82 Desire

gone too far? Would he ever even have considered messing with people’s lives as thoroughly and as utterly ruthlessly as Russell Fucking Fortier?
    When it first happened, when he lost his lease, he tried putting himself in the position of the person or persons who’d screwed him out of it. At the time, only one was known, and it was Russell Fortier.
    In a way, the thing was like an aikido move, using Ray’s own strength against him. It was a thing that twisted and turned upon itself, a thing so devious it was enough to make you shiver in the middle of the night if you happened to wake up in a cold sweat because you could see everything you ever worked for going down the drain like a swatted insect.
    When the company fell, he lost everything. Every cent he made had gone back into it. He and Cille had lived well, had even put a decent amount of money in a college fund, but not only was there nothing besides that—nothing at all—there were debts. He had put not only his own money into the company but other people’s. And then, poof! One day there was no company.
    Of course, he had sued. Fat lot of good that did.
    At first, he would think about the person who had done this to him and wonder what had driven the man to it—if he had gambling debts, or a disabled child in a hospital too expensive to contemplate, and, assuming he did, if this could even help him. Or did he get some big, fat-cat Big Oil bonus for it?
    Or maybe it wasn’t any of that. Maybe it was done just for the sheer pleasure of muscle-flexing. Some sort of socially acceptable version of weenie-waggling. Maybe Fortier had done it just because he could.
    Maybe he was the Prince of Darkness in a business suit.
    That was really how it started—this no-holds-barred, crazy-assed scheme he was involved in now. It had all started with wondering what manner of man would do such a thing. He had researched Fortier and found no gambling debts, no disabled child. He had followed him, spied on him, become more and more obsessed.
    Eventually, Lucille, in some mad attempt to help him get the thing out of his system, had suggested hiring Allred, which they had done with the little money they had left in the college fund.
    After that, the thing took on a momentum of its own. It was still gaining, the proverbial downhill snowball; maybe it was unstoppable now.
    Fuck it , Ray, he said to himself. Would you really want it to stop?
    No way, Jose , his psyche answered. Assuredly not.
    Negative in the extreme.
    When he thought of the wrong done to him and his family, his investors and their families—even, in some cases, his employees and their families—when he thought of all that, and the senselessness of it, the utter unnecessary-ness of it, the last thing he wanted to do was let it go.
    He wanted the sons of bitches to pay. He wanted them publicly humiliated, and he wanted to take United Oil down.
    United Oil had sold him Hyacinth Oil; had sold it to him. And now, out of no further motivation than corporate greed, they’d screwed him back out of it. Not, to be sure, Big Oil as a juggernaut—Russell Fortier had done it.
    But had United said, “No thank you, Mr. Fortier. You’ve obtained this honest man’s lease by nefarious means and we will have nothing to do with it”?
    They had not.
    It made him so mad he wanted to kill.
    It made Lucille mad, too. He could see the tension of her muscles, those little ones in her hands, in her neck, her jaw, around her eyes—he could see how truly furious she was, though she wouldn’t show it. It would ill behoove a member of the helping professions even to admit to so much anger—but Ray knew it was there. And it was there on his account—because he was her husband and she was an angel. But also because he was the underdog in this situation. Lucille was scrappy that way. She’d bite and scratch and tear flesh to help out an underdog.
    Exactly what help Fortier had had, Ray didn’t know yet, but with The Baroness on the job, he was sure going to find out.
    And there was one other little thing—the murder of Gene Allred. The assholes were going to pay for that. It was just a matter of getting the damned disk, and the world was his.

Fifteen
    OKAY. ON WITH the white blouse, the navy skirt, and the goddamn pantyhose, and run for the 82 Desire.
    Some day she really must write a poem about it—the fume-spewing bus that replaced the streetcar. How poetic could you get?
    The Baroness was looking out the window as she rode