Blue World (52 page)

“Look. It’s late. Just tell me, all right?” What was that smell? John thought. A strange, pungent odor…

“I know all about your girlfriend, Father. A big fat dick told me.” The man bent down, and in the low light John could see a pair of pale lips at the screen.

A burnt smell, John thought. That’s what it was. “Meaning?”

“Meanin‘ your ass is cooked, Father John. I heard the music, not you.”

“Music?” Was this guy nuts, or what? “What music?”

The man laughed quietly. “Sure, you know what I mean. All you guys know the secret. That’s why you went after Debra.”

“I’d like to know who you…” He stopped.

Debra, the man had said. Not

Debbie.

His eyes widened.

“She’s my date,” the man said.

There was a metallic click.

Gunpowder, John thought. That’s what I smell.

He jerked his face back from the grille and instinctively lifted his right hand in a gesture of protection because he remembered hearing that click when he was inside a toilet stall, and now he knew what it--

The gun went off, a gout of fire blasting through the grille. The palm of John’s open hand exploded, blood spraying across the opposite wall. Pain seared him, and as he grabbed his wrist and fell off the velvet cushion the pistol went off a second time.

This bullet creased across the front of John’s throat, shocking his larynx like a punch. He grunted with pain and slid to the floor as the third bullet passed through the confessional over his head in a shower of wood splinters.

Travis peered through the broken grille, could see the bastard lying there and blood all over the wall. The bastard’s collar was turning crimson. Got him right in the neck, he thought. Bleed to death real quick. The priest’s eyelids were fluttering, but he was a goner for sure. “She’s my date,” Travis repeated, and he holstered his Colt, got out of the confining little closet, and ran for the doors. Then out into the rain, toward Moby Dick’s Chevy parked up on the curb.

He pulled away, heading for his girlfriend’s place.

And two minutes later, Father John Lancaster burst out of the confessional and fell to the hard marble, his bleeding hand clasped to his chest. He squeezed the wrist with the other hand, trying to constrict the veins and stop the ghastly flow. His face had gone white, and blood crept down his throat over the crimson collar. His first thought was to scream for help--not that anyone was around to hear him--but when he tried that, his voice came out as a pained croak.

Oh, my Christ, he thought. Oh, Holy Mother… I’ve got to get up.

Bleeding. Bleeding all over the floor. The monsignor was… going to… split a gut…

His consciousness ebbed, came back again, ebbed and returned. Pain throbbed up his wrist and through his shoulder; his hand felt as if it had been caught in a freezer, but his face was on fire.

She’s my date, the maniac had said.

My date.

“Oh, Lord,” he gasped, but it came out as the grunt of a wounded beast. Got to get up… got to get up…

now.

He got to his knees. His head was starting to clear a little, but dark pain still sought to drag him under. The smell of blood was sickening, and his palm kept oozing though he squeezed his wrist with all his strength.

Get up… get up… damn you, get up!

That maniac was stalking Debbie… no, stalking Debra Rocks. But Debbie was the one who wore her face.

John stood up, wavered on his feet, clenched his teeth, and staggered through the door that led him into the administrative wing. A telephone, he thought. Got to get to a telephone. The first office was locked. So was the second. His own office was locked, and his keys were in his apartment. He staggered on, leaving a trail of blood drops.

In his apartment, he couldn’t make his fingers close around the telephone’s receiver. They jittered and jumped, but would not obey. Nerve damage, he thought. He lifted the receiver with his left hand and jabbed at the O button with his elbow. Circuits clicked and whirred. “Operator.”

He wanted to say I

need the police, but nothing would come out. Sweat broke from his pores. “I… need…” he croaked.

“Is someone there?” the operator asked. “Hello?”

“I… need… the…” His bruised larynx refused to let the words come out as anything but a harsh moan.

“Hello? Is anyone…”

Blood was trickling down John’s right wrist, and he knew at that moment that if he did not get to Debbie she was doomed.

He looked at his bicycle, next to the door. The operator hung up.

He had to make it. He had to, wounded or not. By the time he got to the police, she might well be raped or… worse, much worse. Anybody who used a gun like that wasn’t going to be satisfied with rape. And now John had to pull whatever guts he had up from his shoes and reach Debbie, because the clock was ticking and time was fast running out.

He went to his black pants, hanging over a chair. He yanked the belt out and tied it as tightly as he could stand around his right wrist, using his left hand and his teeth. Then he shook the cobwebs out of his head, and he thought of Debbie coming face-to-face with that maniac--that killer, possibly--and he jumped on his bike and pedaled furiously down the hall to the stairs.

Blood spotted the floor behind him.

He went through the street door pedaling, out onto Vallejo and into the drizzle. The chilly air served to knock some of the sluggishness out of his legs, and he pedaled harder. His right hand twitched, the palm a red oozing mass and the rest of the hand bone-white. He sped across Broadway and into the night.

He went up the stairs, all the way to number six, and there he buzzed her door.

Debbie opened her eyes. What was that? Somebody at the door? She waited, not sure she’d heard anything at all but a wish. And there it was again: the buzzer.

She sat up in bed. “Lucky,” she whispered.

John was pedaling hard, but the world had slowed down. The streets were made of black, gleaming tar, and the air had thickened. He took a corner fast, and suddenly the tar let his tires go and he was slung into a group of garbage cans.

Debbie put on her white robe, stepped over Unicorn-- who liked to scuttle around in the darkness--and flipped on lights as she hurried to the door. On the kitchen counter was an airline ticket, and it was good Lucky had come because there were a lot of things she needed to say to him.

She started to open the door, in a rush to see his face. But at the last second she stopped herself and peered through the spyhole.

It was a guy with a blond crew cut, wearing a rain-damp canvas coat. He was studying his hands.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice sharp now that she realized it wasn’t him after all.

The guy looked up at the spyhole. He smiled, and she could see weird tattoos at the outer corners of his eyes.

Up again, and speeding onward.

Hurry! he told himself. His legs were cramping. Forget the pain. Hurry, damn it! His vision kept going in and out, but now he had control of himself and he wasn’t going to lose consciousness again. Still, he had a long way to go yet. He grabbed the belt with his teeth and gave it a tightening jerk. Then, his head over the handlebars, he raced toward North Beach.

“Howdy,” Travis said. His heart was thudding. Oh, she was so beautiful, so… within reach.

“You want me to call a cop?” she asked warily, ready to spring back from the door.

“No! Oh, no!” His smile went crooked. “I’ve got a message for you from your boyfriend.”

“My boyfriend?”

“Sure. You know. Fa…” He paused. “John.”

“John?” How many Johns did she know? she thought. This guy must be cracked! But then it dawned on her. “John. You mean Lucky?”

That seemed to turn a light on, he decided. “Lucky,” he repeated thickly. “Yeah, he’s sure lucky, knowin‘ you and all.”

Still, something wasn’t right. Debbie could smell it. “How do you know him?”

“Oh, we go way back. We’re just like this.” He held up a hand with two intertwined fingers.

Debbie still didn’t open the door. If you don’t know the face, she thought, don’t let ‘em into the place. “What’s the message?”

“Let me in and I’ll tell you.”

“No. Sorry. Tell me from out there.”

“I don’t think you want your neighbors hearin‘ this.”

“They’re heavy sleepers. Let’s hear it, Jack.”

“Travis,” he told her with a pained expression. “Travis, from Oklahoma.”

“Okay, great. What’s the message, Travis?”

He paused, studying his hands again. The warped wheels went round and round. Finally he looked up into the spyhole and gave her his best smile. “Your boyfriend’s a priest.”

Her mouth slowly opened. Her face contorted; then she shook her head and grinned. “Travis, you’re crazier’n a one-legged grasshopper!”

“Father John Lancaster,” he went on. “The Cathedral of St. Francis. It’s on Vallejo. A big white place.”

She whispered, “No.” Then, louder: “Hell, no! What kind of joke is this, man?”

“He’s got blond hair. Kind of tall and slim,” Travis said. “Like me. Oh, yeah: he rides around on a ten-speed.”

Debbie stared out at Travis for a moment. Her mouth worked, would release no words. Nothing she could consider saying would express what she was feeling: a war between tears and hysterical laughter. The Cathedral of St. Francis was where she’d gone to ask a priest to pray for Janey McCullough. And the priest in the confessional…

“Oh, no,” she said softly, as if slapped by a feather. “Oh, no.”

She remembered now:

Please don’t curse.

That had been said to her in the confessional, and repeated in her apartment while she was in the kitchen with a frozen dinner in each hand.

“Oh…” It was a pained, stunned, world-crashing gasp.

“…no.”

“Open up. I’ll tell you everythin‘,” Travis said.

Her hand drifted to the latch. Hung there, as Debbie shook her head and tried to make the room stop spinning.

She turned the latch, opened the door, and the cowboy boots clumped across the threshold.

A hill rose before him. It had never seemed so large, so damned monstrous, before. The earth was playing with him, he thought. Hills were rising to block his way. He shifted down to low gear, and fought the bicycle up it, his legs screaming for relief but the fresh pain cleaning all the haze out of his head. Her building was just a couple of blocks to the east now, and when he got up this hill he would take a sharp right and…

God, help me! he begged. Tears had filled his eyes. God, help me!

“A priest,” Debbie whispered. That word made her throat feel raw. “I talked to him when I went to the church. He was in the confession booth. Right there, beside me. And I never knew. I never knew.”

“Now you know,” Travis said. “It’s a hell of a kick, huh? You got any beer?”

“Beer? No. I’ve got wine. Oh, Jesus.” She felt faint, had to grasp hold of the kitchen counter. “I’ve got wine. I think I need a drink myself.” She turned toward the refrigerator, and that was when he came up behind her, slipping the rope out from around his arm, and clutched it around her throat.

She grasped his hands as the rope tightened, and she started to let out a scream, but his face got up right against her ear and the mouth whispered, “I love you, Debra. Even better than I loved Cheri and Easee.”

The scream faltered and stopped on a choke. The impact of what he’d just said, coupled with the realization that her lucky charm--her soul mate--was and always had been a Catholic priest, made her knees buckle.

His right hand left her throat. She heard the rustle of his canvas coat, and her body arched to wrench away from him, to reach the knife drawer and sink a dagger into his black heart. But she didn’t have time, because in the next second something slammed against the back of her skull and the kitchen floor came up like a bad dream.

John reached the top of the hill. And a police car sped past him, descending in the opposite direction. He started to lift his arms, but the car was going somewhere fast and he had no voice to make the officers understand. He looked away, his face grim and determined, and kept pedaling. It was up to him now. Up to him. God was in his heaven, and the angels were abed. It was up to him.

He took the sharp right, misjudged, and ran up over the curb with a spine-jarring bump. The handlebars shivered out of his one-handed grip, and the frame made a noise like guitar strings snapping. Suddenly he had no traction; his pedals were slipping, without engaging the tires. The chain, he realized with an inner shriek, had come off the gear wheels. Without hesitation he threw the bicycle aside in front of a Vietnamese restaurant and ran for Raphael Street.

Debbie opened her eyes. She was in a world of white, and her stomach muscles had cramped with tension. Pain throbbed, a dull bruise, at the back of her head. She trembled, about to throw up, and that was when she realized she was roped.

Not just roped. Bound and hog-tied, with expert knots. She was still in her white robe, but it was open and had ridden up over her hips. Her hands were tied at the wrists behind her, and the tough rope came up around her throat and head and was knotted above her face to…

She moaned; there was a washrag jammed into her mouth.

… to the bathtub’s faucet. She was lying in the bathtub, her face about six inches under the waterflow.

“Now we’re all ready,” Travis said, coming into view above her. He knelt down beside the tub, as Debbie thrashed and tried to get her ankles hooked around the towel rack. No use, she knew after a couple of tries. No use…

“Remember, in

Super Slick?“

Travis asked her excitedly. “You and Cheri did that scene in the tub with the two guys? That was hot, Debra. I couldn’t get that scene out of my mind, it was so hot. It was… like… it was just branded right in there. I put Cheri in a tub too. I’m kind of like a director, huh?”

She thrashed on, knowing it was useless but not ready to give up. Her head remained tautly secured under the faucet.

“Easee’s best scene was when she was on her knees doin‘ that black guy. I did the best I could with that one.” His hand went to the hot-water tap. “I loved you. I loved all of you. And I knew the music was for me. It called me to California.” His hand twisted, and Debbie thrashed anew but she wasn’t going anywhere. He added cold water to the flow so it wouldn’t burn her, and now the water was streaming forcefully into her face. She was able to turn her head maybe a half-inch or so, but the pain killed her neck and the water was still going up her nostrils. The washcloth soaked through and seemed to expand in her mouth. Gonna drown me, she knew. Oh, sweet Jesus… he’s gonna drown me! She blew water out of her nostrils and fought for a breath; she got a gulp of air, but the water was too strong. It went up her nostrils and down her throat.