Ray thought back to Lily. “Yeah.”
Mantu wiped his forehead. “So she takes me down to the basement, to a spare bedroom or something, and she pushes me down on the bed, pulls off my shoes, my belt, and pulls down my pants.”
“I don’t need to know all the details,” Ray said.
Mantu didn’t smile. “But it was wrong. Looking at her was like looking at a doll, or a puppet. Or a robot. I guess some guys find that sexy, but not me. Something about her was just unnatural. Artificial. Like she was programmed.”
Ray nodded. Like Crystal. Poor, dead, lost Crystal, who’d been programmed to do whatever Crawford and Lily had wanted. Just one of the women everyone believed he had murdered.
“But she fucked me. Oh my God, did that crazy bitch ever fuck me. I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, like I’m dying, having a grand mal seizure. But her eyes got even scarier—there was definitely someone behind them then. Something had been hiding and it just came alive when she was riding on top of me. And I didn’t like it. The only thing I could think of was Linda Blair in The Exorcist.”
“Jesus,” Ray said.
“But then—boom—it passes, and her eyes are back to normal. I figure maybe I’m just tripping out from all the blow and reefer—getting stupid paranoid for nothing. But I couldn’t look at those eyes again. No way. I couldn’t let myself look into them. Then she asks if I want to shoot some heroin. I tell her no. I had that feeling you get when you know you’ve gotten yourself in deep shit and you know it’s just gonna get worse and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. I knew I had to get out of there. It was a gut feeling at first, but then I started to panic.”
Mantu stared in silence at the road ahead, his eyes lost. “Then the door opens. I’m lying there, with the girl next to me, both of us buck naked. And there’s a guy at the door, clean-cut, businessman type, fifties, maybe sixties, short gray hair, real conservative looking, but he’s wearing a fucking robe. A black robe. You know what I’m talking about.”
Ray didn’t need to answer. When Mantu had found him that terrible night after the ritual at Crawford’s, Ray had been wearing a blood-splattered hooded red robe.
“And he starts screaming. Eyes popping like his head’s gonna explode. ‘Amber! What the fuck are you doing? Get upstairs or I’ll beat your fucking head in!’ He’s screaming like that, his face purple and veins sticking out of his neck like he’s gonna have an aneurysm. She just gets out of bed, picks up her clothes, and splits. She doesn’t say a word to me.
“And now the crazy white man in his scary robe is looking at me. The robe was black, not white, but shit, a white man in a robe is still a white man in a robe, right? Then he smiles. I’ll never forget that smile. The smile of a jackal. Looking straight at me just like when Wile E. Coyote would see the Road Runner turn into a lamb chop or a turkey leg. And then he looks at my dick, which at that point was about the size of a raisin. ‘You part of the entertainment?’ he asks.
“I tell him no, nope, just a guest, thank you very much. No entertaining for me, no sirree, and hey, I think it’s about time I got home anyway because my poor, sick mother needs her medicine. I’m wondering how the fuck I’m gonna get out of the room alive. Then another guy pokes his head in the room. Younger man, fat. Greek or Italian or something. Mafia type if I’ve ever seen one. The way he looks at me I’m sure he’s gonna slice me from my balls to my chin. But he turns and grabs the other guy and whispers something to him and they just leave.”
“Damn, Mantu.”
“Oh, that ain’t the end, Ray. I wish it was. So I get dressed as fast as I can. I’m just getting my shoes on when two more motherfuckers come in. Young white guys, mean-looking and dressed in nice suits. One of them pulls out a Dirty Harry–sized Glock and points it at my face. Right between my eyes.”
He wiped sweat from his forehead but didn’t take his eyes off the road. “They made me get on the bed. Facedown. Asked me all kinds of questions—who I was, why I was there. I told them the truth, but they seemed surprised that I had gotten in. I was sure they were just gonna pop me and toss me in the Delaware River with a cinder block tied around my neck.
“And then they took me out into an alley. I was praying to Jesus, to Allah, to Buddha, praying that I would live, because if I did I was never going to do another line of coke, I’d never drink again, I’d stop the reefer, and I’d buy my dear old mother a condo in Florida and take her to church every Sunday and out for a big pancake breakfast afterward. All those bullshit bargains you make with God to avoid getting a piece of lead in one side of your head and your brains out the other.”
“And you’re here.”
“Yeah. Here I am. They just kicked me in the balls and threw me on the concrete and said, ‘You forget all about this night, nigger, because we know who you are.’ I cried. I was so happy to be alive, I just laid there and cried.”
“So then what?”
Mantu looked at Ray, then back at the road. He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Once the fear wore off I got mad as hell. And then I just stopped getting gigs. No one returned my calls, not even people I considered my friends. Somehow those bastards blackballed me and shut me down. My whole career, all those years putting in my time…up in smoke.”
“You must have been pissed.”
“Oh, yes. So pissed it drove me to try to figure out what the hell had happened. But curiosity was part of it, too. Who were these people? What was the deal with the robes? I figured maybe they were Freemasons or the mob or some weird Illuminati-type shit. And then I picked up the paper one day and there he was. Looking me in the face.”
Ray stared. “Who?”
“The businessman. The guy in the robe from the party. William R. Hobbs.”
Ray shrugged. “Don’t know him.”
“I didn’t know him, either. But he was the chief financial officer of PEXCO.”
“The oil company?”
“Exactly. Oil and coal and gas, worth about a billion bucks. His wife found him in a puddle of blood with a chunk of his face blown off. Suicide. The New York Times had just published some details of his—what did they call it?—unsavory accounting practices. And there were persistent rumors of him buggering little boys at parties in LA. So everyone assumed he just offed himself.”
Ray rolled down his window halfway. The air in the van felt stifling and stank of sweat. Neither of them had been able to shower in days. “But you didn’t believe it?”
“Fuck no. That guy wasn’t the type to kill himself. One look at him would tell you he’d kill his own mother, his father, his kids, and his puppy before he’d kill himself. He might as well have had ‘sociopath’ tattooed on his forehead. I think he fucked up and did something they didn’t like. Or maybe talked out of class. And they—the big boys—didn’t want to take the chance on him spilling any secrets.”
Ray nodded. “You’re probably right.”
“I was definitely right. Anyway, I got obsessed with it. I moved to D.C. and found a crime reporter at City Paper and he helped me connect the dots. The more I looked, the more dots I found to connect. And it just got bigger and bigger and higher up the chain—politicians, bankers, CEOs. But I was getting really paranoid. I’m talking clinically paranoid—too afraid to leave my apartment because I knew that they knew I was onto them. Looking at the kid bagging my groceries and wondering if the little shit was there to spy on me. I even took apart my smoke alarm because I was convinced there was a camera in it. I started smoking coke, and then meth, which definitely didn’t help—staying up for days at a time and then crashing hard. I was doing some performances at shitty little dive bars and cafés—crazy, rambling conspiracy monologues. I was going off the deep end, and I was sure one night I’d get home and find a guy in a robe sitting in my living room. Smiling at me. And that would be the last thing I ever saw. Period. The End.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. Why would they worry about me when I was busy kil
ling myself line by line and hit by hit? I was no threat to them. And then one night I was doing my shtick at this coffeehouse in Adams Morgan. There might have been ten people in the whole place. I think most of them felt sorry for me because I was really gone at that point. They only laughed at first, until they realized I wasn’t funny—I was sick. I hadn’t eaten in days and I really felt like I was just going to snap, right there, in front of everyone—just start babbling and screaming until someone called the cops to drag me out. But then this old man comes in and sits down. Right in front.”
“Micah,” Ray said.
“He just looked at me. Stared right into my eyes. And then he smiled. And I knew right away that he had my number. He knew me—what I was going through and what I was doing to myself. And when I got off the stage, I went over to him and sat next to him. And he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘I know what you’re going through. It’s time for you to understand.’ And I just broke down, right there in the middle of the coffeehouse, blubbering like a baby.”
“And here you are,” Ray said.
“And here I am. Driving a twenty-year-old VW van on the shittiest road in the shittiest part of Guatemala on my way to visit the meanest and shittiest drug kingpin south of the border.”
Ray turned away. He was doing it all for him.
“It’s not easy. In a lot of ways my old life, no matter how fucked up, was easier than being part of the Brotherhood. Knowing any day I could just walk around a corner and my life would end before I even knew what hit me. Just”—he mimed a gun next to his head—“pow. Game over.”
“Why did you stay with it, then? For so long?”
Mantu laughed. “What do most people do, Ray? They go to school, get some job they don’t give a shit about, marry somebody they pretend they love, have a couple kids, go into debt putting their kids through college, retire from their shit job, and die without ever thinking about any alternative. I always felt like I was here for something bigger. Even when I was circling the drain. When Micah invited me to be part of it, I realized I’d found my calling. A higher purpose, if you want to call it that. My true purpose.”
“What purpose?” Ray asked.
Mantu had to think about it. “Doing the right thing. Fighting on the right side. Helping teachers who are helping other people evolve. And stopping the psychopathic bastards who are working against that evolution.”
Ray smiled. “You sound like Micah.”
Mantu shook his head. “Actually, I’m just in it for the pussy.”
Ray laughed, but it felt hollow. “You are a comedian.”
“Was. Was a comedian.”
The was hung in the dank, sour air.
Ray eventually broke the silence. His guilt was gnawing away at his guts. “But you’re throwing it all away now? All that time with the Brotherhood? Just to help me?”
Mantu shot him a glance. “It’s been brewing for a while. I was starting to wonder about them. About Jeremy in particular. With Micah and our operation in Blackwater, it was all clear. Officially, Micah took his orders from Jeremy, sure, but we were left on our own. Micah called the shots, and I never had reason to doubt him. Everything made sense. Straight up black and white. Now?” He shook his head. “Just shitty shades of gray.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. Things I used to believe in…I’m not so certain of anymore. It’s all changed. I’m not sure what it is, but there’s been stuff going on behind the scenes. Seriously weird shit.”
“Like what?”
The muscles in Mantu’s jaw flexed. “I heard there was some kind of breakthrough in the magical workings. All Jeremy has been concentrating on for the past year are the contact rituals. That’s his thing; it’s always been his thing. And one morning all of the Nine—”
“Nine?”
“The core. The inner circle. They all left in a hurry. Headed to some archaeological dig. They were gone for six days, all hush-hush, to some buried site in the jungle. And then, when they came back, everything was different. Whatever they did out there changed them.”
Ray thought back to the robed, hooded cultists at the Hand and shivered. He’d avoided thinking about magic and rituals and the craziness that happened there. He still wasn’t ready to think about the implications of it, so he didn’t.
“And they got fixated on rounding up people like you. People who have had contact experiences. Bringing them to Eleusis. We started getting UFO contactees, psychics, witches, shamans, spirit mediums from all over the world. It was a recruiting drive. But the details of what they were working on was hush-hush. And me? I’m just a soldier. Following orders, not asking questions. They never told me jack, so I just listened to what I could overhear and tried to read between the lines.”
“Why do you think they need all those people?” Ray asked.
“Hell if I know. But all the other projects got pushed to the side. You’re a big deal to Jeremy, Ray. You made contact as a kid, and then again in Blackwater—that puts you at the top of the list. And whatever came through those lights was deeply interesting to Crawford and to Jeremy. If that thing had gone feral, or brought along some of its friends…I can’t even think about that.”
“And I never want to have anything to do with that shit again.” The nightmares still regularly tore him from sleep, and just thinking about it made his mouth dry. Having something alien inside his head and trying out his body like a cheap suit was something he swore he would never allow again. “You must have some idea. What the point of it all is?”
Mantu shook his head. “I don’t. I have my suspicions. Whatever Jeremy found at that buried temple in the jungle had something to do with the contact rituals. Whatever they discovered, it lit a fire in him to accelerate the work. It became his sole focus. What it is that he found, though—I have no clue. And I’m talked out, Ray. I need to rest. Your turn to take the wheel.”
Chapter Five
The next morning, on Ellen and William’s fourth day in captivity, El Varón quietly approached Ellen at the enormous wooden dinner table. She was absentmindedly picking at a plate of black beans, rice, and shrimp, and William was playing a horrid shooter game on a game console, the kind of game she would never have allowed him to play at home. After the dark shift in Steve’s personality on his return from the Middle East she couldn’t stomach the hyper-realistic violence of video games.
“Juanita makes nice food, doesn’t she?”
Ellen jumped. El Varón sat next to her. He was wearing a crisp white shirt and a linen suit and looked much healthier than he had the previous day, with only a trace of the previous day’s pallor. If he had been ill, he had gotten suddenly and remarkably better.
“Yes,” Ellen said, barely a whisper. “Very nice.”
El Varón sighed. “I am sorry. I know you are still not happy here. But you will be. Things will get better—I can promise you that.”
Ellen pushed a shrimp around in circles.
He put his hand on top of hers and she pulled away. “Please don’t touch me.” His hands were thin, almost elegant—a woman’s hands—and the nails looked like they’d been meticulously manicured. The slender fingers were cold as ice.
He smiled as if he’d been the subject of a child’s tantrum, and she wished she could smash a hammer against his ridiculously white teeth. “Ellen, I have found out something I must tell you.” He glanced into the nearby room where William was blowing hordes of digital humans to bloody shreds, then leaned closer. “She—the woman who is looking for you and Weel-yam—has made it very clear she will pay very much money for the two of you.”
Ellen put down her fork.
“Many of my associates—here and in your country—have heard that she is offering a very large reward. Not enough to tempt me, of course. But there are many greedy and desperate men who would do anything for that kind of money. It is those men I worry about.”
“What are you trying to say?” Was he trying to scare her? Or were there reall
y others seeking them out?
“I just want you to be aware of how dangerous my situation is. So you can appreciate what I am doing for you. You and Weel-yam. She is a woman with many friends, and some of those friends would love to have my business for their own.” His face was so close now she could smell his breath. Minty, as if he’d just brushed those awful teeth. And his cologne reminded her of the stuff teenage boys wore—heavy and nauseating.
“So why are you doing us this favor? Why not just turn us over and take the money?” she asked.
He looked her directly in the eye and put his hand on hers. Despite every muscle in her body screaming in revulsion, she let his damp, cool palm settle there. “Because, Ellen, if she is so desperate to have you, there must be some reason, yes? A woman with such a high price on her head”—he glanced into the other room—“and on her son’s. Why, I wonder? Maybe you know?”
Ellen looked away, then back into his eyes. Anyone meeting him for the first time might have mistaken those eyes as friendly. Empathetic, even. But El Varón lived in an armed fortress and made his fortune in blood money. And sociopaths were good at pretending to be nice, ordinary men—something he most certainly wasn’t. “I don’t know. I honestly have no idea what she wants with us.” Except that she did. It was purely vengeance. To get back at Ray, of course, but also at the two of them for getting away. Lily wasn’t the type to let something go. But El Varón didn’t need to know that.
El Varón shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You are here now, and while you are here, you are my guests, and I am a man who treats his guests well. And I also find you to be very interesting.” His hand tightened around hers. “My profession is a lonely one, Ellen. All around me”—he waved his arms—“are men. They are loyal, and they would die for me, as many have. They are good soldiers. But a man needs a break from soldiers and lieutenants. Especially a man of culture and refinement. By their nature, many of my employees are rather brutal. I cannot talk to them about my many interests or discuss things beyond the ugly aspects of my trade. There is an empty hole in my life.”
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