“That’s the one. Well, if I had married someone named Corrina and if we’d had a son named Jamie and if I had lost him in the war, I now kind of know how that would have felt.”
He had surprised me in many ways. Now I surprised myself by being unable to reply.
At the door again, after picking up the bag of money, I was able to say, “I’ll do my best to come back one day, sir.”
“Everyone calls me Hutch.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do my best to come back, and when I do, we’ll go to a thrift shop.”
He bit his lip and nodded. “Well. All right, then. I’m going to have a cookie now.”
“Have one for me.”
“Splendid. Yes. I will indeed. I’ll have two.”
I stepped outside and closed the door.
Not immediately able to proceed, I stood there, inexpressibly grateful that my life, for all its terrors, is so filled with moments of grace.
FORTY-THREE
THE SATCHEL CONTAINING THE FOUR BOMB TRIGGERS had grown so heavy that I needed all my strength and determination to carry it into the garage and stow it in the trunk of the Mercedes.
I zipped open the bag and, in the trunk light, found that it contained nothing more than I had put into it aboard the tugboat.
Relying on my psychic magnetism both to guide me through the fog without a major collision and to lead me to a pay phone, I drove away from Hutch’s place.
In these streets that seemed as mystic as they were misted, Hoss Shackett perhaps traveled in desperation and rage, either hoping to resuscitate the plan to incinerate four cities or preparing to flee justice, or seeking the monkey in the mechanism, the cause of his current misfortune.
The monkey, who had a highly active imagination, could not help worrying about the chief, because in his monkey heart he knew, just
The downside of psychic magnetism is that it occasionally leads me to a person whom I wish to avoid. This is because every effort that I make to block him from my thoughts is defeated by my constant worry that I will come face to face with him. And even if I succeed in pushing him from my conscious mind, the treacherous subconscious continues to fret about him. Then the object of my dread is either drawn to me-reverse psychic magnetism-or I to him, and often at just the wrong moment.
Therefore, to the exclusion of all else, I concentrated on finding a pay phone as I piloted the Mercedes. Pay phone, pay phone, pay phone.
Since cell phones have become ubiquitous, public pay phones have become more difficult to find. Someday the telephone will be a small voice-activated chip embedded just behind the jawbone and under the ear, and then cell phones will be as outmoded as the coin-operated variety that they have gradually but steadily replaced.
Those commentators who explain our world to us and who tell us how we should feel about it will call the embedded phone “progress.” And when someone from the government wishes to speak with you, they will always know where to reach you and, because of your implant’s transponder signature, where to find you.
This will go a long way toward encouraging the New Civility and toward discouraging the endless quarreling and tiresome debate that characterize our current society, which to so many impatient citizens seems old and tired. All that has been will be blown away, and you may be frightened sometimes by all the changes, but those who have the perspective and the ability to shape societal consensus are as sure as they have ever been about anything that, in the end, you will like your new world and feel that it is a paradise on earth, so just shut up already.
In the blinded night, wondering if eventually my fate would be much like Samson’s, whose eyes had been put out and who had been imprisoned in Gaza, I arrived by psychic magnetism and Mercedes in the parking lot of a convenience store, outside of which stood a pay phone.
Because I did not want these calls to be traced back to Birdie Hopkins’s cell, which would be big trouble for her, I went into the store, bought a bottle of aspirin and a Pepsi, and got change for the public phone.
After taking two aspirin, I tasked the information operator with finding me the numbers of the nearest FBI and Homeland Security field offices.
I called the FBI in Santa Cruz and told them about the nuclear weapons aboard the seagoing tugboat beached at the mouth of Hecate’s Canyon. I suggested that they immediately contact the Coast Guard to confirm that such a vessel had indeed run aground, and I warned them that Chief Hoss Shackett was among the people who had conspired to import those bombs.
The agent with whom I spoke was initially patient in the way that he would have been when listening to an earnest citizen discuss the necessity of all Earthlings wearing aluminum-foil skullcaps to prevent extraterrestrials from reading our thoughts.
As the telling details of my story accumulated, however, he became more involved. Then riveted. When the time arrived for me to hang up, he brought to bear all the tricks of psychology that a good agent knows, intent on keeping me on the line, teasing from me some detail that would lead to my identification, and convincing me that the bureau was prepared to reward me with a monument in Washington, my face on a postage stamp, and seventy-two virgins provided
I hung up and, in the fashion that I had divined my way to a pay phone, I proceeded to the church served by Reverend Charles Moran, who would never know that I had prevented him from killing his wife and committing suicide this very night.
The rectory was separated from the church by a courtyard in which gnarled and spiky abstract sculptures, apparently representing eternal truths, scared the crap out of me more than once as they loomed abruptly out of the fog.
I went around to the back of the church, to the corner occupied by the sacristy. The door was locked.
Assuming that the good reverend and his wife were enjoying the deep sleep of the sinless devout, I used the butt of Valonia’s pistol to break one pane in a sacristy window. I reached through, found the latch, and slipped inside.
I switched on my flashlight and oriented myself. Then I went through an open door into the sanctuary.
Turning on the church lights would unnecessarily risk drawing unwanted attention, which in this instance was any attention of any kind from anyone.
Besides, in this small way, I was reducing my carbon footprint. Although, having prevented the detonation of four nuclear weapons, I suppose that I had earned enough carbon credits to live the rest of my life high on the hog if I wished.
Above the altar, the abstract sculpture of Big Bird or the Lord, or whatever, did not look down at me accusingly, because it had no eyes.
I descended the altar platform, went through the chancel gate, and proceeded to
