Diabolical

by Hank Schwaeble

  “I don’t think so. No, I would say definitely not. William sought me out based on the message. He didn’t seem to know anything else.”

  Hatcher dropped his chin and gave his head a different sort of shake, weary and exaggerated. “The ‘message.’ The one in tongues.”

  “Yes. After what we’ve been through, Jake, all the things that we’ve witnessed, I don’t think you should be so dismissive. He knew about what happened. Knew where to find me.”

  “All right, so why you? Assuming the glossy-lollypalooza stuff—”

  “Glossolalia.”

  “—assuming it’s all true, what do you have to do with this?”

  “I don’t know. Neither does he. Not that he’ll admit. According to him, the message said I was in danger and that he needed to find me.”

  “Did it also tell him to sic Sherman the Tank on me?”

  “No. I’m so sorry for that, Jake. He didn’t want to get you involved. The message told him to organize a team and not tell anyone about its purpose. But I knew I had to get you involved, knew it because of your nephew, and because you’re the only one I trust to deal with these kinds of things. I had to convince him you were the key. I told him that’s why the message told him to find me, because I knew how to find you. He didn’t want to do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “From what I could tell, he had you checked out. Maybe even knew something about you before. He kept saying you were a loose cannon. That you wouldn’t be willing to take orders. I didn’t know anything about the plan to have Sherman confront you, not until it was about to happen. I don’t know where they got the idea.”

  The sun was over the horizon now, creating an explosion of golden colors. Southern California was the only place Hatcher had ever been where the air was cool and the sun was warm virtually every day, the only place where you could wear a bathing suit or a leather jacket and be equally comfortable. There were a lot of things people could bitch about when it came to SoCal, from the politics to the traffic to the obsession with appearances, but the weather wasn’t one of them.

  “And you really want me to do this?”

  “No, Jake. I don’t. Not even a little. But I know you have to. I know it in my heart. I’d do anything to believe you could walk away and that everything would turn out all right. I’ve prayed about it more than you would even believe. This is the only way. It’s all part of God’s plan.”

  Those lines had been rehearsed, that much was clear. Hatcher pictured her practicing in front of the mirror. She probably had for days. And right now, she was wondering how she did. Searching his eyes for a sign. Rather than look away, he let his gaze fold into hers. The blue was so pure, so uncommon, they looked artificial. Like some visual prosthetic fashioned out of cubic zirconium. She didn’t have a movie star’s face or a porn star’s body or even the kind of gorgeous hair that gets a woman noticed. But those eyes were otherwordly, he had to admit.

  “What makes you so sure?” he asked.

  “I just know it. You’re one of God’s warriors, Jake.”

  “Please, Viv. In case you weren’t listening when all that crap was going down, I’m going to Hell. According to Valentine and those gals in Satan’s Harem everyone suddenly wants me to start making nice with, there’s nothing anyone can do to change that. So if He really wants me to be in His army, I’d say He needs to work up a better benefit package.”

  “Please don’t talk that way. You can’t believe there’s no hope . . . you just can’t.”

  “To be honest, I don’t know what to believe, but let’s be logical here. In for a penny, in for a pound. Cherry-picking what you want to believe out of it is a form of denial.”

  “I don’t understand how you can be so . . . calm about it all. Don’t you understand what it means? To be damned? To spend eternity, all of forever, stretching out to infinity, in never-ending torment?”

  “No, I hadn’t really thought about it. But thanks for reminding me.”

  “You don’t know how much it hurts to hear you joke like that.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  Her gaze sank into her cup, like she was trying to read something at the bottom. “Does it scare you?”

  “Vivian, honestly, I try keep it out of my mind.”

  “Maybe they were just trying to get in your head. Sap your will, crush your psyche. Maybe it was a cruel lie, and that’s all.”

  “Valentine sure seemed to believe it. Besides, whether any of it’s true or not, I don’t think God needs someone like me to be His special agent. There are plenty of people out there with military backgrounds who are in church every Sunday, guys who would literally kill for such an assignment. Sucking up to command has always worked in the past, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t now.”

  “But don’t you see? The fact you fought for what was right, fought to prevent that evil man from fulfilling his plan, even though you didn’t necessarily believe you were saving your own soul, that’s what makes you such a warrior for Him. He knows your heart, Jake. He knows the kind of person you are, that you don’t act out of an expectation of being rewarded in the afterlife. You’re better than that. Better than most of those people who sit in pews out of self-interest.”

  His neck popped as he twisted it. The motion was uncomfortable, sent a twinge radiating into his back. He was sore, and the soreness was just beginning.

  “Even if all that’s true, what do you expect me to do?”

  “I expect you to do what God put you here to do. To follow your conscience. To use your God-given abilities to help people. Your nephew’s life is at stake, whether because of William and his men or whoever he thinks he needs to protect him from. But if William is right—and I think he is, Jake, at least partly—this may be much, much bigger than that.”

  Hatcher said nothing. His gaze drifted over the concrete surface of the table. It ended up resting on the cell phone.

  “Vivian, I wouldn’t know how to find the Carnates if I wanted to. They’re not exactly in the phone book.”

  “You found them before. You’re good at that kind of thing.”

  “I literally wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

  “Why do you keep looking at my cell phone?”

  It took a second for the question to register. It was true, he had been staring at her cell phone. He wasn’t sure why. He raised his head but found himself looking past Vivian again. The guy in the sweats shooting hoops. Something had caught his eye, maybe a few times now, but he wasn’t sure what.

  “Jake?”

  Just as he started to pull his gaze back to her, he saw it once more. A glint. He watched for it this time. The guy put up a shot, trotted over it recover it, then turned to dribble away. There it was again. A tiny flash of sunlight. Reflecting off his ear.

  He looked down at the cell a final time. He gestured with his chin toward it, lowered his voice when he spoke. “Did they happen to give you that, by any chance?”

  Vivian started to speak, then stopped. “Why?”

  He picked up the phone, slid it out of its leather jacket. “You said you were pretty certain they didn’t know about us?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, yes. I don’t think so.”

  The phone was new. He ran his finger over the top, pressed a button to wake up the screen. He groped around the menu until he found the call log. Last call listed was from a private number. The entry indicated it ended less than a minute earlier.

  Hatcher’s head snapped up. A basketball rolled slowly across the cement court until it gently bumped against the chain-link fence. The guy in the sweats was gone.

  “If they didn’t before, they sure do now.”

  Hatcher stood, scanning the distance. Joggers, cyclists, a few skateboarders. No guy in gray sweats.

  He glanced down at the display again. The call that just ended had lasted for over forty minutes. The prior three calls were from the same number. Given the time intervals, it seemed Bartlett had the dec
ency not to let anyone listen, including himself, while Hatcher and Vivian had been taking the edge off their pent-up libidos.

  “I don’t understand,” Vivian said. “You think the phone has a . . . what, a bug? That they bugged it?”

  “Didn’t need to. All they had to do was program it to be on silent mode and to automatically answer. It basically turned itself on whenever they called it.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because it’s just like you said. People like Bartlett don’t like leaving things to chance. He wasn’t about to take anything on faith. They would want to know if I was in, was really in. Or if I was intending to head over their way and start popping caps. They’d want to know if you and I were planning something. If you had found out where they were holding my nephew. They want to know everything. Bartlett understands better than most—information is power.”

  Hatcher kept studying the Strand as he spoke, watching for some sign of the man. “I’ll bet that guy is still close.”

  “Jake.”

  Hatcher moved out from behind the table. “Probably just around that corner. If I—”

  “Jake.”

  “Relax, Viv. I just need to get some more infor—”

  “Jake.” Hatcher felt Vivian’s grip on his arm. “Remember how you said you wouldn’t know where to begin?”

  She raised a hand and pointed into the distance. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

  She looked past him, moving her eyes from his in the direction of her finger, peering out over the Pacific at the brilliant morning sky. Hatcher turned to look over his shoulder.

  A small plane was flying above the water, maybe a thousand feet in the air. A banner trailed behind it, carrying a message:J.H. LET’S TALK. LOOK UP YOUR FAVE ESCORTS AND GIVE A CALL.

  Hatcher watched the words fly by to the south until the angle became too acute and they started to shrink in the distance. Assuming he’d read it correctly, he realized he’d been wrong about one thing.

  Damned if they weren’t in the phone book, after all.

  CHAPTER 6

  HATCHER COASTED TO A STOP IN FRONT OF THE SMALL HOUSE and shifted the car into park. After staring at the porch for a few moments, he double-checked the number. This was it, all right. Not exactly what he expected. But when the Carnates were involved, he couldn’t think of much that was.

  The address was in south L.A., what used to be called south central, not far from Florence and Normandie. He didn’t know southern Cal that well yet, but even the Jihadis he’d mixed it up with in Afghanistan probably could have popped off about this zip code’s rep. It was known for having a lot of gangs, a lot of crack, and a lot of crime. Cheap liquor stores and colorful graffiti. Race riots and drive-bys.

  But what Hatcher saw when he looked around was a neighborhood of modest tract homes, mostly Spanish-styled stucco, a smattering of squat, hardy palm trees lining the street in front of them. The landscaping was spotty, the majority of lawns a patchwork of browns and greens and footworn dirt. The assortment of purple and red and yellow paint jobs were probably a bit loud, too, and the cars parked along the curbs tended to be either really flashy or really beat up; but notwithstanding a few of the houses he’d passed with plywood over the windows, sporting spray-painted initials and monikers, the area didn’t strike him as a ghetto. People owned most of these lots, lived in these homes. They cared for them and cared about them. People like that had something to lose, and people with something to lose usually left everyone else alone.

  He reminded himself that unlike them, he didn’t really have anything to lose. It wasn’t even his car.

  The sidewalks were mostly empty and there was very little traffic. Except for an elderly black man a few houses down watering a sprawl of chrysanthemums, nobody seemed to notice Hatcher as he walked up to the house and rang the doorbell.

  It was one of the nicer homes, and actually had a fairly uniform lawn. The walls were a powder-puff blue and the wooden porch was painted a gunmetal shade of gray to match the roof tiles. A good half-minute had passed before a black kid glaring out from beneath a do-rag answered. Short, maybe five foot two, but thickly muscled, wearing a tight shirt with long sleeves that was ribbed like thermal underwear. He stood behind a dense screen door with a fuck-do-you-want? sneer on his face.

  “I’m Hatcher.”

  The sneer flexed. “Yeah? So?”

  “I called. Was given this address.”

  “Zat a fact? By who?”

  It was a good question, one Hatcher wished he could answer. The Carnates hadn’t exactly had a Yellow Pages ad, but he’d been able to find one entry for PI Escort Services on a web page dedicated to adult entertainment in the L.A. area. PI. That was how these half-human, half-demon women had referred to Pleasure Incarnate back in Manhattan, back when they were leading Hatcher around by the nose and setting him up for Valentine’s big finale. Unlike the other posts he’d seen, it didn’t promise GFE or PSE or erotic massages. It simply read, We’re No Angels.

  “By the person I spoke to,” Hatcher said.

  “The person you’s spoke to. Know what I think? I think you just another white boy come down to our hood looking to score some rock. Prob’ly knocking on random doors, thinking there’s got to be some brother on this street dealing, right?”

  Hatcher tried to get a read on the guy, figure out if the vibe he was giving off was for real, but the screen was too dark. The one thing he was relatively certain of was that do-rag wasn’t in the business of offering anything like a Girlfriend Experience or a Porn Star Experience. Then again, sometimes it was hard to tell.

  “Guess I have the wrong place.”

  “Damn right you do, racist motherfucker.”

  Hatcher smiled faintly and turned to leave. He’d only taken three steps when he heard the rack of a charging handle, freezing him in mid-stride.

  The voice from the doorway said, “Know what this is, bitch?”

  Careful not to move his head, Hatcher swept his eyes from one side to the other, scanning the street. His field of vision was relatively unimpeded, but it didn’t offer much consolation. The guy who’d been watering his flowers wasn’t there anymore. Nobody else seemed to be around, either. Everything was quiet.

  A bird chirped.

  “You hear me, punk-ass white boy?”

  “It’s an Ingram MAC-10. I’m guessing a nine-by-nineteen Luger, because a sawed-off runt like you couldn’t handle the kick of a forty-five.”

  “Aww, idn’t that just the cutest. Whiteboy’s got a mouth on him.”

  Hatcher heard a jumble of footsteps, then the squeal of the screen door swinging open, people piling into the yard. He could make out at least three more weapons being cocked. He was pretty sure they were all pistols. At least four guys, at least four firearms. Not great odds.

  He was thinking about those odds, and the odds of going to a wrong address where the person who answers the door just happens to brandish an automatic weapon and just happens to have several armed friends with him, when one of them said, “Taze his ghost ass,” and he felt a twin set of stings in his back at almost the exact moment his entire body began to vibrate like a funny bone and he dropped face-first onto the concrete walk.

  THEY LATCHED HIS WRISTS WITH A NYLON ZIP TIE, PUT A SACK over his head, and threw him in the backseat. He was pretty sure it was Vivian’s rental, since it smelled the same and they’d made a point of ripping the keys out of his pockets while he was on the ground. The barbs in his back didn’t seem to be going anywhere so he angled his torso, letting his arm and shoulder take the weight against the stiff upholstery. He had half a mind to pipe up and tell them keeping the Taser engaged was a waste. If the drive was going to be any sort of distance the only thing he was interested in was getting some sleep.

  But he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  Two guys sat in back with him, one on each side. The one to his right shoved his head down, the one on his left nudged him with something Hatcher
realized was the Taser. A reminder it was still hooked to his back, he supposed. He could hear a guy bounce into the front passenger seat, felt the car rock and heard the driver’s side front door shut. No one said anything as the car started up and pulled away.

  They were good, Hatcher noted. All that jawing at the door aside, these guys were disciplined. Didn’t risk a physical altercation, didn’t discharge any firearms to draw attention, wasted no time in taking him out with an electronic control device. Quick, clean, quiet, effective. Even now they weren’t giving anything up. A few snickers, an occasional whisper. Some likely fun at his expense with a gesture here and there. But they were maintaining an impressive degree of operational security. Hatcher had encountered more than a few military units that could learn a thing or two from their example.

  The car drove backstreets at first, judging by the lack of noise and the sense he had they were barely reaching a top speed of thirty. They stopped for a moment and Hatcher realized they were at an intersection. Seconds later his weight pulled as they accelerated into a turn and he could tell they were on a main thoroughfare. Sounds of traffic. Lots of starting and stopping. They spent about fifteen minutes that way before he felt the car pick up speed and merge onto a freeway.

  They arrived more than a half hour later. How much more, he wasn’t quite sure. All Hatcher could surmise was that wherever they were, it wasn’t too far from the highway. The driver pulled to an abrupt stop. The car bounced as the person behind the wheel slammed the transmission into park. Doors opened all around him.

  The ground was flat, hard. A path of some kind, strewn with stones and pebbles. Definitely an upward slope to it. His only source of direction was the shoves he received to keep moving. After a while the ground began to feel more like hard-packed dirt. The feel of the sun on his arms was intermittent, and each gust of breeze rustled like a maraca. He could hear tweets and chirps.

  They walked for a quarter mile or so, maybe longer. The sun on his arms disappeared, as did the glow of light through the cloth, and he sensed a sudden shift in the surrounding acoustics. They had entered an enclosure of some kind. A kick to the back of his leg and a hard press on his shoulder forced him to his knees. He clenched his jaw as they ripped the twin probes out by the wiring. Once the burning subsided, he could feel the blood seeping into his shirt and running down his back.