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Bowser screamed, a piercing shriek more of surprise and outrage than of pain.
Below, the police helmets gleamed lacquer white, stark against the navy blue
of their jackets and gloves.
Bowser's fingers convulsed with the shock of the blow, releasing their hold on
David's forearms.
He fell. Like a fragile thing that had been dropped, a fumbled dish that could
be clearly seen on its way down to shattering impact, he fell, maintaining eye
contact with David all the while. His feet brushed the lid of the toilet, but
at a bad angle, legs crumpling, shifting his balance forward, toward the
opposite wall. His
arms smashed against a towel rack, and he hit the floor facedown.
Amazingly, he was turning himself over the very instant he struck, throwing
himself back onto his knees and turning to face his attackers. David caught a
glimpse of blood on his face.
The service revolvers were out already, aimed already, cocked and in the
process of firing already.
"Hey, fuck you," Bowser said, in what David's later testimony would call "a
voice of calm defiance."
The pistols went off like cannons, hurling Bowser hard against the shower. The
splash of brain tissue was noted, highlighted and thermally mapped by the Hud
Specs. Bowser slumped, boneless and nearly headless, against the shower's
glass door. "Oh my God!" David screamed. The visored helmets turned up to face
him. In that instant, both thought and emotion fled. He simply picked up the
trouble kit, turned to one
side, and scrambled. Acoustic tiles came apart beneath his churning feet and
knees, but he kept ahead of them, his body's instincts optimizing and
economizing, hurling him forward at maximum speed.
The service revolvers exploded again, sending barely felt shock waves up past
his legs. They went off still again, and this time he heard the bullets
smacking the metal roof and punching through it, but well behind him this
time. He continued forward as far and as fast as he could, until he came up
against a cinder-block wall that marked the far end of the motel.
Again, without a single conscious thought or feeling, he shoved down hard
against the tile which now supported him. It came apart with squeaky
eagerness, dropping him to the room below. He missed, by inches, the soft
landing pad of an oversized bed, but he did come down on his feet, retaining
his grip on the
heavy gym bag.
The room was dark, and a bright figure stood out clearly on the bed; human,
36.4°c. The man sat up, pulling away from David in confusion and alarm.
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Wordlessly, David turned away from him, ran for the door, undid the latches
with a speed that astonished him. This completed, he threw the door open and
hurled himself outside, where he vaulted a railing to land, catlike, on the
cracked asphalt of the parking lot. To the east, dawn had begun to break, but
his body turned him in the opposite direction and, running at a full-bore,
muscle-tearing pace that would leave him' sore for weeks, left the Twilight
Motel behind and pursued the cool darkness of the night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
D
avid awoke, shivering, to the sounds of traffic above him. He was wedged under
a bridge, up where the sloping concrete met the bottom of the roadbed. There
was no dis-orientation, no moment of realization or shock; last night's events
were burned vividly into his brain, images that he could never possibly
forget, even for a moment. Even in sleep.
Dreams, fitful and horrible, had plagued him despite his exhaustion. He felt
he could sleep a lot longer, simply close his eyes and sleep the clock around.
But it was full daylight, and out b'eyond the bridge the telephone poles cast
very short shadows. Ten or eleven a.m., he guessed, and about ten degrees
above freezing. Autumn was setting in hard, this year.
Rummaging in the trouble kit, he found an energy bar and consumed it greedily.
It left his mouth sticky and dry, but there was nothing to wash it down with.
Even Bowser Jones couldn't think of everything.
The thought alarmed him with a wave of profound sadness.
My best friend just died, he thought, stringing the words together to see how
they sounded. Very strange and very bad, he concluded. Not words he'd ever
thought he'd need.
Jesus. What the hell was he going to do now? Go to the police? Arrange a
surrender to Mike Puckett, in person? Give up and die, here, under this
bridge? No, not that, certainly. What would Bowser do?
Find Marian, you putz.
Oh, of course. And all at once, he knew just where to find her. But to get
there, he would need money.
He checked the trouble kit.
The wallets held mostly paper documents, and a driver's license for someone
named Wayne Schlagel, a bearded but otherwise-nondescript man who wore
black-framed glasses and looked, rather remarkably, like a digital touch-up
job of Bowser. Wayne also had an ATM card, its PIN number foolishly
scrawled across its plain yellow face. Bermuda provident bank ltd, the card
said in stiff type below Wayne SchlagePs name. There were some other documents
pertaining to that bank, documents which referred, cryptically, to something
called a "triple-blanked bearer account."
David also came up with a money belt whose secret compartment contained five
gold coins the size of dimes, sealed in a strip of clear, flexible plastic.
They appeared to have been minted in a place called
"Furstentum Castellania." One face featured an elaborate crest of lions and
crowns, the other a stylized cross and the message: "1998 5g 999.9." No
immediate clue as to their value.
The only cash he found was a roll of dollar coins, twenty of them. Not enough
to accomplish anything,
though it might buy him a cheapie pair of actual shoes.
He zipped up the money belt and threaded it through his own belt loops,
buckling it about his waist, and he cleaned most of the garbage out of one of
the wallets and pocketed it, along with the roll of dollars.
Then, he unzipped his jacket and reversed it, swapping sky blue for Scotch
plaid, and performed a similar maneuver with the baseball cap. He thought
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about putting a wig on under it, but decided against it, at least for now.
/
can't believe this is happening, he thought as he zipped up the trouble kit
and, standing, slung it across his back. It was the first time that day the
thought had occurred to him, but he sensed it would by no means be the last.
Squinting, shielding his eyes with a raised hand, he stumbled out into the
sunlight. There was a sidewalk right on the other side of the fence, with
people hurrying along it every few seconds. There was no hole in the fence, so
he simply dropped his bag on the far side and climbed over after it, ignoring
the glares of passersby. So far as he knew, he was breaking no law,
certainly doing no harm.
Once over, he snatched the bag up again and merged with the crowd. He supposed
he did look a little dirty by now. That would have to be remedied eventually,
lest he draw unwanted attention, but it was hardly the first order of
business.
Money made the world go 'round, and it definitely had some going 'round to do
this morning if he was going to get his affairs in order.
David had always been an obsessive planner and scheduler, feeling comfortable
only when the foreseeable future had been structured, like a road paving
itself ahead of his footsteps, zipping out toward the horizon, showing him
where he had to go. Under current circumstances, it seemed frighteningly
impossible to plan anything, but nonetheless a picture of the day ahead began
to coalesce in his mind. And the more he saw of it, the more he knew that,
yes, laying hands on some money was the only way to begin.
For safety reasons, automatic teller machines were never installed in secluded
locations; too easy for the customers to be beaten and robbed. So it was
right out in the open, on the Wharton Street sidewalk bustling with pedestrian
traffic, that David tried Wayne Schlagel's bank card. It wasn't at all a
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