Wages of Sin (49 page)

Bloom had set the nails down next to the mallet and now he'd turned and was leaning against the bench with his elbows braced behind him and his legs crossed at the ankles, as if they were just two guys shooting the breeze.

“And as I studied you,” he went on, “it occurred to me that perhaps you would succeed where I had not. That all I needed to do was start murdering more Fantastics, and you would dig and dig and dig until you found out why, and the why would lead you to my Mercedes.”

He took Rourke's chin in his hand and turned his face up. “So you see, we have made these sins together, Detective Daman Rourke.”

He held Rourke's chin a moment longer, and then let it go and turned back to the bench. “I do believe we are ready now,” he said. “May I suggest you look away. It's going to be bad enough for you without you having to watch it.”

Rourke didn't want to watch, but he'd be damned before he let the son of a bitch know it. Still, his fingers twitched when Bloom pressed the point of the nail into his flesh, then sprang straight in a horror of anticipation as Bloom brought the mallet down on the head of the nail.

It must have been making some noise—the steel head of the mallet striking the nail as Bloom drove it through his wrist and into the bench top with four solid blows. But Rourke didn't hear it through the screams in his head.

Sweat ran down his face like tears. His breath came in harsh tearing gasps. His mind kept saying,
no, no, no,
even as he was looking at the black head of the nail protruding from the flesh of his wrist and the rivulets of blood trickling onto the grease-marred wood.

Bloom set the mallet down and looked at his handiwork with pride, then bent down and cupped Rourke's chin, turning his face toward the lantern light. Bloom's own face was dreamy, his eyes gentle and far away. “That was bad, wasn't it?” he said. “Yes, I can see that it was.”

He took the gag out of Rourke's mouth and used it to wipe the sweat and tears of pain out of Rourke's eyes, his touch obscenely gentle. “I'm not going to insult your intelligence by making promises I can't keep,” he said. “You know I'm going to have to kill you in the end, there simply is no way around it. But there's no need to make a crucible of your death, Detective. Tell me where she is, and I'll murder you gently.”

Rourke moved his dry lips, letting out the barest sound, forcing Bloom to lean in close. “Fuck you,” he said, shooting out as much spit as he could with the words.

Bloom reared up and pulled his arm back, as if he would slap Rourke across the face with the flat of his hand, but then he let it fall and he laughed. “The very words Father Pat said, and you wouldn't think a priest would know such language, let alone make use of it. But then people are often not themselves when they are in extremity.”

The pain, which had been ebbing some, returned now with a ferocity that almost made Rourke faint. Blood was spreading out from his nailed wrist. Too much blood.

“Shall we go then to the threat of a nail to the other wrist?” Bloom said. “Or do I make you a few promises first?”

Those times in the past months when they had talked, Bloom seemed to have to work at pulling words out of himself, but now he just went on and on. He was talking as he went back to the carpetbag—after more nails, Rourke supposed, and he wanted to laugh because Bloom was going to be at another impasse soon. He hadn't been so careful this time. Rourke thought he must have nicked an artery with the nail, and at the rate that the blood was coming out of the hole in Rourke's wrist, Rourke would probably bleed to death long before Bloom would ever let him get a word in edgewise.

Bloom came back to him, but with a brandy flask, not another nail. He grabbed Rourke roughly by the chin, opening his jaw and pouring a hefty dose of it down Rourke's throat, and it went down so fast Rourke almost strangled on it. “I want you
aware,
Detective,” Bloom said. “And listening to my promises.”

Rourke's laugh was more like a hacking cough, but it was real. “What're you trying to do, Bloom—talk me to death?”

Bloom snatched up the mallet and slammed it down on the nail in Rourke's wrist, and Rourke's scream echoed off the open rafters.

Bloom's face was dark with blood-rage, his eyes wide. “You find this amusing, do you? Well, we shall see who laughs last…I've been watching your woman, Detective. Following her in my taxi, spying on her every move. Perhaps she's noticed. Don't you think she's been looking a little scared lately?”

The pain was like an electrical fire in Rourke's wrist, snapping and crackling, but his slowly leaking blood had gone cold. He knew now that he could endure any pain through to the end, but he wasn't going to be able to bear dying with the image in his mind of Remy lying on a riverbank, naked and violated and with a rope wrapped around her neck.

“Every cop in the city is out looking for you,” he said, the words rasping in his raw throat.

“And quite efficiently, too, considering that only a couple of hours ago I walked right into your squad room, had a little conversation with your daughter, and walked back out again…She's a tough little nut, by the way. Your Katie. I'm not going to mind fucking her either.”

Rage, pure and blinding, surged through Rourke with such force that he would have exploded out of the chair if he hadn't been tied down. Every sinew and muscle in his body surged upward with that fury…and he felt a give in the flesh of his wrist as it pulled against the nail.

He sagged back against the chair, his heart tripping over every other beat. He had a way out now, a way out…To get loose, he didn't have to pull the nail out of his wrist. He could pull his wrist off the nail.

Bloom was smiling as he leaned into him, his voice low and soft like a lover's, caught up in their pas de deux of pain and pride. “So do think about that, Detective. I could take them both, your Remy and your little girl. Anytime. Anywhere.”

He straightened and stepped back, and Rourke lifted his head. He forced his eyes to open wide against a wave of enveloping darkness and he saw a naked and bloodied girl rise up out of the dark with the wrench lifted high above her head by the arm that wasn't broken.

Bloom felt, or heard her, and he whirled just as the girl let fly with the wrench, and it struck him with a solid
thunk
on the side of his head. For a moment, Bloom seemed to be half suspended in the air, as if he were being held there by strings, and then he collapsed onto the floor.

She looked down at him a moment, then, moving like a wraith, her battered face strangely serene, she turned away and came to Rourke where he was tied to the chair. He wasn't sure she was even in this world anymore, but then she threw the wrench on the floor, knelt before the chair, and began to pick one-handed at the knots in the ropes.

Rourke didn't know that he was blacking in and out now, until he revived long enough to realize that the ropes were off him and she was staring down at his wrist nailed to the workbench, crying silent tears, and saying over and over. “How do I get it out? How do I get it out?”

Unconsciousness pulled at Rourke again, and his whole body felt drained of blood, but through the blackening edges of his vision, he could see Bloom stirring on the floor.

“Gilly…run,” he tried to shout, but it came out as a croaking whisper. “Run now.”

The girl jerked around to look at Bloom just as he reared up like some creature coming out of a grave. She tried to run, but he was on her. He tossed her to the floor and she landed in a heap, as if she were made of sticks and strings. He loomed over her and wrapped his hands around her throat.

Rourke gathered his feet beneath him, thrusting up off the chair, and his wrist came off the nail with a sucking, bloody pop.

Bloom lurched up off the girl and spun around, lashing out with his heavy brogan, catching Rourke in the belly and sending him crashing back into the workbench.

Bloom laughed and bent over, snatching up the chimney sweep's rope. He wrapped each end of it around his two hands and snapped it taut. “You and I, Detective,” he said, breathing heavily, “have some unfinished business.”

The pain in Rourke's wrist was like a white-hot flame in front of his eyes so that he could barely see. His legs slid out from underneath him and he slowly sagged to the floor, and the wrench was where he'd hoped it would be, where the girl had dropped it, and he wrapped the fingers of his good hand around the hard metal handle.

He heard Bloom's laughter and the snap of the rope. He saw the flare of the black duster as Bloom came at him.

Rourke surged to his feet and he smashed the wrench in Bloom's face, right between the eyes.

Rourke was waiting for Bloom's eyes to open.

He had wrapped the chimney sweep's rope around the man's neck and wedged the wrench in the loop like you would do to make a tourniquet, and now he was waiting for Bloom's eyes to open before he tightened it.

Rourke was lying on top of him, close as lovers. And when his eyelashes stirred and lifted, Rourke put his lips up to the man's ear. “You're gonna die, Bloom,” he said and he smiled.

Bloom flailed beneath him, but weakly. He was too far gone.

Gilly, who had been kneeling next to them, started to scramble away. Rourke was afraid she was going for help, so he grabbed her leg with his free hand and pain shot through him from the gaping, bleeding hole in his wrist.

“Not yet,” he said.

She could have broken away from him, but she didn't. Instead she came closer, so that she, too, could look into Bloom's eyes. “Is he dead?” she said.

“Getting there,” Rourke said, and he began to tighten the rope.

“Good.”

Chapter Thirty-one

R
ourke drifted out of a black swell to the feel of strong arms lifting him, and a voice rough and thick with feeling. “Aw, man, Day. What have you gone and done to yourself?”

Then a moment, an eternity later, he was in a white place, everything was white, even the air, and Paulie was there, making the sign of the cross on his forehead with holy oil.

I am dying,
he thought, and he laughed because it seemed too much that he would die now after just having lived through all of that.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in a bed in a hospital room and he knew he wasn't going to die after all.

Remy was sitting on the edge of the bed and she leaned over and laid her head on his chest. “You must never do that to me again, Day.”

“I won't,” he said. “I'll try not to.”

He must have fallen asleep for a while, because he heard Remy say, “Okay, honey, he's awake now.” And then his Katie was leaning over the bed and planting a big wet one on his cheek, and he laughed and said, “Hey, baby.”

She laughed back and kissed him again, and this time the front of her school uniform jumper crackled.

“What you got there?” he said. “A present for me?”

She pulled a piece of white construction paper out from beneath the flap in her jumper and gave it to him. “I drew you a picture of our cat,” she said.

“That's real pretty, honey. But since when do we have a cat?”

“He adopted us,” Remy said.

“And his name is Cinnamon, Daddy. 'Cause that's his color.”

Rourke held the picture up with his good hand, pretending to look at it so that they wouldn't see the tears in his eyes.

He wasn't supposed to have many visitors, but they kept coming.

Paulie first, his black cassock cinched tight around his waist as if he were fortifying himself with it. The color high in his round Irish face.

“I gave you the last rites,” he said.

“I know.”

“When I asked you if you were sorry for your sins, you laughed in my face.”

Rourke laughed now, too. “Hey, come on. I was out of my head.”

Paulie made a little
hunh
sound, but then he did his version of a smile, crinkling his eyes, twisting one corner of his mouth.

“I'm going to take your advice,” he said.

“Oh, God…”

“You said some things are worth the sacrifices you've got to make to have them. So I've decided to go on a spiritual retreat, to see if I can find my way back to being a priest.”

As Rourke listened while Paulie told him about the retreat, he watched his brother's face, and although he wasn't sure why it would be so, there was something in Paulie that reminded him of Mercedes Bloom.

It's in the eyes, he thought. The marble eyes.

Sean Daly came by and told him about Gilly.

“She was in really bad shape when they brought her in, but she's gonna make it. What that son of a bitch did to her…”

“You were right about her,” Rourke said. “About her being a tough little fighter.”

“Yeah.”

Daly's face got hard-looking, but Rourke knew he was only stiffening up against the intensity of what he was feeling. “There aren't any words,” he said. “Hell, there aren't any deeds that would repay you for what you did. You saved my Gilly, my baby…”

Rourke felt his face stiffen up against this own feelings. “She saved me. She could have crawled out of that place while Bloom was…occupied with me. Instead she took him on. She did you proud, Mr. Daly.”

“Sean. Call me Sean.” He swallowed, and his face was like a rock. “I just want you to know…You ever have it in mind that you want to be chief someday, just say the word and I'll use up every bit of juice I got to make it happen.”

Fio sneaked in some booze and they drank it while they rehashed what had happened, laughing as Rourke told him about how Bloom just wouldn't shut up.

“He was one crazy fucker, I'm telling you,” Fio said.

Fio, it turned out, had been cruising the streets, looking for Bloom's cab when he had remembered about the hot car farm and had gotten the same hunch that Rourke had had. He'd come shrieking up to the place in a squad car, siren blaring, just as a naked Gilly had run out into Chartres Street, screaming that a man was inside the garage bleeding to death.

Fio didn't mention anything, though, about how he had found Bloom's corpse with the makeshift garrote around his neck, and Rourke didn't mention that he'd come to for a moment when Fio had been carrying him out of the garage.