Kornwolf (27 page)

Exasperated, Jack started shoveling change into the lobby's pay phone to call around town. But at that hour, naturally, no one picked up. Three machines and a wrong number later, he broke down and pulled out his wallet, furious.

So much for one more chunk of their purse.

With orders to rest for a couple of days and a handful of over-the-counter aspirin, Roddy was finally released from the Jefferson General just before five a.m. Jack drove them back to the hotel to pick up their bags, only to find that their bags had already been moved to a storage room, down in the basement. Their rooms had been occupied. Sensing a lapse in communications, and taking note of Roddy's condition, the clerk offered all of them cots in a janitor's break room.

Jack had to
not
laugh …

An estimated one and a half million viewers had watched their fight on TV that evening, yet, first, the club had failed to provide them with proper equipment and decent quarters; second, the show's promoters had either bungled or lied about medical coverage; and third, now that the three of them were ready and, finally, cleared to get some rest, the hotel staff could provide no more than a pay phone to seek out alternative lodging.

“This”—Jack turned to Owen, remarking for what, undoubtedly, would not be the last time—“is why you stick with the amateurs, kid. This is a generation of vipers.”

On which note, Owen was given pause to consider The Coach's manner of speech. Until this evening, Jack hadn't spoken, directly, more than a dozen words to him. From off to the side, his vocal inflections had sounded, for the most part, flatly neutral. However, in the past few hours, his accent had hinted directly at regional tendencies—that is: an upward lilt in statements, a
puckering, nasally anal twang. Earlier, Owen had taken these intonations for specific to Pennsyltucky. Even though he hadn't been able to determine, through Roddy, The Coach's place of birth, he assumed that Jack had grown up in the area. If pressed as to
where
, Owen probably would have wagered on either New Holland or Lititz—one of the prominent farming boroughs. Jack was most likely a native of Stepford. Only at the mention of “vipers” did Owen begin to sense just
how
native. The tip-off lay in pronunciation. That is: the v in “viper” had a vaguely, if tangibly German w edge. And “generation” came through as “cheneration.” In full: “a cheneration of wipers.”

To outside ears, for those who had grown up elsewhere, it might not have been detectable. But for Owen, who had spent his whole youth on the outskirts of Stepford trying to make sense of the language, Jack's vernacular, however streetwise, had definite shades of the Pennsyltucky Dutch. (And Stumpf was a Dutchie name.) Maybe The Coach had grown up in the sticks, outnumbered by Plain Folk—or even as
one
of them …

He wouldn't have been the only hayseed to end up on King Street.

Still, it was odd.

And so was his pickup: a massive old F-150 with overly sensitive brakes, even touchier shocks and a souped-up engine that took off from under them, light after light. All the way out of town, Owen bounced on the passenger's seat, gripping an armrest. Roddy lay braced in a clench in the backseat, facing away—still awake, though silent. The window above him was draped with a blanket. At every turn, what sounded like piles of metal shifted around in the hatchback. Again, it was strange: The Coach, as a city rat, owning a pickup truck and all—but nowhere nearly as strange as the proposition he was about to make Owen.

To wit: at dawn, with the first rays of sunlight creasing the flatlands of Valley Forge—just after pulling onto the turnpike, from out of nowhere, as though in a dream: would Owen consider watching (which seemed to mean
running
) the gym for a
couple of weeks? Apparently, Jack had emergency “family matters” out west that couldn't wait. He needed “some brains” to hold down the fort. Roddy already had keys to the building, and Rhya, who worked full-time as a florist, would still run her noon class three days a week. The regular crew would remain in the house. But someone was needed to answer the phones. Somebody had to take care of the club—someone accustomed to “fending off (w)ultures”—and more: the whole building (the sewer, the heat, the electric) would have to be monitored daily. As well, there were matters of scheduling (an amateur tournament was set to begin in five weeks) and sponsorship issues in need of attention.

And somebody had to bring in the mail.

Jack pulled out a roll of twenties, most of his coach's commission for the night. He apologized for not having more to work with. Thing$ had been tough at the gym, of late. He handed the money to Owen. It must have been two thousand dollars in cash … In time, if required, he might devise some way of upping the rate of compensation. For the moment, however, he needed somebody with love for the game, someone he could trust.

For Owen, the only thing left to consider was whether or not The Coach was serious.

Once he had settled on
yes
, he accepted without even blinking.

The Luck of the Celts.

The rest of the ride was spent outlining daily procedure: security, contacts, keys—guidelines for dealing with Jerry Blye.

Jack dictated while Owen took notes. They were finished before the Stepford exit.

The last few minutes passed in silence. A series of images flashed before Owen, dancing now in the oncoming road lines of 222 through his bleary-eyed drifting: his first week in “training,” and how little Jack had acknowledged his presence, much less addressed him. The sudden offer to work Roddy's corner, which Jack had extended without warming up to him. And now, an appeal to run the club.

All of this had happened in twenty-one days.

And still, The Coach was decidedly distant—as pensive, distracted, preoccupied as ever. Of course, he'd been fully attentive to Roddy that evening, and all through the week in training. But every time he had turned away—if only to glance at the clock for a moment—a cloud of gloom had rolled back over him. Owen had watched it right from the start. This was the only Jack he knew.

It was seven o'clock when they dropped him off at the house. Every car on the east side of Mulberry Street had been moved—
except
for his Subaru. The city sweepers had already passed. Another ticket, the fourth of its kind, had been slipped under one of his windshield wipers.

He turned to Roddy, who was still in the backseat, propped on an elbow. His eyes were black. The cut on his forehead was oozing pus.

Owen shook his head, at a loss for words.

Roddy, grinning, mumbled: “I hope I didn't let you guys down.”

“Shut the hell up.”

Owen reached over the backseat and wrapped an arm around Roddy. “You did us all proud, brother.”

“I love you, buddy.”

“I love you too.”

Owen got out of the pickup, nodding to Jack. “I'll call you this afternoon?”

The Coach pulled away without responding.

Mulberry Street was still littered with trash.

Owen turned and walked up the stairs to his front door. He unlocked it, went in, collapsed on the couch and lay there for twenty-five minutes.

As much as he might have preferred to bask in his optimum fortune (once again)—and maybe drift off to sleep with a shit-eating grin on his face for a couple of hours—there was much to be done, including a thorough review of The Basin's scanner material. Owen had set his machine on “record” at four p.m. the day before. He may have been gone from his post for a night, but his bases were covered. It was all in the timing. For as long
as he stayed on his game, he could handle this: everything—the gym, the paper, the Sabbath … The only thing it would cost him was sleep. And that wasn't a problem. For over a week, he'd been up until five a.m. every morning—either roaming The Basin or wielding a spit-bucket—then walking grooves in the floor back home, unable to stop his mind from racing.

The scanner results only bolstered his mania.

By now, Owen's hypothetical musings regarding the moon had played out to a tee.

The first disturbance report in The Basin—a livestock attack in the hills of Ronks—had been filed on the night of September 25th. Six days later, on the first of October, a rash of follow-up killings, mostly of goats and chickens, had reached a climax—along with an outbreak of property damage and small-time robberies. The moon had been full.

For the next few evenings, the level of public unrest had shown a marked decline. By the weekend (October 9th–10th), The Basin appeared to have gone back to normal. The moon had entered its last quarter. The calm had extended for several days.

Then, in the early hours of Friday, the 15th, the livestock attacks had resumed—and along with them, over the weekend, a new wave of Blue Ball Devil hysteria. This came to pass in the new moon phase, which peaked on the evening of Saturday the 16th.

From there, the disorder had trailed off again, diminishing all through the following week. Even while media coverage had surged, the turbulence seemed to have ebbed momentarily. This coincided with the moon's first quarter, which had fallen on October 23rd. Again, disorderly conduct in not just The Basin, but all across the country, bottomed out when the moon's gravitational pull on the earth had been at its weakest. And again, it resurfaced a few days later, increasing in the nights leading up to the full moon—in this case, a blue moon on Halloween, which, on average, occurred every nineteen years.

The scanner reports from the previous evening concurred, including, among other incidents, sexual assault at the Dogboy Tavern, as corroborated loosely by fifteen witnesses, evasion of police at the same address, another attack on the Holtwood Development—this one resulting in six private guards open-firing upon (and missing) an “invisible maniac” trashing their grounds (again)—a farmer named Dougan's claim to have shot and wounded “The Devil” for groping his heifers—the arrest and disarming of nine local residents, most of them stopped in a single procession of minivans cruising Old Laycock Drive, for the unlicensed wielding of modified firearms—the subsequent arrest of an Amish youth, now being held on suspicion of vandalism—a high-speed automobile pursuit by Sergeant Billings of a navy-blue Hornet (Billings gave chase, but was left in the dust between Smoketown and Ronks on Lynwood Road), two complaints of harassment and one of a death threat, lodged by resident “protesters”—three reports of breaking and entering, one from a couple who swore up and down that an overgrown rabbit had robbed their icebox—the unexplained theft of one police radio from an Officer Nelson Kutay's patrol car (two of the officers called him a fat boy and “king hell dipshit” over the air)—and dozens of similar “sightings,” with less specific details of property damage.

If these events were an indication of what lay in store for the coming evening—meaning: were they exceeded by 12:51 a.m., when the moon was full—then tonight would belong to The Sacred Chao. On that note, Owen felt nervously certain.

With a five-minute shower, a guzzle of java and a quick change of clothing, he got back to work.

To start with, the Dogboy was closed for repairs. Nobody answered the business number, and of fifteen listed witnesses, only one could be reached: Dwayne Gibbons. Owen hadn't forgotten the name: that sniveling rat who had tried to milk him for printing
the motion detector photo. He didn't expect any better this time—which was good, as he wasn't about to receive it. A wildly distraught Gibbons raved about devils and horseshit and “killing that bastard.”

Owen, lost in the muddle of spluttering histrionics, hung up the phone.

Attempts to reach Officers Keiffer, Beaumont, Billings and Kutay were unsuccessful. Again, the sheriff was out of his office. Even the dispatcher hung up on Owen.

Thence, he moved on to Dane Dougan, the farmer who'd taken a shot at “The Devil”—and who, like others, claimed that the creature, indeed, bore the overall appearance of Nixon—only with “clotted fur and mange.”

It wasn't any better with the couple whose icebox had been broken into. Most of the people who'd phoned in “sightings” were either asleep or at work or not home. The same went for six of the nine individuals charged with the unlicensed wielding of firearms. The other three, one sounding sickly hung-over, the second cursing the sheriff's name and the third forbidden from taking the phone by his angry wife, who called Owen a “Jew boy”—had just arrived home from a maddening, all-night detainment in the Lamepeter Township precinct.

At this hour, no one seemed ready or willing to help Owen piece together an update. Thus far, his only good quote had been taken from a shaken-up Holtwood Development guard. According to Donald Matthews, who ran a backhoe by day and who'd witnessed the previous evening's attack as a stand-in watchman: that “thing” was no hoax. It had “woven” through an unbroken, six-man barrage of shotgun fire—almost as though it had “seen them patches of lead shot coming, and danced between 'em.”

Still, the statement wasn't enough. It didn't make up for an hour on the phone.

By noon, Owen had run out of options, along with most of the wind in his sails—something he tried to contend with by drinking entirely too much coffee again.

A final call to the Dogboy failed.

Then he spilled coffee all over his crotch. Scalded, he leapt in a fit of yowling …

Yes, it was time to get out of the house.

Today, he would work at the office.

Or not.

The building was quiet. Save for Bess and a pair of typists, the newsroom was empty. No sign of Kegel or Jarvik. No sign of their secretaries. And really no wonder, as Owen's belongings—a couple of folders, some papers and pens and a sack full of trash mail—were stuffed in a cardboard box, on the floor, blocking the aisle behind his cubicle.

He stepped over it, looking inside.