Hell's Horizon (22 page)

We discussed it further but neither of us could pinpoint a viable suspect. I told him what had been happening with my investigation, how Nick had been at the Skylight the night of his sister’s death, but we both agreed that the Hornyak brother couldn’t have set up something this elaborate. Wami was half-tempted to pay him a call and find out exactly how much he knew, but I convinced him that more might be gained by shadowing Nick than torturing him.

With night falling, Wami returned to the torture chamber and told me to wait in the corridor outside. He didn’t spend long on the Red Throat pair, and when he came out he was dragging two black body bags, one of which he nudged across to me. We hauled them through the building to a parking lot. Wami disappeared into the neighboring streets, returning with a hot-wired car, into which we dumped the bodies. He then tied a blindfold over my eyes so I wouldn’t know the location of his hideout and off we set for the Fridge.

Five minutes into the journey Wami stopped, removed my blindfold and swapped places with me. He said he didn’t like driving. Motorcycles were his vehicle of choice. He commented wryly on how endearing it was that his son’s favored mode of transport mirrored his own, but I saw nothing cute in that.

As we neared the morgue my mind turned to Tom Jeery’s empty casket and I asked when he’d left the note. He didn’t know what I was talking about.

“The ‘Out To Lunch’ note,” I reminded him.

“I have no casket in the Fridge,” he said.

“Sure you do. When you killed off Tom Jeery you hired a casket and pretended…” I trailed off. “Didn’t you?”

He shook his head.

I slowed down and pulled over, despite the fact that we were within rifle range of the Fridge. “But it’s there. I checked it. There was a note—‘Out To Lunch.’ ”

Wami sniffed. “A staff prank. The ghouls of the Fridge do many strange things with the bodies in their care.”

“But there wasn’t a body, only a name—
Tom Jeery
.”

He frowned. “Different person, same name?”

“No. The Car—” I stopped. An empty casket. Tom Jeery’s name. Somebody eager to push father and son together.

“How many people know about you and me?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I have always been adept at keeping secrets. One or two from the old neighborhood might have linked Paucar Wami to Tom Jeery, as the gossiping biddy did, but if so, they have kept it to themselves. Otherwise the only one who knows is…” He made a face and groaned.

I waited for him to say the name. When he didn’t, I did, to have it out in the open.

“It’s The Cardinal, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he sighed. “He knows of all my children.”

“The Cardinal told me about the Tom Jeery casket,” I said, and at that the killer turned to stare at me. For a short instant I saw the poise evaporate from his eyes, and realized that he was just as shaken by this as I was.

We agreed that I’d have to confront The Cardinal. He was a master at covering his tracks. If he had staged Nic’s death, the execution of the Fursts and our meeting, the only way to reveal the truth would be to take our findings directly to the ogre and challenge him with them. I was less than thrilled by the thought.

“What if he doesn’t take kindly to my accusations?”

“If this is one of his games, he will expect a confrontation, since he hired you to unmask the killer.”

“And if he says it wasn’t him?”

“We shall take it from there.”

“You still think he might be innocent?”

“The game is certainly one The Cardinal might play,” Wami said. “Were
I
not involved, I would be quick to point the finger. But we go back a long way. Hiring me to kill the Fursts was an act of contempt. I do not think The Cardinal would abuse me so openly.”

Wami drove me home—once we’d dropped off the bodies and collected my bike from behind the Red Throat—and set me down outside Ali’s. He kept the engine running while I got out and didn’t linger once I closed the door, pausing only to roll down the window and say he’d call tomorrow for an update. Then he was gone.

I took my time climbing the stairs, wheezing painfully.

Somebody was waiting for me outside the door of my apartment. My first thought—trouble. I began to edge away quietly. Then I recognized the shapely legs of Priscilla Perdue.

“About time!” she snapped as I shuffled up the final steps. “I’ve been waiting for ages. Ten more minutes and I’d have… What on earth happened to you? You look like you fell through a shredder.”

“I should be so lucky,” I grimaced.

She hurried forward. “Give me the key,” she commanded, then opened the door and guided me through. I wanted to collapse into bed and sleep but she was having none of it. She henpecked me into the bathroom and had me disrobed down to my boxers before I knew what was happening. She wet a sponge and wiped the worst of my cuts and bruises. It would have been highly erotic if each swipe hadn’t elicited a stream of gasps, winces and curses.

“Why don’t you just run a cheese grater over me!” I roared.

“Don’t be such a baby,” she replied calmly. “This has to be done. By rights you should see a doctor. There could be internal injuries.”

“There aren’t.”

“You can’t
know
that.”

“I’ll take a gamble. Shut up and rub.”

Next came the antiseptic—my roars must have been heard in Zimbabwe—then the bandages. After that she wrapped a robe around me and led me through to the living room, where she left me on the couch while she brewed coffee.

“You should have been a nurse,” I mumbled.

“That would have meant facing crybabies like you every day.”

“If you’d taken the beating I have…”

“We can’t all be big, brave boys who go around settling our differences with our fists, can we? Let me guess—somebody insulted your mother?”

“As a matter of fact, you’re due the credit.”

She laughed. “Don’t tell me you were defending my honor.”

“Not exactly. A couple of your friends from the Kool Kats Klub decided to teach me a lesson, to deter me from setting foot on their hallowed turf again.”

“No!” she gasped, immediately contrite. “The dirty sons of… Give me their descriptions. I’ll find out who they are and have them disbarred.”

I coughed guiltily. “No need. They won’t do it again.”

“Was this why you skipped our date?” she asked.

I stared at her blankly.

“We were
supposed
to be stepping out together last night,” she reminded me. “You
said
you’d call.”

I smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I forgot.”

She slapped the back of my head. “You’re a no-good son of a diseased mongrel, Al Jeery. I should have left you as you were. That’s the last time I’ll do a good deed for—”

“Please,” I interrupted as she stormed for the door. “Don’t go. I’ve had things on my mind.”

“Such as?” she sneered.

I silently debated how much I should tell her and decided on a morsel of the truth. “You heard about the Fursts, those people who were killed?”

“Of course,” she said, face softening. “That was awful. The poor children. Whoever did that should be taken out and…” Her lips shut slowly, then opened to form a fascinated O. “Some of the reports mentioned a survivor, a man who tried to save the boy.” She looked at me questioningly and I nodded. She covered her mouth with a hand.

“Breton Furst was on duty at the Skylight the night of Nic’s murder. I believe he was connected. I went there to question him. Before I could…”

Priscilla sank to the floor and took my hands as I briefly ran her through the horror of that nightmarish day. She said nothing and kept her head lowered. When I finished, she looked up and there were tears in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Al.”

“Don’t be silly,” I smiled. “You couldn’t have known.”

“But I should have guessed something was wrong. I assumed you just stood me up, thinking—as usual—that I was the center of the world and nothing happened that didn’t revolve around me. God, it must have been awful. Then you get pulped by a pair of my
friends
. Then I turn up and…” She stood. I was amazed and rather flattered by how upset she was. “I’ll leave and let you recuperate in peace.”

“No,” I said quickly, pulling her back. “I want you to stay.”

She stared at me, then said in a voice as soft as velvet, “The night?”

My heart almost exploded, but I was in no shape—either physically or mentally—for sexual entanglement. “Well, a couple of hours at least,” I muttered.

Priscilla sat on the couch, leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine, gently. “OK,” she sighed. “I’ll stay. For a while. And we’ll see how things go.”

“Sounds good,” I agreed, then returned her kiss as gently as she’d kissed me.

17

I
felt a lot better Monday than I’d feared. The worst of the bruising had subsided and although I was tender from top to toe it was nothing I couldn’t live with. Some light exercise, a healthy breakfast, a brisk walk around the block and by eleven I was ready to take on God himself. Since the supreme being wasn’t available, I caught a cab to Party Central to see The Cardinal.

I was in luck—his secretary could fit me in at two. I wandered the halls of Party Central, catching up on what had been happening during my absence. Breton Furst was the talk of the establishment, but hardly anyone knew of my involvement with him. I asked if Furst had any close friends in Party Central—I wanted to learn more about him—but nobody I spoke to had known him personally. Mike, who was on his lunch break, said Jerry and Furst were good buddies, but Jerry was on sick leave. Mike said he’d tell him to give me a call when he returned.

When it was time to meet The Cardinal, I turned up at his office, only to be led down the corridor and shown into a private gymnasium. The Cardinal was there alone, jogging on a treadmill, naked.

“Come in,” he said amiably. I advanced halfway, cleared my throat and averted my eyes. The Cardinal laughed. “No need to be embarrassed. I’m not.”

“Surely you can afford a tracksuit,” I quipped.

“I can’t spend half the day changing in and out of clothes. Besides, it’s good for the penis. Poor fellow spends so much time locked away, he must feel like the Man in the Iron Mask.”

“Will you be long?” I asked, staring at the floor.

“Yes,” he said. “But we can talk while I work out. You’re not afraid of a little prick, are you?”

My head automatically lifted and I stole a glance. The Cardinal howled with glee, pointed a bony finger and sung out like a schoolkid, “Made you look!”

I grinned at his childish antics, then straightened and nodded to let him see I was ready to talk.

“I heard about your unfortunate encounter with the Fursts,” he said. “A nasty business. It had something to do with the Hornyak investigation?”

“You tell me,” I replied evenly.

“A curious answer,” The Cardinal grunted. “Why should I know anything?”

“You hired Paucar Wami to kill them.”

The Cardinal trundled to a halt, sat down on the mat of the machine and gazed at me with interest. “I thought you didn’t see the assassin.”

“I didn’t, but the two of us had an enlightening encounter yesterday.”

The Cardinal mopped the back of his neck with a towel. “You’ve met him?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know…”

“… That he’s my father.”

“I’m sorry I missed
that
family reunion.” He squinted. “Surely he told you I wasn’t the one who hired him.”

“His employer preferred to remain anonymous.”

“Ah. And you think it was me?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see… I hired Allegro Jinks to masquerade as Paucar Wami, Breton Furst helped him murder Nicola Hornyak, and I sent Wami after the Furst family when you uncovered the link. Is that how you picture it?”

I smiled. “The fact you know about Allegro Jinks proves it.”

He stood and started drying his groin. “Return to the waiting room. I’ll be with you shortly.”

I passed an anxious ten minutes waiting for him, not sure what he’d do now that the mystery had been “solved.” When he appeared he was in his usual clothes. He cocked a finger at me and led the way to a room filled with TVs, computers and video equipment. He located a disc and inserted it into one of the many machines.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on you,” he said, fiddling with the control as he talked. “One of my spies at the Fridge rang a while back and said he had something interesting to show me.”

He hit play and one of the screens flickered into life. It was a recording of me the night I dropped off Jinks’s head. The Cardinal turned up the sound and I heard myself asking the clerk about keeping tabs on the corpse.

“Enough?” The Cardinal said sweetly.

“Enough,” I sighed.

He turned it off. “It was a simple matter to trace the head and make an ID, though I didn’t connect Allegro Jinks to Breton Furst until Furst went looking for him.”

“Is that when you hired Wami to kill Furst?”

“I didn’t hire Paucar Wami. I
want
to know who killed Nicola Hornyak. The person who ordered Furst’s death
already
knows.”

“You didn’t kill her?” I asked skeptically.

“No.”

“So how come you had a file on her when supposedly nobody knew her name?”

“It only took a couple of hours to identify her body,” he said. “I recognized her name as soon as I was informed. I’ve been observing your progress ever since you were a child. I follow the lives of all of Paucar Wami’s children. I have a network of informers—friends, neighbors and colleagues of yours—who tell me how you’re getting along. I knew of your involvement with Nicola Hornyak before she turned up dead in the Skylight. That’s how I was able to put together a file on her so swiftly.”

“Why not tell me? Why the subterfuge?”

“I wanted to clear your name first, in case you had killed her.” I was stung by the accusation. “Please, Al, don’t be offended. You are the son of Paucar Wami. I’ve been expecting your father’s evil genes to bubble to the surface for years.”

“I’m nothing like him,” I snarled.

“I know,” he sighed. “That’s a pity. Paucar Wami has served me loyally but he is getting old and soon I’ll be looking for a replacement. What better prospect than one of his own flesh and blood?”

“You thought…,” I sputtered.

“I
hoped
,” he corrected me. “If you had killed her, I didn’t want to do anything which might stunt your growth.”

“And when you found out I hadn’t killed her?” I growled, disgusted that anyone could think so lowly of me.

“Disappointment. Then curiosity. I took an interest in the case. The detectives I assigned were making progress—they knew about the Paucar Wami look-alike for one thing—but I was forced to withdraw them.”

“Forced?” I couldn’t imagine anyone forcing The Cardinal’s hand.

“Perhaps
invited
would be a more accurate term. Have a look at this. I found it on my desk one morning.” He handed me a postcard. There were four lines of print on the back.

Howard Kett knows about Nicola Hornyak.

He will be demanding her return.

Remove your investigative teams.

Install Al Jeery in their place.

I flipped the postcard over and studied the front. A grotesque, three-breasted statue stretched the length of the card. Underneath its breasts was a tiny calendar, although the names of the months were in a language I couldn’t identify. At the bottom was a caption—
early incan fertility symbol and calendar
. The eleventh month—represented by the word
Ayuamarca
—was highlighted in green.

“What’s this about?” I asked.

“I am interested in our Incan past,” The Cardinal said. “I suppose the sender thought it would grab my attention. He was right.”

“How did it get on your desk?”

“Somebody must have sneaked in while I was asleep. That’s why I went along with the request—a man who can slip in and out of Party Central unseen is not to be taken lightly.”

I turned it over and read the message again. “When did it come?”

“Two days before Kett came looking for the body.”

“Then he knew about the murder before he claimed to?”

“It seems so.”

“You’ve investigated Kett?”

“That’s
your
area of expertise.”

“Did you have the card analyzed for fingerprints and the like?”

“Naturally. It was clean.”

“I received a similar card recently.”

“Oh?” He leaned closer, intrigued.

“A blind beggar was selling cards in my apartment block. I purchased a pack. One was a picture of Nicholas Hornyak in the lobby of the Skylight, the night of his sister’s murder, with a note on the back inviting me to make the connection.”

“A blind beggar.” The Cardinal was troubled.

“I’ve spotted a few blind people since I started investigating.”

“This city has its share,” The Cardinal said.

“You think they might be behind the murders?”

“Unlikely. The man who made a mockery of Party Central’s defenses could hardly have done so without the use of his eyes. And a blind man wouldn’t know a photograph of Nicholas Hornyak, or an Incan fertility god, from a snapshot of my ass.”

“Rudi Ziegler would know an Incan god if he saw one,” I suggested.

“He would indeed,” The Cardinal said. “That’s something I thought myself while perusing your reports—which have been arriving rather slackly of late.”

“I’ve been too busy to write everything down.”

“Or you didn’t trust me,” he countered, a gleam in his eyes. “You didn’t want me knowing that
you
knew things which you thought
I
did too. You believed I was setting you up.”

I grinned guiltily. “A bit of that too.”

“We must learn to trust one another, Al.”

“I’ll trust you when you start playing straight with me,” I said.

“Are you suggesting I haven’t been?”

“You let me think Nic was murdered at the Skylight when you knew she wasn’t.”

He smiled apologetically. “I was testing you. This game is not of my making but it’s one I have attempted to profit by. As I told you at the start, I believe you have great potential. You now know the genesis of my faith in you. I guessed this investigation would turn nasty. I suspected you were being set up, though I didn’t—and still don’t—know why. I could have protected you.

“But I wanted to see how you’d react. This was a chance to watch you wriggle and grow. I found it impossible to resist. So I set you up to
find
the body, and I held back certain details—such as the Wami look-alike, and that she’d been murdered elsewhere—to make your work more of a challenge.”

“And now?” I snapped. “Are there more secrets you’re keeping from me?”

“Ah,” he clucked, “that’s for me to know and you to find out. I will say this—I don’t know who killed your girlfriend or why they’re interested in you.”

“You wouldn’t tell me if you did,” I replied bitterly.

“Maybe. But you’ve been trained to tell a lie from the truth. I am, of course, the king of liars, but you should be able to make an educated guess. Judge for yourself, do I lie or not?”

From what I could read of him, he didn’t. I decided to keep an open mind on the subject but—for the time being—take him at his word until I learned different.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked.

“Wherever you decide. I have full faith in your abilities.”

“Maybe it would be best to let things lie. A lot of people have died. If we drop the investigation and I leave town for a while…”

The Cardinal frowned. “We call that chicken talk around here,” he growled.

“Call it what you like—do you think it would work?”

“No. The only one who can change the rules in a game of this nature is the game’s master. If you attempt to force their hand, they’ll probably respond with a suitably harsh countermeasure.”

I nodded slowly, then followed him out as he headed back for his office. He paused outside the door and took a sheaf of notes from his secretary. “Anything else?” he asked.

I thought a moment. “No.”

“In that case…” He disappeared without a word of farewell. I caught the eye of his secretary and we shrugged at one another, then smiled. I tipped an imaginary hat to her and she waved back, then I caught the elevator down and went home to wait for
Pappy
to call.

He came in person, shortly after eleven, and we discussed my conversation with The Cardinal late into the night. Wami was satisfied that The Cardinal wasn’t the one toying with us. Although I harbored doubts, I agreed that we should broaden our horizons.

He was fascinated by the postcard The Cardinal had received and the possibility that the blind beggar might be involved. He chastised me for not mentioning the beggar before but I told him I couldn’t be expected to reel off every last detail at the drop of a hat. Besides, as The Cardinal had said, a blind man couldn’t have penetrated Party Central’s defenses or identified Nick Hornyak.

“I would not be so sure of that,” he said. “I know of some blind enigmas. They haunt the streets. I never paid much attention to them—they do not interfere with me—but I have tortured a few over the years. Not one uttered a single word, even under the greatest duress.”