The Fury and the Terror Read online

  "No, it isn't."

  "But you know Eden Waring and I don't. You've been here awhile. What, two years? More? Anyway, you've had the lay of the kid and you've got the lay of the land, and I don't have a couple of days to futz around getting my bearings. Clear now, Big Stuff?"

  "Perfectly."

  "If Eden doesn't phone in by the time I've finished my coffee, what do you say we drive up to Greenwood Lake and see if we can find the Hassler place. Get acquainted with the folks. It'll be either you or them the girl contacts first. Make it simple. We sit on the parents, and wait. I might have time to work on my new act. Did I tell you what I do in Vegas? My regular job; this is just moonlighting."

  "What do you do in Vegas?" Geoff asked, but not as if he cared much.

  "I'm a female impersonator. Tina Turner, shit, my Tina is a Day-Glo mindfuck. I have one of those faces, not much to look at now, my late psycho stepdad treated me to a lye bath when I was twelve. I just sit down at my makeup table and start adding on. Mortician's wax, prosthetics, contact lenses, wigs. I've got a twenty-eight-inch waist. My Liz Taylor has some mileage left. Liz plays well with the older crowd we get. That silver wig set me back a couple k. You know, and the costume jewelry: I buy only the best fake stuff, can't skimp when you're re-creating a legend. I come out dripping diamonds. Liz doing Shakespeare. 'O! That this too too solid flesh would melt.' Fuckin' wonderful. Brings down the house. You're probably curious who the new girl is. I'm the first to do her, over here, but I understand Michel has put her into his club Act, that little boite in Pigalle he's been operating since Freckles was a pup."

  Geoff was still too astonished at hearing Elizabeth Taylor's voice come out of Haman to do more than nod.

  "Rona Harvester." For the first time since Geoff had laid eyes on him, he saw Haman's teeth, bared in a big wide showbiz smile. The teeth were false, of course. "Just hope we have time for my Rona. Promise, you'll split a gut laughing."

  CHAPTER 14

  WESTBOUND, NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO • MAY 28 • 7:44 P.M. MDT

  Bertie Nkambe came down the right-side aisle of United's 747, drawing stares from those first-class passengers savvy enough about the fashion world to recognize a Paris Vogue cover girl. She dropped into the seat beside Tom Sherard. He was staring out the window. Not much to see. They were at thirty-four thousand feet, the indigo sky filled with stars like sparks from a brushfire, dark cloud cover over Wyoming's Wind River Range.

  "Found him. Twenty-six B in Economy."

  "Found who?" Sherard asked, slow to pull out of the depths of the poor mood he. was in.

  "The telepath who has been nudging around at us. Looking to get in. I brushed him away like a tsetse. A professor type. Those awful squarish eyeglass frames, like Woody Allen's. And he's gone much too long without a haircut. He's wearing a checked Gap shirt and a brown corduroy jacket. Too big for him, but he has shoulders like a goat. He's eating peanuts and pretending to read Noam Chomsky while he peeps the unsuspecting."

  Sherard was paying attention now.

  "Maybe he's not in the Game."

  "It could bea coincidence that he's on the plane with us. But, Tom. Why don't I deep-fry a batch of his neurons, then we don't have to be concerned about him."

  "That's rather drastic."

  "Why take chances with any telepath? Too many of them are the wrong sort."

  "Your grandfather taught me many valuable things when I was learning to shoot. One of them was, a single blade of grass very close to the muzzle can deflect a bullet."

  Berrie leaned back in the leather seat and stretched, arms over her head. "Point taken."

  "Maybe you should have gone on to London without me. You wouldn't be so bored there."

  Berrie pouted. "What makes you think I'm bored? I don't want to be without you. And you need me. Look at how helpful I've already been. We wouldn't be staying at the Lambourne if I hadn't weighed in with my vast celebrity." She said it with an amused wink. "They're always booked weeks in advance, you know."

  "I don't have anything against the Mark Hopkins."

  Berrie laid her cropped head on his shoulder. "We can have a good time in San Francisco, even though we're only going to be there the night. That is, should you permit yourself to have fun." When he didn't respond she rolled her eyes up to him.

  "Reckon you're right."

  "Of course I am. We don't actually have to go anywhere. It's a snug little suite that I've always enjoyed, and with a phone call the best Chinese food in the western world will be delivered to our door."

  "Snug little suite? How many bedrooms?"

  "One large bedroom. One heavenly extra-long bed, because I am an extra-long person."

  "Bertie—Alberta—you're still a teenager, and this whole arrangement you've come up with is totally out of the—"

  "I was twenty in March. You did pick out those earrings yourself?"

  "For your birthday, yes. I happened to find myself near Cartier's, and I remembered—Birthday, let me remind you. We are not engaged. And we are not going to sleep together."

  "Tom," she said, sorrow and sympathy in her lush contralto voice, "have you had a woman since Gillian died?"

  "Simply none of your—yes, dozens."

  "You know I don't believe that," Bertie said with a confident smile. "What you don't know but will discover is that I've saved myself for you. I mean, I didn't know why, at the time. Why I could have only a passing interest—a crush here and there—on some of the world's most attractive men. You were happily married. I loved Gillian, as much as I love you. Nonetheless something told me—oh, God. Forgive me for that. I'm very sorry."

  He nodded tensely, not looking at her.

  "I don't have that particular gift, Tom," she said after a few moments.

  "Yes, you do."

  "But I never pried into your life! Or Gillian's. I choose not to know the fate of those who are very close and dear to me."

  "Let's not go on with this."

  "Things do pop into my head, whether I'm willing or unwilling to have them there. You have feelings for me, why deny it? Even though you want to go on pretending that to marry me would be a failure of fealty to my father. From the day I came to live with you and Gillian you've had this sense of duty. As if you'd sworn an oath to take care of Bertie Nkambe in the evil old world. Touching then, misguided now. Let me tell you. I have also done a very good job of looking after myself in a tough, what does Calvin call it, tough racket since I was all of sixteen. You think my father would not approve of our love? Well, you're wrong, Tom."

  "Joseph would have me beheaded if I—no, he'd bloody well do it himself."

  "Knowing that I've given myself to a good man, a man whose raising was left to him when your father died, would be a thing of joy and a blessing to Joseph. There. I don't think I have any more to say. Except this."

  She lifted her elegant brown head and put her lips close to his ear, as close as a kiss. She had a full mouth, of course, but with the contours and demure quality of the Orient that shaded the effect of fortress cheekbones.

  Long fingers were poised on his other cheek. Rings glinted at the corner of his eye.

  "Sometimes, Tom, you simply have to say—what the fuck. It's my heart, and I'm going where it tells me to go."

  CHAPTER 15

  MOBY BAY •MAY 28 • 8:55 P.M. PDT

  Eden sidestepped a jellied mass of bronze-green kelp, some flotsam with a L white opaque bottle at its center, like a vapid eye. She waited while runoff from the last wave to smash against the pebbly shore drained seaward, then waded across a shallow wash, the swirl of water alluringly phosphorescent around her ankles.

  She saw someone walking toward her down the beach, where the fog had thinned and moonlight shone on piled driftwood, each blunt stub sheathed in radiance.

  They stopped walking when they were ten feet apart. The other girl wore a peacoat with the collar turned up. Blond hair feathered out from beneath a knitted watch cap.

  "Hi."

  "Hi
. You must be—"

  "Chauncey. You're wondering what kind of name that is for a girl."

  "No, I like it. Thanks for the clothes, Chauncey."

  "Hey, no problem." Chauncey sat on a canted length of driftwood and cocked her head, inviting Eden to join her. Chauncey had a very small, delicately boned, heart-shaped face, perfectly formed small features. Her dark round eyes seemed startlingly large in that petite face.

  "So you're the new Avatar. Awesome."

  Eden shrugged. Her hands were cold. She slipped them beneath the tight cuffs of the borrowed sweater and gazed out to sea. The fog had thinned to furls and wisps. The strong waves rolled in to shore laden with silver like returning champions.

  "'I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,'" she said moodily.

  "That's from Prufrock, right? I like Eliot, although I don't always know where he's coming from. I'm sixth-generation Wicca, by the way. Nearly everyone in Moby Bay has the Craft, or else they're prescient. Guess I'm just used to being what I am. Of course I'm small 'taters next to you."

  Between the crashing of the waves Eden thought she could hear Wardella Tinch playing her accordion.

  "I don't know much about witchcraft. It's all fairy tales to me. There's usually a big book of lore, isn't there? Handwritten on crinkly parchment. Spells and incantations."

  Chauncey shrugged. "I've never seen one. If I need a spell I get it off the Internet."

  Eden smiled. She had the good feeling that she'd met someone she was going to like very much.

  "What kind of music are you into?" Chauncey asked.

  "Classical, mostly. Guitar. I play a little. But I want to study with someone good, if I ever find the time."

  "Did Wardella tell you? I'm with a band. Pussy Whip. Skelly, she's our bassist, came up with the name one night when she and her boyfriend were fooling around in bed with a squirt can of that dessert goo, you probably get the association. Of course there are other, um, connotations. We're one guy, drums, and four girls; I guess is what distinguishes us. That, plus we're good."

  "Hard-core?"

  "Thrash metal/punk, with a social agenda. Our last album on Scrooge Records, Feeding the Sharks, sold thirty-five thousand CDs. Enough so the label springs for our tours. We use the bus Pantera had before they went arena. We've got a new manager. Raoul Kapooshian, he made Supermarket Bloodbath what they are today. There's a tour video. We were hoping to get some of it on MTV, but they don't play any metal at all since Headbanger's Ball was canceled. I'm lead singer and do most of the writing."

  "What are your songs like?"

  "Oh, in-your-face stuff about the things in this world that piss me, that ought to piss everybody off. It helps me cope. As long as there's one starving baby somewhere, the human race is a failure."

  "Yeah."

  "If you feel up to it, I'd like to show you our video. Maybe you could spend the night? Wardella wouldn't mind. You weren't planning to go somewhere else, were you?"

  "No, I don't have any plans. Can't even think straight yet."

  "We'll just hang out then. Chill awhile, if you're not cold enough already."

  "Sounds good. Chauncey—you mentioned the Internet. Could I use your computer to E-mail my folks?"

  "Sure. Let's go."

  They walked together along the rocky beach, through webs of fog that sparkled with millions of tiny drops of moisture. When Chauncey talked she used her hands for emphasis, leaving loops and swirls of bluish light, like nocturnal skywriting, that faded slowly behind them. Her face glowed from the same light. Eden was fascinated. Chauncey grinned, teeth with the eerie brilliance of small opals.

  "I've never seen anything like this."

  "Moby Bay is a special place. Protected."

  "Like a wildlife refuge?"

  "That's a good one. It's a refuge, all right. But the wildest thing in Moby Bay is Wardella's poker night. All of this"—Chauncey made a showy flourish with one hand, like a magician fanning cards—"is just the Caul, that we draw around ourselves at night. When we take back Moby Bay for ourselves, for meditation or renewal. You don't know how glad I am to come back here, after a hundred days on the road."

  "I'll bet. What did you mean, take back Moby Bay. From what?"

  "The tourists, for one thing. Nothing against tourists, that's how most of the people here make a living. We turn the place over to them in the daytime. We've got the quaint nineteenth-century main street, the old Victorian houses and gardens, the microbrewery, the lighthouse on the headland: But there are no accommodations, no typical northern California bed and breakfasts. Everything closes at dusk. The tourists leave. After dark, there's no way to get to Moby Bay. Unless you were born here, or you're invited by someone who was."

  They took a path away from the beach and up a hill. The sky seemed very close, dense with stars, meteors, glowing nebulae. The tall cypresses dripped moisture. Eden felt light-headed but exhilarated, as if some of the tiny meteors were shooting through her mind. Physically she was strong, surefooted behind Chauncey, who occasionally reached down to help her along the steep defile.

  "If you can drive here during the day—"

  "We're ten miles from the highway. It's a good road to Moby Bay but the road branches a lot. Runs close to the sea, with a lot of switchbacks in the coves. Most nights there's fog. If you're driving back after dark because you think you may have left your video camera at the Gray Whale while you were having lunch, nothing looks familiar. In fact, it's kind of forbidding. The lonely road, no lights, no one to ask for directions. Easy to take the wrong fork in the road. So you drive in circles for an hour or so, eventually find yourself back on 101. By then your wife is tired, the kids are whining, so you decide the hell with it, bill the insurance company for the camcorder."

  "Why is Moby bay hard to find at night?"

  They rested for a few moments at the top of the hill. There were a couple of one-story houses on the cliff fifty yards away. Redwood siding, shake-shingle roofs, patios. The odors from an outdoor grill were in the air. A dog was barking. The luminosity had faded from their faces and hands. Nothing out of the ordinary here. From this height the sea was bright and calm.

  "It's all a matter of perception," Chauncey said. "Actually our hypothetical tourist found Moby Bay okay. Maybe he drove down Main Street a couple of times. He just didn't see it. He was like the guy from the audience the hypnotist puts to sleep onstage. The hypnotist tells his subject he's never been married, even though his wife is sitting right there in the second row getting the giggles. Then the hypnotist tells the guy he's madly in love and wants to propose to a best-of-show poodle in dog language. Bow-wow. Down on all fours. Woof-woof. The audience cracks up. Our tourist drives down Main Street looking for Moby Bay. We could be hanging out in front of the ice cream parlor mooning him, he wouldn't see us. That's the effect of the Caul. The bad thing about the Caul is, it screws up TV reception. Cell phones, forget it until the sun comes up. The energy has always been here—a certain resonance, frequency of vibrations, whatever. If you've got even a pinch of extrasensory perception you recognize and use what the earth gives to you. Most people let ninety percent of their gray matter go to waste. The active part of their brains is usually just something to hang their egos on."

  "Chauncey—"

  "I'm sorry. I run off at the mouth. And you know so much more than I do."

  "That's just it. I don't. I don't know why you, everyone I meet says I'm what I am. I don't know what I'm supposed to do! I'm that dumb tourist you were talking about. Going around and around in my head. I have bad dreams that come true. That's all. And Wardella tells me—she won't be there anymore when I need her!"

  After a few moments Chauncey put an arm around Eden's shoulders, drew her close.

  "Somebody will," she said.

  CHAPTER 16

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA • MAY 28 • 9:54 P.M. PDT

  After they checked into the Lambourne, Tom Sherard yielded to Bertie Nkambe's suggestion that they walk up Nob Hill
to Washington, then over to the Alleys of Chinatown, where her favorite Shanghaiese restaurant was located. Not advertised but well known to locals. One of the owners was a nephew of a man Bertie's father had been in business with in Nairobi and Mombasa. "Guanxi," Bertie said, with that wink of hers. Meaning connections. Alberta's sweet insistence was hard to say no to, and after being on a plane for nearly five hours, Sherard needed to exercise. The more he walked, the less dependent he was on the lion's-head cane. And San Francisco had been blessed with a wonderful spring night. Shortly before ten o'clock on a Saturday the little shops, markets, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants of the Alleys were still busy places.

  Bertie never went unnoticed, but in red leather and gold chains she drew attention like firecrackers in the street. Unlike a lot of models who had her elevation, looking over the heads of lesser mortals with waxen stares; Bertie had a smile for every stranger. She liked to browse and haggle. Before they reached the Ya Lin restaurant she stopped half a dozen times, admiring some eighteenth-century porcelains and lacquered screens in a couple of stores, watercolors displayed at curbside by a young student at the San Francisco Art Institute. Bertie conversed with the older Chinese in lilting Mandarin. She was, among her other talents, a natural polyglot. She had soaked up Chinese, English, and Swahili in her own home before coming to New York at the age of twelve to live with Sherard and Gillian and attend the Chapin school. But her real purpose for being in the States was to work with Gillian while she learned to deal with the yin and yang of her Gift.

  The Gift had emerged early in Alberta Nkambe's life, when she was little more than a toddler. A black mamba, perhaps driven from its habitat by thick smoke from a brushfire, had invaded the Nkambes' house on their coffee estate by the Thika River. The snake had found a bamboo basket chair on the roofed veranda to its liking. Joseph Nkambe's favorite chair, when he had a few minutes to relax before dinner and watch rugby matches from England. It was his habit to plump up the chintz-covered dark green cushions before settling down. The family mongoose, their household snakehunter, was being treated at the vet's for an infected paw. Pleasantly distracted by his daughter babbling at play with two older brothers, Joseph didn't see the snake behind the cushion as he reached down.