Nightjack

by Tom Piccirilli

  There were several servants who moved about with great efficiency or else stood aside primly awaiting orders. Maids filled a long banquet table with fruits, wine, meat and fish dishes. There were actual gold goblets and silver chalices.

  An expansive staircase rose to an upper galleried floor. The walls of the tremendous rooms were covered with a profusion of paintings and bas-relief carvings of mythical beast-men and -women. Satyrs, centaurs, mermaids. Ariadne the daughter of Minos, shown as a beautiful woman with the beginnings of spider-like features. Faust walked over and stared at Daedalus with his mechanical wings sweeping open. Daedalus looked at Daedalus and almost smiled. Small spotlights highlighted the details of the statuary and artwork.

  You looked at the marble long enough and it started to appear alive, like the victims of Medusa’s gaze.

  Pia said it first, what they were all imagining. “Makes me think this is where we’re going to wind up. Frozen in stone and stuck inside this gallery. The maids dusting us each day so Kaltzas can see his own grin in our polished skin.”

  “Is he even here?” Hayden asked.

  “No,” Pace said. “He’s missed his chance for a big entrance.”

  “All of this and the guy’s away? What do we do?”

  “We wait for him.”

  “Even the mongoloids didn’t act this stupid.”

  “I’m quite hungry,” Faust said. “I’m going to get something to eat, and suggest you all do the same. Our father who art insatiable.”

  Pace moved up the stairs. He wanted to see what Kaltzas’s view from on high would be like.

  A butler eased along behind him at a polite distance. Whenever Pace looked over at him, the servant would drop his gaze. He wondered if the guy ever got the chance to look somebody in the eye.

  Pace stood on the terrace, taking in the view from the top of the steep mountain, spotting the remnants of three other archeological digs in the distance. To the south, security men prowled the area and, heading toward the village, Land Rovers raised dust all over the summit. Directly below, a plaza swelled with fountains and mosaics, opening into panoramic gardens filled with fruit and nut trees, palms, and exotic birds.

  The storm rushed in like an angry animal. The waves tore into the harbor from the open sea and smashed against the cliff walls. Trees groaned and wavered. Somewhere, somebody shut off the fountains, and as he stared down the first drops of rain splashed heavily across the marble. The statuary lining the courtyard darkened as it grew wet. He looked at the columns, pillars, and colonnades that had withstood ten thousand such gales.

  He sensed that the house had risen up around the landslides and ruins, a merging of earth and man, past and present. He didn’t get the feeling that Kaltzas was trying to bring these remnants into the modern age, but rather the man was trying to retreat through the millennia, to become one with a plane of life lost long ago.

  Pace turned and stepped back into the house, the butler following close behind as they moved down the stairway. Pia angled her chin at him and sipped from a chalice. Faust and Hayden were eating heartily. The three of them were seated at the far end of the long banquet table while Vindi enjoyed his drink all the way at the other.

  Vindi gestured for Pace to join him.

  Sure, what the hell.

  Pace walked past the others and Pia whispered, “You sure he’s not Kaltzas? He could be lying.”

  “Kaltzas wouldn’t lie about who he is,” Pace said and proceeded down the length of the table, twenty, thirty, forty feet until he took the chair beside Vindi. A peal of thunder broke like a colossal bell over the ocean.

  Vindi poured him a goblet of wine and a nearby maid let out a gasp and jumped forward. He spoke a gentle word and she retreated to her station.

  He said, “I believe you will enjoy this wine. Try it.”

  Pace took a sip and found that liked it. Will Pacella made a face and his lips bubbled like a baby’s.

  “Where is Alexander Kaltzas?” Pace asked.

  “My employer...is away at the moment.”

  “I thought this entire visit was orchestrated so he could meet with us.”

  “He will only meet with you. He does not wish to speak to the others.”

  “So why did he invite them along?”

  “They are here because you need them. You are united to them in a way I do not fully comprehend. Through violence. Through love and torment. It was the reason that Rollo Carpie was hired. Not because it was what we wished, but because it was what you needed.”

  So, we’ve been wrong from the beginning, Pace realized. Kaltzas didn’t really suspect the others of hurting Cassandra. He had no real interest in them, except so far as Pace had been using them as emotional crutches from the minute he left the psych ward.

  “Who was in the helicopter?” he asked.

  “That is not your concern right now.”

  “Then by implication it will eventually become my concern.”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “I could make you tell me.”

  A small smile appearing on that bullish face. “Perhaps. But let me ask you a question, Mr. Pacella. Why are you in Greece?”

  “You invited me. And I’m not Pacella.”

  “Yes, of course, apologies. But why did you accept the invitation?”

  “I’m here to see Cassandra.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know what happened that night on the ward.” He searched Vindi’s face. “Can you tell me?”

  “I cannot.”

  “Are you saying you won’t tell or that you don’t know the answer?”

  “I am saying that I live in a superstitious land, and I am a superstitious man. Despite education, opportunity, and even affluence, many of us are still burdened by our rituals and religion. I am saying that you make me afraid. The fate that has encompassed the Kaltzas family often makes me very fearful.”

  “You said we’d met before and had been quite friendly.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You spoke to me at the hospital, the regular hospital, where I was laid up with my burns.”

  “Yes, many times.”

  Pace nodded. “You stopped in to see me while you were visiting Cassandra. You wanted to thank me for saving her life.”

  “You remember this now?”

  “I remember the fire. The rest just makes sense. But why the intrigue? Why make me think you wanted to hurt us?”

  “It was a mistake on our part. But again, it was what you yourself needed. You and your friends are all paranoiac schizophrenics. You all harbor great amounts of guilt feelings where your pasts are concerned. And where Cassandra is concerned. They chose to believe that they were threatened with harm, giving them a reason to escape the facility.”

  “Dr. Brandt said she was frightened by your men as well.”

  Vindi looked to the floor and appeared to have trouble finding the correct words to explain himself without revealing too much. What was he still hiding? He started to speak and stopped, started again and once more curbed himself.

  When Vindi glanced up again, Pace watched his eyes. Vindi had come to some decision much more important than he intended it to appear. “Yes, I know. Dr. Maureen Brandt...that woman...her life...it is a troubled one. Made worse by her feelings for you. She hated and feared you, and yet was attracted to you. As I mentioned to you several days ago, it was common knowledge that you were behind the Ganucci family murders. And yet the police could prove nothing. She was terribly frightened, and yet intrigued. She studied you, and sought to build her career based on your unique case. But I believe she was greatly influenced by the distrust, anxiety, and illness of the others. And yourself. Your many selves.” He took a sip of wine and stared over the rim of the goblet. “If you have not realized it yet, she is quite insane.”

  “I realize it.”

  “Ah.”

  “You still believe we were lovers?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  Pace thou
ght about how lonely she must be. How difficult it must’ve been to let him go, and not follow. Maybe she didn’t do it out of fear at all. Maybe she’d let him come this way on his own out of love for him.

  “Call me paranoid if you like, but I still don’t fully understand the hiring of Rollo Carpie to take me down.”

  Vindi sighed. “He was meant as a gift.”

  “A gift?”

  “For you. He was one of the few members of the Ganucci syndicate who avoided Nightjack’s wrath.”

  “He was a low-level shooter who never got in the way.”

  Vindi’s snorting breaths blew wide ripples in his wine, making it slosh over the rim. “This Rollo Carpie, he killed your mentor, Sam Smith.”

  Before he could stop himself, Pace let out a fierce, cruel laugh. “No way could a second-rater like Rollo take out Sam.”

  “But it’s true.”

  Inside, Sam was shaking his head in disbelief. He didn’t actually remember getting iced, just sitting in his office pouring back a tumbler of whiskey, a little high and very tired and feeling very old, and then turning in his seat to an instant of blinding pain coming in from the window. He supposed it could’ve been Carpie. It could’ve been anyone.

  Still, Kaltzas had no right to offer up blood gifts. They weren’t his to give.

  The rain throbbed across the windows and the growing wind beat at the glass. The storm raged down, a giant infuriated child. Perhaps, in some fashion, it was just another alternate, out there alone in the endless sky, pursued by the burgeoning night, trying to get back inside a safe, warm cage of bones.

  “Why should I believe anything you tell me?” Pace asked.

  “That I cannot answer. You must find your own way to the truth, whether you choose to believe me or not.”

  “When can I talk to Kaltzas?”

  “Perhaps tomorrow, or the day after. Until then, please, enjoy yourself. The servants shall show you to your quarters.”

  twenty-six

  The third story of the villa opened up into several suites very similar to those found at the Athenian Palace, but even more extravagant.

  Faust sat in a chair staring out at the black ocean, his hands folded under his chin. Every few minutes he’d flinch, as if his thoughts were at war. Hayden lay on a bed large enough for five people, drinking metaxa and flipping through the satellite stations, watching American sitcoms from the Sixties in Greek. Funny what didn’t make it into translation. The Skipper shouting down Gilligan, smacking him in the head with his sailor’s cap, the heavily masculine Greek voice ending a string of hard consonants with “little buddy.”

  Pia was taking a bath in a step-down pool-like tub so large that Princess Eirrin was able to swim several strokes underwater. The double-doors to the bathroom were opened wide and Pace watched her nude blue body arching and curving. Every so often the Atlantean heir would lean over the edge with her green hair dripping across her eyes and she’d beckon to Pace with her webbed hands.

  He leaned against the far wall of the suite, near the main door. Servants moved past in the corridors and he tried to split his focus, keep an ear out for anyone who might sound important, Cassandra or her father. He had a bottle of ouzo in his hand and drank from it without feeling. The anti-climax of the visit had left him even less grounded than before. He felt as if his mission, already vague and tenuous, had become even more ethereal.

  Night had fallen early, quick and tremendously hard. The storm continued its siege. Pace felt a little sorry for all the fishermen that wouldn’t be able to go out in the morning to make a living, and for all the others who might try and yet have their boats wrecked, their lines torn, perhaps lives lost. All because Pace had a tempest on his tail.

  “Did you notice,” Princess Eirrin said, “that the shipping tycoon has no paintings of ships? No seascapes? No statues of Poseidon or the naiads? For a Greek who’s made his fortune on the ocean, he has no love for it in his soul.”

  Pacella had lived on Long Island his entire life and he never had a picture of a ship in his house either. He and Jane had loved the beach and going out to Fire Island and spending time in the Hamptons, but the walls of their home were covered with prints of Manet, Van Gogh, and Pollock, an oversized photo of the Manhattan skyline. In the dining room there was even a sacred heart of Jesus. Just like the Ganooch. Just like Cavallo.

  A blur of motion made Pace turn his head. Sister Lurteen sat there on the bed dressed in her habit, smacking her palm with a yardstick. She looked at Pace and said, “Are you eating paste?”

  “No.”

  “You’d better not be!”

  “I’m not.”

  “Let me see your drawings of Jesus.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  She raised the yardstick and brought it down against the back of Pace’s hand. The wood broke in two and the old nun stared at him furiously.

  “Hayden,” Pace whispered, pulling the bottle of Metaxa away from him. “You’ve been drinking too much the last few hours, you should eat something.”

  “Not paste!”

  “No, not that.”

  “Shh!”

  “Have some fruit. Drink some coffee.”

  “Shhh!”

  Pace opened the door to the suite and only had to wait half a minute before one of the servants rushed down the hall to him. Pace was trying to figure out how to gesture for coffee when the man said that he spoke English. Pace asked for some coffee and something to eat. Five minutes later three maids wheeled in three carts of food and a cappuccino maker.

  Faust never turned his head from the window.

  Wearing a large cotton robe, her hair wrapped in a towel, Pia came out of the bathroom and sat on the bed while Pace struggled to get a few cups of cappuccino down Hayden’s throat. Eventually Sister Lurteen faded and Hayden settled down and started eating.

  Pia asked Pace to dry her hair. He took the towel from her and his hands knew the gentle motions because Pacella used to dry Jane’s hair this way. Pia sighed and began to fall asleep in his arms. He wondered if there was any chance of happiness for him, or if it would have to wait until he became the next alternate down the list.

  “Kaltzas is planning to take us out, one by one,” Hayden said with cream on his lips.

  “No,” Pace said while he drew Pia’s hair back and forth with delicate precision. “I don’t think so.”

  “Look. His daughter flees from him and goes where? To America. New York. So he’s already got a hard-on for Americans. Then what happens? She loses her shit completely, has a nervous breakdown, winds up eating fucking rats in alleys.”

  “That’s not what hap—”

  “America drove her insane. Now he’s got even more reason to hate us. Now she winds up in the booby hatch, where bad things happen. Now her father thinks that all these nuts chased after her, beat her up. All of us sticking our crazy cocks in her.”

  “Did you?” Pace asked.

  “Did I what? Fuck her? No. None of us did. Except maybe you.”

  “What was she like?”

  Pia relaxed against Pace’s chest. “A total bitch.”

  “What was she like, Hayden?”

  “She was a sweet girl. Very quiet. Black circles under her eyes. You can see she wanted to die. Like Pia. That’s why Pia hates her.”

  Pia looked at Hayden and went, “Shh.”

  “Do not fucking shush me!”

  “Shh.”

  “Did you hear me, I said do not—”

  Pace looked over at the window. “Faust?”

  Faust said, “I don’t remember.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Faust tilted his head aside, chin aimed toward Pace but his gaze going through him. “Why would you ask that? You don’t remember, so why would you expect me to?”

  “Because I do remember,” Pace said. “Some things.”

  He told about the night of the fire, and how Pacella had saved Cassandra Kaltzas from the flames. How Jane’s death could be tracked back
to Cassandra, if you wanted to think about it that way. Pace didn’t but Pacella did.

  His hands tightened on Pia’s hair and she let out a gasp but didn’t pull away. She whimpered once, a beautifully sweet sound of highly charged sexuality. His voice was that of a schoolteacher trying to excite passion in his students about some great tome of literature. He spoke about the hospital. Pace listened as if from very far behind himself, running to catch up.

  “You two have blood ties,” Faust said. “It has nothing to do with us at all.”

  “That depends on what happened on the ward,” Pace told him.

  “No,” Hayden said. “All that matters is what she thinks happened there. She’s a nut. She could’ve told her father anything. The man still wants vengeance. I can smell it, the hate is all around us.”

  “That’s the hate in us.”

  “Same thing!”

  They watched television the rest of the night, hardly moving at all. Eventually Faust left his seat and stretched out on the enormous bed. Even with the four of them on it there was still plenty of room. They settled in deeper while more sitcoms moved in front of their eyes speaking in a strange language. On occasion one or the other of them would laugh. Sometimes it was Pace. His hands were still twined in Pia’s hair. She couldn’t slip away if she wanted to, but she didn’t seem to mind. Someone would get up and grab some food and share it. One by one they fell asleep, all except for Pace and the storm, which continued to pound at the walls, hoping to slip in and escape back into his flawed human heart.

  ~ * ~

  The next day went by quickly because of the party.

  Pia and Hayden asked the servants to teach them Greek songs and dances. They wanted to recapture some of the fun they’d had in the taverna. The maids and butlers looked away shyly until Vindi said something in Greek that gave them permission. It was all part of keeping the guests happy. Someone drove down to the village and brought back one of the bouzouki bands. The members entered the house dripping wet, wide-eyed and alarmed at being invited into the temple of Olympus.