Mr. Mercedes

  A fresh wave of noise assures him that the sellout crowd is doing just fine. Tanya sees the two ranks of Wheelchair People are also applauding. Except for the bald man. He's just sitting there. Probably doesn't want to drop his picture, Tanya thinks.

  "Are you ready for some Boyd, Steve, and Pete?" the DJ host inquires.

  More cheers and screams.

  "And are you ready for some CAM KNOWLES?"

  The girls (most of whom would be struck utterly dumb in their idol's actual presence) shriek deliriously. They're ready, all right. God, are they ready. They could just die.

  "In a few minutes you're going to see a set that'll knock your eyes out, but for now, ladies and gentlemen--and especially you girls--give it up for . . . 'ROUND . . . HEEERRRRE!!!"

  The audience surges to its feet, and as the lights on the stage go completely dark, Tanya understands why the girls just had to have their phones. In her day, everyone held up matches or Bic lighters. These kids hold up their cell phones, the combined light of all those little screens casting a pallid moonglow across the bowl of the auditorium.

  How do they know to do these things? she wonders. Who tells them? For that matter, who told us?

  She cannot remember.

  The stage lights come up to bright furnace red. At that moment, a call finally slips through the clogged network and Barbara Robinson's cell vibrates in her hand. She ignores it. Answering a phone call is the last thing in the world she wants to do right now (a first in her young life), and she couldn't hear the person on the other end--probably her brother--even if she did. The racket inside the Mingo is deafening . . . and Barb loves it. She waves her vibrating phone back and forth above her head in big slow swoops. Everyone is doing the same, even her mom.

  The lead singer of 'Round Here, dressed in the tightest jeans Tanya Robinson has ever seen, strides onstage. Cam Knowles throws back a tidal wave of blond hair and launches into "You Don't Have to Be Lonely Again."

  Most of the audience remains on its feet for the time being, holding up their phones. The concert has begun.

  34

  The Mercedes turns off Spicer Boulevard and onto a feeder road marked with signs reading MAC DELIVERIES and EMPLOYEES ONLY. A quarter of a mile up is a rolling gate. It's closed. Jerome pulls up next to a post with an intercom on it. The sign here reads CALL FOR ENTRY.

  Hodges says, "Tell them you're the police."

  Jerome rolls down his window and pushes the button. Nothing happens. He pushes it again and this time holds it. Hodges has a nightmarish thought: When Jerome's buzz is finally answered, it will be the fembot, offering several dozen new options.

  But this time it's an actual human, albeit not a friendly one. "Back's closed."

  "Police," Jerome says. "Open the gate."

  "What do you want?"

  "I just told you. Open the goddam gate. This is an emergency."

  The gate begins to trundle open, but instead of rolling forward, Jerome pushes the button again. "Are you security?"

  "Head custodian," the crackly voice returns. "If you want security, you gotta call the Security Department."

  "Nobody there," Hodges tells Jerome. "They're in the auditorium, the whole bunch of them. Just go."

  Jerome does, even though the gate isn't fully open. He scrapes the side of the Mercedes's refurbished body. "Maybe they caught him," he says. "They had his description, so maybe they already caught him."

  "They didn't," Hodges says. "He's in."

  "How do you know?"

  "Listen."

  They can't pick up actual music yet, but with the driver's window still down, they can hear a thudding bass progression.

  "The concert's on. If Windom's men had collared a guy with explosives, they would have shut it down right away and they'd be evacuating the building."

  "How could he get in?" Jerome asks, and thumps the steering wheel. "How?" Hodges can hear the terror in the boy's voice. All because of him. Everything because of him.

  "I have no idea. They had his photo."

  Ahead is a wide concrete ramp leading down to the loading area. Half a dozen roadies are sitting on amp crates and smoking, their work over for the time being. There's an open door leading to the rear of the auditorium, and through it Hodges can hear music coalescing around the bass progression. There's another sound, as well: thousands of happily screaming girls, all of them sitting on ground zero.

  How Hartsfield got in no longer matters unless it helps to find him, and just how in God's name are they supposed to do that in a dark auditorium filled with thousands of people?

  As Jerome parks at the bottom of the ramp, Holly says: "De Niro gave himself a Mohawk. That could be it."

  "What are you talking about?" Hodges asks as he heaves himself out of the back seat. A man in khaki Carhartts has come into the open door to meet them.

  "In Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro played a crazy guy named Travis Bickle," Holly explains as the three of them hurry toward the custodian. "When he decided to assassinate the politician, he shaved his head so he could get close without being recognized. Except for the middle, that is, which is called a Mohawk. Brady Hartsfield probably didn't do that, it'd make him look too weird."

  Hodges remembers the leftover hair in the bathroom sink. It was not the bright (and probably tinted) color of the dead woman's hair. Holly may be nuts, but he thinks she's right about this; Hartsfield has gone skinhead. Yet Hodges doesn't see how even that could have been enough, because--

  The head custodian steps to meet them. "What's it about?"

  Hodges takes out his ID and flashes it briefly, his thumb once more strategically placed. "Detective Bill Hodges. What's your name, sir?"

  "Jamie Gallison." His eyes flick to Jerome and Holly.

  "I'm his partner," Holly says.

  "I'm his trainee," Jerome says.

  The roadies are watching. Some have hurriedly snuffed smokes that may contain something a bit stronger than tobacco. Through the open door, Hodges can see work-lights illuminating a storage area loaded with props and swatches of canvas scenery.

  "Mr. Gallison, we've got a serious problem," Hodges says. "I need you to get Larry Windom down here, right away."

  "Don't do that, Bill." Even in his growing distress, he realizes it's the first time Holly has called him by his first name.

  He ignores her. "Sir, I need you to call him on your cell."

  Gallison shakes his head. "The security guys don't carry cell phones when they're on duty, because every time we have one of these big shows--big kid shows, I mean, it's different with adults--the circuits jam up. The security guys carry--"

  Holly is twitching Hodges's arm. "Don't do it. You'll spook him and he'll set it off. I know he will."

  "She could be right," Jerome says, and then (perhaps recalling his trainee status) adds, "Sir."

  Gallison is looking at them with alarm. "Spook who? Set off what?"

  Hodges remains fixed on the custodian. "They carry what? Walkies? Radios?"

  "Radios, yuh. They have . . ." He pulls his earlobe. "You know, things that look like hearie-aids. Like the FBI and Secret Service wear. What's going on here? Tell me it's not a bomb." And, not liking what he sees on Hodges's pale and sweating face: "Christ, is it?"

  Hodges walks past him into the cavernous storage area. Beyond the attic-like profusion of props, flats, and music stands, there's a carpentry shop and a costume shop. The music is louder than ever, and he's started to have trouble breathing. The pain is creeping down his left arm, and his chest feels too heavy, but his head is clear.

  Brady has either gone bald or mowed it short and dyed what's left. He may have added makeup to darken his skin, or colored contacts, or glasses. But even with all that, he'd still be a single man at a concert filled with young girls. After the heads-up he gave Windom, Hartsfield still would have attracted notice and suspicion. And there's the explosive. Holly and Jerome know about that, but Hodges knows more. There were also steel ball bearings, probably a shitload. Even if
he wasn't collared at the door, how could Hartsfield have gotten all that inside? Is the security here really that bad?

  Gallison grabs his left arm, and when he shakes it, Hodges feels the pain all the way up to his temples. "I'll go myself. Grab the first security guy I see and have him radio for Windom to come down here and talk to you."

  "No," Hodges says. "You will not do that, sir."

  Holly Gibney is the only one of them seeing clearly. Mr. Mercedes is in. He's got a bomb, and it's only by the grace of God that he hasn't triggered it already. It's too late for the police and too late for MAC Security. It's also too late for him.

  But.

  Hodges sits down on an empty crate. "Jerome. Holly. Get with me."

  They do. Jerome is white-eyed, barely holding back panic. Holly is pale but outwardly calm.

  "Going bald wouldn't have been enough. He had to make himself look harmless. I might know how he did that, and if I'm right, I know his location."

  "Where?" Jerome asks. "Tell us. We'll get him. We will."

  "It won't be easy. He's going to be on red alert right now, always checking his personal perimeter. And he knows you, Jerome. You've bought ice cream from that damn Mr. Tastey truck. You told me so."

  "Bill, he's sold ice cream to thousands of people."

  "Sure, but how many black people on the West Side?"

  Jerome is silent, and now he's the one biting his lips.

  "How big a bomb?" Gallison asks. "Maybe I should pull the fire alarm?"

  "Only if you want to get a whole shitload of people killed," Hodges says. It's becoming progressively difficult to talk. "The minute he senses danger, he'll blow whatever he's got. Do you want that?"

  Gallison doesn't reply, and Hodges turns back to the two unlikely associates God--or some whimsical fate--has ordained should be with him tonight.

  "We can't take a chance on you, Jerome, and we certainly can't take a chance on me. He was stalking me long before I even knew he was alive."

  "I'll come up from behind," Jerome says. "Blindside him. In the dark, with nothing but the lights from the stage, he'll never see me."

  "If he's where I think he is, your chances of doing that would be fifty-fifty at best. That's not good enough."

  Hodges turns to the woman with the graying hair and the face of a neurotic teenager. "It's got to be you, Holly. By now he'll have his finger on the trigger, and you're the only one who can get close without being recognized."

  She covers her abused mouth with one hand, but that isn't enough and she adds the other. Her eyes are huge and wet. God help us, Hodges thinks. It isn't the first time he has had this thought in relation to Holly Gibney.

  "Only if you come with me," she says through her hands. "Maybe then--"

  "I can't," Hodges says. "I'm having a heart attack."

  "Oh great," Gallison moans.

  "Mr. Gallison, is there a handicapped area? There must be, right?"

  "Sure. Halfway down the auditorium."

  Not only did he get in with his explosives, Hodges thinks, he's perfectly located to inflict maximum casualties.

  He says: "Listen, you two. Don't make me say this twice."

  35

  Thanks to the emcee's introduction, Brady has relaxed a bit. The carnival crap he saw being offloaded during his reconnaissance trip is either offstage or suspended overhead. The band's first four or five songs are just warmups. Pretty soon the set will roll in either from the sides or drop down from overhead, because the band's main job, the reason they're here, is to sell their latest helping of audio shit. When the kids--many of them attending their first pop concert--see those bright blinking lights and the Ferris wheel and the beachy backdrop, they're going to go out of their teenybop minds. It's then, right then, that he'll push the toggle-switch on Thing Two, and ride into the darkness on a golden bubble of all that happiness.

  The lead singer, the one with all the hair, is finishing a syrupy ballad on his knees. He holds the last note, head bowed, emoting his faggy ass off. He's a lousy singer and probably already overdue for a fatal drug overdose, but when he raises his head and blares, "How ya feelin out there?" the audience goes predictably batshit.

  Brady looks around, as he has every few seconds--checking his perimeter, just as Hodges said he would--and his eyes fix on a little black girl sitting a couple of rows up to his right.

  Do I know her?

  "Who are you looking for?" the pretty girl with the stick legs shouts over the intro to the next song. He can barely hear her. She's grinning at him, and Brady thinks how ridiculous it is for a girl with stick legs to grin at anything. The world has fucked her royally, up the ying-yang and out the wazoo, and how does that deserve even a small smile, let alone such a cheek-stretching moony grin? He thinks, She's probably stoned.

  "Friend of mine!" Brady shouts back.

  Thinking, As if I had any.

  As if.

  36

  Gallison leads Holly and Jerome away to . . . well, to somewhere. Hodges sits on the crate with his head lowered and his hands planted on his thighs. One of the roadies approaches hesitantly and offers to call an ambulance for him. Hodges thanks him but refuses. He doesn't believe Brady could hear the warble of an approaching ambulance (or anything else) over the din 'Round Here is producing, but he won't take the chance. Taking chances is what brought them to this pass, with everyone in the Mingo Auditorium, including Jerome's mother and sister, at risk. He'd rather die than take another chance, and rather hopes he will before he has to explain this shit-coated clusterfuck.

  Only . . . Janey. When he thinks of Janey, laughing and tipping his borrowed fedora at just the right insouciant angle, he knows that if he had it to do over again, he'd likely do it the same way.

  Well . . . most of it. Given a do-over, he might have listened a little more closely to Mrs. Melbourne.

  She thinks they walk among us, Bowfinger had said, and the two of them had had a manly chuckle over that, but the joke was on them, wasn't it? Because Mrs. Melbourne was right. Brady Hartsfield really is an alien, and he was among them all the time, fixing computers and selling ice cream.

  Holly and Jerome are gone, Jerome carrying the .38 that belonged to Hodges's father. Hodges has grave doubts about sending the boy into a crowded auditorium with a loaded gun. Under ordinary circumstances he's a beautifully levelheaded kid, but he's not apt to be so levelheaded with his mom and sis in danger. Holly needs to be protected, though. Remember you're just the backup, Hodges told the boy before Gallison led them away, but Jerome made no acknowledgement. He's not sure Jerome even heard him.

  In any case, Hodges has done all he can do. The only thing left is to sit here, fighting the pain and trying to get his breath and waiting for an explosion he prays will not come.

  37

  Holly Gibney has been institutionalized twice in her life, once in her teens and once in her twenties. The shrink she saw later on (in her so-called maturity) labeled these enforced vacations breaks with reality, which were not good but still better than psychotic breaks, from which many people never returned. Holly herself had a simpler name for said breaks. They were her total freakouts, as opposed to the state of low to moderate freakout in which she lived her day-to-day life.

  The total freakout in her twenties had been caused by her boss at a Cincinnati real estate firm called Frank Mitchell Fine Homes and Estates. Her boss was Frank Mitchell, Jr., a sharp dresser with the face of an intelligent trout. He insisted her work was substandard, that her co-workers loathed her, and the only way she could be assured of remaining with the company would be if he continued to cover for her. Which he would do if she slept with him. Holly didn't want to sleep with Frank Mitchell, Jr., and she didn't want to lose her job. If she lost her job, she would lose her apartment, and have to go back home to live with her milquetoast father and overbearing mother. She finally resolved the conflict by coming in early one day and trashing Frank Mitchell, Jr.'s, office. She was found in her own cubicle, curled up in a corner. Th
e tips of her fingers were bloody. She had chewed at them like an animal trying to escape a trap.

  The cause of her first total freakout was Mike Sturdevant. He was the one who coined the pestiferous nickname Jibba-Jibba.

  In those days, as a high school freshman, Holly had wanted nothing except to scurry from place to place with her books clutched to her newly arrived breasts and her hair screening her acne-spotted face. But even then she had problems that went far beyond acne. Anxiety problems. Depression problems. Insomnia problems.

  Worst of all, stimming.

  Stimming was short for self-stimulation, which sounded like masturbation but wasn't. It was compulsive movement, often accompanied by fragments of self-directed dialogue. Biting one's fingernails and chewing one's lips were mild forms of stimming. More extravagant stimmers waved their hands, slapped at their chests and cheeks, or did curling movements with their arms, as if lifting invisible weights.

  Starting at roughly age eight, Holly began wrapping her arms around her shoulders and shivering all over, muttering to herself and making facial grimaces. This would go on for five or ten seconds, and then she would simply continue with whatever she had been doing--reading, sewing, shooting baskets in the driveway with her father. She was hardly aware that she was doing it unless her mother saw her and told her to stop shaking and making faces, people would think she was having a fit.

  Mike Sturdevant was one of those behaviorally stunted males who look back on high school as the great lost golden age of their lives. He was a senior, and--very much like Cam Knowles--a boy of godlike good looks: broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs, and hair so blond it was a kind of halo. He was on the football team (of course) and dated the head cheerleader (of course). He lived on an entirely different level of the high school hierarchy from Holly Gibney, and under ordinary circumstances, she never would have attracted his notice. But notice her he did, because one day, on her way to the caff, she had one of her stimming episodes.

  Mike Sturdevant and several of his football-playing buddies happened to be passing. They stopped to stare at her--this girl who was clutching herself, shivering, and making a face that pulled her mouth down and turned her eyes into slits. A series of small, inarticulate sounds--perhaps words, perhaps not--came squeezing through her clenched teeth.