The Talisman

Jack did not have to ask him what he meant.

“I’m glad you understand, son.” Speedy closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the stone.

A second later his eyes slowly opened again. “Destinies. That’s what all this is about. More destinies, more lives, than you know. You ever hear the name Rushton? I suspect you might have, all this time gone by.”

Jack nodded.

“All those destinies be the reason your momma brought you all the way to the Alhambra Hotel, Travellin Jack. I was just sittin and waitin, knowin you’d show up. The Talisman pulled you here, boy. Jason. That’s a name you heard, too, I spect.”

“It’s me,” Jack said.

“Then get the Talisman. I brought this l’il thing along, he’p you out some.” He wearily picked up the blanket, which, Jack saw, was of rubber and therefore not a blanket after all.

Jack took the bundle of rubber from Speedy’s charred-looking hand. “How can I get into the hotel, though?” he asked. “I can’t get over the fence, and I can’t swim in with Richard.”

“Blow it up.” Speedy’s eyes had closed again.

Jack unfolded the object. It was an inflatable raft in the shape of a legless horse.

“Recognize her?” Speedy’s voice, ruined as it was, bore a nostalgic lightness. “You and me picked her up, sometime back. I explained about the names.”

Jack suddenly remembered coming to Speedy, that day that seemed filled with slashes of black and white, and finding him sitting inside a round shed, repairing the merry-go-round horses. You be takin liberties with the Lady, but I guess she ain’t gonna mind if you’re helpin me get her back where she belongs. Now that, too, had a larger meaning. Another piece of the world locked into place for Jack. “Silver Lady,” he said.

Speedy winked at him, and again Jack had the eerie sense that everything in his life had conspired to get him to precisely this point. “Your friend here all right?” It was—almost—a deflection.

“I think so.” Jack looked uneasily at Richard who had rolled on his side and was breathing shallowly, his eyes shut.

“Then long’s you think so, blow up ole Silver Lady here. You gotta bring that boy in with you no matter what. He’s a part of it, too.”

Speedy’s skin seemed to be getting worse as they sat on the beach—it had a sickly ash-gray tinge. Before Jack put the air nozzle to his mouth he asked, “Can’t I do anything for you, Speedy?”

“Sure. Go to the Point Venuti drugstore and fetch me a bottle of Lydia Pinkham’s ointment.” Speedy shook his head. “You know how to he’p Speedy Parker, boy. Get the Talisman. That’s all the he’p I need.”

Jack blew into the nozzle.

3

A very short time later he was pushing in the stopper located beside the tail of a raft shaped like a four-foot- long rubber horse with an abnormally broad back.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to get Richard on this thing,” he said, not complaining but merely thinking out loud.

“He be able to follow orders, ole Travellin Jack. Just sit behind him, kind of he’p hold him on. That’s all he needs.”

And in fact Richard had pulled himself into the lee of the standing rocks and was breathing smoothly and regularly through his open mouth. He might have been either asleep or awake, Jack could not tell which.

“All right,” Jack said. “Is there a pier or something out behind that place?”

“Better than a pier, Jacky. Once you gets out beyond the break-water, you’ll see big pilins—they built part of the hotel right out over the water. You’ll see a ladder down in them pilins. Get Richard there up the ladder and you be on the big deck out back. Big windows right there—the kind of windows that be doors, you know? Open up one of them window-doors and you be in the dinin room.” He managed to smile. “Once you in the dinin room, I reckon you’ll be able to sniff out the Talisman. And don’t be afraid of her, sonny. She’s been waitin for you—she’ll come to your hand like a good hound.”

“What’s to stop all these guys from coming in after me?”

“Shoo, they can’t go in the black hotel.” Disgust with Jack’s stupidity was printed in every line on Speedy’s face.

“I know, I mean in the water. Why wouldn’t they come after me with a boat or something?”

Now Speedy managed a painful but genuine smile. “I think you gonna see why, Travellin Jack. Ole Bloat and his boys gotta steer clear of the water, hee hee. Don’t worry bout that now—just remember what I told you and get to gettin, hear?”

“I’m already there,” Jack said, and edged toward the rocks to peer around at the beach road and the hotel. He had managed to get across the road and to Speedy’s cover without being seen: surely he could drag Richard the few feet down to the water and get him on the raft. With any luck at all, he should be able to make it unseen all the way to the pilings—Gardener and the men with binoculars were concentrating on the town and the hillside.

Jack peeked around the side of one of the tall columns. The limousines still stood before the hotel. Jack put his head out an inch or two farther to look across the street. A man in a black suit was just stepping through the door of the wreck of the Kingsland Motel—he was trying, Jack saw, to keep from looking at the black hotel.

A whistle began to shrill, as high and insistent as a woman’s scream.

“Move!” Speedy whispered hoarsely.

Jack jerked his head up and saw at the top of the grassy rise behind the crumbling houses a black-suited man blasting away at the whistle and pointing straight downhill at him. The man’s dark hair swayed around his shoulders—hair, black suit, and sunglasses, he looked like the Angel of Death.