The Four Last Things

by Timothy Hallinan

  It didn't, of course. The air, and the fat man's body odor, continued to flow past me. I touched the wall to my right and the one to my left. Each time, I half-expected rats' teeth to close on my fingers. Instead, I slammed them into duct wall. Solid. That left only one direction, so I reached up. More cold air, no rats.

  Swell. Up. Ninety degrees up. But for how far? I was pretty sure that the duct was too narrow for me to climb it like a rock chimney. Anyway, rock chimneys have always scared the hell out of me.

  I rolled over onto my back and looked up. I needn't have bothered; there was nothing to see. But at least lying on my back I could bend ninety degrees. Only Eleanor could bend ninety degrees on her stomach. And I'd told her that yoga was useless.

  I sat up and then worked myself to a standing position. I was facing in the wrong direction, back the way I'd come.

  My cheekbone was beginning to throb where Needle-nose had hit it. I hadn't felt it until then. I'd been too busy. I dismissed it and made a half-turn and brought my hands up in front of me, which was trickier than it sounds. The duct was almost too narrow for my elbows.

  The wall of the shaft felt smooth and slick and slightly greasy as I slid my palms upward. Despite the chill air, I was still sweating. When I'd signed up for duct patrol, they hadn't said anything about having to go backwards.

  The edge was about six inches above my head. There the duct angled off again, going in the same general direction. Taking the long twenty-five-degree incline into consideration, that would put me just about at street level. If I could get there.

  Praying to the patron saint of private detectives, whoever that might be, I curled my fingers over the edge and tried to pull myself up. I got all the way to tiptoe before my fingers slipped and I landed on my heels again. The duct above me slanted up—not much, but enough to deny me the friction I needed.

  Now I was smelling my own sweat. This was no place to spend the rest of my life.

  The fat little man behind me coughed. It was nice to know he was where he was supposed to be, but he sounded discouragingly near. How far had I really gone?

  I tried to drag myself up again, with the same result. Okay, try something else.

  I used my right foot to worry at my left running shoe until it came off. Then I repeated the action with my left, until both shoes lay at my feet. Unfortunately, there was no way to bend down and pick them up.

  I turned around again and sat down, the shoes lumpy beneath me. Pushing them aside, I wiggled into a semiprone position, with the duct yawning above me, and slipped my hands into the shoes. I hadn't worn socks because the rain would have soaked them, so I was barefoot. The air was cold on the soles of my feet.

  With the shoes wedged onto my hands, I stood up again and turned around. I was half an inch shorter now, something I didn't really need. I realized that some obscure part of my mind was rattling off the Lord's Prayer. Bidding it to shut up, I tried to get my hands above my head, but the added thickness of the running shoes made it impossible. My forearms were too long.

  I slumped against the wall and closed my eyes, which made it no darker than it already was. Other than the cough, I hadn't heard anything behind me: no boots echoing down the hallways, no shouts of “Look in the duct.” My cheekbone hurt. Without thinking, I reached up to rub it and hit it with my shoe. That was a surprise in more ways than one. The duct was rectangular; I'd been assuming it was square. Maybe it was an answer to the Lord's Prayer.

  By crossing my arms in front of me I was able to get my hands, shoes and all, above my head. I slipped them as far into the new air shaft as I could, planted the soles firmly on the floor of the duct, stood on tiptoe, put my bare left foot against the wall behind me, and pulled.

  The shoes gave out a rubbery squeal, but they held. My right foot was off the ground. I braced it against the wall, advanced one hand an inch or two, and pulled again. Right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot, hoping the traction would hold, I inched upward.

  Just as I got my underarms over the edge, I slipped and fell. The corner of the duct slammed my chin, and my knees banged against the wall in front of me, but the shoes didn't fall off my hands. I was very grateful for that. I wasn't sure I had the strength to go back down and get them.

  It took me three more tries before I was lying on my stomach in the new duct. I heard something that sounded like an asthmatic's cough and realized that I was sobbing. I wiped my face on my shirtsleeves and breathed slowly until it passed. Now I could hear noises, but they weren't pursuing me. They were in front of me.

  After another ten or fifteen yards at a slight upward grade the duct angled left and leveled off. Light poured through the far end. Using the shoes on my hands, I pulled myself along at record speed. New Olympic event, I thought. The duct-crawl. I focused all my attention on the light as I dragged myself toward it. After what seemed like a decade it grew brighter. Then it was so bright that I had to stop and close my eyes for a moment. When I opened them I was looking at a grate.

  Well, of course. They don't leave ducts open. They put grates over them. Otherwise, you might get rats.

  It was a perfectly ordinary-looking grate, perhaps a little sturdier than was absolutely necessary. Beyond it I could see a wooden floor. Heavy electrical cables lay on the floor, and a murmur of voices burbled through the grate. Voices could pass through it, but I couldn't, at least not unless I could cut myself into long inch-square strips like a julienned potato. I'd never seen a julienned potato put itself back together again.

  I shrugged the shoes off my hands and pulled at the grate. It didn't give an inch. I pulled again, and then again. Zero. Then I had a brilliant idea. I pushed, and the grate gave way with ridiculous ease and slammed to the floor. I shoved my head and shoulders through, and a bearded man with his hair pulled back in a rubber-banded ponytail leaned down and said “Ssshh.”

  He was dressed in faded jeans and a T-shirt that read HUSSONG'S CANTINA, MEXICO. He carried a clipboard. “Ssshh,” he said again, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. Behind him, in a blaze of light, I saw the flower-bedecked set of “Celebrity Corner.” It was apparently Skippy's turn, because he was talking earnestly. The rock star, Clive, whom I remembered from a century ago, looked like he'd nodded off.

  “Boy,” I whispered to the man with the ponytail. “Have you got problems.” I wiggled the rest of the way out of the duct and started to put on my shoes.

  “I have?” he said anxiously, squatting down.

  “Filtration system's shot to shit. And this grate is loose.”

  He looked relieved. “Tell it to the Air guys,” he said. “I'm Lights.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Well, the lighting down there is pretty terrible too.”

  “Hey,” he said. “I just do the show. Talk to the Church.”

  I finished tying my shoes and stood up. “You're not Church?”

  “Puhleeze,” he said. “I'm a lighting engineer, not an asparagus. No offense, I hope.”

  “Are you kidding? I'm with the city.”

  He gestured for me to keep my voice down and glanced around the studio. “What a bunch of spaniels,” he said, “although the little girl is cute.” He looked at me and edged away. I looked down at myself. I was so filthy I would have edged away too. “Boy,” he said, “the things you guys will do for a buck. I wouldn't go down there even if I was straight.”

  “This is nothing,” I said. “I used to pick up dead animals.”

  “I bet you got some stories,” he said, taking another step. “I lit Art Linkletter once.”

  “We'll sit around and horrify each other someday,” I said. “Well, I guess I better get this grate down to Defect Control.”

  He nodded like he was glad to be rid of me, and I picked up the grate and circumnavigated the stage. People rarely look twice at someone who's carrying something, and nobody focused on me now. There was absolutely no way of knowing how much time I had. I had no idea whether the man who'd grasped the wire was dead, and I didn't really care if
Needle-nose was. Even if they were both alive, I didn't think it was likely that either of them would file a complaint soon. When I looked at my watch, it was only twelve-fifty.

  “Thank you, Skippy,” Mary Claire said over the public-address system. “That was very enlightening. Angel, would you like to say something?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Miller,” Angel said in her best Brooklynese. The kitten had fallen asleep in her lap. “And thank you, Miss deWinters. I can't wait to see your new picture.” She turned to Clive and said, “Would you gimme your autograph?”

  “If you'll give me yours,” Clive said, reviving briefly. People laughed, and I could see that beyond the lights lay a darkened auditorium that seated about three hundred. It was full of the hopeful, people still wearing their raincoats, leaning forward into the splash of light to catch every word. People who didn't know about the basement yet. I doubted that Angel knew about the basement. But who could tell what Angel knew?

  “We're going to close with a special treat,” Mary Claire said. “Some music of the moment from our very own group, the Time Signatures. I know you're going to enjoy this.”

  Lights came up to reveal the sextet who had tormented the audience at the Revealing. A blond woman whose hair looked about as flexible as the fossil record leaned toward a microphone and sang, “This is the moment . . .”

  After all I'd been through, it didn't seem fair that I'd have to listen to “The Hawaiian Wedding Song” too. I was contemplating joining the more discerning members of the audience, who were already shuffling toward the exit, when the lights on the main set went down and everybody stood up and started congratulating each other. Angel and Mary Claire shook hands all around and headed stage left, where they were joined by a slender man in beautifully tailored white linen slacks and an aqua shirt. I had to take a couple of steps closer, my grate firmly in hand, before I could be certain that it was everybody's favorite internist, Dr. Richard Merryman.

  Merryman took Mary Claire's arm and put his free hand firmly on the back of Angel's neck, parting her long blond curls to get at it. He steered them quickly away from the set. I followed.

  Merryman was talking hard and fast, obviously displeased about something and not caring who saw it. Mary Claire gazed up at him unassertively, but Angel's back was stiff and straight. At one point her steps lagged behind his, and he yanked her forward. The little girl stumbled and dropped the kitten. Merryman leaned down and picked it up roughly by the scruff of its neck. It writhed and twisted in his hand. He passed it to Mary Claire, took hold of Angel's neck again, and jerked her along in his wake. They vanished through a door at the back of the stage. The door had a little sparkly star on it, and the name ANGEL ELLSPETH. I lagged behind, scuffing my foot professionally at some imaginary irregularity in the stage floor. After a moment, Mary Claire came out alone and the door closed behind her. She looked unhappy.

  Well, I wasn't very happy either. I went down a series of steps at the edge of the stage and joined the throngs who were fleeing the implacable music. Out on the sidewalk I put my grate down in the rain and went around the corner to Alice. I drove around the block once, checking out the building that housed the TV studio and traversing the alleyway behind the hotel to locate the Borzoi's service entrances. Then, nursing my bruised cheek, I drove off to pick up Eleanor. I knew I was coming back.

  III - Heaven

  Chapter 18

  Eleanor was fuming. “You look like Jett Rink after he hit his gusher,” she said. “You've got a bad bruise on your cheek that someone should take a look at, one of your knees has bled through your pants, and your clothes are filthy.”

  I drove west on Olympic Boulevard without saying anything.

  “And your hands smell like your feet,” she said. “Simeon, are you going to tell me what's going on?”

  “How'd you find him?”

  “Just forget it.” She folded her hands primly and stared through the windshield at the rain.

  “It's the middle of the day. How do you know he'll be home? Doesn't he work?”

  She sniffed. We seemed always to be fighting in cars lately. “You could get killed,” she said to the air, “and no one would know for days.”

  “So could you. That's what I've been trying to tell you. These people do not give to UNICEF.”

  “Stop treating me like Miss World Porcelain of 1988. At the risk of being tedious, let me remind you of a few things. I'm the one they can look up in the phone book, I've been more than a little helpful so far, and I'm the one who found him. I'm also planning to write this whole story, and I think you owe me. I want to know what's happening.”

  “I think maybe you should move.”

  “Don't be dramatic. In fact, don't be anything. Just shut up and drive.”

  I drove.

  “Anyway,” she said in an acid tone, “you're supposed to be good at your job. Surely it's not anything we can't figure out.”

  “We already know who,” I said. “What we want to know is who else, and why. It's whether we can figure them out before they figure us out. And I doubt it.”

  “I don't. I'm an optimist.”

  “Are you ever.”

  “Optimism, as Larry McMurtry said, is a form of courage.”

  “It can also be a form of stupidity.”

  “Oh, Simeon. You're always so eager to stomp on anything that's growing. Except your stupid roots.”

  I didn't feel like someone who was ready to stomp on anything that was growing. But Eleanor usually knew me better than I did.

  “So what happened to your cheek?” she asked a few miles later.

  “I hurt it killing somebody.”

  “Am I supposed to believe that?”

  “Up to you.”

  “Today?”

  “Of course, today. Was I walking around with this cheek last night?”

  “Jiminy Christmas, don't you think I ought to know about it? Who do you think you are, Clint Eastwood? I don't believe this. I don't believe you could kill anybody, and if you did, I don't believe you wouldn't tell me.” She glanced discreetly at the speedometer and tightened her seat belt. Then she sighed. “I don't know, maybe I do believe you could kill somebody.”

  I didn't say anything.

  “Oh, stuff it,” she said violently. For Eleanor that was real profanity. “I don't feel like I really know you at all anymore. I'm not even sure I want to.”

  “I'm not sure that you should,” I said.

  For the next few minutes I concentrated on driving while Eleanor cracked her knuckles very deliberately, one by one. That was always a bad sign. When she started on the second joints I knew we were in for trouble.

  “Turn right on Fourth,” she said very quietly. “And pull over.”

  I made the turn and parked Alice under a big deciduous tree that still had a few leaves clinging hopelessly to its branches. Rain strummed flamenco on the roof of the car.

  “Here?” I said.

  “Here is fine. I've got something to say to you, and I want you to listen. I'm not going to rake over the past, and I'm not going to do character analysis on how you got to be the way you are. You weren't like this when I met you. You were a sweet guy who didn't know where he was going, but you were good at enjoying yourself. Now you're not so sweet anymore, and you don't seem to enjoy yourself very much either. Sometimes I look at you and it's like seeing a stranger through the window of a train. But other times, you're still Simeon.”

  I flicked off the windshield wipers.

  “Maybe it's because we've never really stopped seeing each other,” she said, “maybe if we had I'd notice a big change in you. As it is, it's been sort of day-to-day and more-or-less, like getting older. But instead of just getting older, you've been getting different.” She fiddled with the buckle of her seat belt, making a metallic snapping sound. “But you don't seem to notice that I've changed too. I've been taking care of myself for three years, Simeon. I've published two books, okay? I've got a good job, if I decide to keep it. I've be
en through some men, nothing as serious as you were, but they've been there when I decided I needed them. When I needed them. Are you listening to me?”

  I nodded.

  “I want you to stop acting like I'm the person you met all those years ago. I am involved in this. Maybe I'm in danger. If I am, I want to be able to defend myself, and you have to stop pretending that you're wearing forty pounds of armor and biceps, and I'm the fair lady who needs protection. I'm not helpless. I'm not a little girl. I don't scream when I see a mouse or faint at the sight of blood. You have no right to keep anything from me because you think it might make me safer, and I don't believe for a minute that knowing less is going to reduce my vulnerability. And if you've really killed somebody, then I want to know about it not only for me, but for you too. Simeon, I want you to talk to me.” She reached over and put her hand on top of mine.

  “Okay,” I said. “Here?”

  “Right here. Right now. If you don't, I'm going to get out of this car. You can go find him alone.”

  I told her all of it. When I'd finished she sat quietly, chewing on the ends of her hair.

  “Are you going to tell this to Hammond?” she finally said.

  “Eventually. When I have to.”

  “Why not now?”

  “I want to work it out, Eleanor. I want to get the bastard who killed her.”

  “It sounds like you already did. But of course, he's not the one you want.”

  “No,” I said. “I want the one who told him to do it.”

  “He really pulled her fingernails out,” she said, as though she was trying to digest a fact that contradicted everything she'd ever been taught.

  “Is there someplace else you can stay?”

  “I'll think about it. I suppose I could move in with Chantra for a week or so.”

  “That ought to do it. If I'm not finished by then I'll give it all to Hammond.”

  She directed a clear gaze at me. “Is that a promise?”

  “Promise.” I gave her my hand, and we shook. Then she pressed my hand to her cheek, folded her other hand over it, and lowered it to her lap.