Текст книги "Mr. Mercedes"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

‘What kind of screensavers are those?’ Jerome asks.

Hodges points at Brady’s Number Five. ‘That’s William Holden, so I guess they must be scenes from a movie.’

‘The Wild Bunch,’ Holly says. ‘Directed by Sam Peckinpah. I only watched it once. It gave me nightmares.’

Scenes from a movie, Hodges thinks, looking at the grimaces and gunfire. Also scenes from inside Brady Hartsfield’s head. ‘Now what?’

Jerome says, ‘Holly, you start at the first one. I’ll start at the last one. We’ll meet in the middle.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Holly says. ‘Mr Hodges, can I smoke in here?’

‘Why the hell not?’ he says, and goes over to the cellar stairs to sit and watch them work. As he does, he rubs absently at the hollow just below his left collarbone. That annoying pain is back. He must have pulled a muscle running down the street after his car exploded.

29

The air conditioning in the MAC’s lobby strikes Brady like a slap, causing his sweaty neck and arms to break out in gooseflesh. The main part of the corridor is empty, because they haven’t let in the regular concertgoers yet, but the right side, where there are velvet ropes and a sign reading HANDICAPPED ACCESS, is lined with wheelchairs that are moving slowly toward the checkpoint and the auditorium beyond.

Brady doesn’t like how this is playing out.

He had assumed that everyone would smoosh in at the same time, as they had at the Cleveland Indians game he’d gone to when he was eighteen, and the security guys would be overwhelmed, just giving everyone a cursory look and then passing them on. The concert staff letting in the crips and gooniebirds first is something he should have foreseen, but didn’t.

There are at least a dozen men and women in blue uniforms with brown patches on their shoulders reading MAC SECURITY, and for the time being they have nothing to do but check out the handicapped folks rolling slowly past them. Brady notes with growing coldness that although they’re not checking the storage pockets on all the wheelchairs, they are indeed checking the pockets on some of them – every third or fourth, and sometimes two in a row. When the crips clear security, ushers dressed in ’Round Here tee-shirts are directing them toward the auditorium’s handicapped section.

He always knew he might be stopped at the security checkpoint, but had believed he could still take plenty of ’Round Here’s young fans with him if that happened. Another bad assumption. Flying glass might kill a few of those closest to the doors, but their bodies would also serve as a blast-shield.

Shit, he thinks. Still – I only got eight at City Center. I’m bound to do better than that.

He rolls forward, the picture of Frankie in his lap. The edge of the frame rests against the toggle-switch. The minute one of those security goons bends to look into the pockets on the sides of the wheelchair, Brady will press a hand down on the picture, the yellow lamp will turn green, and electricity will flow to the lead azide detonators nestled in the homemade explosive.

There are only a dozen wheelchairs ahead of him. Chilled air blows down on his hot skin. He thinks of City Center, and how the Trelawney bitch’s heavy car jounced and rocked as it ran over the people after he hit them and knocked them down. As if it were having an orgasm. He remembers the rubbery air inside the mask, and how he screamed with delight and triumph. Screamed until he was so hoarse he could hardly speak at all and had to tell his mother and Tones Frobisher at DE that he had come down with laryngitis.

Now there’s just ten wheelchairs between him and the checkpoint. One of the guards – probably the head honcho, since he’s the oldest and the only one wearing a hat – takes a backpack from a young girl who’s as bald as Brady himself. He explains something to her, and gives her a claim-check.

They’re going to catch me, Brady thinks coldly. They are, so get ready to die.

He is ready. Has been for some time now.

Eight wheelchairs between him and the checkpoint. Seven. Six. It’s like the countdown on his computers.

Then the singing starts outside, muffled at first.

‘The sun, baby, the sun shines when you look at me … The moon, baby …’

When they hit the chorus, the sound swells to that of a cathedral choir: girls singing at the top of their lungs.

‘I WANT TO LOVE YOU MY WAY … WE’LL DRIVE THE BEACHSIDE HIGHWAY …’

At that moment, the main doors swing open. Some girls cheer; most continue singing, and louder than ever.

‘IT’S GONNA BE A NEW DAY … I’LL GIVE YOU KISSES ON THE MIDWAY!’

Chicks wearing ’Round Here tops and their first makeup pour in, their parents (mostly mommies) struggling to keep up and stay connected to their brats. The velvet rope between the main part of the corridor and the handicapped zone is knocked over and trampled underfoot. A beefy twelve– or thirteen-year-old with an ass the size of Iowa is shoved into the wheelchair ahead of Brady’s, and the girl inside it, who has a cheerfully pretty face and sticks for legs, is almost knocked over.

‘Hey, watch it!’ the wheelchair-girl’s mother shouts, but the fat bitch in the double-wide jeans is already gone, waving a ’Round Here pennant in one hand and her ticket in the other. Someone thumps into Brady’s chair, the picture shifts in his lap, and for one cold second he thinks they’re all going to go up in a white flash and a hail of steel bearings. When they don’t, he raises the picture enough to peer underneath, and sees the ready-lamp is still glowing yellow.

Close one, Brady thinks, and grins.

It’s happy confusion in the hallway, and all but one of the security guards who were checking the handicapped concertgoers move to do what they can with this new influx of crazed singing teens and pre-teens. The one guard who remains on the handicapped side of the corridor is a young woman, and she’s waving the wheelchairs through with barely a glance. As Brady approaches her he spots the guy in charge, Hat Honcho, standing on the far side of the corridor almost directly opposite. At six-three or so, he’s easy to see, because he towers over the girls, and his eyes never stop moving. In one hand he holds a piece of paper, which he glances down at every now and again.

‘Show me your tickets and go,’ the security woman says to the pretty wheelchair-girl and her mother. ‘Righthand door.’

Brady sees something interesting. The tall security guy in the hat grabs a guy of twenty or so who looks to be on his own and pulls him out of the scrum.

‘Next!’ the security woman calls to him. ‘Don’t hold up the line!’

Brady rolls forward, ready to push Frankie’s picture against the toggle-switch on Thing Two if she shows even a passing interest in the pockets of his wheelchair. The corridor is now wall to wall with pushing, singing girls, and his score will be a lot higher than thirty. If the corridor has to do, that will be fine.

The security woman points at the picture. ‘Who’s that, hon?’

‘My little boy,’ Brady says with a game smile. ‘He was killed in an accident last year. The same one that left me …’ He indicates the chair. ‘He loved ’Round Here, but he never got to hear their new album. Now he will.’

She’s harried, but not too harried for sympathy; her eyes soften. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Brady says, thinking: You stupid cunt.

‘Go straight ahead, sir, then bear to the right. You’ll find the two handicapped aisles halfway down the auditorium. Great views. If you need help getting down the ramp – it’s pretty steep – look for one of the ushers wearing the yellow armbands.’

‘I’ll be okay,’ Brady says, smiling at her. ‘Great brakes on this baby.’

‘Good for you. Enjoy the show.’

‘Thank you, ma’am, I sure will. Frankie will, too.’

Brady rolls toward the main entrance. Back at the security checkpoint, Larry Windom – known to his police colleagues as Romper-Stomper – releases the young man who decided on the spur of the moment to use his kid sister’s ticket when she came down with mono. He looks nothing like the creep in the photo Bill Hodges sent him.

The auditorium features stadium seating, which delights Brady. The bowl shape will concentrate the explosion. He can imagine the packets of ball bearings taped under his seat fanning out. If he’s lucky, he thinks, he’ll get the band as well as half the audience.

Pop music plays from the overhead speakers, but the girls who are filling the seats and choking the aisles drown it out with their own young and fervent voices. Spotlights swing back and forth over the crowd. Frisbees fly. A couple of oversized beachballs bounce around. The only thing that surprises Brady is that there’s no sign of the Ferris wheel and all that midway shit onstage. Why did they haul it all in, if they weren’t going to use it?

An usher with a yellow armband has just finished placing the pretty girl with the stick legs, and comes up to assist Brady, but Brady waves him off. The usher gives him a grin and a pat on the shoulder as he goes by to help someone else. Brady rolls down to the first of the two sections reserved for the handicapped. He parks next to the pretty girl with the stick legs.

She turns to him with a smile. ‘Isn’t this exciting?’

Brady smiles back, thinking, You don’t know the half of it, you crippled bitch.

30

Tanya Robertson is looking at the stage and thinking of the first concert she ever went to – it was the Temps – and how Bobby Wilson kissed her right in the middle of ‘My Girl.’ Very romantic.

She’s roused from these thoughts by her daughter, who’s shaking her arm. ‘Look, Mom, there’s the crippled man. Over there with the other wheelchair-people.’ Barbara points to the left and down a couple of rows. Here the seats have been removed to make room for two ranks of wheelchairs.

‘I see him, Barb, but it’s not polite to stare.’

‘I hope he has a good time, don’t you?’

Tanya smiles at her daughter. ‘I sure do, honey.’

‘Can we have our phones back? We need them for the start of the show.’

To take pictures with is what Tanya Robinson assumes … because it’s been a long time since she’s been to a rock show. She opens her purse and doles out the candy-colored phones. For a wonder, the girls just hold them. For the time being, they’re too busy goggling around to call or text. Tanya puts a quick kiss on top of Barb’s head and then sits back, lost in the past, thinking of Bobby Wilson’s kiss. Not quite the first, but the first good one.

She hopes that when the time comes, Barb will be as lucky.

31

‘Oh my happy clapping Jesus,’ Holly says, and hits her forehead with the heel of her hand. She’s finished with Brady’s Number One – nothing much there – and has moved on to Number Two.

Jerome looks up from Number Five, which seems to have been exclusively dedicated to video games, most of the Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty sort. ‘What?’

‘It’s just that every now and then I run across someone even more screwed in the head than me,’ she says. ‘It cheers me up. That’s terrible, I know it is, but I can’t help it.’

Hodges gets up from the stairs with a grunt and comes over to look. The screen is filled with small photos. They appear to be harmless cheesecake, not much different from the kind he and his friends used to moon over in Adam and Spicy Leg Art back in the late fifties. Holly enlarges three of them and arranges them in a row. Here is Deborah Hartsfield wearing a filmy robe. And Deborah Hartsfield wearing babydoll pajamas. And Deborah Hartsfield in a frilly pink bra-and-panty set.

‘My God, it’s his mother,’ Jerome says. His face is a study in revulsion, amazement, and fascination. ‘And it looks like she posed.’

It looks that way to Hodges, too.

‘Yup,’ Holly says. ‘Paging Dr Freud. Why do you keep rubbing your shoulder, Mr Hodges?’

‘Pulled a muscle,’ he says. But he’s starting to wonder about that.

Jerome glances at the desktop screen of Number Three, starts to check out the photos of Brady Hartsfield’s mother again, then does a double-take. ‘Whoa,’ he says. ‘Look at this, Bill.’

Sitting in the lower lefthand corner of Number Three’s desktop is a Blue Umbrella icon.

‘Open it,’ Hodges says.

He does, but the file is empty. There’s nothing unsent, and as they now know, all old correspondence on Debbie’s Blue Umbrella goes straight to data heaven.

Jerome sits down at Number Three. ‘This must be his go-to glowbox, Hols. Almost got to be.’

She joins him. ‘I think the other ones are mostly for show – so he can pretend he’s on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise or something.’

Hodges points to a file marked 2009. ‘Let’s look at that one.’

A mouse-click discloses a subfile titled CITY CENTER. Jerome opens it and they stare at a long list of stories about what happened there in April of 2009.

‘The asshole’s press clippings,’ Hodges says.

‘Go through everything on this one,’ Holly tells Jerome. ‘Start with the hard drive.’

Jerome opens it. ‘Oh man, look at this shit.’ He points to a file titled EXPLOSIVES.

‘Open it!’ Holly says, shaking his shoulder. ‘Open it, open it, open it!’

Jerome does, and reveals another loaded subfile. Drawers within drawers, Hodges thinks. A computer’s really nothing but a Victorian rolltop desk, complete with secret compartments.

Holly says, ‘Hey guys, look at this.’ She points. ‘He downloaded the whole Anarchist Cookbook from BitTorrent. That’s illegal!’

‘Duh,’ Jerome says, and she punches him in the arm.

The pain in Hodges’s shoulder is worse. He walks back to the stairs and sits heavily. Jerome and Holly, huddled over Number Three, don’t notice him go. He puts his hands on his thighs (My overweight thighs, he thinks, my badly overweight thighs) and begins taking long slow breaths. The only thing that can make this evening worse would be having a heart attack in a house he’s illegally entered with a minor and a woman who is at least a mile from right in the head. A house where a bullshit-crazy killer’s pinup girl is lying dead upstairs.

Please God, no heart attack. Please.

He takes more long breaths. He stifles a belch and the pain begins to ease.

With his head lowered, he finds himself looking between the stairs. Something glints there in the light of the overhead fluorescents. Hodges drops to his knees and crawls underneath to see what it is. It turns out to be a stainless steel ball bearing, bigger than the ones in the Happy Slapper, heavy in his palm. He looks at the distorted reflection of his face in its curved side, and an idea starts to grow. Only it doesn’t exactly grow; it surfaces, like the bloated body of something drowned.

Farther beneath the stairs is a green garbage bag. Hodges crawls to it with the ball bearing clutched in one hand, feeling the cobwebs that dangle from the undersides of the steps caress his receding hair and growing forehead. Jerome and Holly are chattering excitedly, but he pays no attention.

He grabs the garbage bag with his free hand and begins to back out from beneath the stairs. A drop of sweat runs into his left eye, stinging, and he blinks it away. He sits down on the steps again.

‘Open his email,’ Holly says.

‘God, you’re bossy,’ Jerome says.

‘Open it, open it, open it!’

Right you are, Hodges thinks, and opens the garbage bag. There are snippets of wire inside, and what appears to be a busted circuit board. They are lying on top of a khaki-colored garment that looks like a shirt. He brushes the bits of wire aside, pulls the garment out, holds it up. Not a shirt but a hiker’s vest, the kind with lots of pockets. The lining has been slashed in half a dozen places. He reaches into one of these cuts, feels around, and pulls out two more ball bearings. It’s not a hiker’s vest, at least not anymore. It’s been customized.

Now it’s a suicide vest.

Or was. Brady unloaded it for some reason. Because his plans changed to the Careers Day thing on Saturday? That has to be it. The explosives are probably in his car, unless he’s stolen another one already. He—

‘No!’ Jerome cries. Then he screams it. ‘No! No, no, OH GOD NO!’

‘Please don’t let it be,’ Holly whimpers. ‘Don’t let it be that.’

Hodges drops the vest and hurries across to the bank of computers to see what they’re looking at. It’s an email from a site called FanTastic, thanking Mr Brady Hartsfield for his order.

You may download your printable ticket at once. No bags or backpacks will be allowed at this event. Thank you for ordering from FanTastic, where all the best seats to all the biggest shows are only a click away.

Below this: ‘ROUND HERE MINGO AUDITORIUM MIDWEST CULTURE AND ARTS COMPLEX JUNE 3, 2010 7 PM.

Hodges closes his eyes. It’s the fucking concert after all. We made an understandable mistake … but not a forgivable one. Please God, don’t let him get inside. Please God, let Romper-Stomper’s guys catch him at the door.

But even that could be a nightmare, because Larry Windom is under the impression that he’s looking for a child molester, not a mad bomber. If he spots Brady and tries to collar him with his usual heavy-handed lack of grace—

‘It’s quarter of seven,’ Holly says, pointing to the digital readout on Brady’s Number Three. ‘He might still be waiting in line, but he’s probably inside already.’

Hodges knows she’s right. With that many kids going, seating will have started no later than six-thirty.

‘Jerome,’ he says.

The boy doesn’t reply. He’s staring at the ticket receipt on the computer screen, and when Hodges puts his hand on Jerome’s shoulder, it’s like touching a stone.

‘Jerome.’

Slowly, Jerome turns around. His eyes are huge. ‘We been so stupid,’ he whispers.

‘Call your moms.’ Hodges’s voice remains calm, and it’s not even that much of an effort, because he’s in deep shock. He keeps seeing the ball bearing. And the slashed vest. ‘Do it now. Tell her to grab Barbara and the other kids she brought and beat feet out of there.’

Jerome pulls his phone from the clip on his belt and speed-dials his mother. Holly stares at him with her arms crossed tightly over her breasts and her chewed lips pulled down in a grimace.

Jerome waits, mutters a curse, then says: ‘You have to get out of there, Mom. Just take the girls and go. Don’t call me back and ask questions, just go. Don’t run. But get out!’

He ends the call and tells them what they already know. ‘Voicemail. It rang plenty of times, so she’s not talking on it and it’s not shut off. I don’t get it.’

‘What about your sister?’ Hodges says. ‘She must have a phone.’

Jerome is hitting speed-dial again before he can finish. He listens for what seems to Hodges like an age, although he knows it can only be ten or fifteen seconds. Then he says, ‘Barb! Why in hell aren’t you picking up? You and Mom and the other girls have to get out of there!’ He ends the call. ‘I don’t get this. She always carries it, that thing is practically grafted to her, and she should at least feel it vibra—’

Holly says, ‘Oh shit and piss.’ But that’s not enough for her. ‘Oh, fuck!’

They turn to her.

‘How big is the concert place? How many people can fit inside?’

Hodges tries to retrieve what he knows about the Mingo Auditorium. ‘Seats four thousand. I don’t know if they allow standees or not, I can’t remember that part of the fire code.’

‘And for this show, almost all of them are girls,’ she says. ‘Girls with cell phones practically grafted to them. Most of them gabbing away while they wait for the show to start. Or texting.’ Her eyes are huge with dismay. ‘It’s the circuits. They’re overloaded. You have to keep trying, Jerome. You have to keep trying until you get through.’

He nods numbly, but he’s looking at Hodges. ‘You should call your friend. The one in the security department.’

‘Yeah, but not from here. In the car.’ Hodges looks at his watch again. Ten of seven. ‘We’re going to the MAC.’

Holly clenches a fist on either side of her face. ‘Yes,’ she says, and Hodges finds himself remembering what she said earlier: They can’t find him. We can.

In spite of his desire to confront Hartsfield – to wrap his hands around Hartsfield’s neck and see the bastard’s eyes bulge as his breath stops – Hodges hopes she’s wrong about that. Because if it’s up to them, it may already be too late.

32

This time it’s Jerome behind the wheel and Hodges in back. Olivia Trelawney’s Mercedes gathers itself slowly, but once the twelve-cylinder engine gets cranking, it goes like a rocket … and with the lives of his mother and sister on the line, Jerome drives it like one, weaving from lane to lane and ignoring the protesting honks of the cars around him. Hodges estimates they can be at the MAC in twenty minutes. If the kid doesn’t pile them up, that is.

‘Call the security man!’ Holly says from the passenger seat. ‘Call him, call him, call him!’

As Hodges takes his Nokia out of his jacket pocket, he instructs Jerome to take the City Bypass.

‘Don’t backseat-drive me,’ Jerome says. ‘Just make the call. And hurry.’

But when he tries to access his phone’s memory, the fucking Nokia gives a single weak tweet and then dies. When was the last time he charged it? Hodges can’t remember. He can’t remember the number of the security office, either. He should have written it down in his notebook instead of depending on the phone.

Goddam technology, he thinks … but whose fault is it, really?

‘Holly. Dial 555-1900 and then give me your phone. Mine’s dead.’ 1900 is the department. He can get Windom’s number from Marlo again.

‘Okay, what’s the area code here? My phone’s on—’

She breaks off as Jerome swerves around a panel truck and drives straight at an SUV in the other lane, flashing his lights and yelling, ‘Get out of the way!’ The SUV swerves and Jerome skates the Mercedes past with a coat of paint to spare.

‘—on Cincinnati,’ Holly finishes. She sounds as cool as a Popsicle.

Hodges, thinking he could use some of the drugs she’s on, recites the area code. She dials and hands her phone to him over the seat.

‘Police Department, how may I direct your call?’

‘I need to talk to Marlo Everett in Records, and right away.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but I saw Ms Everett leave half an hour ago.’

‘Have you got her cell number?’

‘Sir, I’m not allowed to give that information ou—’

He has no inclination to engage in a time-consuming argument that will surely prove fruitless, and clicks off just as Jerome swings onto the City Bypass, doing sixty. ‘What’s the holdup, Bill? Why aren’t you—’

‘Shut up and drive, Jerome,’ Holly says. ‘Mr Hodges is doing the best he can.’

The truth is, she really doesn’t want me to reach anyone, Hodges thinks. Because it’s supposed to be us and only us. A crazy idea comes to him, that Holly is using some weird psychic vibe to make sure it stays them and only them. And it might. Based on the way Jerome’s driving, they’ll be at the MAC before Hodges is able to get hold of anyone in authority.

A cold part of his mind is thinking that might be best. Because no matter who Hodges reaches, Larry Windom is the man in charge at the Mingo, and Hodges doesn’t trust him. Romper-Stomper was always a bludgeoner, a go-right-at-em kind of guy, and Hodges doubts he has changed.

Still, he has to try.

He hands Holly’s phone back to her and says, ‘I can’t figure this fucking thing out. Call Directory Assistance and—’

‘Try my sister again first,’ Jerome says, and raps off the number.

Holly dials Barbara’s phone, her thumb moving so fast it’s a blur. Listens. ‘Voicemail.’

Jerome curses and drives faster. Hodges can only hope there’s an angel riding on his shoulder.

‘Barbara!’ Holly hollers. No mumbling now. ‘You and whoever’s with you get your asses out of there right away! ASAP! Pronto!’ She clicks off. ‘Now what? Directory Assistance, you said?’

‘Yeah. Get the MAC Security Department number, dial it, and give the phone back to me. Jerome, take Exit 4A.’

‘3B’s the MAC.’

‘It is if you’re going in front. We’re going to the back.’

‘Bill, if my mom and sis get hurt—’

‘They won’t. Take 4A.’ Holly’s discussion with Directory Assistance has lasted too long. ‘Holly, what’s the holdup?’

‘No direct line into their Security Department.’ She dials a new number, listens, and hands him the phone. ‘You have to go through the main number.’

He presses Holly’s iPhone to his ear hard enough to hurt. It rings. And rings. And rings some more.

As they pass Exits 2A and 2B, Hodges can see the MAC. It’s lit up like a jukebox, the parking lot a sea of cars. His call is finally answered, but before he can say a word, a fembot begins to lecture him. She does it slowly and carefully, as if addressing a person who speaks English as a second language, and not well.

‘Hello, and thank you for calling the Midwest Culture and Arts Complex, where we make life better and all things are possible.’

Hodges listens with Holly’s phone mashed against his ear and sweat rolling down his cheeks and neck. It’s six past seven. The bastard won’t do it until the show starts, he tells himself (he’s actually praying), and rock acts always start late.

‘Remember,’ the fembot says sweetly, ‘we depend on you for support, and season’s passes to the City Symphony and this fall’s Playhouse Series are available now. Not only will you save fifty percent—’

‘What’s happening?’ Jerome shouts as they pass 3A and 3B. The next sign reads EXIT 4A SPICER BOULEVARD ½ MILE. Jerome has tossed Holly his own phone and Holly is trying first Tanya, then Barbara again, with no result.

‘I’m listening to a fucking recorded ad,’ Hodges says. He’s rubbing the hollow of his shoulder again. That ache is like an infected tooth. ‘Go left at the bottom of the ramp. You’ll want a right turn I think about a block up. Maybe two. By the McDonald’s, anyway.’ Although the Mercedes is now doing eighty, the sound of the engine has yet to rise above a sleepy purr.

‘If we hear an explosion, I’m going to lose my mind,’ Jerome says matter-of-factly.

‘Just drive,’ Holly says. An unlit Winston jitters between her teeth. ‘If you don’t wreck us, we’ll be fine.’ She’s gone back to Tanya’s number. ‘We’re going to get him. We’re going to get him get him get him.’

Jerome snatches a glance at her. ‘Holly, you’re nuts.’

‘Just drive,’ she repeats.

‘You can also use your MAC card to obtain a ten percent discount at selected fine restaurants and local retail businesses,’ the fembot informs Hodges.

Then, at long last, she gets down to business.

‘There is no one in the main office to take your call now. If you know the number of the extension you wish to reach, you may dial it at any time. If not, please listen carefully, because our menu options have changed. To call the Avery Johns Drama Office, dial one-oh. To call the Belinda Dean Box Office, dial one-one. To reach City Symphony—’

Oh dear Jesus, Hodges thinks, it’s the fucking Sears catalogue. And in alphabetical order.

The Mercedes dips and swerves as Jerome takes the 4A exit and shoots down the curved ramp. The light is red at the bottom. ‘Holly. How is it your way?’

She checks with the phone still at her ear. ‘You’re okay if you hurry. If you want to get us all killed, take your time.’

Jerome buries the accelerator. Olivia’s Mercedes shoots across four lanes of traffic listing hard to port, the tires squalling. There’s a thud as they bounce across the concrete divider. Horns blare a discordant flourish. From the corner of his eye, Hodges sees a panel truck climb the curb to avoid them.

‘To reach Craft Service and Set Design, dial—’

Hodges punches the roof of the Mercedes. ‘What happened to HUMAN FUCKING BEINGS?’

Just as the Golden Arches of McDonald’s appear ahead on the right, the fembot tells Hodges he can reach the MAC’s Security Department by dialing three-two.

He does so. The phone rings four times, then is picked up. What he hears makes him wonder if he is losing his mind.

‘Hello, and thank you for calling the Midwest Culture and Arts Complex,’ the fembot says cordially. ‘Where we make life better and all things are possible.’

33

‘Why isn’t the show starting, Mrs Robinson?’ Dinah Scott asks. ‘It’s already ten past seven.’

Tanya thinks of telling them about the Stevie Wonder concert she went to when she was in high school, the one that was scheduled to start at eight and finally got underway at nine-thirty, but decides it might be counterproductive.

Hilda’s frowning at her phone. ‘I still can’t get Gail,’ she complains. ‘All the darn circuits are b—’

The lights begin to dim before she can finish. This provokes wild cheering and waves of applause.

‘Oh God, Mommy, I’m so excited!’ Barbara whispers, and Tanya is touched to see tears welling in her daughter’s eyes. A guy in a BAM-100 Good Guys tee-shirt struts out. A spotlight tracks him to center stage.

‘Hey, you guys!’ he shouts. ‘Howya doin out there?’

A fresh wave of noise assures him that the sellout crowd is doing just fine. Tanya sees the two ranks of Wheelchair People are also applauding. Except for the bald man. He’s just sitting there. Probably doesn’t want to drop his picture, Tanya thinks.

‘Are you ready for some Boyd, Steve, and Pete?’ the DJ host inquires.

More cheers and screams.

‘And are you ready for some CAM KNOWLES?’

The girls (most of whom would be struck utterly dumb in their idol’s actual presence) shriek deliriously. They’re ready, all right. God, are they ready. They could just die.

‘In a few minutes you’re going to see a set that’ll knock your eyes out, but for now, ladies and gentlemen – and especially you girls – give it up for … ’ROUND … HEEERRRRE!!!’

The audience surges to its feet, and as the lights on the stage go completely dark, Tanya understands why the girls just had to have their phones. In her day, everyone held up matches or Bic lighters. These kids hold up their cell phones, the combined light of all those little screens casting a pallid moonglow across the bowl of the auditorium.

How do they know to do these things? she wonders. Who tells them? For that matter, who told us?

She cannot remember.

The stage lights come up to bright furnace red. At that moment, a call finally slips through the clogged network and Barbara Robinson’s cell vibrates in her hand. She ignores it. Answering a phone call is the last thing in the world she wants to do right now (a first in her young life), and she couldn’t hear the person on the other end – probably her brother – even if she did. The racket inside the Mingo is deafening … and Barb loves it. She waves her vibrating phone back and forth above her head in big slow swoops. Everyone is doing the same, even her mom.