Текст книги "Kiss of Evil"

Автор книги: Richard Montanari

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

38

Forty-eight thousand three hundred and fifteen dollars is not an easy thing to hide. Not if it is in small bills. And the biggest bill she has is a twenty. Plus, she has at least twelve thousand dollars in singles. Every time you think you have found a perfect place to hide it in your house or apartment—a place you are certain no burglar in the world would think of—you realize that it is the absolute first place any burglar with five functioning brain cells would think of.

So you move it.

Again. And again. And again.

She takes the cash from the plastic trash bag, stuffs it into a WVIZ tote bag, and covers it with a bath towel. She has decided to break down and finally rent a safe-deposit box somewhere with one of her myriad sets of ID. Tonight she will sleep with the bag’s canvas handle wrapped around her wrist; a butcher knife on the nightstand.

She knows she has to end this. And that the best defense is a good offense. And that there are two things she must do if she has any chance of surviving.

One. She has to get the photographs and negatives of her running from the Dream-A-Dream Motel.

Two. She has to find a way to get Isabella back before the police kick her door in.

A pair of seemingly impossible tasks she knows she cannot accomplish alone. A pair of dangerous endeavors that will probably require the mind of a master thief, the hands of a magician. She knows of only one person with that reputation.

She stashes the tote bag back in the hatbox, puts the hatbox in her closet for the time being. She then picks up the phone and dials Jesse Ray Carpenter’s number.

It is time to meet in person.

39

Paris takes in the room. Twenty or so people, mostly white, a mix of men and women in their forties and fifties. They descend the steps into the recreation room. Herb elbows them to the center of the room, introducing them to the other guests. Peg and Chazz. Lisette and Wolfie. Barb and Tug a lesbian couple.

You are a very beautiful young man, Fayette Martin had said to her killer. No one here, as yet, seems to fit that bill. Nor does anyone resemble the sketch of the woman from Vernelle’s.

Except for Rebecca D’Angelo, Paris thinks, crazily. Then instantly boots the thought from his mind.

They reach the far end of the room, where there is a green leather pit couch. Sitting on the couch are three couples in their forties, chatting softly, drinks in hand. They glance up as Carla and Paris approach them.

“Everyone,” Herb says. “I’d like you to meet Cleopatra and John.”

Paris surveys the men. No one even promising.

“This is Maggie and Mort,” Herb says, gesturing to the couple on the left. They are a handsome couple—she is platinum blond, busty; he is tall, indoor tanned.

“This is Jake and Alicia.”

Jake is older than Paris thought initially. He looks closer to sixty at this range, wearing a very expensive rug and a tailored suit. Alicia, on the other hand, is a bombshell. Petite and Asian, toned, forties. She is wearing a tight fuchsia cocktail dress and the most painful-looking stiletto heels Paris has ever seen.

“And last but not least, Ed and Gilda.”

There clearly was a reason to leave Ed and Gilda to the end. Straight out of the late seventies, Ed wears a navy blue leisure suit; Gilda, a red-sequined tank top and hot pants. Paris isn’t sure if they are in costume, or simply unstuck in time.

“What can I get you to drink?” Herb asks Carla, rubbing his hands together like a Borgian alchemist.

“I’ll have a Pellegrino,” she says.

Herb appears crestfallen, as if just now realizing—and rightfully so—that the only way he would stand a snowball in a microwave’s chance of getting anywhere near Cleopatra is for her to be so shitface drunk she couldn’t see what he looked like. He asks: “Is Poland Spring okay? We, uh, ran out of Pellegrino.”

“That’s fine, Dante,” she says.

The saying of his nom de boudoir reenergizes Herb, who scoots off to the bar.

The next twenty minutes of conversation is a bizarre mix of politics, suburban woes, and thinly veiled sexual innuendo. Paris takes every opportunity to covertly examine rings and pendants and earrings and bracelets—anything that might bear a symbol remotely resembling the Ochosi sign. Or even anything looking vaguely Mexican in motif.

But he finds nothing.

The next hour and a half yields even less. Everyone seems to behave like people would behave at a regular cocktail party. No more sex talk than usual.

At ten o’clock, having gathered what Paris believes to have been zero evidence, they find themselves in the kitchen with Herb again.

“We want you to come back for our New Year’s Eve party,” Herb says.

“Both of us, right?” Carla asks, slipping on her coat, arching her back in such way as to bring her breasts to within inches of Herb’s face.

Herb zones for a moment, then, clearly meaning precisely the opposite, says: “Of course. I asked around. You were both a big hit tonight.”

“You noticed the door, too?” Carla asks. They are sitting at a red light on Silsby Road, having just gotten off the radio with the University Heights PD, standing down the operation.

“Yeah. I leaned against it for a minute while Gilda was telling me about her love for maraschino cherries and highballs mixed with Vernors, not regular ginger ale. It was locked.”

“But you heard the music, right?”

“Oh yeah. It was faint, but it was definitely coming from another room.”

At the Macy’s parking lot, Paris’s pager goes off. He holds it up to the streetlight. “It’s Reuben,” he says. “And he’s tagged it urgent.”

Paris looks at Carla; she at him.

He doesn’t have to ask.

Carla edges out into the intersection, looks both ways, throws a blue light onto the roof of her car, and heads west on Cedar Road at a high rate of speed, toward the morgue on Adelbert Road.

The old man is laid out on a table, naked, his genitals covered by a powder blue towel, his bony, hairless skull so flowered with liver spots that at first Paris thinks he is looking at mummified remains of some sort.

“Hey Jacquito,” Reuben says. Reuben is wearing a bloodied apron, no mask. “And hello Sergeant Davis. How ya doin’? You look great.”

Reuben Ocasio is middle-aged, overweight, and, by any community standard, has the face of a bulldog with mumps, yet he is still willing to tread where younger, fitter, better-looking men fear to go. Over a dead body, in the morgue, he is trying to sweet-talk Carla Davis.

“I’m well, Dr. Ocasio,” Carla replies, all business, wisely leaving her coat on. The white dress would all but incapacitate Reuben. “What do we have?”

“Call me Reuben. Please.”

“Reuben,” Carla says, getting it over with.

Reuben smiles at her, as if he had scored some kind of point, then looks at his clipboard. “We have Isaac Levertov, seventy-nine years of age. My preliminary findings are that Mr. Levertov died by strangulation.” Reuben points to the deep purple welt at the base of the old man’s neck. “His wife reported him missing a few days ago. Found him on the roof of his building. She said he ran a hot dog cart in the neighborhood. Right up until the day he turned up missing.”

“Why are we here, Reuben?” Paris asks. “Who’s the primary detective on this case?”

“Ivan Kral is the primary. But I found something I know you’ll be interested in.”

Reuben picks up a nine-by-twelve envelope, opens the clasp.

And Paris knows. “You found more of the purple cardboard.”

“Yep.”

“Damn it,” Paris shouts. He walks across the room, back, hands on hips. He calms. “How much?”

“Not much.” Reuben places five or six eight-by-ten black-and-white photos in front of Paris and Carla. The top photo is of the first strip of cardboard they had found in Fayette Martin’s shoe. The second photo is of an almost identical strip, this time containing other parts of the letters.

“Where was it?” Paris asks.

“Underneath the old man’s upper plate. Not enough surface area for prints. Saliva belongs to only the deceased. SIU is going through all of Willis Walker’s effects now. If our boy is planting one puzzle piece per corpse, there might be something there.”

Paris looks at the final few photographs. Composites of the pieces of cardboard put together in a variety of ways.

“I still don’t see anything,” Paris says.

“The middle word is is, definitely,” Carla says. “And it looks like it ends in g.”

“Yeah,” Reuben says. “That’s about as far as I got.”

“Did you send it out?” Paris asks.

“Yeah. I brought it over myself about a half hour ago. Clay Patterson says it just might be enough to extrapolate the rest of the letters. Waiting for the fax right now.”

“Who is the guy on the table?” Carla asks. “Where did he live?”

Reuben looks at the chart again. “Let’s see . . . he lived at 3204-A Fulton Road.”

The address trips a switch in Paris. He removes his notebook from his pocket, flips back a number of pages. “Say that address again.”

Reuben does.

“Holy shit,” Paris says.

“What?”

“La Botanica Macumba is at 3204 Fulton,” he says. “This guy lived upstairs. What the hell is going on here, Reuben?”

“I don’t know, amigo. I just sort through blood and guts.”

“Have you found anything on him like the Ochosi symbol?”

“Nothing like that,” Reuben says. “But I haven’t been everywhere on him. I’m by myself here tonight. As soon as I get the fax I’ll—”

No sooner does Reuben say the words than the fax machine in his cubicle at the other side of the autopsy theater hums to life. The three of them cross the room, crowd around the fax machine.

First comes a cover page with a hand-scrawled note on a DigiData letterhead.

Reuben. These cardboard strips were cut from the back of a DVD box. The UPC code is 786936297256. Unfortunately, it is a commercial release available just about everywhere DVDs are sold—amazon.com, eBay, etc. Maybe that’s why it took all of ten minutes to nail it down. The full graphic follows.

The fax machine pauses an excruciating twenty seconds or so, its red lights blinking like a railroad crossing. Finally it begins churning out the second page, a five hundred percent blowup of the DVD box end label, the cryptic letters to all three words now filled in.

It is a movie title, a 1990 release that runs for seventy-eight minutes and answers a question posed by an earlier film. A movie title made up of three words on a dark background.

Three words that pass through the room like an electrical storm.

Paris Is Burning.

40

She had not known what to expect when Jean Luc opened the door to his apartment. She had been in so many houses and homes and apartments and penthouses over the past two years that she had become quite the expert at predicting things like motif, wallpaper, furniture. One of her marks was a sixtyish Italian American, a concert promoter who’d sported a two-carat diamond pinkie ring in a setting of gold when she’d met him at the lounge at Morton’s. It didn’t take a genius to know he’d have a paneled recreation room with a black vinyl nail-head bar.

Yet every one of those times she had been in complete control of the situation. If not the man. This time, it is different. This time, she’s the mark.

The real shock, the part that unnerved her as much as anything that had happened so far, is the fact that Jean Luc lives in the building next door to hers. The Cain Towers apartments. It explained how he knew so much about her, but it made her feel stupid. Dumber than the dumbest of her marks.

Earlier in the night she had texted Celeste four times and, for the first time since she had begun doing business with Celeste, she had not gotten a call back within a half hour.

Something is wrong.

Jean Luc had said for her to come over at ten-thirty and he would explain everything she was supposed to do. He had said that this would be the second last of their meetings, and that she would soon be done with him.

Jean Luc greets her at the door to his apartment, dressed in a black cashmere sweater, gray flannel slacks, loafers. His hair is swept straight back today, à la Michael Corleone.

She follows him to the kitchen, a kitchen full of modern, almond-toned appliances. But there is something beneath the fragrance of Glade aerosol and scented candles. Something that has gone off. Something dead.

She looks down the hallway where she figures the bedrooms and bathroom are located. Four doors, all closed, a single sconce at the end. To the left, a small living room, unfurnished. To the right, the tidy little kitchen. Not particularly lived in. Not septic either.

But where might he have the photographs and negatives?

Jean Luc takes her coat without a word and hangs it in the hall closet. He closes the door, leans against it, studies her. After an excruciating silence, a silence during which she could actually hear her pulse in her ears, he says, “I don’t want you to hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I’m glad.”

“I’d have to know you to hate you. I don’t know you at all.”

“We can change that.”

“No. We cannot.”

“Why?”

“We have a business deal, Mr. Christiane,” she says, realizing that it is the first time she has referred to him as anything, much less something as formal as Mr. Christiane. “It is ugly, it is something I never asked for. But it is now on my plate and I can’t get it off. Or can I? Can I just turn around and walk out of here right now?”

“No.”

“See? Now, let’s just tolerate each other for the next day or two and then go on our separate ways.”

“If you only knew my pain, for a single second, you would understand why I am doing what I am doing.”

“Believe it or not, I really don’t care why you’re doing it. What I care about is why I’m doing it.”

Jean Luc’s face is unreadable. Had she pushed him too far?

He crosses his arms, considers her for a few more long moments. Then, as if a key was turned somewhere within him, his face softens and he says: “Can I get you something? Coffee? A soft drink?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“Sure?”

“Positive,” she says, relieved that she hadn’t overstepped any boundary. She has to keep reminding herself that this is a man who beat his father to death with a baseball bat, poured beef broth on the body, and let four big dogs eat what was left.

Jean Luc offers his hand, like an old lover on a beach.

For some reason, she takes it.

He says, “Let me show you a very special room.”

41

Paris presses the button at 3204-A Fulton Road for the fifth time. He steps back onto the sidewalk, glances up. There are no lights on in the apartment. He looks into La Botanica Macumba. It is dark also, save for a small spotlight over the cash register, which sits with its empty drawer open.

Paris tries the door to the stairwell that leads to 3204-A. Locked. He had circled the building twice when he arrived, but the back and sides of the two-story structure offered no lighted windows, no open doors, no fire escape. He takes out his phone, dials the Levertov number. There is no answer, nor is there an answering machine.

Five cars are parked along the curb within a block of the doorway. Paris jots down the license plate numbers. He calls them in, and at the same time requests an address.

Fifteen minutes later, Edward Moriceau is in custody.

Moriceau sits in Interview One at the Justice Center. It is nearly eleven and this is Paris’s third run at the story.

“And you never saw anyone argue with him, threaten him?” Paris asks.

“No. Never.”

“And you’ve never had any business dealings or personal dealings with Mr. Levertov?”

“No.”

Moriceau is lying. Time to ratchet things up a bit. Paris drops a photograph in front of the man, a medium close-up of Willis Walker’s tongue. The Ochosi symbol is very clear. Moriceau brings his hand to his mouth.

“Look familiar to you?”

“Yes,” Moriceau replies, his voice a little thin. “As I said . . .”

“Oh yeah . . . that’s right,” Paris says, knowing it is time to toss out the first bomb, the last vestige of cordiality. “You said something about a disemboweled rooster, didn’t you? This look like a rooster?”

With this, Paris places a full body shot of Willis Walker onto the table. The impasto of thick maroon blood is spread on the white tiles, giving the dead man’s body a bloated, moth-like shape. A rose-colored sprout of viscera extends from where Willis Walker’s genitalia once grew.

Moriceau dry heaves, turns away. Then vomits on his feet.

Paris grimaces, looks at the two-way mirror, and can almost hear the buck being passed down the food chain among the police officers on the other side. Low man gets to fetch the bucket and mop.

Paris circles to Moriceau’s side of the table, carefully skirting the foul debris on the floor. In a moment, Greg Ebersole enters, mop in hand. He hands Moriceau a five-inch stack of napkins, runs the mop over the vomit and makes a lithe and rapid exit from the room.

“Mr. Moriceau,” Paris begins, “somebody is doing terrible things to the people of this city. Right now, nobody here thinks that person is necessarily you. Do you understand?”

Weakly, Moriceau nods, dabs his chin.

“Good. The problem is, as time goes on, and there are more and more connections to Santeria, or the address on Fulton Road, the more likely it is that our attitudes will begin to change. Do you understand this also?”

Again, Moriceau nods.

“I want you to think about something for a moment. Somebody killed the old man who lived over your store. There is a good chance that that person is into Santeria or Macumba or Candomblé, or maybe he’s just a wanna-be asshole who gets his rocks off pretending to be some kind of witch. Either way, the link to your store, the link to the products you sell, is awfully compelling.”

Moriceau looks up, and Paris is nearly frightened by what he sees. The terror in the man’s eyes has no bottom. “They will know . . .”

“They?” Paris asks. “What are you talking about? Who is they?”

Moriceau gazes back at the floor. Paris is almost certain he is about to puke again, but instead Moriceau says, in his increasingly disjoined voice: “The seven powers.”

Paris had come across the term seven powers in his readings on Santeria. But it was all beginning to blend together in his mind. He imagines it would be like someone trying to learn all about Catholicism or Judaism in seventy-two hours or so. “I’m sorry?”

“Eleggua, Orula, Ogun . . .”

Paris could barely hear him now. “What are you talking about?”

“Obatala, Yemaya, Oshun, Shango . . .”

“Mr. Moriceau?”

Moriceau looks up, holds his gaze, his red eyes searching, his hands now trembling like those of a man in violent, freezing waters. “I . . . I . . .”

Paris remains silent for a few moments, waiting for the answer this man will almost certainly not supply. He is right. “You what, Mr. Moriceau?”

“I want a lawyer.”

Paris studies the shivering figure in front of him. This is no stone killer. Whatever legal horrors Moriceau might be facing, whatever apparitions of prison life eddy in his mind, they seem to be nothing compared to the flames of his personal hell.

The stench reaches Paris at that moment—sour and pervasive and cloying. He looks into the mirror, at himself, at the cops on the other side. They all know that there is no way they will be able to hold Edward Moriceau, just as they know that surveillance on La Botanica Macumba will begin within the hour.

The building has taken back its silence, reclaimed its mysteries. Paris is alone. He directs the beam of the flashlight along the cobwebbed wall, the skewed shelving, opaque with dust. Some of the hand-painted menus for Weeza’s cuisine are still visible beneath the layers of time.

Paris Is Burning.

He is unsure why he had come back. Boredom and loneliness certainly had something to do with it. The building had probably given up what it knew about the last moments of Fayette Marie Martin’s life, had most likely disclosed all its veiled wisdom.

But what the Reginald Building had not told him is why would someone like Fayette Martin come here in the first place. Why did she agree to meet with someone who, by all appearances, had been a total stranger, a man she had met online? Why didn’t she drive up to the building, take one look, then drive back home and lock her doors and ask herself what the hell she was doing?

How lonely had it gotten?

He stands in the doorway leading to what was once Weeza’s kitchen, listens to the night sounds, the constant bray of the wind. He wonders if Fayette knew. Did she scream when she saw the big knife? Did it come as a complete surprise? Did she have a second to reflect, or did the end of her life come as a brutal blindside, like a drunk driver running a red light at eighty miles an hour? Hadn’t she known it might happen?

Or was that the kick?

Paris decides to go home, to rest, to take the whole story apart and reassemble it from the bolts up. He plays the flashlight beam across the floor at his feet and heads for the door just as the wind picks up again, a doleful gust that rattles the glass panes of the building’s few remaining windows, loose in their mullions like rows of diseased teeth.