smoke. 'May I ask you a personal question?'
'If it will help.'
'Did you and Alan have any kids before the Change?'
'No, we tried, but were unsuccessful. It seems my, well, this is personal. I simply wasn't able. It hurt Alan a great deal, but he seemed to adapt to it. In fact, he even froze some of his, well…'
'I know, carry on.' I did know, and I didn't feel like hearing it.
'Anyway, he froze some so that he could have a child with me, if there were some medical breakthrough or in the event something happened to him, an injury, whatever. Anyway, I always thought he began his work with genetics in an attempt to solve the problem.' She paused. Then her voice honked. 'What does this have to do with Alan's death?'
'A great deal. Tell me, Mrs. Cotton. You and your husband. Were you getting along, before he died.'
'I'm not sure what you mean.'
I hated coyness. 'Were you playing canasta with Mr. Cotton, before bed.'
'Mr. Wildclown!'
'Please, Mrs. Cotton. It is late. I am obviously in a foul mood. Were you and Mr. Cotton?'
'No, no. We hadn't been together as husband and wife for years before his death.' I heard a barely suppressed sob. 'He was always away with his work, and he just didn't seem interested in me any more.'
'I wonder-have you called Authority again? Have they called you?'
'Why, no.'
'Well expect a call. I believe I saw Mr. Cotton's lab, or what I was expected to believe was his lab. It all looks very convincing.' I paused. 'They'll probably offer the grieving widow a look now.'
'Was there a fire?' Her voice was tired.
'Yes, and no. I have the feeling I saw the setting for an act in a play that got rewritten along the way. There's no point to going into that now. I'll fill you in later. Thank you, Mrs. Cotton. I'm sorry to disturb you.' I listened to muffled honking noises. 'I'll keep you informed.'
Suddenly Edward's voice came on the line. 'Mr. Wildclown. I must ask you to make your calls earlier in the day. Mrs. Cotton is still fragile from her husband's death.'
'Sure Edward. But an emergency is an emergency. I hope I didn't spoil the mood.'
He slammed the phone down. So that was why the butler was so protective of the Cotton manor. He was lord of it. Now, for sleep. Elmo was in the outer office reading old magazines. A brown-bagged bottle of whiskey was twisted up in front of him. 'Come on, Fatso. We can't stay here. I need sleep. But not here.' I knew that I needed one more day to solve this case, and I wouldn't get it if I were caught napping. I knew that my time had run out. 'Let's go for a drive, Elmo. You and I should find a place to hole up.'
Chapter 54
We traveled a winding course into Downings, taking extra caution to lose any tails that might be on us, and ever mindful of Queens. It was easy. The streets that led in and out of the Downings District were littered with torn up cars and trucks, abandoned roadblocks and festered with detours. The office buildings in that section of town had not fared any better. Many were burned out relics of the world before the Change, corpses of a dead civilization. It was fitting that gangs of the dead commanded them now as squatters and thieves. The real money had long since abandoned this part of Greasetown.
I knew of a place, where Tommy had taken me once, when I had been nothing more than an irritated afterthought. He had approached three tall buildings in Downings. The one in the center was ancient, and the shortest. It was a flat-topped number with all the old gothic scrollwork over the windows. Apparently whoever had owned it had been reluctant to sell, because on two congruent sides had grown up a pair of enormous skyscrapers of plain concrete and glass now abandoned. They dwarfed the older building, and were erected so close to it that there was a little under a cramped foot of air separating them. Juxtaposed in such a way, the old building's roof became a tarry diamond set into the corner formed by these two massive abutting buildings. The deepest point of the diamond was dark, sandwiched by the mass and shadow of the gargantuan twins, facing east. The tall buildings had few windows now-just jagged sills and warped aluminum framing. The winds howled through the cramped spaces like demons. Tommy's secret place was atop this short, flat roof that stopped at the twentieth floor. Shaded from whatever weak sun there was; it became a perfect place for mosses, and the three short cedars that grew there. Tommy had brought me here once, and I had seen stars; now I sought this sanctuary for a night's sleep in a city that was growing deadly for me.
I was concerned about my last episode with Tommy, so gave my gun to Elmo and told him to stand guard at the top of the stairs and the broken door that served as roof-access. I walked wearily to the three cedars, sat myself under the rough shelter of a dilapidated plastic and aluminum hobo hut that had been erected beside them, opened the bottle of whiskey, set a pack of cigarettes down and let go of Tommy. He immediately mumbled something about Caesar, then attacked the bottle with a vengeance. I watched apprehensively as he smoked and drank voraciously. When a quarter of the bottle was gone, exhaustion took its toll and he fell asleep on a tumble of garbage and small, moss-covered rocks. He snored weakly. I relaxed and let the hollow darkness absorb me.
Transition.
I was naked in a sterile hallway. Sweat soaked my brow. The lights had gone out. Someone had scrubbed me clean again. My cheeks were raw from the plastic bristles. Whenever the lights went out the doors automatically swung shut in a long rolling thunder: boom, boom, boom like a giant stamping closer on enormous killing feet. I was left in the darkness. I pressed my back to the wall; the bricks were cold against my skin. Fear chattered in my ears.
The sound of breathing reached me from a short distance down the hall prickling my hair at the scalp. If only the clown were here. The clown could help. He'd make the fear go away. From the darkness someone screamed, hot iron on flesh. I scuttled on all fours toward the TV blueness of a night-lit window. A swollen moon pressed against the upper corner, and punched rectangular holes repetitively down the hall where other wired windows allowed a tantalizing view, but no freedom. In the eerie light, I saw strange naked shapes moving slowly toward me, obscenely dragging mottled, twisted limbs. I opened the window on hinges. Fall branches scratched at the air outside it like creaky buried-alive fingers. A wind moaned. Leaves whirled. Approaching all around me was the silent motion of madness. But I could feel an unusual magic now. The clown was here. He had arrived. There was more to the darkness this time, the moon's light, to the shadowy forms that crept near. I knew that the lights would not return. Something had happened and they were out for good. Something had happened out there in the world beyond the black line of trees.
I reached up and grasped the steel mesh screening. I gripped it with my fingers until the skin began to tear. I pulled until it stretched toward me, its blister-shape filling up with moonlight. My arms and fingers ached, the knuckles bled. The screen stretched, swelled inward, anchored to my torn claws, and finally burst free.
I slipped outside. The moonlight glittered on the dewy grass. A field stretched before me to a thick stand of trees atop a hill. I ran in a crouching lope, dropping to all fours in a panting rhythm to feel the warm dew splash my cheeks and soak my body. I reached the hill and turned. I watched the window I had escaped through; saw it birthing sinister monkey shapes into the night. I looked toward the city in the distance. Its many lights did not twinkle like a star field now. Violence had replaced them, lights red as blood howled along the streets. Fire burst out-an explosion.
Transition.
Sweat boiled out of my skin, and my mind whirled with flashing red images. I was in Tommy, had entered during the dream. I could not feel his presence as I often did-lurking there beneath my consciousness like a Freudian nightmare. I tried to remember the dream's fleeting images. Flickering lights and red motes like incandescent blood cells danced and sparked inside my skull. I remembered a moon, then slithering, scampering dark shapes. I calmed myself with whiskey and cigarettes, and fumbled for the sandwiches I had brought along. It was dawn. I had been out for about five hours. The sky slowly lightened.
An unusual rosy light began to color the clouds to the east. Unusual in the sense that I had not seen such a thing in all the time I had been in partnership with Tommy. From my vantage point, I could see the long lancing
