Hopper House (The Jenkins Cycle Book 3) (2 page)

T
he next morning
, during my modest breakfast, I was interrupted by the sound of someone honking a horn from the street. I knew who it was by how annoyingly long he held it down with each blast. Odd way to be a soulless killer, drawing attention in a nice neighborhood like this.

I left him alone, buttered my English muffins, sopped up spilled yolk from my over-easy eggs, and chewed my chewy bacon. When I was done—after washing the dishes, brushing my teeth, and rechecking my baggage—I carried Andre’s suitcase with me outside.

Slowly.

The driver honked again, loud and long.

I unlocked Andre’s car and set my bag in the trunk. Still not rushing. Before closing the hatch, I paused in quiet reflection on the precarious state of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

A car door opened behind me and slammed.

“Where you think you’re going?” Ricky said. “Didn’t you hear me honking? Also, hey—we’re driving in
my
car, asshole, and I’m the one that’s driving. You make me miss my flight, I’m telling Lenny.”

Ricky walked across the nice lawn and not on the sidewalk like a normal person. His tread left a disorderly streak through the light-dark pattern of a recent mow. More than the excessive honking, this small act of ambulatory terrorism irritated me the most.

Ricky smirked on his way past, then reached in the trunk and grabbed my suitcase. I pulled him back roughly by the shoulder.

“Get your goddamned—”

I punched him hard, high on the cheek, throwing all of Andre’s rangy power into it and dropping him on his ass.

Ricky lay there stunned, staring at nothing. When his eyes refocused he said, “You … the hell with Lenny. That’s it!”

He got to his knees, already reaching behind his back, and I punted him in the solar plexus clear out to his lunar plexus. His breath whooshed out and he fell forward onto his stomach. While he twisted on the ground, wheezing like he was dying, I lifted his shirt and snagged the semi-automatic pistol holstered at the small of his back.

After a quick look around the neighborhood to see if anyone was watching—seemed clear—I removed the magazine, racked the slide sideways, and deftly caught the ejected shell. Then I shoved the gun down the back of his pants.

Ricky’s lips moved but nothing came out, and he had grass and dirt in his mouth from chewing the ground.

Finally he said, “You can’t hit me—I’m Italian! When I tell my uncle what you did, you’re dead!”

I leaned down and looked him in the eyes. “You know what I do for your uncle, right? The thing is, I really like doing it. I’m not wired like other people, Ricky. I listen to country and rap music.
Both
of them, Ricky. Lenny has no idea how many people I’ve killed. And the ones he knows about, most of those guys were Italian, just like you.”

It was just a guess Lenny usually sent Andre after other mob guys, but it seemed a safe one. And Ricky wouldn’t know the truth in any case—no way a guy like Lenny would confide in this twerp.

I got in the car, stowed the magazine and extra round in the glove compartment, and backed down the driveway onto the street, parallel to Ricky’s Mustang. I stepped out, went around to his front tire, and stabbed it with the butterfly knife I’d discovered after a more thorough search of the house. The tire issued a screaming whistle, causing me to look around the neighborhood again.

A short, gray-haired woman stood across the street watching me through her storm door.

I waved at her.

She waved back.

Who said New Yorkers weren’t friendly?

Before she called 911 and sicced the NYPD on me, I hopped in the car and left New York in search of a beautiful woman I was supposed to kill.

T
raffic was
heavy through most of New Jersey, and I wondered how late I’d arrive. Just when I thought about stopping for gas, I got a call.

“Hello?” I said.

“What the fuck, Andre?”

Lenny.

“Doing real good, boss. On my way to Georgia.”

“That’s why I’m calling.” He sounded concerned, not mad. “I heard you left without my nephew. I also heard you hit him and messed up his car.”

“Just being unpredictable.”

Lenny chuckled. “Never known you to be so mouthy. Always been a class act until now. You know what? Forget about it. Everyone has a bad day. So why don’t you go back and pick up Ricky and we’ll talk about it later. Smooth it all out.”

Even though Lenny was some sort of pizza mobster who hired killers to run around killing, the way he was being nice to me like this … it had this weird effect, making me feel somehow guilty.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I work alone. I’m like a gentle wildebeest, possibly a caribou. Bringing Ricky along messes with my whole wildebeest-caribou thing. Ever heard of a caribou wandering around with a jackass? Me either. So let me do what I have to do, and I’ll come back and we’ll make up.”

“Caribou?” Lenny said. “Wildebeest? You feeling okay?”

“Feeling good, boss. But traffic’s kind of heavy and I need to pay attention. I’ll bring you back a finger or an ear, I promise. Maybe both. Great big ones, too, you’ll see.”

I hung up and held the power button until it turned off.

To pass the time, I flipped through various radio stations looking for something in range and wished Andre had satellite radio. Increasingly, I wondered what I’d do when I got to Savannah. Obviously I wouldn’t shoot this woman. I’d let her know there were mobsters after her and see how she reacted. Maybe she’d be grateful. Maybe we’d go to dinner and talk about it. Maybe she’d tell me how noble I was for not murdering her. I’d tell her it was nothing at all, just doing my duty. She’d look deeply into my eyes and I’d stare back, and the world would disappear around us.

There were other possibilities. She could run away screaming and call the cops. The cops wouldn’t think I was noble for not murdering her.
They
wouldn’t look deeply into my eyes while the world disappeared around us. They’d throw me in jail and serve me prison food and watch me slowly die of boredom in a noisy cell populated by rejects.

Jersey concluded without a hitch. Then Delaware, then Maryland, and when I finally stopped for gas, I stocked up on little apple pies and a carton of milk to complement the tasty goodness. Tank full and stomach happy, I considered my location and what that meant: Virginia was next, and that’s where
she
lived.

Sandra was doing fine without me and had been for a long time. And for the first time since discovering precisely where she lived, I skipped the turnoff from the Beltway and continued down 95 South. Using my head for once. The minister would have been proud of me.

Two months had passed since talking to him in that church in Toledo. He’d shown up in the middle of my ride as Scott Schaefer, the sex fiend psychologist, and hadn’t batted an eye at the coincidence of taking a job as a priest in the same city as my latest ride. Among other things, he’d said he had a theory about who the Great Whomever was. I’d been curious about that theory ever since.

He’d told me his phone number and asked me to call him. Since then, I’d justified not calling by staying busy on other rides. In truth, I was happy in my ignorance. So long as I didn’t know why I kept coming back to life, I could putter along according to my conscience.

I turned the phone back on and called the minister. It rang eight times and dumped to voicemail. I tried again and he answered on the fourth ring.

“Hello?” he said in a weak voice.

“That you, Anthony?”

“Who is this?”

For some reason, I’d expected him to know through divine such-and-such.

“It’s me, Dan Jenkins, immortal servant of justice.”

“Oh,” he said. “You.”

“Don’t get all mushy. You okay? You sound tired.”

The minister responded with a fit of coughing. Then came a clattering sound, followed by a couple of beeps as his fingers pressed various buttons on his phone.

“You still there?” he said at last.

“In the flesh. Get it?”

A sigh from the other end.

“Despite being confined to this bed for three days with the flu,” he said, wheezing, “I’m going to tell you a discouraging truth: I’ve never found you funny. What do you want?”

“You said to call you. You had a theory about the Great Whomever.”

“Why didn’t you call sooner?” he said tiredly.

The in-person experience with the minister was frequently punctuated by terrifying psychic attacks of holy indignation. When he got like that, staring at me and compelling honesty, all I could do was tell him the truth. Over the phone, no such compulsion existed.

“If you must know, I’ve been pretty busy. Fighting evil, saving beautiful women…”

The minister grunted. “I’ll tell you what I think, and then I’m hanging up. Have you heard of the Book of Enoch?”

“The Book of Enoch,” I said, “is an ancient religious text attributed to Enoch, great grandfather of Noah.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“Encyclopedia Britannica.”

“Have you
read
the Book of Enoch?” he said.

“Not as such.”

The minister sighed. “The Book describes two hundred
irin
—angelic Watchers—who taught mankind astronomy, weapons, sorcery, and other forbidden knowledge. For this, they were chained in everlasting darkness until Judgment Day. The leader of the two hundred was Azazel, but I don’t think you’re him. I think you’re Danel, one of their chiefs. You have a block of some kind, and you were born into the world ignorant of your ancestry. That’s why you think you’re just a normal person.” He breathed heavily a few times. “But you’re not.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “slow down—how sick are you, anyway? Have you seen a doctor?”

With some heat, the minister said, “Do you want to hear what I have to say or don’t you?”

“Fine,” I said, “but I thought we’d gotten past the whole
you’re a demon
explanation. Hold on a second, I’m driving.”

I put the phone down and negotiated a tricky lane change to avoid a caravan of slower traffic. When I picked back up, the minister was talking.

“… powerful Watcher, a Chief of Tens, one who lusted after women and helped unleash the nephilim into the world. Daniel comes from
Danel
. Daniel, in ancient Hebrew, means
judgment of God
. What have you been doing all these years if not that very thing?”

I rolled my eyes. “There’s a billion other people named Daniel. Where’s all this coming from?”

“Shortly after we first met, I had a strange dream. A wizened man approached me with an ancient scroll and compelled me to read it. It was the Book of Enoch. Until then, I’d always considered it apocryphal. Now I feel otherwise.”

That got me laughing. “I dreamed I was chased by shoes once, but you don’t see me making a big deal about it.”

“In the Book,” the minister said, “Azazel taught mankind the secret of weapons, and he spoke to the prophet Enoch
in a dream
. He beseeched Enoch to intercede with God on behalf of the fallen, but Enoch refused. He ended up trying anyway, but to no avail. There were other Watchers, many innocent of wrongdoing, but they swore an oath to Shemyazaz, the leader of the two hundred, and—”

“Wait a minute, hold on,” I said. “So now you’re a prophet?”

In a quieter, arguably humbler tone, he said, “How do you think I found my way to St. Stephens? I had a dream, just like Enoch did thousands of years ago. I followed my interpretation, applied for the job, got hired despite having left the church, and then
you
showed up—right in time to pass judgment on that sex maniac you possessed.”

The minister’s breath wheezed in and out loudly over the phone. The flu sucked, sure, but normally it didn’t drive a person crazy. He really believed this stuff.

“Do you really think you’re a prophet?” I said.

“If I’m not, what am I?”

That was an annoying thing about the minister. He always made everything about him. Now he thought he was a hairy prophet from the age of smoke and mirrors.

“I know you’re not a believer,” he said quietly, “but surely you know the power of dreams. You said as much in that story you sent me, years ago.”

When I’d first run into the minister, I was so happy to find someone I could finally talk to I’d sent my entire story to him in an email. Looking back, I’d come to regret it, given how pushy he could be.

“You really had a dream telling you to go to St. Stephens? And all this Enoch stuff, too?”

Wearily, as if shouldering the world’s sins on his frail shoulders, the minister said, “Yes, Dan, I really did. Now please, I’m very sick—
despite
that useless flu shot they stuck me with last month. We’ll talk more on this later. Goodbye.”

He hung up before I could ask him when.

“
D
an
el
?” I said to no one visible.

When nothing sinister happened, I laughed.

In retrospect, it was interesting how the minister and I had reconnected that time in Toledo. But it was a big country, and coincidences did happen. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the 4th of July, and nobody said
they
were possessed by demons. In 1895, Ohio only had two cars in the entire state, but the drivers somehow managed to crash into each other. The world was like that sometimes. Even if there was a supernatural explanation for the minister’s career decisions, did it have to involve escaped demons from the Book of Enoch?

“Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice,” I said, but again nothing happened.

In time, my mind wandered from regions biblical to topics culinary. One great thing about the South: they have awesome barbecue. I stopped at several places along the way, comparing as I went along. My favorite dish? Burnt ends, hands down, followed by my favorite dessert. They say Eve tested Adam with a pink Cadillac, but it was really peach cobbler, one of the few foods I look forward to eating with a spork.

As I closed in on South of the Border—a massive tourist attraction—I knew I’d have to buy fireworks. Preferably ones that shot so high they posed a risk to Russian spy satellites. Mom and Dad never let me have fireworks as a kid, and I had catching up to do.

“That’ll be a hundred and ninety-two dollars,” the friendly old man working the register said.

I paid him in cash and left the shop with a boxful of rockets and a bag of what may have been depleted uranium planet crackers.

E
ven at night
, Savannah’s gorgeous. Lovely streetlights and beautiful antebellum architecture. I’d been there once, as a teenager, and had the city’s perfectly organized system of garden squares memorized from a tourist map. But all the maps in the world couldn’t have helped me avoid the speed trap shortly before the turn to my hotel.

“Speed limit’s thirty-five along this stretch,” the officer said.

“But my car goes up to a hundred and twenty,” I said. “How’s that fair?”

The cop stared evilly down at me from behind his thick mustache. Such a waste. If I had a mustache like that, I’d only use it for Good.

“You smart mouthing me, boy?” he said, creatively putting two syllables into the word
boy.

“Just worming my way into your good graces, sir.”

The cop grunted, took my license and registration, and went back to his cruiser. Ten minutes later, he tapped on the window and handed me my copy.

I beamed up at him. “I’m just glad you stopped me before someone got hurt, officer.”

“Keep up the attitude,” he said. “See what happens.”

Despite the ticket, it had been a fun trip—and long. When I got out of the car, I was achy and stiff all over. The air felt hot and humid and smelled kind of bad: a little like raw sewage, with a whiff of something chemical in the air. Not overly strong … but it was there. If the minister was around, he’d probably claim it was Satan.

I’d chosen the same hotel as the one on the back of the woman’s picture.

“What’s that smell outside?” I said to the man working the hotel check-in.

“Which smell, sir?” he said politely.

“Uh … kind of a … Well actually, it’s more like…”

“Ah, that,” he said, smiling. “That’s the
smell of money
, as we say in Savannah. We have a paper mill. The other smell is the river.” He chuckled. “When the breeze picks up, it’ll die down.”

I requested a room to last me through the weekend, with a checkout day of Monday. The desk clerk said I was in luck. They were hosting a conference and only had a handful of rooms left.

He gave me my room keys and wished me a good night.

The suite was beautiful, and it smelled great. Somehow, I’d found the only fresh-smelling hotel in the United States. Almost like they were making up for the smell of all that money outside.

After a great shower to wash away the dust from the road, I turned on the TV and lay back on the bed flipping channels. There were movies that looked interesting, but I was too tired for anything interesting. Then one thing led to another and I found the channel that let guests order adult videos right to their rooms. There was a beautiful woman embracing another beautiful woman, both of them wearing lingerie and cowgirl hats, telling me with their eyes:
Hey there, cowboy, whatcha’ gonna do with that rope?

Occasionally, I’ve come back to the world in the body of someone so obnoxiously healthy that every moment is a distraction—particularly at times like these. But the Great Whomever has a sense of humor, and he’s always watching, like a great omniscient Peeping Tom in the sky. The last thing I’d do was make with the rope tricks with all that snickering going on up there.

I changed the channel to one of the regular movies and wished I’d brought a book. Tomorrow, I’d find a book store.

T
he next day
, I ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant. And what a breakfast! Pure bliss. The pancakes weren’t just fluffy, they were
fluftastic
. Helium and a tiny pinch of morphine in every bite.

After finishing my second stack, I flipped through the cartoony map of Savannah I’d found in my room, looking for things to do.

The date on the back of the woman’s picture had her arriving tomorrow, so I spent the day riding tour buses and browsing bookstores. No, I didn’t pull any super-memory stunts to get attention. I simply bought a book. Then I found a beautiful garden square to while away the afternoon.

That night, I went to a fancy restaurant called the Pink House and ordered three different meals all for myself, because everything looked so good. I also ordered three desserts. The waiter didn’t ask me to pay first—it wasn’t that kind of place. But he did smile through veiled disapproval when I told him I couldn’t be bothered with the enormous amount of leftovers.

“But there’s so much food,” he said. “You don’t want us to just throw it away, do you?”

“Of course not,” I said in my best Thurston Howell. “Give it to the poor!” I laughed out loud when his lips pressed together, the closest to a frown I’d seen from him all night.

I tipped him three hundred from Andre’s blood money, then left and hailed a cab.

My confused waiter didn’t realize it, but I’d just made his life suddenly more interesting. After he told everyone about the obnoxious tourist (me), he’d instantly become the delight of the kitchen staff for the remainder of the evening—and flush with cash. If he had anything like a conscience, he’d feel weirdly uncomfortable. My guess was he probably wouldn’t know why. Very hard to reconcile hating a callous jerk (also me) if you’re grateful to him at the same time. Maybe he’d donate it somewhere and remain pure. Or maybe he’d spend it as quickly as possible to get it out of his life, thereby bringing him back into alignment with his sense of self. Or a thousand other things that hadn’t been possible until I’d shown up and made an ass of myself. Looked at in the proper light, I was sort of a hero.

I almost took a ghost tour that night, but chickened out at the last minute. Too spooky. Also, I felt bloated and tired, and weirdly anxious about tomorrow. Resigned to being a fuddy-duddy, I returned to the hotel, watched TV, and tried to relax my nerves in anticipation of the big day.

The big day started with another great breakfast, but that’s where the fun ended. Thank goodness I had my book with me, because I spent the morning sitting in the lobby watching the automatic front doors swish open and closed ten times a minute. About an hour into it, I realized most people wouldn’t start showing up until the civilized check-in time of 3 p.m.

I didn’t want to miss the woman’s arrival, and didn’t want to get sidetracked by something else, so I sat there reading, occasionally getting up for coffee or those terrible pre-packaged sandwiches they sold in the hotel store. Sometimes I looked at the woman’s picture. There was a darkness around her eyes I couldn’t put my finger on. She looked so serious. Great hair. Lovely lips. Something about her, standing there in that crowd of reporters … Clearly an important woman.

When the guests started arriving in larger numbers, I replaced my book with a magazine someone had left out, then put it down after a quick skim. The lobby TV was tuned to the hotel channel. Event listings, guest services, and special deals appeared and disappeared in an endless stream. I wondered what would happen if I changed the channel, then got up to find out. Apparently nothing. The news was a predictable variety of politics, war, people interrupting each other, and people rolling their eyes while waiting to talk. I changed the channel again, found a Spongebob marathon, and left that on.

As I turned to sit back down, that’s when I saw her.

She swept into the lobby through the automatic doors pulling a medium-sized black suitcase behind her on wheels. She walked boldly, cutting an imposing figure in a snug black business dress. Big black sunglasses, long glossy brown hair clipped with a barrette on one side. Gold bracelet. Red shoes. Pearls. She looked like a million bucks during the gold standard. With legs.

I watched as she talked to the check-in clerk. Her voice carried to where I stood, but I only caught one or two words. Her manner was friendly and direct. With legs.

When I edged closer, she turned and looked at me, eyes widening in surprise. Then she waved.

Automatically, I raised my hand to wave back. Then a woman rushed past me and said, “Rachael, you look wonderful! How have you been?”

Rachael said she was fine and asked her something about her
caseload
. Then they stepped off a ways and spoke too quietly for me to hear. A few minutes later, they embraced, and the woman rushed off to greet someone else.

Rachael grabbed her suitcase and made her way to the elevators. I moved to follow—and then stopped when someone blocked my way.

“Where the fuck you think you’re going, pal?” the man said under his breath.

Ricky.