Quicksilver(85)
We were meant to be awed, and we were not.
Soul Timothy said that the door to the left led to the rooms in which the Special Selections were, as he put it, “quartered,” when he should have said imprisoned.
The door to Emmerich’s apartment was on the right. Tim pleaded that the fingerprint scanner controlling the lock responded only to the hands of Emmerich or those of the two physicians who, at their election and in return for seven-figure fees, lived in the Oasis.
As she had done at the main entrance, Panthea placed one palm against that barrier, and by the power invested in her, she released the lock and swung the door open wide.
With a pistol pressed to his head, Tim hadn’t shown any physical manifestation of fear. Now, when he crossed the threshold into the sanctum of the Light, he trembled visibly and paled beneath his tan. These were tremors born of the awe that the rest of us were expected to feel but didn’t. When this soul child put two fingers to his forehead, lips, and heart, my contempt for him was softened by pity. His addiction to the Way was worse than dependence on any drug. He was surely lost forever, with no route back to a rational existence.
Inside the apartment, we were led toward our target by light music, voices, applause, a quick burst of laughter. A TV program.
The rooms were palatial in their appointments if not in their scale. But I was so exhausted by the extravagance of Emmerich’s lifestyle that nothing interested me other than finding that emperor of darkness who called himself the Light.
Although he lived day for night, he wasn’t at breakfast now that the declining sun would soon serve to mark his dawn. We located him in a neon-dazzled arcade with at least a dozen pinball machines as well as early stand-alone consoles like Ms. Pac-Man and Galactic Invaders. There was also a large TV on one wall and in front of it a podium. Emmerich stood at the podium, sidewise to us, barefoot and perhaps naked under a red-silk robe. He was facing the big screen, one hand hovering over a white button the size and shape of half an orange. He was watching what appeared to be a classic episode of Jeopardy! hosted by a fortysomething Alex Trebek.
As we entered the room, one of the contestants said, “I’ll take ‘Famous Littles’ for a hundred,” and Alex said, “In this 1986 movie, Steve Martin played a goofy dentist.” Bodie Emmerich slammed his hand on the button, a buzzer sounded, and he all but shouted the correct response a second or two before the contestant on the program: “What is Little Shop of Horrors?”
The audience applauded, and I stood in the weird double grip of rage and incredulity, with my companions likewise halted by their disbelief. If I’d found Emmerich sprawled on the floor, playing with a puppy and cooing baby talk to it, I’d have thought, Well, Hitler was an animal lover; even psychopaths melt over cute puppies. Seeing this slave master, serial rapist, and probable murderer engaged with such delight in Jeopardy! suggested that the evil he committed was perpetrated with the frivolous intent of a dull boy who lacked the intelligence to grasp the consequences of his actions, a game-show savant whose extensive knowledge of trivia revealed a mind that was nothing but a warehouse of meaningless facts, where there was no capacity to know good from evil. Yet he was not stupid. Perhaps developmentally disabled in a moral sense. Or his conscience had been eaten away by the cancer of narcissism.
The contestant said, “Alex, I’ll take ‘Famous Littles’ for two hundred,” and Alex said, “Jodie Foster directed and starred in this 1991 film about a working-class mother struggling to keep custody of her gifted child.” Emmerich smashed the palm of his right hand into the buzzer on the word “custody,” and shouted, “What is Little Man Tate?” The contestant echoed him, and the audience applauded.
“Turn it off,” Sparky demanded.
Emmerich showed no surprise when he used a Crestron control to mute the audio, although he didn’t switch off the TV. He had known we were there from the moment we entered the arcade.
He turned to us. Fiftysomething. Lean, tan, well maintained. Only a few flecks of gray in his hair. Hands as long-fingered as those of a concert pianist, as powerful as those of a basketball star, the hands of a gentleman strangler. He was handsome in the sexless way that hosts of TV shows for children often are, his features soft at the edges. His expressive eyes were a warm golden brown, his stare direct. It was possible to believe that he was a man of the tenderest feelings—just as it was possible to believe that a hungry wolf in the wild is only a dog that will respond with a wave of the tail when offered a caring hand.
“Timothy,” he said, “this will be resolved. You may go.”
“No, he may not,” I said.
“Go, child,” Emmerich said. “I hold you blameless.”
Gun or no gun, Tim meant to heed the instruction of his master. He turned away from me and started from the room, no doubt with the intention of alerting others that the Oasis had been breached.
I quickly stepped after him, reversing my grip on the Glock. Holding it by the barrel, I slammed the butt down hard on Timothy’s head. All my anger was in that blow, and I hit the guy harder than maybe I intended, but I didn’t care. He was down and out, and that’s how I wanted him.
Bodie Emmerich remained at his personal game-show podium, his right hand resting on the frame of the Crestron panel. In addition to audio-video, climate, lighting, and other controls, that small screen might offer an icon that summoned help. I wondered if, when called, his misnamed children would come creeping in a silent horde or rush into the room like banshees shrieking a promise of imminent death.