Sleepless

by Charlie Huston

  “What do you want, Jasper?”

  I pushed the laptop a few inches toward her.

  “There is something I have to do.”

  I stood.

  “I need help.”

  I bent and touched the top of Omaha’s head.

  “And I need for her to be someplace safe. Until I come back for her.”

  Chizu looked at my hand, so close to her person, and laid her four fingers over it.

  “Yes.”

  Omaha reached up and slapped at our hands, laughing, somehow comfortable under the touch of killers.

  Park needed to protect his daughter in a world changing. He could only try to save the one he knew. Or slow its demise. I knew he would pursue justice, but within the limits of the law, however irrelevant it might have become.

  It would never occur to him to simply kill both Afronzos.

  I was of another mind.

  Afrono’s security force had taken some recent losses. Eleven in all. Even allowing for extravagance, it was hard to imagine that Afronzo Senior employed more than fifteen to twenty former Israeli special forces. He might have many more sport-coated security guards, but they would be more suited to dealing with mail checks and property patrols than with covert terminations. Shooters, perhaps, but not killers. And any force that has recently had its numbers significantly whittled by a supposedly inferior opponent will suffer from a measurable loss of morale. Nonetheless, I’d need more than a great deal of luck.

  My legs hurt. I’d have liked to have driven the STS up to the front door, but the Afronzos knew who I was. Even arriving in a hundred-thousand-dollar car I would not have been led into the patriarch’s presence. Neither the team they had sent to my house nor the one sent to Park’s had reported back. Whether or not additional men had been sent to investigate, they knew something was, at the very least, amiss. I’d crossed town twice on my adaptive ID. Once going south to Culver City and again heading north to Century City. Enough hours had passed for those journeys to have been logged any number of places. They must now know I lived.

  Some camouflage was lent on my current journey by its being accomplished under the auspices of a Thousand Storks pass. It earned a sneer from the Guards, but to anyone looking for me via my NID, it would appear that I’d not left Century City since I arrived there in the morning. Still, a frontal approach would have required a vehicle more tanklike even than the Cadillac.

  The Bel Air residents had been among the first to entrench their neighborhood, having fought a short but intense battle with the L.A. City Council over their right to do so. All streets entering off North Sepulveda and North Beverly Glen had been sealed by the Thousand Storks contractors that provided security for the entire community. Even along Sunset the access streets were closed; only the Bellagio entrance was still open. The decorative white stucco and black iron gates had been bolstered with more practical concrete barriers. A short maze of them meant to discourage any car bombers who might negotiate the thicket of spherical bollards that dotted the approach from the intersection. Patrolled by both Thousand Storks and dozens of private family security forces, there was at least one charity tennis tournament taking place there when I passed through the gate unhindered, as well as a wedding reception at the Hotel Bel Air, and a dog show at the country club.

  I crossed a small property that I’d chosen because the Thousand Storks detail sheet reported it as being unoccupied, protected by only an alarm system and the TS patrols. From inside the tree line at the rear of the property I spent thirty minutes watching the Afronzo grounds beyond. I saw a single foot patrol. A man wearing a blue windbreaker rather than the expected blazer. He carried a flashlight that he played over the ground in front of him. I’d worried there might be dogs and was grateful there were not. Dogs are difficult. Small, fast targets; it can take up to three shots to hit one with small arms when they charge head on.

  As soon as the man passed, I walked out of the trees, not at all steady on my legs, crossed the grass that looked no worse for the drought most people suffered the world over, went up to the lighted window of the guest cottage, peered through to see a man within a few years of my own age seated in an imitation Colonial chair, a bottle of overpriced cognac at hand, a book facedown in his lap, staring into the brown liquor in his snifter. I fired three shots. He was profile to me, so I concentrated fire on his head rather than his chest. Three bullets generally guarantee nothing flukish can happen. Odd deflections caused by a pane of glass, ricochets off the curve of the skull, bullets passing through areas of the brain that are used only for monitoring activity in the appendix, are all made allowable by the presence of the second and third bullets. Such things do not happen in threes. The gun was a silenced HK Mark 23 .45 from my travel kit. Three bullets in the head from that size weapon meant death. Satisfied, I headed for the main house.

  It took only slight reflection to surmise where I might find Afronzo the younger. A conical tower was affixed to the back of the house, an architectural feature that suited his tastes as I had inferred them.

  There was an exceptional mechanic’s garage to service the fleet of luxury vehicles parked in the roundabout at the rear below the tower. One of the roll-up doors was raised three feet. Park’s Subaru was inside, doors open, contents strewn, the hollow spare on the ground, empty. I wormed under and found the inner door that led to a laundry, thence to a kitchen, to a supplementary dining room, and a hall that ended at a curl of stairs.

  Imelda and Magda were at the top. Sitting on a refinished church pew cushioned in gold velvet, outside a single door. Magda held a BlackBerry where they could both see the screen.

  Imelda had a hand over her mouth.

  “Oh, my God. You didn’t tell me he was that nasty.”

  Magda clicked a button.

  “Oh, yeah. Read this one.”

  “Oh. My. God. Is he?”

  Magda was nodding.

  “He totally backs it up. And he likes to send pics, too.”

  “Show me, show me.”

  Both had split the Velcro seams on their corset-style body armor, wearing it peeled open so they could bend to sit.

  I shot Imelda in the heart. Magda flinched at the blood, causing her to move the BlackBerry, giving me an unobstructed shot at her heart. I took it. I closed distance and shot them each once more, head shots.

  The door was unlocked.

  The room on the other side covered 270 degrees of the tower’s circumference, windows running the outer wall. Cager apparently had used the same designer as he had at Denizone. A postapocalypse medieval revival.

  He was sitting in an imitation Eames lounge chair that had been made with oxidized copper rather than plywood. His right hand was fitted into the ergonomic contours of a glossy black gaming hub. His other hand held his phone, thumb flicking over the keys as he occasionally stole glances away from the wall-mounted LCD display to read the messages constantly announcing themselves with the opening note of the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. On the LCD, an elegant figure in an absurdly long windblown black cape scampered and leaped on a plane of subtle geometrics, responding to the slight movements of his fingers and palm on the hub. It took me a moment to realize that his character was dancing, re-creating Cyd Charisse’s dream ballet with the wind in Singing in the Rain.

  On the floor next to his chair was a pile of several objects. The travel drive. A journal. The backup thumb drive Park had worn around his neck. The disk I’d given him with the recording of the mass murder at the gold farm. And his father’s watch.

  I closed the door firmly.

  He didn’t look up.

  “What is it?”

  I moved into his peripheral vision.

  “I need to know what happened to Officer Parker Haas.”

  He looked up.

  “You’re that guy.”

  He removed his hand from the game hub and took out his comb and raked his hair.

  “You look very angry. I think.”

  He put the comb a
way.

  “That’s odd.”

  I was not cruel. I had questions and I asked them. When he was slow to answer, unused to doing promptly what was required of him, I demonstrated the advantages of brevity. But I was not cruel. Not as I received the information I needed. Nor when I killed him. Three bullets. Like father, like son.

  Confusion had begun to reign when I left several minutes after I had arrived. Something had been seen on a security screen somewhere deep within the house. Several blue windbreakers were gathered at the guest cottage. Their energy was focused on the grounds.

  Still, as I came out of the garage, I was seen by one of the windbreakers. He called to me. I kept walking, cutting across the parking area through the cars that were already taking on the patina of relics from another age. Behind me I heard two sets of rapid footsteps. I measured the distance to the trees. Still moving, I glanced through the windows of the cars to see if they had been left with keys in the ignition. They had not. The HK was seated in its shoulder holster under the black sport coat I’d worn. I had two rounds still left in the gun and a twelve-round backup clip. But that was all I carried. My legs would not allow me to run. When my pursuers reached me, I would turn and use one bullet on each, swap to a full clip, and perhaps have time to strip them of their weapons. After that I would need to take cover before a full assault began. I was looking for the heaviest vehicle in the lot when two Thousand Storks fast attack vehicles pulled into the drive. I changed course and walked toward them. The four Storks in each vehicle jumped out and split into twos, ignoring me entirely as they ran past. And my pursuers, taking their cue from the specialists who clearly knew who I was and why I was there, pulled up and turned back, allowing me to walk unmolested down the length of Madrono, circling back to where I’d parked the STS. The car, myself, and all activity in my locale helpfully ignored by Thousand Storks for the one hour between 11 p.m. and midnight. As I’d requested, and as Lady Chizu had ordered, in exchange for the wonder that was Cipher Blue.

  Park’s journal and the other items in my possession, I now drove south to find the end of the story.

  I did not linger in the nursery when I returned to the Culver City house. What I found there was not meant for me, or for anyone else. It was shameful to gawk at such a thing, since there were only two people who could understand its meaning. Perhaps a third person, some day. I left the room and searched for what I’d come for.

  Park had left the safe open. From inside I took the certificates of marriage and birth, Omaha’s medical records, the detective’s badge Park had been given for his Dreamer assignment, and the broach that had been his mother’s. In a nightstand cabinet I found a stack of black journals with red spines, Rose’s diaries from high school to just a few days before. I took a case from a pillow on the bed and filled it with the black and red books. There was a photo album. A shoe box of letters. Park’s academy diploma. A framed square of white cardboard with a smeared green imprint of a baby’s foot. These all seemed relevant, and I took them.

  The last item I took was the gun Park had used to kill. Everything else I had taken was alien to me. The gun was comforting in its familiarity.

  There was nothing else of Park that I understood half as well as I did the lethal mechanics of such a weapon. I could follow the rationale in his choices and actions, but it was very much like a novice speaker of a foreign language translating everything he heard into his native tongue. The sense was there, but it was arrived at only after great labor, and with little nuance.

  Fluency would take time. But I’d made a start, and learned this much.

  29

  PARK DID NOT WATCH JASPER LEAVE WITH OMAHA. he couldn’t. If he had stood at the door and watched them drive away up the street he would have broken in two. Instead he kissed her forehead and tapped the tip of her nose with his pinkie while standing at Rose’s bedside, to remind himself that he could take care of only one of them.

  It did not hollow him out to watch her sleeping in Jasper’s arms, carried from the bedroom. He felt full, pressure at every seam, in danger of exploding.

  He attended to business first.

  He came back to Rose. Still reciting, she shivered from time to time or clenched her teeth as if a sudden pain gripped her.

  From the bedside table he picked up the plastic-wrapped bottle. Rose’s eyes were scanning back and forth across the far wall, as if monitoring the dangers of the game. He ripped open the plastic bag, and the bottle of pills dropped to the floor with a rattle. He picked it up, studied the instructions for opening the patented childproof cap, pressed down while pinching, twisted one way and then the other, and the cap popped off. He broke the foil seal, picked out the wadded cotton, and shook a light blue tablet into his palm.

  “Rose.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Rose.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Rose. I love you more than life.”

  He put the tablet at her lips, pushed it past her teeth, placed a water glass against her mouth, and tilted it up. She coughed and then swallowed.

  She wiped water from her chin and looked around.

  “Park?”

  He shook another pill into his palm.

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes cleared.

  “What the fuck, Park? Now I’m gonna have to start all over.”

  He shook his head.

  “No, you don’t, hon. You don’t have to start over. You finished it. I wish I’d been here to see.”

  She smiled.

  “It was so cool. So quiet. It was.”

  He put another tablet at her lips.

  “Here, take this.”

  She took it between her fingers and looked at it.

  “What is it?”

  “It’ll make you feel better.”

  She blew out her lips.

  “Anything that can make me feel better. I mean, I feel like shit. What is this, cancer-flu or something? I’ve never been this sick. I mean, I never get sick at all.”

  She put the tablet in her mouth, and he gave her the water glass, and she swallowed.

  “Hey. Have I been asleep for a long time?”

  Park nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  She rubbed her eyes.

  “Because everything seems really weird. Like when you’re a kid and you dream you missed Christmas and you wake up and it’s August fifteenth, but you still feel like you missed it. I feel like that. And sick. Rub my neck, baby.”

  She rolled onto her side, and Park rubbed her neck.

  The muscles in her back had stopped twitching.

  She opened her mouth wide and yawned.

  “Okay, whatever those are, they’re great. Please tell me they’re not illegal.”

  “Not illegal.”

  “Can I have another?”

  “Sure.”

  He gave her another.

  She smiled at him.

  “I know it’s not your thing, babe, but you should take one of those.”

  He shook his head.

  She nodded.

  “I know. Never lose control, Parker Haas, you never know who might be watching.”

  She touched his face.

  “I love you. I love you more than life.”

  She closed her eyes.

  He didn’t say anything.

  She sighed and opened her eyes and saw him.

  “How am I going to be able to look after you?”

  He shook his head and told her he didn’t know, and she kind of sighed like she always did when she thought he wasn’t getting something.

  “No, I mean, really, how am I gonna look the fuck after you?”

  He told her that she didn’t have to look after him, that he was okay.

  She was staring at the ceiling.

  “You’re such a, God, I hate the word, but you’re such an innocent. I mean, how am I supposed to walk away from that?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She shook her head, wondering at so
mething.

  “I’ve known you how long? Already I can see it. You’re destined to walk into traffic while reading a book. Or to get stabbed by a drunk asshole in a bar when you try to defend some tramp’s honor. Or do something even stupider like join the Marines and go get killed for oil because you think it’s the right thing to do.”

  He knew the rest, every word, by heart, but he let her say it all.

  “And how am I supposed to keep you from doing something like that if you’re up there and I’m down here? I mean, where did you come from? How did you drop into my life? You’re, God, you’re everything I don’t want. Hold me.”

  He held her.

  She yawned.

  “I can only look after you all the time if we’re together.”

  He held her.

  She twisted partway around to see his face.

  “Really together.”

  He nodded.

  “So let’s get married.”

  She blinked slowly, smiled, nodded.

  “Yeah, let’s get fucking married.”

  Her eyes closed. She slept. Just as she had years before when they’d first had the conversation the morning after the first night they spent together.

  Park stood, scooped her in his arms, walked down the hall, didn’t look at the blood-soaked towels on the floor, and carried her into the nursery.

  Settling her into Omaha’s crib, curled and slight; she opened her eyes once more.

  “Park?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s Omaha?”

  “She’s with Jasper.”

  Rose nodded, closed her eyes again, nuzzled her chin against his palm.

  “Oh. That’s good. She’ll be safe with him.”

  He spent five minutes slipping pills one by one into her mouth, offering her water, and making sure she did not choke in her sleep. Then he sat on the floor next to the crib and put his hand through the bars to hold hers.

  Her eyes moved back and forth under her lids; she sighed once, breathing deeply all the while, until her breathing shallowed. Slowed. And stopped.

  Leaving the room, he looked at the gun on the floor, next to puddled blood seeping. He was feeling what his father had demonstrated with his shotgun. But he was not tempted to pick up the pistol. He had something he had to do.