by Jack Martin
“And to my other friends, Mr. and Mrs.—?”
“Smith,” Challis deadpanned.
“Smith.” Cochran’s eyes embraced them. “Of course. My apologies for last night’s disturbance. I want you both to know that Miss Guttman is going to be fine. She’s been flown to a hospital in San Francisco.”
Right, thought Challis. And chickens have lips. Sure they do.
“And as to the confusion over your order—” Had he been listening at the door? “—Let me simply say that a replacement is being prepared for you at this very moment, absolutely free. It’s on me.”
Buddy was falling all over himself. “Is he incredible, or what?” he wanted to know.
“And now, Mr. Kupfer, a guided tour for you and your family.” Cochran spread his hands, about to lead them on a pilgrimage. “And for our other friends, of course, if they would like to come.”
Challis and Ellie traded uneasy glances.
Cochran’s smile nailed them where they stood. It was so broad it was mocking.
Ellie threw an impudent smile back at him.
“By all means!” she said.
“I don’t think I trust that guy,” whispered Challis, imitating her brand of dry understatement, as they followed the procession through a high door.
Ellie tried on her most cheerful expression. “Me neither,” she said through her sparkling teeth.
Cochran took the lead.
“The latex is heated and poured in, then cooled and poured off. Then it’s all trimming, painting and packaging . . .”
The maskworks was a long, spacious room sectioned by benches and presided over by unspeaking production-line workers. The tables and floor were a pearly gray from the dusting and powdering of the molds and masks. The lighting was indirect and perpetual; it could have been high noon or the middle of the night. That and the fact that there were no clocks reminded Challis of one of the small casinos in downtown Las Vegas.
The staff in their green smocks labored without complaint, humorless sleepwalkers treading back and forth to redistribute stacks of flesh-colored rubber between the tables. One tall worker with deepset eyes and curly hair removed an intermediate stage of a witch’s head as if turning a surgical glove inside out. The material popped into shape, revealing deepset eye sockets and a prognathic brow not unlike those of its handler.
Challis steered Ellie forward.
Where’s the Muzak? he wondered. Without it, what keeps them so contented? They act like they’re hypnotized. Or drugged.
That, he thought, might not be so far out of the question . . .
“And now I’d like to take you all one level deeper,” said Cochran. “This way, please.”
He unlocked a door marked PRIVATE and descended a steep stairway.
They saw his manicured hand beckoning them deeper.
For a few steps he was out of their sight. The light clarified; Challis concentrated on what lay ahead.
They were entering a portion of Cochran’s own quarters.
It was a low-ceilinged cellar which had been remade into a compact museum of the company’s best models, the secret sanctum of a lifetime collector.
One entire wall was inset with false heads of the most elaborate and imaginative designs. Here a sculpted ghoul so real its eyes might have been following Little Buddy on his mad dash down the aisle; there a cobra head large enough to swallow a man whole; and there a withered crone, meticulously detailed right down to glued hairs and stippled pores, with a homuncular second face attached unborn to its left cheek.
“Oh, wow!” said Buddy Senior, whistling low. “This is it! This is really it. Hall of Fame time . . .”
“What’s famous?” said Challis.
“You really don’t know? Conal Cochran? The all-time genius of the practical joke? He invented sticky toilet paper!”
“Oh.”
Challis kept an eye on Ellie. She was too preoccupied to be impressed by the displays. Pretending interest, she wandered placidly among cast-iron clockwork animations from the nineteenth century, each ticking to its own inner mechanism. Yet she hung back, waiting to see what Cochran’s next move would be.
Little Buddy ran ahead to the end of the room. There a wide glass case protected the most valuable pieces, arranged on velvet pads and lighted as if they were examples of the finest jewelers’ art.
Buddy zeroed in on this ultimate display and led Challis to it.
“You must know the Dead Dwarf gag? The Soft Chainsaw? All his!”
“Gee,” said Challis, “I didn’t know . . .”
Buddy took over as if he had been promoted to second in command.
“He manufactured the best Boomer Cushion in the business! Made a great sound!” A flatulent Bronx cheer escaped his lips. “Really loud and convincing. The man has always paid attention to detail. Mechanical toys, masks . . .”
With evangelical zeal he introduced Challis to three superbly repulsive prototypes.
“Look at that paint job. Boy, I’m glad Little Buddy’s gettin’ a chance to see these—LITTLE BUDDY, BE SURE AND LOOK AT THIS STUFF! S’EDUCATIONAL! It’s a real shame Mr. Cochran doesn’t make these anymore.” He gestured wistfully at the glassed-in joker novelties. “But it wasn’t paying off. Took a lot of guts for him to cut his losses and find something with some profit in it.”
“The masks?”
“You bet. The Big Halloween Three. Restrict the choices, lower the price, go for quality. Simplify! Saturation advertising. Our ad is on every major radio and TV station in the country. It’s incredible!”
Now Challis believed that this man was the company’s number-one salesman. Our ad. Incredible indeed.
“Yeah,” agreed Challis, “it is.”
Buddy was determined to convert his new friend.
“You know what? By Halloween night, there’ll be fifty million Silver Shamrock masks on fifty million heads out there! That’s . . .” He groped for an adequate adjective. “That’s unprecedented!” he said as if he had invented the word.
“Fifty million?” said Challis.
“Great to be on a winning team, isn’t it?”
Join our tribe, thought Challis, and partake of immortality. Own a piece of the Golden Calf.
“Yeah,” he said.
Ahead, Cochran was escorting Betty Kupfer through another doorway.
Buddy strutted forward with an expanding proprietary interest, one arm protecting his crown prince and heir, Little Buddy.
Challis caught up with Ellie. If she felt as he did, like a spy with forged papers, she wasn’t letting it show.
A more spacious room awaited them.
Old-fashioned hand-blown lighting fixtures spotlighted a green-and-white celebration cake at one end. A devoted staff of assistants in authentic nineteenth-century period dress stood at attention against antique wood-panel walls. As Challis and Ellie ducked in and brought up the rear, the staff applauded.
Cochran held out a ceremonial plaque.
“Buddy Kupfer, it is my pleasure to present you with this year’s Silver Shamrock Halloween Sales Award. Congratulations!”
To the applause was added a susurrus of approval.
Buddy was speechless. He took the plaque and held it like a loving cup toward the low ceiling. His wife’s compulsive clapping went on and on.
All eyes were on the Kupfers.
Ellie touched Challis’s arm.
“I want to have a look in there,” she said softly, drawing him backwards.
They were behind a nineteenth-century pipe organ. There was another door, PRIVATE. Before he could refuse, she had opened it.
Behind the door stood a pale, red-haired man in a spotless gray suit. He was staring straight ahead. Like a guard.
“Oops,” said Ellie. “My mistake.” She gave him her most innocent smile.
Challis rubbernecked around the organ to see whether they had been noticed.
At the far end of the room, near the punch bowl, another graysuit left the ceremony and star
ted toward them.
“Have a nice day,” said Ellie, closing the door.
They repositioned themselves for the rest of the festivities.
A flash of light.
Betty wound her Instamatic and handed it to the graysuit by the punch bowl. Spotting Challis and Ellie again, he relaxed. Betty posed next to her husband, the essence of euphoria. The gray suit obliged. There was another flash.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Cochran was saying. “A small token of my appreciation.” With contrived offhandedness he produced an envelope from his breast pocket.
Buddy accepted it with the aplomb of a game show contestant. He tore into the envelope.
“Five thousand dollars!”
Betty swooned. “Oh my God . . . !” She made preparations to faint.
Cochran rescued her. She planted a red smear on his jowls and broke into tears.
Another round of applause reverberated through the private room.
“I want a mask! Can I have a mask?”
Little Buddy, riding piggyback on the living embodiment of human generosity, Conal Cochran, snatched greedily at the cartons of finished masks.
“Just what I had in mind for you, my young friend!”
Cochran reined in his procession at the shipping center.
Here a score of contented drones toiled over barricades of cardboard boxes, stuffing them with cushioning material before packing the factory’s final production of witches, pumpkins and bone-white skulls. Each box was loaded from storage shelves filled with finished product; the tiers crowded with skulls reminded Challis of bunkers stacked with the remains of concentration camp victims.
“I want that one!” demanded Little Buddy. He zoomed his arms toward a new pallet of cooling pumpkin faces.
“Oh, no no no no no!” chuckled Cochran indulgently. “These masks haven’t been through final processing yet.”
Without dimming his smile, he gave a hand signal to a tall maskworker in a green smock.
The worker knelt behind a pyramid of cartons and selected a plastic-wrapped jack-o’-lantern mask from the end of the production line.
“Ah, here we are!” said Cochran. He permitted Little Buddy to dismount and formally presented him with the orange headpiece.
The boy’s parents stood by arm in arm, radiating pride.
Cochran unwrapped the mask and installed it over the little boy’s head, taking great pains to adjust it perfectly so that the neck flap with the Silver Shamrock trade seal was positioned exactly at the base of Little Buddy’s skull.
Then Conal Cochran clapped his hands with childlike satisfaction and let the boy go.
“Boo!” exclaimed Little Buddy, running amok with his arms outstretched. His voice was muffled by the rubber, his breathing impaired. But that did not slow him down. “Boo! Boo!”
Buddy Kupfer’s defenseless face was vaguely perplexed. He turned to his wife questioningly. The way he did it told Challis who was really responsible for holding together their optimistic front.
Buddy was awestruck by his new position of privilege, but still insecure about his right to be there. It had happened too fast for him to be sure of the ground rules, and in times of crisis he relied on Betty to keep him from making a fool of himself and blowing a golden opportunity.
“What’s ‘final processing’?” Challis heard him whisper.
Betty maintained her façade of humble delight, but it was apparent that more than a few questions were now nagging at her practical heart. This may have been one of the high-water marks of her marriage, but with each new development she was being drawn more and more out of her depth. She took advantage of her husband’s arm and lifted the weight off one foot for a moment, flexing her toes to relieve at least the burden of standing.
“Don’t ask me,” she said out of the side of her mouth.
C H A P T E R
10
Little Buddy ran upstairs.
Outside there was a maze of activity. Yardmen dressed in jumpsuits caught boxes from conveyor belts and topped up the cardboard pyramids which surrounded them like the quarrystones of a monument. As soon as one pallet was filled, a forklift would chug up and carry it away to one of the supply trucks. As a truck maneuvered through the gates just now, a swirl of dust settled over Little Buddy’s pumpkin head, powdering his orange rubber disguise like the wings of a great monarch butterfly.
Little Buddy held his head and coughed.
Cochran came up into the yard, laughing jovially.
Challis, Ellie and Little Buddy’s parents put their hands in front of their faces to deflect the late afternoon’s punishing rays.
“Be careful, honey!” called Betty. “Those men are busy!”
It was useless; Little Buddy made an end run between the workmen’s legs, growling frightfully through his mask.
None of them reacted in the slightest.
Little Buddy’s macrocephalic pumpkin head slumped forward dejectedly.
Cochran led them past double doors which bore the words NO ADMITTANCE—FINAL PROCESSING. He moved along swiftly, requiring them to keep up.
“Mr. Cochran,” said Buddy Senior, “what is this ‘final processing’?”
“Oh,” crooned Cochran evasively, “a bit o’ this and a bit o’ that. Snips ’n’ snails ’n’ puppy dogs’ tails. Quality inspection, the seal of approval. You know, the usual. And a couple of trade secrets.”
He said it in an intimate voice, to appease Buddy with the impression of confidentiality.
“I’d sure love to see it,” said Buddy.
“Sorry.”
Challis could not miss the abruptness with which Cochran cut Buddy off.
There was something behind those doors he did not want his visitors to see.
Challis caught up with them.
“Not even a peek for your best salesman?” he asked.
Buddy kept pushing. “How about just a look?”
Cochran ignored Buddy and cocked an eyebrow at Challis.
“Part of the inspection process involves highly volatile chemicals. I’d hate to put anyone in danger.”
Buddy tried valiantly to ignore the slight. “Oh sure,” he said. “I understand.”
Cochran placed a fatherly arm on Kupfer’s shoulders and led him across a loading platform, effectively excluding Challis from the conversation.
“Now I do hope you and your family will join me tomorrow for breakfast,” Cochran was saying. “And we’d like your opinion on some of our sales material in the . . .”
That’s it, thought Challis, a little sugar to help the medicine go down. The man was a pro at manipulation; so much so that he was not used to resistance. The furrow of irritation on his brow had revealed that.
“My opinion?” said Buddy, flattered. “Sure, any time!”
Ellie had been buttonholed by Betty Kupfer. She was okay for the moment. He moved off alone to the edge of the platform and took a good look around the yard.
The grounds were enclosed by a wall and a kind of elevated catwalk railing that ran around the perimeter. His eyes followed the railing to its highest point.
There, on a corner observation scaffold was a man in a three-piece suit. It was instantly clear that he could only be there for one purpose.
Challis scanned the railing to the next corner.
Halfway across, between two buildings, was another graysuit.
Another guard.
They were like towermen in a prison. The only detail missing was any sign of guns.
Based on what one of them had done to Ellie Grimbridge’s father and, probably, to the man under the railroad trestle, they didn’t need weapons.
They did what they had to do with their bare hands.
So far Ellie was unaware that they were being quietly supervised from above, like animals rounded up for the slaughterhouse.
He debated telling her. She had enough to worry about. And it might not be as sinister as it appeared.
But prison security in a rubber-mask fa
ctory? Right.
As casually as possible he descended the ramp.
He came up beside the two women and established a friendly but firm grip around Ellie’s waist.
“Darling,” he said, “I think it’s time for us to be going.”
Ellie felt the pressure in his hand. She didn’t resist.
“See you later!” promised Betty.
Ellie strolled with him.
“Act natural. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“What’s up?” she asked.
“We’re getting out.”
Challis kept a synthetic smile plastered to his lips.
“I just saw a couple of guys who look strangely familiar. There’s another one. Don’t look up.”
A hundred yards ahead, another graysuit crossed their path and took up a post next to a truck.
“I hate to say this,” said Challis, “but they look sort of like the man who killed your father.”
She accepted that without argument.
Then, “My God.”
He felt her muscles tense.
He saw what she was looking at.
At the front of a hangarlike garage, a steel door was raising to admit a loaded forklift.
“What?”
Past the forklift, in a corner of the garage, there was a car half-concealed by a loose tarpaulin. The rear end of the car, including the license plate, was visible. A station wagon. Green.
Ellie kept walking, but now she was peeling off alone toward the garage.
“Ellie, don’t!”
She was nearly there when the graysuits caught up with her.
“The car, damn it! The car is—” She twisted to release her wrists from their grip. She did not succeed.
On the platform, Cochran interrupted his conversation with Buddy and raised a bushy eyebrow.
Challis considered his alternatives.
There were none.
He started toward her, maintaining a confident gait. Don’t panic, he told himself. Easy, easy does it . . .
Buddy turned with Cochran.
On the way to join her husband, Betty paused.
Above them all, more graysuits stood at attention.
This was the cutting edge. It could fall either way.
He said a prayer. And kept walking.
