Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) Read online

  Khaali Barre was a pleasant woman, and had been in the country for a little over five years. She didn’t opt for the easy green card marriage, which I admired. Instead, she decided to do things the hard way, by navigating American bureaucracy, which I didn’t admire. She was a good employee, though, and had driven me to the hospital when the Necronomicon decided to get revenge for all those midnight screenings of Army of Darkness I’d gone to. Had I known the actual hardcover book was directed by Sam Raimi, I might not have stocked it. I certainly wouldn’t have put it on the top shelf.

  Mina had seen the falling book’s handiwork late Friday night when she finally got here. The actual accident had happened Thursday morning when some asshole from UCSB wanted to have a look at the thing. He must have gotten to the Lovecraft section in his 20th Century Lit class or, more likely, someone was running a Cthulhu LARP on campus and they’d heard about the local occult bookstore and its cranky proprietor.

  The nice part of having a girlfriend—okay, not the nice part, because there are a ton of nice parts, and I’m enough of a grownup not to make a smutty joke here—is that when you hurt yourself, you get the sympathy affection. And Mina, even though she had just suffered through literally hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 101, made the ouchy face and gave me a hug that turned into a kiss. And believe me, that was worth her hitting the bandage accidentally.

  So yeah, a year later and Mina Duplessis and I are together. I’m still puzzling over that one. I’ve pointed out that she can do better, but she never takes me seriously. There’s the obvious: she’s a beautiful woman, and I mean professionally so. She’s a model, a plus-sized one, who generally gets the call whenever a designer wants a classic old-Hollywood look. More importantly, she’s smart as a whip and funny as hell when she wants to be. I’m just in the business of making sure that whatever reasons she had for hooking up with me remain true. She tells me I have nothing to worry about, but I didn’t spend a decade being paranoid for nothing. No thanks, I’ll keep making date night something fun.

  Granted, there have been a few changes here and there, and if you ask me, for the better. Mina has me dressing a little better. The woman knows clothes. She knows a lot of things in point of fact, but like I said, she’s a model, so the clothes part makes sense. And because she’s a plus-sized model, she’s also used to working with what someone’s got rather than trying to simulate something they don’t. She’s got me in guayaberas and the occasional bowling shirt. Slacks, too, although she’s nice enough to get me the ones that don’t need to be ironed. She briefly tried to get me in something other than my Chuck Taylors, but I put the brakes on that right quick. Still, she says it gives me a laid-back island look. I have to be attractive to exactly one person in the world, so as long as Mina likes it, so do I.

  The biggest hit to my identity, the part separating He-of-a-Thousand-Names and Robert Blank of the California central coast, was when she made me cut the Reagan hair. The haircut that had been my unofficial trademark, the ’do that ushered me into countless ultra-right wing hearts is gone. It’s not like I need it anymore. I don’t need to get the masters of the world to trust me, so there’s no real point in looking like a repurposed Big Boy anymore. Occasionally I miss it, since there really was an art to getting the swirl exactly right, and doing so was the closest I ever got to meditation. But truth be told, I look better now.

  The giant duckbilled bandage on my face wasn’t part of the fashion makeover, but it’d be gone in a little bit and I could go back to smelling something that wasn’t my own dried blood. Kind of funny that I’d made it through an entire noir murder mystery with my sniffer intact, only to take a book to the face during my premature retirement. Somewhere, the Cosmic Trickster is laughing.

  “I don’t want to offend you,” Khaali said from her place behind the counter, civics book in her lap, “but I think I should probably study on my own.”

  I shrugged. “If you want. I think we have a couple good civics texts in the back.”

  “In the Conspiracies section?”

  “Yep, those are them.”

  She chewed her lip. “I think I’ll keep with the one Immigration recommended.”

  “Your lo—” My ringtone cut me off. It was the riff from Boston’s “Peace of Mind,” the only Boston I was getting these days. I checked it. Mina Duplessis calling.

  I answered it. “Sheinhardt Wig Comp—”

  “Rabbit.” That was Mina’s nickname for me, something she picked even before I had a “real” name. .“I need your help.” Her voice was tense, scared. Normally it’s incongruously soft, probably something she affected around the time genetics turned her into the avalanche of beauty she had become. Now, the blade in her words cut through any joke I might have made.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been arrested. They say I killed somebody!”

  Goddamn it. I guess I’m not retired after all.

  [2]

  TOOK ME A SECOND TO RECOVER MY POWER OF SPEECH. Mina was no shrinking violet and, sure, she’d been known to counter even casual sexism with a bit of light crotch soccer, but she’d never kill anyone.

  “What?”

  “The cops. They have evidence. They didn’t even bother to question me, not really. They just arrested me as soon as I got home from your place. They’re holding me without bail, they said.”

  “Don’t worry, Mina. I’ll be right there.”

  “What should I do? I’ve never been arrested before.”

  “Just sit tight and don’t say anything. I’ll get you a lawyer. He’s a little weird, but trust me, he’s gotten me out of some shit before.”

  I could tell she was trying not to cry, and I really wished there was some hugging technology I could deploy through the phone that wouldn’t be terrifying. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t even know this guy, and they’re saying we were sleeping together.”

  “I know. It’s probably just a misunderstanding,” I said, trying to speak in the soothing tones of late night call-in radio. I was really thinking that this sounded like a frame job, but I wasn’t going to say that. Not making Mina cry was one of my primary purposes on this earth. “Did they give you a name? The guy they think you killed?”

  “Um... Neil Greene, I think? I’ve never heard of him before.”

  I had. Neil Greene was a Seventeenth Degree Freemason, a government bureaucrat for the city of Los Angeles who controlled roughly 1/17th of the flow of paperwork that kept the city running, and through that, about the same fraction of the city itself. Plus he was a member in good standing of the First Reformed Church of the Antichrist. He was also a friend of mine, or as close to those as I got. Literally the last thing I had ever seen him do was attempt to save my life. In my head, I briefly went over the pros and cons of telling Mina.

  “I know him,” I said. “Knew him, I mean. Look, this changes nothing. You didn’t know him and you sure as hell didn’t kill him. I’m driving down now, all right? We’ll have this all straightened out before dinner.”

  She exhaled and I pictured her gathering herself. She was a strong person, and like most strong people, she was not a fan of being in situations that were out of control. “Okay,” she said, then repeated it. “Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

  I was on the road pretty much immediately. I told Khaali that I had to go, glossing over exactly why, and asked her to close. She wanted to know what was wrong, but it would probably take too long to explain. I almost headed out with nothing but the shirt on my back, but something made me hold off. A little voice whispering that maybe, just maybe, this was a little more sinister than it appeared—and it already looked sinister enough to be twirling a mustache while it tied Mina to some train tracks. That I should be prepared for another bout of insanity courtesy of my long association with the Information Underground.

  I was retired, right, but I could unretire for a day. This could be like Michael Jordan with the Wizards, if Michael Jordan had never been very good at basketb
all. No, no problem, this was even less than that. I wasn’t deluding myself. I wasn’t trying to come back for good. I was going to do one thing and get out before anyone knew I was there. Get back to the City of Angels, Casablanca for the Secret Masters of the world, the city where shit gets done, where shadow governments can meet and hash out their differences over sushi and cocaine. And here comes Peter Lorre, the Boy Friday for every last one of these groups.

  But Peter Lorre wasn’t looking to get any of his timecards stamped.

  This wasn’t a job. Not a breach of the retirement thing. This was personal. One of my contacts, a contact I later found had himself been double-dipping, had showed up dead and my girlfriend was being framed for it. It didn’t just stink; it reeked like a whorehouse after fleet week. And that internal monologue—you know, the one trying to soothe me with Morgan Freeman’s stentorian tones—was telling me, “Make sure you have your operative kit. Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’. We will prevail and the world is a fine place and worth fighting for.”

  My internal monologue doesn’t always differentiate between Freeman movies very well.

  So I stopped by the homestead. Mina had been here the day before, leaving early Monday morning, and I swear I could still smell her. Evidence of our weekend was still around. Her bathing suit hung in the bathroom. There were Thai takeout leftovers in the fridge, the two DVDs we compromised on still sitting on the coffee table (The Day the Earth Stood Still and Music and Lyrics, for any who care). The empty bottle of merlot, which had turned out to be a good choice.

  Bathroom first. I tried not to focus too hard on her things in there, the various lotions, cleansers, unguents, and oils scattered around that I’d never heard of in my single days. Her toothbrush, her makeup, the bandanna she used to keep her hair out of her eyes when she washed her face. I kept my attention on what I was there to do, grabbing my scant handful of toiletries (with a few additions from Mina. Who knew what a difference moisturizer makes?) and shoving them into a didi bag. Then the good stuff.

  I opened up my closet. Lockpicks, because you never know when a little light breaking and entering will help out. My case of fake IDs. With no recent credit card purchases to establish them as real, eating, sleeping, cable-watching humans, they wouldn’t past close inspection like they used to. They’d do, though. My police badge, and yes, it’s real, though Detective Saroyan, who had the name associated with it, had vanished into the Bermuda Triangle for all anyone knew.

  Those were easy. The last thing I wasn’t so sure about. I stared at my aquarium for a good five minutes or so, weighing my options.

  I have a rectangular seventy-gallon tank in my living room about three-quarters full of water. There are a few fish squirming around in the depths, a couple catfish and algae-eaters employed to keep the whole thing relatively clean. The marquee inhabitants are my three axolotls—salamanders to you and me—two of which were resting lightly on the gravel floor while one had crawled partway out to sun himself on a smooth section of lava rock. I’ve kept three of them as pets since the old days, Normally neotenic—that is, they stay in an aquatic larval form into adulthood—mine had metamorphosed in a misguided bid for symbolic relevance. Now they looked like grumpy pink tiger salamanders.

  I wasn’t looking at them, but rather the largest rock in the tank, nestled in the corner, and contemplating whether it was coming with me. Taking it was an admission that this was probably going to be pretty bad. Not taking it could be the last mistake I ever made.

  To the untrained eye, it looked like a faintly glowing gray rock, pitted and rough. A rusted and sooty chain was bolted into the side, making it look like an artist’s conception of Lemmy’s sperm. The area of the tank where it sat was crusted in more of the same glowing rock, heaviest in the places where the stone sat and stretching outward like silicon algae. Only the chain was completely clean, though with the fire damage, it looked like something from a shipwreck. The axolotls often crawled on the rock, and though I might have been imagining it, I think they had started glowing slightly.

  To an illuminated eye, it was blasphemy. The rock was the Genesis Stone, coming straight from the moon to my aquarium. It was one of the more powerful objects in existence, and responsible for at least one apocalypse back in ’69. It had been bolted to the Chain of the Heretic Martyr, the same thing that had bound Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans, schizophrenic and saint, to the stake. Sticking these objects together was pretty much sacrilege to any number of mystery cults. Since it had been done as a deliberate act of heresy by the head of a Discordian splinter sect, it sort of fit.

  To my eye, it was the thing I had attempted suicide with. Of course, I couldn’t even do that in a relatively normal way. The most insulting part was that I never even left a note, not that I had anyone who would’ve read it back then. I did now, and she was scared and in jail. And she needed me.

  I could do this for her. One last thing.

  I grabbed the chain and hauled the Genesis Flail (as the unrepentant D&D player in me had named it) out, mopping up the stinking salamander water with a towel. The axolotls watched me with Permian hunger. The stone was lighter than it should have been, something to do with the moon’s gravity, but then it was pretty much all magic at that point and could be safely ignored. Sticking all my supplies in the trunk and resigning myself to having some moon rock start growing back there, I got behind the wheel and drove down Pacific Coast Highway toward Los Angeles.

  On the stereo: “Local Boy” by the Rifles.

  I should probably explain. If you know me, you know I can’t stand most music because it’s pretty much just occult viewpoints with guitar solos. The only band this isn’t true for is Boston, because Boston’s music somehow manages to be shallower than one of those plastic wading pools with Spongebob on it. The problem is, music is one of those things Mina knows about. A lot about. And she’s a total snob to boot. Can’t stand Boston for the exact reason I like them so much. So every time she comes up to see me or I go down to see her, she filches my iPod and packs it full of what she calls good music.

  Only I can’t turn off my brain, even when I’m supposed to be retired. So I’m trying to listen to this stuff and all I can think is, “Oh, these guys are just mouthpieces for the Flat Earth Society, or the Merovingians, or the Ordo Templi Orientis.” So where she listens to “Local Boy” and hears a poppy punky tune about a veteran returning home and finding it’s not the same place he left, I hear a song about the hashish trade as related to the Assassins, a thousand-year-old Islamic death cult. It’s exhausting.

  I’d go point by point on the lyrics, but I can’t, since the record companies will sue at even the slightest hint of unfair use. I’d probably be in the clear if not for Geffen v. Spade, where a guy was actually sued over his internal monologue. And the record company won! Garnished his dreams for the rest of his life.

  The Rifles are all about the Assassins and once you know that, their song “Peace and Quiet” becomes downright threatening.

  So there I was on PCH, which, at the risk of hyperbole, is the most beautiful stretch of anything in the galaxy. To the east, you have the greens and golds of the California coast. As you go north, you start with Southwestern desert, which fades into something almost Mediterranean, going up into full Twin Peaks pine forest. To the west you have the endless blue of the Pacific, with alternating sandy beaches and rocky cliffs. Because of the storm on Friday California was still in the middle of a rain hangover, which is the exact opposite of what it sounds like. Meant the sky had been scrubbed and the cool wind blowing inland kept the shine.

  Meant that when PCH turned into the 101 and I pulled into Los Angeles, the skyscrapers downtown were glittering in the sun and the snowcapped peaks of the San Gabriels made the whole thing look like a tourism ad. Made me wonder why I had ever left.

  Oh, right. All those really dangerous people I stabbed in the back for about ten years while I was making a living. Thanks for the reminder, Morgan Freeman. “You’re welcome, an
d I hope I can see my friend and shake his hand.”

  I took the 134 over into Glendale, a neighborhood chiefly known for having a mall, which I’ll probably have to explain to children someday as being a lot like the internet, but minus the porn and cat pictures. I wasn’t after the mall, mostly because I knew about the internet. I’m savvy that way. No, my destination was a little restaurant on a quiet street several blocks north. Glendale was mostly a grid, but lots of trees were planted around to make it feel like Mayberry or something. Now they were rattling in the wind.

  The restaurant was nothing special from the outside. The sign said Sevan, and most people would have thought that was a typo; it was actually the name of a lake in the old Armenian Empire, back when that was more than a cruel joke at a Kardashian’s expense. I headed inside, passing the mixture of balding Armenian men and younger hipsters there for lunch. The dining room was wide and pleasant, carpeted in blue with tables lined up in a grid pattern just like the streets outside. I went to the register, where a bored and impeccably groomed teenager was sullenly waiting. Two older men chatted over the grill, searing a variety of garlicky meats.

  “What can I get you?” she asked me, barely looking up.

  I felt like an asshole. I always did. “I have a problem with the Reptilians.”

  She jumped, focusing her big brown eyes on me with a mixture of pity and wonder. “What?”

  “I need to see Dan. That’s the code, right? It hasn’t changed?”

  The two older men had turned from the grill and one was staring at me. They were familiar, and were probably trying to place me. Problem was, I was in a big duckbill bandage and the Reagan hair was gone. I looked like any other schmuck. Well, not any other schmuck, but I didn’t look like me, or the me they knew.

  One of them said something in Armenian to the girl. She nodded, still nervous, and said, “Come with me.”

  I went around the side of the counter, past the grill, and followed the girl. The door was nearly hidden by a pantry of ingredients and a bulletin board covered in flyers and pushpins. She opened it to reveal an office that was almost big enough for half of me.