“What a trouper.” Joe Winder was very proud.
Skink straightened his rain cap and said, “Go get her.”
“Now?”
“Right now. It’s time.” Skink reached out to shake Winder’s hand. “You’ve got about an hour,” he said.
Winder told him to be careful. “There’s lots of kids out there.”
“Don’t you worry.”
“What about Kingsbury?”
Skink said, “Without the park, he’s finished.”
“I intended to make him famous. You should’ve heard my plan.”
“Some other time,” Skink said. “Now go. And tell her how great she was. Tell her it was absolutely wonderful. Giacomo would’ve been proud.”
“Arrivederci!” said Joe Winder.
From his third-floor office above Sally’s Cimarron Saloon, Francis X. Kingsbury heard the parade go by. Only Princess Golden Sun’s dolorous aria brought him to the window, where he parted the blinds to see what in the name of Jesus H. Christ had gone wrong. The disposition of the crowd had changed from festive to impatient. Unfuckingbelievable, thought Kingsbury. It’s death, this music. And what’s with the evening gown, the Kitty Carlisle number. Where’s the buckskin bikini? Where’s the tits and ass? The tourists looked ready to bolt.
Carrie hit the final note and held it—held it forever, it seemed to Kingsbury. The girl had great pipes, he had to admit, but it wasn’t the time or place for Italian caterwauling. And God, this song, when would it end?
As the float trundled by, Kingsbury was surprised to see that Princess Golden Sun wasn’t singing anymore; in fact, she was drinking from a can of root beer. Yet her final melancholy note still hung in the air!
Or was it something else now?
The fire alarm, for instance.
Kingsbury thought: Please, don’t let it be. He tried to call Security but no one answered—that fucking Pedro, he should’ve been back from his errand hours ago.
Outside, the alarm had tripped a prerecorded message on the public-address system, urging everyone to depart the Amazing Kingdom in a calm and orderly fashion. When Kingsbury peeked out the window again, he saw customers streaming like ants for the exits; the performers and concessionaires ran, as well. Baldy the Eagle ripped off his wings and sprinted from the park at Olympic speed; the animal trainers fled together in a hijacked Cushman, but not before springing the hinge on the lion’s cage and shooing the wobbly, tranquilized beast toward the woods.
Kingsbury ran, too. He ran in search of Pedro Luz, the only man who knew how to turn off the fire alarm. Golf spikes clacking on the concrete, Kingsbury jogged from the security office to King Arthur’s Food Court to The Catacombs, where he found Spence Mooher limping in mopey addled circles, like a dog who’d been grazed by a speeding bus.
But there was no trace of Pedro, and despair clawed at Kingsbury’s gut. People now were pouring out of the park, and taking their money with them. Even if they had wished to stop and purchase one last overpriced souvenir, no one was available to sell it to them.
Chickenshits! Kingsbury raged inwardly. All this panic, and no fire. Can’t you idiots see it’s a false alarm?
Then came the screams.
Kingsbury’s throat tightened. He ducked into a photo kiosk and removed the laminated ID card from his belt. Why risk it if the crowd turned surly?
The screaming continued. In a prickly sweat, Kingsbury tracked the disturbance to the whale tank, where something had caught the attention of several families on their way out of the park. They lined the walkway, and excitedly pointed to the water. Assuming the pose of a fellow tourist, Kingsbury nonchalantly joined the others on the rail. He overheard one man tell his wife that there wasn’t enough light to use the video camera; she encouraged him to try anyway. A young girl cried and clutched at her mother’s leg; her older brother told her to shut up, it’s just a plastic dummy.
It wasn’t a dummy. It was the partially clothed body of Pedro Luz, facedown in the Orky tank. His muscular buttocks mooned the masses, and indeed it was this sight—not the fact he was dead—that had shocked customers into shrieking.
Francis X. Kingsbury glared spitefully at the corpse. Pedro’s bobbing bare ass seemed to mock him—a hairy faceless smile, taunting as it floated by. So this is how it goes, thought Kingsbury. Give a man a second chance, this is how he pays you back.