by Laird Barron
“Time to head for the car.”
“Already? Minerva is enjoying herself.”
The dog joyously rolled in a patch of dirt she’d exposed with furious digging.
“A little longer.”
“Her life is short, man. We owe her every single happy moment she can squeeze out of this ball of misery. You got no one in your world better than this dog.”
That hit me hard. Instinctively, I wanted to laugh it off.
“We see the people and animals we love through a filter,” I said as Minerva gained her feet and grinned the way she only did at me. “They loom larger in the heart than the eye. I’ve loved humans and I’ve loved dogs. You’re right. Dogs are the superior life-form.”
Why dogs are perfect: For them, your companionship is the sum total of their universe. And yet, if I could’ve explained to Minerva that I would outlive her by many, many years, and go on adventures and pet other dogs, she would wag her tail and say, I am glad. I love you.
There were moments since my last dog, Achilles, died that the pain, always present, reached a crescendo and stole my breath. Once or twice, I’d been absurdly tempted to slam my face into a tree and leave bloody teeth embedded in the bark. Just to express the pain, to one-up it. The moment always passed.
I turned my head slightly where he couldn’t see, and cuffed myself once, hard. Little birdies and wheeling stars were preferable to the awful melancholy of contemplating the mortality of loved ones.
“Where are we going next?” Lionel said.
“Got to buy a bouquet of roses if I want to receive a dinner pass.”
“Think roses will get us back in the house?”
“Roses will get me back in the house.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
That evening, I opened the door at Meg’s to find Delia Labrador standing on the welcome mat, clutching a gift bag and smoking a cigarette you couldn’t buy in the USA. She wore a cardigan over a casual shirt, tight velvet pants, and too precious by half snow bunny boots with pink trim and tassels. On another day, it would’ve been a leather jacket and combat boots fitted with spikes. She was a mercurial woman. Doubtless her father would’ve preferred she fronted Zircon Corporation the way Tom Mandibole did the Redlick Group. Instead, she served behind the scenes in a titular, albeit inconsequential role, and lived life on her own terms. Jet-setter or mingler-among-peasants as the spirit moved her. Like I said, mercurial.
“Merry Christmas, Delia.” My hands were damp from washing a batch of dishes, so I nodded instead of offering to shake. She didn’t care.
“A reliable source informs me that Daddy wants you shot.”
“Would that reliable source be your father?”
“I put in a word for you. Reminded him you’re more useful without an extra hole in your head. Hope it helps.” She swept past me into the house.
I was struck once again with her sheer charisma, otherwise known as sex appeal. Blond or brunette, ballroom gown or burlesque and barely clothed, she was a knockout, a 1940s pinup. Her magnetism was the finishing blow. Charming and vicious, sometimes in the same breath. Far too intelligent and far too wily for my good friend Lionel.
“Investigating the Redlick Group? Silly, silly boy.” She set the bag on a table.
“A pernicious falsehood.”
“Is that a pretentious way of saying it’s a damned lie?”
“You got me.”
“Too bad. Because if you were trying to reach my father’s heart, kissing his ass or giving him lots and lots of money are the surest methods.”
“I live to disappoint.”
She rubbed her hands to warm them.
“Some insider info you might want—Redlick Group and Zircon have climbed into bed on about a million business deals. Our families knew each other so far back, we didn’t even have servants. Indian-Wars-and-dying-on-the-Oregon-Trail depth of history. And who fucking cares at the end of the day; Daddy utterly loathes the Redlicks. We all hate the Redlicks.”
“And they hate you,” I said. “Because what’s not to hate?”
“The Lancasters and the Yorks were chummier.”
“A cold war. You stick the shivs in by proxy.”
“Formality and the bottom line, don’t you know? Family delegations will have tea and crumpets tomorrow and attend a state dinner next week. Fake smiles and dagger eyes. Security sweeps for bugs and bombs prior to and after every event.”
“Society page had you in Italy.”
“Change of plans. I bore easily. Meg mentioned she was throwing a little holiday shindig—”
“Meg invited you for dinner?” Delia had frequented Meg’s library for years, so they were on friendly terms. I lifted a drape and surveyed the empty yard. Delia’s ubiquitous security detail wasn’t currently in evidence. The vanload of Black Dog mercs likely parked up the street and around a corner. “No troglodytes in tow?”
“Just you, big boy.”
Lionel heard our voices and came to greet her.
“Oh, my God! Sweetie! What have they done to my beautiful man?” She flung her arms and legs around him. His knots and bruises were receding; that didn’t mean he looked good. “Does your face hurt, baby? Because it’s killing me!” She burst into laughter, then apologized and kissed him passionately. Their reciprocal affection was veering into R-rated territory, so I cleared my throat.
Delia extricated herself from his one-armed embrace, touched his chin, and whisked onward to rendezvous with Meg in the kitchen.
“You’re a halfway cute couple,” I said. “She’s the cute half.”
“I’m so dead.” He gazed after her with an expression of mournful epiphany. “This can never work.”
“Because she’s rich and hot and you’re super-duper not?”
He rubbed his jaw and blinked as if shaking off a daydream.
“For a hundred and one reasons. Take your pick. Damn it.”
Unprepared to handle the intensity of fear and melancholy radiating from him, I chucked him on his shoulder.
“Buck up. Bad form to throw in the towel until after dessert. Oh, oh, tell her about the car wreck—I mean chase. She’ll go gaga with a contact high. Got to be good for one or two rolls in the hay.”
“Who says ‘roll in the hay’?”
“Your mom. C’mon.”
Dinner was leftovers. Not surprising, since I’d been barely able to shove the fridge door closed after storing the remnants of our Christmas feast. Delia perched between Lionel and Devlin. The boys were patently smitten. Devlin shyly asked if she was a movie star. Why did he ask? She looked like a movie star! Delia explained that she sang and danced and had even acted in a few commercials. Close enough for him. Meg fought a long insurgency to pry the kid away after dinner and nip off to bed. Thankfully, he missed Lionel’s downing the last of a fifth of rye and subsequent editorial on colonialism. Instead of relying on charm, he amped his yahoo, self-destructive inclination to eleven.
“White man is the enemy!” he said, demonstrating simultaneously the truth of that statement and also the axiom that we are our own worst enemies.
“Oh, Lionel, pass the mayo,” Meg said.
“And the white bread,” I said.
“Colonialist-invading, boat-having motherfuckers!” He sloshed what was left of the booze in his glass.
Having missed the inciting event, I couldn’t tell whether this was sarcasm or sincerity. Guessing was perilous when it involved Lionel’s deeper philosophy.
“Have another drink, babe,” Delia said, lacing her boots.
“Leaving?” I said. Redundant as she’d already headed for the door.
She awaited me on the porch.
“Speaking of whitey and the enemy . . . Believe it or not, Zircon are the white hats.”
“Compared to whom?”
“Don’t be a jerk. Words to
the wise, Coleridge. Grain of salt and whatnot. Watch yourself with those people. Watch yourself with that whole family.”
“May have to go with, the hell with Labradors and Redlicks alike,” I said.
“Oh, to be a child again with a child’s solutions to problems large and small. Crying, breaking toys, tantrums—”
“Pouting doesn’t go out of style.”
“Picking up your ball and running home won’t always be an option.” She lit one of her chic cigarettes. Somehow, the tobacco scent heightened her allure. “I can’t decide if you’re really that self-destructive or if patronizing me is a sport.”
“Here I thought you came to canoodle with Lionel and score a free meal.”
“Some Column A, some Column B. Column C would be to talk you into not getting disappeared.”
“This isn’t nineteen seventies or eighties Chile and your dad isn’t Pinochet.”
“It’s getting there,” she said. “You might be in for a surprise if you ever tested that theory. Drop the funnies and catch a news broadcast.”
“Papa Labrador sent you, didn’t he? I’m getting whiplash from his moods.”
“Daddy likes options. The shooting-you thing wasn’t ever serious.”
“Yay! He did send you. Right?”
“It was my idea. He went along. Thanks to my badgering, he’s come around to the notion that you’re an excellent pawn. Lethal in the proper circumstances. Cheap and expendable. Then I saw Lionel and my heart got zingy and softened with the spirit of the season.”
“Zingy, eh? No comment. As for Papa Labrador, he’s made an error in judgment if he presumes I’m going to help him in any damned way.”
“Look,” she said. “I don’t have a clear picture of what you’re doing with Senator Redlick’s former hatchet man, except that it’s about a man who died at the Jeffers site.”
I regarded her in stoic silence.
“Daddy owned a chunk of that collider,” she said. “The project was extremely important to him. To us.”
“Multi-billion-dollar white elephant. I’m sure it made your cold hearts go pitty-pat until they froze in your chests.”
“Coleridge, you mistake me. This went deeper than stocks and profit margins. We shared a philosophy and an ultimate goal that transcended our identities as Redlick Group and Zircon Corp. So did the others who invested.”
“You can’t reveal the details, naturally.”
“Sworn to secrecy,” she said. “What matters is that you grasp the unholy fucking importance of this communal goal.”
“Well, I grasp that Redlick Group’s spokes-douche, Tom Mandibole, is a homer for the project. He scoffed at the suggestion it’s dead and buried.”
“Him.” Delia looked as if she was about to cross herself.
I bit my tongue to resist confiding details of what I’d gleaned in what was becoming a wide-reaching investigation into the seamier side of large-scale construction. I hadn’t managed to read anywhere near the entire collection of reports; I nonetheless skimmed until my eyeballs bled. I came across a series of memos. These memos between congressional watchdogs and their agents embedded in the Jeffers Project led me to conclude the government didn’t pull support from the collider due to waste or cost overruns. Those bastards calculate corruption into the bid. The government picked up its marbles and went home because a keen mind on the congressional oversight committee realized Redlick and Zircon, and those other shifty industrialists, had a hidden agenda. Late in the game, an independent geologist on the federal payroll produced evidence of previously undisclosed irregular seismic activity. Carefully obscured from the public, a full-fledged report alleged that an unstable fault line disqualified the collider. The Jeffers Project founders pled ignorance and were lucky to dodge fraud charges. Immense wealth is better than Kevlar sometimes.
Intriguing as it might be, Delia’s perspective wasn’t quite valuable enough to overcome my suspicion of the heiress to the Labrador empire and future holder of the keys to Zircon Corp.
“Does Mandibole have reason to be optimistic?” I said.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Certain unscrupulous persons would slit a baby’s throat to see the collider resurrected. Why do you suppose Gerald Redlick went into politics? He means to influence the government on behalf of his family, his company, and the grand project. Grand projects yet undreamt of, in fact.”
The witch’s cauldron of paranoia and unrequited foreboding in the back of my mind began to bubble.
“You’re perilously close to telling me something,” I said. “Lummoxes are slow on the uptake. If you’ve a point to make, spell it out in all caps.”
“The Labradors and Redlicks no longer see eye to eye about that bloody space-age catacomb. Zircon prefers the project to remain dormant. Redlick and allies desire its revival. You said it—cold war.”
“I wish you and yours the best of luck in the feuds to come.”
She rewarded me with a wan smile.
“Daddy is aware of your traipsing around where you damned well shouldn’t be. The enemy won’t come here into our territory. They’ll wait to catch you in the open. Daddy would encourage you to continue fucking around and do his dirty work by remote control. I’m imploring you to walk away. There are worse fates than concrete galoshes.”
“Thank you for your concern.” I projected calmness. Riding my decades of finely honed bravado into the dirt.
“Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.” Delia’s boots crunched on a rime of snow and ice as she sashayed down the walk. A luxury SUV, fit for the president or a foreign potentate, glided up. A gorilla in a trench coat helped her inside.
Meg laid her hand on my shoulder and watched the vehicle zoom into the night.
“What was that?”
“God bless me,” I said. “I’m afraid it was the ghost of Christmas Future.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
In college, Sean Pruitt had not only defended various assertions by Drs. Campbell and Ryoko, he’d written a paper about the Campbell-Ryoko documentary The Forest That Eats Men. His paper cited a particular set of tapes he’d designated the Ring of Darkness. These tapes were a series of interviews and lectures the doctors had begun in the 1970s, carried into the new millennium. Adeyemi’s lawyer sent the material to me upon request. Apparently, the tapes were among several boxes of similar files Adeyemi had borrowed from Dr. Alex Pruitt’s collection when they’d enlisted PI Griese to probe Sean’s alleged suicide. There wasn’t any love lost between Adeyemi and Dr. Pruitt, yet they’d set aside their differences and worked together hand in glove. People, including hard-bitten thug cops, had certainly loved Sean.
Some of the Campbell-Ryoko files were stored on outdated technology. Meg dipped into her library resources to finagle an archaic recorder for my use. I fiddled with the settings and got the reels turning. Scratchy and oddly distorted, but sufficiently clear that I discerned Dr. Campbell speaking on his beloved topic, extraterrestrial intelligence and alleged incidents of human abduction:
“—you think it can’t be real, it’s a dream, a hallucination, because of the crudeness. The rusty tools, the chains, medieval contraptions. Filth and stink. This can’t be an advanced species. This can’t be a starfaring race.” This from the mouth of multiple abductees.
Dr. Ryoko’s thoughts on mythology, folklore, and quantum physics:
Seances are not solicitations of mystical beings, nor invitations to the spectral souls. Energy is not destroyed, only reshaped, distributed, or displaced. Astral projection and astral viewing are achieved through a variety of methods and these methods often labor under the trappings of mysticism. Oracular vision is frowned upon by modern religions, unless expressly bestowed by approved sources.
Legends are similar no matter where you wander. Jesus, Allah, Satan, Whiro, Azrael, Kali. The same, all the same. Light and dark. Positive, negative. Two components o
f reality are responsible for this phenomenon. Component one is mundane: You’ve mapped one brain and stimulated one nervous system; you’ve mapped and stimulated them all. Ike and Mike think alike and everybody is Ike or Mike. Two veers into esoteric territory. Reality is a string of beads. Dissimilar beads occupy different positions, but all are connected. Concepts such as “here” and “there” are modalities, terms of convenience. Heroic figures, monsters, angels, devils are exaggerations upon human characteristics.
I could imagine Gene K’s take on this insane bullshit were he around to compare notes. He would’ve laughed and said, I told you, kid.
* * *
■■■
The phone rang at an obscene hour.
“Coleridge, you’re one of the last of a dying breed,” Badja Adeyemi said. “That lone mustang stallion on the bluff, overlooking his herd of mares. Now it’s punk kids.”
“It was always punk kids,” I said. “We’re punk kids with wrinkles. And for the love of everything holy, don’t say mares.”
“Had a terrible dream last night. You died. You got lynched and used for a piñata. Saw it clear as a vision. Spent the whole day in a funk. Finally occurred to me to give you a buzz. Glad that you answered the phone.”
“In this universe, I did. Universes overlap. Bands on a radio dial.”
“You definitely croaked in one of the other ones,” he said. “Maybe I glimpsed your unhappy future. To be honest with you, your unhappy future is the least of what troubles me as I fall asleep each night. My dreams insist we all have a dark cloud headed our way. An asteroid is gonna level everything. Gets worse too.”
“The jailers need to let you out of your cage to exercise more,” I said.
“Soon enough, I’ll walk through the door, scot free.”
“Why not today? Enjoying the accommodations?”
“It ain’t the worst. Anyway, I have a different idea: You’re a dead man. Been dead for years. Somebody you shoulda whacked, you didn’t. They got you instead. Everything you experience is a fading dream.”