somebody from the generations that went before – and there are several degrees of age from the look of it, from hale but vacant-looking grands who got struck sick or stupid too early in life on up to the wispy great-greats, skeletal old people with only a few white hairs left standing on their pink heads. Considering where he is right now and where he’s followed Dan Carteret so far today, and considering how close he’s come to being seen at every stop the kid has made, Walker finds this parade of residents extremely peaceful. Nice old couples just about his age come past, pushing old parties in wheelchairs or supporting elbows so their shaky friends and relations can totter along the walks with blissed-out smiles. The visitors all come out of the building headed for the choice benches overlooking the water, but nobody seems to mind when their charges cut out, homing in on the first available place to sit down.
Some visitors from the outside world have brought gift baskets and some go by carrying flowers. As the afternoon flows past, Walker watches as the young and healthy run out of conversation and begin picking at the contents of the baskets, proffering food they’ll end up eating themselves, nibbling out of sheer nervousness. Nobody wants to admit that fruit and candy are nothing to passengers on the long slide to the exit interview. They are beyond being interested in food. They’re beyond being interested in much of anything, and it is this that Walker finds so restful – the absence of striving. Ambition went to sleep in these old people before they lost it, or consciously relinquished control, turning over the pressure of responsibility to whoever checked them into this place.
Driven as he is, ambitious and highly competitive, Walker is happy to be surrounded by people who have just . . . let go. In a lot of ways, it’s a relief.
His . . . No. This Dan Carteret and that girl, Nenna Henderson’s daughter, have been inside the main building for a long, long time. Ten more minutes and he’ll be gnawing his wrists to keep from lapsing into a doze. Walker loves sleep, thinks about it, misses it and invites it, but he works so hard that he never has much time for it. Sleep is the one place in his life where it’s more or less safe.
Sleeping, he can let down his guard because whatever it is that drives him is quiescent, enclosed. Locked inside his skull. Then he can rest. Only then. The power or potential for destruction, whatever Walker Pike chooses to call the force that changed him forever, will lie dormant until he awakes. He can’t hurt anybody.
He’s in the zone when a tap on his windshield rouses him. It’s Jessie, still in that slinky dove gray silk she had on when he saw her going into church with Wade but the neckline’s looser, she undid a pin or took off a belt – something – he doesn’t know.
She comes around to the open window. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Visiting an old party.’
‘Who?’
‘Nobody you know.’
‘Then why are you alone?’
‘He can’t come out until they change his bag.’
But they’ve known each other for much too long. ‘I don’t think so,’ Jessie snaps, ‘it’s not like your dad’s in there.’
Your father wouldn’t be comfortable here. His teeth clamp. ‘You remember! Yeah, I wanted to firebomb this place.’
‘But you didn’t. You hired Florence Rivers to take care of him.’
‘Damn near broke us. There was a lot of stuff missing after he died.’
‘Cheap at the price.’
‘She cleaned us out.’ Walker says thoughtfully, ‘We were so broke we had to plant him out in the boonies. Or let the city plant him.’
‘The boneyard.’
‘Public, the city calls it. It was sad. We did what we could afford. He went into Poinsettia Gardens, out by the Interstate. Probably right next to yours.’
‘You’d be right on that,’ she says, grinning, ‘if I’d ever had a dad.’
‘You told everybody he died in Vietnam.’
‘Unless I told them he was lost at sea.’ They fall into the rhythm like the old, good friends that they are. ‘You have to tell people something, you know?’
Walker grins. It’s been a long time since he’s been this easy with anyone. ‘Unless you don’t.’
‘Like you, Mr tight-mouth. Wade says you’re making a bundle in stuff so techy that he can’t get a grip on it.’
God, did she really make him laugh? ‘It’s just computers. That’s giant electronic brains