Chapter 38 #2
“When you’re running a ten-in-one, there’s often a problem of staffing.
Many human oddities have serious health problems and don’t live so long.
They’re always dying on you. Those who’re odd enough—genuine freaks—they don’t just come to you and apply for a job.
You’ve got to discover them, and they aren’t standing around on every street corner.
You need to develop contacts in certain medical communities, among reporters for the lurid tabloids that fill their pages with everything weird and decadent.
I want you to understand how, when a tip pays off, it’s expensive.
Maybe you think I’m greedy here, but I have expenses.
I have to be generous with the tipsters or I’ll lose them.
I have to negotiate with the parents or whatever institution has custody.
If the freak is intelligent enough to know he has value, I have to cut him in on the take.
They don’t come to me as young and helpless as Alida did.
When I owned the Museum of the Strange, I was fair with everyone.
That’s why, though I’ve been out of the business, I still receive tips from contacts.
This tip was most timely. My need for fresh capital has become severe.
I was getting a bit depressed about finding a way to convince you that buying insurance on Alida Adiel was a necessity.
Then suddenly fate brought me a tip about the weirdest ten-in-one attraction I’ve ever seen.
He’s a very good boy with me. Very good and grateful.
But when I tell him to be bad, he can be very bad indeed.
He so enjoys it. If he were very bad with your girl here, I would be far away, my alibi well established.
If he were somehow to be caught, he can never be tied to me.
And he won’t be taken alive. Even if he were caught, he knows me by a name that isn’t mine.
And the name he knows is not the name that I live by these days.
Since purchasing my boy, I have so diligently separated myself from my past and from everyone I knew that a hundred Pinkerton agents could never find me.
So. Have I set up the situation properly?
Do you understand the risk against which it would be wise to acquire an insurance policy? ”
Loretta took my hand to comfort me, though the contact was also intended to comfort her. “You’re threatening murder, Mr. Farnam.”
“Not a threat, Mrs. Fairchild. It’s a friendly advisement.”
Although not disbelieving, Franklin was at least suspicious. “What is this—‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ with you in the role of the sailor who owns an orangutan that slaughters people?”
Captain looked genuinely puzzled. “Orangutan?”
“He’s not a reader,” I said. “He’s not faking us with rehashed Poe. If this boy of his is real, he’s no orangutan.”
I doubt that I can convey how grotesque it was, sitting on that manicured lawn, under a blue and birdless sky, as if a butler and maids would shortly bring a table to set between us and Captain—a table, a tea service, a small arrangement of flowers, and an array of exquisite pastries.
The white rabbit hadn’t yet arrived, but the Mad Hatter was definitely with us.
“Orangutan?” Captain said. “Well, of course he’s not any such thing. I wouldn’t have traveled a thousand miles to make a deal to acquire a monkey, as I traveled to get my boy.”
Perhaps Franklin was thinking of deceitful studio executives with whom he had done business. He said, “How do we know that this ‘boy’ exists at all?”
With his interlaced hands propped on his ample belly, Captain looked like an editorial cartoon of a self-satisfied robber baron contemplating foreclosing on the homes of a million widows.
When his veracity was questioned, he manufactured a sad expression and for a long moment stared at his hands as if they were folded in prayer for the soul of the doubting Thomas who was his host. At last he raised his head and made eye contact.
“If you haven’t sufficient faith in my word alone to take a life insurance policy on this young lady, then I’ll provide my bona fides.
My boy will pay a visit to Bramley Hall one night and leave irrefutable proof that he was here and is everything I’ve told you.
Proof that you will regret having insisted upon, proof that will cause you grief.
Then for all my trouble, the price of the policy will be raised to one hundred fifty thousand.
Of course, you’re wondering, if you pay, how often might I want you to renew the policy.
I don’t deny I’m a man of many faults, but greed isn’t one of them.
This single premium will buy insurance for life. ”
Franklin was exasperated, but he maintained his composure. He seemed to speak almost with admiration. “Captain Farnam, you are an amazing piece of work.”
“Thank you, sir. I regret it is such a hard world that we are at times required to be hard ourselves in order to survive in it.”
Loretta tried to match Franklin’s calm demeanor, but her voice had an edge that his did not.
“I believe I speak for my husband when I say there will be polar bears and penguins in Hell before we give you even one dollar. I’d rather we spent everything we have making the Bram impenetrable and hiring a platoon of security men. ”
“Agreed,” said Franklin.
Captain smiled and nodded as if, being an experienced insurance salesman, he was accustomed to customer resistance.
“I understand your petulance, and I’m confident that, as successful entrepreneurs, you’ll get past your displeasure and approach this in a businesslike manner.
I must tell you, no matter what extraordinary steps you take to fortify your estate, it’s the nature of my boy, a function of his very freakishness, that he can’t be kept out.
And as to your concern about future premiums, this is the one and only, even if I wished otherwise.
The boy is the instrument that makes it possible for me to do what I’ve advised you I will do if not paid.
For now, he sees me as his savior and is pleased to obey me.
But in time, he will become less . . . manageable.
Even now, he frightens me, though I dare not let him know.
Once he has paid his first visit to your lovely home and you realize that a hundred fifty thousand is a small price to pay to ensure he won’t return, once I have my money, I’ll kill him.
Certain things he does . . . how he looks at me .
. . I’d be crazy to think I can control him and use him long-term. ”
If Franklin had been ready to hustle Captain off the estate, he was given reason to hesitate by the quiet note of dread in the man’s voice and a supporting anxiety in the set of his broad face.
Loretta seemed likewise affected. Captain was a pitchman, wickedly effective at selling the exaggerated qualities of a thing with superlatives that he could make ring true.
However, he was not competition for the great actors of American theater.
I could see he wasn’t faking. He was profoundly afraid of this boy of his.
Loretta was aghast. “Kill him? After you use him, you kill him? You share your intention with us as if it will put us at ease—when what it does is make us morally complicit in murder.”
Captain waved his hands as if to brush away her concern. “It won’t be murder. Killing in self-defense isn’t murder. In addition to his physical abnormalities, the boy is a stone-cold psychopath. If we knew everything that he’s done, I’m sure we would all feel that execution would be warranted.”
“You’re sure, are you? You call him a boy. How old is he?”
Captain promoted himself out of an undignified slump into a better posture.
The folding chair was a credit to its manufacturer; it neither bent nor creaked in protest. “Mrs. Fairchild, you’ve no need to know anything more.
I’ve put the proposal before you, and you either value this girl’s life or you don’t. ”
“Actually,” Franklin said, “it’s not that simple.
The way you speak of this boy, I’m beginning to think he might exist and might be as dangerous as you claim.
You’ve spooked me to consider your terms seriously, though a minute ago, I was prepared to dismiss you as a fraud.
However, just being told this creature exists isn’t good enough.
A hundred thousand dollars requires that I be certain he’s out there somewhere.
I need to be convinced. How old is he? Where does he come from?
Why are you sure you can control him even now? ”