The Croning Part 3

"Do you know where my wife is?"

"Si, senor. Can't you relax and have a nice evening? Let your troubles resolve themselves. As I say to you before, these wayward women will only bring you sorrow. No use chasing after them like a dog chasing chickens."

"I say we round up some putas and go to the donkey show!"

"If you aren't cops," Miller said, "then what are you?"

"He's not gonna listen to reason and get wh.o.r.es with us," Ramirez said. "Montoya said so."

"Shut up, Lupe," Kinder said.

"Easy, easy. Just sayin'."

"Direccion Federal de Seguridad."

"Mexican Intelligence? Where's your suit, your badge?"

"I hope you can keep a secret, senor Miller." Kinder stared coldly at Don, and it was similar to the creepy look Montoya had used, except Kinder was built like a truck and carried a knife large enough to slice off a man's arm. "Sure, yes. You're all right, Miller. We can be friends."

"Mexican Intelligence... Good lord. You go after the real bad guys."

"Si, senor. We go after the bad men."

"You're surveilling Mich.e.l.le? What on earth for? Is that legal?"

"Everything is legal in Mexico, especially for us, stupido," Ramirez said and snickered in that ugly manner of his. "We make the rules."

"We're not watching senora Miller. She's not important. We're watching Professor Trent."

"Oh, that rat b.a.s.t.a.r.d. How I'm growing to hate that sonofab.i.t.c.h."

"Hey, there's the spirit," Ramirez said and slapped Don's shoulder.

"What's he mixed my poor sweetie up in? Oh, G.o.d, it's nothing to do with the Reds, is it? Jesus, she'll be blacklisted..."

The men exchanged glances. Kinder said, "Nothing to concern you, or your wife. This is an internal matter, a matter of state security. Come, finish your beer and we'll take you home. Tomorrow all will be well."

"'An' all manner of things will be well'," Ramirez said.

"Lupe, for the love of f.u.c.k, please shut up."

"Okay, I am."

"No way, Jose," Don said, a tiny bit drunk on top of everything else. "She isn't spending another night doing G.o.d knows what with Mr. Sweden. No, sir. I insist, secret agent Kinder, sidekick Ramirez, your two goons, that you escort me at once to these precious ruins of yours." He slapped the table for emphasis.

"But, senor... What will you do if we find them?"

"I'm going to challenge him to a duel. Anybody got a gun?" Don swayed in his seat, steadied by Ramirez and one of the aforementioned goons, Gunter.

"Ay yi yi," Kinder said and again glanced at his friends. "So be it. Montoya promised you'd prove intractable. Lupe, my apologies. To the car, then. Ondalay."

The brutes Gunter and Clubbo a.s.sisted Don to the car as his legs had all but given out from exhaustion after the adrenaline rush, loss of blood, and the free-flowing booze. The trio sat in back, Don wedged in the middle, his head resting on Clubbo's shoulder. Clubbo smelled pretty good; a combination of liquor, smoke, and aftershave. Don drifted in and out of reality as Kinder dropped the hammer and they hurtled along a winding road that led ever farther from the city into the night.

"My people were Celts," Ramirez said.

"Celts, really?" Don was slurring. "I thought there was something different about you."

"My clan is special. Real black sheep. We were into the groovy s.h.i.t, hombre. We danced to the music of the old black G.o.ds."

"Celestial music," Kinder said, his voice heavy with melancholy. "Those must've been the days."

"Don't be sad, compadre. The wheel rolls round and round all hail Old leech!" And this shout was echoed by Kinder and the heretofore silent Clubbo and Gunter.

"My wife would love to talk with you," Don said.

"Oh, yeah!"

"Shut, up, Lupe! The f.u.c.ker will climb over there and kick your a.s.s." Kinder feathered the brakes and slewed the big car wildly, throwing everyone around.

After they'd straightened out and things were calm for a few moments, Ramirez said as if muttering to himself, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. At the fall of the Western Roman Empire in Britannia, we were there, man, sticking the shiv to those wop f.u.c.ks. We limed our hair and fought b.u.t.t naked, painted in blue and red. We set ourselves on fire, hacked off the heads of our enemies and made fruit bowls outta their skulls. Got one in my pad, too. Fought with copper and bronze and flint. Men f.u.c.ked men when putas were scarce, and the dogs ran scared. Everybody ran scared. So don't screw with me." His eyes were wild in the rearview and Don waved at him, limply.

"n.o.body's s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with you," Kinder said. The pair pa.s.sed a marijuana cigarette back and forth and the Cadillac swooped in broad, stately arcs across the faded centerline. Too dark to be certain, but it felt mountainous.

"I'm okay," Ramirez said after taking a manly drag on the cigarette. He popped his eyes at Don in the mirror. "Be good, puppy. You're under surveillance."

Something huge and dark blotted the stars, and snuggling into Gunter's armpit, Don realized his instincts were absolutely correct-they were in the mountains. Even then, the powerful Cadillac toiled beneath the shadow of a tower of rock. The warm wind grew dense with the tang of pollen and sap, a cloying sauna humidity that instantly stuck Don's shirt to the small of his back and caused him to imagine Aztec ziggurats wreathed in vines and a terrible shadow of winged lizard gliding across the rainbow landscape, an Aztec Princess, nude as fire and over her shoulder a storm cloud, a cloud of something at any rate, a ball of raveling yarn crackling with lightning and closing fast. He groaned and Ramirez barked laughter, and then the car stopped.

Don tried to make a break as soon as the doors opened; jackknifed his head into Gunter's jaw and then flung himself across Clubbo, elbowing and clawing the big man as he went. Gunter wasn't any more fazed by the headb.u.t.t than Kinder had been by getting socked back at the cantina. The brute caught Don's belt and he and Clubbo threw him from the Cadillac. Don landed face down in the dirt and the goons casually kicked him in the ribs and thighs until he couldn't suck enough air to scream.

Kinder called a halt to the beating.

Gunter and Clubbo helped Don to his feet and led him by the headlights' shaft to a mossy boulder and propped him against it. Things happened as if in a dream-someone stripped his jacket and shirt; a quick yank and there went his belt and pants, everything dumped into a canvas bag Kinder held open. Don didn't resist; his limbs were heavy as lead and focusing was impossible.

In his delirium he was far past resistance or holding grudges. He said, "Am I being Shanghaied?" and everyone chuckled and Ramirez patted his arm, careful to stay clear of the blood pumping from his nose and the gore yet trickling down Don's leg from the savage dog bite. To Don, his thigh and lower leg were a ma.s.s of grue, no better than a deer haunch smashed by a car, but he felt only the dullest sensation of pain at this point. Insects churred in the thick brush that surrounded them. Rocks and gravel everywhere, the dim outline of a cliff just at the edge of the headlights' glow; a cave mouth. Someone had painted an inverted crucifix and a crude devil face against the pale rock of the mountainside and other, obscure symbols and glyphs whose significance escaped him. "Are these the ruins?"

"There are many, many ruins in Mexico." Kinder straightened and handed the bag to Clubbo. Clubbo walked to the car and tossed the bag inside. "There are many wonders. I regret to say, compadre, that these ruins your wife spoke of do not exist. I could not take you somewhere that does not exist, so I bring you here. This is the Cave of the Ancients. A dangerous, dangerous place, unless you know where to step. There is a hole inside the entrance. Not far, not far. It may interest a man such as yourself. The hole is bottomless. I ask myself if such a thing as a bottomless hole is possible. We shall go see it now, eh?"

Don briefly contemplated the panic that should've coursed through him. He felt most excellent, adrift on a pink cloud. These men were his facilitators, solicitous to his every need, and his need was to continue floating, to feel the balmy breeze rushing over his damp skin. Mich.e.l.le's face bobbed to the surface of his muddled consciousness and gazed at him with loving disapproval, then burst into vapor and troubled him no more as the men hoisted him upon their shoulders and carried him like a football hero. Ramirez walked ahead with a torch he'd fashioned from a stick and some rags and by that queer and reddish light, devils, or the shadows of devils hooked to the shoes of the men and capered across the stony earth.

The walk lasted an eon and the stars hardened and fossilized in the heavens and Don's blood slowed to stagnancy in his veins. Ramirez began to sing as the path rose and the group came to the mouth of the cave, and though completely incapacitated physically and mentally, Don was amazed by the size of it. The thing yawned like the spiked maw of the Ouroboros and what Ramirez sang was a song of death, of sacrifice.

They proceeded into the cave and along a tunnel. The floor was sandy and occasionally the men's shoes crunched upon bits of shattered bottles of revelries past. And they continued through a snaky side pa.s.sage, emerging at length into a great cavern. Stalact.i.tes spiked the ceiling and the torchlight reflected from deposits of quartz and mica. Even to Don's reduced sensibilities, the chamber felt ancient and malign, a cyst in the granite sinew of the mountain, and fear kindled in his belly. A feeble thing, his fear, pacified and quieted by whatever drug his companions had slipped him at the cantina.

"Aw, s.h.i.t," Don said to no one in particular as he was laid across a slab of worked stone with a smooth concavity marking its axis and a series of deep grooves carved into its foot. The surface of the slab had been fashioned and planed so that it canted toward the edge of a pit. The pit spanned perhaps six feet. An odor of decay wafted from its depths.

The men lighted more torches that were fixed to sconces of blackened iron in the walls. Each man stripped to the waist then donned the headdress and mask of a demon or beast, or demonic beast, and joined his fellows in the wicked chant, this accompanied by the blowing of reeds and clashing of cymbals and piercing ululations that echoed most alarmingly from rock that had seen slaughter and sadism aplenty in its epochs as sentinel and receiver of blood.

Clubbo and Gunter were monkey demons, Kinder a bird of prey with a yellow beak, while Ramirez had donned the trappings of a monstrous bat. Kinder took the ugly stone dagger from his belt and held it loosely, like an ice pick. Ramirez brought forth a similarly brutal stone tomahawk and danced recklessly near the pit, waving a blazing torch in his other hand.

Their dreadful song reached a crescendo. Don considered struggling, tried to flex his hand, tried to swing upright, and found that his extremities were beyond leaden and now short-circuited, nerveless lumps. He closed his eyes and waited. There came then a strange and hypnogogic interlude which might've lasted seconds or minutes and the song resumed altered; shriller and discordant. When he managed to summon the strength to look, he beheld the wondrous sight of Ramirez levitating as if a puppet jerked off his feet by a string, then flying in reverse into the greater darkness of the cavern. He shrieked piteously and flailed with the torch and vanished.

Don couldn't see any of the other men as their screams and wails diminished in opposite directions. However, the acoustics were treacherous. He fell unconscious for a much longer duration. When he awoke, the torches had died, leaving him in blackness. His body and mind were free of the drugged la.s.situde. He shook violently with chill and pent animal terror and those were bad moments.

Someone whispered, "Let the dark blind you on the inside, Don. There are frightful things."

A family bound for market found him on the road near a small southern village two days later; cut, bruised, suffering from exposure and a gash on his temple likely received in a fall. He'd lost twenty pounds and skated very near death. Mich.e.l.le came with the police and officials from the U.S. Consulate. Even Dr. Plimpton frantically hopped a flight and ensconced himself in the hallway, berating himself for some mysterious reason Don was too addled to comprehend.

She sobbed and lay with him on his hospital bed and kissed him a thousand times, explaining that he'd completely misunderstood her last words the morning they'd parted-she and Professor Trent hadn't visited any ruins. There were no ruins. Instead, they'd attended an informal lecture at the home of a German scientist at his villa in the hills. No phones, as the fellow was a notorious recluse. The bus had blown a gasket, so the guests were detained for nearly a day waiting for fresh transportation. An awful misunderstanding.

Naturally, the local authorities questioned him regarding who he'd spoken with and where these people had taken him. Already, the details of names, faces, and events slipped through his memory as eels through a skein.

Don remembered nothing of his escape from the cave. Within a few years, his only solid recollection of that Mexico vacation was the superheated romance with Mich.e.l.le in their hotel and vague impressions of snooty bureaucrats, menacing street thugs, and a parade or party where everyone had worn horrible masks. The rest was simply smoke. For her part, Mich.e.l.le never spoke of it again.

CHAPTER TWO POINT FIVE.

Wenatchee, 1980 The entomologist died with his b.l.o.o.d.y lips pressed to Agent Crane's ear; a slimy crimson seal that burst when the scientist's head lolled, fell to the pillow. Agent Crane stepped away from the bed and its gla.s.sy-eyed pa.s.senger. The dead black bulk of a revolver lay near the corpse's left temple. The revolver was still warm, still reeked of oil and scorched metal. So much for their Person of Interest. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his gory earlobe.

The wind came against the farmhouse. A draft licked Agent Crane's ankles. Limp drapes breathed like balaclavas to the small-mouthed windows. The windows were dark and cold. Everything rattled, sighed, subsided.

"Melodrama, day-o." Agent Barton leaned against the door jam. A tall man, he appeared huge because the doors and halls were tacked up in the '20s when economy of design was king. "What did he say?"

Agent Crane wiped his hands.

An antique clock ticked and clicked on an antique dresser; a bulb sizzled in a bra.s.s lamp. There were many framed pictures; generations of them, arranged by columns. The pictures existed under foggy gla.s.s, subjects made spectral by shadows, their abrupt irrelevance to any living being. Below Agent Crane's shiny wingtips, the tattered throw rug and warped floorboards, came dim, aquatic creaks and b.u.mps of other agents on the ground level. Men in crisp suits knocking about with flashlights and cameras.

"Hey, Tommy," Agent Barton said.

"Yeah."

"Did he say something?"

"Yeah." Mr. Crane finished wiping his hands. He didn't know what to do with the cloth, so he held it between thumb and forefinger. Something crashed downstairs; nervous laughter followed. A dog barked in the yard. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it. Fifteen minutes sooner..."

"Fifteen minutes sooner he might've plugged you or me instead if himself. Want coffee?" Agent Barton didn't wait for an answer; he went to the dresser and used the phone to brief Section. Section had alerted the local authorities, would coordinate the necessary details. After disconnecting with Section, he took a deep breath, visibly composed himself for the call to their field supervisor. It was a short conversation-Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. We'll be back tomorrow in the PM, ma'am. He shuddered, smiled in a perfunctory manner. "We're done here. Want coffee? Let's get some coffee."

Agent Crane nodded. The techs would scour the room, ants on jelly. Maybe there was a note, a recording. Probably nothing. He followed his partner into the narrow hall, down the narrow stairs. They acknowledged the other men, the ones with the gloves and the specimen bags.

Once they were in the car and crunching slowly along the gravel lane, Agent Crane began to relax. He lighted a cigarette. Bony poplars clawed at the stars. Clouds blacked a steadily widening swath of the lower heavens. Three cruisers from the Chelan County sheriff's office met them head on, ghosted by, trailing rooster tails of dust. Red and blue flashes wobbled through the empty fields and imprinted behind Agent Crane's eyelids.

"What's with you?" Agent Barton said.

"I couldn't make it out."

"Couldn't make out what? What Plimpton said?"

"Yeah."

"Looked like he had something on his mind."

"Did it."

"Yep. Hey, there's that truck stop on 97. Burger and coffee."

"OK." Agent Crane cracked the window. Agent Barton hated it when he smoked in the car. Agent Crane lighted another. His head felt thick, felt like a lead ball. The adrenaline was seeping from his system, leaving him shaky and depressed.

They made the highway. Every mile reduced Agent Crane's sensation of dread, until what remained curled in the pit of his stomach. It hit him this way sometimes, but not often, not in years. This wasn't the suicide, either. Plimpton was a photo, a paragraph in a dossier. A pathology report now. Meat.

No, it was something else, some indefinable thing. The other team members had felt it too, judging by their flared nostrils and unhappy smiles. Agent Barton felt it as well; he drove too fast. Barton always drove fast when he was in a mood. Maybe the team would uncover something. Maybe there was a secret stash of chemicals, guns, incriminating doc.u.ments. Bomb-making supplies. Agent Crane didn't want to go back and hang around. He preferred to wait for the report.

He said, "You think she knew?"

"She called it. She must've known something."

"Could be a coincidence..."

"And what do you say about coincidence?"

"f.u.c.k coincidence."

"Right. So she knew, she was right about that much. But, if they don't find anything hot, it's going to look like another circle jerk."

Barton said, "You think they're going to post us in Alaska, huh? Don't worry-Alaska's pretty nice in the fall, long as you pack some electric underwear."

They drove in silence for a while. Then, Crane said, "I wish I could've made out what Plimpton was trying to say."

"Uh-huh." Barton's eyes were slits in the dashboard glow.

"He...slurred. Mumbled. You know."

"Probably didn't see you, Tommy."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Brains all over the wall. He didn't see you."

"He was pretty gone."

"That's what I told Section."

"Good."