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“Or pop through to something else.”
“We can’t risk that.”
“Weain’t risking shit.”
“We have to get him to see—”
“Kiddo. You’re smart as fuck. But you’re a know-it-all. And you’re not as smart as smart-as-fuck people who’ve been at it longer than you.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You got two ears and one mouth. Learn to use them proportionally.”
“That is excellent advice. I’m definitely not ready to take it yet.”
“Course you ain’t.”
“That’sit?”
“Whaddaya want? I’m halfway through a handle of Beam and my cable’s out. You want pontification I need lead time and an inflated sense of my own importance.”
“Tommy, you’re a blue-collar poet. I never would’ve thought it.”
“Well. Like the wise man says, you never know who’s who in the zoo.”
“Who’s the wise man?”
“Me, topped off with the proper level of bourbon.”
Click.
42
Destroying Angel
Drifting up the quartz circular driveway to Tartarus amid a current of partygoers, Evan caught sight of himself in the polished window of a valeted Rolls-Royce SUV with suicide doors.
A floating skull with exposed teeth painted on his lips, frozen in a macabre grimace-grin. He wore a black shirt and black jeans, his body fading into the dark of night.
He’d applied water-based face paint with the same precision and rigor that Jack had taught him to create camo patterns. Sponge, flat-edged brush, white pencil to delineate the shape of the skull, even a few asymmetrical cracks squiggling through the cheekbones.
He felt downright fearsome.
A destroying angel.
The mansion gave the appearance of expanding as he approached, a mélange of tiers replete with decks, terraces, and patios. The white-stained shingle siding, illuminated with bold sabers of light, gave Tartarus the appearance of a ghostly wedding cake.
Security men were in abundant evidence, distinguished fromthe costumed revelers by somber suits and faces. They were checking names at the entry, so Evan detoured through the manicured gardens and slipped through a servant’s door, aided in invisibility by his dark attire.
A brief hall peeked in on a kitchen sufficient to feed a brigade. The corridor led out into the main foyer that yawed three floors upward like the dome of a cathedral. A waterfall feature dominated the inner curve of aSunset Boulevardstaircase. Backlit with glowing crimson, it poured a sheet of water so controlled that it looked like a frozen wave. In its undulating illumination, guests milled and sipped and snorted, dressed in all manner of attire. There were sexy nuns and devils in red tutus, zombie bishops and lingerie angels with fluffy halos, horned lords of darkness and vampy vampires. Silver trays circulated, bubbling wines of various tinctures, pills and snuffboxes, Japanese white strawberries each nestled in its own satin pillow. A string quartet on a dais performed a playful classical version of “Monster Mash.” Someone screamed “Happy Halloween!” and then witch-cackled loud enough to make Evan wince.
He spotted Tenpenny, a head above the revelers, scanning the swirls and eddies with a trained eye. He was tall enough to give the illusion of slimness. Those long bones looked easy to break, but Evan had clashed with enough towering men to know that the extra inches added poundage and fighting leverage and the extra weight strengthened the bones. Even so, Tenpenny stood with the faintest stoop, his head slightly ducked. A perennial right-hand man who’d never learned how to stand up straight.
Moving away, Evan bumped into a man painted statue-white like a cemetery angel, tears of blood staining both cheeks. His pupils were blown wide from MDMA or coke. Fluttering his frosted fingernails before long snow-white lashes, he poked out a pale pink tongue and spoke with a baby-girl crackle in the back of his throat. “Are we even really here?”
Evan said “No” and breezed on.
He circled the ground floor, hoping to make sense of the house, but it spun this way and that, a muddle of corridors and gatheringrooms with pumping music and strobing lights. Even the weather was made to acquiesce to the theme, various contraptions conveying blasts of heat and frost, fog machines issuing dragon-breaths of mist, rain bars felling water from the ceilings into neat trenches along the walls.
