Chapter 12
Lion’s Den
As Evan and Joey glided up the grand staircase, the dizzying interior of Tartarus seemed to warp and stretch.
Joey slid a steadying hand along the banister, a smooth ribbon of African blackwood.
Perched high on the wall atop a ledge of Japanese zelkova wood, carvings of the three monkeys peered down at Evan, larger and more menacing than they’d appeared before.
A gurgled shout from above: “—supposed to bend the knee to ‘settled science’?”
“It’s been like this,” Rawlings said discreetly and somehow over both shoulders as he led, “for a while.”
They reached the landing, the voice growing louder: “—as if truth is arrived at by some tepid consensus rather than thrusts of genius that punctuate the equilibrium of an age. Curse Copernicus in his slumber, slingshot Darwin out of the firmament! We don’t need their disruptive ilk when it comes to—” A muffled blur, like shouting into a pillow.
At Evan’s side, Joey stayed close enough that their elbows brushed.
The hallway to the master suite snaked off to the right.
Evan was certain that last time he was here, it darted the other way.
There were restroom doors and hidden doors, and then the most important door of all floated into view.
Upholstered in plush scarlet fabric, it hid the nerve center of Devine’s operation.
Fed by illicit database connections and lenses hidden in the nooks and crannies of the vertiginous mansion, the AI data-gathering system matched every face to an identity and that identity to every digital impression it had ever made.
It augmented Devine’s roaring frontal lobe, cold and preternaturally powered, all-seeing and psychopathically efficient.
Once the system had your biometrics captured, there was no way to stop it chainsawing through your tree rings.
Evan’s Woolrich button-up and Joey’s poplin blouse sported discreet lab-engineered patterns designed to disrupt machine-vision algorithms, rendering them indiscernible to surveillance lenses.
This was a formality. At regular intervals, Joey ensured that any digital crumbs they might leave behind proliferated into a hydra head of gnashing dead ends.
“—no, no, no,” the voice, now taunting. “Let’s waddle forward together at the pace of eighty-seven-percent agreement, leaving no peer-reviewed Ph.D. behind.”
The double architectural doors at the end of the hall seemed to recede as they approached.
A drumroll of tapping dress shoes and then an assistant type shot through and skittered past them, chest heaving, nostril flanges pinked to a pre-cry hue.
Ejected from the room after her, an incomprehensible burst of glossolalia heavy on fricatives.
They neared the double doors. Or drew farther away from them.
At last they arrived and stepped through, the heat of a not-yet-visible fire whooshing across their cheeks.
The massive master suite telescoped into view—dedicated foyer, condo-size coat closet, en suite office with three easels holding partial Renaissance still lifes, paintus interruptus.
As they passed a hanging bronze mirror, Evan checked his six from force of habit.
Behind him, Joey looked wan but her eyes were focused.
Faintest sparkle of sweat at her hairline.
Eyes lowered, two more staff members scampered past, gripping mops and sloshing buckets of water. Evan proceeded, more of the suite drawing into view.
Behind a funeral veil of a wrought-iron screen, a curtain of deep orange wobbled in the massive hearth, throwing sparks and the delicious singed aroma of endangered Brazilian ironwood.
Other powerful scents proliferated—cigarette smoke, expensive perfume, dog shit.
A tattoo rig lay abandoned, scattered at the edge of a shag rug.
Before the fireplace, a cuboid glass table trapped a naked male mannequin twisted in anguish, an art piece Devine enjoyed resting his heels upon.
Something crashed into the stone rise above the hearth, and remnants of a crystal glass tinkled down onto the silk splash rug, a sharp-toothed rain.
Next a few desks drew into sight, manned by interchangeable assistants with laptops and briefcases and phones. And then the bed, an Alaskan king with pristine white sheets, across which a half-disrobed young woman sprawled like a low-rent silent-movie starlet.
At last there in the corner, Luke Devine paced, wearing boxers and black socks and an untucked oxford shirt, his hair swirled up around the thinning spot that floated on his crown like a yarmulke or monk’s tonsure.
He looked like a caught-out paramour in a well-made play or the Little Prince on a bender.
Purer-than-baby-blue eyes, frosted like ice, peered out from his doll’s face.
He was looking right at Evan and Joey and not at them at all.
“—dancing like puppets to algorithms, tearing one another apart, competing to prove they’re the very, very best at being manipulated.
” Devine’s upper lip snarled up with Rottweilerian derision, a plastic ripple in that smooth, smooth face.
“I mean, I get it, you’ve got to give the monkeys something to do.
” He washed a delicate hand back and forth above the floor, indicating—Evan assumed—the world of men.
“But then you have to rule over monkeys and that gets trying, doesn’t it? ”
Evan said, “It does.”
“Know who’s winning? Whoever has the biggest team of lawyers and lobbyists. The Goliaths capable of achieving regulatory capture. It’s over.”
Evan said, “Till David finds the right stone.”
“There are no Davids anymore. Just sheep bleating for a golden calf.”
Two steps to Evan’s right and one step back, Joey stood poleaxed on her feet and he thought, You asked for this.
He tilted his head toward the love seats and the fireplace. “Over there,” he told Joey, not ungently.
She hustled out of the line of fire.
Devine approached Evan, his words coming fast, belt-fed rounds.
“The only way a law holds down there is because of invisible hands moving up here.” He fluttered said hands.
“Know what it comes down to? Strong men saying no. And I’m saying fucking no.
You know how many people comprehend the need for that anymore? ”
“Not many,” Evan said. “What’s that Macallan you drink? Spanish oak casks?”
Devine swayed on his feet, eyes jerking. His brain was on fire, roaring like a coal engine. “The Number Six.”
“Get it.”
An odd little black box appeared in Devine’s hand, a close-up magic trick. He clicked the solitary button and spoke into the box and to the seated assistants at the same time, the word going forth, omnipotent and omnipresent: “Fetch Macallan Number Six.”
Evan leaned toward Rawlings and said, quietly, “First aim is to get him settled and keep him alive. I don’t give a shit if he winds up with a headache for a month. We’ve gotta get him down and we’ve gotta get him hydrated. Fetch lactated Ringer’s solution and a line.”
Rawlings nodded once and spoke into his wrist: “Hydro kit to lion’s den.”
Devine had closed his eyes and turned his face to the banks of light streaming through the White House–esque radius windows, basking in the warmth. His eyelids flickered as if in REM, moist pink lips twitching to the side.
“Devine,” Evan said. “Luke.”
“It’s you,” the woman—Monica—remarked to Evan, rolling languidly in the sheets.
She wore a micromini skirt and conspicuous vixen-red panties.
The plackets of her unbuttoned blouse balanced in artful opposition along her sumptuously sloped midline, every breath promising a wardrobe malfunction. “It’s whatshisname.”
She’d nearly been forgotten. Such was the power of Devine’s verbal fire hose, sufficient to occlude a vamping damsel poured over a mattress.
Evan said, “Ma’am.”
Devine swung to face her, his diminutive form boyish in his socks, his head cocked like a ridgeback’s. Pivoting silently, he noticed where she was looking and followed her gaze across the room, tracing a straight line to Evan.
Devine’s pupils dilated and then suddenly contracted, fixing on Evan. “Mr. Nowhere Man.”
It was as though Devine’s brain were running five minutes ahead of reality; he had registered Monica way back then but hadn’t caught up to Evan’s presence until this moment. Evan imagined the contoured landscapes of Luke’s mind, all those pits and crevices to fall into.
“Why are your pants off?” Evan asked.
Devine looked down. “I don’t know.”
Devine stumbled closer, kicking over a champagne bucket that held, improbably, an upside-down bowling pin.
“Let’s slow you down some,” Evan said.
Luke blinked five times rapidly. “Whatever for?”
Evan looked past him to Monica.
“You all right?”
“I don’t know,” she breathed. “A bit drunk and my ears are exhausted and … and.…”
“No, she’s not,” Luke said. “She’s off behind the eyes and she witnessed something awful. I can’t deal with this kind of shit so you have to get her to tell you so you can handle—”
“Devine,” Evan said. “Quiet.”
He returned focus to the young woman on the bed. She gulped in air once, twice. Her eyes looked haunted, pupils dilated from whatever she’d been engaging with.
“You saw something,” Evan told her, moving from question to statement. “Something bad.”
“They just, like, set on her,” Monica said, dreamily. “I have a bad feeling about…”
“They?” Evan said. “Who?”
“There was a pack, a pack of guys. It was before … Oh, Jesus.” Covering her mouth, she hurried across the bedroom, her shirt flapping ridiculously, and stumbled through a door that Evan didn’t remember being there a moment ago. The clink of a toilet lid thrown up, sounds of fruitful retching.
Devine had locked on to Joey standing over by the fire, noticing her for the first time. “Who are you?”
Evan said, “With me.”
“I don’t know you.” To Evan: “I don’t know her. And she’s here. Uninvited.”
“I assumed you’d be capable of contending with her,” Evan said.