Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation

by A. W. Hill

  He set the cigar in the ashtray and fished through his inbox. Clipped together were three documents: a printout of the Argonauts.com homepage, a page of related links for “Advanced Immersion Reality Field Gamers,” on which Monica had circled the sub-link gtlt7+, and the login page on which she’d entered the name sdarrell and the password Hazid. In a dialogue box below appeared the reply: “Gaming privileges for sdarrell have been suspended.” A fourth page lay by itself, highlighted in yellow. It was the most intriguing of all. She had given sraszer as a user ID and once again entered Hazid as the password. The reply was:

  hello sraszer. welcome to altgtlt8. to verify your status as

  gauntlet L7 we will need your poe, present locus, and ema of

  your GM. you will receive a response within 24 hrs. remain in

  position and do not reply to this message. allah be praised.

  Raszer felt suddenly that others were present, that the darkness held dozens of germinal forms, waiting to be invoked into being. They could be summoned with as little as an email, and all they needed was a locus and a poe, which was Gauntletargot for point of entry, the place (in time and space) from which a player had entered the game. In Raszer’s case, it was right here, right now. Hazid was the rail switcher, the detour to a different kind of game.

  One small but significant detail in the altgtlt8 posting caught his eye. Despite the near universal use of lowercase letters in Internet communication, Raszer could not imagine an Islamic fundamentalist spelling the name of Allah with a small a. Behind one mask was another, and another, and even the wearer had probably forgotten his true face.

  He got up from the stool and walked into the kitchen, wanting something he’d forgotten by the time he got there. It was dark, and the big cast iron stove creaked and pinged with the heat of its pilot lights. He checked to see that the door leading to his rear deck was securely locked. Outside in the canyon, the northeast wind was whipping up an L.A. sirocco, and even the coyotes were quiet. It was going to be a long night. He returned to the bar, then decided he’d better sleep while he could.

  The desert wind tugged at the big tent’s moorings. A lantern swung, casting oversize lunar shadows on silk. Raszer sat with Harry Wolfe on a sand floor laid with carpets. They were close enough to whisper, but what passed between them was instantly consumed by the wind’s howl. The flap opened slightly, revealing a black sky pinpricked by starlight. For an instant, a face appeared, not unfamiliar. Like Scotty’s, but darker. Harry motioned Raszer closer and whisperered, “Everything is permitted.”

  “Why?” Raszer asked, unable to hear his own voice.

  “At the bottom of the well,” said Harry, “there is no water.”

  A second face appeared at the tent’s opening and filled Raszer with fear. It was the face of the man who had been driving the limo. The flap closed again; Raszer’s mouth was dry.

  He fumbled for the glass of water on his nightstand, knocking it over. Someone expelled a scented breath, not in the tent, but nearer. Wintergreen?

  The lantern’s ellipse swept to and fro over brightly colored carpets: red, saffron, deepest eggplant. Piles of desert provisions, and among them the curled form of a young woman. Raszer called her name.

  “Ruthie . . . ”

  The girl stirred, and the central tent pole—a shaft carved from the trunk of a date palm—creaked like a ship’s mast. Ruthie Endicott lifted her head. Raszer smiled, then glanced back at the front flap. This time it was only the wind. When he returned his eyes to Ruthie, she had become an old man or, rather, a man of middle age made old by the desert, a diet of sweet dates, and the absence of dentists in this foreign place. Or was it an old woman?

  “Have you heard the tale of the two birds?” asked the old man-woman.

  “Ruthie?” Raszer repeated, troubled and talking in his sleep.

  “It’s me,” came a voice unsettlingly close.

  Something slipped into Raszer’s pillow with the sound of a soft tearing. Something cold, hard, and close. Two fingers pinched his nostrils shut. He gasped and tried to scream, but his mouth had filled with warm blood. No sound came but that of a drowning man.

  Raszer’s doorbell rang at 3:40 am. He thought it was in the dream, but then remembered that dream doorbells are different. The first thing he did after he’d opened his eyes was to feel for his tongue. Then he tried to get control of his hearbeat. When he turned on the light, he saw that a nine-inch knife was embedded in his pillow.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead. He withdrew the knife and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, waiting to move until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Then he staggered barefoot to the front door, arm cocked, the knife held at the height of his left ear. The hardwoood floor was cold, and a presence hung still in the air. His heart was in his throat. Someone had been in his house, and might yet be.

  There was a cop at the door, one of Borges’s men.

  “Mr. Raszer?”

  “Yes,” Raszer answered, his ear against the door, his feet spread for flight.

  “Are you all right?”

  “As far as it goes, yeah,” Raszer answered. He punched in the code to disarm the alarm system.

  “My partner saw something on your deck,” said the cop. “Do you mind if we check around back?”

  Raszer unlatched the door. “You might be a couple of minutes late,” he said. “The guy was in my house.” He stepped out onto the stoop, naked to the waist in his drawstring sweats, and displayed the knife. “He left this in my pillow.”

  “Jesus,” said the cop, a man in his forties with long sideburns and thinning, slicked-back hair. “Not exactly the tooth fairy, was he?”

  “No,” said Raszer. “But if they keep leaving these trophies around”—he nodded at the knife—”it’s going to cost them a lot of quarters.”

  “Maybe we should take a look inside,” said the cop.

  “I’d apppreciate if you did,” said Raszer. “Is Lieutenant Borges reachable?”

  “Not at this hour,” replied the cop, then whistled for his partner. “Not even Borges. Any idea how the guy got in?”

  “None,” said Raszer. “There are three doors, all triple-locked and alarmed. This one, the slider on the rear deck, and the library. I haven’t checked the others yet.”

  “So what, then?” the cop said drily. “The guy came down the chimney?”

  “You tell me,” said Raszer. “You’re the one on stakeout.”

  The man’s partner, a squat fellow of about thirty, puffed up the steps and introduced himself to Raszer. The wind whipped through Raszer’s big cedar tree, depositing needles on the stoop. “Wicked night, huh?” said the younger cop.

  “Oh, yeah,” Raszer replied, and held the door. “You guys want some coffee?”

  “That’d be nice,” said the older cop, admiring the array of equipment in Raszer’s front office. “Can you switch on the lights for us?”

  “Sure,” said Raszer. “I’ll make a pot. I think I’m done sleeping. You guys have a look around. Take your time, and don’t forget to look under the beds.”

  Raszer heated some water on the stove, then transferred it to the carafe of his Cona, a blown-glass percolator that looked like it belonged in an alchemist’s lab or an art museum. He lit an alchohol burner beneath the carafe and spooned a couple of ounces of a Guatemalan grind into the top compartment. Then he lit a cigarette, sat at the bar, and waited while the men searched. Despite the timing of their arrival, he hadn’t for a second doubted their credentials. Nobody but cops and plumbers could manage to look both so ordinary and so on top of their game, and L.A. cops were as perfectly cast as if a Hollywood agent had pulled them out of a cattle call.

  The LAPD had a dirty reputation, but if anyone’s men were clean, Borges’s were.

  The tall one wandered back into the living room, put his hands on his hips, and surveyed the surroundings. “Nice layout,” he said. “You wouldn’t know from the street there was this kind of space in here.”


  “I knocked down a few walls,” Raszer said. “And dropped the living room sixteen inches. I don’t like running into things.”

  “Who’s your general contractor?”

  “Venezuelan guy,” said Raszer. “I’ll give you his card. So what’d you find?”

  “You’re right,” said the cop. “The doors are all secure. But the bathroom window’s wide open.”

  Raszer stared for a beat and then said, “Shit,” remembering that he’d opened it after his shower in the early hours of the long day.

  The second cop entered heavily from the other end of the house’s sole hallway. “Those fancy alarm systems don’t do much good if—”

  “Yeah, but hold on,” Raszer said. “It’s a heat sensor. How do you figure—”

  “They all have blind spots,” he said. “Shit, I’ve busted perps who could slip through them like centipedes.”

  “Maybe the guy was cold-blooded,” the tall one said with a chuckle. “Anyhow, he’s gone now.”

  “That’s a relief,” said Raszer. “I think I owe you guys. The doorbell probably scared him off. Otherwise, that knife might be in my chest.”

  “Or it could be he just wanted to let you know he was around,” said the plump one. “Pros don’t kill unless they’ve been paid to.” He sniffed the vapors rising from the Cona. “This coffee ready yet?”

  Raszer took a glance. “Give it another three minutes or so,” he said. “It’s worth the wait.”

  “In that case,” the first cop told him, “we’re gonna check the canyon. Your guy didn’t leave by way of the street. My guess is, he’s waiting it out in the chaparral.”

  “Have at it,” said Raszer, getting up from the stool. “I’ll keep the coffee hot.”

  There was no would-be killer hiding in the brush like a Western movie outlaw. Raszer hadn’t really expected there would be. He was beginning to feel the sensory shift that always occurred when his missions were in full play. He was beginning to accept the presence of daemons. They came with the territory, and with the orientation essential to its navigation.

  It was only as the dawn broke that the chill left his shoulders and the memory of his dream and its aftermath began to fade. By the time the first ray broke over the canyon, he was uncertain of where the dreamline had crossed into reality. He washed and shaved, and dressed for his trip downtown for one more pass at Scotty Darrell.

  Lieutenant Borges was there to meet him at the building entrance and hustled him inside. “I hear you had a visitor last night,” Borges said.

  “It seems that way,” said Raszer. “Thanks for your guys. Am I on time?”

  “Yes and no,” Borges replied. “They scrapped the group interrogation. They’re taking him into federal custody. That guy Picot, from National Counterterrorism, seems to be calling the shots. I’dmake a stink, but the chief’s already told me to let it ride. Scotty’s folks are here. I thought you’d want to see them.”

  “I do,” said Raszer. “How are they?”

  “Shell-shocked.”

  “Yeah. There’s something really wrong here.”

  “What else is new?” said Borges. “The strange thing is that the feds don’t seem all that curious about your four goons in a rented limo . . . although Agent Djapper did ask to sit in on your statement.”

  “That’s fine,” said Raszer. “I’m off to Taos to see Katy’s sister, and I wouldn’t mind having a fed on my tail. If we start going in circles, I may end up following him.”

  Borges pressed the elevator’s Down button. “Following him where?”

  “To wherever he thinks I’m going. The game Scotty was playing—we know that’s how he got sidetracked. But I may have found the channel they used to get to him. The players’ only contact with the GamesMasters once they’re in the game is via emails from Internet cafés. That’s how they get instructions: go to this address, board this bus, and so on. In the actual game, the moves are plotted randomly. But these guys have hacked in and altered the game so the player thinks he’s got a sort of immunity from consequence. Virtual terrorism. Everything is permitted.”

  “You mean he thinks he’s still playing?” Borges interjected. “Even when somebody dies?”

  They stepped into the elevator and Borges pressed sb3. Going down.

  “Right,” Raszer said. “They may even have convinced him he’s in some pupa state between Earth and heaven. That’s the genius of the con: They’ve taken the precepts of the game—to put yourself at God’s disposal—and spun it to their purposes; they’ve put themselves in God’s place. And when you consider how many people are playing these alternate reality games—not just college kids, but secretaries, salesmen, soldiers—it’s potentially huge. A mass conversion that would make the Reverend Moon turn green with envy. Think of it, Luis: These days, if you’re under thirty, you spend half your time in a metalife. The feds are right. It is a human-trafficking operation, but it’s about more than sex or debt bondage or terrorism. The traffic is in minds.”

  The doors opened to the sub-basement. It was ten degrees colder.

  “For what purpose, Raszer?” Borges asked. “If you’re right . . . ”

  “I think it’s about turning the world on its head. Flipping the poles. Up is down. Wrong is right. The Syrian girl gave me a clue. She reminded me of how easy it was to paralyze the United States government with a blowjob and a stained dress.”

  “You’re getting conspiratorial on me again.”

  “Sometimes conspiracy’s just a matter of giving possibilities a nudge. In the end, every blowjob’s part of a bigger picture. Every stained dress tells a story.”

  Borges paused in the wide, echoing hallway. The recycled air was perfumed with Mr. Clean. “Do your girlfriends call you paranoid, Raszer?” he asked.

  “A few have,” Raszer answered. “A few have also justified my paranoia.”

  A door swung open twenty feet down the hall and banged against the stopper. Two men in suits came out. One of them was Douglas Picot. Behind them, a pair of federal marshalls escorted Scotty Darrell, not yet used to his leg irons. He stumbled as they crossed the threshold. Agent Djapper brought up the rear.

  “Here come the real paranoids,” Raszer said.

  “Goddamnit,” Borges muttered. “Why did they have to bring him to his parents in chains? These guys don’t have a pisspot’s worth of class.”

  Scotty looked pale, stringy, and scared. Seeing his parents’ faces must finally have clued him in to the fact that the gauntlet he was now running was all too real. He stood accused of a robbery (the convenience store), a shooting (the tram driver at Universal City), and a murder (Harry Wolfe), among other things. And yet, if Raszer was right about the sort of programming he’d been subjected to, Scotty hadn’t understood until very recently that these were real crimes attributable to a real person. His ontological referents—his sense of what was and what was real—had been messed with. What elegant evil it was: as if his captors had fitted both his consciousness and his conscience with a drop-down screen that flashed: Pay no attention to that twinge in your gut—it’s only a memory of life.

  Scotty glanced up and saw Raszer coming, and his eyes lit briefly with hope, dimming again only when Raszer’s own face failed to affirm it.

  “Well, Mr. Raszer,” said Picot, “we meet again. No rooftop escapades today?”

  “Not before noon,” Raszer replied. “Where are you taking Scotty?”

  “That’s classified,” said Picot.

  “Of course it is,” Raszer shot back.

  “You’ll have to step aside,” Agent Djapper broke in. “We’re—”

  “Not quite so fast,” Borges countered. “I need a paper trail on this handover. Have you finished processing—”

  “Every last form,” said Djapper. “It’s all in order.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake,” Raszer said, ignoring Djapper and stepping into Picot’s path. “Give me a half hour, and I may be able to spare the taxpayers some money and you a lawsuit.�
��

  “That won’t be possible,” Picot said unctuously, through the little hole in his face that served as a mouth. “But we appreciate the offer.”

  “Can I assume you have a federal judge in your corner?” Raszer came back.

  “Are you presenting yourself as Scotty’s attorney, Mr. Raszer?”

  “No, but someone ought to. Has he seen one?”

  Djapper piped in, right in Raszer’s face. His breath smelled of tooth rot beneath the mint. “Mr. Darrell is an unlawful combatant.”

  “That’s funny,” said Raszer. “He looks like a scared kid to me.”

  “Even mass murderers cry for their mothers, Mr. Raszer,” said Picot. “And there are twelve-year-olds out there who can build an IED. It’s best not to think too deeply about this. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re at war. It’s a battle between one kind of human—and another.” In contrast with Bernard Djapper, whose prickliness came as quickly to the skin as the sweat that dampened his dusting of baby powder, Picot seemed to have no internal heat. He was the sort of Dorian Gray whose age would always be forty-four on the outside. “Now, if you’ll excuse—”