by John Shirley
“Sure. I read I’m Number One, too.”
“Good. Now answer this honestly. It’s necessary to be very honest. If you were in a house fire, and the next-door neighbor’s infant son happened to be in the same house, and by going into the next room and carrying him out you’d be taking a big chance on losing your life in the fire—would you?”
“You mean, if I had a clear way to get out myself?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Uhh—”
“Honesty, Billy, or we can’t help you. We know when you’re being dishonest.”
Krupp believed him. “Okay. I’d leave the kid. He ain’t my kid. I’m just as important as he is.”
“Absolutely. Suppose you were trapped in a house with your ex-wife—the latest—and you—ah—were told by the people who had you trapped there—people with big guns—that they wanted to kill your wife and they’d kill you if you didn’t give her up to them.”
Krupp felt reckless, and he could hardly speak for his giggling. “I’d shove her out the front door! And I’d thank ’em!”
The shadow on the TV screen chuckled.
“Now let me ask you this: Do you ever feel like just giving up and dying? Or maybe risking your life in a bank job? Because you’re desperate and they make it so hard for you.”
“Yeah,” said Krupp, quietly now. “Sometimes. They sure as hell make it hard. Everybody wants the money right now. Or too soon.”
“Sure. I know just what you mean. You used to live pretty well. You made a lot of money, so now it’s even hard for you to get welfare relief. But the spades—they get welfare, no problem, right? It’s not fair, you ask me.”
“Not fair…”
“So success—moneywise—is a matter of life and death. It’s dog-eat-dog more than ever before, because of inflation, and recession, and—well, because of people like that bookie who’s on your case. Do you think that’s true?”
Krupp nodded. It was all undeniably true. “Life and death.”
“It’s you or them. A guy has to do what he’s got to. Got to fight.”
Krupp nodded. He was finding it hard to talk. The room was filled with smoke. Only, he knew the smoke wasn’t really there.
The figure on the screen seemed to grow, to loom like a drive-in movie image.
“That’s all I want to ask you. You’ll remember the questions, and the answers.”
Now the screen image had changed. It was a shape made of angles and lines, with little squiggly marks scattered around it. The marks looked like Korn Kurls to him. He giggled, faintly.
There was another shape in the mist. It was a female shape. A nice figure. Very nice. Nothing hiding it. He couldn’t see it clearly, but it looked good. The woman knelt alongside the couch, and her hands moved to unzip his pants.
He sat passively. It must be a dream.
She slipped his small, purplish member into her mouth, and began to suck gently.
He enjoyed it, but he didn’t become excited, exactly—though he was getting hard. It was simply…soothing.
Most of his attention was fixed on the things he saw on the TV screen. Until the fog thickened, blackened, and made everything gone.
Gone. Gone the woman, the TV set, the couch, the basement room. Gone Tooley. Gone the voices (many voices, speaking in strange languages…a gabble that even in New York he’d never heard), gone the half-seen man on the screen.
He was in his apartment, in his bedroom, and his head felt like the Liberty Bell with extra cracks and some vandal pounding it.
He sat up. He winced. He was hung over. He remembered the dream vividly. Dreamt he’d been in a bar. Man with a coke spoon—
Something golden was dangling from his bed post. He blinked away the last traces of the fogginess and peered at the shiny thing. A tiny gold coke spoon. Below it, on the mirror-topped bedside table, was a gram of what had to be cocaine, laid out in neat lines. There was a hundred-dollar bill beside it, rolled up and taped. Beside the hundred-dollar bill was a black leather case, cigar-box-sized.
Hands shaking, he opened the black case. On the red velvet inside were two bright surgical knives.
SIX
While Krupp was descending the gray stairs of the Houston Street-Second Avenue subway station with Tooley—was making that descent for the first time—Lanyard was at the same instant stepping from an elevator into the sub-basement of Gribner’s apartment building. He stepped out into the light of police lamps—light given a bloody tinge by the shadeless table lamp sitting on the dirt floor in the corner of the oppressive, low-ceilinged coal cellar. An ugly reek made him wrinkle his nostrils. Something dead. His stomach felt as if it were curling up to die, too. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the glare; he sorted through the shapes of the several men working in the room and picked out Gribner, facing him, arms outspread, face sagging with a defeated look that accused everything and everyone, as if the whole world had betrayed him. “Lanyard!” Gribner shouted. “You tell me—what am I, that this should happen here, to me? You tell me, what is—Lanyard, look at this….” He bent and laid back a corner of the sheet covering an oblong heap on the floor.
“Gribner, hey—I don’t want to see any more goddamn—” Lanyard started to turn away. But his eyes went involuntarily to the shape on the dirt floor. “Damn it, Gribner.” It looked like a skinned lamb.
Lanyard turned away, retching.
It wasn’t a skinned lamb. It was a small boy. The remains of a small boy. He swallowed hard to control his gag reflex. The sensation subsided. He glanced over his shoulder at the markings on the wall, then stepped quickly into the elevator.
“Lanyard, come back here and—”
The doors closed on Gribner’s shout.
Lanyard closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He opened them immediately. He didn’t see anything, this time, in the darkness behind his eyes. Except the darkness. But that was enough. He didn’t want to look into it. The boy had been mauled.
He found his way out of the building, down the street, into the Ukrainian bar on the corner. “Gin and seven,” he said, sitting at the bar. The bartender made his drink, brought it over. Lanyard rose, and—drink sloshing on his shaking hand—went to a well-lit table in the corner. The jukebox was playing a polka. Twelve old men and two young ones at the bar chattered loudly in what Lanyard took to be Russian. He enjoyed the fact that he couldn’t understand a word of it. It made him feel isolated. He wanted to be alone, with a drink. He was annoyed when Gribner came into the bar and headed straight for his table.
Gribner sat down, without speaking, without looking at Lanyard. A waitress came and Gribner ordered straight bourbon. When this was brought, Gribner and Lanyard sat silently drinking. Now and then Gribner, kicked at the sawdust on the floor, or rubbed his nose. Lanyard became aware that Gribner was trying to keep from crying.
After two or three polkas, Frank Sinatra singing “New York, New York,” and two drinks apiece, Gribner’s face seemed to harden.
He met Lanyard’s eyes. “I remember, Lanyard, you said something about my being used to this sort of thing. About it not affecting me.”
Lanyard shrugged. “I think people get that way after a while. But you were personally affected by this. You must be pretty worried about your nephew.” Lanyard had to force the words out. He didn’t want to talk about it.
Gribner snorted. “If I catch that little S.O.B., I’ll send him to an asylum.”
Lanyard glanced up in surprise. “Yeah?”
“I think he killed my dogs. My Louie and—” He had to stop. He spread his hands. “I must look like some sappy old bird to you, huh? Pissed about his dogs when that kid’s dead down there.”
Lanyard shrugged. “What makes you think your nephew killed the dogs?”
“He was a sadistic, sick little sonuvabitch. I knew that, but I didn’t want to think about it. And he…Jeez, one night I thought I was going crazy. I don’t know. I think he did it with some kind of ventriloquism. But that just goes to show h
ow sick the little prick is.” Gribner’s voice, just then, was harsh enough to make people at adjoining tables look over, though they weren’t close enough to hear what he was saying.
“Did what with ventriloquism?”
“The growling.”
“What—”
But Gribner interrupted him. Vehemently. “Lanyard! Did you see the marks on the wall? Yes or no?”
“Yes. The same mix. Same sort of invocation. I didn’t see a pentagram…but that isn’t always necessary. There are always several methods for invoking the same—influences. But it didn’t look like that kid was cut up in the same way.”
“He wasn’t. Looks like maybe a swarm of rats or a wild dog—how a big dog would have got down my basement—”
“You sure that kid’s not your—?”
“He’s not. Enough of his face was there. Hair’s different. Lanyard, you think these people—the cultists—you think they did this to get me off their case? We don’t have a damn thing. It’s not like we’re getting close.”
“I dunno. Maybe. Seems a bit too obvious a tactic, and one that wouldn’t be much use—they can’t terrorize the whole police force when the city is…” He shook his head. “I take it you think that they approached your nephew… they involved him?”
“Lanyard, you know anything about a…a religious symbol that—ah—it’s a skull with a long mustache?”
Lanyard blinked. He’d seen something of the kind. Somewhere. “I think—there are Persian charms supposed to invoke the healing power of a certain Persian mystic. A sorcerer who was supposed to have the secret of eternal life and luck. He dealt with appeasing Ahriman, while supposedly serving Ahura Mazda. And that’s part of what his cult is into. Appeasing the personification of Evil with sacrifice, but otherwise living the ‘Life of the Just.’ It was a heavily rationalized built-in hypocrisy they had.”
“What about the mustache on the skull?”
“You make it sound pretty silly. Ah—it’s what the charm I mentioned looks like.”
Gribner stood abruptly, accidentally sideswiping the table so it rocked and nearly overturned. Lanyard steadied it; his own glass wobbled but remained upright; Gribner’s rolled onto the floor and broke.
Lanyard looked up. Gribner was already halfway across the room, heading for the door.
He’s holding out on me, Lanyard thought. That’s okay. I don’t have to tell him everything, then. Maguss prefers it that way. And Maguss is the man seductively waving the Big Check.
But Lanyard wasn’t thinking about money, really. “Like a skinned lamb,” he murmured. His eyes were itchy with tiredness. Yet he didn’t close them, except for the briefest possible moment.
MADELAINE WAS GLAD the reception wasn’t at Minder’s private club. The Valencia made her nervous; like Minder, it was fraught with hidden expectations.
The reception for the author of Shake ’Em Down!!, a musical about “good-hearted con men,” was held backstage at Minder’s theater, the New Orpheum. Minder was the show’s producer. It was expected to open in early spring. Minder had called Madelaine personally to invite her to the reception. And he’d hinted that there might be a part for her in the play—not the lead, but a substantial role.
The curtains were down; the guests munched canapes under the ropes and pulleys and the stage lights crowding the ceiling fifty feet overhead. The rehearsal lamps were on, too brightly. The stage area was crowded by men in business suits and in black tie, a few in designer jeans and studiedly chic dyed-leather jackets. The women wore evening gowns or dark, tight-waisted suits…or studiedly chic dyed-leather jackets and designer jeans. Madelaine was in a jumpsuit. She accepted a drink from the red-uniformed bartender on the other side of the linen-covered table, and pretended she was pleased to exchange small talk with Lorna Sandina, the tall, catty Spanish actress who’d been cast as the female lead.
Minder, in a blue dinner jacket and bow tie, shambled through the crowd shaking hands and quipping. Even in blue he looked like a domesticated panda bear.
Madelaine instantly disliked the man Minder chivvied politely before him through the crowd. Minder introduced him strategically as Charlton Buckner, the author of Shake ‘Em Down!! Buckner’s nearly shoulder-length hair looked as if it had been dyed black and given a permanent; it contrasted absurdly with his middle-aged, lined face. He wore a gray suit-coat over a black turtleneck sweater and gray tweed trousers. He was an erstwhile Madison Avenue copywriter for cigarette ads.
She hadn’t heard him speak, and she was picking up nothing from him via her Gift, but his gestures duplicated those of the scores of bantering authors she’d seen on talk shows. Crinkling his eyes with quiet amusement at the right moment; becoming temporarily serious when it was called for, then timing his comic relief.
Madelaine caught Minder’s eye. He trotted ponderously over to her. “My lost lady-love! I can’t see the forest for the trees; I’ve been talking to the other ladies and all the time looking for you!”
“You’re an elegant liar,” she said.
“Tell you what—I’m going to let Tooley handle this business for a while. My young author has got himself snakecharmed, anyway. I wonder if you’d like to take a drive with me to see my new launching pad—it’s a pretty little townhouse on Gramercy Park. Private park—you have to have a key to get into the park in the square. Pretty elitist, huh? Classy stuff. Like to have a look?”
“Delighted,” said Madelaine, though the word didn’t describe her feelings.
Alone with Minder, it would be easier to talk about a part in the play. To talk about it very casually, of course. Fewer interruptions; better chance he’d bring it up himself. She took his arm.
Twenty minutes later, Minder’s limo was pulling up in front of his Russian Renaissance townhouse. The driver stopped and parked, though Minder had told Madelaine they’d simply “swing by.”
“What the hell,” Minder said, “let’s go in and have a look around.”
Very casually. Of course.
“I’ve got some Colombian flake we can sample, before we hustle back to the reception. And we can talk about the part. It’s not big, but it stands out. Its got its own dignity. Yeah, you gotta try this coke, one line of this stuff and…”
Nodding now and then, she followed him out of the car and up to the house.
It’s not too late to make excuses, she told herself.
But she said nothing except, “Oh, thanks, gallant sir,” when he opened the front door for her. And she stepped inside.
LANYARD LAY ON his back, staring at the water stain on the ceiling over the sofa. The water stain bore a resemblance to a Japanese demon-mask. A gnarled, almost clownish countenance. Red. Snarling.
He closed his eyes—and opened them quickly. The flecks behind his eyelids conspired to arrange themselves in patterns that were gnarled… Clownish…red…snarling.
This time he was sure it was his imagination.
He stood, stretched, and went to the small portable TV set on the old wooden trunk beside the bedroom door. He switched on the set and watched the figures in the tiny luminous box expanding geometrically, taking on bloodless form. A newscaster. “Oh, splendid timing,” Lanyard said. “Shit.” But before he could switch the channels the newsman said, “…still no significant leads in the subway ritual murders of seven people. The Guardian Angels, a group of uniformed self-appointed subway patrolmen, have sworn to apprehend the subway killers. Meanwhile, ridership on the trains is down thirty percent, resulting in a greater use of private cars by commuters and unprecedented traffic jams….”
Lanyard switched channels after noticing the gruesome insignia the TV news program used to symbolize the story. In a small video-matted box inset above the newscaster’s shoulder was a skull with a pentagram on its forehead and two sharp knives crossed under it. “Looks like a Hell’s Angels armband,” Lanyard muttered. It was as if the city unconsciously relished the horror taking place in its own innards.
On the PBS channel a self-serio
us, highly manicured commentator was saying, “We have to conclude, studying the imagery of current, popular gore-horror films objectively, that the emphasis is not on subtle terror, the sort that once reigned in classics like Psycho and The Cat People, but on grisly enactments of ritual murder, explicitly detailed and, often, shot from the viewpoint of the killer, so that the audience can satisfy its need to express hostility. Not since the Great Depression has the country been so pressured, have people felt so threatened. The growing Soviet presence, combined with the rising crime rate and rising prices, have given the public a huge need to express an anger that it has long kept suppressed—”
Lanyard hurriedly switched off the TV. “No fucking escape from it!” he said, shaking his head. He was startled by the loudness of his own voice.
He opened a copy of The Village Voice. The first thing his eyes focused on: “…all four black men were taken to the cellar room of the police station, separated, and threatened one by one with…”
Cellars, he thought. Underground. All the killings have happened underground.
Allowing his eyes to rove the page at random, he fixed on:
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Unless we produce something useful!
That’s the offer made by Data Digs, Manhattan’s most sophisticated data-collating service. Doing a term paper? Compiling information to use in applying for a grant? Detective work? Scientific study of human behavior? Consumer buying patterns? Our computer obtains its information from newspaper records, police files, media input of all kinds, and sources we’re unprepared to divulge.
We can collate data for you on any subject. Call_____
Lanyard tore the ad from the magazine and laid it atop the telephone receiver.
He went into the kitchen and fixed himself a drink. He knew it was going to be a long, sleepless night. Because he was afraid to close his eyes.
AS IT HAPPENED, Lanyard fell asleep at about four in the morning, glass in hand. He awoke at nine, on his back, on the couch, dressed except for his shoes. The glass had toppled on his chest. His chest felt sticky. His head ached. But after a few attempts at falling back to sleep, he gave up. He got up, scowled, feeling his clothes as an itchiness, and went into the bathroom. He stripped, took a bath and five aspirin, and drank two cups of coffee. He dressed, looking out the window now and then. It was another windy day, clouds racing like frightened hippos, fat and gray.
