Hustling through the rain, Jerry Connor put his duffel bag in the Caddy's big trunk and got in the back seat. When they hit the Ventura Freeway and he still hadn't noticed the new ghost, Ole mentioned it to him, then said nothing more.
The Icelander seemed distracted now, as if driving on automatic. He'd intended to continue on the Ventura to the 210 freeway, but inadvertently got into a wrong lane and ended up on the Hollywood Freeway instead. He didn't even notice what he'd done for half a mile. But the Hollywood would do; he'd just have to put up with the heavy traffic inbound to downtown L.A.
They hadn't gone many miles when the first incident occurred. Chased by a police car, a Mercedes sped the wrong way onto the Vermont Avenue off-ramp. Two off-bound cars took the guard rail with squalling horns as the Mercedes gunned down the ramp toward them, headed insanely north toward the southbound traffic. Someone in the Mercedes was shooting at the police cruiser. On the freeway, Ole swerved into a momentary opening to his left.
The truck that had been behind him wasn't as lucky; the Mercedes crashed into it and exploded in flames. The patrol car swerved off the ramp and up the muddy, ivy-grown bank, stalled, and rolled sideways down into the flaming shambles. Cars were skidding on the rain-wet pavement, into or around the fire or into each other, and Jerry's ears were filled with the impacts and tearing of metal as he stared in horror out the back window. Then they were through the underpass, and the disaster was out of sight behind them.
Ole wasn't visibly affected. Carol still covered her face with her hands, while Jerry discovered he'd been holding his breath, but the Icelander drove calmly, intently on.
On I-10 the traffic was lighter and faster, and things were uneventful all the way to Pomona. There a pickup just ahead of them was tooling along with a load of office furniture at about sixty miles an hour when its tailgate fell open. A file cabinet tipped out, hitting the pavement about fifty feet in front of the Caddy. Ole yanked to the right, barely avoiding it, but the pickup swerved right, too, heading for the shoulder as another cabinet, strapped to a dolly, fell off. A large desk, standing on end, toppled and followed the cabinet. Ole swerved left, and the car behind him, its driver less quick, smashed into the second file cabinet while the desk bounced and tried to go through the windshield.
After that—incredibly, considering the destruction and carnage—Ole seemed positively cheerful, apparently because they seemed to be leading charmed lives. He even began whistling something neither Jerry nor Carol had heard before, something with a rollicking old-country ethnic sound to it.
Sixty miles later, just short of Banning, the rain stopped. Between Thousand Palms and Indio, clouds gave way to sunshine.
At Indio they stopped to eat.
"Ole," said Carol when they'd sat down in a booth, "do you think we're going to make it?"
Ole grinned at her. "V'y not? Ve come a hundred and sixty miles all right, in spite of crazy people and strange tailgate latches. Ve going to get there yust fine."
"Leaving a trail of wreckage and bodies all the way," she said with a shudder.
"Maybe it hasn't given us its best shot," Jerry suggested. "It hasn't thrown the Caddy around yet like it did the other night."
Ole's blue eyes glittered. "It ain't the same thing that's after us," he said.
"It's not?"
"It sure don't feel like it. Not to me, anyvay. Give a look; does it feel the same to you?"
It didn't, Jerry decided. He'd just taken for granted that it was the same. But everything that had happened today seemed entirely of this world and time, not some other; it had felt physical, not sorcerous—not directly sorcerous, anyway.
A waitress interrupted them with menus, and they ordered on the spot. When she'd gone, Ole looked at the young sergeant and the pretty administrator and grinned again.
"Ve ain't doing too bad. Ve handled v'at ve needed to today, and the other night v'en ve needed help, ve got it. I got the feeling that v'en ve get to that ranch house, there's going to be a regular team of us. Ve going to be hard to beat then."
Jerry grunted. He knew he was going to sound like a nerd, but there was something he needed to say. "I hope the rest of the team is worth more than I am. As a psychic, I don't amount to much; I don't shoot worth a damn left-handed; I can't drive with this broken arm... I can't even sign a check with a signature my bank would recognize!"
"Um," said Ole soberly, "maybe ve should have a pity party. Ve could sing three verses of poor, poor thing for you. But I ain't going to; you'd probably break my head vith your cast." He turned to Carol. "How you doing, kiddo?"
"Not so badly now. We did come through the morning all right, didn't we? Even if some other people didn't."
"Do you think the worst is past, then?" Jerry asked.
Ole shook his head. "Could be. I got no idea. But ve done yust fine so far. And ve can handle vorse than v'at ve seen, if we have to."
The waitress arrived with coffee. When she'd gone, Ole looked at the younger two. "Look," he said, "I know this is heavy stuff for you. It is for me, too, and I been into strange stuff since before you were born. But look at it like this: If things are as bad as Madame Tanya says, ve might as vell take a run at it. And if it ain't like that, then ve got a really vild vacation going here. I think you're both the right partners for me, even if you don't, but I can't prove it to you. That's yust how it feels."
He looked pointedly at Carol. "And remember, you're the vun v'at brought me in on this. And you," he said, turning his eyes to Jerry, "are the vun that got us involved vith the tollgate and the surprise yenerator. You guys picked me to vork vith you, probably for good reasons you don't even know yet. V'ich is fine; life's been more interesting these last couple of days than it's been for a long time. And yust now I'm feeling optimistic.
"Don't take me serious if it don't sound reasonable to you," he added. "This is yust a psychic talking. But for v'at it's vorth, I got a hell of a good batting average."
Jerry decided to leave it at that. "Do you have any idea yet how we're going to find that adobe ranch house we're looking for?"
"I know how ve're going to start. I'm going to drive like a sightseer vith all the time in the vorld. Anytime I get a notion to, I'll take a turn—left, right, or double back. And if either of you gets a hunch, tell me." Ole paused. "I'll make you a bet: I bet ve eat supper in that ranch house tomorrow night."
Jerry smiled ruefully at him, then grinned. "What the hell," he said, "this is a lot better than watching television. And I get to spend a lot of time with Carol." He paused and looked around. "And you too, Leo. Or..." He stopped, confused. "His name is Lefty; how come I called him... Hey! Is that right? Is the new ghost named Leo?" he asked excitedly, and the chills hit him again.
He'd spoken loudly enough that a truck driver and an elderly couple looked over at him.
"You got it," Ole answered, grinning widely. "Leo's his name—Leo Hochman. By golly, you surprised me." He turned to Carol. "Call the caterer and tell her ve're changing the pity party to a celebration. Our novice psychic yust graduated from first grade vith honors!"
They spent the night in the nearly nonexistent village of Greasewood, Arizona, after hours on mostly secondary and lesser roads, some of them gravel. No one had felt the faintest inspiration, not even, apparently, the ghosts.
Before they'd retired to their separate motel cabins, Jerry and Carol had strolled along the desert road beneath the kind of night sky that L.A. hadn't seen for a century. Carol repeated for him Ole's thoughts about a curtain or shield, and a person being partly on one side and partly on the other. Jerry found it interesting but not particularly convincing. There seemed no point to such an arrangement.
Afterward, in Jerry's cabin, Ole treated the broken arm again with the laying on of hands. This time the waves of sensation were slight, but when Sigurdsson was done, the ache was entirely gone for the time being.
It was breaking day when they left Greasewood, with a few stars still gleaming in the clear desert dawn, and an unaccustomed chill in the air. For forty miles they saw no further building and no paved crossroad. Then they crossed another blacktop, on which an empty cattle truck approached. The truck turned left onto their road and followed them.
Jerry felt ill at ease about the truck. Riding in the back seat, he turned and watched it; it was closing on them. He wondered whether to mention it to Ole, then saw the Icelander watching it in the rearview mirror. It wasn't as if it threatened them, Jerry thought. But it did, he felt, have something to do with them.
The blacktop was narrow and irregular, with rough, unpaved shoulders. The desert surface here was rolling—the vaguely eroded pediment of low ragged mountains close by to the north. The truck driver clearly wanted to pass, and remarkably, Ole slowed to accommodate him, crowding the unpaved shoulder with his outside wheels. The truck accelerated and passed them, jouncing on the bad pavement. When it was safely past, they saw the driver's plaid-sleeved arm waving his thanks.
"How fast is he going?" Jerry asked.
"Probably sixty-five," said Ole. "Fast for a road like this vun. I guess these cowboys drive trucks like they vas race horses."
Shortly, it disappeared over a small rise ahead of them, and a minute later Ole slowed abruptly, hitting his brakes. Jerry had felt something, too. When they topped a second rise, they saw the truck on its side in the ditch a hundred yards ahead. Nearer, in and by the road, lay a cow and two calves, wiped out; blood and entrails smeared the pavement.
Ole steered through the carnage and pulled off on the shoulder across from the truck. Its driver, a young man, was dead. Apparently the first cow he'd hit had been thrown high enough into the air that it had come down on top of the cab, caving it in and killing him. This cow lay in the ditch not far behind the truck.
Ole stood quietly regarding the dead man for more than a minute—communicating with him, Jerry realized, doing for the man's spirit what he had done for Carol and himself, and Lefty and Leo.
After that they drove on to the nearest village and reported the accident. When they'd eaten, they went on, sober and untalkative. The low mountains that had flanked them for miles fell astern. Their next change of road was unexpectedly abrupt. They saw the crossroad coming, marked by an unobtrusive sign. The sign meant nothing to any of them as they passed it, but suddenly Ole braked, stopped, backed up to it some sixty or seventy yards, and turned right.
"What is it?" Jerry asked. "Did you get something?"
"Nothing clear or strong," Ole answered, then said no more. Some ten miles farther a dirt road led off to their left, marked by a mailbox, and a sign which read "Pumphandle Ranch 14 mi." Ole hesitated, slowing, then passed it and went on. Roundbacked mountains grew ahead of them, also on their left, and some miles farther they passed another dirt road. Its sign held only a cattle brand and the notation, "9 miles."
Jerry wondered what cattle found to eat here. The dominant vegetation was teddy-bear cholla—viciously spined cactuses resembling five-foot-tall trees—and the multi-stemmed, thorny, wide-splayed ocotillo. Scattered saguaros stood tall above them, the trademark of the Sonoran Desert. Here even the plants were clawed or fanged, and that which crawled was likely to be venomous.
Soon they were paralleling the roundbacked mountains, now about three miles away on the left. They all saw the next dirt road at the same time, innocent of any marker save a mailbox, but they knew, each of them, that it was theirs—knew before they saw the name. Ole slowed, stopped. The hand-lettering on the large mailbox announced: VIC & TORY MERLIN. Jerry stared, then groaned.
"The triumphant sorcerer," he said. "Victory Merlin."
"Good grief! No!" said Carol. "I don't know much about Mr. McBee, but the last thing I expected from him was a pun! Especially one of the worst I ever heard!"