Koko. Peter Straub

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      ‘Mikey! How are you? You sound a little weirded-out, man.’ Poole finally recognized the voice of Conor Linklater, who had turned his head away from the telephone and was saying,’ ‘Hey, I got him! He’s in his room! I told you, man, Mike’s just gonna be in his room, remember?’ Then Conor was speaking to him again. ‘Hey, didn’t you get our message, man?’

      Conversations with Conor Linklater, Michael was reminded, tended to be more scattered than conversations with most other people. ‘I guess not. What time did you get in?’ He looked at his watch and saw that he had been asleep for half an hour.

      ‘We got here about four-thirty, man, and we called you right away, and at first they said you weren’t here and Tina made ‘em look twice and then they said you were here, but nobody answered your phone. Okay. How come you didn’t answer our message?’

      ‘I went out to the Memorial,’ Poole said. ‘I got back a little before five. I was in the middle of a nightmare when you woke me up.’

      Conor did not say good-bye and he did not hang up. Speaking more softly than before, he said, ‘Man, you sound like that nightmare really weirded you out.’

      A rough hand tugging his ear away from his head; the ground greasy with blood. Poole’s memory gave him the picture of a field where exhausted men carried corpses toward impatient helicopters in the hazy blue light of early morning. Some of the corpses had blood-black holes where they should have had ears. ‘I guess I went back to Dragon Valley,’ Poole said, having just understood this.

      ‘Be cool,’ Conor Linklater said. ‘We’re already out the door.’ He hung up.

      Poole splashed water on his face in the bathroom, roughly used a towel, and examined himself in the mirror. In spite of his nap he looked pale and tired. Megavitamins encased in clear plastic lay on the counter beside his toothbrush, and he peeled one free and swallowed it.

      Before he went down the hall to the ice machine, he dialed the number for messages.

      The man who answered told him that he had two messages. ‘The first one is stamped 3:55, and reads “Tried to call back –”’

      ‘I picked that one up at the desk,’ Poole said.

      ‘The second is stamped 4:50, and reads “We just arrived. Where are you? Call 1315 when you return.” It’s signed “Harry.”’

      They had called while he was still downstairs in the lobby.

      2

      Michael Poole paced back and forth between the window overlooking the parking lot and the door. Whenever he got to the door, he stopped and listened. The elevators whirred in their chutes, carts squeaked past. After a little while he heard the ping! of the elevator, and he cracked the door open to look down the corridor. A trim grey-haired man in a white shirt and a blue suit with a name tag on the lapel was hurrying toward him a few paces ahead of a tall blonde woman wearing a grey flannel suit and a paisley foulard tied in a fussy bow. Poole pulled back his head and closed the door. He heard the man fumbling with his key a little way down the hall. Poole wandered back to the window and looked down at the parking lot. Half a dozen men dressed in unmatched parts of uniforms and holding beer cans had settled on the hoods and trunks of various automobiles. They looked like they were singing. Poole walked back to the door and waited. As soon as he heard the elevator land once again on his floor, he opened the door and leaned out into the hall.

      Tall, agitated Harry Beevers and Conor Linklater turned into the hallway together, a harried-looking Tina Pumo a second later. Conor saw him first – he raised his fist and grinned and called out ‘Mikey baby!’ Unlike the last time Michael Poole had seen him, Conor Linklater was smooth-shaven and his pale reddish hair had been cut almost punkishly short. Conor normally wore baggy blue jeans and plaid shirts, but he had taken unaccustomed pains with his wardrobe. Somewhere he had obtained a black T-shirt with the stenciled legend AGENT ORANGE in big irregular yellow letters, and over this garment he wore a large, loose, many-pocketed black denim vest with conspicuous white stitching.’ There were sharp creases in his black trousers.

      ‘Conor, you’re a vision of delight,’ Poole said, stepping out into the corridor while holding the door with his outstretched left hand. Half a foot shorter than Michael, Conor Linklater stepped up to him and wrapped his arms around his chest and hugged him tightly.

      ‘Man,’ he said into Michael’s jawline, and playfully kissed him, ‘what a sight for poor eyes.’

      Smirking at this ripe Linklaterism, Harry Beevers sidled up beside Poole and, in a wave of musky cologne, embraced him too, awkwardly. The corner of a briefcase struck Poole’s hip. ‘Michael, a sight for “poor eyes”,’ Beevers whispered into Poole’s ear. Poole gently pulled himself away and got a vivid close-up of Harry Beevers’ large, overlapping discolored teeth.

      Tina Pumo bobbed back and forth before them in the corridor, grinning fiercely beneath his heavy moustache. ‘You were asleep?’ Pumo asked. ‘You didn’t get our message?’

      ‘Okay, shoot me,’ Poole said, smiling at Pumo. Conor and Beevers broke away from him and moved separately toward the door. Pumo ducked his head like Tom Sawyer, all but digging his toes into the carpet, said, ‘Aw, Mikey, I want to hug you too,’ and did it. ‘Good to see you again, man.’

      ‘You too,’ Michael said.

      ‘Let’s get inside before we get arrested for having an orgy,’ Harry Beevers said, already standing in the entry to Michael’s room.

      ‘Don’t get weird, Lieutenant,’ Conor Linklater said, but moved toward the doorway anyhow, glancing sideways at the other two. Pumo laughed and pounded Michael on the back, then let them go.

      ‘So what have you guys been doing since you got here?’ Michael asked. ‘Apart from swearing at me, that is.’

      Wandering around the room, Conor said, ‘Teeny-Tiny’s been sweatin’ out his restaurant.’ Teeny-Tiny was a reference to the origins of Pumo’s nickname, which had begun as Tiny when he was an undersized child in an undersized town in upstate New York, was modulated later to Teeny, and had finally altered to Tina. After a decade of working in restaurants, Pumo now owned one in SoHo that served Vietnamese food and had been lavishly praised some months before in New York magazine. ‘He made two calls already, man. Him and the Health Department are gonna keep me awake all night.’

      ‘It’s not really anything,’ Tina protested. ‘I picked an awkward time to go away, that’s all. We have to do certain things in the restaurant, and I want to make sure they’re done right.’

      ‘Health Department?’ Michael asked.

      ‘Really, it’s nothing serious.’ Pumo grinned fiercely. His moustache bristled, the joyless creases at the corners of his eyes deepened and lengthened. ‘We’re doing great. Booked solid most nights.’ He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Harry can vouch for me. We do great business.’

      ‘What can I say?’ Beevers asked. ‘You’re a success story.’

      ‘You looked around the hotel?’ Poole asked.

      ‘We checked out the meeting areas downstairs, had a look around,’ Pumo said. ‘It’s a big party. We can do some stuff tonight, if you want,’

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