Hexes and Hemlines (12 page)

“You don’t like witches,” I pointed out, immediately suspicious.

“I don’t like Aidan. Nothing against witches per se.”

“Uh-huh. So what are you doing here?”

He laughed. I had never heard the sound. It was deep, and surprisingly pleasant.

“I felt bad about yesterday. I tend toward the churlish, I know, especially after spending time with Aidan. Anyway, I’m turning over a new leaf. The truth is . . .” As his voice trailed off, he shrugged and avoided my eyes. “I don’t have all that many friends. It may be time for me to reach out.”

I doubted him. Seriously. I imagined he really was working for Aidan, I just couldn’t figure out exactly why. But upon reflection, I decided I could use some company at the moment. I didn’t relish the thought of traipsing around after murder suspects on my own. Usually I was a solo act, since normal humans couldn’t protect themselves as well as I could. But Sailor was different. Whether he liked it or not, he was strong. And it might be useful having him around. I had barely started asking questions about Malachi’s murder, but already there seemed to be much more to this than a simple crime of passion, or the result of bad luck symbols, for that matter. Maybe Sailor could read some minds, some vibrations, and help clue me in on what was going on.

“All right,” I said as I climbed into the driver’s seat. “Jump in.”

“Great,” he said in his more familiar sardonic tone, as he saw Oscar and the cat in the back of the van. “Me and the menagerie. Maybe we can pick up a stray dog, or maybe a raccoon, and make it a party.”

By the time I pulled out onto Harrison the cat had moved to sit in Sailor’s lap. Sailor reared back, looking as appalled as Oscar had in the same situation.

“Not a cat person, I take it?” I asked.

He didn’t deign to answer. Instead, a strange look came over the strong planes of his face. He laid his broad hands upon the feline, ducked his head, and fell silent.

“This is not your cat,” he said after a long moment.

“No,” I responded, though it wasn’t a question.

Sailor met my eyes.

“Can it tell you something?” I asked, suddenly excited. Could Sailor find out from the cat what happened in Malachi’s apartment that night? “It may have been witness to a murder. Can you read its mind?”

But he was shaking his head.

“They don’t process like we do. They’re mostly about visuals, pictures, sensations.”

“Yes, but . . . Did it see what happened?”

“No. But there was something there . . . something evil.”

I sat back, disappointed. “A fat lot of help you are, Mr. Psychic. I think I figured that much out as soon as I saw the man sprawled on the table with a piece of broken mirror stuck in his chest.”

“What are you talking about?” Sailor asked, and I realized he knew nothing of Malachi Zazi’s untimely death. I gave him the abridged version.

“So I thought maybe you could tell me something, from the cat.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault,” Sailor said. “I do what I can. Have
you
ever wandered through the recesses of a cat’s thoughts? It’s mostly about smoked ham and dust motes.”

Oscar snorted loudly from the back of the van.

I pulled over and consulted a San Francisco road map, checking the street signs against it, and the address Rebecca had given me.

Sailor watched me for a moment. “Where are you trying to get to?”

I told him the address.

“That’s in the Tenderloin.”

“Is it?”

“It’s about three blocks from the newspaper offices.”

“It is?”

“Next time I’m driving. Take a left.”

San Francisco is a small town, geographically speaking. Thus, one can pass from a prosperous, well-tended area to a run-down, poverty-stricken neighborhood within the space of a city block or two. Though the Tenderloin sits cheek by jowl with the theater district, the denizens here could scarce afford a movie, never mind an off-Broadway show.

We passed a soup kitchen with a long line of scruffy people waiting, defeated and patient. Several men crowded the corners, holding signs declaring they were available for work. The women, many wearing garish makeup and clothing far too skimpy for San Francisco’s changeable weather, looked as though they did whatever they had to in order to survive.

“At least there’s plenty of parking,” I said as I pulled to a spot at the curb in front of a dingy white four-story building. An old half-lit neon sign flickered near the double doors: HOTEL WHARTON—VACANCY.

“There might not be much left of this van by the time we get back.”

“Sounds like a good reason for you to stay here, keep things safe.” Though it was nice knowing that Sailor was nearby, I didn’t feel any need to have him accompany me to interview Bronwyn’s son-in-law, Gregory. Besides, I wouldn’t know how to explain him to Rebecca. I’d rather save him for bigger fish, presuming I could track any down.

I climbed out of the vehicle. Sailor did the same.

“You’re not coming with me for this,” I told Sailor as we both slammed our doors. “I’d rather talk to this fella alone.”

“Who is it?”

“None of your business. It’s personal. Stay here with the animals.”

Just then a building alarm rang out. A series of muffled pops sounded suspiciously like gunshots. A small group laughed and smoked on the corner, selling a questionable collection of stained clothing that hung on the Cyclone fence behind them.

Sailor snorted. “Yeah, I can just imagine explaining this one to your friends at Aunt Cora’s Closet.
‘Guess I shouldn’t have let her go into the worst dive in the city alone. So sorry about that knife in her back.’
Peaceloving Wiccans or not, they’d put a pox on me.”

“Really, I don’t need a bodyguard, Sailor. I’ve got talismans that are a darned sight better protection than you are.”

He shrugged and came over to stand beside me. “You’re a witch, not an immortal.”

A man reeled toward us on unsteady feet. He wore jeans and an old pin-striped vest that barely hid his sweaty, hairy beer belly; as he neared I noted the stench of alcohol and body odor. The man’s rheumy eyes fixed on me and he gave me a moist leer.

I leaned into Sailor.

My self-appointed bodyguard looked down at me, amused. “How quickly the mighty change their tune,” he said in a low voice. Still, he draped his arm around my shoulders and glowered at the drunken man. Then he urged me toward the hotel doors. “Let’s go, tiger.”

Black leather jacket and permanent scowl or no, Sailor was a psychic, not invincible. Save for premonition, testosterone, bravado, and his fists, he had no actual way of keeping himself safe. I fished around in my Filipino woven backpack until my hand wrapped around a talisman I had carved and charged during the last full moon. I put it around his head, laid my hands flat on his chest, and chanted a quick charm of protection.

When I stepped back, his eyes were dark and searching, though as always hard to read. Full of questions, that much was clear. And something else, something unusual, unexpected. Vulnerability?

The moment passed.

I cast a quick spell of protection over the van and its inhabitants before setting off to find Rebecca’s errant husband.

“This is just lovely,” grumbled Sailor as we stepped into the dingy lobby. The eye-watering chemical aroma of Pine-Sol wasn’t sufficient to hide the underlying scent of unwashed humanity.

“Your place isn’t a whole sight better,” I pointed out.

“Give me a break. My apartment building may be run-down, but it’s nothing like this.”

He was right. Not all poverty is the same: In many instances, it leads to a neighborly interdependence, strong family bonds, hard work, and determination. Often, the more people have to rely upon one another, the more they retain their cultural integrity and remain loyal to their family and friends. But here, in this section of the Tenderloin at least, the grinding poverty was part and parcel of degradation, addiction, and hopelessness.

The Hotel Wharton was the kind of place that rented rooms by the hour. As a domicile its chief advantage, as far as I could imagine, was the price, and the fact that no one would ask questions. About anything. Their recent spate of bad luck notwithstanding, surely the Petrovics had the resources for Gregory to stay someplace decent upon being expelled from the family home. I would imagine Rebecca’s husband feeling most comfortable at a Marriott extended-stay hotel, someplace corporate and shiny and new.

There was only one obvious explanation: Gregory Petrovic was punishing himself.

No one stopped Sailor and me or asked who we were looking for as we made our way down a first-floor hallway. The indoor-outdoor gray carpeting was threadbare and stained, and the cracked stucco walls vibrated with despair. Sounds of televisions and loud conversations seeped through the series of thin doors.

I knocked on the door of room 112.

The man who answered was of average height, pale, with thinning light brown hair. His eyes were surprisingly pretty, large and long-lashed in the way of Maybelline models. Heavy-lidded, they might have been very romantic if they hadn’t been rimmed in red from lack of sleep, or drink. He was lean and fit, with that signature Bay Area upwardly mobile professional look of a man who mountain bikes and windsurfs in his downtime, making it a point of pride to maintain a flat belly after the age of thirty. It was easy enough to imagine that with a change of clothes, he and Rebecca would make a polished-looking affluent couple.

Everything about him looked out of place in this hotel, except for the defeated look in his eyes and a grimy bandage on the ring finger and pinky of his left hand.

“Gregory? I’m Lily Ivory. I work with Bronwyn, your mother-in-law?” I said. His expression remained flat, vacant. “Rebecca sent me. Could we talk?”

“Who’s that?” he asked, glancing behind me.

“An associate of mine. Sailor.”

Gregory shrugged, stepped back, and let us in. The room was standard flophouse: a twelve-by-twelve space with a single window looking out over an alley, a sagging double bed, a scarred bureau with one drawer missing, and a tattered love seat near the window. I had stayed in worse in my time, but always in much more exotic surroundings—Morocco, Thailand, Amsterdam. There it seemed rather romantic. Here, plain miserable.

The bed was neatly made, but clothes were strewn about, and papers spilled out of an open briefcase at the foot of the bed. An empty grease-stained Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket sat on the floor, and a bottle of expensive bourbon stood on the nightstand.

“Is Rebecca ready to see me?” Gregory asked.

“I’m sorry. I don’t actually know. I came to speak to you about Malachi Zazi.”

“Oh.” He drooped like a deflated balloon, sinking down onto the side of the bed and cradling his head in his hands. He let off a defeated thrum, like a funeral dirge. “When Rebecca called and said you’d be coming by, I thought maybe it had to do with us. Her and me, I mean. She told me she’d think about letting me visit with the kids. . . .”

After a moment he looked back up, as though surprised to see we were still there.

“Oh, sorry. Have a seat.”

I perched on the room’s single wooden chair.

Sailor remained silent, standing at the door. He crossed his arms over his broad chest, leaned back against the wall, and glowered. My own personal Secret Service detail.

“The police haven’t pressed charges against you, have they?” I asked. “Do you expect them to?”

“I have no idea. The way my life’s spinning out of control lately, probably.”

“Tell me what’s been going on.”

“I wish I knew. Everything . . . first my research experiments were tampered with. The results were forged, and it looked like I did it, but I didn’t. I swear. I spent less time at home, trying to make up for what was spinning out of control at work. But then we got an audit notice from the IRS, and we owe a bunch of back taxes. I got into a fender bender. And then I started . . . drinking. I managed to get a DUI. I even smashed my hand in the car door,” he said, holding up his bandage with an almost petulant sort of “Why me?” look on his face. “And now this. I’m accused of
murder
.”

Outside a siren blared, grew unbearably loud, then passed. Someone shouted the name “Carrie” repeatedly. Drunken laughter. Smells of marijuana smoke, fried foods, and car exhaust wafted in through the open window. Sailor and I shared a look. Despite my earlier bravado, I was very glad to have him standing guard.

“What kind of research do you do?”

“Antiaging, mostly. The secret to longevity.”

“Have you found it?”

“The secret?” He gave a bitter laugh. “Not quite. I’m afraid there’s no magic potion. We’re investigating regimens of hormones and vitamins, different sorts of medications.”

“You work at Michael Perkins’s company, Perkins Laboratories?”

“Mike Perkins. Yeah.”

The eternal search for youth. I thought about the botanicals I knew that helped people stay younger longer: angelica and cinnamon oil, to name just a couple. But they were mostly about maintaining vitality and health, not just surface beauty. I imagined anyone who came near to inventing such a product would make a fortune.

“Do you think this ‘curse’ you appear to be under has to do with Malachi’s dinners?”

“Six months ago I would have laughed at the very idea. But I’m beginning to wonder whether you can really tempt fate like that and not pay for it eventually.”

“So you believe? In the bad luck symbols?”

“I’m a scientist. I believe in things that are proven, and provable. But contrary to popular belief, that doesn’t mean I’m closed to the idea of something . . . well . . . things that we don’t know about yet.”

It made sense. Scientists deal with outlandish ideas all the time—just look at the inspired lunacy of Galileo. They were among the more open-minded people I’d ever met when it came to magical systems. All they asked for was proof.