The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (20 page)

He waited until the sun set,
street lamps throwing shallow pools of light against shadows teeming with darkness.
He waited until the lights in the bookshop girl’s apartment went out one by
one, filling her windows with night. And just to be safe, he waited another
fifteen minutes more.

Matty Cho was a cautious
animal when it suited his purposes.

It stood to reason that a
woman living alone might take precautions against intruders. She would lock her
door, use a dead-bolt and maybe a chain. She might also keep a weapon close at
hand, perhaps by the bedside or near the door; something like a baseball bat or
pepper spray … or maybe a small handgun. Maybe. She moved like someone who felt
protected, a carefree indifference suggesting she was accustomed to being safe.
She walked back and forth to work with no concern, lived alone, slept naked—so
Crazy Moses claimed. So maybe she kept some means of protection that made her
feel secure, what with no husband or boyfriend or doting sugar daddy around to
protect her. Or maybe she was so privileged she believed herself above bad
things. The rich were like that; figured nothing bad could happen to them
because nothing bad ever had.

Either way, Matty intended to find out why Crazy Moses wanted
her, why he stalked her, watched but would not go near her. What value she was
to him, no one knew. It might be real. It might just as easily be the imaginary
value crazy people ascribe to the inherently worthless? Either way, he would
find out.

She left her windows open,
perhaps hoping for a chance breeze to bring relief from the sweltering heat. No
air-conditioning units hung from her windows—likely she couldn’t afford it. The
building she lived in was outdated and too low-rent to come equipped with central
air, which only made Matty more curious. Why was she worth stalking if she
couldn’t even afford air conditioning? If he had the money, he’d have air
conditioning, what with this heat. So if she didn’t have any money, what
did
she have that garnered the undivided attention of a head-case like Goose Man?
Cho saw it in his eyes, and thought Lucas might have seen it too; seen enough
to scare the hell out of him. Beneath the bluster and arrogance and insanity of
Goose Man’s rants was a scary kernel of truth. The man knew things, important
things, amazing things.

And the woman from the
bookshop was the key.

Slipping across the
street, two shadows accustomed to their invisibility—invisible because no one
wanted
to see them—crept to the back of Ellen’s apartment building. From the height of
Marco’s shoulders, Cho caught the base of the fire escape and slowly lowered
the ladder, careful not to let the rust-flaked gears and wheels rattle as it
came down. Then, like rats in the night, they crept up the steps to the third
floor apartment with its open window, and climbed in.

It was that easy.

Actually, it was too
easy. He’d brought Marco as insurance, but what seemed a reasonable precaution earlier
now felt like an unnecessary risk. Just one more thing that could go wrong, one
more hand after a share—whatever that might be. Marco seemed the logical
choice; Lucas and Johnny would ask questions, go soft, lose their nerve. But
not Marco; loyal as a brain-damaged dog, he did exactly as told and little
else. Marco didn’t need reasons. He lived in the moment, hand to mouth, day to
day, sleepwalking through life and waiting for death to come out of the dark
and run him through like an autumn pig. And God willing, he’d never see it
coming.

Marco was the only one
who wouldn’t question Matty’s reasoning, the basis of his logic as elegantly
simple as it was inherently flawed: Goose Man wouldn’t be stalking the bookshop
girl if she wasn’t worth being stalked. The details after that were left to
Matty’s fertile imagination.
Maybe she ran away from her rich father or
lover or sugar daddy, and now he was looking for her.
Goose Man might
have been brokering information on her whereabouts, or even planning to abduct
her and sell her back.
Or maybe the woman was secretly rich, one of those
eccentrics living in the projects or the mouth of a storm drain, surviving on
spare change and cat food while secretly hoarding thousands or even millions in
cash or jewelry or gold in some bank somewhere.
He had heard about their
kind; he had never met one, of course, but he had heard.

And it was this vague
hope, this glimmer of fool’s gold that Matthew Cho seized upon, the possibility
turning over and over in the course of the morning until it blossomed from idle
fancy to full-blown obsession. Goose Man had to have a reason for stalking the
bookstore girl, only none of them had bothered to ask. She wasn’t especially
beautiful, though after following her all day, Matty had grown accustom to her
simple prettiness, her shape. But that wasn’t the reason Goose Man was stalking
her. Cho had known that kind of animal; the ones that prowled college campuses
in beat-up delivery vans or hiked railroad tracks with duct tape and zip-ties
in their pockets, eyes darting like hunters tracking small game. Goose Man wasn’t
like that; he didn’t give off any of the cues. Goose Man was crazy. Dangerous
and crazy. And he was stalking the girl from the bookstore like his life
depended on it.

What better reason did
you need?

A fisherman’s filleting
knife, the cracked grip wrapped thick with tape, turned nervously in Cho’s
hand. In his pocket, a spool of high-gauge wire; this was not his first home
invasion, and while no expert—
what expert would live in a fucking junkyard?
—he
was no novice either.

Marco shuffled about the
open floor of the sparse room, tape-patched work boots making soft thuds
against the wood flooring. “Whadda we doin’ here, Matty?”

Cho cuffed him sharply. “Why
don’t ya call the fucking cops yourself, ya dumb fuck,” he whispered sharply. No
way did he want someone with all the brains of the last pickle in the jar to
fuck this up for him. “Now shut up before ya wake her.”

Marco was rubbing the
side of his head, face screwed up in pain. “But she ain’t got nuffin’, Matty,” he
said, careful to keep his voice at a plaintive whisper. “Jus’ look aroun’.”

This time, Matthew Cho
caught Marco’s collar, pressing the point of the boning knife to Marco’s throat
and dimpling the skin. “Shut the fuck up, stupid!” he hissed into Marco’s
vacant eyes. “She’s got something, all right. Why else would he ‘ave been
stalking her?”

“Who? Goothe Man? Goothe
Man’th crathy. Crathy people don’t need a reathon to do crazy thit. It’th what
they do.”

“No fuckin’ way,” Cho
insisted. “Goose Man knew something, and I wanna know what it was.” Then Matty
smiled that easy, reassuring smile that he used to use to get tail when that
kind of thing still mattered. “It’ll be worth it, Marco. I promise. Now stay
put, and keep your eyes open.”

Marco
nodded and grinned. “‘Kay, Matty.”

Good dog
, Cho thought, leaving the other in
the middle of the room to watch over an empty window of old moonlight spilling
in from the night outside.

*     *     *

Marco listened absently
as Matty skulked about the bookshop girl’s apartment.
So small.
An
economy with an open kitchen and two other doors that could only lead to the
bedroom and bathroom. So what?

Matty would hit the
bedroom first. That would be smart.

Only nothing about this
was smart. Matty was wrong about the girl; even Marco knew that. There was
nothing here worth getting busted over. No TV. No stereo. No CD collection. No
trinkets or pictures or silverware or anything. Probably didn’t even have any
meds in the bathroom. Matty figured Goose Man for a stalker, but Matty was
wrong.

Goose Man
wasn’t watching her; he was watching
over
her.

Marco knew he should tell
Matty, stop him before he stumbled upon the girl; a girl who had nothing except
what any woman had. Goose Man claimed to have seen her naked. Maybe Matty
wanted to see for himself. Maybe this had nothing to do with what could be
stolen, fenced or used to get high. Maybe this was about Matty looking to tie
the girl down and lay a knife to her throat so she’d spread it. Yeah, maybe.
And maybe this wasn’t jail time, county lock-up, nine months of three meals a day
and showers. Maybe this was prison time, beaten senseless in the yard every
day, living out your days in fear.

Maybe
Matty
was
the crazy motherfucker, not Goose Man.

And maybe—this thought
with rare lucidity—this was not about him at all. Maybe he didn’t need to be
here. Maybe, just maybe, he should get the fuck out of here right now, and not
remember anything about this later if anyone should ask. Maybe he should find
himself a bottle and make himself forget because it was easy not to lie about
what you couldn’t remember anyway. Maybe.

The unfortunate thing
about revelations is how many are not acted upon in time—or at all.

Marco saw the darkness
take shape like a serpent uncoiling from a dark crevice. One moment, he was
alone; the next, Goose Man was in front of him, stepping from the liquid night
like a vampire, death itself armed with a glimmering spear. Not broken and
bleeding, as he had been that morning; not dying or dead, as when they left
him. But whole and alive, emerging from the shadows of the empty room as though
he had been there the entire time, a dark spirit around which the building had
been constructed, invisible and unseen, as omnipotent and unflinching as time or
death or the universe itself.

But the room had been
empty!
He and Matty
had stood right here, had seen everything, the room so small and bare you
couldn’t hide a loaf of bread, much less a tall, crazy fucker with a shabby
overcoat and a glinting metal staff.

Then all these concerns
evaporated, and Marco’s attention turned solely on the long spire of steel
buried in his chest.

Goose Man’s hand shot out
like a whip, clamping over the sagging flesh of Marco’s mouth and drawing his
lips together like the open end of a cloth sack. Marco’s scream—a muffled hiss
of surprise, really—died, stillborn in his throat.

Kreiger wrenched the
lightning rod from Marco’s chest like a bone from a piece of overcooked meat.
There was the sickening
shawk
sound of a razor slicing through a wet bed
sheet, and Marco dropped to his knees. It was as if the blood-covered lightning
rod was every bone in his body, the staff holding his puppet’s parts upright.
Without it, he was just a sagging bag of dying flesh. He watched a thick gout
of blood splatter the floor, bursting out between his fingertips as he tried to
hold himself in, and splash darkly upon Goose Man’s boots. He saw something
dangling from the tip of the lightning rod like a forgotten bit of gristle
caught in a predator’s teeth.

Marco tipped forward like
so much dead weight, prostrate before Goose Man, Ellen Monroe’s secret
guardian. His flesh made a wet, splattering sound as it hit the hardwood floor,
breath whistling in and out, strained, fragile,
inconsequential
.

Goose Man bent to him,
looking at him critically, seeing the inevitable in Marco’s empty eyes.

“Wh-wh-who …?” Marco felt
drool run from the corner of his lips, down his cheek. It dribbled to the floor
in small droplets too dark to be spittle.

“So many names,” Goose
Man answered. “So little time.”

“Whh-what … what …?”

“Me wise magic.”

Marco stared into the
pleasant, aristocratic face, the godlike features, the devil’s leer tugging up
the corners of Goose Man’s mouth. “You’s … D-death … sw-sweet … sweet Jesus
Chr…”

Gusman Kreiger looked
both amused and indifferent, and nodded

*     *     *

The one thing Matt Cho
did not expect as he entered Ellen Monroe’s bedroom was to find it empty.
Passing by the bathroom—
she might have drugs; gotta remember to check that
later
—he eased the bedroom door open with exceptional lightness, no squeak
of the hinges, no thump of wood against some unforeseen object discarded behind
the door. But the only thing waiting on the other side was an unmade bed, old clothes
upon the floor, and a few useless things on her dresser: some worthless
jewelry, earrings, a bracelet of colored string and beads, an old clock radio. Nothing.

Most importantly, no girl
from the bookstore.

His grip tightened on the
boning knife, the taped handle turning oily beneath his fingers.

Where was she? He watched
her go into the building, saw her turn off the lights. No one left afterwards;
not her, not anyone! But her apartment was empty!

Where was she?

His balls ached, grown
hard and desperate over the course of the day. He had not come for some pipe
dream of fabled wealth or its opportunity. Maybe that was his plan at first,
but not now. What sent him up the fire escape and through the window was the
idea of her, the girl from the bookstore, the one with the mousey hair and the
sweet figure, the girl who slept naked. Thanks to Goose Man, she had ceased to
be just anyone, someone to be forgotten easily and quickly like every other
face in the human river that moved careless and uncaring around him. Goose
Man’s words, his devotion and desperation, had transformed her, elevating her
from the simple anonymity of city scenery to a dream-turned-obsession.