by Barry Day
Blind instinct now drove him to reach for what was no longer there. His hand scrabbled pointlessly over the polished surface and encountered only the Borgia Bird in its wrapping. As he fumbled at it, the chamois fell away and he had the golden object in his had for a fleeting moment before Linda began firing again, this time into his unprotected back.
Nicky fell at her feet—not in the gradual, balletic fashion of a movie death but ludicrously and all at once, like a marionette when the puppet master has removed his hand.
Linda emptied the magazine into him, then stood staring down at him.
Then she looked up and for an instant I thought she could see me but it was the lens of a movie camera in her mind that had her full attention.
“With all my heart, I still love the man I killed.”
Davis couldn’t have delivered the line better—even though she had delivered it first in The Letter.
The storm chose that moment to deliver its first clap of thunder. It was virtually overhead and for a moment it deafened me. Then it began to roll around the neighboring hills, like busybody neighbors passing on gossip.
“Bravo!”
The voice was both ironic and metallic.
The doorway was now filled by Kane’s wheelchair. In it he sat, tapping his wizened arm on the metal armrest, as if in applause. Behind him, still in the shadows, stood the figure of Nana. How long had they been there? How much had they seen?
“Poor little Nicky. You wouldn’t listen to any of us, would you? Well, this is what happens when you play out of your league.”
He turned to address his daughter.
“Nana, my dear, I believe Mr. Parmentieri has something that belongs to me. I believe he placed it on the piano when he began the scene with my about-to-be-ex-wife. Would you be so good as to bring it to me?”
Something in his voice brought Linda back from wherever she had been. She turned her face in his direction and it was like that moment in She when time and nature suddenly catch up with Ayesha, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. Linda Grace had aged ten years in as many minutes. It was the face of an old woman that tried to focus on Kane.
Then instinct seemed to take over. She snatched up the Bird and held it to her like a precious baby.
“Oh, but you can’t have this. Nicky and I need it. It’s our meal ticket. You see, we’re going away together, me and Nicky. Going to start over in ________. I can’t remember where. Where is it, Nicky? Where are we going to start over …?”
That was when Nana shot her.
A small gun had somehow appeared in her hand as she crossed the room and it didn’t take much detecting to guess that this was the .22 that had killed Mallory.
They say that a .22 is unreliable at anything but close range but then, Nana Kane had been practising lately. Her shot was right on the money—in more ways than one. It took Linda right in the heart and a small red carnation began to blossom in her cleavage, until it turned into a full, then over-blown rose and she sank slowly and elegantly to the floor. It was almost certainly the best death scene the lady had ever played.
Nana walked over to the body and bent down. She bent down as Nana Kane but when she stood up again and turned towards her father, she had the face of Anna. She also had in the palm of her hand the remains of the Borgia Bird. The shot that took out Linda Grace had taken the Bird with it.
“Oh, Daddy,”—it was the voice of a little frightened girl—“I couldn’t help it. The nasty lady wouldn’t give it to me, so I had to do it. I didn’t mean to hurt the birdie. Really, I didn’t.”
She went over to him with tentative steps and laid what was left of the Bird in his lap. Then she stood back, as if a little distance would protect her from the heat of his anger.
I looked at Kane’s face. But where I had expected to see malice and fury there was only sadness and defeat. He held the fragment up and, once again, it was as though the creature was a lightning conductor.
The storm was now right above us and the thunder and lightning were simultaneous this time. The flash showed for a brief instant what Kane had seen. The Bird was hollow, the thin metal casing packed with stone or cement to give it the required weight.
With surprising strength, a strength born of frustration, Kane hurled it from him. It seemed to travel in an arc in slow motion and my eyes followed it until it reached the mottled Venetian mirror in which the images of Nicky and Linda were reflected. Their bodies seemed almost posed in a Romeo and Juliet tableau of death, until with a crash, the image shattered, like a stone disturbing the surface of a pond.
Now the crazy paving image showed Nana. Gone was the frightened Anna. This was the vengeful Nana standing over the bodies and venting on them the varied gutter vocabulary I had heard that night in Birdland. The expression on that twisted face scared me almost more than anything I had seen so far. And what scared me even more was when she loosed off another two shots into the bodies of Linda and Nicky. Isn’t there some rule about not shooting a man—let alone a lady—when she’s down? If not, there should be.
It was time to call a halt. There was nothing more to be gained here. Two people were dead and there was no bird. Perhaps there never had been. Perhaps it was all for nothing.
I pulled open the French window and stepped into the room. Holmes materialized at my side.
“Party’s over, kiddies.”
All the time I had been in the shrubbery I had had Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson by my side, cocked and ready to roll. Now I used them to cover Nana.
“Drop the gun on the floor, Miss Kane.” Nothing like a little formality to remind people we live in a civilized society—occasionally. “Nice and easy on the floor there.”
She turned—and Anna said:
“Oh, hi, Jack, where did you come from? You really should have been here sooner. You could have helped me. I told you about the terrible things Nana’s been doing. She was fucking Nicky until that bitch Linda came along with her painted eyes and her big boobs. And Nicky was so sweet. And then she stole Daddy’s precious Bird and gave it to that creep Perlman to give to Nicky. But then I don’t know what happened. The Bird got lost somehow. We thought Mr. Mallory might have it but he didn’t and he was awfully nasty about it, so she had to kill him. So Nicky had to have it, don’t you see? But he didn’t have it, either. So what can you do, Jack? Birdie fly away … Birdie go bye-bye.”
Then she laughed the piercing, spine-chilling laugh of a demented child.
And then she shot me.
I guess all the words and the flickering expressions crossing her lovely face had mesmerized me, as they were intended to. Anna-Nana-Anna. Now you see her, now you don’t. But Nana had won in the end.
The bullet took me in the right shoulder and I’ve been shot often enough to know the routine.
You know you’ve been hit but the body’s immediate reaction is to numb the place, so you don’t feel a thing. It’s later that it begins to hurt like hell—if you’re lucky. If you’re not, then you still don’t feel a thing. Ever.
I tried to raise my own gun but Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson seemed to have put on weight. I did just manage to pull the trigger. Nothing. The damn thing had jammed.
Then I found myself on the floor, slumped against the open window. Nana was walking towards me with that loony smile on her face and that cute little gun in her hand. She’d have a busy day tomorrow carving all those new notches on it. Pity I wouldn’t be around to see which one was mine.
Now her image was beginning to come and go, in and out of focus. I told myself—Marlowe wouldn’t faint at a time like this. Sam Spade wouldn’t pass out. Hang in there, Watson! At least go our cracking wise. But I couldn’t think of a single funny thing to say. Life itself was one big joke but it would take too long to explain that to a mad lady.
Then I saw Holmes do the strangest thing. He put his lips together and seemed to be whistling. Funny thing
to do at a time like this, Holmes, I felt like saying. I hope it’s your favorite Wagner. Let me go out like a Valkyrie. That’s right. Jack Watson, Last of the Valkyries.
I saw Nana raise the gun until I was looking down the long thin tunnel of its barrel. So T. S. Eliot was wrong. The world did end with a bang. I just hoped I wouldn’t whimper.
Suddenly in my dimming peripheral vision I sensed a blur of movement. Something had passed my shoulder and was now attached to Nana Kane’s arm. It was also making familiar growling noises and she was screaming in the key of—was it C? For some reason she also seemed to have dropped her gun at my feet. I picked it up with my left hand and levered myself upright by leaning on the window frame.
Nana Kane seemed to have acquired Mike. Or perhaps Mike had acquired Nana Kane. As he hung there, those great limpid eyes—Mike’s not Nana’s—found mine, as if to say—“OK, boss, what do I do now?”
I told him he had probably better let go. After all, I did know where she’d been.
Mike dropped to the floor and padded over to sit at my feet. Ah, those dog training classes are worth every penny. Mike’s going to one as soon as I can afford it.
“Thank you, Holmes,” I muttered. I didn’t care if anyone else heard but no one did. Nana was rocking to and fro, nursing her arm and whimpering like the overgrown, if lethal, schoolgirl she really was. Linda and Nicky seemed to have no comment. And Kane …?
Kane was sitting in his chair, as always, but now slumped to one side. Since I’d known him it had never been what you might call a pretty face but now it was as though gravity had pulled one side of it down. He was still breathing—just about—but he had had a massive stroke. Only the eyes were alive but the being that was Osgood Kane was trapped for whatever time he had left in this sad sack of skin and bone as surely as if he had been buried in an underground prison with—what was Wilde’s famous description? ‘That patch of blue that prisoners call the sky.’
The phone was by the piano and I risked putting Nana’s gun down long enough to dial left handed. Nobody here was going no place. At least, no place of their own choosing.
McNulty picked up his cell phone on the first ring.
“A delivery for you, you Irish Mick,” I said. Then it seemed a good time to faint.
That bottomless black pool had never looked so inviting. As I sank, I could swear I heard Holmes’s voice say anxiously—
“You’re not hurt, Watson. For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!”
And somehow it seemed to me that he had said that to me somewhere before but, then, how could he? Still, it pleased me strangely.
Fifteen
Michelle Pfeiffer was leaning over to kiss me.
“Looks like he’s waking up,” she said softly.
The only trouble was, as her lovely face came slowly into focus, it turned into the homely mug of McNulty. Rats!
Hovering over his shoulder was Holmes and, from what I could make out, the rest of the room was awash with paramedics. From where I lay, propped up on one of the sofas, I could see two black body bags being carried out on stretchers. Linda and Nicky—united in death, at least. So Linda had kept her man, though she’d undoubtedly have preferred a less passive union.
“At a guess I’d say this place looks like the last scene of one of those Elizabethan tragedies. Only isn’t everybody supposed to be dead?”
“McNulty, that mordant sense of humor of yours will be the death of me. If it hadn’t been for the dog in the night time, I wouldn’t presently be among those present myself.”
I felt a wet tongue lick my face and it most certainly wasn’t Michelle Pfeiffer’s. Nor, fortunately, was it McNulty’s. Mike was sitting by the side of the sofa and hearing my voice had brought on this bout of spontaneous affection. I reached out with my uninjured hand and scratched his ears.
“Thanks, pal. I owe you one.”
I’ll say you do. You owe me several.”
McNulty obviously wasn’t a dog owner. He assumed I was talking to him.
“The doc’s patched you up for now. He says you’re lucky it was only a rinky-dink little bullet and it missed anything important—supposing you had anything important. You’ll be as good as new in a couple of days—not that that’s saying a lot. Now, how about telling your Uncle Mac just what went down here tonight before the US Cavalry got here?”
So I did—most of it. I left out the China Connection. Somehow conspiring to deal in drugs, even non-existent ones, wouldn’t look too good on my report card. But crime passionelle, now that sounds really sexy.
“So Nicky’s out of the game?” he said when I’d finished. “The Pomonas will probably send in some other goon to replace him—but then again, maybe they’ll think it’s more trouble than it’s worth. After all, we’re a long way from St. Louis. We can but live in hopes. Pity about Linda Grace, though. I used to fantasize about her when I wasn’t worrying about my acne… . God, that was how many years ago?” He paused for a moment’s thought. “Guess that was part of her problem. Right?”
I sat up, so that I could see the rest of the room better. The pain wasn’t too bad at all and I guessed I’d been given a jab of something or other.
Outside the window Nature seemed to have decided that it had given us its best shot with the storm and all—or maybe it felt it couldn’t compete with the theatrics going on indoors. In any case, it had shut up shop for the night and now—would you believe it?—a full moon was trying to con us that it had been there all the time.
As I turned towards the doorway, Nana Kane came towards me, flanked on each side—I was relieved to see—by two policewomen. She’d been cuffed but had managed to raise both hands so that she could suck her thumb.
“We found her like that when we got here. Haven’t been able to get a peep out of her. The only time she’s taken her goddam thumb out of her goddam mouth was when we cuffed her and then it went right back in again. Personally, I think she’s out to lunch and I wouldn’t count on her being back for tea.”
When she was opposite me, she turned her head in my direction.
McNulty was right. The eyes were empty caverns measureless to man. Deep in their recesses Nana was probably arguing with Anna and who knew how many other schizoid siblings but they could keep the outcome to themselves, as far as I was concerned. I dropped my own eyes and the parade passed by.
“What about the old man?”
“Doc says it’s a stroke and they’ve taken him to the hospital. But he’s a tough old buzzard, that one. He’s not ready to call it a day yet and there’s nothing much they can do for him. My guess is they’ll send him home and wait for Father Time to take care of things. He’s got more nurses there than the Good Samaritan anyway and there’s not a damn thing we can charge him with.”
I reflected that Osgood Kane—Otto Kreizer—or whatever his name was had been living in his personal hell for many a year now. He’d just moved down one layer. But the thought seemed too existential to bother McNulty with at the moment.
“Well, I think that about wraps it up for now, Watson, mon vieux. We’d better get you home. You can come in and make a statement when you’re felling up to it. None of these squirrels is going anywhere. I’ll get one of my guys to drive that heap of junk you call a car. You really should invest in a new one—you make my crime scenes look shabby …”
I thought of the torn scraps of Kane’s check that had been earmarked for just that purpose. Ah, well …
“Come on, pooch. Sounds like you earned your keep tonight.”
And McNulty reached over to scratch Mike’s ears, too. Twice in one day. And they say dogs don’t grin. Ear to ear and a thump from that apology for a tail.
Home, James …
“I beg you not to exert yourself, Watson. With your medical training you of all people should know that rest is of the essence. I would offer to help but under my present
circumstances …”
Holmes, Mike and I were back in the apartment and, due to my invalid status, I had been given the choice of chair. I had also been allowed the last beer in the house, even though the qualified competition for it was not significant and I had had to fetch it myself. Hence Holmes’s strictures.
“Holmes,” I said, not quite catching his eye. “I want to thank you for what you did back there. But for you, I’d be a crime statistic by now.”
“My dear old fellow,”—and I thought I heard a small catch in his voice, too—“how often have you not done something of the sort for me in other days?”
Then, so as to change a potentially embarrassing subject for both of us, he went on—“Of course, had you taken your old service revolver, as I suggested, instead of that piece of glorified tin, a lot of effort could have been saved. However…
“I suggest we now review the events of the last few days, for I am sure you will want to add this little affair to your other chronicles in due course.”
I was too tired to understand what he was referring to but I let it pass.
So we did as he suggested and then I came to the question that was still bugging me.
“So there never was a Borgia Bird—a real one, I mean? All that killing was for nothing?”
“Oh, most certainly there was a Bird but it was the idea of the Bird that led to the carnage—as it always has. It was enough for each of them to think they possessed it.”
“But where is it now?”
“We’ll come to that in good time, old fellow.” He would tell me when he was ready and nothing would hurry him.
“The saddest aspect of the whole affair is undoubtedly the daughter. Kane himself, of course, is as close to pure evil as one will ever see. He reminds me of earlier adversaries of ours—Grimesby Roylott and Charles Augustus Milverton are two who come to mind. You may wish to refresh your memory of those cases before you take up your pen on this one.
“So Nana Kane may well have inherited those tainted genes but that does not necessarily doom the offspring. What undoubtedly did was the conditioning she received at her father’s hand. Good and evil clearly fought an ongoing battle in her developing mind until the tension became too great to bear and she created sister Anna as an alter ego.