nowhere to be seen. It was as if she had never existed.
And then the doors of the dead basilica swung open and Devlin stepped inside a piece of vanished Los Angeles.
He knew just how the mammoth felt.
C HAPTER S EVEN
Los Angeles
The cool interior was a welcome relief from the heat. The Spanish knew what they were doing when they invented California architecture. Space, air, breezeways, and let nature do the rest. Or God. Whichever.
Earthquakes—well, they were the work of the devil, which is why this particular cathedral had been abandoned in favor of the modern monstrosity up the hill, across from the Music Center.
God had moved. The new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels sat up on what was left of Bunker Hill, looming over the Hollywood Freeway. There it was, the sacred and profane, back to back and belly to belly: That was Los Angeles in a nutshell, no contradiction noted or accepted. Take it or leave it, all or nothing. Mammon Found, Paradise Lost.
There was no God here. Except for the old altar, everything ecclesiastical had been stripped away, leaving only the cracked walls and rocked foundations of a building that had finally met the California earthquake code it couldn’t survive or finesse.
No pews, no confessionals. Even the stained-glass windows had been removed; from the side; the cathedral looked like the gap-toothed mouth of one of the bums out on Second Street, who drank Ripple and screamed obscenities at the few civil-service souls who passed by on their way to and from their cubicles and the tacqueria.
The empty church was as eerie as an AA meeting with no drunks. Funny, he’d thought the conversion to the arts center was long-since complete.
“Mr. Harris? Mr. Bert Harris?” Male, Hispanic, early thirties—this much he knew without even turning around. “I’m Father Gonsalves.”
Looking back on it, that should have been the tip-off right there. Father Last Name in a world that had lost both its faith and its surnames. Not Father Tom, or Father Mike or Father Ed. Priests hadn’t used their last names since the Primate was a pup.
The guy looked straight enough. Black cassock, white dog collar, the usual outfit. Good, firm handshake. Devlin liked that.
“I don’t know how much Jacinta has told you,” Father Gonsalves began, his words echoing in the vaulted space.
“Just this,” replied Devlin. He opened his left hand and displayed the rose petal. “Which is, I guess, all I need to know.”
Father Gonsalves moved toward the altar, the only flat surface other than the floor. Its marble top was pebbled from years, decades, of use. Instead of a chalice, there was a small pile of folders and documents lying atop it.
“I don’t know how much you know about miracles—”
“I believe them when I see them, and that’s not very often. As in never.”
“Good. May I ask if you’re a Catholic?” said the padre.
“You may. I’m not.”
“Not anymore, you mean.”
“Guesstimation or revelation?”
“Have a look at this, please.”
It was a computer printout, tens of pages in length. Dates, locations, number of people. Starting in 1900 and running up to the present. Devlin scanned it quickly, his eyes picking out various incidents:
He handed the pages back to the padre. “Looks like an epidemiological study for some sort of disease. An outbreak of some kind. What was it? Hemorrhagic fever? Smallpox?”
Father Gonsalves indicated something on one of the pages. “Note particularly the concatenation in Spain in 1931. Ezquioga, Izurdiaga—”
“Basque country. Just before the civil war. People see things when they’re crazy.”
The priest shot him an impressed look. “Very good. Zumarraga, Ormaiztegui, Albiztur, Barcelona, Iraneta. All in Spain, within the same year.”
“A mental illness of some kind? Mass psychosis, brought on by the proximity of war? If you look at the dates—”
“You’re a data miner, Mr. Harris. You figure it out.”
Interesting choice of
And then the doors of the dead basilica swung open and Devlin stepped inside a piece of vanished Los Angeles.
He knew just how the mammoth felt.
C HAPTER S EVEN
Los Angeles
The cool interior was a welcome relief from the heat. The Spanish knew what they were doing when they invented California architecture. Space, air, breezeways, and let nature do the rest. Or God. Whichever.
Earthquakes—well, they were the work of the devil, which is why this particular cathedral had been abandoned in favor of the modern monstrosity up the hill, across from the Music Center.
God had moved. The new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels sat up on what was left of Bunker Hill, looming over the Hollywood Freeway. There it was, the sacred and profane, back to back and belly to belly: That was Los Angeles in a nutshell, no contradiction noted or accepted. Take it or leave it, all or nothing. Mammon Found, Paradise Lost.
There was no God here. Except for the old altar, everything ecclesiastical had been stripped away, leaving only the cracked walls and rocked foundations of a building that had finally met the California earthquake code it couldn’t survive or finesse.
No pews, no confessionals. Even the stained-glass windows had been removed; from the side; the cathedral looked like the gap-toothed mouth of one of the bums out on Second Street, who drank Ripple and screamed obscenities at the few civil-service souls who passed by on their way to and from their cubicles and the tacqueria.
The empty church was as eerie as an AA meeting with no drunks. Funny, he’d thought the conversion to the arts center was long-since complete.
“Mr. Harris? Mr. Bert Harris?” Male, Hispanic, early thirties—this much he knew without even turning around. “I’m Father Gonsalves.”
Looking back on it, that should have been the tip-off right there. Father Last Name in a world that had lost both its faith and its surnames. Not Father Tom, or Father Mike or Father Ed. Priests hadn’t used their last names since the Primate was a pup.
The guy looked straight enough. Black cassock, white dog collar, the usual outfit. Good, firm handshake. Devlin liked that.
“I don’t know how much Jacinta has told you,” Father Gonsalves began, his words echoing in the vaulted space.
“Just this,” replied Devlin. He opened his left hand and displayed the rose petal. “Which is, I guess, all I need to know.”
Father Gonsalves moved toward the altar, the only flat surface other than the floor. Its marble top was pebbled from years, decades, of use. Instead of a chalice, there was a small pile of folders and documents lying atop it.
“I don’t know how much you know about miracles—”
“I believe them when I see them, and that’s not very often. As in never.”
“Good. May I ask if you’re a Catholic?” said the padre.
“You may. I’m not.”
“Not anymore, you mean.”
“Guesstimation or revelation?”
“Have a look at this, please.”
It was a computer printout, tens of pages in length. Dates, locations, number of people. Starting in 1900 and running up to the present. Devlin scanned it quickly, his eyes picking out various incidents:
He handed the pages back to the padre. “Looks like an epidemiological study for some sort of disease. An outbreak of some kind. What was it? Hemorrhagic fever? Smallpox?”
Father Gonsalves indicated something on one of the pages. “Note particularly the concatenation in Spain in 1931. Ezquioga, Izurdiaga—”
“Basque country. Just before the civil war. People see things when they’re crazy.”
The priest shot him an impressed look. “Very good. Zumarraga, Ormaiztegui, Albiztur, Barcelona, Iraneta. All in Spain, within the same year.”
“A mental illness of some kind? Mass psychosis, brought on by the proximity of war? If you look at the dates—”
“You’re a data miner, Mr. Harris. You figure it out.”
Interesting choice of
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