by Darren Shan
It was the small black marble I’d found in the trout’s mouth and then lost. Only now the golden squiggles down its sides no longer reminded me of worms. They’d been broadened and touched up. Now they looked like snakes.
3
The marble bugged the hell out of me and I slept fitfully. By morning I knew I must have had it on me all along, and was only imagining the change in the squiggles, but part of me wasn’t convinced. I laid it on a wad of cotton wool on the mantelpiece in my living room and kept a close eye on it for the next day or two, but when nothing further happened I forgot about it and concentrated on work.
Wednesday was another busy day. I didn’t get home till two in the morning. Spent the last four hours covering for a sick colleague on the fifteenth floor, one of seven Troops guarding the elevator doors. A further ten soldiers would usually be on each of the three stairway openings, and more patrolling the corridors, but due to The Cardinal’s recent instructions the floor was largely deserted.
It could be difficult staying alert in such conditions. The warm air, the peaceful corridors, the mostly inert elevator, the carpets tickling the soles of my feet. Party Central was layered with thick, expensive carpets from the second floor up. No shoes were allowed. Had to check them in downstairs, even if you were only running a quick errand. Most of the carpets were more comfortable than an average mattress. The temptation to lie down and snooze was overwhelming.
But I was paid to ignore such temptations, so I focused on the doors of the elevator, didn’t let my mind wander, and kept my hand close to the butt of my gun. In the unlikely event that we ever came under attack, I’d be ready.
I meant to call Nic — I still hadn’t spoken with her since I got back — but didn’t get a chance. It was too late when I got home so I simply undressed and crawled into bed, same as the night before.
Thursday, the shit hit the fan.
I’d clocked on an hour before midday and was changing into my uniform in the basement when Vincent Carell stormed in. Vincent was one of Tasso’s men. Thin, face like a ferret, not blessed in the brains department, quick to draw his dick and his gun. I never knew why Tasso placed so much faith in him.
A guy called Richey Harney was by my side, slipping off his boots. “Richey!” Vincent barked. “With me.”
Richey glanced up, pained. “I was on my way home.”
“Was,” Vincent snickered.
“But Frank said I could leave early. He—”
“I don’t give a fuck what Frank said!”
“It’s my daughter’s birthday,” Richey moaned. “I missed her First Communion last month. If I miss this, my wife’ll kill me.”
“Do I look like I give a fuck?” Vincent snapped.
Richey lowered his head and muttered something, then started lacing up his boots again. Sap that I was, I took pity on him.
“Could you use me instead? I just arrived — I’m fresher than Richey.”
Vincent rolled his eyes, then nodded. “Sure. One asshole’s the same as another. Meet me out back three minutes from now.”
“Thanks, man,” Richey said softly as Vincent left.
“No problem. You’d do the same for me, right?”
“Sure.” Richey laughed lamely.
Vincent had calmed down by the time I reported for duty. He tapped the dashboard of a glistening ambulance. “I love these,” he said as I got in, then jammed his foot down. The Troops on the gate only just got it open in time. Their curses trailed us out of Party Central.
“Where are we headed?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the blaring sirens Vincent had activated.
“The Fridge,” Vincent replied, taking a corner like a Keystone Kop. He always drove like this when Tasso wasn’t around.
“Dropping someone off?”
“Picking someone up.”
The Fridge was a privately owned morgue, sometimes referred to by brave — but foolish and short-lived — reporters as the Elephant’s Graveyard of the city. It was where The Cardinal’s employees took undesirable corpses, bodies they didn’t want washing up, victims they wished to keep on ice. Sometimes his own men were stuck away there too, if they’d died in suspicious circumstances and required an autopsy. Apparently the best pathologists in the country plied their trade behind the camouflaged walls of the Fridge.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
Vincent swerved to avoid a necking couple who weren’t paying attention to the road, pounded on the horn, gave them the finger, then looked at me and grinned. “You heard about the girl who got sliced at the Skylight?”
I recalled my conversation with Jerry and Mike. “Yeah.”
“Nobody knows anything about her. She checked in under a pseudonym. Might have been a hooker but wasn’t a regular. We brought her out here to let the experts at her. They haven’t gotten around to her yet — there’s always a backlog at the Fridge. She wasn’t supposed to be a priority but now she is — word leaked and we’ve gotta take her back.”
“Back?”
“To the Skylight. A cop phoned Tasso. Said someone told him what happened. We have till midnight to return her and report her murder or he sweeps in with his men. If she ain’t there, he’ll go to the press.”
“So? Kill the cop, can the story. That’s SOP, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Vincent said. “But it’s simpler to let the cops have her now that they know about her.”
“Won’t the state pathologist figure out how long she’s been dead?”
“That asshole drives a BMW,” Vincent said with a wink. “Gets a new model every year on his birthday. Gratis. He sees what we tell him to see.”
The Fridge looked innocuous from the outside. Set close to the docks, it was a huge dilapidated building, broken glass in the windows, a couple of lights shining to deter tramps, graffiti scrawled by design across the lower walls. We parked down a side alley and let ourselves in. A short stroll down a corridor, through a splintered door, and suddenly we were face-to-face with a vast, whitewashed, stone monstrosity.
The entire interior of the old building had been hollowed out and this enormous box had been constructed inside. Or else they’d built this first, then placed the frame of the older structure around it. I never did think to ask.
Vincent made his way to one of the entrances and tapped in the security code. The door hissed open and a cold blast of air swirled around us. Vincent shivered. “Should have brought my long johns,” he grumbled.
We entered.
This section of the Fridge contained nothing but coffin cubicles. Cold, metal containers, inside which, on ice-cold slabs, rested the dead. They stood in rows of a hundred, five cubicles high, twenty long. There were six floors of scaffolding above this first level, all stacked similarly, staircases and catwalks running around them.
Most of the nearby containers were occupied, their doors tagged and hung with accompanying files. Alongside the usual statistics — gender, height, weight, address, next of kin — were details of how they died, when they were admitted and by whom, and what was to be done with the body. Very little of the information was censored since none but The Cardinal’s own was ever admitted.
Vincent located an internal communicator and pressed a button.
“Dr. Sines will be with you presently, Mr. Carell,” a woman informed him before he had a chance to speak. “Please remain where you are. Refreshments will be provided if requested.”
Vincent looked at me and grinned. “Hungry, Algiers?”
“I couldn’t eat in here if I was starving.”
“Chickenshit,” Vincent laughed, but he ordered nothing either.
I climbed up a couple of flights and went walkabout while we were waiting, checking the roll call of the dead, examining their testimonies. Men, women, children, cops, gangsters, priests — all were represented. Vincent joined me after a couple of impatient minutes and we padded along quietly, one after the other. It was supposed to be good luck to find the final resting place of someone
you knew.
“This is where we’ll wind up,” Vincent said quietly. “A couple of coins over our eyes, jellylike blood, blue skin and a slab for a bed.”
“I’d rather burn than freeze in here,” I said.
“That’s what hell’s for, Algiers.”
We moved up another flight and I finally stumbled upon a name I recognized.
“I remember this guy,” I said. “I was there when we took him out.”
“Theo Boratto.” Vincent frowned. “That was the night we picked up Raimi.”
“Who?”
“Capac Raimi. The guy we let walk.”
I thought back. I’d been part of a support platoon sent to eliminate Boratto and his cohorts. Tasso had lined us up beforehand and described a young man who would be with Boratto. He wasn’t to be harmed. If necessary, we were to sacrifice our own lives before jeopardizing his. No reason was given.
“He’s working for The Cardinal now, isn’t he?” I asked, recalling scraps of gossip I’d picked up in Shankar’s.
“Sure as shit is,” Vincent growled. “The Cardinal’s pet monkey.”
A tall man in a white uniform appeared beneath us and called up, “Mr. Carell?”
“Yeah?” Vincent replied, leaning over the bar.
“I’m Dr. Sines. You’re here to pick up Miss Skylight?”
“Got it in one, Doc.”
Sines didn’t say much as he led the way through the arteries of the Fridge. Five minutes later we entered a large, spotlessly white operating room. Stiff corpses hung from the walls by steel hooks, entrails tumbling down their fronts. I’d been startled the first time I saw them. Thought they were real. It was only when I noticed the pathologist laughing that I realized they were fakes. Lab humor — go figure.
Other doctors and assistants circled the room, ignoring us, up to their elbows in blood and gore.
Our cargo was lying facedown on a slab, naked, whitish-blue.
“I’ve taken her prints, measurements, photographs,” Dr. Sines said. “Had to work quickly. Been examining her back while I was waiting. A clumsy piece of work.”
The back in question had been carved to pieces. Long slashes, deep gouges, thin red cuts and violent purple punctures. An uneven circle had been etched between her shoulder blades, several straight lines radiating from it at tangents.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Maybe a sun symbol,” the doctor replied.
“I didn’t notice that when I brought her in,” Vincent said.
“There was a lot more blood then. We’ve cleaned her up. Amazing what comes out in the wash.” He smiled briefly but Vincent and I remained stony-faced. “How do you want her?”
“What do you mean?” Vincent asked.
“You want us to leave her like she is or should we bloody her up again, make it look like she’s just been killed? She’s to be returned to the scene of the crime as I understand things.”
“Yeah.” Vincent scratched his nose uncertainly. “Fuck it, I got my suit bloody bringing her here — no point ruining it again dragging her back. We’ll take her clean.”
“Shouldn’t we get a bag or something?” I asked.
“Doc?” Vincent sniffed.
“I think some form of wrapping would be appropriate.”
“Then step to it, man! We’re working to a tight schedule.” Vincent smiled at me as the doctor bristled and clicked his fingers at one of his assistants. “Pays to keep them on their toes,” he whispered.
“I wouldn’t pester them,” I whispered back. “Never know how they might take it out on you if you turn up here dead.”
Vincent shrugged. “Like it matters a fuck at that stage. C’mon — let’s turn her, so we’re ready to tip her in. You wanna take the left or right side?”
“I don’t care.”
“Then I’ll take the right — don’t want to be the first to hear her heart if it starts beating again.” He laughed ghoulishly and grabbed her arm as the assistant arrived with the bag. I took the other arm. It was cold. Stiff. Clammy. “Ready?” he asked and I nodded. “One. Two. Three.”
We flipped her onto her back. Vincent tugged her toward the edge of the slab. I started pushing but then my gaze fell on her face and I froze.
“At least look like you’re trying,” Vincent huffed. “Don’t leave me to do it all by my—”
He caught sight of my face and stopped.
“Christ, Algiers, you look worse than the corpse. What’s up?”
I shook my head numbly.
Vincent leaned over and slapped me. “Algiers! Snap out of it. Focus on my lips. What’s. Wrong?” He spoke slowly, as if to a dim-witted child.
“The girl,” I managed to sigh.
“Like you’ve never seen a corpse before. It ain’t like you know her or anything.” He started to laugh, then stopped, his eyes narrowing. “Or do you?”
I nodded wordlessly.
“Shit.” He licked his lips. “Who is she?”
“Nuh-Nuh-Nuh-Nuh,” I stuttered.
“You wanna sit down? Doc, you got a chair?”
“I might be able to rustle one up,” came the dry reply.
“No. Don’t need one,” I gasped. “I’ll be OK.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
“So who is she?”
“She’s…”
“Here we go again. Take a deep breath, Algiers. Concentrate.”
I looked him in the eye and said it. “Her name’s Nic Hornyak.” A moment’s silent beat and I added the kicker. “She’s my girlfriend.”
4
First things first — we had to take Nic’s body back to the Skylight. Vincent offered me an out but I said I’d see the job through. I’d been trained not to let personal feelings get in the way of work.
We said nothing as we crossed the city. What was there to say?
I averted my eyes as we bundled the corpse into the elevator at the Skylight. The general manager was waiting on the eighth floor with four Troops, who silently accepted our consignment. Vincent accompanied them to 812, making sure everything was suitably arranged. I stayed by the elevator, rubbing my hands up and down the sides of my thighs, wondering if this could be a dream. Maybe it was still Friday and I was upriver with Bill, dozing on the damp grassy banks.
“C’mon,” Vincent said, taking me by the elbow and guiding me into the elevator. “I phoned Tasso. He’s busy but said he’d call Frank and have him meet us back at Party Central.” I could tell Vincent was bursting with questions but he kept them to himself.
Frank was standing by the gate at Party Central when we arrived. He told Vincent to park the ambulance and beat it. For once Vincent didn’t argue.
We sat in a downstairs office and I told Frank about me and Nic Hornyak. He listened sympathetically, phrasing his questions delicately. When I was through, he took me for lunch to Shankar’s. We ate quietly, heads down. I went for a long walk after that, sticking to backstreets, oblivious to my surroundings, trying not to think about Nic.
When I got back to Party Central, The Cardinal wanted to see me.
I hadn’t seen as much of The Cardinal as a neutral observer might have supposed. He was a reclusive, rarely glimpsed creature. The more his empire grew, the less he ventured from his base on the fifteenth floor of Party Central. He even dined and slept up there.
I thought about it while waiting to be admitted and could recall only eight or nine occasions when I’d come within touching distance of the city’s infamous crime lord. I’d shared a car with him once, on his way to the airport. He was heading for Rome to pay his last respects to the recently deceased pope, an old friend of his.
He hadn’t said anything to me during the ride. I was up front, he was in the back with Ford Tasso, issuing last-minute orders. He had to be blindfolded before getting on the plane — he was terrified of flying. On the way back, Tasso told me and the two other Troops that if word of The Cardinal’s fear leaked the three of us would be taken out
and shot, no questions asked.
Another time, I ran into him coming out of a bathroom on the ninth floor of Party Central. I held the door open and saluted as he tucked the hem of his shirt back inside his pants. “Thanks,” he said.
“Thanks.” The only word he’d exchanged with me prior to that night.
I felt sick. The one thing they don’t teach you in the Troops is how to converse with The Cardinal, since it’s not something you have to do in the normal run of things. How was I to address him? What would he ask me? How should I respond? I wasn’t even sure I could tell him the time — my teeth were chattering. I was still in shock at finding Nic in the Fridge. Now this.
His personal secretary — Mags — tapped me on the shoulder. “Mr. Jeery,” she smiled. “I’ve called you three times. He’s ready and waiting.”
“Oh.” I wiped sweat from my brow. “Thank you.” I stood.
“Do you want a glass of water?” Mags asked.
My throat was dry but I shook my head. The last thing I wanted was my bladder acting up during my meeting with The Cardinal.
“Don’t worry,” Mags said. “He won’t bite you.”
I managed a weak smile. She squeezed my hand comfortingly, then led me to the door, knocked and gently shoved me in.
The first thing I noticed was the puppets. Dozens of them, hanging from the walls, draped across his huge desk, slumped over in corners. I’d heard about them, of course — everybody knew about The Cardinal’s penchant for puppets — but hadn’t been anticipating the display. For a moment I thought I’d wandered into a toy store by accident. Then I spotted The Cardinal in a monstrous chair behind the desk and everything snapped back into place.
“Al!” he greeted me like an old friend. “Take a seat. Make yourself at home. Get you anything? Coffee, a snack, a beer?”
