The Best of Lucius Shepard (102 page)

“Maybe
I do,” she said. “Maybe I find them a vast improvement.”

“I’m
sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that. I was just...”

“What
did you mean?”

“It
was frustration talking.”

“Don’t
you think I’m frustrated, too? I could probably find an insult to toss at you
if I wanted.”

I
could have pointed out that she was the cause of her own frustration, but I’d
already dug myself a hole and saw no good reason to pull the dirt down on top
of me.

“I’m
sorry,” I said. “I truly am.”

“It’s
not important,” she said icily. “I’ve heard it before.”

She
flung herself off the bed.

“Jo,”
I said despairingly.

“Oh,”
she said, stopping in the doorway. “I nearly forgot. Your employer has a
message for you. He’ll be arriving in three days. Maybe you’ll find his company
less perverse than mine.”

* * * *

I
wasn’t accustomed to viewing myself as an employee, and it took me a hiccup to
translate the term “your employer” into the name Billy Pitch. I’d been
anticipating his arrival, but the news was a shock nonetheless. My dalliance
with Jo, brief and unsatisfying as it was, had placed our time on the island in
the context of a courtship, and I needed to reorder my priorities. I knew I had
to tell Billy everything—he had likely already heard it and our first
conversation would be a test of my loyalty—and I would have to put some distance
between Jo and me. You might have thought this would be an easy chore, given
the state of the relationship, yet I was down the rabbit hole with her, past
the point where longing and desire could be disciplined. Even my most
self-involved thoughts were tinged with her colors.

Like
advance men for pharaoh, Billy Pitch’s retinue arrived before him. Security
people, chef, barber, bed fluffer, and various other functionaries filtered
into the compound over the next day and a half. A seaplane brought in Billy the
following morning and, after freshening up, accompanied by an enormous
bodyguard with the coarse features of an acromegalic giant, he swept into the
foyer of the main wing, the most grotesquely decorated room of all, dominated
by a fountain transplanted from nineteenth century Italy, with floors covered
by pink and purple linoleum and vinyl furniture to match. It had been over a
year since I had seen Billy in the flesh, but I had known him for almost a
decade and he had always seemed ageless in a measly, unprepossessing way—I was
thus pleased to note a pair of bifocals hanging about his neck and that his
fringe of hair was turning gray. He wore a garish cabana set that left his bony
knees and skinny forearms bare. The outfit looked ridiculous, but amplified his
air of insectile menace. He directed a cursory glance toward Pellerin, sitting
on a plum-colored sofa, but his gaze lingered on Jo, who stood behind him.

“My,
my! Aren’t you the sweet thing?” Billy wagged a forefinger at her. “Who’s she
remind me of, Clayton?”

The
bodyguard, a mighty android in a blue silk T-shirt and white linen jacket,
rumbled that he couldn’t say, but she did look familiar.

“It’ll
come to me.” He tipped his head pertly to one side and said to me, “Let’s
talk.”

He
led me into a room containing a functional modern desk and chairs and one of
the ubiquitous flat screens, where I delivered my report. When I had done, he
said, “Good job. Very good job.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Do you
believe her? You think that boy is a miracle worker? Or you think maybe that
girl in there’s gone crazy?”

“It
sounds crazy,” I said. “But everything I’ve seen so far backs her up.”

He
nodded like he wasn’t so much agreeing with me, but rather was mulling
something over. “Let me show you a piece of tape I landed. Part of the Ezawa
project at Tulane. The sound’s no good, but the picture speaks volumes.”

He
switched on the TV and the tape began to play. The original of the tape had
been a piece of film. It had an old-fashioned countdown—10, 9, 8, etc.—and then
the tape went white, flickered, and settled into a grainy color shot of an
orderly removing electrodes from the chest of man wearing a hospital gown. He
appeared to be semi-conscious and was sitting in a wheelchair. Rail-thin, with
scraggly dark hair and rawboned hillbilly face. A woman in a nurse’s uniform
came into view, her back to the camera, and there was a blurt of sound. The
legend “Tucker Mayhew” was briefly superimposed over the picture. Another blurt
of sound, the woman speaking to the orderly, who left the room. Then the woman
moved behind the wheelchair and I saw it was a younger, less buxom Jo, her
make-up so liberally applied as to seem almost grotesque.

Billy
asked why the heavy make-up and I replied, “She said they don’t see very well
at first. Must be to help with that.”

Jo
began to touch the man’s shoulders and neck. Initially he was unresponsive, but
soon the touches came to act like shocks on him, though he was still out of it.
He twitched and stiffened as if being jabbed with needles. His eyelids
fluttered open and his eyes showed green flashes, already brighter than
Pellerin’s.

“The
part where she’s touching him went on longer,” Billy said. “I had it edited
down.”

The
man’s eyes opened. Jo left off touching him and moved away. He gaped, glanced
around, his face a parody of loss. Jo spoke to him and he located her again.
The change in his expression, from woebegone to gratified, was so abrupt as to
be laughable. The sound came and went in spurts, and what I could hear was
garbled, but I caught enough to know she was teasing out his life story, one he
was inventing in order to please her, one that fit the absence in his mind. His
eyes tracked her as she performed movements that in their grace and ritual
elegance reminded me of Balinese dancers, yet had something as well of the
blatant sexuality of bartop strippers you see in clubs on the edge of the
Quarter. She passed behind the wheelchair and again touched him on the back of
the neck.

Billy
paused the tape. “There. Look at that.”

The
man had his head back and mouth open, searching for Jo, and she was about to
touch him again, her long fingers extended toward the nape of his neck. Her
smile was, I thought, unreadable, yet the longer I stared at it, the more
self-satisfied it seemed. The image trembled slightly.

“Anybody
doing that job is going to look bad from time to time.” I said.

“But
that’s the job she does, honey,” Billy said. “You can’t get around that.” He
unpaused the tape and muted the sound. “Know what it puts me in mind of ? Those
women who marry men on death row. It’s all about being in control for them.
They control the visits, letters ... everything. They don’t have to have sex,
yet they have all the emotional content of a real relationship and none of the
fuss. And it’s got a built-in expiration date. It’s a hell of a deal, really.
Of course our Miz Verret, she took it farther than most.”

A
jump in the film, another edit. The man’s eyes blazed a fiery green that
appeared to overflow his sockets. His coordination had improved, he made
coherent gestures and talked non-stop. He struggled to stand and nearly
succeeded. Then, after making an obviously impassioned statement, he fell back,
dead for the second time. Jo stood beside the body for almost a minute before
closing his eyes. A faint radiance shone through the lids. An orderly removed
the body as Jo made notes on a clipboard. The screen whited out and another
countdown started. Billy switched off the TV.

“Forty-seven
minutes,” he said. “Scratch one zombie. You got to be careful around that
girl.”

“Billy,
I was...”

“I
know. You were trying to get a little. But I’d hate to see you screw this up
over a piece of ass.” His voice acquired a pinched nastiness. “Especially since
the bitch is such a freak!” He peered at me over the top of his glasses, as if
assessing the impact of his words. He sighed. “Let’s go have a chat with them,
shall we?”

We
went back into the living room. Clayton and the other bodyguard stood at ease.
Billy took a chair opposite the sofa where Pellerin was sitting and I hovered
at his shoulder. Behind Pellerin, Jo tried to make eye contact with me, but I
pretended not to notice.

“Mister
Pellerin,” said Billy. “I have a question for you.”

Pellerin
looked at me and said, “This dab of cream cheese is the badass you warned us
about?”

“Clayton?”
said Billy. “Would you mind?”

Two
strides carried Clayton to the sofa. He backhanded Pellerin viciously, knocking
his sunglasses off. Jo shrieked and Clayton stood poised to deliver another
blow.

“In
the stomach,” Billy said.

Clayton
drove his fist into Pellerin’s belly, and Billy signaled him to step back. Jo
hurried around the couch to minister to Pellerin, who was trying to breathe,
bleeding from a cut on his cheek.

“I’m
not a very good businessman,” said Billy sadly. “I let things get personal. I
miss out on a lot of opportunities that way, but I’ve learned if you can’t have
fun with an enterprise, it’s best to cut your losses. Do you need a moment,
Mister Pellerin?”

“You
could have killed him!” Jo said, glancing up from Pellerin.

“Precisely.”
Billy church-and-steepled his fingers. “Your boy there’s a valuable commodity,
yet because of my intemperate nature I might have done the unthinkable. Do we
understand each other? Mister Pellerin?”

Pellerin
made a stressed yet affirmative noise.

“Good.
Now ... my question. Is your ability such that you can control the play of
seven or eight good card players so as to achieve a specific result?”

With
considerable effort, holding his belly, Pellerin sat up. “How specific?”

“I’d
like you to arrange it so that you and a certain gentleman outlast all the
rest, and that he have a distinct advantage in chips at that point. Let’s say a
four to one advantage. Then I’d like you to beat him silly. Take all his chips
as quickly as you can.”

“That’s
risky,” said Pellerin. “The guy could get a run of great cards. It’s hard
playing heads-up from that far down. You can’t bluff effectively. Why do you
want me to do it that way? If you let me play my game, I can guarantee a win.”

“Because
he’ll want the game to continue if he thinks you lucked out. He’ll offer you a
check, but you tell him it’s cash or nothing.”

“What
if he...” Pellerin began, and Billy cut him off: “No what-ifs. Yours not to
wonder why, yours but to do or die.” He looked to Clayton. “Is that Byron?”

“Tennyson,”
said Clayton. “‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’”

“Yes,
of course!” He gave himself a pretend-slap for having forgotten. “Well. Can you
do the job, Mister Pellerin?”

“I’ll
need a little luck, but ... yeah. I guess I can do it.”

“We
all need a little luck.” Billy popped out of the chair. “You’ll be leaving for
Fort Lauderdale day after tomorrow. The Seminole Paradise Casino. I’ll have my
people watching, so don’t worry about anything untoward. You will be closely
watched. I’ll give Jack the details. He can tell you all about it.”

He
walked away briskly, but then he turned and pointed at Jo. “I got it!
Big
Brother All-Stars.
The seventh season. You remember, Clayton?”

Clayton
said, maybe, he wasn’t sure.

“Come
on, man! Erica. The tall bitch with the big rack. She played the game real
sneaky.”

“Oh,
yeah,” said Clayton. “Yeah, I can see it.”

* * * *

The
Seminole Paradise Hard Rock Hotel and Casino was a hell of a mouthful for what
amounted to your basic two-hundred-dollar-per-room Florida hotel complete with
fountain display and an assortment of clubs and bars notable for the
indifferent quality of their cuisine and the bad taste evident in their decor.
Particularly annoying was Pangaea, a club decorated with “authentic tribal artifacts”
that likely had been purchased from a prop supply company. The entire complex
was a surfeit of fakes. Fake breasts, fake smiles, fake youth, fake people. Why
anyone would choose such a place to put a dent in their credit cards, I’ll
never know—maybe it offered them the illusion that they were losing fake money.