Night Warriors, page 33
Henry picked up a slice of pickle that had escaped from one of his sandwiches and popped it into his mouth. ‘Well ... very much against my better judgement –’
‘There’s something else,’ said Gil. ‘Why don’t we get Lloyd in on this? He looks pretty athletic, and pretty bright. I think we ought to involve him, too.’
‘Do we know where he lives?’ asked Henry.
‘Not far, somewhere on Lomas Santa Fe Drive, I think he said. I’ll look it up in the telephone directory.’
So it was that a little after five they left Henry’s cottage and drove to the Mini-Market at Solana Beach, where Gil handed over his Mustang to Henry, and went into the store. Henry then drove alone over to Lomas Santa Fe Drive, pulling up just past the fire station at a neat small white-painted house with a green roof and green shutters. He made sure that nobody was looking and then he hopped out of the Mustang without opening the door.
He walked up the short sloping driveway and rang the chimes. He waited two or three minutes before a black woman in a purple-and-white dress answered the door, and stared at him suspiciously. ‘Yes?’ she asked him.
‘You’re Mrs. Curran?’ he smiled, straightening his necktie.
‘That’s right. What do you-all want?’
‘I’m looking for Lloyd Curran. My name is Henry Watkins. I’m a professor at the University of California at San Diego.’
‘What do you want with Lloyd?’ Mrs. Curran demanded.
‘I was talking to him yesterday. We were discussing educational prospects, university degrees, things of that kind. I have some information he asked for, on university curricula.’
Mrs. Curran stared at Henry for a very long time, without saying a word. Then she turned back into the house, and called, ‘Lloyd! Some professor wants you!’
Lloyd came to the door wearing a bright red tee-shirt, and smacking his fist into a catcher’s mitt. He didn’t recognise Henry at first, but then Henry lifted his hand in the unique salute of the Night Warriors, his hand raised, palm facing behind him, and Lloyd suddenly understood that he was receiving a house call from Kasyx, the charge-keeper.
‘Hey, come on in,’ he said, but Henry could hear the sounds of television and rock music and arguing children inside, and so he shook his head. ‘Just come out and sit in the car for a minute. We can talk there.’
‘Well – okay,’ Lloyd agreed, reluctantly. They walked down the path together and climbed into Gil’s Mustang. Lloyd ran his fingers over the dashboard, cut out of machine-turned aluminium, and the special sport steering-wheel, and said, ‘Are these your wheels, man?’
Henry shook his head. ‘I haven’t driven my own car in years. Up until the time I was initiated into the Night Warriors – well, I had a little drinking problem.’
Lloyd was obviously impressed by Henry’s candour. He said, ‘I smoke a little ganja now and again – but, you know, nothing heavy.’
‘When you’re a Night Warrior you don’t need anything like that,’ said Henry. ‘The high comes with the power. Your slide-boxing is something special.’
Lloyd said, ‘Can I tell you something?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Last night, in that dream, I was scared. I mean I was really truly scared.’
‘You had every right to be,’ said Henry.
‘Well, I know that, man, but the strange thing is, when I woke up this morning, I felt disappointed. I felt that I wanted to be back there, where the action was. I couldn’t believe it, but that was the way I felt. I was scared, but I loved it. I felt like I was really somebody, doing something.’
Henry smiled, and nodded. ‘You were,’ he said. ‘How about your ex-wife?’ asked Lloyd. ‘Are you going to try to rescue her tonight?’
‘I’m going to try to rescue her now,’ Henry told him. ‘In a minute, Gil and I are driving up to the Scripps Institute to kill that creature we met in that dream last night. We were wondering if you would care to come with us.’
‘You mean – without being a Night Warrior? Just as me? No armour, no slide-boxing?”
‘Just as you,’ said Henry. ‘The only weapon we’re going to take with us is a gun, and the sole purpose of carrying that is for executing the creature, nothing else.’
Lloyd blew out his cheeks, and rapidly drummed his fingers on his knee. ‘You’re talking about breaking the law, man.’
Henry said, ‘Yes. But then again, no. We – you and me and Gil and Susan – we are the only people who truly understand the danger of what is going on here. For that reason, we have to think of ourselves as being the law. Vigilants, do you see, whose duty it is to protect the world from the Devil.’
Lloyd said, ‘We’re taking a gun?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And we won’t have none of the armour, none of those special skills?’
Henry shook his head.
‘Okay then,’ Lloyd agreed. ‘You can count me in. Just let me go tell my ma I’m going to be late.’
Henry waited in the car. There was some argument between Lloyd and his mother, but eventually he came scuffling out, and climbed into the car again.
‘Everything all right?’ asked Henry, starting up the engine.
‘Ma thinks I’m a kid still. She don’t like spooks, neither.’
Henry U-turned the car, and headed back towards Solana Beach. ‘I don’t think anyone ever called me a spook before,’ he said, with an odd sense of satisfaction.
They picked up Gil by the Santa Fe railroad crossing. He was carrying a brown paper sack full of groceries. He waved, and ran across the road to meet up with them.
‘Did you get the gun?’ asked Henry, heaving himself uncomfortably back into the driver’s seat.
Gil lifted a box of Cheerios out of the sack. ‘Right inside here,’ he smiled, triumphantly. ‘I told Mom I was staying around your place another night to revise some English Literature, and we needed some groceries.’
‘She doesn’t object to your staying?’
‘Not at all,’ said Gil, steering the Mustang across the highway. ‘Once I convinced her that you weren’t a faggot.’
‘Thanks for nothing,’ said Henry.
It took them another fifteen minutes to reach the Scripps Institute. One of the police cars was still parked in the lot, but apart from that the building and its grounds were almost completely deserted. Henry told Gil to park the Mustang at the very far end of the parking-lot, under the shadow of a cypress tree, where it would be out of sight of the main entrance to the marine biology department.
‘I’ll walk in, and ask to speak to my wife,’ said Henry.
‘Your ex-wife,’ Gil corrected him.
‘That’s right,’ said Henry. ‘Then I’ll walk through to the marine biology laboratory, and as I pass by I’ll open that emergency exit right there – that brown door, you see it? – from the inside. As soon as you hear the door click open, you should get yourselves inside as fast as you can, but don’t close it after you. I’ll go back to the reception desk, say that I’ve finished talking to my ... ex-wife, and sign out. Then I’ll come round to the emergency exit and let myself back in.’
‘What do we do once we’re in there?’ asked Lloyd, apprehensively.
‘To your right, about thirty feet along the corridor, there’s a broom closet. Hide in there until I join you.’
‘That emergency exit – it doesn’t have an alarm on it, does it?’ asked Gil.
‘Not the last time I used it. Soon after we were divorced, I snuck into the laboratory to steal back my gold fountain-pen. Andrea never even realised it was me who took it. She was always complaining how dishonest the laboratory staff were.’
‘What about the gun?’ asked Gil.
‘You’re the gunner, you take it. Tuck it into your belt, at the back, and just make sure you don’t sit down too quick. The last thing I want is an ass less Warrior.’
It was seven minutes to six, almost time for the marine biology department to close. Henry marched straight inside, and Gil and Lloyd watched him through the window as he spoke to the receptionist. At first, the receptionist seemed reluctant to let him through, but then they saw him sign the visitor’s book and make his way back towards the laboratory. They loped over to the emergency exit, and waited beside it for Henry to open it up.
‘Supposing he gets caught?’ Lloyd wanted to know.
Gil turned back and looked at him. ‘Then, my friend, we are well and truly fucked.’
But it was only a minute before the brown door abruptly clicked open Gil and Lloyd looked quickly all around them, and then dodged inside, pulling the door to behind them, but not quite closing it. Inside the corridor, it was white and fluorescent and smelled of institutional floor polish. There were framed photographs on the walls of dolphins and narwhals and squids.
Their sneakers squeaking on the polished floor, Gil and Lloyd hurried to the broom-cupboard, and let themselves in. Gil tripped over a bucket, and a mop slid sideways down the wall and clattered on to the tiles, but they held their breath for what seemed like minutes on end, and nobody came to investigate.
‘Next time, why don’t you just yell out, “we’re over here!”’ Lloyd whispered.
‘It was an accident, for Christ’s sake.’
They waited for only a few minutes more, and then the cupboard door suddenly opened again, and Henry came in, gasping and out of breath. He nearly knocked over the mop, but Gil managed to catch it before it fell.
‘Security guard was taking a look around,’ Henry panted. ‘I had to jog around the building and come up behind him.’
‘Man, you’re not fit at all,’ said Lloyd.
‘You don’t need to be an Olympic athlete to teach Kant,’ Henry retorted, with a small show of bad temper. Exertion always made him bad tempered.
They stayed in the broom cupboard for almost half an hour. They heard doors being slammed and feet squeaking on the corridor floors and people calling goodnight. Eventually, the corridor lights were dimmed, and Henry eased open the door and looked out.
‘It’s all right now. It looks like just about everybody’s gone home.’
The three of them walked as softly as they could along the corridor until they reached a short staircase on their left with a notice that read Marine Biology Laboratory – Spectator Seating.
‘We’ll go up there,’ said Henry. He remembered Gil’s words about always taking charge, and so he added, ‘If you agree that it’s a good idea, that is. There’s a balcony there, overlooking the main laboratory. We’ll be able to see exactly where the creature is being kept, and where the police guard is situated. Then we can discuss how we’re going to take the creature out.’
‘Sounds okay to me,’ said Gil.
‘Me too,’ Lloyd agreed; and so the three of them crept up the stairs, until they reached the swing doors which led out on to the balcony. Through the small wired-glass windows in the top of the doors, they could see that the laboratory was still brightly lit. Henry held them back for a moment, and then eased one of the swing doors open, so that he could see the laboratory’s main floor. Gil and Lloyd crowded closely behind him.
Below the railing of the balcony, the laboratory was about fifty feet square, white and tiled and gleaming. There were three long varnished benches, stocked with test-tubes and chemicals and pipettes and flickering bunsen burners. At the far end of the room an IBM computer terminal flickered and glowed, next to a microfiche retrieval display. To the right, up against the wall, there were rows of steel shelving on which stood scores of aquarium tanks. Most of the tanks were empty, but in some of them there were shoals of tropical fish swimming backwards and forwards like showers of brightly coloured needles, and turtles dipping and diving in search of food.
In the centre of the laboratory floor stood a large dissection table, flooded by bright overhead spotlights. On this table, face down, a sinewy black creature lay, its face turned towards Henry and Gil and Lloyd, its eyes closed, its scaly body shining in the lamplight. Andrea was standing over the creature, peering up at an X-ray transparency. She was wearing her spectacles, and looked tired and drawn. A little further away, sitting on the edge of a tilted laboratory stool, talking quietly to a uniformed police officer from the San Diego police department, sat Salvador Ortega.
Henry very carefully let the swing door close again. He turned to face Gil and Lloyd and said, ‘Well? What do you think?’
Lloyd shook his head. ‘We don’t have a chance, the way things stand. If we came down that balcony, waving a gun, those cops would waste us before we could make it anywhere near enough to make sure of that beast.’
‘I agree,’ said Gil. ‘We daren’t risk using the gun until the police are out of the way.’
‘That means a diversion,’ said Henry. ‘Something to get them out of the laboratory just long enough for one of us to nip in there and blow that creature’s brains out.’
Lloyd said, ‘I hate to raise this at a time like this, man, but what happens after we’ve blown that creature away? Those cops are going to run us in, right? I mean if we kill that thing, isn’t that murder?’
‘Not murder, no,’ Henry assured him. ‘The creature isn’t human, after all. The worst they can get us for is illegal possession of a firearm, and tampering with police evidence.’
‘Those are still offences, right? They can still lock us up?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Henry, uncomfortably. ‘I suppose they can.’
‘In that case, I pass,’ said Lloyd. ‘I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not going to be locked up in no cell for nobody, and especially not the ex-wife of somebody I don’t hardly know.’
Gil said, ‘Henry, he may be talking sense. This may not be the right way of doing it.’
Henry looked from one to the other, thoughtfully. ‘We have to destroy that creature some way,’ he said.
‘Well, listen, I’ve got an idea,’ said Lloyd. ‘If you can get everybody out of that laboratory for just about a minute – your wife, the cops, everybody – then maybe I can jump down off the balcony and hit it with something, crack it on the head.’
‘How about setting fire to it?’ Gil suggested. ‘There are bunsen burners down there, and bottles of methylated spirit. Maybe we could make it look like an accident.’
Henry went back to the window in the swing door, and angled his head so that he could peer down into the laboratory. ‘You may have a good idea there, Gil,’ he remarked. ‘There are two bottles of pure alcohol on the actual examination table itself. All you would have to do is knock one of them over, make sure the creature was drenched with it, and set it alight. It may not seem a very likely accident but there’s a good chance that nobody would be able to prove anything different,’
He turned around. ‘It won’t be as quick and as effective as a gun.’
Gil lowered his head. ‘Well, I know; but I guess I wasn’t too keen on using the gun anyway. I know that it was my idea, but if my dad found out that I’d borrowed it – well, he wouldn’t trust me again, with anything. Especially if I used it to shoot somebody, or something.’
Henry nodded. ‘I understand. Let’s see if we can’t burn it.’
Five minutes later, Henry knocked at the door of the laboratory. ‘Andrea!’ he shouted. ‘Andrea, are you in there? Andrea! ‘The doors were opened immediately by Salvador Ortega. ‘Professor Steinway – what are you doing here? This building is all closed up for the night.’
Henry tugged at his sleeve. ‘I have to see Andrea – to warn her –’
‘Come on, Henry,’ Salvador cajoled him. ‘This isn’t the way to behave.’
Henry seized Salvador’s lapels, and stared wildly into his face. ‘Salvador, listen to me. You have to listen to me! Andrea’s going to die! Andrea’s going to die, do you understand me? You mustn’t let her touch that creature any more! It’s going to kill her!’
‘Who’s that?’ called Andrea. ‘Henry, is that you?’
‘Oh, Andrea,’ Henry babbled. ‘Andrea! Andrea! I always loved you, didn’t you know that? You mustn’t touch that creature any more! You must run, flee! I loved you when I was married to you, Andrea, and I love you now!’
‘You’re drunk,’ said Andrea, coldly.
‘I’m not! I’m sober! I’m stone-cold sober! Smell my breath! Go on, smell my breath! Smell it! Haahhhhhhhhh! Did you smell that? Haaaahhhhhh! There you are, nothing but garlic, and that came from two baloney sandwiches.’
Andrea came out into the corridor with Salvador. ‘Henry, listen,’ she said, ‘I don’t care whether you’re drunk or not. I’m a very busy person, and I have four skin-tests to complete tonight before I go home. So would you please be good and go back to your cottage and submerge your senses in whatever brand of distilled grain you happen to be favouring this month.’
Henry gripped Andrea’s lab coat, and wound his hands around it. ‘Andrea, I love you! Haven’t I always said so? You mustn’t touch that creature any more! Promise me! Promise!’
Salvador opened the door of the laboratory, and called out. ‘Officer, would you escort this gentleman out of the building? I think he’s suffering from nervous strain, not to mention too many vodkatinis.’ The uniformed officer came out of the laboratory with a grin, his thumbs tucked into his leather belt. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said to Salvador, and then to Henry, ‘Come along, pal, I think you’ve overstayed your welcome.’
Henry glared at him. ‘Pal? I’m no pal of yours, you uniformed chump! Did you hear that, Salvador? This police officer claimed that he was a pal of mine – or at least that I was a pal of his. Do you know what a serious offence that is? Referring to a member of the public in an overly amicable manner in an attempt to secure his co-operation to waive his rights under the Constitution.’
Salvador put an arm around Henry’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Henry, I don’t know what this act is all about, but it’s time to go. I don’t want to have to take you down to the cooler, do l? It wouldn’t look good in the papers. “Famous Philosophy Prof in Chokey”.’
Henry melodramatically slapped one hand against his heart. He arched his head back and rolled his eyes. ‘Aaagh!’ he shouted. ‘Aaagh!’
