"You'll have to speak to my manager."
"I have a better idea. You speak to the manager. If he or she has any questions, here's the number of my attorney."
Quentin put his kit into a bag along with his last clean shirt, socks, and underwear. He'd buy more if he needed it. He also took his cellular phone, and on the way to the airport he called Wayne Read and told him about his problem with the rental car company.
"Quentin, you shouldn't let clerks like that get to you. The madder you get, the more they enjoy it."
"I know, Wayne. They get a little power and it goes to their heads. I just don't want to be delayed."
"I'll call them. Don't worry about it."
"I'm five minutes from Dulles."
"I'm very, very quick."
He was. The car return people accepted his contract without a quibble. "That's just fine, Mr. Fears. All taken care of."
Sometimes it was very nice to have money and lawyers. Why ordinary people didn't strangle arrogant bureaucrats more often, Quentin didn't know. But then, bureaucrats were ordinary people. Maybe most people simply understood about having to obey stupid rules at work. They went along because they didn't want to cause some other poor schmuck any trouble. Everybody had to do what it took to keep their jobs.
Yeah, but they didn't have to take so much pleasure in it.
As he walked through the airport he thought, So I have money and that means I can buy my way free of a lot of petty annoyances. Somebody bothers me, I can have my lawyer deal with it. Is that evil, somehow? To have that much power? How much power do you have to have before you're a monster? How easy do you have to make your own life at others' expense before you're evil and deserve to be destroyed?
Sitting on the plane, Quentin decided that he hadn't crossed the line. Yet. He knew he wasn't a tyrant. Yet. But he also knew that the line wasn't very clearly drawn. When did Roz cross it? Because he was pretty sure that she had. Controlling your own parents, using them as tools, creating a succubus to seduce some poor sap into sacrificing his body so you can try to harness an even worse monster than yourself—all those things were over the line.
At the same time, he had to recognize that once he turned things over to Wayne, there was no guarantee that it would all be handled kindly and politely. For all he knew, Wayne was the lawyer from hell, calling the head of customer relations and explaining that Quentin Fears, who had enough money to carry out a hostile takeover next week, was being harassed by an ignorant clerk in the New York office and could he please be allowed to return his car at Dulles? And then the company bigwig got on the phone and took care of everything. Part of which might be the serious chewing out of that clerk at La Guardia. Or maybe a bad evaluation. Or maybe losing her job. Maybe because she had messed with the wrong man, with Mr. Big Shot Millionaire, that clerk was going to go home and tell her widowed mother and three younger siblings, of whom she was the sole support, that she had lost her job.
Just because I don't see how it's done doesn't cleanse me of evil that's done in my name, with my money. Maybe the only difference between me and Roz is how far over the line we've chosen to go, and how honest we are about what we want in the world. I tell myself I never sought power, that I don't care about money, that I'm just going about doing good.
The woman at the car rental company in New York was a jerk. She probably didn't lose her job or even hear about the matter again. But Quentin didn't know. Just as Roz had no idea of what she was doing to the people she controlled. That private investigator who flew to California and somehow managed to dig up the grave of a girl who died decades ago and take some part of her body—he couldn't stop himself, but now he had to live with having done it. Roz didn't care. Roz didn't wonder about it. But was that the only difference between them—that she didn't have a second thought about it, but he wondered and felt a little guilt?
Besides, how did he know she felt no guilt? Maybe she was racked with it all the time, but went ahead because she knew she was doing good. She would unite the world under one government. She would end all war. No more Bosnias or Rwandas, Somalias or Chechnyas. Lebanon at peace. Chiapas without corruption or oppression. Colombia without the cartelistas. Joyous celebrations of liberty in Tiananmen Square. The end of mismanagement in Zaire. The end of assassinations in Haiti. If these were the dreams of Roz's heart, then who was he to say that the few lives she ruined weren't a fair price for the good she would accomplish? How was her action any different from a government drafting soldiers and sending them off to die in a noble cause? There were noble causes. Why couldn't this child's cause be noble, too?
Almost he could make himself believe that there was no moral difference between himself and Roz. That he had no right to judge her. That it really came down to a contest for survival. The law of the jungle. On her side, powers far beyond any that Quentin could bring to the battle. On his side, whatever advantage came from age and experience over the shortsightedness and impulsiveness of youth. But morally, no real difference between them. Or worse—that the hopes of the world rested on her victory, and if he succeeded in thwarting her, the one bright hope for the future would be extinguished.
No no no, he shouted inside himself. That isn't right. That's all a lie. But he couldn't think of how he could ever be sure.
Is she the one putting these doubts into my mind? Trying to get me to come along willingly? The succubus wasn't enough, so let's try hoodwinking the boy.
But it didn't work that way. These witches could make people see things. They could enthrall them and force their obedience. They could cause people to forget things. But they couldn't enter Quentin's mind and force him to think a certain way, or he would never have been able to win free of his belief in Madeleine when she returned to him in his bed. These doubts came from his own mind. He was still his own man, alone inside his head.
Roz can't make me think a certain way—but she can see what I'm thinking. And that means that if I'm to have any hope of stopping her, I can't allow myself to think of my own plan. Which means I can't have a plan. Which means I might as well give up, because she does have a plan and I'm one of the pawns.
Aw, don't sell yourself short, Tin, old boy, he told himself. You're at least a knight. Maybe a bishop. Maybe even a rook.
But not the queen.
And the king was locked inside the treasure box.
That's my mistake, he realized. Roz is not the enemy. No matter how much I hate and fear and resent her, no matter how I might want to avenge my humiliation at her hands, the real danger is the one who stole Paul Tyler's life from him and waits now for the lid of the box to open so he can leap to another body and take control. The beast seduced Rowena with its lies. How did he know it wasn't also seducing Roz? Come to me, I'll serve you, you can rule over me. You're the one with the power. I'll jump into that Quentin Fears's body and then you enthrall him and you've got me. Good plan! Good plan!
Roz is not the enemy. Roz is being fooled by the beast as surely as I was fooled by Madeleine.
And truth to tell, in the contest between Roz and the dragon, Quentin might not even qualify as a pawn. Even as the game unfolded, he wouldn't understand what he was seeing. They were out of his league.
At La Guardia he rented another car—from a different company this time, because he didn't want to think again about what he might or might not have done to that clerk. He drove north on roads now banked with snow like canyon walls on either side, where the plows had pushed it all. No scenery, just the white lights of oncoming cars, the red lights of the cars ahead, and the looming walls of filthy snow.
As he neared Mixinack, he read Mike Bolt's number off his card and phoned him. Maybe it was crazy to go back to him, knowing that he had been under Roz's control. But now that Rowena was more aware of what was going on, Roz wouldn't have such free access to him. As long as Bolt stayed away from the rest home, he was a good man. A friend. And he had a right to know how this all came out.
Bolt answered the phone.
"This is Quentin. I'm about five minutes out of Mixinack. You offered me a place to stay. The couch in the den or something."
"It's midnight," said Bolt. "Are you serious?"
"I met Rowena today. She's living in Virginia."
"Is she... what you said? Is she your enemy?"
"She's a witch, Bolt. But I'm not good at picking out bad guys and good guys today. We'll talk about it when I get there."
"Is she coming here? Will she come to Mixinack?"
"I think so," said Quentin. "For all I know they beat me here."
"You really drove back to DC last night in that storm? They said nobody was getting through."
"They were off by at least one. They always are."
"And you're already back."
"Yeah, well, I'm a frequent flier."
"So come on over." Bolt reminded him of how to get there. And then: "Is she still beautiful?"
"Rowena?"
"No, her dog."
"Mike, you're married."
The joking tone was gone when he answered. "Please. Tell me."
"She's beautiful, yes." Though Quentin was quite certain that she would look even more beautiful to Bolt than she looked to him.
"I wasn't crazy to love her, was I?"
"Bolt, we're all crazy to love anybody. But it drives us even crazier if we don't."
"Was that, like, a wise and pithy saying?"
"You better have it posted on your fridge before I arrive."
As he negotiated the side streets of Mixinack, which hadn't been as thoroughly plowed as the highways, Quentin finally found the moral certainty he had been wishing for and despairing of all the way there. It was Lizzy. Lizzy held hostage. The right and wrong of it just didn't matter in the face of that. He would do what it took to get Lizzy out. And that meant staying alive himself, alive and free. Because he was pretty sure that whether the beast won or Roz did, Lizzy's bright spirit would be forgotten in her prison cell if Quentin wasn't there to find her and let her go.
Bolt's wife was up when he got there. Quentin saw at once that she had been asleep; her hair was tousled despite the brush that had been passed over it a couple of times, and her eyes were heavy with weariness. But she met him with a smile when Bolt introduced them. "My Leda," he said, casting an arm across her shoulder.
"Caf or decaf?" she asked, shrugging off her husband's arm and playfully jabbing at him with her elbow.
"No coffee," said Quentin. "You shouldn't have gotten up, I didn't want to be any trouble."
"If you didn't want to be trouble, you'd've stayed in a motel," said Bolt. "Come on, Quentin, how many times you think we have millionaires sleeping on our couch? Let us play the openhearted host."
"You're very kind. Decaf then, or hot chocolate."
"Which? Got 'em both," said Leda.
"Chocolate then."
She made hot chocolate for all three of them, and then pulled a half-finished quart of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer. They all put a dollop of the ice cream into the hot chocolate and then took spoonfuls of it, ice cold and scalding hot at the same time. As he ate, Quentin noticed the swans all over the kitchen. Swans of wicker, porcelain, stuffed fabric, wood; painted on pots, printed on paper and framed, embroidered on cloth, patterned in the wallpaper.
"Leda and the swan," said Quentin. "I guess that means the swan is you, right, Mike?"
"The god in disguise who comes and carries off the beautiful damsel," said Bolt. "Zeus. God of lightning and thunder. Thunder bolts, right?"
"Careful," said Quentin. "It makes Hera jealous."
"Yeah, well, there is no Hera," said Bolt. "The woman who gets up at night with my kids, she's the only woman for me."
She smiled at him, wan with fatigue, but pleased nonetheless at what he said. "Look at him, this is my romancer," she said. "The swan could pick me up, I don't think it could fly. God never made no swan that big."
Quentin could hear how she exaggerated the Bronx in her speech as she modestly refused her husband's worshipful words. A sweet woman, a good woman. And Bolt did love her. Too bad how he was in thrall to a witch whose daughter now had control of her and of the men she happened to possess. If Rowena wanted him, he'd walk away from Leda without a backward glance. And yet he'd know that he had done it. Could he bear living with that? Roz certainly wouldn't care; would Rowena?
They finished the chocolate. Quentin refused to talk about his plans. He didn't have any. He couldn't afford to have any. Drive to the rest home? Stay here waiting for Roz to arrive?
Leda went back to bed after rinsing the mugs. Bolt showed Quentin to his room. Not a couch, a fold-out bed, nicely made. A TV with a remote. "Not the Ritz," said Bolt.
"Beats Motel Six, though," said Quentin.
"Good night, then. You won't need no alarm in this house. We'll keep the door closed, but the pitter-patter of little feet will probably sound like World War II."
"I won't mind."
Bolt turned to go.
"Mike. Would I be wasting my time if I asked you for the loan of a gun?"
"You don't need a gun. Guns just go off and hurt people."
"You know what I'm up against."
"You can't shoot women who don't leave footprints, Quentin."
"The ones I'll be with, they leave footprints."
"Have you ever fired a gun?" asked Bolt.
"I promise you I won't shoot it around any civilians."
"What's to stop them from taking it away from you and shooting you with it?"
"I've got to have something, Mike."
"I'll get you something for self-defense. But don't even think about lethal force, Quentin. If there's any lethal force needed, I'll do it."
"You plan to be there?"
"Wouldn't miss it."
"But will you be a free man, Mike?"
"What do you mean?"
"Rowena owns you, Mike. Her mother said so."
"Her mother's lying," said Bolt cheerfully. "I owe her a lot, but what she says about Rowena, you just got to consider the source."
No point in arguing with him. Maybe Mike would be an asset, maybe he wouldn't. But since Quentin refused to think of any plan besides to wing it, he didn't let himself consider the question.
"Aw, don't look so glum, Quentin. Just think—you've been seduced by a succubus and now you get to have a showdown between the witches and the macho guys."
"Sweet of you to include me with the macho guys," said Quentin.
"That's what it means to be... pals." Bolt grinned.
"Not just guys, but pals." Quentin laid his hand on his heart. "I'm touched."
Bolt shook his head. "Yeah, well, just remember that if one of us has to die in that house tomorrow, I sure hope it's you."
"I know Leda wouldn't have it any other way," said Quentin.
Bolt closed the door behind him as he left. Quentin undressed, and as he crawled onto the creaking, sagging fold-out bed with the paper-thin mattress he knew it would be the worst night of his life. He was asleep in three minutes.
In the morning, Quentin pulled on his clothes and staggered into the kitchen, where Leda was making pancakes and slapping them down on the kids' plates. "Don't you want to use the bathroom before you eat?" she asked.
"If the pancakes are ready now," he said, "I'm not going off to the bathroom and letting these guys eat them all."
The kids laughed and Leda introduced them and they ate breakfast together. Not until they had charged off to school did he realize that he hadn't seen Bolt this morning. Why hadn't he noticed? It was incredible that he hadn't noticed.
Roz, what are you doing?
"Where's Mike?" he asked, dreading the answer.
"Oh, he had some errands he had to run. He told me to tell you that's the burden of the working man. Also I'm supposed to give you this." She handed him a small spray can. Nothing was written on it by the manufacturer, but a label saying "MixPolDep" had been affixed to it. "It's Mace. The real thing, not pepper spray. Tear gas. He says
don't use it outdoors because it's bound to blow right back in your own face, and if you use it indoors make sure your hand is no more than a foot from your target's face."
"He really thinks I'm a klutz, doesn't he?"
"I don't know about that," said Leda, "but he gives the same instructions to new cops when they start working for him."
"I can live with that," said Quentin. "Thanks for the breakfast. Best meal I've had in a week."
Which was true. What he had thought he was eating in the Laurent mansion was better, but it wasn't, strictly speaking, a meal.
"Should I wait for him to get back?" Quentin asked.
"He says do what you need to. If you aren't waiting for him at the department, he'll drive on out to the house. Don't start without him, he says."
"Fair enough," said Quentin.
Then dread stabbed through him and he thought, I wasn't going to let Bolt out of my sight. I've got to go looking for him. He's already got at least an hour's head start on me. Got to call Sally and warn her that Bolt is on the loose.
But he didn't call her. He went to the bathroom and showered and shaved and got dressed in the last of his clean clothes. Maybe it would be the last time he'd ever need clean clothes anyway.
For a moment, as he left the house, he remembered vaguely that he had some kind of errand to run. Something that had seemed very urgent when he thought of it back in the kitchen, right after breakfast, but what was it? Couldn't remember. Well, if it was that urgent it would come back to him.
He drove to the police department. The receptionist said, "Chief Bolt was here a minute ago. He stepped out for a minute. He says for you to wait."
Only then did he remember his urgent errand, and in that moment relief swept over him. Bolt had just stepped out. Everything was going to be fine.
He opened the door and found Sally Sannazzaro waiting in Bolt's office.
She jumped to her feet. "I can't believe it," she said. "Mrs. Tyler said I'd find you here. I thought she meant that Chief Bolt would tell me how to reach you, but no, here you are!"
Treasure Box Page 25
