Among the Living (74 page)

Two industrial floodlights on stanchions popped on, aimed at the center of the gunrail.

“You need to remember who your friends are,” Kingman leaned close and hissed into Jimmy’s ear.

“You’re not my friends,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” Kingman said.

The door at the far end of the gunrail, the end away from the window, opened.

Whitehead was the first through it.

“Five,” the window man said.
“Five!”

“Shut up!” Kingman yelled at the window man. Some of the crowd laughed. The window man gripped the railing with both hands.

On they came. The candidates.

What followed the appearance of each man onto the gunrail, into the spotlights, shouldn’t be called applause, certainly not cheering. But it had a sound, a Sailor-specific sound, something that came out of the back of the mouth, halfway down the throat. Like the huzzahs in the House of Commons. Affirmative grumbling. The vocals were accompanied by the sound of shuffling feet, like walking in place. It was how they registered their respect.

Whitehead got a good reception. Jeremy stood on a bench under the gunrail and scanned the crowd, mentally taking names of any who thought otherwise.

Then it was Steadman. He was so big he had to duck to come through the doorway.

The L.A. contingent responded. And a few of the reds.

There wasn’t ever going to be a vote; that wasn’t the way it worked. But for now it seemed even between the two men, Whitehead and Steadman.

“The Next!”
Kingman shouted out. “Steadman!”

The feet shuffle d louder. Then a rhythm came out of it. And the rhythm turned into stomping.

Led by the black motorcycle boots.

Jeremy glared at Kingman and the SoCal Sailors.

“What?” Kingman said, glaring back at Jeremy.
“What!”

Jeremy seized one of the floodlights and turned it on Kingman. Jimmy was caught in the glare, too.

But the crowd’s attention wasn’t diverted for long.

Because now Whitehead turned toward the door.

To present Mary. In her hood.

Mary Magdalene. Death Mary. A surprise candidate.

“Queen Mary!”
a woman shouted. Men joined her.

Jimmy fell the rest of the way. Facedown.

He knew she was known. He knew she had her friends. He didn’t know that she was poised to rule them, insofar as any of them allowed themselves to be ruled. He thought she had brought him here because she loved him.

She had brought him here to share a throne.

Christina Leonidas had seen Jimmy in the spotlight and now had squeezed in next to him.

“Can a woman be The Next?” she said.

The question was answered when Whitehead handed Mary a white rose.

“I yield,” Whitehead said. And bowed at the waist.

The crowd grumbled their approval.

News joined in, lifting all-too-trusting eyes to the hooded figure on the balcony, the moment’s Juliet.

“Your enemies watch you, learn from you,” Kingman said to Jimmy. “Red Steadman taught me that. Look at all these News. Fresh dead. They got all this from us. From the Cut thing. Run up the numbers, freak everybody out. But it’s not over yet.”

Mary looked down at Jimmy, in the other spotlight.

Kingman leaned even closer to him, to make it personal, to make it like a dirty joke, and said into his ear, “I stood over her, man, up in that white house up in Benedict Canyon, had the bloody, dripping knife in my hand. And something stopped me.” He laughed the ugliest laugh of all, an ugly breath blown in Jimmy’s ear. “Now here we all are . . .”

“One,” the now-chastised lookout said. “One.”

But it wasn’t over. Jeremy shifted the other spotlight from Mary and Whitehead to Steadman.

Steadman moved to the rail.

He looked like a king.

Battling rumbling began, a war of voices and marching feet. The prison seemed to quake with it. Maybe the walls of Alcatraz would crumble with the collective fear and anger and hunger.

Who would it be?

Steadman or Mary?

Jimmy had had enough. He wanted a door. He saw Angel. Angel waved him over. He was along the side. Jimmy started toward him.

“Wait,” Mary called down. “Wait.”

Her voice stilled the crowd. Completely. In a second.

The light was still on him. Jimmy Miles. The waning crescent moon was now in the frame of the barred window. The hour of decision. Steadman looked defeated, one way or another. A few voices called out Jimmy’s name. A few more.

Mary dropped Whitehead’s rose, held out her hand to him. To
him
.

Jimmy looked up at her and said, loud enough for any of them to hear, “Whose idea was all the killing?”

Just when it was starting to get romantic.

He came down the
Z
to the docks, to where one of the red-and-white ferries idled. A crewman leaned on the rail with a hand spotlight, teasing the fish.

Jimmy stopped and turned before he got on board. He could hear them, up the hill, receiving their queen. In his head, he could see her there, and suspected he always would, for whatever years he had left to serve.

They left the top down all the way, even when they ran through a little rain south of Salinas. The kid had his porkpie hat on. The guitar was covered.

Life was good.

“Where’d you get that hat?” Jimmy said over the wind.

“It was my dad’s,” Les Paul said. “It was in the closet.”

“Where’s he?”

“Down in L.A. someplace.”

The kid wasn’t in any hurry to get home. You could feel it coming from him. Going home felt like a sentence.

Jimmy came off the 101 into the middle of Paso Robles. Angel and Lucy were behind them in the Mercury. Jimmy slowed, let him come up alongside.

“Take the 46,” Jimmy said. Angel nodded and sped ahead.

Jimmy turned off to the right. He knew where the kid lived, a few blocks ahead, a street over from the main drag where the little store was. But he didn’t go there yet.

He drove up into the brown hills a mile off the highway. There was a hundred-year-old oak with free shade underneath it. Jimmy parked.

He popped the rear deck on the Porsche and checked the oil, to have something to do.

“All that stuff you saw, forget it,” he said, his head over the engine. It crackled like a fire.

Les was looking to see if he could see the ocean from here.

“I never been up here,” he said.

“It’s nothing for you to think about the rest of your life,” Jimmy said, standing, closing the hood. “It’s not something a guy needs to know. It’s not even real. A lot of it. They just make stuff up.”

The kid turned. “I don’t want to forget it. I want to use it. In my music.”

It made Jimmy want to cry. Something did.

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“Johnny,” the kid said.

Angel had found his own shade tree, at the roadside twist of stainless steel memorializing James Dean. On 46 just before it meets 41. Lucy was just coming out of the little café with a Coke to go.

Jimmy was flying along at a hundred when he came up on them. He pulled it down into fourth and braked just enough to skid into the dirt lot in front of the memorial.

But Angel saw him coming. He already had the door of the Mercury open for Lucy, and she got in, and Angel roared out of there ahead of Jimmy, letting the speed slam the door closed.