Sooner rather than later, Skeet would have to take a paper clip, figuratively speaking. He should have died Tuesday morning. Later this evening, for sure.
The dice tumbled to a nine. The deck of cards gave up a queen of diamonds.
Swiftly calculating, Ahriman determined that the next shot would come from a figure positioned at the southwest corner of the Alamo roof: one of Eliot Ness" loyal subordinates. No doubt, the grieving G-man would be hot for vengeance. His weapon was a marble, which had greater lethal potential than a mere paper clip, and with the benefit of his high vantage point, he might be able to deliver extreme woe to the surrounding Mexican soldiers and to the gangland sc.u.mbags who would rue the day they agreed to do Al Capone"s dirty work.
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"She didn"t commit suicide," Dusty repeated, speaking softly, leaning forward conspiratorially in the booth, even though the roar of voices from the bar prevented anyone from eavesdropping.
The certainty in his voice left Martie speechless. Slashed wrists. No indications of a struggle. A suicide note in Susan"s handwriting. The determination of self-destruction was irrefutable.
Dusty held up his right hand, and with each point he made, he let a finger spring from his clenched fist. "One-yesterday at New Life, Skeet was activated by the name Dr. Yen Lo Dr. Yen Lo and then together we stumbled to the haiku that allowed me to access his subconscious for programming." and then together we stumbled to the haiku that allowed me to access his subconscious for programming."
"Programming," she said doubtfully. "This is still so hard to believe."
"Programming is how I see it. He was waiting for instructions. Missions, Missions, he called them. Two-when I became frustrated with him and told him he should give me a break and just go to sleep, he went out instantly. He he called them. Two-when I became frustrated with him and told him he should give me a break and just go to sleep, he went out instantly. He obeyed obeyed what seemed like an impossible order. I mean, how can you drop off to sleep in a blink, at will? Three-earlier yesterday, when he was going to jump off the roof, he said someone had what seemed like an impossible order. I mean, how can you drop off to sleep in a blink, at will? Three-earlier yesterday, when he was going to jump off the roof, he said someone had told told him to jump." him to jump."
"Yeah, the angel of death."
"Granted, he was whacked on something. But that doesn"t mean there wasn"t some truth in what he said. Four-in The Manchurian Candidate, The Manchurian Candidate, the brainwashed soldier is capable of committing murder on the direction of his controller, then forgetting every detail of what he"s done, but, get this, he"ll also follow instructions to kill himself if necessary." the brainwashed soldier is capable of committing murder on the direction of his controller, then forgetting every detail of what he"s done, but, get this, he"ll also follow instructions to kill himself if necessary."
"It"s just a thriller."
"Yeah, I know. The writing"s good. The plot is entertaining, and the characters are colorful. You"re enjoying it."
Because she had no answer to that, Martie drank more beer.
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General Santa Anna was dead, and history was being rewritten. Al Capone must now a.s.sume command of the combined forces of Mexico and the Chicago underworld.
The goody-two-shoes bunch defending the Alamo had better not start celebrating just yet. Santa Anna was a formidable strategist; but Capone had him beat for sheer ruthlessness.
Once, the real Capone, not this plastic figure, had tortured a snitch with a hand drill. He locked the guy"s head in a machine-shop vice, and with henchmen holding the turn-coat"s arms and legs, old Al had personally cranked the drill handle, driving a diamond-tipped bit through the terrified man"s forehead.
Once, the doctor had killed a woman with a drill, but it had been a Black Decker power model.
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Dusty said, "Condon"s book is fiction, sure, but you get a sense that the psychological-control techniques described in it are based on sound research, that what he proposes as fiction was pretty much possible even at that time. And Martie, the book is set almost fifty years in the past. almost fifty years in the past. Before we had jet airliners." Before we had jet airliners."
"Before we went to the moon."
"Yeah. Before we had cell phones, microwave ovens, and fat-free potato chips with a diarrhea warning on the bag. Just imagine what specialists in mind control might be able to do now, with unlimited resources and no conscience." He paused for Heineken. Then: "Five-Dr. Ahriman said it was incredible incredible that both you and Susan should be stricken with such extreme phobias. He-" that both you and Susan should be stricken with such extreme phobias. He-"
"You know, he"s probably right that mine is related to Susan"s, that it comes from my sense of failure to help her, from my-"
Dusty shook his head and folded his fingers into a fist again. "Or your phobia and hers were implanted, programmed into you as part of an experiment or for some other reason that makes no d.a.m.n sense."
"But Dr. Ahriman never even suggested-"
Impatiently, Dusty said, "He"s a great psychiatrist, okay, and he"s committed to his patients. But he"s conditioned by education and experience to look for psychological cause and effect, for some trauma trauma in your past that caused your condition. Maybe that"s why Susan didn"t seem to be making much progress, because there isn"t any trauma to blame. And, Martie, if they can program you to fear yourself, to have all these violent visions, to do the things you did at the house yesterday...what else could they make you do?" in your past that caused your condition. Maybe that"s why Susan didn"t seem to be making much progress, because there isn"t any trauma to blame. And, Martie, if they can program you to fear yourself, to have all these violent visions, to do the things you did at the house yesterday...what else could they make you do?"
Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was the Valium. Maybe it was even Dusty"s logic. Whatever the reason, Martie found his argument increasingly compelling.
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Her name was Viveca Scofield. She was a starlet s.l.u.t, twenty-five years younger than the doctor"s father, even three years younger than the doctor himself, who at that time was twenty-eight. While playing the second lead in the old man"s latest film, she had used all her considerable wiles to set him up for marriage.
Even if the doctor hadn"t yearned to escape his dad"s shadow and make a name for himself, he would have had to deal with Viveca before she became Mrs. Josh Ahriman and either schemed to control the family fortune or squandered it.
As savvy as Dad was in the ways of Hollywood, as talented as he was at s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g a.s.sociates and browbeating even the most vicious and psychotic studio bosses, he was also a widower of fifteen years and the champion crier of his time, as vulnerable in some ways as he was imperviously armored in others. Viveca would have married him, found a way to drive him to an early death, eaten his liver with chopped onions the night before the funeral, and then cast his son out of the mansion with nothing but a used Mercedes and a token monthly stipend.
In the interest of justice, therefore, the doctor was prepared to eliminate Viveca on the same night that he killed his father. He prepared a second syringe of the ultrashort-acting thiobarbital and paraldehyde, intending to inject it into something she might eat or directly into the starlet herself.
When the great director lay dead in the library, felled by the poisoned pet.i.ts fours, but before surgery had been performed on his lacrimal apparatus, the doctor had gone in search of Viveca and had found her in his father"s bed. A bobinga-wood crack pipe and other drug paraphernalia littered the nightstand, and a book of poetry was on the rumpled sheets beside her. The starlet was snoring like a bear that had gorged on late-season berries half fermented on the vine, spit bubbles swelling and popping on her lips.
She was as naked as nature had made her, and because nature had obviously been in a lascivious mood at the time, the young doctor got all sorts of hot ideas. A lot of money was at stake here, however, and money was power, and power was better than s.e.x.
Earlier in the day, during a private moment, he and Viveca had gotten into an ugly little argument that ended when she coyly noted that she had never seen him well up with emotion the way his father did so routinely. "We"re alike, you and me," she said. "Your father got his share of tears and and yours, while I used up all of mine by the time I was eight. We"re both bone-dry. Now, the problem for you, boy doctor, is that you"ve still got some little withered lump of a heart, but I don"t have any heart at all. So if you try to turn your old man against me, I"ll castrate you and have you singing show tunes, soprano, for my dinner entertainment every night." yours, while I used up all of mine by the time I was eight. We"re both bone-dry. Now, the problem for you, boy doctor, is that you"ve still got some little withered lump of a heart, but I don"t have any heart at all. So if you try to turn your old man against me, I"ll castrate you and have you singing show tunes, soprano, for my dinner entertainment every night."
The memory of this threat gave the doctor an idea better than s.e.x.
He went to the far end of the three-acre estate, to the lavishly equipped tool room and woodworking shop housed in the building that also contained, upstairs, the apartments of the couple that managed the estate, Mr. and Mrs. Haufbrock, and the handyman-groundskeeper, Earl Ventnor. The Haufbrocks were away on a one-week vacation, and Earl was no doubt pa.s.sed out after his nightly patriotic effort to ensure that the American brewing industry would not be driven into bankruptcy by compet.i.tion from foreign beers.
Without the need to skulk, therefore, the doctor selected a Black Decker power drill from the collection of tools. He had the presence of mind also to take a twenty-foot, orange extension cord.
In his father"s bedroom once more, he plugged the extension cord into a wall outlet, plugged the drill into the extension cord, and thus equipped, climbed onto the bed with Viveca, straddling her but remaining on his knees. She was so doped that she snored through all his preparations, and he had to shout her name repeatedly to wake her. When she finally came around, blinking stupidly, she smiled up at him, as if she believed he was someone other than who he was, as if she thought the power drill was an elaborate new Swedish vibrator.
Thanks to the superb instruction provided by the Harvard Medical School, the doctor was able to position the half-inch steel bit with pinpoint accuracy. To the confused and smiling Viveca, he said, "If you don"t have a heart, something else must be in there, and the best way to identify it is take a core sample."
The shriek of the powerful little Black Decker motor brought her out of her drug stupor. By then, however, the drilling operation was under way and in fact nearly completed.
After taking time just to appreciate the loveliness of Viveca being dead, the doctor noticed the book of poetry that lay open on the sheets. A whorl of blood soiled both exposed pages, but in a pristine circle of white paper in the middle of the crimson stain were three lines of verse.
This phantasm of falling petals vanishes into moon and flowers... This phantasm of falling petals vanishes into moon and flowers...
He did not know then that the poem was a haiku, that it had been written by Okyo in 1890, that it was about the poet"s own impending death, and that, like many haiku, it didn"t translate into English with the ideal five-seven-five syllable pattern in which it was composed in the original j.a.panese.
What he did did know was that this tiny poem moved him unexpectedly, profoundly, as he"d never been moved before. The verse expressed, as Ahriman himself could never express it, his heretofore half-repressed and formless sense of his mortality. Okyo"s three lines brought him instantly and poignantly in touch with the terrible sad truth that he, too, was destined eventually to die. He, too, was a phantasm, as fragile as any flower, one day to drop like wilting petals. know was that this tiny poem moved him unexpectedly, profoundly, as he"d never been moved before. The verse expressed, as Ahriman himself could never express it, his heretofore half-repressed and formless sense of his mortality. Okyo"s three lines brought him instantly and poignantly in touch with the terrible sad truth that he, too, was destined eventually to die. He, too, was a phantasm, as fragile as any flower, one day to drop like wilting petals.
As he knelt on the bed and held the book of haiku in both hands, reading those three lines over and over again, having forgotten the drill-pierced starlet whom he still straddled, the doctor felt his chest tighten and his throat thicken with emotion at the prospect of his eventual demise. How short life is! How unjust is death! How insignificant are we all! How cruel the universe.
So powerfully did these thoughts course through his mind, the doctor was sure he must be crying. Holding the book with only his left hand, he raised his right to his dry cheeks, then to his eyes, but he was tearless. He was convinced, however, that he"d been close close to tears, and he knew now that he possessed the capacity to weep if ever he experienced anything sad enough to tap his salty well. to tears, and he knew now that he possessed the capacity to weep if ever he experienced anything sad enough to tap his salty well.
This realization pleased him because it meant that he had more in common with his father than he had supposed, and because it proved he wasn"t like Viveca Scofield, as she had claimed. Perhaps she she had no tears, but his were stored away and waiting. had no tears, but his were stored away and waiting.
She had also been wrong about not having a heart. She had one, all right. Of course, it was no longer beating.
The doctor climbed off Viveca, leaving her like an unfinished woodshop project, Black Decker embedded, and for a long while he sat on the edge of the bed, poring through the book of haiku. Here, in this unlikely place and time, he discovered his artistic side.
When he could finally pry himself away from the book, he brought Dad"s body upstairs, placed it on the bed, wiped the smears of dark chocolate off its mouth, dissected the great director"s fine lacrimal apparatus, and collected the famous eyes. He tapped into Viveca for a few ounces of blood, gathered six pair of her thong-style panties from the dresser drawer-she was a live-in fiancee-and broke off one of her acrylic fingernails.
When he used a master key to let himself into Earl Ventnor"s apartment, he found a crude replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa constructed out of empty Budweiser cans on the living-room coffee table. The handyman, rather than leaning, lay in full collapse on the sofa, snoring almost as loudly as Viveca had been snoring, while Rock Hudson romanced Doris Day in an old movie on television.
Where does fiction end and reality begin? That is the essence of the game. Hudson romancing Day; Earl in a fit of drunken l.u.s.t, raping the helpless starlet and committing a brutal double homicide-we believe what is easy to believe, whether fiction or fact.
The young doctor shook some of Viveca"s blood on the pants and shirt of the sleeping handyman. He used the last of it to soak one pair of the thong panties. He carefully wrapped the broken-off fingernail in the blood-soaked underwear, then put all six pair of panties in the bottom drawer of Earl"s bedroom dresser.
When Ahriman left the apartment, Earl was still sleeping deeply. The sirens would eventually wake him.
In the nearby gardening shed, where the lawn mowers were stored, the doctor found a five-gallon can of gasoline. He carried it into the main house and upstairs to his father"s bedroom.
After bagging his own blood-spotted garments, quickly washing up, and changing into fresh clothes, he soaked the bodies in the gasoline, dropped the empty can on the bed, and lit the pyre.
The doctor had been staying the week at his father"s vacation house in Palm Springs and had driven back to Bel Air this afternoon only to tend to these urgent family matters. With his work done, he returned to the desert.
In spite of the many lovely and valuable antiques that might burn if the fire department didn"t respond quickly enough, Ahriman took with him only the bag full of his b.l.o.o.d.y clothes, the book of haiku, and his dad"s eyes in a jar filled with a temporary fixative solution. Little more than an hour and a half later, in Palm Springs, he burned the incriminating clothes in the fireplace along with a few aromatic cedar splits and later mixed the ashes into the mulch in the little rose garden beyond the swimming pool. As risky as it was to keep the eyes and the slim volume of poetry, he was too sentimental to dispose of them.
He stayed up all night to watch a dusk-to-dawn marathon of old Bela Lugosi movies, ate an entire quart of Rocky-Road ice cream and a big bag of potato chips, swilled down all the root beer and cream soda he wanted, and caught a desert beetle in a big gla.s.s jar and tortured it with a match. His personal philosophy had been enriched immensely by Okyo"s three lines of haiku, and he had taken the poet"s teaching to heart: Life is short, we all die, so you better grab all the fun you can get.
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Dinner was served with a second round of beers. Having had no breakfast and only a small vanilla milk shake for lunch, Martie was famished. Nevertheless, she felt as if having an appet.i.te, so soon after finding Susan dead, was a betrayal of her friend. Life went on, and even as you grieved, you had a capacity for pleasure, too, as wrong as that might seem. Pleasure was possible in the midst of an abiding fear, as well, for she relished every bite of her jumbo prawns even as she listened to her husband reason his way toward an understanding of the doom hanging over them.
Fingers sprang from Dusty"s fist once again: "Six-if Susan could be programmed to submit to repeated s.e.xual abuse and have memories of those events scrubbed from her mind, if she could be instructed to submit to rape, then what couldn"t couldn"t she be made to do? Seven-she began to suspect what was happening, even though she had no proof, and maybe just that little suspicion was enough to alarm her controllers. Eight-she shared her suspicions with you, and they knew it, and they worried that she might share them with someone they didn"t control, so that meant she had to be terminated." she be made to do? Seven-she began to suspect what was happening, even though she had no proof, and maybe just that little suspicion was enough to alarm her controllers. Eight-she shared her suspicions with you, and they knew it, and they worried that she might share them with someone they didn"t control, so that meant she had to be terminated."
"How would they know?"
"Maybe her phone was tapped. Maybe a lot of things. But if they decided to terminate her and instructed instructed her to commit suicide, and she obeyed because she was programmed, then that"s not really suicide. Not morally, maybe not even legally. That"s murder." her to commit suicide, and she obeyed because she was programmed, then that"s not really suicide. Not morally, maybe not even legally. That"s murder."
"But what can we do about it?"
Eating steak, he considered her question for a while. Then: "h.e.l.l if I know-yet. Because we can"t prove anything."
"If they could just call her up and make her commit suicide, behind her locked doors...what do we do the next time our telephone rings?" Martie wondered.
They locked eyes, chewing the question, food forgotten. Finally he said, "We don"t answer it."
"That"s not a practical long-term solution."
"Frankly, Martie, if we don"t figure this out real fast, I don"t think we"re going to be here long term."
She thought of Susan in the bathtub, even though she had never seen the body, and two hands strummed her heartstrings-the hot fingers of grief and the cold of fear. "No, not long," she agreed. "But just how how do we figure it out? Where do we start?" do we figure it out? Where do we start?"
"Only one thing I can think of. Haiku."
"Haiku?"
"Gesundheit," he said, the dear thing, and opened the bookstore bag that he had brought into the restaurant. He sorted through the seven books that Ned had purchased, pa.s.sed one across the table to Martie, and selected another for himself. "Judging by the jacket copy, these are some of the cla.s.sic poets of the form. We"ll try them first-and hope. There"s probably so much contemporary stuff, we could be searching for weeks if we don"t find it in the cla.s.sics."
"What"re we looking for?"
"A poem that gives you a shiver."
"Like when I was thirteen, reading Rod Stewart lyrics?"
"Good G.o.d, no. I"m going to try to forget I even heard that. I mean the kind of shiver you got when you read that name in The Manchurian Candidate. The Manchurian Candidate."
She could speak the name without being affected by it the way she would be if she heard it spoken by someone else: "Raymond Shaw. "Raymond Shaw. There, I just shivered when I said it." There, I just shivered when I said it."
"Look for a haiku that does the same thing to you."
"And then what?"
Instead of answering, he divided his attention between his dinner and his book. In just a few minutes, he said, "Here! It doesn"t chill my spine, but I sure am familiar with it. "Clear cascades...into the waves scatter...blue pine needles.""
"Skeet"s haiku."
According to the book, the verse was written by Mats...o...b..sh-o, who lived from 1644 to 1694.
Because haiku were so short, it was possible to speed through a great many of them in ten minutes, and Martie made the next big discovery before she was half finished with her scampi. "Got it. Written by Yosa Buson, a hundred years after your Bash-o. "Blown from the west...fallen leaves gather...in the east.""
"That"s yours?"