The Shimmer

by Carsten Stroud

  feral is as feral does

  Jack and Annabelle got to the morgue a couple of hours after Clete had been and gone, no one knew where.

  So they looked for Clete at his beach house and then at the Jacksonville offices of Robbery Homicide, didn’t find him anywhere, and no one had any idea where the hell he was, or, if they did, they weren’t saying, and then they were met, unwillingly, in a top-floor hallway, by Beau Short.

  Beau Short was Clete’s boss, a straight razor of a man with close-cut blue-white hair and pale green eyes made even more piercing by a deep mahogany tan. He was wearing a well-cut navy-blue pin-striped suit and his shoes were buffed to a jewellike gleam.

  “In my office,” he said, not implying tea and scones. They went, of course.

  Behind his aircraft-carrier desk, he took in Jack’s rumpled blue suit, his .357 and his unfamiliar Highway Patrol badge, and sat back in his swivel chair, his manner hostile and wary.

  “I’m not getting how the hell you fit into this, Sergeant.”

  “I can vouch for him,” said Annabelle. “The main thing, what we’re worried about here, is Clete Redding, Lieutenant—”

  “Call me Beau.”

  “Thank you. Beau. What we’re worried about—”

  “Is where in hell is Clete Redding right now and what is he planning to do? That about right?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Mind if I ask you a couple of questions first?”

  “If you think we have time for that.”

  He inclined his head, gave her a sideways smile.

  “I do, so bear with me. First of all, I’ve known Clete Redding for over twenty years. Both linebackers in high school football, and then the Corps and then in Korea, and then we came onto the Jacksonville PD as harness bulls. And he has never once, in all that time, told me that he had a—What are you, a cousin or something, Jack? Because you sure as hell are a Redding.”

  “Kind of a cousin.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s never mentioned that he had a ‘kind of a cousin’ working Highway Patrol. Not once. Kind of weird, you think?”

  “Yeah. It is,” said Jack.

  “Got anything useful to say about it?”

  Annabelle broke in.

  “With respect, Lieutenant—”

  “Beau.”

  “Beau, do you know where Clete is right now?”

  “Haven’t a clue, and I’ve got good people out looking for him. He’s not answering his radio, I’ve sent a car to the beach house—they saw your car there, very nice big blue Lincoln Continental by the way—and he’s not there. As you know. About three hours ago, he blew into Immaculate Heart, shoved his way through a lot of his cop friends, had a few words with the Forrest family, hugged his kid.”

  He stopped there, for a moment, because Frank Forrest had called to fill him in on what Declan had said to his father, and Clete’s reaction to it. He said nothing about that to Jack and Annabelle, but went on in a cold hard voice.

  “Then he went down to the basement, to the morgue, and stood looking at Mary Alice for maybe fifteen minutes, didn’t say a word to the attendant, and then he left, looking like rolling thunder, and now we have—excuse me, Annabelle—no fucking clue where the fuck he is.”

  He drew in a long breath, a man at the edge.

  “But...but I do have you, Sergeant Redding, and you do look like a Redding and you do look like a real cop, but nobody over at Highway Patrol HQ has ever heard of you—”

  He stopped, got himself under control.

  “But know what? I don’t give a fuck about that right now. Maybe you’re the fucking CIA or maybe you’re another one of those three-letter swear words I really don’t give a fuck about either. How about one of you—either one, pick a card—just sits up straight and tells me what the fuck is going on here?”

  And he sat back, templed his fingers and, aside from a slight tremor in his right knee, smiled and indicated that he was prepared to wait until Columbus Day for an answer.

  Annabelle and Jack looked at each other for a moment, and then Annabelle turned back to Beau Short.

  “You checked me out too, yes?”

  “Sure did. Very impressive. Naval Intel and now one of the best plainclothes cops in 8 Division, and you’re even suspected of being sort of kind of occasionally, intermittently semihonest.”

  Annabelle smiled, not sweetly.

  “For a New Orleans cop.”

  “Yeah, well, what can I say?”

  “But that’s not my point.”

  “Fine. What is your point?”

  “Somebody killed Mary Alice Redding. Clete thinks it was probably done by Anthony Vizzini.”

  “Or somebody working for him. We’ll know soon enough. Word is Tessio Vizzini is, right now as we speak, hanging the kid by his nuts over a pool full of gators. He calls it ‘putting a guy to the question.’ Most guys tell him the truth.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think Little Anthony is as dumb as a box of mice and as low-down mean and stupid as a retarded stoat. I also think Little Anthony couldn’t recognize the Up button in a freight elevator. So, no, there’s no way he killed Mary Alice Redding.”

  “What does Clete think?”

  “Right now, thinking is not what Clete is doing. Clete believes that, one way or another, the Vizzinis hit his wife. He thinks the drive-by with Tony and Sergio Carpo was a distraction, and those butt-stupid County boys went for it like kittens after a string of Christmas tinsel.”

  He sighed, rubbed his face.

  “Tell you what I’m afraid of. I think Clete is out there in the dark right now, making plans, and when he’s through getting ready, he’ll go through the Vizzini compound like Sherman through Georgia. Unless we can find him and stop him. So now you tell me, what do you think?”

  “We think we know who killed his wife, and it wasn’t any member of the Vizzini family.”

  Long pause.

  “Okay. Not a Vizzini. Then who?”

  “A woman named Aurelia DiSantis.”

  “We know her. She’s Tessio’s punch—his mistress. They meet at the Monterey Court. One of our guys has the shots.”

  “Clete Redding.”

  “Yeah. Yes. Clete. He’s been on a surveillance op with the Vizzinis. So why do you like this DiSantis woman for the death of his wife?”

  “DiSantis is more than she looks,” said Annabelle.

  “Which means?”

  She looked at Jack, who stepped in.

  “She’s a serial killer—”

  “A what?”

  “A repeat offender. She finds vulnerable people—women, men, whatever—and she digs her way into their lives—”

  “A parasite wasp?”

  “Yes. Exactly. A parasite wasp. She works her way into their lives, and she sucks out everything they have, and then she kills them.”

  “Does Clete know about this? He’s been looking into her background, I know.”

  “For you?”

  He flared up at that.

  “For who the fuck else? And what does that mean?”

  Jack didn’t back off.

  “Hey. She’s Tessio Vizzini’s mistress.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen the Monterey Court shots. She’s got her stinger sunk deep in that mook. Look, I know where you’re going with this. Clete walks a narrow line. Annabelle, you’re from New Orleans—you know what it’s like. One hand washes the other. Favors get done, info gets delivered, order is maintained. If Clete’s been letting Tessio know what he’s found out about this DiSantis woman, I don’t care. I’ve been getting everything he’s got, and that’s all I give a good goddamn about.”

  “Has he talked to you at all, about this woman, since he got back from New Orleans?”

  “Hell no. He went
through here like a howitzer shell. Why? Did he come up with something new?”

  “He didn’t,” said Annabelle. “I did.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like her name isn’t Aurelia DiSantis, it’s Selena D’Arcy, date of birth September 7, 1909—”

  “No way. That’d make her...forty-eight?”

  “That’s her real age.”

  “But she doesn’t look anywhere near that. Gotta be wrong.”

  Annabelle was thinking about Philomena now, about how the child Selena had died and about how much they could say and not open up dangerous ground.

  “It’s right there in the Plaquemine Parish records. Date of birth, current address. She lives in number nine at the Pontalba Apartments, next to Jackson Square, and, according to the records, she’s had the place since 1943.”

  “I know the Pontalba. The rent is a fortune. How’s she affording this?”

  Jack stepped in.

  “Like you said, she’s a parasite wasp and she’s been one for a lot longer than Clete thought. Years longer. And now she’s doing it to Tessio Vizzini.”

  “So, yeah, well, good for her. Fuck Tessio Vizzini. He deserves whatever he gets.”

  “But does Clete?”

  “How is this DiSantis woman a threat to Clete?”

  This was a hard question to answer, because a complete answer would have ended up with Beau Short smiling very sweetly at them, saying “Excuse me for a moment” and then stepping out into the hall and calling for some muscle guys to toss them into a psych ward.

  “She’s trying to deflect Clete from her case. And Jack here is on the same case, but he has her under a different name, a Selena D’Arcy. But now we know she’s the same woman Clete is investigating. And she’s trying to distract all of us by killing Mary Alice and laying it on the Vizzinis.”

  He took this in, assessing them as he did so.

  “And how is that supposed to help her?”

  “She sets Clete onto the Vizzinis, and then she tells Tessio that Clete’s on his way, and they kill him. Problem solved.”

  “Okay. I see that. Where is this woman now?”

  Annabelle and Jack glanced at each other.

  Annabelle answered first.

  “We think she’s in a suite at the Alcazar Hotel in St. Augustine.”

  “Yeah? When? Like right now?”

  “Yes. We think so.”

  “And you think she might have what we in the parlance of professional police departments like to call ‘material knowledge of the case in question’?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Hold on.”

  He picked up the phone, dialed a number.

  “Yeah, do you have a woman registered there, name of Aurelia DiSantis...You can’t say? Or you don’t know?...Okay...I get that. Look, I’m Lieutenant Beauregard Short, Jacksonville PD, and I’m officially asking if you have a woman by that name registered at your fucking hotel?”

  Silence, the wall clock ticking, muffled voices in the outer hallway.

  “Yeah, okay...Suite 1408...You happen to know if she’s in right now?...Keys are in the box?...Yeah, thanks...No, I don’t want you to put me through to her...Can I have your name?...Okay, look, Marco, don’t be calling her after I hang up, got that? If you do, that’s interfering with a police matter, comprende? We understand each other?...Good. Thanks.”

  He put the phone down.

  “She’s there right now. Room 1408.”

  He sat up, pushed his chair forward, opened a drawer and pulled out a shoulder rig with a large Smith & Wesson tucked into the holster.

  “Well then,” he said, standing up and grinning wickedly at them while he stripped off his suit coat and tugged the rig over his shoulders and got his jacket back on, all in one seamless flow:

  “Let’s us three go have a talk with her.”

  * * *

  The Alcazar Hotel ballroom was at full bore, redlined, the atrium lounge packed with couples and triples of every combination, all dressed to the hairline, dancing to the thirty-piece swing band on the podium, the brass section putting out a high-velocity swing number, the music pulsing through the smoky air and bouncing off the walls as the three of them walked around the upper balcony looking down into the ballroom floor.

  It was a glittering crystal bowl full of cigarette smoke and candlelights and bright chatter and good-looking wealthy people and over it all the driving percussive power of Benny Goodman’s “Sing Sing Sing.”

  The long bar was packed five deep and Jack saw Anson Freitag behind it, in his red vest, along with five other bar kids, moving quickly, pouring drinks and taking cash tips and smiling at all the people they knew—Freitag was a healthy young man in the prime of his life—happy and vital and destined for a brilliant future with so many innocent lives hanging in the balance.

  * * *

  Jack knew right then that there was no way he was going to shoot the kid down in cold blood—Barbara would never forgive him for that.

  He would have to find another way, if he was ever given the chance. In his heart he was beginning to fear that there was no way he was going to be able to save them.

  It was up to whoever made the Rules.

  * * *

  He turned away, sighing, a heavy sadness on him, and he found the Vizzini table down there, in the middle of the crowded ballroom, and it was empty, chairs tipped inward, roped off with a red velvet cord, obviously being held for the family.

  But tonight, no family, and, according to Clete, there were always Vizzinis at that table every night.

  Interesting.

  * * *

  The elevator bank was at the far end of the gallery, a mahogany wall with gleaming brass fittings, four elevators, all with buffed brass doors. A group of people in evening dress were milling around, laughing, martini glasses in hand, and they parted for the three of them the way tropical fish will make room for a trio of sharks.

  A deep brassy bong, and the doors to number three whispered open. They got in, followed by none of the tropical fish.

  The doors hissed closed, wrapping them in a ponderous stillness. Beau Short pressed the button for 14, an engraved Art Deco medallion made by Tiffany’s. The elevator rose up in the same hushed and ponderous silence.

  * * *

  In Room 1408, Selena was packing her bags. She intended to be gone—no checkout thank you—in thirty minutes. Marco, the assistant concierge, who always called if anyone had asked about her, had not called this evening. But when she had phoned down to have a rental car brought around, he had sounded wary, distant, not his usual sunny and exceedingly well-tipped self.

  Alarms went off down in her limbic system. She checked the Colt, made sure it was loaded, and now it lay on the coverlet beside her overnight bag. She was leaving the suitcases. There was nothing in the closets and drawers she couldn’t easily replace.

  The locket was... Where was the locket?

  She stopped, thinking hard.

  Where was her locket?

  She touched her throat, but the chain was gone. And then she remembered, she had broken the chain last night, in the rental car, when that terrible pinwheel vortex had happened to her... The broken chain was in her purse...but where was the locket?

  Where is the locket?

  She was frantically pawing through her things, her heart pounding, her mouth dry—Where is the locket?—and there was a hard knock at the door.

  Three solid raps that sounded like it could only be the police, followed by a harsh male voice, saying, “Miss DiSantis? Jacksonville PD. Open up.”

  The words froze her right down to the ground.

  Her heart stopped.

  Three more brutal knuckle raps, followed by the same voice.

  “Open up, please. We need to talk to you.”

  Trapped.
/>
  Life in a concrete box.

  No. In Florida, in 1957, death by electric chair.

  She picked up the little Colt, held it to her temple, put her index finger against the trigger, held that pose for a moment and then the anger rose up inside her, a red blossom, and she took the revolver away from her temple.

  No. Not me. Not yet.

  Selena bared her teeth in a feral snarl, aimed the revolver at the broad wooden panels of the hotel door and fired five rounds through it as fast as she could squeeze the trigger. The rounds punched through the boards, leaving little round circles of golden light.

  She heard a man grunt, as if hit with a fist, and then, after a stunned pause, five heavy cracks, and five bullets coming back through the door, a quick murderous volley, five, now six shots, coming in fast, one after the other. One plucked at her hair and the other stung her earlobe as they hummed past her, like killer bumblebees.

  * * *

  And then came the Shimmer...

  The suite walls wavered and flared like a candle flame in a strong wind, and the walls suddenly gave way to a long glassy upward-curving hallway lined with deep green marble gates, a blinding blue-white light rose up from the carpet, and now the carpet was gone and there was a sea of glimmering lights beneath her feet, and she was standing on a clear glass floor, and there was a sound like a great wave crashing through a reef, and the Shimmer was all around her, a luminous rushing river, and she stepped into it, and into the Long Hall, and it took her away.

  * * *

  Beau Short took two bullets in his throat, and they had torn him wide-open. Annabelle knew he was a dead man, but not quite yet, and he was coughing up pink foam and a hot jet of arterial blood was spraying against the walls.

  She was kneeling beside him, his blood sheeting her dress, trying to press her fingers into his carotid artery, trying to pinch it shut, not finding it, a slippery snakelike tube squirming in blood and tissue.

  Her fingers kept slipping away, and the blood wouldn’t stop and she felt him going...going...and then he was gone.

  He was dead.