Sleepless. Part 7

CENTURY CITY WAS WHERE THEY KEPT THE LAWYERS.

Being lawyers, they were among the first to have themselves walled in when it became apparent that the pandemic wasn't going to simply kill the poor and be done with it. Century Park East and Century Park West were sealed at Santa Monica and West Olympic by twelve-foot-high concrete tank barriers. Constellation Boulevard was now a pedestrian mall running between CPE and CPW The only way in or out was through the checkpoint gates at the north end of Avenue of the Stars.

The record labels, production companies, networks, talent agencies, and studio corporate offices that made CC home had long been seeking this kind of security from interlopers. No longer did they have to fear an unsolicited demo tape, head shot, or spec script. The gun towers were finally in place, and, rumor had it, a convoy of armored fighting vehicles was parked in one of the 20th Century Fox lot's many empty soundstages. Ready to whisk the inhabitants to safety should they come under siege.

I had a pa.s.s.

Of almost equal importance, I had a car that was suitably obscene and a wardrobe that matched. I'd been careful to choose both for the occasion.

Conspicuous consumption was the mode in these circles. Driving a Prius might still have scored status points in West Hollywood, but the power elites had taken to declaring their faith in the future and the sustainability of rampant consumerism by rededicating themselves to the better things in life.

African famine relief, environmentalism, election reform, alternative fuels, building homes for the poor, greenness of any shade, they all seemed to smack of ostentation, a self-glorifying austerity that betrayed a distinct lack of optimism.

If the rich could not be seen to believe that things were going to improve, then what hope for the ma.s.ses?

I gave my name at the gate, let a black-uniformed, typically chiseled and severe Thousand Storks security contractor scan the RFID tag on my national ID card, pressed my thumb into a biometric reader, waited while they called to confirm my appointment, and took the parking ticket the contractor handed me, noting the sign that warned I'd be charged twenty-five dollars for every fifteen minutes, without validation.

I repeated a similar process at the security desk and elevator bank of Century Plaza Tower North.

In the old days the fortieth floor would not have been considered the penthouse level, but the top four floors of both buildings had been cleared of their regular tenants, replaced by multiservice command and observation posts. Southern California Theater of Operations Command was headquartered there, with liaison presences from the CIA, FBI, ATF, NSA, DEA, CDC, FEMA, CBP, LAPD, LACS, and, I'd heard rumored, representatives from the DGA, SAG, and WGA.

But that may have been one of those L.A. jokes.

The very top floors of both towers, the forty-fourth, had been evacuated entirely. It had been necessary to clear the floors so that additional load-bearing beams could be installed to support the weight of the batteries of Avengers and I-HAWKs that had been brought in and deposited on the roof by Chinook helicopters. That combination of antiaircraft weaponry meant to ensure that nothing from a traffic copter to a C-5 Galaxy could be crashed into the towers.

Hindsight paving the way, as usual, to a safer future.

Standing at a corner window of the north tower, looking up at the tip of an I-HAWK poking over the edge of the south tower, I couldn't help but reflect on the chaos that would ensue when one of those things launched, raining debris and shattered gla.s.s onto the rooftop tennis courts of 2000 Avenue of the Stars. Bankers and lawyers, maimed during their lunchtime matches, would sue the Pentagon into submission and put a lien on the GNP.

"Is something amusing you?"

I turned from the window, erasing the slight smile that had sketched my lips for a moment.

"Mutilated lawyers."

She looked up from the mechanism in front of her, considered, and squeezed a few drops of Birchwood Casey Gun Scrubber onto the tip of a cotton swab.

"Yes, I get that."

I came across the polished bamboo floor, gliding in my silk-stockinged feet, hands in my pockets, where they were required to be until I exited from her presence. Relieving me of my weapons not having been sufficient security as far as her various attendants and staff were concerned. Though it wasn't me personally they were so leery of. From what I understood, everyone admitted to her office was required to do the same.

An overly talkative greeter from her lobby staff, whom I had run into by chance having a drink at the Cameo in Santa Monica, shared with me over too many sake-tinis that visitors arriving pocketless were provided with an adjustable plastic belt equipped with two small cloth sacks lined in disposable tissue. He felt that a tasteful black blazer, with pockets, might make guests more comfortable, and intended to make such a suggestion to his employer's personal secretary the following morning.

After that encounter I never again saw the young man at the office. I don't expect it was the temerity he displayed in making such a suggestion that lost him his job but rather the lack of perception and awareness that it indicated. Not realizing that the point of such a belt was to disgrace visitors who didn't know enough to bring their own pockets was a demonstration that he was simply not one of her kind.

But no one was her kind.

No kith, no kin, no kind.

Unique and terrible. As exotic, and nearly as mythical, as the dragon tattooed on her arm.

I never forgot my pockets when I came to call. My hands rested inside faun summer-weight wool, the bottom of the left pocket seamed with a thin strip of nearly silent MicroPlast that I could push through should I want to get at the Boker Infinity ceramic drop-point blade tucked alongside my s.c.r.o.t.u.m. A bit of custom tailoring I'd asked for after I'd first come to see her in her office. Mr. Lee had made these particular pockets for me before he was killed by a stray bullet fired by a Little Ethiopia gangster robbing the Jack in the Box near his shop.

For the record, I had nothing to do with Mr. Lee's untimely death soon after he made these and similarly styled slacks in black and navy. I would never dream of killing an excellent tailor, not even to keep a secret that could endanger my life.

However, in the interest of full disclosure, it was not by chance that I ran into the young greeter at Cameo. I had, in fact, overheard him mentioning to another greeter his plans for that evening and managed to find myself there as well. In truth, none of the intelligence I gleaned from him was of particular use, but he was shallowly charming, very fit, extremely pliable, and left the hotel room I arranged for us long before I stopped feigning sleep and rose to order breakfast.

So, not a total loss.

Chizu, lady of a thousand storks, watched as I approached her work-table. A rectangular slab of redwood, polished and smoothed by the oils in her hands. She knelt before it on the floor, one thin cus.h.i.+on under her knees, another between her narrow b.u.t.tocks and the heels of her tiny feet.

She didn't look up.

"Is it always something dead or mutilated that amuses you?"

I stopped gliding, rose on my toes, lowered myself to my heels.

"No. Rarely. If ever. It was, I a.s.sure you, a rueful smile."

She made a slight hum and turned her attention to the gutted 1928 Rem-Blick in front of her, dabbing gun cleaner along the armature of one of the thirty keys of the vaguely insectoid typewheel typewriter.

"I need you to find something for me."

I allowed my gaze to elevate, letting it hopscotch over the dozens of cubbyholes that made up the long back wall of her office. The cubbies were filled with typewriters from every era, up until word processing software had dealt the machine its deathblow. Well, not quite, as evidenced by a Chinese Generation 3000, manufactured in 2005, displayed in an upper cubby. And truly, as things deteriorated, the manual typewriter was poised to make a comeback. But though all of these, from a wood-cased, gold paint-detailed 1873 Sholes & Glidden, to a marvelously streamlined East German Groma Kolibri, and up to the comical 1980s styling of the Generation 3000, were fully functioning, none were destined to endure greater use than the occasional gentle cleaning such as the Rem-Blick currently was undergoing. In an endless rotation she tended to the machines, oiling moving parts, replacing dry ribbons, carefully blowing away dust with a can of compressed air, and returning each to its lighted cubby on the display wall until its time came again.

The remaining walls were gla.s.s, two vast angles of it, honing her workplace to a point, aimed decisively west, at the ocean, and beyond to her native island home.

I stood with my back to that place whence she had been sp.a.w.ned, considered typewriters. And her request.

"Finding things is not generally a task for which I am best employed."

She picked up a small square of gauze.

"But one you are capable of executing."

"Capable, yes. But."

She ran the square of gauze along the underside of the V key, removing excess oil that had run there.

"But you would rather not?"

I twiddled my fingers, an invisible gesture of relative indifference.

"I'll admit that as I get older I am not particularly interested in work that is less than challenging. Recovering lost or stolen property does not tend to offer many opportunities for new experiences."

She dropped the soiled gauze in a steel tray that would more traditionally have been used for b.l.o.o.d.y surgical instruments.

"You will be paid at your accustomed rate."

I reserved comment, never having conceived the prospect of working for less than my accustomed rate. I had long pa.s.sed the point where working for scale, no matter how much I loved the project, was a serious consideration.

I returned my gaze to the typewriters.

"There is something I've been wanting myself."

She looked up from her work.

"Yes?"

I nodded eastward.

"An artwork. Or, more accurately, a fragment of an artwork."

She set her swab aside, and white-gloved fingers indicated I should elaborate.

I closed my eyes.

"In September of 2007, at the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City, a dozen professional motorcycle riders, led by Wink 1100, skidded about on a 72-by-128-foot plane of black-painted plywood. As they rode, bright orange paint layered under the black was revealed in fishtails and streaks."

I drew my toe across the glossy floor in a long arc.

"The work, in toto, was the creation of Aaron Young, who later supervised Mr. 1100 as he rode solo and embellished the piece with various flourishes, including a somewhat legible 'A.Y. '07' as signature."

I made a squiggle with my toe.

"Upon completion, the ma.s.sive work was to have been cut into pieces of sizes varying from quite small bits suitable for wall hanging to billboard panels. There was, however, a fire that destroyed the vast majority of the piece's surface area, leaving just a few corners and edges to be recovered. Instantly recognized as being eminently collectible, these were snapped up by an a.s.sortment of real estate barons, investment bankers, rock stars, and third-generation old-money heirs. The most coveted sections being, no shock, those singed by the fire."

I opened my eyes.

"One of these sections has become available."

She pulled the customized four-finger glove from her left hand. The fifth finger on all her left gloves had been rendered superfluous at a time in the distant past when she had chosen to make a point of some kind by cutting off the pinkie on that hand.

She set the glove aside.

"It sounds hideous."

I nodded.

"Most definitely. In every possible way."

She pulled off her other glove, this one traditionally fingered.

"And the price is beyond you?"

I shook my head.

"Not at all. Which is not to suggest that it is in any way inexpensive. But no, it is not the work itself I need from you."

I turned and looked south, where we once could have expected to see, on an especially clear night, smoothly circling dots of light, tranquilized gnats, dense air traffic over LAX.

"I operate quite well on a local level, but secure cross-country s.h.i.+pping has become a chancy operation at best, and toxically expensive."

I faced her again.

"I am more than capable of bearing all the expenses, but having done so, I don't care to trust anything but the most reliable of transportation services."

Her left thumb folded across her palm and rubbed the nubbin of scar where her finger once was. A gesture that gave every appearance of unconsciousness, yet one I was certain originally had been adopted to unnerve. But in the realms of power and influence where she now moved, I doubted that very many were disconcerted by the prospect of self- mutilation. I imagined that the calculated detachment that informed the movement had been employed so long that it had evolved now to possess the spontaneity to which it had once only aspired.

An observation that might have gotten me killed had I given it voice. Chizu did not care to have her psychology plumbed. It implied the plumber's interest in the whys and wherefores of her dealings. An interest that could never be considered healthy. For the interested party.

She stopped rubbing the scar.

"You would like access to my infrastructure."

If I had been free to, I would have raised a hand in denial.

"I wish to place a s.h.i.+pping order. And to ask that you personally see that the order is carried out."

She rose, a grace that suggested a thread running from the ceiling to the very top of her head, pulling her gently to her bare feet.

"To have s.h.i.+pped a hideous painting?"

I faced the windows again, looking north this time, the inexhaustible glow of the wildfires above the rim of the Santa Monicas as evening fell.

"It's meant to be part of my apocalypse collection."

She came around the worktable, her hedgehog haircut no higher than my shoulder.

"In the face of this view, I see no need for such a collection."

I shrugged, helpless in the grip of one of my obsessions.

"I can't help but think that the creation of this piece was an undeniable sign that the end was looming. Even if it wasn't regarded."

She stood at the window, confronting her reflection.

"Does it have a name, this harbinger?"

I smiled at her reflection.

"'Greeting Card.'"

Her lips twitched and drew into a smile that she allowed.

"Yes. I see the appeal."