The 5th Witch (9 page)

Dan slid a frozen pepperoni pizza in the oven, opened a bottle of stout, then heaved his damp laundry out of his washing machine. He went out onto the narrow balcony outside his living room and started to pin the laundry onto the makeshift clothesline he had fixed up—a sheet, a couple of pillowcases, three T-shirts, and five pairs of striped boxers.

He was just about to go back inside when he saw a pale shape flickering in the yard below under a wide-spreading fan palm. He went to the railing and peered downward, trying to make out what it was. He could see a light-colored triangle that could have been somebody’s shoulder, but the crisscross shadows of the palm fronds made it difficult for him to be sure.

“Anybody down there?” he called. If there was somebody there, he had no compunction about challenging them to show themselves. In the past two or three weeks there had been a rash of petty thefts along Franklin Avenue—bicycles, sunbeds, swimming-pool cleaners—mostly taken by crystal-meth addicts.

“I said, is anybody down there? Come out from under that tree and let’s take a look at you.”

There was a long silence. A warm breeze stirred his washing, and a California quail landed on the railing at the far end of the balcony and cocked its head at him. Quail had a strange habit of flying down whenever he hung out washing, and sucking the water from it with their beaks.

He thought:
No, there’s nobody there. It’s just a stray
sheet of newspaper that’s blown from somebody’s balcony or
a trick of the light
.

But as he turned away, a figure stepped out from under the tree and stood beneath his balcony, staring up at him. His skin felt as if it were shrinking, and Dan almost lost his balance. It was Gayle. She was unharmed, her face as perfect as it had been in the split second before the scaffolding pole had struck her. Her blond hair was unbloodied, and she was wearing the same cream satin dress.

He looked down at her, and he didn’t know whether he ought to say anything or not. After all, she couldn’t be real, could she? How could she be real when she was dead? Maybe he was suffering from the long-delayed effects of crucifying guilt. Maybe he was going mad. Or maybe Michelange DuPriz was trying to make him
think
that he was going mad.

But he stood there staring at her, and she didn’t fade away. She cast a real shadow across the overgrown grass, and her hair was blowing in the breeze. The look in her eyes was distant and unfocused, but then she had always been dreamy.

“Gayle?” he said, with a catch in his throat.

She didn’t answer.

“Gayle, are you for real?”

Still she didn’t say anything.

“Gayle…if you’re for real, I’m coming down. I need to talk to you.”

She parted her lips a little, as if about to speak, but no words came out. All the same, Dan thought he saw her give him the faintest of smiles.

He backed away from the railing, still watching her. Then he hurried through his living room, out his front door, and vaulted down the steps. As he was passing Annie’s apartment, she opened her door and said, “
Dan?
What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! I’m fine!”

He ran around the side of the apartment building and into the yard. There was nobody there. No Gayle, nobody. No footprints in the grass either, to prove that somebody
had
been there.

Annie came around the building behind him and touched him gently on the back.

“Dan? Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s nothing. I think I’m more stressed out than I thought I was. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken any time off. You know what they say. It’s only when the pressure’s taken off them that people go to pieces.”

Annie looked around the yard. “Did you…
expect
somebody to be here?”

“No. Not really.”

“Who was it? Was it Gayle?”

“You read me like a book, Annie Conjure.”

“That’s because I have the gift. But you should be very careful if you’re starting to see people who have passed beyond. Especially people you love.”

Dan looked up at his sheet hanging on the line. He had seen a movie once in which the outline of a dead woman’s face had appeared on a sheet, and he half expected it to happen now.

“I was there, on the balcony. She was standing right here, looking up at me.”

“Whatever you saw, Dan, it wasn’t her.”

“Annie, she looked totally real. Totally solid. The grass—she was throwing a shadow on the grass and everything. Her hair and her dress…they were being blown around by the wind. If she wasn’t real, how could that have happened?”

“Dan, you can see dead people in your dreams and they have shadows, don’t they? You can see dead people in movies and their hair gets blown by the wind. It wasn’t Gayle, I promise you.”

Dan took a deep breath. “Okay. It wasn’t Gayle. But if I see her again—or
it
, or whatever she is—I’ll make sure that you get to see her, too.”

“That’s a deal.”

Annie opened a bottle of zinfandel, and they talked for over a half hour. She explained to him how witches could move solid objects from one place to another—from one room to another, from one city to another, even from one country to another.

“Transportation was discovered by the ancient Druids. They realized that everything in the world is connected by a network of what they called ley lines, and that anything could be moved along these ley lines by using the Earth’s own natural magnetism—especially anything made of metal or stone with any kind of metallic ore in it. But living creatures, too, because they contain minerals. People, even.”

“How about you? Have
you
ever managed to do it?”

Annie shook her head. “Once I tried to make all my dirty dishes vanish from the dinner table and reappear in the dishwasher, but they wouldn’t.”

“That sounds like Mickey Mouse in
Fantasia
, making all those broomsticks carry water for him. Maybe it only works if it’s something you’re passionate about. Or angry. Or vengeful.”

“Maybe I’m just not powerful enough,” Annie admitted. “Last night, I tried to locate that fourth witch again, the one who set fire to the map. I used salt, and I used needles. I even used a spider tied to a length of thread. I can sense that she’s very close. I can sense that much. She could be hiding in my closet for all I know. But she’s keeping herself very well cloaked.”

“We’ll find her. I have a feeling about it. That’s if she doesn’t find us first.”

Annie looked at him, wide eyed and serious. “This is scary, isn’t it? I mean, like, this is very scary. It seems like these witches can do whatever they want, and nobody can do anything to stop them.”

Dan held out his wine glass for a refill. “Nobody wants to believe in them, that’s why.”

“But you believe. And I believe.”

“Exactly. So it looks like stopping them is entirely up to us, doesn’t it?”

Dan climbed the steps back to his apartment. When he opened the door, he found that the living room was billowing with acrid smoke, as if the place was on fire. He pushed his way into the kitchen, coughing. His pizza was burned black, like charcoal. “Shit,” he said. He had lost his appetite after seeing Gayle, but this was all he needed.

He opened all the doors and windows to disperse the smoke. Then he went for a shower and washed his hair. He dressed in a black short-sleeved shirt and tan-colored chinos. As he came back into the living room, combing his hair, the NBC news was rerunning its footage of Chief O’Malley vomiting up the toad, over and over. This was followed by a discussion from a panel of experts—a Roman Catholic priest, a veterinarian, a gastroenterologist, and Roland Zod, the famous TV illusionist.

“From earliest times, the toad has had very strong religious associations,” said the priest, who had a crimson face and wild white hair. “The ancient Egyptians believed that the goddess Heket sprang out of the wetness of Ra’s mouth and that she looked exactly like a toad, as well as having the power to make the Nile flood every year. Even today the Orinoco Indians still beat toads to death with sticks, in the belief that this will make it rain.

“But in the Christian canon, toads have always been associated with heresy, and the devil. It is my personal belief that what happened to the chief of police this morning was a sign from Our Lord that we should return to the laws and morals of the Christian church.”

“So where do you suppose this unfortunate toad came from?” asked the veterinarian, blinking at him furiously.

“It was such a totally obvious trick,” said Roland Zod. He was thirtyish with a shiny, bald head and a pencil mustache. “It
appeared
that a toad came out of his mouth, yes. But in my opinion, it was a yellow balloon painted with eyes to make it
look
like a toad. The chief put his hand up to his mouth, spat out the balloon, which he immediately deflated and tucked into his cuff, and then dropped the real toad onto the floor.”

“Do we know if Chief O’Malley has ever had any training as a stage magician?” asked the gastroenterologist with undisguised sarcasm.

“And why would he resort to such a stunt?” asked the priest. “At best, it could only make him look ridiculous.”

“He did it to impress his audience,” Roland Zod retorted. “Jesus was always pulling off tricks like that to make his point. Changing water into wine, feeding five thousand people with nothing but a couple of fish, raising the dead. Well, the
allegedly
dead.”

“You’re trying to suggest that Jesus was nothing more than a
conjuror?
”

“A good conjuror. Maybe even a
great
conjuror. But I’m just asking you, Reverend, what is the most rational explanation for Chief O’Malley bringing up a live toad? Miracle, personal warning from God, or trick?”

Dan switched off the sound. It was plain that the media still had not been told about the toads in Chief O’Malley’s stomach, although a streamer along the bottom of the screen said,
L.A. police chief still in critical
condition at Cedars-Sinai
.

He was on his way to the kitchen for another stout when the phone rang. It was Ernie.

“El Gordo! How’s it going, fella?”

“How’s it going? Everything is going loco. That’s why I’m calling you. Days is organizing a SWAT team to bring in Orestes Vasquez.”

“
What?
On what charge?”

“Well, it’s not for casting spells. From what I hear, the DA has managed to get an arrest warrant for some pissant immigration scam. Kitchen staff from Colombia with no green cards, something like that.”

“This is nuts. They don’t have any idea what they’re up against. You know that.”

“It may be nuts, but right now the LAPD is looking like a three-ring circus, and Days wants to show the media that he’s taking some action.”

“Why Vasquez? What about the Zombie? Annie thinks that it was Michelange DuPriz who worked that toad trick.”

“Listen,
muchacho
, don’t keep talking that black magic stuff,
please
. Days is going after Vasquez because Vasquez is the one who threatened Chief O’Malley if he interfered in any of his rackets. Days believes that Vasquez pulled off this toad thing by way of showing
Chief O’Malley that he couldn’t break his promise without suffering the consequences.”

“Okay, maybe he’s right. But how the hell does he think that Vasquez did it, unless it was black magic?”

“Search me. And I don’t think Days has any idea either. Maybe he thinks he’s going to find something incriminating at Vasquez’s house.”

“What? Like a lily pond? This is madness, man. You’ve seen what we’re dealing with here.”

“Dan, you know where I stand on this. I’m willing to believe it if you can show me the evidence. But so far—okay, yes, you puked up all that money right in front of my eyes. But I was brought up to believe in God and the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit.”

“Oh, so nothing supernatural then? Do you know when SWAT is planning to go in?”

“Oh-three-hundred hours. When the White Ghost and most of his entourage are sleeping. Well, that’s what they hope, anyhow. They’ve asked for uniformed backup.”

“I’m going to call Days again. I have to. I can’t let him do this.”

“You think he’s going to call this off because of some cock-and-bull story about witches?”

“I have to try, El Gordo. Listen, I’ll call you back. If I can’t persuade him, then you and me have to go to Silverlake when the SWAT team goes in and see what we can do to keep down the casualties.”

“Who cares if the White Ghost gets wasted? Or any of those sacks of shit who work for him?”

“I’m not talking about Vasquez, you dummy. I’m talking about the SWAT team.”

“Oh, come on. Those guys, they have helicopters and body armor and helmets and the most advanced weapons you can think of.”

“Sure they do. But they don’t have the power of the
voodoo, or whatever powers these other three witches can summon among them.”

He could almost hear Ernie’s jowls shaking over the phone, like a dog that had been swimming in a neighbor’s pool. “I don’t know,
muchacho
. But call me, yes. I’ll come with you if I have to. You need a witness to prove to you how delusional you are. Let’s face it, man. Witches? Maybe some other phenomenon. But
witches?
”

He called Deputy Chief Days. A woman with a nasal voice said that Deputy Chief Days was completely tied up and couldn’t speak to anybody (especially a lowly detective from the West Hollywood Homicide Division).

“Tell him it’s a matter of life and death.”

Pause. “Why don’t you send him an e-mail, Detective, and I can try to make sure he looks at it first thing tomorrow.”

“Tell him tomorrow is going to be too late. This is about tonight. This is about Rosewood Avenue.”

Another pause, longer this time. Then a hoarse young lieutenant came on the phone. “Detective Fisher? This is Lieutenant Corcoran. I’ve been asked to ask what you know about Rosewood Avenue.”

“Rosewood Avenue is where Orestes Vasquez lives. The White Ghost. Your target for tonight.”