Queen of Angels Read online

  They were precisely half an hour late. Martin had no doubt he was seeing his benefactors when a tall heavy shouldered man with wavy gray hair and a short hawk nosed fellow with a restrained pompadour stepped into the lounge. They knew him either by the table or on sight.

  “Mr. Albigoni, this is Martin Burke,” hawk nosed Lascal introduced. They exchanged handshakes and nothing comments on the decor and weather. Albigoni’s heart and mind were clearly elsewhere. He seemed stricken. Lascal was either genuinely cheerful or able to mask his feelings.

  “I’ve just had a fine lunch,” Martin said. “Now I’m worried I may not be able to help you.”

  “No fear,” Lascal said.

  Albigoni looked at him squarely but said nothing, his long gray mustache a negative hyperbola over firm pale lips. Lascal handed their menus to a waiter and ordered for both of them. He then spread out his hands for Martin’s benefit: concealing nothing.

  “Do you know Emanuel Goldsmith?” he asked Martin.

  “I know of him,” Martin said. “If we’re talking about the same man.”

  “We are. The poet. He murdered Mr. Albigoni’s daughter three nights ago.”

  Martin nodded as if he had just been informed of a minor peculation in book publishing. Albigoni continued to stare at but not see him.

  “He’s a fugitive, a very sick man, mentally,” Lascal continued. “Would you be willing to help him?”

  “How?” Martin avoided taking a sip from his drink though he fingered the glass.

  “Mr. Albigoni was—is—Mr. Goldsmith’s publisher and friend. He bears him no ill will.” Lascal’s voice did not skim so easily over this prepared statement.

  Martin subdued the raising of an eyebrow. Lunch was becoming quite surreal.

  “Now that Goldsmith is mentally very disturbed, perhaps insane, we’d like you to help him. We’d like to find the roots of his illness.”

  Martin shook his head at the archaisms. “I told you, I’m no longer connected with IPR. I have been told—”

  Albigoni’s stare suddenly came alive. He saw Martin. Lascal glanced at his boss then turned head and shoulders to Martin as if making a wall to protect Albigoni from outside forces. “We can arrange for your return, and for the facilities to be reopened.”

  “I don’t want to work there again. I was kicked out for doing work I knew was entirely reasonable and valuable.”

  “But you didn’t go about it in a reasonable fashion,” Albigoni said.

  “I do not know what is reasonable when politics mixes with science. Do you?”

  Albigoni shook his head slowly bemused again barely listening.

  “Goldsmith needs to be probed,” Lascal said.

  “He isn’t in custody I take it.”

  “No.” Hesitance. “Not yet. We need to know what turned him into a murderer.”

  “He needs legal therapy not a probe.”

  “His problem goes beyond therapy,” Albigoni said jaw clamping on the downbite between words. “A therapist would fix him or change him but that isn’t what I want. I need to know.” Here a flash of angry fire. “He killed eight people. Friends. Of his. Including my daughter. And his own godson. They did him no harm. They were no threat to him. It was an act of deliberate and calculated evil.”

  “It’s only been a couple of days—” Martin said.

  “In theory, could you probe Goldsmith and tell us what caused him to murder his young friends?” Lascal asked.

  A silver plated arbeiter and a human waiter delivered their food, the arbeiter carrying the tray on its flat back. The waiter asked if Martin wished to have another drink. He declined.

  “I’m not being told everything,” Martin said with a sigh. “Gentlemen, I appreciate your hospitality, but—”

  “We can’t explain it all until we’re sure you’re very interested, and will agree,” Lascal said.

  “Tough situation,” Martin said.

  “You’re our best chance,” Albigoni said. “We are not above pleading with you.”

  “You would be richly rewarded,” Lascal said.

  “I think you want me to help you break into the IPR, put Goldsmith in a probe triplex and find out what makes him tick. But the IPR has been closed down. That’s clearly impossible.”

  “It is not.” Lascal picked at his farmshrimp salad.

  Martin lifted his eyebrow dubiously. “First you would have to find Goldsmith, then persuade the state and federal government to reopen IPR.”

  “We can and will reopen IPR,” Albigoni said. Lascal glanced between them uneasily. “Paul, I don’t care whether I live or die right now, and the possibility that Mr. Burke will go to the federals means little to me.”

  “What does Carol Neuman have to—”

  “Please listen to me,” Albigoni said. “After he murdered my daughter and the seven others, Emanuel Goldsmith came to my penthouse at Airport Tower Two in Manhattan Beach. He confessed to his crimes and then he sat on my living room sofa and asked for a drink. My wife is on an anthropological retreat in Borneo and doesn’t know. Nor will she know until…the probe is completed and I can explain why he did it to her. If you conduct the probe I guarantee that IPR will be reopened, that you will return as its director and that you will have sufficient grant money to keep you fully employed in research for the rest of your life, however long that might be.”

  “If I don’t end up therapied and confined for violating federal psychological rights,” Martin said. “I can’t do my work, can’t do what I’ve spent my life trying to do. That’s punishment enough. I don’t need criminal disgrace as well. I think I’d better leave now.” He started to get up. Lascal held his arm.

  “Mr. Albigoni was not exaggerating. He’s willing to put his entire personal fortune at your disposal.”

  “Just to learn what makes Goldsmith tick?”

  “Just that. We then turn him over to the LAPD unharmed for trial.”

  “You don’t want me to therapy him—-just probe?” Martin’s hand shook. He could not believe such a Faust was being pulled on him.

  “Just probe. If there are answers to be found, find them. If you fail to get answers, the honest attempt is sufficient. Mr. Albigoni will still fund you. The IPR will be legally reopened.”

  “What is Carol going to do—how is she involved, besides being therapist to your daughter?”

  Albigoni stared at the table in silence for a moment, then reached into his pocket and produced a card engraved with J N M. “When you’ve made your decision, use this card in your phone. Tell whomever answers a simple yes or no. We’ll contact you and arrange details if your answer is yes.”

  Lascal slid out of the booth and Albigoni followed.

  “Wait, please,” Martin said hand still trembling. He reached for the card. “What sort of guarantees do I have? How do I know you’d fund me?”

  “I am not a thug,” Albigoni said softly.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Burke,” Lascal said. They left. Martin slapped the card on the tablecloth near a glass of water and watched a bead of light dance over the three letters.

  Then he picked it up and pocketed it.

  I loved her more than she could ever know. It filled me with something the usual I suppose cosmic implications blurring my vision. Hers was a mild infatuation; enough to inspire her to lubricity. The lubricity lasted for some thirty-seven days and then I was eased aside with the proper proportions of delicacy and firmness necessary to persuade a headstrong love-idiot. The irony was I had done just the same to another young woman a month before and so in time I saw the tit for tat truth the slippery all-too-obvious: had I gotten what my cock said I wanted I would have been miserable in picos. That was when I grew up if not wise. That was when I wrote down all this nonsense that made my reputation about the ecology of love. Thanks to Geraldine another fingerprint squeezed tight into the old clay.

  8

  “I do not understand why you care about Goldsmith.”

  + Adust loyalty.


  Richard fumbled his tale to a conclusion and dourly inspected his audience. There were seven in the lounge, a coffee tea and wine ranch corner rear the Pacific Lit Arts Parlor.

  “I still do not understand why you cared about that old fart,” Yermak persisted. He dunked his pasty white donut leaving islands of powder in his red wine. At twenty the youngest in the lounge Yermak looked on Richard with mild amusement. “He was capable of anything. Bad writers murder us every day. The death of stinking prose.”

  Ultrima Patch Thule silked to Richard’s defense. “We’re specking murder here,” she said, thin voice distant as grass. Ultrima wore wire rimmed glasses eschewing even physical therapy for her dim eyes.

  “Fap me for my green age but that’s what I’m saying, he’s murdered us all.” Yermak thinned his face in disbelief at their density.

  Richard saddened into silence looked down at his thumb and four fingers resting on the beaten oak veneer. He could not forget the grim determination of the pd’s face accusing and angry; now this. He tried to remember Goldsmith’s last words to him and could not. Perhaps he should have specked the change. He was tired. Still shuddered from the rough morning. “I wish to say—”

  “Ah, fry that!” Yermak spat, leaping away from the table and knocking his chair back with a clatter. “Fap me my green and knock my words, I knew he had it in him, the fart.” Raspberry. “Say I to concern.”

  “Sit down,” Jacob Welsh ordered. Yermak righted his chair and sat eyeshifting, nose aimed like a dog under his trainer’s whistle. “Pardon my friend’s enthusiasm but he has an overstated point.”

  “I will admit,” Ultrima said, “Goldsmith has not charmed much lately. Nor shown his face.”

  “He killed them,” Richard said. “He was one of us and he killed them. Are we not concerned for our own?”

  “Not one of me. I am one,” Yermak said, face contorted. “May I quote the fart, ‘I do not aspire. I be.’”

  “You’ve read and memorized,” Ultrima accused with a glow smile.

  “We have all,” Yermak said at Welsh’s nod. “I regret my callow. Richard, we admire your concern and age but it hardly matters what Goldsmith has done. He abandoned us even while he walked here, left us behind for the adulation of the combs, and no shady can ever respect him again, not even you.”

  “He was a friend,” Richard said.

  “He was a whore,” Welsh said, demonstrating again that the unseen rope between himself and Yermak carried more than physical tension.

  Richard looked around the small group. Two who had not spoken yet, sisters Elayne and Sandra Sandhurst, seemed content to sip their tea and listen warily. Richard saw in Welsh’s and Yermak’s eyes something he should have sensed already; here was anger that had not existed before he brought the news. Here was fear that their connection with Goldsmith would bring them trouble from the pd and the city from where the power really lay in this land—the combs, the therapied.

  + Madame de Roche said it wouldn’t be but the pd may not share her opinion. I have already been accused. Perhaps again? Sharp and clear: quicksand harassment isolation pain. I’ve avoided these pictures since Gina and Dione.

  + I’ve been asleep fifteen years.

  The sharp awareness faded and he closed his eyes for a moment bowing his head. “He was a friend,” Richard repeated.

  “Your friend,” Yermak observed with false calm.

  “Richard is our friend,” Elayne Sandhurst said.

  “Of course,” Yermak agreed irritated they might believe he thought otherwise. He glanced reprovingly at Richard.

  + Thinks I bring discord weaken his place. Their places here are all so weak. They feel helpless.

  “My apologies,” Richard said.

  “Apologizing for what?” Jacob Welsh asked abruptly. “We’re certainly not sorry you told us. We are never sorry to have our opinions confirmed.”

  Sandra Sandhurst lowered her knitting to her lap and drew her lips together. +Norn in judgment; only valid judgment the cutting of our threads.

  “He is a world famous writer, and we all knew him. He was good to all of us.”

  Yermak raspberried again. “He slummed, condescended.”

  Elayne said, “He did not slum.”

  Yermak stood up and knocked his chair down again.

  “Such drama,” Elayne said. She turned away disdainfully.

  “Fap you,” Yermak said blithely. Jacob Welsh leaned his head back and stretched.

  “We’ve had enough, my friend,” he warned Yermak with barely concealed approval. “Two upheavals are quite enough.”

  “I will not sit again not with these,” Yermak said.

  “Time to leave then.” Welsh stood. “Your news is useful, Richard, and I suppose that’s enough. Your loyalty is admirable but we do not share it.”

  “I don’t think it’s loyalty,” Richard said. “If he’s murdered he should be therapied—”

  “But we don’t therapy even our worst enemies, Richard,” Yermak intoned, leaning over him. “I wouldn’t put anybody through that. Better he were dead. Better still if he had never come near us.”

  Richard nodded not in agreement but to wish them off.

  “Don’t forget the reading,” Elayne Sandhurst said cheerily. “Bring your best.”

  “I don’t write anymore,” Yermak said, sneering.

  “Then read something from your dark past,” Ultrima suggested. When Welsh and Yermak had left she turned to Richard. “Honestly. Such children. We’ve never really liked them here…they are so close, so weird.”

  “Like brothers or lovers yet they are neither,” Elayne Sandhurst said.

  “They need help,” Sandra suggested and at that all but Richard laughed. Help was not something the untherapied sought. Help was a kind of death to those who cherished their flaws.

  + We should all live in shade not in the sun. Like insects.

  My first name means god is with us. My last name means worker in gold. I choose words instead; they are much more valuable for being so common, and so misused and misunderstood. As for having god with me; I don’t think so somehow.

  9

  Elevating alongside South Comb Two Mary Choy watched the great mirrored arms rotate to focus the low sixteen sun on Pasadena. She took an external expressway, spending one of her municipal emergency transit credits to get a car to herself.

  Exploring the Colonel Sir John Yardley connection would be perilous. She knew enough of federal politics to see the Janus face the United States turned toward Yardley. Embraced by Raphkind, openly shunned now but in the closet perhaps still silky. Yardley might be federally useful and ultimately LAPD answered to the federals. The department was more than half funded by the National Public Defense. To go any further without departmental approval would not be politic. Mary wanted that approval before the day was over.

  Los Angeles Public Defense Command occupied a three tier block on the favored west side of South Comb Two. The long beanpole of the expressway, in proportion very like a taut stretched human hair, with no visible means of support but its own ten meter hexagonal cross section, carried three express elevators. These stopped at levels chosen only by their passengers, unlike most of the internal arteries of elevators and transports within the comb.

  She took her seat in the carefully cushioned chair and endured the rapid acceleration. In the moments before the door opened as the elevator slowed she felt as if she were floating. This was only slightly less unpleasant than the weight.

  The west side looked out across the old communities of Inglewood Culver City and Santa Monica, now covered with great reddish brown slashes as the old city was leveled and new combs encroached upon shadow. In the max-dense hills of Santa Monica layer upon layer of what some netwit thirty years before had called insulas grew like cave wall crystals, dazzling white at noon but now blue gray in the onset of evening. Here and in the stabilized deep sunk pads of Malibu was where the notyetchosen waited for vacancies within the combs. Vacancies were becomi
ng more and more rare as rejuvenators plied their controversial trade, turning good citizens into multicentenarian eloi.

  Mary Choy was too young to attract a rejuvenator’s pitch but she had gone on eloi busts and seen the interiors of many platinum comb domiciles.

  She withdrew from the elevator and walked purposefully into the lobby. From the acrophobic view of the city to this large inner directed self contained cavern, horizontal slit windows at hip-level affording little relief, was always a small shock to her. Mary felt it as an abrupt discontinuity like a change of key or even scale in music. Arbeiters moved purposefully on narrow paths near the walls leaving the center open for foot traffic. A central circular desk occupied by two young men in green office uniforms jutted from the floor. Overhead an apse sparkled with sheets and curling ribbons of peaceful light in the cathedral quiet.

  “Pd investigator M Choy,” said the young man on her side of the desk as she approached. “You have a quarter till appointment with federal coordinator R Ellenshaw.”

  She had made her appointment with pd supervisor D Reeve. News was speeding and she had guessed right. Large green eyes steady on the greeter’s face, she said, “Fine. Do I wait?”

  “Not here, please,” the greeter said. His eyes pinpointed her with faint disapproval and obvious longing. “You’ll have a seat in third tier, lobby two.”

  She narrowed her eyes and fixed on the greeter until he averted. Then she shivered slightly nodded and walked away adding an extra lilt to her stride. Disliking that common mix of critique and lust she wished to faintly strut the transform and increase the tension. It was a neutral flaw, not socially damaging but perhaps provocative. A distant revenge on Theo. The greeter would not disapprove of Theo but might not lust for her either. Why