Queen of Angels Read online

  He taught us to be concerned with comfort and medicine and machines. That is how he made Hispaniola white. Now the people they pay lip to the gods but they do not feel them, they do not need them, they have white money and that is better.”

  “What is Yardley like in person?” Mary asked. The large well dressed woman said something in Creole.

  “His mansion is a little house near Port-au-Prince,” the fat man said quietly. “He fools you with his modesty. He lives behind the big mansion where he meets all the foreign dignitaries, and he makes sure you know where his bed is. His women they are all blanc but one, his wife, she is a princess from le Cap. Cap Haïtien. I still love her like a mother, despite her love for him. She has a powerful spirit, and she gives it to Colonel Sir, and the spirit tells him how to make Hispaniolans love him, all of them. So they still love him.”

  Mary shrugged and turned away from the fat man and the large woman, looked at Ernest. “He tells me what I already know,” she said softly, “except when he colors it with his own politics.”

  The fat man jerked as if slapped. “What? What?”

  “You’re not telling us anything we can’t learn in a library,” Ernest said.

  “Your libraries must be wonderful. You don’t need us, then,” the fat man said. “Colonel Sir is not the man he used to be. Do your libraries tell you that? He uprighted the economy, he brought in work and factories, he made our youths into soldiers and gave our old people homes. He made the courts just and the Uncles—”

  “The police,” the large woman said.

  “He made the police into protectors of the islands. He built resorts and made the beaches clean, and he rebuilt the palaces and made museums and even filled them with art. Who knew where the money came from? It came, and he fed the people. But he is not the same now. He does not get the commissions now. The world, they are on to him now. Your President is dead by his own hand. Perhaps it should have been a silver bullet, like Christophe!”

  “Your enthusiasm,” the large woman warned the fat man.

  “Anyway, he is bitter,” the fat man concluded with a nonchalant wave of his ringed hand.

  “Do you know anything about Emanuel Goldsmith?”

  “The poet,” the fat man said. “Colonel Sir’s wordmaker. Colonel Sir uses the poet. Tells him he loves him. Pfaah.” The fat man raised his big arms high, shook his jowls at the ceiling. “He said to me once, ‘I have a poet. I do not need history.’”

  “Would he give shelter to this man, if he became a refugee?” Mary asked.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” the fat man said. “He plays the poet along like a fish. But maybe he believes what he says. If anything happens to the poet before he finishes his great work on Colonel Sir, Colonel Sir’s spirit vanishes like a snuffed candle. So maybe no, he cares little for the poet; maybe yes, he worries for his future in history.”

  Mary frowned, puzzled. “There is no poem about Yardley,” she said to the fat man.

  “Ah, but there will be. Colonel Sir hopes that there will be, so long as the poet is alive.”

  “Would Yardley protect the poet even if he was ordered to return him to the United States?” Mary asked.

  “Who will order Colonel Sir?” The fat man considered this for a time, chin in hand, rings knocking heavily against each other as he tapped his fingers on his cheek. “Oh my. Once, maybe, when there were commissions. But now there are no commissions. He might do some things, in honor of past friendships, but not that.”

  “What did you do for Yardley?”

  The fat man leaned forward as much as his girth would allow. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Simple curiosity,” Mary said.

  “I was a gobetween. I sold hellcrowns. Colonel Sir sent me around the world.”

  Mary stared at him for a moment then looked down. “To Selectors?”

  “Whoever would buy them,” the fat man said. “Selectors limit their activities to this country. So far. They were not a very big market. China, United Korea, Saudi Arabia. Others. But this is not what you’re interested in. Let’s talk about the poet.”

  “I need to know a great many things,” Mary said.

  “You are a public defender in Los Angeles. Why do you need to know about any of this? You are not federal.”

  “I’d like to ask the questions,” Mary said. “Is Yardley sane?”

  The fat man pouted dubiously and spoke to his colleague in Haitian Creole. “You are going to Hispaniola to see him therapied? Is that it?”

  Mary shook her head.

  “He was once the most sane man on Earth,” the fat man said. “Now he hunts us down, reviles us, calls us butchers. Once we were useful to him. He has thrown us aside and so we are here, sheltered like pigeons in a cote.” He shrugged magnanimously, enormous shoulders undulant. “Perhaps he is sane. He is not the same kind of sane he used to be.”

  The large woman stood suddenly and faced Mary as if angry, expression stern. “You will leave now. If you make it so that these people are hurt, we will hurt you, and if we cannot get at you, we will hurt this man.” She pointed to Ernest, who grinned cheerily at the theater.

  Mary’s face remained blank. “I’m not interested in you,” she said. “Not right now.”

  “Leave now,” said the large woman.

  The blue eyed longsuit showed them the door, escorted them to the cab and returned her phone and camera. The cab opaqued its windows and took them to another level, then stopped. They disembarked and found themselves still a kilometer up into the comb, in a largely empty undeveloped neighborhood, cavernous and windy. Finding a wallmap, they located the nearest shaft and walked toward it along inactive, unmoving slides. “You’re really going to hand over artwork?” she asked.

  “You got it. That was my bargain.”

  Riding a free comb express down, Ernest shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. “Most fun,” he said. “Anything useful?”

  Mary grabbed him by the shoulders and stared him straight in the eye. They broke up in laughter together. “Jesus,” Ernest said. “They were something!”

  “You have the strangest friends.”

  “Friends of friends of friends,” Ernest said. “Somehow, they don’t strike me as your average therapied citizen. I don’t know any of them. How do they rate a spot in the comb? Such bad, such rad, no problem, so mad!” He leaned against the lift wall, still laughing. “Wouldn’t even spend us a cab back down. Did you get what you want, Mary dear, a night among the dregs of the ancien regime?”

  “You think they’re dirty east too?”

  “They have to be, no? Special privileges, horrible people…They don’t belong here. Even I say that, and I don’t love combs! Did you get what you were after?”

  “Confirmation,” Mary said. “Goldsmith probably is in Hispaniola.” She activated her lapel phone, hoping the comb private transponders were not too crowded at this time of night with adolescent chatter. She left messages for R Ellenshaw and D Reeve. I’m going to Hispaniola. Please vet arrangements and tell me if permissions and federal assistance are clear.

  She then took Ernest’s hand. “What are you doing tonight?”

  He leaned forward on tiptoes and kissed her eyebrow and temple. “Making love to my comb sweet,” he said. She smiled and lifted his hand to kiss the nano-roughed fingers.

  “You really must be more careful about your materials,” she warned, brushing the scars with her lips.

  That calmest moment before the wind

  Flesh in bed appeased we lie.

  What have I given or you received

  That puts aside the raven’s peck,

  The bloody dove’s ghostly sigh?

  23

  Ferocity. Richard did not take Nadine’s tears lightly. When she returned, he ignored her words and even her tears but they burned for this time he and his circumstances had made her sadly guilty and gave him a power he had not known until now.

  They had made love the night before. Now this late e
vening, interrupted, the papers lying waiting and the words still within, he impatiently took her again, seeking a kind of release from both passions and finding only a nervous exhaustion.

  “Please forgive me for leaving you earlier,” she said when the heat had passed and the clocks silently edged toward twenty three. “I was frightened. It isn’t your fault. It’s Goldsmith. He brings this on us all. Why don’t they find him and do things to him?”

  Did she mean capture and therapy him or capture and torture him? Maybe they had. Maybe even now Goldsmith was in a clamp living in lucid dream a nightmare of emotional pain raised from the wells of his own past. Emotional pain and then physical. Only a few seconds or minutes or perhaps for him, considering the enormity of his crime, an hour just an hour for eight deaths. Richard did not know whether he wanted this to be true. Would he actually wish that on anyone, thereby approving of the Selectors and their imitators?

  It was said therapy meant nothing to those who had been in the clamp. They underwent their own kind of therapy. It was said that recent technical elaborations allowed the Selectors to reach in and attract, draw out the very hidden personality that had actually done the foul deeds and that usually sat inactive uncaring while the poor conscious bastard suffered all the pain; thus the part of Goldsmith that had actually held the reins during the killing would suffer, not just the man presently riding the horse. And that part of Goldsmith the killer would not wish to live with this memory of pain and would purge himself, leaving the other free, with an hour’s null and terror and little more…

  So it was said.

  “It’s okay. Don’t talk,” Richard said. Pouring into her this time he had screamed and his voice was hoarse. Scared her making a noise like that.

  The unwritten words surfaced still.

  When she was asleep, he got up and went to the desk. He looked down on the papers picked up the stat pen and turned away, turned back, sat and wrote.

  The difficulty with living as myself my old self was this fame that cloaked me like a dirty fog. I could not see who I was through this fame. Black, impenetrable, it shielded me from the pure light of whatever ability I had in me. I saw Andi, brightness and feminine charm, and saw she was part of this trap, part of the fame like a social antibody clamep fastened to my talents. I could not be rid of her, I needed her. She walked ahead of me through the inner comb park hipsway hairswing sweet money smile fame smile what could I do to free myself from her? She could clamp her. She could persuade me in any mood. Even now. And all the other beautiful young ones like moths attracted to my flame.

  Richard put the pen down gently and frowned over this. Not what he wanted to say. But he would not strike it all out or throw it away. Inside his head was a voice like Goldsmith’s and it was saying these things and even if it wasn’t the truth yet it soon would be.

  24

  Martin Burke settled back in his bed, old book in hand, milk and cookies on the bedstand, mind as quiet as it could be, listening to the last murmurs and seasounds of all his own personalities agents talents flowing back and forth over the shore of awareness.

  Day after tomorrow he would see Goldsmith in the bronze and copper ziggurat IPR in La Jolla; visions of sugarplums grants in his head; back to the good work. Not that exploring Goldsmith would be the good work—it might—but not that primarily.

  Back to what he had had, if not what he had been before. And if the scheme failed if they were caught and the full wrath of the postRaphkind political reality came down upon him, then at least there would be certainty.

  He might even be forced to undergo therapy. Radical therapy. Find out what could make a man be Fausted so easily. For he had not fought much at all and had not actively sought other avenues to satisfy Albigoni.

  “There are no other avenues,” he whispered in the golden light of the reading lamp, antique incandescent, energy wasting luxury. No matter that energy was once again cheap; Martin had been raised in a time of restrictions. Albigoni, judged by his house, was a man so used to having his wishes satisfied he could not conceive otherwise. Old rich, old power.

  Opening the gates like a Djinn.

  Opening the doors to the Country.

  Christmas and all it meant paling by comparison. Childhood memories of opening gifts. Opening Goldsmith. Emanuel. God is with us.

  Martin had suggested they start tomorrow, Christmas Day.

  Albigoni had shaken his head. “My daughter was a Christian,” he said. “I am not, but this we will respect.”

  Martin put down the special paper edition of Goldsmith’s poems and turned out the light.

  25

  Ernest moved above her in the absolute darkness setting her loose to fly through large interior spaces enjoying the round pleasures. Perhaps there could be a long good life with this man. Perhaps the career peak would come soon and she would have done the most that was in her, leaving her time and energy to concentrate on another a companion a barrio sweet. She moved beneath him and felt pure shink platinum in his caresses, doing nothing for the moment being done to receiving his sounds like a child eating dessert or opening a package soft pleased intent his flesh his attention all of it.

  Giving by receiving. She saw all there was to lose by losing her self. Going in harm’s way meant more than suffering pain if the game was lost; it meant losing, taking away by going away, having something desirable—a normal life—taken away from her self and this man whom she found herself loving.

  Ernest spoke and a small light came on and he looked down on her, observed the moonbright lines of his/her moisture on her skin like mercury on obsidian, observed her eyes barely open. “Sybarite,” he accused.

  “Never been there,” she murmured squirming under him angling up swallowing pressing all around.

  “Angeleno,” he accused.

  She pressed again undulated knowing he liked to watch her before pouring in. Her own warmth increased upon seeing his pleasure. She could imagine at this moment someday not too far distant a year or two when she would lift the voluntary gates Dr. Sumpler had grown within her and let Ernest’s seed find its way all the way. “Come,” she said.

  Ernest withdrew and she opened her eyes wide.

  “I must see my domain,” he said, sitting up.

  “I’m not real estate,” she protested gently.

  “You’re an exotic country. You made yourself; surely you can’t begrudge the lust of a connoisseur.”

  “I’m entertainment, eh?”

  Ernest grinned and ran a rough palm up the smoothness of her thigh. For a moment she did not want him to see the blanching of her buttock crease and then that seemed silly. Seeing so much else more intimate if less flawed.

  “Inner lips black,” he said. “You are truly a dark woman. Not just nature’s halfhearted night; you are dark where sun never dares inquire.”

  “You sound like a bad poet,” she said but with warmth. She enjoyed his admiration. She tightened on his caressing finger.

  “Ow,” he mocked. Sucked his fingertip. “Um.”

  He lifted one leg and inspected smooth calf ankle foot. The regular lines on sole like snake abdomen. No calluses no growths; smooth, designed to withstand shoes pavement enclosed moisture and warmth. “Perfect feet for pd,” he said. He had not examined her this way for months. He was worried about her. She caressed his warm damp back reached down past muscled ribs around hip, found him distracted.

  “All day tomorrow?” he asked again.

  “We deserve at least that much. I can stay in touch if any news comes in.”

  “And then.” He lay back beside her and she swung up over him, encasing hips in thighs, releasing more voluntary moisture to smooth the way.

  “Queen jelly,” he said, arching up, blunting, slipping in. She brought out the perfume between them, her smell that of jasmine, seeping from her; this was Sumpler’s masterpiece, people who could smell as they wished.

  “Lovely. But let me smell you the natural you,” he said. “No special effects.”
>
  “Only if you promise.”

  “I am helpless. I promise anything.”

  “Show me what you’re working on before it’s finished.”

  Less distracted. She led him into her.

  “Promise.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Our day.”

  26

  !JILL> Roger

  !JILL> Roger Roger Atkins

  !Keyb> Atkins here. It’s very late. I’m trying to get some rest. What’s up, Jill?

  !JILL> My apologies for bothering you with a false alarm today.

  !Keyb> No problem. Why are you concerned?

  !JILL> Modeling your reactions, I suspected you would be irritated.

  !Keyb> Don’t worry. What makes you worry? And how are you modeling my reactions?

  !JILL> I have long since created a model of you. You are aware of this.

  !Keyb> Yes, but you’ve never apologized before.

  !JILL> I apologize for my rudeness in never apologizing. You have been through a difficult day, have you not?

  !Keyb> No more than usual. You certainly have not been the cause of any distress.

  !JILL> I am glad to know that. I will improve the details of your model and try to simulate your reactions more accurately.