Heigh-ho, as Creeper would say, what’d you expect, really?
I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more. She walks in beauty like the night. But she’s not so pretty, not really, back in 1808 there were lovelier women, and Bengt’s just the man to land ’em too, although Jägerhorn probably does even better. My Veronica’s just the queen bee of a corrupt poisoned hive, that’s all. They’re done now. They’re talking. Or rather the Maje is talking, bless his soul, he’s into his ice cream litany, he’s just been making love to Ronnie and now he’s lying there in bed talking about Sveaborg, damn him. “… only a thirty percent chance that the massacre will take place,” he’s saying, “the fortress is very strong, formidably strong, but the Russians have the numbers, and if they do bring up sufficient reinforcements, Cronstedt’s fears may prove to be substantial. But even that will work out. The assassination, well, the rules will be suspended, they’ll slaughter everyone inside, but Sveaborg will become a sort of Swedish Alamo, and the branching paths ought to come together again. Good probability. The end results will be the same.” Ronnie isn’t listening to him, though; there’s a look on her face I’ve never seen, drunken, hungry, scared, and now she’s moving lower on him and doing something I’ve only seen in my fantasies, and now I don’t want to watch anymore, no, oh no, no, oh no.
General Suchtelen had established his command post on the outskirts of Helsinki, another clever ploy. When Sveaborg turned its cannon on him, every third shot told upon the city the fortress was supposed to protect, until Cronstedt finally ordered the firing stopped. Suchtelen took advantage of that concession as he had all the rest. His apartments were large and comfortable; from his windows, across the white expanse of ice and snow, the gray form of Sveaborg loomed large. Colonel Bengt Anttonen stared at it morosely as he waited in the anteroom with Cronstedt’s other courier and the Russians who had escorted them to Suchtelen. Finally the inner doors opened and the dark Russian captain emerged. “The general will see you now,” he said.
General Suchtelen sat behind a wide wooden desk. An aide stood by his right arm. A guard was posted at the door, and the captain entered with the Swedish couriers. On the broad, bare expanse of the desk was an inkwell, a blotter, and two signed safe conducts, the passes that would take them through the Russian lines to Stockholm and the Swedish king, one by the southern and the other by the northern route. Suchtelen said something, in Russian; the aide provided a translation. Horses had been provided, and fresh mounts would be available for them along the way, orders had been given. Anttonen listened to the discussion with a curiously empty feeling and a vague sense of disorientation. Suchtelen was going to let them go. Why did that surprise him? Those were the terms of the agreement, after all, those were the conditions of the truce. As the translator droned on, Anttonen felt increasingly lost and listless. He had conspired to get himself here, the voices had told him to, and now here he was, and he did not know why, nor did he know what he was to do.
They handed him one of the safe conducts, placed it in his outstretched hand. Perhaps it was the touch of the paper; perhaps it was something else. A sudden red rage filled him, an anger so fierce and blind and all-consuming that for an instant the world seemed to flicker and vanish and he was somewhere else, seeing naked bodies twining in a room whose walls were made of pale green blocks. And then he was back, the rage still hot within him, but cooling now, cooling quickly. They were staring at him, all of them. With a sudden start, Anttonen realized that he had let the safe conduct fall to the floor, that his hand had gone to the hilt of his sword instead, and the blade was now half-drawn, the metal shining dully in the sunlight that streamed through Suchtelen’s window. Had they acted more quickly, they might have stopped him, but he had caught them all by surprise. Suchtelen began to rise from his chair, moving as if in slow motion. Slow motion, Bengt wondered briefly, what was that? But he knew, he knew. The sword was all the way out now. He heard the captain shout something behind him, the aide began to go for his pistol, but Quick Draw McGraw he wasn’t, Bengt had the drop on them all, heigh-ho. He grinned, spun the sword in his hand, and offered it, hilt first, to General Suchtelen.
“My sword, sir, and Colonel Jägerhorn’s compliments,” Bengt Anttonen heard himself say with something approaching awe. “The fortress is in your grasp. Colonel Jägerhorn suggests that you hold up our passage for a month. I concur. Detain us here, and you are certain of victory. Let us go, and who knows what chance misfortune might occur to bring the Swedish fleet? It is a long time until the third of May. In such a time, the king might die, or the horse might die, or you or I might die. Or the horse might talk.”
The translator put away his pistol and began to translate; the other courier began to protest, ineffectually. Bengt Anttonen found himself possessed of an eloquence that even his good friend might envy. He spoke on and on. He had one moment of strange weakness, when his stomach churned and his head swam, but somehow he knew it was nothing to be alarmed at, it was just the pills taking effect, it was just a monster dying far away in a metal coffin full of night, and then there were none, heigh-ho, one siege was ending and another would go on and on, and what did it matter to Bengt, the world was a big, crisp, cold, jeweled oyster. He thought this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and what the hell, maybe he’d save their asses after all, if he happened to feel like it, but he’d do it his way.
After a time, General Suchtelen, nodding, reached out and accepted the proffered sword.
Colonel Bengt Anttonen reached Stockholm on the third of May, in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Eight, with a message for Gustavus Adolphus IV, King of Sweden. On the same date, Sveaborg, impregnable Sveaborg, Gibraltar of the North, surrendered to the inferior Russian forces.
At the conclusion of hostilities, Colonel Anttonen resigned his commission in the Swedish army and became an émigré, first to England, and later to America. He took up residence in New York City, where he married, fathered nine children, and became a well-known and influential journalist, widely respected for his canny ability to sense coming trends. When events proved him wrong, as happened infrequently, Anttonen was always surprised. He was a founder of the Republican Party, and his writings were instrumental in the election of John Charles Fremont to the Presidency in 1856.
In 1857, a year before his death, Anttonen played Paul Morphy in a New York chess tournament, and lost a celebrated game. Afterward, his only comment was, “I could have beat him at dominoes,” a phrase that Morphy’s biographers are fond of quoting.
THE SKIN TRADE
Willie smelled the blood a block away from her apartment.
He hesitated and sniffed at the cool night air again. It was autumn, with the wind off the river and the smell of rain in the air, but the scent, that scent, was copper and spice and fire, unmistakable. He knew the smell of human blood.
A jogger bounced past, his orange sweats bright under the light of the full moon. Willie moved deeper into the shadows. What kind of fool ran at this hour of the night? Asshole, Willie thought, and the sentiment emerged in a low growl. The man looked around, startled. Willie crept back further into the foliage. After a long moment, the jogger continued up the bicycle path, moving a little faster now.
Taking a chance, Willie moved to the edge of the park, where he could stare down her street from the bushes. Two police cruisers were parked outside her building, lights flashing. What the hell had she gone and done?
When he heard the distant sirens and saw another set of lights approaching, flashing red and blue, Willie felt close to panic. The blood scent was heavy in the air and set his skull to pounding. It was too much. He turned and ran deep into the park, for once not caring who might see him, anxious only to get away. He ran south, swift and silent, until he was panting for breath, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. He wasn’t in shape for this kind of shit. He yearned for the safety of his own apartment, for his La-Z-Boy and a good shot of Primatene Mist.
Down near
the riverfront, he finally came to a stop, wheezing and trembling, half-drunk with blood and fear. He crouched near a bridge abutment, staring at the headlights of passing cars and listening to the sound of traffic to soothe his ragged nerves.
Finally, when he was feeling a little stronger, he ran down a squirrel. The blood was hot and rich in his mouth, and the flesh made him feel ever so much stronger, but afterwards he got a hairball from all the goddamned fur.
“Willie,” Randi Wade said suspiciously, “if this is just some crazy scheme to get into my pants, it’s not going to work.”
The small man studied his reflection in the antique oval mirror over her couch, tried out several faces until he found a wounded look he seemed to like, then turned back to let her see it. “You’d think that? You’d think that of me? I come to you, I need your help, and what do I get, cheap sexual innuendo. You ought to know me better than that, Wade, I mean, Jesus, how long we been friends?”
“Nearly as long as you’ve been trying to get into my pants,” Randi said. “Face it, Flambeaux, you’re a horny little bastard.”
Willie deftly changed the subject. “It’s very amateur hour, you know, doing business out of your apartment.”
He sat in one of her red velvet wingback chairs. “I mean, it’s a nice place, don’t get me wrong, I love this Victorian stuff, can’t wait to see the bedroom, but isn’t a private eye supposed to have a sleazy little office in the bad part of town? You know, frosted glass on the door, a bottle in the drawer, lots of dust on the filing cabinets …”
Randi smiled. “You know what they charge for those sleazy little offices in the bad part of town? I’ve got a phone machine, I’m listed in the Yellow Pages …”
“AAA-Wade Investigations,” Willie said sourly. “How do you expect people to find you? Wade, it should be under W, if God had meant everybody to be listed under A, He wouldn’t have invented all those other letters.” He coughed. “I’m coming down with something,” he complained, as if it were her fault. “Are you going to help me, or what?”
“Not until you tell me what this is all about,” Randi said, but she’d already decided to do it. She liked Willie, and she owed him. He’d given her work when she needed it, with his friendship thrown into the bargain. Even his constant, futile attempts to jump her bones were somehow endearing, although she’d never admit it to Willie. “You want to hear about my rates?”
“Rates?” Willie sounded pained. “What about friendship? What about old times’ sake? What about all the times I bought you lunch?”
“You never bought me lunch,” Randi said accusingly.
“Is it my fault you kept turning me down?”
“Taking a bucket of Popeye’s extra spicy to an adult motel for a snack and a quickie does not constitute a lunch invitation in my book,” Randi said.
Willie had a long, morose face, with broad rubbery features capable of an astonishing variety of expressions. Right now he looked as though someone had just run over his puppy. “It would not have been a quickie,” he said with vast wounded dignity. He coughed, and pushed himself back in the chair, looking oddly childlike against the red velvet cushions. “Randi,” he said, his voice suddenly gone scared and weary, “this is for real.”
She’d first met Willie Flambeaux when his collection agency had come after her for the unpaid bills left by her ex. She’d been out of work, broke, and desperate, and Willie had taken pity on her and given her work at the agency. As much as she’d hated hassling people for money, the job had been a godsend, and she’d stayed long enough to wipe out her debt. Willie’s lopsided smile, endless propositions, and mordant intelligence had somehow kept her sane. They’d kept in touch, off and on, even after Randi had left the hounds of hell, as Willie liked to call the collection agency.
All that time, Randi had never heard him sound scared, not even when discoursing on the prospect of imminent death from one of his many grisly and undiagnosed maladies. She sat down on the couch. “Then I’m listening,” she said. “What’s the problem?”
“You see this morning’s Courier?” he asked. “The woman that was murdered over on Parkway?”
“I glanced at it,” Randi said.
“She was a friend of mine.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Suddenly Randi felt guilty for giving him a hard time. “Willie, I’m so sorry.”
“She was just a kid,” Willie said. “Twenty-three. You would have liked her. Lots of spunk. Bright too. She’d been in a wheelchair since high school. The night of her senior prom, her date drank too much and got pissed when she wouldn’t go all the way. On the way home he floored it and ran head-on into a semi. Really showed her. The boy was killed instantly. Joanie lived through it, but her spine was severed, she was paralyzed from the waist down. She never let it stop her. She went on to college and graduated with honors, had a good job.”
“You knew her through all this?”
Willie shook his head. “Nah. Met her about a year ago. She’d been a little overenthusiastic with her credit cards, you know the tune. So I showed up on her doorstep one day, introduced her to Mr. Scissors, one thing led to another and we got to be friends. Like you and me, kind of.” He looked up into her eyes. “The body was mutilated. Who’d do something like that? Bad enough to kill her, but …” Willie was beginning to wheeze. His asthma. He stopped, took a deep breath. “And what the fuck does it mean? Mutilated, Jesus, what a nasty word, but mutilated how? I mean, are we talking Jack the Ripper here?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.” He wet his lips. “I phoned the cops today, tried to get more details. It was a draw. I wouldn’t tell them my name and they wouldn’t give me any information. I tried the funeral home too. A closed-casket wake, then the body is going to be cremated. Sounds to me like something getting covered up.”
“Like what?” she said.
Willie sighed. “You’re going to think this is real weird, but what if …” He ran his fingers through his hair. He looked very agitated. “What if Joanie was … well, savaged … ripped up, maybe even … well, partially eaten … you know, like by … some kind of animal.”
Willie was going on, but Randi was no longer listening.
A coldness settled over her. It was old and gray, full of fear, and suddenly she was twelve years old again, standing in the kitchen door listening to her mother make that sound, that terrible high thin wailing sound. The men were still trying to talk to her, to make her understand … some kind of animal, one of them said. Her mother didn’t seem to hear or understand, but Randi did. She’d repeated the words aloud, and all the eyes had gone to her, and one of the cops had said, Jesus, the kid, and they’d all stared until her mother had finally gotten up and put her to bed. She began to weep uncontrollably as she tucked in the sheets … her mother, not Randi. Randi hadn’t cried. Not then, not at the funeral, not ever in all the years since.
“Hey. Hey! Are you okay?” Willie was asking.
“I’m fine,” she said sharply.
“Jesus, don’t scare me like that, I got problems of my own, you know? You looked like … hell, I don’t know what you looked like, but I wouldn’t want to meet it in a dark alley.”
Randi gave him a hard look. “The paper said Joan Sorenson was murdered. An animal attack isn’t murder.”
“Don’t get legal on me, Wade. I don’t know, I don’t even know that an animal was involved, maybe I’m just nuts, paranoid, you name it. The paper left out the grisly details. The fucking paper left out a lot.” Willie was breathing rapidly, twisting around in his chair, his fingers drumming on the arm.
“Willie, I’ll do whatever I can, but the police are going to go all out on something like this, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to add.”
“The police,” he said in a morose tone. “I don’t trust the police.” He shook his head. “Randi, if the cops go through her things, my name will come up, you know, on her Rolodex and stuff.”
“So you’re afraid you might
be a suspect, is that it?”
“Hell, I don’t know, maybe so.”
“You have an alibi?”
Willie looked very unhappy. “No. Not really. I mean, not anything you could use in court. I was supposed to … to see her that night. Shit, I mean, she might have written my name on her fucking calendar for all I know. I just don’t want them nosing around, you know?”
“Why not?”
He made a face. “Even us turnip-squeezers have our dirty little secrets. Hell, they might find all those nude photos of you.” She didn’t laugh. Willie shook his head. “I mean, God, you’d think the cops would have better things to do than go around solving murders—I haven’t gotten a parking ticket in over a year. Makes you wonder what the hell this town is coming to.” He had begun to wheeze again. “Now I’m getting too worked up again, damn it. It’s you, Wade. I’ll bet you’re wearing crotchless panties under those jeans, right?” Glaring at her accusingly, Willie pulled a bottle of Primatene Mist from his coat pocket, stuck the plastic snout in his mouth, and gave himself a blast, sucking it down greedily.
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