All the Devil's Creatures (24 page)

So despite the time-crunch the facility’s imminent destruction caused him, the Prince felt the demise of Moth Wing in its present form could make easier his task of taking that technology for his own. No more cumbersome Group to run herd on, to use the Dame’s parlance.
And I’ll use the technology not for the Doctor’s evil designs but for good. He suppressed a smile with a slender hand to the lips, smelling the tobacco residue from his last cigarette. Well, my good at least.

He did not fear that his single-minded associates had discovered his back-dealings with Waltz and Solis. At bottom, they were only in this for personal gain.
And you will be sated
, he thought, feeling the briefcase with his feet.

Nor did he worry about the Doctor himself, brilliant as the old man still was. He knew that his own father, as mufti of Damascus, had been the only one the Doctor ever trusted in full, the only one who had shared the Fuhrer’s ear.
The old fool sees him in me, a fellow true-believer in the madman’s impossible dream.

Had the Doctor seemed overly sanguine about the destruction of his life’s work? The Prince chalked it up to the wisdom and perspective that came with age. He had brushed aside the Doctor’s final exhortation as symptomatic of megalomania that seemed to infect all Nazi true-believers. The Doctor had giggled as he said,
Don’t fear, young prince; our work will come to fruition. Because an old man owes me a debt. And his boy—his marvelous, beautiful little boy.

An old man and his boy. Gibberish, certainly. Perhaps the Doctor’s age had begun to affect his mind after all.

•

Addressing the Group, the Prince continued, “The Doctor is nervous and protective with age. And he has grown single minded. As if light bulbs in his mind have gone dark one by one, illuminating no context.”

He locked his eyes on the Congressman, making no attempt to mask his disgust. He had learned what he needed from the fool.

“You need to leave us now,” the Prince said. “We have more to discuss … in private, you understand.”

Duchamp reddened, but the Prince did not flinch from his rage. He nodded to the rough Rhodesian, who stood. The Oilman and the Patrician joined him. The three ushered Duchamp out, the Rhodesian at his back. The Prince watched the Patrician, Duchamp’s oldest friend; he thought he saw some sadness in those eyes, but he was pleased to see no love.

The Congressman gone, the Dame said, “So the products—the clones—those remaining at the site? They’ll be lost?”

“Many will be, yes,” the Prince said.

“Our clients …”

“They cannot bemoan the loss of something they never understood.”

The Oilman and the Patrician exchanged a glance.

Then the Patrician said, “I believe I understand. The deliveries will not be made. But our clients knew very few details of Moth Wing. It will seem to them as if they were jilted by a fly-by-night company.”

The old woman nodded. “A company that promised them something like immortality.” She chuckled and the chuckle turned into a cough but the cough sounded fake. Like a child trying to convince his mother, or himself, he was too sick for school. “They should have known better.”

“In any event, the facility will be dismantled,” the Prince said, patting the Dame’s claw-like hand. “Our Group will disperse for now. You all know the protocols. But rest assured—the Doctor’s work will continue, in some form. And so perhaps we’ll all meet again, called back into service.”

He wheeled the briefcase, a package the Doctor had sent to him for this purpose, away conference table. “In the meantime, I have brought you a token of the Doctor’s appreciation.”

The four of them—Dame, Oilman, Patrician, Rhodesian—gathered around the table as he released the latch. He raised the lid. Inside, a stack of gold bars gleamed, each stamped with a serial number and a swastika.

The Oilman took a half-step back. “Good God, Nazi gold.”

The Patrician winced in disgust, but the old woman laughed. “The ol’ doc still has his cajones, I’ll give him that.”

The Prince said, “From his personal stash, which he smuggled himself sixty years ago. Please, divide it amongst yourselves. For the old man. You can do with it as you will.”

The Rhodesian took his first. But the Patrician hesitated. “Are we really done here? What about the Congressman—the leak? Are we certain it’s in fact been plugged? That none of the clones from will survive the facility’s destruction—aren’t still floating around out there in the hands of some environmental scientist?”

“I think the Congressman took care of that,” the Oilman said. “Pretty damn confident, in fact. He’s an idiot, but I believe what he said about his man recovering the clone. My bigger fear is that he himself will be compromised—”

“Because we’ve cut him out,” the Patrician said. “What incentive does he have to remain loyal? To remain silent? We should have …”

The Patrician cut himself short and closed his eyes in a wince. The Prince thought,
Is he fighting back tears?

He raised his hands and patted the air in a calming gesture. “The Doctor is of course aware of that one remaining liability, and he’s asked me to take care of it. But it’s not a major risk—would even the Congressman be so foolish to go public? And who would believe such a fantastic tale from a disgraced politician?

“In any event, we must first allow him to retrieve the clone. We’ll keep an eye on him, let him cool off, lower his guard. Then, hire someone through back channels to … clean up.”

“Oh, stop all this hemming and hawing,” The Dame said, turning her hard gaze from Prince to Patrician. “He’s my kin; I’ll kill him.”

O
ver beers, Geoff and Marisol relayed their escape from New Orleans.

Tony said, “And the creep that was after you guys—he fucking got
away
? What the hell?”

“That bar was chaos,” Geoff said. “He slipped through the crowd and down the street and, I’m guessing, to our poor rental car.”

“And the cops are still treating the shooting as gang related. Though they did impound the shooter’s truck, and my contacts in the department and working on any connections.”

Touching a finger to his bandaged head, Geoff leaned back on the cheap couch across from Tony and Marisol and peered through his dark beer at the candle flame on the table before them. Though it brought him some peace to be here at his neighborhood dive, he could not relax.

He said, “T-Jacques has cut us off. He lied to the cop on the scene, told him I was crazy, that it was a gangbanger who fired the shots. I don’t know if he’s scared or mad or what. He is a bit nuts, that’s for sure. Said he would achieve his own kind of justice, or something.” He rubbed his face and touched his bandage again—the graze had left a slight dent in his skull. It would be there forever. “But we do have some information now linking Duchamp to this whole mess.”

Tony squinted through his smoke. “Yeah?”

“The black pickup is registered to Jimmy Lee Monroe. I got a call this morning from the deputy working Dalia’s murder saying that Monroe works for Duchamp.”

Marisol said, “Still, it’s a bit of a stretch. Who says Duchamp knows what Monroe’s up to? And this kid deputy says he got his info on Monroe from this guy who runs a roadhouse. Only when he went back to the place the next day, the guy denies everything—says the kid must have been drunk and hallucinating.”

“Wait, is this the same racist motherfucker deputy that’s been all over the news? Jeeze Louise, guys.”

“We met him at Willie’s—I don’t think he’s a racist, really; I think he just slipped up,” Geoff said. “Anyway, I’ll bet the honky-tonk owner is operating on the principle of plausible deniability. I can feel Duchamp all over this deal, and you could to, Marisol.”

“What about the sheriff and the DA out there?”

“They’re not biting. I seemed to have his ear when I first told him about Eileen’s murder, but now …. You’ve seen the TV—they’re getting burned in effigy. And I gather race relations were getting pretty frayed out there before they arrested those twins. Now they’ve got their suspects and the DNA evidence to put them away with. Their just ready to make this thing go away.”

“Don’t blame them.” Marisol shifted in her seat and winced. Tony said, “How’s that knee?”

“Better. Just a bad bruise.”

Geoff said, “I’m really sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. You were right—I shouldn’t have gone alone. Besides—” She gestured to his head. “You took the worst of it.”

Geoff smiled at her, but she only half-smiled back, then looked away. They had never discussed their night in New Orleans, and, with the days that had passed and the intervening events, it had begun to seem like a dream. He sipped his beer in the silence.

Tony said, “So any clue where this Monroe mope might be?”

“Don’t know,” Marisol said. “I think I cut him pretty good, so I have calls in to all the area hospitals. And we reported the rental car stolen. But we’ve heard nothing on either of those fronts.” She paused and pursed her lips and looked into her white wine.

Geoff said, “What is it?”

“That thing I held—that Eileen had in her pod. It looked like a human embryo or fetus or whatever—but different. Misshapen. The head was all wrong … I don’t trust a word the so-called Prince told us. But whatever’s going on at that refinery, it’s bad. Evil even. The women that took me in—they talked about dark days. Or something.”

She shook her head and Geoff thought she looked frightened for a moment. Then she looked down at the table, her long hair hiding her face.

“You sound like T-Jacques,” he said, and she jerked her head up to give him a sharp look. “Don’t get me wrong, I believe you saw what you saw. Maybe we’ve stumbled onto some kind of illicit bio-weapons facility. But whatever it is, it’s about science. Rogue science, Nazi science, maybe. But science. I don’t truck in eschatology.”

Geoff paused, considered. “But I am starting to think we can link Duchamp to this mess. The deputy seems to think he knows where we can get some hard evidence, but it would involve searching Duchamp’s house. And I don’t see a judge granting a warrant with what we’ve got so far, even if we could get the cops to get involved.”

Tony laughed and almost did a spit take with his Scotch. “Fuck the cops. You’re still a bit of a naïf, aren’t you Geoffy? You’re going to have to get to Duchamp’s house on your own. And you happen to be in luck, because I got an invitation.”

“What are you talking about?”

Tony flipped his chubby wrist and stuck his nose up. He looked like the world’s biggest ten-year-old trying to be fancy. He said, “As an esteemed member of the criminal bar, who has represented some of ex-Congressman Duchamp’s less seemly political allies over the years, yours truly has been invited to a shindig at the Duchamp manse this coming Saturday.”

Geoff looked at Marisol and then back at Tony. “And you’re going? So you’ll, what, snoop around for us?”

“Hell no, I’m not going. I don’t do that black tie bullshit.” He squinted at Marisol through his cigarette smoke. “But I think I know a way to get you in, Mari-girl.”

B
obby watched as a papier-mâché approximation himself paraded through the streets around the courthouse square holding a Confederate battle flag. The dummy followed a likeness of Seastrunk, decked out in exaggerated Ku Klux Klan regalia. The people followed the likenesses to the sounds of bongo drums and air horns. He wondered whether, when they burned him in effigy like some third world despot, he would feel the flames deep in his psyche, a dark chill as when a traveler steps across one’s grave.

He had a good view of the temporary stage through the windshield of his cruiser parked near the courthouse annex. He sipped his coke.

The preacher sat on the stage—an old man. Great man. Hero of another era. He eyed the guitar player, a white boy out of Austin, who belted out a song of death and imprisonment and redemption. Harsher lyrics now, a harsher voice. As if even for the white kids with their pseudo-dreadlocks and hemp clothes, this outing was no longer a retro costume trip.

No sign of Duchamp this time. The Reverend took the microphone.

“Brothers and sisters. The town bleeds. The town needs. Justice we seek and justice we shall find. But just as we have been rent asunder by hate, so too shall we be bound together in love. For our outrage is not the blind hatred that burns in the charred hearts of the racist murderers. Ours is the noble, sacred outrage of our Lord Jesus Christ at the Pharisees and the moneylenders and all who would defy His word. An outrage born of love.

“Brothers and sisters, I have spoken with the political leaders in this town. The murderers remain behind bars. The criminal justice system shall run its course, and the prosecutors shall seek a punishment befitting the horrendous crime. That is their word to me. And we shall give them an opportunity to make good on their word. But let no man doubt this: the murderers shall receive their just deserts, in this life and the next, by whatever means necessary.”

Cheers, drums, horns. Bobby knew the old man had the power to lead the crowd in riot. But he stopped short, restrained, letting the threat hang in the warm East Texas sunshine. And Bobby almost dropped his coke at what the Reverend did next.

“Brothers and sisters. I introduce to you a good man. A soldier of justice in whom I have come to believe we can put our faith and trust.”

Sheriff Seastrunk mounted the stage from behind, where he had been waiting out of sight. Two old men on the stage. Veteran of the same old battles. He stepped to the microphone amid a few scattered jeers but mostly rapt and seething silence. A silence thick and palpable that awaited an excuse to break in one direction or another. He spoke clear and loud and his twangy drawl did not sound discordant in that place, in that borderland country that stood on the threshold of the vast and free and open West but turned back on itself into the shadows of the Dixie pines.

The sheriff spoke, and the words he spoke brought forth cheers so loud that Bobby jerked his ahead around inside his car, as if the crowd had merged into a single amoebic organism that swelled and threatened to crush him.