Infernal Affairs

by Jane Heller

  The developers were apoplectic. Ronald Dubin’s face was so purple with rage that I thought he might have an aneurysm. When he wasn’t shouting obscenities, he was trying frantically to herd the partygoers into the lobby of the building, away from the offending sights and smells. But nobody budged. I think we sensed that there was more to come.

  Mayor Kineally looked more humiliated than enraged, as if by appearing beside fountains that were polluted, he, too, had been polluted.

  And then there was poor DeWitt Charney, the mermaids’ creator. He was distraught that his works of art had been defiled and quickly left the party in tears. He was lucky. He escaped before things really got ugly.

  Charlotte didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the polluting of the fountains and acted as if it were merely a childish prank, a case of bad manners. “Boys will be boys,” I actually heard her say. But the other Home Sweet Home agents were far more concerned that the incident might put a stain on the River Princess’s chichi image. Who would buy a condo in a building with such lax security, a building that was such an easy target for vandals? Or worse, who would buy a condo in a building that smelled rotten? That was the obvious message of the vandalism, as far as I was concerned; that something about the River Princess was rotten. To the core.

  “Who could have done this?” Frances asked after she had stopped to talk with David and me. Her voluminous caftan was flapping in the breeze and her mind was undoubtedly calculating all the commission checks that would be lost.

  Who could have done it?

  Before I could ponder the matter further, I saw that Jeremy was making his way through the crowd, striding toward the microphone, his father looking on anxiously. Everything happened very quickly after that, but I’ll try to report the events as best I can.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Jeremy said, as everyone quieted down, “I hate to spoil your party but I’ve got a little speech I wanna make.”

  I glanced at Mike Cook, who was drawing nervously on his cigarette.

  “The River Princess and high-rise buildings like it are killin’ our rivers,” he announced. “Thanks to their developers, black ooze has taken the place of the sea grass beds where fish used to look for food, and algae have taken the place of the fish we all used to catch. The fact is, we don’t have sea life anymore. Oh, we’ve got condo buildings with enough gates and guards to keep an army out. But our rivers don’t have any gates and guards to keep the polluters out. Now, instead of sea life, our rivers have dead fish, black ooze, and raw sewage—samples of which are sittin’ right here in these fancy fountains, ladies and gentlemen. I thought y’all might like to experience firsthand what a polluted river looks and smells like.”

  So Jeremy was responsible!

  He was met with a torrent of boos as he stepped away from the microphone, but I felt an odd sort of respect for him. It all made sense to me now…his warning that within a few days the condos in the River Princess wouldn’t be worth much…his statement about giving the money he made from The Fire Ants gigs to the Save the River Initiative…his comment about putting his money where his mouth was and standing up for what he believed in. Ben was right about him, I realized. Jeremy Cook had principles—and guts. He was an activist who was willing to take on the movers and shakers of Banyan Beach—in order to save the river that had meant so much to him since he was a child. But he hadn’t used violence or damaged property. Not really. Not anything that couldn’t be remedied with a good scrubbing. He had simply sent everybody a message. A symbolic message.

  As I watched two of the River Princess’s security guards each take one of Jeremy’s arms and walk him inside the building, with the next stop the police station, I guessed, I envied him suddenly. Unlike Jeremy Cook, I had never stood up for something that mattered to me. Come to think of it, nothing ever had mattered to me. Until now. Now, what mattered to me was getting the devil out of town.

  But, as I was to learn within seconds, Satan wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Barbara?” asked David, who was still standing next to me. “What is it?”

  I was about to confront him, to tell him that he had to have been mistaken about Jeremy’s being the devil’s cover in Banyan Beach, when the blue sky overhead literally turned black. I mean black. Like the oil Jeremy had dumped into one of the fountains. One minute, we were bathed in sunshine. The next, we were in total darkness. It was as if someone had flicked a light switch to the “off” position.

  The suddenness was so terrifying that some people screamed. I was one of them. The last time I’d witnessed such an abrupt change in the atmosphere was the night of my transformation. Which could only mean one thing.

  “My God!” I cried, grabbing hold of David’s arm. “It’s the devil, isn’t it?”

  David looked as terrified as everybody else. “It must be,” he said. “Brace yourself. He’s not happy.”

  “Why?” I asked as we huddled together, two darksiders in a sea of civilians. “What did we do?”

  “We didn’t do anything. Your friend Jeremy did,” David said bitterly. “The River Princess was one of the devil’s pet projects in Banyan Beach. Jeremy shouldn’t have interfered.”

  I ripped my arm out of his grasp. I was furious at him, fed up with his little games. “How do you know all this?” I demanded. “And why did you tell me that Satan was hiding in Jeremy’s body? It’s not true, and it never was, right, David? Right?”

  He didn’t get a chance to answer me. The devil answered for him. A monstrous bolt of lightning ignited the sky, a charge of electricity that was so powerful and so blinding that my eyesight hasn’t been the same since. The thunder came next, followed by more lightning, gale-force winds and then rain. Well, “rain” doesn’t begin to describe what Satan unleashed on us that afternoon. What came down from that black sky were pellets of moisture, hail-size raindrops that tore into our bare skin like knives.

  Suddenly, umbrellas blew off tables, flowerpots smashed, champagne glasses crashed to the ground, and trays full of hors d’oeuvres landed in the once–crystal-clear swimming pool.

  Two hundred people nearly stampeded each other to death as they tried to find shelter from the intensity of the storm. There was shrieking and sobbing and total panic, not exactly the mild irritation you experience when you’re caught in a rain shower without an umbrella. But then what we were experiencing wasn’t a simple rain shower. It was a storm of Biblical proportions, a display of demonic wrath.

  Of course, I had brought an umbrella. Pete had insisted that I bring it. How had he known it would rain? And why hadn’t I listened to him instead of leaving the damn thing in the car?

  “Why is the devil doing this and why did you lie to me about Jeremy?” I wailed at David, who had removed his navy-blue blazer and was holding it over my head, in a chivalrous but ultimately fruitless attempt to shield me from the soaking rains.

  “Tell me, David!” I yelled again.

  He didn’t answer. The blazer had just blown out of his hands and flown clear across the patio, into the fronds of a nearby palm tree.

  “Let’s make a run for it,” he said as he grabbed my elbow and hustled me away from the others, in the direction of the River Princess’s underground parking garage.

  We started to run, but the marbled patio was incredibly slick, treacherous. I slipped and fell. David helped me up. He slipped and fell. I helped him up. The devil wasn’t making things easy for us.

  We were dashing toward the garage, the wind and rain lashing at our faces, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mike Cook lying on the ground. He was surrounded by three or four people, one of whom seemed to be performing CPR on him.

  “Wait!” I shouted as I came to a sudden stop. “That’s Jeremy’s father. I’ve got to go back and help him.”

  David glanced at Mike Cook but tightened his grip on my arm.

  I tried to wrest my arm out of David’s grasp, so I could go back and help, but he held me tighter.

  “Come on, Barbara,” he said
, forcibly pulling me away from the scene. “I don’t like the look of all this lightning. If we stay here on the patio, we’re putting ourselves in danger.”

  “I know, but I—”

  He grabbed my hand and drew me along with him. We ran until we finally made it to the garage. David tried the heavy metal door. It was locked. From the inside.

  “Now what?” I said as we stood there, soaked and scared, the rain beating down on us with ungodly force.

  “Let’s duck under here,” David said, gesturing toward the pink-and-white awning that curled out over yet another of the River Princess’s maze of doors, all of which were locked.

  The awning wasn’t much in the way of shelter, but it was better than nothing—certainly better than walking all the way around to the front of the building and risking being struck by lightning.

  “Okay, as long as we’re stuck here together, you can tell me the truth about Jeremy,” I said, breathless from all the running. “He’s not Satan’s cover in Banyan Beach, right?”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “So you lied to me!” I was so angry I wanted to choke David.

  “I didn’t want you to find the devil,” he said sheepishly. “I had to throw you off his trail.”

  “But why?”

  “I want you to remain a darksider, that’s why.”

  “But you said you cared about me. People don’t lie to people they care about.”

  “I had to. You and I are supposed to pair up. If you convince the devil to let you out of your bargain with him, I won’t be able to fulfill mine. Our bargains are linked, you see.”

  “How do you know all this stuff? Maybe you’re the one whose body the devil is hiding in.”

  David shook his head. “I’ve just been a darksider longer than you have, and, unlike you, I haven’t resisted. If you don’t resist, you’re given more and more information. So I happen to know that if I lose the female darksider I’m supposed to pair up with, the devil could turn me back into the man I was before my transformation and essentially nullify the deal.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Why hold on to an identity that isn’t even yours? Is having money and power and movie-star looks so important to you?”

  “Yes. I was miserable before my transformation, Barbara.”

  “So was I, but at least the misery was of my own making. It wasn’t engineered by some ‘force of darkness.’ I chose to marry Mitchell Chessner, knowing full well that he wasn’t the man of my dreams. I didn’t work as hard as I could have at my real estate career. And I was the one who stuffed my face with Pepperidge Farm Sausalito cookies night after night. I was responsible for my own unhappiness, David. I know that now. I don’t need the devil to make me thin, successful or happily married. If I want those things, I can get them for myself.”

  Just then, a giant bolt of lightning set the sky ablaze and literally seared the patch of grass right in front of us as it hit the ground!

  “Are you all right?” David asked, touching my arm.

  I nodded. “You?”

  He nodded.

  It seemed to me that the storm was following us. Or, at least, the lightning was.

  “Listen, David,” I said. “You’re not an evil person. You don’t really want all the bad things that have been going on around here to continue, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, tell me the name of the person the devil is using as a cover. The truth, this time.”

  “I want to, Barbara. Really I do.”

  “Then do it,” I urged. “Help me get Satan out of Banyan Beach. You’ll be a big hero. People here will love you.”

  His eyes widened. “They will?”

  “Yes.”

  I had a feeling that all David Bettinger really wanted was to be loved. He didn’t especially care how.

  “If I tell you, Satan will see it as a betrayal,” he said.

  “Betrayal implies loyalty and Satan has none,” I reminded him. “Not to you, not to anyone. So, please. Tell me, David. Tell me what I need to know.”

  He sighed. “All right,” he said. “It’s—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, another bolt of lightning struck. And this time, the devil’s aim was perfect. The lightning tore through the awning and hit David dead-on. In an instant, he was gone—his entire body enveloped by an enormous cloud of blood-red smoke!

  I screamed and, just as I did, the storm ended as abruptly as it had begun. The rain stopped, the wind died, and the thunder and lightning ceased. The sky was now as blue as it had been earlier in the afternoon, and the air was clear, clean, fragrant.

  Thoroughly overcome with fear and fatigue and disbelief, I sank to the wet ground, buried my face in my hands, and cried.

  “Poor, poor David,” I said tearfully. “He was only trying to help me. He was about to spill the beans and the devil electrocuted him for it! It’s all my fault!”

  I sat there with my head in my hands, sobbing, moaning, berating myself.

  And then a voice said, “What’s your fault?”

  The voice wasn’t as deep and velvety as David’s, but it was a male voice.

  “David!” I cried, thinking perhaps he wasn’t dead after all.

  I flung my hands away from my eyes and stood up.

  The cloud of red smoke had disappeared and in its place was a man, but he wasn’t David. Or was he? He was in his forties and he was standing on the very spot where David had stood. He was wearing the identical clothes that David had been wearing, but he didn’t look anything like David. He was short, chubby, and balding, his eyes were a muddy, nondescript brown, and his complexion was pitted with acne scars. I blinked to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. I wasn’t.

  “This is some storm, huh?” he said.

  I just stared at him, my mouth hanging open, my mind trying frantically to comprehend what was happening.

  “Is it really you?” I asked tentatively.

  He laughed good naturedly. “I’ll try not to be insulted that you don’t remember me, Barbara. You sold me the Nowak house on Pelican Circle. Now, do you remember?”

  My God! So this nebbish was David! David Bettinger! The devil’s lightning hadn’t killed him—it had turned him back into the man he was before he became a darksider! To shut him up!

  “You remember me now?” David asked.

  “Of course,” I said, realizing suddenly that it was David who didn’t remember.

  “You’re not a darksider anymore, are you?” I asked.

  He looked puzzled. “Not a what anymore?”

  “A darksider,” I tried again. “You know, a person who’s been taken over by the force of darkness.”

  He chuckled, which made his double chin shimmy. “Lord, no,” he said, holding his fat stomach. “You real estate agents may be into all that New Age stuff, but not me.”

  Well, that answered that.

  I felt my heart sink as I realized that I was now without my only source of information about the devil; that David Bettinger, my single hope for getting my old life back, was no longer of any use to me.

  “Hey, Barbara!”

  I turned and saw Suzanne waving and running toward David and me. Her dark hair was matted to her head and her clothes were soaked and askew, but she was smiling.

  When she reached us, she hugged me and kissed me and told me how she and Althea had waited out the storm in a broom closet. After a minute or two, David, feeling neglected, I guess, cleared his throat.

  “Oh. Excuse me,” Suzanne said to him. “I should have introduced myself. I’m Suzanne Munson.”

  “And I’m Danny Bettinstein,” he said.

  Danny Bettinstein? Even his name had been bogus?

  “Are you new in town?” Suzanne asked him, slipping into her singles bar mode.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m an orthodontist. I’m opening a practice here.”

  “That’s great,” said Suzanne, checking his left hand for a wedding ring.

  Yeah, great, I though
t. Just what Banyan Beach needs: another man with a selective memory.

  Suzanne and David—er, Suzanne and Danny—began to chat like two kids on a date, while I plunged into a major depression. At some point, I announced that I was going home and getting into some dry clothes.

  “Need a lift?” Danny asked.

  I looked at him. He was so homely, poor devil.

  Sorry. Bad choice of words.

  He was…Well, let’s just say he wouldn’t be making the cover of GQ anytime soon. What was worse, he wouldn’t be helping me out of my unfortunate predicament anytime soon, either.

  “No, I don’t need a lift,” I said glumly. “Not the kind you mean.”

  Part Three

  Chapter 20

  Charlotte’s Monday morning gathering was more of a post mortem than a business meeting. Everyone had war stories—about the party, the storm, the customers who no longer wanted to buy a condominium in the now-notorious River Princess.

  “My buyers want to back out of their contract,” Althea said, her scowl even more pronounced than usual. “They’re those politically correct types that won’t use toilet paper if it’s made from dead trees. When they heard what Jeremy Cook did to the fountains and why, they said they wouldn’t live in a building that killed fish. Of course, they told me this over a meal of grilled snapper.”

  “What about my customers from New York?” said Frances, who was on her third croissant and had smothered it with butter and Polaner All Fruit. “They were thinking of buying in the building because of its supposedly great security. Now, they’re not interested.”

  “Neither is Joe Namath,” June sniffed. “He doesn’t want to live in a place that’s gotten so much media attention. He likes to keep a low profile.”

  “It’s the profile of those mermaids that caused my customer’s hissy fit,” said Deirdre. “The minute she saw naked mermaids standing in the middle of the fountains, she said she refused to live in a building that exploited women.”