Oasis of Night (43 page)

You have been through a terrible ordeal, Jack.
No, it wasn't possible. Sam was in Egypt. He'd been nowhere near the American docks when the cab went over. His supposed presence in my room the night before was probably nothing more than the aftereffects of my near-drowning. “Hey, Phonse, how is Chris doing?”

He brightened. “Good. He had a bit of a fever and they were afraid he mightn't make it, but he's all right now.”

“You stayed with him?”

He nodded shyly, his pale cheeks suddenly flushed with hot color. “I was there all night. He was sitting up having his breakfast when I left to come over here.”

That was good news. With any luck at all, Chris would make a full recovery. I was about to say something when the nurse came back. “Sergeant Picco, there is a telephone call for you, from a Mr. Scala, I think he said. Long distance.”

Scala? Andros Scala?

Picco stuck his notebook back into the breast pocket of his tunic and got up. “Thank you, nurse. Jack, I have to go.”

“Phonse, wait—do you think this taxi driver, this Rocky Power guy, could have been hired by someone?”

He seemed reluctant to answer. “It's possible. Don't go getting any ideas.”

“Right. Well, I'm not going to lie around here waiting for them to come and kill me.” I threw back the bedclothes and put my feet on the floor. The room swung around me, and I swayed. Picco caught me and sat me down on the bed. “Thanks.” My attempt had left me shaky, sweating, and nauseous. It almost felt like a repeat of the quinine poisoning episode a few months ago. “Just need to get my bearings and I'll be fine.” God only knew what was in the harbor water: on a clear day you could smell it for miles. I'd probably ingested some horrible bacteria that would kill me. Well, that'd save Octavian the trouble.

“Get back in bed, Stoyles, you friggin' fool.”

I held on to his arm for a moment longer. “I'll be fine. Just got up too quick is all.”

“Look, if there's somebody after you, the safest place you can be is here in the hospital.” Picco helped me lie down and pulled the blankets over me. “I'll even send a constable to stand watch on the door, just in case.” He patted my shoulder. “Stay here. Now, you mind me. I'll come back later on and see how you are.”

Picco meant well, but his suggestion that I stay where I was didn't make any sense to me. Maybe Octavian was dead and maybe he wasn't, but this whole situation was cockeyed from beginning to end and lying flat on my back in a hospital bed wasn't doing me any good. I dug my clothes out of the closet and got dressed. It seemed to take twice as long as usual, and I was exhausted by the time I'd finished tying my shoes.

I'd just slipped into my coat when the nurse came back. “Mr. Stoyles! Get back into bed right this instant.”

“No, thanks. I'm getting out of here.” I slipped past her and out into the hallway. A door at the end of the corridor had a big, red Exit sign over it, and this drew me like a magnet draws iron filings.

“Mr. Stoyles! You can't leave this hospital!” The nurse followed me, but I wasn't interested. I had no idea how long I'd been here, but I'd already wasted too much time. She shouted at me that she was going for the doctor, and I shouted back that was fine, and hurried down the stairs. A door at the bottom let out onto LeMarchant Road, and from there it was easy to find my way back to the Heartache. Twenty minutes later, I was hauling myself in the front door.

Tex, a towel slung over his shoulder, came running to greet me. “Jack, what the hell are you doing out of bed? That cop was here—what's his name with the gray eyes—and he said you were fished out of the harbor.” He guided me to a chair. “We didn't know where you were. Anita came in here crying, saying something about how you were drowned and all that. Shoot. You scared the life out of me.”

“I'm okay. Just a bit shaky, you know, kind of tired.” I felt like I'd been dragged backward through the wringer of an industrial washing machine.

“Yeah, you look it. Hell, why don't you go on up to bed? Me and Anita can handle the lunch crowd. It's been nonstop in here ever since your accident. I guess some people got a taste for that sort of thing, huh?”

“Yeah.” My head was spinning, and I rested it in my hands for a moment. “How long was I gone?” My sense of time was horribly distorted: it could have been a day, or I might have been gone for a week.

“Day before yesterday.” Tex regarded me with concern. “You're lucky to be alive. From what I've heard, most people who go into that harbor don't come out again. Oh, hey—” He fished in his pocket. “I almost forgot. This came yesterday, special delivery. Normally, I wouldn't open your mail, but I was afraid it might be something important. There was only this card.” He handed it to me. It was an ordinary-looking calling card, with nothing except a name printed on pale cream card stock: JONAH OCTAVIAN.

“Tex, where's the envelope this came in?” Seeing that name made me sick to my stomach.

“It's around here somewhere.” He went to my office at the rear of the cafe and returned bearing a pale blue envelope. The postmark indicated it had been sent from St. John's, but there was no return address and no way of knowing who had sent it or why.

“Hm. Yeah, that's about what I figured.” I crumpled the envelope in my fist. “Goddammit.” I got up.

“Jack, where are you going?” Tex came around the table and started buttoning up my coat; it was a cute and curiously tender gesture, and it made me smile like an idiot. “It's freezing out there, and besides, you just got out of the hospital.”

“I need some information on this Rocky Power guy.”

“The cab driver.”

“Yeah.” I squeezed his shoulder to show him there were no hard feelings between us. “You okay to handle the lunch crowd?”

“You know it.”

 

 

T
HE
CITY
directory showed a Rocky Power at 74 Signal Hill Road. This was a modest wooden house attached on one side to a row of similar houses and with an open field on the other side. I knocked on the door and waited, but nobody answered, so I knocked again, a little harder this time. After half an eternity, a middle-aged woman came to the door with her hair in curlers. “Oh, excuse me. I didn't mean to bother you. You're obviously getting ready to go out.”

She stared at me. “Wha'?”

“Your… curlers, there.” I pointed. “I said you're obviously getting ready to go out.”

“No, my son, that I'm not.” She stood back and held the door open. “I might go to Bingo tonight with my sister, Margo, but then again I might not. Are ye coming in or what? I'm not heating up St. John's.”

I stepped into the entryway, which was absolutely filthy, even to the handmade rag rugs on the floor. The walls were made of sagging ten-test, painted an improbable pink, surmounted with numerous holy pictures and religious relics. A cross-eyed Jesus, squeezing the Sacred Heart in his clasped hands, ogled me from the opposite wall. The house smelled like boiled cabbage and dirty socks. “I'm looking for a cab driver named Rocky Power. Are you Mrs. Power?”

“No, I'm not Mrs. Power. I'm Mrs. Cahill. He used to board here.” She peered up at me through a pair of filthy cat's eye glasses. “How come you're asking about him? He's dead, sure.”

I still felt pretty crummy, and I didn't intend to get into it with her. “Is there anybody here who knew him?”

“His brother came in from Gambo yesterday for the funeral. The poor bugger's getting buried this afternoon. You want to talk to him?”

“Sure.” The brother might be a waste of time, but since I'd come all this way, I might as well see something for my efforts. I followed Mrs. Cahill into the next room, stepping over empty milk bottles and discarded foodstuffs in varying states of decay. A pair of angry yellow eyes watched me from under a chair, and a set of needle-sharp claws slashed at my ankles as I went by.

Mrs. Cahill stopped at the foot of the stairs and bellowed for Rocky Power's brother. “Here he comes.” A shadowy figure appeared in the semidarkness at the top of the stairs. “You can talk to 'en in here if you wants to.”

Rocky Power's brother looked nothing like Rocky Power. First of all, he was a good deal younger and a lot better-looking, but there was something hard about him, something sinister. I'd gotten a similar feeling once before, in Philadelphia, when Frankie Missalo and I had done some construction work for a friend of Frankie's father, a big, burly man with a cigar stuck in his face and expensive rings for every finger. He'd been nice enough, but something told me not to turn my back on him. I found out later he was the number one button man for the Sbarro crime family, and he was personally responsible for at least a hundred deaths.

He came downstairs slowly, walking on his heels and letting his body's weight sink noiselessly down under its own impetus. He was very well-dressed, in dark trousers and a silk shirt open at the neck. His face was narrow and watchful, and his heavy-lidded eyes were obsidian dark, with thick, almost feminine lashes. The nose was thin and sharp, like the beak of some predatory bird; the lips, in contrast, were full and fleshy, a little oversensual for my taste. He could have been the man in the photograph, the one I'd seen in Picco's folder. He stopped in front of me and looked me up and down. “Good day. I am Nicholas Power. How can I help you, Mr.…?” The accent belonged to Newfoundland about as much as I did.

“Stoyles. Jack Stoyles. I was in the cab your brother was driving.”

“Ah.” The muscles of his face flexed, drawing up the corners of the mouth while the rest of his face remained utterly still. It was a chilling spectacle. “I am glad you were not killed, as Rocky was.”

“Yeah, well, so am I. That's not what bothers me, though.”

“Oh?” He drifted closer. “What bothers you?”

Time to drop the bomb. “I think someone hired your brother to kill me.”

“Mm.” His expression didn't change. “That is rather a strong accusation.”

“You have an interesting accent for someone from Gambo. I've never heard a Newfoundland accent that sounds like yours.”

“Hmph.” It might have been laughter. “I have been working overseas for many years.”

“Is that so? Sounds Turkish to me… or maybe it's Greek.”

“How interesting.”

“So if you are Greek….” I left it hanging. “You know, you remind me of a picture I saw recently. You familiar with a guy named Picco?”

“Mr. Stoyles.” The smile came and went. “Is there a purpose to your visit? Apart from pointless accusations, I mean.”

“Listen, I'm not interested in your brother. There's nothing I can do about him. What I am interested in is who hired him.”

He laid a cold, reptilian hand on my shoulder; it was all I could do not to shrug it off. “Mr. Stoyles, I cannot condone what my brother did, but I think he has paid for his crimes.” He gazed deeply into my eyes. “You, on the other hand….”

“Hey, wait just a minute!” I shoved his arm down. “Your brother almost killed me, and I think maybe you know something about it.”

“That may be.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “A few evenings ago, a man came to see my brother.” A dark red easy chair, piled high with dirty laundry, stood nearby; he shoved the clothes onto the floor, folded himself into the chair, and lit a cigarette. “My brother didn't want me in the room, so I went out for a walk along the waterfront.” He drew on the cigarette till the end glowed bright red.

“Did your brother say what the man's name was?”

“Mm. I don't recall.” He sighed. “He was about your height, perhaps a man of middle years, but extremely well-groomed, manicured fingernails, fine clothes. He had curling dark hair going gray at the sides, and he spoke with some sort of European accent. He told my brother he had been involved in the construction industry for many years.”

Construction. Yeah, it sounded like Octavian all right, right down to the manicured fingernails. I didn't need him to tell me anything else; I could put the pieces together just fine. “Thanks.” I did my best not to sound sarcastic. “You've been a lot of help.”

He made a noncommittal noise and waved the cigarette at me. “I hope so, Mr. Stoyles. You can show yourself out?”

I threaded my way back through the mess and found the front door without too much trouble. Mrs. Cahill was nowhere to be seen, but I couldn't feel too sorry about that. I was too busy wondering how the hell Jonah Octavian had managed to rise from the dead.

 

 

I
SPENT
an hour in the public library on Duckworth Street, paging through recent newspapers. The
Daily News
had a small piece on the front page, as well as an obit—
Local businessman Jonah Octavian murdered overseas—
but declined to elaborate. The
Evening Telegram
coverage featured a small, black-bordered box on the lower right-hand side of the front page, but said mostly the same thing. A thorough search of the obituaries revealed nothing more than the usual: Octavian had died in Egypt, presumably murdered, burial had already taken place,
Mr. Octavian is survived by his brother Nicholas.

Whose last name, I knew, wasn't Power. This put a whole new slant on things—but the effects of my impromptu swim in the harbor had begun to reassert themselves, so I left the library and headed down the hill to Water Street and the Heartache Cafe. The walk was only about a block, but by the time I made it through the front door, I was weak and sweaty. Tex and Anita were cleaning up after the lunch crowd; they both hurried over when they saw me, and Anita fetched me a hot cup of coffee, which tasted like ambrosia. “Do you guys think you can hold things together? I'd like to go upstairs and lie down for a little while.”