Mercury Rises

by Robert Kroese

  "And the so-called 'General Motors streetcar conspiracy,'" she went on. "What a joke. I mean, sure, GM, Firestone, and the lot wanted to get rid of the streetcars and replace them with buses. But that was going to happen anyway---and it did happen, even in cities where the conspirators had little or no influence. The only reason anybody took notice was that in Los Angeles they pushed a little too hard. Which prompts the question, 'why?' Why did they work so hard to get rid of the streetcars in L.A. when they were on their way out anyway?"

  Eddie shrugged. "Water rights and incest?" he ventured. He didn't have a clue what Cody was talking about. What did Chinatown have to do with streetcars and General Motors? And what did any of it have to do with the mysterious author of the Charlie Nyx books?

  "Ha!" Cody replied. "No, I'm afraid the truth goes much deeper than that. Now you're probably wondering what any of this has to do with Essie," she said.

  "Actually, yes," Eddie said. "I was starting to...wait, with what?"

  "Sorry," Cody said. "I've developed my own jargon for this case. Essie is my code name for the author of the Charlie Nix books. From the Latin, scriptor Carolingus, meaning 'Charlie's author.' Abbreviated S.C., or 'Essie' for short."

  "Of course," replied Eddie. "That makes perfect sense."

  Cody went on, "The truth is, I don't know yet how it's all connected. I just know it is, somehow. Do you know how many corporations were indicted in the conspiracy to form a transportation monopoly in Los Angeles in 1947? Nine. In the Bible, the number nine represents divine justice and the end of human endeavors. There were six parent companies named in the indictment: Firestone, Standard Oil of California, Phillips, General Motors, Federal Engineering, and Mack; and three subsidiaries: National City Lines, Pacific City Lines, and American City Lines. Yellow Truck & Coach, which had been absorbed by GM by the time of the trial, was also involved. That's ten companies. Seven individual executives of these companies were also named as defendants. Revelation speaks of 'a beast rising out of the sea having ten horns and seven heads.' Is it such a stretch to conclude this beast is the petroleum-automotive complex, with its offshore drilling platforms and fleets of oil tankers?"

  Eddie did think it was a stretch. He was starting to think, in fact, that Cody Lang was a few streetcars short of a fleet. She was like some kind of idiot savant, exhibiting a startlingly detailed grasp of eclectic facts that had nothing whatsoever to do with what she and Eddie were ostensibly talking about.

  "I just knew when I took this case that this was going to be the big one," she said excitedly. "The one that finally connects all the dots. I mean, look at you, for example."

  "Me?" replied Eddie doubtfully. He was now only half listening, as he was busily trying to think of some way of extricating himself from this situation.

  "Yep," said Cody. "You and the other demons. It took me a while to figure out, but in the end there was no other explanation."

  "Explanation for what?"

  "The mysterious Katie Midford and her unquestioning minions. No simple waitress from Bellflower could inspire that kind of loyalty, not to mention straight-up fear, no matter how rich she had become. And I knew she was no writer because she admitted as much when she hired me. So who was she, and where had she come from? I did some research and found out that there had indeed been a woman named Katie Midford who had waited tables for several years before the Charlie Nyx books came out. But before that there was nothing. I mean, I found records of several Katherine Midfords who were about the right age, but further investigation revealed that none of them was the Katie Midford. In other words, this woman had just appeared from nowhere, waited tables for just long enough to establish a backstory, and then became the famous Kate Midford, the genius behind the Charlie Nyx phenomenon. Something just wasn't right, you know? And then there was the sunbathing."

  "Sunbathing?" Eddie asked, confused.

  "Yeah," Cody replied, finishing her drink. "She was always lying out by the pool, but her skin was too pale and firm to have spent much time in the sun. I never saw her put on any sunscreen, but she was always white. And although she was supposedly in her late forties, she didn't look that old. I mean, she did, but the oldness seemed sort of artificial, like she was a twenty-five-year-old wearing a middle-aged person costume. Something was just off about her. At first I thought maybe she was a vampire, but that didn't jibe with the sunbathing. That only left one explanation: she was a demon. Once I figured that out, I realized that they were all demons, Katie and her whole cadre of sycophants. Once a person knows what you guys look like, you're surprisingly easy to pick out. Anyway, it doesn't particularly matter to me, but I do like to know who I'm working for."

  Eddie stared dumbfounded at her. Had she really deduced that Katie and her minions were demons simply from Tiamat's habit of sunbathing? It was a ridiculous leap of logic, and yet she had come to exactly the correct conclusion. An oft-repeated truism on the Mundane Plane stated that even a broken clock was right twice a day. Was this the rare instance where Cody's tortured reasoning led her to a conclusion that coincided with reality? Or was there some logic to her madness after all? He found himself wondering what else she had figured out.

  "So," he asked, "did you ever find out who real the author is?"

  Cody frowned. "No. Essie remains a mystery. All I really had to go on were a few cryptic e-mails she sent from an anonymous account."

  "'She?'"

  "Sorry, I tend to think of Essie as a she, but in reality I don't even know that much. Even the handful of e-mails Essie sent seemed to have been forwarded by a third party. The guy who set up this deal really didn't want Midford and Essie talking to each other directly. There were a few clues in some of the e-mails, but none of them led anywhere. They may actually have been red herrings meant to put me off the trail. In any case, I guess I'll never know."

  "You're not working on it anymore?" Eddie asked.

  "Of course not," she replied. "Like I told you, Midford owes me twenty Gs already. Well, minus about three hundred dollars in booze I've gone through over the past few days. The only thing I've been investigating lately is the disappearance of Katie Midford, and that's been an unqualified failure. My only lead was a cabin she supposedly owned in the San Bernardino Forest, but it was destroyed in that wildfire. So here I sit, trying to drink my way even on this damn case."

  Realizing this discussion had gotten him nowhere, Eddie got to his feet. "Well," he said, "I should be going. Got a meeting with my publisher in an hour and I need to go to the hotel and change my shirt." He fingered the bloody bullet holes.

  "Good luck with the meeting. I hope your new publishing friends aren't too disappointed when you can't produce the manuscript."

  "I'll come up with something," Eddie said with feigned confidence. "These things have a way of working themselves out." He moved to leave the room.

  "Panton in suus vicis," Cody said quietly.

  Eddie turned. "What did you say?"

  "It's Latin," Cody said. "It means---"

  "I know what it means," Eddie said. "'Everything in its time.' Where did you hear it?"

  "Just something I say," she said. "It's carved into my father's tombstone. Does it mean something to you?"

  "It's a quote, from a man named Saint Culain," answered Eddie. "He was a little-known medieval scholar who believed there were no such things as coincidences."

  "That's true," Cody said. "Everything is connected."

  "No," said Eddie, shaking his head. "He literally didn't believe in coincidences. He thought no two events ever occurred at exactly the same time."

  "That's crazy," Cody replied.

  "Yeah," Eddie agreed. "Most people think so. Well, most people have never heard of him, but the few who have pretty much agree that he was insane. He's a hobby of mine, though. I've always found him fascinating."

  "Demons have hobbies?"

  "Most don't," Eddie admitted. "But I've had a lot of free time on my hands over the past few decades. I ran across Saint Cula
in while I was doing research on the Ottoman Empire."

  "Research on the..."

  "Long story," Eddie said.

  "Funny," said Cody pensively. "I never knew it was a quote."

  "Maybe your father was a St. Culain fan."

  "I wouldn't know. He died when I was just a kid. And it's not like he was around much before that. He was always gone on business trips. My mother died when I was a baby, so I was essentially raised by a series of Mexican nannies. Pobrecita!" she exclaimed with mock pathos. "Anyway, sob story over. The point is, I always think of panton in suus vicis as a sort of cynical joke. The man who never had time for anything puts 'everything in its time' on his tombstone. Funny stuff."

  "I suppose he would have been around if he could..." started Eddie uncertainly. Human relations were a bit of a mystery to him, and he wasn't sure of the appropriate response.

  "Ha!" Cody barked bitterly. "The year before he died, he completely missed my birthday. He was out of the country, of course, but I didn't get a card, or a phone call, or anything. And when he comes home: nothing. Two months go by before he says to me, 'Hey, I completely forgot your birthday, didn't I?' Then he promises me that my next birthday will be the best ever. Unforgettable, he said. You know what he did for my next birthday?"

  Eddie shook his head.

  "He died!" Cody announced. "He was piloting a small plane over the San Bernardino Mountains, and it crashed. April 29, 1993. Couldn't forget it if I tried."

  Eddie's brow furrowed. "You say your father died on April 29, 1993? Are you sure?"

  Cody glared at him. "Did you hear what I just said? He died on my birthday. Yes, I'm sure."

  "I'm sorry," Eddie said. "It's just...Saint Culain died on April 29, 993 AD. Exactly one thousand years earlier."

  "Bullshit," declared Cody.

  "Um, what?" asked Eddie.

  "I said bullshit. There was no April 29, 993."

  "Oh, right," agreed Eddie. "Before 1582, Western Civilization used the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian. We angels adopted the Gregorian a bit earlier."

  "Really?" Cody asked. "When?"

  "One," said Eddie. "Of course, we didn't call it the Gregorian calendar. That would have been silly. The point is, your father died exactly one thousand years after the death of Saint Culain. Don't you find that at all remarkable?"

  Cody shrugged. "I suppose."

  Eddie was incredulous. "You just spent ten minutes drawing connections between Chinatown, General Motors, and the book of Revelation, and yet you don't find it remarkable that your own father just happened to die exactly one thousand years after the man who spoke the words that are engraved on your father's tombstone?"

  "Coincidences do happen," said Cody. "And they don't all have some hidden meaning."

  "But you have to admit..."

  "Look, drop it, OK? I don't give a shit about this Saint Culain. Or my father, for that matter. He didn't have time for me when he was alive, and I don't have time for him now. I haven't even been to his grave for fifteen years."

  "He's buried here? In Los Angeles?"

  "Just down the highway," said Cody. "Used to be Buena Park Cemetery, but they moved it to make room for a shopping center a few years back."

  "Wait, so he's not there anymore?"

  "Oh, no," replied Cody. "They moved the cemetery, but my father's still there. He's too stubborn to get out of the way for a Bed, Bath & Beyond. Don't you have somewhere to go?"

  Eddie sighed heavily. He had been strangely exhilarated at the thought of finding a missing piece to Cody's puzzle. But maybe it was just a meaningless coincidence. In fact, maybe they were all meaningless coincidences. Sure, Cody had figured out the truth about Katie Midford, but that could have just been a lucky guess. An occasional glimpse of insight didn't mean one wasn't delusional.

  "Yeah, I'd better get going," said Eddie. "Meeting with my publisher."

  "What are you going to tell them?" Cody asked.

  "I'll come up with something," he muttered.

  NINETEEN

  Christine's surprise at seeing the apple sitting there innocuously on a pedestal momentarily edged out her horror at the realization of what it was: an anti-bomb. There was no doubt about it. It was the exact same size and shape as the ones she had seen tucked away in a secret safe on the Floor, Lucifer's staging ground for his abortive invasion of Earth---and also the same as the one that had imploded Anaheim Stadium. The apple's color appeared to be different and it was missing the trigger mechanism she had seen on the other anti-bombs, but other than that it was the same. She wondered, if this one couldn't be triggered manually, what would set it off. A timer, maybe. She held her ear to it, thinking she might hear a ticking noise, but heard nothing but Horace Finch calling to her from up above.

  She picked up the apple, belatedly wondering if it was on some kind of motion-sensitive trigger. She gritted her teeth and held it away from her face, as if maybe that would offer some protection against a device that could level a small city. When nothing happened, she shrugged and slipped the apple into her pocket.

  She called to Finch to lower the rope. He did so, and then hoisted her back to the floor of the crater.

  By the time she emerged into daylight again, the goat was already dead, its throat slit by the shaman's knife. Its headless body hung upside down from a tripod made from three short poles, its blood draining into a clay bowl beneath it. When the bowl filled up, one of the Tawani removed it and put another in its place. Ten bowls had already been filled this way. Christine shuddered. Respect for cultural differences was all well and good, but this was revolting.

  "What took you so long?" Finch asked. "I thought you'd fallen to your death."

  "Sorry," said Christine. "Just doing a little...what's it called? Exploring caves."

  "Spelunking," Finch said.

  "Yeah, spelunking," said Christine. "Our scapegoat over there found a cave. I thought maybe it exited out the side of the mountain somewhere, but it was a dead end."

  "Hmm," replied Finch, regarding her suspiciously. Christine placed her hand over the round bulge in her pocket.

  Not far from the exsanguinating goat, several elders were drawing figures with its blood on pieces of flat bark that they had carried with them up the mountain. When a man had finished drawing on a piece of bark, he would place it on top of a roughly goat-sized rectangular framework that had been constructed out of sticks. Soon the bark was piled nearly a foot high. Other men were collecting dry grass from the crater floor and stuffing it in a gap underneath the framework. While they worked, dark clouds began to gather overhead.

  When the goat had been drained of nearly all its fluids and the wooden framework had been packed with fuel, the animal was placed on top of the bark pile, its severed head positioned awkwardly a few inches away from its neck. As a breeze picked up and the clouds threatened rain, Christine momentarily hoped that maybe the men would be unable to get the fire started---but this hope was dashed when one of the elders produced a disposable lighter. He brushed the flame against the dry grass, and in seconds the pyre was engulfed in flames.

  "What's with the drawings on the bark?" Christine asked Finch.

  "Prayers to the gods," Finch replied. "They use those pictograms to communicate."

  "Communicate what?" Christine asked.

  Finch shrugged. "Their hopes, fears, orders for Chinese takeout, whatever. Even if the gods did exist, they'd have a hell of a time interpreting that mishmash of symbols." He shook his head dismissively. "Primitive African bullshit."

  "You really missed your calling as a tour guide," Christine observed.

  As the fire grew, the clouds overhead continued to darken. Lightning flashed among the clouds, and thunder rolled behind.

  Flames began to caress the goat's carcass, and the elders, encircling the pyre, chanted and raised their hands to the heavens. The goat's hair caught fire, letting off thick blue smoke and an odor that smelled so bad Christine was surprised she had never heard the phrase
"it smelled as bad as burning goat hair." Mercifully after a few minutes the hair was gone and the goat began to smell more appetizing. Unfortunately this only made matters worse. It was now well past noon and Christine was getting hungry.

  "I don't suppose we're going to get any goat-burgers out of this deal," Christine said, as the meat began to sizzle and pop.

  "'Fraid not," said Finch. "The goat is a sacrifice to the gods."

  "Seems to me," Christine reflected, "there's a fine line between a sacrifice to the gods and a nice mountaintop barbecue."

  "True enough," said Finch. "But unless you want to be sacrificed next, I recommend we stay on the right side of that line."

  Christine stood sadly by, her stomach growling, as the goat burned to a crisp. It seemed unfair that after she had already made the sacrifice of rescuing the goat and watching it drained of its fluids she wasn't even allowed to eat any of it. "Stupid gods," she muttered, as the smoke wafted toward the heavens.

  A sudden flash of lightning streaked from the clouds, striking the rim of the crater with a deafening BOOM! Christine immediately began apologizing profusely to gods she had scorned mere seconds earlier. As the saying goes, there are no atheists on mountaintops during thunderstorms.

  The gods responded by pelting the mountaintop with rain.

  "Are we safe here?" Christine asked worriedly, once she had done her best to appease the gods.

  Finch snorted. "The odds of being struck by lightning are---"

  Lightning tore through the sky again, blasting a nearby boulder to pieces. BOOM!

  Christine ran. After a moment's hesitation, Finch followed. A glance backward indicated that the elders remained transfixed on the altar. The rain was now coming down in torrents.