by Victor Koman
The phenomena that a lot of people call `magic' consist of methods to unlock selected portions of the human mind. Once open, these parts of the mind can perform astonishing feats and induce powerful changes in the outside world. After what happened to us, you can't deny that there are certain people who can see things that others can't."
I didn't like it. It sounded too self-consciously mystical. "I could still be tripping on the drugs," I said.
"Not many people see an RTD bus stop on acid."
"Could be a bum trip."
"Dell-just because most people can't integrate a variable across an interval doesn't mean that a mathematician is a magician simply because he can."
"It would have a thousand years ago."
"Yes, but we see the difference now. The mathematician has merely been trained to use a part of his mind in a specific manner. A... whatever you want to call her-a witch-is trained to manipulate a different set of symbols for the same purpose: to understand and utilize nature."
The bus arrived. I flagged it down.
Ann stood and stretched like a gold and turquoise cat. She wasn't concerned with any reply I might have made. We were both tired.
The bus lumbered off the freeway and slowed. It was an aging thing, wary of its movements. It hissed and grumbled to a halt, its brakes creaking like old muscles.
Ann paid for both of us. I picked seats near the rear exit. The only other passengers were an old woman behind the driver and a young bum behind us. The old lady wore a rotting brown cloth coat and held a paper bag full of paper bags to her chest. She muttered quietly to the outside world, damning it for her grief.
The young man sat reading a trashy pornoplaque, the cleanest thing about him. Sweat stained his denim jacket in twin circles under his arms. He chewed on something that occasionally dripped past his lips into his ruddy beard, disappearing from sight.
After several minutes of uncomfortable silence, Ann asked, "Do you believe in god? Really believe?"
"No. It wasn't part of my upbringing."
"Do you believe in satan?"
"It's a package deal, sister. I don't believe in either one. If I need to see the devil, I only have to look as far as a local precinct house where a cop beats out confessions. Or a government office where nicely dressed agents take your money to line their pockets. Or the city streets where some punk would kick his grandmother's head in for a quarter."
"Humanity's not all that bad, Dell."
"Sure," I said, "I know-somewhere there glows the pure fire of truth, reason, justice, and hope." I drew a cigarette from my pack and lit it. "I'd like to find it someday."
The old lady at the front looked at me and pointed at the No Smoking sign. She coughed into her hand, looked at it, and wiped it on her coat.
Ann didn't notice. She smiled at me. "You may have your chance yet."
"Yeah. And pigs may fly." I gazed out the window. "Speaking of which, that police helicopter's been circling Van Ness for quite some time."
Ann looked and frowned. "Think they found the Porsche?"
"Money talks. Cops love to listen. The church can make lots of conversation." I smiled. "I wonder how Golding's going to explain it."
"Let's get back to the rest of the message." She chewed on her lip. "Do you think we should risk going to your office?"
I took a long drag on the cigarette while considering the question. Finally I said, "I think we'll have some time before any officer decides to brave the Arco itself. The story about the radiation dies hard. Beathan and his boys are more likely to conduct the search rather than bring in a third party."
"Gambit!" she said suddenly.
I ground out my cigarette butt under my heel and turned toward her. Her eyes had regained some of their life.
"A gambit is a move in chess where an unimportant piece is sacrificed near the beginning of the game as part of a greater strategy."
"And who's the pawn we're looking for?"
"Bridget said, `The paradoxical one is the gambit.'" Ann mused for a moment. "`A thousand men yet none' is a paradox."
"It's a contradiction, actually. You think a thousand men are going to be sacrificed somewhere?" I watched the `copter circle around south Hollywood a couple more times. They gave up and flew east.
"Maybe a thousand men. Maybe none." She leaned back to stare at the ceiling. "The paradox is linked to the gambit somehow. And what about the monsters beneath the earth born of fire and all that?"
I shrugged. "Hell, obviously. It's got to be all a metaphor."
"Yes! But for what?"
I spread my hands helplessly. "I'm no philosopher."
The bus rumbled over the Harbor Freeway junction, which was more pothole than pavement. It lumbered up the Third Street offramp. I pressed the bell strip to signal the driver. He turned around to look back at us with languid, pained eyes. Air brakes wheezed, coughed once, and growled us to a halt. The doors ached open.
"Metaphors are fine," I said, stepping off the bus and extending my hand to her like some scruffy Galahad. Like a tousled Guinevere, she took my arm and stepped to the pavement. "Except that a metaphor can be misconstrued. Look at the different ways the stories in the Bible are interpreted. That stuff she mumbled could have a hundred different meanings. If it means anything at all."
We crossed the freeway overpass to stroll down toward Figueroa and the Arco Towers. Ann grew moody.
"We'll just have to keep at it until we find the answer."
"Fine," I said. "My fee is five hundred grams a day. In the meantime, I'm involved in another project."
She stopped and turned toward me. The wind from the freeway blew through her hair, tugging at her dress. Her hair and shiny Danskin top shimmered in the descending sunlight like a dream of drifting gold dust on a distant blue horizon.
"This is part of your project. Those phenomena were no coincidence. Those priests didn't pick us randomly to kidnap. Those Nazarene Nazis didn't just happen to pass by the store and decide to smash it up. They recognized you as being a focal point of fundamental importance."
"So I've got someone running scared. So Ammo's setting up the crime of the millennium. The world trembles." I kept walking.
She fell in step with me after a moment. "It's more than that, Dell. Bridget said, `The time of the Number is nigh.' I think you just hit on it. We're less than two months away from the millennium. A lot of people believe that the millennium will mark the return of the kingdom of god."
"Then they'll be off by a year. The millennium begins with the year two thousand
one.
"
"People like large round numbers."
"Yeah," I said. "Especially on pieces of engraved paper. And that's just what all the professional prophets and doomsayers have been getting in exchange for undelivered goods."
"Wouldn't it be nice to change that?"
We'd reached the bottom of the offramp. I turned right at Figueroa.
"Killing God wouldn't change that," I said. "If He even exists at all, He hasn't done much to prevent people from exploiting His name. Removing Him won't stop the con game."
"It might," she said, "if the victims saw through the sham."
The day was still clear, the sky about as brown as it usually is in fall. Most of the derelicts were somewhere else. A beautiful day. Not a drop of blood in the sky. Old Downtown lay quiet and still, the late afternoon shadows long and cool.
Ann stopped to point in shock at what was left of the sign advertising the underground Arco Plaza shops. The shops had been abandoned after the blast, of course, and the below-street mall sealed up.
"Dell-" She dropped her arm down and turned to me. "You know the traditional image of the Devil's tail, don't you?"
"Long. Black. A heart or spade shape on the end."
"Like an arrow."
I nodded. She nodded. We looked at the Plaza sign. A fat black arrow described a three-quarter circle to point downward.
"`The tail of the Dark One points to the
out and down, running near full-circle,'" she recited. "
He's down there!
"
It was as if someone had thrown a switch.
I tried to ask, "Who?" but the word froze in my throat as I stared at the sky. Without a cloud anywhere, the sky suddenly darkened. A wind whipped up behind us, icy and insistent. My ears rang from growing pressure, like an inaudible vibration that blanked out all sound. Above us, the jagged remains of the tower were transformed into a gleaming black dagger poised over the earth.
"We can't get down there," I said over the deafening silence. "The Plaza's been a ruin ever since the bombing. Abandoned. Most of the radioactive debris was washed into it during the decontamination."
Ann stared in horror at the phantasmal ebony blade suspended above us. Blood formed along its cutting edge, running down to fall in impossibly huge droplets to the rubble in the street.
Laughter echoed up from somewhere. A mocking, derisive obscenity that sounded uneasily familiar, like the voices that shout in nightmares.
We both stood our ground. Shadows reached down from the lightless sky to flit about us. They snaked and twisted about, always at the edge of perception, just at the far corner of sight.
"How dangerous is it down there?" Ann asked.
"You have to ask?" I swatted at the spooks even as the wind pushed us closer. "I lived two hundred feet above it for twelve years and got cancer for my trouble."
"If he's down there," she said, not even hearing my answer, "we've got to stop him." She glared unblinking at the dagger aimed at the heart of the world.
"If he's down there-whomever you mean-I need to get into my office. The church tithed my Colt when they sapped me."
"You want to go inside
that?
" The glittering, bloody image transfixed her.
I grabbed her arm. "Sure." I pulled her toward the mirage. "It's just like the blood before-an illusion. Fake. You want to burrow down into a radioactive swamp! Which is crazier?"
The cold wind had become a gale. It blew at our backs, urging us toward the glistening point of the blade. I didn't like that one bit. Maybe, I thought, just maybe some magical equivalent of judo was called for. Take the offensive. Turn the impetus against the attacker.
Running away seemed much more sensible.
Something small and hideously blue-black skittered past us, chattering like an angry monkey, to vanish into the false night. The shadows gained strength. They squeezed at our chests to keep us from breathing. My lungs labored like a frantic animal in a giant's fist. I dragged Ann forward.
She snapped her wrist out of my grasp with a defiant tug. She didn't run away, though-she kept my pace. We clambered over crumbled steel and glass to reach the place where the tower's revolving doors should have been. A roiling pattern of black and grey enveloped everything. It looked like the surface of some horrid polluted sea. I reached out toward it, plunged into it up to my wrist. It felt like liquid nitrogen.
I screamed. The wind threatened to shove me completely into the swirling maelstrom. I curled my burning hand into a fist and rammed forward.
My knuckles cracked against glass. Cool, smooth, firm plate glass. The kind of glass you can see and feel on any building anywhere.
The shifting darkness raced away from where I hit to reveal the side of Arco North. Overhead, the knife and the blood unraveled into nothingness. The sky lightened to the intensity of approaching twilight-the west glowed red-orange. The wind died down to a gentle breeze. Everything lay in shadow, but at least these shadows stood still.
I had managed to come within a foot of the revolving door. We stepped through into the lobby and rushed toward the elevator. I didn't feel like climbing up and down stairs at the moment. I punched for the one operating car. It creaked to life like an old dog dutifully trudging down to its master.
"We've got to find a way down below." Ann looked at me. Her eyebrows arched with a gentle curve that straddled the thin line between an affectation of perpetual surprise and the impression of shrewd, shrewish cunning. They managed to frame her cool blue eyes with a deep warmth. When she wanted them to. Right now, the lines enclosed a look of tired persistence.
"I want to get this over with," she said. "I can't have this go on much longer."
"It'll be over soon enough, kid. Everything ends before we're ready for it."
The lift shuddered to a stop. The doors parted with the creak of metal that sees too little use.
I told her to hold the doors open while I trotted off to my office. She leaned against the electric eyes to cut off their light. She closed her own eyes, cutting off their light, too.
My office looked and smelled as it always did. Dead. Just like the promise of wealth and comfort I'd envisioned years ago.
Promises.
Life promised nothing except a pointless existence punctuated by an early death. Or so I'd heard.
My cheerful mood was not improved by the message on my answering machine. I rummaged through the desk for my other pistol.
"
Dell
"-the voice on the tape sounded worried-"
this is Joey Moreno. You gotta come over right away. Some priests from my archdiocese just left here, asking some really strange questions about you and that TV nut Zacharias. Something funny's going on. I'll be waiting.
"
The line clicked and buzzed. I found my other Colt Lightweight Commander, checked the magazine in the grip. Full. I slipped a second loaded magazine into my pocket. Feeling a tad more secure, I racked the action, snapped on the safety, and slid the gun into my waistband holster.
I dug up my Magna-Lite and flicked it on. The batteries still worked. Good.
I reset the answering machine and locked up. Ann was still standing in front of the doors when I reached the elevator. Her face had relaxed into a calm mask. Her purse lay loosely clutched in her hand. Somehow, her nylons had survived the ordeals and the barefoot walk unscathed.
Just like Hollywood
, I thought as I touched her shoulder lightly.
"Here's where we split up, Blondie."
She opened her eyes. "What?"
"Head over to Auberge. I'll meet you at the Cafe of the Angels when I'm finished downstairs. Get a room at the Hotel Libya if I'm late."
"No," she said, "I'm going with you."
"Look, sister, I happen to have a contractual immunity to radiation-
I think.
You're not so blessed."
"I-"
"You've got spunk. Just let a little common sense sink in." I let the doors close. When I sighed, it sounded just like the aging motor that lowered us slowly down.
"Angel, there's a time to flex your self-confidence and a time to play it wise. Assassins are some of the most cautious people around. Always cross at the green after looking both ways and overhead." I smiled. It didn't do any good.
"I'll guard your back." Her gaze was as cold as the polar wind. Her hand whipped something out of her purse. It glinted even in the diffused elevator light. She held it up to me.
The blade was as long as my hand, double-edged and vehemently sharp. The rainbow-tempered steel narrowed to a nasty point at the tip. The smooth black hilt was contoured and intricately carved to provide a sure grip. She held it as if she knew when to use it, and how.
"What did you say your job is at the Bautista Corporation?"
"Assistant comptroller," she said.
"Are your bookkeepers that difficult to keep in line?"
"The lady's got to protect herself. Lasers are too finicky, guns are too troublesome to maintain properly. Besides"-she lowered the knife-"there aren't many white knights around to save distressed damsels anymore." She laughed. Her face glowed with life again, like the moon coming out from behind an eclipse.
"The lady with a dagger, eh? Where were you thirty years ago? You'd have made a great comrade-or enemy." That did it. I was getting wistful. A sure sign of my dotage. I clammed up.
S
he looked embarrassed for a moment, then smiled as gently as a sea breeze at dawn. She slid the toadsticker back into its sheath in her handbag. It must have weighed half a kilo.
The elevator doors opened on the lobby-the farthest the car could descend. Some of Old Downtown's elite sprawled about the tattered chairs and piles of rags. The less drunken ones tried to argue about the recent inclement weather. Their conclusions were more elegant and metaphysical than mine, so I stopped listening and headed for the exit facing Flower. Ann followed.
"All right, sweetheart." I stepped through a hole in one of the glass panels that served as the doorway. "You're a free woman above the age of consent. I can see there's only one way to keep you from risking your neck-and I've never decked a woman before. Come on."
That sounded good. I nodded toward the subway-style stairs down to the Plaza. I looked tough. The image satisfied me. No need to let her know that I was as scared as a little kid caught in a war zone. The part that bothered me was that I hadn't been drafted-I'd volunteered.
There were two entrances to the Plaza on Flower. The one nearer Sixth Street was still buried under the rubble from the South Tower. The one by North was only marginally more accessible-years of neglect had not made the way any safer. Winds had pushed dirt and trash down the stairs to fill the bottom to thigh height.
I switched on the Magna-Lite. A white oval of illumination spilled across the quadruple doors. The glass panel of one had been smashed long ago. A mound of rubbish flowed through it to form an alluvial fan inside the Plaza.
I wrapped my fingers around the exposed edge of the glass. The butt of my flashlight tapped firmly against it. A large piece broke away on the second try with no more than a loud snap. A few extra swings cleared an opening wide enough for me to step through.
"Careful," I said in offering my hand to Ann. "Scars aren't fashionable this year."
She made it through easily. The steps beyond the door were cluttered with debris. Bits of broken masonry and pulverized tile covered the stairway in a rough, unstable blanket.
"I was here once," Ann whispered like a kid in church, "before they blew it up."
I nodded in the darkness and took a tentative step downward. It was like tiptoeing on castanets. I took the next step even slower.
