Page 32 of The Bad Weather Friend

Less concerned for his safety than for hers, to prove that he didn’t need a testosterone shot (if in fact that was what she had been thinking about him earlier), he hurried after her, along the hallway, into the foyer, and left into the living room.

The first thing he noticed was the shattered armchair. It had been crafted in Sweden of whitewashed sycamore, with a square of thin white upholstery inset in the back and another on the seat, angled to give the impression that it wasn’t merely an armchair but also a means of transportation capable of conveying the occupant anywhere at rocket speed. Although it was a sturdy piece of well-made furniture weighing forty pounds or more, it had been hefted high and slammed repeatedly into the floor until it looked as though it had been left behind by a category-five tornado. Having served as the anvil on which the chair had been hammered into ruin, a couple of two-foot-square limestone tiles were chipped and badly cracked.

The second thing Benny noticed was the intruder, who had moved on from the chair to the far end of the room and stood staring at a Lucite table lamp with a white shade. If he wasn’t seven feet tall, he was six feet ten. In black boots, black leggings, and a black T-shirt, he was a tower of muscle. Hands big enough to juggle bowling balls. Shaved head. Skin the color of beef bouillon. White eyebrows. When he looked toward them, his eyes were the pale blue of faded denim. His face appeared hard, forged in a furnace, as if he could break down a door with it if he preferred not to use a fist for that purpose.

Still plucky but poised to run, Harper said, “Who are you, what do you want, what did you do to the chair?”

After a brooding silence, the stranger spoke in a voice that—not because of volume but because of its quality, its character, its fundamentality—could shaketh the wilderness. “Spike,” he said.

They waited for him to say more, but when the one word appeared to be all that the brute cared to share at the moment, Harper said, “Spike? What does that mean?”

The intruder repeated Harper’s initial question in a perfect imitation of her voice. “‘Who are you?’” Then he reverted to his true voice for his answer: “Spike.”

“That’s your name? Spike is your name?”

“Justice,” the brute declared.

“Spike Justice?” Benny asked.

In Harper’s voice again, Spike said, “‘What do you want?’” In his own voice, he replied, “Justice.”

As if she felt Benny might need a translation, Harper said, “His name’s Spike, and he wants justice.”

Benny took no comfort whatsoever from the fact that Spike had not yet attacked them and left them in the condition of the chair. His peculiar method of conversation suggested that he might be a bit slow-witted, but a lot of murderers were on the stupid side. Even if Spike wasn’t a murderous psychopath, even if he was gentler than he appeared to be, that didn’t mean he was just a big harmless galoot. In John Steinbeck’s novelOf Mice and Men, Lennie has a low IQ and means no harm, but he accidentally kills a puppy, and then he offs Curley’s wife a little less than accidentally. Besides, what about Bob standing spellbound in the garage?

“Broke it,” said Spike.

“You broke justice?” Harper said. “You mean you broke the law?”

Resorting once more to his uncanny impression of her, he said, “‘What did you do to the chair?’” That was the third question she had asked in a rush of words. “Broke it,” he repeated, as himself.

To Benny, Spike didn’t appear as if he was remorseful about breaking the chair. He looked as if he would break anything he wanted to break; thank you very much.

Harper seemed to think that by putting Spike on the defensive, she could get and keep the upper hand in this relationship. Benny didn’t believe she was correct about that, but he didn’t advise her otherwise when she took a sterner tone with the brute. “Destroying other people’s property is not acceptable. What makes you think you had the right to destroy the chair?”

Spike pondered the sycamore debris from a distance and then explained, “Ugly. Uncomfortable. Ridiculous chair.” Once he allowed himself the full expression of his gift for critiquing furniture, the floodgates opened, and he stopped issuing words one drop at a time. “Sit in that absurd chair too long, you’ll deform your spine. It’s within my authority to take such corrective action.”

“What authority?” Benny asked. “I liked that chair.”

Even as Benny finished speaking, Harper said, “What did you do to Bob out there in the garage?”

Spike seemed more obliged to respond to her than to Benny. “I sidelined him until I’ve done what needs to be done. He’ll be okay.”

“You can’t just sideline people.”

Distracted, squinting around the room as if everything he saw offended him, Spike said, “White. White, white, white,” as though he might violently redecorate the house or burn it down.

“You can’t just sideline people,” Harper repeated.

“Yes, I can,” Spike said, glowering at the Lucite lamp.

“That’s an expensive lamp,” Benny ventured, and Harper said, “Until you’ve ‘done what needs to be done.’ What does that mean? What are you here to do?”

“Justice. Vengeance. Cast down the wicked. Set things right.”

“What things?” she asked.

“An eye for an eye,” said Spike.

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