Costume Not Included (35 page)

  The kid, he thought. He was the only lead. He took out his phone, dialed Chesney's work number. He got a computer telling him no one was available to speak to him, though his call was very important to Paxton Life and Casualty. Then Denby tried the kid's home number and got a live person. It took a few moments for him to figure out that he was talking to a reporter who'd staked out the apartment.

  But that's the only place he's likely to show up, the captain thought. He doesn't like the world outside. Not enough pools of light.

  Uniformed police were arriving now, having come on foot through the car-choked streets. A uniformed inspector approached Denby and said, "It's a goober, Denby. Go get into your bag and get back here. You're not on detached duty anymore."

  The captain saw no point arguing. "On my way," he said, getting up from the fountain. But when the senior officer turned his back Denby went, not toward Police Central but toward the riverside apartment house where Chesney Arnstruther and his time-traveling descendant might be found. He would throw out the gate-crashing media and wait.

  Half a block later, the captain changed his mind. He retraced his steps to Civic Plaza, turned and headed for Police Central.

 

"You come to the Garden of Eden," Chesney's mother said to him, "and…
that's
the first thing you think of doing?"

  Chesney was pretty sure that it was probably the first thing the original pair of inhabitants had thought of, too. But he had long ago learned not to voice all of his thoughts to his mother – especially any that concerned sex. He well remembered the time, at the age of ten, when he had asked her if she had had sexual intercourse with his father. He had only been trying to establish that it was a universal rule in procreation, as a kid at school had maintained – Mary and the visitant angel notwithstanding – but his mother had not taken his question in a spirit of scientific inquiry. He could still taste the soap, way deep in the back of his throat.

  "It's the Tree of Life, Mother," he said. "It has a… an effect on you."

  "Put some clothes on," Letitia said. "Both of you."

  Chesney did as she said, hunting around for his underpants while Melda gathered up her clothes and went behind a bush. But as he pulled up his briefs, the young man watched his mother, and saw her expression change as she looked up at the great tree, and at the strange, banana-like fruit that hung from its branches. Her hand went halfway toward the lowest-hanging specimen; then it was as if she had just noticed what her hand was doing and pulled it back, clasping it with the other one then putting them both behind her.

  Chesney pulled his trousers on and closed them up. As he fastened his belt, he said, "What do you want, Mother?"

  If he'd been struck by the wistful look with which she'd regarded the fruit, he was outright surprised to hear her say, in a small voice, "I think I need your help."

  "With what?"

  He could see that she was reluctant to say it. He put on his shirt and began to button it methodically, as always starting at the top and working his way down. Finally, as he fastened the last one, she said, "With Billy Lee." It was not until Chesney had his shirttail tucked in that she finished with, "I think he's maybe doing some harm."

  "Maybe?" Chesney said. "I don't believe I've ever heard you use that word before." He'd always assumed that his mother saw nothing but pools of clear light, all around her – although she often didn't care for what might be so clearly illuminated.

  "All right," she said. "He
is
doing harm, real harm." She looked in every direction but at her son.

  Another son might have been deeply moved to see a woman of Letitia Arnstruther's firmness of mind and spirit reduced to such an abject state. Reconciliation, even hugging, might have ensued. But Chesney was not another son; all his mother's distress did for him was to make him deeply uncomfortable. Much as he disliked his parent's unending campaign to direct his life, the prospect of having to deal with an insecure, uncertain Letitia was moving him toward an unaccustomed sense of panic.

  "What do you want me to do?" he said.

 

At Police Central, off-duty officers were pouring in and uniformed personnel were pouring out, many of the latter bearing transparent plastic shields and dressed in riot gear. Denby took the elevator but rode it past the twentieth floor where his office and uniform were and straight up to the roof. As he expected, he found the department's helicopter on its pad, its pilot in his seat and its rotors slowly turning.

  He went straight to the passenger-side door, climbed in and fastened the seat belt. The pilot, a sergeant named Borisovich, looked at him curiously. "Nobody told me you'd be coming on this one, captain," the man said. "Thought it was just the chief and the deputy watch commander."

  Denby saw no point in prolonging the confusion. He drew his pistol, racked the slide, and pointed it at the pilot. "Get us up," he said.

  The man registered shock but recovered as quickly as a good pilot should. "Not gonna," he said. "And I don't reckon you can fly this thing if I'm sitting here dead."

  The captain said, "Did you know Gabe Martinez?"

  "Sure. He helped train me."

  "He ever tell you how he flew Hueys in Vietnam?"

  Borisovich's face turned cagey. "Yeah."

  "He ever tell you about the time a RPG exploded right next to him in mid-air, and he had to fly back to base with shrapnel wounds all down his left side?"

  The pilot looked straight ahead. "Maybe," he said.

  "So you could probably do it with just one bullet wound," Denby said. He poked the muzzle of the pistol into the fleshy part of the man's thigh. "Say, right here?"

  "This is seriously fucked up, captain," said Borisovich, but he upped the revs on the engine. Moments later, they were off the roof and, at Denby's direction, heading south at the machine's top speed.

  The detective had put it together. The time traveler had come back from his future wasteland to stop Billy Lee Hardacre from precipitating a mass panic that would somehow lead to the end of the world – or at least the end of civilization. He couldn't quite see how the crimefighting fitted in, but that was because history was lived forward and understood backward, and he was living this moment instead of studying it in retrospect. One thing he was sure of, though: the strange book that the preacher had been working on with the supposed angel had been part of the plan to derail Armageddon, and Denby had impulsively stolen that book; an act of theft that had led to its destruction.

  So there was a very good chance, Denby thought, that he, himself, was responsible for the Hell on Earth that was about to descend on the world. And thus it was up to him to stop it. He told the pilot to follow the highway south; he would tell him when to turn toward Hardacre's estate.

  He wouldn't be surprised to find the time traveler there. If not, Denby would take care of things himself.

 

"How can you help us?" Chesney asked the demon. "I dunno," said Xaphan. "Question is, do I gotta hurt him?"

  "No," said Chesney and his mother together.

  But Melda had a different take on what the demon had said. "Why is that the question?"

  The weasel face took on an even shiftier than usual cast. "The basic rule," the fiend said.

  Chesney remembered. "Can't interfere with another contract?" he said. "But Billy Lee doesn't have a contract with Hell."

  Letitia drew herself up to her full height from which she glared down at the demon with sufficient force to have shattered it into smoking fragments. "Of course he does not!"

  Incredibly, Xaphan managed to look even more shifty. "Not as such, no."

  "What aren't you telling us?" the young man said.

  "We've been through this," the demon said, preparing to count on its fingers. "The temperature in downtown Kabul, Madonna's shoe size, the odds against tossing a coin and coming up heads six million times in a row, the–"

  Chesney interrupted. "For the rum and cigars," he said, "last chance: does Hardacre have a deal of any kind with Hell?"

  The fiend drained its ever-present tumbler and said, "Of a kind."

  Letitia squawked, but her son bored in on his assistant. "Specify."

  "He thought our guy was an angel, the same one he dealt with when we had the strike."

  Chesney's mother gasped. "That's cheating!"

  "No kiddin'?" said the fiend. "Imagine that."

  "You're saying the preacher took help from a demon he thought was an angel," Melda said, "and that's the same as signing a contract?"

  Xaphan shrugged. "That's the way we're seein' it. Constructive culpability, that's the term."

  "But he thought he was doing the work of the Lord!" Letitia said.

  The demon blew smoke. "Fact is, toots, he didn't care who's work he was doin', long as it was him doin' it." He tapped ash onto the green grass of Eden. "'Nother fact is, you was just the same. We catch more of you wid pride than wid all the other six big ones put together."

  "It's not fair," Chesney said.

  "Fair ain't the bizness we're in. It went the way it always goes – the preacher sees the action and wants in on it, wants the biggest slice. A demon shows up, offers him help, he don't say, 'Whoa, Nellie, what's the vig?' He just takes it."

  "A demon pretending to be an angel," Chesney said.

  "We weren't helpin' him carry in the groceries," Xaphan countered. "He wanted help you only get from us, real mess-wid-the-world help. And he never said, 'Wait a minute, what's the price of this?' cause all he cared about was bein' the big cheese, makin' his mark."

  It puffed on its cigar and continued, "So the boss says, 'Give him what he wants, it could work to our advantage,' and puts one of the top guys on the job.'

  "Top guy?" Chesney said.

  "Crocell, a full-weight
Dux Asinorum
."

  Letitia's father had prided himself on his legal Latin. "A Duke of Fools," she translated. "A Duke of Hell."

  One of the weasel eyes squinted in her direction, while the black lips spoke around the smoking Havana. "And Hardacre wasn't the only one thought the 'angel' was the cat's pajamas, was he?"

  The woman's face fell. "Pride again. I thought myself special because I had a man who spoke with an angel of the Lord."

  "Nuttin' special about it," said Xaphan. "Our standard product, right off the line. Foolin' fools. It's what we do."

  Melda said, "But this wasn't a standard situation. The Devil wanted Hardacre as an option, in case he really did bring on the end of the world."

  "If we're showin' our hands," Xaphan said, "the boss also wanted him to bring you-know-who back from that little place we visited. Figured he might come in handy, too." The fiend smiled. "Tricky business, too, not lettin' that demon-bustin' prophet catch on about Crocell's little act – the duke had to make sure never to touch the preacher or anythin' on the premises, or old Josh would have sniffed it out. He was supposeta think it was me he smelled. Guess it worked."

  Chesney frowned. "Never mind the self-congratulation. The situation now is that the Devil's got a connection to Joshua – they're writing a book together – so Hardacre gets the chop. And so does my mother."

  "We're innocent," Letitia said. "They tricked us."

  "You could argue that in court," said the demon. "Course, it's our court." It puffed the cigar to a brighter glow. "Judge's name is Minos. He's kinda strict."

  "But now he doesn't need the preacher," Melda said. "So he could let him and Letitia go."

  "No can do," said the fiend. "Like the boss says, we don't make the rules."

  "Enough!" said Chesney. "I need to think!"

  "It's not your kind of problem," said Letitia. "Let me talk to Billy Lee–"

  "No," said Melda, "he won't listen. Besides, Chesney can do this." She put a hand on the young man's arm. "Go on, sweetie, work it through."

  Chesney went to the other side of the Tree of Life and sat down cross-legged on the thick, soft turf, his back against the warm, smooth-barked trunk. The light in the Garden of Eden was as pure as it had been that first morning, but it provided no clear pool of illumination for this problem. The nub of it, he posited, was to prevent Hardacre from bringing on the end of the world. Then he thought, no, that's not it. The problem is to keep Mother and Billy Lee out of Hell. Because, having accepted help from a demon, having taken the fruits of the underworld, that's where they were heading.

  He remembered Nat Blowdell being whipped through the iron gates of Hell. He couldn't let that happen to his mother, for all the grief she had caused him. But the rules were the rules. Then his mind went to Joshua. Did he really have the authority to forgive sins, the way he was empowered to cast out demons? Or was that a quality that had been tacked on later, after the little man had been transfigured into a deity?

  But Chesney couldn't approach the prophet while he was hobnobbing with Lucifer. Let the Devil get one whiff of what the young man wanted and he would do all he could to deny Chesney his wish. Satan had never forgiven – probably never could forgive – the blow that his pride had suffered when a mere human had thrown his kingdom into chaos.

  We have to solve this ourselves, he thought. No,
I
have to solve it. He was one who had started it all, and having read a thousand comix, he knew enough about stories to know that the hero, however flawed a character he might be, has to step up when the situation is at its most perilous and do what needs to be done.

  A petal from one of the great tree's blossoms spiraled down and landed on his knee. He could smell its perfume, strong and deeply pheremonic. He looked up and saw the light dappling through the foliage, the long, cylindrical fruit hanging from their stems. And in a moment, he knew. "Thank you," he said. Then he uncrossed his legs and rose, thinking, yes, the hero has to solve the problem – but sometimes the author gives him a little nudge in the right direction.