Cicero's Dead (20 page)

“Glad to see him do something in color,” said
Bobby.

Twenty feet in front of us, twin inlaid wooden
doors topped by a stained glass archway suggested a church or sanctuary. Low
curved steps in natural granite led up to the doors. Guns drawn, we moved
forward. I turned the knob, pulled the door open and we crossed the threshold.
The air was thick and a putrid stench, one we both instantly recognized,
wrapped itself around us. I had the odd thought that somebody should open a
window. I played my flashlight across the ceiling and walls of a huge
rectangular space with a beamed cathedral ceiling. Rows of wooden pews faced
forward, above which chandeliers hung at intervals, but offered no light. At
the front, a thick burgundy velvet stage curtain hanging ceiling to floor
extended from one wall to the other. Nativity scenes that might normally have
been inspiring made me shudder. Men and young boys in naked undress mingled
with goats, sheep and donkeys.

“I can’t take much more of this shit,” growled
Bobby.

We climbed the five small steps up to the stage,
pulled aside the velvet curtain and stood as still as the body that was
strapped across a rough, plank table. The victim had apparently starved to
death. The emaciation was absolute and the remains, what were left of them,
looked like something out of a horror movie. The flesh, blackening and putrefied,
was covered with maggots and nocturnal beetles. The clothes had been removed
and stacked on an altar next to piles of mold-covered cakes, cheese, bread,
rotten milk, bottled water and wrinkled fruit. Above that hung a plain wooden
cross. It was undoubtedly Cicero and he was very dead. A single,
straight-backed chair sat near the body, with a red oak pulpit completing the
arrangement.

Bobby, his eyes glazed, said, “Is that him,
Cicero?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

BANG! The slug seared the air right in between us,
slamming into Cicero’s skull, spraying congealed blood, brain matter and
maggots through the air. The room erupted with light from the overhead inset
fixtures. Reggie Mount, his green eyes ablaze with fury, aimed his .38 at us.

“How dare you enter this church and invade the
sanctity of this man’s death?” His voice, shrill with excitement, laced with
insanity. I took a step away from Bobby in the hopes of distracting Mount, so
that Bobby could get the drop on him. But Reggie Mount was cunning, and not to
be so easily outsmarted. He grinned and jacked back the hammer on his gun.
“You’re gonna have to do better than that.”

I nodded and smiled. “No harm in trying.”

“Your weapons? Put ‘em on the altar.”

We complied, carefully placing them as far away from
things that crawled as possible.

He flicked his gun at me. “Grab the rope and tie
up Hulk Hogan.”

“Where’s Clipper?”

“Don’t be in such a rush to meet the devil,” he
grinned.

“And what’s he to you, Reggie?”

“My nephew.” A shiver raced down my spine. He must
have sensed it and smiled, but it was completely without warmth. “Amusing that
you didn’t make the connection.”

“I’ll get over it.”

“You know this guy?” Bobby was astonished.

“Met him last Thursday when I came looking for
Clipper.”

Agitated, Reggie gritted his teeth. “I said tie
him up.”

“Did he bring Richie here, to watch his dad die?”

“He most certainly did not.”

“But wouldn’t that have been the ultimate way to
demonstrate his power over him, to get him to do exactly what he wants?”

“He already has total control over Richard.”

“Then what does he want with Jade?”

“He’ll be here soon. You can ask him yourself.”

Bobby, the muscles in his body rippling as he
prepared for combat, announced as if to an unseen moderator, “I can’t wait to
meet him.”

Reggie was growing more arrogant by the second,
Bobby more dangerous. Explosion time. I started laughing. Bobby remained
coiled, ready to leap at the precise right millisecond.

Reggie, perplexed, stared at me. “What the hell’s
so damn funny?”

“Why’d you murder him?”

“Because he had it coming.”

“You’ll have to expound on that.”

Reggie sighed and looked at me like I was a moron.
“Mr. Lamont was no babe in the woods. During the course of our long vigil, he
revealed that he was responsible for multiple homicides. Admittedly they were
drug dealers and other types of criminals, but still, you get the point.”

“But that doesn’t give you the right to murder
him.”

“The right? The world doesn’t run on who has the
right. It runs on who has the power.”

“So then what’s the difference between you and
him?”

“What about the hundreds, perhaps thousands, who
overdosed on his product?”

“That’s not for you to judge. And certainly not
for you to--”

“--Hold on, Nick,” said Bobby. “Maybe he’s got a
point.”

“What?” The shock coursed through me.

“I fucking hate drug dealers. You know that.”

“So what? You’re not buying his bullshit, are
you?”

Reggie was bemused by this sudden turn in events.
His eyes darted from Bobby to me.

“A lotta Vietnamese and GIs died ‘cause’a drugs.”

I nodded, fully aware of why Bobby hated drugs so
much.

Reggie’s eyes narrowed. “You were In Country?”

“What?” said Bobby, pissed.

“Nam. You were in Nam?”

“Yeah. Tunnel rat.”

Reggie Mount lowered his gun. “Jesus. You guys
were crazy.”

“1st Recon. 9th Cavalry,” he smiled. “All in a
day’s work.”

“I was a door gunner on a rescue chopper. Three
tours. Almost 500 missions.”

Bobby grinned. “And you call me crazy?”

They looked at each other, a mutual admiration
society. I felt like I was watching a Monty Python sketch, but I let it play
out.

“One of your guys saved my life,” offered Reggie.

“Is that right?”

He nodded. “We’d just taken off from a hot zone,
north of Saigon and the NVA opened up with a 50 cal. Blew me right out of the
Huey. I dropped like a stone into a paddy field. Next thing I know, I’m being
dragged into a tunnel.”

Bobby’s mouth fell open. “Where, where did it
happen?”

“Why?” glared Reggie, suspiciously.

“Duc Ho, Quang Nai Province?”

“So what if it was?”

“You were cut up pretty bad.”

“Uh-uh. I’m not falling for that.”

“The Huey went down. No one but you survived.”

A curious mixture of shock and disbelief spread
across Reggie’s face. “I don’t know you. I’d remember.”

“In the tunnel, there was a firefight. You got
shot. Left forearm if my memory serves me well.”

He stared blankly. “How could you know that?”

“Simple. I dragged you into the tunnel. Your arm,
can I see it?”

Reggie’s hard green eyes turned soft. Trembling,
he began rolling up his sleeve. “Are you…I mean, it’s not possible.”

Bobby, 225 pounds of pure fighting mad,
adrenaline-coiled muscle, nodded almost imperceptibly.

There it was, an old bullet wound, thick with
white scar tissue, staring up at Reggie. “Shit.” His tone was half-incredulous,
half fait accompli.

Bobby smiled. “Long time no see, bro.”

Looking down at his arm, Reggie licked his
suddenly dry lips. “I dunno, I dunno what to say.”

“Small world.”

“Yeah.” He looked sad, embarrassed and sighed,
“SNAFU.”

“Copy that.”

They stared at each other in the charged silence.

Reggie looked down at his gun, then at me, then at
Bobby. “I wish we’d met under different circumstances.”

“Me too.”

“I’d be KIA if it wasn’t for you.”

“Don’t suppose you can let us sky out?”

Reggie’s face creased with what might’ve passed
for real emotion. “No. Sorry, I really am.”

Bobby nodded. “A handshake then, after all these
years.”

“I can do better. You wanna go first? Your
choice.”

Bobby nodded and Reggie slipped the .38 into his
left hand. He held out his right and took two steps forward, jacking back the
hammer. Bobby stiffened and saluted. They were like marionettes on some
infernal stage. Reggie came to attention and returned the salute. Bobby sprang,
turning sideways, grabbing the .38 with his right, chopping him across the
throat with his left. Sinking to his knees, Reggie’s hands flew up to try and
massage air back into his crushed larynx. Faster than I thought possible, Bobby
wrapped his paws around his head, slamming him down on to the concrete floor.
Now in full kill mode, enraged, he smashed his head so hard it made a hollow,
cracking sound, like a coconut being broken open. Blood and pink brain matter
oozed out of his skull. Reggie Mount twitched several times, his eyes glazed
over and he died. Bobby stood up, breathing hard, eyes wild with blood lust.

The adrenaline was like a hurricane. “Let’s get
the fuck outta here.”

He didn’t move.

“Bobby!”

He looked at me and slowly, deliberately, pulled
out the C4. “It’s time.”

“No. We can’t go blowing up the Hollywood Hills.”

“Cicero’s dead and Jade doesn’t need to see or
know how much he suffered.”

“Yeah, I get that but still.”

“Plus our prints are all over the place.”

“It doesn’t matter. As much as I’d like to blow
these bastards to hell, we can’t.”

Bobby nodded and sighed. “What about me?”

“What about you?”

“I just killed him.”

“It was self-defense.” Bobby looked skeptical.
“Besides, they’ll spend years analyzing Clipper’s paintings, and who knows how
many others he and his crew have murdered. There’s probably DNA all over this
place.”

“I don’t like it, but you’re the boss.”

I inwardly sighed with relief. “Ironic, huh, that
you saved his life? I mean, what’re the chances, right?”

“I didn’t.” He shrugged.

“What? But I thought--”

“--I’d heard about it from one of the grunts in my
unit, who knew the guy that actually did save him.” I didn’t know what to say.
I looked at him in amazement. “I figured we were screwed anyway, so there was
nothing to lose.”

The blood from Reggie Mount’s head was oozing out
and spreading across the concrete floor. I took a step to one side and grabbed
my guns off the altar. “Get your guns and let’s go.”

Bobby picked his up, deliberately blowing off a
maggot. “Bye, asshole.” Then he turned to me, “You gonna call this in?”

“At some point.”

He looked around. “This place is huge and I’ll bet
that we haven’t explored half of it.”

“I don’t care. There’s too much evil here.”

“Heard that.”

“Let it stay here.”

He nodded and we got out like the house was on
fire. Ten minutes later we passed through the stainless steel door and stepped
out onto the windswept hillside.

“You see the bag?” I asked and played my
flashlight over the brush.

“There.”

I retrieved it and that’s when it hit me. “Shit.”

“What?”

“The surveillance tapes have to be in the main
house somewhere.”

I could barely keep up with Bobby, as he hammered
up the access road to the back door. He reached for the handle and froze.
“Wait. What if it’s wired?”

“I dunno. I’m guessing there’s a way into the
labyrinth from the house. If I’m right, then it figures that the system’s on.”

“We need to get those tapes.”

“The only way to not trip the alarm is to go back,
through there.” I pointed at the steel door.

“SNAFU,” he said.

“Yep.”

We headed back down the hill, pulled open the door
and retraced our steps. We didn’t speak. It was nasty. Sweat drenched us as the
unknown chilled our bones. We’ve both seen our fair share of dead people, in my
case mostly lying on cold mortuary slabs, but the vibe in there was as
foreboding as anything I’ve ever experienced. Eventually, we reentered the
perversity of Clipper’s church. I almost expected Reggie to greet us, looking
like Nosferatu, but he was as dead as the cold concrete he lay on. We
sidestepped the spreading red ooze of his death, traversed the stage, past the
crawling scavengers feasting on Cicero’s stinking corpse, and found the passageway
leading up to the main house.

The door into Reggie’s living room was open. We
cautiously entered and, using our flashlights, searched for the computer that
the security cams would be wired into. I found it in a small, back office. The
screen was on, showing the underground church in all its HD vulgarity.

Bobby said, “I wonder if there’s a recording of
Cicero’s torture.”

I clicked onto a folder entitled, Retribution. It
contained about 20 clips. I clicked on one and it opened, showing Cicero, still
very much alive, begging and screaming. It was hard to watch. In the
background, I could just make out Reggie and behind him, in shadow, I knew it
had to be Clipper. I felt sick, disgusted and wanted nothing more than to rain
justice down on that sick son-of-a-bitch.

“We’ll take the mainframe.”

He looked around and found the alarm system
control panel by the back door. “It’s on, but if we’re quick, we can make it to
the van before the rent-a-cops get here.”

I unplugged the computer, leaving the monitor on
the desk. “Ready.”

“I’ll bolt and get the van. Hustle down as fast as
you can. Just be careful and don’t trip.”

I nodded and Bobby reached for the handle. That’s
when the headlights blasted across the front door, as a car pulled up in front
of the house.

“Shit.” I hustled back into the office, replacing
the computer on the desk.

Bobby, standing behind me, pulled out his gun.
“Kill ‘em?”

“Not unless we have to. Hide.”

Before he could respond, the front door opened and
the lights flipped on. Arnold Clipper, in all his malevolent glory, accompanied
by two guys wearing Los Muertos
patches,
ambled in. They hadn’t seen us, so I motioned Bobby to melt back into the
shadows, which he did. I did the same and tried as best I could to slow my
breathing.