"That's outrageous!"
Emil Zacharias glared at me with such utter, raging hatred that I had to clench my teeth in order to remain smiling.
He sat behind his desk at the Culver City office of Hallelujah House. I hadn't figured on finding him there-I'd only wanted to leave a note about what I was planning. His secretary, though, apparently had been expecting me. I was ushered into a munificently well-appointed office about the size of a small cathedral. There he lounged, as calm and pouty as a pampered cat.
He didn't stay that way for long.
"I refuse!" he screamed. You can't force my hand on this one, Ammo!"
"I think I can." I lit a cigarette slowly, letting him stew for a moment. "The contract, as I recall it, was for five hundred a day plus expenses. All the bills I'm running up are legitimately involved in the fulfillment of that contract."
Zack leaned forward, palms flat on the desktop.
"I urge you once more, Ammo, to cancel the contract and quit this game. Give it up. I can't guarantee your safety otherwise."
"I'm not here to debate," I said. "I just want you to know that there may be a drain on your finances that I'm certain you'll find a way to replace. Hand over your checkbook."
He stared at me as if I'd asked for certain portions of his anatomy that (rumor had it) he already lacked.
"Don't bother signing them. I'm sure your bank will make good." I held out my hand.
With a feral growl, he pulled a large leather check register from the top drawer of the desk. It slid across the mahogany to my side.
"Thanks, Zack," I said, hefting it under my arm as I rose. "You'll be seeing the results over the next few weeks." I turned back at the door to nod toward him. "If I don't see you again, have a happy New Year."
"Drop dead."
"That," I said perhaps a bit too cockily, "is contractually excluded."
The billboard faced west on the Sunset Strip, visible all the way from King's Road to the top floors of the buildings lining the intersection at La Cienega.
A man in smudged white overalls applied paint to the last letter of the slogan. He lowered the scaffolding and stepped off, taking his brushes and paints with him. One last glance at a proof of the ad confirmed to him that he'd made a perfect copy.
He probably thought it was a promotional teaser for a new film or rock album. Had he known that there were thousands of people such as he painting or pasting up the same message around the world (on Hallelujah House's tab), he might have thought otherwise.
Ann looked at the sign, arms folded. Her golden hair streamed glowingly over the dark blue business outfit hugging her form. She gazed silently at the billboard.
In the lower right-hand corner, a faithful rendition of Michelangelo's God pointed His finger toward Sunset Boulevard. The rifle crosshairs painted over Him intersected His left temple. The official slogan blazed in crimson above Him.
On the First Day of the Year 2000God Will Die…
"You think that no one will take it seriously," Ann said, running one long, earth-toned nail along her jawline.
"Nobody takes advertising seriously except advertisers."
We stood near the Roxy Theater. The day was only beginning to grow warm. Nearly everywhere else in the United States, mid-November brought an unusual cold. Predictions of a severe winter circulated alongside prognostications of far worse.
The tiny painter had disappeared behind the billboard. A moment later, the scaffolding slowly lowered to the ground out of our view. The word DIE… glistened in the afternoon sun like fresh blood slowly drying. We turned to head back to where my car was parked, over on Olive.
"Though no one will take the ads seriously, it gets the idea of God's death into people's heads. That's part of the `set' Father Beathan said was necessary for his sort of method."
"I just hope we're not tipping our hand." She didn't look too pleased.
I shrugged. "No one will believe in a conspiracy that operates out in the open. It goes against human nature. Martin Luther King and Gandhi both unsettled their nation's rulers by openly announcing every move they were going to make. The tactic confused the enemy into looking for secret maneuvers where there were none. It drove them crazy."
Ann nodded with a distracted air. She seemed lost in thought. "Hitler," she said, "announced his intentions, too."
"And," I added, "nobody took him seriously, either."
"Yes, but look what happened to him."
"He was a politician," I said with a shrug. "They all fall, sooner or later."
"Primarily," a voice behind me interjected, "because they misuse magickal symbols." It was a beautiful voice.
Ann and I turned around.
"In Hitler's case," said Thomas Russell, "he made the fatal mistake of reversing the swastika-an ancient symbol of the sun-as a mark of earthly state power. His downfall was guaranteed from that point." He sighed. "I sometimes wonder whether all those pentagrams on the U.S. flag are going to save us."
He looked up at me. "I like your sign. Trying to cash in on millennial fever?"
"Fever?" Ann asked.
"Round numbers," he said, "bring out the mystic in people."
"Yeah," I said. "I'm starting my own end-of-the-world cult. Five grand gets you the privilege of taking orders from me and including me in your will. We'll be in the Mojave watching for the saucers. If it doesn't rain." We reached my car-one of the last Chryslers built. I leaned against the side to stare at him.
"So you're really planning to go through with it," he said. "You really plan to kill Him."
Ann gave me a sour look. "No one will believe an open conspiracy," she muttered, as biting as bathtub gin. Her gaze turned to the young man. "I don't think we've been introduced."
"Ann Perrine, meet Thomas Russell-religious studies student, author, and survivor of the Ad Hominem Attack show. Tom-meet Ann, my financial manager."
They made courteous sounds at each other. He looked at Ann to ask, "You've figured out a method?"
She merely smiled at him.
I did, too.
"Fine," he said. "Play the sphinx. It doesn't matter what you do to God. People will still act like bastards or not, depending on their perception of their own self-interest. It's just that without God, they'll have one fewer light to guide their actions."
"Or one fewer excuse for their evils." I opened the passenger door for Ann. "In any case, they'll have one fewer leader to obey."
"When did they ever obey Him?" Tom muttered. He turned to leave.
I stepped around to my side of the car. Ann had unlocked the door. I nodded a farewell to Tom and reached for the handle.
That's when the first bullet hit.
The side window shattered, the safety glass grasping the fragments like a spiderweb holding dew.
I ducked behind the door and grabbed for my .45.
"Down, Ann!" I shouted.
Tom hit the pavement and rolled between my car and a blue Subaru. Three more shots made their points against the maroon paint job.
I tried to use the sideview mirror as a periscope. No good. I coaxed the engine into life.
"Hey!" a voice screamed from behind. "You're taking my cover!"
"Sorry pal," I muttered. The car coughed and sputtered. "Come on, Friz," I pleaded, "catch."
The engine turned and whined. It sounded like a Cuisinart.
The four shots were all that had been fired. That didn't encourage me to poke my head up. The Chrysler backed out and pulled into traffic without much benefit of navigation. I put our lives into the hands of the other commuters, hoping that their aversion to the cost of auto repairs would keep them from plowing into us. Ann said something under her breath that I didn't catch. If she was praying, I didn't want to know about what-or to whom.
At the summit of Olive, I peeked up to look in the rearview.
Tom raced away from Sunset, crouched low behind parked cars. A white, late model DeLorean Vendetta sedan squealed around a corner.
"Here comes the chase scene!" I hit the accelerator. The car raced to catch up. Other drivers blared their horns. Pedestrians jumped out of the way. Bystanders grinned. They were probably looking for the movie cameras.
"Brace yourself!"
Ann wedged herself farther down into the space under the dashboard.
I tested the other driver's reaction time by ramming the brake pedal into the floorboard. The Chrysler skidded.
The other driver failed the test. The DeLorean's tires screamed in unison. I fought to stay loose and resilient. Then they hit us.
The roll down the hill outside Auberge had been worse. The sedan slammed into us while it was still braking. I took my foot off the brake and let the impact shove us forward. I floored it while the other car skidded sideways. A couple of sharp turns deposited us downhill on La Cienega. Ann sat up and looked around. After a couple miles, I checked for the DeLorean. No sign.
"Ecclesia?" she asked.
I shrugged. "Lead is lead. I don't care who fired it-it's impolite."
"What now?"
I cut over to Crescent Heights and turned toward the Valley. "Let's go shopping."
"This," the man in the lab coat said, "is the Theta Wave Amplifier." He rubbed one pudgy hand against the light blue enameling of the device. His body described the general outline of a small mountain. Or perhaps a large beachball topped by red hair and beard that framed a ruddy face.
"We've been working on it here at Peripherals for the past ten years."
I wasn't interested in a history lesson. Ann was off talking to the owner.
He reacted to my lack of response by clearing his throat just enough to stuff a Twinkie into it. His extremely off-white smock served as his napkin.
"The Theta Wave Amplifier increases the activity of the brain in the four-to-eight Hertz region-the frequency associated with dreaming and creativity. At the same time, it maintains a corresponding balance in the Delta and Alpha region. We use it mostly to intensify dreams in thought-mapping of test subj-"
"Sold."
"Huh?" he said.
"I said, 'sold.' I'll give you the delivery instructions and a check. If you have no objections."
"Uh… why, no." It was probably the quickest deal he'd ever made. Staring at me from under puffy eyelids, he asked, "What sort of research will you be using it in?"
"Something involving a twelve-year-old telepathic hooker."
He blinked a couple of times and reached for another Twinkie. The plate fell to the floor without his noticing.
We took a trip down to the trading floor of Auberge. Even though it was well after midnight, all the shops were open. Our destination was Selene Pharmaceuticals.
An alluring sky-blue dress enwrapped Ann in a disturbingly sexy manner, yet no one on the trading floor noticed her. I asked her about it. She shrugged, though her coolly flip reply contained a good deal of caution.
"I must have applied the wrong makeup."
We wandered through the drugstore, picking up the necessary contraband. As long as we were in Auberge, we could buy and do pretty much what we wished.
Once we left the complex, we were subject to the drearier laws of the City and County of Los Angeles, State of California, United States of America. Which would mean we'd be about as safe as we were in Auberge, but we'd have to handle our own bribes.
Ann placed the drugs in an attachй case while I forked over some gold to the proprietor of Selene Pharmaceuticals, whose paisley shirt sported a patch embroidered with the name Tom. He hardly raised an eyebrow at the way in which we cleaned out his inventory of psychoactive drugs. His mind was quite probably elsewhere.
I lugged the attachй out of the store. "All we need now is a spaceship."
"I've been checking into that," Ann said. "Commercial Phoenix flights are all booked for the next five months, and no one is willing to sublet us some room. I even went as far as finding out about the two old NASA shuttles. It turns out that they're such rusty hulks, they'd cost billions to get working again."
"Well, we can't do it from the ground. The direct broadcast satellites can only be modified in orbit."
She smiled. "There is a way. A company called StratoDyne has filed Chapter Eleven bankruptcy."
I snorted. "I don't think even Zacharias has enough dough to buy a shuttle manufacturer."
"He won't have to. The owner will give us the company and its one working shuttle for practically nothing."
That puzzled me a tad. "Why do you think that?"
She smiled wickedly. "He draws to inside straights."
It was all she had to say.