Costume Not Included

by Matthew Hughes

  "You figure he lives in that desert?"

  "He looked to be right at home." Boden's shoulder jerked once. "It was a hell of a place," he said.

  Denby got up. "Thanks," he said. The other man's eyes followed him and the policeman saw something else there. "What?" he said.

  "You're interested in the guy? Personally?"

  "Very personally," Denby said.

  Boden looked at his hands, clasped together on the table. "Cause I never snitched, you know. Not once."

  "I know. It's in your file." He waited, and when nothing more came, he said, "This is not really a cops-and-robbers situation. We don't know what in hell we're dealing with."

  Boden made up his mind. "Okay," he said, "you do something for me, I'll do something for you."

  "Do what?"

  "Call my lawyer in Minneapolis. Tell him what's going on."

  Denby smiled. "You mean so he can tell whoever's watching your stuff up there to get it hidden before the FBI comes waving a warrant."

  Boden shrugged.

  The lieutenant said, "In return for what?"

  "Something I figure you don't got. Something you'd like to have."

  "About Batman?"

  "Yeah."

  Denby didn't have to think it over very long. Recovering loot was way down on the scale of priorities. It just went to insurance companies anyway, and lately he had found that he didn't care much for insurance companies, not after meeting the Paxtons. "Okay," he said.

  "Got a cell phone?"

  The policeman handed over his personal phone. Boden punched in some digits and after a moment said, "Scorched Earth," then closed the phone to end the call.

  "Okay," said Denby. "Your turn."

  "Check Schultzy's phone," the bank robber said. "He took a picture."

  There was no heel-cooling time for Denby at J. Edgar Hoople's office. The chief of police's hatchet-faced secretary showed him right in. The boss had been working himself up, the lieutenant could see: the square-jawed face was red and even though it was well before noon, there was a smell of Scotch in the air.

  "Where the hell have you been?" he started out at full volume, one hand indicating the phone on his desk. Denby could see damp finger marks on the handset, slowly drying. "I've got the mayor and the commissioner chewing my ass over this bank robber shit, and you're nowhere to be found!"

  The lieutenant didn't bother answering the question he was asked, because he believed he had an answer to the one that counted. "I think I've got a line on the guy," he said, "Where he comes from."

  Hoople wound down fast. "Tell me."

  "It's hard to believe."

  "I'm already believing that four bank robbers appear out of nowhere on our doorstep. Try me."

  "Look at this," Denby said. He flipped open his phone and showed the chief the photo he had forwarded from the bank robber's phone, which he had used in the evidence room while the sergeant there looked the other way.

  Hoople was silent, studying the image. "I see the guy," he said. "He looks like an asshole in a Halloween costume."

  "Look behind him," Denby said.

  "There's nothing," the chief said. "Desert, clouds."

  "Yeah," said Denby, "and I think I know why." The chief raised his eyebrows. "Because," the lieutenant said, "that's the future."

  Hoople's face started to show red again. "The future?"

  "The future," Denby said, "though I don't know how far. But the guy's a time traveler."

  "Get the fuck outta here!" said the chief of police.

  But Denby didn't. "I've got proof," he said, "a book from the future."

  "No shit?"

  "It's in my locker."

  "What does it say?"

  "I can't read it. Nobody can."

  Hoople reached for the phone. "Get me the commissioner," he said.

  Chesney and Melda were getting ready to go to work when the phone rang. He picked it up, expecting from the caller ID display to hear his mother's voice, but it was Hardacre who said, "It's gone."

  "What's gone?"

  "The book."

  Chesney told Melda. "How did that happen?" she said.

  Hardacre didn't know. He and Letitia had not gone back into the study after the young couple had left. Chesney drove from his mind the image of what they had probably got up to instead; in one sense, he was having a hard time seeing his mother in the role of mistress, or even common-law wife; in another sense, he was seeing disturbing mental pictures of the implications whenever his mind was turned in that direction.

  He concentrated on the problem at hand. "Could the angel have come and collected it?" he said.

  Melda put in her thought. "Maybe God changed his mind?"

  "I don't think so, but I know how we can find out," the preacher said. "Call up your friend from downstairs. Ask him."

  "Yes," said Melda, when the young man looked to her for a response.

  "Hold on," Chesney said into the phone, then summoned the demon. Xaphan appeared instantly, puffing on a fresh Havana, full glass in hand. "Reverend Hardacre's book has been stolen," he said. "What can you tell us about it?"

  "Nuthin'."

  "Why not?"

  The demon drained the glass in one swallow and the tumbler winked out of existence. It held up one stubby digit. "First," it said, "cause the preacher's place is about eighty miles outta your jurisdiction. Second," it added a finger, "cause the boss said to stay out of it."

  "Out of what?"

  "Anything you get up to with that holy joe. It's outta line."

  "Go away," Chesney said, and the demon did.

  As the sulfur cleared, Melda said, "Something I didn't tell you about – Lieutenant Denby asked about the book."

  Chesney could hear Hardacre's voice through the phone, even though it was nowhere near his ear. "What?" He keyed the device to its speaker-phone setting.

  Melda said, "He came to the salon, asking me about the Actionary. The last thing he said was that he wanted to talk to me again, after I'd read the book."

  "When was this?" Hardacre said. She told him. "Have you checked your phone for a tap?" he asked Chesney.

  "There's no need. It's… protected. So is yours, when you're calling me here."

  There was a pause, then the preacher said, "The Devil was worried about the book. He got Denby to snatch it."

  Melda said, "I can't see Denby selling his soul."

  "There are other ways to get someone to do something he might ordinarily not do," said Hardacre, "and the Devil invented all of them."

  "I thought he was a straight cop," Chesney said.

  "He may think he is," the preacher said. "Remember what the road to Hell is paved with."

  "So what do we do?" said Melda.

  "Only thing we can do," said the voice from the speaker phone. "Wait and see."

  Chesney was at his desk, vetting an analysis that had been prepared by three of the actuaries under his supervision: an examination of the effects on life expectancy of longterm unemployment. Given the current downturn in the economy and the consensus among economists that any recovery was likely to be slow in producing enough jobs to return the city to the employment levels it had known before the recession hit, a substantial number of Paxton Life and Casualty policy holders were out of work and liable to stay that way.

  The analysts had woven together a matrix of factors: loss of health benefits, leading to later detection of serious medical issues and a likelihood that they would go untreated, or be undertreated at best; increased risky behavior, including drinking, drug-taking, violence on the street or in the home; poorer nutrition; unstable marital relationships; loss of domicile; general stress levels and descent into depression.

  The trend lines did not look good. More people were liable to die earlier than had been projected when they took out their policies in happier times. In cases where those policies were already fully paid up, it was not possible for Paxton Life and Casualty to restructure the premiums to make the books balance. Premat
ure disbursements, as payouts before the expected deaths of policy holders were called, impacted the quarterly and annual balance sheets.

  PL&C did not tolerate such impacts gladly. The company was preparing a case to identify long-term joblessness as "a material change in the policy holder's circumstances," which would trigger the invoking of a clause in the pages of fine print that would allow the company to cancel paidup policies and up the premiums on those still paying.

  Chesney worked his way through the matrix of figures, and made some notes. Then he turned to his keyboard and drafted a memo instructing the actuaries to factor in the likelihood of criminal activity, apprehension and incarceration as additional elements in the analysis, and recalculate the downstream effects.

  He was about to send the memo when his door opened and Lieutenant Denby entered without knocking. "Surprised?" the policeman said.

  "Not really."

  Chesney watched the man sit. Denby said nothing but folded his hands in his lap and tilted his head at an angle. Chesney studied the man's expression and decided that it fit the old saying about a cat that has just enjoyed a dish of cream. He pressed the enter key that sent off his memo, then said, "You're happy about something."

  "You think?" said Denby.

  "Therapists once trained me to recognize facial expressions. Yours is not one of the difficult ones."

  "You're a weird kid, aren't you?" said the policeman. "You're not, by any chance, from … somewhere else?"

  "I was born at Mercy Hospital on Filbert Street," Chesney said.

  "When?"

  "12:41pm. Does it matter?"

  "I meant," said Denby, "what year?" When Chesney opened his mouth to answer, the lieutenant spoke again, "Or, better yet, what century?"

  "I don't understand," Chesney said. "I was born in 1986."

  Now Denby's expression said he was amused by the answer. Chesney said, "I have work to do. What do you want?"

  "Tell your friend," the lieutenant said, "you know who I mean, that I've figured him out."

  "You have?"

  "Tell him that he can cut the fancy-dress act. The gangbusters…" He paused just a moment, then said, meaningfully, waving his arms like wings, "The coming down from on high like an angel."

  Denby was studying Chesney's reaction, while the young man did his best not to show one. "You think he's an angel?"

  "No," said the lieutenant, "as a matter of fact I don't. As another matter of fact, I know what he is."

  "And what's that?"

  The policeman's face was perfectly serious as he told Chesney.

  The young man leaned back in his chair. "A time traveler?" he said. "Really?"

  "Really. And I want to talk to him."

  "You said that the last time you were here."

  "And did you pass on the message?"

  "In a manner of speaking," Chesney said.

  "What does that mean?"

  "I don't want to go into it."

  Denby gave him a sharp look, then let the matter slide. "Well, give him the message again," Denby said, "in any manner of speaking you like."

  "He didn't take you up on the offer last time. Why should he now?"

  "Because," said Denby, "I've got his book."

  Chesney knew how to look surprised. He had perfected it long ago as a technique to survive his mother's inquisitions. "Oh," he said, "so you've got it. I'll tell the Reverend Hardacre. I think he'll want to prosecute you."

  "He comes looking, it won't be there," said Denby. "It will only be there if your buddy, the poor man's Batman, gets in touch. Otherwise, it goes in the incinerator."

  "I see."

  "So you'll tell him?"

  "Yes."

  "Make it snappy," said Denby.

  "What's the hurry?"

  "I'm not working for myself," said the policeman. "There's a meeting of the Twenty tonight. I'm giving them the book. And copies of this." From his inside jacket pocket he pulled a four-by-six-inch photograph and tossed it onto Chesney's desk blotter. "Give that to your friend, too."

  Chesney turned the image toward him and looked at it. It showed him grinning, paintbrush in hand. Behind him, in reasonable detail, stretched the empty outer circle of Hell.

  SIX

  Just before quitting time, Chesney's phone rang. Seth Baccala's secretary told the young man he was wanted on the tenth floor right away. Chesney had briefly worked on the tenth floor, as part of C Group, a specialassignment unit that the company's owner, W.T. Paxton, had created: the best and brightest number crunchers of Paxton Life and Casualty, whose job was to generate statistics, mostly about crime, that would be useful in Paxton's proposed campaign for governor. The old man had seen the Actionary as an even more useful adjunct to his campaign, until his daughter, Poppy, had been kidnaped into Hell by Nat Blowdell, prompting Chesney to have to go and rescue her.

  It had been a messy situation, only partly resolved by a wave of Xaphan's stubby hand that had emptied and clouded the memories of some of the participants, including Lieutenant Denby. The lieutenant had seen the kidnaping and had charged in right after Blowdell. The Actionary had had to rescue him, too, though the lieutenant had no memory of it.

  Now Paxton had decided against politics. His daughter's nervous breakdown had sapped his spirits. Besides, he was mystified by the sudden disappearance of Blowdell, the political fixer he had hired to be his campaign manager. Group C had been disbanded; the actuaries returned to their previous posts – except for Chesney, whose exceptional number crunching had been recognized and rewarded by promotion.

  The young man had not been up on tenth since the end of the special unit. He saw that nothing else had changed, except that the secondary conference room that had housed C Group during its brief existence had now been returned to its former function. He presented himself to the receptionist and a moment later was told to go into Baccala's office.

  He knocked and went in. Baccala, an impeccably groomed thirty year-old who might have posed for the cover of Harvard's MBA school alumni magazine, invited the actuary to sit down. Chesney could see a question in the man's eyes, and a moment later it was on his lips.

  "Lieutenant Denby came to see you this afternoon," he said. "Why?"

  Chesney did not feel himself at the center of a pool of light. Denby had spoken of the Twenty, the small group of powerful men who had effectively run the city since driving out the mob bootleggers during Prohibition in the thirties. He knew that W.T. Paxton was a member of the Twenty and he suspected that Baccala, his executive assistant, was privy to much of what went on between his boss and the powers-that-were. This conversation was deep in the murky darkness, and dissembling could be a long walk out onto thin ice. Fortunately, though, Chesney had grown up being interrogated by a ruthless expert and had learned some useful techniques.

  One of them was to tell as much of the truth as possible. "He came to see me about the Actionary," he told Baccala.

  The reference brought a rare wrinkle to the other man's exfoliated brow. "Why you?"

  "He thinks I can get a message to him."

  "What message?"

  Chesney told him.

  "A time traveler?" Baccala didn't seem to know whether to laugh or sigh in despair. A moment later, however, his sharp mind brought him around to the essential question. "Why does he think you can get a message to this mystery man?"

  "He didn't say." Chesney was treading wafer-thin ice now. But his lifelong training in evading his mother's inquiries into his behavior stood him in good stead. "It may be because the Actionary saved my girlfriend. Twice," he added.

  That brought an even deeper wrinkle to Baccala's smooth forehead. "You have a girlfriend?"

  Chesney nodded. The other man seemed easily distracted. He wondered if Xaphan had arranged for Baccala to undergo a fit of fuzzy thinking whenever the subject of the Actionary came up.

  Baccala blinked and looked down like a man trying to collect his thoughts. "So," he said after a moment, "nothing to do with the comp
any?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nor the Paxtons?"

  Chesney shook his head.

  Baccala said nothing. He looked, Chesney thought, like a man trying to remember an old tune. "A time traveler?" he said after a while. "Really?"

  "Really."