That was a minefield question and Crow went through about forty replies in his head before he said, “Like a Guthrie, I suppose.”
Mark’s eyes snapped back and locked on Crow’s, searching for mockery. Crow kept his face neutral, trying to convey friendship. They held the contact for a long time and Crow could see Mark’s eyes begin to glisten with moisture, then Mark turned away again and went back to staring out the window. After several minutes of complete silence, Crow sighed and left.
(2)
Vic Wingate was a patient man. Over the last thirty years he had learned the art of waiting, and knew the benefits of thinking before acting. As a result he seldom made a mistake. This was both the greatest of the skills he’d learned from the Man, and the greatest skill he brought to the Man’s service. He was a tool, finely made, and one that worked as perfectly as planned. He was completely aware of this, and instead of feeling exploited he believed with every fiber of his being that he was being used in the best possible way and to his fullest potential. How many servants feel that? Or know it to be the truth?
All day long he’d sat on a canvas folding chair and stared at the slowly bubbling surface of the swamp at the bottom of Dark Hollow, a place forever shrouded in purple shadows by the towering pines and the height of the three mountains that formed it. There was a thermos of coffee by his right foot, and an Igloo cooler by his left in which Lois had packed three ham-and-cheese sandwiches, an apple, and two packs of Tastykake chocolate cupcakes. In his shirt pocket was half a pack of Kools. Vic smoked whatever brand was closest to hand; he didn’t care as long as it wasn’t some low-tar bullshit. He was smoking now, taking long slow drags, holding the mentholated smoke deep in his lungs until he could feel the muscles in his chest start to spasm and then he would exhale slowly, practicing the technique of showing no discomfort, even to the point of exerting control over the cough reflex. Vic knew a lot about control. Even his rages were preplanned and deliberate. He never did anything that wasn’t thought out first, not even smacking Lois around or kicking the shit out of his faggot stepson, Mike. Everything was planned out, and everything fit into a much larger blueprint. The Man’s blueprint. The Plan.
As he sat there, smoking, sometimes the Man would speak to him, whispering into his mind, and sometimes not. At the moment the swamp was quiet except for the buzzing of late season flies. There were almost always flies down here, he considered. Probably because there was always heat coming up from the swamp, and—here he smiled thinly through the smoke that leaked out between his clenched teeth—because down here there was almost always something dead.
Such as the young woman who lay with her head and shoulders submerged in the black muck. Vic reached into his shirt pocket and found the plastic cards he’d tucked behind his pack of smokes, pulled them out, looked at them. Amex card, Visa debit card. Once upon a time he’d have driven up to Easton and sell them to a guy he knew, but he didn’t really need the money now—not with the huge stash he had gotten from Boyd. He tucked them back in his shirt and looked at the third card, a driver’s license. Cecelia Goodchild. Bad photo of a pretty twenty-six-year-old brunette. He flipped the card into the bushes. There were at least forty other cards in there, mostly women. A few men. Some of them were completely faded now, impossible to read even if someone knew to look for them there. Cecelia Goodchild’s card would rot with the others before anyone saw it, and even if by some weird and wild chance it was found, no trace of Goodchild herself ever would be. He reached out with one booted foot and pushed against the heel of her shoe. With a stretch he could just reach it. Her body slid forward an inch. Not enough to sink it, just enough to stir the surface of the swamp. Ringing the dinner bell, he thought, and though he did not feel the Man inside his brain, he somehow knew that he would be amused by the gesture. The Man loved a good joke.
The surface of the swamp remained unmoved, the body untouched. No matter, Vic thought, when he’s hungry, he’ll eat. He sat back in his canvas chair and waited. Vic was very good at waiting.
(3)
“Mr. Crow,” said the nurse, “Dr. Weinstock approved you for a fifteen-minute visit with Ms. Guthrie and you’ve been in here three hours. Time to go back to your room!” The nurse was barely five feet tall, with curly blond hair and a sweet face and in any other circumstances Crow might have labeled her as “cute,” but Weinstock had warned him about Nurse Williams. Around the hospital she was known as the Half-Pint Horror and everyone went in fear of her. “Don’t believe that charming little smile, brother,” Weinstock had warned. “She’s about as cuddly as a scorpion and far less agreeable.”
