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low overhead, tumbling inland toward safer roosts, frightened by a wind
that shattered the sea and flung the wet fragments across the point of
the horn.
"You're so full of shit," she said, but she smiled.
"It's one of my most charming qualities."
A sand devil did a dervish dance around us, spitting grit in our faces,
and we hurried into the house.
 the With the box from Thor's Gun Shop in my arms, I watched white wings
dwindle across the turbulent black sky. Bobby was waiting inside,
where the lights were dialed down to a comfortable murk. The fog was
long gone.
Under the lowering clouds, the night was crystaline. He locked the
front door behind us.
Around us on the peninsula, the sparse shore grass thrashed. Looking
around at the large panes of glass, Sasha said, "I sure wish we could
nail some plywood over these."
Tall sand devils whirled off the tops of the dunes, like pale spirits
spun up from graves.
"This is my house," Bobby said. "I'm not going to board up the
windows, hunker down, and live like a prisoner just because of some
damned monkeys."
I wondered if more than the wind had harried the seagulls from their
shelter. To Sasha, I said, "As long as I've known him, this amazing
dude hasn't been intimidated by monkeys."
"Never," Bobby agreed. "And I'm not starting now."
 "They're not here yet," Bobby assured me as he took the two pizza-shop
boxes from the back of the Explorer.
"It's early for them."
"Monkeys are usually eating at this hour," I said. "I had a little
"Let's at least draw the blinds," Sasha said.
I shook my head. "Bad idea. That'll just make them suspicious.
dancing."
If they can watch us, and if we don't appear to be lying in wait for
them, they'll be less cautious."
"Maybe they won't even come at all tonight," Sasha hoped.
"They'll come," I said. Sasha took the two fire extinguishers from
their boxes and "Yeah. They'll come," Bobby agreed.
clipped the plastic presale guards from the triggers. They were ten
Bobby went inside with our dinner. Orson stayed close by his pound,
marine-type models, easy to handle. She put one in a corner of the
kitchen where it couldn't be seen from the windows, and tucked the
second beside one of the sofas in the living room.
 While Sasha dealt with the extinguishers, Bobby and I sat in the
candlelit kitchen, boxes of ammunition in our laps, working below table
level in case the monkey mafia showed up while we were at work. Sasha
had purchased three extra magazines for the Glock and three
speedloaders for her revolver, and we snapped cartridges into them.
"After I left here last night," I said, "I visited Roosevelt Frost."
Bobby looked at me from under his eyebrows. "He and Orson have a broly
chat?"
"Roosevelt tried. Orson wasn't having any of it. But there was this
cat named Mungojerrie."
"Of course," he said drily.
"The cat said the people at Wyvern wanted me to walk away from this,
just move on."
"You talk to the cat personally?"
"No. Roosevelt passed the message to me."
"Of course."
 "According to the cat, I was going to get a warning. If I didn't stop
Nancying this, they'd kill my friends one by one until I did." tv
"They'll blow me away to warn you off!" V, "Their idea, not mine."
"They can't just kill You? They think they need kryptonite?"
"They revere me, Roosevelt says."
"Well, who doesn't?" Even after the monkeys, he remained dubious about
this issue of anthropomorphizing animal behavior.
But he sure had cranked down the volume of his sarcasm.
"Right after I left the Nostromo," I said, "I was warned, just like the
cat said I would be."
I told Bobby about Lewis Stevenson, and he said, "He was going to kill
Orson?"
From his guard post where he stared up at the pizza boxes on the
counter, Orson whined as if to confirm my account.
"so," Bobby said, "You shot the sheriff."
"He was the chief of police."
 "You shot the sheriff," Bobby insisted.
A lot of years ago, he had been a radical Eric Clapton junkie, so I
knew why he liked it better this way. "All right. I shot the
sheriff-but I did not shoot the deputy."
"I can't let You out of my sight."
He finished with the speedloaders and tucked them into the dump pouch
that Sasha had also purchased.
"Bitchin' shirt," I said.
Bobby was wearing a rare long-sleeve Hawaiian shirt featuring a
spectacular, colorful mural of a tropical festival: oranges, reds, and
greens.
He said, "Kamehameha Garment Company, from about 1950."
Having dealt with the fire extinguishers, Sasha came into the kitchen
and switched on one of the two ovens to warm up the pizza.
To Bobby, I said, "Then I set the patrol car on fire to destroy the
evidence."
 "What's on the pizza?" he asked Sasha.
"Pepperoni on one, sausage and onions on the other."
"Bobby's wearing a used shirt," I told her.
"Antique," Bobby amended.
"Anyway, after I blew up the patrol car, I went over to St.
Bernadette's and let myself in."
"Breaking and entering?"
"Unlocked window."
"So it's just criminal trespass," he said.
As I finished loading the spare magazines for the Glock, I said, "Used
shirt, antique shirt-seems like the same thing to me." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]