Odd Hours

the storm of debris roared by and receded along the corridor.
    An operable casement window offered an escape route, but I did not at once flee the restroom. First, I needed to pee.
    Here is another difference between me and the indefatigable Matt Damon. He never has either the time or the need to visit a lavatory unless he has to go there to engage in a fight to the death with an agent of the fascist conspiracy.
    After washing my hands, I dropped from the window into the alleyway behind the police station. As far as I could tell in the fog, I was alone.
    I proceeded east for two hundred feet and then turned south into the covered and lighted walkway between the police department and the courthouse, where the fog did not rule. I hurried, not sure how long Mr. Sinatra could sustain his fury.
    No one but the cleaning crew would be working in the courthouse at that hour; and the police in the adjacent building were too busy dealing with an X-Files moment for any of them to step outside for a quick smoke.
    I ran to the end of the walk and into Civic Center Park, which—in opposition to Magic Beach tradition—was actually surrounded by the government buildings that justified its name.
    The dark skirts of huge evergreens dripped with condensed mist. Fallen pine cones crunched underfoot, and others tried to roll me off my feet.
    Concrete park benches, like caskets in a winding processional, appeared periodically, forcing me to dodge left, dodge right.
    Windows began to explode in the building from which I had fled. One, two, three, a half-dozen. The tintinnabulation of glass raining on stonework was as charming as an orchestra of fairy bells, which I was able to enjoy because I had gotten safely beyond the zone of raining shards.
    Shouting drew my attention to the north where, even in the fog, dimly visible figures could be seen hurriedly descending a broad and brightly lighted set of stairs to a public plaza. Although I was not a psychic primed for clairvoyant espionage by mad scientists employed by power-crazed intelligence agencies, I somehow knew that these figures were police officers fleeing their headquarters.
    From afar rose sirens, surely incoming squad cars, perhaps also fire engines or ambulances.
    In spite of the inhibiting murk, I ran faster, wishing I could summon the golden retriever again as a kind of Seeing Eye dog. A few minutes later, having put sufficient distance between myself and Civic Center Park, I slowed to a walk for two blocks.
    Only then did I think to check my wristwatch—9:38.
    At midnight if not before, Chief Hoss Shackett and Utgard Rolf intended to bring nuclear weapons onto United States soil by way of Magic Beach Harbor.
    If the chief and the hulk had been killed or at least disabled in the chaos at the station, perhaps the plot would collapse. But I did not think I could count on that. If more than four hundred million dollars had been provided for bribes alone, this operation would have been developed with more than one contingency plan.
    Supposing that two stopped clocks constituted an omen, my guess was that the nukes would not be delivered to the harbor at a minute till midnight, but that they would instead be picked up at sea before that hour. The numbers on the clocks more likely signified the last minute that the plan could be foiled: the time when the bombs were taken from the harbor and placed aboard one truck or several, when they would be moved out of Magic Beach and might subsequently be transferred again to other vehicles bound for doomed cities unknown.

 
    THIRTY
    SINCE THE ENCOUNTER WITH UTGARD AND THE redheaded gunmen on the pier, so much had happened that I’d had little time to think. I had been barely coping with the torrent of events, allowing myself to be guided largely by instinct and by those paranormal gifts that make my journey through life so interesting, so complicated, and at times so heartbreaking.
    I needed fifteen minutes for calm deliberation, a quarter of an hour during which neither my life nor the life of anyone depending on me was in immediate jeopardy. Things had happened this night that I had never experienced previously, moments of a supernatural nature that mystified me. They required a quality of reflection that I could not achieve while sprinting from a mortal threat or verbally fencing with a sadistic police chief in a windowless room that resembled an abattoir.
    Slowing from a fast walk, gradually catching my breath, I sought a place to