50 THE RIGHT HAND OF EVIL HARD AT WORK

50

THE RIGHT HAND OF EVIL HARD AT WORK

In his Lexus, speeding to the house shared by the half brothers Monger and Rackman, Regis Duroc-Jersey, New World Technology vice president and facilitator of the Kettleton project, is exhausted and irritable and worried that his nose is going to start bleeding. Ever since he was ten, for the past twenty years, whenever he is under extreme stress, which is too often, he is sometimes subjected to a nosebleed that can last for as little as fifteen minutes or as long as two hours. When a lengthier affliction passes, the room around him is littered with so many bloody paper napkins—which are softer than paper towels, more absorbent than Kleenex—it appears as if he's a serial killer who, having fully cannibalized his victim, must now gather up the remaining evidence of his feast.

During the past eight months, the main cause of most of Regis's nosebleeds has been Galen Vector. Periodically, he has a nightmare in which Vector—in plaid pants and a garish coral-pink polo shirt, the lenses of his sunglasses as black as collapsed stars—attends him during a nosebleed and tries to staunch the flow by pinching Regis's nostrils in locking pliers, then in a monkey wrench, and finally between the fixed jaw and the movable jaw of an iron C-clamp. In this dream, Vector's pencil mustache extends across his upper lip and down to his chin, and he insists on being called Ming the Merciless, which was a character in the Flash Gordon movies that starred Buster Crabbe in the 1930s.

Ming. Funny how the subconscious works. Regis's older brother, Foster, is an information-technology entrepreneur with numerous patents related to cloud computing, their parents' favorite child by a wide margin, and a fan of old science-fiction movies. Foster has a particular fondness for the character of Ming, perhaps because Ming was as much of a power-mad jerk as Foster. Regis would like to apply a pair of locking pliers to a part of his brother's anatomy more intimate than his nose.

If the address that Vector provided is correct, Monger and Rackman live in a handsome two-story Victorian with two turrets and elaborate architectural moldings. In a fairy tale, someone's magical godmother would occupy such a lovely house, and the hulking half brothers would dwell under a bridge, amidst a litter of children's bones that have been picked clean.

Following Vector's instructions, Regis is to meet with Wendy, whom he called "their wife." Apparently, Monger and Rackman are experienced hikers who, when they are not beating up those whom Vector wishes to have beaten, enjoy venturing into the mountains to marvel at its beauty, no doubt singing "The Sound of Music" as they caper through fields and forests. Wendy will have prepared their fully stuffed backpacks, hiking boots, and desired clothing.

Their wife.

Regis doesn't imagine that marital arrangements between the Bigfoot brothers and Wendy have been legitimized by a minister or a justice of the peace, but he isn't one to judge others as regards such matters. However, he is quite curious about what kind of woman would cohabitate with them. He expects that, physically, Wendy will be the female equivalent of a longshoreman, as lusty as she is well muscled and boldly tattooed.

If he's wrong and she's a long-legged beauty of breathtaking proportions, he'll consider hanging himself. Or maybe just quit his job. Enough is enough. The fourteen months he's been in Kettleton have led him to question whether it makes sense to dedicate his life to the acquisition of hundreds of millions of dollars no matter what grueling effort is required, no matter what ignorant hicks and boors and vicious backwoods criminals he must associate with, no matter how often he is required to kiss the asses of corrupt bureaucrats and politicians. That he could even ask that question is terrifying. Of course it's worth it. Kettleton is such a tedious and depressing place that it has made him a little crazy, just unhinged enough to consider stumbling off the path to wealth and power, into the weeds where most people wander through life with such lack of purpose that they remain forever powerless. Not Regis Duroc-Jersey. Not ever.

When he rings the bell at the Monger-Rackman residence, Wendy, the unlikely trois of the unthinkable ménage à trois , opens the door in a state of breathless excitement. "Goodness gracious, here you are already, but that's okay, don't worry yourself about a thing, I just got it all collected, so come in, come in."

She is the furthest thing from a longshoreman, and though she is not the kind of beauty to appear on the covers of magazines that undertake to arouse young men, she is a delight to the eye—slender, with masses of curly auburn hair, flawless skin, a sprinkling of freckles, and limpid blue eyes. She's much better than beautiful; great beauties are often cool and unapproachable; Wendy is cute enough to be an anime character. Regis loves Japanese anime because all the characters are cute. It's getting harder all the time to find cute in the real world. Having been awakened to perform the task at hand, Wendy is adorable in blue pajamas with pink bunnies all over them.

In Regis's view, she's too cute to be hauling around heavy backpacks, but she insists on carrying her share of gear and loading it into his SUV, and she proves to be stronger than she looks. As Regis closes the liftgate, Wendy says, "What's this about?"

"A little hike, a day or two."

"Put together on the spur of the moment, in the dead of night, it doesn't feel recreational. Spin me another story."

"I'm just doing what I'm told. I can't say what it's about."

"Can't or won't?"

"Does it matter?"

She crosses her arms on her chest, just like some anime girls do when they won't back down from a threat. "I'm a mother to those boys, and I'm determined to set them straight."

Baffled by that statement, he says, "Mother?"

"Oh, yes, I'm younger than they are, but they very much need a mom, even if just an honorary one. Our mother, rest her soul, was a mess, a slattern and an alley cat. They need guidance, those boys, and I mean to set them right."

"Slattern?"

"Look it up, Mr. Jersey."

"I know what it means. I've just never heard anyone use the word. The thing is, I was told ..."

"You were told what?"

"You were their wife."

"Must've been that wicked Galen Vector told you that. The man's soul is as dark as his sunglasses. I am their half sister. I allow them to live here rent-free, and I cook for them. It is my life goal to lead them to the light."

"How's that working out?"

"No one likes a snarky man, Mr. Jersey. I know my brothers are lazy boys who like the easy money of the criminal life. However, I'm winning their hearts and minds. I'll pry them away from Galen Vector and get them on a righteous path. In only a year, I've enjoyed much success with them. They take baby steps. The poor dears can't be made clean overnight. At least they don't murder people anymore."

Even here in the darkness of the driveway, with only the moon and the stars and the wan outspill from the porch lamps, Wendy's eyes are a resplendent and inexplicable blue, as if lit from within. Regis has never met anyone with a stare as direct and searching as hers. He realizes he's stood in silence for more than a few seconds, and then he belatedly comprehends what she said. "How do you know they don't? Don't murder people anymore."

"I've turned them on their axes just far enough that they can lie to the world but not to me. They can't lie to me anymore than you can, Mr. Jersey."

He hears himself say, "Oh, I'm a very good liar, Wendy."

She smiles. "You see?"

Surprised by his admission, he is astonished by what issues from him next. "No, it isn't a recreational hike. It's a search. They're tracking someone. Pursuing her. A woman named Vida. She was the fiancée of José Nochelobo." He bites his tongue. He literally bites it to silence himself, though not hard enough to draw blood.

"My brothers did not kill Mr. Nochelobo."

His tongue frees itself from his teeth. "No."

"Do you know who did, Mr. Jersey?"

"Not his name. Just that he was a professional assassin and a foreign national who came here directly from jobs in Syria and the Ukraine." Alarmed to hear himself making these revelations, Regis says, "Thank you, pleased to meet you, have a nice day," and hurries away from her, alongside the SUV.

As Regis yanks open the driver's door, Wendy puts a hand on his shoulder, and he pivots toward her with no less fright than if she had been a disfigured mutant sociopath with a chain saw.

"When you see my brothers," she says, "remind them of their promise to me."

"All right, yes, I will."

"No murder."

"None," he agrees.

"No violence."

"Oh, well, there will probably be some violence. Vida isn't going to, you know, just give herself up. Your brothers might not kill her, but they'll make it possible for someone else to do it."

"You and the despicable Mr. Vector and his amoral associates are beyond my care. You will do what you will do. But not my poor brothers. They must take a baby step from no murder to no violence. They have promised me. Remind them of their promise."

Her eyes are the unique, iridescent blue of the wings of a Ulysses butterfly, a flock of which he'd once seen in Queensland, Australia, years earlier. In numbers, with their four-inch wingspan, they had flurried out of the shadows, so dazzling against the vivid green of the rainforest that they seemed unearthly. In witness of their aerial waltz, he'd stood transfixed, overcome by a sense of the world as being far more than he'd thought it was, by a sudden awareness of mysteries and fabulous possibilities of which he had previously been unaware. Now, looking into Wendy's eyes, as when he'd seen those butterflies dancing in sunlight, he feels both that the Earth is unearthly and that by his life choices he has lost the ability to perceive wonders that are unfolding around him in every hour of every day.

"Remind them of their promise," she repeats.

"I will, yes, I swear," Regis declares as he launches himself into the SUV and pulls the door shut.

The next thing he knows, he's two miles from Wendy's house, a mile from his next rendezvous, with no idea how he got there. He feels as if he's sloughing off some spell that was cast on him.

Before visiting Wendy, he'd been to Frank Trott's trailer, where Frank's gear had been readied by his son, Farnam, who was wired on something even at that hour. To express dissatisfaction with having been required to exert himself, Farnam repeatedly stuck out his tattooed tongue. Perhaps twenty years old, rail-thin, teeth yellowed, eyes bloodshot, with one eyebrow, having risen from a sofa littered with issues of the magazine Heavy Metal , he wore a T-shirt with the word S TUD in bold letters.

After Trott's trailer, Regis had visited Galen Vector's house, where the crime boss's hiking clothes had been prepared for pickup by Candy Sass, formerly known as Berta Gussman, who had left Kettleton at eighteen to become a porn star and, following a strenuous seven-year career that ended with an extreme allergy to penicillin, had returned home as the main squeeze of the mountain mafioso. Candy was still a looker, even after servicing legions, and she knew it. From Vector's collection of weapons, she provided four AR-15s and sixteen extended magazines, providing enough firepower to contend with Vida if it turned out the fugitive was going into the mountains to take shelter with forty members of a crazed militia. "You won't need a backpack for Galen. He don't carry his own. The others will carry supplies for him." As Regis piled the gear and guns into the Lexus, Candy played with one rifle as perhaps she had done in a steamy sequence in one of her epics. Regis kept saying, "Hey, is that loaded? Are you sure? Are you sure that's not loaded?"

Now, he's three miles farther down the road, and his eyes are burning from lack of sleep, and his stomach is sour from too many caffeine tablets. He's already mostly forgotten Candy Sass and the anxiety she inspired regarding his lack of hand-sanitizing gel. But he's unable to forget the smallest thing about Wendy, anime goddess.

With dawn but forty minutes away, he is speeding toward the property where, according to Vector, Belden Bead and Nash Deacon are buried in their cars, their graves as unmarked as those of pharaohs in pyramids buried deep under the shifting sands of Egypt.

Having been Montessori molded, Pencey prepared, and fine-tuned at Harvard, Regis should have no capacity for superstition. He should be as free from fear of higher powers and spectral presences as he is unconcerned about black cats and broken mirrors. But he can't shake the feeling that cosmic justice is coming down on him, on all of them who are pushing the project in order to drain its funds into their pockets, that the corruption of his heart is known and that his time to repent is running out.

He's further unnerved when a disturbing Cheyenne word springs to mind— Maheo . He had encountered the word a few times during the extensive reading he'd done to familiarize himself with Kettleton County and its history, before coming to this butt-end of nowhere. The Cheyenne, a very spiritual people, believe in a supreme being, Maheo, "The Wise One Above."

They also believe in another god, one who lives in the earth. Regis isn't able to recall the name of the god who lives underfoot. This failure of memory suddenly seems significant. An underground god is surely of a darker nature than Maheo, more likely to extract vengeance for crimes against the Earth. And if you don't even know your enemy's name, how can you hope to know when he's coming after you?

As he slows down to turn onto Vida's driveway, Regis says aloud, "That's stupid, just plain nuts. What's wrong with me?" He answers his own question: "You're tired. That's all. You're worn out." He isn't entirely satisfied with that explanation and says, "Hell no. It's a lot more than that. Everything's coming apart. There are forces rising that aren't supposed to exist."

Making the turn onto the unpaved driveway, he issues a sharp rebuke: "Stop talking to yourself, dammit. You're scaring me." And so he doesn't say one word more as the stone house comes into view, bathed in starlight, the moon having descended below the towering peaks of the western mountains.