Coldheart Canyon (65 page)

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It wasn’t difficult for Todd to find Eppstadt. Unlike his first visit to this little corner of Hell, when his eyes had taken some time to become used to the elaborate fiction that the tiles were creating for him, this time everything was warmed up and ready to go. He looked through the door and there it was, in all its glory, from the spectacle of the eclipse overhead to a single serrated blade of grass bent beneath the toe of his shoe, along which a little black beetle was making its way.

And standing in the midst of all this, looking as appropriate as a hard-on in the Vatican, was Eppstadt. He’d obviously had some problems while he was here. The man who’d been several times cited as the “best-dressed man in Los Angeles” was looking in need of a tailor. His shirt was torn and severely stained with what looked like blood, his face was covered in sweat, and his hair—which he obsessively combed over the bald patch (where the hair plugs hadn’t taken)—had fallen forward, exposing an area of shiny pink scalp, and giving him a ridiculous fringe.

“
You!
” he said, pointing directly at Todd. “You fucking lunatic! You did this deliberately! And now people are dead, Pickett. Real people. Dead because of your stupid games.”

“Hey, hey, slow down. Who’s dead?”

“Oh, as if you give a damn! You trick us all into following you into this . . . this . . .
obscenity
. . .”

Todd looked around as Eppstadt ranted. Obscenity? He saw no obscenity. Given the shortness of his acquaintance with this place he had cer-

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tainly felt a lot of different things about it. He’d been enchanted here, he’d been so terrified that he’d thought his heart would burst, he’d been absurdly aroused and as close to death as he ever wanted to get. But obscene? No. The Devil’s Country was simply the ultimate E-Ticket Ride.

“If you don’t like it,” he said to Eppstadt, “why the hell did you come in here?”

“To help Joe. And now he’s dead.”

“What happened to him?”

Eppstadt glanced over his shoulder, dropping his voice to a whisper.

“There’s a child around here. Only it’s not a child. He’s a goat.”

“So he’s the Devil’s kid?”

“Don’t start with that Devil shit. I never made one of those movies—”

“This isn’t a movie, Eppstadt.”

“No, you’re quite right. It isn’t a movie. It’s a fucking—”

“Obscenity. Yeah, so you said.”

“How can you be so casual?” Eppstadt said, taking a stride toward Todd. “I just saw somebody sliced to death.”

“What?”

“The goat-boy did it. Just opened up Joe’s throat. And it’s your fault.”

Eppstadt’s stride had picked up speed. He was getting ready to do something stupid, Todd sensed; his terror had become a capacity for violence. And even though there’d been times (that lunch, that long-ago lunch, over rare tuna) when Todd had wanted to beat the crap out of Eppstadt, this was neither the time nor the place.

“You want to see what you caused?” Eppstadt said.

“Not particularly.”

“Well you’re going to.”

He caught hold of the front of Todd’s T-shirt.

“Let go of me, Eppstadt.”

Eppstadt ignored him. He just turned and hauled Todd after him, the volatile mixture of his fear and rage making him impossible to resist.

Todd didn’t even try. Katya had given him a lesson in how to behave here.

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something about the way the wind seemed to be blowing from all quarters at once, something about the way the grass seethed at his feet and the trees churned like thunderheads—he thought it wasn’t just Eppstadt who was in a state of agitation. This whole painted world was stirred up.

By now the hunters’ dogs probably had their scent, and the Duke was on his way.

“Just chill,” Todd said to Eppstadt. “I’m not going to fight you. If you want me to see something then I’ll come look. Just stop pulling on me, will you?”

Eppstadt let him go. His lower lip was quivering, as though he was about to burst into tears, which for Todd’s money was worth the price of admission.

“You follow me,” Eppstadt said. “I’ll show you something.”

“Keep your voice down. There are people around here you don’t want to have coming after you.”

“I met one of them already,” Eppstadt said, walking on toward a small group of trees. “And I never want to see anything like it again.”

“So let’s get out of here.”

“No. I want you to see. I want you to take full responsibility for what happened here.”

“I didn’t make this place,” Todd said.

“But you knew it was here. You and your little lover. I’m putting the picture together now. Don’t worry. I’ve got it all.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

Eppstadt was searching the ground now, his step more cautious, as though he was afraid of treading on something.

“What are you looking for?”

He glanced back at Todd. “Joe,” he said. And then, returning his gaze to the ground, he pointed. “There,” he said.

“What?”

“There. Go look.
Go on
.”

“Who was he?” Todd said, staring down at the maimed body in the dirt, its throat gaping.

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“His name was Joe Something-or-Other, and he was a waiter at Maxine’s party. That’s all I know.”

“And the goat-kid did this to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Why, for Christ’s sake?”

“Amusement would be my closest guess.”

Todd passed a clammy hand over his face. “Okay. I’ve see him now. Can we get the hell out of here and find Maxine?”

“Maxine?”

“Yeah. She went outside with Sawyer—”

“I know.”

“And now Sawyer’s dead.”

“Christ. We’re being picked off like flies. Who killed him?”

“Some . . . animal. Only it wasn’t any kind of animal I ever saw before.”

“All right, I’m coming,” Eppstadt said. “But you listen to me, Pickett. If we survive this, you’ve got a fuck of a lot to answer for.”

“Oh, like you don’t.”

“Me? What the hell do I have to do with this?”

“I’ll tell you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I wouldn’t be here nor would you or Maxine or any other poor fuck—”

He glanced at Joe’s corpse. “If you hadn’t sounded off at the beach. Or—if you
really
want to go back to the start of things—how about a certain conversation we had, during which you suggested I get my face fixed?”

“Oh, that.”

“Yes that.”

“I was wrong. You should never have done it. It was a bad call.”

“That was life. My flesh and—” He froze, for something had emerged from the undergrowth: a beast that was a vague relative of a lizard, but shorter, squatter, its back end having, instead of a long and serpentine tail, an outgrowth of two or three hundred pale, bulbous tumors. It went directly to the remains of Joe.

“No, no, no,” Eppstadt said quietly. Then suddenly, running at the crea-

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ture the way he might at a dog who’d come sniffing at his gate. “Get away!” he yelled. “For God’s sake,
get away
!”

The lizard threw the yellow-blue gaze of one of its eyes up in Eppstadt’s direction, was unimpressed, and returned to sniffing around the sliced-open neck. It flicked the wound with its tongue.

“
Oh Jesus
.
Oh Jesus
,” Eppstadt gasped.

He picked up a rock and threw it at the animal, striking its leathery hide. Again, the cold, reptilian assessment, and this time the creature opened its throat and let out a threatening hiss.

Todd caught hold of Eppstadt, wrapping his arms around him from behind, to keep him from getting any more belligerent with the animal.

They were lucky the beast was so interested in the remains of Joe, he knew; otherwise it would have turned on them.

The lizard averted its gaze from Eppstadt again, and started to tear at the raw meat around Joe’s neck so that Joe’s head was thrown back and forth as it secured itself a mouthful.

Eppstadt was no longer attempting to free himself from Todd’s bear-hug, so Todd let his hold slip a little, at which point he turned on Todd, slamming the heel of his hand against Todd’s shoulder.

“That should have been you!” Eppstadt said, following the first blow with a second, twice as strong.

Todd let him rant. Over Eppstadt’s shoulder he saw the lizard retreating into the undergrowth from which it had emerged, dragging the remains of Waiter Joe after him.

“You hear me, Pickett?”

“Yeah, I hear you,” Todd said wearily.

“That’s all you’re good for: lizard food.
Lizard! Food!
” The blows were coming faster and harder now. It was only a matter of time before Todd hit him back, and they both knew it. Knew it and wanted it. No more innuendo; no more lawyers; just fisticuffs in the mud.

“All right,” Todd said, bitch-slapping Eppstadt for the fun of it. “I get it.” He struck him again, harder. “You want to fight?” A third blow, harder still, which split Eppstadt’s lip. Blood ran from his mouth.

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And then suddenly the two of them were at it, not exchanging clean, neat blows the way they did in the movies but knotted up together in a jumble of gouges and kicks; years of anger and competition emptying in a few chaotic seconds. They could not have chosen a less perfect place or time to settle a personal score if they’d looked a lifetime, but this wasn’t about making sensible decisions. This was about bringing the other sonofabitch down. As it was they
both
went down, having wrestled their way into muddy terrain. Their feet slid from under them and down they went, locked together, like two boys.

Tammy saw them fall.

“Oh no,” she said, half to herself. “Not here. Don’t do it here.”

“I wouldn’t go any closer if I were you,” Brahms advised her.

“Well you’re not me,” Tammy said, and without waiting for any further response she pressed on over the uneven ground toward the two men in the mud. There were sounds of birds overhead, and she glanced up at the sky as she walked toward the men. It was spectacularly beautiful, and for a moment her thoughts were entirely claimed by the piled cumulus and the partially-blinded sun. The darkness of the heavens between the clouds was profound enough that the brightest of the stars could be seen, set in velvet gray.

When she looked back at Todd and Eppstadt, they were almost indistinguishable from one another physically—both liberally coated in mud.

But it was still clear which one was Eppstadt. He was letting out a virtually seamless monologue about Todd. The general sense of which was that Todd was a vapid, over-paid, talentless sonofabitch. Furthermore, when all this insanity was over he, Eppstadt, was going to make certain that everybody knew that Todd had caused the death of a number of innocent people with his arrogance.

As Tammy got closer to the fight it became evident to Tammy that this wasn’t going to end quickly or easily. Neither man was going to be talked down from his fury; it had escalated too far. She could only hope they exhausted each other quickly, before they attracted unwanted attention.

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There seemed little hope of that. Though they’d fought to their feet again, it was becoming harder and harder for either man to land a solid blow in this slippery environment. Finally Eppstadt swung wide and went down in the mud, falling heavily. He struggled to get up, the heels of his hands sliding in the mud, but before he could succeed, Todd clambered on top of him, and straddled him, his hands at the man’s throat. There was no fight left in Eppstadt. All he could do was gasp and shake his head.

“You fuckhead,” Todd said. “None of this would have happened . . . if you . . . had made my fucking movie.”

Eppstadt had by now recovered enough energy to speak. “I wouldn’t put you in a movie if my fucking
life
depended on it.”

At which point, Tammy made her presence known. “Todd?”

It was Eppstadt who looked up first. “Oh Jesus,” he said. “I wondered when you were going to show your fat ass.”

Tammy wasn’t in the mood for long speeches. “Leave the shithead in the mud, Todd,” she said, “and let’s just get out of here.”

Todd grinned through his mask of mud; the megawatt smile. “It would be my pleasure.”

He got to his feet and stepped away. Eppstadt pulled his rather ungainly bulk to his knees. He had lost one of his choice Italian shoes in the mêlée, and now began to search for it. In fact, it had been flung wide of the mud, close to where Tammy was standing.

“Looking for this?” she said.

“Yes,” he glared, beckoning with his fingers.

She tossed it in the thorn bushes.

“Cunt.”

“Faggot.”

“No. I am many things but a bugger I am not. Right, Brahms?”

“Don’t bring me into this,” Jerry said. “I just want us all out of here.”

“We’re coming, Jerry!” Todd said, not looking at him. “You go on and take Tammy.”

“Not without you,” she said.

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even though she doesn’t have a hope in hell of getting a fuck out of it.”

Tammy had kept her fury limited to that one casual toss of the Italian shoe, but now it erupted; all her fury toward Eppstadt and his kind. The Mister-High-and-Mightys who thought that fat fan-girls were less than shit.

“You are such scum!” she said. “You nasty-minded tiny-peckered little piece of excrement!”

She approached him as she yelled, but after the fight with Todd the last thing Eppstadt wanted was this woman laying her hands on him.