Game Of Cages (2010) (6 page)

I walked to the door. The woman was speaking, and her voice was deeper than the one I'd eavesdropped on from behind the pantry door. She wasn't Well-Spoken Woman after all. "It's a surprisingly small library," she said. She had an accent like a Kennedy.

A man's thin, nasal voice answered: "But the quality is excellent, if you are interested in road building, Bigfoot, or Ayn Rand. Otherwise--"

"Now," the woman said.

I heard the rustle of clothing and peeked around the edge of the door. The woman stepped backward, allowing the Mustaches to pull sawed-off double-barreled shotguns from under their puffy coats. They pointed them at two men seated in the corner. One was a pudgy young guy with Larry Fine hair, and the other was a huge-bellied biker in riding leathers.

The biker looked startled, then let his hand creep toward the waistband of his pants. Something he saw in the expressions of the Mustaches changed his mind. Stork Neck came up behind him and patted him down.

From my position, I couldn't see Larry Fine's expression. "What the hell are you doing?" he said.

Fat Mustache answered him: "The other bidders here have asked us to kill you both." He was the Russian-speaker. I'd followed the wrong party.

"You can't do that!" Larry Fine blurted out.

"Of course I can," the woman answered. Her voice was mild. Stork Neck removed a little revolver from the biker's belt. "However, I'm tempted to let you live, if you cooperate."

I crossed the doorway to have a better view. No one saw me. They were all paying very close attention to one another. Larry Fine had a look of blustering outrage, as though he had been told he couldn't have nutmeg in his latte. "This doesn't even make sense--"

"Don't be dense, Mr. Kripke. You did not come here to purchase this creature. You don't have the cash to bid or the resources to hold it."

"I didn't expect the price to start so--"

"Shut up," she said. Her tone wasn't harsh or angry, but he did it. "You came here to gather information for your little electronic circle of friends. You plan to put our names and descriptions into your database. Don't bother to deny it."

His mouth worked while he decided whether to take her advice. "You're wrong and you're right. I would have bought the creature if the price hadn't been so high, just like you. I'm also planning to make a record of everything I've seen, Professor Solorov, also just like you." Kripke had an edge of contempt in his voice, as though he didn't think they had the guts to kill him.

Biker looked uncomfortable and edged away from Kripke. I could tell he took the threat seriously, and so did I.

The ghost knife was still in my pocket, but I couldn't use it. Both Mustaches had their backs to me, and I couldn't see their guns. My spell would pretty much hit whatever I wanted it to, but I couldn't hit what I couldn't see. I also expected them to have backup weapons. Horace did.

I could have targeted the men rather than the weapons, of course, but I couldn't hit all of them together. Someone would have time to squeeze a trigger, and I wasn't protected well enough to survive a shotgun blast.

"Perhaps we will," Solorov answered. I wondered if she said we when her gunmen weren't around. "But there are crucial differences. First, we know everyone we will share this information with personally. Second, we brought more guns. You." She spoke to Biker for the first time. "You're his friend, correct? He didn't hire you as a bodyguard; he asked you to come along, right?"

"Right," Biker answered. His voice was hoarse.

"We thought so," she said. "We're going to split you up, but we're willing to spare your lives if you both cooperate."

Kripke let out a dismissive puff of air. "I wouldn't join your group if you--"

"I didn't say you could join us," Solorov said sharply. "You can work for us. I know someone has been feeding you information--recent information. If you share it with us--all of it--and if you report to your group in exactly the manner I indicate, you and your friend may survive."

Kripke looked over at Biker. The look on his friend's face drained all the insolence out of him. He nodded.

"You're lucky, Mr. Kripke, although I doubt you have the wit to see it. If Mr. Yin had been asked to get rid of you, two of his men would have walked in here, shot you both, and left you dead on the floor. And that crotchety German bastard would have cut you open and eaten you. At least I--and the rest of the Fellows, of course--have given you a chance to live and be useful."

Stork Neck and Skinny Mustache waved at Biker. He stood. They were leaving.

I slid away from the door as quietly as I could. There was one other door in the hall, but it was locked. The rattle of the latch sounded as loud as an alarm bell. I hustled away, holding the tray in my left hand.

The corridor ended at a door with a dead bolt. I didn't bother to rattle the knob. To my right was another mudroom and a door into the backyard. To my left was a flight of stairs. I walked up the steps.

The library door clicked shut. At the top of the first landing, I heard Biker's hoarse voice say: "You guys don't have to kill me, you know."

"We know." I didn't recognize that voice.

"You ... you wouldn't really do it, though, right?" I could hear the question in Biker's voice: Are these guys really killers? "Have you ever done this before?"

"I wanted a monster," a new voice said. It sounded high and thin, as though the speaker was under terrible strain. "I came here to get a monster, but we weren't fucking rich enough. Do you know how long I ..." He let that sentence trail off as though he was swallowing all his disappointment and resentment. I wouldn't want to be on the ugly end of his gun.

"We won't do anything we don't have to do," the first man said calmly.

They went outside. I climbed the second flight and came to a huge back window. Through the drapes, I saw Stork Neck and Skinny Mustache lead Biker toward the woods, away from the garage.

According to Horace, the guesthouse was where the predator had been kept. That was my next stop.

There was a muffled chunk of a slamming car door. I crossed toward the front of the house. The nearest door was unlocked and the room inside was filled with furniture covered with white sheets, just like in the movies. The musty smell made me wrinkle my nose.

More heavy drapes hung over the windows at the front of the house. Each window was taller than my apartment. I pulled the drape open a crack. The X6 backed up, trying to make its way through the crowded lot. When it was as close to the door as it was going to get, the guy in the furry Russian hat climbed out of the driver's seat and hustled around the front. He opened the back door like a chauffeur.

A small woman slipped into the backseat. From above I didn't have the best view of her, but I saw that her very dark hair was parted severely down the middle and curled into a librarian's bun. She had a dark complexion and wore a gray suit.

The chauffeur closed her door, got behind the wheel, and sped off. If she was leaving before the others, she worked for Mr. Yin, which meant she was the Well-Spoken Woman who was so casual about asking other people to kill for her. I hoped Catherine was in position to snap a photo.

I mentally ran through the list of bidders Horace had given us: Yin's people were all out on the hillside hunting for the predator. I hadn't seen Yin himself, only his gunman and Well-Spoken Woman, who was his representative. Kripke and his biker bodyguard were accounted for and not doing very well. I'd seen Professor Solorov and about half of her mismatched, badly dressed Fellows; on their own, they didn't impress, but their guns were dangerous enough.

And there was Tattoo, who had to be the German with the harsh voice. I didn't like the look of him, especially since Horace had said he was one of the "old man's" people. The professor had said the old man would have eaten Kripke, and based on previous experience, I knew there was a good chance she meant it literally. I didn't want to meet that old man.

That meant I'd had at least a glimpse of each of the four groups of bidders. Hopefully, what I'd learned would be useful to the society.

I went back into the hall and heard the faint jabbering of a radio. I peered into the darkness and noticed a tiny sliver of light shining from under a door. I had a hunch I knew who was behind that door, and if I was right, the guesthouse could wait.

"I can hear you out there!" Regina shouted. "You can't fool these old ears."

Fair enough. I opened the door and went inside.

The bright light hit half a second before the smell. Who ever brought Regina up here hadn't expected her to sleep. Maybe they didn't care. Three halogen lamps filled the room with an acid-yellow light--there was no way to nod off in here without a blindfold.

The room also stank of unwashed bedpans, sweat, and neglect. My initial impulse was to flee back into the musty shadows of the hall.

"I know," Regina said. I guess I wouldn't have made much of a poker player in that moment. She switched off a small transistor radio on the bed beside her. Her niece had buckled her left wrist to a bolt in the frame. She was still wearing the dirty nightgown, and I wished she would pull it down over the black-and-blue patches on her legs. They gave me goose bumps. "It sickens me, too. Just be glad you don't have to live this way."

"I am. My name is Ray."

"I'm Regina Wilbur. When I was a girl, my father would have had you thrown out of this house for introducing yourself to me. You'd have left with a muddy boot print on your derriere."

"Things have changed," I said, for lack of anything more profound to offer.

She rattled the short chain on her restraint. "So they have. What have you done with Armand?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't know who that is," I said, hoping it would prompt her to explain.

Instead, she sighed bitterly and looked around the room. "This house was mine once. My father built it with timber money. My husband built four more just like it all over the country, and one in the Italian Alps, too. He took my father's fortune and doubled it five times. Trucking lines, at the beginning, then tires and road building. He was a bastard, but most are. At least he had the decency to die young.

"But now Stephanie has taken it all, and the little bitch didn't even have the good manners to wait until I had dirt over my face. She's going to sell it, just like the ones in Carolina and Maine, so she can live in California." She said that word with special distaste. "All auctioned off! All the history here. All the gifts from politicians and people desperate to do business. Even from enemies who wanted my blessing ..."

Her voice trailed off and she stared across the room. Her eyes were like dark river stones. The whole situation made me uneasy.

She seemed to have forgotten me. To prompt her, I said: "Was Armand one of those gifts?"

"Yes," she said, savoring the word like it was candy. "He was a gift from one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the world, Nelson Taber Stroud. Dead now, of course. He and I clashed over all sorts of garbage over the years, especially mining rights, but that changed once Armand arrived. Nothing else mattered after that. Armand was everything."

What is he? I wanted to ask. That seemed too direct. Regina may have been in a bad spot, but she was still sharp. And she hadn't asked for my help, hadn't even hinted that she wanted it. She was either tough as hell or completely crazy.

"It sounds like you loved him very much."

"You bet I did. I made sure Ursula kept his cage clean and stayed with him in his house. He was loved, and I made sure he knew it."

She looked at a nightstand loaded with pictures in silver frames. I circled the bed toward it. I had to move in front of a window, but the glass was so dirty that I wasn't worried about being spotted. The closest picture, though still out of her reach, was of a much younger Regina holding a Scottish terrier to her face. The dog wore a diamond necklace. "Is this Armand?"

She twisted her mouth in disgust. "That's the first Armand. Give me that."

I handed the picture to her. She snatched it with her free hand and flung it across the room. It smashed against a radiator with a noise I thought the whole house could hear.

Damn. Now I understood why it had been out of her reach. I slid my hand into my pocket next to my ghost knife, just in case someone came to investigate.

"That's what I think of that," she said with finality. She turned back to the other pictures.

Regina was much older in these. Every picture showed her crouching beside an empty Plexiglas cage similar to the one in the wrecked truck, only much larger. Flood lamps lit the interior, and the cage was spiderwebbed with electrical wiring.

But all I could see inside the cage was a blurry blue smear. Whatever it was, I couldn't make it out.

I looked at the other pictures. There were at least a dozen, all showing Regina posing with the empty cage. Her hair was longer in some pictures than in others, but she had the same creepy, ecstatic smile in each. Something about them bothered me, though. The smile was the same, but the expression was not. It seemed that the longer her hair was, the more ferocious her eyes became.

I studied the background of the images. They had been taken indoors; there was a couch, a ski jacket, and skis against the wall in one photo, a tiny stove in another. The space looked pretty cramped, and I guessed it was the guesthouse out back.

One picture showed a different woman who didn't smile at all, but her face glowed with smug contentment. She was younger than Regina--maybe in her early fifties--with a pale, stolid look about her. Her eyes had the same fierce glint as Regina's.

"I can't see Armand. Was he in the cage when this was taken?"

"We didn't cage him," she snapped, forgetting that she'd already told me she kept his cage clean. "We kept him safe. But yes, he was there when we took those. He doesn't turn up on film. He isn't a regular animal, you know. He's special."

Now we were getting to it. "How is he special?"

"He is beautiful!" she cried. "He's the most beautiful thing on God's green earth. His eyes are like the stars of the Milky Way, and he's as delicate as thistledown. He's the only dog of his kind in the world. A sapphire dog, Stroud called him. He's as beautiful as a dream at twilight. Like holding the sky in your arms."