Monsters and Magicians (16 page)

"Blutegel, of course," she said, grimly.

He nodded. "Yes, give that lady the brass . . . flowerpot. None other than our own renovated and veneered Henry F. Blutegel, Boy I.R.S. Agent, U.S. of A. As matters developed, they had nothing on him then, just a few understandable mistakes on some

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forms, the kind that anyone other than a very astute and very lucky CPA makes on those paper nightmares the Treasury Department calls simple forms.

"But Blutegel can sense fear more keenly than many, likely because he delights in terrorizing people—I've felt for most of the time since first I met him, dealt with him, that he actually experiences a quasi-sexuaT joy from the act of creating terror in his victims. Though he just went through the standard operating procedure with Meems on that first day, he apparently kept at it, went after him—digging, probing, comparing statements and other records. Finally, fairly recently, he struck pay dirt, got the goods on Meems. You and I both know what he has been putting the poor, crooked bastard through since then. Both you and I have represented enough other poor bastards who've blundered into BlutegeFs clutches to know just what stripe of cold, cruel, inhuman torturer he can be. A cat with a crippled bird is the very soul of compassion in comparison to him.

"Then, earlier this week, Meems's statement reads, Blutegel had a meeting with him on a stretch of deserted road out in the county, at night. There, he offered Meems a deal: I was to get beaten to within an inch of my life by the offices of Mr. Meems and any assistants he chose to hire on. In return for this 'favor' Blutegel would not bring Mr. Meems's heinous transgressions to the attention of his superiors, indeed, he just might be able to so alter the records as to completely cover all of Meems's past misdeeds.

"Quite naturally, all things considered, Mr. Meems jumped at the deal, sought out and secured the

services of a former black employee and, through him, found and hired on the muscular Mr. Harrison. And you know what happened after that/'

"What are the police doing about it, Pedro?" she asked. "Of course you know BlutegeFs going to deny every bit of it. Who'll they believe?"

He looked glum. "Most likely Blutegel, I'm afraid, who'll naturally claim that the accusation is just a case of a tax cheat trying to take revenge on the upright, honest, law-abiding, God-fearing, white knight of the I.R.S. who found him out, unmasked his duplicity, tum-tee-tum-tum-tum and so on; you know that old refrain, they all sing it on occasion when their browbeatings of taxpayers become too noticeable and someone with clout looks like coming down on them.

"No, they'll decide our Mr. Meems is lying through his set of crooked teeth, indict him, try him and send him to the slam, the poor, entrapped bastard."

"Pedro," she demanded, "you're not thinking of . . . Pedro, remember, you're not a criminal attorney, not this kind, anyway."

He waved a hand, placatingly. "No, of course I'm not, Danria. Please, credit me with at least a modicum of intelligence, my dear."

Tm sorry, Pedro," she said, sincerely, adding softly, "It's just that I well know just how big your heart is. Know how much and how deeply you can feel for, sympathize and empathize with abused, suffering people and . . . I'm sorry, Pedro."

He chuckled. "Don't be, I'm far from infallible; I've made my fair share of mistakes of judgment, too.

No, I'm not going to personally defend Mr. Meems. But that's not saying I'm not going to see to it that he has first-class representation, either. Any victim of Blutegel is 9 if not necessarily a friend of mine, at least someone who in my book deserves to get the fairest shake he can, and I'm just of the opinion that Meems won't get what he needs from any of this city's P.D. types—long haired, dope-smoking, acid-tripping, draft-dodging, left-liberal boneheads who mean so well but usually can't deliver in the crunch, having spent too many of their college years burning draft cards, relating with their fellow dopers and chanting slogans to ever absorb much law."

"Yes," she said, "I've noted those types. How does this area wind up with so many of them, anyway? Most of them aren't natives of this part of the country, much less this state or county."

He made a rude sound. "It's mostly old Von Frid-ley, Danna; he's attracted to the New Left because he's of the Old Left. He's also part of the old-strain, New Deal, Democratic machine; furthermore, he knows where so many bodies are buried that his sinecure is a lifetime one, no matter what comes to pass and for all that everyone knows he's so far left that in comparison he makes George McGovern look like the late Joseph McCarthy, philosophically speaking."

"If you feel so strongly, Pedro, you should go into politics yourself. Why don't you?" she asked. "You'd be great."

He shook his head. "No, I wouldn't, Danna, and for one very good and sufficient reason: I am not a crook, never have been, never will be. There is right

and there is wrong and I would refuse flatly to compromise my principles in order to win an election or help someone else to win one. You were right in what you said a bit earlier: yes, I do have a soft spot, I deeply feel for some few put-upon human beings, here and there, now and then; but also, Danna, I just as deeply despise the larger number of humans: they seldom fail to disgust me, and professional politicians or hacks like Fridley are quite high on that particular list. So, no, Id not try politics, for if you once lie down with swine, you are a very long time in ridding yourself of the foul stenches of that in which swine wallow/'

He took the puro from out its long, alcoholic soak, snipped off the tip, and meticulously lit it before saying more, while Danna, knowing his habits in this regard, kept silence until the ritual was done to his critical satisfaction.

Suddenly, uncontrollably, he yawned, prodigiously and long. "Sorry," he muttered, "it's not the company, believe me."

"Of course it's not, Pedro," said the woman, "You're almost out on your feet. Do you mean to kill yourself with work before Blutegel and his next set of thugs get to you?"

He grinned. "Just look at who's calling the ketde black, Why, if it isn't the lawyer-lady who sat up all night and all day reading. Which case has got you burning so much oil, midnight and otherwise, Danna? Is it one I know anything about? One of my referrals, maybe? I might be of some help, if it is."

She shook her head slowly, tiredly. "Not a case at

all, Pedro, thanks anyway. No, I spent the night reading a couple of books loaned me by Mr. Hara— oriental philosophy, Buddhist, mostly."

His dark head nodded rapidly. "Good, good. The philosophy is the basis of the only real and effective grounding in any of the real martial arts. Those westerners who try to acquire the latter without more than skimming over the former are, at best, cheating themselves, for the mind must be effectively channeled, disciplined, before it can in turn discipline the body that houses it."

She gave him a wan smile. "Now you sound exactly like Mr. Hara."

His answering smile was broader. "I should, considering how long I've studied under his tutelage and mastery. But what were you doing in our library, here, all day?"

"Reading," she replied. "No, not the same two books but, rather, some others he had recommended. I stopped by the main branch of the public library on my way in this morning, you see, and was fortunate enough to find most of the ones on his list."

"Look, Danna," he said earnestly, "all this is not something you can learn, absorb overnight. One hell of a lot of deep thought has to go into the mental mix before it will even start to jell properly. So don't try to cram; give it time, give it lots of time . . . then give it some more."

The woman frowned, looked down into the old dregs on the bottom of her coffee cup and then, still not looking up at him, said, "Pedro, it's . . . I'm not so much trying to immerse myself in the man's . . .

in Mr. Hara's philosophy and the offshoots, the practical outgrowths of that philosophy, as I am endeavoring, striving with all my might to understand the man himself, to come to a final decision of ... of whether to really believe all that he says, avers, believes himself.

"You see, last night, here in your office, I . . . well, I told you most of what Mr. Hara had told me, but. . . but not all of it."

She lifted her head then, locked his eyes with her level gaze and stated, baldly, "Pedro, Mr. Hara is convinced that you are a real god, has been so convinced for years, apparently. He has recently come to the conclusion that I, too, am a similar god. . . . For goodness' sake, don't laugh, Pedro. There is no trace of subterfuge in that old man, you know that, and I know ..." she paused for the space of a heartbeat and amended, "at least, I am convinced that he really, truly believes what he told me.

"You see, long years after the events that followed the sinking of his warship and his frustrated attempts at seppuku, his exile and the attempted drowning and his meeting with the Buddhist priest in that empty lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, he met that man once again, in the flesh, the second time somewhere in Tibet, I think, or at least in the Himalayas.

"Mr. Hara was, by then, himself a Buddhist monk or priest or friar or whatever they call them and had seen, lived, experienced nearly two score more years of life in many different parts of the world. On that second meeting, he was told ... he believes he was

told . . . some very singular things about himself and his future.

"In a solemn meeting with his fellow survivor of that tragic shipwreck off the coast of Korea, as well as with two very aged men to whom everyone in that place deferred, Mr. Hara was told, he says, that he had been, was being and would be denied death and subsequent reincarnation for two reasons. One was as punishment for his willful cruelty in murdering two huge but harmless to him sea-beasts—almost the last of their ancient kind—even after being warned by a well-meaning Buddhist priest.

"That part is spooky enough, Pedro, but now comes the real hair-raiser . . . and that's just what it is, too, I go all goose-bumpy every time I even think about it. The second reason, they told him, was because he was fated to awaken three gods unto themselves, three gods who had been innocently living the lives of, living in the bodies of mundane human beings, never guessing their true divinity or even suspecting their superhuman talents, their intended destinies. He was told that it would be long years into what then was still the future before he would be guided to the first of these three gods, then more years before the second, and that not until he had fully awakened the third and last would his soul be free at last to take leave of its corporeal husk and seek its next one."

She shivered strongly, rubbing briskly at her forearms. "Pedro, I've come to both love and respect that old man within a very short amount of time, yet now I am faced with the very difficult choice of

deciding ... of having to decide whether the utter impossibilities that he tells as believed truth are really true or ... or that he is only a senile old man who somehow and somewhere has slipped into a form of gentle insanity."

"Danna," said the man, in quiet, restrained tones, "surely there must be some sort of established criteria, signs, if you will, for recognizing godliness in a man or a woman—first, of course, accepting the existence of gods and other supernatural beings or phenomena. Did Mr. Hara give any reasons just why he considers me . . . and you gods?"

"He said ..." she paused, then interjected, "Pedro, I think he's . . . well, he's at least marginally telepathic and he says that it was in your mind, our minds, that he first recognized the signs that identify us as gods, but he did not elaborate on these signs. He did say that true gods were capable, even without the long years of study, meditation and training of the adept, of performing everything of which adepts are capable and more besides.

"He went on to say that he at first doubted his own . . . ahh, interpretations of that which he had, he thought, discerned in our minds, recognizing of course his own eagerness to find the three who would be his salvation. Therefore, with the aid of other adepts summoned here from elsewhere, he put both of us to certain tests, tests unknown to us, naturally. Then, on the basis of our individual performances, he was able to establish in his own mind and in the minds of the other adepts that you, then later I, were indeed that which we had first seemed to him.

Here, again, he did not in any way, shape or form elaborate as to the signs or tests or results of those tests, and when I asked him for specifics, he just smiled that serene, unworldly smile of his and failed to respond. Do you have any idea what he was then talking about, Pedro? God knows, it's all beyond my depth/'

Pedro hissed through his teeth. "Danna, this is quite a can of worms you've broached here. Let's get another cup of coffee, and then be prepared to sit for a spell."

With the coffee steaming in the two refilled cups, he began, "Look, I have felt for many, many years that, if true gods—beings in the mold of the Judaeo-Christian mold as opposed to the more numerous anthropomorphic ones—existed or now exist, they could not possibly have the slightest interest in the petty lives and affairs of such savage and disgusting creatures as humanity, whether it or they originally created or bred existing humankind or not. I don't often discuss my beliefs; for one thing, they are highly personal, for another—although I don't make it a practice of running from fights—I long ago learned the utter folly of kicking sacred cows and, since I have to live and work in this society, much of which is indirectly controlled by persons and organizations possessing and jealously guarding vested interests of various lands in maintaining at least the outward appearances of belief in God Almighty, I make a few genuflections to conformity," he waved at the antique Spanish crucifix hung on one wall, "give to the expected charities in the expected amounts for a man

of my income attainments, then assiduously avoid discussing in public such incipiently incendiary topics as religion, politics and the morals or lack thereof of other men's wives. In this way, I have managed to be let alone to live my life in prosperity and relative peace. It's a very good course to follow, Danna, and another good course to follow is that of keeping secret from everyone, even spouses and lovers, any unusual, unbelievable talents or abilities in your possession of which you may stumble upon, for it is a human trait to fear anything they do not, cannot understand, because out of their fear comes abhorrence and hatred . . . that's how witchcraft charges, torture, maimings, autos de fe and immolations got their start, you know. You must keep your silence, keep all your own, personal secrets entirely secret until ... if ever . . . you chance to come across, to meet and to recognize one with the same rare talents you yourself possess; but even then you must study them carefully, take long and long to establish that they are emotionally well balanced and completely worthy of your trust, for what you may well be doing is putting into their hands your very life itself. Danna, turn and look over at the liquor cabinet."