Costume Not Included (22 page)

  "How long?" Chesney said privately to Xaphan.

  "Any second now," said the voice only he could hear.

  To the others, Chesney said, "Here we go."

  A shadow appeared at the mouth of the alley, where a street lamp cast a glow, and was quickly followed by the figure of a man walking at a rapid pace. The moment he stepped out of the streetlight's range he became a vague shape in the poorly lit alley, a shadow among shadows.

  Nervous, Chesney thought to himself as he saw the pass swiftly through a place where a slight illumination fell from an apartment window whose shade was pulled down. The man glanced around in several directions before his gaze settled on the fire escape and he moved forward to where the iron ladder was fixed high upon the apartment house wall. He stood there in silence for a moment, while Chesney wondered how he would ascend the fifteen feet between the ground and the bottom rung.

  The Actionary said to Xaphan, "Night vision," and immediately the scene brightened. He saw the man clearly now, though from behind: slight of build, in his early twenties, a smooth, round head, dressed in a dark windbreaker, black jeans and sneakers. He reached into a pocket of his jacket and brought out something cupped in his hand; a moment later he tossed something up at the third-floor window. It struck glass with out the force to break it then rattled down through the iron fire escape.

  "A pebble," Chesney said, aloud. "He threw it at the window."

  "Can you see?" said Denby, whispering even though they could not be heard.

  "Yes. He's doing it again." The man threw a second small missile. They heard the tap and rattle again, then Cathy Bannister's bedroom window slid silently up.

  "No wonder," Denby breathed.

  The sounds were soft – she was making an effort to be silent – as the young woman climbed down the fire escape. At the bottom landing she leaned out and stepped onto the vertical ladder. Under her weight, it slid down to the ground. She stepped off, and it noiselessly rose to its original position.

  "I remember it was freshly oiled," Denby said. "Now I'm thinking she must have done it."

  "It's no kidnapping," Melda said, "at least not yet."

  The couple embraced. Chesney saw a kiss and the woman gave the man a brisk hug. Then they turned and went quickly back the way he'd come. The man kept his face turned toward her, showing Chesney's enhanced vision only an ear and a curve of cheekbone. But there was something familiar there, and in the economy of motion with which the suspect moved.

  Then they were passing through the glow of the streetlight at the end of the alley and turning out of sight. "We need to follow them," the policeman said as they heard the sound of a car's ignition.

  "Xaphan," Chesney said, privately, and the transportation the demon had arranged appeared before them. It was a flat disc of pale metal, hovering six inches off the asphalt. "Step on," he said to the others. They did so and the disc did not sink under their weight. "After them," the Actionary said, and the platform immediately moved silently down the alley, then turned the corner and accelerated to catch up with the taillights of a dark sedan that was just pulling away from the curb. Cathy Bannister's profile, her head turned to talk to the driver, could be seen through the rear window.

  The disc kept them a close distance behind the car, speeding and slowing as necessary, while the three pursuers felt no wind from their journey. At one point, the vehicle stopped for a light and another car came up behind its rear bumper. Xaphan caused the disc to rise smoothly into the air until they were hovering above the second car's hood, then they slid down to their previous position as the traffic moved forward.

  They passed through the college district and turned toward downtown. The city core was one of those places that emptied out after office hours, except for a few restaurants and the usual scattering of after-work bars. But the dinner crowd and one-for-the-road drinkers had mostly gone on to more interesting activities, and the streets were almost untrafficked.

  "Where's he taking her?" Denby said.

  "We'll know in a moment," Chesney said as the car's brake lights flared. The driver turned into a downward sloping driveway beneath one of the office towers, not far from City Hall. His arm reached out to tap a code into a keypad and the big steel door folded itself up. The sedan drove into the basement parking lot.

  "I know this building," Denby said.

  "Yes," said Chesney. He knew it, too.

  The steel door rattled down. "Aren't we going in after them?" the captain said.

  "No need," said the Actionary. The disc was rising smoothly up the side of the building to the top floor. Eighteen stories above the street it stopped then slid gently sideways until they were facing a large window with a rounded top. The room beyond was dark.

  "Wait for it," said Chesney, warned by his assistant. Then a light came on and they were looking into a room lined with metal filing cabinets, all in uniform gray. They were the kind whose front opens up and folds over top of the files within like a garage door. The man led Cathy Bannister into the file room and over to a cabinet in the corner. This one was more strongly constructed, and above the standard key lock was a second security system: a heavy steel bar that fitted into slots on either side of the door and could only be deactivated by a code punched into a seriously strong-looking keypad.

  "That's it?" said the young woman.

  "That's it," said the man.

  "Open it."

  "We had a deal," he countered.

  "So we did," she said. And when he just stood and waited, she gave him a
what-the-Hell
smile, slipped off her jacket and began to unbutton her blouse. She walked over to a small table of scarred dark wood and dropped the garment on top, then with her back to the man she unhooked her bra and laid it on top of the blouse. Then she turned and faced him.

  "Jeez," Denby said softly.

  She was wearing slacks and flat-heeled shoes, but only for another few seconds. She kicked them to one side then, with an expression that was anything but erotic, she peeled down her panties and stood naked.

  Chesney turned to look at Melda. He was thinking he probably ought to apologize for the fact that Cathy Bannister naked was bringing about in him the same physiological response that Melda McCann caused when he saw her without clothes – and even when he just thought about it for more than a few seconds. But Melda's eyes were on what was going on in the room, and Chesney interpreted the look on her face to mean that she wasn't in a mood to accept apologies from anyone.

  He turned back to the window. The young woman had seated herself on the edge of the table, legs open. The man approached her. He reached out and covered one breast with his hand. She kept her gaze on his face – her expression said that whatever was going on here was hers to control – as she lowered her hands to his fly. Chesney heard the sound of the zipper going down and the man's involuntary gasp as she reached in and fished him out. She looked at him expectantly and he put a hand in his jacket pocket and brought out a condom in a plastic wrapper. She took it from him, still holding his eyes with hers, and used her teeth to tear the package open. Then her hands went out of sight as she positioned the contraceptive and rolled it all the way down.

  His back was towards the window, but it was clear what the woman did next from the way her arms moved, and from the way the man's back arched to thrust his groin towards her. After a few more motions, the man groaned. She lay back on the table, propped up on her elbows, and opened herself to him. He unbuckled his belt and let his jeans fall about his ankles then shuffled forward the last few inches to thrust himself into her.

  He leaned forward, his hands on either side of her body, his head thrown back, and after no more than a dozen uncontrolled strokes his legs began to tremble and he made a sound like something being seized by the slaughterman in a barnyard.

  Then it was over. She pushed him back and away from her, and while he stood, panting and round-shouldered, she quickly put on her clothes. Then she held her head the way Chesney had seen Melda hold hers when she was not receptive to argument and said, "Your turn."

  The man took a few seconds to get his breathing under control, then pulled the condom from his flaccid penis and looked around for somewhere to put it. The woman briskly pulled a tissue from a jacket pocket and handed it to him. He folded the contraceptive into the paper and put it in the pocket of his windbreaker. Then he took the torn wrapper from where she had discarded it on the table and put it where he'd put the wad of tissue.

  "Don't want to have to explain that," he said to her.

  "Whatever," she said. "Let's go."

  He pulled up his underwear and jeans, buckled himself up and crossed to where she now waited beside the secure cabinet. He gave her an attempt at a conspiratorial smile, but her face just said,
get on with it
, while her head motioned the same message. He shrugged and made a spin-around motion with one finger, and when she had turned her back he punched in a code, hauled the locking bar out of the way, and opened the file drawer.

  She moved briskly then, elbowing him out of the way, running her index finger over the files. But he stepped back in, more forcefully now and chose a file. He handed it to her and said, "Just this one. That's the deal."

  She took it over to the table and opened it, leaning over it in a posture of intense concentration. "Jesus Murphy," she said.

  He stiffened, his head cocked, listening. "Shh!" he said. "I hear something." He went quickly to the light switch beside the door and plunged the room into darkness. Chesney called for his night vision.

  "Hey!" she said, angry, turning to him from the file she could no longer see.

  "Quiet!" he whispered. He put an ear to the door and listened.

  A flash of eye-searing light flared in Chesney's vision. "Xaphan!" he said, and instantly his sight cleared. A second flash lit up the room, and this time he saw Cathy Bannister posed over the file, a small camera aimed at two pages she had spread wide.

  "Christ!" said the man. "Don't–" he was rushing across the short distance between them, a hand outstretched to seize the camera.

  She took one more exposure, then turned to meet him. They struggled in the dark and she pushed aside his reaching hand.

  "That wasn't part of the deal!" he whispered.

  "It is now!" she said.

  "For fuck's sakes, be quiet!" he said, trying to get a hand over her mouth. "There's somebody out there!"

  "Bullshit!"

  "Give me the–" he said, reaching for the camera again, but the next sound out of him was a high-pitched whine as she brought a knee up into his groin. She made a break for the door then, hands groping ahead of her through the darkness. Chesney saw the man recover enough to throw himself after her.

  He blindly caught her collar, then frantically brought his other hand into play and seized her hair above the back of her neck. She swore, in pain and frustration, and kicked back with one heel at his shin. Now it was his turn to swear, but he held on, putting his weight into it even as she kicked a second time at the same spot, knocking that leg out from under him.

  The man made a whimpering, whining sound, but still would not let go. As she raised her heel for a third backkick, he tried to dodge while standing on one leg. The action swung them both off balance. They toppled to the floor.

  But along the way, Cathy Bannister's head struck the corner of the table on which they'd consummated their deal. The
crack!
was loud, and when he began to rise from the floor, she did not.

  Light flared again. A hand had come through the partly opened doorway and turned on the light. The door swung wide and a distinguished looking man in a tailored three-piece suit was looking down at the woman on the floor and the man half-crouching above her. The newcomer's eyes went to the open cabinet, the file on the table, the little camera lying on the floor near the woman's outstretched hand.

  "Baccala!" said the man in the doorway. "What's the meaning of this?"

  "Mr Tresidder!" said a younger Seth Baccala. "I can explain!"

  But, of course, he couldn't.

 

"Let us be clear," Joshua said, "I am the prophet. You are the one who goes before to… how did you say it?"

  "Stoke the boiler," Billy Lee Hardacre said.

  "In the language of Heaven, I hear that as till the field.' I don't think that's quite what you said."

  "Perhaps you should learn English," the preacher said.

  "No, the language of Heaven is surely best for discussing these kinds of things."

  They were sitting in Hardacre's study, in the glow of lamplight. The prophet was very taken with the soft illumination the lamps threw; yesterday he had enjoyed himself immensely playing with the dimmer switch. "And none of that greasy residue from burning olive oil, even with the highest grade of oil which, believe me, we didn't get too often."

  "If we can get back to the subject," Hardacre now said, "to the fundamental question: what are you going to say?"

  "I'm still thinking about that," said the prophet. "Obviously, I can't say a lot of the things I said last time."

  "Love thy neighbor is still a good message."

  "Is it?" The prophet stroked his beard. He had allowed Hardacre to prevail upon him to trim it drastically. Chest-length whiskers carried the wrong connotations these days, the preacher had said. His mop of black curls had also been reduced to a more reasonable size, Letitia wielding the scissors. "You've had two thousand years to put it into practice," he said, "and what I see on the far-seer…" – he stopped, and made the effort to speak the untranslated word – "the television, what I see there tells me that there has not been much progress.