The Burning Plain by Michael Nava

Author:Michael Nava [Nava, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9781453297698
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1997-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

I BACKED OUT of the driveway and drove to Sunset, then headed east to Laurel Canyon, the snaking road that connected the city to the valley. From Laurel Canyon, tributary roads forked into dark and wooded hills, where rustic bungalows elbowed million-dollar chateaux, and everyone locked up their pets at night to keep them from being carried off by coyotes. I turned off Laurel Canyon at Kirkwood. Donati directed me across a web of narrow, twisting streets to a cul-de-sac where his two-story house occupied the last lot, which backed up against the grove of eucalyptus trees. I pulled into the driveway. The fragrant trees perfumed the cool air and it was so still I could hear the rustle of small animals moving through the woods.

The ground floor of Donati’s pillbox-shaped house was a wall of un-painted concrete, pristine and stark, partly covered by a sheet of corrugated metal. The upper floor was a wall of greenish glass, brightly lit from within, but of such distorting thickness it was impossible to see in from the street. The front door was made of hammered copper and it bore a sign that warned the house was protected by an armed-guard service. The sign seemed extraneous; the house was obviously a bunker. It took Donati a good five minutes to shut off the security alarms and let us in. Of course, his hands were shaking.

From a small foyer paneled in dark marble, metal stairs twisted up to the second floor. I glimpsed an office and a bedroom off the foyer as I ascended behind him. The upper floor was a single big room, anchored on one end by an open kitchen and on the other by a fireplace. The kitchen gleamed, as if it had never been used. Neutral area carpets were scattered across the concrete floor. The room was sparsely furnished with leather club chairs, a matching sofa, a scattering of occasional tables. The walls were a snowy shade of white, dominated by an enormous black-and-white abstract painting that looked very much like a Franz Kline. Over the fireplace were two Mapplethorpe photographs of flowers. Between them was a small engraving. The contrast between Donati’s house and Travis’s apartment could not have been greater. Travis’s antique-cluttered apartment was pure camp. This room was as sour and penitential as a monk’s cell.

“I need a drink,” Donati said. He tossed his keys with a clatter on a lacquered dining table, the overhead light shimmering on its surface. “You?”

“I’ll have a Coke,” I said.

While he slammed through the kitchen, I took a closer look at the engraving on the mantel and recognized it as one of Gustave Doré’s original drawings for the Inferno.

“The wood of the suicides,” Donati said, coming up behind me. “From the Inferno.”

“I recognize it,” I said, accepting a glass.

In the Inferno, the suicides were consigned, like the sodomites, to the circle of the violent, having committed violence against themselves. They spent eternity encased in trees under attack by the Harpies,

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