As Sheen?s smirk had frozen and cracked apart under Hazard?s cold [383] stare, so now the color drained from his face, leaving him as gray as the unpainted concrete walls of the ambulance garage.
Backing away from Hazard and Ethan, raising his hands as if to call a time-out, Sheen said, ?What is this? Are you serious? This is crazy. What-there?s a two-dollar Christmas ornament missing, so I should get a lawyer??
?If you have one,? Hazard said solemnly, ?maybe you?d be smart to give him a call.?
Still not sure what to believe, Sheen backed away another step, two, then pivoted from them and hurried toward the dayroom in which ambulance crews waited to be dispatched.
?SWAT team, my ass,? Hazard grumbled.
Ethan smiled. ?You da man.?
?You da man.?
Ethan had forgotten how much easier life could be with backup, especially backup with a sense of humor.
?You should rejoin the force,? Hazard said as they crossed the garage toward the doors to the garden-room corridor. ?We could save the world, have some fun.?
On the stairs to the upper level of the public garage, Ethan said, ?Supposing all this craziness stops sooner or later-being gut shot but not, the bells, the voice on the phone, a guy walking into your closet mirror. You think it?s possible just to go back to the usual cop stuff like nothing strange ever happened??
?What am I supposed to do-become a monk??
?Seems like this ought to change things.?
?I?m happy who I am,? Hazard said. ?I?m already as cool as cool gets. Don?t you think I?m cool to the chromosomes??
?You?re walking ice.?
?Not to say I don?t have heat.?
?Not to say,? Ethan agreed.
?I?ve got plenty of heat.?
[384] ?You?re so cool, you?re hot.?
?Exactly. So there?s no reason for me to change unless maybe I meet Jesus, and He slaps me upside the head.?
They weren?t in a graveyard, weren?t whistling, but the tenor of their words, echoing off the crypt-cold walls of the stairwell, brought to Ethan?s mind old movie images of boys masking their fear with bravado as they journeyed through a cemetery at high midnight.
CHAPTER 56
ON A GRINDSTONE OF SELF-DENIAL, WITH THE diligence of a true obsessive, Brittina Dowd had sharpened herself into a long thin blade. When she walked, her clothes seemed certain to be cut to shreds by the scissoring movement of her body.
Her hips had been honed until they were almost as fragile as bird bones. Her legs resembled those of a flamingo. Her arms had no more substance than wings stripped of their feathers. Brittina seemed to be determined to whittle herself until a brisk breeze could carry her aloft, high into the realm of wren and sparrow.
She was not a single blade, in fact, but an entire Swiss Army knife with all its cutting edges and pointed tools deployed.
Corky Laputa might have loved her if she had not also been ugly.
Although he didn?t love Brittina, he made love to her. The disorder into which she had shaped her skeletal body thrilled him. This was like making love to Death.
Only twenty-six, she had assiduously prepared herself for early-onset osteoporosis, as though she yearned to be shattered in a fall, reduced to fragments as completely as a crystal vase knocked off a shelf onto a stone floor.
[386] In their passion, Corky always expected to be punctured by one of her knees or elbows, or to hear Brittina crack apart beneath him.
?Do me,? she said, ?do me,? and managed to make it sound less like an invitation to sex than like a request for assisted suicide.
Her bed was narrow, suitable only for a sleeper who did not toss and turn, who lay as unmoving as the average occupant of a casket, by far too narrow for the wild rutting of which they both were capable.
She had furnished the room with a single bed because she?d never had a lover and had expected to remain a virgin. Corky had romanced her as easily as he could have crushed a hummingbird in his fist.
The narrow bed stood in a room on the top floor of a narrow two-story Victorian house. The lot was deep but too narrow to qualify as a residential building site under current city codes.
Almost sixty years ago, just after the war, an eccentric dog fancier had designed and built the curious place. He lived in it with two greyhounds and two whippets.
Eventually he?d been paralyzed by a stroke. After several days passed during which their master had not fed them, the starving dogs ate him.
That had been forty years ago. The subsequent history of this residence at times had been as colorful and on occasion nearly as grisly as the life and ghastly death of its first owner.
The vibe of the house caught Brittina?s attention just like the high-frequency shriek of a dog whistle might have pricked the ears of a whippet. She?d purchased it with a portion of an inheritance that she received from her paternal grandmother.
Brittina was a graduate student at the same university that had provided multigeneration employment for the Laputa family. In another eighteen months, she would earn a doctorate in American literature, which she largely despised.
[387] Although she had not blown her entire inheritance on the house, she needed to supplement her investment income with other revenue. She had served as a graduate assistant to keep herself in chocolate-flavored Slim-Fast and ipecac.
Then, six months ago, Channing Manheim?s personal assistant had approached the chairperson of the university?s English department to explain that a new tutor would be required for the famous actor?s son. Only academicians of the highest caliber need apply.
The chairperson consulted Corky, who was vice-chairperson of the department, and Corky recommended Ms. Dowd.
He?d known that she would be hired because, first of all, the idiot movie star would be impressed by her dramatic appearance. Cadaverous paleness, a gaunt face, and the body of an anorexic nun would be seen as proof that Brittina cared little for the pleasures of the flesh, that she enjoyed largely a life of the mind, that she was therefore a genuine intellectual.
In the entertainment business, only image mattered. Manheim would believe, therefore, that appearance equaled reality in other professions, as well.
Furthermore, Brittina Dowd was an intellectual snob who peppered her speech with academic jargon more impenetrable than the lab-speak of microbiologists. If the young woman?s emaciation didn?t convince the movie star of her intellectual credentials, her big words would.
The evening before Brittina went to her job interview, Corky poured on charm as thick as clotted cream, and she at once proved to be famished not only for food but also for flattery. She allowed herself to indulge her appetite for adoration, and Corky bedded her then for the first time.
Ultimately, she became Aelfric Manheim?s tutor in English and literature, making regularly scheduled visits to Palazzo Rospo.
Prior to this, Rolf Reynerd and Corky had discussed, in general [388] terms, the blow that might be struck in the name of social disorder by proving that even a celebrity of worldwide renown was vulnerable to the agents of chaos. They had not been able to settle on an ideal target until Corky?s lover was hired by Channing Manheim.
From Brittina, in bed and out, Corky had learned much about the Manheim estate. Indeed, she disclosed the existence of Line 24-and, more important, told him about the security guard, Ned Hokenberry, valiant defender of Peaches and Herb, who according to Fric had been dismissed for leaving phony messages from the dead on that answering machine.
Brittina had also painted for Corky a detailed psychological portrait of Channing?s son. This would be invaluable when, with Aelfric prisoner, he proceeded to destroy the boy emotionally.
In the afterglow of insect-frenzy sex, Brittina never once had been suspicious that Corky?s interest in all things Manheim might be related to anything other than simple curiosity. She was an unwitting conspirator, a naive girl in love.
?Do me,? Brittina insisted now, ?do me,? and Corky obliged.
Wind battered the narrow house and hard rain lashed its skinny flanks, and on the narrow bed, Brittina thrashed like an agitated mantis.
This time, in their dreamy postcoital cuddle, Corky had no need to ask questions related to Manheim. He had more information on that subject than he needed to know.
As occasionally was her wont, Brittina drifted into a monologue about the uselessness of literature: the antiquated nature of the written word; the coming triumph of image over language; those ideas that she called memes, which supposedly spread like viruses from mind to mind, creating new ways of thinking in society.
Corky figured that his brain would explode if she didn?t shut up, after which he would need a new way to think.
Eventually, Brittina clattered up from their love nest with the intention of rattling off to the bathroom.
[389] Reaching under the bed, Corky retrieved the pistol where earlier he had hidden it.
When he shot her twice in the back, he half expected Brittina to shatter into bone splinters and dust, as if she were an ancient mummy made brittle by two centuries of dehydration, but she only dropped dead in a pale, angular heap.