Costume Not Included (14 page)

  The analysts had woven together a matrix of factors: loss of health benefits, leading to later detection of serious medical issues and a likelihood that they would go untreated, or be undertreated at best; increased risky behavior, including drinking, drug-taking, violence on the street or in the home; poorer nutrition; unstable marital relationships; loss of domicile; general stress levels and descent into depression.

  The trend lines did not look good. More people were liable to die earlier than had been projected when they took out their policies in happier times. In cases where those policies were already fully paid up, it was not possible for Paxton Life and Casualty to restructure the premiums to make the books balance. Premature disbursements, as payouts before the expected deaths of policy holders were called, impacted the quarterly and annual balance sheets.

  PL&C did not tolerate such impacts gladly. The company was preparing a case to identify long-term joblessness as "a material change in the policy holder's circumstances," which would trigger the invoking of a clause in the pages of fine print that would allow the company to cancel paidup policies and up the premiums on those still paying.

  Chesney worked his way through the matrix of figures, and made some notes. Then he turned to his keyboard and drafted a memo instructing the actuaries to factor in the likelihood of criminal activity, apprehension and incarceration as additional elements in the analysis, and recalculate the downstream effects.

  He was about to send the memo when his door opened and Lieutenant Denby entered without knocking. "Surprised?" the policeman said.

  "Not really."

  Chesney watched the man sit. Denby said nothing but folded his hands in his lap and tilted his head at an angle. Chesney studied the man's expression and decided that it fit the old saying about a cat that has just enjoyed a dish of cream. He pressed the enter key that sent off his memo, then said, "You're happy about something."

  "You think?" said Denby.

  "Therapists once trained me to recognize facial expressions. Yours is not one of the difficult ones."

  "You're a weird kid, aren't you?" said the policeman. "You're not, by any chance, from … somewhere else?"

  "I was born at Mercy Hospital on Filbert Street," Chesney said.

  "When?"

  "12:41pm. Does it matter?"

  "I meant," said Denby, "what year?" When Chesney opened his mouth to answer, the lieutenant spoke again, "Or, better yet, what century?"

  "I don't understand," Chesney said. "I was born in 1986."

  Now Denby's expression said he was amused by the answer. Chesney said, "I have work to do. What do you want?"

  "Tell your friend," the lieutenant said, "you know who I mean, that I've figured him out."

  "You have?"

  "Tell him that he can cut the fancy-dress act. The gangbusters…" He paused just a moment, then said, meaningfully, waving his arms like wings, "The coming down from on high like an angel."

  Denby was studying Chesney's reaction, while the young man did his best not to show one. "You think he's an angel?"

  "No," said the lieutenant, "as a matter of fact I don't. As another matter of fact, I know what he is."

  "And what's that?"

  The policeman's face was perfectly serious as he told Chesney.

  The young man leaned back in his chair. "A time traveler?" he said. "Really?"

  "Really. And I want to talk to him."

  "You said that the last time you were here."

  "And did you pass on the message?"

  "In a manner of speaking," Chesney said.

  "What does that mean?"

  "I don't want to go into it."

  Denby gave him a sharp look, then let the matter slide. "Well, give him the message again," Denby said, "in any manner of speaking you like."

  "He didn't take you up on the offer last time. Why should he now?"

  "Because," said Denby, "I've got his book."

  Chesney knew how to look surprised. He had perfected it long ago as a technique to survive his mother's inquisitions. "Oh," he said, "so
you've
got it. I'll tell the Reverend Hardacre. I think he'll want to prosecute you."

  "He comes looking, it won't be there," said Denby. "It will only be there if your buddy, the poor man's Batman, gets in touch. Otherwise, it goes in the incinerator."

  "I see."

  "So you'll tell him?"

  "Yes."

  "Make it snappy," said Denby.

  "What's the hurry?"

  "I'm not working for myself," said the policeman. "There's a meeting of the Twenty tonight. I'm giving them the book. And copies of this." From his inside jacket pocket he pulled a four-by-six-inch photograph and tossed it onto Chesney's desk blotter. "Give that to your friend, too."

  Chesney turned the image toward him and looked at it. It showed him grinning, paintbrush in hand. Behind him, in reasonable detail, stretched the empty outer circle of Hell.

 
 

 
 
 

Just before quitting time, Chesney's phone rang. Seth Baccala's secretary told the young man he was wanted on the tenth floor right away. Chesney had briefly worked on the tenth floor, as part of C Group, a specialassignment unit that the company's owner, W.T. Paxton, had created: the best and brightest number crunchers of Paxton Life and Casualty, whose job was to generate statistics, mostly about crime, that would be useful in Paxton's proposed campaign for governor. The old man had seen the Actionary as an even more useful adjunct to his campaign, until his daughter, Poppy, had been kidnaped into Hell by Nat Blowdell, prompting Chesney to have to go and rescue her.

  It had been a messy situation, only partly resolved by a wave of Xaphan's stubby hand that had emptied and clouded the memories of some of the participants, including Lieutenant Denby. The lieutenant had seen the kidnaping and had charged in right after Blowdell. The Actionary had had to rescue him, too, though the lieutenant had no memory of it.

  Now Paxton had decided against politics. His daughter's nervous breakdown had sapped his spirits. Besides, he was mystified by the sudden disappearance of Blowdell, the political fixer he had hired to be his campaign manager. Group C had been disbanded; the actuaries returned to their previous posts – except for Chesney, whose exceptional number crunching had been recognized and rewarded by promotion.

  The young man had not been up on tenth since the end of the special unit. He saw that nothing else had changed, except that the secondary conference room that had housed C Group during its brief existence had now been returned to its former function. He presented himself to the receptionist and a moment later was told to go into Baccala's office.

  He knocked and went in. Baccala, an impeccably groomed thirty year-old who might have posed for the cover of Harvard's MBA school alumni magazine, invited the actuary to sit down. Chesney could see a question in the man's eyes, and a moment later it was on his lips.

  "Lieutenant Denby came to see you this afternoon," he said. "Why?"

  Chesney did not feel himself at the center of a pool of light. Denby had spoken of the Twenty, the small group of powerful men who had effectively run the city since driving out the mob bootleggers during Prohibition in the thirties. He knew that W.T. Paxton was a member of the Twenty and he suspected that Baccala, his executive assistant, was privy to much of what went on between his boss and the powers-that-were. This conversation was deep in the murky darkness, and dissembling could be a long walk out onto thin ice. Fortunately, though, Chesney had grown up being interrogated by a ruthless expert and had learned some useful techniques.

  One of them was to tell as much of the truth as possible. "He came to see me about the Actionary," he told Baccala.

  The reference brought a rare wrinkle to the other man's exfoliated brow. "Why you?"

  "He thinks I can get a message to him."

  "What message?"

  Chesney told him.

  "A time traveler?" Baccala didn't seem to know whether to laugh or sigh in despair. A moment later, however, his sharp mind brought him around to the essential question. "Why does he think you can get a message to this mystery man?"

  "He didn't say." Chesney was treading wafer-thin ice now. But his lifelong training in evading his mother's inquiries into his behavior stood him in good stead. "It may be because the Actionary saved my girlfriend. Twice," he added.

  That brought an even deeper wrinkle to Baccala's smooth forehead. "You have a girlfriend?"

  Chesney nodded. The other man seemed easily distracted. He wondered if Xaphan had arranged for Baccala to undergo a fit of fuzzy thinking whenever the subject of the Actionary came up.

  Baccala blinked and looked down like a man trying to collect his thoughts. "So," he said after a moment, "nothing to do with the company?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nor the Paxtons?"

  Chesney shook his head.

  Baccala said nothing. He looked, Chesney thought, like a man trying to remember an old tune. "A time traveler?" he said after a while. "Really?"

  "Really."

  Baccala shrugged. "Okay. That's all."

  Chesney stood up and went to the door, then looked back. The other man was staring at his desk top but obviously not seeing the satiny finish or the solid gold pen and pencil set. The actuary made a note to ask his demon just how long the memory-fogging would last against a sustained attempt by a first-class mind to overcome it.

 

"It usually holds pretty good," said Xaphan. "A guy who's really sharp can chisel his way through, if he works at it lots." It drank some more rum. "But then we can just slap on a second coat."

  "So I don't need to worry," Chesney said.

  "Not about that."

  "What about the other thing?"

  "The meeting of the Twenty?" The demon puffed on its cigar. "On that one, I can't help ya."

  "Why not?"

  "Boss says. I go near that bizness, it's twenty-three skidoo for old Xaphan. I'm down in the pit shoving hot coals up some mug's rosy–"

  Melda cut him off. "We get the picture," she said, "and, personally, it's not one I want to keep."

  "No problem," said the demon. It wagged a digit sideways. Melda blinked. "And I'm not just thinkin' of my own comfort," Xaphan went on. "They could assign you some hotshot that's not as, shall we say, accommodatin' as me."

  "Then what
can
you tell me about the meeting?" Chesney said.

  "Nuthin' you don't already know."

  "You're not much help."

  "Not when you're not crimefightin'." It drained its glass of rum and the tumbler instantly refilled.

  There was a silence in Chesney's apartment. After it had lingered for a while, Melda said, "Xaphan's right." The demon toasted her but she ignored it. "Whatever's going on with the Twenty is none of our business." She pointed a finger at Chesney. "You wanted to fight crime. It makes you happy. So let's fight some crime." She turned to the demon. "What have you got?"

  Xaphan frowned and looked to the young man. "You want I should answer her?"

  "Consider her my partner in crimefighting."

  "Okey-doke." The demon looked up as if there was something written on the ceiling. "Tonight we got a strong-armin', some kids swipin' a car, coupla hit-andruns, three mom-and-pop puncheroos, a guy sellin' pirated videos–"

  "Nuh-uh," said Melda. "None of that picayune stuff. We want something people are gonna be blogging about tomorrow."

  "I can only give ya the crime that's happenin'," said Xaphan.

  Chesney watched Melda thinking. It occurred to Chesney that though he had called her his crimefighting partner without giving it any thought, it might be useful to have someone whose brain could illuminate the darkness that constantly hedged in his pools of light. Now he saw an idea strike her.

  "What about," she said, "crime that happened last year, or the year before, and the guy got away with it, and he's still around?"

  "Yes!" said Chesney. "Cold cases!"

  The weasel brows did a brief up-and-down. "Yeah, got plenty of that."

  "Like what?" said Melda. "And keep it to serious crimes only." She was trying to remember the name of the young woman who had been snatched from her apartment a few years back. It almost came to her, but now the demon was itemizing prospective cases, ticking them off on its short digits. "Got a guy used to go around marryin' widows and divorcees, then he'd clean out their bank accounts and catch the bus outta town. He made millions."

  "Where is he?" Melda said.

  "Nursin' home on Parkhurst. But he's missin a few marbles now."

  "What else?"

  "An ex-button man for the outfit. He's retired now, lives in Meadowview."

  "Button man?" said Melda.

  "He rubbed out guys on contract. He did Joey Hiccups and Angie Snips – they called him that cause he usedta carry these tin snips in the trunk of his car and–"

  Chesney said, "Is there any evidence that could connect this button man to the murders?"

  His assistant waved its cigar. "Nah. He was a real pro." It took a puff. "Course, we could always make some evidence."

  Chesney didn't have to think about it. "No," he said. "I'm the good guy. I fly straight. What else have you got?"

  "There's another guy, a civilian, used to pick up hitchhikers and take them back to his place."

  "And?" said Melda.

  "They're still there."

  Chesney felt a cold chill pass down his spine. "How many?"

  "Seventeen."

  "What did he do to them?"

  Xaphan looked at him sideways. "Your partner won't like the pictures in her head."