It was the eighteenth by now, Mary realized. Lord Jack would be waiting for her at two o’clock in the afternoon.
But if he wasn’t there, what was she going to do?
Mary smiled grimly in her purple haze. That was CinCin talking.
But what ifthe pigs are there?
Shoot the baby first. Then take as many pigs with you as you can.
Reasonable.
Mary opened her eyes and stood up on mile-long legs. She was a walking heartbeat, the roar of blood through her veins like the noise of the freight-hauling trucks. She went into the room where Drummer was sleeping, and she sat on the bed and looked at him. She watched a frown pass over his face: a storm in babyland. Drummer sucked busily on the pacifier, and peace came to his face again. Lately he’d been waking up at three or four in the morning wanting to be fed. Mary was getting efficient at feeding him and changing his diapers. Motherhood suited her, she’d decided.
She could kill him if she had to. She knew she could. And then she would keep shooting until the pigs cut her down and she would join Drummer and her brothers and sisters in a place where the love generation had never died.
Mary lay down on the bed beside Drummer, close enough to feel his heat. She loved him more than anything in the world, because he was hers.
If they had to leave this world together, so be it.
Karma. That was the way things worked.
Mary drifted off to sleep, the acid slowing her pulse. Her last thought was of Lord Jack, bright with beauty in the winter sun, as he accepted the gift she had brought him.
6
A Real Popular Lady
TEN HOURS BEFORE MARY TERROR’S CONVERSATION WITH THE dead, Laura rang the doorbell of a red brick house four miles west of Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a sunny day, huge white clouds moving slowly across the sky, but the air was bitterly cold. Mark had his hands buried in his fleece-lined jacket, and puffs of breath plumed from his mouth. Laura and Mark had left Chattanooga on Friday morning, had driven to Dayton, Ohio, and spent Friday night there before continuing the rest of the way. They had driven through the sprawling University of Michigan, once a hotbed of student dissent in the late sixties and early seventies, and now better known for its Wolverines.
The door opened. An elderly man with a pleasant, leathery face and sun freckles on his scalp peered out. “Yes?”
“Hello.” Laura offered a tight smile. “We’re trying to find Diane Daniells. Do you know where she might be?”
He took a long look at her, another long look at Mark, and then he squinted toward the other side of the road, up at the stone cottage surrounded by oaks and elms at the end of a long dirt driveway. “Diane’s not at home,” he told her.
“We know. We were wondering if you had any idea where she is.” This house and the one belonging to Diane Daniells—once known as Bedelia Morse—were the only ones on this stretch of road.
“Gone on a trip,” he said. “Not sure where.”
“When did she leave?” Mark asked.
“Oh, Thursday afternoon, I suppose it was. Said she was goin’ north, if that’s any help.”
Laura had a knot in her throat, and she had to struggle to clear it. Being so close to where Bedelia Morse lived and being unable to find her was pure torture. “Did she say when she might be back?”
“Weekend trip, she said. You folks friends of Diane’s?”
“I’m an old friend,” Mark answered.
“Well, I’m sorry you missed her. If it’s any help to you, I think she’s gone birdin’.”
“Birding?” Laura asked.
“Yep. Diane asked to borrow my binoculars. See, my wife and I are bird-watchers. We belong to the society.” He scratched his chin. “Diane’s a solitary kind of woman. Be a real good birder if she put her mind to it.”
Laura nodded absently, turned, and looked at the stone cottage again. The mailbox had a peace sign painted on it. In front of the cottage stood an abstract clay sculpture, all sharp angles and edges.
“Diane’s a real popular lady all of a sudden,” the old man said.
“What?”
“Real popular,” he repeated. “Diane usually don’t have no visitors. She comes over and plays chess with me sometimes. Beats my socks off, too. Other fella was askin’ about her yesterday.”
“Other fellow?” Mark frowned. “Who?”
“Friend of hers,” he said. “Fella with a bad throat. Had to plug a doohickey into his neck and talk through a speaker. Damnedest thing.”
“Did Diane tell you who she might be going to visit?” Laura asked, getting the conversation back on track.
“Nope. Just said she was goin’ away for the weekend. Headin’ north, she said.”
It was obvious the man didn’t know anything else. “Thank you,” Laura said, and the old man wished them a good day and closed his door.
On the walk back to Laura’s BMW, Mark kicked a pinecone and said, “Sounds weird.”
“What does?”
“About the guy with the bad throat. Sounds weird.”
“Why? Maybe he’s one of her pottery students.”
“Maybe.” Mark stood next to the car and listened to the wind roaming in the bare trees. “I’ve just got a funny feeling, that’s all.” He got into the car, and Laura slid behind the wheel. Their drive up from the South had been, for Laura, an education in radical philosophy and the teachings of Zen. Mark Treggs was a fount of knowledge about the militant struggles of the sixties, and they had gotten into a long discussion about the assassination of John F. Kennedy as the point when America had become poisoned. “So what do we do now?” he asked as Laura started the engine.
“I’m going to wait for Bedelia Morse to come home,” she told him. “You’ve done your part. If you want, I’ll buy you a plane ticket back to Chattanooga.”
Mark deliberated as they drove back toward Ann Arbor. “Didi won’t talk to you if I’m not there,” he said. “She won’t even let you in the door.” He swept his long hair back over his shoulders and watched the countryside pass. “No, I’d better stick around,” Mark decided. “I can get Rose to call in sick for me on Monday. No problem.”
“I thought you’d be eager to get home.”
“I am, but…I guess I’d like to see Didi. You know, for old times’ sake.”
There was something Laura had been meaning to ask, and now seemed the time. “In your book you dedicated a line to Didi: ‘Keep the faith and love the one you’re with.’ Who were you talking about? Is she living with someone?”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “Herself. I talked her out of slitting her wrists last summer.” He glanced quickly at Laura and then away. “Didi’s carrying a lot of heavy freight. She’s not the same person she used to be. I guess the past eats at her.”
Laura looked at her hands on the steering wheel and realized something that almost startled her. She was wearing no fingernail polish, and her nails were dirty. Her shower this morning had been a speed drill. The diamond of her engagement ring—a link to Doug—looked dull. Before this ordeal she’d been meticulous about her manicures and her ring cleaning. Such things now seemed incredibly pointless.
“A dude with a bad throat,” Mark said quietly. “Asking for Didi. I don’t know. That gives me the creeps.”
“Why?”
“If he was one of her students, wouldn’t he know she was going out of town for the weekend?”
“Not necessarily.”
He grunted. “Maybe you’re right. But it still sounds weird to me.”
Laura said, “This okay?” and motioned to a Days Inn coming up on the left. Mark said it was fine with him, and she turned into the parking lot. The first thing she was going to do when she got to her room was call the FBI in Atlanta and check with Kastle, but she had no intention of betraying either Mark or Bedelia Morse. She knew she was going to be climbing the walls until she got a chance to talk to Didi face-to-face.
As Laura and Mark were checking into the Days Inn, the tall,
gaunt man who had parked his dark blue Buick on a dirt road a half mile from Bedelia Morse’s cottage walked back to his car through the woods, his boots crunching on dead leaves. He wore brown trousers and a gray parka with a hood: colors that helped camouflage him in the winter-gnawed forest. Around his neck was a Minolta camera with a zoom lens, and over his shoulder was a camouflage-mottled bag that held a small SuperSnooper listening dish, earphones, and a miniature tape recorder as well as a loaded .45 automatic. The man’s face was hidden by the hood, but his breathing rattled.
When he reached his car, he unlocked the trunk and put the camera and shoulder bag into it, next to the black leather case that held a Valmet Hunter .308 rifle with a telescopic sight and a nine-round magazine.
His own house was about fifteen miles northwest, in a town called Hell.
He drove there, his black-gloved hands tight on the wheel and his grin demonic.
7
The Devil of All Pigs
BEHIND MARY TERROR WAS New York City. Above her was the gray sky, armored in clouds. Beneath her was the deck of the boat, ferrying a group of tourists across the wind-whipped water to what lay before her: the weeping lady on Liberty Island.
Mary stood within the glassed-in cabin, out of the wind, with Drummer in her arms. The weeping lady grew larger and larger, torch in one hand and book cradled against her breasts. The other passengers were mostly Japanese, and they took pictures like crazy. Mary rocked Drummer and cooed to him, and her heart slammed in her chest as the Circle Line boat neared its destination. In her large shoulder bag was her Magnum pistol, fully loaded. Mary licked her lips. She could see people walking around the base of the weeping lady, could see someone feeding sea gulls on the concrete dock where the boat would pull in. Mary looked at her wristwatch. It was about eight minutes before two o’clock. She realized how big Liberty Island was. Where was the contact supposed to be made? The message in the Stone hadn’t said. A little burst of panic threatened her composure; what if she couldn’t find Jack? What if he was waiting for her but she couldn’t find him? Steady, she told herself. Trust in karma, and keep an eye on your back.
Drummer started to cry. “Shhh, shhh,” she said softly, and she fed him his pacifier. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her sleep had been uneasy, and filled with phantoms: pigs with rifles and shotguns, converging on her from all sides. She had taken stock of the tourists waiting for the boat as she’d bought her ticket: none of them smelled like pigs, and none of them wore shined shoes. But out here in the open she didn’t feel safe, and once she set foot on Liberty Island she would unzip her bag so she could get to her gun in a hurry.
The boat began to slow, the weeping lady gargantuan before her. Then the boat’s crew threw out ropes, the craft sidled up against the dock, and a ramp was tied down. “Watch your step, watch your step!” one of the crewmen cautioned, and the tourists started getting off the boat with a chatter of excitement.
It was time. Mary waited for everyone else to get off, and then she unzipped the carryall and took Drummer across the ramp onto the concrete of Liberty Island.
Sea gulls screeched and spun in the eddies of cold air. Mary’s eyes darted right and left: an elderly couple walked together near the railing; a heavyset woman herded two children along; three teenage boys in leather jackets jostled each other, their voices raucous; a man in a gray jogging outfit was sitting on a bench, staring blankly toward the city; another man, this one wearing a beige overcoat, was tossing peanuts to the sea gulls. He was wearing shined wingtips, and Mary walked quickly away from him, the back of her neck prickling.
A uniformed guide was gathering the Japanese group together. Mary passed him, striding along the walkway that went next to the water. Clumps of oil and dead fish floated in it, white bellies bloated. A woman was coming toward her, walking alone. She had long black hair that whipped in the wind, and she wore a red overcoat. When the woman was about six paces away, she suddenly stopped and smiled. “Hi there!” she said brightly.
Mary was about to answer, when a young dark-haired man passed her from behind. “Hi!” he answered the woman, and they linked arms. “You got away from me, didn’t you?” he teased her. They turned away from Mary Terror, their bodies pressing against the railing, and Mary went on with Drummer.
She threaded her way through another clutch of Japanese tourists, cameras clicking up at the weeping lady. Her eye caught the glint of a badge, and she looked to her right. A pig in a dark blue uniform was strolling slowly along, about thirty feet from her. She veered away from him and walked to the railing, where she stood with Drummer and stared at the gray-hazed city. One hand rested on the lip of her bag, the Magnum within an instant’s reach. She waited a few seconds and then turned away from the view, her heart pounding. The pig had walked on, beyond the Japanese tourists. She watched him go, the breath cold in her lungs. Not safe, she thought. Too open out here. It came to her like a blow: this wasn’t the kind of place Lord Jack would have chosen for a meeting. There was no shelter here, no way out if a trap was sprung. She saw a black man in a Knicks jacket sitting on a bench, staring at her. She stared back long enough to make him look away, and then she started walking again. Mary didn’t like it; this place was wrong, it wasn’t Jack’s style. When she glanced back, she saw the Knicks fan stand up and walk to the railing as if to keep her in sight.
Trap, she thought. An alarm began to scream inside her. The stench of pigs was in the air. The man who’d been feeding the sea gulls suddenly came into view, walking slowly beside the railing in his shined pig shoes, his hands deep in his overcoat pockets. She knew the look of a pig who was carrying firepower, the weight of a gun was in the bastard’s walk. Tears of rage swelled in her eyes, and her mind shrieked the warning: Trap! Trap! Trap!
Mary began striding quickly away from the Knicks fan and the bastard with the shined shoes. Drummer made a little mewling sound around his pacifier, perhaps picking up some of Mary’s tension. “Shhhh,” she told him. Her voice quavered. “Mama’s got her baby.”
Her shoulders tensed. She was waiting for the noise of a whistle or the crackle of a radio: a signal for the enemy to move in on her. She knew what to do when that happened. First kill Drummer with a single shot to the head. Then keep firing at the mindfuckers until they took her down. Reasonable. She would not die without taking some of them with her, and damned if they’d get her alive.
Mary Terror suddenly stopped walking. A small gasp left her mouth.
There he was.
Right there. Ahead of her, leaning against the railing and looking out toward the Atlantic. His body was still slim and youthful, and his long blond hair hung around his shoulders in golden waves. He wore a battered leather jacket, faded jeans, and boots. He was smoking a cigarette, the smoke swirling back over his head in the wind.
Lord Jack. Right there, waiting for her and the baby.
She couldn’t move. A tear—not of rage, but born of joy—streaked down her right cheek. There was a lump in her throat; how could she speak around it? She took a step toward him, her body tormented between frost and fire. He tapped ashes out on the railing and watched a sea gull wheel in the sky. Mary could see the fine etching of his nose and chin. He’d done away with his beard, but it was him. Oh dear God it was him, right there in front of her.
Mary walked to him, trembling. He was smaller than she remembered. Of course he was, because she was larger than she’d been. “Jack?” she said softly; it came out garbled. She took a breath and tried again, ready to see the flames in his eyes when he looked at her. “Jack?”
His head swiveled.
Lord Jack was a girl.
A teenager, maybe seventeen or eighteen. Her long blond hair danced in the wind, a tiny silver skeleton dangling from her right ear. She stared at Mary Terror with the cigarette gripped in her mouth, her eyes hard and wary. “Choo talkin’ ta me?” she asked.
Mary stopped, her legs freezing up. She felt her face harden, felt her joy spin away from her like a sea
gull on the wind. She made a noise, but she wasn’t sure what she said; maybe it was a grunt of pain.
“Crazy fucka,” the girl muttered, and she brushed past Mary Terror and stalked away.
It came. Close behind her. The voice.
“Mary.”
Not a question. A knowing.
She turned, cradling Drummer with one arm and the other hand in her shoulder bag. Her fingers rested on the Magnum’s grip.
“Mary,” he said again, and he smiled with tears swamping his pale blue eyes.
It was the man who’d been feeding the gulls. He had short brown hair flecked with gray on the sides, and he wore tortoiseshell glasses. His face was bony, his chin too long, and his nose too large. Around his eyes were webbings of lines, and two deep lines bracketed his mouth. The wind caught the folds of his beige overcoat. Mary saw that he was wearing a black pin-striped suit, a white shirt, and a red tie with little white dots on it. She glanced down at his shined black wingtips, and her first impression was that the devil of all pigs had just spoken her name.
She didn’t know his face. Didn’t know his eyes. The pigs had sprung their trap. His hands were still in the pockets of his coat. She saw the uniformed pig walking toward them unhurriedly. The Knicks fan was lounging against the railing, staring at the gray water. It was time to play the game out, but on her terms. Mary drew the Magnum from her shoulder bag, her finger on the trigger, and she placed the barrel against Drummer’s head. The baby shivered and blinked.
“No!” the stranger said. “Jesus, no!” He blinked, too, as surprised as Drummer. “I’m Edward,” he said. “Edward Fordyce.”
Liar! she thought. Dirty fucking liar! He didn’t look at all like Edward! The pig was coming, approaching from behind the stranger. He was about ten or eleven paces away, and Mary’s finger tightened on the trigger as she saw the noose falling.