From Black Rooms (16 page)

"Where is everyone?"

"Your dad didn't want to disturb you, so he decided to give Cal ie her lessons at the library today."

"And Calvin?"

Serena folded her arms, her sleeveless muscle-tee revealing hard brown biceps. "Since your pop's gone, I let him crash on the bed upstairs. He was stil there when I checked on him ten minutes ago."

"Did he finish the picture?"

"Beats me. I know he didn't come outta that garage until past noon."

Natalie noted the puffiness around Serena's eyes, the lids at half-mast. "How about you? You get any sleep?"

"Not since Mr. Criswel came. But I can take it. Went three days straight once when I did Black Ops with the Agency."

A strange disappointment descended on Natalie. "You stil don't trust Calvin, do you?"

Serena pouted her lips in disapproval. "Put it this way: I trust your friend Calvin about as much as I trust anyone right now."

"What about our plan? Can we count on him to lead us to Amis?"

"No, but I ain't got any better ideas, so let's go with it." Stil wearing her T-shirt and jeans from the night before, Natalie swung her bare feet onto the floor and stood to straighten the sheets on the sofa bed's mattress.

"In that case, you oughta take your turn on this couch. We've got a busy day tomorrow."

Serena didn't move. "I'l doze, but on one condition."

"Which is?"

"You don't trust Calvin any more than I do." Natalie resented the implication that Serena didn't trust
her, either. With a touch of guilt, though, she had to
admit that she'd let down her guard when it came to Calvin. Natalie had felt such a kinship working with him last night that it was far too easy for her to forget that she knew almost nothing about him...other than the fact that he was a convicted felon.

"I'l keep an eye on him," she promised.

"See that you do, Nat."

Her friend lay down on the fold-out cot ful y clothed and shut her eyes. Her body never ful y relaxed its hairtrigger tension, however, and Natalie wondered if Serena ever slept deeply enough to dream.

True to her word, Natalie went up to the master

bedroom and looked in on Calvin. Stil in his black jeans and hole-ridden concert shirt, he snoozed flat on his back in her father's bed, a light snore escaping his open mouth. With his face smoothed to somnolent

blankness, he appeared utterly guileless. But hard experience had taught Natalie to mistrust her own first impressions. Her first boyfriend, after al , had turned into the Violet Kil er.

With the condo's only other occupants napping, Natalie yielded to the temptation to peek at the progress Calvin had made on their col aborative fraud. From the

moment she entered the garage and flicked on the light, she stood stunned before the easel, because a

transformation had taken place. Although the picture there resembled the one she and Munch had drawn

during the long, feverish night, its colors had taken on a yel owish tinge, like newsprint left in the sun. The cardboard appeared dirtier, its edges separating into layers of paper and its corners blunted as if banged by a clumsy curator. Battered and darkened with abuse, the picture's new pal only served to deepen the dreariness of its dismal theme.

The Whine had become The Scream.

Since Natalie hesitated to share the sofa bed with Calvin and Serena refused to sleep while Calvin was awake, they decided to take turns on the sofa bed that night so they would al be alert to confront Carleton Amis the fol owing day. Despite their plan, they al looked bedraggled come Saturday morning. Natalie, for one, had spent most of her al otted rest time lying with her eyes wide open as mental movies of her past and future encounters with Evan Markham played on the screen of the living-room ceiling.

Calvin was by far the worst off of them, however. Long after Natalie and Serena were up and dressed, he curled on the bed gibbering to unseen interlocutors. The aluminum foil on his head ripped as he pul ed it down around his ears, like a smal boy shutting out monsters with a bedsheet. When Natalie shook his shoulder to nudge him out of his nightmare, he cried out and sprang upright.

"They're back." He wrapped his arms around his skul , gasping. "Get some more foil--a lot of it. Hurry." Natalie ran to the kitchen and fetched a double-length sheet of Reynolds Wrap, which she folded in half

before giving it to Calvin. He replaced the ripped foil with the new, flattening it on his forehead like a cold compress.

"You gonna be okay?" she asked when his panic subsided.

He nodded, but without conviction. "Knock on wood."

"If you aren't up to this, tel us now," Serena cautioned him. "Anything goes wrong, and we're al dead meat." Calvin's ashen cheeks reddened. "I'l be fine." Before he and Serena could get in an argument, Natalie pul ed a basebal cap from a backpack of supplies she'd assembled for their mission. "Here. I thought you might want to wear this to cover the foil."

Calvin accepted the hat but knitted his brows when he saw its embroidered insignia. "San Diego? You realize the Padres suck, don't you?"

"It's a disguise, not a lifestyle." Not knowing or caring anything about sports, Natalie had picked the hat because it was cheap. And although Calvin's attitude nettled her, she took it as a positive sign. He wouldn't be making smart remarks if some dead guy were trying to steal his body. Stil ...this latest attack worried her.

"Calvin, do you have some phrase that sticks in your mind?" She sat beside him on the bed. "Could be anything. A poem, a song, the Pledge of Al egiance even."

He chuckled. "You mean a mantra."

Natalie exchanged a glance with Serena, who acted impressed in spite of herself.

"You know about mantras?" Natalie asked.

"Your daughter gave me a crash course yesterday. But I don't know what would work for me, if anything."

"You won't know til you try. Next time the voices come, give it a shot. You might want to start with your ABC's--we cal that the 'Alphabet Mantra,' and it's the first one most Violets learn when they're kids. Just keep repeating the alphabet over and over and don't think about anything else. Okay?"

"Sure," he said, though he sounded anything but. Serena raised her voice like a dril sergeant. "Al right, people. If we're done with Violet 101, let's get this show on the road."

Calvin grumbled and put on the Padres hat, molding it over the skul cap of foil and tugging the visor low over his eyes.

Their first job, of course, was to ditch Sanjay Prashad. Fortunately, the Corps Security agent had proven fairly easy to dupe in the past, and this time Natalie had help outwitting him.

In preparation, she had asked her dad to park his Camry in the garage the previous night. When they were ready to leave on Saturday morning, Natalie scrunched down in the space behind the car's front seats, out of view of the windows, so that Prashad would see her father behind the wheel and Cal ie in the passenger seat when the Camry rol ed out onto the street. Since the agent could only tail one vehicle at a time, Natalie staggered their departures, forcing him to choose whether to fol ow Wade in his Camry, Serena on her Harley, or Calvin in his VW. Natalie hoped they would al be long gone by the time Prashad figured out that she was not going anywhere in her Volvo.

By prearrangement, they rendezvoused in the parking garage of a local mal . Wade dropped Natalie off there before taking Cal ie to the library for another school session. Natalie thought her father and daughter would be safer in public than back at the condo alone. When the Camry was gone, she put on her backpack and

joined Serena and Calvin inside the VW bus.

"Any problems?" Natalie asked.

They shook their heads. Evidently, they'd given Sanjay the slip.

Natalie glanced at the portfolio case that lay on the carpeted floor beside Calvin, hoping that Carleton Amis found the forgery inside as convincing as she did.

"Anyone have any questions?"

Calvin kept his gaze downcast, his hybrid eyes hidden below the bil of his cap. "When I give Amis the picture, he's going to offer to give me the next

injection. If I don't take it, he'l be suspicious. What should I do?"

Serena sized him up with a hard stare. "Depends."

"On what?"

"On whether you real y want to be one of us." He tilted his head up to look into the two pairs of violet eyes that peered at him. "I do...if you guys can teach me how to control it."

"We can teach you," Serena shot back, "but only you know whether you've got the wil to do it. Do you?" He didn't answer.

Natalie leaned toward him and tucked in a crinkled tongue of foil that stuck out from beneath his cap. "If you have any doubts, Calvin, don't do it."

He nodded without signaling what his decision was, if he'd even made one.

His evasion obviously displeased Serena, but she

dropped the interrogation. Instead, she held up a black motorcycle helmet. "Wel , Nat...ready to ride?" Actual y, Natalie doubted she'd ever be ready to ride with Serena. A decade had passed since Serena had rescued her from Evan with a bike just like this one, and Natalie had gotten over a lot of her phobias in the interim. She no longer refused to take elevators and could even fly in a plane without breaking into a cold sweat, but watching the 5 freeway zip beneath her like an asphalt conveyor belt stil gave her palpitations. Gripping the back of the Harley's seat with her thighs, she actual y became nostalgic for the horses she'd been terrified to ride during her il -fated trip to Peru. At least the plodding nags didn't go seventy miles an hour. At this speed, Natalie knew, the helmet and heavy leather jacket she wore served as little more than a fashion statement. They wouldn't keep her from getting

squished like roadkil beneath the passing cars if she fel off the bike. As they zoomed north toward L.A., she bear-hugged Serena's midsection and shut her eyes. If they did wipe out, she didn't want to see it coming. Natalie needn't have worried, for Serena got them safely to the place where Calvin had agreed to meet Carleton Amis--a bleak industrial district in the City of Commerce fil ed with beige buildings that resembled aircraft hangars. Although the tinted visors of their helmets hid their identity, Serena took an alternate route to the location so their arrival would not be observed. She kil ed the bike's motor while stil several yards away from the chosen parking lot, had Natalie

dismount, then pushed the cycle up to one side of the nearest warehouse. Raising their visors for an

unobstructed view, they edged up to the corner of the building and angled their heads to peer around at Calvin, who already paced beside his VW bus, checking his watch every few seconds.

The exchange took place so quickly, it seemed

anticlimactic. The gold BMW pul ed up beside its poor German cousin, and Carleton Amis got out and met

Calvin in as jovial a manner as he had once greeted Natalie. She noticed that he carried a brown attache case--most likely the same one Calvin had

described...the one that contained the gun for his injection.

The two men traded terse pleasantries before each climbed onto the VW's front seats. For a couple of minutes, only their silhouettes were visible through the bus's rear windshield. They emerged with much the same bland business expressions, only now Amis

carried both the attache case and the art portfolio. Calvin squeezed his upper right bicep as if it smarted, but covered the action by crossing his arms.

"That's it," Serena whispered. "If we tail Amis from here, it'l look too suspicious. I'l go 'round the block and come up behind him."

She lowered her visor and wheeled the Harley back the way they'd come. Natalie watched Amis set the case and portfolio in the Beemer before dropping her own windscreen and jogging after Serena.

Back on the bike, they circled around the warehouse complex to the thoroughfare that led to the freeway, rejoining it just moments before the BMW and VW bus turned onto the street in front of them. As they'd planned, Serena hung back until Calvin broke off to take the 5 South, back toward Natalie's condo. She then closed on the Beemer, trailing it up the on-ramp headed north. Although her nimble maneuvers made Natalie woozy, she proved adept at being inconspicuous,

changing lanes and hiding behind other vehicles while always keeping Amis in view, even as he veered off onto the 10 East interchange in downtown L.A.

It was almost noon when Amis left the freeway, taking the last of several exits for Pasadena. Here, Serena's dance of surveil ance grew even more delicate. The traffic thinned on the surface streets, and she al owed the BMW to get ahead of her by more than a block, risking that Amis could lose her at a red light yet disguising the deliberateness of her pursuit.

After several turns, the BMW final y came to rest in the parking lot of a drab, single-story institution, but Serena did not slow down. Natalie didn't get a good look at the place until they cruised a half mile past it, hung a U, and rode by it in the opposite direction at a lower speed. The facility masked its gracelessness with overgrown rosebushes that molted withered petals, yet the

perfunctory beautification only accentuated the dreary architecture.

GREENER PASTURES ASSISTED LIVING, the sign

out front proclaimed without a trace of irony.

Two men in white uniforms--one heavy, one lean-barricaded the entrance with their bodies. At their hips, they wore what appeared to be stun guns like Serena's. As Carleton Amis strode up, whistling and swinging the portfolio and attache case, the larger of the two orderlies stepped to one side for him to pass through the automatic double doors.

Serena coasted until they were wel out of sight of the hospice, then steered the Harley over to the curb and raised her windscreen. "Never seen an ol' folks home with armed guards," she remarked. "Must be some feisty seniors."

Natalie lifted her own visor and adjusted the straps of her backpack, which weighed on her trapezius muscles.

"Yeah, I'd like to see who they've got in there. What would you say to some undercover work? Can you play old?"