The Bad Place (53 page)

“Those are pretty much traits of everyone who works for us, not just Jamie, Nguyen, Hal, and Lee.”

“I know. But what makes me so comfortable with Asian-Americans is that I buy into the stereotype of them, I feel everything will go along in an orderly, stable fashion when I’m working with them, and I
need
to buy into the stereotype because ... well, I’m not the kind of guy I’ve always thought I was. You ready to hear something shocking?”

“Always,” Julie said.

OFTEN, WHEN Lee Chen was laboring in the computer room, he popped a CD in his Sony Discman and listened to music through earphones. He always kept the door closed to avoid distraction, and no doubt some of his fellow employees thought he was somewhat antisocial; however, when he was engaged in the penetration of a complex and well-protected data network, like the array of police systems he was still plundering, he needed to concentrate. Occasionally music distracted him as much as anything, depending on his mood, but most of the time it was conducive to his work. The minimalist New Age piano solos of George Winston were sometimes just the thing, but more often he needed rock-‘n’-roll. Tonight it was Huey Lewis and The News: “Hip to Be Square” and “The Power of Love,” “The Heart of Rock & Roll” and “You Crack Me Up.” Focused intently on the terminal screen (his window on the mesmerizing world of cyberspace), with “Bad Is Bad” pouring into his ears through the headset, he might not have heard a thing if, in the world outside, God had peeled back the sky and announced the imminent destruction of the human race.

A COOL DRAFT circulated through the room from the broken window, but growing frustration generated a compensatory heat in Candy. He moved slowly around the spacious office, handling various objects, touching the furniture, trying to finesse a vision that would reveal the whereabouts of the Dakotas and Frank. Thus far he’d had no luck.

He could have pored through the contents of the desk drawers and filing cabinets, but that would have taken hours, since he didn’t know where they might have filed the information he was seeking. He also realized he might not recognize the right stuff when he found it, for it might be in a folder or envelope bearing a case name or code that was meaningless to him. And though his mother had taught him to read and write, and though he had been a voracious reader just like her—until he lost interest in books upon her death—teaching himself many subjects as well as any university could have done, he nevertheless trusted what his special gifts could reveal to him more than anything he might find on paper.

Besides, he had already stepped into the lounge, obtained the Dakotas’ home address and phone number, and called to see if they were there. An answering machine had picked up on the third ring, and he had left no message. He didn’t just want to know where the Dakotas lived, where they might turn up in time; he needed to know where they were now, this minute, because he was in a fever to get at them and wring answers from them.

He picked up a third Scotch-and-soda glass. They were all over the room. The psychic residue on the tumbler gave him an instant, vivid image of a man named Jackie Jaxx, and he pitched it aside in anger. It bounced off the sofa, onto the carpet, without shattering.

This Jaxx person left a colorful and noisy psychic impression everywhere in his wake, the way a dog with poor bladder control would mark each step on his route with a dribble of stinking urine. Candy sensed that Jaxx was currently with a large number of people, at a party in Newport Beach, and he also sensed that trying to find Frank or the Dakotas through Jaxx would be wasted effort. Even so, if Jaxx had been alone now, easily taken, Candy would have gone straight to him and slaughtered him, just because the guy’s lingering aura was so brassy and annoying.

Either he had not yet found an object that one of the Dakotas had touched long enough to leave an imprint, or neither of them was the type who left a rich, lingering psychic residue in his wake. For reasons Candy could not fathom, some people were harder to trace than others.

He had always found tracing Frank to be of medium difficulty, but tonight catching that scent was harder than usual. Repeatedly he sensed that Frank had been in the room, but at first he could locate nothing in which the aura of his brother was coagulated.

Next he turned to the four chairs, beginning with the largest. When he skimmed his sensitive fingertips lightly over the upholstery, he quivered with excitement, for he knew at once that Frank had sat there recently. A small tear marred the vinyl on one arm, and when Candy put his thumb upon the rent, particularly vivid visions of Frank assaulted him.

Too many visions. He was rewarded with a whole series of place images, where Frank had traveled after rising from the chair: the High Sierras; the apartment in San Diego in which he had lived briefly four years ago; the rusted front gate of their mother’s house on Pacific Hill Road; a graveyard; a book-lined study in which he’d stayed such a short time that Candy could get only the vaguest impression of it; Punaluu Beach, where Candy had nearly caught him.... There were so many images, from so many travels, layered one atop another, that he could not clearly see the later stops.

Disgusted, he pushed the chair out of his way and turned to the coffee table, where two more tumblers stood. Both contained melted ice and Scotch. He picked one up and had a vision of Julie Dakota.

WHILE JULIE drove toward Santa Barbara as if they were competing in time trials for the Indianapolis 500, Bobby told her the shocking thing: that he was not, at heart, the laid-back guy he appeared to be on the surface; that during his hectic travels with Frank—especially during the moments when he had been reduced to a disembodied mind and a frantic whirl of disconnected atoms—he’d discovered within himself a rich vein of love for stability and order that ran deeper than he could ever have imagined, a motherlode of stick-in-the-mudness; that his delight in swing music arose more from an appreciation for the meticulosity of its structures than from the dizzying musical freedom embodied in jazz; that he was not half the free-spirited man he’d thought he was ... and far more of a conservative embracer of tradition that he would have hoped.

“In short,” he said, “all this time when you thought you were married to an easy-going young-James-Garner type, you’ve actually been wed to an any-age-Charles-Bronson type.”

“I can live with you anyway, Charlie.”

“This is serious. Sort of. I’ve tipped into my late thirties, I’m no child. I should’ve known this about myself a long time ago.”

“You did.”

“Huh?”

“You love order, reason, logic—that’s why you got into a line of work where you could right wrongs, help the innocent, punish the bad. That’s why you share The Dream with me—so we can get our little family in order, step out of the chaos of the world as it is these days and buy into some peace and quiet. That’s why you won’t let me have the Wurlitzer 950—those bubble tubes and leaping gazelles are just a little too chaotic for you.”

He was silent a moment, surprised by her answer.

The lightless vastness of the sea lay to the west.

He said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ve always known what I am, deep down. But then isn’t it unnerving that I’ve fooled myself with my own act for so long?”

“You haven’t. You’re easy-going
and
a bit of Charles Bronson, which is a good thing. Otherwise we probably couldn’t communicate at all, since I’ve got more Bronson in me than anyone but Bronson.”

“God, that’s true!” he said, and they both laughed.

The Toyota’s speed had declined to under seventy. She put it up to eighty and said, “Bobby ... what’s really on your mind?”

“Thomas.”

She glanced at him. “What about Thomas?”

“Since that wordburst, I can’t shake the feeling he’s in danger.”

“What did that have to do with him?”

“I don’t know. But I’d feel better if we could find a phone and put in a call to Cielo Vista. Just to be ... sure.”

She let their speed fall dramatically. Within three miles they exited the freeway and pulled into a service station. There was a full-service lane. While the attendant washed their windows, checked the oil, and filled the tank with premium unleaded, they went inside and used the pay phone.

It was a modern electronic version allowing everything from coin to credit calls, on the wall next to a rack of snack crackers, candy bars, and packages of beer nuts. A condom machine was there, too, right out in the open, thanks to the social chaos wrought by AIDS. Using their AT&T credit card, Bobby called Cielo Vista Care Home in Newport.

It didn’t ring or give a busy signal. He heard an odd series of electronic sounds, then a recording informed him that the number he had dialed was temporarily out of service as a result of unspecified line problems. The droning voice suggested that he try later.

He dialed the operator, who tried the same number, with the same results. She said, “I’m sorry, sir. Please call your party later.”

“What line problems could they be having?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir, but I’m sure service’ll be restored soon.”

He had tilted the phone away from his ear, so Julie could lean in and hear both sides of the exchange. When he hung up, he looked at her. “Let’s go back. I got this hunch Thomas needs us.”

“Go back? We’re little more than half an hour from Santa Barbara now. Much further to go home.”

“He may need us. It’s not a strong hunch, I admit, but it’s persistent and ... weird.”

“If he needs help urgently,” she said, “then we’d never get to him in time, anyway. And if it’s not so urgent, it’ll be okay if we go on to Santa Barbara, call again from the motel. If he’s sick or been hurt or something, the extra driving from here to Santa Barbara and back will only add about an hour.”

“Well...”

“He’s my brother, Bobby. I care about him as much as you do, and I say it’ll be all right. I love you, but you’ve never shown enough talent as a psychic to make me hysterical about this.”

He nodded. “You’re right. I’m just ... jumpy. My nerves haven’t settled down since all that traveling with Frank.”

Back on the highway, a few thin tendrils of fog were creeping in from the sea. Sprinkles of rain fell again, then stopped after less than a minute. The heaviness of the air, and an indefinable but undeniable quality of oppressiveness in the utterly black night sky, portended a major storm.

When they had gone a couple of miles, Bobby said, “I should’ve called Hal at the office. While he’s sitting around there waiting for Frank, he could use some of our contacts with the phone company, the cops, make sure everything’s jake at Cielo Vista.”

“If the lines are still out when you make the call from the motel,” Julie said, “then you can bother Hal about it.”