The Art of Seduction (27 page)

Two more shots followed. As they approached the coach, Mason stopped short. “No,” she cried, “they'll shoot the horses. Follow me. I know a place where they'll never find us.”

As they heard the running footsteps behind them, they darted into the empty square, then around a building where Mason led him down an alley to a manhole cover. She pried it open and said, “We can hide down here.”

“What is this place?” he asked skeptically.

“The catacombs.”

“W
ait.” Richard pulled back on Mason's hand. “It's too dark.” After closing the cover behind them and descending a metal ladder, they'd run fifty feet down a long, black passageway. It was cool and dank, and the air was stale. “We're going to get lost.”

“I have a light.” She reached into her handbag, withdrew a match and handkerchief, struck the match against the wall, and lit the bottom of the cloth. The yellow light flared and illuminated the narrow tunnel leading into the distance.

“Let's wait here. I don't think they're following us.”

“I hear footsteps,” she insisted. “We've got to go farther.” Holding the handkerchief before her like a torch, she led the way. “There's an exit we can take up ahead about half a mile.”

He saw a line of human skulls up ahead. “Is this where you painted Lisette?”

“Yes, right up here.”

Medieval Paris had been built from the limestone that was quarried from these shafts. They weaved their way through almost every quarter of the city, a vast network of underground tunnels. This particular section had become the depository of hundreds of thousands of bones transferred here from the cemeteries of Central Paris in the eighteenth century. The bones and skulls were stacked against the walls, giving the place a particularly ghoulish aspect that Mason had used in a trio of paintings. She held up the lighted handkerchief before a lintel in which an inscription had been carved: S
TOP, FOR THIS IS THE KINGDOM OF DEATH
.

“Let's wait a minute and see if we hear any more footsteps.”

“No, we've got to keep going.”

The path before them suddenly forked in four different directions. Without allowing him time to think about it, she pulled on his hand. “This way.” She gripped his palm tightly, guiding him into one of the shafts.

Soon, they came upon another fork and she took its left branch. Then another three-way division. Then another. And another. At that point, she dropped the burning handkerchief to the ground and stepped on it, stamping it out.

The darkness was intense, smothering.

“What are you
doing
?” he demanded. His voice was shrill.

“We're here.”

“Where?”

“Where we're going to have our talk.”

“Would you please strike another match?”

“Sorry, I don't have another one.”

“Then we've got to get out of here.”

“We're not going anywhere until you tell me what I want to know.”

“This isn't funny, Mason.”

“I don't intend it to be funny. I know the way out, but you don't. If you try to leave, you're sure to get lost. These passages go on forever without end. People become disoriented down here and never find their way out. Someone stumbles on their skeletons fifty years later. So you have two choices: You can either talk to me honestly and I'll lead you out, or we can stay here in this darkness forever. Take your pick.”

“You don't know what you're doing.”

“I know exactly what I'm doing. I've tried everything else, and you've stonewalled me. This is the only course left to me.”

“You don't understand. You know about my nightmares.”

“That's why we're here, so you can tell me about them.”

“What you don't know is they're about darkness. I don't
like
darkness. And I have a fear of falling asleep, having a nightmare, and not having a light to bring me out of it. Just this kind of situation. So please…For Christ's sake, Mason, get me out of here. Now.”

“Do you think this is easy for me? Do you think I wouldn't do anything else if I thought it would make you talk to me? But I've tried, Richard, again and
again.
I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing it for you. So we're not going to take one step out of here until you tell me what I need to hear.”

She felt him fall back against the wall and slide to a sitting position on the floor. She sat beside him. His breath was coming deep and hard. “This was quite an evening you planned. You really wanted to strip me bare, didn't you?”

“I'm sorry I had to do that back there with Hank. But I had to force the issue because I didn't think you'd believe me if I just told you.”

He didn't respond.

She tried again. “Did you have any idea that he might betray you?”

After a moment, he said acridly, “None. Hank was the one person I thought I could count on.”

“You have someone else you can count on now. Me.”

“You. Who dragged me into the darkness.”

“Yes, me. The only person who cares enough about you to fight for you. Hank wanted to mold you into a copy of himself. I don't think he
ever
loved you. He used you. But I love you, Richard. I love you so much that I don't care what happens to me or what you think of me. I only care about you. But unless you tell me everything, this has all been for nothing. You've got to trust me, Richard, please.”

“I can't,” he groaned.

She could feel his torment. “If you don't tell me, Hank has won. I know it's hard. I know it hurts. But I know you can do it. Just think back and tell me what happened. Try, Richard, please. For me. For us.”

He still didn't answer. It was as if the barriers to his heart were so strongly fortified that it was impossible for him to let her in.

She prompted him. “Go back. To the beginning. What is the first thing you see?”

For a long time, he didn't respond and her heart began to sink. Then, just as she'd given up hope, she felt his head drop back against the wall behind him. “I see a little boy…”

The words shook her. Was he actually going to do it? “Tell me about him. What is he like?”

“He's a scruffy, rebellious little smart aleck…His father had died in England and his mother, a Scot, succumbed to pneumonia on the ship to America, leaving him an orphan.”

“But he's not alone, is he?”

“No. He has something wonderful in his life that he's not smart enough to appreciate.”

“What?”

A brief hesitation. “An older sister.”

“Molly?”

“Molly. She's eight years older. And she's lovely, with clear skin and bright eyes and a smile that lights up the world. She's a saint. And more protective of me than my parents ever were. We landed in America with nothing. And we survived thanks to her determination and ingenuity and faith in the future. God”—his voice cracked—“Molly was something!”

Mason put her hand on his leg, offering support. “Tell me about her.”

“She was the strongest and most loving person I ever knew. She had a magic about her that charmed people, and a basic goodness that tended to restore people's faith in humanity. And she was fearless. When we landed in New York harbor, she grabbed me by the hand and didn't look back. We pushed west from one town to another. Mostly, she worked in dance halls. And she could sing a little. We always got by. We eventually landed in Virginia City just before the Comstock Lode came through…” His voice trailed off.

Afraid he wouldn't go on, Mason asked, “What did the two of you do there?”

“She worked in a saloon, and she put me in school for the first time. I hated it. I went because Molly wanted me to, but I just couldn't stand sitting in that classroom day after day. ‘Education is the most important thing in life,' she kept telling me. ‘You're going to school, and you're going to be there every day, and you're going to excel.' But I just wanted my freedom. So one morning, instead of going to the schoolhouse, I just lit out for the mountains.”

Once again, he stopped. Mason squeezed his leg. “What happened?”

“She came after me, of course.” Suddenly, there was an agony in his voice that she'd never heard before. “Even though she could barely ride, she got herself a horse from the livery and set out to track me down. But she didn't find me.” His voice choked. “Something got in her way. Something unforeseen. Something…unimaginable.”

He couldn't go on. He was breathing rapidly now. He reached for her hand, gripping it so tightly that she thought he'd crush it. She pulled his hand to her lips and kissed it tenderly. That simple motion seemed to open the floodgates.

“Molly got to within half a mile of where I was hiding out,” he rasped, “when she ran into a group of men who'd spent the day there on the creekbed drinking whiskey. The Murphy brothers—Clint, Chad, and Rufus—and their toady Harp Childers. The worst batch of no-accounts God ever created. They pulled her down from her horse…” Richard couldn't keep from sobbing. “They tore off her clothes…and they raped her one by one…and then again…I heard her screams, Mason. They drew me there. And I saw it from high up on that hill. I couldn't understand what was happening. I didn't know what to do.”

She felt his tears on her hand. Awash with pain, she turned and pulled him to her, and he cried on her shoulder, pouring out his grief.

“When they were done,” he sobbed, “she was dazed. She tried to stand, and she stumbled toward Harp as if she might be reaching for his gun. Clint Murphy shot her down as casually as he'd shoot a rattlesnake. And the other two Murphys laughed at it. They laughed!”

She stroked his hair, giving him time, saying nothing.

“I was only seven, and it was beyond my comprehension. I ran down to them. I cried to Clint Murphy, ‘Why did you do that? Why did you hurt her?' I couldn't even conceive that she could be dead. ‘Why did you hurt her?' And Clint Murphy said to me, with a smile I'll never forget, ‘I wouldn't waste any tears on a saloon whore, boy.' Then he spurred his horse and they all rode away. I went to her and put my hand on the bullet wound and tried to coax her back to life. But of course I couldn't. So I just lay there with her, holding her…crying…praying…not knowing what to do…out of my mind, really. Hours passed before a horseman happened by. A passing gambler who took pity on me. He tied Molly to her horse and took us both back to town. The funeral was two days later, and the gambler paid for it. But before that, I went to the mortuary to see her. She was laid out in her coffin in her best blue dress. The undertaker had done his job well. She'd never looked more radiant. Everyone who came to see her said she looked like an angel. And she did. For hours, I just stood there at Stampler's Mortuary and stared at her. The coal-black hair. The white skin. The blue, blue dress. The bluest blue I'd ever seen. It gave me a kind of strength, that beauty. Otherwise, I don't know what I would have done. A world that had that kind of beauty in it couldn't be all bad.”

He sat up and took a breath. “I stayed there all night, looking at her by candlelight, finding a kind of peace. But the next morning, they came and nailed the coffin shut and carried it up to Boot Hill. I tried to stop them. When they put her in that hole and shoveled the dirt on her, it took five men to hold me back. You see, I wanted to keep that image. Because without it, I had nothing. I was so crazy that they were in the process of tying me up when the kindly gambler came and calmed me down. He looked me in the eye, and said, ‘You don't have time for this, son. We've got some important business to take care of.'”

“The gambler was Hank.”

“Hank.” Again, Richard's voice choked. “You should have seen him in those days, before the good life turned him soft. He was lean and cagey, and a dead-eye shot. The kind of man they wrote dime novels about. He got me a horse, and the two of us went after those animals who'd done that to Molly. They heard we were on their trail and split up. But one by one, we tracked them down. Hank gunned down Harp in Carson City and got the drop on the two lesser Murphy brothers in Laramie. He made them get on their knees and apologize to me before he shot each one in the head. It took us another two months before we could corner Clint Murphy himself in some little rat-hole town in New Mexico Territory. Hank pistol-whipped him for a good five minutes. Then he handed me the gun. He told me, ‘Take it, son. It's time for you to become a man…'” His voice trailed off.

“What did you do?” she croaked.

“I stuck the barrel in Clint Murphy's ugly face and pulled the trigger. And I enjoyed every minute of it.”

The tears that had been welling up in Mason's eyes spilled over now. “What an awful thing to do to a little boy.”

“I suppose it was. But it didn't seem like it at the time. It felt like sweet justice to me. And I worshiped Hank for giving me the opportunity. After that, he more or less adopted me. He put me with a foster family now and again. He came in and out of my life. He saw to my education. After I'd grown a bit, he kept me with him permanently. He was good to me, Mason. I can't deny that. But I never really could become the kind of man he wanted me to be. Because I never really did get over Molly. The strongest thing in my life wasn't Hank. It was the image of my sister in her coffin in that blue dress. That indelible, transcendent image. That indescribable beauty. Whenever things got really rough for me, I'd close my eyes and bring back that image, and it pulled me through. In a way, that's what my dream is about.”