R.Scott Bakker - Disciple of the dog

Amanda Bonjour had an important decision to make. I may have known that I was investigating a murder all along, but as far as she was concerned, I was hired to find a missing person. That missing person- or parts of her, anyway-had just turned up dead. Amanda had to decide whether she wanted to keep me or to cut me loose. Bringing up money was just a way to calm her down so that she could make that decision rationally, responsibly. I was charging her my highest rate, after all.

And it worked. So fuck you.

Her voice seemed to waver from a wire. “Um”-a viscous swallow- “c-could you tell me what you know?”

And you know what? I told her pretty much everything I’ve told you-everything short of her husband, her daughter, the basement, and the bottle of bourbon. At some point the memory of her tying her shoe in my office entrance just rose and stuck in my mind’s eye, until it seemed that was who I was talking to, Mandy silently crying while tying her shoe. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t lie to that image as I couldn’t hurt it… couldn’t cheapen or demean.

Whatever dignity truth does possess comes from tragedy. It’s all bullshit otherwise, without pain to do the sorting.

She wasn’t worried about money, she said. She just wanted to know what had happened to her daughter. She understood if I wanted to fold my hand and clear out of town-she didn’t want me to do anything that could endanger my future-but until then, she wanted me to keep asking questions.

“And Disciple?”

“Yeah…”

“I wa-want you… want you to… If you find whoever did it, I mean… could- “

“Don’t worry about that, Amanda.”

She was crying again-this time in fury. “Call me Mandy,” she said.

Afterward I just sat there in the wallpaper silence, just… absorbing emptiness, it seemed. I honestly didn’t have a fucking clue as to what I should do next. Put the thumbscrews to Baars about the Thirds? Find out more about Nill’s biker cronies, maybe pay them a visit? Hit all the residences around Nashron to see if anyone had seen anything suspicious? Go to the police station, check on Nolen, reintroduce myself to Deputy Chief Hamilton, and lay the groundwork for the inevitable ass-kissing to come?

Instead, I scampered across the street so that I could get my dope back from the ceiling in the Odd-Jobs restaurant. I almost got clipped by a Lexus (where do people get all their fucking money?) scampering back to my room. I sat at the small, cluttered table and rolled a joint while watching TV. I needed perspective, I decided, a wide-angle, psychedelic lens. I surfed through the channels and there it was, as sure as shit…

Dead Jennifer hadn’t simply made the tube, she had made CNN. I just sat there blinking in amazement. Christ, things were moving fast. Especially for a dope-smoking chronic like me.

“I have a story for you here, Soledad-interesting story. In the course of investigating a grisly ritual murder, a Pennsylvania police officer accidentally shoots and kills a homeless man. We’ll be sure to keep you up to date on what promises to be a tragic… and extraordinary… story. “

Nolen. Poor bastard. People always make at least two mistakes in judging the actions of others. The first is confusing what they would do with what someone else should do. The fucking hubris of this is staggering, given that we only have our pinhole perspectives to work with- pinholes we continually confuse with the sky. The second is thinking they actually would do what they think they would. The ugly fact is that we rarely live up to our good intentions, that it’s a combination of wilful blindness and strategic amnesia that lets us continue duping ourselves otherwise. It’s not just that we judge people by the yardstick of ourselves, our lives, but by the yardstick of idealized selves-a self-congratulatory fantasy.

The yardstick you’re using to judge me, in fact.

Oh yeah. Nolen was fucked. The only thing Molly and I could do for him-literally-was keep him company on his tumble down. She would realize this sooner or later. Then she would forgive me…

By around seven or eight at the latest, I figured.

The question was whether she would have time for a quick hummer. I got a little more fried than I expected, though I should have known: the bud I picked had been especially frosty. CNN kept coming back to Ruddick every half an hour or so, displaying an assortment of shots of Jennifer that I recognized from her Facebook page-the ones that made her look particularly wholesome and fuckable, of course. It was kind of fun watching them cobble together a story arc from what few details they possessed. They used every opportunity they could to repeat the words “young,” “attractive,” “severed,” and “cult.” I found myself wondering whether they had a formula for this, or whether they still “went with their gut” when it came to pushing verbal buttons.

Even still, the piling on of inanities got very stale very quick. I tried to imagine having sex with the flat-chested blonde who was anchoring. Ah, yes, Linda. When that didn’t work, I clicked off the tube, stretched out fully clothed across the bed. Closed my eyes.

The Third’s pig roast leapt into the breach-I mean, like, immediately. Hard to believe that it was just yesterday.

“Disciple!” the Reverend called out. “I love your name. “

“My parents were nudists,” I said.

People laughed even though I wasn’t joking.

I lay there, my mind swinging in vulture-slow circles. Usually the memories come at the behest of some kind of suspicion, conscious or unconscious, when I allow them to free-associate. But sometimes emotional ferocity alone seems to drive them. The louder the shout, the more persistent the echo, I suppose.

I was staring across the ceiling, at the gossamer webs in the corners, listening to Nill’s crazed rap session, seeing the spectre of his reddening face, his eyes like clenched teeth. God hates, he was saying, therefore to hate is godly.

“What kind of fucking goof does that?” Molly cried in disbelief. She was a classic “face-tripper,” one of those chicks with no inclination whatsoever to conceal her feelings behind a neutral expression.

“Goof?” Nill spat. “Psycho? What do you think happens when God-the God Almighty-lands in your brain? You think you stay sane? Read your Bible, bitch. All his vessels crack. All of’em?’

“Some apparently more than others. “

“Manners! Manners, Missy! The Good Lord has a way ofteachingthem! “

The looming shadow of Johnny Dinkfingers. The moment of movement and violence. And I saw them without seeing, the faces of the Third congregation tucked in the corners of my attention.

I raised a thumb and forefinger to my eyes, tried to focus my thoughts. I reminded myself of my theory, that Nill, despite his Charlie Manson gaze, was too wedded to his power to be behind Jennifer’s disappearance. That he was being framed…

And then I saw them, or remembered seeing them, which is altogether different. Johnny Dinkfingers and the two characters I had pegged as junkies, bent in counsel about the rickety-rotted picnic table.

A long conversation without jokes, eyes fixed then wandering. Looking down and bored, then matching gazes.

“Okay. I see,” Johnny mouthed.

“Sheesh. Too much,” the older junkie said.

The younger junkie mimed blows, raised his face to boast a black eye.

Caged laughter, a set of sideways glances. An exchange of inaudible words.

Johnny watched. He seemed nervous, twitchy. “Please,” he said. “Give me a fucking break…”

The younger junkie looked at him as if to say, So?

Johnny smiled, then mouthed, “She’s dead.. “

He shrugged and spat. The older junkie turned to me and grinned.