Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) (31 page)

I squared my shoulders and strode for the front door. No one really looked my way, and I didn’t go out of my way looking for anyone else.

Except for that crying. It wheedled into the part of my brain that was still a social primate out in the Kenyan Rift Valley and had to keep the group in good spirits so we wouldn’t all get eaten by lions. I turned around, and the waterworks choked off right as I saw who it was, since the sobber had seen me too. The tear-streaked face belonged to Heather Marie Tooms. She was sitting right by a detective’s desk, probably in the middle of giving some statement or another. Safe bet it was about me.

She stood up, and the actress in her put a look of happy hope all over face. I swallowed a curse and turned around, hunting for a side exit. Right as I did, the front door to the police station opened and a group, led by Brenda the Satanist, walked in. I recognized some of
those
faces as the pod people at the Crimson Gaze theater. And here they were to finish whatever creepy-ass thing they were planning to do to me yesterday. This was entirely too many people who wanted me dead.

I briskly headed for another end of the station. I stopped at an empty desk and made a phone call. The voice on the other end was muzzy; I’d woken her up. “Hey, I need a ride.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Bob.”

“Bob?”

“You know, Jack?”

The recognition flooded into her voice, though she was only barely more awake. “Bob? Do you know what time it is?”

“The g-man said around five in the morning? Look, I’m really sorry, but I need a ride and my car was torched.”

“Your car was what?”

“I’m at Wilshire Station, and if you could step on it, I’d really appreciate it.” I hung up and quickly called an all-night pizza place in the right neighborhood and ordered sixty pizzas. They were used to that kind of thing and just quoted a price. I told them I had cash.

I hung up, then turned around to get my bearings.

Right into Heather. She grabbed me and planted a kiss on my surprised mouth. “Oh, there you are, Jim! I was so worried!”

“WHAT THE F... MMMPH?”
She cut me off with another kiss and I got my mouth shut in time. I didn’t need this crap.

She pulled back just a bit, wrapping an arm around my elbow and calling across the station. “Detective Wahl! I found him!”

A confused detective, walking in from the breakroom with two coffees, gave her a puzzled nod, then looked the two drinks with the disappointment of a man who had just lost out on coffee with a pretty woman.

“Goddamnit, Heather, do you have any idea of the danger we’re in?”

“Oh, you are such a negative aspect. I was hoping you had turned over a new leaf.”

“In one day?”

“The ladder to spiritual perfection can sometimes seem like an elevator!”

“Oh, Jesus. Look, there are, like, twenty Satanists here, and they’re not too happy with me.”

“About what happened at the Church?”

“Different Satanists.”

“How many different kinds are there?”

“In LA? Three and a half.”

I tugged her toward the side of the station, pretty much where I was going before, only this time with a crazy person who might or might not want me dead. The Sons fanned out across the station. Some were intercepted by cops, but there were so many of them they slipped through the cracks in the social defense. They acted lost, confused, never forming an overt threat.

“What do they want you for?”

“Sacrifice, probably. And they won’t be overly picky about you, either. You’re with me, you die too.”

“We’re in a police station. Why not wait them out?”

“Uh... I’m sort of arrested right now. If I stick around, the guy who knows that will come back and my life gets so much worse.”

“I really think your dishonesty is impeding your enlightenment.”

“You’re probably right about that.”

“If you only applied Dr. Wood’s technosis properly, you’d live a much simpler, more honest, and less violent life.”

“You should have quit while you were ahead.”

I passed a bare desk, and sitting right next to it was the NWO man’s briefcase. Of course. He had claimed a desk in the bullpen. I grabbed the briefcase and kept moving.

“Is that yours?”

“Yes, Heather. I had them hold onto it for me.”

A hallway led out into the parking lot. Outside, the blue of dawn was giving way to the light of the day. I was a little disappointed when I hadn’t passed any pink boxes full of donuts on our way through the station, but oh well. Escaping custody was more important than the gnawing in my belly.

I turned. A single Son had made it into the hall behind us and he was closing fast. The nearest cop was out in the bullpen, so I said, “Heather?” and pointed.

He lunged, and she grabbed him and used his momentum to introduce his head to the wall. We were out the door a second later. Heather grabbed my arm again, her posture saying this was a romantic gesture, but her freaky grip strength saying this was
her
arm now and I was only renting.

She dragged me out to the busy street and I hoped my ride would beat the g-man back. “What are we waiting for? My car’s...”

“Not getting into your car. Try to pull me over there and I’ll take my chances with the Satanists.”

Heather didn’t call my bluff. We watched the traffic on Venice Boulevard and the few people out there early on that Friday morning probably thought we were a cute couple. Heather had changed into a skirt, tights, and long sleeves. That alongside my
Reservoir Dogs
suit and we were a cool pair after a night that went on longer than either of us had planned. Under the swaying palm trees, it was practically a postcard.

The green Prius pulled to a stop on the corner. I glanced through the windshield and saw Lara mouthing, “Get in the goddamn car.”

I got in shotgun and Heather dove into the back.

Lara looked like hell. Her hair was all over the place and she didn’t have a bit of makeup on. She hadn’t even had her coffee, and if memory served, that meant we were all in danger of being beaten with the nearest unsecured object.

She pulled away from the curb and I saw the NWO g-man driving through the intersection, eyes glued on the police station. I slumped down in the seat.

“Okay, you best explain what’s happening right now.”

“I got into some trouble with the law. It’s not my fault.”

“You know I could lose my job if they saw me helping you.”

“Thank you?”

“Goddamn right, thank you.” Lara glanced in the rearview mirror at Heather. “Hi, I’m Lara.”

“Heather. I’m so happy to meet you!” She snaked a hand into the front seat that Lara took uncertainly.

“What have you been saying about me?” Lara asked out of the corner of her mouth.

“Nothing. She’s... she’s like that.”

“Ah. Where are we going?”

I punched an address into her GPS. The Cylon voice set a route out snaking into the nearby Hollywood Hills.

Lara looked into the rearview mirror for long enough to establish who she was talking to and said, “I’ve heard a lot about you. You’re a model?”

“Actress, actually,” Heather said brightly. “I did some modeling when I was younger, though.”

“I thought you had red hair.”

“I’ve dyed it red for parts!”

“Wait,” I said, finally realizing what was happening. “This is not my girlfriend.”

“Then who is she?”

“She’s an assassin who was trying to feed me to some ur-right-wing assholes.”

“Then what the fuck is she doing in my fucking car?” Lara screeched.

“Really enjoying the company,” Heather said brightly.

“She was trying to take me in back there and there hasn’t been time to ditch her.” I mouthed “yet” even though I was certain Lara knew that was implied.

“I don’t know what passes for a brain inside that head, but you have a plan, right?”

“Kind of. I’m sort of making it up as I go.”

She sighed. “Where
exactly
are we going?”

“The temple of the Guardian Servitors of the Anorectic Praxis.”

“Who?”

“Anorexia worshipers.”

“And why are we doing that?”

“Because they want to kill me. I’ve found in my long experience of being the city’s whipping boy that when multiple groups want to kill you, it’s best to let them fight it out.”

“Or get them together to kill you even deader,” Lara muttered.

“I kind of want to kill you,” Heather piped up from the backseat.

“You barely know me,” I said. “Besides, you technically want to take me to people who will then kill me. It’s totally different.”

“Bitch, you touch a hair on his head and I will
break
you.” Lara had mastered the Mom Voice and both Heather and I instinctively sat up and quieted down.

“Thanks, Lara,” I said.

“Don’t ‘thanks, Lara’ me. You put a crazy woman in my car.”

“I’m not crazy,” Heather said. “I know all of Dr. Wood’s teachings by heart.”

“Sorry about that,” I said.

The GPS voice directed us into the Hills, getting snippy the one time Lara missed a right turn. I wondered how long until Shub-Internet got its digital tentacles into these things, or if that had already happened. Maybe if the thing flickered green or started chanting I’d know for sure.

On the stereo: “Far Away” by Nickelback.

What, seriously? It was bad enough that I had to give voice to that thought.

“What?”

“Are you actually listening to Nickelback?”

“What’s wrong with Nickelback?”

“Jesus, Lara, if you have to ask...”

“Goddamnit, don’t make fun of my music. I rescued you from the fucking cops at the ass-crack of dawn.”

“Yeah, but had I known about the Nickelback, I might have surrendered.”

She smacked my arm and turned it up. I silently waited for the hackneyed lyrics, grunting vocals, and what I can only describe as the sounds guitars make when they beg for death, to do what they had obviously been designed to do. I closed my eyes and fought to retain my sanity in the face of raw douchebaggery, wondering if I would still be the same person when I emerged on the other side. Probably not. That man was dead now.

To attempt to distract myself, I opened up the briefcase. There’s a trick you can use to break into a combo-locked briefcase. Input whatever combination you like. I prefer “666” because I’ve seen
Pulp Fiction
too many times. Then push the clasps inward. That resets the combination from whatever the original owner used. Then you push the clasps outward. Bam. Open sez me.

The case contained the file the g-man had tried to intimidate me with. The pictures were in there, as was a copy of Nicky Zorotovich’s warrant. I looked it over, but it told me nothing other than the fact that it looked totally legit. Brady either faked it really well or she used her contacts to actually put out an arrest warrant on a figment of my imagination. I was mildly relieved to see there wasn’t any picture attached, just a comfortably vague physical description, known associates (including people like Vassily the Whale), and a list of places to find me. I folded that stuff up and put it in my jacket. He had a file on Vassily as well, along with ones on Vinnie Cha and Carmelita Donella, hinting that he had been staking out Kosher Nostra hangouts and I had gotten unlucky.

He had a few business cards identifying him as Leonard Rice, and one reasonably fancy pen. I closed the case.

After a hundred thousand years in hell, the car stopped and the stereo silenced. I thought it might be bad form to weep for joy, but when I looked into the back seat, I saw that Heather was already doing that. Or suffering one of the numerous crying jags that came courtesy of her command of all of Dr. Wood’s technosis.

We were at the crest of the hill, where the street dead-ended into a gate. Beyond was the Temple of Anamadim. It looked like the lair of a
Miami Vice
villain crossed with a game of Tetris played by someone with a grudge against Pythagoras. Gleaming white geometric blocks were stacked on top of one another, with the occasional window peeking out from shadow. I wondered if the architect had suffered a crippling head injury right before designing the building.

In there I was known as Ivan Cohen, which was one of the odder aliases I put together. The difficult part was understanding an alien mindset, and I mean that as someone who has dealt with actual aliens on many occasions and can even understand them a little. Cohen’s bio started as a fashion designer, but I had to make sure he failed, like most of my aliases. He was making clothing too small for even the walking sticks they call runway models to fit into. I posted a few rants about the increasingly large women in the fashion industry in relevant comment threads and created a blog of my tiny designs. I did shockingly little research to play a fashion reject, and generally just thought of the most horrible thing to say and then said it. I fit right in.

Outside the gates, three hatchbacks waited, the little shining dorsal fins advertising for “La Pizza Nostra.” In the back, hot bags were stacked high, keeping pizzas toasty warm that would tragically never be eaten. At that thought, my stomach gurgled, and I briefly considered attempting to bribe one of pizza guys for a slice or eight. No, I had to focus on the task at hand: breaking into the temple.

“There a party in there or something?” Lara asked.

“I ordered the pizza. I needed a distraction. You should get out of here. The last thing you want is a bunch of Anas on your ass.”

Heather and I got out of the car.

“Are you sure? You said she wants to kill you.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be safe. Well, as safe as I get.”

“You forgot your briefcase.”

“It’s not mine. I’d appreciate it if you destroyed it.”

“All right. Good luck, Bob.”

“Thanks. I’ll let you know how this all turns out.” I patted the roof of the car. Lara put it into reverse, three-pointed, and was back down the hill. I stared at the Ana compound, already bright even before the full light of day. Behind us, the city stretched out all the way to the ocean.