«Certifiable!» screamed the young brave of the Wopotamis as he fled due west.
At that moment, accompanied by a primordial roar of defiance, a tall figure strode out of the tepee, the flap whipping up and sticking to the exterior wall of animal hides. This giant of a man, gloriously resplendent in full, flowing Indian headdress and beaded buckskins, all signifying his highest tribal office, squinted in the sunlight as he shoved a mutilated cigar into his mouth and began chewing on it furiously. His bronzed, leather-lined face and narrowed eyes betrayed an expression of consummate frustration—also perhaps a degree of fear.
«Goddamn!» swore MacKenzie Hawkins to himself. «I never thought I’d ever have to do this.» The Hawk reached inside his painted buckskin doublet with the beaded yellow bolts of lightning across the chest and pulled out a cellular telephone. «Boston area information? I want the number of the Devereaux residence, first name Sam—»
5
Samuel Lansing Devereaux drove cautiously on the Waltham-Weston road at the height of the Friday evening rush hour exodus from Boston. As usual, he drove carefully, as though he were maneuvering a tricycle through a battlefield of opposing tanks closing in for their thunderous kills, but tonight was worse than usual. It was not the traffic; that was maddeningly standard. It was the pulsating pain in his eyes along with the pounding in his chest and the movable vacuum in his stomach, all the result of an acute seizure of depression. He found it almost impossible to keep his mind on the erratic rhythms of the surrounding vehicles, but forced himself to concentrate on those nearest him, hoping to heaven he stopped short of a collision. He kept the window open, his hand waving continuously until a truck swerved so close that he touched its sideview mirror; he shrieked and instinctively grabbed it, thinking for a moment he was watching his arm disappear over his hood.
There was nothing else for it, or, as the great French playwright phrased it—he could not actually remember the man’s name or the exact phrase in French, but he knew the words said it all. Oh, Christ, he had to get home to his lair and let the music swell and the memories revive until the crisis passed!… Anouilh, that was the goddamned playwright’s name—and the phrase … On ne pouvait plus que crier—hell, it sounded better in English than in the lousy French he had trouble recalling: There was nothing left but to scream, that was it! Actually, it was pretty stupid, thought Sam. So he screamed and turned north into the Weston exit, only minimally aware of those drivers and passengers nearest his car who stared at him through their windows as if watching an act of sodomy between man and beast. The prolonged scream had to go; it was replaced by a wide grin worthy of Alfred E. Neuman as Devereaux pressed the accelerator and three cars crashed behind him.
It had all started within minutes after he left the office following an afternoon conference with a gaggle of related corporate executives whose single-family company was in deep shit if they did not take his advice. The problem was not in their criminality, it was in their stupidity, which could not be pried away from their stubbornness until Sam had made it clear that if they did not follow his instructions, they could all look for different representation, and he would visit each of them in prison, but only on a social basis. Although somewhat obscure, the law did make it clear that grandfathers and grandmothers could not place their grandchildren—especially those between the ages of six months and twelve years—on the company’s board of directors at salaries exceeding seven figures. He had weathered the onslaught of Irish indignation, accepted the eventuality of eternal damnation for shorting the bloodlines of the clan of Dongallen, and fled to his favorite bar two blocks from the firm of Aaron Pinkus Associates.
«Ahh, Sammy boyo,» the owner-barkeep had said as Devereaux slumped on the stool farthest from the entrance. «It’s been a rough day, it has, I can see it. I always know when one or two liquid remedies may lead to a couple more—you sit down at this end of the bar.»
«Do me a favor, O’Toole, and soften the brogue. I’ve spent damn near three hours with your crowd.»
«Oh, they’re the worst, Sam, let me tell you! Especially the two-toilet variety, who are the only ones who can afford you fellas. Here, it’s early, so let me pour you the usual and turn on the tellyvision and you take your mind off business… There’s no Sox game this afternoon, so I’ll turn on the all-day news.»
«Thanks, Tooley.» Devereaux had accepted his drink with a grateful nod as the solicitous owner turned on the cable news network, which was apparently in the middle of a human-interest segment, in this case depicting the good works of a supposedly obscure individual.
«… a woman whose selfless charity and kindness keeps her forever young, a face the angels kiss with the gift of youth and clear-eyed perseverance,» proclaimed the sonorous voice as the camera zoomed in on a white-habited nun dispensing gifts in a children’s hospital located in some war-torn Third World country. «Sister Anne the Benevolent, they call her,» continued the vowel-rolling announcer, «but that’s all the world knows about her … or will ever know from her own lips, we are told. What her true name is or where she came from remains a mystery, a mystery wrapped in an enigma perhaps filled with unendurable pain and sacrifice—»
«Mystery, my ass!» Samuel Lansing Devereaux had screamed, leaping and falling off the barstool as he roared at the television screen. «And the only unendurable pain is mine, you bitch!»
«Sammy, Sammy!» yelled Gavin O’Toole, racing down the length of the mahogany, waving his arms in a sincere effort to quiet his friend and customer. «Shut the fuck up! The woman’s a goddamned saint, and my goddamned clientele ain’t exactly all Protestant, do you get my goddamned message?» O’Toole had lowered his voice while pulling Devereaux over the bar—then he glanced around. «Jesus, a few of my daytime regulars are takin’ exception to your words, Sammy! Don’t worry, Hogan can handle them. Sit down and shut up!»
«Tooley, you don’t understand!» cried the fine Boston lawyer, close to weeping. «She’s the enduring love of my life on earth—»
«That’s better, that’s much better,» whispered O’Toole. «Keep it up.»
«You see, she was a hooker and I saved her!»
«Don’t keep it up.»
«She ran off with Uncle Zio! Our Uncle Zio—he corrupted her!»
«Uncle who? What the hell are you talkin’ about, boyo?»
«Actually, he was the Pope, and he messed up her head and he took her back to Rome, to the Vatican—»
«Hogan! Get over the wood and hold back the bastards!… Come on, Sammy, you’re leavin’ through the kitchen, the front door you’d never make!»
That innocent episode had brought on his acute depression, thought Devereaux, as he sped north on the less-traveled road to Weston. Couldn’t the unknowing «world» understand that the «mystery» was not unknown to one lovesick, adoring Sam-the-lawyer type, who had nurtured Anne-the-many-times-married-hooker from Detroit back into self-respect, only to have her slam the gates shut on their marriage to follow in the steps of crazy Zio?… Well, Uncle Zio hadn’t actually been crazy, he was only misguided where the life of Samuel-my-son-the-fine-attorney was concerned. He was also Pope Francesco I, the most beloved Pope of the twentieth century who had permitted his own kidnapping on Rome’s Via Appia Antica because he had been told he was dying, and it was better that his identical cousin, one Guido Frescobaldi from LaScala Minuscolo, be put on Saint Peter’s throne and take radio instructions from the true Pontiff somewhere in the Alps. It all had worked! For a while. Mac Hawkins and Zio for weeks on end would go up to the ramparts of Zermatt’s Château Machenfeld and over the shortwave radio explain to the less than bright, tone-deaf Frescobaldi what to do next in the cause of the Holy See.