The Book of the Dead

by Richard Preston

  “We should not be concerned with such trifles. It is powerful, mind-expanding: which is why great artists from Van Gogh to Monet to Hemingway made it their drink of choice.”

  Constance took another, cautious sip.

  “Look into it, Constance. Have you ever seen a drink of such a pure and unadulterated color? Hold it up to the light. It’s like gazing at the moon through a flawless emerald.”

  For a moment, she remained motionless, as if searching for answers in the green depths of the liqueur. Then she took another, slightly less tentative sip.

  “How does it make you feel?”

  “Warm. Light.”

  They continued slowly down the gallery.

  “I find it remarkable,” she said after a moment, “that Antoine fitted up this interior into a perfect replica of the family mansion in New Orleans. Down to the last detail—including these paintings.”

  “He had them re-created by a famous artist of the day. He worked with the artist for five years, reconstructing the faces from memory and a few faded engravings and drawings.”

  “And the rest of the house?”

  “Almost identical to the original, save for his choice of volumes in the library. The use he devoted all the sub-basement chambers to, however, was . . . unique, to say the least. The New Orleans mansion was effectively below sea level and so had its basements lined with sheets of lead: that wasn’t necessary here.” He sipped his drink. “After my brother took over this house, a great many changes were made. It is no longer the place Uncle Antoine called home. But then, you know that all too well.”

  Constance did not reply.

  They reached the end of the gallery, where a long, backless settee awaited, cushioned in plush velvet. Nearby lay an elegant English game bag by John Chapman in which Diogenes had brought the bottle of absinthe. Now he lowered himself gracefully onto the settee and motioned for Constance to do the same.

  She sat down beside him, placing the glass of absinthe on a nearby salver. “And the music?” she asked, nodding as if to indicate the shimmering piano scales that freighted the air.

  “Ah, yes. That is Alkan, the forgotten musical genius of the nineteenth century. You will never hear a more luxuriant, cerebral, technically challenging artist—never. When his pieces were first played—a rare event, by the way, since few pianists are up to the challenge—people thought them to be diabolically inspired. Even now Alkan’s music inspires strange behavior in listeners. Some think they smell smoke while listening; others find themselves trembling or growing faint. This piece is the Grande Sonate, ‘Les Quatre ges.’ The Hamelin recording, of course: I’ve never heard more assured virtuosity or more commanding finger technique.” He paused, listening intently a moment. “This fugal passage, for instance: if you count the octave doublings, it has more parts than a pianist has fingers! I know you must appreciate it, Constance, as few do.”

  “Antoine was never a great appreciator of music. I learned the violin entirely on my own.”

  “So you can appreciate the intellectual and sensual heft of the music. Just listen to it! And thank God the greatest musical philosopher was a romantic, a decadent—not some smug Mozart with his puerile false cadences and predictable harmonies.”

  Constance listened a moment in silence. “You seem to have worked rather hard to make this moment agreeable.”

  Diogenes laughed lightly. “And why not? I can think of few pastimes more rewarding than to make you happy.”

  “You seem to be the only one,” she said after a pause, in a very low voice.

  The smile left Diogenes’s face. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because of what I am.”

  “You are a beautiful and brilliant young woman.”

  “I’m a freak.”

  Very quickly—yet with exceptional tenderness—Diogenes took her hands. “No, Constance,” he said softly and urgently. “Not at all. Not to me.”

  She looked away. “You know my history.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then surely you, of all people, would understand. Knowing how I’ve lived—the way in which I’ve lived, here in this house, all these years . . . don’t you find it bizarre? Repugnant?” Suddenly she looked back at him, eyes blazing with strange fire. “I am an old woman, trapped in the body of a young woman. Who would ever want me?”

  Diogenes drew closer. “You have acquired the gift of experience—without the awful cost of age. You are young and vibrant. It may feel a burden to you now, but it doesn’t have to be. You can be free of it anytime you choose. You can begin to live whenever you want. Now, if you choose.”

  She looked away again.

  “Constance, look at me. No one understands you—except me. You are a pearl beyond price. You have all the beauty and freshness of a woman of twenty-one, yet you have a mind refined by a lifetime . . . no, lifetimes . . . of intellectual hunger. But the intellect can take you only so far. You are like an unwatered seed. Lay your intellect aside and recognize your other hunger—your sensual hunger. The seed cries for water—and only then will it sprout, rise, and blossom.”

  Constance, refusing to look back, shook her head violently.

  “You have been cloistered here—shut up like a nun. You’ve read thousands of books, thought deep thoughts. But you haven’t lived. There is another world out there: a world of color and taste and touch. Constance, we will explore that world together. Can’t you feel the deep connection between us? Let me bring that world here, to you. Open yourself to me, Constance: I am the one who can save you. Because I’m the only person who truly understands you. Just as I am the one person who shares your pain.”

  Now, abruptly, Constance tried to pull her hands away. They remained gently—but firmly—clasped in Diogenes’s own. But in the brief struggle, her sleeve drew back from her wrist, exposing several slashing scars: scars that had healed imperfectly.

  Seeing this secret revealed, Constance froze: unable to move, even to breathe.

  Diogenes also seemed to go very still. And then he gently released one hand and held out his own arm, sliding up the cuff from his wrist. There lay a similar scar: older but unmistakable.

  Staring at it, Constance drew in a sharp breath.

  “You see now,” he murmured, “how well we understand each other? It is true—we are alike, so very alike. I understand you. And you, Constance—you understand me.”

  Slowly, gently, he released her other hand. It fell limply to her side. Now, raising his hands to her shoulders, he turned her to face him. She did not resist. He raised a hand to her cheek, stroking it very lightly with the backs of his fingers. The fingers drifted softly over her lips, then down to her chin, which he grasped gently with his fingertips. Slowly, he brought her face closer to his. He kissed her once, ever so lightly, and then again, somewhat more urgently.

  With a gasp that might have been relief or despair, Constance leaned into his embrace and allowed herself to be folded into his arms.

  Adroitly Diogenes shifted his position on the settee and eased her down onto the velvet cushions. One of his pale hands strayed to the lacy front of her dress, undoing a row of pearl buttons below her throat, the slender fingers gliding down, gradually exposing the swelling curve of her breasts to the dim light. As he did so, he murmured some lines in Italian:

  Ei s’immerge ne la notte,

  Ei s’aderge in vèr’ le stelle ...

  As his form moved over her, nimble as a ballet dancer, a second sigh escaped her lips and her eyes closed.

  Diogenes’s eyes did not close. They remained open and fixed upon her, wet with lust and triumph—

  Two eyes: one hazel, one blue.

  42

  Gerry sheathed his radio and cast a disbelieving look in Benjy’s direction. “You won’t frigging believe this.”

  “What now?”

  “They’re still bringing that special prisoner into yard 4 for the two o’clock exercise shift.”

  Benjy stared. “Bringing him back? You’re shittin
’ me.”

  Gerry shook his head.

  “It’s murder. And they’re doing it on our watch.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “On whose orders?”

  “Straight from the horse’s ass: Imhof.”

  A silence gathered in the long empty hall of Herkmoor’s building C.

  “Well, two o’clock is in fifteen minutes,” Benjy said at last. “We’d better get our butts in gear.”

  He led the way as they exited the cellblock into the weak sunlight of yard 4. A smell of springlike decay and dampness drifted on the air. The sodden grass of the outer yards was still matted and brown, and a few bare branches could be seen rising beyond the perimeter walls. They took up positions, not on the catwalk above this time, but in the actual yard.

  “I’m not going to see my corrections career get flushed down the toilet,” said Gerry darkly. “I swear, if any of Pocho’s gang makes a move toward the guy, I’ll use the Taser. I wish to hell they gave us guns.”

  They took up positions on either side of the yard, waiting for the prisoners in isolation to be escorted out for their lone hour of exercise. Gerry checked his Taser, his pepper spray, adjusted his side-handle baton. He wouldn’t wait to see what happened, like he’d done last time.

  A few minutes later, the doors opened and the escort guards filed out with their prisoners, who sidled out into the yard, blinking in the bright light, looking as shit-stupid as they were.

  The last prisoner to come out was the special one. He was as pale as a maggot and looked a mess: face bruised and bandaged, one eye nearly swollen shut. Despite being numbed by years of working in pens, Gerry felt a creeping sense of outrage that the man had been put back in the yard. Pocho was dead, true enough; but that had been an open-and-shut case of self-defense. This was different. This was cold-blooded murder. And if it didn’t happen today, it would happen tomorrow or the next day, on their watch or someone else’s. It was one thing to stick the guy in a cell next to the drummer, or put him in solitary, or take away his books, but this was out of line. Way out of line.

  He braced himself. Pocho’s boys were spreading out, doing their slow pimp-roll, hands in their pockets. The tall one, Rafael Borges, was bouncing the usual basketball, moving in a slow arc toward the hoop. Gerry glanced at Benjy and saw his partner was equally on edge. The escort guards made a gesture toward him and he gestured back, signifying the handoff was complete: they would take over the prisoners. The escort guards filed out, closing the double metal doors behind them.

  Gerry kept his eye on the special prisoner. The man was strolling along the brick wall toward the chain-link fence, moving alertly but without undue alarm. Gerry wondered if he was all right in the head. If it were him out there, he’d have stained his shorts by now.

  He watched as the special prisoner sidled over behind the basketball backboard and placed a casual hand on the chain-link fence, leaning against it. He looked up, then peered from side to side, almost as if waiting for something. The other prisoners slowly circled, none even looking in his direction, acting as if he didn’t exist.

  When a call came over his radio with a burst of static, Gerry jumped. “Fecteau here.”

  “This is Special Agent Spencer Coffey, FBI.”

  “Who?”

  “Wake up, Fecteau, I don’t have all day. As I understand it, you and the other one, Doyle, are in yard 4 on exercise duty.”

  “Yes, yes, sir,” Gerry stammered. Why the hell was Agent Coffey talking directly to him? It must be true what they were whispering, that the special prisoner was a fed—although he sure didn’t look like one.

  “I want both of you up here in Main Security, on the double.”

  “Yes, sir, as soon as we hand over yard duty—”

  “I said, on the double. That means right now.”

  “But, sir, there’s just the two of us guarding the yard—”

  “I gave you a direct order, Fecteau. If I don’t see you in ninety seconds, I swear to God you’ll be in North Dakota tomorrow, on the midnight shift at Black Rock.”

  “But you’re not—”

  His reply was drowned out by a short blast of static as the FBI agent signed off. He looked over at Benjy, who had, of course, heard everything over his own radio. Benjy walked over, shrugging his shoulders faintly.

  “We don’t report to that bastard,” Gerry said. “Do you think we have to do what he says?”

  “You want to take that kind of chance? Let’s get going.”

  Gerry replaced the radio, feeling sick to his stomach. It was murder, pure and simple. But at least they wouldn’t be there when it happened—and they couldn’t be blamed for that, now, could they?

  Ninety seconds . . . He moved swiftly across the yard and opened the metal doors. Then he turned and threw one last glance back at the special prisoner. The man was still leaning against the chain-link fence behind the backboard. Pocho’s gang was already starting to close in, packlike.

  “God help him,” he murmured to Benjy as the doors swung shut behind them with a deep metallic boom.

  43

  Juggy” Ochoa sauntered across the asphalt of the yard, glancing at the sky, the fence, the basketball backboard, his brothers scattered about. His eye turned back to the metal doors that had just clanged shut. The two guards had split. Just like that. He could hardly believe they’d put “Albino” back in the yard—and left him there.

  There the sucker was, leaning against the fence, coolly returning his gaze.

  Ochoa glanced around again through slitted eyes. His prison instincts told him something was going on. It was some kind of setup. Ochoa knew the others felt the same way. They didn’t need to talk; everyone knew already what everyone else was thinking. The guards hated Albino as much as they did. Somebody in high places wanted him dead.

  Ochoa was only too eager to oblige.

  He spit on the asphalt and scuffed it in with his shoe while he watched Borges pound the basketball on the ground with his fist, once, twice, as he made a slow round toward the hoop. Borges was going to reach Albino first, and Ochoa knew Borges could be relied on to be cool and sit tight. There would be plenty of time to take care of the problem, nice and quiet, in a way that nobody got singled out. Sure, it would mean a few months in solitary, loss of privileges—but they were all lifers, anyway. And this was sanctioned. Whatever the consequences, they’d be mild.

  He glanced up at the distant tower. Nobody was looking their way: the tower guards mostly looked to the side and out, toward the perimeter fences. Their view of the interior of yard 4 was limited.

  He turned his gaze back to Albino, disconcerted to see the man was still staring at him. Let him stare. In five minutes, he’d be dead, ready to be rinsed off and shipped out.

  Juggy glanced around at the hermanos. They, too, were taking it slow. Albino was a fighter, a motherfucking dirty fighter, but this time they’d be more careful. And he was banged up; he’d be slower. They’d take him down as a pack.

  They continued to slide in, tightening the ring.

  Borges had reached the three-point line. With a smoothly practiced motion, he tossed the ball up and it swished through the hoop, dropping down—into the waiting hands of the Albino, who had stepped forward with a sudden deft movement to catch it.

  They all stood and stared at him, hard. He held the ball, returning their looks, his stitched-up face utterly neutral. Juggy felt a surge of rage at the raw challenge in his look.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Still no guards.

  Borges stepped forward and the Albino said something to him, talking in a rapid undertone, so low Juggy couldn’t hear what he said. As he approached, Juggy reached down and pulled the little shank out of the crotch seam of his underwear. The time was now: shank the bastard and have it done.

  “Hold on, man,” said Borges, gesturing with his palm out as Ochoa stepped forward. “I want to hear this.”

  “Hear what?”

  “You know you’re being set up
,” Albino was saying. “They want you to kill me. And you know it—every single one of you. Do you know why?”

  He stared in turn at the group that now encircled him.

  “Who the fuck cares?” said Juggy, taking a step forward and readying the shank.

  “Why?” said Borges, holding his arm out toward Juggy again.

  “Because I know how to escape from here.”

  An electric silence.

  “Bullshit,” said Juggy, darting forward with the shank. But the Albino was ready and shot the ball at him, taking him by surprise, and in dodging it Juggy lost his stride. The ball bounced off and rolled away.