"Of what?" he asked, knowing.
"That he'd come back. For me and the kids."
"I almost wish he would come back. Give me a chance to . . ."
He let it trail off, and she looked at him. "To kill him?”
“Maybe. How's Frank doing? Hear from him?"
"They've still got Judy under observation. It must be a terrible place. Frank's lawyer hasn't been able to get her out. The man she . . . attacked is doing all right. Frank's just this side of a basket case. He blames himself. I think."
"You think?"
She shrugged. "He said he should've seen this breakdown coming. But there was something else. Something he didn't tell me."
"You think he knew it was Keith?"
"I didn't mention it. Neither did he."
"How about Diane?"
"I finally talked to her yesterday. She sounded so strange. Very cool, but with . . . an edge. Almost like she didn't care."
"I don't think they've loved each other for a long time." He leaned over and kissed her, bumping his crutch so that it clattered to the wooden deck. "Everyone else is okay? Nothing's happened to Curly or Eddie or Dale?"
"No, I talked to all of them, and they're okay. Curly's taking it real seriously. He even hired a bodyguard."
"We have to do something. I don't know what, but something. Will you get me the phone? I want to call Curly."
A strange voice answered the phone, and put Curly on. "That was my bodyguard, Jocko," he said.
“Jocko?" Woody laughed in spite of himself. "Seriously?”
“Nah, his name's Kevin, but I think a bodyguard ought to be called Jocko or Bruno or something. He doesn't mind."
"You haven't seen anything of our . . . friend?"
"You mean Keith? No."
"It's him, Curly. It really is him. He came here the other night, tried to make me . . . well, let's say I wound up hurting myself instead."
Curly was quiet for a long time. "Tracy didn't give me the details, just that you had an accident. Son of a bitch. You're sure it was him?"
"I can still hear his voice, still see him. He said something about . . . about doing the world."
"Doing the world? What's that supposed to mean?”
“I don't know. Unless—"
"Like with gangsters, you do somebody, you—"
"Kill them."
"Yeah." Neither one spoke for a while. "Damn. Talk about your delusions of grandeur. He's one sick puppy. You think he was serious or just bragging or what?"
"I don't know. God only knows what he's capable of. Stealing a nuclear device, setting it off in New York or L.A. or someplace? Trying to start World War Three? I just don't know. How else would you do the world?"
"But would Pan do something like that?" Curly said. "I mean, that's kind of the ultimate pollution. Out of character, huh? But then he's gotta be nuts to begin with."
"Maybe. But from everything I've read about him, there's a terrible logic to his insanity."
"I almost wish he'd show up. I'd shoot his ass. Or Jocko would."
"I know. I told Tracy the same thing. But I don't think he'll come back. It was almost like he was getting ready, preparing himself for something."
"The mind boggles. What the hell is it?"
"I don't know. But you can bet your ass we'll find out before too long. We and a lot of other people."
~*~
That evening after the kids were in bed, Tracy brought Woody a beer. A CD of Stan Getz ballads was playing softly. She had been thinking about Keith Aarons and Pan most of the day, feeling sicker by the minute. "I have a question," she said as she sat on the carpet near his chair.
"What?"
"Do you think . . . that we could send Keith back?”
“Send him back? You mean to the past?"
"I just wondered if it was possible. Send him back the way we . . . you brought him here. I know it would be hard to find him, maybe impossible. But if we did somehow, could we send him back?"
"And leave him there?"
She nodded. 'Then come back without him, and it would all be as though Pan had never been. Keith would have lived, but no longer than he had—what should I say—been intended to?"
Woody was long in answering, and it took great patience not to push him. "I . . . think it could work. If everything was the same. It worked before. I don't know how, but it did. You're proof of it.
"If it did. And then we came back. Things would be different again. Because when Keith died . . . I died with him."
"So we'd have a third world," Woody said. "One in which there was no Pan because Keith had died, but you'd be there. And Peter and Louisa." He smiled. "The best of all possible worlds."
"Would it be?" she said. "Possible, I mean. How many different tracks can there be? I think it's incredible that there can actually be two, let alone more."
"Why not?"
"How many times can reality break apart and reform itself, Woody? How many tracks can the universe hold?"
"If it's infinite, an infinity of them, I guess."
"But you don't know."
"Jesus, who does? What's your point, Tracy?"
She couldn't tell him. Not yet. "Nothing. No point. Meta-physical pedantry, that's all." She went over to the silent sound system, and hit play again, too weary to choose another disc. "I'm going to get a bath."
In the tub, she thought about what she had not told Woody, let her mind lay immersed in fear as her body lay in the warm, soft water. She was afraid that once she went back to the past, to that same apartment on a fall night twenty-odd years before, that she would not be able to return, that the cycle would stop, that the life she loved and knew so vividly had been only a visit, a gift of grace from some unimaginable god who now realized that he had made a mistake, and saw a chance to set things right again.
For Keith's existence was wrong. Some huge cosmic error had saved his life along with Tracy's. Thousands of people had died because of that mistake, and their friends' lives had been ruined. And now Keith was planning . . . what? A still worse offense? A disaster on a massive scale?
She closed her eyes and let herself slide down into the water, until it covered her chin, her mouth, her eyes, until her head was under, and she thought that if she had ceased to draw breath on that night long ago, how many other dead people would be alive today?
And then she thought about her children, and let her face break the surface of the water, and breathed again.
Her children.
She got out of the tub, dried herself, put on a robe, and walked into Peter's room. He was asleep, his arm around a stuffed rabbit. He held it every night, though he thought he was too old for stuffed animals, and compromised by refusing to acknowledge it or admit to its existence, even to his mother. Still, there it was in his arms.
Isn't that funny, she thought. He loves you, but you're not supposed to exist. Isn't that funny. And sad.
What would happen to you, little boy? What would happen, not if Mommy went away, but if she never was your mommy? Where would you go?
Heaven? Limbo? Someplace where dream children live? And could I be there with you?
Please?
She sat on the floor next to his bed for a long time, just watching him breathe, watching him be. She finally fell asleep, her head against the wall, and Woody had to wake her up so that she could go to bed.
Chapter 37
September 25, 1993:
. . . and O'Hare International waits below. Already the virus is spreading through the world. I could stop now, but I feel the need to hurry it along. After so many years of struggle, what I sought has finally come, and I feel happier than I have in such a long time.
Again I am in coach class. I want to be among people, to reach as many as possible. A nun is sitting next to me, one of those new-style nuns with the shortish skirt and part of her hair showing. She's very friendly, and is going to some nun convention in Chicago—I don't know why that sounds so silly—nun convention, with maybe a
man popping out of a cake naked except for a priest's collar.
That may be the first bit of levity I've ever written in my book of the mind. There was never any reason for it before. In any event, the nun will take some extra guests to her convention—millions of them on her breath. And, like a good Christian, she will share. She will multiply her loaves and fishes.
I've been sharing. In Los Angeles I shared over and over again. I picked up a little girl's Ninja Turtle doll that she had dropped, gave it to her, got my face close to hers, told her to hang on to her friends, that friends were very important, and her mother and father smiled and thanked me, because I'm dressed so well and look so good, and am so kind and polite and forthright, looking everyone in the face, with the touch of mint and death on my breath.
Now Chicago. Then New York.
Then, after all this time, home.
~*~
When Pete Sullivan didn't show up for work at Goncourt Laboratories Thursday morning, Al Freeman asked the other men if they had seen him. They said they hadn't, not at all during the break, and assumed that he had gone camping again. When Al called Pete's apartment, there was no answer, so he called Leonard Brambaugh, the man who owned the building. Brambaugh said that he hadn't seen Pete either.
The orders were to call in if you were sick or couldn't come to work, and the fact that Pete hadn't done so made Al Freeman nervous. Pete had admitted that he'd been pretty depressed by Sally's death. Supposing he'd done something stupid?
"Leonard," said Freeman, "do me a favor. Go up to Pete's apartment and make sure everything's okay."
"Hell, Al, he's not here—his car ain't here."
"Well, check anyway, all right?"
Brambaugh muttered an obscenity, said he'd check and call back, and hung up. Ten minutes later he called for Freeman. "He's gone."
"What, did he leave a note?"
"No, he's gone. Gee-ay-dubya-en. Packed and scattered. Nuthin' left but the furniture. Won't see that boy again. Damn good thing he paid in advance."
Freeman slammed down the phone and went to Ted Horst's office. "Pete Sullivan's gone," he said. "Run out."
"Sure he wasn't grabbed?"
"No. His stuff's gone too. He left. Without a word to anybody."
Horst sat back in his chair. "God damn. All right, let's get down to it. Have 'em run a full inventory. Talk to the security guys who checked him out last Monday. I'll fax his picture to our friends, get them lookin' for his car, lookin' for him at airports, train stations, alla that. What was he workin' on last?"
Freeman tried to swallow, but it stuck in his throat, and he coughed. “The woman. He was taking samples from the woman who died."
Horst went pale. "Jesus. Who with?"
"Billy Magruder."
"Get him."
In less than a minute Magruder was sitting in Ted Horst's office, Horst and Freeman standing over him. "Billy," Horst said, "was Pete Sullivan ever in that cell with that subject alone? Ever, but especially last Monday?"
Magruder shook his head. "No sir."
"Listen to me now, Billy. No lies. I know we've always said how important proper procedures are, and that you can get your ass fired for not followin' them. But if you didn't, you better say so right now, because there are things a helluva lot worse than tellin' me you broke the rules, get it?"
"No sir. Pete and me were in there together. All the time. He's never been alone in there. And neither have I."
"Did he do anything strange in there this week?"
"Like what?"
"Like anything! Goddam it, anything struck you as weird!”
“Well, well no. He . . . he forgot the blood tube Monday, but . . . we went and got it."
"We? Both of you got out of the lock and got it? At the same time?"
"Well, sure. According to procedure. We're not supposed to be alone in there, we know that."
"And you weren't? You didn't go out and get it, then leave it in the lock for him while you got dressed?"
"Hell no, Ted! I know better'n that."
"All right . . . all right. Al, get that inventory started right now." Freeman disappeared through the door. "Billy, help Al. But you remember now, you better've told me the truth. There are worse things than breakin' the rules. Lots worse."
Billy Magruder nodded, stood up, and followed Al Freeman down the hall, thinking bullshit. There's nothing stupider than admitting you broke the rules, and there's nothing worse than getting fired for it.
Nothing.
Chapter 38
By late afternoon, when the Goncourt inventory was completed and nothing was found missing, Keith's plane was landing at Kennedy International. He would have gone directly to the International Arrivals Building, but was too tired, and instead took a cab to the J.F.K. Plaza near the airport, got a room, and slept for several hours.
When he awoke, he took a swim in the pool, had a late dinner, and sat in the bar until midnight, observing the women. He toyed with the idea of picking one up for the night, but decided he was too tired. Then he went back to his room and slept until dawn.
He checked out, took a cab back to International Arrivals, and spent several hours at different gates. He went through the metal detectors, smiling each time, knowing that they would never beep at what he carried, a weapon far more deadly than guns or bombs.
He began to feel tired again at noon, so he bought a Times, paid the admission to the third level observation deck, and sat reading. In the music section he saw a small announcement that the forthcoming week-long appearance of Woody Robinson and his quintet at Fat Tuesday's had been postponed due to "a minor accident," and that Kenny Barron's group would appear in Robinson's place.
Keith smiled, stood up, and walked to the windows, looking out at the planes rising and falling.
~*~
September 27, 1993:
Good for Woody. I always knew he was strong-willed. He had to be to go through all those years of musical changes and keep his vision intact.
He's very similar to me when it comes to single-mindedness. We both had goals, and we never lost our concentration, never stopped seeking the final prize. His music may still live, though. Maybe those who survive will retain enough technology to play it. There will be far fewer people, so their needs won't be as great. Electricity will survive, I'm sure. They'll keep some things. But it will take thousands of years before the earth sinks to the state of dreadful waste it's in now.
Good old Woody. He's no threat anymore. I should call him. Congratulate him.
Tell him what I've done, and let him congratulate me. That's the one thing that bothers me—people won't know. To save the world and not have them know.
Maybe there's some way to tell them. I'll have to think about that. At least I can tell Woody.
It's ten in the morning in California. He'll be up by now.
~*~
Keith left the third level and began walking in the direction of the gates, looking for an isolated bank of pay phones. As he walked down a less than busy corridor, he became aware of someone following him. To make sure, he stopped at a candy machine and bought a pack of gum.
The man stopped too. Keith saw his reflection in the machine's glass. Medium height, wearing a denim jacket zipped halfway up. Sunglasses, blond hair cut short, no facial hair.
Typical little Nazi.
The lab.
All right, he'd make it easy.
Keith kept walking down the corridor until he came to a men's room. He walked inside, saw that it was empty, put down his bag, and stood at the urinal. But instead of his penis he held a small penknife that the airport security people always assumed posed no threat. In most peoples' hands it didn't. But most people were not Pan.
In the reflective chrome collar above the urinal, Keith saw a bent and curved version of the man come into the rest room, his white teeth smiling. His hand became hidden in the folds of his denim jacket, and when it came out Keith saw the gleam of a pistol.
The man came up behin
d him and started to say something, but Keith didn't wait for the words. He whirled around, plucked the pistol from the man's right hand as easily as picking a ripe apple, and pressed the point of the penknife into the hollow directly above the man's sternum.
It sank in easily, and Keith smiled at the look of surprise and pain on the man's face. Then he flicked out the knife and stepped back. The man stood there, unsure how to breathe with two mouths. His hands waved feebly in the air, and he began to look around him, as if for help.
"Instant tracheotomy," said Keith. He pushed the man backwards so that his back hit a booth door and he went down in a sitting position, his sunglasses clattering to the floor. "Don't try to talk. You'll bleed too much. Just nod. Answer my questions and maybe you'll live. Are you from the lab?"
The man, blue eyes wide with shock, nodded.
"They're looking for me?"
The man's hands fumbled at his throat. He looked at his fingers. When he saw they were red, he began to make mewling noises.
"I said don't try and talk. It's only fatal if I want it to be. Now. They're looking for me?"
A nod.
"Everywhere? All over the country? Airports?"
Another nod. And a whimper.
It was time to stop then. Time to go home. The lab had a longer reach than he had thought.
He knelt by the man and pushed him over so that he could take his wallet. He flipped through it, but found nothing that linked the man to the government. At least he wasn't FBI or CIA. More likely a soldier for one of those shabby white supremacist groups. They were the kind of trash Goncourt would use.
He shoved the wallet in his pocket, then turned and washed the few drops of blood from his fingers.
"You'd be dead anyway," he told the man while he dried his hands. "I breathed on you." When he looked back the man's eyes were even wider with fear. "Don't worry, though," said Keith, turning so that the man could see his own silenced pistol, held in Keith's paper towel-wrapped hand. "You won't suffer."
Second Chance Page 28
