Book of Secrets (17 page)

  "UPS came early," he announced, dropping the package in my hands. He smiled broadly and folded in the bread.

  "Um…thanks," I managed, and then turned back inside. Absently waving Royce to follow, I padded on bare feet across the dusty wooden floors to the dining room and dropped down into a chair. Tearing the wrapping from the package in a long strip, I came up with a VHS cassette tape. "Oh yeah," I said, finally remembering what I was supposed to expect. With a groan and accompanying creaks, I pried myself off the chair and went looking for the VCR, left to gather dust in a closet after I'd bought the DVD player. Once I'd wired up the VCR and popped in the tape, it whirred unhappily and then sprang to life. Punching on the television, I fell back onto the chair.

  Time codes scrawled across the screen, and then a header that announced the last Barbara Walters Interview Special, Tape 7832. Royce found a chair on the opposite side of the table and settled in, finishing off the bread. He fingered his cross and circle necklace while he chewed.

  "You join some kind of tape club, Spencer?" he asked. "I thought everybody'd switched over to DVD."

  "Nah," I answered, "just a bit of research."

  "Oh."

  That out of the way, we leaned back and watched the tape. It was the standard Barbara fare, nice shots of her and the interviewees walking slowly through English gardens, accompanied by faithful dogs, standing by water, skipping stones, all while her commentary rattled over the top like an aluminum roof in a hail storm. I recognized Pierce right away from the casual swagger of his walk and the insincere shit-eating grin that split his wrinkled face. Then the scene cut indoors to a quick tour of Pierce's Houston mansion while they talked. If you've seen one billionaire's private fortress, you've seen them all. Last came the actual interview, a two camera setup with Barbara and Pierce facing each other at an angle in matching Louis Quatorze, Pierce shifting uncomfortably back and forth in his chair. They were in his study.

  Seeing the bookcases lining the walls, the rare prints, the sculptures, I felt for sure I'd seen that room before. It was to the first commercial break before I had it. It had that same crowded look as my grandfather's study, except you could tell that Pierce didn't
live
in his, and kept it mainly for show.

  It was a few minutes after the commercial break that I noticed something over Pierce's shoulder and scrambled for the remote. I punched the rewind button and ran the tape back to the Pierce Mansion Tour.

  "What?" Royce asked, leaning forward, still rubbing his necklace. "What did I miss?"

"I'm not sure yet," I answered. "Watch."

  The tape had almost run back to skipping stones by the pond, so I hit play and let it resume normally. Again the cut to the interior of the Mansion, again the tour. Through the main hallway, the dining room, the den, and into the study. Once in the study, Pierce leads Barbara around the room, pointing out the masterpieces. An original Degas, a sword worn by Napoleon, an original edition of Gibbon's
Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
. On and on. Then it happened. I hit the pause button.

  "There!" I shouted, jabbing the remote at the screen. "See that?"

  "See what?" Royce asked.

  "Motherfucker has pointed out every knickknack in the room that Barbara deigns to stop by, and look what he does here."

  The two figures flickered on the screen, noise lines drifting like snow flurries all around them. Barbara stood to the left of the frame, her elbow at a glass case containing a large antique book propped up on a pedestal. Pierce stood to the right, his eyes darting briefly to the case. I hit the play button.

  Barbara half opens her mouth, as though to speak, and begins moving her arm to point in the direction of the open book. Pierce's eyes widen, and his right hand shoots out and grabs Barbara above her elbow. He then points with his free hand to a portrait hanging above the mantle, and courteously drags her over to stand beneath it. The camera follows, and the book and the case disappear from view.

  "That's the kazoo in the cracker jacks," I said, hitting the stop button. "That's the lucky prize."

  Royce was thoroughly baffled, and looked like he was beginning to feel made fun of. I waved him off, telling him there was more honey in the kitchen. Without a word of complaint, he was out of the room and rummaging through the cabinets. I sat at the table, my chin resting in my hand, and watched the sequence through again, muted. It all seemed too easy to chart.

  Pierce had this thing he didn't want anyone to see, or that someone didn't want him to show. He neglects to keep it out of sight when the camera people show, and panics when it catches the great Barbara's eye. He fakes her away from it, but knows it was in the shot. Then, through the interview, he keeps trying to position himself between the book and the camera, but by then it's too late. He knows he can't ask the crew not to shoot the book, can't ask them to edit it out, or they would immediately get suspicious. Two weeks later the show airs, the book in plain view, and someone, somewhere, notices. A few days later, it gets stolen.

  I paused the tape a few dozen times and still couldn't get a better look at the book. But that someone, sitting somewhere, had gotten a good enough look. And then Marconi had gotten a call. 

* * *

Royce had some more errands to run before heading into work, so he made his goodbyes, the last of the honey glistening on his chin. I turned off the television and stripped off my shirt, heading for the shower. At the last instant an unexpected panic washed over me, and I locked and double-bolted the front door before continuing to the bathroom.

  I stood under the water for long minutes, just letting it wash over me. I had been running pretty much nonstop for the past few days on little food and even less rest, and the water felt as though it was pouring new life into me. I was waterlogged and pruned before I finally shut off the tap, but stepping out I felt revived, and a bit more ready to meet what the day would bring. Two phone calls and a bald monk with a videotape; whatever else came would have to be an anticlimax.

  I briefly considered stopping in at the offices of Logion before leaving town, but thought better of it. I had very little to show for my time except vague notions and unanswered questions, and given the growing tab for my endeavors I thought it best to wait to make my big entrance. Shaking the wrinkles out of my suit, I dressed and then stomped into my boots. I dropped a fresh pack of cigarettes into a pocket and took the time to gas up my Zippo. Then I shoved a couple of clean shirts and a pair of sundries into a suitcase and stood in the middle of the living room, trying to remember what I was forgetting. My eyes fell on the cardboard box laying near the couch, half open, the contents just peeking out.

  I hadn't expected to get any farther into my grandfather's stuff than that first magazine, but now my curiosity was beginning to mount. The never ending series of Taylors, the continuous mentions of one "Black Hand" or another… either it was all an elaborate hoax of the old man's, or else there was a long history of insanity here. In my own family? Or just some other crazy bastards who just happen to be named Taylor? Had my grandfather arranged to have the Black Hand Mysteries written in the forties just to add his name to this list of lunatics? Or was that what started him on the path in the first place, some unlikely and unlucky coincidence?

  Whatever the answer, the question had worked its way into my overtaxed brain, and I realized I wouldn't be content until I had the answer. Fishing around in the kitchen drawers, I came up with a roll of packing tape. I sealed up the box, and then put it next to the door by the suitcase. I figured I would regret having to carry it around on the trip, but knew I couldn't help myself. The key to my grandfather's obsession with all that nonsense was in the box somewhere, and the sooner I found it the better.

The morning light was thin and feeble as I walked out the front door onto the porch, the suitcase under one arm, the cardboard box under the other. I locked the door awkwardly, the box balanced on my hip, and then stepped off onto the lawn. The grass was high and dry, the last colors of summer fading, and my boots disappeared from view with every step. I was reminded of my brother, and of the field near our grandfather's house, and I shivered like I always do.

  After dumping the case and box into the trunk, I sat in the driver's seat, trying to figure out how to kill the next three hours. Royce was off at work, and even if he wasn't I think I'd had about enough of his good-natured company as I could stand for one week. Michelle was working on the translation, probably at that very moment, and wasn't much for conversation with a project before her. Amador was holed up in a dark basement somewhere in Houston, spinning his electronic webs through the ether, and my brother was off in parts unknown, doing whatever it was he does these days. Janet had left town months before, doing some kind of Korean walkabout, and everyone else either thought I owed them money or thought they owed me money, and either way it made things strained.

  So I sat there in the car, in the dim light of an autumn Thursday morning, nowhere to go and nothing to do, with two mysteries circling like starving dogs in my thoughts. One old man's stolen property, another old man's senile obsessions. I lit a cigarette and started to drive.

  I meandered for a while, then moseyed, and ended by just tooling around. The stop and go of the traffic, the electric mantra of red-green-yellow, the slight squeal of my brakes as I stepped on the pedal, all had a soothing effect. I concentrated on the simple task of driving and tried to close my mind off to unanswered question. When I finally pulled to a stop, I was in front of the airport. I still had two hours until boarding time.

  Fuck it, I thought. I need a drink.

  I was beginning to think I had a problem, then realized that the magazine was still picking up all my bills, so maybe it wasn't such a problem after all. I lugged the chains I forged in life into the airport and through security and, once in the bar glowing with tasteless neon and "local color", dropped them under the table at my feet. I ordered up a screwdriver, then another for good measure, and settled back to watch the television, the volume turned low, trying to pick out the whispered confessions of the people on the daytime talk shows.

  By the time I got on the plane, all the questions were answered. The women who love too much and the men who wear their underwear had cleared it all up for me, and I hoped to enjoy the flight in peace.

On the plane I dreamt, and in the dream I was on a plane. I sat on a big, wide first class seat, the leather smooth under my hand. In the seat next to me sat a man dressed all in gray, with a silvertopped cane in his hands. On his lapel was a silver pin of a rising sun. The pin caught my eye, and I had the distracted notion that it was actually the setting sun. Then the man spoke, and I lost track.

  "I wonder if I might borrow that?" the man spoke, pointing with the head of his cane towards my lap.

  "What?" I said, my eyes never leaving his. They were cold, gray, like tiny cannonballs frozen in ice.

  "Your magazine," he answered.

  Then I broke from his gaze and looked at my lap. There, resting across my knees, was an enormous leather-bound book, locked with a heavy metal clasp. On the cover was a silver disk. As I looked at it the silver disk began to change, and I realized it was the necklace Royce wore. I wondered where I'd seen it before.

  "Can I have that when you're through?" asked a woman's voice.

  I looked up and sitting opposite us was a woman and another man, both dressed in the same shade of gray. Both had the sun pin on their clothes, though these two also wore nametags. "HELLO MY NAME IS SAMEDI" and "I'M SALOME".

  "I… I'm not finished with it," I answered.

  Then the flight attendant came up and took our drink orders. She leaned over the gray man sitting next to me and asked if I wanted a drink. Then I saw that she had a gun in her hand, pointed at my heart. I realized that she wasn't a flight attendant at all, but a robber, and wondered why I hadn't noticed the mask.

  When I woke up, we were halfway over New Mexico. I felt fuzzy, wrapped in gauze, and the cardboard box in my lap was behaving entirely inappropriately. I managed to swallow twice and then blinked hard, trying to remember where I was. Involuntarily I glanced to my right, worried I would see the gray suit and the silver cane. Instead there was an unlikely looking man in a golf-shirt and sans-a-belt slacks, reading an in-flight magazine. I worked the box off my lap and onto the ground before I lost all respect for it, and then closed my eyes again. When the flight attendant came around to offer me a pillow, I checked twice to make sure she wasn't armed before shaking my head no.

It'd been a while since I had been in Vegas, and stepping off the plane I was reminded why. Each time I came back it was a little less the town I remembered, and a little more Disney. It was getting to the point where, aside from the neon and a couple of street names, it could have been a different city entirely. Kid friendly and family safe, but the kind of place where Dean Martin wouldn't have even stopped for gas.

  Lugging my bag and the box through the airport concourse, maneuvering past the middle-aged housewives taking one last turn at the one-armed bandits before giving up and heading back to Kenosha, I found the rental car kiosks and arranged for transportation. I thought for a second that the girl behind the counter was interested, but then I joked about buying the insurance so I could run down children and old folks with impunity and that was over. She blanched, not getting the joke, and I decided to leave well enough alone.

  Maybe it was too little sleep, or the weird dreams I'd been having the past couple of days, but I felt disconnected as I started up the car and turned out to the main strip. Like watching a pretty boring movie of my life, I was running on remote control.