by Joe Gores
“At the moment I speak the sacred words, six of you will be impregnated by the Holy Ghost. There can be no turning back, no changing of minds. Do you wish your donation returned?”
No one spoke. No one moved. The pairs of women knelt on the hard marble floor in front of Sister Maria Innocente. She spread her arms wide and chanted:
“Káy me yákh som?
Ac tu ángár!
Káy me brishind som, ?
Ac tu páni!”
She repeated it, then said it a third time in English:
“Where I am flame
Be thou the coals!
Where I am rain,
Be thou the water!”
Sister Maria Innocente lowered her arms. “Those of you who have chosen to be mothers are now pregnant,” she said.
The monk escorted them out. That evening, the twelve chairs lining the hallway were once again filled with hopeful women without men, who wanted babies and who were there because of Sister Maria Innocente’s fame, just in case, just in case.
They were yelling, sweat was flying, Midori’s nails were raking his back. One last tremendous thrust took them right off the side of the bed. Even at that ultimate moment, Larry the karate kid spun them in a nifty one-eighty so he was underneath when they hit the floor. The impact made them both come.
They just lay there for a time, holding each other for dear life, laughing with the sheer joy of it, panting, spent, sated. Midori still had an hour before she had to get to work; they untangled and squirmed around to sit side by side with their knees drawn up, their bare backs against the bed.
Midori giggled and panted, “You . . . very bad . . . man, Rarry.”
“And you . . . very bad . . . girr, Midori,” he panted back. When he said “bad girl,” dark images of Luminitsa Djurik and the old man she was taking care of sprang to mind. Here were he and Midori, young and crazy in lust—maybe even in love—and there was that poor old geezer, on the way out.
“How’s old Whit doing?”
She shook her head, bottomless dark eyes suddenly somber.
“Midori not know, Luminitsa quit her job, no work no more.”
Larry jumped to his feet. “Jesus Christ!”
“What’s the matter?” Frightened, Midori sprang up also.
He was pulling on his pants. “Whit said she sprinkled magic salt in his soup.”
“Sure, he say it better’n Viagra. But . . .”
“What’s Whit’s last name?”
Midori paused, pulling on her wispy underwear. “Stabrer.” Larry grabbed her two-year-old phone book off the bedside table, muttering to himself, “Stabler. Whitney Stabler.” On Portola Drive. He dialed the number. Not in service. She’d had it changed, sure as hell.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to get over there!”
fifty
Dirty Harry picked up the phone and heard, “Call me.”
He sauntered out of the Bunco bullpen and down the hall to the bank of pay phones, tapped out the number, got Luminitsa.
“Last night he signed the deed and the power of attorney,” she said. “I can list the house and close out his brokerage accounts this afternoon. With a good dose of magic salt in his breakfast, another at lunchtime, he’ll be gone by nightfall.”
“Shouldn’t I be with you? All that cash . . .”
The greedy turd: eventually, he’d have to go, too.
“Relax, lover. Come around six, we’ll drink champagne and hold his hand while he goes.” Her throaty chuckle was like her hand caressing his groin.
Larry ducked in and out through the thickening clots of morning traffic on 19th Avenue, took a left into Sloat, squealed uphill into Portola Drive, stood on the brakes. It was a modest stucco two-story in the 900 block, but in San Francisco’s redhot real estate market probably worth close to a million bucks. Plenty to kill for, if you were the killing kind.
Midori was holding back. “Luminitsa my friend! She no do anything like—”
“You may not believe it, but Whit needs help. You stay here.”
Midori, good submissive little Japanese girl, stayed. A short flight of terrazzo steps led to a minuscule porch. Larry put his finger on the bell and left it there, Ken Warren–style. The door was flung open. Luminitsa Djurik glared out at him.
Her magnificent body was barely concealed by a filmy negligee; he could see the sharp brown thrust of her nipples against the thin bodice. She really did look a lot like Yana, though she sure didn’t sound like her.
“Go goddam away. I’ve got a sick fucking man here.”
To the left was a stairway leading to the second floor; to the right a living room with a nice fireplace. Ballard strode through it to the dining room, through that into the small neat kitchen. Luminitsa was right behind him. No Whit.
“Where is he?”
“In bed, you goddammed fool! He’s sick, for Chrissake!”
“Yeah, and we both know what made him that way.”
Luminitsa grabbed a butcher knife off the rack and was only a dozen seconds behind him into Whit’s room at the head of the stairs. Larry bent to scoop up the frail old man from his bed.
“I’m taking him to the hospital. They’ll run blood tests and find out just what the hell you’ve been pumping into him.”
With a shriek, Luminitsa leaped at him, sweeping down the foot-long razor-sharp blade over his shoulder and at his chest.
That’s when stocking-footed Midori slammed her in the back of the head with the frying pan she had carried up from the kitchen after sneaking in despite Larry’s order.
Twice, driving in to work, Giselle caught a glimpse of the same dark sedan behind her. Her phone was ringing when she got to her desk. It was Larry Ballard. When he hung up, she was no longer worried about being tailed. She counted on it. She called Geraldine, caught her going out the door to work.
Rosenkrantz spun off the wall to smash the heel of his heavy shoe into the flimsy door just at the latch. It flew back against the wall with a crash. He went in low and to the left, Guildenstern, behind him, high and to the right. Two women were in the room. The cops holstered their pieces.
“Okay, you’ve had your little joke!” yelled Guildenstern. “Now, where in the fuck is Yana?”
Giselle Marc said to the round-faced Italian-looking woman with her, “The hairball is Guildenstern, the cueball is Rosenkrantz. They’re supposed to be Homicide cops.” To the cops, she said coldly, “I believe Yana has left the country.”
“How? She doesn’t have a passport, she can’t get one from a Gypsy documenter because she’s marime . . .” Rosenkrantz stopped to point at Giselle. “You! You gave her your passport!”
“My passport was recently stolen, yes,” Giselle admitted haughtily. “I have reported the loss to the State Department and have applied for a replacement document.”
Guildenstern grinned evilly. “You ain’t gettin’ away with that one, sister. We’re gonna fry your pretty little butt—”
“Oh, grow up. Yana isn’t your killer.”
“I suppose you’re gonna tell us who is,” he sneered.
“I sure am. A woman named Luminitsa Djurik. She married Ephrem in a civil ceremony as Nadja Mihai. Together they murdered two old men with what she called magic salt.”
Despite himself, Rosenkrantz was listening.
“But those two old guys died of digitalis poisoning.”
“Magic salt is dried, crushed foxglove leaves. She would sprinkle it over their food like salt in small progressive doses like arsenic poisoning. Eventually they’d just . . . waste away.”
“Where do we find this mythical broad?” asked Guildenstern with a sneer in his voice.
Giselle smiled sweetly. “After she killed Ephrem, she started slowly poisoning a third old man named Whit Stabler—”
Rosenkrantz, obviously now a believer, was aghast.
“You knew this and you didn’t report it so we—”
“Would you have listened to me? This way, Mr. Stabler is saf
e in the hospital and Larry Ballard is at his home on Portola Drive right now, holding Luminitsa Djurik for you. She was trying to kill him and got knocked out with a frying pan.”
Guildenstern sighed. “Let’s go get her, partner. This lady here is just too goddammed much for me.”
When they were gone, Geraldine asked, “Can I tell Yana the news?”
Giselle was a bit surprised. “You know where she is?”
“She calls me from Rome.”
“Rome again,” said Giselle. “Dan Kearny’s in Rome. He’s staying at a place called San Filippo Neri.”
“A convent?” asked Geraldine.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I’m Italian, remember. I know my Italian saints.” She sighed. “I don’t know anything about the world. San Francisco is the farthest I’ve ever been from Dubuque.”
An hour later, Yana called Geraldine from Rome. An hour after that, she descended from her room at the Hotel Canada with both suitcases in hand. All her sophistication of dress and manner were gone. Her hair pulled back, her face without makeup, she looked like a schoolgirl in Rome for the religious celebrations. The thick-featured balding man at the front desk looked at her in heavy-lidded surprise.
“Parte già, Signorina?”
“I’m going to my cousin’s,” she laughed. She shook her hand in that very Italian gesture, with the limp fingers waggling from side to side. “Everything costs so much!”
She caught a bus to the Stazione and after three streetcar rides checked into the convent of San Filippo Neri.
Dirty Harry climbed the stairs silently. Already his one-eyed snake was twitching in his pants in expectation of the sexual delights to come. Whit’s room was dim; the shades were down, the curtains closed. A motionless form was just visible on the bed. The old fart must already have died.
Then the dead man sat up. Harry gave a strangled cry of terror—and the lights went on. Rosenkrantz was sitting under the covers, beaming at him.
“Harry my man, who makes the ideal groom for a murderess?”
Guildenstern said to Harry’s back, “An old guy with a million-dollar house who dies on his wedding day.”
“Except Whit didn’t die.” Rosenkrantz was off the bed. Harry found his voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just going to—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Guildenstern advised him.
“Until we can read you your rights,” explained Rosenkrantz.
And snapped the cuffs around Harry’s wrists. Really hard.
When Dan Kearny returned to the San Filippo Neri convent, the chapel and kitchen were dark, the office closed and locked, the TV turned off in what had probably been the sewing room. The polite nun from India who had checked him in was nowhere about. He was vaguely disappointed. He enjoyed talking with her. Nobody else even knew he was in Rome and he was a little lonely.
He got into the tiny elevator, punched three. When it shuddered to a stop at his floor and he turned toward his room, a nun passed him in the hall. Her black veil and starched wimple were unlike the habits of the nuns of San Filippo Neri, and left little of her demurely downturned face to be seen.
“Good evening, sister,” Kearny said as they passed.
“Buona sera,” she replied in a muffled voice.
At his room, the heavy slatted wooden window shutters he had left open on the latch let in just enough light for him to see the unsealed envelope on the floor inside the door. He stepped back into the corridor to read the bold block lettering.
GIARDINO ZOOLOGICO
VILLA BORGHESE
AFTER MIDNIGHT
THIS IS FOR GISELLE
He had been wrong. Someone in Rome knew him after all.
fifty-one
Just north of the Aurealian wall lies the 17th Century Villa Borghese, six kilometers in circumference and still a place of harmony in the heart of the Eternal City. Twelve hectares are given over to the Giardino Zoologico. At 4:00 P.M.., an iron-haired, stern-faced priest entered the zoo through the main entrance and did a quick tour of the grounds. Dan Kearny had noticed that the clergy seemed able to move around Rome without anyone noticing them; with his lack of the language, he needed any edge he could get.
The zoo seemed to have too many bears and large cats, not enough primates. But a new small modern-looking building caught his eye. A large sign on its locked door announced grandly, INSTITUTO DEI PRIMATI.
“This’ll be it,” he muttered to himself.
At four-fifty, when the zoo started closing for the night, he buried himself in a dense thicket near the new facility. It was a warm evening and the light lingered until nearly ten o’clock. After the voices of departing patrons died down, he dozed off.
Just at midnight, a dozen dark figures passing close by woke him up. He followed them discreetly.
Looking like a Rom was an asset for this scam. Nanoosh Tsatshimo and Wasso Tomeshti, dressed in Gypsy garb, let half a dozen of the English-speaking believers they had encountered in the bar in Piazza Leonina into Freddie’s room after collecting their hefty fee. Rudolph was waiting outside Freddie’s cage to give note paper and an envelope to each mark.
“In the thirties,” Staley told them, “the Gypsy saint, Ceferino Jiminez Malla, traveled throughout Spain with Freddie’s grandfather as his companion. Jiminez Malla could foresee the future and God let him pass this gift on to his beloved ape.”
Make it mysterious enough and hard enough to believe, and the marks would fight to give you their money.
“Jiminez Malla’s beloved companion finally died, but Freddie, last of the line, still has the gift of second sight. Seal your question about the future in the envelope, and be careful to let no one see it. Not even Freddie will ever see it—but he will answer your questions even so.”
The marks did as directed. Rudolph presented the sealed envelopes to Freddie. He selected one and pressed it against his forehead. He shut his eyes. He swayed. He opened his eyes. He tossed the unopened envelope into the waste bin attached to the wall under the observation window. He went to his computer.
Freddie started hitting his keys. Unseen behind the one-way glass, Willem started hitting his, and the answer showed up on the screen in Freddie’s cage. Freddie pointed at the words.
RED DRESS WOMAN STOP SAD. BEATRICE HAPPY IN HEAVEN. SAY BINGO GET WELL SOON.
In the observation room, Immaculata Bimbai retrieved the sealed envelope from the open back of the phony waste bin, tore it open, and handed it to Willem. She watched through the one-way glass as Willem quickly scanned the first real question and Freddie pressed the next envelope against his shiny black forehead. He grimaced and swayed. He typed. So did Willem.
LAURA LOVE YOU. SHE FAITHFUL. MARRIAGE BLESSED.
Dan Kearny had the impression that he had already met the receptionist. Dark eyes, arched brows, a strong-bridged nose, black hair pulled back to tumble down her back in a single twisted braid. No. He had been seeing that same classical Roman face all week long in the art museums on saints, angels, martyrs, Madonnas. This one, 21st Century instead of 17th, gave him a big smile. She gestured at the closed door behind her.
“Please go in. The curator can see you now.”
Willem Van De Post, curator of the Rome zoo, was a large, fit man in his early 60s with ashy thinning hair. Piercing blue eyes looked up from the papers on his desk and widened in surprise as Kearny spoke without preamble.
“I was locked in your zoo last night by accident. At midnight some Gypsies . . .”
“Surely not, Father!” exclaimed Van De Post.
“Tell me about the orangutan, my son.”
“It’s a long story,” said Willem. “Making this zoo a world-class primate center has been my life’s dream. People don’t come to the zoo to see hedgehogs and foxes, you know. Our board of directors supported the idea of such a center, but could not budget it. When I became curator I got a chance to buy an old silverback gorilla from the Munich zoo, but until now there have been only two
great apes in the primate center.”
“The gorilla and who else?”
“Myself, Father.” Willem leaned back and waved a hand at the computer. “I was exchanging e-mails with Dr. Ulysses Seal, a medical doctor in Minnesota and a prodigiously energetic conservationist. He put me in touch with captive breeding specialists in many zoos. But I had no money to buy a large primate, and had no animal of like value to exchange.”
“But then Our Lord sent you Freddie.”
Willem looked at him quizzically. “I suppose you could say that. I’ve known Robin Brantley for years from various wildlife conferences around the world, and of course knew his work training Freddie in language skills. As the date for the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong approached, he learned that the Peking Zoo wanted to take over Freddie. He flew my wife and me to Hong Kong as his guests to meet his pupil.”
“And he asked for your help,” said Kearny.“Yes. Brantley made me an offer. If we could find enough money for him to get them both out of Hong Kong clandestinely, he would give Freddie to the Rome zoo. My wife’s family are animal trainers, we both agreed that Freddie would suffer great psychological trauma if removed from Brantley’s custody. For me it was the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“How did Marr get into the picture?”
“Marr has the collector’s disease. He heard of Freddie he wanted him, and he took him. The rest you know . . . Mr. Kearny.”
Kearny shrugged. “I do indeed. It cost DKA ten thousand dollars to mount the Xanadu operation to rescue Freddie, Baron.”
“How long have you known?” demanded Willem.
“Since a few days ago. When I learned that Marr had stolen the animal from a man in Rome, I knew you were either that man or his agent. When you stayed in the Observation Room rather than meet Freddie yourself, it was because Freddie knew you. You couldn’t let him see you. I followed a hunch—and the Gypsies—to Rome instead of Berlin.”
“Your reasoning is excellent and your team was excellent, Mr. Kearny. But . . .” Willem opened his hands, sadly. “I regret that I have no money to give you.”