The Bastard Hand (29 page)

I stood absolutely still in the middle of that clean white room, oak wood floorboards under my feet and furnace-hot breezes blowing half-heartedly through the open windows. No books to look at, no TV to turn on. No distractions, just me and my thoughts.

I made a decision right then. As far as I knew, Ishy didn’t have an inkling about his wife—he knew all about Jeannie Angel, yes, but how would he react if he knew his wife was getting the very same Reverend treatment? He’d hit the roof, no doubt about it. He’d start salivating, cursing, calling down all the Hosts of Heaven with his rage.

That, I had to see.

I heard somebody coming down the stairs in the foyer, turned to the door just in time to see Forrey in all his craggy-faced glory.

He didn’t say anything, just looked at me speculatively. He leaned against the doorframe, big hand resting on his gun belt, very Gary Cooper. After giving him a few seconds to feel cool about himself, I said, “Afternoon, Officer Forrey.”

He grimaced. “That’s Captain Forrey, Charlie. What brings you here?”

“Here to see the mayor, Officer—excuse me, Captain Forrey.”

“He’s very busy right now. Tell me what you want, I’ll relay the information.”

I said, “Well, I suppose I could do that. But see, I’ve come all this way, and you don’t wanna send me home all disappointed, do you?”

He pushed himself up from the doorframe. “Charlie, disappointing you is just about the least of my concerns presently. Why don’t you just tell me what you want?”

I said, “No, I don’t think so, Officer Forrey. I’d just as soon wait and see Mr. Ishy personally.”

“Not today, Charlie. If you don’t wanna tell me what’s on your mind, I suggest you leave.”

We stared each other down for a moment that seemed to stretch on and on, and amazingly enough, I blinked first. And would you believe that I sort of liked him right then? Of all the people in this town, Forrey’s hatred of me was probably the purest and cleanest and least selfish. He hated me because I was a cop killer and that was a pretty good reason when you really thought about it.

I said, “I don’t have any bones with you, Captain Forrey. But I need to see Ishy.”

He apparently sensed the change in my approach, because his aggressive stance eased and he slowly moved his hand away from his gun belt. “The mayor’s a trifle indisposed just now, Charlie.”

“I think he’ll want to see me. It has to do with our little blackmail arrangement. Need to keep him up to date.”

He made a little hmph sound back in his throat. He took another step into the room, his face not changing. “Talk to me, Charlie, or leave. Simple as that.”

“I ’preciate you putting it to me straight, Captain. Just the same, I think I’ll wait.”

He sighed, and now my bullheadedness looked ready to pay off. Given other circumstances, he’d arrest me, maybe knock me upside the head for good measure, anything to get me out of Ishy’s house. But of course, I was a bit different from most other two-bit criminals; I was a two-bit criminal who’d made a deal with the mayor.

Just then Forrey’s walkie-talkie squawked, and Oldfield’s tinny voice jumped out of it: “Car Three to Forrey . . . request back-up for possible altercation at 45 Main . . . reports of a disturbance in alley . . . en route presently.”

Forrey scowled, unclipped the talkie from his belt. “Ten-Four, Car Three. Presently at the mayor’s residence. In route.”

Oldfield responded with something I couldn’t make out and Forrey clipped the talkie back on his belt and frowned irritably. He looked at me. “If I had any sense, I’d just arrest you and take you with me in the back of the cruiser. Hell, if I really had any sense, I’d just whup the shit outta you and send you on your way.”

I gave him a look of studied non-committal.

He shook his head and said, “The mayor’ll be down directly, Charlie. You just sit tight right here in this room in the meantime. Even move, next time I see you I’ll go with my instinct and tear you to pieces.”

Not waiting for a response, he turned around and walked out. I waited for the door to slam behind him and went to the window. He hurried down the drive to his cruiser, putting on a pair of sunglasses, got in the car and sped off, leaving a wake of dust and gravel behind him.

As soon as he was out of sight, I turned around, walked into the foyer and up the stairs.

At the landing, the hallway opened up and stretched out and all the oak-paneled doors along its length were closed. No decoration, no art or tables or vases, except for a single green plant at the far end. Its leaves stirred in the tepid breeze, straining through the open window next to it.

Jeannie Angel’s voice: “You have to push, Bishop. Hold it down or I can’t do a thing!”

And the mayor: “Stop the goddamn jawing and strap it! Jesus Hinky Christ, woman, you’ve done it a hundred times!”

“Yes, Bishop, and so have you. Why do I have to do all the work?”

I moved down the hall in the direction of the voices. The farthest door on the left was cracked open. I peered inside.

Jeannie Angel sat on the bed, facing Ishy, who stood in front of her. His pants were half-down but it wasn’t what it looked like at first glance. His right hand was in his pocket and poking through a hole and Jeannie Angel was strapping his wrist to his thigh with a thick leather cord. Trying to, anyway. The hand kept jerking spasmodically away from his thigh before she could tighten the strap.

“Did you even take your pills, Bishop? I can’t help you if you—”

“Of course I took my goddamn pills, what sort of stupid question is that?”

“Well I ask because you—”

“It takes a few minutes for them to start working, you know that!”

“You mean you only just took them? Oh, Bishop, what if someone—”

The mayor’s hand interrupted her, jerking free of the strap again. It fluttered around like a spastic white bird, until he grabbed it with his left hand, cursing, and pushed it back through his pocket hole and held it fiercely against his thigh.

“Hurry!” he said. “Strap the goddamn thing!”

She looped the cord around his leg and tried again. Gently, I pushed open the door and said, “Howdy, Mr. Mayor. Hiya, Jeannie Angel.”

Jeannie Angel froze, staring horrified and dumb. Ishy, too, was statue-still for a moment, looking at me blankly. Then his kingdom collapsed in grand and epic style.

First he said, “Wesley! What the high holy fuck—” and then the hand broke free again, balled into a fist, and slammed him in the nose.

He grunted and blood splashed along his cheek. His left hand made a valiant effort to thwart it, but the right hand faked it out, veered away, shot in again and caught Ishy in the throat.

“Motherfucker!” he choked, fell back on the bed. The crazy hand kept pummeling him while the left hand tried to stop it. “You cocksucking son of a whore! Wesley, you pestilent sack of bile! I’m going to—” Whack, in the mouth, his lip busted. “When I get my hands on you, you goddamn mother—” Whack, in the right eye, staggering him. “Yousa . . .” Speech slurring. Whack, in the nose again. Whack, the jaw. Whack. Whack, whack.

I stood there staring while the mayor of Cuba Landing beat himself to a pulp, and Jeannie Angel, who’d slid off the bed and onto the floor, finally sobbed and got up and ran past me out the door.

Ishy lay on his back on the bed, still cursing me and anything that sounded like me. The left hand was down for the count but the right hand still had something to prove, apparently. It punched Ishy in the face over and over again, and the mayor’s eyes, both turning black and purple, glazed over. “Wesley . . . sumbitch . . .”

Whack.

I tore myself away and left the mayor to himself. Whatever it was I thought I needed to tell him seemed pretty damn insignificant just then.

Jeannie Angel sat at the kitchen table and didn’t look at me when I came in. Not crying anymore, but still giving the occasional sniffle, her eyes still red.

I leaned up against the counter, by the sink, and said, “So. What the hell did I just see?”

“You didn’t see anything.”

“The hell. He just beat the crap out of himself. What’s the matter with him?”

Still not looking at me. “It’s . . . it’s hard to explain, Mr. Wesley. Bishop has an . . . illness.”

“What sort of illness?”

Finally, she looked up at me. Mascara smeared along the bridge of her nose, but she still managed to look tentatively defiant. “It’s called Alien Hand Syndrome.”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“He had a car accident when he was a kid, about seventeen. It damaged, I don’t know, a nerve center in his brain or something and now he needs medication to control his hand. It’s like it’s got a mind of its own or something.”

I said again, “You’re pulling my leg,” and laughed before I could stop myself.

“It’s not funny. It’s a serious problem. Very much like Tourette’s Syndrome, but much more . . .”

She couldn’t find the right word, so I helped her. “Bizarre?”

“Bishop has dealt with it with dignity and grace for many, many years.”

“He’s on medication for it? That explains some things.”

Sharply, “It happens sometimes. You have to understand, Mr. Wesley, Bishop walks a thin line every day. He’s got a great deal of responsibility and he’s a decent man, he really is. For public functions, he has to be sure that his . . . his problem won’t flare up.”

“Could be embarrassing. But which is worse? Beating the shit out of yourself in front of everyone, or rambling on about rhubarb pie?”

“You mean that question rhetorically, but I think the answer is clear.”

I shrugged, and she looked at me hard for a second and said, “Don’t you judge him, Mr. Wesley. Don’t you dare judge him.”

“I’m not in a position to judge anyone.”

“That’s right.”

“He knows about you and Reverend Childe.”

For a moment I thought she hadn’t heard me. She looked at her hands on the table, as if one of them would suddenly go mad and start beating her up if she didn’t watch it. Then she said, “What . . . what about me and Reverend Childe? There’s nothing—”

“Please.”

She swallowed hard. Then she laughed, short and sharp and bitter, and said, “Bastard. Manipulative bastard.”

If she meant the Reverend or Ishy or me I didn’t know for a moment. Her mouth twisted and her fists clenched and she said, “That son of a bitch. He knew. He knew. For how long?”

“Since the beginning, I guess.”

“That son of a bitch. How did he know?”

I shrugged.

She said, “All the time carrying on like everything was perfectly normal. Smiling at me. Calling me his ‘li’l Angel’. The manipulative bastard. I hate him.”

“I have to go. Good luck, Jeannie Angel.”

I started out of the kitchen and she said, “Mr. Wesley. Did Reverend Childe tell him?”

“I doubt it.”

She nodded. “Of course he didn’t. Phinneas wouldn’t do something like that. He’s too kind and gentle, he’d never hurt anyone.”

I laughed, thinking, poor Jeannie Angel.

She turned her anger on me. “You laugh at the strangest things, Mr. Wesley. Does everything strike you as funny? Even other people’s pain?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’re just like him. Just like Bishop. Cold and cruel and manipulative. God, I hate him so much.”

I moved toward the door and was almost through it when she said my name again. I turned around and looked at her and her eyes were wet and pleading.

“I don’t,” she said. “I don’t hate him. Please don’t tell him I said that, Mr. Wesley? I don’t hate him.”

“Okay.”

“And . . . and if you see Phinneas, please tell him to call me? Would you do that for me, Mr. Wesley?”

I didn’t see most of it, the build-up, the conversation, the lead-in and all that. All I saw was the grand finale and that was enough. But I didn’t have to see the rest. I knew Elise and I knew the Reverend well enough to fill in all the blanks.

It happens like this:

The big clock in the sitting room rings in at midnight, and the house is still and somber. Louis and Stella have been sent out, I don’t know where, I don’t care. Elise sits by herself in the kitchen, maybe sipping at a vodka tonic because she drinks more these days. Outside, gravel grumbles under the wheels of the Malibu and a moment later Elise hears the car door chunk closed and the Reverend’s footsteps up the walkway to the back door.

She’s there, opening the door before he knocks, and he grins at her, that big grin that means absolutely nothing and probably even the Reverend can think of nothing to say right then.

She lets him in. He nods, says something homey, enters.

About an hour of conversation then, the Reverend testing the waters, maybe hardly believing that he’s really going to get away with this. Comments growing more and more suggestive, without protest, and he’s finally thinking, well I’ll be damned. She’s all mine, sure as hell.

And it’s a reward, it’s God laying His divine hand on the Reverend’s shoulder and blessing him for all his years of service and faith. Because God loves us, yes He does. God holds our hand and rocks us to sleep at night and He never ever lets anything bad happen. Don’t fret, sinner, about that single goddamn set of footprints, because no, you haven’t been alone all this time.

God is good. God is great. And if you believe that God is insane, then you deserve His punishment. You deserve to be stricken with immortality and terrifying power.

When Elise finally goes upstairs, the Reverend following, another book of the Old Testament is uncovered, the Book of Childe, and Saint Augustine would say, Now that, that’s something I can relate to, brothers and sisters. Can I get an amen?

The last part, that’s the part I saw with my own eyes. On videotape, about an hour later. By then it was anti-climactic because I already knew the ending. I already knew that God stayed Abram’s hand before he could kill his son and I knew that Daniel lived through the lion’s den and I knew that Job came through his suffering with a new family and wealth. I didn’t need to see it.

I’d set up the video camera in the closet while I waited in the spare bedroom. I fell asleep at some point, woke up only when Elise’s bedroom door opened across the hall and Reverend Childe finally left. She walked him downstairs and I made a point of not listening, of shutting off all senses. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I didn’t want to speculate on what she felt or what was going through her head. If the whole experience had been painful or traumatic for her, it would be painful and traumatic for me. If she’d actually enjoyed it, well . . . selfish bastard Charlie would find that even more painful.