Forever Odd

isn’t you, Danny.”
        Shaking his head, he said, “What a mess.”
        “Self-pity isn’t you, and it never has been. We’re a couple of tough little virgin geeks, and don’t you forget it.”
        He couldn’t suppress a smile, though it was tremulous and came with a fresh welling of tears. “I still have my Martian-brain-eating-centipede card.”
        “Are we sentimental fools, or what?”
        “That crack about Demi Moore was funny,” he said.
        “I know. Listen, I’m going out there to have a look around. After I’m gone, you might think you can just tip over your chair and set off the bomb.”
        His evasive eyes revealed that self-sacrifice had indeed crossed his mind.
        “You might think blowing yourself into pâté would get me off the hook, then I’d call Wyatt Porter for help, but you’d be way wrong,” I assured him. “I’d feel more obligated than ever to get all three of them myself. I wouldn’t leave this place until I did. You understand that, Danny?”
        “What a mess.”
        “Besides, you’ve got to live for your dad. Don’t you think so?”
        He sighed, nodded. “Yeah.”
        “You’ve got to live for your dad. That’s your job now.”
        Danny said, “He’s a good man.”
        Picking up the flashlight, I said, “If Datura checks on you before I get back, she’ll see your arms and legs have been freed. That’s all right. Just tell her I’m here.”
        “What’re you going to do now?”
        I shrugged. “You know me. I make it up as I go along.”

----

    THIRTY
        
        STEPPING OUT OF ROOM 1242 AND PULLING THE DOOR shut behind me, I glanced left and right along the corridor. Still deserted. Silent.
         Datura .
        That sounded like a name not given but instead chosen. She had been born Mary or Heather, or something equally common, and she had taken Datura later. It was an exotic word with some meaning that she was amused to apply to herself.
        I visualized my mind as a pool of dark water in moonlight, her name as a leaf. I imagined the leaf settling upon the water, floating for a moment. Saturated, the leaf sank. Currents moved it around the pool, deeper, deeper.
         Datura .
        In seconds, I felt drawn north toward-and beyond-the elevator alcove in which I had arrived earlier by way of the shaft ladder. If the woman waited on this floor, she was in a room distant from 1242.
        Perhaps she didn’t keep Danny with her because she, too, had sensed in him a potential for self-destruction that gave her second thoughts about having strapped him to a bomb that he could choose to detonate.
        Although I could have allowed myself to be drawn to Datura right away, I wasn’t urgently compelled to locate her. She was Medusa, with a voice-instead of eyes-that could turn men to stone, but for the moment I was content to be a man of weary, aching, and fallible flesh.
        Ideally, I would find some way to disable Datura and the two men with her-and gain possession of the remote control that could trigger the explosives. When they were no longer a threat, I could call Chief Porter.
        My chances of overpowering three dangerous people, especially if all of them had guns, were not much better than the odds that the dead gamblers in the burned-out casino could win their lives back with a roll of the fire-yellowed dice.
        Other than ignoring my convincing premonition that calling in the police would be the certain death of Danny, the only alternative to disabling the kidnappers was to disable the bomb. I had less desire to fiddle with that complex detonator than I had to French-kiss a rattlesnake.
        Nevertheless, I had to prepare for the possibility that events would lead me inevitably to precisely that fiddling. And if I freed Danny, we would still have to get out of the Panamint.
        Not agile to begin with, exhausted by the trek from Pico Mundo, he would not be able to move fast. On a good day, in peak form, my brittle-boned friend was not surefooted enough to dare to rush down a flight of stairs.
        To get to the ground floor of this hotel, he would be required to descend twenty-two flights. Then he would have to make his way through treacherous rubble-strewn public areas-while three homicidal psychopaths pursued us.
        Throw in a few dumb, manipulative, scantily clad women, add a few even dumber but hunky guys, include the requirement to eat