by Tim Powers
“It was them,” said Santiago.
“It probably was,” said Ragotskie miserably. “Harlowe doesn’t like free radicals.”
“I’ve been watching the ChakraSys store,” said Santiago, “taking turns with a couple of the gypsies, and one of them saw a man and a woman talk to the old brujo there, this afternoon. That was you two.”
Vickery nodded. Brujo? he thought. Spanish for wizard. We certainly should have talked to that crazy old man.
“And I was there when this man came,” Santiago went on, turning toward Ragotskie. “I knew you were one of Harlowe’s people, mister, I’ve seen you at that place before. And I followed you here, meaning you no good. But—what, you quit? You got fired?”
Ragotskie mumbled, as if to himself, “Okay, maybe somebody on a bicycle could have followed me . . . ” He looked at Santiago. “Both. I quit and I got fired. I tried to—” He glanced warily toward Vickery and Castine. “Yesterday I tried to do something that would stop Harlowe’s, uh, project—”
Santiago nodded. “Egregore.”
“Right. But it didn’t work. So I’m hoping these two can help me find another way to stop it.”
“And,” the boy said, “it wasn’t you who killed Isaac Laquedem.”
“I didn’t know anything about it. I’ve never killed anybody!”
“Not near a freeway, anyway,” put in Vickery. To Santiago he added, “He can’t see ghosts.”
“What is your name?” Santiago asked Ragotskie.
“I don’t think you need—”
Castine said, “He just now refrained from killing you, remember.”
Ragotskie slumped in the chair. “Oh—Elisha Ragotskie.”
Santiago nodded acknowledgment. “I was listening, here, just now,” he said with a wave behind him. “I think it’s maybe a good thing you two didn’t leave town, like Mr. Fakhouri told you to.”
“Fakhouri?” said Castine. “That’s the Egyptian? You know him? He told us he was going to take care of it all himself.”
“Try, sure,” said Santiago, “but he doesn’t know everything. I been moving around the city, finding things out for him. He will try to stop the egregore monster, but I think it’s good that you be working too. Laquedem wanted it stopped.” He looked at Vickery. “Driver for Galvan? Not lately, I think.”
“No,” agreed Vickery. “Galvan wants to sell us to Harlowe, in fact.”
“Sell you to him? Why does he want you?”
“It seems we’d be a perfect part for his damned egregore,” said Castine.
“An essential part,” said Ragotskie.
Santiago stared at Castine and Vickery. “So maybe Fakhouri is right. Maybe you should leave town.”
“We’ve thought about it,” Castine said.
Again Vickery caught a faint sound like singing on the wind, and he opened his mouth to hear it better; it was more than one voice, and the song was—yes, definitely—“What a Wonderful World.”
Rustling among the leaves didn’t seem to be caused by the wind, nor by people either.
The clearing was so dark now that Vickery knew that Santiago had stood up only because he heard the aluminum-frame chair flex. Vickery guessed that he had heard the singing too, and knew what ectoplasmic throats it came from. And he would have heard the closer noises among the leaves too. “I’ll find you again,” the boy said, and then he had disappeared among the dark trees. A whisper came back: “I’m taking your sandwiches, mister.”
“Let’s us go too,” said Castine; her voice was tense, and she was uselessly looking around at the shadows under and between the trees.
“Yes,” said Vickery, getting to his feet. He kept his voice level as he added, “My car’s probably got a ticket, if it hasn’t been towed. Ragotskie, what’s the number of your burner?”
“Uh, okay,” said Ragotskie, and recited the phone number. “But what, are we through here? When do we meet again? There’s not much time, and you’ll need my help with Agnes—”
Clearly he had not heard the singing, or even the agitation among the leaves.
“We’ll call you tomorrow.” Vickery started to reach for Castine’s hand to help her up, then remembered catching her hand last night beside the freeway bridge outside of Barstow, and he pulled his hand back.
But she was standing up anyway, and the two of them hurried through the bushes back toward the freeway shoulder where they had left his car. The frail singing voices were soon drowned out by the mundane roar of rushing car engines.
Just as Agnes Loria was merging onto the westbound 10 freeway, she heard Nunez’s voice on the phone say, “There’s some kind of activity up the slope, on the freeway shoulder. Can’t wait, we’re gonna go in.”
Loria didn’t curse because Nunez would hear it, but she hit the steering wheel with her fist.
I’m too late, she thought, to exit on Vermont and hope to get past Nunez and Foster down on Estes.
But if Elisha is up on the freeway shoulder—well, so am I, in about five seconds.
She sped past the Vermont exit, then braked hard and swerved into the narrow shoulder lane, where a white Saturn was already parked against the guard rail, and she brought her station wagon to a halt a dozen yards behind it and switched off her engine and headlights.
Nunez and Foster will come up cautiously, she thought. I can hop over the guard rail and probably get to Elisha before they make their way up the slope—and then—what, tell him to run? Tell him I’m sorry?
She was about to open her door and get out when two people, a man and a woman, emerged from the shoulder-side trees ahead and stepped over the guard rail and stood by the rear bumper of the parked Saturn; they were looking her way, past her car, clearly waiting for a gap in traffic that would allow them to get into their car on the driver’s side, since the passenger-side door was blocked. Their faces were intermittently illuminated as cars swept past, and Loria recognized the woman from photographs Harlowe had distributed back at the Sepulveda office.
It was Ingrid Castine, and the man with her must be Sebastian Vickery. And Elisha wasn’t with them!
She snatched up her phone and said “Nunez, wait, get back to your car!”
Castine, and then Vickery, had scrambled around and lunged into the Saturn, and Vickery yanked the door shut just before a big semi swooped past. The Saturn’s taillights came on.
“You nearby, Loria?” came Nunez’ voice from her phone. “We’ve waited long enough—”
“Vickery and Castine are up here on the 10 shoulder,” she interrupted, speaking rapidly, “above you, just got into a white Saturn with an Anaheim dealer’s plate—he’s in gear, moving west toward Normandie, I’m going to let a car or two get between us—”
“Don’t lose him!” shouted Nunez. “We’ll get on at Normandie.” From the phone on the seat Loria heard a squeal of tires, then, “Foster stays here for Ragotskie.”
The white Saturn accelerated away up the shoulder lane and merged with traffic. Loria hastily started the engine of her station wagon and clicked it in gear, switched on the headlights, and stepped on the gas pedal. By the time she was able to merge with the right lane, at least three cars were between her and the Saturn, and she moved to the faster lane on her left to keep the Saturn in sight among all the swaying and weaving taillights ahead of her.
“He’s passing Arlington,” she yelled without looking away from the traffic ahead. “Now he’s signaling—I think he’s gonna get off at Crenshaw. Yeah, shit, he’s braking, still signaling.”
“I’ll be there,” gasped Nunez’ voice.
Loria gritted her teeth and swerved to the right, cutting off a pickup truck and getting an angry four-second blast of its horn; and then she swept across the blessedly empty right lane into the Crenshaw exit lane. Now there was one car between her and the Saturn.
“We’re on Washington,” came Nunez’ voice from the phone on the seat beside her. “He might get right back on the freeway, to see if anybody’s following him.”
“He’s still got his right turn signal going,” said Loria. “And he’s in the right-turn lane. I think he’s definitely gonna head north on Crenshaw.”
The Saturn halted at a red light at the bottom of the exit ramp and then turned right, and Loria waited impatiently for the next car to do the same. When it was her turn she rolled through with barely a glance to the left.
The Saturn was now proceeding north along Crenshaw at a reasonable thirty-miles-per-hour in the slow lane, past glowing windows in the old apartment buildings and fenced-in craftsman houses, and the car ahead of Loria passed the slower-moving vehicle; Loria was now right behind the Saturn.
“I’m on his tail,” she said. “I’m gonna pass him so he doesn’t get spooked. You at Crenshaw yet?”
“Any second now,” said Nunez. “Go ahead and pass him, but keep him in sight.”
Loria flipped her turn signal and moved into the left lane—and as she passed the Saturn she couldn’t help glancing to her right.
When they had got into the freeway exit lane, Vickery had flicked a look at the rear view mirror and said, “There was a yellow station wagon parked on the freeway shoulder behind us, remember?—and it’s getting off with us here.” And it had stayed behind them.
Now it was passing him, and he looked at the driver. For a moment he saw her profile, then she turned to face him.
And he stepped on the gas pedal and yanked the steering wheel to the left, smashing his rear door against the station wagon’s front bumper. The station wagon spun sideways across the dividing line, and the headlights of several oncoming cars dipped as the drivers hit the brakes.
Vickery straightened the wheel and kept accelerating.
“It was the woman who was pushing the baby carriage,” he said tightly, “in February.” He pulled the gun out of his pocket and laid it on his lap.
Castine didn’t ask him if he was sure. She licked her upper lip and nodded, glancing around at the other cars. “Ragotskie was careless.” She had drawn the .38 revolver from her coat pocket.
Washington Boulevard was coming up fast, but just short of it Vickery swerved across the oncoming lanes into the side alley of a brightly lit Mobil station—just as a black BMW sedan made a fast left turn from Washington and then rocked up a driveway into the station on the other side.
Vickery braked to a sudden stop when the BMW’s high-beam headlights swung around the station’s convenience store and halted a couple of yards from his front bumper, and he and Castine both ducked below the dashboard as he pushed the gear shift lever into reverse with his left hand.
Four loud gunshots shook the air almost simultaneously, and Vickery felt the Saturn shudder as little cubes of windshield glass peppered the back of his head; then he stamped on the gas pedal, and as the Saturn surged backward he straightened up and fired four shots through his crazed windshield at the vaguely perceptible shape of the BMW. Castine had fired three shots through the windshield at the same time, and when the Saturn had bumped down onto the Crenshaw pavement she leaned forward and smashed at the riddled windshield in front of Vickery with the butt of her revolver. When she pulled the gun back, a flap of window glass pulled away with it, and Vickery dropped his gun and reached up to push more of the glass aside with his left hand as he grabbed the wheel with his right.
They were moving fast in reverse down the southbound lanes of Crenshaw, and Vickery corrected the car’s back-and-forth swerving; a single headlight steered into sight in their wake, and a blink of white light just above it was probably the flash of another gunshot; all he could hear was the Saturn’s engine roar through the torn windshield.
He stomped on the brake and spun the wheel, and when the Saturn had screechingly rotated a hundred-and-eighty degrees he shifted to drive and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The Saturn was under control and facing forward now, and he smoothly passed a couple of slow-moving cars. His nostrils twitched at the metallic smell of coolant steam on the headwind through the ruptured windshield.
“He can’t shoot anymore,” said Castine tensely. “He’ll hit another car!” She leaned forward again to grip the edge of the widened hole in the windshield, and pulled another section of crackling glass aside.
Vickery hardly heard her. In his mind he was back on the night-training course at the Rowley Training Center in Maryland, and all the cars on the street were vector lines in a rapidly changing calculus problem.
The yellow station wagon no longer straddled the center line, and when the one-headlight BMW switched to the passing lane, Vickery saw that the crosswalk signal ahead had turned red, and he pivoted the Saturn into a screeching turn to the right, across the front of a big Stater Bros. delivery truck, and continued the turn right around, to bounce up into the parking lot of a strip mall.
He drove straight through it to the other driveway and swerved back onto Crenshaw, driving north now in the southbound lanes; and even as he heard Castine squeak in alarm as the headlights of a couple of cars rapidly bore down on them, he yanked the wheel to the left and the Saturn went bucking up over the curb and slewed into the driveway of an apartment building.
Vickery braked, then drove up the inclined cement track into a small parking lot behind the building. A sodium vapor light on a pole cast a white radiance over the pavement and the other cars in the lot, and, peering through the ragged hole in the Saturn’s windshield, he could see steam curling up from under the hood. He was relieved to see that a row of rose bushes ahead was lit by both of his headlights.
He switched off the engine and the lights, then twisted the key back to the on position to keep the fans going.
He looked sideways at Castine. “You okay?”
“Yes.” Her eyes were wide and she was biting her lower lip. “You?”
“Not a scratch. Unlike the car.”
He hiked around to peer through the starred back window at the driveway.
“I—think I’m gonna throw up,” said Castine, looking at her hand. There was blood on her shaking fingers, doubtless from tugging at the broken windshield. “I don’t like this!”
“You can’t park here!” came a call from a back door of the building, and Vickery saw a woman silhouetted against an interior light, waving at him.
Vickery just waved back, keeping his attention on the driveway as she repeated her statement in Spanish—but no other car came surging up from the street, and after sixty seconds he opened his door. It creaked, and some part of the lock fell out onto the pavement. He climbed out stiffly, holding his gun down by his thigh where the woman in the doorway wouldn’t see it.
He quickly bent down to glance under the car, and was relieved to see only a small puddle of green coolant splashing and steaming under the engine; a bullet had evidently torn the top radiator hose, not the bottom one or the radiator itself.
Looking back toward the driveway, he called to the woman, “Busted radiator hose is all, I’ll tape it up and be out of here in twenty minutes.”
He walked to the corner of the building and crouched to peer around it, but there was nobody on the sidewalk and no BMW in sight.
Sliding the gun into his jacket pocket as he stood up, he turned and trudged back to the Saturn. Castine had got out and was leaning against the right front fender, possibly to conceal bullet holes. Her hands were in the pockets of her coat. The woman in the doorway hadn’t moved, and Vickery was glad the car was turned partly away from her, so she couldn’t readily see what was left of the windshield; though the rear window had at least a couple of suspicious-looking holes in its web-cracked expanse.
He leaned in through the open driver’s side door and tugged at the hood release lever. Castine stepped back, but nothing happened.
The yellow blanket was still in the back seat, and Vickery took it and walked around to the front bumper. He pounded on the hood and it seemed to click, so he draped the cloth around his hands and yanked up on the hood. It popped up an inch, and another piece of metal clinked to the pavement. He groped under the
edge and pushed the catch, and then he leaned back and hoisted the hood up. He squinted against a billow of hot, damp air, and by the sodium vapor glare he could see steam jetting from a ragged rip in the top radiator hose.
“Fixable,” he told Castine. “It can’t have got too hot in the short time we were driving, and it’s only been a minute leaking. I’ve got coolant and duct tape in the trunk. Once it cools down a bit, I think I can get us moving again.”
The woman in the doorway contented herself with saying, “See that you do!” and retreated inside and slammed the door.
Castine walked back to the trunk. “Will it get us back to Barstow?”
“Not across the desert without a new hose.” More quietly, he went on, “And even when I can get one, I’ll have to bust out what’s left of the windshield and rear window, and,” he said, glancing at his watch, “the glass shops I know of are closed now. It’s illegal to drive without a windshield, as I recall, unless you stay under thirty-five miles per hour. Even then, you’ve got to have eye protection and working windshield wipers.”
In a lowered voice, Castine said, “Windshield wipers for no windshield?” When Vickery shrugged and nodded, she said, “So—what, a motel?”
“I don’t think so. We can put tape patches over the bullet holes, but it’ll still look awful Bonnie and Clyde. Even at a real lowlife motel, it’s too likely the manager would call the cops.”
“Are we scared of the cops?”
“I’m sure several people reported the gun-battle behind the Mobil station. We’d be detained, at least.”
Castine spread her hands. “Sleep in the car somewhere?”
Vickery touched the radiator cap, trying to guess how long it would be before he dared twist it. He leaned into the car and switched the key to the off position.
“Like in a Walmart parking lot?” he said, straightening up. “Still risky.” He wiped his face and gave her a crooked grin. “It’ll take a while, just on surface streets, but I’ve got sunglasses, and I think we can make it up Mulholland.”
