The bowl lay on the ground. The jaggery was not all gone.
How could he resist it? He drew a moistened finger across the bowl and sucked the sacred sugar into his mouth, like a babe on a tit. He licked the bowl. So sweet. So wonderful. So deadly.
“You can keep him in my room at the Thunderbird,” says the secretary.
The wave of recall recedes. Michael is still in the hotel, bound and thirsty, surrounded by killers and strangers who are his family.
“Who’s going to watch him? I’m not going to miss a feast.”
“Bring him of course,” says Jessica.
“Duh,” adds Trent.
Michael likes him.
“You don’t need to guard me,” says Michael.
“Sorry, Jeff,” says the marine. “That’s not going to happen.”
“I’m hungry and tired and need a lozenge.”
“I’ll take Howard and Ericka,” says Trent. “We’ll take him to the T-Bird and see what’s available for the feast.”
“Don’t grab just any crackhead,” says the banker. “Let’s do this right. Not just clay. It should be an enemy.”
“Bad idea,” says the concierge. “An unnecessary risk. We’ll expose ourselves. Our quarry can still flee and we can get caught. I live here. You guys are passing through.”
“We’ll be careful,” says the secretary.
Michael suspects she’s the Ericka that Trent mentioned.
“This hunt can set up the family for years. Decades maybe,” says Bryce. “I’d hate to have Mother fuck it up for us because we dissed her.”
“It’s worse now,” says Perez. “It’s not like it didn’t cross our minds. If we don’t follow the forms now, it’ll be turning our backs on Her.”
“For crying out loud,” says Barb. “It’s a hunt. It’s a job. It’s a deal. The rest is decoration.”
“Kali is decoration?” says the banker.
“She doesn’t care about us,” Barb says.
“She does,” says Michael. “She loves us. She loves me, anyway. She told me.”
“She told you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s it,” says the banker throwing his hands up. “Either we do this right or I’m out of here.”
Perez nods, Poulson grins. Ericka and the soccer mom exchange looks but agree as well. The marine shrugs and gives one dip of his chin. All eyes fall on Barb. She looks at the concierge.
“We’re in your backyard,” she says to him. “You going along with Baby Michael here?”
“What the hell,” he says.
“Whatever.” Barb drains her martini.
Jessica regards Michael appraisingly. He knows that a word from her would be his instant death. Not once since he’s woken has there not been someone within striking distance of him. He does not see the cables or the rods, scarves and rumals, but he knows they are there nonetheless. He has not sensed an overall leader in the group, no single voice of authority. The whole congregation is strangely egalitarian, but he senses it is Jessica’s hunt and he her prisoner, and they will do as she asks.
“Take him to the Thunderbird,” she says.
“Come on,” Trent says gesturing to the big man on Barb’s left. Together they lift Michael off the couch.
“So who’s Howard?” says Michael.
“I am,” says the bartender. “Did we forget the introductions? How rude of us.”
“I thought we were friends now.”
“We’ll let you know.”
“Here’s how it’s gotta be, Jack,” Trent says. “We’re going to untie you and we’re all going to walk out of this room and take the elevator downstairs. We’re going to get a cab and go. You’re going to behave so we don’t regret untying you. Sound good?”
Michael nods.
Ericka produces a knife as if out of the air, and with a flick of her wrist, his hands are free. Another flick and his legs are too.
Ericka leads the way, then Trent, Michael, and Howard at the rear. They march down the wide hall in single file.
“This is how we’ll go the whole way,” says Howard. “If you get any ideas, I got this.” He shows a small stun gun concealed in his palm. “It’ll break all your teeth and look like a heart attack.”
“Where would I go?” Michael says.
The elevator door opens and Ericka steps in to make sure it’s empty. She pushes the lobby button, they get in, and the doors close.
“Why not the parking garage?” Michael asks.
“This hotel doesn’t have one,” Trent says. “We’re in Nevada now. Can’t you smell the sin?”
“Cheap booze and vomit?”
“That’s it.”
Ericka says, “You know there are people who think your family were a bunch of cowards for letting you live.”
“Jesus Christ, Ericka. It wasn’t Masada,” says Trent.
“He was captured,” says Howard.
“Captured? You mean arrested,” says Trent. “How many times have you been arrested Ericka?”
She shrugs.
“Howard, you spent eighteen months in a Dakota jail if I remember right. Why didn’t you off yourself? You could have hanged yourself in a cell. Why didn’t you?”
“It’s okay,” says Michael. “They don’t trust me. No reason they should.”
The door opens and they step out in same order as before, but a little less clumped up. Less conspicuous.
They’re on the casino floor. The air is a clatter of bells, craps callers, and barmaid banter. It’s a maze to get out. The exit sign nearest them is marked Emergency Only. For a moment, a brief tick of sane time, Michael thinks he can make it, knock Trent into Ericka when they round a corner where Howard will be a step behind, and dash for it. An alarm would sound pulling all eyes to them, and in the time it would take the tigers to recover, he could rejoin the world. The other world.
His legs tense in the moment of indecision and he stumbles a step. Then Howard is behind him. The moment is gone.
He follows Trent between banks of slot machines, past the twenty-one tables and two bars. It’s a casino like before in Vegas, vibrant, loud and full of robbery, but even that kitschy allure is lost on Michael. He sees only paths between barriers, crossroads between blinking destinations, smells desperation, smoke, yesterday’s perfume. Ericka stops to watch a craps roll, pausing long enough to cluster the group again, closing up the gaps that had formed since the elevator.
“Oswald!”
The word strikes like a stray bullet. To their credit the tigers keep their reactions hidden. Ericka speeds her pace and the others fall naturally in step.
“Oswald!” comes the call again. Nearer.
Michael resists the urge to look over his shoulder to acknowledge his name. He feels the plastic in his back and knows Howard will not hesitate to use the stun gun if he falters.
The voice is familiar, masculine. It reaches out to him like a rope lowered down a dark crevasse.
Another voice, male, with more authority, calls him, “Yeah Michael Oswald. Hold it, FBI.”
Michael finally turns to look.
Ericka is three steps ahead and disappears into the crowd.
Howard drops something and when he straightens up, he’s behind two conventioneers with stickered name badges on their breasts.
Trent remains close.
“Didn’t you hear me?” The FBI declaration was not a boast. It’s Hall, the agent who’d sweated him in Crystal Springs. Beside him is Craig McCallister his thick neck pushing out his collar.
Trent looks concerned, curious, and friendly. Disarmingly mild. His hands are in his pockets, his shoulders a little hunched. He looks like everyone’s wide-eyed nephew. His shirt and baggy pants conceals taut muscles. He’s ready to move, to act, to run and surely, if expedient, to kill. Even in this crowded room Michael is sure Trent would kill if that’s what was needed.
“I heard you,” Michael says. “What do you want?”
Hall’s been drinking. He stinks
of it. It’s two in the afternoon and the cop has a buzz going. McCallister has a soft drink in his hand, watery and flat. Room temperature prop, Michael is sure.
Hall is a functioning drunk. Michael can tell. He’s seen hundreds of them. It’s a description he’s self-applied many times, to Carla and Maggie, Roy, and maybe even Craig. That life seems like another existence, a story from a book, an ancillary character in the background of a movie. He’s forgetting it with each new breath he takes.
“I wanted to say sorry,” Hall says. “I was an asshole.”
“Was?”
“Let me make it up to you,” he says. “Who’s your friend?”
“Agent Edgar Hall of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, let me introduce you to Trent Tagget, kidnapped millionaire foundling originally from Connecticut.”
“He’s joking,” says Trent extending his hand. “I’m Dean.”
They shake hands.
“I’m Craig McCallister.” Craig offers his hand too. “Oswald and I worked together.”
“Let me buy you a drink,” Hall says, “Oswald. I owe you one.”
“Sure,” says Michael. “Why not?”
“You sure you want to do that?” asks Trent. “We have plans.”
“They’ll wait,” he says. “I’m owed a drink.”
A look of cold disappointment crosses Trent’s face as Michael follows agent Hall into the sports lounge.
“Maybe I’ll join you,” Trent says. “If that’s okay?”
Michael senses a test in the question. But like when he passed the door, sensing an escape, he hesitates.
“Who are you?” says Hall.
“He’s my guide,” Michael says. “I’m here looking for a new job. He’s showing me around.”
“Sorry sport. Just us. Cop-talk.”
“I’ll catch up,” says Michael.
Hall gestures for Michael to lead the way. Craig puts his arm around his shoulder like they’re old army buddies.
“I thought you were going back to Roy?” says Craig.
“I’m looking at options,” says Michael
As they turn into the bar, Michael catches a glimpse of Howard among the conventioneers to his right. Ericka is on the left, a cell phone pressed to her ear. Both are watching Trent. Before stepping away Trent reaches up and rubs his eyes, as if wiping the fatigue out them. Michael recognizes it as the signal to wait and watch. Remembering it makes him smile. He rubs his sore neck inadvertently giving the sign of Kali: By the throat you will have the sign.
Trent scowls, probably misconstruing it as a taunt.
They sit at the bar. It’s not unlike the one he’d left in the suite, same curve to it, similar theme, but the stools here are bolted to the ground. Probably to curtail western-style saloon fights.
“What’ll you have?” says Craig. “Hall’s paying.”
“I got an expense account,” Hall says with a wink.
“Beer for me,” says Michael. “Tall and cold.”
“Are you still sick? You sound awful,” says Craig.
He shrugs. The drinks appear immediately. The bartender is not busy this time of day, not that anyone would know what time it was. There are no clocks in casinos. No windows either. Time is plastic and casino owners know to manipulate it; the better to steal. Kali likes such places.
“I’m glad for the beer,” Michael says drinking it slowly, happy for the calories and the cold on his vocal chords.
“I came up here to check out a condo break-in,” says Craig, “And guess who I run into.”
“Like old times,” says Hall clinking his highball to Michael’s beer glass.
“Not so old,” says Michael.
“No, not so much,” says Craig. Lowering his voice, he says, “Hall told me that nothing new has come out the Crystal Springs thing. Dead ends.”
Michael is glad to hear it. “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about that,” he says.
“We were there,” says Craig. “We’re on the same side.”
Michael wonders.
“I feel bad about being so rough with you,” says Hall, drinker’s maudlin entering his voice.
“You were doing your job,” Michael says sensing the streak moving silently behind him. “We were adversaries then. Enemies.” The word sticks in his throat.
“Yes, there you see? That’s it exactly. We were not enemies. We’re on the same side.”
In the mirror above the bottles, between the shelves of hanging wine glasses, Michael sees Trent take a table beneath the Reds game. Trent passes the sign and Michael watches it, feeling time slip and slow, morph and shiver like it’s a bubble floating between them. It’s as if the universe holds its breath, waiting for Michael to decide. Which world Michael? Which family? Time to pick a side.
Adam and Gale Oswald, sister Gloria. Wife Carla, children Peter and Tiffany. Each face in turn flashes into his mind like shadow puppets on a scrim. There are homes there, and forests not full of graves. Order, Edgar Hall, and the rule of law. Friendship and faith, Craig McCallister. It is a shared reality of television and mortgages, nine-to-fives and Saturday barbecues. He could be a part of the greater whole that is the society he was born into.
And in the mirror watching him with hungry eyes, is a Deceiver. A foundling like himself, kidnapped and brainwashed. Taught to kill. Taught to like it. A parasite. Disease. The fever that kills the weak. A scrim of shadows, a tiger bowing before a foreign god. Kali, the Mother who kills her children, who laps blood and smells of burned bodies and graveyards.
He has only to stay with these friends to get away. Only to say a word to thwart whatever scheme he has stumbled onto.
“They found that truck, you know,” Craig says pulling Michael out of his reverie.
“What truck?”
“The truck with the laser. Lowe’s truck.”
“In New Mexico,” says Hall. “At a chop shop.”
“Good work,” says Michael.
“Not really. It was a tip from an informant,” he says. “That’s always the way.”
“No bounty though,” says Craig sipping his soda.
“What are you doing here?” Michael says to Hall.
“Remember that guy from Homeland Security? I’m working with him again. I’m a liaison. Some international thing is supposed to be happening.”
“From an informant?”
“Same one.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. A voice on the phone maybe. I’m not that close to it,” he says. He drains his drink and requests another with a finger.
“Criminals got it made,” Craig says. “If they get caught, they can point to someone higher up to roll over on.”
“That’s how the DEA works—when it works,” says Hall.
“What are you talking about?” says Michael.
“A bunch of things at once,” says Hall. “The system’s fucked. No one knows what’s going on with anything. This or anything else. But at least I get an expense account in Tahoe.”
“You should slow down,” says Craig.
“I’m good. Nothing’s going to happen until tomorrow at the soonest,” Hall says. He looks at Michael with friendly sympathetic eyes. He is not a good liar; they’re honest.
“I’m sorry to hear you’re out of a job,” Hall says. “I’ve been thinking I could pull a few strings for you. Not that you’ll ever see it, but I spoke highly of you in my report. You found the Crystal Springs site, and that’s some good investigation.”
Michael looks for police backup, undercover FBI, plainclothesmen, uniformed officers. Beside the casino security who watch money and not men, there is nothing to worry about.
“You’ve got a talent. If we’d have let the story out you could have hung your own shingle on the publicity. Sorry about that. Still, I know some people. I think I could get you in the door at the FBI. Get a badge, chase bad guys.”
Shadows on a screen. Illusions all. Temporary all. Lies all.
His drink is too bitter.
“Rum and coke,” says Michael to the bartender. “I’m craving sweet.”
“You’ll have a hangover,” Hall says. “Beer and then liquor; get sick quicker. Or is it the other way around? Don’t mix your alcohols. That’s what it means.”
“So is that HLS guy here yet?”
“Be here tonight.”
“Who else is here?”
“A task force in Carson City ready to spring into action. SWAT and helicopters. It’ll make the news.”
“What’s it about?”
“Hell if I know. I’m liaison. I show my badge and add to the alphabet soup of agencies.”
“Is that all you know?”
“I could tell you more, but I’d have to kill you,” he says laughing. “But lucky for you, no one tells me anything.”
“Lucky for me,” says Michael.
“Could you get me in the FBI?” asks Craig. “I’d be good.”
“Might could,” he says. Craig is beaming with excitement.
“Enough shoptalk,” says Hall. “What are you doing in Tahoe, again?”
“Family reunion,” says Michael. “And a confirmation. Maybe a job.”
The choice was made before he knew he had one. It was made at a lonely campground in the Yellowstone woods while his family dreamed around him. Under a starlit canopy, the air smelling of sulfur and wood smoke, with a mouthful of stolen sugar sacrament, he’d given himself at once and forever to The Mother, to Kali.
“I didn’t know you were religious,” Hall says.
“He’s not,” says Craig.
“I was raised in it.” Michael puts on his most disarming smile. “Hey, if you guys were to disappear for a while, would you be missed?”
Chapter Thirty-One
Michael drinks with Agent Hall and Craig McCallister for over an hour. He learns nothing else about Hall’s purpose in Tahoe except that he’s waiting to hear from someone to do something. His contact is waiting for contact from the informer who won’t surface until right before things are to happen. “Typical bullshit.”
Meanwhile, Trent has left the bar and now waits patiently at a roulette wheel, Howard and Ericka beside him. They place small bets and nurse free drinks and stare with predatory eyes.
What Immortal Hand Page 26