Get Blank (Fill in the Blank)

by Justin Robinson

  I reached the place where I was pretty sure VC had died. There was no sign. No suit, no goo, no bullet. It was as if he never existed, and according to most sources, he had not. The clearing, between several pine trees, had slightly fewer pine needles on the ground considering the wind that had been blowing all week. That was all I’d find. Rest in peace, Victor Charlie. You were memorable. I felt a little silly getting maudlin over a brainwashed mutant, but he had helped me out. I hoped I could at least bring the people responsible down.

  I passed the place where Brady’s companion had fallen. No outline, no blood. She was gone as well. If there was a story about her, it would probably be called something like, “FASHION MODEL DEAD OF LEAD POISONING” and the text would detail something that couldn’t possibly be true. A young woman, found her in her apartment, shot. The police would call it a suicide, but the pistol in her apartment had never been fired and the bullet dug out of her was a large caliber only suitable for assault rifles. It was amazing how many murders got covered up as suicides, and yet the people in charge still left these colossal plot holes. There it was again, so obvious now that I stopped to think about it.

  VC’s Caddy was waiting right where we left it. The key crunched in the lock and I opened up the heavy door. The Genesis Flail was on the back seat, sitting in the harmonic converter. The engine turned over with a barbaric rumble. I hoped to borrow a little of that confidence for the evening.

  My first stop was to my ID guy for a new set of papers. Javier regarded me impassively, his scalp shining between the stubborn strands of hair glued to the other side of his head, and quoted a price. While he worked up the documents, I ran a few errands getting the rest of what I needed: a couple stage lights, some cellophane, batteries, and a remote control. I picked up the ID a couple hours later and drove out to the meeting site.

  Leo Carrillo State Beach is one of the more beautiful beaches on a stretch of coastline known for beautiful beaches. Bordered on the landward side by the rolling avocado-colored cliffs of Malibu, the beach seemed secluded even though the two-lane Pacific Coast Highway ran right by it. The beach was distinctive for the large lava rock formations rising from the sand like a craggy prehistoric creature emerging from the deep to mess up Tokyo. It’s most famous for guest-starring in movies, and there might have been a tiny part of my id that picked this for its appearance in The Usual Suspects when the guys bury Benicio del Toro. Maybe I hoped Fenster’s ghost would look after me and babble gibberish at the people who would shortly be arriving to kill me.

  I pulled into the parking lot across PCH. Only one other car was there, a salt-scarred Range Rover with a surfboard rack on the roof. The guys were probably in the water, catching the last couple waves before the sun went down and the California Current turned the water into liquid nitrogen. The new papers went into my breast pocket and I took the bags of electrical equipment and the Genesis Flail from the car. An underpass led from the lot to the beach itself, the cars passing overhead on PCH surrounding me with an unearthly hum.

  The two surfers passed me in the tunnel, their wetsuits peeled to the waist, their skin and hair fried from a day in the sun. We exchanged a nod, and I felt their eyes on me as I emerged from the tunnel. After all, I was dressed like a jazz musician and carrying what looked like grocery bags and a radioactive rock on a chain.

  I sat the bags down in the sand and went to the closest of the rock formations. I placed the Flail next to the lava rock, winding the chain around it carefully. I judged that by sunset, the hungry tide would cover it up, and by the time my guests showed up, it should be totally hidden. It wasn’t immediately obvious, even though the colors didn’t match. The natural formations ranged from a sunburnt yellowish to a rich chocolate; the Genesis Stone was a glowing gray, the same color as a full moon in a clear sky. The texture matched almost perfectly, though.

  I returned to the bags and assembled the lights. I placed them in pairs on three different rock formations and covered the ends in cellophane. I had to wade out into the surf for one. They would be easy to see in the clear light of day. At night, though, they should be invisible. After all, they were stage lights, designed to be unseen in the dark. I silently thanked Hollis Nguyen for that idea. From the oil-drum trashcan at the mouth of the underpass, a cartoon raccoon shot me Disney eyes, imploring me not to litter. I obeyed, stashing the bags in the trunk of VC’s car. I didn’t need my hand tipped. And last, I keyed the remote. After a few tests, I got the hang of it.

  All that was left was the buzzing of nerves in my limbs. A hundred questions flitted through my head, all useless. Would Brady do what I asked her? Would she sell me out to Quackenbush to get back in their good graces? Was Mina still alive? Couldn’t think about that. She was still alive. She was fine. And she’d be home soon.

  A slender shape emerged from the tunnel, walking into the golden light of the falling sun. It was Brady, and with her aviator shades and her mustache slightly askew, she looked like a skinny blond Burt Reynolds. I was laughing a little when she stopped a few paces from me. My pants were soaking from the water, caked in salt and sand.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “I was thinking about something else. Not how you look like Burt Reynolds.”

  She sighed, clearly getting tired of our association. Couldn’t blame her. Only one more thing, then I’m either dead or victorious and our association was at an end. “I sent the message. What now?”

  “I need you to move your car. I don’t want them seeing anything else in the parking lot. Then come back and stay on the other side of that underpass. If they try to make it out, I need you to stop them.”

  She stared at me, eyes invisible behind the black lenses. “You’re sure this is going to work?”

  “Wizard, remember?”

  She nodded like I hadn’t just made a joke. “Good luck, Blank.”

  “You too, Brady.”

  She trudged up the beach, the setting sun turning her back gold. The tunnel swallowed her up, and a moment later, her little white car was zipping up the road for the next parking lot. I really hoped she was going to be back in time. Whatever else I might feel, it was still nice to have a heavy hitter around. A sympathetic Quackenbush hit squad would have been better, assuming I wasn’t the top target on their list, but Brady would do. Beggars, choosers, and all that. I sat, my back to the Pacific, the harsh wind ripping at my clothes like flags, and powered my phone up. The Ana Temple had made me think of Tetris and I had a couple hours to kill until the meeting time at the numerologically approved twenty-three hundred hours.

  The sky turned pink right as a dark blue Mercedes pulled off the road and into the parking lot. I cursed inwardly. I wanted the beach deserted for this. There was going to be some crossfire, a little magic, and a whole lot of stagecraft.

  But the car did not look like the vehicle someone would take to the beach. And who would be showing up so late?

  I stood up, sand falling off me to be carried away in the wind, and squinted toward the parking lot.

  Showtime?

  Fuck.

  I straightened up, knowing I didn’t look nearly as tough as I hoped. The broken nose might help a little for that, but not enough. My legs were frozen to the knees by the gusty wind. I peered into the tunnel, hoping this wasn’t what I knew in the pit of my stomach it was. They got the message. They got it early.

  My plan wouldn’t work in the daylight. I was a dead man.

  Three silhouettes, almost entirely eaten by darkness, appeared in the tunnel, growing larger as they approached. Which was difficult in at least one case, since that silhouette was about as big as any human being could be while still be considered Homo sapiens and not something Jabba the Hutt might use to guard his basement. It was Vassily “the Whale” Zhukovsky, his shoulders rolling in that distinctive aquatic lumber of his. He loomed behind the other two smaller figures like the Hulk in an Avengers group shot.

  The sun hit the other two figures, and if there was any doubt about one ident
ity, it vanished. Mina’s hair shone blood red in the dying light of day. She had pinned it down, but it looked like a rat’s nest, probably not having been washed since her arrest. She wore the same thing she had when she drove from my place back to hers, an old Stone Roses shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, like always, and I wanted to do something horrible to Vassily, whose gold Desert Eagle flashed in the sun as he pointed it at her head.

  The other figure was the smallest, though walking with the most confidence. His head was shaved, though there was a clear tan line where his hair had used to be. His dark goatee was mostly stubble, but it was growing in nicely. He wore a tailored black suit and a red tie, and was grinning at me like he’d just played the best joke ever on someone. The pistol in his hand was trained on my heart.

  The group stopped about fifteen feet away from me. All three were squinting into the sun, which was a nice bonus, even if it was the sun that was going to kill me. I was Takezo at the end of Duel at Ganryu Island, ready to use geography against the other samurai. Yeah, right. In reality, I was just some lovesick schlub about to try a Hail Mary against a pair of multiple murderers.

  In a scene like this, the woman is usually crying. Not Mina. She just looked angry, like she was waiting for Vassily to drop the gun so she could render him incapable of having children.

  “Hello, Neil,” I said.

  “Hello,” Neil Greene answered. “What do I call you? Colin? Jonah? Sam?”

  “I get that question a lot. The name’s Blank.”

  “Blank it is.”

  “I like the new look. Pretty evil.”

  “Thanks. You have to look the part if you’re going to do what I do.”

  “I’ll bet. You admit to your Satanist pals you own Care Bear PJs and you’re a dead man.”

  “What is Care Bear?” Vassily asked.

  “Hey, Whale. I heard you were dead.”

  “Heard same thing about him, too!” Vassily laughed.

  “Nice trick. What’d you guys use for a corpse, a beluga whale?”

  “Who needs a corpse?” Neil asked. “The only people reporting it were Satanists.”

  “Good point.”

  “What happened to your nose?”

  “Stuck it where it didn’t belong. So, what do you say you let Mina go? We three can have a nice talk, just like you intended.”

  “Sorry,” Neil said. “The girl stays for now.”

  “Uh, Neil? You might not want to refer to her as ‘the girl’ or she might forget about the gun and turn your balls into a dugout canoe.”

  He flinched and looked up at Mina. She nodded. He stepped away. In a desperate attempt to regain control, he sneered, “So you figured it all out, huh? I thought you might. Hell, I counted on it.”

  “Let’s see. You were there that night at the Observatory. You tried to save me from those other guys with guns.”

  “Don’t be coy. I know they worked for Quackenbush Security.”

  “Sure, you do now. After it went down, using your contacts, you found out that was Burt Shaw, and who he worked for. You also saw... what you saw.”

  “Yes, I saw your father take Shaw into the sky at your behest.”

  “Right. That. Anyway, after that night, you pieced together what you could and guessed at the rest. I vanish along with a couple fairly big players and two powerful artifacts. You had to figure the Antichrist was gearing up for something pretty big.”

  Neil waggled those caterpillars he called eyebrows. He hadn’t bothered to pluck them into anything more evil, which he really should have talked to his stylist about. “Oh yes.”

  “And you knew my names.” Well, six or seven of them, but I wasn’t going to give the guy the store. “You saw how much power I’d lucked into by walking between the conspiracies, and you knew I’d somehow gained a little bit of a rep. It was a rep you figured you could use. You know, once you eliminated everyone who knew differently. The first step was creating your new group. You knew what Satan really looked like, and that he was back, so it would make sense to form a cult. You started with disenfranchised members of the First Reformed Church, then widened the net to the other Satanist groups. Your big coup was snatching Hollis Nguyen from the Order of the Morning Star. I’m betting he brought a good chunk of membership your way.”

  I glanced at Mina. It took a lot of self-control not to just run to her. As strong as she was, she had spent a week in county lockup and the rest of the time with a Satanist and a gangster. She needed a hug. Hell, I needed a hug.

  I kept talking instead. “You know when I finally realized it was you? When I thought about how it felt like the city itself was out to get me. But it wasn’t the whole city. Just the one-seventeenth of it you controlled from your desk.”

  Neil grinned at that.

  “It was bugging me the whole time, too. Ever since I saw the police report on your ‘murder.’ I’ve been around a lot of that in my time. More than I’d like. And the thing that every murder in the Underground has in common? Overkill. Nothing’s ever normal. Nothing’s ever neat. A man shot in the back of the head with a shotgun and everything pointing to a lovesick woman? No, sorry. Too neat. Too simple. Too sane. Not unless she’s also an alien mind-controlled by the Templar.”

  “I wanted you,” Neil said. “It had to be something only you would see. Took you long enough.”

  “I’m out of practice. So you needed to put me back in play, and you needed to deflect suspicion from yourself. You knew Mina from the Satanist party and you saw her again at the Observatory, so you figured she was important to me. You kill two birds with one stone by faking your death and framing Mina. I’m guessing you got some poor homeless guy and you switched his fingerprints with yours in city records.”

  “All correct so far.”

  “You knew the only person you could really trust in this thing was Vassily. Not because he’s especially trustworthy, but because he’s the kind of sociopath who would love to consolidate power in LA. No offense, Whale.”

  “None taken. I am sociopath. I took test.”

  “Along with the faked fingerprints, you created some dummy parking tickets and forged emails. It would have been easy to steal Mina’s credit card number. Seriously, sweetie, you need to buy a shredder.”

  She shot me a look telling me to get on with it. But I couldn’t, because the sun had decided to become stately in its waning moments. It wouldn’t sink below the waves until it was goddamn good and ready. If I tried my plan now, they might take enough time to laugh at me before the bullets dropped me and then her.

  I continued. “You sent Satanist hit squads after two members of your little gang, and both bounced. It was blind luck that you managed to get Victor Charlie at the golf course. You were officially in scramble mode. You had Vassily kill Paul Tallutto to ensure you would be the last man standing in that particular cult. I imagine you planned to do the same to the leadership of the Order of the Morning Star and the OTO.”

  Neil shrugged. “If I was going to take over, I might as well make it a clean sweep.”

  “I don’t suppose that if I promise you I’ll get out of LA and stay gone, you’ll let me go.”

  “Sorry, Blank. To become the Antichrist, you have to kill the Antichrist.”

  “You might be thinking of the Highlander.”

  “No more jokes.”

  “You know, Neil, during my trouble last year, right after the guy tried to open up my skull, you were the first person I talked to. You know why? I thought you were too much of a goober to betray anyone. Then I saw you at that party at Paul Tallutto’s. I should have known you were a lot more cunning than I gave you credit for, but for whatever reason, my initial impression stayed in place. I actually came down here looking to bring your killer to justice. Can you believe that?”

  “You made a shitty Antichrist.”

  I had run out of things to talk about. The sky had faded to dark blue above and pink behind. The plan was happening now whet
her I liked it or not. The long shot was going to be even longer than I’d hoped. “Tell me about it. All right. I’m surrendering.” Mina’s eyes got like big, angry saucers. I couldn’t shoot her a calm-down look, either. Not without giving it to Vassily and Neil, too. “We’re trading. You let Mina go, and each step she takes away, I take a step toward, got it? I’m unarmed and I’ll go quietly.”

  Both guns pointed at me. The sun still glowed like a molten coin behind me. I’d found the end of the rope and it was time to swing. In my palm, the tiny remote was fairly soaked in sweat.

  “Okay,” Neil said. I knew their plan. Take me or just shoot me, and then shoot Mina. Not that I needed the exchange to function for my plan to succeed. That should be the first rule in any handoff: never construct a plan that depends on the trustworthiness of a Satanist or Russian gangster.

  I took a step forward in the sand. Mina did the same. Her eyes were on mine, trying to employ couple telepathy.

  I took another step forward. Mina did the same. I nodded to her. And I knew that look. The one saying, Are you being a cocky bastard or do you actually have this?

  The sun dipped below the horizon. The residue of light rapidly dimmed. I shot her a look that said, I have it now, I think, but just the same, you might have to run.

  I took a step forward. Mina did the same. We passed each other.

  The sky turned from pink and gold to blue, falling into the vast dark of the new moon. Offshore, the lights of oil rigs began to twinkle on.

  I took a final step forward. Mina did the same. In my dim understanding of things, she was far enough away to start the plan. I hit the button on the remote.

  Neil’s eyes got big as he looked over my head toward a rock formation out in the pounding surf.