Altar of Bones

by Philip Carter

  ZOE STARED at the blank wall, as the tail end of the film flapped around and around on the spinning spool. Her brain refused to work, but her mouth did.

  “Holy bejesus.”

  She kept looking at the wall, as if expecting it to show her more, to continue with the carnage, to show her Lee Harvey Oswald’s arrest and his murder by Jack Ruby, maybe show LBJ getting sworn in as president with Jackie in her bloodstained pink suit standing blank-faced beside him.

  But there was nothing more. It was over and she’d witnessed history. The real history, not the cooked-up report of the Warren Commission.

  She looked at Ry, who stood motionless, staring just as she had at the now blank wall. Then his hand came up, startling her, and she jerked back. But he was only reaching for the switch on the projector to shut it off.

  The cold, empty look on his face terrified her.

  Carefully, slowly, she said, “What in hell is going on here? How did you know my grandmother had this film? Why did she have it? I know it’s real. Nothing like that could be faked … could it?”

  Ry put the film back into its can and tossed it on the bed. “No, it’s real.”

  “I want to look at it again,” Zoe said, as she watched him pack up the projector. “That man with the rifle, the assassin, I think I’ve seen him somewhere before. And there was another guy, the one with the umbrella? He’s the spitting image of this photograph Yasmine Poole just showed me back at the café. She said his name is Nikolai Popov, and that he was once a big muckety-muck in the KGB. Of course she could’ve been lying through her teeth.”

  “That’s always possible,” Ry said, though he didn’t seem at all surprised to be told that the KGB might have been behind the Kennedy assassination. “We’ll talk it through later. Right now we should get out of here.”

  She took a long, hard look at him. “You know, I had a real nice life back in the day. All I had to worry about was some wifebeater or deadbeat dad going all postal on me, and then the next thing I know my long-lost grandmother turns up murdered, some guy is threatening to pluck out my eyes, I get a letter that sends me to Paris, where I find this icon and end up jumping off a damned bridge and land on piles of soggy newspapers before I nearly drown, and then, just to put the cherry on top of the sundae, I’m lucky enough to meet up with you. But that’s not the grand prize, oh, no. I’ve just found out there really was a second gunman on the grassy knoll. It’s like I went to bed and woke up in the middle of some moonbat conspiracy theory, and right about now I’m thinking you can take your silent act and … well, I won’t be indelicate. Who are you? Just who in hell are you? What is going on here? Spit it out now or I’m going to kick you in the balls.”

  “I told you who I am.”

  “Right. Ryland … no, let’s get all cozy here. It’s Ry O’Malley with the DEA. But what does—my God, are you telling me Kennedy was killed over drugs?”

  “No.”

  He snapped the lid on the projector case and pushed to his feet, his eyes dilated, wild. She half-expected him to pull out a gun and shoot her.

  Instead he shoved his fingers through his hair and spun away from her. She saw the muscles of his back expand as he drew in deep breaths, got himself back under control. Then he turned to face her again.

  “Technically I’m not working for the DEA at the moment. I took what you might call a leave of absence a year and a half ago.”

  “And decided wouldn’t it be fun to join the Russian mafiya? You must be quite the agent to come up with a cover story good enough to fool my mother and her security investigators, because she’s no dummy. She’s many other things, but no dummy.”

  “If you have the means and the know-how to do it, it’s easy enough to create a background for yourself—a Social Security number, false immigration papers, a prison record. Get some skell to vouch for what a badass you are. Stuff like that. It’s called creating a legend. We do it all the time in the DEA.”

  “I bet. So somehow you discovered that my grandmother Katya had the film, and when you couldn’t find her, you went undercover as one my mother’s vors, hoping to pick up a lead from her that would put you on Katya’s trail. Have I got that right?”

  “Yeah, that’s about it in a nutshell.”

  She waited, but he said nothing more. “Okay. Then there’s one or two other things I’d like to know. How did you know my grandmother had the film in the first place? How did you know it even existed? And the man with the rifle, the killer? You know who he is, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know.” His eyes met hers. The violence was still there, but it was being banked by something that looked oddly like pain.

  “Then tell me.”

  He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a photograph. It was her photograph, or rather her grandmother’s, the one she’d found tucked inside the casket. The one of Katya Orlova and Marilyn Monroe and—

  “Hey, that’s where I’ve seen the shooter before!” Zoe took the photograph to study it more closely. Mike and Marilyn and me … “Yesterday in Boris’s shop, I was so focused on my grandmother and how cool it was that she knew Marilyn Monroe, I didn’t really look at this Mike guy in the booth with them, but it’s him, it’s Kennedy’s assassin and—oh, my God, I can’t believe I didn’t put it together before. O’Malley. My mother’s stepfather, Katya’s husband, his name was Mike O’Malley and …”

  She looked from the photograph to Ry O’Malley’s harsh face, back to the photo again.

  “Yeah,” Ry said. “I look like just like him, don’t I?”

  RY WENT TO the window, lifted the shade, and sunlight filled the room. He pulled aside the lace curtain to check out the street below. She knew what he was feeling. She was the pakhan’s daughter, after all.

  “The kil—the man in the film … He’s your father.”

  Ry said nothing, so Zoe went on, “And Yasmine Poole wasn’t lying, was she? I could tell by your reaction when I told you about the photograph of Nikolai Popov. He really was in the KGB, which means your father probably worked for the KGB, too. The KGB killed Kennedy.”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Why?”

  Ry gave a short, bitter laugh. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

  She stared at his back. She was sure he knew way more than he was telling, and it was starting to piss her off because while his father may have been the killer, it seemed to be her neck on the line here now.

  “That was no home movie taken by some random person who showed up to watch the president of the United States drive by that day in Dallas. Whoever had that camera in his hands—no, scratch that. The camera was in her hands, wasn’t it? My grandmother’s. That’s how she ended up with the film of the assassination. She was there.”

  Ry said nothing, so Zoe went on, “And your … the assassin. He knew she was there. You could tell by the way he was mugging for the camera. But why film it in the first place? Certainly it wasn’t to show that he’d pulled off the job, because Kennedy’s death would’ve been proof enough for that—”

  “Life insurance,” Ry said, cutting her off. He let the curtain fall back into place and turned to face her. “Because once the assassination went down, the triggerman would be a loose end to whoever ordered the job, and loose ends get whacked.”

  Whacked. That sounded like something out of GoodFellas, except it wasn’t funny.

  “I guess that’s what I am now. A loose end,” Zoe said, not trying to hide how scared she was. “I think I want to go home now.”

  “Hey.” His face softened, his eyes squinting into his version of a smile. “For an amateur, you’ve been handling yourself pretty well. Don’t wimp out on me now.”

  “Thanks, I guess…. The one thing I’m not getting, though, is where the ponytailed man fits into this. He’s got a Russian accent, so you’d think he’d be working for this Popov guy and the KGB, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days, trying to get his hands on the film. But, no, he kills my grandmother
, then he comes after me with a bicycle chain, but with him it’s all about the altar of bones—”

  Ry closed the distance between them so fast, Zoe didn’t even know what was happening until it was too late. He grabbed her shoulders, spun her around, and pushed her against the wall. He spoke softly, but each word was distinct and deadly. “What do you know about the altar of bones?”

  She tried to knee him in the balls, but he had the whole length of his body pressed up against hers and she couldn’t get any leverage. She said, “I’ll give you two seconds to put me down, and then I’m going to scream so loud they’ll hear me on top of the Eiffel Tower.”

  He put her down.

  She went to the bed, picked up the film, and put it into her satchel. “You’re a bully, and you’re probably a liar, and I’m outta here.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” He stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “You try to handle this on your own, and the wolves out there are gonna eat you alive.”

  “And what are you? You claim to be one of the good guys, and maybe you are and maybe you aren’t. So far you haven’t shown me much reason to trust you.”

  “Maybe because I’m still trying to figure out if I can trust you. I—” He cut himself off and turned toward the door. Then Zoe heard it, too—the creak of a board outside on the stair landing.

  Ry yelled, “Get down!” and knocked her to the floor just as the door burst open.

  25

  A SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPON spat bullets, stitching the wall high above Zoe’s head as she rolled and kept rolling, all the way into the tiny bathroom.

  She came up onto her feet in a half-crouch and whirled in time to catch the big black pistol that came sliding across the floor at her from Ry’s outstretched hand. The studio apartment was too small, and there’d been no time for him to make it to cover. So he lay flat with his arms above his head, and Zoe waited with horror for bullets from the gunmen in the doorway to riddle his body.

  But the shooting stopped abruptly, and then it was eerily quiet except for the soft tinkle of glass falling from a busted picture on the wall and the pounding of her heart.

  Zoe’s hands shook a little as she checked the ammunition clip of the pistol Ry had tossed her, a Walther P99. She pressed her back to the wall between the toilet and door, held the Walther two-fisted out in front of her, and waited.

  From where she was, she could see Ry lying in frozen stillness on the floor, but the half-closed bathroom door blocked her view of the shooters. She thought there were two of them, though, men with hooded sweatshirts, one in black and one in blue. They’d looked familiar. The lovers from the café, maybe? And they’d fired high, which meant they hadn’t been aiming to kill. Yet.

  The floorboard out in the hallway creaked again.

  “Well, well,” said Yasmine Poole, in that soft, smirking voice. “Why, if it isn’t Agent Ryland O’Malley. What a hard man you are to kill. I was certain, back there in Galveston, that I was staring down at your watery grave and yet here you are again, the proverbial bad penny.

  “And Ms. Dmitroff, I know you’re back there in the powder room. Give me the film, and I’ll let you walk out of here alive.”

  Ry met Zoe’s eyes and he shook his head a fraction of an inch, but she didn’t need the warning. They lived only so long as they had the film.

  “Do you hear those sirens, Zoe? Your name has been put on the terrorist watch list with both the FBI and Interpol. So you see, there’s nowhere for you to run to now, nowhere to hide. But if you give me the film, I can make it go away. Bygones and all that.”

  The whoop-whoops were growing steadily louder, coming closer. Zoe thought the imminent arrival of the French cops was probably the only thing keeping Ry O’Malley alive. He still lay on the floor, unmoving, completely vulnerable to a single bullet from Yasmine Poole or her two hooded thugs.

  Think.

  She noticed a bucket full of cleaning supplies under the sink. One was an American brand she recognized—a spray cleanser with bleach. She started talking, to cover any sound she made as she shifted her weight so she could reach it.

  “It seems to me we’ve all landed in a bit of a pickle here, Yasmine. I could wait until the French cops arrive and turn myself and the film over to them, which would leave you with a lot of explaining to do, starting with what the CIA thinks it’s doing carrying out covert operations on French soil.”

  “You win some,” said Yasmine Poole, “you lose some. I’m willing to take my chances.”

  “Yeah?” The bottle of cleanser was full. Zoe checked to be sure the nozzle was in the “on” position. “But imagine what the reaction will be when they actually take a look at the film. Quelle horreur. Quelle suprise. The images of the second gunman on the grassy knoll would be all over the evening news. Would the guys you work for call that a win, Yasmine?”

  Zoe set the cleaner on the floor between her feet and took the film back out of her satchel. It was hard to open the tin can one-handed, but she didn’t dare set down the gun.

  “By the way, just who do you really work for? The CIA, or the people who killed Kennedy? Or are we talking about the same thing?”

  At last, at last, the can popped open. Zoe quickly dumped the film back into her satchel and pressed closed the now empty can. She shifted her weight again and craned her head so she could look through the crack between the jamb and the half-open door. She could see Yasmine Poole now, and the two hooded guys who flanked her on either side, their semiautomatics still pointed at Ry. Yasmine herself was unarmed, but Zoe remembered the gun she carried in her purse.

  “Agent Blackthorn,” said Yasmine Poole, “shoot Agent O’Malley in the kneecap.”

  “No, wait!” Zoe cried out, and she didn’t have to fake the panic in her voice. She was running out of time—both with Yasmine and the French police. The sirens blared so loudly now, they had to be on the next street over and rounding the corner. “I’ll give you the film. Don’t hurt him.”

  She caught Ry’s eye one last time, and she thought he might have winked at her, even though the blue-hooded guy was now standing over him, his weapon pointed down within inches of Ry’s knee.

  “It’s just … I’m scared, Yasmine. Do you promise to let us go?”

  “Of course, Zoe. After all, you could blab to the press all you want about some nameless guy on the grassy knoll, but without the film itself, they’d just think you were another tinfoil-hatted whack job. So slide the film out the door now, please, and we won’t hurt your boyfriend.”

  Outside tires screeched, the whooping sirens cut off abruptly.

  “The film, Zoe. Now.”

  Zoe shot the film can like a hockey puck through the half-open door, toward the far corner of the room and under the purple cabbage-rose overstuffed chair.

  Either she was too smart or she didn’t want to risk ripping her gorgeous red suit, but Yasmine Poole didn’t dive for the can as Zoe had hoped. The black-hooded guy did, though, and the distraction was enough.

  Ry jackknifed his legs and kicked the gun out of blue-hooded guy’s hand. He sprang to his feet just as Zoe flung open the bathroom door, firing with one hand and tossing the bottle of cleanser to Ry with the other. He caught it in midair and sprayed blue-hooded guy in the face with it. The man screamed and clawed at his eyes.

  Zoe shot up the rose-cabbage chair, where the black-hooded guy was still frantically trying to fish out the empty film can. Blood sprayed the wall behind him, as he went down with a scream, clutching his thigh.

  Zoe swung the barrel of the gun onto Yasmine.

  The woman stood still in the midst of the carnage, with her hands held out to her side, her eyes wild and full of a sick excitement, as if daring Zoe to shoot her in cold blood.

  Zoe smiled. “You lose.”

  Ry knocked her arm aside just as she squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit the iron bedstead with a ping and ricocheted up into the ceiling. Yasmine Poole didn’t even flinch.

  Ry pushed Zoe toward the door. “Cop
s,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  ZOE COULD HEAR men shouting and the slap of leather soles on the flagstone courtyard below. She started down, but Ry grabbed her arm and pulled her up a narrower set of stairs, toward the roof.

  “Always,” he said, “have a plan B.”

  The stairs ended in a trapdoor that opened up into an attic with huge, exposed beams, sectioned off into storage units for the building’s tenants. It smelled strongly of mothballs. Zoe didn’t see a window, which wouldn’t have done them much good anyway, as high up as they were. Ry led the way to the back, deep beneath the sloping roof, where a midget-size door with a small white knob was set low on the wall, almost at floor level.

  He turned and grinned at her. “Laundry chute.”

  “Great,” Zoe said. “Only the thing is …”

  But Ry had already turned back to open the little door.

  It was a laundry chute all right. A dark and narrow laundry chute.

  Ry took both the Walther and her satchel out of her suddenly laxhands. He stuffed the gun into an inside pocket of his jacket and zipped up. “You go first,” he said.

  “The thing is, I’m kind of claustrophobic.”

  She heard a door bang right below them, and someone shouting, “Arrêtez! Arrêtez!”

  “Don’t think about it,” Ry said. “Just do it.”

  Zoe set her jaw. She swung feetfirst into the chute, shut her eyes, and held the doorframe with a white-knuckled grip. How hard could this be? You just let go and slide. But what if the chute got narrower as it went down? It was barely wider than a coffin as it was. A coffin … Oh, Lord. What if she got stuck? Unable to go up or down, trapped with the walls squeezing her chest, tighter and tighter, and the air black as death, growing thinner and thinner, running out, until she …

  “Nope,” she said. “Sorry, cowboy, but ain’t no way—”

  His hand smacked her hard in the back.

  It was a long, long way down.

  26