The Stickmen (15 page)

“Yeah, well you’ll hear plenty more if you
fuck up.” Lynn noticed he’d taken the Shirley Highway exit. “Where
are you going? Shouldn’t we got back to your place and plan this
out.”

“I’ve already planned it out,” Garrett told
her, lighting a cigarette. “Up here.” He pointed to his head and
grinned with the cigarette crimped between his teeth. “I’ll be
going into the field, and in the meantime, you’ll be doing the
follow-up here.”

“Follow up on what?

Garrett pulled to a stop around a plushly
shrubbed service court. The long signed loomed just ahead of
them:

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER.

Lynn squinted. “Harlan, what the hell are we
doing—”

He tapped her shoulder. “Oh, and before you
go, I need your piece.”

“My
what?
”

“You know, your gun.”

Lynn gaped at him, then chortled a low
laugh. “Yeah, right. You expect me to give you my
government-register service weapon?
”

“Lynn, you’re the one who just told me I
better not
fuck
up. How credible will I be impersonating an
FBI agent if I don’t have a gun? You guys carry SIG-226s just like
the Bureau, so hand it over.”

Lynn just stared at him.

“Come on, Lynn. No one’ll believe I’m Bureau
unless there’s a piece printing against my jacket. I’ll be arrested
in two seconds.”

Lynn sighed long and hard. “I can’t believe
the things I let you bamboozle me with. It’s almost like we’re
still married.”

Garrett’s brow did a jig. “We
can
be,
hon. All you gotta do is nullify that absurd divorce, and we—”

“Harlan, don’t even say it.” She reluctantly
handed her pistol over to him. “There. You happy
now…
killer?
”

Garrett hefted the attractive black gun in
his hand. “I
like
it!”

“I’ve got more, Harlan. Just remember that.”
Her blond hair tossed when she turned her head and looked back at
the sign. “And would you
please
tell me what we’re doing at
Georgetown Hospital?”

Garrett hastily scribbled something on the
back of an old credit card receipt. “This is a friend of mine, just
say you know me, and get on with the workup.”

Lynn took the slip of paper, but still
looked cruxed. “A workup? On what?”

Garrett reached into the back seat, pulled
the black plastic bag from the suitcase. “A workup on this,” he
elaborated, setting the parcel right into her lap.

««—»»

Garrett knew that in order to effectively
masquerade as a special agent of the F.B.I., he’d have to wear a
decent suit. He also knew that he didn’t
own
a decent suit
and hadn’t in years. Hence, the quick stop at Joseph Abboud Ltd.
and another poke into Swenson’s charitable contribution. Garrett
didn’t
have
to spend $1100 on a suit but—
An agent’s
gotta look good,
he reasoned.
Might as well look REAL good.
What the hell, right?

It made sense to him.

When he was set and ready to go, he and the
Malibu were heading out of the city. Up Route 50 to the Beltway,
then change off onto 95 North; that would get him to Edgewood.

Every so often, he’d catch a forced glimpse
of himself in the rearview, and wink at himself, smiling in
self-satisfaction.

“Special Agent Richard Odenton… You know, I
like
the sound of that.” Another wink, then, and he couldn’t
help the next observation. “It’s
tough
being this
good-looking, but I guess it’s just a burden I’m going to have to
bear.”

Just then, however, even before he crossed
the District’s official boundary, one last very essential priority
occurred to him.

He was running low on cigarettes.

He stopped at a traffic light, then roved
his gaze to the right. The high GAS’N GO flagged him. Garrett
pulled in and parked. But just as he was about to get out of the
car—

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Some tall skinny twitchy kid with pimples
and tufts of frizzy black hair sticking out of his head in
stalklike braids was walking briskly toward the convenience store’s
entrance. The kid couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and he
was a dead give-away; he was wearing a long tacky black raincoat in
spite of the heat. Garrett wasn’t surprised to see the kid whip
open the coat and check the small pistol stuck in his belt. Then he
pulled open the door and strode in into the store.

Garrett was waylaid as his eyes registered
the sight. “You’ve gotta be
shitting
me,” he said aloud to
himself. “Don’t kids today have any brains at all?”

Evidently, this one didn’t.

I really shouldn’t do this,
he
thought.
No, I’m not going to. I’m NOT.
That would be
crazy…
Then he made some further considerations.
Oh the
other hand, that punk could be killing people in there any
minute…

Garrett frowned and whipped out his own
pistol—Lynn’s pistol actually—then got out of the car.

Dumb, dumb, dumb,
he was thinking.
The little bell on the door jingled when he entered,
and—
Fuck,
he observed. The were several customers in the
store, more people to get killed if shooting started,
and—
fuck!
he thought again. There was a woman scanning the
diary products toward the rear, and she had a baby slung to her in
a harness.

The punk kid stood just before the register;
he was bending over a waist-high magazine rack, pretending to be
interested in the variety of tabloids. Garrett winced, in spite of
the situation’s gravity: one of the tabloids—
The National
Reporter
—Garrett had freelanced for several years ago.

The kid was obviously working up his
nerve.

“Hey, son,” said the old duffer at the
register. “You wanna read that crap, you gotta buy it. This ain’t a
library.”

The kid stood up, glaring. “Yeah, well it
ain’t a bank either, you old fuck, but I’m gonna make a
withdrawal.” When the kid had stood up straight, he was pointing
the gun right at the old man’s belly.

The woman in the back screamed, dropping a
bottle of Gatorade. The baby started bawling. The other customers
started yelling, ducking for cover.

Garrett, his own gun drawn, managed to slip
around the potato chip aisle and creep up from behind. “Federal
agent!” he shouted. “Drop the gun and put your hands in the
air!”

Garrett was impressed by how well he done
it. But the punk just stood there, as if calculating.

“Hands up!” Garrett repeated. “Drop the gun!
Do NOT turn around!”

The kid turned around very quickly.

Garrett winced again. Now the two of them
were facing each other, guns aimed.
Christ, I can’t shoot this
guy! I’m carrying a phony FBI badge and a handgun registered to
someone else!

“The fun’s over, Pimples,” Garrett said.

The kid grinned, his dredlocks shaking. “No
it isn’t, it just started. Drop your piece.”

“No,
you
drop
your
piece,
crank-head,” Garrett replied. “What’s that you got there anyway? A
Taurus .22? Gimme a break, buddy. Your gun’s bottom-heavy, has no
sights, has no recoil compensation, and is notoriously inaccurate.
If you pop caps at me, you’ll probably miss, and even if you hit me
with that pea-shooter, I guarantee I’ll

have three 9mm Q-Loads in your face before I
go down. So go on. Show all these

people here how stupid you are.”

The kid stared Garrett down. “Son of a bitch
fuckin’ federal pig.”

You’d be surprised,
Garrett though.
“Your move, Pimples. You can die right here or you can drop the
gun. Use the brains that God gave you. If you drop the gun, you’ll
go to joovie hall because you’re a minor, and you’ll probably be
back on the street in thirty days playing Bad Guy again. Think
about it. Drop the gun…or leave in a body bag. It’s your
choice.”

Garrett cocked his pistol.

The kid tremored, gritting his teeth. His
eyes focused to pinpoints of hate. Then he cursed under his breath
and dropped the gun. He slowly put up his hands.

Garrett let out a long, allaying breath,
wondering just how close he’d come to wetting his slacks. The
customers and the clerk began to applaud, and the woman with the
squalling baby kissed him. “You saved our lives!” she blubbered.
“All in a day’s work, ma’am,” Garrett said.

A few minutes later, the metro cruiser
arrived. Now came the
really
hard part. Garrett tried to
seem as casual as possible when he flashed his badge and ID card to
the muscle-bound cop who entered. A second cop took the kid away in
cuffs.

“Special Agent Odenton, FBI,” Garrett said.
“I scoped the rock-head checking his piece outside, then followed
him in and took him down.”

The big cop looked impressed as well as
grateful. “That kid’s Spaz Coleman. We’ve been trying to nab him
for a year. He’s knocked over eight convenience stores since
November. Good work, Agent Odenton.”

“Piece of cake,” Garrett feigned.

The second cop came back inside, laughing.
“Hey, FBI, you’ll love this! The kid pissed his pants when you drew
down on him!”

“Tell him to send his dry cleaning bill to
the J. Edgar Hoover Building,” Garrett said back. “Look, I know
this is technically my collar but I’m in transit to an urgent
case—kidnapping and interstate flight. How about we make a deal?
You guys take the paperwork, and you can have the collar. Is that
cool? I’m really in a hurry.”

“Sure, no problem. Thanks!”

“My pleasure. Later, guys. Be careful out
there.” The customers applauded again as Garrett left the
store.

I guess there really is a God,
he
thought once the shock wore off and he realized how he could just
as easily have been killed. He got out of D.C. fast, heading for
the highway. It took a while to calm down.

Only then did it occur to him that he’d
forgotten the one thing he’d stopped at the store for:
cigarettes.

««—»»

Danny’s sneakers scuffed up dust as he
wandered alone in the field behind the officers housing blocks. He
kicked at rocks and old tin cans, kicked at dandelions and watched
their ghostly puffs of fuzz explode and blow away.

The summer sun beamed down on him. A few
hundred yards up ahead he could see the baseball field where the
Boys Club leagues played, then the picnic grounds with its rows of
tables and brick grills. Beyond that stretched the forest. There
was no one in sight for as far as he could see.

It’s just me out here,
he thought.
Alone.

Danny didn’t generally like to be alone, but
today being alone felt good. His mom and dad had been arguing again
back at the house.
About me,
Danny knew. “Why can’t he be
like other kids—
normal
kids?” his father had thundered from
the family room. Danny had been down in the basement, working on
some new drawings. He could easily hear them upstairs; their voices
carried right down through the heat vent.

“Because you’re so goddamn repressive, he’ll
never
be normal!” his mother yelled back.

“Oh, that’s right! Blame it on me, pass the
buck like you always do! He’s your kid too, you know! He should be
out playing ball, roughing it up, getting a taste of life, but all
he does instead is hide in the basement drawing all that junk
because
you
encourage him to! Jesus Christ, if you didn’t
coddle him so damn much, maybe he’d be like regular kids!”

“Yes, Tony, he’d be out there ‘roughing it
up’ just like a good little soldier, huh?”

“For God’s sake! He’s got to learn about
life sometime! It’s not all cookies and milk and mommy tucking him
in at night! It’s no wonder he’s so weird, doing all those weirdo
drawings and talking about goddamn spacemen and spaceships and all
that shit! Jesus Christ, it’s no wonder we have to take him to a
shrink!”

And on and on.

By now Danny had learned to block it out but
sometimes it was real hard. He’d slipped out through the basement
door because his head had started to hurt again and he had to get
away from all the yelling. He felt bad about the whole thing,
because it must be all his fault.

But if that were true…then it must be the
Stickmen’s fault too.
Why are they doing this to me?
he
wondered.

A sudden breeze gusted, knocking down the
summer heat and mussing his hair. He wandered further, over the low
rolling hills before the forest. A dragonfly buzzed by; several
sparrows pecked at the grass just ahead of him, paying him no
mind.

Yes, sometimes Danny liked to be alone. No
one yelling. No one to bother him and make him feel bad. No
people.

And no Stickmen.

He stopped at a patch of bare dirt. He knelt
down. He picked up a thin stick and began to draw a picture in the
bare spot.

Tall and thin. Only two fingers on each hand
and two toes on each foot. No ears, no mouth, no nose.

Just a line where the eyes should be.

“Stick…men, stick…men, stick…men,” he
whispered to himself as he wielded the branch.

It didn’t take him long.

In a very short while, he’d drawn several of
the Stickmen, and also the front of their ship with that weird
trapezoidal window on the side.

Danny stood back up and gazed down at the
dirt sketch.

“The Stickmen…”

Another sudden cool breeze swept up,
ruffling his hair.

They’ll be coming soon,
he thought
and turned and walked back home.
They’re coming tonight…

CHAPTER NINE

Lynn still felt at odds about a lot of this,
even with the battered suitcase full of evidence swinging at the
end of her arm right this moment. She knew it was Harlan, of
course, the walking catastrophe, the living human lightning rod for
all things gone afoul.