The Storm Giants (3 page)

Chapter 4
: The Widow Shows Her Face

Outside the
hospital lobby’s entrance doors, a woman stood next to his Escort. She was familiar, and she was comfortably waiting.

Everett
stopped maybe twenty feet back, outside the line of sight for anyone flanking the entrance. He got a transitory glimpse of his reflection – that of a tall man with red hair, freakishly wide shoulders and scar mottled face – before his focus shifted past the stranger in the glass.

She hadn’t
made him yet so he moved to one side of the lobby, checking out the opposite end of the parking lot. Everett moved to the other side of the lobby as if drawn to the bulletin board there. He checked the other end of the lot, still out of sight from outside, going for a parallax view.

The
lot was cluttered with autos but he spotted the box right off – she had at least two cars backing her; late model silver Beamers idled at either end of the parking lot ready to swoop when he came out the door. BMWs were a little high end for the Man unless they were undercover with a budget, but he couldn’t base anything on that.

Everett
considered just bailing, heading out another exit and fading into the comforting embrace of the East Bay jungle. But Kerri would be irked if he ditched the Escort, so he put that option away.

The
automatic doors opened as Everett exited the hospital, trotted down the steps, and broke into a loping run as he hit the asphalt of the parking lot. The Beamers gunned it and closed in from both sides, but Everett kept the majority of his attention on the woman as he scrambled toward her around interposing parked cars.

The BMWs skidded in on
either side as Everett reached arms’ length with her, the car’s hoods a few yards away to his right and left.

The woman seemed
unsurprised at his abrupt approach. She had to be in her mid 50s by now, with a barely restrained sexual intensity. Every movement was a seduction. Tall and blonde, very Nordic and proper, with a striking face like a cameo carved out of ice. The smell of Chanel No. 5 wafted from her, bringing all the old associations crashing.

She had
the kind of slender athletic build only to be obtained through years of psychotically dedicated gym work. She was well dressed and elegant, but her dark sun glasses suggested the weakness in her game: she didn’t trust her own eyes not to betray her.

Everett
still didn’t acknowledge the flanking cars. This blonde had his full attention even though he didn’t aim any direct looks at her. Seeing her, being near her, wasn’t a good thing – back history belonged behind you, not in your face.

“Car doors had best not open
,” Everett said. His ready hands dangled relaxed at his sides.

“It has
been a long time, Everett,” the blonde said, a trace of Germanic accent to her voice. “You prefer to be called that, and not your given Christian name?”

“Doesn’t matter.
What you want?”

“Think
, Everett,” she said. “Search your memories.”

She
relished her little game. Everett was reminded of a cat playing with a half disemboweled mouse, and considered giving her a mocking squeak.

She asked,
“Surely you remember your childhood dentist? Doctor Dauffenbach – and us? You cannot be so rude as to forget your visits to the office. And you know I am a widow now.”

“That was then
, this is now,” Everett said. “You’re not here for nostalgia.”

“I am not,” the Widow said. “Though I apologize for neglecting you so long. If the Juden had not persecuted him unto death, Doctor Dauffenbach had planned on bringing you into the fold. You belonged with us – but the mud people would not permit it to be. I have followed your career, even if from a distance. In the interests of repairing our relationship, you have an opportunity to perform for me again. A task, an errand. A Labor if you will, like Hercules.”

“Not interested
,” Everett said. “You’re in the way.”

She smiled
with a simper and scuffed the edge of a shoe against the asphalt. “So how is your lady, Kerri? And the little one, what is his name? Raymond?”

Everett
found himself stepping closer, his hands aching to grab her. His eyes panned from right to left, scoping the twin Beamers. They both had tinted glass, so neither driver could be seen clearly. They were just blobby silhouettes behind their steering wheels, both of them watching without urgency.

They thoug
ht they were safe in their cars; they thought they had him. Their eyes would widen in shock when he demonstrated their error. They’d die whatever they filled their hands with.

But then wh
at? He’d still be in the dark. His family would still be at the mercy of this wicked woman’s good intentions.

Everett
relaxed his hands though they screamed silent protest as if the appendages were thwarted of a vital purpose. He looked right at her instead of how he usually looked at people: just past them or beside them; at the ground by their feet or over their head.

“Good
,” the Widow said, with the almost imperceptible nod she’d have favored a pet with had it learned a new but unsurprising trick. “You are perhaps still as intelligent as I remember. You can not think I would harm your family. I could never pose a threat to them. There is a bond between us after all.”

She scuffed her shoe on the
ground again, an unconvincingly girlish gesture. “We are still friends and you can trust me, Everett. But it occurs to me that the very capabilities I see in you might be a temptation to foolishness.

“
Your mother told me many things about you before she declined. She was quite cooperative.” The Widow shook her head in simulated commiseration. “I would hate the samples I obtained of your mother’s DNA to fall into the wrong hands. It’s only circumstantial evidence, but the familial genetic similarity might inspire the authorities to treat you as a ‘person of interest’ and turn their millstone attentions your way. But it will not come to that. We are good friends.

“What
do
you want?” Everett asked.

“I have suffered a loss
and you will make it good, as I know you would wish to,” the Widow said. “A thief stole from me and I need you to recover my goods.”

Everett
gestured at the bracketing cars. “You got a crew.”

“
He knows me and my people. He has certain defenses in place that are too inconvenient for me to deal with. In addition, there are other factors, none of which are your concern. I have to send a stranger for any chance at recovery. Someone like him and his people. And here you are again, convenient to my needs.”

Everett
let himself be diverted into examining the tactical situation she confronted him with. A relaxing distraction though he wasn’t about to let her see how pleasant it was for him. “What did he boost off you?”

“Gold.
Bullion to be exact. My late husband managed to salvage a large cache when the Reich fell, and this has supported me and my endeavors for many years. But it was stolen from me by this thief, this charlatan.” She looked a little angry; a furrow tried to mar her unlined Botox brow.

“How’d he manage to beat you for it?”

The Widow exuded ill concealed chagrin. “He pretended to be something that he wasn’t. He charmed me.”

Everett
decided he knew just what kind of charm she was talking about, figured it the most expensive fuck since the Taj Mahal. He tried not to envision her naked and demanding, satisfying someone else. “Where did Dr. D get this gold from?”

“That
too is none of your concern,” she said. “You must learn your place. I wish you the best in all things, young man. But you must remember what a thin line it is between a healthy family, and a fate even your best intentions could not prevent. You will not fail me.”

Everett
studied her cold beauty. He’d know her face and body in Hell a million years from now. “So you want this bullion, in exchange for leaving my family alone and giving up the DNA samples?”

“You
do understand,” she said. “I will be in touch.”

Chapter 5
: A Passing and a Bolt for Home

T
hat night in a Fremont motel room, Everett’s eyes opened and he was awake. Something had just happened, though he couldn’t tell what it was. A relief, a calmness.

He called the h
ospital. They said his mother had just passed. Would he care to make funeral arrangements? Everett hung up and was on the road within five minutes.

As he
drove the speed limit up Highway 101 toward Mendocino and home, Bambi’s face loomed to fill the night sky in front of the Escort, her expression enigmatic.

What was she trying to convey?
Everett couldn’t tell with the storm giants laughing behind her, even if they couldn’t get past her, couldn’t get all the way at him while she was there. It was startling though. He hadn’t seen them outside of dreamland since he’d moved to Mendo.

Everett
was alone so it was safe to say “The fuck away,” as he raised one hand from the steering wheel and clawed the images to the side. They disappeared, leaving nothing ahead of the thrumming little Escort but the two lane blacktop illuminated by its headlights.

Part Two
:

Chapter 6
: So as not to Intrude

Everett
took the access road off 101 and descended the switchbacks zigzagging down the steep embankment toward the river. On the short straight-aways between the hairier turns, he could see his and Kerri’s snug little house and its outbuildings.

A murder of crows croaked welcome
from a tree as the Escort passed. Everett answered back, imitating them with exactitude. The crows cocked their heads and aimed bright eyes at him.

A family quinte
t of Red Tailed Hawks circled above, buoyed on the wind as they patrolled for prey or carrion. The surrounding pines bulked on the bowl of highlands, enclosing their home.

Despite the
breeze whispering through the trees, heat waves shimmered off the flood plain borders of the Eel River, which chuckled and chattered idiotically over its stony bed in the middle distance. The river was semi-f with icy runoff from the latest rain storms in the Mendocino Range. Its clattering roar grew louder as Everett exited the last switchback and parked on the wide concrete slab he’d laid just before he’d left. The cement was curing well, and didn’t look at all look bad considering Everett was no contractor.

Kerri
came to the doorway and they took note of each other. She wore the stained and spattered smock she always had on when painting. Her eyes blinked behind her coke bottle glasses as she pushed away an unruly lock of long red hair.

She
gave Everett a single preoccupied nod as he exited the Escort. He followed her as far as the porch when it became plain it was her easel she was drawn to.

Sun beamed
through the skylight Everett installed, illuminating her latest canvas. Everett studied Kerri’s painting from the porch without entering. The forms and shapes and colors interplayed on the canvas, adding up to something greater than the sum of their parts – mysteries would be revealed if you looked at the painting long enough.

“It’s beautiful
,” Everett said.

“You don’t think it’s too dark?”
Kerri asked. “These days, my pieces . . .”

She noticed he still stood
out on the porch, engrossed and staring at her canvas as if trapped by it. She smiled.

Raymond’s smaller easel
stood next to his mother’s. He usually painted or drew right along with her, but today he was messing with one of his terrariums at the low working table Everett built.

The glass tank
was occupied by a gigantic banana slug; the psychedelic yellow mollusk dangled off the baby fern placed in there to make it feel at home. Raymond scattered pieces of lettuce in the terrarium.

Everett
came to watch over his shoulder, trying not to intrude on his son’s mental space either if he could help it. Everett simultaneously enjoyed – and was troubled by – the fact Raymond was comfortable with his back to the door. There were no scars on Raymond, and none of his bones had been broken yet.

“Hello
, daddy,” the four year old said, smiling down at his pet mollusk. The slug’s Disney cartoon face seemed also to express pleasure as it chowed down on Raymond’s offering. “Look. He never stops eating.”

“Never
?” Everett asked. “He’ll stop eating some day, son. Everything will pass in the end.”

Raymond shook
his head vehemently in the negative, hard enough his helmet of red cowlicks jiggled around a bit before returning to stillness.

Raymond
looked at his captive slug with his mother’s eyes, inhaling the world like Kerri did. But sometimes a look of cold appraisal crept into Raymond’s eyes, the same look Everett saw on those rare occasions he stood in front of the mirror.