Four A. M. and the phone was ringing. Ringing. Dan flopped across the waterbed and picked it up before the answering machine could cut in on him.
Someone mumbled a long string of words at him. The only one that stuck was "FBI."
"FBI?" he murmured. He lay on his back with his eyes closed tightly, willing himself not to wake up completely, because he still had an hour until he had to get up for work.
More mumbling. He gathered that the FBI had, with assistance, picked up three men for questioning. He thanked the caller, hung up the phone, and went immediately back to sleep.
The alarm went off at five. He sat up, for a moment completely disoriented.
"Did someone call me?" he asked the room.
The room certainly knew but didn't answer.
He got up and got ready for work, sure that he'd gotten a phone call in the middle of the night, but completely unable to imagine what it might have been about. He had the nagging feeling that it had been important. He didn't know why.
"I might have dreamed it," he muttered. He had annoying dreams like that. Dreaming that he was getting up and getting ready for work, driving there, doing the show—then having the alarm go off and finding out that it didn't count, and that he had to do it all again. Or dreaming that he got up to go to the bathroom, was standing in front of the toilet taking a leak, not feeling any better for having done it, and waking up when he couldn't stop to discover that he was mere seconds away from a complete bladder failure. He always felt cheated by those dreams. He thought if he had to go through the annoyance, it ought to count for something.
Five A. M. was too early to call friends and family to see if they'd called him.
He passed Puck on the couch, and Fetch curled in a little ball by the door. Neither moved as he went by. He dropped a candy bar beside the imp—Fetch had been spending time cleaning up the house at night, and he didn't think the little monster ever got a thank you from Puck. He didn't bother to wake them. Even if either of them knew that the phone had rung, they wouldn't have known who called. Puck had his own schedule, anyway, and maintained his own list of obligations, meetings, promotions and autographings. He might have a full day planned. He might need his sleep.
He and Dan shared the house, but even that wouldn't be for much longer. The elegant Deerfield Crossing apartment complex had offered the devil a two-bedroom furnished apartment at the end of the month, rent free, in exchange for his doing major promotional work for them. So Dan only had another half month of waking up in the middle of the night to the serenading of the Partridge Family, the Jackson Five, and Abba.
When he got to work, he still hadn't remembered who had called, and he was beginning to be fairly certain that he'd dreamed the entire incident; then, however, Sandy gave him two thumbs up through the glass as he walked into the lobby, and when he gave her a puzzled look and a shrug and mouthed the word "What?" she gave him a look of sheer disbelief.
He stepped into the studio, she finished announcing her last set, and closed the mike.
"What do you mean, 'What?' you moron. I thought the fact that they caught them so fast would have had you jumping up and down for joy."
Something clicked into place. "FBI," he said.
"Ri-i-i-i-i-i-i-ght." Still with the look that said, Dan Cooley, you came to work without your brain again.
"Yeah. I got a phone call in the middle of the night. But I was asleep. I went back to sleep after the call, and . . ." He shrugged. "To be honest with you, Sandy, I didn't remember anything when I woke up except that either the phone had rung or I dreamed that it did."
"Shit. Doesn't the detachable model give you problems sometimes?"
Dan knew she referred to his mind; he didn't bother to ask, nor did he dignify her comment with a response. Instead, he asked, "How did they get them?"
"According to the AP wire story, one of them got caught trying to dump a bunch of letters and another letter bomb in the mail—all of them addressed to you. The box he used for the letter bomb wouldn't fit into the slot, and a police officer who happened to be driving by stopped because he was making such a ruckus, saw what he had, and took him in." Sandy grinned. "He decided if he was going down, he wasn't going to do it alone. He ratted on both the other guys who were in on it with him."
"Three guys. I thought from all the letters, there had to be more than that."
"Evidently not." Sandy passed him the chair. "Incidentally," she said, "expect a lot of ugly phone calls."
Dan said, "Really? Those guys had supporters even after they killed that woman?"
Sandy shook her head vehemently. "Wrong kind of ugly. They've been calling here since the first AP story went out over the news demanding that we lynch the guy."
"You and me?"
Sandy rolled her eyes. "Christ, no. You did leave without your brain this morning. No. The state. North Carolina. They're calling in from all over the country."
"They are?"
"Lines have been swamped all night long. You're everybody's hero."
She was right.
"Gunga Dan, you're on the air."
"Hi. I'm calling from Denver, Colorado," a cheerful man said, "and I just wanted to say that anyone who doesn't think you're doing a great job can go to Hell."
Dan winced. "Thanks for your support—but we still believe in freedom of thought and speech here in North Carolina. " "Gunga Dan, go ahead."
"I'm calling from Valdosta, Georgia, your Hell away from home . . ."
"I think you mean your home away from Hell."
"Just proves you never lived here."
" 'You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy . . . '" Dan said, mimicking Alec Guinness's voice and quoting from Star Wars.
The caller laughed. "Maybe you have lived here. Anyway, I wanted to say that there are worse things in the world than devils in your neighborhood. Religious prejudice, willful ignorance, racism, closed-mindedness and intolerance all come immediately to mind."
"If you'd added halitosis and farting in elevators, you would have listed the seven deadly sins. " "Gunga Dan—talk to me."
"I love you, Gunga Dan. I want to have your baby."
"She might object to being carted around by a stranger," he said. "You're on the air. Say something interesting."
"I think we ought to hang those three guys from the tallest tree in the state."
Dan sighed. "Satan is recruiting on the other side of town. If you want to go to Hell, call him. " "Gunga Dan . . ."
And so it went. He didn't bother to play music. He announced the call letters as often as he had to, he handed off to Marilyn every hour on the hour so she could do the real news, he mocked the murderous thugs and made them look like idiots on the air, and tried to make the people who weren't out for blood look smart and funny. Subtle reinforcement—vigilantes are bad, reasonable people are good, he said in a thousand jokes and wisecracks and sly digs. Maybe it would matter. Maybe.
When his shift finally ended, he thought he would have to drag himself home a piece at a time, because he was too tired to move his body all at once.
He stepped out into a June oven to find Puck leaning on the station car waiting for him.
"I need your help," Puck said. "Can we talk?"
"Sure." Dan frowned. "But why in the world would you wait out here? It's nice and cool inside . . ." He flushed. "Right. This probably still seems nice and cool to you."
"I have to admit I don't have a lot of sympathy for you folks who go around all the time complaining about the temperature."
"I guess not." He shrugged and grinned. "However, if you want to talk to me, I'd rather do it in air conditioning."
Puck waved to his car. "I'll drive. Or we can just sit in the parking lot."
"Parking lot's fine."
They got in and Puck started the car and the air conditioner. The two of them sat, waiting.
"So what do you want to talk about?" Dan finally asked. "What kind of help do you need?"
"A favor."
"You saved my life," Dan said. "I certainly think I can do you a favor."
"You're making too much of that," Puck said. "I just did what I had to do."
"I'd have been dead if you hadn't done it. What do you need?"
Puck winced. "It's major."
"How major was saving my life?"
The devil sighed deeply. "Meg and I talked to a representative of Wilderness Forever, Inc., yesterday."
"On a Sunday?"
"It was a secret meeting. No one was supposed to know about it. But we ironed out most of the problems that stand between the Hellraised and that piece of property."
"Good."
"I see a major problem in the future, however."
"Which is?"
The devil turned and studied him. "The people buying the land from the wilderness people and selling it to the Hellraised are . . . um . . ." He chuckled softly. "Let me put it this way. They'd sell their own grandmothers to Lucifer if they could turn a buck on the deal, and many of their previous dealings prove this. When they sell us the land and we try to get our permits to build on it, people are going to know who they are. Their . . . ah . . . mercenary and somewhat callous record will be on public display, and people will equate them with us. We're going to face a lot of resistance unless someone who has gained the respect of the people of North Carolina stands up for us and says he supports the Hellraised. If you say you think the project will be good for the state, people will support it."
Dan nodded. "I can see that. I think the project will be good for the state." He smiled. "But, Puck, I don't support the Hellraised. I support the right of the Hellraised to seek second chances for themselves and to find redemption. That's a long way from supporting Hell's agenda."
The devil nodded. "Yes, yes . . . I misspoke. I know how you stand on the issues—I just was a bit careless in my wording."
"It happens. But you want me to say that I'm in favor of seeing Devil's Point built? That I think it will be good for the economy, and that it will give the Hellraised employment that isn't directed entirely at temptation?"
"If you would. I honestly think you are the one man in the state who could smooth the way for us to get Devil's Point off the planning table and into production."
Dan rested a hand on Puck's shoulder. "You saved my life. I owe you a favor. And I'll be more than happy to tell people what I think about the project. You aren't asking me to lie, after all."
"No." Puck smiled. "No. I'm not. I wouldn't do that—it would cost me our friendship, and I know it."