Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) (3 page)

But Peter Lorre wasn’t looking to get any of his timecards stamped.

This wasn’t a job. Not a breach of the retirement thing. This was personal. One of my contacts, a contact I later found had himself been double-dipping, had showed up dead and my girlfriend was being framed for it. It didn’t just stink; it reeked like a whorehouse after fleet week. And that internal monologue—you know, the one trying to soothe me with Morgan Freeman’s stentorian tones—was telling me, “Make sure you have your operative kit. Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’. We will prevail and the world is a fine place and worth fighting for.”

My internal monologue doesn’t always differentiate between Freeman movies very well.

 So I stopped by the homestead. Mina had been here the day before, leaving early Monday morning, and I swear I could still smell her. Evidence of our weekend was still around. Her bathing suit hung in the bathroom. There were Thai takeout leftovers in the fridge, the two DVDs we compromised on still sitting on the coffee table (
The Day the Earth Stood Still
and
Music and Lyrics
, for any who care). The empty bottle of merlot, which had turned out to be a good choice.

Bathroom first. I tried not to focus too hard on her things in there, the various lotions, cleansers, unguents, and oils scattered around that I’d never heard of in my single days. Her toothbrush, her makeup, the bandanna she used to keep her hair out of her eyes when she washed her face. I kept my attention on what I was there to do, grabbing my scant handful of toiletries (with a few additions from Mina. Who knew what a difference moisturizer makes?) and shoving them into a didi bag. Then the good stuff.

I opened up my closet. Lockpicks, because you never know when a little light breaking and entering will help out. My case of fake IDs. With no recent credit card purchases to establish them as real, eating, sleeping, cable-watching humans, they wouldn’t past close inspection like they used to. They’d do, though. My police badge, and yes, it’s real, though Detective Saroyan, who had the name associated with it, had vanished into the Bermuda Triangle for all anyone knew.

Those were easy. The last thing I wasn’t so sure about. I stared at my aquarium for a good five minutes or so, weighing my options.

I have a rectangular seventy-gallon tank in my living room about three-quarters full of water. There are a few fish squirming around in the depths, a couple catfish and algae-eaters employed to keep the whole thing relatively clean. The marquee inhabitants are my three axolotls—salamanders to you and me—two of which were resting lightly on the gravel floor while one had crawled partway out to sun himself on a smooth section of lava rock. I’ve kept three of them as pets since the old days, Normally neotenic—that is, they stay in an aquatic larval form into adulthood—mine had metamorphosed in a misguided bid for symbolic relevance. Now they looked like grumpy pink tiger salamanders.

I wasn’t looking at them, but rather the largest rock in the tank, nestled in the corner, and contemplating whether it was coming with me. Taking it was an admission that this was probably going to be pretty bad. Not taking it could be the last mistake I ever made.

To the untrained eye, it looked like a faintly glowing gray rock, pitted and rough. A rusted and sooty chain was bolted into the side, making it look like an artist’s conception of Lemmy’s sperm. The area of the tank where it sat was crusted in more of the same glowing rock, heaviest in the places where the stone sat and stretching outward like silicon algae. Only the chain was completely clean, though with the fire damage, it looked like something from a shipwreck. The axolotls often crawled on the rock, and though I might have been imagining it, I think they had started glowing slightly.

To an illuminated eye, it was blasphemy. The rock was the Genesis Stone, coming straight from the moon to my aquarium. It was one of the more powerful objects in existence, and responsible for at least one apocalypse back in ’69. It had been bolted to the Chain of the Heretic Martyr, the same thing that had bound Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans, schizophrenic and saint, to the stake. Sticking these objects together was pretty much sacrilege to any number of mystery cults. Since it had been done as a deliberate act of heresy by the head of a Discordian splinter sect, it sort of fit.

To my eye, it was the thing I had attempted suicide with. Of course, I couldn’t even do
that
in a relatively normal way. The most insulting part was that I never even left a note, not that I had anyone who would’ve read it back then. I did now, and she was scared and in jail. And she needed me.

I could do this for her. One last thing.

I grabbed the chain and hauled the Genesis Flail (as the unrepentant D&D player in me had named it) out, mopping up the stinking salamander water with a towel. The axolotls watched me with Permian hunger. The stone was lighter than it should have been, something to do with the moon’s gravity, but then it was pretty much all magic at that point and could be safely ignored. Sticking all my supplies in the trunk and resigning myself to having some moon rock start growing back there, I got behind the wheel and drove down Pacific Coast Highway toward Los Angeles.

On the stereo: “Local Boy” by the Rifles.

I should probably explain. If you know me, you know I can’t stand most music because it’s pretty much just occult viewpoints with guitar solos. The only band this isn’t true for is Boston, because Boston’s music somehow manages to be shallower than one of those plastic wading pools with Spongebob on it. The problem is, music is one of those things Mina knows about. A
lot
about. And she’s a total snob to boot. Can’t stand Boston for the exact reason I like them so much. So every time she comes up to see me or I go down to see her, she filches my iPod and packs it full of what she calls good music.

Only I can’t turn off my brain, even when I’m supposed to be retired. S
o I’m trying to listen to this stuff and all I can think is, “Oh, these guys are just mouthpieces for the Flat Earth Society, or the Merovingians, or the Ordo Templi Orientis.” So where she listens to “Local Boy” and hears a poppy punky tune about a veteran returning home and finding it’s not the same place he left, I hear a song about the hashish trade as related to the Assassins, a thousand-year-old Islamic death cult. It’s exhausting.

I’d go point by point on the lyrics, but I can’t, since the record companies will sue at even the slightest hint of unfair use. I’d probably be in the clear if not for
Geffen v. Spade,
where a guy was actually sued over his internal monologue. And the record company won! Garnished his dreams for the rest of his life.

The Rifles are all about the Assassins and once you know that, their song “Peace and Quiet” becomes downright threatening.

So there I was on PCH, which, at the risk of hyperbole, is the most beautiful stretch of anything in the galaxy. To the east, you have the greens and golds of the California coast. As you go north, you start with Southwestern desert, which fades into something almost Mediterranean, going up into full
Twin Peaks
pine forest. To the west you have the endless blue of the Pacific, with alternating sandy beaches and rocky cliffs. Because of the storm on Friday California was still in the middle of a rain hangover, which is the exact opposite of what it sounds like. Meant the sky had been scrubbed and the cool wind blowing inland kept the shine.

Meant that when PCH turned into the 101 and I pulled into Los Angeles, the skyscrapers downtown were glittering in the sun and the snowcapped peaks of the San Gabriels made the whole thing look like a tourism ad. Made me wonder why I had ever left.

Oh, right. All those really dangerous people I stabbed in the back for about ten years while I was making a living. Thanks for the reminder, Morgan Freeman. “You’re welcome, and I hope I can see my friend and shake his hand.”

I took the 134 over into Glendale, a neighborhood chiefly known for having a mall, which I’ll probably have to explain to children someday as being a lot like the internet, but minus the porn and cat pictures. I wasn’t after the mall, mostly because I knew about the internet. I’m savvy that way. No, my destination was a little restaurant on a quiet street several blocks north. Glendale was mostly a grid, but lots of trees were planted around to make it feel like Mayberry or something. Now they were rattling in the wind.

The restaurant was nothing special from the outside. The sign said Sevan, and most people would have thought that was a typo; it was actually the name of a lake in the old Armenian Empire, back when that was more than a cruel joke at a Kardashian’s expense. I headed inside, passing the mixture of balding Armenian men and younger hipsters there for lunch. The dining room was wide and pleasant, carpeted in blue with tables lined up in a grid pattern just like the streets outside. I went to the register, where a bored and impeccably groomed teenager was sullenly waiting. Two older men chatted over the grill, searing a variety of garlicky meats.

“What can I get you?” she asked me, barely looking up.

I felt like an asshole. I always did. “I have a problem with the Reptilians.”

She jumped, focusing her big brown eyes on me with a mixture of pity and wonder. “What?”

“I need to see Dan. That’s the code, right? It hasn’t changed?”

The two older men had turned from the grill and one was staring at me. They were familiar, and were probably trying to place me. Problem was, I was in a big duckbill bandage and the Reagan hair was gone. I looked like any other schmuck. Well, not
any
other schmuck, but I didn’t look like me, or the me they knew.

One of them said something in Armenian to the girl. She nodded, still nervous, and said, “Come with me.”

I went around the side of the counter, past the grill, and followed the girl. The door was nearly hidden by a pantry of ingredients and a bulletin board covered in flyers and pushpins. She opened it to reveal an office that was almost big enough for half of me.

The impressive thing was that it held a man who was easily three of me, all crammed behind his desk. I never figured out how he managed to get in and out of that office. I imagined it had something to do with wormholes.

Dan Onanian was my lawyer. He had been since my first arrest about seven years back on a B&E gone wrong. I don’t think it helped that the whole operation was an attempt to give all the chimpanzees at the LA Zoo Brazilian waxes. The Knights of the Sacred Chao can be a little odd. Anyway, I was the one in charge of actually breaking the locks on the side entrance and the cages. I was also the one left holding the bag when that little errand predictably went down the tubes. I mean, who could have foreseen that attempting to conduct painful grooming procedures on murder machines with seven times the strength of your average high school linebacker would be a terrible idea?

I got his name from another contact. Dan came down to the lockup and had me out on bail in two hours. Made sure everyone knew it was my first offense, and I was out with a small fine and time served.

Granted, our second meeting was a little awkward, since I got caught with stolen goods under a different identity. It was just a shipment of Hello Kitty heads I was delivering to the Order of the Morning Star, but that meant that this time I was arrested as Eli Simms. Dan blinked a couple times when he saw me, then rolled with it, introducing himself and pulling my ass out of trouble yet again.

Dan wasn’t exactly clued-in. He knew there was something big out there—well, bigger than him, anyway—and he was friendly to folks like me. He was discreet, affordable, and best of all, good at what he did—so pretty much the perfect lawyer for my purposes.

He did have some weird beliefs, though.

Dan’s face split into a huge grin when I came through the door. “Mike! Or is it Ivan this time?”

“It’s Bob now, actually,” I said, reaching across his desk and shaking his pillow-like hand as I got hit in the face with a solid wall of cologne. “Bob all the time.”

“Bob. I like it. What happened to your face?”

I touched the bandage like I had to be reminded it was there. “Prizefighting.”

“Sure, sure it was. You look thin. Much too thin. I’ll get you some chicken.”

Before I could stop him, he shouted something in Armenian through the closed door. Oh well. I was a little hungry anyway. I sat down in a slumping wooden chair across from his cluttered desk.

Dan rubbed his bristly goatee. “What can I do for you today, Bob? You’re not calling me from the county jail, so you’re better off than you are normally.”

I tried to focus. Behind Dan was an impressive psycho wall setup. Pictures of people, some connected to one conspiracy or another, some just weirdos he was fixated on, were linked with lines of colored string and annotated with brightly colored sticky notes and articles from various news sources, some clipped from the paper, others printed out from one of his wingnut websites. Some of which, to my embarrassment, I’d made up.

“I’m retired.”

“Are you an internet billionaire? Did you make an app?”

“No, I’m just not doing... what I used to do.”

“That’s good, because that was crazy. Really crazy. What are you doing here? Seems like it’s not just to catch up?”

“A friend of mine was arrested.”

“Breaking and entering? Malicious mischief? I love the cases you used to bring me, Bob. Always so interesting.”

“Murder.”

Dan’s jaw dropped, making his jowls wobble. The door opened and the girl who had led me back leaned in with a styrofoam plate covered with rice, several generous chunks of chicken breast, a little hummus, pita, and tabbouleh. I thanked her and tore into it. “You going to say anything else there, Dan? Or just stare at me?”

“I’m sorry, it’s just... murder. That’s more than you usually come in here with.”

“Yes, but you
are
a criminal defense attorney. You’ve dealt with that kind of thing.”

“Of course.” He watched me eat, making up his mind up. “Who killed who?”