Hell's Horizon (10 page)

Fabio handed me the water, I gulped it, then he led me downstairs, into the open, to recover.

I’d been
curing
people since I was a kid, guided by Fabio, who’d been the first to note my calming influence. He’d spotted me hanging around, befriending wild cats and dogs. I used to slide up to them, ignoring their growls and raised hackles, talking softly, extending my fingers. Within minutes they’d be flopping over onto their backs, offering me their stomachs to rub, letting me play with their ears and feed them scraps.

Fabio initially tested me on a scattering of people plagued with migraines. He found that by talking to and touching them I was able to bring measures of relief to their lives. After that it was troubled friends of his, old men and women who sat around mumbling to themselves, tormented by visions of the past. I’d hold their hands and talk, and they seemed lighter of spirit when we departed. One old dear said she’d had her first full night of sleep in twenty years after my visit.

Fabio helped me develop my skills, modeling my techniques on those of other healers. We tried various methods before settling on the cards, which suited me best. Fabio hoped to make a killing, bring me along slowly, keep it low-key so I didn’t attract the attention of sharper operators. Then he planned to launch me on a wealthier clientele and make them pay through the nose.

Things didn’t work out that way. My mother was proud of my healing abilities but believed it would be immoral to profit from them. She blocked Fabio’s efforts to turn me into a cash cow, coming down hard when she caught him pulling a sly one behind her back, terminating contact between us for months at a stretch.

He tried convincing me to go on the road with him when she was gone but she’d died slowly, horribly, and for a couple of years I wanted nothing to do with sick people. I turned my back on my powers, on the ill, on Fabio. He remained a friend—maybe because he liked me, maybe because he thought I’d come around in the end—but by the time I got my life back on track I was part of the Troops. The lure of the healing profession had passed me by.

Resigning himself, Fabio settled on asking for occasional favors, only calling me when he was in a fix. Nobody other than Fabio and those I helped knew of my powers. I never advertised. I didn’t want hordes of miracle-worshippers camping out on my doorstep.

I’d no idea where the power stemmed from. I didn’t believe in God; I hadn’t made a study of the phenomenon; it wasn’t something I sought or cherished. It was just a talent I’d been born with. Maybe it was the city—as
Time
had attested, these streets were paved with supernatural wonders. Perhaps some of the wonder had rubbed off on me.

I’d almost forgotten about the power these last few years. Alcohol had screwed up my head. I could hardly help others when I was in dire need of aid myself. And since sobering up I’d had more pressing matters on my mind—divorce, staying sober, work, piecing together a new life.

I thought about it while sitting in the wreck of a burned-out car with Fabio at the foot of the block. I brooded upon the old questions: How do I do it? Can any harm come of it? Is it spiritual, physical, psychological? Did I really help Drake or had I just driven the demons deep for a while?

Fabio sighed and patted me on the back. “You ain’t lost your touch, Algeria. You were smooth. Way quicker than you were last time I called you out.”

I grunted, recalling the hours I’d spent on his last “customer,” another of his street maidens, a young woman who’d been in and out of mental hospitals her entire life. I was still drinking at the time. I seemed to help her, but a few months later she plunged to her death in the river.

“Thinking about Cassie?” he asked. “That wasn’t your fault. She was messed up bad. If anybody was in the wrong, it was me, for letting you at her in the state you was in.”

“Think I could have saved her today?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Who knows? A kid like Drake hasn’t had time to let the pain sink deep. Different when a sufferer’s older and the trouble ain’t so easily identifiable. You tried. That’s the most any of us can do.”

I stared up through the fire-eroded roof, letting the sun warm me.

“Feel good?” Fabio asked.

“Yeah.”

“You should do it more often.”

I smiled. “Hire a tent? Preach the Bible? Go out into the world and cure the masses? Earn a fortune?”

“That ain’t what I’m talking about. You got a God-given talent, no matter what you believe. It’s a sin to waste it, working for The Cardinal, staining your hands with blood when you could be using them to heal. It ain’t right.”

“I couldn’t do this full-time, Fabio. It’s nice to come here every so often, do a good deed and go back feeling like the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. But the Troops are my life. Party Central’s where I belong.”

“A man of healing don’t belong nowhere but among those who need him.” Fabio sniffed righteously. “You should be helping people live, not killing them.”

“I don’t kill many,” I replied, low-voiced.

“Makes no difference. You got a calling. I’m no holier-than-thou missionary—I’ve killed in my time, yes I have, and I’d do it again if I had to. But you…” He scowled. “I’m wasting my breath, ain’t I?”

I sighed. “This is the path I’ve chosen.”

“OK. I’ll shut up.” He turned and smiled. “How’s life otherwise? Get over the shock of finding your woman in the Fridge yet?”

I shook my head, bemused. “How’d you know about that?”

“I pick things up.” He wasn’t boasting. Fabio was as close to the heartbeat of this city as anyone I knew. I decided, since he’d brought it up, to ask a few questions. There was no telling what I might learn from an old gossipmonger like Fabio.

“Any idea who killed her?”

“Nope. Word is it was a crazy, maybe from out of town. A john she picked up somewhere and—”

“A
john
? She was a pro?”

“You didn’t know?”

I shook my head, stunned.

“She wasn’t a regular. And she kept it quiet. Nobody would have known, except sometimes she’d ball a guy in an alley or take him back to her apartment or a fancy hotel, and he’d talk, bragging the way you do when you’re young.”

“Nic was a
hooker
?”

“An amateur. That could be another angle—she might have tricked where she shouldn’t, or rubbed a pimp up the wrong way. But word of that would’ve spread. My money’s on the john.”

Nic’s being a pro changed everything. I’d been looking for boyfriends when it seemed I should have been scouring the streets for
clients
.

“Did you know any of her customers?” I asked.

“A couple, but they’re both in the clear—I did a bit of checking. As for the rest, I haven’t a clue. I never heard of her going with the same guy twice. You can ask around but I doubt you’ll unearth anything. Your best bet is to have a chat with a bitch called Priscilla Perdue. They used to—”

He stopped when he saw my face falling.

“Know her?”

“I had a drink with her last night.”

“How come?”

“I didn’t know much about Nic. I’ve been trying to put together a clearer picture. It seems important now that she’s gone.”

“Uh-huh.” If he guessed I was lying, he kept his suspicions under wraps. “That Perdue’s a nasty piece of work, ain’t she?”

“She seemed sweet enough,” I hastened to her defense. Then I remembered the Ku Klux Klub. “A little rough around the edges.”

“She got no edges,” Fabio chuckled. “She’s sharp all over, like a porcupine.”

“She said nothing to me about Nic being a hooker. Is she one too?”

Fabio shrugged. “She sleeps around like a whore, but I don’t think she does it for money. She’s a strange bitch. Used to dress all in black a few years back, holes in the skirts around her bush, so everyone could see. Walked around with her tail in the air, like those posh-ass cats in the Pepé Le Pew cartoons.”

“Think she had anything to do with the murder?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, but it’s not something I’d assume. As far as I know she’s never been into anything other than old-fashioned sleaze.”

We chatted a bit more about the two girls—he had no further revelations—then life in general. He asked how I was getting on at Party Central. Since he didn’t seem to know I’d been reassigned, I said everything was fine. I started to ask after old friends but then noticed the time and said I had to run.

Fabio told me not to be such a stranger, to call again soon. I said I would but we both knew it was an idle promise. I asked him to keep me apprised of Drake’s progress and let me know if the nightmares returned. We parted with a handshake and a few words of farewell, then I was on my way to Party Central for my meeting with The Cardinal.

He was seated by the window when I entered, playing with a puppet, looking pensive. When he spotted my reflection in the glass he turned and brightened.

“Al!” he boomed. “If you’ve cracked the case already, I’ll be impressed.”

“Afraid not,” I grinned ruefully. “I’ve made some inroads but that’s not why I’m here. There’s a problem…”

I told him about my meetings with Nick, Ziegler and Priscilla, the descriptions of Nic’s companion each had presented me with and my belief that the man was Paucar Wami. He listened silently, his face a blank.

“You’ve been busy,” he grunted when I finished, laying aside the puppet.

“I thought I should tell you about him before I went any further.”

“You did right.” He began biting the nails of his right hand. “Tell me what else you’ve discovered about her.”

I went through the past three days as fully as possible. I told him about Nic’s secret sex life and her connection with Priscilla Perdue, about Ziegler, his sun symbols and pretending not to know Priscilla. He said nothing, letting me tell it my own way.

“You think she may have been a sacrificial lamb to the god of the sun?” he asked at the end.

“Probably not. She introduced Wami to Ziegler. If Wami killed her, he might have carved the sun symbol into her back to point the finger of guilt at the medium.”

“You believe Ziegler’s innocent?”

“He knows more than he’s admitting, but I don’t think he killed her.”

“You think it was Paucar Wami.”

“Yeah.”

“And if it wasn’t?”

I shrugged. “A john who did it for kicks.”

He nodded slowly, then said, “It
wasn’t
Wami.”

“Oh?” I didn’t dare say more.

“You’re forgetting the way she was killed, the messy slashes. The experts say it was the work of an amateur.”

“That could have been intentional,” I suggested. “He might not have wanted to be linked to the death. It may have been done to throw us off the scent.”

The Cardinal smiled. “You know nothing about Paucar Wami. He’s killed under many guises in his time, but never pretended to be anything other than a professional. He takes pride in his work and fears no one. He would never spoil the beauty of a kill.”

“You think killing’s beautiful?” I kept a neutral tone.

“I can take or leave it. But to Wami it’s an art form. He has made death his life’s study. It’s all that interests him. Murdering in this fashion would be entirely out of character.”

I shifted on my feet—he hadn’t asked me to sit—and cleared my throat. “Sir, you’re correct when you say I don’t know anything about Paucar Wami. But he’s a killer. And I know he—or somebody fitting his description—was seen with Nic in the weeks prior to her death. In the absence of other concrete suspects, I think it would be lunacy to—”

“Are you calling me a lunatic?” The Cardinal asked. He didn’t seem insulted, merely curious.

“No, sir,” I checked myself. “Of course not. But I think we should explore this. If he’s out of town, we can cross him off our list. But if he’s here and he
was
the one she was seen with…”

The Cardinal was silent awhile. When he spoke, it was over his fingernails, and only barely audible. “Wami
is
here. He took out Johnny Grace a couple of days ago.”

I rolled onto the balls of my feet as though to breathe in the fumes of proof. I wanted to shout, “There! You see!” but didn’t. Instead I held my tongue and let The Cardinal draw the conclusions himself. After a long pause, he spoke.

“If Wami is the killer—and I still harbor strenuous doubts—we must tread carefully. He’s not a man to cross lightly. I’d like to know his reasons for killing Nicola Hornyak, and why he chose the Skylight, but I won’t push. Knowing it was him would be answer enough.”

I phrased my next question as cautiously as possible. “Do you need
me
to ask him? I believe you’ve had dealings with Paucar Wami in the past. Couldn’t you get in contact and…?”

The Cardinal’s face darkened. “Are you telling me how to run my investigation?” he snapped.

“No, sir, I was just—”

“Just nothing!” he roared. “If I wanted to call Wami, I’d call him. I don’t need a flunky like you telling me—”