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

by Harry Shannon

  "What the hell is that?" Darlene asked.

  The man laughed. "Why, that there is Black Rock City. It's a tent city, ma'am." He eyed the camera on the seat. "Now, hold on here," he said. He put his hand on the gun. "Ain't no press allowed."

  Darlene almost reached for her own weapon, but I motioned for her to be still. "No press? Exactly, my man."

  "Huh?"

  I beckoned him closer. "Shit, dude, that's our whole act. There's no film in that camera. My friend here, he doesn't even know how to run the fucking thing. Our act is that we pretend to be from the press, and get people confused and pissed off, but all the while it's all just a put on. Get it?"

  The man grinned. "That's pretty cool. I won't tell."

  "Great," I said. "Where do we park?"

  "Anywhere along in here. There's only one rule, folks. Live and let live. People are here to break out and be free, so don't judge anybody and they won't be judging you."

  "Sounds great to me," Jerry said. He meant it. "Total freedom."

  "It's about love," the man said solemnly. "Real love between the brothers and the sisters."

  "Cool," I said, at a loss for anything else to say. "Thanks a lot."

  "Sure thing."

  We drove away, spewing dust. Darlene shook her head. "Did I just see what I think I saw?"

  "What was that?"

  "Some sunburned dumb-ass running around in a thong with his butt cheeks hanging out, carrying a loaded weapon?"

  "Well, we don't actually know that it was loaded."

  The sound of gunfire peppered the ridgeline. Faint rebel yells floated across the empty sand. A line of cars was driving by some scarecrows and paper targets, calmly blowing them to pieces. A cardboard sign introduced the event as DRIVE BY SHOOTING. More distant gunfire, more voices screaming.

  Darlene looked at me, eyebrows raised. "You were saying?"

  "Nothing."

  "I was under the impression firearms had been banned from this event years ago."

  "Maybe they're shooting blanks."

  She considered. "Maybe. You want to be the one to find out?"

  "You first."

  Jerry yawned. "We'd better find a place to camp. It will be dark in just a few hours. I need a drink."

  "They kind of frown on alcohol," Darlene said.

  "So, I'll have a hit on a joint."

  I frowned. "Take it easy, Jerry. I need you to have your head on straight, okay?"

  "No problem, boss."

  A little too much edge to his voice, like he hasn't forgiven me yet.

  We walked along, our senses gradually overwhelmed by organized chaos. People painted various colors went dancing by, many clearly on psychedelics. A few were openly smoking marijuana, others just carrying sticks of incense. Small fires were lit everywhere, and attendees were cooking everything from hot dogs and veggie burgers to fish steaks. Coolers overflowed with cans of non-alcoholic beer, diet soda, even some contraband wine coolers and pre-mixed cocktails. Loud music flowed from every conceivable direction; we heard drumming, rap songs, country music, and amateurs randomly picking at amplified electric instruments.

  The largest tent had "Black Rock City" spray painted on the side of it in large black letters. Darlene and I exchanged looks and shrugged. We walked in, carrying our small suitcases and sleeping bags. I looked backwards and noticed Jerry was not following us. I tapped Darlene on the shoulder.

  "Watch these," I said, not too concerned. I marched back outside and looked around. Jerry was standing near a pile of old mattresses that lay off to one side, away from the main path. He was shooting something with the video camera. I jogged over. A moaning couple was having sex in the shadows; her legs were wrapped around his waist and they were both oblivious to the world around them.

  "Turn that off," I whispered.

  Jerry sighed and spewed a plume of smoke. His eyes were already red. He'd bummed a hit, and was faded. "Can't blame a guy for trying."

  "Yes, I can, and for getting stoned, too. Do you want to get yourself killed? You'd best stay sober and remember what we're here for, Jerry. Keep your mind on the job."

  "Sorry," Jerry said. "I just can't quite believe this place."

  I surveyed the area. "Me, neither."

  The afternoon sun was cooler, allowing more movement. Three nude girls rode by on bicycles with neon tubes threaded through the spokes. A mime performed in the middle of the walkway, wearing only a makeshift codpiece and facial makeup.

  We passed an open tent and peered in. A group of men wearing feathered Native American headdresses were solemnly passing around a giant bong instead of a wooden pipe.

  We walked into the largest tent, scanning the interior for Darlene. She waved us over to a small space she had cleared. She had unrolled the three sleeping bags and then surrounded and marked off an area with our extra clothing and gear. She spread her hands.

  "Welcome to our hotel suite."

  Jerry wriggled his eyebrows. "No mini-bar?"

  "I'll call room service," Darlene said dryly. She sat down on her sleeping bag and stretched. "Maybe they'll send one up."

  "You do that," I said.

  "Mick, I do have a small piece of news."

  "What's that?" We sat down next to her. Stretching suddenly seemed like a very good idea. I straightened my legs, bent forward and reached for my toes. It hurt. My bad knee popped.

  "See that strange looking creep over there?"

  I looked around the tent. "Can you narrow that down some?"

  "I mean that white-haired old guy, the one in the top hat and tails and green swimming trunks."

  I found him, taking cash from some new arrivals. "Got it."

  "He takes the camping fees and coordinates the cleanup tomorrow morning. He said he thinks he might remember having seen Mary in here yesterday."

  I blinked. "Go on."

  "I gave him the description, and he said he thinks he saw her with three other people. He remembers because she looked like she didn't want to be there. One guy kept slapping her and pushing her around. He was talking in English, or sometimes in pretty bad Spanish."

  "Why does he think it was Mary?"

  "He used her name. More than once."

  I pondered. "This guy who hit her, what did he look like?"

  "Big bastard, all buffed out. That's why nobody had the guts to stand up to him. Guy had his head shaved clean, and he wore some kind of a nose ring. Sound like anybody you know?"

  Oh great, just great, some mountain of a skinhead. "Not really."

  "There was a woman along, too," Darlene said. "Brunette, glasses. He doesn't remember anything else about her."

  "You said three."

  "That is the weirdest part. There was a child with them, too. A little boy."

  I felt it in my bones. "How old?"

  "He didn't know, Mick. He guessed nine or ten, maybe. The kid only spoke Spanish, from the sound of it, so it could be our kid."

  "Could be." I thought for a moment. "One thing worries me; they're not exactly hiding from us, are they?"

  "Lot of guns around here."

  "That crossed my mind, too."

  I suddenly realized Jerry hadn't spoken. He was sprawled out on a sleeping bag with his head on the camera case, one hand wrapped around the handle for protection. Once again, he appeared to be sleeping . . . or passed out.

  "Jerry?"

  Groggy. "Huh?"

  "You stay here and watch our stuff, okay? Darlene and I are going to go see what's going on."

  "Yes master," Jerry said, "whatever you say." He yawned and closed his eyes again. "Wake me if you need something."

  "One hour, okay?"

  "Got it."

  Darlene asked: "Or what?"

  "Or he blows the whistle and calls the local police to come looking for us. What did you think?"

  "Oh."

  As we walked away, Darlene looked back. She seemed puzzled. "He's not really going to sleep again?"

  "I sure hope not. Jerry is a lot
smarter than he looks. He can take care of himself."

  "Except when there are naked women and drugs around."

  The afternoon sun was a reddish, watercolor smear on the skyline. An oval mirage shimmered on the northern desert, and vultures circled carrion to the west. The sweating, teeming mass of inebriated humanity had compacted upon itself and become one giant canvas-covered bacchanal. Something stirring and primitive was taking place, and the incessant drumming, low and rhythmic, felt wildly erotic.

  After a moment, I stripped off my shirt and grabbed her hand. "Let's look natural."

  I was only partly serious. Darlene leaned into me, and I felt an electric charge. We walked briskly, surreptitiously scanning the surroundings. The nude oddities increased and were by turns amusing, overwhelming, and then finally just deadening. We passed bottomless mock-priests and nuns in white collars and body paint, a wagon that served lemonade directly from the tap spigot or in a paper cup, three beautiful young topless girls who sat reading magazines.

  There was an intelligent symmetry to the camp's layout, although at first glance it seemed to have evolved by accident. The improvised "tent city" patterned out from the center in an interlocking series of squares. The toilets were well placed; each served one long row of "art" exhibits. Despite the apparent chaos and confusion, the vast majority of celebrants seemed playful and harmless. We saw two young men begin to argue, but the people around them intervened and broke up the fight before it got started.

  "Okay, I give up," Darlene said. She had moved up on her toes to whisper in my ear, and her breath gave me chills, despite the blistering heat. "What are we looking for?"

  "Damned if I know, just anything that could be linked to Mary, Loco, or Fancy, child pornography, or even some big, ugly bastard with a shaved head and a nose ring."

  I realized we were nearing the outer rim of the tents and approaching rows of parked vehicles. I turned and scanned the horizon. A small trail led off into some low dunes. I tugged Darlene's hand.

  "That way."

  "Any particular reason?"

  "Mostly because it doesn't look so crowded. Look, I'm betting the clues were meant to bring us to Burning Man tonight. And whoever took Mary didn't even try to hide, right?"

  "They wanted us to know they were here."

  "But if you plan on harming somebody, do you want to do it in public, or in private?"

  "Point taken," Darlene said. She tilted her head and looked up at me with an impish grin. "Jesus, Callahan, for a minute there I thought you actually wanted to be alone with me, for some reason."

  "Oh. Well, maybe that too."

  "God, that's so sexy," Darlene said. "The word maybe is such a turn on for a woman."

  "Oh, cut me some slack."

  We moved away from the crowds and into the last row of parked cars, still holding hands. Two handsome young gay men strolled twenty yards ahead of us. They were clearly lovers.

  "I get the feeling there's no privacy anywhere," I said, a bit more regretfully than I'd intended.

  "Mick?" Darlene whispered. She tugged on my arm. I bent down and turned my head. She grabbed my face, adjusted it, and kissed me. The moment lasted.

  I finally pulled away. "Yes."

  Darlene grinned. "Yes what?"

  "To whatever you were thinking."

  I will never understand how I noticed it. After all, the late afternoon was filled with the smoke of cooking fires and the sound of firearms discharging. Somehow, an atavistic dread clutched at my stomach when I saw a small plume of smoke rising from an indentation in the cracked, white ground at the far outskirts of the parking area.

  "What is it?" Darlene asked.

  The two men who had been walking ahead of us came racing back, shouting something.

  I jogged ahead of Darlene, who had already slipped the handgun into her fist. One of the young men was crying and waving his arms. People responded from various angles and began to flood into the area. Meanwhile the other boy cried "Jesus" over and over again.

  When we got to the top of the small rise, I looked down into the gully at the source of the smoke and my gorge rose. A blackened human figure lay in the middle of the indentation, curled in the fetal position. The clothing was burned off; the flesh roasted dark in places, cracked and meaty red in others.

  It was a woman. She was still breathing. Her dark hair was nearly singed away, and the pretty face had gone rigid with agony. Her teeth were bared in a macabre grimace. A video cassette lay near her outstretched fingers, a large piece of tin near her bare feet. The tin had two words spray painted in black: FILM THIS!

  "Oh God no," Darlene said. She clutched at my elbow. "Tell me that isn't her, Mick."

  I was too stunned to respond. I heard the sound of someone vomiting nearby. I fixed my gaze on the darkening horizon as tendrils of smoke stung my eyes. More and more people arrived, wept and wailed. A woman called that she was a nurse and began tending to the burned woman. I tried to gather strength. I swallowed and forced myself to look again.

  A few yards away, also in the gully, lay another figure: This one was a man, someone unknown to me. He wore blue jeans, a western short with a string tie, and was clutching a small gun and what seemed a suicide note. The man had apparently placed the gun under his chin and fired. Most of his face was gone, and part of his forehead had shattered and sprayed itself up onto the baked dune.

  "Mick, tell me," Darlene said urgently. "Is that Mary?"

  We heard the wail of an approaching ambulance. I forced myself to look more closely at the burn victim. The attending nurse was now sobbing. I ran my eyes over the face and body again; studied the heaving bosom and the grimace of agony frozen on those once-pretty features.

  * * * * *

  . . . Loco slowly came to his senses. He was surprised that he could see. There was no blindfold, but it was pitch black within the van anyway. It was no longer moving. He vaguely remembered that they had photographed him again, this time alone and in his underwear. His mouth tasted terrible. They must have changed drugs, because he felt worse than before. His head was pounding. It took him several moments to remember the metal panel and the loosened screws.

  His hands were bound again, but he fingered the panel and pulled up. A slight crack of fading daylight entered the van. He grinned in the darkness and pulled again. The metal screeched and he froze. It would move no further. After several attempts he realized he needed to loosen more screws. He groped at the back of his belt, and then began to cry.

  The screwdriver was gone. They had taken it while he slept.

  EIGHTEEN

  "What's the story?"

  We were back in the tent, sitting on sleeping bags. I had my arm around Jerry, who was crying and trembling. He had already gotten high again. All around us, the revelers continued the final night's party, most unaware that something horrific had just taken place. The police had cordoned off the crime scene, but it lay too far outside of the main camp to have affected the festivities.

  "I used the cell phone," Darlene said. "I called the hospital and I asked if anybody was taking up a collection for the poor girl, what happened, things like that. Nobody would tell me anything. It took a few calls, but I finally got a nurse with a big mouth."

  "And?"

  "They don't know her name, but she is not expected to live. The nurse said that is probably a blessing in disguise."

  "Yeah, it is. What do the local cops think?"

  "The official line is murder-suicide."

  "Fuck that!" Jerry tried to stand up, but failed. He had been sobbing for several minutes. His face was red with rage. "Are they fucking crazy?"

  "You can't blame them, Jerry," Darlene said. "On the surface, it looks pretty open and shut. They found a note in the guy's fist. It said he loved her and couldn't take her behavior any more."

  "Oh, right."

  "Jerry, it claimed Mary was shooting porn films involving little children. It said he couldn't get her to stop. Remember the video tape that was near her
feet, Mick?"

  I knew what was coming. "The nurse said a cop told her what was on it. And it was Mary, doing pornography."

  "Of course."

  "What about the man?" Jerry asked blearily. He took another deep hit on a joint someone had given him. "Who was he?"

  Darlene sat down and hugged her knees. "DOA, no identification of any kind on the body. Naturally, that means it will probably take a couple of weeks to identify him from dental records, so their cover story will hold up at least that long."

  "That's long enough." I patted Jerry on the shoulder, fumbled around for a canteen and drank some water.

  Darlene waited, and when I didn't continue she asked, "Long enough for what, Mick?"

  "Long enough to kill me and get out."

  "Well, maybe it's time we got out."

  "Not yet."

  "I know that if I get too mixed up in this, it could ruin my career and cost me my pension, but I'm angry as hell too, Mick. I'm thinking whoever did this also shot Donato that night, thinking he was you."

  "Bet on it."

  Jerry was several moments behind the conversation. "What did they do, just pick some poor stoned kid at random and blow his brains out to set up an alibi for killing Mary?"

  "That's exactly what they did."

  "We're not leaving," Jerry barked. His eyebrows pranced. He was slurring his words. "We can't. Whoever did this has to pay. We owe it to her, Mick." He reached over and grabbed my sleeve. "We owe it to Mary, man."

  "I know that."

  "I need a drink," Jerry said. "In fact, I need a six-pack."

  "No, don't get any more fucked up than you already are," I said, sternly. "It won't help anything." I got to my feet. "I'm going to the john. I'll be back in a couple of minutes. We'll put our heads together and figure out what the hell to do next."

  When I walked outside, the wind was picking up, moaning soft and low. Sand stung my eyes and I covered them with my palm. Several people were struggling to hold some cheaper cloth tents upright, but the sudden storm knocked them down like dominoes.