by K. W. Jeter
All of which had eventually resulted in the world’s creepiest amusement park – at least of the ones actually open to the public. Maybe there was some shut-down fun fair on the outskirts of Chernobyl that had a more repellent vibe, but if so, nobody was still selling tickets to it.
Not being interested in the fine points of amusement park design, McIntyre hadn’t done his due diligence on the Japanese media bunch he’d gone in with. So yeah, they’d really been big on the pop culture thing, but not the way he probably thought they’d be. He might have been expecting some kind of Grade B Pokemon thing, or maybe the classier sort of anime that ultra-hip Hollywood types are already touting as the next big thing –
Instead, he got an amusement park redesign based on that kind of Japanese manga that if the customs people find it in your luggage when you come back to the U.S., you get taken to a very small room in the basement of the airport. And you don’t come out for a long time. We’re talking serious perv stuff. Hentai to the max, and those cartoon little girls with the enormous eyes, like some sort of pedophile wet dream. Some of the design roughs and architectural renderings got routed to my cubbyhole office by mistake, and I had run them through the shredder, figuring that somebody in the company with a fixation for Asian girls had forgotten the sexual harassment guidelines.
Good thing for McIntyre that he’d already made his money before the place reopened for business. It wasn’t popular. At least not after a couple hundred snarky college kids had finished putting up their YouTube videos about it and had moved on to other things.
McIntyre might have been able to sell the pervy amusement park, or tear it down and build condos or something, but he’d hung on to it, instead. And worked another scam, that I’d wound up keeping the books on. He’d let school parties and youth groups into the place for free and then write off the jacked-up admission prices as a charitable donation from his company. Plus there was some kind of accelerated depreciation schedule from the IRS that he got in on, based on – get this – the amusement park’s educational value. There had been some other scammy things associated with the whole project, all the nickels and dimes of which I’d had to chase down on the computer in my office.
So I was already sick of the place before I ever set foot in it. This was my first time there. Donnie had never wanted to go, even though there was an employee discount from the company that I could’ve taken advantage of. He’d said that he’d rather we saved up our money and go instead to the Talladega Raceway someday.
I got through the turnstile and into the amusement park’s big central area, from which all the other sections branched off. Why McIntyre would have wanted to come here tonight at all – that was a question I wasn’t even thinking about. His housekeeper had said this was where he was going, so that made it the only lead I had. If he hadn’t in fact come here, or if he’d already been here and left, then I was screwed. Plus, even if McIntyre was here, that didn’t mean he had my brother Donnie with him. He might have had Michael take Donnie somewhere else. Anywhere else – or worse. I wasn’t going to think about that, either.
Coming to a halt, I scanned around the amusement park. It was mainly shops here, souvenir stuff and T-shirts and funny hats, plus some places to eat, fast-food junk mainly, all themed to the park’s weird motif. And signs, big ones, plugging the various attractions and rides that the customers had to walk farther into the park to get to. Some of the signs were lit up with neon and bright backlit plastic, others had big flat images of cartoony characters, animated so they waved hello at the crowds, over and over . . .
I didn’t have time to get any more creeped out than I already was, by the giant images of the manga little girls in their frilly, panty-revealing school-girl outfits. I had figured that if McIntyre and Michael, or one of the other of them, were here in the amusement park with Donnie, and out in the open, I’d have an advantage in spotting them, what with Donnie being in a wheelchair. It wasn’t much of an advantage, but it was all I had.
And then I saw that I didn’t even have that.
The place was full of wheelchairs.
Kids in wheelchairs, all ages, filling up the amusement park’s spaces, rolling or stopping in front of the shops, the attractions, the food places, the signs, and everything else. There were plenty of other people as well, adults mainly – walking around, either pushing the wheelchairs or strolling along beside them, or putting mustard and relish on a pair of hotdogs and handing one to the kid in the wheelchair they were with, or waiting in line with them. Basically, everything you’d expect to see people doing in an amusement park, only with wheelchairs.
“What’s going on?” I cornered one of the uniformed park staff, who was emptying an overflowing trashcan into the back of a motorized cart. I pointed to the crowd around us. “I mean . . .”
“It’s a special event.” He dumped out the can and set it back down. “Charity thing. For disabled children and their families. There’s like free admission and special access accommodations for the rides and stuff. It’s kind of a big deal.”
This was something new, that’d come around after I had gotten tossed out of the company. But it sounded like something McIntyre would come up with – he was good at the kinds of things that made him look good. Giving back to the community and all. Just public relations, same as for any other company.
It just didn’t make my job any easier. I wasn’t even sure my brother Donnie was here – and checking out every kid in a wheelchair, in the general racket of an amusement park, would take forever. Anything could happen to Donnie while I was trying to do that.
I didn’t have any choice.
The crowd had gotten more congested with new arrivals coming through the gates, just in the couple of minutes it had taken me to find out what was going on. I started to push my way through, frantically turning my head from side to side as I got past people, scanning the faces of the kids in the wheelchairs, looking for my brother . . .
It’s in crowd scenes like this that you really get reminded of the disadvantages of being as small as me. When you’re just over five feet, the whole frickin’ world can seem like being at the bottom of a well, especially when there’s other people involved. As the crowd got more jammed up inside the park, I found myself pressed nose-first into the backs of people way taller than me, with more of the same pushing me from behind. My forward progress came to a halt until I was able to wriggle past, turning myself sideways so I could duck my head down and angle a shoulder underneath somebody’s arms. A couple of times, I just barely avoided taking an elbow right into the eye. And the whole time, I’m trying to catch a glimpse of the kids in the wheelchairs scattered through the crowd. They were the ones I really felt sorry for. Those kids were down even lower than I was, with even less of a sight line past the other people’s backs – then all of a sudden there’s some frantic Asian chick staring them in the face for a split second, before she turned away and shoved farther into the crowd ahead. I think I heard a couple of them burst into tears behind me.
By the time I pushed my way through the crowd, all the way to the farthest edge of the park, I was exhausted. My head was spinning, the broken thoughts ricocheting from one side of my skull to the other. To keep myself from being trampled or sucked back into the crowd, I pressed my spine hard against the base of the animated sign behind me. Over my head, a pair of manga girls in abbreviated sailor outfits, their eyes big enough that you could’ve parked a car on their pupils, danced a close-pressed tango back and forth. The cartoons were smiling idiotically; I was panting for breath.
This was hopeless. I looked across the crowd as though it were a storm-wracked sea, full of riptides and rocks. McIntyre’s PR people must’ve publicized this event to every family with mobility issues, one kind or another, throughout the entire state. He couldn’t have found this many kids with wheelchairs and walkers and other devices just here in the city.
Then I lucked out.
I turned my head to one side, looking down the wall I was p
ressed up against. The animated sign ended several yards away, at the edge of one of the rides with a slow-moving line snaking through the roped-off lanes in front of it. The kind of ride that zoomed people in little cars through a maze of roller-coaster-like ups and downs, before splashing through a big pool of water at the end. What all that had to do with the couple of park staff at the ride’s entrance, dressed up like sumo wrestlers, only with bow ties and top hats, I had no idea. Didn’t seem to matter to the people in line either, as they shuffled forward, pushing their kids in wheelchairs ahead of them inch by inch.
Raising myself as high as I could on tip-toe, I scanned across the line’s faces, but didn’t see my brother anywhere among them. What I did see, when I lowered myself back down, was the holding area that had been set up right where the amusement park’s customers got aboard the little cars – it was filled with the empty wheelchairs, row after row, waiting for the kids and parents to finish the ride and reclaim them.
Donnie’s empty wheelchair was there. I recognized it by the Joe Gibbs Racing Team sticker that he’d sent away for and slapped on the back of his own ride. His favorite NASCAR team – I’d already heard more about the drivers than I could remember.
Which meant that he was somewhere on this stupid ride. I shoved myself along the edge of the crowd, fighting to get as close to the ride entrance as I could.
With my stomach shoved against the last barrier, I gripped the rope swung between the metal stanchions and craned my head, hoping to catch any sight of my brother –
I didn’t see him. But I recognized Michael’s heavily muscled neck and his broad shoulders, sitting at one side of the little car just starting to clank up the tracks toward the top of the ride’s first incline. Which meant that the figure on the other side was McIntyre. And the little figure between, the top of whose head I could just make over the little car’s back – that had to be Donnie.
As I stared upward, the car reached the top, seemed to halt for a moment, then plunged down the other side, gathering speed.
I lost sight of them among the other cars spaced along the ride’s tracks, whipping through the banked corners, then up and down the other inclines farther along. Right beside me was the water pool where the little cars splashed and slowed down, before rolling to a stop where everybody could get out, the amusement park staff fetching the empty wheelchairs and helping the kids get back into them.
They were busy right now, getting other kids and their parents into the cars and ready for the ride. With my backpack slung behind me, I grabbed hold of the chain-link fence separating the pool from the crowd and started climbing.
I didn’t know whether any of the amusement park staff had spotted me or not. At the top of the fence, I lost my grasp as I slung my leg over, falling face-first on the other side, my outstretched hands striking the surface of the chlorine-smelling water. It wasn’t deep, maybe only three feet or so. That still came up to my hips, as I waded toward a corner overshadowed by an outcropping of artificial rock. As I splashed ahead, I pulled my backpack around in front of me, so I could reach for the .357 inside it.
There wasn’t any plan in my head other than sticking the gun into the faces of Michael and McIntyre when the car they were in splashed into the pool, then pulling my little brother away from between them. If nothing else, I might have the element of surprise going for me.
I didn’t hear anyone shouting after me. There was the loud hubbub from the crowd filling the park and the excited cries of the parents and kids zooming along on the ride, fading farther away and then closer as the little cars swung through the curves. How long it took for them to complete the up-and-down, back-and-forth circuit – I couldn’t tell. I stationed myself in the darkest section of the pool, the .357 raised in one hand.
One little car splashed into the water a couple of yards away from me, with nobody I recognized among the laughing, shouting riders. Then, a minute or so later, another one – still nothing. Eventually somebody was going to spot me lurking here and call the park’s guards.
I looked up the track to where the cars emerged from the ride’s loops and curves, just before rolling down and splashing into the pool. At the back of the car that hung there for a moment, I saw the two men I had been chasing. And the smaller figure of my brother squeezed in between them.
Gun in hand, I was already making my way through the shallow pool as the car rolled down the incline. When it hit the water, the wave splashed hard into my face, knocking me off balance and landing me on my back. I struggled back to my feet, unable to see, flailing wildly in front of me with my free hand.
I caught hold of something moving past me. I jumped and found myself sprawling across Michael’s and McIntyre’s legs inside the little car. I had a quick glimpse of my brother’s face – for a moment, that was all I could see. There was a chrome bar across his and the two men’s laps, holding them secure in their seats. I yanked at the bar, struggling to lift it so I could grab hold of Donnie and pull him to me –
That was a mistake. I should’ve shot Michael and McIntyre first.
If Michael had been startled by my sudden appearance, he got over it fast. One of his big clenched fists slammed into the side of my head, loosening my grip on both the chrome bar and the gun in my other hand. I landed against McIntyre’s chest. He grabbed hold of my arms, so Michael could land another punch . . .
When the little car rolled to a stop, just beyond the pool of water, I didn’t see it. I was out.
SIXTEEN
“Kim –”
I could hear somebody speaking, but couldn’t see him.
“What the hell was that all about?”
It was McIntyre talking to me. He sounded genuinely perplexed.
Opening my eyes, I found myself staring close-up at an expensive-looking Oriental carpet. I had been lying on it while McIntyre had waited for me to regain consciousness. My head felt tender and painful, its contents still reverberating with the blows from Michael’s fist.
“I don’t know . . .” I rolled onto my side, then managed to get up onto my knees. “It . . . seemed like a good idea at the time.”
That excuse didn’t work any better than it had when I’d been in school. Not that I’d ever gotten into trouble that much, at least not for waving a gun at people. Little pigtailed Korean school-girls generally aren’t into that sort of thing.
Right now, though, it seemed to be what my ex-boss McIntyre was worked up about.
“I just can’t believe this,” I heard him saying. “You had a gun.”
Squinting, I looked around, trying to find him. My vision unblurred enough to finally locate him sitting at a table a few feet away. Big ornately carved thing, the opened bottle of fortified wine kind of incongruous sitting on top of it.
“Yeah . . .” I winced as I gave a slow nod. “About that . . .”
“I just don’t know what you could’ve been thinking.” He refilled the stemmed glass in front of him, then took a healthy slug. “What did you imagine was going on?”
“You had Donnie.” Wobbling, I got to my feet. “My brother. You took him.”
“I told you.” McIntyre swung his gaze to the side of the room. “I told you we should have left a note.”
Leaning against the wall, Michael scowled, his arms folded across his chest. “I called her. And left a message.”
I looked over at Michael, but didn’t say anything. That hadn’t been what he’d done. He’d called me and talked to me, all taunting and stuff, when I’d come home to the apartment and found Donnie was missing. So right now, he was lying to his boss. I wasn’t sure what that meant.
Still feeling a little shaky, I tottered over to the big floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the room. It looked out over the pervy amusement park and the crowds jostling around in its garishly lit spaces. So at least I knew where I was.
I turned back toward McIntyre. “Where is he?”
“Your brother? He’s fine.”
“I asked, Where is he?”
“I scared him? What do you think you did when you kidnapped him?”
“Kidnapped?” He stared at me in amazement. “What’re you talking about? All we were doing was showing him a good time. He’s a good kid – he deserves to go out and have some fun, once in a while. And I know you’re on a limited budget, Kim. Especially since . . . you know . . .”
If he didn’t want to talk about me getting thrown into the alley like a sack of trash, neither did I. I stayed quiet for a moment longer.
“So when this event came up here – with all the disabled kids and everything we set up for them – I just figured it would be a nice thing to do.” McIntyre shrugged, his hands spread apart. “For Donnie and you. I thought he’d enjoy it. And maybe it would make up a little bit – for some of the stuff that happened.” He gave one of those nice-boss smiles, that now seemed really fakey. “Between us, I mean.”
“Right.” This wasn’t exactly winning him any points with me. “I’m really happy that this makes you feel better.”
He took another sip of that Spanish Harlem Nights crap, regarding me over the rim of the wineglass.
“You seem different, Kim.” His voice went all thoughtful as he set the glass back down. “You’ve changed. You even look different.”
I was pretty sure I looked like a drowned rat at the moment. My jeans clung clammily to my legs, and water still was dripping from my jacket.
“Well . . . I’m not going into an office every day now.”
“More of a casual look, huh?” He nodded appreciatively. “I like it. Especially the hair.”
