Good King Sauerkraut (10 page)

But
two
fatal accidents—and within minutes of each other? Uh-uh. Not a chance. The police might even accuse him of murder, for god's sake. They couldn't prove murder, of course … could they? But just the accusation alone was enough to do him in. What would happen to Keystone Robotics then? How many contracts would come rolling in if everyone thought Keystone's sole surviving partner was a walking death trap for those who worked with him?

Keystone's sole surviving partner
. God in heaven, how was he ever going to run the business without Dennis? In a rush, a new sense of loss swept over him and King started crying, quietly at first but then more noisily, like a child. Eventually he calmed down and sat moaning quietly to himself. His stomach growled.

“Hey buddy—you're not thinkin' of takin' a swim, are you?”

King jerked his head around to see a man wearing Sanitation Department coveralls standing between two garbage trucks, fists on hips and head cocked to one side. King scrambled awkwardly to his feet, strangely embarrassed. “No, I, uh.” He swallowed and said, “I was just … thinking about something. Thanks for your concern.” He reddened and hurried past the sanitation worker, banging his knee against the fender of one of the garbage trucks. The other man watched him skeptically, uncertain whether he'd averted a suicide or not.

Still hurrying, King crossed under the old elevated highway and found a street sign that told him he was on West Fifty-seventh. Ah. Then that was New Jersey he'd been staring at after all, and it was the Hudson he'd almost thrown himself into. And that rusting hulk he'd passed under had to be the West Side Highway. King's rumbling stomach called his attention to the Madison Coffee Shop on the south side of the street.

Thinking that his face must be tear-streaked, King went into the men's room and washed up. He stared at himself in the mirror. He looked all right; he didn't look at all like a man who'd kill two people before lunch. He went back out and ordered pastrami; it came with the usual cole slaw and potato salad. Meat and vegetables; Dennis would have approved.

Since it was early lunchtime, the place was crowded and King had to share a table with a young man wearing a conservative business suit and a Day-Glo green Mohawk haircut. No one but King seemed to find the combination incongruous. Mohawk ate quietly with neat, small gestures, never lifting his eyes from his plate. King put his age at about twenty, twenty-two.

He polished off his mountain of pastrami and felt better. Then suddenly King, who only an hour earlier had taken flight from contact with other people, now wanted that contact in the worst way. He took a sip of his coffee and said, “I wonder why they can never make this stuff taste as good as it smells.”

In a deliberate and put-upon manner, Mohawk laid down his fork, raised his eyes from his plate, and said, “Were you speaking to me?”

“Yep. I was wondering why the coffee—”

“I heard what you said. I don't know why they can't make it taste as good as it smells.” With that he picked up his fork, lowered his eyes to his plate, and resumed eating. Conversation ended.

King laughed out loud. He was back among the human race, all right, with all its rudeness and its passion for one-upping the other guy. Mohawk hadn't been a member of the adult world very long and was still trying out those of its privileges that were new to him—such as rebuffing a man of his father's generation. King finished his coffee, said “Nice talking to you,” and left.

Out on Fifty-seventh Street again, King's momentary buoyancy deserted him. What was he going to do, what in the
hell
was he going to do? He wasn't going to kill himself, at least not now (it was, however, a possibility he intended to hold in reserve). What was left? Admit all, lose the business, go to prison? Try to convince the police that it was too just an accident?

The thought of that unsettled him enough to start him walking—anywhere, just so long as he was on the move. He couldn't go back to the apartment, not with what he'd left there. He couldn't take a plane to Pittsburgh; that's the first place they'd look for him. Should he run and hide? Should he stay and try to bluff it out? He couldn't just wander the streets forever.

He stopped and looked around to get his bearings, and found he was standing in front of a restaurant—Le Biarritz. King realized the pastrami had merely taken the edge off his appetite; he was still hungry. He went inside and had
Escalopes de veau Casimir
with lots of interesting veggies. Dennis would have been proud of him.

Outside again, King felt a lightening of the spirits which he didn't think was attributable solely to the bottle of white wine he'd consumed with the veal.
Never contemplate suicide on an empty stomach
, he moralized. He had a hankering to top off that marvelous French meal with an old-fashioned Amurrican dessert. A few doors down was the Café 57; he went inside and ordered apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Satisfied at last, King continued his aimless stroll east on Fifty-seventh, relishing being alive in a way that was new to him. How could he have considered giving everything up—including the right to wander wherever he pleased, a free man? (Temporarily, at any rate.) He crossed Broadway, glanced over to the other side of Fifty-seventh, and saw the rear end of a black Cadillac sticking out of the side of a building about ten feet above the sidewalk. That bore investigating.

The Caddy was an old model, fins and whitewalls, and it served as a kind of canopy over the door to the Hard Rock Cafe. People were gathered outside more or less in a line, waiting to get in. One woman stood out from the crowd; she was over six feet tall, with heavily made-up eyes and a magnificent head of frizzy black hair. And prominently displayed on her neck was … a vampire bite?

She was talking to some friends when she spotted King. “I don't believe it—somebody taller'n me? Come here, man.”

King went there.

She looked him up and down with approval. “Well, well. Where have I been all your life?”

“A meeting of the giants,” one of her friends laughed.

“Watch your mouth, you,” she scolded. To King she said, “I'm Shawna. What's your name?”

“King.”

“I meant your first name.”

“King.”

“King King?”

“King Sarcowicz.”

“Um, we'll stick to King.” She noticed him staring at the two bite-sized black dots on her neck and tilted her head to give him a better view. “You like my tattoo?”

“It's … different.”

“Naw, lotsa people gottum. Beats a butterfly on the ass any day.”

“You're advertising yourself as a victim,” one of her friends grumbled, a woman.

“Shawna?” another friend scoffed, a man. “No sensible vampire would
dare
.”

“Here we go,” Shawna growled. “Do I threaten you? I hope?”

King stood listening to their banter and realized he was enjoying himself. He'd taken an instant liking to Shawna; he liked her height and her theatrical looks and her tough way of talking. He decided he even liked her Dracula-was-here tattoo.

Somebody's stomach growled. “Doesn't that line ever move? What time is it?”

Watches were consulted. “Two-thirty,” said three voices, one of them King's.

“Two-thirty!” he repeated, aghast. Warren Osterman had called a meeting at MechoTech for two o'clock. That meant that by now …

“You're supposed to be someplace,” Shawna said accusingly.

“Uh, yes, I am.” The thought of what must be going on right then disconcerted him so much that all he could do was stutter. “I, uh, I c-can't, I-I have to, uh—”

“Hey, if it rattles you that much, maybe you'd better not go.”

“I can't stay here,” he blurted and turned to go—but found the tail of his jacket grasped firmly in Shawna's hand.

“Man, you don't just walk away like that. Where's your manners? Doncha have a card or a phone number or somethin'?”

“Oh. Yes, yes I do.” He fumbled a Keystone Robotics business card out of his billfold and Shawna released his jacket to take it. King was afraid he was going to break down right there in front of them. “I'm sorry, Shawna.” He turned and darted into the traffic.

There was a screech of brakes followed by the sound of a cab driver's colorful profanity. Safely on the other side of the street, King heard Shawna call: “Pittsburgh?”

King stumbled on for a block and crossed Seventh Avenue. He stopped in front of a playbill mounted in a glass case; he stared at it without seeing what it said, needing a moment to get a grip on himself. What was happening right then? When nobody showed up at the meeting, Warren Osterman must have—wait a minute, what about Mimi Hargrove? She'd spent the night at the airport hotel, and King didn't know whether she'd been planning to come back to the apartment first or go straight to the meeting at MechoTech. If she'd gone back to the apartment, that meant she was the one who'd found Dennis and Gregory …
Oh, god, Mimi, I'm sorry!
It was the first time he'd thought of what it would be like to walk in and find a headless body in the living room and an electrocuted one in the bathtub.

But if Mimi had not gone back to the apartment first … then maybe no one knew about it yet. They'd know soon enough, though, when only Mimi showed up for the meeting. And the only one of the four staying at the apartment who was missing was King Sarcowicz. If they weren't looking for him already, it was only a matter of time until they were.

King became aware that the placard in the glass case he was staring at wasn't a playbill at all, technically; it was a listing of concerts scheduled to take place. To his surprise he found he was standing in front of Carnegie Hall. Well, not exactly the front. He walked around the corner to Seventh Avenue where the stage entrance was located …

… and experienced an overwhelming sense of loss. King had never been to a concert at Carnegie Hall. It was one of those things he'd always assumed he'd get around to doing one of these days, sometime soon in a pleasantly vague future that stretched on forever. But now he might never have the chance. That started him thinking of all the other things he'd never get to do. He'd never ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad. He'd never go looking for the Loch Ness monster.

More importantly, he'd never get a chance to realize the dreams he'd had for years—dreams about things that were no longer possible only in the distant future but coming closer every day. Such as insectlike robots that could climb vertical surfaces, that could clean and do maintenance work on the outsides of buildings. He'd never get to build one of those spiderbots. And he'd never design the first fully automated airplane … oh, why stop there? He'd never work on the first intelligent starship. All those opportunities that used to lie ahead of him—gone.

King gave himself a little shake; this was no time to indulge in a sentimental longing for things he'd never know. He went back to Fifty-seventh, which he was beginning to think of as “his” street. Close to Carnegie Hall was the Verve Naturelle Restaurant; more to break his peculiar mood than for any other reason he went in and ordered something called a Powerhouse, which turned out to be orange juice, ice cream, and honey, with a little protein powder mixed in. Next he came to the Russian Tea Room. As if on automatic drive, he headed inside.

In midafternoon the restaurant wasn't too crowded. King was seated in a low central booth that made him feel terribly exposed. But he forgot about being conspicuous as soon as the chicken Kiev arrived. Delicious! He managed to spill his wine before he was through; a sad-eyed Polish waiter gave him a tragic look but said nothing. King left an extra-big tip.

It wasn't until he was pounding the sidewalk again that he began to wonder where this ravenous appetite of his had come from. He'd never eaten so much before at one time in his life. And he didn't feel sick, or even bloated. Just one more strange thing on this strangest of days. It was the only time he'd killed, and it was the only time he'd stuffed himself like a pig. What was the connection?

Speaking of eating …
Why, look what's here
, King thought. An eatery named O'Neals—just what he needed. For the second time that afternoon he topped off a sumptuous meal with pie à la mode. Cherry pie, this time.

King was getting up to leave when a boy of twelve or thirteen came in and sat down. Wide-eyed, the boy looked up at King's six-foot-ten and said, “Wow, you must be a—”

“No, I'm not,” King answered shortly and turned to go.

“Why not?”

That stopped him. In all his years of explaining that he was not now nor had never been a professional basketball player, no one had ever asked him why. He looked at the boy skeptically. “You really want to know, kid?”

“Yeah, I wanna know.” Defiantly.

“Okay.” King sat down next to him. “In the first place, I'm too old to play now. I'm forty-five.”

“But when you were younger—”

“When I was younger, I was nothing less than a mobile disaster-area on the court. I tried. I really did try. The basketball coach in high school saw me walking down a corridor one day and practically dragged me to the gym. But he couldn't teach me to play. You see, I've always been poorly coordinated—it's a physical problem. I kept tripping over my own feet, knocking down my teammates, fouling the other guys. Finally the coach just positioned me under the basket and told me not to move at all—just wait for the other players to feed me the ball.”

King paused while the boy ordered something to eat. “Did it work?” the youngster wanted to know.

“No way. I couldn't manage even that. I fouled out of every game I was in—usually in the first quarter. Finally the coach let me go. He said in time I'd grow out of it.”

“Didja?”