The Green Lama: Scions (The Green Lama Legacy Book 1) (16 page)

Dumont smiled weakly, deep black circles under his eyes. He seemed thinner, the color drained from his face. “Actually, we’re outside a drainage pipe, but I can understand the confusion,” he said, his breathing ragged.

“What the hell are you doin’ here? And what happened to your suit?”

Dumont glanced down at the singed remains hanging off him. “Most recently? Saving your life.”

“Yeah, pull the other one,” she said, sitting up. A large plume of smoke pillared up from the foot of Lady Liberty, the only reminder that the
Bartlett
had ever existed. “Where’s John? Is he okay?”

“He’s unconscious at the moment,” he said, indicating the lieutenant seated next to the drainage pipe. He had a pair of scorch marks on either shoulder and a few scratch marks on his face. “But he’ll be fine. Whatever it was that had… ‘taken’ him is gone. Are you all right?”

“About as good as can be expected, considering the kidnapping, the choking, and the flooding. Who are you supposed to be?” Jean asked the blonde woman seated a few stones away.

“Betty Dale,” the blonde replied, sounding like Jean felt. “Reporter for the
Herald-Tribune
.”

“Oh, great. You better not write me in the article like this.”

“Lost my notebook,” Betty said with a halfhearted shrug.

Jean turned back to Dumont. “I know I was out, but I thought I saw some kind of… green light… Was that the Green Lama?”

“It was,” Dumont replied after a moment.

“Swooped in just in the nick of time, didn’t he? See? Why mix it up when the classics work so well?” she said with more than a trace of suspicion. “And where is he now?”

“You just missed him,” Betty replied for him.

Dumont met the reporter’s gaze and Betty nodded back.

Chapter 9

WITNESSING THE DAWN

FROM ATOP the police station New York City looked warm, the pinpricks of city lights turning off one by one as the sun broke through the night and opened the morning. It had been so long since Gary had seen a sunrise like this; he had forgotten how beautiful it could be. In the distance, he could hear the mournful sound of a foghorn, making him smile. The rooftop door opened behind him and Caraway handed Gary a cup of coffee.

“Thank you.” He took a hesitant sip, finding it a tad too bitter than he cared for, but enjoying it all the same. The two men stood in silence as they watched the sun overtake the city avenue by avenue. They all just went about their lives as if nothing happened, Gary realized as the people began moving through the streets. They woke up every day, ignoring the nightmares and terrors, just as resilient as the day before, if not more so. Maybe living here just made you jaded, or maybe it made you more alive. Maybe it just made you a New Yorker. “You feeling any better after your—?”

“Splitting headache and little roiled on the insides… How’re your ribs?”

Gary lightly patted the bandages beneath his shirt. “Hurts, but it could’ve been worse.”

“Lot worse,” Caraway added, his gaze distant.

“EvangPs downstairs taking care of the particulars. We’re going to be cremating the body after you’re all done with it.” Gary continued, knowing Caraway already knew everything he was telling him. “Said she’d give her a place on her family plot if we couldn’t find…”

“That’s good of her.”

“Better woman than I deserve.”

“Wouldn’t know what that was like.”

Gary raised and lowered his cup several times before he managed to ask, “Did she have any family?”

Caraway shook his head. “They were all onboard.”

“Oh.”

“I lost my mother to a fire.”

Gary half turned to the lieutenant but remained silent.

“It was a bad one. Least, that’s what they said. I was on the front, fighting Jerry for God and Glory or whatever the hell reason was I was over there. Don’t even remember anymore. Probably because I was young and stupid and thought killing Germans would make me…” Caraway swirled his coffee around. “I didn’t even know until I got a postcard from my grandmother. There were three lines. Just three. I never even bothered to write my mother while I was away. Too damn proud, a boy acting a man and not even knowing what it means…” He cleared his throat and looked back out to the city. “I know where you came from, I know what you’ve been through. Hell, I was usually the guy booking you when you were running with Harlem Joe.”

“We used to call him ’Harley.’”

Caraway smiled at that. “Right. Harlem Joe called ’Harley.’ I forgot about that… I’ve seen how far you’ve come. And whether it’s the Lama or your girl that helped get you across that bridge, doesn’t matter,
you
made it across. And for a mother, there ain’t no greater gift than seeing her son become something better than what he was, and you gave her that. You didn’t say goodbye, but there ain’t no doubt you made her proud.”

Gary brushed the tip of his nose and turned back to the city. In spite of the sun, a fresh breeze smelling of winter brushed past and Gary pulled his jacket closer.

“You ever miss this?” Caraway asked after a while.

Gary silently sipped his coffee. “Hell of a day, huh?” he said at last.

Caraway frowned in understanding. “Yep. Hell of a day.”

• • •

The sun travelled over West Forty-Fifth Street as the walls of the Theatrical Boarding House stopped shaking. Ken Clayton walked down the hall to the room marked two-one-four and lightly rapped his knuckles against the door.

“Come in,” Jean croaked from within.

“I didn’t know Ma Smith rented to frogs,” Ken said as he closed the door behind him.

“I didn’t know she rented to Frankenstein’s Monster,” she retorted from her bed, holding an ice pack to her neck. “How’s the head?”

Ken waved dismissively at the massive contusion on his forehead. “I’ve had worse hangovers. Concussion should be fine in a day or so. You?”

“About the same,” she said with small shrug. “Nothing says fun like a hand shaped bruise on your neck.”

Ken sat down on the edge of the bed and took Jean by the hand. “Jean…”

“Oh God, you’re not going to propose are you?” she panicked, her eyes wide.

Ken snorted. “No.”

‘“Cause I’m pretty sure we’ve been over this.”

“I know.”

“And there may be someone else, though I’m not certain—”

“You know how they say all the world’s a stage?”

“Oh, God. Don’t quote Shakespeare.”

“Red, shut up for a second, will ya?” Ken snapped. “Jeez.”

They sat in silence for several minutes as Ken tapped the tips of his fingers together, playing the planned conversation over in his head again. He finally cleared his throat, pinched his uninjured eye shut, and blurted it out. “I want to stop acting.”

Jean let out a sharp laugh. “Please, you’d never want to stop—” She bolted up. “Oh.”

He looked at Jean and smiled. “Yeah.”

“Jesus, Ken,” she breathed. “That’s—That’s a big deal.”

“I mean, I know I can’t… Out in the open, you know. Not in the way I want to, the way I
should.
It’s just that… I met someone and I don’t even know if it will last—I mean, how could it? But I want to enjoy it, for as long as I can, at least.”

“Can I at least get a name, or am I just going to have to come up with a pseudonym?”

“Bennjamin Mendoza,” Ken said, loving the way it sounded as it rolled off his tongue, even if it still made him blush. “With two ’N’s’. We met a few months ago when we were investigating the Lindley Brothers & Andrews’ Combined Circus with the Lama.”

Jean arched an eyebrow. “A Spanish circus performer?”

“Mexican,” he corrected. “It’s how he gets away with the double ‘N’.”

“Even more scandalous. You two buying a shack in the woods or something?”

“Something like that. We just want some time offstage before the world asks us to perform again.”

“So, what do you want me to tell the Lama? You joined the Army for a spell? What with all the business with the Fifth Column here and that nut in Germany, I’m sure he’d buy that. And when you come back a few months, a year later, we’ll just say you were honorably discharged.”

Ken chuckled. “Sure, why not. About as believable as anything else that goes on around here.”

She leaned forward and kissed Ken on the forehead, careful to avoid the welt. “I’m happy for you,” she whispered. “Truly, I am.”

“Thank you. Now, who’s the ‘other man’?”

• • •

Hours passed. Jean sat on the roof watching the ferries run, the toy cars drive by, and the ants marching toward their various picnics. Lady Liberty stood alone in the harbor as the ships floated by without incident. The wind whipped up, numbing her fingers. Jean tucked her hands into her coat pockets and pulled it in a little tighter.

“Ne-tso-hbum.”

A smile formed on her lips. She looked to the shadowed section of the roof. “Well, hey there, stranger,” she said, brushing the dirt off her pant leg as she stood. “I see you got my message.”

The shadow moved and the Green Lama stepped into the light, walking up beside her. The fringes of his red
kata
fluttered in the wind, while the majority of his face remained hidden beneath his viridescent hood. “Far be it from me to ignore a call from Jean Farrell.”

“Smart man. Though, we were missing you on this last adventure.”

“I was nearby.”

“Oh, hiding in the shadows were you?”

“Something like that.”

“Yeah, that reporter woman said you did some impressive stuff. Something about ’electrocuting the devil’ out of Caraway, or some such. Radioactive salts as exorcism; wait ’til the Catholic Church hears about this.”

“Fairly impressive,” he replied solemnly.

“I’m fine by the way, in case you were wondering. A few bumps and bruises, but I’ll survive.”

“Miss Farrell, if I had any doubt of that I don’t think anything in all the six realms would stop me from making sure you do.”

Jean dropped her gaze to the floor in hopes of hiding her blush.

“Do you have any idea what the hell happened to them?” she asked after a moment.

The Green Lama shook his head. “So often we look for the man beneath the mask, the smoke and mirrors, but I’ve come to learn that there are many things in this world that live within the darkness, that are deeper and older than we will ever understand. Buddhists believe there are many malevolent beings that exist within the six realms. The
mamo,
the
rakshasas,
the
pishachas,
and the
moras
are just a few examples. But the creatures that we faced were something… Other.”

“They wanted the ‘Keystone,’” she said, finally getting the why she had called him there. “Apparently, they seemed to think that’s me.”

“They would not be the first to believe you are the most important person in the world.”

Jean bit her lip to fight back the smile. “Always keep it interesting, don’t we, Lama?”

“I suppose we do.”

Far below, a police siren wailed through the street, followed by the popcorn sound of guns. “Seems like they’re playing our song,” she said, unconsciously rubbing her throat. “You go ahead and dance. I’ll sit this one out.”

“Until the next, Ne-tso-hbum.” The Green Lama

bowed his head and walked toward the edge of the roof.

“And hey, you should bring Dumont around a bit more. He’s not as useless as he looks.”

The Green Lama looked back to her and smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.
Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum!
”

• • •

Alone in the
Herald-Tribune
bullpen, Betty’s fingers raced over the keys, the type bars clacking furiously against the ribbon. Exhaustion burned through her, but she did her best to push past it, her eyes blinking heavily. She tore out the sheet of paper as she finished another page and immediately fed in another. Photos of Ken Clayton, Jean Farrell, Gary and Evangl Brown sat on her desk alongside an illustration of the Green Lama by artist V. E. Pyles. The words flowed out of her like a river, writing themselves in streams of sentences and pools of paragraphs. This would be the greatest article she’d ever written, the sort that won Pulitzers, were turned into books which inspired movies which became part of the collective consciousness for decades to come. This would be her legacy.

As the sun finally set, Betty pressed the period key one last time, unrolled the last page and stapled it with the others. Satisfied, she collected her finished article, photos, illustrations, and files and tossed them into the trash. She eyed the stack for several minutes before she pulled the article out, folded it into thirds, and placed it inside her desk drawer atop a folder marked ’X’. She lit herself a cigarette and dropped the still flaming match into the trash. She leaned back in her chair and watched the pages ignite.