just behind him. As always Neil carried a clipboard, and he nodded brusquely in his annoyingly officious manner. 'We need to talk to you alone for a few minutes, Ray.'
'Alone?'
'Yes.'
'How do you know I'm alone?'
'What do you mean, Ray?' The innocence was a little too innocent.
'Where do you think Liz is?'
'I'm sure I don't know.'
'She's in the bath. So I am alone. Pretty damn convenient.'
'All I meant was that we would like to speak to you outside of the presence of your wife. I thought we might chat behind a closed door in some room of your house. But, yes, the fact that Elizabeth is bathing at this time is quite fortuitous.'
The uneasiness increased. 'What do you want?'
'May we come in?' Neil asked.
Ray favored him with a tight smile. 'No you may not.'
'Then we will conduct our business here on the porch.'
'I have no business with you,' Ray said. 'As I've told you assholes before: get off my property.'
They made no effort to move, and Chuck's mouth curved upward in an amused smile. 'You know very well that we're not trespassing. We have the right to be here.'
'Why?'
'The association has been informed that you spoke with SheriffHitman ,'
Neil said, 'and attempted to discover the identity of the person who bailed the late Deke Meldrum out of jail.'
'So? What business is that of yours?'
'When behavior of an individual reflects badly on Bonita Vista, the homeowners' association naturally takes an interest. As you know, it is our goal to avoid tarnishing the reputation of our community and to do everything within our power to make sure that property values are maintained. Needless to say, the death of a man, even a transient, even by accident, is cause for concern.'
'What does that have to do with my trying to find out who bailed out Meldrum?'
'We are simply trying to stave off potential embarrassment. It is clear from the questions you asked and from your past behavior that you are somehow trying to place blame for this man's death on the association, and we're here today to ... dissuade you from that course of action.'
'Got something to hide, Campbell?'
Chuck stepped forward. 'Ray, Ray, Ray. You still haven't learned that sometimes you need to just leave things alone, let them be.'
'Yeah? Why is that?'
They moved fast: Chuck grabbing him by the left arm and pulling him out onto the porch, Terry stepping quickly behind him and yanking on his right arm. The two of them held him, while Neil thwacked his genitals with the clipboard. There was a sudden sharp flare of pain, pain so intense that he wanted to cry out and clutch his balls, but he refused to give these bastards the satisfaction of a response, and he willed himself to remain stoic.
Neil grinned, and there was real enjoyment in it. Malice and pleasure, a lethal combination. For the first time since he and Liz had moved to Utah, Ray was scared. Really and truly scared. A line had been crossed, and it was impossible to go back again, to pretend it hadn't occurred.
Neil lovingly stroked the clipboard as he paced in front of the stoop.
'You're not a team player, Ray. Bonita Vista is a community, and you are part of that community. You and your wife are not hermits or recluses, living on your own. You live here, with us, in respectable, civilized society.' There was steel in his voice, in his eyes. 'You need to play ball.'
'Tell your goons to get their hands off of me.'
Neil punched him in the stomach and Ray doubled over. He remained standing only because Chuck and Terry were holding him up, and he was humiliated to hear that the sounds he made while trying to suck in air sounded like sobs.
'Bonita Vista is your home, and you'd better start showing it more loyalty, more respect. The reason you have such a nice house in such a nice neighborhood is because of the standards maintained by the homeowners' association, because of our vigilance in going after those who do not follow the rules and regulations. Your life is easy because we have made it easy. Yet you are ungrateful, always looking for the cloud behind the silver lining, always imagining nefarious schemes behind perfectly innocent efforts to improve life in our neighborhood.'
'It's a free country,' Ray reminded him.
Neil smiled. Behind him, Chuck and Terry laughed harshly.
'A free country? Do you know why we have a homeowners' association?'
Neil asked. 'It's because we are not under anybody's rule. The federal and state governments do not concern themselves with our petty little problems, and the county, even if it wanted to, doesn't have the means. We're in an unincorporated area, so there is no local government that has jurisdiction. We are on our own. We have been forced to provide for ourselves, to take care of ourselves, to look out for our own. And you're right, we are free. Free from government interference and meddling and micromanagement. But it is only our self-sufficiency that makes it so.'
It sounded like a militia attitude, particularly in the fervency of its delivery, and that was as scary to Ray as anything he had yet heard.
'This is true democracy,' Neil said. 'It's not representative government but direct participation. We, the people, are the ones making decisions and carrying them out. We're not relying on others, on outside assistance. And we're doing a damn good job of it. A
homeowners' association is more efficient than a government agency.
More efficient and more responsive. This,' he said, gesturing to the neighborhood around him with the clipboard, 'is the wave of the future.
The decentralization of government that people have been fighting for for years? We have it.'
'I'm a liberal Democrat,' Ray said. 'I like big government.'
Neil punched him again.
The patina of politeness, the attempt to convert through persuasive argument, was gone, and Neil's voice was annoyed and angry. 'You're a slow learner, Ray, and we're not going to put up with this forever. Get with the program. We're here today as a courtesy call, to give you some friendly advice before you really get yourself into trouble.'
Ray could not breathe, but he managed to croak out a message of defiance: 'Fuck you!'
Chuck kicked him in the shins, Terry punched the back of his neck.
Without the support of their hands, he crumpled to the ground, gasping.
Neil said something he did not catch, and then all three of them were walking away, back up the driveway toward the road. He tried to stand up, and was only able to do so by balancing himself against the doorjamb. He ached all over. They'd hurt him, he realized, in a way that would not show, and even if there were some law enforcement agency he could go to, there was nothing he'd be able to prove. He was filled with a deep furious desire for revenge, but it was tempered by fear, by the more realistic assessment that these people were willing to go to any lengths to achieve their ends.
Their ploy had worked, Ray realized.
He had not been afraid before.
Now he was.
He was grateful at least that he had shown no fear, that he had been able to keep up his defiant bravado in front of those assholes, and he moved slowly and painfully back into the house, locking the door behind him and limping into the living room. He sat down hard on the couch, still trying to catch his breath.
A few moments later, Liz emerged from the bathroom. 'Did someone stop by? I thought I heard voices.'
