SHADOWS

by Jonathan Nasaw

  The Rastaman had grabbed a machete leaning against the trunk of the shade tree from which the cauldron was suspended. "Dot's true." He speared a tiny blue fish, slipped it off the machete with thumb and forefinger, then held it up in the air, making it wriggle as if it were still alive, laughing uproariously at his own joke. Next he popped the whole fish into his mouth like a canape, bit off the head and spat it out into the darkness of the bushes beyond the lighted clearing, then worked his jaws furiously, separating flesh from bone with delicate motions of his teeth and tongue, and spitting the bones out, rat-a-tat-tat, in the general direction of the head.

  "I don't think I can do that," said Selene dubiously, when Joe-Pie offered her one of the little fish on the end of his own machete.

  "Sorry, Miss Selene. Dey all got bones—we ain' cotch no jellyfish today." He and the Rastaman both laughed at that; then the boy sat down on the back steps with the cutting board in his lap; he beheaded, butterflied, and deboned the tiny fish with the tip of his machete—an astounding feat to watch, like seeing somebody fillet a sardine with a saber—and offered it to Selene wrapped in a slice of Wonder bread.

  It was delicious.

  After treating himself to a few more fish (by this time some creature, either a large rodent or a small dog, had stationed itself in the bushes and was catching the fish heads before they hit the ground, then snarfing them down noisily), Mr. Munger left for his cabin, promising to return in a few hours to take Selene back to her hotel.

  The mosquitoes had begun to swarm in clouds. Granny, Selene, and Joe-Pie retreated inside and lit dark green mosquito coils; apparently the fierce Luzan breed were either beneath or beyond the power of Granny's weed magic. After Granny sent Joe-Pie off to his cot behind the green army blanket that screened his bed from the rest of the cabin, she boiled water on her old cast-iron wood-stove, and she and Selene sat at the kitchen table (a board that folded flat against the wall of the cabin, dropping down like a Murphy bed as needed), sipping a tisane made from passion flower and pennyroyal, which was said to pacify the spirit without dulling the senses.

  The first thing Granny told Selene was that if she wanted to take the Fair Lady again she should use fewer cherries, and cook them twice as long. Selene asked her how she knew; the weed woman tapped her temple. As soon as she'd seen the cherries, she explained, she'd recognized that what Selene called Fair Lady was a relative of the plant known as con-com zombi—zombi cucumber. The effects were the same as belladonna: soul flies, body dies. Or rather, body drops into a state of suspended animation indistinguishable from death.

  "Wait a minute, Granny. You mean you don't have to be a witch to fly?"

  Granny snorted derisively.

  So much for witches and ithers. Selene put down her tea and inclined her head toward the weed woman as far as she could without leaning on the table suspended from the wall. "Help me, Granny Weed," Selene requested formally, before recounting what had befallen her in London, about Whistler's father having sent Aldo after both of them, about using the cure-root on the old man, about accidentally killing Mrs. Wah.

  "Aldo? De devilish mon?"

  "Same guy. That's why I need you to teach me what you can in the time we have, because in a day or two I have to go back to California, and in all probability, that devilish man is going to be either waiting for me, or coming after me."

  Granny slapped the table, rattling the cups in their saucers, then leaned back, laughing. "Two day? Cheese and bread, girl, in dot time Granny cyan't teach you to fight Joe-Pie. How me ga send you off to battle de devil in Calif—" She cocked her head, listening. Selene did the same, and heard a sniffling coming from behind the curtain.

  "You listenin' to women's talk again, m'son?"

  A round brown head appeared from around the side of the olive-drab blanket. "You got to help Miss Selene, Granny. You cyan't let de devil take her."

  "Hush, boy. He ain' no real devil, just a poppy-show jumbie."

  Selene took another sip of her penny-passion tea. "Well that's reassuring."

  "It's de boy need assurin'," whispered the old woman as she rose from the table. "What you need is poison. Now dis Aldo, he mebbe don' want to eat what you give him to eat, nor drink what you give him to drink. So it must be on pin. First ting, me ga trade you de cure-root pins for zombi paste. Me ain' need to fly no more, and you ain' need to kill nobody else by mistake. Use one pin on any mon, no matter how big nor small, he sleep like de dead for a night and a day.

  "Howsomever…" She returned from the drying rack over the windowsill with five pins. "If de devilish mon workin' for de old mon, he ga know about pins, ain' ga let you get close enough wit one to stick him."

  She thought about it for a moment while Selene removed the three remaining curare pins from the "For Our Guests" sewing packet, and replaced them with the five new ones. "Unless he cyan't see it. You chew gum?"

  "Sure. I bought a pack of Doublemint at the airport."

  "You can spit?" "Of course."

  "Show Granny."

  Selene took a sip of tea to moisten her mouth, then walked to the door of the cabin and hocked a decent, most unfeminine, loogie out into the backyard.

  Granny nodded decisively. "Mashasha, den—if you don' mind a little pain and bleedin' from de mout."

  "Mine or his?"

  "Yours. But when you spit de juice in his eyes, even de devil go blind. Den, while he tearin' his own eyeball to shred tryin' to get it out, you strike wit de zombi-pin."

  "And if I don't want him to wake up again in twenty-four hours—or ever?"

  Granny shook her head. "One for sleep, two for dead, dey say. But dis Aldo, he be Drinker, yes?"

  "I'm pretty sure."

  "In dot case, make a pincushion out of de devilish son of a bitch, wit Granny Weed's compliments."

  CHAPTER 5

  « ^ »

  Around one in the morning, Pacific standard time, Len/Aldo brought the Toyota to a full stop at the intersection before turning onto Highway 1. "That was foolish of you," he informed Martha.

  "What?"

  "Waving at that car. From now on I want you to keep your head down."

  "I thought it was somebody I knew," replied Martha. "Besides, who died and made you god?"

  "I'm sorry, Martha. But I'm responsible for you now. And if anything happened to you—"

  "Yeah, yeah, seat covers."

  Aldo took his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at her. "I also—I know it's unprofessional, but I care about you. You're a gutsy kid—I want to get you through this."

  Martha turned away, pressed her face against the window. She could see past her reflection to the black water of the lagoon, near the spot where she and her friends used to come to burn a bud and watch the sun go down. Those days were already starting to seem awfully far away. "You know what, Len?" she said into the window. "About an hour ago, if there was one person in the whole world who I was absolutely, positively, bet-your-lunch-money certain really truly cared about me, it was Selene. And now I find out that she's been lying to me all these years about knowing who my father was. So to tell you the truth, at this point people telling me they care about me doesn't exactly make my top ten list of crap I want to hear."

  "Your call," said Aldo evenly. "If you want me to keep it on a professional basis, that's the way it'll be. So as bodyguard to client, miss, I'd like you to tilt your seat as far back as it goes, and keep your head below window level until we're through Stinson Beach."

  Martha leaned forward against the tug of her seat belt harness; as she groped around for the seat lever she found herself feeling a little guilty. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be so pissy."

  "That's all right, miss."

  "You can still call me Martha."

  "That wouldn't be professional, miss."

  "Oh give me a break! Can't we just be, like, friendly?"

  Another sidelong glance from Aldo, accompanied by a charming smile. "I'd like that very much… Martha."

  * * *r />
  Aldo checked the dashboard clock as the highway wound down from the mountain—not quite one-thirty. The sun would be up around a quarter to seven. "Martha, I need a little input from you here." Input—he'd heard that word often on the local talk radio. "We need a place to stay. At least three hours away"—in the unlikely event that this fellow Carson had raised an alarm upon finding the old biker dead and his ward missing—"but not more than four or five at the most." In other words, well before sunset. "Somewhere with lots of motels, fairly steady tourist turnover… ?"

  "Monterey," she answered promptly.

  "Do you know anyone there?"

  "To get hold of?"

  "To not get hold of—or run into."

  "I know a lot of bikers in Salinas, Hollister, like that."

  "What about Monterey itself?"

  "Not a soul."

  "Monterey it is, then. How do we get there?"

  "Turn right at Tarn Junction, take 101 South. But I want to call Carson when we get there, explain what's going on, see how Daddy Don is doing?"

  In a pig's eye, thought Aldo. "We'll see. I have to make a few calls first, see whether the line's being bugged. If it's clear you can talk."

  "What if the line's not clear?"

  "I'll have it swept," he lied nimbly. "Might take a few days, though."

  * * *

  Martha was wary when Aldo returned to the car from the office of a Best Western motel along Munras Avenue in Monterey bearing only a single key. She felt a little better when he assured her that the room had two queen-sized beds, but did not relax her guard entirely, and made damn sure the bathroom door was securely locked when she took her shower. She'd seen what had happened to Jamie Leigh Curtis's mother in the shower in that old movie.

  But Len Patch remained a perfect gentleman in every respect. He changed into his pajamas while she was in the bathroom, and then when he was in the bathroom himself he even ran the water to cover the splashing noise while he was peeing: now that was class! He said he'd already tried calling her house, that the line was indeed tapped to trace incoming calls, and that his people were working on it, so she climbed into the bed nearest the TV, and fell asleep watching HBO.

  When she awoke it was midafternoon. Len was burrowed deep into his bed with the covers pulled over his head; there was a note on the nightstand between the beds, warning her not to open either the door or the blinds, or call home until he had checked out the line again. His handwriting was outstanding—all neat and carefully curlicued—and he'd been thoughtful enough to add a nice postscript to the effect that he was a heavy sleeper, and she should go ahead and watch TV if she wanted.

  Watching Oprah and snacking on the junk food they'd bought at a gas station minimart on the ride down last night—not a bad way to spend an afternoon, if only she'd been able to keep her mind off the circumstances that had brought her here. Fat chance of that, though: in addition to being in danger herself, there was the threat to her newfound father as well as her godmother (whom she couldn't help being afraid for, no matter how hard she worked at hating her). And of course Daddy Don…

  That was the worst, the thought that Daddy Don might think she'd abandoned him. As the afternoon wore on, the urge to call him grew stronger. She started edging up the volume on the TV and banging things around to wake up Len, but it was no use: he didn't budge until sunset, a few minutes after five o'clock. Then when he did he dashed straight for the bathroom, so grumpy he wouldn't even return a friendly greeting.

  When he came out, however, he was a charmer again. "I'll get right on it," he assured her when she told him she needed to call home. And sure enough, when she emerged from the bathroom after her shower he was shouting at somebody on the other end of the phone: "Put it this way: do you have an illustrated dictionary at hand?… Well, if you did, and you looked up Somebody who gives a shit, I assure you you would not find my picture… No, no, sir, I don't want to hear any more excuses. I've got someone here who needs a clean line into—… Then call me when you do."

  There was no one on the other end of the line, of course, but Aldo hung up before Martha was close enough to hear the buzzing. He'd had plenty of time by now to work on his contingencies. Presumably the old biker's body had been discovered last night, and by now they probably knew he hadn't slipped away of his own accord. The first question was, did they suspect Martha? And if so, had the authorities been notified?

  Here's where it got complicated. The answers to those two questions would determine the nature of his first contact, but he wouldn't know what they were until after the contact had been made. Quite a conundrum. A catch-22, as the Americans were fond of saying. But until he worked it out, he would continue to stall.

  Aldo pursed his lips and shook his head, looked up without meeting her eyes—he'd used Visine, but you could never predict how well it would work. "That was one of the best men in the business. Apparently the taps were placed by some highly sophisticated operatives. It's going to take him a bit longer than he thought, but I think I've lit a fire under him."

  "But why? Does anybody know why all this is going on?"

  Aldo rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in the universal gesture. "The money, I suspect. Up until they came after you, we couldn't be sure. But Jonas Whistler, your grandfather, is dying. If Jamey drops out of the picture, Jonas will have no heirs. And if you and Selene drop out of the picture, Jamey will have no heirs. What we're trying to learn now is just who will benefit from all the Whistlers dying without heirs. Qui bono, as they say in Latin. When we know that, we'll know who's behind it. When we know who's behind it, we'll be able to counterattack. In the meantime, we'll keep you out of sight, your father will keep his head down, and we'll do our best to contact Selene and get some protection for her. By the way, that last time she called you, did she happen to tell you where she was?"

  "No. Only that she'd be back soon. But I'm still worried about Daddy Don. How long's all this going to take?"

  "Somewhere between a few days and a few weeks."

  "I can't wait that long. Daddy Don is dying. He needs me."

  Aldo put on a gentle smile, sat down beside Martha on the edge of her bed, patted her hand. "I agree he needs you, but he needs you alive, not dead."

  "Then I have to call him."

  "And you will, I promise. But until my man can get that line clear, the moment your voice comes over that line, they'll have your location."

  "Then we can split right after, and drive someplace else." She reached for the phone on the table between the beds.

  He grabbed the receiver from her hand. "Please. Give my man a few hours."

  "Just give me the phone, asshole!"

  But she'd started to raise her voice; Aldo placed his free hand over her mouth. "I'm afraid I can't do that," he replied regretfully as he pinched her nostrils closed.

  CHAPTER 6

  « ^ »

  After staying up late talking with Granny Friday night, getting up before dawn on Saturday to hit the rain forest trail with Joe-Pie in search of the elusive stinging mashasha nettle and wild dumbcane, a Caribbean dieffenbachia that flourished only in the deep shade of the upper rain forest, then working with Granny again well into Saturday night doctoring a stick of gum, a long hot shower and then bed were all Selene was thinking about when Rutherford Macintosh delivered her back to the Kings Frederick and Christian Arms shortly before midnight. But as she slipped under the mosquito net it occurred to Selene that she hadn't checked on Martha since Thursday night. Thanks to the time difference, though, it still wasn't too late to call the West Coast. She pulled the phone under the net with her, and dialed Martha's number in Bolinas.

  No answer. She gave it a half dozen rings, then hung up and tried Daddy Don's number. Martha's voice came on after four rings: "Hi. We can't come to the phone right now, but if you'll—"

  A breathless man's voice interrupted the message. "Hello?"

  "Hi, who's this?"

  "Selene, is that you?"

  "Ca
rson?" Carson Young was Don Baechler's partner at the Point Reyes Chopper Shop; he and his wife, Carlene, a registered nurse, had been instrumental in arranging and orchestrating Don's home care.

  "Yeah. Did you just call Martha's number?"

  "That was me."

  "Just missed you… Okay, hold on… I gotta catch… my breath." Selene waited until he'd finished gasping. Carson was as close to being a chain-smoker as a roll-your-own man could get. "It ain't good news, Selene. It ain't good news at all."

  "Daddy Don?"

  "Gone."

  Selene sighed. "I'm so sorry. But at least he's not suffering any—"

  He cut her off. "That ain't all. We got what they call a situation here. Martha called me last night, all mysterious, told me I had to come right over, couldn't tell me why. When me and Carlene got here Don was dead in his bed—still warm, but dead—and Martha was nowhere around."

  "Shit no!"

  "There's more. Carlene noticed that Don's morphine infuser was wide open—full throttle. She says it couldn't of been an accident—somebody would of had to deliberately jimmy it."

  "Somebody? You don't think Martha… ?"

  "He couldn't of done it himself, not the shape he was in the last couple days. We figure maybe she couldn't stand to see him suffer no more, or maybe he begged her to help him end it, and then after it was over she panicked and ran away."

  "Any idea where she might have gone?"

  "We spent all day calling her friends, and her friends called their friends… Nobody's heard from her."

  "Has anyone gotten the police involved yet?"

  "Naah. Carlene replaced the busted drip before we called his doctor, so there wasn't no trouble with the death certificate—they're gonna cremate Monday morning. If she hasn't shown up by then, we'll call in a missing persons."