Book of Shadows

by Marc Olden

  Bess shrugged. Dog or no dog, he and Felix were going through the door and they were going to get Raymond. According to Princess Grace, Raymond and Fancy were hiding out with a small-time pornography dealer who kept a guard dog in his apartment to discourage ripoffs. The porn dealer was Murray Train, who owned points in a couple of massage parlors and dealt in X-rated video cassettes, the hottest item in pornography. Murray’s record listed charges of armed robbery, counterfeiting, rape, pimping, and suspicion of murder.

  Murray had a nasty temper. He could be a problem with or without his dog. As for the dog, Joseph Bess would cross that bridge when he came to it. Princess Grace had said it was a Doberman, a vicious animal that hated the world and obeyed only Murray. It was Murray who was helping Raymond and Fancy get out of New York and to Atlanta, where tomorrow they were to “entertain” at a private party given by a wealthy industrialist in that city.

  Murray’s apartment was on the top floor of a walkup on Fifty-third Street just off Eighth Avenue, a rundown building tenanted by Puerto Ricans, prostitutes, and a few pimps. Bess suspected that somewhere in Murray’s collection of video cassettes for sale were a few featuring Fancy and Raymond in action. If Bess had his way, Murray would be taking a fall along with Raymond. Both men deserved jail time.

  Bess nodded to Felix, who nodded back. Time to get down.

  Bess used the butt of his .38 to knock gently on the door.

  Inside the talking stopped.

  “Yeah?”

  Bess said, “I hear you got merchandise. I want to do business.”

  Murray managed to sound both bored and cautious.

  “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, fella. Besides, it’s Saturday and I don’t do no business on a Saturday.”

  “I hear different, Murray. I hear you do business every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”

  “Oh? Who told you that?”

  “Ivy. Says he bought from you a few times and you’re okay.”

  “Ivy said that?” Interest trickled into Murray’s voice. “How is Ivy?”

  “How the hell would you be if you only got one leg?”

  Murray chuckled. “Yeah, that’s Ivy all right. He let his diabetes go until that shit got to him. Okay—”

  The telephone rang.

  Fuck me, breathed Plante, his dark face glistening with perspiration.

  “Just a minute,” said Murray. “Lemme grab the phone.”

  Bess frowned. Soon, soon …

  They heard Murray walk a few steps and heard the ringing stop as he picked up the receiver and said, “Yeah? Yeah, this is he.”

  Silence.

  And Murray’s voice was suddenly soft, edgy. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.”

  He hung up.

  Silence.

  Bess put his ear to the door. He mouthed the words to Felix, he’s whispering.

  Bess didn’t like it. Something was wrong.

  He whispered to Felix, They know. They fucking know.

  Go for it, whispered Felix.

  “Police!” yelled Bess. “Open up!”

  Inside, a small girl’s voice said, “Are they really going to kill us, Daddy?”

  Bess heard the movement on the other side of the door, the sounds he’d heard many times before. Panic. Confusion. An attempt to escape.

  “I said open up, Murray! Don’t make it tough on yourself!”

  The dog growled and began to bark. Felix lifted his arm with the wrist cast and gave the dog the finger.

  Bess jerked his thumb at the door. “Go!”

  Felix stepped in front of it, lifted one big foot and kicked at the lock. The dog barked and barked while Felix kicked repeatedly.

  Fancy shrieked. Raymond yelled. “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”

  With the uncanny sense of timing he’d had all his life, Bess pushed Felix aside, quickly throwing himself back against the wall. A fraction of a second later three shots tore through the wooden door.

  Felix, down on one knee and out of the line of fire, looked up at Bess. “Love you, baby.”

  Waving him away, Bess shouted, “Murray, you stupid son of a bitch! You want it hard, you got it hard!”

  Murray screamed, “Wasn’t me! I didn’t shoot no gun!”

  From within the apartment came sounds of a scuffle and the dog barked and Murray shouted, “Goddam it, gimme that thing! You fuckin’ outta your mind? You don’t shoot at cops!”

  Bess and Felix moved at the same time. Murray and Raymond were arguing and would be occupied for a few seconds.

  The two detectives hit the weakened door together, driving their shoulders into the cheap wood, and it crashed open, slamming against a wall, sending pieces of locks and chains flying through the air.

  And then the Doberman was on Felix, knocking him into Bess and driving both detectives off balance and back, back. Both men went down to the floor, Felix fighting the snarling dog, Joseph Bess grimacing with pain, a hand on his injured ribs. Bess struggled to his knees, his gun somewhere on the floor and forgotten.

  He looked up to see Raymond rushing toward the open door and Bess reached out for his ankle, tripped him up and brought him down. Raymond swung his gun around and Bess flopped on him, both hands catching Raymond’s wrist. Wild eyed with fear, Raymond, his finger still on the trigger, pushed Bess’s wrists up, up, the gun barrel inching towards the detective’s throat. Raymond was lean, but taller and stronger than Joseph Bess.

  Raymond spat in his face and kicked out, painfully scraping Bess’s ankles. Leaning forward and dangerously closer to the gun, Bess dug his teeth into Raymond’s ear, twisting, grinding, tearing at the flesh. The pornographer screamed and Bess shoved the gun down, felt it make contact with Raymond. The gun went off, a flat, slight crack no louder than a toy.

  Raymond stiffened, then abruptly relaxed. Bess, the smell of scorched cloth and flesh in his nostrils, rolled off, breathing heavily, eyes on the bright blood flowing from the hole in Raymond’s stomach.

  Crack.

  Another shot, this one from the hallway.

  Bess looked around. The apartment was empty. There was Bess and Raymond and no one else, not even the dog.

  Bess crawled to his gun, grabbed it. He stood up and, ignoring the pain in his side, staggered from the apartment and out into the hall. Felix was at the other end, standing at the top of the stairs and looking down. When Bess reached him, Felix pointed at the landing below.

  Fancy lay on her side. Curled up near her was Murray.

  “Murray?” asked Bess between deep breaths.

  Felix shook his head. “No. They ran out, him and the girl, and the dog followed them. When they reached here, Murray pushes the kid out of the way so he can go first, but she trips and falls down the stairs and the dog gets tangled up in Murray’s legs and the next thing you know, they’re all falling down. Goddam dog get up, sees me, and he starts growling. Then he’s running back up the stairs like he really wants to kill me.”

  Felix held up his wrist cast. “Back there, when that dog came at me I let him chew on this. Saved my ass. Damn dog went crazy trying to bite through this thing. But I wasn’t going to try it twice. This time I just blew his ass away.”

  Bess looked down at the dead dog, who lay on the last two steps bleeding, his eyes bright, the flesh pulled back from his teeth. Holstering his gun, Bess patted Felix on the shoulder.

  “Raymond?” asked Felix.

  “Gut shot. He’s either gone or on his way out. Let’s check out the kid, see if she’s all right.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Bess and Felix stepped over the dead dog. Felix kicked Murray not too gently in the side. “You ain’t dead, Murray. Let’s see you get up.”

  Murray moaned.

  “The man’s an actor,” said Felix.

  Bess hovered over Fancy.

  “You gonna kill me here?” asked Murray.

  Felix patted him down and cuffed him. “What gives you that idea?”

  “Phone
call,” said a subdued, scared Murray. “Somebody said you was gonna snuff us. Call came in while you was outside. Said you cops were gonna burn us, all three of us, and we’d better shoot our way out or fly out or something.”

  “Who told you that?” said Felix.

  “Somebody.”

  “Somebody. Well, Murray my man, why don’t you tell me who somebody is?”

  “Felix?”

  The black detective looked at his partner.

  Bess said, “She’s dead. Fractured skull, broken neck, I’m not sure. Must have happened when Murray pushed her down the stairs.”

  Murray, who’d been facing the wall, turned, his hands cuffed behind him. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

  Bess stood up, his eyes on the dead child prostitute. “You did more than hurt her, Murray. A lot more.”

  Felix said, “We got company.”

  The detective looked up to see people staring down at them.

  “Which reminds me,” said Bess. “Raymond.”

  He hurried upstairs, pushed his way through the crowd at the top of the stairs and ran down the hall. At the opened door of Murray Train’s apartment, a fat Puerto Rican woman, her hair in curlers, looked inside. Bess shoved his way past her and stopped.

  A Puerto Rican youth was crouched over Raymond.

  Bess said, “If you’ve got anything in your pocket that belongs to him, I’m going to—”

  The fat woman said, “He no steal. He only wan’ help. He see this man he bleeding and he come help. Why you cops make trouble?”

  When Bess looked back at Raymond a wallet and a wristwatch were sitting on his chest and the youth was standing up, scratching the back of his neck and looking at the floor.

  “Get the hell out of here, both of you,” shouted Bess.

  When they left, he bent over Raymond.

  Dead.

  A bullet hole in the stomach was a bad way to go. The pain was incredible and the internal bleeding was just about impossible to stop. Not many people survived Raymond’s kind of wound. He was now a permanently rehabilitated child pornographer and highly unlikely to become a repeat offender. Bess walked over to the telephone.

  When the coroner had taken Raymond and Fancy’s bodies away, Joseph Bess and Felix silently strolled to a window in Murray Train’s apartment and stared down at the rain-wet street below.

  Felix said, “Top floor, no fire escape. All Murray could do was go for them stairs.”

  “We were set up,” said Bess.

  “I know.”

  “Used.”

  “I know.”

  “Somebody wanted to make sure Raymond and Fancy wouldn’t talk.”

  “Yes indeed.”

  Bess looked at his partner. “I read it this way. A certain person sees that Princess Grace gets a hot tip, which gets passed on to us. We then hustle over here to grab Raymond. At just the right moment Murray gets a phone call saying the cops are going to kill everybody in this apartment. Naturally the people in this apartment panic, except maybe Murray, who ain’t too sure it’s a smart thing to start snuffing cops.”

  “Good ol’ Murray. He’s a rat’s ass with a heart.” Bess held a forefinger in the air. “Now Raymond, he’s not so cool. He figures he’s going down, so he tries to whack us out anyway. Why not, right?”

  “Why not indeed.”

  “Remember: Raymond and Fancy were both shouting about being killed and this came right after the call, right after Murray told them what he’d heard over the phone. Felix, brother man, you and I have been had.”

  “Screwed, blewed, and tattooed.”

  Bess punched the palm of one hand with a clenched fist. “Anthony Paul Bofil.”

  Felix shook a cigarette loose from a pack and offered it to Bess, who shook his head. The black detective looked over his shoulder to make sure none of the cops and photographers in the room could overhear him.

  He whispered, “Bofil wouldn’t go anywhere near Murray Train. Murray’s chump change, a nothing who can barely get over.”

  “So someone else made the call for him. But the trail still leads back to Bofil. I can smell it. We were getting close, my man, and close is the one thing Tony Paul doesn’t want. We’ve been had and I don’t like it.”

  “I hear you. I think maybe we should talk with Grace one more time. She might know who goes around making phone calls for Tony Paul. Just one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  Felix looked over his shoulder, then looked forward again out of the window. “If Bofil is the reason Raymond and Fancy are cold meat in a large metal drawer downtown, I think Princess Grace might be in trouble.”

  Bess shook his head. “Tony Paul, Tony Paul. Playing us like we were a couple of violins.”

  Felix put an arm around his shoulders. “Shit floats, my man. That’s why some people are on top and the rest of us are down below looking up. Let’s get the hell out of here. Let the rain wash some of this crap off our souls.”

  TWENTY

  FORTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER leaving Joseph Bess’s apartment in the Village, a tense Marisa arrived home soaked to the skin.

  She had walked the streets in the rain looking for a cab, her nerves stretched to the breaking point by imagining that around every corner lurked the white-haired man and the tall woman, ready to snatch the Book of Shadows from her and drag her off somewhere to be burned alive. A few blocks from Bess’s apartment an empty cab had made a U-turn and approached her and a grateful Marisa had been ready to jump in.

  Until she saw the driver.

  He was stocky, white-haired, and he looked like the man who stalked her until her brain flashed the message that he bore only a slight resemblance to the Druid. But Marisa backed off anyway, shaking her head no. The cab sped away, spraying water on Marisa and her shopping bag.

  Stupid, she told herself. Not too bright, Marisa.

  Her action had been a reflex, a sign of just how uptight she was since stealing the Book of Shadows from Robert. Minutes later she found another empty cab.

  After carefully locking her apartment door she took the shopping bag to the kitchen, where she placed the orange juice and milk in the fridge. Then she remembered it was almost noon and she hadn’t had breakfast. Leaving the shopping bag on the floor near the stove, she removed two eggs and a whole grapefruit from the fridge, took a kitchen knife from a magnetic board hanging over the sink and sliced the grapefruit in half.

  The eggs were placed in a pot of water. When she’d set a flame under the pot she decided she had to pee and that couldn’t wait, so she hurried from the kitchen to the toilet.

  After she’d finished and washed her hands, she turned on the bathtub taps. There was no telling when she’d hear from Joseph Bess, so in the meantime why not relax in a hot tub, maybe have breakfast there? She snapped her fingers. She hadn’t checked her answering service.

  No call from Joseph Bess, but there was one from her agent, Jules. He’d received an offer for Marisa to do a voice-over for a fall line of dresses by a name designer, the commercials to run on all three television networks. And a summer-theater producer in Florida wanted her to do two weeks in a Neil Simon comedy with a former Hollywood Oscar winner. Big bucks all around, said Jules. Call soonest. He was in the Hamptons at his summer home and waiting.

  There was also a caller, male, who’d dialed a wrong number and Marisa started to worry about that until she decided it really had been a wrong number. Time for her to get out of her wet clothes and into a dry martini, as someone once said. She snapped her fingers again. Time to look in on her eggs. On the way back to the kitchen she wondered when Robert would notice that the Book of Shadows was missing.

  Before she could reach the stove the downstairs buzzer rang, the signal from the doorman that Marisa had a visitor. The eggs were forgotten. Joseph Bess. Had to be. He’d gotten her message, thank God. Marisa ran to the intercom.

  “Yes?”

  “Police, Miss Heggen.”

  “Yes, Andy,
I know. Send him up.”

  She released the button under the speaker and turned toward the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. The last thing she wanted was her very own flash flood. After turning off the water, she looked into the mirror. Circles under her eyes. Damp, uncombed hair. And a line in her face that hadn’t been there yesterday.

  Placing her fingers under her ears, Marisa pulled the skin tight. That’s what she needed. A little nip and tuck in Brazil and she could pass for Marie Osmond. Or a polished apple.

  The front door bell rang. Oh God. Why did Bess have to see her looking like this? She found a lipstick in the medicine cabinet, quickly ran it across her lips and smoothed it with the tip of her little finger, and when the bell rang again, she dropped the lipstick in the basin and ran.

  “Coming! Coming!”

  Marisa opened the door and was smiling when Cornell Castle drove his fist deep into her stomach, then shoved her back into the apartment and down to the floor.

  Marisa landed hard on her right side, hurting her shoulder and hip. She couldn’t breathe. Clawing at the carpet with one hand, she brought her knees up to cover her agonized stomach and used all her discipline to will herself to breathe again, to draw air through her open mouth. She closed her eyes, a pitiful attempt to shut out the agony pressing on her insides. The horrible blackness in her head shifted from cold to hot and back to cold again.

  She smelled perfume that was familiar. Then more pain. Someone stepped on the back of her hand and Marisa was wide-eyed with new pain. She saw the spiked heel of a woman’s shoe digging into her hand and Marisa looked up to see Alison Sales.

  “Ground rules,” said Alison looking down at Marisa. “We get the correct answer the first time, Sarah Bernhardt. If we have to ask twice, we’re going to take it out on you with gusto and I’ll tell you something, dear heart, I’m looking forward to it.”

  She pushed the heel in deeper. Marisa shrieked.

  With a dancer’s grace, the slim, beautiful Alison suddenly crouched beside Marisa and the ballpoint pen in her fist was only a fraction of an inch from Marisa’s right eye.

  “Don’t,” whispered Alison. “Don’t scream, don’t yell, don’t even wet your pants, because if you do, I’m going to shove this thing in your eye until it reaches your brain. Do you understand?”