Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [14]
Andrew was gazing down at him.
“It’s going to rain, buddy. Let me give you a ride to the shelter.”
“That’s very nice of you, but I’m waiting for a dude named Steve. We’re going up to Malibu. He has access to a propane stove,” said Willie with a meaningful raise of white eyebrows. “It’s better to stay together because of street violence. That way we can maintain a reasonable situation.”
“You’re not going up to Malibu tonight.”
Willie thought about this and nodded his shaggy head. “That’s true, I have to work.”
“What kind of work do you do?” I asked curiously.
“I travel around America for the national Defense Department,” he said. “I have an ID which the El Monte police took away. That’s what I’m talking about, trying to regain my property. They also impounded my vehicle. My job is to drive randomly throughout the United States and data-process sponge cake in the U.S. population.”
I had the woozy feeling of being lifted up and set back down, like bobbing in a wave.
“Sponge cake?”
“‘Sponge cake’ is a code name that refers to Patricia Hearst, who was an individual from the Soviet Union who was being data-processed to be a high warden in the NOBD. That’s what I was trained to do, you see. Sometimes I would encounter a candlelight situation.”
Andrew was looking away. A damp breeze lifted up the back of his hair.
“A candlelight situation,” Willie explained, “is an entity case where the future and today merge together.”
I thought for a moment, just one moment, he was pulling the greatest joke of all time. Then it all drained out of me.
“Willie,” I said gently, “have you ever been in a hospital?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. I was flying a Cobra and slammed into a mountain in Wyoming called Devil’s Ring. They put me in the hospital.”
“Did they give you medication?”
“They just give me medication and you talk to someone and they release you. I’m taking medication right now,” said Willie. “I’m a depressed person right now. I personally knew Sylvester Stallone in the HBD. He was killed in nineteen seventy.”
Willie said these things with the same measured dullness as before. I felt as if I were in the presence of something enormous, like the pulsing of the stars.
I gave him ten bucks and said, “Take care of yourself.”
“What did you say your name was?”
I gave him another card.
“Thank you. I’m generally around here, if you want to talk to me.”
“God bless,” said Andrew.
We left him sitting cross-legged in the doorway, a mound of bedroll and scraggly white hair.
“Sometimes they whip up a vehicle and leave me someplace,” he called after us.
As we walked through the deserted street, I laid my head against Andrew’s shoulder, certain that they did.
And I dreamed we were in Amsterdam, walking hand in hand, and it was wet and cold and there were lights on the canals.
Five.
Out of nowhere came the smell of cooking onions and the low chatter of the TV. I sat up in bed, awake, heart pounding, late for something I could not remember. Stocks were being traded in New York, but here it was still dark, a little after 6 a.m., Day Three. And the girl was still missing.
We had spent the last two nights in my apartment in Marina Del Rey, averaging about four hours’ sleep, which meant you were never out of the roar. Your eyes might be closed, but case points kept flipping through your brain: Jumpy parents. Employee records. Tax returns. A man with a camera. Sylvester Stallone. Rich kids talking rap and smoking weed and a voice in the night, fifteen years old, begging for some hopped-up piece of shit to bestow upon her the privilege of her life.
We had a bulletin out on the van that had been hovering around the Third Street Promenade: a dark green 1989 Dodge, identified separately by both youngsters, Stephanie and Ethan, after looking through police files. The Korean gang member, David Yi, who had stolen a load of spandex from the Meyer-Murphy factory and had been convicted, at least in part by testimony from Juliana’s dad, was at present serving four years in state prison