Toys sank slowly to his knees, blood running in lines down his chin and splashing on the floor. He caved in around his pain. Not the pain of torn lips and mashed gums, but the red howling ache in his chest.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and wept.
Interlude Thirty-six
Regent Beverly Wilshire
Beverly Hills, California
December 19, 5:37 P.M. EST
Charles Osgood Harrington IV—known as C-Four since he was thrown out of college—was a total pain in the ass. Everyone knew that and agreed on it. The media loved to hate him and ran paparazzi pictures of him almost daily, usually peeing in a sacred fountain in Italy or in a perp walk after a DUI, or those infamous pictures of him during his first and second stays in county correctional facilities or work-release camps. C-Four’s father’s lawyers hated him because he was so irredeemably arrogant and unrepentant in court that he instantly alienated judges and juries. The members of the various boards on which his father, Charles Osgood Harrington III—Three to his cronies and the press—was the chair. The stockholders hated him because each time his personal life detonated onto the headlines the shares in the family companies—Harrington Aeronautics, Harrington-Cheney Petrochemicals, Harrington and Milhaus Fuel Oil Company, and the fourteen others—tumbled. The administration of Yale hated that they were coerced into pushing him through with a degree even though he rarely attended a class and was never sober, but the Harrington family and their friends wrote checks larger than the outrage of the board of regents. Even C-Four’s friends only stayed with him because they thought he was richer than God and liked to show it off by spreading cash around. On a whim he flew the cast of Gossip Girl to a clothing-optional island. Another time he bought a hotel just to throw a party, and once he purchased a Mercedes dealership on a bet and then lost it in a run of poker hands that same night.
When his name came up on programs like Dr. Phil and Ellen, kindhearted but misinformed guest stars speculated that C-Four suffered from emotional damage that was the result of having been too famous even from birth. They discussed how the rich and privileged bear a terrible burden because they can’t be real and said that C-Four’s escapades were no different from the early excesses of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, both of whom had been romantically linked with him at one time or another, at least according to the tabloids.
Three only had one son. His daughter, Victoria, had married a civil-rights lawyer from Boston and was now only tolerated at Christmas. The keys to the kingdom would be passed to C-Four.
Father and son sat in leather chairs by a penthouse window in the Regent Beverly Wilshire. A tall Christmas tree sparkled and glowed behind them. Neither of them had decorated the tree and neither cared who had. Three had barely registered that there was a ten-foot tree in the room. C-Four had draped unused condoms on it like tinsel.
“I would prefer you not go,” said Three.
His son waggled the engraved and gold-embossed card. “Are you fucking kidding me, Dad?”
“Watch your language.”
C-Four snorted. “Oh, right, ’cause you don’t want me to spoil my image.”
“No, I just don’t appreciate you talking like you’re from the gutter.”
“Fuck that.”
Three fumed into the amber depths of his Scotch.
“This gig is going to be too cool to miss.” He reached for the return envelope, which had fallen to the floor. He fished a pen from his pocket, scrawled a brief note, stuffed the card into the envelope, and licked the glue. When he was done, he held it up between fore and index fingers. “You should be happy they even invited me.”
“If I had known about it in time I would have made sure you weren’t invited. It isn’t appropriate that you should go. No one at Yale remembers any ‘good old times’ with you. At best you were a figure of fun, and I suspect you received that invitation out of pity.”
“Thanks, Pop. Always nice to know that you care.” C-Four shook his head and finished the last of his drink. “Besides, this isn’t one of those über-mysterious Inner Circle things. And it’s not for you and your crew of vultures and thieves. For once it’s my generation instead of the corrupt old farts you hang out with.”
“‘Corrupt’?”
“Sorry, Dad, was that the wrong choice of words? Would ‘insanely manipulative’ be better?”
“Charlie …”
“Don’t even try to call me that. And don’t pretend that I don’t know what you and your Inner Circle Bonesmen are all about. Christ, everyone with Net access knows about the shit you assholes pull.” C-Four held up the sealed return envelope. “Besides … this is going to be the party of the century.”
C-Four got up and walked over to the wet bar, mixed a complicated drink, drank half of it standing there, and then strolled to the Christmas tree.
“In what way?” demanded Three.
C-Four took another pull on the drink. “I doubt you’d …” His voice trailed away and he stood frowning at the tree.
“You doubt I’d what?” snapped his father.
“Hm? What?” C-Four looked at his father with a confused smile on his face. He touched his cheeks. “What?”
“You said you doubted that I’d—what?”
C-Four’s confused smile flickered like a lightbulb whose filament was burning too thin. He shifted uncertainly and Three could see that there was something wrong with his son’s face. It looked weirdly uneven. Knobbed. Almost … blistered. “I …”
“Charlie, what’s wrong?”
His son tore at his collar, exposing his throat. All along his upper chest and neck dozens of red spots were appearing, rising from pinpricks and swelling into boils even as the young man stood swaying.
“Good God!” yelled Three. “What the hell did you do to yourself?” C-Four’s fingers twitched and the glass tumbled from his hands. It hit the thick Persian carpet, bounced, and splashed ice and alcohol over his bare feet. But the young man did not seem to notice. He stood there with a half smile, brows knit, head cocked into an attitude of listening as if he was pondering some great internal mystery. Boils blossomed across his face and on his hands. When he touched the ones on his face, they burst with sprays of red mist.
“Careful, dammit … ,” his father said, starting in his chair. Then he froze in place as C-Four raised dreamy eyes toward him.
“I feel really …”
And blood exploded from his mouth and nose.
“Charlie!”
Charles Osgood Harrington III erupted from his chair as his son’s knees suddenly buckled and he dropped. C-Four landed on his knees and fell sideways against the tree. The whole mass of it—tree, tinsel, ornaments, condoms, and fairy lights—canted sideways with the young man on top of it. Blood geysered from C-Four’s mouth and the boils on his skin burst. His father was thirty feet away and he crossed the room in a shot.
But C-Four was already dead.
Chapter Fifty-two
Starbucks
Southampton, Pennsylvania
December 19, 5:42 P.M. EST
Hanler saw me and stood as I approached. He offered me his hand and gave me a single-pump shake that was dry and rock hard. Marty Hanler was in his mid-sixties, with receding gray hair and a deepwater tan. He had bright blue eyes that looked merry but were as focused as a sniper’s eyes. He peered past me out the window.
“Is that Circe? Wow … she’s really … filled out.”
When he straightened he caught sight of my face. My expression flipped some kind of switch inside his head, because immediately the caveman receded and the writer stepped forward. He cleared his throat and looked at Ghost. “That’s a good-looking shepherd. Is he friendly?”