California Bones

by Greg Van Eekhout

  He smelled hound, and sure enough, stationed around the plaza were half a dozen dogs and handlers. Sint holo was always Daniel’s most reliable magic, but even though Gabriel Argent assured him that very few hounds were trained to detect sint holo, Daniel wasn’t willing to risk it. He couldn’t chance being identified by his osteomancy. He wouldn’t use kraken or firedrake or any other kind of magic. Not until he faced the Hierarch.

  He purchased an all-exhibits pass with cash and entered the museum through the Ahmanson Building, which, in addition to the European, Islamic, and modern art collections, housed the People’s Gallery, currently closed for a new installation.

  At the front desk, he picked up a museum map.

  “Please let me know if I can help direct you,” said a man in a blue blazer, sitting behind the desk. He was regular museum staff. The woman standing behind him, also in a blue blazer, was not. Her penetrating gaze lingered on Daniel’s face, and he resisted the urge to make sure his fake mustache was on straight.

  He spent a few hours admiring dance paddles and ancestor figures from Rapa Nui, Turkish dishes and Iranian tile, paintings by Cézanne and Degas, and he memorized the locations of all the cameras tucked in the corners of the galleries behind smoked plastic domes in the ceilings. He sat on benches to rest his feet and watched the comings and goings of art lovers and docents and security guards. It would be different at night, but if anything, security would be lighter then, with the crowds gone. Unfortunately, the patrol posts and patterns would be different, too, and Daniel wouldn’t have a chance to observe them.

  At 5 P.M., he had an expensive BLT and a sparkling water in the café.

  At 7 P.M., an hour before closing, he attached himself to a docent-led tour group and followed them to the second floor. To his right was the German Expressionism gallery. To his left, restrooms and a drinking fountain. And directly in front of him, a desk manned by a pair of guards.

  Daniel parted company with the tour and entered the bathroom. He washed his hands and checked his mustache, and when a man at the urinal went away, he stepped into a toilet stall. Forty seconds later, he lay in the crawl space above the ceiling, spread-eagled to distribute his weight. With the way his week had gone, he was pretty sure he’d come crashing down through the ceiling tiles. He waited and listened and tried hard to stay awake and keep his mind off bad thoughts.

  At 7:56, he heard the rustle of plastic garbage bags and the slosh of a mop.

  He waited until the janitor left.

  Nobody else came.

  He slid some panels aside and dropped down into the stall.

  From his briefcase, he took the rubber ball and a coil of monofilament wire. Reaching as far down the toilet bowl as he could, he pushed the ball in until it was firmly stuck. He flushed and used the monofilament to tie the flush handle in the down position. In less than a minute, water was sloshing over the sides of the bowl and spreading across the floor.

  Fuck Mulholland’s water magic. This was water magic.

  Back up into the crawl space he went.

  It took seven minutes before he heard the restroom door. Then, a voice:

  “Do I look like a plumber to you?” said a female.

  A woman. Dammit, why did it have to be a woman?

  “You’re maintenance, right?” answered a second, male voice. “So, get in there and maintain.”

  “I thought I was a broom pusher. That’s what you rent-a-cops are always saying.”

  “Christ, lady, will you just get in there and fix it, before it floods one of the galleries? Call another broom pusher if you can’t handle it.”

  Again, the pneumatic hiss of the door as it closed, followed by muttered cursing and the splash of footfalls across the wet floor.

  Daniel was crouching on the toilet when she opened the stall door.

  She was not a small woman, and Daniel was not a large man. It would work.

  He raised the gun Steven Baker had aimed at him. In his other hand he held a roll of duct tape.

  “I promise, you’re going to be fine,” he said. “I just need you to answer some questions about the staff here.”

  She blinked at him.

  “Also, I’m going to need your shirt.”

  * * *

  In the dark green shirt of museum custodial staff and the black pants that went with his suit, Daniel approached the security desk. The man on duty was distressingly large and well muscled.

  “Hey, Chao, what’s up?”

  The guard gave him a noncommittal smile. “You guys get that toilet fixed?”

  “Yeah, but we need help cleaning up. There’s shitty water spreading toward American Contemporary.”

  “What do I look like, a mop?” Chao laughed at his own humor. He was a humorous man.

  Daniel chuckled. “A mop, yeah, that’s a good one. No, thing is, the super’s not answering his radio.”

  “Why not?”

  “Probably forgot it while he was beating off to the Greek statues. I need you to call his office.”

  Chao looked from Daniel to the phone on his desk and back to Daniel. “What’s the matter, your hands broke?”

  Daniel held up his bandaged hand, which concealed the taped stump of his missing little finger. “Actually, yeah. Skiing accident. And this one,” he said, holding up his right hand, “touched a bunch of toilet water. But if you don’t care about germs, I can manage—”

  A family-sized bottle of hand sanitizer stood like a gel-filled tower on Chao’s desk.

  “Fine,” Chao grumbled. He lifted the receiver and went to dial. When his hands were visibly away from the alarm button on the underside of his desk, Daniel slipped a Knott’s Berry Farm souvenir snow globe from his pocket.

  “This is a bomb,” he said. “Put down the phone and keep your hands where I can see them or you die on fire. Don’t look at the camera, and slide your chair away from your desk.”

  Chao froze. “That’s not a bomb.”

  “I’m an osteomancer and I’m telling you it’s filled with firedrake saliva, and if I so much as shake it it’s going to be raining the ashes of your ass.”

  Actually, if he shook it, little glittery flakes would swirl around and descend on a tiny, plastic frontier town diorama. It was just a snow globe.

  Chao cradled the receiver. “What do you want?”

  “Um? To steal some art? Stand up. You’re going to walk me down to the first floor and let me into the video room.”

  “Or you shake Knott’s Berry Farm?”

  “You catch on quick, Chao. Maybe I’ll bring you on as my apprentice. Let’s go. We’ll take the stairs.”

  Daniel followed him to the stairwell on the opposite side of the lobby. Chao took the steps gingerly, as if he was afraid to step on a mine.

  “You made me leave my desk without checking in first,” Chao said. “My friend in the video room will know something’s wrong.”

  “That might be true, except everyone knows you’ve got a thing for Sanchez, who stands watch in Modern, and you can’t go twenty minutes without stepping over to flirt with her.”

  Chao looked over his shoulder at Daniel. “Who’s your inside man?”

  “Right now, you are. Keep walking.”

  On the first floor, Daniel guided him to a room with a door marked STAFF ONLY.

  “Inside.”

  “I gotta be buzzed in,” Chao said, somewhat smugly.

  “I’m going to coach you, then.” He told Chao what he wanted him to say. “And here’s your pep talk. Firedrake saliva is really evil magic. And it’s sensitive. Shake it hard enough, and it will go off. And by go off, I mean flames. But it burns in firedrake-subjective time.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “It means you’ll be ash in seconds, but it will seem to you like it’s taking an entire week. So, think about that while you’re talking to whoever’s behind that door.”

  Chao swallowed and thumbed the intercom button on the wall.

  “What do you
want?” came a fuzzy voice through the speaker box.

  “Let me in.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m out of hand sanitizer.”

  “Man, you’re not supposed to drink that stuff. Seriously, what do you want, and who’s that with you?”

  “You don’t know Guice? From maintenance? Everyone knows Guice. How long you been working here?”

  Daniel smiled and gave a little salute for the benefit of the camera that was no doubt trained on him now.

  “I don’t know Guice,” said the fuzzy voice.

  “He’s here to fix the toilet upstairs,” Chao said.

  “Yeah, I saw the water coming under the door. What’s he doing down here if the busted can’s upstairs?”

  “I think there might be water leaking into Modern,” Daniel said, too loudly, like someone unaccustomed to speaking into a microphone.

  “So, what are you bothering me for?”

  “You know the regs, Parvis,” Chao barked, sounding authentically irked. “He can’t go in there without a work order. He just wants to check your monitors to see if there’s water coming in.”

  “I don’t see anything in Modern,” Parvis said. “Except that hottie, Sanchez. Hoo boy, can she stuff a guard uniform—”

  “Parvis, if you don’t shut your cake and let me in—”

  “Okay, okay, a guy can’t even have fun on the graveyard shift?”

  The door buzzed, and Chao pushed it open with the fervor of a bull hoping to gore a matador.

  Parvis turned out to be a pasty white man with a hand of solitaire cards spread out before him, along with a half-empty pizza box and a two-liter of Orange Crush. A dozen TV monitors loomed over his desk. Behind him, video recorders buzzed and hummed in a rack.

  “You gotta get a sense of humor, Chao,” he said, taking up a slice of mushroom and black olives. “It’s called camaraderie. Esprit de corps. It’s being a team player, and, oh, man, Sanchez just bent over! Will you look at her—”

  “This guy’s got a bomb and he’s going to blow us all up instantly, only it’ll take forever. It’s both instant and forever, and painful both ways, so do whatever he says.”

  “Thank you, Chao.” Daniel held up the Knott’s Berry Farm snow globe. Very carefully, he set a second snow globe, this one from Disneyland, on Parvis’s desk.

  Parvis looked like he’d just seen a turtle wearing tap shoes.

  “You’re going to blow shit up with Snow White’s Castle?”

  “It’s dragon spit,” Chao said, helpfully.

  “Take this,” Daniel said, handing his duct tape roll to Chao. “Bind his ankles together and tape his hands to the arms of his chair.”

  “They are so going to fire you for this,” Parvis said when Chao completed the job.

  Again, gingerly, Daniel picked up the Disneyland globe. “Open your mouth, please.”

  Parvis refused to comply. For a guy who looked like captain of the AV club, he was pretty cheeky. Daniel was actually developing a fondness for these guards. They weren’t Fenmont Szu. They weren’t storm troopers. They weren’t henchmen. They were just guys, probably underpaid, hired for the boring task of making sure nobody stole stuff they themselves couldn’t afford in five lifetimes.

  Daniel showed Parvis his gun.

  “It’s either open your mouth or I shoot you in the eye.”

  With a glare of contempt, Parvis opened his mouth.

  Daniel slipped the Disneyland globe between his teeth. “Don’t spit it out, or you’ll slosh it and ignite the firedrake. I wouldn’t scream, either. It’s sound-sensitive. Your watch relief comes on in two hours. I’ll be out of here by then.”

  He inspected his work. Tiger kidnapping, fake mustache, duct tape and tourist souvenirs.

  He went to the door, then stopped and looked back. “Parvis, I know you’re having a bad shift, but don’t blame Chao for this. I’m responsible. Everything that’s gone to shit…”

  He found himself thinking bad thoughts.

  “Everything that’s gone to shit is all on me.”

  * * *

  The world was beautiful. Everything was gardens of misty roses, and wheat fields of soft gold, and clean, white sails, drifting over glassy blue water.

  French Impressionism occupied two galleries and was patrolled by a single guard who paced between them. In the passage separating the two galleries, Chao peered around a corner and signaled Daniel to follow him. He took Daniel through the north gallery when the guard was in the south gallery, and by the time the guard returned to the north gallery, they’d slipped into Dutch Golden Age.

  Before the Ossuary job, the idea of hitting the Los Angeles Museum of Art would have been too ludicrous for Daniel to consider. Now, he saw it was relatively easy. Or, it would have been if he’d had his crew. Cassandra would have dealt with the cameras and alarm systems. Jo would have impersonated a guard, and Moth would have dealt with anyone they couldn’t scam their way past. Also, Daniel might have gotten a little sleep first.

  He just had to keep Chao in line. And what if Chao led him right into a guard patrol, or triggered some hidden alarm switch, or decided he no longer believed in the threat of the Daniel’s gun and Knott’s Berry Farm snow globe? Would Daniel shoot him? Would he electrocute him? Who was he willing to hurt to protect his friends?

  “You’re doing fine,” Daniel whispered. “Just tell me this: How’s the People’s Gallery guarded?”

  Chao stopped. He turned and looked at Daniel in disbelief.

  “The People’s Gallery? You’re hitting the People’s Gallery? That’s the Hierarch’s gallery.”

  “I know.”

  “His personal collection.”

  “I am aware of this fact.”

  “You steal his shit, and he will flay you.”

  “I am comfortable with my choices,” Daniel said. “And keep your voice down. How many guards?”

  “Four outside the entrance.”

  “And inside?”

  “Nobody gets inside. I thought you already knew the layout.”

  “Are you talking shit? Don’t talk shit to me. Just tell me about the guards.”

  “The guys in there aren’t like me and Parvis,” Chao said. “They’re armed to the teeth with magic.”

  “I think I mentioned I’m a badass osteomancer. Take me there.”

  “You’re going to die, and you’re going to take me down with you.” But Chao resumed, leading Daniel through a cloud of aromas—three-headed wolf, mastodon, Pacific griffin—until they came to the source of the smell. Four guards stood before a timber door, a massive thing, banded with black iron, like the entrance to a castle. These guards wore special uniforms, of royal purple, with gold-braided sleeves and epaulettes.

  “The epaulettes are too much,” Daniel said.

  The guards struck poses with their trident-fang lances, leveling them at Daniel’s belly. Daniel removed the last of his snow globes from his pocket, this one from Universal Studios, and placed it on the floor.

  “Tell them what I am, Chao.”

  Chao sighed. “He’s a badass osteomancer.”

  “That’s right. The globe’s filled with the amniotic fluid of a wyvern. Same stuff is packed in my molar. Move or speak and I’ll bite down and destroy you and the stuff you’re paid to protect. Lay down your arms and open the door.”

  A pause long enough for a bead of sweat to trickle down the back of Daniel’s neck.

  “Do it,” one of the guards said.

  Two of them drew back the great iron bolt lock, and all four pushed the door open for him.

  “End of the line for you, Chao,” Daniel said.

  “And for you, too.”

  “We’ll see. By the way, your girl in Modern Art? Sanchez?”

  Chao glowered. “What about her?”

  “I think she likes you.”

  Chao’s face beamed like the sun emerging from clouds.

  Hope must be a nice thing, thought Daniel. He entered the People’s Gallery.
>
  The guards shut the door behind him and slid the bolt back into place, and Daniel went forward into a chamber dedicated to the Hierarch’s majesty. There were gifts from foreign governments: a jade teapot and rice paper scrolls and a brick from a Mayan temple. There were bronze sculptures of the Hierarch on horseback, and a B-52 tail section hanging on wires. The most splendid piece was a billboard-sized oil painting dominating the eastern wall. The Hierarch strode across the water from Catalina Island. Seas churned and foamed at his feet, and gray whales leaped from the water, like eager dogs. He seemed to smile down on Daniel, and the smile was threatening in its paternal indulgence. A brass plate identified the work simply as ARRIVING IN LOS ANGELES. Nobody actually knew where the Hierarch had come from. Some said he came in the 1880s from China on the deck of the frigate Prometheus. Others said he came up from the deserts of Mexico. Still others had him sailing an iceberg down from the Bering Sea.

  The Hierarch had been in this room. He’d spent his time, wandering the gallery, admiring himself, and leaving behind osteomantically charged air as thick as tar. Daniel understood now why Mulholland had instructed him to break into the museum, to come here, to breathe the Hierarch’s air.

  It wasn’t to assassinate the Hierarch.

  Daniel was being fattened for the kill.

  If he actually did manage to assassinate the Hierarch, then good for Mulholland. If he failed, then Mulholland was no worse off.

  Beneath the painting was a modest tunnel opening. Mulholland had told him that this tunnel was the Hierarch’s private gallery entrance, but even without the water mage’s intel, Daniel would have known where it led. A familiar essence wafted from it, one Daniel had not smelled in ten years.

  He breathed deeply of the Hierarch’s magic and entered the tunnel.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Gabriel took a Department of Water and Power service boat to the former location of his neighborhood coffee bar. From the passenger seat, Max sniffed the air. If he detected magic, Gabriel didn’t want to know about it.

  In a short time, Gabriel had secured a position in Mulholland’s organization. He could requisition a boat. He could requisition water mages. He had a future at the Department of Water and Power. Patronage. Someday, maybe real power. All he’d had to do was deliver Daniel Blackland.