Dean R. Koontz - Velocity

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VELOCITY

This book is dedicated to Donna and Steve

Dunio, Vito and Lynn Cerra, Ross and Rosemary

Cerra.

I’ll never figure out why Gerda said yes to me.

But now your family has a crazy wing.

A man can be destroyed but

not defeated.

—Ernest Hemingway,

The Old Man and the Sea

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,

And no man knows or cares who is his

neighbour

Unless his neighbour makes too much

disturbance,

But all dash to and fro in motorcars,

Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

—T.S. Eliot,

Choruses from “The Rock”

PART 1

THE CHOICE IS YOURS

Chapter 1

With draft beer and a smile, Ned Pearsall raised a toast to his deceased

neighbor, Henry Friddle, whose death greatly pleased him.

Henry had been killed by a garden gnome. He had fallen off the roof of

his two-story house, onto that cheerful-looking figure. The gnome was

made of concrete. Henry wasn’t.

A broken neck, a cracked skull: Henry perished on impact.

This death-by-gnome had occurred four years previously. Ned Pearsall

still toasted Henry’s passing at least once a week.

Now, from a stool near the curve of the polished mahogany bar, an

out-of-towner, the only other customer, expressed curiosity at the enduring

nature of Ned’s animosity.

“How bad a neighbor could the poor guy have been that you’re still so

juiced about him?”

Ordinarily, Ned might have ignored the question. He had even less use

for tourists than he did for pretzels.

The tavern offered free bowls of pretzels because they were cheap. Ned

preferred to sustain his thirst with well-salted peanuts.

To keep Ned tipping, Billy Wiles, tending bar, occasionally gave him a

bag of Planters.

Most of the time Ned had to pay for his nuts. This rankled him either

because he could not grasp the economic realities of tavern operation or

because he enjoyed being rankled, probably the latter.

Although he had a head reminiscent of a squash ball and the heavy

rounded shoulders of a sumo wrestler, Ned was an athletic man only if you

thought barroom jabber and grudge-holding qualified as sports. In those

events, he was an Olympian.

Regarding the late Henry Friddle, Ned could be as talkative with

outsiders as with lifelong residents of Vineyard Hills. When, as now, the

only other customer was a stranger, Ned found silence even less congenial

than conversation with a “foreign devil.”

Billy himself had never been much of a talker, never one of those

barkeeps who considered the bar a stage. He was a listener.

To the out-of-towner, Ned declared, “Henry Friddle was a pig.”

The stranger had hair as black as coal dust with traces of ash at the

temples, gray eyes bright with dry amusement, and a softly resonant voice.

“That’s a strong word—pig.”

“You know what the pervert was doing on his roof? He was trying to

piss on my dining-room windows.”

Wiping the bar, Billy Wiles didn’t even glance at the tourist. He’d heard

this story so often that he knew all the reactions to it.

“Friddle, the pig, figured the altitude would give his stream more

distance,” Ned explained.

The stranger said, “What was he—an aeronautical engineer?”

“He was a college professor. He taught contemporary literature.”

“Maybe reading that stuff drove him to suicide,” the tourist said, which

made him more interesting than Billy had first thought.

“No, no,” Ned said impatiently. “The fall was accidental.”

“Was he drunk?”

“Why would you think he was drunk?” Ned wondered.

The stranger shrugged. “He climbed on a roof to urinate on your

windows.”

“He was a sick man,” Ned explained, plinking one finger against his

empty glass to indicate the desire for another round.

Drawing Budweiser from the tap, Billy said, “Henry Friddle was

consumed by vengeance.”

After silent communion with his brew, the tourist asked Ned Pearsall,

“Vengeance? So you urinated on Friddle’s windows first?”

“It wasn’t the same thing at all,” Ned warned in a rough tone that

advised the outsider to avoid being judgmental.

“Ned didn’t do it from his roof,” Billy said.

“That’s right. I walked up to his house, like a man, stood on his lawn,

and aimed at his dining-room windows.”

“Henry and his wife were having dinner at the time,” Billy said.

Before the tourist might express revulsion at the timing of this assault,

Ned said, “They were eating quail, for God’s sake.”

“You showered their windows because they were eating quail?”

Ned sputtered with exasperation. “No, of course not. Do I look insane

to you?” He rolled his eyes at Billy.

Billy raised his eyebrows as though to say What do you expect of a

tourist?

“I’m just trying to convey how pretentious they were,” Ned clarified,

“always eating quail or snails, or Swiss chard.”

“Phony bastards,” the tourist said with such a light seasoning of

mockery that Ned Pearsall didn’t detect it, although Billy did.

“Exactly,” Ned confirmed. “Henry Friddle drove a Jaguar, and his wife

drove a car—you won’t believe this—a car made in Sweden.”

“Detroit was too common for them,” said the tourist.

“Exactly. How much of a snob do you have to be to bring a car all the

way from Sweden?”

The tourist said, “I’ll wager they were wine connoisseurs.”

“Big time! Did you know them or something?”

“I just know the type. They had a lot of books.”

“You’ve got ‘em nailed,” Ned declared. “They’d sit on the front porch,

sniffing their wine, reading books.”

“Right out in public. Imagine that. But if you didn’t pee on their

dining-room windows because they were snobs, why did you?”

“A thousand reasons,” Ned assured him. “The incident of the skunk.

The incident of the lawn fertilizer. The dead petunias.”

“And the garden gnome,” Billy added as he rinsed glasses in the bar

sink.

“The garden gnome was the last straw,” Ned agreed.

“I can understand being driven to aggressive urination by pink plastic

flamingos,” said the tourist, “but, frankly, not by a gnome.”

Ned scowled, remembering the affront. “Ariadne gave it my face.”

“Ariadne who?”

“Henry Friddle’s wife. You ever heard a more pretentious name?”

“Well, the Friddle part brings it down to earth.”

“She was an art professor at the same college. She sculpted the gnome,

created the mold, poured the concrete, painted it herself.”

“Having a sculpture modeled after you can be an honor.”

The beer foam on Ned’s upper lip gave him a rabid appearance as he

protested: “It was a gnome, pal. A drunken gnome. The nose was as red as

an apple. It was carrying a beer bottle in each hand.”

“And its fly was unzipped,” Billy added.

“Thanks so much for reminding me,” Ned grumbled. “Worse, hanging

out of its pants was the head and neck of a dead goose.”

“How creative,” said the tourist.

“At first I didn’t know what the hell that meant—”

“Symbolism. Metaphor.”

“Yeah, yeah. I figured it out. Everybody who walked past their place

saw it, and got a laugh at my expense.”

“Wouldn’t need to see the gnome for that,” said the tourist.

Misunderstanding, Ned agreed: “Right. Just hearing about it, people

were laughing. So I busted up the gnome with a sledgehammer.”

“And they sued you.”

“Worse. They set out another gnome. Figuring I’d bust up the first,

Ariadne had cast and painted a second.”

“I thought life was mellow here in the wine country.”

“Then they tell me,” Ned continued, “if I bust up the second one, they’ll

put a third on the lawn, plus they’ll manufacture a bunch and sell ‘em at cost

to anyone who wants a Ned Pearsall gnome.”

“Sounds like an empty threat,” said the tourist. “Would there really be

people who’d want such a thing?”

“Dozens,” Billy assured him.

“This town’s become a mean place since the pate-and-brie crowd

started moving in from San Francisco,” Ned said sullenly.

“So when you didn’t dare take a sledgehammer to the second gnome,

you were left with no choice but to pee on their windows.”

“Exactly. But I didn’t just go off half-cocked. I thought about the

situation for a week. Then I hosed them.”

“After which, Henry Friddle climbed on his roof with a full bladder,

looking for justice.”

“Yeah. But he waited till I had a birthday dinner for my mom.”

“Unforgivable,” Billy judged.

“Does the Mafia attack innocent members of a man’s family?” Ned

asked indignantly.

Although the question had been rhetorical, Billy played for his tip: “No.

The Mafia’s got class.”

“Which is a word these professor types can’t even spell,” Ned said.

“Mom was seventy-six. She could have had a heart attack.”

“So,” the tourist said, “while trying to urinate on your dining room

windows, Friddle fell off his roof and broke his neck on the Ned Pearsall

gnome. Pretty ironic.”

“I don’t know ironic,” Ned replied. “But it sure was sweet.”

“Tell him what your mom said,” Billy urged.

Following a sip of beer, Ned obliged: “My mom told me, ‘Honey,

praise the Lord, this proves there’s a God.’”

After taking a moment to absorb those words, the tourist said, “She

sounds like quite a religious woman.”

“She wasn’t always. But at seventy-two, she caught pneumonia.”

“It’s sure convenient to have God at a time like that.”

“She figured if God existed, maybe He’d save her. If He didn’t exist,

she wouldn’t be out nothing but some time wasted on prayer.”

“Time,” the tourist advised, “is our most precious possession.”

“True,” Ned agreed. “But Mom wouldn’t have wasted much because

mostly she could pray while she watched TV.”

“What an inspiring story,” said the tourist, and ordered a beer.

Billy opened a pretentious bottle of Heineken, provided a fresh chilled

glass, and whispered, “This one’s on the house.”

“That’s nice of you. Thanks. I’d been thinking you’re quiet and

soft-spoken for a bartender, but now maybe I understand why.”

From his lonely outpost farther along the bar, Ned Pearsall raised his

glass in a toast. “To Ariadne. May she rest in peace.”

Although it might have been against his will, the tourist was engaged

again. Of Ned, he asked, “Not another gnome tragedy?”

“Cancer. Two years after Henry fell off the roof. I sure wish it hadn’t

happened.”

Pouring the fresh Heineken down the side of his tilted glass, the

stranger said, “Death has a way of putting our petty squabbles in

perspective.”

“I miss her,” Ned said. “She had the most spectacular rack, and she

didn’t always wear a bra.”

The tourist twitched.

“She’d be working in the yard,” Ned remembered almost dreamily, “or

walking the dog, and that fine pair would be bouncing and swaying so sweet

you couldn’t catch your breath.”

The tourist checked his face in the back-bar mirror, perhaps to see if he

looked as appalled as he felt.

“Billy,” Ned asked, “didn’t she have the finest set of mamas you could

hope to see?”

“She did,” Billy agreed.

Ned slid off his stool, shambled toward the men’s room, paused at the

tourist. “Even when cancer withered her, those mamas didn’t shrink. The

leaner she got, the bigger they were in proportion. Almost to the end, she

looked hot. What a waste, huh, Billy?”

“What a waste,” Billy echoed as Ned continued to the men’s room.

After a shared silence, the tourist said, “You’re an interesting guy, Billy

Barkeep.”

“Me? I’ve never hosed anyone’s windows.”

“You’re like a sponge, I think. You take everything in.”

Billy picked up a dishcloth and polished some pilsner glasses that had

previously been washed and dried.

“But then you’re a stone too,” the tourist said, “because if you’re

squeezed, you give nothing back.”

Billy continued polishing the glasses.

The gray eyes, bright with amusement, brightened further. “You’re a

man with a philosophy, which is unusual these days, when most people

don’t know who they are or what they believe, or why.”

This, too, was a style of barroom jabber with which Billy was familiar,

though he didn’t hear it often. Compared to Ned Pearsall’s rants, such

boozy observations could seem erudite; but it was all just beer-based

psychoanalysis.

He was disappointed. Briefly, the tourist had seemed different from the

usual two-cheeked heaters who warmed the barstool vinyl.

Smiling, shaking his head, Billy said, “Philosophy. You give me too

much credit.”

The tourist sipped his Heineken.

Although Billy had not intended to say more, he heard himself

continue: “Stay low, stay quiet, keep it simple, don’t expect much, enjoy

what you have.”

The stranger smiled. “Be self-sufficient, don’t get involved, let the

world go to Hell if it wants.”

“Maybe,” Billy conceded.

“Admittedly, it’s not Plato,” said the tourist, “but it is a philosophy.”

“You have one of your own?” Billy asked.

“Right now, I believe that my life will be better and more meaningful if

I can just avoid any further conversation with Ned.”

“That’s not a philosophy,” Billy told him. “That’s a fact.”

At ten minutes past four, Ivy Elgin came to work. She was a waitress as

good as any and an object of desire without equal.

Billy liked her but didn’t long for her. His lack of lust made him unique

among the men who worked or drank in the tavern.

Ivy had mahogany hair, limpid eyes the color of brandy, and the body

for which Hugh Hefner had spent his life, searching.

Although twenty-four, she seemed genuinely unaware that she was the

essential male fantasy in the flesh. She was never seductive. At times she

could be flirtatious, but only in a winsome way.

Her beauty and choirgirl wholesomeness were a combination so erotic

that her smile alone could melt the average man’s earwax.

“Hi, Billy,” Ivy said, coming directly to the bar. “I saw a dead possum

along Old Mill Road, about a quarter mile from Kornell Lane.”

“Naturally dead or road kill?” he asked.

“Fully road kill.”

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VELOCITYDeanKoontz,©2005ThisbookisdedicatedtoDonnaandSteveDunio,VitoandLynnCerra,RossandRosemaryCerra.I’llneverfigureoutwhyGerdasaidyestome.Butnowyourfamilyhasacrazywing.Amancanbedestroyedbutnotdefeated.—ErnestHemingway,TheOldManandtheSeaAndnowyoulivedispersedonribbonroads,Andnomanknowsorcareswhoish...

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