by C R Trolson
He held the cross to his lips and kissed the gold, so smooth, satin against his lips. He was glad to have it back. He had had it for some time.
If you disregarded the mission and the homes and the tawdry beach strip and all the trees planted, the roads cutting through the trees and the cars rolling along and the smog creeping in from Los Angeles - each year getting heavier - nothing had really changed in the last two centuries. And if you only looked at the ocean, nothing had changed at all.
The ocean. 1769. They had all been afraid that night. The impossibly small ship had been leaking for weeks, and then the storm and water spurting knee-high through the chinked Spanish oak. Waves slamming the hull. Wind ripping the canvas sails. The forward mast snapping, impaling a sailor, his arms stretching toward the dark sky.
The scene and smells were dear to him: the huddled priests, the sweat of frightened men, the wet wool, the putrid meat in the lockers, the donkeys, pigs and the few cattle sliding in their own mess. The gray-faced captain of the ship clanking down the ladder in his ridiculous armor sobbing and begging for them to pray. All lit by the twisted straw torch that Serra held, and, if anyone could keep a handful of wet straw burning in a dank, pitching caravel, it was Junipero Serra.
Just when the others were about to die, when the little boat was rolling past the gunnels, on beams’ end, and the freezing water was crashing down the stairs, they grasped each other and Serra screamed out, “Santa Marina! Santa Marina!” in honor of the Saint’s birthday. Then the captain, the crew, and the monks joined in, a grating chorus, “Santa Marina! Santa Marina!”
Knowing it was useless, but somehow taken up in the thrust of the thing, he now remembered yelling as loud as the others. “Santa Marina!” Even the donkeys brayed. The pigs squealed to be included. And then the miracle - the water stopped rushing down the stairs, the ship quit pitching, the ranting wind slowed. The men crossed themselves and looked upon Serra as if he were God.
With dawn, the clouds parted and the sun came out and shone into the depths, turning the sea golden green. The brave little ship bobbed along. They landed the next day and christened the new shore Santa Marina in honor of the miracle. After that, he had always wondered about Serra.
He remembered the first Indians, The Canelenos, the canoers, plowing through the waves in their lashed-up craft, ten of them standing, taking huge strokes with the paddles, remarkably agile. Remarkably tasty.
The Canelenos had always buried their people facing the ocean, their eternity. He considered the eternalness of his own life - how trackless its dimensions had become - the prospects of an undying future, terrifying. He had already lived over twelve hundred years. A half century of that in television land. Could infinity take so long to pass?
He swirled the cape over his shoulder and promenaded back and forth before the mirror. The cross looked good against the black cape. Contrast was the secret. The hat even fit. He picked up his nearby walking stick and struck a pose of complete indifference.
Finally, he leaned the stick against the desk and rang the buzzer. In a moment, Ted limped in, lowering his head slightly to clear the door jamb.
The scars on Ted’s face shined. The black hair of his goatee had been recently hacked at, leaving patches both short and long. Ted wore a black Italian suit, a Versace, but the elegance of the suit only added, by way of incongruity, to his over all monstrousness.
“Did you clean the mess?”
Ted nodded.
“Everything?”
Ted nodded.
“And the plastic?”
“I’ll burn it.”
“Do it today,” Ajax said. Ted was his opposite, culturally and mentally. Ted was his burden. But useful, if handled properly. Ted had worked for him for thirteen years and was as devoted as a pet. And like most clever pets, devious and easily distracted.
He shoved the cross into Ted’s face. He flinched, shrinking backwards. “I found my cross,” he said. “Imagine. I found my cross after you told me it was stolen. My special cross given to me by the Spanish Government for services rendered.” He’d tortured twenty-five nuns to death outside of Madrid, twenty-five nuns who had angered one of the cardinals - their crime, he recalled, had been wanting more food for their labors - nuns who had been accused and found guilty of witchcraft and passed around a dank cell block by three hundred Moorish prisoners.
Ted scratched the hair on his chin. His eyes rolled slightly. His voice was stuttering, furtive, hampered somewhat by the operation to repair his cleft palate. “It was stolen. One of the, the, the maids. One of the Indian girls took it.” Ted’s right hand dabbed at his face. His lips were wet from the exertion of saying his few words. “I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t. I didn’t.”
“Go to the refrigerator,” Ajax said, disgusted with him, especially his clumsy attempt at lying. “Bring me the silver decanter and one of the good cups.”
Ted hurried off. He stepped to the mirror and rolled the brim of the hat. No, no. Much too rakish. He preferred a gentler angle. Less cavalier.
Tired of looking at himself, he opened the top of the cardboard box. According to the manifest he would include, the innocuous box held three hundred vials of a newly developed anti-toxin, designed to counter a rare yet formidable virus, as yet to be unleashed.
When Unicorn Medical received the box, they would dutifully add one vial to each 500cc vinyl bag before shipping the plasti-paks to Los Angeles’s area hospitals. Upon receiving the blood, patients would writhe at first and then appear fine. Transfusion shock, the doctors would say. In twenty-four hours, the actual time dependent on several variables, they would feel the first twitch of Hunger. There might be some interesting scenes as they left their beds and made their way to the streets.
But that would come later. First, the trap. One unit of special blood was already in Los Angeles, sitting in a hospital’s refrigerator somewhere, he wasn’t sure exactly, an anonymous vinyl plasti-pak cast upon the waters, and the randomness of the plan excited him. The special blood would cause the first bits of panic, charges would be made that the blood reserve was poisoned with some new virus, some rare and unidentified strain, but the ever resourceful Ajax Rasmussen, head of Cirrus Industries, would come to the rescue as he had in past. He had foreseen the calamity and would provide three hundred vials of anti-toxin. A universal anti-toxin that he had been developing for years. No one would check that the anti-toxin was the perfect poison.
It would be like handing a bucket of gasoline to a man on fire.
The door opened. Ted dragged in, the posture of a whipped dog.
Ted carried a sliver platter, balancing a silver decanter and a large Thracian goblet, hammered from gold long before the birth of Christ.
Ted put the platter on the desk and picked up the box destined for Unicorn Medical.
Ajax slapped the walking stick in his hand, noting the heft of the Irish Blackthorn, a good stick. Ted was making for the door with the box. “Where are you going with that?”
Ted paused, still much confused. “Send it express?”
“Put it down please.”
When the box touched the desk, he brought the stick down on Ted’s forearm. There was a sharp crack, but Ted did not blink. A tear rolled down his shiny cheek.
Ajax barked, “You don’t imagine I know what goes on around here?”
Ted backed up. His face twisted. Ajax softly laid the stick upside Ted’s skull, an inch above the ear, holding him there. Ted blinked, froze.
He looped the stick around and artfully popped the bridge of Ted’s nose. “You stuck my cross up her cunt,” he screamed and, using both hands on the stick, putting his shoulders into it, struck Ted over and over on the head, the shoulders, above the kidneys, a windmill of action.
Ted finally crumpled, Ajax smashing his collarbone, shrieking, “Get out! Get out! Get out!”
Ted duck-walked from the room, feebly warding off the stick with bleeding hands, crying and cowering. Ajax rained down more blows, chasing him
into the hall.
Ted finally skittered around the corner, out of sight. Ajax spun on his elegant heels, walked back into the study, and slammed the door.
He took a deep breath and dropped the stick, clattering and bouncing on the wood floor. He touched the silver decanter, beaded with water. He was alone with her.
She would not miss the scant amount that he’d taken last night. She would remember nothing. The liquid-Xanax based potion he’d palmed into her drink last night had worked nicely. When they’d left the bar, she’d been fine, even relenting to his offer of escorting her to her room. She’d been a bit drowsy in the elevator, collapsing outside her door.
Inside, he’d been very gentle with her, very gentle. Half mumbling, she’d told him about the cross and where she’d found it.
He now sighed. He’d showed an admirable amount of restraint. He’d only rolled up her sleeve to get at the vein. He had not left a hair out of place. When he took her, finally, she would be pure.
He filled the goblet. The chilling had thickened her blood. The first scent of her was deep, verdant. Had she been ovulating? He tasted the depth of her. The mirror reflected a strand of her blood staining his chin. He smiled. Reese Tarrant would prove a worthy opponent. The Plan was in place. Time was at bay.
Reese stopped at the iron gate. The TV camera swiveled and the lens narrowed to accommodate the afternoon sun glinting off the Mustang’s red paint. The gate, a series of wrought-iron bars ending in miniature spears, hung from two massive cement pillars. Shooting from the sides of each pillar, a cyclone fence topped with concertina wire circled the estate. Fifty yards beyond the gate squatted a brick guardhouse.
The guard, wearing mirrored aviator glasses, leaned out of the door, checked his clipboard, and waved without smiling. The gate swung backward. Thick electrical cables, too heavy for the opening mechanism, ran up each pillar. Had Ajax Rasmussen electrified the fence? To keep people in or out?
He drove the short lane into a courtyard bedded with intricate pinwheels of tan and grape bricks. He parked in front of a cement urn overflowing with violet flowers and a giant old car parked to the side, a Packard, and big enough to cause the skid marks behind Cheevy’s store. Inside the car he might find hair fibers or blood linking Cheevy to the car, if he could find a local judge with enough guts to sign a search warrant.
Another guard, fully equipped with armored vest, pistol, handcuffs, and mace, a walking fortress, opened the cavernous front door. “He’s waiting for you,” the guard said sternly and pointed like a signpost up a stairway that cantilevered to the second floor.
Like the interior of a small cathedral, red and green sunlight pierced the wall of stained glass before floating along the gloomy hall, above a field of Turkish rugs and a fireplace you could roast a steer in.
On the walls, troops of cavalry thundered across huge Bayeux tapestries. Dazed and bearded heads sprouted from lances. The figure of Jesus, his head wrapped in thorns and dripping blood, cried with lowered eyes. In the background, a hand snuck from satin robes. Judas smiled and palmed heavy coins.
At the top of the stairs, he walked down thirty feet of dark hallway toward double-wide doors that were ten feet high and embossed with scarlet dragons.
A giant, the size of an offensive tackle, stood at the end of the hall. Maybe three hundred pounds. Head like a lopsided melon. Long, almost to the floor, arms. He looked hurt, moved with jerks.
The giant wore an expensive butler-style suit, a vest and waistcoat. He was drooling. His face was bruised, an eye swollen shut, lips split. A spit of blood on the white shirt.
He was about to say hello, get a closer look, when the man stepped back into the shadows. Welcome to the house of weird, Reese thought. Was Ajax beating the help?
He was five feet from the red doors when they slid into the door jambs with a low hiss.
When he walked inside, the doors snapped shut behind him, clicking like teeth.
The room was a good sixty feet long, thirty wide, fifteen high, a small auditorium. Directly in front of him was a desk with three chairs. The two chairs in front of the desk were chrome and leather, very modern. The chair behind the desk was leather and high-backed, a good fit for your average billionaire. A row of amber windows, looking over the town and ocean, filled the room with a hazy, surreal golden light. A brass telescope stood perched on a three-legged stand, its lens collecting the town below.
To his right a glass case, lined with red velour, displayed several dolls crudely carved from wood. Their rigid faces seemed in pain, their bellies swollen as if pregnant. There were jade and obsidian stones carved into various shapes: a bear, a cat, several large fish. Sandals. Other knickknacks. A small museum of sorts.
He counted three of the jade fish, perhaps three inches long. Whales, he guessed from their shape. They were striking in a minimalist way, bits of rock for eyes, but there had been four. The one missing had left a darker shade of crimson in the red velour.
Resting on a half-moon table, below a large painting of a lady cutting off some guy’s head, a cardboard box, a one foot cube, seemed out of place.
Recessed high into the wall, he noticed a four inch square stainless steel plate, four notches cut in the plate to accept an attachment, possibly a TV set or security camera.
He heard a click. On the far wall an outline appeared on the emerald wallpaper, a hidden door opened, and Ajax Rasmussen stepped into the room, absolutely beaming. “Do come in, Reese. Do come in.”
“I am in,” he said. Ajax had primped. His black hair was freshly oiled. His suit impeccably flat. Even his eyebrows glistened. All for him? He wondered. Ajax was supposedly in his fifties, but his eyes looked much older, there was space behind those eyes.
Ajax Rasmussen walked briskly to the desk, sitting in the leather chair with the air of a busy man. “Please have a seat. I was surprised by your call about Father Ramon’s death, most distressing. After we spoke, I called the Chief. You have his complete confidence.”
Reese settled into the chair. “That’s reassuring.” Above Ajax’s head, a security camera, brushed nickel, scanned the room at snail’s pace, back and forth, back and forth.
“Imagine,” Ajax said, “a priest killed in Santa Marina, at the mission no less. I told the Chief that I would gladly help.”
“I understand that you knew Father Ramon - ”
“ - Fire away,” Ajax interrupted.
He started again, but Ajax held up his hand. “I want you to know that I am a secret fan of yours. The remarkable way you stopped the Anaheim Vampire, Richard Lamb. Ajax touched one long finger to his temple, as if to isolate his next question. ‘What did Lamb say when he died?’
“Say?”
“His dying words.”
“We weren’t speaking.”
“Nothing?” Ajax said, disappointed. “Sad. Well then, would you care for a cognac?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to the ebony sidebar and filled two snifters from a darkly amber bottle, finely cut and elegant, a piece of art. He placed the glasses between them like opposing chess pieces. “He didn’t call out for his mother? Many do that.”
“No,” he said and took a drink. “He didn’t mention your name, either, if that’s what you’re asking. He didn’t tell me who he worked for.”
Ajax smiled but said nothing. He nodded toward the glass. “How do you like it?”
“Courvoisier, isn’t it?” It tasted expensive and Courvoisier was expensive. He was surprised that Ajax was still trying to impress him. Wasn’t the house big enough?
“Very good. But not just any Courvoisier. L’Esprit de Courvoisier, to be exact. A blend, but old enough to possibly contain a few of the precious drops that escaped Napoleon’s lips. That’s the rumor, anyway, a bit of Napoleon’s private stock. His personal caravan carried thirty casks of it. Into Russia and back out again. Space not wasted on rations, powder, or the wounded. The decanter is Lalique.” Ajax rubbed his hands together. He was enjoying himself. “Was Lamb really a vampir
e?”
“No. He was a freak. A killer who liked to think he was special. A cut above the rest.”
“I knew it. Advanced parasites do not kill their donors. It makes no sense to call him a vampire.”
“I never called him a vampire. That’s what the LA Times called him, but that was just to sell more papers. Don’t vampires kill their victims?”
“On the contrary. They nurture them. Like the farmer nurtures his milk cows. It’s a very symbiotic relationship.”
“Lamb was a killer. Nurturing was beyond him. The vampire part was hype. Phony Hollywood stuff, trying to sell newspapers and TV commercials.”
“But weren’t the bodies bone dry? Didn’t he have their blood stored in his room?” Ajax asked. “That certainly sounds like a vampire to me.”
“He had blood.” Reese said. “But it wasn’t the victims’ blood. It was your blood.” He searched Ajax’s face, but saw nothing. Like staring at a desert.
“Mine?” Ajax seemed shocked and touched his arm as if looking for leaks. “How could he have gotten any of my blood? I keep a close eye on it.”
“Your company. Three bags of A negative, packaged by Cirrus Industries three weeks before I found it in Lamb’s closet.”
“What was he doing with it?”
“According to the coroner, he was drinking it. He drank your blood when he ran out of fresh blood. It was his stash, so to speak. His rat pile.”
“My blood is fresh,” Ajax said. “It is very fresh.”
“Fresh out of the body fresh.”
“I see,” Ajax said. “Did you find out how he obtained our blood? We’re very careful. Our blood only goes to hospitals and the occasional doctor.”
“He got it from you.”
“Me?”
“You personally.”
“That’s absurd.”
“It is.”
Ajax shrugged. There was a hint of a smile on his face. At least someone was having fun. “Didn’t you want to talk about Father Ramon?”
He’d come, in fact, to rattle the billionaire, but Ajax did not seem rattled at all. “Sometime early this morning,” he said, “Father Ramon was strung feet first from a rafter in his room. Do you know anything about it?”