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Authors: Dean Koontz
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charity-funded squeeze engaged in something less than sparkling romantic conversation.
“Did this Farrel asshole really show up, Jonny?”
“Don’t look directly. The old Chevy across the street.”
“The scabby little pervert can’t even afford a real car.”
“My guys will junk it. He better have a bus pass for backup.”
“I bet he’s giving himself a hand job right now, watching us.”
“I love your nasty mouth.”
Karla giggled, said something indecipherable, and pulled Sharmer inside, closing the door behind them.
Constance Tavenall—no doubt soon to cleanse herself of the name Sharmer—stared at the TV. She had married the congressman five years ago, before the first of his three successful political campaigns. By creating the Circle of Friends, he wove an image as a compassionate thinker with innovative approaches to social problems, while marriage to this woman lent him class, respectability. For a husband utterly lacking in character, such a spouse was the moral equivalent of arm candy, meant to dazzle the cognoscenti, not with her beauty, but with her sterling reputation, making it less likely that Sharmer would be the object of suspicion or the subject of close scrutiny.
Considering that all this had just now become incontestably clear to Constance, her composure was remarkable. The crudeness of what she heard failed to fire a blush in her. If she harbored anger, she hid it well. Instead, a barely perceptible yet awful sadness manifested as a faint glister in her eyes.
“A highly efficient directional microphone was synchronized with the camera,” Noah explained. “We’ve added a soundtrack only where we’ve got conversation that’ll ruin him.”
“A stripper. Such a cliche.” Even in the thread of quiet sorrow that this tape spun around her, she found a thin filament of humor, the irony that is the mother-of-all in human relationships. “Jonathan cultivates an image of hip sophistication. The press see themselves in him. They’d forgive him anything, even murder, but they’ll turn savage now because the cliche of this will embarrass them.”
The tape went silent again as a perfectly executed time dissolve brought the viewer from twilight to full night on the same street.
“We’re using a camera and special film with exceptional ability to record clear images in a minimum of light.”
Noah half expected to hear ominous music building toward the assault on the Chevy. Once in a while, Bobby Zoon couldn’t resist indulging in the techniques that he was learning in film school.
The first time that he’d worked for Noah, the kid had delivered a handsomely shot and effectively edited ten-minute piece showing a software designer trading diskettes containing his employer’s most precious product secrets in return for a suitcase full of cash. The tape began with a title card that announced
A Film by Robert Zoon,
and Bobby was crushed when Noah insisted that he remove his credit.
In the Sharmer case, Bobby didn’t catch the jolly approach of the Beagle Boys with their sledgehammer and tire iron. He focused on Karla’s house, on the lighted window of an upstairs bedroom, where the gap between the half-closed drapes tantalized with the prospect of an image suitable for the front page of the sleaziest tabloid.
Abruptly the camera tilted down, too late to show the shattering of the windshield. Documented, however, were the bashing of the side window, Noah’s eruption from the Chevy, and the gleeful capering of the two brightly costumed behemoths who obviously had learned all the wrong lessons from the morning cartoon programs that had been the sole source of moral education during their formative years.
“No doubt,” Noah said, “they were once troubled youths rescued from a life of mischief, and rehabilitated by the Circle of Friends. I expected to be spotted and warned off, but I thought the approach, however it came, would be a lot more discreet than this.”
“Jonathan
“Did this Farrel asshole really show up, Jonny?”
“Don’t look directly. The old Chevy across the street.”
“The scabby little pervert can’t even afford a real car.”
“My guys will junk it. He better have a bus pass for backup.”
“I bet he’s giving himself a hand job right now, watching us.”
“I love your nasty mouth.”
Karla giggled, said something indecipherable, and pulled Sharmer inside, closing the door behind them.
Constance Tavenall—no doubt soon to cleanse herself of the name Sharmer—stared at the TV. She had married the congressman five years ago, before the first of his three successful political campaigns. By creating the Circle of Friends, he wove an image as a compassionate thinker with innovative approaches to social problems, while marriage to this woman lent him class, respectability. For a husband utterly lacking in character, such a spouse was the moral equivalent of arm candy, meant to dazzle the cognoscenti, not with her beauty, but with her sterling reputation, making it less likely that Sharmer would be the object of suspicion or the subject of close scrutiny.
Considering that all this had just now become incontestably clear to Constance, her composure was remarkable. The crudeness of what she heard failed to fire a blush in her. If she harbored anger, she hid it well. Instead, a barely perceptible yet awful sadness manifested as a faint glister in her eyes.
“A highly efficient directional microphone was synchronized with the camera,” Noah explained. “We’ve added a soundtrack only where we’ve got conversation that’ll ruin him.”
“A stripper. Such a cliche.” Even in the thread of quiet sorrow that this tape spun around her, she found a thin filament of humor, the irony that is the mother-of-all in human relationships. “Jonathan cultivates an image of hip sophistication. The press see themselves in him. They’d forgive him anything, even murder, but they’ll turn savage now because the cliche of this will embarrass them.”
The tape went silent again as a perfectly executed time dissolve brought the viewer from twilight to full night on the same street.
“We’re using a camera and special film with exceptional ability to record clear images in a minimum of light.”
Noah half expected to hear ominous music building toward the assault on the Chevy. Once in a while, Bobby Zoon couldn’t resist indulging in the techniques that he was learning in film school.
The first time that he’d worked for Noah, the kid had delivered a handsomely shot and effectively edited ten-minute piece showing a software designer trading diskettes containing his employer’s most precious product secrets in return for a suitcase full of cash. The tape began with a title card that announced
A Film by Robert Zoon,
and Bobby was crushed when Noah insisted that he remove his credit.
In the Sharmer case, Bobby didn’t catch the jolly approach of the Beagle Boys with their sledgehammer and tire iron. He focused on Karla’s house, on the lighted window of an upstairs bedroom, where the gap between the half-closed drapes tantalized with the prospect of an image suitable for the front page of the sleaziest tabloid.
Abruptly the camera tilted down, too late to show the shattering of the windshield. Documented, however, were the bashing of the side window, Noah’s eruption from the Chevy, and the gleeful capering of the two brightly costumed behemoths who obviously had learned all the wrong lessons from the morning cartoon programs that had been the sole source of moral education during their formative years.
“No doubt,” Noah said, “they were once troubled youths rescued from a life of mischief, and rehabilitated by the Circle of Friends. I expected to be spotted and warned off, but I thought the approach, however it came, would be a lot more discreet than this.”
“Jonathan
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