A Passing Curse (2011) (15 page)

He thought back to that night over a year ago. That night had been bothering him ever since the workers had uncovered the leg. He’d been walking from the chapel to his room when he’d seen the imperially slim figure standing in the moonlight. He’d hurried to confront the stranger and found Rasmussen, who’d been, at first, gracious and apologetic for startling him, calmly explaining there in the moonlight, “I know it is late, Father, but I was merely reliving old memories.” He then focused the black eyes on him. “You always stay in the chapel until midnight.”

“I thought you were a prowler,” Ramon said. “How did you get in?”

Rasmussen laughed. “It’s a short walk from my house. After all, Father, I do own the property. And I have several descendants that reside in the cemetery, albeit very quietly.”

That’s when he noticed something black on Ajax’s hands. Like ink in the moonlight. “It’s not a good time for visiting. Not in the dark. I almost called the police.”

“I wouldn’t want you calling the police, Father,” Ajax said solicitously, but with an edge, a promise in the voice of something dreadful. “No telling what they might find if they start snooping around. You yourself, from what I’ve heard, are no innocent.” Rasmussen smiled, a bit too smugly, letting the accusation hang, and abruptly bowed. “We will be leaving you then. Good evening, Father Ramon.”

In the darkness Ramon saw a large figure lurking, a man, the other half of Ajax’s “we.” But the figure moved deeper into the shadows before he could get a good look at him.

A week later, still wondering if he should report the strange occurrence to the police, still wondering if the black on Ajax’s hands had been blood, he received a check, made out to him personally, for fifty thousand dollars. Anonymous, but he knew it was hush money from Rasmussen. He knew Ajax had done something terrible that night. He deposited the check in his bank account and kept quiet, all the time feeling guilty, even donating twenty-five hundred dollars to the Jesuits’ relief fund.

He now felt a draft on his legs. He turned. Stars weakly through the open door. Had he not just closed it?

He again went outside. He was getting simple-minded leaving the door open. He stepped onto the walkway and looked both ways. Soft light from the moon now low and shining through the arches, but the walkway was empty.

He stepped into the room. He turned to close the door. He would latch the bolt firmly. The door would stay closed this time. Before finishing the thought, he was thrown forward into the room. The door slammed shut, the bolt slid home.

He rose quickly, more angry than afraid. Someone had pushed him from outside. He ran to the door, tried to open it, but it would not move.

Behind him a voice. “It is time, Father.”

He turned. “Who?” Probably the new friar Sanchez. He did not trust the boy from Guatemala, a practical joker, a common boy from the country. “Come out, Sanchez!” But the figure stepping into view was not Sanchez.

“Rasmussen!” he said.

The elegant billionaire was dressed sleekly in black. He touched his lips. “Did I frighten you, Father Ramon? Don’t tell me you are not used to late night visitors?”

“What are you doing?” Ramon demanded. This really was too much. The gall of the man. Nor did he like the familiar way he called him Father. There was something very sinister in the voice.

“And who is that with you?”

“It’s only a friend.”

The other person now came into view, as wide as himself but much taller. His mouth and head deformed. Wearing a baseball cap. An Angels’ baseball cap of all things. No doubt the same “friend” he’d seen a year earlier in the graveyard. He’d heard rumors, for years, of Ajax’s bizarre man servant.

Rasmussen walked to the shelf where he’d placed the remains of the leg and brought the empty and carefully rolled linen and set it on the table. He unwrapped the linen, revealing the few spoonfuls of the whitish powder. Ajax turned. “Dust?”

Ramon nodded. “I saw it earlier. I thought someone had stolen the remains and I noticed the dust. You may make your own assumptions.” Even though he felt outwardly calm, Father Ramon was on the verge of calling Father Lavour and the police. He felt as if Rasmussen were little better a burglar and a pushy one at that.

Rasmussen picked up the forlorn sandal. “This seems to have survived?”

“It’s not human,” Ramon said and was surprised by the authority in his voice.

Rasmussen nodded and carefully folded the linen into a small square and placed it in his jacket pocket as if he owned it. “Did the bones really have skin on them?”

“This is absurd,” Ramon said, thinking that this really was the limit, well beyond the pale, but when he moved to take the linen back, Rasmussen kicked him in the shin.

“Are you telling me that a human leg, admittedly not a fresh leg but a leg nonetheless, has turned to dust?”

“I’m telling you that the linen and its contents are Church property and that you are trespassing.” Before Ramon could protest further, Rasmussen’s friend grabbed the whip from under the bed and snaked it around his ankles. He was pulled off his feet with surprising speed and dragged across the floor. He felt helpless, as if a child.

“Stop!” he shrieked, but the man in the baseball cap threw the handle over a ceiling beam and single-handedly pulled him off the floor, a rasping sound as the whip cut into the beam. He rose in successive jerks. The hem of his robe hung at his mouth. He tasted wool.

Finally, he was swinging from the rafter, lazily, as if in a dream, and the world swung with him. He forced himself to breathe. He held his robe away from his face. He realized he was open to them and tried to push the robe up further, to cover himself, but his stomach was to large, his arms to short.

The beam groaned under his weight. The leather stretched without breaking. A good whip, he thought, and felt the pressure building in his head.

He rotated, the room spinning upside down. Someone groaned. What did they want? “Let me down,” he tried to shout but his voice gurgled. His heart felt large in his throat, a football.

Rasmussen stood in front of him, strangely upside down, holding the small sickle, testing the air with it. The archeologist’s tool? Yes. She’d come at him this afternoon. Trying to cut him. Where had Rasmussen found it? Was she involved? Rasmussen’s upside-down mouth looked strangely feminine.

“What?” was all that Ramon could think of saying before Rasmussen darted in and cut him.

Without thinking he screamed, “One!” It was an automatic response. He was suddenly ashamed. The curved blade whistled through the air again. He clenched the robe in his hands and pushed up, covering himself, but his backside was exposed and he felt ashamed.

“Two!” he cried and heard Rasmussen say from a distance, “Bless you, Father, but you have been foolish. I can’t have you telling the police you saw me burying bodies - ”

“I never - ” Ramon protested, knowing it was blood he’d seen on Ajax’s hands so long ago. Blood and the bodies he’d found earlier. Bodies that later disappeared.

“Come Father, you’ve already told them you found an entire body that turned to dust.” Ajax patted his pocket where the folded linen was. “Bones turning to dust? It’s much too soon for that. The game must unfold slowly.”

“Please, I never - ”

“Bless you, Father.”

The blade came down quickly.

Ramon heard himself say, “Three!”

“Bless you, Father,” he heard Rasmussen say, a soothing tone. The room turned. Blood watered the floor. His mind wandered: the word “Bless’ - Blesse” in French - to wound, to hurt. He saw a child whirl by, glistening in the firelight, burning slowly with upraised arms. The child’s head looked huge, about to explode from gravity.

“Bless you, Father.” Rasmussen struck again. Deeper this time. Wetter. His skin splitting. More strokes slashing and he heard himself count out four and five. At the twelfth stroke he could barely speak. His head ballooned, felt the size of a basketball, the skin stretching, the pain excruciating, exquisite. From far off, he heard the man in the baseball cap laughing.

He hardly felt the fourteenth blow and forgot to count it. On the fifteenth stroke he summoned all his strength and bellowed out fifteen but his throat was dry and he only managed a squeak. On the sixteenth and seventeenth strokes he held his breath and prayed that it would stop. Then he started to cry.

12

“The Palms?” she asked when he pulled into the carport. “Your lair?”

“Not exactly,” he said, thinking that she was right, lair was a good word for it. This was certainly not a home as much as it was a place to hole up. He’d not had a home in years. Since his last marriage, at least, and that was a questionable notion, at best.

After a steak dinner at the Sheraton, he’d driven her twenty miles up the coast before coming back. He’d put the top down on the Mustang. The night had been clear and the moon bright silver on the waves. He’d driven too fast in spots, showing off, letting the back end drift on the surf-wet road, but she’d never told him to slow down. If he’d crashed, he imagined her pulling herself out of the wreck, dusting off her pants, and wanting to go again.

“I thought you might want a drink,” he said. “Or I can drive you to your room?”

“A drink’s fine,” she said. “If you’re nice, I might even have two.”

He told her he was always nice and opened the front door. He considered the dismal room. He’d brought nothing with him from Los Angeles except his clothes, TV, his pull-up bar, and a coffee pot. For the first three nights he’d slept on the floor.

Now, there was a coffee table to go with the coffee pot and a sofa that turned into a bed. There was a bed and a dresser in the bedroom. Mr. Rupert Amos, his landlord, had lent him some kitchen chairs and a small table. Junk from another tenant, Amos had said. Tape had fixed the one table leg.

She walked around, glancing at the bare walls, touching the couch. She moved good in tight black slacks. Her legs looked hard. Her hair blood red. “Does the word Spartan mean anything to you?” she asked. “Austere, may fit you better.”

He smiled. “I didn’t come with much.”

“A man with no baggage? I like that.” She sat on the couch. She wore a gray sweater, roomy, but he could see the swell of her breasts beneath it. Her eyes were large and green, searching. Her lipstick was dark red. Before he could answer her, she was up and through the door.

He heard her voice from the bedroom. “You can tell a lot about a man, especially a bachelor, by the way he cleans up after himself.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said, “I’ve know some fairly clean killers.”

“I like orderly people.”

He heard her open the medicine chest in the bathroom and close it. The shower door opened. Maybe she didn’t know too many bachelors. Maybe she was too busy working for Ajax. Too busy with Ajax, period. “The term is anal retentive.”

“I’m not finding the usual,” she said, ignoring him. “No toothpaste all over, no hair in the sink, no dirty clothes, none of that mess you men leave on the rim, rotting things laying around.”

“You’ve been hanging around with slobs,” he said, but liked the fact that she was looking. She was interested. Or maybe just nosy.

“Could be,” she said and he heard the linen closet open. “New towels? I don’t believe it. A man with new towels. Except they’re red towels. Always get white. A woman is always impressed with clean white towels.”

“Noted,” he said. He’d bought the towels yesterday on sale. He’d nearly bought white towels, but the thought of the white towels in Homer’s hotel room had moved his hand to the red. Of course, those white Holiday Inn towels had wound up red from his blood. Now that was something to think about. “I never told you I was a bachelor.”

“You have the look.”

“The look?”

“Desperation,” she said.

“Is that what they call it?” He laughed and pushed the blinking light on the answering machine.

A voice boomed, “This is the Santa Marina Chief of Police - ”

“La di da,” she said over the voice. “The big Chief.”

The Chief’s electric voice filled the room as if answering her. “ - I want you to take a look at something, something strange.” The Chief left his phone number before hanging up.

“That sounded ominous,” she said.

“The Chief thinks I’m a one-man task force,” he said as she stepped closer. He smelled the soft lime of her perfume, like a garden in her hair.

“Are you?”

“Can’t you tell?”

She laughed, walked into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. “What? No egg yoke in the egg tray? Nothing growing on top of the milk carton?” She stood on her toes and peered over the top of the refrigerator. “No dust. No beer can circles.”

“Give it another week.”

She opened the dishwasher. “You actually empty your dishwasher? I don’t even do that. I use mine like an extra cupboard.”

“Okay,” he said and walked into the kitchen. At least she was having a good time. “Show’s over. What are you drinking? I only have Irish wine.”

“Irish wine?”

“Whiskey.”

“Whiskey it is. With a little ice.” She went by him and sat on the couch. He cracked open a tray of ice, made two whiskeys, and sat next to her. She kicked off her shoes, leather slip-ons, and settled into the couch. She folded one leg beneath her and took the drink from him. “What are you going to do now that you’re retired? You’re too young to spend all day at Macdonald’s drinking coffee and reading the paper.”

“I might take up archeology,” he said. “Or vampire hunting.”

“I thought you already had,” she said and touched her glass to his. “You don’t like being asked, do you?”

“People assume I retired early because I couldn’t hack it. Or maybe I was stealing, or knocking too many heads.” He paused. “Or having too many nightmares. Or drugs. Or shot on the booze. Or holding a pistol on myself.”

“Were you?”

“What about you? Digging in the back of a mission? The Chief said you were once a famous archeologist.”

“Did he? Once famous? I’m already a has been? Well, one reason I’m digging in the back of a church is a thousand dollars a day.”

He brushed the hair out of her eyes and touched her cheek. His forearm brushed the soft shape of her breasts, the gray wool. “That’s a thousand reasons.”