SHADOWS

by Jonathan Nasaw

  All the while, though, he had the cold feel of the pistol against his belly fueling his bravado; he had slipped it into the waistband of his slacks, covered only by his windbreaker. But there was no need for the melodramatic sort of you'll-never-take-me-alive maneuver Aldo had in mind as a last resort—no J. Edgars materialized from out of the walls. The ticket agent asked him for another piece of identification, something with a picture, and accepted the blind man's fine Manny the Mocker driver's permit without comment.

  Once he'd been ticketed, things started moving almost too fast. An electric cart was summoned to carry Aldo to his gate—he didn't know whether this was standard procedure for the blind, or only for blind first-class passengers. They were within yards of the metal detector when Aldo remembered the gun and called for a detour to the men's room. The toilets there, unfortunately, had no tanks; he had to try a bit of sleight of hand with paper towels to drop it into the trash receptacle without being seen. A difficult assignment: how could you be sure you wouldn't be seen when you didn't know who was looking?

  No subsequent problem at the metal detector, once the security guards had determined that the white cane was not a weapon of some sort. Aldo's cart driver picked him up at the other side and drove him straight to the first-class lounge, where he quickly downed a succession of first-class vodka martinis.

  As for boarding the plane, Aldo could scarcely remember it; they must have poured him on. He could vaguely recall having a seat-mate at one point, a woman who would simply not… stop… talking… about her grandchildren until finally, driven to desperation, Aldo turned his face to her and lifted his dark glasses just long enough to shut her up in mid-sentence…

  * * *

  "Mr. Patch? Mr. Patch, sir?"

  A gentle hand tugged at Aldo's sleeve. He awoke, confused—he'd been dreaming in Romanian, but the voice was English. "Iertare?"

  "Beg pardon?" replied the man.

  "Yes."

  "What?"

  "Yes. Iertare means beg pardon. In Romanian. Where are we?"

  "Over the Atlantic, sir. We've run into a bumpy patch. Here, let me help you with your seat belt." A body leaned across him; scent of talc. "So you speak Romanian, then?"

  "I'm fluent in every European language with the exception of Finnish." Aldo leaned forward; knowing hands tightened his seat belt across his lap.

  "Are you, now?"

  "I can make myself understood in Finnish, mind you, but I've been told I sound rather like a Russian with a cleft palate."

  "You don't say? By the by, Mr. Patch, do you have anyone meeting you at the gate when we arrive?"

  "I don't think so. What day is it?"

  "Friday."

  "And the date?"

  "The twenty-sixth. Shall I arrange for someone to—"

  "Of November?"

  "Yes, sir, November. Shall I…"

  But Aldo was no longer listening. Four days, he was thinking. Seemed more like an eternity. Then he remembered the previous eternity, when he had eyes, when he'd flown. That had lasted four days as well.

  "Perhaps I'd better arrange for someone, then." The voice seemed to be coming from farther away; the smell of talc definitely was.

  "Yes, please do." Aldo was so tired again. If only I could dose my eyes, he thought. But his eyelids were in shreds, along with most of his eyeballs. "What's your name, friend?"

  "Peter, sir."

  "Peter, could I ask you to bring me two of those clever little bottles of vodka and a large empty glass?"

  "I'm afraid I can serve each passenger only one drink at a time, sir."

  Aldo thought for a moment. "Where's the lady who was sitting next to me?"

  "Still in the loo with a cold washcloth on her head."

  "Good," said Aldo. "Bring me her drink, too."

  * * *

  It was the helpful steward himself who walked Aldo through the nothing-to-declare door at Heathrow, where the Customs agent pawing through Aldo's kit bag unscrewed the top of the empty thermos—and immediately wished he hadn't.

  "Whew, what a stink. Good heavens, man, what was in there?"

  "Clamato juice," replied Aldo. "Gone rather off by now, I should imagine."

  "And what on earth is or was Clamato juice when it's at home?"

  "Clam juice and tomahto. I'm afraid I've grown rather hooked on the stuff."

  "Clam juice and tomahto—what won't those Yanks think of next?"

  * * *

  Peter next volunteered to help Aldo at the autoteller; he'd given the skycap at LAX the rest of his American money. Afterward they shared a cab into London. Dropped Peter at his door first. "I'd invite you up," said the pleasant-smelling fellow, "but my roommate wouldn't be at all pleased. Perhaps I could give you my number, we could get together for a drink sometime?"

  Aldo, who by then was so miserable he could no longer distinguish between the effects of his hangover and those of blood withdrawal (though he'd have offered to keep either for life if only something would take away the pain where his eyes used to be), was nevertheless strangely touched by the obvious come-on. After all the apparently disinterested kindnesses of the past few days, he was glad to know that at least one Samaritan had ulterior motives. Restored his faith in human nature. He pretended to memorize the number, then gave a phony one in return. Nothing personal, Pete, but hen Patch is about to disappear from the face of the earth. Can't have anyone following him to Aldo Striescu's door.

  * * *

  The taxi driver, energized by a generous tip, saw Aldo to the front door of his apartment house. Once inside the vestibule Aldo tried to picture the layout. Stairs to the right. His was the door to the right of the first landing. Almost there. Door key… deadbolt key…

  Home at last? Not quite. He shoved the door open, locked it behind him. Dusty, comfortable, coming-home smell of an empty apartment. Tapping carefully, feeling for anything he might have left lying on the floor, leaving in such a damned hurry nearly three weeks before. End of carpet. Cane tip clicking across linoleum. Refrigerator dead ahead. Feel for the handle. Blast of cold air in his face. Vegetable bin, bottom left. Under a green pepper gone squishy with age, under the rotted spinach…

  Almost home now. Two sealed plastic bags. Teasing himself now… located a pewter goblet in the cabinet. Carried goblet and one bag into the sitting room, set them down on the table beside his armchair. Tapped his way over to the CD player. He'd operated that in the dark often enough—no trouble turning it on. Heard the whir of the CD carousel. Tapped his way back to the armchair. Unsealed the bag of blood as the instrumental music began. Placed the tip of one finger inside the rim of the goblet—the right forefinger, the one Nick had come closest to biting clear through. Poured until the liquid reached the fingertip, took his first sip as the first glorious notes of the Voice came ringing out of the doghouse-sized speakers. La Divina as the treacherous Delila: "Mon coeur's'ouvre a ta voix."

  Aldo Striescu was home at last.

  CHAPTER 13

  « ^ »

  Lights were blazing in every window of No. 11 Cranwick Square; disco music blared from the second-floor drawing room. As Jamey and Selene turned up the short walk they heard snatches of raucous conversation, a man shouting in a foreign language, the high-pitched shriek of a woman's drunken laughter.

  "Sounds like Pop's made himself a few friends since my last visit," remarked Jamey. As he started up the shallow tiled steps the front door flew open and a small dark man staggered out under the portico, bounced off one of the Tuscan columns, and would have fallen headlong to the street if Jamey hadn't caught him by the shoulders of his zippered khaki workingman's jacket.

  "Steady there, old sport."

  "Va multumesc."

  "Pardon?"

  The man looked up at Jamey blearily. He resembled the younger, scrawnier Peter Lorre, but with one dark eyebrow running the width of his face, and the hairline of a chimpanzee. "Multumesc. Means thanks. Thanks you very much."

  "In what language?"

>   "Romanian, what you think?"

  "You're Romanian?" In a friendly, surprised, what-a-coincidence sort of way. "You must know Aldo, then."

  "Striescu? The strigoi?" He started to pull away, but Whistler had a firm hold on his arm, just above the elbow.

  "Yes."

  "Didn't heard of him."

  "But you just told me his last name."

  The drunk tapped the side of his nose slyly. "I only wanted to be sure we was both talking about the same man I didn't heard of." He looked down at Whistler's hand on his arm. "Now look, mister. Either you got to let me go now, or you got to come home with me, tell my femeie why I'm coming home so late for supper."

  * * *

  Stepping over the threshold of No. 11 Cranwick Square was no longer like stepping back into the nineteenth century. The parquet floor and the Oriental rugs were tracked with mud, and the green and gold flocked Morris wallpaper scored with short but emphatic black scratches as if someone had been striking matches against it; the mahogany coat rack lay on its side, one arm broken off; the elegant walnut hall table was buried under fast-food garbage and dirty highball glasses, some with the ice still melting in watery whiskey, others with cigarette stubs floating in days-old scum; overhead cobwebs were strung like hammocks in the corners of the corniced ceiling, and what appeared to be a negligee and a pair of crotchless panties hung from the Beethoven gasolier.

  Selene took off her Lady Burberry trench coat and folded it over her arm, then followed Jamey up the stairs, skirting a vomit stain over which someone had dumped a box of baking soda; the empty carton lay beside the sodden white pile of powder. From the first landing they peeked into the drawing room, where a stout middle-aged man in a cheap wide-collared shirt open at the throat to show his gold neck chain was dancing what might have been the frug with a heavily made-up younger woman wearing a black spaghetti-strap cocktail dress that had been fashionable back when Jackie O. was still a Kennedy.

  Whistler took a sharp right and marched into the drawing room; Selene, puzzled, followed after. There were another dozen or so partygoers in various stages of inebriation scattered around the room, but Jamey made straight for the woman in the black dress. "Where'd you get this?" he demanded coldly, ignoring the man.

  "Upstahrs in big wardrobe." She looked down, then met Jamey's eyes. "Nice, da?" Then, checking Selene out frankly: "There's nice St. Laurent up there, color of safir, look like it might fit you, darling. Why don't you—"

  "Take it off!"

  Jamey hadn't raised his voice, but there was no mistaking his tone. Bewildered, the woman turned to her dance partner. "Manny! You going to let him—"

  But Manny, after a glance at Jamey's eyes, had backed away, holding his hands up in the air, a playful surrender. "Sorry, amorez, none of my affair."

  The woman turned back to Whistler, fingered the lapel of his butter-smooth Italian leather bomber jacket. "Here? Or more private? We can—"

  She had obviously decided to make the best of it, but Jamey cut her short again. "Take it off or I'll rip it off your fucking back."

  No one spoke. The Bee Gees were screeching about staying alive, staying alive, as the young woman shrugged the narrow straps off her shoulders. Jamey looked around for the source of the music, saw a boom box perched on the antique writing desk, strode over to it, and yanked out the plug so hard the outlet sparked. "Party's over," he announced. "Anybody still here in ten minutes leaves through the window—headfirst."

  He looked around the room, clearly hoping someone would challenge him, but no one did. The party girl had stripped down to her strapless bra and panties; he glanced at her disinterestedly, then stalked out of the room. "That was my mother's dress," he said over his shoulder on his way up the stairs.

  "I gathered as much," Selene replied, hurrying after him. He had always taken an interest in fashion: of all the men she'd ever known—straight men, anyway—only Jamey would have been likely to recognize a thirty-year-old dress, mother or no mother. What had really surprised her was his behavior in the drawing room: she couldn't remember Jamey being rude to a woman, hooker or duchess, in all the time she'd known him.

  One thing hadn't changed since Selene's last visit—the old bedstead still creaked. They could hear it from the stairs, a steady counterpoint to the grunting and the groaning and the giggling and the moaning emanating from the bedroom. If somebody in there is wearing something of Whistler's mother's, there's going to be hell to pay, thought Selene.

  No need to worry. At first glance none of the women whose reflections Selene could make out in the mirror of the massive ebony armoire appeared to be wearing much of anything, and certainly nothing likely to have belonged to Alice Whistler, unless Jamey's late mother had shopped at Victoria's Secret. She followed Jamey into the room. The first thing that hit her was the good old orgy smell, a mélange of lubricity and lubricants, stale perfume, sheets damp with sweat and semen. She caught a quick glimpse of the Joanie-on-the-pony pile squirming on the bed—three women, no, four: there was a little one under the old man—before Jamey began hauling bodies off the pile and heaving them onto the floor, quite heedless of where, or how hard, they landed.

  "No!" Selene dropped her trench coat and threw herself at Jamey from behind, tried to pin his arms. "It's not their fault, they're just—"

  He shrugged her off violently; she fell to the floor beside the bed, and a moment later had the wind knocked out of her as one of the women—the little one, fortunately—landed on top of her. Her eyes met a pair of startled hazel eyes in a face not much older than Martha's; then the girl scrambled up and fled the room.

  Selene peered over the edge of the mattress, saw Jamey staring down at Jonas, who was returning his gaze evenly though he was unclothed save for a condom.

  The father spoke first. "And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father," Jonas Whistler declared sepulchrally, pointing a trembling forefinger toward his son's face like some Old Testament prophet, albeit a naked one whose rubber-sheathed penis lay semi-engorged and twitching athwart his skinny white thighs.

  "And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, 'Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.' "

  Instead of replying, Jamey looked down at Selene, peeking over the foot of the bed. His fists were clenched but his voice was steady. "I think my father and I need to have a little chat, Selene," he said. "Could you give us a few minutes?"

  Lifting his head, Jonas appeared to notice Selene for the first time; he glanced from her to his son and back again. "Well I'll be buggered," he said conversationally. "Didn't that arsehole Striescu manage to kill anybody?"

  It was Jamey who answered. "Only about a dozen or so innocent people, including my wife and my little girl."

  Again the sententious, sepulchral voice: "Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent?"

  "Job four seven." Jamey turned back to Selene. "Now if you don't mind…"

  Still she hesitated.

  "Don't worry, I'm not going to kill him," he assured her. "That's exactly what he wants me to do." Then, to his father: "Isn't it?"

  An aristocratic shrug of the bony old shoulders. "Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul, which long for death but it cometh not?"

  "Job three twen—"

  "Oh for shit's sake, will both of you please shut the hell up?" In the astonished silence that followed, Selene climbed wearily to her feet. She'd suddenly had quite enough of both Whistlers—but at least she'd finally figured out why she'd accompanied Jamey to London, to this house, to this bedroom, what she'd come here to say to the old man.

  "I've got something to tell you, Jonas Whistler," she began. But the Creature's father had begun to bobble erect again, distracting her. Selene grabbed the edge of the sheet hanging over the side of the bed and tossed it over him. "Aldo Striescu is dead. I killed him myself, and I can assure you he died in unspeakable agony. But
you, old man, if you ever try to harm me or mine again you won't get off nearly so easily. I will hunt you down wherever you are, I will follow you to the grave and beyond. If you don't think I can do it, by the way, I suggest that you check out First Samuel, since you're so goddamn fond of your Bible, and reacquaint yourself with the Witch of Endor. And I will personally see that you spend eternity in such torment that it will make whatever pitifully inadequate Christian hell you've been so terrified of all these years seem like Club Med in comparison. On that, I give you my Witch's Word."

  She glanced up, saw herself in the wardrobe mirror. With her gray-black hair gone all wild again, and the long black dress that Moll had insisted on buying for her during one of their shopping sprees the other week still in disarray from her fall, she could easily have passed for the woman of Endor—the Bible never actually calls her a witch—though the dress was from Bergdorf's and the matching pumps from Saks. Then she caught a glimpse of Jamey, who was glaring at her over the rumpled expanse of his father's bed with his arms folded lightly across his chest, and understood suddenly that he'd been intending to deliver a similar sermon to his father all along. But now whatever dramatic parting speech he'd had planned would come out more like Yeah, that goes for me too.

  Poor Jamey—she had stolen his thunder yet again.

  * * *

  Selene let herself out quietly, closing the door to the bedroom behind her. Neither Jamey nor his father had spoken yet. She was vaguely curious about what they'd have to say to each other, now that she'd let the air out of Jamey's planned jeremiad, but not curious enough to stick around to hear it. Her business here was done—of that much, and that much only, she was sure.