Whack Job (18 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY

“The Blood of the White Man”

Monday evening.

Light fell early in the mountains even in summer. By the time Otto and Winner showered and put on fresh clothes, guests had already begun to gather on the broad stone veranda overlooking the lake. From the veranda, a verdant lawn descended fifty meters to the rock where the trucked-in soil stopped and nature began. Efficient-looking men in blue blazers and tan slacks were setting up folding chairs facing the lake and a wooden dais that had been carried out. Citronella torches surrounded the seating area.

On the veranda white-liveried attendants dispensed drinks from a portable bar. A buffet table contained cold cuts, buns, salads and condiments. Otto wore cargo pants and a yellow knit golf shirt with a tiny golfer embossed in red. Winner wore sharply creased gray Dockers and a red and blue Hawaiian shirt with the tails out. They made their way through the murmuring crowd to the bar. Otto got a beer and a bottled water. Winner got a gin and tonic. People acknowledged the famous face with smiles and nods. They saw Goldfarb across the way glad-handing a well-known producer.

A tall man with graying hair came up and stuck out his hand. “Mel Tyler, Tyler Aeronautics. Say, my boy thinks you rule the world, Mr. Winner.”

“Please call me Gabe.”

They shook hands. Winner promised to give Tyler a signed copy of his boxed DVDs. The ringing of a cook’s triangle cut through the conversation. Everyone looked to Bob Casey who was banging on the gong with a soup tureen. “If I may have your attention, people, please take your seats on the lawn for the invocation and impromptus.”

The sun was a burnt macaroni strip over the mountains as Otto and Winner took seats on the end of the third row. A quick head count showed at least fifty campers. Amidst the quiet rustling and clinking of ice, Witherspoon emerged from the main lodge wearing an Indian war bonnet that made him seem even taller and carrying a war club/pipe. As he walked toward the podium a half dozen employees as well as a half dozen campers seated in the first row began to bang on pots and pans and even a set of bongo clubs that someone had brought while chanting “Hey na na na…hey na na na…”

Against the majestic backdrop of Mt. Pythagoras, to which a narrow band of gold clung to the very top, Witherspoon took his place behind the dais. Gripping the sides of the oak dais, which bore a bas relief carving of a bonneted warrior astride his horse above the Grove logo, Witherspoon waited for the murmur of conversation to die down. Men in blue blazers wheeled out carts loaded with thermoses and red solo cups.

Witherspoon held the club toward the lodge. “Dog brothers!” he thundered in a sonorous voice. The valley was a natural amphitheater, his words bouncing off the rocks and pinging back. “Welcome to the 118th annual gathering of the tribes and celebration of our father the sun and our mother the moon!”

Applause, war whoops, whistles. Otto looked around. Fortune 500 CEOs stomped their feet and stuck fingers in their mouths. Some of them looked soused already.

Witherspoon fixed the audience with a steely glare and a twinkle in his eye. “Tonight we honor those brave warriors who have gone to the valley of eternal spring, those who walk among us, and those yet to come. I hold in my hand the speaker’s pipe. Whomsoever holds the speaker’s pipe must be listened to.”

“Bad grammar!” someone yelled.

The attendants began filling solo cups and passing them down the rows.

“As we weep for those needlessly slaughtered, we pray for the souls of their killers for we are but mud following in the Great Father’s image. The world was once a garden of Eden riding on the back of a great turtle! Then the white man came, he raped, he pillaged, and he took!”

Boos and hisses. Witherspoon tamped it down. “Kind of like you, Bill,” he said looking at the software billionaire in the first row. The billionaire laughed along with the rest of the crowd.

“My ghost warriors are now handing out the blood of the white man, which we drink in atonement and to mark the passing of another year in which we have all grown wiser!”

Laughter and jokes.

Witherspoon held up a cup. “Wankantanka hear our prayer! Thank you for the rain and air! Thank you for the food we eat--the corn, the schnapps, the buffalo meat..”

Someone muttered, “The ostrich roams the great Sahara…”

Otto surreptitiously upended his bottled water, emptying it. While all eyes were on Witherspoon he carefully poured half his drink into the bottle, screwed the cap back on and slipped it into a pant pocket. It was full dark now and nobody paid him the slightest attention.

“Drink up, dog brothers!” Witherspoon cried. The tribe needed no urging.

Otto put a hand on Winner’s arm and sniffed what remained of his own drink. He dipped the tip of his tongue in the red mixture and concluded it was a Bloody Mary with an odd, subtle undertone. He quietly poured the remainder of his drink beneath the chair.

Winner followed suit, but he had already taken a sip.

“As you know,” Witherspoon boomed, “we have a serious side. Pawnee Grove was always intended to be a modern Chautauqua, a place where the foremost thinkers of the day could present new ideas. It was here Henry Ford first articulated the idea of the automobile assembly line. Mark Twain outlined what he believed to be the future of the newspaper business. In recent years the subjects of have ranged from faster-than-light travel to new ways of extracting natural gas.

“A record number of you have requested the pipe tonight so we may not get you all in, but there’s always tomorrow night. It’s first come, first serve. Mel, the speaker’s pipe is yours.”

The tall aeronautics executive stood and approached the podium, accepting the ceremonial pipe with a grin. Witherspoon stepped down, sat in the front and removed his war bonnet. Sis Boom Ba’s eerie wail drifted faintly from the kitchen.

“Dog brothers!” Tyler began brandishing the pipe. “It was in 1994 that Konstantin Tsiolkovsky first proposed an orbital elevator to carry men beyond earth’s gravitational boundary. The geostationary orbital tether would have to be a minimum thirty-five kilometers in length. That’s twenty-three miles. Until recently, such a project was deemed unfeasible because we lacked the knowledge and materials. Could such a thing support its own weight without crashing back to earth? Where is the best place to build such a thing?

“I am pleased to announce that Tyler Aeronautics has developed a carbon nanotube that meets all the requirements of the geostationary orbital tether…”

The engineer paused gripping the sides of the podium. He grinned. An orange glow gleamed behind his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak and a tiny cloud of vapor escaped. Otto bolted from his seat and before anyone could stop him, leaped onto the podium, ducked, hefted Tyler in a fireman’s carry and ran toward the lake.

***

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

“Bonfire”

Monday night.

The water was shockingly cold. Within seconds, Otto’s toes had gone numb. He staggered in up to his waist and dropped the bigger man into the lake. Vibration transferred through the water. Otto felt the explosion and staggered back, falling, turning over and swimming away beneath the surface as the engineer erupted in flame. A wash of super-heated water rolled over Otto. He stood, shielding his eyes from the boiling conflagration, dimly aware of a stirring and muttering on the lawn, chairs overturned, tables upended, men running for the trees.

His legs were numb from the knee down.

The lawn was lit up like day from the ball of flame in the lake, a blazing nova whose strobing light illuminated the herky-jerk motion of movers and shakers abandoning their seats and running for their cars like the zombie apocalypse.

“Come out of the water now!” someone yelled. Otto tried to catch his bearings.

“Come out of the water now! Put your hands behind your head!”

At first Otto was blinded by the patio spotlights that had all been turned on. It took him a minute for his eyes to adjust. Bob Casey stood in a shooter’s stance at the shore with his pistol trained on Otto’s middle luridly lit like a scene in a Roger Corman movie. From behind the spotlights. In front, the blazing ball.

“I didn’t kill him!” Otto said. “I tried to save him!”

Witherspoon joined Casey. “Why’d you kill him, White?”

Two other staff stood nearby, pistols in their hands. The last guest hot-footed it toward his cabin. Most of the lawn chairs had been tipped over in the mad scramble and red solo cups dotted the yard.

Otto shuffled out of the water hands out, palms up.

“Down on your knees!” Casey yelled. “Hands behind the head!”

Otto did as he was instructed. While Casey held a gun on him, Burt approached with handcuffs.

“Hey wait a minute! One cotton pickin’ minute!”

All eyes save Caseys’, which were glued on Otto, turned to Gabe Winner who stood to the side with his hands visible. “What’s the matter with you guys? You all know about the spontaneous human combustions, right? Otto was trying to save Tyler’s life!”

There was a moment of stunned silence. Who did he think he was? The Detonator?

“What spontaneous human combustions?” one of the crew said.

“I’m a federal agent,” Otto said. “My badge is in my right front pocket.”

Casey motioned for Otto to pull it out. Burt stepped back. Otto slowly withdrew his badge holder, flipped it open and handed it to Burt who looked at it and handed it to Casey.

“Are you armed?” Casey said.

“No,” Otto replied, still on his knees. “And what has that got to do with anything. I thought you encouraged visitors to pack.”

Casey conferred with Witherspoon. Otto couldn’t hear what they said.

Casey holstered his weapon. “Apparently the police are on their way. You’ll have to stay here and talk to them.”

Otto got to his feet. “I intend to. First I have to get out of these clothes.”

Casey handed Otto his badge back. “You might have informed us.”

“Need to know, Mr. Casey. I’m sure you understand that.”

A minute later Winner zipped up in one of the golf carts. Otto got in and they whirred up the lawn, onto the blacktop and into the forest, the cart’s weak lights barely showing the way. The cool evening air and wet clothes chilled Otto to his marrow. At the cabin Otto hurriedly stripped and took a hot shower. He locked the “blood of the white man” in the cabin safe next to his Ruger.

In his room with the door shut Otto used the Ocelot to phone Gus Alvarez.

“Alvarez,” the agent answered.

Behind him, Otto heard dogs barking, kids laughing, other voices. “Gus, very sorry to interrupt your evening.”

`”Go ahead.”

Otto told Alvarez what had happened.

“I’m on my way,” Alvarez said without hesitation. “Don’t let anyone touch the body.”

Otto phoned Margaret Yee and left a brief message describing what had happened.

Winner was smoking a joint when Otto came out of the bathroom.

He offered the joint to Otto. Otto shook his head.

“Helps me relax.”

“What just happened?” Otto said. “What did you see?”

“At first I thought you’d just gone nuts. I didn’t catch the signals until you were almost up there. Then I understood instantly.”

“Did you notice any unusual activity among the campers?”

Winner shook his head. “Everybody stood up when you ran to the water. Most of them must have thought it was part of the show. Nobody realized what was going on until he burst into flame.”

“Why now?” Otto said. “There’s never been an SHC at the Grove before. Whatever it is, it’s happening faster. Like somebody’s losing control.”

“I know. Like, all of a sudden they’re everywhere.”

By the time they returned to the main lodge, an ambulance and a Larimer County Deputy had arrived. Otto found the deputy on the veranda talking to Burt. Otto looked around for Witherspoon and Casey. They were nowhere to be seen.

Otto pulled out his badge. “Officer, I’m Agent White.”
The deputy took the badge and examined it. “You want to tell me what happened, Agent White?”

Otto gave him the rundown. “Where are Witherspoon and Casey? They were just here.”

The deputy looked around. “Haven’t seen them.”

A team of EMTs went up the log steps, through the lobby and the back door with a folding gurney. At the shore they popped it into shape and waded into the lake. They fished around for the cadaver and placed it on the gurney. They wheeled it out of the lake.

Otto ran after them.

“Leave it there, boys!” he called waving his badge. “We’ve got this one.”

One of the EMTs came out of the water in hip waders, walked up to Otto and snatched the badge from his hand, looked at it, handed it back and walked away muttering.

Otto went up to the patio. The deputy had come out back.

“Right now it’s just me,” the deputy said, “but in the next twenty minutes this place is going to be crawling with cops. We’d better make sure that the remaining witnesses stick around.”

The deputy turned to greet two more Larimer County cruisers as they pulled into the lot.

Otto walked into the lodge up to the desk and looked for the big leather ledger. It was missing. He checked Witherspoon’s office He went out onto the deck and watched the EMTs retrieve something that looked like a withered black branch and set it on the gurney.

The deputy returned with a Larimer County Sheriff. Like every sheriff and deputy Otto had ever seen he was a very big man with the shoulders of an ox. He and Otto shook hands.

“Did you know Tyler was going to light up like that?”

“Of course not. I never expected it to take place here but when I realized what was happening I tried to get him into the lake to put out the fire.”

“Walk with me,” the sheriff said, stepping off the veranda onto the lawn and heading toward the gurney. The thing that lay on the gurney looked like a Giacometti sculpture. One limb--an arm or a leg--had been separated. Some hair and skin still clung to the skull.

“A federal team will arrive shortly. We’ll take possession of the body. I’ll be happy to sign for it.”

The sheriff stood with his arms crossed staring at Tyler’s grotesque remains. “That’s fine. This one’s a little outside our purview.”

Otto saw the red and blue lights reflecting off the tall pine on the other side of the lodge. More cops. He looked around. Winner was gone. Probably went back to the cabin or using a lodge phone to talk to Stella.

Gus Alvarez and a young agent arrived in a van at seven forty-five followed by a plain brown Crown Vic with Lon Barnett and another agent. Witherspoon’s and Casey’s cars remained in the parking lot but there was no sign of the two men.

***