Page 78 of The Bad Weather Friend

Because of its warm color, the lamplit flagstone path reminded Benny of the Yellow Brick Road in the movie, but he didn’t feel like dancing along it. He followed Harper, Spike, and the whippet, which glided on its long legs, head high, tail wagless. The dog led them into a residence with numerous bookshelves crammed full of volumes.

Otherwise, the inside of the house had nothing in common with the exterior. There were tens of millions of dollars’ worth of scary-as-hell expressionist and abstract expressionist art on the walls. As they passed canvases, Spike said, “Francis Bacon. Never learned to draw. Used smudges, whorls, jagged slashes, and disturbing shapes to alarm the viewer. Edvard Munch. Lived most of his life on the edge of insanity, spent time in an asylum, serious alcoholic. Ah, Jackson Pollack. Had very little instruction in art. Threw the paint at the canvas, dripped it, applied it with sticks and even turkey basters. Serious alcoholic. Died in a car accident. All three adored for the incoherence represented in their work, and highly collectible.”

The dog led them into a kitchen as stark as Benny’s, although it was black and white, rather than all white. On the far side of a central island, a woman was standing between two commodious swivel stools with backs and arms.

A book lay open in front of one of the stools. Beside it were a glass of red wine, a fork, a napkin, and a white dish that contained what appeared to be steak tartare garnished with capers and chopped onions.

The woman picked up the whippet and placed it on one of the stools. The dog delicately licked her hand before it curled up as though to sleep.

“Llewellyn Urnfield,” said Spike.

“Who else?” she asked. “I am who I am.” She sat on the second stool with the imperious expression of a judge, and they stood on the other side of the island, facing her, as if they were attorneys summoned to the bench to be reprimanded for courtroom antics.

She was fiftysomething, almost as thin as an issue ofVogue, her shoulder-length blond hair styled without bangs and as straight as if she slept hanging by it from a ceiling fixture. In her youth, she must have been an austere beauty with a mystical quality. Now, with her flawless skin and chiseled features, she was still lovely, though severe.

“Upton informed me about what happened to Oliver Lambert at his most recent ill-conceived celebration of excess. Upton expected you, Mr. Catspaw, to visit him in the company of this colorful little jejunity. I have not heard from him since then, but evidently you have visited him and somehow obtained my name from him.”

“He’s dead,” Spike said.

“I have not addressed you,” Urnfield said. “You will have the courtesy to wait until I do.”

Benny said, “We didn’t kill Mr. Theron. Not technically. He died of a heart attack. We adopted his rabbit. She’s in the car.”

“Please attend me carefully, Mr. Catspaw. If Upton is indeed deceased, that is an inconvenience to our movement. However, I am not to any degree emotionally affected by the death of a ninety-year-old man who, while sharing my views on the reorganizationof society, was otherwise repellent both in appearance and personal habits. Nor do I care how he died, whether of a heart attack or a hatchet to the head. As for his rabbit, its future care, and its current whereabouts—in my experience, your talent for tiresome conversation is second to none. If you insist on injecting endless details of no significance that extend this meeting beyond reason, then I shall be most displeased. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You will excuse me, Mr. Catspaw, if I have little confidence in your ability to understand anything. What is it you think that you understand about what I have just told you?”

“You’re in charge of this meeting—this confrontation, powwow, whatever it is—and we’re not to speak until spoken to.”

“And?”

“And. Uh.” She looked nothing like Grandma Cosima, but Benny wouldn’t have been surprised to learn they had been conjoined at birth and shortly after had been surgically separated. “Well, I guess, we’re supposed to keep our responses on point and succinct.”

Her raised eyebrows conveyed the same emphasis as would have two exclamation points on a written reply. “Whatever lies between your ears is gaseous, but at least it provides minimal function.”

Harper said, “I know what ‘jejunity’ means. It’s the noun form of the wordjejune. You’ve just called me juvenile, immature, and insipid.”

Llewellyn Urnfield produced a smile sharp enough to sever a carotid artery. “I am aware that little learning occurs when you attend a government institution, especially when your school day is interrupted by cheerleader practice and daydreaming aboutcopulation with the football team. Therefore, I can only admire that you have taken a course to improve your vocabulary in the wake of your sad miseducation. However, I encourage you to consider that I have had the benefit of the finest finishing school followed by degrees taken at two superb universities, and that my family has possessed great wealth for generations, ensuring both that I could devastate you in a battle of wits or have you killed without consequences. You would be well advised to heed my advice to Mr. Catspaw.”

Benny half expected Harper to fling herself across the kitchen island and take Llewellyn Urnfield out of her barstool. Of course she did no such thing, and even with his gaseous brain, he could deduce why Harper restrained herself. Urnfield had such confidence in her authority over other people that anyone might infer it must be based on more than the mere assumption of superiority, that the woman possessed a lethal power enabling her to turn an attacker to ashes in an instant. Besides, at least in the short term, Urnfield’s vitriol was strangely entertaining.

“Mr. Catspaw,” she said, “those of us who have taken it upon ourselves to develop algorithms that identify dangerous individuals such as you—we aren’t stupid. Indeed, we’re the best and brightest. Yet we are often surprised by how ineffective you people are when we destroy your careers, how little most of you are able to grasp that a powerful organization has devised your destruction. Perhaps this is because we choose our targets early in their lives, before they have acquired much wisdom, when they regard everyone with good will and don’t yet understand that some of us do not regard them in the same let-live spirit. Indeed, we work tirelessly to identify them ever earlier in their lives, so that we can eliminate the threat they pose to a perfect society before they evenbegin to know what they believe, before they develop the ability to influence others, when they’re still naive fools as pathetic as you.”

“Gee,” Benny said, “that’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

“Idothink, Mr. Catspaw, and quite deeply about many things that you have never thought about in your life. In time, we hope to identify our targets when they are in elementary school and disable them psychologically at such an early age they will achieve nothing of which they were once capable. We have been aware for some time that there must be a mysterious organization assisting some of our targets, undoing our fine work, promoting creatures like you into successful lives on the very path that we find unacceptable. Never, however, has one of them identified us so quickly, and none has dared to come after us and confront us as you have this night.”

“I’m proud of being uniquely dedicated to my destiny buddies,” Spike said.

“Shut up,” said Llewellyn Urnfield. “Mr. Catspaw, you will tell me how you have accomplished this, and you will withhold nothing if you value the life of this perky piece of fluff in her pink cap.”

Benny said, “Hey, you can’t—”

“I haven’t given you permission to speak, Mr. Catspaw.” She looked at Spike as he opened his mouth. “Nor have I yet asked to hear a word fromyou. If you think I’m intimidated because you look like Bigfoot after a full-body shave, you don’t understand who I am and what terrible power I possess. This ponytailed popsy is a dead girl standing if that’s what you want. Now, we will pause in our discussion.”

She picked up the fork, ate some of the steak tartare, ate some more, put down the fork, sipped the wine, and then savored another sip.

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