“Everything I’ve learned is public record: school reports, newspapers, interviews that took place during their professional careers. But it’s all bland, no red meat. What I’m trying to say is I think Stratton and Greenfield were groomed or…manufactured.”
“What about love affairs? Didn’t they have a boyfriend or girlfriend along the way? These are two attractive people. Surely there is someone willing to kiss and tell.”
“Afraid not. The only romantic interlude either of them has had, besides with each other, is Stratton’s affair with Laura Bishop. And there is no evidence to support even that, just Laura Bishop’s word. And it looks to me like they’re doing their best to erase that.”
“Speaking of, are you going to Colorado?”
“At this very moment, I’m speaking to you from one of Denver’s finest hotels. I plan to drive east in the morning, which is not all that long from now. I have a lead on some fundamentalist activity in the countryside that could be related to Greenfield. I won’t bother you with details unless I find something worth sharing.”
“You, Miss Leather Fetish, are going to one of the most conservative areas of the country. Try to be a little, uh, discreet. Okay?”
“Worry not, Devy. I’m going to dress like Little Miss Vanilla who is out for a sightseeing tour of ranches and cows.”
“Stop with the Devy, will you?”
“Before I go to eastern Colorado, I have one other question. What about your business deal with Stratton? Having an affair with your and Stratton’s target is not a good idea.”
“Hey, I’m not having an affair with Laura Bishop.” Getting a lecture from Fitch, of all people, annoyed me. Besides, I was no longer planning an affair with Laura. I wanted more than that.
“Excuse me, but you are not a sleep around kind of gal. Is this more than an affair?” Fitch said.
“Yes, probably. But I can satisfy Stratton. I’ll keep Bishop here at Tranquility until things blow over.”
“And you’ll call the press when? Stratton needs taking down, Dev. I don’t care about your business ethics.”
“Ethics be damned. I agree. Now I need to go and carry on this misbegotten mission.”
Disturbed, I said good-bye to Fitch and remained at my desk pondering what I had just learned.
Fitch’s conjecture about Stratton and Greenfield jarred me. “Manufactured” was the same word I used to describe the Theater and its characters. Could Stratton and Greenfield be some sort of product of the Malignity?
“Holy hell. ‘As above, so below,’” I said aloud. The Magician’s traditional symbolism. One arm pointing up, the other pointing down. What occurs in the heavens is mirrored on earth. I looked at my fingernails. At least they were intact on my customary plane of existence, and so were Stratton’s and Greenfield’s.
I barely completed the thought when I was thrown to the floor. My body was squeezed and elongated like it was being blown through a straw. The wracking sensation ended, and I looked up at the face of the High Priestess. She was baring her teeth. At least that’s what I think she was doing until I understood she was smiling. Her teeth looked like they had been carved out of soap, a facsimile of teeth. She would always revolt me, no matter what her intentions were.
“I thought you’d improved my transition process,” I croaked.
“When it suits us. But sometimes meddlers need to be reminded who controls them.” That spectral grimace of hers was lifeless. The teeth were dust dry. That’s what made me shiver. “You don’t like my visage, meddler? It’s not human enough for you? I am not human, thankfully, so I don’t aspire to look exactly like one.”
“Who are you, really?”
“Using your words, let us say I’m another client. You have a task that needs completion. You are on the path of failure, I’m afraid. You have not been careful.” Her thin eyebrows jerked woodenly together in a rehearsed gesture of disapproval. “Was it not clear when you were conscripted?”
“You haven’t given me word one about what you expect of me.” I stood and faced her. This time I wouldn’t cower.
“Then go,” she said. “Go to your Theater and learn what needs to be done. It may already be too late to save your Laura Bishop. The Malignity is marching, marching fast.” Again, without moving, she smashed my body into the pillar behind her throne. I felt my forehead clonk against the marble.
There was no sensation of the transition to Pento’s Theater. Instead, I heard him say, “Are you bleeding, damsel?”
I was lying on my back with my hands covering my agonizing forehead. Venomous darts of pain ripped across my scalp. My throat emitted a pathetic sound between a moan and a scream. My hands felt sticky. I pulled them away to find my tapered, nail-less fingers covered with blood. At least the blood was the right color, but on closer inspection, there was a melting red gelatin quality to it. I rolled on my side and spewed partially digested flank steak into Pento’s faux dirt. The vomit had a rubbery bounce to it that made me even more revolted, and I finished with dry heaves.
Depleted finally, I rocked myself several times to collect my damaged self so that I could, just barely, rise to my knees. I worked the gloppy blood between the tips of my fingers. “Can you stop this…this blood? It’s all wrong, Pento.”
I looked up at Pento and saw him twist his head so far around, he was looking back over his shoulder blades. It was horrific, like a demon possession, but it lasted only a second then his head snapped forward again. My bleeding stopped, literally dried up, leaving a tacky residue.
“My apologies, damsel. Most humans do not like to see me work. For some reason, the twisting of my head annoys them. However, I cannot help it. It is what happens when I create within the Theater.” He reached his gloved hand to me, which I grasped and felt him effortlessly pull me to my feet. “Please tell me. A few times when you have come to the Theater you acted as if you had been struck in the head. Why is that? I cannot seem to make the transition pleasant for you. It has never been like that.”
“Never? Your ‘lady’ never slams people against marble surfaces before she ships them off to you? Maybe you figure that abuse will make us more docile, more amenable to your wishes. Well, guess what, Pento, that doesn’t work. At least, it doesn’t work with me.” I was squeezing my appallingly deformed fingers into the palms of my hands.
“Abuse? Whatever do you mean? The Lady gives me strict directions never to abuse anyone in the meddler line.”
“What do you think the Lady does when I make my little appearances before her throne? She sure isn’t serving me tea and crumpets.” I was stepping closer to him in my anger. He backed away.
“Tea and crumpets? Appearances?”
“Quit parroting me. Tell me exactly what’s going on here. And what is a ‘line’ anyway?”
“A line is you, damsel. You are a line, the bloodline. Why do you not know that?”
“Pento, just who is ‘the Lady’ that you are talking about? We need some definitions of terms so that we are clear with each other.” He appeared as bewildered as I.
“The goddess Isis, the High Priestess, Persephone. The keeper of wisdom. She can be cold, but not brutal. Unless she is worried.” He hesitated. “Oh dear, she is worried.”
“Well, she doesn’t seem to get that I break. She keeps tossing me around like a discarded rag doll.”
“Then things are worse than I knew. She must be troubled. She wants you to resolve the situation with the Malignity without delay.”
“You need to tell her to back off, Pento. I will try to do as I’ve been directed, but I can’t if I’m wounded or my skull is cracked. Are you sure she’s on our side?”
“Of that we can be certain. Despite her cruelty to you, she does not align herself with He-Who-Comes-Before. They are competitors. She does not usually get so demanding.” Pento was shaking his head in a jerky rendition of bewilderment.
“The Magician, the number one of tarot major arcane, or whatever else he could be called. He is Jerry Greenfi
eld, and Jerry is the Malignity. Is that right?”
“He is but a creature of the Malignity. There are many. The Malignity hates free choice, so it terrorizes humans. It seeks to manipulate humans through their ignorance, fear, and naïveté. It has human puppets it cultivates. For your understanding, the Magician is an aspect of the Malignity. Greenfield is just a puppet.” Pento’s face tried to do indignation.
“And the Malignity’s puppets carve the letter I on people’s faces,” I said when I realized the I on Laura’s face meant the number one. The number of the Magician in tarot.
“That may be, damsel. I know its puppets are recruited when they are young. They always have great hunger for power because they are hollow inside. Mostly, they come to a terrible end, but sometimes they become vicious rulers. They leave no place for those who question their tactics. Your very people suffered from one of those only decades ago, I think.”
“Well, actually, my people have suffered from many of them. But the worst for Jews was Hitler. Some of our other oppressors were popes, imams, wild-eyed screamers of righteousness. Wait. You said I’m a bloodline.”
“As are all the humans. They come from bloodlines, each specially gifted. At different times in human history, certain bloodlines are called upon to either disrupt or restore. You come from the meddler bloodline. In your system of tarot cards, damsel, you are called the Fool. Your line is often useful to us.”
“Because I can appear and change the course of events without warning. My bloodline shows up anywhere and nowhere, like the Fool in tarot. But I’m guessing we and other bloodlines don’t always follow your script. Do they, Pento? The plans of your kind are often foiled. Am I correct?”
“You are correct. It is the unpredictability of human free choice. We set the stage, but humans write the script. It is the way your world has been designed, to help you humans evolve.”
“Evolve into what? What is the destination for human evolution?”
Here Pento became inert, like a figure in a wax museum—lifelike but eerily unreal. Had my question pushed too far? Did his battery run out?
As I waited in the stillness, not even the fake birds flew, I thought about the Magician I had encountered there in the Theater. He had Jerry Greenfield’s ridiculous pompadour hair. The Magician was the ultimate manipulator using both reality and illusions. He could be as malevolent as any card in the deck given the right situation, a creature of the Malignity. But he wasn’t the wild card. I was the wild card.
I took a long look at my ghastly fingers. “I have work to do. I’m ready to leave now.” It was as simple as that. I found myself sitting on the floor of my study, looking at my fingernails.
Exhaustion overpowered me. I crawled to the couch that stood against the wall. When I was comfortable with an afghan covering me, I fell asleep with the sweet anticipation of joining Laura later. I wanted to make love with her one more time before we returned to Seattle.
Chapter Thirteen
The phone on my desk jolted me to rummy consciousness. I checked the clock and saw I had slept several hours. Morning light shone through the cracks between the drawn curtains. I tripped to my desk and grabbed the phone receiver, forgetting it was a quaint model connected to the cradle by a cord. The cradle hurled and crashed off the desk after me as I slumped on the couch, receiver in hand.
“Jeez, Rosten, are you okay? What’s happening there?”
“I’m okay. I’m okay. What’s up?” I was rubbing my forehead, trying to wake up.
“You have to speed things up. It’s gotten bad here in Colorado. Real bad.” I detected a twinge of panic in Fitch’s usually controlled voice.
“How? Did the denizens of eastern Colorado come after you with rakes and pitchforks?”
“Not me. They did something far worse. Someone bombed a women’s clinic about seventy miles east of Denver. It was in the middle of nowhere. There were first responders rushing around me during my entire drive eastward. I just followed them.”
“What does that have to do with Stratton or Greenfield? Wait, you said a women’s clinic? Oh shit.”
“Yeah, oh shit. An exclusive abortion clinic posing as a fat farm for the wealthy. Where the rising Hollywood starlets and preachers’ mistresses can get rid of their mistakes with none the wiser. Someone found out about it and took it out. Six people killed. Only two survived, a doctor and a nurse.”
“And you suspect Jerry Greenfield? C’mon, Fitch. He’s too public and not that stupid, is he?”
“I’ve set up my laptop and other equipment in a little motel along Highway 36. I’m picking up chatter that isn’t all that cryptic. Greenfield might not be stupid, but his lackeys are. They’re blabbing all over the airwaves. His people were involved, all right. And it’s more than an anti-abortion operation. They were looking not only to destroy an abortion clinic, but to destroy all the clinic’s records.” Here Fitch went quiet while I spent a few moments connecting dots.
“I see,” I said. “Looks like my hunch was right. Can you get to that doctor and nurse?” Fitch made a derisive sound as if I’d asked her if she could tie her own shoes. “Find out what they know. Feel free to tell them everything about your trip to Colorado, why you’re there, Laura’s situation, everything. I’m thinking they have a story to tell you and are willing to go public when it’s safe. Do what you can to ensure their safety, and I’m not talking about the police.”
“I’m on it. I’ve got security connections here. The doctor and nurse have been rushed to a hospital in Denver. My guess is I’ll find them there and will need to get them out before someone lays waste to them. As soon as I get their story and have their safety secure, I’m flying back to Seattle. I’ll charter a plane if I have to.”
“You’re amazing, old girl.”
“I’m not old and I’m not a girl. I’ll call you when I get to town. Touché, by the way.” She hung up.
I sat on the couch for several minutes weighing my choices. How many times in my life had I asked myself the perennial question: If I could go back in time, when Hitler was a baby, would I kill him? Would the heinous act of killing an infant save six million Jews and countless others? I’ve never been able to answer that question. But I could answer this one: Would stopping the Stratton / Greenfield machine save anyone? Yes, it could save Laura, at least, and possibly others who dared get in the way of Stratton’s campaign.
It became obvious to me that Elizabeth Stratton, Jerry Greenfield, and Tom Dwight were agents, puppets, of the Malignity. They all could go to hell, and I would be happy to have a hand in it. To me, they had become less than cockroaches. They’d been refined, groomed, and buffed to bring power to forces that loved to torment human beings. And I supposed, grudgingly, that I too had been seasoned to be the Fool, the wild card, the coyote, the trickster who spoiled the meticulous plans of humans and gods. I was the agent of chaos, either by naïveté or by cunning. But it was my choice whose plans I spoiled.
In those moments, I made my choice. I was going to take down Elizabeth Stratton and her machine. If my career, such as it was, ended, my clients disappeared, so be it. I opted for love and, in some larger sense, I chose my fellow human beings.
Determined, I left my office to find Laura. As soon as I walked out the door, I went straight to the living room and grabbed Elizabeth Stratton’s check from the table drawer. I ripped it into the smallest pieces possible and tossed them into the fireplace. Time to hold Laura again, I thought, and started for the stairs leading up to my bedroom.
I was distracted by something glinting on the floor of the front foyer. My keys. My keys with the security fob. They had been on the dresser in my bedroom. My bedroom where I’d last seen Laura. Panicked with foreboding, I took the stairs two at a time and raced to the bedroom. It was abandoned.
Laura’s clothes were gone. Her purse was gone. She was gone. My cell phone had disappeared too. They had gotten to her. While I slept, dreaming on my cozy couch, Stratton’s animals had taken Laura. And I didn�
�t do anything to stop them.
“No!” I screamed. I dropped to my knees and pressed my hand over my mouth. What could I do? My mind was wild with fear and guilt. I couldn’t land on a thought, much less a plan. All I could think was I had to find Laura. Or they would kill her. If they hadn’t already.
The jangle of my landline beside the bed pulled me out of my morass of indecision. I scrambled to answer it.
“Hey, Ms. Rosten? This is Pete down here at Island Security.”
“Pete? Oh, Pete.”
“Yeah, uh, the guys have been patrolling your property all night, real close like. All’s A-okay. Do you want us to keep it up today?”
“They saw nobody? Nothing? All night?”
“Nothing at all. Your place is tight as a drum, but you need to turn your alarm back on. We noticed here in the office that your system got deactivated. But we figured you were there, so it was no big deal.”
Could I trust my own security company? I wasn’t sure, so I asked them to continue patrolling until further notice, regardless of the expense. He didn’t complain. I didn’t mention Laura.
Where would they take Laura? If the security team didn’t see anyone in the vicinity of the house, how did they get to her? Would the security company lie to me? I strode to the curtains and yanked the cord. Before me spread Hunter Bay lit by morning light. The rain had run itself out. I scanned the bay looking for any kind of a watercraft, but much of the water was hidden by mist.
I pushed my forehead against the glass to peer down at my dock. My dinghy was gone. I rushed to my closet and grabbed the binoculars. When I focused them on the dock, I discerned that the door of the shed was hanging open. Someone had taken Laura and my boat. Maybe my boat had already been gone when we had arrived yesterday, a victim of a random crime. Maybe not.
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