This ghastly display reminded him of Nazi death camps where prisoners had been forced to extract gold fillings from the mouths of gassed victims. Midas must be a psychopath. Elías took out his phone and snapped a photo.
He looked for the faux Bacon, but as he’d suspected, it was nowhere to be found. Alicia must still have it.
He went back to the master bedroom, reset the alarm, stepped outside, closed the balcony door, and lowered the metal shutters behind him. He swung down to the ground, and went to his sister’s car.
Alicia’s uncle was dead; that was obvious. Midas must have murdered him years before, so Alicia’s story of the kidnapping was absurd. But why had the gangster killed a broken-down old circus magician? Had he uncovered some of his boss’s dirty secrets? What possible importance could an isolated and half-crazy old man have had? Every discovery Elías made raised new questions.
And the bishop’s painting was still missing.
35
L was lying in bed next to Midas when he awoke, eyes bloodshot, head pounding. He thrashed about blindly reaching for her. He couldn’t remember a thing and desperately needed an explanation.
“You took too much of the drug last night. I warned you it was dangerous. It could have killed you.”
“Then why the hell did you give me so much?”
“Your choke hold was quite persuasive.”
Midas didn’t respond. L got dressed, then made breakfast and brought it to him in bed with some ibuprofen. She gave him a good-bye kiss and left him to sleep it off. She had important business to take care of—like planning an assassination. Under the influence of the W, Midas had let slip that the bishop went to El Rincón de Pepe for dinner every Thursday.
L knew the place—several clients had taken her there for fancy meals. Her plan was simple. They’d get a table for two and order several bottles of wine. Her uncle would distract the man long enough for her to spike the bishop’s wine with W. Enough to kill.
Thursday was still two days off, though, so they would follow their usual routines and not attract any attention.
But L became aware of an unusual smell as soon as she and her uncle arrived at the Midas Piano Bar for their shifts that evening. As she tried to place the faint, acrid odor, the bouncer told them to head up to the office—the boss wanted to see them. The odor suddenly swelled to a stench of putrefaction that made her stomach heave. Instinctively, she dipped into her bag for the two vials of W. She clutched them like treasures, one in either hand, as they climbed the stairs. She silently thanked her nose for the warning. Two muscular types grabbed them when they stepped into the room, forced them onto chairs, and tied their hands behind them.
“What’s all this about?”
“Oh,” Midas said with a smile, “I think you know.”
He pushed a button, and a screen lit up with video footage of his bedroom. Midas lay in a heap on the bed, barely conscious, while L leaned over him like a vulture devouring its prey. She heard herself interrogating him about the bishop.
The son of a bitch must have surveillance cameras all over the mansion.
Midas leaned into L’s face. “Who are you people?”
“You know that already,” her uncle said cheerfully. “You have our resumés.”
“Shut your mouth!” Midas got even closer and stared into L’s eyes. “Why do you want to kill the bishop?”
“Kill him? We just wanted to give him a surprise.”
Midas ran the video back. The voices were unmistakable:
I want you to tell me about the bishop.
What?
I know you work for him. I want to know what his habits are. Where we can meet him. How we can kill him.
Midas stopped the recording. “Not much room for doubt there.”
“Nothing is more certain than evident doubt.”
“Enough fancy talk.” Midas grabbed L by the hair and pulled so hard that he distorted her features and reduced her eyes to slits. “It’ll be better for you if you start singing right now.”
“An aria or a ballad?”
He released her, picked up a pair of pliers from his desk, and turned to her uncle. Two thugs grabbed the man’s head and forced his mouth open. Midas reached in, took hold of one of the gold teeth, and wrenched it out. Her uncle howled. L looked away, but another thug grabbed her head and forced her to watch.
“Don’t tell them anything,” her uncle called. He spit out blood. The thugs immobilized him as Midas jammed the pliers into his mouth and extracted another tooth.
“I really like this dental work of yours,” said Midas. “I’ll find a place of honor for it in my private collection. That’s a promise.”
The thugs guffawed. Midas yanked out another tooth and then another. He kept going until not a single tooth was left. L didn’t say a word. She watched the spectacle with a distracted air, seeming to witness the screams and the suffering of her only remaining family member, but in fact, her attention was fixed on Midas.
She studied every inch of his face, every trait and blemish. She made sure she’d never forget them. Midas clamped the pliers on her uncle’s tongue and pulled it out of his mouth. With a sadistic grin in her direction, he picked up a box cutter and slashed it in two. Her uncle lost consciousness and lolled back against the chair. Blood bubbled from his mouth. He shook uncontrollably as if in an epileptic fit.
Without pausing to contemplate his victim, Midas cut his throat.
Blood gushed everywhere, left and right. An instant later, her uncle slumped there silent, motionless and dead.
L didn’t blink. She wanted to retain the horror and intensity of that moment, to burn it into her memory as blazing proof of what evil is capable of. She would remember forever why she had to exterminate that monster and everything he represented. As well as those he was working for.
The thug holding her whipped a plastic bag over her head and secured it so no air could pass. At first she gasped and struggled for air but quickly realized the futility of resisting. Summoning her meditation techniques, she slowed her breathing and allowed her mind to go blank, becoming aware of every atom of her body. Her muscles relaxed, her pulse slowed to almost nil, and her lungs took in only enough oxygen to keep her alive. After a couple of minutes, they pulled off the bag. They were amazed and angry. The thug grabbed her hair and forced her eyes open.
“Don’t worry, you’ll talk. Maybe not today or even tomorrow, but I promise you, sooner or later you’ll talk.” Midas glanced at his henchmen. “Take her to the ship.”
36
After casing Midas’s house, Elías returned the car to his sister, took a taxi home, gulped down a painkiller, and went to bed. The next morning, he and Caridad ate breakfast while watching television news so they wouldn’t have to talk. He knew she was furious he’d gone out despite his condition. And because he’d neglected his marital duty to assist in matters more important to her, especially the emotional aspects of their relationship.
They wished each other a good day and went their separate ways.
Lola was shocked at the sight of him when he appeared at the office. She gave him a hug, heart to heart, and with a woebegone expression flew off to visit her herbalist. She came back with several creams she insisted on applying to his injured hand and face. He was grateful that she asked no questions, just offered a sympathetic ear in case he wanted to talk. When he made it clear he didn’t, Lola put a pile of folders on his desk. All were for jobs that were overdue, but Elías didn’t even bother to open them. He was too distracted.
He called Alicia’s number, but there was still no answer. The phone company sent him a text indicating the voice mails he’d left her had gone to the digital equivalent of a dead letter office. He decided to revisit the apartment on Paseo Alfonso XIII where he’d tracked her down.
He put on his sunglasses and hat in an effort to hide the marks left by the attack.
He walked to the building where they’d met and pressed the intercom button.
&n
bsp; “Yes, what is it?” said a male voice with a strong English accent.
Elías was taken aback and almost didn’t respond.
“Delivery,” he finally lied. The door clicked open.
He took the elevator, removed his hat, and rang the bell. The man who answered was tall and pale, with horn-rimmed glasses. The man looked Elías up and down. “What can I do for you?”
“Is your wife in?” Elías put on his heartiest smile. “You see, I’m selling skin cream, the best on the market, blended with specks of gold leaf, for an astonishingly low price!”
“I live alone,” the man replied in his strong accent and moved to close the door.
“I see you’re from abroad. Do you know how damaging the Spanish sun is for those from cooler climates? I have men’s cream as well. ”
“I come here for work. No beach, no sun.”
And he closed the door.
Elías went out to the street and walked to the nearby real estate registry. In the cramped waiting room, he sat in one of the worn chairs with anonymous stains and waited half an hour until his number was called. He slid a fifty to the clerk and said she could keep the change if she got his document right away. She didn’t reply but swiftly returned with paperwork that identified the apartment’s owner as Antonio Meroño Mercader.
He went back to his office. An Internet search turned up a two-year-old real estate ad offering the apartment for rent. He telephoned.
“Hello, I’m calling about the apartment you have for rent on Paseo Alfonso XIII.”
“It’s already leased.” The voice on the other end of the line was deep and masculine.
“Well, you see, I’m very interested in the place and I wouldn’t mind paying extra. Maybe I could persuade you to break the current lease?”
“How much are you offering?”
“Let’s say a thousand a month.”
“A thousand?” The man sounded surprised and suddenly very interested. “For how long?”
“Five years to start out. I’m setting up an office. If we do well, it might be until I retire.”
“I’ve just rented it for two years. I’ll have to check with my attorney.” There was a certain reluctance in the man’s voice. Perhaps Elías had overshot with the rent.
“I am an attorney. Perhaps I can give you a hand . . . Who’s on the lease now?”
“A foreigner who works for SABIC Plastics. He’s here one week a month and then goes back home. It’s a fine arrangement for me. He’s very conscientious about the apartment. I’ve had careless tenants in the past.”
“If he’s a foreigner, you can cancel the lease without any problems. I doubt he’ll want to get tied up in the Spanish courts.”
“Really? I’d like to talk it over with my attorney in any case.”
“Certainly, do that. And you can discuss it with your wife,” Elías joked. “In my experience, the little ladies are always the ones to make the final decision.”
“Unfortunately, sir, I am a widower.”
“Oh, my. I beg your pardon. If you don’t mind, I’ll do some checking of my own and call again later this morning.”
He hung up, downcast and worried. Alicia must have known the man was rarely there and somehow obtained the keys. Were they friends? Was she the cleaning woman? Had she known Elías was tracking her and set it all up so he’d find her there?
The auction house had copied that address from her ID card, so the identity must be fake too. He checked his notes and saw “Alicia” had claimed to be working for Paris Selection, a modeling agency. An Internet search turned up no agency by that name. Nothing even close.
Elías was puzzled. Surely she’d want to know what he’d discovered so far. Why else would she have been waiting for him in that borrowed apartment? Why spin yarns about a kidnapped uncle? Was she just trying to make him believe she didn’t have the painting so he’d go away? That was ridiculous. She’d wanted him to investigate Midas.
With no remaining leads, it looked like he’d just have to wait for her to call. Soon, he hoped.
Elías dug out his mirror cube and focused on it, sliding the bright squares up and down, right and left, trying to fit them into a coherent pattern just as he was doing with his thoughts. The squares slid every which way, refusing to approach something even vaguely resembling a cube.
He’d been tempted to look up the solution on the Internet but decided against it. He had to solve it for himself. And in the meantime, the mechanical puzzle freed his mind. It allowed him to take a step back, get perspective on his situation, maybe find a new approach. So he stared into space and explored the puzzle only by touch, noting the square tiles, the pegs, and the way the shape expanded or contracted when he manipulated it.
He stared at the painting of Judith on the office wall, his fingers still working. An idea began to take shape as his gaze idly followed the brushstrokes.
He hadn’t looked into the background of the painting itself. He’d simply obeyed his uncle’s instructions to judge whether it was an original Bacon, to buy it even if it wasn’t.
But now, right now, as his hands moved automatically, he remembered that his uncle had hired him for three or four similar jobs over the last decade. All those artworks were stored in a private room in the bishop’s cellar. The bishop had never discussed the collection.
He left the mirror cube on his desk and checked his files. His memory was accurate: a couple of years earlier, he’d been ordered to contact a private owner to purchase an unsigned work that looked like a Braque. It showed a wine bottle jutting out above a pile of three-dimensional parallelograms. Some years before that, he’d gone to a few auctions to acquire paintings with similar themes. For example, one depicted a wine bottle painted in black vertical strokes over a field of horizontal strokes of the same color, supposedly the work of Soulages. Another was of a mother and son harvesting grapes in a vineyard against a colorful background. His uncle believed it was a Chagall. None of them had been certified as originals. They were uncatalogued paintings without signatures, and each had something to do with wine. Clearly, they were related, but what was the bishop’s angle?
He returned the folders to the filing cabinet, settled behind his desk, and again turned his eyes to the painting of Judith. This time, he allowed himself to dwell on the colors, the violence, the powerful gush of blood from Holofernes’s neck about to spray the table and walls. It occurred to him that his understanding of the work had changed. He was starting to see Alicia as a modern equivalent of the biblical Judith: a woman unchecked by pity or scruples living a lie in order to—what? Avenge her uncle?
He leaned back and stretched out his legs, momentarily distracted by the clatter of Lola’s printer in the front room. His religion classes had never mentioned Judith. Nor had his uncle brought her up in their theology discussions. Elías had been following his mother’s advice to read the entire Bible when he’d come across the story at the age of sixteen. He’d thrilled at the tale of the brave heroine who freed her people from brutal heathen oppressors, but he hadn’t thought about her again until late in his university studies. Some scholars maintained the tale was a simple parable admonishing besieged Jews never to submit to their adversaries. On the other hand, fundamentalist Christians insisted that everything in the Bible was the literal truth. Elías had never really cared before.
Artemisia Gentileschi’s chiaroscuro technique showed the influence of Caravaggio, but the distance between his Judith and this one was vast. The Judith in Elías’s office was a woman unafraid of bloodshed. She seemed almost to be enjoying the murder.
Judith, the religious femme fatale. A woman of legendary chastity and religious devotion who sinned in order to destroy her people’s foe, the scourge of the West and loyal servant of Nebuchadnezzar the Great. It seemed absurd to believe that the Babylonian general who’d laid waste to all before him would turn into a model of restraint when an elegant woman from the besieged city arrived at his camp. Holofernes certainly had no fear of h
is victims’ god. He worshipped Marduk and was accompanied by diviners and priests to protect and guide him as he obliterated one people after another.
No, Elías decided, Judith couldn’t have gone down to the camp the way the story said; the only imaginable reception would have been laughter and swift execution. Armies traveled with their own regiments of prostitutes, women who tried to survive off the soldiers’ loot and pay. It was far more likely that Judith had infiltrated that female band as a sort of Trojan horse. And Holofernes soon would have noticed her. She’d have stood out as less ravaged by that life, those men, and their illnesses. She wouldn’t have been vulgar, and she’d have been better dressed, mysterious, and wreathed in inviting smiles. Judith would have gone to bed with him like any common whore, waiting for the opportunity to poison his wine and decapitate him in a postcoital stupor. She’d have left the tent carrying her trophy in a bundle the guards would assume was payment for services rendered. Elías imagined her telling them the general didn’t want to be disturbed before morning. And then she would have fled. Back to Bethulia, where she’d proclaim to the council of elders her slaying of the enemy and would credit divine inspiration. They would concur and approve of her sacrifice for her people. Then she’d go home for a bath and scrub. She’d douche herself with infusions of rue. She’d chew parsley and cotton root to ward off pregnancy while seeking to wipe every trace of the dead general from her body.
Judith had become a prostitute. She’d sacrificed her chastity to save her people.
Was Alicia equally determined to avenge her uncle’s death?
Suddenly, it clicked.
Paris Selection!
In Greek mythology, Paris, son of the Trojan king, lived a pastoral life far removed from human passions. That’s why Zeus chose him to adjudicate the dispute among Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera. Each claimed to be the most beautiful woman in a wedding party. Eris, the goddess of discord, gave Paris a golden apple and instructed him to deliver it to the most beautiful of the heavenly three. Each goddess tried to bribe Paris, even appearing naked before him. At last, he chose Aphrodite, who had promised him the love of the world’s most beautiful woman. So Paris fell in love with Helen, wife of the Spartan king. He found her willing and carried her off, sparking the Trojan War.
The Dark Circus Page 20