Mr. Mercedes

  "What are you gibbering about?" Mike asked her.

  Holly relaxed her grip on her shoulders, staring at him in wild surprise. She didn't know what he was saying; she only knew he was staring at her. All his friends were staring at her. And grinning.

  She gaped at him. "What?"

  "Gibbering!" Mike shouted. "Jibba-jibba-gibbering!"

  The others took it up as she ran toward the cafeteria with her head lowered, bumping into people as she went. From then on, Holly Gibney was known to the student body at Walnut Hills High School as Jibba-Jibba, and so she remained until just after the Christmas break. That was when her mother found her curled up naked in the bathtub, saying that she would never go to Walnut Hills again. If her mother tried to make her, she said, she would kill herself.

  Voila! Total freakout!

  When she got better (a little), she went to a different school where things were less stressful (a little less). She never had to see Mike Sturdevant again, but she still has dreams in which she's running down an endless high school corridor--sometimes dressed only in her underwear--while people laugh at her, and point at her, and call her Jibba-Jibba.

  She's thinking of those dear old high school days as she and Jerome follow the head custodian through the warren of rooms below the Mingo Auditorium. That's what Brady Hartsfield will look like, she decides, like Mike Sturdevant, only bald. Which she hopes Mike is, wherever he may now reside. Bald . . . fat . . . pre-diabetic . . . afflicted with a nagging wife and ungrateful children . . .

  Jibba-Jibba, she thinks.

  Pay you back, she thinks.

  Gallison leads them through the carpentry shop and costume shop, past a cluster of dressing rooms, then down a corridor wide enough to transport flats and completed sets. The corridor ends at a freight elevator with the doors standing open. Happy pop music booms down the shaft. The current song is about love and dancing. Nothing Holly can relate to.

  "You don't want the elevator," Gallison says, "it goes backstage and you can't get to the auditorium from there without walking right through the band. Listen, is that guy really having a heart attack? Are you guys really cops? You don't look like cops." He glances at Jerome. "You're too young." Then to Holly, his expression even more doubtful. "And you're . . ."

  "Too freaky?" Holly supplies.

  "I wasn't going to say that." Maybe not, but it's what he's thinking. Holly knows; a girl once nicknamed Jibba-Jibba always does.

  "I'm calling the cops," Gallison says. "The real cops. And if this is some kind of joke--"

  "Do what you need to do," Jerome says, thinking Why not? Let him call in the National Guard if he wants to. This is going to be over, one way or the other, in the next few minutes. Jerome knows it, and he can see that Holly does, too. The gun Hodges gave him is in his pocket. It feels heavy and weirdly warm. Other than the air rifle he had when he was nine or ten (a birthday present given to him despite his mother's reservations), he has never carried a gun in his life, and this one feels alive.

  Holly points to the left of the elevator. "What about that door?" And when Gallison doesn't reply immediately: "Help us. Please. Maybe we're not real cops, maybe you're right about that, but there really is a man in the audience tonight who's very dangerous."

  She takes a deep breath and says words she can hardly believe, even though she knows they are true. "Mister, we're all you've got."

  Gallison thinks it over, then says, "The stairs'll take you to Auditorium Left. It's a long flight. At the top, there's two doors. The one on the left goes outside. The one on the right opens on the auditorium, way down by the stage. That close, the music's apt to bust your eardrums."

  Touching the grip of the pistol in his pocket, Jerome asks, "And exactly where's the handicapped section?"

  38

  Brady does know her. He does.

  At first he can't get it, it's like a word that's stuck on the tip of your tongue. Then, as the band starts some song about making love on the dancefloor, it comes to him. The house on Teaberry Lane, the one where Hodges's pet boy lives with his family, a nest of niggers with white names. Except for the dog, that is. He's named O'dell, a nigger name for sure, and Brady meant to kill him . . . only he ended up killing his mother instead.

  Brady remembers the day the niggerboy came running to the Mr. Tastey truck, his ankles still green from cutting the fat ex-cop's lawn. And his sister shouting, Get me a chocolate! Pleeeease?

  The sister's name is Barbara, and that's her, big as life and twice as ugly. She's sitting two rows up to the right with her friends and a woman who has to be her mother. Jerome isn't with them, and Brady is savagely glad. Let Jerome live, that's fine.

  But without his sister.

  Or his mother.

  Let him see what that feels like.

  Still looking at Barbara Robinson, his finger creeps beneath Frankie's picture and finds Thing Two's toggle-switch. He caresses it through the thin fabric of the tee-shirt the way he was allowed--on a few fortunate occasions only--to caress his mother's nipples. Onstage, the lead singer of 'Round Here does a split that must just about crush his balls (always supposing he has any) in those tight jeans he's wearing, then springs to his feet and approaches the edge of the stage. Chicks scream. Chicks reach out as if to touch him, their hands waving, their fingernails--painted in every girlish color of the rainbow--gleaming in the footlights.

  "Hey, do you guys like an amusement park?" Cam hollers.

  They scream that they do.

  "Do you guys like a carnival?"

  They scream that they love a carnival.

  "Have you ever been kissed on the midway?"

  The screams are utterly delirious now. The audience is on its feet again, the roving spotlights once more skimming over the crowd. Brady can no longer see the band, but it doesn't matter. He already knows what's coming, because he was there at the load-in.

  Lowering his voice to an intimate, amplified murmur, Cam Knowles says, "Well, you're gonna get that kiss tonight."

  Carnival music starts up--a Korg synthesizer set to play a calliope tune. The stage is suddenly bathed in a swirl of light: orange, blue, red, green, yellow. There's a gasp of amazement as the midway set starts to descend. Both the carousel and the Ferris wheel are already turning.

  "THIS IS THE TITLE TRACK OF OUR NEW ALBUM, AND WE REALLY HOPE YOU ENJOY IT!" Cam bellows, and the other instruments fall in around the synth.

  "The desert cries in all directions," Cam Knowles intones. "Like eternity, you're my infection." To Brady he sounds like Jim Morrison after a prefrontal lobotomy. Then he yells jubilantly: "What'll cure me, guys?"

  The audience knows, and roars out the words as the band kicks in full-force.

  "BABY, BABY, YOU'VE GOT THE LOVE THAT I NEED . . . YOU AND I, WE GOT IT BAD . . . LIKE NOTHIN' THAT I EVER HAD . . ."

  Brady smiles. It is the beatific smile of a troubled man who at long last finds himself at peace. He glances down at the yellow glow of the ready-lamp, wondering if he will live long enough to see it turn green. Then he looks back at the niggergirl, who is on her feet, clapping and shaking her tail.

  Look at me, he thinks. Look at me, Barbara. I want to be the last thing you ever see.

  39

  Barbara takes her eyes from the wonders onstage long enough to see if the bald man in the wheelchair is having as much fun as she is. He has become, for reasons she doesn't understand, her man in the wheelchair. Is it because he reminds her of someone? Surely that can't be, can it? The only crippled person she knows is Dustin Stevens at school, and he's just a little second-grader. Still, there's something familiar about the crippled bald man.

  This whole evening has been like a dream, and what she sees now also seems dreamlike. At first she thinks the man in the wheelchair is waving to her, but that's not it. He's smiling . . . and he's giving her the finger. At first she can't believe it, but that's it, all right.

  There's a woman approaching him, climbing the aisle stairs two by two, going so fast she's al
most running. And behind her, almost on her heels . . . maybe all this really is a dream, because it looks like . . .

  "Jerome?" Barbara tugs Tanya's sleeve to draw her attention away from the stage. "Mom, is that . . ."

  Then everything happens.

  40

  Holly's initial thought is that Jerome could have gone first after all, because the bald and bespectacled man in the wheelchair isn't--for the moment, at least--even looking at the stage. He's turned away and staring at someone in the center section, and it appears to her that the vile son of a bitch is actually flipping that someone the bird. But it's too late to change places with Jerome, even though he's the one with the revolver. The man's got his hand beneath the framed picture in his lap and she's terribly afraid that means he's ready to do it. If so, there are only seconds left.

  At least he's on the aisle, she thinks.

  She has no plan, the extent of Holly's planning usually goes no further than what snack she might prepare to go with her evening movie, but for once her troubled mind is clear, and when she reaches the man they're looking for, the words that come out of her mouth seem exactly right. Divinely right. She has to bend down and shout to be heard over the driving, amplified beat of the band and the delirious shrieks of the girls in the audience.

  "Mike? Mike Sturdevant, is that you?"

  Brady turns from his contemplation of Barbara Robinson, startled, and as he does, Holly swings the knotted sock Bill Hodges has given her--his Happy Slapper--with adrenaline-loaded strength. It flies a short hard arc and connects with Brady's bald head just above the temple. She can't hear the sound it makes over the combined cacophony of the band and the fans, but she sees a section of skull the size of a small teacup cave in. His hands fly up, the one that was hidden knocking Frankie's picture to the floor, where the glass shatters. His eyes are sort of looking at her, except now they're rolled up in their sockets so that only the bottom halves of the irises show.

  Next to Brady, the girl with the stick-thin legs is staring at Holly, shocked. So is Barbara Robinson. No one else is paying any attention. They're on their feet, clapping and swaying and singing along.

  "I WANT TO LOVE YOU MY WAY . . . WE'LL DRIVE THE BEACHSIDE HIGHWAY . . ."

  Brady's mouth is opening and closing like the mouth of a fish that has just been pulled from a river.

  "IT'S GONNA BE A NEW DAY . . . I'LL GIVE YOU KISSES ON THE MIDWAY!"

  Jerome lays a hand on Holly's shoulder and shouts to be heard. "Holly! What's he got under his shirt?"

  She hears him--he's so close she can feel his breath puff against her cheek with each word--but it's like one of those radio transmissions that come wavering in late at night, some DJ or gospel-shouter halfway across the country.

  "Here's a little present from Jibba-Jibba, Mike," she says, and hits him again in exactly the same place, only even harder, deepening the divot in his skull. The thin skin splits and the blood comes, first in beads and then in a freshet, pouring down his neck to color the top of his blue 'Round Here tee-shirt a muddy purple. This time Brady's head snaps all the way over onto his right shoulder and he begins to shiver and shuffle his feet. She thinks, Like a dog dreaming about chasing rabbits.

  Before Holly can hit him again--and she really really wants to--Jerome grabs her and spins her around. "He's out, Holly! He's out! What are you doing?"

  "Therapy," she says, and then all the strength runs out of her legs. She sits down in the aisle. Her fingers relax on the knotted end of the Happy Slapper, and it drops beside one sneaker.

  Onstage, the band plays on.

  41

  A hand is tugging at his arm.

  "Jerome? Jerome!"

  He turns from Holly and the slumped form of Brady Hartsfield to see his little sister, her eyes wide with dismay. His mom is right behind her. In his current hyper state, Jerome isn't a bit surprised, but at the same time he knows the danger isn't over.

  "What did you do?" a girl is shouting. "What did you do to him?"

  Jerome wheels back the other way and sees the girl sitting one wheelchair in from the aisle reaching for Hartsfield. Jerome shouts, "Holly! Don't let her do that!"

  Holly lurches to her feet, stumbles, and almost falls on top of Brady. It surely would have been the last fall of her life, but she manages to keep her feet and grab the wheelchair girl's hands. There's hardly any strength in them, and she feels an instant of pity. She bends down close and shouts to be heard. "Don't touch him! He's got a bomb, and I think it's hot!"

  The wheelchair girl shrinks away. Perhaps she understands; perhaps she's only afraid of Holly, who's looking even wilder than usual just now.

  Brady's shivers and twitches are strengthening. Holly doesn't like that, because she can see something, a dim yellow light, under his shirt. Yellow is the color of trouble.

  "Jerome?" Tanya says. "What are you doing here?"

  An usher is approaching. "Clear the aisle!" the usher shouts over the music. "You have to clear the aisle, folks!"

  Jerome grasps his mother's shoulders. He pulls her to him until their foreheads are touching. "You have to get out of here, Mom. Take the girls and go. Right now. Make the usher go with you. Tell her your daughter is sick. Please don't ask questions."

  She looks in his eyes and doesn't ask questions.

  "Mom?" Barbara begins. "What . . ." The rest is lost in the crash of the band and the choral accompaniment from the audience. Tanya takes Barbara by the arm and approaches the usher. At the same time she's motioning for Hilda, Dinah, and Betsy to join her.

  Jerome turns back to Holly. She's bent over Brady, who continues to shudder as cerebral storms rage inside his head. His feet tapdance, as if even in unconsciousness he's really feeling that goodtime 'Round Here beat. His hands fly aimlessly around, and when one of them approaches the dim yellow light under his tee-shirt, Jerome bats it away like a basketball guard rejecting a shot in the paint.

  "I want to get out of here," the wheelchair girl moans. "I'm scared."

  Jerome can relate to that--he also wants to get out of here, and he's scared to death--but for now she has to stay where she is. Brady has her blocked in, and they don't dare move him. Not yet.

  Holly is ahead of Jerome, as she so often is. "You have to stay still for now, honey," she tells the wheelchair girl. "Chill out and enjoy the concert." She's thinking how much simpler this would be if she'd managed to kill him instead of just bashing his sicko brains halfway to Peru. She wonders if Jerome would shoot Hartsfield if she asked him to. Probably not. Too bad. With all this noise, he could probably get away with it.

  "Are you crazy?" the wheelchair girl asks wonderingly.

  "People keep asking me that," Holly says, and--very gingerly--she begins to pull up Brady's tee-shirt. "Hold his hands," she tells Jerome.

  "What if I can't?"

  "Then OJ the motherfucker."

  The sellout audience is on its feet, swaying and clapping. The beachballs are flying again. Jerome takes one quick glance behind him and sees his mother leading the girls up the aisle to the exit, the usher accompanying them. That's one for our side, at least, he thinks, then turns back to the business at hand. He grabs Brady's flying hands and pins them together. The wrists are slippery with sweat. It's like holding a couple of struggling fish.

  "I don't know what you're doing, but do it fast!" he shouts at Holly.

  The yellow light is coming from a plastic gadget that looks like a customized TV remote control. Instead of numbered channel buttons, there's a white toggle-switch, the kind you use to flip on a light in your living room. It's standing straight up. There's a wire leading from the gadget. It goes under the man's butt.

  Brady makes a grunting sound and suddenly there's an acidic smell. His bladder has let go. Holly looks at the peebag on his lap, but it doesn't seem to be attached to anything. She grabs it and hands it to the wheelchair girl. "Hold this."

  "Eeuw, it's pee," the wheelchair girl says, and then: "It's not pee. There's something inside. It looks l
ike clay."

  "Put it down." Jerome has to shout to be heard over the music. "Put it on the floor. Gently." Then, to Holly: "Hurry the hell up!"

  Holly is studying the yellow ready-lamp. And the little white nub of the toggle-switch. She could push it forward or back and doesn't dare do either one, because she doesn't know which way is off and which way is boom.

  She plucks Thing Two from where it was resting on Brady's stomach. It's like picking up a snake that's bloated with poison, and takes all her courage. "Hold his hands, Jerome, you just hold his hands."

  "He's slippery," Jerome grunts.

  We already knew that, Holly thinks. One slippery son of a bitch. One slippery motherfucker.

  She turns the gadget over, willing her hands not to shake and trying not to think of the four thousand people who don't even know their lives now depend on poor messed-up Holly Gibney. She looks at the battery cover. Then, holding her breath, she slides it down and lets it drop to the floor.

  Inside are two double-A batteries. Holly hooks a fingernail onto the ridge of one and thinks, God, if You're there, please let this work. For a moment she can't make her finger move. Then one of Brady's hands slips free of Jerome's grip and slaps her upside the head.

  Holly jerks and the battery she's been worrying pops out of the compartment. She waits for the world to explode, and when it doesn't, she turns the remote control over. The yellow light has gone out. Holly begins to cry. She grabs the master wire and yanks it free of Thing Two.

  "You can let him go n--" she begins, but Jerome already has. He's hugging her so tight she can hardly breathe. Holly doesn't care. She hugs him back.

  The audience is cheering wildly.

  "They think they're cheering for the song, but they're really cheering for us," she manages to whisper in Jerome's ear. "They just don't know it yet. Now let me go, Jerome. You're hugging me too tight. Let me go before I pass out."

  42

  Hodges is still sitting on the crate in the storage area, and not alone. There's an elephant sitting on his chest. Something's happening. Either the world is going away from him or he's going away from the world. He thinks it's the latter. It's like he's inside a camera and the camera is going backwards on one of those dolly-track things. The world is as bright as ever, but getting smaller, and there's a growing circle of darkness around it.