Armageddon Crazy

by Mick Farren

  "No expense spared."

  "You're not kidding."

  There was a certain twisted logic to the deacons maintaining their own closed whorehouse. Indeed, it was the same logic of applied hypocrisy that operated on every level of the Faithful regime. They used their thought police to enforce public morality, but at the same time they had to recognize that, among their gestapo, some of the boys would definitely be boys. This recreation facility and, Carlisle assumed, many others across the country, had been provided so that God's strong right arms could sexually unwind with only a minimal risk of scandal. Carlisle was quite proud that he, with a single stroke, had considerably upped the ante on that risk.

  "The place is lousy with cameras. They must record everyone's every stroke," Reeves said.

  Carlisle sniffed. "It's a system of interlocking blackmail. I know your sins, but you know mine."

  "God can never have enough data."

  Loud voices floated up from the parlor. The tour was cut short as Carlisle and Reeves hurried to the head of the stairs.

  "What's going on down there?"

  A new squad of deacons had arrived. They were being held at gunpoint in the parlor by the boys from the riot squad. Their leader was a tall man with a black leather coat draped over his shoulders. His hair was close to white blond and very long for a deacon. His eyes were hidden behind black Raybans.

  Reeves whistled under his breath. "Christ, now you're in for it."

  Carlisle nodded. "Dreisler. I didn't expect him so soon."

  Matthew Dreisler was the head of Deacon Internal Affairs and, as the deacons' chief headhunter, possibly the most feared man in all of New York.

  Carlisle hurried down the stairs, angrily demanding answers from the riot squad. "I thought I told you to seal this place!"

  "We did."

  "So how did these people get in?"

  "They brought their own warrants."

  Cold black sunglasses were regarding him. When Dreisler spoke, it was a patrician drawl that seemed almost decadent. "You must be Carlisle."

  Harry nodded. "I'm Carlisle,"

  "And you're the one with the theory. You think someone here is in cahoots with the LPs."

  "I find it a little too much of a coincidence that a triple assassination should happen just a stone's throw from this establishment."

  "You suspect a direct connection."

  "I thought it merited investigation."

  Dreisler removed his sunglasses. "Or did you just see a chance for the PD to humiliate the deacons?"

  Carlisle did not answer.

  Dreisler shrugged. "As it happens, I agree with you. With the first part, that is. That's why I'm taking over this investigation as of now."

  Carlisle folded his arms across his chest. "I don't think I can go along with that."

  Dreisler's pale eyebrows shot up. "You don't?"

  "I'm the officer on the scene here and I've got the authority to keep anyone out if I decide they might compromise the investigation."

  Dreisler had a white silk evening scarf draped around his neck. He was slowly twisting one end of it between the ringers of his left hand. "Go on."

  "There's the possibility that a deacon has been turned by the terrorists, or that you have an infiltrator among you."

  "If anyone fingered those boys, it was more likely one of the girls."

  "Sure it is, but until I'm satisfied that it wasn't a deacon, I'm not letting any one of you near this."

  Dreisler was smiling as if he admired Carlisle's gall. "Are you always so gung ho on procedure?"

  Harry shook his head. "Not usually, but now and then it comes in handy."

  "Do you know who I am?"

  Carlisle nodded. That was the warning shot that he had been waiting for. "I know who you are, Deacon Dreisler."

  "Either you have a lot of balls, or you're plain stupid."

  "I'm a New York cop, Deacon Dreisler. Everything mat might imply."

  Dreisler laughed as if he were conceding the point. "You have forgotten one thing, though."

  Carlisle was instantly on his guard. "What's that?"

  "There's been no crime committed here. You're not the officer on the scene because there is no scene."

  Carlisle looked bemused. "We're standing in the middle of a functioning brothel."

  "In that case you should have brought a vice warrant. We've been talking terrorism, and I don't see a single terrorist on the premises."

  "I figure that this is close enough to the shooting to qualify as a secondary investigation point, and I've secured the premises accordingly."

  Dreisler sighed as if he were getting weary of all this sparring. He held out the tracy on his wrist. "Do you know how long it would take me to get a ruling in my favor on this?"

  Carlisle raised his hand. Enough was enough. "I know you can run me out of here at any time, but if you do, I'll be back with the first camera crew I come across. There's media all over the neighborhood. They were tipped and they went live with the killings before the censors could get in and blanket it. They'll love this."

  Dreisler looked Carlisle up and down as if really seeing him for the first time. "Well, well, you don't give up too easily, do you, Carlisle?"

  "Just doing my job."

  Dreisler smiled. "The classic Nuremberg answer. I tell you what, Lieutenant Carlisle. While your men are doing their work, why don't you and I go somewhere on our own and talk about terrorism?"

  THREE

  Mansard

  There was a chill wind blowing off the river and across the landfill. Charlie Mansard huddled his shoulders deeper into the bulk of his sheepskin coat. Behind him, the lights of the city had taken on their nighttime unreality. Mansard glanced back at them. All his life he had worked with lights, but they never lost their essential magic. It was ironic that light and illusion should have become his stable reality. He fished in his coat pocket for his other stable reality, pulled out the silver hip flask, and took a quick nip of scotch.

  "Is there any coffee?"

  Rita poured steaming coffee from a vacuum flask and held out the Styrofoam cup to him.

  "You want to call a break so we can all get warm?"

  Mansard shook his head. "Absolutely not. I want to get on with it."

  Mansard had never transcended the elemental fear that the device would simply refuse to work. In the last minutes before the field test of the scale model, the tension was unbearable. If anything went wrong at this point, it would be a long way back to the drawing board. He turned to the nearest production assistant and pointed to the communicator on his belt. "Give me that."

  He all but barked into the radio. "Are we ready yet?"

  The unruffled voice of Jimmy Gadd came back to him through the tiny speaker. "Not quite, boss. Just a couple more minutes."

  Mansard impatiently stamped his feet as he handed back the communicator.

  Rita was as calm as Gadd. "Do you want an Equital?"

  "No, I don't. I don't want any pills." In fact, he had taken two uppers on the way down to the landfill.

  Rita sniffed. "If you don't calm down, you'll burst a blood vessel."

  "I'm perfectly calm."

  "Sure you are."

  Mansard turned and faced the towering cityscape. "They could have blacked out the twin towers for us."

  "They threw a shitfit. Said they couldn't do it, just for the test of a model."

  Mansard turned back on the offending skyscrapers and faced the river. "Screw them."

  The PA had his communicator to his ear. "It's Gadd, Mr. Mansard. He's ready to go."

  Charlie Mansard held out his hand for the unit. "How is it, Jimmy? You can roll it?"

  "Everything on line, boss. Zero on the fault deck."

  "Okay, then, let's get to it."

  Bono, the chief engineer, was already punching buttons on the portable masterboard. Rita handed Mansard a bullhorn. Mansard took a final look around.

  "Okay, ladies and gentlemen, here we go. Fog up."
/>
  A dozen or more pillars of vapor rose straight up into the night sky from a point some fifty yards away. At first they were thin individual strands, but quickly they thickened and solidified into a single cohesive column.

  "Fog running ten of ninety on the board, boss."

  Mansard nodded. "Put up the reference points."

  A complex constellation of bright green stars appeared in the column of mist.

  "Image up to one-third."

  In the mist ghostly figures were shaping themselves around the green stars. They were too faint, however, for Mansard to make out any details.

  "So far so good. Bring in the base structure nice and slow. We don't want any overload this early in the game."

  The ghostly figures began to solidify until they were static sculptures of white light. Now it was possible to see exactly what they were. The four mounted figures of horror on their equally terrible steeds stood motioness in the mist: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, each over fifteen feet tall and perfect in every detail – the cowl of Death, the ornate armor and plumed helmet of War, the outstretched arm and rotting flesh of Pestilence, and the hollow skull eyes and sunken cheeks of Famine. Mansard rubbed his hands together. The design was holding together very well. About the only blemish was the tip of the spear that War brandished aloft. If flickered and wavered. The image came and went.

  Mansard spoke urgently into the communicator. "Jimmy, what's the story on that spear?"

  "It's too long. It's projecting beyond the effective apex of the fog generators."

  "Will we have the same problem on the full-size version?"

  "If anything, it'll be worse. We can't expect the same fog apex on the real thing."

  "Damn."

  "Do you want us to rerig it?"

  "No. We can fix it on this end by simply lowering the figure's arm."

  Mansard walked over to Bono at the masterboard. After a short discussion, the engineer put up a schematic on the main function monitor and nursed a simple joystick. In a perfectly natural movement, War dipped his lance until the tip came into sharp focus.

  "That's good. Let's color the matrix."

  It was like the dawn of some medieval hallucination. As the color came up, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse took on a ghastly solidity. The colors vibrated into the night.

  Jimmy Gadd whooped through the communicator. "How's that, boss? Right on the master drawing or what?"

  Mansard grinned. "Close enough for rock and roll."

  The colors were, in fact, perfect: the graveyard, damp earth brown of Death's robes, the glowing red coals that were his horse's eyes, the sheen of orange fire on War's blue-black armor – it was all there, just as Mansard had dreamed it, and it was awesome.

  "Okay, here comes the big test. Run the animation up to fifty percent speed."

  Bono nodded. "Running them nice and easy."

  The Four Horsemen slowly started to move. The horses raised one foot and then another. Their heads nodded ponderously, their nostrils flared, and their manes fanned out behind them. It was as if they were attempting to gallop through some thick heavy liquid.

  "How's the power load holding up?"

  "Everything's in the green."

  "Let's ease it up toward normal. Pull back immediately if anything starts to redline."

  "Stop sweating it, boss. It's all going fine."

  Mansard knew that Bono was right, but he would never admit it. "Just watch out for an overload."

  The Four Horsemen began to gather speed. Mansard was transfixed. When those images were scaled up to nearly a hundred feet tall, they would blow the city away. There had really been nothing like it before.

  "Up to normal motion."

  The horses' hooves pounded the empty air in eerie silence. Their necks stretched and strained; their glowing eyes bulged from skull sockets. Death swung his scythe, and the outstretched arm of Pestilence broadcast contagion across the Earth.

  Mansard rubbed his hands together. "How's it holding up?"

  "It's holding. Quit worrying."

  Mansard started to walk toward the shining images. He glanced back at the lighted apartment windows of the Tribeck Tower. What the hell would they think of this apparition on the landfill? Not that he particularly cared. The general population had become so goddamn weird that they deserved all they got. He stepped carefully over the snaking cables that connected the laser banks and the massed fog generators. Jimmy Gadd and his crew crouched beside the bulky equipment, watching tensely. Gadd straightened, weary but grinning, as Mansard approached.

  "I think we got it."

  "It does look like it."

  "Now all we have to do is build the big one."

  Mansard made a dismissive gesture. "Just a detail."

  Gadd sniffed. "Tell me that on the day."

  Winters

  "Have you heard about the sub-basement?"

  The suspect from Fifteenth Street had stopped being truculent and was becoming genuinely frightened. She inspected her fingernails. They were bloodred and as long as claws. She was avoiding his eyes.

  "I've heard about it. There's a few of your buddies who just can't stop talking about it."

  "We have our own dungeon down there."

  "I said I heard about it."

  "It's not one of your fantasy games. It's the real thing down there."

  "I said I heard."

  "I have the power to send you down there."

  The woman looked frantically at the clerical auxiliary who was chaperoning the interrogation. The CA remained stone-faced. The suspect turned back to Winters. "You can't do that to me."

  In fact he could not. The instruction had been very simple. The deacons assigned to each of the women brought in from Fifteenth Street were to scare the hell out of them, but there was to be absolutely nothing physical. "If you so much as breathe hard on one of those whores, you're dead. You got that?" Those assigned to the job were all junior deacons. Too many of the senior officers had been regular customers at the house. Dreisler and his headhunters were all over the building. The working girls from the house were rapidly becoming an embarrassment. Even though Dreisler had managed to keep away the media, the matter of the house on Fifteenth Street was still a loose cannon in the department. A cover might have been put on it if the PD had not burst in there first, but, as it was, the thing was so close to being public that the hookers had to be handled with kid gloves. Carlisle was walking around like a man who had the world by the balls, and without a doubt, if the women simply disappeared, he would blow the story to the more hostile elements in the press. The deacons had reacted by falling into a holding pattern. Junior deacons like Winters would keep the women in a state of shock, off balance, and malleable, until some upper echelon decided what to do with them.

  "I can do pretty much anything I want with you."

  The woman was looking at her nails again. "I want a lawyer."

  "This is nothing to do with the law. We aren't policemen. We're the spiritual guardians of society. What happens here is a matter between you, me, and God."

  The woman's face twisted. "God?"

  "Don't add blasphemy to the rest of your crimes."

  Winters was starting to enjoy himself. The woman was small, with black hair, green eyes, and spectacular breasts. Although she had been in the Astor Place complex for close to half a day, she had not been allowed to change out of her working clothes. She was still half-naked in a leather twopiece, black latex stockings, and alarmingly high heels. It was extremely exciting to have even illusionary total power over a creature who, in almost any other context, would have completely intimidated him. In the interrogation room, the costume put her at a positive disadvantage. She kept shifting around in the hard, high-backed chair as if trying to hide or protect her considerable expanses of bare flesh. A bluebird was tattooed on the outside of her left thigh. She caught Winters looking at it and covered it with her hand.

  "I don't understand why you're doing this. I haven't done an
ything. I haven't committed any crimes."

  "You're a first-degree common harlot. That, on its own, would be worth a year in Joshua."

  "This is ridiculous. We were working for the goddamn deacons. We had a deal and we kept up our end of it."

  "You had a deal until three of us were murdered coming out of that place."

  "That was nothing to do with any of the girls."

  "We don't know that. It's quite possible that any of you could have been working with the terrorists."

  "That's impossible. The place was bugged from top to bottom. You couldn't get away with anything. I already told the PDs and now I'm telling you. Me and the rest of the girls were there for one purpose and one purpose only."

  "The unclean lusts of the flesh?"

  "Money. We were making money and keeping out of trouble."

  "I suppose you have some suitably pathetic sob story about how you first became a fallen flower."

  "You don't need a sob story when unemployment's at thirty percent. I come from Bangor, Maine, Mr. Deacon. You know what they get up to up there? Those bastards passed a city ordinance that prescribed branding for fornicators."

  "Some areas are more zealous than others when it comes to the Lord's work."

  Winters was staring at the suspect's breasts and thinking about fornication and branding. The woman went on talking.

  "So I get down to New York and I find that there ain't any more jobs down here. My second night, I get picked up on Tenth Avenue and instead of getting busted, I get recruited."