Charisma

by Steven Barnes

  “A slush fund.”

  “Gigantic. Hundreds of millions. He was able to trace the connections down from the top—following the money. And up from the bottom, dealers in Texas and California who had made connection with Contras and black ops men running the whole thing.”

  “The kind of story that can make a career.”

  “Or get you killed. So. This young reporter was putting it all together, when his editor, who had given him ten months, came to him saying that Newsweek was getting ready to run their own story.”

  “Time pressure.”

  “The reporter had two weeks. Two weeks to get it sewn up. To find the missing link that would cement the entire string top to bottom. Because every step had to be validated at least two ways. He didn’t have it, but knew of a guy named ‘Benny.’”

  “Benny.”

  “Benny Alvarez was a go-between. The reporter knew everything about him, except that he hadn’t been able to meet him. And Benny died.”

  She closed her eyes. “You wrote about that. A drug-related shooting?”

  “Yes. So … I ‘found’ an interview with Benny, and printed it. It was my missing link. And the Times printed it. Pulitzer nomination. Job offer with Marcus Communications.”

  “What happened?”

  “Funny thing. Benny wasn’t actually dead. The worm was actually in witness protection. He read the article, stewed over it for a couple of years, and then threatened to break cover unless I paid him off. Even getting the threat out was enough for his people to find him. And kill him.”

  “But the damage was done.”

  “Yes. It couldn’t be proven, but everyone knew I’d lied. And everything came unraveled.”

  “Your career…?”

  Renny didn’t hear those words the first time she spoke them. Didn’t hear them, but felt them. His career. Watching everything he’d worked for since college going down in flames, feeling homicidally angry, then suicidally depressed when he realized that he had only himself to blame. He could count on the fingers of one hand the pains that had remained with him throughout his life. His first dog’s death. His first heartbreak. The day his father walked out of his life. The day his cancer-ravaged mother stopped recognizing him.

  And the week his career crashed and burned.

  “Nothing could be proven,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Everyone knew. I was already at Marcus, riding high, and suddenly I was poison. It was a long fall.” He paused, feeling the weight of the truth. “So I’m here.”

  “Interviewing me, instead of the President.”

  “Yes.”

  “You stopped talking about that young reporter.”

  “I guess I did.” His hands were shaking. He pulled a cigarette out of his briefcase, and lit it without asking permission. They were just two addicts, having a friendly little chat.

  “You don’t like me,” she said, “but you trust me, don’t you?”

  “I guess you’re right.” He exhaled a slender plume. “Anything else?”

  “No,” she said. “How do you feel now?”

  He searched inside himself for the answer, and was surprised when he found it. “Strange. Better.”

  “As I felt when I had written my little book.”

  “So.” He inhaled again. Strangely, exhaling, he felt more of the weight lift. What he had done was inexcusable, but not beyond comprehension. He’d let anger and fear and competitiveness eat at his judgment, until he ran out of reasons to Just Say No. “So,” he said. “It’s too much to hope, but what’s the story you’re dangling in front of me?”

  She sipped her tea. “The recorder is off?”

  “Yes.”

  She slid the little box of cocaine out of sight. “You did not hear this from me,” she said.

  He considered her carefully. This didn’t seem like the same woman at all; if he wasn’t entirely mistaken, she seemed just a bit fearful. “All right,” he said.

  “Perhaps thirteen years ago this happened. Things were at their peak. I was supplying girls to Hollywood, and some to Washington, through trusted connections. The girls were run as an escort agency. An up-front fee was paid, the girls would negotiate additional services, and I received a portion of their earnings.”

  “Pretty much what you described in the book.”

  “Yes. Remember when I mentioned a girl who became greedy, who used me to make connections and then made dates directly, to deny me my percentage?”

  “Yes. You said she left your employ.”

  “Indeed. I called her Majel. Her real name was Courtney Piper. And the customer was Alexander Marcus.”

  “Marcus?” Renny had heard rumors about his fondness for prostitutes, so that wasn’t surprising. He had the distinct feeling that she hadn’t finished yet.

  “Yes. December of ’88, in San Francisco. I had supplied ladies to Mr. Marcus before. Consistently, they had reported that he was rough, and generous and incredibly virile … considering that he had only a single testicle.”

  “What?”

  She grinned at him. “Didn’t you know? No, I don’t suppose you would. They said he had had reconstructive surgery. He was scarred, as if he had been in some horrible accident.”

  Jesus.

  “I had had problems with Courtney before, knew that she had a pattern of sneaking to see her previous clients, and making money without sharing it.”

  He felt his mouth pulling into a frown. “So … what happened that night?”

  “She called in sick—as she had done before. I have a contact who saw her entering a restaurant, a block from the Plaza Hotel, where Marcus was staying. I was ready to fire her the following day.”

  “And?”

  “And she never came in.”

  “Never?”

  “No.”

  The single syllable hung in the air like a bad smell. He wanted to shuffle papers, or light another cigarette or something. “Did you ever see her again?”

  Penelope reached into her drawer, pulled out the little box and prepared another serving of cocaine, chopping and fluffing it before answering. She looked up at him. “Are you sure?” she asked. For a moment he wondered if she meant are you sure about that question, but then realized she was asking him if he wanted a snort.

  “No, thank you. Did you ever see her again?”

  She sniffed deeply, and then wiped tears away from her eyes.

  “Yes. Once more. At the morgue, a week later.”

  “A week.”

  She daubed again. “She was found in the mountains above Santa Cruz. Her hands were torn with what the coroner called defensive wounds. The police officer said that she was naked, and bruised. Her feet were abraded, as if she had run barefoot across rough terrain. The police thought she had been hunted. I barely recognized her: her face had been chewed.”

  The bottom fell out of his stomach, and he fought against a sour, ugly taste in the back of his throat. “Chewed?”

  She lit a cigarette, and sat, studying him.

  “Bitten,” she said. “Disfigured.”

  “By an animal?”

  She smiled at him. For the first time he noticed that her teeth were small, perfectly formed, improbably, artificially white. “Human teeth, they said.”

  His mind was buzzing, but the thoughts were still fluid, had yet to solidify into any conclusions. “What else?”

  She snorted the other half of her line. “That is all,” she said.

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “No,” she said. “It was months later that I heard the story of the restaurant. And who would believe it?”

  Who, indeed. “That’s it?”

  She said nothing.

  “What exactly are you saying?” His voice had a quaver in it that he didn’t like at all.

  “For forty years, I made my living reading people, as I read you. I met this man once, shook his hand, watched his eyes as they roamed my body, heard his voice without electronic filtering.” She leaned forward. “I fel
t him, Renny Sand. And I tell you that what he loved most in the world was not sex. Not money. Not anything but power—and there is no greater power than that of life and death. Of knowing that there are no rules.” Her words were simple, and unadorned, and spoken with absolute conviction. Sand found himself drawn in by them, to them, and had to remind himself that conviction didn’t mean accuracy.

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Isn’t it? But I give it to you. It is now yours.”

  “This is nothing,” he said. To his disgust, Renny realized that even as he said it, he was busy figuring angles.

  She watched him shrewdly, and he realized that in a game of poker, this woman would have already won his underwear and pink slip. She had known a hundred of him. Sand didn’t have the slightest idea who she really was.

  “You don’t believe that,” she said. “You are not sure what it is, but you do not believe that.”

  He stood. If nothing else, he had to get away from her damned self-confident smirk, the obscene implication of her words. “If that’s all you have to say, I’m out of here.”

  “Mr. Sand?”

  He wanted to hit her, and wasn’t entirely certain where the anger came from. “What now, damn it?”

  “You believe I tell the truth?”

  “I believe that you think you’re telling the truth.”

  “That is enough, for now. You will look into it.” Annoyingly, it wasn’t a question.

  He slammed the briefcase closed again, and without a backward glance, left the room. On the way out, Shan opened the door to the hall.

  “How much of that shit does she put up her nose every day?” He wanted to hear a brain-killing answer.

  Like her mistress, Shan was way ahead of him. “Not enough to cloud her mind,” she said.

  22

  CLAREMONT, THURSDAY, MAY 24

  Cappy Swenson and “Toad” Wilcox hadn’t slept in three days. For Cappy, the world was beginning to fill with sticky strands of pink spider silk. He could barely see them, but could feel them when he waved his hands, or stalked in increasing frenzy from room to room. They brushed against his face and hands, were easier to see in darkness than in light. When he lumbered into the kitchen to run his face under the tap, he walked through walls of the stuff. When he stumbled back out into the living room to snort another short, thin fluffy line of crystal meth, the spiderwebs got into his eyes, his mouth. Another line, and the world went white for a moment: no trouble, no spiderwebs, nothing but pure adrenaline as his synapses fried.

  Ellie Krup had been up for thirty-six hours. It had been a party at first, but now she was yapping at him, screwing up his ability to think, and he needed to think. He paced, and ranted, and slammed his fist sideways against the trailer’s paneling, shaking the entire house. He had pushed her twice, and slapped her once, and she just kept yapping. He was going to settle her down harder pretty damned soon, if she didn’t get out of his face.

  He made another line disappear up his nose, whipped his head back as the first sour tingles hit, and heard her say: “You’ve got to slow down on that shit, Cap.…”

  Like the bitch wasn’t first in line for his leavings. He glared at her, a red haze boiling at the corners of his vision. He itched, dammit. His joints felt swollen and loose at the same time. Ellie looked like shit. Her eyes were squiggled red as a plate of marinara. She shrank back, and he turned back to his favorite topic. “I bet the fucking Canadians set this shit up. Canucks control the border, think they can flood us with their cheap shit. What do you think?”

  Ellie grimaced. “Cap, I dunno. I really don’t.”

  Howie “Toad” Wilcox leaned in and snorted one of the remaining lines. Wilcox looked just like his nickname: short, thick body, long legs, squat hairless face. Toad had been Cappy’s closest friend for ten years. They’d celled together down in California, at Tehachapi State, then ridden cross-country for years before falling into this gig in Hicksville, Washington. “I say we kill those fucking bastards.”

  Cappy glared at him. “The faggots?”

  “Hell, yes!” Toad said. “Who else?”

  Cappy stopped still, gaze defocused as if searching deep inside himself for the answers. There was wisdom in there, a regular fucking font of it. “Give it time,” he growled. “All things in time. First, we find out what the fuck is going on in this town. We’ve got enemies.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” Toad said.

  Cappy sat on one corner of the living room couch. It groaned and sagged beneath his bulk. The pieces were coming together in his head now. Yeah. He could feel it. “And they’re getting together, moving against us. They want a fucking war, that’s what they’ll have.”

  “Cap, honey…” Ellie said.

  That was the last straw. As she moved toward him he backhanded her savagely. Her head whipped back, and she stumble-flew back against the wall, stunning herself, and slid down, too dazed to move. Blood trickled from her nose.

  Cappy looked at her dully, appreciating the precision of the blow, then spooned another line out, and sniffed, trying to clear his head.

  “This shit is just too fucking good,” Toad said.

  “Cap,” Ellie pleaded.

  Cappy looked at her incuriously. She seemed kind of funny, crouched there with the blood oozing over her lips. “You want a fresh one?”

  She shook her head frantically and cowered back. She said nothing for the next two hours, just watched as Cappy and Toad snorted, and planned, and the night stretched cold dark fingers toward morning.

  23

  SATURDAY, MAY 26

  Lee was the last one to join their circle, and Patrick had the feeling that he had barely convinced himself to come at all. The boy was pushing his bicycle up the path to the meeting spot long after Destiny had already called them to order.

  They spoke of business, of the health of the web page, and the lawn-mowing venture. For almost a half hour, Lee looked at them, as if he was about to explode, and then said: “All right. All right. What happened? I know you guys are holding back on me. You’ve got to tell me what happened.” His eyes were wild. Without knowing, he already knew too much, and it was nearly killing him.

  Hermie, Destiny and Patrick looked at each other. There had been an agreement not to let the secret out any further. This was the kind of secret that got people killed, and for Lee to be burdened with it as well …

  But it was the thing that everyone knew and no one discussed, and it was killing their friendship. So Patrick told the story again, as simply and directly as he could. The air seemed to grow chill as he did, and Lee just stared at them, his mouth working without words emerging. Then when Patrick finished he just said: “Good Christ. Oh shit. Oh, man, guys—this is bad. This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” He stood up, and wouldn’t look at them, pacing back and forth, seething with nervous energy.

  Then he looked at them, and shook his head. “I can’t be a part of this, man. This is just too much.” And he got back on his bike. “I’ll call you guys in a few days. I need to chill out. Oh, man.” And he bumped his bike down the wooded path, and away.

  Patrick looked at Destiny and Shermie. “You guys?”

  “He’s right,” Shermie said. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.” He paused, looking at the ground, shaking his head. “But I’m with you, bro.”

  Destiny nodded.

  Patrick stood up. “Well, I guess there isn’t a whole lot more to talk about right now. Let’s call it. We’ll … we can talk in school next week, all right?”

  Shermie waved his hand. “You guys go ahead. I need to kick it a bit. Just chill and think.”

  Destiny pulled Patrick away, kept him from hovering over his brooding friend. They steered their bikes down the path, sharing discipline and focus in a cocoon of silence. He let her get a little ahead of him, and watched her. The sun and shadow played on her, filtering down from the trees like green netting.

  They turned right onto River
View Road, rolling into the bike lane. She slowed so that he could catch up—

  And then the world went crazy.

  From two different side roads, first four, then six motorcycles appeared. To Patrick on his little bike, the choppers seemed impossibly gigantic, the gargoyles squatting upon them mythically imposing in black leathers.

  With a single glance, Patrick was absolutely certain that one of them was Cappy. The bikes thundered down from the hillside, appearing almost out of nowhere, and went into idle, coasting, almost walking along as the riders examined Patrick and Destiny.

  They were hemmed in by the wall of flesh and steel. Five men, one woman. The woman was Ellie Krup, and she was larger than half the men. Her wind-whipped hair was a dull blond, her square jaw almost hidden by her collar. She wore no leathers, and her upper arms were massive, her knuckles creased with ground-in dirt.

  They glanced at the kids, and one of the bikes swerved over a bit as it popped out of idle, so close that Destiny gasped.

  Destiny’s face was strained and ashen.

  “Let’s just stop.” Patrick was praying to himself: Please God, don’t let them know. Please, Jesus—

  Before they could begin to slow, one of the choppers swooped up behind them, bumping their rear tires with its massive chrome fender.

  Trembling now, Patrick looked up at the face beneath one of the helmets, the bearded face, the surprisingly clean and white teeth clenching a thin black cigar. The fleshy lips turned up in a jolly Santa smile.

  In that instant Patrick saw the metal guard rail just around the curve. As clearly as an image on the Imax screen where he’d seen Fantasia, he saw himself and Destiny crowded closer and closer to the barrier, saw the “accidental” twitch of one of the choppers, saw their fragile little ten-speeds careening sideways and smashing into the barrier. Broken limbs at the best. The worst, they could bounce back out into traffic, and the next truck around the curve would plough them like a tractor.

  He reached an arm out for Destiny. “Stop,” he said, his voice suddenly fierce.