Shaman's Blood (12 page)

She folded the letter and put it back in the case. That left the blue aerogramme. Alice noted the postmark—Cooktown, Queensland, December 20, 1969—and unfolded the flaps. The message it contained was brief and hastily scrawled. It was a plea for money.

“It looks like they’ve maxed out Suzanne’s credit card and are short on funds. She wants Hal to wire them some money. They’re getting ready to make some kind of trek and have hired a vehicle and a guide, and bought provisions, but it’s taken most of their cash.” Alice read another paragraph to herself, then put down the aerogramme and stared at Margaret. “They’re headed into the bush, in search of Quinkan cave paintings.”

Alice didn’t even bother to explain; her brain was derailed. She’d suddenly realized that what her late-lamented parents were doing in Australia wasn’t a honeymoon, or even a fun adventure. Ned was on the trail of something. With a sour feeling in her gut, Alice guessed what must have happened to Ned in Australia. He’d found his quarry, or it had found him. Which suddenly explained a whole lot about Suzanne and her crazed state of mind when she’d come back to the States as a widow instead of a bride.

It also meant something equally chilling. That desolate landscape of canyons and caves, high bluffs and raging winds was the place of her waking nightmares—the Outback of the Dreamtime.

Alice gathered all the papers together and shut them up in the briefcase. She wiped sweaty palms on her shirt.

“Excuse me,” she said, getting up. “I need to make a phone call.”

Chapter 9

April 1965

“What was it like?” The teenage boy sat on the couch, watching as Ned got dressed.

“What was what like?”

“Tripper said you freaked out on an acid trip. I wondered what it was like.”

Ned put his only good long-sleeved shirt down on the bed and turned toward the boy. “Tripper doesn’t know shit. What else did he tell you?”

The boy shrugged. “Just that he was scared the fuzz was gonna come bust the door down, you were yelling so loud. He said you scared the shit out of everybody.”

He turned his back on the boy. “Tripper has a big mouth.”

“Where you going? I’ve never seen you dressed up like that.”

Ned buttoned his shirt, leaving the top two buttons undone. He straightened his cuffs. “You’re fucking nosey, you know that?”

“Just wondering, is all.” The boy felt around between the couch cushions and produced a joint. He retrieved matches from his jeans and lit up, toking with practiced ease. He held the joint out to Ned.

“Pass. Maybe later, when I get back.”

“Ain’t gonna last that long,” said the boy. “You got a date or something?”

Ned brushed his hair, pulling out tangles. “None of your business.”

The boy inhaled with a loud sucking hiss and spoke holding his breath. “Is she a fox?”

Ned stopped brushing and looked at the boy. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Bullshit. How old?”

The boy shrugged. “Thirteen. But I’ll be fourteen in a couple of weeks. And I got laid already. So, like, is your date a fox?”

“There’s no date.” Ned checked his pants pockets for his wallet and other essentials and headed toward the door.

“Oh. I get it.” The boy started to smile. “You’re hustling. Have a good time.”

Ned shut the door behind him a little harder than necessary.

*    *    *

Nighttime in the Castro district could be a surreal experience, even without pharmaceutical enhancements. However, Ned wished he’d taken at least one toke from the kid. He was jittery, and a little grass would have been welcome right about now. He piloted his body down Market Street, feeling disconnected. He hadn’t felt right since last week when he’d dropped the blotter with Tripper and those girls. It had taken cold water in the face and a bath towel shoved in his mouth to shut off the screaming, but that had brought him back to his senses and the worst was past within a few minutes. Shaken, he’d sat on the floor of the bathroom staring at his forearms, as the scale pattern pulsed dark green-gold against his lighter olive skin. Mary Catherine had slid down onto the floor behind him, leaning against his back with her arms around his waist. The warmth of her body had been an unspeakable comfort. 

Fortunately, his shouts had also jarred Gloria loose from her crying jag to the point that she could recognize her buddy Linda, and Tripper had snuggled both girls into bed with him, talking them through the experience like the old pro that he was.

“Neddy,” Green Eyes had whispered.

“Shh. Just sit.” With glacial slowness, the vibrations along his veins began to let up, and the objects in the room became more solid, their outlines more stable. Once the amoeboid acid pattern that pulsed over his field of vision began to fade, he started to feel closer to normal. Mary Catherine sighed and curled up in his lap, her eyes closed. Soon, her regular breathing told him she was asleep. Ned had held her slight body close to his chest with a king-sized hotel bath towel wrapped around them both and wondered if he would ever sleep again.

After that night, his forearms continued to prickle in a way he hadn’t felt in years, not since he’d confronted the serpents at Brother Micha’s tent revival. In fact, since the acid trip, his shadow nemesis had returned with a vengeance. A piece of Ned’s mind was very frightened, realizing he’d opened forbidden doors again. He lay in his bed in the house on Fulton, telling friends he’d caught a virus and to leave him alone. But his mind chewed and chewed over what to do. By the end of the week, he could see only one solution. He had to go home. All the way back to the ashes of his mother’s house where he’d been born and where the Quinkan, as it called itself, had killed his father and possessed his mother. Would it eventually kill him as well? Ned was scared down to his bones, but he was also resolute.

*    *    *

Stopping at the intersection of Market and Castro, Ned surveyed the crowd. He needed a place that was expensive, but casual enough that he could get in dressed as he was in plain white shirt and khaki pants. He knew of several possibilities, one close by and the others another block away. Ned had concluded, sitting on the cold bathroom floor with Mary Catherine, that he had to get home, which was going to take much more money than he could make selling sketches. In this town, there were really only two ways of making that kind of quick cash, and both of them involved selling. Since he didn’t have a stash of drugs he could unload, that left the other option. If it didn’t work out, Ned was grimly prepared to hitchhike his way across the country; he’d done it before, but needed to get home quicker.

Resolved, he jaywalked across the street and pushed open the glass and brass doors of a well-known piano bar. A hostess approached him, menu in hand, but Ned shook his head.

“I’m just going to the bar.”

She smiled and nodded. “Enjoy your stay, sir.”

Ned sat down at the bar and looked over the crowd. The place was expensive yet laid back, a casual-but-upscale kind of place he’d been in only once before. He looked over the drink menu and saw that he had just enough cash in his pocket for one order.

“Ginger ale on the rocks,” he said, looking past the bartender at the array of tables and booths reflected in the expanse of mirror behind the man. The place was moderately filled, mostly with couples, but there were enough singles scattered around to get his hopes up.

He drained his drink, and sat fingering the empty glass. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Can I get that refilled for you?”

Ned looked the guy over. Not too old, conservative clothes, understated jewelry, new shoes. Bland Midwestern face. He could have been anything from a college professor to an advertising executive, or a successful dealer.

“All right.”

The man picked up Ned’s glass and handed it to the bartender. “Give him a refill of whatever he’s drinking.” He sat down beside Ned. “Name’s Grant. Yours?”

“Ned.”

“Do you come here much? I haven’t seen you before.”

“Now and then,” said Ned, watching as the man took a money clip from his inside jacket pocket and peeled off a twenty from a sizeable wad. The edge of a Rolex peeked out from under his shirt cuff. He paid for the drink and put the money back in his jacket. Ned decided drug dealer was a definite possibility. He needed to be careful.

“What about you?” asked Ned. “You come here much?”

“Whenever I’m in town.”

“You’re not local, then?”

Grant shook his head. “I do business around the country, but this is my favorite town. I always try to arrange it so that my west coast connection is in San Francisco.”

The bartender returned with a full glass, and Grant took it from him. He held it, looking at Ned with frank appraisal.

“And you?”

“I’ve lived here for about nine years; I guess that makes me sort of local.” He reached for the glass, his fingers barely grazing Grant’s hand.

“You here by yourself?” Grant asked.

“Yes.”

“Want some company?” Then Grant laughed. “Well, of course you do. Why else would you be sitting here talking to me. Am I right?”

Ned allowed himself a grin. “You’re good. Pegged me right away.”

“So, Ned … let’s cut to the chase. How much do you want?”

“I’ll do whatever you want for a thousand dollars,” said Ned without blinking.

Grant’s barking laugh ricocheted off the leather and brass surfaces of the bar. Heads turned, then looked away.

“Nobody’s butt is worth that much! I’ll pay you four hundred.”

Ned hesitated. It wasn’t nearly as much as he needed to get him across the country in a hurry, but he also wanted to get this over with.

Grant was leaning toward him. “Why do you need so much? Debts to pay?”

Ned swallowed. “Family emergency. I need to get home.”

“And where is that?”

“Florida.”

Grant leaned back on the stool. “I tell you what, Ned from Florida. You show me the best time I’ve ever had, and you might get more than four hundred out of me.”

“Done.” Ned stood up. “Where do you want to go?”

“I imagine my hotel suite is more comfortable than whatever loft you live in. Am I right again?”

Ned smiled with his teeth. “Lead away.”

Riding in the cab to Grant’s hotel, Ned was relieved that the man made no overture to touch him or in any way indicate that they were more than two business colleagues out for a drink. The cabbie dropped them off in front of a restored turn-of-the-century luxury hotel near the Financial District. It wasn’t until Grant had unlocked the door to his suite and dropped his suit jacket on a velvet side chair that he made any reference at all to their business in hand.

“You’re a pretty boy, Ned. Are you part Mexican, or what?” He took two beers from a small icebox and handed one to Ned. Then he sat down on a chaise beside the wide window looking out over the lights of the city. “Make yourself at home. I’m not in a hurry … unless you are.”

“I’m not,” Ned lied, barely sipping his beer. He sat down in an overstuffed chair opposite the man from out of town.

“I like you, Ned,” Grant said, taking a long swallow from the bottle sweating around his fingers. “I don’t really have any basis for that, since we barely know each other. But I promise you this—you do me right, and I’ll take good care of you.”

“Ready whenever you are, but I’d like to see the money, if you don’t mind.”

Grant laughed. “Before I even find out if you’re worth all that cash or not? You’re pretty demanding.” He sat still, looking at Ned. “I like that.”

He got up and went to retrieve his jacket, pulling out the money clip. He tossed it onto the glass table between them. “It’s all yours if I like what you’re selling.”

Ned reached out for the clip and unfolded the wad of bills. He stopped counting when the quick tally in his head went past six hundred. “I think it’s enough.”

Grant turned out the lights in the sitting room and walked to the bedroom. Ned followed.

“So, Ned, do you like to give or receive?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Grant unzipped his expensive trousers and let them fall to the carpet. “You do know what to do, right?”

“Yeah,” said Ned, biting his lip. “I know.”

Chapter 10

July 11, 2009—Present Day

“There he is,” said Margaret, waving.

Hal came toward them across the baggage claim lobby, impeccable in a well-tailored black suit, oblivious to the midsummer Miami heat.

“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he said, a bit breathless. “Airport traffic is worse than I remembered.”

“No problem, we just got here.” Alice hugged him; he kissed her cheek and gave Margaret a quick scrunch around the shoulders.

“I’ve booked rooms for all of us at the Sheraton on the beach, so it’s a bit of a drive.” He helped them find their suitcases and carried them out to a waiting taxi.

Settled into the back seat with Margaret, Alice watched the cityscape roll by, white and tan and shaded glass set against the impossible blue that was the sky on a clear day over the Miami coastline. She hadn’t been home in years and couldn’t resist pointing out familiar landmarks to Margaret as they cruised along the Dolphin Expressway. Passing over the MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach, they were soon rolling past Art Deco hotels resplendent and uniquely tacky in their restored facades of pastel aqua and shell pink.

“As I told you on the phone last night, South Beach is where your mother and father met each other,” said Hal over his shoulder from the front seat. “I believe he was working as a waiter in one of the hotel bars, or something like that.”

Alice and Margaret craned their necks, taking in the row of hotels along Ocean Drive. To their right lapped the blue-green waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

“Ned Waterston held several different jobs in the year we came to know him,” Hal continued. “Being a waiter was only one of them. Suzanne told us he painted portraits as a street artist. I can’t confirm that, although his artistic talents were genuine. I have a pencil sketch he did of Suzanne that is quite good.” Hal’s voice was level, yet Alice now knew about the strife over Suzanne’s sudden and all-encompassing passion for this mystery man.