by Cameron West
fifteen
Imade my way back down the rugged path and did the thing with the chain, stopping to plant a kiss on the combination lock. Easing out onto Highway 1, I pulled into the first gas station I spotted and filled the tank. I rang Archie’s cell phone, but the call didn’t go through.At the fastest speed prudence would allow, I drove down 128 to 101, every fiber in my being yearning to streak through like a Japanese train, ripping up mailboxes and tearing down clotheslines with the sheer force of my wind drag.
The earth slowly rotated out of daylight. I pressed on through San Francisco and San Jose, down 101 to Highway 5, fighting off the inevitable effects of mental and physical overexpenditure. As my eyes grew heavy, thoughts began to flow like sailors’ whiskey.Noble purpose, Pop and Mona, Circles of Truth, Ginny and Archie, Big Bear, curly hair, Fred Astaire, debonair.
Suddenly the ride turned bumpy and I jerked awake. I had crossed the breakdown lane and was barreling down the slope of a canyon doing seventy-five. I tugged the wheel, hoping to change direction without fishtailing, but I was going too fast at too sharp an angle and lost control.
One option left. I countersteered hard right and yanked the hand brake, locking the back wheels, throwing the Jag into a spin. When the car was halfway around, I tromped on the gas. The tires smoked. Dirt and gravel kicked up all around me as the full force of the big engine battled my rearward momentum.
Don’t blow, I prayed to the tires as I headed backward down the embankment, rubber squealing, motor growling. In three frantic seconds the tug-of-war ended, the Jag winning out over the sloping ditch.
I sat perfectly still, the smell of burnt rubber wafting through the window. My heart thumped like in a Betty Boop cartoon. I reached for the key; my hand was shaking. I had the heights, two feet from the ground.
Ginny’s hand had steadied me in the garden—before I’d unraveled the secret of the Circles. Just a little tremor, I thought. I turned the key.
The big engine purred as if nothing had happened; the muffler masked the angry boom of sparking gasoline. I threw the Jag into first gear and edged back into the night as the radio played the Beach Boys singing “California Girls.”
Pulling off at Magic Mountain, I ducked into a Safeway, used the facilities, bought a Boulder Bar and some juice, slammed them down, and tried Archie again.
Still no connection.
A well-groomed man carrying a bag of groceries passed by. His pager went off. Something in my head went off, too. Of course. Archie’s pager!
I dialed, punched in the number of the pay phone, hit the pound sign, and slammed down the receiver. Now all I had to do was stand there and wait, maybe get an empty coffee cup and hold it out to the Magic Mountaineers. Alms for the idiot.
Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. I just about yanked it off the wound metal cord.
“Archie?”
“Gagmaster?” he answered in his familiar baritone. “Sorry to be so long. We had to get to a pay phone.”
“Is she with you?” My heart beat fiercely.
“Affirmative.”
“Is she all right?”
“Of course,” he said. “She’s withme.”
I sagged against the side of the phone booth, bursting with feelings I couldn’t comprehend.
Archie said,“Hey . . . you all right?”
“I am now.”
“Where are you?”
I told him.
“Okay,” he said, “take Five to Fourteen North to Pear Blossom Highway to Eighteen to Thirty-eight to Fawnskin. We’re at 2116 Fawn Skin Drive, just past the four-thousand-feet elevation mark. Look for the bear I made out of a tree. Got it?”
I said I did.
“Good,” he said.“Here.”
I heard the muffled sound of two voices, then one that made my knees weak, questioning, “Reb?”
“Ginny,” I breathed.
“Thank God. What happened at Pop’s?”
“Didn’t Archie tell you? He was there.”
“He was? That doesn’t make sense.”
“How did you hook up with him?”
“I’ll explain when you get here. Hurry.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m getting on the road.”
“Wait. Have you still got the Circles?”
Pride swelled in me. “I most definitely do.”
“What are you saying?” she asked, incredulous. “Are you telling me you actually figured them out?”
I let my silence answer.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you did it!”
“I’m coming to get you,” I told her, my mouth suddenly dirt-dry. “Be there in a couple of hours.”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” she whispered. “Bye.”
I hung up, gently this time, totally intoxicated with emotion, but thirsting for more, dying to drink from her well forever, to gulp quenching heartfuls of her.
There was plenty of gas in the Jag, too much blood in my veins, and exactly enough grit in my soul.
Drive, Traveler, drive.
I passed roving headlights and billboards advertising blue jeans and breakfast specials. Satellite dishes prayed to the licorice sky, red-eyed fruit bats swooped, teenage lovers sweated, and me, the son of the museum curator and the woman with the acorn eyes, steered to where nature intended.I felt a pull on the stitches in my back, triggering images of Pop and Mona—their tears and kindness. The two of them, maybe right this moment, under a well-worn quilt. Soft old skin touching soft old skin. Pop making merry with Mona the maiden. And afterward, chocolate-chip cookies. The stuff of Comptche, the husk of human life.Life.I was sticking my toe in the pool and it felt good.
Before long I was bucking and dipping on the ridiculous Pear Blossom Highway, a two-lane shortcut to Big Bear. The San Bernardino Mountains were on my right, the dead-flat desert on my left. The road was so wavy, the highs and lows so extreme, that cars driving toward me looked like they were sending signals in Morse code.
I clicked on a classical station. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 lilted on the radio and a strange chaotic sensation contrasted with the sweeping harmonious music. My breathing became shallow, my thoughts as coarse as a cat’s tongue. Disconcerted, I mentally administered a self-exam.
My back was definitely sore where Pop had sewn me up, my buns were barking, my knee ached from smacking the dashboard during the spinout, and my underwear had been up my crack for a hundred and fifty miles. Exam results: mental melee, physical foundering. Therapist’s recommendation: Change life and underwear.
Archie’s directions were precise. A hundred yards past the elevation marker, I saw his sculpted bear. It looked more like a fat woodenmonkey. I could picture Archie out there on a summer day with the McCullough, yanking the saw cord, brrrrmmm, bup bup bup, bzzzzzzzzzz, whoops, fuck it, bzzzzzzzzzz, whoops, fuck it. Hacking on the helpless pine, sweat dripping onto the saw’s rubber grip. Not exactly Michelangelo chipping away everything that wasn’t David.
I drove down the long driveway till I spotted Archie’s Hummer parked in front of a big A-frame cabin. The lights in the house were out; smoke drifted up from the chimney toward the pregnant yellow moon. I parked, grabbed the box of transparencies and notes, and groaned my way out of the car.Why are the lights out?Although the air wasn’t brisk, I suddenly got goose bumps.
Then someone grabbed the back of my jacket and put a gun to my head. Instantly I dropped to the ground like a sack of stones, catching my assailant by surprise. I scissored his legs and he went over, his silver gun glinting in the moonlight.
Grabbing his gun hand, I twisted hard. I heard an ugly snap and a cry just before a bolt of lightning hit my neck and time stopped.
When I came to, I was sitting in a steel and leather chair in front of the hearth in Archie’s living room. A nicely built fire crackled on the grate. When the heat reached a little air pocket in one of the split logs, it made a pop and sparks flew against the glass fireplace doors. The sound echoed in my head like a boom from the “1812
Overture,” and was accompanied by considerable pain, which flared from my left eye back to what I assumed was a good-sized lump behind my ear.Off to my right a familiar throaty female voice uttered, “Reb.” I felt comfort, as though a soft blanket had been fluffed over me.
I painfully inched my head toward the sound. Only four feet away, Ginny sat in an identical chair.
A hand with manicured and polished fingernails touched her shoulder. She shivered in response.
“See, honey?” an ominous voice said. “I told you he’d be back.”
My eyes followed a black kidskin sleeve up to a shoulder, to a collar,-to the tattoo of a serpent. The snake seemed to undulate with each carotid throb.
I elevated my gaze to meet a harsh chin, then a sneering mouth and the tip of a Roman nose, then two black eyes seizing my stare.
“Flame Boy,” Tecci called out, like a long-lost pal. “We meet again on terra firma.”
The sound waves rippled down my spine, shuddering me fully awake. I took in the sight of Nolo Tecci, his disturbed face angular and Picasso.
Memory’s ghosts sprang from their cots, their long arms reaching-—the blaze, the screams, the falling ceiling. The sea horses on the doctor’s tie reared, whinnying at the sight of the serpent in their path. Liquid fury flash-flooded my senses. I lurched forward, but my wrists and ankles were tightly bound to the chair with box twine.
Tecci let out a pull-the-wings-off-a-fly laugh. Ginny wasn’t tied down. She made a move toward me, but he squeezed her shoulder harshly, forcing her back into her chair.
I steeled myself, sucked in a long breath through my nose and let it out slowly.
“Where’s Archie?” I asked.
“Taking a little nap,” Tecci answered. “He’s a big one. Made a nice heavy-bag for my men. Gave them an excellent workout. By the way, my guy out in the driveway? I think you broke his wrist. He’s in the kitchen, wrapping it in ice. He doesn’t like you as much as I do. Hey, Jocko,” he yelled, “are you a little upset with Flame Boy?”
An angry voice from the other room called, “I’m gonna break his fuckin’ neck, Mr. Tecci. Just give me a minute.”
Ginny gasped. Nolo dug into her shoulder again and turned his head toward the doorway. “Quiet now, Jocko. You’re upsetting Ms. Gianelli.”
I noticed the reflection of the flickering fire on Tecci’s polished loafers. He looked down at them, too.
“You know, Flame Boy, labor’s pretty cheap. The Krauts, the Wops, everybody’s cheap. That’s because they’re ignorant.” He shouted in Jocko’s direction again, “You’re incredibly stupid, aren’t you?”
There was no answer from the kitchen. Nolo stomped the floor twice like a stage manager giving a cue. Jocko appeared in the doorway, a strong-looking guy with a blocky chin and male-pattern baldness, wearing a white Polo shirt smeared with dirt. His wrist was wrapped in a checkered towel. He cradled it delicately.
“Aren’t you stupid?” Nolo prompted.
“Yeah,” Jocko acknowledged reluctantly, eyes downcast. Then he disappeared into the kitchen.
“That was a very good answer, don’t you think?” Nolo said, smiling at me. “Do you think that was a good answer, Ms. Gianelli?”
Ginny looked at me with fear. “Yes.”
“It was a good answer, wasn’t it, Joey?” Nolo spoke to someone behind me.
“Good answer,” a deep voice replied.
“Do you like it, Lon?” Tecci said to someone off to my right, just out of view.
“I like it,” he answered, sniffling like he had a cold.
Nolo picked up a handful of transparencies from a small pine table next to Ginny. The sheets were a total mess, most of them bent. They must have gone flying when I hit the ground.
“By the way, Flame Boy,” Nolo said, sifting through them, “I really appreciate these righteous rings. The question is, how do they go together and what do they mean? Look at all of them.”
I saw the killer’s hands touching Mona’s transparencies—my work, Leonardo’s genius—leaving infernal imprints on everything, visible only to me through the infrared of my hatred.
“How did you find us?” I asked defiantly. “I got the Hollister House bit that you had my car phone, but how’d you get here?”
“Ma Bell. We checked out the main phone at the inn right after you had the party with the Germans. I told Krell we shouldn’t usethose boys, but he’s a patriot, you know. I guarantee he never had a Nathan’s hot dog in his entire life. Anyway, we misplaced you for a little while until the dear sweet cannoli here called with the A.F.B.B. business. That didn’t sound like a reservation to me. And, of course, as you might expect, I have a source who’s got the spread on you and everyone you ever met. So A. F., that was Archie Ferris in a heartbeat. And
B. B . . . well, not too difficult. Tell him, honey,” he said to Ginny, “how you got all the way down here from the North Coast.”
“Don’t call me honey,” she snapped.
Nolo smiled at me. “I do like her,” he said.
Kneeling down on the carpet, he placed his chin on Ginny’s shoulder.-She flinched.
“When I say do something,” he whispered in her ear, “you must do it. Now tell him.”
Ginny nervously licked her lips. “I took a cab,” she said softly.
Nolo stood up and laughed. “She took a cab! The girl took a four-hundred-mile taxi trip. I love that.” He stomped the floor.
Jocko came back to the doorway, as if on cue.
Nolo stopped laughing. “Get out,” he snarled. “I didn’t call you.”
The man withdrew.
Nolo waved the transparencies at me. “All right,” he said. “I repeat, Flame Boy. How do they go together?”
I let my face hang loosely, showing apparent ease while inside thoughts crashed into each other like bumper cars.
“I’m a stuntman, Nolo,” I said. “What do I know about this kind of thing? I was just trying to figure it out myself.”
“Well, that’s good, Flame Boy, that’s exceptionally good. Of course you don’t know what it means. How could you? But you, darling,” he said to Ginny. “You know what it means.”
“I’m an art historian,” she said. “The designs may have historical significance, but I have absolutely no idea of what.”
Nolo mimicked, “I have absolutely no idea of what. You’re quite a hot little condiment, aren’t you? Here’s what I think. Flame Boy wasplaying Dick Tracy and somehow he uncovered some sort of code that Leonardo da Vinci made up five million years ago.”
Nolo brushed the edge of one of the transparencies against his closely shaved chin. “I’m going to get a dollar for every one of those years, once Krell’s analysts crack the code. That’s where you come in, art girl. In case whatever the eggheads find out needs some artistic interpreting.” He caressed Ginny’s hair.
I futilely twisted my wrists against the twine.
“Relax, Flame Boy,” he said. “I’m just toying with her. We’ve got the two pages of da Vinci’s notes and all these nice circles on translucent paper. Herr Krell is going to be blissful.”
“By the way, where is Krell?” I asked. “I’d like to meet him, share the bliss with him.”
“In his jet.” Nolo shrugged.
“Well,” I said, “if Wiener’s at the airport, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
“Wiener . . . You’re a card, a regular joker.”
My stare hardened, the molten pool of loathing solidifying in my gut.
“I’m the Ace of Spades, Tecci,” I uttered. “I always turn up.”
“Oooh,” he taunted, “I’m trembling like a twig in a twister. That’s not bad, twig in a twister. Do you think? Ah, I have the muse in me.”
Keep him talking.
“Hey, Nolo. How did you know we were taking the taxi to Torcello Island?”
“Ah, money talks, Ace. In fact it screams,” Tecci said with a malignant leer. “Now the question is, will you?”
Nolo set the clu
tter of transparencies down on the table, reached into his inside jacket pocket, and withdrew something that looked like a silver garage door opener with a little gooseneck attached to it. A surgeon’s laser.
“You won’t be turning up, Ace. You’ll be burning up. You and your pal,” he said, stroking the apparatus like a piece of velvet. “But first, I’ve got to sign off on you.”
I swallowed hard. The signature “N” in the nape.
“Not her,” I said, my eyes locked on Tecci’s.
“That’s very touching,” he smirked. “I really think he’s soft on you, sweetheart. One never knows. It’s conceivable I might even get stuck on you, myself. Ms. Gianelli comes with us. She’s not a roaster, she’s a coaster. A coast-to-coaster. For now.”
Tecci pulled a two-pronged electric device for zapping muggers from his pants pocket and casually zapped Ginny with it; instantly, her arms and legs splayed out and she collapsed, limp as a scarecrow. So that was the lightning bolt that laid me out in the driveway.
Tecci replaced the zapper in his pocket and clicked on the laser. He took a step toward me. “Joey, Lon,” he called to his goons.“Hold Flame Boy’s head back for me. Are you ready to scream, Ace?”
I gripped the metal rails of the chair, bracing myself for the pain.
Somebody grabbed my hair and pulled. I heard pops as my neck bent back, gas escaping from between cervical vertebrae, like at the chiropractor. Tough hands with callused fingers held my forehead. I smelled Nolo’s breath as he exhaled. It was oddly sweet—toothpaste-sweet.
“Now don’t move,” Tecci said. “I like to be neat.” Dread surged in me as I felt the first sting of the laser on my neck and smelled the unnatural scent of burning flesh.
I stubbornly clung to a thimbleful of resolve not to howl in agony.
“Nice cursive N,” Nolo said, like a grammar-school kid, “loop, down, and up and over the mountain.” I pictured him with the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, focused.
“I did it just like this to your father in his study while you and Mommy were upstairs sleeping,” he whispered in my ear.
