Fourth of July Creek (27 page)

“That’s a quarter-ounce Krugerrand,” Pearl said. “For the medicine and the food and your trouble. I don’t know what gold’s at right now, but that’s more than fair.”

“I can’t take this.”

“Yes you can. You can change it into a hundred dollars. At least.”

“I’d heard you didn’t believe in the dollar.”

Pete couldn’t see his eyes to tell what the man might have thought about that remark. Pearl hawked up a plug of snot and spat.

“From who?”

“A pawnbroker. A dope farmer.”

Pearl lifted his chin and turned his head to better hear Pete.

“Ever since I came across your son,” Pete said, “I’ve kept my ear to the ground for you.”

Pearl daubed the corner of his eye with the back of his hand.

“Really, I can’t take this,” Pete said of the coin. “Helena pays for everything. Reimburses me, anyway. And my salary.”

“Render unto Caesar then,” Pearl said.

“And what if you’re right? What if the world comes crashing down and money’s worthless? Won’t you want this gold?”

Pearl smiled. Pete asked what for.

“Well, what is gold?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

Pearl leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

“The metal isn’t
for
anything, is it? It’s soft and worthless. All we do with gold is stamp it with animals and dead men and Masonic symbols. Melt it into trinkets,” he said, donning an imaginary ring. “We stack bars of it in vaults.”

He laid gold bar atop invisible bar. One eye had come unstuck and was partially open, giving him the aspect of a demented vagrant or seer. A little of both.

“A can of Spam is a better hedge against the apocalypse,” he said, smiling. “It lasts a thousand years, and you can eat it.”

Pearl felt around his person and located some fingerless wool gloves in one of the many pockets on his olive army coat and pulled them on. He tipped his head at a noise he alone heard, some auditory figment of his own paranoia.

Pete turned the coin over in his palm.

“Why not put a hole in this one?”

Pearl smiled, presumably at his own infamy.

“That’s a South African coin. I have no opinion of the images on it.”

“But Lincoln and Washington?”

“Washington was a slaver and a Mason. And Lincoln issued fiat scrip to pay for his war on the states.”

“And FDR?”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Pearl said.

The boy watched them talk and looked to Pete like he had a stake in the outcome. Like he wanted Pete to pass his father’s test. Worried about it, in fact.

“I’m not a man,” Pearl said, unprompted and like he was holding another conversation with a ghost or within himself.

“You’re not a man,” Pete repeated. “What are you, then?”

The child looked away from Pete. It slowly occurred to him that Pearl wasn’t helpless at all, that the boy would do anything he told him to, that he had shot at Vandine—

“I’m dynamite,” Pearl said, smiling. Tilting his head as if to better hear Pete’s expression.

The boy would not look at Pete.

“What do the shapes mean?” he asked, as though they were talking about some harmless craft. “The square and the star and the keyhole?”

“Symbols,” Pearl said, fluttering his fingers in the air.

“Of . . . ?”

“Of nothing. Like all symbols. Of themselves. Of a virus. As in the Tulpenwode.”

“The what?”

The boy abruptly stood. Pete resisted the urge to stand himself as the child went into the tent.

“In centuries past, there was a market in Holland,” Pearl said. “The country at the time was making advances toward modern capitalism. Trading currencies and commodities. Futures markets.”

Pete wondered if whatever Pearl had said—
tool pen road
?—was some kind of signal. If the boy was even now fetching a gun.

“A new investor class,” Pearl continued. “New ways of buying low and selling high. Paper fortunes. Betting essentially—and then bubbles and crashes.”

The boy remained in the tent.

“Are you following me?”

He had failed to kill before. Maybe Pearl had insisted his son try again.

“Mr. Snow?”

“Yes, I’m following you.”

“The Tulpenwode was such a bubble and crash,” Pearl said. “
Tulpen
is Dutch for tulip. And
wode
. . .
wode
is mania.”

“Mania. Yes,” Pete said, absently.

“Now the tulip at this time was a new flower in Europe. Very popular. It should’ve been a harmless fad, but because of the Tulpenwode, it remains to this day a symbol of Holland.

“Now this flower had a virus, which expressed itself by streaking the petals with ribbons of color. Tiger stripes and flames. The Dutch classified them with a passion, gave them names like ‘Viceroy’ and ‘Semper Augustus.’ And these infected tulips needed careful cultivation. This only intensified the sense of their preciousness.

“Almost overnight, the growers who tended these flowers were charged exorbitantly for the bulbs. And this gave way to the second cause of the Tulpenwode: the speculative Dutch market.”

The boy exited the tent in an oversize peacoat that he’d buttoned incorrectly. His hands tucked in the pockets.

“Contracts were drawn up to protect the growers with a set price,” Pearl lectured, “defending them against rapid changes in the market. A ‘futures’ contract. And as the prices of the bulbs continued to rise, a surprising thing happened: the contracts
themselves
became commodities. As the prices for the contracts ballooned, the price of the flowers ballooned, and vice versa. Just imagine that. For the first time, the price of an object—a vanity at that—was sheer enthusiasm.”

“Enthusiasm,” Pete repeated, watching the boy.

“Perfectly sane people traded their horses and sheep for bulbs of the rarer varieties. Goods in excess of several tons—cheese, a bull, beer—were traded for a single Viceroy bulb. For a time, the tulip replaced the florin as the national currency. This was a fuckin
wode
.”

“A
wode
,” Pete said.

The boy sneezed, startling him.

“Bless you,” Pearl said.

The boy wiped his nose with his sleeve, and then set both empty hands on his lap.

He picked his nose.

“Then one day,” Pearl carried on, “it was as if everyone found their sense in a dresser or hanging from a nail in the barn. The tulip became just a flower again. The prices plummeted. Whole families were ruined, generations of wealth squandered on nearly worthless contracts for sick flowers.”

The boy didn’t have a pistol.

“So your coins,” Pete said, “they’re like this . . . tulip mania?”

Pearl didn’t reply or move. The boy now unbuttoned the coat to fix it.

“The pawnbroker says people pay good cash for some of your coins,” Pete said. “He told me that there are collectors everywhere. That they have almost become another money. He says you’re a genius. That you’re up to something major.”

Pearl grinned and nodded sagely.

“I am the kakangelist.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“The bringer of bad tidings. The bad word.”

“So your coins are a warning.”

“The coins are a whimper when what is needed is a full-throated cry. We are in a different situation altogether now. The Lord has set me over nations that I might root out and pull down and destroy. I believe the pawnbroker is right. I will be associated with something incredible. My only fear is that one day I might be thought of as holy.”

It alarmed Pete to realize that the boy was standing. He’d been drawn in by Pearl’s inchoate charisma, his madman charm. Now the child was afoot and off into the woods.

Pete tried to silently rise to his feet.

“Are you going somewhere?” Pearl asked.

“I’m just stretching my legs,” Pete said. “Where did Ben go?”

“He’s only a boy. A boy you’ve come to aid,” Pearl said. “You aren’t afraid of us, are you? Us poor, backward people who need your assistance?”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t think it.”

“Your presence here presumes it.”

“No. I came to help. That’s all. I know you’re not people to mess with.”

“Ah,” Pearl said. “The man in the ash. Yes?”

The boy was behind Pete in the dark. He turned and peered into the trees, but could not see through the cedar and larch.

“Yes?” Pearl asked again.

“Yes,” Pete whispered.

“The Lord needs us to be sharp,” Pearl said.

The boy blithely stepped through the ferns and into the firelight, dropped an armful of firewood, and went back into the woods. Pearl’s clouded eyes were half-opened, regarding Pete or his shape. He sat back down.

“You thought it was the end of the world,” Pete said.

“Of this world.”

“But it wasn’t. Your wife. What did she think?”

“Of what?”

“Of everything . . . Where is she?”

The blind man gestured vaguely, his arm up and behind his ear, as if to say they were deeper in the mountains and many miles away.

“With the other children?”

“Yes. She is with the other children.”

“She’s alive.”

“Yes.”

The boy returned with more wood.

“It
will
be like that,” Pearl said.

“What will?”

“The end. Fire, smoke, blood.”

Pearl rubbed his temples. Pete asked if he was in pain again. The man did not say.

“I see your instrumentality now,” Pearl said. “God is inscrutable and I don’t know the end game, but He has made it clear that you are involved now.”

“Okay. Does your wife need anything? The other children, are they—?”

Pearl said he needed news. On the way west, he said, they’d read about the assassination of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigade. He said that Revelations 13:3 predicted the Antichrist would survive a deadly wound. That he would yet rise to lead armies against God. He said he had a list of possible Antichrists. He said these were some of the things he needed to know.

The boy fed the fire, grinning pleasantly at Pete, oblivious to what all had been said. Or, more likely, absolutely accustomed to it.

A
gain the elevator operator told Pete that Mary wasn’t in and wouldn’t let him up. Pete smoked in the theater lobby, watching through the glass doors for someone to come down the stairs—residents on the first few floors didn’t bother with the elevator and the cranky Charon who operated it—but no one came down. He bought a ticket to a matinee and went up into the balcony. The movie let out and he made like he was waiting in the second-floor lobby for someone in the bathroom. A few teenage truants left the theater and an attendant came to clean. Near the top of the stairs was an open janitor’s closet and next to it a locked door. Pete could see the apartment building’s hallway through the little window in the door.

“You lock yourself out?”

The janitor was already sorting through his keys.

“Yeah, I was just . . . Yes.”

The janitor gave him a peculiar look.

“You here to see Iris.”

“Uh, yes.”

The janitor found the key but he didn’t open the door. He looked about and then rubbed the fingers of his free hand against his thumb. Pete gave him a ten.

“You tip the box office?”

“I didn’t—”

“Tell Iris. She’ll take care of it. Come back out this way. Don’t use the elevator.”

So there was a whore and the elevator attendant didn’t like it or had been told by the building owner to do something about it. Pete climbed a flight of stairs. Curious as to which door was hers. Wondered would there be trouble when the guy in the box office didn’t get his tip. He had half a mind to go down there and tip the man himself just to not queer any of their business.

Mary’s room was at the corner of the L-shaped hall, and he came to it from the back stairs. A fresh angle on the place. A man stepped out, closing her door behind him. Pete’s stomach dropped. The man walked straight toward him, looking down. Pete gazed at him—gray temples and a hundred-dollar suit—and then turned toward the nearest door and pulled out his keys. The man walked past and exited where Pete had just entered.

Pete found himself in front of Mary’s apartment, just short of knocking. His fist in the air. He wondered what she’d say. If anything. His mind and heart fairly raced, but all his reasoned thoughts biased toward ignoring it. Not her type at all. Maybe she had some kind of business with him. Maybe it had to do with a case. Maybe he was her father.

She didn’t have a father.

Maybe she was Iris.

He ran back to the stairs that exited off the theater lobby. On the landing above the elevator, he squatted to see the operator sitting in the open car on his stool. Pete jogged up to the second floor, summoned the elevator, and was back on the landing just as the elevator door closed. He ran down the last flight of steps and outside.

Pete waited in front of the theater for the suit to exit. The man didn’t see him or recognize him if he did. Pete hung back, watching him. The guy was pushing fifty. A fit fifty. Trim, not unattractive. But still.

When the suit crossed the street and walked north, Pete remained on his side of Higgins and tailed him two blocks until he entered the Montana Building. Pete dashed through a gap in traffic and followed him into the lobby. The suit had just boarded the elevator. He stopped the door from closing.

“Thanks,” Pete said.

The man nodded. Pete entered and stood to the right and just behind the suit. He scanned the man for the flush of sex. Faint scratches and blemishes. An aura of contentment. Every hair was in place. A pleasant cologne tinged the air between them.

“Floor?” the man asked as the elevator closed.

“Eight,” Pete said.

The suit looked over at him, one eyebrow aloft. He gestured at the panel of buttons. There were only six floors.

“Top floor,” Pete said. The man pushed the button and the elevator rose.

Pete wondered what it was he intended to do following this guy.

The man exited on his floor, Pete rode the elevator to the top, back down, and got off on three. A hall of offices with frosted glass windows. Law offices.

He went outside, stood on the sidewalk for some time. A woman in a car gestured at him to cross, as he was standing in the gutter. He got himself back on the sidewalk. He loitered in the entry of Butterfly Herbs wondering what to do. There was a deep ache of jealousy within him that surprised him. He watched but did not really see a policeman question and then arrest a vagrant.