Damnation Street wab-3

by Andrew Klavan

"What place? What is this?"

  "It's the castle. For tourists. Robert Lindley built it. For the woman he loved. Only she never came. I run it now. For the people."

  "What people?"

  "The people. You know. The tourists. I give them the tours."

  The specialist's quick wild glance took in the corners, the rafters. A stuffed alligator. A glass dog. A hangman's noose. Dizzy with the heat, he saw them swirling around him.

  "Ain't it strange?" the old man said. "He put everything in it. Hoping she'd come."

  The killer steadied his gaze on the man in the chair. Shoved the gunpoint at him. "Come on."

  "All right, all right," said the old man. "Here. He wanted you to have this."

  The old man reached inside the tweed jacket. The killer's gun hand tightened.

  "Uh-uh-uh," said the old man, with a soft chuckle. He didn't seem to care very much whether he died or not. Slowly, he drew out a folded piece of paper. He held it out toward the man who called himself John Foy.

  Foy snatched the paper away. "Did he tell you I'd kill you?" he said in a strangled voice.

  The black man shook his head slowly. "He said you wouldn't do a thing. Not a thing. The people'll be here for the last tour soon and they'd find me. He said you'd take the paper and go, or the two of you were finished. He said you didn't want that."

  The killer hated Weiss so much just then, he almost shot the old man anyway. But in the end, what could he do? He felt the room closing in on him. Strange shapes in glass bottles. A carved menagerie. A crude painting of a staring face.

  "This is a crazy fucking place," he said, sick and dizzy with the heat.

  The old man laughed outright. "Yes, it is. Robert Lindley, the man who built it, he had a crazy idea of things. But that's what a man builds castles for, isn't it? Some say it's for money; some say it's for sex or love. But really, it's just for his own crazy idea of things, that's all. The woman he loved-she never even came."

  The killer retreated, his heart hammering, his face hot. He drew away from the staring longhorn skull and the stuffed woman sitting weirdly at the piano. He went out the door. Down the steps, across the dirt lot, back to the car. He had to sit behind the wheel a long time before he could focus, before there was anything in his mind but heat sickness and rage. He had to stare at the folded paper a long time before he could bring himself to open it.

  Then he did. It was a notebook page, wrinkled. Black ink on it. Weiss's scrawl.

  Sky Harbor. Gate 8. 6:30.

  The Shadowman crushed the paper in his fist, a growl of rage squeezing out of him. He could barely stand the feeling in him. He thought it would claw him apart. Weiss. Weiss. That arrogant fuck. Weiss had summoned him to a meeting. Sky Harbor. The airport. Six thirty. Just a couple of hours from now.

  The arrogant fuck. The arrogant so-dead fuck. He had known exactly what the specialist would do. Known exactly, every step-and still knew. It made the specialist hate the detective with a flaming hatred. Worse. It made him afraid of him. Because if Weiss could do this to him now, what would happen when it came time for the end?

  The fuck. The arrogant fuck. The arrogant so-dead fuck.

  He tried to breathe. He tried to breathe deeper. All right, he thought, all right. They would meet. Six thirty. They would meet and the killer would tell him about Bishop. He would tell him how Bishop walked right into it, how he never suspected a thing. He would tell him how Bishop took two in the gut, how he sunk down to the floor leaving a trail of blood on the window behind him. How he sunk into the pool leaving a trail of blood in the water.

  That's how it would be in the end too. That's how it would be for Weiss.

  He started the car with a quick jerk of the key. He put it in gear roughly. He backed out over the dirt lot.

  You arrogant so-dead fuck, he thought. I am coming for you.

  Part Four

  Shy Harbor

  33.

  Olivia Graves looked up from her desk when Weiss came to the office doorway. The sight of her made Weiss stop short on the threshold. There was a big window on the wall to her left. There was a lot of light-a sheet of warm afternoon light, late, clear desert light-sweeping across her. It smoothed her features nearly to nothing. So for a moment, Weiss thought she looked exactly like Julie.

  Then she stood. She stepped around her desk, came toward him. "Mr. Weiss?"

  The illusion was gone. She didn't look like her older sister at all. He'd just expected her to. Maybe wanted her to.

  In fact, Olivia was short and slender. Her features were small and sharp. Her hair was boy cut, parted on one side, brown, not Julie's flowing, startling red and gold. She wore a long green skirt and a white blouse. Not an unfriendly look but a little starched, a little unapproachable. It made Weiss feel underdressed, wearing only his slacks and his blue polo shirt. But he'd left his tweed jacket behind out at that weird house on the edge of the desert.

  Anyway, he found Olivia attractive in a compact, efficient sort of way. Twenty-seven years old, as he knew from the newspaper stories. Trying to seem older, he thought. Trying to seem as if she weren't afraid of him, which touched him, made him want to take care of her, protect her from the wind and weather-which was pretty much the way he felt about most women most of the time.

  They met in the middle of the room. He towered over her. His paunch alone dwarfed her. She offered her small white hand. His huge hand engulfed it. He looked down at her. He thought of the little girl waiting on the school doorstep with her big sister. Huddled there in the morning dark after their father hammered their mother to death. His sad, baggy eyes went soft for her.

  But Olivia Graves's manner was clipped and businesslike. She gestured brusquely toward a leather sling chair near the wall across from the window. She marched toward another sling chair facing the first, her blocky heels knocking hard against the Yuma rug.

  Weiss followed her to the chairs. He hated sling chairs. He always felt as if his big body were going to sink right through them and smack the floor. He waited for her to sit first, then worked himself down across from her, settling back carefully against the thin leather.

  He took a quick glance around the room. The office was big. He was surprised. She was only an associate professor of psychology, but the office was downright spacious. Nothing much in it but the Yuma rug from the door to the blocky blond-wood desk. An upholstered swivel chair behind the desk, a bookshelf behind the chair. Jumbo-sized books with dark bindings; doctor-type books. That huge window on the far wall with a view of the campus, its green paths and gracefully rounded red-and-white buildings. Then, set apart against the opposite wall, these two chairs they were in and a glass coffee table beside them with a huge picture book on it about Native American art.

  This, he realized, was the corner where Olivia did therapy and counseling. She had guided him to the chair where the students sat when they came to her homesick or lovelorn or pregnant or whatever the hell students were these days.

  And Olivia Graves was in her psychologist chair. And she now made a psychologist-type gesture at him, an unreadable unfolding of the hands that might've been an invitation for him to begin or maybe not.

  She had a lot of ways to defend her inner territory, this girl. The starched outfit, the clipped manner. Now this I'm-the-doctor routine.

  "You know why I'm here, Dr. Graves," Weiss said.

  "Ms. Graves. On the phone, you said it was about my sister."

  "That's right."

  "I'm interested to know. How did you find me?"

  "I find people," said Weiss.

  "That's an interesting job."

  "Sometimes."

  "I mean it's an interesting line of work to go into."

  Weiss smiled a little. "So is yours."

  "And now you're trying to find my sister."

  "That's right."

  "Why? If you don't mind my asking."

  "There's a man looking for her-a bad guy, a contract killer. I want to stop him."

  "S
o it's really him you're looking for."

  "And her."

  "I'm confused. You're looking for both of them?"

  She was sitting with her legs crossed, with her hands clasped on top of her knee. Her body was leaning toward him out of the sling. Her expression was caring, polite, inquiring. It was the whole psychologist package. She thought she could play him like one of her patients, then send him away with nothing. Weiss, in his protective concern for her, tried not to laugh.

  "The man-the bad guy-who wants to find her," he said. "He's following me. When I find your sister, he'll make a move to get her. Then I'll take care of him."

  "You'll-take care of him?"

  "That's right."

  "I see." Her expression didn't change. She nodded, psychologist-like, considering. "You want to use my sister as bait to catch this man."

  "If it comes down to that. But he'll find her eventually anyway. He has people all over the country. She'll make a mistake, walk down the wrong street. She'll have to live afraid every day-and eventually he'll find her."

  "So you're going to save her. You're going to rescue her from this bad man."

  "I'm going to take him out of the equation. Then she can live her life any way she wants."

  Olivia straightened her back, drew in a loud breath through her pert nose. "I see." More I-am-the-psychologist stuff. "Just out of curiosity? How do I know you're not the bad guy? Just because you're you?"

  "That and my white hat."

  She smiled blandly. "Yes, but really: how do I know?"

  "You know," said Weiss. He tried to lean forward, but he was sunk too deep in the damned sling chair. "You know exactly who I am and why I'm here. You know because your father would've called to warn you…"

  "My father…?"

  "…and because Julie-your sister, Mary-would've found a way to warn you too."

  If that shook Olivia Graves, she didn't show it. In fact, she tilted her head, narrowed one eye, and basically looked him over as if he were ranting, out of his mind. It was a hell of a smooth performance, assuming it was a performance at all.

  "That's a very interesting fantasy," she said. "I take it you know my history, then."

  "Your father killed your mother, deserted you, and disappeared. Yeah, I know."

  "And you know I was raised in foster homes separate from my sister."

  "Yes."

  "And that my sister ran away shortly after that, almost fifteen years ago."

  "All right."

  "And I haven't seen her since. And I certainly haven't seen my father-no one has."

  "Miss Graves…"

  "So I don't really know who you are. And I can't really help you, can I? Even if I wanted to help you lead this 'bad guy' of yours right to my sister's door, I couldn't, because I have no idea where she is."

  It was awfully good, awfully cool. And though Weiss knew she was lying, he had no way to prove it. As usual, he had nothing to go on but being Weiss.

  "Miss Graves," he said slowly. "I know your father would've called to warn you after I found him."

  "You found him," Olivia Graves said. "You found my father who's been a fugitive for seventeen years. The police couldn't. The FBI couldn't. But you did. You want me to believe that."

  "You know it's true. Because he called you. And even if he didn't call you, your sister would've let you know."

  Olivia Graves kept the performance going. She shook her head quickly as if she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing from him. She gave a bemused laugh. "Well, you have it all figured out, don't you?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "My father, who's been missing for seventeen years, has called me. My sister, who's been missing for fifteen years, somehow gets in touch. And all because of you. Is there something that makes you believe all this, or does it just come into your head?"

  Weiss did laugh now. He couldn't help it. "It pretty much just comes into my head," he admitted.

  "I can see that. Sort of like this fantasy you have of rescuing my sister from a killer. That just comes into your head too, doesn't it?"

  Weiss didn't answer. There was color in Olivia's cheeks now, a sparking anger in her eyes. He knew if he just let her go on, she would show herself. He just let her go on.

  "How well do you know my sister?" she asked.

  "I've never met her."

  "Really. You've never met her?"

  "I've seen some pictures of her, that's all. A photograph and a ten-second video loop from the Internet."

  "I see." Her hands clasped on her knee, Olivia Graves leaned forward even farther, jutting her chin at him eagerly. Weiss couldn't help but get the idea in his head that she was moving in to finish him off. "You saw some pictures of her. And she's very beautiful, isn't she, Mr. Weiss?"

  "Yes, she is."

  "She always was. And men-" She gestured at him with one hand. "Men of a certain mind-set have always fallen in love with her at first sight, even when she was a girl. To be fair, I think she fostered it to some extent. She had a habit of becoming whoever men wanted her to be. I suppose that makes her the perfect whore, doesn't it? Especially for someone like yourself, who seems to expect the world to correlate itself with your fantasy life." Weiss saw a faint smile play at the corner of Olivia's lips, a faintly triumphant smile as she leaned in for him. "Let me ask you something, Mr. Weiss. Do you often form such intense attachments to prostitutes?"

  "Let me ask you something, sweetheart," he said. "How do you know she's a prostitute, if you haven't heard from her in fifteen years?"

  The question caught her off guard, pulled her up straight as if he had yanked on a rope attached to the back of her neck. Weiss, being Weiss, had figured it would be like that. Being Weiss, he had figured this girl out pretty well. She was the "sane one" in the Graves family. She was the lone member of a shattered clan who lived a normal life, walked a straight path. She wouldn't turn her father in. She wouldn't lead him to her sister. But she had no sympathy for either of them, no time for the messes they made, and no patience for whatever unsavory characters they got themselves involved with. They could play games with contract killers and private detectives all they wanted. She wasn't going to have them dragging her into their foolishness. The whole idea of it got her righteous anger working. And the anger was why she had said too much.

  She tried to backtrack now. "I just assumed she hadn't changed," she said coldly.

  "No. You know. Because you and her-you've never lost touch with each other. You wouldn't lose touch."

  Still, she kept the act going. "I see. More of your fantasy life."

  "C'mon, lady. You were two little girls who went through hell together. Your big sister was beautiful and kind, and she took care of you the only way she knew how. You had the brains, and you always knew you were taking care of her too. And you still take care of each other. You wouldn't lose touch."

  Olivia began to speak, then didn't-then began to speak again, then didn't again. Then, bitterly, she said, "Well… Well, this has been very interesting. You-you have a very interesting personality disorder, Mr. Weiss. Are you aware of that?"

  He gave another laugh. "Only one?"

  "You think you understand everything, but you don't understand anything."

  "Yeah, it's that or the other way around, I'm never sure."

  Her eyes were glistening. It hurt Weiss to see it. The tip of her tongue came out to dampen her lips. "I think you should leave now," she said softly.

  Weiss nodded. "Sure. I'll leave. But first let me say what I came to say."

  Twenty-seven-year-old Olivia Graves sat very straight in her sling chair trying not to cry. "All right," she said. "Go on."

  "You have a way of getting in touch with your sister. Nothing direct. Neither of you would risk that. But something simple. A middleman, probably, who passes messages between you. Whatever the system is, I want you to use it to send a message for me." He couldn't tolerate this stupid chair anymore. It made him feel like a beached whale. With a tremendous g
roan, he worked his way out of it. He stood hugely above her, where she sat straight fighting her tears. "Tell her it's up to her," he said. "She can run or she can stay. I won't do this forever. I'm close now, but if she goes on running, she can keep one step ahead of me. If that's what she decides to do, I'll stop, I'll walk away, and then it'll just be him, the bad guy, because he'll never stop and she'll have to go on running and that'll be her life till he finds her or she dies. If she stays put, if she lets me reach her, he'll reach her, too, and him and me, we'll decide it between us. Then it'll be over, either way. Tell her. Let her know. It's up to her."

  Olivia Graves was holding on to herself so severely now that her head trembled. She tried to smile her triumphant smile again, but it just came off as spiteful. "You see? You think you understand everything," she said again. "But you don't. You don't understand any of it. Any of it."

  Weiss didn't answer. He shook his head. He sighed heavily. He put his hands in his pants pockets and lumbered to the door.

  Olivia's next words broke from her in a ragged voice. "Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?"

  Weiss opened the door and stepped through. "You're the psychologist," he muttered. "You figure it out."

  34.

  Now I have to say just a word or two here about what was happening to me, only because it eventually came to play a role in the central story-a minor role, I admit, but a role all the same.

  Weiss, at this time, had just exited Olivia Graves's office and was driving out to Sky Harbor Airport, where he hoped to meet with the Shadowman. In San Francisco, meanwhile, where it was an hour earlier, Sissy and I had just returned to her apartment. We had left work on the early side. With Weiss gone and the business suffering, there wasn't much to do. The Agency had become a depressing place to hang around.

  When we got in, Sissy went to the bathroom to take a shower. I changed into jeans and a T-shirt and plunked down on her four-poster bed to read. And I tried to read. I went through the motions. Stretched out on her fluffy bedspread, my head propped up on her fluffy pillows with a fluffy cat kneading my belly with her claws and another fluffy cat sleeping on my crotch. I held the book in front of me, and my eyes went back and forth over the words. But my mind was too full to pay attention to them, and my heart was too heavy. My heart weighed a ton.