by Darren Shan
Ellen invited me over to her place Sunday afternoon. I called Wami and told him I wouldn’t be tracking Nick, and why.
“My ex-daughter-in-law,” he chuckled. “I should come with you and introduce myself.” I knew him well enough by now to know he was joking. I asked if he’d cover Nick for me. He said he would but I felt he was only saying it to appease me. I didn’t care. I was starting to lose interest in the Hornyak heir.
Ellen looked divine, dressed in white, a blue ribbon through her hair. I used to love combing those fine, blond locks. If I had to say what I missed most about her, it would be waking up in the early hours of the morning to find her hair spread out on the pillow and gently combing through it with my fingers.
She’d cooked pasta, which we quickly devoured. Stuck the dishes in the washer, retired to the balcony — she had a nice apartment overlooking the river — and made the most of the weather. She noticed my faint bruises — a memento of my run-in with the KKK boys — and inquired about them. I made up a story.
“Now,” she said when I finished. “Rudi Ziegler.” She pulled a file out from beneath a chair. Licked the tips of her index and third fingers and flicked over the first page. “That’s his real name, by the way, not an alias.”
“I know.”
She glared. “You might have told me. I spent days tracing his roots.”
“Sorry.”
“Well,” she sniffed, “you probably know the rest as well. No police record, never in trouble. Fills out his tax forms, operates aboveboard. Worth a small fortune. He started out with very little, a meager inheritance when his father died, which he used to launch and advertise the business. A couple of office jobs when he was younger, but most of his life has been devoted to magic. I tried finding out who he studied under but he seems to have picked it up from a variety of sources, fairground fortune-tellers and the like. Never married. No children.”
She zipped forward a few pages. “I attended four meetings. The first time, it was just the two of us. I told him I’d been having odd dreams and wanted to explore the spiritual plane to make sense of them. He read my palms, did the tarot, the usual rigmarole. I said I’d like to try a séance. He promised to phone when a place came up. Said it might take a few weeks — my karma had to be compatible with the group’s, or some such hogwash. Called a couple of days later to say he’d found the perfect companions. I went along to three sessions.”
“Anything happen?”
She chuckled scornfully. “Lots of fog, strobe lights, eerie noises and shaking of tables. He’s got a crystal ball and he conjured up some images. Spoke in voices. I was disappointed — it was so fake. The others seemed to enjoy it but I’m not sure they believed it was real any more than I did.”
“Nothing dark or magical?”
“No. I asked after the third séance if there was anywhere further to go. Said I wished to make meatier contact. Told him I wanted to dance with demons.”
“You didn’t!”
“You told me to say it.” She couldn’t hide an impish grin.
“How did he react?”
“He said he wasn’t that way inclined — he was more involved with gods of light than demons of the dark — but he could pass me on to people who were. He gave me a couple of names.”
“That sounds more like it.” I rubbed my hands together. “I hope you didn’t go visit these guys.”
She shook her head. “I got your leads. The rest is up to you.” She handed me a sheet of paper with two names and addresses. They meant nothing to me, so I laid the sheet aside, to investigate later.
We discussed the case and how I’d been progressing (I told her nothing about Paucar Wami or the Fursts), then talk turned to love. Ellen asked if I’d been seeing anyone. I told her I had. Was it serious? I thought of the way my heart leaped when Priscilla kissed me, and said it might be.
“How about you?” I asked, as you do when someone makes inquiries of that nature.
She smiled nervously. “Actually, I think I might be falling in love, Al.” She awaited my reaction.
I stared out over the river. It was a surprise — there’d been nobody meaningful in Ellen’s life since our marriage dissolved. A month ago the news might have sent me running back to the bottle, but after all that had happened these last few weeks, it didn’t seem as earth-shattering as it once would have.
“Anybody I know?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You going to tell me the name or do I have to guess?”
She hesitated. “Not yet. I don’t know how involved we’re going to get. I’m not at the stage where I want to make a public commitment.”
“So why mention it?”
“In case word leaks. So you don’t feel like I’ve been going behind your back.”
“We’re divorced,” I reminded her. “You can do what you like.”
“I know. Still, if it was you and things were getting hot and you didn’t tell me, I’d be hopping mad.” I knew what she meant. As far apart as we’d drifted, there would always be a special bond between us.
“Well?” she asked when I said nothing. “What do you think?”
“Does it matter?”
“You know it does,” she said softly.
“I don’t know the guy,” I protested. “How can I have an opinion?”
“Who says it’s a guy?” she smirked.
“You don’t swing that way,” I laughed.
“Maybe I’ll surprise you. But seriously, what do you think? Are you jealous?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. “I’m delighted for you. It’s great. I wish you all the best. I’ve only one question — can I give you away at the wedding?”
“There won’t be a wedding. One was enough. Besides, it wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll see,” she grinned and said no more about it.
She kissed my cheeks before I left and rubbed my nose with hers. In the old days, that would have been the sign for our lips to meet. Now it was simply a nice way for two close friends to say goodbye.
“Give me a ring if anything comes of the Ziegler tips,” she said.
“I’ll be sending over the finest bouquet of flowers if one of these names leads anywhere,” I vowed.
“And be careful. I don’t want the killer carving you up like that poor girl.”
“I’ll watch my back, kemosabe.”
“See you ’round, Grasshopper.”
Then I slipped away, to spend the rest of the day wondering about her new beau. Whoever he was, he’d better treat her well — better than I had — or I’d be after him. No matter how heavy things got between Priscilla and me, Ellen would remain the true love of my life. Nobody would do the dirty on her as long as I was on the scene.
The names of the two mystics led nowhere. No outstanding connections to any of the key players, though Priscilla had been a customer of one. I asked her about him. She said he was graver than Ziegler but no more genuine. Nic had never been to him.
Apart from the two names, there was nothing in Ellen’s report of any use. I hadn’t expected anything — it wasn’t as if I thought Ziegler would talk openly of human sacrifice — but I was disappointed all the same. I’d agreed with Wami that if nothing happened with Nick over the next few days, we should shift our focus to Ziegler. Since Ellen had produced no dirt, that would mean more shadowing, more long hours of hanging around.
I felt glum on Tuesday when I rolled home shortly before midnight and hit the sack. I was sleeping soundly these times, too exhausted to dream. So when I jolted awake in the middle of the night, I thought something was wrong. For a few seconds I couldn’t hear over the sound of my pounding heart. When my hearing returned, I realized it was only the buzzing of my cell phone that had disturbed me. I checked my watch — three a.m., for Christ’s sake! — groaned and reached blindly for the phone.
“This had better be a matter of life or fucking death,” I snarled, expecting the mocking tones of my
father. But it wasn’t.
“The public phone in front of the library. Be there, ten minutes from now.”
“Who—,” I began, but the caller had hung up. I sat on the edge of my bed trying to place the voice. When I couldn’t, I rolled off and got dressed. I might be walking into trouble but I was too tired to care. I thought of calling Wami but there wasn’t time for him to come over.
As I headed for the door, my eyes flicked to the mantelpiece and I slowed. The black, gold-streaked marble I’d found in the trout’s mouth and placed there was missing. For a moment I was sure someone had stolen it. But that was crazy. More likely it had rolled onto the floor. I didn’t have time to look for it, and anyway it wasn’t important. I’d forgotten about it by the time I unchained my bike.
I arrived at the phone booth with a couple of minutes to spare. Stood in out of the cool night breeze, yawning. A patrol car passed, two officers giving me a suspicious once-over. I half-waved and they carried on without stopping. Then the phone rang and I answered immediately. “If this is a joke, I’ll kick your—”
“There’s a phone outside the post office in Marlin Street. You know where that is?”
“Yeah,” I said cautiously.
“How long will it take you to cycle there?”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“I’ll call in twenty-five. If you’re being tailed, pass it by and I’ll get in contact another time.”
“Who is this?” I snapped. “Why should I—”
He was gone again.
I hung up and considered my next move. It could be a trap but it would have been just as easy to strike at my home or outside the library as across town. This way I had time to call for assistance. Besides, the caller sounded scared.
With hardly any traffic to contend with, and jumping red lights, I made Marlin Street in seventeen minutes. As far as I could tell I wasn’t being followed, though from my experience with Nick I knew how simple it was for a cautious hunter to track his prey undetected.
I’d been thinking hard about the voice and this time, when the phone rang, I spoke first. “Jerry?”
There was a nervous pause, then, “No names. There’s an all-night diner at the top of this street. I’ll be waiting.”
I was sure when I hung up — it was Jerry Falstaff, from work. I’d seen virtually nothing of him since The Cardinal took me off regular duty. What was he doing, calling me in such a provocative fashion? Only one way to find out…
A handful of late-night souls were scattered around the diner, eating silently, reading or staring out the windows. Jerry was near the back. From the way he sat, I knew he cradled a gun under cover of the tablecloth. I glanced around at the other diners again, searching for danger, but they seemed oblivious.
I strolled across but didn’t sit.
“That a gun in your lap or are you just pleased to see me?”
“Get something to eat,” Jerry ordered, voice low and strained. “Make it look natural. Sit opposite me and cover the area to my back. First sign of trouble, open fire and make a break for the kitchen — there’s a door, leads to a set of stairs running down to an alley.”
“I’m sitting nowhere and doing nothing till you tell me what this is all about.”
Jerry looked up briefly. “You trust me, Al?”
“I’ve never had reason not to,” I answered indirectly.
“Then listen carefully and do what I say.” He took a bite out of a large roll and, using it for cover, muttered out of the side of his mouth, “It’s about Breton Furst.”
I took my jacket off, draped it over the back of the chair and went to order a slice of pizza. When I returned, Jerry let me have it.
“I graduated from basic training with Breton. We kept in touch. He drew me aside at Party Central a few weeks ago and asked me to be his Tonto.” That was a phrase we used in the Troops when one of us passed a message to another to be opened in the event of his disappearance or death. Sometimes the message was no more than a note to be handed to a loved one, but other times it was a way to gain revenge from beyond the grave.
Tontos were forbidden — if you were found holding a note that contained even a hint of classified information, you were dismissed without benefits, and that was the most lenient reprisal — but common. We looked out for one another in the Troops. It was a way of protecting ourselves from the whims of our masters. They never knew if a Troop had left behind a Tonto, so they tended not to sacrifice us lightly.
“I fled as soon as I heard about the execution,” Jerry continued. “Called in sick and went on the lam. Been sleeping in my van. Sent my wife and kids into hiding.”
“You think whoever killed Furst knows about you?”
“Probably not, but would you chance it?” One of the customers rose and Jerry’s body tightened. I thought he was going to start firing, but then the guy tossed a tip down and ambled away. Jerry relaxed.
“Do you have the message on you?” I asked.
“I’m not crazy. I read it — figured I owed him that much — then burned the fucker. Laid low and let some time pass before getting in touch with you.”
“I was mentioned in the message?”
“No. But I heard you were with him when he was killed and I figured you were as good a person to come to as any. I don’t trust anybody else.”
“What makes you think you can trust me?”
He shrugged. “It was your girlfriend he died for.”
I swallowed a mouthful of pizza. “What was in the message?”
“Breton was on duty the night Nicola Hornyak was killed. Some guy bribed him to leave his post at ten o’clock — said he wanted to sneak in a friend. According to Breton, that sort of shit happens all the time at the Skylight.”
“Did he know the guy?”
“Not straight off.”
“But he found out?”
“I’m coming to that. There was more. He told Breton to come up to his room between two and three and let out the friend. Said he’d be chained to the bed and wearing a mask which Breton wasn’t to remove.”
“It was Nic’s room?” I guessed.
“No. The room next door, 814.”
“Nicholas’s room,” I sighed.
Jerry looked surprised. “You know already?”
“I’ve been digging around.”
“Breton only found out when Hornyak’s picture turned up in the papers. He shat himself.”
“Why not tell Frank as soon as he heard about the murder in 812? He must have known it wasn’t coincidence.”
“He wasn’t thinking clearly. See, he let the guy out in the middle of the night like he’d promised. He was masked, chained to the bed and naked, as Breton was expecting, but also mad as hell. He wanted to know where the bastard who’d tied him up was hiding, threatened to have both their heads. Breton told him to shut up or he’d remove his mask. That worked. He got dressed and left.”
“Furst didn’t see his face?”
“No. He’d no idea who he was.”
But I did. Nick’s lover of the night, Charlie Grohl. I hadn’t gone looking for Grohl — he’d slipped my mind — and now I cursed myself for the oversight.
“Breton didn’t hear anything in 812,” Jerry went on, “but only a fool would think the two events weren’t connected. The guy who bribed him probably killed the girl too. He thought about going to Frank, but that would have meant admitting to taking a bribe. Plus he’d untied and released the one person who could identify the killer. It would have cost him his job, maybe worse. So he kept his mouth shut.”
“I can understand that,” I grunted. “What happened next?”
“For a long time, nothing. When he saw Nicholas Hornyak’s photo in the paper and realized it was the dead girl’s brother who’d bribed him, he almost confessed — that was proof that the events of the two rooms were connected. But having kept quiet so long, he figured he’d be better off saying nothing.
“Nearly two weeks later, someone called Bre
ton. The caller knew everything, how Nicholas Hornyak bribed him, that he’d been in the room next to the girl’s, that he’d kept quiet. He said he needed a favor and arranged a meeting. Breton didn’t want to go but he had no choice.
“They met in a movie theater. It was dark and the blackmailer tried not to show his face, but Breton made him and put it in his message.”
“Who was it?” I snapped, certain it must be the mysterious Charlie Grohl.
“In a minute. I’m almost finished. The blackmailer said he was looking for the body of a guy called Allegro Jinks. He thought it was in the Fridge. He wanted Breton to go there and find it. If he cooperated, his secret would be safe.
“Back home, Breton wrote up his confession and passed it along to me. He said at the end that he was on his way to the Fridge. He didn’t know what would happen but wanted to make sure — if something went wrong — that the guy who set him up didn’t escape unpunished.”
“The name,” I snarled. I was afraid someone would burst in and pump a bullet through his head before he could spit it out. “Who the hell was it?”
Jerry smiled thinly, glanced around, then said, “Does Howard Kett ring any bells?”
19
It was a three-hour train ride to the lake resort. I grabbed a window seat and spent the journey reflecting.
I’d run Jerry through his tale a couple more times, in case he’d missed anything. I put the names of Charlie Grohl, Rudi Ziegler and Priscilla Perdue to him, none of which were familiar.
Jerry felt better by the end of the conversation. He’d dreaded making contact, afraid he’d be killed like Furst when he met me. Now that it was over, and he had my word that I wouldn’t mention his name to anyone, he could relax. He’d lie low a few more days before reporting back to work, then try to drive all memories of Breton’s message and our meeting from his thoughts.
