Jonathan Nasaw - The Boys from Santa Cruz

“I’m okay, really I’m okay,” protested Skip, lowering himself onto the submerged ledge that ran the circumference of the pool and patting the bandage covering the talon marks on his shoulder back into place.

Candace eased down next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of her magnificent young breasts bobbing on the dimly sparkling, silvery gray surface of the water. “I don’t want to interfere in your process,” she said in her soft, imaginary-gum-chewing California accent, “and no offense intended, but you seem to be wired rilly tight for some reason.”

“No, I’m fine. Just a little PTSD flashback, is all.” Posttraumatic stress disorder. “I can handle it.”

“Oh.” Candace nodded knowingly-the Oliver Institute had held a sliding-scale retreat for troubled veterans a year earlier. “Were you in Vietnam? Is that where you hurt your leg? If you don’t mind my asking.”

I’d-I’d rather not talk about the war, if that’s all right with you, Skip wanted to say, haltingly and humbly. Instead he told her the unglamorous truth, then quickly changed the subject. “About this thing tonight,” he said. “You know, I’m not really all that clear on exactly what’s supposed to happen.”

She smiled and touched his forearm lightly. “Lucky you,” she said. “You get to be surprised.”

For his preliminary recon, Asmador changes into a light-colored, green-and-tan camo jumpsuit. Loping silently up the path through the woods, he refuses to be distracted by the way the forest keeps bursting into flames on either side of the path, the fresh young spring leaves dancing with pale green fire, the shafts of sunlight burning like golden pillars.

Eventually the path widens out into a one-lane dirt road with a two-story, wood-and-glass building on the left and a steaming, open-air pool farther ahead on the right. Coming directly toward him down that road is a golf cart with a striped canopy. A cart being driven by-and here an eidetic image of a blown-up fragment of text from the Book flashes through Asmador’s mind as he ducks into the bushes by the side of the path- a huge fat guy wearing a loud sport coat and one of those stupid little checked hats with feathers in the brim.

Fat guy, loud jacket, checked hat-the realization scarcely has time to register before the driver pulls the cart off the road and hurries into the two-story building with the slanting roof.

Asmador can scarcely believe his luck. All three of his surviving enemies-Dr. O, Epstein, Pender-gathered in one place for his convenience. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, he tells himself-surely all hell must have been brought to bear to bring this about. And why? For the same reason he and the husband-and-wife team of bow hunters had converged on that lonely rest stop last night: to ensure that his mission will be carried out.

Asmador’s first inclination is to wait for Pender to emerge again, then put an arrow through him. But crouching in the bushes with his laminated bow drawn and a carbon-shafted arrow nocked, Asmador has time to mull over the probable consequences. Sure, he could kill Pender easily enough from here (unless he misses his shot: there is always that possibility). But that would put the other two on alert, and soon the place would be crawling with cops. Maybe he’d get a second shot from cover at either Epstein or Dr. O during the confusion, maybe he wouldn’t; maybe he’d have time to make it back to the Cherokee, maybe he wouldn’t.

But the powers below haven’t gone to all the trouble of arranging this miraculous confluence in order to have him pick off one victim at the cost of losing the other two, Asmador decides. No, it would be better to-

A scratching, scurrying sound breaks Asmador’s train of thought. He wheels, draws back the bowstring, aims downward at a forty-degree angle, and releases the arrow in one smooth, continuous motion. It sizzles through the shimmering, green-and-gold-dappled air and with a solid thwack! pins something furry, a large chipmunk or a small squirrel, to the base of a tree with mossy gray bark a good ten or fifteen yards away.

Or maybe missing isn’t always a possibility, Asmador tells himself as he approaches the still twitching critter. By the time he reaches it, the light has drained from its eyes. The little body looks like an empty sack of fur-the arrow, rated for a much larger mammal, has done an astounding amount of damage.

“Ouch,” Asmador squeaks aloud, as if speaking for the tiny creature-for him, that’s about as close to empathy as it gets.

After dropping off Skip, Pender continued on to the Center and parked the cart where he’d found it. He hopped down and buttoned his sport coat to cover his shoulder holster before entering.

The dining hall was cool and dim; the paneled walls and varnished trestle tables gave off a buttery, honey-brown glow. “Anybody home?” called Pender.

“Back here in the kitchen.”

The crew-cut, bathrobe-clad man Pender had passed in the doorway earlier was standing with his back to the room, washing a bunch of dusky red grapes in the big industrial sink. “Hi. Where’s Dr. Oliver?”

“In his cabin. Why?”

“I, uh, I just wanted to ask him a few questions about tonight’s ceremony.”

Leaving the grapes in a colander to drain, Steve dried his hands on a dish towel, then turned and extended his hand to Pender. “You’re Ed, right?”

“Right as rain.”

They shook hands. Stahl, who stood a sturdy-looking five-ten, with a weathered complexion that accentuated the arctic blue of his eyes, had a firm grip, but his hand was lost in Pender’s huge paw. “I’m Steve. I can answer any questions you may have.”

“Okay, sure,” said Pender. “How about a quick summary of what’s going to go down tonight?”

“We’re going to meet upstairs at five o’clock. O’s going to introduce you to everybody, then lead a breathing exercise. After that, we’ll hike up into the hills, to a clearing known as the Omphalos, where O will lead everybody in a Bodhisattva vow. Then comes the, uh, sacrament, then everybody chants for a while, then we head up to the bluff to watch the sunset. Then more chanting and meditation, and around ten o’clock we come back here and usually everybody dances or meditates or whatever until dawn.”

Pender had not missed the quick sideways flicker of Stahl’s eyes or the hesitation that preceded the word sacrament. “Tell me more about this sacrament,” he prompted. “What exactly does it involve?”

“A single grape, a crouton, and a drink of springwater,” said Stahl, without making eye contact.

Is he that bad a liar, Pender wondered, or is he trying to give me a heads-up here? “I see. And of those three items, which one is spiked?”

Stahl’s frosty eyes narrowed and his thin lips tightened. Then he sighed an unmistakable I-guess-you-got-me sigh. “Everybody else knows about it, so I guess there’s no reason you shouldn’t. But just to cover my ass, let’s make it a hypothetical, okay?”

“That’ll work.”

“Okay, let’s say there was a group of people doing a ceremony that involved taking a substance that might not be technically legal but in the proper setting, under the proper guidance, would help them reach a higher state of consciousness-you know, kind of open the doors of perception, as Huxley put it. Are you with me so far?”

Pender nodded-he could always ask Skip who this Huxley was, if it turned out to be important.

“Excellent. Now let’s say maybe one person was nervous about the substance-taking part of it, or just didn’t feel like he or she was ready for that. Still with me?”