you’re not alone?”
“I haven’t been alone in two weeks,” he said. “My phones are bugged, my apartment, even my car. When I’m asleep they switch on a camera with an infrared lens that’s above the smoke detector in my ceiling.”
“That’s a very good sign,” said the woman. “If the bugs and cameras had disappeared, that would be a very bad sign. It would mean they expected that pretty soon the police would be taking a close look at everything you used to own.”
“It’s not the sort of sign that makes me want to rush out and buy next year’s calendar.”
“Don’t worry about what didn’t happen,” said the woman. “Worry about what you have to make happen.”
“What?”
“The instant that the box opens—”
“What box?”
“Just listen. When the box opens, you get out and walk—do not run—to the exit door that’s facing you. Go outside, get into the black Ford that’s parked in the reserved space at the end of the lot. Drive north on Route 15. It will take you to St. George, Utah. That’s about all the time I can buy you. You’ll still be an hour from Cedar City. Don’t stop to pee or something, just keep driving. There’s a small airport in Cedar City, and your ticket is reserved at the Southwest Airlines desk under the name David Keller. From now on, that’s you. The papers I promised you are in the wallet under the seat of the car. There’s a suitcase in the trunk. You’ll just make your flight, and you’ll be in Denver before daylight.”
“What about the other stuff?”
“Everything you’ll need at first is in the suitcase. The diplomas, honorable discharge, bank books, and so on are in your new apartment.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“That gets me out, but what about you? They’ve seen you with me. They’ll have nobody to take it out on but you.”
Her eyes settled on him in puzzled curiosity, studied his face for a moment as though they had found something rare and unfamiliar there, then drifted toward the stage. “I’m good at this, and you couldn’t help me anyway. Don’t think about me. Think about what you have to do.”
“Anything else you haven’t told me?”
“Volumes,” she said. “I like to spend more time with my runners before I set them free, but you don’t have it to spare. All you really need to know is that if you never make a mistake you’ll live forever. Right now, just concentrate on tonight. If you live through this, you’ll catch on.”
“What if they’ve got somebody waiting at the back door for me?”
She placed her long, thin fingers on his hand, and her voice went soft and low, like a mother talking to her child. “Then hit him fast, and hurt him as badly as you can. He won’t have the stomach for a one-on-one fight for keeps. It takes much more courage to spend two weeks pretending you don’t know you’re in trouble than it does to join a pack stalking a lone man. I’ve been watching you, and I’ve been watching them. You can do this.”
He sighed, but his lungs had taken in so little air it came out in a shallow puff. “I sure hope you’re right. I assume you took your fee out of the money when you took it to Denver?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. A year from now, maybe two, you’ll think about the way your life is. And you’ll remember how you felt tonight. And then you’ll send me a present.”
He raised his eyebrows. “How do you know that?”
“I don’t. But over the years I’ve gotten a lot of presents.”
As the house lights dimmed, Pete raised his eyes to see where tonight’s shadows were. He found them in the tier above, seated in a booth where they could catch a glimpse of him in profile whenever they wished. He leaned back, hiding his face from them, but the woman gently leaned on his back and pushed him forward as she whispered in his ear, “Let them see you. Keep your face where they can see it.”
A small projectile spitting sparks like a comet streaked over their heads. It exploded at center stage in a loud bang and a billow of lighter-fluid flame six feet high, followed by a fog of dry-ice smoke that quickly spread from curtain to curtain and drifted over the footlights into the audience.
A bright spotlight beam appeared and frantically swept across the wall of smoke, trying to penetrate it and find some solid object. In a moment a few wisps seemed to congeal and resolve themselves into the shape of an old, bent, wizened woman in bulky rags, leaning on a cane. She hobbled forward out of the fog haltingly, then seemed to notice the audience for the first time. Pete looked at the people around him. They were hushed with surprise, as though they had forgotten that they had bought tickets and sat here sipping watered drinks waiting for this.
The old woman glared at them, then gave a low unearthly cackle and lifted the cane into the air. As it reached the height of her shoulder it shortened and narrowed, and as it went over her head it was clearly a wand.
She tapped herself on the top of the head and the rags instantly incinerated in a flash of sparks and smoke. The spotlight fought its way through the smoke and found in her place a young, shapely woman who stood erect and wore a sparkling gold spandex skin that seemed little brighter than her mane of honey-blond hair. The deep, resonant voice of the announcer shouted, “Ladies and gentlemen … Miranda!” and then was drowned in music and applause.
Pete leaned to the side and said, “She’s got my attention. I hope she’s got theirs.”
The woman beside him watched his eyes. “If she doesn’t yet, she will. She used to strip.”
Miranda paced the empty, dim stage like a cat, doing the impossible for the willfully gullible, receptive crowd. First she reached into the air and began plucking things out of it: white doves that couldn’t have been hidden in her brief costume and flew out over the audience, then returned to a perch at the back of the stage; a single rose that she tossed over her shoulder onto the floor; then, one after another, four rabbits. It was as though she were completing the compulsory round of a conjurers’ competition, executing a sampling of the standard tricks.
Only slowly did it occur to the audience that something strange and unplanned was happening. The rose she had thrown behind her was changing. It grew longer and longer, then arched upward a little. Then it began to writhe and slither. Miranda produced a magician’s top hat, put it on her head, then took it off and held it before her stomach. The rabbits, one by one, ran toward her, leapt into the hat, and disappeared inside it. She collapsed the hat and flicked it offstage like a Frisbee.
The audience was distracted. The rabbit trick was a bit out of the ordinary, but the audience was captured by that rose. It was now seven or eight feet long. The petals had fallen off, and now it arched its back, slowly raising its head behind Miranda, and spread its hood. It was a king cobra, its green-black skin looking oily in the lights. As she took her bow, it coiled to strike. Miranda seemed to sense something was bothering her audience. She frowned at them, then reached up into the dark air again, produced a pearl-handled revolver, pivoted gracefully, and shot the serpent through the eye. It jerked spasmodically, then fell. A wind passed across the stage, swirling the smoke in little eddies. The snake crumbled into dry flakes that blew away, leaving only a new, fresh rose in its place. Miranda squeezed the pistol in her hands until it became a ball the color of mercury, threw it into the air, and watched it explode.
While Miranda took another bow, Jane studied the audience, trying to detect anyone watching the two shadows for a signal. After a moment she was satisfied that they had come alone. A company like Pleasure, Inc., could afford as many as they wanted, but they wouldn’t put more than two on Pete Hatcher. Pete wasn’t crazy enough to attack even that many. She leaned close to him and whispered, “Your time is here. Take one last look at it, and then never come back. This part of your life is already over.”
He turned to look at her face, but it was veiled in darkness again. The music grew loud and frantic, and the audience murmured and then drew in its breath as Miranda took a little run and jumped off the eight-foot stage onto the floor. She danced up the aisle, glanced at a man sitting at one of the tables, reached into his ear, and extracted a pair of satin and lace panties. The man grinned appreciatively, but the woman beside him looked, then bared her teeth in something that wasn’t a smile. Her left hand moved furtively along her haunch.
The audience gasped its religious conviction that the hand was quicker than the eye, and as Miranda danced along the tables, their approval drowned out all but the beat of Miranda’s music.
As she drew near Pete Hatcher, he turned his eyes away from her toward Jane. She said, “Good luck, Pete,”
