The Hellfire Club

could drive. All this without asking me if I had the slightest interest in driving across Massachusetts at night.'

'The girl refused to have me drive them, so naturally I decided to do it. Along the way I planned to inform Davey of his girlfriend's inventions. Then we'd have an entertaining scene, wouldn't we?'

'Davey was too drunk to see that the girl was furious. He couldn't drive, and she didn't have a license. I solved their problem. 'It's no good anymore,' the girl kept saying, but he wouldn't listen to her. Well, off we go. Davey passed out in the backseat. The girl sat up front with me, but she wouldn't say any more than it took to give me directions. We got about a hundred miles down the highway, and Davey woke up and started quoting from Night Journey. I wish I had whatever you're supposed to use to cut through ribs, because this knife isn't making it. I got through the cartilage and stripped away a lot of the intercostal muscle, but I'm going to have to break 'em off with my hands.'

Dart grasped a rib and pulled, swearing to himself. The curved bone gradually moved upward and then snapped in half. 'Good enough, I guess.' He sliced through more cartilage.

'I tried to drown him out with the radio, but all I could find was disco shit, which I hate. Know what I like? Real music. Kind of singers you never hear anymore. Give me a good wop baritone and I'm a happy camper. Ah, getting a good view of the heart now.

'There we are, a hundred miles into the middle of nowhere, Davey spouting Hugo Driver, the girl sitting like a marble statue. All of a sudden she has to pee. Which makes me see red, because we just passed a rest stop, why didn't she pipe up then? Like a peek into this girl's mind? 'Whenever possible,' she says, 'I like to pee in the woods like Pippin Little, because I am Pippin Little.' This seemed like the moment to tell Davey what I know about the bitch, so I do. I have to repeat it two or three times, but he does finally get it. She may be Pippin Little, but she sure as hell isn't who she told him she was. In fact, it hits him, drunk as he is, that what she was calling herself was a hell of a lot like the name of another character in Night Journey. The girl doesn't turn a fucking hair. She says, Turn off at the next exit. I can get out there.'

' If you won't tell me who you really are, you can get out and stay out,' Davey yells.

'We're so far in the country it's like a coal mine. I get off the highway, and we're at the edge of these woods. Davey makes a grab for the girl, but she zips out and runs into the trees. Davey starts swearing at me - now it's my fault she's a liar. After ten delightful minutes, I finally suggest that his friend is taking an extremely long time to finish her business. He piles out and charges around in the woods for about half an hour. The hell with this, he says, let's go back to New Haven and this time I'm driving. He gets behind the wheel and guns the car around. All of a sudden the bitch is right in front of the car, and then she disappears. Our hero starts crying. Then he whips a gram out of his pocket, snorts about half of it, and drives away.'

'He left her there?'

'Drove away. Eighty miles an hour all the way back to dear old Yale, that maker of men, not to mention hit- and-run drivers.'

'What happened after that?'

'Crazy Amy got out of the locked ward, and Davey went straight back to mooning over her. Never came back to the Hellfire Club. Boo hoo, we all sure missed him.'

'Is there a Hellfire Club in New York?'

Dart looked up at her, eyes narrowed. 'As a matter of fact, yes. In the twenties, a group of alums decided there was no reason the fun should stop on graduation day. More formal than the New Haven thing - servants, a concierge, great food. The dues are high enough to keep out the riffraff, but the essential spirit remains the same. Why do you ask?'

'I was wondering if Davey ever went there.'

His eyes shone. 'Might have spotted that gutless hit-and-run artist within the hallowed halls a time or two. Avoided him like the plague, of course.'

'Of course.'

'Darling heart, would you do me a favor? The hammer I bought in Fairfield is in a bag on the backseat. If I'm going to break these ribs, I might as well do it a little more efficiently.'

Entirely amused. Dart stood up and watched her move toward the door. Nora went outside, where the air was of an astonishing sweetness. She looked back and saw Dart just inside the door, holding his arms, stained red to the elbows like a butcher's, out from his sides. Amusement radiated from his eyes and face. 'You should smell the air out here,' she said.

'I prefer the air in here,' Dart said. 'Funny old me.'

Heat shimmered off the top of the car. Nora leaned into the oven of the interior and opened a bag on the laden backseat. The long wooden shaft of the hammer met the palm of her hand. Her heart leaped in her chest, and her face grew hot beneath the makeup. She became aware that the thick balloon filled with emotional exhaust fumes was no longer about her. She had not noticed its departure, but it had departed all the same. Dart beckoned her back into the room with a courtly wave.

'Close the door, my dear. Only a tiny test, but you passed it beautifully.'

'You're a fun guy.'

'I am!' He pointed a red finger at Sheldon Dolkis. 'I want you right beside me. You're a nurse, you can assist. Kneel on a pillow, so as not to hurt your knees. Considerate me. Take one off that scabby bed.'

Nora knelt on the pillow and set the hammer down next to her right thigh. Dart squatted and pointed into the body cavity. 'That aortic arch looks more like a slump, and the old pulmonary trunk is like a worn-out inner tube. I want to see his superior vena cavity. Bet it's a terrible mess.' He leaned forward to peer between the ribs on the far side of the chest, clearly expecting her to do the same.

Nora's heart jumped like a fish. She picked up the hammer, still wondering if she could actually go through with it. Then she planted her left hand in the middle of his back as if for support and smashed the hammer into the side of his head.

Dart exhaled sharply and almost fell into the open body. He caught himself by sinking his hands into the cavity and tried to get to his feet. Nora leaped up and battered the back of his head. Dart sagged to his knees. She cocked back her arm and whacked him again. He toppled sideways and struck the floor.

Nora crouched over him, the hammer raised. Her heart beat wildly, and her breath came in quick, short pants. Dart's mouth hung open, and a sliver of drool wobbled from his lower lip.

She dropped to one knee and thrust her hand into his pocket for the car keys. A second later, she was running through the sunlight. She started the car and backed away from the motel. Through the open door, she saw Dick Dart rising to his knees. She jolted to a stop and tried to shift into drive but in her panic moved the indicator to neutral. When she hit the accelerator, the engine raced, but the car slid downhill. She pressed the brake pedal and looked back at the room. Dart was staggering toward the door.

Her hand fluttered over the shift lever and moved the car into drive. Waving his red arms, Dick Dart was racing toward her.

The car shot forward. She twisted the wheel, and the right front fender struck him with an audible thump. Like the girl in the story, he disappeared. Nora fastened her shaking hands on the wheel and sped downhill.

BOOK VI

FAMILIAR MONSTERS

Pippin understood the nature of his task. That was not the problem.

The problem was that the task was impossible.56

Streets, buildings, stoplights flew past her, other drivers honked and jolted to standstills. Pedestrians shouted, waved. For a lengthy period Nora drove the wrong way down a one-way street. She had escaped, she was escaping, but where? She drove aimlessly through a foreign city, now and then startled by the stranger's face reflected in the rearview mirror. She supposed that this stranger was looking for the expressway but had no idea of where to go once she got there.

She pulled to the side of the road. The world outside the car consisted of large, handsome houses squatting, like enormous dogs and cats, on spacious lawns. It came to her that she had seen this place before, and that something unpleasant had happened to her here. Yet the neighborhood was not unpleasant, not at all, because it contained…