Page 81 of The Bad Weather Friend

“How wretched your life must be. Another and more important difference between us is that you work for your money, and my money works for me.”

“You inherited billions.”

“Wealth is genetic, Mr. Catspaw. If it hadn’t passed to me from my parents’ estate, I would have earned it quickly in some high-tech endeavor. Having inherited it has allowed me to devote myself to the betterment of the world. With no need to labor to meet my quotidian needs, I spend my time thinking about issues that have perplexed humanity for centuries—and finding solutions. My IQ is a hundred eighty. I won’t embarrass you by asking what yours might be.”

“Thank you.”

“‘Quotidian’ in that context,” Harper said, “meanseveryday. That’s all it means. Your everyday needs.”

Urnfield said, “You are a tedious person. If you wish to live long enough to give birth to the next generation of space fillers, do not interrupt me again. Now, Mr. Catspaw, indulge my curiosity by answering one more question as best you can. I am a billionaire many times over, and yet I live in a middle-class neighborhood. I have no live-in help, only a day staff. To all appearances, I do not employ any extraordinary security. Why do you suppose I choose to live in such humble circumstances?”

After considering a Francis Bacon painting above a counter, between two Sub-Zero refrigerators, a composition so unnerving that it would give nightmares to an axe murderer who’d always enjoyed sweet dreams prior to seeing it, Benny said, “It’s humble except for a couple hundred million worth of paintings by deranged alcoholics.”

Urnfield’s sigh conveyed contempt no less effectively than her words. “Please refrain from pretending that you know anything about art, Mr. Catspaw. Pollock, Munch, and the others whose work hangs here were alcoholics, but Mr. Bacon was not. Are you unable to answer my question?”

“I guess you live here because you want to appear humble.”

“You have just said something of such profound ignorance that your ability to dress and feed yourself is called into question. Allow me to enlighten you. I do not care whether I am thought humble or brilliant or elegant. Other people’s opinions of me matter not at all, because if I did care about that, I would be just like them. I occupy this residence because I have no interest in status symbols and lavish expressions of wealth. I see enormous wealth as having one and only one useful purpose—power. Every civilization currently in existence has been misbuilt and grossly mismanaged. I mean to use my power—and encourage others like me to use their wealth—to set the world right, reset it, remake it so that what we create can never be unmade or in any way altered.”

“That’s a big job,” Benny said.

“Yes, I am aware. However, I’m not afraid of how much work lies ahead. We have numerous programs, not just the one by which you were targeted. But we will persevere. We will not let the little people defeat us.”

“You shouldn’t worry about the little people,” Benny advised. “There aren’t that many of them, and their life expectancy is often not good. Besides, they never have a lot of money unless they play elves and hobbits in hit movies.”

Llewellyn Urnfield stared at him, slammed by a rare moment of befuddlement. “I can make no sense of what you said, Mr.Catspaw. Are youtryingto be stupid, or is it simply that you can’t help it? Never mind. That was a rhetorical question.”

To Benny, Harper said, “She really thinks she’s untouchable, invulnerable.”

Either Urnfield didn’t hear that statement or was incapable of hearing it. She turned her attention to Spike. “You. What did you say your name was?”

“Spike.”

“You said you could explain yourself, who you are, how you came to be here. I am now prepared to listen, though I advise you to be succinct, as I am a busy woman.”

Spike obliged. “I am a craggle.”

“You appear not at all craggy. You have polish, and you look like a big lump of muscle.”

“Craggle. Not craggy. As best it can be explained to one of your species,” Spike elucidated, “a craggle is for the most part a benign supernatural creature whose mission is to help nice people lead safe and meaningful lives when they find themselves thwarted and abused by such as yourself—nice people who could contribute to the world in ways that improve it and lift the spirits of others, do good where you would do evil.”

Having sampled her wine during that speech, Llewellyn Urnfield put her glass down. “Good and evil are relative concepts, therefore meaningless. To hurry your recitation along, I should tell you that I am quite impervious to insults.”

“As I observed earlier. In short, I’m Benjamin’s bodyguard, friend, and destiny buddy. I am about to show you abilities that will convince you that you’re overmatched and should back off, quit tormenting your moral betters, and retreat to whatever snake hole you came from. If you don’t die of a heart attack or go madfrom what you are about to see, then you won’t remember what I’ve told and shown you. However, the terror will remain with you, festering into such a host of phobias that you’re no longer competent enough to carry on with your schemes to remake the world as you wish.”

Again, Urnfield produced a smile as sharp as a razor and as curved as a chef’s mezzaluna. “I forget nothing. I remember every resentment I’ve harbored since the cradle.”

“Then your heart must be very black,” Spike said. “Mine is not. Here, I’ll show you.”

As with F. Upton Theron, he tore his beating heart from his chest and held it out to her, blood dripping on the island.

Urnfield twitched but didn’t flinch, eased back an inch in her seat but didn’t recoil. “What trick is this?”

“Trick?” said Spike. “No, I think it’s very real, but I’ll take a closer look.”

His eyes reeled out of his sockets on tethers of muscle and blood vessels and optic nerves, hovering around the throbbing heart, peering at it from this angle and that.

Evidently, Llewellyn Urnfield was far more detached from sanity than she had seemed heretofore. She regarded this display as though it was of interest but not as shocking and horrific as things she witnessed every day. Like maybe a long flow of snakes slithering out of a water faucet. Or her daytime employees butchering live babies to eat for lunch. Or floors and walls swarming with huge cockroaches that had human heads. The kind of things chronic alcoholics saw when they suffered delirium tremens.

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