The Tower Part 27

"Jade Marlow?"

He nodded.

"What the h.e.l.l's he doing here?"

"See for yourself."

The agent took the binoculars and peered through them.

Jade stood before the grave, his head bowed meditatively. His eyes were open and his face wore a tight, serious scowl. His lips moved, offering jumbled phrases to the silent cemetery. For an instant, his face softened, and he ran his thumb across his bottom lip.

The agent lowered the binoculars and smiled at his partner. "Holy s.h.i.+t! It is him. Should we approach?"

"No way. Not unless you wanna lose a limb."

"So what should we do?"

"Just watch him, I guess. Make sure he doesn't dig them up or anything." He laughed, a short, hiccuping giggle.

The taller agent raised the binoculars back to his eyes. Jade was nowhere to be seen.

He drove along the streets, prowling in his bullet-riddled car. He didn't want to go home, but he wasn't sure exactly where it was he did want to go. He turned on the radio and a news brief blasted from the speakers.

"-today at The Cutting Floor. At least one male was injured and-"

He clicked it off and drove in silence, listening to his tires clatter over the sewer grates. After a while, he wasn't sure where he was.

The pounding started in his head, like a vise tightening incrementally around his temples. The throbbing increased until he could almost hear it. He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a bottle of Advil. With his left hand on the wheel, he couldn't get the top off, so he banged it against the dashboard and the round pills spilled everywhere, clinking against the winds.h.i.+eld and scattering across the pa.s.senger seat and the floor. He scooped four of them off the seat and swallowed them.

Shaking his head and pressing one hand to his face, he kept driving, still with no apparent destination. All of a sudden, he was in his garage. He stumbled from the car and into the house.

Somewhere deep inside him, he heard the singing start again.

He staggered to the study as if he were drugged, and there he collapsed into his chair. His hand groped for the drawer, knocking the lamp off the side of the desk. It swung from the cord, light twirling around the room. Without looking, he opened the drawer and pulled out a small music box. All he could hear was the rhyme in his head, even over the tune of the music box.

Eenie meenie minie moe.

Catch a r.e.t.a.r.d by the toe.

Make him holler blow by blow.

Eenie meenie minie moe.

The music box stood open, the top of the circus tent long chipped away. His hand came down firmly over the lid of the box, trapping the music inside.

An eight-by-ten picture of Allander lay on the desktop. The music box covered part of it, but Allander's brown eyes leered up at Jade as if tracing the lines of his face. They were alive, his eyes. Even here, even now.

Jade ran his hands over his face and through his hair. The pain was not subsiding. He couldn't remember it ever lasting this long. He closed his eyes tightly, pressing his thumb and finger to the top of his nose.

The circus tent on top of the little music box spun to him in the darkness. Sounds echoed in his head.

The bang of a screen door as the thirteen-year-old boy ran from the house. A crying mother collapsing against the door frame.

He's going. He's going to see Mr. Hollow.

He ran down the street.

The r.e.t.a.r.ded boy finally reached Mr. Hollow and he stepped over the neat circle of rocks to see him, reaching his hand to touch the golden hay sticking out from under the loose clothes. He was mesmerized by the scarecrow-so much so that he even forgot about the boys from whom he was fleeing. Mr. Hollow would protect him from anything, he thought. His mouth hung open as he paid homage to the great scarecrow. The pounding of footsteps stirred him from his trance, and he turned to face the four boys who circled him menacingly.

The thirteen-year-old boy sprinted down the road holding on to his cap so it wouldn't fall off. He turned off the road into a large field of waving foxtails and cursed as he saw the trampled trail leading through the high weeds. Running full speed, he disappeared into them.

Eenie meenie minie moe In the crack of a gunshot, he was back above himself, sprinting through the waving field of foxtails. He ran with quick, expert steps, leaping over furrows, weaving past dirt mounds and gopher holes. His arms pumped furiously at his sides, and the sun fell over his shoulders.

Catch a r.e.t.a.r.d by the toe He could barely make out the chanting of the children, but as his vision cut ahead and he saw his younger brother still holding dumbly on to the straw that he probably thought was a hand protruding from Mr. Hollow's sleeve . . .

Make him holler blow by blow . . . the sound rose and his brother turned, remembering again the boys who had been chasing him, and terror crept back into his face. He heard him yelling, "Jade! Jade!," over and over as the boys circled him . . .

Eenie meenie minie moe . . . and closed in, and Jade heard their voices now and remembered the rhyming lyrics that his brother would recite in his slurred voice as he stumbled home after school, crying, and they were his call to duty, his incitement to fists and swings. Jade ran faster through the high weeds when he heard his name shrieked; a foxtail caught him across the left cheek, cutting deeply, but he didn't notice, he just ran faster; but the four had closed in and one stepped firmly over his brother's foot . . .

by the toe . . . and his fist reared back to strike above the loosely blubbering lower lip.

The clock struck the hour, breaking Jade from his vision. It tolled gloomily, filling the house. Jade slid the photograph of Allander from under the music box and lifted it to his eyes.

In the living room, the phone rang.

46.

" I enjoyed your little ruse earlier this evening. I can't believe they actually pay you for paltry efforts such as that. So obvious. Plus, Mother hates Orson Welles. Wouldn't be caught dead at one of his films. So to speak."

Jade's entire body tightened when he heard the purring voice. His shoulders and neck tensed, his chest flexed, his stomach grew taut.

The voice sounded like two pieces of silk rubbing together. It was low, smooth, unrushed. Jade felt a tingling in his stomach as the voice calmly continued, the voice from the audiotapes and the videos, the voice he had heard rise from the written transcripts as if they were so many burning bushes. He sat down on the couch, slowing his descent by leaning on the cus.h.i.+on with one arm.

"I'm glad to see I caught you speechless. I've heard that's quite a feat. Are you enjoying having your miserable life falled with me? Pictures? Tapes? Files? You're consumed with me, Marlow. I've seen how you work. With my own eyes, in fact. I'd almost consider it flattering if you weren't such an amateur." Allander chuckled. "I must say, I find the t.i.tle 'Tracker' a bit overblown. You're more like an errant chaser."

"I'm getting to you."

"Yes, you're just waiting at home to . . . what? Gather your strength?"

Jade strained to identify any background noises, but the line was quiet. He picked up the map of Woodside from the floor and glanced over it. "Something like that."

Another chuckle. "Yes, yes, I see."

Jade was desperately thinking of how to get a rise out of him, some way to make him angry so he'd slip up. Deny his individuality, he decided. "You think you're smarter than the rest, but you work in patterns. You all do."

"That's right, you keen little copper. Was the corpse's head covered? Were the bodies posed? Were they . . . violated?" He paused for a moment, and Jade could hear him breathing. "I know the patterns so well I give them to you gift-wrapped. And you know the best part, Marlow? You still can't catch me."

Bluff called. They both knew Allander was right.

"I turned your prison inside out and killed everyone in it," he sneered.

"Not everyone."

"Oh yes. Mustn't forget Claudius."

Allander had lengthened Claude's name to Claudius. Jade caught the reference-Hamlet's uncle, who had murdered Hamlet's father and wed his mother. Another Oedipal figure, Hamlet's rival and the fulfiller of his desires.

"Well, before I go," Allander continued, "I was hoping you could allay my concerns about something."

A beat of silence.

"I was wondering why a grown man with no children would keep a picture of a r.e.t.a.r.ded boy. Couldn't help noticing when I was in your bedroom. You know, Jade-it is all right that I call you Jade, isn't it?-I detect a similarity in the eyes. Between you and the r.e.t.a.r.d, that is. It's amazing what one can find out with a little research."

Jade gripped the receiver so tightly that his entire hand was white. He was shaking all over.

"Just you push me, you f.u.c.k," he growled. Not the conventional way to keep a suspect talking, but he knew that Allander would time the call out at fifty-nine seconds anyway.

"Funny, Marlow," Allander replied. "That's precisely what I thought I was doing."

Jade heard him breathing on the other end of the line again, but he couldn't think of anything to say.

"Well, I had better let you get back to your case, hero. It seems you're a bit behind. But don't worry, I'm sure something will break soon."

"Only you, Atlasia. Only you."

Dial tone. Fifty-eight seconds.

Jade held the phone tightly to his ear even after the dial tone had faded to an automated recording. He rose from the couch and hurled the phone across the room. It smashed into a framed print, shattering the gla.s.s and bringing it cras.h.i.+ng to the ground. The phone's cord snapped, its plastic plug still stuck in the jack.

Deep inhale. From the stomach to the rib cage to the chest. Exhale. Eyes closed. Jade imagined himself sprinting. Control, efficiency. He felt his shoulders loosen up. You never realize how tense you are until you relax, he thought. He walked his body slowly down a mental ladder, amazed at how many steps it took for his muscles to unclench. He was close to his end. The end of the fuse.

Allander had called him a "hero." The word rang through his head like a crash of cymbals. There are no f.u.c.king heroes, he thought. They're all dead and we've created playthings to fill the void.

The phone shrieked and Jade pivoted to his side, yanking his gun from the back of his pants and whipping it to aim at the door. His heart jerked in his chest. He couldn't remember ever feeling so jumpy.

On the second ring, he lowered his gun, walked over to the phone that lay among the broken shards of gla.s.s, and picked it up. Another ring as he realized he was holding the smashed receiver to an unconnected line. He shook his head and walked into the kitchen to pick up a functional phone.

"It's Darby. Bad time?"

Jade looked at the shattered picture frame and smashed phone lying at the base of the living room wall, and then at the gun that he was still gripping tightly. He let the gun clatter to the countertop. "You could say that."

"I was just calling to make sure you weren't wasting your energy and our time by sulking."

"What gave you that idea?"

Darby laughed. "I don't know. Motherly intuition. You can see how well it's served me in the past."

Jade wanted to say something rea.s.suring, but couldn't find the words.

"We don't hold you responsible, you know. Just keep doing your job and we'll keep doing ours."

"I know," Jade said. "I am."

"Good."

"Get some sleep, huh?" Jade said.

"Oh sure. Then maybe we could play a few holes of golf in the morning."

"Good night, Darby."

He hung up and stared at the phone for a few moments before picking it up and ringing Tony.

"Hey. I need to talk to you."

"Fine. Beer. Pour Little Rich Kid. Twenty minutes."

The idea of going out caught Jade so totally off guard that he actually stopped to consider it. He hadn't realized how claustrophobic he'd felt the past few days, as if the sky were closing in on him.

He closed his eyes to think, and images pressed themselves into his mind-Orson Welles appearing out of darkness, Darby's swollen face, two graves with no gra.s.s grown over them yet, the stretch of a scarecrow's arms. A flicker of mania brushed against him, the edge of an obsession. He needed some distance. He was no good like this.

"All right," he said. He ran his fingers through his hair and then across the scar on his cheek.

Allander smiled when he heard the sound of the cras.h.i.+ng phone echo down the line from Jade's house across the street. He lowered the cellular phone and slid it into his pocket.

At first, Allander had been content to toy with Jade, to engage in a kind of gamesmans.h.i.+p with him. He had been drawn to Jade's astounding arrogance from the start, but more and more, he was beginning to feel an emotional outrage. There had been the whole issue of the obscene and obviously erroneous article in that tabloid, but there was no need to get worked up over that. Still, he felt increasingly drawn to Jade, in a way that was more visceral than tactical.

He watched the house for a few minutes, enjoying the chirp of crickets issuing from the bushes around him. Pretty soon, the living room light turned off and he heard Jade's car start up in the garage.

Allander cut back silently to his Jeep.

Jade raced across town in his car, cutting in and out of lanes of traffic. Honking incessantly, he revved, swerved, and fought his way along the road, pa.s.sing other cars as though they were moving backward.

At one point, he got stuck behind slow cars that blocked all three lanes, but he managed to cut over and then back, threading his way through them. As he accelerated past the last one, he smiled as the road yawned empty before him, and he pierced the openness ahead, nosing his car forward around turns and up hills.

He arrived at Pour Little Rich Kid five minutes early.

Jade sat for a minute studying his own eyes in the rearview mirror. He sensed a storm rising beneath the green surface.

Pour Little Rich Kid was a yuppie hangout. Like most bars of its type, it was all windows and mirrors, a s.p.a.cious loft of a building. The mirrors were essential, for the customers looked at themselves constantly and adjusted their hair almost as often as they looked around to check out members of the opposite s.e.x.

It was not the usual hangout for Jade and Tony, but it was slow on weeknights and the ale was brewed in the back. A large sign showed a twenty-something male wearing a cardigan and holding a tennis racket in one hand. His other arm rotated mechanically, tipping a huge ale to his mouth at regular intervals.