“Oliver?” Baby Joe looked taken aback. “Oliver Crawford?”
“Yeah. Did you go to his funeral?”
“No.”
“Know anybody who did?”
Baby Joe stared at her, brows furrowed. “No. Hasel and I wanted to go, but we got a call from Professor Warnick. He said the Crawfords didn’t want anyone there but immediate family.”
“Did you ever actually meet his immediate family?”
Baby Joe frowned. “Do you mean do I think they exist? I know they do, my brother was—”
“No—I meant, did you see any of them then. After Oliver supposedly jumped out the window of the hospital.”
Baby Joe was silent. The waitress brought Annie’s drink, disappeared into a flood of ruby light. Baby Joe looked at Annie holding her double martini in both hands, like a child drinking a glass of milk. “You think Angelica killed him?” he said at last.
“I don’t know what I think.” Annie sipped her martini, made a face. “This really costs thirty bucks?”
“Yeah.”
“No wonder your newspaper’s in trouble.” She shuddered. “Listen. I want you to do me a favor.”
Baby Joe raised an eyebrow.
“Labrys canceled the rest of my tour. Angelica called them. I don’t know how she did it—like maybe she pulled Fiona from a flaming plane wreck once and I never knew about it. But Fiona called me a few nights ago and the tour’s off. Angelica Furiano threatened them with a lawsuit, some bullshit about me making a statement to the press that Angelica was involved with that murder in P-town. Only I never talked to the press! I never talked to anyone except Helen and now you. But unless I go along with her, Labrys pulls the plug on me, MTV dumps my video, and the masters for my next album disappear somewhere between here and Iona Studios.”
Baby Joe whistled. “Sounds like you’re fucked, hija.”
“Tell me about it. So I’m going underground for a little bit.” She sighed and leaned back into the booth, her cheeks bright with a false rosy glow from the martini. “See, I’m thinking that maybe Angelica’ll just kind of forget about me. Like maybe she just wanted to scare me; so Whoo! I’m scared.” Annie fluttered her hands in front of her face, then cocked her head. “Think it’ll work?”
“No.” Baby Joe looked at the empty stage, his expression remote. When the music blared out again and another girl pranced onto the platform, he ducked his head to reach inside his jacket. “Here. You better read this.”
It was Hasel’s letter, and the worn obituary notices from the Charlottesville paper. Annie scanned them quickly.
“What is this?” Her face went dead white. “Baby Joe… ?”
“It’s what happened to Hasel,” he said softly.
“But—is it true? I mean, this stuff he wrote you about Angelica?”
“I think it’s true, hija.”
“B-but—but why?” Annie’s voice broke and she looked away. “Why would she kill Hasel?”
“Why would Angelica kill anyone?” Before she could protest, he lit his cigarette and took a drag, leaned over and slid the pages from her hand. “You know what this is, hija?” He waved the papers at her and put them back inside his jacket.
Annie shook her head, hardly seeing him at all. “What?”
“This is some bad fucking fallout from the Benandanti.”
“The Benandanti? But Angelica hated them, she told me! All that patriarchal shit—she was like, way ahead of the curve on that,” Annie said, and in spite of herself smiled wryly. “She’d never go along with the Benandanti.”
“I’m not saying she went along with them. I’m saying she’s coming back at them. You ever read her books? No?” He looked surprised. “I would’ve thought you’d be into that shit—”
“Why? Because I’m a lesbian? Please.” Annie’s glare softened into curiosity. “So what about her books?”
“They’re a fucking blueprint for a new religion, that’s what. Dios ka naman! She’s got women from here to Bombay, reading this stuff, making these círculos—” He inscribed a circle in the air, looking as though he’d spit into it. “—these, like, covens. Talagang bruja! When I first read her stuff, I couldn’t believe it—I mean, I couldn’t believe anyone would buy into it. Goddess rippers! Like Witchcraft 101. But now…”
His black eyes grew distant, unfocused; looking at him, Annie shivered. The Benandanti. For the first time in years she thought about Baby Joe being one of them. She swallowed, her mouth tasting bitterly of vermouth.
“Not any more, hija,” he said softly. “I’m like Angie: I got out. But what she’s doing—Dios ko, this is some serious shit! I been hearing about it for a while, at the paper. We get all the crazies, you know? Wife beaters, guys who want to stick it to little girls, but this is crazier even than that. These guys call us, saying their wives and girlfriends are into some kind of cult, you know—get together with the gals once a month over on the Upper East Side or wherever, and we should be writing about that instead of trade sanctions against Japan. Girlfriends dancing in the moonlight, snake handling, calling up demons, whatever. These guys talk about blood, they say the women’re up to something weird. But you know—guys like that, they always think women are up to something weird. So who pays attention?
“But then I start to hear other stuff. Guy I know, covers homicide, starts talking about these ritual killings. Bones alongside the Major Deegan Expressway, this fire circle up by the Cloisters. A snuff video, with all these women and some guy who gets it at the end, only no one ever reports him missing. Stuff like that.
“Then some bodies start to show up. Mutilated bodies. No single MO, the killings are all over the map, but a lot of the victims are homeless men. Sometimes homeless women. And a lot of kids. I mean, like runaway boys who’re hustling or whatever. Some people say it’s Santeria; maybe even Anton LaVey’s people. But then the Santeria folks say No way, this isn’t them at all, and even the other guys, the Satanists, get pissed off! That’s when I started to take a professional interest.
“Then I hear about something out West. One of Angelica’s bodyguards is, like, eaten by killer ants! On Angie’s ranch, with Angie supposedly asleep back in la casa. Then there’s all these unsolved murders of runaways and homeless people out in Arizona and L.A. and Seattle, and your acid test up in Provincetown, some dumb kid on smart drugs ends up wearing his small intestine for a necktie. Now you look me in the eye and tell me there’s not something weird going on.”
She tried to look him in the eye, but Baby Joe only stared at the stage, where two women were embracing and simulating orgasm. Annie lowered her head into her hands and ran her fingers across her buzz-cut scalp.
“And you really think Angelica’s behind it all?”
Baby Joe turned back to her. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“But why? I mean, I know she’s got something to do with it—I saw her, when I was hallucinating, or—well, whatever I was doing. But she can’t be in all these places at once. Can she?” Annie added, a little desperately.
“‘Let us placate her in advance by assuming the cannibalistic worst,’” recited Baby Joe softly.
“What?”
“Just something I read. Listen, Annie—”
He took her hand, her small fingers disappearing beneath his. “Something really strange is going on—I don’t mean just with you, or me, or Hasel, but with everything. The whole world, maybe.
“You remember how Angie used to talk—all that goddess stuff, all those books Warnick gave her? Well, I read some of them too—back then, I mean. And I saw what happened at the Orphic Lodge that night, before—well, before Oliver jumped—”
“And?”
“And—well, what if something really happened to them? What if Angie did something—what if that night, her and Oliver both did something, and—well, what if they woke something. Something they shouldn’t be screwing with.”
“Something like—what?” Annie asked warily.
“Christ, Annie! Yo
u were at the Divine, you know there’s a whole world of stuff out there that nobody else talks about! You weren’t supposed to find out, and I walked away from it, and maybe Oliver killed himself because of it—but it’s still there.”
Annie tried to draw her hand away, but Baby Joe only clutched it tighter.
“It’s still there, Annie! You know it is! Look what’s happened to the world since that night at the Divine—only what, nineteen years ago? People always say how the past looks better than whatever we have now—but Dios ko, things really have gotten worse! There’s all these horrible little wars, there’s this horrible plague that’s killing us and everyone’s pretending not to notice. Things happen like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and we’re supposed to just forget. Men go around hunting women and children like they were deer, and women fall on the men with knives. And on top of that, the whole fucking planet is just sort of dying. I mean, we got earthquakes, and fires, and floods, and droughts and blizzards and—well, everything! It’s like the pregame show for the apocalypse!”
His voice rose as Annie continued to look at him with a stony expression. “Don’t you see, Annie? This is it—and whatever it is, Angelica’s not just part of it. Angelica is it. I mean, for two thousand years Christians have been talking about the Second Coming, about Jesus and the saints and all that shit… but what if there could be a different kind of Second Coming?”
“But why is she killing us?” Annie tried to keep her voice from quavering. “We were her friends! Why did Oliver have to the, and Hasel? Hasel would never hurt anyone! And me, they tried to kill me—”
“Maybe to her it’s not like killing. I mean, if somehow this goddess has been reincarnated as Angelica.” Baby Joe laughed, a soft ominous giggle. “Maybe she’s trying to save us—keep us from seeing what comes next. Maybe she thinks she’s doing her friends a favor.”
For several minutes they sat without talking. Dancers walked on and off the stage behind them, sweat and glitter silvering the air in their wake. Finally Annie asked, “What about Sweeney? You’re in touch with her—does she know?”
“I told her about Hasel. And she knows about Angelica—I mean she knows that Angelica’s come back. She saw her on TV a week or so ago, some talk show.”
“But this other stuff? These—” Annie raked her fingernails across the table’s surface. “You know,” she ended brokenly.
Baby Joe dropped his cigarette on the floor and let it burn there. “She knows some. Hasel’s letter, and I faxed her some other things. Articles.” Glitter and grey ash sifted over him; he waved it away and said, “I’ve tried calling her this week but she’s never at the museum. Which is strange, ‘cause I don’t think she’s taken a vacation in five years. When I call her at home I just keep getting her machine.”
He fell silent. Annie couldn’t meet his eyes: they were so black he looked stoned or crazy drunk, and ferociously intense. She turned instead to gaze at the stage, where two women caressed each other with luminous violet talons. The mirrored floor beneath them was streaked with sweat and god knows what else. One of them arched her back so that her blond mane swept the floor. Her spike heel impaled a twenty-dollar bill, and she laughed.
“Fucking shit.” Annie swore beneath her breath and looked away. The sight of them sickened her, and the sound of the men watching, the way their drunken voices got husky and boyish at once. And their smell, that almost imperceptible musk of—what? Sweat and semen and whiskey-fueled hope, she guessed; then realized it was Baby Joe she could smell, the oily taint of vodka on his skin and pungent tobacco on his breath. Without wanting to Annie cringed, thinking of her old friend sitting beside her with an erection, his eyes fixed on the stage.
It almost makes you think they get what they deserve…
She recoiled in horror at the thought.
“What?” Baby Joe put a hand on her shoulder and started to his feet, looking around with that same fierce gaze. “You see someone, hija?”
At his touch she jumped, her skin prickling. But it was only Baby Joe. Sweet rude Baby Joe, with his Peter Lorre giggle and nicotine-stained fingers, his angry gaze directed at some imagined enemy out there in the strip club.
He’s being protective, Annie thought with amazed tenderness, protective of me!
“N-nothing… She stared past him at the women onstage, their motions no longer grotesque or crude but merely pathetic, even childish. Suddenly she laughed.
“What?” Baby Joe demanded, but Annie could only point. “What?”
“Just the idea,” she finally gasped through her laughter.
“What idea?” Baby Joe stared at her suspiciously.
“That Angelica could take over the world. That she could make us all afraid of each other—afraid enough to—”
She reached for his hand; but at that moment a shadow fell across the table. With a small cry Annie looked up. Baby Joe’s back stiffened against the booth’s leather seat, but then Annie exclaimed in relief.
“Justine! Jeez, you scared me.”
“Ah-nee!” a lilting voice sang out. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay, Baby Joe.” Annie scooted across the seat to make room. “This is Justine. She’s a friend of mine. I asked her to meet us here.”
Above them towered a six-and-a-half-foot Caribe beauty, her long black hair oiled and twisted into corkscrews, her full lips and high cheekbones dusted with silver powder. She wore a shocking pink sheath slit to her thighs, and over that a pink rubber girdle, and pink rubber platform shoes with tiny silver starfish embedded in them. A zircon studded one of her very white front teeth.
“Mr. Malabar. What a pleasure. I enjoy your writing in the Beacon.” Her deep voice was French-inflected, luscious as fine chocolate. Her hand folded around Baby Joe’s, larger and stronger than his, studded with rings and smelling of Obsession perfume. “Although you were very unkind to poor Miss Hyde Park last week, cette femme maudite! What can you have been thinking? I saw her show and it left me in tears. Je pleurais.”
Justine dabbed an eye with a ruby-pointed finger, then smiled as she gently slapped Annie’s cheek. “And you! I haven’t seen you since Wigstock, except on TV. And now you have troubles with voudon?”
Annie glanced from Baby Joe to Justine, who were eyeing each other with polite wariness.
“Um, well…” Annie cleared her throat. Justine was really Helen’s friend. Annie had only met her once before; she’d forgotten how imposing she was. “Justine, I need you to help me find someone. Someone special.”
“In here?” Justine swept the room with a disdainful glare. “Chérie, you will need a Geiger counter to find someone special here.”
“No, not here. I don’t know where, exactly.”
“Uh-huh.” Justine rolled her eyes. She leaned over to pluck a cigarette from Baby Joe’s pack, then slid into the booth beside Annie. “Girl problems, Annie?”
“Sort of.” Annie looked at Baby Joe. “Now, I know this is going to sound crazy, but…”
She told them about the rave. Her vision—if that’s what it was—of ritual sacrifice and the eerily beautiful demon in the boathouse, Angelica’s role in the killing, the attempt to slay Annie herself, and then the phone call early the next morning, when Annie learned that Angelica had successfully derailed her tour. Finally, she told them of the woman who had saved her.
“And that freaked me as much as the rest of it. Maybe more.” Annie leaned back in the booth and tugged at the collar of her tuxedo shirt. “God, I’m exhausted.” She turned to Justine, who was listening with great seriousness, her dark eyes wide. “And I can’t believe I’m telling you guys this. I’d think I hallucinated it all, except I know that kid is dead. And I know a strange woman brought flowers to me after my show that night. Patrick saw her, and Helen saw the flowers, and I recognized her—”
Baby Joe shook his head. “You sure about that, Annie?”
“No. I’m not sure. It was dark, I was scared to death, and messed up—I mean, they must
have slipped me something, for me to see all that crazy shit! But I’m pretty certain. I got a good look, and…”
Her voice trailed off. She stared miserably down at the floor. “Maybe I’m just going nuts.”
Justine shook her head. “Uh-uh. I believe you. Things like that, they happen to me all the time. Except for the black gardon with a face.” She shuddered, wiping her mouth with a cocktail napkin and examining the lipstick stain as though it were an omen. “Now you said you have a photo for me? Because Justine knows a lot of people, but she is not psychique.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” From her knapsack Annie withdrew an envelope, opened it carefully, and removed a black-and-white photo, brown-stained and curling around the edges. “It’s just an old Polaroid. But it’s the only one I have.”
“Hmmm.” Justine squinted as Baby Joe peered over her shoulder, looking like he wanted to snatch the photo from her hand. “Well, you are right, it is not very good. But—”
“Who took that picture?” demanded Baby Joe.
Annie looked annoyed. “I don’t remember. We were at a Halloween party. I had a life too, you know.”
“Mes enfants!” Justine shook a finger at Baby Joe. She pursed her lips and stared at the photo for another moment, then slid it into a small plastic reticule hanging from her waist. “Tant pis: not someone I know, but we’ll see. Now, I have to meet some friends of my own, so you will excuse me.”
She stood, towering above the others. “Annie, you know how to call me? But it will be a while—”
“How long?”
Justine tilted her head, eyeing the girls onstage. “Bridge-and-tunnel amateurs,” she sniffed. “How long? A month…”
“A month! I can’t wait a month—”
“You wait this long, you can wait a month. But I will start asking about your friend. Give Helen a kiss for me. And you—”
She ducked to kiss Baby Joe on the lips, letting her long fingernails tickle his throat. “Mr. Malabar! You need a date for one of your shows, you give me a call. Your friend has the number.” Light sparked the zircon in her front tooth as Justine smiled and strode off through the club.
Waking the Moon Page 44
