Within minutes her body was reeling from the insult. She sat down heavily on the wooden rim of the covered hot tub and dazedly began brushing the pastry crumbs from her chest. Soon she broke out into a fine sweat from the crown of her head to her bare toes; when she looked down she saw that the skin of her torso had taken on a red blotchy glow.
She started to mop herself off with the towel she'd donned for Martha, but quickly soaked it through; she draped it over the railing; it slipped off and fell into the bushes on the other side. Her mind seized on the need for a dry towel. She tottered into the house, sweat pouring down her face, dripping from nose, chin, and nipples, but by the time she reached the bathroom out behind the kitchen she had sweated out every drop of moisture her body could spare, and the heat from the fever had cooked it away.
Her face felt like parchment, and when she brought her hands up to her eyes, she saw through a quickly darkening rosy glow that the skin of her fingertips had begun to pucker.
Selene looked up and caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror: her long witchy gray-black hair had frizzed out wildly, and her face was indeed crimson as madder. Then she couldn't see anything: an angry red haze had washed across her vision.
* * *
Somehow Selene must have managed to stagger to the ladder—she had a vague memory of a black reeling time—and climb to her loft, because when she regained what passed for consciousness she found she was lying facedown on the waterbed, her nose buried in a soft canyon between two pillows.
She rolled onto her back, fighting against a sudden wave of dizziness that worsened as the waterbed rocked and rolled. When she opened her eyes she saw only the red haze at first, but gradually it parted to reveal the jagged crimson branches of the redwood trees outlined against a garish pink and violet sky.
She reached a hand up toward the domed skylight directly over the bed. To her mild surprise it slipped through as easily as if the Plexiglas were spun sugar; she felt her spirit drawing out after it with a rush, flowing freely through the illusory hole, wobbling and shifting shape like a great bubble of lucid oil rising up through water.
CHAPTER 4
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The view of San Francisco at night was breathtaking from Aldo Striescu's corner suite at the Fairmont. The neighborly hills, the cold starry towers, the great sweep of the bay spanned by bridges strung with scalloped strands of light, gave Aldo the same tender feeling in his chest as hearing the divine Callas singing "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi. Soaring sweetness, a core of innocence and sorrow, but with an edge to it that never let you forget why La Divina had also been the preeminent Medea and Lady Macbeth of her day.
"Cruzime si inocenta." He said it in Romanian first, then repeated it in English—"Cruelty and innocence"—in order to practice his mush-mouthed California dialect. Sounded too sibilant to his trained ear. He repeated the troublesome word—"innocence, innocence, innocence"—until he felt ready for a field test, then picked up the phone and punched a button at random.
"Housekeeping, this is Rosa."
"Rosa!" As if he'd reached an old friend by mistake. "I'm trying to reach room service… Sure, thanks."
"Room service, this is Hector."
"Hector! Do you serve crabs—and don't tell me you serve anybody!" For Aldo, the ability to pun was a measure of his mastery over the language.
An obsequious chuckle. "We do have a crab cocktail, sir."
"Fresh?"
"Previously frozen."
"As opposed to what? Still frozen?"
Silence.
"Just kidding, Hec." He ordered two, along with the Surf 'n' Turf combo, a bottle of Napa Chardonnay that Hector had seemed quite enthusiastic about, and a slice of the delightfully named Chocolate Decadence for dessert. "And coffee—make it a cappuccino. Forty-five minutes? Swell. Room nine twenny-two."
He hung up. He wasn't really hungry—but then, his room number wasn't 922, either.
"Chahklit decadince, chahklit decadince…" He practiced that one on the way to the bathroom, then tried out the whole order again in front of the ornate bathroom mirror, where the sight of his reflection reminded him of the boy by the side of the rain forest path who'd run away shouting about the devil Friday morning. The goatee Aldo had grown to match the photo on his American passport, along with his wide forehead, impishly arched eyebrows, and permanently bloodshot eyes, made the comparison all but inevitable.
Generally speaking, he wasn't pleased with the look. It robbed him of some of the easy—and incongruous, to those who knew him—Striescuan charm. But the passport had been too clean to pass up—and free. It occurred to Aldo that he should have chased the Luzan boy down, eyewitnesses being something of an impediment in his line of work, but he'd been on a tight schedule at the time—as it was, he barely made it back to his hotel room before sunrise. Ah well, perhaps someday he would return to Santa Luz and finish the job.
Not that his schedule was any more forgiving tonight. Aldo had two of Whistler's properties to torch before driving up to Lake Tahoe, and according to the maps splayed out on the marble-topped coffee table over by the window they were two counties apart, with the San Francisco Bay between them.
After showering and dressing—black slacks and a worn black pullover—Aldo removed his silver thermos from the refrigerator built into the wet bar in the living room and carried it over to the sofa by the picture window. He took his first swallow of the night while comparing the maps with the computer printout he'd brought with him from London, by way of Santa Luz, detailing James Whistler's worldwide real estate holdings.
Aldo traced tonight's route with his finger: across the famous Golden Gate Bridge and up Route 1 to the redwood A-frame near Bolinas, then clear across Marin County and over the Richmond—San Rafael bridge to El Sobrante, where Whistler owned a clapboard farmhouse. He might even have time to watch that one go up before leaving for Tahoe, where Whistler Manor was located. The manor itself he would save until the following night.
* * *
The roadbed of the Golden Gate Bridge was wet and shiny with fog; overhead the towers disappeared into the mist. Aldo slipped a disk of Callas singing "L'altra notte in fondo al mare" into the CD player of his rented Mercury Sable, then changed his mind, and the disk. Norma would be a much better accompaniment for what the guidebook promised would be a winding and spectacular drive up the coast—he would save Mefistofele for the flames.
Aldo grinned at the thought of the flames; his grin widened when he discovered that there was no bridge toll for northbound travelers. Growing up an orphan, Aldo had learned to appreciate these little bonuses in life. Despite years of living high off the Ceausescu hog, he had never entirely overcome the poverty of his upbringing. Even now, on the brink of the biggest payoff of his life, he still begrudged every dollar he couldn't charge directly to his new employer's Platinum Card.
His new employer: something else to grin about. And to make a poor orphan boy shake his head in wonder over the vagaries of fate. Just a little over a month ago Aldo had still been living hand-to-mouth after nearly four years in England, doing shit work, mostly collection and protection, and the occasional torch job, for the Suterana, the Romanian criminal underground, which for the most part did shit work for the English criminal underground.
So things could have been worse. Aldo had a decent, soundproofed apartment in Chelsea, and when funds did run low it was always possible for a man of his peculiar talents and abilities to obtain cash. But in his opinion he should never have been allowed to fall into even such modestly straitened circumstances in the first place. For without Aldo and his Third Branch colleagues in the Securitate guiding the so-called spontaneous December Revolution that followed the slaughter in Timisoara, the Communists would never have been able to rid themselves of the old peasant Ceausescu, who'd become an embarrassment anyway, while still managing to coopt the National Salvation Front, thereby maintaining themselves in power without missing a meal.
So as far as Aldo wa
s concerned, he should have been back in Bucharest helping to run the new government along with the rest of the conspirators who'd engineered the phony coup d'etat. But more scapegoats were needed, and who better to sacrifice than the field operatives, men who knew too much anyway? The double-cross had turned into a triple-cross: Aldo had barely managed to escape to England with his life and his Callas collection, leaving his life savings behind. Hence the one-bedroom flat in Chelsea and the shit work for the Suterana.
And then one September night he'd popped into the Cock and Fender for a pint, was told by an old buddy from Bucharest of a mad old fellow with a fierce interest in certain Romanian folk legends, and suddenly everything changed. Now, a month later, here he was driving a fully loaded Sable with creamy leather seats and a sound system worthy of La Divina across the celebrated Golden Gate Bridge, getting paid more money than he'd ever dreamed of to do a job he'd have gladly done for free—or at least for expenses: burn a striga—a witch.
According to the maps the turn-off for Bolinas was just north of the town of Stinson Beach. Aldo was nearly to Olema before he realized he'd missed it. He turned around and soon found himself back in Stinson. Somehow he'd managed to miss his turn again heading south.
There was nothing for it but to ask directions. How bloody unprofessional! He executed his second U-turn of the night, pulled up in front of a bar called the Sand Dollar, pressed the button to lower the passenger-side front window, and hailed a hippie-looking fellow in a tie-dyed shirt who was just reeling down the steps. Time to try out his California accent for real. "Hey dude, can you tell me how to get to Bolinas?"
"Sure can." But no directions were immediately forthcoming—the fellow just stood there, swaying and giggling.
"Oh, I get it," said Aldo. "Like, I said 'can you?' and you could. Right?"
"Riiight!"
"Very funny. How about would you tell me how to get to Bolinas?"
"Sure. Jus' drive straight through town"—the hippie waved vaguely to his right—"pas' the lagoon, pas' the Audubon Ranch, hang a lef' on the Bobo road."
"That's what I thought—but I didn't see any sign or anything."
"That's 'cause the Bobos take the signs down as fas' as Caltrans can put 'em up. Don't like tourists much in Bobo-land. Jus' look for a busted-off sign after the lagoon."
"Great. Thanks."
"No prob. Hey, how about you buy me a drink for my condition?"
"What condition is that?"
"Not drunk enough."
Aldo laughed and pulled away from the curb, tires squealing. When he passed the wide flat lagoon for the third time he slowed the Sable to a crawl. Eventually he made out the broken signpost across the highway; the road to Bolinas was right where the maps and the hippie had said it would be. Batardes. He flipped a finger, American style, to all the Bobos in Bobo-land: they had cost him precious time. Now he'd have to rush both this job and the one in El Sobrante if he hoped to make Tahoe before sunrise.
Ah well, perhaps there would still be time to have a little fun with the striga before he torched the building. Because in Aldo's experience the only thing that could equal the orgasm potential of watching an old wooden building going up in flames while listening to La Divina sing Mefistofele, was the release that could be achieved during even the most hurried of smotherings, if the victim put up a decent fight.
But it seemed Aldo was doomed to be disappointed once again. First he missed the driveway and drove halfway into town before executing yet another U-turn. Then when he finally located the A-frame at the top of the winding drive, he discovered that there was nowhere to hide the Sable while he went about his business. This one would have to be extra quick, to reduce the possibility of someone driving up and spotting the car. Aldo muttered a quick oath—oh, how he hated to torch and run.
And such favorable tinder, too: he'd never burned redwood before, but if it flared like other dry evergreens, the conflagration would be spectacular. Not that he would have time to watch it. He backed the Sable around in the driveway, so it was facing downhill, took a healthy swig from his thermos, and climbed out of the car with his leather kit bag in hand.
The front door was unlocked. It was Aldo's first piece of luck all night. Another followed immediately: he sensed the presence of the witch. A third: he climbed the ladder to the loft and saw that she was lying across her bed, on her back, sound asleep, and—a fourth spot of luck—completely naked. He wouldn't have taken the time to undress her otherwise. Skinny old thing, but perhaps what she lacked in meat she'd make up for in fight. Without a good struggle he had no chance at an orgasm.
But there Aldo's brief run of luck petered out. He snatched up a pillow which had fallen to the floor, placed it firmly over the striga's face, and tensed himself for a resistance that never came; there was no reaction whatsoever. A minute went by, then another, without so much as a gasp or wiggle. Puzzled, Aldo tried to remember whether she had been breathing when he first saw her. But she must have been; she was still warm.
Warm? She was hot, and the sheets were soaked with sweat. Maybe she'd been in a coma or something. Whatever her problem, smothering her proved a dreadful disappointment. She never even kicked at the end. They were all supposed to kick at the end—it was a reflex, for God's sake.
But the striga was definitely not breathing when he removed the pillow after a few minutes, and when he put his ear to her bare chest he couldn't hear a heartbeat. Just to be sure, he plucked out a pubic hair. She didn't flinch. Dead as dead could be, and he hadn't even managed an erection, much less an orgasm.
"Oh well," said Aldo aloud, climbing back down the ladder. "Alt noapte, alt flacara, alt femeie." Other nights, other fires, other women. "And they'll all be kicking like the famous Rockettes of Radio City Music Hall. For now, there is work to be done."
Indeed there was. He took a toothpaste tube filled with jellied gasoline from the kit bag and began squeezing it around the base of the ladder.
CHAPTER 5
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The photo album discovered among Aunt Connie's effects after the beloved biker mama and her likewise beloved '57 Harley Sportster missed a curve in the fog (the bend of Highway 1 where she suffered the ultimate Wipe Out, and where her ashes had later been scattered, was still known as Dead Woman's Curve) was a typical Aunt Connie production. The oldest pictures—mostly of Martha's maternal grandparents, a pleasant-looking, clueless old couple—were pasted in carefully enough, as were Martha's first baby pictures, but all the later prints had been stuffed back into the Photo-Mat envelopes they'd come in, and the envelopes jammed between the glossy pages of the album.
Not that Connie wasn't sentimental about her photos—she was sentimental about everything. Just not very organized. And out of the whole collection, there was only one of Moll Herrick, immensely pregnant, standing next to Connie. After coming home from Selene's that morning, Martha had dug it out from the album and slipped it into the edge of the white wicker frame around the mirror atop the white wicker dresser in her bedroom. From time to time during the day, Martha had looked up from her Misikidak to inspect the snapshot, trying to gauge whether Selene had told the truth about the mother-daughter resemblance. Hard to tell what Moll looked like from that one picture; her features had blurred into the bovine placidity common among expectant mothers.
But the two sisters in the photo shared the pouty look that film stars were now injecting collagen into their lips to obtain, and when Martha glanced from the picture to her mirrored image one last time on her way out that evening, she was absolutely convinced she could see the same sexy lift to her own upper lip. Eat your heart out, Drew Barrymore.
The A-frame that Martha and Daddy Don shared was constructed according to the same general plan as Selene's up the hill: one big room on the ground floor, separated into kitchen and living areas by pillars that supported the sleeping loft overhead. Daddy Don and his crew had added the deck and hot tub to the upper house when Whistler purchased it for a honeymoon cottage for himself a
nd Selene; the same crew had later converted the sleeping porch behind the lower house into a nursery when Martha arrived, then popped the top of that a few feet when she outgrew the nursery. (And done a creditable job all around, considering that what they were a crew of was motorcycle mechanics, not carpenters.)
After Connie's fatal spill, Selene had moved into the upper A-frame to help Daddy Don raise the six-year-old Martha. Between Selene and her circle of witches up the hill, and Daddy Don and his extended family of bikers, Martha's two surrogate parents had managed to raise what passed for a normal teenager, at least in Bolinas. Martha smoked pot but avoided stronger drugs; was sexually active but not egregiously promiscuous according to the mores of Marin County teenagers, and always used protection; and although she was an indifferent student, her grades through her third year of high school would have been good enough to get her into any of a dozen campuses of the Cal State system, had she not dropped out in September, a few weeks into her senior year, to help care for Daddy Don—against both his and Selene's wishes.
Whether she would return to school to finish up her senior year was a subject Martha refused to discuss, or even consider, involving as it did speculation about Daddy Don's eventual demise: on this topic the seventeen-year-old had raised denial to an art form.
Just before eleven o'clock on Halloween night Martha crept quietly out of her room and closed the door behind her. The only light in the main room was the pallid silvery flicker of the TV. She tiptoed over to the hospital bed, which had been cranked to a sitting position although the occupant was asleep, found the remote clipped to the sheet, and clicked off the television.
SHADOWS Page 4
