The Glory Hand (28 page)

Of course, if it had been up to him, instead of the Service, he wouldn't have chosen Len Ryan as a partner. The Russian-made Kytusha rocket whose explosion had remodeled Len's face at Khe Sanh had scarred his personality as well, making him as surly at noon as he was when Runt shook him awake for the graveyard watch at three a.m. But Len had earned his keep. He'd been the one who'd found the double lid of Colombian Gold hidden in the knothole of that enormous oak tree, the private stash of some brown-thighed camper, no doubt. A couple of hits of that stuff after taps played at Casmaran, and he and Len had slept like babies.

But Runt had kept the grass away from Len tonight. There would be no more dope for awhile - not after the way the Broyles kid had been acting the last few days. Their job had been a piece of cake when she had stayed where she was supposed to, dancing around in her leotard, or showering with her skinny friend in the bathhouse where the peepholes revealed a good shot of beaver. But since Cassie had begun wandering off alone in the woods, they'd had to tighten up. Sneaking over to that shack on the other side ol the lake - had the silly bitch gone into heat, or what? Runt couldn't figure out what the hell she saw in the Jew living
_t
|,
_e
re - any guy who could make up crap like that and call it inusic had to be a faggot.

But what if they
were
fucking their brains out? Runt had instructions to protect the Senator's kid from bodily harm. He wasn't sure if that included protecting her cherry, but he wasn't about to wait and find out. What would the Senator do if after letting his wife get knocked off, Runt let his daughter get knocked
up?
No, after losing Cassie in broad daylight near the Jew's cabin today, Runt and Len had kept their hands off the stash - and their dicks - on the chance that she'd try something again tonight.

This time they'd caught her. And now that they'd blown their cover anyway, Runt wanted to hurt her, just a little. He just wanted to see the shock on her face when she realized he had been there all along. Shock . . . and okay, yes, maybe a little fear, too.

The kid
was
shocked, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide. She had turned as white as the moon that crept, like a ghost, through the clouds.

But Runt's satisfaction died quickly, the moment it dawned that it wasn't him Cassie feared. It wasn't even Len who had scared her shitless. She was staring right past them . . .
through
them ... at something behind their backs.

Cassie gasped, helpless, like a fish hurled out of water. The wet cloth that had been clamped over her nose and mouth (it reeked of cleaning fluid? alcohol?) smothered her face, burned her eyes, blocked off her air. She gagged from the fumes, kicked and flailed with her arms and legs. But it was no use fighting it . . . she was sinking into a stupor. And as her mind began to falter, it muffled the sounds of the struggle that engulfed her.

The forest shuddered - something crashed to the ground, something enormous, as if the giant oak had been felled in a single stroke. She realized, too late, that it was the sound of

her own body falling to earth.

* * *

Runt heard Cassie whimpering.

Some-fucking-one's grabbed the kid right out from under me.

But who? Where was the son-of-a-bitch? At least after all this waiting he deserved the chance to kick the shit out of someone. But he couldn't see a thing. 'Len!' He called out blindly. The only reply was a groan from his partner that told him he would be facing the enemy alone.

I'll kill the motherfucker\

Runt spun around, but his reflexes were slower than they'd been in the swamps of Khe Sanh fifteen years ago, and Christ, the dope they'd been smoking up here must have been
killer shit.
He could hardly
move.

Grab the gun.
An instinctive reflex of hand to holster.
Go for it.

Why can't you grab the fucking gun?

Runt had felt no incision, no blade. But his hand was gone. In the pitch dark he could feel his life's blood pumping out onto the ground from his stump of a wrist, like a black stream of piss.

Where the fuck's my hand?

The sudden loss of blood . . . the sudden loss of pints of blood ... It made him light-headed, giddy, the way no Colombian Gold ever could.

Please.

please don't hurt me anymore . . .

He was only dimly aware of hurtling into the air, of crashing skyward through the branches of the Hanging Tree. He didn't hear the impact of his body, the crunch of bone against wood. He heard voices. Women's voices, laughing with the scorn of whores.

Their laughter. It was even worse than what they had done to him.

What was so funny?

What was so goddamn funny?

It was the last, feeble thought that drained through Runt's mind, before his brain switched off for good.

Chapter 24

Even before the rumble of Barbara's Chevette had faded away down the dirt driveway, Jake had heard the music rising, born at the moment the sun had died. He had rushed into the forest after it, into a darkness that had come as suddenly as the slamming of a door.

The music . . . though the melody was the same as the night before, it had an even greater hold over him. When he passed within the shadow of the Hanging Tree, he had no reason to know what terrible upheaval had just taken place there. The blood on the ground was hidden by the night, and besides, his eyes were as good as closed, his ears attuned to the subtle shifts in the music's volume, that he hoped would guide him down the right trail.

Follow it.

Groping through the forest under the cobwebbed moon, he discovered a faint path that penetrated the brambles, and hurried down it, crushing Death Angels underfoot.

The music ... he felt like a hunter in pursuit of a feline beast, an animal at once beautiful and deadly. (Deadly because it was beautiful? Or beautiful because it was deadly?) He felt like a hunter who might at any moment become the prey. Thorns pricked at his hands, his arms, and he wondered whether the wall of brambles had been planted there to stave off intruders. He plunged into them, as if they were proof of the music's power, proof that there had to be something precious beyond them, to be jealously guarded.

A glow from far down the trail, a glow too intense, too yellow to be moonlight. The yellow of a neon sign on Forty-second Street, a color both exquisite and seductive because it was corrupt. It was beyond a tall stand of pines ... a few dozen yards . . .

Instead of quickening his pace, he stopped. Two eyes stared at him, luminous and cold, like embers of the moon.

An animal, hackles raised, nostrils flared, a wolf as black as if it had been carved out of the night sky, stood squarely in the cleft between two boulders, blocking his path. Two eyes, silver and unblinking. For a moment, Jake felt as if he were looking down the barrels of two guns.

It bared its fangs and the chatter of the cicadas died. A guttural growl. And echoing it, the music took on an undertone of menace. But the darkening of the melody only increased Jake's fascination with it. He felt as though he were standing on the brink of a widening gorge, riveted by the chasm.

Does the beast hear the music? he wondered. Were its ears picking up levels, depths of sound he didn't know existed? Without taking his eyes from the animal, he bent down slowly and picked up a fallen tree branch. A snarl was welling in his throat - like the wolfs, he thought - part of a rage, a primal fury he had never felt before.

You need the music. You need it too badly to let anything stop you.
He took a step forward.
Break open its skull. . .

He drew back the club to strike, but the animal reared onto its hind legs and tore the branch out of his hand with its jaws. Crouching low, it tensed its haunches, ready to go for Jake's throat. But suddenly the posture of the wolf changed. Its hackles lowered, and its tail wilted between its legs, its growl reduced to a whimper. Meekly, it scuttled into the shadows as a woman emerged, clad in white, from among the trees.

Moonlight etched her face in a silver silhouette, a face he knew. She held out her hands to him. The music in the distance seemed to change its tone, the note of menace softening to something approaching tenderness. He didn't move - he couldn't - for fear the vision before him would prove as elusive as the music.

Sarah didn't say a word. She glided towards him, and when she was within his reach, so close he could smell the jasmine she had woven into her hair, she pulled off her gauzy shift. She was looking at him as if she were expecting something from him, as if there were something he had -something inside him - that she had to possess. And a numbing certainty washed over him: she would be disappointed.

Questions formed in his throat, rose to his mouth, but she stopped them with a cool finger on his lips. Her eyes were fierce and wild, as fierce as the wolfs eyes had been. Yet somehow the ferocity lured him closer.

Why did she want
himl

She pulled him against her, and he felt his body begin to respond. There were questions to ask her, but . . . (
Don't talk, you'll lose it if you talk.)
She was like the music in the forest that overwhelmed him without his understanding.

Suddenly he didn't care why she wanted him. He felt her flesh against his, a fine layer of down giving her skin a softness that his wife's never had. Her muscles were taut, yet supple, as Barbara's had never been. And then Barbara was forgotten, irrelevant, as Sarah pulled him gently to the ground.

He pressed his face into her hair and inhaled a perfume sweet-laden with night-blooming jasmine, the scent of tropical flowers that he was certain had never grown in the forests of Maine. And he wanted her.

What if you can't?

His mind flinched from the old fear, the humiliating failures with his wife. Then Sarah ran her fingers over his body, and he felt a new strength. When her body enfolded his, it was as if he were possessing the music, a composer merging with his symphony.

Wait.

Now that he was as close to the music as he was to her lips, a note rang false . . .

Something's terribly wrong.

Something's (Block it out. Block out the thought) wrong.

The faintest tinge of suspicion was enough to weaken him.

Don't lose it.

His fingers brushed something under her arm . . . something that shouldn't be there.

Its touch repelled him, and he opened his eyes to see it -a fleshy protusion under her left arm, the size of the first joint of his index finger. A sticky liquid oozed from it onto his hand.

Hadn't Cassie said . . .?

Cassie's friend had one.

Then he remembered the painting he'd exhumed from the ice house. The crazed women dancing . . . didn't they have those fleshy polyps under their arms too, a small detail defined by the painter with exaggerated precision, as though it were somehow terribly important? He pried himself away from her, fought to his feet.

She doesn't give a damn about you . . . She's trying to keep you from the music . . . Preying on your weakness . . . because she knows you are weak.

He glanced down the trail, but the glow had died. The music had ended. He turned and ran back towards the cabin.

As he did, he shot a look over his shoulder. In his humiliation, his rage, he was sure his sight was deceiving him: Sarah's eyes had merged with the eyes of the wolf, her body with its body, as if she and the beast were two halves of a single, cunning thing. He turned away and ran. But when he glimpsed his cabin through the trees at last, he realized that he hadn't escaped. Because he knew he would go back there. He might be weak ... he might be a coward. But tomorrow night, tomorrow night even Sarah would not be able to stop him.

Chapter 25

Someone was following her, she was sure of it. Barbara glanced furtively behind her at the sea of faces on Fifth Avenue. All of them stalking her, the entire rush-hour horde.

You're paranoid,
she repeated to herself several times, with a New Yorker's contempt for timidity.
It's only the heat breathing down your neck.
At 8:30 in the morning the sun had yet to bore through the grimy haze, but it was already so humid that her blouse clung to her body.

The tape ... the tape made you paranoid.

She clutched her Panasonic tape recorder by its shoulder strap, and glanced through the clear plastic lid to make sure that the tape was still threaded onto it.
You've got to play the tape for Otto. But if you do, he'll say you're crazy . . .

As the light changed, she barely had the strength to cross the street, and the thought shot through her mind that she might be too weak to make it to the Met. Had she eaten dinner? Had she eaten anything last night? The cup of black coffee she had gulped down before leaving her apartment felt like acid in her empty stomach, threatening her with nausea.

No, it wasn't the coffee. It was the rising sense of chaos that nauseated her. She had fought against chaos, the curator's enemy, at the Met all these years, and now it was overwhelming her, spinning everything out of control. The chaos of uncertainty and doubt, the chaos of the unknown.