He let the binoculars dangle around his neck and waited while his men got firing angles on all of the yellow Cadillac’s passengers before he approached. Sheriff Burton was screaming at him on the cell phone.
“I’m pinned down up here, Sheridan. Handle this and get your ass up here. Now!”
“Yes, sir. What do you want me to do with them?”
“Find out who they are, then cuff them and leave them there. And hurry.”
Sheridan hung up. “Get out of the car. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
The two men and a woman did as they were told and submitted to pat-downs from Sheridan’s men. When they were handcuffed, Sheridan spun the younger man around.
“Who are you?”
“Gabe Fenton. I’m a biologist.” Gabe smiled weakly. “Nice headsets. You guys could all be standing by to take my subscription order for Corruption Weekly.”
Sheridan didn’t react. “What are you doing here?”
“Endangered species protection. There’s a very rare creature in that cave up there.”
Val winced. “Were you supposed to tell him that?” she whispered.
“How did you know to come here?” Sheridan asked.
“This is the habitat of the California red-legged frog, very endangered. I saw your SWAT vehicle go by and the driver had that ‘I want to kill some rare frogs’ look in his eye.” Gabe looked at one of the other SWAT guys, a stocky Hispanic man who was glaring at him over the sights of his M-16. “See, there’s that look right there.”
“We didn’t bring the SWAT vehicle,” Sheridan said flatly.
“Actually,” Val jumped in, “I’m a clinical psychologist. I have experience in hostage negotiation. I heard the SWAT team being dispatched on my scanner at home, and since you’re so far north, I thought you might need some help. Dr. Fenton agreed to ride along with me.”
“We weren’t dispatched over the radio,” Sheridan said, dismissing Val as if she were an insect. He looked at Howard. “And you?”
“Howard Phillips. I’m merely here to observe a hideous ancient creature that has arisen from the darkest Stygian depths to wreak havoc on civilization and feast on human flesh.” Howard smiled (the smile of an undertaker at the news of a big bus crash, but a smile nonetheless).
Sheridan stared blankly at H.P., saying nothing.
“He’s the caterer,” Gabe said quickly. “We brought him along to get your order. I’ll bet none of you guys remembered to pack a lunch, did you?”
“Who did you tell you were coming here?”
Gabe looked at Val and Howard for some clue as to the right answer. “No one,” he said.
Sheridan nodded. “We are going to put you in the back of that truck over there for your own safety,” he said. Then to the others he said, “Lock them in the K-9 unit. We’ve got to go.”
Thirty
Theo
“Listen,” Theo said, cocking his ear toward the cave mouth. “Vehicles. The SWAT team is here.”
Molly glanced to the back of the cave. From the light of the colors Steve was flashing she could see that the pilgrims had surrounded the Sea Beast and were stroking his scales. She turned back to Theo. “You’ve got to stop the helicopters. Call them and stop it.”
“Molly, it’s not the news helicopters that will hurt him, or us. It’s those guys who just pulled up.” Theo peeked out the mouth of the cave and saw two four-wheel-drives parking down on the marine terrace, about a hundred yards from the cave mouth. Of course, he thought, they still think they need cover.
Molly brandished her broadsword, holding it only inches from Theo’s stomach. “If he’s hurt, I’ll never forgive you, Theo Crowe. I’ll track you down to the ends of the earth and kill you like the radioactive scum that you are.”
“That Kendra or Molly talking?”
“I mean it,” she screamed, almost hysterical now. Steve roared from the back of the cave.
“Don’t go nuts on me, Molly. I’m doing my best. But the only thing your pal seems likely to do is eat me. He doesn’t seemed real motivated by anything else.”
Molly slumped to her knees and hung her head as if someone had sucked the energy out of her through a valve in her boot. Theo fought the urge to comfort her, afraid that if he even touched her shoulder the Sea Beast might attack him.
Then it hit him. He flipped open his cell phone and dialed the Head of the Slug.
Mavis
Mavis Sand had spent a lifetime making mistakes and learning from them, and that perspective made her feel as if she knew what was good for people better than they knew themselves. Consequently, Mavis was a meddler. Most of the time she was content to use information as her tool of choice and rumor as her means of delivery. What someone knew—and when they knew it—controlled what they did. (The Spider, pulling digital strings from his basement web, had exactly the same philosophy.) Today she’d had a heap of problems dumped on her, none of them directly hers, and she had been pondering them all morning without much luck in coming up with a way to manipulate the information to solve them. Then the call came from Theo, and it all clicked: Theo was right, they could use the monster’s instincts to get them out of the cave, but if she played the mix right, she could solve a couple of other problems as well.
She put down the phone and Catfish said, “Who that?”
“It was Theo.”
“That ol‘ dragon ain’t et him yet? Boy must be livin a charmed life.”
Mavis leaned over the bar, close to Catfish, took his hand in hers, and began squeezing. “Sweetie, put on your friendly persuasion hat. I need you to run down to the pharmacy and pick up something for me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Catfish said, wincing as the bones in his fingers compressed under her grip.
When the Bluesman was gone, Mavis made a quick phone call, then went to the back room and dug through boxes and filling cabinets until she came up with what she was looking for: a small black box attached to a long cord with a cigarette lighter plug on the end. “Don’t worry, Theo,” she said to herself. “I put my life in the hands of machinery a long time ago, and I’m doing just fine.” She giggled and it came out sounding like the starter cranking on a fuel dry Ford.
Catfish
A Bluesman hates to be told what to do. Authority rankles him, inspires his rebellion, and plays to his need to self-destruct. A Bluesman doesn’t take to having a boss unless he’s on a chain gang (for the chain gang boss ranks below only a mean old woman and a sweet young thing in the hierarchy of the Blues Muse, followed closely by bad liquor, a dead dog, and the Man). Catfish had a boss who was a mean old woman: a distinct and disconcerting turn of the Blues screw that might have driven a lesser Bluesman to shoot hisself, get shot, get hold of some bad liquor, or bust up his guitar and take a job down to the mill. But Catfish hadn’t taken nigh unto eighty trips around that cruel, cruel sun without gaining some perspective, so he would go to the pharmacy as he was told. He would talk to the fish-fucking white boy with the combed-over hair that waved in the air like the sprung lid on a bean can. And when he was done, he would pick up his pay from the mean old woman who was holding it hostage and he would get his wrinkly Black ass out of this town and go nurse his heartbreak on the moving trap that was, is, and always shall be the road.
So Catfish strolled a rolling Delta moonwalk of a stroll (redolent of sassafras and jive) into Pine Cove Drug and Gift, and the four blue-haired chicken women behind the counter nearly tumbled over each other trying to get to the back room. Imagine it: a person of the Dark persuasion in their midst. What if he should ask for a vial of Afro-Sheen or some other ethnically oriented product with which they were totally unfamiliar? Why, the smoke alarms would melt, screaming like dying witches, when their collective minds steamed to a stop. Do we look like thrill-seekers? Wasn’t it enough that we had to put up that sign reading NO HABLA ESPANOL and acknowledge the existence of thirty percent of the population, even in the negative? No, we shall err on the side of safety, thank you, and in li
eu of sand in which to bury our heads, we shall head into the back room.
Winston Krauss, who was counting fake Zolofts behind his glass wall, looked up and saw Catfish coming down the aisle toward the counter and immediately regretted that he hadn’t installed bulletproof glass. Still, Winston was a man of the world, and you don’t indulge the fantasy of molesting dolphins without becoming familiar with the ways of people of color, for that is who dolphins prefer to hang out with, when they aren’t hanging out with the Cousteaus, or so it appeared on the Discovery Channel. He stepped out of his booth and met Catfish as he reached the counter.
“Good day, me brother-mon, ye,” Winston said in his best island dialect. “What can I be gettin for ye?” And there was that welcoming smile, only a dreadlock and a white sand beach short of a travel poster.
Catfish squinted, removed his fedora, ran a hand over his shining scalp, stepped back, turned his head to the side and studied the pharmacist for a moment, then said, “I will slap the shit out of you. You know that?”
“Sorry,” Winston said, coughing somewhat, as if trying to dislodge the errant Jamaican from his throat. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“Mavis down to the Slug sent me up to ax you somethin.”
“I’m familiar with her medical records,” Winston said, “You can have her call me if she has a question.”
“Yeah, she don’t want to call you. She want you to come down to see her.”
Winston adjusted his bolo tie. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to have her call me. I can’t leave the store.”
Catfish nodded. “That what she thought you’d say. She say to ax you if she can have a big jar of them sugar pills you selling instead medicine.”
Winston glanced at the back room where his staff was huddled like Anne Frank and family, peering out through the crack in the door. “Tell her I’ll be right over,” Winston said.
“She said to wait and come with you.”
Winston was visibly sweating now; oily beads rose on his scalp. “Let me tell the staff where I’ll be.”
“Hurry up, Flipper. I ain’t got all day,” Catfish said.
Winston Krauss shuddered, hitched up his double knits, and waddled around the counter. “Ladies, I’ll be back in few minutes,” he called over his shoulder.
Catfish leaned over the counter to where he could see the row of eyes peering out of the crack and said, “I be back in a few minutes my own self, ladies. I needs some medicine what can help me with this huge black dick I have to carry around. The weight of it like to break my back.”
There was a collective intake of breath so abrupt that the drop in pressure sprung the barometer on the wall and made Catfish’s ears pop.
Winston Krauss turned and scowled at Catfish. “Was that really necessary?”
“Man’s got to look after his reputation,” Catfish said.
The Sheriff
Burton had them cover him while he moved down through the rocks and across the marine terrace to the Blazers. He found Sheridan crouched behind the fender, his M-16 trained on the cave entrance.
“Rough morning, Sheriff?” Sheridan said, showing a hint of a smile at Burton’s disheveled suit.
Burton looked around at the other team members, who were all staring through rifle scopes at the cave entrance. “So we only have five?”
“Morales is coaching Pee-Wee Football today. The others are on regular duty. We couldn’t pull them off.”
Burton scowled. “As far as I know, they only have the one weapon, but it’s a fully automatic AK. I want two men on either side of the cave mouth, one down in that crevice where I was pinned down can deliver the gas, followed by concussion grenades. I’ll stay here with a sniper rifle to take out anyone who gets past the entry crew. Shoot anything that moves. Let’s go, five minutes. On my mark.”
“No gas,” Sheridan said.
“What?”
“No gas and no concussion. You wanted us here without checking in. That stuff is kept in the locker at County Justice. We just have the body armor and our own personal weapons.”
Burton looked around at the other men again. “You guys all have your own personal M-16s, but no grenades?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So I have a standoff? I had a standoff before, Sheridan. A standoff doesn’t do me any good. Come with me.” He pushed a fresh clip into his 9 mm. and turned to the others. “Cover us.”
Burton led the SWAT commander to a spot in the rocks just below the cave mouth. “Crowe?” Burton called. “You’ve had enough time to consider my offer!”
“Offer?” Sheridan asked.
Burton shushed him.
“I haven’t decided yet!” Theo shouted. “We’ve got thirty people in here to discuss it with and they’re not being cooperative.”
Sheridan looked at Burton. “Thirty people? We can’t shoot thirty people. I’m not shooting any thirty people.”
“Five minutes, Crowe,” Burton said. “Then you have no more options.”
“What’s the offer?” Sheridan whispered to the sheriff.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m just trying to get the subject separated from the hostages so we can take him out.”
“Then we’d better have a description of the suspect, don’t you think?”
“He’s the one in handcuffs,” Burton said.
“Well, aren’t you the fucking hero?” Sheridan shot back.
Skinner
Skinner watched from the front seat of the Mercedes as the Food Guy was loaded into the back of the Suburban with the cage in it. The Bad Guys hadn’t even left the windows cracked. How would the Food Guy breathe? He wouldn’t be able to sit in the front seat and put his head out the window either. Skinner was sad for the Food Guy.
He crawled in the backseat of the Mercedes and lay down to nap away his anxiety.
The Head of the Slug
The first thing Catfish saw when he came through the doors of the Head of the Slug was Estelle standing at the bar, and he could feel the crust peeling off his heart like old paint. Her hair was down. Brushed out, it hung to her waist. She was wearing a pair of pink overalls that had been splattered with paint over a man’s white T-shirt—his T-shirt, he realized. She looked to him like what he always thought home was supposed to look like, but as a Bluesman, he was bound by tradition to be cool.
“Hey, girl, what you doin‘ here?”
“I called her,” Mavis said. “This is your driver.”
“What I need a driver for?”
“I’ll tell you.” Estelle took his hand and led him to a booth in the corner.
Winston Krauss came through the door a second later and Mavis waved him over to the bar. “Son, I’m about to make you the happiest man in the whole world.”
“You are? Why?”
“Because I like to see people get what they want. And I have what you want.”
“You do?”
Mavis stepped up to the bar and in low, conspiratorial tones, began telling Winston Krauss the most titillating, outrageously erotic tale that she had ever told, trying the whole time to remember that the man she was talking to wanted to have sex with marine animals.
Over in the corner booth, Catfish’s modicum of cool had melted. Estelle was smiling, even as tears welled up in her eyes. “I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I thought it would put you in danger. Really.”
“I know that,” Catfish said, a gentleness in his voice that he usually reserved for kittens and traffic cops. “It just that I been runnin from this my whole life.”
“I don’t think so,” Estelle said. “I think you’ve been running to this.”
Catfish grinned. “You gonna take them old Blues off me for good, ain’t you?”
“You know it.”
“Then let’s go.” Catfish stood up and turned to where Mavis and Winston stood.
“We ready? Y’all ready?” He noticed that the front of Winston’s trousers had become overly tight. “Yeah, you ready. You sick, but you ready.”
Mavis nodded, a slight mechanical ratcheting noise coming from her neck, “Take the second turn out, not the first,” Mavis said to Estelle. “From there it hugs the coast, so there’s no hills.”
“I have to go get my mask and fins,” wailed Winston.
Thirty-one
Molly
“Has it been five minutes yet?” Molly was sitting cross-legged, her sword held across her knees. Theo jumped as if he’d been poked with an ice pick, then checked his watch. He crouched by the cave mouth, listening for the sound of either salvation or death.
“About a minute left. Where the hell are they? Molly, maybe you should find some cover.”
“What cover?” She looked around the cave. It was an open chamber; the only cover would be the darkness in the back of the chamber.
“Get behind Steve.”
“No,” Molly said. “I won’t do that.” She heard a voice come from the back of her mind. “Get to cover, you daffy broad. What, do you have a death wish?”
“I have abandonment issues. I’m not going to turn around and abandon someone else,” Molly said.
“What?” Theo said.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Fine, die. What do I care?” said the narrator.
“Bastard,” Molly said.
“What?” said Theo.
“Not you!”
“Molly, how did you get those guys to come out and drag me into the cave before?”
“I just told them to.”
“Well, take their clothes back to them and tell them to get dressed.”
“Why?”
“Just do it. And tell them to hang on to Steve’s sides and not let go, no matter what he does.”
“Now who’s nuts?”
“Molly, please, I’m trying to save him.”
The Sheriff
Burton checked his watch. “That’s it. Get into position. We’re going in.”
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