A Passing Curse (2011)

by C R Trolson

  “The priests wouldn’t go for that. The mission is practically a shrine to them. And if we did tear the place apart, we’d have to find something. That is, if we could even get a search warrant.”

  Thomkins nodded.

  Reese set his coffee down and noticed the pictures under the glass top of the coffee table: Thomkins holding two fighting cocks. He looked at his new partner.

  “Romulo and Jedi,” Thomkins said.

  “Did you fight them?” He’d busted a few cockfights when he worked vice. It was mostly a Mexican and redneck thing. Thomkins didn’t seem the type.

  “Sure, but I never gambled. There was a news story, a local interest thing, and the paper made a big deal out of it and the Chief found out and - ”

  “You had to give up your birds?”

  “Yeah,” Thomkins said sadly. “I gave them to a guy to sell. I had to promise the Chief I’d never have anything to do with it again.”

  “What kind?”

  “My best was Romulo, an O’Neal Red, great feathers, a power bird, a jumper, an air fighter.” Thomkins handed him a small wooden box. Inside Reese saw the nasty metal spurs, sharp curved edges and points like needles. They resembled the finger blade he’d found inside the mansion.

  “I liked the short-curved gaffs because Romulo was a jumper and they cut better at a high angle.”

  Reese finished the coffee. “If anything happens tonight, if anyone else gets killed and you need to find me, I’ll be at the Sheraton, room two-twenty-seven. But, until tomorrow morning, I don’t want you to go anywhere near Ajax or the mission.”

  Thomkins nodded. “Two-two-seven.” He scribbled in his notebook. “Got it. You know. I just though of something…something strange.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I heard the Chief tell someone he was tired of cleaning up their messes. He was on the phone. I was waiting outside his door. I’m not sure.”

  “His wife?”

  “I doubt it. The Chief wouldn’t talk to his wife like that. Word is he’s scared to death of her. She looks meaner than he is. Might even be bigger.”

  Reese grinned. The hen-pecked Chief. “Keep your ears and eyes open. Tell me anything that doesn’t look right.”

  “I will,” Thomkins said. “You’re carrying a gun.”

  He unholstered the pistol, checked the trigger was on half-cock, and handed it over butt first. Thomkins accepted the pistol like he was receiving communion. “The gun you shot Lamb with?” Thomkins turned the pistol over in his hands. “Richard Lamb. Vampire serial killer. And you caught him. Killed him.”

  “There is no such thing as a vampire,” Reese said.

  “But Richard Lamb drank blood.”

  “The Zulu’s drink blood. Russians put it in their borscht. The Swedes make blood pudding. Vampires are American comic book crap.”

  Thomkins aimed the pistol at the window and fake-bucked his wrist like a kid with a capgun. “What kind of load did you use?”

  “One-eighty grain bullet. Red Ball powder. Same as what’s in the cylinder.” It was too much for him to resist. He wanted Thomkins to see what was in the cylinder. “Go ahead. Take a look.”

  Thomkins swung the cylinder out, dumped the cartridges in his hand, and spread them on the table. He picked one up “Silver?”

  “Someday, Thomkins,” he said, “you’ll make a fine detective.” He picked up the pistol, loaded the chambers, and reholstered. “Remember, eight tomorrow morning at the mission. We’ll do the crime scene again and ask around a little. Maybe the priests know something.”

  21

  Rusty Webber woke slowly, emerging from a dry-mouthed, restless sleep. She lay in the semi-darkness, not sure where she was, thinking, for a moment, she was back in London. She slowly made out the room dimly lit from the bathroom vanity. She held her head in her hands. Her sinuses hurt. Her eyes felt swollen. She opened the refreshment center. She grabbed a snickers bar and ate it. She opened a can of diet coke and drank half, washing down the chocolate. She poured a miniature bottle of baccardi rum into the coke and drank it. Her head felt better. She made another rum and coke, in a glass with ice, swallowed four aspirin. By her third rum and coke, she was feeling better.

  She stripped and ran a hot shower, stepping in, and closing her eyes. She remembered the last strange meeting with Ajax and afterwards a blur. She was going to have to start eating better and trying to sleep more at night. These long afternoon naps made her feel groggy.

  She’d already dressed and dried her hair when she heard the knocking and opened the door. Reese in the hall, tired and spent like an old football player who had lost one too many games. Did he ever sleep? Probably too busy selling her cross. He was holding an old book, a large book, the brown cover like peeling linoleum. Tooled leather. Sixteenth, seventeenth century, she guessed.

  “What’s up?” she asked, keeping the edge off her voice. She should just ask him about the cross. Get it over with. And then there was that little detail about his screaming.

  “Been out busting crime,” he said. “And you?”

  “Digging in the cold, cold ground,” she said. “I found a third set of remains. I left the bones in the dirt, encased. Maybe if I exhume tonight I can save them.”

  “So the sun won’t destroy the bones?”

  He was making fun of her, she thought, but she didn’t care. He didn’t know what she knew. He hadn’t been seeing things, either. Well, maybe he had. He’d certainly seen something last night. “You want to help, you’re welcome.”

  “Sure,” he said and came inside. He handed her the book. It weighed at least ten pounds. “Ramon had this old bestseller in his room. It’s Latin. I got it from Halloran, the medical examiner.”

  She cleared the writing table, lay the book down, adjusted the lamp.

  She smoothed her hand along the first page. She examined the edge with her magnifying glass. “This parchment was common in Europe, two centuries ago. It’s actually calfskin and called vellum.”

  “How sure are you of the date?”

  She pointed to the date, MDCCXCII, written clearly in large German block lettering on the first page. “You’re not the only detective around here.”

  “Roman numerals? I never got the hang of them.”

  “1792. I believe the Spanish were still using the Julian calendar, but the year would be the same. There might be a ten or twelve day difference between that and the Gregorian calendar used today.”

  “Unless it’s a forgery.”

  She examined more pages. “There’s no profit in forging books from this age, unless they were first prints by famous authors, because it would cost at least ten thousand dollars to reproduce, more than the genuine article is worth. Why bother? So it can sit around a mission and grow mold?”

  She flipped more pages. “The script is handwritten, excellent calligraphy. I don’t know why it’s handwritten. They had good printing presses. They also had good cotton paper. It might be a commemorative copy.” She looked at him. “This might be the original draft, the only draft.”

  He leaned over her shoulder. She felt his breath on her neck. “I’d like to know what it says.”

  She turned to a piece of wax paper inserted in the middle of the book. The pages were splattered a mottled brown. “Blood?” she asked.

  “It was open to those pages when Ramon was killed.”

  “Charming.” She took a deep breath, the book smelled of mold and candle wax and something she’d smelled before. Regret? She re-inserted the wax paper and returned to the first page. “A History of the Santa Maria Mission and Settlement, written by Father Alberto Duran.”

  She turned to the first sentence of the first chapter. The hardest thing about translating Latin, once you memorized the array of declensions and tenses, was that it was written periodically, stringed loosely along, the meaning of the sentence hanging near the end. English was generally subject-verb-object.

  ” “In that many of you do not believe in the supernatural and righ
tly so…as all God’s creatures should believe only in the eminence of one God, I will tell you that certain things exist in this world with no explanation. More than the Devil of whom we are quite aware of, there are demons, supremely evil beings, that have been conjured up by the California natives, evil things made even more evil by the wickedness and naivety of the Indians….”” She did not like the way the book was heading. Vampires, was a good guess.

  “Hey,” he said, “that’s pretty good.”

  She ought to ask him straight up if he made a habit of stealing private property. He’d probably deny it. She continued, ” “…beings of supreme evilness have lain dormant for years. In this particular case the evilness was conjured to counterattack an evilness in our own midst, an evil we brought from Spain.”” She raised her eyebrows.

  “Go on.”

  ” “Our Dear Father Delgado who accompanied the great Father Serra and has accomplished much in his long tenure as Superior among us, is, I believe, quite another thing.” “

  “What?”

  She read for a moment. “Father Delgado was a vampire.” She knew it. Just like Hamsun said. At least the old man was not totally senile, at least there was a bit of truth to his ramblings.

  He shook his head. “I’m sick of vampires.”

  “You and me, both.” She stood and touched his chest. “Richard Lamb?” She held her hand there, over his heart. “The scars?” He put his hand on top of hers. “You woke up screaming,” she said.

  “You were nice about it.”

  “I slapped you.”

  “I know you did,” he said. “But you didn’t panic. You took it in stride. You were just trying to wake me up. I’m lucky you didn’t have a frying pan.”

  “You are at that.”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve been slapped.” He kissed her forehead. “Thanks, for not saying too much about it”

  She felt the leather strap under his jacket and snapped it against him. He smiled at her. “You’re carrying,” she said. “I thought you were retired. Off the force.” He shrugged and she said without thinking, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of a personal nature?”

  “No,” she said, “not really.” Unless kleptomania was of a personal nature. “You spoke with Ajax yesterday, didn’t you? You went to his house? Did you ask him to buy anything?”

  “Your point?”

  “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but Ajax told me something pretty strange. Did you find a gold cross under my mattress and try to sell it to Ajax?”

  He took a step back from her. “You’ve had a bug up your ass since I walked in.” He tried to mimic her voice. “‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.’ How the hell am I supposed to take it? Did I just happen to find a cross? That’s rich. You meant steal it.”

  “Did you?”

  “The only cross I know about is the one I saw in Ajax’s desk drawer.” He held up his hands about a foot apart. “It looked gold-plated.”

  “That’s my cross. It’s solid gold. Ajax told me you tried to sell it to him. It was your mother’s.”

  “My mother’s? She died ten years ago,” he said. “She only bore crosses. She didn’t own any. And where did you get it?”

  “You didn’t steal it?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “Wait a second,” she said. “How did you see it in the first place if it was inside his desk? If it was inside his desk there’s no way you’d see it unless…”

  “I searched his desk.”

  “You searched his desk?”

  “ - I’m a cop and Ajax is at the top of the list. I’m trying to investigate thirteen murders. I’m not worried about hurting anyone’s feelings or following the law.” He paused. The beginning of a smile. “By the way, Rusty, where did you find the cross? You dug it up at the mission?”

  “So?”

  He nodded smugly. “That’s what I thought. I knew you were holding back the first day. This is cute,” he said. “Ajax ripped you off and then tried to put the blame on me. And if you took the cross from the mission without telling anyone, then you stole it to begin with. Has Ajax been in this room?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  “Has he?”

  “He was here the night you dropped me off, the night the Chief showed up at your apartment.” She quickly explained finding Ajax in her room.

  “Has he been under your covers?”

  “Say it.”

  He was about to when someone knocked on the door. She looked through the peephole and opened the door. A young man with red hair, wearing Levis, a nylon jacket, and an embarrassed grin, said, “Is Reese here?” He seemed surprised to see her. She remembered him from the mission. The young cop.

  “What’s wrong, Thomkins?” Reese said. “Another homicide?”

  “No,” Thomkins said quickly, “nothing like that.”

  “Come on in,” she said, glad he was here. She’d been on the verge of telling Reese to go to hell and then throwing his ass out of her room.

  “You drinking?” Reese asked in a not unfriendly tone. “There’s beer in the icebox and whiskey.”

  She opened the small refrigerator. “He wants a beer,” she said. “Budweiser or Heineken?”

  Thomkins wasn’t sure. “Give him a Heineken,” Reese said. “Live it up, son, she’s on an expense account from the city’s top citizen.”

  “Heineken’s fine,” Thomkins said and she handed him one.

  Reese cleared his throat. “I was just over at Thomkins’ house. We have an appointment tomorrow at the mission. Early morning stuff. Detective stuff.”

  “You came to the mission,” she said to Thomkins, “when I called about Ramon.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “The Chief sent me to look after things.” He looked at the floor. “I didn’t do much good, Father Ramon getting killed and all.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for that,” she said.

  Thomkins smiled at her and turned to Reese. “You want to see a cockfight?” She could tell he thought a lot of Reese. Looked up to him. He had a lot to learn.

  “A cockfight?” Reese said, and scratched his ear as if he hadn’t heard right.

  “You seemed interested in the birds and since I know where there’s a fight tonight….” He looked at her and smiled. “You’re welcome, too.”

  Reese looked uncomfortable. “To tell you the truth Thomkins, it’s getting late, and….”

  Before he finished, she walked over and slammed the book shut. She was suddenly tired of the mission, the priests, vampires in general, and arguing with Reese in particular. “Let’s go.”

  Reese looked at her. “What about the bones?”

  “They aren’t going anywhere.” She grabbed a blue canvas jacket. “Let’s go.”

  Thomkins, now loosening up, asked her, “Have you ever seen a cockfight? They’ve been having them in this country for a few hundred years, since the Spanish landed.”

  “Cockfight? No. But I’ve been to bullfights, dogfights, fistfights, wrestling, and a food riot in Cairo once. My father was big on conflicts and since he didn’t have a son I got dragged to a lot of fights - he particularly liked Madison Square Garden - I saw Sugar Ray fight twice. I gagged on cigar smoke but I loved it.”

  “You’ll love this,” Thomkins said. “There’s nothing like it.”

  “Is there betting?” she asked and opened the door.

  Thomkins nodded eagerly and walked into the hall with her. “You can bet. Sure. That’s what they do mostly. But let me give you a few pointers. I’ll point out the fighters, and I’ll point out the stove birds. And sometimes there’s not much difference between them….”

  Reese sat in the back of Thomkins’ Ford, listening to Thomkins go on about the cockfighting. He did not feel enthusiastic. Thomkins, suddenly the expert cockfighter, talked non-stop to Rusty. She hung on every word, trying to bug him, no doubt. Thomkins kept talking. He drove out of the city for five minutes and do
wn a gravel road for ten.

  Reese finally saw the dim lights in the distance. Thomkins parked the Ford behind at least a dozen other cars, mostly pick-ups and older Cadilacs.

  To the right of the cars stood a sloping farmhouse, completely dark. To the left, a teetering barn. Yellow light flickered through the wood slats like headlights through a picket fence. When Thomkins shut off the engine, a man came out of the shadows.

  The man peered through the driver’s window. “Thomkins?”

  In the moonlight, Reese couldn’t tell whether the man was armed, but he was definitely the lookout. He was Mexican and wore a straw cowboy hat, starched cowboy shirt, and ironed Levi’s. A huge belt buckle glinted in the sparse light.

  “It’s me,” Thomkins said.

  When Thomkins got out of the car, the man shook his hand and slapped him on the back, “Amigo! We never expect to see you again. After that business with your Jeffe.”

  “Armando! Como estas?”

  “I am good.”

  “Pedro?”

  “He’s at the ring.” They all got out. The man motioned for them to follow him. He opened the side door. They were flooded with light. Reese heard shouts and cheers. He smelled sawdust and chickens. Thirty men clamored around the ring. They were mostly older, mostly Mexican, mostly in white or green bell bottom jeans with large belt buckles and white straw cowboy hats. Most of the hats had feathers, short colorful ones, stuck into the bands. They did their best to ignore him. They made him for a cop.

  Several men waved to Thomkins, who they knew was a cop, but it didn’t seem to bother them. One yelled, “Hey! You’re back. Who’s the girl?”

  The fiber board ring was about two feet high, forming a twenty-foot circle, supported by metal stakes. Redwood chips covered the ring’s floor.

  Along one wall of the barn, stretching thirty feet and three rows high, were forty or more wire cages. Inside the cages, silent roosters paced back and forth. He guessed the birds knew their purpose and seemed intent to get on with it.

  There were no birds in the ring. The men were clustered into groups of four or five. Cigarette smoke hung above their heads. Each man had a paper cup. The only other woman, besides Rusty, stood behind a smooth-wood door set across two fifty-five gallon drums. She poured whiskey or beer into the paper cups. She was dressed slickly in a sheer black dress, spaghetti straps, no bra that he could see. Heavy mascara ringed her eyes. A cigarette hung from her mouth. Rusty in ten years, he thought, there was a laugh.