What the hell’s going on here? she thinks. Why is a news crew setting up across the street from my apartment building?
When Jean Luc removes his coat and begins to roll up his shirtsleeves, she knows. But it is a wisdom she does not want, a keen palisade of memory that tells her that the horror of this night had been ordained a very long time ago.
Because, there, on Jean Luc’s forearm, is the tattoo of a bright orange rattlesnake.
This is the man who was fighting with Celeste in the hotel lobby two years ago, she thinks. My life has been on a collision course with this moment for two years.
Her knees trick painfully, her mind reels out of control, her stomach revolts. She grabs onto the windowsill to steady herself and looks down to see the driver of the NBC van angling his vehicle toward Jesse Ray’s sedan.
The man puts the van in park, exits, crosses over to Jesse Ray’s car, stops. He turns to glance at his partner, a quizzical look on his face, then reaches for Jesse Ray’s arm and removes it from the car window. It is a mannequin arm clad in a black coat sleeve and a bright white cuff, the hand holding an all-but-burned-down cigarette.
The man from NBC scratches his head and smiles. The cigarette falls to the ground.
Four floors above, Christian del Blanco-known over the years as a hundred different men, including a bon vivant named Jean Luc Christiane and a shadowy grifter named Jesse Ray Carpenter-laughs as he closes the shutters and draws the blinds, sparing the night this tableau for the moment, denying those madmen, who can surely hear such things, the song of Mary’s scream.
70
Paris checks the door, the stench from the cauldron a thick, fetid fog that invades every cubic inch of air in the room. The door has an ordinary interior door lock, reversed. The door itself is solid core. The lock would go first. He feels along the ink black wall, finds the heavy plywood over the window, the black-painted heads of the lag bolts. Solid, too.
He surveys the small room, made smaller by the blackness. The cauldron, dead center. A sturdy wing chair. And, across from the chair, a small table with a computer and keyboard.
Not his father.
The computer is on, but the screen is deep blue, blank. Paris sits in the chair, tries to clear his head. He checks the magazine in his weapon. One bullet. The son of a bitch had left him with one bullet. He returns the magazine, jacks the round, clicks on the safety.
He checks his pockets. Right pocket. Twenty or thirty dollars in a paper clip. A packet of relish or ketchup from Subway. Left pocket. Empty.
One bullet, with condiments and hallucinations to go, Paris thinks.
Great.
71
The man is tall and thin, red-haired. He wears a cheap overcoat, sturdy black lace-up shoes. In the stale light thrown from the caged bulb on the wall in the underground service tunnel linking the Cain Manor and Cain Towers apartments, he looks tired and wan and deeply etched with worry. A man running on coffee, sugar, animal fat, liquor.
A cop.
“Evening,” I say, the barrel of the twenty-two up against Mary’s back. We stop walking. We are now about ten feet from the man.
“Evening,” the red-haired man replies.
I feel Mary tense, about to bolt. “What’s the weather like out there?”
“Getting pretty bad,” the man says, turning his body slightly away from me, the sort of move a left-hander would make if he were going to unsnap the holster of a gun on his left hip, a weapon hiding beneath his coat. His voice echoes slightly in the concrete tunnel. Above us, a water pipe clangs.
“Looks like we’re in for the evening,” I say. “Wife’s a little under the weather. Had to leave the party next door. Thank God for this walk-through, eh?”
“Oh yeah.” The cop takes a step forward. “Are you all right, ma’am?”
“Like I said, she’s a little nauseous. Bad shrimp or something, you know? Can’t trust those bargain basement caterers.”
“If you don’t mind sir, I’d like to hear it from her. Now, ma’am, are you-”
Suddenly, the crackle of two-way radio traffic bursts from inside the red-haired man’s coat.
Our eyes meet again. And we are linked forever.
Before he can make his move I step behind Mary, lock an arm around her throat, put the barrel of the gun to her temple. The redheaded cop freezes.
I say: “Put your hands behind your head and interlace your fingers. Officer.”
Slowly, reluctantly, he does. But he does not take his eyes from mine. His eyes are a deep green, unreadable, stoic in their calm. I know that this man can do me great harm.
“You have your handcuffs with you?” I ask.
The cop just stares.
I say: “Cuff yourself to the drainpipe.”
“No.”
I cock my weapon. Mary goes rigid beneath my hand. “Beg your pardon?”
“I’m not going to do it.”
“And why is that?”
The cop looks at me with a weariness I have never before seen in a man his age. A resignation of soul. “Because I’m a beat-up cop, pal. You hear me? A used-up old flatfoot. Letting you handcuff me is a nightmare far worse than anything you could do with that gun. Believe this.”
“Do you think I won’t kill her?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” the cop says. “I think you’re going to kill her. I think you’re going to kill me, too. You’re just not going to do it to me while I’m cuffed to a drainpipe. I’m leaving my son more than that. Sorry.”
I do not want to hear anymore of this.
I shoot him three times.
He stumbles backward and goes down, hard, flat on his back.
Mary shrieks. I cover her mouth. I put the gun to her head until the reality of her own death becomes apparent in her eyes. I lead her to the service elevator, then hit the button with my elbow. The car soon arrives.
I hear fire engines in the distance.
As we step inside I can also hear the traffic on the cop’s radio. The elevator doors close just as a woman’s voice says:
“Greg… Greg… you’d better get out… all hell is starting to break loose out here… Bobby’s down… repeat… Bobby’s down…”
72
He looks so ordinary, Paris thinks. Better than average looks, he had thought when the man had played the part of Julian Cruz. Charming and easygoing.
He had shaken hands with a monster and not known it.
But now, seeing him sitting in a chair on the computer screen, in the upper-right-hand frame of four, he looks ordinary. In the upper-left-hand frame, Paris sees himself, sitting on the chair, live, courtesy of the small digital camera clipped to the monitor and the track lights overhead. In the lower right is the old video of himself on the steps of the Justice Center.
“Mr. del Blanco,” Paris says.
“Christian, please, detective,” the man says.
“Call this off.”
“Did you enjoy your hot dog? Tasty?”
“Call this off.”
“Too late for that.”
“Let me ask you something,” Paris says, trying to sound a lot more in control than he really is. The magic mushroom is still making his mind take wing in a thousand directions. “I understand why you’re after me. I even understand why you went after Mike Ryan. But why the Levertovs?”
Christian reaches off camera. He brings back a trio of photographs. To Paris, they look like pictures of Christian coming and going from La Botanica Macumba. “Can you believe these? Clandestine pictures of me.” He laughs, holds them closer to the camera. “Turns out old Ike wasn’t just selling kosher hot dogs on that corner, detective. He was one of these block-watch people. I’d seen him around the corner a few times, passed the time of day with him, even met his wife. But about the fifth time I visited the botanica, he started to become suspicious, it seems, began taking pictures. Guess I wasn’t the right breed. Believe me, the minute a voodoo murder and a sketch of the suspect showed up in the press he woul
d have been on the phone. I needed time. Old Ike just meddled in the wrong man’s business. Edith made the mistake of loving him.” Christian puts the photos aside, leans forward, adds: “The important question is, how did you feel?”
“What do you mean?”
“To be a suspect. Even for a minute. How did it feel when people, people you’ve known for years, looked you straight in the eye and thought you were a fiend? Did the shame of it all make you want to kill yourself? Make you want to get drunk and set yourself afire? Hmm? Show the world that Paris is, indeed, burning?”
In his mind’s eye Paris sees Bobby’s face, and how only ninety-nine percent of it believed him. “I know who my friends are. They know the truth.”
“Truth,” Christian says, wistfully. He reaches out of frame, returns with a sterling flask, sips from it. “Amanita muscaria. Very potent. Have you ever tried it?”
Paris remains silent.
“Where did it take you on its brief, exhilarating voyage?”
Dad, Paris thinks. “You wouldn’t begin to understand.”
“Oh, I bet I would. The Hinchi Indians say it invokes ancient memories. What are your ancient memories, detective?” Christian leans forward, taps a few keys. Instantly, in the lower-right-hand frame, a picture appears. A picture of Frank Paris. A picture that was in the newspaper next to his father’s obituary. The anger rises in Paris’s chest. His training pushes it back. Barely. He now knows what triggered his hallucination.
Christian says, “The first thing you should know is that I am in the very next room.” On-screen, Paris sees Christian walk out of frame. Then, faintly: “Hear this?”
Paris hears a muffled pounding from behind him. “Yes.”
Christian walks back into frame. “As I’m sure you know by now, you have only one bullet. In your life, right now, that bullet is currency. How will you spend it? The lock on the door? You could shoot it off, but then your gun would be empty and I would kill you.”
Before Paris can stop himself, he looks back at the picture of his father, thinks about the photograph in this butcher’s hands. He says: “Fuck you.”
Christian stares into the camera, motionless, as if a DVD had been put on freeze frame. Then, in a smear, he bolts out of frame, and, for twenty seconds the screen is a gray, out-of-focus blur. Then, the point of view changes to a longer shot, and Paris can now see that, in the bright white room next door there is an altar not unlike the chantry in Evangelina Cruz’s basement. But this one is larger, covered in a huge, brilliant white cloth. There seem to be candles everywhere, starring up the lens of the digital camera. On the steps of the altar Paris sees dried animal claws outlined against the cloud white sheet. He sees earthen cruets bearing ancient symbols. He sees a half-dozen brass plates bearing cones of incense, stacks of copper coins.
But it is what Jack Paris sees behind the altar that terrifies him.
There, against the white wall, behind the shimmering candles and mysterious pottery and vaporous urns, is a huge white crucifix. And on it hangs a figure.
A familiar figure.
The figure of Rebecca D’Angelo.
73
I remove my shirt, pants, underwear, shoes, and socks. I slip the long white caftan over my head, my skin now electric with the feel of the rayon. I have never felt more the brujo, so full of power.
I undress my madrina on the crucifix. Her skin looks soft, sepulchral, white. I take out my big claw hammer. “Have you ever witnessed a real sacrifice, detective?”
“Listen to me,” Paris says. “If she’s dead, there isn’t a rock big enough to hide under. Hear me?”
“She’s not dead.”
“Kill yourself. Now.”
“She is tied there,” I say. “But, if you don’t do exactly what I say, it can get worse.” I hold up the silver spikes, sharpened to a razor point. “Much worse.”
74
He has to keep the man talking. “How do we end this, Christian? Stop what you’re doing and let’s talk.”
“I want you to draw your weapon.”
Paris obeys. “Now what?”
“Put your bullet in the chamber.”
“It’s already loaded.”
“Of course,” Christian says. “Safety off?”
“Safety’s off.”
On-screen, in one of the four frames, is now a local news break-in. Paris can see a pair of Cleveland Heights zone cars in a Dairy Barn lot and thinks:
We are in the Cain Towers apartments.
Christian says: “You will now place the barrel of the weapon against your forehead and pull the trigger.”
“What?”
“If you do this within, let’s see, four minutes, I’ll let her go. If not, I am going to drive nails into her hands and feet. Which do you think our viewers would prefer? You or her?”
Viewers? Paris thinks. This is being broadcast? “What are you talking about?”
“You’re the main attraction on Cable99 right now. Dare I say, soon, worldwide.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Perhaps. But seeing as you’re really not that much of a detective, I doubt seriously that you are qualified to make such a damning diagnosis. No offense.”
The lower-right-hand frame flickers with still pictures now. Christian, in front of a rusty old Bonneville. Christian and his sister at Cedar Point.
You’ve got to know what breaks his heart.
“She didn’t kill herself,” Paris says, knowing now that the real Sarah Weiss is dead. The woman in his apartment had been an impostor. “It wasn’t suicide.”
Christian freezes, his face contorting with rage. “Shut up.”
“It’s true. They’re reopening the case. They’re treating it as a homicide.”
“Shut up!”
“I know you blame me for prosecuting her, but I was doing my job. The evidence was there. But now there is evidence that she was not driven to suicide. It is much worse.”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“Don’t you want to see whoever did this to your sister pay for it? Isn’t that what all this has been about?”
Christian steps away from the crucifix.
Yes, Paris thinks.
Stall him.
“So, I can walk away from this?” Christian asks. “You and me’ll hit the trail and round up the bad guys, sheriff? Please.”
“Of course not. But you can get help. And I can see that justice is done for you.”
“Shut up,” Christian says. “Not a word.” He holds up a pair of spikes. In the other hand, he holds a crown of razor wire. “If you say-”
“No!”
“What did I just tell you?” Christian screams. “You killed her, you asshole.”
“Wait!”
Christian does not wait. He crosses the room, walking right up to the camera. In an instant, Paris’s computer screen goes blue again.
But Paris can still hear. Christian has left the microphone on. Christian screams: “The whole world is watching you!”
Paris hears Christian’s footsteps storming around the room. He hears the music, which had been a faint, scratchy noise in the background, suddenly jump in volume.
“Christian!”
“Save her life!” Christian says.
“Stop!”
But he does not stop. Paris hears the ugly, hateful sound. The icy clank of hammer on steel.
Then come the screams.
75
Furnell Braxton is bathed in sweat. For a single, crazy instant, he sees himself on stage in a huge ballroom at the Marriott picking up a local Emmy. He checks his levels. The audio level is dead center; the video, although lagging slightly, sometimes producing a series of still images, is clear. There are now four separate feeds. The lunatic in the white room with the girl. The looping video of all the old pictures. The cop in the black room with the gun. And the NBC live-news cam.
Furnell had taken the live network feed and inserted it into his cablecast like Harry Blackstone
dovetailing two halves of a bridge deck. He hadn’t the slightest idea if he had any right whatsoever to grab the feed, but on the other hand, at the moment, he simply didn’t care.
This is Emmy time.
On-screen, in the upper-right-hand frame, the lunatic is poised, ready to slam home a nail he had begun to pound into the nude woman’s left hand. The nude woman is tied to a cross. The lunatic is watching his monitor, his hand over the woman’s mouth.
In the lower-left frame, now, a medium shot of the Cain Towers apartment shot from across the street. Cop cars everywhere. You can hear a helicopter, too.
The lower-right-hand frame is a video feed showing an old crime scene photo, a kitchen floor covered in blood.
But it is the frame in the upper left that has Furnell, and everyone else, watching, spellbound. In that frame sits the police officer, on the verge of suicide. He has a 9 mm pistol reversed in his hands, the barrel against the center of his forehead, his thumb is on the trigger, his face is corded with fear. At exactly midnight he says:
“I know you will see this one day, Missy. I hope you won’t, but I know you will.” His voice breaks. “I love you and your mother with all my heart.”
He pulls the trigger.
The sound is more of a muffled clap than a bang, but the body bucks and shakes, then Furnell sees the hole, dead center on the man’s forehead. The cop slumps into the chair, still and silent.
In the upper-right-hand frame the man in the white caftan steps away from the woman on the cross. He walks up to the camera, stares. He is looking at his monitor in disbelief. Then, he begins to laugh, high and loud and long, spinning in a circle, shouting in tongues.
Death, Furnell Braxton thinks as he turns and deposits his Tony Roma’s dinner all over the control panel, his acceptance speech on hold for the moment.
He had broadcast death.
Live.
76
The Amanita Muscaria is in full, adolescent blossom in my brain, my muscles, my blood. I feel primally fit, cunning.
Kiss Of Evil jp-2 Page 26
