Concrete Underground (2010) (25 page)

"Get her out of here," Max instructed Anthony.

"Where is he taking her?" I asked as I watched Anthony grab the girl roughly and drag her down the hallway.

"I frankly don't care," Max responded. "She's no good to me anymore. Would you want a whore that looks like that?"

"So what, you're gonna toss her out on the street like trash?" I yelled at him. "She's a human being, for fuck's sake. And for all your bullshit and intellectual posturing, you're just a glorified pimp."

"Oh, you are certainly not in any position to lecture me on feminism, friend," Max responded. "I give people what they want - their dreams, their most secret fantasies. I can't help it if the world is full of sick children stunted by sexual repression."

He took a seat beside me on the floor and continued, "D, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. What I give to the people who win my games is exactly the same thing I give to the losers - I give them whatever it is they desire most. Whether that's a punishment or a reward is up to them."

"This is not what I wanted," I growled back.

"Sometimes what a person wants is good for them, and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes people want to lose. Sometimes they find themselves at a point in their lives where they need to be punished, and I am happy to oblige. Sometimes they choose to take their adversity and use it to spur themselves to become better. And sometimes they are happier just wallowing masochistically in their own misery."

My head had stopped spinning, and I was starting to think more clearly. I sat up and propped my back against the wall. He rested his head on my shoulder.

"I don't trade in base wish-fulfillment. I'm not interested in empty escapism. I show people who they really are. I purify human souls in the crucible of pain and struggle. I turn base matter into gold. That's what I'm about, and that's what the Highwater Society is about, even if they need to be reminded of it from time to time."

Suddenly I heard music playing and a voice singing.

I tried to call you before, but I lost my nerve.

I tried my imagination, but I was disturbed.

It took me a few seconds to realize that it was coming from Max's pants. He pulled my cell phone out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID display, then began to chuckle.

"That's your ringtone for your sister?" he said with amusement. "That's going to be stuck in my head all day now."

He tossed me the phone, but the call went to voice-mail before I could answer.

As we walked out of the building and back to the car, Max sang over and over, "
Eight six seven five three-oh ni-iiine
."

26. It Felt Good

Jenny's message said that her plane had landed and she wanted to invite me to dinner with her. And Brad. At James McPherson's house. So naturally I called her back and said yes.

I also called up Columbine to see if she wanted to tag along, but her response was a terse "No."

McPherson lived in up in the forested hills at the northwestern edge of the valley. It was a long, winding drive to his mansion, but the Boxster handled it just fine.

I arrived about twenty minutes early, hoping to get a chance to talk with McPherson himself before everyone else arrived. As I entered the house, McPherson was walking into the foyer from inside, escorting out two men - Max's friend Peterman and my friend Brian. They didn't notice me right away.

"All I'm saying is we can't afford to underestimate him," Peterman, his tone of voice and their body language implying that this was the tail end of a conversation that he was not willing to drop. "He is dangerous, and sooner or later everyone in this organization is going to have to pay the piper for his sins."

Brian caught sight of me and shot me a contemptuous glare. McPherson turned his head, following Brian's gaze.

"Ah, Mr. Quetzal, you are early," he said gregariously.

"Hope I'm not interrupting anything," I replied.

"Not at all, I was just showing my guests out."

The two other men exited quickly, leaving me alone with McPherson.

"We were actually just discussing your new employer," he explained.

"I gathered."

He smiled. "Yes, Max and I are good friends going back more than a decade now. But he does have a tendency to rub people the wrong way, as I'm sure you've noticed."

He led me down a hallway to a set of large oak double doors. They opened into his study, which was remarkable for how busy it was. One entire wall was dominated with overstuffed book cases. The opposite wall was literally covered with framed pictures, awards, declarations, newspaper clippings, and other remembrances of his life, all hung with scant centimeters of space between frames. A third wall was taken up by two large curio cabinets, one on each side of the double doors leading into the room, filled with various gifts and trinkets.

The rest of the room was filled with furniture - couches, chairs, coffee tables, end tables, short bookcases - all expensive antiques, all covered with more books and trinkets.

He seemed to have a neurotic compulsion to surround himself with things, giving the entire place an almost desperate feel. It was almost as if he was worried in his age that his life was slipping through his fingers like falling sand, and he was trying to hold tight onto as many little grains as he could.

I sat in an arm chair in front of his large mahogany desk, while he poured us each a glass of brandy.

I continued, "The thing I don't understand is why you all put him in charge to begin with if you were so concerned with him being a loose cannon. I mean, anyone who talks to him more than a couple minutes is going to quickly figure out that Max's hardware is severely mis-wired."

"What do you mean, put him in charge?" he asked.

"Doesn't he run your Highwater Society?"

"Good lord, no," McPherson laughed. "I don't know what he's told you, but there's a lot more to the Highwater Society than Max's little games. The fact of the matter is that Max did us a very big favor once by helping us recover something we had lost, and so we repaid him with a largely ceremonial position, which he in turn has managed to make a bloody mess of."

"So what's your group really all about then?"

McPherson leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. "It's not something I can just tell you, it's something you can only learn through your own experience. I will tell you, though, that our organization goes back a very long time."

"Back to when your family first set up shop in this valley to bilk money from gold miners?"

"Yes, we have existed in this city since its founding, but we also have antecedents that span back centuries in the old world."

I stifled a laugh. "What are you, the fucking Illuminati or something? Rosicrucians? Stone Cutters?"

He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a ring with the crown and globe symbol. "Are you telling me you don't know what this sigil means?"

The symbol started to shimmer like the one I'd seen last night, and suddenly I heard a loud, piercing shriek of feedback along with the incessant mechanical clatter of a film projector. I gritted my teeth and tried suppress the cacophony in my head.

"Now, I don't tell you this to poison the well for you with your boss," he continued. "But if you're going to be part of our family now, it's time you started figuring these things out."

"What do you mean, part of the family?" I asked, the noise subsiding.

"I mean just that. Not only is your sister married to my nephew and heir, but now my daughter has apparently decided that the sun rises and sets on your head. You're one of us."

"I haven't fucked Columbine," I blurted out.

"Pardon?"

"Natalie, I mean. We're not a couple. Whatever. Nevermind."
Where the fuck did that come from?

A brief look of concern flashed across his face but soon resolved itself into a magnanimous grin. "Be that as it may, I understand you've been spending a lot of time with her," he said, sipping his brandy. "Incidentally, I hope she's well; I haven't had a chance to see her in quite some time."

"She's good," I replied. "In fact, she came here to see you a few days ago, but you were leaving just as she pulled up. She said you were riding with some other men in an old classic car - a blue Chevy Del Rey."

I studied him closely for a reaction. If he was surprised or made nervous by my mention of the blue car, his face didn't betray it.

"Really?" McPherson responded, shaking his head. "Well, my daughter does like to tell stories, so it wouldn't surprise me if that little detail is one of her embellishments."

"That's true, she does like to tell stories," I said and shot the entire glass of brandy he had set in front of me. "I guess I'll just have to ask Anthony about it, since that's who blue car man drove you to meet."

Again, no reaction - not even a twitch.

"You know, you really should sip a liquor this fine," he admonished.

I burst into laughter, which caused him to arch an eyebrow quizzically.

"Sorry," I apologized. "But do you ever feel like you're life is one of those old cartoons where you keep running in a straight line, but the same scenery keeps cycling back around every couple frames?"

"I'm not sure I follow."

I shrugged my shoulders, then looked down at a row of framed photos on the desk. They were all of Columbine, each one showing her at a different age.

I picked up the furthest one from me, which showed her as an infant sitting in the lap of a woman. The picture had been cropped to focus on the child, so most of the woman was out of frame. Only her hands and chest were visible.

"Nice picture," I said. "Who's that holding her?"

"Her mother," he replied.

"I thought her mother died during labor."

"No." McPherson shook his head and frowned. "She died when Natalie was still very young, though. Shortly after this picture was taken, in fact. Why'd you think she died during childbirth?"

"That's what she told me. But as you said, she likes to embellish her stories," I explained. "Why'd you cut her mom out of the picture?"

He sucked his teeth distastefully. "Her mother and I were never married. Things didn't end on good terms between us."

"What does that mean?"

McPherson didn't respond. I shifted restlessly in my chair, my patience wearing thin, and finally blurted out, "Okay, fine, let's stop pussyfooting around this thing. Let me ask you this - why have you been calling Lily Lynch so much lately? What's the story there?"

McPherson furrowed his brow pensively and pushed the tips of his fingers together, forming his hands into an
A
. "Lynch - wait, are you talking about Natalie's friend, that unpleasant little woman who works for Max? I don't remember speaking with her lately, and I can't imagine why I should have."

The way he kept playing dumb was starting to grate on my nerves. I decided to provoke him a little. Leaning in over the table conspiratorially, I gave him a knowing wink and asked, "You were fucking her, weren't you?"

His cheeks immediately glowed bright pink. "Excuse me."

I put up my hands as if to say I meant no harm. "I can't say I blame you. I've imagined what she was like between the sheets myself once or twice. I bet she likes it rough, doesn't she? Pulling her hair, holding her down, maybe slapping her around a bit. I can tell her type - just like I can tell yours. But hey, takes two to know, right, and who doesn't like a little of the rough stuff?"

He stood up and lunged toward me menacingly, slamming his palms down on the desktop, his face flush with rage. "Listen, I don't know what kind of stories my daughter has been telling you about me, but I am not some kind of monster - despite whatever she might
believe
I did or didn't do to her."

At first I stared at him blankly in confusion, but then something clicked in my head, and Columbine's animosity towards her father made a lot more sense.

Then I hit him.

I hit the bastard hard, and then I hit him again.

And it felt good.

McPherson spat a couple wads of blood and teeth onto the slick finish of his desktop.

On my way out of the house, I found Jenny and Brad waiting in the drawing room.

"What's wrong?" Jenny asked as she stood up to meet me.

"I just accused your new father-in-law of colluding with blackmailers and murderers. Then I knocked a couple of teeth out for molesting his daughter."

"You what?" Brad yelled.

"Brad, Jesus, just mind your own fucking business, you cunt," I snarled as I headed for the door.

Jenny grabbed my arm. "D, wait."

I shrugged her off. "Jenny, I'm not really in the mood for a lecture now, so save it."

She looked at me with hurt in her eyes. "Why are you so intent on driving away the few people left who actually care about you?"

"You know, this is the second time this week someone has asked me that. I still don't have a good answer."

27. Would It Have Made a Difference?

I pounded my fist against the steering wheel in frustration as I sped down the hill, twisting along the narrow mountain road, not really sure where I was heading.

I switched the radio onto the local junior college station. The music was strange and ethereal. A woman sang surreal stream-of-consciousness lyrics over a single acoustic guitar plucking repetitive arpeggios with typewriter sounds in the background. It was hypnotic and unsettling at the same time. I could feel the hairs standing up on my arms.

A magic for the chosen few

Confused as well as clarified

Unknown, a pixel in your TV screen

Give me truth and I'll show you how you lie

Give me lies and I will know yourself

A phone started ringing, but when I picked up mine I realized it was the wrong one. I opened the glove box to grab Lily's phone and looked down at the caller ID display, which read:
HOME
.