The Last Hot Time

by John M. Ford

  "Yeah, sure." Danny looked at the body. "Don't touch the blood, right?"

  "It won't soak through unbroken skin. But yeah, don't."

  Danny pulled down his suspenders and took off his shirt. There was a waterproof apron hanging against the wall. He reached for a pair of surgical gloves, then found a heavy rubber pair.

  The body was wearing a white cotton shirt with ruffles down the front, and thin leather bands with silver buckles wrapped around her forearms. Danny cut away the shirt front with scissors. He cut off the straps, too, so he didn't have to look at them.

  There was a hole near the heart, another on the left flank, by the floating ribs, a third in the abdomen—when had that happened? He was impressed that the Ellyll had gone so far with those wounds. The wonderful silver hair was matted and vile. McCain's shot to the forehead seemed like overkill, unless it was something to do with the pale girl. . . . There were a couple of long bluish marks around the throat that didn't make any medical sense, but he put the question aside.

  He had seen plenty worse, riding the van, in the County ER. learning the trade. Shotguns. Traffic accidents; a little bullet had nothing on a pickup truck for kinetic energy. And farm machinery-was hell on muscle and bone.

  Death made a difference, too. A dead body didn't move or pulse or clutch or moan. When the life had faded out under you. after you'd pounded and stuck, breathed and fought for it, you felt something. You couldn't let it last, because there'd be another run any minute, but it was bad while it held on. A body you just found, though—when the bullets or the truck bumper or the tons of corn falling down the silo had finished the job before you got there— there was nothing but the taxi ride to the morgue. Meat delivery some of the guys called it.

  Retractor, probe. He thought he heard a click, but there wasn't enough light. He tossed the probe down and opened drawers until he found a headband light. Yeah, there the little bastard was. Dissecting knife. Forceps. He examined the slug: it hadn't deformed much, looked like an ordinary hardball. At home, people had mostly used hollowpoints on each other. He tossed it into a steel basin, where it gave a rolling clang.

  The other chest shot had gotten behind a rib. Danny got a spreader on the bone, cracked it out. Hemostat, to pull back the mangled heart wall; it was tough and kept slipping. Light on metal. Clang.

  "Coffee's on," Stagger Lee said, and put a big china mug on the counter.

  "Thanks. Halfway there." The coffee was muddy-looking, and had a sharp, sweet smell. It burned the back of his throat, not with heat.

  "What's in this?"

  "Irish. Just drink it slow. The comfort of mankind."

  There was brown sugar in it, and thick cream. It did taste good. Danny took a long sip of it, then noticed his glove left a bloody print and wrapped the mug in a towel.

  The bullet in the lower thorax was deep. He undid the woman's belt, started to unfasten the fly buttons, then just got the shears and cut his way in. It wasn't anything like undressing her. Meat forgave everything. He made a Y-shaped cut, pulled back the points and got retractors and elastic on them. The liver was a strange coppery color, and he didn't see a spleen.

  Stagger Lee said, "You know what you're doing. I just dug like Fred C. Dobbs."

  "You do this often?"

  "When it needed doing."

  Danny thought about objecting to the answer, but didn't. "What's it for?"

  "Mr. Patrise didn't talk to you about this?"

  "No."

  "The body goes back to the Ellyllon. Sometimes they take it over Division to Elfland, sometimes not. It's their fancy Borgia politics, nothing to do with us." He looked down at the deep incision. "We take all of our stuff back."

  The third bullet went into the pan.

  Stagger said, "Do you need help?"

  "No."

  "I'll be in the other room. I quit being curious about brains a while ago."

  "Go to bed if you want."

  "No, I'll wait."

  The knife went around the forehead, the scalp peeled back. The electric skull saw buzzed right through the bone. The brain didn't look any different from a human's, not that Danny's job had involved much neurosurgery. He was getting tired. He used the long-bladed knife and cut out a wedge, as from a watermelon, pried out the bullet and shoved the section back. He put the bowl of skull back in place and tugged the scalp down. "That's it," he said. "What now?"

  "That's all," Stagger Lee said. "I'll call to have the body collected, get the maids to clean up in here."

  "I can do it."

  "We've got maids. You're a specialist. Get your—" He looked at the mug with its pink stains, wiped it, carefully poured the contents into a paper cup. "Here. Call it a night. Remember, poker game's Monday. Let me know."

  Danny didn't object. He carried the coffee up to his room, took a short hot shower and fell into bed.

  Something didn't add up right about the bullet business. It might be true about sending the body back to Elfland, it might even have been true about removing the World stuff; but it didn't feel true—at least, not like all of the truth.

  He didn't think anymore, he didn't want to. He slept.

  There was a tall woman there—really tall, somewhere over six feet—in a red flannel shirt, black vest and jeans, blazing away with a Tommy gun. Danny recognized her from the raid on the bottling plant. She turned her head. "Hi," she said.

  "Hello. I'm . . . Doc."

  "Just a sec." She pulled off her soundproof earmuffs. "Hi," she said again. "You said you were Doc, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "We didn't have a chance to get introduced the other night. I'm Katie Silverbirch. Long Tall Katie if I'm not there to hear it." She pulled the magazine out of the Thompson. "Come to play?"

  Danny gestured at the weapon. "I never shot one of those before. I was going to ask Jesse about it."

  "Jesse's busy, I think. But he taught me, and I can teach you. If that'll do."

  "That'd be great. Thank you."

  "Get yourself some goggles and a set of muffs. Right over there."

  When Danny was equipped, Katie showed him how to load and work the gun. "You've basically got two useful stances. If you really want to hit targets, you hold it like a rifle, bring it up to your eye, like this. If you can brace against a corner, that's even better; gives you some cover, too." She lowered the weapon to just above her waist, leaned forward on the balls of her feet. "Hipshooting isn't very accurate, but if you've got to charge through a door, it makes the bad guys duck. And a Thompson throws so much lead you'll probably hit something. This is the way." She leaned into the gun and fired a burst, tearing the midsection out of the paper silhouette at the end of the range. She handed Danny the gun. "Try it."

  He did. The Thompson bucked like a firehose under full stream, but he clenched hard and got some of the bullets into the target.

  " 'S'okay," Katie said. "What do you think made all those other holes in the wall—moths?"

  "How long did it take you to learn?"

  "Awhile. But I was handling a chainsaw when 1 was four. It's all in the control."

  "Four?"

  "My folks are loggers, up in Michigan. The Peninsula."

  "That's the skinny north part, right?"

  She laughed. "Right. How about you?"

  "Farmers. Iowa."

  "Came 'bout as far. Call strong down there?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "The call to come here. You know, to where the magic's strong. My Mama calls it medicine. She's Ojibwa. Try changing out the magazine." As Danny did, Katie said, "I didn't know what it was at first. I just had some dreams, and a funny feeling when I saw clouds in the south. But Mama knew. She said to Dad, 'Girl's had a vision. She's gone go.'

  "My dad, he's a big old Finn, but he's got medicine of his own. . . . Anyway, Mama packed me up, and said goodbye. Dad drove me to Green Bay, to the train station, and he said goodbye. Don't think he could have done it with Mama there. The way he did it, he could go back home and tell
Mama I'd gotten on the train all right, everything was fine. So what did your folks say, when it happened?"

  "They didn't want me to go." Danny put the gun down, thinking hard. He thought he'd gone away on his own account. What did it change if something had made him do it? "We argued a lot about it."

  "Oh." Katie chewed on her lip, and then said, "I got scared, on the way. I got off the train when it stopped in Milwaukee, and I thought about just not going on. But it was dark, and when I looked out on the lake and saw the Fire glow ... I got back on. I don't know what would have happened if it had been daytime."

  Danny told her about the old man at the truck stop, with his box of Bibles. "Maybe . . . there's always a last chance to change your mind." He wasn't at all sure he believed yet in a call, but he couldn't deny that it made sense.

  "Turn back, O man," Katie sang without much of a tune, "forswear thy foolish ways."

  Danny said, "Do you still hear from your folks?"

  "Mama writes every month. Dad's not much of a writer, but he always puts a line or two in. Sends a photo, sometimes. You know what a bloodstopper is?"

  "No."

  "Some people can stop bleeding, with a word, sometimes just by willing it. This is old, long before the elves came back. All the loggers know about it; somebody'd take an ax in the foot, or a bucksaw right through the hand, and they'd call the bloodstopper. Even if he was on the phone, he'd work the charm, and the bleeding would just quit."

  "You've seen that?"

  "Yes. My dad can do it, and on the drive to Green Bay he taught me. A man can only teach a woman, and a woman has to teach a man." She paused, put her hands together. "I haven't worked it. Shade medicine's strange—the elves' and ours both. I'm not sure of it. Not like Tommy." She touched the gun. "The Ojibwa say that everything you are is a gift from the spirit world, and until you have those gifts inside you, you aren't really anything."

  Katie smiled crookedly at Danny, as if she wanted him to answer that.

  He smiled back, and nodded. He didn't have an answer.

  wver a late lunch Monday, Stagger Lee said, "How long has it been since you went to a movie?"

  "A while." It had actually been two years. There was no theater in Adair; every chance they could, Danny and Robin had hitched to the drive-in a county over. Rob usually talked them in for half price, since they wouldn't be taking up a car slot: the guy at the gate looked dubious, but Rob had always been good at getting his point across.

  Danny couldn't remember what the movie had been.

  Stagger Lee said, "The Biograph's showing The Train with Burt Lancaster. That's supposed to be first-rate, and even if it isn't, it's Lancaster. And it's Monday, so Laughs Lost will be running Chaplin all afternoon."

  "I don't care."

  "Biograph, then. I'm not that big on Charlie. Keaton's on Tuesday: that's different."

  The theater was only a few blocks away. No prices were posted at the box office, which was manned by a halfie in a brass-buttoned jacket and an odd round cap. Damn saw people in line pa) with

  silver coins, little scrolls of brown paper, a bundle of exotic weeds. Stagger insisted on paying for both of them, with a tarnished quarter. He scooped up the tickets and waited.

  "Change, Johnny," he said finally.

  The boy behind the glass said, "What, Mr. Lee?"

  "There's only two of us for one show. Besides, I saw you palm the dime the World lady gave you."

  The boy pushed it across.

  As they walked through the doors, Danny said, "How could he do that?"

  "What? Cut a deal? Same way I did. Down on the Levee, nothing has a fixed price, and nobody pays retail. Allow me to demonstrate further." He went to the snack counter, waved at the young man behind it.

  "Afternoon, Mr. Lee. What can I get for you?"

  "Your neon box is stuttering. How about two giant double-butter popcorns for a recharge?"

  "Just a moment, Mr. Lee."

  The counterman tapped on a side door, spoke with someone within. "Manager says sure thing, Mr. Lee. You know the way?"

  Stagger Lee waved a reply and led Danny to a door marked employees ONLY. Beyond it was a service room lit by a steel-shaded bulb, meters and junction boxes around the walls. Some of the boxes had red-lightning warning labels, others a tilted-spiral mark and the words CAUTION SPELLS ACTIVE.

  Stagger Lee rapped his knuckles on one of the spell boxes, cocked his head as if listening for something. Danny couldn't detect any change in the room's overall hum.

  Danny said, "Should I—you know, watch this?"

  "Nothing secret about it. You don't need hocus-pocus when the trick really works."

  Stagger opened the box. Inside was a flat brass ring ten inches across, surrounded by other bits of shiny metal and glass. The ring rotated about a turn to the right, then back as far to the left. At each reversal the rest of the machinery ticked and flashed. The big ring didn't seem to be physically connected to anything else; the devices made no obvious sense at all.

  Danny wondered how he would explain a fuse box to someone who'd never heard of electricity: You mean the little wires are supposed to burn up?

  Stagger brought the silver dime out of his pocket.

  "Does that—"

  "Just a second, please. Gotta concentrate."

  Carefully, Stagger held the coin in the center of the brass ring. He put two fingers of his other hand on a flattened sphere of red glass, and muttered something Danny couldn't hear.

  A blob of darkness appeared around the coin, and Stagger pulled his fingertips away. The red glass glowed, not very brightly, and Stagger let it go as well.

  The darkness filled the ring, and the coin vanished into it. The blob was like a blind spot in the eyes after staring at the sun; Danny looked away. Stagger exhaled loudly and shut the box.

  Danny said, "The coin's fuel?"

  "Not really, though it'll get used up. Magic doesn't just happen, abracadabra poof. It runs on energy, like everything else. Can you get your head around the idea of multiple universes?"

  "Like Elfland."

  "Like that. Some people always thought there were other universes; it helps a lot to have one we can point to. Elfland's a parallel universe, and the magic source is another. There may be more, maybe an infinite number.

  "Anyway, Elfland's got a wide-open channel to the magic source. They're bathed in it, like we get sunshine and cosmic ravs. while we're insulated. Sometimes, though—at least since Elfland punched the big holes—we can get into contact with the power.''

  "The Touch."

  "You got it. If you're good, you can pull in power without props. But spellboxes need something to drop the resistance. Some metals can do it, especially silver." He tapped the box. "The flow will eventually wear the dime away. Nobody rides for free."

  "You said people didn't need props," Danny said. "What if you're the dime?"

  Stagger Lee said quietly, "Doc. you arc no more than the third person I know who's ever asked that. The answer is that we haven't

  been doing this long enough to know. It's going to be interesting finding out. Come on, let's go collect our popcorn and some good seats."

  The movie was exciting, a World War Two adventure with evil Nazis and brave Resistance fighters and a long railroad chase. It was in black and white; Stagger explained that movies were still made that way even after color was available. "Artistic choice," he said. "The sort of image you want in the viewer's mind."

  "Well, sure, but isn't it—"

  "Not what's on the screen. In the mind. Like any magic trick, it's what the audience remembers that counts."

  They went back to the house and collected Danny's car. This time they drove north, to a place called the Rush Street Grill. It had large round tables, a short but busy bar, a small bandstand with drums and an amp set up. Lucius Birdsong was there, alone at a big round table, eating a huge sloppy cheeseburger. He was wearing a sweatshirt with what looked like a college seal, with the school name and motto in ne
at lettering. It actually read J-SCHOOL is for the other guys.

  "Glad you could make it, Doc," Birdsong said. "I trust you have brought all you hold dear, intent on bidding it farewell?"

  "Listen to this guy," Stagger Lee said. "I've seen him shove in his last typewriter on a pair of fours."

  Carmen Mirage came in. Heads turned. She was wearing a bronze shirtwaist blouse with a deep-cut neck, and a long black leather skirt. Her hair glowed with fairy dust. She sat down with Danny and the others. "Deka won't be here tonight. She's got a gig way uptown."

  "Neither will Spoke," Stagger Lee said. "He's got a date . . . some distance downtown." Carmen laughed musically.

  A woman sat down behind the drum kit, and a man in a vest and black T-shirt stepped up next to her, carrying an electric guitar. The woman began with a stately beat, the man joined it, and then they launched into an instrumental of "Wall of Death."

  During "Valentine's Day (is Over)" the Tokyo Fox came in. Under her coat she was wearing a brilliant red dress, one of those Oriental silk dresses with a high collar and a slit halfway up her

  thigh that showed black stockings and red high heels.

  She looked straight at Danny. "Good evening, Doc."

  Danny had the impression that the others were looking at him as well. He didn't turn his head to check. He had a feeling that his response was important. "Hello, Miss Kitsune. Pleased to see you. Are you joining us?"

  "Wouldn't miss it," she said as she sat down.

  A couple of songs later, the waiter whispered into Carmen's ear. "Well, of course, cara mia," she said, excused herself, and went up to the bandstand.

  The drummer began a quick four-beat; the guitarist launched into a twanging riff. Danny hadn't expected country music here. It wasn't that he didn't like country. He was just, well, tired of songs about guns and trucks and the love of good women, dogs, and Jesus in no particular order.

  What Carmen sang, though, was jazzy and very quick, not danceable at all: