The Knights of the Cornerstone

by James P. Blaylock

  The dog turned on Mifflin wildly, knocking him sideways into the cabin wall, then falling back and lunging forward again, growling furiously. There was a popping sound, and for a moment Calvin wondered what it was, but then he saw the pistol in Mifflin’s hand just as the man was knocked over sideways along the wall with the dog sprawled down across him.

  Now two different voices were shouting “Go!” and Taber had the engine in reverse, but the boat was sitting still, straining at something that had them moored to the dock. Then the air-conditioning unit toppled backward out of its window and hit the deck with a heavy crash. The tethered boats lurched into motion, and the air conditioner slid backward, but caught on the low rung of the railing, jamming them to a stop again.

  Mifflin was on his feet now, steadying himself against the cabin wall. Calvin saw the big pistol in his hand and tried to make himself small, swiveling the cannon, cranking the lever forward and blasting away wildly, sweeping it back and forth. When he shut it down ten seconds later Mifflin was simply gone, the body of the dog was jammed under the lower rung of the railing in the stern, the cabin door had been blown inward, and an awning set up aft was knocked sideways, the aluminum struts tilting out over the railing and the wet canvas lying on the top of the water, tugged downriver on the current.

  “Hold your fire!” Taber shouted at him, gesturing furiously, and in the same instant the boat gave a big lurch and shot out into the river, towing the other craft. The heavy electrical cord that had stubbornly been holding them had torn away from the pinned air conditioner, and it danced on top of the river alongside the dock, throwing sparks. The lights at the rear of Beamon’s yard and on the dock blinked out and everything was dark again.

  “Watch for that shit-bird with the pistol,” Taber shouted, and Calvin scanned the deck of the pontoon boat and the river, looking for Mifflin, ready to blast him to kingdom come. He was nowhere to be seen, though, and already they were out in midstream, a hundred feet below the dock and moving downriver fast. They anchored both boats in a little inlet on the deserted Arizona side. The engine throttled back, and Calvin got up from his seat and stepped across to the other deck, anxious to finish things.

  He approached the blasted-open door of the big cabin cautiously. Inside there was a flooded hallway with an inner door leading into a flooded bathroom and another into a small galley. A third door apparently led into the living quarters. Calvin pushed it open, looked into the darkness, and stepped inside. The interior was silent, but there was the smell of a freshly lit cigarette. He spotted the glow of the ash and nearly stepped straight back out again, but Taber stood right behind him and immediately reached past him and found the light switch. Calvin was startled to see a woman sitting at a table, looking at nothing, the cigarette between her fingers. On the bed lay an old man, his eyes half open and staring toward the ceiling. It wasn’t Al Lymon.

  “He’s dead,” the woman said tonelessly, gesturing with the cigarette at the man on the bed. She looked weary—not just exhausted, but worn down under years of trouble. The dead man looked like waxwork, and he might easily have been a hundred years old. On a bedside table next to him the fraudulent veil lay in a heap.

  +

  “The man on the bed is Geoffery de Charney,” Taber said to Calvin in a low voice.

  “Bob Postum smothered him with a pillow,” the woman said. “He would have killed me, too, if I meant anything to him, but I haven’t meant anything to him for forty years. Killing Geoff was pointless, because he was almost gone from congestive heart failure. But Bob was in a hurry to assume the throne.”

  It’s Salome, Calvin thought, the old man’s niece, who had asked for the head of John Nazarite half a century ago. She had to be seventy years old. The dancer in her had long since disappeared, and she looked like someone’s grandmother now. She’d be a hell of a lot better off, Calvin thought, if she were someone’s grandmother instead of what she had become playing out her part in a dead man’s empty schemes. Her name came to him suddenly. “Paige Whitney, isn’t it?”

  She nodded at him. “And you must be the nephew from out of town who was carrying salvation in a cardboard box. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, but so far I haven’t seen too much salvation.”

  “We’re looking for my uncle. That’s what all this is about.”

  “He’s not here. I don’t know where he is. If I did, I’d tell you. Happily. He was here, but they took him off a few hours ago. Bob was going to force him to use the veil to save Geoff, but he didn’t need force. Your uncle was willing enough, even to save a man who didn’t merit being saved. Then it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t really the veil, which your uncle figured out as soon as he held it in his hands. I think he was willing because he was dying himself. I’m sorry to tell you that, honey. He didn’t look good.”

  “I’m not sure that’s why he was willing to save him. It’s the other way around—he’s dying because he was willing to use the veil that way.”

  “Six of one and a half dozen of the other,” she said. “I know I wouldn’t have done it. And I loved Geoff, too, in my way. But he was ready to die. I think your uncle knew that. Bob just wanted to authenticate the veil. He would have killed Geoff one way or another, once he was sure of the veil. With Geoff and Al Lymon both out of the way …” She shrugged and stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray and looked out the cabin window, into the darkness outside.

  “I’m going back to Beamon’s yard,” Calvin said to Taber. “It makes sense Lymon is there.”

  “We’ll head back upriver and tie on again at the dock. What about you?” he asked the woman.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got a car in the lot across the street from Beamon’s. I’ll just wait here with Geoff a moment longer, though, and do the right thing by him.” She lit another cigarette and looked out the window again as Taber and Calvin went out, closing the door behind them. There was light in the east now, a purple glow above black hills, and the stars were fading. The wind seemed to be coming up again with the sun.

  “What’ll we do about the old man?” Calvin asked.

  “Nothing. Let the cops in Needles work it out when they find him. We’ll get Shirley to drive the Harvester down here to pick you up. There’s room for Al to lie down in the back, if you find him. Best you’re all out of here before real daylight. I don’t know when the first shift comes on, but it’s probably early, so don’t waste any time. If Al’s not there, you’d best head back to New Cyprus.”

  They pulled in the anchors, started the engine, and crossed the river. Calvin went back aboard de Charney’s boat along with Whitey Sternbottom, and they unhitched it from the fireboat, cut away the canvas awning that was still trailing in the water, started the engine, and ran the boat back into the dock, tying on again fore and aft. The fireboat came in afterward, and Whitey stepped back aboard, waving at Calvin as they took off. Calvin paused for a moment to watch them go, looking at the dark outline of the Dead Mountains in the distance. In a half hour or so the peaks would be lit up and golden, and then the day would set in again.

  As the thought came into his mind, there was a sudden orange glow low in the sky over the mountains, and then the sound of a muffled explosion, very distant, and then a second glow, flashing and fading, and a second muffled boom. Calvin heard the engine on the fireboat wind up, and the boat slewed sideways and shot away forward, back toward New Cyprus. Calvin turned and sprinted up the dock, up onto the shore, and in through the open chain-link gate into Beamon’s yard.

  THE RESCUE

  The moon was gone now, and it was darker than it had been despite the predawn glow in the east. There were half a dozen stake-bed trucks parked in the yard and other pieces of light equipment along with stacks of plywood, big rectangles of sheet iron, piles of sand and gravel, and pallets of bagged cement. Beyond the pallets stood a boat trailer with a boat on it, the hitch balanced on a slice of tree stump. The boat was the Painted Lady, not that it made any differ
ence now.

  Calvin moved along warily at first but rapidly came to the conclusion that there was nothing to see out here. It made sense that his uncle would be inside the warehouse somewhere, either tied up or in a locked room. A big load-in door to the interior stood open—revealing a black rectangle of shadowy darkness thirty feet in front of him. Inside, it was pitch-dark, and he had to wait what seemed like an interminable time for his eyes to adjust. He listened hard, but he could hear no sound at all aside from his own breathing. Shadows slowly appeared out of the darkness, and he saw that he was in a large warehouse with a high ceiling. There were skylights, although they didn’t help much yet, and there were more pallets and machinery—concrete saws and wheelbarrows and jackhammers and small skip-loader tractors with backhoes. Across the room, against a far wall, steel shelves were neatly stacked with crates and hard hats and water jugs and power tools.

  He was able to see enough now to make his way across the floor and into an open hallway. There were doors going off on either side—two restroom doors and a half dozen small offices with glass windows and open louvered blinds, the offices apparently empty. There was a windowless steel door, however, with a hasp hastily screwed onto it, fastened with a heavy lock. Calvin listened hard at the door and heard what sounded like a cough behind it, and the sound of shuffling. He knocked sharply and heard a voice, too low or feeble for him to make out any words. Who else could it be, though?

  “It’s me,” he said. “Cal. Hang on!”

  He grabbed the lock and yanked on it, nearly tearing the skin off his hand, and then turned and jogged back out into the open warehouse, spotted pry bars and claw hammers hanging from the shelves, decided on a pry bar, and grabbed a big one. No time for half measures here. He stopped, hearing a horn toot outside, just a fragment of a honk—Shirley and Donna; it had to be, and right on time. He jogged back down the hallway, past the locked door to the front of the warehouse, where the dead bolt on the big entry door had a simple latch on the inside, thank God. When he opened the door a crack and peered out, they were already out of the Harvester, which sat facing the street, the rear cargo door open with the dome light on so they could load Lymon up and get out.

  “I think I found him,” Calvin said, turning away and leading the two of them back down the hall. He jammed the end of the pry bar under the hasp, banging on it a couple of times to get some leverage, and then leaned into it, the screw heads snapping off and the lock and hasp breaking away. He opened the door onto a large room, twenty feet deep or so, and maybe twenty-five feet wide. In the dim light he could see three large safes, all standing open. Clothing racks hung along the wall—long lengths of iron pipe hanging from the ceiling. The racks were mostly empty, aside from what appeared to be a few theater costumes—some chain mail and tunics, but mainly white robes and burnooses and red sashes, as if for a production of Arabian Nights.

  Lymon lay on his back on a foam pad on the floor. There was a water bottle next to him. He looked at Calvin with a fixed expression on his face, as if he was working hard to keep any kind of composure at all.

  “Good to see you,” he said. His voice sounded weak. The change in him was shocking, as if Nettie’s sickness had swept through him like a tidal wave, simply crushing him.

  “We’re glad to see you,” Calvin told him.

  “You shouldn’t have wasted your time. I can’t help you now. I’m like that fellow who apologized because he was taking too long to die.”

  “To hell with that,” Calvin said. “Let’s get you out of here. There were a couple of explosions up in the hills just about ten minutes ago, probably in the quarry.”

  “We saw it, too,” Shirley said.

  “They took weapons out of the safes,” Lymon told them, trying to push himself up onto his elbows, but he was evidently too weak, and he lay back down. “Costumes, too. They mean to take out the relics and everything else.”

  “How many of them are there?” Calvin asked. “Besides Bob Postum? It would take an army.”

  “Can’t say. But if they didn’t have an army, or something like it, they wouldn’t have started it up. You three go on, but not over the hill if they’re already up there. Go back up the river.”

  “And tell Nettie we left you behind?” Shirley said.

  “We’ll all go up the river,” Donna said. “Let’s get him down to de Charney’s boat. The ignition key’s got to be on board somewhere.”

  “The old man’s in it, dead,” Calvin said.

  “Then he won’t care,” Shirley put in. “If he starts to argue we’ll dump him in the river.”

  Calvin put his hands under his uncle’s arms and tried to lift him, but Lymon let out a gasp of pain, and it seemed to Calvin as if he were pulling him to pieces. Dragging him out of the warehouse by his boot heels wasn’t going to fly. “Give me half a second,” Calvin said, and he hurried out of the room and down the hallway to the warehouse again, where he grabbed a high-sided wheelbarrow. He tipped it over onto its side when turning it around, righted it again, and then forced himself to slow down and take it easy.

  “In you go,” he said, backing the wheelbarrow into the room. Together, pulling and pushing, they managed to haul Lymon up between the handles. He slumped backward, sitting down in a heap on the foam pad from the floor and resting with his hands in his lap, his head back and eyes closed.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said weakly, “since I’ve been hauled home in a wheelbarrow.” He tried to laugh but couldn’t manage it.

  Calvin had the unshakable feeling that he had been running around in the dark warehouse for half an hour, and that the sun was rising like a helium balloon in the sky outside. He kept the wheelbarrow low, so that it wouldn’t spill, and turned sharply into the hallway, heading down toward the warehouse and to the river. Lymon now appeared to be unconscious, breathing heavily and erratically.

  It was lighter in the warehouse—the gray dawn showing through the skylights, and through the open door ahead Calvin could make out the materials piled in the yard. Then they were out among the pallets and machinery, under the windy morning sky, heading for the open gate that led out to the dock. Calvin thought about the racks of costumes in the locked room. What was that all about? Somehow he couldn’t imagine Bob Postum playing the lead in Scheherazade. …

  He stopped abruptly when someone stepped in through the gates and held up a pistol, not pointing it at them, but letting them see it—the same pistol that Calvin had seen earlier that morning. It was Mifflin, his clothes wet with river water, the hair on the sides of his head standing straight out. He held up his free hand, like a traffic cop. “You folks hold it,” he said. “Just stay right there.”

  Calvin wondered whether it mattered that the pistol had gotten soaked. What he knew about pistols would fill half a postcard. Shirley and Donna, he noticed, had stopped dead, and both of them knew more than he did.

  “At ease with the wheelbarrow, son,” Mifflin said to Calvin. “We aren’t going anywhere till we think this through.” Donna moved across to stand next to Shirley, and Mifflin edged back a step. “You don’t come anywhere near me, Red. I don’t like to be crowded by jujitsu queens, and I don’t intend to shoot anybody if I can help it. We’ll all move back inside now.”

  “My uncle’s sick,” Calvin said. “He needs a doctor and a hospital.”

  “You’re right about that,” Mifflin told him. “If you had a siren on that wheelbarrow, you could run him right on down the highway into Needles. Move on inside now, like I said.”

  Lymon was still unconscious, and had slumped sideways down into the wheelbarrow. Calvin lifted the handles and started to make a wide turn, in order to follow Shirley, when out of the corner of his eye he saw a black dog run in through the gate, a moving shadow against the early morning twilight, leaping silently at Mifflin’s back. Mifflin shouted in surprise, stumbling forward, the dog clamping onto his arm and bearing him over onto the ground.

  Mifflin threw himself back and forth, shrieking, “H
ey, hey!” in a falsetto voice, audible above the sound of deep muffled growling. He still held the pistol in his right hand, trying to keep from beating it on the concrete floor of the yard. Calvin started forward but stopped dead when Mifflin quit fighting and jammed the gun against the dog’s side and pulled the trigger. There was the sound of the pistol going off, muffled, but loud enough, and the dog lay dead on the ground.

  Mifflin pushed himself to his knees, still holding the pistol, his left arm turned outward. He stared at his mangled hand and forearm, blood running down onto his khaki pants, and then he stood up shakily, getting his bearings. Calvin sprinted forward, pushing the wheelbarrow at a dead run toward Mifflin, who looked at him incredulously from fifteen feet away. He felt the wheelbarrow slam solidly into him at mid-thigh, knocking him backward, the wheel bouncing up and over Mifflin’s body and down again onto the concrete. Calvin fought to keep it upright, but tripped over Mifflin, letting go of the wheelbarrow handles and falling heavily. He caught himself with his hands and got back up fast—fast enough to see the wheelbarrow teeter along for another five feet or so before it hit a head-high pile of sand and went over sideways.

  “I got Lymon!” Shirley yelled, and Calvin sprang to his feet and looked for the pistol, which lay on the concrete near a pallet of fence block. Mifflin was already up and lurching toward it. Calvin took three running steps and threw himself forward, hitting him in the back of the knees with his shoulder, the two of them going down in a heap, Mifflin grunting with pain. Calvin scrambled up again, just as Donna was snatching up the fallen pistol.