Eye of the Burning Man: A Mick Callahan Novel (The Mick Callahan Series)

by Harry Shannon

  "No thanks," Darlene said.

  "Well, I could use a beer," Jerry said. "In fact, I could use a few."

  Fancy chuckled. He nodded to one of the gang members, who went to an oak bookcase, pulled and opened a hidden refrigerator. He extracted a German beer and opened it for Jerry, who chugged half in one gulp. Fancy took off his fur coat and dropped it over one end of a plush leather couch. He wore a tight white knit shirt, made of some expensive fabric. He had the sleeves rolled down, as if to cover his withered left arm.

  The small man motioned for his three prisoners to be seated. I sat down directly opposite the desk, in a straight-backed wooden chair. Jerry and Darlene sat on the couch. The gang members kept us covered.

  "Well, well." Fancy drummed his good fingers on the desk. "What are we to do with you three?"

  "I'm here for Mary." I watched carefully. Either Fancy was a gifted actor, or he really was startled.

  "If memory serves me," Fancy said, "you're the one who took her out of my care a few weeks ago."

  "She's gone."

  "I see." Fancy sat forward and the chair squeaked. "And so you decided to come here to beard the lion in his den?"

  "Something like that. I tried to call, but you weren't listed in the phone book under P."

  Fancy frowned. "That kind of cheap shot is beneath you, Mr. Callahan, and may I say that it would not be wise to annoy me any further."

  "Okay. I'm listening."

  Fancy pursed his lips. "I am no angel. I think I've already made that perfectly clear. I have committed my share of felonious actions. But I have also never made a bird stay with me that wanted to fly away."

  "You tried to stop the two of us."

  "Not at all!" Fancy laughed. "Or you would be dead. I let her go with you, Mr. Callahan, because I recognized you. Since I knew you no longer did drugs, so you were probably telling the truth."

  "I was."

  "I also knew that you had some money of your own. I thought you had come merely to help the girl."

  "I did. So why didn't you let us go without a fight?"

  "When you stood up to my boys, and acquitted yourself so very well, I felt vindicated."

  "Because?"

  "It was obvious that you were capable of protecting her from her enemies. And so you both lived, and you were allowed to drive away."

  I was puzzled. "Her enemies, or yours?"

  Fancy stroked his chin with his right hand. His left lay on the table as if tortured to death. "As I said before, her enemies."

  "Who are you talking about?"

  "That I do not know, Mr. Callahan," Fancy said. "The girl came to me seeking protection and gainful employment as a prostitute. She claimed she had some people after her. I hear these things all the time."

  "And you try to help?"

  "I do my best."

  "I'll just bet you do," Darlene said. Her voice dripped venom.

  Fancy started to address me again, but then broke off to confront her. "Young lady." His cultured voice was heavy with irony. "Please spare me the cynicism. You may choose to believe it or not, but I am merely a good businessman. I protect my girls, and if anyone hurts them I see to it at once. This girl Mary had heard of my reputation. She sought me out, I did not pursue her."

  "You exploit women," Darlene said.

  Fancy gestured towards the warehouse and the filming going on beyond his office wall. "Those people are actors, albeit bad ones. They have contracts. They receive thousands of dollars a week each, just for performing sexually for the camera. They have pension plans and IRAs and insurance. They come here for one reason and one reason only, because I give them a better deal than my competition."

  "The Italians?" Darlene asked.

  Fancy did not answer.

  "And do you give them better protection, too?" I felt my heart sinking. Mary was not here, and if she wasn't, she was probably dead.

  Fancy nodded. "I give far better protection."

  I sighed. "And you're telling me that she came to you because she felt she was in danger?"

  "Yes."

  "Why should I believe you?"

  Fancy leaned back and shrugged. "You will have to, because there is nothing else for it. Can you imagine my reputation if I didn't play fair with my girls?"

  "Good heavens, no," Darlene said. "I can't imagine."

  "I know who you are and I know where you work, Sergeant Hernandez." Fancy's tone was sharp flint; it threw sparks. "If you were not a policewoman you would already be dead. You will stop insulting me."

  One of his lackeys covered her mouth, but not too harshly. Darlene sighed and nodded that she'd gotten the message. He released her, so I relaxed.

  "Thank you," Fancy said. He turned back to me. "I'm a rich man, Mr. Callahan, rich, but not particularly greedy. I believe keeping the people around me content serves as something of a life insurance policy. Can you comprehend that? My competition cannot."

  Slowly, I nodded. "Yes. I can imagine that otherwise the life expectancy in your line of work would be minimal."

  "What I may lack in brawn, I more than make up for in brains."

  Here goes nothing. I leaned forward casually and rested my palms on the desk. I locked eyes with Fancy and smiled. "What kind of a deal did you cut for those children?"

  "What children?"

  "You know what I'm talking about."

  "No, Mr. Callahan. I do not."

  "The kids in the dirty movies."

  Fancy glared back with the eyes of a hungry shark. A long moment passed. "If I snap my fingers, you die."

  I nodded. "I realize that."

  "You have a big mouth."

  "I know that, too. So why haven't you killed me yet?"

  "I'll be honest with you. I'm not sure," Fancy said. "Five seconds ago you were inches from being buried alive in cement and dropped in Big Bear Lake."

  "You haven't answered my question." The rage oozing from Fancy felt as solid as the furniture. We stared and no one blinked.

  "Mick?" Jerry said, softly. His voice cracked thin and adolescent from the tension. "Can I just interject something here?"

  "No."

  Come on, I thought, why is this taking so long?

  Finally, Fancy looked away. "I do not exploit small children, Mr. Callahan. I suspect you, as a therapist, can intuit why."

  Perhaps because you can relate to them so well, I thought. "Maybe I can, but I still need to ask you one last thing, and that's if you have ever heard of a little boy named Manuel Sanchez. His nickname is Loco."

  "Loco Sanchez? No. I have not heard of him."

  He is lying about something, but what?

  "I do not traffic in children."

  "Okay."

  "This is a spurious rumor spread by my competition."

  "Why?"

  "It is obviously intended to attract the attention of the FBI, because they want to shut me down, and it would be so delicious to them if the law were to work to their advantage." He stood up suddenly, and his men reacted. Weapons were cocked.

  I felt the tension rise again and swallowed. "Easy, gentlemen, we're just having a conversation, here."

  "Mr. Callahan? May I call you Mick? Let me repeat this one more time. I do not know of your Loco Sanchez. I do not exploit children." Fancy leaned forward over the desk, bad arm tight against his chest. His voice grew cold. "And I am not fond of those who do."

  "Okay."

  "Can you guess what happens to people I am not fond of, Mick?"

  "I think so."

  "Then kindly do not raise that point again."

  I had run out of options. "I believe you." Darlene was still glowering. I felt like crossing my fingers. "I'm sorry if that question gave insult."

  Fancy sat down. "If I decide to let you go, what will you do next?"

  I told him.

  SEVENTEEN

  "It is my considered opinion that you have less than twenty-four hours to go," Hal Solomon said. The image on the monitor was so crisp he might as well have
been sitting in the hotel room. He pinched the bridge of his nose, adjusted his reading glasses, and patted down his silver hair. Hal seemed weak, exhausted. When he moved in the chair he grunted with pain.

  "Still feeling poorly, Hal?"

  "Merely suffering from jet lag, young stallion. I am now in Japan."

  He's bullshitting me again. "What in the world for?"

  "This poor girl and the child pornography issue truly depressed me. I felt a sad longing to walk the gardens of Kyoto. Such things come over me from time to time. In any event, do you wish to see the rest of the film? As I said, I think you have only one day to go."

  "Until what?" Jerry looked confused. He glanced over at Darlene, but she was cleaning her pistol.

  "In less than twenty-four hours, the giant Burning Man will be set afire and the festival will end," Hal said.

  I sighed. "Mary will probably disappear, and along with her any chance of finding out whether or not any of this leads to the boy."

  "What makes you say all that?" Darlene asked.

  "Think about it. Everything keeps pointing that way. Someone has been playing games with me from the start. Burned patches in my yard, strange phone calls, the guy with the tattoo. I'm starting to wonder if Mary showing up was as much a part of the whole picture as her disappearance."

  Hal looked quizzical. "What do you mean by that, Mick?"

  "She told me she was trouble, more trouble than she thought I could handle."

  "So?"

  "At the time I was convinced she was talking about bringing Fancy down on my neck. Maybe she was trying to warn me about all the rest of it, but couldn't go through with telling me the truth. She was too afraid of whoever put her up to contacting me."

  Jerry frowned. He looked worn and sullen. "Why would anyone send her after you?"

  "I don't know. But I think she felt caught between a rock and a hard place. She couldn't tell me the truth, but she didn't want to set me up either. She couldn't go through with it, so she ran."

  "And someone caught her," Jerry said. It was not a question.

  "Yes. And unless we keep following the trail, we're never going to find out who that was. Hal, is anything particularly special about this year's Burning Man Festival?"

  Hal looked down at his notes. "Not really, another large host of rebellious anarchists, recreational users of LSD and mushrooms, artists, bikers, the odd and the curious are gathering in the empty flats to celebrate a few days of chaos."

  Jerry started hopping up and down as if bored. "There was one thing. The local law supposedly doesn't want the actual burning of that giant figure to happen this year, even in Nevada."

  I motioned for him to sit down. "Kind of renders the event meaningless, doesn't it?"

  "Exactly," Jerry said, and scratched his chin. "So what I heard is that a lot of people are threatening to just go ahead and torch something anyway. Any excuse to party. Hey, sounds okay to me."

  "So there could be a major incident of some kind."

  "Assuming the police choose to intervene," Hal said. "From what I gather, they don't take this all that seriously."

  "Still, it is classic stuff," I said, "polarizing between the conservative and the liberal. The letter of the law versus the will of the people. Maybe that part of it is more meaningful than we think."

  "I don't know much about this thing," Darlene said, "but aren't the vast majority of the folks there pretty harmless?"

  "Absolutely," Hal said. He coughed and grimaced. "In fact, one might argue that such an event serves a valid sociological purpose. A blowing off of steam, shall we say."

  I sipped soda. "At least one person there is far from harmless, but talk about finding a needle in a haystack . . ."

  Hal changed gears abruptly. "Folks, did you believe what Fancy told you yesterday?"

  "Me, I think he's a lying sack of shit," Darlene spat.

  "I don't know. I believed part of what he told us."

  Darlene sneered. "Which part?"

  "I think he is actually proud of his operation, the way he treats his people and tries to protect them. He's arrogant, and he sees himself as a kind of ghetto Robin Hood."

  "While he exploits young women and little children?"

  "Easy, Darlene, I have no intention of defending the man or his lifestyle. I was just making an observation."

  "What else do you believe?" Jerry asked, urgently. "Do you think he knows where Mary is? Was he lying about that?"

  "I'm sure he was lying about something, but I'm still not sure what."

  "While you were bearding your lion, I made three reservations from Ontario airport to Reno," Hal said. "Since everyone in the world seems to know who you are anyway, I made them under your real names."

  "Reno?"

  "There is no service, non-stop or otherwise, to the middle of the desert. To Black Rock or whatever it is. One must improvise."

  "It does make the most sense to fly there, rent a car and drive out to the site," I said. "Flying will save us a lot of time."

  Darlene was already moving. "Then let's go."

  "Black Rock. When Mary called the last time, she said that, then a word that sounded like 'tent.'"

  "And that means?"

  "I guess we'll find out in a few hours. Hal, I want to talk to you alone for a second. Stay on."

  Darlene shrugged and gathered up her things. She and Jerry left to load the vehicle. I sat down at the computer. "Stop lying to me, Hal. It's gotten worse. Tell me what's going on."

  Hal started to speak, stopped. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he looked ancient. "I'm actually in New York, son. Emergency surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning."

  "For the bile duct thing? What's the rush?"

  "They don't know for sure," Hal said. "But as of now it appears to be an infection of the bilary tract. I believe it is called ascending cholangitis, and it is something especially serious in a person my age. At the risk of seeming dramatic, with this condition added to my acute pancreatitis, the situation has now become rather grave. I had hoped to deceive, rather than worry you. I apologize."

  "What is your prognosis?"

  "Let us just say that the surgery has been described as messy, risky, and in no way guaranteed to work."

  "And if it doesn't work?"

  "Callahan," Hal said, mildly. "Have I told you lately that you are valued?"

  "Jesus." I rubbed my palms together. The room felt cold. "Come on Hal, knock it off. You're going to live forever."

  "Most definitely not, but with luck just a bit longer."

  "You seem pretty calm."

  "Well it is my own damned fault, is it not? It seems that all those years of alcoholism and debauchery have finally caught up with me."

  "I may be right behind you."

  "You may indeed. Be certain to warn the revelers at the festival, to wit there is a reckoning."

  "They wouldn't listen. We didn't."

  Hal shrugged. "And so now we cut me open and rearrange my innards. Disgusting."

  "Are you frightened?"

  "Oh, yes." The old man smiled. "Very frightened indeed."

  I choked back tears. "You are valued, too."

  "This I know. And now, please go find those missing people."

  * * * * *

  We kept to ourselves as we traveled. Virtually no conversation took place; each of us lost in thought, the tension continually growing.

  Jerry was jealous, frightened, and confused. He drank too much on the airplane and nodded off; meanwhile, Darlene, doubting my judgment, flipped through some magazines like an enraged housewife ignoring a husband in the dog house. For my part, I stared out the window and wondered at a strange quality of my life; an odd quirk that led me, again and again, to violence.

  Reno airport is large and gaudy. Hundreds of slot machines, all multi-colored and highly seductive, grin and chirp their greetings. The two-way mirrors make the walk to the baggage area seem endless. The bars are generally packed; the seats before the row
s of one-armed bandits filled with desperate people clutching paper buckets and spilling their lives out one lonely quarter at a time.

  At the counter of the car rental agency, we printed out a map.

  I selected a white Volvo station wagon and ordered it delivered with a full tank of gas. We rode a small company van to the pick-up area, still virtually silent. There was no debate about driving. Jerry packed the suitcases and camera gear into the back of the wagon.

  "Why do we still need this shit?"

  I shrugged. "It's really just a way of protecting Darlene. This way she's moonlighting on a legitimate project. And if anyone happens to recognize me, it makes sense why I'm here."

  "You say so." Jerry sighed. He got in and stretched out.

  Reno is flat, and in the smothering summer the roads out of town seem like straight shots into emptiness, like furrows in a pool table, surrounded by pastures and grazing cattle.

  Time passed, civilization fell away.

  I drove on through the blistering heat of the desert, drinking in the scent of the sage and the eerie, vast emptiness that is central Nevada. Darlene slept in the passenger seat. An inflated headrest kept her neck erect. Jerry sprawled out on the back seat, his dusty boots resting on the expensive video camera's black padded case. From the CD player, woman with an Appalachian twang sang: I only miss you when I'm breathing . . .

  Finally, I noticed markers. Some were gaudy, homemade stick figures with arrows pointing due west. Some signs were painted on cardboard in large red letters stating: "Burning Man This Way."

  As a cloud of dust cleared, I saw a nearly naked man in some kind of a thong waving cars into a crowded parking area. I pulled over and rolled down the window. The guy was clearly stoned and almost lavender from sunburn. He had a pistol hanging from his waist like a second phallus. He grinned and leaned in the window, pupils dilated and mouth reeking of pot.

  "Howdy folks," he said. "Welcome to Black Rock."

  "This is it, huh?"

  "First time?"

  "Sure is."

  Jerry awoke and rubbed his sandy eyes. "What?"

  Darlene let the air out of the neck brace. She looked out the window at the huge rows of cars. A few hundred yards away sat a massive expanse of flat white sand, littered with hundreds of tents of all shapes, colors, and sizes. Green portable toilets seemed randomly placed throughout the camp. Towering over it all was a grotesque, massive stick-man, built of wood and neon piping.