Cities of the Red Night (10 page)

“Where do you think the head is now?”

“In New York.”

HORSE HATTOCK TO RIDE TO RIDE

Next day when we got to the office there was a telegram from Dimitri:

HAVE SUSPECT IN CUSTODY WHO WITNESSED DEATH OF JERRY GREEN STOP WIRE IF WISH TO INTERVIEW SUSPECT

We took the next plane to Athens and checked into the Hilton. Dimitri sent a car for us.

Jim was a bit stiff when they shook hands in Dimitri's air-conditioned office … wall-to-wall blue carpet, a desk, leather-covered chairs, a picture of the Parthenon on the wall, everything neat and impersonal as a room in the Hilton.

Dimitri raised one eyebrow. “I infer you disapprove of our politics, Mr. Brady. For myself I disapprove of any politics. Please understand that I stand to gain nothing from this investigation. My political superiors want the whole thing dropped … a few degenerate foreigners … it's bad for the tourist business.”

Jim blushed sulkily and looked at his shoes and turned one foot sideways.

“What about this witness you got?” I asked.

Dimitri leaned back in his chair behind the desk and put the tips of his fingers together. “Ah yes—Adam North, the perfect witness. Survived his perfection because he was in custody. On the morning that the Green boy was killed, September eighteenth, young North was arrested with a quarter-ounce of heroin in his possession. When I saw the laboratory report I ordered him placed in isolation. The heroin he had been buying from street pushers was about ten percent. This was almost one hundred percent. It would have killed him in a matter of seconds.”

“Well, if they would kill him to shut him up about something, why let him know about it in the first place?” Jim asked.

“A searching question. You see, he was a sort of camera from which a film could be withdrawn and developed. But first the bare bones, later the meat. Adam North had been approached by someone fitting”—Dimitri glanced at me—“your description of Marty Blum, and offered a quarter-ounce of heroin plus a thousand-dollar bonus to be paid in two installments to witness a magical ritual involving a simulated execution. He was suspicious.”

Dimitri turned on a tape recorder. “Why
me
?” said a stupid, surly young voice. It went on.

“So this character from a comic strip says I am a perfect. ‘A perfect
what
?' I ask him. ‘A perfect witness,' he tells me. He has five C-notes in his hand. ‘Well, all right,' I say. ‘But there is a condition,' he says. ‘You must promise to refrain from heroin or any other drug for three days prior to the ceremony. You have to be in a pure condition.' ‘Promise on my scout's honor,' I told him and he lays the bread on me. ‘But one more thing,' he says. He gives me a color picture of a kid with red hair who looks sorta like me. ‘This is the subject. You will concentrate on this picture for the next three days.' So I tell him ‘Sure' and split. And would you believe it, with five hundred cools in my pocket I can't score for shit nowhere no way. So when the chauffeur comes to pick me up in a Daimler I am sick as a dog.”

Dimitri shut off the tape recorder. “He was driven to a villa outside of Athens where he witnessed a bizarre ceremony culminating in the hanging of the Green boy. Back in Athens he was given the quarter-ounce of heroin. He was on his way back to his girl friend's apartment when the arrest was made.”

“It still doesn't make any sense,” Jim said. “They drag him in as a witness, God knows why, then knock him off to shut him up.”

“They did not intend to
shut
him up. They intended to
open
him and extract the film. Adam North was a perfect witness. He is Jerry's age, born on the same day, and resembles him enough to be a twin brother. You are acquainted with the symptoms of heroin withdrawal … the painful intensity of impressions, light fever, spontaneous orgasms … a sensitized film. And a heroin overdose is the easiest of deaths, so the pictures registered on the sensitized withdrawal film come off without distortion in a heroin O.D.”

“I see,” said Jim.

“It's all here on the tape, but I think you would like to see this boy. He is, I should tell you, retarded.”

*   *   *

As we were going down in the elevator, Dimitri continued. “There is reason to suspect a latent psychosis, masked by his addiction.”

“Is he receiving any medication?” I asked.

“Yes—methadone, orally. I don't want his disorder to surface here.”

“You mean he could become a public charge?” I asked.

“More than that—he could become a sanitary hazard.”

We saw Adam North in one of the interrogation rooms, under fluorescent lights. A table, a tape recorder, four chairs. He was a handsome blond kid with green eyes. The resemblance to Jerry was remarkable. However, while Jerry was described as very bright and quick, this boy had a slack, vacuous, stupid look about him, sleepy and sullen like a lizard resentfully aroused from hibernation. Dimitri explained that we were investigators hired by Jerry's family, and we had a few questions. The boy looked down at the table in front of him and said nothing.

“This man who offered you the quarter-ounce of H. You'd seen him before?” I asked.

“Yeah. When I first came here he steered me to a score. I figure he is creaming off a percentage.”

“What did he look like?”

“Gray face, pockmarks, stocky medium build, fancy purple vest and a watch chain. Like he stepped out of the 1890s. Didn't seem to feel the heat.”

“Anything else?”

“Funny smell about him, like something rotten in a refrigerator.”

“Please describe the ritual you witnessed,” I said.

“Allow me,” interrupted Dimitri. He looked at the boy and said, “Ganymede” and snapped his fingers. The boy shivered and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. When he spoke, his voice was altered beyond recognition. I had the impression he was translating the words from another tongue, a language of giggles and turkey gobbles and coos and purrs and whimpers and trills.

“Ganymede Hotel … shutters closed … naked on the bed … Jerry's picture … it's coming alive … gets me hot to look at it … I know he's in a room just like this … waiting … there's a smell in the room,
his
smell … I can smell what's going to happen … naked with animal masks … demon masks … I'm naked but I don't have a mask. We are standing on a stage … translucent noose … it's squirming like a snake … Jerry is led in naked by a twin sister … can't hardly tell them apart. There's a red haze over everything, and the
smell
—” The kid whimpered and squirmed and rubbed his crotch. “She's tying his hands behind him with a red scarf … she's got the noose around his neck.… It's
growing
into him … his cock is coming up and he gets red all over right down to his toenails—we call it a red-on.…” Adam giggled. “The platform falls out from under him and he's hanging there kicking. He goes off three times in a row. His twin sister is catching the seed in a bottle. It's going to
grow.…
” The boy opened his eyes and looked uncertainly at Dimitri, who shook his head in mild reproof.

“You still think all this happened, Adam?”

“Well, sure, Doctor, I remember it.”

“You remember dreams too. Your story has been checked and found to be without factual foundation. This was hardly necessary since you have been under constant surveillance since your arrival in Athens. The heroin you were taking has been analyzed. It contains certain impurities which can cause a temporary psychosis with just such bizarre hallucination as you describe. We were looking for the wholesalers who were distributing this poisonous heroin. We have them now. The case is closed. I advise you to forget all about it. You will be released tomorrow. The consulate has arranged for you to work your way home on a freighter.”

The boy was led away by a white-coated attendant.

“What about the other witnesses, who wore masks?” I asked Dimitri.

“I surmised that they would be eligible for immediate disposal. A charter plane for London leaving Athens the day after the ritual murder crashed in Yugoslavia. There were no survivors. I checked the passenger list with my police contacts in England. Seven of the passengers belonged to a Druid cult suspected of robbing graves and performing black-magic rituals with animal sacrifices. One of the animals allegedly sacrificed was a horse. Such an act is considerably more shocking to the British sensibility than human sacrifice.”

“They sacrificed a
horse
?”

“It's an old Scythian practice. A naked youth mounts the horse, slits its throat and rides it to the ground. Dangerous, I'm told. Rather like your American rodeos.”

“What about the twin sister who hanged him?” Jim demanded.

Dimitri opened a file. “‘She' is a transvestite, Arn West, born Arnold Atkins at Newcastle upon Tyne. A topflight ultraexpensive assassin specializing in sexual techniques and poisons. His consultation fee to listen to a proposition is a hundred thousand dollars, nonrefundable. Known as the Popper, the Blue Octopus, the Siren Cloak.

“And now, would you gentlemen care to join me for dinner? I would like to hear from you, Mr. Snide, the complete story and not a version edited for the so limited police mentality.”

*   *   *

Dimitri's house was near the American Embassy. It was not the sort of house you would expect a police official on a modest salary to own. It took up almost half a block. The grounds were surrounded by high walls, with six feet of barbed wire on top. The door looked like a bank vault.

Dimitri led the way down a hall with a red-tiled floor into a book-lined room. French doors opened onto a patio about seventy feet long and forty feet wide. I could see a pool, trees and flowers. Jim and I sat down and Dimitri mixed drinks. I glanced at the books: magic, demonology, a number of medical books, a shelf of Egyptology and books on the Mayans and Aztecs.

I told Dimitri what I knew and what I suspected. It took about half an hour. After I had finished, he sat for some time in silence, looking down into his drink.

“Well, Mr. Snide,” he said at last. “It would seem that your case is closed. The killers are dead.”

“But they were only—”

“Exactly: Servants. Dupes. Hired killers, paid off with a special form of death. You will recognize the rite as the Egyptian sunset rite dedicated to Set. A sacrifice involving both sex and death is the most potent projection of magical intention. The participants did not know that one of the intentions they were projecting was their own death in a plane crash.”

“Any evidence of sabotage?”

“No. But there was not much left of the plane. The crash occurred outside Zagreb. Pilot was off course and flying low. It looks like pilot error. There are, of course, techniques for producing such errors.… You are still intending to continue on this case? To find the higher-ups? And why exactly?”

“Look, Colonel, this didn't start with the Green case. These people are old enemies.”

“Do not be in a hurry to dispose of old enemies. What would you do without them? Look at it this way: You are retained to find a killer. You turn up a hired assassin. You are not satisfied. You want to find the man who hired him. You find another servant. You are not satisfied. You find another servant, and another, right up to Mr. or Mrs. Big—who turns out to be yet another servant … a servant of forces and powers you cannot reach. Where do you stop? Where do you draw the line?”

He had a point.

He went on: “Let us consider what has happened here. A boy has been hanged for ritual and magical purposes. Is this so startling?… You have read
The Bog People
?”

I nodded.

“Well, a modest consumption of one nude hanging a year during the spring festivals … such festivals, within reason, could serve as a safety valve.… After all, worse things happen every day. Certainly this is a minor matter compared with Hiroshima, Vietnam, mass pollution, droughts, famines … you have to take a broad general view of things.”

“It might not be within reason at all. It might become pandemic.”

“Yes … the Aztecs got rather out of hand. But you are referring to your virus theory. Shall we call it ‘Virus B-23'? The ‘Hanging Fever'? And you are extrapolating from two cases which may not be connected. Peter Winkler may have died from something altogether different. I know you do not want to entertain such a possibility, but suppose that such an epidemic does occur?” He paused. “How old was Winkler?”

“In his early fifties.”

“So. Jerry was a carrier of the illness. He did not die of it directly. Winkler, who was thirty years older, died in a few days. Well … there are those who think a selective pestilence is the most humane solution to overpopulation and the attendant impasses of pollution, inflation, and exhaustion of natural resources. A plague that kills the old and leaves the young, minus a reasonable percentage … one might be tempted to let such an epidemic run its course even if one had the power to stop it.”

“Colonel, I have a hunch that what we might find in the South American laboratories would make the story we heard from Adam North sound like a mild Gothic romance for old ladies and children.”

“Exactly what I am getting at, Mr. Snide. There are risks not worth taking. There are things better left unseen and unknown.”

“But somebody has to see and know them eventually. Otherwise there is no protection.”

“That somebody who has to see and know may not be you. Think of your own life, and that of your assistant. You may not be called upon to act in this matter.”

“You have a point.”

“He sure does,” said Jim.

“Mr. Snide, do you consider Hiroshima a crime?”