The Green Lama: Crimson Circle (21 page)

Omega sighed. “I grow tired of this game, Mr. Brown.”

“Yeah, I’m getting pretty tired of it myself,” Gary replied.

“Let us get straight to business, then,” Omega said, his voice once again warm and friendly. “Where shall we begin today? Right or left?”

“Can’t really feel my left, you might want to start on my right.”

“Very good.”

Gary couldn’t see it, but he knew Omega smiled pleasantly as he gently took Gary’s right forearm and snapped it into a “V.”

• • •

“WHERE THE HELL is Farrell?” Jason Fluegge screamed as he rushed through the dressing room, forcefully shoving aside crew and actors alike. He was sweating again, that drenching cascade of perspiration that began at his brow dripped over his eyebrows, down his cheeks, off his chin and pooled in the pits of his underarms. It was twenty minutes to show time and the lead was nowhere to be seen…
again
. He stuck his head in Farrell’s shared dressing room. “Erin, please, tell me you’ve seen Jean in the last five minutes.”

Erin gave him a bewildered look through the mirror and shrugged as she powdered her face. “Don’t ask me, boss man. I didn’t even know she was missing.” Erin paused in consideration. “You think she was eaten by the Cannibal Killer? Though I doubt it considering I saw her take down some drunk in a back alley…”

“Good Lord,” Fluegge groaned, not believing a single word Erin had said. He massaged his eyes in frustration. “Dumont probably took her on
another
European tour. Never work with actresses with rich boyfriends, you hear me, Erin? Never. They’re a goddamn
plague
. You never know when they’re gonna go gallivanting on some kind of stupid adventure halfway across the universe...
Courtney
!” Fluegge hollered.

A beautiful young blonde girl poked her head out from around the corner. “Yes, Mr. Fluegge?”

“You better have remembered your lines, ’cause you’re on tonight,” he said to the understudy. “Get into wardrobe five minutes ago. And I want you to make that audience weep,” he shouted as the actress gracefully ran past him toward the wardrobe department. “You hear me?! I want there to be a tissue shortage in New York. If they’re not crying, we didn’t do our job.” And then, to the rest of the cast: “That goes for all of you. Weeping. Remember everyone, this is a tragedy.”

• • •

THE WIND whipped up the side of the building, full of frost and water. The streetlamps sent long shadows down the alleyway. Rats scampered back and forth, chased by raggedy cats intent on a meal. In the windows, silhouettes did their dances of the evening, men and women cooking, eating, undressing, copulating, fighting, their songs blurring with the horns and engines of late night buses and taxis into a general cacophony of the city. Jean rested her head against the concrete balustrade, finding the cool stone oddly refreshing. They had been out on the roof for the better part of the afternoon, straight on through evening and now into the encroaching dead of night. Despite the pangs of exhaustion beating behind her eyes, Jean kept her gaze on the alleyway, waiting for the shadows to move and the monsters to reveal themselves.

All of the twelve victims—including one child, Jean made sure she never forgot that—had been immigrants or homeless. The thought unsettled her. She knew killers kept to a pattern, but this seemed oddly specific while remaining wholly random. None of the murders were in the same location twice, scattered across each of the five boroughs like buckshot, but the murders were all consistent, the bodies ripped in half, the insides eaten, black ooze spotting the remains. At first, she and Jethro thought the killer to be the first victim’s husband; but after the second murder, then the third, and then the tenth, the facts stopped lining up. The victims were Hispanic, Oriental, European, and Indian, all ranging in age and sex. It was like the killer was taking a gastronomic tour of the world through the tenements and alleyways. It was also the reason why she and Ken had set up surveillance in the Lower East Side. If the killer was stalking immigrant neighborhoods, he would end up down there, if for nothing else, by the simple law of averages.

“The Cannibal Killer,” Ken mused, recalling the headline from the morning and evening editions. He sat on the roof beside her, legs crossed, enjoying a cigarette. “Who came up with that? Hearst probably, slimy bastard. Remind me to talk to Betty about that. The Cannibal Killer…” He took another drag of his cigarette and shook his head. “The money they’re making with these headlines. You should’ve seen the swarm surrounding the newsboy this morning. Kid couldn’t keep up so they just started throwing nickels at his feet. Couple of guys even got into a fistfight over a half-ripped copy. And it’s not like any of them really cared about the victims. It’s all about the spectacle, the distant horror of it… Trust me, Hearst is probably rolling his liver spots in dollar bills like he was printing ’em.”

“At least they’re not talking about me,” Jean murmured, suddenly feeling very selfish.

“Oh, they still are,” Ken assured her. “You’re just not reading far enough. Apparently, you—well, Jean
Parker
—and Jethro are getting married in two weeks in Hollywood… They just don’t know which one.”

Jean allowed herself a smile. “Knowing us, it’ll be Florida.”

“Probably while we’re fighting off the Fifth Column or some new kind of horror from the deep. We always keep it classy, don’t we? Or at least we keep it interesting.” He paused to take a drag of his cigarette and smirked. “Just as long as it’s not Cleveland.”

“Oh, you know Jethro and Cleveland. I’m still surprised we don’t have a place out there already.” There was a rush of movement behind one of the windows on the third floor of the opposite building and the hint of a scream. Jean’s throat tightened and she squinted in hopes it would resolve her vision. A small gust of wind pushed the curtains aside. A father tickling his young daughter. Relief washed over her and she returned to her vigil.

Several minutes passed. Ken shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. “You couldn’t have chosen a
warmer
place for us to stake out? I’m beginning to lose feeling in my fingers.”

Jean looked over at Ken and arched her eyebrow. “Did anyone ever tell you that you whine too much?”

Ken shrugged. “I’ve heard the criticism and have chosen to ignore it. Don’t worry, Red, I’m cognizant of my flaws.” He finished his cigarette and flicked it over the side of the building, the orange embers a comet’s tail behind the tumbling stub. Ken looked up at the dark cloudy sky and sighed, the last of his cigarette smoke billowing out from his mouth. He cleared his throat and turned to Jean, but didn’t risk looking her in the eyes and quietly said: “Look, I know you don’t want to talk about Theodor—”

“That’s right,” Jean cut in, turning back to the alleyway.

Ken frowned. “But, you probably should.”

“No, I shouldn’t.”

Ken rubbed his eyes in frustration. “I’m not gonna say ‘it wasn’t your fault,’ or something cliché like that. The hole he fell into was his own—”

“It’s not that, Clayton.” Jean got to her feet, drew her revolver and began checking the chambers. All six were loaded, just as they had been a half hour ago, and a half hour before that. Slamming the cylinder back in place, she holstered the gun and walked over the edge to watch the father play with his daughter in the third floor window. They seemed so happy; why did that make her so sad? “No matter how deep the pit he tumbled into was, it wasn’t deep enough for him to get murdered like that.”

Ken found another cigarette, while Jean’s breath frosted in the air. The moon, a blot of light behind the clouds, inched further across the sky, ignorant of anything beside itself.

“That’s true of most anyone,” Ken said as his waved out his match. “Theodor. The twelve people from the last two weeks…”

“You asked me in R’lyeh if I ever thought Jethro would retire,” Jean said, unconsciously drumming her hand on the handle of her holstered gun. “What our lives would be like if we…” She cleared her throat. “Part of me expected it to be like it always was. Saving the day with a laugh and a smile. Sure we’ve faced down death and monsters, but there was always a sense, in the back of my mind, that we would all make it out to the other side. But with Theodor and Gary… I guess I’m finding out what the other side is really like… and it’s a lot harder than I ever expected.”

“You’re not saying you and Jethro—”

“What? No. God, no. I’m crazier about him today than when we first got together. It’s just that—” She ran her hand through her hair. “We’re out here to do good, right? We’re out here to save people. That’s what Jethro stands for. That’s why we’re here. But what do we do when not even the heroes are safe?”

Something moved in the shadows of the alleyway, a lurch of motion in human form. Jean’s heart began hammering, her blood boiling. Her revolver was cocked before she realized she had drawn it. “There! Come on!” she hissed as she ran passed Ken, who was fumbling with his cigarette. She charged through the roof exit and raced down the stairs, her heels echoing down the stairwell.

Bursting into the alleyway, Jean already had her gun aimed at the man hunched in the shadows. “You! Creepy guy in the corner!” she shouted. “Turn and let me see your baby blues.”

The man took a long shuffling turn around, his feet dragging against the concrete. Gooseflesh ran up Jean’s neck and her finger instinctively squeezed down on the trigger, anticipating the bloody triangle and circle on the man’s forehead, the black ooze between his teeth. She heard Ken yell as the hammer fell down on the revolver. He knocked her arm, sending the bullet wild, raining brick over the alleyway.

“Jean, no!” Ken shouted, trying to wrench the gun from her hand. “It’s just some drunk!”

“Puhlees,” the man sobbed, “doan hur me!”

Jean froze. The man was hunched over himself, holding his arms over his head. His clothes were ratty, ripped and ruined. He stank of whiskey and rum, his beard sopped with alcohol. His eyes were wide; his corroded mouth gaped in fear. The gun in her hand suddenly became impossibly heavy, and her arm swung limp to her side.

“Sorry about the scare there, buddy. It’s been one of those weeks, eh? Get out of here and try and sober up,” Ken told the drunk, patting the man on the shoulder while handing him a dollar. The drunk nodded in fearful understanding before he stumbled down the alleyway, rounded the corner, and disappeared into the street.

“Jesus Christ,” Ken groaned angrily once the man was out of earshot. “What the hell were you thinking?!”

Jean shook her head slightly, her gaze still stuck on the ground. She replayed it all back in her head. She had seen the scar, the black ooze… hadn’t she? She glanced down at her gun, still warm from the shot. Bits of brick were sprinkled over her shoulder, her hair. She absently holstered her gun.

Ken’s brow furrowed in concern. He reached over to touch her shoulder. “Jean…”

She heard her name, bringing her back to reality, back to the cold and the night where the monsters still lurked. He met her gaze, his sympathy short-lived. “You’re jumping at shadows, Red,” he said calmly.

Jean’s eyes fell. She had overreacted, she knew that, but that didn’t stop the horrors that were clawing through the city. “That’s ’cause the shadows keep jumping back, Clayton.”

That’s when she heard the screams coming from the third floor window.

• • •

LIKE SO MANY things, the bar had been left abandoned, boarded up and left to collect dust until it all rusted away. The Green Lama stared down at the bullet hole in the floor, blood soaked into the wood. Theodor’s blood. It was maroon, almost brown, scabbed over. The bones and brain matter had been collected and discarded; only a few shards remained jammed between the floorboards. The Green Lama drifted further down the bar. He kept his feet off the ground—a task that had grown dramatically easier over time—to avoid contaminating the crime scene. A long trail of dried blood—
Theodor Harrin’s blood
—tracked through the bar, leading up to a solitary table in the back. The table had been left where it had fallen, tilted to the side and cracked straight through the center. Standing guard over the table’s vacant space were two old wooden chairs, one so caked with blood the legs were stuck to the floor. That was where Theodor had sat, where he had been tortured. Fingernails, clumps of hair and chunks of skin had been found piled up around the chair. The pain must have been excruciating. But for all the blood, for all the evidence of the horrors Theodor had endured, there were no clues. No fingerprints, shoe prints, or stray hairs—save for Theodor’s—not even a single bullet shell casing. Nothing, the scene had been swept clean. It was as if Theodor had been killed by a ghost.

Jethro pulled back his hood and let his feet touch the ground. He had been through the crime scene every night for nearly two weeks, always coming up empty. His shoulders slumped, his body wracked with exhaustion despite the energy coursing through his body.

He tried to think back to his short time working with Theodor, but found the memories muddled. Even Theodor’s act—which had always impressed him—seemed grey and faded in his thoughts, an old photograph left out in the sun. He could recall his adventures with Gary and Evangl in vivid detail; his times with Ken, Caraway and Jean stood out like mountains in a plain. But, Theodor… Theodor was forgotten. Jethro sat across from the blood caked chair and stared at it silently, hating himself. He had failed Theodor, as he failed those children on the docks, as he failed the passengers aboard the
Bartlett
, as he had failed Gan and Sotiria, as he had failed the Cannibal Killer’s victims… He massaged his eyes. Was this what now awaited Gary; awaited everyone he ever held dear?