Eye of the Burning Man: A Mick Callahan Novel (The Mick Callahan Series) (17 page)

I squirmed as the video proceeded. I saw several nude people, their bodies painted green, yellow, and purple dance through the barren Nevada desert. A few wore masks, and for a split second, I cringed because one had been painted black. Meanwhile, people were pitching tents in the middle of nowhere, and time-lapse photography showed a small "city" springing up.

Someone had spray painted a sign that said: "Welcome to Black Rock." What appeared to be a full bacchanal began and flourished. A number of apparently gay men were dressed as a macabre version of nuns. They had long plastic penises hanging out of their black habits and they hooted as a group of topless women danced by wearing hula skirts. One woman with a stunning figure rolled around naked in blue mud, playing with her nipple rings.

As I watched, a dark part of me remembered how much the old Mick loved this kind of irreverence. As I'd told Hal, I had virtually no memory of having attended the festival, other than the fight that resulted from taking mushrooms while blind drunk. I'd had sex with someone, perhaps the black girl I'd accidentally struck, but everything else was a blur.

A narrator informed me that a hidden camera had been used to record the footage. Generally the press was no longer allowed at the Burning Man Festival, except as full participants. Some pieces of a production shot before the ban were also attached. I watched them as well.

Burning Man was always held the week prior to and including Labor Day. The event had begun in 1986, when a broken-hearted man named Larry Harvey decided to mark both the solstice and the end of a passionate love affair by burning some stick figures on Baker Beach in northern California. The action was blatantly illegal, but several onlookers and some of Harvey's friends found it amusing.

So, they did it again the following year. Some observers thought the festival was an abreaction to the economic excess of the Ronald Reagan l980s; some just considered it a throwback to the solstice celebrations of pagan religions.

By the third year or so, the crowds had grown from dozens to hundreds and finally thousands of people, and the Park Police demanded that the stick figures not be lit for safety reasons, but the crowd had insisted. The police cracked down and the festival was banned.

The following year found the entire festival transplanted to the emptiness of Nevada. That was where the video had been taken. I slowed the film to enjoy some of the scenery.

The most striking visual was the majestic emptiness of that four hundred square mile, alkaline expanse known as Nevada's Black Rock desert. I had been born and raised in the Northeastern part of the state, up in the Dry Wells area, and had not spent a great deal of time exploring directions other than south, towards Elko and eventually Reno, before moving to live in Los Angeles. Only someone born in the desert can fully appreciate both its terrible beauty and stunning emptiness.

At first glance, the footage made me feel homesick: The magnificence of the yellow-flowered, harsh turquoise angles of a clump of sage only apparent seen in full contrast to the nothingness within which it grows.

As the film went on, and the macabre Labor Day festival began, something disturbing happened. It was obvious that the vast majority of the participants were harmlessly acting out their resentments of social norms, customs, and societal prohibitions. This was anarchy, nudity and drugs plus Halloween costumes, nothing more. But for me, it was also an unpleasant trip down memory lane.

What had been somewhat fun years ago now seemed sad and even destructive. I only saw that humans had invaded a barren, gorgeous wasteland with their beer cans and fires and guns and cars and airplanes and somehow scarred it; polluted it with their obsessions, desperate death anxiety, and egoistic need to rebel. I saw myself in those humans, and it did not leave me comfortable.

I could see some logic to the so-called performance art involved and even find myself able to identify with the often expressed, and somewhat valid, concerns about the potential geopolitical economic impact of free trade and corporate monopolies on developing nations. But the positive intent was too often marred by the presence of drugs and mindless sex. That took the edge off the sentiments. Bettering the world by tearing it down was an old idea, and it had never worked.

The Black Rock Arts Festival, as the Burning Man is also known, prided itself on keeping a neat and environmentally friendly camp. Portable toilets abounded, as did collection areas for plastic and tin. Many of the participants went to great lengths to clean up afterwards. Yet for me there was something dualistic here. On one level it was harmless fun, adolescent rebellion. On another, it seemed obnoxious and self-centered.

On the video, several people began shooting automatic weapons at paper targets while being pelted with water balloons. A voice indicated that firearms had since been banned from the festival. I turned the video off and sat back in my chair. After a few moments of contemplation, I checked the time and called Hal Solomon.

"Somebody is toying with me."

Hal's silver hair rippled on the monitor. He tilted his head. "What makes you say that?"

"Because these days the whole event takes place in a place called Black Rock City." I explained the night Peanut had called Larry Donato. "That burned area in my back yard had a small black rock in it."

"I see."

"That was a personal message of some kind, Hal. Something the cops weren't supposed to understand." I rubbed my temples. "But from whom? And was it intended for me, or for Mary?"

"Didn't you tell me that the man who attacked you after work wore a spray-painted Halloween mask to hide his features?"

"Yes, he did."

"Well, do you think that was just a coincidence, or could it also have something to do with this eccentric festival?"

"It seems connected, and I am starting to have a very bad feeling about all of this."

"That strikes me as a sensible response," Hal said from the monitor. "Of course, there is one other possibility." His face dissolved into multicolored pixels and then reassembled.

"What is that?"

"You have irritated a lot of people over the years. Perhaps someone from your drugging or drinking days or even from that long-ago night you went to the Burning Man Festival is newly out of prison and hot on your trail."

"Maybe," I said. "I keep dreaming about this black girl . . ."

"My word." For a brief moment Hal was in perfect focus and his lips were in synch. He leaned to one side and clutched his abdomen. His face was as closed as his fists.

"Hal?"

A moment passed. Hal grunted and shook himself. "I suppose it is time to come clean."

"About what?"

"My drinking career has caught up with me. It seems I have substantial scarring around the bile duct, causing lingering digestive problems and pain. In short, I have been diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis."

"Damn. Hal, that's very serious."

"Indeed it is. It appears my poor, exhausted little internal organ does not produce enough digestive enzymes. The self-created obstruction must be removed surgically."

I touched the screen with my fingers. "I'm so sorry. When are you scheduled?"

"Soon. We are working on it, stallion. We are working on it."

"Will you keep me in the loop?"

"Most certainly, and do be sure to tell your clients that however fun the party may be, the bill always comes due at some point."

"Believe me, I do."

"Let us now return to whoever may be after you. Could it perhaps be a former drug dealer you owed money to? It would be relatively easy for someone to find you and follow you home from the station to establish where you live. Do you still have the gun?"

"Yes. It's in the closet."

The synch slipped again. Hal shook his head, a bit sadly. "Perhaps you should keep it handy?"

"Hal, Jerry still lives up north, right there in Nevada. He has been looking for Mary for months, but she won't give me permission to tell him she's here. I think she's protecting him in some way."

"And she knows more than she's letting on?"

"I
know
she does, and I'm going to try to pin her down about that tomorrow. Listen, about Jerry?"

"Yes?"

"I wonder what he knows about this festival. Can you send the footage on to him? Just ask him to take a look and tell you what he thinks."

"Yes again. Shall we also ask him to call you?"

"Not yet, I don't want to have to lie to him again. Please just add a note that I said I'll get in touch later today or tomorrow. I think it's time I had a real heart-to-heart with Mary, and not just about Jerry. I think she's used up her grace period."

"Get some sleep." Hal massaged his belly.

"I will. And you take care of your poor, abused stomach."

"Pancreas."

"I stand corrected."

"Good night."

I switched off and sat back. It was nearly one-thirty in the morning. I stretched and went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, went to the bedroom and turned out all of the lights except the one nearest the bed. I flipped on the bedside clock radio, put the volume down to a low level and then found some Merle Haggard playing on KZLA.
Where you been all this time, my darlin' . . . ?

What would the world be like without Hal in it? That was not something I wished to contemplate. I had just stripped off my shirt and started to remove my jeans when something rustled in the bushes outside the bedroom window. I froze.

Seconds later, the sound came again.

I stretched flat in the darkness and turned out the light, waited a few moments, then slipped out onto the floor. I crept over to the closet, slid the wooden door open as quietly as possible and took down the gun case. I opened the zipper and removed the .357 from the nylon case. I slipped in a speed loader with hollow points; put the case back up on the closet shelf.

I gently clicked the cylinder shut and edged down the wall into the hallway; both hands on the gun, barrel pointed down towards the floor. The boards creaked. The radio station switched to an old record by Emmylou Harris,
You've got it coming to you honey . . .
I stepped over the floor heater grill and into the kitchen.

I could see the entire yard. Someone had set off the motion detector, and the porch light glared out into the bushes. I let my eyes roam over the shadows, probing for any unusual shapes.

After a time, I dropped into a low crouch and moved briskly across the kitchen floor.

I went to bent knees by the silverware cabinets and took a deep breath. I reached for the handle to the back door and then stopped, thinking it would be better to wait for the lights to go out again.
How long were they set for? Was it two minutes, or five?

I could just call the police, but if Fancy and his posse were outside, there would not be time enough for help to arrive. I also debated waking Mary, but didn't know what I was up against. Why terrify her if I could handle this alone?

The noise came again, and after a few seconds, another time. It sounded like footsteps in that patch of ivy that grew up and over the side fence.

I started to open the back door and then stopped. The burglar alarm system was on. If I opened the door it would raise holy hell, Mary would be awake and the neighbors alerted.

I turned the porch light off, so it wouldn't respond to movement, and slipped back out into the living room. I punched in the five-digit code and disarmed the alarm system, then slipped out the front door and down to the side gate.

I stood quietly for a long moment with eyes closed, then opened them. The moonlight was sufficient. I walked carefully down the sidewalk with the gun pointed up towards the sky this time, peered around the corner and pulled back. Nothing happened, so I stepped out into the back yard.

The sound.

I dropped into a crouch and thumbed the hammer back just as a small ball of fur jumped high in the ivy and landed again.

"Murphy? God damn it, where have you been?"

The old gray cat had been trying to catch something in the ivy, perhaps a lizard. He saw me, cried out in hunger and ran over to thread himself between my legs. I eased the hammer down, shook with relief and unused adrenaline. I grabbed the cat, fed him well, and finally went to bed.

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