They walked to a corner of a street of older redbrick houses standing opposite some shops, mostly closed by this time of night, and a bar standing beside a drab restaurant It was quiet and deserted, with mist swirling in the glow of a few watery yellow streetlights.
"It's just along here, on this side," Rita said, pointing.
"Who are these people again?" Jarrow asked.
"Their names are Sandy and Bruce. They're old friends. Tony and I knew them for years."
"And you're sure they're reliable?" Jarrow was his normal hesitant self again. Just as in Minneapolis, the transformation had reversed itself as quickly as it had happened. Now, the knowledge that they were being hunted added more to his uncertainty and confusion.
"They're both okay," Rita assured him. She looked along the row of houses and thought for a moment. "Look, maybe it would be better if I go on ahead and talk to them first to give them some idea of what to expect. . . . I mean, this kind of thing doesn't happen every day. Can you wait here?"
Jarrow nodded.
"I'll be back in two minutes. Just give me a chance to explain first, okay?" She waited until he nodded again, then walked away and merged into the shadows of one of the doorways a short distance away in the gloom. Jarrow turned and moved a few paces away around the corner, exhaling white vapor into the chilly night air and stamping his feet against the cold seeping up through his shoes. That was something else he should have bought. Gordon's choice of footwear might have been fine in Georgia, but Chicago in November at this time of evening was something else.
What did it mean, this sudden change that had taken place in him twice now? It seemed to be triggered reflexively when danger threatened, as if from some depth of his being over which he had no voluntary control. And according to Rita, Demiro had been involved in a secret experimental program to transplant ready-learned behavior as an aid to military training. Furthermore, a conditioning to violence seemed to fit with the pointers that Jarrow had found in Atlanta to the kind of person Maurice Gordon was—or, more likely, he was beginning to suspect, had been a cover for. A cover for what? What had the men who had broken into Rita's called him?—"Samurai." It sounded like a code name. And they had acted as if they knew him. Jarrow pulled his coat tighter and stared at the murky outlines of the buildings across the street. As discomforting as he found the thought, there could be no denying that in a grisly but compelling kind of way that had to be faced, the pieces were starting to fit together.
Inside the house, Bruce, looking surprised but pleased, brought Rita into the kitchen, where Sandy was trying to introduce more baby cereal into their eight-month-old daughter, Alice, than was already plastered in her hair, ears, and nose and all over her hands and clothes. The piles of dishes, laundry, and food still not put away told of one of those days when entropy had won out.
"It's Rita," Bruce said unnecessarily. "Come on in. It's a hell of a cold night to take a walk. I thought it was one of those college kids from the welfare department, checking to make sure we know which end to put the diaper on."
"Hi," Sandy said. "Grab a chair if you can find one. Alice is having one of her frisky days. Isn't that right, Alice? . . . There, tastes good, huh? It might work better if I made this into pies and threw 'em at her. Bruce, put on some coffee for us, would you, hon?"
"Thanks," Rita said. "You'd better make it four."
At the clipped note in her voice, Bruce turned his head, then saw her face properly for the first time. "Hey, what's up?"
Sandy straightened up, forgetting her encrusted daughter for the moment. "Rita, what is it? What's happened?"
"Anybody got a cigarette?" Rita hadn't had one since she was at the flat, having left hers behind in the rush to get out. Bruce produced a pack from a drawer after some searching. He used them occasionally, and there were only a few left. Rita took one and held it steady with some effort while he lit it. "Thanks." She looked up at him, across at Sandy, and exhaled. "Tony isn't dead. He's come back." They stared incredulously. Bruce started to say something, but Rita stopped him with a quick motion of her hand. "I don't know where he's been or what's been going on. He arrived in town today from Minneapolis."
"Tony? Alive? But, but . . ." Sandy shook her head. "Is he okay?"
"Where is he?" Bruce asked, similarly astounded.
"That's the whole point. He's got some kind of amnesia . . . but not only that. It's not just that he doesn't know who he is. He thinks he's someone else completely. I mean it's total, a completely different personality. But apart from that he seems quite rational." Rita looked at Bruce. "He's outside, just along the street. . . . Look, we had some trouble back at the flat. There are some guys after him. I mean heavy stuff, with guns. I don't know who they are. They came busting into the place."
"Jesus Christ!" Bruce exclaimed.
"What happened to them?" Sandy asked, horrified.
"We got out and managed to lose them. That's another story. But we need to get inside off the streets, and we can't go back there tonight." Rita looked around at the room and gestured imploringly. "So what I'm saying is, is there any way we could . . ."
"Well, sure." Bruce's tone conveyed that she should have known better than to ask.
"It's so weird that I thought I ought to come in first and let you know how he is. And he agreed—I mean, he's not acting crazy or anything. But he's convinced he's somebody called Jarrow, Dick Jarrow. That's what I've been calling him. So just try and, kind of, go along with it for now, okay? Tomorrow will be a better time to figure out what to do."
"Get him inside," Sandy said. "He'll freeze out there."
Rita brought Jarrow in a few minutes later. There were some awkward preliminaries. Hard as they tried, Sandy and Bruce found it impossible to disguise the strangeness of being introduced to somebody they had known closely for years. "Don't feel too bad about it," Jarrow told them. "I know how this must feel. I've had a couple of days to get used to this, and I'm still having a problem."
They talked for a while over coffee, self-consciously at first, more or less repeating what Rita had already said in brief, but it gave Sandy and Bruce a chance to adapt. Then Sandy excused herself and went to get Alice washed and put to bed. Bruce began a brave attack upon the havoc of the kitchen and Rita rose to help, while Jarrow remained at the table, hands clasped around his mug.
"What were you doing in Minneapolis?" Bruce asked him as he moved to clear the table.
"It's where I live. I went back to where I'm from," Jarrow told him.
"Yeah. . . . Right," Bruce agreed, but still with detectable absence of conviction. "And you've no idea who these guys were who broke into Rita and Margaret's place?"
"No. They must have been watching either Rita or the place. The only thing I can think of is that they followed her from Atlanta."
"He called me from Atlanta on Monday," Rita explained. "But there was no mention of any Dick Jarrow then. He was Tony, his old self. He'd woken up in a hotel there, and that was all he knew."
"But Georgia was where he transferred to last year, when he went on that special assignment," Bruce observed. "Where was it?"
"A place called Pearse," Rita said.
"Right. So there has to be some connection."
Rita went on, "The last thing he remembered was -being at Pearse sometime last May. There was nothing then about anything that had to do with flying in helicopters."
Bruce turned toward Jarrow from the sink, where he had been stacking dishes. "Any idea what you were doing in Atlanta on Monday?"
Jarrow shook his head. "No."
The door opened and Sandy came back in. "Well, there's some justice in life after all. She went out like a light. Little snot—must run on some infinite energy source that science hasn't discovered yet. . . . Oh, thanks, Bruce."
"Needs a man's touch," Bruce grunted.
"How are we doing?" Sandy inquired, looking around.
"It's the strangest story I've heard for a long time," Bruce said. "No, wrong. It's the strangest story I've heard anytime. I don't know what to make of it. But I'm just an out-of-work machine operator. What do I know about any of it?"
"What happened to Margaret in all this?" Sandy asked.
Rita put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, Christ, I forgot about Margaret. She was out. What's she going to come back to? The place looked like it had been bombed."
"Will those guys still be around?" Bruce asked.
"How would I know?"
"Try giving her a call," Sandy suggested, indicating a traditional audio-only phone hanging over the half-height refrigerator.
Bruce lifted it off the hook and was about to tap in the number, then hesitated. "We don't know who they were," he said, looking at the others. "Do you think it might be tapped? Could they trace a calling number back to here?"
Rita glanced at Sandy. They both shrugged.
"I wouldn't risk it," Jarrow said from the table. "With computers they can do anything."
A few seconds of baffled silence ensued. Then Sandy said, "I guess we could always call from someplace else. Does that sound overdramatic, you know, too much like the movies?"
"Not to me it doesn't," Rita answered.
"I'll get Eric to call her," Bruce said. "He's on the other side of town."
"Who's Eric?" Jarrow asked.
"Another friend, student at University of Chicago," Bruce replied. "He's okay."
"Don't you call him, Bruce," Rita said. "Let me do it. If he hears from you, it'll be obvious where I've gone. If I call him, it could be from anywhere. People can't give away what they don't know."
Bruce nodded, picked up the phone again, and handed it to her.
"I just want him to let Margaret know that I'm okay, I know about the mess there, and I'll explain later," she said, taking it.
The others waited, keeping silent while Rita made the call. She kept it brief, told Eric that she'd call again in the morning, and hung up. The four of them exchanged looks that agreed there was nothing more that they could do now.
Sandy sighed and stretched out her arms to relieve aching muscles. "Whew, what a day. Well, now that the demolition machine's asleep, maybe we can get to eat too. Can I get you guys a sandwich or something? When did you last have a bite?"
"I don't know. It feels like sometime last week," Rita said. Now that her nerves were recovering, she was beginning to realize how much all the tension had taken out of her.
Jarrow had glimpsed how bare the refrigerator was while Bruce was putting the things away. "Is there a pizza place or anything like that near here?" he asked.
"A block and a half away," Sandy answered.
Jarrow felt inside his jacket for Gordon's wallet. "Then order a couple of big ones," he said. "And a six-pack or two to go with them. It's on me."