CHAPTER 63
JACK TROTTER, KNOWN TO THE WORLD BY MANY names, known only to Corky as Queeg von Hindenburg, didn?t live in the glamorous part of Malibu. He resided far from those view hills and beaches where actors and rock stars and the fabulously wealthy founders of bankrupt dot-com companies sunned, played, and shared recipes for cannabis brownies.
Instead, he lived inland, behind the hills and beyond the sight of the sea, in one of the rustic canyons that appealed not only to those who kept horses and loved the simple life but also to troubled cranks and crackpots, weedheads with names like Boomer and Moose who farmed marijuana under lamps in barns and bunkers, ecoterrorists scheming to blow up auto dealerships in the name of endangered tree rats, and religious cultists worshiping UFOs.
A ranch fence badly in need of paint surrounded Trotter?s four acres. He usually kept the gate shut to discourage visitors.
Today the gate hung wide open because he feared that Corky-known to him as Robin Goodfellow, kick-ass federal agent-would drive through that barrier, battering it off its hinges, as he?d done once before.
At the end of the graveled driveway stood the hacienda-style house [419] of pale yellow stucco and exposed timbers. Not dilapidated enough to be called ramshackle, not nearly dirty enough to be called squalid, the place suffered instead from a sort of genteel neglect.
Trotter didn?t spend much money maintaining his home because he expected to have to flee at any moment. A man with his head in the lunette of a guillotine lived with no more tension than what Jack Trotter daily endured.
A conspiracy theorist, he believed that a secret cabal ran the nation, that it intended soon to dispense with democracy and impose brutal dictatorial control. He was ever alert for early signs of the coming crackdown.
Currently Trotter believed that post-office employees would be the vanguard of the repression. They were, in his estimation, not the mere bureaucrats they appeared to be, but highly trained shock troops masquerading as innocent letter carriers.
He had prepared a series of bolt-holes, each more remote than the one before it. He hoped to escape civilization by degrees when the bloodbath began.
No doubt he would have fled after Corky?s first visit had he not believed that Corky, as Robin Goodfellow, knew the location of every one of his bolt-holes and would descend on him in his hideaway with a company of cutthroat mailmen who would show no mercy.
Toward the east end of the property, away from the house, stood an ancient unpainted barn and a prefab steel building of more recent construction. Corky knew only some of what Trotter was up to in those structures, but he pretended to have full knowledge.
In the fierce heat of summer, the real threat to Trotter would be fire, not a wicked government cabal. The steep slopes behind his property, as well as half the narrow valley both up-canyon and down-canyon, bristled with wild brush that, by late August, would be as ready for burning as Brittina Dowd?s house had proved to be with the application of a little gasoline.
Now, of course, the steep slopes were so supersaturated with rain [420] that the risk was a mud slide. In this terrain, a canyon wall could descend in a tidal wave of muck with such suddenness that even a wild-eyed paranoid with every nerve fully cocked might not be able to outrun it. If he broke into a sprint at first rumble, Trotter could still wind up buried alive, but alive only briefly, sharing his grave with an ark?s worth of crushed and smothered wildlife.
Corky loved southern California.
Not yet crushed and smothered, Trotter waited for his visitor on the veranda. If at all possible, he hoped to keep Corky out of the house.
On one of his previous visits, deeply into his role as a rogue government agent who used the United States Constitution as toilet paper, Corky had misbehaved. He had shown no respect for Trotter?s property rights. He had been a brute.
On this twenty-second day of December, Corky didn?t find himself to be mellowed out by holiday good will. He was a punk-mean elf.
Although he parked ten steps from the veranda, he didn?t hurry through the downpour because Robin Goodfellow, too cool for jackboots but wearing them in spirit, was not a man who noticed the weather when he was in a foul mood.
He climbed the three steps to the veranda, drew the Glock from his shoulder holster, and pressed the muzzle to Trotter?s forehead.
?Repeat what you told me on the phone.?
?Damn,? Trotter said nervously. ?You know it?s true.?
?It?s bullshit,? Corky said.
Trotter?s hair was as orange as that of the Cheshire Cat who had toyed with Alice in Wonderland. He had the pinned-wide, protuberant eyes of the Mad Hatter. His nose twitched nervously, reminiscent of the White Rabbit. His bloated face and his huge mustache recalled the famous Walrus, and he was in general as brillig, slithy, and mimsy as numerous of Lewis Carroll?s characters rolled into one.
?For God?s sake, Goodfellow,? Trotter all but blubbered, ?the storm, [421] the storm! We can?t do the job in this. It?s impossible in weather like this.?
Still pressing the Glock to Trotter?s forehead, Corky said, ?The storm will break by six o?clock. The wind will die completely. We?ll have ideal conditions.?
?Yeah, they?re saying it might break, but what do they know? Do any of their predictions ever turn out right??
?I?m not relying on the TV weathermen, you cretin. I?m relying on supersecret Defense Department satellites that not only study the planet?s weather patterns but control them with microwave energy pulses. We will make the storm end when we need it to end.?
This crackpot assertion played well with the paranoid Trotter, whose pinned-wide eyes stretched even wider. ?Weather control,? he whispered shakily. ?Hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, droughts-an untraceable weapon as terrible as nuclear bombs.?
In reality, Corky was counting on nothing more than chaos to be his ally, to bring the storm to an end when he needed calm skies.
Chaos never failed him.
?Rain or no rain, wind or no wind,? he told Trotter, ?you will be in Bel Air, at the rendezvous point, at seven o?clock sharp, as originally planned.?
?Weather control,? Trotter muttered darkly.
?Don?t even think about not coming. Do you know how many eyes are on us right now-up in those hills, out in those fields??
?Lots of eyes,? Trotter guessed.
?My people are everywhere in this canyon, ready to keep you honest or blow your brains out, whichever you want.?
In fact, the only eyes on them were those of the crows, hawks, sparrows, and other members of the feathered community gathered in the ancient California live oaks that sheltered the house.
Jack Trotter had fallen for these lies not because of the phony NSA credentials, not because of Corky?s bravura performance as Agent [422] Robin Goodfellow, but because Corky had known so much about Trotter?s many aliases and at least a few things about his thus far successful career as a bank robber and a distributor of Ecstasy. He believed that Corky had learned about him by means of the ruling cabal?s all but omniscient intelligence-gathering apparatus.
What Corky had learned about Trotter, however, he had heard from Mick Sachatone, the hacker and multimillionaire anarchist who traded in forged documents, untraceable cell phones, and other illegal paperwork, objects, substances, and information. Mick had provided Trotter with the identities that subsequently he revealed to Corky.
Ordinarily, Mick would never disclose to one client the affairs of another. Considering the kind of people he did business with, such a lack of discretion would result, if he were lucky, in his death or, if he were unlucky, in the excision of his eyes, the extraction of his tongue, the severing of his thumbs, and castration with pliers.
Because Mick had reason to hate Trotter with an intensity nearly homicidal, he had risked sharing information with Corky. Jealous rage of operatic proportions had caused him to violate his usual standards of client confidentiality.
For his part, Trotter had earned Mick?s enmity, though he seemed unaware of it. He had stolen Mick?s girlfriend.
Mick?s girlfriend had been a porn-movie star renowned in certain jerky circles for the inhuman flexibility of her body.
Perhaps Trotter didn?t think that anyone could become profoundly emotionally attached, on evenings and weekends, to a woman who did two, six, and even ten men at a time in front of a camera, during her regular business hours.
Since the age of thirteen, however, Mick?s most cherished dream had been to have a porn star for a girlfriend. He felt that Trotter had robbed him of his heart?s one true desire and had thwarted his destiny.
After four months with Trotter, the woman had disappeared. Mick was of the opinion that, having tired of her, Trotter had killed her [423] either because she had learned too much about his illegal activities or merely for sport, and had buried her deep in the canyon.
Now she was of no use to anyone, and this pointless waste of her exceptional flexibility further infuriated Mick.
Lowering the Glock from Trotter?s forehead, Corky said, ?Let?s go inside.?
?Please, let?s not,? Trotter pleaded.
?Need I remind you,? Corky said, lying with delightful panache, ?that your cooperation with me could earn you erasure from all public records, from all tax records, making you the freest man who ever lived, a man utterly unknown to the government??
?I?ll be there tonight. Seven o?clock sharp. Wind or no wind. I swear I will.?
?I still want to go inside,? Corky said. ?I still feel the need to make my point with you.?
A sadness came into Trotter?s Mad Hatter eyes. His walruslike face drooped.
Resigned, he led Corky into the house.
The bullet holes in the walls, from the previous occasion when Corky had needed to teach Trotter a lesson, had not been repaired; however, the living-room display shelves had been filled with a new collection of Lladro porcelains-statuettes of ballerinas, princesses dancing with princes, children capering with a dog, a lovely farm maiden feeding a flock of geese gathered at her feet
That a paranoid, conspiracy-drunk, bank-robbing, drug-peddling survivalist with bolt-holes leading from here to the Canadian border should have a weak spot for fragile porcelains didn?t surprise Corky. Regardless of how rough we may appear on the exterior, each of us has a human heart.
Corky himself had a weakness for old Shirley Temple movies, in which he indulged once or twice a year. Without embarrassment.
As Trotter watched, Corky emptied the 9-mm magazine, shattering one porcelain with every shot.
[424] In the months since he had unintentionally wounded Mina Reynerd in the foot, he had become remarkably proficient with handguns. Until recently, he?d never much wanted to use a firearm in the service of chaos, for it had seemed too cold, too impersonal. But he was warming to the instrument.
He replaced the first magazine with a second and finished off the Lladro collection. The humid air was full of a chalky dust and the smell of gunfire.
?Seven o?clock,? he said.
?I?ll be there,? said the chastened Trotter.
?Gonna take a magic carpet ride.?
After replacing the second magazine with a third, Corky slipped the Glock into his shoulder holster and walked out to the veranda.
He proceeded slowly through the rain to the Land Rover, boldly turning his back to the house.
He drove down out of the Malibu canyons toward the coast.
The sky was an open beaker, pouring forth not rain but the universal solvent for which medieval alchemists had sought in vain. All around him, the hills were melting. The lowlands were dissolving. The edge of the continent deliquesced into the tumultuous sea.