Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

“Yes,” Milo was saying. “I have some men working on it right now. It will be ready.”

The silver-haired man nodded. When he spoke, his voice was softer than Milo’s, and serious. “These people?” he asked. “The real thing?”

“Oh, yes. Some, anyway.”

“And you can handle them?” The men were turning now, moving back beneath the railing and out of Ike’s sight. “I rely heavily upon Hound,” Milo said. “But don’t worry. I think you’ll find it interesting.” The silver-haired man said something else, but Ike was unable to make it out. He remained at the rail a moment longer and was about to leave it when he saw Milo and Hound once again. The two men were walking back across the stone floor beneath him. Milo walked with his hand at Hound’s back. It was held there in an odd way, as if he were guiding Hound across the floor and through the doorway on the other side, and Ike was struck by the gesture. It was the way a man might put his hand on the back of a child, he thought, or a lover.

Ike stepped quickly away from the railing and entered the doorway at the far end of the balcony. It was dark there and he waited a moment for his eyes to adjust. He did not know what to make of the things he had heard. What he found himself thinking about was that final image of Hound and Milo as they passed through the door, Milo’s hand at Hound’s back. It seemed to connect for him to other things—to those letters he’d once seen scratched into the metal partition of a bathroom in Huntington Beach, to what Michelle had told him on the boat, to Hound’s abstinence at his own parties. And he found himself wondering what Hound would have to say about it. Quite a line of bullshit, no doubt—one more stop perhaps on the road to discovery. Or maybe Ike was wrong, maybe it explained nothing.

There was a window open somewhere. He could feel the damp draft on his face. He could smell the sea and a trace of bougainvillaea. There were several doors along the hall. One stood partially open. Ike went to the door and stopped. He whispered. When there was no answer, he pushed it open and walked inside.

The room was large, empty, and dark, though saved from total darkness by a pair of tall French doors that stood open upon a small balcony. The fog seemed to have lifted a bit and the doors emitted a pale light. He could make out a few pieces of furniture—a bed, dresser, a small nightstand, a pair of large chairs. The scent of the gardens was strong in the room. He was about to leave when he noticed what appeared to be a white dress hung against the blackness of the closet. At first glance he thought that the dress was the one he had seen Michelle in that afternoon. But moving closer, he saw it was not. The style was slightly different. And then he noticed a second dress draped over a chair. This dress was white as well, also similar in style to Michelle’s. He held aside the dress that hung in the closet’s doorway. The small space was filled with women’s clothes—or girls’ clothes, because there was something in the general cut and color of the fabrics that suggested youth. Pushing through them, he was aware of the pulse in his hand, of the coolness of the fabrics against his skin.

From the closet he moved to the dresser. There were some toilet articles on top—brushes, a hand mirror. Opening a drawer, he saw that it was filled with jewelry, with bracelets and ornaments for the hair. He moved them about with his fingers, listening to the soft scraping sounds they made upon the wood, suddenly seeing Milo Trax doing the very same thing, standing in this same spot, searching for some trinket and selecting the ivory combs—they were, judging by what he saw here now, the nicest, the most expensive. It had been that simple. The combs had not been given to Michelle to bait him. Hound Adams was probably not even aware of them and Ike had been right not to catch him in his lie. His hunch at least had bought him some time. And yet there was something in that now which struck him as little more than a cruel joke. He had entered the trap, and he could not believe now that he had not seen it before, had not sensed the evil of this place from the beginning. He had, he supposed, always been too sidetracked by other things. On this particular trip he had thought only of the chance to talk to Michelle, to save her from some dread trip to Mexico. Save her. Jesus. There had been no trips to Mexico for Ellen Tucker. Preston had been right: the kid in the white car had lied. Or, Ike thought, perhaps he had only been wrong. But then it really made no difference now. He had been right on the beach: Ellen had been here and this is what there was. A party at the ranch. And the ranch was the end of the line.

He left the room as he had found it, lit only by the pale light entering through the glass doors. But it felt more like a tomb now, and as he closed the door after him he felt something go out of him, as if some piece of himself had been left there.

He found another set of steps at the far end of the hall, and a door to the outside. He went through it and felt the cool air, damp and heavy on his face. His face, he thought, was very hot, almost feverish, as he moved through a dark garden, around a corner of the house, and into one of the patios where guests were congregating.

A fair-sized group had already arrived. Some had seated themselves in lawn chairs, others on the ground. Ike stood for a moment at the edge of the patio, searching for Michelle, taking in the scene. The ages of the guests appeared mixed, though most looked to be younger than Milo, closer in fact to Hound’s age, and Ike was reminded of the conversation he’d recently overheard—the silver-haired man’s question about control, Milo’s answer that he depended upon Hound.

Many of the people were dressed simply, in Levi jeans, Mexican pullovers, or Levi jackets. Others, however, were decked out more elaborately in a kind of funky evening dress that seemed to Ike to be more costume than anything else. The clothing seemed to have something to do with how the guests were grouped. A circle of those more simply dressed had been formed upon the concrete floor of the patio, and as Ike turned toward them he saw that Hound Adams was there as well, seated at the center of the group, apparently engaged in some conversation, or debate, with a thickly built bald-headed man Ike had not seen before. Ike was too far away to catch anything of what was being said, but he could see both men moving their heads, occasionally gesturing with their hands. The rest of those seated on the ground seemed to be following the conversation with some interest. And though a few of the more elaborately dressed people had come to stand at the edge of the circle, most of the others were scattered about across the garden, forming smaller groups of their own.

Through an open sliding door Ike caught a glimpse of the two men he’d seen earlier, in the entry with Hound and Milo. He could see a bit of light shining off the taller man’s hair. Whether or not Milo was with them he could not say. Music drifted from the house and across the gardens—damp now in the fog, so that where the light struck the leaves of the plants the leaves looked slick and wet. Ike stood for a moment longer, making certain that Michelle was not among the guests, then he stepped backward, away from the edge of concrete and into the shadows.

He was desperate to find her now. He did not want to go back into the house by way of the patio. He did not want to risk another confrontation with either Hound or Milo, as he still did not know what was expected of him. He was beginning to feel rather foolish in the clothes. They were, he decided, a little like those costumes he’d seen some of the guests in. But there was something else about them as well, something that made him feel he had already compromised himself, that he was Milo’s boy.