Worse Angels

by Laird Barron

  “I have my opinion,” I said. “And that’s all I’ll ever have. I’m sorry.”

  “Same,” Adeyemi said. He embraced me, which was a surprise. He’d intuited I’d killed some guys, or done something vengeful on his and June’s behalf. The fact I looked like I’d been chucked into a running cement mixer was a giveaway of sorts.

  “No hugging in prison,” I said. “No hugging in prison!”

  As I readied to accompany his lawyer out into the fresh air and sunshine, I asked Adeyemi what he planned to do.

  “I’m going to ponder.”

  “Elections coming this fall. I don’t know how much it matters to you, that business with the Jeffers Project. If Redlick holds on as a senator, he’ll do his damnedest to revive the collider. Off the books. A diversion of resources so the RG or an ally, such as Spencer Industries, can finish the job.”

  His old nasty-cop persona resurfaced with a derisive snort.

  “Be realistic. Gerry isn’t satisfied with a seat in the Senate. He’s gunning for the presidency. Joke candidacy? Joke’s on us; he’ll win.”

  “Goodbye, Lieutenant.”

  “Goodbye, hard-ass.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. I’m wrong all the time, so why not about that too?

  * * *

  ■■■

  Lionel and I dug the Croatoan’s trove up in the spring.

  We hauled it to a warehouse on the Hudson near Kingston. Sonny, the former Japanese diplomat, bade us sit in an office cluttered by shipping manifests and milk crates crammed with documents. Old-timey posters of tugboats and capsized barges and stonily aggrieved barge captains set the mood. Serious, serious Japanese dudes in excellent suits paced the dingy hallway. More loitered in the stairwell, passing cigarettes back and forth. A couple carried wakizashi under their jackets. We’d parked in view of the window. As I chatted with our patron, Lionel watched two guys circling his car, eyes shaded so they could look inside.

  Sonny the Diplomat was relaxed as he jovially explained why he couldn’t offer more than pennies on the dollar. Can’t say I listened to the whole spiel.

  An astronaut’s brain floats in his skull, is the comment I recall from our conversation. It was in a documentary. Those missions in space that last for months change the astronauts. Their brains float. They come home not the same.

  Seventy-five thousand apiece. We went in lugging several plastic cartons. In the end, my share of the take was neatly inserted into a large insulated envelope.

  “Fuck a duck.” Lionel flung his envelope into the backseat after we were safely on the road. He lit a cigarette and smoked in anger.

  “Moving that amount of weight in ancient currency is a bitch. He has to wash it through I don’t want to guess how many third-world embassies and depots. Warlord caves in Pakistan. Iraqi drug dens. He can’t run the entire lump into Japan no matter how many bases we’ve stuck in there since the big war.”

  He sighed.

  “Ah, well. My bookie’s eyes will gleam when I check in this weekend. I can get a new engine for my jalopy. And some tires. Surprise Delia with some classy swag.”

  “Delia already has all the swag,” I said.

  “Man swag.”

  “Man swag?”

  “She doesn’t have man swag.”

  “Her boyfriend, the famous rock musician, has that covered too,” I said.

  He lit another cigarette.

  “Been thinking my cabin could be more secure. Friend of a friend is trying to unload an M2 Browning. He’s got bazookas.”

  “Anti-personnel machine guns and anti-tank rockets. That’s man swag.”

  “You scoff. Keep playing fuck-fuck with evil corporations, military hardware might become a requirement, not a luxury.”

  “Seventy-five K will get the creditors off my case. Put a down payment on a house for Meg with what’s left.” I’d perused a handful of listings with no real sense of commitment. Looking, just looking. “Business is steady. I’m stable.”

  “This is a taste. Taste won’t last.”

  “Nope.”

  We went a while farther.

  “Okay,” I said. “You want to go after a bigger score?”

  “The rest of the alleged hoard? The Wagner train missing longer than the Ark of the Covenant. How much again?”

  “Seven million, plus or minus. Gold, jewels.”

  “Our cut would be fat. A fence can move that shit, easy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is easy. I didn’t say it. Why ruin Lionel’s moment?

  “Must be Christmas again already. Santa clue you in where we can find the treasure?”

  “I’ve logged hours with the Croatoan’s home videos.”

  “Oh, dude.”

  “There’s a clip separate from his snuff films. One that didn’t fit with the Anvil Mountain sequence either. We’ll have to dig deeper, ascertain the facts. Going by glimpses of terrain, I believe he filmed where the rest of the money is waiting. In the mountains of Northern California. Won’t be easy to find. Won’t be without peril.”

  “One of these days then.”

  “One of these days?”

  “As in, one of these days, we’ll retire to the islands and sleep in a hammock.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “One of these days, we’ll go hunting for the rest of the Nibelungen. Live like old Germanic kings. Party hard and come to a tragic end.”

  Lionel smiled.

  “At last, something to look forward to.”

  * * *

  ■■■

  I wasn’t flush for long. Meg insisted I visit the neurologist pal of hers; friend prices or not, it wasn’t cheap. What did I learn from the battery of tests, scans, blood draws, and general imposition? My body was aging fast due to frequent abuse and my brain emitted the occasional peculiar wave. What could be inferred? What could be done? Not a blessed thing, the specialist said while scribbling a referral to a psychiatrist who might be interested in chatting. However, I had a standing invitation to drop in for further observation, gratis.

  I promised to be in touch.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Bizarre, titillating gossip about Senator Gerald Redlick emerged as news stories over the summer and autumn. Worst of them all, from Team Redlick’s perspective, was a sordid October Surprise launched in The New York Times. Russian oligarchs, Russian prostitutes, and a selection of dubious real estate details brokered by the Redlick Group ten years past got tongues wagging. Meanwhile, Adeyemi walked out of prison a week prior to the election. The judge heard a motion to dismiss on what the legal community dubbed a bogus technicality. Damned if His Honor didn’t throw out the case too.

  I called Bellow for a chat. He’d taken the FBI retirement package and signed with a small security consulting firm after three ugly weeks of not knowing what to do with himself. He, like everybody, figured the slow drip of anti-Redlick info was generated by Adeyemi as a method of enacting retaliation without actually testifying against his ex-boss. Bellow predicted the various news stories wouldn’t amount to much legally. He also forecast that Adeyemi would be arrested on new charges or shot in the back of the head by New Year’s. Word on the wire circulated that Russian tycoons were already putting in orders for the guy’s scalp. Oh, and since we weren’t allowed to have anything nice, I could expect Redlick to hold on to his Senate seat.

  Also in the Can’t Have Anything Nice category, I saw Tom Mandibole on a cable news sound bite defending the Redlick Group’s sterling reputation against “scurrilous” and “politically motivated” attack articles. Someone was going to pay, pay, pay! He looked right into the camera at me and grinned.

  * * *

  ■■■

  Redlick won reelection by the clichéd “razor-thin margin.” This caused Meg to remark, God might be dead, but the devil is in business.


  A lone sliver of light penetrated the gloom—Redlick’s colleagues grew spines and did what a majority of voters hadn’t: they punished him for the bad press, if not the bad deeds. He was stripped of his committees and leadership roles and demoted to a rank-and-file sophomore senator. Bereft of status and influence, he wouldn’t be masterminding a resurrection of the Jeffers Project anytime soon.

  Lionel clapped me on the shoulder when the news broke. The evidence we’d gathered turned Adeyemi against his friend, convinced him to strike Redlick down from the shadows. The dead weren’t coming back, and as usual, the masterminds eluded justice, but Gerald Redlick was temporarily thwarted in his larger ambitions. I commented to Lionel that this is what winning looked like these days. The angel on my left shoulder laughed. In the greater battle of good versus evil, this is what winning has always looked like.

  Bellow called early one morning in mid-December. His sources reported that the machinery was in motion; odds were being made on Adeyemi’s life expectancy. Best bet was forty-eight hours. Bellow reminded me that, as with all gambling, the information was for entertainment purposes only.

  * * *

  ■■■

  Lionel and I used a junker car with throwaway plates and traveled incognito to Elkhorn Lake. No one, and I mean no one, not even Meg, knew anything about the trip. This was a real New York winter. Last year, I’d been able to drive all the way in. Not this time around. We parked where the road ended and heaps of snow began. Several other snowy cars and a couple of pickups occupied the plowed spot. We walked our weary asses nearly a mile through the woods and over the hills along a slippery path to Badja Adeyemi’s cabin. Our gear dragged behind on a plastic sled.

  Adeyemi greeted us from the porch with an automatic pistol. Recognition filtered into his deadpan expression. He nonetheless weighed whether or not to blow my head off a tick too long for comfort. He lowered the pistol, invited us inside, and offered us beers.

  “Suppose I’m glad to see you,” he said. “How’d you know I was holed up at the shack?”

  “Where else would you go?” I said.

  The lake was frozen to dark, wind-scoured marble. Black and blue storm clouds glowered like a crowd of villains.

  I asked whether he’d spotted any bogeys. Because they were inbound.

  “Counted two at the market,” he said. “Means five.”

  “It means six or eight,” Lionel said. He slipped into his black clothes.

  “They could hit us with a drone,” Adeyemi said. “Missile comes through the window and kaboom, this shack is kindling.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, your friends will want it to look like an accident. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Heart attack. Outside chance it could be a staged hanging or self-inflicted gunshot. Four men will breach and neutralize. The rest will perform overwatch and lookout.”

  “Failing that,” Lionel said. “Yep, next time it’ll be more dramatic.” He was mostly dressed and going over his arsenal. The last glimmer of sunlight enfolded him and softened into a full-body halo. It made me imagine the Angel of Death and his choir tuning their axes and singing their arpeggios in anticipation of what must surely come.

  I checked the yard for the hundredth time.

  “Let’s hope I’m right and it doesn’t turn into World War Three.”

  Lionel loaded his rifle. He laid it on the table next to several knives and a 9mm pistol. He picked up the pistol.

  “Welcome to the Underworld. Nobody in the real world gives a shit.”

  “Frankly, my dear, neither do I.”

  “Let the blood flow, let it flow, let it flow.”

  “Shitheels might not even come.” Adeyemi leaned back in his rickety chair. His expression was as serene as a grandfather content with himself and the world.

  “They might not.” I unzipped my bags and brought out the Kevlar battle-plated jacket I’d seldom had an opportunity to wear, and began to shrug into the cumbersome sonofabitch. I felt like a ronin strapping on his armor before the battle to end all battles and that squared everything. I tested the fit of my gas mask.

  Adeyemi watched disinterestedly.

  “If they do come and we manage to win, there’ll be another team next week, or the week after, or ninjas jumping out of the woodwork wherever I go. The fuckers will get me. Today, tomorrow, someday.” It wasn’t a defeatist observation, merely pragmatic.

  Lionel grinned, dazzling white through brown and black camo tiger stripes.

  “Roger that. But it won’t be these guys.” He hefted his rifle, adjusting the bunting scope cover, working the bolt action before slinging the weapon over his shoulder. “I’ll be in the trees. Radio check in five.” He slipped away without a goodbye.

  I lit a kerosene lamp and hung it from a hook near the stove. We’d pushed the couch and some chairs near the front door without blocking it so that when the bad guys burst in there’d be an immediate obstacle and we’d kill them while they were delayed. Or Lionel would shoot them as they milled around on the porch. Whichever.

  “We’re in for weather,” Adeyemi said. “But we’ve got wood and we’ve got brews. I got a deck of cards, if you play pinochle.”

  “Gin rummy.”

  I leaned my boar spear against the wall. Its presence comforted my atavistic self. Spears are the single most effective non-projectile weapon in human history. Something can’t bite you if it can’t get close to you. The Mossberg was loaded and ready for action. I hoped and prayed whoever was en route didn’t dawdle. The idea of lounging in that heavy armor for any extended duration was depressing.

  He sipped his beer, stoic as a totem. Finally, he spoke.

  “My uncle Gage lived in the hills outside of town. By himself in a cabin like this one. Coyote got shot; Gage found him in a ditch a piece down the road. Tweezed the pellets and nursed him back to life. Chomped the ever-loving crap out of his hand too. Coyote made it, though. Recovered and scampered off for the high timber after a few weeks. But he came around every winter, usually when the storms hit in January, and curled up on the foot of my uncle’s bed. Ate the cat food, yada, yada. One of the last times I sat with my uncle, he was drunk and muttering about that coyote. His friend. Hadn’t seen the critter for a couple of years.” He studied the austere vista, shadow and light playing over his leathery face. Mostly shadow. “Said to me, ‘Some nights when it’s this cold and the wind is howling, I worry for the coyote out there. Dumb. Mother Nature will take care of him. That’s her job. That’s the way of it. Coyote’s a pile of bones on an unmarked grave somewhere in the hills.’”

  Adeyemi lapsed into silence as darkness thickened and all we had was that fragile guttering flame between us and the endless void. Really, that’s all anybody has. Flames crackled in the barrel stove and the flue moaned softly. I meditated upon the wilderness and animals alone in the dark, living out nature’s plan.

  Nature has a plan for me as well. An exit into the posthumous life by a silver bullet through the heart or peacefully in my sleep. Maybe, when it’s time, I’ll return home to the utter North, lie down on autumn tundra beneath the aurora borealis, and commend my spirit to the fields of ancient lights. Whichever way it goes, the worms in the earth patiently abide.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Jessica M.; Dr. Todd Banister and staff at Banister Animal Hospital of Kingston, New York; Yves Tourigny; Christopher Coke; the Langan Family; Paul Tremblay; Phil Fracassi; Stephanie Simurd; Deborah Gordon Brown; James McAlear; Jason, Harmony, Oksana, Julian, and Quinn Barron; Timbi Porter; Jody Rose; and, as always, my fans.

  Special thanks to Sara Minnich, Patricja Okuniewska, Bonnie Rice, Madeleine Hopkins, and the Putnam team; William DeMerrit; and my agents, Janet Reid and Pouya Shahbazian.

  Extra-special thanks to my colleague Frank Duffy, who understands; and to Gage P. & Tiffany F.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Laird Barr
on was born in Alaska, where he raised huskies and worked in the construction and fishing industries for much of his youth. He is the author of several short-story collections and three novels, and his work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. A multiple Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Award nominee, he is also a three-time winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Barron lives in Kingston, New York.

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