“Who is that?” Travis asked.
“Jenny’s husband,” Brine answered, bending over and inspecting Robert’s neck for any jutting vertebrae. “He’ll be okay.”
“Maybe we should go somewhere else.”
“There isn’t time,” Brine said. “Besides, he might be able to help.”
Mavis Sand was standing on a plastic milk box peering over the bar at Robert’s supine form. “Nice move, Asbestos,” she said. “I like a man that can handle himself.”
Brine ignored the compliment. “Do you have any smelling salts?”
Mavis climbed down from her milk box, rummaged under the bar for a moment, and came up with a gallon bottle of ammonia. “This should do it.” To Travis and the Djinn she said: “You boys want anything?”
Gian Hen Gian stepped up to the bar. “Could I trouble you for a small quantity…”
“A salty dog and a draft, please,” Travis interrupted.
Brine wrapped one arm under Robert’s armpits and dragged him to a table. He propped him up in a chair, retrieved the ammonia bottle from the bar, and waved it under Robert’s nose.
Robert came to, gagging.
“Bring this boy a beer, Mavis,” Brine said.
“He ain’t drinking today. I’ve been pouring him Cokes since noon.”
“A Coke, then.”
Travis and the Djinn took their drinks and joined Brine and Robert at the table, where Robert sat looking around as if he were experiencing reality for the first time. A nasty bump was rising on his forehead. He rubbed it and winced.
“What hit me?”
“I did,” Brine said. “Robert, I know you’re angry at Travis, but you have to put it aside. Jenny’s in trouble.”
Robert started to protest, but Brine raised a hand and he fell silent.
“For once in your life, Robert, do the right thing and listen.”
It took fifteen minutes for Brine to relate the condensed version of the demon’s story, during which time the only interruption was the screeching feedback of Mavis Sand’s hearing aid, which she had cranked up to maximum so she could eavesdrop. When Brine finished, he drained his beer and ordered a pitcher. “Well?” he said.
Robert said, “Gus, you’re the sanest man I know, and I believe that you believe Jenny is in trouble, but I don’t believe this little man is a genie and I don’t believe in demons.”
“I have seen the demon,” came a voice from the dark end of the bar. The figure who had been sitting quietly when they came in stood and walked toward them.
They all turned to see a rumpled and wrinkled Howard Phillips staggering out of the dark, obviously drunk.
“I saw it outside of my house last night. I thought it was one of the slave creatures kept by the Old Ones.”
“What in the hell are you talking about, Howard?” Robert asked.
“It doesn’t matter any longer. What matters is that these men are telling you the truth.”
“So now what?” Robert said. “What do we do now?”
Howard pulled a pocket watch from his vest and checked the time. “You have one hour to plan a course of action. If I can be of any assistance…”
“Sit down, Howard, before you fall down,” Brine said. “Let’s lay it out. I think it’s obvious from what we know that there is no way to hurt the demon.”
“True,” Travis said.
“Therefore,” Brine continued, “the only way to stop him and his new master is to get the invocation from the second candlestick, which will either send Catch back to hell or empower Gian Hen Gian.”
“When Travis meets them, why don’t we just rush them and take it?” Robert said.
Travis shook his head. “Catch would kill Jenny and the Elliotts before we ever got close. Even if we got hold of the invocation, it has to be translated. That takes time. It’s been years since I’ve read any Greek. You would all be killed, and Catch would find another translator.”
“Yes, Robert,” Brine added. “Did we mention that unless Catch is in his eating form, which must have been what Howard saw, no one can see him but Travis?”
“I am fluent in Greek,” Howard said. They all looked at him.
“No,” Brine said. “They expect Travis to be alone. The mouth of the cave is at least fifty yards from any cover. As soon as Howard stepped out, it would be over.”
“Maybe we should let it be over,” Travis said.
“No. Wait a minute,” Robert said. He took a pen from Howard’s pocket and began scribbling figures on a cocktail napkin. “You say there’s cover fifty yards from the caves?” Brine nodded. Robert did some scribbling. “Okay, Travis, exactly how big is the print on the invocation? Can you remember?”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters,” Robert insisted. “How big is the print?”
“I don’t know — it’s been a long time. It was handwritten, and the parchment was pretty long. I’d guess the characters were maybe a half-inch tall.”
Robert scribbled furiously on the napkin, then put the pen down. “If you can get them out of the cave and hold up the invocation — tell them you need more light or something — I can set up a telephoto lens on a tripod in the woods and Howard can translate the invocation.”
“I don’t think they’ll let me hold the parchment up long enough for Howard to translate. They’ll suspect something.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Robert pushed the napkin he had been writing on in front of Travis. It was covered with fractions and ratios.
Looking at it, Travis was baffled. “What does this mean?”
“It means that I can put a Polaroid back on one of my Nikons and when you hold up the parchments, I can photograph them, hand the Polaroid to Howard, and thirty seconds later he can start translating. The ratios show that the print will be readable on the Polaroid. I just need enough time to focus and set exposure, maybe three seconds.” Robert looked around the table.
Howard Phillips was the first to speak. “It sounds feasible, although fraught with contingencies.”
Augustus Brine was smiling.
“What do you think, Gus?” Robert asked.
“You know, I always thought you were a lost cause, but I think I’ve changed my mind. Howard’s right, though — there’s lot of ifs involved. But it might work.”
“He is still a lost cause,” the Djinn chimed in. “The invocation is useless without the silver Seal of Solomon, which is part of one of the candlesticks.”
“It’s hopeless,” Travis said.
Brine said, “No, it’s not. It’s just very difficult. We have to get the candlesticks before they know about the seal. We’ll use a diversion.”
“Are you going to explode more flour?” asked Gian Hen Gian.
“No. We’re going to use you as bait. If Catch hates you as much as you say, he’ll come after you and Travis can grab the candlesticks and run.”
“I don’t like it,” Travis said. “Not unless we can get Jenny and the Elliotts clear.”
“I agree,” said Robert.
“Do you have a better idea?” Brine asked.
“Rachel is a bitch,” Robert said, “but I don’t think she’s a killer. Maybe Travis can send Jenny down the hill from the caves with the candlesticks as a condition to translating the invocation.”
“That still leaves the Elliotts,” Brine said. “And besides, we don’t know if the demon knows the seal is in the candlesticks. I think we go for the diversion plan. As soon as Howard has the invocation translated, Gian Hen Gian should step out of the woods and we all go for it.”
Howard Phillips said, “But even if you have the seal and the invocation, you still have to read the words before the demon kills us all.”
“That’s right,” said Travis. “And the process should begin as soon as Rachel starts reading the words I translate, or Catch will know something is up. I can’t bluff on the translation at my end.”
“You don’t have to,” Brine said. “You simply have to be slower
than Howard, which doesn’t sound like a problem.”
“Wait a second,” Robert said. He was out of his seat and across the bar to where Mavis was standing. “Mavis, give me your recorder.”
“What recorder?” she said coyly.
“Don’t bullshit me, Mavis. You’ve got a microcassette recorder under the bar so you can listen to people’s conversations.”
Mavis pulled the recorder out from under the bar and reluctantly handed it over to Robert. “This is the solution to the time problem,” Robert said. “We read the invocation into this before the genie comes out of the woods. When and if we get the candlesticks, we play it back. This thing has a high speed for secretaries to use when typing dictation.”
Brine looked at Travis. “Will it work?”
“It’s not any more risky than anything else we’re doing.”
“Who’s voice do we use?” Robert asked. “Who gets the responsibility?”
The Djinn answered, “It must be Augustus Brine. He has been chosen.”
Robert checked his watch. “We’ve got a half hour and I still have to pick up my cameras at The Breeze’s trailer. Let’s meet at the U-PICK-EM sign in fifteen minutes.”
“Wait — we need to go over this again,” Travis said.
“Later,” Brine said. He threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table and headed toward the door. “Robert, use Howard’s car. I don’t want this whole thing depending on your old truck starting. Travis, Gian Hen Gian, you ride with me.”
33
RIVERA
During the drive to Pine Cove, Rivera was nagged by the idea that he had forgotten something. It wasn’t that he hadn’t reported where he was going; he had planned that. Until he had physical evidence that there was a serial killer in the area, he wasn’t saying a word. But when he knocked on the Elliotts’ front door and it swung open, he suddenly remembered that his bullet-proof vest was hanging in his locker back at the station.
He called into the house and waited for an answer. None came.
Only cops and vampires have to have an invitation to enter, he thought. But there is probable cause. The part of his mind that functioned like a district attorney kicked in.
“So, Sergeant Rivera,” the lawyer said, “you entered a private residence based on a computer data base that could have been no more than a mailing list?”
“I believed that Effrom Elliott’s name on the list represented a clear and present danger to a private citizen, so I entered the residence.”
Rivera drew his revolver and held it in his right hand while he held his badge out in his left.
“Mr. and Mrs. Elliott, this is Sergeant Rivera from the Sheriff’s Department. I’m coming in the house.”
He moved from room to room announcing his presence before he entered. The bedroom door was closed. He saw the splintered bullet hole in the door and felt his adrenaline surge.
Should he call for backup?
The D.A. said: “And so you entered the house on what basis?”
Rivera came through the door low and rolled. He lay for a moment on the floor of the empty room, feeling stupid.
What now? He couldn’t call in and report a bullet hole in a residence that he had probably entered illegally, especially when he hadn’t reported that he was in Pine Cove in the first place.
One step at a time, he told himself.
Rivera returned to his unmarked car and reported that he was in Pine Cove.
“Sergeant Rivera,” the dispatcher said, “there is a message for you from Technical Sergeant Nailsworth. He said to tell you that Robert Masterson is married to the granddaughter of Effrom Elliott. He said he doesn’t know what it means, but he thought you should know.”
It meant that he had to find Robert Masterson. He acknowledged the message and signed off.
Fifteen minutes later he was at The Breeze’s trailer. The old pickup was gone and no one answered the door. He radioed the station and requested a direct patch to the Spider.
“Nailgun, can you get me Masterson’s wife’s home address? He gave the trailer as residence when we brought him in. And give me the place where she works.”
“Hold on, it’ll be just a second for her address.” Rivera lit a cigarette while he waited. Before he took the second drag, Nailsworth came back with the address and the shortest route from Rivera’s location.
“It will take a little longer for the employer. I have to access the Social Security files.”
“How long?”
“Five, maybe ten minutes.”
“I’m on my way to the house. Maybe I won’t need it.”
“Rivera, there was a fire call at that address this morning. That mean anything to you?”
“Nothing means anything to me anymore, Nailsworth.”
Five minutes later Rivera pulled up in front of Jenny’s house. Everything was covered with a gummy gray goo, a mix of ashes, flour, and water from the fire hoses. As Rivera climbed out of the car, Nailsworth called back.
“Jennifer Masterson is currently employed at H.P.’s Cafe, off Cypress in Pine Cove. You want the phone number?”
“No,” Rivera said. “If she’s not here, I’ll go over there. It’s just a few doors down from my next stop.”
“You need anything else?” Nailsworth sounded as if he was holding something back.
“No,” Rivera said. “I’ll call if I do.”
“Rivera, don’t forget about that other matter.”
“What matter?”
“Roxanne. Check on her for me.”
“As soon as I can, Nailsworth.”
Rivera threw the radio mike onto the passenger seat. As he walked up to the house, he heard someone come on the radio singing a chorus to the song “Roxanne” in a horrible falsetto. Nailsworth had shown his weakness over an open frequency, and now, Rivera knew, the whole department would ride the fat man’s humiliation into the ground.
When this was over, Rivera promised himself, he would concoct a story to vindicate the Spider’s pride. He owed him that. Of course, that depended on Rivera vindicating himself.
The walk to the door covered his shoes with gray goo. He waited for an answer and returned to the car, cursing in Spanish, his shoes converted to dough balls.
He didn’t get out of the car at H.P.’s Cafe. It was obvious from the darkened windows that no one was inside. His last chance was the Head of the Slug Saloon. If Masterson wasn’t there, he was out of leads, and he would have to report what he knew, or, what was more embarrassing, what he didn’t know, to the captain.
Rivera found a parking place in front of the Slug behind Robert’s truck, and after taking a few minutes to get his right shoe unstuck from the gas pedal, he went in.
34
U-PICK-EM
The Pagan Vegetarians for Peace called them the Sacred Caves because they believed that the caves had once been used by Ohlone Indians for religious ceremonies. This, in fact, was not true, for the Ohlone had avoided the caves as much as possible due to the huge population of bats that lived there, bats that were inextricably locked into the destiny of the caves.
The first human occupation of the caves came in the 1960s, when a down-and-out farmer named Homer Styles decided to use the damp interior of the caves to cultivate mushrooms. Homer started his business with five hundred wooden crates of the sort used for carting soda bottles, and a half-gallon carton of mail-order mushroom spores; total investment: sixteen dollars. Homer had stolen the crates from behind the Thrifty-Mart, a few at a time, over the period of weeks that it took him to read the pamphlet Fungus for Fun and Profit, put out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
After filling the crates with moist peat and laying them out on the cave floor, Homer spread his spores and waited for the money to roll in. What Homer didn’t figure on was the rapid growth rate of the mushrooms (he’d skipped that part of the pamphlet), and within days he found himself sitting in a cave full of mushrooms with no market and no money to pay for help in harvesting.
T
he solution to Homer’s problem came from another government pamphlet entitled The Consumer-Harvested Farm, which had come, by mistake, in the same envelope with Fungus for Fun. Homer took his last ten dollars and placed an ad in the local paper: Mushrooms, $.50 lb. U-PICK-EM, your container. Old Creek Road. 9–5 daily.
-=*=-
Mushroom-hungry Pine Covers came in droves. As fast as the mushrooms were harvested, they grew back, and the money rolled in.
Homer spent his first profits on a generator and a string of lights for the caves, figuring that by extending his business hours into the evening, his profits would grow in proportion. It would have been a sound business move had the bats not decided to rear their furry heads in protest.
During the day the bats had been content to hang out on the roof of the cave while Homer ran his business below. But on the first night of Homer’s extended hours when the bats woke to find their home invaded by harshly lit mushroom pickers, their tolerance ended.
There were twenty customers in the caves when the lights went on. In an instant the air above them was a maelstrom of screeching, furry, flying rodents. In the rush to exit, one woman fell and broke a hip and another was bitten on the hand while extracting a bat from her hair. The cloud of bats soon disappeared into the night, only to be replaced the next day by an equally dense cloud of landbound vermin: personal-injury lawyers.
The varmints prevailed in court. Homer’s business was destroyed, and once again the bats slept in peace.
A depressed Homer Styles went on a binge in the Head of the Slug. He spent four days in an Irish whiskey haze before his money ran out and Mavis Sand sent him to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. (Mavis could tell when a man had hit bottom, and she felt no need to pump a dry well.)
Homer found himself in the meeting room of the First National Bank, telling his story. It happened that at that same meeting a young surfer who called himself The Breeze was working off a court-ordered sentence he had earned by drunkenly crashing a ’62 Volkswagen into a police cruiser and promptly puking on the arresting officer’s shoes.
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