by Tim Powers
Evelyn stood up and took Spencer’s arm, and the three of them left the building by a side stairway. They walked quickly down Pico away from the police station.
“Jesus, Spencer,” Evelyn whispered breathlessly. “I was afraid you were killed. Forty armed police were sent out to put down a riot in Pershing Square. Were you there? They just came back a little while ago, and they said they had to open fire on the crowd.”
“That’s what they did, all right,” Spencer said. “Yeah, we were there. This is my friend Thomas, by the way. Thomas, Evelyn.” They nodded to each other. “There’s a few things I want to find out about all this. Let’s stop somewhere. Are there any restaurants open?”
“I hear Pennick’s is,” Evelyn said.
“Pennick’s it is, then.”
Pennick’s was a cafeteria a few blocks away; Thomas spent ten of his eleven solis on a roast beef sandwich and a cup of watery beer. Evelyn and Spencer had the same, and the three of them took a table in the back corner.
“So what happened?” Evelyn asked as soon as Spencer had taken a sip of beer.
“We were in a good position in line,” Spencer said, “but it was a spooky line. The people behind tried to take our places. It began to look like we’d have to risk losing teeth to keep our positions, and we didn’t really want ration numbers anyway, so we ducked out just as the fight started. Then all these cops arrived and just started pouring bullets into the square.”
“They claimed they gave everyone a chance to leave peaceably,” Evelyn told him.
“I didn’t hear anything like that,” Spencer said. “In fact, we saw them shoot down a lot of people that were trying to give themselves up.” He had another pull at the beer. “The thing that worries me is this: the police showed up—what would you say?—about ten seconds after the first rock was thrown, and they started shooting no later than five seconds after that. They were trotting up Olive, with their rifles at the ready, while everything was still more-or-less peaceful.”
“Yeah…?” said Evelyn slowly.
“Yeah. I think they were going to shoot up the crowd in any case. The fact that a fight happened to be going on just gave them a better excuse than they’d planned on.”
“What would they want to do that for?” Evelyn asked skeptically. “That sounds paranoid to me.”
“I don’t know why they would,” Spencer said, “but that’s how it looked.”
Thomas nodded. “I’d have to agree,” he said. “It looked like that’s what they’d planned to do from the start.”
“Jesus,” Evelyn exhaled, and reached for her glass. “Well, to answer your soon-to-be-asked question: no—I haven’t heard or seen anything that’d support your suspicion. Maybe their PADMUs have all shorted out at once, and they’ve all gone crazy; the other big news today was—”
“PADMUs?” Thomas interrupted.
“Priority and Decision-Making Units,” Spencer explained. “What was the other news?” he asked Evelyn.
“Oh, some monk who ran off from the Merignac monastery. There are more murders and robberies and arson going on lately than we can even file, and what are they wasting all their time on? Chasing a monk.”
Thomas drained his beer in one gulp and wiped his mouth with a trembling hand.
“That is odd,” Spencer agreed. “Why are they so hot to get him?”
“I don’t know. I just know they’re all looking for him. His name’s Thomas, as I recall, and they’re looking for him around MacArthur Park. Somebody thinks he saw him there.”
“Maybe they are all going crazy,” Spencer said. “Be careful at the damn station house.” He stood up, wrapping his sandwich in a napkin and sliding it into his coat pocket. “We gotta go, Ev. I’ll see you tonight.” He leaned over and kissed her.
“Okay,” she said. She waved at Thomas. “I’m sorry. What was your name again?”
“Rufus Pennick,” he blurted automatically.
“Huh! Any relation to this place?”
That’s where I got the name from, Thomas realized with some panic. “Uh, yes,” he said quickly. My great-uncle used to own it, I believe. I don’t know if he still does or not. Haven’t kept in touch.”
“I know how that is,” Evelyn nodded. “I haven’t seen my family in two years. Good meeting you. Later, Spence.”
The two young men stepped out of the restaurant door and onto the sidewalk. Thomas started to speak, and then noticed that Spencer was shaking with suppressed laughter.
“What in hell is so Funny?” he demanded testily.
Spencer coughed and straightened his face. “Nothin’, Rufe,” he drawled.
“Yeah? Well, I’d like to see what you could come up with on the spur of the moment.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, Rufus Pennick—of the restaurant-baron Pennicks, you know,” said Spencer in a ridiculous British accent.
“Jesus. Will you stop? The L.A. police are devoting their lives to catching me, and you’re kidding around.”
Spencer sobered. “You’re right. What have you done, anyway? They wouldn’t go to this much trouble for a… cannibalistic child molester who spent his weekends blowing up old ladies with a shotgun.”
“I don’t know. I told you I was sky-fishing. And I punched Brother Olaus—maybe he died…? I can’t really picture that from just one sock in the belly, though. And I ran out of a restaurant yesterday morning without paying for breakfast… oh, and I threw a poodle through a window.” He grinned. “Those are my sins, father.”
“Go to hell, my son. This doesn’t figure, though. None of that stuff would be enough to get ’em really interested, even if old Brother Olaf did die. Especially these days, with Pelias in a coma and riots in the streets.” He scratched his jaw. “I wonder what it is they think you’ve done.”
The Bellamy Theatre, seen by daylight, was a good deal larger than Thomas had imagined last night. Its broad entrance, crowded now with gawking people, took up nearly a third of the two-hundred block of Second Street, and rose upward for three storeys in a grand display of balconies, tile-roofed gables and rust-streaked concrete gargoyles.
Spencer saw the knot of people around the entrance and quickened his pace. “What now?” he muttered. The crowd parted for the two purposeful-looking young men and a moment later Thomas saw, lying on the pavement, the body of the girl, Jean, who had cleaned and bandaged his wound the night before.
She was clearly dead. The left half of her skirt was drenched in blood and her head lolled at an unnatural angle. Someone had straightened her limbs, but her eyes remained open and, Thomas thought, puzzled-looking.
“What the hell happened?” Spencer asked sharply.
Gladhand rolled forward in a wheelchair. “She was in Pershing Square,” he said, “when the police opened fire on the crowd. This gentleman—” he nodded toward a heavy-set man in overalls, “—brought her back here.”
“She was alive when I found her,” the man said humbly. “She told me to take her here. Only she died in the back of my cart.”
“Who are all these people?” Spencer asked, waving at the rest of the crowd. They grinned in embarrassment and shuffled their feet.
“Spectators,” Gladhand said.
Spencer shoved one of them in the arm. “Get out of here, you bastards,” he spat.
“See here,” began one. “You can’t—”
“I can break your teeth, slug. Get out of here!” The crowd began to break up indignantly. “Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens!” he shouted at them.
“Thank you, Spencer,” said Gladhand. “That’s what I was trying to get across when you arrived.” The theatre manager was speaking calmly, but he was pale and breathing a little fast. “Come in, sir, and have some brandy with us,” he said to the man in overalls.
“Uh, okay,” he said. “Here, I’ll carry her inside for you.” He bent down and picked up Jean, one arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders. Spencer led him inside and helped him lower the body onto a vinyl-covered
couch.
Thomas followed, pushing Gladhand’s wheelchair. “Thank you, Thomas,” Gladhand said.
“Rufus,” Spencer corrected.
“Now wait a minute,” Gladhand protested. “Last night you—”
Spencer winked at him and shook his head; the theatre manager shrugged. “Thank you, Rufus.”
“I’ll get brandy,” Spencer said, and bounded up a carpeted stairway.
The man in overalls sat down on a wooden chair and rubbed his hands together nervously. “I’m Tom Straddle,” he said. “I grow stuff.”
“I’m Nathan Gladhand, and this,” with a wave at Thomas, “is apparently Rufus.”
Straddle’s head bobbed twice. “I come along after the cops was gone,” he said. “They was lots of people dead on the grass, but she was on the sidewalk, and movin’. So I picked her up and she said take her to the Bell’my Theatre, so I did.”
Spencer returned with the brandy and glasses, and Gladhand poured it. When everybody had a glass, he raised his. “For Jean,” he said evenly.
Thomas repeated it and took a long sip.
“You two didn’t see her there?” Gladhand asked Spencer.
“No,” he answered awkwardly. “It was a huge crowd. She told me she was going to paint the Arden set all day today.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought, too.”
“Them cops must have gone crazy,” Straddle put in. “Shootin’ all them people.”
“Yes,” said Gladhand. “Well, I see you’ve finished your brandy, Mr. Straddle, so I suppose we shouldn’t keep you any longer. Thank you again for bringing her back here. Let me—sir, I insist—give you something for going out of your way to help us.”
Straddle accepted a handful of coins and shambled out.
“Deal with the, uh… remains, will you?” Gladhand said, waving vaguely at the couch. His voice was, with evident effort, quite calm.
“Sure,” Spencer answered quickly. He and Thomas lifted the body and carried it through the inner doors and down the center aisle to a narrow storeroom under the stage. They returned silently to the lobby, wiped off the couch with a number of paper towels, and sat down.
“What happened at Pershing Square, Spencer?” Gladhand asked thoughtfully.
Spencer described in detail the events of the morning, and shared with the manager his guess that the police had intended from the beginning to fire on the crowd.
“It certainly is inexplicable,” Gladhand observed when he’d finished. “You’d think Tabasco would keep his androids quiet now, with old Joe Pelias in whatever kind of comatose state he’s in. Ever since Hancock killed himself six years ago, Pelias has been the main champion of the androids. Why are they running amuck the first time he’s not there to defend them?”
“They liked him?” Thomas asked.
“Oh, I suppose so, if androids like anybody,” Gladhand said. “Sure, they liked him.”
“Well,” said Thomas slowly, “maybe it’s revenge.”
No one spoke for a moment, then Spencer muttered, “Jesus. There’s a thought.”
“Rehearsal is cancelled for tonight, Spencer,” Gladhand said briskly. “Post that fact where everyone will see it, will you? And Rufus, you can tell me what became of a young man named Thomas, who, as I recall, slept here last night.”
CHAPTER 4
A Night at the Blind Moon
LATER THAT AFTERNOON THOMAS was slouched comfortably in one of the sprung easy chairs on the alley-side balcony. He was leafing through his script of As You Like It, lazily underlining the Touchstone speeches, and sipping from time to time at a glass of cold vin rosé that stood on a table within easy reach.
After a while he became aware of a voice from the alley below, getting nearer and louder. Soon he decided it was a song that the unseen person was trying to render, and he listened for words. “Bringing in the sheep; bringing in the sheep,” the cracked old voice rasped. “We all come re-joi-cing, bringing in the sheep.”
Now clumping labored steps sounded on the stairs to the balcony, and Thomas laid the script aside and stood up. “Who is that?” he asked.
A crazy-eyed, ragged-bearded face, shadowed under a cardboard hat, poked up over the top step and squinted suspiciously at Thomas. “Who,” it countered, “is that?”
“I’m, uh, Rufus Pennick. I’m an actor here. Now—”
“Oh, that’s all right, then.” The old man grinned reassuringly and lurched his way up the remaining stairs to the balcony. “I’m Ben Corwin,” he said, holding out a stained, claw-like hand which Thomas shook briefly. Ben Corwin, Thomas thought; where have I heard that name?
The old man slumped into the other chair. After a moment he spied the glass of wine and drained it in one gulp. “Ah, good, good, good,” he sighed. He fished a little metal box out of his pocket and flipped open its lid. “Snoose?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, would you like a bit of snoose?”
Thomas peered distastefully at the iridescent brown powder in the box. “No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Corwin put the box down and then lifted his feet in his hands and rested them on the wobbling table. He was wearing battered sandals, and Thomas noticed, on the left one, a bit of wire where the heel-strap should have been. My old sandals! he thought. This is the beggar they gave them to. Corwin picked up the snuffbox and took a liberal pinch of the brown dust, spread it on the back of his hand, and then inhaled it vigorously, giving both nostrils a turn.
“Ahhh,” he sighed, sagging in the chair. His head fell back and his jaw dropped open, and a noise like snoring issued from his mouth. Thomas tried to go on with his script-marking, but found that the balcony had, for the moment, been robbed of its charm. He went inside.
He wandered downstairs to the greenroom and found Spencer knotting a plaid scarf about his throat. “Rufus!” Spencer said. “I was looking for you. Me and a couple of the guys are going over to the Blind Moon to have a few beers. Come along.” His cheeriness had about it a quality of suppressed hysteria.
Thomas considered the invitation, then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “What’s snoose? Snuff?”
Spencer looked at him sharply. “Why? You haven’t bought any, have you?”
“No. There’s a gentleman on the balcony, though, whom it has rendered unconscious.”
“Ben Corwin? Sure. He takes it all the time. The stuff was invented by androids, and they’re the most common users of it. It’s real bad business—a mixture of snuff, opium and fine-ground glass.”
“Glass? Why glass, for God’s sake?” Thomas shuddered, remembering the gusto with which Corwin had inhaled the stuff.
“It makes tiny cuts in the skin so the opium goes right into the bloodstream. Trouble is the glass does too. It does incredible damage to the body, they say—blindness, insanity, heart trouble, even varicose veins. Snoose fans never live long.” He shook his head. “Most people just jam it up under their lip, but old Ben snorts it. Sometime he’s going to blow his nose and find his brain in his hankie.”
“He didn’t look like that would upset him a whole lot.”
Spencer grinned. “Yeah, it probably wouldn’t.” He pulled a black knitted cap over his red hair. “Get your coat and come on,” he said.
In the lobby two young men were waiting for them. “Rufus, meet a couple of fellow-thespians,” Spencer said. “This,” an amiable-looking youth with lanky blond hair, “is Jeff Kyler, and that one,” a dark, short man in burgundy-colored pants, “is Robert Negri. Jeff, Robert—Rufus Pennick.”
Thomas said hello to them and detected, he thought, a trace of reserve in their answering nods. Oh well, he said to himself; I’m a green newcomer, an intruder thrust into the intimacies of their craft. I’d probably be a little stand-offish too, if I was in their place.
“Shall we walk or drive?” Jeff asked.
“Too many maniacs running around loose lately,” Negri growled. “Let’s drive.”
“Right,” Spencer
agreed. “I’ll bring the car around front.” He ducked down a hallway.
Thomas remembered the machine that had rocketed past him on the Hollywood Freeway the day before. “A gas-car?” he asked, following the other two out of the building.
“The body of one,” Jeff said. “It’s a derelict we found in the hills one day. Spencer put wooden wheels on it and took the old motor out. We all painted it and cleaned it up, and now it’s the neatest little wagon you ever saw.”
Thomas nodded, tried and failed to think of something to say, and nodded again. “You, uh, heard about the business in Pershing Square this morning?” he asked.
“Never discuss your casualties,” Negri snapped.
“It’s too soon to talk about her,” Jeff explained more kindly.
“Ah,” Thomas said softly, trying not to look disconcerted. A close-mouthed crew, these actors, he thought. The clopping of a horse’s hooves on pavement broke the awkward silence, and then the car rounded the corner onto Second from Broadway and pulled up to the curb.
“Hop in, gentlemen,” Spencer called from the driver’s seat.
Thomas stared at the vehicle. It was a streamlined, albeit dented here and there, metal body, painted gold. A burly old horse was harnessed to the front bumper, and the reins extended from his bit to Spencer’s hands through the space where a windshield must once have been. The wheels were sturdy oaken disks rimmed with battered bands of iron.
“Quit gawking and come on,” Spencer said. Thomas got in beside him and the other two got in back. The seats were transplanted theatre chairs, upholstered in red velvet, with cast iron flourishes for arms.
“An impressive vehicle,” Thomas commented.
“Hell yes,” Spencer said, snapping the reins. “If you like, I’ll let you have a try behind the wheel.”
“Behind the wheel?”
“The steering wheel. This ring here. That’s how cars were meant to be steered, see, by turning it. Behind the wheel means, you know, in the driver’s seat.”
“Oh,” said Thomas. “Sure. I’d like to, sometime.”
“Not today, huh, Spencer?” Negri pleaded. “I don’t feel so good, and I sure don’t need any extra shaking up.”
