by Dean Koontz
When we got out of the Mercedes, lights came on in the ceiling of the portico.
“Way out here, they must have their own generator,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the keening wind that thrashed the palm fronds.
“Lots and lots of solar panels,” Mrs. Fischer said as she took my arm and pretended that I was helping her to the front entrance. “Plus two gasoline-powered generators, one to back up the other.”
“What are they—survivalists?”
“No, dear. They just like their privacy.”
More suitable to a vault than to a home, the stainless-steel door opened, and before us stood a fifty-something guy with a shock of red hair and lively green eyes. He had a face as sweetly appealing as that of Bill Cosby, a face of such likability that he would have been perfect to play the father in a TV-sitcom family, not in any contemporary show but in one made back in the day when sitcom dads were more real and less grotesque than they are now, when everyone still knew that families matter, when the word values meant something more important than the sales prices at the currently cool clothing store where you buy your gear.
He wore white tennis shoes, khakis, a white T-shirt, and a full-length yellow apron on which were printed the words KITCHEN SLAVE, and he was wiping his hands on a dishtowel. At the sight of Mrs. Fischer, he broke into a killer smile that would have been hard to match even by Tom Cruise or a golden retriever. “Come in, get out of that nasty night.” As he ushered us across the threshold, he tucked the towel in an apron pocket. He took Mrs. Fischer’s hands, brought them to his lips, kissed them, not as a courtly Frenchman might have done, but as a son might have kissed the worn and aged hands of a beloved mother.
He said, “We were so happy when we heard about Oscar.”
“Kipp, dear, you’re as kind as ever. Oscar waited a long time for his big moment, and I’m sure he found the wait worthwhile.”
“No suffering?” Kipp asked.
“Not for someone who’d so completely gotten back his innocence. Oscar had been smooth and blue for years.”
“It’s just great news.”
“When the people at the funeral home gave me the ashes in an urn, we all drank some Dom Perignon. You know how much Oscar liked Dom Perignon.”
Turning to me, Kipp said, “You must be Edie’s new chauffeur.”
“Yes, sir. Thomas is the name.”
We shook hands, and he said, “May I call you Tom?”
“That’s as good as anything, sir.”
“Please call me Kipp.”
“Yes, sir.”
He would never need a knife to spread a pat of butter on his toast. That smile would quickly melt it.
“Have you had dinner?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Back in Barstow.”
“We ran into Chandelle and Gideon outside the restaurant,” Mrs. Fischer told him.
Our host said, “That was an amazing thing they did last December in Pennsylvania.”
“Wasn’t it, dear? And for ever so long, poor Pennsylvania has needed something amazing to happen there.”
“We might be outnumbered, Edie, but we’re going to win this thing.”
“I’ve never doubted it,” Mrs. Fischer said.
“What thing?” I asked.
“The whole amazing thing!” Kipp declared with childlike delight. “Anyway, we were just about to have dinner when you showed up, but I hear you’re in a hurry.”
Mrs. Fischer said, “We’re in a terrible hurry, Kipp. Could you put dinner in stasis and help us first?”
“That’s exactly what we’ve done, we’ve put it in stasis.”
I knew what the word stasis meant: the state of equilibrium or inactivity caused by opposing equal forces. I suspected that Kipp didn’t simply mean that they had stowed dinner in a warming drawer.
Something huge and black burst into the foyer, and I let out a squeal of alarm that was no doubt identical to the sound that Little Miss Muffet made when a spider sat down beside her on that stupid tuffet.
Twenty-two
* * *
The creature surprised me, coming from my right side, but when I reeled back, I realized this was none other than Big Dog, because he was a really big dog, a black Great Dane with soulful brown eyes. He was the most humongous specimen of his breed that I’d ever seen, his head so large that you might have been able to do a handstand on it if you could have trained him for a circus act. His ears hadn’t been cropped when he was a puppy, which is a common practice among breeders; therefore, they didn’t stand up but folded forward as if they were the flaps on two velvet purses.
Kipp said, “Don’t be afraid, Tom. Big Dog is as gentle as a lamb—unless you mean to harm anyone in this house, which you don’t.”
“I definitely don’t, sir.”
“Just call him Big or Biggy, and let him smell you.”
I said, “Hey there, Biggy. Big Biggy. Good dog.”
The Dane snuffled at my jeans and sweater with such enthusiasm that I half thought he might vacuum them off my body.
Mrs. Fischer cooed to the dog: “Sweet Biggy Wiggy, him such a pretty, pretty boy.”
Suddenly done with me, whimpering with extreme doggy pleasure, Biggy collapsed at Mrs. Fischer’s feet. He rolled onto his back and bared his belly, tail swishing and thumping on the polished-mahogany floor in recognition of his old friend.
Mrs. Fischer knelt to rub the dog’s tummy, and Kipp said, “What do you need, Edie? Birth certificates, driver’s licenses, passports, somebody’s computer system hacked? Oh, and we’ve just got some of those insect spy drones the government doesn’t want the public to know about, complete with control stations.”
Biggy’s mouth had fallen open, revealing two curved archipelagos of white teeth in a sea of black gums. In his throat he made a deep purring sound, as though he had swallowed a house cat whole.
As always, Mrs. Fischer knew what she wanted. “Kipp, dear, we need one bulletproof vest for Tom. Then a police gun belt hung with four spare magazine pouches, two Mace holders, one snap pouch to hold a Talkabout, one stretch sheath with a little flashlight, no swivel holster. We need a double shoulder rig so the child can carry a pistol under each arm. We’ll need two Talkabouts, one for the gun belt, one for me. We don’t want Mace for the Mace holders, but two ten-shot units of pressure-stream sedative. For the pistols, we’ll need whatever you can match with sound suppressors. This job falls apart as soon as anyone hears a gunshot. Can you do all that?”
“What do you think?”
Getting up from the Great Dane, she said, “I think you can. Oh, and plenty of copper-jacketed hollow-point ammunition.”
Kipp grinned at me, clapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Tom, you must be planning a trip straight to Hell City.”
“I’m hoping it’s just a suburb, sir.”
“Come along. I want you to meet Mazie and the family. Then we’ll outfit you pronto.”
The sprawling house was furnished differently from what I had imagined and was much warmer and more welcoming than I expected. Intricate and beautifully worn Persian carpets on the hardwood floors. Antique Japanese cabinets. Pictorial Japanese screens on the walls. Shanghai Art Deco chairs and sofas upholstered in rich silks. Stained-glass and amber blown-glass lamps. And scattered here and there, large plush squeaky toys for a ginormous dog.
Later, Mrs. Fischer would tell me who Kipp and his family were and how they came to be in this place. As this is my memoir, however, I will use authorial license and insert that information throughout my account of events in Casa Bolthole, which is what they called their desert home.
Kipp had been a hugely successful equities trader in a major investment firm with a sterling reputation. The company had installed a new CEO, a man with deep investment-management background, who had also previously been a senator from a major Eastern-seaboard state before losing his re-election bid. In two years, the senator managed to bankrupt the firm with large reckless bets on foreign bonds and currencies. Even wo
rse, a billion dollars of investors’ money had gone missing, not lost in the bond or currency debacles—just gone. Because we live in a brave new world of financial buccaneering in which properly connected politicians, current and former, can steal from the public or private purse with little chance of punishment, the senator was not indicted, but Kipp was. The evidence, as well-concocted as any martini that might please James Bond, persuaded a jury to convict.
Before he had been an equities trader, Kipp had served as an intelligence officer in the marines. He knew a thing or two about surveillance, electronic eavesdropping, and cleverly structured entrapments of the enemy, as did a number of his former marine buddies, who came to his assistance. In a seemingly private venue, when the ex-senator thought he was in the company of a like-minded public servant with equally sticky fingers, after a couple of drinks too many, he gloated about the cleverness with which he had framed Kipp for the charge of embezzlement. A recording made without the knowledge of the subject cannot be easily entered into evidence in a court of law. But between Kipp’s conviction and his sentencing, the ex-senator’s gloating, with accompanying video, was put on YouTube by an anonymous and untraceable truth teller.
The judge declared a mistrial. The prosecutor dropped all charges. Then something else happened, something far worse, and at his wife’s suggestion, Kipp agreed that henceforth they should live off the grid. Through false identities and clandestine means, they constructed Casa Bolthole with a purpose in mind. To this day, the senator remains a free man, so lawyered-up that every time he goes to court, the tramping of attorneys’ feet sounds like a Memorial Day parade from a lost time when uniformed servicemen and ribboned veterans marched by the thousands to honor their country and to be honored in return by crowds lining the parade route.
The kitchen in Casa Bolthole was large, with Santos mahogany flooring, golden bird’s-eye-maple cabinetry that featured rounded corners as in a ship’s galley, and black-granite countertops, all clean flowing lines that soothed the eye. At the round dining table, six places were set for dinner, and the flames of candles fluttered in crystal containers. The overhead lights had been dialed low, and more candles stood on the center island.
At that island, as we entered, Mazie finished pouring Dom Perignon into four champagne flutes. “None for you,” she told Biggy as he hurried to her side, nostrils flaring, a potential four-legged alcoholic.
Tall, willowy, beautiful, her glossy black hair worn long, Mazie was wrapped in an elegant black-silk kimono patterned with white koi mottled red and red koi mottled gold. Her large almond-shaped eyes were so dark that, reflecting several points of candlelight, they might have been portals offering two views of a night sky and stars ever receding into eternity.
After more warm greetings and another introduction, we stood at the island and raised the slender glasses, and Mazie said, “To Oscar, in whom the fire and the rose are now one.”
Mrs. Fischer and Kipp said, “To Oscar.” I didn’t have any idea what the toast meant, but I don’t have any idea what a lot of things mean, so I said, “To Oscar,” as well, and we sipped the champagne, which was icy cold and delicious.
Biggy padded to the corner of the kitchen in which his water bowl stood on a mat, and he noisily lapped at the contents, perhaps joining in a nonalcoholic toast, as if he were the designated driver.
After a second sip of Dom Perignon, Mazie turned to me and spoke as if she already knew what we’d come here to acquire and what task I had set out upon that would require those acquisitions. “Tom, if Tom is your truest name, are you afraid of the battle that lies ahead of you?”
Remembering what Annamaria had told me, I said, “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid, but I hope only in proportion to the threat.”
“I sense a terrible longing in you, a deep yearning. I hope you don’t yearn for death.”
“No, ma’am. I yearn for what comes after it. But I’m not keen on suffering.”
“None of us are. But we suffer nonetheless. Until we reach that condition Oscar reached a few years ago.”
“You mean … fully blue and smooth?”
Mazie’s smile was beatific, a curve of pure grace. She had an aura of perfect calm and great strength. Her uncommonly direct gaze suggested that she had once stared down Death himself and no longer feared what she might see in other eyes.
Later, I would learn from Mrs. Fischer that Mazie had been an attorney in a major Manhattan law firm when Kipp had been an equities trader. After the video of the senator had been posted on YouTube, clearing Kipp and implicating the former politician in the theft of investors’ money, their wobbling world seemed to have been returned to its proper angle of rotation.
But then the worse thing happened. A senior partner in Mazie’s firm introduced her to two new clients, Mr. Reasoner and Mr. Power, businessmen who had a complaint against a major competitor, involving patent infringement, which seemed an easy case for a litigator of her talents. Because the clients were wary to the point of paranoia, the first meeting with them took place in a soundproof conference room. After introductions but before the meeting began, the senior partner excused himself “for just a moment,” without explanation. As Mr. Reasoner took a seat at the table and opened his briefcase, Mr. Power crossed the room to have a closer look at a bronze sculpture with which he professed to be quite taken, and as he passed behind Mazie, she felt something sting the back of her neck.
When she regained consciousness, her wrists were bound to the arms of a chair. A rubber ball had been placed in her mouth, and her lips had been firmly sealed with duct tape. For a grueling hour, the two men discussed in loving detail their favorite methods of torture, and while they talked, they took turns pinching shut her nose, inducing suffocation panic before letting her breathe again. They made certain she understood that if she wasn’t safe in the luxurious offices of this prestigious law firm, she would be safe nowhere. If she couldn’t trust a senior partner—or perhaps any senior partner, or anyone at all—in the firm where she had worked for eleven years, she could trust no one anywhere.
This was payback, they said, for what Kipp did to the senator, who still had more loyal and powerful friends than could be easily counted. Kipp was innocent, yes, but that didn’t matter. The only purpose of the innocent was to be used, like cattle, by those who despised innocence. Oh, maybe the meek will inherit the earth, but not now, not until the end of time. Now the meek, the innocent, had to learn to take what was dealt to them and endure it.
Reasoner and Power, obviously not their names, said they would not mark her this time, because the punishment that she and Kipp had earned wasn’t to be administered in a single visit. Days or weeks, perhaps even months from now, they would surprise her again, four of them instead of two, and they would brutally rape her until they were satiated. After that, they might give her several months, maybe a full year, in which to anticipate their third visit. No one can be vigilant 24/7 for an extended period of time, and no bodyguards she might hire could be trusted, because the majority of people were easily corrupted. On their third visit, they would torture her, blind her, visit upon her a measure of brain damage that would ensure her permanent disability, but they would not kill her. Kipp’s punishment was to bear the guilt that would only grow as he saw her emotionally, physically, and intellectually degraded.
Finished with her, they took the duct tape off her mouth, untied her wrists from the arms of the chair, and allowed her to remove the rubber ball from her mouth. Reasoner placed the ball, the tape, and the cord in his briefcase. The two men said, “Have a nice day,” and left the conference room. Mazie remained seated for several minutes, telling herself that she was waiting for the senior partner to return and babble out some excuse, perhaps tearfully, about why he had been unable to warn or to protect her. The truth was, she felt too weak to stand. She would never be given an excuse. She was done here. They would already have some reason for firing her, supported by reams of forged documentation. The firm occupied Floors 34 through 37,
and when at last Mazie left that conference room, she found the entire thirty-sixth floor deserted. The hush was so eerie that it would not have been hard to believe that the city in all its boroughs had been depopulated. But when the elevator doors opened at the lobby, the bustle and bark of humanity returned, and she had to pass through it. In the street, the braying of car horns and engines and brakes and people overwhelmed her, oppressed her.
For a while, she leaned on a lamppost, head hung, expecting to vomit in the gutter. When she didn’t, she went home to Kipp. They had significant financial resources, in fact millions, and the expertise to move them around often enough and cleverly enough to leave a trail that eventually withered away. They made plans that very afternoon, not merely plans to vanish into new identities and hide, although that was part of it, but also to fight back, and not merely against the senator and Mazie’s former law firm but, wherever an opportunity presented itself, against any aspect of the vigorously metastasizing corruption that was a terminal cancer in this ever more dangerous postmodern world.
While waiting to vomit in the gutter, Mazie had recalled lines from her favorite poet, T. S. Eliot, who wrote that although the world ceaselessly turned and changed, one thing and one alone never changed. However you disguise it, this thing does not change: / The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil. Their plan seemed grandiose, foolish, hopeless, but step by step, as they worked to fulfill it, they found the surest footing they’d ever known. If they had elected merely to change identities and hide, they would have had no hope of full and meaningful lives, because those who cower forget how to stand and, in time, can only crawl. By choosing the path of resistance, they had discovered people like Mrs. Fischer and Oscar, like Gideon and Chandelle, and they had learned the true and hidden nature of the world.