Internecine (4 page)

I don’t know what happened.

There was a blinding flash of hot, solar-white, phosphorescent light, and a harsh blast of sound that seemed to punch all the air out of the room. I thought it was the gunshot, never mind the silencer. The sound of death is always loud, and for five, maybe ten, seconds, I was certain I was paid in full, or at least mortally perforated. My heart tried to break my ribs and pole-vault out my throat. All I could see were milky, purple sunburst globes. My nerves were screaming. I had an itch in my lower back that was driving me nuts.

The curtains were still wafting around, from the blowback. And Celeste, whatever her name, was sprawled on the floor, writhing feebly. Her right hand was gone and her face was a voodoo mask of blood, still steaming from the heat flash. Some of her hair had cooked into vapor and her eyebrows were gone. When I saw her track and grope around, I knew she was blind. When she grimaced and tried to roll herself to a crouch, I saw gaps where two of her front teeth had vacated. Her top
was shredded and her blood-streaked breasts were exposed. Not implants. Pierced nipples; single posts. She made it halfway to standing, then collapsed and went still. I thought she was dead but after an instant I could see her still breathing—shallow, autonomic respiration. Not dead, not yet.

I could do exactly nothing. Duct tape is tenacious. What could I do? Manfully rip myself free at the cost of my own flesh, not to mention ruining a lot of Danish leather? Call the cops? And say . . . what? Help her? Why? Fifteen seconds ago she was getting ready to blow me away with a sharklike smile.

My skull was really pounding, now. What a riot on old Conrad.

Well, my deft verbal skills had sure gone on unpaid leave. Talking people into or out of things is one of my big guns, and I had just completely blown it.

This so-called Celeste person, by contrast, had come in like a total pro, even telling me I did
not
have to open the door—so I
would
open it, you see, to prove what a swell, okay guy I was at heart. A guy competent and self-assured enough to see poor little Celeste as no threat at all. She sold me a persona I was eager to buy.

And like a coward, I found myself wishing for the calm pool of how things had been just a tiny while ago, before the locker key.

Now it was gruesomely apparent that there were entire universes from which I had managed to insulate myself. We’ve all done it: Go for the pay hike, stay in the moribund job, seek and acquire the material things guys like me instruct you to value. Ever since my divorce, I realized, I had willingly given myself over to life in a bomb shelter. Touch nothing, and make damned sure nothing touches you. When you get very good at it, nothing will move you, either, and pretty soon, you’re checking your own wrist to see if there is still a pulse. Then you contemplate opening a vein to ascertain whether your own blood is still in there.

I mentioned movies before; I watch a lot of movies and would deny the accusation that I experience anything vicariously through them. Los Angeles is an industry town in the way Pittsburgh is a steel town (or was) or Detroit is an auto town (or was). LA’s product is visual
media—movies, TV, Webisodes, dancing billboards. The raw material, the local “ore,” if you will, is stuff of the imagination, which means that this industry, unlike all the others, is based on
making shit up
. That’s too mysterious for most ordinary people to handle, and they disqualify the notion that Hollywood’s “industry” is different or special in a variety of down-home, salt-of-the-earth ways . . . because to keep the world at large un-special is a great way to deny your own lack of individualism or status.

The point is this: In order to sell people things, you have to be movie-literate, because movies provide pocket homilies that roll smoothly off the tongue instead of any sort of cogent philosophy. Movies tell Blue State folks to beware of the Red States, and vice versa. Hell, movies even tell people what clothing to wear; what’s hot and what’s not. The reason we don’t have royalty in America is because we have celebrities.

Which includes our politicians. Which was why it was so critical that Kroeger Concepts was chosen to paint the correct portrait of G. Johnson Jenks, so the electorate would buy it the way we told them to.

Katy Burgess always called them the “electo-
rat
.”

So everybody logs their time, pays their tributes, keeps their heads down, locks their doors, and worries about pedophiles or what commercials will be on during the Super Bowl. It all works, after a fashion, providing a simulacrum of life . . . until you unlock your door of your own volition.

It had been nagging at me ever since I regained a soupy sort of consciousness. It was almost as though I had
willed
that goddamned key into existence to stir up the turbid compost of my life, which had become buffed, shined, rigorously arranged, and allergen-free, festooned with the correct car, the proper tank watch, the desirable living quarters, and an utter lack of oxygen. Friends? I had conditionalized them according to their usefulness. Lovers? I had used and disposed of them according to contractual double-talk.

Some sainted wiseass once said that you recognize the turning points in your life only in retrospect.

I had done my job and done it well—so well that I had pulled a kind of cell door shut behind me and saved everybody else the trouble of locking it. Did I want to shove someone like Katy Burgess into that
grinder, where all the product emerges the same? I didn’t think so; I kind of liked her. Talking with her, I was aware of being entertaining instead of forthright. My rule was never to discuss my past. There was only the
now
.

Was this just standard-issue, middle-aged cynicism and boredom? The kind of joy two decades of white-collar skills can bring?

Some other sainted wiseass once said that dramatic events accelerate your thinking. I’ll say . . . especially when your life is thrown into jeopardy.

Like in the movies: The jeopardy is the turning point.

Here was the jeopardy: gunfire and bloodshed. Suspense, too—I was tied up firmer than a tree engirded by killing vines.

Like the weekend gambler, I had indulged a tempting little risk and lost my bucket of quarters. Would I moan about my superficial damage and retreat, having learned my lesson? Or would I take a bigger risk and chance learning something that could bust me out of the cage my life had become?

There’s this guy I know—Katy had mentioned him back at the bar—who calls himself the Mole Man. He’s an information conduit for Kroeger and a total eccentric. Nobody knows anything about him, not really. Sometimes he tries to talk me into coaching him on fine wines. It is his sheer lack of background that makes him fascinating; he just
is,
in all his weirdness. He doesn’t care what’s hot and what’s not. He only cares about what’s interesting. He
knows
things; all kinds of obscure linkages and arcana. I imagine you could sit down with him, no preamble or conditions, and within five minutes be swept away into some place you never thought you’d find worthy of note.

Once, when he brought up the topic of wine yet again, I thought:
He’s inviting me in
.

But I didn’t pursue it. I had work to do.

The Mole Man is a short bald guy—nobody would ever want to look like him. But to get inside the finely machined clockwork of his mind and live there awhile, that might be the key to making sense out of life. If not adventure, then at least answers, the kind that could liberate you from the dictates of mass manipulation.

All we ever need is a key.

An hour later, by the stereo clock, and I was still in my seat, needing more than anything to go to the bathroom, when I enjoyed another nighttime visitor. Another un-invitee. Celeste had not moved and was still breathing.

To yell for help from some Samaritan from another of my unknown neighbors would have been in vain. One of the selling points of the building in which I live is the soundproof walls. I was nowhere near a telephone, and in no position to manipulate one. Given help of any sort, I would have to wrestle the challenge of explaining the bloody, maimed woman currently spoiling the resale value of my Stahls carpeting. The duct tape held me, powerless, viselike at all points.

I wished I could backpedal; maybe ask Katy what was so goddamned
interesting
about this Alica Brandenberg person. I had plenty of time to wonder that myself. Ridiculously, the briefcase that might be hiding an answer, or five, was on the other side of the room, beyond the grab of some schmuck tied up in a chair.

Some admen call them bullet points. Some call them action items. Others call them flags (a term which, interestingly enough, comes from the pharmaceutical industry). In the movie biz they’re called loglines. Their purpose is to boil away flowery filigree and get right to the steak. What did I know, right now, without the garni du jour?

Somebody wants Alicia Brandenberg dead.

Subterraneans are involved.

Alicia Brandenberg may or may not be lying about her past, according to Katy. She might have more than one name, history, dossier.

Best guess: Alicia Brandenberg was straddling the political fence, playing both candidates, Jenks and Ripkin. Or, she was a mole for Ripkin.

The rest was conjecture, and I was still firmly immobilized.

That’s how it remained until a new intruder came in via the sixth-floor balcony. Like I said, I live in a security building.

He was just
there,
filling air that had been tenantless a moment before, a black silhouette through the sheers of my Odelay drapes. He appeared like a ghost, ninja-quiet, unmoving. I thought I was freaking
out or hallucinating until he tickled the sliding door (silently defeating the Sentry lock there, too) and stepped inside.

Oh christ, this one was wearing a black ski mask.
Black everything else, and what looked like dancing shoes. He stepped over the inert form of Celeste like it was no big deal. When he spotted the open case on the table, he muttered
goddammit to hell
and immediately slammed it shut.

Then he saw me, across the room, as if for the first time, as if I was the least of his worries.

“Lucky you,” he said.

I can spin-doctor verbal pitches like a fighter pilot doing Immelman turns. I can go silver-tongued with zero prep and talk nearly anyone into nearly anything; it’s part of my job. I can commiserate with clients and give voice to their inarticulate objections with the psychiatrist’s trick of prompting trust. I am extremely skilled, verbally. And right now I couldn’t dredge up a thing to say. At least half of my body was still convinced I was dead, and seeing all this from the ceiling, or a tunnel of light. I was mute with fear, and it was embarrassing.

The intruder stooped to pick up something behind my Donatelle quilted pillowback sofa. Celeste’s hand. He held it gingerly between two fingers, like dead vermin from a trap, turning it this way and that. He, too, wore surgical gloves, snugged into the wristlets of a black, military-style brigade sweater. He emitted a tiny
humph
and walked to the kitchen to drop the hand into my vegetable-washing sink, the smaller one that was part of the marble butcherblock centerpiece. He rinsed off blood and something that smeared like lampblack, and dried his still-gloved hands on a paper towel from a chrome spindle I’d bought at Smarter Image.

He stood looking at the case again, and shaking his head. “What a classic,” he said. Then he turned to me. “Are you shot?”

I shook my head no, rattling my forebrain.

“Are you sure?”

I shook my head yes.

“Are you
mute,
or something?”

Getting my voice to work was like trying to crack ice with a banana. I forced out a dry croak. “No.” I swallowed. It hurt. “I’m not.”

“Fucking amateurs.” I didn’t know whether he meant me or the still-motionless Celeste, or both of us. “Bet this was all a big surprise for you, am I right?”

I nodded again. “You could say that.”

“Oh, I
could?
That’s priceless. You’re all tied up in a chair with a soon-to-be corpse in your lap, and do you
really
want to play stupid games? Maybe you should just go back to nodding, ace.”

“She’s not dead,” I said.

He nodded, now. Better answer; no drama. He stepped toward her and pulled his own silenced automatic from a spine holster. The gun was black, the rig was black; I didn’t even register it. He gave her two shots to the head, point-blank. The gun made a coughing sound like someone punching a cardboard box, one-two. The body on the floor jigged with the hits, expelled its final breath in a watery gasp, then settled, as though deflating.