Bless the Child (21 page)

The curator’s mouth was still full of unasked questions, as Hazred abruptly left the office. If Abdul Hazred’s credential as an Egyptologist were not so impeccable, the curator would have rebuked him for his rudeness. As it was, he felt relieved to know the government was not leaving the matter in the hands of some Secret Service cretin, but had chosen a scholar of Hazred’s dimension to handle so delicate a matter.

G
ino Garibaldi stuck his head into Devlin’s office at 11:00 A.M. “Guess where your anonymous call came from, Lieutenant,” he asked with a grin.

“Cheri Adam’s place,” Devlin replied. The telephoned warning to Maggie had come too soon on the heels of her call to Cheri to be coincidence.” Maybe we should see what she has to tell us about how that happened.”

The two men put their notebooks in their pockets and headed for the West Ninth Street address.

After forty minutes of alternate verbal bludgeoning and cajoling, Cheri, reluctantly, gave them a name.

“Allie Roberts,” she said, wanting to unburden herself, but afraid. “She was my best friend since we were kids. I told her about Mrs. O’Connor and she called her from here.”

“Why did you want Allie to call Mrs. O’Connor, Cheri?” Devlin asked, determined to keep the girl talking. “What made you think she and Jenna were into the same thing?”

“That day in Greenwich,” she answered nervously. “Jenna was showing off all the great stuff she had. You know, money, clothes, jewelry. She took me to her bedroom to see her closet, like, it was bigger than this whole apartment. And, she started trying things on for me. That’s when I saw that weird tattoo on her shoulder—and it was exactly the same one Allie had on her back, from Maa Kheru. So, I thought, shit, maybe all Jenna’s money was coming from the same place Allie’s had. I mean, according to Allie, the Maa Kheru guys are all loaded. Rolls-Royces, mansions, the works.

“Then when Mrs. O’Connor called me, and she was so desperate and all—I thought, maybe I could save Jenna’s kid from those creeps, if I got Allie to talk with her. I didn’t think you could trace a call like you did,” she said disgustedly.

“Where’s your friend now, Cheri?” Garibaldi interjected.

“I can’t tell you that. I promised. She says they’re gonna kill her.”

“Look, Cher,” Devlin said gently, “if Allie’s in as much trouble as you say, she needs us to find her—and fast. She has a better chance of staying alive with us protecting her, than if she’s out there on her own.”

Cheri considered the wisdom of that thought, then said hesitantly, “She’s in this artist’s space on Great Jones Street. One of those old loft buildings they cut up into a thousand cheap studios. Oh God! I hope I’m doing the right thing telling you this.”

Devlin
and Garibaldi entered the filthy hallway together. It seemed deserted. The stairwell smelled like 1906 was the last time it had been washed; the once white marble steps were a dismal gray, worn hollow by the shuffling feet of decades.

They knocked at the door number Cheri had provided, but there was no response.

“Cover me,” Devlin murmured, Glock in one hand, the other on the knob. The ancient door pushed open creakily—he kicked it, wide, then whipped the gun around the corner of the door jamb, in a military-crouch position. Both men’s eyes swept the interior with practiced caution. A filthy mattress in one corner, a cockroach swarm in a pizza box, a Woolworth’s cardboard chest, with the drawers pulled out an rummaged. Clean, rag-like clothing spilling from the drawers.

Garibaldi moved to the right, Devlin to the left into the space. The only appendage to the large open area was a minute water closet, on Devlin’s side.

“Over here, Lieutenant,” Gino called from beside the bed. It was soaked in blood.

“Cheri said she knew they’d find her,” Devlin murmured, surveying the wreckage.

“This doesn’t say a lot for Cheri’s prospects of a long life, either.”

Devlin nodded. “Call forensics, Gino,” he said, “not that it’ll do us a helluva lot of good without a body.”

Garibaldi shook his head knowingly. “Yeah, but maybe this’ll move Cheri into remembering a few more salient facts for us.”

“Maybe. And there’s still the tattoo to follow up on. Get her to draw us a picture of it, and maybe you can find us the artist.”

“You think maybe it’s time to make this a little more official, Lieutenant?”

Devlin frowned. “Let’s see what we can shake loose from Cheri first. It wouldn’t hurt to know what we’re really dealing with here, before we spread the word. She may just have reneged on a dealer, or gotten wasted by her pimp. We don’t even know if the blood is hers.”

Back
at Cheri’s apartment Devlin and Garibaldi waited patiently for the girl to reemerge from the bathroom; the sounds of vomiting had been unmistakable. She was not only sickened by Allie’s disappearance, but also scared to death for herself, after hearing about the bloodstains on the bed.

“Look, Cheri,” Devlin said, when she reentered the room, eyes and nose shiny red from crying. “If Allie trusted you with the story she told Mrs. O’Connor on the phone, I’m pretty sure she told you a lot more than that.”

Cheri shook her head negatively. “What Allie knew probably got her killed,” she said adamantly. “I don’t want to be the next on their list.”

“We can keep you alive, Cheri,” Devlin said intensely, “but only if you level with us. Look, kid, if you keep all you know to yourself, it’ll take us just that much longer to nail the bastards who got your friend. I don’t want to scare you, but you could get to be a big red stain on a bed, too—and I’d rather that didn’t happen.”

He let the gruesome thought settle in; they could almost hear the frightened calculation being rung up in the girl’s head. “What do you want to know?” she asked finally, in a desolate whisper.

Devlin and Garibaldi exchanged glances. “Everything she ever told you about Maa Kheru,” Garibaldi answered. “How did she get involved with these Maa Kheru guys in the first place?”

Cheri took a deep breath. “Allie was an addict, like me . . . you know how it is when you get high, things happen. She was working in this club on Christopher, the Loopy Jupiter. Allie was a real good dancer, and it didn’t matter much whether she was topless or bottomless, she just loved to dance, and she had this to-die-for body . . . she used to mix up some special kind of shit, so she could dance all night.”

“Cocaine and heroin?” Garibaldi prompted.

“And something else. I don’t know what, exactly. Anyway, one night, some guy came in who didn’t look like a bum—you know, suit, tie, the works. Well, he took her aside, and said he was a talent scout for a special group of people who really appreciated her dancing. He told her if she was interested, there’d be plenty of dope, plenty of food, clothes, you name it—and all she had to do was party with his friends, and play along with whatever went down. So she went with him, after she got off work.

“He took her to some uptown apartment, very ritzy and expensive—and it was full of a lot of men and women who looked rich. Allie said was a pretty weird scene—like an audition, or something. They let her get high on some real good stuff, and they told her to dance. She said the music was great, and she just danced herself silly. And, then they gave her some more coke, and told her to take off her clothes, and they all gathered around to watch her. She said they all seemed interested in her body, kind of like doctors or something, and they made all kinds of comments about how great it was, how terrific her tits were, and stuff. So I guess she was feeling kind of important.

“Anyway, she hooked up with them, for a while—dancing for parties, sleeping with whoever they said. She was living pretty high on the hog, with designer clothes and a lot of bread. She thought she was on top of the world—she used to talk about the famous men she was sleeping with—really big names from TV and politics . . .

“Did you believe her?” Devlin asked.

“Yeah, I believed her. Look, Lieutenant, you only have to watch the news on TV to know how much all those big shots are fucking around. And they’re not doing it with brain surgeons.”

Devlin and Garibaldi suppressed smiles.

“But it was a real weird scene, and some of it made her nervous. Like they made her get this Egyptian tattoo—”

“Could you draw it?” Garibaldi cut in.

“I guess. It had one of those funny Egyptian crosses with the loop on top . . .”

“An Ankh?”

“Yeah, that’s it! And it had some ancient writing—you know—hieroglyphics, like on pyramids—she said they were.

“Anyway, Allie lived with these guys for over a year. Then she found out she was pregnant, so she figured she’d blown the whole gig. But a funny thing happened. When she asked the guy who ran the show for money for an abortion, he said he didn’t want her to have one. He said the people in his club, liked babies, and if she wanted to, she could have the kid, and they’d take care of her while she was pregnant. Allie called me and said, ‘Holy shit! Cheri, it’s like some kind of welfare program they run for employees who are pregnant. They even have a house where they let you stay. Someplace upstate, near Bear Mountain.’”

Devlin and Garibaldi exchanged glances.

“So she kept on working until she showed, and even after that he didn’t want her to stop, he just provided johns who got off on sex with pregnant women.”

“Jeez,” Garibaldi said, “what a prince.”

Devlin motioned her to continue. “Finally, when it was almost time for the baby to get born, they sent her to this place. She didn’t say exactly where, just that it was near Bear Mountain.

“Now, here’s where the whole scene gets even weirder,” Cheri said, lost now in her story; happy to unburden herself of the details. “In this kind of boarding-house place, she was given some kind of disgusting drink every day, which she didn’t want to take. They told her to drink it for the baby, because it had brewer’s yeast and vitamins in it, but Cheri said it tasted metallic, sort of like blood, and it smelled like shit. So she refused to drink it, but they went nuts over the whole issue, and finally two guys forced her to drink it. They said if she gave them any more flak, she’d have to leave. That’s when she started to get weirded out, I think . . . you know, suspicious enough to nose around because it didn’t feel right. Anyway, there were other girls in the house, and some of them knew bits and pieces of the big picture . . . that’s when she first heard the club was called Maa Kheru.

“Then about two nights before her baby was born, another of the girls went into labor, and Cheri heard all this screaming going on. It scared the shit out of her. At first she thought it was just labor pains and all, but then she heard them saying they were taking the baby away somewhere, and she heard the mother begging them not to. Then somebody called them all Breeders. He said, ‘You stupid cunt, don’t tell me you didn’t know the babies here are bred for Satan’s table.’”

Devlin’s jaw was set in stone; Garibaldi had seen the look often enough to know he was thinking of Maggie’s grandchild. “Had she heard anything about Satanism before this, Cheri?” he asked, a sharp edge to his voice. It was obvious Cheri didn’t want to answer, she averted her eyes.