Steve Erickson - Arc d'X

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.”