by Shan, Darren
Velouria stopped at the second cubicle in a row of six. They were stacked two high. My father’s was on the lower bunk. I stared at his name, embossed on a thin strip of metal. No file was attached. I inquired about that and Velouria checked her notes. “The information on these older inmates is often sketchy. Most were simply dumped here. In some cases they didn’t even give us a name. We might have a file on him somewhere. I can look it up if you want.”
“No need.” I read the name again and cleared my throat. “I’d like to be alone.”
“Sure. Want me to wait nearby or can you find your own way out?”
“I’ve got a good sense of direction. You can leave.”
“If you get lost—and, trust me, it’s easier than you’d think—buzz for help and we’ll send someone to find you.”
She left and I was alone. With my father.
I ran my fingers over the name and shivered as I realized that this could be me one day, locked away in one of these cramped cubicles, never visited or disturbed. If I had children—not that I had any current plans—would they wind up standing here as I was, tracing my name with their fingers, wondering what their old man had been like?
I stood around for a couple of minutes, waiting for memories to flood back, but they didn’t. I resurrected my old snapshots of him but found nothing new. Maybe if I saw the body…
I didn’t act on the thought straightaway. He’d been here a long time. The refrigeration process couldn’t be relied upon. The body might have decayed. I could find myself face-to-face with a rotting-flesh zombie like those moviemakers are so fond of. The picture I had of Tom Jeery was of a tall, strong, healthy man. Did I want to risk replacing that with an image of a time-eaten corpse, sunken cheeks, exposed bones and a fetid stench?
I decided to peek. Though it hadn’t been easy to look at Nic in the crematorium, I was glad I had. I had a final image of her to cling to, which drew a line between the live and dead Nic. It was good to look upon the faces of the dead.
I considered checking with Velouria before proceeding, but he was my father—if anyone had the right to violate his final slumber, it was me. I studied the door. Some of the newer models came equipped with computerized locks but this was a plain old spin-lock, no keys or codes required. I spun the wheel slowly. There was a crackle when the door opened, a hiss of cold air, then I felt the slab slide forward a few inches of its own accord before shuddering to a halt.
I wiped around my brow, took firm hold of the door, swung it back, grabbed the slab and tugged. It resisted, then slid out smoothly, a wave of white icy gas rising from it, causing me to cough and avert my eyes. When I’d recovered, I leaned into the misty fog, waving my hands, dispersing it. The slab came into focus and I held my breath, searching for my father’s face.
The mist lifted. Only wispy tendrils remained. And when they cleared…
Nothing. The cubicle was empty.
I remained rooted to the spot, wondering if the body had slipped to the floor or remained jammed inside. I bent over and peered in—nothing. The floor was clear too. I checked the sides of the container, but it was solid.
As I withdrew, a small object caught my eye. A piece of paper lay in the space where my father should have been, neatly folded in half and resting on its edges. I picked it up and stepped back, mind going in a thousand different directions all at once. I checked one more time for a corpse—as if I could have missed it!—then unfolded the paper with trembling fingers and read the three short words printed in black across it—OUT TO LUNCH.
part three
“a severed human head”
11
I spent the next few hours raising unholy hell. I summoned Velouria and her superiors, along with one of the managing directors who happened to be present. I ranted and raved. Made threats. Took out my gun at one stage and waved it over my head like an Indian shaking a tomahawk. Eventually they sent along my good buddy Dr. Sines to calm me down. He tried leading me away to a quiet anteroom but I stood my ground—I had crazy thoughts of the body’s being replaced while I was absent.
“Bodies go missing all the time,” he sighed, offering a cigarette—which I refused—and lighting up. The posse of doctors and nurses who’d gathered to watch the sparks fly was dispersing. “It’s no big deal.”
“He was my father!”
“A father,” Sines noted, flicking through the file, “you never visited or checked on until today.”
“I didn’t know he was here,” I growled.
Sines couldn’t have looked less sympathetic. “If his own son wasn’t interested in his whereabouts, you can’t be too surprised that we weren’t either.”
“You’re paid to take an interest!”
“No,” he corrected me. “We’re paid to check bodies in and stack them away. If we’re told to care for a body, we do. Otherwise it’s fair game.”
“Fair game for who?”
Sines asked if he could push in the slab and close the door of my father’s tomb. I took one final look, put the note back and said he could. Then he continued in a lower tone. “Any number of people could have made off with it. Your lot for starters. The Troops come here every so often and cart a corpse or two away.”
“What for?”
“The mind boggles—you can do a lot of things with a body. They’re your people, not mine. You figure them out.
“Then there are certain doctors—this is something I’d never admit in public—who act rather more freely with the bodies than they should. Corpses are hard to come by on the outside. If one of my colleagues needs a cadaver to experiment on, he takes one. No forms to fill in and no questions asked unless the body has been tagged for sanctuary, and those are never interfered with.”
“That’s sick,” I muttered.
“What if one of them finds the cure for cancer?” He smiled. “But let’s not get into that argument. Besides, I think the presence of the note precludes professional involvement—pathologists aren’t noted for their subtle sense of humor. My guess is it’s the Troops or one of the Fridge’s underlings.”
“A nurse?”
“Nurses, porters, watchmen, maintenance, canteen staff… take your pick.”
“What would they want with the body?”
“Use your imagination,” he chuckled. “Somebody wants to be the talk of a party, or wants to scare the wits out of his dear old grandmother, or wants to cut a head off and use it as a bowling ball. I could go on all night.”
“How do we narrow down the list of suspects?” I asked.
“We don’t,” Sines sighed. “Your father’s body has been here a long time. It could have been taken a week after his arrival or yesterday—there’s no way of knowing. An investigation can be instigated if you insist, but I’d advise against it, as the odds of revealing the culprit are slim at best.”
I’d calmed down—Sines had a soothing influence—and, thinking it over, I knew he was right. Raising a stink would be counterproductive. It would only draw attention to me. Plus it would eat into my time and distract me. This was a mystery for another day, when I didn’t have The Cardinal riding on my back.
“I’ll leave it,” I said, “but not indefinitely. That’s my father somebody’s fucked with. How would you feel if it was your old man?”
“Peeved,” he smirked. “Because I like you, I’ll ask around on the quiet. Pretend I’m fishing for anecdotes. Might learn more that way—a practical joker is usually incapable of keeping his lip zipped if he thinks he’s bragging to a fellow clown.”
“Thanks, Sines.” I hadn’t expected the offer.
“But on one condition,” he added.
“Name it.”
He shook his ID badge at me. “Would you please call me Dr. Sines?”
As I was making notes of my meeting with Sines back home I remembered something Rudi Ziegler had said. Flipping back a few pages I found my minutes. When I’d asked Ziegler if he thought the carving on Nic’s back had anything to do with the Incan brooch she
was wearing, he said he doubted it. The Incas were sun worshippers and she had been killed at night. Besides, why kill her at the Skylight? If it had been Incas, a more suitable venue would have been the site of the Manco Capac statue.
I jotted down in capitals, “MANCO CAPAC STATUE—INVESTIGATE” and circled them with my pen. It was too late to go there now—they’d be closing down for the day—but first thing tomorrow…
I felt too agitated to stay indoors. If I sat around brooding, my thoughts would return to the bare slab, the hiss of gas and my father’s absent corpse. I needed to be active.
I took to the streets and asked after Paucar Wami again. Word of my interest had spread and many knew why—they’d heard about Nic and my connection to her. The rumor doing the rounds was that I loved her and had sworn a blood oath over her dead body to get even with her killer. I didn’t bother denying it.
I learned nothing new, though there was a lot more talk about Wami tonight. There’d been a few sightings of the killer and these, coupled with the questions I’d been asking, had convinced many people of his involvement. Several claimed to have seen Wami kill her, and a few poor souls swore blind they’d helped him, but when pushed, none could produce the slightest shred of evidence.
I rolled home late, legs stiff, notebook full of names, half leads and theories. Several people had mentioned Fabio—he allegedly knew more about Wami than most—but I didn’t want to call around so soon after our last meeting, making it look as if I were asking for a favor in return for my curative turn. I’d give it a couple of days and only try the centenarian pimp if all else failed.
I cleaned the apartment, hoping to tire myself out so I’d fall asleep quickly and not lie awake, tossing and turning, thinking about my father.
It didn’t work. Exhausted as I was, sleep proved elusive, and when I managed to drop off for a few minutes my dreams were filled with empty coffins, laughing skeletons and screaming, dislocated ghosts.
The building site was a hive of activity. Men popped in and out of portable sheds like ants. Foremen with megaphones coordinated their troops with tinny bellows. Overhead cranes shifted huge weights from one end of the site to the other. Most attention focused on the center of the industrial wasteland, where scaffolding circled two similar structures standing side by side—a huge pair of legs, I assumed.
I wandered around the site without being questioned, observing the bustle with interest. Judging by the size of the legs, the completed statue would be monstrous. I wondered who was financing its construction. I checked some vans and cabins for names, but there were several companies involved, all of whom had probably been subcontracted. The laborers were reluctant to be drawn into conversation—they were behind schedule, I learned, and would miss out on bonuses if they didn’t finish on time.
The guy must have been incredibly influential, whoever he was. This was a busy part of the city. Construction was interfering with traffic, and I’m sure the dust and noise weren’t welcomed by those in the neighboring buildings. You’d need friends in high places to nudge something like this along. I wondered if one of those friends was also a friend of Nick Hornyak’s, maybe the one who sicced Howard Kett on me.
I was wandering around, exchanging pleasantries with the natives, when I spotted a familiar figure near the scaffolding, talking to a foreman. I waited until he was alone, then sneaked up behind him and murmured in his ear, “Are you following me, Mr. Ziegler?”
Rudi Ziegler spun on his heels, blinking anxiously. He was dressed in a heavy plastic coat, industrial green overalls and rubber boots, and goggles to protect his eyes. When he saw me, he relaxed and raised the goggles.
“Al Jeery,” he smiled, fanning his face with his pudgy hands. “You gave me a start.” He frowned. “Why ask if I’m following you?”
“You were at the funeral yesterday—so was I. And now we’re both here.”
“You were at the funeral? I didn’t see you.” He exhaled heavily through his nostrils. “Then again, I didn’t notice much. I thought it was barbaric of them to have that transparent lid on the coffin. Her brother’s idea.
“As for being here, I’ve been coming three or four days a week for the last fortnight. I petitioned for a statue to be erected in memory of our Incan forebears some years ago, but it came to nothing. Now this.” He beamed like a child.
“That’s going to be Manco Capac?” I asked. “The sun god?”
“The son of the sun god,” Ziegler corrected me. “Manco Capac was the founding father of the Incan empire. His followers believed he was a direct descendant of the sun deity.”
I nodded studiously. “When and where did this guy live, exactly?”
“About 1200 ad, along the western coast of South America.”
“Mind telling me what we’re doing building a monument to him here, today?”
“This city has strong Incan roots. Didn’t you know?” From my blank expression he gathered I didn’t. “This was an Indian village in earlier times. A small winter settlement. In the sixteenth century—just before the Spanish invaded—a band of Incas arrived, settled and made it home.”
“How’d they get here?” I asked curiously.
Ziegler shrugged. “Nobody knows. It’s puzzled archaeologists for decades. When the signs were first unearthed, many thought it was a practical joke, that old Incan artifacts had been buried by pranksters. Further investigation proved that wasn’t so. Incas were here. Not only that—they made this city what it is, laying the foundations upon which the modern version was built.”
“That mean we’re a bunch of Incan offspring?” I asked.
“Our bloodlines are intriguingly mixed,” Ziegler said, readjusting his goggles as a dust cloud swept over us. “Many races have found their way here over the centuries. But those whose roots stretch back more than a couple of generations are almost surely linked—however tenuously—to the Incas.”
“And one of them’s decided to pay tribute at last.” I smiled. “Was it you?”
Ziegler smiled with me. “I wish. Actually, I’m not sure who the benefactor is. But yes, it is nice to see. For someone who’s spent his life dabbling with all things Incan, it’s a tremendously exciting development. They’re not just building a statue but a museum. They’ll be shipping in ornaments, manufacturing replicas, hosting wild Inca-style parties.”
“That won’t do your business any harm,” I noted.
“True—and don’t think I’m not making plans to cash in—but that’s not why I’m here. The financial aspects pale in the face of the staggering aesthetic majesty of the project.”
Ziegler stared lovingly up at the legs. I didn’t like to break into his reverie, so I studied them with him, watching as the cranes added to the lower sections, thickening them—I guessed—to support what would surely be a massive upper body.
“This Manco Capac,” I said. “How do they know what he looks like? I mean, 1200 ad… that’s a while ago.”
“It is indeed,” Ziegler agreed. “But even primitive cavemen boasted artists. I’m not sure which source the designers have gone with for the statue, but there are several possible portraits to choose from. The result may not be entirely accurate, but it’s the symbolism which counts.”
Symbolism. Symbols…
“Didn’t you tell me the Incas had a thing for human sacrifice?” I asked.
Ziegler nodded. “Almost every society has a history of offering its own kind to the gods. The Incas were no different, although they were more subtle about it than most.”
“How can you have a subtle sacrifice?” I laughed.
His face misted over. “They would pick the most desirable of their virgins—male and female—and deck them out in fine robes, adorn them with flowers, feed them exotic fruits and parade them around like celebrities. Then they’d slip them drugs to dull their senses, haul them up a mountain and leave them in an exposed place to freeze. There wasn’t much pain, just a gentle drifting off and a glorious union with the gods.” He sighed happil
y. “It must have been beautiful.”
I decided not to comment on that.
“Was that how they killed all their victims? They never varied the routine, used, for instance, knives?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “The Incas reserved the holy sacrifices for special occasions. I’m sure there were plenty of other, smaller, messier sacrifices. But not with knives—the Incas weren’t metallurgists.”
“They must have had cutting implements of one kind or another,” I said.
“Of course. Jagged rocks, crystals, sharpened bones.”
“So they had knives of a sort.”
Ziegler smiled thinly. “Of a sort.”
“The sort that could have been used to carve a sun symbol on Nic’s back?”
“I very much doubt it,” he sniffed.
“Remember what you told me about that when I came to visit?”
“Refresh my memory.”
“You said, if it had been Inca-related, they wouldn’t have killed her in the Skylight—they’d have done it out here. You still stand by that?”
He looked puzzled. “I think this would be a good place for a sacrifice to the sun to be made, yes, but she wasn’t killed here. She was killed at the hotel.”
I said nothing, but coughed discreetly and glanced away.
Ziegler stared hard. “Are you implying she wasn’t?”
I hesitated, pondering whether to play my ace, then opted against it—better to keep it quiet for the time being. “Of course she was killed at the hotel,” I said. “But maybe she’d been here beforehand. Did you ever discuss this place with her?”
“I might have mentioned it, but only in passing. She’d moved on from Incas and the sun by our last few sessions. Demons were more her style.”
A truck approached and we had to get out of the way. Ziegler led me clear, treading confidently, at home here. I spotted a tall man in robes standing not far from us. He seemed to be gazing at the statue but he couldn’t have been, because when he turned I saw that his eyes were white. They stared blindly in my direction, as the eyes of the man in the funeral parlor had. At first I thought it was the same guy but that was ridiculous—a man without the use of his eyes was hardly likely to be trailing me around the city.