"Where'd you plant it?" Perriweather asked. "Never mind, I'll tell you. You planted it inside something refrigerated, didn't you?"
"Right in their refrigerated medicine container," Gloria said with a proud smile.
"Exactly, you idiot. And by the time it had warmed up enough to be of use, it was too late. And all it could do was infect the chimpanzees. The deaths of all those beetles is on your head."
"I'll take the blame for that if I get the credit for the hundred delegates," Gloria said.
Perriweather shook his head. "I can't tolerate this anymore. Now I hear stories about two new scientists at the IHAEO. They say they're preparing even bigger crimes. No more half-measures."
"What are you going to do?" Nathan Muswasser asked.
Perriweather said he was going to take out the entire lab, all its equipment and all its personnel, in retribution for the Ung genocide.
"Impossible," said Gloria.
"Too dangerous," said Nathan.
"You know," Perriweather said coldly, "I've been putting up all the money for the Species Liberation Alliance for years. Every time I'm called on, I defend you, and you people will do anything but take real risks. Now, when I need you, where are you? You're telling me things are impossible or too dangerous."
"You're just too interested in bugs," Gloria said.
"And you're just too insensitive to their plight," Perriweather said.
"But we'll work with you," she said. "We need your money, so we'll work with you."
"I think I'll be able to do this one without you," Perriweather said. "If I need you, I'll call."
After they left, he sat for a long while staring at the study door. Of course they didn't understand what he wanted. No one, not since he was five years old, had ever understood what this heir to the Perriweather fortune had wanted.
His wife did not know. He knew what she wanted.
She wanted to be married to a Perriweather. Sometimes, she wanted to copulate. Eventually, after being turned down by him enough times, she took lovers. Sometimes he would watch them from the floor above but it just didn't interest him.
He was willing to reproduce. In fact, that had been one of his requirements upon agreeing to marry her. But he insisted that before they copulate, she be with egg.
"I'm not going to fertilize an empty uterus," Waldron had said to the most beautiful debutante of North Shore society, now his bride.
"Well, some people, Waldron, you know, some people enjoy it."
"I guess they do. Some people."
"You didn't tell me you didn't enjoy it," she said.
"You didn't ask," said Waldron, his thin elegant patrician features looking like an ice mask.
"I assumed," she said.
"Not my fault," he said. They had honeymooned on a tour of Europe. Waldron, his bride found out, liked alleys. Garbage dumps held more fascination for him than the Louvre or British theater.
He often mumbled as he passed cemeteries, "Waste. Waste."
"Human life? The death of us all, dear, is inevitable. But we can be remembered by our loved ones," the beautiful young Mrs. Perriweather had said.
"Nonsense," he snarled. "Brass, steel. Airtight, watertight. Just throw them in the ground. Let them do some good."
"Have you always felt this way?" she asked.
"Of course. What a waste. Sealing bodies up like that is so ... so . . ."
"Futile? Pathetic?" she offered.
"Selfish," said Waldron.
At the time, Peiriweather's mother was still living and the young bride asked if Waldron had always been that way.
"You noticed?" asked the grande dame of North Shore society.
"When he asks for rotted fruit for dinner, it really is hard to miss, Mother. May I call you Mother?"
"I'm glad finally that someone does. Yes, Waldron does things that most people might consider different. But he is not, let me stress, he is not insane. Perriweather men have often been different. But they are not, let me reiterate, insane."
The mother-in-law was on her veranda, which stretched out over the rocky line that met the gray Atlantic that fine spring day.
"Perriweather men have sealed themselves in barrels and tried to float down the Amazon. One Perriweather liked to eat roasted bat. Another felt he was the bird god of the Incas, and Waldron's father, I must confess, liked to lather himself in glue before he did 'it.' "
"You poor woman," said the bride.
"Water-soluble. I insisted on water-soluble glue," said the older Mrs. Perriweather. "I never would with epoxy. But back to important things. None of the Perriweather men were ever really insane."
"What does it take for you to call one of them insane?"
"Spending his principal. Failing to live on just the interest on his money. That, my dear, is lunacy. And that is proof that Waldron is not insane because Waldron would never do that."
"I guess there have been worse marriages," the bride said.
"That's what I am telling you, dear."
There really was only one very difficult moment and that was the night that the doctor told her she was most fertile. Waldron had sex with her as if he didn't want to do any more than light upon her. But it was enough to conceive and carry on the Perriweather name.
After the baby was born, Waldion ignored his wife totally. She complained to her mother-in-law.
"He acts as if I am not his wife," she said.
"The truth is, Waldron does not think that I am his mother," said the old woman.
"I've heard of children wondering who their father was but not their mother. Who does he think is his mother?"
"I don't know. He never tells anyone. He doesn't lie really, he just doesn't talk about it anymore. We have shown him hospital records. Had him talk to the doctor who delivered him. Gotten sworn testimony from nurses. And still, he won't accept me as his mummy."
"Maybe because he was raised by a nanny?" the young woman said.
"All Perriweathers are raised by nannies. I was as affectionate as any mother in the family. But he just wouldn't call me Mom."
"You know what he calls me?" said Waldron's wife.
"What?"
"His egg-layer."
"Dear," said her mother-in-law, sympathetically placing a hand on the young woman's arm. "He never spends the principal."
Waldron Perriweather III not only maintained the Perriweather fortune but he advanced it brilliantly, showing a sense of business that few would expect outside a top management school. It was beyond ruthless. He just seemed to have an inordinate knack for multiplying money rapidly.
He never told his secret but many suspected from bits and snatches that he simply looked for a chance to grow on the disasters of others.
What none of them could know was that in learning to use money, Perriweather had become one of the more efficient killers on his planet. And he did this as he invested: without passion; with only a grand cunning. Money bought services and the difference between a thug and a surgeon was that a thug usually gave more thought to tearing somebody apart and was not so ready with an excuse if he should fail.
Hit men and arm breakers, Waldron found out early, were far more refreshing to deal with than doctors. A surgeon might blame death on a patient's blood pressure and send the bill nevertheless. But a hit man never charged unless he succeeded.
So in some elements of the underworld, Waldron Perriweather III was better understood then he was in his own family or on Wall Street.
Among those who understood him were Anselmo "Boss" Bossiloni and Myron Feldman, even though they referred to him between themselves as "that faggy rich guy."
Anselmo and Myron looked like two cigarette machines, except that cigarette machines didn't have hair and, some said, felt more mercy than Anselmo and Myron. The pair had met in rehabilitation school. Myron was the better student. He majored in shop and what he learned was how to use an electric drill effectively. He found out if you took the drill bit and put it to someone's kneecap, you could negotiate anything.