City of the Snakes (17 page)

“Of course not. Is he dead?”

“No,” she sighs, “but he’s not far off. I thought you might like to be with him at the end. You don’t have to come, but—”

“I’ll be there,” I interrupt softly. “He’s at home?”

“Yes. He made us promise we wouldn’t move him to a hospital. He wanted to die in his own bed.”

“I’m on my way.”

Switching off the TVs, I eject the discs and hide them behind the loose panels at the back of my wardrobe—not a great hiding place, but they should be safe from amateur burglars—then slap on my Al Jeery face paint and wig, remove the green contacts, take off the severed, varnished finger hanging from my neck, and hurry downstairs with my bike.

The house is crowded with Fabio’s friends and relatives, all come to cheer the old pimp off, as he would have wished. Beer and whisky flow like water. Spirits are already high. Pulsing music blares from Fabio’s CD player—he developed a taste for R & B late in life—and the space closest to the speakers is full of younger mourners, bopping their heads. The older members occupy rooms nearer the back, where they complain to each other about the noise.

Flo and Drake are playing host, along with a handful of others who helped look after Fabio in his twilight years. They pass around food, clear away empties, keep the peace between the young and old, and guard the entrance to Fabio’s bedroom, making sure he isn’t overcrowded.

“Can I sit with him awhile?” I ask Flo during a quiet moment.

“Sure,” she smiles wearily. “We’re giving everyone a few minutes with him, to say goodbye and wish him well, but you can stay as long as you want. You’re one of his favorites.”

“It’s good to have friends in high places,” I grin, then head through. I find him unconscious, as he’s been for most of the last twenty-four hours. Zeba—one of Fabio’s ladies—tells me they don’t expect him to open his eyes again.

“We asked if he wanted us to call you over, the last few times he was awake,” Zeba says softly, wiping sweat from his forehead. “He said not to bother. Said you knew each other too long for sentimental shit like that. Said there wasn’t nothing you could say now that you hadn’t said before.”

“Cantankerous to the end,” I snort, laying the back of my hand on his cheeks, one after the other, feeling the coldness of death in them. “Any idea how long he has left?”

“A few hours. His body’s all busted. I reckon he’s only hanging on for one last blast of music. Soon as them youngsters stop playing the songs, he’ll up and quit.”

“Maybe we should let them play on indefinitely,” I suggest.

“Nah,” she smiles. “He’s done here. Let the old tomcat go. It’d be cruel to keep him hanging on. He’s got better places to be.”

I sit with Fabio until the end, while others file in and out, shepherded by the eagle-eyed Zeba. Sometimes I hold his hands, sometimes I wipe his brow, but mostly I sit back and watch people make their farewells. I don’t
say anything. He was right—there’s nothing new either of us could say. Fabio’s my oldest friend, there for me even before Bill Casey, the only one I never alienated since becoming Paucar Wami. I worried sometimes that the
villacs
might use him to hurt me, but thankfully they let him be.

Another old friend, Ali, enters and we exchange a few hushed words. He runs a bagel shop beneath the apartment where I used to live. I still drop in occasionally, in Al Jeery guise, though it’s been a few months.

“How are you, my friend?” Ali asks.

“Good. And you?”

“I cannot complain.”

“I didn’t know you knew Fabio.”

“I don’t,” he says. “I just saw the crowd and joined the party.” He laughs, then smiles sheepishly when Zeba glares at him. “Fabio was a good customer of mine. And I of his. We exchanged… services.”

“You swapped bagels for ladies?” I smirk.

“Yes,” he blushes. “I always believed I was getting the better of the bargain, but Fabio said many men had finer women to offer than he, but nobody in this city could slap together as delicious a bagel as me.”

“He had a point.”

“I will miss him.”

“Me too.”

“And the women.”

I choke on a laugh. “I think you’ll find a few of those elsewhere.”

“Yes,” Ali sighs. “But it will not be the same. I will always think of Fabio when I am enjoying the embrace of a fine woman.” He giggles impishly and winks at me. “Well, maybe not
always…”

Finally, Fabio passes. There’s no climactic finale or dramatic last gasp. His breathing has been getting softer, to the point where his chest no longer seems to rise or fall. Flo replaced Zeba an hour ago and has been checking his pulse every five minutes, holding a mirror over his lips and nose. This time she shakes her head, tears forming. “He’s gone,” she says flatly.

And that’s the end of that.

I want to slip off home but Flo asks me to stay. It would be impolite to say no, so I remain as she and Zeba see to his body, stripping and washing him
one last time, before dressing him in his best clothes—Fabio always placed great importance on appearance. A mortician will fix him up tomorrow, but the ladies are determined to keep him in good shape in the meantime. We should be able to get him cremated soon, maybe at the weekend or early next week. There’s a long waiting list at the crematorium, but one of Fabio’s many grandsons is on the staff.

I leave the women to their ministrations—rather, they shoo me out of the room—and mingle uneasily with the other guests. I know most of them (as Paucar Wami it’s my business to know people), but very few know me. They’re aware that I’m a close friend of Fabio’s, and a few of the older guests recognize me from when I was a kid, but nobody knows who I am at night.

After half an hour of strained small talk, one of Fabio’s great-grandsons takes me aside. Fabio never married, but he sired many bastards, who in turn bred like rabbits. I don’t know how many grandchildren and great-grandchildren he had—I don’t think the old buzzard knew himself—but it’s in excess of a hundred.

I know Kurt Jones, aka Bones Jones, the one who sidetracks me. A small fish in one of the smaller gangs. Fabio liked him. Most of the pimp’s descendants had gone legit. That pleased him, but left him with little in common with them. Bones was one of the few he could click with.

“How you doing, Bones?”

“Not bad, man. Business is good. Could be better, but hey! You ain’t in the market for digital cameras, are you? I got a load going dirt cheap.”

“I can maybe take one if the price is right.”

“Nah, man, I’m into bulk trading.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s OK.” He glances around, drags me away from the others and lowers his voice. “I don’t know why he told me to tell you this, but I was shooting the shit with the F last week, and there was this one thing he said I had to take it to you. I came over your place Monday but you was out and I been busy since.”

“What’s it regarding?”

Bones’s voice drops even further. “Ever hear of a dude called Paucar Wami?”

I stiffen. “What about him?”

“Shit I heard. Rumors. You probably don’t know this, but someone’s been offing people close to Ford Tasso and Eugene Davern.”

“So?”

“Word is Paucar Wami’s taking them down.”

“You think Wami’s killing Tasso and Davern’s confidants?”

“Not me, man,
I
don’t think shit. It’s what I heard. I told the F—he always liked hearing about Wami—and he said I had to tell you.”

“Thanks, Bones. I owe you.”

It’s not unusual for me to be blamed for killings I have nothing to do with, and normally I allow such rumors to circulate unchecked (good for business), but this is a complication I can do without. When Tasso gets word of it, he’ll want to know if it’s true. I’m sure I can convince him of my innocence, but once seeds of doubt have been sown, relationships are never quite the same. I’ll have to move to quell the rumors, and fast.

I make my apologies to Flo, tell her to call me if she needs help with the funeral arrangements, then slip away from the party—which is hitting full swing—and return home. I shed my wig and face paint, become Paucar Wami, and take to the streets to sort this shit out.

It’s worse than I thought. The rumors have been spreading for a couple of weeks. I’d have gotten wind of them sooner if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my investigations. According to the gossipmongers I’m not only responsible for wiping out some of Tasso’s and Davern’s key men, but I’ve been putting together a gang of my own, backed by a mystery benefactor, with the intention of turning the Troops and Kluxers against each other, letting them slug it out, then moving in to finish them off and seize control.

It only takes a few hours to track the stories back to some of their sources, and I spend the predawn hours Saturday grilling several people who’ve been busy feeding the rumor mill. They confess freely, with only a minimum of prompting (being jolted awake in the middle of the night by a legendary killer tends to loosen the stiffest of tongues). They were bribed to spread the lies, but they don’t know who paid them or why. They received orders and payment in plain envelopes. I check the notes, all of which run much the same way. “This is the news. Let it be heard. More
money to follow.” Underneath, the rumors—Paucar Wami has been killing Ford Tasso’s and Eugene Davern’s men… he’s formed a gang of his own… he kidnapped The Cardinal… et cetera.

I’m baffled to begin with—I don’t know what anyone stands to gain by this—but then a glimmer of an idea strikes me. By framing me for his disappearance, maybe Raimi’s kidnappers hope to turn Ford Tasso against me. If that’s the case, it raises a conundrum. I’ve been working on the assumption that the
villacs
took Raimi, to tempt me back into their warped games. But if they did, they’d surely want to keep me active. They’d hardly instigate rumors that might lead to Tasso’s terminating my contract.

Is somebody else involved? Was Raimi kidnapped by a third party? Maybe the priests are looking for Raimi too, got me involved because they thought I might be able to help find him, and the real kidnappers are now trying to undermine me.

It’s almost 08:00 when I go to bed, brooding about the rumors, the
villacs
and possible others. After ten or fifteen minutes I fall into a troubled sleep…

… Which I snap out of abruptly at 09:16 when my front door’s kicked in and three men with guns burst into my apartment.

I’m rolling out of bed in an instant, snatching my .45 from beneath the pillow where I always keep it, taking a bead on the men, who’ve fanned out. My finger tightens and I prepare to blow away the man on my right. But they aren’t firing. They have the drop on me but they’re holding off. And they look terrified.

As I pause, bewildered, a fourth man enters. Clad in a white fur coat, the hem swirling around his ankles, he strolls past the three with guns. His blond hair and blue eyes belong on a model. He oozes self-confidence and wealth. He smiles at me as if we’re old friends, casts an eye around and sighs. “How you people live in such squalor is beyond me. Have niggers no sense of self-worth?”

I almost let him have a full clip in the stomach. But if I open fire on him, his men will retaliate. I wouldn’t survive the shoot-out.

The man in the fur coat pulls over a chair and sits. His manicured fingers pick at the folds of the coat as he grins. “Hyde Wornton,” he introduces himself. “I’d say I was pleased to meet you, but that’d be a lie. The
only niggers I like are those with a rope around their necks and nothing but air beneath their feet.”

Hyde Wornton. Eugene Davern’s lieutenant, one of the men I considered following in the hope of tracing Capac Raimi. This is bad. Wornton has a foul reputation. One of the more zealous Kluxers, he keeps the spirit of the Klan alive and well, even while Davern struggles to suppress it. A dangerous man at the best of times.

“What do you want?” I snarl.

“That’s ‘Sir’ or ‘Massah’ to you, nigger,” he says pleasantly.

“Call me that again and you die,” I tell him.

“I don’t think so,” he laughs. “You’re smarter than that. You won’t throw your life away just because someone calls you a nigger or a coon.”

“You’re a dead man,” I whisper. “Not today, but soon. That’s a promise.”

“Never met a darkie who could keep a promise,” he giggles, then gets serious. “You know who I work for. Eugene—Mr. Davern to you—requests the pleasure of your company. Pronto.”

“Eugene Davern can go fuck his whore of a mother,” I retort, enjoying the dark cloud that disturbs Wornton’s expression.

“Careful,” he hisses. “Make a crack like that again and I’m apt to start something ugly, regardless of the consequences.”

“Just tell me what you want and quit with the dramatics,” I drawl.

“Your ass in my car, now.”

“If I refuse?”

Wornton shrugs. “It’s obvious I don’t want to start a shooting match. If you don’t come, we walk. But it’s taken a lot of time and money to track you down, to link the feared Paucar Wami to the meek Al Jeery. Now that we have, you’re up shit creek. If you don’t jump when we say, we tell everyone what we know and that’s bye-bye alter ego, farewell hidey-hole. You’ll be exposed, with nowhere to run, and your enemies will descend on you like a swarm of locusts and free your clean white bones of their degenerate black skin.”