Sleepless. Part 12

4sale, thousands of comic books-These were my husbands. I'm not sure what they are worth, but we don't have room for them and I'm afraid they are a fire hazard and our area keeps losing services from the DWP and the fire department can't get pump trucks up our access road. I just want to get rid of them. Bring a truck and as much bottled water as you can carry and you can have them all.

All my worldly possessions-The things I have spent a lifetime acquiring. Everything from my baby blanket to the house I paid off just last year. Fifty-two years worth of material objects. My letters and business papers. My 2007 BMW 6 series. My 56 inch plasma screen. My sectional. A collection of 12 numbered Hockney prints, framed. My Talor Made graphite clubs. My three Armani suits, 44 long jacket, 42/34 pants. My All-Clad pots and pans. My grandmother's wedding shoes. A really nice mountain bike that I never use. My letterman jacket, lettered in both football and track. My first tooth and a lock of my baby hair. A gla.s.s jar with a fistful of sand from a beach in France from my honeymoon. My divorce papers. A penny squashed flat after I put it on a train track. I have no family. I'm giving it all away. But only to someone willing to move into my house and live here with these things and use them. These are my things. These are what I'm leaving. I want them to stay together. Call me and tell me why you should have my things.

Personals: SLPM 4 SLPF-up late. LOL! Keep me company?

SLPM 4 ANYONE-I'm a virgin, you're experienced and gentle. Hold me.

SLP 4 ???-Alone in my apartment, the front door unlocked. I give you the address and tell you that I'll be in bed with my eyes closed and headphones on. I can't see you or hear you. How will you send me someplace better? Serious responders only, please. I don't have time to waste on anyone without the nerve. And, no, this is not a call for help.

SLP 4 DR33M3R-I'll do anything u want.

Thousands of listings.

I looked around. I tried to find out something that Rose and I hadn't already learned about SLP. I looked at a forum for family members of sleepless, but I could never post. Mostly I looked at the Dreamer listings. All the people looking to buy or trade for it. I placed a couple ads. The only responses I got that went further than one email were from obvious scammers: I HAVE RECEIVED YOUR EMAIL AND WILL BE HAPPY TO ACCEPT YOUR OFFER!!! I AM TRAVELING ABROAD AND CANNOT MEET WITH YOU IN PERSON!!! SEND ME YOUR BANK ROUTING AND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND I WILL ARRANGE A TRANSFER IN THE OFFERED AMOUNT!!! A COURIER WILL DELIVER THE ITEMS!!!.

People were often directed to Dreamer and SLP forums where they could get more information. Mostly ident.i.ty theft scams. A few were legitimate but primarily concerned with counseling, online group therapy. Religious sites, preaching acceptance, conversion, hope, and, most of all, resistance to the temptation of suicide.

Rumors permeated almost all those sites. An insistence that Dreamer was out there, a large supply of it that other sleepless were tapping into. Captain Bartolome said it was "to be expected bulls.h.i.+t." Of course the sleepless were sharing rumors about a secret supply of Dreamer; what else would you expect? It would have been far stranger if there were no rumors. He said, "Look for the money." The money, he didn't need to say, would lead to busts of scale.

But there should be something. Sleepless spend so much time online, there should be something about black market Dreamer. CL is a natural place for dealers to look for customers. But I couldn't find anything.

At the party Hydo had said something about Dreamer that stuck in my head. Pa.s.sing a bottle of Jack Daniels around a table, he'd said Dreamer was "on a special wavelength." He said part of that was literal. He was stoned, but it caught my attention, and I asked Beenie for an introduction. Hydo got more stoned, explained what he meant. Talking about how the RFID tags on the cases and bottles mean there are actual traceable radio signals that tell you where the Dreamer is. "The whole history of each bottle is in the air," is what he said. Which I already knew, but hadn't thought of that way. Not that it really helped.

Why isn't there an audible signal? A visible signal?

There's always a slang at work in drug deals. On CL people talk about 420 and going skiing and taking a vacation, when what they want is pot, cocaine, or LSD, but that was the kind of stuff you could get from an LAPD training pamphlet. I'd been able to pick up most of the cues I needed for my a.s.signment by listening carefully and parsing what I heard. It was like philosophy. You don't glean anything useful with a surface reading of Nietzsche; you have to spend some time thinking about an idea like "G.o.d is dead" for it to be anything but a knee-jerk catchphrase.

But no trace of Dreamer slang or lingo can be picked up. Nothing that could hit the cops' radar and start them asking around the way they would if a new tag started showing up on top of old graffiti.

Dreamer has to be out there. Bartolome said the demand was too great and "the money's too high" for there not to be black market Dreamer. Real DR33M3R.

But if it is there, it is also somehow invisible. Not just down low, but without a trace. And that requires organization: a consciously designed distribution system for the only drug that law enforcement has any real interest in controlling.

Real Dreamer. Actual DR33M3R, in large and reliable quant.i.ties. Pills straight from the factories, stolen in the supply chain. Their absence should be known. The individual pills are traceable through the batch and production sequence codes stamped into them. Bottles and boxes, crates and pallets, all have their own RFID tags. Wherever a large amount of Dreamer may have slipped out of the system, someone must be aware of the shortage. Several people must be aware.

Afronzo-New Day DR33M3R being sold on a large scale. Several people within the production and distribution chain have to be involved in this trade in DR33M3R. Someone, somewhere, inside or outside of A-ND designed the system, recruited those involved and is reaping the bulk of the reward.

Hydo said, "On a special wavelength." Beenie said he thought Hydo knew "the guy."

I get that far, and it slips apart. Because Hydo is dead. Anything he knew about the "special wavelength" is gone.

Why am I writing this? It looks like paranoia.

Sleep deprivation.

I fell asleep on my way downtown. At least I think I must have. I don't remember driving here. I remember driving from Bel Air to a bungalow in West Hollywood (754 King). The girl who answered the door was in perfect "Like a Virgin" Madonna drag. Not dressed for a party or anything, just that's what she wears. That's what her mom told me. She said her daughter and her daughter's friends are all into the same stuff she thought sucked when she was their age. She said she was a punk in the eighties, hated Madonna. She said it doesn't really matter, because her daughter thinks Madonna is just this crazy "old lady that believes in magic and adopts African babies and needs to start acting more her age cuz it's kind of gross when she dresses up in underwear." She said her daughter just likes the old music and loves the clothes. She asked if I had kids, and I told her yes. She said, "Wait and see, whatever you thought sucked when you were a teenager, that'll be what's cool." Then she asked how old my kid is and I told her that I have a baby, and she stopped talking about it.

Her yard is all poppies. She raises them. When the blooms fall off, she slits the bulbs with a razor over and over, letting the sap ooze out and dry in layers. Then she sc.r.a.pes it off and collects it. Homegrown opium. I traded her ketamine (10 milliliters, liquid) for a ball of opium roughly the size of a marble (weight indeterminate). Then I left as two boys arrived, one dressed in "Thriller" red and black leather, the other in "Purple Rain." At least that's what I think happened. I don't remember getting into the car or driving here. It's possible I dreamed the two boys.

I fell asleep behind the wheel.

I could have died. I would have left Rose and the baby alone.

I need to sleep. But I don't know when that will be. I have to meet Beenie. I need to find out what is going on. Something is going on. The world didn't just spin off its axis by itself. It didn't happen all by itself. Not now. Not just in time for Rose to get pregnant. Not just in time for my baby. The world didn't decide to end just in time for my baby to be born.

I need to sleep. But I can't now. So I need to stay awake.

I took two 5-milligram dexamphetamine sulfate tablets. My tongue is dry and my stomach feels tight. I'm grinding my teeth. I don't feel stupid like I did the few times I smoked pot with Rose before I joined the force. I never liked pot, but Rose liked the idea of smoking it together. I never told her how unpleasant it was for me. This feels different. I still feel tired, but not sleepy.

I shouldn't be writing this down. Except that it would be a lie not to.

It's midnight. Time to go inside and find Beenie.

First I'll call Rose and tell her I love her. I'll tell her to put the phone next to the baby's ear so she can hear me tell her I love her. So she can hear me when I tell her that I don't care how she dresses when she grows up. Or who she thinks is cool. Or if she goes out with boys who dress like Michael Jackson and Prince. I'll tell her she can be and do whatever she wants when she grows up. Just that she has to grow up. She has to grow up.

I'm going to stop writing now. I don't think I'm making much sense.

But I know I'm right. I know the world is like this for a reason. I know that someone did something to sicken the world.

And it's not too late. It's not too late. It's not too late. I say that it is not too late.

Chapter 9.

THE MOST STRIKING THING ABOUT THE TWO YOUNG MEN ON the security recording was the tremendous amounts of stress under which they were both obviously laboring. In the first of them, this stress was clearly etched in the the jittery suddenness of his movements, in the habit of constantly raking a comb across his head, defining and redefining the side part in his a.s.siduously composed geek haircut. Finally, and most decisively, his stress was revealed in the way he yanked his Olympic from his retro leather book satchel and sprayed the room without giving any warning that he intended to do so.

It was, for the record, a K3B-M4. So I got the make but not the model.

I got most of the rest of it right. The escalation of the argument with the Korean American, the tactfully turned backs of the workers. And then my re-creation went awry. He did not search the premises. He did not even glance at the travel drive that I could clearly see sitting exactly where I'd been told it would be. He came, he killed, and he left. Leaving the drive.

I watched as the cameras went into delay mode, recording in shorter and shorter bursts at longer and longer intervals, allowing hours to pa.s.s in minutes, slight stutters in the lighting caused as one of the monitors continued to flicker. And then the cameras revived, movement bringing them back to life, and a second young man under duress entered the room.

He surveyed the crime scene with some thoroughness, taking several photos, recording the positions of bodies, the placement of entry wounds and blood sprays. Then pausing for a final a.s.sessment, he noticed the drive, made a brief mental calculation of some kind, took the travel drive, and left. Giving the impression that the theft of the drive was not at all premeditated.

As for his obvious anxiety and stress, they were revealed not in any particular tick of behavior but rather in the contrast between the efficiency with which he went about his business, and the blind distraction apparent in his failure to erase himself from the security hard drive from which I had recorded the DVD I was watching.

I watched it again. I watched it several times over.

His frame was lanky but fit. The haircut wasn't one. It was what had been very short hair neglected over several months. The clothes were practical and inexpensive. Off-brand khaki cargo pants, a plain black T-s.h.i.+rt. Only his shoes were of any particular interest. A pair of black Tsubo Korphs, legendarily durable, comfortable, and ugly. Excellent for anyone who spends a great deal of time on his feet. Nurses and hospital orderlies often favor the white ones. In terms of palette and basic silhouette, he could quite easily have been taken for one of the mercenaries I had killed in the room several hours after he had gone carefully through the procedures I was watching him execute.

But he was not one of them. He was, in fact, a cop. Young, not terribly experienced at detective work, but game and apt. He'd obviously done his homework and listened up in cla.s.s. He went about his business with care, but with concern for the time it was taking, frequently looking at the anachronism on his wrist. I watched and came to another conclusion.

The camera image could be magnified enough for me to see that he was deleting something from the Korean American's BlackBerry That, combined with his time sensitivity, the impulsive theft of the drive, and his stress level, seemed to make a simple case. Dirty cop. Covering up traces of whatever dirty business he had been engaged in there.

This diagnosis was contraindicated by a few details: the time he took to survey the crime scene, take pictures, and check the pulses of the dead. Dirty? Well, certainly he had something to hide. More than likely it was some form of dirtiness. Always best to a.s.sume the worst about a stranger until you know otherwise.

The killer, for instance, had killed out of juvenile rage. There might be money involved, nothing would be more natural, but when it boiled down to the moment of the deed, he simply lost his self-control and, because he had one handy, pulled his gun and opened fire. It was on his face. Not beforehand, not even while he was shooting. But afterward, with smoke still oozing from the barrel of his weapon, the absolute shock on his face. The look that said explicitly, Did I just do that? I hardly needed to see his lips move: Oh, s.h.i.+t. Or to observe the nervous giggle that escaped from them. He'd never planned to go in there and kill those people. He'd just walked into a room where he knew he was going to have an argument with someone and took a high-powered a.s.sault rifle with him. For no real reason. Just because he thought he might need it. For what, he would have found it impossible to say.

The other young man, the one with the well-maintained ancient watch, the practical shoes, and the precise methodology, he'd never have lost control in that manner. Had he wanted to kill those people, he'd have gone in with a plan and carried it out with great efficiency. And possibly still have walked out having forgotten to take care of the cameras.

I was, I will admit it, intrigued.

Not that my curiosity was a matter of concern. I would have had to track him down whether or not I was keen to know just how and why he'd come to be there.

He had Lady Chizu's drive.

Inevitably, I must find him. And take it. And do all that she had asked of me.

Sitting in my Cadillac, spending another late evening in traffic, some hours after the dear French pilot had touched down on the Thousand Storks pad in Century City and reminded me that I had his number, as if I had forgotten, I found a section of the recording where the cop's face was turned almost directly to one of the cameras. I froze it, grabbed the frame, saved it as "Young Faust," connected via Bluetooth to the Canon Pixma in the glove box, and printed several copies. Then I left-clicked the touchpad b.u.t.ton on my Toughbook and skipped back on the recording, watching Young Faust depart backward, and the killer enter similarly, and, would that it were so easy, watched the dead jump joyously to life, expelling bullets from their bodies in sheer relief that it had all been a bad dream. Or so I chose to reimagine the scene.

I froze the picture and considered the killer. I would need no a.s.sistance from business a.s.sociates who owed me favors to identify this face and give it a name. I owned a TV, after all.

Parsifal K. Afronzo Jr. Cager to his friends. Freshly minted ma.s.s murderer.

The policeman, dirty to whatever degree, would likely be seeking him, or vice versa. So then must I.

Chapter 10.

PARK DIDN'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT MUSIC. HIS IPOD WAS FILLED with playlists that Rose made and loaded for him. Music she thought he should listen to. Or things she just thought he might enjoy. He listened to all of them, trying always to listen to them in the manner she suggested.

Listen to this on the ride to cla.s.s, she'd said the first time she made him a list. She did this after buying him the iPod as a birthday present and seeing that it hadn't left the box in the two weeks since he'd unwrapped it. She thought that once he saw how much fun the little gadget could be, he'd start filling it himself, seeking out new music to expand his world. But he didn't.

What he enjoyed was listening to what she chose for him. He'd never have told her what she came to suspect anyway, that he consciously avoided loading new music onto the player so that she would feel compelled to keep doing it herself. Over the years it gradually filled with music that came to be a part of the day-to-day communication between a woman who didn't know how to edit a thought or emotion that crossed her mind and a man who barely understood that there might be a need to communicate anything that wasn't absolutely essential to the immediate situation.

Playlist t.i.tles: The ride to the water Walking on Telegraph Mowing the lawn Missing Rose We're having a baby Cheese sandwich for lunch Keep your head down What I'll do to you tonight Don't forget the toilet paper It's not that big a deal, I'm not really mad at you, just frustrated with my f.u.c.king work The baby kicked me this morning Don't worry so much She has your eyes Come home safe Awake without you When she asked at the end of a day how he'd felt about a new list, what songs he liked best, he never knew the song t.i.tles or the names of the artists. The songs were the messages from her; it never occurred to him to care what they were called or who was playing them. He'd say he liked, That one in the middle, with the happy beat, but it was kind of sad, about the kid falling down on the playing field and everyone looking at him and he just lies there. Or he'd hum the melody as he remembered it. Or, when she insisted, sing a lyric that had stuck in his head.

That's what he was thinking about as he walked down the line of people waiting to get inside Denizone. Every time the doors, designed to look like the much-battered gates of an under-siege castle, opened to admit another tan and fit young thing, Park heard a bit of a song he'd once sung for Rose. The chorus only, sung to her in a high whisper, with a tempo more appropriate to a waltz than to a rock song: This heart's on fire, this heart's on fire, this heart's on fire, this heart's on fire.

It froze him for a moment, just before the velvet rope, the doorman, in the blockbuster-fantasy distressed leather and chain mail of a mythical kingdom, nodding at him.

"'Sup, Park?"

The door swung closed, cutting off the song, and Park came back, letting go of the memory, the night he'd sung it for her.

"Priest."

He offered his hand, and Priest took it, palming an offered vial of powdered Ecstasy.

He held it up between forefinger and thumb.

"Same stuff as before?"

Park shook his head.

"Better."

Priest pocketed the vial and unhooked the rope.

"Big party tonight. Tournament in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Top gladiators."

Park waited while the Priest's counterpart, a young man of similar girth, wearing an equally detailed costume, put a bracelet of brown microsuede around his wrist, fastening it with a pincer that snapped a thin copper rivet into place.

"I'm just meeting a customer."

Priest waved a macelike baton at the door, tripping an electric eye.

"Hope they're in there already. We're at capacity."

The huge door swung open.

"We'll find each other."

Priest offered his fist.

"Have a good one."

Park gave him a b.u.mp, a gesture that never felt genuine to him, but one he'd learned to execute without a grimace.

"Always."

He pa.s.sed into an entryway of textured concrete contoured to look like living stone, the mouth of a tunnel hewed into the side of a mountain, the walls pulsing with projected images from Chasm Tide. Desert landscapes of the Wilting Lands, the Aerie's Village, a pontoon city he'd never seen, it looked scavenged from the remains of a great twentieth-century seaport, and the Lair of Brralwarr, the great dragon worm rampaging on an overmatched band of adventurers.

These would be live player views from gamers currently in-world, snagged and sampled and projected here, stirred and flas.h.i.+ng by, perspectives randomly distorted, colors filtered, resolution mixed and pixelated.

A giant ax blade cut down the wall, and he flinched, recognizing a trap from the Clockwork Labyrinth. He stopped, staring, wondering if he might catch a glimpse of Cipher Blue. It was always possible, watching someone else's game, that you could see, in the distance or close at hand, the avatar of someone you knew, friend or enemy.

But she wasn't there. And then the scene was gone, replaced by the Precipice Baccha.n.a.l, a ceaseless orgy of virtual flesh that endured with ever increasing frenzy in the circular city of Gyre, hemming the edge of the Chasm itself.

A new song was playing. One he didn't know, one that vibrated through the floor and walls, beating at the doors at the opposite end of the hall, past the coat check and the cas.h.i.+er.

Heaped on the cas.h.i.+er's table, trinkets of jewelry, packets and tubes of intoxicants, a stack of gift cards from high-end merchants, a few rare coins, a pair of ostrich cowboy boots, a samurai sword, a bowl full of car keys, each with a pink slip rubber-banded to it, several thick wads of cash money, and, on the floor, a fifteen-gallon gas can.

The cas.h.i.+er, a man who had discarded the robe that was meant to make him look like a cleric, wearing instead two-sizes-loose factory-distressed black jeans of recycled cotton held up by wide blue suspenders that draped thin bare shoulders, looked up at Park and pointed a fat plastic pistol.

Park held out his wrist, and the cas.h.i.+er aimed the RFID interrogator at it and pulled the trigger. There was a beep as the device read the signal the tiny silver chip on the bracelet broadcast in response to the interrogator's prompt. The clerk looked at the code that appeared on an LCD screen on the plastic gun.

"Comp."