Dantes' Inferno (28 page)

The road narrowed where Sweetheart guided the convertible around a tight corner, cutting close to the steep drop-off from Mulholland into the San Fernando Valley.

“What?” he asked, finally. “You keep looking at me.”

“No, I don't.” She fingered her bracelet. “I've made it a point
not
to look at you.” After a moment's silence, she said, “It really bothered me the way you reacted to Molly Redding's name.”

“That's none of your business.”

“Wrong.” She snapped down the cover on her laptop. “An hour ago you told me you ran a profile on me. Why? So
you'd know who you're dealing with—and more important, whether you could trust me under pressure.”

“If you've got trust issues, Dr. Strange, I suggest you deal with them.”

“Fine and fuck you.” She stared at him, fighting to regain control over her emotions—

The words slipped out: “When we get back to your house, I'll run it through MOSAIK: what's the skinny on Sweetheart's screwed-up relationship with his niece?”

She was sorry as soon as she said it.

But Sweetheart didn't give her time to apologize. He shifted into third gear, his foot riding the gas pedal.

Sylvia was aware of the narrow winding road and the speedometer needle, trembling just above fifty miles per hour—then fifty-five—sixty.

She said, “I'll apologize if you slow down.”

He just scowled, mouth set, as the Mercedes picked up speed. Warm wind kicked up dust, spinning tires spit gravel. Trees and shrubs blurred into a tapestry of watery color. The needle on the speedometer jerked upward in small but steady increments.

“Slow down.”

He ignored her.

“Slow. Down.”

But he didn't, and the greenery melted into one continuous soft hedge bordering the roadside. The verge of Mulholland Road seemed to undulate beneath the Mercedes' tires. She counted to five.

“Pull the fuck over, I'll
fucking
walk!”

He didn't look at her, but his foot eased off the accelerator. The car coasted for a quarter mile, rolling to a stop near a tall stand of eucalyptus. Dust swirled around them, settling reluctantly. With the engine silenced, the cicadas swelled to song. Sylvia sat stiffly.

“You want to talk about it?” she asked finally.

“I don't need a shrink.” He snapped the visor up. “There's nothing mysterious about compensatory attachment objects, affiliatory readjustments.” His speech was flat and mechanical; he tipped his head every few beats, physically marking criteria off some internalized master list. “These are life's unpleasant but mundane stressors.”

“Stop.” Sylvia took a deep breath, waiting several seconds before she was able to continue. “Don't call Jason Redding's death
mundane
.”

When Sweetheart spoke again, he sounded diminished, worn down like a stone in the tidal zone. “My niece was never stable; she's been troubled all her life; but Jason was bright and gifted. When he died—” His voice broke.

Sylvia closed her eyes; Sweetheart's pain was an invisible presence; it took up space. She felt cornered, she felt crowded.

He tried again: “I never approved of his mother's lifestyle. She is an addict. I paid for treatment, once, twice . . . the statistics on rehab are negatively skewed . . .” He let go of his breath with a sigh. “I did the only logical thing—I distanced myself.”

He sat immobile, a palpable tension emanating from his stillness. “Jason no longer exists—neither does his mother.”

Sylvia couldn't take her eyes from his face; the lack of expression was more disconcerting than any possible affect.

“I need a focus for my anger,” he said, returning her gaze blankly. “I chose John Dantes because he murdered Jason. It's very simple psychology—from the greatest book: an eye for an eye.”

He pushed open the car door and climbed out. “I'll see that Dantes goes to hell.”

Numbly, Sylvia watched him walk toward the trees and the embankment. He stood silently for long seconds. Then,
just when she expected him to return to the car, he stepped off the edge of the road.

She didn't move; she wasn't ready to face him yet. In her years as a psychologist, she'd come across psychopathological attachment countless times—she knew its danger. But it was rare to encounter this level of obsessive pathology in one of the
good guys
—a man she might have to count on to save lives.

She caught up with Sweetheart at the edge of a chain-link fence and the dead, leaf-filled swimming pool that lay beyond. Carefully, as if she might be scalded, she laid a hand on his arm. Beneath the cotton shirtsleeve, his flesh felt pliable and very human.

For a moment, he didn't move; then he pointed down the slope. “That must've been a hell of an explosion.”

Measured by the visible foundation, Simon Mole's home had been large, perhaps five-thousand-plus square feet. California Spanish style from the look of the remaining walls, the skeletal fireplaces, and crumbling stucco. A graceful arch still marked the western boundary. Just beyond, wild roses, fruit, bougainvillea, azalea, ice plant—the lushes of this Mediterranean subclimate grew jungle thick.

They walked the perimeter, avoiding bramble growth, wild azaleas, ginger, bird-of-paradise: nature left to take back her own, southern California style. Visible within the foundation of the main living area, a deep crater had further excavated what had already been a basement. Sylvia stepped over the low wall and moved carefully toward the crater; from here she seemed to be staring down into the mouth of a giant burrow. She set her hands on her hips.

“Natural gas blows the hell out of exterior structures,” Sweetheart said. “It pops the roof, explodes the walls.”

“Since when does it leave a ten-by-fifteen-foot crater?” Sylvia asked.

He moved to her side—they were shoulder to shoulder on the spongy terrain. He said, “The family had money, they were visible, and banking on political futures.”

“They would object to an investigation,” Sylvia said. “Especially one that would reveal the fact their son was playing with explosives.”

“Explosives that blew this hole in the earth and killed their only daughter,” Sweetheart said softly. “It's plausible.”

Sylvia took one more step toward the crater. Over the years, branches, leaves, and trash had gathered in the deep hole. A gleam of light caught her eye. She moved to the edge, identified the lip of a large corrugated pipe, twisted, torn, and penetrating earth and broken concrete. For an instant, she felt herself sway, unsteady, off balance. Water dripped from the rough metal—a rhythmically hypnotic sound. Part of the city's infrastructure . . . another pipe leading deep underground.

For only in destroying I find ease/To my relentless thoughts
.

Abruptly, she cried out as earth gave way and she dropped toward the bottom of the filthy crater. Pain streaked through her muscles, her shoulder burned where her arm was stretched back and up. Sweetheart had caught her, heaved her onto solid ground—all one neat movement. Sylvia stumbled away from the hole.

“Jesus,” she murmured when she'd caught her breath.
“Thank you.”

He nodded, remaining silent.

For several minutes they stood at the edge of the lot where the land fell away to blend with the home-studded hillside, the canyons, and the distant—and very vulnerable—city.

Finally, Sylvia said, “Dantes' guilt is one issue;
yours
is another. You're not responsible for Jason's death.”

Sweetheart swung his head round to stare at her now.
His eyes, the color of a storm sky, were accusing. But their focus was internal. The professor—for all his intellect and analytic skill—was a man stricken and turned inside out by grief and rage.

A dangerously potent combination—especially under the circumstances.

Sylvia took one more breath, gathering courage as she stepped off the edge of an invisible psychic cliff. “I believe it's possible that Dantes has chosen psychological blind-ness—perhaps he truly doesn't possess the ego strength to
see
the truth.

“But you, Sweetheart . . . you can't afford
not
to see. Don't confuse revenge with justice. Time is running out.”

Each man is born possessing the map to the Holy Land, a territory of the body and the soul to call his own. But oh so quickly heaven turns to hell. I too have loved and lost.

Mole's Manifesto

1:01
P.M
.
The bomb is set to detonate at 1:18:30.

M's truck is idling in the shade of an old eucalyptus. He tears the sanitary paper wrapping from the tip of his straw, and he sips very cold cola. The radio plays oldies.

All morning, he has tagged along with Sweetheart and Strange.

Now he has managed to get ahead of them for a few minutes.

Obviously, they have no idea they are carrying death with them in the green Mercedes. After their detour to Valley Vista Drive, Sweetheart went over his baby with great care; he found no IEDs attached like barnacles; no one had tampered with gas tank or hood; nothing had triggered the silent alarm.

But the truth is, M has been ahead of them since the beginning.

They carry death because Dr. Strange brought it with
her—from the trunk of her rented Lincoln to the house on Selma, to the armored Mercedes.

M gazes out at the two-lane road for a sign of the green sedan. Nothing yet.

He spends more time surveying the surroundings. The hill behind him and the canyon across the road both wear the scars of recent wildfires. Each burning season, the Santa Ana winds catch sparks in the California desert, and then they whip those flames into a molecular frenzy until earth's very skin is burned away and whatever is left is scorched and blackened.

M is grateful for the shade. He has inhabited places in the world where the only relief from the sun is a man's own shadow; and he has seen grown men—skin blistered, eyes singed, tongues swollen and black—leaping like joyful toddlers, arms stretched wide, legs hopping as they chase their own shadows across endless oceans of sand. He has been among those whose job it is to bury such fools. Wielding rope and shovel while the sun and the mercury dance skyward, he has hurled sand over withered bodies, he has sent souls from this world with curses instead of prayers.

It is reason that bursts into flames, it is sanity that burns hottest, and it is the ember of faith that dies last.

Oh yes, it is faith that prolongs the torment and suffering of men.

He folds back the wax paper from his sandwich, and he carefully removes a thin slice of dill pickle. From his parking place, he has a view of traffic as it traverses the canyon. For at least five hundred yards each vehicle is in full view, even spotlighted by dappled sun.

M waits for his inquisitors, taking advantage of this momentary lull by enjoying a shady lunch hour. This has
also given him time to meditate—on life, on death, past and future. On the imminent future of the man and woman who pursue him.

Sweetheart and Strange. They sound like a vaudeville team. He smiles.

But his smile fades.

They are not so funny after all, he thinks to himself as the green Mercedes crests a small rise to emerge into plain view.

Dantes has grown much too involved with the woman. He is playing with fire.

And Sweetheart . . ..

After all, the fifth circle is reserved for the angry, the wrathful, the sullen.

He turns the key in the ignition. He fastens his seat belt. He adjusts the rearview mirror, even checks his teeth for remnants of food.

The last of his sandwich rests beside him on the seat of his truck. Quickly, neatly, he collects the scraps of lettuce, ham, and bread and the plastic paper wrap, and he deposits it all into a trash bag.