The Puppet Master

'Ah.'

'So,' he said. His eyes, I'd thought, were gray. Now I decided they were blue. They looked into me, steady and disconcerting. 'There is something else you vant from me. V'at is it?'

'Dr. Sproule mentioned a couple named Vic and Tory Merlin.'

His gaze never changed, he didn't nod, his eyebrows didn't arch. He simply said, 'O-oh?'

I hadn't intended to say what I said next. It just sort of blopped out. 'She told me that Christman's ideas came from them. That he simply adapted them for teaching and application.'

'She is right about v'ere his ideas came from. His ideas about reality and people and how to help them. But Christman did more than adapt them. Overall he changed them. Not on purpose, I don't think. He didn't fully understand them. He changed importances, left important things out . . . Made a dog's breakfast out of them, if you vant to know. Except the easy stuff, the beginning stuff. He got that pretty good.'

'Could you tell me how to get in touch with the Merlins? Give me their phone number?'

He pursed his lips. 'Tell you v'at. I'll give them your number, and tell them v'at you're interested in. If they vant, they can get in touch vith you.'

* * *

And that's as far as I got. Sigurdsson turned his attention to Tuuli, and they talked for a few minutes while I sat there like a lump. If he'd been forty years, or maybe even thirty years younger, I'd have been jealous. Tuuli gave him her card, and he talked about the Merlins, whom he called the most powerful psychics he knew of. Then he buzzed his wife, and she came in, a really good-looking lady in her sixties, I judged. Probably twenty years younger than her husband. She and Sigurdsson and Tuuli had a good time yakking for another half hour, but I had things on my mind, and didn't add much to the conversation.

I needed to talk with Lon Thomas. I'd been afraid of it, afraid of him, been holding the idea down, mostly refusing to look at it, telling myself he wouldn't say anything useful. After a few minutes we got up, shook hands and left. As we drove away, Tuuli was full of the evening, full of having had a conversation with Olaf Sigurdsson! And of how friendly and charming Laura Sigurdsson had been. She was so full of it all that at first she didn't seem to notice I was only half with her. When she did notice, she laid a hand on my arm.

'Thank you, Martti,' she said softly in Finnish. 'Thank you for taking me along.'

I hadn't had much choice; Sigurdsson had almost ordered it. But she wasn't expressing thanks; she was expressing affection. Love. She didn't do that a lot. Of course, lots of times I wasn't very loveable; I was inconsiderate and unreasonable, and took too much for granted. We both did, as far as that went.

I'd turned onto Mulholland Drive by then, headed east. We came to a place—a public overlook—with a great view of the billion lights of the San Fernando Valley, and I pulled off the right of way into one of the diagonal parking slots there. Then we just sat holding hands and looking. We didn't even neck. I can't say personally what L.A. was like in the smog years. But with Arne Haugen's geogravitic power converters powering everything from cars to cities, from desalinization plants to transmountain water pipelines, L.A.'s got to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Especially at night, from the Santa Monica Mountains.

We'd been there about three or four minutes when a Buick pulled up behind us, blocking us in. Both of us stiffened; I thought of the guy who'd tailed me. I had my 9mm Glock in the door pocket and my 7.65 Walther under one arm. Presumably Tuuli had the little .25-caliber Lady Colt I'd given her in her shoulder bag. There were at least four guys in the Buick. Three piled out with wrecking bars and hammers in their hands. Trashers. Two of them came to my door and one to Tuuli's, all of them grinning, probably high on something.

My window was open—Tuuli had run hers up—and one of them stuck his face in. 'Hey! You!' he said. 'No fucking in the car! Unless you're gonna pass it around!'

Now I knew which one was the ringleader. The others laughed at his wit until I pointed my Walther at him. He backed away quickly, both of them did, but not any quicker than I keyed the door open and stepped out.

'You pull a gun on someone and you can go to jail!' He half yelled it; the other half was whine, high and nasal.

I answered by shooting once, blowing the Buick's right front tire. Their hands were already up. Now they reached higher, stretching. 'On your bellies!' I said, twitching my gun at the two in front of me. They went down as if their knees had melted, very cooperative, hands wide. Meanwhile I'd heard Tuuli's door close. I glanced back and saw the guy on her side backing away. She'd have her Lady Colt in her hand. I pointed the Walther at the guy still in the Buick, behind the steering wheel; his hands were up by his ears. I stepped to where I could see his other front tire, and shot it out. That left me with seven rounds. 'Out!' I told him, and out he got.

'You got a trashing tool in there?' I asked. He nodded. 'In back?' Another nod. 'Get it out! Carefully, or I'll put one of these right through your spine.' He gave a little half sob, opened the back door, and brought out a short- handled sledgehammer.

'Whose car?' I asked.

'My old man's.'

'Your what?!'

'My father's.'

'He know what you use it for?'

'He thinks I'm at Sepulveda Mall, ice skating.'

'Hon!' I said. 'Cover those three!'

'I am!'

I had the driver get back in his Buick and drive it ahead a few meters, out of the way, then get out with his hammer and lie down by the other three. 'Hon,' I said, 'back out and then back east down the road a hundred feet or so.' I was assuming none of the punks had read my plates, and I didn't want them to. When she'd done it, I had the four of them get up, watching them closely. I decided that none had a gun actually on him, though there may have been one in their car. They were dressed in the Valley Smooth style, tights with a codpiece, and not even