The Light is the Darkness (11 page)

“Bad, huh?” Conrad’s brain had reached the stage where it decided to begin shutting off nonessential functions. Everything from the neck down belonged to a fossilized cave bear. At least his gorge was staying put.

“Oh, yeah. But the old ones…boy, it looks like ya got yourself caught by a buzzsaw, or something’.” Cardinal emphasized that observation by gulping his drink with nary a shudder and snapping his fingers for another Johnny Walker on the rocks and make it a double, those damned lights were hot as the hubs of Hades.

Conrad resisted the urge to touch his own face. Obscured by fresh bruises and the jagged cut that had scabbed quite dramatically, the underlying scar forked from his hairline, paralleled the orbital of his left eye; another branch hooked behind his cauliflower ear. A venerable scar, among the first in his expanding collection.

Conrad fell away from the ticky-tack tables, the guttering votives and swan-necked men in polyester suits, plunged down the black shaft to a lonely farm in a lonely field, the abattoir lit by swaying kerosene lanterns, its concrete floor and antique drains choked with straw and dust, the leopard on his chest tearing at his face until the skin began to flex like a latex mask. All those wet mouths in the gallery, their collective exhortations no louder than a breeze sighing through tall grass; all those empty eyes brittle as malachite, radiating the coldness of serried ranks of knives hanging points-down from a rack.

Few animals were a match for a professional fighting man if the struggle lasted beyond that initial explosion of sinew and adrenaline. Amateur hour; the gallery stifled yawns and rattled ice in their drinks as the blood poured out at their feet.

Conrad had been young and sloppy. And lucky. Mr. Kosokian always retained first class medics. The plastic surgeon, a convict on a short leash,
had
been a consummate professional. With a good tan, the marks were nearly invisible.

Marty Cardinal said, “I played Vegas once. Shook Sammy’s hand, damned if I didn’t. He was a quick-draw fella. Didja know? Quick-draw. Pow-pow-pow with these six-guns like Marshal Dillon on
Gun Smoke
. It was a hoot. Dorsey! Dorsey, c’mere a minute!” He waved at the piano player, a fellow septuagenarian in an exhausted white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. “Dorsey an’ me go back. Traveled the Northwest circuit together. Did a USO tour with Neil Diamond. Dorsey tickles those ivories like none other. Billy Joel called him Magic Fingers.”

“Nah, that’s what Billy’s wife called me.” Dorsey summoned the waitress and put in for fresh drinks all around. He constantly riffled a worn deck of cards, first left-handed, then right. “Any chum of Marty C., yadda yadda. Marty this guy a boxer. Looks like a boxer. You a boxer, sonny?”

“I know from boxers, Dorsey. He ain’t no boxer. He look like Rocky Marciano to you? He look like Gerry Cooney? Where’s yer girlfriend, kid?” Marty Cardinal was methodically stacking his dead soldiers in a glistening ziggurat, a sacrificial altar.

“She returned to the Mother Ship, I think,” Conrad said.

“Oh, she wasn’t a hooker, right? She wasn’t a working girl ya picked up from under an off ramp, or anything?”

Conrad smiled wryly, lighted a cigarette and pressed it to his swollen lips.

Dorsey snorted, passed his cards to and fro. He had the jaw of a horse and crooked hands blotched with liver spots. “Ah, Marty, she wasn’t on the job. College kid down on her luck. A dropout for certain—prolly afraid to go home to ma an’ pa, so she’s bummin’ around with dubious sorts. No offense.”

“You a dubious character, kid?”

“Mr. Cardinal—”

“Call me Marty C.”

“What did you do before?”

“Eh? Before what?”

Conrad gestured at the room. “Before Vegas. Before any of this.”

“Hear that, Dorsey? He wants to know about, ‘Once Upon a Time.’” Marty Cardinal helped himself to another drink. His smile was chilly.

“I heard what he said.” Dorsey studied his cards.

“You were in the Army.”

Marty Cardinal nodded. “Korea. Nastiest hellhole on the planet. Still dream about the cold. Ya been checking into my back story, eh kid?”

“Yes. I’ve been to the ends of the Earth, and here you are. In this place.”

“Huh. Hear that, Dorsey? The kid’s been looking for me. Maybe I owe him some money. Cripes, I hope ya can squeeze blood from a turnip, kiddo. My three exes cleaned me out ages ago; took my cars, my condos, the whole schmeer. How’d ya find me, anyhow?”

“Detective agency. It wasn’t difficult.” Conrad pulled a creased flyer from his wallet; a promotional shot of a younger, thinner, slickly-dressed Marty Cardinal bracketed by showgirls. The singer had scrawled his autograph across the back.

“Holy Toledo. That’s from the Sands!” Marty Cardinal shook his head in bleary wonder.

The cocktail waitress leaned into their circle, handed Conrad a cell phone; eyed him suspiciously as if he might go for her throat at any moment. “For you.”

He smiled painfully, hoping to reassure her, said into the receiver, “Conrad.”

Singh said, “Conrad, Conrad. What are you doing?” The connection was poor.

Strangely enough, it seemed these men whose stock and trade was surreptitious communication seldom managed a line clear of interference. Of course, for all Conrad knew, Singh was calling from the bowels of a slumbering volcano, or a submarine at the bottom of the South Pacific. “I’m relaxing. Conducting a pleasant conversation with friends. Yourself?”

“Conducting a what? An interrogation, you say?”

Conrad covered the receiver with his chin. “What happened after the Army.” He swept his hand under the tabletop, groping for a mike, a wire, anything suspicious.

“Whozatt on the horn?”

“It’s not Don King,” Conrad said.

Marty Cardinal and Dorsey chuckled and the glacier receded. Marty Cardinal said, “Broadway, baby. After Korea I moved to the Apple, tried to get my name in lights.”

“Who is that charming, drunken fellow I hear?” Singh buzzed.

Conrad held up a finger as he addressed Singh. “A war hero. I’m drinking him under the table.”

“Oh my, a real live war hero—is there such a thing? You must be punch drunk, poor boy. Buy him a shot for me, though. Just in case.”

“Karmic insurance?”

“Indeed. I’m certainly in the market… Look, Rob mentioned that you called earlier. He’s worried about you.”

“He’s worried about his money, you mean.”

“
Our
money. We share everything. Basically, we’re married. Please meet me at that museum in Coleville. You know the one—it’s on your way, isn’t it? Fourteen-hundred hours on Friday. We can speak of cabbages and kings, the weather in Buenos Aires.”

“
You
owe somebody money? Is that why ya got yer head busted?” Marty Cardinal had finished off another round. “That the s.o.b. who beat the tar outta ya, kid?”

“Okay,” Conrad said. “I’ll be there. It may be close.”

“Drive like the wind, mate,” Singh said. “Oh, and Conrad…I’m glad you’re in one piece.
Ciao
.”

“I’m touched,” Conrad said, but Singh was gone. “Sorry, Mr.—Marty. And after Broadway, you moved west, didn’t you? Washington, Idaho? Do you recall a man named Ambrose Drake?”

“Huh?”

“Ambrose Drake. He was a doctor—a surgeon.”

Marty Cardinal’s face slammed shut. He began snapping his fingers frantically at the waitress.

“Ambrose Drake. A tall, distinguished gentleman. Very dark, very ethnic.”

“What sorta trouble are you in?” Dorsey glanced up from his cards. “Unless you’re writin’ a book—”

“I’m not writing a book.”

“Then what?” Marty Cardinal gripped the edge of the table, a man clinging to a piece of flotsam in heavy seas. “What the hell ya want from me. Y-you’re—this is ancient history.”

“Is it?”

“I dunno a goddamned thing.”

“Dr. Ambrose Drake,” Conrad said. “He treated your grandson.”

“Go to hell.”

“Consider me the Ghost of Christmas Past. I know everything. You came to the Cloister to visit a child. You don’t recognize me? I was a boy, so it’s understandable.
You
I recall quite vividly. I thought you were an officer, even in civilian clothes. You had that military bearing. Command presence. Hadn’t quite reinvented yourself as Frank Sinatra.”

Marty Cardinal appeared ill. He gagged down an inch of bourbon. “The clinic. I dunno—”

“His name was Dick, your grandson. He had leukemia,” Conrad said. He was hardly drunk, now. His hands were steady, his tone flat with honed menace. Coupled with his grotesque scarring, his brawny shoulders and immense hands, the menace shtick was reliable. “There were a lot of people at the clinic, but I could never forget Dick either. A piano prodigy, just like your pal Dorsey there. Loved model planes and baseball. My brother called him Dicky, talked about him nonstop. Real amigos, those two. My brother had a tumor named Jake, by the way.”

Marty Cardinal spilled his drink, knocked over the stack of empties when he clumsily sopped the mess.

“Dicky’s head was always shaved…”

Marty Cardinal’s eyes leaked; his mouth hung slack and ugly with the shock of recollection, of demons loosed and ravenous.

“Leave him alone,” Dorsey said.

“Are you crying? Don’t do that. Please, I need you to look at something. Dr. Drake gave this to some of them to study.” Conrad made the promotional photo disappear and drew another tattered sheet of paper from his coat, held it near the light. The paper was papyrus-yellow, saturated with water stains and splashed by violent brush-work that resembled the craft of a demented calligrapher. “I’ve been told that the military used tools like this, back in the days when you were in the service. This, however, was originally created by Dr. Drake as a visual psychotropic, albeit inert without the concomitant verbal trigger. Uncle Sam considered buying the protocol, but passed. Have another look—you’ve seen it before.”

“Aww, no.” Marty Cardinal bawled. He covered his eyes. “Aww no, no, no.”

Conrad gaped in wonder and horror, then collected himself sufficiently to proceed with the Hoover-style third degree. “Any of these sound familiar? MK-Ultra. Majestic Twelve. Project TALLHAT. Project Bluebook.”

Marty Cardinal hunched tighter, refused to look. Wow, a monster. Look!

“It’s okay, chum.” Dorsey slung a scrawny arm over Marty Cardinal’s shoulders and glared venomously at Conrad. “You better get. He’s got nothin’ to say to you.”

Conrad forged ahead, implacable as a steamroller. “Some say the doctor is yet among the living. Drake was decrepit when he administered the Cloister. I’d peg him at one hundred, easy. Not many folks see out a century of birthdays. Must be one hell of a medicine man, assuming he even exists. I don’t think the Drake we know ever did.”

“Who sent ya? I’m out. They said I was out. Lyin’ sonsabitches.”

“No one sent me. I’m a free agent, an inquiring mind. I want to know more about the Drake Technique.”

“I don’t know shit.”

“I suppose if the CIA had gotten around to co-opting his research they’d have given it some silly code name. Probably converted it to something absolutely unimaginative—OPERATION MINDFUCK. Bureaucrats, eh? For God’s sake, stop crying, would you.” It was rubbing Conrad’s nerves raw, the moaning and weeping, waking the lizard, the creature that always wanted a bite of something weak and vulnerable. His fingers curled.

“Screw ya, ya punk. This is bullshit.”

“You were on the team of spooks that debriefed Drake and his scientists about his “Technique.” Istanbul, summer of ’60. The CIA was just checking it out, you didn’t actually appropriate the intellectual property, probably because everyone thought it was a hoax. They were correct. So your commanding officers examined the evidence and cut the doctor loose, let him creep back under some rock.”

Marty Cardinal whined.

Conrad grinned, heartless and deranged, and tossed back a raw double vodka without removing his feral gaze from Marty Cardinal. Compassion was too heavy a load this far up the mountain. “But a couple decades later when poor Dicky got sick, you didn’t hesitate, not for one second, did you? You’d sensed something in Drake. You knew he was the real thing, that he held the power of life and death in a big way. Sadly, it wasn’t about helping your grandson. Dicky was, how do you military folks say it?—expendable. Nah, you offered the poor little tyke up to the dark gods in a black magic ritual at the doctor’s clinic. You’d have done a lot worse to become a high wire Vegas act. Irony of it is, that sadist probably didn’t even need your grandson, or any of those kids, to fuel his experiments. I think Drake accepted sacrifices because that’s just how Satan gets his kicks. Cruelty to mortals.”

“Go ’way,” Marty Cardinal said, muffled into his hand.

“Examine the drawing and I will.”

“Go ’way.”

“Look at the drawing,” Conrad said with bared teeth. Then, softly, “I’m sorry, Marty. Truly, I am. You were there. Most of the others are gone, or missing—and my time is short. I can’t leave until you look at the drawing. So look.”