always been something of a clumsy goof, but Vic hadn’t heard him approach. They were all like that. Ghost-footed. Vic just gave him an uptick of his chin.
“Karl said you wanted a count.” He handed over a sheet of paper that showed the location of every nest in town. Beside each location there was a number, and a tally at the bottom of the page.
“That’s everyone?”
“Yes, sir. Less about ten of the Dead Heads that Karl wanted put down. Ones who wouldn’t listen.”
Vic frowned. “Still a lot of mouths to feed.”
Golub stared at him for a moment, perplexed, then when he realized that Vic had made a joke he laughed. It was a bad fake of a laugh, but it showed respect and Vic appreciated the gesture.
“You and McVey all set to handle the candy?”
“Sure. We have about eight guys with us. None of the ones with too much teeth. Guys like me and Shanahan who can blend in.”
“No Dead Heads either.”
“Oh, no sir. The ones who are still left are locked up.”
“Any word on Mike?”
“No. I had everyone out looking last night, and those guys who can take sunlight are still out there. Nobody’s seen him.” Golub paused. “Is that going to be okay for us? If we don’t find him, I mean?”
Vic sucked on the mouth of the beer bottle. “Let’s just say it’d be better for all of us if we found him.”
He dismissed Golub with a curt nod and sipped his beer. His face still hurt from Mike’s lucky punches. Little bastard. God, how he wished he could just do what he wanted to do to that kid and have done with it. Two or three hours and some power tools would be a nice way to punch his ticket. Make him pay for the hurt and the humiliation. Yeah, that would be sweet. That’d take the sting out.
He sat down at the kitchen table and took out his notebook. Tomorrow was Halloween. Even though he’d worked so hard for all these years to bring the Plan to this point, it was hard to believe that it was all ready to launch. Tonight he’d set the dynamite and wire the radio detonators. The boxes of candy would be distributed all throughout the town, and a few in the neighboring towns of Crestville and Black Marsh. Spreading joy, Vic thought.
The candy was not precisely part of the Plan, but Vic had put it into play as a backup. The Plan was complicated and something could go wrong. If the Plan failed, or if any part of it misfired and the authorities came in before the Man rose, then the candy would be part of a cover story. And even if the Plan worked according to the Man’s vision and intention, it would be useful to muddy the waters for a while, at least until the Red Wave took hold and started sweeping toward both coasts. Ultra-high doses of hallucinogens were in the candy, more would be dumped into the town’s water supply, and at least a quarter of all the bottled water that would be sold to tourists was spiked with LSD or haloperidol.
Vic also had caches of white supremacist flyers hidden where the authorities could find them once an investigation started. An excellent cover story. Not towel-head terrorists but homegrown stuff. Very plausible, and Vic didn’t feel so much as a twinge of sympathy for his buddies in the white leagues who would take the hit for all this. Once the Man rose there would be a whole New Order and old loyalties wouldn’t mean a thing. All human connections would be broken forever.
Without warning an image of Lois popped into his head. It happened so suddenly that it jolted Vic, even though it was the fifth or sixth time it had happened today. Lois. For sixteen years she’d been his whore and his punch, and never once had he ever given a single moment’s serious consideration to the possibility that there were any genuine feelings for her anywhere in his heart. A month ago Vic would have laughed at the thought. Now she belonged to Ruger and suddenly there were conflicted feelings in Vic that he would have liked to reach in and tear out by the roots.
He didn’t want to feel a goddamn thing for her, or for anyone except the Man, yet there it was. The Man must have known all along, or must have gotten wind of it the way he does, because when Little Halloween went all to hell and Griswold vented his rage at Vic, Ruger, and all the others, there had been a special twist of the blade for Vic. To appease the Man, to earn back his favor, Vic had been asked for a sacrifice. The Man wanted him to give up Lois. Not just give her up—he wanted Vic to let Ruger have her.
That shouldn’t have hurt. Sure, maybe it should have stung his pride a bit, like the alpha dog having to yield up a favorite toy to a new puppy in the house, but it should not have hurt him deep inside.
He swallowed more beer and stared at his list without really reading the entries. It did hurt, though. It actually hurt.
(3)
Ferro said, “What’s this bullshit all about?”
Val leaned back in her chair and gave him a long, calculating look. “Frank, I want you and Vince to come with us to the hospital. Saul Weinstock has all of the forensics and video information and he’s willing to show you everything.”
“Why should we go anywhere with you?”
“Because now that you’ve read that report you have to know the rest.”
“No, we don’t,” said LaMastra, “it’s not our case anymore. What part of that can’t you people process?”
Ferro met Val’s stare and after a minute he said, “Be quiet, Vince.”
LaMastra pivoted in his seat and stared at him. “What?”
“She’s right,” Ferro said. “There’s something very wrong here and we have to know what’s going on.”
Crow exhaled a long breath, but Val didn’t look convinced. “Are you saying that you understand what’s going on…that you understand what those reports indicate?”
“No,” Ferro snapped. “I’m saying that someone has either screwed up a crucial phase of the investigation, or else these folks are pulling some kind of shit. In either case I want to know what’s going on.” He looked hard at Val. “And if there’s something hinky with this don’t think my sympathies for your losses are going to cut you any slack.”
“All we want you to do is look at the evidence,” she said.
“Okay. We’ll go that far, but as of now I’m putting you all on notice. This is police business and you are a bunch of local yokels who are not cops.” He stared hard at Crow. “And I don’t give a rat’s ass if you used to wear a badge, Mr. Crow. That was then, this is now.”
“Frank,” said Val, her blue eyes dark and unblinking, “if, after seeing what Dr. Weinstock has, you want to arrest us, then so be it. If we can’t convince you with what we have to show, then jail is going to be the safest place for all of us to be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ferro demanded.
Val just gave him an enigmatic smile and called for the check.
(4)
Sergeant Jim Polk finished his coffee and stepped out into the sunlight of October 30. Though the forecast called for a storm later, the sky of early afternoon was a cold blue dome dotted with crows circling high above. The sunlight was warm on his face and Polk indulged himself by standing there, face tilted upward, eyes closed, enjoying the warmth.
“Trying to get a tan, Jim?”
Polk opened his eye to see Gus Bernhardt’s florid, sweating face beaming at him from the passenger window of Unit C1, the command vehicle of the town’s small fleet of cruisers. Gus was chewing a mouthful of gum so big he looked like a cow with a cud and Polk resisted the urge to spit on him. Instead he pasted on a genial smile.
“Afternoon, Chief,” he said. “Nice day for it, huh?”
“Sunshine brings in the tourists,” Gus said, as if that’s what Polk meant; and at least that much was true because the town around them had swollen to bursting with tourists. Thousands upon thousands of them— overnighters and day-trippers, kids and adults, families and school groups. They were everywhere, going in and out of the stores like lines of worker ants. Laughing, all of them. Everyone seemed to be having tremendous fun.
Polk hated them all. He hated the smiles on their faces, he hated the hands that lovers held, he hated the grins on the faces of the kids as they showed each other the costumes they’d bought for tomorrow night. Speakers on the lampposts played music, and Polk swore to himself that if he heard one more goddamn rendition of “Monster Mash” he was going to take his hunting rifle and climb to the top of the Methodist Church and just plain open up.
