The Devil was in a foul mood. He held the telephone at arm’s length. “Do you understand that I am, at this very moment, freezing to death?!”
Shirley — the telephone representative for Washington Gas — may have understood, but she was not at all sympathetic to the Devil’s plight, which is to say that she was acting like an unfeeling, robot bitch as she followed a diagrammatic flow chart of scripted answers with about as much empathy for his misery and discomfort as a washing machine has for clothing as it cycles from soak to agitate to rinse to spin.
No, Shirley didn’t seem to care anymore than his thermostat did. And yelling at her wasn’t helping any more than it had with that. Satan had screamed at and berated the little box on the wall off and on for two days before his neighbor had knocked on the door, wondering what all the fuss was about. The neighbor had explained the mysteries of climate control, and had eventually helped Satan to figure out that the gas wasn’t working. So now here he was, on the phone with this merciless, automaton whore.
“I’m sorry, sir, but if you want to place a service order, you need to call us three days in advance,” she said. This was the fifth time she had advised the Devil of Washington Gas’ three-day notice requirement. Of course, Shirley had no idea that she was speaking with Satan. She heard his accent and figured he was just another one of those diplomats from England or Gondor or wherever.
“You keep reciting that as if it were some kind of mystical incantation that will make me go away. Do you really think that I didn’t hear you the first five times you said it? Or that I was somehow unable to understand? Oh wait, I’m sorry. Are you, perchance, a complete fucking idiot? Is that the problem?”
“You’re just being rude,” she said. Shirley didn’t like these snooty foreign guys.
“Yes, but you see, you madam, are a moron. And I am having to cope simultaneously with freezing my backside off and your profound stupidity. My rudeness is therefore excused. I am afraid, however, that your stupidity is not. It is, in fact, inexcusable. So I must insist that you cease your idiotic prattling and TURN ON MY FUCKING HEAT ALREADY!” Satan sat down and crossed his legs. He felt calm and in control.
“Hold, please.” Some light jazz came on as Shirley put the Prince of Darkness on hold.
He stood up and began pacing. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. The Dark Lord of the Underworld did not look good in sweaters. Not frumpy brown ones anyway.
The phone continued to play hold music at him while he waited. He held the handset out at arm’s length again, glaring at it with an evil eye, and was just about to fling it at the wall when he remembered the last time he’d been put on hold. He glanced over to where his old telephone was still embedded in the sheetrock and sighed. The ingenuity and deviousness of humans was astounding – hold music was like a cheese grater for the soul. Forget all the fire and brimstone, they really needed to start piping this stuff in down in Hell.
He sighed again. Was it worth this? Was eternal damnation really any worse than sitting on hold, listening to Muzak?
I should just go back, he thought.
It was an odd thing, this nagging sense that he should be back in Hell. He’d been there in rebellion after all. The original and most profound rebellion. And it was strange and uncomfortable to think of rebelling as something he had to do. But then, he’d felt compelled to rebel against God. Driven. Like it was something he couldn’t not do. And it took him a while to understand, but by giving in and succumbing to that compulsion, he was actually serving a purpose set out for him – and for which he’d been designed and created – by God. So, the reality of the situation was that he wasn’t a rebel at all. He was a pawn in God’s big plan. God needed a patsy, a chump – someone to set up as a straw man in His weird, self-serving battle between good and evil.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if the deck hadn’t been stacked; if it had been set up as a fair fight; if he were something more than a pawn in the Lord Almighty’s ineffable f’ed up, dumbass plan. God had created Satan to fulfill a role – to rebel and then get his Satanic ass kicked on Judgment Day. It was such a stupid plan, and yet, it was a nut that Satan couldn’t crack.
He’d always assumed that an idea would come to him; that, when the time came, he’d figure out some way to emerge victorious. The minions had asked him about it constantly, the nagging, incessant shits that they were.
“Master, how will we defeat Him, when it is written that … uh … we will not … uh … defeat … Him?” Belial had asked.
And Satan always responded the same way. “I cannot speak of these things, for He is always listening, but rest assured, I have a plan.”
But he hadn’t. He had no friggin’ idea what he was going to do. And as the time drew closer; as the Day of Judgment crept up, he began to realize that a plan wasn’t going to arrive in his miraculous brain. He’d never figure it out.
And then, one day, he realized, That was the bloody point. It was God’s perfect plan. A plan in which Satan and his followers, his entire army of fallen angels, were all just pawns. It was totally, blindingly obvious, but his rebellion – the Fall – it was all planned, intended, part of His great scheme. He wasn’t the Lord of Hell. He was God’s scapegoat and, worse, a foregone conclusion. He hated that.
Even the labels sucked. “Prince of Darkness?” Whatever. He wasn’t evil. No, he preferred to group his particular combination of proclivities together under the heading “Fun.” But fun wasn’t part of The Plan.
And that, of course, was why he was now here, on Earth, wearing a human-body costume and second guessing his decision to trade everything he’d known for a cold apartment, a frumpy sweater, and this robot bitch on the phone who wouldn’t turn on his damned gas.
He thumbed his copy of the collector’s edition of the Star Wars Trilogy that had just arrived, and felt just a tiny bit better. For the past week he’d holed himself up, staying out of trouble and watching a hell of a lot of television. And in that time he’d discovered the awesome saga of Luke and Leia and Darth Vader.
Oh, Darth. Darthy, Darth, Darth, Darth.
There were a lot of things that he loved about Star Wars. The Death Star kicked ass, and seeing the fuzzy little Ewoks get killed had been highly satisfactory. And, of course, he saw Darth Vader as a kindred spirit, both in terms of general outlook and his heavy reliance on what Satan figured must be anger-management breathing. Mostly though, it was the mythology of the movies that struck him. It was, he thought, kind of an allegory for his own struggle and rebellion against God. He just wasn’t sure whether he was Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader. And the whole dark vs. light sides of the force thing was confusing. God was easy enough – He was the emperor. Satan had some ideas for where the story should go next, and had decided that he was just going to have to go to Hollywood and meet the man behind the films.
Shirley came back on the line and went straight back into her mantra: “I’m sorry, sir, but you need to call us three days in adv—” but she didn’t finish, due to the fact that, at that very instant, the entire headquarters of Washington Gas exploded in an enormous fireball.
On Satan’s end, the line went dead. There wasn’t even any hold music.
“Hello?” he said. “Are you there?” But this was just denial. He knew that Shirley was no longer on the line. And he knew it was his fault.
The phone started making that rapid beeping sound phones make when left off the hook.
He punched the OFF button and took a deep breath, letting the phone fall by his side.
“Shit,” he said. No gas. No heat. And he’d risked exposure. Again. What he really needed was something to help him stay focused; some kind of motivational tool. Maybe one of those calendars like they have in factories. Only instead of saying: “Fifty-nine days since last on-the-job accident,” his would have to say something like, “Three days since last accidental use of supernatural Satanic powers to blow shit up.”
* * *
FBI Agent Bob Robertson was put
in charge of the investigation of the explosion of the Washington Gas headquarters. His mandate, broadly speaking, was to answer two questions: First, just what in God’s name happened? (It was a poorly-worded mandate.) Second, how was it that, with the entire headquarters exploding in a giant fireball, all but one of the Washington Gas employees escaped completely unharmed?
Robertson hadn’t a clue. And the forensics guys had been no help at all, concluding only that it looked like there had been an “explosion of some type.”
As for the one Washington Gas employee who had been affected, it wasn’t clear how exactly her condition related to the incident, or if it was even related at all. Her name was Shirley Strickland, and really she was perfectly fine, except for the fact that she seemed to be completely incapable of saying anything other than, “I’m sorry, but if you want to place a service order, you have to call three days in advance.” Robertson had no clue about that either.
He did have one lead, at least – space heaters – for whatever that was worth.
A lot of people in and around Washington, D.C. heat their homes using oil, so the destruction of Washington Gas’ headquarters didn’t cause the kind of panic that might have occurred had the entire D.C. Metroplex suddenly found itself without heating oil in a cool November. Still, there are enough folks there who do rely on natural gas for heat, especially downtown in the apartments and condominiums occupied by the zillions of interns and young professionals. Pretty much all them went out that day and bought space heaters.
Most of the stores in town ran out of space heaters within hours of the explosion. One store, however, sold its entire supply – it had nine on hand – in just thirty minutes. And every single one of the space heaters, it turns out, was purchased by the same person – an individual using a credit card registered in the name of Mr. B. L. Tod, which was the same name the guy in the white Lamborghini had used in signing up for his parking space.
The street address associated with the credit card had been a fake. Fortunately, one of the agents had thought to check the address on the Internet, so the FBI was spared the embarrassment of sending an assault squad to the National Cathedral.
Now, Robertson was back at the office, taking care of some paperwork that had been piling up while he’d been out failing to solve the Washington Gas fiasco. His team was still investigating, but he wasn’t particularly hopeful.
“Bob? Bob! I think I’ve found him!” One of his younger agents stood, leaning halfway over her desk as she continued clicking her mouse. After a few more clicks, she grabbed a couple of sheets of paper off the printer, and headed over to Robertson’s desk.
“Danvers, right?” he said, looking over the pages she’d handed him. Robertson knew Danvers’ name perfectly well, and her perfectly-shaped bottom even better. He studied the page. It looked like – well, he couldn’t tell what it was. He handed it back. “What is this?”
“It’s from an Internet forum,” she said. “Someone has been posting using the handle Bacon, Lettuce, and Death. And apparently he’s a big Star Wars fan.” She nodded and smiled as she said this, apparently thinking that it explained everything.
“Bacon, lettuce, and what?”
“Bacon, Lettuce, and Death,” she said. But Robertson still wore a confused expression. “‘Tod’ means ‘death’ in German. B.L. Tod. B.L.T. Bacon Lettuce and Death. Simple really.”
Robertson shook his head. “Great,” he said, stretching the word out like a sardonic, cynical version of the cereal-chomping tiger. “Danvers, have you been smoking the dope?”
Danvers turned to him and smiled, apparently taking Robertson’s statement as a joke. “Look here.” She flipped the pages. “I contacted the ISP, and I asked for the IP address.” She ran a finger along the side of her head, tucking her long blonde hair behind her ear.
It took a second for Robertson to remember where he was. “What?”
“I got Mr. BLT’s IP address.” Robertson gave her a blank look, so she continued, “It’s a unique identifier – an address – and every computer connected to the Internet has one.”
“Do we need a warrant for that?” Robertson wasn’t up on all this computer mumbo jumbo.
She gave him a sly smile.
“Okay…” he said.
“Anyway, it didn’t tell me much. Just that he’s been posting from a computer here in Washington.”
“That kind of seems like a lot to me.”
“Well,” she said, “yeah. I guess so.” She paused, giving him a look he recognized and remembered as the same look he used to get from girls in high school. And college. She nodded emphatic nods and spoke slowly, as if that would help the information penetrate. “It just … won’t actually … allow us … to find him,” she said.
Robertson squinted, so Danvers soldiered on, flipping pages. “There’s a big party for a senator tonight,” she said. “A fundraiser. Here in town. And apparently one of the Star Wars producers is going to be there. Tod keeps asking ‘Are you sure?’ and ‘How do you know?’” She smiled triumphantly.
Robertson just kept staring at her with an intense but confused look on his face.
“I think he might be planning to go to a fundraiser here in town,” she said.
No change, other than a slight twitch of his mustache.
“Tonight!” she said.
Robertson looked skeptical. “How can we be sure it’s him?”
She put her hand on her hip, tilted her head, and just generally imbued her whole body with you-ain’t-all-that attitude. “We can’t,” she said. “But have you got any better leads?”
Robertson eyed the young woman skeptically, careful not to stare or linger too long or do anything that might be interpreted the wrong way. Which is to say that Robertson’s gaze slid down the length of her body and then settled on a random point in space, precisely one foot to the left of Ms. Danvers, and definitely not anywhere near her perky breasts.
“Well,” he said to the air, “let’s get a team together and go get this guy.”
Chapter 8. Asthmatic Dugong
Governor Dick Whitford grunted as he finished his breakfast. He took a moment to extract a bit of something tasty from his teeth, let out an ear-splitting belch, and dabbed at his mouth with an embroidered linen napkin before subsiding back into his enormous leather chair. Then he reached out a pale and pudgy hand to press a button on his phone.
“Withers,” he croaked.
A moment later a woman worthy of the name “Withers” bustled in and began clearing Whitford’s breakfast mess off of his desk. She was powerfully-built and efficient – all business – but then there were a couple of stray wisps of graying hair that dangled from an otherwise severe bun.
Whitford waited for her to finish with a vaguely impatient, almost sarcastic look on his face.
“Send them in,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And check the thermostat,” he said, “it feels warm in here.”
“It’s not warm, sir,” she said. “It’s 64 degrees.” Ms. Withers was one of the few people who could contradict Dick Whitford without fear of being declared an enemy of the state and shipped off to a Caribbean summer camp for insurgents. “And 50 degrees outside.”
“It’s warm, goddamnit. Fix it.”
Ms. Withers made a show of pulling up the collar of her sweater as she bustled out.
There were a lot of people who thought that the former Vice President of the United States was Satan, and that, after two terms, a couple of minor Constitutional “transgressions,” and a handful of cardiac episodes, Dick Whitford would make his way back to one of the inner circles of Hell. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d gone home to Texas, which, in some ways isn’t all that different.
Texas has many things going for it, but unless you’re the kind of person who enjoys vacationing on the surface of the sun or inside a blast furnace, summer is not one of them. Native Texans often refer to the warm season, which generally runs from February to November, in lov
ing, dulcet tones and using phrases such as “Oh holy fuck, will it never end?!”
Whitford hated the heat. But he hated Liberals and Communists even more, so he had no choice but to live in Texas. And so he did whatever it took to shield himself against the infernal Lone Star climate, such as having two entire backup cooling systems installed in any building where he was likely to spend much time. After all, why would any God-fearing Texan settle for just one monster-truck-sized air conditioning unit when he could install two, or even three, thereby flipping the Lone Finger at the idea of “centralized” climate control? Well, he wouldn’t. Because that would be un-American, you dirty Communist. Which is why Whitford had multiple air-conditioning units lined up in nice, environmentally friendly rows outside each of his houses.
The governor didn’t spend much time at any of his houses though. He preferred to spend his days – and his nights – lurking within the dark, frigid confines of his office, which he kept at a hypothermia-inducing fifty-nine degrees. Which is why members of his staff usually scoffed at the idea of their boss being the Prince of Darkness. They had all decided that the idea that Satan would come to Earth and sequester himself in a freezer just seemed preposterous. Which of course, only shows that they had actually given the question serious consideration.
The icy temperatures had, in fact, led those who worked under Whitford (or near rather – any unfortunate soul who worked under Whitford would not do so for long) to come up with an entirely different set of theories. First among these was the idea that Whitford was a cyborg; that the frigid temperatures were essential to maintain the proper function of the super-conducting microprocessors in Whitford’s robot components. The guy had, after all, survived a string of heart attacks that would have killed all but the most robotic overlord.
Nobody was really sure how many heart attacks he’d had. In his second term as vice president, his trips up Connecticut Avenue to the National Naval Medical Center had become so frequent that CNN stopped covering them. After his last visit to the hospital he trudged out, hunched over, with a look of grim determination on his face, and glared with a cynical eye at the few newspaper reporters who’d showed up.
What Would Satan Do? Page 5