Full Dark, No Stars

“Now?” Elvid looked surprised. “Now you start enjoying your fifteen years of good health. Possibly twenty or even twenty-five. Who knows?”

“And happiness?”

Elvid favored him with the roguish look. It would have been amusing if not for the coldness Streeter saw just beneath. And the age. In that moment he felt certain that George Elvid had been doing business for a very long time, reflux or no reflux. “The happiness part is up to you, Dave. And your family, of course—Janet, May, and Justin.”

Had he told Elvid their names? Streeter couldn’t remember.

“Perhaps the children most of al . There’s an old saying to the effect that children are our hostages to fortune, but in fact it’s the children who take the parents hostage, that’s what I think. One of them could have a fatal or disabling accident on a deserted country road… fal prey to a debilitating disease…”

“Are you saying—”

“No, no, no! This isn’t some half-assed morality tale. I’m a businessman, not a character out of ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster.’ Al I’m saying is that your happiness is in your hands and those of your nearest and dearest. And if you think I’m going to show up two decades or so down the line to col ect your soul in my moldy old pocketbook, you’d better think again. The souls of humans have become

poor and transparent things.”

He spoke, Streeter thought, as the fox might have done after repeated leaps had proved to it that the grapes were real y and truly out of reach. But Streeter had no intention of saying such a thing. Now that the deal was done, al he wanted to do was get out of here. But stil he lingered, not wanting to ask the question that was on his mind but knowing he had to. Because there was no gift-giving going on here; Streeter had been making deals in the bank for most of his life, and he knew a horse-trade when he saw one. Or when he smel ed it: a faint, unpleasant stink like burned aviation fuel.

In words of one syllable, you have to do the dirty to someone else if the dirty is to be lifted from you.

But stealing a single hypertension pil wasn’t exactly doing the dirty. Was it?

Elvid, meanwhile, was yanking his big umbrel a closed. And when it was furled, Streeter observed an amazing and disheartening fact: it wasn’t yel ow at al . It was as gray as the sky. Summer was

almost over.

almost over.

“Most of my clients are perfectly satisfied, perfectly happy. Is that what you want to hear?”

It was… and wasn’t.

“I sense you have a more pertinent question,” Elvid said. “If you want an answer, quit beating around the bush and ask it. It’s going to rain, and I want to get undercover before it does. The last thing I need at my age is bronchitis.”

“Where’s your car?”

“Oh, was that your question?” Elvid sneered openly at him. His cheeks were lean, not in the least pudgy, and his eyes turned up at the corners, where the whites shaded to an unpleasant and—yes, it

was true—cancerous black. He looked like the world’s least pleasant clown, with half his makeup removed.

“Your teeth,” Streeter said stupidly. “They have points.”

“Your question, Mr. Streeter!”

“Is Tom Goodhugh going to get cancer?”

Elvid gaped for a moment, then started to giggle. The sound was wheezy, dusty, and unpleasant—like a dying cal iope.

“No, Dave,” he said. “Tom Goodhugh isn’t going to get cancer. Not him.”

“What, then? What?”

The contempt with which Elvid surveyed him made Streeter’s bones feel weak—as if holes had been eaten in them by some painless but terribly corrosive acid. “Why would you care? You hate him,

you said so yourself.”

“But—”

“Watch. Wait. Enjoy. And take this.” He handed Streeter a business card. Written on it was THE NON-SECTARIAN CHILDREN’S FUND and the address of a bank in the Cayman Islands.

“Tax haven,” Elvid said. “You’l send my fifteen percent there. If you short me, I’l know. And then woe is you, kiddo.”

“What if my wife finds out and asks questions?”

“Your wife has a personal checkbook. Beyond that, she never looks at a thing. She trusts you. Am I right?”

“Wel …” Streeter observed with no surprise that the raindrops striking Elvid’s hands and arms smoked and sizzled. “Yes.”

“Of course I am. Our dealing is done. Get out of here and go back to your wife. I’m sure she’l welcome you with open arms. Take her to bed. Stick your mortal penis in her and pretend she’s your best

friend’s wife. You don’t deserve her, but lucky you.”

“What if I want to take it back,” Streeter whispered.

Elvid favored him with a stony smile that revealed a jutting ring of cannibal teeth. “You can’t,” he said.

That was in August of 2001, less than a month before the fal of the Towers.

In December (on the same day Winona Ryder was busted for shoplifting, in fact), Dr. Roderick Henderson proclaimed Dave Streeter cancer-free—and, in addition, a bona fide miracle of the modern

age.

“I have no explanation for this,” Henderson said.