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not tonight.
Bullock said nothing. He kept glaring at me.
Angie, sweetheart, I said.
From behind me, she said, Yes, Daddy?
Do you think you could go over and pick up that gun? Very carefully, by the
handle?
Okay.
She came around me, and I noticed that she was still a bit unsteady on her
feet. When she bent over to pick up the gun, I thought she might fall over,
but she steadied herself, grabbed it gingerly, found it a bit heavier than
she d anticipated, I think, and handed it to me. I slipped it into my other
pocket.
Now all we had to do was get out of there. Get to the Virtue, hope it would
start, get Angie to a hospital to make sure she was okay. But Blondie was
still out there someplace. In the house, maybe out in the garage. And, as
thick as the walls seemed to be in this old house, he might still have heard
the shot, or Angie s scream, and be on his way back to investigate.
To Bullock, I said, Take out your knife.
I don t have a knife. Didn t even blink.
The one in your back pocket, the one you put to my neck when we were in the
garage.
I don t have it now, he said.
Okay, I said. You can either toss out your knife, or Barbie and Ken get
it.
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Bullock suddenly looked alarmed. What? What did you say?
Toss it, or the dolls die, I said.
Bullock almost smiled. You re absolutely out of your mind. Whaddya gonna do,
take one of them hostage?
That was a plan I could keep in reserve. For now, I was happy to play
executioner. I turned the gun toward the shelves of pink packages. I didn t
really have to aim. I could fire anywhere and hit something.
So I did.
I caught the Munsters version of Ken and Barbie. The box spun on the shelf,
hit the back wall, and bounced back onto the floor. The bullet had torn
through the packaging and caught Ken in the neck, knocking his
Frankenstein-like head clean off.
My God! Bullock said. What have you done? You some kind of fucking
animal?
Toss out the knife, I said.
That s Munster Barbie! It took me five years to find that!
I fired again, putting a hole through the door of Barbie s pink Volkswagen
minibus.
It then occurred to me that I d fired three bullets. I had no idea how many I
had left, and there was no sense using them all on defenseless pieces of
plastic.
Stop it! Bullock screamed. Stop it!
He reached into his back pocket and threw the switchblade, closed, across the
room.
What s wrong with you? he asked. Are you insane?
Pockmark, leaning into his chair and still holding his wounded leg, looked at
Bullock and said, Sonow he s insane. He shoots me in the fucking leg, you got
nothing to say.
I was ready to move out. Bullock and Pockmark, to the best of my knowledge,
were disarmed. But I had to get myself and Angie down the hall, out the door,
to the garage, get the door open, get us into the Virtue, get it started
(fingers crossed), and drive away. Once I was out of this room and no longer
able to keep a gun on Bullock, he d probably come after us.
And Blondie was still out there.
A phone rang.
I looked at Bullock, who looked at me. The ringing was coming from inside the
cardboard box where he d found the Snapple bottle.
It was my cell phone.
Tentatively, I moved closer to the desk, still holding the gun on Bullock,
and reached in with my left hand for the phone. The phone was damp, but there
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wasn t time to be squeamish about picking it up. I pressed the button after
the third ring and put the phone up to my left ear, half expecting it to be
Bertrand Magnuson, checking in with me to make sure I wasn t using a weapon in
the performance of my duties as aMetropolitan staff member. No, I could say
honestly, I was only shooting people in my off-time.
Hello, I said evenly.
Mr. Walker? It s Trevor.
Jesus. Just what I needed.
This isn t really a good time, Trevor. I ve kind of got my hands full.
Okay, listen, I m sorry, but I wanted to know how it was going, because if
you haven t found Angie, I think I can tell you where she is.
I know where she is, Trevor. She s here with me.
So you re at the house on Wyndham Lane?
I felt blood pounding in my temples. That s right, Trevor. We re in a house
on Wyndham Lane.
Excellent.
Trevor, where are you?
Well, I m sort of in the bushes, by the house. I didn t think you were here,
because I didn t see your car or anything. But that big black SUV? The one
they used to take away Angie? It s here. But if you re with Angie, I m
assuming everything s okay, right?
Not entirely, Trevor. There are still a few things to work out. How,
exactly, did you know where to find us?
Okay, I ll tell you, but you re gonna be pissed.
GO AHEAD, I said to Trevor, trying to keep my voice even. I won t get mad. I
promise.
Angie was feeling a bit unsteady on her feet and plopped back onto the couch
while I continued to hold a gun on Bullock. Pockmark had lost a fair bit of
blood, and his head hung down onto his chest as he gripped his thigh. The guy
needed to get to a hospital.
This was the thing I was going to tell you a while ago, Trevor said, but I
couldn t think of a way to do it, but I ve been thinking about it and decided
the best thing to do is help Angie, no matter what.
Okay, Trevor. I d be real grateful if you can move this story along and just
tell me.
I know what I ve done, some people might call inappropriate. But I wasn t
doing it for my own purposes alone. I think there s a larger issue at stake
here, a point to be made about how we re all being monitored in one way or
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another, that Big Brother is watching our every move, and that we need to take
a stand against this kind of dehumanization that threatens to rob us of our
Trevor!
Okay. You know that day you found me at your place, and I had my computer
with me, and I was looking for my dog?
The tracking thing, I said. Let me guess.
Yeah, he said. Right.
You ve been tracking Angie s whereabouts, with the same kind of gizmo you
clipped onto your dog s collar.
You don t have to thank me now, Trevor said. When I ran into Angie the
other day at Starbucks, I was helping her with her coat and I sort of slipped
it into one of the inside pockets where I figured she d never look.
I glanced over at Angie, and at her coat, draped over the end of the couch.
Hold on a second, Trevor, I said. To Angie, I said, Honey?
Yes, Dad?
Take a look in the inside pockets of your coat, see if you find anything in
there.
Like what?
Sort of like a button or something.
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