Fever City (29 page)

My gun.

Too late.

Gillis sees it and swears.

There is an atomic flash: yellow, then white. Heat bursts as the shot erupts inside the contained coffin of the car. The thunder of Zeus.

And then the hollow patter of broken glass. The cordite cloud lifts and Schiller and I sit up slowly, our heads rising through the shimmer and the smoke, our ears ringing.

The passenger door is wide open. Deckard is gone.

Gillis is slumped against the steering wheel. Schiller jerks his body back. ‘Are you hit?'

Gillis opens his eyes, his voice at the other end of a long tunnel. ‘I don't think so . . . '

‘You'd know it if you were.' Schiller follows me out of the car. ‘Trust a fucking glue head to miss at point-blank. Where'd he go?'

A woman hanging out of a second-floor window points into the canal. ‘He jumped! Right there.'

We stand on the bank of the canal, gazing into the oil-tarnished surface of the water. The last of Deckard's bubbles burst like afterthoughts on the surface. ‘And him still cuffed!'

I head back to the car, picking up the revolver that Deckard tossed in his mad dash to escape by drowning, and then I retrieve the rest of my arsenal from under the seat, trying to ignore the sobs of Gillis.

‘Why the hell did he run?'

I'd been in Roselli's home earlier that day. I knew exactly what made Deckard do it. The same thing that made the rest of them crawl through ancient pipes, struggle up through soil. Crash through windows; fall through air. Race across highways. Panic. Flee. Do anything to avoid the gods of cruelty: Roselli and his pizza oven; Old Man Bannister and his riding crop; the Frost Moose Hunter of Hoover's renegade agents. The knowing ice pick of Boris Landis.

It was as if Los Angeles were no longer a city but a sepulchre; a mausoleum metropolis where the only signs of movement were the rigor mortis contraction of locking muscle. And the lisp of smoke from the funeral pyre, caught in the Santa Ana winds.

T
he restaurant is low-ceilinged and dark, the kind of discreet place you'd steal into with your mistress, only to discover your wife in a corner booth with her lover. Evelyn reaches across the table and takes my hand, nursing it palm up, as though trying to get in a fast reading. ‘You're hungry,' she says, with clairvoyant-like authority.

It's an easy assumption. We'd spent half the night and most of the morning making love and then walked for two hours through the historic centre. Who wouldn't have an appetite? ‘I thought New York was the only city left where people still walked.'

‘San Francisco. Savannah, of course . . . But a Virgo like you would prefer European cities. I can imagine you walking for hours in Rome.'

‘You're right, only I'm not a Virgo . . . '

Evelyn runs a red fingernail across my palm. ‘But that's impossible . . . '

‘Want to see my birth certificate?'

She laughs. ‘There must have been some kind of exceptional celestial event that occurred at your birth. Were you premature?'

‘I know I was precocious.' It's time to come clean with her. ‘To tell you the truth, Evelyn, I don't believe in any of that stuff . . . '

‘You should open your mind. Your life changes when you have the courage to follow your Zodiac.'

I'm not one of those people who call credulity
courage
. ‘The only Zodiac I've ever paid attention to is this one,' I say, pulling my sleeve back to display my watch.

‘Very retro . . . '

‘It was my father's. He gave it to me just before he died.'

‘I'm sorry . . . '

‘Don't be, it's a good memory.'

Evelyn unclips her pocketbook, taking out a deck of tarot cards. She sees the look in my eyes and smiles. ‘Indulge me,' she says, dealing five tarot cards facedown: anonymous yet somehow accusatory. With the speed of a stinging wasp, she turns them over.

I'm not crazy about my hand.

She taps the Fool. ‘You.'

‘Thank you very much . . . ' I crane my head to look in detail at the card. The Fool is teetering on the edge of a cliff, a dog barking a warning at his heels. ‘Cute dog.'

‘In this arrangement, the Fool also signifies the son. The son who's condemned to search for the Truth denied.' Her finger glides across the surface of the card, pointing to the abyss beyond the cliff. ‘This then is his Quest.' She nods to the Hierophant. ‘Which leads here, to the father.'

‘He doesn't look very happy.'

‘His authority is being challenged. But it's not only that. The Fool is looking forward, but the father is focused on the past, for he is also the judge.'

‘What crime has been committed?'

She points to the next card: Death. ‘Murder.'

‘Most foul . . . '

Her eyes flash with annoyance. ‘This is serious.' Before I can say anything, Evelyn continues, touching The Hanged Man. ‘The judgment has already been made.' She looks up at me, her eyes luminous with professional exhilaration—like a medical scientist who has just made a major discovery. The person sitting opposite me is transfigured; I don't know her anymore. It's as though I've been seated at the wrong table. I feel like calling the waiter over and asking him to explain this mistake.

‘That's one interpretation. They could mean anything.' They could mean nothing.

‘There's no “could” with the Tarot.' She pushes the last card, which shows a tower being struck by lightning, towards the Fool. ‘The Tower is your domain in every sense of the word. Where you come from; what made you. Your hardships and successes.'

She goes to draw another card. ‘I wish you wouldn't.' But it's too late, she's already turned it. She stares at me.

‘I knew it.'

‘Knew what?'

Evelyn is trembling as she gazes at me. ‘You're the Magus.'

The throb of the cork at my side makes me jump. In the heightened silence between us, the tumble of wine is a cascade. I go through with the ritual, swirling the glass, breathing in the fragrances of the white wine. Notes of almonds with a hint of straw. And something I recognize but can't quite name. Pungent; overripe. A fruit or flower . . . Some childhood memory, emphatic in its importance yet somehow disturbing. The more I try to recall it, the thornier it becomes, pushing me away until it's lost altogether and I am back in a fancy restaurant, nodding approval to a waiter.

‘You saw it, just then. You know you did.'

‘I was just trying to recall a smell. Wines are so complex these days.' I turn to the waiter for support, but he just stares into the middle distance.

‘It wasn't the wine, it was you. Something from your past.' My past feels like it ended several weeks before when my wife divorced me to marry a French teacher. Evelyn stands. ‘I'll be right back . . . '

The empty space left by Evelyn's departure is filled by the restaurant's music. I hadn't even noticed it before. They're playing an orchestral version of
It's A Most Unusual Day
. The fact that I even recognize it is almost as disturbing as the show Evelyn has just put on. Too depressed to continue wondering whether the card reading was a result of her forgetting to take her meds, I check the
Dallas Morning News
on my iPhone. Cowboys. Expressways. Local weather. State weather. National weather. I can remember the time when people had better things to do than spend their life looking at weather reports. There's something about a local murder. I feel my blood slow as my heart slams on the brakes. Even the screen on the iPhone seems to dim with shock. I read it again. A former underworld figure, LeRoy ‘Tex' Jeetton, was found shot, execution-style, inside his car. Three to the head. Three to the mouth. The punishment for an informer. Local police figured it was a settling of accounts.

The thought occurs to me before I can block it: was Tex's murder linked in any way with our meeting? As far as I can recall, there was no one else in the bar, except the bartender. I dropped him home, at a ratty little place in Oak Cliff, round eleven. Did someone follow us? Did they take my license plate? I make a mental note to change my rent-a-car that afternoon.

Evelyn comes back and we eat our lunch in silence. It is not the simmering hard silence that punishes a table after a fight; it is a harmonious, respectful silence; peaceful and welcome. She doesn't mention the cards again and I certainly don't mention what happened to Tex.

It's always a shock to leave the artificial twilight and the air-conditioning behind, to step out into the glare of unfiltered afternoon sunlight, the pith of humid air heavy as a summer cold. In that first exit moment, when the senses strain to adjust from the camouflage of fabrication to the authenticity of reality, it feels as if anything can happen.

And it does.

Dwayne Wayne reaches out of the dazzle of sunshine, takes my arm and pulls me into the back of a large, dark limo. Before I even have a moment to register what's happening, it has happened. I have been abducted.

I look back through the tinted windows at Evelyn, who glances abstractly after the car, then turns and walks back inside the restaurant, as though she just remembered she had left her phone behind.

The car slows and stops for a red light. I lurch away from Wayne, yanking hard on the car door. Locked. I try the window. The same. I thump the glass, the car pulling away. Dwayne Wayne chuckles to himself. ‘Evelyn called. Told us what was happening.' There is a disconcerting panting coming from somewhere inside the car. I hope it's not from me. He smiles, shaking his head. ‘You didn't have a clue, did you? Damn, we're good . . . '

The panting grows in intensity—like someone losing a fight against a fatal asthma attack. ‘Who's
we
?' My throat is so dry, my voice cracks. I start to slowly ease my phone out of my jacket pocket.

Wayne chuckles again, barely able to contain his mirth. His head lolls back towards the window Evelyn had disappeared from. ‘Her . . . ' He nods to the driver. ‘Him . . . ' The driver turns around. Adam Granston. The Man on the Horn.

‘Tex is dead,' Granston says.

I lean forward peering into the front passenger seat. Granston's beagle is on the floor. One mystery solved. I almost have the phone out. Wayne hasn't noticed.

‘Did you hear what I just said? Tex Jeetton is dead.'

‘I know.'
9
. . .

Granston shakes his head in sorrowful disbelief, talking in a soft, contemptuous rush. ‘You know he's dead. But that's not knowing. Knowing is understanding
why
he's dead. And you don't have a clue.'

Silence. Broken only by the gentle hum of the air-conditioner and the heartbeat pant of the dog.
1
. . .
1
. The soft lisp of connection. Too late. Wayne spots the phone in my hand; snatches it away with a grin. ‘All electronic devices must be switched off.'

‘What the hell is going on?'

‘We're protecting you.'

‘Abducting me, you mean.'

‘We're taking you to a safe house.'

‘Kidnapping me!'

‘Saving your sorry ass. As for the kidnapping . . . ' There is the pop of unlocking doors. ‘You are free to go.'

‘Right, jump out of a speeding car—what kind of choice is that?'

‘A choice.' Granston chimes in, his eyes in the rearview mirror crinkling in a wizen approximation of amusement.

Ever the lawyer. ‘Where the hell is this safe house?'

‘We're nearly there . . . ' Wayne helpfully shows me his GPS. ‘Old Preston Hollow.'

The name rings a bell. I have to keep them talking. The more they say, the less of a surprise I'll have waiting for me when we arrive—I hope. ‘Why take me to a safe house?

‘We have information.'

‘That's what Tex said too, but he was lying.'

‘E. Howard Hunt?' Wayne purrs the name, like a father trying to get his child to eat his peas. I don't respond. I don't like peas. ‘He wasn't lying.'

Bullshit. ‘So what information do you have that's more original?'

‘More original than Original Sin?'

Granston's eyes flicker doubtfully. He looks even more worried by Wayne's bizarre comment than I do.

I nod to the front. ‘What's in the box?' Wayne starts to look over to the passenger seat before he stops himself. His eyes flare with anger. Not good for me but good for the situation. Anger leads to mistakes.

'You think you're so smart and you don't know a thing about the Bannister case.'

‘That's enough.'

Too late. Granston's ire confirms my suspicions. This has got nothing to do with JFK. This is about my father. Granston and Tex both knew about him. And these two clowns taking me for a ride may be carpooling but they sure as hell don't act like they're real partners. Wayne glares at Granston, then settles his great bulk back into his seat. He speaks in a long, raw mutter. ‘Damn, it's more than enough. It's all he'll need.'

‘Need for what?'

He turns, his eyes simmering with the sugar hit of insider dope. I feel a sucker punch coming somewhere. ‘For comprehension of the situation, Mr. Alston, and believe me, we certainly have a situation here.'

‘Kidnapping. Abduction. Unlawful detention. Theft.' That last one scores an amazed, outraged look. I nod to my phone that he's still nursing in his great hand. He reluctantly passes it back to me. ‘You used to be a bounty hunter, didn't you?'

‘Bounty hunter, my ass. He was a bondsman.'

Wayne shakes his head in wounded disbelief. The car bucks its way over a grille, passing the glare of private armed security, then coasts down a tree-lined driveway into unknown territory.

An enormous mansion comes into view, Gothic and brooding. ‘Well, what do you know—Hogwarts!'