Bedroom Eyes (35 page)

His skin prickled and Tony told himself not to be ridiculous. He might have grown up accepting a certain amount of mysticism that attached itself to a city like New Orleans, a city as wed to the traditions of the Caribbean and the African as it was to the order-driven Americans who arrived late on the scene, but he’d learned to deal squarely in all that was rational.

He unlocked his front door and strode inside, headed for his bedroom to change for his meeting with Hinson and the old man.

At the doorway to his bedroom, he stopped. Curled up on the pillow he slept on every night was the blue-eyed cat. Curious, Tony tiptoed to the bed. Stroking the cat under the chin, he murmured, “Is there some secret you’d like to tell me, my lucky Penny?”

The cat stretched its front paws out, eyes still closed, and snuggled deeper against the pillow.

Tony moved away, stripping off his basketball shoes, shorts, and T-shirt as he walked out of the room headed for the bathroom.

When he stepped out of the shower a few minutes later, the cat sat on the floor of the bathroom, staring at him with wide eyes. For some odd reason, Tony grabbed a towel and covered himself. The cat retreated to the doorway, walked a foot or so into the hall, then returned.

The forward and backward dance reminded Tony of the old Lassie reruns where the collie was trying to tell Timmy someone was in trouble.

Wrapping the towel around his waist, he followed the cat back to his bedroom, where she leaped gracefully to the bedside table, nose pointing to the blinking light on the answering machine.

“Prettier
and
smarter than Lassie,” Tony said, hitting the play button, then petting the cat while he waited for the messages to play back.

The first message brought out prickles on the back of his neck. He heard once more the voice of the woman on Penelope’s machine, accompanied by the deep voice of a man, again speaking of trying to fix things.

The second message, though, was far more critical.

Twelve men on the field was code for trouble—specifically, that someone had sold out to Hinson’s side. And if Roy was leaving the message, only Roy could be presumed to still be trustworthy.

Or was he playing both sides against the middle?

Tony mulled over that possibility as he threw on a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved cotton shirt. If the old man expected him to wear a suit for this meeting, he should have requested black tie, Tony thought, wondering whether they’d expect him to be packing his gun or be trusting enough to leave it at home.

What the hell. Better to be perceived as tough, he thought, and poked it in the waistband of his pants before shrugging into the one lightweight sports jacket he owned.

The cat had settled back onto the bed, where it kept watch on him. He thought if the animal’s eyes grew any bigger they would fall out of its head. Funny, but the cat reminded him of Penelope the other night when they’d been at Chris’s camp. She’d looked at him with the same wide-eyed wonder when he’d eagerly cast off his shorts.

Only to have to retrieve them a few minutes later.

Don’t think about Penelope now, he told himself. Do your job.

Trying to assure himself that, based on the phone messages he’d heard, she had other friends looking for her, Tony headed toward the front of the house.

The phone rang.

“Nuts,” he said. Where had he left the portable? He remembered the mess in the kitchen and traced his earlier path to the back of the house. The machine came on; the caller hung up.

With a shrug, Tony collected the phone anyway. He usually left it near the front of his house, in case he got a call while porch sitting, something he liked to do after the temperature finally cooled enough and the early evening mosquitoes gave up their search for fresh blood.

He’d made it almost to the front room when the phone rang again. The cat, following him, arched her back at the sound, then continued on.

At the same time, a knock sounded at the door.

He pressed the talk button on the phone, glanced outside, identified Pretty-Boy as he expected, then said, “Olano,” into the phone at the same time he opened the door, stepping slightly to the side, a habit hard to ignore after his years on the force.

“Don’t go—” said the voice on the phone.

The cat hissed and leaped straight at Pretty-Boy’s face.

A blast of gunfire slammed into the room.

Tony yanked the gun from the waistband of his pants and fired point-blank at Hinson’s underling. At the same moment, the cat dashed between his legs and Tony tripped and crashed to the floor, blood seeping from his left arm.

The last thing he saw before he passed out was the orange cat standing over him, licking him on the face. Then, as pain overtook him, he imagined he saw not the cat, but Penelope leaning over him, kissing him, and saying in the fiercest voice he’d ever heard, “Don’t you dare die, Tony Olano, or I’ll be mad at you forever.”

Alistair had used one of his most powerful candles for the spell of retroactivity.

The spell was never performed except in the most extreme circumstances, such as undoing spells gone awry or to counter evil too strong to be handled through more routine channels.

The flame of the purple, black, and white candle continued to bum. He’d finished the secret ritual, barely whispering the words. He certainly didn’t want Mrs. Merlin imitating this spell and getting it wrong!

Bent slightly toward the altar, Alistair continued to gaze into the flame, watching for any indication of success or hint of failure.

Suddenly the healthy blue-white center sputtered and, to his dismay, glowed blood-red.

Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.

From the doorway, Mrs. Merlin finally found her tongue. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? I can just feel it—”

He nodded. Since he figured she’d stayed silent far longer than she ever had in her life, he didn’t object to her joining in.

The candle began to smoke.

Alistair tugged on his ponytail and considered the situation.

Mrs. Merlin tugged at his elbow. Her carroty hair stood at all angles, as if she’d been running her hands through it over and over. Concern showed in her eyes and Mr. Gotho felt genuine sorrow for her as she worried over her friends stuck in altered bodies.

Thanks to her messing with magick beyond her power, he reminded himself, suddenly not so sympathetic.

The candle continued to smoke.

A siren sounded.

Both Alistair and Mrs. Merlin jumped.

The noise came from over their heads.

Glancing up, he spotted the smoke detector ringing lustily.

The door burst open and the potbellied officer stuck his head in. “Are you two still in here?” Then he must have spotted the candle because he said, “And causing more trouble, are you? I’ve a good mind to arrest the both of you. Where’s Steve?”

Mrs. Merlin started to answer, from the looks of her about to launch into a tirade, so Alistair said, “Steve locked us in. No one came to our rescue, so we used the items we had at our disposal to get someone’s attention.”

The officer gave him a sour glance and popped an antacid tablet into his mouth. “Ever heard of the intercom?”

“Oh, silly me,” Alistair said, leaning over and snuffing out the flame, offering, as he did so, a quick prayer to the stars for the safe return of Penelope and Mr. M.

“Well, if Steve locked you in here, he must have had a reason, so I guess you have to stay here or in a cell.” He crossed his arms over his gut. “Which one’ll it be?”

“I think,” Alistair said, beginning to pack his materials back into the duffel bag, careful not to spill any wax, “you ought to be asking yourself why a fellow policeman was so foolish as to detain two citizens without probable cause or even the courtesy of an explanation.”

The officer scratched his head, turned, and headed down the hall. No doubt in search of someone to tell him what to do.

“After you, Mrs. Merlin,” Alistair said, holding open the door.

The emergency medical techs had Tony on a stretcher, preparing to strap him in for a ride to the hospital when he came to.

He jerked upright, wincing at the pain in his arm and the back of his head.

“Easy there,” the EMT, a pretty redhead, said.

“Forget easy,” Tony muttered. He looked around, piecing together what had happened. Officers swarmed his living room; he heard more people outside, including the voice of his next door neighbor. Mrs. Sanderson rattled on about how she’d called 9-1-1 and how she’d suspected something bad was going down when she’d seen that fancy car coming around the neighborhood.

Fancy cars, Mrs. Sanderson explained, meant only one thing—drug dealers.

And drugs meant violence.

Tony pretty much agreed with Mrs. Sanderson’s logic. And he figured from the way the officers milling around his house avoided his gaze they assumed he’d gone all the way over to the other side.

Then Roy appeared in the doorway.

“Tony!” He rushed to his side. “Shit, man, you don’t listen. There I am on the phone trying to warn you and you walk right into a bullet.” To the EMT he said, “He’s probably not going to want to go with you right away.”

“Not exactly your model patient,” she said. “But a lucky one. A bullet nicked his arm and he suffered a blow to the back of his head.”

“Yeah, I fell,” Tony said, embarrassed at his lack of grace under fire. Then he remembered the cat, picturing it going for the assailant’s eyes and most probably saving Tony’s life. “Hey, anybody seen my cat?”

Mrs. Sanderson stuck her head in the door. “Your cat died last year, Tony. And if you tell me you’re in with those drug dealers, why, I don’t think I could stand to believe such a thing of you.”

Tony shook his head and smiled at her. “Don’t worry. But I do have a cat. It showed up here today. Orange, with blue eyes.”

“He must have hit his head harder than he knows, poor boy,” Mrs. Sanderson said as a uniformed officer led her away from the door.

Roy waved the EMT away, following her retreat with an appreciative glance. “Yeah, you must have taken quite a conk. I don’t think you even noticed the beauty working on you.”

Tony shrugged, then he remembered his vision of Penelope leaning over him. She was the only beauty he was interested in. “What went down?” he said to Roy in a low voice.

“Two characters came into the Eighth District station looking for you—”

“What kind of characters?” Tony pressed his hand against his arm, checking the bandage.

“At first I took them for some of the Quarter loonies, but when the woman mentioned you and Hinson in the same breath, clearly something more than met the eye was going on.”

“From that, Pretty-Boy decides to take me out?” Tony shook his head.

“Oh, there’s more, and it’s not pretty at all.” Roy made a face of disgust. “Steve sold out.”

“What?” Tony shot forward, groaning as he jerked his arm.

“Yep, and if I hadn’t overheard him with my own ears, I never would’ve believed him capable of such a thing.”

“Why did he do it?” Tony knew there could be only one answer to that. “Or should I ask what was his price?”

Roy grimaced. “Plenty. Not that he’ll get to spend any of it now. I followed him after he questioned this old woman and the guy with her. He called Hinson at the restaurant. That much is on tape. He met him outside, but I was on him like a flea on a dog. Seems he planned to tip Hinson all along, but waited until you were going under with them.”

“So why kill me? Why not just feed me bad info and use me?”

“No doubt that’s what the old man would have done,” Roy said. “But Steve told Hinson that his fiancée was in love with you. The guy went nuts.” Roy chuckled. “The best part was, he waited till he got back to the restaurant, argued with the old man, then ordered the hit himself.”

“So we’ve got him on tape?” Tony forgot about the pain in his arm and the throbbing in the back of his head.

“Yep.” Roy looked supremely satisfied.

“What happened to Steve?”

“I tackled him, got him handcuffed inside my car, then tried to call you.”

“Thanks,” Tony said, mulling over what Roy had said. “Hinson’s ego finally found him out, didn’t it?” One thing the old man had never done was order a hit in anger. His rules might be odd ones, but he’d followed them for years.

Feeling sick, and not from his wound, Tony put his head in his hands for a moment, then said, “So the operation’s over before it starts?”

“Oh, but that’s not a bad thing, buddy,” Roy said, rubbing his hands together. “Your cover’s blown, so that puts an end to your vacation, but we might get the old man as an accessory to this one, and to the attack on Squeek, too, plus I have a feeling Hinson will sing to try to save himself.”

“Yeah, the pretty ones usually do,” Tony said, struggling to his feet. “And some vacation, having my friends and family think I’m nothing but a bum who took a bribe.”

Roy chucked him on the shoulder. “You held up okay, Olano, and I think the department should be proud.”

“Thanks,” Tony said, testing his balance, knowing nothing would keep him from searching for Penelope.

“Where do you think you’re going?” The EMT rushed up to him.

“To find the woman I love,” he said. “So don’t try to stop me.”

She grinned and threw him a flirtatious look. “Ah, a romantic. Too bad I didn’t arrive on the scene earlier.”

“I’ve got a pain,” Roy quipped, eyeing the woman.

“Call a doctor,” she said, and started packing up.

“Oh, my, just look at all those police cars,” Mrs. Merlin said. “You were right for us to come straight here to check on the outcome of the spell.”

Mr. Gotho swung the car to a halt in the middle of the street behind a row of cruisers, all of them with blue and red lights flashing. He nodded, his face grim.

They made their way to the front gate of the address the same helpful relative had given them for Tony Olano, only to be blocked by a patrolman who refused to let them pass.

“But it’s a matter of life and death,” Mrs. Merlin said, knowing in her bones that it was, even though she sensed the danger had passed over like a thundercloud that scurried by without dumping its burden of moisture.