Dark Rivers of the Heart (76 page)

…barefoot, carrying the revolver in my left hand, I hurry down from the studio where I shot my father, through the back of the cupboard into a world not anything like the one behind the wardrobe in those books by C. S. Lewis, through the catacombs, not daring to look left or right, because those dead women seem to be straining to break out of their plaster. I have the crazy fear that they might pull loose as if the plaster is still wet, come for me, take me into one of the walls with them. I’m my father’s son and I deserve to choke on cold wet plaster, have it squeezed into my nostrils and poured down my throat, until I’m as one with the figures in the tableaux, unbreathing, a harbor for the rats. My heart’s knocking so hard that each beat makes my vision darken slightly, briefly, as if the surges in blood pressure will burst vessels in my eyes. I feel each beat in my right hand too. The pain in my knuckles throbs, lub-dub, three small hearts in every finger. But I love the pain. I want more pain. Back in the vestibule and descending the stairs into the room of blue light, I repeatedly rapped the swollen knuckles of that hand with the revolver that I held in the other. Now I rap them hard again in the catacombs, to drive out all feeling but pain. Because…because equal to the pain, dear Jesus God Almighty, I still have it on my hand, like a stain on my hand: the smoothness of the woman’s skin. The full curves and warm resiliency of her breasts, turgid nipples rubbing my palm. The flatness of belly, the tautness of muscles as she strains against the manacles. The lubricious heat into which he forces my fingers against all my resistance, against her terrible half-dazed protest. Her eyes were locked with mine. Pleading with her eyes. The misery of her eyes. But the traitor hand has its own sense memory, unshakable, and it makes me sick. All the feelings in my hand make me sick, and some of the feelings in my heart. I have such disgust, loathing, such fear of myself. But other feelings too—unclean emotions in harmony with the excitement of the hateful hand. And at the door to the black room I stop, lean against the wall, and vomit. Sweating. Shuddering with chills. When I turn away from the mess, with only my stomach purged, I force myself to grab the lever-action handle with my injured hand, making pain shoot up my forearm as I violently jerk open the door. And then I’m inside, into the black room again.

Don’t look at her. Don’t. Don’t! Don’t look at her naked. No right to look at her naked. This can be done with my eyes averted, edging to the table, aware of her only as a flesh-colored form out of the corner of my eye, floating in the darkness over there. “It’s okay,” I tell her, my voice so hoarse from the choking, “it’s okay, lady, he’s dead, lady, I shot him. I’ll let you loose, get you out of here, don’t be afraid.” And then I realize I haven’t any idea where to find the keys to the manacles. “Lady, I don’t have a key, no key, got to go for help, call the cops. But it’s okay, he’s dead.” No sound from her there, out of the corner of my eye. She’d been dazed from the blows to her head, only half conscious, and now she’s passed out. But I don’t want her to wake up after I’ve gone and be alone and afraid. I remember the look in her eyes—was it the same look in my mother’s eyes at the very end?—and I don’t want her to be so afraid when she wakes and thinks he’s coming back for her. That’s all, that’s all. I just don’t want her to be afraid, so I’m going to have to bring her around, shake her, wake her up, make her understand that he’s dead and that I’ll be back with help. I edge to the table, trying not to look at her body, going to look only at her face. A smell hits me. Terrible. Nauseating. The blackness is dizzying again. I put one hand out. Against the table. To steady myself. It’s the right hand, still remembering the curve of her breasts, and I put it down in a warm, viscous, slippery mass that wasn’t there before. I look at her face. Mouth open. Eyes. Dead blank eyes. He’s been at her. Two slashes. Vicious. Brutal. All of his great strength behind the blade. Her throat. Her abdomen. I spin away from the table, away from the woman, collide with the wall. Wiping my right hand on the black wall, calling for Jesus and for my mother, and saying “lady please lady please,” as if she could mend herself by an act of will if only she’d listen to my pleas. Wiping wiping wiping the hand, front and back, on the wall, not only wiping off what I’ve pressed it into but wiping off the way she felt when she was alive, wiping hard, harder, angrily, furiously, until my hand seems on fire, until there’s nothing in my hand but pain. And then I stand there awhile. Not quite sure where I am any longer. I know there’s a door. I go to it. Through it. Oh, yes. The catacombs.

Spencer stood in the center of the black room, his right hand in front of his face, staring at it in the hard projected light, as though it was not at all the same hand that had been at the end of his wrist for the past sixteen years.

Almost wonderingly, he said, “I would’ve saved her.”

“I know that,” Ellie said.

“But I couldn’t save anyone.”

“And that’s not your fault, either.”

For the first time since that ancient July, he thought he might have the capacity to accept, not soon but eventually, that he had no greater weight of guilt to carry than any other man. Darker memories, a more intimate experience of the human capacity for evil, knowledge that other people would never want forced on them as it had been forced on him—all of that, yes, but not a greater weight of guilt.

Rocky barked. Twice. Loud.

Startled, Spencer said, “He never barks.”

Slipping off the safety on the SIG, Ellie swung toward the door as it flew open. She wasn’t quick enough.

The genial-looking man—the same who had broken into the Malibu cabin—burst into the black room. He had a silencer-fitted Beretta in his right hand, and he was smiling and squeezing off a shot as he came.

Ellie took the round in her right shoulder, squealed in pain. Her hand spasmed and released the pistol, and she was slammed into the wall. She sagged against the blackness, gasping with the shock of being shot, realized the Micro Uzi was sliding off her shoulder, and made a grab for it with her left hand. It slipped through her fingers, hit the floor, and spun away from her.

The pistol was gone, clattering beyond reach across the floor toward the man with the Beretta. But Spencer went for the Uzi even as it was falling.

The smiling man fired again. The bullet sparked off the stone inches from Spencer’s reaching hand, forcing him to pull back, and it ricocheted around the room.

The shooter seemed unfazed by the whine of the bouncing slug, as if he led such a charmed life that his safety was a foregone conclusion.

“I’d prefer not to shoot you,” he said. “I didn’t want to shoot Ellie, either. I’ve other plans for both of you. But one more wrong move—and you’ll take away all my choices. Now kick the Uzi over here.”

Instead of doing what he had been told, Spencer went to Ellie. He touched her face and looked at her shoulder. “How bad?”

She was clutching her wound, trying not to reveal the extent of her pain, but the truth was in her eyes. “Okay, I’m okay, it’s nothing,” she said, yet Spencer saw her glance at the whimpering dog when she lied.

The heavy door to the abattoir hadn’t fallen shut. Someone was holding it open. The shooter stepped aside to let him enter. The second man was Steven Ackblom.

Roy was certain that this would be one of the most interesting nights of his life. It might even be as singular as the first night that he had spent with Eve, although he wouldn’t betray her even by hoping that it might be better. This was an incredible confluence of events: the capture of the woman at last; the chance to learn what Grant might know about any organized opposition to the agency, then the pleasure of putting that troubled man out of his misery; a unique opportunity to be with one of the great artists of the century as he turned his hand to the medium that had made him famous; and when it was done, perhaps even Eleanor’s perfect eyes would be salvageable. Cosmic forces were at work in the design of such a night.

When Steven entered the room, the expression on Spencer Grant’s face was worth the loss of at least two helicopters and a satellite. Anger darkened his face, twisted his features. It was a rage so pure that it possessed a fascinating beauty all its own. Enraged, Grant nonetheless shrank back with the woman.

“Hello, Mikey,” Steven said. “How’ve you been?”

The son—once Mikey, now Spencer—was unable to speak.

“I’ve been well but…in boring circumstances,” said the artist.

Spencer Grant remained silent. Roy was chilled by the expression in the ex-cop’s eyes.

Steven looked around at the black ceiling, walls, floor. “They blamed me for the woman you did here that night. I took the fall on that one too. For you, baby boy.”

“He never touched her,” Ellie Summerton said.

“Didn’t he?” the artist asked.

“We know he didn’t.”

Steven sighed with regret. “Well, no, he didn’t. But he was
that
close to doing her.” He held up his thumb and forefinger, only a quarter of an inch apart. “That close.”

“He was never close at all,” she said, but Grant remained unable to speak.

“Wasn’t he?” Steven said. “Well, I think he was. I think if I’d been a little smarter, if I’d encouraged him to drop his pants and climb on top of her first, then he would have been happy to take the scalpel afterward. He’d have been more in the spirit of things then, you see.”

“You’re not my father,” Grant said emptily.

“You’re wrong about that, my sweet boy. Your mother was a firm believer in marital vows. There was only ever me with her. I’m sure of that. In the end, here in this room, she was able to keep not the slightest secret from me.”

Roy thought that Grant was going to come across the room with all the fury of a bull, heedless of bullets.

“What a pathetic little dog,” Steven said. “Look at him shaking, hanging his head. Perfect pet for you, Mikey. He reminds me of the way you acted here that night. When I gave you the chance to transcend, you were too much of a pussy to seize it.”

The woman appeared to be furious too, perhaps even angrier than she was afraid, though both. Her eyes had never been more beautiful.

“How long ago that was, Mikey, and what a new world this is,” Steven said, taking a couple of steps toward his son and the woman, forcing them to shrink back farther. “I was so ahead of my time, so much deeper into the avant-garde than I ever fully realized. The newspapers called me insane. I ought to demand a retraction, don’t you think? Now, the streets are crawling with men more violent than I ever was. Gangs have gunfights anywhere they please, and babies get shot down on kindergarten playgrounds—and nobody does anything about it. The enlightened are too busy worrying that you’re going to eat a food additive that’ll shave three and a half days off your lifespan. Did you read about the FBI agents up in Idaho, where they shot an unarmed woman while she was
holding
her baby, and shot her fourteen-year-old son in the back when he tried to run from them? Killed them both. You see that in the papers, Mikey? And now men like Roy here hold very responsible positions in government. Why, I could be a fabulously successful politician these days. I’ve got everything it takes. I’m not insane, Mikey. Daddy’s not insane and never was. Evil, yes. I embrace that. From earliest childhood, I had it all in that regard. I’ve always liked to have fun. But I’m not crazy, baby boy. Roy here, guardian of public safety, protector of the republic—why, Mikey,
he’s
a raving lunatic.”

Roy smiled at Steven, wondering what joke he was setting up. The artist was endlessly amusing. But Steven had moved so far into the room that Roy couldn’t see his face, only the back of his head.

“Mikey, you should hear Roy rant on about compassion, about the poor quality of life that so many people live and shouldn’t have to, about reducing population by ninety percent to save the environment. He loves everybody. He understands their suffering. He weeps for them. And when he has a chance, he’ll blow them to kingdom come to make society a little nicer. It’s a hoot, Mikey. And they give him helicopters and limousines and all the cash he needs and flunkies with big guns in shoulder holsters. They let him run around making a better world. And this man, Mikey, I’m telling you, he’s got worms in his brain.”

Playing along with it, Roy said, “Worms in my brain, big old slimy worms in my brain.”

“See,” Steven said. “He’s a funny guy, Roy is. Only wants to be liked. Most people do like him too. Don’t they, Roy?”

Roy sensed that they were coming to the punch line. “Well, now, Steven, I don’t want to be bragging about myself—”

“See!” Steven said. “He’s a modest man too. Modest and kind and compassionate. Doesn’t everybody like you, Roy? Come on. Don’t be so bashful.”

“Well, yeah, most people like me,” Roy admitted, “but that’s because I treat everyone with respect.”

“That’s right!” Steven said. He laughed. “Roy treats everyone with the same solemn respect. Why, he’s an equal-opportunity killer. Evenhanded treatment for everyone from a presidential aide wasted in a Washington park and then made to look like a suicide…to an ordinary paraplegic shot down to spare him the daily struggle. Roy doesn’t understand that these things have to be done for
fun.
Only for fun. Otherwise, it’s insane, it really is, to do it for some noble
purpose.
He’s so solemn about it, thinks of himself as a dreamer, a man of ideals. But he does uphold his ideals—I’ll give him that much. He plays no favorites. He’s the least prejudiced, most egalitarian, foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic who ever lived. Don’t you agree, Mr. Rink?”