The Madman - Страница 109

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She saw a form move at the nursing station, and exhaled slowly when she saw Little Black uncurl himself from behind the desk and open the wire door.

"Right on time," he said.

"Wouldn't miss this for the world," she said with a measure of false bravado.

He shook his head. "I'm guessing you're just in for a long, boring night," he said. He pointed at the intercom on the desk. It was old-fashioned, a small squawk box with a single on off switch on the top and a dial to reduce squelch. "This will keep you connected to my brother and I upstairs," he said. "But we really got to hear you sing out that Apollo word, because these things got to be ten, twenty years old and they don't work too good. The telephone, too, connects upstairs. Just dial two zero two, and it rings. Tell you what, if it rings twice and then you hang up, we'll take that as a signal, too, and come running."

"Two zero two. Got it."

"But ain't likely to need it," Little Black said. "In my experience, inside this place, nothing logical or expected ever happens right, no matter how much planning goes into it. I'm pretty sure that the guy you're hunting knows you're gonna be here. Word gets around pretty good, if you say the right thing to the right person. Gets broadcast real fast. But if this guy is as clever as you seem to think, I've got my doubts that he'll walk into something he's got to figure is a trap. Still, never know."

"That's right," Lucy said. "You never know."

Little Black nodded. "Well, you call. You call if something happens with any of the patients you don't want to handle. Just ignore anybody calling out for help or something. We generally wait until morning for dealing with most any nighttime problems."

"Okay."

He shook his head. "Nervous?"

"No," Lucy replied. She knew she was something she just wasn't certain that nervous described it.

"When it gets late, I'll send someone to check up on you. That'd be okay, right?"

"Always appreciate the company. Except I don't want to spook the Angel."

"I'm not guessing that he's the sort that gets spooked by much," Little Black said. He looked down the corridor. "I made sure the dormitory doors are locked," he said. "Men's and women's. Especially that one right over there that Peter wanted me to unlock. Of course, you know that's the key, right at the end of that chain that unlocks it…" He winked conspiratorially. "My guess is, just about everyone in there is lights-out fast asleep by now."

With that, Little Black shoved back and stepped down the corridor. He turned once and waved, but it was so dark at the end of the hallway, near the stairwell on that end, that she could barely make out his features, beyond the white attendant's suit he wore.

Lucy heard the door creak shut, and then put her pocketbook down on the table, next to the phone. She waited for a few seconds, just long enough to let the silence creep over her with a clammy enveloping sensation, and then she took the key and went down to the men's dormitory. As quietly as she could, she slipped the key into the door lock and turned it once, hearing a distant click. She took a deep breath, and then went back to the nursing station and began to wait for something to happen.

Peter sat wide-awake and cross-legged on his bunk. He heard the click of the lock tumblers being turned, and knew this meant Lucy had unlocked the door. He imagined her in his mind's eye rapidly walking back down to the nursing station. Lucy was so striking, from her height, her scar, the way she carried herself, it was easy for Peter to picture her every move. He strained, trying to hear the sound of her footsteps, but was unable. The noise of the room filled with sleeping men, tangled up in sheets and various despairs, overwhelmed any modest sound from out in the corridor. Too much snoring, heavy breathing, talking in their sleep going on around him to pick out and isolate noise. He guessed this might be a problem, and so, when he was persuaded that all around him were locked in whatever unsettled, uneven sleep they were going to get, he, silently unfolded himself and gingerly picked his way past the forms of men and came to the door. He did not dare open it, for he thought that the noise might awaken someone, no matter how drugged they were. Instead, what Peter did was simply slide down, back against the adjacent wall, so that he was sitting on the floor, waiting for a sound that was out of the ordinary, or the word that signaled the arrival of the Angel.

He wished he had a weapon. A gun, he thought, would be helpful. Even a baseball bat or a policeman's baton. He reminded himself that the Angel would wield a knife, and he would need to stay clear of the man's reach until the Moses brothers arrived, Security was called, and success had been achieved.

Lucy, he guessed, would not have agreed to her performance without some assistance. She had not said she would be armed, but he suspected she was.

The edge they had, though, was in surprise and numbers. It would, he imagined, be sufficient.

Peter stole a glance at Francis and shook his head. The younger man seemed to be asleep, which he thought was a good thing. He regretted that he was leaving Francis behind, but felt that probably, all in all, it was going to be better for him. Since the arrival of the Angel at his bedside an event Peter still wasn't certain had actually taken place it seemed to him that Francis had been increasingly flaky, and increasingly less in control. C-Bird had been descending along some route that Peter could only guess at, and surely wanted no part of. It made him sad to see what was happening to his friend, and be powerless to do anything about it. Francis had taken Cleo's death very hard, Peter thought, and more than any of them seemed to have developed an unhealthy obsession with finding the Angel. It was a little as if Francis's need to find the killer signaled something different and immense to the younger man. It was something well beyond determination, and something dangerous.

Peter, of course, was wrong about that. Obsession truly lay with Lucy, but he did not want to see that.

He leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment. He felt fatigue running through his veins, parallel to excitement. He understood that much was about to change in his life, that night, the following morning. Within him, Peter pushed away many memories, and he wondered what was next in his own story. At the same time, he continued to listen carefully, waiting for a signal from Lucy.

He wondered if, after that night, he would ever see her again.

A few feet away, Francis lay rigid on his own bunk, perfectly aware that Peter had silently moved past him and taken up a position near the door. He knew sleep was very distant, but death was not, and he breathed in slowly, steadily, waiting for something he could feel was utterly inevitable to occur. Something that was set in stone, planned and plotted, measured out, deciphered and designed. He felt as if he was caught up in a current, dragging him someplace far closer to who he was, or who he could be, and that he was helpless to swim against the tide.

We were all exactly where the Angel expected us to be. I wanted to write that down, but did not. It went beyond the idea that we had simply taken up places on a stage, and were feeling that last rush of anxiety before the curtain rises, wondering whether our lines were memorized, whether our movements were choreographed, whether we would hit our marks and follow our cues. The Angel knew where we were physically, but deeper still. He knew where we were in our hearts.

Except, perhaps, for me, because my heart was so confused.

I rocked back and forth, moaning, like a wounded man on a battlefield who wants to call for help, but can manage only some deep sound of pain. I was kneeling on the floor, the wall space dwindling in front of me, as were the words I had available.

Around me, the Angel roared, his voice like a torrent, drowning out my protests. He shouted, "I knew. I knew. You were all so stupid… so, normal… so sane!" His voice seemed to rebound off the walls, gain momentum in the shadows and then pummel me like blows. "I was none of those things! I was so much greater!"

Then, as I lowered my head and squeezed shut my eyes, I yelled out, "Not me…" which made little sense, but the sound of my own voice contending with his gave me a momentary burst of adrenaline. I took a breath, waiting for some pain to be sent my way, but when it did not come, I looked up, and saw the room suddenly bursting with light. Explosions, star bursts like phosphorous shells in the distance, tracers racing through darkness, a battle in the dark.

"Tell me!" I demanded, my voice raised above the sounds of fighting. The world of my little apartment seemed to buckle and sway with the violence of war.

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