by Laird Barron
See him again? Chat? Don automatically disliked the sound of it, whatever it meant. The duo smelled of airport aftershave and Mr. Claxton smiled fiercely as they shook hands. Mr. Dart didn’t smile at all. His face hung oblong as a waterlogged piñata and was utterly melancholy. Mr. Claxton nodded at Bronson Ford. “Hiya, kiddo. California Gold? Nope, too dark—no offense. Colombian, then. Make with the bud, eh?” There was no warmth in the greeting, only a queer, pseudo familiarity, the implication of accustomed authority lent by official credentials and jackboots.
Bronson Ford expressionlessly took another long hit. He slowly held forth the joint in his left hand and Mr. Claxton strode over and took it and squinted as he dragged. He coughed and his cheeks darkened. He handed the joint to Mr. Dart and Mr. Dart drew in the smoke, held it expertly in the manner of a blooded veteran, before exhaling. His expression was a pallid, moony reflection of Bronson Ford’s. The tall man offered the rapidly dwindling joint to Don.
“Um, thanks anyway,” Don said, edging from their tribal campfire circle toward the doorway, from which spilled light and the tidal roar of tipsy conversation. Civilization and its protections seemed suddenly remote. Three pairs of eyes focused upon him and Mr. Claxton frowned ominously.
“It’s easier than slicing our palms, trust me,” Mr. Dart said.
Don said, “Okay, sure. One can’t hurt.” He accepted the joint and inhaled clumsily; it had been ages since his days of rebellious toking behind the bleachers at school and later in the dorms at college. The rush almost knocked him over. He tried to speak and ended up hacking and retching. Claxton smiled benignly, as if to acknowledge that all was well, that they had forged a brotherly compact and now secrets could be safely exchanged, and retrieved the joint.
No one spoke for a minute or two, or fifteen, Don wasn’t certain because time had become rather elastic and he was dizzy. He gripped the rail for dear life and peered at the black masses of tree tops on the hillside below the house and wondered about the songbirds in their secret nests, the scrabbling mice, the silently gliding owls. The stars jumped. He could not remember the best grass ever having such a visceral effect upon his senses. Kent Pepper had confided that the native strains were getting stronger with each new crop.
Bronson Ford rose quickly and scuttled back inside and the men watched him depart.
“I’m Sicilian with a Welsh influence,” Mr. Claxton said, his voice booming like a god speaking from the clouds. “Tom Jones meets the Cosa Nostra. You were staring.”
“The Sicilian for cruelty and ruthlessness, the Welsh for his charm,” Mr. Dart said. “You should hear him in the shower. Lawrence Welk more than Tom Jones, I’d say. Vunnerful, vunnerful.”
Mr. Claxton said, “You work for AstraCorp.”
“I’m a consultant,” Don said.
“A long-term consultant.”
“Eh, the projects last as what they last…Say, what is it you fellows do?”
“We’ve got government jobs. Great dental.” Mr. Claxton showed his teeth. “Yeah, AstraCorp. Man, the Rourkes sorta own that baby. Don— may I call you Don?—you’re working on a job on the Peninsula. Lot number, oops, lost it. Slango Camp it’s called. Timber company logged the shit out of those mountains during the 1920s. Now it’s being prepped for some new development, yeah?”
Don nodded warily. “Sure, that’s public knowledge, I guess.” He didn’t volunteer the fact AstraCorp was conducting its portion of an environmental impact study for some energy development company in California. Don hadn’t gotten physically involved—his task was to line out the surveyors and other specialists and ride herd on the paperwork. He eyed Dart and Claxton (instantly dubbing them Frick and Frack) and tried to guess their angle. Possibly they weren’t feds after all, and instead represented rival interests to AstraCorp; espionage was common in the industry, but seldom this overt.
“Right on. Slango’s got a history. How many loggers disappeared from that camp in 1923? Two hundred wasn’t it?”
Mr. Dart said, “You have a big-time physicist on the clock up there. Vern Noonan. Hot shit dude, huh? Kinda like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer bringing in a gun that size. Come on, level with me—what’s really on the agenda at Slango?”
“Gosh, I wouldn’t be able to venture a guess,” Don said. A small lie; he’d seen Noonan’s name on the manifests and felt a twinge of curiosity regarding the man’s presence on an involved, if pedestrian, feasibility study.
“Have you met Dr. Herman Strauss? Old evil German scientist, did big things at R&D for the company back during the height of the Red Scare—became Herr Director, in fact. There’s the secret to how we won World War Two—our Nazi scientists were better than their Nazi scientists.”
“Er, no. Should I know him?”
“Hah, well, maybe. Mrs. Miller interviewed him for her first book. The interview got edited for content or length, or whatever. Very interesting fellow, Herman Strauss. Specialized in mind control and unorthodox applications of medicine and technology. Heh, if he hadn’t gotten press-ganged by the Allies, he’d probably be sipping mint juleps on one of those plantations in South America.”
Mr. Claxton tried next. “Hey, ever hear of a physicist named Nelson Cooye? Great big Lakota Indian. Chummy with Plimpton. He did research for Caltech, Stanford, MIT. A real stallion for an egghead.”
“Never met him,” Don said, trying to picture Cooye. He had the unhappy premonition that the guy was famous and something bad had happened to him and that somehow this terrible thing presaged something equally dreadful for Don himself. He recalled a newspaper photo, two and a half inches of print, rumors of uncontrollable violence, of public tirades. He didn’t normally keep track of physicists.
“Ah.” Mr. Claxton nodded. “But you hearda Cooye. Rather a renowned figure among the radical elements, the lunatic fringe. He was buddies with that one dude, Toshi Ryoko, guy that made a movie about his expeditions in the Far East. Another classic, lemme say. I heard a rumor he’s in the planning stages for a trip to some deathtrap of a wildlife preserve in Bangladesh. Bet he gets a Nobel if he can find backers.”
“Oh, Toshi,” Don said. Everybody in the civilized world knew of Toshi Ryoko the same way everybody knew of Jacques Cousteau or Dian Fossey. “Did something blow up in his documentary?”
“No. It’s about an expedition, is all. Nothing to do with the price of tea in China. Anyhoo, Cooye was a smidge wacko; a saucer watcher. Got himself and a few radical kids from Stanford arrested for trespassing on a government research facility in Nevada. Nothing important there, by the way—it’s the thought that counts.”
“Yeah, I don’t recall. Who do you gentlemen work for? FBI? CIA?”
“CIA doesn’t operate on American soil,” Mr. Claxton said. “That’s the line, anyhow. National Security Agency.”
“Uh-huh. Y’know, my grandfather always warned me to never talk to spooks.”
“Yep, he was a smart guy, your gramps. We’ll get to him. Back to Cooye. He rolled in a teeny Volkswagen. Can you imagine this six-eight dude jamming himself into one a those contraptions? Went off the road near Eureka. Burned up on the rocks.”
“When?”
“About six weeks ago. Sad, sad, y’know. Wonder what he was thinking about on the way down.”
“The highway patrol couldn’t locate the body,” Mr. Dart said. “Cops say he was thrown from the wreck and taken out to sea.”
“Yep, like a commode flushing.” Mr. Claxton mimed pulling a chain. “There’s a bore tide along that stretch of coast. No way they’ll ever find him unless he washes up somewhere, which I doubt. But on to the good parts: Plimpton,” and here the agent gestured to encompass the party being thrown in the dead man’s honor, “and Cooye moonlighted for the CIA during the ’60s. Cooye was a few years younger than you. CIA likes’em young and dumb. Your granddad knew Cooye pretty well, like a grandson, in fact; we’re confident Luther handled him during his tour in Bali. Course this is speculation—the company boys don’t play nice
. But we’re betting Luther was the control. Small, small world, ain’t it.”
Don hadn’t given the matter much thought since he was a kid—it was simply a dab of color in the magnificent canvas of his grandfather’s larger-than-life persona, a childhood fascination stowed in the trunk where such dusty recollections languish. “I never met Cooye, despite the fact you say he was close to my grandfather. Granddad didn’t work for the CIA. The brass forced him out years before the company or the NSA even formed.”
“He worked for Army Intelligence. Same diff.”
“He was old, decrepit. Died not long ago… 1977.
“1977, there’s an excellent year.”
“For some, I guess.”
“Well, three years, you should be done with the grieving and on with the spending of that inheritance loot. Old bird had a few bills stuffed under the mattress, I’d bet my left nut on that.” Mr. Dart grinned when he said it, like he was relating a dirty joke. “This leads to the next piece of the puzzle and how your wife was Plimpton’s star pupil and all those mysterious vacations they took together.”
“I’ll thank you to consider very carefully what you say about my wife.” Don loosened his tie and turned slightly sideways. His hands flexed, loosened, flexed.
The agents exchanged a glance. “Don’t get crazy, Miller,” Mr. Claxton said.
“Let’s see some ID,” Don said, and that also hit him with a powerful sensation of déjà vu. He glimpsed, a shadow in his mind’s eye, some rough men laughing, then wearing devilish masks while the fires of hell burned away the darkness. He swayed as the room dilated and contracted.
“Hell, man. We’re undercover. We don’t carry badges undercover.”
“Hey,” Mr. Dart said, “I’m curious—you ever ask yourself what the connection is between the Wolvertons, Rourkes, and Mocks? Other than big fortunes?”
“You gotta include the Redfields too,” Mr. Claxton said. “Although, I don’t know how deep that goes.”
“Let me think…They all live in Olympia?” Don said. “The Mocks aren’t moneyed.”
“Oh, come on,” Mr. Dart said. “Those old bitches are sitting on millions. Besides, I said it isn’t just the money. And Plimpton mixed with them. His line was almost as mind-numbingly boring as yours. How did he fit in? Look at these clowns—they drove hundreds of miles to this joint in Timbuktu to pay homage to a lab jockey. Not like the guy did anything sexy—no Nobel, no famous dino discovery, no Einsteinian breakthroughs on the true nature of reality…he always just plugged along researching the mundane stuff that only excites other lab jockeys and review boards. Odd, huh?”
“Wake up, Miller,” Mr. Claxton said. “We’re watching out for you. Something’s rotten in Olympia and these rich assholes are in cahoots.”
“Cahoots?” Don blinked and tried to wrap his mind around the notion. “You mean like spies and Deep Throat? Cloak and dagger? Commie moles?”
Mr. Dart smiled. “Everybody knows who the commie moles are. You see them in small-town obituaries all the time.”
“Think worse,” Mr. Claxton said. “Think bigger.”
“I don’t know what my grandfather was into,” Don said. A half lie—that Granddad and Dad had done dirty business of the U.S. of A. was implicit in their very nature, the artifacts they’d left behind. He’d heard of the secret government black lists, and not only the kind McCarthy reserved for the un-American Activities Committee. Oh, no; the FBI kept tabs on all kinds of people from environmental activists to Pinko college professors to subversive authors and reformed hippies. Thus, in a way, given his relatives’ exotic background, and the company Michelle had kept over the years, he wasn’t entirely surprised to occasionally encounter federal law enforcement types sniffing around like jackals on the scent of blood. His family had surely collected enemies.
“Here’s the inside scoop. Plimpton committed suicide,” Mr. Dart said. “The coroner’s report is a dummy.”
“Baloney. Lou had a heart attack.”
“Wrong, my friend,” Mr. Claxton said. “Any idea why the good doctor would want to off himself?”
“I wasn’t close to the man. I don’t believe you, though.”
“That’s okay, Miller. Your wife might have an answer.”
“Sure. She’d be the one to ask.”
“We’re not allowed to speak with her,” Mr. Claxton said. “She’s an untouchable.”
“You can’t talk to my wife?”
“Nope, indeed we cannot. It’s a real pain in the ass.”
“She’s in the parlor, last I noticed. Not a hard lady to find…” Don trailed off, belatedly noting how serious Frick and Frack were.
“Don’t you get it, Miller?”
“He doesn’t.”
“This is what we’re trying to make you understand. Michelle Mock isn’t…How shall I put it delicately?” Mr. Dart paused and stroked his chin. “She’s got powerful friends. I don’t often run across people blessed with the kind of friends as these. You?” He nodded to Mr. Claxton.
Mr. Claxton said, “I’ve shot at potentates who aren’t as secure as your woman. Truth be told, this whole visit is unauthorized. Our superiors would have our guts for garters if they knew we were here gathering intelligence. Spying on Mrs. Miller. Warning you.”
“That’s why we decided to pay our respects and get to know you, Mr. Miller. Of all these splendid folks you’re the only one who isn’t protected by the forces of darkness. The only one who’s in a vulnerable position.”
“Protected from what?”
The agents stared without answering.
Don had had enough. “This is the goddamned Osterman Weekend or you two are having me on. And I don’t see Bob Ludlum anywhere, so… Please excuse me, I’m going to take a piss now.”
“More like Rosemary’s Baby writ large. Illuminati level shit. The Mayans vanishing en masse and leaving us a calendar that rolls over to zero in about thirty years.”
“Easy does it. Man’s got to piss, man’s got to piss.” Mr. Dart’s lachrymose expression became pleading. “This I have to know—what went on in Mexico?”
“The records say you were playing chicken with the reaper,” Mr. Claxton said. “Somebody used you for a piñata. Almost bit the dust is what I get from the file.”
“Nothing happened.” Don slumped with exhaustion. Mexico, 1958. He’d gotten lost in a bad neighborhood and some thugs hassled him. Alcohol was surely involved. Michelle played deaf whenever he started reminiscing about their trip to Mexico City. The truth was, most of the details were fuzzy. “I had a nice time with my wife. Drank a wagon load of Coronas. Came home with a sombrero. It’s hanging on a hook in my den.”
“See, we heard that in between the Coronas and hanky-panky you lovebirds were spotted lurking in interesting places with the wrong kind of people.” Mr. Claxton wasn’t smiling anymore. “Are you aware that your wife went to an enclave of a certain Nazi scientist who’d managed to escape the Mossad? Or that Plimpton, Josef Wolverton, the former owner of this magnificent estate, and several luminaries in the fields of eugenics and tinfoil hat science theory were invited to that party? There were also several of those scary people who play with Tesla coils and test tubes in their basements, trying to design homemade atom smashers. Best of all, no fewer than nine all-pro practitioners of the occult made the trip. I’d give a testicle to find a video of that little hoedown.”
“Yep, she’s sipping champagne and schmoozing with Anton LaVey and the Goering fan club. Meanwhile, you’re playing fuck-fuck with some dirty agents in Mexican intelligence.” Mr. Dart shook his head. “You drop off the radar and resurface a couple of days later, covered in blood, raving mad, though nothing that a week in the loony ward and a few high-powered injections couldn’t fix. Two of them Mexicans were heavy hitters, by the way. Double-breasted sonofabitches I surely wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. Contract killers, the lot of ’em. Kinder, during his troubled youth, was chief torturer for el Presidente. Ramirez specialized in polit
ical executions. He loved bumping foreign nationals. The authorities spared no expense searching for the bodies. Neither hide nor hair was ever found.”
“Hell of a mystery,” Mr. Claxton said.
Don said, “Excuse my language, but I don’t have the first damned clue what you’re on about. This is a fantasy.”
“I’m on Black Beauties and copious amounts of blow,” Mr. Dart said. “We’re here to save the free world. We’re all that stands between your overeducated ass and the Not With a Bang, But A Whimper ending of the world. We’re also high on vengeance. A couple of our brother agents recently disappeared while investigating Plimpton’s death. Kind of how them loggers went poof in 1923 and them Mexicans disappeared after they tried to snuff you, Don.”
Claxton sneered. “Man, your wife was at an overnight cocktail social with a member of the Third Reich and a cabal of Satanists while you’re getting kidnapped and tortured and you don’t bat an eyelash. You need a fucking clue all right.”
“It’s a conspiracy,” Mr. Dart said. “I’m guessing you’re exactly the rube she needs to maintain her cover as a cute little lady scientist. Who’d suspect her of anything with Gomer Pyle hanging around? She didn’t fool your grandpa. Remind me to let you listen to the piece of audiotape I found in the archives. Ol’ Luther was chatting with his handlers in Washington. This was ’76. Not even five years ago. He wanted clearance to terminate a certain unnamed female in-law with extreme prejudice. Pretty sure he was talking about Mrs. Miller. Washington denied the request, apparently.”
“Yeah, and here’s the kicker. You don’t know Cooye, but you wanna take a wild stab in the dark at who was really chummy with the dude? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.”
Don gaped at the men. His faculties were fried. He didn’t trust his mouth to form words without spluttering or foaming. Everything the agents said was penetrating, digging furrows into his gray matter. He just hadn’t registered the impacts yet. “I don’t think so. No way.” He shook his head in the stubborn and ungainly fashion of a man who’d drunk or smoked to the point of believing himself sober.