Any Minute Now (28 page)

Sydny took the hood from Julie's hand. “You don't believe me.”

“I don't see any reason I should.”

“Look. I told you that sex is power. You don't believe me? How many women have you seen lose touch with themselves, simply disappear when they attach themselves to a man?” Her lips curved upward. “You're smart. When you go to political dinners or cocktail parties what do the women look like to you? Ornaments, icing,
objects
. Isn't that right.” It wasn't a question.

Julie continued to look at her, but seemed incapable of forming an answer.

“That abdication of power is pathetic, don't you think?” Sydny cocked her head. “Do you want to leave?” She gestured toward the door out to the living room. “You're not a prisoner. If you don't want to be here, please leave.”

Julie, both frightened and fascinated, stood rooted to the spot.

Looking as stern as a military commandant, Sydny said, “You need to voice it, Julie.”

“I want to stay.” Her answer was immediate. Her voice seemed to come from a place inside her she did not recognize.

Sydny nodded. “Give me your handbag.” Julie handed it over without protest, watching as Sydny opened one of the doors to the armoire, tossed the bag into a space behind a line of boots with heels so high just looking at them gave Julie a nosebleed.

“You have on too many clothes,” Sydny observed. “Get rid of your jacket. Just drop it on the floor.” Julie complied. “Now come sit over here.” She indicated the high-backed leather chair. Julie sat, her bare knees primly together. She smoothed her pleated skirt over her thighs.

“Now take off your panties. That's right, slide them down your legs. When you sit back down, lift the back of your skirt up so there's nothing between you and the leather.”

Holding up her skirt, Julie sat back down. Gooseflesh sprang out on her thighs and arms as her private parts made contact with the cool leather. She watched Sydny duck into the closet. She emerged holding a pair of velvet-soft gloves.

“Put these on.”

They ran all the way up to Julie's elbows.

Approaching her, Sydny said, “Lean slightly forward.” When Julie did so, she unbuttoned the first two buttons of Julie's silk blouse. “Don't move.” She found the straps of Julie's bra and cut them with a small, opal-handled penknife, then snipped the front. The bra's cups came away from Julie breasts. Reaching in, she lifted the bra out and away.

Sydny eyed her. “I can see the outline of your breasts through your blouse. Your nipples are hard. Are you excited?”

Julie could scarcely breathe. Her voice failed her.

Sydny approached her, slid her hand under Julie's skirt, felt the dampness between her thighs. “You are.” She smiled in the way a mother smiles at her daughter, a connection, a certain intimacy that cannot ever be repeated with anyone else. “Are you ready to surrender.” Again, it wasn't a question.

She handed Julie the hood.

 

27

Even in the most desolate climate there was always beauty. Whitman, however, was in no condition to ferret it out. Even though he stood in the compound with his back to the villa, even though the sunlight brushed his cheek, the breeze ruffled his hair, he was somewhere far, far away.

Around him rose walls of iron and steel, down one of which a sheet of water dropped like a curtain in a mortuary viewing room. At the bottom of this particular wall was a rectangular trough, constructed of hand-hewn stones, into which the water spilled. Stories inside the Well told of this trough being bottomless, like the myth of the sacred
cenote
at Chichen Itza, a thousand years old. So many blood sacrifices had been made at that
cenote
, the bodies of so many of the Mayan enemies had plunged into its depths, that it had come to be known as The Well of Souls.

The stench of the Well filled his nostrils, clogging them with the fetor of terror, human excrement, blood, and flesh stripped from its rightful place on the body. In this Charlie was right, he had made a fatal error in taking her there. Why had he? No, so many years later, he could not say. He had told himself that he'd wanted to share everything with her, but truth could be a terrible thing, especially when it came to the Well.

He knew he couldn't long survive this kind of introspection; he was not the suicidal type. He also knew memories of the Well had been triggered by Alice's terrible death. For someone so young to die was agony enough, but that it should come from her own hand spoke of a despair beyond comprehension. But that was another lie he was feeding to himself. Of course he could comprehend her despair; he'd seen it every night he had worked down in the Well.

Fumbling in his backpack, he found his iPod and earbuds, plugged them in, and listened to the original 1927 recording of Hoagy Carmichael playing “Star Dust,” which in the years following the addition of lyrics, became known as “Stardust.” Back in the day, he and Charlie would get dressed up, sneak into wedding receptions in order to foxtrot to the hired bands, the last of the venues where these bands could find work. But these happy memories only impressed upon him how his relationship with Charlie had deteriorated. A final blowup, then atrophy. And here they were, in the bleakness of the enemy's stronghold, at each other's throats.

How could his life get any worse?

*   *   *

It came as a revelation to Preach that death could be a good thing—a wanted thing—a powerful thing. This had never occurred to him, and why should it? He had never died. Unlike Crow.

And Crow came to him while he was in his great circular marble bath, which was situated in the center of his ramshackle house deep in the bayous. It was the house he had lived in for many, many years, the place from which he had battled the evangelical preachers so drunk on their own power they relished lording it over their sheep-like followers. He had spent decades fighting their invidious lies, couched in half-truths. He had felt like a lone voice in the wilderness, which, in fact, he was. Not altogether by his own choice.

The three female acolytes swam around him like Homer's sirens, their long, fiery hair darkened by water to the color of fresh blood. Their sheer gowns were plastered to their lithe bodies, more erotic than if they had been nude. Their beautiful milky-skinned faces, one lightly misted by freckles, were all turned to him as flowers turned to the sun. Their hands were on his flesh, moving—always moving. They were happy—he was happy.

A commotion turned his attention to the bath's door. A young man in a policeman's uniform strode in, unbidden, unannounced, but not unanticipated. His name was Kneckne. He was new. He didn't know the score.

His hand was on the butt of his service revolver. “You the man they call Preach?”

“I am,” said Preach.

Officer Kneckne approached the tub. “There've been complaints about this place, about you.”

“What sort of complaints, son?”

Kneckne frowned, his eyes taking in the three sirens. “Lewd and lascivious acts; profane acts against God and Nature. Evil things.”

Preach smiled. “I don't see anything evil around here. Do you, son?”

“Why, sir, yes, I do.” He stood at the edge of the tub, unsnapped his holster. There was a film of sweat on his upper lip and a dangle of snot in one nostril. “You're going to have to come with me.”

“Oh, I don't think so.”

“Sir, I see you're an ignorant man. You don't understand the laws of the land. You don't have a choice in the matter.”

Knechne didn't know the score, and now he never would.

Preach uttered a single word under his breath and the three acolytes rose up, as one, grabbed Knechne while he was still gawping at their near-nakedness, and pulled him under the water. He thrashed, his arms and legs beating a tattoo, sending waves lapping over the sides of the tub, but his head never reappeared.

The acolytes weren't sirens; they were death-dealers. Preach had taught them how to kill; they performed their task by instinct, unhindered by thought or choice.

When he stopped thrashing, they hauled the corpse out of the tub. Two of them took him outside to the woodshed, where, later, he would be fed into the chipper. As usual, they would bicker over who would have the honor; Preach would let them. A bit of spirited competitiveness was healthy.

When they returned, they slid back into the water as if it was their natural element. Preach smiled at them and they smiled back. Their long, strong fingers recommenced their caressing of his nipples, scrotum, and phallus.

Preach closed his eyes and sighed deeply, his thoughts running his long life backwards. He had many talents, but making money wasn't one of them; he lacked the patience to work for other people; he lacked the temperament to start at the bottom and work his way up a corporate ladder. He was a ferocious autodidact, unschooled in any traditional manner. His worldview was diametrically opposite of those in the world's corporate suites. He had learned this early on in life, so he used other people to make money for him. He was good at influencing people—better than good, actually. Nobody did it better.

His parents were dirt-poor. They had nothing; they wanted nothing. Unlike them, Preach wanted everything—everything except fame. He shied away from fame, the limelight, being known. He lived in the shadows at the edge of the world, and he was smart enough to understand that that was where he belonged. He was out of his element walking among the hordes of men and women who teemed across the continents.

But he could select a precious few, draw them to him, indoctrinate them, work through them while deluding them into believing they were making decisions of their own free will. Life was filled with forks in the road, decisions to be made that led to one future or another. His will was done by taking away certain forks. Editing their lives. As a pack of baying hounds will cut off the fox's myriad escape routes until it had only one way to go, with the foreknowledge that Crow gave him, Preach manipulated people into moving inexorably toward a future he had devised like a sculptor exploring a block of marble, seeing, as only he can, the end result.

He had created the Alchemists. They massed money, more than he might ever need, and power. Their tentacles had spread to virtually every corner of the globe. Of course he had a vast network, in law enforcement, politics, economics, merchant banking, but those people were passive: messengers of intel, nothing more. The Alchemists were an active group. Its members did what he directed them to do, when he directed them to do it. All save Greg Whitman. Much to Preach's chagrin, life was not a block of marble. The future of which he was given glimpses was not a block of marble. Whitman, he had discovered, had a way of mucking up even his most meticulously laid plans. But then Whitman was special. He knew that the instant he pressed his fingertip to Whitman's father's breastbone. Moments later, the man died of a cerebral aneurism. Preach had had a moment of regret—one of the very few in his long, long life—but it was fleeting, and left no imprint on him. The death was necessary to remove the fork in the young Whitman's life that would have led him away from Preach. He could not have that. Whitman was like Preach, he could have a familiar—like Crow—if he wished it. He might divine the future, as Preach did. He had mastered the resurrection technique almost as if he'd known it in his bones. And he might know more—he might—but he would have to unlock those secrets himself. Whitman was like a son to Preach, someone who might one day surpass even his own accomplishments. Like all of the people Preach brought into his orbit, Whitman had a streak of cruelty in him. It was others' penchant for cruelty that Preach exploited, that bound his people to him. But Whitman's cruelty was a reptilian thing, glimpsed in light, vanishing in shadow, one moment there, the next not, so that Preach could never be sure of it, never be certain of his hold over Whitman, even despite his pounding into Whitman the glory of the newer, better world to come. For there was a part of Whitman, Preach suspected, that rejected his own cruelty, was repulsed by it, while the others savored theirs like vintage wine.

It was in this reflective mood that Crow found him. The acolytes could not, of course, see Crow, but they felt his shade move across their bare shoulders like a sudden icefall, and they shuddered, pulling back to the far side of the tub, eyes glassy and, for the moment, fearful.

Crow brought him up to date on all the people in the net he had cast far and wide years ago. But as of this moment everyone was performing as planned—even, this time, Whitman. The future was still as Crow had envisioned it.

 

28

At any given moment of the day or night, St. Vincent had at his disposal a virtual battalion of people: not only a driver, bodyguards, security detail, but also, should he required them, a chef, masseuse, even a psychiatrist. But there were times when circumstances dictated that he be alone. This was one of them.

A sliver of moon seemed to beckon him onward. He drove carefully, keeping to the various speed limits. As with anything that had to do with Gregory Whitman he struggled to keep his emotions in check, but there was so much history, so many memories he wished to annihilate that it was tough sledding. His mind kept going back into the Well, to his time there with Whitman.

He slid the car to the curb in front of The Doll House. Fifty bucks got him inside without the usual scrutiny, and a hundred more to the manager on duty bought him key information: that Sydny had left for the night, the name of the nearby café she frequented, and her home address. Neither place was far away.

A brisk walk brought him to the café. He went in, ordered a Scotch, which was some cheap crap he scarcely touched. As he paid for it he asked the bartender if Sydny was there.

“Haven't seen her all night,” he said.

“Brings all her johns here, does she?”