The Devil and Dan Cooley Read online

  "Then you understand that once we buy a piece of property, we must retain it."

  "Under most circumstances, yes. In this instance, however, I think you'll find that you further your own cause by selling."

  He raised his eyebrows and started to argue, but Meg held up a finger.

  "Hear me out. I know where you stand on this. According to the head of the consortium, all of your people were appalled by the archconservative stance of most of the consortium members."

  "Do you realize that, collectively, the group that wants to buy that land has invested in almost every capitalist sweatshop operation around the globe?"

  Meg said, "I know several of the members of the group fairly well. While I like some of them a great deal as people, I find their politics and moral stances on issues repugnant." As repugnant as I find yours, she thought. "However, I think you'll find it interesting to know that the consortium is acting as a middleman for another interested group."

  "Really?"

  Meg nodded. "And this is strictly confidential, but if you're interested, I'd be willing to disclose the identity of the actual buyer."

  "Of course I'm interested. You think this other buyer will change my mind, hmm?"

  "Let me put it this way. The final buyer is a hell of a long way from being an archconservative." Meg smiled, "Have you been following the local furor over the Great Devil Makeover?"

  "Of course. I think everyone has."

  "How do you feel about it?"

  "About what?"

  Meg had to be careful how she worded this. She wanted the most anticonservative wording she could find; she thought Haversham would respond to that better than he would to the moderate phrasing she herself would have found preferable. She said, "About the general North Carolinian refusal to grant any sort of rights or protections to people who, through no fault of their own, have been forced to live here and are incapable of living anywhere else?"

  He looked a little surprised. "To tell you the truth, I hadn't looked at it in quite that way."

  Meg hadn't thought so. "No? I'm surprised. I've been looking at it that way for a while, so of course it seems obvious to me." She leaned forward, resting her elbows on either side of her plate, and said, "I do family practice. But I saw this tremendous injustice being done, so I sat down with some colleagues of mine who work for the ACLU. I presented work I'd done toward the initiation of a class action antidiscrimination suit against the state."

  Haversham grinned at her. "That's terrific."

  "Thanks. But that's a slow, slow process. Meanwhile, discrimination—at least discrimination by conservative and religious elements in the state—prevents the Hellraised from finding gainful employment, buying property, or becoming productive members of society."

  "I can see that."

  "The Hellraised want to buy this land. They'll use it to employ themselves."

  "Damn." Haversham sighed. "Look, under the circumstances, I'd almost consider selling it to them. But you see, they approached us about it before. They want to build an amusement park on the site—and we simply can't permit that. If they wanted to buy the land to maintain as wilderness..." He shrugged.

  They can't employ themselves running a wilderness, you idiot, she thought. She was going to have to crawl a little lower. "How many conservatives live in Fender County?" Meg asked. "And religious fundamentalists? How many of those?"

  "The place is full of them."

  Meg nodded and leaned back. "How do they feel about your organization?"

  "They hate us."

  "Are they tolerant of you?"

  "Hell, no. Those polluting money-grubbing cigarette-smoking Jesus-shouting gun nuts fight us every time we turn around."

  "How do you think they'd feel about having a Hell-run amusement park in their back yards?"

  Haversham laughed. "They'd shit."

  "I know."

  She smiled at him.

  He smiled at her.

  She said, "It's a rather petty thought, isn't it?"

  "Pretty petty. Yes." He kept smiling.

  Meg worked the corner of her cloth napkin into a tube and rolled it forward and back across the table. Forward and back. Forward and back. She looked at the napkin while she said, "They aren't going to be tolerant of their own free will."

  "No."

  "Not of you. Not of the Hellraised. Not of anyone who's different than them."

  "No."

  Meg glanced up at him. "I'll paraphrase something you said, if you don't mind. If they won't do what's good for them of their own free will, then someone should make them do it. They won't accept the Hellraised on their own. Make them accept."

  "I like it." He paused, glanced out the window beside them at the steady flow of traffic, then looked back at her. "I'm curious, though. I can see why you're involved with this—I can tell you're the sort of person who cares. Who is willing to take on causes. Who pays attention to global concerns, and won't just watch the world be swallowed by the money mongers. But I get the feeling there's more to it for you than just the obvious."

  "Of course." Meg gave him a candid smile. "Someone sent Dan Cooley a letter bomb the night before last. I was with him when it went off. If I hadn't been with him, he would probably be dead now."

  "Dan Cooley... Dan Cooley..." He frowned. "I can't say the name rings a bell."

  "Dan Cooley. Also known as Gunga Dan."

  His eyes widened slightly. "Gunga Dan the DJ?"

  "Yes."

  "I heard about the bombing. Well, who hasn't? You know him?"

  Meg smiled. "We're good friends."

  "I'm impressed." Haversham took a sip of his water and leaned back in his chair. "I'm also inclined to recommend to the rest of the committee that we go with this deal. Before we can even think about it, though, we'll have to have a couple of concessions."

  "Such as?"

  "We get an equivalent grant of wild land somewhere else in the state."

  "That should be quite simple."

  "We stay completely out of the public eye. The consortium who bought the land from us will have to take any pressure for selling it."

  "I thought of that. That's why the Hellraised were willing to work through a middleman this time. The middleman will serve as your buffer; the consortium doesn't care what anyone thinks of them, as long as they make their profit."

  "Isn't that the way?"

  Meg nodded. "It is. Anything else?"

  Haversham's eyes got a shifty look. "I'd like to meet one of the..." His voice dropped. "...one of the Hellraised before I take this back to my colleagues."

  Meg smiled. "Of course. As luck would have it, I invited Puck to join us. I thought you'd like to meet him. He's running late—he has quite a busy schedule, between public appearances and doing radio promotions—but I'm sure he'll be along soon."

  Five minutes later, Puck strolled up to the table, led by the maitre d'. Haversham seemed surprised to find the devil so urbane and charming. Meg, pleased at how well they were getting along, excused herself for a few moments. Puck had asked Meg when she called him to enlist his help if she wouldn't mind letting him talk with whomever the Wilderness Foundation sent, just for a while. When she returned, they were deep in conversation. Puck glanced at her and hung one hand below the table to give her a thumbs-up sign. That sign meant he could take it from there.

  "Gentlemen," she said, "I hate to eat and run, but I have some late work to do on a divorce case for tomorrow morning. Kyle," she shook his hand, "the consortium will be in touch with you tomorrow. If you'd like to talk with me again..."

  "No, no." He smiled, the smile entirely too broad and toothy. "Not at all. We'll be, I think, more than happy to sell the land. I've been discussing details with Puck, and Devil's Point sounds Wee a wonderful place. No one mentioned to me that they were bringing back extinct species."

  She smiled. Good of Puck to think of that angle. It seemed to have been the clincher.

  Chapter 36

  Down in the darkn
ess, down in the hot black twisting passageways of Hell, where the damned wept and the doubly damned made them weep, Lucifer sat in his palace; the bitter Prince of Hatred gloated at the shifting tides of a silent war that he waged eternally and had waged since the first human wished an enemy into eternal torture and thereby damned himself. The tides, so fickle of late, now shifted strongly in Lucifer's favor.

  Above, in the world of light and the living, where all choices still remained and all options were always open, he felt his servants push open a floodgate... and as the leading edge came open, his enemies, flailing and protesting, fought its movement and by fighting gave it the anger and the hatred it needed to move the rest of the way.

  God grant me a good enemy, he thought, for there are certainly times when an enemy can open doors no friend ever would.

  Chapter 37

  Janna picked up the phone.

  "Janna? It's Kate Matorsi."

  "Hello, Kate." Janna wondered if, given her guaranteed oncoming success, she ought to dump her agent.

  "I have some wonderful news for you."

  "Really?"

  "I just got a call from Anton Leighton-White. He was at the reading that you did the other day for When the Owl Cries. "

  "I remember the name—but he wasn't one of the important people there. He was just sitting in."

  "That's right. He's another director working for the same producer. He liked your reading, he liked your look, and he was impressed by the note you sent to the producer. Said you were a real professional and a class act."

  "That's nice of him."

  "Sweetheart, we don't give a shit about nice. He was sitting in to see if any of the people who were wrong for Owl were right for his film, which is basically Jurassic Park meets Raiders of the Lost Ark. He sent me a script for it; it's wonderful, you have the lead if you want it, and the money they are willing to pay you is beyond the dreams of avarice, kiddo. This movie will be next summer's major summer release."

  Janna sat there, thunderstruck. This was it. The big break. Already.

  "Speechless, huh?" Kate said.

  He'd liked her. He'd liked her enough to give her the lead in a major movie. "Wow," she said.

  Kate had to go, but said she'd call back shortly.

  Janna hung up the phone and lay down on the couch. Major motion picture. With her as the lead.

  He'd liked her.

  Or had he?

  Maybe it was the contract kicking in. Maybe he hadn't liked her until after she'd signed it.

  It didn't matter. Major motion picture. Tons of money, summer release, action-adventure heaven.

  Maybe he hadn't liked her at all. Maybe she hadn't been good enough to earn the part.

  It doesn't matter, she told herself again. This is my big break. This is where I start to fly.

  Maybe he hated me. Maybe I have nothing to do with this at all.

  She stared at the ceiling, poised on the brink of success, and found that it wasn't as exciting as she'd thought it would be. She wanted to know that he'd really liked her. She wanted to know that he thought she was wonderful. And she couldn't know that, because her contract with Hell could make him give her the part even if he loathed her. She would never know if he'd liked her work; would never again know if anyone really liked her work.

  And it mattered.

  Chapter 38

  MONDAY, JUNE 13TH

  Four A. M. and the phone was ringing. Ringing. Dan flopped across the waterbed and picked it up before the answering machine could cut in on him.

  Someone mumbled a long string of words at him. The only one that stuck was "FBI."

  "FBI?" he murmured. He lay on his back with his eyes closed tightly, willing himself not to wake up completely, because he still had an hour until he had to get up for work.

  More mumbling. He gathered that the FBI had, with assistance, picked up three men for questioning. He thanked the caller, hung up the phone, and went immediately back to sleep.

  The alarm went off at five. He sat up, for a moment completely disoriented.

  "Did someone call me?" he asked the room.

  The room certainly knew but didn't answer.

  He got up and got ready for work, sure that he'd gotten a phone call in the middle of the night, but completely unable to imagine what it might have been about. He had the nagging feeling that it had been important. He didn't know why.

  "I might have dreamed it," he muttered. He had annoying dreams like that. Dreaming that he was getting up and getting ready for work, driving there, doing the show—then having the alarm go off and finding out that it didn't count, and that he had to do it all again. Or dreaming that he got up to go to the bathroom, was standing in front of the toilet taking a leak, not feeling any better for having done it, and waking up when he couldn't stop to discover that he was mere seconds away from a complete bladder failure. He always felt cheated by those dreams. He thought if he had to go through the annoyance, it ought to count for something.

  Five A. M. was too early to call friends and family to see if they'd called him.

  He passed Puck on the couch, and Fetch curled in a little ball by the door. Neither moved as he went by. He dropped a candy bar beside the imp—Fetch had been spending time cleaning up the house at night, and he didn't think the little monster ever got a thank you from Puck. He didn't bother to wake them. Even if either of them knew that the phone had rung, they wouldn't have known who called. Puck had his own schedule, anyway, and maintained his own list of obligations, meetings, promotions and autographings. He might have a full day planned. He might need his sleep.

  He and Dan shared the house, but even that wouldn't be for much longer. The elegant Deerfield Crossing apartment complex had offered the devil a two-bedroom furnished apartment at the end of the month, rent free, in exchange for his doing major promotional work for them. So Dan only had another half month of waking up in the middle of the night to the serenading of the Partridge Family, the Jackson Five, and Abba.

  When he got to work, he still hadn't remembered who had called, and he was beginning to be fairly certain that he'd dreamed the entire incident; then, however, Sandy gave him two thumbs up through the glass as he walked into the lobby, and when he gave her a puzzled look and a shrug and mouthed the word "What?" she gave him a look of sheer disbelief.

  He stepped into the studio, she finished announcing her last set, and closed the mike.

  "What do you mean, 'What?' you moron. I thought the fact that they caught them so fast would have had you jumping up and down for joy."

  Something clicked into place. "FBI," he said.

  "Ri-i-i-i-i-i-i-ght." Still with the look that said, Dan Cooley, you came to work without your brain again.

  "Yeah. I got a phone call in the middle of the night. But I was asleep. I went back to sleep after the call, and..." He shrugged. "To be honest with you, Sandy, I didn't remember anything when I woke up except that either the phone had rung or I dreamed that it did."

  "Shit. Doesn't the detachable model give you problems sometimes?"

  Dan knew she referred to his mind; he didn't bother to ask, nor did he dignify her comment with a response. Instead, he asked, "How did they get them?"

  "According to the AP wire story, one of them got caught trying to dump a bunch of letters and another letter bomb in the mail—all of them addressed to you. The box he used for the letter bomb wouldn't fit into the slot, and a police officer who happened to be driving by stopped because he was making such a ruckus, saw what he had, and took him in." Sandy grinned. "He decided if he was going down, he wasn't going to do it alone. He ratted on both the other guys who were in on it with him."

  "Three guys. I thought from all the letters, there had to be more than that."

  "Evidently not." Sandy passed him the chair. "Incidentally," she said, "expect a lot of ugly phone calls."

  Dan said, "Really? Those guys had supporters even after they killed that woman?"

  Sandy shook her head vehemently. "Wron
g kind of ugly. They've been calling here since the first AP story went out over the news demanding that we lynch the guy."

  "You and me?"

  Sandy rolled her eyes. "Christ, no. You did leave without your brain this morning. No. The state. North Carolina. They're calling in from all over the country."

  "They are?"

  "Lines have been swamped all night long. You're everybody's hero."

  She was right.

  "Gunga Dan, you're on the air."

  "Hi. I'm calling from Denver, Colorado," a cheerful man said, "and I just wanted to say that anyone who doesn't think you're doing a great job can go to Hell."

  Dan winced. "Thanks for your support—but we still believe in freedom of thought and speech here in North Carolina. " "Gunga Dan, go ahead."

  "I'm calling from Valdosta, Georgia, your Hell away from home..."

  "I think you mean your home away from Hell."

  "Just proves you never lived here."

  " 'You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy... '" Dan said, mimicking Alec Guinness's voice and quoting from Star Wars.

  The caller laughed. "Maybe you have lived here. Anyway, I wanted to say that there are worse things in the world than devils in your neighborhood. Religious prejudice, willful ignorance, racism, closed-mindedness and intolerance all come immediately to mind."

  "If you'd added halitosis and farting in elevators, you would have listed the seven deadly sins. " "Gunga Dan—talk to me."

  "I love you, Gunga Dan. I want to have your baby."

  "She might object to being carted around by a stranger," he said. "You're on the air. Say something interesting."

  "I think we ought to hang those three guys from the tallest tree in the state."

  Dan sighed. "Satan is recruiting on the other side of town. If you want to go to Hell, call him. " "Gunga Dan..."

  And so it went. He didn't bother to play music. He announced the call letters as often as he had to, he handed off to Marilyn every hour on the hour so she could do the real news, he mocked the murderous thugs and made them look like idiots on the air, and tried to make the people who weren't out for blood look smart and funny. Subtle reinforcement—vigilantes are bad, reasonable people are good, he said in a thousand jokes and wisecracks and sly digs. Maybe it would matter. Maybe.