Dantes' Inferno (16 page)

“Again, the categories are not mutually exclusive. The anarchist bomber Ravachol was known for his political extremism, his antisocial personality, and his sexual eccentricities; he wore rouge and carried lipstick and explosives in his purse.”

About fifteen seconds into the ascent, Sylvia noticed the second car, Sinai, passing downhill on the northern zipper. As far as she could see, it held one passenger.

“He's one of ours,” Church murmured.

The Olivet came to rest with a clank and a jolt. Sylvia debarked, accompanied by Church, ready to hand her fare to the girl inside the ticket booth. History for a quarter. Five rides for a buck. Inflation on hiatus.

But Church flashed his credential at the attendant and she waved them on with a startled look.

“Hey, two bits is two bits,” Church drawled.

At first glance, the Water Court was deserted; then Sylvia noticed the other couple. She guessed they were cops.

She picked up speed, crossing to the far edge of the viewing patio.

“Various and sundry theories factor in personality variables such as the death wish, suicidal tendencies, a low arousal threshold. It is called a ‘coward's crime,' but the bomber's life offers the barest apportionment for cowardice. The risk of injury and/or death is extremely high. The overwhelming majority of bombing victims are the bombers themselves, killed in the act of construction or transportation.”

Brilliant perps aren't the norm, she thought.

“I'm going to call Roybal. Get the transmission set up with Dantes,” Church said, joining Sylvia.

“Give me two more minutes,” she said, not taking her eyes from the surrounding cityscape. She pushed away the unpleasant thought that she'd better produce results—pray this is a wild goose chase and we can all go home safe and sound.

She imagined Dantes standing in her place. Los Angeles was more than his home, it was his ego, and he'd written about its nooks and crannies, its noir secrets, in detail. The result was a tome—part urban history, part ecosociology—an architecture-as-destiny treatise, with a healthy dose of social psychology by a man who claimed no use for psychologists. Meanwhile, he'd lived a double life as an outlaw, an anarchist.

John Dantes' infernal machines—his bombs—were special. His creations brought destruction—to a small section of the aqueduct, to a Water & Power building, to an oil derrick. But he had no one signature—no definitive method of construction—that he left on each and every device. Some were utilitarian, designed to provide the most bang for the buck. Some were duds—hoax devices. And some were beautiful—created especially to attract the curious.

Not unlike the bomb that killed ten-year-old Jason Redding.

“One man's revolutionary is another man's coldblooded killer. At the turn of the twentieth century, the political bomber is the most dangerous animal in the pack—his psychopathology, hence his motivation, still maintains a hiding place, a safe house deep in the recesses of ideology.”

Dantes was sending her on errands. First, to the top of Angels Flight. And she had taken the damn choo-choo because—

In the distance, light fired up the glass and metallic surface of the Bonaventure Hotel. Her heart caught, but it was just the glare of the sun.

No explosions. Not yet
.

The sun burned one shoulder, the side of her face. When she looked over at Church, light stung her eyes. A sliver of fractured memory jabbed at her for an instant.

“Call him now,” she told the detective with a sharp nod.

Church placed the call.

Less than thirty seconds later, Dantes was on the phone.

“Dr. Strange. How's the view from Angels Flight?”

“Your friend called the FBI,” Sylvia said. “He mentioned the third circle.”

“Where a cold rain falls, and the three-headed hound of hell guards the damned.”

“Is he punishing LA, the city fathers, for the sin of gluttony?”

“Only Ciacco knows the future of the city,” Dantes cut her off, “and he's in hell. You'll have to do this all by yourself, Dr. Strange. Tell me what you see.”

“A city under siege,” she answered quietly.

“I want details, not melodrama,” he said. “Grand Central Market to the east. Pershing Square. The Metropolitan Water District, a Wells Fargo bank, a bar, those old hotels from the Chandler days.” He paused. “What's behind you?”

“More city,” she said, adrenaline level rising like an
internal tide. She reached automatically for her pills, but found her pockets empty.

“Facing north, talk to me.”

“Wilshire Boulevard. Olympic, Pico.”

“North, not west.”

She turned slowly. Three-dimensional Monopoly. She could see half the damn city, including the traffic-clogged recesses of the Civic Center. The Hollywood Freeway. The Harbor interchange. Millions of people traveling along the massive concrete river every day. Such easy victims.

“Why am I here, Dantes? I put my ass on the line for you.”

“Be patient,” he said.

“While you're getting off on some power games? You against the FBI?”

“They can't give you the answers,” he snapped. “
I can
.”

“Maybe. Or maybe you're just playing with innocent lives.”

Silence. Was he gone? This was a five-way transmission: in addition to Sylvia and Dantes, Detective Church, SA Purcell, and the U.S. marshals at Roybal were all monitoring the call. The Feds' party line.

“
Hello?
” Sylvia breathed. “Shit.”

“Don't jump to stupid conclusions,” he said sharply. “You're in way over your head, so listen very carefully. Did you follow my trial before they so rudely and unconstitutionally
gagged
me?”

“Yes—I—”

“Do you remember Judge Heron's response to my final refusal to undergo a psychiatric evaluation?”

“He used your own statement.” Caught off guard, she stalled. “About society labeling radicals as criminal or mental misfits . . .”

“Wrong.”

“Remind me.”

“Pay attention to detail. Otherwise, you're just April's fool.”

“I remember reading about—” She broke off. “Dantes?”

“He hung up?” Church asked, mouth gone slack with alarm, earpiece protruding like some black insect. “What did he mean? Shit,
fuck
.”

Sylvia shook her head, warding off the sensation of sinking underwater. Her eyes were glued to the coffee stain on the detective's shirt as she said, “The trial transcripts fill entire rooms. Leo Carreras did one evaluation; a state psychiatrist did another. What about the judge—”

“This is fucking useless,” Church groaned.

“Back off, leave me the hell alone.”

Church did.

“What did he just say? ‘Pay attention to detail. Otherwise, you're just April's fool.'” She stared up at Church, but she wasn't seeing him. “That's when Dantes called me—on April first.” She closed her eyes, traveling back in time. “I was at my house, on the deck; it was late. I asked him about . . .
what?
”

“What?” Church prodded.

“Object-relations theory,” Sylvia blurted out, as a mental light snapped on.

The detective watched her blankly.

“Dantes never knew his father. He lived with his grandparents, but he never bonded with them. His mother was a suicide,” she said, frustrated by the need to explain, fighting the urge to bolt. “Dantes asked me what he'd replaced her with, and I didn't make the connection until now.”

As Sylvia's delivery picked up speed, she used gestures for emphasis. “She used to take him all over the city, day and night, a sort of constant pilgrimage.”

“So we're supposed to wander the damn streets?” Church exploded in exasperation.

“Shut up, Detective.” Sylvia pressed redial on the phone—it rang too many times. Just when she was about to panic, Dantes answered.

“During the trial, you told Dr. Carreras that a
place
—instead of a person—could be a child's primary attachment object. You said that had happened for you.”

“And then he and Judge Heron used it against me. Bravo, Dr. Strange.”

“The city is what you love most.
She's
your primary attachment. She made you feel safe, she made you belong.” Sylvia stood stock-still, holding her breath, then quietly asking: “What place in LA are we talking about, John?”

She heard the relief in his voice as he recited three words like a small prayer: “Home sweet home.”

Too often, the system devours its most gifted and creative children. Dostoyevsky wrote about such cannibalism, so did Conrad. At the turning of each century, the faults of humanity's social systems are highlighted. The
clues
to the imminent death of a particular civilization are revealed, but only to those who have the courage to seek out the truth, and to read the signs.

Dantes' Inferno

11:20 a.m
.
Home sweet home was a three-story clapboard Victorian, now boarded up and surrounded by chain-link.

She'd looked up the passage from
Dantes' Inferno: “I was
raised downtown. My blood is city blood. My skin filters the same urban smog that used to diffuse the air around the white Victorian at the corner of Beaudry and Temple. As a boy I was a knock-kneed ruffian who loved his home sweet home.”

Pale and austere, the house stood alone, waiting to be razed or moved like some Hollywood back-lot prop. The lot was large, at least a half acre, and barren except for the house and a half dozen tall old trees—palm, olive, evergreen. A narrow walkway, overgrown with weeds, still marked the path to the front door.

At some point the neighborhood had been residential, but zoning changes and city expansion were rapidly altering the landscape. On bordering streets, small shops still advertised their trades, but high-rise office buildings, those vertical neighborhoods that were clearly the next wave, loomed over the modest businesses.

Detective Church parked on Temple, catty-corner to the house. He gazed out at the property, his eyes obscured by the black sunglasses. He was still chewing gum. He said, “I remember when we made the search.”

“Right after the arrest?” Sylvia asked.

“He was still on the lam. We cornered him at Llano del Rio about two weeks later,” Church said. “Forensics went through it again before the trial. They catalogued half a ton of evidence—most of it useless.”

Sylvia pushed open her car door and climbed out, saying, “So who's got the wire cutters?”

The trio walked the hundred feet to the street boundary of the property, where weeds sprouted at the base of the fence, clumping between metal links. As they followed the perimeter, Sylvia could hear the
shush-shush
of traffic on the Hollywood Freeway although she couldn't actually see vehicles. The air was heavy with pollutants, heat, humidity. The sky was an unnatural gray-blue.

They passed a photography shop that looked as if it had gone out of business a decade earlier. The storefront had faded, the painted sign was curling at the edges, the gray-tinted plate window was protected by wrought iron bars.

Someone had spray-painted nihilistic graffiti over the billboard that marked the back end of the property:
FUCK US ALL
. Others had left gang symbols, black and angular. An urban dissident with a juvenile sense of humor had blacked out one of the model's eyes.

The metal fence was solid, formidable; ditto the gate. Fortunately, the padlock was fastened to a wimpy chain. Church got it with one snip.

The investigators had been given the official go-ahead to enter the property. With extreme caution. They'd lost their backup; the other agents had taken off from Angels Flight, headed for MDC. Bomb threats were keeping the Feds very busy.

“How do you want to do this?” Purcell asked calmly.

“Very slowly.”

“In the mood for booby traps?”

Church shrugged away the tension, saying, “You first.”

“Great,” Sylvia murmured. It had crossed her mind that tripping into a serial bomber's former residence—even a childhood residence—wasn't such a great idea. Even the most rabid tourists had stayed on the other side of the fence.

The rear of the house was shaded by two tall and spindly palms and an olive tree. With the aid of Purcell's skill with locks, the door opened smoothly, allowing access to an ample kitchen now dimly lit by daylight seeping through the papered windows. Church entered first, executing a careful visual search. Sylvia started to follow, but Purcell held her back.

“Let's make the call,” Purcell said.

The line had been secured for only one purpose, and Dantes answered on the first ring. “What took you so long?”

“We had to find a way through the fence,” Sylvia said. Her first objective was survival—her second, to keep Dantes happy. “Home sweet home . . . I'm at the back door. I'm going inside now.”