The Last Hot Time (9 page)

McCain looked into the distance, and said, "Oh."

"I know I saw her."

McCain went to the fallen elf, drew one of his guns, aimed very deliberately between the woman's eyes, and fired. He put the gun away. "I believe you," he said, with no irony at all, and crossed himself.

"I don't get it."

"Her name's Resurrection Mary," McCain said, and tilted his head toward the stone wall. "That's Resurrection Cemetery over there. Usually she's on Archer Street, but I guess it was a slow night."

"Okay, but I still don't know where she went."

"She got what she wanted and went back where she came from, Doc. What's the matter, don't you whistle in graveyards in Iowa?"

Danny stared.

"You go on back," McCain said. "Night's not over yet."

When Danny reached the bottling floor, everyone was gone except for Mr. Patrise and Stagger Lee. Stagger was wiring up what were pretty obviously explosives. "That's it, sir. Good night."

"Good night, Stagger," Patrise said. "Come with me, Hallow."

Danny and Mr. Patrise got into the big car. The woman Patrise had called Katherine and Cloudhunter sat in front; Katie drove them away. About half a block down, there was a muffled sound of thunder, and a shimmer of orange light behind them.

Mt the house, Danny took Cloudhunter to the infirmary. Mr. Patrise followed them. The Ellyll removed his shirt, showing a slender, very angular chest. By human standards, there wasn't much musculature, but Cloudhunter was certainly not weak; Danny touched his shoulder and felt wiry hardness beneath the skin.

He had Cloudhunter lie flat, got a pressure bandage ready in case of serious bleeding, and unwound the blue silk scarf. With a firm, even pull, it came out of the wound, displaying the flattened slug like a piece of jewelry in a shop window. The bleeding was minor.

Danny opened a tube of goldenrod salve, looked at it skeptical 1 v. Stagger Lee had made some pretty wild claims for the stuff;

Danny supposed it was at least an antiseptic. He rubbed some on the broken skin.

The oozing blood just stopped. The bruising began to fade, and Danny could see the edges of the hole crawl toward closure. He blinked, thinking he must be too tired to see straight, but there it was. With a nervous glance at Mr. Patrise. who was watching silently, halfway smiling. Danny applied a gauze dressing and reslung the Ellyll's arm.

"Do you think you can rest okay. Cloudhunter? I think that's what you need more than anything."

"Call me Cloud." the Ellyll said, and nodded. "I will have some . . . camomile tea."

Danny laughed. "My grandmother used to make camomile tea."

"Was she wise?"

"Yeah." Danny lied.

Mr. Patrise said. "The tea will be in your room. Cloud." He yawned. "It's been a busy week. I think we'll all just relax for the next couple of days. Good night." He went out.

Danny said. "You'll be all right in your room. Cloud? If this starts to bleed at all. or hurt, call me."

"I will. Doc. You have my thanks.''

"Oh. It's my job now. Here, don't forget your scarf." He folded the blue silk, then felt the hard spot within it. "You want the bullet?"

Cloudhunter stared at him in a way that was deeply unsettling.

"I. uh—I knew some people who'd keep things like that. Luck. I guesv

Silently, Cloudhunter accepted the piece of metal, closed his fingers over it.

Danny tried to think of something else to say. "That's really beautiful silk."

Cloud said something that sounded like "Nancy." Danny supposed it was a word in the elf language.

The phone buzzed. "Infirmary"

Staggd Lee's voice said. "Doc. arc vou still working in there?"

"No, just finished."

"Would you stay there, please? There's another job."

"Sure." Cloud nodded and left the room. "Who's—" But Stagger had hung up. Danny hadn't seen anyone else hurt. He paced a bit, then looked around at the cabinets and refilled his bag, adjusting the load—fewer pills, more wound closures, an extra inflatable splint.

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. Stagger Lee came in, followed by two of the gray-coated house staff. They were carrying a zippered black bag. From its size and weight and the way it folded, Danny had no doubt of what was in it. Without a word it was carried into the surgery room, dropped on the table. The bearers left. Stagger Lee had hung up his coat; he went in, unzipped the bag.

It was the dead elf woman.

Danny said, "What's this for?" He remembered something McCain had said: If they cant crawl back to Elfland, they die. "She won't—I mean, she isn't going to—come back."

Stagger Lee looked faintly amused. "She's quite permanently dead. We need the bullets out." He uncovered a tray of surgical tools. "It'll wait till tomorrow, if you're really worn out, but the job won't get any prettier."

"The bullets."

"Yes. It doesn't have to be done neatly. Just get them out intact." He exhaled. "I am in serious need of a scotch. Can I get you something?"

"Just some coffee. Please."

"Be right back." He stopped at the door. "Wait. You were taught all about body-fluid safety, right?"

"Yeah, sure." Danny looked at the body. "Don't touch the blood, right?"

"It won't soak through unbroken skin. But yeah, don't."

Danny pulled down his suspenders and took off his shirt. There was a waterproof apron hanging against the wall. He reached for a pair of surgical gloves, then found a heavy rubber pair.

The body was wearing a white cotton shirt with ruffles down the front, and thin leather bands with silver buckles wrapped around her forearms. Danny cut away the shirt front with scissors. He cut off the straps, too, so he didn't have to look at them.

There was a hole near the heart, another on the left flank, by the floating ribs, a third in the abdomen—when had that happened? He was impressed that the Ellyll had gone so far with those wounds. The wonderful silver hair was matted and vile. McCain's shot to the forehead seemed like overkill, unless it was something to do with the pale girl. . . . There were a couple of long bluish marks around the throat that didn't make any medical sense, but he put the question aside.

He had seen plenty worse, riding the van, in the County ER. learning the trade. Shotguns. Traffic accidents; a little bullet had nothing on a pickup truck for kinetic energy. And farm machinery-was hell on muscle and bone.

Death made a difference, too. A dead body didn't move or pulse or clutch or moan. When the life had faded out under you. after you'd pounded and stuck, breathed and fought for it, you felt something. You couldn't let it last, because there'd be another run any minute, but it was bad while it held on. A body you just found, though—when the bullets or the truck bumper or the tons of corn falling down the silo had finished the job before you got there— there was nothing but the taxi ride to the morgue. Meat delivery some of the guys called it.

Retractor, probe. He thought he heard a click, but there wasn't enough light. He tossed the probe down and opened drawers until he found a headband light. Yeah, there the little bastard was. Dissecting knife. Forceps. He examined the slug: it hadn't deformed much, looked like an ordinary hardball. At home, people had mostly used hollowpoints on each other. He tossed it into a steel basin, where it gave a rolling clang.

The other chest shot had gotten behind a rib. Danny got a spreader on the bone, cracked it out. Hemostat, to pull back the mangled heart wall; it was tough and kept slipping. Light on metal. Clang.

"Coffee's on," Stagger Lee said, and put a big china mug on the counter.

"Thanks. Halfway there." The coffee was muddy-looking, and had a sharp, sweet smell. It burned the back of his throat, not with heat.

"What's in this?"

"Irish. Just drink it slow. The comfort of mankind."

There was brown sugar in it, and thick cream. It did taste good. Danny took a long sip of it, then noticed his glove left a bloody print and wrapped the mug in a towel.

The bullet in the lower thorax was deep. He undid the woman's belt, started to unfasten the fly buttons, then just got the shears and cut his way in. It wasn't anything like undressing her. Meat forgave everything. He made a Y-shaped cut, pulled back the points and got retractors and elastic on them. The liver was a strange coppery color, and he didn't see a spleen.

Stagger Lee said, "You know what you're doing. I just dug like Fred C. Dobbs."

"You do this often?"

"When it needed doing."

Danny thought about objecting to the answer, but didn't. "What's it for?"

"Mr. Patrise didn't talk to you about this?"

"No."

"The body goes back to the Ellyllon. Sometimes they take it over Division to Elfland, sometimes not. It's their fancy Borgia politics, nothing to do with us." He looked down at the deep incision. "We take all of our stuff back."

The third bullet went into the pan.

Stagger said, "Do you need help?"

"No."

"I'll be in the other room. I quit being curious about brains a while ago."

"Go to bed if you want."

"No, I'll wait."

The knife went around the forehead, the scalp peeled back. The electric skull saw buzzed right through the bone. The brain didn't look any different from a human's, not that Danny's job had involved much neurosurgery. He was getting tired. He used the long-bladed knife and cut out a wedge, as from a watermelon, pried out the bullet and shoved the section back. He put the bowl of skull back in place and tugged the scalp down. "That's it," he said. "What now?"

"That's all," Stagger Lee said. "I'll call to have the body collected, get the maids to clean up in here."

"I can do it."

"We've got maids. You're a specialist. Get your—" He looked at the mug with its pink stains, wiped it, carefully poured the contents into a paper cup. "Here. Call it a night. Remember, poker game's Monday. Let me know."

Danny didn't object. He carried the coffee up to his room, took a short hot shower and fell into bed.

Something didn't add up right about the bullet business. It might be true about sending the body back to Elfland, it might even have been true about removing the World stuff; but it didn't feel true—at least, not like all of the truth.

He didn't think anymore, he didn't want to. He slept.

There was a tall woman there—really tall, somewhere over six feet—in a red flannel shirt, black vest and jeans, blazing away with a Tommy gun. Danny recognized her from the raid on the bottling plant. She turned her head. "Hi," she said.

"Hello. I'm . . . Doc."

"Just a sec." She pulled off her soundproof earmuffs. "Hi," she said again. "You said you were Doc, right?"

"Yeah."

"We didn't have a chance to get introduced the other night. I'm Katie Silverbirch. Long Tall Katie if I'm not there to hear it." She pulled the magazine out of the Thompson. "Come to play?"

Danny gestured at the weapon. "I never shot one of those before. I was going to ask Jesse about it."

"Jesse's busy, I think. But he taught me, and I can teach you. If that'll do."

"That'd be great. Thank you."

"Get yourself some goggles and a set of muffs. Right over there."

When Danny was equipped, Katie showed him how to load and work the gun. "You've basically got two useful stances. If you really want to hit targets, you hold it like a rifle, bring it up to your eye, like this. If you can brace against a corner, that's even better; gives you some cover, too." She lowered the weapon to just above her waist, leaned forward on the balls of her feet. "Hipshooting isn't very accurate, but if you've got to charge through a door, it makes the bad guys duck. And a Thompson throws so much lead you'll probably hit something. This is the way." She leaned into the gun and fired a burst, tearing the midsection out of the paper silhouette at the end of the range. She handed Danny the gun. "Try it."

He did. The Thompson bucked like a firehose under full stream, but he clenched hard and got some of the bullets into the target.

" 'S'okay," Katie said. "What do you think made all those other holes in the wall—moths?"

"How long did it take you to learn?"

"Awhile. But I was handling a chainsaw when 1 was four. It's all in the control."

"Four?"

"My folks are loggers, up in Michigan. The Peninsula."

"That's the skinny north part, right?"

She laughed. "Right. How about you?"

"Farmers. Iowa."

"Came 'bout as far. Call strong down there?"

"What do you mean?"

"The call to come here. You know, to where the magic's strong. My Mama calls it medicine. She's Ojibwa. Try changing out the magazine." As Danny did, Katie said, "I didn't know what it was at first. I just had some dreams, and a funny feeling when I saw clouds in the south. But Mama knew. She said to Dad, 'Girl's had a vision. She's gone go.'