"Th-that w-would just mean one m-more soul for Y-Yahveh," the sandy one said. He stuttered like a motorboat, and it wasn't from fear: the hands holding his rifle never wavered.
"One more soul for Allah," the darker boy corrected.
Sandy glanced at the Panarab.
A wisp of smoke from the burning complex drifted between us. It carried a smell of things dead and dying. The Panarabian kid paid it no mind. He'd probably been raised during the Pax Israelia ten years before.
Sandy wrinkled his nose. I took a chance.
"Allah or Yahveh. Which God will get your soul? Which God is supreme?" I split my aim between the two without dropping my guard.
"Allah," said the dark one.
"Yahveh," insisted the light one.
Something whooshed through the air behind me.
"Knock it off with the shiv," I hissed.
Ann muttered something and stopped waving the blade around. The two boys didn't even notice. They were involved in a theological discussion.
"Yahveh."
"Allah."
They glowered, slowly turning their rifles toward each other.
"Allah," the Panarabian said with a low growl.
"Yahveh," Sandy Hair retorted, racking the action on his M-16.
"Kali!" a voice screamed from the nearby underpass.
The boys spun about to look toward the source of the sound. Had they lived long enough, each would have seen a bullet hit him in the chest. Two rifles clattered to the pavement. Two young men followed them shortly.
I jumped up, gave Ann a shove in the direction of the Bonaventure, and commandeered one of the rifles. I sped up to match Ann's athletic pace.
Footsteps raced behind me. I whipped about, a .45 in one hand and an M-16 in the other.
"Tough guy," a gravelly voice rumbled. "Can't even plug a couple of punk kids."
Randolph Corbin trotted his hulk up beside me, one thick hand grasping a Springfield M-1A. The other hand clutched at his belly. His pug face was distorted from breathing as if it were the latest fad. His brown turtleneck shirt and tan slacks appeared to have been redesigned by a chainsaw. Soot stained his clothes, hands, and face. The seat of his pants had been badly singed.
I nodded toward the hotel lobby. "I see you didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition, either."
"Right. And I can see that you were the answer they sought. Duck!"
I drove my shoulder into the sidewalk, rolled over, and brought the rifle up. I fired.
Corbin placed three well-aimed rounds into the chests of as many armed attackers. I dropped the other two with shots to the head-an old trademark of mine and a damned stupid habit.
Somewhere to the south whined dozens of police sirens.
"Finally," Ann said, unimpressed. She tried to open one of the doors set in a long wall of concrete. No luck. We raced toward the main lobby doors.
Corbin wheezed in great exhausted gasps. "You must know the Ecclesia is after you. They attacked Auberge."
"Yeah," I said. "I had a sort of hunch about that."
"Even Auberge management didn't know, and they've got informants everywhere to give them warnings about raids." He looked behind us at the carnage. "I guess they never thought to infiltrate the Ecclesia."
"But you did?" Ann said.
"A Buddhist friend of mine. She dropped too much acid at Bryn Mawr" "In here," I said. A side door surrendered to my kick. We rushed inside.
The Bonaventure was still in use, though it no longer qualified as the luxury hotel it had once been. The radiation problems this far from Arco South posed no danger, but fear was fear. True, a higher class of derelicts and bums inhabited the less-than-gleaming towers. Most even paid rent. But bums were bums.
To our right sat a greasy hotel clerk reading a newsplaque, the racing information onscreen. His gaze drifted lazily up to us, his eyes widening when he saw the three of us armed with rifles, pistol, and knife. His grease turned to sweat.
"No trouble, man," he said in a piping voice. "We've got protection."
My thumb played threateningly with the pistol's slide safety. "You personally? Right now?"
The clerk gulped like a sea bass and added more sweat to his face. Nervous hands gripped the edge of the counter. His newsplaque clattered to the floor.
"We're looking for someone," Ann said. "A dark-haired girl. Have you seen her?"
The clerk shook his head.
"We won't be long," I said. I cased the lobby area.
The light from the registration desk was the only artificial illumination in the atrium. Sunlight shone muddily through the ring of windows at the top edge of the cylindrical interior. It could have been a dim and restful medieval cathedral except for the pair of drunks snoring against each other on a mezzanine couch.
"Which elevator works?" I asked.
"The left one," the clerk said.
Inside, Ann asked me, "Which floor?" She surveyed the array of buttons. Outside the cracked glass of the elevator walls, what once had been a landscaped indoor pond lay dry and choked with cans and Mylar bags. There were even a few glass bottles here and there, which indicated how long the place had been in that condition.
An eerie image appeared amidst the garbage. Before meshimmeringly ghostlike-floated a view of the smoldering battle outside. I seemed to be viewing it from up high.
I punched for the top floor. "We'll work our way down from the restaurant," I said.
This elevator, at least, didn't groan and shudder. It lifted us quickly and quietly upward past the windows of the atrium, out into hazy daylight. The car glided up the interface between the central and northeast columns. Something clunked, and we jerked to a stop.
"I think we can handle things from here on, Corbin." I aimed the M16 at the elevator doors. "You don't have to follow us."
I moved Ann behind me. She stepped around to my side, knife at the ready.
Corbin shrugged and raised his own rifle. He had regained his breath. "You seem to be having more fun up here than I would be down there. Besides"-he grinned wickedly-"you seem to have gotten everyone more stirred up than I ever could."
The elevator doors parted. Nothing greeted us but a quiet restaurant foyer. Corbin slid around the doors to police the hallway. Ann and I wandered out to watch him. His husky figure darted in and out of niches and doorways with guerrillalike precision.
"You weren't a Buckleyite in college," I said. "You must have been a Minuteman."
He turned to grin at me, then said, "All clear. This way to the restaurant."
We stepped into a place that at one time had been one of the finest eateries in L.A. The new owners had let it slide into a lousy gin mill.
"Is the kid you're looking for about four-eight, dark reddish hair, garish clothes?" Corbin asked, gesturing to a booth by the window.
"Shut your fuckin' mouth, asshole."
"Foul tongue, rotten manners, and about three glasses of Plymouth gin in her?"
Isadora Volante sneered at us from behind a half-empty bottle. An ashtray held a pack and a half of cigarette butts.
"An adequate description," Ann said, stepping past us to the kid's table.
Isadora turned her attention away from us back to the scene several hundred feet below. The crack L.A. Fire Department stood about, casually debating the best strategy for extinguishing the blaze. The police munched doughnuts and watched. A few cops took occasional potshots at the remaining Auberge guards for the benefit of the TV crews.
Everything was under control.
"How'd you get here?" I asked the kid.
She tugged at a thin strap that supported a sheer, lime-green negligee.
"I was in Casino Grande when I felt the same sort of evil vibes I got from the old farts back in the hotel room. I begged one of the guards to let me out through the air conditioning shaft inside the Angeles Plaza."