Book of Shadows (23 page)

Bess looked down at the dead dog, who lay on the last two steps bleeding, his eyes bright, the flesh pulled back from his teeth. Holstering his gun, Bess patted Felix on the shoulder.

“Raymond?” asked Felix.

“Gut shot. He’s either gone or on his way out. Let’s check out the kid, see if she’s all right.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Bess and Felix stepped over the dead dog. Felix kicked Murray not too gently in the side. “You ain’t dead, Murray. Let’s see you get up.”

Murray moaned.

“The man’s an actor,” said Felix.

Bess hovered over Fancy.

“You gonna kill me here?” asked Murray.

Felix patted him down and cuffed him. “What gives you that idea?”

“Phone call,” said a subdued, scared Murray. “Somebody said you was gonna snuff us. Call came in while you was outside. Said you cops were gonna burn us, all three of us, and we’d better shoot our way out or fly out or something.”

“Who told you that?” said Felix.

“Somebody.”

“Somebody. Well, Murray my man, why don’t you tell me who somebody is?”

“Felix?”

The black detective looked at his partner.

Bess said, “She’s dead. Fractured skull, broken neck, I’m not sure. Must have happened when Murray pushed her down the stairs.”

Murray, who’d been facing the wall, turned, his hands cuffed behind him. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

Bess stood up, his eyes on the dead child prostitute. “You did more than hurt her, Murray. A lot more.”

Felix said, “We got company.”

The detective looked up to see people staring down at them.

“Which reminds me,” said Bess. “Raymond.”

He hurried upstairs, pushed his way through the crowd at the top of the stairs and ran down the hall. At the opened door of Murray Train’s apartment, a fat Puerto Rican woman, her hair in curlers, looked inside. Bess shoved his way past her and stopped.

A Puerto Rican youth was crouched over Raymond.

Bess said, “If you’ve got anything in your pocket that belongs to him, I’m going to—”

The fat woman said, “He no steal. He only wan’ help. He see this man he bleeding and he come help. Why you cops make trouble?”

When Bess looked back at Raymond a wallet and a wristwatch were sitting on his chest and the youth was standing up, scratching the back of his neck and looking at the floor.

“Get the hell out of here, both of you,” shouted Bess.

When they left, he bent over Raymond.

Dead.

A bullet hole in the stomach was a bad way to go. The pain was incredible and the internal bleeding was just about impossible to stop. Not many people survived Raymond’s kind of wound. He was now a permanently rehabilitated child pornographer and highly unlikely to become a repeat offender. Bess walked over to the telephone.

When the coroner had taken Raymond and Fancy’s bodies away, Joseph Bess and Felix silently strolled to a window in Murray Train’s apartment and stared down at the rain-wet street below.

Felix said, “Top floor, no fire escape. All Murray could do was go for them stairs.”

“We were set up,” said Bess.

“I know.”

“Used.”

“I know.”

“Somebody wanted to make sure Raymond and Fancy wouldn’t talk.”

“Yes indeed.”

Bess looked at his partner. “I read it this way. A certain person sees that Princess Grace gets a hot tip, which gets passed on to us. We then hustle over here to grab Raymond. At just the right moment Murray gets a phone call saying the cops are going to kill everybody in this apartment. Naturally the people in this apartment panic, except maybe Murray, who ain’t too sure it’s a smart thing to start snuffing cops.”

“Good ol’ Murray. He’s a rat’s ass with a heart.” Bess held a forefinger in the air. “Now Raymond, he’s not so cool. He figures he’s going down, so he tries to whack us out anyway. Why not, right?”

“Why not indeed.”

“Remember: Raymond and Fancy were both shouting about being killed and this came right after the call, right after Murray told them what he’d heard over the phone. Felix, brother man, you and I have been had.”

“Screwed, blewed, and tattooed.”

Bess punched the palm of one hand with a clenched fist. “Anthony Paul Bofil.”

Felix shook a cigarette loose from a pack and offered it to Bess, who shook his head. The black detective looked over his shoulder to make sure none of the cops and photographers in the room could overhear him.

He whispered, “Bofil wouldn’t go anywhere near Murray Train. Murray’s chump change, a nothing who can barely get over.”

“So someone else made the call for him. But the trail still leads back to Bofil. I can smell it. We were getting close, my man, and close is the one thing Tony Paul doesn’t want. We’ve been had and I don’t like it.”

“I hear you. I think maybe we should talk with Grace one more time. She might know who goes around making phone calls for Tony Paul. Just one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

Felix looked over his shoulder, then looked forward again out of the window. “If Bofil is the reason Raymond and Fancy are cold meat in a large metal drawer downtown, I think Princess Grace might be in trouble.”

Bess shook his head. “Tony Paul, Tony Paul. Playing us like we were a couple of violins.”

Felix put an arm around his shoulders. “Shit floats, my man. That’s why some people are on top and the rest of us are down below looking up. Let’s get the hell out of here. Let the rain wash some of this crap off our souls.”

F
ORTY-FIVE MINUTES AFTER
leaving Joseph Bess’s apartment in the Village, a tense Marisa arrived home soaked to the skin.

She had walked the streets in the rain looking for a cab, her nerves stretched to the breaking point by imagining that around every corner lurked the white-haired man and the tall woman, ready to snatch the
Book of Shadows
from her and drag her off somewhere to be burned alive. A few blocks from Bess’s apartment an empty cab had made a U-turn and approached her and a grateful Marisa had been ready to jump in.

Until she saw the driver.

He was stocky, white-haired, and he looked like the man who stalked her until her brain flashed the message that he bore only a slight resemblance to the Druid. But Marisa backed off anyway, shaking her head no. The cab sped away, spraying water on Marisa and her shopping bag.

Stupid, she told herself. Not too bright, Marisa.

Her action had been a reflex, a sign of just how uptight she was since stealing the
Book of Shadows
from Robert. Minutes later she found another empty cab.

After carefully locking her apartment door she took the shopping bag to the kitchen, where she placed the orange juice and milk in the fridge. Then she remembered it was almost noon and she hadn’t had breakfast. Leaving the shopping bag on the floor near the stove, she removed two eggs and a whole grapefruit from the fridge, took a kitchen knife from a magnetic board hanging over the sink and sliced the grapefruit in half.

The eggs were placed in a pot of water. When she’d set a flame under the pot she decided she had to pee and that couldn’t wait, so she hurried from the kitchen to the toilet.

After she’d finished and washed her hands, she turned on the bathtub taps. There was no telling when she’d hear from Joseph Bess, so in the meantime why not relax in a hot tub, maybe have breakfast there? She snapped her fingers. She hadn’t checked her answering service.

No call from Joseph Bess, but there was one from her agent, Jules. He’d received an offer for Marisa to do a voice-over for a fall line of dresses by a name designer, the commercials to run on all three television networks. And a summer-theater producer in Florida wanted her to do two weeks in a Neil Simon comedy with a former Hollywood Oscar winner. Big bucks all around, said Jules. Call soonest. He was in the Hamptons at his summer home and waiting.

There was also a caller, male, who’d dialed a wrong number and Marisa started to worry about that until she decided it really had been a wrong number. Time for her to get out of her wet clothes and into a dry martini, as someone once said. She snapped her fingers again. Time to look in on her eggs. On the way back to the kitchen she wondered when Robert would notice that the
Book
o
f Shadows
was missing.

Before she could reach the stove the downstairs buzzer rang, the signal from the doorman that Marisa had a visitor. The eggs were forgotten. Joseph Bess. Had to be. He’d gotten her message, thank God. Marisa ran to the intercom.

“Yes?”

“Police, Miss Heggen.”

“Yes, Andy, I know. Send him up.”

She released the button under the speaker and turned toward the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. The last thing she wanted was her very own flash flood. After turning off the water, she looked into the mirror. Circles under her eyes. Damp, uncombed hair. And a line in her face that hadn’t been there yesterday.

Placing her fingers under her ears, Marisa pulled the skin tight. That’s what she needed. A little nip and tuck in Brazil and she could pass for Marie Osmond. Or a polished apple.

The front door bell rang. Oh God. Why did Bess have to see her looking like this? She found a lipstick in the medicine cabinet, quickly ran it across her lips and smoothed it with the tip of her little finger, and when the bell rang again, she dropped the lipstick in the basin and ran.

“Coming! Coming!”

Marisa opened the door and was smiling when Cornell Castle drove his fist deep into her stomach, then shoved her back into the apartment and down to the floor.

Marisa landed hard on her right side, hurting her shoulder and hip.
She couldn’t breathe.
Clawing at the carpet with one hand, she brought her knees up to cover her agonized stomach and used all her discipline to will herself to breathe again, to draw air through her open mouth. She closed her eyes, a pitiful attempt to shut out the agony pressing on her insides. The horrible blackness in her head shifted from cold to hot and back to cold again.

She smelled perfume that was familiar. Then more pain. Someone stepped on the back of her hand and Marisa was wide-eyed with new pain. She saw the spiked heel of a woman’s shoe digging into her hand and Marisa looked up to see Alison Sales.

“Ground rules,” said Alison looking down at Marisa. “We get the correct answer the first time, Sarah Bernhardt. If we have to ask twice, we’re going to take it out on you with gusto and I’ll tell you something, dear heart, I’m looking forward to it.”

She pushed the heel in deeper. Marisa shrieked.

With a dancer’s grace, the slim, beautiful Alison suddenly crouched beside Marisa and the ballpoint pen in her fist was only a fraction of an inch from Marisa’s right eye.

“Don’t,” whispered Alison. “Don’t scream, don’t yell, don’t even wet your pants, because if you do, I’m going to shove this thing in your eye until it reaches your brain. Do you understand?”

Marisa coughed and said nothing.

Alison slapped her hard across the face. “I said
do you understand?
Answer me.”

Marisa nodded. “Yes, I understand.”

Alison stood up. “Good.”

Cornell Castle, who’d made a quick tour of the apartment, stood in the bathroom doorway. “She’s alone. The lady was getting ready to take a bath, looks like.”

Alison Sales sat on a couch, crossed her legs and smoothed her skirt down. “Who were you expecting?” she said to Marisa.

Marisa attempted to sit up.

Alison said softly, “Cornell.”

Cornell Castle walked calmly over to Marisa, painfully yanked her hair and threw her back to the floor, where she landed face down. Leaning over he punched her in the kidney, a whiplike blow that made her groan.

She willed herself not to cry out.

Alison said, “I didn’t tell you to sit up. I merely asked a question. Who were you expecting?”

Marisa’s back felt as though it were in a vise. She lay face down on the carpet, a hand tearing at the fabric, the other hand in a tight fist at her side. The words and her breathing both came slowly.

“Joseph Bess. He’s … he’s a cop.”

“We know,” said Alison. “Detective sergeant, and he’s your new-found great and good friend. Were you going to turn the book over to him?”

“Y-yes.”

“Why?”

“I was afraid to keep it.”

“Meaning the book’s still here. You may sit up now. It’s hard to hear you with your mouth full of rug. No, don’t sit. Kneel. Kneel facing me.”

Marisa did as she was ordered. Why were they doing this to her? What was the
Book of Shadows
to them? Were they connected in some way to the Druids?

As for Alison Sales, she was the most frightening woman Marisa had ever met in her life. Sadistic, psychotic, and glacial. Totally frozen and without an ounce of feeling. If Marisa survived today it would be because she was very, very lucky.

Power. That was Alison’s game.

Marisa’s heart was pounding when she spoke. “May I ask a question?”

Alison smiled with half her mouth. “You learn fast. I like that. I really like that. Yes, you may ask one question.”

“Are … are you two connected with the Druids in any way?”

Alison nodded. “Yes and no. We’re independent, but yes, we do have an affiliation with the Druids.”

Cornell Castle snorted. “That’s the problem. And the sooner we eliminate said problem, the better.”

“Then …”

Marisa stopped herself. Alison’s face had quickly hardened.

Marisa, intelligent enough to have caught her mistake before it became fatal, hung her head and said, “I’m sorry.”

Alison relaxed.

Cornell Castle, his arms folded, watched the two women with keen interest. Alison was an expert at creative sadism, at inventing games combining sex and pain. He’d brought her along this morning because she loathed Marisa Heggen. There was, of course, the matter of Alison’s sharing Robert with Marisa, but Cornell knew that Alison’s hatred of the actress went deeper than mere jealousy.

Marisa had fame, talent, money; things Alison had always wanted but never managed to achieve. There was a certain power and mystery in belonging to the coven, in being in witchcraft, but it was to be enjoyed in secret. Alison wanted to be acknowledged as the superior person she saw herself as being. Marisa had the public acclaim Alison wanted and that’s why Alison had disliked her on sight and had readily agreed to accompany Cornell to her apartment. She had pleaded with Cornell to let her humiliate the actress before they killed her.