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This time back in Chevy Chase, Janet Spofford answered the phone. "Mr Spofford, please. It's important." She replied just-a-minute, and blinking sleep from her eyes, rolled over and prodded Thomas' back. He'd wound himself in the bedding, as usual, an annoying trait, "Thomas! Telephone!" His tendency toward blanket piracy, a venial sin at worst, was rendered moot by the rest of his bedroom behavior. "Thomas!"
He sat up, and took the phone.
"Spofford here."
"Mr Spofford. This is the tracking room. Mosca's on the monitor again. San Francisco. He doesn't seem to be moving." "Call David. I'll be right there."
He ran the Lincoln fast toward the Beltway, steering with one hand, holding his car phone with the other, talking with NAO---- North American Operations, from whom he ordered a jet plane poised to take him to San Francisco. A call to the Directorate for Administration secured the immediate opening of liaison with the SF police and the SF office of the FBI. He rushed through the security checks, and, thirty minutes after the call, stepped into the monitor room. This time Dave had arrived first. He was conversing with technicians clustered before the screen. Dave pointed at a close-up map of Mosca' s new neighborhood. "Look. He's still there. That blue dot. Right there on this corner. It's a motel called the Broadway Manor." He zoomed in. "Room 101."
"Railroads?"
"No railroads."
"Car lines? Buses?"
"Buses and cable cars. I'll show you the overlay."
Thomas called NAO to say he'd be at the airport in twenty minutes and to have the flight ready. "Dave, you'll come with me." Soon, a surly Dave at his side, he was driving the Lincoln full speed into the wet bright of the empty early-morning freeway. "As they say, Dave, speeding around here, you never know whom you might run into." Get NAO on the phone. Set it up. Tell NAO about Broadway Manor, but no more than they need to know. "Rent room 102 for MKMOSCA. Yes. I have it. Horace A. ARCHER." He glanced at the red-faced beefcake on the seat beside him. Of all possibilities, how did they happen to select that pseudonym? "Okay. Affirmative. And rent room 201 and install whatever's necessary to achieve full electronic surveillance of room 101." That should do it. "I'll arrive about nine am California time. Have an FBI man waiting for me on the northwest corner of Broadway and Van Ness. Have him ready to brief me with the latest information. Right! A map of 101. Showing the furniture, everything. Who's in 101. What they've been doing and saying. Negative. Don't alarm the occupants. Don't bother them in any way." He glanced back at rumpled, angry Dave, remembering how his father had always told him democracy makes it possible for the best
men to rise to the top. "In Jefferson's words, democracy will replace the aristocracy of blood and privilege with the aristocracy of the able." Contemplating Dave as they walked from the car to the plane, and thinking about his other colleagues, and about his confreres at Webb and Yale, he wondered how this principle, in which he'd once placed so much trust, had, in application, managed to go s0 far awry. The plane rose rapidly into the rainwashed starry night. Dave writhed and snored in his seat across the aisle. NAO had secured a fast, small, military jet. Military intelligence in the USA, he mused behind closed eyes, began with Titans: its founder, George Washington; Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Jefferson and, yes, Nathan Hale. Then it metamorphosed into the silver age of gods and heroes, of Allan Pinkerton and Wild Bill Donovan. And now it's degenerated through mediocrity to cacocrity, uranium into lead: Colby and Casey, then Bush and Mild Bill Webster and Gates and the amoral careerists of today. What had once broken the Japanese naval code and turned the tide of communism had shriveled into Watergate and Irangate and more recent covert operations which when judged by ends as well as means are scarcely to be distinguished from common crime.
And now here I am, mustering the vast resources of CIA to hunt down a . . . fly!
Well . . . .
He reminded himself what he sought only seemed a fly.
A seeming-fly I've never seen.
Does Mosca exist?
Is he but a figment derived from conversations with Dr Bruhn and the Fly Reports?
Or a rogue fragment of some blundered disinformation campaign? Every half hour Thomas checked with the monitor room. Save for occasional interruptions, the fix remained bright and steady. As he'd told Dave about Mosca, "We'll catch him if we can, kill him if we must."
At 8:45 am at the corner of Polk and Broadway Thomas and Dave stepped out of a taxi into a cool sunny morning. Dave was wrathfully complaining about having to come along. "Dave. Think of it this way. We are cherubim, defending Paradise and the Tree of Life from the forces of evil." They walked one block west to Van Ness, crossed, and approached a trim looking man in a gray suit. "Are you waiting for me?" asked Thomas.
* * *
That evening, seated side by side, the boob tube laving them with evergreen rays, Mosca and Santa Sebastiana, though exhausted, ergo open to soothing influences, began to suffer from progressive boredom. Mosca turned his back on the TV and confronted himself in the vanity mirror. For the first time he had a good look at his new vehicle. Black stubble crusted its face and black hair curled over the top of its T-shirt. The scar, torn from temple to chin, seemed inflamed. Sunburn and wrinkles, accumulated over years of sheepherding and petty crime, veneered its forehead, and the brown zombied eyes showed pupils reduced to the size of gnats. Lank hair in profusion drooped over flat ears.
"Be as you desire me," said a mirthful Santa Sebastiana. "Did you ever see a Cristo like that before?"
"Not on display."
"Look at your back."
He stripped his T-shirt, turned toward the TV, and gazed over his shoulder into the mirror. The basic scars---- three cuts across three perpendicular, slashed by the Maistro de Novios with a flint chip as the seal of the order---- would do for a tic-tac-toe game had they not been overlain with a pad of artifacts derived from years of penitential discipline. "Now isn't that special?" said Santa Sebastiana. "Pedro spends fifty-one weeks annually fucking sheep and mugging travelers, and then wipes it clean with the lash during Holy Week s0 he can do
it all over again." She laughed. "He should have got himself crucified after he stole all that money from the Morada."
Mosca felt an alien shudder pass through his mestizo Pedro body. And then came the mestizo Pedro voice: "O! suffering Jesús, with this life blood of mine, I cleanse my soul in Thy name."
"Don't let him get out of control."
"You put all that in his head."
"Be as I desire me."
Exasperated, he lay on the bed and closed his eyes; the TV voices became a glossolalia chorus in his relaxing consciousness. A fierce pain and a thud and another sear of fire shocked him awake. Santa Sebastiana whoops with glee at this sleepwalker. Abruptly Mosca realizes he's standing before the TV gripping an electric cord woven through a chain he'd torn from an overhead lamp, and scourging his back, splashing the walls with blood.
To Lysle, hip to the Pablo story, Lysle, the hovering observer, it seemed as if Room One-oh-one of the Broadway Manor had transformed int0 the Broadway Morada.
* * *
While the agent was introducing himself and presenting his ID card, Thomas thought this man as well suited to serving the FBI as a Zoroastrian would be to driving a Mazda. A manager! They're all managers. They think of themselves as practical professionals and despise us as impetuous romantics. They think we're too unstable to be trusted with guns. He smiled at the agent, while in imagination he saw him in a Dior dress, at a drag party in New York City, dancing with that peerless guardian of righteousness and public morals, J. Edgar Hoover. Whenever Thomas met an FBI man, he mastered such intimidation as he might feel by imaging the agent in drag, hoofing The Hoover with their legendary director, the avatar namesake of the FBI building on PA Ave., DC (no AC here!), the hero herself clad in a blonde wig and French maid costume, rouge and lipstick, storming over stomped champagne glasses and crushed cans of Queer Beer, leaping and undulating to the music of God Bless America accelerated to a boogie beat and segued on occasion into a fully orchestrated rendition of Yankee Doodle . . . mind the music and the step . . . .
Grinning, bubbling mirth, Thomas displayed his credential and introduced Dave. "My colleague, Horace R. Archer."
"Mr Spofford, my office wants to know what this is all about."
"Were I free to tell you, I would most certainly do so."
"We're both federal agents. In order to expedite cooperation, we should share what we know."
"All I'm at liberty to say is that this is a highly classified matter vital to National Security." He flashed his tame charmsmile. "Did you bring the map and the package?"
The agent drew a map and a flat package from inside his suit coat and gave them to Thomas who stowed them in his sport jacket. "Tell me everything that's been going on."
"Room 101 is occupied by a single man, a Latino, of about thirty-five, who registered as a resident of a small town in northern New Mexico. He's been alone ever since we set up surveillance, and, the manager says, he's seen no one else going there since the suspect arrived in a City Cab last night about ten pm. We checked that out. Couldn't find the driver, but we saw the waybill. The cab brought him straight here from the Transbay Terminal, suggesting the suspect knew where he was going. He's in there right now." The agent assumed a more intimate expression. Your electronic people in room 201 have filled in the whole picture beginning about one am. This guy is weird. He has nothing with him but a woman's handbag. And a crude wooden statue that looks like death. He left the TV on all night. It's still on, tuned to 'General Hospital.' And he talks to himself. The transcript's in the package. A religious fanatic. Brainburn. You know what? Shortly after your team arrived and set up, this gent got out of
bed, jerked the cord off a lamp, a cord wound through a chain, and began whipping his own back until blood was flying all over the place. A nut case. Even by the standards of this nutty city."
"Interesting."
"Probably a Devil worshiper."
"Where's your car and what kind is it?"
A Catholic church occupied the opposite corner. "It's that blue Buick parked there in front of Saint Brigid's."
"Here's what I want you to do. Go to the motel office. Tell the manager to call our boy Pedro and tell him to come to the office. Show Pedro your ID. Tell him you want some information. Then take him to your car, and keep him there until you see one or both or us walk by. When that happens, thank him and let him go."
"Okay."
"This restaurant right here on the corner, Peter D's; if you need us for anything, here's where we'll be."
"Got it."
"We can see the office from here. When you and Pedro go by, we'll see you." He smiled a fraternal smile. "Pedro is not a suspect. Be polite. Don't alarm him. Don't dig for data. Just keep him there until one or both of us walks by."
"Affirmative."
Chuckling to himself, Thomas led into Peter D's and ordered coffee. He opened the package. "Here we have a cage for Mosca, a key to 101, two small aerosols, two protective masks, and the transcripts. One of the aerosols will kill every single insect in the room. The other will put everything in the room to sleep. It's strong enough to knock out a horse. We have a killer and a sleeper." He stirred coffee. "Archer, did you know the nerve gas left over from World War II was modified into Malathion and other pesticides? Of the poison gas family, only nerve gas kills insects. Can you believe they spray the stuff on fields, that is to say, on our food?"
* * *
In room 101, minutes later, the phone rang, and Mosca answered. "Mr Gonzales, this is the front desk. Please come to the office. I'm sorry to disturb you, but it's very important."
Mosca dressed: Levis, lavender T-shirt emblazoned SANTA FE/ A STROLL THROUGH HISTORY, and a black cloth jacket. And now what? He told his companions the news. Caution and Perversity advised him: Stay here. Curiosity said: Go find out. He went. In the office, the agent introduced himself and said he would like to ask some questions pursuant to an ongoing investigation. Would Mr Gonzales be s0 kind as to accompany him to the privacy of his car?
"We can do it here."
"Come with me to my car."
"I'd rather not."
"I advise cooperation. The consequences of obstructing justice can be severe."
"We'll do it here."
"If you don't come with me, I'll have to take you into custody as a material witness."
"Let's go! What we waiting for!"
When they slid into the Buick and shut the doors, the agent smiled at Mosca and said, "A few preliminaries. Your full name is Pedro Felice Gonzales? Is that correct?"
"Well, yes."
"Your motel registration says you come from a small town in New Mexico."
"Yes. That's true."
"Would you please show me your ID."
"In this country, neither males nor females are required by law to carry ID, let alone show it. I'm talking androgynous rights."
A dark look closed over the agent's face.
"Mr Gonzales. Show me your ID."
"Here in our country one is only required by law to give one's real name. And possibly one's address. That's all."
"Mr Gonzales. We're going to have a serious problem."
Call up reinforcements! Mobilize the troops! Open utterly to Pedro!
Pedro surged up inside, seizing the controls.
"Why, sir . . . just why did you come to San Francisco?"
"My Lord Jesus Christ, I am a poor Penitente who comes to Saint Francis' pueblo in deep humility to seek grace in piety and devotion."
"Easy does it. Calm down. Where, exactly, do you live?"
"Brother, if I have injured thee or any other, pardon me, for the love of God, in whom I dwell."
"What's wrong with you?"
"This child is meek and ready to suffer. If ye be of the chosen brethren and lodge in His grace, answer then: Who giveth light?"
"Beats me. Who?"
"My father, Jesus, giveth light."
"Well . . . ."
"And who giveth joy?'
"Whoahhhhh."
"My mother Mary giveth joy."
'Hold it!"
"And who preserveth faith?"
"Who?"
"Our brother Joseph. Saint Peter will open the gates to me; he will cleanse me with light in the sacred name of Mary and the holy seal of Jesus. Of thee I asketh: Who giveth light?"
"Hey mister, back off."
"Know thou, sinner, Jesus giveth light."
"Yes, yes of course. I'm a Christian too. I go to church!"
"Don't be deceived by grace and salvation. That easy faith is the Devil's snare. It will surely send thee straight to Hell!"
"I resent that."
"Sinner, bound as thou art to damnation, to eternal fire and ice, you would do well to heed the word of Jesús and partake of His discipline and His suffering!"
* * *
. . . and what was going on inside the Broadway Morada, whilst this catechism, this theological disputation---- yeah, this evangelical colloquy was taking place in the blue Buick parked before Saint Brigid's parish church, San Francisco?
Santa Sebastiana, seated at the vanity table, was succumbing to the hypnotic powers of 'General Hospital,' an offering to which Lysle manifested utter indifference as he flitted and fluttered about, looking for food. Attention captured by a pizza commercial, this bold insect settled on Santa Sebastiana's head.
Suddenly the door opened and closed. There stood two masked men. "Horace," one said to the other. "Nobody's here and nobody will be. We have plenty of time. We'll keep still and look around."
"Jesusgod! Tom! That statue! Those bony hands! That black dress. That witch's cowl. Could any real person ever have been so ugly?"
'Hideous."
(I'll make you bastards pay for that.)
"Tom! Look! There! On her head. There he is."
Thomas slowly drew the sleeper aerosol from his breast pocket. He directed it at Santa Sebastiana. It blew out a mist that enveloped her head. Lysle flew up a yard or s0, then fell to the carpet.
"Gotcha!" cried Dave.
A jubilant Thomas dropped to his knees. "Well, doggone if it didn't work on him." He laid the aerosol aside, and, tenderly, using both hands, he lifted Lysle with a comb, and thrust him into the cage. He handed it to Dave. "There's something fishy about all this."
"Yeah."
"I'm going to stay in your room for a few days and keep an eye on things. You carry Mosca directly to Dr Bruhn, then you can take some time off."
Dave gave him his card-key, and left. After standing for a while, watching the TV and thinking things over, Thomas walked outside past the blue Buick, and, after making sure he'd been seen, went to room 102, entered, and lay down to nap. Presently, Mosca came back to 101. The aerosol had dissipated. Cold, wooden, and ugly as ever, Santa Sebastiana gazed at the TV. "Hey babe," said Mosca, "I've been interrogated by the FBI. At last mompop has caught up."
"Shhhhh. Just think to me. We're being overheard."
"Mompop's hot on my trail."
"Mompop just came in here and took Lysle."
"How?"
"Knocked him out with aerosol spray."
He felt an immense surge of anxiety, for Lysle, for himself, and embraced Santa Sebastiana, and kissed her on the mouth.
And a glowing mist emerged from the dry wood.
And it began to form.
And solidify.
And he stood back
And there stood Dońa Sebastiana, free at last, a sexy radiant beauty.
Complete.
He went to her and drew her tight.
No cold wood or rotting guts under his hands.
He turned off the TV to curb its flash and babble.
Santa Sebastiana vivified by a kiss!
A fairy tale come true!
He peered into her eyes.
He walked around her, Santa Sebastiana, Dońa Sebastiana, around her perfect marble body, no longer marred by a pus-oozing putrescent back.
That silly worm rose, a comic cobra, hard and throbbing. "Corazon de Jesús!" cried Pedro.
"I'm your Prince Charming," said Mosca.
"You're my piss boy," said Santa Sebastiana.
He felt awe and envy and shame as he lusted for Magna Mater.
"And after you empty my pisspot, you can be my whipping boy." She took his cheeks gently between her hands and kissed him. "You can be my slave."
"You can be my Sister Inviolatus of the Five Wounds."
She stripped his T-shirt and stroked his nipples.
The crazed worm muscled itself behind the controls and crushed her to him, and said, "Let's go for it."
"What about Lysle?"
She undid his belt and dropped his pants.
"The hell with Lysle."
She touched him there.
He tongued her ear.
"Bed."
She grasped him.
"Would you sleep with me like this?"
He pushed her down and slid on top.
"Dare you sleep with what you see?"
His finger combed through soft hair and slid in.
You may wake up with me half rotten."
"I'll suck you and fuck you and kiss you all over."
"And go to sleep and maybe wake with me dead, or as a wrinkled crone, or as a male. As, I mean, you know, my masculine part. Saint Sebastian."
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