Black Angel

by Graham Masterton

  “You want some dessert?” Larry asked him. dryly.

  “For sure. As long as it never walked or flew.”

  Larry beckoned the waitress. Then he asked Dogmeat, “Do you know a woman called Edna-Mae Lickerman? Big woman, dark-haired, smokes little cigars. Runs a pottery store on Vallejo.”

  “Oh Edna-Mae, oh certainly,” said Dogmeat. “Now Edna-Mae used to be something in the good old bad old days. She made wonderful roach pipes and all kinds of far-out stuff. She’s not as old as she looks, as a matter of fact, but she had a malheureuse marriage and it told on her face. Her old man was Nathan Lickerman. He used to run the Lickerman School of Expressive Dance. It should have been called the Lickerman School for Underage Young Ladies to Get Their Muffs Touched Up by a Foaming Lecher. Nathan spent less and less time at home, and more and more time at the dance studio, adjusting the pantie area of his young ladies’ leotards. At first Edna-Mae was heartbroken, then she took a lover to pay the nasty Nathan in his own kroner. Well, several lovers, as a matter of fact, but the grand amour of her middle-age was a guy called Julius Kwolek. He was solid tofu from ear to ear as far as I could make out. I mean, whenever he farted he turned around to see where the noise was coming from. But Edna-Mae was crazy about him. She and Nathan got divorced. A lot of hand-made pottery got thrown—and I don’t mean on the wheel, neither. Edna-Mae and Julius planned to get married, but they came up against an insurmountable obstacle which was that Julius died of a massive coronary three weeks before the ceremony. Edna-Mae was never the same after that. She got into tequila and spiritualism and kelp, and believe me those three things can age you even more dramatically than two nights in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I saw her, what, two or three weeks ago. She usually hangs around at some rundown Mexican joint on Front and Green. She bought me a cerveza. She seemed to have eased off the kelp, stepped up the tequila.”

  “When you say she got into spiritualism,” asked Larry, “was this something she did alone, or with a group?”

  “We-e-ell, she did both. She used to tell fortunes. She was good at fortunes. Tealeafery, crystal-ballery, and that. But mainly palms. Palms are great. A good palmist can track your life right down to the last minute, practically; and do you know that there’s new scientific research that shows a provable correlation between your life expectancy and the lines on your hands. So stare at your hand and tremble, lieutenant. If your lifeline looks in the least bit branchy, you’re in deep shit.”

  That remark was too close to the truth for Larry to laugh. “Tell me about the group stuff,” he asked, his voice edged with glass.

  Dogmeat said, “I’ll have the Cisco Kid Surprise. That’s all fruit, of course.”

  Larry finished the dregs of his coffee and waited. He was suddenly aware that Dogmeat was hedging.

  “Do you have a problem with this?” he inquired.

  “Maybe un poco,” said Dogmeat, diffidently.

  “Is this something you’d rather tell me in private?”

  “I don’t know. It all happened a long time ago. But it was all mucho unpleasant at the time, versteh? This was back in Edna-Mae’s headshop days, when the world was young and Grace was Slick. A deeply heavy group of black-magic-type people hit town. They had a secret name that nobody was supposed to know, and everybody said that if you even so much as mentioned that they existed, they’d cut your throat all the way around. There was a lot of deeply heavy mumbo-jumbo going down, I mean you’re talking merde lourde here. There was talk about Satan-worship, animal sacrifices, stuff like that. That was the time some young woman knelt right down in Union Square in front of the St. Francis Hotel and deliberately got herself beheaded by a cablecar. Edna-Mae was into this group for a while, although she never told me much about it. It all broke up afterward, who knows why, and nobody knew what happened to any of these heavy people afterwards.”

  “Did Edna-Mae mention any of this stuff recently?” asked Larry.

  The waitress brought Dogmeat’s Cisco Kid Surprise. He looked at it in disappointment.

  “Something wrong, sir?” she asked him.

  “It’s not particularly surprising, is it?” he demanded.

  She frowned at it, too. “I don’t know. Maybe it would be more surprising if you were expecting something else.”

  “What do you think the Cisco Kid would have thought of it?”

  “I don’t know,” the girl replied. “I don’t even know there was a Cisco Kid. I thought the dessert was like, you know, a San Francisco surprise for kids.”

  Dogmeat dug his spoon into the luridly colored fruit. “Thank God Duncan Renaldo can’t hear you say that.”

  Larry watched him as he ate. “Did you ever hear of a spiritualist called Wilbert Fraser? I’m going to pay him a visit tonight, along with my mother.”

  Dogmeat nodded. “Sure I know Wilbert Fraser. He used to live on Valencia for years, before some adoring widow left him a heap of shekels and he moved to Nob Hill. He’s the current guru non-pareil of the purple-rinsed seekers after truth, negotiable bearer bonds, and the world beyond the veil. He was all mixed up with Edna-Mae, too, in those days, but don’t ask me how.”

  “Is he any good?” asked Larry.

  “Rock back on your heels, but yes. Or so I’ve heard. I’ll tell you who went to him to talk to her dead daughter, and that was—” here he leaned forward, and whispered into Larry’s ear the name of a hugely wealthy San Francisco society matron.

  “No shit,” said Larry.

  “No shit,” Dogmeat told him. He scraped up the last of his Cisco Kid Surprise. He blew his nose on his crumpled-up paper napkin, and then said, “Well, then, what’s all this worth?”

  “You mean the buzz and the bumble, the faces in the yose nabe?”

  Dogmeat sniffed, and nodded happily.

  “I don’t know,” said Larry. “I guess it’s worth a burrito vegetariano and a Cisco Kid Surprise.”

  “Oh, come on, man,” Dogmeat protested. “This is highly precognitive information I’m giving you here. It has to be worth a twenty at least.”

  “I want to hear more before I pay, okay? Any more faces, any more disappearances, tell me.”

  “Do you have some kind of personal interest in this?” asked Dogmeat, slyly, his eyes narrowing behind his pink sunglasses.

  “Just don’t forget to call me, okay?” Larry told him.

  “All righty,” said Dogmeat. “But next time it’s a fifty. Otherwise, a curse on all your horses.”

  “It’s ‘houses’, not ‘horses’,” Larry corrected him.

  “Well, them too,” said Dogmeat.

  *

  He returned to the Hall of Justice that afternoon feeling as if he had a hangover, even though he hadn’t been drinking. He passed Dan Burroughs’ office, room 400, and knocked on the open door. Dan was sitting in a haze of gray cigarette smoke, writing up his monthly report to the Commissioner. His yucca looked as if it were dying of asphyxiation, and the only decoration in his office was a faded color photograph of Dan shaking hands with Karl Malden and a poster for the Studebaker Museum in South Bend, Indiana. Dan had always believed that Humphrey Bogart was the last great American actor and that the Studebaker was the last great American car.

  “How’s progress?” he asked. “I’ve promised the Press a statement in time for the six o’clock news.”

  “Do you want the natural progress or the supernatural progress?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Larry went into Dan’s office and sat down in front of the desk. “There’s something very weird about this investigation, Dan.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Dan challenged him.

  “Did Houston tell you about the Lickerman woman?”

  “Sure. But so what? She suffered some exaggerated form of endocrinal collapse, that’s all. It’s a common symptom of AIDS. The doctors are coming up against new symptoms everyday.”

  “An endocrinal collapse? In four minutes?”

  “Who the hell knows? Leave it to the
doctors. All I want you to do is find this guy.”

  Larry said, “What happened to Edna-Mae Lickerman is a part of what’s going down here.”

  “Houston tells me you’ve staked out the cantina, in case he comes back?”

  “That’s right. Bill Glass is out there now.”

  “And what about the cantina’s customers?”

  “We’ve interviewed almost all of the regulars, and we’ve tracked down nine out of thirteen casual diners who were there Friday evening.”

  “And?”

  “Some of them remember a big guy in a leather jacket making a phone call, most of them don’t.”

  “Any identifications?”

  “None so far. Not even close. We’ve made a particular point of showing them every felon that Joe Berry ever arrested—even if they’re still in the slammer.”

  Dan sucked hard at his cigarette, then crushed it out in a Goodyear tire ashtray that was already crowded with butts. “Somebody must know this maniac. He must have a lover, or a friend, or a landlord, or an employer.”

  “We should have an artist’s impression ready for six o’clock, if that’ll help,” Larry told him.

  “Okay, good. But I want to see some real cerebral detective-work here, Larry. I’ve promised Mayor Agnos that this guy won’t be allowed to massacre one more Bay area family. Not one more.”

  “I just hope that’s a promise we can keep,” said Larry. “Believe me, Dan, there’s more to this investigation than meets the eye.”

  “Like what? Like the incredible shrinking woman? Do me a favor, Larry, I want inspiration, not science-fiction.”

  “I’ll send you up your artist’s impression,” said Larry, pushing back his chair.

  *

  Houston was waiting for Larry in his office. He looked as tired as Larry felt. He had been following up a report by a nosey landlady in the Mission District that her lodger had been behaving suspiciously “burning joss-sticks and chanting and this morning I found a cleaver in his kitchen, just thought you ought to know.” Then he had spent two hours interviewing a twitchy young man with a faded Giants T-shirt and glaring red spots who claimed to be the Fog City Satan except that he couldn’t remember any of the details of any of his killings, and on the night of the Berry killing he had been baby-sitting for his sister on Presidio Avenue.

  “Any word from the hospital?” Larry asked him.

  “Not so far,” said Houston.

  They sat in silence for a moment. Along the corridor, telephones were ringing, and nobody was answering. Out of the window, they could see nothing but gray gloom, and the shapes of familiar buildings made unfamiliar by the fog.

  “Think this is ever going to lift?” asked Houston.

  Larry shrugged. He picked up a pencil and turned it end over end. From the windowsill, Linda and Frankie and Mikey smiled at him out of a silver photograph frame.

  “Where do we go from here?” asked Houston. “It seems like the only way we’re ever going to catch this guy is by knocking on every door in the whole Goddamned city. Either that, or lucky accident.”

  “The cantina’s a start,” said Larry.

  “What if he never goes back there?”

  “Then we keep on asking questions and circulating his description and praying that he doesn’t do it again.”

  Houston sat watching Larry for a long time, in silence. Then he said, “You think there’s something occult in this case, don’t you?”

  Larry nodded. “I don’t just think it, Houston. I’m convinced of it. You saw my hand. You saw Edna-Mae. Neither of those occurrences was natural or explicable, no matter what Dan thinks about it. And last night it happened again.”

  He raised his hand, palm flat. “Last night I felt my hand itching, and I saw the shapes moving across it, and I heard the voice whispering, too. And I’m not the only one. I talked to Dogmeat today and he told me that at least three or four other people have experienced a similar kind of phenomenon.”

  Houston’s lower lip protruded. He looked unhappy and serious. “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to split this investigation into two. On one side, we’re going to follow a totally routine and traditional investigation. Thorough, professional, but right by the book. On the other side, we’re going to look into the supernatural aspects of it; and we’re going to do that just as thoroughly.”

  “How do you think Dan’s going to take to that?”

  “Dan isn’t going to know about that. Not unless you tell him.”

  “You don’t believe that any of this was supernatural, though?” Houston asked him.

  “I believe in what I see with my own eyes, Houston, whatever the hell you choose to call it. But the way I feel about this investigation right now is that if we stop at the threshold of what we can’t understand, our boy is going to leave us way behind, stuck by our own lack of imagination in reality-land, and there are going to be more families murdered, and maybe a whole lot worse, and we’ll never be able to catch him, never.”

  “Well, lieutenant,” said Houston. “If that’s what you want to do.”

  “Houston,” Larry replied. “Last night I laid in bed and that face appeared on my hand and it spoke to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, do you think I ought to ignore that manifestation, put it down to overwork or too much linguine before bedtime, or do you think I ought to take it into careful consideration as a possible item of evidence?”

  Houston looked down at his polished tan Oxford shoes, and then back up again. “I guess you could try to take a video-recording of it, lieutenant, next time it happens. Then maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult for other people to believe.”

  “But you believe it? You saw it for yourself.”

  “I don’t know. I thought I saw something, sure. But like you say—overwork, stress. Sometimes you can make yourself believe something just because you want to believe it.”

  “Houston,” said Larry, getting up from his chair and sitting on the edge of his desk, “at least two other people in the city have reported similar incidents.” He jotted their names down on his notepad, David Green, Michael Leibowitz. “David Green is an artist, he’s crashing with the Kuzdenyi twins. Michael Leibowitz works for the Mint. Go talk to them both. Find out what they think. Then find out what you think.”

  Houston reluctantly took the piece of paper and left the office. More phones rang. Larry remained seated on the desk after he had gone, thoughtful and more than a little anxious. He knew that Houston was a devotee of the Arne Knudsen school of scientific detective-work; but he wasn’t quite sure where Dan Burroughs stood in the middle of this; or how closely Houston was reporting back to him.

  The phone rang. Larry scooped it up and said, “Foggia.”

  “Oh hi,” came a bright and cultured voice. “This is Fay Kuhn your favorite newshound. I’m interested in writing a profile on you for Thursday’s magazine section. Do you think you could spare me a little time tomorrow morning?”

  “Miss Kuhn, I’m right in the middle of a complex and serious homicide investigation.”

  “You spared an hour for Dogmeat Jones.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Oh, come on, lieutenant. Even burritos have ears.”

  “Well—” Larry swung his desk diary around. “I can spare you fifteen minutes, tomorrow at eleven o’clock. But absolutely no longer. And I may have to cancel at short notice, depending on how the investigation is progressing.”

  “It is progressing, then?” asked Fay Kuhn.

  “Ms Kuhn, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, lieutenant. And, lieutenant?”

  A patient sigh. “What is it, Ms Kuhn?”

  “Lieutenant, have you heard anything about faces appearing where faces oughtn’t to be?”

  Larry massaged the back of his neck. Stress, he could feel it. His muscles were tensed like ropes. He might have known that Dogmeat would gossip to the Press. He should hav
e paid him the twenty. It wasn’t worth compromising a complicated and critical investigation like this for the price of a couple of bottles of cheap wine.

  “Ms Kuhn, what do you mean by faces appearing where faces oughtn’t to be?”

  “You tell me, lieutenant. Faces in windows, faces in Japanese soup. Maybe San Francisco is entering into a new era of magical weirdness.”

  “Maybe Dogmeat Jones isn’t playing with a full deck.”

  “Maybe Dr. Howard Kaplan can’t find out what happened to Mrs. Edna-Mae Lickerman.”

  “Well, well,” Larry admitted. “You’re good. I’ll grant you that. But I won’t grant you an interview tomorrow morning unless you keep all of this stuff to yourself, at least for now.”

  “What’s Dan Burroughs going to tell us tonight?” asked Fay Kuhn.

  “You can hear it along with everybody else. But if I were you, I’d leave some space open for a picture.”

  “Thank you, lieutenant. See you tomorrow. And by the way, our editorial secretary thinks you’re cute.”

  Larry hung up. He waited for a long moment, then he picked up the phone again. It rang and rang for almost a minute, and then a laconic voice said, “Guido’s Bar.”

  “I’ve got a message for Dogmeat,” said Larry. “Tell him his benefactor called.”

  “Benny who?”

  “His ben-e-factor, what are you, Chinese or something?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Larry, “That was wrong of me.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the laconic voice replied. “It takes all sorts. Hell—at least I’m not a Jap.”

  Larry said, “Could you tell Dogmeat his benefactor called him. Tell him his benefactor said that he’s dogmeat.”

  There was a pause. Then, “Tell Dogmeat that he’s dogmeat?”

  “You got it,” said Larry, and put down the phone.