by John Dalmas
Life was getting complicated.
On Wednesday morning I drove my usual route to work, crossing the Santa Monica Mountains on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, through a light drizzle and mist, enjoying the way the Sportee handled the curves and how green and lovely everything looked. I didn't notice anyone following me, and I doubt there was. At the lot, I transferred my bags from the Sportee to my Olds.
I'd spent Monday looking into the department's evidence from the bombing site, and didn't find anything useful. On Tuesday I'd checked with my main informants again, with the usual lack of results. The only thing that tweaked me at all was that Miss Melanie seemed uncomfortable with me. I didn't ask her why. She wouldn't have told me, and it would have made her more wary.
Wednesday morning I worked out, then checked with more informants.
At the end of the day I drove to the apartment hotel I'd been registered at, and moved into my room there. It was getting dark before I drove to Canter's for supper; I like Yiddish food almost as well as Mexican. I did better than I sometimes do at walking out before I was stuffed, and had just reached my car when a guy with a pistol pointed at me stepped from behind a van.
"Hands up, asshole!" he said. "We want your money!"
Never get into a life-threatening fight over your wallet, sure as hell not when the other guy's got the drop on you. My hands went all the way up, shoulder-width apart and open wide. I heard someone else come up behind me, and expected him to go through my pockets. Instead, something pressed against the back of my neck, something not a gun or knife. It stung, and almost instantly I felt my mind fogging, my knees going weak. I started to fall, and he grabbed me under the arms. That's all I remember of that.
* * *
When I woke up, I was in the back of a van, parked in someone's attached residential garage. Some Gnostie's no doubt. The dome light was on, and there was a guy in the off-side front seat. I was gagged, but I must have made a noise, because he was looking back at me. My wrists had been handcuffed behind my back, and my ankles and knees were tied with duct tape. The guy didn't say anything, just put his book aside, got out, and went into the house.
I don't know what they juiced me with, but I didn't feel too bad. A little headachey, a little weak. I rolled around enough to discover that my pistol was no longer in my shoulder holster, not that I could have gotten to it anyway. A couple of minutes later he came back with two other guys. One was big, with a nasty smile. He stood in the van door, flexing and unflexing his hands in front of him, trying to intimidate me, while the third guy got in and blindfolded me. Then they threw a plastic tarp over me. A minute later I heard the garage door open, and we backed out.
As we started down the street, I heard one of them talking on the car phone, telling someone we were on our way. We drove for fifteen or twenty minutes, then stopped—I had no idea where—and the tarp was pulled off me. Someone grabbed my feet, pulled me most of the way out, and cut the tape on my ankles and knees. Someone else grabbed my upper right arm. "Stand up!" he said, and pulled.
I was a little unsteady, but I managed. The problem was being blindfolded and disoriented, not the shot. I heard traffic sounds not far off, smelled night jasmine and damp soil. Then he told me "Walk!" I stumbled trying, and someone grabbed me to keep me from falling.
"Fischer, take his blindfold off. It doesn't matter if he sees something. Walking blind like that he'll fall down, and he must weigh 250 pounds."
Two hundred thirty, I thought. At most. I felt someone untying the blindfold, and when he pulled it off, I realized at once where I was: at a service entrance to one of the Campus buildings. I could see a residential street maybe 120 feet to my left, with apartment houses on the other side.
And it didn't matter if I saw things! That could only mean one thing. I yelled as loudly I could, louder than you'd think. The gag was effective against speaking words, but when it came to an animal-like howl . . . The big guy slugged me in the gut, doubling me over, then uppercut me, hitting me in the forehead. I went down like a stone, and he kicked me once in the side. When I looked up, he'd stepped back. He had a police baton in one hand, and the guy in charge was swearing at him in a hard-edged undertone.
"Miller, you goddamn fucking idiot, if you kill him, Lon will have your balls on a stick! You'll be lucky to get assigned to the SRC! He wants information from this guy."
"Whaddaya mean? I had to shut him up!"
"You did that when you hit him in the gut. If you hit him with that goddamn billy club, you could kill him."
"Shit! You couldn't kill him by hitting him on the head with a crowbar."
"That's backflash, Miller! Once more and I'll see you before a committee! And when you talk to me, call me sir! Now get him inside!"
He took a key ring off a clip on his belt and unlocked a pair of double doors, holding one of them open while the other two guys dragged me inside, into a dimly lit corridor. The door clashed shut behind us. After he'd locked it, he spoke to me. "Can you stand up?"
I grunted, nodding my head.
"Help him!"
Fischer and Miller lifted me by the arms. I stood there for a second, steadying myself. Actually, Miller didn't seem particularly strong. He'd been getting by on big.
"Okay," the leader said, "let's go."
We went down the corridor, turned left down another, and entered a large dining room at the end. It was unlit except for city light shining like a full moon through large windows. Open windows; night jasmine overrode the smell of floor-cleaning compound. Three people were sitting at a table near the front, looking at us. The light was too weak to show their facial features from across the room, but the big one had to be Lon Thomas. The others were probably bodyguards, I told myself. My keepers led me to him.
It was Thomas, all right. As for the bodyguards— One didn't seem to be. He was a thin, tallish guy with some kind of instrument on the table in front of him. The other was a woman, young and good-looking in a hard, lipless way, but a bodyguard sure enough. One of her hands rested on a machine pistol, an Uzi. Anyone who'd carry one of those where an ordinary pistol would do, is at least a little crazy.
Thomas looked me up and down, then nodded. I noticed Miller rubbing his right fist. I hoped he'd broken it; sprained it at least.
"He yelled," my captor told Thomas. "Right through the gag."
Thomas grunted. "So that's what that was." He looked at the quiet one, Fischer. "Mr. Fischer," he said, "go outside and see if anyone's poking around who seems curious about the noise. If there is, tell them someone was, uh, preparing to braze a door handle and burned himself with the torch. Be casual but convincing. At this hour, I doubt anyone would investigate, but let's not take anything for granted."
Fischer left. Thomas was looking at me again. "So. Mr. Seppanen," he said. "You see, I know your real name. I am going to have your gag taken off so you can answer some questions. If you become abusive or refuse to cooperate, I'll have to have you disciplined and perhaps injected. If you cooperate, we'll finish our business here and I'll have you returned to your car."
Yeah, I thought. Dead. The victim of a mugging, no doubt. A clock glowed pale on a wall: It was minutes after two in the morning.
"Miller, be prepared to, um, punch Mr. Seppanen in the abdomen if he becomes unruly. Hard enough to subdue him. Collins, take his gag off."
Collins took the gag off, and I stood there working my jaw from side to side. Thomas looked at me thoughtfully. The bodyguard hadn't moved, as far as I could tell. I'd a lot rather have Miller mad at me.
"We'll have to have his hands in front of him. Collins, do you have the key to his cuffs?"
"Yes, sir." Collins took the ring of keys from his belt clip again and held one up.
"Mr. Seppanen," Thomas told me, "get down on your knees."
I did. Collins took the cuff off one wrist, had me put my hands in front of me, then chained them together again. With the cuffs over my shirt sleeves—that was Thomas' order. Then Thomas had me stand up and sit
on a chair across the table from the thin man, whose instrument panel lit his face a ghostly blue.
Thomas looked at him. "Will there be any difficulty getting reads with his hands manacled?"
"There shouldn't be."
"Fine. Mr. Seppanen, please pick up the electrodes and rest your hands in your lap." The electrodes were a pair of metal cylinders. I picked them up, wrapping my hands around them.
"Very good. Now please don't move any more than you must, and don't touch the electrodes together. The instrument is a psychogalvanometer. I presume you know what that is?"
"It's used in polygraphs; it measures electrical resistance across the skin."
"Very good." He turned to his technician. "Selkirk, talk the dial down into range."
"It's there now, Mr. Thomas."
"Oh? Well then, we'll begin." Thomas turned back to me. "You are a man of exceptional self-possession, Mr. Seppanen. My congratulations."
He wanted to keep me calm, to make the galvanometer readings as meaningful as possible. "Thanks," I said.
His eyebrows lifted. "Well then, let's begin."
It was a short interrogation. First he asked me some ranging and calibration questions: My name, where I'd grown up, if I'd ever committed a sex crime, any other crime, things like that. And what, before my present assignment, I'd thought of the Church of the New Gnosis.
His first meaningful question was what, specifically, I was investigating. I told him: the disappearance of Ray Christman. That we suspected he was dead or kidnaped. Thomas didn't look surprised or angry, but the question seemed to introvert him. He didn't ask who our contract was with.
Then he asked who my suspects were, and I told him: the Noeties, the COGS, factions within the church, and the various and numerous people with grudges against it. I didn't mention the Merlins; I no longer suspected them.
The guy with the psychogalvanometer never said a word; presumably he would have if he'd had any meaningful instrument readings.
But to me, Thomas' response was especially important: He looked thoughtfully past me and said, "How could any Noeties or COGS have gotten to Ray? It would have been virtually impossible. Surely you considered that?"
"They could have hired professionals. Some underworld outfits are pretty resourceful."
"If they only wanted to assassinate him, yes. A sniper, someone with a military mortar, that kind of thing. But I can't accept that that sort of people—any sort of people—could have secretly abducted him."
"Which brings us," I said, "to the major reason for suspecting someone in the church."
Thomas shook his head, a strong, decisive rejection. That's when I told him we'd been bogged down badly on the case, and if something hadn't developed soon, we might have dropped it, or mothballed it. But then someone had bombed Tuuli's old apartment. That must have been done by the church, I told him, and told him why. I thought he'd deny it, but he only frowned. I also told him we had a contract with the LAPD to compile evidence for an indictment on the bombing, which was true as far as it went.
His face turned wooden. "Thank you, Mr. Seppanen," he said. "You have been very helpful. I'm going to have you returned to your car. We have nothing to fear from your investigation, because Mr. Christman's retirement was entirely his own decision. And I can absolutely assure you we had nothing to do with any bombing. Also, I assume you are astute enough to realize that there is no way you can prove that this little discussion ever took place. As you said, in the Church we are a very close group. 'Impenetrable,' I believe the media have called us."
As I put down the electrodes, Thomas looked past me. "Mr. Collins, take Mr. Seppanen to the security entrance and hold him there till a vehicle comes for him. I want you to see personally that he arrives back where he came from."
Fischer had come back, and Collins told him and Miller to take my arms. Then Collins, with a gun in his hand, led the three of us into and through a big kitchen to a service elevator. He pushed a button, the door opened, and a few seconds later we were on our way down to the basement.
I didn't like the look of the room at the bottom. The floor was smooth-finished concrete, sloping to a central drain, and there was a large meat-cutting table near the middle. The ceiling was low, and there was an overhead track with rolling meat hooks that led to what appeared to be a reefer door.
Collins turned. By the light of the fluorescents, he looked as pale as anyone I'd ever seen, as if he might faint or puke, but his face was set. He pointed his gun at me. "Miller," he said, "I know you'll be disappointed if you don't get to do the honors."
Miller let go my arm and slugged me in the kidneys. Except he didn't, quite. He'd been just high, banging me in the floating ribs from behind. It hurt all right, but not as much as I pretended. Then he stepped around in front of me, police baton in one hand. He could just as well have clubbed me from behind, but he wanted me to see what was coming, which was stupid—right in character.
Miller was just slapping the baton against his left palm when I stomped down as hard as I could on Fischer's instep. He let go my arm with a yell. At the same instant I launched a flying sidekick that took Miller in the breastbone. In the gym I'd have been criticized for it; it leaves you vulnerable to a quick counter. But Miller wasn't quick, and it slammed him backward into Collins, who swore as his gun went off, possibly into Miller. The greater danger had been that, with my hands manacled in front of me, I might have lost my balance after the kick, but I didn't. I was on Collins before he could recover, kicked the side of his knee, and about the time he hit the concrete, kicked him hard in the gut, then the ribs. He rolled into a ball, a natural reaction, and stepping around, I kicked him once more, in the neck. He stiffened with spasm, then went slack.
I knelt, grabbed his gun, and spun to see what Fischer was doing. What I saw was the elevator door closing. So I put the gun on the butcher table, fumbled the key ring off Collins' belt clip, and put it between my teeth. Then I picked up the gun again and looked around. At that moment I was really scared, for the first time that night. I felt trapped down there, and remembered Thomas' bodyguard with that damned Uzi. Thomas was probably armed, too. Then I saw a door at the back of the room, ran to it and opened it. There was a narrow staircase leading downward, and I remembered what Molly Cadigan had said about utility tunnels connecting the different buildings. I started down, and a pneumatic closer closed the door behind me.
The tunnel was about ten feet wide, dim and chilly, with ducts and big pipes overhead wrapped with insulation. Here and there was a single fluorescent tube for light. It took precious seconds to find what I assumed was the right key. I put it between my teeth, got my hands free, and took off at an easy trot. About a hundred feet farther, I came to a steel door in the side wall, like a ship's door, and opened it. Inside was a lightless room with a lot of old sheet-iron junk. I trotted on, glad to be wearing crepe-soled shoes; they were virtually soundless on the concrete.
Pretty soon I passed a junction with a narrower tunnel, then steep steel stairs like a ship's ladder, leading up. Presumably to some other part of the building I'd just left. I passed it by. A ways farther was a wide door, apparently to another tunnel, but it was locked, and I padded on. There were more doors like the first; I ignored them. Farther on, the tunnel I was in ended at a cross tunnel. It was even wider, and there was another steel stairway leading up. Hesitating, I considered. I might still be under the building with Thomas in it—it was a big one—so instead of going up, I turned right.
This tunnel was blocked, farther on, by a broad, heavy sliding door. I paused and listened, but couldn't hear a hint of pursuit. I reminded myself I'd been down there for no more than two minutes, and maybe Thomas and his bodyguard had left the dining room when I did. Maybe Fischer was having to chase them down. I grabbed the handle of the door and pulled. With an effort it opened, fairly quietly, moving on wheels on an overhead track. After taking a moment to close it behind me, I ran on. A short way ahead, the tunnel turned about 45 degrees and, a l
ittle way past the turn, entered a sort of workroom like a large alcove, about 20 feet wide and 40 long. Along the far side was a bench with pipefitter's vises. Overhead were racks with a few pipes on them.
Just now, though, the room seemed to be a dormitory. It was pretty much taken up with old canvas folding cots, most of them occupied by unblanketed men and women in gray coveralls, patched and dirty. They were curled against the chill, but seemed to be sleeping heavily. A single man, also in dirty coveralls, was standing by a small and battered metal desk beneath a single fluorescent. What looked like a logbook lay open on it. I guessed he was a straw boss or something like that. He wore an orange ball cap that I took to be a badge of rank. His eyes, calm and direct, stopped me in my tracks.
"Sir," he said quietly, "this is SRC space. It's off limits to all others except security and the morals police. You'll have to leave."
I nodded, said, "Right!", and strode on through the room and out of it, prepared to sprint if the guy yelled. He didn't. The continuation of the tunnel was narrower here, not more than six feet wide, and darker, all the fluorescents dead but one. It occurred to me with a pang that the wall I could make out about 200 feet ahead might be a dead end.
It wasn't. When I got there, I found another cross tunnel, also narrow. This seemed to be neglected territory. The dust was heavy, and in the branch to my right I could hear and smell a steam leak. The only fluorescent was flickering weakly.
Suddenly I heard voices behind me, farther off than the "SRC space." I had pursuers, and they'd passed through the sliding door. I took the left branch.
And 80 feet farther came to a narrow steel door in one wall, with a simple handle. I stepped inside and found myself in an unlit vertical tube about three feet in diameter, with rungs up one side. I grabbed one, then pulled the door shut behind me, which left me in pitch darkness. Groping, I climbed two rungs at a time until my reaching hand came to an overhead. With a push I raised it—a manhole cover. I shoved it out of my way and it fell with a loud clank. Then I hoisted myself out onto a raised concrete dock at one end of a big parking lot; the lid had fallen off it to the pavement. The end I was in was walled on three sides by buildings. A ways ahead, the buildings ended and the lot widened. There were hardly any cars at this hour. Maybe 400 feet ahead, streetlights showed the row of tall palms where the fence would be. It had begun to drizzle. The dominant smell was ripe Dumpster instead of jasmine.
