Dean Koontz - Watchers

Travis made no reference to what had happened and pretended to have forgotten the whole affair. But when he had the dog’s attention, and when Nora was not looking, he mouthed threats at the mutt: No more apple tarts. Choke chain. Muzzle. Straight to the dog pound.

Einstein took every threat with great equanimity, either grinning or yawning or blowing air out his nostrils.

Early Sunday evening, Vince Nasco paid a visit to Johnny “The Wire” Santini. Johnny was called “The Wire” for several reasons, not least of which was that he was tall and lean and taut, and he looked as if he was constructed of knotted wires in various gauges. He also had frizzy hair the shade of copper. He had made his bones at the tender age of fifteen, when to please his uncle, Religio Fustino, don of one of New York’s Five Families, Johnny had taken it upon himself to strangle a freelance shit-and-coke dealer who was operating in the Bronx without the permission of the Family. Johnny used a length of piano wire for the job. This display of initiative and dedication to the principles of the Family had filled Don Religio with pride and love, and he had wept for only the second time in his life, promising his nephew the eternal respect of the Family and a well-paid position in the business.

Now Johnny The Wire was thirty-five and lived in a million-dollar beach house in San Clemente. The ten rooms and four baths had been remade by an interior designer commissioned to create an authentic — and expensive— private Art Deco retreat from the modern world. Everything was in shades of black, silver, and deep blue, with accents of turquoise and peach. Johnny had told Vince that he liked Art Deco because it reminded him of the Roaring Twenties, and he liked the twenties because that was the romantic era of legendary gangsters.

To Johnny The Wire, crime was not just a means to make money, not simply a way to rebel against the constraints of civilized society, and not only a genetic compulsion, but it was also — and primarily — a magnificent romantic tradition. He saw himself as a brother of every eye-patched hook-handed pirate who ever sailed in search of plunder, of every highwayman who had robbed a mail coach, of every safecracker and kidnapper and embezzler and thug in all the ages of criminal endeavor. He was, he insisted, mystical kin to Jesse James, Dillinger, Al Capone, the Dalton boys, Lucky Luciano, and legions of others, and Johnny loved them all, these legendary brothers in blood and theft.

Greeting Vince at the front door, Johnny said, “Come in, come in, big guy. Good to see you again.”

They hugged. Vince didn’t like hugging, but he had worked for Johnny’s Uncle Religio when he’d lived back in New York, and he still did a West Coast job for the Fustino Family now and then, so he and Johnny went back a long way, long enough that a hug was required.

“You’re looking good,” Johnny said. “Taking care of yourself, I see. Still mean as a snake?”

“A rattlesnake,” Vince said, a little embarrassed to be saying such a stupid thing, but he knew it was the kind of outlaw crap that Johnny liked to hear.

“Hadn’t seen you in so long I thought maybe the cops busted your ass.”

“I’ll never do time,” Vince said, meaning that he knew prison was not part of his destiny.

Johnny took it to mean that Vince would go down shooting rather than submit to the law, and he scowled and nodded approval. “They ever get you in a corner, blow away as many of ‘em as you can before they take you out. That’s the only clean way to go down.”

Johnny The Wire was an astonishingly ugly man, which probably explained his need to feel that he was a part of a great romantic tradition. Over the years Vince had noticed that the better-looking hoods never glamorized what they did. They killed in cold blood because they liked killing or found it necessary, and they stole and embezzled and extorted because they wanted easy money, and that was the end of it: no justifications, no self-glorification, which was the way it ought to be. But those with faces that appeared to have been crudely molded from concrete, those who resembled Quasimodo on a bad day — well, many of them tried to compensate for their unfortunate looks by casting themselves as Jimmy Cagney in Public Enemy.

Johnny was wearing a black jumpsuit, black sneakers. He always wore black, probably because he thought it made him look sinister instead of just ugly.

From the foyer, Vince followed Johnny into the living room, where the furniture was upholstered in black fabric and the end tables were finished in glossy black lacquer. There were ormolu table lamps by Ranc, large silver-dusted Deco vases by Daum, a pair of antique chairs by Jacques Ruhlmann. Vince knew the history of these things only because, on previous visits, Johnny The Wire had stepped out of his tough-guy persona long enough to babble about his period treasures.

A good-looking blonde was reclining on a silver-and-black chaise longue, reading a magazine. No older than twenty, she was almost embarrassingly ripe. Her silver-blond hair was cut short, in a pageboy. She was wearing Chinese-red silk lounging pajamas that clung to the contours of her full breasts, and when she glanced up and pouted at Vince, she seemed to be trying to look like Jean Harlow.

“This is Samantha,” Johnny The Wire said. To Samantha, he said, “Toots, this here is a made man that nobody messes with, a legend in his own time.”

Vince felt like a jackass.

“What’s a ‘made man’?” the blonde asked in a high-pitched voice she’d no doubt copied from the old movie star Judy Holliday.

Standing beside the longue, cupping one of the blonde’s breasts and fondling it through the silk pajamas, Johnny said, “She doesn’t know the lingo, Vince. She’s not of the fratellanza. She’s a valley girl, new to the life, unaware of our customs.”

“He means I’m no greaseball guinea,” Samantha said sourly.

Johnny slapped her so hard that he nearly knocked her off the chaise longue. “You watch your mouth, bitch.”

She put a hand to her face, and tears shimmered in her eyes, and in a little-girl voice, she said, “I’m sorry, Johnny.”

“Stupid bitch,” he muttered.

“I don’t know what gets into me,” she said. “You’re good to me, Johnny, and I hate myself when I act like that.”

To Vince, it appeared to be a rehearsed scene, but he supposed that was just because they’d been through it so many times before, both privately and publicly. From the shine in Samantha’s eyes, Vince could tell she enjoyed being slapped around; she smart-mouthed Johnny just so he’d hit her. Johnny clearly liked slapping her, too.

Vince was disgusted.

Johnny The Wire called her a “bitch” again, then led Vince out of the living room and into the big study, closing the door behind them. He winked and said, “She’s a little uppity, that one, but she can just about suck your brains out through your cock.”

Half-sickened by Johnny Santini’s sleaziness, Vince refused to be drawn into such a conversation. Instead, he withdrew an envelope from his jacket pocket. “I need information.”

Johnny took the envelope, looked inside, thumbed casually through the wad of hundred-dollar bills, and said, “What you want, you got.”

The study was the only room in the house untouched by Art Deco. It was strictly high-tech. Sturdy metal tables were lined up along three walls, and eight computers stood on them, different makes and models. Every computer had its own phone line and modem, and every display screen was aglow. On some screens, programs were running; data flickered across them or scrolled from top to bottom. Drapes were drawn over the windows, and the two flexible-neck work lamps were hooded to prevent glare on the monitors, so the predominant light was electronic-green, which gave Vince a peculiar feeling of being under the surface of the sea. Three laser printers were producing hard copies with only vague whispering sounds that for some reason brought to mind images of fish swimming through ocean-floor vegetation.