A Passing Curse (2011) (11 page)

“I never thought about that,” Cheevy said. The fact that Ajax was talking made him feel better.

This was the first time he’d been inside the castle. Ajax had always met him at the store, with Ted driving the huge old car. In the corner of the room, he noticed an aluminum drain pan, like you’d put under a car to catch oil, and jutting above it, head high, a reinforced bar of steel.

Next to the pan was a five-gallon clear glass jug, tubes sprouting from the top. A piece of New York modern sculpture, he imagined, and probably expensive. He could make something that looked just as good. He was creative, too.

Past the drain pan he saw the painting of a woman sawing off a man’s head. A goddess with strong arms, shining black hair. Her right hand worked the sword. Blood sprayed two feet high. A woman to her side, probably the maid, held the poor fuck down.

“Did you tell Mr. Tarrant about the game we are writing? The contamination of the world’s blood supply? Does he understand what is at stake?”

“We didn’t talk that much, he’s an asshole. Started talking shit, like he was still a cop. I kicked him out of my store. Out on his ass.”

Ajax smiled. “Drink up, dear Cheevy. Don’t waste the brandy.”

Cheevy drank. The brandy was warm and strong. He felt his head going slightly elastic, but that was the heroin. Heron, heron. A blue bird. Heroin. He turned the word over in his mind and laughed.

Ajax kept smiling. “What else did you tell Mr. Tarrant?”

He kept lying. “That vampires could also be killed by the sun.” He noted the rays from the two o’clock sun fell through the bronze windows and squarely on Ajax, lighting his head like a Russian saint. He felt comfortable with Ajax in the sun.

“What if the windows were very special windows that block ultraviolet light?”

“I didn’t think of that,” Cheevy said. In fact he was having a lot of trouble thinking at all. He was definitely feeling drowsy.

“Did you tell him that a vampire has very little blood inside his body and can heal wounds by licking them?”

Cheevy shook his head. His lips felt numb. He blamed the dope, some good shit. He wanted to lie down and wondered if Ajax would mind.

Ajax smiled. “Like this?” With his left forefinger now sprouting a black claw, Ajax ripped open his right forearm, exposing arteries and veins that let escape black bubbles. Ajax leisurely ran his tongue along the gash, sealing it.

Cheevy felt beside himself, removed from the scene. “How in the hell? It’s fantastic! The special effects. My God, if I could get that in the store. Special tape? Is that it? We could make a fortune!”

“It’s lovely to think so,” Ajax said. “Isn’t it?”

The question slipped by him. What had Ajax said? He jerked his head up. He’d been asleep. “How?” was all he could manage to say.

“No matter. I know what Reese Tarrant suspects. I know, because Homer, fine killer that he was, left a few loose ends. Homer talked too much. Just as you will.”

I’m not a snitch,” he heard someone say. Ajax’s eyes had turned red and were boring into him.

“I really did like you.” Ajax held his hands together as if in prayer. “You were useful.” He chuckled. “In a way, you’ll go on living.”

“What?”

“You know too much for your own good,” Ajax said briskly. “Homer told you I was paying him extra money to take part in clinical trials.”

Cheevy turned and noticed the fleece lined ankle straps casually flung behind the oil pan. His neck tightened. Ajax spoke, but it took a moment for the words to catch up with the smirking mouth.

“And didn’t you ask Homer what drugs he was taking? And didn’t you want to pay him for a sample?”

“What are you talking about?” He made a fist. Bad Ass. Bad Ass. Was Ajax threatening him? He’d shoot his goddamned ass. He reached for the pistol. His hand shook. His eyes watered from the strain.

“As for Reese Tarrant,” Ajax said, “I welcome him. After all, Jesus had his Romans.”

“I’m having trouble,” Cheevy said. He was having so much trouble that he could not remember what he was having trouble about. The pistol was there in front of him on the table.

“Slide the gun off the table,” Ajax said. “There now. I don’t want you hurting anyone, especially not me.”

Cheevy watched from the shore. His hand snaked out. He pointed the pistol at Ajax. Ajax made an O with his mouth and shook his head. He pulled the trigger. Nothing. He shucked the slide, ejecting the unfired bullet, loading another. The bullet clattered on the wood floor. He pulled the trigger again. Nothing. Ajax was laughing. He tried to re-cock and couldn’t remember putting the gun back together, if he’d done it right.

Ajax quit laughing and approached him with a short syringe. Before he could block him, Ajax plunged the needle into his forearm.

The pistol fell, bouncing on the floor. A black bird landed on the window sill and beat its wings against the glass.

A door opened. He heard footsteps. Ajax quit laughing and said, “Don’t be so timid, Ted. He’s under control. You merely drag him to the davit and attach the leg straps. The winch will do the rest. Quick, now.”

He felt a solid punch. He tried to claw into the rug as he was dragged across it. Friction burned his face. He lost his hat. There was heavy breathing, fever breath. The crow hopped from foot to foot. A vulture? Ajax stole noiselessly to the window, shooing it away.

Someone grabbed his ankles. Cheevy thought of his father and tears fell. He watched the face above him, twisted and dull, the teeth at angles from spotty gums, one eye scooting back and forth.

He felt shearing wool around his ankles. The softness his salvation. Was it all a joke? The engine whirred. The cable stretched tight, his head swung off the floor. His upside-down lungs filled. He tried to scream. He coughed and reached for the empty holster. Ajax came for him, the scalpel low and shining. He would die if he did not move. He jerked and the cable strummed. Helpful Ted reached with a quick hand to steady him. He searched the room right and left. The inverted goddess slashed at the white neck. Her face held no hope for him.

Also upside down, Ajax’s mouth moved softly like a girl’s. “I’ll open you at the jugular, the carotid is too deep, too messy. That will take care of the volume, then the pump to suck you dry.”

He tried to pray but forgot. He spun on the wire and chanted, “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.”

Ajax whispered, “Don’t move. It will only make things worse.”

He could no longer move. The bird stared. The sword fell. The goddess cast down the head. The scalpel falling and from a distance Ajax softly saying, “After all, what has another day to offer you?”

9

At nine o’clock the next morning, Rusty Webber stood in the mission’s parking lot. The heavy fog made the bell towers seem gloomier than they were, if that were possible. She shivered. The towers seemed too familiar, too phallic, guarding this sanctuary of men. God’s men.

She walked through a sandstone arch, trellised with hyacinths, across a tiny courtyard, and into the small office. A priest, angular and bleached like an El Greco model, looked up from his desk. A glass jar labeled “Contributions” in wavy graphite was filled with twisted dollar bills.

After she introduced herself, the priest curtly told her that Father Ramon was expecting an archeologist in his room. He gave directions: down the alcove, across the courtyard, up the spiral staircase.

She left the office already regretting her decision. What was she doing here? She’d woken at midnight, slightly disoriented, looked around the apartment, and panicked. A word she hated, but the truth. Had she panicked because she still felt Clark in the apartment watching her? Or had it been Romania and the near execution still fresh in her mind? Or was it her need, always, to be moving? For whatever reason, she’d loaded her tools in the back of the Nissan and been on the road by three this morning.

She’d checked into the Sheraton an hour ago. She hadn’t called Ajax because he’d left a message at the front desk for her: Fr. Ramon is expecting you at the mission before noon.

The self-satisfied note, as if Ajax had known she was coming all along, her resistance a formality, had pissed her off, and she’d almost gone back to Burlingame because of it. She hated being that transparent. It wasn’t her pride that was hurt - she liked to think that she was hard to read - Deception and camouflage meant survival.

She walked down the sandstone halls telling herself that she might as well face reality. She was here for one reason: the Temple of Arysur. And Ajax knew it. The chance of finding Alexander the Great’s tomb, however slight, had brought her to Santa Marina against her better judgment. It didn’t even matter that finding the temple was a calculated fantasy at best or that working for Rasmussen had proved to be unhealthy in the past; what mattered was getting back into the field again in a big way. She was greedy for the hunt, for the knowledge. And Ajax had counted on that.

Finding Alexander’s tomb wasn’t the only reason she was here. She knew herself too well. If Ajax had been underneath the castle in Romania waiting for her, if he’d set her up, for whatever reason, then she’d find a way to get him. There it was, greed and revenge, the twins of self-destruction.

She walked up the dark circular stairs curving upwards through the large corner tower and leading to the second floor. One thing she was sure of - she was not here simply to dig up a dead Indian.

At Ramon’s heavy oak door, she hit the planks twice with the heel of her hand before hearing a peevish voice say, “Come.”

Father Ramon sat behind an oak desk strewn with books, cupcake and twinkie packages long empty, a computerized chess set. Two yellowed candles burned on the desk. When she closed the door, the candle flames wavered, blurring shadows against the far wall.

She thrust her hand forward. “Rusty Webber.”

Ramon struggled out of his chair. He looked at her quizzically. “Rusty?” he said but did not offer his hand. He was morbidly obese. A fringe of ginger hair ringed his skull like a fright wig. He could have used a neck. Piggish eyes wedged deeply inside a swollen face. Gluttony came to mind.

She kept her hand over the desk until he awkwardly took it. When his cheek twitched, she let him go. The room smelled of moldy books and sweat, the dankness from living too long alone. Good practice for dying, she thought, living alone.

Ramon stared at his hand and slowly moved the fingers. “Well,” he said and sat down. “This is most unusual.” His voice was higher than she’d expected.

She looked around. He slept on three bare planks with a wood block, sweat stained, for a pillow. Folded at the foot of the planks was a gray blanket, a bit doggy looking. She’d been nice enough.

“Where’s the site?”

“The site?”

“You found bones, didn’t you?” A leather handle poked from beneath the wooden bed. Ramon saw her look and coughed, hoping to distract her. She said nothing. How did Voltaire’s quatrain go? Tell us how Saint Francis’ cord came to serve as Venus’ sash? Or was it lash?

Ramon quit coughing. “The remains were found in the garden, next to the graveyard,” he said.

“You cannot - ”

She’d been waiting for this. “Show me.”

Ramon held up his hand. His fingernails were broken and splintered, dirt stuffed. His wrists dirty. “The garden and graveyard area are off limits to women and tourists. This is an all-male order, certain proprieties must be observed.” It looked like Ramon had been doing a little digging on his own.

“Like the Church observed when it was busy killing Indians?”

He ignored her. “The last female allowed in the garden was the wife of President Theodore Roosevelt. Only females that are heads of state or married to heads of state may enter our cemetery and garden area.” He sounded like a tour guide, but he was starting to sweat.

“You keep saying ‘females’ like we’re not quite human.”

He squinted at her.

“You have at least two thousand Indian women who entered your precious graveyard, Ramon. Dead from rape, overwork, and disease your kind brought from Spain. Dumped in your cemetery. Some were buried with wooden babies.”

“Wooden - ?”

“The girls? Raped by priests and soldiers? You remember. When you discovered they were drowning their newborns, you put them in chains, made them carry the carved babies, then whipped them to death. You won’t find that in any of your tour pamphlets.” She took a step closer to the desk.

“Me?” Ramon’s face turned crimson. “I was not even born.”

“Your kind.”

“My Kind? You - You can’t come in here blaspheming - ” Ramon struggled to stand. His breath rasped. His eyes were wide now and white.

“Blasphemy would be corrupting St. Mary’s statue with a dildo,” she said matter-of-factly.

Ramon grasped his rosary beads and looked at the ceiling, as if for an answer. He fell back into the chair. He opened his mouth to speak but she beat him to it. “As mandated by state and federal law and at the request of the Santa Marina Chief of Police, I am here to investigate historical human remains and to determine their subsequent classification and disposition.” That should do it for Ramon.

He sputtered, “They’re Indian remains. That’s all. And you’re screaming about killing and raping. Serra was not a killer. He was a Saint. We saved them.”

She stared at him. This whole business of finding a few bones at a mission was ridiculous. Then why was Ramon so nervous? And who cared about Serra? “Show me the site, Father Ramon. I’ve got work to do.”

Through the brass telescope, Ajax Rasmussen watched her open the cemetery door. Ramon now behind her, hurrying to catch up. Just inside the cemetery walls, she spun and pointed her finger at the priest. The clarity of her movement was such that he could almost hear her voice.

Ajax cared little that Ramon’s bumbling, finding the body, might hamper his own plans. He thought that with Reese Tarrant and Father Ramon in the equation, life might be interesting again.

It was important that Father Ramon not let the cat out of the bag too quickly, though. He reflected that all in life was timing. Besides, Ramon’s contretemps had given him a wonderful excuse to hasten Miss Webber’s arrival, and the ridding of Ramon might provide amusement, however slight.