R.Scott Bakker - Disciple of the dog

Did he know something I didn’t?

I glimpsed a guy swearing and laughing, flicking liquid from his fingertips-beer, I realized. The spill had shrink-wrapped his red T around his gut, and I was just about to glance away when he pulled the shirt off in a single fat-armed motion.

A flash of winter-pale skin. I found myself blinking at the black arms of a tattoo swastika flexing across the flab of his gut…

Uh-oh.

The guy mimed a striptease, swinging his shirt, wagging his hips, and slapping his ass to uproarious laughter. Apparently the Holocaust was no big deal around here.

“You gotta-” Molly began.

“Hey!” a voice shouted from our right. It was Tim. “Hey, Disciple!”

“Remember the cheeks,” I muttered to Molly.

“I told you. Fuck that. No way. Besides, what the hell-”

I tuned her out. Tim jogged up to us wearing baggy blue jeans and a vintage Led Zeppelin T-shirt. His face was flushed with something akin to relief. He had been talking about me, I could tell.

I introduced him to Molly, who managed to be pleasant even though she was obviously distracted. Swastikas at church picnics tend to do that, I suppose. She tossed two What-the-hell-Disciple? glances in my direction as I made nice with Tim.

“There,” the skinny young man said with a smile in his voice. “That’s him. Reverend Nill.”

I have this bad habit, a kind of hmmpf habit, where I immediately become skeptical of anyone described in glowing terms. At some level I think I actually wanted Reverend Nill to be an obvious putz, someone who would let me sling an arm around Tim’s shoulders and say, “I hate to break it to you, kid…” But if the swastika had spiked the pork punch, then Reverend Nill was a true-blue mickey. He looked unremarkable enough-you know, in that generic, doughy all-American way. Fit. Short dark hair. But his eyes, fawk. Even from a dozen yards away they fairly sparked Prussian blue. The first thing I literally thought was, Rasputin.

Rasputin. Have you ever seen pictures of that crazy fucker? A look that gropes you. Dead a century and still makes you feel your fly’s undone. Now, we all know how it works in the movies: the guy with the freaky eyes is always guilty. But this wasn’t a movie, and as it so happened, I knew someone else with eyes like that, someone I would have died for had he not died for me first. Sean O’May.

One-hundred-and-sixty-pound frame. Thousand-pound gaze. Give you Alzheimer’s trying to stare him down.

So I didn’t jump to conclusions. I really didn’t.

No, it was actually the chick glaring in ostrich fury at his side that sealed the deal. She was kind of hot, actually, only in a more mature way than Molly. High heels pricked into turf. Spray paint for blue jeans. A rack that would make strange babies cry.

“Who’s the woman next to him?” I asked Tim.

“Uh, his wife, Sheila.”

“Huh,” I said, thinking, Now that’s one Angry Bitch…

“Well,she looks friendly,” Molly muttered.

Gawd, I loved her when she was sarcastic.

Oh ya, I know angry bitches. They’re pretty much my investigative bread and butter: nothing pries open the wallet quite as effectively as vindictiveness. A true, High Holy Angry Bitch would burn down the world just to see you scorched. She would sit beside you in the Burn Victims Unit filing her nails and then, when the nurses weren’t looking, she would start wiping her-what is it called? emery board?-across your blistered skin.

In this instance, the most important thing to know about Angry Bitches is the kind ofmen who find themselves in their evil clutches. You see, typically, Angry Bitches sink their claws into the soft white souls of Nice Guys-you know the type, the kind who are blessedly happy to be relieved of command. A few Hapless Dudes fall into their clutches here and there-you never know where you’re going to bounce on a bad rebound-but otherwise the main victim of the Angry Bitch is not a victim at all… Far from it, in fact.

Sociopaths.

Given my own fears of falling under this category, I’ve actually spent quite some time pondering what it is that brings Angry Bitches and Sociopaths together. And I’ve come to the conclusion that, aside from the rigours of compulsive sexuality, Sociopaths are drawn to Angry Bitches because they, and they alone, can make them feel. I’ve often noticed in the Mexican soap opera I call my romantic life that it’s painfully easy to confuse emotional violence with passion. So it strikes me that if you’re generally passionless, if you belong to that not-as- small-as-you-think minority that has the same emotional response to words like “rape” as to words like “chair,” then an Angry Bitch is bound to stick out in the long string of women you break and humiliate-to seem exceptional, even.

So there it was. I took one look at Reverend Nill’s wife and pretty much instantly realized that Nill was more than just another evangelical, more than just another man whose vicious circles were exceedingly small.

He was a big fat Sociopath.

Which is to say, my new prime suspect.

In the absence of conscience, there’s pretty much always some kind of crime. Nine out of ten Presidents agree. So. Move on over, Baars. A new freak had come to Suspicion Town.

“Um,Disciple…” Molly said, with the blank look of a babe soaking in a bad vibe.

“Thank you, Tim,” I said with an air of gratitude I almost felt. “This is awesome… Can’t you smell it, Molly?” Of course all I could smell was pig shit. Don’t ask me how memories can reek; all I know is that they do. “My mouth’s watering already!”

The kid’s grin fairly bubbled toothpaste, it was so raw and uncut.

Fawk.

“Johnny’s the one,” he explained in a rush. “The one responsible. He’s an old buddy of the Rev’s from seminary. Wait till you try his sauce, man. Positively. Kick. Ass.”

“Who’s he? The biker guy?”

There was actually a group of three What’s-wrong-with-this-picture? types milling around a weather-worn picnic table behind and to the left of the good Reverend. Two looked like junkies, you know, with mean, hooded glares perched in beef-jerky bodies. But it was the guy who imperiously towered over them whom I had asked Tim about: auburn hair to his shoulders, a beard to his chest, and statuesque, a veritable museum exhibit of humanity…

“Everyone calls him Dinkfingers,” Tim laughed, “because of the size of his meathooks.”

Even Molly had to chuckle at that.

“Scary-looking dude,” I said.

“Yeah. Don’t mind that-his looks, I mean. He’s a fucking stand-up guy. Stand. Up.”

And he was also an AB, I realized. A member of the Aryan Brotherhood. I could tell by his tatts, which were somewhat more subtle than Swastika- Gut’s but just as clear. I found myself wondering about Reverend Nill’s “seminary.”

Another strike against the good Reverend. The future tends to resemble the past. Nobody knew this with quite the intimacy that I did. It was my fucking curse in a nutshell.

“Ah… Disciple?” Molly said, nudging me with her elbow this time. “We should-”

“Well? Dutchie, my boy, aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“-don’t you think?” Molly finished.

I strolled across the lumpy grass with Tim to my left and Molly in wary tow.

Introductions were exchanged. Sheila Nill’s smile made her look about as pleasant as a Klingon war cruiser. I almost shouted, Shields up! as I shook her clawed fingers. Reverend Nill folded my hand in two warm palms, positively beamed Christian welcome. Johnny Dinkfingers-that name still cracks me up, fawk-engulfed my little-boy hand in his banana-bunch grip. Smiling was beneath him, apparently.

“Disciple!”Nill exclaimed. “I love your name.”