Stone Junction

  With his father’s blessings, the CIA put him on salary. His training was thorough, his teachers the best. At sixteen, he performed his first solo hit, a Dayton reporter about to reveal some bad news about cash movements in the Cayman Islands – not that Gurry cared why. But when he was twenty he did ask himself why he was killing people for a loutish bureaucracy he had come to despise for the monthly pittance of sixteen thousand dollars.

  Gurry declared himself independent. The agency graciously gave him his leave, sending two men to kill him. When their bodies were found mummy-wrapped in scarlet ribbon at the bottom of a dumpster two blocks from the director’s house, a truce was negotiated: Gurry would continue to take on special assignments for them at a reasonable wage, but could accept or reject assignments as he chose.

  Gurry Debritto’s career wasn’t limited to assassination – he did security work and general demolition as well – but assassination, he often said, was ‘the biggest buck for the bang.’ His fees grew in direct proportion to the narrow legend he became. The most he’d received was twenty million dollars for poisoning Jack Ruby. The least was the twenty thousand for killing Annalee Pearse. That one still pissed him off. It wasn’t his fault it was botched.

  ‘We’re drunk in a Motel 6 in Stockton, California. You didn’t find Miss Rainbow Moonbeam Brigit Fifth Bardo or whatever the fuck her name is, but we know enough already, don’t we? Other people at the party said she wandered back around dawn and announced – it was the sort of thing people remember – ‘I just went around the block to the Horsehead Nebula and sucked a boy’s dick till his skull caved in.’ That boy had to be Daniel, and we know he must have told her – bragging, probably – about Livermore. Or maybe she gave him drugs. Or found something in the house. Or convinced him it was wrong and he should call the cops. But maybe he called Volta. Annalee said they’d been given a number to call if they saw us. But we don’t need all the pieces to solve the puzzle. We can feel the truth. We can feel Daniel’s fear and hatred, and Volta’s cold, neutral touch. You were right to advise our independent investigation, right to sense their dissembling. Volta is brilliant. To suggest – after coaching Daniel – that it wasn’t an accident. The best lie is always the truth. He’s worthy of us.’

  Shamus Malloy was talking to his horribly burned hand. He always took the white glove off now as soon as they were alone. He had the thumb tucked under his index and middle finger, making an opening like a mouth. Above it, on the knuckle joining the index finger to the hand, stray splatters of molten silver had left pocked scar-tissue that resembled two blank eyes. Shamus looked into them. ‘You have to help me. What should we do now? What should we do about Daniel and Volta?’

  His hand said, ‘Destroy them.’

  Transcription:

  Denis Joyner, AMO Mobile Radio

  Time to ID down to a bottom line: you got the DJ, the Direct Jolt, wired to fire some juice in your ear, and if you got the DJ, you know you have KUSH fuckin’ rollin’ ray-dee-ooo, natural as a six and five, and where you are is where it’s at, and who I am’s a mystery to me too.

  Let’s run that bunny down to an illogical conclusion. I mean, come on people! Why are you covering me up with this deluge of cards and letters asking, ‘Hey, who are you, and what’s going down, and is this for real, and wow, who pays for your folly and where can I get me some?’ Asking, ‘What does DJ really stand for?’ Asking, ‘What does it all mean?’

  My marketing consultants must be taking drugs. They must think demographics are some kind of visual aid. Who am I? Hey, who are you? And who are we if we’re turning the table together? Why is it wise to question all answers and stupid to answer all questions? Face it: Sometimes you have to beg for an answer. I mean get right down on your bony little knees and beg your heart dry.

  But friends and countrymen of the roaring night, you don’t have to beg me. Answers I don’t know are my specialty. So, let me take your questions from the top:

  My real name is Doe John. I was born of gypsy spawn and motion is my home. I am the Voice of the Blur and the Breath of Song. Hang on, honey – I got the pedal to the metal and I won’t be long.

  Everything is going down, unless it’s rising or signed a short-term contract with equilibrium.

  It’s for real and for sure. A true fucking story, friend. You can bet it with both hands.

  When you lose the bet, AMO shoots some vig my way, keeping me on the air like some alternative PBS for the sorely bored and seriously demented. In the long run, I come out of your pocket when you’re asleep at night and tell you all the good ways to be bad.

  DJ stands for disc jockey, as in I’m riding the wheel just like you and I guess we’ll just have to see for ourselves where it stops. If it does. If it’s moving to start with. Because if wishes were wings we’d all be risen, and if cream was butter we wouldn’t have to churn.

  Don’t mean shit.

  Churn on that.

  And next time send me some tough ones.

  This has been the Devout Jester whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

  Three days after Daniel’s first disappearance, he came in for breakfast, sat down, squared his shoulders, shut his eyes, and instantly vanished.

  Volta, who’d been chopping tomatoes for salsa to accompany his renowned huevos rancheros, laid the knife on the cutting board and applauded, murmuring, ‘Bravo.’ Then he went back to chopping.

  He was aware of Daniel’s presence but tried mightily to ignore him. He was glad to get rid of him, if only for a few minutes. From the moment Daniel had reappeared and stumbled toward the porch, he’d showered Volta with questions. The only one Volta could answer with certainty had been the first.

  ‘What did you put the poison in, the wheatcakes or the ham?’

  ‘Daniel! I take pride in my wheatcakes, and I would never insult Tick Hathaway’s ham.’

  ‘Where?’

  Volta couldn’t tell if Daniel was demanding or pleading. ‘I injected it in the apple in your portion of the fruit salad. I was in a Christian mood.’

  ‘What? Christian?’

  ‘The Tree of Knowledge. Forbidden fruit. Temptation and the Fall and all of that. Some tastes of the forbidden are rapturous; some make you sick.’

  ‘What’s sick,’ Daniel gasped, ‘is dosing somebody. And what’s really sick is mixing speed with it.’

  ‘I’ve offered the apology of necessity. I can only repeat it. And please – it wasn’t poison. It was a virus that took Charmaine weeks of intense work.’

  ‘She hates me,’ Daniel said.

  Volta noted with surprise the disconsolate edge in his tone. ‘No, she doesn’t. She highly recommends you, as a matter of fact; and as you undoubtedly noticed, she is extremely aware and uncommonly insightful.’

  Daniel doggedly shook his head.

  After that first question, Volta had no certain answers. This uncertainty seemed to provoke Daniel into fusillades of more questions, as if answers simply awaited the right inquiry.

  ‘Why do your clothes vanish with you? And your fillings? Why don’t they just fall on the floor?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Volta patiently replied, a reply he would often repeat. ‘I can only tell you, based on my own limited experience, that anything in intimate connection with your force field for longer than thirty to forty hours will disappear with you and reappear when you do – depending on its own strength of field and its harmony with your own.’

  ‘What do you mean exactly by this force field? Your body?’

  ‘Daniel, I can only speculate. I think of it as the sum of vitality – flesh, soul, psyche, or anything else you consider a constituent of being.’

  ‘Wait a minute now. Let’s take a practical example. Say my pocketknife disappears with me and I walk outside and set it on a rock and then go back inside and reappear, the knife would still be in my pocket?’

  ‘No, not in my experience. It would reappear on the rock, right where you left it.’

  ‘Why? It wouldn’t be in my f
orce field anymore.’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps there’s some principle of dimensional or field exclusivity. Or as Smiling Jack is fond of saying, “You can’t be in two places at once if you’re not anywhere at all.”’

  ‘Wait a minute. How can you see? You don’t have eyes. How can you hear when your ears have vanished? It just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘That’s because it’s impossible, Daniel. If the impossible made sense, it wouldn’t be impossible. I assure you I made long and serious inquiries – discreetly, of course – from physicists to shamans. The only conclusion among those few who would even entertain the notion was that sensory integrity is not limited to somatic existence. Think of it this way: You briefly turn into your ghost.’

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Tell your ghost.’

  ‘All right, all right. So what you’re saying is that the physical self turns into spirit.’

  ‘I don’t know. What I’m suggesting, if anything, is that we’re born to be amazed.’

  ‘But I wonder …’ and Daniel would ricochet off on another line of questions.

  To spare himself, Volta added another four hours of solitary meditation to Daniel’s daily post-graduate regimen. It didn’t matter. There were still as many questions; Daniel just asked them faster.

  ‘Why did you experience the ecstasy as contraction while I felt it as expansion?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps we were experiencing different things, or the same things differently.’

  ‘And that’s why I didn’t go through that still, empty, stop-time sensation you did when you vanished?’

  ‘So I assume, yes.’

  ‘But some things we experienced were the same. Why some in common, some unique?’

  ‘I don’t know. To make it more interesting?’

  But the interrogative reversal didn’t work. Daniel ignored the question and bored on with his own until Volta said pointedly, ‘Daniel, ask yourself. You know as much about it as I do, and I have no doubts that soon you will surpass my meager understanding.’

  Volta wiped the cutting board. Daniel had been vanished far longer than his program prescribed. Volta resisted an impulse to check the clock. Daniel was beyond him. He must have simply imagined a mirror, making a leap that Volta had never considered. That didn’t surprise him, for he’d felt from the beginning that Daniel wanted to dance on the threshold. Thus far Daniel had displayed discipline and respect, but his passion to understand what was essentially a mystery could easily fuse into obsession, and that worried Volta. As he cracked eggs, he decided to relinquish his position on the Star. He was weary of constant decisions, weary of questions he couldn’t answer or had already answered too many times. If they stole the Diamond, he would have found what he’d sought. Then he could spend his remaining years watching the wind blow, visiting friends, tending the garden, savoring a cup of afternoon tea, standing in the Diamond’s center.

  Volta glanced at the clock. Serenity would have to wait. Daniel had vanished fifteen minutes ago, clearly ignoring Volta’s suggestion that he limit disappearances to under ten minutes. He tried to sense Daniel’s presence in the room. He felt, but only faintly, that Daniel was still at the table. Just as Volta was about to abandon nonchalance and yell at Daniel to return, Daniel reappeared, still seated at the table. He showed no evidence of disorientation. His smile was almost indecent with triumph.

  ‘Forgive the theatrics,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ve been around you too long.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Volta said, his throat tight. He could feel his anxiety collapse through relief into anger. Anger was pointless.

  ‘Not bad for a beginner, wouldn’t you say?’ When Volta said nothing, Daniel added, ‘It’s all in the imagination, and a million mirrors.’

  Volta walked over to Daniel. ‘No it’s not,’ he said evenly. Before Daniel could react, Volta slapped him hard across the face. ‘It’s a dance, and you better watch your step or you’ll fall through one of those mirrors and keep on going.’

  Daniel touched his numb cheek and lifted his eyes to Volta’s. ‘Fuck you,’ he said.

  Volta swung but his open hand never touched flesh. Daniel had vanished.

  Swiftly but without apparent urgency, Volta moved to the center of the kitchen. He rolled up the sleeves on his faded denim shirt and waited, trying to sense Daniel’s whereabouts. Before he could bring his concentration to the necessary point, Daniel appeared behind him, locking his hands behind Volta’s neck and pushing his head forward and down, virtually immobilizing him with a full nelson. Applying just a bit of pressure for emphasis, Daniel grunted, ‘Well my, my – imagine that. I mean, who would have even imagined the possibility, or ever imagined it would come to this? Do you imagine I’ll accept your apology?’

  Volta started laughing. Daniel increased the pressure but then he began laughing too and eased off slightly. The instant the pressure relaxed, Volta shot his arms straight up as he pushed backward, neatly slipping the hold and knocking Daniel off balance. Before Daniel could react, Volta produced a deck of cards and tossed them fluttering at Daniel’s face, who instinctively raised his arms to protect his eyes.

  ‘Dharma combat!’ Volta shouted joyously. ‘Real magic!’ He tickled Daniel along his exposed ribs.

  Daniel brought his elbows down to pin Volta’s hands, simultaneously shifting into position for a Tao Do Chaung shin-kick. Volta escaped him and tossed a fine gray gritty powder in Daniel’s face that instantly blinded him and set his sinuses ablaze. Pawing at his face, Daniel staggered helplessly while Volta followed close behind, almost yelling, ‘It’s really all in the imagination? Come on, is that for real?’ He timed his words between Daniel’s vicious sneezes, but found little pleasure in Daniel’s discomfort. He put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder and guided him to the sink.

  ‘You win, Daniel.’ He pushed Daniel’s head down tenderly and turned on the cold water so Daniel could rinse his eyes.

  Daniel burbled, ‘Jealous.’

  ‘Wrong,’ Volta said softly, but with such conviction that Daniel shut up and gave himself to the soothing water.

  Volta patted him on the back. ‘I don’t want you pouting about this. I applaud your abilities, but I won’t be taunted or demeaned. We have important work to do together. Obviously, and to your credit, you’ve surpassed my abilities at vanishing, have done in a week what took me years. I readily admit you may well have a genius for it. However, I am responsible for sharing the secret, and I wouldn’t have assumed that responsibility if I hadn’t thought you would grant me some rights in the matter, some control, some respect.’

  He quit patting Daniel’s back, and leaned down to whisper in his wet ear, ‘I can feel your hunger, Daniel. I can feel how you want to lose yourself. I felt it too. Expanding, contracting – it makes no difference. Vanishing is not the way out. There is no way out, Daniel, no final, astonishing escape. That’s the cold, magical fact.’

  Daniel nodded almost imperceptibly.

  ‘Good,’ Volta said. He paused a moment, his hand still on Daniel’s shoulder. ‘And don’t ask me any more questions today. Practice your right to remain silent. If the theft fails, you may need it.’

  Over the huevos rancheros, Volta briefed Daniel as usual on the previous night’s radio transmissions regarding the Diamond.

  ‘Last night’s only news was that we can expect some real news this morning. We know the Diamond is in New Mexico, probably the White Sands Proving Grounds – or that’s my guess.’

  ‘No progress,’ Daniel translated.

  ‘If I’m reading correctly between the lines, it means someone’s gotten in close. Probably Jean or Ellison Deeds. I don’t think you’ve met Ellison, but he’s as accomplished as Jean in his own right. Patience is crucial, Daniel. You’ve been with us long enough to know how highly we value quality information. Lacking guns and numbers, intelligence is our most important weapon. And as I’m sure you appreciate, the closer one gets to the source, the more r
eliable the information. If you don’t appreciate it, you should – your life may depend on it.’

  ‘I didn’t say no progress was unsatisfactory,’ Daniel said primly, a tone at odds with his damp hair and red eyes, which gave him the look of a half-drowned gargoyle at the end of a bad drug binge.

  Volta nodded, pleased that Daniel, if a little testy, seemed willing to regard their recent clash as a mode of clarification. ‘We’re just at one of those plateaus,’ Volta said. ‘After all, we’ve learned about where it is, though not exactly – White Sands is a large installation. But the exact location and the security arrangements will likely come as a single breakthrough, so it could all coalesce very quickly.’

  ‘You said White Sands was a military testing ground for bombs and other weapons, right?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘You think they’re going to nuke it?’

  ‘Who knows? A national government is bad enough, but this administration is the largest collection of scoundrels and morons in recent memory, perhaps ever. I wouldn’t even guess what they might do. However, I’m not convinced they could destroy it, even with a nuclear device.’

  ‘You still think it’s the diamond you saw in your vision.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Volta said, noting Daniel had replaced bald questions with tentative assertions.

  ‘Well, you want to see it for your own purposes. It would seem you’re being greedy too.’

  Volta smiled. ‘Of course I’m being greedy, but my greed is pure: I want to see it, not possess it. I think it’s not real greed if you don’t think anyone should have it, including yourself.’

  ‘You should run for president,’ Daniel said.

  ‘I’m already a president of sorts, and serving the Star seems to have exhausted my ambition as well as my strength.’

  ‘That still leaves you your wisdom and charm,’ Daniel smiled thinly, lifting a salsa-drenched forkful of the huevos rancheros in salute.