American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,24

act on it. As such, Mallory has assumed the unspoken role of number two at the Roadhouse.

She pours herself another, but before she can drink Bolan walks to her and gently takes the glass. “How’d it go?” he asks.

“I got it, didn’t I?” She raises and lowers the shoulder with the satchel.

Bolan watches her carefully.

“I did,” she says. “It went fine.”

“Who did you use?”

“A junkie,” she says.

“Who?” Bolan insists.

“A girl named Bonnie,” says Mallory. “You don’t know her.”

“The same girl you used last time?”

“Yes. But I don’t know if we can use her again.”

Bolan cocks an eyebrow. “And why is that?”

“She’s all screwed up, Tom,” says Mallory. She takes the scotch back and downs it, throat clicking, and grits her teeth as it settles. “And not just because she’s a goddamn junkie. She knows what we’re having her do is fucking weird. She just doesn’t know how.”

Bolan gives a faint, unpleasant laugh. “I’m not surprised,” he says. He takes the satchel off her shoulder and walks back to his desk, where he unzips it.

Inside the satchel is a polished wooden box, about the size of a cigar box. It has not been taped and tied shut; these precautions are not yet necessary. But he still feels extremely anxious holding it.

“She says she’s being followed,” says Mallory.

Bolan looks up. “By who?”

“She doesn’t know. She doesn’t actually see anyone, she says. But she knows it’s there.”

“It?”

“That’s what she said.”

Bolan purses his lips, then sits down on the floor behind his desk. Underneath the desk on the left-hand side is a thick metal safe. “Is that all she said?”

He hears the clink of the scotch bottle against the lip of the glass, then another click as her throat forces the scotch down. “Christ, no. She was babbling. But she says when we send her to go get… that thing, that someone watches her. She feels something there, Tom, in that place underground. It watches her come in, and it watches her take that thing, and it watches her leave. But she says when she leaves, it follows her, and it keeps watching her.”

Bolan twists the dial back and forth and opens the safe. Supposedly, the salesman said, this thing is so dense and impenetrable you could store uranium in it and sleep next to it and go cancer-free for years. What Bolan is about to store there is not radioactive—at least, he doesn’t think it is—but he would still prefer more protection if he could get it. But if this safe were any denser it would probably break through the damn floor.

He sets the little box in his lap. Before he undoes the clasp, he asks, “Do you believe her?”

“Believe her? Are you kidding? Of course I don’t believe her, she’s out of her gourd.”

He smiles a little. He expected that answer. Mallory is not the type to suspend her disbelief for anything. Which is a pity, because Bolan probably knows more about what is going on in Wink than anyone else, and he knows not to scoff at stories like that. So many of them turn out to be true.

He carefully undoes the bronze clasp on the box, takes a little breath, and opens it up.

Sitting inside on a cushioned interior of dark green velvet is a tiny skull. To most people it would appear grotesque but unremarkable, simply a fleshless, bleached rodent skull like that of a rat or mouse. Bolan knows it is actually a rabbit skull. Or it appears to be a rabbit skull. He’s studied their messages, and though they did not state outright what they needed him to get—and what he in turn had someone else get for him—he can read between the lines as well as anyone.

It only looks like a skull. Bolan knows it is really much more than that.

He closes the box, rehooks the clasp, and places the box in the safe and shuts it. Then he sighs a little. It is getting so goddamn hard not to bite the hand that feeds him these days.

When he stands back up he sees Mallory is looking into the mirror behind the liquor cabinet shelves. She appears a little rattled, which is odd: Bolan has seen Mallory take care of stabbings and ODs without even blinking an eye, so the idea that anything could upset her is new to him.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Hm? Oh. Nothing. I was just thinking about something she said.”

“The junkie?”

“Yeah. She wanted to come with me. Back to here, if you