The Scarlet Gospels (6 page)

“Watch,” he said.

Then he wrapped the hand into which Harry had spat around his erection.

“Watch?” Harry said, glancing down in disgust.

“No!” the creature said. “Him. You and me. We watch him.” As the beast spoke, he began to work his rod with long, leisurely strokes. His free hand still rested on Harry's shoulder, and with overpowering force he turned Harry back toward his partner.

Harry was appalled to see that the damage done in the few seconds Harry's gaze had been averted had already rendered Scummy unrecognizable: his hair had burned away entirely, and his naked head was a bubbling ball of red and black; his eyes were virtually closed by the heat-swollen flesh, and his mouth hung open, burning tongue sticking out like an accusing finger.

Harry tried to move, but the hand on his shoulder kept him from the job. He tried to close his eyes against the horror, but the creature, though he was standing behind Harry, somehow knew that he was disobeying his instruction. The beast pushed his thumb into the clenched muscle of Harry's shoulder, penetrating it with the ease of a man pressing his thumb into an overripe pear.

“Open!” the beast demanded.

Harry did as he was told. The blistered meat of Scummy's face had started to blacken, the swollen skin cracking open and curling back from the muscle.

“God forgive me, Scummy. God fucking forgive me.”

“Oh!” the beast gasped. “You dirty-mouthed whore!”

Without warning, the beast unloaded. Then he gave a shuddering sigh and turned Harry to face him once more, the two lighted pinpoints of his eyes seeming to burrow into Harry's head and scratch at the back of his skull.

“Stay out of the Triangle,” he said. “Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“I understand.”

“Not that. The other thing. Say it, like you did before.”

Harry gritted his teeth. There was a definitive point where his flight was overridden by his fight, and he was fast approaching it.

“Say. It,” the beast said.

“God forgive me,” Harry said through gritted teeth.

“No. I want to have it in my head for later. Give me something good to work with.”

Harry mustered the voice of entreaty as best he could, which, as it turned out, wasn't very hard.

“God. Forgive me.”

 

3

Harry woke around noon, the sound of his partner's screams nearer than his liquor-soaked memories of the previous night's birthday celebrations. The streets outside his room were gratifyingly quiet. All he heard was a bell, calling those who were still faithful to a Sunday mass. He ordered up some coffee and juice, which came while he was showering. The day was already humid, and by the time he'd dried himself he'd already started work on a fresh sweat.

As he sipped his coffee, strong and sweet, he watched the people toing and froing in the street two stories below. The only pair in any hurry were a couple of tourists with a map; everyone else was going about their business at a nice mellow speed, pacing themselves for the long hot day and the long hot night that would surely follow.

The phone rang. Harry picked it up.

“Are you checking up on me, Norma?” he said, trying his best to sound human.

“Got it in one, Detective,” Norma said. “And no. It wouldn't do me much good, would it? You're too good a liar, Harry D'Amour.”

“You did teach me everything I know.”

“Watch it, now. How was the birthday celebration?”

“I got drunk—”

“No surprise there.”

“—and I started thinking about the past.”

“Oh Lord, Harry. What have I told you about leaving that shit alone?”

“I don't
invite
the thoughts in.”

Norma spat out a humorless laugh. “Honey, we both know you were born with an invitation stamped on your forehead.”

Harry grimaced.

“All I can say is what's already been said,” Norma continued. “What's done is done. The good and the bad both. So make peace with it or it'll swallow you whole.”

“Norma, I want to do what I came here to do and get out of this goddamn city.”

“Harry—”

But he had already gone.

Norma pursed her lips and hung up the phone. She knew what to expect from Harry D'Amour, but that didn't mean she was inured to his brooding, tortured fa
ç
ade. Yes, Otherness had a way of finding Harry wherever he went, but there were things that could be done about that—measures that could be taken if one was so inclined. Harry D'Amour never took those measures because, Norma knew, Harry D'Amour loved his job. More important, he was damn good at it, and, as long as that was the case, Norma would forgive him his transgressions.

Norma Paine, black, blind, and admitting to being sixty-three (though the truth was probably closer to eighty or more), sat in her favorite chair by the window of her fifteenth-floor apartment. It was from this spot that she had spent twelve hours of every day for the last forty years talking to the dead. It was a service she offered to the recently deceased, who were, in Norma's experience, often lost, confused, and frightened. She'd seen the departed in her mind's eye since infancy.

Norma had been born blind, and it had come as quite a shock to her when she first realized that the benign faces she could remember looking down at her in her cot were not those of her parents, but those of the curious departed. The way she saw it, she was lucky. She wasn't really blind—she just saw a different world from most other folks, and that put her in a unique position to do some good in the world.

Somehow if someone was dead and lost in New York, sooner or later they found their way to Norma. Some nights there were phantoms lined up half a block or more, sometimes just a dozen or so. And occasionally she would be so inundated with needy phantoms that she would have to turn all hundred and three televisions in her apartment on—all playing relatively low, but tuned to different channels, in a new Babel of game shows, soap operas, weather reports, scandal, tragedy, and banality—in order to drive them all away.

It wasn't often that Norma's counseling of the recently dead overlapped with Harry's life as a private investigator, but there were always exceptions. Carston Goode had been one such case. Goode by name, good by nature—that was how he'd styled his life. Goode was a family man who had married his high school sweetheart. Together, they lived in New York with five kids to raise and more than enough money to do so, thanks to fees he charged as a lawyer, a few good investments, and a deep-seated faith in the generosity of the Lord his God, Who took—as Carston was fond of saying—“best care of those who cared best about Him.” At least that had been his belief until eight days ago, when within the space of a hundred seconds his well-ordered, God-loving life had gone to Hell.

Carston Goode had been on his way to work, bright and early, eager as a man half his age to be in the thick of things, when a youth had darted toward him through the throng of early birds on Lexington Avenue and snatched Carston's briefcase right out of his hand. Lesser men would have yelled for help, but Carston Goode was more confident in the state of his body than most his age. He didn't smoke or drink. He worked out four times a week and only sparingly indulged in his passion for red meat. None of these things, however, stopped him from being felled by a massive heart attack just as he came within two or three strides of the felon he'd decided to chase down.

Goode was dead, and death was bad. Not simply because he'd left his beloved Patricia alone to raise their children or he wouldn't now get to write the book of personal revelations about life and the law that he'd been resolving to do every New Year's Eve for the past decade.

No, the truly bad thing about Goode being dead was the little house in the French Quarter of New Orleans that Patricia didn't know he owned. He had been especially careful to keep all knowledge of its existence a secret. But he had not factored into his arrangements the possibility that he'd drop dead in the street without the least warning. Now he was faced with the inevitable dissolution of everything that he'd worked so hard to appear to be.

Sooner or later, somebody—either Patricia going through the drawers in his desk or one of his associates dutifully tidying up the work Goode had left unfinished at the firm—would turn up some reference to number 68 Dupont Street in Louisiana and, tracking down the owner of the house at the address, would discover it had been Carston. And it was only a matter of time before they would go down to New Orleans to find out what secrets it would reveal. And the secrets were abundant.

Well, Carston Goode wasn't about to take this lying down. Once he adjusted to his less corporeal state, he next learned the way the system worked on the Other Side. And, putting his skills as a lawyer to work, he very soon had jumped to the front of a long line and found himself in the presence of the woman he had been assured would solve his problems.

“You're Norma Paine?” he said.

“That's right.”

“Why do you have so many televisions? You're blind.”

“And you're rude. I swear, the bigger the bully, the smaller the dick.”

Carston's jaw dropped.

“You can see me?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Carston looked down at his body. He, like every ghost he'd met since his death, was naked. His hands instantly moved to his withered penis.

“There's no need to be offensive,” he said. “Now please, I have money, so—”

Norma got up from her chair and walked straight at Goode, murmuring to herself.

“Every night I get one of these dead-ass fools think they can buy their way into Heaven. There's a trick my momma taught me,” she said to Goode, “once she knew I had the gift. It's called Ghost Pushing.” With the palm of her left hand, she shoved Goode in the middle of the chest. He stumbled backward.

“How did you—”

“Two more of those and you're gone.”

“Please! Listen to me!”

She shoved again. “Make that one. Say good night—”

“I need to talk to Harry D'Amour.”

Norma stopped dead in her tracks and said, “You've got one minute to change my mind about you.”

 

4

“Harry D'Amour. He's a private investigator, right? I was told you know him.”

“What if I do?”

“I have urgent need of his services. And like I said, money is no consequence. I'd prefer to talk directly to D'Amour, after he's signed a confidentiality agreement, of course.”

Norma laughed, hard and long.

“I never cease…” she started to reply, her words having to compete with her unfettered amusement, “… never … cease to be amazed … at how many absurdities can be uttered in perfect seriousness by folks like you. In case you haven't noticed, you're not in your law offices now. Ain't no use in hanging on to your little secrets, 'cause you've got nowhere to put them except up your ass. So talk, or I'm gonna leave you to find some other ghost talker.”

“Okay. Okay. Just … just don't send me away. The truth: I own a house in New Orleans. Nothing fancy, but I use it as a place to get away from … my responsibilities … as a family man.”

“Oh, I've heard this story before. And what is it you do in the little house of yours?”

“Entertain.”

“I bet you do. And who are the entertained?”

“Men. Young men. Legal age, mind you. But young nonetheless. And it's not what you think. No drugs. No violence. When we meet, we make … magic.” He spoke the word quietly, as though he might be overheard. “It's never serious. Just some bits of nonsense I got out of old books. I find it keeps things spicy.”

“I still haven't heard a compelling reason to help you. So you had yourself a secret life. Then you up and died and now people are gonna find out. That's the bed you made. Make your peace with what you were and move on.”

“No. You misunderstand. I'm not ashamed. Yes, I fought what I was at first, but I came to terms with that a long time ago. That's when I bought the house. I don't give a shit what people think or the legacy I left behind. I'm dead. What does it matter now?”

“That's the first sensible thing you've said all night.”

“Yeah, well, there's no use denying it. And like I said, that's not the problem. I loved every moment I spent at that house. The problem is that I loved my wife too. I still do. So much that I can't bear the thought of her ever finding out. Not for me, but because I know it would destroy her. That's why I need your help. I don't want my best friend to die knowing she didn't really know me. I don't want our kids to suffer the fallout of her wounds and my … indiscretions. I need to know they're going to be okay.”

“There's enough in that story to make me think you might be a decent human being under all those layers of lawyer and liar.”

Goode didn't raise his head. “Does that mean you'll help me?”

“I'll talk to him.”

“When?”

“Lord, but you're impatient.”

“Look, I'm sorry. But every hour that passes makes it more likely that Patricia—that's my wife—is going to find something. And when she does, that's when the questions start.”

“You've been dead how long?”

“Eight days.”

“Well, if your adoring wife loves you as much as you claim, I think it's reasonable to assume that she's far too busy grieving to be going through your papers.”

“Grieving,” Goode said, as though the idea of his wife's anguish concerning his death had not really come into focus until now.

“Yes, grieving. I take that to mean you haven't been home to see for yourself.”

The lawyer shook his head.

“Couldn't. I was afraid. No. I
am
afraid. Of what I'll find.”