For the second time since she had been taking care of him, Valerie drove Lindstrom to Big Planet Comics on U Street, NW. As it happened, Lindstrom was an avid reader of Hulk comics. Not too surprising, when you thought about it, Valerie told herself as she stared at the garishly colored covers of comics filling the layered racks. The Hulk was Dr. Bruce Banner, a shy physicist who, when he got angry, turned into a huge green monster who wreaked havoc wherever he went. That was the beginning. These days, however, in the manner of comics’ new universes, there were many Hulks, confusing her no end.

That Paulus Lindstrom loved The Hulk said quite a lot about forces hidden deep in his psyche. While Lindstrom picked up the latest issues, she leafed through a comic called “Gang War.” The cover depicted a human eyeball pierced by the tip of a switchblade. Good god, Valerie thought, shoving the comic back onto its rack.

She went over to Lindstrom. “Paulus, are you ready to go?”

“As soon as I pick out a Hulk T-shirt.”

At length, she shuffled him over to the register, where she paid for his haul with cash.

Back in the car, they buckled up, and she headed home.

Lindstrom had taken his comics out of their plastic bag and was staring at them as if he could not believe his good fortune. Valerie, her caution verging on paranoia after the incident in the DARPA parking lot, kept an eye on the side mirror, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“Do you like the shirt I picked out?” Lindstrom asked, holding it up.

“Why does it say ‘The Incredible Hulk’?” she asked.

Lindstrom smiled, as if at a faraway memory. “That was the title of the comic when it first came out. Everything was either Incredible or Amazing at Marvel in those days.”

She maneuvered her way through the traffic and passed a corner packed with a group of teenagers horsing around, bringing up all sorts of memories, good and bad. “Why is he green?”

Lindstrom laughed. “That’s the way Stan Lee conceived of him.”

“Who’s Stan L—?”

A truck, running the light, slammed into her side of the car, drove them sideways into an SUV. Her car collapsed in on itself like an accordion, the vicious force crushing Valerie and Lindstrom together like doomed lovers.

Chapter 38

38

Flix, hunkered down beside Whitman as sunlight gained ground on nighttime shadows, said, “Compadre, I gotta know. You gotta tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Whitman was studying Charlie’s face in profile as she scanned the hilly horizon with field glasses. A hundred different memories went off in his mind like fireworks.

“What did you do to me?” Flix persisted.

“I saved your life,” Whitman said.

“Yeah, well, okay. But, I mean, how the fuck?”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Whit…”