shattering of the mirror as I banged into the wall below the transom. Shards of glass flew, and I covered my head.
“You crazy bastard,” I shouted at Nelson, sinking to the floor and moving my arm away from my eyes. I could see that my pants were torn by the flying glass, but I was doing fine compared to Marish, who had a deep gash on his cheek from the shotgun blast. He was looking around for something with madness in his eyes. He panted the frightened pant of a fat man. I helped him look. We were probably looking for his gun, and I wanted to find it first.
“Don’t move in there,” came Nelson’s voice. “Or I’ll fire the second barrel.”
“Nelson, no!” I yelled, spotting the gun and going for it. Marish let out a gasp and went through the door. I got to my feet, picking up a cut on my palm. I staggered out of the destroyed toilet and looked down the bar. Everyone was looking at Marish and me. Some had their mouths open. All had heard the explosion, and no one could miss the two shredded humans who had come through the door.
“Stop him,” I shouted after Marish, who was almost at the front door. He was leaving a trail of blood. No trail was needed, but my own knees weren’t doing well enough to carry me forward.
Marish put one hand on the door. Behind me from the toilet I could hear Nelson’s voice yelling, “What the hell is going on in there?”
The radio was now giving a calm male message in slow Spanish that made it clear radios were unaware of human activity. I didn’t know if Marish would get away or where he would go. I didn’t have to find out.
Emmett Kelly moved to the door and put a hand on Marish’s shoulder.
“Hold it,” he said. Marish turned, his wild bloody face showing all his hatred for the circus. The look took Kelly by surprise. He was used to a lot, but not that look of hatred.
Marish couldn’t resist. He threw a wild fat right at Kelly, who ducked and came back with a push to Marish’s chest. The fat man tumbled back over the Hijo drunk and went down in a lump.
I limped forward as Alex and Nelson came through the front door of Hijo’s with shotguns ready.
People began to scramble for corners and scream.
“Hold it,” I yelled. “Don’t shoot.”
Nelson’s eyes were wild and frightened, but they were probably no different from those of anyone else in the room, except he had the shotgun.
“It’s over, Sheriff,” said Alex evenly.
Nelson looked over at Marish and aimed his barrel at the fallen form. “Right,” said Nelson. “It’s over.”
It was at that point that my knees said the hell with it, and I crumpled to the floor, hoping for an inkwell.
When I opened my eyes after dreaming that Koko and I could fly over Cincinnati, I found the face of Doc Ogle.
“Full of holes,” came a voice behind him.
“Me?” I asked with a croak, trying to sit up.
“You and the whole damn story,” came Nelson’s voice. I looked past Doc Ogle, who had trouble straightening up. Nelson and Alex were there. I was back in the sheriff’s office on the bench.
“This man could use a hospital,” said the doc, packing something in his black bag. “Lacerations, concussion, goddamn crazy handprint on his back.”
In the cell beyond the first, I could see Marish, sitting with his head down. He turned his face toward me, and I didn’t like what I saw. The stitches didn’t bother me, but that look did. I turned away.
“I will explain it another time for you,” came Gunther’s voice. I turned my head in the other direction and saw Gunther, Jeremy, and Shelly.
“Don’t bother,” sighed Nelson. “I’ve got enough. I heard enough. Alex and I heard enough.”
“You’ll be a hero, Nelson,” I said, sitting up. “Caught a killer single-handed in a bloody gun battle. May even make the San Diego papers.”
“May at that,” said Nelson, pursing his lips.
“We’ll be happy to stay around and tell our part of this,” I volunteered. Jeremy walked over to me and gave me an arm. Hell, he picked me up.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Nelson, clearly preferring his own tale of his gun battle and whatever fantasy of heroism he was working on. “Just you and your friends pack up and get out. We don’t need you in Mirador, and we don’t need the damn circus either.”
“We’re going,” I said. Shelly led the way out, and Jeremy supported me.
“Maybe we’ll see you again sometime,” said Alex, leaning against the wall.
I tried to read through his words and couldn’t.
“Maybe,” said the Spirit of Seventy Wounds, and off we went into the afternoon, closing the door of the Mirador police station behind us.
The circus people were leaning against or loitering near half a dozen cars and trucks in what looked like a vigil. Peg and Elder spotted me first and moved in my direction. The Tanuccis were with them, and Emmett Kelly stood to the side with Agnes Sudds.
“Are you all right?” said Peg.
“Terrific,” I said.
“You look awful.”
“Maybe I don’t feel so terrific,” I admitted. “In fact, I think I’d just like to close my eyes and wake up in my bed back in Hollywood.”
“Alone?” came Agnes’ voice from behind.
“I’ll be happy to wake up,” I said, feeling something dark come over me.
Emmett Kelly took a step toward me with his hand out and his mouth open. That was my last memory of him, silent and looking a little sad.
I was aware of movement, I think, and Shelly’s voice talking about saberteeth. I was aware of snakes of green and Saint Patrick with an electric staff. I was aware of a body full of aches and the memory of a look of hate. And then I was aware of nothing.
The next time I woke up, I was just where I wanted to be, lying in my own room in Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse on Heliotrope in Hollywood. My bed was there, the sofa with doilies I wasn’t allowed to touch, and my wooden table and small refrigerator. I wanted to get up and have a bowl of Wheaties, but a hand reached out and pushed me back. It was a small hand.
“You must rest without disturbance,” said Gunther. We were the only two in the room. “The doctor has come here to look at you and declared you recoverable. The suggestion came that you be moved to a hospital, but I thought you would prefer …”
“I would prefer,” I said, sitting up. I was under one of Mrs. Plaut’s homemade quilts, dressed in a T-shirt and underwear and feeling an overall ache that made a lie of aches.
“A thousand natural shocks,” said Gunther sympathetically, watching me sit up.
“Something like that,” I said.
“It is that which flesh is heir to, Toby,” he said, handing me a cup of tea he retrieved from the table. “It is a bit cool but perhaps better for you for that.”
While I drank, Mrs. Plaut burst in. Mrs. Plaut was not a knocker. Even if she knocked, she would never hear the responding “Come in” or “Stay out,” and there were no locks on the doors of Mrs. Plaut’s rooms.
“Mr. Peters,” she said, crossing her thin arms. She was a tiny pink woman somewhere between seventy-five and a thousand, with the strength of a determined terrier. “You haven’t been killing people again, have you?”
“Not intentionally,” I said, sipping tea. “And not on the premises.”
“No more bodies here,” she said, stepping in to straighten a chair.
“I promised,” I said.
Satisfied, she dropped a bundle of handwritten sheets on my table. “Chapters,” she announced. “Papa and the well and Uncle Damper’s Eskimo wife.”
Mrs. Plaut was under the impression that I was, alternately, an exterminator and a screenwriter. I had never been able to determine how she came to this conclusion or when she made the transition from one to the other. I think she didn’t much care as long as I continued to make corrections of her family history, which was now well over 3,000 pages long. I was in for a night with Uncle Damper’s Eskimo wife.
