AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The Deacon generally worked out of the front seat of his car, but he had a small office that he never used. It was in the regional F.D.L.E. headquarters, near the airport. It had a window, a desk with a telephone and computer, and two metal folding chairs.
I’d been a cop in L.A. for seven years, and I’d gotten to know a couple of the movie people out there. One of them once told me that you could tell how important somebody was by their office. A corner office with lots of windows, a potted plant, art on the wall and a couch meant this was a major player, somebody really important.
The rating system was so clear, my friend said he could tell at a glance where somebody ranked, even by what kind of plants they had. “Anybody can have a ficus,” he told me.
Deacon didn’t even have a ficus. It didn’t seem to bother him. He led us into the office with his name on the door like somebody going into a strange room. He looked around once, as if trying to figure out where everything was, and then settled uncertainly into the chair behind the desk. “Sit down,” he said, waving vaguely at the folding chairs.
I gave Nicky the chair directly across from Deacon and sat with my arm wedged against the wall. I felt sick, empty, tired. I closed my eyes. Too many hours had gone by since Anna had been grabbed. It was already too late, and I wasn’t doing anything. I hadn’t done anything right yet.
“Okay,” Deacon poked with his pointer fingers at the keyboard. His dark triangular eyebrows were wrinkled down and his tongue was shoved out the side of his mouth.
He punched in a final command, shook his head, and looked at Nicky. “Now, son, I’d like to get a description of the guy that clobbered you.”
Nicky shook his head. The Deacon just looked at him.
“Aw, look, I dunno,” Nicky said. “I barely saw him, it was so fast—I dunno what I can tell you.”
“Anything at all might help,” Deacon said.
Nicky frowned. “He was a black fella, I know that. But—” Nicky looked over at me. “I’m sorry. But I didn’t even get the door open and he was upside my noggin. And I’m on the floor, on my side, and that’s it. Lights out.”
“Sometimes it helps,” said the Deacon, “if you close your eyes and try to see it all in slow motion.”
Nicky looked up at him, surprised. He blinked. “Of course,” he said. “I’m a silly shit. Self-hypnosis.”
“What’s that?” Deacon asked him.
“Self-hypnosis. I can put myself into a trance, right? Do it all the time, for channeling and that.”
“Nicky,” I said. I didn’t want him going off on one of his Spiritual Odysseys right now and channeling the spirit of a 12th century Tibetan monk.
But he was already into it, leaning back in the chair, pointing his chin at the ceiling, blowing his breath out and sucking it back in again.
I looked at Deacon. He raised one of those eyebrows at me and I shook my head. We both stared at Nicky.
His face looked subtly different. Some of the lines on it had smoothed out and he seemed—I don’t know—more serious or something. Not his usual elf-self.
“Okay,” he said. His voice was breathy, but clear.
Deacon shrugged. “How does this work. Somebody knocks at the door, is that it?”
“Who can this be?” he says, and I feel ice cubes along my spine. It’s Anna’s voice.
“Must be Billy,” he says in his own voice.
“And you go to the door,” Deacon says.
Nicky laughs, a high-pitched cackle. “He’s forgot his key!” he says, and then changing to Anna’s voice again, “Nicky, no! Wait!”
Nicky turned in his chair, a quarter-turn to where Anna is. “Eh?” he says, and frowns.
“You open the door,” Deacon suggests.
“Oh… Yeah,” he says, in his slow, breathy voice. “I… open the door. I’m half-looking at Anna. She’s rising up off the chair. And something… Uh,” he says.
“What is it?” Deacon asks.
“He… hit me.”
