Any Minute Now (29 page)

“Go fuck yourself,” the bartender said before he went off to fill the order of a pair of regulars at the other end of the bar.

Back in the car, St. Vincent shook out a cigarette and lit up. He hadn't smoked since the Well closed. But it was open again, and that meant Whitman would be involved again whether or not anyone liked it. He most certainly did not, though he knew Monroe would welcome it. St. Vincent was certain that of all the Alchemists Monroe alone would be happy to see Whitman again. Perhaps happy wasn't the right word. Relieved? Grateful? St. Vincent could see why, but only by straining his brain to its limits. Whitman was far too dangerous to be allowed anywhere near the reopened Well. Hadn't Monroe learned anything from the first time?

He sat and smoked until the car's interior was as smog-bound as a Beijing street. He closed his eyes. Maybe he was getting too old for this. Wasn't it true that in every gunslinger's life there came a time when a younger one was faster, smarter, stronger?

But not yet. Not today, or even tomorrow.

St. Vincent turned the ignition on, eased the car out into the street. Eight minutes later he was parked across from Sydny's apartment. He lit another cigarette, opened the window, stared at the façade of her building. He let his mind wander, allowed his imagination to take root, until visions of what Sydny might be doing and in what stage of undress flashed across the scrim of his mind. He tried to imagine the depths of such a lewd woman's sins. Then he tried harder, so hard an ache began behind his eyes, the same kind of ache he'd get when he slid into bed after one of his mother's visit, as if he were inside a storm of wasps.

He smoked the cigarette down to the nub, flicked it into the road. He was about to get out of the car when his mobile buzzed. Dickerson.

“How are you and Lucy getting along?”

“Fine,” Dickerson said in his ear. “But I—”

“Where have you put her up?”

“My place for the time being, but boss—”

“I'm busy, Jonah. You have thirty seconds.”

“We have a situation, boss. Sergeant Moran has failed to check in.”

“Maybe he's taking a crap.” St. Vincent stared up at the light coming through the living room windows of Sydny's apartment. The bedroom was dark.

“We can't raise anyone in the cadre,” Dickerson said. “It's as if the comm at the villa doesn't exist.”

Now he had St. Vincent's full attention. A thought entered St. Vincent's mind—a terrible thought. “Jonah, where is Whitman and the Red Rover team?”

“They're supposed to be in Beirut.”

“I know where they're
supposed
to be, shithead.” St. Vincent was truly irritated now. Irritated and more than a little alarmed. “Find out where they
actually
are. You have thirty minutes. If, by then, you can't give me a definitive answer, pack your possessions. You'll be cleaning toilets in the congressional bathrooms.”

*   *   *

Enough! Whitman shouted silently. He was team leader; he had to remain unshaken by everything no matter what. He had to heal someone.

“Compadre!”
he called.
“¡Ven aquí, por favor!”

Flix appeared a moment later. Whitman was shocked at how much he had changed in just a matter of a half hour. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes looked like black holes in a skull. Worst of all, bloody vertical tracks scored down either side of his face, like war paint or ritual incisions. Crescents of crusted blood were visible under his nails.

There were still other changes: he moved as if on ball bearings, his boots scarcely touching the ground. He made as much noise as an owl on the hunt, which was to say, none. His eyes seemed focused on both Whitman and on the immediate environment, which, so far as Whitman knew, was impossible.

But then again maybe not. Years ago, he had been sent down to the swamps of southern Louisiana as part of his training for the Well. He'd spent six months in that hellhole, which was literal as well as figurative. While there, he met a young boy, not more than twelve or thirteen, riding a bike. The kid looked no different from the other kids Whitman had seen in his time down there amid the mishmash of religions, superstitions, and ethnicities. The kid could have been Creole, but he also could have been mestizo, or a mix of anything, which was pretty much the norm in the noxious bayous south of New Orleans, where voodoo and Santería spawned their love children.

He'd come across the kid in the red glare of early morning, when the Spanish moss didn't seem so malignant and the stench of oil wasn't so pervasive. Whitman was taking a run when he saw the kid, sitting astride his bike, eating his breakfast. What made Whitman stop was the faux license plate on the bike. Instead of a series of numbers and letters it was imprinted with the phrase:
CTHULHU IS COMING.

Whitman had read Lovecraft. He'd found
The Call of Cthulhu
in his mother's night table and, stealing it, had read it by flashlight under the nighttime bedcovers, far after he should have been asleep. Cthulhu was one of what Lovecraft called the Old Ones, demonic, God-like beasts worshipped by people of a certain, half-mad stripe. Cthulhu was described as a colossal cephalopod with many tentacles and bat wings. Truly the stuff of nightmares.

As it turned out, Cthulhu wasn't the only bizarre thing the kid was into. As Whitman engaged him, the kid generously shared his breakfast and started talking a blue streak. Turned out he knew a man named Preach, a big kahuna in the swamplands, according to the kid, for many, many years. People came to him for potions, curses, voodoo, and Santería spells of every shape and variety. According to the kid, Preach had been at the forefront of the struggle against the demonization of non-Christian religions, directed by the area's fire-breathing evangelical preachers, of which there was no shortage.

The kid claimed he had witnessed a zombification ritual that had been performed by Preach in order to ease the pain of a friend diagnosed with a fatal disease.

“The idea of zombification's simple,” the kid had said. “Course all those comics an' movies an' junk would have you think otherwise. Zombification's a purifying ritual—at least Preach's was. It cuts off what goes on in the head from what goes on in the body, so you feel no pain no matter how much hurt is put on you.” The kid had shook his head. “All that undead stuff, I dunno. Preach told me he once met Papa Legba—midnight in our local cemetery. Rolled some dice, had a drink, a couple of laughs, that was it.”

“And you believed him,” Whitman had said.

The boy had peered at him queerly. “You would, too, if you'd'a seen that zombie. Grateful as shit, that zombie was. Gave Preach all his money, he did, for takin' away his sufferin'.”

Even after all these years, Whitman could still hear the kid's laughter echoing through the dead trees, as the air thickened to okra stew with the rising of the vicious sun.

So now, here in Western Pak, Whitman could not help but feel that he had come face to face with a modern-day zombie. Because it was clear enough that Flix was no longer himself.

Whitman reached out. “Flix, come on over here and sit down.”

He pulled Orteño into the shadow of the roof's overhang, sat facing him. “Tell me what's going on.”

Flix held his head in his hands. “I would if I could,” he said, “but I don't even know who I am. I can't recognize…” He dropped a pile of dog tags in the dirt between them. “Whit, I can't believe I killed these soldiers. How did I do it? I have no fucking memory of it. One minute I'm jumping into the compound, the next you're sending me out to check on all these dead men I shot.” His head turned back and his feverish eyes clocked on Whit's. “I mean, what the fuck, man? What. The. Fuck!”

“Calm down, Flix.”

Whitman squeezed Orteño's shoulder. The gesture caused Flix to rear back, his eyes open wide and staring, his hands up, ready to defend himself.

“Flix, for Christ's sake, it's me, Whit.”

Orteño continued to stare at him as if he were the enemy.

“Flix, something happened to you back in the States.”

“What?” Orteño blinked several times, his pupils contracting. “Oh, yeah, I know. The concussion. Could be that's what's—”

“You didn't have a concussion, Flix. They did something to you while you were unconscious.”

“‘They'? Who's ‘they'?”

“One step at a time,” Whit said. “What's the last thing you remember before waking up in the hospital?”

“I…” Flix frowned. “Who the fuck remembers?” He passed a hand across his eyes. “Wait, I had gone to see Lucy, my niece. She's been at the Bethesda Institute of Mary Immaculate, recovering from drugs.”

“Who put her there, Flix?”

Orteño's face went vacant again, and Whit thought, zombified.

“St. Vincent,” Flix said, at length. He seemed like two separate people.

“Luther St. Vincent?”

“Uh huh.”

“From NSA?”

Flix nodded.

“Was he there on your last visit?”

“He's always there. He supervises the visits.”

“Why? What's Luther St. Vincent have to do with Lucy?”

Orteño looked away. His face was pale and sweating, as if the two people inside his brain were fighting a dreadful war.

Whit suppressed an urge to lean forward. “
Compadre
, what is it?” He didn't want to trigger another aggressive response.

“She…” Flix licked his lips, his head dropping down. “She was in trouble with the law. State police, he said. And the FBI. Cuz she got caught crossing state lines with drugs.”

Now it all became clear to Whitman. “So he got Lucy out of hock—if she ever really was in trouble with the feds.”

Flix's head came up. “What d'you mean?”

“The whole thing could have been staged by St. Vincent.” Whitman peered into his friend's face. “Flix, d'you understand? The cocksucker is using your niece as leverage.” Whitman struggled to hold Flix's gaze with his own. He couldn't afford the eyes going out of focus, his consciousness beaten back again at this crucial moment. “Why,
compadre
? What's St. Vincent using Lucy for?”

“Jesus, Whit.” Orteño looked and sounded miserable. “Jesus, don't be pissed. He wants me to spy on you. To report back whatever you do. He said it was because of the leak.”

“And you believed him?”

“Honestly?” Flix blinked back a budding wetness in his eyes. “Honestly, I was thinking of Lucy, and my sister Marilena.” Then he groaned. “Christ, Whit, what the hell's happening to me?”

“Let's get back to that last trip to see Lucy. You saw her and then what?”

Flix closed his eyes. “It's all one big kaleidoscope,
compadre
. My brain feels like a piñata that's been hit over and over.”

“I know, Flix. But
think
. Try to concentrate. You left Lucy and…?”

“And nothing,
nada
…” His expression was horrible to see—twisted, seeming to morph from one aspect to another, gripped by interior shadows. Then he gasped, surfacing again. “No, wait a minute. I remember St. Vincent walking me out. There was a car, an ambulance, then he said, ‘Watch your head!' as I was getting into…”

He shook his head. “Nothing, Whit. Nothing, except waking up in the hospital.” Unconsciously, he put a hand to the side of his neck.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. I … don't know.”

Whitman leaned in, turned him a bit. He peered at the spot Orteño had touched. “It's a needle mark, Flix. St. Vincent injected you, knocked you out. You were abducted.”

It was then that the convulsions started and, fingers curled to animal claws, Orteño tried to rip his face off.

 

29

“You've waited long enough,” St. Vincent's mother had said to him. “It's time you saw the face of the enemy.”

St. Vincent, sitting in his car, another cigarette dangling between lips, checked his wristwatch. Twenty minutes to go. At the end of that time, whether or not Jonah had called, it would be time to confront Sydny.

He inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs and, as the nicotine hit, his memory flowered open to meet his present self. He remembered the evening, unnaturally clear as a bell, with a full moon riding the corner of an animal-shaped cloud.

Sitting next to his mother in the rattling Woody station wagon, he watched the swamps, the hunched trees, freighted with Spanish moss. The stench of sulfur and oil combined to coat the inside of his mouth. After what seemed a long time, they turned off the paved road onto a dirt track, bumping along for a mile or so.

Abruptly, his mother stopped the car and they got out. Thick tendrils of fog curled about their ankles, though all the time they were driving the night had been perfectly clear. He looked up, but could no longer find the moon.

Because his mother needed no light to guide her, he deduced that she had been here before, possibly many times. Turning sharply to their left, he saw pale lights burning through the windows of a house. Not even that; he saw as they came closer that it was more like a shack that was long past its sell-by date.

Inside they were met by a young boy with the disturbing ebon eyes of a crow. Behind him sat a man with prematurely white hair and a horrifying smile. Behind the man, spread across the rear wall more as a fetish than a trophy, hung a great wolf's head and skin, the teeth and claws painted in primary colors: red, yellow, blue.

The white-haired man had been studying something in his hands, which were folded in his lap. He looked up as they entered. St. Vincent was shocked. He'd been expecting eyes old and rheumy as the flesh around them, but these were the vivid color of a bluebird, alight with the vigor of youth.