The Puppet Master

by John Dalmas

  I'd jumped from the dock and begun trotting toward the palms, when a strong flashlight beam swept the pavement ahead of me. Security men on a roof, I realized. They'd heard the manhole cover fall. Another light joined it, swept the pavement to my right. Then someone saw me and called out. A light beam found me. I ignored it.

  A voice yelled from the direction of the manhole, and I ran faster. Ahead I could see the fence—chain link topped with razor wire. The palm trees were on the inside. Breathing hard, I reached the nearest of them and began to shinny up the trunk. It was harder than I'd expected. Behind me, someone yelled "Shoot!" and someone else yelled "No, goddamn it, it'll bring the police!" When my feet were well above the fence, I jumped, pushing off as best I could, clearing the razor wire and landing heels first on the sidewalk, to crash heavily onto my back.

  It knocked the wind out of me. Stunned and gasping, I rolled onto my hands and knees and looked up. They were not more than 150 feet away, running toward me. Then headlights caught me, and a minivan pulled to the curb. I lurched to my feet, ready to run again, when a voice called from the van—Tuuli's voice! "Martti! Quick! Get in." A door was open, and she had me by a sleeve, pulling. I half climbed, half fell in. Before Tuuli could close the door, the van pulled away, burning rubber.

  18

  COMMAND PERFORMANCE

  The driver was Carlos. He asked if I was all right, and I told him I was. He didn't ask any more questions. Instead he phoned our security division headquarters, in north Burbank. Told them to send an extra crew to corporate headquarters in West Hollywood. The Gnosties were unlikely to try anything further tonight, but if they did, that's where they'd hit.

  As he drove, I sat by Tuuli in the backseat, turning the interrogation over in my mind. I didn't even ask how they'd known where I was. Carlos stopped at a Denny's on Sunset, where we took a booth and ordered coffee and pie. At that hour, it was a good place to wait while the added security had time to reach headquarters.

  We were almost the only customers there. It was a good place to talk, if we kept it quiet.

  "So," Carlos said, "I suppose you've got questions."

  "Yeah. How did you guys come to be there?" I looked at Tuuli. "You especially."

  It turned out she actually had gone to Arizona. About the time the flight left Williams though, she'd had a premonition that I'd need her, that I'd be in extreme danger. Frank Diacono was waiting for her at Flagstaff. She told him her premonition, then tried to phone me. I'd already left my room, and left my beeper there. I don't usually carry it off duty. So she called the office, and the night watch forwarded her call to Carlos. They'd agreed to meet at building reception.

  When she'd finished her call, Frank had flown her to Barstow himself, where she could catch a Vegas-L.A. local with almost no wait. Frank, of course, didn't have a permit to fly in L.A. airspace—those are really hard to get, for obvious reasons—or he'd have flown her the rest of the way. All the way back she'd worried about what she could possibly do when she got here. The premonition was vague. I was in danger; that's all there was of it.

  When she got with Carlos though, it seemed to her that the danger was or would be at the Campus. So they'd driven there, and she'd told Carlos, "Park here." "Here" being at the curb about forty or fifty meters from where I eventually came over the fence. That had been about midnight; they'd had more than a two-hour wait. She smiled at me, then reached and patted Carlos' cheek. "And you never complained a bit," she said to him. "I'm not sure you even doubted."

  He laughed. "No comment," he said. Carlos Katagawa was seldom the inscrutable Oriental, regardless of his Japanese ancestry. "Actually I assumed it was genuine when you first talked to me on the phone. I've seen you operate before, remember. But I admit feeling spooky about sitting there at the curb with nothing happening. What good could it possibly do to wait there? Next to a nearly empty parking lot!" He sipped coffee and looked at me. "That's quite a lady you married. So. Now it's your turn to talk. How did you get into a situation like that?"

  I put off answering till we got to the office, where I could talk to the computer terminal, to a confidential fail-safe file, telling him pretty much what I told you. Adding that I might have killed Miller; a kick like that to the sternum would shock the heart, might even stop it. Or Collins' shot may have hit him. Collins might also be dead, though I doubted it. I might have broken some of his ribs, though, so he could have a punctured lung.

  "We've got grounds to call in the LAPD now," Carlos pointed out.

  "No, I don't want to do that. I'd rather we each tape our statements of what we saw and heard, and duplicate the files into two or three legal repositories for use as depositions when the time comes. I'm not out to bust the church hierarchy, necessarily. I want to find out what happened to Christman."

  Carlos raised an eyebrow. I suppose he figured I'd want to bust the hierarchy, after what had happened. "If we get a few people indicted," he said, "and some hotshot LAPD interrogators talk to them awhile, maybe they'll tell what happened to Christman."

  "I don't think they would, Carl. I don't think even Thomas knows what happened to Christman."

  He didn't say anything, just waited for me to explain. "It's the questions he asked me: Thomas seemed unwilling to accept that Christman was really dead. He argued that the Noeties and the COGs couldn't possibly have killed him. Which tended to load the case against him. Why would he do that? And who was he trying to convince? Me? He never intended for a minute to let me out of there alive.

  "No, he was thinking out loud. My best judgement now is that he doesn't know what happened to Christman, and wishes he did."

  "Okay, then why is he trying to kill the investigation? Or at least the investigator."

  "If Christman's dead, he doesn't want us to find out. Plus I don't think he's all there mentally.

  "Now here's a question for you: According to the Times article, Christman had things set up so the church paid him essentially all its income beyond strictly budgeted operating expenses. If it wanted money for any extraordinary project—something not budgeted as routine operating funds—they had to ask him for it. That seemed to be his major form of control after he turned the executive functions over to his bureaucracy. And considering how rich he apparently was, he really didn't spend a whole lot on his personal life.

  "The same writers estimated that, by 2006, the church's long-term gross income had certainly surpassed 200 million. I called up the hypertext on that, and their estimate was based on a lot of hard information and some rough assumptions. So say its long-term gross income was half a billion by last fall, when Christman dropped out of sight. That's church income. Then add whatever earnings that money had accumulated!"

  Carlos' pursed lips formed a thoughtful O, a silent whistle. Tuuli wasn't saying anything either.

  "It'd be interesting to see Christman's will," I went on. "Who'd get his money if it was legally established that he was dead? That's a piece of information that might break this case. But it's my impression that as the law stands, it's information we can't get at, without compelling evidence that Christman is dead."

  Carlos nodded. "So what do you want to do?"

  * * *

  What I did was call church security; it seemed like the only office they'd have open at that hour. A stoney-faced woman answered, and I told her I wanted to talk to Thomas. She told me he wasn't available.

  "He is to me," I said. "Tell him Martti Seppanen wants to talk to him."

  "Mr. Seppanen"—she got the name right, first shot—"it is three-forty in the morning. If you want to speak to Mr. Thomas, you'll have to leave your . . ."

  I interrupted her. "You're damned well aware that someone escaped from the kitchen about two-fifteen this morning, and left two guys badly injured or dead. He got away through the tunnels, across the parking lot, and over the fence."

  She actually changed expression slightly. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "The hell you don't! The whole thing is over an
investigation of whether Ray Christman is dead or alive. Lon will want to talk to me. He wanted to so badly earlier, he had me kidnaped. Now get him on the goddamn screen or we'll go to the LAPD with everything we've learned. We've already got an investigation contract with them."

  The stone face slipped a little more. "Just a moment," she said, and put me on hold. I glanced at Tuuli; she looked impressed and—proud.

  I winked at her, and she grinned. "Thanks for saving my ass, babe," I told her. "It's all yours now." It was my version of Bogart as Sam Spade. Of course, in those ancient movies they'd never have said ass.

  It took a few minutes before Thomas came on the screen. He looked like hell. I suppose I didn't look too good either. I spoke first. "Thomas," I said, "I want to do two things for you."

  He stared.

  "First I need to tell you that this conversation is being recorded. I want you to know that I and the two witnesses who picked me up have just recorded and safe-stored our separate statements of what each of us saw and experienced tonight. They've been covering me since I left my office—actually since the bombing. They witnessed the assault on me outside Canter's Restaurant, and followed my kidnapers.

  "Your people didn't do that bad a job of searching me, incidentally. It's just that my shirt is an ultrawave transmitter. When your goons got me down in the meat-cutting room and Miller told me what they were going to do to me— Well, it's all in the net now, in triplicate safe-files, along with your interrogation."

  Thomas' face had looked a little puffy when he'd come on. It had shrunk since then. "We don't particularly want to bust the church," I went on. "Like I said a couple weeks ago, I have an uncle who swears it turned his life around, even though he quit it years ago. Probably saved him from cirrhosis of the liver. All we want to do is find out what happened to Ray Christman. And we want your cooperation. If you did nothing criminal to him, you're clear.

  "On the other hand, if you try to interfere, your ass is in the fire, along with the church. Our depositions are coded to several keeper keys in the law enforcement net. If anything happens, the LAPD, the county prosecutor, and the FBI will have them, and you know how they'd love that. Incidentally, those statements also cover what we know about the bombing of the Hollywood Boulevard apartment and the murder of the Boghosians."

  He was still staring haggardly at my image on his screen. "I'll tell you something else," I said. "Yesterday we were a little afraid of you people. Now we've got you by the balls. But we don't particularly want you scared of us; we just want you to act rationally, and cooperate.

  "I'm going to ask you a question now. But I'll preface it by reminding you of your rights: you don't have to talk. Anything you say may be held against you in a court of law. So. What do you know about the disappearance of Ray Christman?"

  There was a long pause; when he spoke, his voice was husky. "Nothing," he said at last. "If I did, I'd probably tell you. But I really honest to God don't know."

  "All right, Mr. Thomas, I'll let it go for now. Where have you taken the two goons who were going to murder me?"

  Another long pause. "Presbyterian Hospital."

  "What names are they under? I'll be checking with Presbyterian."

  "Their own names: Collins and Miller."

  "What first names?"

  "Miller is—Clark Miller, I think. And James Collins."

  "Thank you, Mr. Thomas. We'll be getting in touch with you from time to time. Make sure your people put us through. And Mr. Thomas—I am not a vengeful person. Only one with a professional responsibility."

  I broke the connection then and sat back, feeling I'd handled an awful lot awfully well. Carlos shook his head. "My what marvels our radio people have come up with! A shirt-transmitter! And ultrawave yet!"

  "Make you a bet," I said. "I'll bet he doesn't check it out to see if it's possible."

  * * *

  After she and Carlos had recorded their statements, Tuuli and I drove home. Actually she drove; we used her car. An investigative assistant would pick mine up at Canter's. We felt pretty confident that Thomas wouldn't try to hit any of us now. That had been a major purpose in calling him and saying what I'd said. Meanwhile, Carlos had told me to take the day off, and the next day if I wanted to.

  At that hour, Tuuli and I had Laurel Canyon Boulevard almost to ourselves. Dawn was graying the sky, and a cool green smell blew in on us through my open window.

  "What was it like, your premonition?" I asked.

  "Just a realization. A realization that you were in danger."

  "No voice? No vision?"

  She shook her head. "Would you still like to spend a week in Arizona?"

  "I would, but it can wait a couple of days. Or longer if you want."

  "Not today?"

  "You and I are going to spend today alone," she purred, and put her hand on my leg. "I suppose you're so tired, you'll want to go straight to sleep when we get home."

  I laughed. "Not to sleep. Only to bed. After a hot shower."

  "Good," she said. "That shower is going to be crowded though."

  19

  SHOPPING PSYCHICS

  Needless to say, we were both asleep an hour after we got home. Tuuli woke up first, not long after noon, and it was the nicest day, I think, of my whole life. We'd never been so relaxed around each other, or talked so much. And we didn't cross swords even once.

  The coffee took a beating, but we drank hers. Tuuli always drinks decaf at home, but I'd never thought it was anything for me. As a young kid I'd drink coffee with my dad. He liked his sweet and strong, so strong the spoon would stand straight up in it—not really—and mom made it the way he liked. He was easygoing, never bossy to her, but she liked to please him, make him happy. He was sixty-one and she was twenty-five when they got married, a strange but happy story, right up to the bloody end.

  Huh! Look at that! I can actually talk about it now.

  Me, on the other hand—I'd been, if not actually bossy, at least judgemental, and Tuuli had . . . But I'm getting off the subject.

  Like I said, we loafed around and talked a lot that day, and I asked her way more about psychics and being psychic than I ever had before. I'd always felt uncomfortable about it, a little edgy maybe, but that day I was really relaxed. Like Winifred Sproule, she mentioned idiot savants, and said that some of the more capable psychics had been either neurotic or more or less retarded. Ole Sigurdsson, she said, had supposedly been kicked in the head by a horse when he was a child, and it had left him both feebleminded and psychic. Then, when he was pretty much grown, he'd come to America with relatives, and en route had somehow lost his feeblemindedness.

  I told her it was hard to think of Ole as having been feebleminded. She agreed, but said she'd read it in his biography, written by his wife Laura, before they were married.

  Anyway, for some reason the conversation reminded me of the psychic photographers Winifred Sproule had mentioned, and when I went to work the day after that, it was on my mind. I didn't know why. And not only psychic photographers, but psychics in general. I still didn't have a real lead on what had happened to Christman. Could a psychic help me?

  I hadn't asked Tuuli: She knew the problem, and nothing had come to her or she'd have told me. I'd asked Vic, and he'd seemed to dodge it, while Ole'd said he "didn't get anything" on it.

  I knew there was a compendium of psychics put out some years ago by a university. It had added respectability to the field, and boomed the growing post-plague interest. So, from the office, I phoned Winifred Sproule. I figured she might be able to discuss and evaluate it better than an electronic or even a human reference librarian.

  It turned out she had it on her shelves in hard copy: A Catalog of Significant Confirmed Psychics in North America, compiled by a Dr. Norman J. Gustafson and Dr. Lisabet V. Mitchell, and published by Washington State University Press. She said I could come in and borrow it if I'd like. I told her I'd just call it up on my computer, from the L.A. Library tank. The truth was, I was a lit
tle afraid of Dr. Sproule.

  The title page read "Copyright 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011," so it was updated regularly. I read the Introduction first. There was, it said, a companion publication, in three volumes, on exposed fraudulent psychics. Three volumes of case histories! And those were only "a representative sample."

  The "confirmed psychics" volume, on the other hand, was thin, 115 pages exclusive of the stuff up front. Even that length was due partly to multiple listings and even more to extensive appendices—hypertext in the computer edition—that summarized briefly the more important studies made of the individual psychics.

  It didn't include those idiot savants whose only known talent was calendar computations. There was disagreement as to whether or not calendar computation was actually psychic.

  The first list was alphabetical, and I checked to see if Tuuli was included. She was. So was Ole. The Merlins weren't, or Bhiksu, or Mikki Diacono. Maybe they hadn't come to the compilers' attention. After each name on the alphabetical list was a list of talents verified for that person, and reference codes to appendix material. Cross lists were by talents, and state or province. Under any particular talent, the people were listed in a consensus order of reliability: a 1 rating was highest, and according to the introduction, no one had rated a 1 except some idiot savants.