Mr. Mercedes: A Novel (47 page)

Brady runs his hand over the top of his head, feeling smooth skin where no stubble will ever have the chance to grow out. Then he backs the wheelchair out of the slot where he has parked his car and begins to roll himself slowly across the expanse of parking lot toward the growing crowd.

26

Hodges gets snared in rush-hour traffic and doesn’t arrive back on the North Side until shortly after six
P.M
. Jerome and Holly are still with him; they both want to see this through, regardless of the consequences, and since they seem to understand what those consequences may be, Hodges has decided he can’t refuse them. Not that he has much of a choice; Holly won’t divulge what she knows. Or thinks she knows.

Hank Beeson is out of his house and crossing the street before Hodges can bring Olivia Trelawney’s Mercedes to a stop in the Hartsfield driveway. Hodges sighs and powers down the driver’s-side window.

“I sure would like to know what’s going on,” Mr. Beeson says. “Does it have anything to do with all that mess down in Lowtown?”

“Mr. Beeson,” Hodges says, “I appreciate your concern, but you need to go back to your house and—”

“No, wait,” Holly says. She’s leaning across the center console of Olivia Trelawney’s Mercedes so she can look up at Beeson’s face. “Tell me how Mr. Hartsfield sounds. I need to know how his voice sounds.”

Beeson looks perplexed. “Like anyone, I guess. Why?”

“Is it low? You know, baritone?”

“You mean like one of those fat opera singers?” Beeson laughs. “Hell, no. What kind of question is that?”

“Not high and squeaky, either?”

To Hodges, Beeson says, “Is your partner crazy?”

Only a little, Hodges thinks. “Just answer the question, sir.”

“Not low, not high and squeaky. Regular! What’s going on?”

“No accent?” Holly persists. “Like . . . um . . . Southern? Or New England? Or Brooklyn, maybe?”

“No, I said. He sounds like anybody.”

Holly sits back, apparently satisfied.

Hodges says, “Go back inside, Mr. Beeson. Please.”

Beeson snorts but backs off. He pauses at the foot of his steps to cast a glare over his shoulder. It’s one Hodges has seen many times before, the
I pay your salary, asshole
glare. Then he goes inside, slamming the door behind him to make sure they get the point. Soon he appears once more at the window with his arms folded over his chest.

“What if he calls the cop shop to ask what we’re doing here?” Jerome asks from the back seat.

Hodges smiles. It’s wintry but genuine. “Good luck with that tonight. Come on.”

As he leads them single-file along the narrow path between the house and the garage, he checks his watch. Quarter past six. He thinks, How the time flies when you’re having fun.

They enter the kitchen. Hodges opens the basement door and reaches for the light switch.

“No,” Holly says. “Leave it off.”

He looks at her questioningly, but Holly has turned to Jerome.

“You have to do it. Mr. Hodges is too old and I’m a woman.”

For a moment Jerome doesn’t get it, then he does. “Control equals lights?”

She nods. Her face is tense and drawn. “It should work if your voice is anywhere close to his.”

Jerome steps into the doorway, clears his throat self-consciously, and says, “Control.”

The basement remains dark.

Hodges says, “You’ve got a naturally low voice. Not baritone, but low. It’s why you sound older than you really are when you’re on the phone. See if you can raise it up a little.”

Jerome repeats the word, and the lights in the basement come on. Holly Gibney, whose life has not exactly been a sitcom, laughs and claps her hands.

27

It’s six-twenty when Tanya Robinson arrives at the MAC, and as she joins the line of incoming vehicles, she wishes she’d listened to the girls’ importuning and left for the concert an hour earlier. The lot is already three-quarters full. Guys in orange vests are flagging traffic. One of them waves her to the left. She turns that way, driving with slow care because she’s borrowed Ginny Carver’s Tahoe for tonight’s safari, and the last thing she wants is to get into a fender-bender. In the seats behind her, the girls—Hilda Carver, Betsy DeWitt, Dinah Scott, and her own Barbara—are literally bouncing with excitement. They have loaded the Tahoe’s CD changer with their ’Round Here CDs (among them they have all six), and they squeal “Oh, I
love
this one!” every time a new tune comes on. It’s noisy and it’s stressful and Tanya is surprised to find she’s enjoying herself quite a lot.

“Watch out for the crippled guy, Mrs. Robinson,” Betsy says, pointing.

The crippled guy is skinny, pale, and bald, all but floating inside his baggy tee-shirt. He’s holding what looks like a framed picture in his lap, and she can also see one of those urine bags. A sadly jaunty ’Round Here pennant juts from a pocket on the side of his wheelchair. Poor man, Tanya thinks.

“Maybe we should help him,” Barbara says. “He’s going awful slow.”

“Bless your kind heart,” Tanya says. “Let me get us parked, and if he hasn’t made it to the building when we walk back, we’ll do just that.”

She slides the borrowed Tahoe into an empty space and turns it off with a sigh of relief.

“Boy, look at the
lines
,” Dinah says. “There must be a zillion people here.”

“Nowhere near that many,” Tanya says, “but it
is
a lot. They’ll open the doors soon, though. And we’ve got good seats, so don’t worry about that.”

“You’ve still got the tickets, right, Mom?”

Tanya ostentatiously checks her purse. “Got them right here, hon.”

“And we can have souvenirs?”

“One each, and nothing that costs over ten dollars.”

“I’ve got my own money, Mrs. Robinson,” Betsy says as they climb out of the Tahoe. The girls are a little nervous at the sight of the crowd growing outside the MAC. They cluster together, their four shadows becoming a single dark puddle in the strong early-evening sunlight.

“I’m sure you do, Bets, but this is on me,” Tanya says. “Now listen up, girls. I want you to give me your money and phones for safekeeping. Sometimes there are pickpockets at these big public gatherings. I’ll give everything back when we’re safe in our seats, but no texting or calling once the show starts—are we clear on that?”

“Can we each take a picture first, Mrs. Robinson?” Hilda asks.

“Yes. One each.”

“Two!” Barbara begs.

“All right, two. But hurry up.”

They each take two pictures, promising to email them later, so everyone has a complete set. Tanya takes a couple of her own, with the four girls grouped together and their arms around each other’s shoulders. She thinks they look lovely.

“Okay, ladies, hand over the cash and the cackleboxes.”

The girls give up thirty dollars or so among them and their candy-colored phones. Tanya puts everything in her purse and locks Ginny Carver’s van with the button on the key-fob. She hears the satisfying thump of the locks engaging—a sound that means safety and security.

“Now listen, you crazy females. We’re all going to hold hands until we’re in our seats, okay? Let me hear your okay.”

“Okaay!”
the girls shout, and grab hands. They’re tricked out in their best skinny jeans and their best sneakers. All are wearing ’Round Here tees, and Hilda’s ponytail has been tied with a white silk ribbon that says I LUV CAM in red letters.

“And we’re going to have fun, right? Best time ever, right? Let me hear your okay.”

“OKAAAYYYY!”

Satisfied, Tanya leads them toward the MAC. It’s a long walk across hot macadam, but none of them seems to mind. Tanya looks for the bald man in the wheelchair and spies him making his way toward the back of the handicapped line. That one is much shorter, but it still makes her sad to see all those broken folks. Then the wheelchairs start to move. They’re letting the handicapped people in first, and she thinks that’s a good idea. Let all or at least most of them get settled in their own section before the stampede begins.

As Tanya’s party reaches the end of the shortest line of abled people (which is still very long), she watches the skinny bald guy propel himself up the handicap ramp and thinks how much easier it would be for him if he had one of those motorized chairs. She wonders about the picture in his lap. Some loved relative who’s gone on? That seems the most likely.

Poor man, she thinks again, and sends up a brief prayer to God, thanking Him that her own two kids are all right.

“Mom?” Barbara says.

“Yes, honey?”

“Best time ever, right?”

Tanya Robinson squeezes her daughter’s hand. “You bet.”

A girl starts singing “Kisses on the Midway” in a clear, sweet voice.
“The sun, baby, the sun shines when you look at me . . . The moon, baby, the moon glows when you’re next to me . . .”

More girls join in.
“Your love, your touch, just a little is never enough . . . I want to love you my way . . .”

Soon the song is floating up into the warm evening air a thousand voices strong. Tanya is happy to add her voice, and after the CD-a-thon coming from Barbara’s room these last two weeks, she knows all the words.

Impulsively, she bends down and kisses the top of her daughter’s head.

Best time ever, she thinks.

28

Hodges and his junior Watsons stand in Brady’s basement control room, looking at the row of silent computers.

“Chaos first,” Jerome says. “Then darkness. Right?”

Hodges thinks, It sounds like something out of the Book of Revelation.

“I think so,” Holly says. “At least that’s the order she had them in.” To Hodges, she says, “She was listening, see? I bet she was listening a lot more than he knew she was listening.” She turns back to Jerome. “One thing. Very important. Don’t waste time if you get
chaos
to turn them on.”

“Right. The suicide program. Only what if I get nervous and my voice goes all high and squeaky like Mickey Mouse?”

She starts to reply, then sees the look in his eye. “Hardy-har-har.” But she smiles in spite of herself. “Go on, Jerome. Be Brady Hartsfield.”

He only has to say
chaos
once. The computers flash on, and the numbers start descending.

“Darkness!”

The numbers continue to count down.

“Don’t
shout
,” Holly says. “Jeez.”

16. 15. 14.

“Darkness.”

“I think you’re too low again,” Hodges says, trying not to sound as nervous as he feels.

12. 11.

Jerome wipes his mouth. “D-darkness.”

“Mushmouth,” Holly observes. Perhaps not helpfully.

8. 7. 6.

“Darkness.”

5.

The countdown disappears. Jerome lets out a gusty sigh of relief. What replaces the numbers is a series of color photographs of men in old-timey Western clothes, shooting and being shot. One has been frozen as he and his horse crash through a plate glass window.

“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 forseen, 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.