In the Blood (4 page)

"No, ma'am, I'm a private investigator. I'm not familiar with what happened. I
heard there was a gang war-"

Mrs. Eichorn snorted smoke from her nostrils. "You believe that shit?" She gave
him another look, this one not quite as hard as the last. "You're not from around
here, are ya? Shoulda figured when you asked if Jimmy was in. Not that it matters.

People forget things, get the stories wrong, make up stuff because they like the way
it sounds. You know how it is."

"There wasn't a fight?"

"Massacre is a better word for it. I'm just thankful my boy was spared, that's all.

The rest of those sleazebags you could've flushed and no one would've cared. But
Jimmy... he was new to the gang. They hadn't had time to mess him up yet, least not
much." The creases at the corners of her mouth deepened.

"Can I talk to him?"

"You can try."

She led him down a narrow, unlit hall and opened a door with a Metallica poster
tacked to it. It was dark in the small room, although enough illumination spilled
through the window facing the street to allow Palmer a quick glimpse of a narrow
child's bed in one corner and heavy metal posters plastered on the cracked and
peeling walls.

Jimmy Eichorn sat in a wheelchair, staring at the world beyond the windowsill.

"I left the room the way he had it." Mrs. Eichorn's voice dropped into a lower,
softer register, as if she was in church. "I think it makes him happy." She went and
stood beside her son's wheelchair, one hand absently stroking the back of his head.

"The blue's almost grown out. I hated it when he dyed it. He always had such pretty
hair, don't you think so?"

Jimmy's hair was the same mousy noncolor as his mother's. The boy slumped in the
wheelchair looked to be sixteen years old, although his slack features made him seem
even younger. He was dressed in a pair of pajamas, a blanket draped over his lap.

Jimmy ignored the adults standing to either side of him, his attention fixed on the
street below.

"Jimmy? Jimmy, look at me, sweetheart. This nice man wants to ask you a
question."

Jimmy took his eyes away from the lamppost across the street and tilted his head in
order to stare at his mother. After a couple of seconds his lips pulled into a smile,
drool wetting his chin. He reached up and clasped his mother's hand. Mrs. Eichorn
smiled indulgently and brushed the hair out of his eyes.

"Jimmy?"

The boy's eyes flickered toward the window then shifted to Palmer. They were the
eyes of a preschooler, wide and clear and uncertain of strangers.

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"Jimmy, I need your help."

"Go ahead, darling. It's all right." Mrs. Eichorn squeezed Jimmy's hand.

Palmer pulled the photo of Chaz out of his jacket and held it up so the boy could see
it. "Do you know where I can find this man, Jimmy? Do you know where Chaz is?"

A muscle in Jimmy's face jerked. Palmer couldn't tell if the boy had shook his head

"no" or suffered a muscle spasm. Before he could press the issue, Jimmy gave a
weird, high-pitched squeal and began to twitch.

Palmer stepped back in disgust as the boy voided his bowels. Jimmy's eyes rolled in
their sockets and then glazed, staring at some unknown fixed point.

"Get out! Go on, get out!" snapped Mrs. Eichorn.

"But-"

"Just get out! I can't deal with him with you in the room!"

Jimmy clawed at his own throat, as if trying to pull an invisible attacker from his
windpipe. Palmer glimpsed what looked like puncture marks in the shadow of the
boy's chin. He stood awkwardly in the Eichorn's drab front room, listening to the
mother soothe her imbecile son. Palmer looked at his hands and noticed they were
shaking.

"He was such a happy baby."

Mrs. Eichorn stood slumped against the doorway, lighting another cigarette. Her
hands were trembling as well.

"He used to laugh like nobody's business," she continued. "His daddy thought the
world of him, because of that laugh. It made him stay around a couple of years
longer than he would have if Jimmy had cried like most babies, I guess. When he
ran off in '79, Jimmy was just five. Things changed. I... I was just fifteen when
Jimmy was born. What did I know about bringing a kid up by myself?" She looked
at the cigarette in her hand then glanced at Palmer, as if daring him to say
otherwise. He suddenly realized this hopeless, washed-out woman was seven years
his junior.

"It's not my fault he got like this... someone
did
that to him." Her voice tightened
and she looked away. "He wouldn't be like that if he hadn't been with the gang that
night. I asked him not to go-to break it off. But he wouldn't do it. He said being a
Blue Monkey was important to him. More important than anything. You know
what they made him do to be a part of their goddamn special gang? They made him
suck their... their
things!
I couldn't believe he still wanted to have anything to do
with them after what they made him do, but he was
proud
of being a Blue Monkey."

She shook her head in disgust. "I told him that night I didn't want him hanging
around that bar with those scum. I told him that if he went there he better not come
home. He cursed me out! His own mama! And he went anyway." Her eyes were
bright with unshed tears, but her cheeks remained dry. "I guess we're both paying
for our sins, huh?"

Palmer couldn't bring himself to look at her. "Mrs. Eichorn... I'm sorry, I didn't
realize my questioning your son would... upset him."

She shrugged. "No way you
could
know. It's funny what sets him off sometimes. But
you didn't have to ask him, though. I could have told you where to find Chaz."

"You know Chaz?"

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"Yeah, I
knew
him. He's dead. Died the same night the Blue Monkeys got into
trouble. Jimmy brought him here once or twice. I figured him for a dealer. I told
Jimmy I didn't like the kind of trash he hung out with, so he stopped bringing Chaz
over. Rumor had it Chaz got himself bumped off."

"You mean it was a hit?"

"That's what it looked like, at least. I wouldn't have been surprised. Chaz was the
kind of jerk who'd cross the wrong people just for kicks."

"Mrs. Eichorn, this is real important: Did Jimmy ever mention if Chaz had a
girlfriend?"

"Not that I recall. But, then, Jimmy and I didn't exactly talk a lot by then."

"I don't want to delay you anymore than I already have, Mrs. Eichorn. I appreciate
everything you've been able to tell me." Palmer slipped a couple of fifty-dollar bills
into her apron pocket as he left.

"You know something?" she said, opening the door for him. "It's funny, in a way,
but I can't bring myself to really hate whoever it was that did those things. In a way,
I got what I wanted. I got my little boy back. Don't you think that's funny?"

Palmer simply nodded and hurried away. On the third landing he paused long
enough to sneak a pain pill. By the time he reached the street, his ribs no longer felt
like they were being cracked open with a lobster mallet. He did not look up to see if
Jimmy was watching over him.

That night Palmer dreamed he was in a wheelchair, being pushed down a long,
poorly lit corridor. The wheelchair needed to be oiled and squeaked whenever it
moved. Everything seemed so vivid, so real, Palmer thought he was back in the
prison infirmary. Then he remembered he'd been released. Confused, he twisted
around to find out who was propelling the wheelchair.

Loli smiled back at him, looking both sexy and menacing in her starched white
nurse's uniform. Palmer was acutely aware of the erection tenting his hospital
johnny.

"Did you miss me, darling?" asked Loli, her lips painted the color of fresh blood.

"Yes. Very much." He hated to admit it, but he
did
miss her, no matter what she'd
done to him. It made him feel stupid, powerless and degraded, but his dick was hard
enough to cut diamonds.

"I missed you, too. But I won't
this
time!"

Loli halted the wheelchair at the top of a flight of stairs that seemed to stretch,
Escher-like, into another dimension. Palmer's head began to swim. He tried to stand
up, but his arms and legs were strapped to the wheelchair.

He twisted his head around, hoping to catch another glimpse of Loli. Instead, he
found himself staring down the bore of his gun. He knew he was dreaming and knew
what would happen next. He also remembered an old wives' tale-or was it a
disputed scientific fact?-that if you dreamed you were killed, you'd die in your sleep.

Surely even an imaginary Loli couldn't miss at this range.

Palmer threw himself headfirst down the warped, endlessly replicating stairwell.

Miraculously, the wheelchair remained upright as he caromed off gothic arches and
past half-glimpsed crumbling facades. He could hear Loli shrieking obscenities from

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the top of the stair, along with the sound of receding gunfire. He wasn't sure where
he was going, but at least it was away from Loli, with her bleeding mouth and
punishing .38.

For a brief, giddy moment, Palmer knew what it was like to be free. Then he saw the
massive brick wall blocking his way. And in front of the wall, standing in a
policeman's firing stance, both hands wrapped around the handle of the gun, was
Loli.

"Fooled you!"

When he woke up, he realized he'd wet the bed.

Palmer looked at the rows upon rows of cold marble and granite, then back at the
map the caretaker had given him at the gate. According to what information there
was, Geoffrey Chastain, better known as Chaz, was buried in Sector E-7. Most of
the headstones in the area were newer models, some even looked machine made. The
names and dates were still sharply defined and easy to read. It would be several
years before the wind and the rain rendered the inscriptions as vague as those found
on the older stones.

It was early February and frost crunched under his heels as he made his way among
the stones. Palmer was cold despite his anorak, and his mood had not been helped
by the nightmare that had jerked him awake, sweating and shivering, at four that
morning. He'd been unable-unwilling?-to go back to sleep, his scar throbbing like a
bad cigarette burn.

He rechecked what little information he'd been able to get from the cemetery
caretaker's files as he trudged along. Chastain's plot had been paid for
anonymously-in cash. The only point of interest was that the deceased had originally
been interred in Potter's Field, then dug up and replanted in a proper grave,
complete with headstone, a month later. Palmer was certain Sonja Blue was behind
Chaz's change of address. But why? Was it out of guilt? Sense of duty? Love?

He literally stumbled across Chaz's grave by accident. His feet had become
entangled in the faded remains of a funeral wreath, and to keep from falling, he had
leaned against a nearby tombstone. When he'd finally freed himself, he saw he was
resting his butt on Geoffrey Chastain's monument.

Palmer stepped back and stared at the nondescript granite marker: GEOFFREY

ALAN CHASTAIN 1961-1989. There was no other information, sentiment or
religious symbol to be found on its chill face, except for a stonemason's mark at the
bottom.

Palmer cursed himself, the self-deprecations rising from his lips in puffs of mist.

What had he expected to find out here in the first place? The missing heiress's
forwarding address chiseled into her dead lover's tombstone?

Then he saw the flowers. At first he thought they were part of the same wreath he'd
originally tripped over; then he realized they were wrapped differently. He bent and
lifted the bouquet from its resting place atop Chaz's grave. What he thought were
long-dead flowers were relatively fresh roses the color of midnight. Palmer handled
the bouquet gingerly, since the bundled stems were full of thorns.

Black roses. With the florist's name and telephone number stenciled onto the ribbon

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binding them together. Palmer smiled as he pulled the ribbon free, wincing as a
thorn bit into the meat of his thumb.

He stared at the bead of blood-as shiny and red as a freshly polished ruby-for a
second before bringing it to his mouth. As he sucked, he glanced up and saw a gaunt
young man dressed in an unseasonably light jacket watching him from a few yards
away, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. Palmer caught the odor of burning clove
on the crisp morning breeze. When Palmer looked again, the man was gone,
although the scent of his French cigarette still hung in the air.