Forever Odd

than decapitate .”
        “Check out the back of the chair.”
        I went around behind him to have a look. Being a guy who has seen a few movies as well as some weird action in real life, I at once recognized the kilo of plastic explosives held to the back of the chair by the same tape that bound Danny.
        A battery, lots of colorful wires, an instrument that resembled a small version of a carpenter’s level (with the indicator bubble measuring a perfect horizontal plane), and other arcane paraphernalia suggested that whoever had put the bomb together had a flair for such work.
        Danny said, “The instant I raise my ass off the chair-boom. If I try to walk with the chair and the level measures too far off the horizontal-boom.”
        “We have a problem here,” I agreed.

----

    TWENTY-NINE
        
        IN WHISPERS, IN MURMURS, WITH BATED BREATH, SOTTO voce , in voce velata , softly we conducted the conversation, not solely because the syphilitic-suicide-bomber-mad-cow woman and her pals might hear us, but I think also because we superstitiously felt that the wrong word, spoken too loud, would trigger the bomb.
        Stripping the spelunker’s strap off my arm and setting it aside with the flashlight, I said, “Where are they?”
        “I don’t know. Odd, you have to get out of here.”
        “Do they leave you by yourself for long periods?”
        “They check in maybe once an hour. She was just here about fifteen minutes ago. Call Wyatt Porter.”
        “This isn’t in his jurisdiction.”
        “So he’ll call Sheriff Amory.”
        “If police get into this, you’ll die.”
        “So who do you want to call-the sanitation department?”
        “I just know you’ll die. The way I know things. Can this package be detonated whenever they want?”
        “Yeah. She showed me a remote control. She said it would be as easy as changing TV channels.”
        “Who is she?”
        “Her name’s Datura. Two guys are with her. I don’t know their names. There was a third sonofabitch.”
        “I found his body. What happened to him?”
        “I didn’t see it. He was…strange. So are the other two.”
        As I began to cut the tape on his left forearm, I said, “What’s her first name?”
        “Datura. I don’t know her last. Odd, what’re you doing? I can’t get up from this chair.”
        “You might as well be ready to get up in case the situation changes. Who is she?”
        “Odd, she’ll kill you. She will. You’ve got to get out of here.”
        “Not without you,” I said, sawing the tape that bound his right wrist to the chair.
        Danny shook his head. “I don’t want you to die for me.”
        “Then who am I gonna die for? Some total stranger? What sense does that make? Who is she?”
        He let out a low sound of abject misery. “You’re gonna think I’m such a loser.”
        “You’re not a loser. You’re a geek, I’m a geek, but we’re not losers.”
        “You’re not a geek,” he said.
        Cutting the second set of bonds on his right arm, I said, “I’m a fry cook when I’m working, and when I added a sweater vest to my wardrobe it was more change than I could handle. I see dead people, and I talk to Elvis, so don’t tell me I’m not a geek. Who is she?”
        “Promise you won’t tell Dad.”
        He wasn’t talking about Simon Makepeace, his biological father. He meant his stepfather. He didn’t know Dr. Jessup was dead.
        This wasn’t the best time to tell him. He would be devastated. I needed him to be focused, and game.
        Something he saw in my eyes, in my expression, made him frown, and he said, “What?”
        “I won’t tell him,” I promised, and turned my attention to the bonds securing his right ankle to the leg of the chair.
        “You swear?”
        “If I ever tell him, I’ll give back my Venusian-methane-slime-beast card.”
        “You still have it?”
        “I told you I’m a geek. Who is Datura?”
        Danny took a deep breath, held it until I thought that he was going after a Guinness World Record, then let it out with two words: “Phone sex.”
        I blinked at him, briefly confused. “Phone sex?”
        Blushing, mortified, he said, “I’m sure this is a colossal surprise to you, but I’ve never done the real thing with a girl.”
        “Not even with Demi Moore?”
        “Bastard,” he hissed.
        “Could you have