Sitting on a chair near an Ikea-flavored dinette group was Dandine’s black Halliburton—the one we hadn’t taken to Park Tower.
“So what’d the hospital guys say?”
“I left on my own recognizance,” I said. “I had to get out. Had to do something about . . . you know, Dandine.”
“Do what? What’s to do? He’s under—like, way under. He’ll surface when he has to.”
“Did you see what happened? With the limo?”
“Nah. I cleared your car, then I got this priority beep. Coded message from Mr. D, saying get your ass out. This place was prepped and I landed here. So now I’m sorta waiting, like you.”
“Prepped by who?”
Zetts shrugged. Who really knew? Who cared?
It was a weird inversion—I actually felt as though for the first time, I knew more than he did. I knew how the fallback hide had been set up, because of what the Mole Man told me. Zetts knew, too, but he’d never say.
I looked down at the floor and tried to make my play as casual as I could. “I think Dandine is in trouble. I’m going to need your help.”
“Nah—he’s under, dude. That’s it.”
“I don’t think he’s under. I think NORCO has him.”
Zetts made a face, as though tasting a sour, acidic burp. “Aww . . . crap. Ya think?” He fidgeted and punched at the air. “That sucks.” He opened his fridge door, then closed it. He looked around as though seeing his immutable environment for the first time. “Shit on a pogo stick.”
This next part was negotiatively painful. “You like Dandine, don’t you? I said. “He means a lot to you.”
“Uhyeah!” The way Zetts said it was a almost a cough—huh-yeah-huh—which suggested I was illuminating the obvious.
“You’ve been together for a long time?”
“Pretty much.” There was a new wariness in his tone.
I showed him the paper the Mole Man had given me. His expression crumpled, like an origami bird changing into the shape of something that hunts and eats origami birds.
“A www , man . . .” His expression seemed completely betrayed. “Only Dandine and one other person are supposed to know that.”
Good old item #2, the most expensive charge on the Mole Man’s shopping list. The thing that made Zetts valuable to NORCO, believe it or don’t.
“I don’t suppose you have any kind of a plan?” he said sheepishly.
I didn’t want to admit that my plan was a steal, a simple modification of what Dandine had proposed, so I said, “Yeah. And it all pivots on you.” Then I tossed my recently purchased set of handcuffs on the table, mostly just to see the expression on his face. Dandine had thought of handcuffs and not used them. I had better handcuffs.
“Okayyyyyy . . .” he said tentatively. “You’re not gonna hit me again, are you?”
We were back in the game.
THE FINAL DAY
You’d never believe me if I told you where NORCO was really hiding. You’d laugh and say, no way. It’s twelve stories beneath a famous Hollywood landmark. The complex was considerably augmented during the endless Metro Rail construction for which Futuristics, Inc. had been the primary contractor. That’s right—the company I helped to promote, which at one time was run by Garrett J. Stradling, alias the late G. Johnson Jenks.
The aboveground structures have been restored to their original vintage glory, but the interior of the building was also heavily renovated around the turn of the century, when 2000 became 2001. Guess which company had a big slice of that deal, too. Some marketing genius (not me) thought it would be a swell idea to connect Universal Studios City-Walk with Hollywood Boulevard, via the train, so that tourists and other potential consumers could experience a less threatening, wallet-loosening environment. Today, you’ll see billboards that desperately proclaim Hollywood Is Back! in reference to the mercantile monstrosity erected at the corner of the Boulevard and Highland Avenue. It is called the Kodak Center. It is a sterile, beige, jumped-up mall fashioned after the overblown sets constructed by D. W. Griffith for his movie, Intolerance—you know, that silent epic starring Lillian Gish, hailed as one of the greatest motion pictures ever filmed, which neither one of us, you or I, has ever bothered to sit through? Imagine a PG-rated Babylon dotted with “fun kiosks,” and you’ve basically got the mall. It also houses the Kodak Theatre, the place where the Academy Awards landed after a waterfall of payola . . . much to the consternation of anyone who ever has to drive anywhere on Hollywood, or Highland.
But the “restoration” aspect I mentioned was applied to the Chinese Theatre—originally Grauman’s, then Mann’s, and now Grauman’s again in name only . . . and they’re already thinking about selling it again. The box office was eliminated from the forecourt—it was a modern add-on to begin with—which had the added fiscal garnish of freeing up additional forecourt space for more premium hand-and footprint deals. (Did you know such “honorees” have to pay for the cost of cleaning up the sidewalk and “framing” the concrete, once the press conference is over? It’s all deducted as advertising. And don’t even get me started on those stars on the Walk of Fame, and how easily they’re bought. Bob Hope has four of them.)
All that sound and fury—erection of the bogus Babylonian mall, earthquake-proofing the theatre before its face-lift, and adding a cathedralsized underground station for the subway—not only consumed a lot of time, but covered up a lot of extracurricular activity. A new, state-of-the-art roost for NORCO was the least of it, as Zetts and I were about to witness.
Now you have to shoulder-and-elbow among milling tourists in order to belly up to the booth and attempt to figure out which movie is playing in the actual Chinese, versus the other six features that are filed in the multiplex closets that are part of the Babylonian mall. Today, the Chinese boasted the opening weekend run of something called Confirmed Kill, what Variety would designate an “actioner”—one of those flamboyant train wrecks that big-screen-TV emporia always use to demonstrate the coolness of their in-store surround-sound systems.
(Ever notice that? Walk into a rental joint or an electronics discount mart, and a hundred screens magnify the technocarnage and gun porn of some CGI-loaded visual extravaganza. It’s never a Merchant-Ivory film or a meaningful human drama, or anything offering surcease of occasional silence; it’s usually some endless director’s cut of exploding spaceships or volcanic cataclysm, comic books colliding loudly with video games, the better to rumble those subwoofers . . . and sell the rubes.)
You can’t get into the Chinese Theatre unless you buy a ticket. That’s the single most prevalent question, answered a thousand and one times per day by the crimson-uniformed ushers. No, ma’am, this is not a museum; it’s a movie theatre.
“Yo, it’s fuckin Mason Stone, dude,” said Zetts, grinning at the poster, which depicted our hero dangling one-handed from a black helicopter and blowing the undies off a skyscraper pent house full of baddies. He was holding an M-60 one-handed, his shirt shredded ( just like Doc Savage), with blood marring one side of his supercool, spiky haircut. “Did you see Human Weapon 4?”
“Was it better than Human Weapon 3?”
Have you ever been hit in the face with a shovel? I abruptly realized the fundamental difference between reality and realism: In action movies, the reckless, risk-addicted hotshots always survive. In reality, their corpses got mulched in secret by outfits like NORCO. In movies, we win against terrorists. In reality . . . well, we know better now, don’t we?
“Popcorn?” asked Zetts. I could tell he was half-serious, looking for a last-minute out.
“No time.”
“Kind of a waste.”
“You still up for this? Because if you’re not, I need to know now.”
I was wearing the shoulder holster that Dandine had fitted to me. Sheathed within was the gun Dandine had chosen for me—the SIG Super .40 he had cleaned and lubed back at Rook’s, which had patiently awaited me in the black Halliburton recovered by Zetts. The chamber was em
pty and the magazine held twelve rounds, just as Dandine had left it . . . sort of. While fooling around, I jacked the slide and a cartridge already “in the pipe” (as they say) came flying out. I chased it and had to pick it up off the floor. It was one of the hazard-striped ones, the minirockets. The kind that explode. Dandine had racked it as the first shot; not a pleasant portent to consider. Instead of trying to reload it, I put it in my pocket.
I was the least qualified person in the world to go gunslinging after NORCO. If anything begged to be shot with a real bullet, I had to click off the thumb safety, rack the slide, aim the gun, and actually squeeze a live trigger. I hoped I could remember those four things, in order, if the day turned pessimistic. Fancy moves and special applications were for guys in movies, not me. The last time I had fired a weapon—pardon me, discharged a firearm—was at the Beverly Hills Gun Club (of which I was not a member) in 1998, or ’97. Nothing in the situation there seemed applicable to my current state of mind. I was leery and nervous about the casual gun owner’s often-fatal shortcoming: the nerve to shoot at a living human target. If you pull it, you must be prepared to use it. Too many people’s lives had been ruined by the gap of will between the former and the latter. The issue was not competence, but resolve. Dandine always had a full house of resolve; I wished there was a pill I could take that would bump up mine so I could at least stop shaking.
“Yeah,” said Zetts. “I mean, otherwise, we might as well see if the flick is any good, right?”
We got our tickets torn and entered the lobby of the Chinese. Zetts had been right; it was a waste, considering how admission prices had pole-vaulted since the last time I had gone to a movie theatre . . . which had been about the last time I was on a shooting range.
According to the Mole Man, there was a curtained niche near the narrow stairs leading down to the men’s restroom. Inside was a door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY. Instead of a keyed lock, there was a cardswipe slot mounted next to the door.
We ducked inside the curtain; it was a close fit for two men. “Okay. Put ’em on and remember—”
“Dude, I got it, okay?” Zetts cuffed himself with the bracelets I had provided.
I popped the snap closure on the shoulder holster that secured the gun, then ran my fake NORCO ID through the card slot. The LED blinked red, then green, and the door gave you about as much time to enter as the average key-carded hotel room, which meant I had to run the card twice.
Inside, metal stairs led down about two stories, judging by what we could see from the landing.
Zetts held both hands up to point, and I acknowledged the camera lens angled down at us, out of reach in the concrete shadows. We switched positions so he could move down the steps ahead of me, since he was supposedly my prisoner. He was playing my part, from Dandine’s backup plan for the First Interstate building, where NORCO . . . wasn’t.
Below was more bare cement—buttressing, foundations, heavy rebar and bolting, and foam-insulated pipes. Nothing more mysterious than what you’d see in a newly constructed parking garage. Something was amiss but I couldn’t place it. Left of the foot of the stairs was a single bank of elevator doors and a bored-looking theatre usher, leaning against the wall, reading a comic book.
Not reading, not really. Watching us approach. Not an usher. Too big. His jacket was unbuttoned.
I flashed the ID prepared for me by the (obviously talented) Rook. Then I opened my jacket to display the gun in my armpit, the same way Dandine had at Park Tower. The man nodded coolly, twigging up one eyebrow at the sight of my cast, then produced another key card. His and mine were required to scan through double slots next to the elevator doors, the way a safety deposit box needs two keys. The doors slid back and he resumed not-reading his comic.
Not an elevator, not yet. It was a short corridor with an identical set of doors about fifteen feet distant. Once the doors behind us closed, the others opened. It was like an airlock, or a great place to rabbit-trap a possible threat. When I crossed under the threshold, a two-note beep sounded.
The next room was a reception area with no attempt at charm. A grizzled man with a fairly lush handlebar moustache was stationed at an aluminum console full of TV monitors and phone lines. Off to his left, two security men sat browsing magazines in a punishingly severe waiting area—stone table, glass top, vinyl furniture. I was conscious of moving my hand very slowly to my pocket to exhibit my ID. The man with the moustache barely glanced at it, but nodded. He resembled an old cowboy gone corporate, or a retired stuntman.
“Reference?” he said.
“This is Declan Morris Zetts,” I said. “But Gerardis will want to see me.”
“What’s this?” He was looking at Zetts, noting the handcuffs.
“I wound up with a detainee. That’s why Gerardis will want to know about it.”
“Armament?”
“Standard SIG Super .40, from inventory.”
The man typed a few instructions and waited to see something he didn’t like on a screen, or hear it in his phone headset. “One of ours, plus one guest,” he reported into his mike. “Reference was Declan Morris Zetts. Requesting Gerardis.” He listened as someone in his ear delivered quite a long sentence. His eyebrows went up.
“You guys must be important,” he said. The two men across the room stood up as though snapping to attention. “You need escort?”
“No,” I said. “Situation’s not dynamic.”
“Remove your glasses, please.”
I showed him my damage and he blew a little whistle of awe. “You can see, though, right?”
“No problem.”
“All-righty.” He pointed idly toward the three sets of elevator-style doors on the far side of the chamber. “Know how this works?”
“I’m not really used to it yet.”
“Yeah, most of us aren’t, and there’s still some bugs in the system. Take the first set of doors. You’ve got a priority tag. Good luck.”
The doors parted. Awaiting us was a sleek capsule that resembled a private subway car, or one of those minimonorails used by some airports. To his credit, Zetts waited until we were inside, and the doors had hissed shut, before he said what the fuck?! under his breath.
The car bumped smoothly into motion. The tunnel was illuminated by twin rows of blue lights, which we could see blur past fore and aft, through Lexan windows, as we felt the slight press of acceleration. Our conveyance could have accommodated about six people.
“You’ve never seen any of this?” I asked.
“News to me, boss.” He looked around as though we had just been abducted into a flying saucer. “It’s like a secret subway.”
“You’ve got it.” The proposition was so huge and obvious that my mind had trouble encompassing it. But I already knew when it had been built . . . and who had built it. It was a practical underworld, not in the gangster sense, more in the Dantean mold. Our travel time was thirty seconds, tops.
We were remanded to another detail-deprived waiting room, and virtual clone of the first, but with more humorless sentries filling it, in a huddle pattern that reminded me of the catastrophic fumble at the airport. I finally recognized what seemed “off” about the whole matrix: No signs, anywhere. No framed pictures. No company logos—not on the consoles, not on the walls or the doors. No stickers advising what not to do, nor warnings, nor danger symbols or hazard/restricted iconography. No admonitions to keep your hands in the car, or do not attempt to force the doors, or use your damned seat belt. We’re so surrounded and engulfed by signs and symbols that our brains are now tuned to register an alarm if they are absent. Even day-to-day clothing is drowning in logos, and it’s all pitch-meistering, the constant low undertone of sell-sell-sell. Think of the product placement all over your sunglasses, your wristwatch, your running shoes. Under normal circumstances, we’re all mobile billboards for a variety of preferred products and services. NORCO didn’t even bother to acknowledge itself. It seemed transient and tentative, as though waiting to be labeled, and
hence, stamped into real-world validity.
There weren’t even big numbers differentiating walls and rooms and doors. I suppose I expected them, like deck and catwalk levels in a starship movie, the better to keep track of geography during the chase scene. The absence of benchmarks suggested a kind of vaunting arrogance to me, a superiority to the world of the walking dead that oozed from every crevice—almost a programmed psychological intimidation, very subtle, very potent.
When our little bullet car stopped, we found ourselves staring through another Lexan airlock at another sentry, sitting console. If not for the fact that the man did not have the handlebar moustache of his predecessor, we might have just whizzed around a closed track in a big circle. The door slid back with a soft, pneumatic exhalation.
“What do you think?” said Zetts.
“I think we can’t outthink these guys.”
We sat there like dopes for a couple of beats, until the man at the console waved us in. Hey, c’mon, what are you waiting for?
I let the pistol drop from the holster into my grasp. I cut the safety and chambered the debut round. Then I decocked—I didn’t want to sneeze or something and accidentally put a bullet into good old Zetts. Difficult enough, to do all this one-handed; impossible if my fractured wrist had been my shooting hand. We stood up together and I let the console man see me snug the gun into Zetts’s neck as we moved forward. His expression went wary and he extended a hand, fingers splayed, as if to imply that’s not necessary; be careful.
Internecine Page 31
