by J. R. Rain
“So he’s Maltese?”
She shrugs. “That’s what the neighbors say. Anyways, his wife, Nadya, seems to have still told fortunes for a living. Tarot or palm reading or some shit.” Despite her show of disdain, I happen to know Malena religiously visits her own Santeria fortuneteller at least once a month. She goes on, riffling through her notes with her surgical gloves, looking like an ER nurse. “We have nothing on her. The palm-reading client, Maria Walker―the mayor’s daughter―age twenty-seven. Then we have two unidentified males; one looks to be pretty old, maybe in his seventies. Maybe somebody’s father, but the neighbors know nothing about him. The younger vic is most likely a bodyguard, because he had a holster. Huge guy, but it didn’t seem to matter.”
“Did he have a weapon?”
“An H-K. We found it at the bottom of the pool fully chambered.” H-K is short for Heckler & Koch, a brand of pistol.
The two of us have been all but whispering to each other in a corner of the living room, but the space is getting too crowded, and we’re interrupted by a fresh influx of more responders. There’s a ripple of excitement among them.
“We’ve got a wit!” says one, and suddenly I spot a familiar face over Ayon’s shoulder, very faint in the bright crime scene lights. Bull. It must be after dark. I excuse myself and step back outside onto the deck, taking out my cell-phone.
ey, no phones at the scene!” one of the Central Homicide dicks barks at me, but I just give him the finger and turn so the phone is facing the wall. Like I’m taking a call from my boss or something. The department is scared shitless about video leaks. Not that they’re going to be able to keep a lid on this one for more than five minutes.
“How did you find me?” I ask Bull when he joins me.
“Me and the Gimp tailed you all day. Out to Cloverly and back. Used to be a hell of a roadhouse out that way.”
“Oh shit!” I can feel my face turning crimson. Incredible how that still works with no circulatory system. “Please tell me you didn’t watch―”
“Well, the Gimp wanted to―man’s an animal. But I turned him around and marched him away. Don’t worry, toots; we didn’t see nothin’, you know, indecent…” He looks as embarrassed as I am.
What never ceases to amaze me about McGuinness is for all his cruelty and corruption, he’s also surprisingly prissy about anything having to do with women. I guess that’s a pretty old-fashioned quality in a man―but it seems kind of sweet at the moment. Then I think: oh crap, please tell me the cute lieutenant from last night, the Dream Soldier, wasn’t anywhere around to watch, too.
But “Thanks, Bull,” is all I say. “Hey, how come you two were tailing me, anyway?”
“I told you why; the Eaters might be on the lookout for people like you. So I decided we better tag along and keep an eye on things. Just in case, see.” I see, all right. What I don’t see is what Bull or anybody else planned to do about it if the Soul Eaters find me…
“Got anything for me here?”
“Yeah, one of the vics was still haunting the place when we got here. An old guy. Foreign. Gimp’s got him cuffed now, but sooner or later Grandpa’s gonna figure out the rules here and just wander away on his own, like the others did. So we better make tracks now, you want to give him the third degree.”
“Okay. Meet you back at my car.”
On the way out, I almost literally run into Val Tabori, my brand spanking new lover, who gives me a look. You know what kind of look I mean; one for public consumption. You know, like, Hey, look at me, world: I just totally nailed this bitch. A ‘Barney Stimson’ look. Unfortunately, Ayon is still around and sees it, so I know I’m gonna catch hell from her on the subject later.
“I know what I’m doing here,” I say to him sourly. “But what the hell are you doing here?”
“Didn’t anybody tell you, chel?” he says, smirking back at me. “The lady of the house was a Gypsy.”
Fantastic. So now I’ll be seeing the smug bastard every day, at least until this one is in the can. Talk about shitting where you eat. I curse under my breath all the way out to my Toyota, ignoring the pleas of a few of the camera-persons behind the thin barricade of twisted yellow tape. After I get in and slam the door, I pull my phone out again so that nobody films me apparently talking to myself. Bull and the Gimp are already waiting for me there, along with the ghost of one of the murdered men from inside the house, whose face and fingers keep fracturing apart and then reassembling themselves.
He looks to be his late sixties or seventies, balding, with a receding fringe of thick white hair. He’s wizened but very tough, like a hard-eyed old rooster; his skin, I’m guessing, was weathered to a uniform brown in life. He strikes me as someone who spent a lot of time on boats.
“You speak English?” I ask him. He nods. I’m suddenly aware that I’m still dressed like a big white Easter bunny, right down to the paper hospital slippers; maybe my surgical gloves will scare him. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Izaak Drago,” he says, after a minute. His voice sounds like it’s coming out of a cement mixer.
“Let me guess. You’re from Malta?” He answers in another language, so I don’t have a clue what he’s saying. But it sounds contemptuous.
The Gimp does something to him, and anger flares up briefly in Drago’s hooded eyes. “Hey, asshole. Answer the lady!”
“I am Maltese, yes.”
And suddenly I realize what this must all be about. “You’re one of the Three Wise Men, aren’t you?” I have the name for them in Maltese scribbled down somewhere in my notes, but I can’t remember them right now to save my life. It doesn’t matter; I’m sure I would have pronounced them wrong anyway.
Besides, Izaak here isn’t talking. I decide to change tacks with him.
“Look, Mr. Drago―I’m just looking for the people who did this to you.” Then I tell the Gimp to release him from his cuffs. But the old man has already figured this aspect of the afterlife out; he pulls away from whatever ghostly bonds had been containing him―those of “habit”, as Lorna once called it―and passes out through the car door to the street. It’s getting dark now, and my vision is doubled by the glowing contours of the dead world.
Drago smiles down at me through the car window. “His soul will soon belong to demons. As will yours, Sinjorina Zombi.” Then he turns away and disappears into the night. The Gimp follows him.
“Maybe you shouldn’t of let him go,” says Bull from the passenger seat beside me. “We coulda made him talk.” Somehow, I doubt that. “Now you’ll never know who did…whatever it was they did in there.” I can tell that the old monster, veteran cop though he is, was pretty shocked by what he saw inside the Trapanis’ house.
“Oh, I already know who did it. Or at least I know how to find out.”
And now I’m feeling seriously sick. I’m not sure whether it’s a reaction to the way Tabori just treated me in there―or to the sight and smell of the corpses. Or maybe it was the coup de grace, the threat of demons or Soul Eaters coming after me…whatever, I’m about to lose it. Because it’s obvious to me that whoever committed this crime was one of the fellow-cops Dr. Phil had mentioned earlier in the day. You know, the ones I’m supposed to meet in a therapy group. That ceremony I’d seen the remains of out at the besh today―that was to summon one of us to go forth and do this, to wipe out another rival fortuneteller, along with one of the money-laundering Maltese. One of the Three Wise Men, the tliet gh’orrief, that was the name for them.
It might even have been chosen at random, which one of us three mulo cops responded to the call. My guess is the killer was unarmed at the time, so he drove up to the front gate, somehow got inside, and then tore everybody in the house apart with his bare hands and fingernails and, most likely, teeth. Then he staggered out again and drove off. And that’s why I’m shaking and feeling like I’m about to puke; because if I hadn’t asked Rabbi Tamara to stuff my pockets with salt and babysit me last night, the one who did it could have been me…
And that thought literally pushes me over the top. I open my door and start retching and then dry-heaving what’s left of my gut contents out onto the street pavement, much to the delight of the bored TV camera crews. There’s no feeling quite like knowing you’re gonna make the evening news while you’re hurling.
“Hey, gata―you okay in here?” It’s Ayon, opening the passenger door and sliding in beside me. There’s no sign of Bull, though my guess is he wouldn’t have minded the spark of contact with the “Mexican Spitfire” moving through him.
“Not so much,” I tell her, and she hands me a bottled water and strokes my cheek.
“Jesus Christ, you’re freezing cold. I’ll go get you some Coke,” she says. “That’ll make you feel better.” Coke is like Ayon’s magical cure for everything. The soft drink, I mean, not the drug. “Honestly, I thought it would be me losing it in there―not a tough old crime-scene pro like you.”
Malena never lets an opportunity slip of reminding me that she’s a year and a half younger than me.
“Thanks. Actually, it wasn’t just that. I…I’ve had a lot on my plate lately.” As usual, I have an irrational compulsion to blurt out the truth to her, to just tell her everything, but I resist it. I’m still not totally sure I can trust her. And besides, even if I can, there’s no knowing how she’ll react. She’s very superstitious and is also a terrible gossip and a snoop. So maybe I’d better not. Too many people know already. Like Val, for instance.
And also as usual, my partner can read my mind.
“Like the Gypsy King, huh..?” she says, leering at me. “Looks to me like you two sealed the deal. Or are you gonna bother denying it?”
I shake my head.
“Okay, I want all the details, girl. So how was he, on a scale of one to ten?”
I shrug. “Not bad. It was nice. But with me, it’s not about―”
“Yeah, yeah, I know; it’s not about the fucking, it’s about the cuddling and the flowers or some stupid shit. Now I need to hurl. With me, it’s strictly about the fucking, thank God. Now let’s go find a Coke and get you cleaned up. You’ve got really bad puke-breath―maybe one of the TV trucks will loan us some Scope or toothpaste. I really hate to see you getting hooked up with that mother, though, no offense,” she says once we’re walked over to the police line in our matching bunny suits. “There’s just something not quite right about him.”
“Maybe you’re just prejudiced against Gypsies.”
But she says nothing.
Anyway, I keep feeling pretty freaked for the next couple hours. My nausea’s not going away, and I know why: because I can’t shake the feeling that I need to be back home where Rabbi Tamara can take care of me, can stuff my pockets full of salt at the first sign of my wandering off someplace in a trance. Because nighttime just isn’t safe for me anymore―I could be summoned again any moment, as the grisly scene inside the house has totally proved. I was kidding myself the night I killed Dooriya and Boiko in Rosedale that it might just be a one-time thing, my being used like that. But now I can see that Gana Kali and the Horvaths are planning a real reign of terror with their mulo army. And plan to stop at nothing.
Know what else I think? I think this was the plan from the start. It was always about the Maltese money-laundering operation―me whacking a rival fortuneteller was a test run, to see if the magic zombie shit even worked. But maybe now it’s occurred to the Horvaths that they can totally wipe out the competition; there’s already two rival Gypsy fortunetellers down, and who knows how many to go. And that’s not even the main event. Who knows? Maybe they really will raise an army and try to take over the whole city. Why think small when you can go bigtime?
Of course, that’s not the Romani way exactly, not from everything I’ve read on the Internet. They like to lurk in the shadows, stay small and obscure and hidden from the prying eyes of the gadjo. So why come out now? Why suddenly create three mulos out of the blue like this―and then set them loose to wreak bloody havoc? Isn’t that taking an awfully big risk of public exposure? I mean, Val’s paranoia is right about one thing: if there’s a sudden outbreak of murderous zombies here, Homeland Security will come down on this town like a swarm of flies on shit―and that would mean the end of the Horvath clan’s anonymity.
Something’s different now. Maybe Gana Kali could never work the zombie spell right before. The hakkno mulo, Val called it. Maybe or someone taught her how to do it properly. Something’s definitely changed in their lives to make her and her father suddenly so vicious and greedy, without any fear of consequences. This hyperviolent sort of shit was never the family’s MO before.
As far as I’m concerned in this, my involvement can’t ever stop until I take her out―and make sure all knowledge of the spell is completely erased with her. As long as she’s alive, I’ll always have the prospect of being summoned again hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles. Which means I may have to go rogue and do some cold-blooded killing myself―of her and anybody else who has this power over me.
The thought makes my tummy start feeling distinctly queasy again.
right and early the next morning, all the detectives on the case have to report downtown to a conference room just off the main Homicide bureau. There are about twenty of us crammed into the room, though only nine, including me, Ayon, and Val Tabori, are actually assigned to the case; the rest are various police brass and their admin flunkies, along with a couple of suits from the DA’s office who are obviously sitting in to report directly to the mayor.
We watch a video of the interview with the witness, an elderly neighbor woman, on a big flat-panel screen high up on the wall. Sometime after midnight, she says, she heard screams from down the street, so she got out of bed and looked out her second-floor window in time to see a man staggering out of the Trapani’s house across the street and two doors down.
Unfortunately, the night was dark, and the old lady makes a bad wit. The man she saw staggering out through the electronic front gate was big―over six feet and two hundred pounds―but she couldn’t give us much of anything else. He was, she said, covered from head to foot in what she thought was oil but later realized must have been blood. This distorted his appearance, making him look less like a human being than a moving statue―a “golem”, she called it. Being old, she didn’t have an iPhone to take a photograph with and wasn’t close enough to get a good look at him; so had nothing for the Identikit artist. He had instead created a mockup illustration of the getaway car, a large late-model sedan, either maroon or dark green; she couldn’t be sure. This was flashed up on the flat-panel screen―it looked a lot like Vlad the Impala, I noticed. Or maybe an unmarked police-issue Crown Victoria.
But the man she described definitely wasn’t the Gypsy King, who fidgets next to me as we watch this. He’s acting weird toward me this morning in ways I haven’t seen from him before. For one thing, he looks upset: pale and sweating and nervous, fidgeting in the seat beside me as all this goes down. For another, he’s being solicitous, even kind of clingy; giving me tender glances and bringing me coffee and a couple doughnuts, which I decline. I remember one time I had a pregnancy scare with Harper, and this was exactly how he acted. I can tell Malena, sitting on my other side, has noticed and is impressed in spite of her dislike of him.
The lead detective on this case is the senior lieutenant from central Homicide, Bowen. Who is barking like an asshole drill sergeant because there are at least four people in the room who outrank him, including his own captain, a deputy commissioner, plus the two suits representing the mayor. And a woman with a shiny blonded motorcycle helmet of hair who almost screams Internal Affairs―which can only mean I’m not the only one who suspects maybe a police officer did it. Bowen gets up to give us our case assignments, but before he gets to the pep talk part, he goes over what ID and the ME’s office have managed to come up with, complete with a Powerpoint presentation.
“Nicholas Matthew Trapani,” he says, as Trapani’s face pops onto the screen
. “Age thirty-seven, born in Malta, became a naturalized US citizen at twenty-one.” We switch to a coroner’s photograph of Trapani’s head, which has been partially reconstructed and stuck next to the top of his body on the morgue slab. Most of him was found in a blood-spattered room next to the main living area. Bowen goes into some detail about the dead man’s business interests, then says that he’s on the FBI database as a person of interest in an ongoing RICO investigation.
“Will we be getting the file from them?” somebody interrupts, and he snaps back, “On need to know.” Then he goes on to the bodyguard.
“Luca Pandolfo Messineo.” A mugshot of a beefy guy smirking slightly―a jailhouse cut-up, obviously―shows up next, followed by his morgue shot, which is a mess. He’s missing both eyeballs and his tongue, and his remaining skin looks sluglike and puffy, like it’s been injected with steroids. “Age twenty-five, born Borough of Queens, of Sicilian extraction. He’s the one from the pool, so he spent the night mostly underwater. Incidentally, not all of the forensics prelim you may have heard at the scene turns out to have been accurate. We think Mr. Messineo here, who seems to have been the family bodyguard and chauffeur, was killed first and dumped in the pool along with his sidearm, a registered carry Heckler & Koch HK45 with an intact round in its chamber.”
“So it all happened too fast for him to fire it,” says somebody.
“Draw your own conclusions. Now on to Mrs. Trapani, Nadya―we think.” Beside me, Val exhales quietly and his body goes rigid; then he leans forward like a schoolkid about to raise his hand. “We know next to nothing about her at this point. Thirtyish, mother of his child, had a small business telling fortunes on the side―yeah, what? You’ve got something to say, Detective?”
“Tabori, Gang Taskforce. The victim was thirty-two, place of birth, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, maiden name Nadezhda Elena Radu. The reason I know this is because I originally recruited her as a CI for the department.” A Confidential Informant. Which means he’s probably feeling guilty and responsible for her death.
