He gunned the engine and drove out to Palos Verdes. An upscale neighborhood along the coast, it was next to working-class San Pedro. He drove down the Harbor Freeway, turning off on PCH to climb the shoreline. Eventually he pulled off and into the parking lot of a Subway.
“I just had pie,” I said.
“Affirmative.” VC leaned over and opened up the glovebox, retrieving a roll of Scotch tape. I got a look into the compartment; there was a lot of paper in there. No guns, which was nice. Was the car’s registration in there? Was this car even registered?
“Wait here,” I said to Elias.
VC and I went into the Subway. He headed right to the soda fountain and taped the picture of Scarface and his Columbian creamer over the Coke logo on the first spigot. Then he went to the first hapless employee and flashed a badge. “I am part of your Federal Food and Drug Administration. No disease claims more human lives per year than Escherichia coli, known to your scientists by the colloquial term ‘food poisoning.’ It has come to the attention of this agency of comestibles that your entire shipment of sliced pickled cucumbers might have been contaminated with the bacteria called Escherichia coli. You will provide 453.592 grams of sliced pickled cucumbers to test for the presence of this bacteria.”
“F-f-four hundred...” stammered the baffled sandwich artist.
“Converted to your king’s measurements, that is one pound.”
“One pound?” The poor kid, who could not have been more than sixteen years old, looked around helplessly but the other employees had vanished at the sight of two black-suited FDA spooks.
“This sample will be provided in a timely manner.” VC leaned over the sneeze guard. “The Federal Food and Drug Administration shall not be trifled with.”
I had to admit, the guy was pretty intimidating when he wanted to be.
The kid turned around and opened the fridge behind him, removing a metal container of pickles with plastic wrap over it. “I... uh... I don’t know if this is exactly a pound or however many, uh, grams...”
“This will do,” VC said, snatching it out of the kid’s hand. “May your day be nice.”
The two of us left, climbing back into the Caddy and screeching out into traffic. I held the pickles in my lap. “E. coli?”
“This unit is immune to any number of bacterial infections.”
“Not really what I was asking, but good to know.”
VC rode the gas pedal, driving inland. He stopped in Gardena, a neighborhood south of downtown in that section of LA really only distinctive for how much crime it had relative to others. He found a nondescript intersection with a four-way stop in a residential neighborhood. The houses were old LA, and most of them had seen better days. Leaning over, he removed a small white rectangle from the glovebox and got out of the car. He went over to one of the stop signs and slapped what turned out to be a sticker beneath the STOP. Now, in white lettering, in the same font, were the words “collaborate and listen.”
He got back in the car and pushed the thing to sixty. The posted limit was thirty-five. “You ever wonder where you made the wrong turn in your life?”
“Negative. This unit needed to make a left and did so.”
“I was born from the unliving clay, given life in the Word of the Almighty,” rumbled Elias.
“Right. Forgot my audience here.”
It was afternoon by the time VC made it to Hollywood Boulevard. Even though it was a Thursday, the street was far from deserted. People trudged up and down the dingy walk of fame, disappearing into the low-rent boutiques, or else headed for the massive new Babylon on Hollywood and Highland. There was probably something deeply symbolic about a homeless guy farting on Montgomery Clift’s star, but I didn’t care. VC pulled over by a meter, leaned over, and took a can of spray paint from the glovebox. I was beginning to think that thing was some kind of half-assed Bag of Holding.
“Now what?”
“To be seen from the sky, a larger signal is needed.” He nodded at a billboard. A skinny model gazed listlessly back at me, a bottle of perfume next to her. Although, judging by her skeletal physique and hooded eyes, it could have been heroin.
“We’re vandalizing a billboard?”
“Affirmative.”
“In broad daylight?”
“The wavelengths have not...”
“Don’t do a literal joke. It cheapens this for both of us.”
I got out of the car. The billboard was mounted on the roof of an apartment building with stores on the ground level. I knew once we got up there, there would be a cage of razorwire to stop us from doing exactly the thing we were going to do.
VC led the way into the storefront on the ground floor. It sold lingerie, and not the high-quality kind. It was the kind that I’d buy for Mina if I ever wanted her to dump me. The clerks were a mixture of teenagers earning a paycheck and older creeps trapped in a life without choices. I don’t know what they thought of the three of us. Probably the weirdest gay threesome they had seen in a long time.
We went through the racks of rubber, and I thought about how Paul had probably loved this place. I could swear I saw a few of the outfits the harem was wearing on hangers here. Our shoes squeaked on the dirty linoleum as we went back to the door marked “Employees Only.” If the clerks saw, they either didn’t care or they thought we were too scary to bother with. I had to admit, that last option was sort of cool.
The storage area for the store included racks of leather, lace, and lust in shredded plastic that looked like old cobwebs. Shelves held sagging cardboard boxes and the chipped concrete floor was covered in discarded and dirty labels. VC went right through, opening up an unmarked door at the back to reveal a metal staircase. We went up it and emerged on the windy roof. The billboard sprouted from the east side, letting the wan girlchild stare sullenly out over Hollywood.
A ladder, enclosed in chainlink and razorwire and blocked by a horizontal gate, prohibited access to the billboard. I picked the lock in a second and all three of us were through.
“Now what?”
“Messages emanate from one to another,” VC said, shaking the can of spray paint. He walked right to the golem and climbed the guy without saying another word. Elias scarcely reacted, and when VC stood up on the golem’s shoulder, Elias clamped his meathooks on the Man in Black’s ankles. The can hissed, and VC seemed to steer Elias not with words, but by shifting his weight, forcing the golem to react by moving under him. I watched the street, waiting for the wail of sirens. None came, and really only a few people even looked up. Apathy has always been the Information Underground’s best asset.
A clank sounded, and I saw that VC had dismounted Elias. “The task is finished. One more step remains.” He had drawn black sunglasses and a fedora on the model. The weird thing was, using only black, he had managed to add accents and shades. The sunglasses gave the impression of a reflection and the fedora had contours. I might be biased, but VC had improved that billboard in every conceivable way.
We left the store and drove south into Hancock Park, a rich neighborhood smooshed between grungy Hollywood, hipster Melrose, and the unwashed masses of Koreatown. The Wilshire Country Club was a section of rolling green hills hidden on all sides by fences, hedges, and gates. The rich folks must have decided it was best not to taunt others with what they could never have, and so these idyllic fields were only visible in the places where the acidic LA haze had eaten into the screen of plants. VC pulled over on Rosewood, a residential street bordering the country club.
I climbed the fence, VC following me over. We landed in a gap of the privacy hedge, and I was barely scraped at all. It was a nice change from my steadily increasing litany of injuries.
I looked back at Elias standing on the street, who projected a forlorn sense of being the last kid picked for kickball. “Uh... you can wait here, if you...” The golem wrapped his gloved paw around the underside of the fence and pulled upward. With a rattle and groan, the fence bent upward. He waddled underneath, then p
ulled the fence back down. The gaps in the chainlink were hopelessly deformed, but it wasn’t terrible. “Or, you know, you could just perform a terrifying feat of strength.”
“My strength is terrible only to the evildoer.”
“Wait. Did you really just say that? Because that is awesome.”
VC led us across the verdant field, the trees whipping and undulating in the wind. The last time I had been on a golf course was with Mina. The woman loved to golf, and I didn’t mind being outdoors. Granted, she had to slather SPF a million over her arms and face and she wore this silly green visor like she was dealing blackjack, but it was all worth it for her. And, frankly, for me, too. There was the conversation on one hand and Mina in capris in the other, satisfying both the Goofus and Gallant in my psyche. It was a good reminder of why I was dipping back into the madness of my old life.
“I speak only the truth,” Elias rumbled.
It’s tempting to chalk most cryptids up to hoaxes, and oftentimes you’ll be right. People love faking them because, even to experienced agents, they’re scary as hell. But real cryptids will bust something out and you’ll remember, “Oh right, this is a space alien/refugee out of time/clay monster man.”
“Have you ever given any thought to fighting crime?”
“I fight threats to the Creators.”
“Right, yeah, but have you ever thought about how that includes common street crime?”
Elias was silent. I was a little worried I might have broken the little scroll of prayers that amounted to his celestial punch card when he spoke. “Explain, please.”
“Okay, so you people get made to protect a small group from the depredations of a larger class. The group you were created to protect is a small group with enemies, sure. But they’re also the most powerful group out there. In the never-ending struggle for power in which we’re basically pawns—okay, you’re a rook, but still—they’re on top and they’re remaining there. They’re there partly because of the culture and society as a whole. The prevailing social order is what keeps them on top. So the problem becomes when something destabilizes that social order, whether it’s a banker crashing the world economy or some gang shooting a kid on the way to school. Maybe imperceptibly, that damages the underlying social order that the Illuminati uses to maintain control on the world at large. Not a lot of damage, sure, just a little crack. But enough cracks can break a dam, bring down a building, or destroy a secret society.”
Elias walked next to me, leaving footprints in the grass. “You speak the truth,” he rumbled after a while.
“Every now and then, yeah.”
We arrived at the pro shop, ignoring the confused looks from the two caddies who drew the short straw and had to work on Thursday afternoon. One look at Elias and they realized they might have something important to do inside and promptly vanished. VC reached into his coat and slapped something on the bottom corner of the paned window in the front. It was a little UFO sticker.
We returned to the car. “Where is the meeting?” I asked him. “Someplace out of the way?”
“Affirmative. Latitude 34.120—”
“Not coordinates. Names.”
“Roosevelt Municipal Golf Course.”
I knew the spot. It was in Griffith Park, not far from Mina’s place, and one of her favorite courses. It hosted a more working-class clientele and she appreciated the appealing lack of snobbery. It also helped that Griffith Park is legitimately pretty for someone who has never spent an evening catering one of the many bizarre rituals conducted within the Park’s boundaries. It’s easy to forget, but Griffith Park, the eastern part of the Santa Monica foothills, is the tenth-largest urban park in the nation. It’s bigger and wilder than Central Park, and even hosts the odd and extremely lost mountain lion.
There’s also a golf course, pressed right up against the southeastern edge of the park. With the trees and greens, and the purple San Gabriels on the horizon, it almost doesn’t look like Los Angeles. But one glance at the faux-Spanish municipal buildings and there was nowhere else it could be.
VC guided the car up the winding roads into Griffith Park. The place got progressively wilder the deeper and higher you went in. Down here, there were still maintained lawns, and barely any daytime coyotes. It was practically cosmopolitan. VC parked in a small lot overlooking the combination pro shop, bar, and grill that served the course. I thought about getting something to eat, but that would have meant moving and I wasn’t certain I really wanted to do that. So instead I ate the leftover dim sum and wished there were more.
I cracked the window, getting the clean rosemary scent of the LA foothills into the car and scooted low on my seat. “Wake me up if anyone starts shooting.”
“Affirmative.”
And, this might seem insane, but I dropped off to sleep in a car with a couple cryptids. I have no idea what I dreamed about, either. The next thing I knew, I felt some rubbery fingers on my shoulder, shaking me. I opened my eyes, and it took me a second to realize the black was my MiB hat over my eyes. I took that away and groggily blinked.
Night had fallen. The course was dark, because no matter how cloudless the sky might be, the ambient light of the city made sure the sky was an almost unblemished blanket. The moon was only a rumor. The few lights came from the pro shop, set up along the corner.
“What time is it?” I asked, my voice thicker than Turkish coffee.
“Twenty-three hundred hours.”
“You’re right, that was a dumb question.”
We got out of the car. A concrete staircase led down to the grass. Unlike the clean, uniform green of Wilshire, Roosevelt had small patches of yellow. The wind rushed over us, staggering VC and me for a few gusts; Elias didn’t notice. We walked out onto the green and waited. A few copses of trees about thirty feet away rustled in the breeze.
Killing time in the dark, I practiced the summing up of the case in my mind. That was how this thing was done. When Ingrid Brady showed, I’d explain to her how she did it even though she was the one person in the world who knew exactly how she did it. After all, she was there.
Then I’d have Elias nab her, disarm her, and I’d call one of the intelligence groups I was on decent terms with, probably Scorpio or INT-13, and turn Brady over with the caveat that Mina goes free and my file is scrubbed. Hell, I could turn Brady over to Stan Brizendine at the Freemasons; he’d probably have enough juice to do what I needed. As long as Neil’s death got avenged in some way, he’d be happy as a clam. I had options. Assuming I could grab a trained spook with semi-mystical powers gained through denial of pizza.
As I was thinking about it, they materialized at the far side of the green. At first, they were hard to see, since they were so slight, they looked like they should blow away. There were three of them, all with the same model’s build. Tall, willowy, cadaverous. They were dressed like VC and me, if we’d had any style. Their suits looked like Hugo Boss—thanks, Mina—and were tailored to hide the weapons I was positive were on them. All three looked like men, but I was pretty sure that was drag. These were Anas, followers of the fashion and anorexia goddess Anamadim, pretending to be government spooks.
I knew for a fact the person in the lead was a woman. The conservative wig and the wispy blond mustache didn’t fool me. Though to be fair, they had the first time I saw her in that getup. She stopped about twenty feet away, calling out to us. She hadn’t recognized me yet, but it was dark, and she seemed focused on VC. “What’s with the backup, Victor Charlie? Don’t trust me?
“Negative. Accompaniment appears in proportional measure.”
“You’ll forgive me. With Greene and Zhukovsky murdered and Constantinescu almost, I had to take precautions.”
“Oh, that’s rich,” I said. Brady’s head snapped around. I could see it on her face, trying to place me from the voice. The costume wasn’t helping her recall, nor was the busted nose, or the backlight from the pro shop.
That wouldn’t stop someone like Ingrid Brady. She and her two c
ompanions pulled pistols. “You?” Brady said. I know I didn’t imagine the edge of hysterical fear cutting the word in two. “How?” Yeah, bet you never expected me to make it this far.
“That could take awhile.” Movement in the trees beyond Brady caught my eye. Something metallic glinting off the diffuse light from the pro shop. “Brought more backup?”
Brady glanced around and screamed, “Ambush!” Her gun barked and I dove behind Elias. I don’t think she hit anything. The golem lumbered forward; Brady was running for the pro shop, firing into the trees that had once been behind her. I scrambled to my feet and pursued, even if I had no idea what I was doing. Lights flashed along the treeline, kicking up clods of dirt around my feet. I could hear bullets slamming into the giant wad of clay that was Elias. Ahead of me, one of Brady’s two companions caught a bullet and went spinning grotesquely to the ground. I didn’t stop to look at her and just hoped she hadn’t even known what hit her.
I put my back against the cool stucco wall of the pro shop, breath burning in my lungs. I could still see Elias out on the green, striding toward the first gunfire, but VC had vanished. Good for him. I hoped he would stay low.
I tried the glass door into the pro shop, becoming abundantly aware I was chasing not just Brady, but also her friend who was probably merely a lesser version still extremely capable of handing me my ass. I went through the door as quietly as I could and found myself in a little foyer of a faux-hacienda. A glass case had pictures of various golfers brightened up by a stand of fake bamboo. The burgundy rug, worn thin by thousands of golf shoes, did nothing to hide my footsteps as I crept to the archway leading inward.
In this second room, a staircase on the left went upward to a landing, then switched back and disappeared to a second floor. A small bar, almost entirely lost in deep gloom, was next to the staircase. On the right was the pro shop, although it looked like most of the equipment was for rent rather than sale. The largest space, straight ahead, was a dining room. Circular tables were scattered about and the northeastern corner was mostly plate glass. I could see flashes outside on the course, but they were farther away, deeper into the trees. Elias was gone, and the only evidence of anything happening was the shredded turf and the crumpled body of Brady’s friend.
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