Devil in the Wires (16 page)

 

Chapter 37

The Blues in Africa

“T
here's an Ellington tune,” she told me. “A piano piece, up-­tempo, fun stuff. But if you listen to the phrasing, the melody, it's African—­traditional African. Now, OK. Maybe there's a route there, maybe it's been handed down through work songs, generation to generation. Maybe. But the point is this: it all links up. All of it. It all links up.”

It was a loud bar. Sports on the TVs, ­people talking, yelling all around.

We leaned close. We had to.

“There's guys, right, guys in North Africa, they play the blues. Not the Chicago blues, and not the Delta blues. The
African
blues. That's what I wanna hear.”

The waitress came by, brought our burgers and our drinks. “Ain't seen you in an age,” she said, and Angel smiled. “Been around,” she said, but when the waitress left, she looked at me, wide-­eyed. “What's going on? I haven't been in this place since forever, you know? Never even seen her before—­”

There was an atmosphere. It pulled you in, it caught you up. Before I knew it, I'd practically forgotten what a bad mood I'd been in. It wasn't just the booze, either. It wasn't even—­though I hated to admit this—­being with Angel once again.

“So—­get this.” She was talking quickly, urgently. “Next year, if all goes well, I'll get my doctorate.
Doctor
Angel Abney Farthing, for what that's worth. I've been doing this—­it feels like centuries, you know? Two jobs, studying. Cen-­tu-­ries. And now it's all about to end.”

“That's pretty amazing. You should never forget that, the achievement—­”

She held a hand up, silenced me.

“The question I'm looking at right now is: What next?”

“I'm the same,” I said. “I'm wondering that, and—­”

“ 'Cause it looks like, all you get with a doctorate is teaching work.”

“Well, that's not bad.”

“Uh-­uh.”

She shook her head.

“I know a guy,” she said. “Bill Williams, a music grad like me. And he is
good
. This guy's got
books
. Published books. And in the last five years, he's had three jobs.
Three
. Soon as he gets one, he says, he starts looking for the next. That's the world of universities, Chris. We don't have your—­what? Ivory spires. Oh—­Harvard, maybe. Prince­ton. They're nowhere I'll get work.

“Towers. Or, dreaming spires. One or the other. And I'm not sure we've got them, either, anymore . . .

“See, I spent my whole life getting here. And now I'm almost finished, and what do I wanna do? Teach high school, like Mom and Dad? No, I don't. Try for funding in academia? One year at a time? No. No.”

I tried to pull a sympathetic face.

She said, “I can't keep on doing this PR shit. It's an act. It isn't me. And I wanna hear the blues, the real blues. I wanna hear the blues in Africa.” Her eyes were on me, and I watched her face: there was an eagerness now, an intensity, quite different from her normal playfulness. Very different from the way she'd been at the receptions and events she'd helped to host. Even her voice had changed; it was lower now, smoky, as if each word were almost too exciting to be voiced. “I found a way to do it,” she said. “I found a way.”

“Well, that's great.”

“You could maybe help me with it.”

“Sure. I mean . . . I owe you, and . . .”

The waitress brought us more martinis. She danced along the aisle. Someone was singing on the far side of the bar, and she sang along, wagging her hips in time.

“I want to join Field Ops.”

I had a glass halfway to my mouth; slowly now, I put it down again.

“I . . .”

Angel said, “You'll help me, won't you?”

“You . . .” I wanted the drink, but deliberately, I didn't take it. “Angel. You need to think long and hard about this. Seriously. It's not—­you know. It's not always how it looks.”

“Hey. You're not the only Field Op I ever met, you know.”

“I know, I know, but—­look. When I was here before, I said a lot of things, and maybe gave a picture of the job that wasn't, you know—­I didn't lie, but I probably slanted things a bit, OK? I wanted to impress you, and—­”

“You wanted to get in my pants. So, again: you're not the only Field Op I ever met.”

“But, but—­”

“It's not glamorous. Fine. Neither is teaching. Neither is studying, and working two jobs. I'll tell you something else about me,” she said. “When I was little, like maybe six, I had me some big, big plans. I was gonna be the first girl ever to play for the Red Wings. The Red Wings, and the Detroit Symphony, both.” She took a drink, eyeing me across her glass. “Didn't happen. Didn't even start to happen.” I saw the pink tip of her tongue between her teeth. “You live with that kinda disappointment, you can live with anything.”

I laughed. She laughed, too. But the weird thing was: when we stopped, someone behind me kept on laughing, laughing, and laughing, and they didn't stop at all.

Angel said, “My, this place is happening tonight.”

“Is it always like this?”

“Long time since I've been here, like I say. Used to be pretty quiet, though. Is this a party, or —­?”

W
e stood outside. I felt the tingle in the air, even at this distance, an itching in my forearms, a tickle in my skin. I put my head back, looked up at the sky. The stars seemed to vibrate; the air itself was shivering with life.

A ­couple left the bar behind us. A flood of sound escaped with them into the night.

I said, “They're celebrating.”

Far off, in the crook of the bay, the Beach House blazed, every light still burning. I felt the warm air on my face, I smelled the fresh leaves. It was spring, but somehow more than spring. It was a spring that rose within the mind, that seemed to break with everything that might have gone before it. Celebrating: yes.

“It's the arrival of a new god,” I said then. “Do you feel it? They do. And they don't even know it yet.”

 

Chapter 38

Live from Chicago

F
redericks e-­mailed, asked me how I was. What I sent back was more like an attempt to get my own thoughts in order than any sensible attempt at correspondence. I did remember to send my best to his wife and kids, though.

There's an excitement here, and not just among the Beach House crew. It's almost a contagion, a sheer thrill borne on the air. I'd say emotions are heightened for a good mile around the site. There's a party mood. A constant
thump-­thump-­thump
of music. I actually caught myself dancing home the other day. Already, ­people are drawn here, much as they were towards the Indiana site. On the other hand, it's a much more urban vibe. Fewer church groups present, and a fair amount of weed being smoked. Mostly it's good-­natured, though I've seen tempers flare over some pretty trivial matters. We've also had our share of “sightseers,” mostly coming by along the beach. Security's been tripled in the last ­couple of weeks, and I wonder if this up-­front, in-­public approach is really going to work. In addition, some of the staff are working long shifts—­twelve hours, five and six days a week. This was a concern in Indiana, too.

Shailer tells me he'll “look into it.” He backed me up with the decanting, and he knows the dangers, but I still don't trust him. Things are going too well now. Even the suggestion of a problem would be, if you'll pardon the expression, problematic. So we'll have to see how this pans out.

Assur is wired to the grid. There was a formal ceremony last week, very low key, just a ­couple of officials present and a large horde of technicians. I took a back seat. Everything went off without a hitch. It was such a weird sensation, looking out over the city after that. I still forget it sometimes, carry on as normal. Then I switch a light on, make a cup of coffee, or take the el train, and I think:
I am in a city powered by a living god
. Its energy is all around us. I can't explain. It never felt like this when we were simply burning the damn things.

I suppose it's the kind of world the medieval theologians must have dreamed about, a world entirely saturated with divinity. A lightbulb sparks with an unworldly power. The fridge hums in the corner, singing the song of god.
Whither shall I go then from thy spirit? Or whither shall I go then from thy presence?

Forgive the subjective tone. That may be one of the results of living in such close proximity myself. Although by now, really we're all a part of it, aren't we?

­People say that you can feel him in the air. (I call it “him” because that seems to be the convention here.) They might be right. I've certainly felt something. There are stories that the presence of Assur is touching on Chicago's own, innate hotspots. I was inclined to dismiss it all as urban legend, though one of them—­some sort of poltergeist activity in Humboldt Park—­managed to get itself on local news. But then I actually saw something myself, a few days back. I was well away from the Beach House, up on Dearborn in the North Loop. I was waiting for a bus, watching an old homeless guy wrestling some opponent no one else could see. I don't know what the guy was on, but he wasn't totally out of it. He was playing to the gallery as he crouched over this unseen enemy, swinging great hooked punches, like something out of
Popeye
, yelling with each blow—­barely distinguishable words, but clearly the equivalent of “Take that! Take that!”

It was quite funny, and we all expected him to hit us up for change once he was done. But then, something happened. He jerked up into the air, almost as if thrown, tottered backwards, his feet just barely on the ground, and slammed against the nearby building front. If it was fake, it was the finest piece of mime I've seen in years. Afterwards, he stumbled about, dazed, and eventually wandered off. There were three or four of us there at the bus stop, and we all saw it. We just weren't sure what we'd seen.

The city, as you might imagine, was delighted with our work. The mayor was down to visit us again this week and couldn't find sufficient praise to heap upon the project. This was generally absorbed by Farnham Kuehl, the site director, and let me say, if praise were calories, he'd be the size of a small elephant by now. Apparently the city's been on the verge of bankruptcy for years. In one swoop, the Registry has bailed them out. So I assume that means we'll stick around.

“E
motions are heightened,” I had written. But it wasn't all sweetness and light.

This was what I hadn't said to Seddon in my weekly reports, nor even hinted at to Fredericks, so far.

Walking home one night after a solitary meal, I saw a tall, thin man come barging out of the dollar store. He was talking to someone still inside, and didn't see the beggar woman on the corner till he'd practically run into her. I suppose that I'd got used to Midwest manners and expected a profuse apology. Instead he shoved her, so viciously she half fell, half staggered out into the road, shrieking a curse at him.

By this time I was almost right in front of him, my mouth open, ready to say something—­I don't know what. He shouldered past me and then we both stopped, turned, and looked at each other. His face clouded, and something seemed to click inside him. He gave a nasty, twisted smile. “Don't have your dog tonight,” he said. Then, “Or your bitch,” and he was gone, up the street, swinging his arms in an angry, exaggerated fashion. I asked the woman if she was OK; I felt in my pocket and found her a ­couple of bucks. I was already halfway down the block before I realized he was the same man I'd encountered outside Angel's building, two weeks previously.

He was not the worst person to have graced the neighborhood. But for my money, by the end of it all, I think that he was pretty close.

 

Chapter 39

The Body Dump

L
eopold and Loeb were local boys. Bright sparks, privileged rich kids who, in a spirit of adventure, decided they'd like to know how it felt to kill someone. So they picked up a neighbor's boy and murdered him. The way you do. That was in the '20s. Or go back further, to the great Columbia Exposition of 1893, and we have H. H. Holmes, perhaps the first recorded serial killer, who almost certainly picked up his victims in the crowds that swarmed the festival—­the land immediately behind the Beach House—­and took them back to his “Murder Castle” in Englewood. That's history; and the fact is, it leaves marks on a place. Whether they matter is a question of the circumstances, I suppose, and how things pan out later. But in my line of work . . .

It was early morning. The sound of sirens wasn't rare, not even in a quiet neighborhood, and maybe I was just on edge. Getting jumpy with the long, long wait for things to happen. But I knew. Somehow, I knew.

I picked the phone up. I got Santos, the night-­duty guy.

“Not here,” he said.

“Nothing's wrong? You sure?”

“Sure I'm sure. There's—­” and I heard other voices, then he said, “Hang on a sec, please, Chris,” and I got piped Vivaldi. I put my shoes on. Looked out the window. Sunrise made streamers up over the lake. I pulled a jacket on and pocketed a reader. “Hello? Chris?” I was out the door. The phone crackled, stuttered. “Just talked to Security. There's cops out back. Something going on. It's not us, though, I'm sure. I dunno—­wait, wait.” Voices again. “Holy shit. They found a body? Where?”

I remembered the bodies in the Indiana facility. The withered, shriveled flesh. I remembered the photographs I'd seen in Budapest. I remembered—­

“Describe it.”

“It's not here, Chris, I haven't seen it, it's not . . .”

I was in the elevator. Santos cut out for a moment. “ . . . I dunno, it's in the water, right in back of us. Yeah, I'm outside now, I can see. Looks like they're trying to get it out. Oh, that's terrible. I don't—­”

“Shriveled? Withered?”

“It's way over in the lake. I can only see the ­people around it. It's in the water, so I guess—­”

Shriveled. Withered. Looking like some kind of dried-­up vegetable with a human face. Looking like death, and more than death. Like what happens when everything worthwhile, every little drop of life, every essence has been leached away, and drained . . .

I was on foot. I ran, then walked, then ran again, cut across the museum lawns, into the park. Cop cars wailed past me, hurtling down Lake Shore. Grass and gravel underfoot. Then I was through the underpass and out onto the beach. The sun sat perched on the horizon, a string of tiny, rose-­colored clouds flanking it: steam from the Gary steelworks, far across the bay.

The house itself was dark, almost silhouetted, solid and forbidding. The parking lot was full of cop cars. A ­couple more had driven out onto the jetty. A huddle of dark figures gathered at the water's edge. I dropped onto the sand, jogging now.

Had I wanted something to go wrong? Had I wanted them to say, we need you after all? I had a weird notion that this was my responsibility, somehow—­as if some negligence or wish fulfilment, not even conscious on my part, had provoked a tragedy. I was scarcely halfway across the sand when a young cop—­he didn't look as if he'd even started shaving yet—­moved out to stop me.

“Is Woollard here?” I said. Woollard was a local detective I'd met and got on well with; or at least, we'd shared a ­couple of jokes, which had pretty much endeared him to me. I showed my Registry ID. That didn't seem to cut much ice.

But Woollard had just got there, too. He was fifty-­odd, a small, slight black man with a neat moustache and an assiduous manner. The hair on his head was graying and had thinned on top; it was cut so short you could see where it was going to vanish, the line already clear around his skull. He wore a short-­sleeved shirt, a jacket draped over his arm.

I waved to him and he came across.

“Hey, Mr. Copeland. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“What's going on?”

“Bad shit, I'd say. You ever see this many cops an' it's not?”

“I've never seen this many cops,” I said.

“Ha.” He shrugged, finished off a conversation with one of his aides. Then, to me, “I'm telling you. We don't turn out like this for just any old thing. Ain't seen the body yet.” He looked at me, weighing me up. “You're—­what? Kind of the troubleshooter here, that right?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“Should interest you, then. Seeing it's right next to your little installation. Wanna come along?” He looked at me, and something in my face must have been wrong because he said, “Don't have to.”

“No. I'll come.”

“Yeah?”

“I want to. Yeah, I want to see.”

I don't pray exactly—­my line of work generally mitigates against it—­but I was thinking, please, please, not those dried-­up, withered things. Please no. I thought of that first reading I'd had: that one anomalous spike. I thought of the figure I'd seen, that had vanished from the sands. Of Assur, that shapeless, formless movement in the shadows.

And I thought: here we go again.

There were a lot of ­people there, but most of them weren't doing much. I heard a ­couple of guys planning where to go for breakfast; others were discussing sports. But on the sand beside the water was a little knot of ­people whose attention was most definitely fixed. Among them, at their feet, I could make out something, some sort of object. It was hard to focus. I was too wound up. Too nervous.

“It's a quiet district,” Woollard said, glancing around. “West and south, you got gangbangers, big time. But killing here, that's rare, y'know? That's rare.”

“Maybe,” I said, “maybe someone drowned. Fell off a boat. Or maybe—­”

“Maybe. That's not what I hear, though.”

He took a look at me, slapped me on the shoulder. “Hey. You turn around, take a deep breath, walk away. This ain't your job.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it is.”

But I did stop. I turned around. I watched the little chateau on the promontory, where I'd walked with Angel. I watched the waves break on the shore.

A voice said, “Well, he didn't get that way being pecked by geese.”

I turned quickly then, walked over to the group beside the body. Woollard raised his brows at me. And I looked down . . .

It was a man, or had been. The cops had pulled him from the water and laid him on a white plastic sheet that may have been a body bag. I didn't get the details of the corpse, only a vague impression: a whitish, doughy shape, peculiarly soft-­looking and somehow not quite right, not whole. Naked. Bloated. The opposite of all those shriveled, desiccated things I'd seen in Budapest and Indiana. I turned away, not because I was afraid but because I didn't want ­people to see the look on my face. I was worried that I couldn't keep the grin down, couldn't stop myself saying a quiet thanks to nobody at all.

“CCTV?”

“They're checking it out now.”

“That's your place, Copeland. Wanna deal with it?”

I mumbled. I nodded.

I said, “Was he killed here? Did he drift . . . ?”

Woollard frowned. “That matter to you?”

“Just . . . curious.”

“This ain't a killing. This is something else. And no, I'll say right now: it wasn't done here. Feel better?”

“No.”

But inside, I was glad. Inside, I was so, so glad.

I walked over to the Beach House. The cops were already there.

I found Santos.

“Is this why you're here, then?” he said.

But I brushed that aside.

“It's nothing,” I said. “A body dump. Nothing to do with us at all.”

“Well, good. I've got the overnights for you, by the way.”

I poured a coffee. I found a place to sit down. I checked the overnights, the way I did each morning. A dull, routine job.

And suddenly, I wasn't quite so happy anymore.