R.Scott Bakker: Disciple of the dog

Part of the U.S. military’s retirement package.

I passed a bustling Citgo, an abandoned GM dealership, and finally the white frame Church of the Third Resurrection before making it into the town proper.

What a dump, I thought. And I live in fucking Newark. I took a wrong turn at some point, because I somehow found myself in the industrial park peering at all the dead factories. The first was one of those rambling windowless affairs that made me think I was looking at mismatched container boxes from a distance. The second was a stripped skeleton of rust-burned I-beams. I felt vaguely disappointed: I had been hoping for something more crowded, more bricked and rotted-more Dickensian-not pastel cubes in a patchwork of vast industrial lots. Fucking modernity, man. Even our decadence and decline have become generic.

I turned around on some service road, backtracked. The downtown made me feel more at home. Someday someone will eulogize the strip mall, and I for one will shed a real tear. The way I figure it, humans have always lived and worked in aesthetic abominations. The people I saw looked stupid-walking or talking or gazing with an insolence I reflex- ively attributed to generational inbreeding. More urban chauvinism, I know, and the fact that I think everybody looks stupid. I see people the way I imagine animals must see me: nice head of hair, ape-boy, but what the fuck happened to your face?

I found the police department in a building surprising for its size. Later I would learn that in its manufacturing heyday, Ruddick had been three times bigger, population-wise. This little demographic fact would figure largely in what followed, as it so happened.

Nolen was out, of course, so I hunkered down in the vestibule with nothing more than a paunchy desk sergeant to keep me company, the kind of guy who ages watchful, if you know what I mean. Eyes so bulbous it seemed impossible he could ever shut them-entirely. A great look for a cop, actually. He was positively freaking me out, so much so I was actually relieved when my cell twittered to the riff from “Back in Black.”

“Manning,” I said in lieu of a hello.

“Hey, Disciple! This is Albert. Not catching you at a bad time, am I?”

“Naw. Just aimlessly wandering the aisles of Walmart, you know…” I winked at the glaring sergeant.

Albert Fellows was one of my bookworm buddies, a social psychologist over at New York University-one of a number of relationships I had cultivated over the years. I had called him the previous night while researching the Framers online, left a message. Since I only remembered everything people said, I continually sought people who could tell me what I needed to know. In exchange, I would score them a bag of weed here and there. You have no idea just how many academics are hard up for weed. And because they live lives so tragically insulated from crime, they tend to be almost comedically grateful.

Apparently Albert had never heard of the Framers, though he was positively giddy about the opportunity to learn more about them. He said he just wanted me to know that he was “on the case,” but I could tell he had really called out of curiosity-that he just had to know what I was up to this particular lap around the track. So I filled him in-with a good dose of my own commentary.

“Come on, Albert. Five billion years? Could something like that be for real?” I winked at the cop once more, and finally the fucker looked away. “I mean, who would fall for that kind of shit?”

A long cellphone ha-ha. “Look, Diss. The assumption is that there’s gotta be something wrong with cult members. You know. Stupid.. Weak-minded.. What have you. But the fact is, they tend to be better educated and have higher IQs than the general population-”

“Whatever,” I interrupted. “You still gotta be crazy to believe what these guy-”

“And why’s that? There’s bloody good reason why psychology and psychiary have such a hard time defining things like ‘irrational beliefs.’ Outside the realm ofpractical common sense, pretty much all human beliefis irrational. All of it! What we believe typically comes down to how the issue is framed and who gets to us first. ”

I already knew this in my peculiar way. One of the big bonuses of diehard cynicism is the ability to take heart in bad news.

“We believe things willy-nilly,” I said.

“Unto death, my friend. Unto death. ”

I hung up thinking about Dead Jennifer’s photo in my wallet. I found myself blinking at the desk sergeant, who of course had resumed his slack-faced reverie from behind the desk, staring at me like I was a stain in the wallpaper. I couldn’t resist.

“What? You run out of hay or oats or something?”

“Huh?”

That was when Chief Caleb Nolen came striding in. Rule one of private investigating is to kiss official ass-you know, Bugs Bunny-style: muh-muh-muh-muh- muh!-unless the official happens to be female, in which case you lick boots. Contrary to what you may believe, cops generally like private investigators. We make them feel superior, for one, the way I imagine a rock star feels talking to a roadie-as the “be” to their “wanna.” And some of us-especially the handsome, edgy ones like me-make them feel like they’re in a movie, which means they choose their roles accordingly. Who would you rather be in a flick, the wry veteran or the obstructionist asshole? If there’s one thing Hollywood is good at, it’s giving us roles to play. Everyone loves to pretend they’re in a movie, no matter where you go in the world. Good thing, too. If it wasn’t movies, then it would be some psychotic legend from the Middle Ages-or worse yet, Scripture.

Even so, Nolen had this sour look on his face as I took the seat opposite his desk, as if I were the druggie cousin who kept hitting Grandma up for money. That was when I realized I was wearing my I WOULD RATHER BE MASTURBATING T-shirt.

Fawk.

I glanced at my chest then looked up at him helplessly. “Um… Shit…”

No wonder the desk sergeant couldn’t stop staring. When you remember as much as I do, you end up overlooking more than a few crucial details.

“Pretty funny,” Nolen said, grinning. “Actually… ”

A wave of relief washed over me. Nolen was good people, I realized. Anyone who would rather be masturbating is good people. Self-reliance is what makes this country great.

First thing I thought when seeing Nolen was that he was the kind of cop you argued traffic tickets with-which made his position as chief something of a mystery. He was fit in a gay, long-distance-runner kind of way, with hair just shaggy enough to suggest that he liked to rock out with his iPod. He had one of those soft faces where all the features seem to crowd inward-eyes, nose, and mouth packed into a space no larger than my palm-huddling as if trying to conserve expressive warmth or something. He had to be at least thirty-five, and yet his blue eyes made him seem younger, much younger. Adolescent jumpy. Adolescent eager.

Nolen began by telling me how much he liked the Bonjours, and how “this horrible Jennifer deal” had “rocked him like nobody’s business.”

“You try to avoid it,” he said, “but you do this job long enough and you… you start sorting people, you know?”

I nodded because it seemed expected. Usually-for men anyway- phrases like “you know” are a kind of verbal bondo, just something they say. They really don’t give a fuck if you know or not. But this guy said it as if he meant it.

“My shrink,” Nolen continued, “she says it’s a kind of reflex mechanism, a thing people do to protect themselves. Terms like, er, you know, ‘decent folk,’ ah, ‘low-lifes,’ stuff like that…”

Fawk. A cop who spoke openly about his shrink to a complete stranger… The most I could do was lean back and nod. I’m not easily astonished, trust me.