61 -- Don’t make me do this

  

 

"Here," Mike said, shaking Lance awake with one hand while pushing a luke warm cup of coffee towards him with the other. Day light streamed through the branches of the bush under which he lay, full day light suggesting a time as late as Eleven. Crying babies and screaming kids emphasized the effect. He closed his eyes again. They hurt, as did his back from a cool night sleeping on the hard ground. The quilt from home had kept few stones from biting into him. Nor had the blankets kept him warm. More than once he'd wished for the van or the motel luxury of Denver.

 "Thanks," he said and sat up, sipping the spill over from the lid. "Where did you find this?"

 "A pioneer market just over the north side of the park," Mike said, easing over to the still-sleeping Marie a few feet away, nudging her with his free hand. She groaned and opened her eyes, her hair splayed across her face like bright red fingers. She brushed the strands aside.

 "What is it?" she asked, keeping her eyes closed against the light.

 "Time to wake up, honey," Mike said softly.

 She squirmed, her face twisting into the indignant expression of an annoyed Goddess. Her eyes opened, her brows descending into a puzzled frown as she stared up at the leaves.

 "Drink this," Mike said, pressing the cup into her hands. "Quickly. We're not safe here."

 "Bucking...?" Lance asked.

 "No, Tinkertons," Mike said with an edge of rage. "They seem to have a pipe line into our secrets. They started arriving about an hour ago. They're everywhere."

 "But they couldn't know about the meeting, could they?"

 "I don't know," Mike said, peering out from the cover of the willow branches, a small eastern luxury transplanted here but doing badly, its leaves budding brown rather than green, the dying brown of inappropriate environment. "They have our scent and that worries me. They might know there's meeting but not exactly when. In which case they're not taking any chances."

 "Daddy's men?" Marie said, the horror finally seeping through the last layers of sleepiness.

 "What are we going to do?" Lance asked.

 "Re-disguise Marie for one thing," Mike said, dragging out a shopping bag Lance recognized as one of Sarah's. "I took the luxury of going back to the van. Things seemed to have quieted down at Dale's place for a while. It might even be safe enough for us to go back there if we have to."

 "Any place seems safer than here," Lance said, shivering-- Sarah's squirming form leaping into his mind even with his eyes closed. "But with all the noise last night and drugs, I'd feel much more comfortable elsewhere."

 "We don't want to go too far away," Mike said, dumping the bag onto the ground at Marie's feet.

 "If only we could convince Daddy's men Marie wasn't here," Lance mumbled, imagining the grand scene their arrival at Dale's would make, one mindless cult meeting another.

 "You're not sending me anywhere," Marie said. "Not while you two are having all the fun."

 Another time and place her indignant expression would have been comical, but Mike didn't laugh.

 "Fun?" he said sharply. "Our meeting with Buckingham is no social engagement."

 "Then why are we meeting him?" she asked.

 Mike took a long breath, his gaze catching Lance's for an instant and in that instant came a flash of pain. "To kill him," he whispered.

 Lance's stomach tightened and he closed his eyes again, the back fire of a car north of the park making him jump.

 "Which means it's going to be crazy enough around here without your father's men breathing down our necks," Mike said, pacing the bare ground, crimping hands.

 "But they'll still be here whether I go or not," Marie argued, drawing a deep frown from Mike.

 "Huh?"

 "Someone told them I'm here. So even if you send me some place, they won't know."

 "And," Lance added, "if Buckingham sees them, he might just shy away."

 "Then we're screwed," Mike mumbled.

 "No," Lance said, pushing himself up, something clicking in his stiff neck.

 "What can we do?"

 "Send them elsewhere."

 The frown deepened into a cut between Mike's eyes. "How?"

 Lance wiped the coffee and sweat from his lip with a sleeve. He knew how bad the next words would sound to Marie and knew exactly what kind of reaction to expect.

 "They would flock to some other place at midnight if they believed Marie would be there."

 "And just how would they come to believe that?" Marie asked coldly, her suspicious gaze working over Lance. She knew what he had in mind but wanted him to say it.

 "We could arrange a meeting between you and your father..."

 "No!" she howled.

 "It wouldn't be for real," Lance said. "They just had to believe it was."

 "But I would have to talk to Daddy," she said, pushing herself up, her long red hair tumbling down over her shoulders, dented from sleep and the previous night's captivity beneath a wig.

 "Why?" Lance asked. "Couldn't one of us call Detroit?"

 "Daddy wouldn't believe it. Only hearing my voice would convince him and I couldn't talk with him."

 "Why not?" Mike asked.

 "Because--" she said and shuddered, her now-hard eyes glaring at Lance as if she could kill him. "--because he might convince me to come home."

 "What?" Mike said.

 "You don't know how persuasive that man can be."

 "But Lance and I will be right beside you. We'll stop it if he does."

 "Please, Mikie," she whispered, her cheeks already spouting tears. "Don't make me do this."

 "We don't have a choice," Mike said, tossing her clothing and a new wig from the bag. "Get into these and then we'll find a telephone."

                ***********

 "Something's wrong," Dan said, twisting his neck. The sleep in the car had been both dangerous and painful, the steer wheel fighting him for space. He had thought to drive here sooner and begged space to rest from Free Press Bobo. But something had stopped him, making him settle for a dark parking space near Fountain and Vine.

 "Huh? What?" Bobo asked, head rising from over the rear seat, his eyes red and miserable like after a long drunk. He slept heavy-- which surprised Dan. Even the cars whining start and bumpy journey hadn't woken him.

 "It's too quiet," Dan said. "This place is usually packed this time of day."

 Hell, it rarely went without people at night either, its lawn an unofficial love-in and crash pad for many regular street people. But now the space behind the hedge was vacant, lacking even a sleeping bag or abandoned undergarment as evidence of occupation.

 "What time is it?"

 "After eleven."

 "Maybe Bob took the day off to go to the beach," Bobo mumbled, stifling a yawn.

 "Not him," Dan said. "He's all business. It would have taken something serious for him to close up shop."

 "Like what?"

 "Like a bust, maybe."

 The reddened eyes widened, then narrowed again. "Or Buckingham," Bobo said, reaching for one of the weapons under the seat.

 "No guns," Dan said, popping open his door, the earlier drizzle long vanquished by the rising, brutal sun-- a foreshadowing of an equally brutal summer. "Whatever happened here is history. It just feels bad."

 "So why don't we skip it?" Bobo asked, drawing himself out the rear passenger door-- his once perfect clothing now a wreckage of wrinkles. Even his tie was askew and he tried in vain to straighten it using the dusty window as a mirror.

 Dan shook his head, eyeing the driveway on an angle. Someone coughed beyond the corner of the building, a hacking, cigarette cough not much different from his own. "We should see what's going on," he said, starting across the street.

 His lung felt sore in his chest. Maybe the doctor's had been right. Maybe he wouldn't survive another summer in the city with its shell of smog. A queasiness had come over him. He felt a bit discombobulated, as if a fog had risen around him, blurring everything slightly.

 But he could smell the bite of something familiar in the air as he stepped into the driveway, something...

 "Damn!" he cursed and stopped. The crossed arms of a police barricade blocked their way. Crime-scene tape flapped loosely from the folded wood like the loose end of a bandage. Cold swept over Dan. He stepped over them and hurried to the door. It stood ajar, its gap emitting the smell of newspapers and gunpowder and blood.

 "Hey!" a sharp voice shouted from an alley between the garage and the apartment building wall next door. The cop appear re-zipping his zipper. "What are you doing in there?"

 Dan turned, Bobo at his elbow like a frightened dog. "We're looking for Free Press Bob," Dan said.

 "He's not here," the cop said, his bored tone suggesting persistent repetition as people came looking for information and newspapers.

 "Did something happen?" Bobo asked, tentatively pointing towards the flapping tape.

 "A mugging of some sort," the cop said. "I don't know all the details. I'm just here to watch the place."

 "Is he all right?" Dan asked. "I mean..."

 "He's not dead. At least he wasn't last I heard. But the paramedics said he was in pretty bad shape. I think they took him down to Hollywood Presbyterian."

 "Come on," Dan said, grabbing Bobo's arm.

 "Come where?" Bobo asked, digging his heals in at the barricade.

 "Where do you think?"

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