Dantes' Inferno (8 page)

Barefoot, she walked to the edge of the redwood deck. Although her eyes scanned the shadowy ridge that marked the northern boundary of her acreage, her thoughts were traveling a thousand miles due west
.

“How did you get my number?”

“My lawyer.”

She'd been warned: it was Dantes' habit to make preliminary contact with all visitors. She said, “I only have a few minutes—”

“And you can't discuss testing procedure,” he finished. “I won't keep you long.”

She didn't respond; she was considering a call to Leo, to refuse the job, to change her mind. She was still in shock after her client's suicide. Maybe a thousand miles was as close as she wanted to get to John Dantes
.

A harsh edge suddenly energized his words. “We may be disconnected. The tone is the thirty-second warning.”

“I know the drill,” Sylvia said. She spilled some wine down her chin
.

“Good.” He took a breath, releasing emotion with the exhalation. He had already learned what humans learn when they are monitored twenty-four hours a day: how to communicate in subtext, how to speak beneath the words. It was the responsibility of the listener to learn to translate this secret language
.

“They're transferring me downtown,” Dantes said. “It's all very hush-hush, but I'm guessing they'll roust me at two
A.M.
for the helicopter.” His voice was laced with mockery
.

She knew she should hang up. Instead, she swallowed more wine and said, “I'm not going anywhere.”

And he laughed
.

In the silence that followed, she plunked her butt on the edge of the deck, pressing her bare toes into the moist garden soil below. Inside the house, through the kitchen window, she could see her lover, Matt England, and her eleven-year-old foster daughter, Serena, preparing dinner. The ripple of soft laughter and the scent of savory spices drifted across the dark currents of night. Sylvia felt abruptly grateful for her freedom. And she felt very lonely
.

A month ago—if this phone conversation ended back then, she would have walked inside her house to enjoy a good meal; she would've joined in the laughter, and after Serena went to sleep, she would've made love with Matt
.

But that was before Mona Carpenter's death
.

“Do you know the city?” he asked
.

Of course, he meant Los Angeles
.

“Some,” she said, cautiously. She was aware the sound of her voice was traveling to a man encased in a concrete prison. Maximum security. Lockdown twenty-three hours a day. Maybe a narrow window overlooking ocean, more likely a view of the asphalt prison yard. Plenty of time to think about his most recent crimes, his latest victims: a young woman—a gifted teacher—and a child both killed. Jason Redding had been Serena's age
.

He said, “Dantes'
Inferno
is required reading.”

He was living up to his reputation for manipulation. She told him the truth: “I read it when it came out.” She downed the last of her wine. For a moment, she felt dizzy. “I have a question for you.”

“Fine.” But he'd hesitated
.

“Your mother's death was obviously traumatic—and you mention she was a powerful influence in your life—but you didn't write about—”

“I was nine,” Dantes interrupted. “I watched her swim out past the Santa Monica breakwater. She never came back. End of story.”

In the background, an angry, authoritarian voice was ordering an inmate: “Hands behind your back. Hands behind your back. Put your hands behind your back.”

“Now I have a question for you,” Dantes said. “The day she left me, I replaced my mother. With who, Dr. Strange? With what?”

A series of electronic clicks interrupted the transmission. It took Sylvia a moment to register the thirty-second warning. Unconsciously she tightened her grip on the handset as if muscles and tendons might prevent disconnection
.

“—you might be surprised by the changes in LA—all the renovation. I call it ‘quakification.'” Dantes changed tone, leavening his farewell with irony. “The interview is still on. By the way, happy April Fool's Day.”

And then he was gone, leaving behind the ghostly whispers of dead women and children. She'd remained on the redwood deck, shivering in the desert night until a touch brought her back. As if awakened from a deep sleep, she'd gazed up into the beautiful face of her foster daughter, Serena
.

She'd heard a sweet voice asking, “Why are you sad?”

So I descended from first to second circle—

Which girdles a smaller space and greater pain,

Which spurs more lamentation. Minos the dreadful

Snarls at the gate. He examines each one's sin,

Judging and disposing as he curls his tail:

That is, when an ill-begotten soul comes down,

It comes before him, and confesses all;

Minos, great connoisseur of sin, discerns

For every spirit its proper place in Hell. . . .

The Inferno of Dante
, translated by Robert Pinsky

11:35
P.M.
In this hellish subterranean maze he hears the primitive language of forgotten men. Here, the earth smells damp and metallic like blood, and the heat oppresses, sneaking down through vents and plates and cracks in the surface of the world. There is a strange humidity, the product of steam and the relentless seepage of a thousand rusting arteries. There is cancer inside this body, beneath the skin of this schizoid, voluptuous city named for angels.

He stands some fifteen feet below ground, below downtown; beneath three inches of asphalt, almost a foot of coarse concrete, and a layer of chemical-soaked soil; beneath a zone of seemingly infinite casings packed with wires feeding telephones, electricity, streetlights, cable televisions, fire alarms.

On the skid row street above him a barrel bonfire glows;
its luminescence falls down through a grate and dances skittishly across the muck beneath his feet. Voices, ghostly and laced with hysteria and fortified wine, follow the light down to keep him company. He is trapped here in the dark, in this ten-by-twelve tunnel, in the midst of a vast subterranean network of urban arteries and bones. He is imprisoned in the strata of gas lines, water lines and mains, steam pipes. Below him the massive sewer system angles down into the netherworld, the subway vaults and tunnels traverse hundreds of square miles, the old water tunnels leak their precious cargo into ancient culverts.

Only the devil knows what other treasures and evils have been buried during the life span of the city.

Ah, but he is here to find a tall, skinny ferret of a man, a homeless creature known in this underworld as “the Pope” because of a shadowy former existence as a priest. By day, the Pope panhandles above ground; at night, he preaches in this dark, dank cathedral to a congregation of the lost, the maimed, the damned. His knowledge of corners and hidden rooms and tunnels is rumored to be extraordinary. Over the past months, all through the detailed preparation, the Pope's knowledge has proved worrisome. It must be dealt with immediately.

I am a mole, blindly nosing my way through hell
.

I am M
.

The thought tears through his consciousness.

It is the dark that he seeks—no,
craves
—and the dark that he fears.

It is the haunted whispers, the company of men like himself, men who have crossed the line.

Surely this place is as torturous as any hell he has ever imagined?

M stares down at a half-dead man splayed on the tunnel floor, spent needle still growing from a bruised and scabbed
arm. Squatting down, he whispers, “Are you dead yet?” Although he receives no answer, expects none, he sees the man's chest expand ever so faintly. This one will live at least for tonight.

He does not hunger for the sting of needles. His own madness is a poison recently swallowed. When he gazes into the mirror he has begun to notice a darkening of his reflection, as if his blood is stagnating, as if he is rotting just like the men he stumbles upon in this underbelly of the city—the transients, the hoboes, the lunatics, the criminals. He hasn't lost all glimmers of his sanity, but this ability to see his own psychic fault lines, these remnants of rational thought processes, only irritates.

And so he acts.

This city is under siege. Blood will spill and the innocent will die. The ruin cannot be stopped.

Can't stop, can't stop, can't stop
—the sound of dripping water seems to taunt him.

He's spent sleepless nights haunting these vaults, drains, pipelines, subway tunnels, until he is a ghostly legend to the transients and indigents who come here to hide or to die.

He steps over the comatose junkie, wading through fetid water, trash, human waste. Somehow, he will find his way. The maps are inside his head. They make his brow burn and his skull ache.

Quick, light footsteps! Is that a shadow? Does he see the peculiar humped silhouette of the Pope?

M follows, picking up speed, ducking through the wide passageway into a narrower pipe. Here, he can't stand straight but must hunch like an ape, loping on bent knees. He hears the fast tap of feet running forty or fifty feet ahead.

He calls out, “Wait!”

The runner picks up speed, splashing through puddles,
tripping over piles of rubble. The rasp of labored breath scrapes the walls.

When he aims his flashlight ahead, the beam bounces off cylindrical, ridged metal. He is breathing heavily now, too, still moving quickly when he almost collides with a low-hanging pipe, almost takes his own head off at the neck. He's come to a fork in the underground road. Which way did his quarry go?

Clicking off his light, he forces himself to stand in blackness, straining to hear. Beneath the ragged sound of his own breathing he detects the suppressed breath of another living creature.

To his own surprise, he whispers, “Help me, please.”

The words echo in the tunnel, finally fading away. Apparently he is alone with the stench, the warm unnatural drafts, the ghostly voices.

M turns left, walking another thirty feet to yet another bend in the tunnel. His light illuminates unspeakable things. How can human beings choose to live this way?

It happens so fast. Suddenly, he is face-to-face with the Pope, who asks, “Are you all right?”

“I've been looking for you,” M whispers.

The Pope is frightened but manages to speak. “I found out what you wanted. I've seen the monster. Its tentacles are growing. They're swollen as malignant vessels and they're spreading out all around us. The end is near . . . so very near.” He speaks with the urgent flowery tones of a street prophet. His breath carries the sickening stench of disease. His eyes are rimmed with circles. He, too, is going dark with his own blood.

“You say you've seen it, then?” M asks slowly.

“In the tunnels, yes.” The Pope nods, pointing up, then down dramatically. “It's spreading, Satan's pollution. It lusts for our souls. It is consumed with lust for our goodness.”

“And what do you lust for, holy man? What brought you to the second circle of hell?”

The Pope meets his gaze, unflinching. “In my life, above, out in the world of air and light, I lusted for women . . . and money . . . and the power over men's souls. I dwelled in the fallen cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, and Babylon.” The Pope blinks, swallowing painfully, aching with this confession. “But my true sin . . . what drove me down into this hell was my lust for righteousness.” A bony hand reaches out. “Forgive me.” He sighs. “I'm hungry.”

“Hungry.” For a long time M stares at the Pope; then he slowly pulls a brown square from his back pocket.

Waiting, the Pope is caught between fear and need. He is afraid of this man—this devilish apparition who wanders the tunnels each night—in the same way he is afraid of plague or murder or the big hungry rats. But he is hungry, too. And he needs money to buy food, maybe a little something to take his mind away from these sewers. He gazes down, expecting to see a few coins or a dollar bill in the other man's hand.

But in reality, he sees a Mylar bag.

The Pope looks up puzzled, “Who are you?”

“I'm Minos, judge of the dead.” With a wistful smile, M grabs the Pope by his grimy hair, slamming his head into the hard-packed earthen wall, sliding Mylar over skin and skull. Fits like a glove. Made to order, it tightens around the base when he tugs—creating a vacuum effect, molding to the suffocating man's face.

As the Pope loses consciousness, as he flails, as his eyes go red, he sees a vision: Los Angeles is a burning hell, the sky turns black, the city falls in upon herself, and only dust is left.