The rear room was as wide as the store but only ten feet deep, with concrete-block walls. It doubled as an office and storage area. On the left were piles of boxes, apparently filled with merchandise. On the right were a desk, an IBM PC, a few file cabinets, a small refrigerator, and a worktable on which stood a Mr. Coffee machine. No violence had been done there; everything was neat and orderly.
Mondale had been going through the desk drawers. Several items, including a slim little address book, were piled on the blotter.
As the captain closed the door, Dan went around behind the desk and sat down.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Mondale asked.
‘Taking a load off my feet. It’s been a long day.’
‘You know that’s not what I mean.’
‘Oh?’
As usual, Mondale was wearing a brown suit, light-beige shirt, brown tie, brown socks and shoes. His brown eyes seemed to flicker with a murderous light similar to that refracted within his ruby ring. ‘I wanted to see you in my office by two-thirty.’
‘I never got your message.’
‘I know you damn well did.’
‘No. Really. I’d have come running.’
‘Don’t screw with me.’
Dan just stared at him.
The captain stood several steps from the desk, his neck stiff, his shoulders tense, arms straight down at his sides, hands flexing and twitching as if he had to struggle to keep from forming them into fists and coming for Haldane. ‘What have you been doing all day?’
‘Contemplating the meaning of life.’
‘You were at Rink’s place.’
‘You don’t need to be in a church. It’s possible to contemplate the meaning of life almost anywhere.’
‘I didn’t send you to Rink’s place.’
‘I’m a full-fledged detective-lieutenant. I usually follow my own instincts in an investigation.’
‘Not in this one. This one’s big. In this one, you’re just part of the team. You do what I tell you, go where I tell you. You don’t even shit unless I tell you it’s okay.’
‘Careful, Ross. You’re beginning to sound power crazy.’
‘What happened to your head?’
‘I’ve been taking karate lessons.’
‘What?’
‘Tried to break a board with my head.’
‘Like hell.’
‘Okay, then what happened was George Padrakis told me you wanted to see me here, and at the mention of your name, I dropped to my knees and bowed down so fast I scraped my head on the sidewalk.’
For a moment Ross couldn’t speak. His brown face had flushed. He was breathing hard.
Dan more closely examined the items that Mondale had taken from the drawers and piled on the blotter: the address book, a ledger-size checkbook for an account in the name of the Sign of the Pentagram, an appointments calendar, and a thick sheaf of invoices. He picked up the address book.
‘Put that down and listen to me,’ Mondale said sharply, finally recovering his voice.
Dan favored him with a sweet smile of innocence and said, ‘But it might contain a clue, Captain. I’m investigating this case, and I wouldn’t be doing my job well if I didn’t pursue every possible clue.’
Mondale came toward the desk, furious. His hands had finally tightened into twin hammers of flesh and bone.
Ah, at last, Dan thought, the showdown we’ve both been wanting for years.
* * *
Laura stood in front of the Sony, staring at it, afraid to touch it, shivering in the chilly air. The cold seemed to be radiating from the radio, carried on the pale-green light that shone forth from the AM-FM dial.
That was a crazy thought.
It was a radio, not an air conditioner. Not a … Not anything. Just a radio. An ordinary radio.
An ordinary radio that had turned itself on without help from anyone.
Bonnie Tyler’s song had faded into a new tune. It was a golden oldie: Procul Harum singing ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale.’ That was at top volume too. The radio vibrated against the tile counter on which it stood. The thunderous song reverberated in the windows, hurting Laura’s ears.
Earl had moved up behind her.
If Pepper was still squealing in another part of the house, the cat’s voice was lost in the explosively loud music. Hesitantly, Laura put her fingers on the volume knob. Freezing. Shuddering, she nearly snatched her hand away, not simply because the plastic was impossibly cold but because it was a different kind of coldness from any she’d felt before, a strangeness that chilled not only the flesh but the mind and soul as well. Nevertheless, she held on to it and tried to reduce the volume, but the knob wouldn’t budge. She couldn’t turn Procul Harum down, and since the volume control was also the ON-OFF switch, she couldn’t shut the music off either. She strained hard, felt the muscles bunching in her arm, but still the knob would not respond.