Page 46 of The Bad Weather Friend

“I believe I would enjoy getting to know him if one day there’s a justifiable reason to make him a destiny buddy and reveal to him the existence of my kind.”

Ehud returned to the Explorer with a pass to be displayed prominently on the dashboard. “Have fun at the party, Mr. Lambert.”

“Well,” said Spike, “I suppose it might be the occasion when Satan shows up to collect the soul my brother sold, but that’llprobably be a night when I have the bad luck not to be present for all the fun.”

The ornate gate rolled open. Spike powered up his window and drove through, and colonnades of palm trees flanked them again.

Benny knew the neighborhood well. He’d sold a twelve-million-dollar house here. One of the lesser residences. The architecture of these homes was often unfortunate, but the views of the Pacific and of the light show that was Orange County came at a cost.

They cruised higher into the community, and soon the streets were lined with the luxury vehicles of partygoers. A platoon of young valet-parking attendants in white shirts and black slacks waited in front of the Lambert residence in expectation of generous tips and the fun of driving glittering sedans and sports cars that cost far more than an average house anywhere in the Midwest. They didn’t look crestfallen at the sight of the Ford Explorer, merely stunned that anyone in such a plebian conveyance would have been invited to an affair where the other guests were grandees or at least social-climbing swells with only a few rungs of the ladder remaining above them.

Stacked on an acre with a hundred-eighty-degree view, the house was grand in scale and vulgar in execution. As required by design guidelines of the community, it was Mediterranean—or was said to be, which apparently was good enough. In fact, it more resembled a residence in a cartoon Candyland where marshmallow qualified as an approved building material and where the definition of “accurate detail” had been decided by an architect who was literally a silly goose. Long ago, on the innocent side ofpuberty, Benny had realized that wealth and good taste were not necessarily linked.

Under the pitying gazes of the valets, he and Harper stepped out of the SUV and joined Spike, where he accepted a car check from an attendant. Gone were the craggle’s black boots, black leggings, and black T-shirt. He wore black patent-leather shoes, a tuxedo, a ruffled shirt with French cuffs, a black tie, and a cummerbund.

“Will you look at that,” said Harper, and Benny said, “A cute trick, but not as impressive as the business with the eyeball.”

Wide-eyed at the sight of the tip he’d just been given, the valet said, “Uh, sir, you accidentally gave me a C-note.”

Pulling a thick wad of hundreds from a pants pocket, Spike said, “Sorry about that.” He peeled off a second hundred and passed it over, but then changed his mind and put the entire bankroll—maybe two thousand dollars or more—in the young man’s hand. “Spread it around among your fellow car jockeys. Just don’t dent a fender. The Ford belongs to my destiny buddy. He’s such a perfectionist, if the paint is scratched, he’ll piss a brick.”

Pretending to be struggling against a fierce wind in this calm night, a pair of mimes—a man and a woman—met them at the entrance to the walkway and led them to the front door, apparently with the intention of assuring them that entertainment of a tedious nature would be provided without surcease during the event.

When Benny and Spike followed Harper into the spacious foyer, leaving the miserable mimes to perish in a tornado, a dozen long-legged showgirls in skimpy costumes featuring enormous pink feathers were posed on the curve of the grand staircase. Timing their movements more or less to the music of a bandplaying elsewhere in the house, the beauties descended as in a Busby Berkeley number from a 1930s movie, circled the three newcomers, smiling and blowing kisses, and paraded up the stairs from which they’d come, molting only slightly in the process.

The ten-piece band performed on a stage skirted with black velvet, in a courtyard decorated with maybe two thousand black and white balloons, doors open on all sides to flood the house with their music. The chatter of tuxedoed men and glamorously gowned women swelled louder than the band. The abundance of cavernous cleavage was a stirring testimony to the skill of Newport Beach’s legions of cosmetic surgeons. Liveried waiters glided among the bejeweled and Botoxed celebrants, effortlessly carrying trays laden with fine wines and hors d’oeuvres. Guests were drinking champagne or chardonnay or cabernet, while others were eating skewered shrimp or lamb lollipops or chunks of ahi in wasabi sauce. Young sylphs in black body shirts and leggings circulated with supernatural grace, relieving guests of empty wineglasses, skewers, and soiled napkins. At various nooks in the mansion, women costumed as Romani read palms, dealt tarot cards, and perhaps cast curses on the enemies of the party guests for a price. The immense swimming pool must have been drained and then filled with saltwater, or otherwise the two dolphins frolicking in it would have been dead. A mustachioed and goateed man with fake horns spirit-gummed to his forehead and a red rubber tail protruding from the back of his pants, making balloon animals, might have seemed out of place if he hadn’t been using bottled oxygen to inflate a variety of condoms with which to create his menagerie, but everywhere he went, gales of laughter greeted his act. Three or four times, Benny heard someone say thewhole shebang was right out ofThe Great Gatsby, which meant they had never read Fitzgerald’s novel.

Holding hands again, mainly to avoid being separated and lost forever in this sea of hilarity, Benny and Harper followed Spike as, from his higher vantage point, he searched for Oliver Lambert, whose photo Handy Duroc had earlier pulled from the internet. The attorney was eventually found in the kitchen—one rather like that in Duroc’s house, but larger—where a busy cadre of cooks labored to ensure the guests had a selection of delectables with which to accompany excess alcohol consumption throughout the evening. So many delicious smells laced the air, Benny wouldn’t have been surprised if he gained a pound just by breathing. Lambert was at one of the islands, sampling a fresh-from-the-oven savory, in the company of the caterer, Chaz Champlain, for whom Benny once listed and sold a house.

Spike approached the attorney and put a hand on his shoulder. Lambert looked up, chewing something, and Spike bent down to whisper in his ear. The lawyer swallowed, and a glazed look came over his face. With Spike’s arm around his shoulders in a brotherly fashion, Lambert exited the kitchen by the back stairs.

Benny smiled at Champlain and said, “Great job.”

He and Harper followed the craggle and his distinguished captive to the second floor, along a hallway, to a spare bedroom. Harper closed the door behind them as Spike encouraged Lambert to sit on the edge of the bed.

At fifty, the attorney had a coiffed mane of dark-brown hair as it might have been when he was twenty, the still-smooth yet seasoned face of a thirtysomething barrister, the poisonous methyl-green eyes of a centenarian who had spent a hundred years looking upon wicked work committed by himself andothers, the patrician nose of a Boston Brahmin, the ripe mouth of a born libertine, and the prominent jaw of a proud longshoreman. He appeared to have been stitched together in an experiment, handsomer than the creature Victor Frankenstein summoned to life, but a man who was designed to be all things to all people—and nothing reliable.

When Lambert sat on the bed, he looked around the room, clearly puzzled about how and why he happened to be there. Then he focused on Harper, liked what he saw, seemed to reach the bizarre conclusion that he had been invited to a ménage à quatre, winked at her, and patted the mattress beside him.

“Oh, yuch,” she said. “Spike, shake and bake this toad, and let’s get out of here. I don’t want to breathe the same air he’s breathing any longer than I have to.”

If Lambert had still been somewhat in the mists of a craggle spell, Harper’s insult woke him fully to the reality of the moment. He began to get up from the bed, but he sat down again when Spike put one massive hand on his chest and politely positioned him.

Suddenly alert to the possibility that even an individual of his social position and power might be in danger in his home, he fumbled in a pocket of his tuxedo trousers and then in the other pocket. He still didn’t seem to be alarmed, only irritated.

With a magician’s flare, Spike produced an object about the size of a tube of lipstick. He thumbed open the flip-top of the object to reveal a button. “When I press this, how many bodyguards does it summon?”

“How did you get that?” Lambert demanded. “You have no right to that. Who are you? Who do you think you are?”

“I’d say at least eight security agents during an event of this size. Two of them should always have been within sight of you. But you felt so safe in this crowd of your own kind that you assigned all eight to the perimeter.”

“You won’t escape this house. You won’t get away. You’re finished.”

Spike’s voice got more craggily. “Don’t be tedious. I have no patience for tedious people. I like to have fun. You are not being fun.” To Harper and Benny, he said, “Am I missing something? Is he being fun, and I just don’t get it?”

“He’s no fun whatsoever,” Harper said.

“You’re no fun at all,” Benny told the attorney. “You ruined my life. I never did anything to you, and you waltzed in and ruined my life.”

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