But the office, the desk, when observed more closely, did begin to resemble a movie set: flat, a facade. Props. Dwork had run the show, with a few obligatory appearances from the front-man Cugok now and then. Later, interviews with the higher personnel—the plant foreman and the department supervisors (truth scanned to prove their innocence)—confirmed this. Though only the head of Research, Dwork had seemed to them many times to have an inordinate amount of influence in the company.
“Loveland made a mistake,” said Beak. “Why hire somebody to play Cugok, risk involving another person, when Dwork could have played the boss himself?”
“It made sense. If Dwork was caught or had to run, Cugok could still stay in business. That’s what happened, right? Though, thank God, only for a short time.” Monty held onto the desktop photograph of Cugok and his wife so the wife’s identity could be investigated. “I’ve got to drop in on Helga Greenberg again. She sold this property to these people—maybe she met Cugok. Most likely. Dwork, too, maybe. She might be of some help.”
Monty was staring hatefully at a series of framed diplomas and certificates of achievement on the wall, cheerily gleaming gold seals on them. All obvious fakes. Fucking terrifying. Money had to have had a lot to do with this place coming into being. The right palms had been papered. Only such an evil substance could have provided for such an extent of evil. The plant was polluted with it, even if it didn’t show up on any toxin scan.
At this point, Monty experienced the disheartening feeling that all the world was in some way part of Toll Loveland’s sick, passionately heinous vision.
Part Three:
Black Blizzard
NINETEEN
“Jesus Christ!”
“Like it?”
Mauve stood at the foot of the bed, naked but for the cheap plastic skull mask over her face. Monty sighed and wagged his head. “Cute. Losing weight, huh?”
“You forget today is Eric Hughes’ Black Blizzard? I’m so excited.”
“I hadn’t forgotten. I just didn’t expect to wake up to this. Please, Mauve, take it off.”
“All day we’re supposed to wear masks and I intend to do it. I bought something for you, too.”
“No. Forget it. Sorry.”
She tossed a gift onto the bed. It was a skull head pin. The eyes flashed red and the jaw gnashed when a switch was activated. “I knew you wouldn’t wear a mask so I bought that for your lapel, and you will wear it.”
“I will—thank you. But you can’t wear that all day, Mauve.”
She pushed the squeaky mask up to the top of her head on its elastic band. “Well, I won’t take it off any more than this. I hope a lot of people wear them. I’m sure they will; I keep seeing people buy them. I saw people buying better ones, too—full head masks. Some folks are really into it.”
“More for the thrill, than for Hughes’ message about the Oracle tragedy,” Monty opined, getting out of bed. “Did you take it off when you showered?”
“Well…yeah. Don’t tell anybody, huh?”
Monty went to take his own shower. He didn’t like the mask on her. Too creepy.
Giddry would be following Cangue again today; nothing with him, yet, though he’d been seeing old friends and Giddry was busy photographing them and establishing their identities. Giddry wasn’t needed at Cugok, since Captain Nedland himself was supervising the investigation there due to the great media attention. Monty and Beak intended to return today to poke around further and to sit in on the police interrogations, held there in a meeting room.
When Monty emerged from the bathroom to dress, Mauve (in a black blouse and tight black skirt, skull mask atop her head) seized his hand and drew him to the window. “It’s already starting!” she gushed.
It was like volcanic ash sifting down thinly. Black flakes lazily floating, already accumulating on surfaces like soot. Passing vehicles swept the loose dust after them in swirls. It was a dirty-looking, ugly sight. Industrial waste or nuclear fallout. And Monty had a terrible thought, which he voiced.
“I guess it would be too late now, but what if Eric Hughes turned out to really be Toll Loveland? And this—” he nodded at the black snow “—was his latest project?”
Mauve chewed on that one for a moment. “Wow…”
There was a distant muffled thud from the sky and the window rattled. Monty had heard two while showering but had taken them for sounds in the building. Now he realized it was the cannons at the air factory firing, bringing about this miracle—Eric Hughes’ vision.
“I’m sure it’s only snow,” Mauve dismissed, but a little nervously.
“I know,” Monty said, and went to dress.
Black shirt buttoned to the top button, black trousers, black shoes, his turquoise jacket with the skull pin on his lapel, placed there by Mauve. The vidphone rang—probably Beak, anxious to get to Cugok. Monty went to it.
The face of Vern Woodmere appeared, a little more like the ravaged Vern he knew and less like the suave gangster from the Bone Club.
“Who’s with you, man?” Vern hissed in a whisper.
“With me? My girlfriend, is all—why?”
“Is your phone clean?”
“I would hope so. It doesn’t have any special blockers, though. What’s wrong?”
“I, ah, I’ve got a tip for ya.”
“A tip?”
“I think. I think it’s a tip.”
“A tip about what?”
Mauve came in from the kitchen but Monty waved her away impatiently. A bit irritated, she hung back in the kitchen threshold but listened.
“I want in on it, if it is,” Vern said. “I’ll be blowing my thing with the Teebs but if it’s what I think it is then it’s worth it, man, and I want you to count me in. This is my thing, too, even if I’m not an agent anymore—right?”
“What…”
“The Loveland thing, man.”
“Tell me.”
“Let me work with you and Beak?”
“As much as I can. Tell me.”
Vern straightened up, glanced over his shoulder. “I heard something from my friend Blud Fulcrum. He’s big at Teeb and he hears a lot, like I told you. He told me this thing because he knows I know the person, but he obviously doesn’t see the significance in it I saw…”
“What person?” Monty didn’t care for Vern’s dramatic build-up.
“Helga Greenberg. She contacted the Teeb Family about having someone cloned. But it had to be done at her house, she specified. So they’re gonna send over two top technicians this afternoon. Now the kicker.”
“Yeah?”
“The cloning is already half finished, she told them, but there was a problem and she needs them to take over. She has all the equipment needed in her home. All she wants is their knowledge.”
“Fuck,” hissed Monty. “Fuck me…”
“Do you see it?”
“I see it. God love you, Vern. I fuckin’ see it, man.”
“For one thing, someone sent Cangue to Teeb for his memory wipe. Because Dwork is dead and he couldn’t do it…”
“And now Helga Greenberg needs Teeb to have a cloning completed,” Monty said. “Because Dwork is dead and couldn’t do it.”
“She owned Greenberg Products, where Loveland did Pandora’s Box. She sold it to Cugok, who doesn’t exist…but where Westy Dwork just happened to work.”
“And her husband died of Garland Syndrome a little after the chem spill that ruined Greenberg. How do we know that she didn’t arrange that with Loveland? Loveland must have been her lover…”
“Yeah—right. And now the person she’s cloning. It’s got to be him.”
“Right.” Monty thought of the painting Matter of Life and Death. Baby emerging from a skeleton. “I thought he was already alive and around, but he wasn’t. He must have been waiting to reemerge when the Big Frown thing happened, but it never did. Dwork had started on the clone to have him ready to return on the scene. But we nailed Dwork, and little Helga had to go to your
buddies to have Cangue’s memory erased and Loveland finished developing.”
“We could be off, but I doubt it,” said Vern. “If it was just Cangue or just her coming to Teeb for help I might not have thought she was involved—but both, and so close together? And why the fuck does she have a cloning set-up in her house?”
“It’s her,” Monty said, without any doubts. It all made sense. And there they had been inside her house, Vern and he, a whole year ago, without knowing that the seed of Toll Loveland was hidden there, buried, waiting to bloom again into life, dramatically timed to coincide with The Big Frown.
“Let’s go cuff her, Monty,” Vern said.
“Vern, you can’t come…Nedland would have my balls.”
“Hey, I told you man, this is my thing, too! I lost my job because of that fuck! You can’t deny me my right to participate in this, man. You, me and Beak—look what he did to us. You, me and Beak have to be the ones to take him and his fuckin’ girlfriend.”
“This is big—I should report it before I move…”
“You know you don’t mean that, man—Christ! Think of Opal!”
“You think I’ve forgotten about her?” Monty snapped. “All right, I don’t have to report my every move to Nedland…but if you go with me, it will come out after and he’ll blow his top. Can’t you see that? You did your part, Vern, you did it just now. Let me and Beak sweep up the rest of it…”
Monty saw the fury rippling beneath the shadow-bruised face of the Red War veteran. That he was a Red War veteran returned to the front of Monty’s mind, to see this mounting rage replace the previous furtiveness. Vern no longer whispered. “You haven’t denied Beak his due and you won’t deny mine. I’m going down there, Monty…now. You can meet me there if you’re fast enough, but I won’t wait long so you’d better call Beak…”
“Don’t do this, Vern, I mean it!”
“I won’t wait long. I’m on my way.”
“Vern, don’t! I’ll stop you when I get there, I swear it! I’ll cuff you, Vern—don’t make me do it. I won’t have you fuck this up!”
“So go call Nedland on me, you fucking traitor!” Vern stepped back from the screen, half turned to take something from a desk drawer. “Try to stop me.” He lifted a heavy pistol at the screen and Monty almost instinctively jumped back, dove for cover.
Muzzle flash. The picture went black.
“Fuck!” Monty roared, and punched out Beak’s number. In his haste he messed up and had to punch it out again. Now Mauve came to stand behind him.
“He’s crazy,” she said. “Are you going to call your boss?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Me and Beak will go down there.” Shit—Beak wasn’t answering. If he were already on his way to Cugok, Monty decided, then he would go on to Helga Greenberg’s place alone.
“Monty, you saw him—he’s dangerous! If you try to stop him from going in there he might kill you!”
“He won’t…” His ringing still unanswered.
“Monty…”
“He won’t!” Monty snarled at her.
Beak came on, towel over his shoulders, his fur sleek like an otter’s from a shower. “I’m almost ready, Monty.”
“You’re ready now. Helga Greenberg is in with Loveland—Vern found out from his people. He’s going down there to arrest her…maybe to kill her. He may or may not wait for us. You know where she lives to meet me there?”
“I know the park, but not the exact house.”
“It’s a ten story, light greenish apartment building with her place on top, and that’s made of dark green and peach-colored tiles covered in ivy. Look, just meet me instead. There’s a white arched bridge in the park, pretty close…well, shit, there’s a couple of those…”
“I’ll find it. Go. I’ll be there. I’ll find the apartment building. Just go stop him…don’t wait for me.”
“Don’t tell Nedland.”
“I won’t.” Beak punched off.
Monty whirled, and Mauve was there.
“Look…” she said.
“I’ll be all right.” Monty took her upper arms and kissed her forehead. Her mask fell off to the floor behind her. “This is it,” he told her. She didn’t like the strange look in his eyes, and his funny tense smile. Or that, as he plunged toward the door, he flipped the switch to make his skull pin’s jaw work and eyes glow red, even though she had bought the crazy thing for him.
*
It was a full-force blizzard now, and made for slowed progress. Despite his anxiousness, Monty could at last acknowledge the beauty of the storm. Where a half-hour ago it had looked like soot or ash, thinly spread on surfaces, now as it began to stick together and pile up—coat and cloak objects—it became a stranger sight with less to be compared to. It was an increasingly awesome visual, and the beauty of it was full of mystery; disquieting, even disorienting. Parked cars looked as if they’d been draped with black blankets. Blackness clung to moving pedestrians. The air was thick with it, dark with it. Monty had to have his headlights on.
At a stoplight he checked the clip in his pink semi-automatic, felt inside his coat for his extra magazines of solid shells and plasma capsules. Christ, he thought, it might’ve been quicker to take the train. Some children on the sidewalk to his right caught his eye. Full head rubber skull masks on two of them, another with a cheap plastic mask like Mauve’s. A man and woman using the crosswalk wore skull faces. Monty looked in his rear-view monitor. There was a grinning cousin to Death behind the dash of the vehicle in back of him.
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Doomsday,” Monty sang quietly to himself as traffic moved forward again.
At one point, not far from the park, Monty had to drive between two gangs of kids hurling black snowballs across the street at each other. One exploded against his side window and he hissed a curse. A huge robot snow melter was ahead of him, also. “Come on, come on, come on,” he chanted. He was tempted to beep Beak and check on his progress, but the robot turned to the left and he was instantly free to zip forward.
The park stretched before him, the greatest unbroken field of black yet. Like some volcanic desert, sparkling obsidian sand. Kids tramped in it (school had been called off, half because of the snow’s impediment and half as a kind of holiday). Monty saw a black snowman, then another one, and a black snow fort rising up.
Then he saw the mint green apartment house looming beyond the veils of snow. The jade and peach-tiled house atop it, tangled in vines forever as lush and green as in summer. As he drew nearer he watched for Vern outside the guard station, waiting for him. He wasn’t there.
He ran from his car into the station, stamped his feet on a mat as he produced his badge, black crystal flakes sparkling in his hair. “Health agent—I need to get into Helga Greenberg’s apartment to make an arrest. If you make any attempts to contact her you’ll be arrested as an accomplice to her crimes. How can I get in there on my own?”
A uniformed woman behind the counter sputtered, “We don’t have access to her apartment…we have no emergency code breaker for her.”
“Not even the super has one,” growled a burly uniformed man, giving Monty a plasma-hot glare.
“Has a man come through here, graying slicked-back hair, intense-looking, in a red and gold-striped jacket?”
“Yeah,” said the burly guard. “He’s a health agent, too. About five minutes ago.”
“He’s not a health agent,” Monty hissed. “Don’t call the forcers; I’ve got this under control. My partner is on the way—he’s an Enisku named Beak. Tell him I went up, and to come on after me.” And with that, Monty bolted into the apartment building toward the elevator.
The lift deposited him on the open roof of the mint green structure. The wind up here was bitterly cold, the whipping snow stinging Monty’s face as if the crystals were tiny shards of volcanic glass.
It took only a moment to see that the lock on the front door to Helga Greenberg’s parasitic house was m
elted through. Monty remembered the gun he had seen in Vern’s hand for a moment before the screen went blank. It looked like an old-fashioned toy locomotive engine, a heavy black thing covered in details and tiny jewels of light. A real heavy-duty zapper…thanks to the Teeb Family’s resources. Had an alarm gone off when Vern found his way inside?
He drew his semi-auto, poised to one side of the door and pushed it open with his shoe. His heart was hammering as he swung into the building; a foyer. Jade and peach tiles covering walls, ceiling and floor, huge potted plants, a large oil painting of the park below. Monty didn’t recall it from last time, but remembered the oil portrait he’d seen of Mrs. Greenberg, painted by her late husband—a patron of the arts.
He stole into a corridor, wide and plant-lined. Softly spotlighted antiques on display, pools of glinting fish. Sculptures, and some ancient bas-reliefs also spotlighted on the walls. One, positioned above the door at the end of the hall, portraying some tentacled sphinx-like monster, caught Monty’s eye and gave him an odd chill.
Patron of the arts. Patron of…
Jesus, Monty thought. Could that be it?
He entered a side doorway. He couldn’t exactly remember which way they’d taken before, but who was to say she would be in the same room, if she were in the building at all?
This was a sitting room, in violet and darker purple tiles, dominated by a huge purple stone fireplace with rounded edges and a stripe of chrome trim. The round-edged purple velour furniture also had silvery trim. Quite a room. A pterodactyl-like creature with an oil-slick iridescence to its skin and wing membranes was mounted above the fireplace. Inside the base of the clear plastic coffee table was a large, pale blue arachnid or crustacean moving slowly across a bed of violet crystals.
Monty cut across the room to another door, nudged it gingerly open.
A bright kitchen, yellow and white tiles. Monty slid inside.
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