by Josh Lanyon
“He’s on his own time now.”
“Are you saying you, like, fired him?”
I grinned. I don’t know why, but that belligerent mix of Valley Girl and Wicked Witch struck me as sort of funny.
“I’m not saying anything, kiddo, other than that he’s not here, and I have no idea when he’s coming back.” She opened her mouth, but I added, “I’m thinking that if Angus wanted you to know where he was, he’d have left word with you.”
She glared ferociously with those Alice Cooper eyes. I studied her. We seemed to have reached an impasse.
“I want to know where Gus is!” She was louder now. Maybe she thought we didn’t speak the same language.
“I can’t help you.”
Her skinny chest rose and fell. “Can’t or won’t?”
This kind of stunt was not good for business. I was lucky a customer hadn’t strolled in yet. I said, to conciliate, “Can’t, if it makes you feel better.”
“I’ll tell you what will make me feel better!”
I waited politely while she trembled with rage. Belatedly, I wondered whether she was on something. Her eyes did look stoned. My gaze slid to her faithful companion who stood there wordlessly waiting for…whatever. Behind the pink heart-shaped specs, her eyes met mine, slid away.
Snowden’s class, I thought abruptly. That’s where I’ve seen you.
I still didn’t think I had a problem. I mean, I was confident I could take Wicked, if it came down to that. I wasn’t quite sure about the stocky brunette. I was fairly sure that two healthy, adult-sized, and aggressive femmes would be a handful, even for a guy who didn’t have a tricky heart. But I honestly didn’t think this was going anywhere I couldn’t handle.
The blonde jerked her head to her trusty sidekick. The dark-haired girl turned toward the front door, moving to shut it.
Now that, I admit, caught me off guard. I remembered Jake saying once that half the people who wound up victims simply took too long to assess potential danger or ignored their own instincts.
As the leather munchkin flipped the “Open” sign over to “Closed,” I started considering my options.
The blonde turned back to me. “Did you, like, want to change your mind?” she drawled.
“Like, what about?” Now she had me doing it.
I figured if I reached for the phone I would wind up in a wrestling match with her, and I wanted to avoid that. It wasn’t solely fear of being beaten up by girls; it was the thought that they could scream rape or God knows what, and they might be believed. Being gay wouldn’t necessarily protect me. There are lunatics out there who believe that a gay man is capable of anything. Even lusting after college co-eds.
She made this minute sound of impatience and fury and shoved the stack of paperbacks on the counter to the floor.
The situation was fast morphing from farce to felony.
I could always run upstairs, lock myself in my flat, and call the cops. Or I could grab the antique poker from in front of the fake fireplace and start whaling away with it, but… I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t rational, but I had a real reluctance to start crunching skulls and breaking bones. Nor was I about to leave the shop to their mercy.
She advanced on me. “Listen, queer bait, we want an answer!”
Queer bait?
I contemplated shoving the nearest bookshelf over on her, but that was liable to kill her. I ducked back, putting the counter between us.
“Why don’t you ask your Ouija board?”
As Jake has frequently pointed out, I have a tendency to shoot my mouth off at the wrong time. She tried to jump across the counter top to scratch me. I backed out of range of her ink-tipped claws.
“For fuck’s sake!” observed the brunette.
So now I knew the name of their mysterious deity.
Sabrina the Teenage Bitch wriggled forward on the polished mahogany and spilled none too gracefully over the other side with sales receipts and assorted invoices. I slipped around the end of the counter, keeping one eye on the lady with the mohawk.
Sabrina rose, shook her blonde mane out of her face. “I can make you so sorry,” she whispered. My nostrils twitched as I got a whiff of cinnamon gum and overpowering perfume. Obsession? Shalimar? Brimstone?
“Likewise,” I said evenly. “And what a waste of both of our time, since I don’t have the information you need.”
“Kinsey,” exclaimed the second one, nodding at the window facing the street. To my astonishment I saw Jake striding along the sidewalk clearly making straight for Cloak and Dagger Books.
The cavalry when I least expected it. I said, “Kinsey, don’t look now, but there’s a house with your name on it.”
Kinsey and the Poison Dwarf gaped, taken aback by what they seemed to believe were my psychic powers — or maybe they really thought a house was blowing their way.
Jake looked like the house had hit him first. There was a discreet square of white over his brow. One side of his face looked bruised. He was casually dressed, jeans and a leather jacket, so he wasn’t working.
“This isn’t over,” Kinsey warned me, backing away. Her foot slid on a sheaf of papers, and she reached out to steady herself.
“Snap out of it,” I told her. “The guy’s a cop. And a friend. D’you —”
But they freaked at the word “cop.” The dark-haired girl fumbled the front door open, and they went hurtling through it, nearly knocking down Jake, who had paused at the sight of the closed door.
As the glass door settled into place, I heard his muffled curse, one arm cradling what were apparently sore ribs. Instinctively, he turned to go after them. From my vantage point I saw him check. He turned back, shoved open the door, and leaned inside the doorway. I waved my arm to signal that I was okay — and to go after them — but it took him a moment to pinpoint me in the relative gloom of the shop’s interior.
Then he was gone.
Through the front window, I watched him sprint down the busy sidewalk in pursuit. One arm was clamped to his side as though to brace himself. He didn’t know what he was pursuing; it was the same reflex that makes a dog chase a car down the street.
I knelt, gathered the fallen papers and books. My heart was kicking hard with a rush of adrenaline and tension. I was irritated that my hands weren’t quite steady. I still wasn’t convinced the whole incident wasn’t mostly ridiculous.
Jake was back in under five minutes. “So…did they see your prices? What was that about?” Despite the wisecrack, his face was glazed with sweat, and beneath the tan, pale. He moved like he hurt.
“I take it they got away?”
He glared at me, still breathing hard.
“They came in asking for Angus. They didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know where he was.”
“Maybe you weren’t convincing.”
“Jake,” I said hotly. “I don’t know where he is.”
He let that go. “So what happened? They threatened you? What?”
“Yeah. Sort of.” I felt like an idiot. I couldn’t picture Jake letting a pair of girls chase him around a room. “They got here a couple of minutes ahead of you. Nothing actually happened.”
Jake scowled. “The goddamn door was shut, Adrien, with a closed sign on it. Something sure as shit was going down in here. I know guilt when I see it. Those two were guilty as hell. Did you get a name? Did you recognize either of them?”
“One of them, the blonde, was named ‘Kinsey.’ I recognized the dark-haired girl from Guy Snowden’s class last Monday.”
All business, he sat on the fat arm of one of the faded, comfy chairs, and took out a notebook to jot down my information. By the time we finished, his color was better. He had caught his breath again.
Flipping the notebook shut, he straightened and came over to the counter where I stood.
“I think I’ll have another word with Professor Snowden,” he said. I didn’t like his smile. I wondered what the first word had been and decided I’d be happier not knowing
.
“So what are you doing here?” I asked. “How are you feeling?”
Our public greetings were always awkward. Occasionally, he’d actually kiss me hello, if we were well and truly on our own, but generally any physical display of affection had to wait till we were behind closed — and locked and bolted — doors. Today, in particular there seemed to be a force field around him.
I didn’t care; I was happy that he was alive and in one piece. And that he’d come to see me so soon after getting released from the hospital. So, I settled with gripping his arm as it rested on the counter, giving him a friendly shake. “Nice to see you.”
A weird expression crossed his features. His hazel gaze met mine, swerved away.
“Kate’s pregnant,” he said.
“Oh?” For a second I actually couldn’t think who Kate was. Then it registered. Kate. The red-haired woman in the hospital. Kate Keegan. The woman he slept with when he wasn’t sleeping with me.
“Kind of a surprise,” I said neutrally. He seemed shaken, but not upset. Had it been planned? Was he glad? Was she trying to manipulate him? Trap him?
“Yeah.” He smiled, a goofy smile.
So he was happy about it.
“She’s keeping it — the baby — then?”
He nodded. His eyes met mine. Fell away. “Yeah. That much we’re agreed on.”
“What do you not agree on?”
He wasn’t looking at me. He said carefully, “We’ve talked about getting married, but this would kind of escalate things.”
I blinked. “Sure.”
“We’re both in a pretty good position financially and with our careers.” He glanced my way. “But it’s not like we planned for it. It would mean a lot of…adjustments.”
“Right.”
He took a deep breath, then let it out. “Anyway, I thought I’d better tell you.” He looked at his watch and said with relief, “I’m late. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay.”
He grabbed me around the neck in a quick bear hug and banged his cheek against mine. Or that was his intention. In fact, he knocked both our heads together kind of hard, which felt symbolic. He grunted, and I grunted. He let loose and was gone. I watched him go through the little birdies circling my head.
Chapter Nine
After Partners in Crime broke for the evening, I went upstairs and discovered that Guy Snowden had left another of those cautious, noncommittal messages on my machine. I figured if he was still noncommittal, Jake must not have got hold of him. I tried calling him back, got his machine again, and left a less cautious message of my own.
Still no word from the Dark Realm regarding Blade Sable. My online query lay right where I had left it. Discussion did not exactly scintillate. Spells were exchanged, political opinions were exchanged, a video was recommended: Cursed with Christina Ricci. This triggered an unexpectedly heated debate of the flick’s cinematic merits and Ricci’s physical ones. I sighed. Signed out.
An evening of surfing the ’Net for information on local Satanic organizations did little for my nerves, although I thought I had a better understanding of what Satanism was.
As with Christianity, there appeared to be several different religious belief systems and practices in Satanism. Traditional Satanists worshiped the deity Satan, aka the Christian Devil. But the majority of Satanists seemed to view Satanism as an abstract philosophy with Satan functioning as a symbol for pre-Christian life concepts.
Of course, according to the Religious Right, anyone who wasn’t practicing conservative Christianity was a Satanist.
The ugly stuff, the stuff that got the media attention, seemed to fall into the category of Satanic dabbling. A mix of everything from Wicca to psychotropic werewolves with, as far as I could tell, no connection to religious Satanism, this junk seemed to attract the young (pissy adolescents in particular) and the mentally ill.
I was reading up on the more horrific manifestations of this mystical acting out, when the phone rang next to my elbow, and I almost went through the roof.
By the time I had regained composure enough to pick up the receiver, I hoped it might be Jake, but nope, the hoarse whisper on the other end belonged to Angus.
“Adrien…?”
“Angus, speak up,” I said crisply. Hours of reading about the Sign of the Beast, ritual torture, crazed killers, and equally crazed Christian fundamentalists made me less patient than usual. “Where are you?”
“I don’t think I should tell you,” Angus mumbled. “It might not be safe.”
Swell. Was he anticipating my being captured and tortured for the information?
I heard a sound like a garbage disposal running in the background, which I deduced was Wanda, offering Angus guidance. “Adrien, I think I made a big mistake,” he said.
That made two of us. “What mistake?” I asked.
“I think I left stuff at my place that might help them track us.”
“Angus, who is ‘them’? Wait — forget I asked. You’ve got to call Jake right away.”
“I’m not talking to him,” Angus said in perfectly normal and perfectly hostile tones. “He doesn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to me.”
“Listen to me carefully,” I said. “They dug up a body in Eaton Canyon a couple of days ago. A kid named Tony Zellig. Jake’s part of the investigation. He wants to talk to you.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said desperately. My heart sank. Not: “I don’t know anything about any body!” Not: “Who’s Tony Zellig?”
“Adrien, please listen. If they find that letter, they’ll be able to hunt us down. Adrien…are you there?”
“I’m here.” I rested my forehead on my hand, tried to think. “What letter?”
“The letter from my Grampy. I left it right there on the coffee table. If they find it, they’ll make the connection…”
His Grampy? How desperate a character could a kid be who called his grandfather “Grampy”?
“Do they know where you live? Maybe they’ve already found it.”
I didn’t actually believe that. I had trouble with the idea of this vast conspiracy of evil, but I felt the panic vibrate all the way down the line. He covered the mouthpiece and held a quick, ragged discussion with Wanda.
“If they —” His voice cracked. He tried again. “If they’ve found out, we need to know.”
The minute hand of the clock on my desk clicked onto the six. Eleven-thirty. I listened to Angus breathing noisily on the other end. He sounded like he was about to cry.
“How do I get in?” I asked at last.
“There’s a key in the dragon planter on the back porch.”
“Terrific,” I said briefly. “No one will ever think of looking there.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“What exactly am I doing? Retrieving a letter that has the location of your secret hideout?”
His voice wavered. “Why are you mad at me?”
“Because you knew —” My voice shook. I cleared my throat and said, “Because you knew about the body in Eaton Canyon. Because you’re involved in a goddamned murder — and I helped you —”
He slammed the phone down.
I pressed Call Return. The number flashed on the screen. Up north somewhere, judging by the area code. I scribbled the number. Then I called Jake’s cell. It was busy. I pressed pound to leave a message.
“It’s me.” I explained briefly, recited Angus’s phone number. “He asked me to pick something up for him at his place. It’s eleven-thirty now. I should be over there by twelve, if you want to have a look around without a warrant.” I pulled the address out of my Rolodex, read it over the phone, and hung up.
* * * * *
The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. One of those rectangular, L-shaped, ranch-style fixer-uppers that no one had bothered to fix up. It looked blue in the moonlight. The peeling shutters were blood-colored — possibly brown in the light of day. The attached garage sagged wearily on i
ts posts. Apparently Angus wasn’t a big fan of HGTV.
For laughs, I walked to the front and tried the door. It was locked. I decided that was a good sign. I went around to the side gate. It was also locked, fastened by a padlock on the other side of the tall wooden gate.
I weighed alternatives while keeping an eye on the neighbor’s house. The windows next door were dark, so either no one was home, or everyone was in bed. I didn’t fancy getting snagged for burglary by a Citizen’s Watch zealot. I suspected Angus might not stay around long enough to back my story.
It was a reasonably sturdy gate. I decided it could likely take my weight. I grabbed the top board and swung myself up. I balanced briefly, the fence groaning in alarm. I jumped, landing in tall grass and weeds.
That had been easier than expected. I went around the corner of the house. The patio was a cement slab with a metal canopy. There was a selection of withered plants in pots of various sizes. I didn’t need to use my flashlight thanks to the dramatic full moon, and the fact that the dragon planter had been painted in Day-Glo paint. Red eyes glowed eerily from the shadows. I poked around in the dirt and dead twigs, found the key, and opened the sliding glass door.
I stepped inside. The place stank of cigarettes, marijuana, garbage…
“Hello?”
The sound of my voice was startling in the emptiness of that house. I’d never been anywhere that felt so cold, so devoid of life.
I turned on the nearest lamp.
The room looked shockingly ordinary. No horned goat image painted on the walls, no altar festooned with black candles.
The shag carpet looked like Rice-A-Roni, and there was an assortment of furniture ready for the Goodwill, although, come to think of it, that was probably where Angus had purchased it. The coffee table was littered with music magazines and bills. There were several books on astrology, including a copy of The Devil’s Disciple by Garibaldi.
There was also a copy of The Satanic Bible. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise at the sight of the ominous scarlet pentagram on that stark black cover.
After a moment I shook off my inertia, telling myself not to be an ass. I quickly shuffled through the papers scattered across the coffee table. No letters. I glanced around the room.