Here, the dead sleep.
Here are treasures, seen and unseen.
Here is temptation.
And here is evil.
CHAPTER NINE
The windows in the room were covered with sheets of metal riveted to the walls, preventing any natural light from entering. There were pieces of bone on a workbench: ribs, a radius and ulnae, sections of skull. A smell of urine added a sharp, unpleasant character to the stale air in the room. Beneath the bench were four or five wooden packing crates containing straw and paper. Against the far wall, to the right of the blacked-out windows, was a console table. At each end rested more skulls, all missing their lower jaw, with what appeared to be a bone from the upper arm clasped beneath the upper mandible. A hole had been made in the tops of the skulls, into which candles had been inserted. They flickered, illuminating the figure that hovered behind them.
It was black, about two feet in height, and appeared to be made from a combination of human and animal remains. The wing of a large bird had been carefully stripped of its skin and feathers, and the bones skillfully fixed in place so that the wing stood outstretched, as though the creature to which it belonged were about to take flight. The wing was fixed to a section of spine from which a small rib cage also curled. It might have belonged to a child or a monkey, but I couldn’t tell which. To the left of the spine there was, instead of a second wing, a skeletal arm, with all of the bones in place, down to the tiny fingers. The arm was raised, the fingers grasping. They ended in small sharp nails. The right leg looked like the back leg of a cat or dog, judging by the angle of the joint. The left was clearly closer to that of a human, but was unfinished, the wire frame visible from the ankle down.
The fusion of animal and man was clearest, though, in the head, which was slightly out of proportion to the rest of the figure. Whoever had crafted it possessed an artistry to match his disturbed vision. A multiplicity of different creatures had been used to create it, and I had to look closely to find the lines where one ended and another began: half of a primate’s jaw was carefully attached to that of a child, while the upper part of the facial area between jaws and forehead had been formed using sections of white bone and bird heads. Finally, horns emerged from the top of a human skull, one barely visible and resembling the node on the head of an immature deer, the other ramlike and curling around the back of the skull, almost touching the statue’s small clavicle.
“If this guy is subletting, he’s in a shitload of trouble,” said Angel.
Louis was examining one of the skulls upon the workbench, his face barely inches from its empty sockets.
“They look old,” I said, answering a question that had not been asked.
He nodded, then left the room. I heard him moving boxes around, searching for some clue as to the whereabouts of Alice.
I followed the smell of urine to the bathroom. The tub contained more bones, all soaking in yellow liquid. The stink of ammonia made my eyes water. I made a cursory search of the cabinets, a handkerchief pressed to my nose and mouth, then closed the door behind me. Angel was still examining the bone statue, apparently fascinated by it. I wasn’t surprised. The creation looked like it belonged in an art gallery or a museum. It was repugnant, but breathtaking in its artistry and in the fluidity with which one creature’s remains flowed into the next.
“I just can’t figure out what the hell this is supposed to be,” he asked. “It looks like a man changing into a bird, or a bird changing into a man.”
“You see a lot of birds with horns?” I said.
Angel reached out a finger to touch the protuberances on the skull, then thought better of it.
“I guess it’s not a bird, then.”
“I guess not.”
I took a piece of newspaper from the floor and used it to lift one of the skull candlesticks from the table, then shined my mini Maglite inside. There were serial numbers of some kind etched into the bone. I examined the others and all had similar markings, except for one that was adorned with the symbol of a two-pronged fork and rested on a pelvic bone. I took one of the numbered skulls and placed it in a tea chest, then carefully added the forked skull and the statue. I took the box into the next room, where Louis was kneeling on the floor. Before him stood an open suitcase. It contained tools, among them scalpels, files, and small bone saws, all carefully packed away in canvas pockets, and a pair of videocassettes. Each was labeled along the side with a long line of initials, and dates.
“He was getting ready to leave,” said Louis.
“Looks like it.”
He gestured at the chest in my hands.
“You found something?”
“Maybe. There are marks on these skulls. I’d like someone to take a look at them, perhaps at the statue too.”
Louis removed one of the cassettes from the case, placed it in the VCR, then turned on the TV. There was nothing to be seen for a time except static, then the picture cleared. It showed an area of yellow sand and stone, across which the camera panned jerkily before coming to rest upon the partially clothed body of a young woman. She lay facedown upon the ground, and there was blood upon her back, her legs, and the once-white shorts that she wore. Her dark hair was spread across the sand like tendrils of ink in dirty water.
The young woman stirred. A male voice spoke in what sounded like Spanish.
“I think he said that she’s still alive,” said Louis.
A figure appeared in front of the camera. The cameraman moved slightly to get a better shot. A pair of expensive black boots came into view.
“No,” said another voice, in English.
The camera was pushed away, preventing it from getting a clear view of the man or the girl. It picked up a sound like a coconut cracking. Someone laughed. The cameraman recovered himself and focused once again on the girl. There was blood flowing across the sand around her head.
“Puta.” It was the first voice again.
Whore.
The tape went blank for a moment, then resumed. This time, the girl had yellow highlights in her dark hair, but the surroundings were similar: sand and rocks. A bug stalked across a smear of blood close by her mouth, the only part of her face that was visible beneath her hair. A hand reached out, sweeping the hair back so that the cameraman could get a better view of her, then that section ended, and a new one began, with another dead girl, this one naked on a rock.
Louis fast-forwarded the tape. I lost track of the number of women. When he was done, he inserted the second cassette and did the same. Once or twice, a girl with darker skin appeared, and he stopped the image, examining it closely before moving on. All of the women were Hispanic.
“I’m going to call the cops,” I told him.
“Not yet. This guy ain’t gonna leave this shit here for just anyone to find. He’ll come back for it, and soon. If you’re right about being watched in the alley, then whoever lives here could be outside right now. I say we wait.”
I thought about what I was going to say to him before I opened my mouth. Rachel, had she been present to witness it, might have considered this progress on my part.
“Louis, we don’t have time to wait around. The cops can do surveillance better than we can. This guy is a link, but maybe we can pick up the chain farther on. The longer we stay still, the more the chances diminish of finding Alice before something bad happens to her.”
I’ve seen people, even experienced cops, fall into the trap of using the past tense when talking about a missing person. That’s why, sometimes, it pays to work out in your head what you’re planning to say before the words start spilling out of your mouth.
I gently lifted the box I was holding. “Stay here for a while longer, see what else you can find. If I can’t get back here first, I’ll call you and give you time to get out before I talk to the cops.”
Garcia sat in his car, a yellow Toyota, and watched the men enter his apartment. He guessed that the pimp was smarter than he had appeared to be, because there was no other way t
hat they could have found his base so quickly. The pimp had followed someone to Garcia, probably in an effort to gain some room for maneuver in case his betrayal of the girl rebounded on him. Garcia was furious. A day or two later and the apartment would have been empty, its occupant gone. There was much in those rooms that was valuable to Garcia. He wanted it back. Yet Brightwell’s instructions had been clear: follow them and find out where they go, but don’t hurt them or attempt to engage them. If they separated, he was to stay with the man in the leather jacket, the one who had lingered in the alleyway as though aware of their presence. The fat man had appeared distracted as he left Garcia, but also strangely excited. Garcia knew better than to ask him why.
Don’t hurt them.
But that was before Brightwell knew where they were going. Now they were in Garcia’s place, and close to what they were seeking, although they might not recognize it if they saw it. Nevertheless, if they called the police, then Garcia would become a marked man in this country just as he was back home, and he might also be at risk from the very people who were sheltering him if his exposure threatened to bring down trouble on their heads. Garcia tried to recall if there was any way of connecting Brightwell to him through whatever remained in the apartment. He didn’t believe so, but he had watched some of the cop shows on TV, and sometimes it seemed like they could perform miracles using only dust and dirt. Then he considered all of his hard work in recent months, the great effort of construction for which he had been brought to the city. This too was threatened by the presence of the visitors. If they discovered it, or decided to report whatever they found in Garcia’s apartment, then all would be undone. Garcia was proud of what had been built; it was worthy to stand alongside the Capuchin church in Rome, the church behind the Farnese Palace, even Sedlec itself.
Garcia took out his cell. Brightwell’s number was to be called only in an emergency, but Garcia figured that this qualified. He entered the digits and waited.
“They’re at my place,” he said, once the fat man answered.
“What remains?”
“Tools,” said Garcia. “Materials.”
“Anything that I should be concerned about?”
Garcia considered his options, then made his decision.
“No,” he lied.
“Then walk away.”
“I will,” Garcia lied again.
When I’m done.
He touched his fingers to the small relic that hung from a silver chain amid the hairs of his chest. It was a shard of bone, taken from the body of the woman for whom these men were searching, these trespassers on Garcia’s sacred place. Garcia had dedicated the relic to his guardian, to Santa Muerte, and now it was imbued with her spirit, her essence.
“Muertecita,” he whispered, as his anger grew. “Reza por mi.”
Sarah Yeates was one of those people you needed in your life. Apart from being smart and funny, she was also a treasure trove of esoteric information, a status that was due at least in part to her work in the library of the Museum of Natural History. She was dark-haired, looked about ten years younger than her age, and had the kind of personality that scared off dumb men and forced the smart ones to think fast on their feet. I wasn’t sure what category I fell into where Sarah was concerned. I hoped I was in the second group, but I sometimes suspected that I might be included by default, and Sarah was just waiting for a vacancy to open up in the first group so she could file me there instead.
I called her at home. It took her a few rings to answer, and when she did her voice was foggy with sleep.
“Huh?” she said.
“Hello to you too.”
“Who is this?”
“Charlie Parker. Am I calling at a bad time?”
“You are if you’re trying to be funny. You do know what time it is, right?”
“Late.”
“Yeah, which is what you’ll be if you don’t have a good reason for calling me.”
“It’s important. I need to pick your brain about something.”
I heard her sigh and sink back into her pillow.
“Go on.”
“I have some items that I’ve found in an apartment. They’re human bones. Some have been made into candlesticks. There’s also a statue of some kind, constructed from human and animal remains mixed together. I found a bath of urine with bones in it, so I think someone was treating them for some reason. Pretty soon I’m going to have to call the cops and tell them what I’ve found, so I don’t have long. You’re the first person I’ve woken over this, but I expect to wake others before the night is through. Is there anyone in the museum, or even outside it, who might be able to tell me something I can use?”
Sarah was quiet for so long that I thought she’d fallen asleep again.
“Sarah?” I said.
“Jeez, you’re impatient,” she said. “Give a girl time to think.”
There were noises from the other end of the line as she got out of bed, told me to hold on, then put the phone down. I waited, hearing drawers opening and closing in the background. Eventually she came back.
“I’m not going to give you the names of anyone at the museum, because I’d kind of like to keep my job. It pays my rent, you know, and enables me to keep a telephone so dipshits who don’t even remember to send a Christmas card can call me in the dead of night asking for my help.”
“I didn’t know you were religious.”
“That’s not the point. I like presents.”
“I’ll make it up to you this year.”
“You’d better. Okay, if this runs dry, I’ll arrange for you to talk to some people in the morning, but this is the guy you need to meet anyway. You got a pen? Right, well you also have a namesake. His name is Neddo, Charles Neddo. He’s got a place down in Cortlandt Alley. The plate beside his door says he’s an antique dealer, but the front of the store is full of junk. He wouldn’t make enough out of it to feed flies if it weren’t for his sidelines.”
“Which are?”
“He deals in what collectors term ‘esoterica.’ Occult stuff, mainly, but he’s been known to sell artifacts that you don’t generally find outside of museum basements. He keeps that merchandise in a locked room behind a curtain at the back of the store. I’ve been in there, once or twice, so I know what I’m talking about. I seem to recall seeing items similar to the ones you’re talking about, although Neddo’s equivalents would be pretty old. He’s the place to start, though. He lives above the store. Go wake him up and let me get back to sleep.”
“Will he cooperate with a stranger?”
“He will if the stranger offers him something in return. Just be sure to bring along your finds. If they’re interesting to him, then you’ll learn something.”
“Thanks, Sarah.”
“Yeah, whatever. I hear you found a girlfriend. How’d that happen?”
“Good luck.”
“Yours, I think, not hers. Don’t forget my present.”
Then she hung up.
Louis moved through the unfinished floor, framed by doorways and lit by moonlight, until he came at last to the window. The window did not look onto the street. Instead, it showed Louis the dimly lit interior of a white-tiled room. In the center of the room, over a drain in the sloped floor, a chair had been fixed. There were leather restraints on the arms and the legs.
Louis opened the door and entered the white room. A shape moved to his left, and he almost fired at it before he saw his own reflection in the two-way glass. He knelt down by the drain. The floor, the drain, all were clean. Even the chair had been scrubbed, the grain cleansed of any trace of those who had occupied it. He smelled disinfectant and bleach. His gloved fingers touched the wood of the armrest, then gripped it tightly.
Not here, he thought. Don’t let her life have ended here.
Cortlandt Alley was a monkey puzzle of fire escapes and hanging wires. Neddo’s storefront was black, and the only clue to his business was a small brass plate on the brickwork with the words NEDDO ANTI
QUES. A black cast-iron screen protected the glass, but the interior was concealed by gray drapes that had not been moved in a very long time, and the whole storefront looked like it had recently been sprayed with dust. To the left of the glass was a black steel door with an intercom beside it, inset with a camera lens. The windows above were all dark.
I had seen no trace of anyone watching the apartment building when I left. Angel covered me from the door as I went to my car, and I took the most circuitous route that I could to Manhattan. Once or twice, I thought I saw a beat-up yellow Toyota a couple of cars behind me, but it was gone by the time I got to Cortlandt Alley.
I pressed the button on the intercom. It was answered within seconds by a man, and he didn’t sound like he’d just been woken up.
“I’m looking for Charles Neddo,” I said.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Parker. I’m a private investigator.”
“It’s a little late to be calling, isn’t it?”
“It’s important.”
“How important?”
The alley was empty, and I could see no one on the street. I took the statue from the bag and, carefully holding it by its plinth, displayed it before the lens.
“This important,” I said.
“Show me some ID.”
I juggled the statue, found my wallet, and flipped it open.
Nothing happened for a time, then the voice said: “Wait there.”
He took his time. Any longer and I could have put down roots. Eventually, I heard the sound of a key in the lock and bolts being drawn back. The door opened and a man stood before me, segmented by a series of strong security chains. He was late middle-aged, with pointed tufts of gray hair sticking up from his skull that gave him the appearance of an ageing punk. His eyes were very small and round, and his mouth was set in a plump scowl. He wore a bright green robe that seemed to have trouble stretching all the way around his body. Beneath it I could see black trousers and a white shirt, wrinkled but clean.
The Black Angel Page 18