The Faceless One (13 page)

Fear driving her, she went to the door and knocked tentatively.

“Mr. Breckforth?”

She listened but didn’t hear anything. She knocked louder, calling his name.

“Mr. Breckforth, are you all right?”

She opened the door and stepped in.

The room was pitch-black, and there was a smell of cloves and excrement, the reek hitting her as soon as she entered. She covered her mouth, trying not to gag.

Denise wanted to run out, but she had taken first aid in the Girl Scouts when she was a teen. Mr. Breckforth might need help. She went to the light switch near the door and flicked it on.

The rich carpet had a long stain on it, pink and red and glistening, dotted here and there with little clumps of matter that looked like cartilage or irregular pieces of bone. The smell seemed to increase with the illumination. She wondered if Mr. Breckforth had vomited, but she didn’t see how anyone could lose such a huge quantity of fluid and live.

She walked in slowly, trying to avoid stepping in the spreading stain.

Something fell on her, enveloping her in a wet and fleshy embrace. Denise struggled to get out of it, but it was as resilient as a nylon net. The more she struggled, the more it gripped her, threatening to suffocate her.

Her screams brought in Theresa and Aidan Mayfield, one of the senior partners. By the time they got the thing off her, she was hysterical and had to be sedated by paramedics.

After a cursory examination, the coroner made a grotesque announcement.

The thing that had dropped on Denise was the skin of Martin Breckforth.

Aside from four small holes in the chest and a clean bite mark on his right calf, the coroner could find no evidence of incisions. The skin was intact, which raised two questions:

How had the skin been removed?

And where was the rest of him?

The Old Fart was holding four queens. Well, a pair of queens, but threes and one-eyed jacks were wild, and damned if he didn’t have a three and a one-eyed jack to escort his ladies to the winner’s circle.

This was Jimmy and George’s standard play, and the Old Fart went for it every time. They’d let him win a few hands, augmenting his amateur skills with a ridiculous variety of wild cards, then fleece him once they were deep into the game.

Deutschendorf raked in the pile of chips and belched quietly, putting his hand to his mouth, and saying, “Pardon me,” after the damage had already been done.

They played for chips because the staff frowned on gambling. It didn’t matter. They kept a careful accounting of the game and usually settled up in one of their rooms just before everyone went for a daily walk by the duckless duck pond, a Golden Summer tradition since 1972.

Jimmy and George didn’t feel too bad about fleecing the Old Fart—his stories were boring, and he got a generous allowance from his son, the big-time movie director in Hollywood. Besides that, his breath was bad, always smelling like sour green apples and old cheese.

The three men were gathered around a card table in the rec room. This was also the TV room, craft center, and makeshift dance hall. At the moment, three women and a crabby veteran of World War II were watching
Diagnosis: Murder
, and four other women were playing mahjongg.

“My son’s making one of those action pictures,” the Old Fart said, his breath wafting over Jimmy. It was times like this he wished someone would smoke a cigar although he hated the smell—anything was better than this man’s breath. Fat chance, though. Smoking was up there with drinking and gambling as chief among the Golden Summer cardinal sins. He imagined they had outlawed sex, too, although he didn’t think much about that since Rose died.

“What’s it called?” George asked, to keep the Old Fart occupied and happy until they made their move.

“
Trace Elements
,” the Old Fart said. “It’s about terrorists who are going to poison the water supply unless the hero can stop them.”

“Doesn’t sound too exciting,” George said.

“My son will gussy it up,” the Old Fart promised, “and he’ll get some big action star like Arnold or Mel to be in it.”

“Arnold’s in politics, and Mel’s got religion,” Jimmy said.

“Wrong on both counts,” said the Old Fart, always pleased to show his insider knowledge of Hollywood.

“I like comedies with big titties,” George announced. Jimmy smiled.

The Old Fart rolled his eyes. “Leave it to an old fart like you to go for the gutter,” he said.

Jimmy and George looked at each other and broke out laughing. They had never told Fred Deutschendorf what they called him. If they had done so, he probably wouldn’t play poker anymore. And, truth to tell, they liked him well enough. Fred Deutschendorf was annoying, and he smelled bad, but his heart was in the right place.

“I don’t think that was such a hilarious comment,” Fred said sourly, and they laughed all the harder.

“What movies do you like, Jimmy?” the Old Fart asked, already assuming Jimmy kept company with George in that nefarious address known as “the gutter.”

“Cop movies with lots of chasing and shooting,” he said. “And wisecracks,” he added as an afterthought.

The Old Fart nodded enthusiastically. “That’s just what Duane is making. Only it’s FBI, not city cops.”

“Shit,” said George, “buncha white people chasing down people of color.” He looked at Jimmy accusingly.

“That used to be true,” said Jimmy, “only now some of the cops are black, too.”

George thought about that and nodded. “I guess there are a few.”

“Never see any Indian cops,” Jimmy said, “and mostly the white guys win.”

“I object to that,” the Old Fart said. “I’m white.”

“And you’re winning,” George declared, gesturing at the Old Fart’s chips.

The Old Fart couldn’t think of a rejoinder to that.

But not for long
, Jimmy thought, as they moved in for the kill.

Jimmy and George were up twenty dollars when the Old Fart got a spectacular hand. It was pure dumb luck, and nearly wiped them out. Jimmy dug into his jeans to cover the bet, hoping the nurses wouldn’t see him using cash. In such a contingency, they usually flashed the cash, then put it out of sight. They were all on the honor system, and none of them would have violated that trust.

As Jimmy brought out a crumpled wad of ones from his front pocket, the copper amulet spilled out and bounced across the table, landing between George and the Old Fart.

How did that get there? Jimmy wondered. He had carefully put it in his shirt pocket. He wouldn’t have put such a valued item in his pants pocket for fear of accidentally dropping it as he had just done.

“Where did you get this?” the Old Fart asked, scooping up the mysterious talisman with its legend of
CHIN EATER
.

“Please give it back,” Jimmy said quietly.

“I have one just like it,” the Old Fart announced, and Jimmy stared at him.

The Old Fart looked at the long house on the front. He looked at Jimmy. “Is this mine?” he asked, accusation creeping into his voice. “I got it when I went to visit Duane,” the Old Fart continued. He turned it over.

Perhaps
, Jimmy thought,
he can explain to me what the Chin Eater is
.

The Old Fart nodded. “Oh, sorry, this isn’t mine. The writing on yours is rubbed off.”

The Old Fart pointed to the embossed lettering. “It’s supposed to say ‘Chinese Theater.’ ”

Jimmy looked at him, confused.

“Chinese Theater?” he echoed.

“In Hollywood. It used to be called Grauman’s Chinese, now they just call it the Chinese Theater. Lot of premieres there, big stars.” He waved the copper amulet. “This is a souvenir penny. They press it in a machine, costs fifty cents. Didn’t you know that?”

Jimmy shook his head, feeling dizzy.

The Faceless One
, he thought.
He’s headed for Los Angeles
.

No, no—this was stupid—a bird picked up some tourist trinket, and now he was imagining the end of the world beginning in Los Angeles.

You are a stupid, foolish old man, Jimmy Kalmaku
, he thought angrily.
Play your cards and eat your fish sticks. You are no shaman. You are no hero
.

Raven …

Just a crow that would dine on a dead, desiccated cat and caw noisily from a telephone line. No sacred bird, no Trickster, no god from the beginning of the world.

Just a crow.

Play your card game, old man
.

Live in your bland room and eat your bland food
.

You are no shaman
.

Somewhere, far away, he thought he heard his uncle sigh unhappily.

When Stan Roberts got the call about old man Breckforth, one of the beat cops had been going into lurid detail about some vic they had scraped off the subway tracks near Central Park. There hadn’t been much left of the guy, and what there was had been eaten by acid, of all things. They had found an expensive shoe near the scene, and it seemed as if the mook’s suit had been silk. The beat was theorizing about the fucking Yakuza, but Stan figured the kid had watched too many movies. Such a murder was much sloppier than they liked to play.

He got to the crime scene on the tenth floor of Trump Tower before Richie Matthews. Breckforth was a pretty important guy, being the first name of the firm and all. Old man Breckforth had been skinned, just like Daniel Slater. This time, though, there was no body to speak of, just a disgusting stain in the thick carpet, a stain that gave off an unbelievably foul stench. The coroner, a round little man named Schiffman, was both excited and repulsed by the murder. He couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how an entire human skin had been removed from the body intact. He planned to submit a paper on the subject to the
American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology
, which Richie told Stan should be called
Weekly Stiffie
. Personally, Stan thought the coroner looked like he was about to come in his pants.

The similarity between Slater’s and Breckforth’s deaths were enough to suggest a connection between the two men, and it didn’t take long to find one. Breckforth’s law firm had represented Daniel Slater for the last five years. The actual attorney Slater retained, Jackson Purcival, seemed to be missing.

Unless Purcival was also dead, this moved him up to suspect number one in a double homicide as far as Roberts was concerned. He took a sip of bitter coffee and moved away from Coroner Schiffman, tired of the little man’s breathless theorizing on everything from rapid cellular decay to cases from
Fringe
and
The X-Files
.

Richie walked up, chewing gum and brandishing a rolled-up newspaper.

“Take a look at this, Stan,” he said, handing him the paper.

Roberts unrolled it and looked at the copy of the
New York Post
. “Taxidermist Skins Another One!” the fifty-point type screamed. Alongside the lurid headline was an artist’s rendering of the skin of Martin Breckforth, along with actual photos of Daniel Slater’s remains.

“Who the fuck leaked this?” Roberts demanded, his voice carrying through the hush of
the law offices.

Richie shrugged. “Nobody’ll cop to it.”

The Taxidermist. Leave it to the
Post
to come up with a catchy and fear-provoking nickname. And now they had two murders, probably from the same sick fuck. This was all he needed, a hot summer coupled with another serial killer. What was it about this town that bred them? Jesus, maybe he should move to Arkansas and work a speed trap outside a town of about forty people, where the only real crime was someone stealing Old Lady Brownteeth’s apple pie from the windowsill.

Roberts thrust the paper in Schiffman’s face. “These photos came from our office or yours, and I sure as fuck know they didn’t come from mine.”

Schiffman blanched. Seeing his face, Roberts now knew that if he read the article, all signs would point to the overexcited coroner. Probably saw himself as the star of some new reality show.

The little man protested. “Detective Roberts, I am a professional, and my ethics …”

“Your ethics don’t mean dick,” Roberts interrupted. “Now, I don’t give a fuck what you do back in that rat’s nest you call an office. I don’t care if you’re naked when you slice corpses up, I don’t care if you stuff ’em like Thanksgiving turkeys. Hell, I don’t care if you fuck every stiff. Just don’t fuck with my investigation, or your successor will have to remove the fifty pounds of pig shit that I dump down your throat.”

Schiffman sputtered in outrage. He was so angry, he didn’t know which insult to respond to first. As he raised a hand in a gesture of righteous indignation, Roberts pushed past him.

“Get the fuck out of my way, you greasy, glory-sucking, perverted asswipe.”

Roberts walked past Richie, who grinned, still chewing his gum.

“Make a new friend, Stan?”

“Shit, that guy’s been a pain since he took the job.”

Breckforth’s assistant, Denise, was no help at all in the investigation. Despite being sedated, she just kept wailing and crying. He wondered for a moment if the girl had had anything going on with old man Breckforth, then sighed.

Twelve years on the job had made him cynical.

Mayfield wasn’t much help, either. He had gotten Breckforth’s skin off Denise, but could only offer the insight that it felt wet and rubbery. Big help.

Things got interesting when they talked to Theresa, who was Purcival’s assistant. Seems Purcival had gone bugshit when she had mistakenly sent some kind of voodoo mask to Slater’s brother in California. Purcival had read her the riot act, then run out. He had missed an important meeting at three and hadn’t been heard from since.

Back at headquarters, Roberts was about to call Purcival’s home when Richie came in
bubbling with excitement.

“Stan, they just got an ID on the victim in the subway. Found his wallet about fifty feet from the body.”

“You gonna keep me in suspense or what?”

“It’s Jackson Purcival.”

Stan Roberts sighed. Looks like Suspect No. 1 had just turned up as hamburger under the B train. However, he wasn’t ready to announce the death of Jackson Purcival just yet. True, his wallet had been found at the scene, but he was suspicious. Maybe Purcival had killed a transient and left his wallet near the stiff, using acid to disguise the corpse. He wanted more conclusive evidence before he announced to Purcival’s partners that they now had two offices up for grabs.