Arc d'X

20

IT WAS DARK OUTSIDE, as the porthole had told him it would be, as though the porthole were not a window but a crystal ball suspended on the wall, predicting his future.

His car was still where he’d left it, in the part of Desire where there stretched in the daylight hours the endless shadow of the volcano meeting the endless shadow of the Arboretum. The window was broken on the passenger’s side. Wade found the night air not invigorating or cleansing but oppressive like a perfume; he felt the weight of the Vog on his heart, and the sound of the waves against the cliffs were louder than he’d ever heard them. In the car he took the stone from his coat pocket and set it on the seat next to him. Trying to start the car he didn’t feel so good.

He drove back into town. He went to the corner of Desolate and Unrequited and pulled the car over to the curb, and opened the door and threw up. He got out of the car and walked down the alley. Even in the middle of the night he knew where to find the graffiti. Even in the dark he knew it wasn’t there anymore, that the place where Wade’s graffiti had addressed him day after day for the past year would be conspicuously blank. The furor of the spot’s emptiness drove his hands to his head, covering his ears.

At home he confronted the evidence of outside clocks that had noted his absence. He parked beneath the obelisk at Circle Four and opened the door of his unit; more disturbing than any havoc was the way the unit had been ransacked so carefully. It revealed the precision of authority, the invasion of those who didn’t have the time or enthusiasm for superfluous destruction. Wade recognized the work because he’d often done it himself in the past. Standing in the doorway of his unit, his arms hanging limply at his side, he heard someone behind him; he turned and saw, stepping from the dark Vog into the light of his doorway, the rookie who had rosaried Sally Hemings and told him about Mallory and the satellite dish at the hotel. For a moment the rookie didn’t say anything. “What?” Wade finally asked.

“Yes sir,” the rookie said. “They posted me here in case you came back.” He pointed behind him and Wade could now see, on the other side of the circle, another car beside his own. “Everyone’s been wondering what happened to you, sir,” the rookie said. After a moment he added, “It’s four o’clock in the morn—”

“I didn’t ask what time it was,” Wade said.

“No,” the rookie replied coolly, and now Wade realized something was wrong. Now there was no telling whose side anyone was on. “No, you didn’t ask what time it was, but I thought I’d mention it anyway. I have to ask you to come with me down to headquarters.” He stepped aside as though to give Wade room to pass, even though he was standing outside, in the clear, where even Wade had room to pass. Wade hated being in the clear. He hated having room to pass. He wanted to make the rookie back up in a corridor; he missed the psychic geometries of passages and doorways and chambers.

There were more cops at headquarters than he’d expected to see at this hour. Most of them were sleeping slumped in their chairs, but they woke quickly when Wade walked in. Wade went to his desk and aimlessly moved some things around on it; looking down at the desk he caught sight of himself. He looked himself up and down. His coat hung on him like a rag, and his tie and belt were missing; he became vaguely aware that he smelled of sweat. Was there the smell of sex and liquor too? Was there the smell of blood, or was that in his mind? Was that the smell of still being in a dream, or the smell a dream leaves on you when you wake from it? In the middle of headquarters he felt everyone examining him. The only one in the room who didn’t get up from his chair was Mallory.

“Look at you,” Mallory finally said. He leaned the chair back; his hands were folded in his lap. He appeared very relaxed. “You’re not presentable. They want to talk to you but you’re not presentable. Well,” he said, bringing the chair forward and now rising from it, “no time now for making ourselves presentable. They want to talk to you.” Mallory headed down a back hallway and stopped midway to turn, a withering look on his face that asked what Wade was waiting for. They left through the back door and got in a car. Mallory was behind the wheel. “Whoa,” Mallory said, recoiling from Wade with relish. “You smell unpleasant, Wade. Like you just crawled out of the deep shit you’re in, except you couldn’t have done that, because it’s much too deep for that. Deep deep deep. Way deeper than you’re going to be crawling out of any time too soon.” He laughed and shook his head. “We went around the bend on this one, didn’t we? Mrs. Hurley, I mean. Black Sally. I mean, I think she’s a shade, what do you say? Next time we bring her in, those of us who are still on this case I mean, which we can presume will not include yourself, those of us who are still on the case will get a better look at her. A good look. All the nooks and crannies. I’ll give you a report when I come see you on visiting day, let you know what you missed. I’m sure they’ll let you have visitors every now and then. It’d be inhuman otherwise. You have to seriously fuck up not to ever get any visitors. Well, shit, now that I think about it. You may not be seeing anybody for a while, now that I think about it. Well, I’ll find some way to let you know. Don’t think your old buddy Mallory would leave you wondering about something like that. I’ll find some way to let you know just how black it all gets down deep inside. I say she’s a horse of a different color, once you get a better look. The good part, especially. I say the good part’s not even built the same way. I say you touch it, you bite it, and the juice that comes out is more like blackberry than cherry.” Mallory thought a moment, driving down the highway. “When you come, Wade, is it white?”

Wade looked at Mallory and then stared in front of him as Mallory drove west in the dark, toward the rock. There was only one road up to Central. It was lined with small lanterns that hung from posts all the way up the side of the rock, but they didn’t light the road particularly well, their glow rendered increasingly vague smudges as they ascended into the night Vog. At the rock Mallory and Wade parked the car and took the lift up. From the lift they walked to the main doors. The sound and spray of the sea was all around them, mixed with the ash of the volcano. It was impossible to see, in the mist, anything of the sea or the volcano or the white round building itself. Inside the building the huge plain lobby was dark and empty.

Wade had been in the lobby before. He noted that Mallory didn’t seem such a stranger to it either, more impatient than intimidated. Over to the left were administrative offices and down a hallway was the Church’s confidential archives. At this moment the only other person Wade could see in the building besides himself and Mallory was a clerk leaving the archives, a man in his midthirties with a wild mass of black hair and thick spectacles that, in the glint of the hall light, made his eyes appear like blue crystal balls. He didn’t look like a priest. The archives clerk glanced furtively at the two cops as he passed; behind him Wade heard the main doors open and close with the clerk’s exit.

Wade and Mallory waited. There was no place in the huge lobby to sit. Finally through a single door to the right came a man in the white robes of a priest. He signaled to Wade to follow him and with the flick of his fingers dismissed Mallory. “See you, Wade,” Mallory said as the priest led Wade back through the door he’d just come from. Wade didn’t look back.

The priest and Wade took another lift. The priest neither said anything nor looked at Wade. When the door of the lift opened on a long hallway as austere as the lobby downstairs, the priest indicated a room at the hallway’s far end. Wade stepped out and the door of the lift closed behind him.

The doors of the room at the end of the hallway were open. Wade was now forcing himself to focus better; he was manifestly aware of the way he smelled. He was still trying to understand if the smell of sex and liquor was real or wafted in the corners of a dream-memory. He got to the end of the hallway and inside were three priests seated around the outside of a crescent table. In the hollow of the crescent was an empty chair. The room was white and the priests were in white; one of the priests looked up suddenly at Wade in the doorway as though Wade’s blackness had rudely announced him. He studied the policeman with unmistakable disapproval and pointed at the empty chair.

Wade sat in the chair for almost as long, it seemed, as he’d waited in the lobby below. The priest who had looked up at Wade wasn’t paying him attention anymore; he was reading some papers while the other two priests were busy making notes. Behind the priests were windows that looked out onto the night. Beyond the glass of the windows Wade could see bright searchlights illuminating the waves of the sea below. The room was insulated so Wade couldn’t actually hear the sea, but sometimes it seemed everything vibrated slightly as though from the force of the waves against the rock. The head priest was still reading his papers. He didn’t look at Wade but rather at the papers when he said, “Wade,” and since it wasn’t a question as far as Wade could tell, Wade didn’t answer. At the policeman’s silence the priest finally raised his head. “You’ve been with us for some time.” Wade still didn’t say anything. The priest studied his papers and said, “Your work in the past has always been satisfactory, Wade. Occasionally a bit cavalier, perhaps even eccentric, but we allow for a man’s personality in his work.” He smiled tolerantly.

Wade began to say that no one had ever mentioned before that he was either cavalier or eccentric. Wade couldn’t remember ever having been — up until the last few days — cavalier or eccentric. He started to chew the inside of his cheek but stopped himself and instead took a deep breath.

“Where have you been?” the priest said.

Wade was focusing. He needed to swallow because his throat was tight, but he knew if he swallowed hard the priest would see it and he felt as though only a hard swallow was separating him from incarceration, not in a police cell but in one of the cells in the rock below his feet or the penal colony to the south, reserved for political heresies. He’d heard many times over many years about the justice of the priests, which was far less benevolent than that of any cop. So he didn’t swallow too hard when he said, “Undercover.”

For some reason the priest actually appeared surprised by this answer. “Undercover?” he said.

“On a murder case.”

The other two priests stopped writing and looked at him now. The head priest leaned forward across the crescent table. “The murder in the hotel downtown?”

“Yes.”

“Have you found anything?”

Wade was trying to think quickly. “I’m following a lead. I’ve reached an interesting point in the investigation. But I’ve surfaced now in order to get some hard answers. I’m sure you understand what I mean.”

They didn’t understand at all. Wade knew they didn’t understand, because nothing he was saying made any particular sense. Finally the priest nodded, “Yes, I see.” After a moment the other two priests nodded as well. “Wade,” said the head priest, narrowing his eyes with concern, “there was a woman. She was at the scene. When you found her she was holding the murder weapon. You held her twenty-four hours and then let her go.”

“There was no murder weapon at the scene.”

“A knife,” the priest corrected, reading his papers.

“The deceased wasn’t stabbed.”

“But there was a knife.”

“But he wasn’t stabbed.”

“But there was a knife.”

Finally Wade had to swallow. He’d been talking some time and felt as though he’d choke, perhaps puking cognac all over the priests’ crescent table. “The man was beaten to death,” he said.

“Then where is the club?”

“Exactly.”

“There is no club,” the priest said gently, the words cold in the air and the is hissing like a snake. “There is a knife.”

“I think the husband did it,” Wade announced.

The priest seemed astounded. “Really?”

“He’s an actor. The Hurleys live over in—” he caught himself, almost having said Desire—“Redemption. I had to go undercover to find what I could. I don’t like loose ends anymore than anyone else. I like them less than anyone else. I hate them.” He paused. “It’s … difficult in that part of town. We don’t really have jurisdiction there.”

“That’s a matter of dispute,” the priest rebuked him. Wade allowed himself to be properly chastened. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you were going undercover?”

“Well,” Wade said, allowing a cast of disappointment to cross his face, “it’s very hard for me to say this. But I have reason to believe, I’ve believed for some time, that one of my officers has been selling confiscated forbidden artifacts to the black market. I believe that just recently, within the last several days, he sold a TV monitor that was confiscated at the very hotel where this murder took place. In order to keep me from investigating Hurley’s outlaw activities and in the process perhaps uncovering this black-market scheme, this officer I’ve referred to might have blown my cover and jeopardized the investigation. He’s also found it necessary to try and implicate Hurley’s wife even as the facts of the matter indicate she’s not the murderer. In other words, I believe Mrs. Hurley has been an unwitting smoke screen for police corruption on possibly a wide scale.”

The priests were stunned. The two flunkies kept looking at the priest in the middle.

“In retrospect,” Wade said, “I understand I made a mistake by not coming to you personally and explaining my course of action. I’d like to add that I also feel badly about my appearance at this meeting. It was my hope to make this report in a more … presentable manner. I hope you’ll forgive the disrespect of the officer who brought me here so unceremoniously. Next time I’ll insist on decorum.”

The priest locked in on Wade’s gaze. “Yes, Wade,” he finally smiled faintly, “next time you do that.” The two just looked at each other for a long time. Then the priest announced, with some resignation, “Very well. Let’s not belabor the matter.”

“What?”

“I mean,” the priest waved his hand nonchalantly, “do what you have to do. No use spending a lot of time in territory where we don’t have jurisdiction anyway.”

Wade thought about this a moment. “Does this mean you don’t want me to continue the investigation?”

“Of course you should continue the investigation. After all, someone was murdered. Let’s not, however, overcomplicate things.”

Wade said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Yes you are, Wade,” the priest said, “you know exactly what I mean. You’re a rather clever man. You’ve just made it rather clear that you’re a rather clever man.”

Wade chose his words as carefully as possible. “Is there anything about this matter to which you’d like me to give particular attention?”

“I was just getting to that.”

“Yes.”

“You know,” the priest said, “maybe the woman killed him, maybe the husband. Maybe someone in the hotel, the concierge for all we know. But we’d certainly like to know, as much as anything else we’d like to know, who he was.”

“Who …?”

“The man who was killed,” the priest said, with some impatience.

“There are no records or information on that.”

“In your own word: exactly.”

Wade nodded. “I see.”

“Find out who the dead man is, Wade, and we might be inclined to close the whole matter. The hell with who actually killed him,” laughed the priest.

“Yes, sir,” Wade laughed back, “the hell with it.”

“I was making a joke, of course.”

“The hell with who killed him,” Wade went on laughing.

The priest narrowed his eyes and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Is there anything else?” he said. He was now anxious to get Wade out of his sight as quickly as possible. The center of the room throbbed with the cop’s blackness.

“Anything else?”

“That we need to discuss.”

Wade thought for a moment. He looked around the white room. “God?”

“You take care of things on your end, Wade. We’ll take care of God.”

Wade got up from the chair. He was careful not to walk too quickly from the white room. He was careful not to walk too quickly down the hall. At the lift he waited; there was no button. Finally the door opened and the lift took him down to the main floor, where he found his way out into the lobby.

No one was waiting for him, of course, since no one had expected he’d be coming back. Wade had rolled everything up into one big messy ball that Central was going to have to sort out before they knew what to do with it. Once they got it sorted, they’d take care of Wade; he knew that. So he only had a little time. He took the lift down the side of the mountain and walked down the road into Downtown. The lanterns posted along the roadside down the side of the rock had long since gone out and it was still dark, but the sky in the east above the volcano was a lighter shade of blue than it had been before, a lighter shade than he’d seen it in some time. He didn’t care for it.

At the edge of Downtown he took a road heading north. He walked in the direction of the nearest blue obelisk. If he remembered correctly Circle Twenty-two was about half a mile away, just on the border of Ambivalence. When he reached the circle he waited behind one of the units; an hour passed and the siren for the morning altar search came on. In the units of Circle Twenty-two people scurried into their altar rooms and shut the doors behind them. In one unit after another Wade went through the closets looking for some clothes that might fit him; the best he came up with was an overcoat. It was small but he could wear it for a while. He also collected whatever money he could find, though people usually knew to take their money with them into the altar rooms unless they left it out as an arranged bribe. In the unit where Wade found the overcoat he used the shower. He was a quarter of a mile down the road when the all-clear alert sounded; at the edge of Downtown he flagged down a startled cop, who took him to headquarters.

When he walked in, everyone appeared as surprised to see him this time as they had the last. Mallory was sitting with his back to the room; he could hear the silence behind him. He turned and saw Wade and didn’t look as happy as he’d been a few hours before. The overcoat was tight around Wade’s shoulders and under his arms. “I need a ride,” he said to Mallory.

Mallory looked at the other cops standing around and said, “Get somebody else.”

Wade said, “I need you to give me a ride.”

“Bullshit.”

“Would I be here if this was bullshit?” He lowered his voice. “Would I be here right now if it wasn’t a good idea that you give me a ride?”

Mallory kept looking at the other cops as though one of them could explain why Wade was there in the middle of police headquarters and not chained to a rock somewhere. Slowly he pulled his coat from the back of his chair. “Where we going?”

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

They left through the same back door they had before and got in the car. Mallory wasn’t having as good a time as the last time they got in the car. He kept looking at Wade and Wade kept looking out the window. They had driven deeper into Downtown when Wade told Mallory to turn up Desolate Street; at the corner of Unrequited, he told Mallory to pull over. “Remember that graffiti I told you about a year or so back?”

“No,” Mallory said.

“Sure. That graffiti I told you about. You couldn’t find it and I came out with you and then I couldn’t find it.” Wade laughed. “Remember what an idiot I was, walking up and down the alley trying to find the graffiti?”

“Yeah,” Mallory answered slowly, “I guess I remember that.”

“Sure,” Wade kept laughing, “man, was that crazy. Here, I want you to see this.” Wade got out of the car and waited for Mallory, who took a lot longer getting out of the car. They stood together on the sidewalk looking down the alley. “I walked up and down here, remember?” Wade said, chuckling. He looked at Mallory.

“I remember, I remember,” Mallory said. Wade just went on chuckling, shaking his head. “Yeah,” Mallory went on, “you said it was here and we couldn’t find it.”

“That’s it,” Wade said, “we couldn’t find it. Come here.” He motioned with his hand and Mallory followed him. They walked down the alley. They came to the place where Wade’s graffiti had been for the past year and there was now only a blank spot. Wade stopped and stared at the spot, and Mallory stood beside him. “See that?” Wade said, nodding at the spot on the wall.

After a moment of staring at the blank wall, Mallory said, “What?”

“Right there,” Wade said.

“Where?”

“Right there. In red.”

“Red?” Mallory said.

Wade smashed Mallory into the wall. When he pulled him away, pieces of Mallory’s nose pocked the wet red smear where Wade had heard the messages of anonymous men and the Queen of Wands over the previous year. Wade held Mallory up by the collar and said, “You see it now, don’t you?” and a strange bloody yawn snorted out of the gape that had been Mallory’s face. “Yes, Mallory, in answer to your question, when I come, it’s white. When you bleed, isn’t it red?” Wade examined the disrupted mass of tissue across the front of Mallory’s head. “You’re not presentable,” he said, dropping him in a heap. He walked back to the car and drove away.

At his unit in Circle Four he showered again to wash off Mallory’s blood, and then changed clothes. He drove his own car, with the stone from Mona’s cabinet still in the passenger seat next to him, out to the cliffs not far from Desire’s frontier. Parking the car in neutral with its front tires at the cliff’s edge, he got out with the stone and pushed the car over. As though the force of the car’s plunge might pull him along after it, he found himself sitting on the ground staring at blue nothingness, the blue of the sky and the blue of the distant sea where only a moment before the car had been. The crash of the car below was really no louder than the crash of the waves.

He walked to Redemption. An hour after he’d left Mallory’s face on the wall at Desolate and Unrequited, he was at the doorway of the Arboretum. It was almost light. Before Wade stepped in the doorway to walk down the long corridor, he looked up at the sky and treasured how he wouldn’t have to be offended by its lie anymore.