Then She Vanished

Sixteen

That evening I watched San Diego’s Local Live! news out on the patio with the Irregulars, nursing one of Liz’s “battle ready” manhattans. She substitutes amaro for the vermouth, claiming a thirty percent improvement in taste, though her husband, Dick, disputes the number. They’ve been married for forty-some years, and they live together on this property, though they rent the two casitas that are farthest apart. They drink freely, quarrel about everything, and spend almost every waking hour together. I used to think they were a poster couple for dysfunctional marriage, but now I’m not so sure.

Thanks to a generous former Irregular, the patio TV is not only flat and huge — seventy-five inches — but is modified to receive the densest of pixels and cleanest of sound. Almost wireless, and neat. Because of the TV’s size, the newscasters on-screen are well-groomed giants, more detailed to us than we are to each other. The screen hangs from the western edge of the palapa canopy, so with some leaning or ducking you can peer under or around it to the pond, the oak savanna, the sky, sunset, or stars. We sit well back for our hour and a half of daily viewing. Mostly news; no regular entertainment, just occasional movies or prizefights. When the last person turns off the power, the TV tucks up under the waterproof palapa ceiling.

Local Live! led with Dalton Strait’s bombshell claim that his opponent, Ammna Safar, was almost certainly related to IS fighters in Iraq, based on research done by the fledgling San Diego company HerediLink. The news anchor explained that HerediLink offered low-cost ancestry searches using DNA. A HerediLink spokeswoman admitted that her company was a Strait campaign donor. Then a brisk young Strait aide denied directly relating Ammna Safar to any specific Islamic State individual in Iraq — although many suspected IS fighters conceal their identities to protect blood relations in the United States. There were several “convincing” possibilities. He refused to reveal how samples of Safar’s DNA were obtained. Which made me wonder.

Then a slightly blurry picture of a young girl and boy — eight or ten years old, by the looks of them — standing in a green field in soccer uniforms, grew into an epic portrait on our seventy-five-incher. An unshaven and wrinkle-shirted Dalton was next, saying that HerediLink had proven “genetically within ninety-nine percent” that the boy and girl were cousins and that the boy had very likely gone on to a life of terror in the Middle East, where records were poorly kept. The girl, of course, was Ammna Safar.

Frank sat to my left and Odile to my right, leaning forward to talk across me like I was furniture. Frank’s mongrel, Triunfo, lay on the paver directly in front of us, giving me his full attention. A sleek black face with brown eyebrows and upright ears that flopped over up near the tips. He’s taken an interest in me lately but I don’t know why.

“Señorita Odile, did you see the future today?” asked Frank.

As a second-year illegal immigrant to the U.S., Frank worked hard to improve his English. I found him early the winter before last, living on the far reaches of the rancho, down in an arroyo, collecting water with a tarp, eating rabbits and quail he could snare. He was seventeen, skinny, and miserable. His father had been murdered in front of him and Francisco had fled his Salvadoran village under threat of death from MS-13. I honored the values of my nation by giving him asylum — a place to stay and a job. Which of course made me a criminal because Francisco Cuellar’s asylum is not mine to grant.

“Well, I did observe parts of a client’s future today,” said Odile. “It’s my job.”

“Was a good future?”

“Frank, I’ve told you about psychic — client privilege.”

“Yes, but I don’t know this person.”

Odile smiled and sipped her drink. Even sitting down at the communal picnic table, Odile is conspicuously tall. She hunches sometimes, as lengthy women sometimes do. Catches herself and straightens. She has fair skin and rosy cheeks.

“She has three very good weeks to enjoy,” said Odile. “A good job offer and no more car trouble.”

“And then what?” asked Frank.

“You know I have a three-week maximum sensing the future. I’m trying to get stronger…”

Frank tapped his soft drink can on the table. “What kind of car does she have?”

“Come on,” said Odile. “You know I won’t give details like that. And Frank, you should pay attention to the TV now — something important is about to happen. Though I’m not sure what.”

On the huge screen TV above me, the Local Live! studio anchors introduced their next feature.

“Ready to go ape in San Diego?” asked Dwayne Swift.

“All the way from the mountains of Congo!” said Jimena Callejas.

Then a cut to a Local Live! reporter at the San Diego Zoo with the newborn Belinda, a mountain gorilla. Although the size on-screen of an adult man, Belinda looked all baby, huddled deep and bright eyed in the arms of her Queen Kong mom.

“They ought to just leave them in the jungle, where they belong,” said Dick.

“They’re from the mountains, dearie. They look almost human.”

“If you consider flinging your own feces at visitors human.”

“You were a boy. You were taunting him.”

Burt left the table, worked his phone from his pocket and walked toward the pond. A short-legged, top-heavy little man. The sun was setting, a showy orange ball dropping through gray clouds. I looked past Burt, out at the sun on the water and saw Justine in her rowboat and floppy hat, her fair arms on the oars, catching the rays all those years ago.

The Local Live! reporter, outfitted in hospital scrubs, paper cap, and sterile gloves, cradled Belinda in her arms as the camera zoomed in.

“Such a beautiful baby,” she said. “Maybe she’ll see her mountains someday! Back to you in the studio, Jimena and Dwayne.”

Burt circled back to the table, setting up tomorrow’s tee time, apparently.

Something went haywire on the Local Live! transmission, the big-screen picture in sudden free fall then fracturing into thick black bars like those in a slot machine. A roar of static, then silence and a fully black screen.

“Your cable sucks, Roland,” said Dick. “Ought to rethink that satellite offer they keep making.”

I could hear the “lazy landlord” tone in his voice. “I got satellite six months ago, Grandpa.”

“This is much worse than a weak signal,” said Odile. Her rosy cheeks had lost their color. Sitting bolt upright, she stared at the black screen, then closed her eyes altogether.

When order was restored in the Local Live! studio, three human figures wearing street clothes and hideous masks stood behind the news desk. On the left, a female wearing a disturbing Hannya mask from Japanese theater, in the middle a man behind a grotesque Iroquois tribal face, and on the right another male wearing a splatter mask from World War I. On the mega-screen they looked like players in a stage drama performed by giants.

On either side of them stood two black-clad, balaclava-hidden actors — one a man and one a woman — each pinning a Local Live! anchor facedown over the desk by the neck and holding a handgun to their respective heads. Jimena Callejas’s hair had swept down over her face; Dwayne Swift was pale and bug-eyed with terror.

“God in heaven,” whispered Liz.

“Sonsofbitches!” said Dick.

“No, no…” said Odile.

The middle figure, in the Iroquois mask — black haired, wild eyed, crazily baring his wide wooden teeth — raised a sheet of paper and began reading from it, voice lowered to doomsday bass by a voice changer.

“God in heaven,” said Liz.

Burt and I commenced shooting with our cell phones.

“Allow us to introduce ourselves,” said the Iroquois. A male voice, unrecognizable. “We are representatives of The Chaos Committee. You know what we have accomplished in the last week and a half. We wanted to give you a chance to meet us. Face-to-mask. Forgive our shyness but our anonymity is important.”

It seemed as if all of Rancho de los Robles was holding its breath. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

“The last week has only been our introduction, as we have made clear. Injuring minor political slaves is not our goal. But now that you have seen us, we know that you’ll be taking our devolution very seriously. We are serious because this is the nation we once loved and believed in and fought for in a thousand different ways. This is a nation born in chaos. Then destroyed by two centuries of greed, moral sloth, and the mass rape of nature. We must now return to chaos to be reborn. To reclaim our future. To devolve.

“Citizens, act with us. Lash out with fury! Destroy the masters in government — from city hall to the president. If you are an honest policeman, turn your guns on the wealthy who control you! If you are loyal military, bring us the heads of your officers! Death to the lockstep of parties and opinions. Only chaos can burn the weakness and corruption and greed out of this republic! Burn it brightly and completely. Compromise is surrender. Violence is victory. Chaos is God and God is Chaos.”

Anchorman Dwayne Swift fainted, sliding down behind the desk as his ninja captor knelt out of camera beside him.

By now all of the Irregulars were standing and shooting with their phones.

Except Odile, who sat still as a statue, eyes wide. “Something worse is going to happen,” she said. “I can’t see it yet.” She closed her eyes again and I could see her hands, clasped together and trembling on the picnic table.

“My brothers and sisters in arms,” said the Iroquois Goliath. “As proof of our power and the power of our ideas, witness the Encinitas office of Representative Clark Nisson. Good night!”

The masks advanced on the cameras and the picture went spastic, then dark.

Burt stormed off toward the sunset, phone to his ear: calling Nisson’s office, I presumed.

Odile stood, her eyes still wide and fixed on the television.

I changed the TV to the local PBS channel, which would be mid-broadcast with their nightly news hour.

And there she was, the familiar face from which we got our commercial-free San Diego weather. Another sunny spring day everywhere in the county, she said, then was suddenly cut off mid-sentence, replaced by the anchors at their desk, a man and woman of stolid professional calm and good cheer, now obviously distressed and trying not to show it.

“We have a confirmed report,” said Rick Carpenter, reading off a teleprompter, “that a fiery explosion has rocked the Encinitas office of United States Representative Clark Nisson. We have no information on the cause of the blast, injuries, or damage. We do not know if Congressman Nisson was present. However — oh jeez — the terrorist group calling itself The Chaos Committee has apparently claimed responsibility… Donna, do we… Jimmy, is there any footage to go with that… no? None? Please, all of you at home, be patient, we’re trying to get corroboration of this very disturbing development. Please stand by.”

I hadn’t felt that helpless since pushing the gauze into Ernie Avalos’s gaping face in that gun-smoke-clotted room in the old city of Fallujah.

Dalton picked up. He was drunk and morose. He’d been gaming, hadn’t heard about the TV station takeover or the bomb sent to his congressman.

Late that night Mike Lark returned my several calls. Congressman Clark Nisson and aide Art Arguello were killed instantly when a firebomb exploded in the representative’s office at 6:48 p.m. The bomb had contained a gel fire accelerant that had been blown throughout the office by the explosion. The fire had engulfed the small ground-floor office almost immediately. Lark and his brethren suspected another mail bomb, as was The Chaos Committee MO.

California’s governor stated that the bomb was a terrorist act and declared a state of emergency at 7:30 the next morning.