Haggopian and Other Stories (68 page)

“You know what I mean,” she grinned. And she was at once serious again. “I’m looking for Antonio Minatelli.”

Why not?
Slater thought.
I’m looking for him; the police are looking for him; why shouldn’t she be?
“I’ve a feeling he won’t show.”

“You’re Old Bill!” she accused.

He shook his head. “No, just an interested party. What difference does it make?”

“What, him not showing or you being…whatever you are? Never mind. It makes no difference.”

“Good,” said Slater.

“Minatelli was top of my list, but…when one story dies on you, you look for another. I’ll rearrange my priorities, that’s all.”

Slater ordered more drinks. He’d had two beers, three brandies, nothing to eat. If he was going to carry on drinking he really ought to eat. “What are your priorities?” he inquired.

“The next in line after Minatelli just ran out on me,” she answered, ruefully. “The one with the beard and the mouth.”

“Kevin Blacker? If he’s not careful he’ll frighten himself to death! I believe he really does believe. The guy’s a nut. I mean, it’s one thing to ‘believe’ in Hilda Ogden, but Cthulhu’s something else.”

“Hlu-hlu,” she said, without smiling.

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“I’m Belinda Laine,” she introduced herself, glanced at her watch. “And I just went off-duty.”

It was 10:15. “Slater,” he answered. “Jim Slater, and I’m hungry.”

The bar was filling up; people jostled; Karl Ferd came twining through the crush. “The next on my list,” said Belinda Laine, as Ferd joined them. Ferd looked at Slater with eyes that said,
you don’t waste any time, do you?

Slater said: “Do you two know each other?”

“Er, no.” Ferd appeared a little shy. “I’m Karl Ferd.”

“I know,” she said. “You’re
Dugong
,
right? Britain’s answer to Bob Prout’s
Shoggoth Pit
?”

Ferd tried not to preen. “
Dugong
is OK,” he shrugged.

“You’re too modest, Karl,” she said. “But you’ve done some deep stuff lately: like the tongue-in-cheek issue where every article offered ‘proof’ that the whole Mythos thing is real. The only ‘name’ that was missing from your contents page was Kevin Blacker.”

Again Ferd’s shrug, and his sour grin. “That’s ’cos it was tongue-in-cheek!”

“But
very
well done,” she complimented him. “A lot of your readers—close to a thousand of them?—might get the idea that you believe in this stuff, too. I mean, you present some damning ‘evidence’.”

“I got some clever writers, that’s all.”

Her serious look slowly evaporated, and she smiled. Which was worth seeing. Slater had been thinking:
she knows her stuff. She’s talking to him on his own level. She’s researched this better than I have!
“I’m hungry,” he said again. “Do you want to eat, you two?”

“Not me,” Ferd answered. “I’m off home. I’ve a pal down at the Hall who has offered me a lift.”

“Before you go,” said Slater, “tell me: why did you go running after Blacker like that?”

“I wanted to check if he’d be around tomorrow to mess up the games,” Ferd answered at once. “He makes people uncomfortable.”

“And will he be around?” Belinda Laine was interested.

Ferd shook his head. “No. He says he’s delivered his warning and now it’s up to us. He’s on his way back home to Oxford.”

She seemed disappointed. “But you’ll be here, right?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Maybe we’ll get a few minutes to talk in private.”

Down, boy!
Slater thought, seeing Ferd’s eager expression. “Great!” the young man answered. “Long as you like.” He turned to Slater, said: “Cheers, then.”

“Cheers.” They watched him leave.

“Where will we eat?” She smiled.

They took a taxi to a steak house and had a small meal. She hardly touched her food. Slater got through his, and through a bottle of house white which tasted dreadful. She had a gin and tonic but only drank half of it. While she toyed with her food and drink, he asked, “How did you get onto this? What’s your angle?”

“Not fair,” she answered. “You already know about me. Ace reporter and all that. Assignment: check out the games convention, look for missing kids; get some sort of a story, anyway. Possibilities. Why are so many young people so deeply into this thing? What’s the attraction? Etc, etc. You know all that, but I only know your name. “

True,
he thought. “I’m a PI,” he said, breaking Rule Number One. “Tony Minatelli’s Mum wants her son back. But I don’t think she’ll ever see him again. Young guys don’t run off and leave their cars behind. He’s a goner. Oh, and you did say you were looking for missing kids. Plural. My opinion: Hans Guttmeier’s a goner, too.”

She opened her eyes wide. “You’re well informed,” she said. “How about Jean Daniel de Marigny?”

“Eh?”

“Young Frenchman.” She stared hard at Slater. “Disappeared in Rheims.”

I’m well informed!
he thought. “Maybe we should team up,” he suggested. “Also, you’re in the wrong business. Give the newspaper job the elbow, Belinda, and open up a detective agency! You’re well ahead of me.”

She laughed, then went serious again. “Are you a believer, Jim?”

“Only in Santa Claus. You mean this ‘they’re here, walking among us’ business? Naw! Oh,
someone
is walking among us, all right: a crazy man, a psycho. Maybe Kevin Blacker. But aliens? Elder Gods? Invaders from the spaces between the spaces?”

She sat back.

“Now Andrew Paynter,” he went on, “—a pal of mine back at the agency in Croydon—he’s just gullible enough to make something big of all this.”

“He is?”

The wine was getting to Slater. “Universes sliding together,” he mumbled. “Fishers through fissures. Him and Kevin Blacker could have a really heavy session together.” He looked at the empty bottle and her eyes followed his.

“Will the bar be open back at your hotel?”

He shrugged. “Dunno—but I’ve a half-bottle of Martell in my room.”

“Strictly business,” she said, but she was smiling.

“Of course,” said Slater, thinking:
you stupid bastard!
Meaning himself, naturally.

• • •

In the taxi she snuggled up to him, said: “What if it was all real? I mean, why would they be taking out these people? Guttmeier, Minatelli, de Marigny…”

“Guttmeier was the world’s No. 1. Maybe it was more than just a game to him. Maybe he’d seen through the curtain. Minatelli? Perhaps he knew or guessed something. I don’t know. But it isn’t real. If it were…surely there’d be bigger targets? Like this Moribund outfit.”

“No.” She snuggled closer. “Moribund only produces the games—they’re in it for the dollars. They don’t believe. They’re Blacker’s unconscious cultists. And they’re doing a great job, spreading the word—but without believing a word of it.”

“
If
it were real,” Slater mused, aware of her beside him, “Blacker would have to go. He’d be high on their list.”

He felt her nod in the darkness of the back seat. “Maybe Karl Ferd, too.”

“I like Karl,” he said, “and so I’m glad it’s not real. On the other hand I’m also glad you are.”

“That’s nice,” she said.

He was silent for a moment, then asked: “Why Karl Ferd? He’s no true believer.”

“No, but he’s a deep one. I mean, not a Deep One, but inquisitive, questioning, investigative.”

“Everybody’s trying to get into the act,” said Slater. And after a moment: “But you know, I think I’ll stick with this one. There’s more to it than meets the eye. It warrants a little in-depth scrutiny.”

“And you’re good at that, right?”

“Once I get my teeth into something, yes.”

It had stopped raining when they got back to the hotel. They went up to Slater’s room where he produced his bottle. “If that’s what it takes,” she said, “go ahead. It’s unflattering, but flattery isn’t what I need right now.”

Suddenly nervous as a kid, Slater drank while she showered. Over her splashing, the telephone rang. The receptionist put Andrew Paynter on the line. “Hello, Jim? I’ve been trying to get you all night.”

“Make it short,” Slater slurred. “What’s up?”

“It’s nothing, really,” Paynter said. And now he sounded uncomfortable. “See, I just found out that Judy reads weird fiction. She’s a horror-freak!”

“Ho-hum,” Slater yawned. “Believe me, you’ve got more shocks than that coming.”

“No, listen—this is interesting. She mentioned how she’d like us to go up to a convention in Birmingham next week. The British Fantasy Society or some such outfit. All her favourite authors will be there. People like Curly Grant and J. Caspar Ramble—and Edward J. Waggler, the guy who did the Blaine series. So I’m thinking of taking her.”

“What you’re thinking of is a dirty weekend,” said Slater.

“Will you
listen
to me?” Paynter insisted. “There’s more.”

Slater sighed. “I’m listening,” he said.

“See,” said Paynter uneasily, “there’ll be a whole bunch of Mythos writers up there; and I just happened to be checking out a road route, and—”

“Birmingham sits right on your ley line, right?”

“That’s right! And the time-scale is right, too!”

“Ho-hum,” said Slater again. He began to sing: “They’re coming to take me away, ha-ha…”

“Well
I
think it’s interesting,” said Paynter. “You…you—oh,
bollocks!”
The phone went click and started to beep. Slater grinned and replaced it in its cradle.

“Huffy bastard!” he said. And then he sat very still for five minutes and listened to Belinda Laine splashing…

• • •

When she came out from the shower she was naked as newborn and scrubbed just as pink. Slater looked at her and discovered he’d forgotten how long it had been. The sight of her drew the alcohol like tweezers draw a bee sting; in a moment he was half sober again. Removing his clothes with fingers that weren’t quite his own—or which at least behaved like they were someone else’s, and someone stupid at that—he wondered: Christ, how long
has
it been?!

“You’re a hard one to get close to,” she said, drawing him stumbling into the bedroom. “I couldn’t tell if you wanted me or not. And I’m
still
not sure!”

But a cool one? Even stretching him out on the bed, she leaned over to adjust the position of her pager on the bedside table. Bloody “ace reporter”!

After that…obviously it wasn’t love, wasn’t even lust—it was need! Like a good meal after fasting for a week, or a drink after hiking across the Gobi Desert, or fresh air after an eight-hour stakeout in a smoky motel room with no air-conditioning. And it felt good! And while they were doing it he had to admit (if only to himself, and then grudgingly) that it was a sight better than risking wanker’s cramp in a tepid bath of scummy water.

But that was while they were doing it. Immediately after—when the weight was off and the sugar was melting from his brain, when he’d stopped groaning and could unclench his teeth, unscrew his eyes and look her in her lovely face—in short, when he could start thinking again…

…It was the same as it had always been. It was nothing. Or if anything, it was disgust. With himself, but even more so with her. So that he thought:
Lord, as close up as this she isn’t even good-looking!
And instead of the sugar she’d sprinkled there for a little while, now the acid was back in his brain, putting words in his mouth he knew he shouldn’t say to a dog let alone someone he’d just emptied himself into:

“For an ace reporter,” he heard himself say, “You make a bloody good hooker!” But having said it, instead of biting his tongue, it was as if the words themselves bred more acid. Acid that burned away his perceptions until they warped right out of shape and started lying to him and feeding him wrong information. Suddenly she didn’t even feel like a woman any more, and her face was like so much rubber and downright ugly!

“A what?” she said, apparently stunned, but not yet outraged. She seemed more surprised than shocked. Maybe that in itself should have told him something, but he was too far gone now—too angry with himself that he’d succumbed. She was WOMAN, and they were all the same. “A tart! A piece! A slimy bloody
hooker
!”

“Ah!”
she said, with a lot of emphasis; and she smiled at him with her suddenly mobile, swiftly metamorphosing face. Her left arm held him tightly and her legs wound about him. Her left hand grew three-inch claws sharp as needles that sank all the way into his back. One of them pierced his spine expertly to paralyse him, so that his scream came out a shrill, gasping whistle.
“No,”
she said, in a voice which flowed like her unbelievable features, “not a hooker—just a hook!”

He shook on her, jerking like he was ready to come again, vibrating in agony—the agony of
knowing
, and in knowing there was nothing he could do about it. Her right arm uncoiled from his back and lifted the pager from the bedside table, and something sharp and shiny pressed its button.

There came a crackle of static, and something else that might have been speech, might even have been a question. But not in any language of Earth. She answered it in the same—tongue?—and sank a second needle into Slater’s spinal column to still his twitching and calm him down a little.

Before the darkness came, he realised he knew beyond any reasonable doubt that she’d been speaking through the fissure, and also that he knew what she’d said.

“OK,” she’d said. “You can reel us in now…”