Dreamcatcher(103)

Brodsky paused, clearly embarrassed either by what he was saying or how he imagined it must sound. Owen, who was fascinated, gestured for him to go on.

'There ain't much more. I told him to fish em out, dry em off, and pop em in. It was like a billion times I've helped some guy work on somethin except I wasn't there  -  I was here. None of it was happening.'

Owen said: 'What next?' Bellowing to be heard over the engines, but the two of them still as private as a priest and his customer in a church confessional.

'Started up first crank. I told him to check the gas while he was at it, and there was a full tank. He said thanks.' Brodsky shook his head wonderingly. 'And I said, No problem, boss. Then I kind of thumped back into my own head and I was just walking along. You think I'm crazy?'

'No. But I want you to keep this to yourself for the time being.'

Under his mask, Brodsky's lips spread in a grin. 'Oh man, no problem there, either. I just . . . well, we're supposed to report anything unusual, that's the directive, and I thought - '

Quickly, not giving Brodsky time to think, Owen rapped: 'What was his name?'

'Jonesy Three,' Dawg replied, and then his eyes widened in surprise. 'Holy shit! I didn't know I knew that.'

'Is that some sort of Indian name, do you think? Like Sonny Sixkiller or Ron Nine Moons?'

'Coulda been, but . . .' Brodsky paused, thinking, then burst out: 'It was awful! Not when it was happening, but later on . . . thinking about it . . . it was like being . . .' He dropped his voice. 'Like being raped, sir.'

'Let it go,' Owen said. 'You must have a few things to do?'

Brodsky smiled. 'Only a few thousand.'

'Then get started.'

'Okay.' Brodsky took a step away, then turned back. Owen was looking toward the corral, which had once held horses and now held men. Most of the detainees were in the barn, and all but one of the two dozen or so out here were huddled up together, as if for comfort. The one who stood apart was a tall, skinny drink of water wearing big glasses that made him look sort of like an owl. Brodsky looked from the doomed owl to Underhill. 'You're not gonna get me in hack over this, are you? Send me to see the shrink?' Unaware, of course, both of them unaware that the skinny guy in the old-fashioned horn-rims was a shrink.

'Not a ch - ' Owen began. Before he could finish, there was a gunshot from Kurtz's Winnebago and someone began to scream.

'Boss?' Brodsky whispered. Owen couldn't hear him over the contending motors; he read the word off Brodsky's lips. And: 'Ohh, f**k.'

'Go on, Dawg,' Owen said. 'Not your business.'

Brodsky looked at him a moment longer, wetting his lips inside his mask. Owen gave him a nod, trying to project an air of confidence, of command, of everything's-under-control. Maybe it worked, because Brodsky returned the nod and started away.

From the Winnebago with the hand-lettered sign on the door (THE BUCK STOPS HERE), the screaming continued. As Owen started that way, the man standing by himself in the compound spoke to him. 'Hey! Hey, you! Stop a minute, I need to talk to you!'

I'll bet, Underhill thought, not slowing his pace. I bet you've got a whale of a tale to tell and a thousand reasons why you should be let out of here right now.

'Overhill? No, Underhill. That's your name, isn't it? Sure it is. I have to talk to you  -  it's important to both of us!'

Owen stopped in spite of the screaming from the Winnebago, which was breaking up into hurt sobs now. Not good, but at least it seemed that no one had been killed. He took a closer look at the man in the spectacles. Skinny as a rail and shivering in spite of the down parka he was wearing.

'It's important to Rita,' the skinny man called over the con?tending roar of the engines. 'To Katrina, too.' Speaking the names seemed to sap the geeky guy, as if he had drawn them up like stones from some deep well, but in his shock at hearing the names of his wife and daughter from this stranger's lips, Owen barely noticed. The urge to go to the man and ask him how he knew those names was strong, but he was currently out of time . . . he had an appointment. And just because no one had been killed yet didn't mean no one would be killed.

Owen gave the man behind the wire a final look, marking his face, and then hurried on toward the Winnebago with the sign on the door.

3

Perlmutter had read Heart of Darkness, had seen Apocalypse Now, and had on many occasions thought that the name Kurtz was simply a little too convenient. He would have bet a hundred dollars (a great sum for a non - wagering artistic fellow such as himself) that it wasn't the boss's real name  -  that the boss's real name was Arthur Holsapple or Dagwood Elgart, maybe even Paddy Maloney. Kurtz? Unlikely. It was almost surely an affectation, as much a prop as George Patton's pearl - handled .45. The men, some of whom had been with Kurtz since Desert Storm (Archie Perlmutter didn't go back nearly that far), thought he was one crazy motherf*cker, and so did Perlmutter . . . crazy like Patton had been crazy. Crazy like a fox, in other words. Probably when he was shaving in the morning he looked at his reflection and practiced saying 'The horror, the horror' in just the right Marlon Brando whisper.

So Pearly felt disquiet but no unusual disquiet as he escorted Cook's Third Melrose into the over-warm command trailer. And Kurtz looked pretty much okay. The skipper was sitting in a cane rocking chair in the living-room area. He had removed his coverall  -  it hung on the door through which Perlmutter and Melrose had entered  -  and received them in his longjohns. From one post of the rocking chair his pistol hung by its belt, not a pearl-handled .45 but a nine-millimeter automatic.