Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio

by Andrews

  "Thank you," I said and then thought about the ghost again. "What does he want?"

  "He wants us to go to the chapel."

  "In the middle of the night?" I fretted, and Elmo moaned, but Callie was already headed out the door.

  The doorman watched us leave, and I suspected him of calling someone and having us followed. Frankly, I suspected everyone in this hotel of something. It was a full moon, and Sheik Skippy brought the car around in just minutes. I gave it the once-over to make sure whoever had bugged Elmo's collar hadn't done a similar job on our car. Then I hopped in on the driver's side, tipped Skip, dodging his hat with the four-foot plume, and drove us out of the circular drive toward the mountains. I watched the doorman in my rearview mirror opening another car door, waggling his large purple feather aside, and offering his hand to assist the passenger from the car. Why is it that we decide exactly in which location it's okay to wear a four-foot feather on your hat? I thought to myself. It’s okay at the circus, it’s okay at the royal palace, it’s okay at the entrance to the Desert Star Casino, but it’s not okay at the Pentagon, the symphony, or church.

  "You think about social customs a lot, don't you?" Callie said out of the blue, as if wired into my head.

  "Yeah, I guess so. Everything seems so arbitrary."

  "Like?"

  "It's like that tribe, let's say they're in New Guinea, where their culture demands that a young boy lose his virginity to his uncle as a matter of custom. If the uncle doesn't sleep with his nephew, well then, he hasn't done his duty. So you don't sleep with your nephew in New Guinea and you get ostracized, and then you do sleep with your nephew in New Mexico and you get jailed. I'm not taking a moral stance here, I'm just saying..."

  "What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying it all makes no sense. I'm wondering if, in a thousand years, a man and woman sleeping together will be an absolutely shocking event because the world will be run by lesbians who've obtained their children through cloning that dates back to some DNA-Sourdough-Starter-Kit. Then with my luck, I'll come back as one of the guys, and I'll still be on the wrong side of the fence."

  "Do you wish you were straight?"

  I took her small hand in mine. "Not unless you like straight men."

  "We've been all through that," she said.

  We pulled slowly into the empty chapel parking area. The night was still, the wind still; the cacophony of distant automobile horns drifted past us in that hollow way the night air carries sound. I shut the lights off and rolled to a stop, leaving the car very near the chapel doors in case we needed to make a quick exit. I told Elmo to stay inside, keep the doors locked, and not to make a sound, we'd be right back. I took my gun out of the console and tucked it into the waistband of my jeans.

  "Take it out of your pants!" Callie ordered. "Just carry it. I don't want you to blow your ass off," she added, her stress starting to show.

  "Saving it for you." I grinned.

  We got out of the car and pushed the chapel door open, letting our eyes grow accustomed to the dark. I made no move to turn the lights on. After a few moments, hand in hand, we made our way down the dark aisle to the vestry door. It too was open as if this church were the most trusting place on earth. We looked around; no one seemed to be within earshot of us. The wall was ajar. I gave Callie a look that said "someone must be here." I peeked inside into total darkness. If someone was here, they were taking the same dead-end path we had taken before.

  We moved slowly and quietly down the long dirt corridor, feeling our way again and instinctively knowing not to make a sound. As I felt we were about to see the wall before us, something fluttered in the distance ahead of us, the edge of something, maybe the wing of a large bat. I put my hand up as a signal to stop and stay back against the wall. There it was: a man. A man in a brown cape and a skullcap, blending into the earthen walls. A priest, of course, I thought. But doing what? The priest reached to his right at a spot on the wall about shoulder height and pressed his palm against it. The wall slid back slightly, revealing another wall with a box in it. The priest slid the ring off his little finger and placed the flat bas-relief side of it onto a reverse engraving that was apparently created to interlock with the ring. He slid his forefinger into the ring, using it like a ratchet, and turned the ring ninety degrees to the left. A small door swung open, the size of a safe deposit drawer. The priest reached in and removed a stack of cash, put it in his robe, shut the door, and reset the combination on the lock with his ring, then put the ring back on his pinkie finger. It dawned on me that the tunnel was in the direction of the hotel and that the hotel probably connected uphill and underground with the church.

  "Didn't know it was the church's money, Father," I said, startling the priest and upsetting Callie, who'd been pulling on my arm, trying desperately to get me to exit this place, but there was something about a priest slipping around in the dead of night taking money from some unknown source that made me lose common sense.

  "Who dares enter here?" he whispered, fearful, I was certain, that he had been discovered. "How dare you desecrate the house of God? Be gone!"

  Without waiting for an answer, he swung back his cape and pulled a knife from his cassock, lunging at us. I couldn't see well enough to shoot. Plus I was fearful the dirt walls might be covering rock, and a bullet could ricochet, hitting us.

  I pushed Callie back and swung my arms wildly, trying to make myself an erratic target. He used his cape like a matador, gracefully swinging it and twirling the edge in front of me, concealing momentarily the knife's blade and then allowing it suddenly to slice out at me. The priest was deadly graceful, ducking and turning and swirling, but I managed to snag the end of his cape as it whipped by my eyes, and I circled it over his arm as it came at me again, binding him up in his own cloth. I bit into his wrist, holding his other arm at bay. The knife clattered to the floor, and Callie scrambled for it as the priest threw me to the dirt and put his hands around my neck. My mind flashed to Joanie Burr and the marks on her neck. Had the priest killed her too? Not the priest, I prayed.

  "Come near me, and I will choke the life from her!" he shouted at Callie, who now had the knife firmly in hand. I was gasping and weakening, knowing I had only seconds to do something. Overcoming the instinct to push him away from me, I tucked my chin to my chest as tightly as I could, trying not to panic as it made my breathing even harder. I reached behind my head with my right hand, grasped the fingers of his left hand, pulled them backward as far as I could, pinning his left forearm with mine while I broke his fingers. The sound of the bones snapping was a relief. He howled and let go. Callie ran forward and drove the knife into his side, not hesitating, as I might have, to attack the Cloth. As he lay on the floor, I knocked him unconscious with a kick to the head and pulled the ring from the little finger of his right hand, and we both ran back to the end of the corridor. He roused himself, recovering quickly. The small space ahead of us was already beginning to close. I pushed Callie through and nearly crawled over her in my attempt to avoid the slamming wall that caught the heel of my shoe.

  "That was close!" I panted as we ran to the car and made our escape.

  Neither of us spoke. I was in shock over what had just happened. As we sped away, I dialed Wade and asked him to check with the diocese on a Father Ramon, a priest who had just tried to kill us. After I hung up, I just sat and caught my breath for a moment.

  "We've got to create a story that will turn them against each other and bring them all to one place, so we can finally see who the hell is behind this," I said.

  "There's too many of them for that, but maybe you'll get the ringleader," Callie said quietly.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Back in the relative safety of our room, I uncovered Elmo's dog collar with the hidden microphone still attached. "Here you go, buddy. You're all nice and clean and I forgot to put your collar back on! There." I slipped his collar over his head and gave him a pat. I glanced at Callie as if to say this was the moment for sett
ing the trap.

  "Why in hell did that priest try to kill us?" I asked.

  "I have no idea. Maybe he's the one hiding Mo. Priests have kept secrets for centuries and have often hidden fugitives around the world."

  "I just can't believe it. You're psychic. How come you didn't know?" I asked.

  "Mixed signals, I guess. Randall telling me he was dead, then Karla saying he was dead. She could be in on it, double-crossing her partners."

  "Well, if this note is for real, then Mo Black's not dead and he's been playing everyone for a sucker for years. He's getting most of the cash and maybe splitting it with someone who fronts for him, and he makes everyone else believe he's dead. So someone in this group of players has betrayed all the rest of them."

  "Let me see the letter." Callie leaned over my shoulder for timing purposes to stare at nothing. "It could be a trap. I mean, maybe this letter was written by hotel employees who are in on this thing, and we'd be walking into an ambush if we head down that tunnel."

  "Only one way to find out. I'm guessing the tunnel is on the other side of the cashiers' cage. We've got to get through there first. We need uniforms like the employees."

  Thirty minutes later, with Elmo safely in his cage, we left the room and headed for the hotel laundry where I told the supervisor I was picking up dry cleaning for Brownlee. The laundry supervisor made a quick call while I held my breath, then almost instantly he received permission to give us two white shirts, a vest, and pants. As he disappeared back into the laundry to retrieve the items, Callie told me not to worry about getting her a complete outfit because it would look terrible and she wasn't wearing anyone's clothing.

  "They never get sweat out of clothes," she fretted. "It's sweat that grows bacteria. You're just wearing someone else's disease. I would never wear it. If you put a blue light on those pants, you would jump out a window before you'd put them on," she continued.

  "Thanks for sharing," I whispered. "This whole deal is too easy. Way too easy."

  "Someone's helping us get where they want us to go," Callie said in a chipper tone as if we were about to attend a family reunion. "We just have to believe we have higher protection than they do."

  "Yeah, well, you might want to give your highest contact up there a little heads up that we're gonna need all they've got."

  Back in our room, I put the outfit on and asked Callie to cover her blond hair with a hat. In any other location, a person might stand out in a hat, but Vegas was full of people wearing odd gear. Before leaving, I tossed Elmo a large chew bone and I gave Callie her final instructions, aware that people were probably listening via Elmo's mike. "Okay, the secret to success is in boldly acting and looking like we belong. Never slink or creep or slip around. Walk like you own the place and that it's your God-given right to go back to the cashiers' cage and open the door and walk through it. People are like animals; they sense when you're feeling like you're doing something you shouldn't be doing. Take big direct strides. Focus on the cashiers' cage door."

  We left Elmo and the microphone behind as we headed out the door.

  "So they should know exactly where we're headed now," Callie said, out of earshot of the microphone.

  "Right," I replied. "If they want to meet us, this will do it. I didn't bring my gun. I was afraid it would set off metal detectors or something in the cash room and everything would come to a halt. So we're unarmed."

  "Well, let's put it more positively," Callie said. "We don't have conventional weapons."

  Out on the casino floor, Callie followed close behind me as if she were my invited guest. I knew there were cameras trained on us, but I never looked up or made any attempt to shield myself from them, because that too would have drawn attention. I used the security clearance card on the electronic eye next to the cashiers' cage door and it let us in without a hitch. We moved through the cashiers' room, without looking or pausing, and exited through a smaller back door, which opened onto a paved concrete tunnel that stretched out long and dark before us. Hotel golf carts were parked to our right, and I jumped in. Callie got in beside me. I cranked the key, aware that there was no turning back now. I drove into the darkness, a slight glow from ground lights illuminating the road. After more than a mile, the road turned right, then left, and then rose steadily. I warned Callie to hang on to the overhead bar. After a few minutes, we started up an incline that rose several hundred feet in the air.

  "Stop!" Callie ordered. I stopped abruptly and set the brake. Ahead, in the wall of the tunnel, was a polished metal door with an entrance key pad beside it.

  "This could be a service entrance; we're not at the end of the tunnel yet," I warned.

  "This is where we're supposed to go," she said.

  "How do you know—" But my words were broken by the blue iridescent light I'd seen on the theater wall that now hovered above the floor next to the door. I didn't have time to ask Callie who or what the light was; in fact, I didn't really want to know. If we were being followed by friendly spirits, fine. I just hoped they were armed.

  We got out of the cart and walked up to the entrance, aware of the eerie echo our feet made on the cold cement. No sound emanated from the other side of the door. The flat electronic key pad turned out to be something more complex. In the center was a tiny image of a bird with its clawed foot raised in the air. From my pocket, I took the priest's ring, its gold surface as hard as painted steel. Placing the bas-relief bird image against the wall plate's identical reverse image, I put my index finger through the ring to use my hand as a ratchet. The doors swooshed open rapidly, startling us. We forced ourselves to step forward rather than back, and the doors swished shut behind us. We were standing inside a small theater in the round, where perhaps a hundred people could gather. It was awe-inspiring in its attention to detail, which was visible even in the dim light, almost a replica of the large theater used in the Boy Review, but this theater felt private, personal, and secretive—a magician's room, where one could become intimate with trickery. In the center was a forty-foot polished silver disk made up of circles within circles. It appeared to be a brilliantly engineered stage upon which countless breathtaking illusions had been performed. So dramatic was the stage's design that I nearly missed the young woman standing in a corner, a rope around her neck, looking terrified and exhausted—Rose exactly as Mo had depicted her. I made a move to free her as a voice emerged from the eerie darkness.

  "And so it happens exactly as we planned." Karla stepped toward us out of the darkness, surprising us. "I don't know what your game is, but Mo Black is dead. I buried him myself," she said without a trace of her gun moll facade.

  "You've lost your accent," I remarked.

  "It's a town of loss: lost innocence, lost virginity, lost lives. An accent is a small thing to lose," she said, and despite fearing what was in store for us, for a fleeting second, I pitied her because she saw the world in terms of losses and not gains.

  "Why do you want us here?" Callie asked bravely.

  "It ties up loose ends." Karla smiled at Rose. "I have to get rid of Sophia, who has a pathetic plan to avenge her grandfather's death and clean up his hotel. We tried to warn her by threatening her little girlfriend, but then Rose had already involved you, and unfortunately, the two of you don't know when to mind your own business."

  Suddenly the door behind her opened and Giovanni came into the room. He looked sleepy and drugged and not sure why he'd been summoned. He seemed confused when he saw all of us standing there.

  "How did they get in here?" he asked.

  "I led them here! I even instructed the laundry to give them a uniform to wear so they would think it was difficult and that they were clever. You're in my world, not yours," Karla said. "We have to clean up our mess, Gio. It's gone on long enough."

  "Does that mean killing your own grandchild, Karla?" I asked.

  "Step-grandchild. Hardly a relative at all," Karla said. "It's Loomis I hate to upset, but we'll all mourn together and then perhaps name our new restau
rant the Sophia in her honor."

  "So you control the porn ring through the hotel, and Gio controls the ring of men who finger the boys and get them to the rooms—"

  "I make certain that the money is there for the ghost," Giovanni interrupted, blinking into the dim light.

  "There is no ghost in this instance, Giovanni," I corrected gently.

  "The Holy Ghost," he said. "I get money to the Holy Ghost, and I atone."

  "For what do you atone, Giovanni?" Callie asked.

  Giovanni looked like a man who had left his body, his spirit in too much pain to stay confined in the flesh. "I speak to God about many things, and I help God build his church, and his school, and his hospital, and I pay for the children to have a place to play, and God forgives me when I have to do certain things." He looked at Rose, who trembled. Tears filled his eyes. "Mo wanted to stop the ring." Giovanni broke down in tears. "But you killed him," he said almost inaudibly.

  All heads turned to behold Karla, gun in hand, staring at Giovanni, her demeanor cool as ice.

  "You're such a pussy," she said. "We've talked about that. You'd rather be with boys than girls. Now for me, that's a little distasteful, because I was supposed to be your girlfriend. My price for being your lover without the loving is that the boy ring and the money from the ring continue. I don't care how many perverts come here to do whatever they want to do, as long as no one tells and everyone pays. Ahh, but someone told, didn't you, Rose? And now I have to go behind everyone and clean up the mess, as usual."

  Suddenly the door on the opposite side of the small theater opened and standing before us was Father Ramon, his pants and shirt recognizable but the rest of his garb removed. His side was bleeding through the bandages where Callie had stabbed him, and his broken fingers were swollen.

  "Father, why are you here? You must leave! What's happened to your hand? You're injured!" Giovanni said. "Please, Father, leave here now."