“Cyborg killing machine from the future?”
“Nope.”
“Adrenaline-addicted indestructible hitwoman?”
“Nope.”
“Print model with ties to an underground feminist conspiracy?”
“Nope—wait, yes.”
We sat on the small concrete ledge of a planter that bordered this side of the building. Beyond us, there was some greenery and a couple cigarette butts stubbed out in the soil. It was more than a little mundane. Mina leaned into me. I leaned back. We waited.
I heard the cars before I saw the headlights swing into view. Two of them: black, probably bulletproof. They parked illegally in front of the building. Two men got out of each, men in suits, and an easy bet that they were armed. They scanned the area. After a moment, the door on the left car opened and Burt Shaw stepped out. He straightened his tie and walked toward the building. His men fanned out.
“Showtime. Hang back. If they start shooting, run.”
I didn’t check to see if she’d nodded. There was, of course, the chance that she was working with Shaw and this was their final gambit to kill me. It was also possible that I was an idiot.
Shaw saw me before his men did. He stopped, his attention fixing on me. His men reacted a half-second later, whirling; two moving back to protect the boss and the other two moving outward to cover me from multiple angles. They were the ones ready to shoot, but it was Shaw that was the scary one. The man’s attention was palpable. He could invade my personal bubble from twenty yards away.
He spoke loudly. “Mr. Levitt?”
I nodded to him. “Mr. Shaw.”
There was no expression on his face, not amusement, not surprise, not apprehension. He was waiting to see how this played out and any response seemed fine to him. He said, “I was surprised when Ms. Ratliff gave me your message. I had been under the impression that you were happy in your employment.”
Ms. Ratliff. Right. “Mr. Shaw, look, I realize you’re a busy man, and I appreciate you coming here. I know it was kind of a rude way to get your attention, but I figured I had to scream to be heard, if you follow. I do have a question for you before we go on, and you know, this is just curiosity, and you might be the wrong guy to ask, but… Ms. Ratliff. What does she look like?”
He raised his eyebrows. I think that was his version of the Mina-look of utter shock. “She’s mid-fifties, gray hair, very short and plump.”
“In this business, faith isn’t so much tested as it is beaten about the head and neck with a sock full of batteries.”
“What are you babbling about?”
“Not important. I called you here because I know everything.”
“Omniscience is generally reserved for God.”
Mina was right: this was going to be very satisfying. “Let’s start with your bio. You’re former CIA. You were involved in Operation Condor, collecting DNA from the disappeared, which you then sold to the Clone Wolves in exchange for future considerations. Specifically, you bought the clones, which you then turned over to specific handlers—people like Ingrid Brady and Eric Caldwell—to turn into Manchurian Candidates. You kept track of these with gimmicked phone books, given to each one of the handlers. The plan was to use your Candidates to remove opposition. You want LA, and with it, the heart of the information underground. You control peace summits. You control hand-offs. You control hits. There was only one possible person that could stand in your way: me. You knew about my divided loyalties. I didn’t know about your plan, but I had the tools to put it together, so you arranged my hit. You even had me plant my killer’s weapon… this…” I hefted the rock and chain for emphasis, “as a final fuck-you.”
“And what did you hope to gain by talking to me?”
I shrugged. “Clemency. You want LA? I don’t care. Not my problem. My goal is to not have my head caved in. Modest, I know, but I find the key to happiness is intimately involved with one’s head staying roughly spherical. Alternately, you could kill me, and everything I know goes straight to the papers.”
He gave me a thin smile. “You’re actually threatening me with the press? Mr. Levitt, I control the press. I could have Paul Newman hack you up and feed each screaming piece to Shamu in front of three thousand people and have the press call it suicide.”
I wondered if he knew Paul Newman was dead. It was creepier if he did. In any case, he was right. Eric proved that, even if people like Dorothy Kilgallen and Karen Silkwood hadn’t.
He continued, “As I said, I was surprised when Ms. Ratliff gave me your message. I was not aware of you until I saw you on Friday night. I looked into it, and I found out that I had you to thank for warning Mr. Quackenbush about the problems he was due to have with the Assassins. Mr. Levitt, I never tried to have you killed. On the contrary, we were quite happy with you. Emphasis on were.” His men pulled their guns. Mina gasped.
I said, “Diaz couldn’t act on his own.”
“True. He was supposed to kill Tariq Suliman, thanks to you. Why he went off-mission is, frankly, a mystery.” Shaw reached into his coat. I flinched. He removed an envelope. “Fortunately, it’s not a mystery that matters to me. This is a letter from our mutual friend, Diaz’s ‘father.’ It claims responsibility for everything Diaz did.” He threw it at my feet. “You can keep that one. I have a copy.”
I picked the letter up. Opened it. One look at it, and the whole thing fell into place. For real this time. I thought about goat’s blood and the bunker in San Pedro. I wanted to vomit, but that’s bad form when four pistols are pointed at you. I had thought that the octopus used the darkness, but I’d forgotten that just because something lives in the dark doesn’t mean it can see.
I pocketed the letter.
Then all I had to solve was the problem of the four guns pointed at me. It’s not like four was the magic number. It’s not like you give me three and they’d be on the ground, clutching mangled crotches and thinking I was some kind of nut-punching dervish, but that fourth gun is one too many. One gun was one gun too damn many.
“Okay, so the press thing was a misstep. Sorry about that. How about we discuss this a little more before you do something I’ll regret?”
“Sorry, Mr. Levitt, or whatever your real name is. Shooting you seems to be the simplest solution.”
“Put those guns down!” Neil’s voice, shouting from off to the left. He marched across the parking lot, surrounded by other Satanists. They were still in their tuxes and cocktail dresses, but they had chosen to accessorize with the latest in NRA fashions. They outnumbered Shaw’s group at least two to one.
I said, “I hope you don’t mind. I brought backup, and mine thinks I’m God. Or… something along those lines.”
Shaw had the good graces to look annoyed. Maybe that was the bone he threw me, so if there was an afterlife, I could tell everyone else he’d killed, “Yeah, I got an exasperated eye roll out of him! It was awesome.” I’d get some jealous high-fives, and then I could get down to the serious business of finding out where Marilyn was hiding.
I didn’t see the signal, but Shaw and his men turned and started firing as one. It reminded me of the Clone Wolves. Apparently, Neil and the others weren’t prepared for someone to call their bluff.
“Hey! Wait!” Neil hunkered, he danced, all while the bullets whizzed around him. The other Satanists had thrown themselves to the ground, run for cover, or just plain bolted. It seemed like a good idea.
I turned. Mina was already running. I was proud of her. I caught up and we were at the railing before Shaw called in an irritated monotone, “Would someone kill Mr. Levitt, please?” If Mina made it out, I hoped she would put that on my tombstone. I wondered what name she’d put on it, or if I’d have the world’s first multiple-choice grave marker.
She rounded the corner, the planter giving her some cover. I heard a gunshot I was pretty sure was intended for me and I flinched, but I made it around the corner with no new holes. Mina had stopped. She looked scared, but it was a controlled fear. A
fter the parking garage, the UFO abduction, and meeting Shub-Internet, she was getting some steel in those veins. She said, “The summation didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.”
“The upside is I know who actually did it.”
“Are you sure, or is this another false positive that’s going to get us shot at?”
I decided to ignore that. There were more gunshots, all of which I’m fairly sure were directed at the Satanists. Footfalls pounded toward us. I pointed Mina toward the planter and moved away from it. She took my meaning. I stood in the open and started whipping the rock over my head.
The spook turned the corner and skidded to a stop. For a second, he was terrified. Then he remembered that he had a gun and I had a rock. That seemed to cheer him up. He leveled the pistol at me.
I tried a turkey curse: “A can of Spam is opened every four seconds. The same can.”
He frowned, trying to figure out if what I’d said to him had any meaning at all. Fortunately, he was so focused on me, he missed Mina creeping out from behind the planter, only seeing her when she jumped on him. He fell, his gun clattering across the cement. While he threw her off, I grabbed the gun off the ground and pointed it at him. “Freeze? That sounds so outdated. What’s the current term?”
Mina snapped, “Focus.” She was getting up and brushing herself off.
“Right. Freeze!”
The spook looked a little nervous. I couldn’t blame the guy. I was pretty nervous myself. He grinned. “I don’t know how you plan to shoot me with the safety on.”
“Oh, har har. I’ve seen that one. I check the safety, you attack, disarm me, and you have your gun back. I’ll just check.” I fired the gun. It hit him in the leg.
He screamed.
I felt terrible. “Oh my god! I’m sorry! Are you okay?”
He rolled around, holding his leg. “Son of a bitch!”
I couldn’t tell if I’d hit anything important.
Mina said to him, “You stay there. We’ll get help.”
The gunfire out front had died down. I wondered if the Satanists had gotten anyone. Mina and I ran for the far rail at the back of the observatory. I looked over; it looked like a drop into nothing at all. I’m not generally that afraid of heights, but that view completely petrified me.
“Come on,” I said, pulling her along until we found a place where I could see the ground. I hopped down. She followed, fell on her ass, and swore at me.
“Sorry.”
She got to her feet. “Better than being shot, right?”
We stood on what could barely be called a path. Just staying upright on the slope would be a challenge. I was about to stuff the gun down the front of my pants, then remembered how poorly that had the potential to go, so I shoved it down the back. I could handle getting shot in the ass. Emotionally, if not physically. I reached out and Mina grabbed my hand. Between the two of us, we might be able to keep from falling down the hill. We picked down the slope along the wall of the observatory and worked our way across the bottom. I could hear Shaw talking to the agent I’d shot, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Probably something about how I had a gun now. What they didn’t know was that the gun was making me more than a little nervous. I kept having waking nightmares of falling and shooting my balls off, even though I’d have to violate the laws of physics to do it. If there was one thing I had absolute faith in, it was the lengths the universe would go for a groin trauma gag.
I picked up my phone and dialed Adam Roth’s phone, the Shub-Internet line. I could hear it ring in the distance. The talking stopped. They would be looking toward the other side of the parking lot, near where we went down the hill. Far away from the car.
The talking started up again. I hung up the phone and nodded at Mina, who was really just an indistinct shape with a sweaty hand at this point.
We made our way around the observatory. There was the beginning of another path, probably used by the little deer and coyotes found in the park. Go up that, run across first the lawn and then the parking lot, hope the Satanists had been chased off, and we would be at my car.
I helped Mina up the slope. A silhouette stepped into the observatory’s light. I couldn’t tell if it was Shaw or not. Mina and I ducked behind a tree. I tried to remember which phone was up there. I guessed maybe my Malta phone. I called it.
On the other side of the park, I dimly heard a ring, then several gunshots. Okay, not there. Maybe the V.E.N.U.S. phone? I called it. That ring was closer. I peeked: the silhouette’s head had whipped around. He’d be rooting through the planter until he found it. I thought about making a run for it. No, better to stick to cover.
I led Mina through the trees, every now and then calling one of my phones. It was a game of full-contact Marco Polo. I called, they shot. I knew they were seeing me in every tree by now. Count on pareidolia. It wasn’t Jesus in toast, but I could repurpose it well enough to have them see a low-rent Antichrist in some chaparral.
The car was close now. Just a short hike up a hill, and we’d be in it and away.
Of course, that’s right when I got outsmarted.
Shaw stepped out in front of us. He had it worked out. Without the car, we’d be walking down the hill in the dark. “Hello, Mr. Levitt.”
“Hey, Burt. Want to help us up?”
“Drop the gun.”
I did.
He cocked his pistol. I imagined him giving me a thin smile, but then I saw what was dropping from the sky and everything else in my head vanished. Mina screamed. In fairness to her, if part of me hadn’t been expecting this, I might have screamed, too. Our friend from Diaz’s house tucked its huge wings in and landed silently behind Shaw. The glowing eyes cast enough light to read by.
Shaw brought the gun up. That was when he noticed the red glow on his hand.
“Shaw, meet Mothman. Mothman, Shaw.”
He turned, and I think he tried to say something. Then both shapes rocketed into the sky.
Poor Shaw. Of course, had he decided to talk it out like a normal human being and not a mass-murdering asshole, he wouldn’t be the prey of a time-traveling mutant or fortune-telling alien or whatever the hell Mothman actually was. Shit, I owed the guy my life. I could at least get his taxonomy right.
Mina asked, “Was that the thing from Diaz’s place?”
“Nice guy. Saved my ass three times.”
“Mothman? What is he, some kind of conspiracy superhero?”
I thought about it. “Yes.” Good an answer as any.
We ran up the hill and threw ourselves into the car. Within seconds, we were roaring down the hill at a completely unsafe sixty.
My phone rang. I answered. I knew who it was even before I heard the buzzing voice. “Thanks for the save.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Not to sound ungrateful, but why do you keep helping me?”
“Because you need it.”
“Eric Caldwell needed help.”
“He made his choices.”
If that thing had said that before I had worked everything out, I might have pushed the statement away. But he said it when I was feeling unusually introspective. “And I haven’t.”
“Not yet. Soon.”
“Look, next time…”
“There will not be a next time. You get my help one time. Then I move on.”
“Right. You stop this Silver Bridge from collapsing this time, but after that, it’s on its own.”
“I see all times and all places. No one has ever manipulated probability to such a degree.”
“So I’m, what... your favorite show?”
There was a long, crackling pause. “Yes.” The line went dead.
Mina watched me hang up the phone and tuck it back in my pocket. “I don’t want to know, do I?”
“I think you do, and no, you don’t.”
“So Shaw wasn’t Mr. Blank?” I shook my head. She sighed. “Then who? Who’s left? We’ve scoured every inch of this city, and your stupid information under
ground; we should know what’s going on.”
“I do. We’re going to get out of here and find someplace quiet. And then I’ll tell you everything. The real summation.”
That’s how I found myself in a diner on Sunset, the Brite Spot. A nice place, with a lunch counter through the middle and a dessert case displaying dangerously top-heavy cupcakes. Mina and I were at a booth, the vinyl shot through with glitter. The waitress, who had to be more than a hundred, slid a slice of pie in front of me, and a milkshake glass in front of Mina, along with the silver cup holding the extra. Mina looked at me over a generous dollop of whipped cream. “Okay. Speak up.”
I took a deep breath. A couple booths away, two cops ate a late-night breakfast. Where were they when I was being shot at? “I know exactly who sent the assassin to Union Station. I know who armed him; I know why he was there. It had to be someone with all of my connections, all of my resources and knowledge. There’s only one person like that.
“Me.”
The look she gave me effortlessly combined fear, anger, and incredulity. I wanted to bottle it and sell it to extras in disaster movies.
I went on: “On Thursday, Hasim Khoury the Assassin told me that Tariq Suliman had accepted a contract on Irving Quackenbush’s life. That’s Shaw’s boss. He runs a security company. Basically, he’s the guy who protects nearly every government installation. Anyway, I told him about the contract on his head. Quackenbush put Shaw in charge of solving that problem.”
She said, “So he activated his Manchurian Candidates to kill the Assassins. How did Diaz get his hands on the Genesis Stone and the Chain?”
“Remember when you said that the Discordian, Stacy—GOOD FISH—was sad? That was right after Eric Caldwell died. If you looked at her charm bracelet, it included a Templar cross—the thing that looked like a Nazi iron cross, only in red. She was dating Eric Caldwell. When I checked out his place, I found a bunch of cans of hairspray. He didn’t use it, but Miss Flock of Seagulls sure did. She must have taken the gimmicked phone book from Eric. The Discordians selected a Candidate without knowing it because they were using a phone book designed to pick only one person. They tell Diaz where to pick up the weapon, and now he’s armed.”
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