“That would be the murderer,” Micky interrupted without a wink or a smirk, as though she’d never think to question the outrageous family portrait that the girl was painting for them.
“Yeah, Dr. Doom,” Leilani confirmed.
“Never let him adopt you,” Micky said. “Even Leilani Klonk is preferable to Leilani Doom.”
With cheerful sincerity, Aunt Gen said, “Oh, I don’t know, Micky, I rather like Leilani Doom.”
As though it were the most natural thing to do, the girl picked up Micky’s fresh can of Budweiser and, instead of drinking from it, rolled it back and forth across her brow, cooling her forehead.
“Dr. Doom isn’t his real name, of course. It’s what I call him behind his back. Sometimes at dinner, he likes to talk about people he’s killed — the way they looked when they died, their last words, if they cried, whether they peed themselves, all sorts of kinky stuff.”
The girl put down the beer — on the far side of her plate, out of Micky’s reach. Her manner was casual, but her motive was nonetheless clear. She had appointed herself guardian of Micky’s sobriety.
“Maybe,” Leilani continued, “you think that would be interesting conversation, even if sort of gross, but let me tell you, it loses its charm pretty quick.”
“What’s your pseudofather’s real name?” Geneva asked.
Before Leilani could reply, Micky suggested, “Hannibal Lecter.”
“To some people, his name’s scarier than Lecter’s. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. Preston Maddoc.”
“What an impressive name,” Geneva said. “Like a Supreme Court justice or a senator, or someone grand.”
Leilani said, “He comes from a family of Ivy League academic snots. Nobody in that crowd has a regular first name. They’re worse about names than old Sinsemilla. They’re all Hudson, Lombard, Trevor or Kingsley, Wycliffe, Crispin. You’d grow old and die trying to find a Jim or Bob among them. Dr. Doom’s parents were professors — history, literature — so his middle name is Claudius. Preston Claudius Maddoc.”
“I’ve never heard of him,” Micky said.
Leilani appeared to be surprised. “Don’t you read newspapers?”
“I stopped reading them when they stopped carrying news,” said Geneva. “They’re all opinion now, front page to last.”
“He’s been all over television,” Leilani said.
Geneva shook her miswired head. “I don’t watch anything on TV except old movies.”
“I just don’t like news,” Micky explained. “It’s mostly bad, and when it isn’t bad, it’s mostly lies.”
“Ah.” Leilani’s eyes widened. “You’re the twelve percenters.”
“The what?”
“Every time the newspaper or TV people take a poll, no matter what the question, twelve percent of the public has no opinion. You could ask them if a group of mad scientists ought to be allowed to create a new species of human beings crossed with crocodiles, and twelve percent would have no opinion.”
“I’d be opposed,” said Geneva, brandishing a carrot stick.
“Me, too,” Micky agreed.
“Some human beings are mean enough without crocodile blood in their veins,” Geneva said.
“What about alligators?” Micky asked her aunt.
“Opposed,” Geneva responded with firm resolve.
“What about human beings crossed with wildly poisonous vipers?” Micky proposed.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Geneva promised.
“Okay, then what about human beings crossed with puppy dogs?”
Geneva brightened. “Now you’re talking.”
To Leilani, Micky said, “So I guess we’re not twelve percenters, after all. We have lots of opinions, and we’re proud of them.”
Grinning, Leilani bit into a crisp dill pickle. “I really like you, Micky B. You, too, Mrs. D.”
“And we like you, sweetheart,” Geneva assured her.
“Only one of you was shot m the head,” Leilani said, “but you’ve both got scrambled wiring for the most part in a nice way.”
“You’re a master of the gracious compliment,” Micky said.
“And so smart,” Aunt Gen said proudly, as if the girl were her daughter. “Micky, did you know she’s got an IQ of one eighty-six?”
“I thought it would be at least one ninety,” Micky replied.
“The day of the test,” Leilani said, “I had chocolate ice cream for breakfast. If I’d had oatmeal, I might’ve scored six or eight points higher. Sinsemilla’s not a boffo mom when it comes to keeping the fridge stocked. So I took the test through a sugar rush and a major post-sugar crash. Not that I’m making excuses or complaining. I’m lucky there was ice cream and not just marijuana brownies. Heck, I’m lucky I’m not dead and buried in some unmarked grave, with worms making passionate worm love inside my empty skull — or taken away in an extraterrestrial starship, like Lukipela, and hauled off to some godforsaken alien planet where there’s nothing worth watching on TV and the only flavor of ice cream is chunky cockroach with crushed-glass sprinkles.”
“So now,” said Micky, “in addition to your perpetually wasted tofu-peaches-bean-sprouts mother and your murderous stepfather, we’re to believe you had a brother who was abducted by aliens.”
“That’s the current story,” Leilani said, “and we’re sticking to it. Strange lights in the sky, pale green levitation beams that suck you right out of your shoes and up into the mother ship, little gray men with big heads and enormous eyes — the whole package. Mrs. D, may I have one of those radishes that looks like a rose?”
“Of course, dear.” Geneva slid the dish of garnishes across the table.
Laughing softly, shaking her head, Micky said, “Kiddo, you’ve pushed this Addams Family routine one step too far. I don’t buy the alien abduction for a second.”
“Frankly,” Leilani said, “neither do I. But the alternative is too hideous to consider, so I just suspend my disbelief.”
“What alternative?”
“If Lukipela isn’t on an alien planet, then he’s somewhere else, and wherever that somewhere might be, you can bet it’s not warm, clean, with good potato salad and great chicken sandwiches.”
For an instant, in the girl’s lustrous blue eyes, behind the twin mirror images of the window and its burden of smoldering summer-evening light, behind the smoky reflections of the layered kitchen shadows, something seemed to turn with horrid laziness, like a body twisting slowly, slowly back and forth at the end of a hangman’s noose. Leilani looked away almost at once, and yet on the strength of a single Budweiser, Micky imagined that she had glimpsed a soul suspended over an abyss.
Chapter 6
Like the supernatural sylph of folklore, who inhabited the air, she approached along the hallway as though not quite touching the floor, tall and slim, wearing a platinum-gray silk suit, as graceful as a quiver of light.
Constance Veronica Tavenall-Sharmer, wife of the media-revered congressman who disbursed payoffs in airsickness bags, had been born from the headwaters of the human gene pool, before the river flowed out of Eden and became polluted with the tributaries of a fallen world. Her hair wasn’t merely blond but the rich shade of pure-gold coins, fitting for a descendant of an old-money family that earned its fortune in banking and brokerage. Matte-satin skin. Features that would, if carved in stone, earn their sculptor the highest accolades and also immortality, if you measure immortality by mere centuries and expect to find it in museums. Her willow-leaf eyes were as green as spring and as cool as the layered shade deep in a grove of trees.
When he’d met her two weeks ago, Noah Farrel had disliked this woman on first sight, strictly as a matter of principle. Born to wealth and blessed with great beauty, she would skate through life with a smile, warm in even the most bitter wind, describing graceful arabesques upon her flashing blades, while all around her people perished in the cold and fell through the ice that, though solid under her, was treacherously thin for them.