City of the Snakes tct-3

by Darren Shan

  “No,” Leo smiles. “I’m glad you came. I feel better knowing the truth. It’s like you’ve given Bill back to me after those other people tried to take him away with lies.”

  I study Leo’s eyes and see a peace in them that wasn’t there when I arrived. His life will never be perfect — it can’t be, not with all that he’s suffered — but it won’t be quite as grim as it was. Part of me envies him that peace, but for the most part I’m pleased for him.

  “I’ll go now,” I say, standing and stretching. Then I remember the story I fed him and quickly tie up the loose ends. “Those bastards won’t get any further with their stories about Bill. I’ll put a stop to them.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Leo says. “Let them lie all they want. I don’t care now that I know the truth.” He leans against the tree and sighs. “Would you mind if I didn’t see you off? I’d rather sit here and rest awhile, think about Bill.”

  “That’s fine. It was nice meeting you, Leo.”

  “You too, Al,” he murmurs, closing his eyes and snuggling up to the tree.

  I watch the wretched old man for a few seconds, thinking about Bill, Paucar Wami and the dark secrets of the past. Then, skirting the central building — I don’t feel up to another conversation with Nora — I locate my driver and tell him to get me back to the station as quickly as he can. I’m anxious to return to my ugly, cramped but familiar and comforting hovel in the city.

  6: kkk

  It’s a relief to be back. When I got off the train last night I walked home, even though it took ages. It was like a stroll through paradise, soaking up the noise and stench of the city, relishing the feel of the pavement beneath my feet, the crush of the crowds outside movie theaters and in public squares, the intensity of the lights, the overpowering, converging buildings that block out most of the sky and make me feel as if I’m inside a dome. It’s not healthy, this fear I’ve developed of the world beyond. Addictions are dangerous, and addiction to a city — especially one with as polluted a soul as this — is downright perverse. But I can’t help myself. I’ve devoted my last ten years to darkness and insanity, and in the eyes of the world I’m a monster. I need somewhere to hide from those condemning eyes — a lair.

  It was late when I got home, and I was tired, so I stayed in and wrote a report of my meeting with Leo. I read through it several times once it was finished, in case it would spark any new ideas. Then I burned it. This apartment has been burgled twice and might be again — it’s not the safest of neighborhoods. I wouldn’t want such a sensitive document falling into someone else’s hands.

  I’d like to pursue the Bill angle — I toy with the idea of abducting Leo and putting out word that I have him and won’t release him unless Bill shows his face — but I can’t risk pissing off Ford Tasso. If he learns I’ve been hunting for Bill instead of for his Cardinal, he could bring the full wrath of Party Central down upon me.

  So, putting the mystery of Bill and Paucar Wami to one side, I return to the Capac Raimi puzzle. I spend Tuesday locating Ama Situwa’s friends. Most are easy to track down. I contact them by phone and ask about her, pretending to be an insurance agent, trying to find her in order to pay out on a premium. Only one of them — Shelly Odone — can recall Cafran Reed’s temporary daughter.

  “Ama and I were great friends. We enjoyed some wild nights on the town.” She giggles at the memories. Shelly lives abroad, with the man she married eight years ago. She left the city shortly before Ferdinand Dorak died. She wasn’t here when the brainwashing fog was working its wonders. That’s why she remembers Ama.

  “Did you ever hear from her after you moved?” I ask.

  “No. I called the restaurant a few times, but she must have had a major row with her father because he wouldn’t even admit to having a daughter. Will you let me know if you find her? I’d love to hear what she’s been up to.”

  No luck with Situwa’s favored restaurants, bars, clubs, beauty salons, shops or gym. I do the rounds of all of them, Wednesday and Thursday, in Al Jeery guise, again pretending to be an insurance agent.

  I break from my investigations on Thursday evening to attend a book auction. Many rare first editions in the biggest sale to hit the city in six or seven years. I weave in and out of the crowd of excited bookworms in my security guard clothes, scanning the faces of elderly men, searching for Bill. I leave an hour before the conclusion, bemused by the frenzied bidding and increasingly crazy prices fetched by the novels.

  Later, as Paucar Wami, I visit a couple of the bars and clubs I hit earlier, and convince the managers to pass me copies of their surveillance discs, which I’ll sift through, watching closely in case Ama made an appearance and was caught on camera. A shot in the dark, but I have to try. I’ll sift through the society columns in papers and magazines too, studying photos. I can do that in Party Central — they have copies of all the city’s periodicals on file. It won’t be fun, and I doubt it’ll lead anywhere, but it’s all part of a detective’s sorry lot.

  Friday morning, I purchase a pair of TV sets and DVD players, using the credit card Mags sent me the day after I accepted the case. I have them delivered and I ask the team — a middle-aged man and his teenage son — to hook up the equipment. They say that they know nothing about that, they’re just the monkeys who lug this stuff around. One generous tip later, they become instant experts, and I’m soon in business.

  I crack open a beer, then settle back and play two discs simultaneously, eyes flicking lizard-like from one TV to the other, drinking in faces, comparing them to Ama Situwa’s, dismissing most automatically. A few cause me to hit the pause button, but on closer study they aren’t my woman and it’s back to the action, watching, waiting, blinking as seldom as possible.

  One of the discs runs out before the other. I let the second get to the end before ejecting both and inserting a fresh pair. A short break to rest my eyes, then it’s back to the discs, the silence of the apartment disturbed only by my breathing and the soft whirring of the DVD players.

  I’m on my fourth set of discs when my cell rings. I’m glad for the distraction. I’m accustomed to long, lonely vigils, stalking prey, but a live stakeout can be exciting, despite the hours of inactivity. This is just a drag.

  I check the incoming number but don’t recognize it. This influx of unfamiliar callers is annoying. “Hello?” I answer neutrally, ready to be Al Jeery or Paucar Wami, depending on who the caller’s looking for.

  “Al? It’s Flo. I got your number from Fabio’s book. Hope you don’t mind me calling.”

  “Of course not. Is he dead?”

  “No,” she sighs, “but he’s not far off. I thought you might like to be with him at the end. You don’t have to come, but—”

  “I’ll be there,” I interrupt softly. “He’s at home?”

  “Yes. He made us promise we wouldn’t move him to a hospital. He wanted to die in his own bed.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Switching off the TVs, I eject the discs and hide them behind the loose panels at the back of my wardrobe — not a great hiding place, but they should be safe from amateur burglars — then slap on my Al Jeery face paint and wig, remove the green contacts, take off the severed, varnished finger hanging from my neck, and hurry downstairs with my bike.

  The house is crowded with Fabio’s friends and relatives, all come to cheer the old pimp off, as he would have wished. Beer and whisky flow like water. Spirits are already high. Pulsing music blares from Fabio’s CD player — he developed a taste for R & B late in life — and the space closest to the speakers is full of younger mourners, bopping their heads. The older members occupy rooms nearer the back, where they complain to each other about the noise.

  Flo and Drake are playing host, along with a handful of others who helped look after Fabio in his twilight years. They pass around food, clear away empties, keep the peace between the young and old, and guard the entrance to Fabio’s bedroom, making sure he isn’t overcrowded.

  “Can I
sit with him awhile?” I ask Flo during a quiet moment.

  “Sure,” she smiles wearily. “We’re giving everyone a few minutes with him, to say goodbye and wish him well, but you can stay as long as you want. You’re one of his favorites.”

  “It’s good to have friends in high places,” I grin, then head through. I find him unconscious, as he’s been for most of the last twenty-four hours. Zeba — one of Fabio’s ladies — tells me they don’t expect him to open his eyes again.

  “We asked if he wanted us to call you over, the last few times he was awake,” Zeba says softly, wiping sweat from his forehead. “He said not to bother. Said you knew each other too long for sentimental shit like that. Said there wasn’t nothing you could say now that you hadn’t said before.”

  “Cantankerous to the end,” I snort, laying the back of my hand on his cheeks, one after the other, feeling the coldness of death in them. “Any idea how long he has left?”

  “A few hours. His body’s all busted. I reckon he’s only hanging on for one last blast of music. Soon as them youngsters stop playing the songs, he’ll up and quit.”

  “Maybe we should let them play on indefinitely,” I suggest.

  “Nah,” she smiles. “He’s done here. Let the old tomcat go. It’d be cruel to keep him hanging on. He’s got better places to be.”

  I sit with Fabio until the end, while others file in and out, shepherded by the eagle-eyed Zeba. Sometimes I hold his hands, sometimes I wipe his brow, but mostly I sit back and watch people make their farewells. I don’t say anything. He was right — there’s nothing new either of us could say. Fabio’s my oldest friend, there for me even before Bill Casey, the only one I never alienated since becoming Paucar Wami. I worried sometimes that the villacs might use him to hurt me, but thankfully they let him be.

  Another old friend, Ali, enters and we exchange a few hushed words. He runs a bagel shop beneath the apartment where I used to live. I still drop in occasionally, in Al Jeery guise, though it’s been a few months.

  “How are you, my friend?” Ali asks.

  “Good. And you?”

  “I cannot complain.”

  “I didn’t know you knew Fabio.”

  “I don’t,” he says. “I just saw the crowd and joined the party.” He laughs, then smiles sheepishly when Zeba glares at him. “Fabio was a good customer of mine. And I of his. We exchanged… services.”

  “You swapped bagels for ladies?” I smirk.

  “Yes,” he blushes. “I always believed I was getting the better of the bargain, but Fabio said many men had finer women to offer than he, but nobody in this city could slap together as delicious a bagel as me.”

  “He had a point.”

  “I will miss him.”

  “Me too.”

  “And the women.”

  I choke on a laugh. “I think you’ll find a few of those elsewhere.”

  “Yes,” Ali sighs. “But it will not be the same. I will always think of Fabio when I am enjoying the embrace of a fine woman.” He giggles impishly and winks at me. “Well, maybe not always…”

  Finally, Fabio passes. There’s no climactic finale or dramatic last gasp. His breathing has been getting softer, to the point where his chest no longer seems to rise or fall. Flo replaced Zeba an hour ago and has been checking his pulse every five minutes, holding a mirror over his lips and nose. This time she shakes her head, tears forming. “He’s gone,” she says flatly.

  And that’s the end of that.

  I want to slip off home but Flo asks me to stay. It would be impolite to say no, so I remain as she and Zeba see to his body, stripping and washing him one last time, before dressing him in his best clothes — Fabio always placed great importance on appearance. A mortician will fix him up tomorrow, but the ladies are determined to keep him in good shape in the meantime. We should be able to get him cremated soon, maybe at the weekend or early next week. There’s a long waiting list at the crematorium, but one of Fabio’s many grandsons is on the staff.

  I leave the women to their ministrations — rather, they shoo me out of the room — and mingle uneasily with the other guests. I know most of them (as Paucar Wami it’s my business to know people), but very few know me. They’re aware that I’m a close friend of Fabio’s, and a few of the older guests recognize me from when I was a kid, but nobody knows who I am at night.

  After half an hour of strained small talk, one of Fabio’s great-grandsons takes me aside. Fabio never married, but he sired many bastards, who in turn bred like rabbits. I don’t know how many grandchildren and great-grandchildren he had — I don’t think the old buzzard knew himself — but it’s in excess of a hundred.

  I know Kurt Jones, aka Bones Jones, the one who sidetracks me. A small fish in one of the smaller gangs. Fabio liked him. Most of the pimp’s descendants had gone legit. That pleased him, but left him with little in common with them. Bones was one of the few he could click with.

  “How you doing, Bones?”

  “Not bad, man. Business is good. Could be better, but hey! You ain’t in the market for digital cameras, are you? I got a load going dirt cheap.”

  “I can maybe take one if the price is right.”

  “Nah, man, I’m into bulk trading.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s OK.” He glances around, drags me away from the others and lowers his voice. “I don’t know why he told me to tell you this, but I was shooting the shit with the F last week, and there was this one thing he said I had to take it to you. I came over your place Monday but you was out and I been busy since.”

  “What’s it regarding?”

  Bones’s voice drops even further. “Ever hear of a dude called Paucar Wami?”

  I stiffen. “What about him?”

  “Shit I heard. Rumors. You probably don’t know this, but someone’s been offing people close to Ford Tasso and Eugene Davern.”

  “So?”

  “Word is Paucar Wami’s taking them down.”

  “You think Wami’s killing Tasso and Davern’s confidants?”

  “Not me, man, I don’t think shit. It’s what I heard. I told the F — he always liked hearing about Wami — and he said I had to tell you.”

  “Thanks, Bones. I owe you.”

  It’s not unusual for me to be blamed for killings I have nothing to do with, and normally I allow such rumors to circulate unchecked (good for business), but this is a complication I can do without. When Tasso gets word of it, he’ll want to know if it’s true. I’m sure I can convince him of my innocence, but once seeds of doubt have been sown, relationships are never quite the same. I’ll have to move to quell the rumors, and fast.

  I make my apologies to Flo, tell her to call me if she needs help with the funeral arrangements, then slip away from the party — which is hitting full swing — and return home. I shed my wig and face paint, become Paucar Wami, and take to the streets to sort this shit out.

  It’s worse than I thought. The rumors have been spreading for a couple of weeks. I’d have gotten wind of them sooner if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my investigations. According to the gossipmongers I’m not only responsible for wiping out some of Tasso’s and Davern’s key men, but I’ve been putting together a gang of my own, backed by a mystery benefactor, with the intention of turning the Troops and Kluxers against each other, letting them slug it out, then moving in to finish them off and seize control.

  It only takes a few hours to track the stories back to some of their sources, and I spend the predawn hours Saturday grilling several people who’ve been busy feeding the rumor mill. They confess freely, with only a minimum of prompting (being jolted awake in the middle of the night by a legendary killer tends to loosen the stiffest of tongues). They were bribed to spread the lies, but they don’t know who paid them or why. They received orders and payment in plain envelopes. I check the notes, all of which run much the same way. “This is the news. Let it be heard. More money to follow.” Underneath, the rumors — Paucar Wami has been ki
lling Ford Tasso’s and Eugene Davern’s men… he’s formed a gang of his own… he kidnapped The Cardinal… et cetera.

  I’m baffled to begin with — I don’t know what anyone stands to gain by this — but then a glimmer of an idea strikes me. By framing me for his disappearance, maybe Raimi’s kidnappers hope to turn Ford Tasso against me. If that’s the case, it raises a conundrum. I’ve been working on the assumption that the villacs took Raimi, to tempt me back into their warped games. But if they did, they’d surely want to keep me active. They’d hardly instigate rumors that might lead to Tasso’s terminating my contract.

  Is somebody else involved? Was Raimi kidnapped by a third party? Maybe the priests are looking for Raimi too, got me involved because they thought I might be able to help find him, and the real kidnappers are now trying to undermine me.

  It’s almost 08:00 when I go to bed, brooding about the rumors, the villacs and possible others. After ten or fifteen minutes I fall into a troubled sleep…

  … Which I snap out of abruptly at 09:16 when my front door’s kicked in and three men with guns burst into my apartment.

  I’m rolling out of bed in an instant, snatching my.45 from beneath the pillow where I always keep it, taking a bead on the men, who’ve fanned out. My finger tightens and I prepare to blow away the man on my right. But they aren’t firing. They have the drop on me but they’re holding off. And they look terrified.

  As I pause, bewildered, a fourth man enters. Clad in a white fur coat, the hem swirling around his ankles, he strolls past the three with guns. His blond hair and blue eyes belong on a model. He oozes self-confidence and wealth. He smiles at me as if we’re old friends, casts an eye around and sighs. “How you people live in such squalor is beyond me. Have niggers no sense of self-worth?”

  I almost let him have a full clip in the stomach. But if I open fire on him, his men will retaliate. I wouldn’t survive the shoot-out.