Ness for quite some time.'
Ann looked and frowned. 'Think they found the Porsche?'
'Money talks. Cops love to listen. The church can make lots of conversation.' I smiled. 'I wonder how Golding's going to explain it.'
'Let's get back to the rest of the message.' She chewed on her lip. 'Do you think we should risk going to your office?'
I took a long drag on the cigarette while considering the question. Finally I said, 'I think we'll have some time before any officer decides to brave the Arco itself. The story about the radiation dies hard. Beathan and his boys are more likely to conduct the search rather than bring in a third party.'
'Gambit!' she said suddenly.
I ground out my cigarette butt under my heel and turned toward her. Her eyes had regained some of their life.
'A gambit is a move in chess where an unimportant piece is sacrificed near the beginning of the game as part of a greater strategy.'
'And who's the pawn we're looking for?'
'Bridget said, `The paradoxical one is the gambit.'' Ann mused for a moment. '`A thousand men yet none' is a paradox.'
'It's a contradiction, actually. You think a thousand men are going to be sacrificed somewhere?' I watched the `copter circle around south Hollywood a couple more times. They gave up and flew east.
'Maybe a thousand men. Maybe none.' She leaned back to stare at the ceiling. 'The paradox is linked to the gambit somehow. And what about the monsters beneath the earth born of fire and all that?'
I shrugged. 'Hell, obviously. It's got to be all a metaphor.'
'Yes! But for what?'
I spread my hands helplessly. 'I'm no philosopher.'
The bus rumbled over the Harbor Freeway junction, which was more pothole than pavement. It lumbered up the Third Street offramp. I pressed the bell strip to signal the driver. He turned around to look back at us with languid, pained eyes. Air brakes wheezed, coughed once, and growled us to a halt. The doors ached open.
'Metaphors are fine,' I said, stepping off the bus and extending my hand to her like some scruffy Galahad. Like a tousled Guinevere, she took my arm and stepped to the pavement. 'Except that a metaphor can be misconstrued. Look at the different ways the stories in the Bible are interpreted. That stuff she mumbled could have a hundred different meanings. If it means anything at all.'
We crossed the freeway overpass to stroll down toward Figueroa and the Arco Towers. Ann grew moody.
'We'll just have to keep at it until we find the answer.'
'Fine,' I said. 'My fee is five hundred grams a day. In the meantime, I'm involved in another project.'
She stopped and turned toward me. The wind from the freeway blew through her hair, tugging at her dress. Her hair and shiny Danskin top shimmered in the descending sunlight like a dream of drifting gold dust on a distant blue horizon.
'This is part of your project. Those phenomena were no coincidence. Those priests didn't pick us randomly to kidnap. Those Nazarene Nazis didn't just happen to pass by the store and decide to smash it up. They recognized you as being a focal point of fundamental importance.'
'So I've got someone running scared. So Ammo's setting up the crime of the millennium. The world trembles.' I kept walking.
She fell in step with me after a moment. 'It's more than that, Dell. Bridget said, `The time of the Number is nigh.' I think you just hit on it. We're less than two months away from the millennium. A lot of people believe that the millennium will mark the return of the kingdom of god.'
'Then they'll be off by a year. The millennium begins with the year two thousand
'
