Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

Oh, they saw me, all right.

What will we do?

Stanley doesn’t answer. The cyclone fence isn’t far, but he doubts they could clear it in time; anyway, they’d have to drop straight into the sloped channel of the LA River to get away, and he doesn’t want to try that in the dark. But moving farther into the backlot is no good, either: they’re apt to get tripped up or boxed in if they can’t see where they’re going. And now the way they came from is blocked.

Two white beams are moving down the street of brownstones: heavy flashlights, the kind with big square batteries slung beneath. The two studio guards are moving like cops move — keeping plenty of space between them, holding their lights away from their bodies — and Stanley can tell they’ll be tough to shake. He didn’t see whether the guard at the gate was wearing a pistol, but he’d bet that these two are. They’re coming through the darkness like men with guns.

We have to run away, Claudio whispers. They will find us.

Just sit tight. We ain’t done here yet.

It is no good to sit tight. We can’t see where to hide. They know this place.

They damn well will see us if we run. That’s what they want, is to flush us out and shoot us. I didn’t come all the way out here to get rousted by these clowns.

Stanley, Claudio says. Your man is not here. No one is here but them. It is stupid for us to stay.

The guards are close enough now to make out their faces: handsome, cold-eyed, unworried. Each has what looks like a thirtyeight special revolver in his right hand. Off-duty cops, Stanley figures, moonlighting for extra cash. They won’t be slow to pull the trigger. He could use Claudio as a decoy, split them up, ambush one, take his gun away. If he can circle back to the mound of debris, there’s bound to be something there he could crack a skull with. A piece of rebar, maybe.

I will go to them, Claudio says.

Huh?

I will go to them. When they take me away, you will go back through the fence. I will meet you on the road. Where the bus dropped us.

Stanley unglues his eyes from the moving lights and looks at Claudio. Have you flipped your wig? he hisses. Whaddya mean, you’ll go to them? And do what?

Claudio’s still watching the guards; Stanley can see his dark irises click from one to the other. His right hand is firm and warm on Stanley’s shoulder. His expression is calm, alert. I will talk to them, he says.

Stanley takes a deep breath. Kid, he says, if they call in the cops, you’re done for. They’ll ship you back to Mexico. If you’re lucky. Is that what you want?

They will not call any cops.

Yeah? How do you figure that, smart guy?

I will be very sorry to them. It will be no problem. He turns to Stanley and grins. I have a nice front, he says.

Stanley opens his mouth to speak, but Claudio is already standing up, stepping from the bushes. If you do not see me in one hour, he says, go back to the ocean. I will meet you at our headquarters.

He’s walking down the middle of the street now, his arms above his head, his toes turned out in a slow saunter. Stanley watches him go. The flashlight beams rake the pavement and converge on him, and in their light his black perfect shape is trimmed by a white corona. Hello, my friends, he calls out. I think that I have become lost.

Stanley’s pulse scolds him in his throat and in his temples. He keeps very still. The guards draw close to Claudio; they vanish at the edges of the light he’s stopping. Stanley can’t hear what anybody says. One of the beams sweeps his way, tracing Claudio’s path back toward the bushes, and Stanley lies flat and buries his face in the redwood mulch.

The light flashes over him: once, twice, three times. When he hasn’t seen it in a solid thirty seconds he looks up again. The guards have put their pistols away; one holds his flashlight at Claudio’s back, while the other stands in front, a hand alongside his neck. He seems to be pinching Claudio’s ear like a schoolmaster, though the gesture could also be a caress. His light is aimed at Claudio’s throat, making his face unreadable, his eyes and mouth into black voids. After a moment, the three of them turn, walk, and vanish around the corner.

Stanley waits for the guards’ engine to start, for the crunch of their wheels, for the spillover from their headlights to fade from the canyons of façades. This seems to take a long time. When everything is dark and silent again, he jogs toward the burn, retracing his steps as best he can.

He’s back to the spot where they jumped the fence in what seems like no time at all, but after a couple of tries he realizes he’ll never clear it on his own: it’s bowed badly inward, and he’s neither strong nor heavy enough to bend it back without Claudio’s help. There are too many lights to the south, too many houses, so he heads toward the river instead, looking for a spot where he can slither under. This is hopeless — there’s a tension wire strung along the base, an inch above the ground — but eventually he comes to a tight corner with an endpost he can climb. He throws his jacket over, throws the combat pack after it, and winces as it clatters on the dry ground. Then he grabs the rough loops of wire, digs in with the toes of his shoes. Scared and impatient, he catches his leg on a barb as he’s coming over the top; his jeans tear, a gash opens in his calf, and for a bad moment he’s tangled, tipping forward, about to be flayed by his own weight, slammed facefirst in the dirt. Then he rights himself, measures out his breaths — staring at the black ridge of Mount Lee, a spillway impounding the lights of the city — frees his leg, and drops.

He backtracks until he finds streetlamps, pavement, houses with lit windows: old couples playing gin rummy, families gathered around TV sets. The neighborhood streets lead him to the freeway. He’s jogging now, blood drying on his ankle, uncertain of the time; Claudio said to meet in an hour, but of course they have no watches. Stanley feels like it’s been at least that long since they split up.

When he comes to the bus-stop, Claudio’s not there. Stanley throws the combat pack on a bench and sits and waits. Then he stands up. Beyond the padlocked studio gates he sees no movement, not even the occasional glint of headlights. To the east, the dark form of Cahuenga Peak slowly takes shape against the purple night sky, and after a few minutes a reddish moon bubbles up behind it, not quite full. Stanley watches as it rolls across the sky, going yellow, then white.

He sits again, opens the pack, takes out The Mirror Thief . A streetlamp overhead gives plenty of light, but Stanley doesn’t read, can’t concentrate. For a second he has the urge to throw the book, as hard as he can, at the studio gates. He imagines it flying from his hand and flaring into a wall of fire that sweeps the whole valley clean — or taking wing, swooping through the dark like a great brown owl, finding Claudio and carrying him to safety. Stanley believes the book to be capable of such feats. He believes it has promised him as much.

But Stanley doesn’t throw the book. The Mirror Thief stays shut in his lap, inert like a jammed pistol, as Stanley revisits its contents from memory.

Westward rise the twin oneiric gates, horn

and ivory, each one skull-sprung from sleep.

Half-awake, Crivano laughs at the asperity

of fire. So spake the alchemist, “Calcination

is the very treasure of a thing; be not you

weary of calcination!” In this manner only

can the foul substance by red levels be reduced:

bot bar bot

unglimpsed behind the white-hot furnace door,

made new behind the unfurled cloak of night.

How would Crivano handle a fix like this? It’s a dumb question, for a bunch of reasons. Crivano would have come alone, for one — or at least he wouldn’t have come with anybody he’d think twice about leaving behind. Stanley may not know all the stuff that Adrian Welles knows — history, alchemy, ancient languages, magic — but he ought to understand this much. He ought to know how to act like a thief.