The Best Revenge

by Stephen White

  “Thirsty?”the voice inquired.

  Tom lifted his left hand so he could flip his captor the bird with both hands. The sleeping bag slipped to the ground behind him. A few clouds were forming above the Divide, but to him the sky didn’t portend rain. He thought wistfully that he’d settle for some cloud cover and a little shade.

  “Now catch!” The quality of the voice had changed dramatically. It was no longer amplified.

  “What?”

  “Turn around.”

  Tom did.

  “I said, ‘Catch!’” A figure wearing a bulky canvas suit with fat gloves and a helmet with a screen over the face stood on the edge of the pine forest. In one hand the person held a wooden box about eighteen inches square with a handle on the top. In the other hand he carried a shopping bag with a flat bottom.

  Tom perused the disguise and had to admit it was pretty good camouflage. He couldn’t identify whoever was wearing the suit. He still thought the voice had been a man’s.

  “Catch what?” Tom asked.

  The man took a half-dozen steps forward until he stood only ten feet from the fence. He set the box down on the dirt, reached into the bag, and removed a half-liter bottle of water. He tossed it over the fence.

  Tom jumped back a yard or so and caught it.

  His ears picked up a droning noise, as though someone was operating a lawn mower a hundred yards away.Were they that close to civilization?

  The thought gave him hope.

  “Now put down the bottle and catch this.” The man in the canvas suit reached back into the bag and lifted an orb about the size of a softball. He held it up above his head so that Tom could examine it. Then, with an exaggerated underhanded motion, he tossed it high over the fence.

  Tom dropped the bottle and braced to catch the orb. It was coming straight at him. The second it hit his hands the ball disintegrated and he found himself instantly enveloped in a cloud of fine yellow powder. All that remained of the ball in his hands was a crumpled pile of cheesecloth, flat toothpicks, and a little bit of tape.

  He coughed and tried to spit the yellow dust out of his mouth, “What the fuck was that?”

  “Pollen.”

  “Pollen?”

  “Yes, Tom, pollen. You like pollen?”

  “Not particularly. I’d rather have a sandwich.”

  “You know who likes pollen?”

  “Mary Poppins?”

  “Bees like pollen, Tom. And to make them like it even more, I chopped up a few queen bees and mixed them up with the pollen. The scent of the queen bees draws the worker bees like naked girls draw adolescent boys. And these particular bees are a tad on the aggressive side, anyway.”

  Tom’s heartbeat accelerated and, without thinking, he brushed at his bare arms. The dust, as fine as cake flour, coated him like paint. Brushing it only seemed to force the yellow pigment into his skin.

  He stared at the man. With monumental alarm, his mind recognized the purpose of the canvas suit the man was wearing.

  It wasn’t a disguise.

  It was a beekeeper’s outfit.

  “No!” Tom screamed. He started a frantic dance, flailing his legs, maniacally rubbing his hands over his skin and clothing. “Are they killer bees? Are they going to kill me?”

  The man reached down and grabbed the handle on the wooden box.

  “No, you can’t!” Tom yelled, still swiping at the yellow powder that covered his body.

  The man lifted the box and began to swing it front to back.

  The droning noise grew louder.

  “Wait! Tell me what you want! You can’t do that!” Tom implored.

  The length of the arc of the box increased a little bit each time the man swung it. It reminded Tom of a child climbing progressively higher on a swing.

  The humming sound permeated the clearing.

  Tom ran to the farthest corner of the enclosure. It felt futile, but he didn’t know what else to do.

  Near the top of its forward arc, the man released the wooden box from his hand. It accelerated as it shot into the air, easily clearing the top of the fence before falling and crashing to the dust about five feet into the pen.

  The wooden box collapsed upon impact and the sound of the furious swarm of bees escaping their confinement was the scariest thing Tom had heard since the night in prison when . . .

  The bees were upon him before he could complete the thought.

  No, they’re not killer bees,” the man said. “And I do hope you’re not allergic.” He didn’t think Tom Clone heard him.

  The funny thing was, his words were totally sincere.

  CHAPTER 32

  Kelda almost didn’t have to fake it. Ten minutes after she’d left the lobby of the Hotel Monaco, she felt almost as sick as she was pretending to be when she took the elevator back up to the FBI Field Office and told the young guy at the reception desk that she had just thrown up her lunch and was going to take the rest of the day off.

  Bill Graves watched her collect her things and stuff them into her shoulder bag. “Where are you going?” he finally asked.

  “Home. I’m not feeling well. I just puked up my lunch.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I hope you feel better. Anything I can do? Do you need a ride someplace?”

  She forced a smile. “Thanks, but no. I’m sure I’ll be fine. It’s just a stomach bug, probably.”

  “Please don’t tell me you ate at that Italian place at the Hotel Monaco? Panzano? I really like that place, wouldn’t want to think it made you sick.”

  His words caused her to hold her breath. Billhad seen her in the lobby of the Hotel Monaco. And he wanted her to know that he’d seen her. The question was: Why did he want her to know?

  Was he warning her about something?

  “No, no. There was too long a wait at the restaurant, and I didn’t have time. I just ended up grabbing something from a street vendor. Just my luck, it came right back up.” She regretted the lie even as she was telling it. If Bill had been following her, he would know that she hadn’t really stopped at any of the sidewalk stands for lunch.

  He’d know she was lying. And he’d conclude she had a reason to lie.

  After a moment’s contemplation, he said, “Well, I do hope you feel better. Take care.”

  “Thanks, Bill. You’re a sweetheart, you know that?”

  “I keep telling you that, Kelda.”

  She slipped her bag over her left shoulder and headed toward the bank of elevators.

  When the car arrived, Kelda stepped in, moved to the back corner of the elevator, and leaned against the wall. The sudden swoosh of the rapid descent flipped her empty stomach, and she wondered if she really was going to throw up. As the car stopped about halfway down the building to pick up additional passengers, she suddenly realized why Bill Graves had told her that he’d seen her standing in the lobby at the Hotel Monaco.

  He wanted her to know she was being followed.

  Kelda bolted out of the elevator just before the door closed on the eleventh floor, and hustled down the hall to the staircase. Descending the stairs to the building’s lobby, she used a delivery door that a UPS driver had left propped open and made her way out to the alley.

  The tail that Bill Graves was warning her about could have been unofficial—it could have been nothing more than Bill being curious or intrusive. That was worrisome, but Kelda was confident she could lose any tail Bill put on her if he was acting alone. But . . . if the tail was something that had been mounted by the SAC with full Bureau resources, that was something else altogether. If that was the case, Kelda couldn’t risk using her car to leave downtown. She couldn’t even risk renting a car with her own ID.

  The air was hot and still. A block from the Federal Building, she checked her wallet and counted her cash. Thirty-seven dollars. She backtracked half a block and withdrew four hundred dollars from an ATM. If her colleagues wanted to know she’d collected money from her account, she knew that they could get the information easily. Bu
t it wouldn’t tell them anything important about her location. She was exactly where they thought she would be, less than a block from the field office.

  Kelda convinced herself that no helicopters—they couldn’t want to know what she was up tothat badly—were involved in tracking her, and she flagged down a cab. She told the driver to drop her at the corner of Thirty-second and Speer, just across Federal Boulevard on the other side of Interstate 25. At the conclusion of the ten-minute ride, she gave the driver one of the fresh bills that she’d just gotten out of the ATM and told him to keep the change. She waited on the corner until the cab was out of sight. After carefully examining the area for signs that her colleagues had managed to track her—she didn’t notice a thing—she headed on foot toward Highland Park.

  It only took her two minutes to get to the address she was seeking on Grove Street, less than a block from the park. The home was a bungalow with a tiny lawn and impeccably maintained landscaping. Kelda climbed three wooden steps to the front porch and touched the bell.

  “Please be home, please be home,” Kelda murmured as she fished in her change purse for a couple of Percocet. Still waiting, she popped them into her mouth and swallowed them dry.

  Seconds later, Maria Alija answered the door. She was dressed in a simple print dress and open-toed shoes.

  Kelda asked, “May I come in, Maria?”

  A storm of alarm rose in Maria’s eyes. “Is my baby okay?”

  Kelda raised both palms. “Rosa’s fine. She’s fine.” The panic in Maria’s eyes didn’t ebb. Kelda said, “You believe me, don’t you, Maria?”

  “Si.”

  “I need a favor from you,por favor . Can I borrow your car? It’s kind of an emergency.”

  Without hesitation, Maria Alija reached into her purse and held out her keys to Kelda. “I was just heading back to work. You can have it as long as you want. Overnight, whatever you need. Anything for you. You are family.”

  “And you are a saint, Maria. I’ll drop you off at your work,” Kelda said. “How’s that?”

  Maria worked in a dentist’s office that was about a mile north of her home. A couple of minutes later, as Kelda pulled Maria’s old Ford Contour into the lot, she asked, “One more favor, Maria? Another big one.”

  “Si.”

  “Do you carry a cell phone?”

  “Si,for Rosa. She worries.”

  “May I borrow it?”

  Maria smiled. “Kelda, I would give you a kidney, gladly.”

  CHAPTER 33

  You shouldn’t have swatted at them. It only pisses them off. If you had just stayed still, I don’t think you would have been stung so often. Maybe not even at all. But, although I wouldn’t know, I bet that’s hard to do when a thousand bees are buzzing around your head.”

  The voice was once again amplified.

  Tom could hear it, clearly. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t been stung on his ears. He would have said, “Fuck you,” but his lips were already so swollen he didn’t think it was worth the agony it would cause to try to speak.

  “The point wasn’t the stinging. It was the fear. Did you experience the fear, Tom? Did you?”

  Tom nodded. A few bees still buzzed around the enclosure. The faint noise they made sounded to Tom like a dentist’s drill hovering above his unanesthetized molar.

  “What? Did you say something?”

  “I could ha’e gone into shock and died. You could ha’e killed ’e.”

  “That’s true. I took that risk.”

  Tom had already poured half the bottle of water that the man had thrown to him over his skin. The other half he’d poured down his throat, trying not to touch the rim of the bottle to his lips. “It really ’ucking hurts. The stings. They ’ucking ’urn and they ’ucking sting.”

  “I bet they do.”

  “One got inside ’y ’outh. I even ha’e a sting in ’y arm’it.”

  “Really? One stung you inside your mouth? That’s why you’re talking so funny. And you have one in your armpit? Ouch.”

  “Why?” Tom pleaded.

  “Why? Why am I doing this? You tell me. Why? Why would someone do this to you? Terrify you half to death? Why?”

  Tom was fighting tears. “I don’t know. Why?”

  “You don’t know yet? I guess we’re not done, then. The lessons will just have to continue. You keep working on an answer, okay? Tom? It’s important. I hope you get this right, because if you don’t understand the lessons, I promise that you won’t want to take the final.”

  “No ’ore ’ees. No ’ore ’ees. ’ease.” Tom Clone had made it through all his years in the penitentiary without begging. But he was begging.

  “Just tell me then, why would someone do this to you? Just tell me and we’ll move on to another lesson.”

  Tom could barely create a coherent thought through the volume of agony he was suffering from the plethora of fresh bee stings.Another lesson? Oh God. He shook his head, mute and helpless.

  “Hey,”the voice coaxed,“listen to this.”

  For almost a minute, Tom heard nothing. What he was listening for was the drone of the distant lawn mower, which to him would mean the advent of another swarm of bees and more agony. What he finally heard was even more frightening: the unforgettable sound of steel doors slamming.

  Prison doors.

  “Oh’an . You ’ucker,” Tom said. “It was you. You ’ade those ’oises in ’y house.”

  “Yes, I did. I actually recorded them right off the DVD ofThe Green Mile. You probably missed it, but it was a pretty good Tom Hanks movie about death row. Then I cleaned them up digitally a bit. It’s a cassette recorder on a timer up in the attic. I think the effects sound pretty good. Do you agree?”

  Tom didn’t reply.

  “Good. I’m just going to keep playing that loop for a while. I have it set up so that the doors seem to close at random. Just like it must have been for you when you were inside. You just never know what’s coming. That can’t be pleasant. Could make you fearful.”

  Tom felt his heart pop in his chest, and his mind flashed on a lesson from his senior psychiatry rotation.Learned Helplessness, maybe. An orange book. Someone named Seligman—or something like that—wrote it.

  It was about the connection between despair and the inability to control negative consequences in life.This is what life was like for those rats and dogs, he thought.I’m helpless. There’s nothing I can do to stop this madman.

  “I’m behind you now, Tom.” The voice was natural again, lacking amplification. “You should turn around.”

  Tom crawled to his knees. Slowly, he rotated to face his captor.

  The man was ten feet from the fence. He was wearing faded blue jeans, a polo shirt, and lightweight hiking boots. A motorcycle helmet—a full one, with chin and jaw protection and a dark visor—totally hid his face. In his left hand he carried another wooden box with a handle on top. This box was about eighteen inches long and a foot high. The man wore heavy leather gloves.

  “ ’ore ’ees?” Tom’s voice was burdened with so much dread he could barely get the sounds out of his throat.

  “More bees? No.” The man shook his head, hefting the box slightly. “Snakes this time. Vipers.”

  “What?”

  The man repeated himself. “I said, ‘Vipers.’ It’s a terribly misunderstood species of snake.”

  He moved forward and placed the wooden box flush against the chain-link fence, reached down, and lifted the side that was closest to the fence straight up and away from the box.

  Ten seconds later, a glistening head about the size of a small egg emerged from the shadows and extended through one of the galvanized diamonds in the mesh of the fence.

  “It’s about fear, Tom. Do you get it yet?”

  Tom was incredulous. He couldn’t take his eyes off the box and the snake that was emerging from the darkness. “ ’i’ers?” he asked. “That’s a ’i’er?”

  “Yes, Tom. Vipers. That’s a viper.”

  “H
el’! Hel’!” He scrambled to his feet and backed away, dragging the sleeping bag with him across the enclosure.

  “No one’s going to help you, Tom. Do you know what that’s like? Not to have anyone help you when you’re afraid? To have someone know that you’re afraid and be in a position to help you but refuse you help? Can you imagine what that is like, Tom? You know, I bet you can.”

  “Hel’! Hel’!” Tom’s voice cracked as he screamed. His parched throat couldn’t generate the volume that his lungs were demanding.

  “You don’t have to wonder what it’s like to be stalked anymore, Tom. The vipers are stalkingyou now.”

  The snake surged forward so that about a foot of its body extended out of the wooden box. There it stilled, its sleek head frozen in space about ten inches above the dirt.

  The man said, “He hasn’t eaten in well over a week.”

  “Hel’!”

  A second head emerged from the box, protruding through a different diamond in the mesh.

  “Neither has that one,” said the man, who turned and walked back toward the forest. He paused and said, “Remember, Tom. It’s about fear. It’s all about fear.Feel the fear. ”

  Just then a prison door slammed in the middle of the Colorado wilderness.

  CHAPTER 34

  One of the two snakes had slithered about halfway across the enclosure toward Tom when he came to the sudden realization that the man in the beekeeper’s suit and the motorcycle helmet wasn’t Detective Prehost.

  Why would Prehost want to teach him lessons about fear?

  In Tom’s experience, Prehost’s motivations had no heuristic undertones. Prehost’s scheme was devoid of pretense. He simply wanted Tom poisoned to death in the execution chamber at the Colorado State Penitentiary. He wouldn’t bother to engage in theater to torment Tom about the meaning of fear.

  So, Tom wondered, if the man in the motorcycle helmet wasn’t Fred Prehost, who the hell was he?

  While Tom desperately pondered the identity of his captor, the second snake cleared the fence and stretched down to the dry earth. The dark natural camouflage of the two vipers failed to disguise them in the pale dust of Colorado’s high country. As the snakes slithered across the open space in the fenced-in pen, they were as visible to Tom as shark fins in a swimming pool.