Part 47 (1/2)

'We're what?'

So Pearson explained a little about the Ten O'Clock People and their tribal gestures (surly glances when confronted by no smoking signs, surly shrugs of acquiescence when asked by some accredited authority to Please Put Your Cigarette Out, Sir), their tribal sacraments (gum, hard candies, toothpicks, and, of course, little Binaca push-b.u.t.ton spray cans), and their tribal litanies (I'm quitting for good next year being the most common).

Duke listened, fascinated, and when Pearson had finished he said, 'Jesus Christ, Brandon! You've found the Lost Tribe of Israel! Crazy f.u.c.ks all wandered off following Joe Camel!'

Pearson burst out laughing, earning another annoyed, puzzled look from the smooth-faced fellow over in NoSmo.

'Anyway, it all fits in,' Duke told him. 'Let me ask you something - do you smoke around your kid?'

'Christ, no!' Pearson exclaimed.

'Your wife?'

'Nope, not anymore.'

'When was the last time you had a b.u.t.t in a restaurant?'

Pearson considered it and discovered a peculiar thing: he couldn't remember. Nowadays he asked to be seated in the no-smoking section even when he was alone, deferring his cigarette until after he'd finished, paid up, and left. And the days when he had actually smoked between courses were long in the past, of course.

'Ten O'Clock People,' Duke said in a marveling voice. 'Man, I love that - I love it that we have a name. And it really is like being part of a tribe. It - '

He broke off suddenly, looking out one of the windows. A Boston city cop was walking by, talking to a pretty young woman. She was looking up at him with a sweetly mingled expression of admiration and s.e.x-appeal, totally unaware of the black, appraising eyes and glaring triangular teeth just above her.

'Jesus, would you look at that,' Pearson said in a low voice.

'Yeah,' Duke said. 'It's becoming more common, too. More common every day.' He was quiet for a moment, looking into his half-empty beer schooner. Then he seemed to almost physically shake himself out of his revery. 'Whatever else we are,' he told Pearson, 'we're the only people in the whole G.o.ddam world who see them.'

'What, just smokers?' Pearson asked incredulously. Of course he should have seen that Duke was leading him here, but still . . .

'No,' Duke said patiently. 'Smokers don't see them. Non-smokers don't see them, either.' He measured Pearson with his eyes. 'Only people like us see them, Brandon - people who are neither fish nor fowl.

'Only Ten O'Clock People like us.'

When they left Gallagher's fifteen minutes later (Pearson had first called his wife, told her his manufactured tale of woe, and promised to be home by ten), the rain had slackened to a fine drizzle and Duke proposed they walk awhile. Not all the way to Cambridge, which was where they would end up, but far enough for Duke to fill in the rest of the background. The streets were nearly deserted, and they could finish their conversation without looking back over their shoulders.

'In a bizarre way, it's sort of like your first o.r.g.a.s.m,' Duke was saying as they walked through a gauzy groundmist in the direction of the Charles River. 'Once that kicks into gear, becomes a part of your life, it's just there for you. Same with this. One day the chemicals in your head balance just right and you see one. I've wondered, you know, how many people have just dropped dead of fright at that moment. A lot, I bet.'

Pearson looked at the b.l.o.o.d.y smear of a traffic-light reflection on the s.h.i.+ny black pavement of Boylston Street and remembered the shock of his first encounter. 'They're so awful. So hideous. The way their flesh seems to move around on their heads . . . there's really no way to say it, is there?'

Duke was nodding. 'They're ugly motherf.u.c.kers, all right. I was on the Red Line, headed back home to Milton, when I saw my first one. He was standing on the downtown platform at Park Street Station. We went right by him. Good thing for me I was in the train and goin away, because I screamed.'

'What happened then?'

Duke's smile had become, at least temporarily, a grimace of embarra.s.sment. 'People looked at me, then looked away real quick. You know how it is in the city; there's a nut preachin about how Jesus loves Tupperware on every street corner.'

Pearson nodded. He knew how it was in the city, all right. Or thought he had, until today.

'This tall redheaded geek with about a trillion freckles on his face sat down in the seat beside me and grabbed my elbow just about the same way I grabbed yours this morning. His name is Robbie Delray. He's a housepainter. You'll meet him tonight at Kate's.'

'What's Kate's?'

'Specialty bookstore in Cambridge. Mysteries. We meet there once or twice a week. It's a good place. Good people, too, mostly. You'll see. Anyway, Robbie grabbed my elbow and said, 'You're not crazy, I saw it too. It's real - it's a batman.' That was all, and he could have been spoutin from the top end of some amphetamine high for all I knew . . . except I had seen it, and the relief . . . '

'Yes,' Pearson said, thinking back to that morning. They paused at Storrow Drive, waited for a tanker truck to go by, and then hurried across the puddly street. Pearson was momentarily transfixed by a fading spray-painted graffito on the back of a park bench, which faced the river. THE ALIENS HAVE LANDED, it said. WE ATE 2 AT LEGAL SEAFOOD.

'Good thing for me you were there this morning,' Pearson said. 'I was lucky.'

Duke nodded. 'Yeah, man, you were. When the bats f.u.c.k with a dude, they f.u.c.k with him - the cops usually pick up the pieces in a basket after one of their little parties. You hear that?''

Pearson nodded.

'And n.o.body knows the victims all had one thing in common - they'd cut down their smoking to between five and ten cigarettes a day. I have an idea that sort of similarity's a little too obscure even for the FBI.'

'But why kill us?' Pearson asked. 'I mean, some guy goes running around saying his boss is a Martian, they don't send out the National Guard; they put the guy in the b.o.o.byhatch!'

'Come on, man, get real,' Duke said. 'You've seen these cuties.'

'They . . . like to?'

'Yeah, they like to. But that's getting the cart before the horse. They're like wolves, Brandon, invisible wolves that keep working their way back and forth through a herd of sheep. Now tell me - what do wolves want with sheep, aside from getting their jollies off every time they kill one?'

'They . . . what are you saying?' Pearson's voice dropped to a whisper. 'Are you saying that they eat us?'

'They eat some part of us,' Duke said. 'That's what Robbie Delray believed on the day I met him, and that's what most of us still believe.'

'Who's us, Duke?'

'The people I'm taking you to see. We won't all be there, but this time most of us will be. Something's come up. Something big.'

'What?'

To that Duke would only shake his head and ask, 'You ready for a cab yet? Getting too mildewy?'

Pearson was mildewy, but not ready for a cab. The walk had invigorated him . . . but not just the walk. He didn't think he could tell Duke this - at least not yet - but there was a definite upside to this . . . a romantic upside. It was as if he had fallen into some weird but exciting boy's adventure story; he could almost imagine the N. C. Wyeth ill.u.s.trations. He looked at the nimbuses of white light revolving slowly around the streetlamps, which soldiered their way up Storrow Drive and smiled a little. Something big has come up, he thought. Agent X-9 has slipped in with good news from our underground base . . . we 've located the batpoison we've been looking for!

'The excitement wears off, believe me,' Duke said dryly.

Pearson turned his head, startled.

'Around the time they fish your second friend out of Boston Harbor with half his head gone, you realize Tom Swift isn't going to show up and help you whitewash the G.o.ddam fence.'

'Tom Sawyer,' Pearson muttered, and wiped rainwater out of his eyes. He could feel himself flus.h.i.+ng.

'They eat something that our brains make, that's what Robbie thinks. Maybe an enzyme, he says, maybe some kind of special electrical wave. He says it might be the same thing that lets us - some of us, anyway - see them, and that to them we're like tomatoes in a farmer's garden, theirs to take whenever they decide we're ripe.

'Me, I was raised Baptist and I'm willing to cut right to the chase - none of that Farmer John c.r.a.p. I think they're soul-suckers.'

'Really? Are you putting me on, or do you really believe that?'

Duke laughed, shrugged, and looked defiant, all at the same time. 's.h.i.+t, I don't know, man. These things came into my life about the same time I decided heaven was a fairytale and h.e.l.l was other people. Now I'm all f.u.c.ked up again. But that doesn't really matter. The important thing, the only thing you have to get straight and keep straight, is that they have plenty of reasons to kill us. First because they're afraid of us doing just what we're doing, getting together, organizing, trying to put a hurt on them . . . '