Dark Magic (17 page)

He took a deep breath. His parents were good people. This couldn’t be true.

“Are you sure this came from the FBI?” he asked.

“Positive.”

“Maybe you read it wrong.”

Liza reached across the table, and rested her hand atop his. “It was all there. Your parents were original members of the Order of Astrum. I didn’t read it wrong.”

He felt himself growing angry. What he knew about his parents’ past, he’d learned from Milly and Max. Had they known all of this, but never told him?

“Damn them,” he muttered.

“Peter, what’s wrong?”

“They’ve been holding back on me all this time.”

“Your friends?”

“Yes, my friends.”

He slapped the table with the palm of his hand. Heads turned throughout the restaurant. He suddenly was being bombarded with thoughts, and knew what every person in the restaurant was thinking. He’d never experienced anything like it before. It was unnerving, and he threw down money and stood up.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“Please sit down, and tell me what’s wrong.”

He shook his head. The room was changing, the red tones and warm wood turning the color of bright red blood. The angry beast buried deep inside of him was taking over.

“I’ll meet you outside,” he said.

He stood beneath an awning and waited for her to come out. Cars and yellow cabs raced past on the rain-soaked street. He didn’t really know who his parents were, which meant that he didn’t really know who he was. It was like becoming an orphan all over again. Moments later, Liza came through the front door, and saw that he was weeping.

“Oh, Peter, I’m so sorry,” she said, and hugged him until the aching pain went away.

23

Langston Turnbull was a retired shopkeeper from Wales who’d had the misfortune of being the same height and build as Wolfe. Wolfe had spotted Turnbull on the beach in sunny Spain while on vacation, and later drowned him so he could steal the Welshman’s passport. The passport contained the only photo Wolfe had of the dead man. Physically, they shared much in common. Facially, not as much. Turnbull had sandy hair, a round face with flared nostrils, and wrinkles. Wolfe looked nothing like him.

That was about to change.

Wolfe waited until dusk before leaving his hotel. The police knew what he looked like, and would eventually track him down. By turning himself into Turnbull, he could check into another hotel under his new identity, and stay out of the law’s grasp.

There was a Duane Reade drugstore on every block in New York. Entering the branch on Eighth Avenue near his hotel, Wolfe glanced at his reflection in the window. His face was swollen and bruised, and would only draw further attention to himself.

He grabbed a shopping basket and started his search. The aisles were jammed with merchandise. How anyone could find what they were looking for was beyond him.

He heard the tiniest of noises. Someone had crept up behind him. Based upon the sound their feet had made, the person stood about five-two, and weighed a hundred pounds.

He spun around. “Yes?”

A diminutive Hispanic woman in a blue store uniform stood behind him. The last time someone had snuck up on him like that, he’d punctured their windpipe.

“I’m Carmella, the store supervisor,” she said. “Can I help you?”

“Your store’s layout is confusing.”

“Tell me what you want, and I’ll help you find it.”

Carmella guided him up and down the aisles. It was like having his own personal shopper, and he grabbed a tube of hair dye, a pair of barber shears, nail polish, a tub of makeup, hair spray, and a pair of cheap reading glasses.

“All done?” she asked.

Wolfe had to think. He’d turned himself into Turnbull before, and there was always one item he forgot to purchase before he made the transformation.

“I need a piece of plastic tubing,” he remembered. “A half inch wide, and a few inches long. My wife asked me to pick some up.”

“Do you know what she needs it for?”

“Love, we’ve been married twenty years. You learn not to ask questions.”

“Smart man. Let’s ask our pharmacist.”

Carmella talked a bearded man in a white lab coat into selling Wolfe a piece of plastic tubing. Wolfe paid for the items at the checkout with Carmella ringing him up. Behind the checkout was a cork board covered in flyers. One flyer had Wolfe’s face plastered on it with the word
WANTED
. If Carmella saw the flyer, he was done.

He nervously glanced around the store. The other employees were out of earshot. He sized Carmella up. She looked frail, and would be easy prey.

“Forget something?” she asked.

“Do you have the time? My watch has stopped running.”

She consulted her watch. Wolfe lifted his arm, prepared to chop her windpipe with the side of his hand. It was a trick he’d learned in the army. Without her windpipe, she couldn’t cry for help, and would die without anyone being the wiser.

Motion caught his eye. Outside the store, a pair of uniformed policemen walked past, swinging their night sticks in unison. He covered his mouth as if coughing, and watched them pass.

“It’s a few minutes past six,” she said.

He backed away from the counter, and moved toward the exit. He wanted to tell her to buy a lottery ticket. It wasn’t very often that one of his victims got away.

“Have a nice day,” she called after him.

*   *   *

Bathrooms in hotels were ludicrously small, and hardly big enough for a grown man to stand in. Hugging the sink in his room, Wolfe unscrewed the bottle of clear nail polish, and began to coat his face with the tiny brush. Facial recognition technology was used by most law enforcement agencies to catch fugitives, and was considered infallible. Wolfe knew otherwise. The software used in these programs recognized twenty-five different points on a person’s face. If four of those points were changed, the program could be fooled into thinking the person was someone else.

Soon the bottle of nail polish was empty. He dried his face with a hair dryer, then crinkled his cheeks, and made dozens of wrinkles appear. He looked ten years older already.

The next step was his hair. The hair dye he’d bought was called Just For Men, and he generously brushed the product into his scalp. Before his eyes, his hair turned from black to sandy blond. He didn’t look good as a blond, but neither had Turnbull.

Then came his face. Turnbull’s face was decidedly smaller than his. Wolfe solved that problem by brushing his hair onto his forehead, and carefully molding it into place with hair spray. It made his face look smaller than it really was.

His nose also needed work. Turnbull had flared nostrils. This was where the plastic tubing came into play. Cutting off two small pieces, he slit them open and stretched them out, then shoved them into his nostrils, causing both to expand.

The last item of business was the Order’s tattoo on his neck. Wolfe sported multiple tattoos, and they’d all faded over time. Not the Order’s. It was still as vibrant as the day he’d joined, something he’d never quite understood. He covered it with pancake makeup, and made it disappear.

He was done. Picking up Turnbull’s passport, he held it to the mirror, and compared his face to the dead shopkeeper. It wasn’t a perfect match, but no one ever looked like their passport photo, and he knew it would pass muster.

Something didn’t feel right. He stared long and hard at the photo before realizing what it was. Turnbull had worn a dark suit and necktie in the photo, and looked dignified. He needed a new outfit, and the transformation would be complete.

*   *   *

Eighth Avenue was a potpourri of discount stores run by Middle Easterners. He picked a store called The Gent that sold men’s clothes. Shaking off the raindrops, he went inside.

Behind the counter sat a man wearing a purple Nehru jacket straight out of the psychedelic sixties. Wolfe had a theory about people who dressed in period costume: They were not happy with their lives, and wished to be living another one. An old Beatles song blared out of a boom box on the counter.

“My name is Fami. Welcome to my store,” the proprietor said.

“I’m looking for some business attire,” Wolfe said.

“What price range do you have in mind?”

“The cheaper the better.”

“How cheap is cheap?” Fami had a voice like a bird.
Cheep cheep.

“I don’t plan to wear the clothes more than a few times.”

“Try the bins in the back. Those are the cheapest clothes in the store.”

The sixties motif followed Wolfe down the aisle. Posters of Hendrix, Joplin, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, and Jefferson Airplane covered the walls. Wolfe’s memories of the music were as faded as the art work, and he wondered why people like Fami wouldn’t let go.

The clothes in the back were knockoffs. He grabbed a fifty-dollar suit, a nine-dollar dress shirt, a five-dollar plastic belt, and a three-dollar striped necktie. The Beatles song ended, and he heard Fami making a phone call. The proprietor dialed only three numbers.

Wolfe’s radar went up. Fami could have been calling information, but hardly anyone used that service these days, preferring to look up phone numbers on the Internet.

An automated voice answered the call.

“You have dialed 911 of the New York City Police Department. Your call is very important to us. Please hold on.”

Wolfe cursed under his breath. Had Fami made him? It didn’t seem possible, yet that was the only explanation. He returned to the front of the store with the clothes. As Wolfe neared the counter, Fami drew a .38 Special from beneath the register, and aimed it at him.

“Put your arms where I can see them.”

“Hey, look, I just want to buy some clothes.”

“Do as I say—right now!”

Wolfe dropped the clothes onto the counter, and lifted his arms into the air.

“Mind telling me what I did?”

“You are a wanted man. The tattoo on your neck gave you away.”

A smokey mirror hung behind the counter. In its reflection, Wolfe saw how the Order’s tattoo had bled through the makeup. The elders were tracking him like a damn dog.

“Hey, be careful with that thing,” Wolfe said.

Fami’s hand was shaking. People who never handled guns were more dangerous than those who did. Wolfe prayed Fami didn’t shoot him.

No such luck.

The sound of the .38 discharging sent Wolfe an inch off the floor. The bullet ripped a swatch of fabric clean off the arm of his coat. The startled look on Fami’s face said he hadn’t meant to squeeze the trigger; it had just happened.

“You shot me,” Wolfe gasped.

His hand went to his side. The bullet had only grazed him. He pretended it was much worse, and started to moan.

“Help me…”

Fami took the bait. He came around the counter wearing a stricken look. Wolfe waited until he was close before knocking the gun away. He threw his hands around Fami’s throat, and began to choke him with the gold peace symbol hanging around his neck.

“This is 911. What’s your emergency?” came a voice out of the cordless phone on the counter.

“Help! He’s killing me,” Fami screamed.

“Hold on! We’re on our way,” the operator replied.

Two quick blows and Fami was lying on the floor. Wolfe grabbed the clothes off the counter and fled.

*   *   *

The gunshot was ringing in his ears as he entered his hotel room. Every soldier had a preference of how he wanted to die. Getting shot to death by a bloody hippie was not his.

He sat on the bed, and waited for his head to clear. His laptop sat on the dresser. The screen saver was of the beach in the Seychelles where he planned to retire with Rita. Just looking at the cobalt-blue ocean made him feel better. Without warning, the picture morphed into the Order’s shimmering symbol. It was the elders.

He grabbed the laptop and logged in. The elders had sent him an e-mail with an attachment, which he opened. It contained photographs of the remaining people on his hit list. The photograph of Millicent Adams had a bright red circle drawn around it, and he guessed they wanted him to take her out next. Bloody idiots. Next they’d be picking his meals for him.

He signed out of e-mail. To his surprise, the Order’s symbol remained on the screen. When he tried to retrieve the Seychelles screen saver, he discovered that it had been erased. He grabbed the laptop and shook it in a rage.

The elders were going to harass him until he got the job done. They didn’t care if he lived or died. He was just another dog they were keeping on a psychic leash.

Wolfe decided that he’d had enough. This would be his last contract for the Order. It was time for him to start a new life.

He put on his new clothes, feeling better about his situation already.

24

Peter and Liza cabbed it to the theater. Peter did not feel like talking, content to hold his girlfriend’s hand while staring out the window at the gusty winds that now accompanied the rain. The weather had been foul for days, and he wondered if the spirits were trying to tell him something. Instead of coming out and saying what was on their minds, the spirits always made it a puzzle, and challenged him to figure it out. It was as if he weren’t good enough for them, and had to prove himself whenever they made contact.

“Your fingers are ice cold,” Liza said. “I hope you’re not getting sick.”

He looked down at his hands. The skin had turned blue, and he cupped his hands and blew into them. He was reminded of how cold he’d gotten while confronting Wolfe outside Lester Rowe’s apartment. Was this a sign telling him that Wolfe was lying in wait at the theater? He wasn’t going to take any chances, and he called Zack on his cell phone.

“Hey Peter’s, what’s up?” his head of security answered.

“I’m five minutes away from the theater,” Peter said. “How we looking?”

“The place is packed. Your fan club from New Jersey is here.”