Dead Man's Song (Pine Deep 2)

“Damn,” he said, and then he said, “Dhampyr. ” The night-bird cawed more loudly this time and the Bone Man started to play one of the old songs, trying to work what magic he could to soothe the mind and the soul of the thing below that was no longer exactly a human boy.

(3)

In the basement two floors below, Vic lit a cigarette and settled back in his Barcalounger, drawing in a deep lungful as he scrutinized the face of his guest. The menthol felt good in his throat and chest. The chair was comfortable, too, a Frasier model—real leather in a nice chocolate brown. The other thing that felt good was the pistol laying on his thigh, the trigger guard resting on his crotch, the barrel more or less pointed in the other man’s direction. Not an overt threat but more than a suggestion. Behind him were shelves of books, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, many of them stolen, some purchased through second, third, and fourth intermediaries. A lot of them banned by the church for hundreds of years. Nothing you could find on eBay.

Vic exhaled and the smoke joined the blue cloud that had formed over his head. He’d smoked a lot of cigarettes this evening. “You stink,” he said, which was true enough. The other man smelled of dirt, old blood, shit, and Christ knew what else.

The man seated in the other chair—a straight-backed wooden chair with knobbed legs—just stared at him, his eyes flat and without expression, his face wax-white, the skin of his cheeks sucked in and moistureless, his mouth nothing more than a red slit.

“I feel…strange,” Karl Ruger said, and his voice was a dry whisper in his throat.

“No kidding. ” Vic took another drag. “I’m curious…does any of this shit hurt?”

“Hurt?”

“Yeah. You’re just about as jacked up as anyone I’ve ever seen, sport. You had the shit kicked out of you, you been shot more times than Bonnie and Clyde, and you slept in a refrigerator for a couple of nights. That can’t feel good. ”

“No,” said Ruger, looking down at his hands. They were as white as cream except for some streaks of dirt, though the fingernails had thickened and grown dark, almost black. Ruger flexed them. With the loss of so much fluid—almost all of his blood and water—his hands were unnaturally thin, almost delicate. Even all that he had taken from that cop, Golub, hadn’t done much to flesh him out. “No—no pain. ”

“Sorry to hear that,” Vic said with a nasty grin.

Ruger raised his eyes. They were no longer without expression. “Kiss my ass. ”

His gaze was hard on Vic for a while and then drifted sideways to scan the room. As that stare left him, Vic could feel a change in frequency or perhaps of vibration, and he noted it down in his mental filing cabinet. He watched as Ruger assessed the basement—Vic’s domain. It was Vic’s totally private space, hallowed ground where Lois and Mike were never allowed to set foot. The basement was partitioned in a mirror-image of the partitions in Vic’s own mind, and he was aware of it—and was aware of what the basement and its contents were telling Ruger. There were gun racks heavy with rifles, shotguns, and pistols; along one wall there were stacks of unopened boxes of Panasonic DVD players, HD and plasma TVs, Black and Decker microwave ovens, and Craig CD players.

In the far corner was a computer workstation with a laser printer next to which stood a tall stack of yellow leaflets bearing a crudely drawn caricature of a Jewish man who looked shifty and avaricious, cringing beneath a bold, black swastika. In the opposite corner was a complex telephone rerouting and answering system that serviced several different lines: Vic Wingate’s Gun Repair, White America, the Aryan Brotherhood, the National Socialist Party, and a pornography distributorship called V. W. Enterprises. At this end of the basement was a second computer workstation and a Mission table that was piled high with bundled stacks of money that were splotched with reddish-brown stains. Old blood. Ruger sniffed the air as he looked at the bills and Vic noted just the smallest lift of one of Ruger’s eyebrows. He filed that away, too. Ruger turned to face Vic but let his gaze linger significantly on the money before shifting back to meet Vic’s assessing stare. “That looks familiar,” he said mildly.

“Finders keepers,” Vic said. “Guess you’re shit outta luck. ”

A shrug. “I can always get more. ” As he said this he flexed his thin white hands.

Vic said, “Tell me something else, sport…how’s the old noggin’ working? You know who you are?”

“I know. ”

“Can you tell me your name. ”

“Blow me. ”

“Fair enough. ” Vic thought for a moment. “The Man wants me to determine whether you’re damaged goods or not. You understand what I mean by that?”

Ruger said nothing, but he smiled. A tiny lift of cold lips.

“He and I have gone to a lot of effort to bring you to this moment, right here, right now. I want you to pay attention now ’cause this shit’s important. ”

“I’m listening,” Ruger said softly. His gray tongue flicked over his dry red lips.

In one smooth movement Vic picked up his pistol and pointed it at Ruger. “If it turns out that your brain’s turned to mush just like your buddy’s then I hate to break the news but it’s beddy-bye time, you dig? And don’t get any ideas about leaping over and trying to wrestle this away from ol’ Vic. That would be the last stupid move you ever made, ’cause I made these loads myself and if you were to guess that they’re special then you’d be right. Am I making myself clear?”

“As glass,” Ruger said. He never even glanced at the gun. His black-within-red-within-black eyes were fixed on Vic’s.

There was a sound above them—Lois’s footfalls as she walked from the study to the kitchen. A pause, then a thunk as the refrigerator door closed, and her footfalls retreated back down the hall. Lois getting more ice for her drink. Vic and Ruger both stared at the ceiling and then lowered their eyes at the same time, reestablishing contact. “Just so we both understand who’s in charge here. ”

“Your house, your rules,” Ruger said.

“Just what I wanted to hear. ”

“What happened to Boyd? Why’s he so messed up?”