Devoted(98)

“We had a deal. You pissed on it. You decided to grandstand, be the glory boy, and you let him get away. You haven’t just fucked me over. There’s an interested party you don’t know about, someone who could crush you like an ant and enjoy doing it. You’ve fucked him over, too. If the worst that happens to you is you wake up some morning to find your balls have been cut off, you should spend the rest of your life thanking God nothing worse was done to your sorry ass. But because something is needed from you, there is one hard way out, only one way.”

Tears welled in Hayden Eckman’s eyes. “Tell me.”

“Some men from my office will be coming to see you at six o’clock this evening. You will turn over to them all evidence, including the bodies of the victims.”



“Yes, of course.”

“They’ll have a long statement for you to sign, explaining all that happened. The names Nathan Palmer and Lee Shacket won’t be anywhere in the statement. The perpetrator will be identified as a drug-addled MS-13 gang member.”

“What MS-13 gang member?”

“We’ll produce a likely candidate later. Not your concern.”

“But Shacket’s still out there.”

“We’ll find him. Anyway, he’ll self-destruct.”

“I don’t think he’ll kill himself,” said the sheriff.

“I didn’t say he would. I said he’ll self-destruct. He won’t be able to stop it. Now do you want to take this one chance, or are you determined to blow up your life?”

As fat, warm tears rolled down Hayden Eckman’s face, he said, “Will I be allowed to continue being the sheriff?”

“As long as you understand I own you, the interested party I mentioned owns you, everybody owns you.”

“All right,” the sheriff said without hesitation. He was no longer sitting on the floor. He was lying on his side, in the fetal position. “Would it be possible . . . Will I be allowed eventually to run for higher office?”

“Allowed? Hell, you’ll be required to run. Once you’re owned by the right people and you acknowledge being owned, that you’re in the game just to do what you’re told, you’re an ideal candidate. There’s one more thing you have to do to earn all this.”



“Tell me.”

“Those six deputies providing protection. Pull them off that duty. Send them home. They aren’t needed anymore.”

“But what if . . .”

“They aren’t needed anymore.”

“What if Shacket . . . What if this MS-13 gangbanger goes back there?”

“Nothing bad is going to happen. Nothing that will cast blame on you. There are elegant ways to deal with these things. Now are you owned or are you not? It’s comfortable being owned, Hayden. It makes everything so much easier. You’ll become a valuable asset and be well taken care of. Your progress will be assured.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It is nice.”

“Well, if they aren’t needed anymore . . .”

“They aren’t.”

“I’ll pull them off that duty.”

“Welcome home, Hayden.”

“That sounds nice, too.”

“It is nice,” Tio said and terminated the call.

Sheriff Hayden Eckman continued lying on his kitchen floor, in the fetal position, for perhaps another quarter of an hour. He felt as if he were descending through a narrow passage, forced forward by contractions through a birth canal, toward a new life. These weren’t contractions of his conscience, for his conscience wasn’t muscular enough to get the job done. These were contractions of desire, the same desire for status and power that had driven him as long as he could remember. If the exalted status he might one day achieve was unearned, conferred on him because of his obedience to the biases and preferences of the ruling class . . . well, he could revel in the prestige of his position nonetheless. He wouldn’t be alone; probably three-quarters of those who enjoyed acclaim and high renown had achieved nothing to warrant it, other than to follow slavishly the ideology currently required of the anointed. And if the power that he acquired was not real power, if he was only doing to others what he was told to do to them, it was far better to be the whip that the powerful used than to be one of those lashed by it.



I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.

Furthermore, he was well suited for the new life Tio Barbizon offered him because he was a superb liar. He was such a convincing deceiver, he often found that in time he came to believe that the truth he invented was the truth in fact, and could occasionally be surprised to discover that he had even deceived himself. Once his new masters had lifted him up several rungs of the ladder, he might well believe that his power was his own, real and earned. If one believed something with all one’s heart, that made it enough of a truth on which to base a life, at least one day at a time.

Finally he got up from the kitchen floor, born fully clothed, with no messy afterbirth.

He finished the Scotch in the glass he’d left on the island.

Then he used his personal phone to call the personal phone of one of the deputies at the Bookman residence, and he ordered an end to the protection he had provided for the widow and her child.