Eleonora’s eyes rolled wildly. He lifted her carefully up in his arms. She weighed no more than a run-over cat, and her feet swung as he carried her out of the door and along the hallway and out into the fog.
She made no sound; but her rolling eyes told him that she wasn’t dead.
He eased open the passenger door of his Toyota with his knee and lowered her into the seat. He carefully tightened her seatbelt so that it fitted closely around her bony, protruding hips. She stirred and trembled, and a thin string of glistening saliva slid from her lower lip. Her eyes were open and she kept looking at him, but she showed no sign that she recognized him, or that she understood what had happened to her. Larry was more shocked than he liked to admit, and when he sat down beside her, his hand was juddering so wildly that he could scarcely jab the key into the ignition.
He started up, and pulled away from the curb. A taxi blasted its horn at him because he had forgotten to switch on his lights, and he had pulled away without making a signal. “I’m sorry! Scusi! I didn’t see you!” he called.
“Forget it!” the driver shouted back. “I never expect assholes to have eyes!” If Larry hadn’t been so distressed, he would have taken his number and reported him. But right now, all he cared about was getting this collapsed crow’s-nest that had once been his mother off to the hospital.
He clamped his flashing red light on to the roof of his Toyota and drove at full throttle. The car bucked and bounced as he drove across Larkin. The fog was so thick that all he could see was blurred lights, ghostly fluorescent signs.
“Mario!” his mother croaked, swiveling her head around.
“Momma, everything’s okay, just keep quiet!” Larry reassured her.
“Mario!” his mother screamed.
“Momma, everything’s okay. This won’t take long. You had an accident, that’s all.”
But his mother twisted around to stare at him and her eyes were crammed with hatred. “Mario, you bastard, you betrayed me, you bastard.”
“Momma, listen,” said Larry, laying his hand on his mother’s arm. “This is Larry. You had an accident. Everything’s going to be fine. Just take it easy, everything’s going to be terrific.”
His suspension slammed as he drove across Polk. His mother was almost thrown out of her seatbelt. A red bread truck pulled in front of him in the fog, Lasorda’s Pane Integrate, a fucking Italian bread truck, and he swerved and leaned on the horn.
“Police!” he screamed out of the window. “Get out of the fucking way!”
The driver couldn’t hear him over the bellowing of his rig, and simply waved.
He skidded, spun the wheel, and almost lost the Toyota on the intersection with Van Ness. His mother’s tufted head knocked against the window, but she continued to rant and babble and curse.
“You went with that girl, you went with that girl, and you took her to bed, didn’t you, on our anniversary, our silver anniversary, and all the family waiting for us and you were late, and they knew where you’d been.”
“Momma, calm down,” Larry told her. “We’re almost there, okay?”
“You know nothing,” his mother spat; and convulsed.
“Momma, please hold on. Three minutes, we’re there.”
“You know nothing,” she raged.
“Come on, momma, you know what grandpa always used to say. Giovane potesse, vecchio sapesse. The young people got the energy, the old people got the know-how.”
“You know nothing, you bastard,” his mother screeched. “You humiliated me, time and time again, in front of your family. You made me feel so small.”
“Momma, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
His mother arched backward in her seat, trembling and muttering. Larry was almost hysterical. What the hell have I done? he thought. I’ve destroyed my own mother, destroyed her. That elegant witty woman I loved so much. Holy Mother, look at her now, look at her now!
Like some shabby malevolent dwarf. Swearing, drooling and rolling her eyes. Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis.
“Momma, for God’s sake, hold on.”
But then, halfway between Willow and Eddy, his mother started throwing herself from side to side, her thin arms flailing, her feet kicking. She forced herself in front of Larry and snatched and bit at his hand.
The Toyota swerved across the street and collided broadside with a slowly moving truck. Pieces of trim and smashed plastic glittered in the fog. Larry spun the wheel but his mother clawed at his face and bit at his ear and his scalp. He forced her away, but she came back at him with even great ferocity, screeching and panting and spitting. It was like trying to fight off a demented cat.
“Momma, for the love of God!”
She bit at his face, and he felt her teeth crunch against his cheekbone. The Toyota skidded, slewed end-over-end, hit the curb backward and slammed against a hydrant. The windshield dropped out in a hailstorm of toughened glass. Larry’s head knocked against the steering-wheel and he felt his back twist against the seat.
Still screeching, his mother scrambled out of the open windshield and on to the glass-strewn hood. He tried to snatch at her ankle, but she was far too quick for him. “You!” she kept screaming at him. “You betrayed me! You humiliated me!”
Half-hopping, half-falling, she jumped down from the car and into the road.
Even Larry didn’t see the huge green tractor-trailer that was bellowing up Van Ness on its way to the Golden Gate. He was too shocked, the fog was too thick. For some reason, he didn’t even hear it.
But just as his mother limped crabwise across the road, the rig emerged from the fog with its klaxons blaring.
“Momma!” Larry yelled; although she was scarcely his momma any more.
The tractor’s wheels missed the crouched little creature by inches; but she tried to dart in front of the trailer’s wheels, right underneath the rig. One huge tire crushed her on to the road-surface as if she were nothing more than sticks and rags. The brakes locked. The tires howled in a long agonized chorus. Eleonora Foggia was jammed right beneath the wheel, and it dragged her along for nearly thirty feet, so that she was nothing more than a wide scarlet smear on the pavement, gruesomely decorated with smashed fragments of hair and bone and ripped-apart fabric and glistening pig’s-caul intestines.
Larry lowered his head. His knees ached where they had collided with the underneath of the dash. His chin was wet with blood. He didn’t know what to do next, whether to sit here and wait for somebody to help him; or whether to pretend that he wasn’t here at all.
A black man in a windbreaker stared into the open windshield. “How’re you doing, man?” he wanted to know.
“Good. Good. I’m doing good,” said Larry.
“That your kid got run over?”
Larry shook his head. “It wasn’t a kid, it was—” He touched his eyes with his hands and realized that he was weeping. “Shit,” he said, annoyed at his own weakness.
“I was the first here, wasn’t I?” the black man asked him.
“Sure,” said Larry. He picked up his r/t and miraculously it still worked. While the black man stared at him in fascination, he called police headquarters and asked to speak to Houston Brough. Houston was supposed to have left for home, but Glass said that was probably over on 24th Street, interviewing a man who said his neighbor had been chanting and burning incense all night. Larry’s voice kept trembling, and he had to stop from time to time and take deep breaths to control himself.
“Houston? I’ve had a traffic accident on Van Ness. Between Eddy and Willow. It sounds like the cavalry’s already on its way. Listen, I’m fine, I’m not hurt, but my mother was, um, killed.”
“Jesus, Larry, I don’t know what to say.”
“Listen, Houston, she wasn’t quite what she used to be. She—she’d changed, like Edna-Mae.”
“She’d what? I didn’t catch that.”
“She’d changed, like Edna-Mae Lickerman. I don’t know, shrunk. She went crazy in the car and
tried to scratch me to pieces.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to talk to Wilbert Fraser. Then I’m coming back to Bryant Street. What’s the time now?”
“Ten, a little after.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you at eleven-thirty. And, do me a favour, will you? Call Linda and tell her what’s happened. Tell her my mother couldn’t have felt a thing. Tell her I’m fine, no problems. Tell her I’ll call her later.”
“Ten-four, lieutenant.”
By now, two patrol cars and an ambulance had arrived at the scene. Across the street, a Chinese police officer had caught hold of the arm of the truck driver, who had climbed down from his rig and was walking around in a circle. Larry wrenched open the distorted door of his Toyota and climbed stiffly out. A young cop came up to him and said, “Are you okay, sir? You shouldn’t try to move just yet awhile. I’ll have the paramedic check you over.”
Larry produced his badge. “I need a ride,” he said, in a woolly voice. “Check with your partner, then get me over to Jackson Street.”
“Sure,” said Larry. “Whatever.”
“Just give us some time, lieutenant. We’re going to have to take down some details. You know what I mean? Paperwork.”
He waited beside his wrecked car, smearing the blood from his face with Kleenex. He didn’t look over at the tractor-trailer or the dark shining smear on the roadway that used to be his mother. The red ambulance lights flashed on his face; and on the face of the curious black man, who stood beside him respectfully and almost proprietorially. “I was the first here, wasn’t I?” he asked again.
Larry nodded. “Sure you were. No question about it.”
*
The last of Wilbert Fraser’s seance guests were just driving away as Larry arrived back at Jackson Street. Samantha Bacon, wrapped in a white fluffy fun-fur coat (no actress, not even an almost-forgotten face like Samantha Bacon, could afford to wear anything environmentally unsound.) Bembridge Caldwell, looking blue-gray and profoundly unwell.
Larry thanked the young police officer for the ride, and climbed out. As he came limping up the steps, Wilbert Fraser was waiting for him by the open front door.
“Larry! My God! What’s happened?” he asked. “You look like you’ve been in a car wreck.”
“Very astute of you,” said Larry. His lips felt like cotton wadding. “We had an accident on Van Ness. My mother’s dead.”
“She’s dead? Eleonora’s dead? You’re not serious? Eleonora?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m totally serious.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, God. Oh, dear, I don’t know what to say.”
Wilbert Fraser bit his lip. Larry could see the tears sparkling in the corners of his eyes, and prayed to God that he would have the strength not to cry, too. Not just yet, anyway. Let me cry in private, when this is all over.
“I need to talk to you,” he told Wilbert Fraser.
“Of course, of course, anything. Come in. Do you want to wash up? I can lend you a clean shirt. Oh, your poor mother! Dear, dear Eleonora! How did it happen?”
Wilbert Fraser closed the front door behind them, and led Larry through to a large bathroom with a marble basin and mahogany paneling and prints of naked boy snake-charmers being admired by hawklike Arabs. “You can wash up in there. Don’t worry if you get blood on the towels. Would you like some coffee?”
“I need something stronger than coffee, Mr. Fraser.”
“Please call me Wilbert. I was named after my great-grandfather. You know, Wilbert Bullock? He had the power too. It almost undid him.”
Larry was startled when he saw himself in the mirror. His face was swathed in dried blood and there was an ugly bruised lump on his right cheek where his mother had bitten him. His hands were covered in bites and scratches too. His hair was white with dust and sparkled with powdered glass.
Slowly, carefully, he filled the basin with hot water and washed himself. The water turned rusty with blood. Then he limped across to the living-room, where Wilbert was waiting for him with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two cut-crystal glasses.
“Please, sit down,” said Wilbert.
Larry sat in a large brown-velour armchair, and took a large mouthful of whiskey. He shuddered as he drank it, and it burned his throat; but it warmed him up, and relaxed him, and overwhelmed that dreadful thumping heart-attack feeling caused by too much adrenalin surging round his system.
Wilbert said, “I don’t really understand why you want to talk to me.”
“We held a seance of our own,” said Larry.
“I don’t follow.”
“We went home this evening, my mother and me, and we held a seance of our own. My mother was sure that she could handle it. She used to hold seances all the time with my grandmother.”
Wilbert said, “Damn.” Then, “Damn, damn, damn.” He looked up. “She wanted you to talk to your father, I suppose?”
Larry nodded. “She was so excited that I saw that little girl tonight. She was so excited because I actually believed.”
“What happened?” asked Wilbert gravely, taking off his spectacles and folding them. “The spirits were very unsettled tonight. Dreadfully unsettled.”
“We held up our hands, same way we did when we were here. I know, I know. I know what you said. It takes a really powerful medium to handle that kind of a seance. I did try to remind her. But she wanted to do it the same way as you. Bare wires, know what I mean?”
“Of course,” nodded Wilbert. “But incredibly risky.”
“You’re not kidding. The lights went out… then my mother’s coat dragged all of this ectoplasm out of my hand. Well… I guess it was ectoplasm. We had a coat that stood by itself.”
“Oh, God,” Wilbert despaired. “Didn’t either of you have the least idea of the danger? I mean, communicating with the spirit-world is usually safe, just like flying in a 747 is usually safe. But you wouldn’t let a three-year-old kid fly a 747, would you? Well, would you? Any more than you should have allowed somebody as inexperienced as Eleonora to contact the dead!”
“I didn’t realize,” said Larry. “I told her to be careful. I told her to hold hands.”
“It wouldn’t have made all that much difference, holding hands, if you were up against a spirit who could drag that much ectoplasm out of you.”
“Oh,” said Larry, feeling worse than ever. He swallowed more whiskey.
Wilbert looked at him thoughtfully. “Your hand, did you say?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said it took the ectoplasm out of your hand?”
“That’s correct. Anything wrong?”
“No, no. Of course not. But it’s very unusual. Most of the time the spirits take it out of your side, or your stomach, or occasionally your head. You don’t often hear of ectoplasm appearing out of your hand. Let me take a look at it, would you?”
Larry sat forward in his seat and held out his hand. Wilbert took hold of it and turned it around, carefully scrutinizing the palm. Then, still holding it, he raised his head and looked directly into Larry’s eyes.
“You’re one of them?” he asked, in disbelief.
“One of who?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Jesus! The moving hand.”
Larry abruptly took his hand back. “You know about this stuff?”
“For sure. You’re one of the Black Brotherhood. No wonder my seance with Margot Tryall went so haywire.”
“The Black Brotherhood? What the hell is the Black Brotherhood?”
“You have the moving hand and you don’t know what the Black Brotherhood is?”
“Should I?”
“The Black Brotherhood was one of the most powerful occult groups that San Francisco ever knew.”
“Dogmeat Jones mentioned something about that.”
“They were fearsome—truly fearsome,” said Wilbert. Then, changing the subject, “Is Dogmeat still around? I haven’t seen Dogmeat in a long, long time.”
“You haven’t seen Edna-Mae Lickerman in quite a while, either,” Larry added.
“No,” Wilbert admitted, with embarrassment. “Of course, yes, I was just pretending that I didn’t know her. As a matter of fact I knew her real well. I’m sorry I didn’t fess up to it this evening: I was being defensive. I have an aversion to policemen who can’t stop being policemen, even when they’re off duty. It tends to make it difficult to be totally open with them.”
Larry finished his whiskey. “As a matter of fact, Wilbert, tonight I was on duty. I’m assigned to the Fog City Satan.”
“I see. You didn’t think that anybody here could have—”
“No, no, of course not. But the Fog City Satan keeps on giving this warning. Something terrible is going to come over from the other side with the express intention of eating San Francisco for lunch. To feed, that’s the word he keeps using. Up until tonight, I didn’t know anything about the other side, except what my mother had told me, and that’s why I came. Now, well, shit. I wish to God I hadn’t.”
“I’m sorry, Larry,” said Wilbert. “You don’t know how much.”
“What I need to know is—is there any possibility that some kind of spirit can come back from the other side?” asked Larry. “Sort of, like, come back to life?”
“You’re talking about resurrection? Genuine resurrection?”
“I guess so.”
“Well… there are myths and legends about it,” Wilbert replied. “There are several rituals, too. But whether these rituals work or not...”
“This Black Brotherhood… is that the kind of thing that they were into?”
Wilbert gave him an evasive shrug.
“Could the Black Brotherhood have anything to do with the Fog City Satan?” Larry persisted. “I’m trying to establish a link here, Wilbert. I’m trying to get a toehold.”
“You tell me, Larry. You’re the man with the moving hand.”
Larry held his open palm close to Wilbert’s face. “I told you. I got this by accident, Wilbert, not by design. If I knew how to get rid of it, I would. Now I need to know, Wilbert. I need to know everything whether you think it’s relevant or not. Who were the Black Brotherhood, for instance? And what do you think’s going down?”
Black Angel Page 18
