Louis said to the ceiling, “I’ll look at the contracts on one condition.”
Whispers hushed around the room before it spoke again. “STATE YOUR TERMS.”
Louis smiled. A minor victory, Louis my boy, but there’s a long way to go yet. “Remove these goddamn shackles,” he said.
Instantly, the invisible restraint loosened around his waist. He sat up and dangled his legs over the edge. On the floor at the base of the layback were two contracts he hadn’t noticed before; one a wad of paper as thick as a telephone directory, the other a single folio scrolled and tied with a purple ribbon. He jumped down, surprised at the ease and litheness at which he landed on the floor, and picked them up. Now that he had the medics listening to him, it was time for the next item on the agenda.
“How long do I keep these bandages on?” he asked, putting the contracts on the leather layback.
The voice didn’t answer immediately. “YOU HAVE A CHOICE.”
Louis glanced up at the ceiling, slightly bemused. “You’re the docs. Aren’t you supposed to tell me when they can come off?”
The voice repeated itself.
Louis shrugged. If that was the way it was, then he chose now. He grabbed a loose end of a bandage on his wrist and unwound it. There was another bandage underneath. He unwound that one too. There was another. And another. “What the hell’s going on?” he said, growling under his breath. Then to the ceiling: “Get these goddamn bandages off me!”
“MAKE YOUR CHOICE,” the voice said. It wasn’t a threat, just a simple statement of fact.
Louis glanced down at the leather layback and picked up the scroll with the purple ribbon. He was surprised to read that it wasn’t a contract at all. It was a goddamn party invitation. Louis DeVille is hereby invited to attend the Celebration of Life at the Mansion of Many Rooms. He reread it, thinking it some kind of childish joke. There was no name, no indication as to who had written it. Nor was it dated; and he had no idea where in hell he was supposed to find the address of the Mansion of Many Rooms. His signature wasn’t even required at the bottom. What kind of goddamn contract was this? Something his useless wife would have come up with. It was even hand written in amateurish scrawl. The whole thing was farcical, just like this entire goddamn state of affairs.
When he glanced down at the thick wad of paper, it suddenly clicked what he was meant to do. Maybe that’s it. Maybe this whole thing is a test.
He tossed the scroll over his shoulder and flicked through the other contract. Now this was more like it. Six hundred and sixty-six typed pages of detailed contractual obligations. Though, to his dismay, there were more clauses and sub-clauses than he had seen on any document, more than he reckoned he would find on the latest amendment to the constitution of the United Goddamn States of America. It would take him over a month to get through all the legalese mumbo jumbo.
He skimmed over the first few pages. It seemed the issuing authority, LeMont International Enterprises Ltd, was undertaking a major restructuring program and he was being headhunted to oversee the project, and at his age that was a goddamn laugh. Still, on page thirteen, the contract defined the proposed position as “Interim Management Consultant,” IMC, and went on to list the terms of his employment over the next four or five pages. Which was the first thing he needed to negotiate. He couldn’t devote himself to another fulltime position whilst remaining head of Global Resolutions Network. Goddamn it. That would mean working around the clock. It just couldn’t be done; and though he was flattered at their interest in him, he would just have to tell them that their expectations were a little unrealistic, to say the least. If they really wanted his consulting services, they would just have to accept he couldn’t do it at the drop of a hat. It would have to be part-time, once a week at most, or nothing.
He continued reading. On page one hundred and four he saw something about “exclusivity of intellectual property” and made a mental note to query it with his lawyers (and he would, goddamn it, even if LeMont International Enterprises had a problem with getting his lawyers involved). There was more, too. The position of Interim Management Consultant entailed living on site, which was just goddamn ridiculous. He would be buggered before he packed up and left his penthouse on Beeker Street. But it was there, in writing. Clause one hundred and sixty-nine, sub-clause (b) on page two hundred and seventy-three: “It is agreed that the IMC undertakes immediate residency within the premises of LeMont International Enterprises Ltd.”
He kept flicking through, shaking his head. From what he could gather, LeMont International Enterprises was some kind of industrial export park where all the employees worked and lived, from cleaners and maintenance workers to administrative and executive staff. It sounded massive, in fact, a corporation leviathan. A corporation metropolis.
How hadn’t he heard of them before? He hadn’t a goddamn clue who LeMont International Enterprises were, and there was nothing in the contract from what he had briefly seen to indicate what they actually produced. They weren’t listed on the New York Stock Exchange, that was for sure; something this big he would have known about. They had to be privately owned. When he got out of hospital, he would make sure Sarah got onto it straight away. Find out just who these guys were, and what in hell they had to do with his rehabilitation.
He put the contract back down on the leather layback. All in all it looked like the real deal. It was tempting all right. Tempting enough that he might just take them up on their offer. Maybe he could manipulate the position of IMC for the good for his own business. Maybe this company was the answer to the recent problems he had been facing.
“I’ll need some time to go through it,” he said to the ceiling. “Devil’s in the detail, you know. I’m not just putting my name down on something without going through it with a fine-tooth comb.”
Louis heard whispers before the voice answered: “YOU HAVE ALREADY CHOSEN.”
“What do you mean? I haven’t signed anything yet.”
“YOU HAVE REJECTED THE OTHER. YOUR CHOICE HAS BEEN MADE.”
Louis glanced over his shoulder at the scroll he had tossed away. He was about to say that the assumption of choice made through indirect action was goddamn ridiculous, and about as legally binding as same sex marriage in the state of Utah, but the voice cut him short.
“LOUIS DEVILLE. ARE YOU READY?”
“What, goddamn it? Ready for what?”
“YOUR JUDGMENT.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Judgment
WITHOUT any indication of what was going to happen, the room suddenly lit up in a flash of brilliant white light, as though a Super Nova had just exploded over his head. Louis’ first reaction was to cringe and bury his head in the crook of his bandaged elbows. “What the hell?” he shouted.
It wasn’t an explosion, as it turned out. There was no noise, no cracking boom that burst his eardrums and rendered him deaf. There was no heat surge, though he half expected to feel himself erupt into flames and frizzle to a pile of ash. There wasn’t even a shockwave to knock him to his knees or launch him into the wall on the other side of the room. Not so much as a breath of wind, just stillness and silence.
Nonetheless, when he peeked from the crooks of his elbows, he found he had been temporarily blinded. The abyss of darkness had returned, to his dismay, though this time he was fully corpus mentis. “Goddamn it you son of a bitch!” he shouted to the ceiling, groping the space in front of him where the leather layback should have been. “I can’t see a goddamn thing!”
He kept groping for the layback. At that moment, he heard footsteps scuffling from behind. He spun around, though what really freaked him out was that it sounded more like a scuttling rodent than an approaching nurse or medic. A goddamn huge rodent.
“Who’s there?” he said. He heard the opening of a door, followed by scuffled footsteps and some sort of scraping noise. “Who’s there?” he asked again. The door clicked shut and he heard more scraping scuffles. “Answer me, goddamn it! I know someone’s there
!”
“Now, now, Mr. DeVille,” someone said, and sniggered. “No need to get hot under the collar. I’m here to help.”
Louis almost jumped out of his bandages. It wasn’t the same voice he had heard previously, the one that boomed from every corner of the room. This was meek and reedy and filled with a false sense of courage, the kind of voice that only dared to make itself heard from the shadows. The voice’s manner was kind of familiar too, though not one he had heard for some time, and not one he could immediately put a face to. He figured it wasn’t Epstein. That good-for-noth’n Jew-boy wouldn’t fly all the way to New York to see how the boss was recovering. Not unless there was something in it for himself. In fact, he was sure it wasn’t any of his current vice presidents. They were probably this minute squabbling over who would take over the reins. Well, he had news for them. This CEO wasn’t dead and buried just yet.
“Who are you?” he asked. “I can’t see. I’ve been blinded.”
“You’re not blind,” the stranger said, and from the tone of his voice Louis reckoned he had enjoyed scaring him. “The lights are off.”
Louis brought his hand to his face and held it an inch away from his eyes. It was true. He could see the bandages wrapped around his digits, though in the near total darkness he thought he could only count three fingers and they looked kind of shorter and stubbier than normal. He let the thought go, blaming it on the lack of visibility, and told the stranger to switch on the lights.
“They’re off for a reason,” the stranger said.
Louis heard him snigger again under his breath. His high reedy voice was really beginning to give him the creeps. It sounded like the squeak of a mouse, or even a rat; and no matter how goddamn ridiculous it sounded, the idea that he was in conversation with a rodent wouldn’t leave his head. He wanted to see who he was talking to. Had to see, for his own sanity.
“I don’t give a goddamn hoot what the reason is. I want the lights on.”
The stranger replied, “They’re off for your own protection.”
Again, Louis heard the guy (mouse?) snigger. He had heard something else too, a kind of swish, like something (a tail?) trailing across the floor. Something wasn’t right here. Something wasn’t goddamned right at all. Louis took a step back, feeling his way toward the wall. “I want the light on,” he said, taking another step back. “I want it on now!”
This time the stranger snorted in contempt. “I tell you what. Why don’t you stop giving the orders and start taking them?”
Louis took another step back. The leather layback wasn’t where it should have been. The darkness had him so disorientated he had lost all sense of where he was in relation to it. What’s more, the room seemed bigger somehow, as if the walls had stretched apart with the Super Nova explosion. Even the ceiling seemed higher. The dark space was vacuous; and if he didn’t think it impossible, he could have sworn he was in a different room from a moment ago.
It even smelled differently. The white room (if he could actually suspend disbelief for a moment and admit that he was no longer in that room), the two-way mirrored room, hadn’t really smelled of anything. It certainly hadn’t smelled of disinfectant or antiseptic floor wash, the kind of nasal-cleansing reek he expected from a hospital; and neither did this room (the dark room?). It smelled more like he remembered his grandfather’s farm, cattle and horses and pigs and poultry, before the old man was forced to sellout to the Office of Roads and Transport and watch the bulldozers level the only property he had owned to make way for a goddamn highway. That’s what this room smelled of, animals; and whether they loved it or hated it, that was the smell every kid growing up in the big smoke remembered about their trips to the countryside. The smell that lingered for days in your hair and clothes when you got back to your parents’ two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, no matter how often you rinsed your head or how hard you pressed your jeans and shirt through the wringer. The smell that made the bullies in the playground rub your face in the mud and call you “Farm Boy” or “Stinky” (Horseshit, DeVille, you stink of goddamn horseshit!), then pull your trousers down and fill it with dog turds and tell all the other kids that you crapped in your pants.
Yeah, he remembered that goddamned smell all right. He had never forgotten it; and it was with him again.
Louis backed further away. He could still hear the swish of whatever it was trailing back and forth behind the stranger. A length of rope? For what? To tie him up?
“You can stop backing away, Mr. DeVille,” the stranger said, but that was the last thing Louis was going to do. “I’m here to help.”
Two steps more, Louis backed into the wall. Though difficult to feel anything through the bandages, he ran his hand over it for a door handle or window ledge. Even still, he could tell that the wall was rough with indented shallows and knobby bumps, as if a pickaxe had gouged the entire face out of rock. That was a goddamn surprise. He thought he was on the upper level of the hospital, where most ITU departments seemed to be located. Except now it seemed he was somewhere underground, in a tunnel or something. Most probably down in the basement with the emergency generators and laundry rooms. Which explained why the room was so goddamn stifling. When had it got so goddamn hot and steamy? It was a goddamn sauna.
He kept running his bandaged hand over the rocky wall. The stranger scuffled closer. “I want my lawyer,” Louis said. He had never wished to see that Jew-boy Epstein as much as now. “I know my rights.”
The stranger sniggered, scuffling closer still. “You’ll get a lawyer in due course.” Louis figured the gap between them was no more than two or three arm-lengths now. “As for your rights,” and he paused, sniggering, “you have as much as what The Boss allows you to have.”
Louis pressed himself to the wall. He felt his body break out in sweat beneath the bandages. The stranger was now right in his face, yet he still couldn’t see him. Where was that goddamn Jew-boy when he needed him? Where was Sarah? Goddamn it, where was any of his employees? The stranger sniggered and a stench of rotting flesh wafted past his nostrils, a stench so goddamned vile it made him gag and his head start to spin.
“I’ve waited a long time for this, Mr. DeVille,” the stranger said. “Your ass is mine!”
Louis felt the stranger grab him on the shoulder and then a sudden sting in the neck. He squealed, a pathetic noise that sounded alien and far away. Worse, as if he had just been injected with some hypnotic drug, he felt his head beginning to spin. It was happening again. His knees crumpled beneath him, then his ears blocked up and he was suddenly deaf as well as blind. He could still smell, though. That god-awful reek was worse than anything. It was everywhere, totally overwhelming his senses (Horseshit, DeVille, you stink of goddamn horseshit!).
Powerless, he slid down the wall and collapsed in an unconscious heap at the feet of the stranger.
CHAPTER SIX
The Mirror of Truth
THE first thing Louis saw when his eyelids creaked open was the portrait. Similar in many ways to the portrait hanging in his office, the one he had paid a goddamn fortune for, it was roughly the same size and had the same gilded frame. Yet it wasn’t his portrait. To begin with, there was no Roman Coliseum in the background. Just a plain gray backdrop like on those days when the clouds sheeted the sky from horizon to horizon and drizzled nonstop for hours and hours and hours.
What’s more, someone with a warped sense of humor had replaced his imposing Caesar-like figure with a scrawny weasel, still wearing a toga and laurel mind you. A goddamn caricature those two-bit artists at Times Square or Liberty Island sketched for the tourists, the ones that exaggerated your worst features – bucked teeth, bulging eyes, flapping ears – and made you look like a goddamn Loony Toon cartoon. Maybe Epstein had passed the hat around the office and had it made while he was stuck in hospital. Maybe the Jew-boy thought it would cheer the boss up and help him with his rehabilitation. If that was the case, he could afford a bit of a chuckle. He wasn’t so uptight he couldn’t laugh at him
self (hadn’t his VPs always called him “the old weasel” behind his back?). As long as Epstein hadn’t dipped into company funds to pay for the goddamn thing, it was all right with him.
Thinking of his subordinates caused him to remember where he was and how he had got there. Looking left and right to see if he still had company, he realized somewhat absently that he was on the leather layback again, now propped upright with something digging into his lower spine, a cylindrical-shaped lump, like a rolled newspaper or magazine. Thankfully, he was alone again, just as he had been in the white room. Except now the walls and ceiling and floor were gray, like slate or granite. In fact, it was more like a cave or grotto than a hospital room, and it was still as goddamn hot as hell.
At least the stench had improved. He could still detect the lingering smell of horseshit, but it was nowhere near as bad as it had been when the stranger had sniggered in his face. What’s more, and it had almost slipped his attention, the lights were back on. The dark room had turned into the gray room.
He glanced at the roof. A single dusty globe dangled from the end of a tortuous piece of wire. Was it just his mind playing tricks on him, or did the rays from the filament seem gray and sick, somehow malignant? Like the tumor that had eaten his grandfather’s stomach from the inside out. He didn’t know if it were possible for light to become cancerous, it just reminded him of how his grandfather’s skin had turned the same miserable gray toward the end. Despite his youthfulness, when Louis had walked onto the hospital ward and seen the limp form on the bed, he had known right there and then that there would be no miracle cure to save his grandfather. Henry Trump didn’t even last a week, and the grayness never left his skin. Even the foundation and rouge the undertakers had applied to his face before the funeral couldn’t hide it. Once the grayness was in you, it never left. It lingered like horseshit.
DeVille's Contract Page 5
