*
The air was dank and smelled of gasoline. It was the sound of an engine that penetrated his consciousness, that suggested that the darkness which held him was cramped and moving. He rolled involuntarily and hit his head against a hard, metallic surface. Crying out, he realised where he was and braced himself against the walls of the trunk just as the vehicle banked to the left. He fought his fear and found a modicum of control deep within himself. The motel. He’d gone there to meet someone, or find something. His mind was groggy, his thoughts all tangled and confused. He heard snatches of a broken voice and distorted music. He tried to focus, wanting to make sense of what was being said. But it was difficult to hear clearly above the engine noise, and the effort of bracing himself to stop from being thrown around inside the trunk made it impossible to concentrate.
Feeling the car slow, he touched the back of his head and felt the warm ooze of blood. The skin was broken and bruised. What had happened to him? He fought the urge to call out, not wanting the driver to know he was conscious. Element of surprise, he rationalised. The car started moving again, the engine noise increasing as it accelerated, then settling back into a steady drone. He began to feel calmer, if not yet entirely in control of his thoughts. Someone had been waiting for him at the motel, whoever was driving the car. It was significant, he thought, that he was still alive. It gave him some currency. But who was it? There were a few possibilities, most likely Astorbilt’s man. There was also Snow.
But Snow was working for him. Least he had been until the whore had messed with his head. That’s why it had been necessary to intervene. Get him back with the program. The car slowed, swung right and picked up speed again. Snow’s failure, his loss of control, was intolerable. He wanted to scream, to pound his fists against the walls of his moving cage. Was this how he would leave the world? A simple diminishing? After everything he had done to stamp his presence on the city.
Minutes dragged by while he fought his fear and the anger that nurtured it. For a man who had always seen the bigger picture, it was an awful predicament. Nobody had the right to do this to him. He forced himself to think about what had happened at the motel. He’d gone there alone, not to find Snow, but to leave something for him. For a moment he couldn’t remember what it was. Money, or something else to ensure his loyalty? It had to do with the whore—what was her name. He remembered the indecipherable complex of emotions he’d seen in her unyielding gaze. It had enraged him. His hands were shaking and his resolve was on the verge of crumbling. Impulsively, he smashed his fists against the hood and cried out, “Listen to me, for Chrissakes—I’m still alive.”
The only reply was that same odd, soft voice, and a plaintive melody. But this time he was able to make out words. Something about yellow birds. They had a strangely calming effect. Snow had called him with a name he’d recognised. Somebody had already given it to him. The whore? As her fearful eyes had locked onto his? What was it? What was he missing? He put a finger to his lips, tasted the blood. It didn’t help. He’d gone to there to leave something for Snow, something that would make him see the job through. Eliminate Astorbilt’s man. What was the fucking name? He closed his eyes and saw a bird, bright feathers glinting in a fiery sun. He had almost lost it, he realised, but not quite. There was a way back. He felt his mouth curling into a bitter smile. Not just one bird, but a whole flock, swooping down out of the sun. What he had left at the motel was a reminder to Snow, who had always been his man and would be again. He began to laugh in the silence, knowing that when the time came, Snow would fall.
*
The sky was empty and cool as the blue neon figure of a man with a boy on his shoulder sparkled into life. A camera mounted above a liquor store on the corner shifted its gaze from Escovedo’s car to follow a lone crow as it swept across the parking lot and alighted on the boy’s head. Hector stared at the bird for a moment, then turned back to the motel’s check-in office. He’d lost track of time since the car he’d been watching had left the motel and headed downtown. It didn’t matter, he thought, as he pulled out from the kerb and swung left into the lot. The night was still long enough. A dozen or so vehicles were parked in there, beat-up and nondescript, belonging to travelling salesmen, construction workers, migrant labourers. Nobody he was looking for.
Hector stopped in front of the third block. Scanning the raised walkway that ran along the front of the single storey building, he thought about Darla and the life he could have had. That possibility was gone, he reminded himself, as he got out of the car and stepped up onto the walkway. Through the wall he heard voices and music. He moved past the window where TV images flickered behind the blinds. A woman came out of her room three doors ahead. He waited as she headed in the opposite direction, towards the office, never seeing him. Another bird, or maybe the same one, swooped down and settled on the ground in front of his car. Come to pick over the bones, he thought. He knocked on the door to room 311, and hearing no answer, went to work on the lock and was inside in less than thirty seconds. The blinds were shut and the room lay in darkness. He flicked on a torch and moved the beam across the floor. The bed was unmade and next to it on the night table was a glass with the dregs of some liquor in it. The sound of a country waltz drifted through the wall from the next room.
There was a holdall in the bottom of the formica wardrobe. It held a pair of black jeans, some t-shirts, underwear, a laptop, a length of nylon cord, and a couple of spare clips for a semi-automatic. Nothing beneath the bed. He quickly rifled through the flimsy chest of drawers, then looked in the bathroom and again came up empty. The phone was no good, had to be routed through reception. He sat on the edge of the bed, scanning the room for anything that seemed out of place. The only thing that did was himself. On the night table next to the glass was a CD case. Image of a man in an old-fashioned suit on the cover. His bow-tie was half undone and he held a bouquet of orange flowers in his right hand, close to his chest. There was some kind of fur, or what might have been flames, where his head should have been. No writing to say what it was. He turned it over, saw the words ‘It’s a wonderful life’ printed across a green background. Flipping the case open, he stared at the blank disc with a small square label stuck on it. The word ‘Thingstable’ was handwritten there. He said the word aloud, finding the shape of it familiar in his mouth. Something Darla had said. He thought back over his last conversation with her, on the phone, a couple of hours before he’d found her body in the basement of the El Camino. He pictured her swollen, discoloured face and the fear in her eyes. Something about Snow, a warning. The word lingered in his mind, an echo of something forgotten. Unable to discern its significance, he closed the plastic case and put it inside his jacket. He looked around the room one more time, making sure he hadn’t missed anything. Tex-mex rhythms came through the wall and he thought if he put his head against it, he’d feel the damn thing vibrating.
He stepped out into cool evening air. Heard the flutter of wings and started to turn as a dark shape came at him from the right. Tried to move but wasn’t fast enough. Last thing he thought of was flight.
*
Everything is just so. The images flicker in black and white across the screen in the expected manner, their movements dictated according to esoteric principles of random logic. Theoretically, it should be possible to predict any number of intersections and chance encounters from the curl of a lip, the glint of an eye, a hesitant footfall or a word that dies on the tongue. And yet, and yet, there’s no accounting for the small patches of inky darkness that drift now and again across the scene of moments that have already been. Thingstable leans back in his chair and scrunches his eyes. Times like this, he hates himself. Maybe that’s stretching things a little. Truth is, it’s the fly in the fucking ointment he can’t stand. At first, everything seemed to pan out the way he remembered, but now he sees that what he has been watching is not what he thought he was watching. She’s not saying what he had heard her say. Either she never said those things or her words
had been distorted. He has no idea how that can be. Other than that someone else was playing her.
Well, Thingstable thinks, that’s just one more thing he should have anticipated. He watches the whole scene once again from the start. He filters out all the extraneous bodies, those who have subsumed themselves completely into their chosen roles. It’s a fine piece of self-deception, but his interest is focussed entirely on the ones who have reached an accommodation with the cameras. Which is to say, himself and the woman. He scrutinises her face for the thing she’s trying to hide. The cameras sweep across the room, as if mimicking her gaze. His eyes follow them, but he can’t tell what’s significant and what’s incidental. He persists, two soundtracks filling his ears. One is diegetic, the other is outside, in this room where he sits. He finds it difficult to distinguish between them, as both seem to feature a fractured voice that sings of ghosts shedding their hosts. On screen, more black shapes flutter from the margins and fill the air above the mass of flesh. He watches himself take note of them, though he can’t remember doing so at the time. He hears himself utter the word angel, but she ignores it, still trying to keep something from him. But he knows now that she sees the tiny creatures that swarm throughout the bar. And then, just for one moment, he catches it, the face, or rather faces, she’s been trying not to see.
Thingstable smiles as he freezes the frame, first on Hector and then on Snow. Two birds, he thinks. One stone. And then he turns back to see someone else in his place, speaking to Darla. He sighs, waiting for the big picture to paint itself across the screen.
*
Snow sat in the back of a cab with the window rolled down. The streets of the Latin Quarter were full of music. Passing a department store, he was struck by the discordance between the pounding electro-salsa rhythms and the choreographed stillness of the dozen blacksuited mannequins in the display window, each of them cradling a stringed instrument. Disoriented, he found himself hearing the tune inside the tune, his lips mouthing words nobody sung. Things were slipping away from him, not just the old certainties and beliefs which, if he was honest, had fallen by the wayside a long time past, but the everyday signifiers which had, until now, anchored him in the real world. It was no longer just a case of Escovedo or Firstnighter; he had reached a new level of self-doubt which perhaps explained Darla not answering her calls, but not his increasingly frequent sightings of angels throughout the city. He’d seen another five on his way here, hanging from streetlamps or peeking out from behind the statuary in the niches in church walls. He wondered if they could explain the sharp tang of salt in the air, or the weightless feeling he had when he woke from his dreams.
The cab dropped him off at the corner of Quierado and Rose. He bought the Chronicle at a stall and walked the two blocks to El Camino. He ordered a bottle of Corona and tried calling Darla again but her phone was still switched off. It was after three, too early for her to be busy. A big Latino in loose jeans and leather vest was making loud, clicking noises along the counter, a skinny ghost of a girl clinging to his arm, urging him on. The guy turned and mashed his mouth against hers as if he wanted to suck all the life out of her. The bar filled slowly and Snow checked the faces of those who came in against the line-up in his head.
He skimmed the headlines, looking for anything that might signal the extent of the disconnection. The fear, which he was still reluctant to admit, was that it didn’t go beyond him. He found his own advert in the classifieds but doubted its authenticity. The news pages carried a report of a fall in crime figures. The mayor cited the almost total CCTV coverage of the city as playing the major part in the reduction. The business section carried a brief story on Astorbilt’s proposed investment in the Panthers, currently riding the tail of an eight game losing streak. No strange sightings reported anywhere over Provenance, no mention of angels. A sudden unease settled on him, the feeling that he was being watched. He scanned the bar but it was too crowded for him to pick out any one individual paying him undue attention. Two guys in jeans and leather jackets had taken to the small stage at the rear of the bar. The singer played electric guitar, his companion tinkered with a synthesizer. They made a strange, oddly familiar noise he couldn’t place. Taking out his cellphone, Snow pretended to make a call. Talking to himself, he continued to survey the crowd, looking for signs of interest. Presently, he flipped the phone shut and moved through the press of bodies towards a door at the rear of the bar. He went through and down the steps to the basement. In the men’s room he checked there was a fresh clip in his Mauser semi-automatic, and positioned himself behind the door.
Thirty second later he heard footsteps in the narrow hallway. He tensed, holding the pistol two-handed, close to his chest. Somebody stopped outside the door. It began to swing inwards. Snow was ready. The door stopped and he heard slow, steady breathing, before it was shut again. He started counting, tasting the salty tang of dread on his lips. At ten he opened the door and stepped out into the hall. To the right, music came spilling down the stairwell from the bar. To the left, the hallway stretched into darkness. He moved into the gloom and passed the door to the women’s restroom. He stopped outside a third door, on his right, which was open a fraction. Reaching for the handle, he caught a glimpse of movement at the far end of the hall. “Hector –”, he cried out, raising his own gun just as the roar of a gunshot filled the cramped, shadowed space. Something knocked him back against the wall and he slumped to the floor, dazed. Through blurred vision he saw someone lurch by him and stagger up the steps.
Snow touched the back of his head behind his left ear and his fingers came away wet with blood. Get up, he told himself. You’re not dead. He forced himself to his feet, head spinning, and started up the stairwell. The noise in the bar smashed into him like another bullet. People stared at him, at the blood rolling down his head. He grabbed one kid and said, “Geezer just came up—where’d he go?”
The kid backed away and told him to go fuck himself. Snow thought for a second about smashing him to a pulp, then turned to a waitress and asked her if she’d seen Darla.
The woman shrugged, said, “Darla, si, maybe,” and moved away. Snow stumbled through the crowd towards the exit. A carnival parade moved along Quierado, filling the street with raucous noise, a cacophony of music, engines and the screaming of angels. His vision blurred as he struggled through the crowd, nobody paying him any attention. It felt like the entire city was passing him by. He needed to speak to someone, if only to confirm that he was still real. He called Darla again. This time he got a ring tone but nobody answered.
*
Escovedo lay on his back staring up at the ceiling fan, the taste of her body still in his mouth, the scent of the sea in his nostrils. They were in a hotel room in Korby, close to his office. He’d paid for the room but nothing else, which meant, he figured, their relationship had moved on to a new plane. He thought she was ready to leave with him, if he finally came out and asked her, but he doubted they’d let him go. “I’m getting out,” he said, turning towards Darla. She lay on her side, facing him. Her eyes were closed but he knew she wasn’t sleeping. “I want you to come with me.”
“Yeah?” she said. “Where you gonna go?”
“Away from Provenance.”
“Still looking for yourself, Hector, is that it? Used up all your options here and now it’s time to move on?” Her eyes opened and she stared at him. “Jesus, all you have is an idea of who you want to be. No wonder you’re so messed up. You got to be more than an idea. This picture you have of yourself, it’s just not real.”
She had a point, Hector thought. Not the one she imagined, but something that resonated with his own disillusion. Somehow, he’d convinced himself that by taking on this one last job for Astorbilt, he’d be able to escape his hollow past. Instead, he’d let Snow become his nemesis. It was no longer about eliminating the threat to Astorbilt—he had to take Snow out in order to set himself free. So, what was stopping him?
Darla reached over and stroked his face. “
What are you afraid of?”
How could he articulate what he felt in a way that would make her believe him? “Fading away,” he said. “Don’t you feel yourself dissolving, like the city is melting those things that make you who you are?”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “I know who I am.”
“What about Snow? You know exactly who he is, what he wants?”
“Besides killing you? He wants me, and he wants out of Provenance.”
The congruence between their desires disturbed him. “Did he say why?”
Darla drew closer to him. “He sees angels everywhere,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. “He thinks they’re going to save him.”
Hector shivered. He thought of himself as beyond redemption. Just escaping the bad things he had done would suffice. Turn the past to steam. No more Astorbilt, no more losing sight of why he was doing the things he did. He sat up on the bed, pushed himself back against the headboard. Late afternoon sunlight fell through blinds, and through the open window he could hear the cries of quarrelsome birds. “What have you told him about me?”
“That you’re not who he thinks you are.”
“Who does he think I am?”
“A kindred spirit.”
Hector laughed, but he felt unnerved.
The Dream Operator Page 3