Angel City (36 page)

“May I help you?”

“Sure, where's the bar?”

“Apologies, monsieur, the bar does not open till eight.”

“But the band is playing now.”

“Sound and light check.”

“What?”

“Sound. Light. Check.”

Harper wasn't sure what it meant, but it sounded very much like
fuck off
.

“How about Karoliina?”

The man did a visual recon of Harper from head to toe and back again.

“
You
know Karoliina?”

“Sure.”

“And
she's
expecting you?”

Harper waved the bandaged palm of his right hand before the man's eyes.

“Mate, can you think of another reason why I'd be here? And if you can't, you should just step aside and let me pass, then forget all about it.”

The man stepped aside, and Harper squeezed by.

It was a huge, dimly lit space of old wooden floors and ceilings, supported by the original iron crossbeams and pillars. Far end of the space, five young men on a stage. Four with guitars, one on drums. They had their eyes to the floor as they played. All of them dressed in clothing off the racks of a Salvation Army thrift store. Their hair looking like it didn't know what a comb was. And there were a couple men in overalls walking around the open floor with tall stepladders. They parked the ladders under spotlights, climbed up, and adjusted the color filters and direction of light.
Seems the band likes the color blue,
Harper thought. Harper saw the bar to the right. He walked over. No bartender, and the bottles were locked up behind a cage.

He settled into the shadows, watched the band.

There wasn't a singer, just the instrumentalists playing the same riff over and over. The two guitarists at either end of the lineup were overlaying the progression of drums, bass, and rhythm guitar with riffs that sang and clashed and wailed. And all together the sound seemed to rise above the sum of its parts and into a slow hypnotic drone, circling the space and bouncing off the walls. Harper felt sound resonate in his chest. He knew it . . . from somewhere . . . a chant. Then it stopped cold. The guitarist moved around the stage, plucking notes or striking chords quietly. One of them passed a ciggie around and they all had a puff. Looked hand-rolled. The drummer yelled to someone.

“I still need more kick drum in the monitors!”

Harper made a mental note for future reference. Sound and light check. Got it.

Someone tapped Harper's shoulder from behind. That's when he realized how hypnotic the sound had been. For a moment, he'd lost concentration on the now. He turned around, saw Karoliina from Tampere. She was in her sheepskin coat and swinging her beads.

“Nice to see you again,” she said.

“And you, too, I think.”

“You saw the blue angel, didn't you?”

Harper flashed the chalk drawing on the pavement outside the train station.

“I did. There were a few of them.”

“That's how it works. Most people are coming by train for this gig. Krinkle made the signs so people will know where to go.”

“Krinkle?”

“The roadie for the band. You know, the guy who moves the amps and speakers and instruments, and the band, from one place to the other. Gets it all set up for the gig, then takes it down, takes it someplace else.”

“Krinkle the roadie. Right. Tell me something, mademoiselle, can everyone see them?”

“See what?”

“The signs on the ground.”

She smiled.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you're looking for them or not.”

Harper looked at the band. The guitarists were still plucking softly at their strings, and the drummer was slamming at his kick drum whilst puffing on the hand-rolled ciggie.

“What are they smoking up there?”

“Some Toulouse homegrown. You want some?”

He looked at Karoliina.

“No thanks, I've got my own.”

She gave her beads a happy twirl.

“What did you think of the music?”

“It's loud.”

“Compared to what?” she said.

Only music he could flash up was from a program on the History Channel.
The Greatest Arias of Opera.
There was one song, “Nessun Dorma” from
Turandot
. Something about a man not being able to sleep. It gave Harper the chills.

“Compared to everything I know about music,” Harper said.

He stared at her.

“Krinkle is backstage,” she said. “He's the one you're looking for. He's waiting for you.”

“Krinkle.”

“Yeah.”

“Is there more to his name, or is that it?”

“Yeah, some people call him Little Buddha, but Krinkle is what most people call him.”

“And how do you know he's the one I'm looking for?”

“Because he told me.”

“Sorry?”

“I was standing with him and we saw you come in. Krinkle said, ‘Tell that guy with the bandages on his hands that I'm the one he's looking for, and I'll meet him backstage.'”

Harper checked the room. The stage was pressed up against a brick wall.

“Where's backstage?”

Karoliina pointed to the fire exit sign to the left of the stage.

“You go out that door, down the alley, and you'll see a big black bus. It's his. He's there.”

Harper nodded, walked that way. He stopped, turned around. Karoliina was leaning against the bar, swinging her beads, watching him.

“You're not coming with me?”

“No. I need to be here when the band finishes the sound and light check. I restring and tune the guitars before every gig. That's what I do. That's why I had to be here.”

Harper walked back to her.

“By the way, if it's not a trade secret, how the hell did you get here?”

“To Toulouse?”

“I checked the train, twice. You were nowhere to be seen.”

“You were looking for me?”

“Yes.”

She smiled, chuffed at the thought. Harper flashed the sentiment in Finnish:
Tyytyväinen.

“No secret,” she said. “I ran into a friend at the Dijon station. Turns out he was heading to Lausanne, too. He writes game programs for the Internet. Sells billions and billions of them, so he's loaded with billions. He had a private jet fly down from Paris, pick us up at Dijon airport, and fly us here.”

Harper thought about it.

“You flew here.”

“I told you, I had to be here to restring and tune the guitars.”

“Right. That's what you do. Cheers.”

“Ei kestä.”

Harper stared at her, working the words in his head:
My pleasure.
She reminded him of someone just then. She was a shadow on his timeline; she was in LP's Bar at the Palace Hotel. The hippocampus region of his brain snapped him back to now. He turned away, crossed the wooden floor, headed for the fire exit. He walked by the stage. The musicians watched him pass. The lot of them with that Karoliina-on-the-train gaze.
I know who you are.

Out the door.

Down the alley.

Parked in the shade of a very old plane tree was a Mercedes-Benz Travego. It fit the bill. It was big, it was black. And a bit more stylish than the number 16 bus Harper rode often through the old quarter of Lausanne. Looked like a custom job. The black metallic paint almost sparkled, the wheels were polished chrome, the windows running down the side were tinted to keep whomever was inside from prying eyes. Harper looked around. Nobody. He dug out his fags, lit up, giving someone a chance to show up. He checked the bus's license plate; it was registered in Germany. No other markings. Just then, a hydraulic pump went
shhhhh
, and the one door at the front of the bus opened. A set of stairs slid out and down to the ground. The stairs were chrome, like the wheels. And there were small blue lights along the edge of the steps.

Harper drew on his smoke.

“Must be my stop.”

He walked over.

A disembodied voice said
“Please mind the gap”
in German, Spanish, Italian, English, and French. Harper dropped his smoke and climbed on the bus. He saw the driver's cockpit. Had a lot more bells and whistles than the number 16 in Lausanne. Thing looked like it could drive itself and explain Minkowski's space-time theory at the same time. Top of the steps there was a door to the passenger compartment. Harper looked at the empty driver's seat.

“Okay if I just go in?”

The steps retracted and the door of the bus closed.

“I'll take that as a yes.”

Harper grabbed the latch, heard music from beyond the door.

Violins and a piano playing a progression of descending chords around a tonic note. Wasn't the same tune as the band in the club. It was soft, no percussion, floating. But it had the same feel—deep within the sound was that same droning chant. Harper opened the door, saw a well-appointed cabin of black leather sofas and chairs anchored to the red carpeted floor. A long desk lined one side of the cabin. It was topped with Apple laptops and monitors, a high-tech microphone. Huge speakers were mounted on either end of the desk. Between the speakers was a rack of DVD and CD units, reel-to-reel tape machines. There was a man sitting at the desk in a swivel chair. His back was to Harper. He had a shock of white hair, tied in a long ponytail. He wore denim overalls over a red-checked shirt. He didn't turn around as Harper entered the cabin, but he raised his left hand, index finger in the air, acknowledging his presence and telling him,
Hang on a second
.

Harper's eyes shifted to the green and red lights flashing down the line of equipment. The needles of meters on one reel-to-reel bounced up and down as the wheels turned and rolled tape at fifteen inches per second.
Must be the source of the music,
Harper thought. The man hit a switch on the desk and the music from the speakers cut. Same moment, a sign above the cabin door lit up red:
ON AIR
.
The man leaned into the microphone, eased up one fader on the sound mixer.

“It's called A Symphony Pathétique from the neoclassicist drone collective known as A Winged Victory for the Sullen. Wherever you are in space and time, you're tuned to the last radio station on planet Earth, and yes, it's true: Locomotora is performing tonight in downtown Toulouse. But fear not if you can't make it, because we'll be presenting the gig live in about five hours. Spread the word. Meantime, we're winding back the clock with the Grateful Dead. Jamming at the Dream Bowl in Vallejo, California, back in 1969. February twenty-first, a soft winter's night. Hold on to your heads, brothers and sisters, it's ‘Dark Star,' and I'm gonna let the concert run all the way to ‘Morning Dew.' We'll talk on the other side.”

The man's voice was laid-back and American as apple pie. He flipped the switch on the mixer, another reel-to-reel began to turn, and the cabin filled with music. More guitars and drums weaving around one another, looking for a place to connect, and when they did, the man at the desk eased down the fader on the mixer and the sound became a whisper. He pulled off his headphones, spun around in his swivel chair. He picked up a cup of tea and sipped.

Harper saw the man was tall, from the flip-flops on his feet to the long, unkempt beard that matched the color of his hair. Lines and creases etched in the man's face put him well into his sixties. But it was the shade of green in his eyes that gave away the man's true age. Two and a half million years.

“Hey there, brother,” he said. “Long time, no see. We need to talk.”

I

A
PPROACHING THE TOWN OF
T
ARASCON-SUR-
A
RIÈGE, THE TWO
men dressed as pilgrims making their way to Le Chemin de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle turned south into the Vicdessos Valley. They followed a two-lane road bound by hills thick with beech and silver fir. The sky was bright, but the direct light of the sun never found their steps. They kept a steady, quiet pace as they walked, and there were the sounds of a fast-running stream and woodpeckers hammering at trees. Nearing Vicdessos and Auzat, they climbed the north-facing slope of the valley to the top of the ridge, two hundred meters above the towns. Inhabitants of the region were welcoming. They would take notice of two pilgrims who had lost their way, surely.

“Messieurs, you should be going west to Aquitaine, to the crossing at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port,” they'd say. “You can't cross the mountains without a guide, not here. It's very dangerous this time of year. The storms can come quickly now. If you become lost, no one will find your bodies till the spring melt.”

Following the ridge, they stayed clear of Goulier and the castle ruins at Montréal de Sos. The sun warmed the hilltops, and at a clearing along the ridge, Astruc and Goose saw a handful of people walking the trail to the ruins.

What are they searching for, Father?

Astruc knew Montréal de Sos well. He'd combed the ruins and caves many years ago, searching for the same thing the tourists were looking for now.

“Hope. They're searching for hope.”

Clear of the towns, they descended the ridge and joined a stretch of asphalt with no painted lines or passing traffic. A yellow sign, almost hidden in overgrown scrub, marked the road as the D8. It was quiet here; the road could pass for abandoned. They walked, leaning into their steps as the grade began to rise. By the time they reached the hamlet of Marc, seven kilometers south, they'd reached an altitude of eleven hundred meters. They'd also reached the place where all roads ended; there were only rugged tracks and mountain trails. From here, the land quickly climbed another two thousand meters to the crest of the Pyrenees.

The hamlet was very quiet. Most of the inhabitants had moved down to lower altitudes to escape the coming winter. Already, in the shadows where Astruc and Goose walked, a chilling cold seeped down from the peaks of Rouges de Bassiès, Montcalm, and d'Éstats.

Could we stop a moment, Father?

Astruc looked at the sky. The sun was sinking, but there was still an hour of good light. He pointed to a wooden bench outside one of the dwellings. Goose let his backpack slip from his shoulders. He pulled the hoodie from his head and slumped onto the bench.

“What is it, Goose?”

My eyes. I can't see clearly.

Astruc took off his backpack, opened it, and found an auto-injector. He undid the needle cap, set the injector on Goose's thigh, and hit the release. The potion acted quickly. Goose's vision returned.

It's better now, Father. Thank you.

“We waited much too long. I'll give you another shot before you sleep.”

If the Dark Ones find us, they'll never believe I'm the savior of men.

Astruc knew Goose was making a joke, despite speaking the truth. He could see it in the boy's pale eyes.

“You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, Goose, but it is your duty.”

I know, Father.

Astruc rubbed the boy's head.

“You know what the Dark Ones will do to you if they find you.”

Goose reached into his leather jacket, pulled a sharp dagger from its harness.

Yes, Father, but you trained
me well. Even a savior of men must know how to kill.

Astruc looked at the boy's eyes, checking him for light.
So fragile,
Astruc thought. But then again, had not both of them, had not the entire world, been crippled in the never-ending war between darkness and light? A war that had done nothing but turn paradise into a wasteland of hungry ghosts?

“Tomorrow, we'll cross Heaven's Gate and reach the other side of the Pyrenees. Tomorrow we will complete our mission. Then we'll continue our trip to Le Chemin de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle.”

Goose sheathed the dagger.

And then you will rest, won't you, Father? Then you'll be able to sleep.

“I'll sleep, Goose, when I am forgiven of my sins.”

II

H
ANG ON, ARE YOU TELLING ME THE PRIEST IS ONE OF US?”

“That's exactly what I'm telling you,” Krinkle said.

“Bullshit.”

“I told you, he's fucked up.”

“Define ‘fucked up.'”

“As in the opposite of ‘all is well.'”

“I watched him kill an innocent man.”

“He's killed lots since he lost it. Mostly bad guys, trying to kill him or the kid. There's been some collateral damage.”

“The man in Paris wasn't collateral damage. He was a bloody file clerk in the mayor's office of the fourteenth arrondissement.”

“So I hear. Astruc thought he was working with you. He thought Gilles Lambert was one of the Dark Ones.”

“The what?”

“We're all the same to him. Good guys, bad guys. He thinks you and I are as evil as the enemy. In his head, we've enslaved mankind with our war. You think about it, you think he may have a fucking point.”

Harper flashed back to Astruc in the cavern beneath Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Saw the big man speak those very words:
the Dark Ones.
He thought about it. Wasn't easy. He was still trying to get his head around the fact that the hippie leftover from the 1960s, the one wearing the denim carpenter overalls and flip-flops and sitting on a decked-out bus in Toulouse, was one of his own kind. Then the real surprise dropped: So was Father Christophe Astruc, OP.

“What about the kid?”

“George Muret?”

“Astruc calls him Goose.”

“That's what the locals called him in his neighborhood when he was growing up. He had it tough.”

Harper stared at him.

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Mi casa es tu casa, hermano.”

Harper fumbled in his coat for his cigarette case. By the time he had a cigarette to his lips, Krinkle had a flame at the ready.

“How the hell do you guys do that?”

“Do what?”

“The fire thing.”

Krinkle opened the palm of his hand. He was holding a small gold-plated lighter.

“You think I was management?”

“Are you?” Harper said.

“Hell no, brother, we work for the same suit.”

“Inspector Gobet of the Swiss Police?”

“Is that what you call him? Is that what he is to you, a Swiss cop?”

“You telling me he isn't?”

Krinkle scratched his head.

“I think management is what it needs to be, and I think it's never the same thing to any of us.”

“So what's management to you?”

Krinkle formed his hand like a gun, aimed at the kill spot above Harper's right eye.

“Bang.”

Message received:
I could tell you but . . .

Harper drew on his fag.

“Just out of curiosity, how do we know we're talking about the same member of management?”

Krinkle reached in the pouch of his overalls, pulled out a pack of smokes. No brand, no logo. He flipped the top, gave the pack a jerk, caught a gold-filtered fag in his lips, and lit up. Krinkle inhaled deeply, held it a few seconds, nodded to Harper's smoke.

“We smoke the same brand, don't we?”

“Hand-rolled at a little shop behind the Ritz in Paris?”

“Check.”

Harper looked around the bus.

“Mind if I ask what it is you do, exactly? The band, the music, drawing angels on sidewalks and T-shirts, this radio setup?”

Krinkle sipped his tea.

“Communications, inspiration. Taking the sounds of men and tossing them into the sky.”

“Sorry?”

“Radio waves travel forever through time and space, brother.”

“Does that mean there's something out there listening?”

Krinkle shrugged, had a swig of tea.

“Just doing what I'm told to do.”

Harper took another hit of radiance.

“Right, so the kid, Goose, had it tough. What else can you tell me about him?”

“Haven't figured it out yet?”

“Sorry?”

“I heard you're pretty good with hunches.”

Harper held up his bandaged hands. “You heard wrong. What do you know about the kid?”

“Same thing none of us did, until I paid a visit to the administration office of a certain school for the deaf in Toulouse. Today, on my lunch break. The school's near the cathedral.”

The school Goose attended, where he met Astruc,
Harper thought.

“What did they tell you?”

“Nothing.”

“Sorry?”

“It was lunchtime, this is France, no one was there. That's why I went when I did. Let myself in, searched the office. Went to the file room in the cellar, dug around through the archives. Nothing on the kid.”

“So how . . .”

“Because on the way out, I looked around. Figured the dimensions of the cellar to the floor space of the upper floor. Didn't look right. I found a false wall hiding a big fucking bank vault. A Mosler, with a forty-seven-thousand-pound door.”

“Sounds big.”

“Isn't about big, it's about solid. There were a few Moslers in Hiroshima when the Americans dropped the nuke. Every one of the vaults survived the blast.”

“So cracking nuke-proof safes is a communication skill in your line of work?”

“Sometimes. Let me tell you, there's some nasty shit in there. Shit Holy Mother Church does not want the world to see.”

“Like what?”

Krinkle smoked.

“The one you call Gobet said you'd ask that question, and I'm to tell you it's none of your concern in the greater scheme of things.”

“And in the lesser scheme of things?”

“The kid's father isn't the kid's father.”

Harper thought about it.

“The kid is a half-breed.”

“Bingo, brother. Got a hunch on who the real father is?”

III

T
HEY FOLLOWED A CASCADING STREAM UP THE MOUNTAINSIDE AS
the light began to fade. The rocks were wet with misty spray, and they climbed carefully. Three hundred meters up, they reached a clearing bordered by a rock-faced cliff on one side and a line of stunted silver fir on the other. Ten meters above, a gush of water spilled over a crag and crashed into a churning pool. A roe deer was drinking from the pool and didn't hear the approach of the men at first. Then its ears twitched and the animal looked up. Astruc and Goose stopped and watched the deer. Its coat was rust-colored, its face was gray, and there were erect antlers atop its head.

Goose signed,
Genus and species: Caprelous caprelous. It's a young male. Three to four years old.

Astruc held his voice and signed,
How can you tell its age?

Its antlers don't have branches yet. I think antlers are funny things. I liked reading about them and seeing the pictures. That's why I know.

Astruc nodded, marveling again at how Goose never forgot anything he'd seen or read.

“Then it must be true,” Astruc said.

His voice carried through the clearing, and the deer heard it and darted into the pine trees. A small shelter stood a hundred meters away at the base of the cliff. Stone-walled, slate-roofed, simple wooden door. There were shelters like this all across the Pyrenees. They were marked on maps as
le refuge
. Once only known to smugglers, then to the Spanish Republicans fleeing Fascism, now they were used by tourists from around the world who came to trek across the rugged mountains during the summer months.

Astruc led the way to the shelter, found an official notice tacked to the door advising passersby that use of the shelter was
interdit
without an official permit from the commune authorities in Auzat. But it was autumn now, and the pass at Heaven's Gate was closed. There would be no tourists coming this way, or officials from the commune checking for permits.

They went inside.

It was dim, damp. The only light came through a small window on the south wall. Inside were two wood-framed bunk beds with straw mattresses, either side of the shelter, and a stone fireplace built into the north wall. Goose took off his backpack, pulled his hoodie from his head. He opened the backpack, found four candles, and anchored them in the slits of the roughly hewn floor. He lit the wicks, and the shelter glowed with warm light. He unrolled his sleeping bag and spread it over one of the lower bunks. Astruc took off his own backpack, unrolled his own sleeping bag on the opposite bunk. He sat down and sighed.

“It's been a long day, but a blessed day for the world. Oh, Goose, what have you done with the hard drive?”