Odd Apocalypse
Page 9

If I had come to Roseland alone, perhaps I would have left, as Henry advised. But Annamaria, on her mysterious mission, would not leave, and I could not abandon her to the mercy of … Of who knew what?
Ten
ACCOMPANIED BY THE BUZZ OF BUMBLEBEES, BY DARTING wrens that sang complex songs in high tinkling trills, by bright butterflies that seemed out of season, and for a while by a pair of scampering squirrels, I felt like a character in a Disney movie, and I half expected the squirrels to start talking as I followed the property line south from the gatehouse.
That gave me no comfort. Bad things happen to good animals in some Walt Disney movies. Think of Bambi’s mother and Old Yeller, the former shot down in front of her child, the latter foaming at the mouth with rabies and killed by the boy who loved him. People don’t always fare better. Even the sweetest of princesses get poisoned by witches. There was a touch of Quentin Tarantino in Uncle Walt.
Henry Lolam had said that he hated Roseland but nonetheless returned to it because, with its encircling masonry, “the center might still hold.” I knew what the poet, Yeats, had intended by his lines, but I didn’t know what the security guard meant.
The high, wide structure was reminiscent of a fortification, but it wasn’t, after all, the Great Wall of China. It wouldn’t hold back the Mongol hordes or their equivalent. A determined man could easily climb over it, either to enter or to leave.
Even in the early 1920s, such a massive construction project would have been costly. The income tax had been new and low in those days, and Constantine Cloyce had been an incredibly wealthy man. But if his purpose was to define his fifty-two acres, building the wall two-thirds this height and half this width would have done the job as well at a fraction of the cost.
Until now, I hadn’t given any thought to this rampart. But the conversation with Henry pricked my curiosity.
Although I followed the property line, I gave no indication that the wall intrigued me. Always at Roseland, I felt watched, but now more than usual. Certainly, Henry must be keeping an eye on me from the gatehouse. He had seemed to wish me well; perhaps he still did. But his attitude changed when I mentioned the giant with the scars.
After a hundred yards, the manicured lawn and flower gardens gave way to wild grass, and two hundred yards after that, I ascended a gentle slope and passed through a stand of California live oaks ranging in size from sixty to ninety feet in height. The wildlife had abandoned me except for nuthatches whistling in the majestic branches of the black-trunked trees.
Screened from the gatehouse and the main house, I went to the wall. The stones provided toeholds, handholds, and I scaled those nine feet with alacrity.
Atop the palisade, on hands and knees, I discovered what I might have unconsciously expected. Set in the grout lines among the dark stones were serpentine patterns of the bright copper coins on each of which was engraved the slightly elongated figure eight that I had seen elsewhere.
Dappled with sunshine and oak-branch shadows, the cap was of the same material as the wall, sawn into flags and set in an irregular but fitted pattern. With my palms flat on the cool stone, I could feel the faintest vibrations, as though buried within this massive rampart must be machinery of some kind.
Leaning forward, I put my left ear to the stone, but I could hear no noise arising from inside the wall.
If those rapid, small-arc oscillations produced a sound, it would not be a heavy throb or thrum, but instead a high-pitched hum or even a whine.
The longer I considered those vibrations, the less they seemed to be the product of laboring machinery and the more the source struck me as electronic.
I got to my knees, fished in a pocket of my jeans, and extracted a penknife that I had purchased when I’d gone into town to buy some clothes. I had gotten the small knife specifically to pry one of the copper discs from its mortar bed, though I hadn’t taken one from the stable or from the mausoleum—where they also decorated the floor—because I assumed that if the vandalism was noticed, I would be the first suspect to whom they turned.
More important, they might realize the missing copper disc was not a case of vandalism but a consequence of investigation. If they suspected that I was more than a mere guest enjoying the pleasures of Roseland, I might learn the secrets of this place suddenly and violently.
A full nine feet above the ground, atop the wall, a missing bit of copper would not readily be noticed. When I set to work with the penknife, digging out the mortar, I soon discovered that the copper would not readily be removed, either. By the time I burrowed down an inch, when the blade of the penknife snapped, I realized that the discs were not as thin as coins but were instead the blunt ends of inch-diameter copper rods. For all I knew, they extended the entire depth of the wall and into its concrete footing.
Copper was far too soft a metal and too expensive to serve as structural reinforcement. Steel rebar would have been used for that purpose. The copper had some other function. Considering the expense of embedding so many rods in a long work of masonry, I could only assume they must be no less essential to the true purpose of the wall than was the web of rebar that maintained the structural integrity.
I threw the pieces of the broken knife into the tall wild grass beyond the estate and crawled forward on hands and knees until I came out from under the overhanging branches of the oaks. I got to my feet and walked the yard-wide wall, as if I were again—or still—a boy adventuring.
The rise in the land hid the distant main house and all other structures from me—and me from them.
Within fifty feet, I came to what appeared to be a foot-wide, shallow black bowl turned upside down in the center of the wall cap. When I knelt again, I saw that this object was supported on four-inch-long steel pins, and that it was a rain deflector set over a six-inch-square ventilation grill.
I thrust one hand under the bowl and felt a faint, warm draft barely fluttering against my fingers. When I bent my head to the deflector, I smelled something that reminded me of new-sprouting spring grass and ripe summer grass and wild strawberries, although the fragrance was not in fact like any of those things, but unique. Abruptly the draft turned cold, and though the scent that came with the change of temperature was also unique, it reminded me of things that it smelled nothing like: dry leaves but also dead leaves wet with a not-unpleasant mold and also the so-faint but stirring scent released by cracking ice.
Cool changed to warm and warm to cool every twenty seconds, for what reason and to what purpose I couldn’t guess. I had no idea why a wall would need to be ventilated or why the flow of air and odor would not be consistent.
I rose and continued perhaps four hundred feet until I came to another rain deflector and vent. Here, I found the same conditions.
Immediately ahead, another hurst of oaks spread branches over the wall, and a few hung low. I considered jumping off the rampart, but I didn’t know what ankle-fracturing hole or rock the long grass might hide, and so I slid backward off the top, hung by my hands, and dropped a little more than three feet.
I backed away from the wall, trying to spot the rain deflector curved over the vent grill. But it was far above my head, had a low profile, and was a nonreflective black that made it difficult to see. When I had backed off far enough to detect the thing, it was a hardly noticeable shape that didn’t seem out of place or intriguing.
Puzzled by my discoveries, I turned away from the wall and found the muzzle of a pistol aligned with my left eye.
Eleven
THE HAND HOLDING THE PISTOL HAD LONG, BLUNT fingers and bristles of wiry black hair between the knuckles, and the guy to whom the hand belonged had a face to match his fist: hard, clenched features and a beard shadow that would not be shaved away even with a wood-chipper.
Paulie Sempiterno was chief of the Roseland security team, and in neatly pressed gray slacks, white polo shirt, and handsome blue blazer, he still looked as if he spent most of his time in alleyways breaking people’s knees with a baseball bat and decorating their faces with chain patterns.
He said, “I don’t like you, pretty boy,” and his rough voice chilled the whistling nuthatches to silence in the trees behind him.
Although I had met him only once before and had done nothing to offend him, I believed that he was sincere, that he disliked me in fact intensely. Even if he hadn’t said a word, I could read his contempt in the way that his thick purple lips sneered back from teeth that looked formidable enough to crunch up a pork chop, bones and all. The gun in my face was another clue.
He said, “Wolflaw’s a flaming idiot, he’s always been an idiot, but I didn’t expect this, not even from him. Houseguests! And not just overnight. What the hell is he thinking? Why stop there? Why not have a wedding for you and your knocked-up sweetie? Invite a hundred of your inbred moron relatives, hire an orchestra, ask the governor to stop taking bribes long enough to come down from Sacramento and officiate.”
Stocky, barrel-chested, thick-necked, antisocial, Sempiterno would have been a classic strong-and-silent type if he could have shut up for a minute. But he had a mad-on, and he wanted me to know he had a mad-on, and he evidently thought I was so slow-witted that I wouldn’t understand his position until he had used a thousand words to paint a picture of it.
He said, “Anyway, you’re not just some houseguest, pretty boy. Looking here, looking there, snooping around, up to the stables, talking to Shilshom about a horse when there isn’t any horse, haven’t been horses here for a long time, now walking on the wall. Who the hell walks on top of a nine-foot wall? Nobody, that’s who. Except you. Why the hell were you walking on the wall?”
When he paused for longer than one quick inhalation, I figured I was being invited to reply. “Well, sir, the view’s nice from up there. You can see so much farther.”
Thrusting the pistol closer to my left eye, just in case I had forgotten about it, he said, “How’s this view. You like this view? More dramatic than the Grand Canyon. I don’t know what you’re up to, wall-walker, but you’re up to something. I don’t like people who are up to something. You know how much tolerance I have for people who are up to something?”
“None?” I guessed, pretty sure that my answer had won a prize, if there was a prize to be won.
“Less than none. What’re you up to?”
“I’m not up to anything, sir. To be frank, I’m just freeloading off Mr. Wolflaw. He’s charmed by the girl I’m with, and I’m along for the ride. Could you put the gun away? I’m harmless. I really am.”
He glared at me. His glare could melt a polar bear’s testicles.
If he’d had a cold sore on his lip, we would have been friends by now.
“I know you’re going to be major trouble,” he said. “I’d really like to put a bullet in your face.”
“Yes, sir, I know you would. I appreciate that. But you really don’t have a reason to put a bullet in my face.”
“The reason is I don’t like it.”
“Besides, if you kill me, the girl I’m with will be upset, and Mr. Wolflaw is so charmed by her that he’ll be upset, too, and there goes your job. Not to mention prison, gang rape, and the loss of your right to vote.”
Even the prospect of being turned away from the ballot box didn’t seem to faze him. “The girl’s not his type. She’s nobody’s type. The bitch creeps me out.”
“Ah, sir, that’s just mean. She’s not a Victoria’s Secret model, but she’s pretty in her way.”
“I’m not talking about how she looks. With this face, I’m gonna make fun of how other people look?”
“Good point.”
At last lowering the pistol, he said, “It’s how she stared at me the very first time I saw her. Like she’s a speed-reader and my whole story’s no longer than the list of ingredients on a cereal box.”
I nodded. “She seems to look straight into your heart.”
“Wasn’t any damn romance-novel moment,” Sempiterno said. “It was like I went through airport security and in ten seconds flat came out scoped, poked, and naked.”
If you’re open to it, a smile can find you at the most unlikely times. “I like the way you say things, sir.”
Again he favored me with that bruin-emasculating glare. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just that you have a way of putting things.”
“I say what I say. I don’t care what you think.” He holstered his pistol. “If Noah Wolflaw, the idiot, wants you here, I can’t make you leave. But you better understand, pretty boy, he doesn’t love the girl and he doesn’t like you, he’s all about himself. And whatever he wants from you two—when he takes it, you’re going to wish to hell you’d listened to me and been long gone.”
As he turned away from me, I said, “I’m thinking we’ll probably leave in the morning.”
Having taken only two steps, he halted, facing me again. “Leave today. Don’t stay the night. Leave now.”
“Maybe after lunch.”
He stared at me as if, with his willpower alone, he could cause me to spontaneously combust. After a silence, he said, “Maybe I know after all why Wolflaw wants you here.”
“Why?”
Instead of answering me, he said, “Whatever you’re looking for in Roseland, you’ll find its opposite. If you want to live, look for death.”
He turned away again and strode toward the conclave of massive oaks. At his approach, the whistling nuthatches in the aviary of branches all fell silent again. When he stepped into the shadows of the trees, the flock flew, wings rattling through the veils of oval leaves, and flung themselves into the sky, at risk of falcons.
Among the trees I saw a battery-powered mini truck, a vehicle often used by landscapers, which was longer than a golf cart, smaller than a pickup, roofless, with two seats and an open cargo area. This one was jacked up on fat tires that, with other alterations, made it pretty much an all-terrain vehicle.
Paulie Sempiterno got behind the wheel. Purring softly, the trucklet seemed almost to float among the trees, out into the golden meadow, and toward the rise beyond which stood the main house.
I don’t take offense at any rude names that I am called. I did find pretty boy sad, however, because I’m as ordinary looking as any actor who has ever played Tom Cruise’s pal in a movie and whose primary job is, by his very ordinariness, to make the star look even more extraordinary than he does in real life.
When he sneered those two words, Mr. Sempiterno wasn’t mocking me; successful mockery must be based on at least a grain of truth. You can’t mock a dog for being a dog, but in trying to do so, you make yourself a person worthy of mockery. The security chief thought me a pretty boy only by comparison to himself, suggesting that his assessment of his somewhat unfortunate appearance was far too harsh, and that was where the sadness lay.