by Various
“I’m sorry,” said Dr. Crandall. “I know I must be keeping you.”” He reached out and grabbed Nico’s mottled pink, scarred hand and pumped it vigorously. “It’s been a pleasure.””
“Likewise, mate. Always nice to meet a fan.”
He turned then as the lift dinged open and Zita pushed the gurney inside.
But something caught his hand.
Dr. Crandall hadn’t let go.
“Oh! Listen! Would you mind terribly, giving me your autograph?”
He pushed a little notepad into Nico’s hand and a pen. It was full of prescriptions. Jesus, if Crandall only knew what a temptation it was for him to just knock him down and bolt with this little treasure.
He scribbled his name quickly, glancing at the door.
“Oh sorry. I actually need that page. Can you do it on a blank one?”
“Sure.”
“And make it out to Marvin?”
“Sure. Marvin.”
“M-A-R-V-I-N.”
He nodded. He goddamned well knew how to spell Marvin. C-U-N-T.
The doors closed. He watched the numbers descend rapidly as he handed back the notepad and Dr. Marvin Crandall shook his hand again and reiterated his pleasure at having met him.
“Say,” said Nico. “What’s in the basement of this place?””
“Oh nothing but the pathology lab, the morgue,” he said, giggling a little at the last and pushing his glasses up his nose with his index finger. Nico wondered if he had ever seen a black shirted Crandall at one of the horror hound conventions he sometimes got a signing table at. ““Oh and the loading dock. You know, for supplies and stuff.”
“Thanks, Doc. Really brilliant meeting you.”
He hurried down the corridor, ducked his head into the waiting room.
Goddammit!
The kid, Jimmy, was not sitting where he was supposed to. What a hell of a time for him to go to the loo. Now what?
The second lift dinged open, a red arrow pointing down.
He ran to catch it.
He rode it thankfully alone to the basement, and stepped out into a bleakly lit fluorescent hallway with a big yellow sign on a pair of doors to the right that read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. NO ADMITTANCE.
No convenient doctor’s smock and surgical mask about. No wheelchair to jump into. If he ran into a security guard or a nurse, he’d be escorted back to the lift, maybe given the boot.
He went to the door and peered through the little glass squares. He caught a glimpse of a red clad figure turning the corner at the end of the hall.
He pushed through, got his cellphone out, and dialed.
No signal here in the basement. He was on his own.
He jogged down the corridor, hearing the squeaking of the gurney wheels like metal rats getting quieter ahead.
He reached the corner, flattened, and peered around the side like he was MI6 or bloody John Steed or something.
She had stopped the gurney and lifted the sheet. Underneath was a pet carrier with a wire door. He saw the blue of the baby’s blanket through the mesh, heard it squeal.
She told it to shut up as she gripped the handle and pulled it out from under the cart, set it roughly down.
She got a coat out from under the gurney, put it on, zipped it up, and opened an outer door, sweeping up the pet carrier.
Nico looked down at the phone again. Still no signal.
He wasn’t supposed to get this close. Just phone it in. Except no phone. Go back upstairs, try to find the kid, or follow?
The door slammed shut.
He abandoned the cover of the corner and went down to the exit, waited a moment, and pushed it slowly open, the night air frigid on his hand.
The loading dock Dr. Crandall had mentioned was there, and idling in the bay was a van marked AAA Cleaning Service. Zita had just slammed the passenger door. She looked to be rubbing her hands in front of the heater.
The kitty carrier was on the ground behind the van, the baby getting a face full of exhaust.
A shaven headed Mexican man in a red hoody and matching trainers was opening the back of the van.
Nico slid along the wall towards the end of the bay, tried the phone. Nothing.
The man in the back lifted the carrier into the back of the van and closed the doors.
He got out from under the building and tried the phone. Now it was acquiring a signal at least.
The driver’s side door slammed and the engine revved.
Nico spammed the Call button and stepped out in front of the van as it lurched into gear and stopped short of hitting him.
The driver’s side window rolled down.
“Hey, puto! Get the fuck outta the way!” yelled the driver.
Nico looked into the glaring headlights and kept hitting Call.
Now Zita leaned out of her window.
“Hey! Move, pinche guero!”
Nico just stared. He had no idea what to say. His thumb was getting sore from jabbing the phone.
The driver’s side door opened and the bald man in the red hood came from behind the headlights, coalescing from shadow into detail. He was scowling, shoulders rolling like a panther’s as he approached.
Shite.
“You deaf? Get the fuck out the road, homes.”
Then they both heard a ring tone from somewhere very close. The tune was Peter `N Wendy’s Theme, the Elton Ormond hit tune from ten years ago, written especially for the titular TV show.
The driver of the van looked confused.
Nico breathed deeply, and stepped aside.
There was Pan, standing behind him. A slight figure, no higher than Nico’s chest, in a green short sleeved leather tunic with a peaked cap that came down over his eyes and nose in a sharp, stylized cowl. His bright blue irises shined through the eyelets. His leather gauntleted fists were bunched, knuckles on his narrow waist, encircled by the wide belt with the ringing phone and the knife. His legs and arms were sparingly muscled but looked absurdly thin in dark green Expandex.
He didn’t cut a very imposing figure, to be honest.
The driver smirked at his appearance.
“’The fuck is this shit?” he said, chuckling.
“Where’s the baby?” Pan asked in his high little voice.
“Back of the van,” said Nico.
Pan moved.
There was only about seven feet between him and the driver, but he launched himself into the air so swiftly the impact of his two feet sent the driver slamming back against the grill of the van.
Then he just floated there for an instant before righting himself, the toes of his boots eight inches off the pavement.
The driver groaned and peeled himself off the bumper of the van.
Zita shrieked from the passenger’s window.
“Es El Niño Eterno! Quemarlo, Bombero!”
“What did she say?” Nico wondered out loud.
“Burn him,” said Pan. “Look out!’
Nico felt himself shoved aside hard enough to fling him back against the wall of the dock. He lost his sunglasses. As he went flying, a jet of orange and blue flame roiled through the spot he’d been standing in, flying out of the driver’s outstretched hand.
He was a chimeric.
Pan wasn’t caught in the gout of fire either, he slipped under it, twisting gracefully, and flew at the man Zita had called Bombero.
Bombero dodged aside and Pan’s small fists smashed the front of the van, rocking it on its chassis.
Bombero’s still flaming fist came down across Pan’s back and slammed him to the pavement, but before he could blast him again, Pan’s body rose no more than an inch off the ground and shot forward under the van.
Bombero looked confused for a second, then heard the sound of running feet on the roof and looked up just as Pan came flying down at him. He caught the larger man by his hood and used his momentum to fling him head over heels, out into the par
king lot, tearing his red sweater away.
Bombero rolled to his feet though, and now both arms rippled with crackling flame. He was like the burning bush. Though blue hot at the source, his skin was unburnt. His white t-shirt smoldered, curled, and fell from him, revealing an intricate tattoo painted across his muscled chest. It depicted some kind of ghastly, grinning red fleshed figure adorned in primitive turquoise jewelry and bearing a flaming serpent on his back. To Nico it looked like something in the margins of a placemat at a Mexican restaurant.
Bombero whirled his arms clockwise and then flung out both hands with a gleeful shout. Two twisting slinkies of fire erupted from his hands and merged into a horizontal blazing cyclone which swept straight at Pan.
Instead of dodging aside though, Pan flipped backwards and plunged through the windshield of the van.
The fire cyclone cascaded across the van and Zita screamed in the passenger’s seat as her hair and clothes ignited.
The back doors blew off the van and Pan came flying out with the fire at his heels, clutching the pet carrier as the heat touched off the gas tank and the vehicle exploded. The shockwave blew him against the back wall of the bay and he fell in a heap.
Bombero looked aghast at what he’d done for only a moment, then he turned and ran.
Well, Nico wasn’t about to chase after him.
He ran toward the back of the dock, holding up his hand against the flames. God, if there was one thing he couldn’t stand now, it was fire. It was as if his marred flesh remembered the old agony, and screamed a warning as he got nearer the burning wreck.
There was Pan, lying flat across the carrier, and oh God, as Nico got closer he could see the molten shape of the plastic.
Pan stirred and got to his knees as Nico arrived. He tried to pick up the carrier, but the handle was too hot and he scorched himself.
Pan knelt there, staring at it. His eyes went up and met Nico’s. There was a thin line of blood leaking from the corner of Pan’s mouth.
Then they heard the snuffling from inside.
Pan gripped the wire door and tore it off.
He reached in up to the elbows and came out with the baby. The blanket was singed, but the nipper started wailing when exposed to the two extremes of the cold air and the heat from the van fire. Despite a minor reddening of the skin, it wasn’t hurt.
Nico grabbed Pan’s elbow and led him and the baby out of the dock and into the parking lot.
“You okay?” Nico asked.
“I just bit my tongue. Zita?” He glanced back at the burning van.
“That cunt is toast and jam,” said Nico. “The human flamethrower got away.”
“I don’t want him yet,” said Pan. “Here.””
He pushed the wailing baby into Nico’s arms, and then set his lost sunglasses on Nico’s nose. Where had he found them?
They could hear sirens now.
“You’d better drop that kid off and get scarce,” Pan said to him.
“Where are you going?”
“Malibar. To get the dispatcher.”
“What should I do?”
“Go home. I’ll see you later.”
Pan sprang into the air and was a dot in the next minute, streaking up over the roof of the hospital.
Nico shushed the crying baby and headed back into the hospital through the loading dock door. He lay the kid on the gurney, pushed it back to the lift, pressed L, and left it there for somebody to find.
It was a miracle he didn’t run into anybody in the interim.
When he walked outside again the night was accosted with the red and blue splash of emergency lights and the lights of the TV news vans.
Just his luck, before he got to his car, it started to rain.
TWO
The Pacific was boiling like a big glass of Alka Seltzer.
Spray beaded on the clear wall of the Malibar beach house, even though the surf was a hundred feet or more down at the base of the cliff. The house weathered the storm, and Frank wasn't worried. He was from Nebraska originally, where the rain could turn to hail the size of a boy's fist and the wind could change your zip code. These California storms, despite the ‘weather watches' he saw the plastic faced meteorologists sweat about on the eleven o'clock news were a joke. A house like this one, glass-walled and poised on stilts like some crystal monstrosity in an old biddy's curio cabinet, wouldn't last a week in a blue norther back home. Out here, in the face of one of these blustery West Coast jobs, it would be fine.
Home.
That was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Who'd have thought then that he'd be the man he was now, smoking and watching the ocean throw a tantrum through the glass of a multi-million dollar house with a stolen baby bawling in the back bedroom and a couple of half-assed cowboys, with about the same moral sense God granted a pair of horny chimpanzees, sitting on his couch watching a Dukes of Hazard marathon.
But hell, this ridiculous house, the vintage Indian in his garage, the speedboat hanging in the shack down by his private beach, and that eight-thousand-dollar television on which Guff and Wally were ogling a cheeky Catherine Bach was all bought and built on stolen babies.
Sometimes he wished he could start his life over. Be a kid again in Nebraska. He used to know what was right then. He used to watch Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Lone Ranger on Sunday mornings, and then he'd go bouncing around the back field in his pajamas, alternately shooting the sword out of Guy of Gisbourne's hand or running some pesky bandits through with his flashing hickory stick.
He took a long drag on his Pall Mall and wished he could burn the whole damn thing down. Maybe his sins would burn away with it.
The baby was really belting it out now. Where the hell was Zita with the Pampers and the Similac? She’d been due with the supplies and the new kid twenty minutes ago. How the hell do you let a baby run out of the essentials like that? I mean, what the hell were they paying her for? No matter how desperate that couple from Vancouver was to adopt a healthy white baby, it was just bad business to deliver the kid with a full diaper and squawking ‘cause it hadn't been fed.
He shook his head. Bad business.
But the whole damn thing was the definition of bad business, wasn't it? The business of being bad. Frank had several nurses like Zita on his payroll in the hospitals across two counties. When some mother came in with plans to deliver and leave the kid there for adoption, Frank got a call. Zita or someone like her waltzed into the hospital in her rented nurse's uniform, plucked the little crib lizard out of the nursery, and brought it to Guff and Wally, his delivery boys. They waited for the nurse to call, then went bombing off in their tricked out Escalade (license plate DOH 437; the two screws meant it to be an acronym for Dukes of Hazard, but he liked to think of it as that sound Homer Simpson made whenever he fucked up). They brought the kids to Frank, because Frank knew the right people. People who knew sterile couples who had, or could raise, the cash to buy a baby and all the papers. Once the connection was made, off the kid went with Wally and Guff to meet its new parents or whatever.
Easy money. Easy money always seemed to go hand-in-hand with bad business out here on the best coast. Easy money was the foundation for the House That Frank Built.
"Damn, that kid is loud!" Guff said, reaching for another Heiney from the city of green glass bottles on the end table in front of them, like Kong reaching through skyscrapers for Fay Wray. He was a big bastard, Guff, and crazy.
"I think he's the loudest one yet," Wally agreed, peeling the label off his and smiling as Daisy Duke jumped into her Jeep and Roscoe started talking smack to that beleaguered-looking hound dog riding shotgun.
Frank waited to see if one of them would get up to check on the baby. Guff leaned forward in his seat, looking like he was going to get up, but he fished the remote out of the noisy pile of potato chip bags on the floor and turned the volume up on the TV. The baby's wailing merged with Roscoe'
s pursuit siren.
"Jesus," Frank said, and went past them, headed down the back hall.
"What's his problem?" Guff said to Wally.
Wally shrugged.
The lights were off in the hallway, casting the white walls in a blue glow from the skylight. He went into the back bedroom and flicked on the light. The kid was red in the face and squealing. Roscoe P. Coltrane could have tied this kid to the roof of his squad and got Luke and Bo to pull over.
He hated dealing with the kids. Hated handling them. He should have sent Guff or Wally to get the goddamned diapers. He tried shushing the baby, but he couldn't even hear himself over the bawling. He reached down gingerly and picked it up in his hands, holding it in front of him like a bag of plutonium. What the hell was the matter with him, anyway?
Against his better judgment, he put the kid against his shoulder and started patting its back and cooing to it, like he'd seen them do on TV. After a couple good pats the kid let out a belch that sounded like it came from Booger on Revenge of the Nerds.
In spite of himself, Frank chuckled slightly.
The kid threw up on his shoulder.
"Shit," said Frank.
A few minutes later he was back in the living room, mopping at his shirt with a paper towel from the kitchen island. Roscoe was cackling into his CB to an excited Cletus, both of them oblivious to the fact that they were headed right for each other.
Sure enough, Cletus was flipping his patrol car three seconds later, and the din on the surround sound was tremendous, coupled with Guff and Wally's appreciative hooting and laughing. They never got tired of this show, though only Wally had been alive long enough to have ever seen the original run.
"Will you turn that shit down?" Frank barked in frustration.
Guff pursed his lips and picked up the remote. The noise of the crashing car was still too loud.
"I said turn it down!" Frank yelled. "Gimme the remote, you dumb hillbilly," he hissed, snatching the clicker away, pressing mute, and flinging it down on the couch.
The sound of rending metal continued. It sounded like it was coming from outside.
What the hell?