Stone Junction (51 page)

The question, sudden and oblique, caught Daniel off balance. ‘What makes you ask that?’

Kenny shrugged. ‘A hunch. A feeling. I wasn’t meaning to get in your shit about it. You don’t have to tell me diddly.’

‘I almost died once,’ Daniel said. ‘From a bomb explosion. My heart stopped when they were loading me in the ambulance; they had to shock it to get it started. That’s what the doctor told me, anyway – I don’t remember. I was falling, that’s the last thing I remember, falling till it seemed I’d fall forever, then right in front of me, out of nowhere, was a mirror, and I remember lifting my hands to protect my face but I don’t know if I fell through it or it shattered or what. I guess the closest I’ve ever come to seeing Death was in that mirror, but I don’t remember what I saw there, if I saw anything at all.’

‘That’s Death, all right. He loves to fuck around with mirrors, mirrors and windows – two of his favorite toys.’

‘If you don’t mind a personal question, something you said has got me curious.’

Kenny glanced over at him. ‘Do it, man. Shoot.’

‘I’m not quite sure how to put it,’ Daniel replied. ‘You said when you looked at Ginnilee’s picture, you vanished inside yourself. Do you mean your body actually disappeared, turned into air?’

‘Negative. Just the fucking opposite. My body stayed and my mind vanished. You had the right track, though; just the wrong train.’

Daniel thought about this. It actually seemed to make better sense than the way he was going about it. He tried to imagine his mind vanished, smiling when he realized he’d gotten ahead of himself, that first he’d have to imagine his mind. The thought cracked him up.

Kenny eyed him nervously. ‘What got you off, man?’

‘I was trying to imagine my mind.’

‘Yeah, I know – it’s weird, huh? Like a TV watching itself, or a slot machine playing itself, shit like that.’

‘Shit like that,’ Daniel repeated, still chuckling.

Kenny, eyes back on the road, seemed almost solemn. He nodded his head once, as if confirming a decision, and turned to Daniel. ‘I got a deal for you, Herman, a stone guarantee. Why don’t you hook up with me for awhile, ride some patrol. I can get you decent work in the casino if you want some play money, but if you’d rather kick back I’ve got an extra bunk and lots of rations. I’m no fucking Julie Child, but I cook good enough I don’t use nothing from cans.’

Sobered by the offer, Daniel said, ‘I’m honored, but I have a mission of my own. Maybe when it’s over, I’ll take you up on it.’

‘What’s your mission, man. This some of that “religious zeal” stuff?’

‘Some, I guess. You see, I found the Grail––’

‘Say what?’ Kenny cocked his ear. ‘The Grail?’

‘Like the Holy Grail,’ Daniel said.

‘You mean like in the Knights of the fucking Round Table? Some kind of trophy cup from God or something like that? I always dug those knights thundering off to lance some flipped-out dragon. Foxworth used to laugh at me about it. Said, “Fuck dem knights and da round table. Thas a
lot
of hard riding fo’
not much
pussy.” I told him pussy wasn’t the point. The point was the
quest
, fighting your way through. He said, “Thas cool wi’ me, Kenny. You quest it, I’ll fuck it.” That was Foxworth, man, pussy and music. Fucking Foxworth. Ate a Claymore at Song Be. Heard about it from a guy in the VA, bed next to––’ Kenny stopped, lifting his hands from the wheel in a helpless shrug. ‘Sorry, man,’ he apologized. ‘I shit all over your riff. I get spaced here at night. Get the diarrhea jaws.’

Daniel said, ‘I understand. No problem.’

‘So anyway, before I went drifty, you were saying you’re after this Grail, right?’

‘Not exactly. I found the Grail – not the Holy Grail, but one like it. My mission is to figure out what to do with it.’

‘Fuck, man!
Hang on
to it.’

‘I thought of that first, too,’ Daniel said, ‘but now I’m convinced hanging on to it is the one thing I
can’t
do.’

‘I know some people in Vegas who could move it for thirty percent, if what you mean is
too hot
to hang on to. Free introduction, just to help a brother get clear.’

‘Not necessary. It can’t be sold or bought or stolen or kept. But maybe it can be opened.’

‘Got a torch in the shop,’ Kenny offered.

‘No, wouldn’t do it, but thanks for the thought. I’ll find a way, I’m sure.’

‘Right on, brother. One way or another, blow the walls down. Soul belongs to Jesus but your ass belongs to the Corps. Any way I can help you, call the Shamrock and let me know. I’ll ride in like the fucking cavalry, my iron flipped to rock’n’roll. Me and fucking Foxworth, man, we had this secret army, all the drug-suckers and wailing fools, the loonies and the lonely and the desperately fucked up, a secret army of us called The Brotherhood of the Hideous Truth. Foxworth was the supreme commander, and I was his field general, General Chaos he called me. Only had one rule for meetings. They couldn’t begin until everyone was too stoned to stand up and salute the flag. Fucking Foxworth, man …’

Daniel listened till he could almost imagine Foxworth sitting between them, drinking Bacardi with beer chasers, grinning at his certain knowledge that of the five billion adult human beings on the planet, over half had pussies – and even if that wasn’t the ultimate point, it surely offered reason to live.

At Daniel’s insistence, Kenny let him off near dawn in the middle of nowhere, just road and sagebrush as far as you could see.

‘Look me up any time, man; I’ll be there,’ Kenny reminded him as Daniel got out.

‘Shoot straight,’ Daniel said.

Kenny raised a clenched fist. ‘Now you got the spirit. Semper fi, bro’.’ Daniel smiled and started to close the door. ‘Whoa, mofo! You forgot your bowling ball. Get your shit squared away, son. There’s a war on.’ He handed the bag out to Daniel with a wink. ‘How can you bowl ’em over without a fucking ball? That’d be like going questing without a lance.’

‘Indeed,’ Daniel said as he took the Diamond back. ‘Thanks again.’

Kenny swung the Trans-Am across the center divider and headed back to Las Vegas. The loss of Daniel’s company depressed him. In that vanished month as Death’s Chauffeur, Kenny had developed an acute sensitivity to the thin musky odor released in the breath of those who would die soon. Kenny shook his head dolefully. ‘You stupid jaw-jacking shithead, he was the best bait you’ve had in fifteen years and you fucked it up just like you’ve fucked up everything. Get your shit squared away, boy; there’s a war going down.’ He remembered saying the same thing to Daniel. When he thought about it, he realized those were the last words Foxworth had ever said to him. Fucking Foxworth. He started crying again.

Gurry Debritto smiled as he finished decoding the transmission. He put the message with the others his West Coast listeners had picked up. If the locations were accurate – his subcontractors were the best in the world – the Diamond had been flown to Seattle, driven by van to Coos Bay, Oregon, and was now on an unnamed ship seventy miles due west of the mouth of the Smith River, headed down the coast. He reread the last transmission:

SAIL AWAY. PROBLEMA. FIRST NEST FOULED. BACKUP SHAKY. SAME BAY AND DAY BUT SHIFT STORAGE OKIE TURF 107772400. SHINE ON HARVEST MOON. BLT T GO.

Gurry Debritto nodded. They were good, these people, but always the little problems and changes required adjustments. Evidently the original destination had been somehow fouled and the backup couldn’t be trusted, so they were shifting to a new place. He had a hunch where. The boat was headed south along the coast to the same bay as planned, and San Francisco Bay seemed a logical place to start, particularly in light of OKIE TURF – Oakland, if his hunch was right. He turned to the keyboard and punched up the Oakland Index, then the street directory. He assumed the time and address were contained in the numbers 107772400. He studied them for a moment, deciding to start with the obvious – 2400 as the time. He tapped out 107 77 Street on keyboard and there it was: CARDINAL LIGHT IMPORTS, twenty-one-thousand-square-foot warehouse, owned by Tao-Hihe Chemical, leased to Cardinal Light Imports in January. He punched in the access code for Langley Central Records, then the security clearance sequence that was one of the perks he’d insisted upon as a condition for his services.

Not much on Harvey Moon, but enough. President of Cardinal Light Imports, a board member of Tao-Hihe Chemicals, and an elder of the Breaking Wave Temple, a Taoist church that drew their religious inspiration from Lao-Tzu and their social analysis from Karl Marx. Suspected of smuggling arms for Mao (unconfirmed) and drugs for the Danish Provos (unconfirmed; perhaps disinformation). Lives aboard yacht [
Susy-Q:
Cayman Reg: LV967769]. Married seven times; thirty-one children…

Debritto read on.
Thirty-one
fucking kids. Didn’t these people understand that they had to quit breeding like dogs?

He repunched the Oakland street directory and jotted down the map file number for Seventy-seventh Street. If they were bringing the Diamond down on Moon’s yacht, it would be sweet to take it right there on the boat. But the yacht would be risky, too hard to secure. He’d have to hire help, and he’d always worked alone in close.

When he pulled the Seventy-seventh Street aerial from the map case and located the Cardinal Light warehouse, he dropped all consideration of hitting the yacht. The warehouse was perfect. One story, open ground all around it, a large skylight on the roof. He always appreciated skylights. He liked looking down. Perhaps Mr Moon would show up in person. So far, they’d been more than accommodating. They were bringing it right to him. He was in Berkeley, right next door. He could take the Nimitz and be there in twenty minutes.

He went down to the basement and opened the weapons locker. He would have at least a day to set up the warehouse. It was just past midnight, a perfect time to go take a look. He decided he could afford the extra weight and bulk of four grenades, a drag on stealth but nice to have if even half the Moon kids showed. In a way, he wished they would.

‘Thirty-one kids,’ he muttered, slipping the.380 in his ankle holster. ‘That’s a crime against humanity. This has to stop. If the idiots keep breeding and the intelligent wisely don’t, humans will devolve back to animals. Beasts. Goddamn cunts. Let’s make a baby. If the fucking women weren’t so weak we’d have a chance.’

As soon as he had the Diamond in his control, he’d brush up on his underwater demolition techniques and go slap a mine on Mr Moon’s floating pleasure dome.

Debritto rolled up over the roof gutter and came up in a crouch. The warehouse was just like in the picture: flat tar roof, skylight, three small vent pipes. He held himself motionless for a full minute, eyes scanning the roof, listening. Staying low, he moved to the edge of the skylight. He laid out flat and listened. He could hear muffled music inside, probably a radio. He slipped the silenced.357 from its shoulder holster and inched forward.

What he saw confused him. A man’s face stared up into his. In the instant he realized the warehouse floor was covered with mirrors, the dart hit an inch below his left ear. He tried to roll and snap off a shot but instead flopped onto his back. His body went rigid, the gun slipping from his hand as the fingers stiffened and spread until they were almost bent backward. His lungs were filling with ice. Just before he lost consciousness he saw a tall figure in a black cape and black nurse’s cap step from behind the closest ventilation pipe and raise the blowgun to his lips. The back of Debritto’s right hand stung.

He heard footsteps, a rustle of cloth, a burning sensation in one of his arms. His eyes were open but he couldn’t see. His body had turned to frozen glass. He was a fly in amber, paralyzed, senseless. But he could hear, he realized, had heard footsteps and a rustle of cloth.

A woman’s voice whispered in his ear, ‘Dimethyl tubocaine chloride, a neuromuscular blocking agent. To slow you down enough to listen. I suggest you listen as if your life depended on it. The second dart was a mixture of curare and datura. I gave you two injections a moment ago, both containing synergistic combinations. Belladonna. Tetraclorothane. Methyl iodide. Sodium acid sulfate. Plus a few others I’d lost the labels for. Oh, and some hallucinogens for color. I won’t bore you with the specific effects of each. You’ll know soon enough. And I can’t tell you the cumulative effects because I’ve never tried these combinations before. You’ll be the first to know. Maybe the only one who ever will. And you do deserve to know, don’t you, Mr Debritto? I think so. Information is the root of understanding, and compassion is its flower. I’m an understanding and compassionate woman, Mr Debritto. I am also a Raven, quicksilver’s daughter, the moon’s witness, a messenger between the dead and the living, and a dweller in both realms. I know you doubt my compassion as you lie here so pathetically trapped inside your senseless flesh. Doubt is a tribute to intelligence, as I’m sure you’d agree if you could. So let me prove my compassion, Mr Debritto, prove it with a promise and a gift. I promise I will call you an ambulance within twenty minutes. And the gift is a critical piece of information that could mean the difference between life and death. I’m
not sure
whether I’ve given you a lethal dose or not. Lucky, lucky you. Yet another adventure in self-discovery. Poor baby. Poor, poor baby.’ She paused, and though he couldn’t feel it, gently stroked his brow. When she spoke again, her voice seemed harsher and more intense: ‘He was able to steal the Diamond because he believed in the Diamond. Now we’ll find out what you believe in.’

Debritto heard the rustle of her skirt as she walked away. He tried to move his right hand to find the gun but it was impossible, his mind trapped in a block of ice. He pitted his rage at her against the terror of his own helplessness. He would not be beaten by a woman, by a weak, brainless cunt. She probably hadn’t given him a fatal dose. Too soft to make irrevocable decisions, too sentimental to exercise full power. He tried to concentrate on remembering the poisons she’d said she used. How stupid to mention them. If the paralysis faded he could tell the doctors, who’d know the antidotes. But concentration was difficult lying there paralyzed on the roof. He tried to squeeze his attention back to the poisons she’d named. He heard a female voice whispering in his ear, but it was another woman speaking. His mother’s voice told him, ‘You are evil. Corrupt with evil. Sick with evil. Mad with evil. Evil, evil, evil.’