Waiting for Mister Cool Page 3

  “Okay, I guess you really are into movies. And you really are old if you know that kind of shit.”

  “Look who’s talking,” said Lee, with more than a hint of impatience.

  “Me, I just picked it up buying my old man videos of movies he’d grown up watching on TV or something, for when I had to give something for holidays and birthdays and shit. Kind of a cheap, no-brainer gift. And easier than figuring out that ‘Bobettes’ shit.”

  “So I pass the Mister Cool movie test?” Max asked. “There’s no connection between us, by the way. I just notice things. About you. Cal, here. This set-up. Does the job entail getting all these men killed?”

  Morris grunted, put his hands on his hips, checked his boots. When he looked up, he asked, “So how do you like this part of the country?”

  “There’s something to like?” Lee answered.

  “Never seen anything like it,” Max said, so truthful the Beast shuddered in his belly.

  “Doesn’t look like much, now, of course, in the dark. Even in daylight. That circle of houses that form the perimeter of our target were cottages built around the original resort hotel some bright entrepreneur decided to put up over a hundred years ago. The main house, around where the Ferris wheel is now, burned down during construction, and only the cottages survived.”

  “They don’t look like cottages to me,” Max said.

  “Place was abandoned for a while.” Morris continued. “Squatters settled in, moved on. In the thirties, circuses came here to die. The place became a retirement colony for broke and busted carny acts. You can still see the bones of elephants and jungle cats in the graveyard, next to their handlers’ tombstones. They built an amusement park with what they had, a kind of Luna Park of the backwoods, thinking people might come out to visit. Got their wheel, had a saloon and playhouse, even a race track around the outside of these cottages, along where we’re camped. Place wasn’t any more settled back then than it is now, and between the Dust Bowl and the Depression, there wasn’t much of a tourist industry, so you can imagine what happened. The place is kind of interesting, but I wouldn’t recommend taking in the sights there, just yet.”

  “Anybody live in those little houses now?” Lee asked.

  “No.”

  “Then why are the lights on?”

  Morris shrugged his shoulders, nodded once to Max. “You’ll like this one. This movie producer came along, hired what was left of the carnies and had them put up a studio out here. Rebuilt the cottages, put in electricity, plumbing, sewage. Heard they actually put a few reels in the can before they went bust. Just goes to show you have to be careful with movie money, Mister Cool. Anyway, the government came along during the second World War and set up a secret lab. You know, Manhattan Project stuff. They used some of the old basements and tunnels from the resort, and what the carnival and movie people added. Lasted quite a while, too, what with the Russians and Chinese messing around in the same fields.”

  “What fields would that be?” Lee asked.

  Max wished he hadn’t. He wanted to get on to the job. The unanswered questions mixed in with the lies were only aggravating the Beast.

  “Who the fuck knows? Quantum physics. Mass hypnosis and hysteria. Mind games and science experiments to mess with people’s realities. Psychic crap. You hear about this weird kind of shit that doesn’t make sense all the time, and in the end, who cares? Nothing came out of it. It was all a waste of money, typical government bullshit. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be standing here, would we?” Morris stared at Max, expectantly.

  “Ain’t it the truth,” Lee agreed, and making a point not to look to Max.

  Max suddenly wanted a closer look at Morris maps and pictures.

  “Morris,” Cal said, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other, “are we running any more operations tonight?”

  “No. Max and I need to talk, and I don’t think our friends across the way are feeling frisky tonight after their run-in with us on the highway. Send the techs home. Tighten up the perimeter. And keep an eye on those girls. We don’t want anything unfortunate to happen.”

  “Right,” Cal said, and quickly left.

  “Yeah, you keep an eye out on those girls,” Lee deadpanned.

  “But get everybody back here bright and early tomorrow morning.” He looked to Max and said, “Maybe we’ll make our move then.”

  “I feel so lonely,” said Lee.

  “Nobody missed the base when it closed,” Morris continued, packing the photographs and diagrams in a steel case. “You know, the Berlin Wall and all of that. The military never hired locals, and they kept to themselves. Shipped guys on leave out of the area just so they wouldn’t get asked stupid questions. Wasn’t that many of them, anyway. Other folks moved in when the place was abandoned. There were rumors of drug runners, mob types hiding out, real comic book stuff. Right now we got a nest of pervs up in there. By the way, you boys ate? Want some coffee?”

  “I’m more interested in where we’re going to bed down,” Lee said. “I don’t suppose there’s a motel nearby.”

  “That’s where the boys are heading. We rented out a whole place up the road. These guys, you know, they’re not really used to roughing it, anymore. A lot of them were never the physical type. Military wanted them for their brains. Lucky they made it out of Boot Camp. We pulled some grunts who were stationed here who retired to police or security work, but the rest were running other aspects of this operation and then went into computers and such. They got the nice cars. Of course right now, the way things are heating up with the pervs, everybody has to carry a weapon, which is making our techies kind of nervous and why we had to pull you into to help handle things.” Car engines started up as men called out to each other outside. Someone shut off the music. “I’m figuring a pair of tough guys like you wouldn’t mind a night out under a thunderstorm. Just like old times, right?”

  “So what exactly are you doing here?” Max asked, watching Morris slide the lock box under the table, then stand and pace the few steps back and forth in the small space.

  The Beast shadowed his thoughts inside the cage that was Max, cramped, restless. Dangerous. Its voice was the sound of engines gunning outside. The odor of Morris’s testosterone building in the close quarters, adding to the fog of hormones from all the other men in the vicinity, nicked at Max’s seething rage. He promised himself and the Beast a private reconnaissance when the audience was over.

  Morris pulled up, crossed his arms over his chest. “You boys are really pushing, aren’t you?”

  “We’re men of the world,” Lee said. “Sometimes it’s just good to see the shit before you actually step into it.”

  “No shit, here,” Morris said. He swelled with pride. Only half-serious, he asked, “At least on my end. You guys wouldn’t be part of some kind of government sting operation, would you?”

  Lee’s laughter burst out like flood waters through a broken dike, and Max coughed over his smile.

  The Beast strained to puncture Morris’s self-satisfaction, while Max admired Lee’s subtle playing with the man’s ego to draw him out. He found the Beast’s methods more entertaining, but Lee’s approach would tell them the game they’d be playing.

  “I’d heard about some strange things going on up here,” Morris said, both tense and eager. His gaze shifted restlessly from Max to Lee, corners of the room, and places Max couldn’t see. “You know how it is when you’re waiting and waiting on an op and you can’t fire off rounds yet, so you spray belts of words, instead? One guy’s crawling all over the insides of his head talking about what he’s seen someplace no one’s ever heard of, and later you hear that place again popping out of somebody else’s stoned-out conversation like weeds, and you begin to wonder who should be taking the drugs. Most guys just laugh that shit off. Others get spooked. Me, I’m curious. I followed up. I’ve got my own contacts in military and corporate networks. It wasn’t easy, but I found out the upper echelon got nervous about what was going on here. The blac
k ops budget pipe was wide open when everyone was afraid the Soviets were looking into the same kinds of things, but when they self-destructed, the pipe broke. Too many people didn’t want to mess with what was coming out of here.”

  “What, this is where they moved the Area 51 alien to?” Lee said. He choked back another round of laughter.

  “Did my research,” Morris said, tapping the steel case with his foot. “Scouted the place. Found out all I needed to know. More. Much more.” Morris’s eyes widened slightly, and he shuddered.

  He licked his lips, and Max wasn’t sure if he was trying to cover up a bit of a drool.

  “There’s real potential for the place,” Morris said, settling down, backing away, turning on his heels. The vehicles were driving off, at last, letting the country quiet seep into their company, where it could pick up his words and let them drift through the air like mist, obscuring their own truth. “I’m aiming to put down serious roots. A few of the men are even planning to move their families out here. This is the first time the ones who were stationed here actually got a chance to check out the neighborhood.”

  “What neighborhood?” Lee asked.

  “Some people like being left alone. And they also like being on the ground floor of something brand new, like those fellas over at Microsoft, know what I mean? Of course, you have to clear out the riff raff. The pervs were here when I checked the place out, trucking all kinds of kids in and out, finding their own uses for the facilities. Me and a few of the boys tried to put the heat on them, but even more of them showed up, and they brought more guns.”

  “Why don’t you just let the law handle them?” Lee asked.

  Morris chuckled to himself, but Max understood Lee was only probing for how bad the situation might be. “Hell, you’ve got to understand, there are always folks who know a good opportunity when they see one. Especially when there aren’t that many to begin with. You’ve seen this county. Let’s just say one or two public officials might have gotten paid off to look the other way before I got here, when the pervs were so quiet you hardly knew they were there and nobody wanted to look at what they were doing.”

  “Everybody’s got secrets,” Lee said.

  “Of course they do. But once I got my team together and gave a few demonstrations on how things could be different, a lot of the locals came over to my view of things. Suddenly, the stakes were much bigger than just surviving off of a few pedophiles who weren’t taking any kids anybody knew, just bad ones from the city, or strays from immigrant litters who were going to steal our jobs, anyway, and they were actually helping the those kids, too, adopting them and keeping them alive and healthy in an old army base nobody used, anymore. I gave them a look at a bigger picture. Much bigger. And then all the right people got outraged over the terrible things going on in their back yard and it was time to set things right.”

  “It’s a beautiful thing when folks let secrets go and embrace the traditional values that made –”

  “Shut up,” Max told Lee. At least he recognized part of the taint in the air. The Beast slithered through the strands of Morris’s words running through Max’s mind. So far, he had no judgments to make, though he was uneasy about the twins, and what they might do running loose. There was only so much he could clean up.

  Morris went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Now everybody wanted to take care of this problem quick as possible, without the fuss of trials and lawyers and media coverage. We’ve got the future to think about, the area’s good name and all. Of course, the pervs knew we couldn’t go public with accusations, or call in the FBI and risk a Waco with child hostages, of all things, and figured they could stall for time to call in favors from people higher up, or maybe just blackmail them for protection. You’d be surprised how deep corruption runs through the way things work.”

  Max grunted.

  “But we figured we had what it took to take care of business, especially with the right kind of help. That’s why you’re here. After this is over, we’ll get to serious work, and when we’re done, people will be coming from the other side of the world for a taste of what we’re offering.”

  “What is it do you think you’ll turn this wilderness ruin into?” asked Lee.

  Max was content Lee hadn’t bothered asking what would happen to the children. If the twins had been around to hear Morris, the killing would have already started.

  “A business opportunity. A kind of tech hot house designed to reprogram the mind.”

  Morris shuffled his feet.

  Lee stared at the tent’s inner entry flap, as if expecting someone to rescue him from the conversation. “Really?” he said.

  “It’s about looking at the world differently,” Morris said, low but steady. “About seeing how it really is. Changing the way of things right at the root, between the ears, behind the eyes. Isn’t it time for some fresh blood?”

  “People tend to say new blood,” Lee said. “Is there a reason you chose ‘fresh’?”

  More information locked into place in the pattern that had flashed through Max’s mind. The Beast batted the thought around, tore at it with its unreason, but Max salvaged the instinctual insight. “You’re starting a religion,” he said.

  Lee scowled and shook his head.

  Morris raised an eyebrow. “Do you have faith, Max?”

  “I carry my faith inside me all of the time.”

  Morris grabbed Max by the elbow and led him outside. Thunder boomed from nearby hills. The last of the vehicles heading for the local motel was fading out of earshot. The guards had closed ranks around the remaining vehicles and the tents.

  “This land’s been sinned on,” Morris said, kicking at dirt. “And Lord knows I’m a sinner. But salvation’s just a state of mind, do you know that? If you plant the thought in your head that you can serve a higher power, that your will doesn’t belong to you but to something else, that you can make things right in the world if you just give yourself over to a higher purpose, salvation and forgiveness will come. Did you know that?”

  “No,” Max said.

  “Guess you never learned that much out of any of your movies.”

  “Hey, we never miss The Ten Commandments or Ben Hur,” said Lee.

  “There’s a bunch of sinners on the other side of this spread. They’re hiding things over there. Terrible things. Even worse than the kiddie stuff. They’ve got a taste of what this place can be, and they’re using its power for their own sick, malignant purpose. They know enough to play their little games and intimidate the uninitiated. But I’ve got the experts. We’re going to set those poor souls free. Purify the land. And then we’ll build a temple on the hill top, and our light will shine for all to see, and people will come to us for salvation and we will pass them into the embrace of our wisdom.”

  Lee’s mouth hung open, before he whispered, “Holy shit.”

  “But first there’s going to be blood,” Max said. He thought to ask if Morris thought the poor souls he wanted to run off had any plans on fighting back, but didn’t bother. Maybe later, he could get an answer embraced by reality, rather than whatever passed for wisdom in this place.

  “Blood always comes first,” said Morris.

  Lee nodded his head. “Ain’t it the truth.”

  The Beast rose to the bait, and the night closed in on Max. He could almost taste the first drops of rain, and blood. His hands were slick with sweat, with the need to feel life in their power. And death.

  If the twins had been around, he might have surrendered to the temptation to jump Morris and Cal, especially with so much of their support gone. Lee could have taken Cal out quickly and quietly, moving on to what no doubt was the worst of the lot relegated to kitchen and cleanup duty, while the Beast amused itself with Morris’s youth, stamina, and training. The twins could have had the guards all to themselves, and with any luck, the screams might have enticed the other camp to investigate, adding to the herd of prey. By morning, when the rest of Morris’s men returned, the whole plac
e might already have gone up in fire.

  But he didn’t want to be rash with the twins out of sight. They might be planning their own surprise for him, or perhaps already playing with the guards, or Morris’s enemies.

  The Beast complained, but didn’t dare challenge him. Blood was coming, sooner or later.

  A sense of comforting warmth flooded Max, as if he’d captured Morris’s wife, or Cal’s, and had started taunting the women he imagined they might have with what he was going to do to their men while he did the same thing to them.

  But the fantasy of pain and humiliation collapsed under the pressure of an odd need. Max found himself wanting the twins, and even Lee, close by, the Beast held in check, everyone and everything safe and under his protection and control. Even if that safety meant delaying the satisfaction of his appetites.

  Max rubbed his forehead, momentarily disoriented by the strange shift of priorities. He wondered if the new, and bizarre, perspective had something to do with what prey called family, and if he’d caught some kind of disease from Morris or his men that forced people to harbor unnatural attachments against their will. That might explain how someone with the Morris’s peculiar beliefs could draw as many followers as he had.

  But the moment’s confusion passed as the Beast climbed into the seat of his conscience, chased off shadows of intimacy, and braced the cracks of doubt with mindless, boundless rage.

  Max attributed the lapse to an anticipation of pleasures.

  A sheet of rain slapped him in the face. Lightning flashed, followed immediately by thunder breaking.

  The Ferris wheel lights went out, along with the path lamps. Campfires quickly dwindled. The sickly light from the cottage windows remained, making Max’s stomach queasy every time he looked at them. The glow seemed to deepen the darkness.

  Lee cursed.

  Water soaked through Max’s shirt and jeans as quickly as if he’d jumped into a river. A gust of air rushed his face, following the burst of rain, and Max had to close his eyes to clear them.