Costume Not Included (29 page)

  Hall Bruster began to shake. A white froth appeared at the corners of his mouth, his eyes rolled back, and his knees bent as he began to run in place behind the desk. Then his neck bent backwards to an impossible extent. Chesney could hear the bones crack as the back of the pundit's skull almost touched the space between his shoulder blades. His mouth opened wider than it should have been able to, and a roaring voice emerged, making harsh sounds that might have been words, but in a deep timbre that no human vocal apparatus could have produced. It sounded to Chesney like a whale cursing.

  Xaphan silently toasted the screen, then said, "And here we go."

  Something shadowy yet thick, like dense, roiling smoke, erupted from Bruster's far-too-open mouth. It twisted in the air, then tumbled to the desk, and the shapes of knobbed limbs and joints, a narrow, hairless skull, wart-speckled shoulders, and some even less attractive parts, seemed to take solid form only to dissipate from one moment to the next. And now something else was appearing from the pundit's lips. It looked to Chesney like a pair of giant crab's legs, sickly yellow and tipped with jagged claws, reaching out from within to spread the orifice even wider. Instead of a deep-throated roar, the man's body was now issuing a hissing, gasping voice, the words it was forming full of harsh gutturals and throatclearing k-sounds.

  Someone screamed amid a clatter of chairs and shouts, and a rising din of struggle as the unseen audience fought to put distance between themselves and the glistening, segmented body that was dragging itself out of Bruster's throat and joining the writhing smoke-creature on the desk. The monster lifted its tail to elevate the stinging tip, a drop of pale ichor hanging from the needle point.

  But Joshua, still clutching Bruster's hand, pointed a finger at the two horrors on the desktop and said, in a voice that shook the studio walls, "Begone, foul demons! Back to the pit and trouble this soul no more!"

  And in a moment, gone they were. The desk was empty, Bruster ceased his high-stepping contortions, and fell back in his chair like a plump puppet whose strings have been cut. He bounced off the back of the seat, his glasses flew off, and his arms barely caught him as he toppled forward to sprawl across the desk. He lay inert for several seconds as the last sounds of the fleeing audience registered on the overhead microphone. Then he slowly lifted his head, his eyes glazed and blinking, a dribble of drool hanging from one corner of his mouth. "Where… what…?" he said.

  Joshua was looking down on him, a kindly expression on the unbearded portion of his face, his eyes pools of compassion. "There," he said, "I'll bet you're glad to have those two out of you."

  Bruster looked up, stunned. Then his face took on an expression of pure delight, even as tears sprang from his eyes. He said, "You are my Lord and savior."

  "Now, now," said the prophet. "They were just a couple of demons."

  But Bruster slid from his chair to his knees and embraced Joshua's ankles. "Lord, Lord," he cried. Then he just cried.

 

"See?" Xaphan said, gesturing to the screen with the Havana. "Told ya."

  The shot of a drooling Hall Bruster, his back being comfortingly patted by the prophet, abruptly disappeared, and was replaced by a notice that technical difficulties had temporarily disrupted the broadcast.

  "We should get him out of there," said Chesney. "Some of those people wanted to attack him even before…" He made an expansive gesture, both hands vibrating in mid-air, that connoted a situation that was rapidly going out of control.

  "Bring him back here," Melda said. "The media will be looking for him at Hardacre's." She thought for a moment. "And the rev is probably not going to be the most genial of hosts just now."

  "Not to mention the old battle-ax," said the demon.

  Chesney thought he might have commented at that point, but Joshua had to be his primary concern. "Let's go," he said.

  They passed through his room in Hell, the fiend pausing to refill its glass, then relocated to Hall Bruster's television studio, where chaos was apparently settling in for an extended stay. Two men in shirtsleeves, one fat and the other even fatter, had the host by his ankles and armpits and were endeavoring to remove him from the vicinity. A tall, thin man with an earpiece-and-microphone set dangling from a cord around his neck was shouting, "Get back! Get back!" at the prophet, while a short young woman with her hair severely braided was poking at the bearded man with the pointed end of a flagstaff that usually stood in the background of Bruster's set.

  Joshua was backing away, palms extended in a placating mode, saying, "He'll be fine. A little wine mixed with honey works wonders."

  Chesney said privately to Xaphan, invisible behind him, "Voice of authority," and stepped into the melée. "I'll handle this," he said, in a tone that made Gregory Peck sound like a tenderfoot Boy Scout. The director and the spear-maiden fell back, giving the young man space to step up to the prophet and take him by the arm.

  "It's all right," Joshua said.

  "No, it's not," Chesney said. He could see past the prophet and across the studio to a side door that led out into a sunlit parking lot. Some members of the audience who had fled the unexpected exorcism were now peeking back into the room. Seeing a welcome absence of demons and an outnumbered false prophet already under attack, their courage was reasserting itself. One fiftyish man with a face lined by a lifetime of delivering stern judgments was already withdrawing a square-barreled, black pistol from under his armpit.

  "Xaphan!" the young man said. "Now!" An instant later they were in transit through Chesney's infernal stage point, then before the young man could blink they popped into his apartment's living room.

  Joshua looked around and noticed the view from the window. He went over to survey the panorama of river and city. "We're very high up, aren't we?" he said. "Reminds me of the time when the Adversary wanted a chat with me."

  "That reminds me," said the demon, "he wants another one."

  "What about?" said the prophet.

  "He don't tell me that. You gotta ask him yourself."

  The bearded man shrugged. "What's the point? We never had much to say to each other."

  "I'm just passin' on the message." The demon turned to Chesney. "You want anythin' else?"

  "Just put the costume away."

  A moment later, he was back in his normal Sunday garb of khakis and checked shirt. The demon was a memory in sulfur, and the prophet was turning away from the window to say, "Now what?"

  Melda got up from the couch. "Lunch," she said, then turned to Joshua. "Are there things you're not allowed to eat?"

  "There used to be," he said, "but I think all of that's lapsed now."

  "Good," she said. "Let me introduce you to a Ball Park Frank."

 

Monday morning, Seth Baccala called Denby and said, "I think we should talk."

  "So do I," said the detective, "and soon."

  "Where?" It was an important question for the executive assistant. If Denby wanted to talk down at Police Central, that was one thing; if he wanted to talk at Baccala's office in the Paxton building, it was another. If he wanted to talk at the offices of Baiche, Lobeer, Tressider, that was another thing altogether.

  "I'll come to you," Denby said, and Baccala let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.

  When the policeman arrived, the executive assistant told his secretary to hold all calls.

  "Even from W.T.?" she said.

  "He won't be calling." The old man had not been seen in the building since the disappearance of his political consultant and his daughter's nervous collapse.

  Denby sat across from Baccala in the visitor's chair, the polished and orderly desk between them. The younger man's seat was slightly higher, and the chair the policeman was in had front legs that were slightly shorter than the back, forcing the sitter to lean forward in a supplicant's pose; it was all intended to give the owner of the office a psychological advantage. Today it didn't.

  "Well," said Baccala and waited for what would come.

  Denby gave him the same look he'd given the chief of police at the news conference. Then, to make sure there were no mistakes, he said, "I know."

  Baccala saw no point in fencing. "The time traveler," he said. It was not a question.

  "I saw you. In the file room. On the loading dock."

  Baccala nodded. "And you saw them bury her."

  "Uh huh."

  "Can you make a case?"

  Denby looked up into a corner of the room, then back to the other man. "I can go back and record it," he said. "Say they were tapes from security cameras that had just come to light."

  Baccala put his hands flat on the desk, looked down at them, and blew out another breath. "That's it, then." A moment later, what the policeman had said sank all the way in. He looked up. "You say you 'can'," he said. "But you haven't."

  Denby held his gaze. "No, I haven't."

  Baccala waited, but so did the detective. After a while, the younger man said, "You want something."

  "Uh huh."

  "What?"

  Denby did not blink. "The Twenty."

  Baccala had been feeling a sense of relief, reading into the policeman's words and manner a growing conviction that Denby was like Hoople and Hanshaw: a man in search of a payoff. But now a cold shiver went down his back and somehow lodged in his bowels, which were turning to a roiling liquid behind the fine-spun wool of his handmade suit pants and the silk of his boxer's.

  "No," he said.

  "Okay." Denby stood up. "Do you want to turn yourself in, or will I take you now?" He reached to the small of his back and came up with a pair of handcuffs.

  "They'll kill me," Baccala said. "They'll kill you."

  "That could happen," the captain said. "And you'd only do a couple of years for manslaughter and concealing a body."

  Baccala waited. He knew that wasn't all of it.

  "That's right," Denby said. "They wouldn't take the chance on you in prison. You don't have the…" He sought for the word, then went on, "Well, let's say you don't have the breeding. The first time some big lifer showed you what happens behind bars to the delicately boned, you'd be looking for a way out."

  "And there is no way out," the younger man said, "is there?"

  Denby put away the cuffs but didn't sit down again. He leaned over Baccala's desk and said, "There's one. We take them all down. Make an airtight case and hand it over to the feds. To a federal attorney who wants to be President some day."

  Baccala's face felt cold. He knew he must look as pale as the skull beneath his flesh. "Can't be done," he said.

  "Can," said the captain. "In a month, I'm going to be the new chief of police. You've already taken Paxton's place at the table." He leaned in closer. "Everything will be compartmentalized. I know that. So one of us on the inside is not enough. Two of us, it's no better than a maybe."

  Baccala sensed a "but" in the offing. He raised his brows.

  Denby smiled. "But we've got the time traveler. It's his project. So we'll turn one or two more," he said, "even three or four. We'll cut a few steers out of the herd, then use them to round up the old bulls."

  Baccala's hands were trembling. "And what happens to us steers?" he said.

  Denby shrugged. "Nothing. At worst, witness protection." Then his tone turned conspiratorial. "Or maybe when that federal attorney gets sworn in as President, you're up there on the platform, too, sitting in the seat reserved for White House Chief of Staff. He'll owe you enough."

  The executive assistant was still feeling a vibration passing through his flesh. But now he couldn't tell if it was fear or expectation. "All or nothing," he said.

  "Don't it make life interesting?" said the policeman.

  "How long do I have to decide?"

  "Five seconds."

  Baccala swallowed something that didn't taste good. Then he said, "I'm in."

 

Chesney was at his desk, immersed in a matrix of probabilities that connected risk to cost and profit in the insuring of single women who managed their own white-collar businesses. There were more of them than there had ever been before. He looked up to see Denby opening his office door. The policeman came in and told him about recruiting Seth Baccala to the cause of bringing down the Twenty.

  "He gets away?" Chesney said.

  "It's how it often works. You use a little fish to catch a bigger one." The captain thought for a minute. "Besides, I bet there hasn't been a day go by that he hasn't regretted what happened to Bannister. Not to mention the way she played him for a sucker."

  "Now we'll be doing the same thing," Chesney said. "Playing him the way that reporter did."

  "Some people, that's what they're good for."

  Five minutes after the policeman left, it was Baccala's turn to step into the actuary's office and close the door. "Denby told you," he said.

  "Yes."

  There was a peculiar expression on the executive assistant's face. Chesney thought it might be the faintest hope he had ever seen. "The time traveler," Baccala said, "he can't change the past, can he?"

  "It doesn't work that way," Chesney said. He saw the emotion disappear from the other man's face, like a few drops of water evaporating from a skillet once the heat is turned on under it.

  Afterwards, Chesney tried to think his way through the man's situation. He found that no pool of light shone around Baccala, the way it had around Melda, right from the start. But neither was the man hidden from him in darkness. If he thought about it, he realized, the way he'd thought about not being a prophet, he would be able to bring the man into clearer focus. That was new and different. It was as if he could see the first steps of a trail that led into the murk, and somehow he knew that if he took those first steps, the next ones along the way would become clear to him.