by Shan, Darren
I decided to leave before he went off on another rant. I was on my way out with the list of names when I stopped on an impulse. “Do you know Richey Harney?”
Frank closed his eyes for a second, putting a face to the name, then nodded.
“He said he was at his daughter’s birthday party last week. Could you check—”
“Richey Harney doesn’t have a daughter.”
I paused. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Is he married?”
“In the middle of a divorce. No children.”
“Then I must have been mistaken. See you, Frank.”
Richey had left the building when I went looking for him. I was about to get his address and track him down when I spotted Vincent Carell chatting up a secretary. I decided to have a word with him instead. He wasn’t happy to be interrupted but came when I said it was important.
“What’s bugging you?” he growled. “Couldn’t you see the sparks zapping between us? I was this close to—”
“You recall our trip to the Fridge?” I cut in.
“Do I look like a goldfish? ’Course I fucking remember. What about it?”
“You asked Richey Harney to go with you first.”
“Yeah?” Growing guarded now.
“He said he had to go to his daughter’s birthday party. He told us he missed her First Communion and if he missed the party on top of that, he’d be in the doghouse with his wife.”
“So?” Vincent said unhappily.
“Richey Harney doesn’t have a daughter.”
“He doesn’t?”
“He’s in the middle of a divorce.”
“He is?”
I leaned in closer. “You can tell me what’s going on, or I can worm it out of Richey. Either way, I will find out.”
“Harney won’t say anything. He’s got more sense.”
“But he’s also got less to lose than you. If he talks in exchange for my oath that I’ll swear everything came from you…”
Vincent’s nostrils flared. “Don’t fuck with me, Algiers.”
“I won’t. Not if you play ball. Tell me what that scene was about and I’ll keep it to myself. Not a word to anyone. It’ll be our little secret.”
Vincent took a deep breath. “If you say anything…”
“I won’t.”
“Ford set me up to it.”
“Up to what?”
“He said to wait until you came down, then go in after you. Harney would be there, waiting, ready to respond when I said what Ford told me to.”
“ And? ” I pressed.
“Ford thought you’d take pity on the fool and offer to step in for him. If you didn’t, we were to have an argument on the way out and I was to storm back in and tell you to take his place.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know.”
“Vincent…”
“No shit, Algiers. Ford didn’t know either. He was following The Cardinal’s orders. Neither of us knew about your girlfriend.”
“You didn’t know it was Nicola Hornyak lying out there on the slab?” I snorted skeptically.
“I’d never heard of her before you ID’d her. Ford hadn’t either.”
“The Cardinal knew.”
Vincent shrugged.
I stepped away and thanked Vincent for his cooperation. He made a face, warned me again not to tell anyone he’d told me, and went back after the secretary. I found a chair and sat down.
I knew The Cardinal had known about Nic from the start—the file was proof of that—but it never occurred to me that I’d been deliberately sent to discover the body, that he’d arranged things to make it look as if it were my choice.
I recalled card tricks I’d learned as a kid, and how important the force was. A good magician could force his chosen card on a member of an audience, making it seem as if that person had chosen for himself. My trip to the Fridge had been an elaborate force, arranged by The Cardinal to look like an incredible coincidence. Sap that I was, I bought it.
Now that I knew about Vincent and Richey, I got to wondering what other tricks Mr. Dorak may have been playing. I’d assumed Nic was the reason The Cardinal had taken an interest in me, but maybe it was the other way around. He’d confessed to having had his eye on me since I joined the Troops. Perhaps he’d decided it was time to wind me up and see how I jumped. Could Nic have been killed on his orders and planted for me to find? If so, I was on a fool’s quest. There could be no justice for Nicola Hornyak if The Cardinal had signed her execution slip.
I spent the rest of Thursday and most of Friday stuck in Party Central, checking on the thirty-six Skylight Troops, scouring the files for incriminating evidence, of which there was plenty. Nineteen had chalked up at least one kill, twelve had served time, four were junkies, nine were being or had been rehabilitated. One had served as a covert agent in the Middle East, an authorized anarchist who suffered a moral crisis after bombing a school full of children. Three used to be rent boys. Two were fashioning alternate careers as pimps. Most gambled, drank a lot and screwed around outlandishly.
But there was nothing to link them to Nic, Rudi Ziegler or Paucar Wami. I devoted a lot of time to the rent boys and pimps, figuring they might have moved in the same circles as Nic, but if they had, it wasn’t recorded. I made a note to have a few words with them in private, but there was no rush. I had other fish to fry in the meantime. Namely, Paucar Wami.
There’d been no confirmed sightings since he annihilated Johnny Grace, though several bodies had been discovered bearing some of his numerous trademarks. I made inquiries that Friday by phone, which wasn’t the best way—people were always inclined to reveal more face-to-face. I planned to wrap up my investigation into the private lives of the Troops early Saturday and spend the rest of the day pounding the streets. If nothing turned up, I’d go see Fabio on Sunday.
I cycled home late, bleary-eyed, head pounding. I wasn’t accustomed to all this paperwork and screen time. I felt drained. I dropped into Ali’s and got a couple of bagels. I couldn’t face a book, not even a magazine, so I just ate the bagels, brewed a hot lemon drink to soothe the throbbing in my head and went to bed. I was asleep within minutes.
The sound of dripping woke me. Soft and steady, too gentle to disturb an ordinary sleeping ear. But I’d been trained to spring awake at the faintest unfamiliar sound—footsteps, the creak of a door, an unexpected drip.
I knew it wasn’t coming from my taps—I checked them every night, as water-conscious as every good citizen should be in these days of global warming. Besides, the position was wrong. My bathroom was on the other side of the wall at the head of my bed, the kitchen lay to the far right of the apartment, but the drips were coming from the center of the living room.
I swung my legs out smoothly. My fingers felt beneath the mattress and located the gun I kept there. I stood and started for the door, naked, moving stealthily, primed to open fire.
I pressed an ear to the door. The steady drip continued but I tuned it out and listened for other sounds, such as heavy breathing or the beat of an anxious heart.
Nothing.
Leaving the light off, I turned the handle and let the door swing open, stepping to the left in case there was someone on the other side waiting to barge through.
No movement.
I stepped out, left hand steadying my right as I led with my gun.
Nobody there. The room was full of shadows but I knew after a brief once-over that it was clean. Except for the object hanging from the lightbulb in the center of the room, the source of the drips.
I moved toward it swiftly, head flicking left and right, not letting my guard drop. As I closed on the object the sounds of the drips magnified. Again I focused to tune them out.
A foot from it, I stopped. I was staring at the back of a severed human head. It was hanging from a wire and revolving slowly.
As the face spun into view, I thought this was one of my nightmares come to life, Tom Jeer
y’s ghost head. My breath caught in my throat and the nozzle of my gun lifted. I almost let the head have a full clip, but controlled myself before I fired. The head posed no threat and firing would be a waste of ammunition and a sign of blind panic.
I watched breathlessly as the face crept into view. I knew it couldn’t be my dead father, but I couldn’t shake the fear that this was his spirit come to chastise me for not taking care of his mortal remains.
Then I caught sight of two twisting snakes running down the sides of the face and all thoughts of supernatural specters fled. This was no phantom. It was the solid, disconnected head of the city’s emperor of death—Paucar Wami!
13
Years of training evaporated. I froze, arms dropping, eyes widening. Wami’s face filled my vision. The sound of his blood splattering onto the floor crowded the cavities of my ears and deafened me to all else. The city could have gone up in flames and I wouldn’t have noticed. There was only the head, its eyes gouged out, the skin at the sides of the nose peeled away to create a pair of thumb-size holes, chin chipped in two (hammer and chisel? a drill?) where the heads of the snakes should have met.
I was so obsessed by the head, I didn’t stop to ask how it got there, who hung it from my lamp and where he was now.
A hand slid over my right shoulder and fingers gripped my throat. Another hand darted around the left side of my face. On the middle finger was a ring, a four-inch spike protruding from it. It was one stroke away from making a gooey puddle of my left eye.
“Drop your weapon, relax, do nothing stupid.” It was a soft but confident, cruel voice. I let the gun slip from my fingers and allowed my arms to hang by my sides.
“Sit,” my captor said and I felt the edge of a chair—it must have been the one I kept by the window of my bedroom—bite into the backs of my legs. If the head in front of me hadn’t been so distorted by pain, I would have sworn it was laughing.
The hand around my throat withdrew. Seconds later, so did the hand with the ring. A fool would have dived for the gun. I sat firm.
“Where were you?” I asked, sickened to be caught so cheaply.
“Under the bed,” he chuckled. “Isn’t that where all the bogeymen hang out?”
It must have taken more than the few seconds I was frozen for him to slide out, fetch the chair and cross the room after me. Why hadn’t I sensed him? Even a ghost would have made some kind of noise.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What do you want?”
“In time,” he replied, then reached forward and poked the head. “Know who this belongs to?”
I gulped. “Yes.”
“Say his name. I want to hear it.”
I licked my lips. I didn’t know what was happening but I had to play along. Whoever this guy was, he’d killed the man many said couldn’t be killed. He wasn’t to be taken lightly.
“It’s Paucar Wami,” I croaked.
“Indeed?” He sounded amused. There was a long pause. I came close to bolting. Managed to stay in check, though it wasn’t easy.
“Do you know why I am here?”
The question caught me by surprise. I couldn’t answer. Then I felt something sharp scratch along the width of my bare back and the words tumbled out.
“No. I don’t even know who you are. How could I—”
“Enough.” He patted my right shoulder. “I am not here to kill you.” His hand crept forward and he pointed at the head. “I have had enough killing for one night.”
“Could I have that in writing?” My chattering teeth made a mockery of the show of bravado.
“I will write it for you in blood if you wish,” he teased. Then, “Do not, at any stage, turn around. If you gaze upon my face, I will have to kill you.”
“Who are you?” I asked, calmly this time. It was possible he was playing with me, and had no intention of letting me live, but things didn’t seem as desperate as they had at first.
“Ask instead who I am not,” he replied cryptically.
“OK. Who aren’t you?”
“I am not him.” The hand poked the head again. “And he is not Paucar Wami. His name is—was—Allegro Jinks.”
I frowned and focused on the tattooed features hanging from the thin wire. The face was the image of how I’d pictured Wami. I began to mutter, “I don’t follow. If he isn’t—”
Then the penny dropped and I groaned.
Paucar Wami—as my assailant most surely was—laughed. “I see I have no need to introduce myself. Good. I hate formal introductions.”
“Why are you here?” I asked. “What do you want?”
“I want nothing, Al. I come as an ally, bringing you this fine head as a goodwill token. I was going to send it by mail, but I thought you might appreciate the personal touch.” I felt his breath on the back of my neck as he leaned in closer to whisper, “You were looking for me. Asking questions. Spreading rumors. You said I killed the Hornyak girl. I could not stand for such slander. Normally I would have put a quick end to the lies. But I could not understand why you were so sure of my involvement. I did some digging and discovered she had been seen with a Paucar Wami ringer.”
“A ringer?” I almost looked over my shoulder, then remembered the warning. “It wasn’t you with Nic?”
“I never met Nicola Hornyak or even heard of the girl until your queries drew my attention to her.” I felt him pressing into my back. I didn’t move, though the temptation to shy away from his touch was great. He stroked the dead man’s cheeks, caressing the writhing snakes, one after the other.
“These beauties belong to me and no other. No one else has a right to wear the snakes. When I heard of the impostor, I made the rounds of various tattoo parlors, to find out who had copied them without my permission. A slim Chinaman called Ho Yun Fen was the guilty party. Quite an artist. A shame to kill him, but lessons must be taught. Ho Yun remembered the snakes, the customer’s name and that a pretty white girl had been with him at the time.”
“When was this?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of my fear.
“Five weeks before her death. Yes,” he said as I opened my mouth to form the question, “the girl was Nicola Hornyak, though that only came out when I paid a call on Mr. Jinks. He protected her identity as vigorously as he could, given the circumstances, but in the end was forced to part with the secret, painful as it was.”
I stared at the ruined face of Allegro Jinks and made up my mind to tell Wami anything he wanted to know, the second he asked.
“Did Jinks kill her?”
“No,” Wami sighed. “She rang him earlier that night and told him to stay in, that she would come to see him. He fell asleep waiting for her. Heard nothing more of her until she made the papers the next week.”
“That was his story?”
“That was the truth.” I could feel Wami’s smile. “Men don’t lie when you scoop out their eyes, then start on their genitalia.”
My testicles retreated at the thought.
“Did he know who killed her?” I asked, driving the picture of the dismembered Jinks from my mind.
“No. He was not acquainted with her ways. She picked him up a fortnight or so prior to his tattooing. Gave an alias. Never told him where she lived. Used him as she pleased.”
“For sex?”
“And more. The tattoos were her idea. He did not want them. She performed acts of wanton abandon—which I blush to think about—to win him over. She also made him shave his scalp—he had a full head of curly locks when they met.”
“Did she say why?”
“She told him it would make him look sexy.” Wami chuckled. “Which, dare I say, is true enough.”
Once again my eyes fixed on the snakes, but now I focused on the shaven head and noticed it was covered by a light layer of bristle. As I stared, trying to make sense of the craziness, Wami spoke again.
“So much for my story. How about yours? Any idea why your girlfriend would have kitted Allegro out like this?”
“She knew a me
dium called Rudi Ziegler,” I answered, client confidentiality be damned. “She took Wami—Jinks—to see him. Said he was her demon lover. Maybe she’d heard about your exploits and thought this was how a demon would look.”
“Interesting. Allegro mentioned her interest in the occult. Do you think I should pay a call to Mr. Ziegler?”
“No. He’s a harmless old quack. He had nothing to do with her death.”
“Then who had?”
“I don’t know,” I groaned. “I thought it was you until you turned up with that.” Meaning the head.
“It was not you?” Wami asked casually.
“Me? ” I blinked.
“Concern is a fine form of camouflage. Nobody is going to suspect a man so determined to bring her killer to justice, a hero who charges around, accusing all but himself.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“It makes no difference to me if you did or not. I will let you live either way. But confessing can do wonders for a man’s soul.”
“I didn’t kill her.” Stiffly this time.
“Very well,” Wami sighed. “Just thought I would ask.” There was the briefest of sounds as he stood. “I will be off then.”
“That’s it?” I asked, startled.
“Unless you want to share a beer and pretzels,” he laughed.
“That’s all you came for? To show me the head and tell me about Jinks?”
“And clear my name. I need not have. Many murders in this city are attributed to me, and usually I care not what people think. But I knew of your connection to The Cardinal and also…” He paused, then shrugged (I knew by the rustling of his jacket). “It was pride. I solved the mystery and wanted someone to share it with.”
“You only solved part of the mystery,” I reminded him. “You didn’t find out who killed Nic.”
“That is of no interest to me. I wanted to know who was impersonating me and why. If the Hornyak girl was alive, I would pay her a visit and ask why she demanded the makeover, but even I have never managed to pry secrets from the dead.”
“How can I trust you?” I asked. “You might have ordered Jinks’s tattoo yourself, to serve as a red herring.”
“To what end?”
