Echols chewed on his upper lip while framing an answer. Finally, he said, “Mac, we’re a little edgy about doing any more of those.”
Fain snapped forward in the judge’s chair. His pale gray eyes bored into Echols. “We? We? Who is this we you’re talking about? I’m the one who does the business. I’m the one with the power. Me. McAllister Fain. So you want me to cancel the national tour? All right. I may not agree, but I’ll go along. But what are you saying now? Are you saying I should not bring anyone else back to life? Because ‘we’ are a little edgy? What if it was your wife, Warner? Or your little boy died suddenly? Would you be edgy then, or would you want me to bring him back?”
Echols held up both hands in defense. “Mac, Mac, I’m only thinking about your career. Moral questions are not my department. The thing is, you’ve done enough now to assure you of a sizable income for years to come. Especially after the national coverage we got on Kevin Jackson. All it takes now is careful management of the spin-offs and you’ll be a rich man for the rest of your life.”
“I’m already rich,” Fain said. “I’ve seen the bankbooks. How much more money can I use? I want to give something back. This power I have must not be hoarded. I can give the gift of rebirth. A second chance at life. What would people say about me if I had the gift and didn’t use it?”
For several moments the room was deathly quiet. The only sound was a persistent mockingbird outside the window. Finally, Warner Echols said, “Mac, you’re starting to sound like …”
“Like what?” Fain snapped when he hesitated.
“Never mind,” Echols said quietly. “I’ll start the wheels turning.”
“Start them turning now, Warner. I want a list of potential returnees in my hands by this afternoon.”
“Returnees,” Echols repeated dryly.
“Call them whatever you want; just get me the list.”
“This afternoon,” Echols said, and rose to leave.
“Another thing,” Fain said, stopping him. “Victoria Clifford. I want her out of here.”
“Victoria? What’s the trouble?”
“No trouble; she’s getting on my nerves is all. Pull her out and get me somebody else.”
“Whatever you say, Mac.”
Warner Echols left the office without further comment.
• • •
Fain tossed the half-dollar into the air, caught it on the back of his other hand, flipped his hand, and the coin disappeared. He got up from the chair and walked over to the window. The mockingbird still sang its varied repertoire somewhere in the branches of the California live oak outside. Fain scanned the tangled branches but could not locate the bird.
He walked back to the desk, sat down, and drummed his fingers. It was a rare minute alone for him these days. In minutes, he knew, someone would come through the door with papers for him to sign, a question for him to answer, a decision to be made. But for this minute or two he could enjoy the solitude.
Or could he? Having people with him at least kept him from thinking, and lately he found unwanted thoughts creeping into his mind. As convinced as he was about the rightness of what he was doing, there were times when unasked questions nagged at him for an answer. Times when he was alone.
Maybe he had been hasty in getting rid of Victoria. She was, after all, available to him anytime he wanted her. No, he decided, Victoria was a purpose girl. She was looking out for Victoria, and the time she spent with him was strictly for her own benefit.
Without really thinking about it, he picked up the phone and punched the private-line button — the one that cut off the recorder. He keyed in a number and listened as the receiver buzzed in his ear. It rang four times on the other end. He was about to hang up, then:
“Hello?”
So surprised was Fain to hear Jillian’s voice that at first he could not find his own. He had not even tried to call her in weeks, and before that he got only her answering machine.
“Hello?” she said again.
“Hi,” he got out at last. “I caught you at home.”
“Hello, Mac.”
The familiar husky voice was like mulled wine.
“How’ve you been?” he asked.
“Fine. I’ve been reading about you.”
“They keep me pretty busy.”
“So it seems.”
“What about you? Are you working?”
“I’m in Three Candles; it’s a bedroom farce. Nothing heavy, but I’ve got a nice part.”
“Sounds great. Where is it?”
“At the Northside Theatre, an equity-waiver house in the Valley.”
“I’d like to come and see you.”
“I wish you could, but we close tomorrow night, and we’re sold out.”
“Oh, well …” He cleared his throat. “Maybe we could get together?”
A long pause on Jillian’s end.
“I don’t know, Mac. I’m pretty busy. And I know you are, too.”
“I’ll make time. And you’re closing tomorrow.”
“I go right back into rehearsals.”
The pause this time was on his end.
“I see. Well, glad to hear you’re making it, kid.”
“I don’t know about making it, but it’s good to be working.”
“Yeah. Let’s keep in touch, okay?”
“Sure, Mac.”
“G’bye then.”
He hung up the phone and for several minutes sat looking down at the dead instrument. Outside, the mockingbird had stopped singing.
• • •
The return of McAllister Fain to the resurrection business was given wide and favorable media coverage, thanks to the publicity department of Federated Artists. The first carefully chosen subject was a city fireman who died of smoke inhalation while rescuing several elderly patients from a nursing home. The fireman’s family was tearfully grateful, but Fain waved away their thanks. The mayor and city council voted unanimously to give Fain a special commendation. His modest acceptance on national television would have done credit to the young Jimmy Stewart.
The next was a sixteen-year-old girl in the San Fernando Valley. Despondent over a failed love affair, she sealed up the garage, started the engine of the family Caprice, and sat behind the wheel, inhaling carbon monoxide. They found her the next morning. The pleas of the grief-stricken parents persuaded Fain to break one of his own rules and bring back a suicide.
A popular television-series star died under anesthesia during cosmetic surgery. Fain brought her back, to the joy of her international fan clubs. The media failed to report that the star was also a client of Federated Artists.
To prove that he served not only the rich and famous, Fain resurrected a transient who was asphyxiated while trying to sleep inside a barrel recently used to haul toxic chemicals. The man’s gratitude at being restored to his meager life was limited.
Having broken one of his rules with the young suicide, Fain had less trouble breaking the one against working with trauma victims. Especially in a good cause. A policeman was shot to death by a doped-up armed-robbery suspect not far from Fain’s old apartment in Echo Park. The officer was killed by a bullet that entered his cheek and traveled upward through the brain. After he was revived the wound refused to heal, but that was overlooked in the general celebration of the hero’s return.
From the shooting victim it was a short step for Fain to take a young working mother of three who had been struck down in a crosswalk by a hit-and-run driver. He performed the short ceremony, which now came as naturally to him as the Pledge of Allegiance, and the mangled body stirred to life. Doctors doubted that they could put her back together in a recognizable shape, but that was their problem. McAllister Fain had triumphed again.
It became inconvenient for Fain to travel to wherever the deceased happened to lie, so it was decided that a centralized location would be provided where the victims could be brought to him. The site selected was a theater on Vine Street that had begun life in the 1930s as a movie
palace. In 1955 it had been refurbished as a television studio, and there originated many of the comedy-variety shows of the day. The present owner was losing money renting it out for rock videos, and he was happy to accept the inflated offer made by Federated Artists out of the ever-growing profits of McAllister Fain.
While one triumph followed another for Fain, he became ever further removed from the public that clamored for a glimpse of him. While his earliest performances had been under makeshift circumstances, sometimes surrounded by strangers, he now worked on a stage with the latest in professional lighting and sound. The live audience was carefully controlled.
He was surrounded at all times by F-A security personnel and by a growing entourage who leaped to grant his every whim and shielded him from any adverse comments. He was scheduled for meetings, luncheons, appearances, telecasts, and script conferences during every waking hour. Fain was kept so thoroughly focused on the progress of his own fortunes that he was unaware of events unfolding in other parts of the city.
• • •
Leanne Kruger sat hunched forward in her darkened room before her dressing-table mirror. She looked into the shadowed eyes of the dim image in the glass and shivered. The face, caked with makeup and puffed out of proportion, belonged to a stranger. Leanne crushed the bottle of cologne she was holding. The fingers of her hand were deeply lacerated. No blood flowed from the cuts. She never bled anymore. And she never healed.
It was not only her face but her mind that troubled Leanne. In moments of lucidity like this one, she felt despair at what was happening to her. At other times — and they were growing more frequent — she felt a wild, unfocused rage and a need for revenge against … against whom?
Lately, voices filled her head. Strange voices of people she had never known. They reached out to her, called to her. There had been only one at first — the voice of a young boy. She heard it faintly the first time a week or so after her return. A young boy, alone and frightened. Then there had been another. Not so young but still less than an adult. Each day the voices grew louder — the words more distinct but still garbled.
For a while there were just the two of them. They called to Leanne, cried out for help. She denied the voices at first. Fought against them. Tried to close them out. But as she began to see the changes in her body and feel her mind slipping loose, she began to listen.
Now there were more voices. Three, six, ten. All of them lost and in pain, feeling the things she felt. Leanne sent her own thoughts out to them and sensed that they received her.
It was time to act.
One thought burned clearly through the fog that had dimmed her mind. She had to leave this house. She had to go to the owners of the voices. She could not have named the people or the meeting place, but something like a physical force pulled her. She would find them.
She rose from the padded bench that faced the mirror and walked out of the bedroom. The light was brighter in the hall, and Leanne winced. She had lost count of the days since last she had left the bedroom.
At the foot of the stairs Elliot came to meet her. His expression told her more clearly than the mirror what her face had become. He tried not to show it, but it was there. The horror.
“Leanne! Are you all right?”
She walked past him, saying nothing.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.” Like some disobedient child.
“Wait! You can’t go out like that.”
She wore green satin lounging pajamas, a short belted robe, and slippers. What was wrong with that? Leanne continued toward the door.
Elliot moved directly in front of her. Reflexively, he turned his head away, then forced himself to look. “I can’t let you go outside.”
“Get out of my way.” Even to her own ears Leanne’s voice sounded harsh and unfamiliar. She was unaccustomed to using it lately.
“No, stop.” Elliot took hold of her by the shoulder.
With a sweep of her arm she sent him stumbling across the floor and into the wall. He went to his knees, stunned as much by Leanne’s phenomenal strength as by the impact.
She opened the heavy front door and stepped out into the night, letting the darkness close around her like a warm bath. By the time Elliot Kruger came out and shouted for the security guard, Leanne was gone.
• • •
The day after Leanne Kruger disappeared in Bel Air, Alberto Ledo came home in Alhambra to find his wife looking even more distraught than usual for these trying days.
“Maria, what is it?” he asked, hurrying to the front door, where she stood, teary-eyed, biting hard on a knuckle.
“Miguelito is gone,” she said.
“Gone? What do you mean gone?”
“He didn’t come home from school today. I waited and I waited, and finally I called the school. He never even went there.”
“But you sent him off this morning.”
“Yes, but you know how he has been lately. He acted very strange, wouldn’t even talk to me. I should never have let him go.”
Alberto took her in his arms. “It is not your fault. You were right — Miguel should have seen a doctor. I should have listened to you.”
“Berto, what will we do?”
“Find our boy. I’ll get the men in the neighborhood to help me. If we can’t find him, then we will call in the police.”
• • •
At about the same time, a spirited basketball game stopped suddenly in Willowbrook as a woman walked out onto the asphalt playing surface. Sometimes girls would come and stand around, making suggestive remarks while the boys played and pretended to ignore them, but older women, mothers, never came to the playground.
“You boys,” she said.
They watched her, silent, wary.
“You … Nero Krutcher, Elray Dickenson, you … Porky. Come over here.”
Reluctantly, the three boys disengaged themselves from the others and slouched over to the woman. She looked at each of them in turn, her dark face creased with worry.
“Any you boys seen my Kevin?”
Three heads rolled solemnly from side to side.
“You his friends. He always with you when he ain’t home.”
Nero Krutcher, his bare muscular torso gleaming with sweat, spoke in a mumble. “He ain’t been with us. We seen him, you know, on the street two three times, but he don’t hang out with us no more.”
“He didn’t come home last night or the night before,” Urbana Jackson said. “I’m worried he might be in trouble or hurt or somethin’.”
The boys shrugged. The short, stocky one looked down at his new Nike court shoes.
“You know somethin’ you not tellin’ me, Porky?”
“Some white dude came around lookin’ for him,” Porky Edwards mumbled.
“Not the police?”
“No. Man said he was writin’ a story.”
“And you ain’t seen Kevin?”
“Not since …” Porky looked at the others — “three days back? Yeah, three days. Just saw him for a minute across the street. Looked kinda sick.”
“Well …” The woman seemed to want to ask more questions but abruptly changed her mind. “All right. You see him, you tell him get hisself home, hear?”
“We’ll do it,” Porky said.
The three boys watched Urbana Jackson, suddenly grown older, walk out of the playground. Then they returned to the game.
• • •
The surface under his feet undulated like a poorly filled water bed. McAllister Fain fought to move, but he could make no headway. In the shadows around him were … things. They rustled and hissed at him. Obscene little sounds. They were coming for him, closing in.
He tried to run, but the billowing surface mocked him, blocked him from any escape. The things moved closer. They multiplied and pushed in on him. He fell, bouncing in slow motion as they covered him with their rotting, stinking bodies. He tried to claw his way out, but he came away with handfuls of loose dead flesh.
Fain sat up in bed, his eyes wide and staring at the jiggling shadow pattern made by the trees outside his window. His pajamas were soaked through with sweat.
Gradually, the horror of the dream dissipated, and his breathing returned to normal. There were maybe a dozen other people sleeping somewhere in the big stone house, but never in his life had he felt so alone. He lay back down but slept no more before the dawn.
Chapter 24
Warner Echols slid his Porsche 911 to a stop in the gravel driveway in front of Eagle’s Roost and leaped from the cockpit before the engine had stopped turning over. He dashed up the steps to the entrance and banged on the carved oak door, ignoring the bell.
The maid who answered the door recognized Echols and admitted him at once, stepping back out of the way when she saw the look on his face.
“Where is he?” Echols demanded. He gripped the rolled copy of the Los Angeles Times in his fist like a weapon.
“Mr. Fain?” the maid said.
“Hell yes, Mr. Fain. Who do you think?”
“H-he’s relaxing in the hot tub.”
“Relaxing,” Echols repeated through clenched teeth. He pounded through the great entrance hall and on out toward the terrace where Fain had directed them to put in a hot tub.
The maid watched the agent’s retreating back with wide, frightened eyes.
• • •
The water bubbled and steamed and swirled about the interior of the six-foot redwood tub. The effect, according to the ads, was supposed to be soothing, but neither of the occupants looked particularly at ease.
“Damn it!” Mac Fain scowled at the soggy Marlboro that was falling apart between his fingers. “Why don’t they make those things waterproof?” He wadded the debris into a small ball and dropped it over the edge of the tub. He took a long pull from the Bloody Mary that was balanced on the wooden ledge.
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