by Laird Barron
We came through the other side. Minerva curled onto her favorite throw rug and chewed a dried pig’s ear. I got argyle socks and a wristwatch to replace the one that went belly-up in Horseheads. I hadn’t mentioned the tunnel to Meg, nor what happened down there. I smiled wide, strapped the sweet new watch to my arm, fiddled with the settings, and thanked her and Devlin. The gift represented a decent chunk of change for a librarian on a budget. I hugged them tight. It was a beauty, it was perfect. It was an omen of doom. The quartz digital display went haywire after lunch, losing time, then gaining time, then producing error messages. By late afternoon the battery was kaput. I hadn’t foreseen this development, but it didn’t surprise me. My cell phone had been hinky as well; its battery died within a few hours unless I plugged it into the charger twice a day.
Plump roasted goose for dinner with mashed potatoes, green beans, drop-biscuits, and pumpkin pie for dessert. Cognac and a cigar for Lionel and me. Meg sipped peppermint schnapps and Devlin went to bed. He was ruddy and exhausted despite petitioning to stay up another hour. Christmas ranks as a banner day when you’re that age. I hadn’t broached the subject of his left-jab, right-cross approach to diplomacy, choosing to save that unpleasantness until the holidays were done. Now that the moment drew near, I was getting cold feet. Maybe a meteor would hit during the night and I’d be spared the duty.
Lionel slept in the living room as the news tried to balance holiday cheer with the usual reports of global catastrophe. Patroclus Possum, also bunking at the Shaw residence for the evening, slunk from his crate and snoozed on Lionel’s feet. Minerva lay in the middle of the room, every bit of her attention laser-focused on the possum. There was a bit of saber-rattling, but honoring the spirit of Christmas, no open warfare. All that was missing from the tableau were some wise men.
I sat with Meg in the kitchen, holding hands as snow piled against the windowsill.
Meg snapped her fingers.
“The mystery money.” She disappeared into another room and returned with a manila envelope stuffed with photocopies of newspaper stories. “In 1973, a private train engine, Fafnir’s Hammer, two passenger cars, and four people disappeared in the mountains between Oregon and California. Poof, gone Johnson. Train belonged to Major Arnaout Wagner, industrialist. His girlfriend, a bodyguard, and a travel journalist were among the missing. There is speculation, unconfirmed may I add, that he was transporting a heap of money to Los Angeles. His vanishing was a rather big deal.”
“One-point-five million. That’s my guess.”
“For what?”
“How much money was on the train.”
“Guess again, Kreskin. Eight million, according to anonymous sources. A lesser percentage was cash. The rest was coins and precious gems. Literal treasure.”
“Sealing an investment?”
“Or a payoff. Odds are even. Wagner was an eccentric. Involved in enough tawdry affairs to make Howard Hughes blush.”
“Somebody intercepted him and his dough . . .” I thumbed through the pages. “You weren’t kidding. The ‘Vanishing of Fafnir’s Hammer’ made a splash.”
“The search went on for weeks. Only so many places an engine and two cars can go. Yet, nada. Not a trace to this day. A Great Unsolved American Mystery.”
“What makes you think our stash might be part of the Wagner hoard?”
“This caught my eye.” She handed me a news photo, circa 1971, of a beaming Wagner, cocktail raised high. One of the other suits laughing along with him was the founder of Zircon Corporation, Matthias Labrador. “There’s more. Wagner invested heavily in Zircon. Sat on the board.”
“Oh, boy,” I said.
“Heck of a coincidence. You working with Delia and that fuss.”
Like my daddy before me, I’m not fond of coincidence. Coincidence is the universe’s favorite loophole right after destiny. Loophole is another word for snare. Snares have a tendency to tighten around one’s neck.
I’d known the Croatoan had either stolen the money or received it as a payment for villainous services rendered. That it might be connected to the high-profile disappearance of a rich pal of the Labradors thickened the plot considerably.
“Nibelungen,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The day after Christmas, Lionel and I were thrown out of the house.
Meg had gone into the library for a partial shift dedicated to repairing the damage done by the staff “winter solstice” party that she hadn’t even attended. She returned while Lionel, Devlin, and I were lounging in our underwear, eating cold cereal and watching cartoons.
“Oh, God. Another patron died.” Meg hurled her bag toward a chair. She poured a glass of wine and had a go. “Jenny Selznick. Her obituary is in the paper.”
“What happened?” I said.
“Breast cancer.”
“Was she elderly?”
“Jenny wasn’t even sixty!”
I expressed sympathy and surreptitiously put on my pants, as one does.
Lionel sighed morosely.
“Check your tits. Always check your tits.”
Fortunately, he didn’t meet Meg’s death gaze or he would’ve keeled over, the fat bubbling in his smoking skull. Ninety seconds later, he and I were in the yard, putting the rest of our clothes on. It was bitterly amusing to observe Lionel dressing one-handed.
* * *
■■■
We grabbed Minerva and ventured to the Rail Trail for a hike between snowstorms. The Wallkill Valley section ran from Kingston down into Rosendale. Minerva always went bonkers for a post-storm jaunt—the “pristine” canvas of snow was decorated with an impressionist fresco of rabbit and squirrel piss. Locals, decked in festive seasonal wear, shouted gaily as they skied and snowshoed. An afternoon of good weather dispels wintertime blues more assuredly than drugs. We settled for schlepping along in their tracks. Icicles dripped from branches and songbirds chirped, basking in the burst of sunlight.
A guy in a canary yellow bodysuit whizzed past, nearly smacking me with a ski pole and causing Minerva to dive for her doggy life. I’d dreamed of Aotearoa, although I couldn’t recall the specifics except a sense of green tranquility in a time before the onslaught of humanity. I muttered a dig at the evils of colonization, the pain and suffering that consequently echoed down through the ages.
Lionel waved his good arm in an encompassing gesture. His doctor advised minimal physical activity until the break completely healed. I figured the doc was ahead of the game in that Lionel wasn’t performing calisthenics yet.
“Roads, bridges, plumbing,” he said. “This cozy, white-bread hiking path. The dirt under our feet. Everything we have, we have thanks to the conniving of murderous shithead colonizing ancestors.”
“So, let’s not be hard on conniving, murderous shitheads?”
“Let’s not be hard on ourselves is what I’m saying. Our conniving shitheadedness is a survival trait.”
“Nature’s plan,” I said, more to myself than to him.
“Means we live long enough to pass our shithead genes to a new generation. Can’t argue with Nature.”
Glancing over my shoulder to ascertain no skiers or snowshoers were within earshot, I caught him up to speed on what Meg had learned of the provenance of our buried treasure and the ties between its original owner, Arnaout Wagner, and the Labradors.
“That’s terrific. Is that supposed to be a lead? Let me know when you decide to get serious. Speaking of those rich bastards . . .”
Lionel expressed an intense and recent fascination with crime and punishment, and how it pertained to the Labrador family business, Zircon Corp. The family and its holdings had gotten into legal hot water over the years. Notable were the troubles that befell one Labrador man or another. Delia’s uncle Zebulon, for example, had gotten clapped in irons several years ago for brokering arms deals with China and ordering acts
of industrial sabotage against corporate rivals. The big Z was liable to die in prison. Lionel trawled the Internet for old news clips of Zebulon Labrador’s high-profile federal trial. The man possessed a fantastic aesthetic, although nothing on the good green earth could’ve saved him from the hammer of justice swung by an irate judge. Even he wasn’t privileged enough to withstand the unbridled wrath of a government who’d been cut out of the lucrative black-market weapons trade.
“Where do you suppose all those fancy clothes went?” Lionel said, almost wistful. “Ostrich jackets? Cobra suits? Sharkskin boots? Did the government confiscate that swag? Was there an auction like they do with cars? Is there a fat cat version of Goodwill? A bunch of slightly less obscenely rich dudes going through the obscenely rich dude’s shit. You get the boots! You get the jacket and the pants. That Rolex is mine, bitch!”
“For the love of God, man,” I said. “Call Delia. You’ve got it bad if you’re going to ramble on about Uncle Z’s damned wardrobe.”
“I’m not calling her. She can gallivant around Italy if that makes her happy.”
“You’re driving me up a tree. Show some resolve. Talk about anything else until we get back to the car. I’ll start the timer.”
Lionel pushed his shades aside so he could roll his eyes at me.
“Resolve? I’ve gone thirty hours without itching my balls because I was set up in a blind, waiting for a green light on some Taliban target.”
“Yet you can’t go fifteen minutes without pissing and moaning about your girlfriend.” I said “girlfriend” in a falsetto. “Admit you can’t compete with some longhair rocker and his ski pole. Poles. There’s no shame in it.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he said in a tragic voice and pushed his glasses back on.
“At least we’re free men.”
“Free? The hell you on about?”
“I’m shut of the Outfit,” I said. “You’re shut of the military and mercenary work, and maybe your maniac girlfriend. Meg is bound to relent sooner or later. Otherwise, we can head to our shacks and kindle a fire and brood like manly men of yore. Be of good cheer.”
Lionel was emphatically not of good cheer, as I soon discovered.
“We aren’t free. The universe gives us longer leashes and lets us run. It can retract the damned things anytime. We’ve gone through some shit. We know each other pretty well, wouldn’t you say?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Wrong, bud. No matter what, people remain a mystery. It isn’t much different from getting close to a character on a TV show. You know every quirk about that character; you don’t know that the actor, the action star, is scared spitless of guns, that he beats his wife, that he’s as dumb as a bag of hammers.”
“That car wreck really—”
“Car chase.”
“That car chase really bothers you,” I said. It bothered me as well, although my worry centered on what might result of the encounter, or who would come calling.
“It got me thinking about the close calls I had in the Corps. Should’ve bought the farm on several occasions. Dumb fucking luck I’m here and intact. But it’s on my mind lately.”
“Shell shock?”
“Our grandfathers called it shell shock, yeah. These days, some call it post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s no joke. Twenty veterans commit suicide every day.” He smiled a flat, dark smile. “Gonna lay a secret on you, amigo. I don’t have shell shock or PTSD. Don’t worry on that score.”
“Hey, I’m here to listen.”
“It’s okay, amigo,” he said. “We both have our demons.”
“Hearts of darkness. Well earned.”
“Nah, whatever darkness lives inside me took root when I was a baby. Once upon a time, SIDS was the terror in every mother’s heart. No sudden infant death syndrome for baby Lionel. Death slunk in as I lay in that crib. Decided it liked the view and would stay awhile. As a man, I went to war because I craved mayhem. Recognized that if I didn’t ship my ass to a war zone, there’d be hell to pay at home. Thought I could go overseas and either die or burn the devil out of me. Or drown it in blood.”
“But you didn’t die, or burn, or drown,” I said.
“And the devil is still in there.”
“Bonus.”
“Ain’t it, though? The devil is a real prick. He protects and keeps the worst of us, his favored sons.”
“That’s gospel. What did Billy Joel say . . . ?”
“Leave Billy Joel out of this, okay? Knew a guy whose best years were in-country. Like me, he only got a good night’s sleep on patrol in hostile territory. He cashed out. Right away, home life went wrong. He wanted out from under the peacetime regime. Tried to re-enlist. Uncle Sam didn’t want him. Attempted suicide. Got drunk and stabbed himself with a pocket knife. His lungs filled with blood; he gasped and faded to black. Woke the next day with a hangover and a knife stuck in his chest. There’s an embarrassing hospital visit.”
The going was sludgy and we rested on a log whose exposed surface was sun-dried and warm to the touch. Lionel dug a bottle of beer out of his coat pocket. I wasn’t in the mood, but had a swig to be sociable.
“Provenance,” I said. “Fate minus mysticism. Like the song says, where you begin and where you wind up aren’t always far apart.”
“No shit, it’s provenance.”
“In a past life, maybe I didn’t run around killing people,” I said.
“Are all you Coleridges comedians?” he said. “If anything, our past selves probably ran around killing a hell of a lot more people. The bag limits were higher.”
“There you go, obliterating my romantic illusions.”
Lionel regarded the bottle.
“Me and my wet blanket. It coulda been a christening gift. The people who raised me were hard-core alkies. Cigarette in one hand, a glass of hooch in the other.”
My ears pricked up. He wasn’t what you would call an open book when it came to his family.
“Your parents sound like pieces of work.”
He precariously clutched the bottle in his left fist and drew a cigarette to illustrate his point.
“I said the people who raised me. Hustlers too. Bet on anything. And I mean any fucking thing. Semi-pros, but they never knew when to cash in. Spent half the year in Vegas pissing away their retirement. Rose at the crack of noon, slobbered off to bed at two A.M. and nothing between except sports on the tube, penny ante blackjack, two packs of Winston, and a quart of the cheap stuff. Apiece. I got a real education from that pair.”
“What did they eat?” I lit his smoke.
“The light. Time and space.”
“You go to Vegas with them?”
“Nah. Well, twice. That went over like a lead balloon. Cramped their style. Rancher friends of theirs ran a spread in the Northwest. Put me to work.” He finished his beer. “That was okay.”
We watched our fellow travelers slosh and slide past for a while.
“Been turning it over in my mind and I can’t understand what’s going on at the Jeffers site,” I said. “Are we onto something in regard to Sean Pruitt or did those bogeys come at us because we snooped around the facility?”
“What if the answer is A and B?”
“Separate yet connected.”
“Everything is connected. Then there’s the Valley. Place is fucked. The Jeffers site is fucked. While you were down there playing grab-ass in the tunnel, I had a case of the willies. Haven’t been that spooked since the war. Man, if some nimrod would’ve stepped from behind a tree and said boo!, I would’ve put a round between his eyes.”
“Ghost stories,” I said. “Herzog got into your head.”
“Forget ghost stories. Let’s not lose sight of the fact there’s a security robot crawling around down there. His claim of clandestine fuckery at the site was money.”
“For a security
robot, it sure wasn’t keeping the graffiti artists in check. The joint looked like a New York subway in 1975.”
“Excellent observation,” he said. “Security is designed to repel or capture trespassers. I have to assume the graffiti artists aren’t trespassing.”
“Which leads to: Why would scientists advocate wild-ass faux tribal art on a collider track?”
“You tell me and we’ll both know.”
“Huh. Maybe Shanks Mathis is responsible. Maybe the Redlick Group locked some leftover scientists in a cell. Eggheads are chained down there in the dark, solving for X.”
Lionel wasn’t dissuaded by my sarcasm.
“The site isn’t on the updated maps. I mean, it’s recorded somewhere, but not on search engines or the Internet satellite maps. It’s acknowledged in Horseheads, yet only in passing and if you bring it up first. Same deal with the Nameless Field—a blank spot on any map you’ll find.”
“Odd, yes.”
“Those women at the Black Powder,” he said. “The ones who clued me in to the strange lights and odd sounds at the abandoned site . . . one was from Colorado. She did the blabbing. Her gal pal was a local. Local girl kept mum. As time passes, fewer and fewer people will admit that the site or the colony exist. They’ll drive by the access roads and not even spare a glance. Horses in blinders of their own devising.”
“Which amounts to what? A collaboration between superstitious locals and the Redlicks? Mandibole referred to the project as ‘dreaming.’ They might be carrying on the construction piecemeal and on the sly.”
“The Redlicks are locals too, and not a bit less superstitious.”
I studied the angle of the sun. My knees were tired and my ribs had given some warning twinges. I didn’t want the rest of my body to join the chorus.