Page 59 of The Bad Weather Friend

It was in his interest to learn all that he could about the clandestine defenders who sometimes schemed with success to undo the damage done to men and women like Catspaw. In previous situations, even highly professional security forces had failed to insulate the Better Kind against these mysterious agents; neither had schemes to find and slaughter said agents been successful; incredibly, they were able to purge their images from security-camera video. Some of the Better Kind had been exposed to outrageous ridicule akin to what Oliver Lambert suffered. However, none had been physically harmed, a fact that gave Upton the courage to prepare this drawing room for an eventual visit from these enigmatic enemies.

For thirty years, since he turned sixty, Upton had kept two full-time physicians on payroll, not only to provide immediate emergency care if needed, but also to ensure that he was able to obtain a prescription for any medication he wanted, for whatever purpose he might wish to use it. One of the current pair of doctors, Alistair Pinch, who received more than one million dollars a year, visited Upton half an hour earlier to install a catheter in a vein in the crook of his left arm, without presuming to inquire why. Dr. Pinch also refrained from asking about Arabella, who often sprawled in Upton’s lap during long evenings of mutual affection. She was currently safe in the primary bedroom, where she would remain until this nasty business was done. Following the physician’s departure, Upton fully loaded a pair of hypodermic syringes, the contents of which he could inject into the catheter in less than a minute.

He was ready for a confrontation.

He sat in a Biedermeier armchair in the sixty-by-forty-foot drawing room that offered a stunning view of the Pacific during the day. Currently, ten Tiffany lamps provided a magical ambiance that encouraged in him a nostalgic mood. He found himself thinking back over a life well lived.

When F. Upton Theron was just in his twenties, yammering fools in the media would already on occasion say that he had more money than God. Whenever this came to his attention, he held Arabella in his lap and said, “My darling girl, I have no knowledge of the Lord, but considering that He never steps forward to refute the claim that my fortune is much greater than His, I must assume that He is indeed poorer than I. And because money is power, who then is the greater power, my sweet?” Arabella always declared that her dear Uppie was the greater power; she nevercalled him Upton. He would then say, “Let God keep to Heaven, and I will see that Earth is run as it ought to be.” He never failed to be amused by this little dialogue. Because Arabella enjoyed it quite as much as Uppie did, they always followed this with a marvelous cuddle. During this wanton snuggling, he often buried his face in her belly and stroked her ears, and no matter how long their mutual adoration lasted, Arabella never once vacated her bowels in his lap.

When truly loved and adequately schooled, a sixteen-pound white rabbit, of the breed called “Flemish giant,” could be potty trained. The great house, in which Upton was born, had been renovated after he inherited it when he was twenty-seven, so that a room on each of the three levels served as a toilet for Arabella. The doors were always left open, and the floors paved in sealed limestone with a central drain. A trusted member of the fourteen-person household staff checked eachtoilette de la lapineight times a day to collect the pellets and wash the urine into the drain.

Even with loving care, a Flemish giant lived only a few years. Upton contracted with a breeder to produce an uninterrupted series of white Flemish giants and hold them off the market. A new Arabella must always be on the brink of adulthood and fully toilet trained, to be placed in Upton’s arms the very day that the current Arabella passed away. Rabbits could be stoic in decline. Often Upton didn’t know he’d lost a beloved Arabella until, at the end of a frantic search, he found the cooling body. Such shocking discoveries were distressing. When he knew his sweet Arabella was ill, after the veterinarian confirmed that nothing more could be done to extend her life, Upton spared her from dying alone, euthanizing her as tenderly as he knew how. He and he alone dug her grave and placed her body in it. Every Arabella was buried inthe same corner of the estate, near the first Arabella Rabbit. The first Arabella had come to him with the silly name Powderpuff, and he’d changed it.

When Upton’s father built the estate, he had called it Casa Something Something, a romantic and foolish name for such a grand house. Upton resorted to the Italian language when he renamed it Palazzo del Coniglio, Palace of the Rabbit. Over the decades he lived in happiness with many Arabellas. A stone wall encompassed five acres with a spectacular view of the San Clemente coastline.

The vaguely Tuscan house provided over sixty thousand square feet of living space, a space that was more than comfortable for a confirmed bachelor like Upton, even though he seldom left the property. Those people he wished to see were invited to Palazzo del Coniglio or induced to come there by application of the carrot-and-stick tactic, or reduced to swift obedience by a credible threat to destroy everything they held dear. Upton had no interest in travel for business or pleasure; rather than see the world, he wanted to own a large portion of it.

His father, H. Ellsworth Theron, had left him a considerable fortune, and he had industriously multiplied it year after year. In pursuit of his goals, Upton was ruthless, deceitful, utterly without conscience. He experienced no doubt or regret, no shame, because he knew his ultimate intention was noble—to amass enough power and influence to reset the world from what it was to what it ought to be, and make people do what was best for them, whether they wanted to do it or not. Some people called him evil, but their judgment meant nothing to Upton because he had healthy self-esteem, and he was smarter than they were, therefore better able to see the truth of things. His goodness wasuncontestable, as proved by the time, money, and unconditional love that he devoted to bunnies.

Upton was self-aware enough to understand that he was in part motivated to be a good man because his father was such a bad one. Ellsworth built Casa Blah Blah largely to placate his wife, Upton’s mother, Pelagia. She could reign as a doyenne of high society, her grand estate a draw for celebrities and artists and politicians who came for long weekends of partying with like-minded people who shared the most enlightened views. In return, she never complained that Ellsworth spent much of his time away from home with one or another of his mistresses.

Although he had hardly known his father, Upton knew his mother too well and despised her more than he did Ellsworth. Because Upton strongly resembled his father, Pelagia could not bring herself to grant him even a fraction of the affection that she lavished on his younger sister, who didn’t resemble Ellsworth but looked remarkably like a movie star who visited Casa Silly Name often for a week at a time. Sister got everything she wanted, and Upton got what Mother decided he deserved.

Sister was seven when she received the rabbit she desired and named it Powderpuff, while her ten-year-old brother continued to be denied the dog for which he had been pleading for years. One night while everyone slept, Sister ventured from her room and evidently fell, hitting her head on the pool coping and plunging unconscious into the water, where she was found drowned in the morning. Grieving for his sibling, Upton honored her memory by assuming responsibility for Powderpuff. He renamed the white rabbit Arabella, after the lost girl.

When Upton was fifteen and had just received his third rabbit, Ellsworth divorced Pelagia, keeping both Casa Doobee DoobeeDoo and custody of their son, while settling on her thirty million dollars per the terms of a prenuptial agreement. Thereafter, Upton never saw his mother again, though every year on his birthday, until she died, she sent him a different photograph of his sister.

Although Upton occasionally saw his father after the divorce, he was raised by Mr. and Mrs. Gumfrey, who served in loco parentis. Norbert Gumfrey was the estate manager slash butler, and Zenobia Gumfrey was the cook. They were not by nature kindly people, but they knew a good thing when they fell into it. They made sure that young Upton had everything he wanted, which was more than he needed, and he in turn never reported what he knew about the many games they played with the expenses of the estate and the sums they embezzled.

Twelve years after the divorce, Ellsworth died, and Upton came into his inheritance. The Gumfreys, with the survival instincts of two rabbits in a world of wolves, suspected they might be fired and replaced with honest employees. Zenobia issued a warning cloaked as an innocuous comment: “Ah, dear boy, look at you now, the handsome master of Palazzo del Coniglio. How fast time passes. It doesn’t seem possible your parents entrusted you to Norbert and me twelve years ago or that it’s been seventeen years since your beloved sister was drowned.” Even if the left corner of Zenobia’s mouth hadn’t curved into the vaguest suggestion of a sneer, Upton would have understood the threat inherent in the locution “was drowned” when a mere “drowned” would have been the correct way to express an accidental death.

He responded to that subtle extortion by giving the Gumfreys an immediate 20 percent raise and generously expanding their paid-vacation benefit from two weeks to four. Later that year, while they were on holiday in Las Vegas, staying in a presidentialsuite with a twelve-foot-square spa, they died in a freakish electrocution when the pump motor malfunctioned and a failure of the spa insulation allowed electric current to be introduced into the water.

Through an intermediary, photographs of the deceased were quietly provided by the hotel engineer, Ivan Krucknick, who was responsible for keeping the extensive mechanical systems functioning without surcease. The pictures were satisfying because the Gumfreys had paid a proper price for treachery, for not being the better kind of people, chiseling such minor sums in an inelegant ill-conceived fashion, revealing themselves to be little more than grubby street criminals in livery.

Because Upton had been interviewing new couples who could serve as estate manager and cook, he was able to replace the Gumfreys the day after the timely incident in Vegas. Management of the eighteen-member staff, including those in the house and the groundskeepers, proceeded without a hitch.

Thereafter, for the next sixty-three years, F. Upton Theron’s life had gone smoothly, a busy and fulfilling affair defined by the unconditional love of large white rabbits, the accumulation of ever greater wealth, and the vigorous cancellation of the careers of the retrograde individuals who possessed the qualities and potential to rise into positions from which they could challenge, in one way or another, the steady progress toward utopia that was being crafted by their betters. At ninety, he felt fortunate to have led a life of purpose and meaning.

The hypodermic syringes lay on the table beside his armchair, under the colorful canopy of a Tiffany lamp. His shirtsleeve was rolled up to expose the catheter that Dr. Pinch had installed in his left arm.

Also on the table was a small remote-control device rather like a garage-door opener. It offered two buttons, one red and one green.

Upton owned numerous companies, including the relatively small Ob & Ob—short for Obstruct and Obliterate—that installed security systems with defensiveandoffensive capabilities, as well as panic rooms that could survive even a tactical nuke if one detonated no closer than sixty-four yards. They worked mostly on properties owned by members of the Better Kind, though there were some vicious dictators whom it made sense to oblige. Ob & Ob had done great work on this drawing room.

To their consternation, the regular security guards had been sent home with the assurance that Upton would be safe this one night without them, though he gave no explanation. He believed they were genuinely concerned for him because they knew he was a great man.

As he waited for a showdown, he held a bottle of root beer, sipping the treat through a straw. He enjoyed root beer floats with French vanilla ice cream more than the unenhanced beverage; however, on this occasion, the larger glass and the long spoon required by a float would be more difficult to set aside than a simple bottle. He needed to remain quick and dexterous to meet a sudden threat. All these years later, he remembered how much Sister enjoyed root beer floats, but of course she couldn’t have them anymore. He intended to prepare a float later, when his visitors, whoever they might prove to be, were all reliably dead.

A tone sounded throughout the house, revealing that a vehicle had turned off the street and entered the driveway.

He must assume that those who evidently represented Benjamin Catspaw and who earlier humiliated Oliver Lambert, Esquire, had dared to venture into his web.

After taking one more deep draw of the soda, he set the bottle aside and picked up one of the hypodermic syringes. He pressed the plunger just enough to squirt a brief stream of the contents out of the cannula, ensuring that he would not inject an embolism into his bloodstream. He married the needle to the catheter and administered the full dose. He repeated this procedure with the second syringe, providing himself with a total of sixty cubic centimeters of antitoxin. He put the empty syringes under his chair, rolled down his sleeve, and placed the special remote control on the seat of his chair, against his thigh, where it was unlikely to be noticed.

DO NO HARM

So after they enjoyed a group hug outside of the Newport Beach restaurant, they got in the Explorer. Spike drove out of the parking lot and turned left, and they were instantly twentysome miles south of Newport, exiting Interstate 5 at San Clemente.

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