“Good.” I gave her the address of a burger place in Venice, somewhere nice and public. “Meet me there at six.”
With that, I got up.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“Errand.” I paused. “You’re going to follow me, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then come along. If you’re going to watch, I want you close enough to watch back.” She hopped up and followed me from the park. I said, “Listen, could you try to walk like a grown woman? I already feel a little creepy here.” She gave me a blank look and kept walking like a twelve-year-old in a military parade. Beaten, I sighed, “Better.”
Back into the newsstand, back into the back. Javier looked from me to Oana. “She need a fake ID to go drinking?”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose.
“I’m twenty-six,” Oana said.
Javier wasn’t buying, but he handed me Eric’s new papers. “None of my business. Mr. Balzac won’t be fooling experts, but he might be able to get a credit card.”
“Who can’t?”
Oana had to move the passenger seat of my car forward about a foot. I was commuting with a hobbit.
We drove to the courthouse and I parked on the west side, across the street. We had some shade. I hunkered down and got to watching. There were a few people out front: a fat man at the bus station, a blonde on the steps drinking from a large bottle of water, and a few suits moving in and out of the building.
“What are we doing here?” Oana asked.
“Parking. Waiting. Look, if you want to go hide in some bushes to watch me, that’s fine, too.”
“I feel fine here.”
Eric should be in there by now. I tried not to let the paranoia creep up on me. He’d been caught trying to escape; he’d been shot. Someone had already gotten to him, either the girl or the old man. There were a lot of ways it could have already gone wrong.
I heard a zipper. It was Oana, going through her purse, a tiny handbag with an angry penguin on the side. She removed a plastic box with a checkerboard pattern, opened it, and emptied the pieces into her hand.
“Travel chess,” she said.
“I know what it is.”
She set up the board. She moved: e4.
I said, “It’s been years.”
“Don’t be chicken.” Her voice went up several octaves and she flapped her arms. “Cheep cheep cheep.” That was weird enough to get me to move: b6.
“So what happened in Sydney?” I was still smarting from the Bluthian chicken noise she threw my way. She moved: d4.
“I missed the landing on my vault.” That wound seemed fresh.
I decided we needed some bigger guns: Bb7. “Was it worth it? Becoming a hobbit, I mean.”
She looked at me as though I was a really interesting insect. Bd3. She didn’t answer.
I went ahead. “I mean, you sacrifice a lot. Mornings, weekends, a normal-sized neck, menstruation.” My move: f5.
“Do you think you’re being funny?”
“A little, I mean…” I glanced at the door of the courthouse. Eric was coming down the stairs in the gray suit I had gotten for him, trying to look as casual as he could. “Showtime.”
Her gaze followed mine and I was out of the car. Eric spotted me, and for a moment looked relieved. The blonde woman tossed aside her water bottle. She was very thin. Skinny, even. Fucking anorexic. Shit.
Eric turned and was about to yell when she kicked him in the face. Perfect Muay Thai form, too. Textbook.
I tried to get a decent look at her. Blonde hair past her shoulders, and thicker than I would have expected. Smallish eyes, thin lips. Good bones, which was fortunate since that’s all there was of her.
“Son of a bitch!”
I ran through traffic. Eric was still rattled by the kick; the fact that he wasn’t lights out said he was tough as hell. The woman punched Eric in the temple, landing it perfectly. Nobody was that tough; he was out.
I hopped on the curb. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I thought maybe I could grab her. As I lunged, she spun and kicked me in the belly, digging her heel into a jumble of my organs. I crumpled. Pain replaced breath. I couldn’t move beyond holding my gut and trying to inhale.
A van roared up. The stick woman easily picked Eric up over her shoulder and threw him into the van. She glanced my way, but didn’t have the good graces to shoot me a cocky grin before hopping in after Eric. The van was gone before I could get up.
I devoted my first breath to a stream of curses.
“She was Ana.” Oana helped me to my feet.
“You’re fucking-ay right.”
“Who was the man?”
“That’s the last we’re going to see of him.”
-FOURTEEN-
Eric’s apartment was not crawling with cops. That made me a little nervous. The man was dead. The very least they could do was systematically violate his privacy like a freshman arriving at an English boarding school. I picked the lock on the front door and went inside.
Old clove smoke had turned the oxygen in the house into an oppressed minority, consigned only to the ghettoes inside. Eric kept his house dark, and not just because the lights were off. He had black drapes on every window, drawn tight. Shadows turned out to be black furniture and bookcases. The walls were lined with fantasy art, the scary Boris Vallejo/Frank Frazetta knock-offs where everyone, man and woman, was six feet of corded muscle, wearing only G-strings and using disturbingly phallic swords to fight disturbingly phallic dragons. The medieval weaponry on the wall was intended either for decoration or theft deterrent. He did keep everything neat and clean, and for that I was grateful.
Eric’s bedroom was in the back. It somehow managed to be darker than the rest of the place. I wondered how the men and/or women he brought home reacted. They probably weren’t sure if he was going to have sex with them or sacrifice them to his dark gods. Really, that might have been a plus to them. I decided I didn’t want to think about Eric’s sex life anymore.
I opened up the closet and saw that that wasn’t going to be possible.
“What’s that?” Oana said, pointing at something I wanted to unsee.
“I don’t know.”
“And that?”
“Please stop talking.”
I found the book Eric was talking about under some squeaking vinyl. It was a big book and could be a part of his medieval weaponry collection in a pinch. I opened the page marked by the protruding sticky note. I must have made a noise, because Oana said, “What?”
“What” was a picture of Raul Diaz, dead. Not alone, either. The picture showed a pile of bodies stuffed into what looked like a classroom. The bodies had been executed with single bullet wounds to the head. The caption said: “The disappeared, victims of Operation Condor.”
Condor was the CIA code for the assassination and overthrow of Salvador Allende. Bunch of left-wing Chileans vanished, and later some of them turned up in mass executions like the one in the picture. Others were never heard from again. They were called “the disappeared.” Apparently, Raul Diaz had died in 1975. That was fine. Didn’t make him a fucking vampire.
I tried to cover my shock. “Horrible picture.”
“Yeah.”
I searched the rest of the apartment, but I didn’t find anything else that I hadn’t expected, other than six cans of Aquanet in the bathroom cabinet and two more in the trashcan. I wondered why Eric was doing his hair in 1985. The shaggy medieval look he went for didn’t call for that kind of hold.
I drove from there to Venice and parked out by the beach. The door was open, and I was sitting in the driver’s seat, feet on the ground. Oana was perched on the hood. It was a little hard to get upset with her for sitting there. After all, it’s not like she weighed anything.
I made two phone calls. The first was to the Whale. He answered immediately. “Shto?”
“It’s Nicky.”
“Nicky! I was impressed. Picked that door with nothing but a knife.”
“Uh… yeah.”
“I put on show for the others. Nearly twisted Neil’s head off. Made them believe.”
“Vassily, a point.”
“You have Chain.”
“No, but I know where it is. Look, before you say, ‘Good, go get it,’ keep listening. It’s not where I can get at it. I know you can, however.”
“You need, what, cat burglar?”
I wondered what kind of cat he thought he was. “The opposite. This place is a research station. Government grants. Links to things like SETI and JPL. I need you to go in hard and loud.”
Vassily started laughing. “Just like sex!”
“Security shifts change at midnight,” I said. This was a blind guess. “Head in then. And Vassily, bring your guys.”
“I will. I get Chain, we split cash. Good doing business with you, Nicky.”
“My pleasure.” I hung up. To Oana, I announced, “We have our diversion.”
She turned around to give me a dubious look. “And the other?”
The second phone call was to Hasim Khoury. “Hasim, it’s Len.”
“How’re you doin’?” I could smell the booze over the phone.
“Can you get ahold of Tariq Suliman?”
That sobered him up. “What do you need him for?”
“Can you get him?”
“Yes. It’s not really a good time.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, a bit of a situation. Nothing to be concerned about.”
“Then find Tariq for me.” I gave Hasim the same meeting place I gave Oana earlier, the burger place in Venice. It was a short walk from where we were.
“He doesn’t like being summoned.”
“Then phrase it as a request. Talk to you later, Hasim.”
Oana was suddenly right in front of me. I jumped, then noticed that she was at eye level when I was sitting down. That put me in a better mood. “Who is Tariq Suliman?”
“You’ll like him. He’s creepy. I feel like I should warn you, though, he currently wants Mina dead.”
“And you thought it would be a good idea to bring him to her?”
“Well, no. The fact of the matter is, Tariq will keep coming until he’s dead, and there’s only one thing I know of that might be able to take him out.”
“Which is?”
“You don’t want to know, but we’re going to where they live.”
I was pretty sure Oana thought I was completely insane at this point, and was probably regretting having helped me escape. A million guys in the information underground, and she had to wind up with the one who talked in the riddles you find on Popsicle sticks.
We waited at a table outside the burger place. I wasn’t hungry and I was pretty sure she was a vegetarian, judging by the way she looked at the burgers. Instead, she took her travel chess set out again and made me play a game. She didn’t actually make me—I mean, she didn’t pull a gun, put a knife to my throat, or physically move my hand—but I didn’t want her to make that chicken noise again. It was disconcerting and weirdly infectious.
People were everywhere. It was afternoon going on evening, so families, tired and red from a day at the beach, were heading inland, turning the beaches over to the night people: high-school kids and the homeless, anyone who wanted to get drunk on a bed of sand.
I saw Tariq when he was still twenty feet away. I was pretty sure that meant that he had gotten within breathing distance, determined it wasn’t a setup, and doubled back. Oana saw him as soon as I did. Clearly, she was expecting something else.
“That’s him?”
“Yep.”
“He looks like Goofy the dog.”
He kind of did. Tall, lanky; sub in ears for dreads and make his clothes a little less garish. Bam. Goofy. I said, “You should tell him that.”
Tariq took the empty chair. He wasn’t grinning at me, but he wasn’t glaring, either—a strange halfway expression that suggested either sudden violence or impending bromance. I was more comfortable with the former.
“Who’s that?” Tariq demanded, pointing at Oana. “Someone trying to kill her, too?”
“Just some Uruk-hai.”
Tariq burst out laughing. “Hell yeah! What up, peck?”
Oana opened her mouth to say something, but I jumped in, and not to point out that Tariq had his fantasy little people mixed up. “Tariq, listen, I’m sorry about earlier.”
The laughter stopped, and his expression suddenly was a glare. He’d decided. He was going to try to kill me with what was on the table: a Styrofoam cup, a straw, a half-full ashtray, and some travel chess pieces. I really hated how my mind was filling in those blanks.
“What the fuck?” Tariq snapped. “I should kill you, just because.”
“I’m saying sorry here.”
“Man, I got kids to feed.”
“… You do?”
He shrugged. I had no idea if he was being serious. “You’re like Cain, and you know what happened to Cain in the story.”
“He got a mark that made sure no one would ever hurt him?”
Tariq said, “You don’t know shit. So, come on, I’m here, what do you want to say to me?”
“Your target is still alive?”
“Busty St. Clair?” he said.
“Mina Duplessis,” Oana snapped.
“Why didn’t you kill her?” he asked.
“The Russian mob has the contract on her, too. They, uh, knocked me out and taped me to a chair.”
He shouted to the sky, “D’OOOOH!”
“So I’m saying as a peace offering, I’ll give you a location.”
“And I give you?”
“Another thirty years on the planet, for starters.”
“I like this deal!”
I gave him the location. He held his hand up. I did the same and he slapped me five, hard. Then he walked away and was gone before he was ten feet distant.
“Let’s go. He’ll need a couple hours to prepare,” I said.
“And us?”
I didn’t answer her. We got in my car and drove east. The sun set on us, and soon we were in a David Lynch movie. The desert at night, the sky gets bigger and the ground falls away. There’s the patch of ground in the headlights, the shining lines of the center divider and stars. It becomes an asphalt tightrope over infinity.
On the stereo: “Let Me Take You Home Tonight.”
To my horror, Oana started singing along. It wasn’t that she was a bad singer; it’s just that I was having trouble reconciling what she was doing with the act of singing. It was the perfect counterpoint to the desert around us. I shrugged and started singing, too. We weren’t going to win any karaoke contests.
I turned off the road at the right mile marker, then off again onto a dirt road. There was a base not far from here. When we hit the rise, I pulled the car off to the side and killed the lights. From ten feet away, it would look like part of the hill.
I got out of the car, popped the trunk, and grabbed a few things.
“Get your gun,” Oana said.
“I don’t have a gun.”
“You don’t have a—how are you planning to get Mina back?”
“Thought I’d ask nicely. You catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar, you know.”
“You catch even more flies with a flamethrower.”
“You don’t know what ‘brick shithouse’ means, but you know the English for flamethrower. That’s Romanian education for you.” I started up the hill.
The desert is not exactly quiet at night. Compared to the city or to anywhere with trees, it is. But there are insects, birds, all the usual noisemakers. They’re not as boisterous. Really, the desert comes off like an upscale movie theatre in a rich neighborhood: there’s stage whispers, but not enough to screw up the film.
At the top of the hill, we were able to look down on the complex. It wasn’t much to look at, really. The small valley gave it about three hundred feet on all sides to the hills. The
fences and razorwire enclosed a larger area with distinct sections. On the south side, there was a makeshift town. It was supposed to look like a ’50s road stop town, a barracks that didn’t feel like one. Over the fifty years since it had been built, it had been partly reclaimed by the desert, becoming one of those Road Warrior settlements that dot the southwest. A herd of cows wandered between the buildings. The north side sported a perfectly square patch of pavement: the airstrip. Of course, it was much too small for an actual plane to use. Next to that were the warehouse-sized hangars, lit with floods. In the center was a central building, creepily designed to look like a large ’50s-era mansion, with smaller “cottages” that were actually labs.
What there wasn’t was men with guns.
To the naked eye, there was no security beyond a high fence and some floodlights. To be fair, they didn’t really need to keep people out.
Oana and I walked down the path. It was coming up on midnight, but we should be in before Vassily showed up.
Floodlights are usually described as making small sections of daylight. That’s not accurate. Floodlights give a light whiter than anything that’s not under Sirius. Shadows become the parabolic electron orbits of atomic symbols. Beneath a flood, we become nuclear. That was the scene Oana and I approached through the desert.
The dirt road led to a gate in the fence. It was partly open, but not all the way. Somehow, that made it worse.
“You know these people?” Oana asked. She knew the answer. Presumably, VC had informed her of that connection.
“There’s one word in that sentence that’s wrong.”
Her head snapped toward me. “So UFOs are aliens?”
“Some of them. Look, this is the kind of thing that ends up driving people crazy.”
“Are you saying you’re crazy?”
“No, but I’m in an amazing level of denial.”
I squeezed through the gate. Oana didn’t have to. I was getting a case of nerves. The compound was silent, apparently empty. Oana kept scanning the terrain.
The front door of the central building opened. No one touched the door.
“Oana, what time is it?”
“Eleven forty-five.”
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