Goner House: The Return of Patience

Chapter 23 Numb’s Place

  In her car on Careless Street, Reason soon saw Mr. Power’s limousine pull up at Numb’s Place. The big man got out and went in, his bodyguards accompanying him only to the door as predicted by Patience. As they drove away in the limo, she considered how unlikely it was that, while headed for this place of drunken pleasures, he had been making phone calls in his car to stop the demolition of Leasing House. No, Wisdom was probably right that Mr. Pretence had turned him from such intervention. He had broken his promise and was here for a typical night of reveling.

  She left her car and walked straight in the front door. Ahead of her, through open double doors, she could see a room crowded with round tables and graced with a small stage for entertainments. Someone was playing a piano. Well dressed people were at the tables. The hostess looked at her with a smile. Rather than go in, she slipped around a corner as if to go to the restroom, stepped over a black velvet rope, and ducked down some stairs to the basement.

  Now came the hard part. She had much to do here in a building that Patience had predicted would be crawling with Sordid’s CRISP agents. She walked along a dimly lighted hallway on a littered, dirty carpet until she came to an open door on her right and looked in. She saw at once that it was a makeup room for performers, for a mirror and a countertop laden with creams, lipsticks, and the like stretched down one long wall, and low stools were spaced along the counter. The room was well lit by rows of bare bulbs across the top of the mirror.

  “Well, who is this? Could it be Reason, could it be my own lost love?”

  She started and turned to discover that the speaker was a man who had slipped up behind her and was now gripping her wrist. Looking up, she met the eyes of Bits Bitterly, a fellow she had dated in high school. Across one side of his handsome face was an ugly scar beginning under his nose and extending upward right across an eye, a scar that she had once inflicted on him with a screwdriver. Now he had her, disastrously, for she knew he had often worked for the City as a paid informer and worse. Abort! Her mission was doomed, finished. She would be lucky even to escape the building. With her wrist held, she could not use her phone to call for help. She tried to reach for the pistol in the purse slung over her shoulder but discovered the weapon had found its way to the bottom and was inaccessible, buried under other items.

  “Bits,” she said somewhat breathlessly. “I came for the show tonight, but I’ve gotten lost looking for the ladies’ room. Can you steer me the right direction?”

  “Certainly, dearest,” he said, “but first let me look at you. Do you know that to see you at all is, for me, like a mad dream of delirium, impossible and even unhealthy, but welcome? I’ve been separated from you by my emotional instability, by illness, by the force of necessity that has me working for an organization I detest and with people I despise—and yet here you are. Why, if I had only been vouchsafed to see you for one moment and from a distance, I—”

  “I’m feeling a bit ill myself, Bits. I think you’d better get to the point.”

  He stiffened and his smile disappeared. “Don’t be testy, sweetheart, it doesn’t suit you. Why don’t we go to the next room?” While leading her down the hall, he was drawing out a pistol with his free hand. “Let me introduce you to some of my co-workers.”

  The room that she entered as a prisoner was full of props, and large wardrobes stood against the walls. One of the wardrobes had both its wide doors open, revealing many silky, brightly colored dresses of the showgirl type. Lounging on chairs were two men. The older one she recognized as Mr. Fear, a City Councilman whom she had met once and whose picture sometimes appeared in the newspaper. The younger was unknown to her, a sandy haired man of about thirty with short-lashed staring eyes like lead buttons in a puffy, expressionless face.

  Bits brought her near this man. “Anger, vacate your chair for a lady, my own darling, whom I’ve loved for ages although, or because, she spurned me.”

  “Who’s she?” Anger said dully. “A Heavenite?”

  “Heavenly indeed, can’t you see?” Bits stroked her brown hair with his gun’s barrel. “Dear thing, you’re still pretty. What a romantic couple we would have made if you hadn’t been so stubborn.”

  “You can’t shoot me,” she said shrilly. “The noise will be heard upstairs.”

  “Oh, but this pistol has a silencer, darling. That’s standard for us.” As if to demonstrate the truth of Bits’ statement, the other two men drew out their own silenced pistols. “But you know I don’t want to shoot you. I didn’t wait all these years for that.”

  She knew it was not her imagination that his skin was becoming green.

  “No, Bits, you want to devour me. When my son was a baby, you wanted to eat him too. But I don’t believe that you’ll do that with other people around.”

  “But these gentleman are all politeness and tact. They’ll leave us.”

  “Then I’ll scream.”

  “Only for a split second. My hands can be around your throat so quickly. Here, let me take your purse just in case you have some crude weapon in it such as a screwdriver.”

  He set it aside. Yet another man now entered, a tall and blonde young fellow wearing glasses, whom the agents acknowledged with rough humor, Bits mocking him about the large bribe that had brought Crisp his help for the evening. This, she now heard from them, was Mr. Prolong, Mr. Power’s new secretary.

  “Why the hell are you grouping up down here?” he said angrily. “All right, you caught one of them, but did it occur to any of you that she might be a diversion? That more of them might be upstairs?”

  “We’ll find out about that from her,” Fear said ominously.

  “Sure you will, but it only takes one of you to interrogate her. The others should patrol.”

  Reason saw that Bits’ face and hands were taking on more and more of the appearance of a ‘scaly.’ To be left alone with him would mean being literally dinner for the man-sized lizard he was rapidly becoming. She tried to stand up, but he pushed her back.

  “Don’t leave me with him,” she said desperately to the secretary. “He does horrible things. I once saw the corpse of a cat he had eaten, a family pet.”

  “You two get upstairs,” Prolong said to Fear and Anger, “and Bits, you find out everything she knows and do it fast. Then tell me what you found out, and then—do whatever you want with her, but make sure you clean things up afterward.” He turned to Fear and Anger, who had not moved. “What is it?”

  “Nobody put you in charge of CRISP,” Fear said. “You go upstairs and do the patrolling.”

  Prolong broke into a grin. “Come on, guys, don’t be so touchy. Sure, OK, I’ll go look around. No need to…”

  Suddenly Prolong grasped Bits by the arm and swung him around by it in a twisting, painful way, causing him to drop his pistol. At the same time he used his other hand to karate chop Anger in the side of the neck with great force and the agent fell backward. Fear was free to use his pistol and did, but Prolong was using Bits as a shield, so it was the scaly who took the bullet. Crying out, Bits wrenched away from Prolong and ran out the door into the hallway, a long green tail trailing behind him out of a tear in his pants.

  Prolong’s arm was just long enough to push the older man’s pistol hand aside as he fired a second shot. As a puff of powder blew out of a hole in the wall plaster, Prolong kicked the pistol out of Fear’s hand and, catching it neatly in the air, reversed it and pistol whipped him over the head. Fear dropped onto the chair he had risen from, his balding head bleeding. Anger was starting to rise from the floor, but Prolong leaned down and pistol whipped him as well. He fell back.

  The secretary looked to Reason in her chair. “Make sure Bits doesn’t make it upstairs or use his phone,” he said.

  She nodded, went to her purse and extracted her Moore pistol, and followed a trail of blood drops out the door and into a room across the hall. Flipping on a light, she found the
room was full of stage backdrops. She had a moment to realize that she was now scaly hunting, searching for prey. Though she had hunted Bits like this once before, she had then been poorly equipped with a screwdriver, and Bits had not been wounded. The blood drops led her behind some large, painted canvases in a corner. He was all lizard now, she found, covered with scales, a long-toothed fiend with snout and claws.

  Lying on the floor, moaning in agony, he turned a yellow eye to her, the one with the scar across it, and gasped, “Help me, Reason. Call 9-1-1. Hurry, for God’s sake!”

  She did nothing but flick off the safety on the Moore pistol.

  “You can’t do that,” he said. “You Heavenites are bound to forgive your enemies. It’s in your dear little Bible. The Lord Jesus commands you. So forgive me and help me, old thing. Call the ambulance, darling!”

  By this time her little knees were on his chest and the pistol barrel was between his lizard eyes. She did not intend to miss.

  “You don’t mean that, dearest, you can’t. You won’t shoot me. Think of your conscience, of your dear Christ. Think of—”

  The noise of the Moore pistol, she discovered, was no greater than that of the CRISP agents’ silenced pistols. A neat hole was in Bits’ forehead.

  She got up and stood back, shaken and hoping that he would simply lie still. What she saw instead was something like the inflation of an air mattress. He ‘blew up,’ tearing through his clothes, into a bulk of ten times his former mass, pushing the painted canvases aside. He was still a scaly but a bloated, muscleless mass, immensely fat, something too huge, foul, and smelly to sneak up on anyone or masquerade as a man. Though he was plainly still breathing, she hoped that he was at least unconscious. Unfortunately, he spoke.

  “I am the greatest artiste that has ever lived,” he said in a weak, small voice, “and you shoot me! Shoot me with a gun! You, a mere yahoo, an ignoramus, a Philistine! How could you have any conception of the things I feel? Of what it is to be exquisitely sensitive? You owe me your obedience, your worship! Where are you? I can’t see you! Oh, Reason, I don’t feel well at all. I can’t move. How could you do this to me? Don’t you remember what we once were to each other?”

  “Bits, way back in high school we had fourteen dates, and I was miserable during the last four. Get over it.”

  “Don’t leave me like this,” he wheezed.

  “Shut up or I’ll shoot you again.”

  He was silent. She flicked the pistol’s safety back on and wobbled back to the costume room.

  As she came through the door, the tall secretary stood with his back to her, facing the chair where Mr. Fear had sat down and was still seated. The Councilman’s forehead was still bleeding but he was alert now. His jacket was open, revealing a mass of plastic bundles and wires around his middle. With his left hand he was holding tightly to a piece of this apparatus.

  “Patience, I shot Bits,” Reason reported.

  “That’s nice, Aunt Reas’,” the secretary said without turning, “but we’ve got a situation here. Fear’s got bombs attached to him.”

  She stood still and looked again. Yes, bombs. Fear was a suicide bomber. What next in this palace of nightmares?

  “So you’re the agent called Patience,” Fear said to him. “Not a bad job, infiltrating Power’s office like that. But it’s all over now. I’ll take the whole building with me.”

  “Before you do that,” Patience said, “would you mind telling me how you happen to be outfitted this evening for suicide bombing? A premonition that you’d need it, or do you just like the thrill of being ready to detonate?”

  “I always am,” said Fear. “I never go out without wearing this.”

  “But surely there are exceptions,” Patience pressed. “What about swimming parties?”

  “I don’t go to them when invited,” Fear explained.

  “Well, thanks for clearing that up.”

  “You’re more than welcome. Now die.”

  With his free right hand, Fear flicked a switch on the bomb apparatus. Simultaneously, Patience punched him in the side of his face. Reason swayed a little on her feet until she realized that no explosion had taken place. Instead, she saw that Patience had swiftly inserted fingers into the metal and plastic grip piece that Fear’s left hand had held and was now holding it closed while pulling Fear’s slack hand away. The older man was slumped back in the chair, limp and motionless.

  “I’ve got the ‘dead man’ control,” he said. “That’s why it didn’t explode.”

  “Thank God,” she exhaled. “Can you tie it closed? And then let’s run.”

  “Easy there,” he said. “Don’t forget about all the innocent people upstairs.”

  She was ready to let them take their chances but tried to look concerned.

  “But surely if it’s tied closed and we call the police bomb squad?”

  “Not actually. You see, we learned about this kind of suicide bomb in spy school. Once he flipped the switch, it’s timed to go off even if he doesn’t release the dead man control.”

  “What? That’s crazy! Why?”

  “In case of a loss of nerve, I guess. And of course it’s crazy. Suicide bombers are crazy. Here, hold this so I can use both hands to try to disable it.”

  “No! Let’s run. How much time do we have?”

  “The people upstairs, Aunt Reason?”

  “No, I can’t do this. I’m trying to faint.”

  He pulled her small hand to the release and let go with his, so that she had to hold it or die. She held it.

  “How much time?” she squeaked.

  He pulled out a tiny pocketknife and began to examine wires. “It varies. Maybe one minute from the time the switch was thrown, maybe more.”

  Reason was shocked silent, suddenly painfully aware of being unable to run, of having to hold closed the dead man control; and surely half a minute or more had already passed! She forced herself to remain silent so Patience would not be distracted for one second. They were crouched side by side. Fear remained motionless. Patience was still looking over the wires, she hoped with some understanding of what he was examining. Why didn’t he cut something! Every second was an agony. Hurry!

  “Say, Aunt Reas’, there was this snail that got mugged by a turtle, and when the police came, they asked the snail what the turtle looked like.”

  “Sh-shut up and concentrate!”

  “No, it’s fine.” He pulled a thin blue wire away from the others and looked at it as if reading the tiny letters printed on it. “So the snail says to the officer, ‘I don’t know what he looked like. It all happened so fast!” He laughed easily. “Oh, wait, this wire isn’t the right one. Let’s check this other one.”

  She moaned miserably. Suddenly, loud symphonic music blared near them, seeming to come from Fear’s chest, and she both gripped the control harder and almost fell over. Patience took a moment from his work to slip Fear’s cell phone from his breast pocket and answer it.

  “Yes? Oh sure, this is his phone, but he’s not available now. Who is this? Chief Sordid? It’s Prolong, sir. Shall I take a message?”

  With her free hand, Reason pulled the phone from him and threw it across the room where it bounced off a wardrobe door with a crack and fell to the floor with a thump.

  “Yeah, I didn’t want to talk to him anyway,” Patience said. He used the tiny scissors part of his pocket knife to clip a wire. “OK, let’s see if that worked.” He peeled away some tape and pulled out a small LED display. “Say, that was close. Take a look.”

  The display read 00.00.007.

  Reason stared at the numbers. “What does that mean? You don’t mean that we only had seven seconds left?”

  “No, that’s seven-tenths of a second, Aunt Reas’. See the extra zero? Good thing you interrupted my phone call, huh? You can let go of the control now.”

  It took her a few moments to believe him. T
hen she let go and rolled back onto the carpet, staring at the ceiling with her lips parted. Patience dragged the bodies of both agents into one of the wardrobes that happened to have a key in its lock and locked them in.

  “Better get ready,” he said to his aunt’s recumbent form as he returned to the center of the room.

  “You can’t expect me to do anything now!”

  “Why not? Things are going great.”

  “You’re insane. I won’t do it. I’m leaving.”

  “Oh, hey! Listen to that in the wardrobe. I’ll bet that’s Anger’s cell phone this time and that it’s Sordid calling again. He’ll try Bits next.”

  She rolled over and up onto her knees. “You’re insane. I’m leaving.”

  “That’s a shame because I was thinking of making you my permanent HIMF spy partner. Hey, just kidding! Give me the letter from Captain Mercy first, before you go.”

  Chief Sordid had lost contact with all three CRISP agents in Numb’s Place, and it had sounded to him like his brief conversation with Prolong had been interrupted by an attack on the young man.

  He hurriedly called Indifference, who was supposed to be with Grudge at Guiles Leasing’s house, taking good care of the Heavenite agent Prayer.

  “We have an emergency at Numb’s Place,” he said tightly. “Get yourself there as fast as possible. Run red lights. Whatever you have to do.”

  “I’m coming,” she said.

  He felt a little better knowing that his super-agent was on the way. As he got into his car to head for the nightspot himself, his phone rang.

  “Chief, this is Pretence. I thought you’d want to know that we just found out a woman was assaulted at the church here tonight. Somebody used some kind of knockout spray on Deaconess Faith.”

  Sordid could hear a woman’s sobbing in the background. “Put her on.”

  “I don’t think she’s really quite ready—”

  “Put her on!”

  Momentarily, a woman’s weak voice said, “What? Who is it?”

  “Chief Sordid of City Intelligence, ma’am. Do you have any idea who assaulted you?”

  “Oh, what am I to do? I’m empty, useless. I can never show my face in church again. I’ve got to hide somewhere…”

  “Who knocked you out?” he demanded angrily.

  “Don’t yell. I probably deserved it. I’m nobody now, not a deaconess. I don’t deserve any better than a jail cell for being such a phony. I’m so, so empty…”

  He ended the call and drove off at top speed.

  Mr. Power had a reserved table at Numb’s place—Mrs. Numb saw to that— and this evening he was at his table, a glass in front of him, and accompanied only by women. Not yet drunk but happily anticipating being so. The ladies were middle-aged Mrs. Numb, a pretty girl named Fashion, and the well known Miss Fame Vainglory, the stunning beauty, who had accompanied him from the Mammon Church.

  The music had been, until now, just musicians, but a female singer had arrived on stage, underdressed in something electric blue. The bandleader announced Miss Lucy Ditty and the petite woman began to sing in a voice that took charge of the room.

  You all know I’m a tough one.

  You cross me and you’ll regret it.

  My life has been a rough one.

  It don’t bother me—I don’t let it.

  But nobody knows how it was,

  What I lost when I was young.

  They don’t see inside me because

  I’ve gotta keep getting things done.

  Nobody knows me at all.

  How tender my heart can be.

  No, nobody knows me at all.

  The me that they see isn’t me.

  To Power’s surprise his new assistant Prolong came striding across the room, greeted the group at the table, and sat down with them. This was unwelcome not only because Prolong’s presence here at Numb’s had been unknown to Power, and because it was irregular for an assistant to fraternize with his boss, but also because Power had been enjoying listening to, and ogling, the torch singer. She was no kid but he liked the look of her legs below that short skirt and above her platform heels. Besides, her song seemed meant for him, seemed to tell his own story, for inside he was really just a soft hearted guy. She was getting into it too, her made-up face streaked with a tear.

  “I’ve got something I need to talk to you about, sir,” Prolong said, a serious expression on his face.

  “Yeah, well it can wait till Monday,” he replied gruffly.

  “Monday will be too late for this one, sir.”

  “I tell you, just stuff it! You ever hear a voice like that?”

  Nobody knows me at all.

  How tender my heart can be…

  “I hadn’t really noticed, sir.”

  “Then listen, you shallow little dip. This is the real stuff. Hey, Andy!” This was spoken to the waiter. “Get over here. When Lucy finishes her song, tell her she’s invited to my table.”

  Her song was ending, so the waiter talked to her, and stepping off the raised platform that was the stage, she came straight to the table. By pulling over a chair from an adjoining table and making the others shift over, Mr. Power made sure she sat down by him.

  “Great song!” he said to her. “Andy, get this lady a drink. What? She’ll have what I’m having, won’t you, beautiful? Tell me, when did you start here, Lucy?”

  “Actually, they went and got my name wrong,” she said with a little heat. “I told ’em my name’s Lucidity but they couldn’t seem to get it straight.”

  “Ludissa…? What?”

  “Nevah mind, just call me Lucy.”

  “You bet. And, you know, Lucy, I can be a good friend to you, help you to get bookings at other places. Name’s Power. You’ve heard of me, haven’t you?”

  “Sir, this will only take a minute…” said Prolong.

  Power ignored him and made introductions around the table.

  “Tell me, Lucy,” he said, “you have any use for older men?”

  “I think oldah men are fascinatin’,” she said agreeably.

  “So you want to spend some time with me? When’s your next song?”

  “It’s supposed to be right now, but I don’t care.” She leaned near to him and made eye contact. “I wondah if you and me could have a little time to ahselves, Mr. Powah?”

  Power was used to being rude and seldom regretted it, so he decided to instantly be rid of the others. “Numb, why don’t you and the other ladies take a trip to the powder room for a while? I need a little space with this lady. Prolong, get lost.”

  He reached out and stroked the ends of Lucy’s dark hair.

  “I’m not used to being told to leave a table in my own place, dear,” Numb said firmly.

  Prolong, however, backed his boss. “Come on, ladies. It’s what Mr. Power wants. Let’s all sit down at another table.”

  In a minute, Power was alone with Lucy. They chatted on indifferent subjects for a few minutes until Power brought up her plans for the night.

  “It’s hahd for me to plan anythin’ ’cause I’m so sad and miserable,” she said. “Actually, it’s ’cause of somethin’ that maybe you could help with. I’m friends with anothah regulah in heah, a fella by the name o’ Guiles, and he’s goin’ to be Relocated tomorrow.”

  Power remembered that he had seen Guiles Leasing in Numb’s Place from time to time. “Yeah, well, that’s really rough, but unfortunately I can’t help him.”

  “But the sad pawt of it is that he’s got a lotta influence ovah some impo’tant Heavenites that live in his neighborhood. His cousin is one o’ the Heavenites, and this cousin was at yoah house earliah this evenin’ ready to beg for yoah help. How often d’ya get a Heavenite beggin’ to you, Mr. Powah? And this is someone in close with the Embassy. It looks to me like Guiles is the only chance you’ve got to pull this guy, this Mistah Dignity, away from the Heavenites, and Guiles says that would spoil
all the Heavenites’ big plans ’cause they rely heavy on Dignity and his family and his friends. I tell ya, ya let my friend Guiles reel in Dignity, and you’d nevah have to worry about Heaven again. They’ll all just get on their ship and sail away.”

  “What ship?” Power said angrily. “There isn’t any.”

  “Sorry, so theah ain’t any. But I just mean they’ll go away.”

  “Who told you there’s a Heavenite ship?”

  “Guiles did. He gave me some papuhs that he says came from City Intelligence and tell all about what’s goin’ on.”

  When she had extracted two folded up papers from behind the wide belt of her dress and had spread them out on the table, Power seized them, put on glasses, and read them. He noted Sordid’s name on the ‘From’ line and not ‘Friends of the Media,’ and saw that this looked like a genuine report from the Chief, for it contained information that Sordid had had straight from Power and from Lawyer Temptation, with no intermediaries. Ominously, this meant it differed in important ways from the content of the lost report as Sordid had given it to him, and not just in its author. The apparently restored parts, derived from Power and Temptation, included some very explosive revelations about the Mayor and also told about the plans to take over Mammon Enterprises. Guiles had obtained this report from Sordid somehow, but the Intelligence Chief had not reported that. Instead, he had doctored his account of the leak, apparently to hide that he was the one who had lost the information. Then he had done his best to Relocate the Leasing family and pronto. Naturally, what else?

  “It looks like the City’s in dangah of, uh, sort of floatin’ into this burnin’ lake, it says theah,” Lucy went on, “and Guiles says the Heavenites are behind that too. But if the Heavenites give up on Dignity and his crowd, then wouldn’t theah King let that go, just let the City be?”

  Without missing this point, Power considered what his feelings must be if Sordid really had written it all and if he had lied about the way the information had been lost. The important point, he could see, was that Sordid had been the source of a huge, disastrous leak and had deceived both him and the Mayor about it. He would have to be dealt with. (Though it was a mere side issue for now, he could not help but think that this also meant he could get Miss Abject back at her desk and fire that dork Prolong.) As for Guiles, the simpering little scumball was just squirming around, trying to save himself from Relocation. He had not released the information to the press but was only trying to stop Sordid’s little plot against him.

  “And take a peek at this, Mr. Powah,” Lucy said.

  She put in front of him a letter written on Heavenite Navy stationery. Scanning it, he found that Captain Mercy himself was asking him, at Mr. Dignity’s request, to delay Relocation for the Leasings and to let the house stand. Yes, the same man who had married Love Orchard, and a very powerful Heavenite, was asking, not demanding. This was new to Power’s experience and suggested that Guiles Leasing had great influence indeed, influence by way of his cousin Dignity that extended all the way up to the Heavenite top brass, influence the City desperately needed.

  “I tell ya, Mr. Powah,” she said, “Guiles could save the City if ya give him a chance, and this Sordid guy, well, he’s tryin’ to destroy Guiles.”

  Of course he was, thought Power. Because Guiles had the evidence that Sordid had lost his report. Power decided that Chief Sordid was going to lose more than that, that he would lose his job and maybe his pulse.

  All this information had come quickly, and so it was only now that Power thought to turn suspicious eyes on the lounge singer. Sitting beside him all stiff and serious, and talking like a lawyer, somehow she didn’t look the same as she had just a few minutes ago. Even in her performer’s costume, she no longer looked like much fun.

  “You’re telling me Guiles gave you these papers?”

  “Sure did, Mr. Powah.”

  “And the letter from the Captain? How did you get that?”

  “One of the Heavenites give it to me, to give to you.”

  “Why didn’t Mercy just mail it to me?”

  “No time. You see the date on it. It had to reach you tonight.”

  “Well, why didn’t he send it by messenger?”

  “I guess he did. I’m the messenger.”

  “Wait a minute, honey, wait a minute. Who is it you’re working for? And don’t tell me this dump.”

  She was silent.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, trying to see behind her theatrical makeup. She was beginning to look a little familiar.

  Her dark little eyes flashed at him. “I’m Reason,” she said.

  While Power had been listening to Reason, Chief Sordid had arrived in a hurry outside the nightclub, in such a hurry that he almost failed to notice a City limo parked further from the entrance. But looking again, he stepped near enough to read its plate. This was Mammonette’s car. What was she doing here? He went back to his own car and called the limo’s dash phone but got no response. He had not been an intelligence veteran for decades for nothing. Even in the present crisis, he knew he should take the time to investigate this.

  For all their hurry to get to Numb’s Place, Wisdom, Prevarica, and Dignity had been unable to think of anything to do when they had arrived. They could not just rush in. The two young people were underage, and Dignity, who had frequented the place before his name change, was liable to be recognized by Mrs. Numb and others who knew he was now a Heavenite. To make matters worse, Reason was no longer answering her cell phone.

  Dignity and Wisdom restlessly took the air outside the limo, walking a little distance down Careless Street, but Prevarica, for unstated reasons, preferred to stay in the car. The man and boy were standing talking to one another when they saw Sordid pull up and get out. When he approached the limo, they prudently kept their distance, hoping he would have no interest in Prevarica. He opened the right rear door, and stood back, but Prevvy did not get out, and in fact they could not see her. Was she lying down on the back seat? Sordid walked away several steps and stood with his mouth moving, apparently talking to himself.

  Presently, when he had soliloquized enough, he went in Numb’s Place. Dignity and Wisdom ran to the car and, looking in the back seat, saw not the girl but only her clothes and purse.

  “Where is she?” Dignity said stupidly. “And is she naked?”

  “I’ll bet she’s inside,” Wisdom said, pointing to the nightclub, “and yeah, she is.”

  He went on to explain what he had seen, or rather not seen, of Prevvy’s neck on the day she had stolen Sordid’s report. He could only conclude that her invisibility had finally become complete and that, therefore, Chief Sordid had not been talking to himself but to her. He also explained his theory that the invisibility was a result of the shelling from the Gloria Dothan.

  “So she’s a double agent,” said Dignity, after he had had time take in all this.

  Wisdom considered. “No, she’s a triple agent—so far. She always did like complications. Maybe that explains why Mr. Pretence knew to get involved at the church and stop us there. Prevarica wasn’t with me all the time, so she could have tipped him off somehow.” He looked at the building. “We’ve got to get in there. Mom’s in there and doesn’t know Sordid has arrived or that Prevarica has changed sides again. They won’t recognize me like they would you. I’ve got an idea of how I might get in through the back door.”

  Wisdom gathered Prevarica’s clothes and purse into a tight bundle, leaving behind only her Moore pistol, stowed in the glove compartment. Then he sprinted around to the back of the building and knocked. Presently, the door was opened by a gray headed, sloppily dressed woman who asked him his business.

  “Costume delivery for Miss Lucidity.”

  “For who? For Lucy Ditty?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Hum, well stay here and I’ll ask.”

  She went down to the basement and found Lucy putting on her street
clothes.

  “You didn’t need to have hung up your stage clothes yourself, Miss Ditty. That’s what I’m here for.”

  “Thank you, Smudge, but I don’t mind.”

  “You sung good tonight. Mr. Prolong was right to recommend you to Mrs. Numb.”

  “Thank you, Smudge.”

  “Also, there’s a boy at the door, asking for you. Says he’s got a costume delivery. It’s a mulatto boy.”

  Reason took this in. “Yeah, that’s my son, and I did ask him to drop somethin’ off for me. I’ll meet him at the door.”

  She hastily finished dressing and went up the stairs to the front door but did not see Wisdom or anyone out front. What she did see, when she turned around, was Chief Sordid walking toward the lobby from the main room. Thinking only of maximum safety, she ducked into the women’s restroom.

  Wisdom and Smudge waited for Reason at the back door. When a few minutes had passed and she had not come, he nervously asked to go to her. “In the basement,” Smudge said, pointing to the back stairway. He hurried past her down the stairs and into the first room he came to, that is, the makeup room.

  There, seated before the long mirror with her back to him, was Prevarica. She was dressed again, in ill-fitting slacks and a hoodie that she must have found on the premises. She also wore what was obviously a wig, black and frizzy, and she was heavily made up, both face and neck, and wore lipstick. This gave her the appearance of a handless, footless grotesque with empty holes where her eyes should have been.

  She turned away from the mirror and they looked at each other, if what she was doing could be said to be looking.

  “I didn’t think you could follow me in here,” she said.

  Someone was appearing behind him, Wisdom saw in the mirror, and whirling around he was faced with Chief Sordid. The Intelligence chief looked him over.

  “Just to make sure, this is Wisdom?” he asked Prevarica.

  “Sure is, Chief,” she said.

  He drew a large pistol. “You’re under arrest, boy,” he said. “I’ll go easy on you if you tell me about any other Heavenites on the premises. Speak up. Now!”

  When Wisdom just stared at him, he slapped the boy with his free hand. Wisdom took the opportunity to throw himself down on the floor, dropping Prevarica’s clothes and landing with his right hand under his chest. Sordid kicked him casually and not very hard.

  “Get up, kid.”

  He rolled over, Moore pistol drawn from the inner pocket of his jacket, safety off, and shot the Chief once in the chest. Sordid instantly dropped his pistol and fell backward. Laying aside his own pistol, Wisdom rose and bent over him. He was relieved to see that the slug did not seem to have killed him, but the Chief’s face was turning purple. Momentarily, the man rolled onto his side and vomited what seemed to be mud in large quantities. He was immobilized except for the vomiting, which did not stop.

  Prevarica had joined Wisdom in watching this, but now pulled him away from the disgusting scene to the other side of the room. Standing beside him, she actually rested a hand on his shoulder, which gave him a feeling of exhilaration. She was choosing to touch him! His elation ended suddenly, however, when he found that, while he had been distracted, she had picked up Sordid’s dropped pistol and was now touching the side of his head with its barrel.

  “This is so sweet, because when I kill you, Wiz, I’ll still be an undiscovered mole in the HIMF. Now all I have to do is say the right things to Mr. Power before he leaves here, stuff that will counter anything you Heavenites may have said to him. Our house gets saved by the City, and we’re not indebted to Heaven or expected to lean toward your King in any way. We’ll be free.”

  He looked at her weird, eyeless face out of the corner of his eye. “The City won’t save your house, Prevarica. Who told you that?”

  “He did,” she said, indicating the Chief. “When he recovers, he’ll tell you. Oh, but I’m forgetting that you’ll be dead. Still, I’ll tell you what he would say if your brains were still inside your skull. He’d say that he, the Chief, has made sure that Leasing House goes off the demolition list. That’s out of gratitude for the information I’ve been feeding him about what the HIMF is doing and for my future service as a member of his spy team.”

  “So that’s what you two were talking about out front?”

  “Oh, no, we worked that out earlier today. Out front just now he was telling me to get in here and lure HIMF agents to him. You know, I think the Chief’s even more powerful than the mayor, and he’s my partner and wants to reward me.”

  “But my mom’s in here and she was supposed to tell Mr. Power that Sordid lost the memo. Power probably knows that by now, and if he does, then Sordid can’t help you because he’ll lose his job.”

  “Do you think I haven’t thought of that? His first plan was to capture or kill all the HIMF members. Well, that wasn’t too smart, and he totally blew it, so I’ve had to come up with a better idea, like I said. I’ll tell Mr. Power that anything your mom may have said to him was lies and a ruse to bring my house under Heaven’s flag like happened with the Hopes, that the HIA forged Captain Mercy’s letter and the memo, and that Chief Sordid is innocent. I’ll add that Leasing House of course won’t listen to Heaven and become Heavenite like your mom wants us too, but that we will be useful to subvert Grace and Hope Houses. Then Sordid keeps his job and cancels the Relocation. He’s already agreed to cancel it. That way I’ll get everything I want.”

  “No, no, Prevarica, Power won’t believe you. But even if he did, once Sordid’s name is cleared, he’ll go ahead and demolish your house.”

  “I’ve got his word, Wiz.” She laughed and her voice’s pitch rose. “OK, now I’m going to shoot you.”

  He looked sideways at the pistol that seemed to hover in the air beyond an empty sleeve.

  “Wait a minute, why don’t you just call your dad? You’ll believe him won’t you? Just take a minute and tell him what you just told me, and see what he says. He’ll tell you that only Relocation will satisfy Sordid, because he won’t trust you and your dad with the knowledge you have of his secret report. He’s only pretending to want to help you until you’re back in that paddy wagon and on your way to Hell again. There won’t be any gratitude, no wish to use you as a mole. And do you really think they would trust you as an agent, trust a kid with important spy work?”

  “He will!”

  “Anyway, have you forgotten that the whole City is going down? What good will it do you, even if you can weasel your way out of all this, if you’re here when it all goes over the edge into the lake of fire? Do you remember saying that you won’t live to be twenty-one? And anyway, what are you going to do about being invisible?”

  “Shut up!”

  Her pistol hand drooped for a moment, and in a rough flurry, he grabbed her invisible wrist and shook the pistol out of her hand. Then they stood facing each other, both breathing hard, until he released her.

  “OK, all right,” she said wearily. “Of course, you’re right. I don’t know why I could believe all that, except that I just wanted so bad for it to be true.”

  This sounded very good, but Wisdom was wary.

  “So you’ll just leave here and go home?”

  “Sure, yeah.”

  “With me?” he added, thinking of a nice long walk beside her, and never mind the team’s limos. He did not fail to consider that she had just meant to ventilate his head and that he might expect another murder attempt before the evening was over. A guy has to make a few sacrifices to spend time with the girl he loves. And didn’t James Bond romance the evil women who were always trying to kill him? Wisdom was not sure because his parents had never allowed him to watch a Bond movie.

  “Yes, with you,” she said. “I promise I’m on your side.”

  Wisdom retrieved his Moore pistol. Picking up her own clothes from the floor, Prevarica made him turn his back while she changed back into them even
though there was nothing for him to see. Then they took another close look at Chief Sordid, who had stopped vomiting and lay still. Leaving him apparently dead, or close to it, they went back upstairs and out the back door and started the long walk home.

  Borrowing Prevarica’s phone again, Wisdom called his mother to make sure she was all right and to let her know where he was. He learned that she had accomplished her mission, was hiding out in a stall in the nightclub’s women’s restroom, and expected to make her escape soon. She assured Wisdom that she would not need his help.

  After Wisdom had headed for the back door of Numb’s Place, Dignity called Patience to tell him what was happening and to ask if he knew anything about the status of Reason’s mission inside.

  “I’m in Numb’s Place too,” Patience told him, “and I think maybe things are finally going our way. Anyway, Reason has been talking with Power and he was seriously listening to her. But now we’ve got to watch out not just for Sordid but also for any backup agents he calls in here. Who did he have at Power’s place when you were there?”

  “Well, there was a little guy named Grudge and a lady named Indifference.”

  “Indifference! We especially have to watch out for her.”

  “Tell me about it,” Dignity moaned. “I know as well as you do that she could talk Power out of any decision he’s made.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Patience said. “Indifference has probably been briefed on all local Heavenites and shown pictures of us. She’ll be able to recognize Aunt Reason and Wisdom, and she’ll be armed, so even if she doesn’t communicate with Sordid, they’re in danger.”

  While they were speaking, a BMW pulled up, and Indifference jumped out of the passenger side onto the sidewalk in front of the nightclub. The driver pulled away at once. Not knowing quite what he was doing, and with no time to think, Dignity flipped his phone closed, stepped forward, and confronted her.

  “Uh, hello.”

  “Mr. Dignity,” she said smiling, “what a pleasure to meet you twice this evening. If you’ll excuse me, I’m in a hurry to meet someone in here.”

  “My cousins are in there,” he said, stupidly abandoning spy secrecy, “and I can’t let you go in until they leave. Uh, sorry.”

  This of course made no sense, for he should not actually allow her to enter until Mr. Power was gone too, which probably would not be for hours. He was doing the best he could.

  “Oh, Mr. Dignity, are you still trying to reach out and protect your Leasing cousins? I hate to see you being taken advantage of by them like this. They’re dragging you into their affairs, putting you to work for them, and paying you nothing. Are they even grateful? Don’t you see how dysfunctional it is? So why don’t you let them fight their own battles? Then you can go home and enjoy life with your family.”

  “No, I mean my other cousins,” he said, not caring much whether she understood.

  Her purse, he felt, must hold a pistol, so he pulled it off her arm. This created a problem, for a very large man had been slowly approaching them and now was close enough to see what had happened. Looking up at him, Dignity saw the ugly face of Adversity.

  “Dignity a purse snatcher!” he exclaimed. “You give that back to her!”

  “You don’t understand the situation,” Dignity said weakly. “I think she may have a pistol in this purse.”

  “Well, what if she does? What if she’s got a license for it? Lot’s of people do.” Adversity raised his fists. “You wanna fight?”

  Even if he could fight such a big man, Dignity knew that doing so would allow Indifference to slip inside, which must not happen. He was in an impossible situation. Indifference stepped back to see him pounded by Adversity.

  “Hey, you pile of garbage! You want your head ripped off?”

  This was shouted by Patience, who was suddenly beside Dignity, having come out the front door. The HIA agent pushed Indifference toward Dignity, and Dignity, still holding her purse, gripped her arm—but only lightly. He just wasn’t made for this sort of thing.

  Adversity turned to face Patience, his fists still raised. “Who you calling garbage? Hey, pretty boy, you want a piece of me? I’ll beat the tar out of you!”

  “Yeah, try this one on!” Patience roared as he charged forward.

  Suddenly they were swinging at each other, kicking, whirling around, grunting and yelling. For a few moments this had the appearance of a deadly battle, but as the gyrations continued, Dignity saw with puzzlement that only the lightest of blows were being landed, mere sideswipes. Furthermore, they seemed to have plenty of time, between these theatrical moves, to trash talk one another, with Adversity calling Patience ‘Ken doll,’ among other things, and Patience unfavorably comparing Adversity’s looks and intelligence with those of a cross-eyed Neanderthal.

  Dignity and Indifference exchanged quizzical looks. What kind of fight was this? The two ‘combatants’ finally exploded into laughter, came together, and hugged each other.

  “Say, old buddy,” Patience said, “great to see you. This is my Uncle Dignity, so don’t flatten his nose or anything, OK?”

  “Sure, pal,” said Adversity with a grin. “What about the hot lady?”

  “Well, unfortunately she’s on the wrong side. We can’t let her go inside this place.”

  “Good or bad, she sizzles. What you gonna do with her?”

  Patience turned aside to Indifference and, standing quite close to her, looked into her eyes.

  “Been a while,” he said to her with a grin.

  “I kept the necklace,” she said to him, and she touched a gold chain that hung around her neck.

  “Yeah, I see, and you’re as beautiful as ever. Ever think of changing sides?”

  “You know I’d be lying if I said so. But I think about you often.”

  “Yeah, and I think about you, doll. It’s a shame there’s no future for us.”

  “Never mind,” she said as she kissed his cheek. “We’ll always have Paris.”

  Patience tore himself away from her and turned to the big man.

  “Ad, would you escort Miss Indifference from here in your car? Be very good to her, but don’t let her go until I call you, right? We have to make sure she doesn’t interfere in something. And thanks for coming over on such short notice. I just thought we could use some help here.”

  “No problem, Paish. I’m always free.” Adversity took the purse from Dignity and turned to the lovely CRISP agent. “Baby, I always say you should make the most of whatever situation you find yourself in. How about if me and you make a night of it? After all, there’s nothing personal, right?”

  “Not at all, that would be fine,” she said complacently, and she put her arm through his.

  As they walked away together, Dignity said to Patience, “I didn’t think any woman could stand him.”

  “She’s maybe the only one who could,” Patience replied.

  “And you and her, you had something going, and in Paris?”

  “Oh, that. Yeah, we did, in Paris, Illinois. Say, here’s Reason.”

  The little woman had come out the front door and now joined them.

  “Code Gold!” she said. “Mr. Power knows it all now, and when I left him he was already started on calling the proper people to save the Leasings and their house. I’ve been hiding in the restroom and working up the courage to make a dash for it, which I just did. Wiz and Prevvy got out too and for some odd reason are walking home. We should try to pick them up.”

  However, Dignity now noticed that the limo he had been loaned by Mammonette was missing. The kids had not taken it, it was stolen! He had to admit to the others that he did not have the key, that he must have left it in the ignition. But why, he asked, would anyone steal a city limo, so easily identified on the street? Wondering about this, they got into Reason’s car together and started toward Sandhill Street. Reason tried to call Prevarica’s cell phone but got no answer.


  Wisdom was having happy, soulful, miserable moments walking beside Prevarica and occasionally talking with her. This was interrupted when a City limo pulled to the curb near them, and both of the near windows lowered together electronically. Wisdom sighed inwardly. This would be Dignity, come to pick them up. But when they came up to the car, they found themselves looking at a little man seated inside and at the business end of a pistol he was holding.

  “Get in and keep me company,” he said, laughing.

  “Hi, Grudge,” Prevarica said airily. “Having a good evening?”

  She slipped quickly into the front passenger side and Wisdom, following more slowly, got in back. Grudge had turned around as they did this and now aimed his pistol directly at Wisdom.

  “I spotted you crossing the intersection down the block from Numb’s,” he said to the girl. “Chief Sordid had called and told me that some Heavenites came to Numb’s in Mammonette’s limo, so I ditched Indifference’s BMV, stole this baby, and used it to reel you in. What happened, Prevarica? The kid was abducting you, right?”

  “Nah,” she giggled, “I was pretending to want to go with him. He’s got a Moore pistol.”

  “Get it, take it.”

  Leaning over the back seat, she reached inside Wisdom’s jacket, took out the pistol, and gleefully pointed it at him.

  “You’re holding it too close to him; he might grab it,” Grudge warned. “Change places with me so I can be free to do something, and hold my pistol on him. I don’t trust that HIA-issued crap.”

  In a few moments they had made this adjustment. With Grudge’s 45 automatic in both her gloved hands, Prevarica was on her knees, covering Wisdom over the back of the driver’s seat. Grudge, in the passenger seat, and with more room without the steering wheel in front of him, rummaged in a bag he had brought with him. Wisdom noted that Prevarica was being careful this time to keep the pistol more than an arm’s length away from him and was holding it very firmly. No slip ups.

  “Why don’t we just shoot him?” she asked.

  “Because I want to do it a different way.”

  “What are you looking for? Death serum?”

  “Yeah, I don’t get enough chances to experiment,” he said, holding up a long, wicked looking syringe. “I have to do a little mixing here, so hang on. In the meantime, what the hell is it with your eyes, anyway?”

  “Nothing. You have any sunglasses?”

  He took a moment to hand her a pair of Mammonette’s that had been lying on the dash.

  “Thanks.”

  She put them on without for a moment letting the gun barrel change direction.

  Reason and Dignity had been happy to allow Patience to drive Reason’s Kia, for both felt played out. But to Reason’s annoyance, Patience drove and made phone calls at the same time. So unsafe. Fortunately, agent Prayer did not answer his call. That seemed to worry him, but Reason was beyond caring about such things.

  “You were supposed to be keeping an eye on Leasing House,” Patience reminded Dignity.

  “It’s OK. I’ve got Honesty covering it,” he answered from the back seat.

  This seemed satisfactory to Reason, for Honesty was far more reliable than Dignity.

  “Don’t forget to keep looking for Wisdom and Prevarica,” she prompted Patience. “They’re walking, and they would have come this way or on one of the streets parallel to this one.”

  “You’re absolutely sure they didn’t make off with Mammonette’s limo?” said Dignity.

  “No, Wisdom said they were already starting on foot when he called.”

  Patience turned to where she was seated on the passenger side, and smiled at her.

  “Aunt Reas’, your makeup looks great!”

  She swiveled the rearview mirror to look at herself. “Oh, no! I forgot to wash it off, I was in such a hurry. Give me a tissue or something.”

  “You really hate makeup, don’t you? Afraid you’re going to attract too many men?”

  “I’m not going to take much more from you,” she said, groping in her purse for a tissue without success. “Tease me again, and I’m not responsible for what happens.”

  She meant it.

  “Great legs in that dress tonight, Aunt Reas’.”

  She remembered that the Moore pistol was still in her purse. It had been easy to shoot Bits.

  “Just keep a lookout for Wiz,” she said tightly.

  Prevarica pretended to yawn.

  “Sorry, babe, this is going to take some time,” Grudge said, still working with chemicals from his bag. “Say, Wisdom, when you’re history, I think I’ve got me a new girlfriend here, huh?”

  Prevarica laughed, holding the pistol. “Wiz, you’re going to be gone but not remembered. I think everyone’s had about enough of you, anyway. Always the sanctimonious little kid, huh? Always worried about rules and regulations and not stepping on anyone’s toes. God, it’ll be a relief to be rid of you. It’s been the hardest thing in the world tonight, hours of trying to pretend I can stand you. Come on, Grudge. Can’t we snuff him soon?”

  “I need some light.”

  “OK, but I can’t turn the overhead on and hold the pistol on perfect boy at the same time. Here, you cover him for a minute.”

  Grudge took back his pistol, turning sideways in his seat to point it at Wisdom. Prevarica turned back around and peered at the dash area behind the steering wheel. She pushed a button. With a whoosh and a crack, Grudge’s seat shot out of the top of the car and disappeared, taking the little CRISP agent with it. A small door in the roof slid closed over the now missing passenger seat.

  Prevarica turned around again on the driver’s seat to face Wisdom.

  “Slick, huh?”

  “Uh, Prevarica, did you hit the ejection seat button by accident?”

  “What to you think I am, a fool? Oh, you didn’t think all that before was real, did you? I was just pretending to go along with Grudge and watching for an opportunity to get us away from him. I didn’t mean any of that I just said about you; it was all just part of the act.”

  Wisdom felt that what had actually happened was that he had watched her change sides again—twice more. He had lost count of how many times she had veered madly back and forth over the course of the evening. But he said nothing. Prevarica was Prevarica.

  The passenger seat slammed down some distance behind them in the middle of the street. Slowly, the parachute above it sifted down and covered it.

  “Even if he didn’t fall out, that can’t have been comfortable,” Wisdom said.

  “Who cares about him?” She turned around and reached for the ignition. “Oh, damn, he had the key on him. Well, anyway, where’s my pistol, the one Chief Doohickey gave me? I left it in the car here when I went in Numb’s Place.”

  She found it in the glove compartment where Wisdom had put it and, after shoving it back in her purse, gave Wisdom back his own pistol.

  She got out, smiling sweetly at him. “Let’s get going, partner.”

  They resumed their walk home.