“It’s not easy to believe.”
“I,” she told him, “can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.”
“Really?”
“I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” She stopped, out of breath.
Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, “Okay. So if I tell you what I’ve learned you won’t think that I’m a nut.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Try me.”
“Would you believe that all the gods that people have ever imagined are still with us today?”
“…maybe.”
“And that there are new gods out there, gods of computers and telephones and whatever, and that they all seem to think there isn’t room for them both in the world. And that some kind of war is kind of likely.”
“And these gods killed those two men?”
“No, my wife killed those two men.”
“I thought you said your wife was dead.”
“She is.”
“She killed them before she died, then?”
“After. Don’t ask.”
She reached up a hand and flicked her hair from her forehead.
They pulled up on Main Street, outside the Buck Stops Here. The sign over the window showed a surprised-looking stag standing on its hind legs holding a glass of beer. Shadow got out. He grabbed the bag with the book in it, and got out.
“Why would they have a war?” asked Sam. “It seems kind of redundant. What is there to win?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Shadow.
“It’s easier to believe in aliens than in gods,” said Sam. “Maybe Mister Town and Mister Whatever were Men in Black, only the alien kind.”
“Maybe they were, at that,” said Shadow.
They were standing on the sidewalk outside the Buck Stops Here and Sam stopped. She looked up at Shadow, and her breath hung on the night air like a faint cloud. She said, “Just tell me you’re one of the good guys.”
“I can’t,” said Shadow. “I wish I could. But I’m doing my best.”
She looked up at him, and bit her lower lip. Then she nodded. “Good enough,” she said. “I won’t turn you in. You can buy me a beer.”
Shadow pushed the door open for her, and they were hit by a blast of heat and music, enveloped by a cloud of warmth that smelled of beer and hamburgers. They went inside.
Sam waved at some friends. Shadow nodded to a handful of people whose faces—although not their names—he remembered from the day he had spent searching for Alison McGovern, or who he had met in Mabel’s in the morning. Chad Mulligan was standing at the bar, with his arm around the shoulders of a small red-haired woman—the kissing cousin, Shadow figured. He wondered what she looked like, but she had her back to him. Chad’s hand raised in a mock salute when he saw Shadow. Shadow grinned, and waved back at him. Shadow looked around for Hinzelmann, but the old man did not seem to be there this evening. He spied a free table at the back and started walking toward it.
Then somebody began to scream.
It was a bad scream, a full-throated, seen-a-ghost hysterical scream, which silenced all conversation. Shadow looked around, certain somebody was being murdered, and then he realized that all the faces in the bar were turning toward him. Even the black cat, who slept in the window during the day, was standing up on top of the jukebox with its tail high and its back arched and was staring at Shadow.
Time slowed.
“Get him!” shouted a woman’s voice, parked on the verge of hysteria. “Oh for god’s sake, somebody stop him! Don’t let him get away! Please!” It was a voice he knew.
Nobody moved. They stared at Shadow. He stared back at them.
Chad Mulligan stepped forward, walking through the people. The small woman walked behind him warily, her eyes wide, as if she was preparing to start screaming once more. Shadow knew her. Of course he knew her.
Chad was still holding his beer, which he put down on a nearby table. He said, “Mike.”
Shadow said “Chad.”
Audrey Burton was a step behind Chad Mulligan. Her face was white, and there were tears in her eyes. She had been screaming. “Shadow,” she said. “You bastard. You murderous evil bastard.”
“Are you sure that you know this man, hon?” said Chad. He looked uncomfortable. It was obvious that he hoped that whatever was happening here was all some kind of case of mistaken identity, something that one day they might be able to laugh about.
Audrey Burton looked at him incredulously. “Are you crazy? He worked for Robbie for years. His slutty wife was my best friend. He’s wanted for murder. I had to answer questions. He’s an escaped convict.” She was way over the top, her voice trembling with suppressed hysteria, sobbing out her words like a soap actress going for a daytime Emmy. Kissing cousins, thought Shadow, unimpressed.