"Sagansky," she said to one of their number. He had the looks of a matinee idol gone to seed. Beside him, a woman who seemed to have all trace of animation drained from her. "What are you doing up here?"
Sagansky looked up at her. "Sssh...," he said.
"Did somebody die?" Eve said. "Besides Buddy."
"Sad," Sagansky said.
"Happens to us all," was Eve's unsentimental response. "You too. See if it doesn't. Have you had the grand tour of the house?"
Sagansky nodded. "Lamar..." he said, his eyes swivelling in the comedian's direction and overshooting their target, then coming back to settle on him, "Lamar showed us around."
"It better be worth it," Eve said.
"It is," was Sagansky's response. "Really...it is. Especially the upper rooms."
"Ah yes," Lamar said. "Why don't we just go straight up there?"
Grillo's paranoia hadn't been mellowed an iota by encountering Sagansky and wife. Something deeply weird was going on here.
"I think we've seen enough," Grillo said to Lamar.
"Oh, I'm sorry," the comedian replied. "I was forgetting about Eve. Poor Eve. It must be all too much for you."
His condescension, beautifully pitched, created precisely the effect he intended.
"Don't be ridiculous," she snorted. "I may be getting on, but I'm not senile. Take us up!"
Lamar shrugged. "Are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure."
"Well, if you insist..." he said, and led on, past the loiterers, to the bottom of the next flight of stairs. Grillo followed. As he passed Sagansky he heard the man muttering snatches of his previous exchange with Eve. Dead fish floating around in the back of his head.
"...it is...really, it is...especially the upper rooms..."
Eve was already a little way up the flight, determined she could match Lamar step for step.
Grillo called after her, "Eve. Don't go any further."
She ignored him.
"Eve?" he said again.
This time she glanced round.
"Are you coming, Grillo?" she said.
If Lamar realized that she'd let slip the name of her secret he didn't register anything. He simply led her to the top of the stairs and round a corner, out of sight.
More than once in his career Grillo had avoided a beating up by taking notice of the very danger signals he'd been getting since they'd started the climb. But he wasn't about to see Eve's ego undo her. In the space of an hour he'd become fond of the lady. Cursing himself and her in equal measure, he followed where she and her seducer had gone.
Outside, a minor fracas was occurring at the gate. It had begun with a wind that had blown up out of nowhere, running up through the trees that overhung the Hill like a tide. It was dry and dusty, and drove several late-arriving guests back into their limos to fix their streaming mascara.
Emerging from the gusts was a car; in the car a filthy young man who casually demanded entry to the house.
The guards kept their cool. They'd dealt with countless gatecrashers like this in their time; kids with more balls than brains who just wanted to get a glimpse of the high life.
"No invitation, son," one of them told the boy.
The gatecrasher got out of his car. There was blood on him; not his own. And in his eyes a rabid look that had the guards' hands moving towards the weapons beneath their jackets.
"I have to see my father," the boy said.
"Is he a guest?" the guard wanted to know. It was not impossible this was some rich kid from Bel-Air, head fucked with drugs, come looking for Papa.
"Yeah, he's a guest," said Tommy-Ray.
"What's his name?" the guard asked. "Give me the list, Clark."
"He's not on any of your lists," Tommy-Ray said. "He lives here."
"You've got the wrong house, son," Clark told him, having to raise his voice over the roar of wind in the trees, which continued unabated. "This is Buddy Vance's house. Unless you're one of his bastards!" He grinned at a third man, who didn't return the smile. His gaze was on the trees themselves, or on the air stirring them up. He narrowed his eyes, as if he could almost see something in the dust-dirtied sky.
"You're going to regret this, nigger," the kid was telling the first guard. "I'm coming back, and I'm telling you—you're the first to go." He stabbed a finger at Clark. "You hear me? He's the first. You come right after."
He got back into the car, and backed up, then turned around and headed down the Hill. By some unnerving coincidence, the wind seemed to go with him, back down into Palomo Grove.
"Fucking strange," the sky-watcher said, as the last of the motion in the trees died away.
"Go up to the house," the first guard told Clark. "Just check everything's OK up there..."
"Why shouldn't it be?"
"Just fucking do it, will you?" the man replied, still staring down the Hill after the boy and the wind.
"Keep your tits on," Clark replied, and did as ordered.
With the wind gone, the two remaining guards were aware of just how quiet it was. No sound from the town below.
No sound from the house above. And them in a silent alleyway of trees.
"Ever been under fire, Rab?" the sky-watcher asked.
"Nope. Have you?"
"Sure," came the reply. He snorted dust into the handkerchief his wife Marci had pressed for the top pocket of his tux. Then, sniffing, he surveyed the sky.
"Between attacks..." he said.
"Yeah?"
"It feels just like this."
Tommy-Ray, the Jaff thought, turning from his business momentarily, and going to the window. He'd been distracted by his work, and hadn't realized his son was near until he was driving away down the Hill. He tried to send a call out to the youth, but the message was not received. The thoughts the Jaff had found it easy to manipulate on previous occasions were not so simple any longer. Something had changed; something of great significance which the Jaff couldn't interpret. The boy's mind was no longer an open book. What signals he did receive were confounding. There was a fear in the boy he'd never felt before; and a chill, a profound chill.
It was no use trying to make sense of the signals; not with so much else to occupy him. The boy would come back. In fact that was the only clear message he was receiving: that Tommy-Ray intended to return.
Meanwhile there were more urgent demands upon the Jaff's time. The afternoon had proved profitable. In a matter of two hours his ambition for this gathering had been realized. It had produced allies possessed of a profound purity undreamed of among the Gravers' terata. The egos that had yielded them had resisted his persuasions at first. That was to be expected. Several of them, thinking they were about to be murdered, had produced their wallets and attempted to bribe their way out of the upper room. Two of the women had bared their silicone breasts and offered their bodies rather than die; one of the men had attempted a similar bargain.
But their narcissism had crumbled like a sugar wall, their threats, negotiations, pleas and performances been silenced as soon as they started to sweat out their fears. He'd sent them al] back to the party, milked and passive.
The assembly that now lined the walls was purer for its fresh recruits, a message of entropy passing from one terata to another, their multiplicity devolving in the shadows to something more ancient; darker, simpler. They'd become un-particularized. He could no longer ascribe to any of them the names of their creators. Gunther Rothbery, Christine Sea-pard, Laurie Doyle, Martine Nesbitt: where were they now? Become a common clay.
He had as large a legion as he could hold sway over; many more and his army would become unruly. Indeed perhaps it had already become so. Yet he continued to put off the moment when he finally let his hands do what they had been created, and re-created, to do: use the Art. It was twenty years since that life-shattering day when he'd found the symbol of the Shoal, lost in transit in the wilds of Nebraska. He'd never returned. Even during his war with Fletcher the trail of battle had never led him back to Omaha. He doubted there'd be anybody left he knew. Disease and despair would have taken a good half of them. Age, the other half. He, of course, had remained untouched by such forces. The passage of years had no authority over him. Only the Nuncio had that, and there was no way back from such alteration. He had to go forward, to see realized the ambition which had been laid in him that day, and the days following. He'd flown from the banality of his life into strange territories, and seldom looked back. But today, as the parade of famous faces had appeared before him in the upper room, and wept and shuddered and bared their breasts then their souls for him, he couldn't help but glance back to the man he'd been, who would never have dared hope to keep such celebrated company. When he did, he found something in himself he'd hidden, almost successfully, all these years. The very thing he was sweating from his victims: fear.