Kiss of the Blue Dragon (9 page)

“Maybe the test was wrong,” I said in a monotone.

“Steele explained the statistics to me. It’s simply not possible. You are a true, blue telepath.”

“I don’t want to be a telepath,” I practically snarled. “Don’t you get it? This is like telling a prosecuting attorney that when the moon is full he turns into a serial killer with long, pointy claws.”

“That’s not a good comparison. Think about how much good you can do.”

I heaved a sigh. “Maybe.”

“I was in psy-ops for years. That’s an umbrella term for a large department that covers everything from propaganda to psychological evaluations to parapsychological investigations. We have a whole team of psychics who work with detectives, and most of them were trained at IPAC.”

“What do you mean, trained? According to Steele, you’re either gifted or not.”

“We all have some extrasensory perceptions. I think most people have had the experience of thinking about someone and a second later that person calls on the phone. Haven’t you heard stories about
a person who gets a bad feeling about a ride on the train and takes the bus only to find out later that the train crashed that afternoon?”

“I thought those were urban legends,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest as we strolled.

“Perhaps, but there’s often a core of truth in urban legends. A hundred years ago the only people who could help police investigations were the genuinely gifted telepaths. They were few and far between. IPAC helps people like that strengthen their skills. But for the last twenty years or so they’ve been using a telepathic enhancing computer chip designed by Clear Sight Technologies. It’s implanted in the brain. The program captures ESP images in the carrier and magnifies them, freezing the images in still shots.”

I stopped walking and looked up at him, amazed as always by how far technology was changing our world. “These people can actually see the future?”

“Whatever natural capabilities they have are enhanced. Some people see scenes from the future, some from the past, some can locate people and items by touching objects associated with them. The people who choose this profession and accept the implant are called Clear Sighters. It comes from the word ‘clairvoyance,’ which is French for clear sight.”

I was more inclined to trust implanted technology than any so-called natural ability. Increasingly it seemed like the machines would be the ones left standing victorious over humans at the end of time…along with the cockroaches.

“Sounds like those tests were a waste of time,
then,” I said belligerently. “You don’t need natural psychics if you can create them. Let’s call Detective Hoskins and get a Clear Sighter on Lola’s case right now.”

Light-headed, I stopped and dabbed perspiration beading on my temples. The sun blazed down on us.

Marco stopped a second later and turned back. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Just hot.”

He reached out to support my elbow, then pulled his hand back at the last second. I glanced up and caught his frown just before he smoothed it over.

“You’re afraid of me,” I said.

“No, Baker, I’m not.”

“You think I’m a freak because of those tests.”

He rolled his eyes. “You are not a freak.”

“Then why did you stop yourself from touching me.”

“I didn’t want you to think I was patronizing you?”

I looked hard at him, waiting for him to admit that he now considered me as bizarre as my mother, but he held his ground. Shrinks were good at that. I turned and started back toward the car. “Let’s go before I melt.”

We started back toward the cruiser. “Clear Sighters have one big drawback,” he continued.

“Just one?”

“The transmission from the computer chip to cognitive pathways in the brain can be short-circuited under certain circumstances.”

“Like what?”

“Sometimes a simple electrical anomaly in the environment can interfere, though that’s rare. The greatest threat comes from R.M.O. operatives. They have technology that can short out computer-enhanced telepathy entirely.”

I took this in, then stopped. I felt like I was playing the obtuse Watson to his clever Sherlock Holmes. He’d laid out all the clues, but I still couldn’t quite put together why he cared about my talents in this area. “So you think that I’m the only one who can find Lola because the R.M.O. will short-circuit any other computer-enhanced operative called in to work on this case.”

“Yes.”

I stuffed my hands into my jeans and felt my hipbones. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten a decent meal. “Did it ever occur to you that if I had the ability to envision Lola’s whereabouts I would have done so already?”

“Yes, it has. But using psychic ability is like driving a car. You can’t even turn on the engine until somebody gives you the key. In this case, the key is confirmation of your ability. You just need confidence, and a little practice.”

He sounded perfectly reasonable, but that hard nut inside my chest that my doctor called a heart tightened with suspicion. He had to get something out of this, too, or he wouldn’t be going to so much trouble.

“So what do you want?” I said bluntly.

He raised his brows. “What do you mean?”

“What do you get out of this? You want the credit if I find her? Is that it?”

He gave me a dimpled grin. “You’re damned cynical, Angel Baker.”

“Damned right I am. And hot, too.”

“Come on. I’ll turn on the air.” He motioned toward the car. It was only a hundred yards away.

We continued on and stopped when we reached the front passenger door. He electronically unlocked the door, but when I tried to open it, he shut it again and leaned against it, crossing his arms.

“Okay, you’re right,” he said. “I do want something from you.”

“I knew it.”

“But it’s not recognition or glory. I don’t give a damn about that.”

My eyes narrowed. “What then?”

“I do have interest in your telepathy regarding my brother’s case, but not in the way you think. I want you to use your skills to help me find out what happened just before Danny was gunned down. I don’t think traditional methods of detection are going to work. There’s some kind of cover-up going on.”

“What do you mean, cover-up?”

“After I looked at your file on Master Comp the other night, I looked up Dan’s partner. The next day he skipped town. Someone tipped him off that I’d been snooping into his record. I know I’m on to something. And since Dan was killed during a drug deal with the R.M.O., I need someone to help me investigate the mob, someone whose brain can’t be short-circuited at the crucial moment.”

I considered his proposition carefully. It would feel good to bring closure to Danny Black’s case.
But could I work with his brother and keep my emotional distance? For some reason that I couldn’t understand, I trusted Marco. If I trusted him too much, I might let down my guard. And I knew all too well how that would turn out.

I crossed my arms again, which seemed the safest pose when his pheromones were igniting electrical fires in the most indecent parts of my body.

“I might consider your proposition, Detective Marco, if you offer to help me in return.”

He held out his open hands. “I’m all yours.”

If only that were true, I thought as I eyed the dark, silky chest hair peeking out of his open collar. “Great, then we have a deal.”

“But on one condition,” he said.

Here it came. “Oh?”

“When we’ve closed both cases—and together I believe we will—you give up your work as a CRS.”

I laughed and tilted my head in exaggerated confusion. “Excuse me, are you my father?”

“It’s wrong, Baker. What you do is wrong.”

“Oh, so now you’re my priest.”

The set of his square jaw hardened and his nostrils flared. I was getting under his skin. Now this was fun.

“If I told you the real reason I’m asking this of you,” he said, “I doubt you’d believe me.”

“Try me.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“You’re right. I don’t believe you.”

He nodded and looked into the distance. Then he pushed off the car and went around to the driver’s
side. We got in and drove awhile in silence, which he broke, saying, “I shouldn’t tell you this, but my committee believes the state legislature is going to outlaw the retribution profession in the next session. I don’t want them to make an example out of you. With the brouhaha over the Gibson Warrants, things are going to get ugly. If the mayor’s political enemies find out you did a job for him, you’ll be the poster child for the anti-CRS movement.”

“I’ll take my chances. If the law is passed, I’ll start zapping burgers for a living. Meanwhile, we don’t have to let that stop us from working together.”

He looked at me with a bittersweet smile. I braced myself for what was coming next. “I’m sorry, Baker. I can’t work with you until you swear off your profession. I’m the head of the committee who has been lobbying for the new law.”

“So you’re worried what others will think if you hang with me.”

He didn’t nod. He didn’t need to. I blinked hard and looked out the window. We were now on Addison, passing Wrigley Field. I shut my eyes and saw a vision of my former fiancé, Peter Brandt. Handsome, brilliant Peter. I was going to be his partner, help him achieve his potential in investigative journalism. But I wasn’t quite good enough for Peter. While he could and did use my connection to Henry Bassett to forward his career, in the long run he needed someone with cachet, with class.

I didn’t say any more until we arrived back at my two-flat. “No need to get out. I can see myself in.”

I opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk,
bending to look at him in the car for my parting shot. “News flash, Marco. I guess you were right about this whole psychic thing. I just had a vision of the future. And it doesn’t include you.”

With that I slammed the door.

Wizard of Oz

I
went upstairs and checked in with Mike. He’d taken a couple of messages—one from the P.I. I had hired to watch Lancaster’s Shelter. All was quiet on the western side of Chicago. No sign of Drummond.

Detective Hoskins called to say he’d placed a surveillance crew at Lola’s apartment. So far there had been no return of the R.M.O., according to undercover police operatives. Hoskins said it was surprising, but that Lola’s kidnapping and the assassination attempt on me and Marco might have been an anomaly. In other words, Lola had probably pissed somebody off, was now dead in an alley and her nosy daughter was long forgotten.

I refused to believe that Lola was dead, but was happy to hear that the Sgarristas were otherwise occupied. Meanwhile, Hoskins was going to pay Vladimir Gorky a visit and canvas some of the Russian stores on West Devon. I doubted Hoskins would get anywhere near Gorky. He didn’t have the clout.

Mike didn’t ask any questions about my visit to IPAC. As usual, he would wait until I was ready to talk about it, even though I knew he wanted me to use this so-called ability of mine to help him find his brother. Unlike Marco, Mike would never pressure me. That made me feel all the more responsible to help him. Meanwhile, he excused himself to work out in the garden.

Without consciously deciding to, I retrieved Lola’s crystal ball and tripod and placed them in the middle of the kitchen table. Just curious, I told myself. I poured a glass of water and sipped while I stared at the ball.

Don’t go there
, a voice inside my head warned me.
Don’t go anywhere near there
. But I did.

I put my empty water glass in the sink and sat at the table, then cracked my knuckles in preparation for a laying on of the hands, and changed my mind. I quickly rose and poured a cup of coffee. I sipped from my mug while I leaned against the sink and watched the afternoon light play off the crystal. Mike’s workout noises floated in through the screen door—
Aaaaaiiiieeee. Heeeeyaaaaa. Hawuuuu!

Finally, I sat and placed my hands on the ball. It was room temperature. No surprise there. Instinctively, I knew the room should be dark. It would be
hard to see any images with the sun glaring in. So what? If this crap was going to work, it would have to be without any help from me. I listened to the old-fashioned clock tick in the hallway. It dated from the reign of Elizabeth II. I’d picked it up at the great little antique shop on Halsted. What a deal. I remember—

“Holy shit!” I stared in amazement as a face appeared in the ball. No, make that an eye. A big, bloodshot, creepy eyeball. It was as if the scrying crystal was a monocle and someone was trying to focus through it at me. I jumped back and the image disappeared.

My heart pounded three times for every second the clock ticked. I gripped the edge of the table.
I had to see more.
It was like paying to see a scary movie. You can’t leave until the end, even if you watch the whole thing through a crack between your fingers.

Swallowing hard, I forced myself to breathe and placed my hands back on the ball. This time it was warm.
Something was really happening here
. I couldn’t deny it. Images flowed herky-jerky. It reminded me of one of those little pads of paper with sequential drawings that you get in party bags when you’re a kid—you flip through the pages and the character moves. The faster you flip, the smoother the motion appears.

The first image was in black and white. A thin, big-eyed man was spitting out orders I couldn’t hear. I could see the images in the crystal ball and in my head at the same time. It was a strange sort of depth perception. Then the ball went black.

“No!” I cried. “Come back.”

I willed my energy through my fingers, trying to warm things up. If the heat of my touch triggered images, the warmer the better. Or was it the images that triggered the heat? Suddenly sound added into the mix. I heard crying, but it wasn’t Lola. It was a young girl, or several young girls. Then I heard water dripping. Each drop echoed as it hit a pool, slow and undisturbed like water that coagulates in a cave. Did that explain the darkness?

The ball brightened suddenly. Actually, the image simply vanished and what I now stared at was the sun reflecting off the glass. The vision was gone. I felt robbed. It was like listening to music on a super digital system, then switching to an antique hi-fi whose needle has reached the scratchy end of a vinyl record.

“Damn it!” I pulled my hands away, still staring at the dark globe. Already I was addicted to the images I’d seen. I wanted more. It was like magic, a different world I never knew existed. Except it was this world, and whatever I’d seen either had happened, was happening now or was about to happen.

I sank back in my chair, dumbfounded. Marco had compared this to learning to drive a car. If only I could sign up for lessons. What was I supposed to do with this information?

Mike came up the back stairs from the garden. He opened the door and focused on the ball, then eagerly looked at me. “What?”

“What what?” My lips thinned. “You knew I’d do it, didn’t you?”

He padded silently across the ceramic tile floor
in bare feet and sat across from me at the table. “What you see?”

I explained the brief, seemingly disconnected visions. After recounting the weird eyeball that focused on me, I shivered.

“Mike, it was like a scene out of
The Wizard of Oz
, when the witch looks back at Dorothy through the crystal ball.”

“Oz Wizard?” he asked.

“
The Wizard of Oz
. It’s a classic movie all American kids see at least once. The little girl named Dorothy gets lost in a tornado and ends up in the land of little people.” His frown deepened. “She has to get to the Emerald City so the wizard can magically transport her back to Kansas, though God knows why she wants to do that. Anyway, when she gets there she discovers the wizard is a fraud, but she catches a ride in a hot-air balloon—actually she never quite gets in, but then—”

I stopped, not only because I was tired of hearing myself talk, but because it hit me. “Emerald City,” I whispered.

Mike’s sable eyes finally lit. “That is the city under Chicago. People with no homes live there.”

“Yes.” Our gazes locked. A chill of premonition and excitement spread over my flesh. Downtown Chicago. Years ago Lower Wacker Drive, which wound under the Loop just south of the Chicago River, was lit with fluorescent green bulbs and dubbed the Emerald City. Lots of homeless found havens and hideouts in the nooks and crannies of the subterranean street. Even though the green lights
were eventually replaced with sodium vapor lights, the name stuck.

A century later when the homeless took over the abandoned underground subway rails on the north side of the river to create a more permanent home, they carried the name Emerald City with them. I didn’t know much about the inhabitants, except that they were called moles, for obvious reasons. Many of them never see the light of day.

I shut my eyes and recalled my vision—so much darkness and moisture, like a cave. Then I recalled the brief vision I’d had of Lola when I’d first touched the crystal ball in her apartment. She’d been crying for help, a vision of tatty red hair and dripping mascara against a sea of black. A bolt of certainty seared through me. Lola was there. Underground.

“Mike, Lola is somewhere in Emerald City, I just know it.”

“Then we go there,” Mike said simply.

“Yes.”

There was no question about it. I’d been great at avoiding business with the moles. I wasn’t prejudiced against them, but I’d heard some creepy stories. Some of the more primitive clans bred and harvested rats to supplement their foraging. I’d have to talk to Hank first and get the facts straight.

“We’ll go as soon as I talk to my foster brother, the kid wonder. If anyone can prepare me for this, it’s Henry Bassett Junior.”

One of the things I love most about this crazy day and age is the eclectic clothing you see on the com
muter trains. I watched the free fashion show in the crush of passengers who loaded and unloaded at every stop on the old elevated Red Line during the ride downtown.

There was a Hasidic Jew who wore a timeless black suit, braids and Coke-bottle glasses, a young girl dressed like Queen Elizabeth I in a six-inch-deep white ruff collar and a farthingale petticoat that stuck out a foot all around. There was a businessman in a tailored suit and a middle-aged woman who wore only a thong and a paste-on bra. It was a regular circus.

Every day in this town is a masquerade. Clothes aren’t just expressions of individuality, they’re cultural markers. These days you get to choose your identity, unless you’re in one of the ultra subnational mobs. If you’re in the Cosa Nostra, the R.M.O., the IRA, the Mongolian Mob or any number of other national syndicates, you touted your pure bloodlines and tried to marry within your own ethnic enclave. Otherwise, over the last century, America had become amazingly integrated.

I credited the rise of computers. If people spend all their time on the Internet—shopping, chatting, playing games—then their world becomes almost medieval in its social simplicity and isolation. Think about it. If you socialize on the World Wide Web instead of the town square, who is going to ostracize you for marrying “one of those people”? No one. You’re in a world of your own making and,
voilà!
Tolerance sneaks in the back door.

Over the course of a hundred years, technology
allowed America to finally achieve the impossible dream: racial and ethnic tolerance. While there were still definable ethnic neighborhoods in the city, these days most people’s genealogy charts look like the ingredient list on a bottle of ketchup.

The chick in the Elizabethan costume probably couldn’t tell you if she had more African, Swedish or Irish blood in her veins. But she could tell you all about who belongs to the Elizabethan Society she visits nightly on the Internet.

The only groups that adamantly polarize around their ethnicity are the mobs and gangs, and that’s because their culture is what sets them apart and enables them to remain a unique money-making entity. Dirty money, but money nonetheless. And this is America, after all. We may have achieved racial integration, but we’ll never stop worshiping the almighty dollar.

The politics of fashion often led to comical results. After watching my fill of jiggling cellulite on the middle-aged woman’s butt, I concluded that thongs shouldn’t be sold without a license. Of course, I had no right to remark on unusual styles. Mike wore a dark yellow monk’s robe and I literally wore a suit of armor, albeit one that looked like silk.

The problem with millifine steel is that while it deflects bullets and blades, it’s hot as blazes and not entirely flexible, like a long-sleeved denim shirt left out to dry in the sun. I felt a little like the Tin Man, which was appropriate considering our mission, but I promised Henry I’d be careful of the Sgarristas, although I hoped we wouldn’t run into any downtown.

We spilled out of the train station into the river of rush-hour traffic flowing down the sidewalk and made our way past Water Tower Place. I went into hypervigilant mode. A retribution specialist never knows when she’ll run into someone she’s bagged in the past. Mike was tense, too. He hated downtown. He hurried ahead of me until we reached the TV station.

We met my brother Hank on the management level. He took one look at my outfit and frowned. “You in trouble?”

“Nah,” I said, giving him a hug. “Just wanted to make your pop happy.”

Hugging Hank was always heaven. I loved him unconditionally. He was taller than me and strong enough, but somehow he hugged like pudding. I let him go and gave him a sisterly once-over. “Look at you! Handsome as usual.”

I shoved a lock of his tousled cinnamon hair behind his ear and waited for that “Aw, shucks, leave me alone” look that made a mess of his softly freckled face. It was a game we played. While he looked like Jimmy White from
Superman
, he was brilliant and already a relentless journalist. I resisted the urge to gush “I’m so
proud
of you!” Lola had said that to me recently, and I had vowed I would never turn into my mother.

“Let’s go to my office.” Hank led us to the newsroom, which was reassuringly chaotic as producers and on-air talent prepared for the five-o’clock news. Police alerts sounded in the assignment room, where stories flashed in red on the assignment board. In
terns who would sell their souls for a chance to go on camera tensely dashed around while the seasoned journalists who’d already supervised the editing of their reports joked at the water cooler about the six floaters dragged yesterday from Lake Michigan. Apparent suicides.

I never got used to reporters’ lackadaisical attitudes toward death, even though I knew it was necessary for those who had to deal with tragedy every day. Here, everyone except for the top reporters dressed like they were in a war zone—bulletproof flak jackets and boots—and with the snipers that frequented downtown, it was necessary.

Mike and I followed Hank like ducklings into his small office where he’d been researching his latest undercover segment on the effects of hydrogen emissions on the environment. He told us the hole in the ozone layer created by outmoded carbon dioxide was closing back up. But the new energy source was creating problems of its own, a new kind of pollution whose effects were still not understood. Cause and effect, Henry used to lecture us. Everything in the universe has a cause and effect. It was a lot like karma.

Henry Jr. poured two cups of coffee and handed me one.

“I won’t even bother to offer you coffee, Mike, but help yourself to the water,” he said as he sank into his chair and propped his soft-soled shoes on the desk. He grabbed a pencil and twirled it in his fingers. “What’s up, sis?”

“I told you already about Lola’s problems with the R.M.O.”

“I assume that’s why you’re wearing that sexy armor.” His brown eyes sparkled with humor and journalistic curiosity.

“You’ll have to admit, it does accent my best and hide my worst features,” I said, shrugging out of the jacket and hanging it over the back of my chair. Then seriously, I said, “The police believe the Mafiya took her. So do I. But I have reason to believe she’s being held underground.”