Greasing the Piñata

by Tim Maleeny

  “I think they changed their position on that one.”

  “Which is fine,” said Linda. “We learn new things, scientists come up with new theories. They might be wrong again, but at least there are some people who do their homework and try to understand the consequences of their actions.”

  “Feeling old?”

  Linda smacked him on the leg. “Feeling sick and tired of being lectured about the environment—my environment.”

  “Glad it’s yours and not mine. I couldn’t handle the responsibility.”

  “I voted for that bastard.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about him getting re-elected.” Cape stood and brushed off his pants. He extended his hand. “Help you up?”

  Linda shook her head. “I think I’ll stay awhile.”

  Cape bent down and kissed her on the head, feeling her hair intertwine with his own, tugging gently as he pulled away.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Get out of my hair, Oscar.”

  Inspector Garcia ignored the man in the white lab coat, who barely glanced up from his computer screen. His was standing, the computer set at eye level, his shoulders hunched as if he spent more time in that position than he did asleep. His head was clean-shaven, his ears small and slightly pointed near the tops.

  Garcia popped some gum in his mouth. “You look like an elf, Ramirez.”

  “Fuck you. This is a sterile environment.”

  “I took a shower.” Garcia looked around the collection of steel countertops littered with scales, test tubes, computers, and a number of machines he didn’t recognize. “You called me.”

  “You’re supposed to wait in the lobby.” Ramirez pushed his glasses up onto his forehead as he turned away from the computer. “It’s the rules.”

  Garcia blew a bubble and popped it. “You called me.”

  Ramirez shook his head and walked over to a desk near the door. He selected a manila folder and flipped it open.

  “You wanted to know about the floaters?” Ramirez tilted his head forward until his glasses swung down onto his nose.

  Garcia waited.

  “DNA looks like a match.”

  “For both?”

  Ramirez nodded. “Father and son.”

  “Have you told anyone else?”

  “What do you think happened?”

  Garcia ignored him. “Have you told anyone?”

  Ramirez looked at Garcia over his glasses. “You said you would get me soccer tickets.”

  “Yes, I did.” Garcia popped another bubble. “How confident are you?”

  “I want to run it again, just to be sure. This was the second time.”

  “Same results?”

  Ramirez shook his head. “The first sample was degraded with reptilian DNA. You should have told me about the alligators.”

  “Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise.”

  Ramirez scowled. “We use a polymerase chain reaction technique, Garcia. Very sensitive.”

  “You have enough to work with?”

  “Sometimes we only have a strand of hair. You gave me a leg, a torso, an arm—I am rich in evidence, poor on time.”

  “How soon for the final results? I need to make some calls.”

  “Where are the seats?”

  “Goal line—home team.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Ramirez. “You can make your calls tomorrow.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Drive into the desert and look for smoke.”

  The woman working the counter at the AAA office smiled at Cape as she gave him directions that seemed as confusing as her wardrobe. Her dress had a shimmering thread woven into it, making her sparkle as she swayed back forth. She wore white gloves that ran up to her elbows. Her graying hair was pinned up, looking like a dilapidated pyramid on the verge of collapse.

  “That’s it?” Cape tried to sound more appreciative than dumbfounded.

  “If you see purple mountains followed by a fruited plain, you’re in the Midwest and you’ve gone too far.”

  “Got a map?”

  The woman shook her head in disapproval as she handed over a map of Nevada. “No maps for the BRC.”

  “BRC?”

  “Black Rock City.” She leaned closer and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “You’ve never been, have you?”

  Cape shook his head. “My first time.”

  “I couldn’t go this year.” She sighed and looked around the empty office, scowling. “Work.”

  “Bummer.”

  “You got that right. But you missed most of it—today’s the last day.”

  Cape sighed. “Work.”

  “Hey, at least you’ll get to see the man burn, right?”

  “Right.” Cape wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he nodded enthusiastically. It was time to leave.

  “Just drive into the desert?”

  “There’s thirty thousand people camped in the middle of the playa.” The woman spread her arms like Moses. “How can you miss ‘em?”

  The drive took five hours in a pickup he borrowed from a friend. He had an extra tank of gas, blankets, a sleeping bag, and a cooler filled with water, cold cuts, bananas, and enough pretzels to survive a nuclear winter.

  The shadows were getting long by the time Cape turned off the road onto the broken moonscape of the playa, a prehistoric lakebed now dry as a bone. Nothing but cracked earth in all directions, white dust covering the windshield like snow as the truck bumped and jostled its way through a desolation so vast that Cape started to wonder if he’d been transported to the Forbidden Zone on The Planet of the Apes. He squinted into the harsh light, half expecting to catch a glimpse of Charlton Heston on the horizon.

  He began humming the theme from Lawrence of Arabia before he saw Black Rock City. It was an apt name for the collection of tents, cars, and RVs clustered at the heart of Black Rock desert, squeezed into an area less than three miles square. Seen from the air the annual gathering formed a giant U, but from Cape’s vantage point it looked like an invading army.

  Thank God they had a post office.

  It was right next to the portable toilets, adjacent to the radio station, and within walking distance of the fire department, first aid clinic, and recycling center. The ramshackle tents and lean-tos that circled the encampment offered more services than most municipalities. And by tomorrow there wouldn’t be a trace they had ever existed.

  The postman couldn’t have been more than a thousand years old. Cape figured it would take that long just to count the wrinkles in his skin, beginning with deep folds below his eyes that creased and turned all the way down his arms, stomach, and legs. His loincloth and sun visor left little to the imagination.

  Cape removed his sunglasses so the man could see his eyes. “I’m looking for Hera and the Mud People.”

  Methuselah nodded. “Nice bunch, them mud people.” He stood, his knees popping like firecrackers, and pointed along the arc of tents to his left. “At the end of this row are the Luddites. You see that shack of plywood and silk banners?”

  Cape nodded. “Luddites.”

  The old man shook his head. “Got their name from the 19th century movement against technology—folks that smashed the factory machines to protest the industrial revolution. Bunch of phonies, you ask me.”

  “How’s that?”

  “They’re rich wankers from Silicon Valley, geeks from the tech capitol of the world.”

  “Maybe they’re being ironic.”

  “Not likely. They make their millions on stock options, then come out here to get high and hit on college girls from Berkeley.”

  “How about the mud men?”

  “Sure. Turn left at the end of the row, walk into the maze and take your second right. Go all the way to the end—the mud people are out on the rim.”

  If a three-ring circus had sex with a Renaissance festival and then ingested large quantities of psychotropic drugs during its pregnancy, it might give birth to Burning Man. By the t
ime Cape passed the first dozen encampments he wasn’t sure what was real or what he was imagining.

  He passed a family of four on stilts, a boy around fifteen and a daughter who looked slightly older, their bodies painted with lurid colors, faces covered with animal masks. A band of women wearing nothing but grass skirts, their nipples painted to look like eyes, navels turned into gaping mouths. Plenty of people in shorts and tank tops, and just as many wandering around naked, their bodies encrusted with dust. As with most nude beaches, the people who walked around stark naked were the ones you most wanted to see fully clothed.

  Art was everywhere. Wooden platforms filled spaces between the tents and trailers, some more than twenty feet high. Giant birds and pterodactyls made of wire. A six-armed Shiva with glowing eyes, blue lights running down her animatronic arms. In the distance Cape saw a ferris wheel, and somewhere to his left must have been a trampoline, because a man wearing a horned helmet and wings was soaring into the air at regular intervals.

  Cape considered going back to the truck for water. He could taste the dust in the back of his throat as he walked, his shadow stretched before him like a scarecrow twice his size.

  When he came to the end of the row, it was clear where he was headed. Nearly a dozen tents clustered around three large mounds of earth that reminded Cape of igloos. Built from the desert floor, each was roughly ten feet in diameter, crude rectangular doors cut into them. As Cape came within ten feet of the closest mound, a man emerged holding a wooden spear and wearing a mask. A brown and gray bodysuit covered everything else except the man’s feet, upon which he wore a pair of Teva sandals. The mask was made entirely of mud, a fierce expression carved into its rounded surface.

  “Hargabufargas?” The voice was a distorted booming behind the mask.

  “Sorry?” Cape contemplated trying another igloo, but he was hesitant to turn his back on the spear.

  “Wagafusardus!” The mud face looked pissed, its angry eyebrows deep gashes in the mask, the mouth a jagged line. The spear moved up and down ominously.

  Cape spread his hands, open-palmed. “I come in peace.”

  The mud man spun the spear around in one fluid motion, bringing it over his head with the tip pointing down. Cape was trying to decide whether to lunge sideways or try for a kick to the groin when the warrior thrust the spear into the desert floor between them. His hands now free, he reached up and lifted the heavy mask from his head.

  “What do you want?” His voice sounded small without the echo. Black hair tangled with sweat topped a long, narrow face that began with a high forehead and ended in a close-cropped goatee.

  “Must get hot in there.”

  “You must be the detective.”

  Cape shrugged. “Is Rebecc—I mean Hera—she around?”

  The man nodded, sweat running into his eyes. He jabbed a thumb to the right. “Hut number one.”

  Cape strode to the first hut on the left and ducked inside the door.

  “You came!”

  Cape blinked against the darkness but couldn’t see Rebecca, or anything else. Even with dusk on the horizon, the glare outside had been absolute. He sensed movement and felt Rebecca’s arms wrap around him, then release before the blackness turned to spots and then resolved to recognizable shapes within the shadows.

  The temperature was the first sensation, the surprising cool. Looking around Cape saw that the walls were actually nylon. They were inside a camping tent covered with mud made from the desert floor. Fiberglass poles placed at regular intervals added support.

  Rebecca stood three feet away, wearing a skin-tight bodysuit like the mud warrior outside, only on her it looked a lot better. She seemed to be staring at Cape’s shirt.

  “Oops.”

  Cape looked down and saw that his shirt was stained with mud, one streak running down his side onto his shorts. He looked back at Rebecca and noticed corresponding gaps on her suit, revealing bare skin underneath. She shifted her weight and another clump broke off her right thigh, and Cape realized she wasn’t wearing a leotard after all. She was completely naked, painted with dust from the playa.

  This was going to be a lot harder than he thought.

  Cape glanced over his shoulder toward the rectangle of light behind him. “How about we go for a walk?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just turned and stepped outside, putting his sunglasses back on. Cape mentally kicked himself. She’s a client—not your ex-girlfriend, and not a damsel in distress.

  They had only spoken of the deaths in Mexico over the telephone, then she’d come out here to run away from it all. True, she invited him out here, but seeing Cape and dealing with reality were two different things, one an uninvited guest. So he shouldn’t have been surprised when she started running away from him.

  Rebecca brushed past him and strode purposefully across the cracked earth. She headed toward the center of the semi-circle, chunks of clay popping off her thighs and calves.

  A client. Cape picked up his pace. Not a mirage.

  She navigated her way through milling throngs, people in costume all facing in the same direction. Cape lost sight of her, then pushed through into a small clearing between a group dressed like elves and a smaller bunch of robots. And looming over them, stark against the darkening sky, was the Burning Man himself.

  A skeletal figure of wood and glass, it stood on a platform that elevated its height to over sixty feet. The head was squared off, tapering toward a flat chin. Arms that seemed too long for the body, exposed ribs covered in neon and fluorescent lights. It looked ominous in the half-light, a warning of the coming apocalypse. Cape heard drums in the near distance, and speakers blared to life all over the camp. People cheered.

  Rebecca stopped and turned, all the sadness of the world etched into her face. Cape took her right hand in his and didn’t say a word as shadows pooled between their feet like blood. Twilight had come to die in the desert.

  A thunderous roar as thirty thousand people cried out as one. Light coursed across the giant’s frame, neon lightning. Blue and white flashed outward in all directions, flickering with a manic energy that made the giant appear to move.

  Someone at the base of the tower lit a torch and held it against the gasoline-soaked legs of the wooden effigy just as the sun ran for cover.

  Flames ran up the sides of the figure with liquid grace. Fluorescent light bulbs exploded from the heat, sending sparks into the night sky, where they disappeared like yesterday’s plans.

  The burning man was consumed in less time than it takes to think twice. People were cheering, hugging and kissing—Auld Lang Syne of the damned. Cape looked at Rebecca and saw her face streaked with tears, their tracks running down her chin, neck, and across her chest. Their eyes met and she pulled him close, sobbing convulsively as her head hit his shoulder.

  A woman with orange dreadlocks standing a few feet away took notice and smiled sympathetically, gesturing at the crumbling tower and the dying embers of the burning man.

  “Shame it all has to end.”

  Cape didn’t respond, just held on as Rebecca cried away every memory of her brother and father, every regret, missed opportunity, bitter word and forgotten moment. The crowd had dissipated along with the smoke from the fire by the time Rebecca raised her head to look at him.

  “Let’s talk.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Priest sat in the last pew and bided his time.

  About a dozen of the faithful were taking the body of Christ into their mouths, Father Connolly placing the wafers on tongues with fastidious care and exaggerated gestures designed to impress the entire congregation. It reminded Priest of the time when he was fifteen and he bathed the wafers at his local church in LSD. That was a sermon to be remembered.

  Connolly blathered on for another ten minutes before cutting loose his flock. Mothers and children, fathers and friends passed Priest on their way to the front door, never realizing there was a wolf in their midst. A handful stayed behind, people waiting their turn for t
he confessional. Priest remained in the back row while the other parishioners stood or sat a respectful distance away from the twin booths.

  It was another thirty minutes before Priest stepped up to the confessional. He stood for a moment outside the priest’s side of the booth, then looked around the church, checking to be sure he and Father Connolly were alone before slipping into the parishioner’s side.

  Priest leaned back against the wall and sighed, head tilted toward the checkered screen. He could discern movement and shadows, but Father Connolly’s face was all but invisible.

  “I have sinned, Father.”

  “God forgives you.”

  “I sincerely doubt it.”

  Connolly’s reply was soft but insistent. “God’s mercy is infinite.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “It is a very serious matter.” Connolly tried to sound stern but compassionate. “I am merely a vessel for God. Pretend you are speaking to Him, and your sins will be forgiven.”

  “Just like that?”

  Connolly hesitated. “You must be genuinely sorry and resolve to make amends.”

  “There’s always a catch, isn’t there?”

  Connolly took a deep breath. “You came here for a reason—you must be looking for some kind of absolution.”

  “Actually, I just wanted an audience.” Priest leaned closer to the screen and lowered his voice. “I’m trying out some new material.”

  “What?” Connolly’s voice was sharp.

  “Is the Seal of the Confessional something you consider sacred?”

  A long moment passed before Connolly replied. Clearly he was weighing his options, but he took the question seriously.

  “Yes, it is a priest’s most sacred trust. Whatever is said—”

  “Good, because you know what happens to a priest that violates that trust?”

  “Well, there is censure, even excommunic—”

  “No, no, no.” Priest’s voice echoed around the booth, the sound revealing how claustrophobic the space could feel. “Would you like me to tell you what will happen, or would you rather use your imagination?”

  Sudden movement on the other side of the screen, followed by the rattle of a door handle. Priest listened to the sound for several seconds before saying anything.