Relentless

Arabella. Bella to friends.”
    “Does Henry wonder if his assailants may have been the same people who murdered the Landulfs?”
    “He is certain of it. But the police consider the Landulf matter settled. And they have made no progress on Henry’s case.”
    “Bella, the people who killed the Landulfs and brutalized your son—they’re now trying to kill my family, and me.”
    “Then God help you, Cubby. And I’m sure Henry will want to help as well. I assume you want to see him.”
    “If it’s not too great an imposition.”
    “Are you prepared for him? Do you know what was done to him?”
    “Yes. But I would guess hearing about it isn’t the same as seeing him firsthand.”
    “Not the same at all,” she agreed. “The thing to remember is, he does not want pity or even sympathy. Especially not from someone he admires, like you.”
    I nodded. “I won’t offend him.”
    “You may have heard a police theory that Henry solicited men in a gay bar and went somewhere with them, not realizing he had fallen into the hands of psychopaths.”
    “I hadn’t heard that.”
    “Well, it isn’t true. Henry is not gay, and neither were those who mutilated him. He was awakened in this house, taken from it in the middle of the night—and brought back two months later. Please wait here while I let him know you’ve come to visit.”
    Alone for the next ten minutes, I gave my mind and heart to the appreciation of the two paintings.
    Henry Casas would do no more of his great work. At the age of thirty-six, he was blinded by the measured application of an acid. His hands were amputated at the wrists with surgical precision.
    Perhaps because he had been known to speak so articulately about painting and culture, in resistance to certain ideological art, his tongue and his vocal cords were removed.
    Now he lived without sight, without a sense of taste, without an easy means of communication, with no outlet for his talent, still this side of death but perhaps, on his worst days, wondering if he should take the final steps.

   A former first-floor drawing room had been converted into a combination bedroom, sitting room, and studio, with a wooden floor and no carpet.
    Easels and art supplies suggested that somehow Henry still worked, though no paintings were in view.
    Barefoot, in jeans and a flannel shirt, he sat in a wheeled office chair, at a computer, from which he turned toward us as we approached.
    His glass eyes—actually plastic hemispheres—were attached to his ocular muscles and moved like real eyes, though he was blind.
    He remained a handsome man, and nothing in his expression or his attitude suggested he felt defeated.
    Mechanical hands, not prostheses meant to look like real hands but three-digit robotic devices, had been attached to the stumps of his wrists and evidently were operated by nerve impulses.
    When I told him what a pleasure it was to meet him and spoke ofmy admiration for the paintings in the library, in such terms that I hoped he would know I was sincere, he listened with a smile.
    In reply, he turned to the computer keyboard, and with one of his steel fingers, he began to type.
    I could hardly imagine the laborious effort he had expended teaching himself to find the right keys without the assistance of eyes and with fingers that could not feel what they touched.
    When he finished, I assumed I should step closer to read the words on the screen, but before I could move, he pressed a final key, and a synthesized computer voice spoke what he had written:
“I’m a crazed fan. Halfway through your new book. Splendid.”
    Bella indicated a portable CD player and an audio edition of
One O’Clock Jump
on a table beside the sofa.
    His mother had explained why I had come. He was willing to answer my questions, was in fact eager to help.
    I told him about Shearman Waxx, a condensed version of what we had already endured at the critic’s hands.
    On the phone earlier, Vivian Norby had called Waxx not merely an enigma but more precisely a black hole. After hours of work on the Internet, she had been able to learn nothing more about him than we already knew.
    Who were his parents? Where was he born? Where did he go to school? What jobs did he have before his first book on creative writing was adopted in so many universities and he was hired as a reviewer? Even questions of that fundamental nature could not be answered.
    In frustration, wondering if Waxx might have written anything under a pseudonym,