A Passing Curse (2011) (6 page)

“This is illegal as hell,” Harrington screamed, frantically ripping the paper, throwing the pieces at Bugazi’s feet. “Worthless. I’ll see you tried as a war criminal!”

“We have many copies,” Bugazi said. He pulled out the gilded sword and shouted, “Abrazzi!” The firing squad unslung their weapons and shuffled back into line.

“Secush!” The soldier’s heads swiveled to the right as if connected by a rod. Their rifles snapped to their chests. Bugazi lifted the point of the sword higher.

A second to tip the chair and be gone, she thought. The woods were fifty yards away. Would they shoot her in the back? No. They were determined to kill her properly. Bugazi wanted everything legal.

She tensed her legs, ready to move, but Harrington jumped in front of the firing squad, shielding her, screaming into the phone, “They’re doing it now! Hurry!”

Bugazi stormed over, livid, and slapped Harrington’s shoulder with the sword. “Is disgraceful,” Bugazi said. “Move!”

Two soldiers ran up. Harrington turned and wrapped her in his arms, yelling, “You’ll have to kill us both!”

“Bravo, Wally,” she said. One soldier swung a leather sap and popped Wallace on the temple. She felt his grip loosen as he collapsed into the snow. They dragged him by the collar to the far wall. The toes of his black leather shoes pointed up. The heels left wavering furrows.

Bugazi raised his sword, “Seredush!” The rifles came up and she started to kick free.

She thought it was a far off earthquake and then, in slow motion, the specks grew into twin horizontal tornadoes, coming right at her. And then two F-15s or 16s, she couldn’t tell, streaked by at a thousand feet, full afterburners. The sonic boom rolled over them like a barrage.

Windows broke. The withered pine trembled. Red half-moon tiles slid from the roof and crashed in the courtyard. One tile hit a soldier’s neck and dropped him to the ground.

The planes looped and made a lower pass. Half the soldiers dropped their rifles, swarmed out of the gate, headed for the woods.

Bugazi ran through the remaining soldiers, hitting them with the flat of his sword, barking and pointing at the planes with the sword, urging them to shoot.

She tipped the chair over, kicked free of the chains, and with wobbly legs and numb feet steadied herself against the wall.

Bugazi, pistol out, ran toward her. A huge Blackhawk helicopter, American star prominent, thumped in over the roofs and hovered at fifty feet, the rotor whipping slush and rain.

Bugazi grabbed her. The rotor blast tore at his clothes, flared his lips. He put the pistol to her head. He wanted them to see his hostage.

Gun barrels angled from the Blackhawk’s side door. Bright red dots chased each other across the wall.

One dot focused on the top of the black homburg. A bright red spray. Bugazi dropping slowly, silently working his mouth. She heard more gunshots and closed her eyes to keep the blood out. She was learning.

When the Blackhawk landed outside the gate, three Romanian soldiers, what was left of the firing squad, patted her on the back and tried to hand her thick pieces of bread smeared with mustard, their lunch. She pushed them away. Two soldiers, the ones who had clubbed Wallace, dragged Bugazi’s body behind a trash can. Other soldiers held Wallace’s head up to give him coffee. A squad of United States paratroopers jumped from the sides of the Blackhawk and fanned out. Their uniforms were remarkably clean.

The Romanian who had brought the order for her death now stood in the center of the courtyard waving a white rag and calling out, “Vee luf America.”

5

Four weeks later

Santa Marina, CA

The sun pushed through the fog. The oak trees came into view, their tops barely visible over the adobe wall of the mission’s cemetery.

Father Ramon had instructed the workers, a laborer and a backhoe operator, to dig the footings down three feet. He had also told them that this part of the cemetery, half an acre in the north corner once used as a garden, was clear: there were no gas or water mains to dig into, no electricity or TV cables to cut through, and, most certainly, there were no bodies or coffins to dislodge.

Earlier this morning, after a surveyor had set hubs for elevation, the laborer painted in the footings with orange paint, and the backhoe operator began digging.

By measuring each section of new ditch with a pole marked at three feet, the laborer made sure that the operator dug no deeper than required. When the ditch was at the right depth, he signaled with a sideways chopping of his right hand and the operator moved the backhoe forward to dig another set.

As the sun baked off more fog, the coastal mountains cleared, and the laborer set his grade pole down. He walked over to the spoils pile and kicked at something.

Wanting to move on - the cement trucks were coming at three - the operator yelled over the engine, “You gonna check grade or what?”

“You pulled something up!” the laborer shouted.

The operator hoped that it was not a telephone line. The optical ones were underground and expensive. The priest had said the ground was clear, no utilities, so if he had hit a line it would be on the priest. He killed the engine and leaned out of the cab. “What is it?”

“I think it’s a leg,” the laborer said slowly.

“What?”

The laborer nudged it with the toe of his boot. The skin was wrinkled and tea colored. “A leg,” he said and reached down with his hand.

“Don’t touch the goddamn thing!”

The laborer jerked his hand back. “Feels like leather.”

“I said don’t touch it.” The operator climbed down. He looked at the pile of dirt, the leg, and the twisted leather sandal still attached to the foot. “You’d better go get the fat guy,” he said. “Go get Ramon.”

The laborer ran off. The operator touched the leg. It did feel like leather.

Reese Tarrant walked from his new apartment to the beach and Foggy Ben’s diner for breakfast. Another dull day in Santa Marina, he thought. The fog was drifting out to sea and he was drifting with it. He could smell the salt from the ocean and below that the low-tide smell of seaweed and maybe a dead fish or two thrown in with it.

From Foggy Ben’s, if you went along the beach road, palm lined and sand blown, there were bars and fast food joints, liquor stores, porno shops, several desultory whores, and a tattoo parlor, typical for any beach town.

Up ahead, the mission’s twin bell towers broke through the haze. The parking lot was deserted, still too early for tourists. Over the low adobe wall, topped with faded and cracked Spanish tile, imbedded with shards of broken glass for the over-curious, he saw a backhoe kicking up dust, and, through the dust, a worker leaning against his shovel.

The path lay between the crumbling asphalt road and cottages sitting quaint and dreamlike behind white picket fences and country gardens. It was a lovely town, and, for a moment, he wished he were retired.

But he was working, and, for the first time in years, he was not sure how things would turn out. He was alone. No backup. The LAPD was not behind him on this. He had no safety net. He was an orphan and suddenly felt cold.

He wore running shoes, loose fitting Levi’s, a white T-shirt, and an old hound’s-tooth sport jacket. He missed the weight of the gun and the tightness of the leather cross-bands holding the holster. He felt lopsided, trying to compensate for the weight. But he was supposed to be retired and, for now, would act the part. No gun. No cuffs.

One week earlier he had factually retired, after twenty years, from the LAPD, a few days later moving what little he owned from a one-bedroom apartment in the San Fernando Valley to a one-bedroom apartment in Santa Marina. It had taken him one hour to pack and a little over two hours to drive up the coast. He’d paid six months rent in advance to the mildly drunk landlord, who’d offered him a glass of Walker Red and cackled with approval after he’d shot the glass back with a smile.

Santa Marina was a small town, maybe fifty thousand, an old Spanish town laid out with the mission at center stage, the twin bell towers, by law, the town’s tallest structure. Oak-shaded streets were named after various Spanish explorers and entrepreneurs, the losers and cheaters of the new world.

Most of the houses and businesses were low and arched, unfaltering in their off-white stucco, the dingy, half-baked orange of Spanish tile descending everywhere, some moss grown, weeds sprouting fifty feet above the street.

Yesterday, after he’d walked the town out, he’d driven the red “65 Mustang through Santa Marina’s oak covered hills, down canyons and roads that twisted past old Moorish mansions and California ranchers and past the newer geometrical, contemporary homes, jutting out arrogant and indifferent. Hollywood money, he thought, million-dollar second homes, summer homes, bought with cash.

On his right, yellow roses bloomed over the sharp points of a white picket fence. Behind the roses a patch of almost-blue grass gave way to a flower bed of purple and red gladiolus and then a gray porch with blue pillars rising to a rolled-shingle roof.

“No one ever walks anymore,” an old lady called from the porch. She stepped lightly off the porch and came toward him, wearing a cotton-flower dress under a green apron, shaded by a wide straw hat. A woman with clear old eyes, magnified greatly behind glasses the size of dinner plates. She pointed heavy garden shears that could prune a finger. “They’re all too busy.”

“I’m retired,” he admitted.

“Retired? You’re too young. Well, nowadays everyone retires sooner. People live longer and retire earlier. Maybe that’s why everyone is so unhappy. If you live longer you should work longer. That way you keep your mind off the small things. That’s what kills you, the details.”

“God is in the details,” he said. She didn’t appreciate this and peered over her glasses at him, not only to get a better picture of him but to show disdain as well.

“Reese Tarrant?” He nodded and shifted his weight a little, not sure where she was going and not in the mood to deal with a matronly geezer. “You don’t look like your picture.”

“I’m bigger,” he said. She removed her glove and he took her hand. Her grip was firm. Her calluses disks of grit. “I didn’t want to barge in.”

“Don’t you know that little old ladies like people barging in? It gives us an excuse to cook and talk about the neighbors.” She dropped the shears into her apron. “Eggs?”

“What if the neighbors drop in?”

“Then we talk about the other neighbors. Only fittin’.”

“Eggs will be fine,” he said. She was a tough old bird, he thought, and stubborn to boot. She’d called the hotline two weeks before his one and only meeting with Lamb, claiming Lamb’s sketch in the LA newspaper resembled Homer Wermels, a boy she knew in Santa Marina. “Mrs. Everett.”

She opened the gate. It hung at a strange angle and creaked on un-oiled hinges. No husband?

“Call me Hannah.” The front room was gleaming red oak floors, ornate bookcases, a green velvet couch, oriental rugs. Neat as a pin.

“Don’t mind the mess.” She hung the apron in a hall closet and walked into the kitchen. “Where are you staying?” she asked and poured him a cup of coffee.

“The Palms.” He’d not planned on dealing with her this early. He’d wanted breakfast first, a chance to wake up.

“Not a hotel?” She lit a gas flame under a large cast-iron skillet and pulled a carton of eggs from the refrigerator. “Planning to stay awhile?”

“Over easy,” he said. The kitchen smelled of warming bread and cinnamon. She added a quarter stick of butter to the pan. She added two large sausage links. She moved around wiping the counter with a worn cloth printed with large tomatoes. She hummed to herself, ignoring him.

When the butter and sausage were all sizzling good, she smartly broke two eggs on the edge of the skillet. “You wouldn’t be in Santa Marina unless you thought Homer was Richard Lamb. Unless you thought Homer was a killer.”

“Probably not,” he said, but thinking that Santa Marina wouldn’t be a bad place to settle down, once he discovered why one of its residents had gone on a killing spree. Maybe the quiet town had driven Homer over the edge.

“You don’t give away much.”

“No,” he said.

“That can prove annoying.”

“What was Homer like?” he asked, not wanting to argue. The coffee had a hint of hazelnut and he savored it. It was a big chipped old mug, blue enamel. She wiped the counter, her back to him now. “Homer and Richard Lamb are the same man? You believe that?” When she turned to see why he hadn’t answered, he handed her the wallet-sized morgue photo from his wallet. She held the photo at arm’s length. “He looks awful.” He didn’t mention the judicious use of mortician’s putty.

“It could be Homer,” she said finally and handed him the photo. “I can’t be positive. Face looks like modeling clay. You do that? The LA paper said you killed an innocent man.” The Times, he recalled, had said he’d killed an unarmed suspect without enough evidence against him to be arrested for littering, much less thirteen murders.

“I can’t discuss it.”

“That’s nice,” she said. “You don’t have to explain killing the wrong man. You don’t have to explain killing a boy.”

“That would bother me?” He’d killed the right man. That wasn’t the problem.

“I doubt it, Mr. Tarrant. I doubt if much bothers you. You probably sleep like a baby.” She slipped her hand into a paisley oven mitt, slightly scorched. She pulled a pan of bread from the oven and whacked the bottom to release the loaf onto a large cutting board. “Homer was a simple man, I guess. He delivered the morning paper, and at night was a janitor at the university in Santa Barbara. Then he disappeared.”

“Did you ever know him to be violent? Arrests? Peeping Tom? Lewd conduct?” The man in room 637 had been everything but simple.

“Lewd conduct?” She shook her head sadly. “Homer didn’t know sex outside of puppy love. Gentle as a kitten. A child, really.” She leveled not so gentle eyes on him. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“In Los Angeles, Homer bought red contact lenses, put aluminum foil over his hotel windows, and had an inch of Transylvanian dirt in the bottom of his bathtub.” She did not need to know that Homer had been a raving sexaholic, a maniacal jack-off artist. It had always struck him as odd that none of Homer’s thirteen victims had been raped. Objects had been inserted, that was bad enough, but no proof existed that Homer had raped them personally. The FBI had cited impotence as a possible answer, but he knew that wasn’t the case.