by Mike Sager
“What did I do? I’ll tell you what I did. And this is shocking. I didn’t read about this in any book; this is my life I’m telling you about. This is God’s honest truth. I took my brother’s dead body out of my apartment, Michael’s body. He was still warm. Humid, you might call it, like the way someone feels sleeping next to you under the sheets. I loved him, yes, but the thing is, he was deceased—there was nothing further I could do. And I knew if they found him in my apartment, I could face a murder beef. The evidence of my guilt was right there on the table—one and a half bindles of dope. The syringe was mine too. It was still in his arm. I could not go back to prison. I cannot. I had no other choice. I put him in the elevator in his pajama bottoms. I pressed the B, for basement.”
A single tear, fat and solitary, dripped from the corner of Larry’s eye and flowed along a deep furrow in his cheek, like rainwater through a desert wash, then plunged off his jawline, free-falling through the cold, greasy atmosphere of Ma’s Place, splashing onto the dirty linoleum floor. Seede reached over and placed a hand on Larry’s shoulder, gave him a couple of pats. Some time ago Seede had been at the Library of Congress, waiting for some periodicals he’d ordered to come down from the stacks. Idly he’d picked up a random book on a table and begun paging through. It turned out to be a volume of Scottish legends. In days of yore, apparently, in Scottish villages, there was always a man who served as the village sin eater. When someone died, the relatives would lay a feast atop the body. They would invite the sin eater to come to the house and consume the feast, symbolically absorbing into himself any sins the deceased had committed over the course of his or her lifetime, clearing his way into heaven. Reading this, Seede was struck by the parallels to his own job—although in his case, he serviced the living. He listened. He validated. He gave voice. He absorbed pain—so many murders and assaults, so many lies and scandals, so much misfortune and injustice. Over the years, it had begun to accumulate, like toxins in his liver.
“What happened after that?” Seede asked.
“I did what all dope fiends do in a crisis: I shot up. And then I left the building. I didn’t want to be around when the cops arrived.”
“I’m guessing you took the stairs,” Jamal said, chuckling at his own bon mot.
Oblivious, Larry dipped his Bic into his bindle and sniffed. Seede looked to Jamal with a pregnant expression. Jamal took a swig of his coffee, addressed their guest. “You still doing any commerce?” he asked.
Larry switched nostrils and sniffed again. “Not a whole lot. How much are you looking to get?”
Jamal eyeballed Seede. “What do you think, two dimes?”
“What do you think?” Seede asked Larry the Pharmacist.
Larry the Pharmacist popped the empty bindle into his mouth, commenced chewing. “You ever use heroin before?”
Seede shook his head no.
“What else do you have on board?”
“On board?”
“What other chemicals are in your system right now?”
“Since when?”
“Say, the last twenty-four hours.”
“Dimetapp—that’s an allergy medication, an antihistamine. And let’s see: four, eight, um … about fourteen milligrams of Xanax, and about an eightball of street crack.” He thought a moment. “And a couple of joints, some wine. Does nicotine and caffeine count?”
“Yoooooo!” Jamal sang appreciatively. “Unsafe at any speed!”
“Actually, I’m functioning at a pretty high level.” Seede’s tone was that of a researcher, assessing the state of a lab animal.
“I had another front-page story on Sunday.”
“You been going to work every day?”
“Pretty much. None of my eagle-eyed investigative colleagues suspect a thing—everybody in the newsroom looks like shit. I’m beginning to believe what they say: the most obvious is the least obvious. It certainly bears out in this case. I don’t think anyone suspects—except my wife, although she has no idea how long it’s been going on and to what extent.”
“And since she gone at the moment—”
“I’d try a dime to start,” Larry the Pharmacist said. “That’s about a tenth of a gram, a hundred milligrams. Hellraiser is running about 37.5 percent pure. You’d be ingesting only about thirty-eight milligrams of pure heroin. It’s not that much. Enough to get you off, give you a little taste. It certainly won’t kill you. Unless …” His voice trailed off.
Alarmed: “Unless what?”
“Unless you have a systemic intolerance to opiates. You don’t, do you? It’s pretty rare.”
Seede’s eyes widened. “Not that I know of.”
Jamal chuckled again and took a swig of his coffee. “Don’t worry. We can have you at Howard Hospital in two minutes.” He looked at Larry. “They say the brain can go without oxygen for what, five minutes?”
“I believe that’s correct,” Larry confirmed.
“How long do you think it would take to acquire a habit?” Seede asked.
Larry the Pharmacist looked at him gravely. “I wouldn’t recommend it,” he said.
31
Salem followed the butler into the crystal chamber. The motorized ceiling was partially retracted, revealing a glass-and-steel roof, the wan winter sky above.
They were greeted by Bert Metcalfe. He was wearing a royal blue workout suit and white Reebok trainers. A terry-cloth towel was draped over his neck; drops of perspiration roosted amidst the swirling curls at his temples.
“Hello, Salem,” he said warmly.
The hand he offered was small and stubby, with tufts of fine black hair growing like sea grass along the fleshy dunes of his knuckles. She chose to leave it where it was.
Metcalfe’s hand dropped lifelessly to his side, like a duck caught midflight by a load of no. 3 buckshot. “You are Salem Irene Clark, are you not?”
She drew back one side of her long coat like a stage curtain, pinned it to her hip with a fist, revealing a chic little black dress that clung to her thin but shapely form. “I’m whoever you want me to be, baby.”
Metcalfe cut his eyes to Desmond and then back to Salem. In his mind, this scene had unfolded a bit differently. Maybe he should have let the detective fill her in. He dabbed his forehead with the towel. “I know who you are,” he said earnestly.
“I’m sure you do, baby,” Salem said. “And I’m gonna get to know you real good too.” She drew back the other flap of her coat, pinned it with her other fist.
“No, no, no,” he said, struggling to make himself understood. “I don’t want to have sex with you. I just want to talk.”
“It’s yo money.”
Exasperated, he put his own two fists on his hips. “How much?”
Salem considered what the market would bear. She wondered what “just talk” was really going to entail. He was obviously loaded. But something about the whole scene felt really weird. Not dangerous exactly. Just off. That he knew her name—that was explainable: the cop had told him. Rich folk always have cops around to help with their dirty work. The skull thingies everywhere didn’t help. Neither did this guy. What was he, a midget or something? The usual stuff she could handle—the blow jobs and straight sex, the groping in the front seats of cars—when it came right down to it, it wasn’t much different from high school dating. It wasn’t until the freak show started—the tandem dates, the dirty talk—that she began to really feel like a ho (instead of like someone just pretending to be one).
“Perhaps I need to speak to your pimp about the financial arrangements?” Metcalfe said, mistaking her reticence for ploy. The stress on the word carried an accusatory tone, modulated with a hint of worry that seemed inappropriate to Salem, especially under the circumstances.
“You can talk to me,” she said, raising her index finger in admonition. The nail was long and sharp, painted red. “And he ain’t my pimp,” she said, waggling the finger in the air, meanwhile swiveling her head contrapuntally. “He my security.”
A feel
ing of sadness overcame Metcalfe. He remembered her now, the mother. Her name was Suzy, a leggy bottle blonde with baby doll eyes and a raspy, cigarette voice. She’d worked as a bartender in a tavern patronized by NASA employees. Metcalfe had gone there with some ground-control types. The next day his friend Grissom was incinerated on the launchpad; in his shock and grief he’d never given the woman another thought. But why hadn’t she contacted him? It made no sense. She must have had other lovers. She must not have believed the child was his. Certainly she’d known who he was and could have found him—his visit to Canaveral had been noted in the local press. Why not let him know? Why not ask for money? How strange it was to think that all these years he’d had a child in the world and hadn’t known. And this is what had become of her. And this is how easy it was to communicate. It seemed so sad and ironic. He wished now that he’d prepared more for this meeting, maybe done a little reading on the subjects of fatherhood and reunions—all sorts of relevant topics came to mind.
“You’re safe now,” he said, striking a parental tone, his voice full of emotion. He reached up and placed his stubby but well-meaning paw atop her admonishing, red-painted fingernail, steered the hand back down to her side. “I know what happened in Miami. I know about the shooting in the condo. I can help you.”
Salem stepped backward, out of range of his touch. How the fuck does he know all this? She gave her voice a hard edge; her eyes took cover behind a ghetto squint, lids crinkled, the effect somewhat offset by her lush Max Factor lashes. “You wanna date or not? Cause I gotta be goin. I got an appointment downtown, know what I’m sayin?”
Metcalfe sighed. “Give her the money, Desmond.”
A standard payroll envelope, nearly two inches thick. Salem opened the flap, thumbed the stack of bills inside. She’d left South Beach almost three weeks ago. There’d been no sign of the men who killed Roberto, no sign of anyone following her. Maybe this little guy was right. Maybe she was safe. Maybe her trail was cold by now. Maybe the whole thing had been a huge mistake. Maybe they’d never even realized she’d been hiding in the closet. Maybe they didn’t care. Or maybe they did. Who knew? One thing was sure: there was a lot of money in this envelope. More than she’d ever seen at one time. More than enough for a ticket to California, a start on a new life.
“These are all fifties,” she said, incredulous, pronouncing the second f in fifties—her ghetto inflection momentarily forgotten.
“Tea for two, please, Thornton,” Metcalfe ordered.
32
Geoff Greene, the proprietor of Mystic Eye Books, leaned back in his desk chair, appraising the young girl before him with a connoisseur’s eye. He was a handsome older man, chiseled and craggy, a type you might find acting in a daytime soap. His thinning hair was expensively cut; his cashmere turtleneck was threadbare at the elbows. A two-day stubble of salt-and-pepper beard camouflaged the gentle erosion of his jawline. “Your name is Sojii?” he asked.
“Ava introduced us once. I was in the shop, and you were—”
“And you are … ?” Greene waved his antique half-glasses imperiously in the direction of her companion.
“James Freeman, Mr. Greene.” He’d insisted on following her up the stairs, along the dark corridor to this back office. He proffered his hand and a winning smile. “Don’t mind me: I’m just along for the ride.”
The room was small and dusty, with books everywhere—crammed into shelves, stacked waist-high around the floor, balanced on the arms of chairs, piled atop the large desk behind which Greene was sitting. Scattered here and there were fallen deities, breakage from the bookstore—a Buddha with no head, a Jesus with one arm, two halves of a Ganesha serving as paperweights. From this unlikely headquarters, Greene did a brisk and lucrative trade in rare texts and high-end religious relics. Self-educated in his field, he’d gotten his start peddling illustrated Bibles door to door in a beat-up VW bug. While he did boast a sizable personal collection of important artifacts, the rarest and most valuable of which were kept in a vault in the basement, he served more often as a middleman, working the dark margins between the mercenary adventurers who acquired the stuff and the wealthy zealots who conspired to possess it. He gestured to a pair of chairs. Freeman removed a stack of books to the floor and sat down in one. Sojii perched on the edge of the other.
“Ava tells me you’re interested in crystals,” Greene said.
“Crystal skulls,” Sojii clarified.
“Crystal skulls?” The smile overlarge.
“You know—like a skull made out of a large piece of crystal rock?”
He smiled again, a toothy display of expensive bridgework that resembled a primate fear grimace. “What a coincidence,” he said, indicating the array of books spread before him on his desk. “I was just doing some research on that very topic.”
“Small world,” said Freeman. He liked the looks of this guy, but that was about it.
“What do you want to know?” Greene asked Sojii.
A long beat, eyes downcast. Then her emerald irises rose and sought his grays. “Everything?”
Greene smiled again, closer to genuine this time, disarmed by her youth and beauty. He fitted his glasses to the tip of his nose, pulled out a book from the pile on his desk. “According to various legends, there are as many as fourteen ancient skulls,” he said, locating a page. He commenced reading: “Crafted of precious or semiprecious minerals, in lifelike human proportions, they are said to be able to speak or sing or otherwise communicate, sometimes in birdsong or other animal sounds. A fifteenth skull is known as the Master Skull. All of the skulls are said to contain important information about the origins, purpose, and destiny of mankind—answers to some of the greatest mysteries of life and the universe.”
“How do you know which is which?” Sojii asked.
“For one thing, they’re made of different materials,” he said. “Some are crystal—three of them, I believe, including the Master Skull, which is said to be the most valuable. Then there’s a jade skull, a rose quartz skull, one of lapis, so on. According to the legends, they’re meant to be used in groups of five with a crystal skull central to each grouping.”
“Whose legends?” Freeman asked.
“That’s what’s interesting,” Greene said, looking over the top of his glasses. “Versions of the same stories are found in different cultures.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “The Mayans and the Aztecs in Central America. The Pueblo Indians in the southwest United States. The Cherokees of the northeast, the Canadian tribes. All of them have legends about skulls. All of them have legends about visitors from the sky or from the sea. The British Museum has a crystal skull. As does the Smithsonian—that one is said to be cursed. But most of the fifteen skulls are privately owned. They’re very valuable. As you could imagine, there are a lot of counterfeits on the market.”
“How do you know which are the counterfeits and which are real?” Sojii asked.
Greene leaned forward. “Why are you so interested in all this anyway?”
Uncertain: “I just am?”
“You haven’t seen one, have you?”
Her backpack was on the floor between her feet. “What if I have?”
“For one thing, you might be on the verge of becoming a very wealthy young woman.”
Unblinking: “What if it’s not mine?”
“These skulls have enormous scientific value,” he said gravely. “Religious, historic, scientific—you name it, Sojii. If you know where one is, it is your civic duty to come forward and tell.”
She glanced at Freeman and then back at Greene, considering. Then she reached down and unzipped her backpack. She placed the skull upon the desk.
It was a marvelous object, absolutely flawless, anatomically correct. The cranium was transparent, cool to the touch. The eye sockets glowed softly, reflecting the available light. The details of the teeth were precise, the cheekbones were exquisite, the surface was as smooth as glass. Deep within the skull could be seen a series of tiny bubbl
es, laid out in a gently curving plain, glittering within the mass of the crystal like stars.
Visibly moved, Greene picked it up with both hands, turned it reverently this way and that. A rainbow of refracted light played across the rugged screen of his face. Until yesterday, when Detective Bandini had called, Greene had never given much thought to crystal skulls. He had collaborated intermittently with Bandini since the early eighties, when the cop, working robbery at the time, had sought Greene’s advice on a series of break-ins at churches. Of course, Greene had heard of crystal skulls; he had replicas for sale in his store. But typically that sort of product wasn’t on his radar. He usually concentrated on more mainstream items—ancient texts, rare icons, paintings, and the like. As he told Bandini: he’d heard nothing specific, black market or otherwise. Bandini thanked him and hung up, but not before mentioning—rather pointedly, Greene thought—that a large reward for information was being offered by a private party. With the holiday lull at hand, Greene had decided to nose around a bit. Like he always said: nothing comes to those who wait.
“This is the Master Skull, isn’t it?” Sojii asked.
“It’s supposedly a woman,” Greene said. “In the mid-1920s, a forensics guy from the New York City Police Department drew an artist’s conception from a photograph. He used the bone structure to extrapolate her features.”
Greene pulled another book from the pile on his desk, flipped through the pages, found the drawing. He held it up for his visitors to see.
“Whoa,” Freeman exclaimed. “She looks exactly like you, Sojii.”
“The eyes and the cheekbones especially,” Greene agreed.
It was Sojii’s turn to be skeptical. “And this was supposedly made on another planet?”
Greene threw up his hands, partly in acknowledgment of the volumes crowded into his dusty office, symbolic of mankind’s collective wisdom, partly in acknowledgment of the great mysteries that mankind’s collective wisdom hadn’t yet managed to explain. “Some say beings from outer space brought the Master Skull and its brothers and sisters to Earth millenniums ago.” His voice sounded neutral, just relating the facts, unbelievable as they might sound. “Others say the skulls were fashioned by the inhabitants of Atlantis in the hours or days before their civilization was wiped out. Some believe the Atlanteans were the descendants of colonists from another planet. The earliest known reference comes from Plato, circa 350 B.C.”
