They got back to San Francisco on Christmas Eve, driving the whole way in silence. Dr. Ryan had patched up Mark’s shoulder, urging Artie to get further treatment for him in the city. The muscles had been torn, nothing serious, but somebody should check him for possible infection once he got home.
Levin had been mistaken. They weren’t choppers, though perhaps he had thought so because he’d been operating with a ’Nam mind-set plus a bad case of wishful thinking. It was his chance for an intelligence coup, to become a national hero. He must have called Washington, but the message had never been delivered. The Old People had Hounds in D.C. as well as San Francisco and besides, Levin’s old friend was probably tucked away in a minor bureaucracy of the DOD. Without proof, who would pay attention to what a semiretired intelligence officer told them?
The “choppers” had actually been several cars from Willow, the passengers armed. They had been too late, and for that Artie had been grateful. Susan and Mark would never have survived any shootout; it had been bad enough as it was: Doc Ryan had been along and helped Mark, but there was nothing to be done for Levin. It had been a lucky shot, an instant kill.
Artie had left the house with his arm protectively around Mark’s good shoulder. He’d glanced once at Levin lying on the floor and had felt everything from grief to pity to relief that he had been so lucky and Susan and Mark were still alive. Then he’d had a brief flashback to the days in the Haight when he had lived in a crashpad with half a dozen others, including Mitch, and spent more than one evening smoking joints and laughing uproariously at the Three Stooges on the tube.
But there was little connection between that Mitch and this.
The doctor and the others would take care of the body. Levin had left San Francisco in his BMW and disappeared. There would be an investigation, but nobody in Willow had seen either him or his car. The case would end up in an open file, be shuffled toward the back, and eventually forgotten.
Susan’s parents had told her they would be back at midnight but Artie didn’t want to stick around to meet them. Somebody else could fill them in. Susan had left them a note; she didn’t want to stay either. He hadn’t argued with her one way or the other; he couldn’t care less.
Back at the house on Noe, he and Mark had taken a nap, then gone out shopping for a Christmas tree. Afterward he called Connie to wish her and the Grub a Merry Christmas and to report that his family was together again. He’d bitten his tongue when he said it, but was glad he’d told her. A little of the Christmas spirit had managed to infect Connie and the news had cheered her even more.
“Merry Christmas, Artie, and don’t drink too much eggnog. Oh, yeah, Monday’s a working day and you better be here, damn it—you’ve just run out of excuses.”
They had spent late afternoon trimming the tree and Susan had eventually joined in. Mark was cheerful
and talkative; Artie didn’t have much to say. Susan said nothing at all.
They ordered out for pizza, waited an hour and a half for it to show up, and ate a cold mushroom-and-double-sausage in stony silence.
After he had finished one slice, Mark shoved his plate away, angry.
“You two got something to talk about but I don’t think I want to hear it.”
He stalked out to the porch and yanked the sliding glass doors shut behind him. Artie could see him leaning on the railing, looking out at the lights of the city twinkling in the gathering dusk. San Francisco at its prettiest. A fairly warm evening, the fog just beginning to roll in and a sea of colored lights below that seemed to go on forever.
Artie pushed his own plate aside and walked into the living room, Susan following. He sat on the edge of the couch, Susan on the edge of the big recliner, tense and uneasy. She still hadn’t looked him in the eyes.
“Where do you want to start?” she finally asked.
“Why did you marry me?” He had wanted to be dispassionate and objective, but to himself he sounded despairing. Women will break your heart all your life, Arthur.
“Because I wanted a father for Mark. And for protection. I was afraid of what might be coming.”
Like a few Jewish women did in Nazi Germany, Artje thought. Married to an Aryan, they had hoped for protection during the holocaust that had followed. If they married high enough up, it helped. But not always.
“Why me?” Artie repeated.
She looked at him then, a slight flush of anger on her cheeks.
“You want me to read off your virtues? You’re brave, you’re stable, and you’re a family man. I realized that early on. You wanted a family badly and when you got one, I knew it would mean everything in life to you.
Do you remember the conversations we had after we first met? You wanted me, but you really wanted a family more. I couldn’t give you everything you wanted—I warned you about that—but I could give you enough, and with Mark I could give it to you all at once. As I remember, you said you liked that.”
“Protection,” Artie said, sullen.
“That’s right, and for protection. For myself and Mark. Especially Mark.”
“But not for love,” Artie said. It hurt to say it.
She looked away.
“No, not for love.”
He had asked for the truth and gotten it, and now he was sorry he had asked. But he couldn’t blame her for that.
“Your first husband—you’ve never told me much about him.”
“I’d known Michael in college. We graduated during a recession and he ended up in construction, as labor. He was on a work site one day and a wall collapsed on him. He died immediately.”
Artie knew better but he had to ask it anyway.
“You loved him.”
“No.”
He looked surprised and she said, “He was a friend. I wanted children and if you’re one of us that means an arranged marriage. You have to be matched—both of you have to be species typed. My family knew his, and both families approved. My father thought the world of him.”
Which explained why her parents hated him, Artie thought. They would probably have hated anybody who followed Michael.
“I hoped to grow to love him.” Her voice was dry, emotionless. “I think I might have.”
“You told me you couldn’t have any more children. The truth is you didn’t want any more, right?”
“That’s not true. But they would have been sterile
and nothing on heaven or earth would have enabled them to have children in turn. How do you think they would have felt? How do you think I would have? I would have condemned them to a childless marriage. It wouldn’t have been fair. Not to them. And not to you, either—you would have wanted grandchildren.”
“They could have adopted,” Artie said. “It wouldn’t have mattered to me.”
She stared at him, contemptuous.
“And you’re so sure you can speak for them?”
Hubris, Artie thought. He was guilty of it, guilty as sin. But he couldn’t help himself.
“Chandler was your Hound,” he said. “Cathy was his lover and told him everything about Larry’s research. She didn’t know what he was.” For just a moment he was back in Chandler’s little theater, watching as Dave peeled off his makeup and became somebody Artie had never known, somebody who had almost squashed him like a bug. “Charlie Allen shot him.”
“Chandler?” She looked surprised.
“You never knew?”
She shook her head.
“Of course not.” Then: “You don’t understand how … underground we’ve had to be. Nobody knows who the Hounds are. They’re the only army we have, if you want to call it that. We couldn’t tell you who they are even under torture because we don’t know. We live in cells, little groups of us scattered around the country. There aren’t many of us—there never were. A town like Willow, of almost a thousand, is unusual. I don’t know of any others, though I’m sure there are some. A very few of us have contacts outside the group, like Dr. Ryan has contacts in Washington. But otherwise, we’re in—”
“—deep cover,” Artie finished.
“That’s right. We have to be.”
“Mark’s school,” he said. “It never was a school for the handicapped, was it?”
She looked tired.
“Schools, even private ones, have too many physical examinations, too much probing by doctors and nurses from the state. Maybe they never would have discovered anything unusual. Maybe they would have. We don’t get sick very often—we’re immune to most of your diseases. We couldn’t take the chance that somewhere along the line somebody would get curious. Perfect attendance records, an A in health. Always. And stronger, much stronger, than average …”
“So you opened your own schools. Like Bayview.”
“Mark and I have our own family doctor, too. You never knew.”
“What happened with the academy? I met one of the students there; he said it had been sold.”
She shrugged.
“It was time to fold it. State examiners were suspicious the last time they came around. They were due again right -after the first of the year and we felt we couldn’t risk it.”
“Why not?”
She half smiled then.
“You saw Mark. None of the students were handicapped; it was a sham, a show for anybody who came around.”
“Like me.”
“Like you.”
Collins had been very good. Artie would have sworn he had a withered right arm. And Mark had fooled him for five years. The car accident had been faked. Both he and Susan had gone out of their way to deceive him.
“You knew Larry was going to be killed.”
She shook her head, denying it.
“I didn’t know. Certainly not then. Cathy had told me what Larry was working on, swearing me to secrecy, and I knew it would be dangerous. I knew … eventually … a Hound would come after him. But aside from Mary and myself, I didn’t even know there were any others of us in the Club. The police called Cathy shortly after Larry’s death and she called me just before she left the house. She wouldn’t say where she was going.”
The timing would have been right, Artie thought. He wouldn’t have known about the call; he’d been at Soriano’s, waiting for Larry to show.
“So you called your folks and said you’d be coming up—maybe for an extended stay—and they were delighted. You decided to fake your father’s illness.”
“Something like that. Hal suggested it—I needed a last-minute reason for going. They didn’t want you to come along, said you’d just bring danger up with you.”
“You never left the house when you were in Willow, did you?”
“I didn’t want anybody to know I had gone up there. After Larry was killed, I knew there would be an investigation, that sooner or later the police would want to talk to me. Perhaps to Mark. I didn’t want to risk it.”
Artie was suddenly angry again.
“You knew I was a good friend of Larry’s, that I was one of those with his neck in a noose. You knew it all along, and you never warned me. That morning when you left, you asked me what Larry had to say at the meeting, and all the time you knew he was dead. You lied to me.”
She sighed.
“Yes, Artie, I lied to you.” Then it was her turn to be angry. “If I had warned you, I would have had to betray my own species and betray Mark. I couldn’t do that. You should know about divided loyalties—they’re not easy to handle, are they?”
He had a glimmering of the truth then, only a glimpse, and then it was gone.
“I would have sacrificed everything for you and Mark.” He cursed the plaintive tone in his voice.
“That’s why I married you. In turn, I would have sacrificed everything for Mark. I still would, I would offer up my own life for him as easily as I would offer up yours. I did my best to get him out of here. I ordered him to come up to Willow and he refused. We agreed on a day or two later, as soon as school was out. But school wasn’t his reason for staying.”
Artie couldn’t hide his bitterness. “A week of romance. An early Christmas present to himself.”
She looked at him, startled.
“You can’t really believe that!”
Artie didn’t answer her. He was lost in a flashback of the last dream he’d had, when he had stood watch in front of the cave, looking at the wolf just beyond the firelight and wondering if it could be trained to guard the cave in return for scraps of meat.
“You married me to be a watchdog,” he said with sudden insight.
She had shifted slightly so her face was in shadow. “Not against any of our Hounds—against yours. And you were a very good watchdog. You more than lived up to expectations.” There was a sudden tinge of pity in her voice. “I knew that somewhere along the line you would have to make a choice. I didn’t think it would turn out to be the particular one you had to make.”
Moe and Curly and Larry on the tube and a very young Mitch Levin sitting beside him on the dirty floor mattress, doubled up in laughter.
“You felt nothing for Shea?” he said at last. “For Lyle? For Cathy? I thought she was your closest friend.”
She started to cry then, silently, the tears glistening in the glow from the lights on the Christmas tree.
“Yes. They were good friends, and I betrayed them by keeping quiet. It was just as difficult a choice to make as yours.” She was suddenly furious, at him, at herself, at the choice she’d had to make. “And there was no way I would betray Mark!”..
Artie sank back in his chair. Everything had gone to hell; everything bad that could happen to him had happened.
“Mitch was right,” he said slowly, “and so was Chandler. It was war and it was either you or us. I was as familiar with that as Mitch was—we were both graduates of the same killing fields.”
Pity flowed over her face like water.
“There isn’t going to be any war, Artie. We’ve won and you’ve lost.”
Artie frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
She looked away. “Go ask your son.”
“He’s not my son,” he said angrily.
“He thinks he is. You raised him; he’s got your values, your outlook. He might as well be your flesh and blood. He earned it. He saved your life. He stayed behind to take care of the beloved watchdog. I hadn’t planned on that.”
“I owe him,” Artie said reluctantly, remembering the time on the porch.
She saw the image in his mind. “That wasn’t the only time.”
He held his head in his hands, trying to make sense of everything she was telling him. There were huge gaps, but he was too tired to ask her to fill them in now.
“There were other times?”
Her voice was curt. “How do you think you stayed alive? You should have died a dozen times over. Ask him.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Tonight. You don’t know him—you should at least make a start. He’s not like you, but he’s not like me either. I would like to think he has the best of me.” She paused. “And the best of you. You should be proud of him. And you should be willing to show it.”
“If he saved my life more than once,” Artie said sarcastically,
“then he must have known Chandler was the Hound. Why didn’t he just kill the bastard? You people seem able to do anything else.”
“He doesn’t have the genes for it,” she said, her voice ice. “He didn’t kill him because he couldn’t kill him.”
Artie looked up, confused and angry once again.
“You’re going to have to explain that one.”
She shook her head.
“Not me—Mark. Go talk to your son, Arthur.”