Authors: Carsten Stroud
“This trick of the light you’re looking at. It always happens at this time of the afternoon, at least if the day is sunny. I heard the boy describe it and he is quite right. The room reproduces the effect of a camera obscura, a pinhole camera. I suppose I should board up that hole, but I haven’t yet. I have no idea why. But if you’re waiting for Glynis Ruelle to open the way, you must think of something else to do instead.”
“She let Rainey in once.”
“The boy hadn’t gone to Crater Sink then. Now he has. Nothing is in him now. I can smell it on him.”
“Do you know what’s happened to him?”
She looked over at Rainey.
“Yes. Nothing has happened to him. Nothing happens to most of the Teagues. You don’t actually know who this child is, do you? I mean, his antecedents are obscure, are they not?”
“Yes. We can’t find any trace of his birth.”
“This boy was conceived in April of 1999, in Abel Teague’s hospital room at the Gates of Gilead Palliative Care Center in Sallytown. It was not a consensual transaction. This boy is the consequence of a sustained and brutal rape. I do not know his mother’s name. His father was Abel Teague. She was confined to that room for nine months. When she delivered this boy, she was killed by Abel Teague’s Guardians. Abel is a terrible man. Glynis Ruelle managed to bring him to the harvest, where he suffers.
He wishes to escape. He is trying to become a living man again. Now that this boy is almost grown, and the heir to great wealth, Abel Teague wishes to come back and have a new life inside this boy’s body. The presence inside this boy is helping him.”
“But we have to stop that!”
“Yes. You do. That is easily done.”
“How?”
“Kill him.”
“What?”
“Your friend here has a weapon. Kill this creature and it all ends. The portion of the presence that is in him will dissipate and be gone. The Guardians that the presence has created will fade. Abel Teague will remain where he is, a part of the harvest.”
“We can’t just
kill
him!”
“You have no choice.”
Delia looked at Lemon.
“Young man, you must be strong. For the woman and the boy. Do it. Kill him now!”
Lemon hesitated, and then he walked over to Rainey and put the gun to his head. Deep down in his skull, Rainey heard
Cain
begin to hiss, like a trapped snake. Rainey closed his eyes and waited.
Anything was better than this.
Kate screamed at Lemon to stop.
He didn’t.
Lemon cocked the hammer back, pressing the gun muzzle in tight. Kate came across the room at Lemon.
“Lemon, how do you know this woman is real?”
Lemon looked over at Delia.
Delia Cotton nodded at Lemon.
“She may be right. For some time now I have suspected that I might be dead. Time has a way of moving around me and it isn’t always where I left it. It doesn’t matter. The thing inside the child has to be driven out. There is no other way.”
Hannah’s hearing aids
.
“Lemon, listen. There may be another way.”
“There is no other way,” said Delia quietly.
Kate’s eyes were locked on his.
His heart changed.
Maybe she was right
.
Maybe there was another way
.
Lemon took the muzzle away from Rainey’s temple. Through it all Rainey had neither flinched nor shown any kind of emotion.
Delia waited until Kate looked at her.
“I pity you, Kate. You are making a grave error and you and your family will come to bitterly regret it. But it is done. Now please take that creature from my house.”
She looked at Rainey, and he met her look.
“To what lives in this body, hear me, the way is shut. Shut and barred and I guard it. Never come here again, creature, or I will put an end to you.”
It was a fine, clear Monday evening and the view across Fountain Square was particularly stellar. Delores Maranzano was standing at the long floor-to-ceiling window in the living room of her suite on the Pinnacle Floor of The Memphis and watching the lights of the city glitter and sparkle in the cool fall air. She was wearing one of Coco Chanel’s little black dresses because she had just come from poor Frankie’s memorial service at Holy Name, where the novena that Mr. Endicott had kindly paid for had just been performed, against the medieval background of a magnificent Roman Catholic cathedral and a full choir.
Now she was having a bracing gin and tonic and admiring the panorama. But her mind was not at ease. Events had not gone well at that ranch up in the foothills. In fact they had gone quite badly.
Not only had she lost four nice young men in her employ, but she had also lost her nephew Manolo, who had somehow managed to get himself shot in the face during that fiasco, and now he lay on a tin tray in the morgue at Lady Grace, with four other bodies nearby to keep him company.
His condition had been described to her by a Special Agent Boonie Hackendorff of the FBI—whose offices she was looking into right this
moment, on the other side of Fountain Square—as “a closed casket deal, ma’am. A closed casket deal.”
Apparently his investigation into the entire affair would be clouding her future for quite some time, and he showed every sign of being very persistent. Well, that was a concern for another day. There
was
an upside.
She had heard from Tony that Frankie’s associates were impressed by the energy Delores had shown in the abortive attempt to avenge the wrongful death of her husband, and that while things had clearly not gone well, her display of steel had gone a long way to improve her standing with the organization. At that point in her ruminations the doorbell rang.
Frankie Il Secondo was at the vet recovering from having his vocal cords sliced apart, so there was no earsplitting crescendo of falsetto yapping to contend with as she made her way across the carpet to open the door.
Mr. Endicott, as expected, stood there in the glow of the overhead light, holding a bouquet of white roses and wearing a sad, sympathetic smile.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” he said.
“Not at all. Please come in.”
She stood aside and bowed him into the room.
He noted the improvement in the atmosphere at once and looked around for Frankie Il Secondo, who was nowhere to be found. He came to the center of the room, still holding the flowers, waiting, she assumed, for her to do something clever with them.
She smiled, carried them into the kitchen, filled the sink with water, set the stems into it, and came back out with a bottle of Pellegrino and two glasses. She set them down on the coffee table and poured a glass for Mr. Endicott, who seemed ill at ease.
“I am very grateful to you for seeing me, Mrs. Maranzano—”
“Please. After what we’ve been through? It’s Delores to you.”
Endicott bowed slightly.
“Delores, then. I am painfully aware that the events of the weekend have created a number of problems for you. And I am very sorry for that. It is unfortunate that when your people arrived, several law enforcement officials happened to be visiting the residence. I understand you have been called upon by Agent Hackendorff of the FBI?”
“Oh yes. This morning. Early.”
Endicott sipped at his sparkling water.
“Was he … unpleasant?”
“Not really. He was under the impression that my nephew, Manolo, had taken matters into his own hands. I told him that I had no idea what Manolo had been planning and that if I had I would have done everything in my power to stop him.”
“Excellent. May I ask …?”
“Did
your
name come up?”
He inclined his head.
“Not at all. Why complicate things, right?”
“Excellent. I thank you for your discretion. I was hoping to hear you say that.”
“I’m sure you were,” she said, with a sly up-from-under look that was decidedly flirtatious.
Good Lord
.
Is the woman making a pass at me?
He had been planning to use one of the kitchen knives on her—the security detail downstairs was too thorough to risk bringing up a weapon—but dear God she did have a lovely figure on her, and it was a poor heart that never rejoiced.
Tidy as you go
was his motto, and after he tidied up the Delores problem, he was going to go back to Warren Smoles’ house and tidy him up too.
He had taken up a very discreet residence at Warren’s lovely home, since hotels and motels were a trifle too hot for him right now. He had even let Warren live for a while longer. He was back at the house right now, lying on top of his king-sized bed, naked and bound and gagged.
He had kept Warren alive largely because, now that Warren had become talkative, Endicott was learning so much about All Things Cap City. Niceville and Cap City had all sorts of possibilities for a talented and enterprising psychopath. Concerning Delores here, he could always slice her up after they made love. He was pretty certain that there was a Jacuzzi somewhere in this flat. They were perfect for that sort of work. He watched her with renewed interest as she went about seducing him.
She was wearing a black dress. She crossed her legs to great effect and leaned over to pour out more Pellegrino, giving him a glimpse of her marvelous breasts. From this vantage he concluded that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She handed him his glass, still leaning forward and opening her legs slightly.
Endicott felt his skin beginning to burn.
She sat back in her chair and crossed her legs again, this time more slowly, to even better effect.
“Delores, may I say you look
perfect
this evening. Grief often makes a woman—”
Delores was on her feet.
“I’m going to slip into something more comfortable, Harvill. Give me five minutes.”
He gave her three. He had his shorts and socks on but was otherwise naked when he pushed the door of her bedroom open with his left foot. He had two glasses of white wine, one in each hand, so there wasn’t much he could do when Desi Munoz clubbed him across the back of his head with the barrel of Frankie Maranzano’s Dan Wesson .44.
The glasses went flying and Mr. Endicott went sprawling. He rolled over onto his back and blinked up at Desi’s towering bulk. Even a happy Desi Munoz was not an endearing sight, and right now Desi Munoz was very far from happy.
“Desi. You’re supposed to be in Leavenworth.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not, am I? I’m fucking
here
.”
Delores was standing behind him, half-naked.
Unlike Desi, she looked quite happy.
“You said they were in Leavenworth. I asked around and found out that Desi was already out. I felt I had to call, Harvill. I mean, we’re all part of the same
family
, aren’t we, Desi?”
“Fucking well told we are.”
“Desi has agreed to help me run my end of things here. He has expertise in the business. Mr. La Motta and Mr. Spahn are flying down later. Isn’t this exciting? And it’s all because of you, Harvill. Desi, are you going to shoot him right here? Because, you know, the carpet and all?”
Desi frowned.
“Okay. Where you want him?”
“How about the tub in the guest bathroom? It’s a Jacuzzi. You know, for the blood and icky bits and all that stuff?”
“Okay. The bathroom. Get up, Harvill.”
On the way into the bathroom Mr. Endicott’s mind was racing. He knew he could come up with something. And sure enough, he did, and it was absolutely brilliant, but before he could really get things off the ground Desi shot him in the back of the head. Getting shot in the back of the head at close range with a .44-caliber revolver renders the entire concept of
having
a head retroactively moot.
Being a gentleman, at least where half-naked
ex-goo-mays
worth thirty million dollars were concerned, Desi Munoz dumped what was left of Harvill Endicott into the Jacuzzi to bleed out.
Then he and Delores went back out to the living room and got to know each other better.
(As a footnote to Harvill Endicott’s premature decapitation, it’s worth mentioning that Warren Smoles’ absence from the Niceville social whirl was not remarked upon for almost three weeks. His partners at Smoles Heimroth Cotton and Haggard were aware of the spanking he had gotten from Terrible Teddy—it had been the talk of the legal community for days afterwards—Judge Monroe’s phrase “the Sultan of Slime” was on everyone’s lips—and they were not surprised that he was lying low.
Smoles had no personal friends and when the cleaning ladies arrived on Wednesday only to find the house closed up and the entrance code changed, they simply marked him down as “Account Suspended.” No one else gave much of a damn about him.
Except of course for the cats.
After a while, when the new guy didn’t come back and the dry food ran out and the electric can opener continued to defeat their best efforts and all they had to drink was the trickle of water dripping into a bathtub on the third floor, the cats began to take a more active interest in Warren Smoles.
Smoles was laid out on top of the king-sized bed in his master en suite, just as Endicott had left him. He was trussed up like a Christmas ham and he had a bullet hole in his thigh.
But he was still alive.
Whenever the cats would wander into the room, he’d jerk around on the bed and make weird noises at them. Sadly, if the electric can opener was simply impossible for creatures without opposable thumbs, there wasn’t much the cats could do about the knots and gags and plastic cord cuffs that were keeping Warren Smoles right where he was.
He was, however, fun to watch.
Being cats, they’d soon lose interest in what he was doing and wander out again to look a bit harder for something good to eat. Eventually it became clear to all of them that there really wasn’t
anything
left to eat in the whole damn house.
On the morning of the fifth day they began to gather around Smoles
again. He wasn’t jerking and twisting and making weird noises by then. He was badly dehydrated and slipping in and out of consciousness. The cats, all fifteen of them, sat around him on the bed and considered him through half-closed eyes.