I
It was night when he stopped at the flashing arms of a railroad crossing. The klaxons twisted his insides. He opened the door and puked. Murderous thunder of passing flats vibrated his bones. While he was spilling his guts onto the pitted asphalt, someone climbed in on the passenger side, slammed the door hard enough to rock the car.
Conrad wiped his mouth, regarded the dark-haired girl in the denim jacket and bellbottom pants who was calmly checking her makeup in the visor mirror. A livid strawberry keloid ripened on her left wrist, partially occluded by a charm bracelet. She smelled of cigarettes and Prince Matchabelli and seemed unpleasantly familiar. One of those malleable faces he’d seen a lot of lately; it glowed a blurry white in the gloom.
“Ever wonder what’s in those boxcars?” Her voice was husky from the rawness of the country air. “Could be cattle, could be people, political prisoners on the way to Gitmo. Anything, really. See their eyes in the headlights, peeking between the slats.”
Conrad was dizzy. Concussion, definitely. Goddamn, he hoped it was a concussion. Looking at her almost caused him to be sick again. Was he hallucinating? He didn’t think so. He wasn’t certain of anything, even gravity.
“I’m Rhonda. Where you goin’?” Her eyes were small and lively. She nervously rifled a leather handbag with a peace symbol stitched on the flap. “You don’t mind, I hope…? I was freezing out there.”
He hadn’t noticed her at the crossing, hadn’t seen her at all. She likely planted herself nearby, hoped to catch some poor sucker who got blocked by the train. Popped up like a trapdoor spider.
Rhonda nodded at her bag. “So…where’d you say you were goin’?”
“West.” His mantra. And in truth, the answer was South if he kept on to the end. South into the magma boiling heart of the world, and onward to Hell.
“Cool. Me too.” She lighted a clove cigarette, glanced around the interior, wrinkled her nose. “Old car you got here. Wow, is this your mom?” She tapped a black and white photo pinned to the visor; a dark woman in a gypsy kerchief smiled from the shade of an elm.
“It’s a classic.” Conrad stared at the train, the lights.
Rhonda exhaled gustily. “Wow. Somebody kicked the shit outta you, didn’t they. You feelin’ alright, man? Train’s gone.”
Indeed it was gone, reduced to a shadowy wedge lit by blue and red beacons. His hands shook as he put the Eldorado into gear. Seem to fly it, it will pursue…hadn’t Ben Jonson said that about shadows? Jung knew; Hesse knew; Nietzsche absolutely knew. The Germans were canny. Conrad thought about shadows, how there were so many to choose from, how hungry and insatiable they proved to be. Relentless as cancer. “You picked the wrong car.”
“Oh, yeah? Are you a psycho?” The girl smiled as if at a joke.
“It’s a bad time for me.”
“Well, it ain’t so wonderful for me either. My last two hitches were from horny truckers. Some fun. Home, James.”
Conrad sighed. “Wanda, I’m beat. I’m going to get a room and crash for the night.” He’d spotted a sign that said FOOD GAS LODGING THREE MILES. That would be the Happy Raven and it was on his list of places to go, the very reason he’d driven across the belly of the country, taken an unsanctioned bout against a no-name flak. The fight had been one of his many pretexts to lurk in this geographical region, to conduct his private manhunt within a manhunt, a veritable nested Russian doll of plots and stratagems.
The machinery was in motion. It was down to the lounge singer, the English professor or the retired politico. He’d picked the lounge singer because the lounge singer was as good as any and because the lounge singer had been a traveling man. Travel always made for interesting conversation. According to his sources, the man he sought worked the lounge Friday through Sunday, six to ten P.M., had done so for the last eighteen months. Conrad reflected that often the most slippery ones were those who never really tried to cover their tracks.
“It’s Rhonda.”
“Yeah.”
II
Rhonda tagged along as Conrad registered in the hotel lobby. She adjourned with him to the lounge for the theatre half of dinner theatre. Five minutes and two margaritas later, she spotted a gaunt man in a razor-crisp Armani suit who disappeared through the door with the fly-spackled EXIT sign.
“Omigod—there’s Raul!”
“Who’s Raul?” Conrad asked half-heartedly. Too familiar faces, too familiar names. The only Raul he knew was presumed dead at the bottom of some Mexican landfill. Time for another drink. Rhonda patted Conrad’s hand, promised to be back in a jiff. Her small, quick eyes had gone over to black. She smiled a shark’s smile and followed the immaculate stranger.
Conrad hoped that was the end. Meanwhile, it was just him and the lush and a whiskey river. He even toasted Mr. Willie Nelson. “God bless you, Willie.”
The lush wasn’t interested in Willie Nelson. He was a Rat Pack man. He gazed at Conrad. “Gotta say, real clean,” the lush said. He wore a silk blazer open at the neck to display a clunky gold medallion. His hard cheeks shone like a polished boot. He sat stiffly; an action figure melting under a sun lamp.
The lush called himself Marty Cardinal, although Conrad knew the man’s birth certificate; his forty year old visa stamped a dozen places in the Orient, the Middle East and points between; and his dog tags said something different. But, tonight, as every other smoky, gin-soaked night for several crumbling decades, it had been Marty Cardinal. He sweated through a poorly-dyed pompadour from his last set of Dean Martin and Perry Como covers ala Tom Jones on Quaaludes. The audience of the Happy Raven Lounge, which included the requisite barside lechers and a few drunken seniors on a pit stop from their bus tour, had applauded tepidly as Cardinal ambled from the stage and listed to the dim corner where Conrad nursed a boilermaker. They’d never met before Conrad told the waitress to slip the crooner a crisp g-note and ask him if he could fake his way through My Rifle, My Pony And Me, but no time like the present, according to the singer as he’d ordered a round from the baggy-eyed cocktail waitress, Put it on my tab, sweetheart, baby face.“They sewed you up real nice, kid. Maybe you should get ’em to do you a favor and stitch that cheek of yours. It’s nasty.”
“Bad, huh?” Conrad’s brain had reached the stage where it decided to begin shutting off nonessential functions. Everything from the neck down belonged to a fossilized cave bear. At least his gorge was staying put.
“Oh, yeah. But the old ones…boy, it looks like ya got yourself caught by a buzzsaw, or something’.” Cardinal emphasized that observation by gulping his drink with nary a shudder and snapping his fingers for another Johnny Walker on the rocks and make it a double, those damned lights were hot as the hubs of Hades.
Conrad resisted the urge to touch his own face. Obscured by fresh bruises and the jagged cut that had scabbed quite dramatically, the underlying scar forked from his hairline, paralleled the orbital of his left eye; another branch hooked behind his cauliflower ear. A venerable scar, among the first in his expanding collection.
Conrad fell away from the ticky-tack tables, the guttering votives and swan-necked men in polyester suits, plunged down the black shaft to a lonely farm in a lonely field, the abattoir lit by swaying kerosene lanterns, its concrete floor and antique drains choked with straw and dust, the leopard on his chest tearing at his face until the skin began to flex like a latex mask. All those wet mouths in the gallery, their collective exhortations no louder than a breeze sighing through tall grass; all those empty eyes brittle as malachite, radiating the coldness of serried ranks of knives hanging points-down from a rack.
Few animals were a match for a professional fighting man if the struggle lasted beyond that initial explosion of sinew and adrenaline. Amateur hour; the gallery stifled yawns and rattled ice in their drinks as the blood poured out at their feet.
Conrad had been young and sloppy. And lucky. Mr. Kosokian always retained first class medics. The plastic surgeon, a convict on a short leash, had been a consummate
professional. With a good tan, the marks were nearly invisible.
Marty Cardinal said, “I played Vegas once. Shook Sammy’s hand, damned if I didn’t. He was a quick-draw fella. Didja know? Quick-draw. Pow-pow-pow with these six-guns like Marshal Dillon on Gun Smoke. It was a hoot. Dorsey! Dorsey, c’mere a minute!” He waved at the piano player, a fellow septuagenarian in an exhausted white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. “Dorsey an’ me go back. Traveled the Northwest circuit together. Did a USO tour with Neil Diamond. Dorsey tickles those ivories like none other. Billy Joel called him Magic Fingers.”
“Nah, that’s what Billy’s wife called me.” Dorsey summoned the waitress and put in for fresh drinks all around. He constantly riffled a worn deck of cards, first left-handed, then right. “Any chum of Marty C., yadda yadda. Marty this guy a boxer. Looks like a boxer. You a boxer, sonny?”
“I know from boxers, Dorsey. He ain’t no boxer. He look like Rocky Marciano to you? He look like Gerry Cooney? Where’s yer girlfriend, kid?” Marty Cardinal was methodically stacking his dead soldiers in a glistening ziggurat, a sacrificial altar.
“She returned to the Mother Ship, I think,” Conrad said.
“Oh, she wasn’t a hooker, right? She wasn’t a working girl ya picked up from under an off ramp, or anything?”
Conrad smiled wryly, lighted a cigarette and pressed it to his swollen lips.
Dorsey snorted, passed his cards to and fro. He had the jaw of a horse and crooked hands blotched with liver spots. “Ah, Marty, she wasn’t on the job. College kid down on her luck. A dropout for certain—prolly afraid to go home to ma an’ pa, so she’s bummin’ around with dubious sorts. No offense.”
“You a dubious character, kid?”
“Mr. Cardinal—”
“Call me Marty C.”
“What did you do before?”
“Eh? Before what?”
Conrad gestured at the room. “Before Vegas. Before any of this.”
“Hear that, Dorsey? He wants to know about, ‘Once Upon a Time.’” Marty Cardinal helped himself to another drink. His smile was chilly.
“I heard what he said.” Dorsey studied his cards.
“You were in the Army.”
Marty Cardinal nodded. “Korea. Nastiest hellhole on the planet. Still dream about the cold. Ya been checking into my back story, eh kid?”
“Yes. I’ve been to the ends of the Earth, and here you are. In this place.”
“Huh. Hear that, Dorsey? The kid’s been looking for me. Maybe I owe him some money. Cripes, I hope ya can squeeze blood from a turnip, kiddo. My three exes cleaned me out ages ago; took my cars, my condos, the whole schmeer. How’d ya find me, anyhow?”
“Detective agency. It wasn’t difficult.” Conrad pulled a creased flyer from his wallet; a promotional shot of a younger, thinner, slickly-dressed Marty Cardinal bracketed by showgirls. The singer had scrawled his autograph across the back.
“Holy Toledo. That’s from the Sands!” Marty Cardinal shook his head in bleary wonder.
The cocktail waitress leaned into their circle, handed Conrad a cell phone; eyed him suspiciously as if he might go for her throat at any moment. “For you.”
He smiled painfully, hoping to reassure her, said into the receiver, “Conrad.”
Singh said, “Conrad, Conrad. What are you doing?” The connection was poor.
Strangely enough, it seemed these men whose stock and trade was surreptitious communication seldom managed a line clear of interference. Of course, for all Conrad knew, Singh was calling from the bowels of a slumbering volcano, or a submarine at the bottom of the South Pacific. “I’m relaxing. Conducting a pleasant conversation with friends. Yourself?”
“Conducting a what? An interrogation, you say?”
Conrad covered the receiver with his chin. “What happened after the Army.” He swept his hand under the tabletop, groping for a mike, a wire, anything suspicious.
“Whozatt on the horn?”
“It’s not Don King,” Conrad said.
Marty Cardinal and Dorsey chuckled and the glacier receded. Marty Cardinal said, “Broadway, baby. After Korea I moved to the Apple, tried to get my name in lights.”
“Who is that charming, drunken fellow I hear?” Singh buzzed.
Conrad held up a finger as he addressed Singh. “A war hero. I’m drinking him under the table.”
“Oh my, a real live war hero—is there such a thing? You must be punch drunk, poor boy. Buy him a shot for me, though. Just in case.”
“Karmic insurance?”
“Indeed. I’m certainly in the market… Look, Rob mentioned that you called earlier. He’s worried about you.”
“He’s worried about his money, you mean.”
“Our money. We share everything. Basically, we’re married. Please meet me at that museum in Coleville. You know the one—it’s on your way, isn’t it? Fourteen-hundred hours on Friday. We can speak of cabbages and kings, the weather in Buenos Aires.”
“You owe somebody money? Is that why ya got yer head busted?” Marty Cardinal had finished off another round. “That the s.o.b. who beat the tar outta ya, kid?”
“Okay,” Conrad said. “I’ll be there. It may be close.”
“Drive like the wind, mate,” Singh said. “Oh, and Conrad…I’m glad you’re in one piece. Ciao.”
“I’m touched,” Conrad said, but Singh was gone. “Sorry, Mr.—Marty. And after Broadway, you moved west, didn’t you? Washington, Idaho? Do you recall a man named Ambrose Drake?”
“Huh?”
“Ambrose Drake. He was a doctor—a surgeon.”
Marty Cardinal’s face slammed shut. He began snapping his fingers frantically at the waitress.
“Ambrose Drake. A tall, distinguished gentleman. Very dark, very ethnic.”
“What sorta trouble are you in?” Dorsey glanced up from his cards. “Unless you’re writin’ a book—”
“I’m not writing a book.”
“Then what?” Marty Cardinal gripped the edge of the table, a man clinging to a piece of flotsam in heavy seas. “What the hell ya want from me. Y-you’re—this is ancient history.”
“Is it?”
“I dunno a goddamned thing.”
“Dr. Ambrose Drake,” Conrad said. “He treated your grandson.”
“Go to hell.”
“Consider me the Ghost of Christmas Past. I know everything. You came to the Cloister to visit a child. You don’t recognize me? I was a boy, so it’s understandable. You I recall quite vividly. I thought you were an officer, even in civilian clothes. You had that military bearing. Command presence. Hadn’t quite reinvented yourself as Frank Sinatra.”
Marty Cardinal appeared ill. He gagged down an inch of bourbon. “The clinic. I dunno—”
“His name was Dick, your grandson. He had leukemia,” Conrad said. He was hardly drunk, now. His hands were steady, his tone flat with honed menace. Coupled with his grotesque scarring, his brawny shoulders and immense hands, the menace shtick was reliable. “There were a lot of people at the clinic, but I could never forget Dick either. A piano prodigy, just like your pal Dorsey there. Loved model planes and baseball. My brother called him Dicky, talked about him nonstop. Real amigos, those two. My brother had a tumor named Jake, by the way.”
Marty Cardinal spilled his drink, knocked over the stack of empties when he clumsily sopped the mess.
“Dicky’s head was always shaved…”
Marty Cardinal’s eyes leaked; his mouth hung slack and ugly with the shock of recollection, of demons loosed and ravenous.
“Leave him alone,” Dorsey said.
“Are you crying? Don’t do that. Please, I need you to look at something. Dr. Drake gave this to some of them to study.” Conrad made the promotional photo disappear and drew another tattered sheet of paper from his coat, held it near the light. The paper was papyrus-yellow, saturated with water stains and splashed by violent brush-work that resembled the craft of a demented calligrapher. “I’ve been
told that the military used tools like this, back in the days when you were in the service. This, however, was originally created by Dr. Drake as a visual psychotropic, albeit inert without the concomitant verbal trigger. Uncle Sam considered buying the protocol, but passed. Have another look—you’ve seen it before.”
“Aww, no.” Marty Cardinal bawled. He covered his eyes. “Aww no, no, no.”
Conrad gaped in wonder and horror, then collected himself sufficiently to proceed with the Hoover-style third degree. “Any of these sound familiar? MK-Ultra. Majestic Twelve. Project TALLHAT. Project Bluebook.”
Marty Cardinal hunched tighter, refused to look. Wow, a monster. Look!
“It’s okay, chum.” Dorsey slung a scrawny arm over Marty Cardinal’s shoulders and glared venomously at Conrad. “You better get. He’s got nothin’ to say to you.”
Conrad forged ahead, implacable as a steamroller. “Some say the doctor is yet among the living. Drake was decrepit when he administered the Cloister. I’d peg him at one hundred, easy. Not many folks see out a century of birthdays. Must be one hell of a medicine man, assuming he even exists. I don’t think the Drake we know ever did.”
“Who sent ya? I’m out. They said I was out. Lyin’ sonsabitches.”
“No one sent me. I’m a free agent, an inquiring mind. I want to know more about the Drake Technique.”
“I don’t know shit.”
“I suppose if the CIA had gotten around to co-opting his research they’d have given it some silly code name. Probably converted it to something absolutely unimaginative—OPERATION MINDFUCK. Bureaucrats, eh? For God’s sake, stop crying, would you.” It was rubbing Conrad’s nerves raw, the moaning and weeping, waking the lizard, the creature that always wanted a bite of something weak and vulnerable. His fingers curled.
“Screw ya, ya punk. This is bullshit.”
“You were on the team of spooks that debriefed Drake and his scientists about his “Technique.” Istanbul, summer of ’60. The CIA was just checking it out, you didn’t actually appropriate the intellectual property, probably because everyone thought it was a hoax. They were correct. So your commanding officers examined the evidence and cut the doctor loose, let him creep back under some rock.”
The Light is the Darkness Page 8