RIDDLE OF MISSING STUDENT
A medical student was abducted from his Los Ilusiones apartment last night by several armed men.
Mr Francis Gorelli, 19, worked as an intern at the Moon Beach General Hospital, and was due to take examinations later in the year.
One of the armed men was about 25, white, and he was wearing a black suit and a black top hat. A dark car was seen leaving the area and police are still trying to trace the vehicle.
The family of the missing man refused to comment today. The abduction of Mr Gorelli is only the latest incident in a wave of violence that has been sweeping the notorious eastern suburbs of the city.
A pretty accurate description, considering. But maybe the shock had burned his image into that girl’s memory. Certainly he’d never forgotten her: her long black hair, her yellow dress; her screams. Creed had sent him into the building knowing that he’d be seen. Knowing also, possibly, that he’d be remembered. His face twisted in a sour smile. Even six years later it’d been something of a gamble, perhaps, to drive back to the city in a black suit and a black top hat, to drive back to the city in the same dark car.
Every time he read the article he had to admire Creed’s strategy. Two things. One: the murder of Francis Gorelli had driven Vasco insane and insanity, surely, was a far more effective, far more exquisite punishment than death. Two: the killing (or, as the papers understood it, the abduction) of an innocent man was a crime with no motive. It forced the police to generalise. Their conclusion only scratched the surface of the truth. The crime was part of ‘a wave of violence’. Its context had become its cause. Nor had the body (or, for that matter, any other evidence) been discovered. Not even a murder then. Not necessarily. Just another missing-persons case. A poster in a police station. An appeal on the back of a carton of milk.
Jed dozed through the afternoon. By the evening he needed more pain-killers. When he left his room he noticed that all the videos had gone; Silence must’ve been busy. He heard voices in the kitchen, and went and stood in the doorway. Silence was sitting at the table with a man. There were small transparent plastic bags scattered all over the formica. Inside were watches, lighters, rings. Sensing something behind him, the man swung round. ‘Who the fuck’s this?’
Silence showed him a card: FRIEND.
‘OK,’ the man said, ‘OK,’ and he turned to Jed and said, ‘Sorry about that.’
Jed nodded. He didn’t want to risk speaking. Not yet. He shook two tablets on to a piece of silver foil and began to grind them up with the back of a spoon.
The man had sandy-gold hair and tiny red veins below his sideburns. His hands shook. He was smoking menthol cigarettes. ‘What’s this you’ve got?’ he said, tapping a maroon box with one finger.
Silence snapped the lid open. He took out a gold pocket watch and handed it to the man. Jed saw the watch over the man’s shoulder. Its face was ringed with gems.
The man nodded. ‘Nice piece.’
Silence reached over. He flicked the back of the watch open with his thumb and held it to the man’s ear. It played ‘As Time Goes By’.
‘Ain’t that something.’ The man stared at Silence. ‘How’d you know it played a tune, Silence, you being deaf and all?’
Silence wrote, SOMEBODY TOLD ME.
The man guffawed. ‘And you trusted them?’
Silence wrote, DID YOU HEAR THE TUNE OR DIDN’T YOU?
‘I heard the tune.’
I MAY BE DUMB, Silence wrote, BUT I’M NOT THAT DUMB. Then he tucked the rest of his cards back into his pocket. Clearly that was all he was going to say on the subject.
Jed opened the fridge. There was a six-pack of plain yoghurt on the top shelf. Silence had come through for him. He stirred his crushed tablets into a yoghurt, then he found a piece of paper and wrote, THANKS FOR THE YOGHURT. On his way out of the room he handed Silence the message.
Silence smiled. YOUR’E WELCOME, he wrote.
‘You’re weird, you are,’ the man said. ‘Just plain weird, the lot of you.’
Jed went back to bed.
The next day he left the apartment at noon. He stood at ground-level and looked around. Heat rippled on the concrete, the horizon seemed alive with snakes. He walked past his car and out through the housing project. Smells came to him: warm garbage, tar melting, dead fish. There was nobody about. Days like this most people stayed home and stood in front of the fridge with the door open or something.
He was heading for the thrift stores in Mangrove South. He’d decided that if he walked he’d be less visible. It was only twenty minutes. He took shortcuts and kept to the shadows. Every now and then he spoke to himself. He was testing his voice. There was no danger in it. He was east of downtown and the only people on the streets were old men with bottles of sweet red wine. They talked to themselves all the time. He fitted right in. Christ, it was hot, though. He could feel the heat of the sidewalk through the soles of his boots.
He was almost there when he heard somebody call his name. He ignored it. Then somebody came running out of the sunlight towards him. It was Nathan.
‘You sick or something?’ Nathan said.
Jed touched the scarf at his neck. ‘Sick? Heh.’ That was one way of putting it.
‘So how are you doing? Did you find a place?’
There’d always been something manic about Nathan. Behind those green eyes, that blond hair. Behind that tan. He was like a dog with training that nobody can use.
Jed nodded. ‘I found a place.’
‘Where is it?’
As if he was going to tell him that.
‘Round here.’
Then Nathan said, ‘I remember when you used to live in the Towers.’ Straight out. As if he could see right into the hooded part of Jed’s brain.
Jed stared at him. But Nathan’s eyes had misted over; he seemed to have lowered himself into his own memory.
‘I went there once. I looked for you.’ He smiled. ‘Couldn’t find you, though.’
‘Must’ve been years ago,’ Jed said, still watching him closely.
‘The place was like a maze,’ Nathan said.
Still is.
Jed chipped at the wall with his boot. And began to smile, because he’d thought of something.
‘By the way.’ He took out one of Mario’s hundred-dollar bills and smiled down at it. He’d kept it as a kind of souvenir. But now he had a better use for it. He held the bill out to Nathan. ‘Here’s the money I owe you.’
It was worth $100 just to see Nathan’s face.
‘But,’ he was stammering, ‘but I only lent you eight.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Jed said. ‘You were so kind, letting me stay and all.’
And his smile began to twist on his face, he just couldn’t keep the sneer out of it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘better be going.’
And just walked away.
When he reached the corner of the street he glanced over his shoulder. Nathan was still standing on the sidewalk staring at him. Had Nathan guessed where he was living? No, he was thrown by the money. That was all it was. Jed shifted his shoulders inside his jacket. So he used to live in the Towers once upon a time. So what. He hadn’t told Nathan anything, had he?
He walked on. Two blocks west he found the thrift store he’d been looking for. Inside he moved from rail to rail. He began to assemble a wardrobe. It wasn’t easy. These were all dead men’s clothes. Why was everyone who died so fucking fat? You’d think a few thin people would die sometimes, but no. It took him fifteen minutes just to find a pair of pants and even then they were three inches too big around the waist and he needed a belt to hold them up. Still, it was a start. In half an hour he was standing in front of a full-length mirror. This was what he had on: a pale-blue turtleneck (it hid the ghosts); a pair of chinos in a kind of rusty ochre colour; brown leather sandals with rubber soles (he’d learned a thing or two from that Sister in the hospital); a grey fake snakeskin belt; and a maroon leather jacket with black buttons and scoop lapels.
He heaped his own clothes on the counter and explained that he wanted to trade them for the clothes he was now wearing. The woman who ran the place wore a cardigan draped over her shoulders. She shifted her arms inside the cardigan and looked at him sideways. Her jackdaw eye swooped on his most valuable possession. ‘What about the hat?’
He wedged the hat under his arm. ‘Not for sale.’
The woman shrugged. She began to sort one-handed through his clothes. Held a boot up between finger and thumb. ‘Don’t suppose you ever heard of polish, did you?’
‘They’re all black, the clothes,’ he said. ‘You should be able to shift them pretty quick in a town like this.’
‘That may be so, but look at the state of them.’ The woman lifted his frayed jacket and let it drop again. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘you leave your clothes plus fifteen dollars, on account of that coat you got there’s leather,’ and her eye hovered, gleaming, above his hat once more, ‘unless of course –’
He paid the $15 and left. On his way back to the Towers he had to stop in a supermarket and a pharmacy. By the time he reached the thirteenth floor he was drenched in sweat. Silence let him in. He went straight to the kitchen. Silence followed him, stood in the doorway. He began to unpack the bags he was carrying. A block of ice-cream. A tin of minestrone soup. A box of COLOR-U-BLONDE hair dye. A roll of silver foil. And two six-packs of yoghurt (one plain, one assorted-fruit flavours).
He turned. Silence was still watching from the doorway. Silence handed him a card: I WAS WORRIED FOR A MOMENT. I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT’VE FORGOTTEN THE YOGHURT.
Jed had to grin.
WHAT’S WITH THE SOUP? Silence wrote.
‘It’s my throat,’ Jed explained. ‘Yoghurt, ice-cream, minestrone. They’re the only things I can get down.’
Later that evening, when Silence had gone out, he locked himself in the bathroom. He took off his new blue turtleneck and wrapped a towel around his shoulders. He opened the COLOR-U-BLONDE, pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and slowly, meticulously, applied the peroxide solution to his hair. Afterwards he covered his head in silver foil. Almost immediately his scalp began to burn. This reassured him. No change is possible, he thought, without pain. No change is real unless it hurts.
He walked out on to the balcony as the sun set. The city lay in its own haze, buildings dipped in spun sugar, they could melt on your tongue. The sting of peroxide balanced the ache in his throat, almost cancelled it. Tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow he would make the call.
The evening passed. He stood on the balcony eating fruit yoghurt and watching the planes. A calmness eased into his bones. His blood slowed down. That tortoise, Bob, he was smarter than he looked.
Towards midnight he heard Silence return. He left his bedroom and joined Silence in the lounge. Silence was smoking a joint and watching TV. He offered Jed the joint. Jed turned it down. Silence was staring at him now. Silence put the joint down in the ashtray so he could stare better. Then he wrote on a card and handed it to Jed. Jed read the card and smiled. There was only one word on it:
EERIE.
The next morning he walked into the bathroom and saw a blond stranger in the mirror. ‘Jesus,’ he said. His voice didn’t sound bad. A bit croaky, but OK. He undid the scarf. The ghosts had changed colour. They’d achieved a curious yellow-brown. It reminded him of crème caramel, old banana skins. Or the thin band of pollution that sometimes circled the horizon.
He borrowed one of Silence’s cordless phones and stood on the balcony. The city was making that sound that cities make. Like if you’re told to breathe out slowly through your mouth. He sensed the first drop of rain on his shoulder, he felt it burn into his skin like acid, he heard it telling him that he was special, special. The sound of the rain in that word. The meaning of that word on his skin.
He dialled the Paradise Corporation.
The receptionist put him through to the chairman’s office. A secretary answered. ‘Mr Creed’s at home today. Can I take a message?’
‘No message,’ Jed said, and cut her off.
He dialled the Palace Hotel. ‘Apartment 1412, please.’
‘One moment.’
He could hear the phone ringing in Creed’s apartment now. Then it was picked up. ‘Yes?’
‘Mr Creed, please.’
‘Who’s calling?’
Jed recognised the voice on the other end. It was the Skull. Michael The Skull McGowan. So they were still working together. If that wasn’t loyalty.
‘Who’s calling?’ the Skull said again.
‘It’s Jed Morgan.’ There was a pause, then Creed was on the line. Jed could tell by the silence. He’d know that silence anywhere.
‘Creed?’
‘Spaghetti. How nice. I’ve been expecting your call.’
Jed’s hand tightened round the phone. You could never tell whether Creed was bluffing. ‘What do you mean?’
But Creed just laughed. ‘Your voice sounds terrible.’
‘I’ve had a cold.’
‘It doesn’t sound like a cold. It sounds more like someone tried to strangle you.’
His heart beat hard, the air thickened around him. He gripped the balcony with his free hand. How did Creed know all this? Did he know everything?
‘What do you want, Spaghetti?’ Creed was saying. ‘I’m a busy man. I haven’t got all day.’
He hadn’t thought this out properly. He hadn’t imagined the way it might go. He jumped at some words as they came into his mind. ‘I need some money.’
‘I didn’t think you were interested in money.’
‘I want half a million.’
‘You’ll only start throwing it around. Remember last time.’
‘Half a million. And I want it tomorrow night.’
‘What makes you think you deserve anything?’
‘I’ve got a tape. You want to hear it?’
‘What is it? Violins?’
Jed picked up his pen recorder and pressed PLAY. He held it over the phone. ‘You want me to kill Vasco’s brother? … That’s right … How? … Don’t worry about that … It’s taken care of … It’s nice …’ He pressed STOP. ‘There’s your violins, Creed. Did you like them?’
‘Tape doesn’t stand up in court, Spaghetti.’
‘How about the papers, Creed? Does tape stand up in the papers?’
A silence.
He had him. At last he had him.
‘How would it look on the front page, Creed? I can see the headline now. Funeral baron held on murder charge. Headline like that, you could sell a few papers, I reckon.’
Don’t give him time to think.
‘Midnight tomorrow. The West Pier. Just you and me. You got that?’
Another silence.
‘Jed?’
‘What?’
‘You’re still driving the same car.’
‘So?’
‘Bit risky, isn’t it, driving the same car? I mean, it could be seen as evidence, couldn’t it?’ A pause. ‘You know what they say about evidence. They say destroy it.’
‘What are you talking about, Creed?’
‘I thought I’d do a friend a favour, that’s all.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘Why don’t you look out the window?’
‘I am looking out the –’
His car exploded with a dull thump. One hand on the balcony, he felt the building shake. Bits of chrome and glass scattered over the parking-lot. Flames reached arms out of the windows, clawed their way across the roof. The flames sounded like rain, he thought. Like rain. Then a fire alarm jangled and a baby started crying.
He dropped the phone and ran inside. Silence was standing outside his bedroom door in his pyjamas. The explosion must’ve woken him.
‘It’s my car,’ Jed said. ‘They blew up my car.’
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He ran down the stairs, all thirteen floors. By the time he reached the ground his car was surrounded by kids from the project. Some were pointing, chattering. Others scoured the concrete, collecting bits of headlamp and mirror. He pushed to the front. You could no longer tell what colour the car had been. You could only just read the numberplate: CREAM 8. He’d had that numberplate since he was sixteen. He’d paid a fucking hundred dollars for that numberplate. He dashed towards it, hands outstretched, but a blast of heat threw him back with no eyebrows.
‘This your car?’ one of the kids shouted.
He didn’t answer. He could hear sirens whooping on Ocean Avenue. Weee-ooo Weee-ooo Weee-ooo. They’d be arriving any moment. He turned and made off in the direction of the project.
He ran up a flight of stairs and along a walkway, putting solid concrete between himself and his burning car. He glanced up once and saw the boy with the crewcut and the puffy eyes standing on a balcony above him.
The boy shouted something.
He didn’t hear it the first time.
The boy shouted it again. ‘Where’s your hat, mister?’
The Ocean Bed Motel
When Nathan woke in the morning, the bed was empty. Through the open door he could hear Reid talking.
‘You know what they say about evidence.’ A pause. ‘They say destroy it.’ Another pause. ‘I thought I’d do a friend a favour, that’s all.’
He could hear no second voice. It must be a phone-call. He eased out of the bed and pulled on his jeans. In the lounge the sun pressed against the drawn blinds. A few bright ribs of light thrown on the floor.
‘Why don’t you look out the window?’ Reid said, and then he hung up.
Strange way to end a phone-call.
Reid put the phone down with a smile. When he looked up and saw Nathan standing in the doorway the smile remained. Or rather, the shape of the smile remained. The content had altered. Where the first smile had been poisonous, the second was benign. And the transition was so effortless, so deft. Nathan knew he was supposed to be smiling back, but found that he could only stare.
‘I’d almost forgotten you were here,’ Reid said.
The Five Gates of Hell Page 37