Time Bomb

21

I heard her get up the next morning at six. She had dressed and was drinking coffee at the kitchen table when I came in half an hour later.

“Blue Monday,” she said.

“Feeling down?”

“Actually, not one bit.” She gazed out the window. “Really love this view.”

I filled a cup and sat down.

She looked at her watch. “When you’re ready, I’ll take a ride back to my place. I want to get to school early, set up your parents for today’s group.”

“How many do you expect?”

“About twenty. Quite a few are Spanish-speaking. I can be your translator but it means I’ve got to clear my desk first.”

“Sounds good.”

“Do you think you’ll need more than one session?”

“Probably not. I’ll be available for individual follow-ups.”

“Great.”

Both of us talking shop, skirting the personal as if it were a dead animal in the middle of the road.

I drank a little more coffee.

She said, “Want any breakfast?”

“Nope. You?”

She shook her head. “How about a rain check, then? I’m a pretty good breakfast cook- nothing Cordon Bleu, just down-home integrity and high quantity.”

“I look forward to making you prove it.”

Her smile was sudden, white, dazzling.

We touched hands. I drove her home.

During the drive she looked out the window a lot and I sensed more pulling away- a reaffirmation of her ability to take care of herself. So I dropped her off in front of her building, told her I’d see her at eleven, put gas in the Seville, and used a pay phone at the station to call my service for the messages I’d neglected to pick up yesterday. Just one, from Mahlon Burden, reminding me to call his son and reiterating Howard Burden’s business number.

Just after nine I called Encino.

A female voice said, “Pierce, Sloan, and Marder.”

“Howard Burden, please.”

Her tone became guarded. “One moment.”

Another female voice, louder and nasal: “Howard Burden’s office.”

“I’d like to speak with Mr. Burden.”

“Whom shall I say is calling?”

“Dr. Delaware.”

“May I ask what this is about, Doctor?”

“A personal matter. I was referred by Mr. Burden’s father.”

Hesitation. “One moment.”

She was gone for what seemed like a long time. Then: “I’m sorry. Mr. Burden’s in a meeting.”

“Any idea when he’ll be free?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I’ll give you my number. Please ask him to call me.”

“I’ll deliver the message.” Frosty tone. Letting me know a call-back was about as likely as world peace. I thought I understood her protectiveness.

“I’m not with the press,” I said. “His father is pretty eager for me to talk with him. You can call Mr. Burden Senior and confirm that.”

“I’ll give him the message, sir.”

Another roadblock at the entrance to Ocean Heights. When I saw the pair of squad cars, my hands went clammy.

But this was a smaller police presence than on the day of the sniping- just two black-and-whites, an equal number of uniformed cops standing in the middle of the street, chatting with each other, looking relaxed.

They refused to answer my questions and had a few of their own. I spent a long time explaining who I was, waiting for them to call the school and verify it with Linda. She couldn’t be reached. Finally, after showing them my psych license and med school faculty card and tossing in Milo’s name, I was allowed through.

Before I walked back to my car I tried again. “So what’s going on?”

The cops looked amused and annoyed at the same time.

One of them said, “Show time, sir.” The other hooked his thumb toward the Seville and said, “Better be getting going.”

I drove off, speeding up Esperanza. The school was ringed with vehicles and I had to park more than a block away. More cop cars, along with bland-looking sedans that might have been unmarkeds, media vans, at least three white ultrastretch Mercedes. And spectators- a few of the locals, standing in front of their homes. Some looked sour- the put-upon resignation of picnickers invaded by ants. But others seemed pleased, as if waiting for a parade.

I walked on, wondering what had brought them out. What “show time” meant. Then I heard it, as I got closer to the school grounds. A relentless drumbeat. Synthesizer trills over a walking bass run.

Carnival sounds. A rock-and-roll carnival. I wondered why Linda hadn’t mentioned anything to me.

Directly across from the school entrance, a local stood blocking the sidewalk. Thickset older man in plaid madras pants and white Ban-Lon golf shirt, smoking a cigarette and flicking ashes onto the sidewalk. Flicking in the direction of the school. As I approached, he stopped and stared. Dry-ice squint, raw-pork complexion.

“Morning,” I said. “What’s all the hubbub?”

He peered at me, flicked, and said, “Some singer.” His tone of voice said he placed that one rung above pimp on the occupational ladder.

“Which one?”

“Who knows?” He took a drag. “First they force themselves on us; then they bring in their jungle music.”

He gave me a challenging look. I walked around him and crossed the street. His cigarette flew by me, landed on the macadam, throwing off sparks.

The fence around the schoolyard was laced with orange and silver streamers, hung so densely I couldn’t see inside. The gate was locked. A school policeman was at the front door to the school building, along with a husky black man with Rasta dreadlocks and a patchy, blemishlike beard. The black man wore white sweat pants and an orange T-shirt that said THE CHILLER TOUR! MEGA-PLATINUM! in metallic letters. He held a clipboard in one hand, a set of gold-plated keys in the other. As I got closer, the school cop retreated.

Dreadlocks said, “Name.”

“Dr. Delaware. Alex Delaware. I work at the school.”

He looked at the clipboard, ran his finger down a page. “How do you spell thot, mon?” His enunciation was precise.

I told him. He turned a page and his brows compressed, pulling forward several twists of hair. “Delaware. As in the state?”

“Exactly.”

“Sorry, mon, I don’t see anything like thot.”

Before I could reply, the door swung open. Linda stormed out. She’d changed into a cheerful-looking yellow dress but didn’t look happy.

“Stop hassling this man!”

The school cop and Dread turned to stare at her. She came down the steps, took my arm, pulled me past them. Dread said, “Mo’om-”

She held up a warning finger. “Uh-uh, don’t say a word! This man works here. He’s a famous doctor! He has a job to do and you’re getting in the way!”

Dread pulled at a lock and grinned. “Sorry, mo’om. I was just looking for his name- no offense intended.”

“No offense?! I gave your people his name! They promised me there’d be no hassle!”

Dread smiled again and shrugged. “Sorry.”

“What the heck do you think this is anyway? Some disco club?” She glared at the school cop: “And what about you! What the heck are you here for- just here to keep him company?”

Before either of them could answer, we were inside. She slammed the door behind us.

“Jesus! I just knew that was going to happen!” She was still gripping my arm as we speed-walked down the corridor.

I said, “What’s going on?”

“DeJon Jonson is what’s going on. He’s chosen to honor us with a personal appearance. For the sake of the poor victimized children.”

“The Chiller himself?”

“In all his spangled glory. And his entourage. Groupies, roadies, press agents, an army of bodyguards- clones of Mr. Reggae out there. And a whole bunch of unclassifieds who look as if they should be shipped off to drug rehab. Not to mention every TV, radio, and newspaper hack in town and a dozen pencil-pushers from the Board who haven’t seen the inside of a schoolyard since Eisenhower.”

She stopped, straightened her dress, patted her hair. “And of course, our dear Councilman Latch- it was he who arranged the whole thing.”

“Latch?”

She nodded. “Wifey-poo’s show biz connections, no doubt. She’s here, too, patting the kids’ heads and wearing a rock that could pay for all our school lunches for a year.”

“Diamonds on a revolutionary?”

“California revolutionary. What my dad used to call Cadillac Commies. Lord save me from Monday morning surprises.”

“No one told you?”

“Nope.”

“So much for his hearing me.”

“What’s that?”

“Latch. The time he dropped in to play his harmonica. I talked to him about keeping things predictable. He told me he’d heard me- I’d given him food for thought.”

“Oh, he heard it all right. He just chose to disregard it.”

“When did you actually find out?”

We resumed walking. She said, “One of the pencil-pushers left a message on my machine last night at ten. I had the poor manners to be out with you, didn’t pick up until this morning. Which gave me a heck of a lot of time to prepare, right? I managed to get to Latch just a while ago, told him this could be disruptive. He didn’t process that at all, said getting a star of DeJon’s caliber wasn’t something that came up every day; this was a coup for the kids.”

I said, “Coup for him. Tape a few thousand feet of happy-face video for the next campaign.”

She made a taut, throaty sound, like a mama bobcat warning hunters away from the lair. “You know, what gets me the most is that Sunday call from downtown. That’s got to be a historical first. Ordinarily I can’t even get them to take a message during working hours. Ordering textbooks, begging for funds for field trips- everything takes forever. Molasses Standard Time. But for this, they can move like rockets.”

I said, “Rock and roll never dies. You even got your guard back.”

She gave a disgusted look. “You should see the production they’ve put together. Crew from the record company arrived at seven, along with carpenters from the district. They set up a big stage out on the yard in one hour flat. P.A. system, all those streamers, the works. They even printed up a schedule- do you believe that! Orange print on silver satin paper, must have cost a fortune. Everything laid out by the minute: Latch makes a speech; then DeJon does his thing, throws paper flowers at the kids, and is whisked off to a waiting limo. It actually says that-Whisked Off. To Waiting Limo. The whole darned thing gets filmed for the evening news and probably used on DeJon’s next rock video. His flunkies came into the classrooms and distributed release forms for the kids to take home.”

I said, “Mega-platinum and the Nobel Peace Prize too. With all this excitement, what’s the status of the parent group?”

“The parents are all here- though I had a heck of a time getting Jonson’s yahoos to understand they needed to be let through without a body search. I had to watch the door all morning. ’Course, once Latch’s people realized who they were, they laid out the red carpet- snapped their pictures with Latch, gave them front-row seats for the show.”

“How’d the mothers react to that?”

“Confused, at first. But they got into it pretty quickly- celebrities for an hour. Whether they’ll be in a receptive state for talking about problems, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

I smiled. “Not receptive even for a famous doctor?”

She colored. “Hey, to me, you’re famous. The kind of fame that matters.”

We reached her office. As she unlocked it, she said, “Alex, I know it’s the same old question, but what’s the psychological effect of something like this on the kids?”

“Let’s hope they’ll have some fun, get back to their routine in a day or so, and move on. The main risk you run is that they’ll get so overstimulated that they experience a case of the morning-after blues once the hoopla dies down. I used to see it a lot when I worked at the hospital. Celebrities would blow in for photo-op visits with poor little sick kids, then disappear just as suddenly, and the kids would be left with their pain and disease and a sudden silence on the wards that was really… harsh. It was due to the shift in arousal- decompression. I started to think of it as the psychological bends.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “We see the same kind of thing after an all-day field trip. They’re supposed to be having fun but they fall apart.”

“Exactly,” I said. “It’s why so many birthday parties end up in tears. Another thing to consider is that all this excitement and strangers- politicians, the press- could cause them to remember the last time things got so excited around here.”

“The sniping? Oh, boy.”

“Some of them may flash back to it, get anxious all over.”

“Terrific,” she said. “What do I do?”

“Keep an eye out for anxiety reactions- especially among the younger ones. When things quiet down, try to get them back to a routine. Maintain discipline but be flexible. They may need to talk about the concert, talk out the excitement- and any fear they’re experiencing. If any persistent reactions develop, you know where to find me.”

“You’re becoming a fixture here, Doc.”

I smiled. “Ulterior motives.”

She smiled back, but looked low.

“What is it?” I said.

“I’m supposed to be in charge, but I feel… irrelevant.”

“This is a one-shot deal, Linda. By tomorrow you’ll be back in control. But yeah, it stinks. They should have told you.”

She gave another sad smile. “Thanks for the support.”

“Ulterior motives.”

This time her smile was untarnished.

She took my hand and led me inside the office, locked the door behind us, threw her arms around me, and kissed me hard and long.

“There,” she said. “My own contribution to overstimulation.”

“Acknowledged,” I said, catching my breath. “And appreciated.”

She kissed me again. We went into her inner office. The music from the schoolyard pounded through the walls.

“Here’s the list of parents,” she said, handing me a sheet of paper.

I took it. The music stopped. An amplified, reverberating voice took its place.

She said, “Let the games begin.”

We stood at the back of the yard, looking out over hundreds of heads, watching Gordon Latch.

He stood behind a lectern at the center of the stage, brandishing his harmonica. The lectern was polished walnut embossed with the city seal. The stage was heavy lumber, elevated and backed with a thirty-foot wall of black silk that looked like a patch on the clear blue eye of the sky. Lots of sound equipment but no instruments. No musicians either. Just the press, crowding around on all sides, filming, talking into tape recorders, jotting. And a small army of hulking types in orange T-shirts patrolling with walkie-talkies. Some of the Beef Brigade stood on stage, others down at spectator level. From the way they glared and scanned the crowd, they could have been guarding the crown jewels.

Latch grinned and waved, puffed a couple of high notes into the mike, and said something about celebrating life. His words echoed across the schoolyard and died somewhere out on the spotless streets of Ocean Heights. A row of ten folding chairs had been set up to the left of the podium. Eight of them were occupied by middle-aged men and women in business suits. Except for the sound gear and the Orange Men lurking behind them, it could have been a middle-management seminar.

Sitting in the two seats closest to the podium were Bud Ahlward, in the same brown suit he’d worn the day he’d shot Holly Burden, and a thin, attractive woman with taffy-colored wedge-cut hair, a deeply tanned face, and a jawline so tight it looked like a seam.

Mrs. Latch. The former Miranda Brundage. Looking at her attire reminded me the sixties were ancient history. Or maybe they’d never happened at all. She had on a two-piece black leather outfit with padded shoulders and gold lamé appliqué, diamond earrings, and the rock Linda had mentioned- a solitaire on a chain that, even at this distance, reflected enough light to brighten a ballroom. Her legs were well shaped, sheathed in gray silk, crossed at the ankles, her feet encased in spike-heel thonged affairs that had to be handmade Italian. She alternated between gazing out at the audience and looking up at her husband.

Even at this distance she looked bored, almost defiantly jaded. I thought I remembered that she’d once wanted to be an actress. Either she had no talent or wasn’t bothering to fake it.

Latch held forth in echoplex eloquence:

“… so I told DeJon [jon… jon… jon] you’re someone everyone looks up to [to… to… to]. Your message is positive, a message for today, and the kids at Hale need you!”

Applause line.

Latch stopped and waited.

The kids didn’t get it, but the suits and the orange gorillas did. The sound of twenty pairs of hands clapping was feeble.

Latch beamed as if it had been an ovation at the National Convention, removed his welfare glasses, and loosened his tie. His wife’s affection for high style hadn’t rubbed off: He had on a rumpled tan corduroy suit, blue chambray shirt, and navy knit tie.

“DeJon said yes!” Up-raised fist.

“The school board said yes!” Punching air.

“So we put it together for you!” Both hands raised. Dual victory V’s.

“… So here he is, boys and girls of all ages: the Chiller, the ultimate Crowd-Thriller, DeJo-on Jonson!”

Power chords tumbled out of the speakers like avalanche boulders: rumbling, deafening, threatening, finally picking up melodic content and terminating as a sustaining organ tone- a fugue performed by an E. Power Biggs on acid. A hailstorm of guitar chords shattered the silence. Thunderous drums. Hissing cymbals. The suits on stage looked stricken but kept their places. The orange T-shirts marched toward them and touched the backs of their chairs. As if choreographed, the bureaucrats in the suits got up and filed off the stage. Miranda Latch and Ahlward hung back, she applauding with aerobic fervor that seemed disconnected to the ennui in her eyes.

Latch left the podium and took her hand. Waving to the audience, the two of them walked off the stage. Ahlward trailed, looking bored, one hand inside his jacket.

The three of them took seats in the front row, amid a group of plainly dressed women- my group. The mothers were all applauding. I couldn’t see their faces.

The music got louder. Linda grimaced.

I said, “One sec,” and made my way toward the front of the assembly, weaving past news crews and camera gear.

Finally I got close enough to see. Hundreds of faces. Some blank, some puzzled, some burnished with excitement. I glanced over at the front row. The mothers looked intimidated but not unhappy. Instant celebrity.

Latch noticed me. Smiled and continued snapping his fingers in time with the beat. Bud Ahlward followed his boss’s glance, let his eyes settle on me, then looked away. Miranda was snapping her fingers too. For all the fun she was having it might have been physical therapy.

I returned my attention to the kids. The volume of the music continued to climb. I saw one little girl- a first grader- slap her hands over her ears.

I moved forward to get a better look. The little girl’s eyes were squeezed shut and her mouth was trembling. A blast from the speakers and she burst into an open-mouthed wail rendered silent by the din. No one noticed. All eyes, including those of her teacher, were fixed upon the stage.

I went back to Linda and managed, with gestures and shouts in her ear, to communicate what was happening. She looked over at the little girl, who was crying harder. Then she nudged me and pointed. A couple of other kids in the lower grades were looking unsteady, holding their ears too. More tears.

Linda gave a furious look and stomped forward, elbowing cameramen and orange bruisers until she reached the little girl’s teacher. She talked behind her hand, pointed discreetly. The teacher’s mouth formed an O. Looking chastened, he turned his attention back to his class.

I counted about six or seven children crying by now, four of them kids I recognized easily because they were in the high-risk group. Linda saw them too. She went over to each of them, bending low, patting heads, talking in their ears. Taking their hands and offering them the choice of leaving.

Four headshakes, three nods. She removed the nodders from the group, herded them past the press clutch, back into the school building.

I followed her. It took me a while to get into the building. Linda was halfway down the main corridor, sitting on the floor in a circle with the three children. Smiling, talking, holding a hand puppet and making it talk in a high-pitched voice. The children were smiling. No distress that I could see.

I took a few steps forward. She looked up.

“Look, kids, it’s Dr. Delaware.”

“Hi,” I said.

Shy waves.

“Anything you guys want to ask Dr. Delaware”

Silence.

“Looks like everything’s under control, Dr. Delaware?”

I said, “Great, Dr. Overstreet,” and went back outside.

Though the music was louder, the stage was uninhabited. Not a musician in sight, not even a synthesizer wizard. I realized this was going to be a lip-sync exhibition. Prefab passion.

Nothing happened for several seconds. Then what appeared to be a huge orange flame burned its way through the black backdrop. Gasps from the audience. As the flame got closer, it turned into an oversized sheet of heavy satin, trailing along the stage. Beneath the satin was movement- a swelling and pulsating as the sheet shimmered forward. Like a gag horse, minus head or tail. Cheap trick, but eerie.

The sheet bumped and grinded its way center stage. Organ crescendo, cymbal crash, and the sheet dropped, revealing six more huge men, bare-chested and wearing orange tights and silver jackboots. Three blacks, on the left, scowling under broom-bristles of straightened yellow hair. On the right, a trio of Nordic types in royal-blue Afros.

The six of them spread their legs and assumed wrist-gripping iron-pumper poses. Between them appeared a very tall, very skinny man in his mid-twenties, with skin the color of India ink, Asian eyes, and orange Jheri-curled past-the-shoulders hair that looked as if it had been braised with axle grease. Wide shoulders, the hips of a prepubescent boy, rubbery limbs, a Modigliani neck, and the terminal-illness cheekbones of a Vogue model.

He wore electric-blue goggles in tiger-hide plastic frames that were wider than his face, a tight silver silk jumpsuit embroidered with orange thread and festooned with costume sapphires in baroque patterns. His hands were encased in fingerless blue satin weight-lifter’s gloves; his feet shod in silver high-tops with orange laces.

He snapped his fingers. The musclemen retreated, satin sheet in hand.

The music picked up pace. Jonson pranced, knees high like a drum majorette, did a Nijinsky leap, shot off a flurry of tap-dance pyrotechnics, and ended with a split that transformed him into an inverted silver T and made my groin hurt vicariously.

Then, sudden quiet topped by a high-pitched hum from the speakers. A few of the older kids were out of their seats, bouncing and clapping and calling out, “DeJon! DeJon! Do ‘Chiller’! ‘Chiller’! DeJon! DeJon!”

The orange-haired man scissored himself upright and smiled feverishly. Went pigeon-toed and knock-kneed, shimmied, squatted, did a backwards double somersault followed by a headstand and some rapid hand-walking, then jumped back to his feet, flexed each bicep, and bared his teeth.

The music resumed: a modified reggae beat supercharged by a string-popping funk riff.

His teeth parted and his mouth opened wide enough for a tonsil display. A very whispery tenor oozed out of the speakers.

When the night moves in,

And creepies crawl,

And thingies creep,

Over castle walls,

Gasp. Hand to mouth. Look of exaggerated fear.

That’s when I’m real.

That’s when I live.

I’m your party man,

Got so much to give.

Cause I’m a chiller. Love your chiller.

Baby I’m your chiller. Got to love your chiller.

Sweet kind of chiller. Got to kiss your chiller.

Seductive leer. Change of tempo to a manic two-four almost drowned out by shouts and applause. Jonson belly-danced, jumped back, raced forward, skidded to a stop at the edge of the stage, rolled his eyes. When he lip-synced again, his whisper had turned into a raspy baritone:

And when the snakes of wrath

Meet the toads of fire,

And scorpions waltz

Across the pyre,

That’s when I breathe.

That makes me whole.

I’m here to love

Your mortal soul.

Cause I’m a chiller. Love your chiller…

Charming.

I searched for signs of anxiety among the children. Many of them were rocking and bopping, singing along, shouting out Jonson’s name. Taking it the way it was meant to be taken- as a sound-wave gestalt, the lyrics irrelevant. It went on for another minute. Then a rain of orange and silver flowers appeared out of nowhere, butterfly-delicate. The musclemen reappeared with the orange sheet and Jonson was whisked offstage. The whole thing had taken less than two minutes.

Latch got back onstage and mouthed inaudible thank-yous over the cheers. The press surged past him, taking off in the direction of the sheet. Latch stood there, abandoned, and I saw something- a spoiled, peevish look- creep onto his face. Just for a second. Then it was gone and he was grinning again and waving, his wife and Ahlward by his side.

Things had gotten wild out in the cheap seats. The kids were pelting each other with flowers; teachers struggled to line them up. I looked back at the front row and saw my mothers standing alone, confused. The Latches and Ahlward stood nearby, surrounded by young-scrubbeds like the ones I’d seen the day of the sniping. Lots of congratulations from the troops. Latch getting what he needed, soaking it up while maintaining a TV face. No one made any attempt to talk to the mothers.

I started making my way over, waiting for whole classes to pass, getting my insteps trampled by tiny feet. Camera crews were pulling up cable, creating tripwires, and I had to watch where I stepped. When I was a few feet away, Latch saw me, grinned, and waved. His wife waved too; Pavlov would have given her an A. Ahlward remained stolid, one hand in his jacket.

Latch said something to him. The redheaded man walked over to me and said, “Dr. Delaware, the councilman would like to speak with you.”

“Gee whiz,” I said.

If he heard me he didn’t let on.