The Orpheus Deception

by David Stone

  “Crapola?” said Mr. Oakland, giving her a shy smile. Nikki blushed a little and recovered. Mr. Oakland was a Mormon.

  “Sorry about the crapola thing, sir. But you can see, this is basically a vulgar house, and, if we can judge by the people in the video, they’re the vulgar people it was built for.”

  “A reasonable deduction. Anything on the people?”

  “So far, no. I needed your permission to do anything more, since doing Facial Recog will chew up mainframe time, and I know we have a lot of more important things to do . . . ?”

  She left the question hanging.

  So did Mr. Oakland.

  “You’re still on the Monitors, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’ve done all this on your own time?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Oakland beamed upon her, his fat face shining bright.

  “Commendable, Miss Turrin. Quite.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Promotion? No more boring Monitor work? Please.

  Mr. Oakland smiled again, stood up.

  “Well, thank you very much, Miss Turrin. I’ll take it from here.”

  Nikki stood up, her face reddening.

  “Really, sir, I’d be very happy to—”

  “I’m sure. But we really need you on the Monitors right now. That’s vital work. National Security work. Protecting our homeland. Vital.”

  “But . . .”

  “I’ll make sure the people upstairs know how much you have contributed to this project.”

  Now it’s a project?

  “Yes, sir. That would be great, sir.”

  “Do you have any other copies of this video?”

  “No, sir. That’s the only one I have.”

  But it’s all over YouTube, you greasy little capon.

  “Good, then. Well, the country’s at war, Nikki. We can’t sit around like a pair of peacenik ninnyhammers, can we? So, back at it, and God bless.”

  Nikki bared her teeth and gritted out a smile.

  “And God bless you too. Sir.”

  22

  The Intercontinental Hotel, Singapore

  Since there was nothing to do but wait for Chong to make his move, Dalton and Mandy Pownall waited. They ordered dinner from room service, along with a couple of bottles of Bollinger. They picked at the meal for a time, and together they polished off the Bolly over the next two hours. Mandy—showered, scented, and shining—was now lounging on the sofa in an oversized pale pink terry-cloth robe and watching Lady from Shanghai on the plasma TV. Dalton was painfully aware that she was quite naked under the robe, and he was finding it hard to concentrate on the film, which was wonderful. He was keeping his mind off Cora Vasari, too, trying not to allow visions of her body, lying on an ICU gurney, surrounded by beeping monitors, her splendid heartbeat reduced to a jagged green line crawling across a black screen. He was also trying to keep Porter Naumann’s ghost from resurfacing in his life; the chemical toxins that had created Naumann in the first place had to have leached out of his tissues by now. But Dalton sensed Naumann’s presence in the air around him, saw Naumann now and then—a fleeting movement out of the corner of his eye, a trick of the light in the darkened hall, a sardonic whisper, a half-open door into an empty room.

  Permanent impairment.

  Cora had warned him, about the drug he’d been exposed to, in a time that now seemed left behind on the far shore of an onrushing river that had carried him far from her villa in the Dorsoduro, where they had first met. She had been . . . startling . . . radiant . . . a force of nature . . . Her full body and her fine intelligent face . . . Tough-minded and very smart, and sentimental, and gifted with a wicked sense of humor. Sexually, sensually, she was mad, bad, and dangerous to know. The one night he had spent with her in the suite at the Savoia was seared into his libido. She had been demanding and generous, tentative, inventive, shockingly outrageous. And he was beginning to feel that what had begun as a strong physical attraction, in the middle of a hunt for a brutal psychopathic killer, was turning into something closer to . . . love?

  Dalton did not do love.

  Had not loved for a very long time. If ever.

  Very likely never would.

  So why had he exploded into Cora’s well-ordered life like a runaway caisson? How did he justify going anywhere near her, dragging his risks and faults and sins behind him like a tattered harness, if he wasn’t capable of loving her? His love had done Laura no good at all; had, in an indirect way, killed her. And now Cora Vasari had taken two bullets and was lying on a hospital bed in Florence, deep in a coma from which she might never awake.

  Meet Dalton and die.

  Porter Naumann had been right:

  Grief is coming.

  Grief is here.

  On the screen, Orson Welles, shot against a shimmering black-and-whitesea, was delivering a silky baritone soliloquy on life and desire and honor. He was lit like a Hurrell portrait, a cinematic monument at the peak of his art, a lock of shining black hair hanging down over one eyebrow. He was now in a grave somewhere in southern Spain, Dalton thought, a gross, bloated corpse rotting in a crypt. Lovely image, that. He reached for the Bolly and saw that Mandy had fallen asleep on the sofa. Her robe had fallen away from her long, well-turned legs, almost all the way to her equally splendid thighs. He got up, a bit unsteady, and stepped softly over to her.

  He looked down at her face. In sleep, she looked older, the cold, damn-you humor was gone and the vulnerable woman alone remained. She was as lovely as Cora. He wanted her. He wanted Cora too.

  He wanted women to want him.

  He’d figure out what to do with them later.

  He found a soft, blue cashmere blanket in the hall closet and laid it gently over her sleeping body, turned the sound of the film down a little, and went back to his chair, with the bottle of Bolly and a clean crystal flute, to watch the rest of Lady from Shanghai.

  Dalton didn’t do love.

  23

  The Fragrance Hotel, 219 Joo Chiat Road, Geylang district, Singapore

  The Fragrance rented rooms. Two hours. Twenty dollars. They turned the room around five times a day. The hotel looked like the kind of hotel that did that sort of thing, a concrete-block and corrugated-iron bunker with narrow, badly lit halls and soundproof rooms with soundproof doors. The halls smelled of bleach and looked like they got scrubbed a lot because they needed to be scrubbed a lot. There was a sticky carpet and a concrete staircase, and Lujac covered the ground on cat’s feet, gliding along like a navy blue ghost, in and out of the pools of blue light from a row of bulbs overhead covered with wire-frame cases. He knew the room because he had watched the cop and the ah beng boy go inside, and then had watched for the light that came on a moment later in a front room on the second floor. He stood in the dark of a side alley and watched as the Malay cop came to the window, staring out for a time, silhouetted in the hard-white light from a single bulb, hanging from the ceiling behind him, his right hand still in the bandage, his baseball jacket unzipped, his cap off. He reached out, the blinds slowly closed, and the little cop turned toward the room.

  Lujac was a man of refined feelings and tactful discretion. He knew they’d want to be alone for a time. Get to know each other. He had given them thirty minutes. Now he was right outside the door.

  No one had seen him coming, and if anyone saw him go they would not survive the experience. He stood in the dim light outside Room 19 and listened for a while. Low, faint voices, one commanding and the other submissive, and the occasional grunting moan. The door was heavy and well set in a solid frame, but the lock was ridiculous. He reached out, tested the knob. It was always a good idea to check to see if the door was actually locked, nothing made you feel more silly than trying to kick in a door that wasn’t locked. Lujac stepped back, took a small Sony digital camera out of his suit-jacket pocket, held it in his left hand. He had the little shucking tool in his right. It glittered in the downlight, a bright curve of silvery
steel, a little like a crescent moon. He set himself, breathed out a little, going inward for a moment, and then he lunged forward, his foot up, heel out, striking the door an inch below the knob. The door slammed open, and Lujac was in the dank, half-lit room.

  A small twin bed on a bare wooden floor, a rusty sink, a cheap vinyl chair piled with clothes, a bedside lamp made of copper and batik cloth, two figures, both naked and shiny with sweat, frozen in the middle of a tangle of pale green sheets, their positions reversed, head and foot. The camera strobed, running off a series of rapid shots, and each flash lit up the steamy little room like a bolt of lightning, turning the figures on the bed into a kind of jittery silent movie of frantic motion: the Malay cop’s wide eyes, irises lit red, as he stared up at the camera. Then blackness, and another flash: cop and the punker boy breaking apart. Darkness, another flash: the boy, caught frozen, fumbling at his clothes; the cop, reaching for his belt, tearing at the pocket. Darkness, another flash: the boy, flying toward the doorway.

  Lujac snapped a final shot, slammed the door shut behind him, and kicked the punker boy in the lower belly, hard, catching him in midstride. The kid bent himself around Lujac’s leg and slid to the floor, gagging. Lujac heard the sound of metal sliding on metal, a tinny, locking click.

  The Malay cop, naked, was standing by the bed, holding a small, chrome-plated semiauto pistol in his left hand. His wet face was green in the light from the bedside lamp, his eyes two tiny holes filled with a red glitter, his mouth open. He was gasping, but silently, like a gaffed trout in a boat. He lifted the pistol, pointed it at Lujac, said nothing at all, and fired, a short, sharp crack in the room, like a branch snapping.

  The round whispered past Lujac’s left ear and punched into the heavy wooden door at his back. Lujac went low and exploded at the cop. Charge a gun, flee a knife. Another snapping bark, and another round plucked at his coat, burning a ribbon of fire around his rib cage. Hadn’t spotted the little hideaway piece. Should have. He slammed into the little cop, closing his hands around the pistol, getting a thumb in between the hammer and the pin, bending the gun muzzle up and back, fighting it hard. He heard the little Malay squeal as his trigger finger, trapped inside the guard, was wrenched nearly out of joint. A short, vicious, twisting, writhing struggle; a quick jerk. Now Lujac had the gun.

  He straightened, aware of the sharp, red pain at his side, paused for effect, then kneed the cop very hard in the balls, then slammed him across the temple with the side of the pistol as the cop went down. The cop clutched his groin, breath hissing out through his clenched teeth. Lujac stamped him hard in the back of the neck, bouncing the cop’s face off the floor. Then he stepped back around the bed and dragged the punker boy to his feet. The kid was still naked. He had his T-shirt in his hand, and used it to cover himself. He stared at Lujac and said nothing. His eyes were like the eyes of a prey animal. He knew what had just happened and why. Lujac reached out a hand; the kid flinched away. Lujac smiled gently, his hand paused in the air. The kid wasn’t pretty, but he had something. Lujac decided it was a kind of sweet hopelessness tinged with resignation.

  “You speak English, boy?” asked Lujac, soft as sleep.

  The boy nodded twice; short, sharp jerks of the head on a rigid neck.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Noordin. Bobby. Bobby Noordin.”

  His voice cracked on the final syllable, a hoarse croak. There was a slithery sound of sheets being hauled off the bed. The little cop was rolling over, still clutching his groin, and the sheets had come off as he rolled. He was making a low, keening sound, like a lost little girl.

  “How old are you, Bobby?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “You have some ID?”

  “Yes. It over there.”

  Bobby made a quick, flicking gesture, indicating the pile of his clothes on the chair by the bed.

  “Show me.”

  Bobby stepped around the corner of the bed. Lujac kept the pistol on Bobby’s back as he crouched in the corner, picking through the pile. He straightened, and came back with a cheap black nylon wallet. He handed it to Lujac and moved out of Lujac’s reach, glancing across the bed at the cop, and then turning back, his full attention on Lujac. No questions about his rights. No demand to see a badge. In Singapore, what he had been doing with—and for—the cop was a matter for a severe caning and a long prison term. There was no plea to be made. Lujac opened the wallet, checked the kid’s ID, saw a picture of an old Malay woman smiling, gap-tooted, into a cheap camera. A vague family resemblance there, probably his sainted mummy. Lujac grinned to himself, as he flipped through a dirty bundle of Sing dollars.

  “He already pay you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenny Sing dollah.”

  “Okay. Go sit on the bed.”

  “I please dress?”

  “No. Leave the shirt. Go sit.”

  Bobby hesitated, looking at his clothes. Then he dropped his T-shirt and went back to the bed. He crawled on the bed and curled up against the headboard, covering himself as well as he could. He looked a little like a lemur, big eyes, and a round, open mouth. He began to vibrate like a tuning fork. Lujac liked that. The Malay cop stopped keening.

  Lujac stepped around the bed, leaned down, dragged the cop to his feet, and shoved him onto the bed beside the boy. The cop dragged himself upright and got his back against the headboard, keeping some distance between himself and the kid. They did not look at each other. They both looked at Lujac. The cop’s black eye was fading a little into green-and-brown tones. His right hand was still bandaged. If he’d been using his right hand to shoot that little pistol at Lujac, Lujac figured he’d be dead now, which would come as a happy surprise to Larissa.

  Nobody knocked on the door and asked what was going on. Through the window, they could hear the sounds of the market and the faint echo of distant music. Lujac took a moment to check his ribs. There was blood on his shirt. But not much. He felt his ribs, found a tiny furrow plowed along the flesh. Ruined the Pink’s shirt, but maybe the suit would be okay. He hoped so. It was a Brioni. There was a picture over the bed, a faded color shot of a tropical beach fringed in palms, taken sometime in the forties. On the ceiling, a three-bladed fan turned the smoky air, making a low whip-whip sound. The room smelled of sex and sweat, smoke and Tiger beer. Lujac switched the gun from his right to his left hand and pulled out the little oyster-shucking tool. He hefted it in his hand, smiling at the two people on the bed. Neither of them spoke. The cop knew what Bobby knew, what the penalty was for what they had been doing. It would be far worse for him.

  He was the cop.

  “What’s your name?” said Lujac, standing at the foot of the bed and tossing the little shucking tool into the air now and then, catching it by the handle. The blade glittered in the light, making tiny, flashing arcs as it spun and fell. The cop wiped his lips with his bandaged hand and blinked.

  “I am Corporal Ahmed. Of the Interior Police Service.”

  “Out of uniform? A bit?”

  “I am”—he searched for the phrase, got it—“unnah-covah.”

  Lujac smiled at that, a bright, open, sunny smile.

  “So you’ll be happy about the shots, then? Really nails your case.”

  Corporal Ahmed said nothing, but Lujac could see what he was thinking:

  This is Singapore. This European is not a cop or he would have said so. He was in the suite at the Intercontinental this morning. He is some kind of thief. No matter what he says, I can handle it. Except for the camera. Pay whatever. Get out of the room. Get help. Then find the man again and put him into a bare white room at Changi. But first, get the camera.

  “I am unnah-covah. This boy is prostitute. You have inna-fere with official matter. You must—”

  Lujac tossed him the shucking tool. It tumbled through the half-light,glimmering like a pinwheel. The cop and the boy flinched away from the tool, and it struck the headboard between them and thudded ont
o the mattress. They both looked at it. Then up at Lujac. Lujac had the camera in his left hand and the pistol in his right. The pistol was aimed at Corporal Ahmed’s left eye, just above the bruise.

  “Pick it up,” he said.

  The cop looked at the boy and then at Lujac’s gun hand. He picked up the tool, staring at Lujac.

  “Use it,” said Lujac.

  The boy jerked to the right but stopped when Lujac shifted the gun to him. He saw where he was, and it came as no surprise, but his lemur eyes filled up and he began to sob in silence. The cop stared at Lujac.

  “His blood on the floor or your brains on the wall.”

  The cop shook his head. Lujac fired once. The gun kicked and flared and barked. Chips flew out of the headboard an inch from the cop’s ear. The cop made a snaky move with the tool—snick and snack—Lujac’s camera flashed and clicked, flaring out and freezing the moment as the boy’s throat was laid wide open from his left ear to his collarbone. Blood gushed out in a scarlet arc, like a spray of rubies, and spattered across the lime green sheet.

  Malays are very good with knives. Always have been. Lujac was counting on it. And Lujac caught it all, sixteen frames, a masterpiece of timing. The boy clapped both hands around his throat. Blood pumped out between his fingers. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound came. The cop had cut through his larynx and opened his throat. The kid went blue and rolled off the bed and onto the floor in a tangle of limbs and blood. He lay there, making a faint, breathy gurgle, which mingled with the drumming sound of his blood, spraying, in weakening pulses, across the plywood walls beside his head. Gradually, the line of the blood arc drooped, and, in a little while, the room was very still. There was only the sound of Corporal Ahmed’s rapid breathing, the fan blade churning through the air, and the tinny sounds of the street market coming in through the blinds.

  “What you wan?” asked Corporal Ahmed, after a long while.