Selene spent most of the next two hours driving around the city, revisiting her old haunts. The basement apartment at Page and Central in the Haight; the Broadway house she'd finally sold at the height of the real estate boom in the eighties; Jamey's old Queen Anne in Noe Valley; the Castro district where she used to hang out with Nick. She returned to the Prince Albert a few minutes shy of seven, but the doorman was in place, and remembered her. He also remembered whom Nick had left with, but his description didn't ring a bell with Selene. She asked him where Nick lived; he told her he couldn't give out that sort of information. "It's an emergency," she replied coldly. "If you'd like, I can make it a police emergency."
The address was then forthcoming, but as she approached the building on Folsom Street she began to suspect she'd heard the doorman wrong; surely Nick Santos would never have lived in such a dump. Yet there was his last name next to one of the three buzzers: apartment 301. She pressed the button. Waited. Pressed again. And again and again, then pressed the button for 201.
"Yes?" A man's voice over the intercom.
"It's an emergency—I'm looking for Nick."
"Ring his fucking bell then." The intercom went dead.
She rang 201 again. "I have been. No answer. Do you know where he is?"
"How the hell should I know?" was the reply. "Lady, life ain't a sitcom and I ain't the wacky neighbor. Welcome to the big city."
Silence over the intercom again. This time Selene leaned on the buzzer until 201 was sputtering at her again. When he quieted down she released the button. "You can either give me five minutes of your time or you can call the cops and swear out a complaint, which'll take a lot longer, and be a lot more trouble in the—"
But the peephole at the street door had darkened; a moment later the door swung open, and Selene found herself staring up at a burly bearded man in a frilly housecoat. One of those "only in San Francisco" moments. Selene was more than up to the challenge. "I'm so sorry to bother you," she said without batting an eye. "But I'm afraid something's happened to Nick."
He narrowed his eyes. "I didn't let you in," he said as he stepped aside just far enough for her to squeeze through. He then trotted up the stairs ahead of her, darted through the door to 201, and locked it behind him.
Wacky neighbor? thought Selene, hurrying past his door and up the second flight of stairs to the third floor. Heaven forbid! She knocked. "Nick?" And again. "Nick, it's Selene. Are you in there?" She tried the thumb-latch door handle, and was surprised when it yielded with a gratifying ca-chunk; the door swung open; Selene darted inside and locked it behind her.
The first thing that hit her was the smell of shit. It wouldn't be accurate to say that she knew what she was going to find before she found it, but on some level she must have, because her body more or less went on automatic pilot while her mind spun off into orbit. He's just stuck on the pot. Montezuma's revenge—no wonder he couldn't answer the door. Then, as she passed the kitchen area and saw the champagne glasses with the telltale red thread in the stems. Hot date, hunh, Nicky?
When she reached the bedroom door, whatever protective instinct was guiding her at the moment told her to keep her eyes down, not to look at the bed just yet. Bad enough that the hardwood floor was spattered with dried blood and the shit smell was so strong she was ready to retch even before she caught sight of Nick's body jackknifed onto its side with its back to her.
But she didn't; she swayed, she gulped, and yes, she called out to some power for strength as she forced herself to approach the bed. She couldn't take it in all at once; she started at the ankles bound with black cable, saw the thighs and buttocks smeared with caked feces, the hands bound behind the small of the back with the same black cord.
Her mind took one last irrelevant leap: It's like a joke. He was doing b & d and the other guy left him tied up and he shit himself and he's embarrassed to say anything…
By then, however, she was close enough to see the edge of the pulpy mess the murderer had made of Nick's face, and denial was no longer an option. It was at that point that she realized she was not alone, that a man was now standing in the doorway behind her.
Panic flooded her as she spun around, but it was relief that sent her to her knees. Then Jamey Whistler was kneeling in front of her and his arms were around her. Words were not possible—or necessary. She began to sob into the familiar hollow of his shoulder; soon his shirt was wet with her tears, and her hair with his.
CHAPTER 9
« ^ »
Aldo's trip to the emergency room had cost him nine hundred and seventy-nine dollars—payable by credit card, fortunately—for twenty-four sutures, eight in each of the three middle fingers of his right hand, four above and four below, and an additional eighty bucks at the all-night pharmacy for Len Patch's Percodan prescription. He'd discarded the prescription for antibiotics, despite the doctor's warnings about the septic possibilities of human bites, because Aldo knew that as long as he had an ample supply of human blood, taken orally, he'd heal swiftly, and infection free.
And blood he had; after stanching the wounds in Nick's apartment with pressure, then loosening the tourniquet, he had filled a pillowcase with several of Nick's Clamato juice jars, none of which contained Clamato juice, as well as a .38-caliber revolver he'd found hidden in a cigar box in the bottom of Nick's bedside drawer.
Aldo was not in a mood to take any lip from his teenage charge when he returned to their rooms on Lombard Street with less than an hour to spare before dawn. Fortunately, she was asleep. Also fortunate: their room was just down the hall from the ice machine. It took him a dozen or so trips to fill the tub in the other bathroom—clumsy going, one-handed—but by sunrise he had the Clamato jars on ice. He then washed down three Percodans with a water glass full of blood and retired to the other bedroom to watch television. He'd rather have slept, but while he could never sleep on blood, neither could he heal as fast as he was going to need to without it.
Percodan and blood, however, proved to be a mellow combination; within an hour Aldo was pain free, and even in the mood for a chat. He wandered into the next room and found the girl awake. Her gray eyes were wide above the towel that held her gag in place, but she wasn't struggling. A good sign. He untied her, hand and foot, ungagged her, and let her take her toothbrush and toothpaste into the bathroom with her.
After everything Martha had endured—the unimaginable shock of being strangled back in Monterey, waking up trussed like a chicken, being stuffed into the trunk of the Toyota, spending that first day on the bed in the new motel, channel surfing frantically because she couldn't keep her attention focused on anything but the horror of it all for longer than a few seconds, and then, just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, being abandoned, half-suffocated, all night—after all this, being allowed to brush her teeth was like a day at the beach. "Can I take a shower too?" she called through the open door.
"I'd have to come in," he replied from the bed.
She checked out the shower curtain—flower patterned but transparent. "Never mind, then."
"I've already seen you in the buff, you know," he informed her. "You and your friends, in the hot tub the other night."
How long had he been watching her? she wondered, as she managed a shaky wisecrack. "See anything you haven't seen before?" It was a favorite line of Aunt Connie's.
"I'm really not in the mood for banter," he called back, not unpleasantly—these Peres really were quite good. "If you want a shower, I need to be there."
She rinsed her mouth out, then kept the water running while she looked around the bathroom for something she might use as a weapon. Maybe she could…
What? Soap him to death? She could feel the panic creeping up on her again. She stared into the mirror, into her own eyes. Keep him happy, give him what he wants. Anything you can do to live is better than dying. Then she remembered that she was a fully initiated witch now. Besides, you have to stick around for the revenge. She was grasping at straws, and knew it, but the
option seemed to be a total and utter freak-out. "Okay, whatever."
Aldo wondered whether the sight of her might prove too tempting. He wasn't particularly horny, not after Nick at night (a good nineties American cable TV pun—Aldo gave himself a mental pat on the back), but he didn't want to leave her alone either. He thought of a compromise. "Let the shower curtain get steamed up, then call me when you're in."
Good decision, for once. The outline of her slim youthful body through the steamy curtain certainly proved pleasant enough, but not too arousing; it was like the soft-core porn on the so-called adult pay-per-view channels. "How old are you?" he called over the noise of the shower.
"Seventeen." She had donned the little plastic shower cap—dreads got better the less you washed them.
"Almost old enough to model. Ever consider it?"
She turned off the water. "Gimme a break. I'm not near pretty enough—or tall enough."
"For porno shots, I meant. You'll soon be the perfect age for that."
Despite her earlier admonitions to her mirrored self, Martha was starting to feel awfully weird about the turn things were taking. "Hand me a towel, would you?" she called shakily.
But he was a perfect gentleman again—he reached a bath towel around the curtain without peeking. Martha stepped out of the shower with the towel wrapped around her. Then she noticed that her clothes had disappeared. "What am I supposed to wear?" she asked him.
"That will do nicely," was his reply. He'd decided there was no sense denying himself a few innocent pleasures, not after the terrible traumas he'd been through recently.
* * *
Another compromise: for Aldo, knowing that the girl was naked under the bedclothes with her wrists and ankles bound was enough of a kick without being too much of a provocation. For Martha, the fact that he had let her keep the towel on until he had finished tying her up and covering her with the sheet gave her at least a breath of hope that he wasn't going to rape her after all.
He was even being a little kind, the way he had been the first night when he told her he cared about her. "Any pain?" he asked her when she was nicely tucked in.
"Only my arms and legs and back and neck and my shoulders from being tied up all—"
"Say no more." He patted her on the knee, went into the next room, and returned with a glass of ice water and a yellow tablet.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Percodan. Pain pill. Here." He brought it right up to her mouth; she kept her lips closed firmly while she thought about it. What if he was drugging her? Then it occurred to her: if you're going to get raped and murdered, you might as well get doped up first. She opened her mouth and swallowed; tenderly he held the glass to her lips and allowed her as much water as she wanted; even after the pill was down she gulped so greedily that the cold water gave her an ice-cream headache.
It took the Percodan about twenty minutes to start coming on. When Aldo returned from the other room to see how she was doing, she found herself feeling rather chatty. "What happened to your hand?"
"I was trying to save a fellow's life. Somehow he'd swallowed a handkerchief; I was trying to unblock his breathing passage and he bit me."
"But why—"
"Don't ask."
Martha was beginning to understand why the bikers liked pain pills so much. It wasn't just that they made the pain go away, it was that they replaced it with the mellowest feeling. God's in his heaven and all's right with the world, Carson Young used to say when he was kicked back and stoned. She thought of something: "Hey, could I have the remote back?"
"Soon, sweetheart. But first there are a few things we need to talk about."
"Like what?"
"Like vampires. I'm one, you know. And so is your father."
Whoosh! The good feeling rushed out like air escaping from a party balloon as Aldo pulled one of the motel chairs up close to her head and settled himself in for a bedside chat. So much for God in his fucking heaven.
CHAPTER 10
« ^ »
As if at a signal Selene and Jamey, still kneeling, broke their embrace, drew back, and looked into each other's eyes. A hundred irrelevancies sprang into Selene's mind. That Jamey's gray eyes were darker than she'd remembered—more like his father's. That he was no longer dyeing his hair; it was white now, cropped close with a suggestion of bangs, a Julius Caesar cut that cried out for a laurel wreath. That the furrows in his long meaty cheeks were deep enough to sprout wheat in. That he seemed to have aged more in the last year than he had in the last decade—or had it only been the past few weeks that had done this to him? Which brought her back to the moment, the terrible moment, Nick behind her on the bed, shit smell, blood spatters.
"How long have you been here?" she asked as they rose to their feet.
"Few minutes." Breathing heavily, wiping his face with the back of his hand. "Came in through the kitchen window. Whoever did this left that way. There's a trail of dried blood all the way down the fire escape."
"Do you know who it was?"
"I know fuck-all." But he read it in her eyes. "Wait—do you?"
"His name is Aldo, and he's working for your father."
Selene was already close to overdrawn at the astonishment bank—Whistler's response wiped out her account entirely: he laughed. "What's that expression? No good deed goes unpunished?"
A ray of unwarranted hope for Selene—she knew it was foolish but found herself writing a little mind-screenplay nonetheless—Jamey one step ahead of them all, an elaborate plan, he'd faked all the deaths. Then she breathed in the smell of Nick and the moment ended. But just in case: "Lourdes and Cora?"
From a distance, though their faces were inches apart: " 'And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.' " There was still a trace of amusement in those narrow eyes. "I always thought that was from Moby-Dick. Turns out it's the Book of Job."
She wanted to shake him until the hint of a smile was gone from his lips. "Do you remember Martha Herrick?"
"The little girl who lives down the hill from you? Moll's daughter?"
"She's your daughter too."
A slow shake of the head, a mildly puzzled reply. "I often wondered about the timing. Though Moll never said a—"
"Aldo's got her, Jamey—I'm pretty sure he's got her."
Again his response was not what she'd have predicted, if she hadn't just gone out of the predicting Jamey business. "Ever been fingerprinted?"
She shook her head.
"Did anyone see you come in?"
She explained about the bearded man.
"Then let's get out of here before somebody calls the cops."
"Can we at least cover him up?" She gestured toward Nick's body on the bed without looking at it.
"I'm thinking about the legal implications," said the man who had been weeping into her hair a minute before. "As as of this moment neither of us has committed so much as a misdemeanor. But we will have, if we disturb the scene. I believe we're also required to inform the authorities, but we can always just dial nine-one-one on our way out and leave the phone off the hook."
"Jamey, that's Nick over there. We can't just—"
"The hell we can't." The glare in his eyes startled her—not frightened her: Jamey could never frighten her—but she drew back, and he softened his tone. "I know that's Nick. Rather, that was Nick. Nick's dead now, and he's dead because of me. As is everyone else I care about except you. Right now my only concern is getting you away from here before you end up in a similar condition. And we certainly can't help—what was her name?"
"Martha."
"We can't help Martha from the police station."
It didn't take Selene long to think it over. "Door or fire escape?"
"Fire escape."
"Okay then. But Jamey?"
"What?" He had already started for the kitchen.
"It wasn't because of you that all those people died. It was because your father hired that man to kill them."
"Chain chain chain," he replied with
out turning around. "Chain of goddamn fools."
* * *
Considering the state of San Francisco's emergency response system—disrepair bordering on collapse—it was not surprising that after dialing 911 and leaving the phone off the hook, Selene and Jamey had time to slip out the window, sneak down the fire escape and up the alley, link elbows out on Folsom Street and stroll casually (or as casually as they could manage) for two or three blocks, then double back toward Harrison Street before they heard the first siren in the distance.
"Where have you been staying?" she asked him, tossing him the keys as they reached the Jaguar. She had already summarized her travels for him—she was getting awfully good at it—and told him all she knew about Aldo—not much, beyond the physical description she and Joe-Pie had stitched together. Then she realized that was obsolete; all they had to go on now was the Prince Albert doorman's roughest of sketches. Medium height, brown hair and stash. No apparent tattoos or piercings.
"With an encampment of homeless down by the Embarcadero."
"That accounts for the outfit." Jamey was clad in filthy denim jeans and jacket, like the goofy Reverend Jim from Taxi. "Are you broke, or just hiding out?"
"Both. Couldn't access any of my credit cards. They're all billed through the trust, and my father was the first man I suspected."
"So how have you been getting by?"
"By the skin of my teeth." He opened the passenger door for her. "But that's over now. No more hiding."
She leaned over and unlocked his door. "What do you mean?"
"I mean we need to be found," he explained as he climbed behind the wheel. "Contacted, rather. What other earthly use could this Aldo have for the girl? Or for you, for that matter? I'm sure they planned to use you both to get to me. When Jonas lost you, the other chap snatched Martha. And somehow he knew about Nick, too. Do you think he followed you to the club last night?"
SHADOWS Page 24
