“Sitting,” Joe interrupted.
“…sitting on a sidewalk. So what’s going on? Are you causing a riot back there or what?”
“I don’t think so,” Joe said, scratching his chin. “I left about three in the morning.”
“Why then?”
“Well, I…I didn’t want my wife to know I was goin’. I didn’t tell her about the belt.”
Spud started to nod—he wouldn’t have told his mother. Then he frowned sharply. “You mean you left your wife back there to get killed? You…”
“No, kid, no!” Joe flung up his hands. “It ain’t like you think. I was gonna come back here into the past and make a bundle on the Series, and then go back to the same moment I left and buy another belt for Alice. Honest, I love my wife, dammit!”
Spud thought. “How much to you need?”
“For a good belt, made in Japan? Twenty grand, your money. Which is the same in ours, in numbers, only we call ’em Rockefellers instead of dollars.”
Spud whistled a descending arpeggio. “How’d you expect to win that kind of money? That takes a big stake, and you said you sunk your savings in the belt.”
“Yeah,” Koziack smiled, “but they terminate your life-insurance when you go Eligible, and I got five thousand Rockies from that. I even remembered to change it to dollars,” he added proudly. “It’s right…” His face darkened.
“…here in your pocket,” Spud finished. “Terrific.” His eyes widened. “Hey, wait—you’re in trouble!”
“Huh?”
“Your legs are back in 2007, sitting on the sidewalk, right? So they’re creating reality. Get it? They’re making future—you can’t go back to the moment you left ’cause time is going on after it already. So if you don’t get back soon, the sun’ll come up and some blood-thirsty nut’ll kill your wife.”
Joe blanched. “Oh Jesus God,” he breathed. “I think you’re right.” He glanced at a passing sign, which read, MANHATTAN—10 MILES. “Does this thing go any…ulp…faster?”
The car leaped forward.
To his credit, Joe kept his eyes bravely open as Spud yanked the car in and out of high-speed traffic, snaking through holes that hadn’t appeared to be there and doing unspeakable things to the Buick’s transmission. But Joe was almost—almost—grateful when the sound of an ululating siren became audible over the snarling horns and screaming brakes.
Spud glanced in the mirror, located the whirling gumball machine in the rear-view mirror, and groaned aloud. “Just our luck! The cops—and us with only five bucks between us. Twelve years old, no license, a stolen car, a half a fat guy in a dress—cripes, even fifty bucks’d be cutting it close.” Thinking furiously, he pulled over and parked on the grass, beneath a hellishly bright highway light. “Maybe I can go back and talk to them before they see you,” he said to Joe, and began to get out.
“Wait, Spud!” Joe said urgently. He snatched a handful of cigarette butts from the ashtray, smeared black grime on Spud’s upper lip. “There. Now you look maybe sixteen.”
Spud grinned. “You’re okay, Joe.” He got out.
Twenty feet behind them, Patrolman Vitelli turned to his partner. “Freaks,” he said happily. “Kids. Probably clouted the car, no license. Let me have it.”
“Don’t take a cent less than seventy-five,” Patrolman Duffy advised.
“I dunno, Pat. They don’t look like they got more than fifty to me.”
“Well, all right,” Duffy grumbled. “But I want an ounce of whatever they’re smokin’. We’re running low.”
Vitelli nodded and got out of the black and white, one hand on his pistol. Spud met him halfway, and a certain lengthy ritual dialogue was held.
“Five bucks!” Vitelli roared. “You must be outa your mind.”
“I wish I was,” Spud said fervently. “Honest to God, it’s all I got.”
“How about your friend?” Vitelli said, and started for the Buick, which sat clearly illuminated in the pool of light beneath the arc light.
“He’s stone broke,” Spud said hastily. “I’m takin’ him to Bellevue—he thinks he may have leprosy.”
Vitelli pulled up short with one hand on the truck. “You got a license and registration?” he growled.
Spud’s heart sank. “I…”
Vitelli nodded. “All right, buddy. Let’s open the trunk.”
Spud’s heart bounced off his shoes and rocketed back up, lodging behind his palate. Seeing his reaction, Vitelli looked down at the trunk, noticing for the first time the odd nature of its fastening. He tugged experimentally, flimsy fabric parted, and the trunk lid rose.
Blinking at the light, the blond girl sat up stiffly, a muddy treadprint on her…person.
The air filled with the sound of screeching brakes.
Vitelli staggered back as if he’d been slapped with a sandbag. He looked from the girl to Spud to the girl to Spud, and his eyes narrowed.
“Oh, boy,” he said softly. “Oh boy.” He unholstered his gun.
“Look, officer, I can explain,” Spud said without the least shred of conviction.
“Hey,” said the blond girl, clearly dazed.
“Holy shit,” said Duffy in the squad car.
“Excuse me,” said Joe, getting out of the Buick.
Both cops gasped as they caught sight of him, and Vitelli began to shake his head slowly. Seeing their expressions, the girl raised up onto her knees and peered around the trunk lid, completing the task of converting what had been three lanes of rushing traffic into a goggle-eyed parking lot.
“My dress,” she yelped.
Koziack stood beside the Buick a little uncertainly, searching for words in all the likely places. “Oh shit,” he said at last, and began to pull the dress over his head, removing the derby. “Pleistocene, here I come.”
Vitelli froze. The gun dropped from his nerveless fingers; the hand stayed before him, index finger crooked.
“Tony,” came a shaky voice from the squad car, “forget the ounce.”
Spud examined the glaze in Vitelli’s eyes and bolted for the car. “Come on,” he screamed at Joe. The girl barely (I’m sorry, really) managed to jump from the trunk before the car sprang forward like a plane trying to outrun a bullet, lurching off the shoulder in front of a ten-mile traffic pileup that showed no slightest sign of beginning to start up again.
Behind them Vitelli still stood like a statue, imaginary gun still pointing at where Joe had been standing. Tears leaked from his unblinking eyes.
As the girl stared around her with widening eyes, car doors began to open.
Spud was thoroughly spooked, but he relaxed a good deal when the toll-booth attendant at the Brooklyn Bridge failed to show any interest in a twelve-year-old driving a car with the trunk wide open. Joe had the dress folded over where his lap should have been, and the attendant only changed the five and went back to his egg salad sandwich without comment.
“Where are we going?” Spud asked, speaking for the first time since they had left the two policemen and the girl behind.
Joe named a midtown address in the forties.
“Great. How’re we gonna get you from the car into the place?”
Joe chuckled. “Hey, Spud—this may be 1976, but Manhattan is Manhattan. Nobody’ll notice a thing.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. What do you figure to do?”
Joe’s grin atrophied. “Jeez, I dunno. Get the belt fixed first—I ain’t thought about after that.”
Spud snorted. “Joe, I think you’re a good guy and I’m your pal, but if you didn’t have a roof on your mouth, you’d blow your derby off every time you hiccuped. Look, it’s simple: you get the belt fixed, you get both halves of you back together, and it’s maybe ten o’clock, right?”
“If those goniffs at the dealership don’t take too long fixin’ the belt,” Joe agreed.
“So you give me the insurance money, and use the belt to go a few months ahead. By the time, with the Series and the Bowl games and maybe a litt
le Olympics action, we can split, say, fifty grand. You take your half and take the time-belt back to the moment your legs left 2007, at 10:01. You buy your wife a time-belt first thing in the morning and you’re both safe.”
“Sounds great,” Joe said a little slowly, “but…uh…”
Spud glanced at him irritably. “What’s wrong with it?” he demanded.
“I don’t want you should be offended, Spud. I mean, you’re obviously a tough, smart little guy, but…”
“Spit it out!”
“Spud, there is no way in the world a twelve-year-old kid is gonna take fifty grand from the bookies and keep it.” Joe shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry, but you know I’m right.”
Spud grimaced and banged the wheel with his fist. “I’ll go to a lot of bookies,” he began.
“Spud, Spud, you get into that bracket, at your age, the word has just gotta spread. You know that.”
The boy jammed on the brakes for a traffic light and swore. “Dammit, you’re right.”
Joe slumped sadly in his seat. “And I can’t do it myself. If I get caught bettin’ on sports events of the past myself, it’s the Pleistocene for me.”
Spud stared, astounded. “Then how did you figure to accomplish anything?”
“Well…” Joe looked embarrassed. “I guess I thought I’d find some guy I could trust. I didn’t think he’d be…so young.”
“A grownup you can trust? Joe, you really are a moron.”
“Well. I didn’t have no choice, fragit. Besides, it might still work. How much do you think you could score, say, on one big event like the Series, if you hustled all the books you could get to?”
Twenty thousand, Spud thought, but he said nothing.
Joe had been right: the sight of half a fat man being dragged across the sidewalk by a twelve-year-old with ashes on his upper lip aroused no reaction at all in midtown Manhattan on a Friday night. One out-of-towner on his way to the theater blinked a few times, but his attention was distracted almost immediately by a midget in a gorilla suit, wearing a sandwich sign advertising an off-off-off-Broadway play about bestiality. Spud and Joe reached their destination without commotion, a glass door in a group of six by which one entered various sections of a single building, like a thief seeking the correct route to the Sarcophagus Room of Tut’s Tomb. The one they chose was labeled, “Breadbody & McTwee, Importers,” and opened on a tall stairway. Spud left Joe at the foot of the stairs and went to fetch assistance. Shortly he came back down with a moronic-looking pimply teen-ager in dirty green coveralls, “Dinny” written in red lace on his breast pocket.
“Be goddamn,” Dinny said with what Joe felt was excessive amusement. “Never seen anything like it. I thought this kid was nuts. Come on, let’s go.” Chuckling to himself, he helped Spud haul Joe upstairs to the shop. They brought him into a smallish room filled with oscilloscopes, signal generators, computer terminals, assorted unidentifiable hardware, tools, spare parts, beer cans, as-yet unpublished issues of Playboy and Analog, overflowing ashtrays, a muted radio, and a cheap desk piled with carbon copies of God only knew what. Dinny sat on a cigarette-scarred stool, still chuckling, and pulled down a reference book from an overhead shelf. He chewed gum and picked at his pimples as he thumbed through it, as though to demonstrate that he could do all three at once. It was clearly his showpiece. At last he looked up, shreds of gum decorating his grin, and nodded to Joe.
“If it’s what I t’ink it is,” he pronounced, “I c’n fix it. Got yer warranty papers?”
Joe nodded briefly, retrieved them from a compartment in the time-belt and handed them over. “How long will it take?”
“Take it easy,” Dinny said unresponsively, and began studying the papers like an orangutan inspecting the Magna Carta. Joe curbed his impatience with a visible effort and rummaged in a nearby ashtray, selecting the longest butt he could find.
“Joe,” Spud whispered, “how come that goof is the only one here?”
“Whaddya expect at nine thirty on a Friday night, the regional manager?” Joe whispered back savagely.
“I hope he knows what he’s doing.”
“Me too, but I can’t wait for somebody better, dammit. Alice is in danger, and my legs’ve been using up my time for me back there. Besides, I’ve had to piss for the last hour-and-a-half.”
Spud nodded grimly and selected a butt of his own. They smoked for what seemed like an interminable time in silence broken only by the rustling of paper and the sound of Dinny’s pimples popping.
“Awright,” the mechanic said at last, “the warranty’s still good. Lucky you didn’t come ta me a week from now.”
“The speed you’re goin’, maybe I have,” Joe snapped. “Come on, come on, will ya? Get me my legs back—I ain’t got all night.”
“Take it easy,” Dinny said with infuriating glee. “You’ll get your legs back. Just relax. Come on over inna light.” Moving with sadistic slowness, he acquired a device that seemed something like a hand-held fluoroscope with a six-inch screen, and began running it around the belt. He stopped, gazed at the screen for a full ten seconds, and sucked his teeth.
“Sorry, mister,” he drawled, straightening up and grinning. “I can’t help you.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?” Joe roared.
“Somebody tampered with this belt, tried to jinx the override cutout so they could visit some Interdicted Period—probably wanted to see the Crucifixion or some other event that a vested-interest group got declared Off-Limits. I bet that’s why it don’t work right. It takes a specialist to work on one of these, you know.” He smiled proudly, pleased with the last sentence.
“So you can’t fix it?” Koziack groaned.
“Maybe yes, maybe no, but I ain’t gonna try ’less I see some cash. That belt’s been tampered with,” Dinny said, relishing the moment. “The warranty’s void.”
Joe howled like a gutshot buffalo, and stepped forward. His meaty right fist traveled six inches from his shoulder, caught Dinny full in the mouth and dropped him in his tracks, popping the mechanic’s upper lip and three pimples. “I’d stomp on ya if I could, ya smart-ass mugger-hugger,” Joe roared down at the unconscious Dinny. “Think you’re funny!”
“Easy, Joe,” Spud yelled. “Don’t get excited. We gotta do something.”
“What the hell can we do?” Joe cried despairingly. “That crumb is the only mechanic in a hundred miles—we’ll never get to the next one in time, and we haven’t got a prayer anyway with four dollars and change. Crummy pap-lapper, I oughta…oh damn it.” He began to cry.
“Hey, Joe,” Spud protested, flustered beyond measure at seeing a sober grownup cry, “come on, take it easy. Come on now, cut it out.” Joe, his face in his hands, shook his head and kept on sobbing.
Spud thought furiously, and suddenly a light dawned and was filled with a strange prescience, a déjà vu kind of certainty that startled him with its intensity. He wasted no time examining it. Stepping close to Joe, he bent at the waist, swung from the hip, and kicked the belt as hard as he could, squarely on the spot Dinny had last examined. A sob became a startled yell—and Joe’s fat legs appeared beneath him, growing downward from the belt like tubers.
“What the hell did you kick me for?” Joe demanded, glaring indignantly at Spud. “What’d I do to you?”
Spud pointed.
Joe looked down. “Wa-HOO!!” he shouted gleefully. “You did it, Spud, I got my legs back! Oh, Spud, baby, you’re beautiful, I got my legs back!” He began to caper around the room in a spontaneous improvised goat-dance, knocking equipment crashing in all directions, and Spud danced with him, laughing and whooping and for the first time in this story looking his age. Together they careened like an improbable vaudeville team, the big fat man and the mustached midget, howling like fools.
At last they subsided, and Joe sat down to catch his breath. “Woo-ee,” he panted, “what a break. Hey, Spud, I really gotta thank you, honest to God. Look, I been thinkin’—you can’t m
ake enough from the bookies for both of us without stickin’ your neck way out. So the hell with that, see? I’ll give you the Series winner like I promised, but you keep all the dough. I’ll figure out some other way to get the scratch—with the belt workin’ again it shouldn’t be too hard.”
Spud laughed and shook his head. “Thanks, Joe,” he said. “That’s really nice of you, and I appreciate it—but ‘figuring out’ isn’t exactly your strong suit. Besides, I’ve been doing some thinking too. If I won fifty bucks shooting pool, that’d make me happy—I’d be proud, I’d’ve earned it. But to make twenty-thousand on a fixed game with no gamble at all—that’s no kick. You need the money—you take it, just like we planned. I’ll see the bookies tonight.”
“But you earned it, kid,” Joe said in bewilderment. “You went through a lotta work to get me here, and you fixed the belt.”
“That’s all right,” Spud insisted. “I don’t want money—but there’s one thing you can do for me.”
“Anything,” Joe agreed. “As soon as I take a piss.”
Three hours later, having ditched the car and visited the home of “Odds” Evenwright, where he placed a large bet on a certain ball club, Spud arrived home to find precisely what he had expected:
His mother, awesomely drunk and madder than hell, sitting next to the pool table on which his personal cue and balls still rested, waiting for him to come home.
“Hi, Mom,” he said cheerfully as he entered the living room, and braced himself. With a cry of alcoholic fury, Mrs. Flynn lurched from her chair and began to close on him.
Then she pulled up short, realizing belatedly that her son was accompanied by a stranger. For a moment, old reflex manners nearly took hold, but the drink was upon her and her Irish was up. “Are you the tramp who’s been teachin’ my Clarence to shoot pool, you tramp?” she screeched, shaking her fist and very nearly capsizing with the effort. “You fat bum, are the one’sh been corrupting my boy?”
“Not me,” Joe said politely, and disappeared.
By Any Other Name Page 5
