32 THE VENERABLE BEAD
32
THE VENERABLE BEAD
Eight months earlier, when Damon Orbach tells Belden Bead about the hot girl who came to the Slyke house under a false name, how she conned the drugged-out Morgan and drained him of certain knowledge as if she'd opened a petcock in his head, Bead reacts with all the caution, discretion, wisdom, and manners that might be expected of the son of one of the county's most powerful families. Shaped and refined by the scholars and philosophers of Yale, he is an attorney who employs his knowledge of the law to avoid arrest and prosecution for acts that the great unwashed consider criminal but which are, in his more cultured view, merely the efficient servicing of the needs of those people who yearn for calm in a turbulent world. Or who are desperate for some stimulation to save them from the sea of boredom in which they are drowning. Or just want to exercise their God-given right to get wasted as often as they can afford. So after a week of scheming, wearing a white fedora, white pin-striped Givenchy suit with a brightly patterned shirt, dressy brown-and-white loafers, a Rolex watch, and two rings on each hand, he arrives in his black 1970 Plymouth Superbird Hemi. He parks in the yard and lays on the car horn for longer than a minute, waits, then pounds the Klaxon for perhaps half a minute more.
When Vida doesn't make an appearance, Bead exits the muscle car with a manila envelope in one hand and stands at the foot of the porch steps and calls her name several times. In an imperious voice, producing almost as many decibels as the car horn, he declares that he knows she's at home, that she knows who the hell he is, that they have an issue to discuss, an accommodation to reach, and that he needs to get back to town for a dinner engagement.
Since her conversation with Morgan Slyke, Vida has cautiously researched the great Bead. She knows what car he drives. Among other things, she knows he usually travels in the scowling company of two muscle-bound gunmen named Hanes and Rudy, whom some locals refer to as Jane and Judy, although never within their hearing. This time, Bead appears to have come alone, which might support his contention that his purpose is to negotiate with her rather than terminate her. In spite of his flamboyant attire, he is said to manage his empire from behind layered curtains of deniability, as prudently as befits the godfather of mountain crime. But it is rumored that, at times of intolerable frustration, he takes the chains off his Mr. Hyde and becomes a horror.
When at last Vida steps onto the front porch, she's wearing a roomy gray sweatshirt and jeans tucked into cowboy boots, something of a contrast to Bead in his finery. "What do you want?"
"Peace," he says.
"Then why did you start a war?"
His eyebrows seem to rise halfway to his hairline. "Terrence Boschvark and his company started the war, bombed us simple country folk with megatons of money. There's no defense. I'm just determined to get my share instead of becoming a battlefield casualty."
"And you'll do anything to get that share."
"Oh, I can think of things I wouldn't do. I'm not as greedy as others I can name. Now, we can stand here talking at each other from different altitudes until we're hoarse. Or if you'll extend a little Kettleton County kindness, invite me to a rocking chair, sit with me long enough to hear me out, much misery can be avoided by everyone."
"I can't be bought."
"I don't want to buy anyone. I'm here to explain, persuade."
"And if I'm not persuadable?"
"You've nothing to fear from me. What should scare the bejesus out of you is a four-hundred-billion-dollar corporation still guided by its self-adoring idealistic founder, with a mission statement so noble and poetic it makes stonehearted hedge-fund managers weep. An entity like that, run by a man like Terrence Boschvark, can grind a thousand Vidas to dust and get away with it. I am a messenger, not a hatchet man. If you'll listen to what I've come to say and if you're wise, you'll accept what I propose and get on with your life here, as your uncle got on with life after he put his war behind him."
Considering that Belden Bead arrived with much horn blowing and that he's dressed as if he thinks a new disco era is at hand, Vida finds it hard to believe he's just a well-meaning messenger or negotiator. Nevertheless, her investigation into José Nochelobo's death has hardly begun; she has much to learn, and it's possible that she will learn something true and useful even from a man as deceitful as Bead.
She invites him onto the porch and directs him to the chair she usually occupies. On this occasion, she finds it more advantageous to be positioned to the right of him rather than to his left.
After hanging his fedora on the finial that caps one of the stiles supporting the headrail of the chair, he sits with the nine-by-twelve envelope on his lap. He shoots one cuff of his rainbow-hued shirt and then the other, displaying an inch of fabric past each coat sleeve. He adjusts his collar and smooths his wheat-colored hair with both hands.
He is a good-looking man, with eyes the blue of robin eggs and as clear as if he just stepped out of Eden into this broken world, where he's not yet seen wickedness. His face is open and smooth, but his mouth is soft and suggestive of decadence.
Bead says, "Terrence Boschvark isn't an idealist. He's one of those messianic freaks who go down in the history books for all the wrong reasons. You understand?"
"Nothing," Vida replies, "is more dangerous than a man who has no humility, who sees himself as a savior but lacks mercy and pity, lacks any quality of the divine, let alone divinity itself."
"Then you know what'll happen to you if you try to thwart him."
"Maybe I don't care what he did."
"Oh, you care. You're the kind who can't not care."
"Did he direct you to enlist those boys to pelt José with bottles of water?"
"You have to understand my situation."
"Willing accomplice?"
"I am not a man with scruples, but I am a survivor. Boschvark has saturated this county with private investigators. He knows all the power players, who has done what, by what levers all of us can be controlled. The man has a thousand ways short of violence—major financial tools, political connections—to persuade or destroy those who are straight arrows. When it comes to the rest of us, he has the state attorney general in his pocket, also several key figures in the Department of Justice in Washington. If he says ‘sic him,' then I'm done. Happily, he prefers to use me, and I have no choice but to be used."
"So you enlisted those five boys."
"The point was to humiliate Nochelobo, not to kill him."
"Humiliate him? You think that makes sense?"
"No one could know he'd fall down those steps just wrong enough to break his neck."
"He didn't break his neck," she says.
"Read the autopsy."
"Herbert Lagare falsified the cause of death."
Bead regards her with a credible approximation of amazement. "Good old Herb Lagare? Chamber-of-Commerce Bible-study United-Way Herb?"
With his steady stare, mouth agape in what seems to be genuine incomprehension, jewel-ringed hands relaxed on the large envelope, he's a convincing picture of disbelief.
She says, "You really don't know about the air rifle?"
"Air rifle? What air rifle?"
Deception can't change the color of a deceiver's eyes. However, as her uncle told her twelve years earlier, she sees with something other than ordinary vision. With the same nameless sense by which she knows where gemstones are and aren't to be found in the placer mine, she knows that Belden Bead is lying and is oh-so-quietly alarmed.
She says, "It fired a hypodermic dart loaded with what must have been a potent neurotoxin. That's what killed José. There had to've been a highly skilled shooter at a courthouse window. The dart staggered José, and the rest was choreographed so he was tumbled down the steps, making the report of a broken neck credible."
"Wait, wait, wait—get real. That's tinfoil-hat stuff. Who would think up a crazy trick like that, take such a risk?"
"You just told me Boschvark is messianic, capable of anything."
"But he's subtle, cold, not hotheaded. He wouldn't sanction such a public hit in front of so many potential witnesses. Someone has lied to you, sold you coal and called it gold."
"It had to be in public. José was so charismatic that he was turning the voters against the plan. If he had an accident in a lonely place, everyone would have been suspicious."
"Look, I understand you loved the guy, and I don't mean to diminish him in any way, but Nochelobo wasn't that charismatic. Boschvark wasn't concerned about him."
"I know what happened," she insists.
He shakes his head and sighs. "You can't comprehend how a man like Terrence Boschvark operates. He'd never risk ordering someone to harm you physically. He can easily deal with his enemies without violence. Here's what I mean, his style, how he works. Listen and learn. You inherited this land from your uncle. You think he owned it. Maybe he did. But Boschvark is able to work through bureaucrats in half a dozen agencies to build a case that your land has been poisoned by something you've been doing here. Or the Native American nation that once owned it was never paid properly. Or an endangered species lives here and nowhere else."
"I'll fight for my land."
"If you can get an attorney, in the end you'll discover he was paid by Boschvark to betray you, but you won't be able to prove it. And forget about poisoned soil and all that. The assault on you will be more profound. You'll be evicted within thirty days, without compensation. Then where will you go? Your heart is here."
"Evicted? There's no mortgage. No overdue taxes."
"In here I have your fate." Bead pats the manila envelope, and the gesture conveys the same vanity with which he smoothed his hair earlier. He gets erotic pleasure from being in league with those who can crush anyone they choose. He is aroused and his desire sated by violence, whether it is the kind that leaves his target physically broken and bloodied or with a mortally wounded spirit. "Boschvark doesn't even know about this. I've learned a thing or two from him, and I've put this together myself. He doesn't know you've been running your little investigation. I don't want him to know because whatever you got from Morgan Slyke, one of my boys, will reflect badly on me. I don't want Boschvark distrusting me. In this envelope are copies of documents that were recently printed on paper milled seven decades ago, bearing the correct signatures and seals of that time. The originals, superb forgeries, prove your uncle never bought this property from a previous owner, that it was county-owned land when he moved onto it, that he illegally homesteaded these eighty acres by paying a bribe to the Kettleton County assessor, who was then also the tax collector, a man named Gregory Gattigan."
Vida conceals her anger. She senses that everything now depends on Bead believing that she's beginning to realize he and Boschvark comprise a force as irresistible as an avalanche. In a voice bled of all conviction, she says, "No one's going to buy what you're selling."
"I also have here a copy of a notarized statement from Bethany Gattigan Dirks, daughter of Gregory Gattigan. Bethany swears under penalty of perjury that her father, with only one month to live, confessed to her that he altered the historic county land maps to remove eighty acres from public holdings and place them on the tax rolls under the ownership of your uncle Ogden."
Bead takes such sadistic delight in Vida's torment that the decadence previously suggested only by the softness of his mouth is evident in his lacerating stare, in his cruel smile. The tip of his tongue licks the curve of his mouth, revealing a satyromania that alerts her to a danger greater than the forged documents present.
"Now," he continues, "don't think poorly of Mrs. Dirks. She's seventy-six, a pitiful widow. For too long, she's lived on a skimpy Social Security check and the little she makes from seamstress work. She regrets that all she had to sell was her integrity, but it was worth a pretty penny to me."
Vida says nothing. She wants him to think that her silence is the silence of one who knows she is defeated but can't bear to admit as much. He must not think she might in any way strike out at him.
"All the documents, plus a letter requesting an interview with you, are in this envelope from the current assessor."
She can see that the envelope bears her address and a postage-meter tape dated three days earlier.
He offers the envelope to her, but she doesn't accept it, so he places it on the small table between the rocking chairs.
"If you assure me that you'll stop playing Nancy Drew," Bead continues, "and if you, at my direction, produce a short handwritten letter signed by you, no one will evict you."
"A letter saying what?"
"It'll be dated the day before the tragedy. To José Nochelobo. A very angry letter. While he was at work, you let yourself in his place with your key. You'd baked his favorite cake to leave as a surprise. You saw a few things that needed to be tidied up, and while you were attending to that, you stumbled upon his collection of child pornography."
"You son of a bitch."
"You know my mother. So in the letter you break up with him. You can't tolerate such perversity. You urge him to get counseling."
"He didn't have child pornography."
"The sheriff has locked away the collection."
"Then either you or Boschvark's people, someone at New World Technology, planted it the day José was murdered."
"Your letter, with your prints and DNA on it, added to that box of filth, will lend credibility to the evidence of his sick mind."
"No."
"That's not an option."
"It's my only option. No."
"Here's what you should consider while you think about it."
"I don't need to think about it. I won't do it."
"Before you give me your final decision, understand that the sheriff has told no one about that collection. None of us wants to destroy Mr. Nochelobo's reputation unless it's absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, he was so persuasive that even now, after his death, people rally around his crusade as a memorial to him. We hope their passion fades. If it does, there'll be no need to reveal his sexual attraction to children. In time, as the New World Technology project advances, his nasty collection and your letter will be destroyed. We won't make it public out of meanness alone. It's only insurance."
"You're disgusting, all of you."
Bead consults his Rolex. "I have that dinner engagement."
"Then go choke on something."
"If you won't write that letter, Vida, you will be evicted. Where will you go? How will you get the money that the endless litigation will require?"
She says nothing.
"If you won't write the letter, Sheriff Montrose will feel a moral obligation to reveal the collection of kiddie porn and launch an investigation to learn if José, as a teacher, might have forced himself on any minors. I guarantee a few will come forward."
He could have presented the copies of the forged property documents in a folder. There is no reason to deliver them in an assessor's envelope with dated postage-meter tape, as though she received it in the mail. Unless ... Unless, once she has written the letter, after he has overpowered her— maybe with chloroform , an inner voice suggests—raped her while she's unconscious, and staged her suicide, he can then scatter the envelope and its contents beside her corpse, to establish why she took her life. In the new Kettleton, there will be no investigation or autopsy.
With a note of desperation meant to convince him that the fight has gone out of her, she says, "I want to stay here. Have to stay."
"Then back off."
"And if I do, I'll really be allowed to stay here?"
"I don't have any use for this shitty place. No one does. Just keep yourself to yourself. Stay out of the way of the money train."
"But do you promise? You swear?"
"I promise. I swear," he lies.
She remembers the lascivious intent he revealed when he licked his lips. She sees sick desire in his stare, those eyes the cold, pale blue of Namibian smithsonite. His soul is harder than any gemstone.
She should have armed herself with her uncle's pistol. She hadn't imagined that Bead would be so reckless as to move directly to violence. She thought he'd come to level a warning at her and give her a few days to acquiesce. If that was his intention when he arrived, he has since decided on a different, more brutal resolution to the problem she presents.
"Come on, Vida. You've got nothing to gain by refusing, and everything to lose. Let's write that letter and get on with our day. I don't want to keep my dinner companions waiting."
There are no dinner companions. His deceit is palpable.
The prospect of allowing him into her house is intolerable. Her options will be limited when he crosses the threshold.
She gets to her feet and approaches the front door and halts. "The envelope. The documents."
When Bead reaches down and plucks the envelope from the table, Vida hikes up her sweatshirt from her right hip and draws the can of bear spray from the holster attached to her belt, the only defensive weapon she'd thought necessary.
Whatever Bead sees from the corner of his eye, it's enough to make him drop the envelope, reach under his coat, and pull a pistol from his shoulder rig. As he turns toward her, the expanding cloud of repellent is still dense when it bursts against his face, oiling him with an instant sheen. Tears flood his eyes, severely blurring his vision. His pupils will have instantly swelled wide, letting in a blinding farrago of amorphous shapes of light. She gives him the full seven-second charge, so that though he turns his face away, he remains in the cloud of capsaicin. Then she throws the can aside. Even as Bead is retching, he's gasping for breath, like a two-headed beast in conflict with itself. He can't find fresh air, feels as if he's suffocating. His ears should be ringing as loud as a siren, further disorienting him.
He opens fire. He can't see her. She'd be dead if he could discern even the vague shape of her. But he fires a round and then another, trusting to luck and proximity, a power freak suddenly powerless, frightened and furious. The hard crack of each shot is reverberant and hollow, as though Bead and Vida are kenneled by the porch, the cacophony of bestial combat trapped and ricocheting along metaled walls.
The cloud of repellent expands past Bead and beyond the porch, but though its diffusion is propelled by highly pressurized gas, the peppery particulate appears to disperse sluggishly. It seems to Vida that both she and her assailant are moving in slow motion, as though the watch spring of the universe has unwound, time itself running out. She holds her breath as she steps into the third shot, which tunnels through the air maybe a foot wide of her. Violence is by its nature swift, but in this moment of mortal danger, she picks up a rocking chair and rams her assailant with it as if moving through some viscous fluid. Like a deep-sea diver laboring under miles of water, he staggers backward into the porch balustrade, reflexively firing the gun once more.
That shot sets right the universe, and time surges full speed. As Bead falls, he seems to fling the pistol away as if shocked by it. The weapon clatters across the porch floor, and Vida quickens after it, breath held and eyes squinted to slits.
Gun in hand, she turns to Belden Bead, where he sits on the porch floor with his back against the railing balusters, eyes still pools of tears but his breathing no longer labored, as though some source of mercy has granted him surcease from the effects of bear spray. In his fall, he has shot himself in his left leg, his thigh. Judging by the blood spreading through the fabric of his suit pants and across the planking, she figures the bullet severed the femoral artery. He is bleeding out fast, and he knows it.
If his recognition of his fate should humble him, it does not, and neither does imminent death wring from him a plea for help. He doesn't damn her, as she might expect, but contents himself with calling her names that deny her personhood, that reduce her to an inanimate sex toy, a tool for masturbation. In sprays of jalape?o spittle, various obscene words for one female anatomical feature spew from him repetitively, with increasing ferocity, as if this is not a man insulting her, but instead a demonic parasite that resides in Bead and hates her because it will be evicted from this world when its host dies.
Vida stands over him, watching him die, offering Bead no aid, no pity. If something possesses him, it does so at his invitation, and if nothing has possessed him, he is a self-made monster, the spiritual brother of the man who killed her father, conspirator in the death of José Nochelobo, one of the legions who lust for power and draw across the world a darkness that denies the light by which the universe was conceived.
He falls silent, and his eyes widen, and for a moment Vida thinks he has died. Suspended over the abyss by a gossamer filament of life, he speaks in a raw, thin, quavering voice colored by what might be wonder or even awe. "Who are you? What are you? Where did it come from, the moon, so big behind you?"
Twilight has not yet arrived. The moon has not yet risen.
Belden Bead breathes out the last of his life.
She can't report what's happened. They will distort the facts into proof of murder. For her, Kettleton offers no law or justice.