Forever Man (17 page)

“That may be,” Webber said evenly, withdrawing another cigarette and lighting it. “Care to tell me why you’re in such a foul mood?”

“Chet Boardman. Morris is in the hall asking about him.”

“I’m sure she is.” When Jack raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question, Webber added, “Look, Chet came to me yesterday. Said he’d had second thoughts and wanted out. Said he couldn’t get past this ‘uncomfortable’ feeling he got around me. But see, I worked hard at gathering together our little group. I wasn’t going to let him simply walk away. And I certainly wasn’t going to risk him talking about our plans. So, Mr. Boardman is no longer an issue.”

“What’d you do? Kill him, too?”

“Who said he was dead? Besides, killing is a baser impulse of the human condition which I avoid whenever possible.”

“But didn’t you…?” Jack looked meaningfully back at the hall where the mourners were gathered.

“You think
I
did the kid in?” Webber asked, frowning.

It was Jack’s turn to frown. “Well, with the full moon, and the way he was torn up, I kind of assumed—”

“What, that I was a
werewolf
?” Webber laughed. “You’ve been watching too many movies.”

“Then…?”

“What’s been causing the ruckus? That’s above your pay grade for now. When I think the time is right, maybe I’ll introduce you to my friend.” After taking another pull on his cigarette, Webber continued. “This is why I do the thinking, Jack. All you need to do is follow my orders. Nothing more.”

“I don’t follow anyone’s orders.” Jack was angry. Angry at being laughed at, at being wrong, at being humiliated. In a moment of déjà vu, he grabbed the cigarette from Webber’s hand and ground it out. “You’re the one who needs me, not the other way around. How about you come find me when you can show a little more respect?” He turned to leave.

“We’re not done yet,” Webber said.

Jack gave him the finger.

“Don’t make me teach you a lesson.”

“Go to hell.”

“No,” Webber said. “I think maybe you should.”

Jack had gone two steps when the world suddenly
thinned
. It was as if reality had become two-dimensional: the hall, the cars, the sky and the trees had all flattened, lost their depth. While his eyes told him he was being drawn forcibly into that gap between perceptions, his stomach said otherwise, and the conflicting signals made him nauseous. He stretched out a hand, expecting to hit a solid wall of existence. His fingers felt nothing. Then, like a painting left out in the rain, everything around him began to wash away.

Reality melted and ran in wide, raw streams. Blue sky and green trees and yellow sun and pale concrete and black asphalt mixed into a foul sludge that hardened into the ground beneath his feet. A darkly red world of stone and shadow began to emerge. Gone was the disturbing, two-dimensional reality he’d just experienced. What had lain hidden behind the landscape of his ordinary world horrified him.

He stood in a long corridor where walls of sharp rock, craggy and broken, stretched high into the shadows above. The corridor ran before him as far as he could see, lit by a blood-red glow rising from numerous cracks in the stone floor. It was hot here. He was immediately drenched in sweat.

But it was the smell that hit him like a physical blow. It was the stench of rotting flesh: hot, wet, oily. It filled his nostrils with a putridity so loathsome that his stomach threatened to rebel and empty its contents onto the ground.

And there was a sound, faint at first, but growing. It was a scuttling, like beetles crawling over old bones. As the noise grew, he could feel them, hideous insects entering him—through his mouth, his nose, his ears, his anus, the tip of his penis—filling him, digging deep under his skin, into his body, biting, chewing….

The nacreous red glow flared. Jack, hugging his writhing abdomen, could now make out creatures perched among the rocky crags that made up the tunnel’s walls.

Black among the dark shadows of this hell, numerous shapes—or perhaps
misshapes
would be a better word—made the nightmare complete. One creature had a hairless, spherical body of suppurating flesh; three arms extending from its midsection, two of which gripped the ledge where it stood while the third pulled at a decaying carcass and stuffed what it could gather into a wide mouth on top of its body. Another resembled a giant starfish clinging to the stone, except where the tentacles met at its central point, a woman’s wretched face—mouth working silently while insane eyes shed tears of blood—had replaced its body. Farther down, two others were locked in a struggle to either kill or mate: one humanoid creature stabbed repeatedly with a long appendage growing from the center of its chest, while the other, which looked like a diseased flower attached to a snake’s body, accepted the demanding thrusts into its floral mouth while sharp teeth rent the flesh from the intruding phallus.

Jack turned to look behind him. The tunnel continued in the other direction as far as he could see. He wanted to run, to escape from this place. He wanted to—

The tunnel abruptly disappeared. He was back in the parking lot, under a dome of blue sky. There was no melting this time, just the jarring snap back into his world.

Jack’s mind reeled. His hands flew to his gut, felt around for some sign that the insects were still inside him. There was nothing—no movement, no gnawing, no
scuttling
.

“Jack”

He spun around, his heart pounding at the top of his throat. Webber sat slumped in his cab, breathing heavily, a slight sheen of sweat on his brow. He looked exhausted, as if he’d tried to move a mountain by pushing it with his hands.

“Jack,” Webber repeated. His voice was weak, but it was enough to anchor Jack’s mind and keep it from sliding into the abyss. “Come here.”

Numbly, Jack stumbled over to Webber’s SUV, the harsh scrape of blacktop beneath his shoes oddly reassuring. He stopped next to the cab.

“Reach into my shirt pocket,” Webber said. “Get a cigarette and put it in my mouth.”

Jack did.

“Lighter’s in the same pocket.”

Jack reached in and removed it. His hand trembled as he spun the striking wheel; it took three tries before the sparks caught. He held the flame under the business end of the cigarette.

“I can put you there again if I want to,” Webber said, drawing deeply on the cigarette. “And I can leave you there if I need to. Fuck with me again and I’ll do just that.
Capisce
?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, his mind wailing at the possibility of being marooned in that place. “I
capisce
.”

“Good. Now, besides having a bug up your ass about Chet, did you learn anything else from your Chief of Police?”

“She knows about you now,” Jack said, summarizing the events from the wake.

“That was inevitable, though I would’ve preferred another day or two of anonymity,” Webber said. “Anything else?”

“Owens. It sounds like he’s been asking about Kevin.”

“There we are,” Webber said, his words frustratingly nonchalant. “I think it’s your son. He’s the one this has been about.”

“But I don’t understand.” Jack struggled with the next words. “Kevin, all he does is draw pictures. He can’t even talk….” His shoulders sagged. “I wanted so much more for him. God knows, I tried.”

Several months before, Jack had brought Kevin to Dr. Ron Westwood, an autism specialist, to definitively diagnose his son’s condition. That final meeting had been one of the worst days in Jack’s life.

He and Kevin had been ushered into the doctor’s office by the man’s secretary, Ms. Li. After sitting down with Kevin in his lap, he’d received the bad news.

“What you’re telling me,” Jack had said, “is that Kevin has something more than autism? Von…something?”

“Von Kliner’s Syndrome,” Dr. Westwood answered. “It’s a rare subset of autism and even less understood. So much so that we don’t have defined treatment protocols.” The man paused before continuing. “I know this is hard to hear, Mr. Sallinen. Your son is going to need significant assistance throughout his life: special education, behavioral therapy, psychotropic medications. Maybe even placement in a group home as an adult.”

“Group home?” Jack said, tears standing in his eyes. He hugged Kevin tighter. “You know money’s not an issue. I’ll pay for any treatment that will help cure him.”

“Mr. Sallinen, if you’re going to be the best support for your son, there’s something you have to understand, right here and now:
there is no cure
. Sure, you can afford the best help available, and that’s a wonderful asset for both you and Kevin. But as long as you continue to search for a cure and not focus on his care, you’ll be allowing him to fall even farther behind developmentally.” His expression had grown somber. “I doubt he’ll ever be able to hold a job. Or even get married.”

The news rocked Jack to his core. What the doctor had just described…it wasn’t a life. It was purgatory; a living hell. To be hidden beneath layers of autism—no, his son deserved better.

Wiping at his eyes, Jack said, “I understand. But I want you to know that I will do anything to help Kevin. No matter the cost. Anything.”

Westwood held his gaze for a moment. Reaching into his desk drawer, he pulled out a business card and handed it to Jack. “I have an associate. He knows more about von Kliner’s than most. Has had considerable firsthand experience. He knows the dangers, the risks, of the condition. You may want to get in contact with him at some point. He may be able to help.”

Jack had looked at the card. It was white with embossed black letters, but it provided no title. “This Darryl Webber,” he said, lifting his eyes to Westwood. “Is he a doctor?”

“No, more of a behavioral specialist. But a good one.” The man had smiled for the first time. “I think you’ll like him.”

Jack had slipped the card into his wallet. Afterward, he would pull it out. Agonize over it. He’d refused to accept that there was no cure, that he had to turn to “behavioral” solutions. Finally, weeks later and increasingly desperate to help his son, he’d pulled it out.

Sometimes he wondered if he’d made a mistake.

“Listen, Jack,” Webber said, his voice surprisingly friendly. “You did the right thing by calling me. I may be the only person standing between your son and the old man.”

“Owens is locked up. He can’t get to Kevin.”

“Don’t get too comfortable with that thought. I doubt Owens’ stint as public enemy number one is going to last. That old man’s crafty. He can spin lies better than a D.C. politician. Pretty soon he’ll have Morris convinced he’s the savior of the world. Once he’s set free, our job becomes decidedly more complicated. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“And how’re we supposed to do that?”

“First we go get your son, then we take out Owens.” He said this casually, as if he were ordering burgers and fries at the drive-thru.

“You mean kill him?” Jack said incredulously. Owens was locked in a jail cell, in the middle of a police station, surrounded by cops, and Webber thought he was going to waltz in and put a couple bullets into him? “That’s your big plan?”

“Yeah, I know,” Webber said, nodding. “Sounds almost impossible, given where he is. But that’s why I worked so hard to put him there.” His fingers tapped the steering wheel. “The whole shebang hinges on Carlton Manick. He has to get you, me, and your kid into that cell for a minute or two. That’s all I’ll need. Owens will have nowhere to hide. It’ll be like fish in a barrel, Jack. Fish in a barrel.”

Jack could see about half a dozen flaws with Webber’s plan. Like how they were going to get out after killing Owens. But, given what he’d witnessed of the man’s strange powers, he was willing to discount most of them. One, however, wasn’t going to fly with him.

“We’re not taking Kevin in there. It’s too dangerous.”

Webber squinted, his eyes flashing darkly, like chips of obsidian in the sunlight. “Are you giving me shit
again
?”

Jack swallowed hard. “When it comes to Kevin, yes, I am. He’s all I have in this world, and I’m not going to risk his life for you or anyone else.”

“He is, huh?” Webber drew on his cigarette. “What about your other boy?”

“Fuck him. Kevin’s the only one that matters.”

“Now I know why reality TV is so popular,” Webber said with a roll of his eyes. “You’re a real douche, Sallinen.”

“Fuck you very much,” replied Jack succinctly. “Are we all square on this? You and Dirty Harry can go do the deed, but Kevin stays out of danger?”

“Sorry, but after Owens is finally dead, we can’t waste time going back for the kid. So, like it or not, he’s going in with us.” His voice grew sharp, lethal. “Or if you prefer, I can send your fat ass back where you were. Leave you there and just take your boy. Now, are we all square on
that
?”

“Yes, sir,” Jack said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “But explain this one to me. If we get to Kevin first, why even bother with Owens? By the time Morris lets him go, we could be long gone. That old man wouldn’t stand a chance of finding us.”

Webber’s face grew hard. “Because ‘that old man’ has been a problem for a long time, and I want to be the one who gets rid of him. Besides, he and I have a score to settle.” Webber pointed to the puckered scar that ran along his jaw. “Owens gave me that.”

Jack stared at the scar for a moment, then met Webber’s eyes. “Who is he, anyway?”

“He’s one of the most dangerous men in the world,” Webber said with complete aplomb. He pointed to the hall. “After this little party is done, round up Denny and Carlton. We need to move quickly.”

Jack nodded. “I’ll let them know. Should we meet back at the hotel?”

“That’ll work.” Webber dropped his half-smoked cigarette at Jack’s feet. “One more thing.”

“Yes.”

“Tell them to bring guns.”

Two rows down and four spaces over, J.J. Sallinen crouched behind a truck. He listened to his father and the stranger talking.

Tears streamed down his face. He watched his father head back into the hall. The stranger gunned his truck and pulled out of the parking lot.