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.'
'Sounds as if you breached their security,' Corbin muttered.
'I have my ways. How do you think I was able to warn you back on the hill?'
I gazed around the restaurant. 'We've got to get out of here without running into cops, feds, or Ecclesia.'
'There might be a way,' Corbin said, 'but we'd have to deal with the Ecclesia.' He pointed upward.
'The Huey.' I shouted to the anemic old bartender, 'You! How do we get to the roof?'
He pointed toward the kitchen door. Corbin ran through to check it out. I turned to the kid. 'Let's go.'
'Forget it. I'm cutting free. You guys are freaks.'
'Auberge is gone, sugar. Look out the window-those're cops you see milling about. They'll be up here when they start thinking about it.'
'That scares me like a limp prick,' she said in a drunken slur. 'I can handle cops. I can head up to Frisco-to Auriga, under Union Square.'
Ann put a gentle hand on the child's shoulder. 'How will that settle your account with the Ecclesia?' Spoken like a
