by Peter Straub
From the shelf in the kitchen he fetched the cleaver, the roll of strapping tape, and the brown paper bag. Koko tossed the cleaver on the floor and took a new washcloth out of the bag. He pinched Roberto Ortiz’s nose between his forefinger and thumb, pulled up, and stuffed the washcloth into Ortiz’s mouth. Then he peeled off a length of the tape and wound it three times around the bottom half of Ortiz’s face, sealing in the washcloth.
Koko took both sets of cards out of his pockets and sat cross-legged on the floor. He placed the cards beside him and rested the handle of the cleaver on his thigh. He watched Ortiz’s eyes, waiting for him to wake up.
If you thought there were good parts, if you were a person who thought about the good parts, this was the good part now, coming up.
Ortiz had webby little wrinkles next to his eyes, and they looked dirty, full of dirt, because his skin was that olive color. He had just washed his hair, and it was thick and shiny black, with the sort of waves in it that looked like real waves, one after the other. You thought he was handsome, until you noticed his boxer’s dented little blob of a nose.
Ortiz finally opened his eyes. Give him this much, he got the whole situation right away and tried to jump forward. The ropes caught him short before he even got started, and he wrestled with them for a second before he got that too. He just gave up, sat back and looked from side to side—tried to take everything in. He stopped when he saw Miss Balandran melted into her chair and he really looked at her and then he looked straight at Koko and tried to get out of the chair again but kept on staring at Koko when he realized he couldn’t.
“Here you are with me, Roberto Ortiz,” Koko said. He picked up the regimental cards and held the good old Rearing Elephant out toward Ortiz. “Recognize this emblem?”
Ortiz shook his head, and Koko could see pain floating in his eyes.
“You have to tell me the truth about everything,” Koko said. “Don’t go out on a lie, try to remember everything, don’t waste pieces of your own brain. Come on, look at it.”
He saw how Roberto Ortiz was concentrating. The awakening of some little cell way back in his head flared in his eyes.
“I thought you’d remember,” Koko said. “You showed up with the rest of the hyenas, you must have seen it somewhere. You walked all around, you probably worried about getting your spit-shine boots all dirty—you were there, Roberto. I asked you here because I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to ask you some important questions.”
Roberto Ortiz groaned through the washcloth and tape. He issued a plea with his big soft brown eyes.
“You won’t have to talk. Just nod your head.”
If you saw a leaf shaking.
If the chicken froze on one foot.
If you saw these things, no part of the animal was wasted.
“The Elephant stands for the 24th Infantry, right?”
Ortiz nodded.
“And would you agree that the elephant embodies these traits—nobility, grace, gravity, patience, perseverance, power and reserve in times of peace, power and wrath in times of war?”
Ortiz looked confused, but nodded.
“And in your opinion, did an atrocity take place in the I Corps village of Ia Thuc?”
Ortiz hesitated, then nodded again.
Koko was not in a darkened room in a pink stucco bungalow on the fringe of a tropical city, but on a frozen tundra under a sky of high hard blue. A constant wind skirled and rippled the thin layer of snow over a layer of ice hundreds of yards deep. Far off to the west sat a range of glaciers like broken teeth. God’s hand hung hugely in the air, pointing at him.
Koko jumped up and rapped the butt of his pistol against the knot on Ortiz’s head. Just like a cartoon, Ortiz’s eyes floated up into his head. His whole body went loose. Koko sat down and waited for him to wake up again.
When Ortiz’s eyelids fluttered, Koko slapped him hard, and Ortiz jerked his head up and stared wildly at him, all attention again.
“Wrong answer,” Koko said. “Even the court-martials, unfair as they were, couldn’t say there was any atrocity. It was an act of God. A literal act of God. Do you know what that means?”
Ortiz shook his head. The pupils of his eyes looked blurry.
“It doesn’t matter. I want to see if you remember certain names. Do you remember the name Tina Pumo, Pumo the Puma?”
Ortiz shook his head.
“Michael Poole?”
Ortiz wearily shook his head again.
“Conor Linklater?”
Another shake of the head.
“Harry Beevers?”
Ortiz lifted his head, remembering, and nodded.
“Yes. He talked to you, didn’t he? And he was pleased with himself. ‘Children can kill,’ he said, didn’t he? ‘It doesn’t matter what you do to a killer.’ And ‘The Elephant takes care of its own.’ He said that, ‘The Elephant takes care of its own.’ Right?”
Ortiz nodded.
“You sure you don’t remember Tina Pumo?”
Ortiz shook his head.
“You’re so fucking dumb, Roberto. You remember Harry Beevers, but you forget everybody else. All these people I have to find, have to track down … unless they come to me. Big joke! What do you think I should do after I find them?”
Ortiz cocked his head.
“I mean, do you think I should talk to them? These people were my brothers. I could step outside of all this shit, I could say, I cleaned up my share of the cesspool, now it’s someone else’s turn, I could say that, I could start all over, let it be someone else’s responsibility. What’s your best opinion on that, Roberto Ortiz?”
Roberto Ortiz communicated by means of mental telepathy that Koko should now let it be someone else’s responsibility to clean up the cesspool.
“It’s not that easy, Roberto. Poole was married when we were over there, for God’s sake! Don’t you think he told his wife about what happened? Pumo had Dawn Cucchio, don’t you think he has another girlfriend, or a wife, or both, right now? Lieutenant Beevers used to write to a woman named Pat Caldwell! You see how it never stops? That’s what eternity means, Roberto! It means Koko has to go on and on, cleaning up the world … making sure no part is wasted, that what travels from one ear to another ear is rooted out, nothing left over, nothing wasted.…”
For a second he actually saw red—a vast sheet of blood washing over everything, carrying everything with it, houses and cows and the engines of trains, washing everything clean.
“You know why I wanted you to bring copies of your articles?”
Ortiz shook his head.
Koko smiled. He reached out and picked the thick file of articles off the floor and opened it on his lap. “Here’s a good headline, Roberto, DID THIRTY CHILDREN DIE? I mean, is that yellow journalism, or what? You can really be proud of yourself, Roberto. It’s right up there with BIGFOOT DEVOURS TIBETAN BABY. What’s your answer, anyhow? Did thirty children die?”
Ortiz did not move.
“It’s cool if you don’t want to say. Satanic beings come in many forms, Roberto, in many, many forms.” As he spoke, Koko took a pack of matches from his pocket and set the file alight. He fanned it in the air to keep the fire alive.
When the flames neared his fingers, Koko dropped the burning papers and kicked them apart. The small flames left greasy black scorches on the wooden floor.
“I always liked the smell of fire,” Koko said. “I always liked the smell of gunpowder. I always liked the smell of blood. They’re clean smells, you know?”
I always liked the smell of gunpowder.
I always liked the smell of blood.
He smiled at the little flames guttering out on the floor. “I like how you can even smell the dust burning.” He turned his smile to Ortiz. “I wish my work was done. But at least I’ll have two pretty passports to use. And maybe when I’m done in the States, I’ll go to Honduras. That makes a lot of sense, I think. Maybe I’ll go there after I check out all these people I have to check out.” He
closed his eyes and rocked back and forth on the floor. “Work never leaves you alone, does it?” He stopped rocking. “Would you like me to untie you now?”
Ortiz looked at him carefully, then nodded very slowly.
“You’re so stupid,” Koko said. He shook his head, smiling sadly, took up the automatic pistol, and pointed it at the middle of Roberto Ortiz’s chest. He looked directly into Ortiz’s eyes, then shook his head again, still smiling sadly, braced his wrist with his left hand, and fired.
Then he watched Roberto Ortiz die fighting and twitching and struggling to speak. Blood darkened the pretty blazer, ruined the pretty shirt and the luxurious necktie.
Eternity, jealous and alert, watched with Koko.
When it was done, Koko wrote his name on one of the Orchid Boy playing cards, grasped the cleaver, and pushed himself up off the floor to do the messy part of the job.
PART
THREE
THE
TIGER BALM
GARDENS
1
“Just let me keep the books,” Michael Poole said to the erect little woman, all black shining hair and deep dimples, beside him. Her name tag read PUN YIN. She tilted his carry-on bag toward him, and Poole took the copies of A Beast in View and The Divided Man from the open pouch on the side. The stewardess smiled and began making her way forward through the pediatricians.
The doctors had started to unwind as soon as the plane hit cruising level. On earth, visible to their patients and other laymen, Michael’s colleagues liked to appear knowing, circumspect, and only as juvenile as conventional American ethics permitted; aloft, they acted like fraternity boys. Pediatricians in playclothes, in terrycloth jogging suits and college sweaters, pediatricians in red blazers and plaid trousers roamed the aisles of the big airplane, glad-handing and bawling out bad jokes. Pun Yin got no more than halfway toward the front of the plane with Michael’s bag when a squat, flabby doctor with a leer like a Halloween pumpkin positioned himself before her and did an awkward bump and grind.
“Hey!” Beevers said. “We’re on our way!”
“Give me an S,” Conor said, and lifted his glass.
“You remember to get the pictures? Or did your brain collapse again?”
“They’re in my bag,” Poole said. He had made fifty copies of the author’s photo on the back of Orchid Blood, Underhill’s last book.
All three men were watching the unknown doctor twitch around Pun Yin while a group of medical men yipped encouragement. The pretty stewardess patted the man on the shoulder and squeezed past him, interposing Michael’s bag between the doctor and herself.
“We’re going to face the elephant,” Beevers said. “Remember?”
“Could I forget?” Poole asked. During the Civil War, when their regiment had been founded, “facing the elephant” had been slang for going into battle.
In a loud, blurry voice Conor asked, “What traits are embodied in the elephant?”
“In time of peace or in time of war?” Beevers asked.
“Both. Let’s hear the whole shootin’ match.”
Beevers glanced at Poole. “The elephant embodies nobility, grace, gravity, patience, perseverance, power, and reserve in times of peace. The elephant embodies power and wrath in times of war.”
A few of the pediatricians nearest stared at him in affable confusion, trying to share the joke.
Beevers and Poole began to laugh.
“Damn straight,” Conor said. “That’s it, there it is.”
Pun Yin glimmered for a moment far away at the head of the cabin, then swished a curtain before her and was gone.
2
The airplane slowly digested the thousands of miles between Los Angeles and Singapore, where the corpses of Miss Balandran and Roberto Ortiz sat undiscovered in a bungalow on a leafy road; the doctors settled into their seats, overcome by alcohol and the exhaustion of travel. Bland food arrived, considerably less delicious than the smile with which Pun Yin placed it before the passengers. Eventually the stewardess removed their trays, poured out brandy, plumped up pillows for the long night.
“I never told you what Underhill’s old agent told Tina Pumo,” Poole said to Beevers across a dozing Conor Linklater.
Shafts of light pierced the long dark cabin of the 747. Soon Savannah Smiles would be shown, to be followed by a second movie which starred Karl Malden and several Yugoslavians.
“You mean you didn’t want to tell me,” Beevers said. “It must be pretty good.”
“Good enough,” Poole admitted.
Beevers waited. At last he said, “I guess we do have about twenty more hours.”
“I’m just trying to get it all organized.” Poole cleared his throat. “At first, Underhill behaved like any other author. He bitched about the size of his printings, asked where his royalty checks were, things like that. Apparently he was nicer than most writers, or at least no worse than most. He had his odd points, but they didn’t seem serious. He lived in Singapore, and the people at Gladstone House couldn’t write to him directly because even his agent only had a post office box number.”
“Let me guess. Then things took a turn for the worse.”
“Very gradually. He wrote a couple of letters to the marketing people and the publicity department. They weren’t spending enough money on him, they weren’t taking him seriously. He didn’t like his paperback jacket. His print run was too small. Okay. Gladstone decided to put a little more effort into his second book, The Divided Man, and the effort paid off. The book made the paperback best-seller list for a month or two and sold very well.”
“So was our boy happy? Did he send roses to Gladstone’s marketing department?”
“He went off the rails,” Poole admitted. “He sent them a long crazy letter as soon as the book hit the list—it should have got on higher and sooner, the ad campaign wasn’t good enough, he was sick of being stabbed in the back, on and on. The next day another ranting letter showed up. Gladstone got a letter every day for a week, long letters, five and six pages. The last couple threatened them with physical abuse.”
Beevers grinned.
“There was a lot of stuff about them shafting him because he was a Vietnam veteran. I guess he even mentioned Ia Thuc.”
“Hah!”
“Then after the book dropped off the list he began a long fandango about a lawsuit. Weird letters started turning up at Gladstone House from a Singapore lawyer named Ong Pin. Underhill was suing them for two million dollars, that being the amount the lawyer had calculated had been lost to his client through Gladstone’s incompetence. On the other hand, if Gladstone wished to avoid the expense and publicity of a trial, Ong Pin’s client was willing to settle for a single one-time payment of half a million dollars.”
“Which they declined to pay.”
“Especially since they had observed that Ong Pin’s address was the same post office box to which Underhill’s agent, Fenwick Throng, sent his mail and royalty checks.”
“That’s our boy.”
“When they wrote back, giving him the option of taking his next book elsewhere if he was not satisfied with their efforts, he seemed to come to his senses. He even wrote to apologize for losing his temper. And he explained that Ong Pin was a lawyer friend of his who had lost his office, and was temporarily living with him.”
“A flower!”
“Well, anyway … he made the threat of a two-million-dollar lawsuit sound like a drunken prank. Things settled down. But as soon as he submitted his next book, Orchid Blood, he got crazy again and started threatening lawsuits. Ong Pin wrote some sort of goofy screed in the kind of English you get in Japanese instruction manuals, you know? And when the book came out, Underhill mailed a box with dried-up shit in it to the president of Gladstone, Geoffrey Penmaiden, who I guess everybody knew and revered. It was like sending a turd to Maxwell Perkins. Then the book came out and flopped. Just sank out of sight. They haven’t heard a word from him since, and I don’t think they’re too eager to work wi
th him again.”
“He sent shit in a box to Geoffrey Penmaiden? The most famous publisher in America?” Beevers asked.
“I think it had more to do with self-hatred than craziness,” Poole said.
“You think they’re not the same?” Beevers reached over and patted Michael’s knee. “Really.”
When Beevers canted back his seat and closed his eyes, Michael switched on the reading light and picked up his copy of A Beast in View.
At the beginning of Underhill’s first novel, a rich boy named Henry Harper is drafted and sent to basic training in the South. The sort of person who gradually but thoroughly undermines the favorable first impression he creates, Harper is superficially charming, snobbish, selfish. Other people chiefly either disgust or impress him. Of course he detests basic training, and is detested by every other recruit on the base. Eventually he meets Nat Beasley, a black soldier who seems to like him in spite of his faults and who detects a decent person beneath Henry’s snobbery and self-consciousness. Nat Beasley defends Harper and gets him through basic. Much to Harper’s relief, his father, a federal judge in Michigan, is able to fix it that Henry and Beasley are assigned to the same unit in Vietnam. The judge even manages to get Henry and Nat on the same flight from San Francisco to Tan Son Hut. And during the flight, Henry Harper strikes a bargain with Nat Beasley. He says that if Nat continues to protect him, Henry will guarantee him half of all the money he will ever earn or inherit. This is a sum of at least two or three million dollars, and Beasley accepts.
After about a month in the country, the two soldiers get separated from their unit while on patrol. Nat Beasley picks up his M-16 and blows a hole the size of a family Bible in Henry Harper’s chest. Beasley switches dogtags and then destroys Harper’s body so completely that it is utterly unrecognizable. He then takes off cross-country toward Thailand.