“At this time in the morning?”
“She develops the concept that a frightening number of people in the world are unaware of the actual living reality the human beings around them. It is the complete absence of empathy in action. They believe themselves to be real, of course, yet they merely lack the imagination to see that other persons are also real in the same way and on the same terms. Thus, even though they go through the obligatory social forms and personal relationships, all people are objects rather than people. If all other people are objects, then there can be no psychic trauma involved in treating them as objects. That pair disposed of fourteen objects, not fourteen brothers. Their uneasiness comes not from any pity, not from any concern for the dead objects, but merely from their awareness that society frowns upon such actions.”
“Meyer, please!”
“In a sense one can envy them because, unlike you and me, Travis, they cannot identify, they cannot project. We can, and so we do a lot of bleeding. We bled for a woman as wretched as Miss Bellemer. You keep remembering the look of the back of Griff’s neck. This pair drifts through life without the inconvenience of such uncomfortable baggage. Interesting, isn’t it, to relate this concept to conscience and to individual goals?”
“Are you through?”
“Vocalization always helps me develop such relationships.”
“Meyer, how did it go?”
“Oh! My little visit. I slid in there like a veritable wraith. After a few moments I began to realize I could have marched through leading a LIFE and drum corps. At that point my heart stopped banging into my larynx and slid back down where it belongs. I selected a more effective place for our voodoo doll. The sink stopper seemed tight. I left her under water in the sink, and fortunately it is a very deep sink. She has some buoyancy. The porous stone has absorbed enough water to hold her down. She sways with the motion of the ship. An eerie effect. Drunks often have to make a bathroom journey in the small hours. I left the bathroom light on for the fellow. When you are beginning to emerge into hangover, the world is slightly hallucinatory. It might take him quite some time to identify the real and the unreal.”
“Remind me not to wake you up at this time of day. You are so ornate you give me a headache. I call your attention to where the Powell Daniels money is at the moment.”
“Around Terry’s middle. So?”
“If we don’t want him making a successful run for it, I better take the wings off his heels.”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s after four. The depressant effects are diminishing. He’s had perhaps seven hours. I don’t think the risk is justified, Travis. He’s an exceptionally brawny brute. Why don’t you just leave well enough alone?”
“I’m going to give it a try.”
Shrewd eyes studied me. “I find the compulsion odd. Your normal cheer has soured. Could it be possible the little pig required the bargain be sealed, in her manner?”
“Get off my back, Meyer.”
“And so the daring-do is a penance, a reaffirmation of the real identity of the McGee, a symbolic scrubbing of the soiled escutcheon.”
“Do you really think I cut myself a slice of that?”
“Dear boy, if I thought so, I wouldn’t be making such a dull joke about it.”
“Then be advised I came damned close.”
His eyes went round. “Actually?”
“Seems I’m less fastidious than I thought. So maybe there is a little flavor of escutcheon scrubbing in the air after all.”
“The wish is not the deed, except to apologists. You didn’t follow through. And, if you had, after all she is young, pneumatic, lubricious, and no doubt highly competent. Also, any parent will tell you that if you dress a child in his best and send him out to play, he will find the deepest, sloppiest mud puddle in town and stomp around in it, perfectly aware of the whomping he’ll get when he goes home. There is sometimes a hypnotic deliciousness about dirt.”
I grinned at him. “I need you around more often, sire. Okay. All straight on the rest of your duties?”