by Unknown
I googled Tangento and got 1,490,000 hits. The first was a Wikipedia article, remarkably evenhanded in tone considering that anyone in cyberspace could have written it. The second was the company’s official site. That was followed by a bunch of obscure legal findings related to the merger of Tangento and Billy Olson, a designer clothing company, some news articles about the merger, and an article about the compensation package of the latest Tangento CEO, Edgar Raider.
I had paged through about thirty Google entries and found nothing about Tangento trouble in Asia when Steve rushed in. Because it was Friday, he was wearing tweed trousers and a cashmere sweater instead of his customary suit. He still looked ready to jump into a photo shoot—until you noticed his face, which was creased with worry.
“Angie, I’m so sorry, I wanted to come over earlier but I had a meeting I couldn’t get out of. What a shock, finding Lucy like that. Are you okay?”
I nodded, but I felt my lower lip tremble. Steve came around to my side of the desk and pulled me into a hug. I pressed my face into his soft sweater, and then gently extricated myself.
“I’m okay,” I said. “It doesn’t seem real.”
Steve sat on the edge of my desk. “The police called me last night, asking a bunch of questions about Lucy. I tried to call you but you weren’t home.”
“I was asleep. I guess I was in shock from what I saw, and I just, fell asleep.”
So you’re still lying about Eric to your best friend, are you? That seems like a bad precedent for a relationship.
“Sleep’s probably the best thing for you. You sure as hell shouldn’t be at work.” Steve’s gaze took in the darkened office. “Why is it so dark in here? Let me open the blinds.”
“No, don’t. I have a headache. Hey, Steve, look at this.” I showed him the envelope with my address, then the Thailand brochure. “You used to be a travel agent, do you have some insight into what it’s advertising? Something about it seems odd to me.”
Steve sat down and read the brochure. “Sex,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Not now, I have a headache.”
“Sex tours.”
“They advertise them?”
“Honey, have you been awake the last two years? Advertisers use sex to sell everything, including sex.”
“But why go all the way to Thailand to see a prostitute? You can get one three blocks from here.”
“Some would say you can get them in this office. But to answer your question, Thailand and Southeast Asia have prostitution down to a science. They cater to every proclivity, at bargain basement prices.” Steve picked up the envelope again. “But why would they send it to you? You’re the wrong gender, wrong moral code, wrong everything. Maybe they were sending it to Andrew McCaffrey.”
“At this agency? I don’t think so,” I replied.
I took the brochure and looked at the address on the back, running over the conversation with Barry in my mind. “Do you think this might have something to do with Tangento?”
Steve looked confused.
“Don’t you remember what Stan Ruckheiser was saying at lunch about Tangento? A ‘brouhaha’ in Asia? Maybe someone is trying to tell me something.”
“Like what? Someone wants you to go to Thailand, buy a prostitute, then check in on the Proteus shoe factory?”
“Do you still have friends in the travel business?”
“But of course.”
“Maybe you can make some discreet inquiries, see if you can figure out who this Jad Paan Travel Agency belongs to, or who their clients are, or something.”
“I’ll try,” Steve answered. “Maybe they have an American affiliate. In the meantime you should call your credit card company and see if someone’s using your card to,” he read from the brochure, “‘feel the warmth of Southeast Asia.’ A stolen identity could be the answer to this mystery.”
My head throbbed, and I must have winced, because Steve suddenly said, “Angie, seriously, you don’t look good. Why don’t you go home and rest?”
“I guess you’re right. I don’t seem to be getting much done around here.”
My phone rang and I picked it up. Steve left, pointing first at me, then jerking his thumb toward the door to indicate I should go home.
“Hello, Angie, this is Mary Jordan from Human Resources. Lucy Weston’s sister, Morgan, is coming from St. Louis on Monday. We have to pack up Lucy’s office, so I thought I’d see if you could help us with that, since you knew her so well.”
Knew her so well? I almost laughed, but it was too sad. I knew her better dead than I’d ever known her while she was alive.
“Yes, Mary, I’ll be glad to help her sister. Just have her call me on Monday. Right now, though, I’m going home. I’m not feeling too well.”
When I got home I took three Ibuprofen tablets, washed down with a handful of water, then I went to my room and pulled down the blinds. It still wasn’t dark enough so I went back to the bathroom and dug around in my travel bag for my eyeshade. As soon as I put it on I fell into a deep sleep.
I had a dream in which I was wandering the alleys of some medieval European city, with high, stone walls, cobblestone streets, and courtyards with tinkling fountains. It would have been picturesque except I was the only human being around, but for the shadowy figures flitting around corners in the distance. I was looking for Eric. I could smell his maddening scent in the air. I followed it like a hound chasing a fox, except that the fox could easily kill me when I caught him. I was in great danger, I sensed menace everywhere, but I couldn’t stop searching for a glimpse of a chiseled white cheek and flame-colored hair.
The phone rang, but trying to wake up was like crawling out of quicksand. I reached for the phone, banging my head into the nightstand in the dark.
“Angie, it’s Les.”
Instantly I was awake. “Les, my God, where are you, what happened…”
“I’m in big trouble.”
“The police just wanted to talk to you, why did you run away?”
“Bullshit, Angie, talk means they want to arrest me. I’m their only suspect; they’re not looking for anyone else. You’ve got to help me catch the killer!” His voice was high-pitched and nearly hysterical.
“Who, Les?”
“The vampire!”
“You mean Suleiman?”
Les laughed, an ugly cackling sound. “Suleiman’s a pretty boy poser. I’m talking about the real vampire.”
Chapter 11
“Les, there are no real vampires.” I spoke consolingly, as if to a child having bad dreams.
Les’s ragged breathing filled my ears. “One of them is real, the one Lucy fell in love with. It’s hard to believe, I know. I didn’t believe it myself until I met him.”
“You met him? What did he look like?” It was an odd question, but Les was too distraught to notice.
“I don’t know, exactly. He was wearing a hood. They have these rituals at the House of Usher where people volunteer to let him suck their blood. You’ve got to go and record it, for evidence, so the police will believe what we’re telling them!”
So Les couldn’t confirm that the man I knew as Eric was the one he identified as the real vampire. I was both relieved and disappointed to know this, but I felt that I couldn’t hide from the truth for much longer. I owed it to Lucy, not to mention myself. I also felt increasingly sure that the truth, if there even was such a thing, would not change what I felt about him.
“Is this the same ritual you were going to go to with Lucy last week?” I asked.
“How do you know about that? Who have you been talking to?”
“Answer the question, Les.”
“Moravia told Lucy not to come anymore. Lucy said it was because her new boyfriend didn’t want to be in competition with me, that he was trying to be chivalrous.”
“That’s good for you, right? The new boyfriend was bowing out.”
“Wrong. Lucy said she wasn’t going to let me get in her way, that once the vampire knew it
was really over between me and her, he’d come back to her.”
“So Lucy didn’t go to the ritual that night?” Maybe because you killed her to keep her from going?
“I don’t know. She kicked me out before midnight. I think she did go, and he killed her there. Maybe he’ll kill someone else tonight. If you go and get a video I’ll be off the hook.”
I grabbed for the edge of the table, feeling dizzy. “Les, I can’t do that, especially if what you’re saying is true. Tell the police, they can go over and see for themselves.”
Les laughed again. “Yeah, right, they’ll go right over there when I call them and tell them it wasn’t me, that it was a vampire. They’ll believe that, Angie. No, you go. There’s a password, they’ll let you in. You’ll be safe, there’s always an audience you can blend in with. Only the person who volunteers is in danger.”
“Oh, that makes me feel better.”
Les ignored me. “Go in the back entrance, from the alley near the dumpster. At the bottom of the stairs there’ll be a guard. Say the password and they’ll let you in. Make a video of what they’re doing and take it to the police. Then they’ll have to believe you. I could get the death penalty! You owe me, Angie, you handed me to the police on a…”
An electronic voice interrupted Les, saying “Please deposit fifty cents for three more minutes.”
Les shouted, “Shit, I don’t have any more money. Requiem, that’s the password…”
The connection was severed before I could reply.
After talking to Les I tried to sit up and think but it was like I’d taken a tranquilizer. My head kept slumping lower and lower until I was asleep again. When I woke up my alarm clock read 9:58 P.M. I tried to keep my eyes closed, thinking I ought to try to sleep through the night, but I couldn’t keep the lids down. My biorhythms were completely confused. I finally gave up and went to the kitchen.
Kimberley was there, dressed in a fluffy white robe, drinking a glass of milk and flipping through Vogue.
“Hey, I’m glad you came home and went to bed. How are you feeling now?”
“Better, I guess.”
I opened the refrigerator, trying to remember the last time I’d eaten. There was the Irish coffee I’d had with Eric, was that only last night? It seemed like a lifetime ago. Before that was the salad I’d eaten at the Azure Sea. I should have been starving, but nothing in the refrigerator looked appealing. It was all Kimberley’s food: soymilk, eggs, buttermilk bread, yogurt, sliced Swiss cheese. I realized for the first time that all of Kimberley’s food products were white. I wondered if there was a category of mental illness in the psychology books for white food eaters.
I poured myself a glass of soymilk and sat down opposite Kimberley. She continued to read, no longer acknowledging my presence. If Kimberley had been a different kind of person I was sure we would have been talking a mile a minute, comforting each other, exchanging theories, examining every minute detail of the past few days. But even if Kimberley hadn’t sabotaged me with the Macabre Factor account, we still wouldn’t have been best-friending it around the kitchen.
I’d been living there almost a year and I still knew only the facts about Kimberley. She’d never shared any of her feelings with me—assuming she had feelings. We lived together as if we were neighbors on the same hallway, waving hello when we ran into each other. We each had our own bathroom and neither of us used the kitchen much. If I used up the last of something I replaced it, and so did Kimberley. We coexisted. Now there were so many things between us—Lucy’s death, Kimberley’s treachery, and Dick’s favoritism toward me—I wasn’t sure we could even go back to coexistence. On top of everything else I was probably going to have to find a new place to live. For a second I imagined that the new place might be with Eric, in whatever chalet or chateau or condo he called home. But only for a second.
“What are you going to do tonight?” I asked.
“I’m going to take a sleeping pill and go to bed. I can’t wait to have this day over.” She looked at me over the magazine. “What about you?”
I’m going to the House of Usher to film a vampire ritual. Wanna go?
“Nothing much. I might go over to Steve’s place to watch a movie.”
I left Kimberley in the kitchen and sat in the living room without turning on any lamps. The twinkling lights of the city, giving way to soft inky blackness at the edge of the water, had a soothing effect on me. I noticed that, just like yesterday, I was starting to feel better now that it was full night. My headache was gone and I felt wide-awake.
Kimberley came in. “Do you want me to turn a light on for you?”
“No!” I said a little too sharply. I changed my tone. “I like looking at the view this way.”
“Okay, I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good night.”
The light in the kitchen was off and the living room was in even deeper darkness. But as I gazed across the room at the built-in bookshelves where Kimberley kept her library, the titles leapt out at me like there was a spotlight on them. Feng Shui Your Crib, How to Meditate in 10 Minutes a Day, The Art of Business, The Business of Advertising. I’d never been able to read those titles from the couch, even in daylight. Was my eyesight getting better?
I thought about what Les had asked me to do. What he had really asked, although he didn’t know it, was for me to see whether Lucy’s boyfriend and mine were one and the same. I wanted to exonerate Les. I wanted to find Lucy’s killer and have it be somebody I’d never seen before, someone I didn’t give an expletive about. I wanted to see Eric again, but not at the House of Usher. I went to my room to change clothes.
Steve lived in the Castro District, a neighborhood known throughout the world as a gay mecca, now being taken over by the “stroller pushing crowd,” as he liked to call heterosexual parents. But on a Friday night at 11:30 the stroller crowd was snug in their beds and Castro Street had reverted back to its previous owners. Handsome men with handlebar mustaches and bulging pectoral muscles strolled arm in arm. Rainbow flags signifying gay liberation fluttered in the wind. 1970s disco music pulsated from the open doors of the bars.
Steve’s apartment was on a hill directly above the busy part of Castro Street. Every spot on the street was taken, so I double-parked in front of the building, turning on my hazard lights. I entered the portico of the graying, 1960s-era shoebox building and pushed the intercom button for apartment four.
Steve’s garbled voice sounded like he was still under his covers. “This better be an emergency.”
“Steve, listen, I need you to come out with me.”
“Angie, I was asleep!”
“I need a wingman.” Steve and I had been out together many times, but it never worked for meeting potential mates because we always had so much fun with each other that we scared off everybody else.
Steve’s voice was weary. “I thought you were sick, now you want to go party? You better come up here so I can chastise you properly.” He buzzed me into the building and I climbed a flight of narrow stairs to his door.
Dressed in boxer shorts decorated with hearts and a red T-shirt, Steve gestured me into the living room of his one-bedroom apartment. He had done wonders with the room, making it look like a tiny Tuscan villa, with terra-cotta walls, antique wooden tables laden with flowers and Italian pottery, and even a miniature replica of Michelangelo’s David. He tried to get me to sit on the overstuffed velvet couch, but I chose to pace instead.
“So, what are you doing out by yourself at midnight?”
“Steve, I don’t have time to explain, we have to go to the House of Usher. Les thinks it was one of the people there who killed Lucy. He asked me to help him, there’s no one left except me, he says he’s innocent, the police are going to arrest him unless I get some evidence, he told me where we can sneak in…” I stopped, knowing I was going in circles.
“Let me get this straight. You think one of these characters might have killed Lucy, but you want to go st
raight to the lion’s den and offer yourself as a rump roast, and bring yours truly along for dessert. I don’t think so. That’s what we have the police for, Nancy Drew.” Steve sat down on his couch and crossed his arms, case closed.
“I’ve already thought this through. The police are not going to do anything except keep looking for Les, at least until they have some other suspect. They’re not going to get another suspect because they have no cause to look for one. Les is right, I did give him up, and if he didn’t do it I have to help him.”
I wasn’t going to mention my other reason, wanting to make sure Eric was not the person Les thought was Lucy’s killer. Then he really wouldn’t let me go.
“And what if these wackos did kill Lucy, Angie? What about this guy, Eric, who drugged you? What if it was him?”
So much for deception.
Steve looked at me closely, then clapped his hand to his mouth. “You saw him again, Angie, I see it in your eyes. You’ve completely lost your mind, and I’m not letting you out of this apartment!”
I sat down on a satiny wing chair. Tears prickled my eyes, threatening to spill over. I scrubbed at them roughly with my hand. “Yes, I saw him again. We went out last night. We rode down Highway One on a motorcycle. It was magical…” My voice trailed off.
What would Steve say if I told him everything—if I described my encounters with Eric, the strange symptoms I’d been having since the first time he’d touched me, and the desperate longing for him that was starting to consume my waking hours and my dreams? What if the situation were reversed and Steve was telling me the same things about a man he had just met? I would be doing anything in my power to keep him away from the guy.
“Les needs my help. I hope you will go with me, but if you don’t, I’m going anyway.”
Steve stared at me for a long moment, and then stood up. He pulled off the red T-shirt as he headed for his bedroom.