The Omicron Legion (24 page)

“But we all need help from time to time, now don’t we?”

“Apparently.”

“And me and my boys are willing to keep helpin’ ya, but you gotta wait a bit.”

“I may not have a bit.”

“You may not have a choice. Got a few of my lot out now checkin’ the streets for scuttlebutt, governor. They come back, we’ll know more.”

“In the meantime, Reverend, I’d like to meet the boys that saved me.”

“Wanna thank them personal like, right?”

“Not exactly.” Blaine glared in feigned anger at a young mulatto who was still holding him down. “I think one of them stole my wallet.”

By lunchtime the Orlando Orfei Circus had been magically brought to life. Patty had managed a brief nap on the couch in John Lynnford’s trailer until his gentle, calloused hand roused her. He led her outside, and she saw the rides were all assembled; a few had even started into their test spins. The finishing touches were being placed on the booths and stands that formed a makeshift midway. The big top for the animal and clown acts was halfway erected, as were the much smaller tent-topped auditoriums for entertainment in the form of exotic dancers and the freak show.

One of the first things John tried to do after taking over the Orlando Orfei was to put an end to the freak show, but it was the arguments of the freaks themselves that persuaded him against it. This was their world, they insisted, the only one where they felt truly comfortable. People were going to laugh at them anyway. Let them do it for a fee and then leave the freaks alone to be with their accepting fellows.

Using his cane to aid him across the uneven ground, John Lynnford led Patty beyond the midway and into the cafeteria tent. They approached a table whose lone inhabitant was a dwarf who was reading a newspaper with the aid of a magnifying glass.

“Good afternoon, Professor,” John said.

“Quiet,” the dwarf snapped. “Can’t you see I’m reading?”

He turned the page gingerly, and Patty saw its edges were creased and yellowed, the paper so brittle it seemed ready to break off in his hand. “Okay. That’ll do,” he said as he folded the paper fondly into quarters. He looked Patty over. “I guess you’ll want the sports page.”

“No, I—”

“A challenge, then! You’ve come with a challenge.”

Patty was turning toward John when he began to explain. “The professor here is the world’s foremost authority on facts.”

“All facts,” the little man broke in, and tapped his head proudly. “Photographic memory.”

“His booth is my personal favorite. People challenge him with a day in history, and he can always name a noteworthy event that occurred on that day.”

“Or they name the event,” the little man elaborated, “and I name the day. Doesn’t matter either way. I never lose. What have you for me? Perhaps you’ll be the first to stump me.”

“He reads newspapers,” John continued. “Day and night. How many languages, Professor?”

“How many are there?” He looked back at Patty and leaned farther over the table. “A challenge, girl! Try me!”

“The first Superbowl,” Patty managed.

“January fifteenth, 1967. Green Bay versus Kansas City. Final score 33-14 in favor of Green Bay. Try again! A date this time.”

“April twelfth, 1861,” she asked after thinking for a moment.

“Category?”

“History.”

“History! Of course!” The little man barely needed to think. “Southern artillery opens fire on Fort Sumter. The American Civil War begins. More?”

“That’s enough.”

“Another date, then!” The little man drummed the table in eager anticipation.

“October tenth, 1980,” John chimed in.

The professor regarded him playfully. “A dirty trick, my friend. The day I joined the circus.”

“He was a forger,” Lynnford explained. “The best in the business.”

“The best ever!” the little man boasted, but then his expression grew sad. “Until my eyes started to go. They’re still going. A little harder to read my papers every day, it is. I made a mistake with some counterfeit money. Cost a few gentlemen millions and left them most unhappy. Some went to jail. I came here.”

“Passports, Professor,” John coaxed him.

“Simple work. Beneath my degree of expertise.”

“For my pretty friend here.”

“Hmmmmmmmm…You either match her face to a picture or match a picture to her face. The latter means starting from scratch.”

“Can you do it?”

“Check my files. Let you know.” He studied Patty’s face.” Strong features. Difficult to match. Means starting from scratch. Leave me her measurements and specs. But no picture until she’s finished with Teresa. Go now. I’ve got my paper to finish.”

“Who’s Teresa?” Patty wanted to know after they had left the tent.

John just looked at her. “You’ll see.”

John pushed himself up the four steps leading to a rusted metal trailer.

“It’s me, Teresa,” he called after knocking.

The door opened, and Patty caught a glimpse of a woman in a clown suit; no, not a suit, just flour-white facial makeup with red highlighting her cheeks, eyes, and mouth. Her hair was tied in a bun, ready to be swallowed by the clown’s typical dome and wig. She was wearing baggy jeans and a black shirt. Her hands showed traces of white makeup.

“Can we come in, Teresa?”

The woman gazed down the steps toward Patty. The warmth disappeared from her expression. She looked suspicious.

“It’s all right,” John said soothingly. “She’s with me.”

Teresa nodded reluctantly and let John enter, backing away as Patty climbed the steps in his wake.

“The professor’s working on a passport for her. She needs a new appearance. Can you do something?”

The clown regarded Patty closely for the first time. She shrugged, then nodded again. “She’s a friend, Teresa,” John said softly. “You can trust her.”

But far from looking convinced, the clown moved into another section of the trailer.

“Teresa was already here when I took over,” John explained. “No one knows her true story because she hasn’t spoken a word since her arrival. There’s also not a soul on my payroll here who admits to having seen her without her makeup.”

“My God…”

“She just represents the extreme of what all of us are going through. We’re all hiding; Teresa just manifests it more blatantly. But the beautiful thing is that nobody ever pesters her about it, and she’s the best clown we’ve got.”

“But don’t you wonder what happened to make her withdraw like this?”

“Of course I do, except it’s none of my business.” John Lynnford paused. “At any rate, you’ve got to change your appearance before you leave here. The professor will provide you with the means, and Teresa will take care of the face.”

With that Teresa returned, she was carrying a vanity case. She backed a chair against the kitchen sink and signaled Patty to take it. The clown eased her neck gently backward, drenched her blond hair in water, and combed it straight back. She massaged what might have been shampoo into it, rinsed it, then went through the whole process again.

“You’ll be here for a while,” John said. “I’ve got to see how things are going. We open at sundown.”

In all, the transformation process took over two hours. Patty’s hair emerged jet black and tightly curled from the perm process. Makeup gave her face an entirely different hue and tint. Contact lenses made her eyes dark brown. But there was more, enough so that when at last Teresa allowed her to look in the mirror, she didn’t recognize the face that looked back.

She looked ten years older, at least, harder and meaner, with furrows accentuated on the forehead, brow, and under her eyes.

John Lynnford was coming up the steps when Patty stepped through the doorway.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“I’m the new attraction for the spook house. Let me loose inside to scare the little kiddies.”

“It was time you grew up, anyway.”

“Fifteen years in two hours is pushing it a little.”

“Added to how many years in the past month or so?”

“I get the point.”

“I really wasn’t meaning to make one.”

He led her to the professor’s trailer. The little man had no idea who she was until he put on a different pair of glasses.

“Get her some clothes, boss,” he said to John. “Have her picture taken and get it over to me. The passport’s almost finished.”

Back outside, Patty stopped and touched Lynnford’s hand.

“How am I ever going to thank you for all this?”

“Some ticket sales would help. Come back when you’ve got more money.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I. Look around you. We’re a community here, a family. We’ve all been down, and we all know what it’s like not to have anyone there to pick you back up again. It’s a lousy feeling, and the best way to forget it is to pick up someone else. That’s what we do.”

Patty looked into his eyes. “I wish I could do the same for you.”

“Sorry. Lost cause.”

John started to move away. Patty closed the gap and grasped his arm gently.

“You weren’t the only one injured in that fall,” she said, with sudden understanding. “Your cousin didn’t miss the catch, did he?”

Lynnford’s lips trembled. His cane burrowed its way into the ground. “It was our grand finale. The five-person pyramid swing we were known worldwide for. I was the top rung. Everything depended on me. I tried to be fancy, and I slipped. The bar wobbled, and that was that. The net wasn’t built to handle five people tumbling into it at once. It gave way, and no one came out of it whole. Two broke their necks, another his spine. I got out of it best of all because there were other bodies to cushion my fall. That’s why I’ve never asked Teresa why she doesn’t speak. I figure she’s got her reasons and she deserves them. We’ve all got our reasons and they’ve got to be respected. You’ve got your reason to leave, so we help you. If you had chosen to stay, we would have helped you there, too.”

Just then the circus strongman, Zandor, rushed up to John Lynnford’s side. His rippling muscles glistened with sweat that seemed to pour like a fountain from his bald dome. He gestured with a pair of massive arms toward the shopping mall and parking lot on the left as he whispered his report.

“You’re sure?” Lynnford asked him.

“Yes.” Zandor nodded.

With the strongman still standing rigid at his side, Lynnford turned back to Patty.

“I’m afraid we’ve got company.”

“More of the Japanese.”

Lynnford shook his head. “Locals, by the sound of it, and not the most honorable sorts, either. Maybe sent by the Japanese.”

“Then you’ve got to get me out of here. You’ve got—”

“No way,” Lynnford interrupted. “We don’t know if they’re still around the area or not, so this remains the safest place for you. This may even work to our benefit. We can make it work.”

“How?”

“We know they’ll be coming, and we know when.” John Lynnford paused. “Tonight, at the Orlando Orfei’s opening.”

McCracken’s immediate goal was to get some strength back into his weary, battered body. The effects both from his desperate fight with the disciple and his ill-fated fall from the roof of the Bali Bar had taken their toll. A half hour of painstaking exercise brought him a good portion of the way back, though not all. He knew the rest would be there when he needed it, and he might need it soon, because the news Reverend Jim Hope’s boys brought back from the streets wasn’t good. Not surprisingly, the murder of Fernando Da Sa had been pinned on him by the true perpetrators, and the crime lord’s soldiers were scouring the streets for him.

“And there’s more,” Reverend Jim reported.

“Can’t wait to hear it.”

“The same men are looking for a woman who showed up at your hotel.” Blaine looked up from the plate of brown rice and fish the boys had cooked for him. “A woman?”

“As luck would have it, one of my boys was in the area at the time.” Hope winked.

“I’m sure. Just go on.”

“Something spooked her and she ran off, but then word got passed that she was working with you, and Da Sa’s people got interested.”

“Describe her!”

“Cute, athletic, blond hair.”

“Patty!”

“You know her, then.”

“What I don’t know is what the hell she’s doing down here!”

Thoughts raced through Blaine’s head. Patty Hunsecker must have come to Rio to find him, alerted to the procedure by Sal Belamo. This could only mean something had gone dreadfully wrong back in the States. Sal would never have risked sending Patty down here if her life wasn’t equally endangered back home.

McCracken placed his plate down on the stool in front of him. “Do you know where she is?” he demanded.

“We might be able to find out.”

“How?”

“Da Sa’s men. If they latch onto her, it won’t stay secret from my boys.”

“It’s good to hear they steal more than money.”

“Lots of times information’s more valuable. Plenty of my lot used to run with the younger ones in Da Sa’s bunch; when they grow up they’ll probably join them.” A frown crossed Jim Hope’s face. “Course the problem we got now is plenty of Da Sa’s soldiers come from the
favelas.
So once they learn you’re here, we can’t rely on protection from within, governor. Quite the opposite, if you know what I mean.”

“I do. Just find the woman.”

“What happens when we do?”

“I go in and get her.”

Hope smiled. “Had a feeling you were gonna say that, governor. Course you know that’ll probably put you up against Da Sa’s boys…who are out to get you anyway.”

“I’ll let them bring in plenty of reinforcements to even out the odds.”

The boys drifted in and out of the shanty they called home throughout the afternoon. One pair arrived brimming with pride. Reverend Jim Hope let them accompany him over to Blaine.

“These got a present for ya, governor.”

Blaine took a thick travel wallet from the reverend’s extended hand. Inside was a passport belonging to a man of his approximate size and likeness: thick hair, dark features, and a beard. No scar through the left eyebrow, but it was doubtful any customs official would notice the oversight.

“We figured the papers you got with you might not get you outta the country.”