Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place

by The Bad Place(Lit)

  keyboard as if he were a concert pianist about to interpret Mozart. He

  hesitated and glanced sideways at Julie.

  "I'll work into their systems indirectly to discourage tracebacks. I

  won't damage any data or breach national security, so I probably won't

  even be noticed. But if someone spys me snooping and puts a tracer on

  me that I don't see or can't shake, they might pull your PI license for

  this."

  "I'll sacrifice myself, and take the blame. Bobby's license won't be

  pulled, too, so the agency won't go down. How long will this take?"

  "Four or five hours, maybe more, maybe a lot more. Can somebody bring

  me lunch at noon? I'd rather eat here and take a break."

  "Sure. What would you like?"

  "Big Mac, double order of fries, vanilla shake."

  Julie grimaced.

  "How come a high-tech guy like you never heard of cholesterol?"

  "Heard of it. Don't care. If we never really die, cholesterol can't

  kill me. It can only move me out of this life a little sooner."

  ARCHER VAN CORVAIRE cracked open the Levolor blind and peered through

  the thick bulletproof glass in the front door of his Newport Beach shop.

  He squinted suspiciously at Bobby and Clint, though he knew and expected

  them. At last he unlocked the door and let them in.

  Van Corvaire was about fifty-five but invested a lot of time and money

  in the maintenance of a youthful appearance. To thwart time, he'd

  undergone dermabrasion, face-lifts, and liposuction; to improve on

  nature, he'd had a nose job, cheek implants, and chin restructuring. He

  wore a toupee of such exquisite craftsmanship, it would have passed for

  his own dyed-black hair-except that he sabotaged the illusion by

  insisting on not merely a replacement but a lush, unnatural pompadour.

  If he ever got into a swimming pool wearing that toupee, it would look

  like the conning tower of a submarine.

  After reengaging both dead bolts, he turned to Bobby.

  "I never do business in the morning. I take only afternoon

  appointments."

  "We appreciate the exception you've made for us," Bobby said.

  Van Corvaire sighed elaborately.

  "Well, what is it?"

  "I have a stone I'd like you to appraise for me." He squinted, which

  wasn't appealing, since his eyes were already as narrow as those of a

  ferret. Before his name change thirty years ago, he'd been Jim Bob

  Spleener, and a friend would have told him that when he squinted

  suspiciously he looked very much like a Spleener and not at all like a

  van Corvaire.

  "An appraisal? That's all you want?"

  He led them through the small but plush salesroom: handtextured plaster

  ceiling; bleached suede walls; whitewashed oak floors; custom area

  carpet by Patterson, Flynn & Martin in shades of peach, pale blue and

  sandstone; a modern white sofa flanked by pickled-finish, buriwood

  tables by Bau; elegant rattan chairs encircling a round table with a

  glass thick enough to survive a blow from a sledgehammer.

  one small merchandise display case stood off to the left. Corvaire's

  business was conducted entirely by appointment, his jewelry was custom

  designed for the very rich and tasteful people who would find it

  necessary to buy hundred-thousand dollar necklaces to wear to a

  thousand-dollar-a-plate char dinner, and never grasp the irony.

  The back wall was mirrored, and van Corvaire watched him self with

  obvious pleasure all the way across the room. He hardly took his eyes

  off his reflection until he passed through the door into the workroom.

  Bobby wondered if the guy ever got so entranced by his image that he

  walked smack into it. He didn't like Jim van Corvaire, but the

  narcissistic creep's knowledge of gems and jewelry was often useful.

  Years ago, when Dakota & Dakota Investigations was julie Dakota

  Investigations, without the ampersand and the red dancy (better never

  put it that way around Julie, who wouldn't appreciate the clever

  wordplay but would make him eat redundancy. Bobby had helped van

  Corvaire recover a fortune in unmounted diamonds stolen by a lover. Old

  Bob desperately wanted his gems but didn't want the woman sent to

  prison, so he went to Bobby instead of to the police That was the only

  soft spot Bobby had ever seen in van vaire; in the intervening years the

  jeweler no doubt had grown a callus over it too.

  Bobby fished one of the marble-size red stones from his pocket. He saw

  the jeweler's eyes widen.

  With Clint standing to one side of him, with Bobby behind him and

  looking over his shoulder, van Corvaire sat on a high stool at a

  workbench and examined the rough-cut stone through a loupe. Then he put

  it on the lighted glass table with a microscope and studied it with that

  more powerful instrument.

  "Well?" Bobby asked.

  The jeweler did not respond. He rose, elbowing them out of the way, and

  went to another stool, farther along the work bench. There, he used one

  scale to weigh the stone and another to determine if its specific

  gravity matched that of any known gems.

  Finally, he moved to a third stool that was positioned in front of a

  vise. From a drawer he withdrew a ring box in which three large, cut

  gems lay on a square of blue velvet.

  "Junk diamonds," he said.

  "They look nice to me," Bobby said.

  "Too many flaws."

  He selected one of those stones and fixed it in the vise with a couple

  of turns of the crank. Gripping the red beauty in a small pair of

  pliers, he used one of its sharper edges to attempt to score the

  polished facet of the diamond in the vise, pressing with considerable

  effort. Then he put the pliers and red gem aside, picked up another

  jeweler's loupe, leaned forward, and studied the junk diamond.

  "A faint scratch," he said. "Diamond cuts diamond."

  He held the red stone between thumb and forefinger, staring at it with

  obvious fascination-and greed.

  "Where did you get this?"

  "Can't tell you," Bobby said.

  "So it's just a red diamond?"

  "Just? The red diamond may be the rarest most precious stone in the

  world! You must let me market it for you. I have clients who'd pay

  anything to have this as the centerstone of a necklace or pendant. It'll

  probably be too big for a ring even after a final cut. It's huge!"

  "What's it worth?" Clint asked.

  "Impossible to say until it's finish-cut. Millions, certainly."

  "Millions?" Bobby said doubtfully.

  "It's big but not that big." Van Corvaire finally tore his gaze from

  the stone and looked up at Bobby.

  "You don't understand. Until now, there were only seven known red

  diamonds in the world. This is the eighth. And when it's cut and

  polished, it'll be one of the two largest. This comes as close to

  priceless as anything gets."

  OUTSIDE Archer van Corvaire's small shop, where heavy traffic roared

  past on Pacific Coast Highway, with disco-frenetic flares of sunlight

  flashing off the chrome and glass, it was hard to believe that the

  tranquility of Newport Harbor and its burden of beautiful yachts were

  just
beyond the building far side of the street. In a sudden moment of

  enlightenment Bobby realized that his entire life (and perhaps nearly

  every one else's) was like this street at this precise point in time:

  all busy and noise, glare and movement, a desperate rush to break out of

  the herd, to achieve something and transcend the whirl of commerce,

  thereby giving respite for reflection a shot at serenity-when all the

  time serenity was only a step away, on the far side of the street, just

  out of sight.

  That realization contributed to a heretofore subtle feeling that the

  Pollard case was somehow a trap-or, more accurately, a squirrel cage

  that spun faster and faster even as he scampered frantically to get a

  footing on its rotating floor.

  Bobby stood for a few seconds by the open door of the car, feeling

  ensnared, caged. At that moment he was not sure why, even with the

  obvious dangers, he had been so eager to take on Frank's problems and

  put all that he cared about at risk. He knew that the reasons he had

  quoted to Julie and to himself-sympathy for Frank, curiosity, the

  excitement of a wildly different kind of job-were merely justifications,

  not reasons, and his true motivation was something he did not yet

  understand. Unnerved, he got in the car and pulled the door shut as

  Clint started the engine.

  "Bobby, how many red diamonds would you say are in that mason jar? A

  hundred?"

  "More. A couple hundred."

  "Worth what-hundreds of millions?"

  "Maybe a billion or more."

  They stared at each other, and for a while neither of them spoke. It

  wasn't that no words were adequate to the situation instead, there was

  too much to say and no easy way to determine where to begin.

  At last Bobby said, "But you couldn't convert the stones into cash, not

  quickly anyway. You'd have to dribble them onto the market over a lot

  of years to prevent a sudden dilution of their rarity and value, but

  also to avoid causing a sensation by drawing unwanted attention, and

  maybe having to answer some unanswerable questions."

  "After they've mined diamonds for hundreds of years, over the world, and

  only found seven red ones... where in the hell did Frank come up with a

  jarful?"

  Bobby shook his head and said nothing.

  Clint reached into his pants pocket and withdrew one of the diamonds,

  smaller than the specimen that Bobby had brought for Archer van

  Corvaire's appraisal.

  "I took this home to show it to Felina. I was going to return it to the

  jar when I got to the office, but you hustled me out before I had a

  chance. Now that I know what it is, I don't want it in my possession a

  minute longer."

  Bobby took the stone and put it in his pocket with the larger diamond.

  "Thank you, Clint."

  DR. DYSON MANFRED'S study, in his house in Turtle Rock, was the most

  uncomfortable place Bobby had ever been. He had been happier last week,

  flattened on the floor of his van, trying to avoid being chopped to bits

  by automatic weapons fire than he was among Manfred's collection of

  many-legged, carapaced, antenna-bristled, mandibled, and thoroughly

  repulsive exotic bugs.

  Repeatedly, in his peripheral vision, Bobby saw something move in one of

  the many glass-covered boxes on the wall, but every time he turned to

  ascertain which hideous creature was about to slip out from under the

  frame, his fear proved unfounded. All of the nightmarish specimens were

  pinned and motionless, lined up neatly beside one another, none missing.

  He also would have sworn that he heard things skittering and slithering

  inside the shallow drawers of the many cases that he knew contained more

  insects, but he supposed that those sounds were every bit was imaginary

  as the phantom movement glimpsed from the corners of his eyes.

  Though he knew Clint to be a born stoic, Bobby was impressed by the

  apparent ease with which the guy endured the creepy-crawly decor. This

  was an employee he must never lose. He decided on the spot to give

  Clint a significant raise in salary before the day was out.

  Bobby found Dr. Manfred nearly as disquieting as his collection. The

  tall, thing, long-limbed entomologist seemed to be the offspring of a

  professional basketball player and one of those African stick insects

  that you saw in nature films and hoped never to encounter in real life.

  Manfred stood behind his desk, his chair pushed out of the way, and they

  stood in front of it. Their attention was direct upon a two-foot-long,

  one-foot-wide, white-enamel, inch-lab tray which occupied the center of

  the desktop and over which was draped a small white towel.

  "I have had no sleep since Mr. Karaghiosis brought this me last night,"

  Manfred said,

  "and I won't sleep much tonight either, just turning over all the

  remaining questions in mind. This dissection was the most fascinating

  of my care and I doubt that I'll ever again experience anything in my I

  to equal it." The intensity with which Manfred spoke-and the

  implication that

  neither good food nor good sex, neither a beautiful sunset nor a fine

  wine, could be a fraction as satisfying as ins dismemberment-gave Bobby

  a queasy stomach.

  He glanced at the fourth man in the room, if only to divide his

  attention briefly from their bugophile host. The guy in his late

  forties, as round as Manfred was angular, as pi as Manfred was pale,

  with red-gold hair, blue eyes, and freckles. He sat on a chair in the

  corner, straining the seams of gray jogging suit, with his hands fisted

  on his heavy thigh looking like a good Boston Irish fellow who had been

  trying to eat his way into a career as a Sumo wrestler. The

  entomologist hadn't introduced or even referred to the well-padded

  server. Bobby figured that introductions would be made who Manfred was

  ready. He decided not to force the issue-if on because the round man

  silently regarded them with a mixture of wonder, suspicion, fear, and

  intense curiosity that encouraged Bobby to believe they would not be

  pleased to hear who he had to tell them when, at last, he spoke.

  With long-fingered, spidery hands-which Bobby might have sprayed with

  Raid if he'd had any-Dyson Manfred moved the towel from the white-enamel

  tray, revealing the mains of Frank's insect. The head, a couple of the

  legs,of the highly articulated pincers, and a few other unidentified

  parts had been cut off and put aside. Each grisly piece rest on a soft

  pad of what appeared to be cotton cloth, almost a jeweler might present

  a fine gem on velvet to a prospective buyer. Bobby stared at the

  plum-size head with its small reddish-blue eye, then at its two large

  muddy-yellow eyes that were too similar in color to Dyson Manfred's. He

  shivered. T main part of the bug was in the middle of the tray, on its

  back. The exposed underside had been slit open, the outer layers of

  tissue removed or folded back, and the inner workings revealed.

  Using the gleaming point of a slender scalpel, which he handled with

  grace and precision, the entomologist began by showing them the

>   respiratory, ingestive, digestive, and excretory systems of the bug.

  Manfred kept referring to the

  "great art" of the biological design, but Bobby saw nothing that equaled

  a painting by Matisse; in fact, the guts of the thing were even more

  repellent than its exterior. One term-"polishing chamber"-struck him as

  odd, but when he asked for a further explanation, Manfred only said,

  "in time, in time," and went on with his lecture.

  When the entomologist finished, Bobby said,

  "Okay, we know how the thing ticks, so what does that tell us about it

  that we might want to know? For instance, where does it come from?"

  Manfred stared at him, unresponding.

  Bobby said,

  "The South American jungles?" Manfred's peculiar amber eyes were hard

  to read, and his silence puzzling.

  "Africa?" Bobby said. The entomologist's stare was beginning to make

  him twitchier than he already was.

  "Mr. Dakota,"

  Manfred said finally,

  "you're asking the wrong question. Let me ask the interesting ones for

  you. What does this creature eat? Well, to put it in the simplest

  terms that any layman can understand-it eats a broad spectrum of

  minerals, rock, and soil. What does it ex-"

  "It eats dirt?" Clint asked.

  "That's an even simpler way to express it," Manfred said.