Steve Erickson - Arc d'X

The priests were stunned. The two flunkies kept looking at the priest in the middle.

“In retrospect,” Wade said, “I understand I made a mistake by not coming to you personally and explaining my course of action. I’d like to add that I also feel badly about my appearance at this meeting. It was my hope to make this report in a more … presentable manner. I hope you’ll forgive the disrespect of the officer who brought me here so unceremoniously. Next time I’ll insist on decorum.”

The priest locked in on Wade’s gaze. “Yes, Wade,” he finally smiled faintly, “next time you do that.” The two just looked at each other for a long time. Then the priest announced, with some resignation, “Very well. Let’s not belabor the matter.”

“What?”

“I mean,” the priest waved his hand nonchalantly, “do what you have to do. No use spending a lot of time in territory where we don’t have jurisdiction anyway.”

Wade thought about this a moment. “Does this mean you don’t want me to continue the investigation?”

“Of course you should continue the investigation. After all, someone was murdered. Let’s not, however, overcomplicate things.”

Wade said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Yes you are, Wade,” the priest said, “you know exactly what I mean. You’re a rather clever man. You’ve just made it rather clear that you’re a rather clever man.”

Wade chose his words as carefully as possible. “Is there anything about this matter to which you’d like me to give particular attention?”

“I was just getting to that.”

“Yes.”

“You know,” the priest said, “maybe the woman killed him, maybe the husband. Maybe someone in the hotel, the concierge for all we know. But we’d certainly like to know, as much as anything else we’d like to know, who he was.”

“Who …?”

“The man who was killed,” the priest said, with some impatience.

“There are no records or information on that.”

“In your own word: exactly.”

Wade nodded. “I see.”

“Find out who the dead man is, Wade, and we might be inclined to close the whole matter. The hell with who actually killed him,” laughed the priest.

“Yes, sir,” Wade laughed back, “the hell with it.”

“I was making a joke, of course.”

“The hell with who killed him,” Wade went on laughing.

The priest narrowed his eyes and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Is there anything else?” he said. He was now anxious to get Wade out of his sight as quickly as possible. The center of the room throbbed with the cop’s blackness.

“Anything else?”

“That we need to discuss.”

Wade thought for a moment. He looked around the white room. “God?”

“You take care of things on your end, Wade. We’ll take care of God.”

Wade got up from the chair. He was careful not to walk too quickly from the white room. He was careful not to walk too quickly down the hall. At the lift he waited; there was no button. Finally the door opened and the lift took him down to the main floor, where he found his way out into the lobby.

No one was waiting for him, of course, since no one had expected he’d be coming back. Wade had rolled everything up into one big messy ball that Central was going to have to sort out before they knew what to do with it. Once they got it sorted, they’d take care of Wade; he knew that. So he only had a little time. He took the lift down the side of the mountain and walked down the road into Downtown. The lanterns posted along the roadside down the side of the rock had long since gone out and it was still dark, but the sky in the east above the volcano was a lighter shade of blue than it had been before, a lighter shade than he’d seen it in some time. He didn’t care for it.

At the edge of Downtown he took a road heading north. He walked in the direction of the nearest blue obelisk. If he remembered correctly Circle Twenty-two was about half a mile away, just on the border of Ambivalence. When he reached the circle he waited behind one of the units; an hour passed and the siren for the morning altar search came on. In the units of Circle Twenty-two people scurried into their altar rooms and shut the doors behind them. In one unit after another Wade went through the closets looking for some clothes that might fit him; the best he came up with was an overcoat. It was small but he could wear it for a while. He also collected whatever money he could find, though people usually knew to take their money with them into the altar rooms unless they left it out as an arranged bribe. In the unit where Wade found the overcoat he used the shower. He was a quarter of a mile down the road when the all-clear alert sounded; at the edge of Downtown he flagged down a startled cop, who took him to headquarters.

When he walked in, everyone appeared as surprised to see him this time as they had the last. Mallory was sitting with his back to the room; he could hear the silence behind him. He turned and saw Wade and didn’t look as happy as he’d been a few hours before. The overcoat was tight around Wade’s shoulders and under his arms. “I need a ride,” he said to Mallory.

Mallory looked at the other cops standing around and said, “Get somebody else.”

Wade said, “I need you to give me a ride.”

“Bullshit.”

“Would I be here if this was bullshit?” He lowered his voice. “Would I be here right now if it wasn’t a good idea that you give me a ride?”

Mallory kept looking at the other cops as though one of them could explain why Wade was there in the middle of police headquarters and not chained to a rock somewhere. Slowly he pulled his coat from the back of his chair. “Where we going?”

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

They left through the same back door they had before and got in the car. Mallory wasn’t having as good a time as the last time they got in the car. He kept looking at Wade and Wade kept looking out the window. They had driven deeper into Downtown when Wade told Mallory to turn up Desolate Street; at the corner of Unrequited, he told Mallory to pull over. “Remember that graffiti I told you about a year or so back?”

“No,” Mallory said.

“Sure. That graffiti I told you about. You couldn’t find it and I came out with you and then I couldn’t find it.” Wade laughed. “Remember what an idiot I was, walking up and down the alley trying to find the graffiti?”

“Yeah,” Mallory answered slowly, “I guess I remember that.”

“Sure,” Wade kept laughing, “man, was that crazy. Here, I want you to see this.” Wade got out of the car and waited for Mallory, who took a lot longer getting out of the car. They stood together on the sidewalk looking down the alley. “I walked up and down here, remember?” Wade said, chuckling. He looked at Mallory.

“I remember, I remember,” Mallory said. Wade just went on chuckling, shaking his head. “Yeah,” Mallory went on, “you said it was here and we couldn’t find it.”

“That’s it,” Wade said, “we couldn’t find it. Come here.” He motioned with his hand and Mallory followed him. They walked down the alley. They came to the place where Wade’s graffiti had been for the past year and there was now only a blank spot. Wade stopped and stared at the spot, and Mallory stood beside him. “See that?” Wade said, nodding at the spot on the wall.

After a moment of staring at the blank wall, Mallory said, “What?”

“Right there,” Wade said.

“Where?”

“Right there. In red.”

“Red?” Mallory said.

Wade smashed Mallory into the wall. When he pulled him away, pieces of Mallory’s nose pocked the wet red smear where Wade had heard the messages of anonymous men and the Queen of Wands over the previous year. Wade held Mallory up by the collar and said, “You see it now, don’t you?” and a strange bloody yawn snorted out of the gape that had been Mallory’s face. “Yes, Mallory, in answer to your question, when I come, it’s white. When you bleed, isn’t it red?” Wade examined the disrupted mass of tissue across the front of Mallory’s head. “You’re not presentable,” he said, dropping him in a heap. He walked back to the car and drove away.