The bus pulled into a corner of a parking lot in the center of which was a large hamburger stand. The bus doors opened, and the driver got out first. Baum took Anana’s hand and led her out. Kickaha noted this out of the corner of his eye; he was watching the Lincoln. It had pulled into a parking place five cars down from the stand.
Baum was immediately surrounded by five or six young girls who shrieked his name and a number of unintelligible exclamations. They also tried to touch him. Baum smiled at them and waved his hands for them to back away. After a minute’s struggle, he and the older men succeeded in backing them off.
Kickaha, carrying the instrument case, followed Moo-Moo off the bus and across the lot to the picnic table under a shady awning, where Baum and Anana were seated. The waitress brought hamburgers, hot dogs, milk shakes, and cokes. He salivated when he saw his hamburger.
It had been, God, over twenty-four years since he had tasted a hamburger! He bit down and then chewed slowly. There was something in the meat, some unidentified element, that he did not like. This distasteful substance also seemed to be in the lettuce and tomato.
Anana, grimaced and said, in the language of the Lords, “What do you put in this food?”
Kickaha shrugged and said, “Insecticide, maybe, although it doesn’t seem possible that we could detect one part in a million or whatever it was. Still, there’s something.”
They fared better with the chocolate milk shake. This was as thick and creamy and delicious as he remembered it. Anana nodded her approval, too.
The men were still in the Lincoln and were looking at him and Anana. At the group, anyway.
Baum looked across to Kickaha and said, “OK, Finnegan. This is it. Take off!”
Kickaha glanced up at him and said, “The bargain was, I take off if she agrees to go with you.”
Baum laughed and said, “Just trying to spare your feelings, my Midwestern rustic. But have it your way. Watch me, maybe you’ll learn something.”
He leaned over Anana, who was talking with Moo-Moo. Moo-Moo glanced once at Baum’s face, then got up, and walked off. Kickaha watched Baum and Anana. The conversation was short; the action, abrupt and explosive.
Anana slapped Baum so hard across the face that its noise could be heard above the gabble of his fans and the roar of the traffic. There was a short silence from everybody around Baum and then a number of shrieks of anger from the girl fans. Baum shouted angrily and swung with his right fist at Anana. She dodged and slid off the bench, but then the people around her blocked Kickaha’s view.
He scooped off some change on the table, left by customers. Putting this in his pocket, he jumped into the fray. He was, however, almost knocked down by the press of bodies trying to get away. The girls rammed into him, clawed at him, shrieked, gouged, and kicked.
Suddenly, there was an opening. He saw Baum lying on the cement, his legs drawn up and his hands clenching his groin. A girl, bent over, was sitting by him and holding her stomach. Another girl was leaning over a wooden table, her back to him and retching.
Kickaha grabbed Anana’s hand and shouted, “Come on! This is the chance we’ve been looking for!”
The instrument case in his other hand, he led her running toward the back of the parking lot. Just before they went down a narrow alley between two tall buildings, he looked back. The car containing his shadowers had pulled into the lot, and three of the men were getting out. They saw their quarry, and ran toward them. But they were not stupid enough to pull out weapons before they caught up with them. Kickaha did not intend that they should catch up with them.
And then, as he ran out of the alley and into the next street, he thought, Why not? I could spend years trying to find Red Orc but if I can get hold of those who work for him . . . ?