by Lee, Tanith
Lorlo opened the door. Honey stood there, dismayed.
"All right. This had better be good."
But it had come from Manchester. Nothing from there could be ignored. Honey was right, sod him.
Lorlo was peevish. His mood was being spoiled.
The girl had gone into the bathroom and he had heard the splash of water. He put on the Sinatra record, tenderly. Gentled by his high, he wished he could find a girl who would appreciate Ol' Blue Eyes. They had no musical taste. Perhaps, Ruth…
She would be hot. He knew it. Once he got her going.
But now this.
Lorlo walked over the acres of white carpet. A slight leadenness was building in his gut.
Manchester—
He reached the fax and looked down at the printout neither Frankie nor Honey had had the temerity to pluck.
On it, in gray and milk dots, was Ruth's face. It was exact. Lorlo stared, bemused, his body trying to catch up.
Under the image were a few lines of prose.
White girl, hair black and long, eyes black, height approximately five feet two inches, weight between six-ten and seven stone. Age twelve years and some months. Name Ruth.
Below this were just four words:
MULLEY. LET HER GO.
"Shit," said Lorlo. "Oh, shit."
He backed along the carpet. Then he came to Honey, and clutched at him.
"I didn't know."
"No, Mr. Mulley. We none of us—"
"I didn't know. They won't believe that." And then. "I got to get her out. Out."
By the time he reached the door, Lorlo had a sort of control of himself. He opened it, and went in, casually.
Ruth had come from the bathroom. She was standing by the bed. She looked bizarre, because she had wrapped herself, head to foot, in the skins of leopards. It seemed to him that this was only part of the whole. This was as it had to be.
"Doll," said Lorlo, nicely, "there's been a change of plan. Got to let you go. All right?"
Honey was in the door, and behind him was Frankie. They both looked scared.
"Now, babe," said Lorlo to Ruth, "nothing happened, did it? Didn't hurt you, did I?"
Cowled in leopardskin, a feline nun, Ruth said softly, "No."
"That's good, good, Ruth. Just a bit of fun." Lorlo laughed. He walked to the music center and shut off Sinatra. "You can go now. Wherever you want. And Ruth, I want you to know, if there's anything I can do—just ask."
Ruth looked by him, to Frankie and Honey.
Lorlo said quickly, "And the boys, Ruth. We're at your service, babe. Where do you want to go? Frankie'll drive you in the Merc."
Ruth gathered the skins around her.
"I'd like this."
"Take it, baby. Just take it. It's yours."
A white hand came out of the skin. Ruth drew up her bag, and into it, from another white hand, she dropped something she had been hiding in the pelt.
So, she had stolen something. That was fine.
"Do you want a drink? See you on your way?"
"No," said Ruth. "Thank you."
She walked past him, through the door.
"Frankie," rapped Lorlo, "take her down in the lift. Take her wherever she wants to go."
"Sure, Mr. Mulley."
Her black-haired head had come from the skin now. Otherwise clothed in it, leopardess, she glided over the carpet.
In another fifteen minutes—
But it had not come to that.
Lorlo felt disorientated and nauseous.
Frankie had pressed for the lift. The wide doors opened in the wall, and Ruth went through, and Frankie followed her, not getting near, as if she was an isotope.
In his cubby, Chas chose another bottle from the crate of fizzy lemonade, and opened it. He drank earnestly, like a child. During his fighting days, this beverage had been strictly off the menu.
Somewhere out of the night, deep in the dereliction, a car moved.
Chas listened. His left ear was not up to much, but his right was very acute. The car slid through the broken buildings like an alligator in a swamp, and went away.
Chas sat down and put his feet up on the table. His cigar had gone out and he relit it with the gold lighter Mr. Mulley had given him after that job in Brixton. He pulled the thick smoke down into the sacks of his lungs. Opening up the paper, he found a girl with naked breasts, and began to reach for the box of pins.
Maybe it was only a drift of smoke. Something had passed over the glass window of the cubby.
Chas looked around.
In the doorway stood a man in a long black coat. His hair was white. He smiled.
Chas swung down his legs and got up.
"Wha ya wan?"
"Many things," said the man. He had a dry actor's voice. His hair was very long.
"Ya wan Mr. Mulley?" asked Chas. "You tell me name and business. If I think ya need ta see him, I call him up on the internal."
"Yes, I'd like to see Mr. Mulley," said the white-haired man. He glanced about the room. "A boxer with a gun and axe."
"Ya better believe I don' need no gun."
"Why don't you show me."
Chas grinned, displaying ill-kept, well-made false teeth. "I'll show ya."
He lumbered forward with a weird mechanical speed, and his left arm reared out for Malach's face.
Malach caught the arm at the wrist in his left hand.
Chas gawped at him, rolled off-balance. The hefty blow had been checked as if by a wall. "A southpaw," Malach said mildly.
Chas lunged with a right hook.
Malach's right hand was there, pinioning Chas at the right wrist.
"Eia," said Malach.
Chas struggled, his face congested and bewildered.
Malach had stopped smiling. He straightened his back and looked into the eyes of Chas. Then he pulled smartly down on the lost boxer's crossed arms. There was a dull gristly creak. Chas howled. His eyes skidded up.
Malach let go the two wrists. The arms of Chas now hung down limp and too long, the arms of an ape. They had been pulled from their sockets.
"No axe, no gun," said Malach. He pushed at Chas and Chas fell over on his back under the table. His arms were useless, he could not get up.
Malach went to the crate of lemonade, and taking a bottle he shook it up, glancing around again as he did so at the elements of the cubby. Then he unscrewed the cap of the bottle, and poured the bubbling liquid over Chas's face, into his nostrils.
The lift reached the lobby and the great slow doors opened.
Ruth, the priestess of cats, came out. Her black hair rayed over the cape of skins. Her white face, with its rose mouth and black-shadowed eyes, showed nothing.
Frankie was behind her. "But I can drive you wherever you want. There's no strings. He gave me strict orders."
"I don't want to go in your car," said Ruth. "I told you."
"He'll create a scene."
Ruth said nothing.
Frankie called across the lobby. "Chas? The doll's just going through. No problem." Frankie stepped back in the lift. " 'S all yours."
He pushed at the button panel and the doors began to close again. They shut together like chunks of old armor and the lift slid up into the warehouse, back to the white carpet and the Bugattis.
After the lift was gone, Ruth did not move.
She stood in the foyer, seemingly waiting. She knew, had been lessoned in, the silent noise of death. Frankie, who should have known it too, had missed it.
Then Adamus came out of the wall.
He had changed, as the dead do.
"Daddy," said Ruth, clearly. And then, correcting herself, "Adam."
He was there, in the midst of the massive gray and rusty lobby, sidelit by the glare from the cubbyhole. He stayed immobile as an iron statue.
Ruth moved. She walked to him over the lobby floor, the leopardskin trailing, looking up at his face.
When she was a yard away, she halted.
"Not Da
ddy," he said. "Not Adam. My name is Malach. Say it."
"Malach," said Ruth.
He slapped her across the face.
It was a light, stinging blow, not wounding or violent, but sharp as a drawn sword.
She rocked, he caught her shoulder. As she regained her equilibrium, he let her go.
He said, "What floor?"
"Three."
The internal phone rang in the cubby.
Malach went without hesitation back into the room and lifted the receiver. Lorlo Mulley's voice was extruded, breathless.
"Don't talk, Chas. Go out and see where the girl goes. Make sure she goes somewhere. Then come up. I want you up here."
The connection clicked off.
Malach replaced the receiver.
Ruth had followed him. She gazed a moment at the legs of Chas sticking out from under the table. But Malach was already gone. He was holding the fire extinguisher. He crossed the lobby and stepped out onto the cement, where the big silver car sat against the backdrop of ruin and river.
The car had not been locked. It was unnecessary.
Malach opened the door and got in. He dropped the extinguisher on the seat.
He started the engine, which roused with a swift soft growl. The Mercedes turned on the spot, then came in smoothly backward, through the lobby, up to the doors of the lift.
Malach got out again. "Fetch a newspaper from the room."
Ruth returned into the cubby obediently. She- took a paper from the table, from the pile by the uncapped bottle of lemonade. The gold lighter lay on its side, and in the tin which had served as an ashtray, the last cigar had gone out forever.
When she brought him the paper, Malach was in the back of the Merc with the drinks cabinet opened out before him.
He had undone the decanters of vodka and brandy, the bottles of Cointreau, creme de menthe and Tia Maria. He lined them up and stuck into their tops long twists of newspaper.
Colored pins fell out of the breasts of women.
"Get the lift," said Malach. Ruth pressed the button. "When it comes, you hold down the button to keep the doors open."
"Yes, Malach."
The lift came, grudging, as if it did not like to.
When the doors were wide, Malach drove the Mercedes in backward, until the car filled up the elevator.
Malach leaned into the back of the Merc and lit the spills of paper with Arthur Simpkins's box of Swan Vestas. "Close the doors, now, Ruth."
The papers burned bright, five torches finding emeralds and tiger's-eye in the bottles. The doors were beginning to close.
Malach was out of the car. Now he leaned into the front. He shifted the Merc into drive, and brought down the fire extinguisher hard on the accelerator, jamming it. Then he was gone.
As the lift doors came together, Ruth saw Malach slip between them impossibly, the car roaring at his back.
The doors shut and the car rammed into them from inside, and the lobby shook.
Over the row Lorlo was making, running about the white carpet like a crazy beetle, rummaging in the cabinets and files, shouting at them, only Frankie heard the engine of the car wake on the forecourt.
He went to one of the big uncurtained windows to look out. And the Mercedes had gone.
"Mr. Mulley—"
"Not now, Frankie. Jesus, Frankie, help me lift this file."
Lorlo was shitting himself, it was obvious. He had sent a message back on the fax, but there had been no reply.
He might be in big trouble. For some reason, the girl was dynamite. That meant trouble for Frankie too, but Frankie had his own contingency plans. These involved shopping Lorlo as soon as was needful.
Now Lorlo was doctoring his files, or trying to, looking up all the little fiddles and indiscretions.
Honey just wanted to get out. He edged nearer and nearer to the lift.
"Mr. Mulley," said Frankie finally, "the fucking car's gone."
"Jesus. She took my car," said Lorlo.
He darted back across the room and fastened on the internal phone. "Chas? Chas? Sod him, he's not there."
Then they heard the big thump in the lift which trembled the floor. It was often noisy. Nerves might make it seem worse.
"That's him coming up now," said Frankie.
"Stupid bastard, letting her take the car. There's stuff in the car. Maybe she's gone to them—"
Lorlo pictured Ruth driving through the night to Manchester.
While he was doing this, the lift arrived.
"Chas—"
The doors opened, faster it seemed than they had ever done before. Not Chas, but the burning Mercedes came crashing through. It bowled over the screeching Honey, bumped once, and then poured toward them up the plain of white, with fire leaping from its open sides.
Lorlo and Frankie wailed like children in the dark.
Down among the dereliction, Malach stood with Ruth, in the black night above the inky river.
Together they watched the windows of the third floor of the warehouse, behind which came a sudden constipated thunder, and then a blinding whuff of light and rage of sound. All the glass shot out, a rain of stars, and tiny pieces tinkled about them like hail, and small blobs of flame and scraps of burning furnishings and papers.
Then the fiery Mercedes burst from the far end of the warehouse and dived slowly down into the prolapse of the wasteland, into the black rubbish and the weeds. Redness rose from there to the canopy of tainted city sky. Reflected in the vitriol of the river.
As the glass and flaming fragments fell, Malach had lifted part of his long coat to cover Ruth's head, and shielded her face with his hand. The coat was like a black wing, under which he had taken her.
CHAPTER 21
ALTHENE PUSHED BACK THE DOOR. "Come in." The storm had broken abruptly, and her room was lit and flickered by sheet lightning through the colored window. This was like another scene. And not like at all. Then, that time in the past, Rachaela had woken to find Adamus, and the window of the Temptation flaring upon him.
Althene's window was cunningly of a woman before a colored window, and this inner casement was a thing of irises and hyacinths.
The room was art nouveau. The dark turquoise curtains were figured in peacocks of pale greenish gold. A gilt shawl draped the midnight blue of the bed, and in tall brazen urns fanned brown and emerald feathers. On a polished table with storks' legs lay a platter of milk glass, with three apples on it, one of rose quartz, one of scratched ebony, and one of coal-blue crystal. The mirrors were of reflecting glass, rimmed by glass-paste fruits and leaves. A curtain like those of the window draped the bathroom door.
There were books strewn about. There should have been a mandoline with tassels, or some embroidery on a frame. But clearly Althene was a stylist rather than a liar.
"Isn't it charming," said Althene. "How thoughtful they are."
"Does the window open?"
"I haven't tried. In the bathroom it does. An enormous tree almost brushes the sill. Yesterday a dove came and watched me brush my teeth. It was very flattering."
Rachaela would not give in.
"About the dress. It's very kind of you, but I—"
"You have no long dresses, you said. This is a special dinner. You and I are almost alike. Cheta will come and see to the few alterations. To please them. You must."
"Why is the dinner special?"
"Kei will cook it."
"And is that the only reason?"
"Imagine, if you will," said Althene, "that they want to celebrate a possibility."
"Of what?"
"Renewal, hope, the washing away of sin."
"Whose sin?" asked Rachaela. "Mine?"
"How self-centered you are," said Althene. "If you weren't beautiful, one would want to slap you."
"I'll go." Rachaela turned to the door.
Somehow Althene was past her, blocking the exit. She flicked at a fringed rope, and another peacock curtain came down over the doorway. "I've imprisoned you. No chance
to escape until you've seen the dress." She was playful, and oddly dangerous. The power behind her eyes glowed out on Rachaela, a challenge Rachaela did not care to meet.
"You're making everything very difficult," she said.
"No, Rachaela. You are making everything very difficult. But then. Opposition is sometimes stimulating."
The lightning fluttered, and the woman at the window in the window appeared. The tap of rain came from the glass, a million dainty fingers.
"Negative ions," said Althene. "After all, let's see if the window opens."
It did.
A vein of darkness stabbed by diamonds.
Rachaela drew in a breath.
Althene stalked on her effortless high heels to the carven wardrobe. Inside, some twenty or so garments hung in suave gradations of color and texture.
"Here is mine."
Althene swept out on her arm, like a swooning princess, a thing of wine-red satin. She shook it and held it up, a dress with a deep narrow V of neck, long sleeves, a crossover bodice, padded shoulders, and sleek-waisted mermaid body. It had no ornament.
"Let me demonstrate." Althene unzipped her Mocha clothes, which fell around her like fawning dogs.
Her arms were lightly muscled, without a trace even of down. She wore a short camisole in caramel silk, with a high breast and hem edged in smoky guipure lace. She was unselfconscious to the point of parody. To be so gorgeous and not to know, was a contradiction in terms.
She slid the wine dress on over her head, receiving it like a prayer. She smoothed it down, unzipped.
"Do me up."
Like her page, Rachaela came and performed the duty. She was resigned.
Althene said, "You see. The dress I have in mind for you is the same. But white."
And from the wardrobe came the white dress, like snow, or Malach's hair. Silk, this one. From the right shoulder to the point of the V of the neck, extended a line of black embroidery, the shapes of tiny roses.
"Try," said Althene.
Rachaela stared at her. She did not want to take off her blouse and skirt before this Medusa. But then, not to do so was to back down, and they were in a sort of game, the games the Scarabae played.
And I, too, am Scarabae.
"All right."
She pulled off her top and the skirt. Althene looked at her, without any nuance of interest or committal.
