The Great And Secret Show Part 15

"When?"

"Palomo Grove is built on bad land. The earth beneath our feet feels solid enough but it's on the move."

"So the whole town could go the way of Buddy Vance? Is that what you're saying?"

"You can quote me as long as you don't name me."

"That's fine by me."

"Got what you need?"

"More than enough."

"No such thing," Hotchkiss observed. "Not with bad news. Excuse me, would you?"

There had been a sudden galvanizing of forces around the fissure. Leaving Grillo with a punchline for his story any comedian would have envied, Hotchkiss strode off to oversee the raising of Buddy Vance.

In his bedroom Tommy-Ray lay and sweated. He'd come out of the sunlight and closed the windows, then drawn the curtains. Sealing the room thus had made it into an oven, but the heat and the gloom soothed him. In their embrace he didn't feel so alone, and exposed, as he'd felt in the bright, clean air of the Grove. Here he could smell his own juices as they oozed from his pores; his own stale breath as it rose from his throat and dropped back down over his face. If Jo-Beth had cheated on him then he would have to seek out new company, and where better to begin than with himself?

He'd heard her come back to the house in the early afternoon, and argue with Momma, but he didn't try to catch the words between them. If her pathetic romance was already falling apart-and why else would she be sobbing on the stairs?- then that was her own d.a.m.n fault. He had more important business.

Lying in the heat, the strangest pictures came haunting his head. They all rose from a darkness which his curtained room couldn't hope to match. Was that, perhaps, why they were incomplete as yet? Fragments of a scheme he wanted pa.s.sionately to grasp but that kept slipping from him. In them, there was blood; there was rock; there was a pale, flickering creature his gut turned at seeing. And there was a man he could not make out but who would, if he sweated enough, come clear in front of him.

When he did, the waiting would be over.

First, there was a shout of alarm from the fissure. Men around the hole, Spilmont and Hotchkiss included, set to work to haul the men up, but whatever was taking place underground was too violent to be controlled from the surface. The cop closest to the crevice cried out as the rope he was holding suddenly tightened around his gloved hand and he was jerked towards the lip like a hooked fish. It was Spilmont who saved him, taking hold of the man from behind long enough for him to pull his fingers free of the gloves. As both fell backwards on to the ground the shouts from below multiplied, supplemented by warnings from above.

"It's opening!" somebody yelled. "Jesus Christ, it's opening!"

Grillo was a physical coward until he sniffed news; then he was ready to stand face to face with anything. He pushed past Hotchkiss and a cop to get a better view of what was happening. n.o.body stopped him; not with their own safety to consider. Dust was rising from the widening fissure, blinding the anchormen who were holding the ropes on which the retrieval party's life depended. Even as he watched, one of the men was hauled towards the crevice, from which shrieks that suggested ma.s.sacre were rising. He added his as the earth went to dust beneath his heels. Somebody threw himself past Grillo in the confusion and attempted to s.n.a.t.c.h at the man but too late. The rope tightened. He was pulled out of sight, leaving his failed savior face down at the edge of the crack. Grillo took three steps towards the survivor, barely able to see either the ground or its absence beneath his feet. He felt its tremors, however, rising through his legs and up his spine, throwing his thoughts into chaos. Instinct sufficed. Legs spread to keep his balance, he reached down for the fallen man. It was Hotchkiss, face bloodied when he'd hit the earth, a dazed look in his eyes. Grillo yelled his name. The man responded by grabbing at Grillo's proffered arm, as the ground around them both split open.

Side by side on the motel bed, neither Jo-Beth nor Howie woke, though both gasped and shuddered like lovers saved from drowning. There had been dreams of water for them both. Of a dark sea which was carrying them towards some wonderful place. But their journey had been interrupted. Something below their dreaming selves had s.n.a.t.c.hed at them, dragging them out of that lulling tide and down into a shaft of rock and pain. Men were screaming all around them as they fell to their deaths, ropes following like obedient snakes.

Somewhere in the confusion they heard each other, each sobbing the other's name, but there wasn't time for reunion before their downward motion was checked and an upward surge caught them. It was icy cold; a torrent of water from a river that had never seen the sun but mounted the chasm now, bearing dead men, dreamers and whatever else occupied this nightmare, before it. The walls became a blur as they rose to meet the sky.

Grillo and Hotchkiss were four yards from the fissure when the waters broke, the violence of the breakage enough to throw them off their feet as a freezing rain fell. It stung Hotchkiss from his daze. He grabbed hold of Grillo's arm, hollering: "Look at that!"

There was something alive in the flood. Grillo saw it for the briefest of moments-a form, or forms-that seemed human as he glimpsed them but left on his inner eye another impression entirely, like the after-burn of fireworks. He shook the image off and looked again. But whatever he'd seen had gone.

"We got to get out!" he heard Hotchkiss yell. The ground was still cracking. They hauled themselves upright, their feet scrabbling in the mud for purchase, and ran blindly through rain and dust, only knowing they'd reached the perimeter when they tripped over the rope. One of the retrieval team, his hand half gone, lay where the first spurt had dropped him. Beyond rope and body, in the cover of the trees, were Spilmont and a number of cops. The rain came down lightly here, tapping on the canopy like a midsummer shower, while behind the storm from the earth roared itself out.

Soaking with his own sweat, Tommy-Ray stared at the ceiling and laughed. He hadn't had a ride like that since the summer before last, out at Topanga, when a freak tide had thrown up a magnificent swell. He, Andy and Scan had ridden it for hours, high on speed.

"I'm ready," he said, wiping salt-water from his eyes. "Ready and willing. Just come get me, whoever the f.u.c.k you are."

Howie looked dead, lying on the bed all bundled up, his teeth clenched, his eyes closed. Jo-Beth backed away, hand to her mouth to block the panic, her words-Dear G.o.d forgive me-coming in m.u.f.fled sobs. They'd done wrong, even lying together on the same bed. It was a crime against the laws of the Lord to dream the way she'd dreamt (of him naked beside her on a warm sea, their hair intertwined the way she'd wanted their bodies to be) and what had that dream brought? Cataclysm! Blood, rock and a terrible rain which had killed him in his sleep.

Dear G.o.d, forgive me- He opened his eyes so suddenly her prayer deserted her. In its place, his name.

"Howie? You're alive."

He unknotted himself, reaching out to claim his spectacles from beside the bed. He put them on. Her shock came into focus.

"You dreamed it too," he said.

"It wasn't like a dream. It was real." She was shaking from head to foot. "What have we done, Howie?"

"Nothing," he said, coughing the growl from his throat. "We've done nothing."

"Momma was right. I shouldn't have-"

"Stop it," he said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and standing up. "We've done nothing wrong."

"What was that then?" she said.

"A bad dream."

"In both our heads?"

"Maybe it wasn't the same," he said, hoping to calm her.

"I was floating, with you beside me. Then I was underground. Men were screaming-"

"All right-" he said.

"It was the same."

"Yes."

"See?" she said. "Whatever's between us...it's wrong. Maybe it's the Devil's work."

"You don't believe that."

"I don't know what I believe," she said. He moved towards her, but she kept him at bay with a gesture. "Don't, Howie. It's not right. We shouldn't touch each other." She started towards the door. "I have to go."

"This is...is...is...absurd," he said, but no stumbling words of his were going to stop her leaving. She was already fumbling with the security bolt he'd put on when she'd entered.

"I'll get it," he said, leaning past her to open the door. In lieu of any comforting words he kept a silence which she only broke with: "Goodbye."

"You're not giving us time to think this through."

"I'm afraid, Howie," she said. "You're right, I don't believe the Devil's in this. But if he isn't, who is? Have you got any answers for that?"

She was barely able to keep her emotions in check; she kept gulping air as if trying to swallow, and failing. The sight of her distress made him long to hug her, but what had been invited last night was now forbidden.

"No," he told her. "No answers."

She took the cue of his reply to leave him at the door. He watched her for a count of five, defying himself to stand and let her go, knowing what had happened between them was more significant than anything he'd experienced in eighteen years of breathing the air of the planet. At five, he closed the door.

PART FOUR:.

PRIMAL SCENES.

I.

Grillo had never heard Abernethy happier. The man fairly whooped when Grillo told him the Buddy Vance story had taken a turn for the cataclysmic, and that he'd been there to witness it all.

"Start writing!" he said. "Take a room in town-charge it to me-and start writing! I'll hold the front page." If Abernethy sought to excite Grillo with B-movie cliches he failed.

What had happened at the caves had left him numb. But the suggestion that he take a room was welcome. Though he'd dried off at the bar where he and Hotchkiss had given their account to Spilmont, he felt dirty and exhausted.

"What about this Hotchkiss guy?" Abernethy said.

"What's his story?"

"I don't know."

"Find out. And get some more background on Vance. Have you been up to the house yet?"

"Give me time."

"You're on the spot," Abernethy said. "It's your story. Get to it."

He revenged himself on Abernethy, albeit pettily, by taking the most expensive room on offer at the Hotel Palomo, in Stillbrook Village, ordering up champagne and a rare hamburger, and tipping the waiter so well the man asked him if he hadn't made a mistake. The booze made him light-headed; his favorite condition in which to call Tesla. She wasn't in. He left a message stating his present locale. Then he looked up Hotchkiss in the directory and called him. He had heard the man give his account to Spilmont. No mention had been made of what they'd glimpsed escaping from the fissure. Grillo had similarly kept quiet on the subject, and the absence of any questions on the subject from Spilmont suggested n.o.body else had been close enough to the fissure to witness the sight. He wanted to compare notes with Hotchkiss, but he drew a blank. Either he wasn't in or he'd decided not to answer the telephone.

With that route of enquiry blocked, he turned his attention to the Vance mansion. It was almost nine in the evening, but there was no harm in his wandering up the Hill to have a look at the dead man's estate. He might even talk his way inside if the champagne hadn't got the better of his tongue. In some regards the timing was advantageous. This morning Vance had been the focal point of events in the Grove. His relatives, if they had a taste for the limelight-and few didn't-could bide their time before choosing between suitors for their story. But now Vance's demise had been superseded by a larger, and fresher, tragedy. Grillo might therefore find the contingent more eager to talk than he would have done at noon.

He regretted deciding to walk. The Hill was steeper than it had seemed from below, and badly lit. But there were compensations. He had the street to himself, and so could leave the sidewalk and wander up the center, admiring the stars as they appeared overhead. Vance's residence wasn't hard to locate. The road stopped at its gates. After Coney Eye, there was only sky.

The main gate was unguarded but locked. A side gate, however, gave him access to a path which wound through a colonnade of undisciplined evergreens, which were alternately flooded with green, yellow and red light, to the front of the house. It was vast, and utterly idiosyncratic; a palace which defied the aesthetic of the Grove in every way. There was no trace here of the pseudo-Mediterranean, or the ranch style, or the Spanish style, or the mock-Tudor, or the modern colonial. The whole mansion looked like a funfair ride, its facade painted in the same primaries that had lit the trees, its windows ringed with lights which were presently turned off. Coney Eye, Grillo now understood, was a little piece of the Island: Vance's homage to Carnival. There were lights burning inside. He knocked, aware that he was being scrutinized by cameras above the door. A woman of oriental extraction- Vietnamese, perhaps-opened it, and informed him that Mrs. Vance was indeed in residence. If he'd wait in the hallway, she told him, she'd see if the lady of the house was available. Grillo thanked her, and waited while the woman took herself off upstairs.

As outside, so in: a temple to fun. Every inch of the hallway was hung with panels from all manner of Carnival rides: brilliantly colored advertis.e.m.e.nts for Tunnels of Love, Ghost Train Rides, Carousels, Freak Shows, Wrestling Shows, Gal Shows, Waltzes, Dippers, and Mystic Swings. The renderings were for the most part crude, the work of painters who knew their craft was in the service of commerce, and had no lasting merit. Close scrutiny didn't flatter the displays; their gaudy self-confidence was to be viewed through the crush of a crowd rather than studied under the spotlight. Vance had not been blind to that fact. By hanging the items cheek by jowl on every wall he effectively drew the eye on from one to the next, preventing it from lingering too long on any detail. The display, for all its vulgarity, drew a smile from Grillo, as no doubt Vance had intended, a smile that fell from his face when Roch.e.l.le Vance appeared at the top of the stairs and began her descent.

Never in his life had he seen a face more flawless. With every step she took towards him he expected to find a compromise in its perfection, but there was none. She was of Caribbean blood, he guessed, her dark features had that ease about their line. Her hair was drawn back tight, emphasizing the dome of her forehead and the symmetry of her brows. She wore no jewelry, and only the simplest of black dresses.

"Mr. Grillo," she said, "I'm Buddy's widow." The word, despite the color of her dress, couldn't have seemed more inappropriate. This was not a woman who'd risen from a tear-soaked pillow. "How can I help you?" she asked.

"I'm a journalist-"

"So Ellen told me."

"I wanted to ask you about your husband."

"It's a little late."

"I was in the woods most of the afternoon."

"Ah yes," she said. "You're that Mr. Grillo."

"I'm sorry?"

"I had one of the policemen..." She turned to Ellen. "What was his name?"

"Spilmont."

"Spilmont. He was here, to tell me what happened. He mentioned your great heroism."

"It wasn't so great."

"Enough to deserve a night's rest I would have thought," she said. "Rather than business."

"I'd like to get the story."

"Yes. Well come in."

Ellen opened a door to the left of the hallway. As Roch.e.l.le led Grillo in she laid out the ground rules.

"I'll answer your questions as best I can, as long as you limit them to Buddy's professional life." Her speech was devoid of accent. A European education, perhaps? "I know nothing about his other wives so don't bother prying. Nor will I speculate on his addictions. Would you like some coffee?"

"That'd be most welcome," Grillo said, aware that he was doing what he did so often during interviews: catching a tone from his interviewee.

"Coffee for Mr. Grillo, Ellen," Roch.e.l.le said, inviting her guest to sit. "And water for me."

The room they'd entered ran the full length of the house, and was two stories high, the second marked by a gallery which ran around all four walls. These, like the hallway walls, were a painted din. Invitations, seductions and warnings fought for his eye. "The Ride of a Lifetime!" one modestly promised; "All the Fun You Can Stand!" another announced, "And Then Some!"

"This is just part of Buddy's collection," Roch.e.l.le said. "There's more in New York. I believe it's the biggest in private hands."

"I didn't know anybody collected this stuff."

"Buddy called it the true art of America. It may be that it is, which says something..." She trailed off, her distaste for this hollering parade quite plain. The expression, crossing a face so devoid of sculptural error, carried distressing force.

"You'll break the collection up, I suppose," Grillo said.

"That depends on the Will," she said. "It may not be mine to sell."

"You've got no sentimental attachments to it?"

"I think that comes under the heading of private life," she said.

"Yes. I suppose it does."

"But I'm sure Buddy's obsession was harmless enough." She stood up and flipped a switch between two panels from a ghost-train facade. Multicolored lights came on beyond the gla.s.s wall at the far end of the room. "Allow me to show you," she said, wandering down the length of the room, and stepping out into the soup of colors. Pieces too big to be fitted into the house were a.s.sembled here. A carved face, maybe twelve feet high, the yawning, saw-toothed mouth of which had been the entrance to a ride. A placard advertising The Wall of Death, written out in lights. A full-size, bas-relief locomotive, driven by skeletons, appearing to burst from a tunnel.

"My G.o.d," was all Grillo could muster.