Well In Time Part 16

Lone-R shrugged. "Who knows?" He scrambled to his feet. "Hey! I almost forgot." He went back into the corridor and returned with her backpack. "So you can freshen up," he said, tossing it beside her on the mattress. "Gotta go. See you later."

Before she could think of a way to detain him, he was gone, locking the door behind him.

Of course, they had been through her backpack. Her pa.s.sport and driver's license were shoved into a pocket she always used for batteries. So much for pretending her name was Jane. Everything else was there including her money, a change of underwear, and the skirt and sweater she'd kept stored in the pack as a celebratory outfit when she and Javier had survived their strategic retreat.

Now, she was without him, without Hill, but needing a change of clothes badly. Feeling disloyal, she went to the tiny bathroom and sponged herself clean with the cold water that dribbled from the faucet. Then she donned the skirt and sweater, combed her long hair and put on lipstick. Feeling far better, she sat cross-legged on the mattress again, and finished the tasteless plate of food.

An hour pa.s.sed. She set the tray by the door, wandered to the window and stood staring at the canyon. A wind was rising, sending small clouds scudding across the sky, and their shadows fleeing along the cliff face like jubilant black sheep. The room was slowly warming, but air seeping around the weathered wooden frame told her that the day outside was cold, despite the suns.h.i.+ne.

Her mind was as scattered as the clouds, and she decided to meditate. Sitting cross-legged on the mattress, she closed her eyes and centered her mind. Soon her body began to rock gently from side to side, as kundalini energy rose undulating up her spine and her mind filled with colored patterns of light. She had a fleeting thought that being locked in an impregnable stone room at the top of an equally impregnable cliff was not so bad. Then, she floated into bliss.

When they came for her she was ready-clean, dressed, calm, and centered. Lone-R opened the door, followed by Icepick, and she was led down a maze of corridors and a flight of stairs, with one of them guarding her on each side.

They stopped before high double doors, deeply carved with matching crests. If her high school Latin still served her, the motto on the left read I teach, and the one on the right, I conquer. Lone-R tapped on the right-hand door with scarred and calloused knuckles. A voice from inside called "Enter!" and the doors opened outward, each propelled by a man in a black ca.s.sock.

Lone-R and Icepick escorted Calypso onto a dais surrounded by a turned bannister of old and polished wood. A straight chair sat waiting, but she chose to stand, taking in her surroundings. She resisted the urge to let her eyes dart around the room and instead swept them with the steady calm of a surveillance camera. Hill was not in the room.

To her right, sitting at a high wooden desk, was Father Keat, like a judge before his court. In front of her, ranged in straight wooden chairs five rows deep, sat an a.s.sortment of men, all in black ca.s.socks, and all staring at her impa.s.sively. A man stood on guard in front of each of the double doors, and Lone-R and Icepick went to replace them.

The room was large, square and warmed by a huge fireplace at the rear. A fire tender stood beside it, his hands folded before him. The wall to her left held a bank of long cas.e.m.e.nt windows letting in the slant of autumnal sun through wavering antique gla.s.s and thrumming with wind. Despite the fire and the suns.h.i.+ne, the room was chilly and she was glad she'd worn her sweater.

It did not occur to her that she had adopted Javier's habit of taking in any new place fully, looking for danger, until Father Keat interrupted her scrutiny. "I hope you're satisfied with your surroundings, Miss Searcy?"

"Father Keat," she said, turning toward him with dignity and bowing very slightly and ironically in his direction.

"Please be seated."

"I prefer to stand."

"We prefer that you sit."

She sat. Deep silence filled the room. The fire snapped. Wind rattled the windowpanes, beyond which the canyon walls shone rose and copper in morning light. The rows of men sat silently immovable, hands folded in their laps. Calypso's quick count put their number at around sixty.

"You present us with a rare dilemma, Miss Searcy," Father Keat began. Calypso did not respond. "We do not allow trespa.s.sers on our land, and you and your companion have trespa.s.sed. We are here today to decide what the penalty should be."

"May I speak?"

"Of course. You are your own sole defense."

"I was not aware that the area of the grotto was private land. My friend and I were tired and thirsty and needed a place to camp for the night. If you release us, I promise that we will never bother you again."

"I'm afraid it isn't that simple."

"I can pay a ransom, if that's what you want."

"No. Money is not the objective, here. Secrecy is. You see, Miss Searcy, you've stumbled on a well-kept secret. You've lived in these canyons for almost twenty years and yet you never knew of our existence."

Something in the man's a.s.surance nettled her. "How do you know how long I've lived here or what I do or do not know?"

"Scopolamine, Miss Searcy. You've been under the influence of a truth drug. The first time you almost OD'd. The second time, you underwent interrogation by our resident expert. There's nothing we don't know about you, except your hat size. And we can find that out, too, if need be."

Calypso frowned, glaring at Father Keat. "I don't remember giving you any information about myself."

"Scopolamine turns you into a zombie, Miss Searcy. You won't remember a thing you do under its influence. But let me recap your life, just so you know that I'm not lying to you."

He glanced at a paper lying on the desk in front of him, picked it up, and read. "You were born in 1950 in Berkeley, California. Your father was a university professor and your mother was a concert pianist. Your parents were killed by a drunk driver on Shattuck Avenue, coming home from one of your mother's concerts. You had just turned eighteen; therefore, required no legal guardian. The estate you inherited from your parents was less than one might have expected. In order to finance your education, you sold your family home and moved into an apartment on Dwight Way. You received your bachelors degree at UC Berkeley, in 1968.

"During your time at the university, you met and fell in love with Javier Cartena, who was recently arrived from Mexico. You taught him English. You were raped in Santa Rita prison by a guard, following a peace march in Oakland. Mr. Cartena helped you during your recovery. Then, he hunted down and murdered your attacker, jumped a freight train for Mexico, and disappeared from your life for the next twenty-five years. Shall I continue?"

During this recitation, Calypso held her clenched hands lying helplessly in her lap. What kind of drug was it that could pry her deepest secrets from her? How could she possibly have revealed to complete strangers that Javier had committed murder? She choked her panic down and raised her head defiantly.

"No. I'm convinced."

"Good. Now the problem is, you see, that we don't call ourselves The Ghosts for nothing. Not unlike Mr. Cartena, each of us has reason to keep certain aspects of his past secret. In fact, the necessity for that is so great that each of us has had to disappear completely from the world, by staging our own deaths. So we are doubly Ghosts, Miss Searcy: we live an invisible existence, and we are all-officially-dead."

Calypso shook her head in confusion. "I don't understand. What are you doing here? What is this place, anyway?"

Father Keat took his time to answer. He gazed out the windows, choosing his words. Finally, his eyes met hers.

"On June 25th, 1767, the Order of Men in the Company of Jesus-the Jesuit order-underwent expulsion from Mexico. They were under suspicion by the king and were arrested and s.h.i.+pped out of the country. I'm sure you know this.

"In this canyon, they had done extensive missionary work and were in the process of building a big church near Batopilas, the mission of San Miguel de Satev, just outside of town. You know, because it was revealed during interrogation, that the church is called the Lost Mission, because there are no records describing its existence. There's a reason for that which you do not know, according to your own testimony while under the influence of the drug. So I'll tell you what even historians don't know.

"The Jesuits in this canyon decided to defy the expulsion order. Because of its remoteness, the king's agents didn't arrive to arrest them until after news had already reached Batopilas of the expulsion order. So the fathers had time to hide themselves in that very cave you claim to have traversed two days ago. Local Indians were the only ones who knew about the cave because of its inaccessibility. One of them led the fathers to the cave and kept them supplied with food until the king's men had given up finding them. The local rumor was that the Jesuits had fled northward to Alta California, and that was the official word sent back to Europe to account for their disappearance.

"Now you know that the Jesuits were a hardheaded lot. They'd begun their missionary work and weren't about to give it up. First, they built this place, to house themselves. You can imagine the labor required to raise these three stories of stone on this steep land. For water, they developed a spring that rises behind this building. They cultivated small fields. All this was hidden from the town of Batopilas because of the remoteness of this hanging valley and its distance from the mining operations.

"When they'd established this monk house and their food supply, they were determined to finish the church that they'd started. But they couldn't show themselves in town on danger of arrest. So they hit on the plan of building only at night. People would go to bed with the church in one building phase, and wake up the next morning to find it in a further stage of completion.

"The Europeans in the community found this very unnerving and felt the place was haunted and so avoided it. The local indigenous population, however, with their thin sc.r.a.ping of Christianity, believed it was a miracle and they've been wors.h.i.+pping there ever since.

"So that's why it's called the Lost Mission and why it was never recorded in the official church records. Like us, the Jesuits were ghosts. Eventually, of course, they all died off and this place was left abandoned. Even the Indians avoided it, because the Jesuits would torture any of them that they found nearby. So it just sat empty until we bought it, twenty years ago."

Calypso couldn't help blurting out, "But how did you find this place, then?"

Father Keat smiled thinly and said, "I'll let El Lobo tell you that part."

He raised his hand and gestured toward the audience. Calypso caught a quick movement from the corner of her eye, as El Lobo rose from the a.s.sembled brothers and made his way to the front of the room. He came to stand in the center, between Calypso's dais and Father Keat's desk, and clasping his hands behind his back and staring straight ahead, began to speak.

"I was a fugitive," he said. "I had done a contract killing for one of the drug mafia and instead of paying me, they decided just to kill me. I got out, but I had to kill one of the big guys to do it. And I was injured. I knew this canyon a little, from when I was a kid-how remote it is. So I came here and lived off wild mangoes and avocados, and just kept way out on the margins of things. Eventually, I found the grotto and then the little trail that the Jesuits had built, climbing into the hanging valley. And then I found this building.

"It wasn't in bad shape, considering that it'd been abandoned for over two hundred years. When I first entered, I found the last Jesuit's skeleton, still lying in his bed. Some of the windows were broken and swallows and owls were nesting inside, but that was about it. There weren't even any mice or rats. The library had a complete account of what they'd been doing since the expulsion, and I'd sit and read their journals at night, by the fire.

"So I set up housekeeping here, until I thought it was safe to make a break for the border. That's where I met Father Keat-in Texas. Eventually, I told him about this place and with..." he looked questioningly at Father Keat who nodded, "with money we made doing...stuff...we bought this land using my name, because I'm a Mexican citizen. Then before I 'died,'" he flipped his fingers in the air to indicate quotation marks, "we set up a corporation for owners.h.i.+p. It's complicated but it's working."

Father Keat answered his questioning look with a nod, and El Lobo made his way back toward his seat. Calypso's eyes followed him. Even indoors, his movements were swift and stealthy, with an animal-like hyperawareness. He truly was a wolf of a man, she thought warily.

"And you wanted this property because...?" she asked Father Keat, as her eyes followed El Lobo to his seat.

"Because I was getting older and I wanted out of what I was doing. And I knew a lot of other guys who did, too. You're among a rare group of men, Miss Searcy. Altogether, we've personally killed over a thousand people. Those are the ones we know about. When you do aerial bombing, like I did, you don't get to count coup."

An entire a.s.sembly of a.s.sa.s.sins! Calypso fought to keep her composure. She felt her chances of survival, like the tube in the cave, gradually but ineluctably diminis.h.i.+ng. At the end of this kangaroo court would there be some small hole still left, through which she could just barely wriggle to safety? She glanced at Father Keat's granitic jaw and doubted it.

"We are united by a spirit of democracy, Miss Searcy," he continued, oblivious to how absurd that a.s.sertion sounded to her. "So the men thought it was only fair if they shared their stories with you, since against your will they've gotten to know yours." His eyes swept the a.s.sembled men. "Who wants to go first?"

"I do." The voice came not from the body of men, but from the door. It was Lone-R. Father Keat tilted his head and someone rose from the seated men to take Lone-R's place as guard. Lone-R came to stand where El Lobo had stood and took up the same posture.

"Begin," Father Keat commanded.

"My name is Lone-R. I have another name, an official one, but it was never really mine. The State gave it to me because I didn't have no father. My mother was a prost.i.tute. I was born addicted to crack cocaine and almost died when I was a baby, comin' off it. When I was just a kid, my mom started sellin' me to weirdos for s.e.x. When I got to be nine, I thought f.u.c.k this, and I ran away. I lived on the street, doin' what I had to, to survive.

"I grew up big, like you see me. On the street, if you're strong everybody gots to take a swing at you, to test theirselves." Lone-R held up his scarred hands, covered in callouses thick as rhinoceros hide. "I learned to fight. Ha yeah! When people started dyin', then people started leavin' me alone. But I kept driftin' west, and I had to prove myself again, in every city I came to.

"Finally, I got to LA and I took up with some guys who were on their way to do a robbery and I said, What the h.e.l.l? and went along. Well, they gave me a .9 and when things started to go wrong, I used it. I killed a cop and that was the first time I went away to the pen. They never could prove it was me, though, so after nine years, I was out again and I was still only twenty-seven.

"When I got out of prison, I was full of anger and hate. I wanted to kill everyone, no exceptions. I paroled in LA and out on the street I was always in fights. One day this guy comes onto me about some s.h.i.+t and I cold c.o.c.ked him. He was dead before he hit the pavement. Well, you might know, a cop was just drivin' around the corner and seen the whole thing. Bam! I'm back in prison on a second strike.

"I ended up doin' time in San Quentin, twenty-five to life. But I got lucky. The California prison system was over-crowded, and the federal court said they had to let twenty thousand people go. I don't know how it happened, but my number got pulled, and I was out on the street again, after only doin' seven years. So now, I'm thirty-four years old and mean as h.e.l.l. I knew it was just a matter of time before I got slammed for somethin' else, so I broke parole and ran to Dallas. And that's where I met Father Keat and my life got changed."

Lone-R glanced at Father Keat, who nodded almost imperceptibly. Lone-R turned his eyes to Calypso. "I guess he'll tell you about that." He turned and walked back to the door. The relief guard returned to his chair and everyone looked expectantly at Father Keat. Rather than explain, however, Father Keat called for another testimony.

"I'll talk." A hand went up in the middle of the a.s.sembly.

Father Keat nodded saying, "Go ahead."

A short, elderly man threaded his way past the others and came to stand before them. Calypso studied him closely, finding it hard to believe that he, too, was a killer. He had the inoffensive face of a grandpa, a balding head fringed in gray hair, and gla.s.ses. His robe looked like a black barrel, giving evidence of a stout body beneath. He cleared his throat and began in a gravelly voice.

"My name's t.i.to, but everyone calls me The Knife. I grew up in Chicago, South Side, Back of the Yards. My father was a tailor from Armenia. He married my mother when she was fresh off the boat. He was fifty-three and she was sixteen. That's how they did things in those days.

"It was a tough neighborhood. As I kid, I had to fight to survive. I was small, so I bought me a knife.

"One day in front of the barber shop, this kid twice my size starts pus.h.i.+ng me around, threatening to pull my gizzard out through my mouth. So I take my knife and I stick him right in the gut. Well, I must of hit an artery, 'cause the guy falls to the ground, bleeding like a broken hydrant, and in a few seconds, he's dead.

"I'm in shock. I'm just a kid. I don't even have the sense to run. I hear a siren coming and I'm just standing there, staring at this guy lying on the sidewalk in a puddle of blood, and I'm still holding the knife.

"All of a sudden, I feel this big hand come down on the back of my neck and somebody drags me into the barber shop. Whoever it is has got a death grip on my neck. He pushes me right through the shop, out the back door, into an alley. I'm thinking, oh s.h.i.+t, my time is up.

"The guy's got a car parked back in the alley, and he's got a driver. He says to the driver, Open the door! And when he does, the guy throws me into the backseat and says, Let's get outta here. The driver pulls out fast and away we go, with the guy holding my head down so n.o.body sees me through the window.

"Well, long story short, turns out I'd connected with Big Joe Gratz, one of the biggest mobsters in Chicago. He tells me, You got sand, kid, and he says he wants to train me to be a hit man. Well, h.e.l.l. What have I got to lose? So he puts me in with these really tough guys and they teach me all they know. And for over twenty years, I do Big Joe's dirty work, even when he's spending time in the slammer.

"But then, one day..."

"That's enough for now, Knife," Father Keat cut in. "We'll hear the rest later." He looked at the group. "Next?"

One by one, the men came forward, stood with hands clasped over their black ca.s.socks, looked straight ahead, and told the most ghastly stories of mayhem and murder. There were thieves, pimps and a.s.sa.s.sins, interrogators, drug dealers and gun runners, each one with a nickname evoking his trade. Some of the worst were Latin American soldiers trained in counter-insurgency at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. They told their stories of the torture of innocent campesinos with the bland confidence lent a twice-told tale, sometimes with a hint of pride, sometimes with the barest breath of shame.

Calypso's attention was riveted to each. She studied their faces with their stress lines, scars and baggy eyes, their thinning hair, their powerful hands. As the stories went on, she began to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of their c.u.mulative crimes, the weight of which seemed to be filling the room and snuffing the light from the windows. To her surprise, it wasn't disgust that filled her but a ragged sort of compa.s.sion for these lives so marred and mangled by violence and crime.

At last, Father Keat announced that they would break for lunch. Calypso was escorted back to her room, where a tray was waiting for her.

"It's nice to see they sometimes alternate rice and beans with beans and rice," she said acidly.

She plopped down on the mattress, pulled her legs into lotus posture, then balanced the tray on her thighs. Maybe, she thought as she chewed the tasteless mess, instead of killing her they might let her bring some inspiration to their kitchen as their cook.

After lunch the stories went on. Calypso began to differentiate the lesser from the greater offenders against the human race. Mere murder of rival drug soldiers began to seem petty, compared to wholesale slaughter of innocents by agency of airplane, helicopter and automatic weapons or through s.a.d.i.s.tic torture. Initially, she felt nauseous, listening to the gruesome details of death and destruction. Later, as the afternoon wore on and each man came forward to tell his tale, she became numb.

Finally, the ordeal was over, with no apparent verdict having been accomplished in her own case. She was led back to her original room, with its low wooden bed, primitive table, and chair. A fire was lit and extra wood brought. A tray of food arrived, featuring the same monotonous rice and beans.

As she chewed morosely, she thought of Hill, wondering where he was salted away in this pile of stone. She could hear his voice, in sardonic mode, saying, "Too bad Pedro's not with us. He could shuck and jive in a.s.sa.s.sin, and maybe win us our freedom." She smiled, despite herself.

She was so enervated by the day and its revelations that she scarcely ate. The sun had barely sunk behind the cliffs when she lay on the bed, pulled the woolen blanket over her, and fell into exhausted sleep.

In the depths of the night, Calypso suddenly found herself standing in a barren stone hallway before a pair of elevator doors. She could hear the mechanism of the lift rumbling, feel the slight tremor of it rising up her legs from the floor. It was cold and she s.h.i.+vered as she waited under a bare bulb that shed sickly yellow light.

The grinding of the elevator ceased and after a pause, the doors parted. Calypso peered into an interior that seemed to hold shadow and nothing more. Then with a slight rustle, as of dry leaves s.h.i.+fting, a figure appeared from the darkness. It was tall, thin, and all in black, and she thought it must be one of her captors. Her eyes swept up the long, inky garment to the face. Then she gasped and froze, too paralyzed with fear even to scream.

The face, hooded in black, was fleshless. There were no eyes, only gaping sockets were eyes should have been. Nevertheless, Calypso had the distinct impression that she was under intense scrutiny. The two black holes were leveled at her like twin barrels of a shotgun.

Mesmerized, Calypso could not tear her eyes away from them. Her mouth went dry; her heart hammered. Her thoughts were gelatinous, unstable, amorphous. She could not move, but remained captive of the vacant but intense stare, as hypnotic and lethal as a cobra's.

Despite the figure's similarity to the Grim Reaper, Calypso began to discern that it was female. What was more, this was no mere mortal, but a divinity: La Flaca, "The Skinny Lady," la Senora de las Sombras, "Lady of the Shadows," Santa Muerte, "Saint Death"-she went by many names among the poor and disenfranchised of Mexico, who venerated her and invoked her against violent death, especially by gunshot.

Death Herself had come to call, and Calypso had the impression that this visit was in response to the day's litany of Ghostly crimes and in defense of their victims. Punchily, she realized that some sort of respect must be paid to so august a visitor.

She tried to speak, but her mouth was frozen in a rictus of terror. Gathering her will, exerting maximal effort, she tried again, and achieved a ragged hiss of air. At last, contorting her face in sheer determination, through clenched teeth and shuddering lips, she managed a rasping whisper.

"Bl-bl-bless you, Mother."

Before her startled eyes, the terrible faceless face began to morph. From within the skull, a hazy ma.s.s pushed outward and began, layer upon layer, to solidify, first into muscles crisscrossing, and finally into flesh. In the place of the hideous skull, a ravis.h.i.+ngly beautiful face appeared, of an angel, of a G.o.ddess. Calypso, unable to fathom its loveliness and delicacy, gazed upon it with wonder and delight.

The figure made the smallest movement with its hand, that moments before had hung down only bones of la Huesuda, "the Bony Lady," but now was long fingered and graceful. Santsima Muerte, "Most Holy Death," raised Her fingers in a gesture of blessing. Calypso felt hot, stinging energy shower over her like sparks blown from a fire. She stood encompa.s.sed in the fiery breath of la Dama Poderosa, "the Powerful Lady," entranced.

The doors of the elevator began to close and the car to descend. Calypso's awed gaze followed, as it sank from view. Her last glimpse was of the sweet face, smiling up at her from floor level, as the doors closed completely.