I sat back, trying to imagine surviving that kind of nightmare, night after night. Demons and devils pinning me down, cutting me up.
“As far as you know, she never tried to seek out professional help?”
“Scarlet was determined to work through the nightmares. Face them head on, show the black figures in her subconscious that she was not afraid of them. Once she succeeded, they would disappear and forever stop taunting her. No psychologist on earth could have assisted her with that. For Scarlet, her war with the demons had to be fought battle by battle, and only by she and she alone.”
Suma finished her tea. I offered to make some more, but she declined. What she wanted was Jack.
I poured a shot into her teacup. She downed it in one swift pull. The psychic teetotaler meets the barfly.
“I’m not being entirely truthful,” she confessed, grabbing hold of the bottleneck and helping herself to another shot. “Scarlet did seek out help. Not good help, but something to help her cope all the same.”
I asked her to tell me about it.
“I caught her in the bathroom one night at the church. I walked into a stall. She was snorting. . .” She let her statement hang as though physically repulsed at what she had to say.
“Snorting,” I pressed. “Snorting what, Natalie?”
“It was a brown powder. She was sucking the stuff right up into her nose. . . From off the toilet tank through a rolled up dollar bill.”
“Heroin,” I said, without raising my voice. “You’re sure you saw her snorting heroin?”
“Like I said, it was a powder and it was definitely brown and it definitely changed her mood.”
My stomach cramped up. At that point, a brick could have slammed me upside the head and it would not have shocked me more.
I thought if Scarlet was snorting heroin—if this woman was telling the truth—then it was becoming plainly obvious that I had no clue who the real Scarlet Montana was. I relied on my somewhat damaged gray matter to produce a vivid image and pictured my sometime lover leaning over a toilet tank, lush hair veiling her face while she sucked brown shit up into her nostrils using a rolled-up dollar bill for a straw. Sitting there at the kitchen table, I ran the image over and over again in my brain. But no matter how many times I played it, rewound it, paused it, I could not get used to it.
But then, I thought about something else: if it could be proven that she had been desperate enough to snort heroin, then it was yet another bit of evidence that would lend itself well to the suicide theory. Still, I was refusing to believe it.
“You have any idea where she might have scored the drugs?” I asked.
Suma drank her shot. Again, just one swift pull. I offered her a third, but she declined.
“Sometimes there was a man who would show up after the meetings,” she said. “A funny-looking man with white skin. Whiter than white skin. An albino, I think. . . He would come pick her up and together they would drive off.”
The kitchen chair, I thought it slid out from under me. I envisioned my secret albino stalker. “Did this man by any chance drive a big four-by-four SUV—a Toyota Land Cruiser, maybe? Did he speak with a foreign accent? Maybe Polish or Russian?”
Her cheeks were a bit flushed from the whiskey. They looked a lot healthier than when she had first walked into my kitchen from out of the rain.
“A Land Cruiser like all the rich soccer moms drive,” she said. “Definitely. And yes, he spoke with a thick accent.”
I bit my lip and stood up. I knew that eventually some loose ends would begin to tie up, but I didn’t expect these ends to come together.
“Anything else you want to tell me?”
She stood. Together we headed for the front door.
“Nothing. Only that it makes me very sad that Scarlet is gone.”
“Don’t you believe that she is still alive?” I asked. “Walking around in another’s body? Maybe even the body of an animal? Maybe a bird?”
She grinned out the corner of her mouth. “Oh, that’s just the stuff we like to believe on Monday nights. The Psychic Fair might be good for the soul, but it doesn’t make you immortal, Mr. Moonlight. Nor does it pay the bills. It’s simply a salve, not a remedy.” A sweet smile. “Like a glass of whiskey on a rainy spring night.”
“I guess Scarlet could be the proof of that,” I said.
“I’m actually pessimistic about the end,” she went on. “Rather, not pessimistic necessarily. But let’s just say that when we go, there’s a good bet that a set of pearly gates will not be waiting for us. When we die, it will be nothing. Unconsciousness and that’s all.”
“Then why frequent the Psychic Fair at all?”
“It provides some kind of balance in my life and inevitable death. Hope without having to resort to the dogma of organized religion which I consider to be the bane of all civilization.”
Whoa daddy, I thought, Natalie would make one hell of a dinner date.
I asked her if she’d like me to drive her home. Or at least allow me to call her a cab.
She said she only lived on the next block over by the St. Pious church; that preferred to walk in the rain. Something about cleansing the mind. But I think she was a little tipsy.
Before she walked out, I stopped her long enough to ask her one more thing.
“Why are you so convinced that Scarlet killed herself?”
“Because she was very sweet and she would never give anyone cause to kill her,” she explained. “But she was very, very sad and very, very tortured in her mind.”
“It could be that someone wanted her dead,” I said.
“Why on earth would anyone want that?”
In my mind, I saw Jake; I saw Cain; I saw the black shadows that stabbed her, night after night. Maybe they had their reasons for killing her. Because Scarlet might have known something and was about to use it against them. It would have been motivation enough. It was a motivation stronger than any I could have harbored. It was my job to find out what that “something” was.
“Maybe it’s true what they say about nice people finishing last,” I mused.
“Perhaps,” she said, “but I have this feeling that Scarlet was never even in the race.”
She held out her hand. I took it in mine. Without asking, she turned my hand over to expose the scratched up palm, just like the Reverend Dubois had done earlier. I was too surprised to be angry.
“You see anything to dispute your fearless leader’s assessment?” I inquired.
She bit down on her lip and let go of my hand.
“It’s late,” she said. “And all those scratches. It’s very difficult to see anything.”
“But you do see something,” I pressed.
“No,” she said turning her head. “Nothing.” But she was a sweet woman and all sweet women are terrible liars.
I let Suma out. Or was it Natalie?
She turned back to me, looking into my face with wide, moist eyes.
“Moonlight,” she whispered. “It’s such a pretty, musical name.” “It’s just a name,” I said. “The name I was born with and the name I’ll die with.”
She wished me inner peace. I told her all I wanted was a good night’s sleep.
“One day, Mr. Moonlight,” she whispered, “we’ll have all the sleep we ever wished for.”
30
Not long after Suma, or Natalie, had exited the carnal reality of Dad’s house, I washed down another codeine with a glass of water. Then I went back outside and parked the Mercedes in the garage. Dad might be dead and gone, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that he watched over me like a hawk—especially when I was using his things.
Once I made it back in the house, I locked up. When I saw that two new messages had been recorded on the answering machine, I immediately thought of Lola.
Maybe she was on her way over. Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part.
I tapped the PLAY button and listened for a voice.
A beautiful voice.
; No dice.
Instead, I got only the sound of man’s breathing, then a shuffling noise followed by a quick hang-up. As for the second call, same deal.
Since my father’s thirty-year-old phone was not blessed with modern caller ID, I deleted the non-messages then punched Star 69 into the handset.
When the operator gave me the number, I quickly jotted it down and then dialed. I got a recorded message: “You have reached The Russo, Saratoga’s only traditional Russian restaurant,” said a man in a distinctive
Russian-accented voice not unlike that possessed by my new white friend. He proceeded to recite the establishment’s hours.
I hung up and opened the cabinet that contained my Saratoga region phone book. I looked up The Russo in the yellow pages and found an address for the place on Main in Saratoga’s downtown shopping district. Definitely a storefront joint.
I copied the address onto a Post-a-Note and slipped it into my wallet. Then I slid into bed and laid myself down beside my old friend Insomnia.
I finally gave up on the idea of sleep sometime around pre-dawn.
Lying prone in bed, I stared up at the cracked plaster ceiling, listening to the rain coming down outside. Every raindrop seemed to be calling out my name.
My head was growing tighter, the evil spirits pressing themselves against the backs of my eyeballs.
I knew I had to crawl out of the bed, get the old body moving, distract myself.
Downstairs I made the coffee and wondered why I wasn’t nearly as awake on my feet as I was on my back. I listened to the spatter the raindrops made against the kitchen windows when the wind blew hard. I wondered if it would ever stop raining in Albany.
A few minutes later, I decided to call Lyons and leave him an update on his voicemail. I told the crime reporter I was working the case but that I’d still need more time before I could draw up some definite conclusions. Then I mentioned the cremation scheduled for that afternoon. But I also told him that if we met later that evening, I’d more than likely have his answers along with the supporting paperwork.
With that done, I poured another coffee and opened the front door to see if the paper had come yet.
It hadn’t.
But from where I stood I looked out onto the thick pines and oaks that separated my front lawn from Hope Lane. The rain was coming down steadily, collecting and running like a small river to the catch basin located at the southeast corner of the property.
I brought the cup to my lips. Once more I saw Scarlet’s face. I saw the living face first and the dead face second. Two entirely different people.
I can’t say why, but I was reminded suddenly of an old saying that used to hang on my wall above my desk at the A.P.D.
“Let conversation cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights to help the living.”
I knew that if Scarlet was to delight in helping me at all, even in death, then she would do her best to lead me directly to her killer.
31
By nine o’clock I’d jogged three miles in the rain, put in a full free-weight workout and three three-minute rounds on the heavy-bag inside the same basement gym I set up back when I was still in high school. Once showered, I treated myself to a pair of clean Levis.
With the Browning strapped to my chest and the Beatle’s “White Album” playing in the eight-track cassette player, I was about to take the next necessary step in stopping Scarlet’s cremation. Which meant a visit to my old pal and toxicologist, Dr. Norman Miner.
I drove the funeral coach across town to the Albany Medical Center. Having driven in through the entrance gates, I motored all the way to the far west end of the facility, past the concrete parking garage, past the morgue entrance, past the physical plant to a series of three old four-storied buildings made up of brick facades and French-paned windows. At the turn of the twentieth century, Ivy League-style buildings that long ago served as the original Albany Medical Hospital, but that now were barely large enough to accommodate the labs.
I pulled into the broad parking lot that separated the old facility from the new and parked in a space that, according to a pole-mounted sign, was “Reserved for Dr. Norman Miner.”
I was no stranger to Toxicology, which meant I knew full well that Miner didn’t give a rat’s ass about his reserved parking space. So riddled was he with gout that it pained him to even touch the gas and brake pedals of his old Volvo sedan with the tips of his swelled toes. Therefore, Miner almost always used the local taxi service as his main mode of transport.
I entered the main building, breathing in the old familiar odor—a strange, intense mixture of chemicals, disinfectants and waste that emanated from the many lab animals confined to their stacked metal cages stored in the basement. So much for modern ventilation. But then, if you worked long enough in a place like this, I imagined your nasal passages got used to it.
Upstairs, I stood inside the open doors of the first of three tox labs. It was the usual scene. Dozens of men and women standing around an equal amount of freestanding marble islands with nearly every square inch of counter filled with beakers, clear pots, test tubes, Bunsen burners and laptop computers. Technicians and scientists so engrossed in their work that not a single one of them bothered to look up at me.
Stepping back out into the corridor I nearly ran him over.
Dr. Norman Miner.
He was a short, squat, curly-haired man who had served as the resident head of S.M.A.C.’s tox division ever since it had a tox division. The same man who had been best friends with my father which, in my mind, made him family. You might say it was a stroke of good luck that he hadn’t retired yet. If ever there was a case in which I needed both his medical expertise and his loyalty, this was it.
I peered into his glass-blue eyes and grinned.
“You know why I’m here, old-timer,” I said in my best imitation of a tough-guy dick. “Whaddaya got for me?”
Miner raised his right hand and quick-slapped my butt.
“Not here, dummy. We’ll address your emergency behind closed doors.”
It’s true, Norman was old. Even by retirement standards.
I watched him as he walked the narrow third-floor corridor, half-dozen steps ahead of me. Waddled is more like it, with his terribly bowed, nearly stunted legs, bedroom slippers for shoes. He was a short man who had been a good two to three inches taller a good two to three decades ago. Before age and gravity betrayed him.
Once inside his office, he took his place behind a mammoth wooden desk, sat down hard in a leather swivel chair, and released a very relieved breath. The place was as musty as it was cramped. It gave you the feeling that this one room had been left untouched for decades; that as the years passed, the hospital had simply built around it.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered the walls with what I guessed were about a thousand volumes. So many books and magazines that not a single space of shelf went unused.
Miner ran sausage fingers over a weathered face, then ran them through his full head of stark white locks. I could tell by the thick layer of sweat that coated his upper lip that he was in real pain. The deep set of crow’s feet carved into the corners of his eyes proved that he’d been enduring the pain for a long time. As soon as he got hold of his breath and his equilibrium, he asked me how I was holding up, as if the state of my health were foremost on his mind. And to a man like Miner, it was.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
He smiled as best he could under the circumstances. “It’s the damned gout again, Richard,” he said. “Getting so I cannot eat or drink a thing without my feet swelling up like balloons.”
I was well aware of the good toxicologist’s penchant for rich foods and fine wines. A fondness that, at this stage of the life game, was pretty much killing him. The good toxicologist plagued by toxins swimming around in his own blood.
I sat down in the one wooden chair in front of his desk.
“You should retire to Florida,” I said. “
Switch to a low-fat diet; take it easy like normal people your age.”
He exhaled a breath and looked me in the eye.
“Now let me ask you, Richard,” he said. “Just what the hell would I do with myself in Florida?”
I pretended to think about it for a minute, scratching at the tip of my chin with index finger and thumb. “You could chase women, for instance.”
“Not with these feet,” he said. “‘Sides, all the women in Miami are either too old, too married or too rich.”
“Rich is good,” I said. “And you’re mature in years yourself.”
“Never married,” he said. “Never had any kids, and despite the mileage, I do not consider myself an old man.”
“What is it you’re trying to tell me, Doc?”
“I’m in full possession of my faculties—feet be damned. And, I’ve still got my first paycheck.”
He pulled out the top desk drawer and retrieved a manila folder, which he laid flat on his desk before flipping it open. From where I sat, I could see that his hands were shaking. Not a lot, but enough for me to notice.
“Mrs. Montana’s tox report,” he said. “Per yours and Phillips’s request.”
He ran an index finger across a sheet of eleven-by-fourteen-inch computer-generated graph paper, pausing every second or two to whisper something indiscernible under his breath.
Looking back up, he said, “These are the facts of the matter: not only was the alcohol level in her blood high enough to put most men twice her size into a coma, but she also had a good amount of curare floating around her veins and brain.”
“Curare,” I said. “Stuff that paralyzes you.”
He nodded. “That, Richard, is your smoking gun.”
I shook my head. Miner’s blue eyes were still glued to mine when he let loose with a painful grunt as he shifted and repositioned sore feet beneath his desk.
“Stuff has been around for years and years,” he said. “Emergency rooms still keep it lying around in their closets for the occasional psychopathic patient that can’t be controlled.”
Moonlight Falls Page 12