The Witch's Key (7 page)

Although most aspects of business carried out there
are conducted under minimum security, for some reason, the planners
and architects of the building felt it necessary to fortify the
detective’s block like Fort Knox. To get to where Carlos and
Spinelli worked, one needed to pass through multiple layers of
security that even the Pentagon doesn’t require. For this reason, I
met up with Spinelli in the lobby and followed him upstairs to
Carlos’ workstation. He had just returned from his ‘
thing
’
and was now feeling so stuffed that he could barely move.

“That’s it?” I said. “Eating? That’s the thing you
had to do that was so important?”

“No. It wasn’t just eating. I was working. I met a
contact who had some Intel.”

“A contact?”

“Yes, a transient, a hungry transient. He said he
wouldn’t meet me unless I bought him lunch.”

“Did you get anything?”

“I went for the smorgasbord.”

“No! I mean Intel.”

“Oh, sure. Plenty.”

I crossed my arms to my chest. It would have ticked
me off if I thought that Carlos had gone off to eat while Spinelli
and I worked the leads to his case. It’s not that I hadn’t paid for
my fair share if Intel with a thick steak or a few martinis. But I
knew how much Carlos liked to eat. The man is a garbage disposal in
wingtips. I tried to remind myself that I was not a cop anymore,
and that I especially was not the lead cop in this investigation.
This was Carlos’ baby and if he wanted to conduct the show from a
buffet line, then who was I to say differently?

“Well?”

Carlos kicked back, wearing his smile like a crown.
Of course, I suppose it could have been gas. It is hard to tell
with him sometimes. “There’s a witness to one of the murders,” he
said.

“You’re kidding?”

He leaned forward, showing more eagerness to talk
now. “No. This guy saw the entire thing.”

I sat up on the edge of my chair. “And?”

“Well, first he saw these two hobos talking, and one
of them had something in his hand.”

“A gun?”

“I don’t know. He couldn’t say. But that’s when the
second one climbed up on some trestlework and jump off in front of
an oncoming train.”

“That’s great! We need to get this witness in here
right away.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t know who he is.”

“But you just had lunch with him.”

“No I didn’t.”

“You said—”

“It wasn’t him.”

“Then, who…”

“Some other guy who knows a guy that knows the
witness.”

I rolled back into my chair. “Carlos, what you have
is a he-said-she-said, only without a description of the
perpetrator.”

“At least we know for sure now that these deaths
weren’t suicides.”

“No, we know nothing for sure. We have a guy that may
know a witness to someone that may have witnessed somebody
committing a murder or suicide.”

“It’s a start.”

“It’s a waste of the fifteen bucks you spent on
lunch.”

“Thirty,” he said. “And the department reimburses
me.”

“Thirty! The guy’s a bum. Couldn’t you have taken him
to the Burger Barn?”

He pulled back some, embarrassed and deflated. “So,
what did
you
come back with? Any luck with Mister
Marcella?”

I shook my head. “No. You were right about him being
old school. He doesn’t know any of the younger guys hopping
freights these days.”

“Were you able to tell if he’s your…you know.
Father?”

“He is,” I said. “He told me about my real mother,
too, and why he abandoned me on the doorstep of the orphanage.”

“So, you told him?”

“What, that I’m his son? Of course not. How on earth
could I explain something like that to him.”

“You could write him a letter,” said Spinelli. “Tell
him that you’re all right and that you—”

“What, miss him? Maybe tell him that I’d love to be
there with him in his dying days, but that I’m just a little busy
right now?”

“No! I didn’t mean that. I just thought, I don’t
know.”

Sure, his intentions were good, and I knew that
Carlos’ concerns were genuine, too. And it’s not as though I had
all the answers, either. I wanted my dad to know who I was, and
that I didn’t harbor any ill feelings towards him. But how could
that make anything better for him? Wasn’t it possible that meeting
me, knowing about me, could only make matters worse? I mean, there
he was at the end of his life, reconciling all the good and bad
things he had ever done and coming to terms with them before his
final judgment day. Meeting me could unearth a graveyard of
skeletons that he thought had been put to rest decades ago. No,
deciding what to do about dad was not a simple matter, but neither
was doing nothing.

“I know what you meant, Dominic,” I said. “And I know
you both mean well, but this is something I must deal with on my
own.”

“So, you’re not angry with him,” asked Carlos. “About
leaving you, I mean.”

“No. He had his reasons. I guess my mother was a real
whack job. She left him little choice.”

“Was she?”

“Yeah, shame, too. He really loved her. They were
both hobos, riding the freights together, living under the stars.
He said he compared their adventures to those of Gary Cooper and
Ingrid Bergman in the movie,
To Whom the Bell Tolls
. But
then when I came along, she sort of wigged out on him. She just got
up and walked out, leaving him holding the bag, or should I say,
the little bundle of joy?”

Carlos shook his head. “That’s terrible.”

“I know. What is a hobo to do, right? But old dad did
his best. He raised me to age five, but with the war overseas
raging, he was eventually called to go fight in it. That’s when he
left me with the orphanage.”

“Man, that makes me want to cry,” said Carlos. “He’s
really an upstanding guy, your dad. Isn’t he?”

“I think so.”

It is funny. I am usually better with details than
most. It is a gift, something I have honed through years of police
work, gathering clues and conducting interviews. So it took me by
surprise a bit when Spinelli was able to jump on a few of the
obvious inconstancies in my story that I totally missed.

“It was ‘43’,” he said, almost inaudibly. Carlos and
I looked at him strangely.

“What’s that?”

“The movie,
To Whom the Bell Tolls
. It came
out in ‘43’.”

“So?”

“You were born in 42, weren’t you?”

“I’m not following.”

“You said that your mom and dad related their
adventures to Bergman and Cooper, but that’s impossible. If she
left him after you were born, then they couldn’t have known about
the movie because it wasn’t out yet.”

I agreed, explaining the mix-up as an oversight. “So,
dad was confused. He’s an old man. Maybe he meant another
movie.”

“What about the war?”

“What about it?”

“You said he left you to go fight in Europe. By the
time you were five, World War II had been over nearly two years. I
don’t suppose the Axis took to kindly to that.”

“No,” I said, retreating in a shell of denial. “I
don’t suppose they did. Maybe my dad’s medications had him confused
about some things.”

“Yeah, I bet that’s it,” said Carlos, and when he
shot his young partner
the look
, Spinelli hopped aboard.

“Of course, that’s probably it. An old man on
morphine will ramble on if you let him.”

Left with that, I could have let myself off the hook
and not heard another word about it. But Carlos knew me better, and
I suppose Spinelli did, too. As much as I wanted to believe the
crap about the drugs, I could not. Pops was lucid and direct the
entire time we spoke. He didn’t mix words about his past, and his
memories, though distant, were not forged in morphine. I smiled up
at Spinelli and Carlos and thanked them for their support. “You
guys are all right,” I said, adding, “but you suck at being
detectives.”

“What do mean?” Carlos asked. “You’re the one that
missed all the obvious flaws in Pops’ story.”

“Yes, and you were willing to overlook them just to
spare my feelings. You can’t do that.”

“Fine. We’ll go down to the hospice center right now
and bring that old coot in for questioning. How’s that?”

“No, Carlos. You can’t do that, either.”

He turned to Spinelli for backup, but the rookie
detective waved him off with a subtle headshake. It made me glad to
think that Carlos would be the next one retiring.

“So what would you have us do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Look, even if Pops knows
something, he’s obviously not the killer. He’s been in bed for
weeks. Why don’t we work on finding your mystery witness? We can
start by infiltrating some transient camps.”

“I can stop by the Goodwill and pick up some ratty
clothes,” Spinelli volunteered. “That will help us fit in.”

“Great. Do that.”

“And I’ll get my harmonica,” said Carlos.

I looked at him as though he might be joking.
“Why?”

“To help us fit in.”

I stood up and headed for the door. “We’ll meet
outside in the parking lot tomorrow morning. Don’t either of you
shave.” I turned and looked back over my shoulder. “And
Carlos?”

He snapped to attention. “Yes?”

“Forget the harmonica.”

Before heading back to the apartment, I decided to
swing out of my way a bit to see a dear friend. Leona Diaz had
known Lilith Adams for a number of years. The two worked closely
together in Doctor Lieberman’s psychic workshops, and I felt Leona
was one of the few people I could talk to about my feelings for
Lilith without prejudice. Her ability to bilocate, or project her
metaphysical being across dimensions, qualified her for inclusion
in the Lieberman project, though I made no assumptions regarding
her otherwise innocuous connections with others in the group.
Lilith Adams, especially. Paranormal attributes notwithstanding,
but for their age and exceptional beauty, the two women shared
little else. If I were smart or averse to self-torment, I would
probably have done better to fall in love with Leona instead of
Lilith.

Obviously, I am neither.

Leona kept a small apartment on the second floor of a
building across town that probably should have been raised years
ago. Though it was not much to look at, I guess it proved idyllic
for the understated needs of a shy Mestizos girl from Honduras.

I walked up the stairs and knocked on her door,
keeping in mind that she would not recognize me since my return to
prime. Although she had witnessed many truly amazing examples of
supernatural occurrences in her studies at the institute, I doubted
if she had ever seen an individual miraculously shed forty years
off his age. To break it to her gently, I decided to introduce
myself as her new neighbor. Then, after easing her into her comfort
zone, I would explain the truth and hope that she might
understand.

I took a half step back as she opened the door,
disappointed to see that she did not leave the safety chain latched
as I had taught her. In my career, I had seen too often, young
women such as Leona accosted at their own front door by muggers,
thieves and rapists. It is a concern that one should take seriously
in any neighborhood, especially, as I have told Leona more than
once, in hers.

“A`low?” she said, in that charming accent that
endears her to me so.

“Hi there,” I said. “You don’t know me, but I just
moved in next door and I—”

“Detective Marcella?”

“What?”

“¡Por Dios! Detective, it is you!”

“How did you…”

“Come.” She grabbed my hand and yanked me inside.
“Sit, please, here on my sofa.” She patted the seat cushion and
dragged me down onto the sofa beside her. “Oh, you must tell me how
you look so good? You have been working out, no?”

“No, I mean, yes, I do now, but that’s not how
I…Wait, how did you recognize me so quickly?”

She pointed at her eyes, though tightly squeezed by
the enormous smile on her face, and then at mine. “I see you in
there,” she said. “You cannot hide from me.”

“I wasn’t trying to hide. Did Carlos tip you off
about me?”

“Do you want I should make some tea?” She stood and
started across the room. “I have some from my home country. I think
you will like it.”

“No, Leona, thank you, maybe later. Please, sit down.
I need your help with something important.”

She came around the end of the sofa and reclaimed her
seat beside me. “Of course, Detective. How I may help you?”

“It’s Lilith,” I said.

“Oh? Is she not so fine?”

“No, I mean, yes, she is fine. That is, she is very
fine. She is the finest, most perfect thing I’ve ever known.”

“I do not understand.”

“It’s complicated. As you can see, thanks to Lilith I
am now forty years younger.”

“Sí, you are muy handsome.”

“Thank you, but that’s not the problem. See, now that
I am much closer to Lilith’s age I…that is, she and I…or rather,
we—”

“You are in love with her, no?”

“Yes!” I said, feeling a great weight lifted from my
chest. “God, yes. Leona, the things she does to me. I haven’t felt
this way since, well, before you were born. She’s all I think
about, night and day. I’ve been wrestling with these feelings for
over a year now, but ever since she included me in her rite of
passage ceremony I—”

“Wait. It is how you became young again?”

“Yes. That’s what the passage does. It returns you to
your prime.” She smiled, her pressed lips dimpling her cheeks ever
slightly. “What?” I said. “Why are you looking at me like
that?”

“The rite of passage is a most sacred and personal
ceremony for a witch. For her to include you means that she has
emotionally bonded with you.”