Black Mountain

by Laird Barron

  “I suppose that’s what I mean.”

  The SUV escaped surface street traffic and merged onto the highway south.

  “You’re the common denominator,” I said.

  “I’m anything but common. Nic only hung around us because Harry took him under his wing. Nic was a wallflower.”

  “Some wallflower.”

  “I wasn’t stonewalling you—not entirely. Harry’s death stunned me. I initially assumed his past had caught up to him: a jealous lover, a vindictive hustler, the mob. He’d alluded to the possibility.”

  I waited.

  She sipped. She’d had a skinful, yet maintained control and was probably more formidable than ever. I’d begun to think maybe she and Lionel were compatible on a more meaningful level.

  “Every wee Labrador grows up hearing that Uncle Ephraim is the devil. Some claim he murdered a boy his own age whose family worked on the estate and that he trafficked in the occult. Grandfather staged a car accident and Ephraim was eventually shipped away under a different name.”

  “We’re both up to speed on your uncle’s crazy adventures since then,” I said. “Hitman, serial killer, lurker at striptease shows. Alas, there’s one last, nasty wrinkle.”

  “I’ll brace myself.”

  “Obviously, the guys who shot your uncle are totally convinced he’s dead. I’ve also labored under that theory. Until recently. In light of new information, I’ve come to believe he’s alive and kicking.”

  She waited.

  “More important, I think you know his current whereabouts.” I watched with minor satisfaction as her soft, gloating expression went rigid. “Your uncle must be a physical wreck. At his age, a man doesn’t easily recover from chronic illnesses or bullet wounds. While Royal may do his bidding on the Murder, Inc., front, the old man likely requires regular care. A private clinic or hospital, say?”

  She could’ve done with her all-concealing movie-starlet glasses at that moment. Fear, anger, and a peculiar hint of relief shone in her eyes, in the set of her lovely jaw. For an instant, her affected diffidence, her meticulously cultivated disdain, wavered.

  “Trouble is, you’re an amateur,” I said. “How far can I be trusted? Well, my dear—how far can you throw me? Worse—for you, at least—you’ve already dived into the deep end.”

  “Your agency motto should state Better to be lucky and persistent than good.”

  “Win is a win. Now, tell me what I’ve won.”

  “Bravo, Inspector Clouseau. ‘The Croatoan’ is among us, albeit in a moribund condition.” Her contempt resurfaced. “After you lumbered onto the scene and we spoke, it occurred to me that Father might not be totally invested in capturing Harry’s murderer.”

  “You pulled back the carpet to see the dirt.”

  “Exactly. I sniffed about, putting together years of partially overheard conversations and rumors. I snooped into Father’s secret papers, which are hardly as secret as he’d hoped. Lo and behold, I realized the man you’re hunting is a Labrador. ‘Realized’ is a dodge. I admitted to myself who it had to be. When I confronted Father with what I knew, he unburdened himself.”

  “Did this ‘unburdening’ involve a gun barrel fixed between his eyes?”

  “No. It involved my knowledge of a trip he took to Moscow to secure a clandestine business loan. He sincerely believes the less my mother knows of his fetish for prostitutes and water sports, the better.”

  “Assuming Mom’s as ruthless as you are, I’d have to agree,” I said.

  “Your suspicions are in line with the ugly truth. Father and Ephraim have been in touch, off and on, since 1969. Three years ago, somebody—a ‘vengeful criminal boss,’ perhaps—shot Ephraim and buried him in a shallow grave in the Pine Barrens. Ephraim clawed free and dragged himself to a road. A Good Samaritan took him to the hospital as a John Doe. My uncle managed to call in the cavalry, and Father spirited him away before the authorities arrived.”

  “Daddy couldn’t very well refuse a brother in need. Especially not this brother.”

  “Father did what Labrador protocol demands—he squirreled his brother away at a private facility. Alas, my uncle didn’t perish of his wounds and thus spare everyone subsequent troubles. He persists in a semi-catatonic state. Long periods of unconsciousness punctuated by brief intervals of lucidity.” She passed me a scarp of paper with an address scribbled on it.

  Contemplating the case in its entirety, I wondered if in addition to “brief intervals of lucidity,” her uncle also enjoyed brief intervals of mobility. An unsettling thought.

  We traveled in silence for a while. She with her flask, me itchy under the collar and vulnerable despite my size, experience, and skill. Reality currently manifested as a vast body of dark water. Bottomless, trackless.

  “I’m curious what you think will happen next,” I said; and I was.

  “You’re an attack dog. My dearest hope is that you’ll behave true to type and commit acts of reckless and extreme violence. Sic ’em, boy.”

  “I don’t ‘sic ’em’ anymore.”

  “Nonsense. Isaiah, you’ll never be a detective. You are, however, singularly qualified to deal with this problem.”

  “Murdering an invalid?”

  “Putting down a feral beast that would rip you apart, if given an opportunity. Isn’t it a mistake to underestimate a foe? Just when you think the monster is dead, it opens its eyes.”

  “Get it straight—Royal is my foe. Your uncle is a world-class asshole whom everybody wants to make my problem.”

  “The victims deserve justice.”

  “Some of them,” I said. “Have you considered putting this on Jekyll and Hyde? Those two passed the BD psych eval? They aren’t averse to a spot of wetwork. My main man Hyde; he wouldn’t flinch to cap a man on a gurney.”

  “I asked.”

  “Paid-by-the-hour goons said no to the spectacular Delia Labrador?”

  “These men aren’t like you,” she said with a great deal of acid. “Not underneath where it counts. They’re paid to appear menacing and disperse the rabble.”

  “They’re too smart to go against your dad, is what you’re saying.”

  “It seems so,” she said.

  “You think I have a less developed survival instinct than your goons?”

  “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it? If you act, act quickly. With all this excitement, Father may decide to relocate my uncle soon. It may already be in the works.”

  The day we’d met at the Stone Rooster, Delia matter-of-factly proclaimed an interest in vengeance on behalf of her lover. I was starting to believe her.

  “The Labrador family closet is full of skeletons,” she said. “Two weeks ago, I could choose to ignore the rumors. Harry and I weren’t in love at the end, although we cared deeply for each other. Even you should understand that idea.”

  “Yes.”

  I held out my hand. She passed the flask and I drank. I didn’t recognize the variety of brandy, except that it was of a caliber well beyond what I could casually afford.

  “Harry and Ray were killed for the exact same reason,” she said. “In Harry’s case, his betrayal of Uncle Ephraim was a significant factor. However, I think in your line, they call it a secondary motive.”

  “And the primary?”

  “I slept with Ray and Harry. There’s the real reason they’re dead.”

  “Okay, let me process this a moment,” I said.

  “Ephraim is in a state of rapid decline. Barely capable of speech. I had to put my ear too close to his lips. The reek would turn your stomach. He whispered I resemble my mother. My gorgeous, blonde mother. I defiled myself rutting with filthy old men, so he’d sent an Angel of Death to watch over me.”

  My breath caught in my chest as the yellow, bestial eye of the universe opened and beamed forth a torrent of frigid light. Those
girls and young women slaughtered by the Tri-State Killer were blondes of a similar size, form, and physiognomy; although none compared to Delia Labrador. Who could? Here was the Madonna–whore complex taken to its furthest logical extreme. I grappled with what to say. My arsenal of quips and homey observations was inadequate. So, I bit my tongue.

  “I intended to end his wretched life,” she said. “Murder doesn’t seem to be in my repertoire. I couldn’t bring myself to end him. And so, we come to your role in this tragicomedy.”

  A tear trickled down her cheek, silvery and pure in the light that filtered through the window tint. Maybe genuine, maybe not. She brushed it aside and took a full-on gulp from the rapidly diminishing flask. That gesture I bought completely.

  “I don’t care whether Ephraim rose like Lazarus from his deathbed and personally stuck the knife in Harry. I don’t care if a psycho disciple acted in his name. I don’t care whether my grandfather or my father, or both of the sonsofbitches dressed in matching onesies, yanked the marionette strings.” She spoke through clenched teeth with the painstaking enunciation that incipient drunkenness induces. Her body tremored, as if she were recreating an act of horrific mayhem in her mind. “I don’t care. I don’t fucking care. Harry didn’t deserve that horrible death or to be desecrated. Somebody has to pay.”

  “You’re in luck, Ms. Labrador. Somebody always does.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Delia’s boys dropped me at the Hudson Valley Mall. Lionel leaned against the frame of his car, smoking a cigarette. He and Delia may have made eye contact before she rolled up her window and the SUV sped away.

  We headed in the opposite direction.

  “Be dark in forty-five minutes.” Lionel sounded like a hero in an old horror film preparing to storm the evil count’s gothic stronghold. For all I knew, that’s exactly what we were doing. Who could say what awaited us at the Labradors’ secret hospice?

  “Curtis in the picture?” he said. He wore driving gloves.

  “This is a need-to-know situation. I haven’t decided if I need him to know.” I followed his cue and donned a set he’d left on the floorboard for me to borrow.

  “I’d love to know the plan.”

  “I want to look at . . . him. We’ll go from there.” Despite my conflict, despite my protestations, nothing was going to stop me from seeing the Croatoan up close and personal. What then? That’s as many moves ahead as my mind could process.

  “Right.” He lit a cigarette from the dash knob and cracked his window. “Delia must be supermax TNT furious with her dad to cross him like this.”

  “She’s carrying a torch for you, and Daddy is interfering.”

  “Yeah? Think so?”

  “Whatever you do, when this is over, sleep with her every chance you get. Our lives might depend upon it.”

  Lionel gave me a two-finger salute and a crooked smile.

  “I’ll do my best to save you, buddy.”

  * * *

  —

  EVENING COAGULATED along the horizon. A phalanx of black-and-purple thunderheads shrouded the emerging stars. The immensity of night and darkness pressed against the rim of the world and trickled into my heart. My hand rested against the butt of my .357. The pistol was a steely comfort even as the solidity of physics and reason threatened to dissolve around me.

  My neck tightened and pain knifed into the back of my skull. I closed my eyes and focused. I reflected on what Xerxes Vance told me minutes before I’d bid him farewell.

  I’ve photographed many animals. Predator observation is my forte. Consider an animal in South Africa called the pelican spider. Its jaws and neck are longer than usual—grotesquely so. Nature designed it to hunt other spiders. It’s only my pet theory—but I propose there are people like that. I’m not referring to run-of-the-mill serial killers; nor people who lack empathy or are addicted to sadism. I’m not referring to people afflicted by a brain disorder, or people lacking a gene. This is rarer. Humans evolved to catch other humans. These predators don’t possess elongated necks or gaff hooks for fangs. The horrible machinery is hidden on the inside. You won’t see it before they come very close. They can come very close because they’ve an inherent ability to mimic unaffected emotion, and because they successfully mimic a spectrum of phenotypes.

  Do you think the handlers at Zircon comprehend that Oestryke is more than a hitter? I’m a jaded guy. Even so, it’s uncomfortable to believe a corporation would tolerate such a creature set loose upon the world.

  Do they comprehend his alien psychology? Vance rolled another joint. Whoever was involved from the beginning of his transformation? Certainly, they do. His essential inhumanity, his derangement, is the primary reason the patriarchs walked through fire to keep him in the fold. Those who control Zircon are wealthy and influential thanks to their affinity for envisioning the full scope of available opportunities. R and D is the lifeblood of their enterprise, if not the final purpose, my friend.

  I suggest the truth is far worse. Our own protectors have sanctioned this corruption. Morris’s wartime exploits and the mob hits were convenient testing grounds. But consider the raw intelligence aberrant psych teams could glean from a war-hardened serial killer. You’ll never find proof the Feds were monitoring his murders; charting and analyzing how to weaponize his predilection to hunt fellow primates. Guaranteed they were. Oh, yes, they were.

  * * *

  —

  BLESSED WITH THE WEALTH of kings and pharaohs, the Labradors could’ve hidden their prodigal son anywhere. Had the decision been mine, I would’ve chosen the caldera of a dead volcano on an uncharted island in the South Pacific; or I would’ve stuffed the wretch into a burlap bag and tossed it off the Tappan Zee Bridge.

  Eschewing such exotic measures, Jonathan Labrador opted to conceal his murderous sibling the last place anyone would look—had they been looking—which was in plain sight.

  The nameless hospice occupied a plot of erstwhile farmland, southeast of Olivebridge and the Ashokan Reservoir. The main structure was a large single-level fieldstone cylinder crowned by a conical roof of overlapping brown tiles. Thick glass-block windows warped the red blob of sun and the pastures of tall, pale grass. An A-frame barn crumbled against the nearest fence line.

  Lionel parked at the entrance to a long, unpaved driveway. The yard lay empty but for a white van. The van had an extended body and ceiling, designed for transporting patients.

  He mashed his cigarette in the ashtray.

  “I vote we turn the car around and help the Italian posse hunt for Royal.”

  “You’re outvoted.”

  “Breathe it in, amigo. My mom smelled snow from a blue sky and, next day, here came a blizzard. Granddad’s trick knee pained him when bad weather was on the way. My nose doesn’t work quite the same, but it’s just as reliable. Fuck walking into that building. We should get the hell outta here.”

  “The person laid up in there can’t hurt anybody,” I said. It sounded brave.

  “That so? Why did you request the Mossberg?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Yes, there she was on the backseat, draped in a Norwegian blanket. The worse of my two angels counseled that I should walk inside and cut the Croatoan in half to prove Chekhov right.

  “Reasonable precautions. Have to assume Royal pays homage to the king. Hate to cross paths unprepared.”

  “To hell with being reasonable. Rather not hang with the Italians? Fine. We can pack an overnight kit and tramp up to Anvil Mountain. I’m a decent spelunker. There might be a jackpot waiting for us to claim it. Kooks love to hide shit in caves. Guns. Millions of dollars. Gold.”

  “We’ll invest in hazmat suits and hit the caves. After we sort this business. Delia mentioned that her uncle might be whisked away in the dead of night. She may have something there.”

  “Labrador won’t do jack,” he said. “I’ll stake the farm he’s sick
of this crap. They’re counting on you to do the dirty work. We’re too deep to tag the cops. Anyway, once a hitter, always a hitter. Bad breeding will out, is how they’re betting. Papa washes his hands like Pilate; Delia can tell herself she’s clean. Or maybe you have turned over a new leaf and take a walk. Status quo is maintained and they ponder the next move. It’s not perfect. It’s what they’ve got.”

  “The die has been cast,” I said.

  But I did seriously consider his proposal that we scamper like rabbits. Surf crashed against my consciousness with each heartbeat. Another incipient migraine.

  An alternate reality seeped into my own, similar to the black hole that had dilated momentarily in the Michigan rest stop and the West Kill Lodge. In this other baby, half-shaped mirror universe, a nondescript sedan screeched into the yard. The make and model most frequently found at the bottom of a lake or torched in a parking lot. Curtis and four of his men unloaded from the car. The foot soldiers were armed with Uzis on waist slings. I recalled these guys from our meeting at the Poughkeepsie YMCA.

  Our confrontation unfolded with the hazy logic of a vivid dream.

  Shoe, meet the other foot, I said.

  Whaddya mean? Curtis lit a cigarette and squinted at the property.

  This time last year, you were extricating me from a thorny predicament. Tables have turned.

  He exhaled. His eyes were dead. He was ready to whack somebody, anybody.

  Coleridge, for both our sakes, I pray this is worth the drive. Wanda promised me a steak dinner and some light role play for dessert. She’d already poured the wine when you interrupted us. That fuckin’ ship has sailed.

  It’ll sail back. I gestured toward the hospice. The Croatoan is inside. Alive. Or half dead. Nic Royal serves as his eyes, his ears, his red right hand.

  Sonofabitch. Nic fuckin’ Royal is the Croatoan’s soldier?

  March in and put the guy out of our collective misery. Should be easy. He’s on death’s doorstep. I smiled sardonically. Hasn’t been the same since you double-tapped him.