Nightjack

by Tom Piccirilli

  “We’ve met before?”

  “Yes, several times. We were quite friendly. On that ward, in the institution.”

  “You were there?”

  “Visiting.” Vindi shoved his huge nose forward and peered into Pace’s eyes. His beard drifted in the breeze. “I see you have not been taking your medication. You seem as ill now as when we last met. You do not react well to treatment.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I know everything about you, Mr. Pacella.”

  Inside him, a few different people were yelling and trying to grab his attention, but they drowned each other out. Maybe Pacella was still around despite Jack’s best efforts to kill him. The schoolteacher hiding somewhere deep, grading papers, preparing exam questions. Reading Renaissance poetry, maybe drinking cocoa. The fucker actually used to drink cocoa. Jane bringing it to him on a tray, with a dish of almond cookies. She wanted to kiss him with a mouth full of wine and he wanted to sit there and drink frickin’ hot chocolate. He’d hold the cookie with just the tips of two fingers, so afraid to get stains on his books. Seated in front of a small fireplace in a leather chair that cost him half a year’s salary, in a room covered with dark cherry paneling because it made him think of England, a place he’d never been. Learning how to smoke a pipe but never really enjoying it, as he paged through Browning, Keats, Burns. Sipping the cocoa, wiping those two fingers on a silk napkin.

  It was no wonder the guy had to go.

  Pace shifted the handle of the screwdriver in his fist, holding it the way he would grip the handle of a blade. All these wise guys packed big guns loaded with hollow-tipped and mercury-filled hotshot shells that exploded on impact and chopped a guy up to pieces inside. The bodyguards carrying oily paper bags full of zeppoles, cannolli, and Napoleons for their bosses. You never drop the zeppoles. Trying to juggle the bags and get their guns out at the same time. They liked to show off their .45’s and .357 Magnums with barrels so long it took like eight seconds to draw them fully out of their holsters.

  Jack could have a liver on a plate in eight seconds. By the time the goombas got their weapons free they had five inches of stainless steel in the throat or between the ribs. The Ganooch boys too stupid to know they were dead, still holding the zeppoles while a river of red froth sluiced across the floor.

  “You know everything about me?” Pace repeated. “Good. Then you’re the one I want to talk to. I’m a little mixed up on some things, and my psychiatrist isn’t helping. She’s got her own problems.”

  “Yes, she is ineffectual. And deeply repressed.”

  “Okay, so give me the details.”

  It tickled the Minotaur so much that he let out a snort. Vindi displayed an uneven row of thick, yellow teeth. All this effort to affect elegance and style, yet the guy wouldn’t get his teeth capped or trim the beard. He was totally gratified that he could get away with being so repulsive.

  “I’m serious,” Pace said.

  “Oh, I know you are. That has always been your most dire ailment. How uncompromising and Spartan you are. It is ultimately what led to your initial mental collapse. The first breakdown, and all those that followed.”

  “Stop with the compliments.”

  Vindi’s eyes took in everything. He was aware of the screwdriver in Pace’s fist, and kept himself just out of range. His arms were loose at his sides, huge hands slightly raised so he could block or attack as needed. The bull neck bulged with corded muscle. He wouldn’t be easy.

  “So let me hear it.”

  “You are William Pacella,” Vindi said. “Former high school English teacher. Schizophrenic with dissociative identity disorder, better known in most circles as multiple-personality disorder. You went mad when your wife died in a restaurant fire.”

  Pace couldn’t get his mouth wrapped around the name of the place though. He tried a couple of times and couldn’t quite get it. He said, “Emily’s? Emeel’s?”

  “Emilio’s, yes. Named after the owner, Emilio Cavallo.”

  “Cavallo,” Pace said, nodding. “Yeah.”

  “The local syndicate, run by Joseph Ganucci, also known as ‘the Ganooch,’”—he had to stop and grin—“these Italians and their ludicrous nomenclature.”

  “Get on with it.”

  “Ganucci’s crew had apparently been trying to drive Cavallo out of business. Your wife, Jane, the restaurant manager, was caught in the blaze along with three other employees, one of whom you saved. You had a psychotic break and hunted down several of the mobsters responsible, known collectively as the Ganucci Family. In the guise of an alternate persona called Nightjack, you killed each of them with either a knife or your bare hands. This is rather common knowledge although the police agencies never acquired enough formal evidence against you. Your alternate identities confused them greatly. After you finally dispatched Joseph Ganucci, you voluntarily admitted yourself into the Garden Falls Psychiatric Facility. You were eventually state committed after you carried out acts of violence in the hospital. Today you were released.”

  So there it was, laid out front to back in a few simple sentences. Pace gritted his teeth and gave a rictus grin, thinking about Jane in flames. Now he understood why it was so clear in his mind. Pacella had been there, in the restaurant, and had watched her die. Why hadn’t he been able to save her?

  “That sounds about right,” he whispered.

  “Would you like to hear more?” Vindi asked. “There is a good deal more to cover.”

  “No,” Pace told him. You didn’t go willingly to your reckoning, you let it come to you, inch by inch. “Not right now.”

  “As you wish.”

  “You’re quite amenable.”

  The great shoulders shrugging, the mouth shifting into a brief, curious smile. “We were once friends.”

  “You and me? So what happened?”

  “I cannot discuss that with you at this time.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would not be in your best interest, I think. Nor that of my employer.”

  A family walked past them in the lot. Man and wife, five-year-old daughter holding a melting ice cream cone. The three of them tired from a long drive and moving slowly. The father perceived the situation and drew his wife and kid close, skirting away trying to get to his minivan that the Jag had almost blocked in. Pace watched them, knowing there were a half-dozen men inside him who could relate to the father, a group of children who wanted to go play with the little girl.

  The guy pulled his minivan out and barely missed clipping the Jag’s rear quarter panel. He kept his face down and refused to look over as he gunned it out of the lot and hit the highway, heading for one of the beach motels.

  “It was stupid to send Rollo Carpie after me,” Pace said.

  Vindi seemed almost embarrassed. “He was no real threat to you. It was meant to gain your attention, nothing more.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Yes.”

  The need to do something was building up, thrashing within him, a black ocean filled with drowning people. All of them reaching up, asking to be saved. How many of them could take Vindi? How many could get him alive, and how many would need to kill him? The hinges of Pace’s jaw began to throb. The kids in his head shouted for ice cream.

  “But you could’ve just sent a fruit basket, you know.”

  “My employer wishes to see you. And your associates. The others from the asylum.” Saying the word with a certain amount of veneration. Not as insane asylum, but as sanctuary.

  “Say his name, damn it.”

  But Vindi wouldn’t, as if afraid that saying the man’s name would somehow invoke him, awaken the ancient gods.

  Images without context filled Pace’s mind. He saw a large silhouetted figure standing before a bright window, a flash of polished marble. Grim eyes ignited with undivided purpose. The kids stopped asking for ice cream and started crying, running for the corners. The dizzying stink of blood filled Pace’s head, and he felt a tiny burst of pa
in in his throat—a love bite where teeth nipped him. The tactile presence of a hand on his chest pressed him back one step, then another.

  “Where is Cassandra?” he asked.

  “It is quite fascinating that you have suppressed so much,” Vindi said. “How fearful you are of yourself. It saddens me greatly to see you in this state.”

  “I’ll bear up.”

  “Yes, but for how long? You have trials still ahead of you.”

  “Everyone does.”

  Vindi snorted again in his bullish manner, speaking in Greek, calling to someone inside Pace. It was a challenge of some kind, Vindi urging someone to come out. Pace tossed the screwdriver over his shoulder and his hands became hard as stone. They were strangler’s hands, and they had done a lot of work for him already. Vindi quit moving.

  “And what’s to stop me from breaking your neck?” Pace asked.

  Vindi smiled without warmth. “I assure you it would not be to your advantage, nor would it be effortless. My employer does not hire incompetents.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Oh, but you would.”

  Talk about a contrary prick. Pace tried to picture Cassandra Kaltzas but could only see Jane’s burning face. The kids had scurried back and were whining for strawberry swirly, fudge ripple, chocolate mint chip. They tugged on his sleeve, saying, Please please please please, oh please.

  “I was in a straitjacket when Cassandra was raped, they tell me.”

  “We doubt the veracity of that particular report.”

  “Why?”

  “You and Dr. Maureen Brandt were lovers. She undoubtedly forged certain documentation. The fact that you’re free now is proof that she is able to subvert the clinical system.”

  “But she acts like she hates me. Where do you get your information?”

  “With the proper inducement, anyone is willing to talk. It is simple to bribe the proper authorities. They sought to hide the situation, rather than approach it openly. They feared repercussions. Money quells fear.”

  “Why didn’t Kaltzas call them on it? Have a full investigation made?”

  “It was decided the matter should be dealt with directly and personally.”

  “Is that so?” Pace handed out the ice cream cones, and each of the kids took theirs in turn, saying, Thank you, thank you, oh thank you before running off. He stared after them as they skipped and bounded away. “I really look forward to meeting him.”

  “You have met him.”

  “Whatever. I still have things to think through. We need your car. And money.”

  “Certainly.” Vindi stepped aside, allowing Pace access to the Jag. Raindrops began to spatter against the windshield. “There is a billfold in the glove compartment filled with five thousand dollars.”

  “That’s really why Kaltzas sent you, isn’t it? You’re here to direct our course. To make sure we get to Pythos.”

  “A private jet is waiting for you at Kennedy Airport.”

  You didn’t go willingly to your reckoning, you let it come to you, inch by inch.

  Maybe he was wrong. Maybe you had to meet it at least halfway, if you were ever going to get any of the answers you needed.

  Pace slid behind the wheel of the Jag. The computerized tracking equipment set in the dashboard made it look like a cockpit. “Where is he now?” Pace asked. “And where is Cassandra?”

  The Minotaur smiled, shards of golden bone appearing through the forest of wiry beard. “On Pythos. Waiting for you.

  nine

  Crumble enjoyed the Jag and stuck his head out the sunroof, tongue lolling, barking into the rain. Dr. Brandt said, “Please, Hayden, people are looking.” She turned to Pace and asked, “Are you ready to discuss what happened yet?”

  “No.”

  Finishing up her third Double Cheesy Bacony Burger, Pia let out a contented moan. All the men in the car—the hundreds of them, even the gay ones, even the dead ones—stiffened at the sound. She could do it to you even when she wasn’t half-trying, reaching inside to pluck at your guts.

  Faust, somehow more in tune with Pace, sensed his rising agitation and put a hand to the back of Pace’s head, like he could hold everybody inside there and keep them from pouring free.

  “It’s all right, Will.”

  “Sure. We’re almost there.”

  Pace followed Map’s directions through a couple miles of wetland, along a series of curving sand-blown roads heavy with saw grass. Now that they were off the main streets traffic thinned and the towns turned into hamlets and fishing villages, the woods deepening as brackish inlets began to surround them.

  The house was tucked away on a small spit of sand and weeds. The area around it peeled back into a mixture of silt, black mud, and eddying saltwater drooling across a stony shoreline at low tide. Lapping waves could be heard.

  Faust threw his door open the moment the Jag came to a full stop. “It’s like a church,” he said. “One of those country churches where the town would huddle in the middle of a yellow fever epidemic. Where they came to die together. The town marshals would seal them inside alive to quarantine them. Our father who art inescapable.”

  “You’re fun as a fuckin’ barrel of dead spider monkeys, you are,” Hayden told him.

  They climbed out. The pelting cold rain hurt, but no one made a sound. Pace popped the trunk and they gathered their meager belongings and tramped up the gravel walkway in the darkness.

  The storm broke in full as Pace led them to the front door. Dr. Brandt asked, “Is this your house, Will?”

  “No,” he said. He found a key hidden in a niche between two of the cedar shingles below the front window. He unlocked and pushed the door open. They filed in and he turned on the lights.

  “How did you know where the key was?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, of course. You were a school teacher and your wife managed a restaurant in Manhattan. I’ve seen your financial records. You couldn’t afford a house in this area.”

  “You know it all, lady.”

  Hayden said, “Jack must’ve paid cash for it after ripping off all the goombas. Those mobsters horde their payoffs, they’re tighter with a buck than a Thai hooker.”

  “Do you know any Thai hookers?” Pia asked. “Or mobsters?”

  “A few of each. After they’d get arrested they’d show up at the home to do community service taking care of me and the mongoloids. Nice folks all around, really. Taught me Texas Hold‘em.”

  Pace tried to imagine Jack walking into a realtor’s office with three-quarters of a mill in twenties and fifties. Setting up accounts to have the electricity and water paid automatically each month. The guy asking him if he was married, had children, and Jack just standing there giggling.

  “When did you first come here, Will?” Dr. Brandt asked.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of asking questions?”

  He thought, Maybe canning fish wouldn’t have been so bad.

  You sit there all day long in front of a conveyor belt covered in tuna, squid, halibut, cod. Pick the slimy things up, reach for one of those little cans, and just smash ‘em in there. Next to you is a robot that welds the lids shut. The robot wants to learn how to be human, keeps asking you to explain things. What is love? You tell him, I don’t know, Robbie. Where is the soul located? No clue, Robbie. Why do men pay Bubbles LaRue twenty dollars to lie with them in the back of her 1982 El Camino with Edlebrock valve covers and flowmaster exhaust during the designated lunch hour? That’s easy to explain, Robbie—Do you agree that it is necessary to have an underlying principle or dictum to rejoice when we succeed and to take solace when we fail? You’re a little over my head there, Robbie. Is it better to live without requiring assertion of value or belief in the admittedly doubtful existence of a clinical entity thus far unconfirmed in the known structure of the visible universe? Fuck are you talkin’ about, Robbie, lighten up a little, yeah? So you try teaching him how to acquire a sense of humor. Start off with knock
knock jokes. Robbie tells you, That does not compute. You work your way up to the traveling salesmen making it with the farmer’s daughter, her crotch smelling like corn on the cob. Robbie going, That does not compute! His metal arms flailing, claws snapping. Eradicate! Expunge! Other fish canners lying broken and dying all over the factory. The salmon staring at you while you stuff it into the fucking can.

  Sniffing like he was having an allergy attack, with his head tossed way back, Faust announced, “The stink of murder is here.”

  “So this is it,” Hayden said, holding his pad, getting ready to write to his mother. “The house that Jack built.”

  The one-story house was old, one of those converted cabins from back when rich New York urbanite bankers used to build this far out on the island to accommodate their mistresses in the summer. It was furnished in a quaint countrified style, lots of wicker and oak, rocking chairs and throw pillows with embroidered sayings on them.

  Home is Where your Love is.

  All realities once were dreams.

  Eat at Tiny Bob’s Lobster Pavilion.

  The weight of history bore down. Men had given way here, women had borne children, art had been conducted and completed. A broad stone fireplace against the far wall looked like an alter where human sacrifices had once been performed.

  “So’s the stink of love,” Pia intoned, the word taking on a heavy, tragic cadence. “It’s everywhere. In the walls, the very lumber.”

  “You say that as if it’s bad,” Faust said.

  “It is.”

  “Somebody’s been taking care of the place while you’ve been in the Falls, Will.”

  Pace said, “A woman. I think she comes in to clean once a month.” The truth of it struck him with such force and clarity that he had to turn his chin aside like he was dodging a blow. The middle-aged woman’s wide face was burnished with real character. She was the wife of a fisherman. She’d lost her firstborn to the sea decades ago and carried the guilt around with her always. The shame of a mother who could not protect her child from the dominion of the ocean.

  It wasn’t that odd, this far out on the island, to have repairmen and weekly or monthly cleaning services, where the owners and the help never saw one another. A lot of these homes were used only in season, a couple of weekends a year. Jack must’ve had several automatic withdrawals made from his account.