Brides Of The Impaler (25 page)

All he had to do was tease the pick along the top, then the bottom of the keyway while exerting the most minimal rightward pressure against the wrench, and—

click
.

—the cylinder turned.

Gemser opened the door to almost be shoved backward by the stench of urine, garbage, and something he couldn’t really have known was decomposing human flesh. The
scritching
sound stopped; then he swore he heard someone say, “It’s the guard.”

Gemser got past the gagging and commanded in a stout voice, “Who’s in there? I’m calling the cops. This is private property.”
Probably a bunch of bums living in there all
this time and no one knew
, he realized, sliding out his aluminum flashlight and stepping into the doorway.

A woman’s voice said the strangest word: “Salut…” And just as Gemser proceeded and before he could turn his flashlight on, many hands grabbed him and hauled him into the darkness. Then the door slammed shut.

“Nothin’ like good old
Bast
on to wear a lawyer out,” Jess commented as he parked the car, but Paul didn’t hear him; he was looking up at the house with a smile in his eye.
I’ve
only been away one night but I miss her so much it’s like a year
.

Jess had an idea by looking at his friend. “Come on, lover boy. Let’s go in. The weekend has officially begun. I need to eat, drink, and get laid.”

“I second that.” Paul snapped out of it. “Grab the last bag.”

The smell of all that gourmet Chinese food drove them nuts on the drive back. They carried three big carryout bags toward the front steps. Paul was about to go up when—

“Excuse me. Would one of you be Mr. Nasher?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Paul said. It was the doorman from the condo building next door. He looked kind of slinky and stooped over in the stock getup.

“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, sir, but the management of my building asked me to speak with you.”

Paul looked puzzled at the tall condo building, then back to the doorman. “Is there a problem?”

“Oh, just a tiny one. Some of our residents have complained about the noise that seems to be coming from your basement.”

“Noise?” Paul frowned. “We had a contractor in there, I
think, but just for an appraisal. I can’t imagine what
noise
you mean.”

“Perhaps it’s an exaggeration then, sir, but I was asked to mention it. You see, many of our residents are retired and getting on in years. They go to bed early. Quite a few on the first floor claim to hear noises like hammering in the wee hours—er, more of a
clinking
sound.”

“A clinking sound?”

“Yes, sir, over the past several nights, not to mention for an hour or so this afternoon. The sound was described by residents as something like hammers to chisels. I knocked on your front door earlier but there was no answer and, I’m very sorry to trouble you with this. But if you could look into it?”

“I, uh, I will,” Paul faltered.

“Good day to you, sir.”

The doorman returned to his post.

“Clinking sound? What the hell was that all about?” Jess asked, one arm wrapped around a carryout bag.

“I don’t know and I don’t care.” Paul mounted the steps. “All I want to do now is scarf down my char-grilled lemongrass pheasant satay and ball Cristina’s brains out…and not necessarily in that order.”

“You dog, you!”

Paul paused to grin at the door. “I’m telling you, man. Cristina’s never been so good. She makes me feel twenty again. All of a sudden she just so, so, so…”

“Horny as a mutt in heat?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of voracious but, yeah, that’ll do.”

“Come on.”

“We’re here!” Paul announced when he and Jess barged through the front door. They stalked to the kitchen to set the bags down.

“Damn, that smells good,” Jess remarked, putting his face to a bag. “Hey, where are the girls?”

“Here we are,” Britt said. They must’ve been in the bedroom. She and Cristina simultaneously embraced their men. “Oh, baby, I really missed you,” Paul said, breathing in the scent of Cristina’s hair.

She gave him a half-lewd kiss. “How was your trip?”

“A pain in the ass but now it’s over.”

“Amen to that,” Jess said, arm around Britt.

Cristina got four beers from the fridge. “Here’s the Chinese beer you wanted.”

“We’re ready,” Jess said.

Britt looked in the bags. “I hope you got the Hunan-style ostrich steak.”

“Two orders,” Paul said. “Plus pheasant satay, crab ran-goon made with Cousie crab, prawns in XO sauce, drunken chicken—oh—and sweetbreads with black mushroom.”

“What exactly are sweetbreads?” Cristina asked.

“I don’t know, lamb brains or something. Thymus glands.”

“I know what I
won’t
be eating…”

They all grabbed a beer, but Paul and Jess looked at each other as if by premonition. Something didn’t seem quite right.
The girls
, he thought. They both looked wearied in some way, their blouses smudged, their jeans dusty. It was as though they were trying to smile to cover up their fatigue.

“Everything all right?” Paul asked.

“Yeah, you girls look like you’ve been hanging Sheetrock,” Jess said, halfway done with his beer already.

Now it was Cristina and Britt who traded glances. But neither spoke.

“Come on. What’s up?” Paul prodded, and then the thought struck him. “You girls weren’t doing anything in the basement, were you?”

Britt’s eyes widened. “Why…do you ask?”

Paul was just shy of getting ticked. “The doorman at the place next to us said some of the old folks were complaining
about
noises
coming from the house.” He eyed Cristina in particular. “From the
basement
. But how could that be? The basement’s off-limits.”

“The funky mold,” Jess added.

“Well,” Cristina began but then faltered and looked to Britt.

“All right, we
were
in the basement,” Britt spoke up.

Paul’s anger flared. “Britt, you were
here
when the doctor said—”

“Forget about what the doctor said,” she came back. “He was wrong. The contractor told Cristina the mold was typical and harmless. It’s not important. And we were down there all day and we didn’t get sick, we didn’t hallucinate.”

“We found something down there, Paul,” Cristina said.

“Look, I’m totally confused now—” Paul shook his head, aggravated. “What are you talking about? You
found
something?”

“Let’s show them,” Britt said, and then she and Cristina headed for the basement steps.

“Women are
kooky
,” Jess said.

They followed them down.

Paul didn’t like it even before he hit the steps. “I don’t know about this,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” Jess added. “I think we should do what the doc said and stay out of here until it’s clean.”

Britt frowned over her shoulder. “Oh, Jess,
forget
about the fucking mold! You’ve got to see this.”

A lot of the boxes had now been stacked aside, widening the aisle. A few more yards down, Paul spied some shovels, a small sledgehammer and a chisel.

“I thought the freaky doorman was high,” Jess said. “Guess that explains the
clinking
sound.”

When Paul saw most of the cement patchwork broken up and piled to the side he almost had a fit. “Cristina! Why the
hell
would you do this?” There was also some dirt piled to the side. “You’ve been digging? For what?”

“I—I wasn’t sure,” Cristina said. “But the patch was already cracked.”

“
What?
”

“Paul, calm down,” Britt said. “Just…look.” And then she pointed down.

After they’d broken out the cement, they’d dug several feet down. “We couldn’t get it out,” Britt told them.

Cristina looked down, too. “It’s too heavy.”

“So we figured you two he-men could lift it out of there.”

In the hole sat a single barrel of some sort that seemed to be covered in rust.

“What is that? A metal drum?” Paul asked and got down on his knees.

Jess knelt as well. “Maybe it’s a keg of wine, like, three hundred years old or something.”

“Or maybe buried treasure,” Paul fantasized.

Britt tapped her foot impatiently. “We won’t know
what
it is unless you guys can get it out.”

The men hesitated. Then they shrugged and got to work.

“Lever it up,” Paul said, his feet in the hole and pulling the strange drum backward. Jess got the shovel’s edge beneath the cannister’s base. Paul then pulled it over on its side with a huff.

“Jesus, the damn thing’s heavier than a floor safe…”

Jess lifted up on the rim, then shot a frown at Britt. “We’re lawyers, not forklifts!”

“Quit whining,” Britt egged on, laughing. “Would you rather Cristina and I mess up our beautiful nails?”

Paul and Jess failed at the first two attempts to lift the small barrel, but on the third—

“Up, up!” Paul grunted.

“Fuckin’-
A!
”

“Be careful,” Cristina fretted.

They hoisted it out on its side, then after a few more grunts got it set upright.

“Now what?” Jess asked, sitting exhausted against some boxes. “I’ll bet that thing’s made of cast iron.”

“And look at the lid,” Paul observed. “It’s crimped under the lip.”

“Try this,” Cristina said, offering the hammer and chisel.

Paul got to work, gradually hammering, then bending the iron lip up around the rim. The noise was nerve-racking. “I think I’m getting it…” Eventually—

“Bingo,” Britt said.

When Paul pried the lid open, Jess lifted it away and—

clang!

—heaved it aside.

Britt dropped to her knees and shouldered between the two men, reaching in. The smell that eddied up was nothing unpleasant but surely a fetor that suggested antiquity: old metal, old wood, and the scent of fabric that should be rotting but for some reason wasn’t. Paul froze, and Cristina and Jess stared when Britt lifted some unknown object swathed in old, burlaplike cloth.

“Well, I can tell already it’s not jewels or gold coins,” she said, setting it on the floor. She began to carefully unwrap the cloth, then gagged.

Everyone else gagged as well.

“That’s just great!” Jess said, repelled.

Paul muttered, “You’ve
got
to be kidding me.”

Within the emaciated cloth lay a yellowed animal’s skull.

“It looks like a dog’s skull,” Cristina said, a hand to her stomach.

“What the
fuck
is a dog skull doing buried in our basement?” Paul remarked.

“But there’s something else.” And Britt was reaching in again, lifting out another object padded by the ancient, crumbling fabric. “It feels like some sort of a—”

What she held up was a crude bowl—about the size of a
cereal bowl—that seemed to be made of fired clay. A disturbed look touched her face even before she turned it around.

“What’s that there on the side?” Jess asked with some excitement.

“Maybe they
are
jewels,” Paul hoped.

Britt said nothing when she showed the feature to Cristina, who croaked, “Oh, my God,” and then fainted immediately.

Into the front of the bowl had been set three circular polished stones: one black, one green, and one red.

“
O quam magnificum, o domnul
…”

Father Rollin sat dejected in his heavily curtained study, nervously thumbing his pendant under which had been etched the same words he’d just muttered to himself. And then he looked at his ring, and saw the same words etched again. Paul Nasher and the other man had returned a while earlier, Rollin had seen through his window. With his binoculars, then, he watched the four of them mingle in the kitchen for a few moments; then they disappeared.

Where are they?
the priest wondered, his stomach strangely tight. They hadn’t gone upstairs because he’d kept the glasses trained regularly on the steps.

Why do I have this feeling they’re in the basement?

The light was draining out of late afternoon. Rollin couldn’t guess where his surveillance might be best posted tonight: here, or his room at the Ketchum. He dreaded returning to the hotel to night, for the bawdy convention was going strong.
Just don’t have it in me tonight
. But he couldn’t believe what he was doing next: leaving his church on the pretense of going for a walk.

A walk around the alley.

Those homeless girls kept weighing on his mind.
They’re
all prostitutes, or were in their better days
, he felt sure.
And
Canessa
herself was a prostitute
. Was he seeing too much into it?

He didn’t know. Sometimes he felt like he didn’t know anything.

How hackneyed
. He was whistling as he walked down Dessorio Avenue—Bach’s
Passacaglia
. of all things—to seem inconspicuous. An old man walking his dog nodded to him; then a woman in a business dress walked briskly by without even noticing.
I’m invisible to everyone but the old
, he joked, but liked the idea.
I wish I could BE invisible, so
I could walk right into the annex house and see what they’re
up to
.

Ludicrous.

The old Banana Republic stood dark, which was strange for he knew there were guards there round the clock. Just before he cut into the alley, a patter of footfalls startled him. Had he heard giggling, too? He jerked around and glared back down the street but there was nothing.

A dark alley is no place for a priest at sundown
, he caught himself worrying, yet he felt fairly sure that God would protect him from muggers.
Fairly
sure.
Do I even deserve his
protection?
Perhaps not. Now he felt inane. He turned left down the alley, pretending to meander, until he was directly behind his old annex house. One high sodium lamp provided the only useful illumination.
Don’t let your shadow
be seen
, he warned himself. Then he’d
really
have some explaining to do.
If they ARE in the basement, they might
see me
…

He hunkered down quickly and peered in the streetlevel windows.

Did he hear voices?
Just my imagination?
he wondered, but for a moment he thought he’d heard agitated conversation.
Then:
No
, he thought. The basement stood completely lightless, all that looked back at him were solid panes of black.

Rollin walked back toward the alley exit in long strides, and when he passed the Banana Republic he shivered for no apparent reason.

Back at the church, he found the door unlocked.
I
couldn’t possibly have
, he felt sure. Nevertheless, it was. “Absentmindedness is a symptom of men my age,” he muttered next. He’d done it before, and he always reasoned that there was little to steal in a barely used church. He pushed into the murky nave entrance and turned on a few dim lights, and then locked the doors.

I don’t know what I’m going to do now but of course…I
NEVER know what I’m going to do
.