The Collected Stories by Robert McCammon

Author:Robert McCammon [McCammon, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub

8. Yours Truly

The Hispanic man lit his cigarette with the flame, then put the pistol-shaped lighter back into his pocket. "What kinda party you dressed up for?"

The Green Falcon didn't answer. His nerves were still jangling, and he wasn't sure he could speak, even if he tried.

"You lookin' for a score or not?" the man persisted.

"I'm... looking for the Watchman," he managed to say.

"Oh. Yeah, I should've figured you were. Didn't know the old creep had any friends."

Somebody called out, "Paco! Get your ass over here, NOW!"

The man sneered. "When I'm ready!" and then he sauntered toward the group of others who stood around the Mercedes.

The Green Falcon went through the door and into the darkness.

He stood on a narrow staircase, tried to find a light switch, but could not. Two steps down and his right hand found a light bulb overhead, with a dangling cord. He pulled it, and the light bulb illuminated with a bright yellow glow. The concrete stairs extended beyond the light's range, the walls made of cracked grey cinder block. The Green Falcon went down, into a place that smelled as damp and musty as a long-closed crypt. Halfway down the steps, he halted.

There had been a sound of movement over on the right. "Anyone there?" he asked. No answer, and now the sound had ceased. Rats, he decided. Big ones. He came to the bottom of the stairs, darkness surrounding him. Again he felt for a light switch, again with no reward. The smell was putrid: wet and decaying paper, he thought. He took a few steps forward, reaching out to both sides; his right arm brushed what felt like a stack of magazines or newspapers. And then the fingers of his left hand found a wall and a light switch, and when he flicked it, a couple of naked bulbs came on.

He looked around the Watchman's domain.

The basement—a huge, cavernous chamber—might have put the periodicals department of the L.A. Public Library to shame. Neat stacks of books, newspapers, and magazines were piled against the walls and made corridors across the basement, their turns and windings as intricate as a carefully constructed maze. The Green Falcon had never seen anything like it before, there had to be thousands—no, hundreds of thousands—of items down here. Maps of Los Angeles, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and other municipalities were mounted on the walls, tinged with green mold but otherwise unmarred. Here stood a stack of telephone books six feet tall, there were multiple stacks of old Hollywood Reporters. The place was an immense repository of information, and the Green Falcon was stunned because he'd never expected anything like this. A bank of battered filing cabinets stood against one wall, more newspapers stacked on top of them. There had to be thirty years of accumulated magazines and papers just in this part of the basement alone, and the chamber stretched the length of the motel. He couldn't restrain his curiosity; he went to one of the filing cabinets, which had precise little alphabet letters identifying their contents, and opened a drawer.

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