All-Day Breakfast (11 page)

“Yeah,” I said blandly, “I'd heard about that.”

“Little Scott Barnes, he's an athletic kid, went down on his back during the soccer game last night—
compound
fracture
of the leg, everybody could see it plain as day, but he hopped up and kept playing, said it didn't bother him. Rest of the kids were just about sick! They had to strap him down on one of those stretchers just to keep him from hopping out of the ambulance! Feisty bugger.”

“I hadn't heard that one.”

“Now, my wife sent me over here, Mr. Giller, to suss you out. She figured, hey, all these troubles with the eleventh-grade field trip, fire at
our
house, your house, the Sutherlands' and the Mooneys', then Scott Barnes's mother in that accident…Colleen and I've almost started believing that something really
terrible
happened with that accident in Velouria, and now we're being badgered out of town before we can put our heads together, hash it all out. Does that seem logical to you?”

“Well.” I encouraged my brain to participate, this seemed important. “If it really has been
organized
by somebody, I couldn't say why they'd do that. Obviously
something
happened to everybody in Velouria.”

“Not there, Jocko, that's the man's vehicle!” Avery tugged the leash. “Now when we rolled into my brother's place this noon hour, it happened a friend of his was over. This friend's name is Svendsen, cheerful as all heck, made me think of a cocker spaniel—you know the guy?”

“I've only been in town a couple of months, I—”

“Well, this Svendsen's ex-military, Air Force officer, I believe, saw action in the Persian Gulf and just retired very recently. And after we got to talking about Megan, he told us that plant in Velouria is owned by this Penzler Industries outfit, are you familiar with them?”

“I know the name, sure.”

“You do! Well, Svendsen said this Penzler has expanded like crazy in recent years, and their venture capital came out of
military
contracts. You aware of that?”

The firemen had been ambling through the wreckage, hunting on the ground for something, but now they looked up at me and Avery.

“I wasn't aware,” I said softly.

“Well.” Taking the hint, Avery tugged the dog in closer and nearly whispered. “Can you recall exactly what they were
making
over in Velouria? Because my girls only said garbage bags.”

It was unbelievable to me that Avery could even hold this conversation,
any
conversation, while his daughter and her sequinned cardigan were two days missing and presumed God-knows-what, but I was keeping my cool pretty well myself considering that I'd just watched Josie and Ray getting spirited away. I tugged absently at my reattached finger and recalled that I had a hole through my shoulder that would probably show daylight if I stood, heroically, against the setting sun.

“In Velouria,” I whispered, “they told us they were manufacturing garbage bags, and flexible pipes for the plumbing in motorhomes. They walked us through the whole procedure. Bit of this chemical, bit of that one,
abracadabra
—plastic.”

“But if they put in a bit
more
of that one and a bit
less
of this, it's another kind of plastic
entirely
,” Avery said quietly. “Were you aware of that?”

“Sure,” I said. “That's just science.”

The bearded fireman ducked under the yellow tape, wiping his palms on his overalls.

“Hey, Giller?” he said. “I'm probably not the one supposed to tell you—”

Then
why
tell me? My ears flushed hot, and I glanced around for a two-by-four that I could use to knock him across the teeth.

“—but you have been
slightly
lucky here,” he went on. “I mean, it could have been way worse. The arson guys from the police came across a device that had been set to go off in the middle of the night—you believe that? That's what our chief's paperwork said. But they figured it must've gone haywire and ignited this morning instead. The diagnostic told them that. Because you have young kids and that, right? Would have been way worse in the middle of the night.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for telling me.”

All the time Avery was making a big show of rubbing his dog's belly while it lay on its back, but he threw me this meaningful look—incendiary devices in the middle of the damn night?
Badgered out of town?

“This Svendsen had had about six beer,” he whispered, “so he was real talkative. He said the plastic Penzler made was
for the soldiers
.”

The clean-shaven fireman seemed to be talking into a
cb
radio up in their cab.

“That could mean anything,” I muttered. “Body armor or—”

“Right, of course! Well, my sister-in-law was trying to escort the guy out but when he started hunting around for his shoes he told me something else. Put his arm around me and said that plastic was meant to go inside the soldiers.
Inside
. Then ran out to his car in his stocking feet and drove away! My sister-in-law shut the door and my jaw hit the floor with this whole thing. I mean, our house had
just burned down
!”

His eyes bugged out. The dog sat down on the sidewalk and stared at me too.

“Soldiers,” I finally said. “Like they're sending to the Congo?”

“I guess! Puts Penzler on a tight effin' schedule, hey? What do
you
think?”

“I don't know what to think.”

“All right. All right,” he said. “I'll ask Svendsen about it again if I see him. I'd better roll back along to my brother's, tell my wife I sussed you out.”

I watched him saunter away up the block between the hedges and the line of elms, like we'd only been talking about the Steelers' post-season chances, and wasn't Coach Tomlin a snappy dresser? Beside me the clean-shaven fireman leaned his elbow out the fire engine's window.

“Guy seems pretty excited,” he called.

“His daughter's missing and his house burned down last night.”

“Oh, yeah, down on Mitchell! Thought he looked familiar. Hey, you still staying down at the Brennan?”

“That's right,” I said, though I hadn't ever checked in.

He nodded, patted the outside of the door agreeably. His head jerked up.

“Oh, man, holy shit!”

I looked too—a car must've been pulling into one of the driveways, and now Doug Avery lay sprawled on his face beneath its bumper, motionless as a pork sausage. At that distance it looked like he'd put on a red skullcap. The car was some sporty model, yellow—I couldn't see the whole car, a tree was in the way—and I was going to punch my fist through the driver's chest whether old Doug was dead or not. I started running and the fireman jumped down from the engine and ran beside me.

The yellow car was backing out onto the street.

“Hey!” the fireman yelled, waving his dinner-plate hand. “Hold up!”

Its tires squealed and it roared fifty feet then squealed again around the hedges at the corner. Only then did we get to Avery. The leash was still around his wrist and Jocko licked his ear, tail wagging. Doug's left leg was twisted backwards under him, and something like raw egg dripped out of the back of his head. A half-gallon of blood showed where his head had hit the right-angle of the curb.

Before he'd even stopped running, the fireman was calling into his walkie-talkie, and I didn't stop at all—I had enough bacon dogs in me that I figured I could chase that yellow car clear across Colorado, straight down the interstate, so long as I could keep one eye on him. But I slingshotted around the hedge and of course it was long gone. Just a woman in pink, raking leaves beside the sidewalk.

“You see that car?” I yelled. “Get the license?”

She scratched her chin on her knobbly work glove.

The fireman stood
six feet back from the body, the leash in his hand and Jocko straining like hell to try to sniff Doug. The bearded fireman was sprinting up the sidewalk from my house, some kind of plastic tool kit in one hand, pulling a latex glove onto the other with his teeth.

“Don't bust a gut. No vitals,” the clean-shaven one called. “Hang around to give a statement to the cops,” he said to me. “They're looking out for the car. We'll see.”

I studied how the blades of grass bent beneath Doug's elbow.

“Hey, I'm not going anywhere,” I said.

Ah, yes
, I thought.
This makes sense. It's all been building up to this exact thing
. If only Doug had been washed in pink goop with us, he could've sat up and asked for breakfast.

As the firemen bent over the body I wandered back toward my burned-down house. A baby-blue convertible was parked between the fire truck and the neighbor's brown pickup. Grace sat on the hood, gnawing pepperoni and swinging her flip-flops, while Amber probed the ashes of my front porch with her sneaker.

“Hey, hey!” She waved her one arm. She wore a
squirrel whisperer
T-shirt.

“Why're you guys hanging around here?” I asked. “Might not be the safest—”

“We can see
that
!” said Amber. “Figure you didn't
want
your house to—”

“Weren't you all writing letters to Congress?”

“Screw that,” said Grace, “we're the refugees now. Didn't you call the factory guy—he say anything good?”

“Oh.” Child was using her brain! “Guy said to meet him way out in Lancaster County, but I'm going to head to Velouria before that, see what anybody has to say.”

“We're in. Hey, crazy chick,” she called to Amber, “come get in the car.”

“What's that thumping?” I asked.

“It's that asshole!” said Amber. “Pop the trunk, I want to munch his face!”

Demurely, Grace slid to the ground and circled the car. “What's going on down the block there?” she asked, flicking up a pierced eyebrow.

“Megan Avery's dad got run over by somebody.”

“Megan's hilarious.” Amber clacked her nails on the back windshield. “Come on, come
on
!”

Grace reached beside the driver's seat and the trunk opened with a metallic burp.

“Yeah, about time,” a man's voice hollered from inside, “you fucking—”

Amber's fist came back to her shoulder and descended.

I peered in—a shirtless, black-bearded, three-hundred-pound man held his hands to his nose as blood seeped between his fingers. He had a snake's open mouth tattooed around his eyes, a fang threatening each eyeball, and
napalm death
written across his bare chest. The trunk smelled of booze and vanilla air-freshener.

“Mr. Giller, I am
sorry
, but you would not
believe
how rude he was to us.”

“You drive a yellow car, sir?” I shouted down at him. “Huh?”

“Getting oud,” he said, grasping for the lip of the trunk. “Nod funny.”

Grace stood at my hip, unwrapping another Slim Jim, while Amber waited with that right fist still cocked, eyes darting from me to our large victim.

“One missing arm,” she hissed. “He calls me a
freak
—not like it's a harelip!”

His head came up, then he raised his massive legs and lowered them to the cement. He staggered across to the opposite sidewalk, hands to his face like he needed to keep pieces from falling off.

“Done and done,” I said. “Let's carry ourselves with some dignity here, girls.”

“We were grocery shopping,” said Grace. “You want some raw wieners?”

I sure did.

“No, thank you.” I glanced at the firemen standing on either side of the silver emergency blanket they'd spread over Avery, and suddenly I felt snipers peering at us from every window. “I want to ditch you two,” I said, “and get to Velouria.”

“Hey, no way!” Grace chewed hard, already unwrapping the next one. “Can they splatter us with the stuff again, you think? I am seriously so sick of eating these!”

Again I heard sirens from down the hill. I shut my eyes for a second so I could think. I didn't need these two, no, but Hoover was not safe for any of us.

I took Grace's Slim Jim and started to chew. She just smiled at me, nodding, as if to say
That's cool, man
, but my imagination was out on the highway to MacArthur, telekinetically pushing Deb's car away from Hoover—God willing, they were already out past the Fuddruckers billboard.

“Can you just leave town?” I asked. “Where do your folks think you are?”

“My mom's in Taiwan,” said Grace, “so I'm at the chick's place, but her folks are at the hospital 'cause her dad got backed into by a sand truck, so he's got whiplash.”

“Sand truck? There's no snow on the ground!”

Amber shrugged, her empty sleeve flapping in the breeze. “That's what
I
said.”

Two police cars slid up the block, sirens off now, stopping beside the fire truck. I trotted over and leaned in a window—it was my guy with the sideburns and dimples.

“Not here,” I said. “Seven or eight houses up.”

He nodded and drove away, followed by the next cop, then an ambulance that had appeared. Another car was in line behind them, a green Taurus station wagon.

“Mr. Giller!” Colleen Avery leaned over her steering wheel. “
You
haven't seen Megan around, have you?” She smiled, like Megan was off playing hide-and-seek, giggling. “You know, since our field trip she's been—”

“I don't know where she is.”

“No? Oh, hello, girls!” Colleen waved at the two on the sidewalk, her voice all ice cream. “My husband was coming to see you. Has he already gone home?”