Butch Karp: Absolute Rage Part 21

"You are good at this," he said after a while. "An opium chef as we call it. Do you feel corrupted?"

"Not at all. It seems a very innocent pleasure. And I like to see you relaxed."

"You're a good girl."

Another long pause. "And I am a very bad man. But when I take nha phien with you, I seem to float into another world, as if I am living a story different from the actual story of my life. As in the Tale of Kieu, the story of Kieu and the bandit chieftain. Do you remember that?"

"Yes. The bandit chieftain was really a decent man, forced by necessity into a cruel life. I always thought of you when I read it."

"Our sorrowful national epic. We Vietnamese are connoisseurs of sorrow, you know. We make the Russians look like the French. Or the happy Americans, the fortunate people. My hope is that the boys I bring over will in time learn something about this."

"Who are they?"

"Sons of my old comrades. Southerners, of the NLF. I find as many of them as I can, and whoever remains of the people I served with, and their families. We were all disgraced after the war. Insufficiently grateful to our northern comrades, too many bourgeois tendencies, our grandfathers could read, perhaps. We had imagined we were fighting for a better life, so we all had to be reeducated. It turned out that what we were fighting for was to give absolute power to a bunch of fat b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who sat out the war in Hanoi bunkers. Imagine our surprise!"

"How can you get them out?"

"Oh, in Vietnam now anything can be arranged with money. The country is one great bazaar. The granddaughters of the Vietcong are selling themselves to fat Germans in Saigon hotels. Nothing changed. All the wars, twenty years of them, so that the pimps can be Vietnamese instead of French. Or Americans. You should have dropped dollars from your bombers instead of bombs; it would have been cheaper." He took another long drag and closed his eyes.

"You don't have to continue in this life," she said. "You could go anywhere. Start over."

"I do start over, my dear. Every night when I smoke my pipe I have a beautiful and quite different life."

"And then you kill more people."

"In fact, the last time I killed anyone it was rescuing you, do you recall? From those Chinese in that shop by the beach."

She felt a flush of shame. "I'm sorry, Uncle. I was being a prig. Who am I to judge you?"

He said nothing for several minutes. "No, I am far from offended. I believe that had I not met you and your mother, I would not have been a real person anymore. As it is, my goal is to keep violence"-he drifted for a moment-"to a minimum. If I died before I had to kill another person, I would be happy."

At this he fell silent. She stayed with him, drifting off herself into a semisleep, touched a little by the drug fumes, a state that provided just a taste of the famous silky dreams.

From which she was startled by a ringing phone. She climbed the stairs to the kitchen and picked up the receiver.

"Hai ba ba, nam sau bon bay."

"Lucy?"

"Yeah. Dan?"

"Uh-huh. What was that?"

"The number in Vietnamese. Is my mom okay?"

"Yeah, well, that's why I'm calling. It's two-thirty and she's not back. I called Poole's and she's not there either. I checked the cops and the hospital, too. I'm a little worried and you said to call . . ."

"Yes. Thank you. Do you know where she went?"

"She said something about the bridge on Route 130, north of town."

"Okay, good, I'll take it from here. You should get some sleep."

"You'll take it . . . ?" he exclaimed, disturbed by the coldness in her tone. "What're you going to do?"

"Call my dad, for starters. Don't worry about it."

"Aren't you worried?"

He heard a long sigh over the wires. "Of course I'm worried. But I'm used to this. In my family we don't get all upset when someone goes missing. My dad calls it Karp Disaster Mode. I have to go now."

Karp had the answering machine on, so Lucy had to call six times before the acc.u.mulated disturbance penetrated her father's sleep.

"What happened?" No preambles at 3 A.M. He could feel his heart thump.

"I don't know. I'm at Tran's with the boys. Dan just called. Mom went out looking for a piece of evidence and hasn't come back."

"Oh, c.r.a.p!" Karp knuckled his face, took a couple of deep breaths. "Okay, I'll get something organized. You have your cell phone?"

"Yeah. We were planning to go to Boston tomorrow. Should we come back home?"

"No, there's no reason for that yet. I hope. Just keep the phone up. You okay?"

"Fine. You'll call me as soon as you know something?"

"Right. Take care."

He punched off and found the number Hendricks had given him. A machine answered. Karp spoke to it, trying to control the urgency in his tone, so that he did not sound like a hysterical husband. He took a shower, then dressed and called airlines. He found a Continental flight to Cleveland out of La Guardia at six-thirty with a connection to Charleston that would have him there at ten thirty-eight. Only first cla.s.s was open. He took the seat, one way. It cost about the same as a roundtrip to Buenos Aires, coach.

The phone rang as he was putting on his jacket. He told Hendricks what had happened, and his travel plans.

"Okay, I'll have you met at the airport," said Hendricks, "and I'll get a team down there. You say she was headed for the bridge over the Guyandotte?"

"Is that on 130?"

"Yeah. We call it the green bridge."

A pause. "What do you think? Should I worry? I mean, it's only one night . . ."

"No, you did good calling me. It pays to be worried if the Cades start messing with you."

The plane was delayed, as planes always are at La Guardia. Fortunately the turboprop was delayed at Cleveland, too, so that Karp, at the end of a desperate sprint to the gate, was allowed to stumble sweating out onto the tarmac and climb into the little plane.

They were waiting for him at Yeager Airport in Charleston, three Broncos with state markings and their engines running, and a dark sedan with Hendricks, in full uniform and dark Ray*Bans, leaning against the fender.

They shook hands. Karp tossed his bag in the trunk and jumped in the back with Hendricks.

"Any news?"

"I got the barracks at Logan working on it. She was there. Someone saw a red truck go by yesterday evening, headed north on 130. We've got troopers looking, but no luck so far."

The motorcade took off with sirens and lights. Forty-five minutes later they were at the state police barracks in Logan, just over the border from Robbens. There Karp observed that two of the Broncos were full of men in black jumpsuits and baseball hats.

"You expecting a war?" Karp asked.

"Something like that," said Hendricks. He left Karp in an office while he ordered his troops, Karp feeling useless and starting to feel stupid as well. From a distance he heard the thump of a helicopter, which added to the impression of a major, semimilitary operation.

Cheryl Oggert came in, looking crisp as a saltine in a tan s.h.i.+rtwaist dress. She had a paper bag in hand, containing coffee and sweet rolls.

"I wouldn't impose state police coffee on you," she said. "How're you doing?"

"I'm fine. What're you doing here?"

"Public relations."

"And spying for the governor."

"That, too. Are you worried?"

"Hendricks thinks I should be. On the other hand, Marlene is pretty resourceful."

"I hope she is. Are you going out with the search?"

"I'd like to. I haven't wanted to be a pain in the a.s.s, though. Hendricks seems like he's fairly busy."

"You should go. I'll take care of it, if you want." She smiled and patted his hand.

Marlene had forgotten about the mosquitoes. She had no repellent, and even though she rolled all the windows up, they got in, attacking in squadrons. Sleep came in unsatisfying dribbles. She awoke stiff and itching to thin, silvery light coming through windows made opaque by condensation. Cursing, she staggered out of the truck into a heavy morning fog that had swallowed the farmhouse she had been in the previous night. Gog circled around her, sniffing. She found a clean rag in the truck and wiped the windows, using the soaked fabric also for a face wash. Inside, she cranked up the engine and wiped the rearview mirror, during which exercise she caught sight of her face and yelped in dismay. It was like a contour map drawn in scarlet, welts upon welts.

After driving slowly around the little clearing for some time, she found what she thought was the track up which they had come in the night. It was more like a tunnel than a road, but the sight of broken branches and deep tire tracks convinced her that she was going the right way. She had, of course, completely forgotten the directions of Darl, but this did not seem to be an insurmountable problem.

"It stands to reason," she explained to the dog, "if I pick the road that tends downward every time we meet another trail, then eventually we'll hit the river valley and the main roads, or if not, we'll still get off the mountain and reach the land of baths, whiskey, and Lanacane. And dog food. See, that's the advantage of partnering with a species that has higher mental functions. You could never have figured that out on your own, could you?"

After an hour or so of driving, during which the fog burned off considerably, she found herself on a steep, rocky road, little more than two ruts, with rank growth and even small trees growing up between them.

"This is what they call a divided highway in West Virginia," she said. "The ruts are divided by lovely ornamental sumacs. But lucky us, it's dropping real steep and I have a good feeling that just around this curve we will be able to see . . ."

She hit the brakes a little too late, just after she had become aware that the road had disappeared. What lay ahead was a great tangle of sunken, disturbed earth and fallen trees, as if a giant had pressed his foot down hard upon the earth. The truck tilted; Marlene screamed; the dog whined. Metal screeched upon rock, a heavy branch smashed against the winds.h.i.+eld, as the truck skidded at a terrifying angle, down, off the road and into the churned-up area.

And stopped with a bone-jarring thump, nosed into the upended root ball of a toppled hickory. After she had stopped shaking, she got out to inspect the damage. The rear differential housing was wedged upon a boulder, leaving the rear wheels clear of the ground. The front wheels were buried to their upper rims in mud.

"Well, this truck needs a nice rest. It's not going anywhere without a wrecker. What we need, Gog, is a colorful Neapolitan dogcart, to which I would hitch you, and you would pull me in a leisurely fas.h.i.+on back to civilization. But you forgot your colorful Neapolitan dogcart, didn't you? You always forget your G.o.dd.a.m.n dogcart. What kind of best friend are you? A p.i.s.s poor one. This is absolutely the last time I am taking you on a fun trip like this."

And so on as she labored up the slope. At the top she continued downward on what had been the shoulder of the putative road. Gradually, however, the ruts became fainter, the growth between them became more mature, until she found herself facing a twenty-foot-high mountain ash growing between the vague traces of wheel marks.

"Excuse me," she said to the tree, "could you tell me where I could catch the downtown D train?" Turning to the dog, she said, "This is entirely your fault. I will never listen to your stupid ideas again!"

Hendricks came into the office. "I'm going to go talk to someone who might know something about this. You want to come along?"

Karp did. They got in a Bronco with three of the black-clad officers. Hendricks drove.

"Where are we going?" asked Karp.

"See a fella I know." That was all Karp got during the forty-minute drive. They pa.s.sed the green bridge and then headed west up increasingly primitive roads. Karp tried to recall his airborne geography lesson.

"We're on Burnt Peak, yes?"

Hendricks looked at him. "You got it." He turned into an overgrown driveway.

In a clearing stood a double-wide mobile home, painted pale green. A mud-covered white Mazda pickup sat in the yard, beside a scatter of toys, an inflatable pool, some bikes, a yellow mutt dog, and a towheaded boy of about seven, wearing swim shorts.

The dog barked. Hendricks got out of the Bronco and allowed the dog to sniff at him. To the boy he said, "Your papaw in there?"

A nod.

"Well, whyn't you go on in there and tell him Wade Hendricks wants to talk to him."

The boy ran into the trailer. A few minutes later a large-gutted man in an unders.h.i.+rt and stained green workpants stepped barefoot out onto the mobile home's concrete ap.r.o.n.

Hendricks advanced and shook the man's hand. "Russell. How you keepin'?"

"Pretty fair," said the man, not smiling. His chin indicated the Bronco. "I guess you ain't visiting."

"No, I'm not. This's police business. We're looking for a woman gone missing. Her name's Marlene Ciampi. She was Mose Welch's lawyer. The one from away."

"I heard about her. She's gone missing, you say?"

"Went out last night to the green bridge and didn't come back."

"Uh-huh. Well, how about that. She's got that Dodge four-by, ain't she? Red?"

"That's right. You seen it?"

"No, I ain't. I worked the late at Majestic last night. I'm just now getting up. You're here because of her runnin' the Cade boys off."

"That's right. You heard anything about maybe they was plannin' some get-even?"

"Tell you the truth, them boys is always running their mouths. I don't pay them much mind. They was red up, though. Earl, mostly. That lady needs to watch her step, I guess. But I didn't hear of no actual what you might call a plan."

Some polite talk about people Karp didn't know followed this exchange, and then Hendricks returned to the car and they rode off.

"What was that all about?"

"Oh, Russell is a good fella to talk to if the Cades have got up to any mischief."

"He's a Cade?"

"Related to them. It's good news, though. We're probably not dealing with foul play. On the other hand, if she decided to go cruising around these hills at night . . . well."