The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2)

by Michael Stiles

  “I really need to see her,” said Rachael. Her eyes were glistening a little. “My mother hasn’t been the same since she went away. Please find her.”

  “I’m trying,” Joy said. “I’ll keep trying.”

  “Thank you.” Rachael gave her an awkward hug and then led her mother out of the office. Ruth’s steps were unsteady, as if she was sleepwalking.

  Those two men were still out there taking pictures. Joy, deciding that they needed to be gone, went outside to confront them.

  “Boys,” she said in the most imperious voice she could muster, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Hello, Miss,” said one of the men. He was only a little bit old, perhaps in his mid-thirties, and he had light brown hair that didn’t match his dark sideburns. His forehead and ears were badly sunburned. “My friend and I are looking for Hollywood Boulevard. Can you point us there?”

  The other one came over while they were talking. He had a darker complexion than his friend, and was so nervous that his whole body seemed to be vibrating. “Hollawood Booo-levard,” he repeated. His accent reminded her of Desi Arnaz.

  “Are you Cuban?” Joy asked him.

  “Si,” he said, but immediately changed his answer to “No!” when the first man elbowed him hard in the ribs. The Cuban—she was sure he was Cuban—was sweating profusely and his lips were trembling.

  “What are you taking pictures of?”

  The pale-skinned one gave his companion a warning look that clearly indicated that he was to do all the talking. “We’re visiting from Florida,” he explained. “My friend wanted to see Hollywood. We must have made a wrong turn.”

  “You must have,” Joy said coolly.

  “If you could just tell us which way―”

  “Stop that!” Joy yelled at the Cuban man, who was once again taking pictures of the front of the building, camera wobbling in his shaky hands.

  “He’s interested in architecture,” said the friend, a little petulantly.

  Joy folded her arms in front of her chest to make him stop staring at it. “I’m calling the cops,” she said.

  The Cuban man stuck a hand inside his sport coat, looking at her with wide, terrified eyes. His friend raised one finger and said, “Now hold on, honey. No need for that. No need for that!” These last words were directed at the Cuban, who quickly withdrew his hand from his jacket. “We’ll be on our way,” he said to Joy, smiling toothily at her. He had some food stuck in his teeth and the sight of it nauseated her.

  She waited there until they got in their car, feeling pleased with herself for standing up to them. Rayfield would be proud of her when she told him.

  When she went back in, Mrs. Moran had already gone in to see the doctor. Joy sat down at her desk, enjoying the quiet of the late afternoon, and went back to her screenplay. But in the back of her mind was her little voice, telling her she really needed to talk to Ed. If she could only find him.

  * * *

  Maggie Quinn was hiding in the bushes in front of an expensive house in Bel Air. The place was set so far back from the street that you couldn’t even see the house unless you squeezed through the gate (or climbed the fence) and crossed the big lawn. Maggie didn’t climb fences, but there was a gap in the gate large enough for her to fit through.

  Now she was peeking into the window to see if she had the right house. It had taken her forever to find it. For a long time she’d been searching for someone named Tannenbaum. The girl who had come into her shop had mentioned her name to the manager, but Maggie had heard it wrong. It turned out there were lots of Tannenbaums in Los Angeles—more than Maggie would ever have expected—and she had peeked into many windows before realizing her mistake. Then, late one night, she had woken up from a sound sleep and the right name had popped into her mind: Greenbaum!

  There were quite a few Greenbaums, too. That had made things difficult. But this house felt right. The Greenbaum girl seemed rich and spoiled. This could be the house of a rich and spoiled girl.

  It had turned out to be the right place, and Maggie spent many subsequent nights crouched in the garden to look through the window. The mother was usually home. Maggie had seen her taking blue pills from a big bottle she kept in her purse, and she acted dazed and disoriented most of the time.

  The daughter was much more alert, except for the times she borrowed her mother’s purse and swiped one or two of those blue pills.

  Maggie was waiting for the right opportunity to jump out of the bushes and kill the girl. But the moment was never quite right. The brat never came out of the house at night, only during the daytime. When she did go out after dark, she usually brought her mother with her. There didn’t seem to be any father.

  This evening, a Saturday, it appeared that her luck might be improving. Maggie had arrived at the house just after sunset, parking on a neighboring street as she usually did, and crept around to the side of the house to look in the living room window. The mother seemed unusually anxious, and her daughter went to another room to get the bottle of pills. The mother took two of them and reclined on the couch. Twenty minutes later, the girl came back with the bottle and offered her mother a third one. They had a lengthy conversation about it, and although Maggie couldn’t hear what they were saying, it seemed the girl was attempting to convince her mother that she hadn’t taken her medicine yet. The mother, looking more bewildered than ever, finally relented and swallowed a third blue pill. Then she lay back again with a contented look on her face, smiling slightly as she floated off to a happier place.

  The girl went upstairs for half an hour and came back down wearing different clothes. Had she been awake, the mother surely would never have allowed the girl to go out in a dress that short… but the mother was a million miles away and had nothing to say on the matter. The girl patted her mother’s face—not an affectionate pat, more of a slap. Her mother didn’t stir. The girl opened her mother’s purse, slipped a set of car keys out of it, and headed toward the front door, picking up her own small, red purse from a table by the door.

  This was the chance Maggie had been waiting for. She stumbled through the garden, tripping over shrubbery and trampling flowers as she went. She fell down and had to stop to pick some mulch and dirt out of her hair. By the time she got around to the front of the house, the girl had the car door open and was about to get in.

  Maggie ran across the lawn as fast as she could. The girl heard her coming and turned. Her wide, terrified eyes glittered in the moonlight. Don’t scream, Maggie silently urged. She pulled her folding knife out of her pocket and opened it up as she approached.

  The Greenbaum girl didn’t scream. She calmly reached into her red purse and took out a gun, which she pointed at Maggie. Maggie stopped short, kicking up bits of grass and dirt as she skidded to a stop.

  “What the hell is your problem, you crazy chick?” the girl demanded. “I never did anything to you!” She looked funny, a teenager in a miniskirt with a big revolver in her hands. But her hands were steady and she seemed to know how to use the thing.

  Maggie spluttered for a moment, shocked that the girl would say something so obviously dumb. “Stitches!” she said at last. “I had to get sixteen stitches in my face because of you.”

  The girl rolled her eyes insolently. “You’re such an idiot. It’s my sister you’re looking for! Can’t you tell I’m not her?”

  That had to be a lie. Maggie never forgot a face. But… suddenly she wasn’t quite so sure. Terwilliger’s girl, the one she had fought in that ladies’ room, had a thin build. This girl, now that she reflected on it, had a very slightly fuller figure. Her eyes seemed a shade lighter. And she did look younger. “Whoops,” said Maggie.

  “Sarah moved out a long time ago. And she’s never coming back.”

  “Sarah?” said Maggie.

  “My sister. Jesus, you’re dense. I’m not her. I’m Rachael.”

  Maggie felt completely befuddled. She was normally quite on top of things, and didn’t like the sensation
of being utterly confused. “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s my name, dimwit!”

  “No!” Maggie took a deep breath and tried again. “How do you know she’s never coming back?”

  “Because she knows I’ll kill her if she does.” Rachael cocked her head to the side in a very teenagerly way, swishing her hair to one side like a horse swatting a fly with its tail. “What did she do to you, anyway?”

  “She cut my face,” Maggie said. “And tried to flush me down a toilet.”

  Rachael nodded. “She used to try to flush me, too. When I was little. To see if I could swim underwater.” She lowered the gun, just a tiny bit. “And she ruined our family. Ruined it. I hate her.”

  “I’m planning to kill her,” said Maggie.

  “Me too,” said Rachael.

  “Want to kill her together?”

  Rachael thought about that for a moment, then put the gun back in her purse. “Okay.”

  27

  Great Balls of Fire

  Kajdas had wandered through the wilderness for what felt like an eternity. There was no day or night in this place; only the purple sky and the eerie light that had no identifiable source. In that time, he had not seen another person—in fact, there weren’t any animals, either. No squirrels, no birds, not even bugs. There was only the crimson forest, the mountains, and the tower.

  He had first noticed the spire the day after he’d escaped from the dark pit. It was far off, visible between the peaks of two mountains in the distance. The tower was narrow and perfectly straight, and so tall that it was impossible to tell where it ended and the sky began.

  Tom had walked toward the tower, thinking that if there were any people within a thousand miles, they would be somewhere near that structure. It was too straight and tall to be a natural formation. So he had walked in that direction, stopping occasionally to rest. He slept sometimes, but found that he never needed anything to eat or drink. He did not get hungry or thirsty. That fact was something he avoided thinking about, because he was pretty sure it meant that he was dead. If he was dead, then this empty world could only be one of two places, and he was afraid to find out which one it was.

  There were no trails. He had to make his way through dense jungles and bogs, and strange things happened when he came into contact with any of the flora. Images flooded his mind, memories of his younger days, and there weren’t any memories that he wanted to revisit. He avoided touching the plants as he made his way up into the mountains. The foliage became thinner as he went uphill, and in the end there was only the bare rock of the mountainside. Looking behind him, he saw the vast red wilderness stretching out for miles under the glittering violet sky.

  He had begun to fear that the spire would always be beyond his reach. It seemed that he was coming no closer to it, no matter how far he walked. Finally, after so many days that he couldn’t possibly have kept count, he noticed that it was definitely closer than before.

  The wind was nearly strong enough to knock him off his feet as he hiked through the high mountain passes. Sometimes there was no clear way forward, and he had to scale high walls of rough rock. He lost his grip and fell often, sometimes a very long way, but the fall never hurt him. He merely dusted himself off and started over.

  At last he came to the peak of one of the mountains, and the tower was right there in front of him. It looked like a spire made of white stone, although stone couldn’t possibly be so smooth and perfect. He could not see any seams; the tower appeared to be made of a single piece of stone, as though it had grown up out of the living bedrock below. It rose straight into the sky, narrow and straight, with nothing to support it. And it was whispering.

  * * *

  “Leave your tie alone, Bismuth.”

  Ed forced himself to keep his hands at his sides. He had only worn a tuxedo once before in his life. “The collar is chafing my neck.”

  Leonard, whose own bow-tie was slightly askew, heaved a sigh. “Just stop touching it. And this is all wrong.” He reached around Ed’s waist, unfastened his cummerbund, and flipped it over. “Crumb-catcher goes crumb-side-up,” he explained.

  They were in Ed’s hotel suite. Leonard had arrived with Abe Cruller twenty minutes earlier, both men dressed in their own tuxes. They had found Ed still wearing his t-shirt and jeans, sorting through the various parts of his rented tuxedo and trying to make sense of them. Leonard had helped him get dressed, grumbling all the while. Cruller just watched and laughed, clearly quite entertained.

  The event was a black-tie reception for several Republican governors, along with a few Southern Democrats who were faithful to Nixon. Through Haldeman, Cruller had obtained tickets for the three of them. He had also managed to get Bob Haldeman to produce identification cards that would supposedly allow them to go, unescorted, into other parts of the White House. Once inside, Leonard and Ed were to get into Kissinger’s safe and photograph any documents that proved the National Security Advisor had been tapping phones to collect intelligence on Nixon’s men.

  It was a short taxi ride from the hotel to the White House. They entered by the front gate this time, where Secret Service agents checked their credentials and let them inside. Cruller patted one of the agents on the shoulder and asked him about his family. The agent clearly knew Cruller well and appeared flattered by the attention.

  The party was already well underway when they were shown into the crowded East Room. Ed stopped just inside the doorway to take it all in: huge chandeliers, tall windows covered by thick gold curtains, a massive grand piano with legs in the shape of eagles. A pianist was playing a happy tune that sounded like Rodgers and Hammerstein. Men in tuxedoes and women in elegant evening gowns chatted while they sipped their drinks and smoked. The smoke was everywhere, filling the whole room with a faint haze. Ed was relieved to see that it was the ordinary kind that came from cigarettes and cigars.

  Cruller gave Ed two thumbs up, his signal that all was good, then went off to look for Alexander Haig. Abe’s task was to make sure the Deputy National Security Advisor was supplied with an abundance of conversation and alcohol, to keep him at the party and away from Henry Kissinger’s office.

  “There’s Ron Ziegler,” Leonard whispered, nodding his head in the direction of a man with an ovoid face and a perfect haircut. “He’s a genius.”

  Ed watched Leonard’s face, trying to determine whether the man was joking.

  “Genius,” Leonard said again. “Ziegler plays the press like a violin. There’s nothing in the world that man couldn’t spin into a success story. The reason he’s here tonight is to get people to forget Vietnam and starting talking about China.”

  Indeed, many of the conversations Ed overheard were about China. Nixon had just announced that he would be traveling there the following year, setting the news networks alight with excitement about his shrewd diplomatic maneuver. Ziegler, his press secretary, had revealed that Nixon and Kissinger had been in secret talks with Peking for months, and that they were nearing a breakthrough. And, just as the President had undoubtedly hoped, Vietnam had been overshadowed in the news by his historic outreach to China.

  Ed had never followed politics very closely, but being close to the center of the action had awakened an interest he’d never had before. He had taken to reading newspapers and watching the evening news in his hotel room every day. It was infectious, the aura of politics and intrigue that pervaded this city.

  “I’ve got seven minutes past eight,” Leonard said, looking at his watch. “Synchronize.”

  Ed checked his own watch, which was showing 8:04. “Close enough,” he replied.

  Leonard clearly did not appreciate Ed’s flippancy. “Meet me at the rendezvous point in fifteen,” he said, then started working his way toward the exit.

  Ed accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter and looked around, unsure of what to do with himself in a room full of strangers. He could see Abe Cruller, talking quietly with Haig, but didn’t dare go anywhere near them. Feeling increasi
ngly self-conscious, he wandered over to the piano. A group of ten or twelve people had gathered around to listen to the music. Ed positioned himself behind the piano player, close enough to the group that he was not quite standing off by himself. If he stood near the crowd, he reasoned, it might not be too obvious that he was by himself.

  The pianist finished his show tune, and several people clapped. “Do you take requests?” asked an older man who was standing next to Ed. He smiled, showing off very long and yellow teeth. “How about Swinging on a Star?”

  “Let’s hear a little Perry Como!” a gray-haired woman called out. “Some Enchanted Evening!”

  Ed, who estimated that he had to be at least forty years younger than the median age of the other guests, couldn’t resist having a little fun. “Do you know any Jerry Lee Lewis? Goodness, gracious…”

  He forgot the rest of the words as the pianist turned around in his seat to face him. Ed had seen President Nixon countless times on the television, but seeing him in person, sitting at a piano, came as quite a surprise. Looking around, Ed realized that four of the men standing near the piano were Secret Service agents.

  “I… didn’t know you could play. Sir.”

  The President regarded Ed thoughtfully for a long, quiet moment. The people around the piano had all fallen silent and were watching with great interest. “Great Balls of Fire, isn’t that right?” Nixon said.

  “Y-yes, sir,” said Ed.

  The President pursed his lips in thought. “Let’s see what I can do.” He turned back to the piano, flexed his fingers, and began a competent rendition of Jerry Lee.

  The people were all staring at Ed now, so he backed away and tried his best to disappear into the crowd. He caught Cruller’s eye; the man was still talking to Haig, but gave Ed a surreptitious wink. He seemed to be trying not to laugh.