No Such Creature

into actual existence. The fear factor was definitely in his favour, and he was in an excellent position to amp it up, given his own peculiar mutilation. He told himself he had no intention of turning into a sadist. You don’t want to lose your humanity, after all. It was simply a business model. He formed a loose association of assistants to put his scheme into action, and the Subtractors myth became his biggest asset.

From the outside, the Desert Moon funeral parlour looked like a drive-through bank. In fact, that wasn’t a half-bad idea, Zig thought as he went inside. You could have the coffin low in a window, loved one on display, and people could just drive by, stop for a second, and take off.

The interior offered the usual collection of hushed rooms and pastel fabrics. Melvin Togg was laid out in viewing room three. Besides Melvin himself there was only one lone occupant, a woman sitting on a long, low couch beneath a soothing abstract.

Zig went and stood over the casket, head bowed. Melvin looked peaceful, and quite a bit healthier than he had in life, the mortician’s art tastefully applied. A tiny guitar with Graceland scrolled around it was pinned to Melvin’s lapel, a rosary entwined in his fingers. The cuffs of his burial suit covered his wrists and any microscopic evidence of duct tape that might have remained, not that any would.

It hadn’t taken Melvin long to lose consciousness, but Zig had to be sure, and he and Clem had waited quite a while after the bag stopped puffing in and out before venturing over. They had untaped his wrists and ankles from the chair, putting the tape into their pockets. Then they had carried Melvin over to his bed and laid him down on it, still with the bag over his face. Zig washed his wrists with rubbing alcohol to remove any trace of the tape.

Melvin’s Elvis clock had startled them as they were leaving.

“Man, am I beat,” the King said. “It’s six o’clock.”

Zig went over to the woman. “Charlie Zigler,” he said. “Would you be Melvin’s wife?”

“No, no. Melvin wasn’t married,” the woman said. “I’m his sister. Monica Davies.”

“Very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“Melvin was a good guy. I didn’t know him very well, but I liked him, same as most people.”

The woman smiled faintly.

“I was shocked when I heard he’d, you know …”

“Committed suicide? How would you even hear such a thing? It wasn’t in the paper.”

“No, I know. But people talk. And they’re all saying the same thing: no one saw it coming. Melvin seemed pretty chipper, pretty gung-ho, right up to the end. You know the way he was.”

The woman nodded, dipping her head once.

“I probably should have seen it, though. I’m kicking myself about that.”

It took a moment for this to register. When Ms. Davies looked up at him, it was with a frown of puzzlement. “But you said you hardly knew him.”

“I know. That’s what makes it so weird. In retrospect, I mean.”

Zig reached into his satchel and handed her a parcel loosely wrapped in brown paper. She slipped off the rubber bands and unfolded the paper, contemplating the framed rectangle in her hands.

“It’s from Elvis,” she said.

“Uh-huh. Isn’t that amazing? Melvin come over to my place one afternoon last week and give it to me. I was kinda surprised at the time, because I knew he was a real Elvis fan. And I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to give it to me.”

Monica Davies seemed frozen in that hunched-over position. Not a muscle moved. A tear detached itself from her eyelash and splashed onto the picture. She rubbed it away with a neatly painted index finger.

“Like I say,” Zig said, “Melvin hardly knew me, but he give me this thing. I was surprised, but I didn’t think too much about it until I heard the news. Then it kinda made sense. They say people give away things that are precious to them, you know. Anyway, I thought I’d come here and give it to his wife or family or whatever.”

“You’re very kind,” she said, and wept a little into a Kleenex.

“I’m just sorry I didn’t realize what it meant at the time. I coulda done something maybe.”

“How could you know?” she said softly. “What does anybody know about anybody?”

For the entire next day Max was sullen as only Max could be. Here they were strolling the brightest, gaudiest blocks in the world-neon cowboys, a Manhattan skyline, the temple of Luxor-and Max was ignoring it, muttering to himself like a gargantuan baby. Owen kept trying to interest him in the criminal history of Las Vegas, the colourful, murderous life of Bugsy Siegel, but Max would not snap out of it.

That night in his bunk, Owen could hear Max talking to himself in the Rocket’s master bedroom. He reached for a paperback in an effort to ignore him: The Magus, a novel with which he was flat-out in love. Owen was soon absorbed in the story.

“I have of late, and wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth …”

Max was reciting loudly enough to make sure Owen could hear.

“… forgone all custom of exercise. And indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory.”

Yeah, yeah, keep it up, Max. I know you’re upset.

Owen fitted the buds of his iPod into his ears. This little gizmo was the legacy of a raid they had pulled on a dinner party in the Hamptons a couple of years ago. It wasn’t one of the video models, but it was still a little gem. Owen dialed up a pod-cast of flutey New Age stuff, supposedly for meditation but perfect for reading. By the time he had finished the story of Conchis and the Nazis and switched out his light, all was silent in Denmark, the curtain having apparently come down on Hamlet and his depression. Owen drifted off to the whirr of the Rocket’s air conditioner and the traffic on the distant Strip.

He was awakened sometime during the night by a cry ringing in his ears-loud enough that his heart was jacked up and his eyes wide open. He lay still, hearing nothing but the rattle from the AC. Then another shout.

Max and his nightmares. A burst of incoherent cries got Owen out of bed and into his bathrobe. He opened the bedroom door.

“Max?”

Max was cowering against the head of the bed, striped pyjamas soaked in sweat, his face pressed into a pillow balanced on his knees.

“Max?”

“Wuh-hah!” He thrashed at the air with one hand, clutching the pillow with the other. A quiver shook his massive frame.

Owen went over and laid a hand on his shoulder.

Max heaved with a great intake of breath and lifted his head from the pillow. His eyes opened, glazed and bloodshot.

“The Butcher,” he said hoarsely. “The Butcher was here. Right here. In my room. In this very room.”

“The Alcatraz guy?”

“S’blood, boy. I could have reached out and touched his cleaver. Fuh! Sitting in that chair, talking to me.”

Max leaned toward his night table, straining mightily, and hoisted his water glass. An interlude of gulps and slurps.

“Blood up to his elbows. Both hands. Blood over his face. Like he’d been swimming in it. And he says to me, ‘Welcome home, Maxie. I think we’re going to get along fine.’”

“It was just a nightmare.”

“No! I tell you he was in this room. Alive as you or me.”

“Max, you had a nightmare.”

“He reeked of prison. I wouldn’t survive if I had to go back inside, boy. I frankly prefer death, d’you hear?”

“Max, take it easy. You’re not going to prison.”

“Boy, listen to me.” He clasped Owen’s hand between two hot paws. “I’ve not been the perfect father, God knows. But I’ve done my best to bring you up like my own. Asked nothing in return. Nothing big, anyway-well, nothing too big. But now I am, I do, I must. Look me in the face, boy.”