American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,25

can believe it. But not for a hit or anything like that. She doesn’t like being alone at night anymore. She says her dreams have changed.”

“How so?”

“She says she dreams about the same thing every night now,” Mallory says faintly, still staring at herself in the mirror. “She dreams about a man, standing in her bedroom. He’s very tall, dressed in a dirty blue canvas suit. And he’s got little wooden rabbit heads sewn all along his suit. And his head… she said she doesn’t know if it’s a helmet, or a mask, like an Indian mask or something, but it’s all wooden too, all painted up like a rabbit head, with two pointy ears. He just stands there, and though she can’t see his eyes she’s sure he’s watching her. Can you believe that, Tom?”

Bolan is silent. Again he remembers what Zimmerman told him: there was a light in the trees, and then a man was there, watching them. And they could see nothing about him except two points on his head, like horns or maybe ears…

He watches Mallory carefully. He told the boys a little bit about what they were doing on the mesa—not much, but enough—but Mallory is now coming very close to a truth Bolan would prefer to keep hidden.

“Come here,” he says to her, and gestures. She walks over to the desk.

“Sit,” he says, and she does so, curious.

“Let me tell you what we’re going to do here, Mallory,” he says. “This is some delicate work. And you’ve handled it delicately. But we’re going to need to be even more delicate from here on out.”

“What does delicate mean?”

Bolan opens a drawer on his desk, reaches in, and produces a small plastic baggie containing a white powder. He places it on the edge of the desk before her.

“You offering me a bump?” Mallory asks, entertained.

Bolan smiles humorlessly and shakes his head. “No. No, I am not. That shit is not pure, Mal. It is quite the opposite of pure. If you were to partake of that, why, you’d be pale and stiff within an hour. Do you see?”

Mallory glances at the baggie again. “No.”

“Well, let me explain. Sometime soon—not now, but soon—you’re going to go back to that girl of yours…”

“Bonnie.”

“Right. Bonnie. You’re going to go back to her and make her run that route in the tunnels again.”

“She’s not going to want to do that, Tom,” says Mallory. “She’s shook up as it is.”

“Well, that’s tough, because you’re going to make her. She’s not going to have a choice. Not the way her good friend Mallory sells it.”

Mallory is quiet for a bit. “And how is she going to sell it?”

He smiles again. “Mallory’s going to say that she’s carrying some seriously quality shit, and she’d be all too happy to pass it along if Bonnie does this one little favor again for her,” says Bolan. “For us.”

For a while there is silence, broken only by the whoops from downstairs.

Mallory looks back at the little white baggie. “And where does that enter into it?” she asks.

Bolan stares at her balefully with his hooded, puffy eyes. “Are you fucking stupid, Mal?” he asks. “Don’t tell me you’re fucking stupid. Because I know you, and I know you’re not fucking stupid. You’re a very smart girl. That’s why I keep you around, right?”

“I’m not… I can’t do something like that.”

“But you can, and you will. You’re going to do it, Mal. It’s going to happen. That girl has too many stories rolling around in her head. She did some real choice work for us, sure, but things are getting too hot to just leave her walking around.” He nods at the baggie. “This is the easy way. We don’t want to do it the hard way. I know the hard way, Mal, and it’s hard on everyone.”

Mallory looks from the baggie to Bolan, and her eyes gain a steely glint. “Who’s saying to do this? Is it you? Or is it them?”

Bolan stares back impassively. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.”

“No, it doesn’t. Because it’s going to happen, one way or another, so who gives the order is irrelevant.”

Mallory loses a little color, but the steely glint grows. Bolan is amused and surprised by this reaction: Mal’s never personally killed anyone, sure, but he knows she’s seen people die. What does it matter, he thinks, whose hand does the actual act?

“Who’s it for?” she asks.

“Who’s what for?”

“The skulls. I know who the last one was for. They just