Although they had spent at least half of the hour-long Pause on the run before they had wound up in the warehouse at the end of that canyon, they didn’t need nearly as long to get back to where they had started from. According to Connie’s wristwatch, they reached the coast highway less than five minutes after commandeering the nitrous-oxide dealers’ wheels, partly because they took a more direct return route and partly because Harry drove fast enough to scare even her.
In fact, when they slid to a stop in front of The Green House, with some still-unbroken Christmas lights clinking noisily along the sides of the van, the time was just thirty-five seconds past 1:37 in the morning. That was little more than eight minutes since the Pause had both begun and ended at 1:29, which meant they had taken about three minutes to fight their way out of the crowded warehouse and seize their transportation at gunpoint — though it sure had seemed a lot longer.
The tow truck and the Volvo, which had been frozen in the southbound lane, were gone. When time had started up again, their drivers had continued on with no realization that anything unusual had happened. Other traffic was moving north and south.
Connie was relieved to see Sammy standing on the sidewalk in front of The Green House. He was gesticulating wildly, arguing with the permed host in the Armani suit and hand-painted silk tie. One of the waiters was standing in the doorway, apparently prepared to help the boss if the confrontation got physical.
When Connie and Harry got out of the van, the host saw them and turned away from Sammy. “You!” he said. “My God, it’s you!” He came toward them purposefully, almost angrily, as if they had left without paying their check.
Bar patrons and other employees were at the windows, watching. Connie recognized some of them as the people who had been watching her and Harry with Sammy and the dog, and who had been frozen there, staring fixedly, after the Pause hit. They were no longer as rigid as stone, but they were still watching with fascination.
“What’s going on here?” the host asked as he approached, an edge of hysteria in his voice. “How did that happen, where did you go? What is this… this… this van!”
Connie had to remind herself that the man had seen them vanish in what seemed to him a split second. The dog had yelped and nipped the air and plunged for the shrubbery, alerting them that something was happening, which had spooked Sammy into sprinting for the alley. But Connie and Harry had remained on the sidewalk in full view of the people at the restaurant windows, the Pause had hit, they had been forced to run for their lives, then the Pause had ended without them where they originally had been on the sidewalk, and to the onlookers it had seemed as if two people had vanished into thin air. Only to turn up eight minutes later in a white van decorated with strings of red and green Christmas lights.
The host’s exasperation and curiosity were understandable.
If their window of opportunity for finding and dealing with Ticktock had not been so small, if the ticking seconds had not been leading them inexorably closer to sudden death, the uproar in front of the restaurant might even have been funny. Hell, it was funny, but that didn’t mean she and Harry could take the time to laugh at it. Maybe later. If they lived.
“What is this, what happened here, what’s going on?” the host demanded. “I can’t make heads or tails out of what your raving lunatic over there is telling me.”
By “raving lunatic,” he meant Sammy.
“He’s not our raving lunatic,” Harry said.
“Yes he is,” Connie reminded Harry, “and you better go talk to him. I’ll handle this.”
She was half afraid that Harry — as painfully aware of their time limit as she was — might pull his revolver on the host and threaten to blow his teeth out the back of his head if he didn’t shut up and get inside. As much as she approved of Harry taking a more aggressive approach to certain problems, there was a proper time and place for aggression, and this was not it.
Harry went off to talk with Sammy.
Connie put one arm around the host’s shoulders and escorted him up the walkway to the front door of his restaurant, speaking in a soft but authoritative voice, informing him that she and Detective Lyon were in the middle of important and urgent police business, and sincerely assuring him that she would return to explain everything, even what might seem to him inexplicable, “just as soon as the ongoing situation is resolved.”
Considering that it was traditionally Harry’s job to calm and placate people, her job to upset them, she had a lot of success with the restaurateur. She had no intention of ever returning to explain anything whatsoever to him, and she had no idea how he thought she could explain people vanishing into thin air. But he calmed down, and she persuaded him to go inside his restaurant with the bodyguard-waiter who was standing in the doorway.
She checked the shrubbery but confirmed what she already knew: the dog was not hiding there any more. He was gone.
She joined Harry and Sammy on the sidewalk in time to hear the hobo say, “How should I know where he lives? He’s an alien, he’s a long way from his planet, he must have a spaceship hidden around here somewhere.”
More patiently than Connie expected, Harry said, “Forget that stuff, he’s no alien. He—”
A dog barked, startling them.
Connie spun around and saw the flop-eared mutt. He was uphill, just turning the corner at the south end of the block. Following him were a woman and a boy of about five.
As soon as the dog saw that he had gotten their attention, he snatched hold of one cuff of the boy’s jeans, and with his teeth impatiently pulled him along. After a couple of steps he let go, ran toward Connie, stopped halfway between his people and hers, barked at her, barked at the woman and boy, barked at Connie again, then just sat there looking left and right and left again, as if to say, Well, haven’t I done enough?
The woman and the boy appeared to be curious but frightened. The mother was attractive in a way, and the child was cute, neatly and cleanly dressed, but they both had the wary and haunted look of people who knew the streets too well.
Connie approached them slowly, with a smile. When she passed the dog, he got off his butt and padded along at her side, panting and grinning.
There was a quality of mystery and awe about the moment, and Connie knew that whatever connection they were about to make was going to mean life or death to her and Harry, maybe to all of them.
She had no idea what she was going to say to them until she was close enough to speak: “Have you had… also had… a strange experience lately?”
The woman blinked at her in surprise. “Strange experience? Oh, yes. Oh my, yes.”
PART THREE
A Scary Little Cottage in the Woods
Faraway in China,
the people sometimes say,
life is often bitter
and all too seldom gay.
Bitter as dragon tears,
great cascades of sorrow
flood down all the years,
drowning our tomorrows.
Faraway in China,
the people also say,
life is sometimes joyous
if all too often gray.
Although life is seasoned
with bitter dragon tears,
seasoning is just a spice
within our brew of years.
Bad times are only rice,
tears are one more flavor,
that gives us sustenance,
something we can savor.
— The Book of Counted Sorrows
SIX
1
Now they know.
He is a good dog, good dog, good.
They are all together now. The woman and the boy, the stinky man, the not-so-stinky man, and the woman without a boy. All of them smelling of the touch of the thing-that-will-kill-you, which is why he knew they had to be together.
They know it, too. They know why they are together. They stand in front of the people food place, talking to each other, talking fast, all excited, sometimes all t
alking at once, while the women and the boy and the not-so-stinky man are always sure to keep the stinky man up-wind from them.
They keep stooping down to pet him and scratch behind his ears and tell him he’s a good dog, good, and they say other nice things about him that he can’t really understand. This is the best. It is so good to be petted and scratched and liked by people who will, he is pretty sure, not set his fur on fire, and by people who do not have any cat smell on them, none.
Once, long after the little girl who called him Prince, there were some people who took him into their place and fed him and were nice to him, called him Max, but they had a cat. Big cat. Mean. The cat was called Fluffy. Max was nice to Fluffy. Max never once chased Fluffy. In those days Max never chased cats. Well, hardly ever. Some cats, he liked. But Fluffy did not like Max and did not want Max in the people place, so sometimes Fluffy stole Max’s food, and other times Fluffy peed in Max’s water bowl. During the day when the nice people were gone from their place to some other place, Max and Fluffy were left alone, and Fluffy would screech, all crazy and spitting, and scare Max and chase him around the place. Or jump off high things onto Max. Big cat. Screeching. Spitting. Crazy. So Max understood that it was Fluffy’s place, not Max’s and Fluffy’s place, just Fluffy’s, so he went away from the nice people and was just Fella again.
Ever since, he worries that when he finds nice people who want to take him into their place and feed him forever, they will have cat smell on them, and when he goes to their place with them and walks in the door with them, there will be Fluffy. Big. Mean. Crazy.
So now it is nice that none of these people has any cat smell, because if one of them wants to be a family with him, he will be safe, and he won’t have to worry about pee in his water bowl.
After a while, they are so excited talking to each other that they aren’t petting him so much and saying how good he is, so he gets bored. Yawns. Lies down. Might sleep. He is tired. Busy day, being a good dog.
But then he sees the people in the food place, looking out the windows of the food place. Interesting. At the windows, looking out. Looking at him.
Maybe they think he is cute.
Maybe they want to give him food.
Why wouldn’t they want to give him food?
So he gets up and pads to the food place. Head high. Prance a little. Wag the tail. They like that.
At the door, he waits. Nobody opens it. He puts one paw on it. Waits. Nobody. He scratches. Nobody.
He goes out where the people at the window can see him. He wags his tail. He tilts his head, pricks up one ear. They see him. He knows they see him.
He goes to the door again. Waits. Waits.
Waits.
Scratches. Nobody.
Maybe they don’t know he wants food. Or maybe they’re scared of him, think he’s a bad dog. He doesn’t look like a bad dog. How could they be scared? Don’t they know when to be scared, when not? He would never jump off high places on top of them or pee in their water bowls. Stupid people. Stupid.
Finally he decides he’s not going to get any food, so he goes back to the nice people he brought together. On his way he keeps his head up, prances, wags his tail, just to show the people at the window what they’re missing.
When he gets back to the women and the boy and the stinky man and the not-so-stinky man, something is wrong. He can feel it and smell it.
They are scared. This is not new. They have all been scared since he first smelled each of them. But this is a different scared. Worse scared.
And they have a little trace of the just-lie-down-and-die smell. Animals get that smell sometimes, when they’re old, when they’re very tired and sick. People, not so often. Though he knows a place where people have that smell. He was there earlier in the night with the woman and the boy.
Interesting.
But bad interesting.
He is worried that these nice people have even a little bit of the just-lie-down-and-die smell. What is wrong with them? Not sick. Maybe the stinky man, sick a little, but not the rest of them. Not old, either.
Their voices are different, too. A little excited, not so much as before. Tired, a little. Sad, a little. Something else… What? Something. What? What?
He sniffs around their feet, one at a time, sniffs sniffs sniffs sniffs, even the stinky man, and suddenly he knows what’s wrong with them, and he can’t believe it, can’t.
He is amazed. Amazed. He backs away, looks at them, amazed. All of them have the special smell that says do-I-chase-it-or-does-it-chase-me? — do-I-run-or-do-I-fight? — am-I-hungry-enough-to-dig-something-out-of-its-hole-and-eat-it-or-should-I-wait-and-see-if-people-will-give-me-something-good? It is the smell of not knowing what to do, which is sometimes a different kind of fear smell. Like now. They are afraid of the thing-that-will-kill-you, but they are also afraid because they don’t know what to do next.
He is amazed because he knows what to do next, and he is not even a people. But sometimes they can be so slow, people. All right. He will show them what to do next. He barks, and of course they all look at him because he’s not a dog that barks much.
He barks again, then runs past them, downhill, runs, runs, and then stops and looks back and barks again. They stare at him. He is amazed.
He runs back to them, barks, turns, runs downhill again, runs, runs, stops, looks back, barks again.
They’re talking. Looking at him and talking. Like maybe they get it.
So he runs a little farther, turns, looks back, barks. They’re excited. They get it. Amazing.
2
They did not know how far the dog was going to lead them, and they were agreed that the five of them would be too conspicuous on foot, as a group, at almost two o’clock in the morning. They decided to see if Woofer would be as eager to run ahead and lead the van as he was to lead them on foot, because in the vehicle they would be considerably less of a spectacle.
Janet helped Detective Gulliver and Detective Lyon quickly take the Christmas-tree lights off the van. They were attached with metal clips in some places and with pieces of masking tape in others.
It seemed doubtful that the dog was going to lead them directly to the person they were calling Ticktock. Just in case, however, it made a lot of sense not to draw attention to themselves with strings of red and green lights.
While they worked, Sammy Shamroe followed them around the Ford, telling them, not for the first time, that he had been a fool and a fallen man, but that he was going to turn over a new leaf after this. It seemed important to him that they believe he was sincere in making a commitment to a new life — as if he needed other people to believe it before he would be convinced himself.
“I never really thought I had anything the world really needed,” Sammy said, “thought I was pretty much worthless, just a hype artist, smooth talker, empty inside, but now here I am saving the world from an alien. Okay, not an alien, actually, and not saving the world all by myself, but helping to save it damn sure enough.”
Janet was still astonished by what Woofer had done. No one was quite sure how he knew that the five of them were living under the same bizarre threat or that it would be useful for them to be brought together. Everyone knew that animals’ senses were in some respects weaker than those of human beings but in many respects stronger, and that beyond the usual five senses they might have others that were difficult to understand. But after this, she would never look at another dog — or any animal, for that matter — in quite the same way that she had regarded them before.
Taking the dog into their lives and feeding him when she could least afford it had turned out to be perhaps the smartest thing she had ever done.
She and the two detectives finished removing the lights, rolled them up, and put them in the back of the van.
“I’ve quit drinking for good,” Sammy said, following them to the rear door. “Can you believe it? But it’s true. No more. Not one drop. Nada.”
Woofer was sitting on the sidewalk with Danny
, in the fall of light under a streetlamp, watching them, waiting patiently.
Initially, when she learned that Ms. Gulliver and Mr. Lyon were police detectives, Janet had almost grabbed Danny and run. After all, she had left a dead husband, killed by her own hand, moldering on desert sands in Arizona, and she had no way of knowing if the hateful man was still where she had left him. If Vince’s body had been found, she might be wanted for questioning; there might even be a warrant for her arrest.
More to the point, no authority figure in her life had been a friend to her, with the possible exception of Mr. Ishigura at Pacific View Care Home. She thought of them as a different breed, people with whom she had nothing in common.
But Ms. Gulliver and Mr. Lyon seemed reliable and kind and well-meaning. She did not think they were the type of people who would let Danny be taken away from her, though she had no intention of telling them she’d killed Vince. And Janet certainly did have things in common with them — not least of all, the will to live and the desire to get Ticktock before he got them.
She had decided to trust the detectives largely because she had no choice; they were all in this together. But she also decided to trust them because the dog trusted them.
“It’s five minutes till two,” Detective Lyon said, checking his wristwatch. “Let’s get moving, for God’s sake.”
Janet called Danny to her, and he got into the back of the van with her and Sammy Shamroe, who pulled the rear door shut after them.
Detective Lyon climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and switched on the headlights.
The rear of the van was open to the front compartment. Janet, Danny, and Sammy crowded forward to look over the front seat and through the windshield.
Serpentine tendrils of thin fog were beginning to slither across the coast highway from the ocean. The headlights of an oncoming car, the only other traffic in sight, caught the lazily drifting mist at just the right angle and created a horizontal ribbon of rainbowlike colors that began at the right-hand curb and ended at the left-hand curb. The car drove through the colors, carrying them off into the night.
Dragon Tears Page 34
