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“Someone’s gonna bust through that mirror, any minute!”
“Mirror!?” I cried.
I reached out.
“No!” said Crumley.
“What’s he up to?” asked Henry.
“Looking back,” I said.
I swung the mirror door wide.
I stared down the long tunnel, astounded at how far we had run, from country to country, mystery to mystery, along twenty years to now, Halloween to Halloween. The tunnel sank through commissaries of tinned films to reliquaries for the nameless. Could I have run all that way without Crumley and Henry to flail away shadows as my breath banged the walls?
I listened.
Far off, did doors open and slam? Was a dark army or a simple Beast in pursuit? Soon, would a death gun discharge skulls, blow the tunnel, ram me back from the mirror? Would—
“God damn!” said Crumley. “Idiot! Out! ”
He knocked my hand down. The mirror shut.
I grabbed the phone and dialed.
“Constance!” I yelled. “Green Town.”
Constance yelled back.
“What’d she say?” Crumley peered into my face. “Never mind,” he added, “because—”
The mirror shook. We ran.
55
The studio was as dark and empty as the graveyard over the wall.
The two cities looked at each other across the night air and played similar deaths. We were the only warm things moving in the streets. Somewhere, perhaps, Fritz was running night films of Galilee and charcoal beds and evocative Christs and footprints blowing away on the dawn wind. Somewhere, Maggie Botwin was crouched over her telescope viewing the bowels of China. Somewhere, the Beast was ravening to follow, or lying low.
“Take it easy!” said Crumley.
“We’re not being followed,” said Henry. “Listen! the blind man says. Where we going?”
“To my grandparents’.”
“Well, now that sounds nice,” said Henry.
Hustling along, we whispered:
“Good God, does anyone in the studio know about that passage?”
“If so, they never said.”
“Lord, think. If nobody knew, and the Beast came every night or every day, and listened behind the wall, after a while he’d know everything. All the deals, the ins and outs, all the stockmarket junk, all the women. Save up the data long enough and you’re ready to cash in. Shake the Guy at them, get the money, run.”
“The Guy?”
“The Guy Fawkes dummy, the fireworks mannequin, the Guy they toss on the bonfire every Guy Fawkes Day in England, November 5th. Like our Halloween, but religious politics. Fawkes almost blew up Parliament. Caught, he was hanged. We got something like it here. The Beast plans to blow up Maximus. Not literally, but rip it apart with suspicion. Scare everyone. Shake a dummy at them. Maybe he’s been shaking them down for years. And nobody the wiser. He’s an inside trader using secret information.”
