Tully tried to speak, but the gag prevented him from making anything but strangled moans, no louder than the throaty calls of pigeons.
“Yeah,” Jake answered, “just lost my balance for a second. It’s this gimp leg of mine.”
“You … you need any help?” It was clear from the sound of his voice that the kid didn’t want to help a cripple take a dump, but his parents had raised him to be helpful.
“No thanks,” Jake answered.
“It’s no bother, Mister …”
“Look, kid, I appreciate it, but I don’t want some stranger in here wiping my ass, okay?”
“Oh, sorry. Sorry.” The kid hurried out.
“Just you and me, Maxie,” Jake Sparks whispered.
Tully was crying now, and his heart was beating much too fast. He wasn’t sure what Jake Sparks meant to do, but he was terrified.
“Want to know why I’m doing this?” Jake asked, his cheeriness returning.
Tully started to shake his head, then nodded.
Sparks suddenly spun him around and pushed hard. Tully was now facing Sparks as he landed atop the toilet seat. He looked up, seeing the long, ivory knife in Jake’s hand. He dimly remembered that Sparks had brought the knife back from Cambodia and used it as a letter opener.
“Die wondering,” Jake Sparks said, and slit Tully’s throat. Before the blood could jet from Tully’s nicked carotid, Jake grabbed a second rag from his pocket and pushed it on the wound, just enough to divert the crimson torrent down Tully’s belly and into the toilet. Max Tully’s vision blurred, and he struggled feebly, but his life was over.
* * *
“Good-bye, Porky,” Jake Sparks said, and stuffed the blood-soaked rag in Tully’s sodden shirt. He looked down at the tile floor. Not a single drop of blood. Jake had grown up on a hog farm in Michigan and helped his old man slit a lot of throats on their way to be ham and bacon. He was very fast, and very good. His old man would have been proud.
A stench rose in the stall as Tully’s bowels evacuated into his slacks. Jake wrinkled his nose, then smiled. It would preserve the illusion that some crip was in here using the stall. By the time his ruse was discovered, he would be in California. He knew there were probably a dozen clues a good forensics team could use to tie him to the murder, but he would be at the Slaters’ before his name came up.
And by then, it wouldn’t matter.
Jake Sparks bent down and saw that the restroom was empty. He crawled under the partition into the next stall, then went to the sinks. He washed up, the blood on his hands sluicing down the drain with hot water and soap that smelled mildly like coconut.
He checked his watch and saw that he had enough time to get another meal before his flight. Work like this on his dad’s farm had always made him ravenous.
He wondered if there was anyplace he could get a BLT.
Jimmy woke up just before 10:00
A.M.
. feeling ravenous. The wounds on his chest had fully closed and begun to itch.
Relieved to see him finally awake, George brought him some coffee.
Jimmy told George about his encounter with Dabo Muu. George nodded.
“My gramma Bessie used to talk about something she called Old Daddy Mudwhacker. Maybe it’s the same fellow.”
“Anything about the Taxidermist?”
George nodded, and held up pages he had torn from the papers. With colorful graphics and simple blocks of text, the
Daily News
outlined the murderous spree of the New York serial killer. Under each victim’s photo was a brief description of the person, including their age, occupation, and residence. All photos radiated from the focal point, which was Daniel Slater. Slater rated a sidebar for his contributions both to charity and his groundbreaking work on various indigenous tribes in the Southwest (including the Hopi and the Zuni), the Pacific Coast (the Chumash), and the Pacific Northwest (including the Haida, Tlingit, and Kwakiutl).
George pointed excitedly to this reference.
“Got to be more than a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
Jimmy nodded as he read the article. He saw the same pattern that Stan Roberts had, that each victim had had its face mutilated in some manner. Jimmy, however, was able to put it into context with The Faceless One.
“Guess we should be in New York,” George commented. It was clear he wasn’t sure how they could get to New York unless they were able to tap Fred Deutschendorf again.
Jimmy shook his head. He reached into his pocket and brought out the copper talisman with its inscription of
CHIN EATER
.
“Raven wouldn’t send me here for nothing. It would have been just as easy to point me to
New York.”
“But you said they like makin’ people dance a bit first before they get down to business.”
“That’s true, but this is something particularly dire. The fact that other gods have gotten involved means it is trouble on a global scale. The fact that Dabo Muu let himself suffer the indignity of being caged and actually spoke to me means it is urgent.”
Jimmy looked at George. “Whatever is coming is coming soon. The gods don’t have time for me to be flying from coast to coast at a whim.” Jimmy tapped the paper. “Somebody connected with Daniel Slater is out here. They are either the next victim or something worse.”
“How could you be worse than a victim?” George asked.
“You could be a slave … or a bride,” Jimmy said, and shuddered to think of someone mortal aligned with that monstrosity.
“Probably a hundred Slaters in L.A., and we’re not even sure it’s a relative with the same name,” said George.
“Time to play Matlock,” said Jimmy.
“I want to do it,” George said firmly. Jimmy looked at him in surprise. “You go sneaking around zoos and seeing dead people and whatnot. I want to make a contribution, Cochise.”
“Okay,” Jimmy agreed, “you can be Matlock.”
George smiled and sipped the last of his coffee, then got the number for NYU from directory assistance and called the main administration number. He punched a button to be connected to the department of anthropology. After a moment, he frowned and hung up.
“Machine—guess those eggheads don’t work on Saturday.” George thought a minute and grinned. “Obituary,” he said.
They went over to the lobby to use a PC that was available for guests. Jimmy wondered why George hadn’t used this in his Taxidermist research, then realized he probably hadn’t wanted to leave him alone too long. Once again his heart went out to this man who had become his best friend in spite of him.
They quickly found an obituary for Daniel Slater, and it mentioned Steven Slater as a resident of La Crescenta. From there it was a matter of checking the phone listings, and they soon had their address.
“Now all we gotta do is find La Crescenta,” George said.
The desk clerk was very helpful. He wasn’t sure where La Crescenta was, so he looked it up online, then printed them a detailed set of directions and a map. They could take the Golden State Freeway to the Ventura Freeway to the Foothill Freeway. The trip would take about twenty minutes.
Jimmy asked the clerk if there was a craft-and-hobby store in the area. The clerk knew of
a place down on Olive called Crafty Devil. It mostly carried high-end model kits and remote-control vehicles, but they had a large section for making dolls and scenery for model railroads. Jimmy got directions and thanked him. They drove down Olive, the street filled with antique stores and specialty bookshops.
The heat was already in the upper eighties, the sunlight piercing all but the densest shade. Jimmy was glad for the air-conditioning in the Lincoln.
The Crafty Devil was located between a store that specialized in used cookbooks and a combination theater/coffeehouse named Play Grounds. The Crafty Devil had a sign featuring a cartoon devil driving a blue metal-flake dragster in the style of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Jimmy didn’t know Roth, but he found it interesting that many whites had reduced their penultimate villain to a caricature in diapers hawking everything from fireworks to deviled ham. Maybe they felt that took away his power. Jimmy thought it was a way to grow careless, complacent. He couldn’t imagine even the most apathetic of his people using The Faceless One to adorn the sign on a tire store or a fruit-drink stand.
George found an empty space near the front, and they were able to park under a bedraggled castor bean tree. They put enough change in the meter for a half hour and went in, the heat stealing the coolness from their clothes and skin.
It was air-conditioned inside the store, which was nearly empty at that time of day. One young boy was getting tips on airbrushing from a heavyset man behind the counter. The man nodded to Jimmy and George. There was a stack of handbaskets near the entrance, and Jimmy took one.
“Morning,” said the heavyset man, smiling easily, “let me know if I can help you find anything.” Then he went back to pointing out colors for the diorama the boy was painting.
George and Jimmy wandered through aisles filled with plastic and vinyl model kits, cars and jets and ships and monsters stacked almost to the ceiling. One aisle was filled with materials for making model airplanes; there were sheets and dowels and blocks of balsa wood, tissue paper, glue and varnish, struts and wheels in plastic or rubber. There was a good smell to the place, wood and glue, clay and paint.
Jimmy found most of what he needed on the craft aisle. He bought two boxes of papier-mâché mix, several jars of tempera paints in blue, red, white, black, orange, yellow, and brown, several paintbrushes, and a couple of transparent plastic face masks that would serve as a template. After some thinking, he also bought a length of balsa wood that was four inches by three feet. He took the basket up to the front counter, and the man totaled them up on an old brass cash register. The total was just under twenty dollars, and Jimmy paid him with most of the cash he had left.
They put the materials in the trunk, and Jimmy saw a small convenience store across the
street.
“How much money have we got left?” he asked George.
“We got about seventy dollars, not counting what we’ll need for the hotel,” George said.
“We’d better get some supplies,” Jimmy said.
“You plannin’ on holin’ up somewhere?” George asked.
Jimmy smiled, but there wasn’t much humor in it.
“Something like that,” he said.
They decided not to go to the small store and instead found a large market called Food Stores, Inc. The name was spectacularly unimaginative, but they found some very inexpensive items. Jimmy purchased packages of beef bullion, two cases of mixed soups, a case of tuna fish, a case of macaroni and cheese mix, and five gallons of distilled water. He also found a box of Presto fireplace logs, a huge box of saltines, and a box of Cheerios as big as a suitcase.
“What about milk?” George asked.
At first Jimmy was going to say no. Milk would spoil if left out. But if what he thought was coming was coming, then spoiled milk would be the least of their worries. He bought two gallons of whole milk.
They put the food into the car and grabbed a burger for George at a drive-through featuring teriyaki bowls and pastrami. Jimmy got a cup of hot water and mixed one of the bullion cubes. He never liked bullion, but he was still undergoing purification. He didn’t want to undo it all with a double cheeseburger and onion rings even though they smelled delicious. George drove them toward Glendale as they ate an early lunch. Jimmy did not want to tell George it might be the last hot meal they would have for a while.
Just before they left the city of Glendale, the Glendale Freeway took them to the north, into brown foothills dotted with occasional houses. The sky was hazy from smog and the sun glared down on the landscape like a tyrant. There were the remains of a doe by the side of the freeway, belly bloated and legs jutting stiffly from the carcass. Jimmy thought it was a bad omen, but he kept it to himself.
“George,” he said quietly.
“What’s up, Geronimo,” George asked, licking salt from his fingertips.
“When we get to the Slaters’, I want you to drop me off and head back to the hotel. If I’m not back in a day or two, return to Seattle without me.”
George looked at him. “Is this the part of the story where you get all noble and martyrlike on me?” George asked, his eyes narrowing.
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Jimmy said.
George glanced at the road, making sure they were staying in their lane. The freeway curved to the left, and he followed it, seeing signs for the 210 to Sacramento ahead.
“Let’s say I do ditch you, and you don’t come back by Saturday, and I go back to Golden Summer on Sunday. Then what?”
“You live your life,” Jimmy said.
“Uh-huh. Very deep. And just what is my life, you who know so much with your myths and your gods and all?”
Jimmy was confused. “What it has always been, I suppose.”
“So you die, and I go back to playing cards with Fred Deutschendorf and sneaking booze past Nurse Belva, maybe catching a little Matlock or some titty on the TV?”
Jimmy shrugged. He wasn’t comfortable with where this was going.
“So,” George continued, “I’m just your chauffeur. The friendly nigger who knows how to drive.”
“Wait a minute,” Jimmy said.
“No, you wait a goddamned minute,” George said, his voice rising. “I want to know just why you brought me along. Is it so you could have a nigger to order around, take you places, and shuffle and smile and say ‘No suh’ and ‘Yassuh’? Is that it, Jimmy?”
“You know damn well it isn’t,” Jimmy said, growing angry now. “I brought you along because you’re my friend.”
George made a derisive sputter. “Friend? How valuable a friend I must be, that you want me to fucking drop you off just when things are going to get tough.”
“You don’t have any idea what’s coming, George,” Jimmy warned.
“Don’t I? Haven’t you filled my ears with those stories since day one? Haven’t I listened to what you said about Raven and the Otter-People and every other goddamned thing you brought with you from that godforsaken ice-ridden flyspeck you hail from?”
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Jimmy repeated, his voice breaking with emotion.