Hellenic Immortal (11 page)

“It’s not helping me much now.” He leaned back, as if getting a view of me from a distance would improve the analysis. “You’re pretty sharp, I know that.”

“Thank you.”

“Seriously, that was a hell of a stunt you pulled with the money.” He thought about it for a second. “You don’t care all that much about money, even though you have a ton of it.”

“This is true,” I agreed.

“But not always true,” he suggested. “Everyone cares about money.”

I smiled. “No comment.”

He tamped out his cigarette and lit another one. I really thought smoking wasn’t allowed in public places anymore, but that did not appear to be the case unless Mike’s car also took us back to the mid-90’s.

“Tell me about the girl,” he said.

“Ariadne?”

“Clara Wasserman.”

“Nothing to talk about there.” It was an unconvincing response.

“I disagree; there’s plenty to talk about. Like, she got paid $5 million by a guy named Robert Grindel, a guy that’s conveniently dead now, the same guy who also used to own that island you bought.”

“Well,” I began, “I wouldn’t say anything about Bob Grindel was convenient.”

“But you knew he was dead.”

“Of course I did. That’s why people have estate sales. Listen, Clara isn’t anybody. She’s a girl I got to know, that’s all.”

“What did she do to earn $5 million?”

I smiled. “You’d have to ask her.”

“Which you suggest I not do, because she isn’t anybody.”

“Now you’re catching on.”

“Left you, huh?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“It was the age thing, right? I mean I know you look thirty-something, but you’ve gotta be older. And she’s, what, in her twenties?”

Part of me wanted to tell him that yes, that was exactly the problem, that although Clara and I are both going to live a very long time, her childhood memories included music television, the Internet, and rock music from Seattle while mine involved goring a wild animal and wearing its lower intestines as a trophy. Instead, I changed the subject. “So what’s your verdict? Have you figured me out?”

“I figure you stole your money and killed the guy who had it last.”

“Like Bob Grindel?”

“Like him. Course you have more money than he did. And I wouldn’t wanna jump to any premature conclusions here. Am I close?”

“No, but points for creativity.”

“Yeah . . . it’s too much money anyway.” He fixed me with another one of his stares. “Mug a guy, get his wallet that’s one thing. But this is royalty money. People notice when royalty get mugged.”

I smiled as he continued.

“Just the same, I think killing someone is well within the scope of your abilities.”

“Isn’t that true for everybody?”
 

“No. Only certain people.” He sniffed the air. “The food’s ready.”

*
 
*
 
*

I haven’t spent much of my life in cars, as you can imagine. Being in one is still something I have to consciously accustom myself to. It’s not the same as with airplanes, which are totally divorced from any prior experience. But cars go on the ground just like horses and carriages, and the only real difference is the traveling speed. Well, that and the comparative comforts of a pair of shock absorbers and wheels covered in vulcanized rubber, which is a nice step up from wooden wagon wheels on an unpaved road.

It’s the velocity that gives me trouble. I spend most short car trips feeling anxious, and long car trips—especially at highway speeds—can reduce me to a puddle of nervous twitches. This does not make me the best traveling companion in the world.

“Oh my God, will you lie down in the back again or something?” Mike complained. I was sitting in the passenger seat, and my knee was bouncing up and down at a rate that may have equaled the car’s pistons.

“That won’t help,” I said. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going so at least I can look forward to an upcoming exit?”

“You’re like a child, I swear. Just outside of Sacramento, okay?”

“See, that’s helpful. Now what’s just outside of Sacramento?”

“Something I want you to see.”

“Useful.”

“It isn’t meant to be.”
 

We were going eighty-seven miles per hour. I was thoroughly amazed, both that anything could go that fast and not crumble to dust for violating some basic physical laws, and that we hadn’t been pulled over by anybody. Mike had said we were off the grid, but I bet we’d pop right back up on the grid—and damned if I knew what the grid was—if he were stopped for speeding.

Mike kept his eyes on the road. “I’m not trying to be cryptic. I just don’t want to bias your impression by telling you too much beforehand.”

“And does this thing have to do with Ariadne Papos?” I asked.

“It does,” he said reluctantly. “And that’s all I’m saying.”

That didn’t help me at all because I already knew it, but we had struck a deal. In exchange for helping me get out of Vegas, I’d look at his thing, whatever it was. I am not exactly legendary when it comes to keeping my word, but in this case I was planning to; it was entirely possible I wasn’t done needing Mike’s help.

When you find out the government of a particular nation is actively searching for you, it’s almost always in your best interest to get out of that nation as quickly as possible; anything less than an immediate departure just increases the chances that you never get to leave. So I probably should have headed for the airport. On the other hand, that’s undoubtedly what they expected me to do, and did I want to be somewhere over the Midwest when they figured out I was on a particular flight? I did not. It isn’t like I could get off in the middle somewhere.

There were too many variables. How fast was their response time? Was I “wanted” in the sense of my face being plastered all over the place, or did they still have laws in this country that required them to actually pin a crime on me first? And was what I did in the casino a big enough crime to qualify? A guy could go crazy thinking about it. I much preferred going crazy watching the speedometer.

“Do you have to use the bathroom or something?” Mike asked.
 

My knee must have been quite the distraction. “I don’t travel by car much.” I could have said I preferred stagecoach, but that might initiate further questions.

“You spent too much time on that island,” he said.
 

I think Mike took it personally, like I was criticizing his driving. I wasn’t; just the speed at which he was accomplishing it. But then our exit was coming up and Mike slowed down, as did my knee. A few minutes later we were taking an off-ramp to a place called Rancho Cordova.
 

A wave of relief flooded through me. “Is this it?”
 

“Almost. Jesus, a pretty day like this, and you spend it watching the car gauges.”

“One of us has to,” I muttered. “Besides, the day was moving past me too quickly to enjoy.”

He rolled us into a nice suburban neighborhood, and after a few more twists and turns, we came to a stop in front of a modest one story ranch home. It had yellow siding, red shingles, and a covered patio, small in the sense that the garage was nearly as large as the living space portion. It was such a mundane terminus I didn’t know what to think.

“Are we meeting your mom?”
 

“No,” he said, shutting the car’s engine down.

“You’re a realtor on the side?”

“No. Shut up.”

“Okay.”

I stepped out of the car. Mike was right; it was a beautiful day. And I’d stepped right into an episode of
Leave It To Beaver
. I could hear neighborhood kids playing in the not-too-great distance and closer, the sound of somebody mowing their lawn. A few houses down, an elderly couple was drinking—I swear—lemonade on their front porch. Under the circumstances (rogue FBI agent and all that) this was surreal.

Mike led us up to the front door, which I discovered was crossed with yellow police tape reading DO NOT CROSS.

“That’s more like it.”
 

Mike peered through the window beside the door, looking for goodness-knows-what.

“Do police really expect the yellow tape to keep people out?” I asked, just trying to make conversation.

“Yeah. It’s a psychological deterrent.”

“But does it work?”

“Who knows? Anyway, she’s not coming back here. They yanked my surveillance team almost a week ago, after a month. The tape is new.”

“This is Ariadne’s place?”

“Yeah.” He pulled a key out of his pocket and opened the front door.

We were greeted by a central air-conditioning system that had clearly been working much too hard, perhaps out of boredom. The front entrance gave way to a moderately appointed living room with matching couch and chair, a couple of end tables, and a TV. Certainly, nothing to warrant the yellow tape warning like severed human heads or body parts, which would certainly explain the cold air.

“It’s this way.” He led me past the living room and to a corridor on the right.
 

I peeked through the first doorway I came to. “Oh, a bedroom.” Again, no severed human heads there. Next came a bathroom, and then a third door, which was closed. Mike stopped at it.

“This is it,” he said. “You ready?”

“I guess.”
 

He turned the knob and pushed open the door.

I stepped into a darkened room, and until Mike hit the light switch behind me, I was wondering if I was about to get jumped. But then, I saw what the room looked like, and finally I understood why Mike had gone through so much trouble to get me to this place.

To call it a shrine would be a gross over-simplification. Is was more like a series of small, interconnected shrines devoted to a variety of arcana, the most prominent of which appeared to be dedicated to me personally. In fact, I took up one whole wall, right over the computer. “I thought you said she just had me on her computer.”

“That was her work console,” he explained. “We didn’t find this until later. Actually—and I feel stupid even mentioning this—while I was here looking at this wall wondering who the fuck you were, someone else was looking at the photo in your FBI file. It was a good week before we put the two pieces together.”

“Efficient.”

“That’s why I like to work alone. We’re usually fifty left hands not knowing what the fifty right hands are doing.”

I stepped up to the wall and took a closer look at myself. Most of the photos were current.

“She’s been following you around for a while,” he commented, noting my interest specifically in a photograph taken outside of Central Park in New York City. It was over two years old. I knew that both because I was sporting the bald look at the time, and because I more or less commissioned the photo.

“No,” I said. “She got these from the Internet.”

“Really?”

“It’s a long story. Thing is, I know for a fact the site is shut down.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s gone. A lot of sites are archived on the server level.”

“No kidding?” I actually had no idea what he had just said, but it didn’t sound like something I needed more details on. I know enough about computers to use the Internet competently, but that’s about it.

“Yeah. Wanna know how I know that?”

“Ariadne,” I offered.

“Accessing non-public archived web pages was one of her functions.”

“For my FBI file?”

“For terrorist activity,” he clarified. “My point is, if these pictures were once in the public domain, she knew how to find them. But why did she?”

I didn’t answer that, because I didn’t know. My eyes drifted to the bottom of the pictures, where there were a variety of words tacked on the wall. None of them were in English.

“We know what most of those say, but there are still a couple we’re not sure of.”

“This one is Lazarus,” I informed him. “It’s in Greek. This here . . . it’s Aramaic. It means
Wandering Jew
.”

“Very good,” he admitted. Mike sounded impressed. “How about that one on the side there?”

“That’s Sumerian. Not surprised you’re having trouble finding someone who can identify that.”

“What’s it say?”

“Ut-Naphishtim. It’s a name, just like the others.”

“Okay, so how’d you know that?”

“I’m something of a collector of dead languages.”

I pulled myself away from the Giant Wall of Me and moved to the wall opposite the door and next to the only window in the room, which was shuttered closed. The wall was papered with pages of highlighted text of all shapes and sizes, along with a small poster of what looked to me like a comic book character of some kind. I based that on the nature of the artwork, not because the man depicted had a big S on his chest or anything similarly archetypal. It was of a thin, pale man with spiky black hair and black eyes and a long, flowing robe. He actually looked like a vampire I knew once. Especially the eyes. Vampires all have black eyes.

I pointed at a picture. “This I’m clueless about.”
 

“That’s a comic book character called Sandman,” Mike answered. “In the stories, he’s one of the Eternals, a living incarnation of Dream. Or something. Got a comic book geek in the Sacramento office who identified it for me.”

“And the text?” I asked.

“Pages from novels. Heinlein, Neil Stephenson, Bova, Grimwood, and a couple others.”

I leaned forward to identify some highlighted text. It was a quotation from a character named Lazarus Long. She sure knew how to hammer home a theme.

I moved to the third wall. A small table had been set up against the center of the wall, and in the center of the table was a scale model of a Greek temple I recognized as belonging to Dionysos.

More pictures took up the wall-space, mostly consisting of Greek statuettes and photos of artifacts. At the top of the wall was a banner, also in the Greek language.

“Dionysos,” Mike interpreted for me, possibly aware that he didn’t have to. “God of wine,” he added.
 

I leaned forward to focus on a small Polaroid just above the temple model. “God of the theater too,” I pointed out. “And madness.”