False Memory Part 71

Ahriman conveyed the subject from the mind chapel up to full consciousness on the count of ten, whereupon he said, "Sorry, wrong number," and hung up.

Returning directly to his fourteenth-floor suite, the doctor was circ.u.mspect upon entering the reception lounge, lest the Keanuphobe be waiting there with a spike-heeled shoe in each hand.

Jennifer looked up from her desk, beyond the reception window, and waved perkily.

He waved but hurried to his office before she could launch into an enthusiastic harangue about the health benefits of eating five ounces of liquefied pine bark every day.

At his desk once more, he slipped the Beretta out of his holster and put it within easy reach.

He plucked a fresh bottle of black cherry soda from the office refrigerator and used it to wash down another cookie. He needed a blast of sugar.

He was in action again. He had gotten through a rocky moment or two, but the crisis had only invigorated him. Ever the optimist, he knew that another spectacular win was only hours away, and he was excited.

Now and then, people asked the doctor how he managed to keep his youthful looks, his youthful figure, and such a high energy level day after day, through a busy life. His answer was always the same: What kept him young was his sense of fun. fun.

When the phone rang, it was necessary to activate and access the subject once more: "Ed Mavole."

"I'm listening."

Following the haiku, Dr. Ahriman said, "You will go directly to a self-storage yard in Anaheim." He provided the address of the facility, the number of the unit that he had rented with false ID, and the combination of the lock on the door. "Among other things in the storage unit, you will find two Glock 18 machine pistols and several spare thirty-three-round magazines. Take one of the pistols and...four magazines ought to be enough."

Regrettably, with five rather than three people to subdue at the house in Malibu, and with only one person to subdue them instead of two, it would not be possible to take control of the residence quietly enough to be able, thereafter, to dismember all the victims and compose ironic tableaux according to the original game plan. So much gunfire would be required that police would arrive quickly and interrupt the work: Cops had a notoriously poor sense of both fun and irony.

Perhaps, however, there would be enough time to transform Derek Lampton Sr. into the object of ridicule that he deserved to be.

"Other than the pistol and the four magazines, the only items you'll take from the storage unit are an autopsy saw and a cranial blade. No, better take two blades, in case one snaps."

Attention to detail.

He described these tools to be sure no mistakes were made, and then he gave directions to Derek Lampton's place in Malibu.

"Kill everyone you find at the house." He listed the people he expected to be present. "But if there are others-visiting neighbors, a meter reader, whoever-kill them, too. Enter forcefully, moving quickly from room to room, chasing them down if they flee, and waste no time. Then before the police arrive, you will remove the top of Dr. Derek Lampton's skull with the cranial saw." He described the technique by which this could be best accomplished. "Now tell me whether or not you understand."

"I understand."

"You will remove the brain and set it aside. Repeat, please."

"Remove the brain and set it aside."

The doctor gazed wistfully at the blue bag on his desk. There was no way, on a timely basis and beyond the eyes of witnesses, to rendezvous with this programmed killer and pa.s.s along Valet's useful product. "There is something you must put in the empty skull. If the Lamptons have a dog, you might find what you need, but if not, you'll have to produce it yourself." He gave his final instructions, including a suicide directive.

"I understand."

"I've given you very important work, and I'm convinced you will perform it impeccably."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

When he hung up the phone, Ahriman wished that he had been able to program the pustulant Lampton family themselves-the insufferable Derek, his s.l.u.t of a wife, and their deranged son-and use them them as puppets. Unfortunately, they were too aware of him and were sure to regard him with suspicion; he stood little or no chance of getting close enough to them to administer the requisite drugs and to conduct three long programming sessions. as puppets. Unfortunately, they were too aware of him and were sure to regard him with suspicion; he stood little or no chance of getting close enough to them to administer the requisite drugs and to conduct three long programming sessions.

Nevertheless, he was ebullient. Triumph was within reach.

Black cherry soda. Dead fool out in Malibu. Learn to love yourself.

Perfection. The doctor raised a toast to his poetic genius.

73.

On Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard, this house would have looked like the place that was central to the American Dream, the place you crossed over the river and went through the woods to reach on a cool Thanksgiving dawn, the place where Santa Claus seemed to be real even to adults on a snowy Christmas morning, the quintessential house for the idealized grandmother. Although a perfect house-and indeed a faultless grandmother-had never existed in real life, this nation of pa.s.sionate sentimentalists believed this was the way grandmothers' houses universally ought ought to be. Slate roof with a widow's walk. Silvered cedar-s.h.i.+ngle siding. Window frames and shutters glossy with white marine-finish paint. A deep porch with white wicker rocking chairs and a bench swing, and a manicured yard with foot-high white picket fences surrounding each lush flower bed. On Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard, in a certain moment of the past, you might have found Norman Rockwell sitting at an easel in the front yard, painting two adorable children as they chased a goose with a red ribbon tied in a half-finished bow around its neck, while a happy dog frolicked in the background. to be. Slate roof with a widow's walk. Silvered cedar-s.h.i.+ngle siding. Window frames and shutters glossy with white marine-finish paint. A deep porch with white wicker rocking chairs and a bench swing, and a manicured yard with foot-high white picket fences surrounding each lush flower bed. On Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard, in a certain moment of the past, you might have found Norman Rockwell sitting at an easel in the front yard, painting two adorable children as they chased a goose with a red ribbon tied in a half-finished bow around its neck, while a happy dog frolicked in the background.

Here in Malibu, even in the middle of a coastal winter, on a low bluff above the Pacific, with steps leading down to the beach, with palm trees aplenty, the house looked misplaced. Beautiful, graceful, well designed, and well constructed, but misplaced nonetheless. If anyone's grand-mother lived herein, she would have had electric-blue fingernails, bleached-blond hair, lips sensuously recon-toured with injections of collagen, and surgically enlarged b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The house was a s.h.i.+ning fiction, harboring darker truths within, and the sight of it on this visit-only the fifth Dusty had paid since leaving almost twelve years ago, at the age of eighteen-affected him as it always had before, sending a chill through his heart rather than up his spine.

The house, of course, was not to blame. It was only a house.

Nevertheless, after he and Martie parked in the driveway, as they were ascending the front-porch steps, he said, "The Tower of Cirith Ungol."

He dared not think about their little house in Corona Del Mar. If it was really burned to the ground, as Ahriman had claimed, Dusty wasn't ready to deal with the emotional impact. A house is just a house, sure, and property is replaceable, but if you have lived well and loved in a house, if you have made good memories there, then you can't help but grieve over the loss of it.

He dared not think, either, about Skeet and Fig. If Ahriman was telling the truth, if he had killed them, both this world and Dusty's heart were darker places than they had been yesterday, and they were certain to remain darker for the rest of his life. The possible loss of his troubled but much-loved brother had left him half-numb, as he might have expected, but he was a little surprised at how profoundly disturbed he was, as well, by the thought of Fig's death; the quietly diligent painter had been peculiar indeed, but also kind and good-natured, and the hole he left in Dusty's life was the size and the shape of an odd but meaningful friends.h.i.+p.

His mother, Claudette, answered the bell, and as always Dusty was startled and disarmed by her beauty. At fifty-two, she could pa.s.s for thirty-five; and at thirty-five she'd had the power to rivet everyone in a crowded room merely by entering, a power that she no doubt would still have at eighty-five. His father, her second of four husbands, once said, "Since birth, Claudette has looked good enough to eat. Every day the world looks on her, and its mouth waters." This was so correct and so succinct that it was probably something Trevor, his father, had read somewhere rather than anything he had thought himself, and though it seemed at first crude, it was not, and it was true. Trevor hadn't been commenting on her s.e.xuality. He had meant beauty as a thing apart from s.e.xual desire, beauty as an ideal, beauty so striking that it spoke to the soul. Women and men, babies and centenarians alike, were drawn to Claudette, wanted to be near her, and deep in their eyes when they gazed at her was something like pure hope and something like rapture, but different and mysterious. The love so many brought to her was love unearned-and unreciprocated. Her eyes were similar to Dusty's, gray-blue, but with less blue than his; and in them he had never seen what any son longs to see in his mother's eyes, nor had he ever seen a reason to believe that she wanted or would accept the love that-more as a boy than now, but still now-he would have lavished on her.

"Sherwood," she said, offering neither a kiss nor a welcoming hand, "do all young people come unannounced these days?"

"Mother, you know my name's not Sherwood-"

"Sherwood Penn Rhodes. It's on your birth certificate."

"You know perfectly well that I had it legally changed-"

"Yes, when you were eighteen, rebellious, and even more foolish than you are now," she said.

"Dusty is what all my friends called me since I was a kid."

"Your friends were always the cla.s.s losers, Sherwood. You've always a.s.sociated with the wrong type, so routinely it almost seems willful. Dustin Dustin Rhodes. What were you thinking? How could we keep a straight face, introducing you to cultured people as Dusty Rhodes?" Rhodes. What were you thinking? How could we keep a straight face, introducing you to cultured people as Dusty Rhodes?"

"That's exactly exactly what I was thinking." what I was thinking."

"h.e.l.lo, Claudette," Martie said, having been ignored thus far.

"Dear," Claudette said, "please use your good influence with the boy and insist he revert to a grown-up name."

Martie smiled. "I like Dusty-the name and the boy."

"Martine," Claudette said. "That's a real person's name, dear."

"I like people to call me Martie."

"I know, yes. How unfortunate. You're not setting a very good example for Sherwood."

"Dustin," Dusty insisted.

"Not in my house," Claudette demurred.

Always, upon arrival here, no matter how much time had pa.s.sed since his previous visit, Dusty was greeted in this distant fas.h.i.+on, not routinely with a debate about his name, sometimes with lengthy comments on his blue-collar dress or his unstylish haircut, or with probing queries about whether he had yet pursued "real" work or was still painting houses. Once, she kept him on the porch, discussing the political crisis in China, for at least five minutes, though it had seemed like an hour. She always eventually invited him inside, but he was never sure that she would let him cross the threshold.

Skeet had once been enormously excited when he'd seen a movie about angels, with Nicholas Cage starring as one of the winged. The premise of the film was that guardian angels aren't permitted to know romantic love or other strong feelings; they must remain strictly intellectual beings in order to serve humanity without becoming too emotionally involved. To Skeet, this explained their mother, whose beauty even the angels might envy, but who could be cooler than a pitcher of unsweetened lemonade in midsummer.

Finally, having extracted whatever psychic toll she sought from these delays, Claudette stepped back, inviting them in without word or gesture. "One son shows up with a...guest at almost midnight, the other with a wife, and neither calls first. I know both took cla.s.ses in manners and deportment, but apparently the money was wasted."

Dusty a.s.sumed that the other son was Junior, who was fifteen and lived here, but when he and Martie stepped past Claudette, Skeet bounded down the stairs to greet them. He appeared to be paler than when they had last seen him, thinner as well, with darker circles under his eyes, but he was alive.

When Dusty hugged him, Skeet said, "Ouch, ouch, ouch," and then said it again when he hugged Martie.

Astonished, Dusty said, "We thought you were-"

"We were told," Martie said, "that you were-"

Before either of them could finish the thought, Skeet hiked up his pullover and his unders.h.i.+rt, eliciting a wince of distaste from his mother, and displayed his bare torso. "Bullet wounds!" he announced with amazement and a curious pride.

Four wicked bruises with ugly dark centers and overlapping aureoles marked his wasted chest and stomach.

Relieved to see Skeet alive, joyous, but puzzled, Dusty said, "Bullet wounds?"

"Well," Skeet amended, "they would have been bullet wounds if me and Fig-"

"Fig and I," his mother corrected.

"Yeah, if Fig and I hadn't been wearing Kevlar vests."

Dusty felt the need to sit down. Martie was shaky, too. But they had come here with a sense of urgency, and it might be a mortal mistake to lose it now. "What were you doing in Kevlar vests?"

"Good thing you didn't want them for New Mexico," said Skeet. "Me and Fig-" A quick, guilty glance at his mother. "Fig and I figured we might as well make ourselves useful, so we decided to tail Dr. Ahriman."

"You what what?"

"We followed him in Fig's truck-"

"Which I made them park in the garage," said Claudette. "I do not wish that vehicle to be seen in my driveway."

"It's a cool truck," Skeet said. "Anyway, we put on vests just to be safe, and we followed him, and somehow he turned the tables on us. We thought we lost him, and we were out on the beach, trying to make contact with one of the mother s.h.i.+ps, and he just walked up and shot us both four times."

"Good G.o.d," Martie said.

Dusty was trembling, overcome by more emotions then he could name or sort out. Nevertheless, he noticed that Skeet's eyes were brighter and clearer than they had been since that celebratory day, over fifteen years ago, when the two of them had packaged a box of dog droppings and mailed it off to Holden Caulfield, the elder, after Claudette had thrown him out in favor of Derek.

"He was wearing a ski mask, so we couldn't positively identify him to the police. We didn't even go to the police. Didn't seem like we'd get anywhere with them. But we knew it was him, all right. He didn't fool us." Skeet was beaming, as if they had pulled one over on the psychiatrist. "He shoots Fig twice, then me four times, and it's like being slammed in the gut with a hammer, knocks all the breath out of me, and I'm almost unconscious, too, and I want to suck air, but I don't because even with the wind howling, he might hear me and know I'm not really dead. Fig's playing dead, too. So then before he turns back to Fig and shoots him two more times, the guy says to me, 'Your mother's a wh.o.r.e, and your father's a fraud, and your stepfather-he's got s.h.i.+t for brains.'"

Icily, Claudette said, "I've never even met this purveyor of pop-psych drivel."

"Then both me and Fig, Fig and I, we knew Ahriman went away in a hurry, but we laid there, 'cause we were scared. And for a while we couldn't couldn't move. Like we were stunned. You know? And then when we could move, we came here to find out why he thinks Mother's a wh.o.r.e." move. Like we were stunned. You know? And then when we could move, we came here to find out why he thinks Mother's a wh.o.r.e."

"Have you been to a hospital?" Martie worried.

"Nah, I'm fine," Skeet said, finally lowering his sweater.

"You could have a cracked rib, internal injuries."

"I've made the same argument," Claudette said, "to no avail. You know what Holden's like, Sherwood. He's always had more enthusiasm than common sense."

"It's still a good idea to go to a hospital, be examined while the injuries are visible," Dusty advised Skeet. "That's admissible evidence if we're ever able to get this s.h.i.+thead into court."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Claudette admonished, "or sonofab.i.t.c.h sonofab.i.t.c.h. Either is adequate, Sherwood. Pointless vulgarities don't impress me. If you think s.h.i.+thead s.h.i.+thead will shock me, better think again. But in this house we've never thought William Burroughs is literature, and we're not going to start thinking so now." will shock me, better think again. But in this house we've never thought William Burroughs is literature, and we're not going to start thinking so now."

"I love your mother," Martie told Dusty.

Claudette's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

"How was New Mexico?" Skeet asked.

"A land of enchantment," Dusty said.

At the end of the hall, the swinging door to the kitchen swung, and through it came Derek Lampton. He approached with his shoulders back, spine ramrod-straight, chest out, and although his bearing was military, he nevertheless seemed to slink toward them.

Skeet and Dusty had secretly called him Lizard virtually from the day he arrived, but Lampton was more accurately a mink of a man, compact and sleek and sinuous, hair as thick and s.h.i.+ny as fur, with the quick, black, watchful eyes of something that would raid a chicken coop the moment the farmer's back was turned. His hands, neither of which he offered to Dusty or Martie, featured slender fingers with wider than normal webbing and with slightly pointy nails, like clever paws. The mink is a member of the weasel family.

"Has someone died and are we having a reading of the will?" Lampton asked, which was his idea of humor and the closest thing to a greeting he would ever offer.

He looked Martie up and down, his attention lingering on the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against her sweater, as he always forthrightly examined attractive women. When at last he met her eyes, he bared his small, sharp, white-white teeth. This pa.s.sed for his smile-and perhaps even for what he believed to be a seductive seductive smile. smile.

"Sherwood and Martine actually were in New Mexico," Claudette told her husband.

"Really?" Lampton said, raising his eyebrows.

"I told you," Skeet said.

"That's true," Lampton confirmed, addressing Dusty rather than Skeet. "He told us, but with such flamboyant detail, we a.s.sumed that it was less reality than just one of his dissociative fantasies."

"I don't have dissociative fantasies," Skeet objected, managing to put some iron in his voice, although he couldn't meet Lampton's eyes-and instead stared at the floor when he raised his objection.

"Now, Holden, don't be defensive," Lampton soothed. "I'm not judging you when I mention your dissociative fantasies, any more than I would be judging Dusty if I were to mention his pathological aversion to authority."