Dantes' Inferno (11 page)

He passes a uniformed police officer and nods politely, stepping beneath one of several arched doorways. Slipping out of darkness into the hard white heat of concrete days, he breathes deeply, relishing the faint scent of chlorine. His nose is damn good; it has saved his skin more than once. He's managed to scent his own death in the air when the mix of chemicals turned deadly. Today he is just breathing LA's distinct perfume, a poison all its own.

Crossing the parking lot that fronts Union Station, he picks his way past construction detour signs and turns onto Los Angeles Street. He has a vehicle parked just three blocks north. At the moment, he is a foot soldier.

With care, he shifts his leather backpack to his other arm. The weight hangs more heavily now, but he doesn't slow, continuing his even stride, crossing over Highway 101. Below him, a river of cars and trucks form a solid south-flowing current that threatens to flood Anaheim. He catches sight of a child whose face is pressed to the dusty rear window of a station wagon. He waves; the child sticks its tongue out.

At this more human level, along the rail of the on ramp, transients have cast their blankets, marking their territory with cardboard, old rags, piss, and sweat. The freeway squatters' village reminds him of nomadic encampments he has encountered deep in forsaken deserts. For an instant, he imagines tasseled camels, veiled women, and tents billowing like the sails of vessels beached in the Taklimakan, the Sahara, the Nubian, the Libyan, the Kyzyl Kum, and the Kara-Kum.

He's seen a bit of the world.

Shaking off the memory, and slowing pace in a city of baking asphalt, steel, and glass, he turns in a direction that will take him past the transients. Going by several, he scatters coins toward their extended arms. When he walks in front of a thin, bleary-eyed man sitting cross-legged like any holy beggar in any holy city, he tosses a larger, shinier coin into the air.

The Kennedy half-dollar falls, spiraling, reflecting sharp, fast splinters of light.

It lands in the transient's lap.
For luck
.

He moves faster now, past a row of about-to-be-gentrified brick buildings. Here, in this concrete forest primeval, there
isn't much pedestrian traffic because of the heat; the few people he passes, eyes cast downward according to urban etiquette and for protection from the glare, don't dare look up.

But he does. The green-blue walls of Metro Detention Center rise above him. Hotel Metro. He smiles up at his old friend.

Can you feel me? Because I feel you, Dantes
.

I feel your every breath. Hey, I promised, didn't I?

I'm Ulysses. Or is that you?

Both of us pilgrims, you and me together again in Babylon
.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
.

Time to settle a very old score
.

Smiling, still moving, continuing westward toward a dusty park and a street of buildings awaiting renovation. While he walks, he tastes the exhaust from car engines and the heat of cooked earth. He absorbs the hum of traffic, the rumble of jets high over his head, the vibration of transformers and underground trains. All these things form the pulse of the city.

Dantes' City of Angels with her pure-sex curves, her dazzling smile, her leggy nonchalance. She even wears the priceless jewels of powerful men: a gleaming ziggurat, a pyramid-shaped Tower of Babel. Dantes' girl . . .

As he stares out at this world, he pulls a carved bone figurine from his pocket; it is the size of a child's thumb, and like a child, he rubs its smooth skin between his fingers: Enkidu, companion of the hero Gilgamesh, who journeyed up from the Assyro-Babylonian underworld to tell his friend the sad story of the regions of eternal darkness.

In the house of dust

Live lord and priest.

Live the wizard and the prophet . . .

Live those whom the great gods

Have anointed in the abyss.

Dusk is their nourishment

And their food is mud.

Welcome to LA, where innocence can't survive.

Welcome to Operation Inferno.

Systematically and with an outlaw brilliance, John Freeman Dantes took on the powers that were and the powers that be by targeting water, oil, boosters, regulators, and planners, and the political machinery that created mythic Los Angeles. The two innocent victims of the aqueduct bombing were victims of war. It was only when he bombed the Getty that Dantes faltered on his course, crossing over the line from prophetic anarchist to coldblooded assassin. I for one mourned his fall from grace.

Letter to the editor,
LA Weekly
, December 1, 2001

7:55
A.M.
Purcell and Church finished briefing Sylvia in the empty corridor as they waited for the elevator.

“We'll keep you under audio surveillance as long as you're in there,” Purcell explained. “Dantes will expect that. He won't try anything. He
can't
try anything.”

“Take your time, be direct, let him set the pace,” Church said, coaching. “You'd better give me that.” He held out his hand for the file on Dantes.

Sylvia relinquished it willingly. She'd just finished skimming
the three hundred pages; much of the material was familiar from her previous research in preparation for the BPP, but some of it was new—for instance, the lab reports of the forensic evidence left at each bomb scene, and the postmortem photographs of the surveyor and the security guard killed when a section of the California aqueduct exploded. The photographs were full color and very graphic—insurance she'd never forget John Dantes was a murderer.

She leaned wearily against the wall, sipping burnt coffee from a Styrofoam cup; the fluorescent lights in the corridor made her eyes sting.

Purcell pressed the
down
button for the third time. Nothing happened. She pressed it again, mumbling, “Damn elevators are slower than molasses.”

“Doc?” Church tapped the side of his head. “Use whatever it takes to build up your connection with him, but don't try to outfox the fox.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Scared?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You should be . . .” Abruptly, his voice died away as if he'd been cut off. But he was simply changing cognitive lanes. He studied Sylvia's face and asked, “Do you know why Dantes asked for you?”

“I'm outside the system. He's planning to use me, manipulate me—maybe he even thinks he can
turn
me. I become his ally.” She shrugged grimly. “But those are the obvious reasons.”

“What's not obvious?”

“Don't know yet. If yesterday was the test—somehow I passed. Take into consideration it was our first meeting face-to-face—there are issues of
transference
.” She paused, glancing speculatively at Church.

“As in, you remind him of his mother, his lover, whatever,” the detective said. “I took Psych 101, Doc.”

“Close enough,” Sylvia said. “Psychologically, Dantes needs my help.”

“Therapy?” Purcell spit out the word just as the elevator rumbled to a stop.

Eyeing the FBI agent, Church snorted. “Fucker's bombs are a cry for help.”

The elevator doors opened silently.

“I thought you took Psych 101,” Sylvia said dryly, following the investigators into the small metal box. She closed her dark eyes for a moment. “Dantes thinks I'm vulnerable.” Opening her eyes wide, she added, “That's crucial to him.”

Church kept his voice even. “You feeling vulnerable?”

“Oh, yeah,” she answered softly.

As if on cue, Purcell punched a button and the elevator descended, picking up speed, passing ground level and two lower floors, to brake smoothly on a third subterranean level.

“Dantes isn't at MDC?” Sylvia asked, fighting back panic. It frightened her to think he wasn't locked inside a cell.

“We've transported him over here for security considerations,” Purcell said.

“Mine or his?” Sylvia asked. She swallowed coffee, spilling some from the Styrofoam cup; a blue pill nestled secretly in the palm of her hand.

“Ours,” Purcell said flatly.

The elevator doors glided open, admitting stale, warm air. Followed closely by both investigators, Sylvia stepped out into a dimly lit concrete garage. “What is this place?” she asked.

“A basement, with utility access, and tunnel access to MDC,” Purcell said, moving forward briskly. She nodded toward a double door marked
No Entry
. “The U.S. marshals
use it for prisoner transport, which is why it's equipped with a cage.”

“Terrific.” Sylvia took another sip of coffee and tipped her head back slightly, ready to catch the blue pill in her mouth.

A wide hand gripped her wrist, fingers clamped tight around the tendons in her arm. Slowly—involuntarily—her muscles let go and the pill slipped away.

“You always eat the breakfast of champions?” Church asked in a very quiet voice. His mouth was almost pressed against her ear, and he hadn't released her yet.

She stared up at him. “Only when I'm having a breakdown.”

“Welcome to LA,” he said sharply, with a quick dip of his red head.

She didn't answer; instead she took two steps toward the double doors where Purcell and a U.S. marshall waited stiffly.

“Hey, Doc?”

She turned to glance back at Church, catching the faintest wink. He said, “Don't fumble.” He tossed something in the air—a pack of cigarettes—and she caught them automatically, neatly.

She opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out. The palms of her hands hit the cold metal doors of the transport cage. She was pushing a glacier uphill.

8:13
A.M.
The room—about fifteen by twenty—was windowless, hot, designed to hold a dozen maximum security inmates. It could best be described as a mesh-lined metal bunker with built-in benches.

John Dantes was still wearing his prison colors, still sporting his bullet-proof vest. A chain bracelet courtesy of the state linked arms, waist, ankles—the chains also kept
him from straying more than a few inches from the mesh wall. He was seated behind a narrow table, but his fingers barely reached the edge.

Sylvia stood in place, conscious of adrenaline, dread, and flowing underneath, a strong current of expectation. She waited, unwilling to be the first to speak.

“Dr. Strange. I want to thank you,” he said, oddly formal in speech and posture. His face showed deeper strain than it had twenty-four hours earlier. “I wasn't sure you'd accept my invitation.”

“That's what this is? An invitation?” she asked softly. “It feels like a summons.”

“Then I apologize.” His eyes narrowed, jaw tensing abruptly. “Did they give you a bad time?”

“I'm fine.” She was in motion, crossing the cage, dropping the pack of cigarettes on the table. She sat on a metal folding chair. “I'm here.”

With careful movements, she tapped the pack until a cigarette protruded from the opening. She held it out, and he strained forward to reach it with his lips. She pulled a lighter from her jacket pocket. Leaning toward him across the table, she flicked the metal lip, extending the flame.

He drew on the cigarette until the tip flared orange. As he exhaled, smoke hovered on the air around his mouth. “Why not ask the question?”

She nodded, placing the lighter on the table. Her fingers found the cigarette pack, and she worried the cellophane. “Why me?”

“We both know you've run through the various possibilities,” he said softly. “Can we just say you're a free agent?”

“I'm still on their side,” she answered, stretching to pick up an improvised ashtray someone had left on the floor.

“I'm betting you're on the side of justice and equity.”

“I'm listening.”

“It's not that simple.”

“Yes, it is,” she said sharply. “You have information they need—”

“My hands are tied.” He shifted his arms until the chains pulled taut. His smile was mean.

Sylvia stood, walking away from the table to come to a standstill by the mesh-lined wall. She gripped metal. “They need to know about the extortion letters.”

“I only know about my private correspondence.”

“Bullshit.” She pivoted to face him.

“No,” he said sharply. “We do it
my
way.”

“Of course we do.” She didn't try to mask her derision.

Dantes dipped his head, his face unreadable while he finished his cigarette. “Do you miss Santa Fe, Dr. Strange? Your friends, your family?”

When Sylvia didn't answer, he looked up. “A thousand miles is no distance at all.”

She placed the palms of her hands on the table and leaned toward Dantes. Conscious of audio surveillance, she mouthed four words—
Don't fuck with me
.