He could imagine her face, the eyes widening, then clouding over. Maybe he would put one more round into her, a coup de grace to the temple.
Sweet.
He watched them as they walked away. Debated whether or not to follow them. He would have to make his move sometime. He might not get a better chance.
——
Kate walked on with Sam Brewer, passing more warehouses. The soulless industrial buildings reminded her of a day when, at six years old, she had gone with her mother to pick up her dad at work. They had pulled up to a vast, grim structure where ships and trains offloaded goods in huge crates, stacked in great piles by men with aching backs and calloused hands, while a foreman blew a whistle and bellowed orders. It was loud, hot, airless, and it seemed like hell, a place she’d heard about in Sunday school.
Daddy works here, she’d thought, and felt afraid.
She followed Sam across a line of railroad tracks, stepping high over the rails. Past the tracks ran the concrete trough of the Los Angeles River, a trickle of water, oily in the starlight, meandering down its center. Twenty yards north, a railroad bridge spanned the river. On the near side a fire guttered. Beside it crouched a man.
“That’s him,” Sam said.
“Who?”
“Lazarus. What we call him, anyway. ’Cause he’s a dead man walking. It’s some shit from the Bible.”
“I’m familiar with the reference.”
They threaded their way along the embankment, its chalky pallor offset by splotches of graffiti like gray mold. The Broadway bridge lay to the south, groaning with distant traffic.
“Hey, Laz. It’s me, Sam.”
The man stood up slowly. “You stay the fuck away.”
“Just here to talk, bro.”
“I’ll cut you. Fucking swear I will.”
Sam flashed Kate a cocksure smile. “He won’t cut nobody. Couldn’t, even if he wanted to.” He raised his voice. “Come on, Laz, be hospitable.”
They stopped a few feet from the man and watched him in the glow of the fire. His hands were what Kate noticed first. Scarred hands, fingers sticking out in all directions like broken straw in a broom.
His face was half slack, the face of a stroke victim, muscles on the left side drooping, left eye unblinking and glassy. He chewed the right corner of his mouth. Drool threaded his beard.
“The lady’s come to hear your story,” Sam said. “Tell her, Laz. Tell her about Swann.”
Lazarus went on chewing his mouth. “That motherfucker.”
“Tell her what he did.”
“Fucker. Messed me up. My hands…” He nodded and went on nodding like a bobblehead toy. “It hurt.”
“What happened to his hands?” Kate asked.
Sam shrugged. “Swann crushed the knuckles to powder, then worked over the fingers with a knife. Cut the tendons one by one.”
“Fucked ’em up royal,” Lazarus said. He shifted his weight like a restless child. His clothes, pasted to him in layers, gave off a warm cloud of body odor.
“His hands aren’t the worst thing. Show her your head, Laz.”
Lazarus shuffled his feet, rotating sideways, and brushed back a tuft of hair to reveal a wound above his left ear. In the dancing shadows it trembled like a pale, puckered mouth.
“Swann drove a four-inch nail in there,” Sam said. “Pounded it in with his boot. Laid ol’ Laz on the floor and just stomped the nail in—wham bam, thank you, ma’am.”
“How long ago was this?” Kate asked.
Sam frowned. “More’n ten years.”
“Why did Swann do it?”
“That’s the wrong question. You’re asking that question, it means you still don’t get it. There aren’t any explanations. Swann does what he likes.”
“There must be some reason. An argument between them or something.”
“Reason? Sure. Maybe Laz looked at him wrong. Or sneezed, and Swann got to thinking about germs. All that matters is Swann took a dislike. That’s how he always says it—I took a dislike to the man.”
“Did he get medical attention?”
“Wasn’t much the docs could do. Nail’s still in there. They can’t take it out without doing more damage.”
“Fucker,” Lazarus murmured.
He shambled closer, his good eye squinting at Kate. It might have been a long time since he’d seen a woman up close. He reached out and let his dead fingers brush her arm. The fingernails were long and soiled, curving like talons.
She didn’t flinch. As the sisters had so often reminded her, Jesus touched lepers and rubbed spittle in the eyes of the blind. She could let this sad wreck of a man pat her arm.
“What’s your name?” she asked him. “Your real name?”
Lazarus said nothing.
Sam answered for him. “Bob Ellis.”
“Hello, Bob,” Kate said gently.
Lazarus—Bob Ellis—made a mewling sound.
“Still getting the migraines?” Sam asked. “The headaches?”
Lazarus inclined his head. “Hurts like fuck.” His head drooped lower until his beard scraped the back of her hand like a steel wool pad.
“All the time, huh?”
“All the time,” Lazarus murmured, drawing a deep inhalation of breath. Smelling her skin.
“Yeah, that’s rough.” Sam smiled at Kate. “I don’t know if Swann meant to ice him or what, but I’m guessing when he saw how ol’ Laz turned out, he figured it was better than a clean kill.”
Kate felt moist pressure on her hand. The touch of his lips. She stood unmoving, trying not to inhale the stink of his sweat or to see the small bright things that crawled in his hair.
“There, there,” she whispered. “It’s all right, Bob. It’s all right.”
Sam chuckled. “No use lying to him, Sister Sunshine. He’ll never be all right again. And I wouldn’t get all weepy about old Bob. It’s not like he was any kind of saint. He did plenty of bad shit in his day.”
“How did you know he was here?”
“Word gets around. People come and see. Laz here is the dog-faced boy. Everyone wants a peek.”
Lazarus continued bowing before her, his mouth on her hand.
“Nobody helps him?”
“He can look out for himself. Okay, show’s over. Let’s get going.”
Gently, she freed her hand. Bob Ellis raised his head, and his mouth warped into a half smile.
“Mary,” he whispered.
She glanced at Sam with a silent inquiry.
“Girl he used to go with,” Sam explained. “Maybe he thinks you’re her.”
She looked at the ragged ruin before her and saw yearning, deep and hopeless.
“Mary,” Bob Ellis said again. “Love you.”
Something broke inside her. She forgot his smell, his sores, and she put her arms around him, rocked him.
“Hell,” Sam said in disgust, walking away.
She pulled out some money, tried to press a few bills into his pocket, alms for the poor, but her hand shook and she dropped them on the ground. Kneeling, she started to gather them, but her vision blurred, eyes burning, and she gave up and stood. She rose to follow Sam.
Sam never looked back, but she did, once. She saw Lazarus on his knees, shoveling the bills into a small, precious pile with the heels of his useless hands.
“So that’s who we’re dealing with,” Sam said as they recrossed the tracks. “That’s who you want to understand.”
Yes, Kate thought. She got it now. She saw what Swann was. What he could do.
And he had Chelsea.
THE church had fallen into disrepair years ago. Swann had no idea when it had finally been condemned. Since its closure, squatters had come and gone—you could find their leavings strewn among the apsidal chapels and the rectory. Some of them had taken dumps on the floor, like animals. The offal was still there, petrified into glistening coal-black lumps.
Nearly all the furnishings were gone—pews, altar, baptismal font, icons, and
crucifixes. But no one had removed the stained glass windows. The lower windows were boarded up, but the higher ones were unobstructed. Saints frowned down, backlit by the rusty glow of streetlights.
Though the church was secured with a perimeter fence, the squatters had found their way in, and Swann had, too, discovering a loose section of fencing that was bent upward, allowing access to anyone willing to crawl. He had first wriggled inside a week ago to ascertain that the place would suit his needs.
Now he and Chelsea Brewer were alone in the church, with only the light of an electric lantern to commemorate the glow of the thousand paschal candles that had been lighted here.
Swann was still coming down from the high that had lifted him ever since he had pulled away from Panic Room in the Guardian Angel limo. He’d carried out the snatch without a single complication.
Euphoria was a dangerous state of mind. There was still much to do. Later, he could celebrate. Later, when it was over.
The girl lay near the chancel, sprawled on the floor, her head propped against the wall, eyes open but unblinking. She had made no sound since their arrival. Swann worried that he’d overdone it with the GHB. She might drift into a coma. But he was prepared. The same dealer who had supplied him with prefilled syringes of GHB had sold him a matching set of syringes containing Naloxone, a GHB antagonist. It might take some experimentation to determine the correct balance, but with luck, he could keep Chelsea in a hazy state, awake but compliant.
He approached Chelsea. She’d gotten dirty when he dragged her under the fence, but the disarray of her clothes and the streaks of dirt on her face made her somehow more appealing, more human than the perfect iconic image on billboards and magazine covers.
The poodle lay beside her, nosing the girl disconsolately. Cute little thing. Its cream-colored head was the exact size of a tennis ball, with a teddy bear face and black-button eyes and a serious, downturned mouth. Swann reached out to pet the dog and gain its trust. The poodle released a volley of yips and snarls.
Not so cute anymore. Irritated, Swann picked up the animal and carried it to a confessional box in a small transept to the left of what had been the main altar. He shut the dog inside the box. Its paws scratched at the door as he walked away.
The confessional box was built into the wall, which must be why it remained when all the other furnishings had been carted off. The wood was old and partly rotten, but still sturdy enough. The lattice that separated the sinner from the priest, the kneeler where the penitent crouched to confess his sins—all of it was still there, overlooked when the church was cleaned out.
He tied off Chelsea’s forearm with a rubber tube, then screwed one of the Naloxone syringes into the injector. It held two milligrams of the drug in a saline solution. He uncapped the needle, squirted a few drops, and found a vein, blue like a bruise against the girl’s pale skin.
She didn’t wince or even blink when the long needle, slender as an eyelash, slid in. He depressed the plunger until the syringe was empty, unscrewed the spent syringe, and flicked it into the shadows. Then he waited. The stuff was supposed to reverse the effects of GHB, and to do it fast.
A minute passed. Abruptly, Chelsea shuddered all over with a hard shock, followed by a series of smaller tremors sweeping through her body and jerking her limbs. Her face twitched. Swann watched her eyes. They still didn’t blink, but all of a sudden, they seemed to grow too large for her face, and they stared at him with unnerving intensity.
And then she was screaming.
The screams were torn out of her from some deep hollow of fear and despair. They rang through the church like the pealing of bells.
Shit. Must’ve misjudged the dose. She was way too lively now.
He seized her by the shoulders, his fingers grinding into the soft flesh under her blouse. She lashed out. He released his grip to ward off her clawing hands. Finally, he got both of her hands in his and squeezed them shut, then forced her arms down.
“Shut up,” he said, not loudly, the words enunciated with great clarity. He couldn’t have her screaming. Someone outside might hear.
He fixed his eyes on hers. Held her with his stare until her last scream had died in her mouth.
“Quiet now. Hush.”
Her throat jerked with a swallow. Another wave of trembling flickered through her, and she was still.
Gently, he let go of her hands. She put them together, clasping them in her lap.
Her first question surprised him. In a raw, spent voice, she asked, “Where’s Chanticleer?”
“Who?”
“My dog.”
“I’ll get him. Sit tight.”
He walked to the confessional box and opened the door. The poodle darted out and ran to his mistress, who scooped him up and cradled him in her arms like a baby.
“I didn’t hurt him,” Swann said.
The girl didn’t answer. She seemed to be slipping away again, back into the GHB stupor. She might require another dose of the antidote. He didn’t think so, though. He figured it was shock, not the drug, that was deadening her reactions.
The trouble with shock was that if she went in too deep, she might not come out—at least not anytime soon. He needed her alert enough to say a few words over the phone. Sooner or later the nun would have to hear her voice.
He sat down on the floor, facing her, and smiled.
“Chanticleer, eh?” He mimicked her pronunciation: shon-ti-clear. “Seems like an awfully big name for such a little dog.”
He tried again to pet the poodle, but withdrew his hand when the dog released a yip of warning. Chelsea said nothing.
“That’s a French word, I bet. What’s it mean?”
No answer.
“Come on, it must mean something.”
Finally, she responded. “Rooster,” she said dully.
“You named your dog after a rooster?”
“A rooster in a story.”
“Tell me the story.”
“I don’t remember it.”
He put on a pouting face. “You just don’t want to share.”
The first flash of emotion lit up her face. “Why should I share anything with you?”
“I’m not such a bad guy.”
Already the flash was fading, as quickly as the afterimage of a lightning strike. Her voice dropped lower. “Then why’d you kill Grange?”
“Is that what you think? I didn’t kill him.”
“I saw you.” A whisper now. “You pounded on him, grabbed him from behind—”
“I beat him up. But he’s not dead. By now he’s probably sitting up in bed in the ER, sipping apple juice.”
She tilted her head. “You left him alive?”
“I knocked him out, that’s all. Wouldn’t have made sense to do anything else. A dead body brings in the police in a big way, and I don’t need that.” He had her attention now. “Look, I’ll be straight with you. I’m not exactly a virgin when it comes to killing. But I don’t do it unless it’s necessary.”
“When’s it ever necessary?”
“There are times. Times when you have to kill in self-defense—or for self-respect. A man has to stand up for himself, or he’s not a man.”
“That’s not how you’re supposed to act. In the Wild West, maybe, but not in, you know, civilization.”
“Civilization’s overrated. Civilization makes you soft, weak. Easy prey. In the real world, it’s kill or be killed. I didn’t make the rules, sugarplum. I just live by them.”
“That’s really what you think?”
He nodded soberly. “People say the world’s a vale of tears. But that’s not it. That’s saying it wrong. What the world is, what it really is…it’s blood and craziness. It’s an insanity so big that ordinary human craziness doesn’t even make a dent in it, doesn’t matter a damn. That’s the truth, but most people won’t face it. They dream up gods and spirits, all that crap, anything so they don’t have to see the reality that’s staring them right in the face.”
&nb
sp; “Not like you.”
“No, not like me. I’m no fucking dreamer.”
“So you kill people.”
“Sometimes.”
She lifted her head. “How long before you kill me?”
“I won’t. You’ll be just fine.”
“Yeah, right.”
He knew she was wearily accustomed to bullshit promises. She’d been used by the users and conned by the con artists until mistrust was second nature to her.
“Hey, kiddo, look at me. Go on, look.” He waited until her eyes—green eyes, emerald green—found his face.
She didn’t answer.
“I don’t believe in cruelty for its own sake. And I won’t be cruel to you. Fact is, I’ve already done you a favor tonight. A big one.”
“What favor?”
“Never mind that now. You just have to trust me. You’ll live through this. You’ll be fine.”
“You can’t let me go. I’ve seen your face.”
Swann shrugged. “I’m not making any secret about my identity. I’ve already told Kate Malick my name.”
“Why?”
“Because an artist wants to sign his work.”
She turned away. “You’re lying,” she said in a defeated voice. “You’ll kill me. I know it.”
“You’ve been doing your best to kill yourself for years, and all of a sudden, you’re worried I’m going to do it? Kiddo, you need to figure out what your agenda is.”
She made no response, appeared to be drifting off. He wanted to keep her focused.
“You’re an actress. How about you do some acting?”
“What?”
“Play a part. Entertain me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on, you’ve got a captive audience here.”
“You’re not the one who’s a captive.”
“Act for me,” he said in a crisper tone. “That’s an order.”
It seemed to dawn on her that he was serious and that she could not refuse. “I don’t know any scenes to play.”
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