The Cracked Earth (18 page)

O
N THE WAY TO
P
ROPELLOR
H
EADS THE NEXT DAY, HIS EYE WAS
caught by a shop on Little Santa Monica called Dirty Lingerie. A long line of women snaked away down the block under a banner:
YOUR FAVORITE SOAP HUNK SIGNS YOUR BRA.
A woman at the head of the line fled, squealing happily, and a fortyish matron stepped forward to a card table on the sidewalk and tugged a sweater up to reveal a thick white bra. A young man in a muscle shirt leaned forward with a Magic Marker to ask something and then write on her breast. Two other young men stood beside him, all with the dark chiseled sort of looks you saw in
Esquire
ads, signing away as women unbuttoned their blouses and bent forward with no apparent reticence. We're back to the postmodern, he thought.

“M
UMBLE
!”

“Mumble frotz!”

The two programmers exchanged something like a high-five, though Admiral Wicks couldn't reach very high out of his lightweight wheelchair.

“Gloat on. Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Gloat off,” Michael Chen exulted. “We did it, Liffey-san. Well, we did segment
one
.”

“Smile, man. You are looking very thirty years ago. Especially with that big goose egg on your cheek.”

“I'd like to know what I'm smiling about,” Jack Liffey said. The Australian came in carrying fresh bottles of Yoo-Hoo, looking like he'd watched the cat eat the canary he'd always hated. They opened the Yoo-Hoos and spiked them with vodka to celebrate. The vodka bottle was already halfway down. Admiral Wicks was peeling the plastic off slices of Velveeta and gorging himself.

“The lads turned the trick,” Bruce Parfit said. “And it's so untraceable they may never get to claim their victory. In the wee hours of the
A.M.,
the domestic wing of Mitsuko Enterprises donated their entire cash reserve in this country to charity, and the Japanese, being conservative businessmen, had a gi-fucking-normous cash reserve over here, twelve million dollars. What's that in yen?”

“Some dumb-ass number,” Michael Chen said. “Over a billion, I think.”

“Not just one charity, or a few of them. We spammed their reserve everywhere. We sent a few hundred dollars to every nonprofit in the United States, even the ones devoted to maintaining the purity of the white race against the yellow peril. Some of the surprised administrators are already E-mailing their thank-yous back to Mitsuko. Imagine the consternation at Mitsuko Corporate over in Century City when the news penetrates. Of course they'll go after their cash, but my lads pipelined it so fantastically deviously that it'll cost them almost as much to find it all and get it back. It was wonderful, like stealing the Rockefeller millions in dollar bills and throwing it out of a helicopter over the Rose Parade. Here's to the unacknowledged genius of Michael Chen and Admiral Wicks.”

He put an arm on each of them.

“Touch me if you love me.” Admiral Wicks bridled.

Michael Chen did a little dance. “We're not done yet. Segment
two
is being coded.”

“Do not fire until you see the yellow of their eyes,” Admiral Wicks called out.

“Careful there, dark man.”

“Just a thinko, my friend. I'm a little drunk and racism surfaces in all drunks. You know I love my yellow brothers.”

“And I, my
frères noires,
unless they're weenies or spods,” Michael Chen said.

They made it up with a Yoo-Hoo toast and a low five.

“Sounds good. What's segment two?” Jack Liffey asked.

“We have yet to fire upon the home office in Tokyo,” Admiral Wicks said. “We have something different in mind for them, something classic and clean and honorable.”

“And utterly devastating!” Michael Chen seconded. They touched bottles.

“Killer!”

“They'll be coining new words for us!”

“In time to come, when our grandchildren tell the net police what we did, every great revenge scheme will be known as a Wicks-Chen!”

“A Chen-Wicks!”

“Leave us not argue! A Wen-chicks-wen!”

“I object! That uses your initial letter twice.”

“But it rhymes with you twice!”

“Gentlemen, could I have your undivided attention,” Jack Liffey beseeched. “Do I get to know what's going to happen?” He noticed Admiral Wicks's long, thin, delicate fingers, which he was working now against the tough bubblewrap on a packet of bologna.

“Nil.” Admiral Wicks seemed to climb back down a steepness from somewhere far away, and the instant his eyes met Jack Liffey's, the package ripped open and slices of bologna sprayed out onto his lap, where he looked down again. “Try us tomorrow, monsieur, and we'll tell you how it went down. All is illusion, but combat is the worthiest illusion.”

“For the digital samurai,” Michael Chen added. “And I'm not even Japanese.”

• • •

H
E
drove up Argyle through the lower hills where the big expensive houses all hid modestly from the road, crouching behind hedges or turning their backs, allowing only sly glimpses of Tudor framing or scrolled witches' roofs. He was apprehensive about seeing Lori Bright again. He knew how much he wanted her and how tenuous her own feelings for him probably were, and he had no idea what he would tell her about Lee. He thought he had a new handle on his integrity, but he was already getting chills thinking of her voice. It was the shifting from one world to another that was so hard, he thought.

At Avenida Bluebird a big workman's truck was parked in the front drive, lettered
WE-BOLT-U-DOWN: EARTHQUAKE RETROFITTING, RADON AND AUTO SHUTOFFS.

Anita was nicer to him now, actually smiling as she showed him into the trophy room. He heard a banging down in the basement and then the whiz of a big power drill.

“Hope you feeling better, sir.”

“Better than what?”

But she was already moving on. The photographs of movie stars had come down from the interior wall and the plaster had recently been drilled through in several spots, explorations that had left little tailing piles of silt on the floor. He had a sudden absurd sensation of kinship with the old house, of age and a dogged chivalry, working overtime to hold together things that should really have fallen apart. He wondered if the walls felt a sense of relief that help was coming.

Then she was there and he felt the burn spread up his chest. Her hair was wrapped in a towel—she always seemed to be just coming from a bath—and she wore a short terrycloth robe like something that might have come from Kmart. Her lower legs were absolutely astonishing, sculpted to just that perfect museum-quality Greco-Roman shape. Only above the shortie robe did he know that her thighs spread a bit more than she would probably like.

“Jack Jack.” She kissed him and patted the tender lump beside his eye. “My sweet warrior, my champion, my love.”

She smelled of musk and something sweet and the voice was like swimming in warm custard, and he swam. Already her emotions were intense, excessive.

“How is the delightful Maeve?”

“Fine. She's home.”

“I hope I didn't cause trouble with her mother.”

Go for the sore spots. “Not yet.”

He had to tell her now. “I found Lee,” he said dryly.

She froze up and a hand went to her mouth, a gesture of caution or modesty or anxiety, and he wondered if she remembered it from some film. He couldn't trust anything about her anymore. After all, she'd played Catherine the Great.

“She's okay. She's fine. She'll be phoning you in twenty minutes. That was part of the deal for not dragging her straight back.” He took out the fat envelope.

“She's giving back the money, all but a few hundred that was spent. That was the other part of the deal.”

This time she looked genuinely shocked and her hand pressed her mouth hard. The other hand went to her chest as if the robe were threatening to burst open. He no longer knew quite what to make of any gesture she made.

“You must have guessed,” he said. “You and your husband both warned me it was fishy.” He put the envelope in her hand and she looked down at it as if not knowing quite what it was.

“Eeep.” It was a little noise from her throat, probably quite genuine. At least he hoped so, the kind of actorish calculation that could invoke that noise did not bear thinking about. She put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself. He wanted desperately to carry her to bed and untie the sash and peel off the robe.

“You must have guessed,” he repeated.

“Oh, Jack, it's so easy to know and not know. Where is she?”

“She's in L.A. She's safe.”

“
Where is she?
”

“Ask her when she calls. I promise you she's all right.”

“Jack.” She tossed the envelope aside. Money meant nothing to Catherine the Great. “Where is my daughter?”

“I promised not to tell.”

“You made a promise like that to a fifteen-year-old run-away?”

“I gave my word.”

“Your word?”

“It applies equally to children. If I dragged her back now, she'd just run off again and she'd burrow deeper somewhere. Why don't we deal with what she thinks is bothering her? Then she'll come back on her own steam.”

Her eyes were going wild and something he saw in there worried him a lot. It reminded him of the way she made love, like pure madness, and the fear of whatever it was settled over him like frost.

“I need you, Jack. Does that penetrate that thick skin of yours? I hired you because I need you and I've come to need you more than I thought. You can't let me down like this.”

That was a new tack, he thought. He didn't know what to make of it. “Fifteen minutes now. Talk to her. We'll get her home.”

Anita stuck her head in. “Madam—”

“Go away! So youth must be served,” she spat at the closing door. Her eyes swept around like lasers toward him, then she caught herself, and he could actually see her shifting gears. “So she tells you I'm a bad mother and she gets to follow her hormones and her teenage rebellion and the hell with me.”

“What did you do to her?” he said. “You tell me.”

“We're all hostages to fortune. I couldn't always be there for her. Is it so terrible?” She opened her arms to an audience, any audience, and a lot of the robe pulled open, so he could see the curve of a breast, one blue vein like a lightning strike on the inner swell.

Things are tough all over, he thought, dredging the thought out of some surprising reserve of irony, but he hoped it didn't show on his face because she seemed to be metamorphosing again. “Jack, darling.” She loosened the tie on the robe, gently pulling back one lapel to show the full swell of her breast, then an edge of the cowrie-brown nipple, then the whole breast. “Millions and millions of men have wanted to see this. Don't you feel privileged? I'll do anything you want, darling. We'll do anything together you've ever let yourself dream about. Shall I suggest what I'll do for you? You're my champion.”

She took his hand and placed it on her breast. She nuzzled against him and he felt like he couldn't get enough air.

“Ten minutes,” he said. “Just talk to her.”

Now she seemed to be crying, burrowing her head in his chest and pressing against him. The show of frailty inflamed everything in him that was not already inflamed and stiffened his penis, which up to then had been only half-decided. Yet he still didn't believe it. Maybe she was actually scared deep inside, but she would never let him see it, not the real fear. What he saw was a mask over a mask. The big Spanish-Norman house, her entourage of servants, her whole life—they all existed in a damaged reality.

“Oh, Jack, I don't know how to say this. That girl has me over a barrel. She's so fierce and so self-righteous. I can't face her on the phone. Not without an edge. I need to know something, where she is, something. She's too much for me.”

He wanted to help her, to say the words that would ease the intolerable confusion and brighten her face again. His whole being was inflamed with wanting to please her. It was what she counted on, and he knew it. He did not know what his face looked like, watching her, but he guessed it looked hungry and sad, like a starving man too proud to steal the loaf.

“Jack.” Never had he heard his name spoken so often. He wondered if it was something that had come out of bad screenplays. She walked suddenly to a photo album that lay on the sideboard. She fanned it open to show dozens of picture postcards tucked anyhow between the pages. “Look. This is me, Jack. All my life I've only written postcards. I can't sustain. After the horrible buzz of so much that's banal, I don't know what to say anymore. That girl is so
earnest
and she demands so much of me.”

She rocked a little as if pulled between giant magnets. “All my life I've had this recurring dream. There's a castle wall made of rough stones and I'm inside the castle and there's narrow windows open to the city outside, maybe a dozen of them, and there's a monkey chained in each one, sitting there on the sill. Most of them are looking out at the city. Some are—you know, see no evil, speak no evil, with their little hairy elbows up in the air. I think some of the dream comes from this trite little monkey sculpture my folks had on their mantel, but that's the painless part. A few of the monkeys are chained looking
in,
and they're looking into the corners of the room where it's too dark for me to see what's there, and I get a real chill wondering what it is they're watching. But one little monkey is more animated than the others and lately I can see this one's got Lee's face, and these soulful brown eyes are watching
me.
The eyes follow me. And every time I'm about to do something, every time I'm about to think a stupid thought or do something petty, that little monkey rattles her chain a little. Damn it, that's all, just rattles that damn tinkly chain like a reminder she's watching. Jack, I wake up sweating.”