He shook his head again, Mr. Scoutmaster showing a dull scout how to tie a complex knot for the fiftieth time. “Spare me the sloppy compassion. Without the fittest there will be no survival. Retardates don't discover cures for diseases. Spastics don't steer jumbo jets. Too many of the unfit, and we'll all be enduring, not living. The way Willy was forced to endure that bathroom.”
He removed his glasses, cleaned them with a tissue. The house was silent.
“A nice mix,” I said. “Pop philosophy and sadistic fun.”
“Fun is good,” he said. “What else do we have to show for our time on this planet?”
He raised the syringe again. No help coming, but play for time, time was all I had.
“Melvin Myers,” I said. “A blind man trying to live a normal life. What was his sin? Learning something about Lehmann while fooling with the computers? Embezzlement? Shunting grant money to New Utopia?”
Big smile. “Ah, the irony,” he said. “Money allocated for the inferior finally used productively. Myers, that place- pathetic.”
“Myers was intelligent.”
“It's all the same.”
“Damaged tissue.”
“Spoiled meat can be gussied up and sautÉed, but it remains unfit for consumption. The blind don't lead the blind. The blind get led around like barnyard animals.”
He aimed the needle at the ceiling, squirting liquid. A toilet flushed. Footsteps, again.
I heard Tenney's voice. “Whew, no more Mexican for me.”
Baker tapped the syringe.
No rescue.
Daniel, Milo- how could you abandon me?
My body started to shake. “You can't hope to-”
“Hope has nothing to do with it,” said Baker. “What you know amounts to supposition but no evidence. The same goes for Sturgis. The game needs to end. Here's a true test of your belief system: Is there an afterlife? Now you'll find out. Or”- he smiled-“you won't.”
“DVLL. You're the new devils?”
The needle caught ceiling light, sparking white.
His mouth tightened. Irritated. “How many foreign languages do you speak?”
“Some Spanish. I learned a little Latin in school.”
“I speak eleven,” he said.
“All that travel.”
“Travel enriches.”
“What language is DVLL?”
“German,” he said. “Nothing like the Goths when it comes to matters of principle. The crispness, none of that useless Gallic lassitude.”
Zena's comments about French. Parroting her guru.
The needle lowered.
“So what does it mean?” I said.
No answer. He'd turned grave, almost sad.
Daniel, Milo… the limits of friendship… just another delusion…
“Potassium chloride?” I tried for the third time. “Freelance executioner. At least the state offers sedation.”
Tenney said, “The state offers a last meal and prayers and a blindfold because the state's game is insincerity- pretending to be humane.”
He laughed very loudly. “The state actually takes the time to sterilize the injection site with alcohol. Protecting against what? The state is an ass.”
“Don't worry,” said Baker. “Your heart will explode, it won't take long.”
“Dust to dust, carbon to carbon.”
“Clever. Too bad we never got a chance to spend more quality time together.”
“Executed,” I said, barely able to restrain the scream that kept growing within me. “What's my crime?”
“Oh, Alex,” he said. “I'm so disappointed in you. You still don't understand.”
“Understand what?”
A sad shake of his head. “There are no crimes, only errors.”
“Then why'd you become a cop?”
The needle lowered a bit. “Because police work offers so much opportunity.”
“For power.”
“No, power's for politicians. What law enforcement offers is choice. Possibilities. Order and disorder, crime and punishment. Playing the rules like a card hustler.”
“When to fold, when to draw,” I said. Stall, stretch every second, don't look at the needle. Robin- “Who to arrest, who to let go.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Fun.”
“Who gets to live,” I said, “who doesn't. How many others have you killed?”
“I stopped counting long ago. Because it doesn't matter. That's the point, Alex: Everything is matter and nothing matters.”
“Then why bother to kill me?”
“Because I want to.”
“Because you can.”
He came closer. “Not a single one of them was missed… no impact, nothing changed. It made me realize what I should have known years before: Sensation is all. One passes the time in the least onerous way possible. I like to clean house.”
“A sweeper,” I said, and when he didn't answer: “The elite takes out the trash.”
“There are no elites. Just those with fewer impediments. Willy and I will end up worm-food like everyone else.”
“Smarter worms, though,” said Tenney. He grinned at me. “See you for chess in hell. You supply the board.”
“Sensation is all,” I said to Baker.
Baker put down the needle again, unbuttoned his shirt, and spread the placket.
His chest was tan, hairless, a grotesque plane of ravaged flesh.
Scores of scars, some threadlike, others raised and welted.
He displayed himself proudly, rebuttoned. “I thought of myself as a blank canvas, decided to draw. Please don't talk to me about mercy.”
“At least tell me about DVLL.”
“Oh, that,” he said, dismissively. “Just a quotation from Herr Shickelgruber. Pure mediocrity, that one, those sickening watercolors, but he did have a way with a phrase.”
“Mein Kampf?” I said.
He got very close. Sweet breath, soap-and-water skin. How did he tolerate Tenney?
“ “Die vernichtung lebensunwerten Leben,' ” he said. “ “Lives not worth living.' Which applies, I'm afraid, to yours.”
Tenney moved in and held my right hand down, elbow to the mattress. Oh, Milo, the bastard is right, nothing matters in the end, nothing's fair- fingertips drummed the crook of my arm, raising a vein.
Baker lifted the syringe.
“Happy heart attack,” he said.
Robin- Mom- go out with style, don't scream, don't scream- I prepared for the jab, nervous system crashing, alarm bells jingling-
Nothing.
Baker straightened. Perturbed.
Still the jingling.
The doorbell.
“Shit,” said Tenney.
“Go see who it is, Willy, and be careful.”
Clang. The needle disappeared and in its place Baker held a machine pistol- black, banana-shaped handle, rectangular body, nasty little barrel.
He looked around the room.
The bell rang again. Stopped. Three knocks. More bell.
I heard Tenney's rapid climb up the stairs.
Voices.
Tenney's, the other high-pitched.
A woman?
Her voice, Tenney's, hers.
“No,” I heard Tenney say, “you've got the wrong-”
Baker moved toward the door, pistol held high.
The woman's voice again, irate.
“I'm telling you,” said Tenney, “that this-”
Then, a low, muffled stutter that could only be one thing. More footsteps, racing, as Baker pointed the machine pistol at the door, ready.
Thunder behind him- breaking glass, a glass roar- from behind the curtains, then a flute arpeggio of tinkling shards as the curtains parted and men burst in shooting.
More stutter, much louder.
Baker never had a chance to see them. His pink shirtback sucked up crimson and the rear of his head dissolved in a red-brown mist.
The front of his head followed, facial features blanketed in red oil and white jelly, the substructure disintegrating, features losing integrity, turning to port wine. Melting. A wax figure melting.
His chest exploded and soft things flew out, plunking wetly against the wall.
One of the shooters ran to me. Young, sharp-featured, black hair. One of the guards I'd seen at the consulate. Behind him, a big, heavy, white-haired black man in navy blue sweats. Older, at least sixty. He glanced at Baker's body, then at me.