Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (36 page)

    
“Why?”
Raszer asked, unable to hear his own voice.

    
“At
the bottom of the well,” said Harry, “there is no water.”

    
A
second face appeared at the tent’s opening and filled Raszer with fear. It was
the face of the man who had been driving the limo. The flap closed again;
Raszer’s mouth was dry.

    
He
fumbled for the glass of water on his nightstand, knocking it over. Someone
expelled a scented breath, not in the tent, but nearer. Wintergreen?

    
The
lantern’s ellipse swept to and fro over brightly colored carpets: red, saffron,
deepest eggplant. Piles of desert provisions, and among them the curled form of
a young woman. Raszer called her name.

    
“Ruthie
. . . ”

    
The
girl stirred, and the central tent pole—a shaft carved from the trunk of a date
palm—creaked like a ship’s mast. Ruthie Endicott lifted her head. Raszer
smiled, then glanced back at the front flap. This time it was only the wind.
When he returned his eyes to Ruthie, she had become an old man or, rather, a
man of middle age made old by the desert, a diet of sweet dates, and the
absence of dentists in this foreign place. Or was it an old woman?

    
“Have
you heard the tale of the two birds?” asked the old man-woman.

    
“Ruthie?”
Raszer repeated, troubled and talking in his sleep.

    
“It’s
me,” came a voice unsettlingly close.

    
Something
slipped into Raszer’s pillow with the sound of a soft tearing. Something cold,
hard, and close. Two fingers pinched his nostrils shut. He gasped and tried to
scream, but his mouth had filled with warm blood. No sound came but that of a
drowning man.

Raszer’s doorbell rang at 3:40
am
.
He thought it was in the dream, but then remembered that dream doorbells are
different. The first thing he did after he’d opened his eyes was to feel for
his tongue. Then he tried to get control of his hearbeat. When he turned on the
light, he saw that a nine-inch knife was embedded in his pillow.

    
Sweat
broke out on his forehead. He withdrew the knife and swung his legs over the
edge of the bed, waiting to move until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness.
Then he staggered barefoot to the front door, arm cocked, the knife held at the
height of his left ear. The hardwoood floor was cold, and a presence hung still
in the air. His heart was in his throat. Someone had been in his house, and
might yet be.

    
There
was a cop at the door, one of Borges’s men.

    
“Mr.
Raszer?”

    
“Yes,”
Raszer answered, his ear against the door, his feet spread for flight.

    
“Are you
all right?”

    
“As far
as it goes, yeah,” Raszer answered. He punched in the code to disarm the alarm
system.

    
“My
partner saw something on your deck,” said the cop. “Do you mind if we check
around back?”

    
Raszer
unlatched the door. “You might be a couple of minutes late,” he said. “The guy
was in my house.” He stepped out onto the stoop, naked to the waist in his
drawstring sweats, and displayed the knife. “He left this in my pillow.”

    
“Jesus,”
said the cop, a man in his forties with long sideburns and thinning,
slicked-back hair. “Not exactly the tooth fairy, was he?”

    
“No,”
said Raszer. “But if they keep leaving these trophies around”—he nodded at the
knife—”it’s going to cost them a lot of quarters.”

    
“Maybe
we should take a look inside,” said the cop.

    
“I’d
apppreciate if you did,” said Raszer. “Is Lieutenant Borges reachable?”

    
“Not at
this hour,” replied the cop, then whistled for his partner. “Not even Borges.
Any idea how the guy got in?”

    
“None,”
said Raszer. “There are three doors, all triple-locked and alarmed. This one,
the slider on the rear deck, and the library. I haven’t checked the others
yet.”

    
“So
what, then?” the cop said drily. “The guy came down the chimney?”

    
“You
tell me,” said Raszer. “You’re the one on stakeout.”

    
The
man’s partner, a squat fellow of about thirty, puffed up the steps and
introduced himself to Raszer. The wind whipped through Raszer’s big cedar tree,
depositing needles on the stoop. “Wicked night, huh?” said the younger cop.

    
“Oh,
yeah,” Raszer replied, and held the door. “You guys want some coffee?”

    
“That’d
be nice,” said the older cop, admiring the array of equipment in Raszer’s front
office. “Can you switch on the lights for us?”

    
“Sure,”
said Raszer. “I’ll make a pot. I think I’m done sleeping. You guys have a look
around. Take your time, and don’t forget to look under the beds.”

    
Raszer
heated some water on the stove, then transferred it to the carafe of his Cona,
a blown-glass percolator that looked like it belonged in an alchemist’s lab or
an art museum. He lit an alchohol burner beneath the carafe and spooned a
couple of ounces of a Guatemalan grind into the top compartment. Then he lit a
cigarette, sat at the bar, and waited while the men searched. Despite the
timing of their arrival, he hadn’t for a second doubted their credentials.
Nobody but cops and plumbers could manage to look both so ordinary and so on
top of their game, and L.A. cops were as perfectly cast as if a Hollywood agent
had pulled them out of a cattle call.

    
The LAPD
had a dirty reputation, but if anyone’s men were clean, Borges’s were.

    
The tall
one wandered back into the living room, put his hands on his hips, and surveyed
the surroundings. “Nice layout,” he said. “You wouldn’t know from the street
there was this kind of space in here.”

    
“I
knocked down a few walls,” Raszer said. “And dropped the living room sixteen
inches. I don’t like running into things.”

    
“Who’s
your general contractor?”

    
“Venezuelan
guy,” said Raszer. “I’ll give you his card. So what’d you find?”

    
“You’re
right,” said the cop. “The doors are all secure. But the bathroom window’s wide
open.”

    
Raszer
stared for a beat and then said, “Shit,” remembering that he’d opened it after
his shower in the early hours of the long day.

    
The
second cop entered heavily from the other end of the house’s sole hallway.
“Those fancy alarm systems don’t do much good if—”

    
“Yeah,
but hold on,” Raszer said. “It’s a heat sensor. How do you figure—”

    
“They
all have blind spots,” he said. “Shit, I’ve busted perps who could slip through
them like centipedes.”

    
“Maybe
the guy was cold-blooded,” the tall one said with a chuckle. “Anyhow, he’s gone
now.”

    
“That’s
a relief,” said Raszer. “I think I owe you guys. The doorbell probably scared
him off. Otherwise, that knife might be in my chest.”

    
“Or it
could be he just wanted to let you know he was around,” said the plump one.
“Pros don’t kill unless they’ve been paid to.” He sniffed the vapors rising
from the Cona.
“This coffee ready
yet?”

    
Raszer
took a glance. “Give it another three minutes or so,” he said. “It’s worth the
wait.”

    
“In that
case,” the first cop told him, “we’re gonna check the canyon. Your guy didn’t
leave by way of the street. My guess is, he’s waiting it out in the chaparral.”

    
“Have at
it,” said Raszer, getting up from the stool. “I’ll keep the coffee hot.”

    
There
was no would-be killer hiding in the brush like a Western movie outlaw. Raszer
hadn’t really expected there would be. He was beginning to feel the sensory
shift that always occurred when his missions were in full play. He was
beginning to accept the presence of daemons. They came with the territory, and
with the orientation essential to its navigation.

    
It was
only as the dawn broke that the chill left his shoulders and the memory of his
dream and its aftermath began to fade. By the time the first ray broke over the
canyon, he was uncertain of where the dreamline had crossed into reality. He
washed and shaved, and dressed for his trip downtown for one more pass at
Scotty Darrell.

    
Lieutenant
Borges was there to meet him at the building entrance and hustled him inside.
“I hear you had a visitor last night,” Borges said.

    
“It
seems that way,” said Raszer. “Thanks for your guys. Am I on time?”

    
“Yes and
no,” Borges replied. “They scrapped the group interrogation. They’re taking him
into federal custody. That guy Picot, from National Counterterrorism, seems to
be calling the shots. I’dmake a stink, but the chief’s already told me to let
it ride. Scotty’s folks are here. I thought you’d want to see them.”

    
“I do,”
said Raszer. “How are they?”

    
“Shell-shocked.”

    
“Yeah.
There’s something really wrong here.”

    
“What
else is new?” said Borges. “The strange thing is that the feds don’t seem all
that curious about your four goons in a rented limo . . . although Agent
Djapper did ask to sit in on your statement.”

    
“That’s
fine,” said Raszer. “I’m off to Taos to see Katy’s sister, and I wouldn’t mind
having a fed on my tail. If we start going in circles, I may end up following
him.”

    
Borges
pressed the elevator’s D
own
button. “Following him where?”

    
“To
wherever he thinks I’m going. The game Scotty was playing—we know that’s how he
got sidetracked. But I may have found the channel they used to get to him. The
players’ only contact with the GamesMasters once they’re in the game is via
emails from Internet cafés. That’s how they get instructions: go to this
address, board this bus, and so on. In the actual game, the moves are plotted
randomly. But these guys have hacked in and altered the game so the player
thinks he’s got a sort of immunity from consequence. Virtual terrorism.
Everything is permitted.”

    
“You
mean he thinks he’s still playing?” Borges interjected. “Even when somebody
dies?”

    
They
stepped into the elevator and Borges pressed
sb3
. Going
down.

    
“Right,”
Raszer said. “They may even have convinced him he’s in some pupa state between
Earth and heaven. That’s the genius of the con: They’ve taken the precepts of
the game—to put yourself at God’s disposal—and spun it to their purposes;
they’ve put themselves in God’s place. And when you consider how many people
are playing these alternate reality games—not just college kids, but
secretaries, salesmen, soldiers—it’s potentially huge. A mass conversion that
would make the Reverend Moon turn green with envy. Think of it, Luis: These
days, if you’re under thirty, you spend half your time in a metalife. The feds
are right. It is a human-trafficking operation, but it’s about more than sex or
debt bondage or terrorism. The traffic is in minds.”

    
The
doors opened to the sub-basement. It was ten degrees colder.

    
“For
what purpose, Raszer?” Borges asked. “If you’re right . . . ”

    
“I think
it’s about turning the world on its head. Flipping the poles. Up is down. Wrong
is right. The Syrian girl gave me a clue. She reminded me of how easy it was to
paralyze the United States government with a blowjob and a stained dress.”

    
“You’re getting
conspiratorial on me again.”

    
“Sometimes
conspiracy’s just a matter of giving possibilities a nudge. In the end, every
blowjob’s part of a bigger picture. Every stained dress tells a story.”

    
Borges
paused in the wide, echoing hallway. The recycled air was perfumed with Mr.
Clean. “Do your girlfriends call you paranoid, Raszer?” he asked.

    
“A few
have,” Raszer answered. “A few have also justified my paranoia.”

    
A door
swung open twenty feet down the hall and banged against the stopper. Two men in
suits came out. One of them was Douglas Picot. Behind them, a pair of federal
marshalls escorted Scotty Darrell, not yet used to his leg irons. He stumbled
as they crossed the threshold. Agent Djapper brought up the rear.