The Sunset Prophecy (Love & Armageddon #1) (23 page)

“
Someone who is chosen to hold the Blessed Sacrament.”

Paolo kept scanning the intersections he crossed with keen eyes.
“I’d gladly drive you to his house, but I don’t know where he lives.”

“
Head toward Beverly Hills. We’ll get one of those maps from the map stands.”

“
Why would Shia Labeouf’s house be listed on those cheesy maps? Tourists want to see the homes of Harrison Ford, Wil Smith, Tom Cruise, and Schwarzenegger. Not the guy from
Holes
.”

Cindy glanced toward the back seat of the Accord.
“Do you have a clean rag I can use as a tourniquet? This one is dirty as hell.”

Paolo opened the center console and pulled out a pristine white scarf.
“Here, this was a gift from my ex-wife. I haven’t found a use for it.”

“
Thanks,” Cindy said, as she tightly wrapped the scarf around her foot. “Damn, I just realized this is a nice scarf.”

Paolo drove up Sunset Boulevard, past the Whiskey
A Go-Go, the Key Club, the Comedy Store and reached the familiar greened residential walls of the Southern California’s most famous enclave, Beverly Hills. They pulled up to an old wooden sign, with “maps to the stars” painted on it in kindergarten script on the sidewalk. An older gentleman with an L.A. Dodgers cap, wearing a grimy flannel shirt began taking the sign down.

Cindy rolled down her window.
“Excuse me?”

She startled the man. It was late at night and no one
stopped to ask for directions anymore. He probably thought it was a drive-by robbery.

“
I’m done. I’m out of maps. Come tomorrow,” said the man, rapidly.

“
Sir, do you happen to know where Shia Labeouf’s home is?”

“
Who?” asked the man, slightly annoyed at the midnight interrogation.

“
He was in the
Indiana Jones
movie, the young kid,” Paolo blared.

“
The little Asian kid? I don’t think he could afford to live here.”

“
No,” said Cindy, rolling her eyes. “The last movie, with the swinging monkeys and the Crystal Skull.”

“
Didn’t see it,” said the man, as he walked down the sidewalk with the sign under his armpits.

Paolo trailed him with his car.
“He was the guy in
Transformers
, opposite Megan Fox.”

“
Ohhh
, that guy,” said the man. “I’ve seen him speed down these parts in a yellow Lam. A Murciélago, actually. He turned down this street right up here more than a couple times.”

“
Are you sure that was him?” asked Cindy.

“
I’m here seven days a week. I recognize a lot of faces driving down Sunset. I know it’s him. He’s sporting a beard of late, and he lives down that street.”

As Cindy kept the man engaged in conversation, Paolo noticed a pair of bright halogen lights approaching at a high speed in his rearview mirror.

“Hey, we gotta get going,” he said, elbowing Cindy. “I don’t think B.H.P.D. likes cars parked on Sunset at midnight.”

As the professor placed his foot slightly on the gas pedal, a sleek and
shiny yellow blur streaked past their semi-parked car. “I think that’s a Lam,” said Paolo.

“
A yellow Lam,” Cindy blurted.

The man outside the car interjected loudly,
“There he goes.”

Paolo hammered the pedal with his foot and the semi-bald tires on his Accord screeched as if they were the sickly pangs of alley
cats. The yellow Lam made a sharp right turn onto the first residential street up ahead. Paolo sped into the turn foolishly, trailing closely behind the svelte sports car, almost tilting his Accord onto two wheels, careening Cindy onto his shoulder

The yellow Lam made a quick left turn
.

Paolo followed suit, this time
Cindy fell toward the passenger door, her head bumping against the grab handle, as her bony waist impinged against the door’s armrest. “Dammit, Paolo,” Cindy cried out. The mansions blurred in their peripheral vision like an LSD-influenced slide carousel. The Lamborghini stopped in front of a Tuscan-styled mansion, with a terraced bush plot.

“
Can you see if it’s him?” asked Cindy, as they parked the Accord three houses down. Paolo smartly turned off his headlights.

“
I see what you see,” said Paolo.

“
As soon as he drives past the gate, pull up slowly so we can see if he gets out of the car.”

The Lamborghini disappeared halfway through the enclosure, before Paolo began his slow creep. The Accord stopped in front of the home next door. Cindy limped out of the vehicle, climbed the short wall next door and lurked over the fence that
separated both homes, and she then herself up and onto the wall. Cindy glanced over his shoulder at Paolo, and gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Fortunately, Shia Labeouf didn’t park his Lam inside his garage. Instead, he parked it on his circular, cobbled driveway.

Cindy climbed down from the fence and reentered the Accord.

“It’s him,” she said, in a soft voice. “How do we get in, though?”

“
I don’t know how I feel about that,” said Paolo. “How sure are you that the Blessed Sacrament is in his home?”

“
The thing with the wings that was down there in the tomb told me. We need to do this.”

“
But that’s breaking and entering.”

“
I’m telling you someone or something is being held against her will in that house. I’ve deduced from the Apocryphon that this woman...” Cindy said, as she pulled out the book from her backpack and flipped through it, showing Paolo the picture of the veiled woman. “...this woman right here, is in there.”

“
Cindy, I believe that this book is genuine, you know that. But to suggest that the woman in this book is in Shia Labeouf’s house is a humongous leap,” said Paolo, who licked his lips, a nervous habit.

“
I know it sounds crazy. But after what happened to me down there, anything is possible. We’ve been right, so far. She’s in there.”

Paolo nodded his head and remained quiet. He struggled with the irrationality of everything that had unfolded so far.

Cindy pulled out the two leather scapulars she kept in her back pocket. “Here, you got a browser on your phone? I got these from a couple of corpses in the tunnel.”

“
You what?” Paolo exclaimed. “Yes...yes we can do research on my phone,” Paolo said, reaching for his phone. “My goodness, we’re grave robbers!”

“
Look up the Horsley Brothers, or specifically, David and William Horsley.”

“
Okay,” Paolo muttered, as he scrolled the phone. “Here’s the Wiki on David Horsley.”

Cindy pulled Paolo
’s wrist closer to her eyes, so she can read his bright screen.

“
This is nuts,” Paolo said, as he lowered his glasses from his nose. “It says that David Horsley opened up the first film studio in Hollywood. There’s Hollywood history under that church, so why would the Horsley brothers be buried there?”

Cindy opened the Apocryphon and turned to the page she noted while in the subterranean tunnel under the
church. “Look, Paolo,” she said, enthusiastically pointing at the text. “In return for their cooperation, they were granted tombs next to the Blessed Sacrament. Cooperation in something so bloody large, so epic, so earth-shattering, that it’s worth entering Mr. Labeouf’s house for.”

Paolo paused as he took off his glasses and wiped the sweat from his brow.

Cindy continued, “They opened the first movie studio at the behest of some long-running conspiracy. They were rewarded with a ceremonial burial.” Cindy paused for a few seconds. Her imagination ran wild with possibilities. “The film industry is involved in something friggin’ grand here. We gotta go in, or if you don’t to go in, then I’ll go by myself. You can wait here or leave.”

“
I have a great job with the university. If I get caught, not only am I going to prison, but I’m tarnishing the name of the university, which has done a lot for me,” Paolo said.

“
We are on the verge of discovering something that not only will define your career, but define history. We don’t have to tell anyone how we found out. We don’t have to tell anyone we ventured into someone’s home to discover such a secret.”

Paolo sighed. He grabbed Cindy
’s hand and said, “I’m putting my career on the line here.”

Cindy nodded.
“I know. You don’t have to do this. I’m just telling you what’s at stake.”

“
Once we’re inside, what do we do, where do we go?”

“
There’s a side entrance through the garage. It’s open. Murat revealed that the Blessed Sacrament is somewhere underground. I don’t think she would be held through an underground entrance in his back yard or front yard, that’d be pretty stupid, right?”

“
I...I guess.”

Cindy
’s face perked up. She reached underneath the seat and grabbed the rondure and dowel. “I think these will lead us to her.”

“
Those artifacts?”

“
Yes, they led me to her tomb. They’re probably drawn to her, remember?”

“
Remember what?” What are you talking about?”

“
Step out of the car, let me show you something.”

Paolo climbed out of the Accord and met Cindy who crow
-hopped onto the sidewalk. She placed the rondure on the floor and said, “If the sphere rolls east, we’re screwed, if it heads toward Mr. Labeouf’s home, then we got something.”

Paolo stood next to Cindy, his arms crossed, observing her with a skeptical eye.

With gusto, she pointed the dowel at the rondure and as predicted by Cindy’s hunch, it rolled toward the mansion.

“
Interesting,” said Paolo. “How does it do that? What’s the mechanism?”

“
Fate,” Cindy said, picking up the artifacts. “Fate and destiny, that’s all I can say. Raffi wanted me to have these items for a reason.”

Paolo
peered over the side wall and then looked at Cindy who was standing next to him. “Can you do this? Can you climb over this wall?”

“
The wall isn’t as tall as the fence back at the church, but the fall on the other side is much higher. But if I can walk the fence up further the drop is lessened.”

Cindy was
right. The initial drop on the other side Shia’s wall was much higher than the fence at the Crossroads of the World, however, if one cat walked on top of the fence, toward the back, only a three-foot drop awaited.

“
I’ll go first. Keep your eyes open,” said Paolo. “Are you sure you can stay and walk on the wall?”

“
Yes. Hurry, go, before someone sees us.”

Paolo scaled the wall
and stood on top of it. He traversed the top of the wall as if it were a pathetic high-wire act, one clumsy step at a time, as the top of the wall was only a foot wide. He dropped down. The bottom of his shirt lifted and his bare belly scraped against the rough edge of the masonry. “Holy hell!”

“
What happened?” Cindy whispered loudly.

“
I scraped my stomach,” whined Paolo. “I seriously need to lose this weight.”

“
Okay, here I come,” said Cindy, as she climbed the wall and dragged her bottom—as if the fence were a pommel horse—toward Paolo.

The professor caught Cindy.

They ducked and stuck to the shadows. Paolo held Cindy up by his shoulder, as they neared the garage.

Before entering the door to the garage, Cindy placed the rondure on the ground and pointed the dowel. The metal sphere rolled through the open door and into
the lightless garage. Cindy exhaled and said, “You ready?”

They entered the garage. The faint glow from the white paint of Shia
’s Porsche guided them through the darkness. Paolo grabbed Cindy’s wrist, as he heard a voice yelling from inside the house.

“
So, what do you do for a living, Nick from near Massapequa?” hollered the voice.

“
Is that Shia?” asked Cindy.

“
He’s busy talking to a Nick. It doesn’t sound like he’s behind the door,” said Paolo, hushed.

The sphere bumped against the door that led to the house. Cindy slightly opened the door and peered through it. Shia
’s kitchen light was on, but no one appeared to be in her sight.

Shia seemed to be arguing with strangers in another room.
“The lamest scene in movie history has to be the monkey-swinging scene. You killed my childhood memories. You’ve slaughtered them,” he read out loud. He then paused. Paolo and Cindy could hear the sound of his footsteps as he paced randomly around his hardwood floors. “Sarah Geary...ooh, nice pic, but I’ve already apologized for the
Crystal Skull
—do I really have to do it again?”