The Devil's bed

Moses didn’t reply. Otter stepped into the dim illumination from the light above the altar, and he looked around. A few moments passed before he saw Bo.

“Sorry that took so long. What are you doing there all alone? Praying?”

Bo slowly turned and looked behind him. Moses was gone.

Otter came down the aisle, carrying a white bag that smelled of the hot gyros inside it.

“I’ve got to go, Otter.”

“Why?”

“Moses was here.”

“The dead guy?”

“He’s not dead.”

Otter’s eyes jumped around the darkened church. “How’d he find you?”

“Because he’s a goddamn genius. He may get it in his head to call the police. Until I figure all this out, I can’t take a chance on getting picked up.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not like I haven’t been on the streets before.”

“This sucks, Spider-Man. What can I do to help?”

“You’ve already done enough.”

Otter handed him the bag of food. “Wait here.” He was gone a few minutes. When he came back he carried a rolled blanket tied with a rope that was looped in such a way that it created a sling to make the bedroll easier to carry over his shoulder.

“It’s a good blanket,” Otter said. “Kept me warm a lot of nights when I didn’t have a roof over my head. And here.” Otter shoved a handful of money at him. “Only forty-seven dollars. It won’t get you to Mexico, but it’ll keep you fed for a few days.”

“I can’t-”

“Take it, Spider-Man. I’ve got food, and a paycheck’s on the way. You’ve got to keep yourself together until things get cleared up. God knows when that’ll be.”

Bo had always been the one offering help. It had been a long time since he’d needed any himself. He found it hard being on the other side of charity, having something as simple as an old blanket and spare change mean so much.

“Thanks.”

“No thanks necessary. Just be careful, okay?”

Bo retrieved his Sig from the church pew and stuffed it into the bedroll. Otter’s final offering was a strong hug, then Bo took his leave.

He walked the streets as the dark of night hardened around him. Clouds rolled in from the west and blotted out the stars. He stopped once, at a convenience store to buy toothpaste and a toothbrush, and to use the phone. Directory assistance was unable to help him. Lorna Channing’s telephone number was unlisted. Bo tried the White House using the code name Peter Parker, but he got nowhere.

When he reached the river, he followed the east bank of the Mississippi, walking along a jogging path that finally ended in the broken concrete of old docks and landings no longer used and fallen into disrepair. Behind him, the towers of the downtown district spiked toward a sky domed with an overcast that reflected the glitter and glare of the city. Ahead of him, high above the river, a row of lit globes slanted down from Cherokee Heights like a broken string of pearls. The High Bridge. Bo passed under the girders and made his way to the place where once, long ago, the old bus had sat on blocks and sheltered his street family. The bus was gone, but the site was still a deserted stretch of riverbank guarded by cottonwoods and cushioned by tall grass. Bo rolled out the blanket and sat down. A muddy smell flowed up from the river, thick as the water itself. He was in a place where eons before, glacial flooding had carved a deep chasm in the layers of sandstone. The houses atop the Heights were set back too far to be seen from the river, and the bluff beneath them was invisible in the dark. The great bridge seemed to connect with nothing at all. Bo recalled that only a couple of days before he’d been on top of the bridge, poised to plunge to his death, to ride into eternity on the current of the black water below.

His body hurt. His feet ached because the shoes Otter had given him were too small. His head was packed with facts and conjectures that whirled round and round and sucked all his thinking into a confusing maelstrom. He tried to sort a few things out.

He was certain now what NOMan’s goal was.

The assassination of the First Lady.

The murder of Kate.

It was possible that with Moses now truly at large and with Bo complicating things, they may have decided to call off the operation, but he knew that these were people accustomed to manipulating events on an enormous scale. The network of NOMan was so tightly woven into the mundane fabric of the legitimate system that it was almost invisible. They’d been operating so long and so effectively that by now they may have considered themselves invulnerable and were still determined to proceed with the killing.

But how? And where? And when?