"I suppose."
"It's the only way I can prove two things to those believers: that Trammel is dead, and that the Guardians are hypocrites and liars. And if I do, everything else the Guardians have done and said will be suspect, including all they've said about me. The fact that they must have planned this caper long ago will show they must also have planned to knock off Trammel long ago—and one Shell Scott won't look so fiendish any more."
She smiled, and kept smiling. As soon as I grinned, she leaned forward and pursed her lips in a kiss that was not pretended. There was something else I'd been going to tell her, but I'll never know what it was.
This was the Third Day, the day of the resurrection.
In three hours, it would happen, and I'd be there, and I still didn't know how I could get halfway to that roped-off ring without being recognized and stopped, much less clear inside it.
Lyn said, "Sit down, Shell. Relax. You'll wear yourself out." I had virtually paced a hole in the carpet. I stopped, slumped on the couch beside Lyn, and said, "Here it is noon again. Big day. I ought to be out there now. But I don't want to get stopped before I even get started on my mission."
"You . . ." She stopped. Since early morning, we'd discussed dozens of possible disguises, anything that might get me through, and none of them had been good enough. Lyn probably hesitated at mentioning another feeble one. But she went on: "You might go as a woman. Dress up in—"
"Oh, Lord. Lyn, in the first place, I wouldn't dress up as a woman for any reason. Too damn many comedians and lodge members think that's funny now. Besides, how many six-foot-two and two-hundred-and-five-pound babes have you laid eyes on?"
She shook her head. "Maybe there isn't any way."
"There's always a way."
"Like a way to fly? Shell, I don't want you to go there."
"Uh-uh, baby. We dropped that. That guy just didn't know how to fly, anyway. He went at it wrong. Besides, he didn't have any feathers. Oh, the hell with him." I was jumpy. "I could stuff cotton in my cheeks, dye my hair—even shave my blasted hair off; I could do a lot of things. But I'd still be a big six-two. Out in the crowd of people, a lot of things might be good enough. But there won't be a helluva lot of time; old Whoozit won't be sticking around long. So I've got to be right up there, right in front of a jillion people, and ninety-nine per cent of them will know my size, my shape, and how many hangnails I've got. Oh, Lord, the place is packed already—it was packed yesterday. If I could only shrink!"
It was true enough that almost everybody would know me, and almost certainly be looking for me. Trammel wasn't the only attraction today; this was a double feature. The way the papers were playing up the coming resurrection, you'd think it was the end of the world, but I hadn't been forgotten. Nearly every reporter and feature writer in California had come up with the same idea. Since the maniac had attacked Arthur Trammel, then murdered him and, finally, disappeared "into thin air," it naturally followed that the maniac would be in attendance at the resurrection. That's what they'd said, anyway.
And that was why no disguise had yet sounded good enough. Maybe Lyn was right; maybe there wasn't any. The newspapers and broadcasts had asked the same question about both Trammel and me: Will he return? It was a very disgusting, affair as far as I was concerned. The news boys had taken what was a pretty fair story all by itself, tied me into it, and made this the damnedest story that L.A. had ever heard of. It wasn't just local; it was all over the States. For all I knew, it was all over the world. And I wished it were just all over.
Lyn said helpfully, "At least we've got a pretty good getaway planned."
"Yeah. Good enough." I was twitchy, because I knew I was going through with the plan even if I had to strip naked, plaster myself with feathers, and go as a bird. The getaway part, the route and all, Lyn and I had settled yesterday and last night here in her apartment. It would do, but it didn't appear at this point that we'd be using it. I'd found out one other thing last night. Lyn had driven me near the two-story house and the garage where I'd parked my Cad. The car had still been there, with no cops in it, so they must not have found the buggy. From the trunk I'd taken a ten-pound bag of things called tetrahedrons, which bag was now in Lyn's Chrysler convertible, but it didn't appear we'd use them either.
I got up and started pacing again. "I wish I were two feet high," I said. "I wish I could shrink. I wish I were somebody else."
"Shell!" Lyn sounded excited and I swung around toward her. She was getting up off the couch. "Maybe you can shrink. Couldn't you walk on your knees, like José Ferrer in Moulin Rouge? Put pads on your knees and tie your feet up against your thighs?"
The excitement in me started to die down. And then all of a sudden it roared up in me like an explosion and I shouted. "Oh, baby, you're beautiful, wonderful!" I grabbed her about the waist and swung her off the floor and in a circle clear around me.
Then I put her down and said, "No, I can't shrink. But I can do better than that."
"What? Better?"
"Yeah. And how."
I told her. And then there was frantic activity. It took a precious hour, and we had to get in touch with Randolph Hunt again and let him in on it. He not only offered us his lodge as sanctuary if I lived, but spent money and pulled the strings that got us everything we needed. At precisely one-thirty-five, I was in the bedroom, all set, and Lyn was alone in the front room waiting for me.
When I walked slowly and awkwardly out of the bedroom, she squealed with delight, though she might possibly have gone out of her mind if she hadn't been in on the whole business. Because, aside from Lyn's pancake makeup and eyebrow-pencil pockmarks on my face, I was six feet, eleven inches tall and looked as if I weighed three hundred pounds. I wore a tattered black robe that reached to the floor, had long, long black hair and a long, long black beard that flowed down my chest, and I carried a gnarled staff.
Enter the Prophet! Enter the Master of the Moon People!
Enter Lovable Shell Scott.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lyn, instead of suddenly dying when she saw me, let out her happy squeal and said, "Oh! How wonderful you look!"
"Of course." I wiggled bushy, black, glued-on eyebrows at her.
She made a sound suspiciously like gagging, then eyed me up and down. "I think you'll work," she said. "I think if anything would pass, this ghastly whatsit will pass."
"You're right. I don't believe anybody in the world—cops, Trammels, Trammelites, not even Shell Scott—would look for a six-foot-eleven-with-a-black-beard-and-so-on Shell Scott. I am the Purloined Letter. I am cagey as hell. All these cops, all these people, will be looking for a two-foot-high Shell Scott. Aren't I clever?"
"You are nauseous. You are not my love."
"Good. I don't want to be your love, not while I'm in this shape. But just wait till this is over and I'm—"
I saw the sudden pain that marked her face. Her features smoothed almost immediately, but the kicks were gone. I looked at my watch, strapped with its face inside my wrist so I could more unobtrusively check it later. It was time for us to leave.
About a mile from the resurrection spot, we got one short glimpse of the crowd, and Lyn gasped, "My God, there must be at least fifty thousand people there!" I told her that plain old garden-variety revivalists often pull ten thousand customers from L.A.'s two million. Fifty thousand for this was almost disappointing. We drove the rest of the way in silence.
She parked at the side of the road; we could see a small segment of the crowd from here.
"Well, off we go," I said, "into the wild bluenoses yonder."
"Oh, stop it," she said. "I know you don't feel funny at all."
"I feel funny as hell, not to mention the way I look."
"Shell, please." Her voice was stretched tight. "It's . . . almost here," she said. "Don't be glib, as if you're off on a lark."
"All right, honey. I was just making words. To tell you the truth, I don't know what I'm saying."
"There you go agai
n. Shell, tell me, how do you feel?" Her voice was shaking.
"Well," I said, "I can't say I'm overjoyed. As a matter of fact, I'm scared of that—that bomb up there." I looked out the window, up the rise of ground to the shifting movement and color of the crowd. "But think how bad it would be if it was people."
"Oh-h, Shell." All of a sudden her face was twisted, with tears suddenly starting. She said my name over and over again, grabbed me, wrapped her soft arms around my neck, and clung to me with surprising strength. "Shell," she sobbed, her body shaking against me. "Shell, please, please don't go. Forget it, we'll go away somewhere together."
I pulled her arms gently from around my neck. "Lyn, listen to me. I've come all the way up to here, and I'm not going to stop now. I can't."
"Please—"
"Honey! Where would I go? Where would we go? We settled all this. Both of us said we wouldn't talk about it."
She sniffed noisily, pressed both hands over her eyes.
Finally, she lowered her hands and looked at me, dark streaks of mascara on her cheeks. She took a deep breath and said, "All right. God, you're a mess." She swallowed. "Well, go light your bomb."
I pushed the car door open and swung my legs out, got to my feet, and almost fell. I said. "Hell, honey, it'll be all right." She started the car. I turned around and began walking.
From down on the highway, east of that natural amphitheater, I had been able to see only a segment at the top of its western arc, and a small part of the crowd. Now, walking on a newly scuffed path in the brown earth, walking slowly and carefully up the slight rise, I could hear the hum and buzz made by thousands of voices a hundred yards ahead of me. On my right was the edge of the cliff slanting sharply ahead, up to its peak, then dropping down, I knew, to the lowest point and the focus of the crowd that would be gathered there. Beyond the cliff, the lower level of the plain stretched toward green hills, and I could see the place where Lyn and I had lain yesterday.
It was difficult and tiring to walk because of the concentration necessary to keep from falling. My added nine inches of height were provided by small lightweight aluminum stilts—until today, appropriately enough, part of a circus clown's bag of tricks. Each was equipped with two leather straps, one tight around my ankle and the other fastened below my knee.
The black robe trailed the ground and hid my feet and stilts, covered my own clothes beneath it. Walking the last few yards, I leaned my weight on the long staff. I could feel the unfamiliar beard warm upon my face, brushing against my chest, and the mass of tangled black hair thick on my cheeks, corded strands dangling over my eyes. Perspiration formed on my face and chest, though the sun was behind one of several low-hanging clouds drifting overhead.
I walked the last few steps to the crest of the rise, beyond which the earth sloped down to the place of resurrection. Even knowing what was there, having from a distance seen the people, I wasn't prepared for what I saw now. The ragged outer fringe of the crowd began well below me, extending in a loose circle around to the opposite arc and back to this side again, filling the depression down to the bottom of the earthen funnel. There, two hundred yards away, was the empty square, roped off. People were tightly packed all around it, shoving in closer.
In the square's exact center, already in place upon the wooden platform, was the coffin. When I saw it, saw the harsh angular lines of the coffin in that barren square, so still and somber in contrast to the movement and color all around it, a tingle brushed my spine and prickled my skin.
I swore to myself. I damn well wasn't going to get all creeped up—the way everybody was supposed to—by the clever props, the near perfect location, and all the rest that had obviously been so well and carefully arranged.
When I pulled my eyes from the coffin I saw two blue-uniformed policemen five yards away, and barely managed to keep from breaking into a run. Dozens of other uniformed men were all around the perimeter of the crowd; the place was loaded with cops. Probably more were down in the crowd itself, but these were away from its edge, where they could see anybody who came here.
Both cops were staring at me curiously, their mouths slowly closing, which was just as good as their telling me that I was a very odd sight indeed. So I waved my arms at them and shook my staff at them and said, with my voice as low as I could get it, "Sinners! Oh, you dirty sinners. You have had it." Or something like that, which was about as close as I could get to prophet talk. Then I turned and walked slowly down the hill, leaning on my staff.
I managed ten steps before glancing over my shoulder. One of the men was making circular motions with his index finger near his temple.
As I neared the edge of the crowd, I tried to estimate its number. People were scattered in small bunches on the slopes, and only farther down, around the square, were they massed tight. I guessed that fifty thousand wouldn't be any exaggeration. Farther down it didn't look like people at all, but like a vat-dyed ant heap, a blob of squirming animals in all colors of the rainbow. As I walked closer, the sun slid from behind a cloud and in brighter light the colors became more intense, surprisingly varied and vivid.
And now, entering the fringe of the crowd and gathering many, many glances from wide-eyed men and women, I noted something that I had expected here but had not imagined would be present in such wild and staggering profusion: There were more strange forms of life about than I had believed existed.
Not even counting the piles of blankets and bedrolls, the fires and coffee and sandwiches and tents, this was the goddamnedest, goofiest vista of cuckoos I had ever laid eyes on in my life. There were more robes and turbans and crowns and gowns than you could shake a wizard's wand at. There were guys dressed in gold and pink and polka dots, guys in sheets and shrouds and very little; there were dolls in Mother Hubbards, and what appeared to be bras and diapers, and even one babe in grass skirt and beret.
And, of course, it figured. It was sheer inevitability. Not just because this was so close to Hollywood, though that probably helped a lot, but because this was L.A., the Land of the Abnormal. Nobody even tries to deny it any more; L.A. is the magnet for meatballs. It seems that as soon as a citizen from elsewhere loses his stability, he heads for the land where more people are nowhere: Southern California.
We've got, you can count them, over three hundred separate cults. Their membership totals from up in the thousands down to one, and, without doubt, every member was here. It couldn't have been otherwise. This was the Rising of Trammel, the Big Day.
That meant, too, that over three hundred cult leaders were present—worrying, sweating, biting off fingernails. Their leadership was threatened. If this boy came up today, so would their lunches; they'd lose not only prestige, but their flocks, which would be flocking to Trammel.
So this was an eerie sight indeed. Undoubtedly some here were just curious, and there would surely be reporters and photographers and more cops, but this was primarily a cultists' convention, a crackpot ball. Even for me, after living thirty years in L.A., and knowing that cults and peculiar sects abound from Main Street to the Hollywood hills, seeing all of them in one place at one time was a revelation. It made me think maybe all us people should be in cages, with the animals outside peering in at us, feeding us peanuts and bananas and getting a good laugh.
I went striding downhill through that panorama of paranoia, and everybody eyeballed me. Even in this bunch, I stood out. Every once in a while some peculiarly decked-out cat, probably a leader surrounded by his followers, would make a strange sign at me or speak as I passed. I ignored them all.
At fifteen minutes of three I had worked my way around to Coffin Square's west side. I could see people in the square, six of them, all dressed in black and lined up facing away from the cliff's edge. And I began wondering seriously how in hell I was going to get up there. Already the going was tough, and there remained a hundred feet between the square and me. It would be anticlimactic indeed if, after all my sweat and preparation, Joe Smith leaped up laughing and waving and I could on
ly wave back at him.
I figured I could press ahead through and around people all right except for the last five or six yards, where bodies were shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh and no telling; but from that point on I'd need a disintegrator. A short fat man facing away from me blocked my path and I was about to step around him when he glanced over his shoulder and saw me. I kept forgetting, momentarily, what I looked like, but he got the full impact of me all at once, and it seemed likely he'd never forget.
He must have seen several things today that were peculiar, but there was no doubt at all that he had not yet seen anything as horrible as me. You'd have thought his two eyes were attached to his mouth, the way all three of them sprang open. The rapidity of the change and the gruesome fixity of his new expression came close to being the funniest thing I'd seen up here—and all of a sudden I realized that around me were not beings from another world, but just people.
People like me, some of them nearer the edge than others. About the only really tough ones were down in that ring; and if the rest were anything like this joe, I might have it made. With that thought, inspiration blossomed.
From where I stood, the ground slanted downward all the way to the square. So not only was I horrendously tall to begin with; I towered even farther above those ahead of me simply because I was on somewhat higher ground. The guy was still anchored there, gawping up at me as if he were trying to break his neck with his chin.
I swung my staff forward, clutching it back of center, and pointed it at him, mumbling gurgling gibberish deep in my throat. He sprang back from the point of my staff as if it were loaded. I had my disintegrator. I kept walking forward, gargling my tonsils, not too vigorously, but loud enough so those closest could hear me.
With their eyes pointed toward the coffin, naturally none of the people were, at first, looking in my direction. Ah, but afterward they were. One or two before me would hear an odd snuffling noise and turn casually to see a bearded giant, face contorted and eyes glittering, bearing down on them and aiming a wicked gadget at their chops. And then they would not be before me. I did it about twenty times, and I got quite good at it.
Always Leave ’Em Dying Page 15