The 5th Witch (13 page)

He went back out onto the balcony. Gayle’s half-empty bottle of stout was still standing on the glass-topped side table, but there was no sign of Gayle.

“Gayle?” he called, going back into the living room.

No answer.

He checked the bedroom. “Gayle?”

Still no answer. She had gone. He went to the front door and looked outside, on the steps. Annie was out there with Malkin, sewing some beadwork.

“Hi, Dan! Everything okay?”

“I don’t know. Did anybody pass you, just a few moments ago?”

“Yes. Mrs. Tedescu.”

“Nobody else?”

She shook her head. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

He was tempted for a moment to tell her that he had not only seen a ghost, he had made love to her, but he decided against it. It was too confusing, too inexplicable, and too painful, as well.

He went back inside and walked around the apartment a second time, even opening the closet doors in case Gayle was being childish and hiding. But she had disappeared.

He hesitated for a moment, biting his lip. He picked up the phone and dialed the number of Gayle’s old apartment, which he had never had the heart to delete. It rang and rang, but nobody answered. He tried her cell phone number, but that was cut off.

It was ten of three, and he had to go. He took a felt-tip pen and scrawled a message on the kitchen notice-board: Gayle—
if I’m not here by the time you get back,
wait for me!! Please!!

He looked at the message and thought:
You’re losing
it, fella. You really are
. But he didn’t rub it out. Whatever Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass world he had found himself in, he still needed to see Gayle again.

He collected his wallet and his keys, and drove to the police station for the SWAT debriefing. As he went down the steps, Annie looked up, one eye squinched against the sunlight, and said, “Dan! Come for supper tonight, why don’t you? I’m cooking a stir-fry with orchids in it. They’re very good for the soul.”

“Hey,
muchacho
, over here,” said Ernie, beckoning Dan across to the window. The conference room at the West Hollywood police headquarters was crowded with detectives and uniformed officers and support staff, but instead of the usual laughing and banter, there was an awkward silence, punctuated only by coughs and the shuffling of feet.

Dan elbowed his way along the aisle, and as he did so, several detectives widened their eyes, as if to ask him what the hell was happening. They had all seen the TV news, and they all knew how distorted it must have been. Eighteen cops had been killed in only three or four minutes, including Captain Kromesky and Lieutenant Cascarelli, without any of them firing a single shot. Their bodies had been so mangled and so comprehensively ripped apart that it was going to take the coroner’s department weeks to make formal identifications.

“Everybody’s been pushing me to tell them what really happened,” said Ernie. “The current scuttlebutt is that the SWAT teams were brought down by a pack of killer rottweilers.”

“And you’ve said—?”

“
Soy una tumba
. My lips are sealed. You think I want to lose my pension? Besides, I don’t know what really happened.”

“Let’s put it this way: They weren’t attacked by any kind of dog, were they? They weren’t attacked by anything you’ve ever seen before. Things from hell, that’s what killed them.”

Ernie frowned. “You look different.”

“What do you mean, I look different?”

“I don’t know. Did something happen today? You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

“I’ll tell you later, okay?” said Dan, because at that moment Lieutenant Harris walked briskly into the conference room, carrying a clipboard tucked under his arm. Lieutenant Harris was a short, tough-looking man with cropped gray hair that could have been used to polish stainless-steel saucepans. His eyes were pale green with a slightly distracting squint, and his mouth was permanently downturned, as if he believed nothing and approved of nothing and wouldn’t know a frivolous remark if it stung him on the back of the neck.

Lieutenant Harris waited until the coughing and shuffling had stopped, and then he said, “Last night, during a combined operation on Rosewood Avenue in Silverlake, the Los Angeles Police Department lost eighteen good men. A night of infamy. A night of
bloody
infamy. Exactly how that disaster occurred remains, for the time being, classified, subject to a full investigation. But I have to warn you that after last night, our lives are never going to be the same again. Last night was this division’s nine-eleven.”

He gave a signal to a young freckle-faced officer behind him, and the officer switched on a large LCD television screen. At first the screen showed nothing but a bronze LAPD badge with the motto
to protect
and to serve
. But then Chief O’Malley appeared, sitting
at a conference table, with Mayor Briggs on one side of him and Deputy Chief Days on the other. An assortment of police commissioners and senior officers stood in the background, looking confused.

Dan was shocked by Chief O’Malley’s appearance. His face was ashen, and his skin was strangely stretched. His eyes looked as black as two cigarette burns. His mouth appeared almost lipless, and when he spoke his voice was whispery and harsh.

“Thought the chief was still in the hospital,” said Ernie.

“He should be. For our sake, as well as his. I seriously don’t like the look of this.”

Chief O’Malley cleared his throat. “Before I say anything else, I want to express our grief for the eighteen good men who were killed last night and our heartfelt sympathy to their families and their friends. What happened was a terrible and unexpected tragedy, and our only consolation is that all of those men died bravely, and in the line of duty.

“They went out to protect their community and to serve this great city of ours, and they died, and we shall miss them all.”

There was a long silence. Chief O’Malley kept running the tip of his tongue around his lips, as if he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say next. Deputy Chief Days leaned over to him and whispered something in his ear, and he nodded.

In a strained voice, he said, “Whether we like it or not, what happened last night marks the end of an era in the LAPD. Last night showed us that times have moved on, and that we can no longer enforce the law by being authoritarian and inflexible. In other words, although we are still a police force, we can no longer police by force.”

“
What?
” said Ernie. “What the hell is he saying?”

“The traditional methods of keeping order in our communities have been left behind. Today, there have been so many changes in social attitudes. We have far greater moral tolerance than we used to. We are much more ethnically mixed. And more and more, people are demanding to take responsibility for their own lives—not according to the hard-and-fast rules that society lays down for them, but according to their own consciences.

“I came here to Los Angeles determined as always to impose a law-enforcement regime of zero tolerance. Never give an inch. Period. But I recognize now that this highly diverse community can make no forward progress if a stone wall is set up in its path. The way ahead is to trust the good people of Los Angeles to keep their own city in order. From now on, the name of our policing policy is
symbiosis
—that is, living together for our mutual benefit with each part of our society assisting the others.

“It’s like the Egyptian plover, a bird that lives on the backs of crocodiles in the Nile, feeding on parasitic insects that infest the crocodiles’ skin. The Egyptian plover protects the crocodiles from ill health, but at the same time it’s protected itself because its natural predators don’t dare to come too close to the crocodiles’ jaws.”

“Crocodiles?” said Ernie in bewilderment. “What in the name of God is he talking about?”

Chief O’Malley poured himself a glass of water, and they could hear the carafe rattling against the tumbler.

“Look at him,” said Dan. “He’s terrified.”

Next to him, Sergeant Kennedy was shaking his head. “I thought that O’Malley was supposed to be one of the hardest cops in history. O’Malley the Mallet, that’s what they used to call him.”

That’s before Michelange DuPriz crammed his stomach
with toads
, thought Dan.
That’s before bufotenine turned
him into a zombie—afraid of everyone and everything, especially
the
manbo
who controls him
. But he could see that, in a different way, Deputy Chief Days was equally unnerved. Deputy Chief Days had seen that the human body could be turned into finely chopped tomato in a matter of minutes.

Deputy Chief Days leaned toward the microphone and said, “Chief O’Malley and I have assembled a committee of influential citizens to discuss the reorganization of law enforcement. I’d like to introduce them to you.”

The camera slowly panned to the left—and there, standing on one side of the LAPD conference room were Orestes “The White Ghost” Vasquez, with Lida Siado; Vasili Krylov, with Miska; and Jean-Christophe “The Zombie” Artisson, with Michelange DuPriz; and twenty or thirty bodyguards and henchmen. All were soberly dressed in black, except Orestes Vasquez, who wore a white double-breasted suit with a black armband.

There was a roaring shout of disbelief from the assembled policemen. “No
way
, man! Those slimeballs? What the hell is he thinking, man? They’re killers! Krylov? That sack of shit? Vasquez? He’s got to be out of his frigging mind!”

Lieutenant Harris banged his fist on the table for order, but when the policemen saw Chief O’Malley rise from his seat and walk around to shake hands with Vasquez and Krylov and Artisson, the shouting crescendoed, and they began to stamp their feet and hammer on the desks.

Chief O’Malley was saying something, but his voice was drowned out. It was only when Lieutenant Harris bellowed, “Shut the hell up! You may not like it, but
you need to frigging listen!” that the policemen finally quieted down.

Chief O’Malley was saying, “…these three men all have reputations some of you may find questionable. I am not going to pretend that over the years they haven’t had their names linked with various activities, such as drug running, prostitution, and arms dealing.

“But in this new age of mutuality, who better to police the narcotics trade than people who know every dealer and every connection from here to Bogotá? Who better to ensure the safety and health of sex workers than people who have been running brothels for decades? These men have unparalleled influence in every field of criminal activity, and if we work
with
them rather than against them, we can harness that influence to make Los Angeles one of the most civilized cities in the world.

“I give you symbiosis, ladies and gentlemen. I give you the law enforcement of the future.”

There was more shouting and more stamping. Lieutenant Harris stood with his head bowed waiting for everybody to calm down. Dan could only think of what his father had said.
Nothing good can come out of
this, if witches have teamed up with mobsters
. Well, they had, and in a matter of days they had used their magic to undermine everything the LAPD stood for.

Ernie said, “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know, El Gordo. Maybe we could team up with Jimmy ‘The Rat’ Pescano and Ruben ‘Scrappy’ Villa—go out working the streets together?”

“The guys—they’re not going to tolerate this. Look at them now.”

“If the guys don’t tolerate this, they’re going to wind up the same way as those SWAT teams. Ground beef. Or maybe worse.”

“You will have to warn them,
muchacho
. Otherwise, there could be many more killings.”

“I intend to, when they simmer down.”

Dan looked back at the TV screen. Although he couldn’t hear what they were saying, it was obvious that Chief O’Malley was having an intense conversation with Vasili Krylov. But he could also tell by their body language that Krylov was talking in his most bombastic Russian way and making demands, and that Chief O’Malley was agreeing with him and making concessions. In the background, Mayor Briggs, usually such a mountainous presence, was standing alone with his hand pressed over his mouth, as if he had forgotten where he was.

“Okay, everybody,” shouted Lieutenant Harris. “Let’s put a sock in it. We need to discuss where we’re going to go from here.”

“Are you kidding me?” Sergeant Kennedy demanded. “The only place we need to go from here is round to the Parker Center and blow those three scumbags away.”

“Kennedy, use your intelligence. Something serious has happened, and the chief is clearly under extreme pressure. It’s not for us to second guess our superiors. All we can do is shut up and assess the situation before we go in with all guns blazing.”

“But for Christ’s sake, Lieutenant, look at him! The Mallet? More like the goddamned Marshmallow! Schmoozing with Krylov, of all people, and the Zombie, and Vasquez. Vasquez had his sister’s boyfriend wrapped up in razor wire, stark naked, and dangled from the overpass at the Hollywood Split. I cut the poor bastard down myself.”

Lieutenant Harris tried to settle everybody down, but the conference room remained in uproar. Dan, however, walked slowly over to the TV screen, so that
he could see the pictures from the Parker Center more clearly. There was Michelange DuPriz, smiling at him as if she could sense that he was watching her, haughty and erotic and almost skeletally thin. There was Lida Siado, smiling and laughing, as if she were hosting a party. And Miska, the white-haired Russian witch, in a black puffball dress decorated with black ostrich feathers. She had a sly, cold look in her eyes, her irises as reflective as liquid mercury.

The young freckle-faced officer came over to switch off the TV, but Dan said, “Hold up!”

He had seen somebody else in the background, another strange woman. She was standing by the window with her back to the conference room, facing northeast, so that she was mostly in shadow. On her head she was wearing a floppy, wide-brimmed bonnet, almost like a nun’s wimple but made of soft gray fabric. Over her shoulders she wore a long gray cloak, which was either tattered with age or deliberately torn, with feathers and knots and beads tied all over it. Dan guessed from the way that she was stooped over that she was elderly, but he couldn’t see her face. He could only see a single hand in a long gray leather glove—a hand that was holding a long wooden staff with a knob on top of it about the size of a man’s clenched fist.

Ernie came up to him. “What are you looking at so hard, man?”

“This old woman. What the hell is
she
doing there?”

He turned to the young officer and said, “Can you record from this TV?”

“Sure. It’s fully digital. You want me to?”

Dan nodded. “You remember I told you that Annie and I located a fourth witch, an extra-powerful witch? Or at least
she
located
us
.”

Ernie took his heavy-rimmed eyeglasses out of his
shirt pocket, put them on, and peered closely at the TV screen. “You think this could be her?”

“Well, she sure looks like a witch, you have to admit.”

Ernie’s nose was almost touching the screen when the elderly woman snapped her head around and glared at him. Ernie jolted back. The woman’s eyes were milky white, like a boiled cod’s, and her skin was shriveled, as if she had been hung out in the sun to dry.

She raised her staff toward him and screamed something, although they couldn’t hear what she was saying. Her teeth were a jumble of brown and blackened stumps, and there were clusters of warts all around her mouth.

The clenched fist on top of her staff wasn’t a fist at all, but a stuffed cat’s head with empty eye sockets.

“
Madre mia
,” said Ernie, crossing himself twice. “If I didn’t know she couldn’t see me—”

“Oh, I think she
can
see you,” said Dan. “I think she can see you clear as day.”

The elderly woman had turned back to the window now, but Ernie still kept his distance. “That’s one real genuine witch,
muchacho
. I mean, that’s like your storybook witch.”