Crystal Whisperer (Spotless Series #3)

by Camilla Monk

  I worded my next question carefully. “Would you say that, within your moral frame of reference, this guy deserved to be . . . uh . . . to have that done to him? Because he had committed some sort of crime?”

  “Irrelevant. Plastination is, however, a fascinating process.”

  “Come on! I’m trying to find you excuses, and you’re just being an asshole!”

  “Careful, little Island.” We both knew the threat was—almost—empty; he pulled out a tiny black smartphone and shot me a condescending glare. “There. March is on his way. Happy now?”

  “Is he okay?”

  Dries removed a toddler out of his way, casually lifting her by the handle of her Mickey Mouse backpack, under the parents’ horrified stares. “I certainly hope not. That idiot let Morgan escape. He’d better show up with a missing leg for it.”

  Morgan? So, Dries already knew that the leak had come from Alex. What else exactly did he know?

  He took us through a maze of backstreets, zigzagging away from the Rialto and into San Polo. A long-suffering sigh reached my ears. “What did I hire him for?”

  “You didn’t hire March. You whined for help because you’re burnt like toast,” I muttered.

  “As you would be, were it not for my generous intervention.”

  I nearly choked with indignation. “Because it was entirely your fault in the first place!”

  He paused midstep, a dangerous gleam in his golden eyes. “It was. However, imagine my surprise when I told March that a cleaning team was on its way to his house, and he informed me that you were in said house.” I opened my mouth to protest. He cut me off. “I remember stating you didn’t have my blessing.”

  “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work like that. What I do, and who I do it with, is none of your business, Dries.”

  His chest heaved as if he was going to lose his temper, but whatever rage had been boiling in there he kept in check behind a mask of disdain. “Betrayed by my own blood. Twice. Now, hush and walk. We will have this conversation again, young lady.”

  12

  The Golden Mountain

  In her palm, the meatballs felt hot, moist and heavy.

  —Terry Robs, The Italian Chef’s Secret Sauce

  The pizza boxes and soda bottles overflowing from the trash cans made for a decent sundial: I’d say we reached the quiet neighborhood of Campo San Tomà around lunchtime. We slipped into a passageway so narrow Dries and I could barely walk side by side. He stopped in front of a tall door recessed in an arch that was supported by two sculpted columns. The building was in poor condition, as evidenced by the bricks showing under what had once been a layer of plaster and red paint. The intricate Moorish designs and latticed windows suggested a fifteenth-or sixteenth-century house, the sort of gift Venice bestowed upon those brave enough to get lost in its streets until nightfall.

  I wondered if he owned the place, since he made it past a rather complicated door code. Ahead of us, a corridor led to a wrought iron gate barring access to a private Eden: a small patch of garden where thick foliage surrounded cascading glycine and fragrant rosebushes. I couldn’t wait to take a better look, but the gate refused to budge when Dries turned the knob. He slammed his thumb on a plastic intercom on the wall. “Dikkenek, maak oop die hek.” Dikkenek, open the gate.

  Dikkenek? Wasn’t that the name Isiporho had mentioned in Cape Town? Another Lion then. The lock clicked, triggering loud barking and the heavy patter of claws, first on the floor above us and then in the garden’s gravel. I jumped back, and Dries closed the gate just in time, before a hurricane of brownish hair and flappy jowls rammed against it. Through the rusty-iron bars, a fat bulldog snarled at us. Dries rang the intercom again with an irritated sigh. “En neem beheer van jou hond.” And control your dog.

  A gravelly male voiced thundered from somewhere inside the house. “Andrea, zwijg! Kom hier terug!” Andrea, be quiet! Come back here!

  With a final reluctant yelp, the dog retreated, and this time legitimate footsteps crushed the gravel. Before us stood some sort of . . . old Viking. Think Jeffrey Lebowski—The Dude—but with bright-yellow paint stains all over his T-shirt and cargo shorts and even some clinging to his mess of shoulder-length blond hair. I paid little attention to his right hand until he pulled the gate open. Alerted by an unexpected whirring sound, I looked down. The sleek carbon fiber reached all the way up his arm and under the sleeve of his T-shirt. I made a note that the metallic joints had amazing coordination: his elbow and fingers moved smoothly as he showed us in.

  I tried to avert my eyes, but he noticed I’d been staring. “Feast your eyes; I don’t mind. You can call me Jan, by the way.” His accent was different than Dries’s, a little softer maybe. In any case, save for the beer belly, this guy looked strong enough to open a thousand pickle jars.

  “You look worse and worse every time I see you, broer,” Dries said with a smirk.

  Nice greeting, especially to a guy who was obviously going through the trouble of hiding us.

  “And you’ve come a long way down, Vice Commander,” our host shot back. The curl of his lips under that yellowish beard belied the harsh statement.

  Once in the garden, I basked in the scent of flowers and crushed leaves hanging in the air. Andrea now lay sprawled in a bed of violets, watching us through heavy-lidded eyes. God, that dog was a zeppelin.

  “So is it Dikkenek or Jan?” I asked the guy as he opened a worm-eaten wooden door leading inside the house.

  That made him laugh, but I received no further clarification.

  “He was from Brussels, and he always had a big mouth,” Dries commented with a shrug, as if it explained everything.

  It sort of did. Past tense: Jan’s career was over, likely because he was missing his right arm. Different accent: The guy was from Belgium, where Dikkenek was not-so-nice slang to designate a boastful, big-mouthed type of individual.

  Andrea’s frenzied bark broke through our chitchat. The front door had been opened; someone else was inviting themselves into Jan’s little paradise. I ran toward the gate, with the dog springing after me—his owner grabbed him by the collar with a powerful left hand, otherwise this story might have ended then and there. I jumped into March’s arms when he walked in. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” His hand brushed down my side, where a bullet had grazed me and left a smarting sensation and a little dried blood on the torn cotton. “We need to take care of this.”

  I looked up to see that he had earned a gash of his own, under his ear, and much closer to his carotid than I was comfortable with. “I’m fine; what happened to you?”

  “Mr. Morgan was very insistent I should spend the rest of the afternoon with him.”

  “The little shit’s father taught him well.” Dries stood with his arms crossed, dark amusement in his eyes.

  I balled my fists, willing myself not to react. Alex’s father? How well had Dries known him before his death?

  Against me, March stiffened. He planted his gaze in his mentor’s. “Speaking of that . . . we need to talk.”

  Before Dries had a chance to say a word, Jan waved his prosthetic arm to the open door revealing the half-painted walls of his living room. “Band-Aids and pasta first?”

  If it had been up to me, I’d have followed March to a room upstairs to help him take care of his neck—and provided all manner of physical comfort in the process. Hélas! Dries stated that he didn’t want the two of us alone together, and I guess it would have been awkward anyway for us to disappear into a bedroom, even just to kiss. Because, you know, not in public. Even behind locked doors.

  So, after having disinfected my own scrape and put a Band-Aid on it, I found myself helping Jan cook pasta in a kitchen that was okay by my standards and a lot less so by March’s. I sliced an onion on the stone counter while he opened a box of spaghetti with the consummate skill of a man who lived alone. At Jan’s feet, Andrea didn’t miss a detail of the preparation, his tongue dangling and salivating in a disgusting manner whe
n Jan grabbed a large box of meatballs from his freezer. For having a “big mouth,” the man was oddly quiet though.

  “It’s a beautiful house,” I said, hoping to strike up conversation while he put the meatballs in the microwave, inside which enough food splatters remained to make a second meal.

  “Bought it for my wife. She grew up in the area, and she wanted to renovate it.” He glanced at the half-painted yellow walls of the living area behind us. “Now I’m doing it with Andrea, but I’m not sure about the colors . . . and he doesn’t even see them.”

  I scanned the haphazard paint strokes and brand-new red tiling around us in the kitchen. “Did your wife leave?”

  “She died last year. Cancer.”

  My hands let go of the knife. Good job, Island! “I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah . . . she was a fine woman. Damn shame.”

  Remembering March’s conversation with Pieter, back in Cape Saint Francis, I submitted to the custom Jan had no doubt adopted during his years in South Africa and confirmed his statement with a little nod. “Shame.”

  He resumed watching the bubbling water. I hesitated to tell him that it wouldn’t boil if he kept looking at it—a well-known, albeit inexplicable, scientific phenomenon. Considering my previous misstep, however, I decided to tread on safer ground. I pointed at the line of golden trophies on top of a cupboard. “Wow, you won the . . . um . . . Montagna d’Oro cup? Several times?”

  “Not me, Andrea.”

  I turned to the culprit, sprawled on his side and watching my every move as I started stirring the tomato sauce. “Wow . . . like some kind of”—I cringed, noticing that drool had started to pool on the terracotta tiles under Andrea’s glistening chin—“pageant?”

  Jan gave me a look mirroring that of his dog. “It’s fried polenta. A fried-polenta eating contest.”

  “For dogs?”

  “Yup. They hold it in Ca’ Savio every summer. They set up a tent on the beach; people come to watch.”

  “No way!”

  At last, he threw the spaghetti in the boiling water with a prideful grin. This baby here”—he pointed his finger at Andrea—“can eat six pounds of polenta in four minutes and twenty seconds. We smashed that Great Dane last year!”

  “Sweet Jesus! Does he throw it up afterward?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You know, maybe it’s bad for him.”

  On Jan’s forehead, the lines deepened. “You’re judging.”

  “Absolutely not. But he’s already really fat—”

  “We tried the local pet fit club; it wasn’t his thing.”

  Arms akimbo, I forced an air of severity on my face. “I don’t see any pet food—you’re only feeding him leftovers, right?”

  Jan took a wary step back. “It depends. He doesn’t like—”

  “Will you need any help, Island?”

  I whirled around. How long had March been standing there? And, more importantly, how the hell had he managed to clean up so fast? Even the fresh bloodstains on his collar had disappeared, a slight dampness the only indication that a miracle had taken place. My man was a wizard.

  “No, we’re almost done. Can you just bring these outside?” I said, handing him four plates to be set on the table standing in the garden.

  He took them, his gaze traveling between Andrea and Jan. “Weight Watchers, perhaps?”

  It was like a weird family lunch, where half of the guests wore holsters, one kept feeding pasta to his dog as if we wouldn’t notice, and March and I stole glances at each other every time Dries looked down at his plate. Cutlery clinked softly; the Parmesan mill traveled across the table. No one dared to say a word until the patriarch of this clichéd play poured himself a second glass of priceless red Quintarelli to go with his frozen meatballs.

  “I’m going to have to supervise your dating. I have a few names in mind, nice boys,” Dries said, almost absently.

  The shot was, however, precisely calculated. Across the table, Jan cast me a look of sorrow.

  March paused halfway in the process of dividing a meatball in four perfect quarter spheres. “I don’t remember that we came here for that.”

  Dries’s eyes sent daggers my way. “And, yet, poor choices were made that brought us together here and now. Were you happy to see Mr. Morgan again, by the way?”

  I welcomed the blow with gritted teeth. Point made. He’d somehow learned of my involvement with Alex and expected me to go through each Station of the Cross to beg for forgiveness. I wouldn’t. “Stop this. Alex is trying to destroy you because you killed his parents. Don’t make this about me.” On my plate, the tomato sauce now looked mildly disgusting. “I was just a means to an end.”

  Across the table, Dries leaned back in his chair. “Always so blunt. If you insist, let’s get it out of the way. Yes, I got rid of Morgan Senior. Yes, there were unexpected side casualties. We all live with our ghosts, and we don’t let them get in the way of the job—that’s how it works.”

  Our “ghosts”, huh? Like my mom. Just a ghost that got in the way of the job. I dropped my fork onto my plate. I would have preferred some sob story about a botched job, sprinkled with a few regretful sighs, rather than this cynical detachment.

  I rapped my fingers on the table. “Good for you. I mean, if you’re cool about it. I guess it’s easier for Alex to hate you that way.”

  March covered my hand with his to stop the rapping. “Why did you kill him?” he asked Dries.

  “He’d served his purpose, and I didn’t trust him much.” I noticed Jan’s imperceptible nod of approval as Dries concluded with an exasperated sigh. “Are we going to go over every single frumentarius I ever erased, or can we move on?”

  I looked up from my plate. Frumentarius?

  March’s reaction was different than mine. Not curiosity, but rather pure shock as his eyes fluttered wide open, and the muscles in his jaw contracted. “I’m sorry, come again?”

  13

  The Grain Collectors

  Neither his pungent garlic breath, nor the thick layer of fat protecting his middle from sword cuts could stop her: She wanted this powerful warrior passionately.

  Hope Knight, The Gladiator’s Sheath

  “The father was a frumentarius. I thought you’d have figured it out by now,” Dries said to March, helping himself to a couple more meatballs.

  I had no idea what he meant by that, but March seemed to be reeling, an infrequent occurrence for him . . . except around Dries. “Is Mr. Morgan aware of this?”

  A barking laugh burst from Dries’s chest. “I hope so. If I recall well, his boss didn’t exactly try to stop us, back then. Erwin was done with him too. Gladly threw him to the Lions, in fact.”

  March shot up from his chair, nearly toppling the table over. My heart jostled. All color had drained from his face, and his features seemed paralyzed, as if he were struggling to curb the kind of rage no one wants to be on the receiving end of.

  Here we go. Erwin. Again.

  Alex’s boss. I preferred to call him “the Caterpillar,” because the guy enjoyed cigarillos, and he was a pretentious asswipe who deserved to get knocked off of his mushroom—said mushroom being a shadow subdivision of the CIA’s Directorate of Foreign Operations, for which March had carried out some nasty wet jobs in his former life. Erwin and March shared a long and grisly history together, punctuated by minor incidents such as Erwin pushing one of his agents into March’s bed, only to later send her to her death during a mission in Ivory Coast. Nothing huge. It wasn’t like March had dragged around some serious emotional trauma for years after Charlotte’s horrendous death.

  Why was I not surprised to learn that a manipulative asshole like the Caterpillar had hired and groomed a young Alex after he had engineered his father’s death? Did Alex know any of this?

  Next to me, March spoke to Dries without even looking at him, each word enunciated slowly, dangerously, balanced on the edge of a razor blade. “A word with you.”

  I sprang up too, on
ly to be stopped by his palm on my shoulder, gentle but inflexible. “Island. No.”

  He and Dries left the table and disappeared into Jan’s house. In his own chair, our host appeared curious but otherwise unaffected. I wondered how much he had seen in his life, how many secrets he had kept to become so jaded. I took a calming breath and sat back. “What’s a frumentarius? What did Dries do this time?”

  Jan’s shoulders heaved in a lazy shrug. “Nothing he hasn’t done before.”

  Shouts in Afrikaans suddenly burst from the house. My head jerked up to a window on the second floor. Behind the reflection of the afternoon clouds in the glass, March’s silhouette paced in a room, tearing Dries’s head off about something. I could only grasp a few intelligible bits of his booming voice. “Is hy? . . . Het Anies . . . ?” Is he? . . . Did Anies . . . ?

  “Jan, what are they talking about?”

  His features pinched. He looked left and right, stroking his bushy beard. “The Frumentarii . . . you could call them spies. I say they’re just assholes who’re not brave or skilled enough to join the brotherhood.”

  I moved my chair to his, my voice down to a whisper. “Spies for the Lions?”

  He lowered his voice. “Actually it means grain collector. In the old times, they were legionnaires spying for the Roman Emperor . . . and for us. There’s no grain left to collect, and the empire is long gone.” He winked. “But we’re still here, and there are other empires to spy on. They don’t get carved. Most of them work for other chicken coops. They’re our foxes.”

  Good thing I was sitting. Because as it turned out, Alex’s dad had been a double agent feeding intel to the Lions. I remembered March’s words at Pieter’s garage, when I’d asked if Lions ever took their phones to let the CIA know of their plans: It depends.