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Chapter 4

Pendergast stopped at Alice Pearl’s rented blue Camry only long enough to pick up his tasteful shoulder bag and a white lab jacket that would make him highly visible under the street lights; then headed for the parking garage stairwell. He pitter-patted silently down the stairs and came out on the street side of the garage. He headed down the sidewalk, walking a little fast, as befitted a woman walking alone at night, trying to get somewhere as quickly and safely as possible. He stooped a little to disguise his height, and let his posture assume that of the perfect victim who wouldn’t fight back. He moved along in a nervous scurry and kept his eyes open for the Slasher, hoping to become his next victim. Though the man had attacked once already tonight, he had been thwarted, so there was good reason to believe he might be looking for fresh prey.

Though scurrying, Pendergast tried to let his hips sway a little more, let his beautiful red hair swing a little more saucily. A man walked out from between two cars in a parking lot ahead of him and turned away, walking fast. He seemed to be wearing a light topcoat and a baseball cap, but that meant nothing—he could have the cape hidden under the coat, the mask on his head under the cap. Alice Pearl immediately began singing. “You know that we are liv-ing in a material world, and I am a material girl...”

The man glanced back and walked on. Drat. Pendergast wished he’d brought a skirt to put on after his shift. He thought a skirt might be more enticing. He was also mindful of the handprints on his derriere and would’ve never gone out (or stayed in) looking like that, in drag or not. But changing in front of Jo Bright had not been well advised, so here he was, trying to attract a maniac wearing dirty scrubs. Of course dirty scrubs might be more enticing to the maniac than clean scrubs...depending on what the stain was...some maniacs did have a highly refined olfactory sense...and Pendergast’s own highly refined olfactory sense was trying to tell him what the stain was, though he chose to ignore it...but all that was neither here nor there now; he would have to make do with what he had to work with, and try to keep his mind on what he was doing, despite the padded underwire bra digging into his left armpit and the feeling that his exquisitely rounded foam tush had slipped a notch to the right. He reached back and surreptitiously straightened his ass.

A car veered to the curb beside the man ahead of him and the man got in and embraced and kissed the driver, who was also male. Pendergast sighed with relief. That explained the man’s failure to react to Alice Pearl, who had actually gotten a little huffy momentarily. She did not like being ignored. Perhaps now she would be easier to live with, despite her cravings for chocolate and chick flicks set in the South.

An old red Mustang veered to the curb beside Pendergast and he stopped and bent to look in. Cody Pruitt waved and shouted through the open passenger window. “Hey, Alice! Need a ride?”

“No, thank you, I’m just...taking the air.”

“Where you taking it?”

Pendergast started to smile at the lame joke, then realized it wasn’t a joke, just lame. “Actually, I’m out for a little walk to help me sleep.” He resumed his scurry. “See you tomorrow.”

Pruitt’s Mustang paused indecisively, then finally roared off into the night. Whew.

Pendergast was getting close to a Quick Stop convenience store. There was a bank of endangered payphones on the corner, the kind with the little open boxes one could almost stick one’s head into and thus pretend one could hear over the traffic noise. The phones were not really that close to the store. It wouldn’t be a bad place to ambush a victim. He decided to loiter around the phones for a while. It would put him on the corner of two main thoroughfares and his white jacket and lush, shining hair would be highly visible in all the light from the store. He patted his hair and strolled over to the phones, lifting a receiver and pretending to dial and deposit coins.

Pendergast’s master plan was interrupted suddenly by the arrival of a young Caucasian male in rapper-wanna-be clothes who was in need of the phone next to his. Though there were three others in the bank of phones at the edge of the Quick Stop’s parking lot, this guy had to pick the one right next to his. Pendergast thinned his lips at the Wannabe, who grinned and winked.

What kind of girl did the Wannabe think he was, anyway? Besides, the Wannabe had brown teeth, wore pants that could’ve concealed all the extras from Braveheart, and reeked of several incompatible molecules which had apparently been thrown together and overpriced by some designer who really just wanted to see how far into idiocy the modern male would venture in search of vulva. Even if Pendergast were a hooker, he wouldn’t touch the Wannabe if the guy were the last man on earth. He turned his back on him and spoke into his dead phone. “You’re on your way then? Five minutes? Okay, sugarpie. I can’t wait to feel your big muscular weightlifter’s arms around me.”

He listened for the retreating footsteps of the Wannabe, who had yet to dial a number, and heard nothing but mouth breathing. Drat. Might as well move on; no maniac with even one working brain cell would attack even a bombshell like Alice with a junior maniac already breathing down her neck. He started to walk away and heard a footstep behind him and a tentative cough. He turned, and there was the Wannabe. “Excuse me, but don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Pendergast sighed. Mr. Originality. Still, the young man was at least being polite. If the young man didn’t have brown teeth, the baggiest pants this side of MC Hammer, and the please-do-me stench, and if Pendergast really were female, or at least gay, he might chat the fellow up a little. All things considered, though, he really didn’t see the point.

He smiled demurely and, still using his Alice voice, said, “I don’t think so. And—I’m engaged.” That should let the Wannabe down easily enough.

But what the Wannabe had in pants, he lacked in class, and proved it by saying, “I’d like to engage in something with you right now, honey. How much?”

Called a slut again? Pendergast felt his mouth drop open and closed it quickly, lest he entice the Wannabe even further. Did this lout think that he could just hit on any woman on the street, and so crudely, at that? Did he have to assume that any woman alone and wearing such an attractive wig was for hire? The nerve!

The Wannabe, sensing imminent rejection in Pendergast’s obvious pique, pressed his luck by uttering the most overused, offensive, and irrelevant phrase known to modern woman: “You don’t know what you’re missing!”

That did it. Pendergast’s big blue eyes grew cold beneath his red curls. He put his face very close to the Wannabe’s, almost kissing close, and said, two octaves below his normal voice, “Fuck off, junior, before I teach you how to treat a lady.”

The Wannabe’s mouth dropped open, much as Pendergast’s had, and he backed up quickly, then turned and loped in the direction of the store, his pants baggier than ever, apparently held up only by a pimple sprouting very low on one buttock .

“And, for God’s sake, buy some new pants!” Pendergast called after him, returning to the phone and his make-believe conversation.

He’d educated the dead phone about the physical and chemical properties of each planet and moon in the solar system for about fifteen minutes when he heard a soft rumble and looked up to behold a Corn Rock PD cruiser beside him. He hung up the phone slowly.

“New in town, honey?” the cop asked, grinning.

“Yes, officer,” he Aliced. “I was just calling my boyfriend to see if he wants anything from the store.”

“Yeah, right,” the cop sneered. “You do think fast, I’ll give you that.” The cop opened his door and put a leg out.

The small pistol hiding in Alice Pearl’s underwear amidst other unexpected things suddenly felt like the biggest phallic object in the underwear, though it wasn’t. He had thought it safe to pack the pistol under the loose scrubs, and indeed it had not caused a problem all night in the ER. But he hadn’t planned on being searched. He could’ve produced identification from another of the many handy pockets sewn into the underwear, but he did not want the local constabulary knowing his secret or his mission.

The cop’s radio crackled and he hesitated, then picked up his mic and answered the call. Pendergast, keeping an eye on the cop, reached down slowly, snaked a hand up under his scrub shirt, and extracted the gun from his underwear. If the cop looked up now someone would probably get shot. Probably the cop. Though loathe to shoot a police officer just trying to do his duty, Pendergast, remembering from too much experience what being shot felt like, was even more loathe to get shot again himself. And the cop was rude and disrespectful of women, after all.

Watching the cop, he quickly dropped the gun into a nearby trashcan, where it disappeared under a disgustingly odiferous collection of fast-food wrappers and other assorted paraphernalia. The cop looked his way and he pretended to be raising his hand to fluff his hair. He was prepared to take the cop out with an Indescribable Tibetan Martial Arts Maneuver, but the cop saved himself by believing the hair fluff.

The cop hung up his mic and got out of the car. “Up against the car and spread em, honey.”

Spread em?

Pendergast smoldered. The cop had no probable cause for which to search Alice Pearl! But the real cause for concern was just how high up the spread was the cop going? He had tried hiding his candy by tucking everything and was not able to overcome the discomfort, even with the most intense mind-over-matter modalities in his considerable arsenal. He assumed that his candy was simply too big to be hidden. (Though fantastically intelligent and wise, Pendergast was still male.) So he had fashioned a pair of Alice underwear out of tight, spandex form-shaper panties, in case of the random tumescence, but, after the breezy comfort of his usual silk boxers, could not bear being cooped up in those either. He had finally decided to take his chances, so now here he was, dangling and vulnerable to roving cop hands. He readied himself for a Patented Pendergast Sucker Punch and assumed the position. The cop felt around his waist, leaned down and patted his ankles, then ran his hands up his legs. “Tall one, ain’t you, honey?”

Pendergast didn’t answer. He could only hold his breath as the cop’s hands moved higher. Another couple of inches and the cop would have nine inches worth of reasons to bust him. Well, eight and a half, anyway. With rather impressive circumference, if he did say so himself.

The cop’s hands stopped just south of Alice’s panties. He stepped back. “Get along, little lady. We don’t allow no pussy peddling round here.”

“Yes, sir,” Pendergast demurred in his Alice voice, thinking but not saying that pussy peddling was the one thing the cop couldn’t possibly charge him with. He scurried on down the street, also thinking but not saying that the cop was a first-rate Barney and that before leaving Corn Rock, North Carolina, he was going to make it his business to teach this Barney some manners.

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