“So what happens then? Insteada being smart like I should, I go nuts on account of I’m the guy who pays the bills, that Harvard up there pulls in the money better than any casino I ever saw, and you want to find a real good criminal, get some Boston WASP in a bow tie, and all of a sudden nobody listens to me! I’m seeing red in a big way here, Deacon, this is my uncle Vincente’s funeral, and insteada backing me up his mother is telling me I’m not helping. I yell, You want to help? Then go up there and bring back his wife and kids, or I’ll send Carlo and Tommy to do it. All of a sudden I’m so mad I’m thinking these people are insulting me, how can they think they can get away with that, people who insult me don’t do it twice - and then I hear what I’m thinking, and I do what she said and put a cork in it, but it’s too late, I went way over the top and we all know it.
“Arthur Jr takes off, and his mother won’t talk to me for the whole rest of the day. Only thing I’m happy about is I didn’t blow up where anyone else could see it. Deacon, I know you’re the type guy wouldn’t dream of threatening his family, but if the time ever comes, do yourself a favor and light up a Havana instead.”
“I’m sure that is excellent advice,” I said.
“Don’t let the thought cross your mind. Anyhow, you know what they say, it only hurts for a little while, which is true as far as it goes, and I calmed down. Uncle Vincente’s funeral was beautiful. You woulda thought the Pope died. When the people are going out to the limousines, Arthur Jr is sitting in a chair at the back of the church reading a book. Put that in your pocket, I say, wanta do homework, do it in the car. He tells me it isn’t homework, but he puts it in his pocket and we go out to the cemetery. His mother looks out the window the whole time we’re driving to the cemetery, and the kid starts reading again. So I ask what the hell is it, this book he can’t put down? He tells me but it’s like he’s speaking some foreign language, only word I understand is ‘the,’ which happens a lot when your kid reads a lot of fancy books, half the titles make no sense to an ordinary person. Okay, we’re out there in Queens, goddam graveyard the size of Newark, FBI and reporters all over the place, and I’m thinking maybe Arthur Jr wasn’t wrong after all, Hunter probably hates having the FBI take her picture, and besides that little Hermione probably would a mugged one of ‘em and stole his wallet. So I tell Arthur Jr I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t really think you were going to put me in the same grave as Uncle Waffles, he says, the Harvard smart-ass. When it’s all over, we get back in the car, and out comes the book again. We get home, and he disappears. We have a lot of people over, food, wine, politicians, old-timers from Brownsville, Chicago people, Detroit people, LA people, movie directors, cops, actors I never heard of, priests, bishops, the guy from the Cardinal. Everybody’s asking me, Where’s Arthur, Jr? I go upstairs to find out. He’s in his old room, and he’s still reading that book. I say, Arthur Jr, people are asking about you, I think it would be nice if you mingled with our guests. I’ll be right down, he says, I just finished what I was reading. Here, take a look, you might enjoy it. He gives me the book and goes out of the room. So I’m wondering - what the hell is this, anyhow? I take it into the bedroom, toss it on the table. About ten-thirty, eleven that night, everybody’s gone, kid’s on the shuttle back to Boston, house is cleaned up, enough food in the refrigerator to feed the whole bunch all over again, I go up to bed. Arthur Jr’s mother still isn’t talking to me, so I get in and pick up the book. Herman Melville is the name of the guy, and I see that the story the kid was reading is called ‘Bartleby the Scrivener.’ So I decide I’ll try it. What the hell, right? You’re an educated guy, you ever read that story?”
“A long time ago,” I said. “A bit . . . odd, isn’t it?”
“Odd? That’s the most terrible story I ever read in my whole life! This dud gets a job in a law office and decides he doesn’t want to work. Does he get fired? He does not. This is a story? You hire a guy who won’t do the job, what do you do, pamper the asshole? At the end, the dud ups and disappears and you find out he used to work in the dead letter office. Is there a point here? The next day I call up Arthur Jr, say, could he explain to me please what the hell that story is supposed to mean? Dad, he says, it means what it says. Deacon, I just about pulled the plug on Harvard right then and there. I never went to any college, but I do know that nothing means what it says, not on this planet.”
This reflection was accurate when applied to the documents on my desk, for each had been encoded in a systematic fashion which rendered their literal contents deliberately misleading. Another code had informed both of my recent conversations with Marguerite. “Fiction is best left to real life,” I said.
“Someone shoulda told that to Herman Melville,” said Mr Arthur “This Building Is Condemned” C—.
Mrs Rampage buzzed me to advise that I was running behind schedule and enquire about removing the coffee things. I invited her to gather up the debris. A door behind me opened, and I assumed that my secretary had responded to my request with an alacrity remarkable even in her. The first sign of my error was the behavior of the three other men in the room, until this moment no more animated than marble statues. The thug at my client’s side stepped forward to stand behind me, and his fellows moved to the front of my desk. “What the hell is this shit?” said the client, because of the man in front of him unable to see Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff. Holding a pad bearing one of his many lists, Mr Clubb gazed in mild surprise at the giants flanking my desk and said, “I apologize for the intrusion, sir, but our understanding was that your appointment would be over in an hour, and by my simple way of reckoning you should be free to answer a query as to steam irons.”
“What the hell is this shit?” said my client, repeating his original question with a slight tonal variation expressive of gathering dismay.
I attempted to salvage matters by saying, “Please allow me to explain the interruption. I have employed these men as consultants, and as they prefer to work in my office, a condition I of course could not permit during our business meeting, I temporarily relocated them in my washroom, outfitted with a library adequate to their needs.”
“Fit for a king, in my opinion,” said Mr Clubb.
At that moment the other door into my office, to the left of my desk, opened to admit Mrs Rampage, and my client’s guardians inserted their hands into their suit jackets and separated with the speed and precision of a dance team.
“Oh, my,” said Mrs Rampage. “Excuse me. Should I come back later?”
“Not on your life, my darling,” said Mr Clubb. “Temporary misunderstanding of the false alarm sort. Please allow us to enjoy the delightful spectacle of your feminine charms.”
Before my wondering eyes, Mrs Rampage curtseyed and hastened to my desk to gather up the wreckage.
I looked toward my client and observed a detail of striking peculiarity, that although his half-consumed cigar remained between his lips, four inches of cylindrical ash had deposited a grey smear on his necktie before coming to rest on the shelf of his belly. He was staring straight ahead with eyes grown to the size of quarters. His face had become the color of raw pie crust.
Mr Clubb said, “Respectful greetings, sir.”
The client gargled and turned upon me a look of unvarnished horror.
Mr Clubb said, “Apologies to all.” Mrs Rampage had already bolted. From unseen regions came the sound of a closing door.
Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C— blinked twice, bringing his eyes to something like their normal dimensions. With an uncertain hand but gently, as if it were a tiny but much-loved baby, he placed his cigar in the crystal shell. He cleared his throat; he looked at the ceiling. “Deacon,” he said, gazing upward. “Gotta run. My next appointment musta slipped my mind. What happens when you start to gab. I’ll be in touch about this stuff.” He stood, dislodging the ashen cylinder to the carpet, and motioned his gangsters to the outer office.
* * * *
IV.
Of course at the earliest op
portunity I interrogated both of my detectives about this turn of events, and while they moved their mountains of paper, bottles, buckets, glasses, hand-drawn maps, and other impedimenta back behind the screen, I continued the questioning. No, they averred, the gentlemen at my desk was not a gentleman whom previously they had been privileged to look upon, acquaint themselves with, or encounter in any way whatsoever. They had never been employed in any capacity by the gentleman. Mr Clubb observed that the unknown gentleman had been wearing a conspicuously handsome and well-tailored suit.
“That is his custom,” I said.
“And I believe he smokes, sir, a noble high order of cigar,” said Mr Clubb with a glance at my breast pocket. “Which would be the sort of item unfairly beyond the dreams of honest laborers such as ourselves.”
“I trust that you will permit me,” I said with a sigh, “to offer you the pleasure of two of the same.” No sooner had the offer been accepted, the barnies back behind their screen, than I buzzed Mrs Rampage with the request to summon by instant delivery from the most distinguished cigar merchant in the city a box of his finest. “Good for you, boss!” whooped the new Mrs Rampage.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon brooding upon the reaction of Mr Arthur “This Building Is Condemned” C— to my “consultants.” I could not but imagine that his hasty departure boded ill for our relationship. I had seen terror on his face, and he knew that I knew what I had seen. An understanding of this sort is fatal to that nuance-play critical alike to high-level churchmen and their outlaw counterparts, and I had to confront the possibility that my client’s departure had been of a permanent nature. Where Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C— went, his colleagues of lesser rank, Mr Tommy “I Believe in Rainbows” B—, Mr Anthony “Moonlight Becomes You” M—, Mr Bobby “Total Eclipse” G—, and their fellow Archbishops, Cardinals, and Papal Nuncios would assuredly follow. Before the close of the day, I would send a comforting fax informing Mr “This Building Is Condemned” C— that the consultants had been summarily released from employment. I would be telling only a “white” or provisional untruth, for Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff’s task would surely be completed long before my client’s return. All was in order, all was in train, and as if to put the seal upon the matter, Mrs Rampage buzzed to enquire if she might come through with the box of cigars. Speaking in a breathy timbre I had never before heard from anyone save Marguerite in the earliest, most blissful days of our marriage, Mrs Rampage added that she had some surprises for me, too. “By this point,” I said, “I expect no less.” Mrs Rampagegiggled.
The surprises, in the event, were of a satisfying practicality. The good woman had wisely sought the advice of Mr Montfort d’M—, who, after recommending a suitably aristocratic cigar emporium and a favorite cigar, had purchased for me a rosewood humidor, a double-bladed cigar cutter, and a lighter of antique design. As soon Mrs Rampage had been instructed to compose a note of gratitude embellished in whatever fashion she saw fit, I arrayed all but one of the cigars in the humidor, decapitated that one, and set it alight. Beneath a faint touch of fruitiness like the aroma of a blossoming pear tree, I met in successive layers the tastes of black olives, aged Gouda cheese, pine needles, new leather, miso soup, either sorghum or brown sugar, burning peat, library paste and myrtle leaves. The long finish intriguingly combined Bible paper and sunflower seeds. Mr Montfort d’M— had chosen well, though I regretted the absence of black butter sauce.
Feeling comradely, I strolled across my office towards the merriment emanating from the far side of the screen. A superior cigar, even if devoid of black butter sauce, should be complemented by a worthy liquor, and in the light what was to transpire during the evening I considered a snifter of Mr Clubb’s Bombay gin not inappropriate. “Fellows,” I said, tactfully announcing my presence, “are preparations nearly completed?”
“That, sir, they are,” said one or another of the pair.
“Welcome news,” I said, and stepped around the screen. “But I must be assured -”
I had expected disorder, but nothing approaching the chaos before me. It was as if the detritus of New York City’s half-dozen filthiest living quarters had been scooped up, shaken and dumped into my office. Heaps of ash, bottles, shoals of papers, books with stained covers and broken spines, battered furniture, broken glass, refuse I could not identify, refuse I could not even see, undulated from the base of the screen, around and over the table, heaping itself into landfill-like piles here and there, and washed against the plate-glass windows. A jagged, five-foot opening gaped in a smashed pane. Their derbies perched on their heads, islanded in their chairs, Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff leaned back, feet up on what must have been the table.
“You’ll join us in a drink, sir,” said Mr Clubb, “by way of wishing us success and adding to the pleasure of that handsome smoke.” He extended a stout leg and kicked rubble from a chair. I sat down. Mr Clubb plucked an unclean glass from the morass and filled it with Dutch gin or genever from one of the minaret-shaped stone flagons I had observed upon my infrequent layovers in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Mrs Rampage had been variously employed during the barnies’ sequestration. Then I wondered if Mrs Rampage might not have shown signs of intoxication during our last encounter.
“I thought you drank Bombay,” I said.
“Variety is, as they say, life’s condiment,” said Mr Clubb, and handed me the glass.
I said, “You have made yourselves quite at home.”
“I thank you for your restraint,” said Mr Clubb. “In which sentiment my partner agrees, am I correct, Mr Cuff?”
“Entirely,” said Mr Cuff. “But I wager you a C-note to a see-gar that a word or two of reassurance is in order.”
“How right that man is,” said Mr Clubb. “He has a genius for the truth I have never known to fail him. Sir, you enter our workspace to come upon the slovenly, the careless, the unseemly, and your response, which we comprehend in every particular, is to recoil. My wish is that you take a moment to remember these two essentials: one, we have, as aforesaid, our methods which are ours alone, and two, having appeared fresh on the scene, you see it worse than it is. By morning tomorrow, the cleaning staff shall have done its work.”
“I suppose you have been Visualizing,” I said, and quaffed genever.
“Mr Cuff and I,” he said, “prefer to minimize the risk of accidents, surprises, and such by the method of rehearsing our as you might say performances. These poor sticks, sir, are easily replaced, but our work once under way demands completion and cannot be duplicated, redone, or undone.”
I recalled the all-important guarantee. “I remember your words,” I said, “and I must be assured that you remember mine. I did not request termination. During the course of the day my feelings on the matter have intensified. Termination, if by that term you meant . . .”
“Termination is termination,” said Mr Clubb.
“Extermination,” I said. “Cessation of life due to external forces. It is not my wish, it is unacceptable, and I have even been thinking that I overstated the degree of physical punishment appropriate in this matter.”
“Appropriate?” said Mr Clubb. “When it comes to desire, ‘appropriate’ is a concept without meaning. In the sacred realm of desire, ‘appropriate,’ being meaningless, does not exist. We speak of your inmost wishes, sir, and desire is an extremely thingy sort of thing.”
I looked at the hole in the window, the broken bits of furniture and ruined books. “I think,” I said, “that permanent injury is all I wish. Something on the order of blindness or the loss of a hand.”
Mr Clubb favored me with a glance of humorous irony. “It goes, sir, as it goes, which brings to mind that we have but an hour more, a period of time to be splendidly improved by a superior Double Corona such as the fine example in your hand.”
“Forgive me,” I said. “And might I then request ... ?” I extended the nearly empty glass, and Mr Clubb refilled it. Each received a cigar, and I lingered at my desk for the required term, si
pping genever and pretending to work until I heard sounds of movement. Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff approached. “So you are off,” I said.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology] Page 52