I was at the exciting part - the Alemans were trying to drive them into the alkahest pits still bubbling from the First Sorcerous War. Even so, I kept losing track of what was going on. The phone again. I almost hoped it was another huckster, I'd taken savage, mindless pleasure in baiting the first one.
Too much had happened to me, with no chance for me to hit back at anyone. If a miserable salesman chose that moment to inflict himself on me, it was his lookout "Hello?" I snapped.
"David?" The progressive distortion from two phone imps couldn't mask the voice. All my rage evaporated even before she went on, "It's Judy."
"Honey," I whispered; just hearing for sure that she was alive took my breath away, I made myself talk louder: "Are you all right?"
"I'm - fair," she said, which made me fearful all over again. She hunted on: "Don't ask questions, Dave. You have to listen to me. They won't let me talk long. They say you have to stop messing around with things that aren't your business, or else-" I waited to hear what the "or else" was, but she'd stopped. I was afraid I could figure it out for myself.
"Tell them I say I'll do whatever they want," I answered. I hoped she'd get the distinction: just because I said it didn't mean I would.
"Be careful, Dave," she said. "They aren't joking. They-"
Her voice cut off. Faintly, as if the imps were reproducing the words of someone farther from the phone, I heard,
"Come on, you."
"Honey, I love you," I said. While I was talking, though, somebody hung up the phone. I don't think Judy heard me.
I spent a while wishing damnation on the wretches who'd snatched her, then pulled myself together and called the Long Beach constables. Plaindothesman Johnson had the night off; I got some other worthy, name of Scott. He heard me out, then said, "Thanks for passing on the information, sir. We'll do what we can with it"
Which meant as I knew only too well, they weren't going to do much. It did tell them, as it had me, that Judy was still on This Side. That did count for something to them, and it had counted for a lot more than something to me. I had fresh hope.
I called the CBI. Saul Klein had gone home, but the fellow who answered the phone knew what was going on with the case. I asked him, "Can you send someone down to try to trace the call? Your Mistress Chang managed to do it earlier today."
"Well, why not?" the CBI man said after he thought it over. "Don't hurt to try." He read me back my home address to make sure he had it right, then said, "We'll have someone there in half an hour or so."
It was more like forty-five minutes, but that didn't surprise me. I drive St. James' Freeway every day; I know how things can be down there. When the rap on the door came, I opened it with my left hand. My right hand was holding the blasting rod; after what had happened to Judy, I wasn't taking any chances.
The weedy little fellow outside gave back a pace when he saw I was carrying a rod, which meant he almost went ass over teakettle down the stairs. He rallied fast, though.
"Can't say as I blame you, six," he said, and flashed a CBI sigil that said he was an intermediate thaumaturgic analyst - by which I learned the CBI has silly job tides, too - named Horace Smidley. I lowered the rod right away. He might not have looked like the light-and-magic show version of a CBI man, but he sure did look like a Horace Smidley.
I led him to the phone. He went through the same tracing ritual Celia Chang had used earlier in the day back at the office. He wasn't as smooth as she had been - he was only an intermediate thaumaturgic analyst after all - but he got the job done. The quasi-mouth that formed Ehgors seal spoke its series of digits, then fell sflent once more.
That's the same number they used when they called before," I said.
"Is it? Careless of them." Smidley made a ducking noise in the back of his throat; I got the idea that he disapproved of carelessness no matter who perpetrated it, even if it made catching the bad guys easier. He went on. "I'll take the information back with me."
"What do you think it means?" I asked. "Are they holding Judy somewhere dose to there and using that phone because it's convenient to them?"
That is most probable," he said; he and Michael Manstein would have got on well together. The other possibility is that they are deliberately transporting her a long distance to mislead us. Possible, as I say, but risky: any accident or flying violation that a constable happens to observe destroys what up to now has appeared a well-organized scheme."
Again, you could tell he liked organization, no matter who was using it or for what purpose. I worry about people like that; the Leader of Alemania had had a lot of them behind him. Horace Smidley, though, was on my side, for which I was duly grateful. I thanked him for taking the trouble to come down at night "My pleasure," he said, and then, to my mind, weakened the answer by adding, "And my duty." He headed down the stairs - intentionally this time - and then, I presume, on back to Westwood.
Me? I shut the door after him, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I don't remember another thing until the alarm clock scared me awake the next morning.
It was going to be a hot one. I could tell as soon as I got out of bed. Even after a long night's sleep, I still felt tired, but out my bedroom window I saw that the wind stirring tile eucalyptus tree next door was some from out of the northeast what they call St. Ann's wind. That always strikes me as rude, or don't you think naming a wind after the Virgin's mother implies she talked too much?
The wind swirled hard enough to shake my carpet as I headed for the freeway. When I flew past a vacant lot, I watched the dust devils spinning tumbleweeds around and tossing them up into the sky. There are more dust devils these days than there used to be; I've always said cutting the budget for meteorological exorcists was a mistake. One day the devils will join forces and blow down a building or three, and fixing things will end up costing a lot more than we're saving now.
But what politician looks to the future? I wondered why I was bothering myself, come to that. If the Third Sorcerous War broke out, dust devils would be the least of my - and everyone else's - worries.
Michael was waiting for me in the parking lot. "Have you received any news?" he asked as I walked up to his carpet. "They made Judy call me last night," I said, nodding.
"Whoever they are, they want us to stop investigating anything that has anything to do with the Devonshire dump - or else."
Michael gave me a curious look. "Yet you are still here."
He turned on to Wilshire to get to St. James' Freeway for the trip up into the Valley.
"Yeah, I'm still here," I said. "I don't believe stopping would really make them turn Judy loose. And besides… the deeper we get into this case, the more important it looks."
God, help me, I was starting to think like Henry Legion. Saving the world, not just one person, looked bigger all the time.
We got off the Venture Freeway at Winnetka and headed north, Michael flying, me navigating. It was a mixed kind of neighborhood, first a business block, then a row of homes, then some more businesses. Once we flew past what looked half like a school, half like a farm. I glanced down at my map.
"That's the Ceres Institute of St. Ferdinand's Valley." In spite of everything, I laughed. "Angels City is an ecumenical place."
"Another artificial cult," Michael said; his business is keeping up with such things. They say the goddess really does improve agricultural productivity."
"I wonder how much maintaining her cult adds to the price of produce, though." Cost-benefit analysis again. You can't get away from it in our society: it was the same kind of thing I was doing to see whether the Chumash Powers would be worth preserving if they did still happen to exist That reminded me I'd have to call Professor Blank one of these days and see what more he'd harassed his graduate students into finding out "We should be getting dose," Michael said.