The Eye of the Moon (14 page)

It was no great secret that Dante didn’t like fortune tellers. Yet here he was again, sitting at a round table opposite some mad old crone with his gorgeous sweetheart Kacy beside him.

The premises were nothing too special this time, either. The three of them were in a tent, albeit a fairly spacious one, but it was just about the crummiest joint of any of the numerous fortune tellers they had visited. In fairness, the tent was one of many at a travelling fairground, so not much should have been expected really. ‘Madame Sangria’ was the name of the psychic in question. An elderly lady in a shapeless black dress, she wore her hair in a red bandanna, and affected huge gold rings in her ear lobes and at least five cheap multi-coloured beaded necklaces hanging down over her bosom.

Today was Dante and Kacy’s fifth ‘anniversary’, and Dante had promised his girlfriend that he had a big surprise in store for her. Kacy was well aware that they weren’t about to head out for a fancy meal at an expensive restaurant. If that had been the case, Dante would surely have insisted she wore something more appropriate than the blue jeans and baggy grey sweatshirt she had picked out for the day. He too would probably have made more of an effort, rather than choosing a pair of ripped jeans and a dirty white T-shirt with a picture of Foghorn Leghorn on the front.

Since Kacy knew Dante’s mind better than anyone, she was fully prepared for the great surprise to be crap.
And this is crap
, she thought. They had been to many fortune tellers in the past because she enjoyed the whole experience, but that didn’t mean she wanted to go to another one as a special treat
to celebrate the five years they had been together. The only comfort she took from this outing was that she knew Dante had probably racked his brain for weeks before coming up with the idea. So, grateful for the fact that he had at least put some thought into it, she was happy, sort of. After all, Dante may not have been particularly sharp, but he had a really good heart, and even if what he believed was a bit of creative genius – taking her to yet another fortune teller – was actually totally lame, it didn’t matter. The important thing was that he loved her enough to make the effort.

Dante had paid Madame Sangria twenty dollars to read the Tarot for Kacy. The woman had dealt out cards on to the round table in front of her. It was a small table with a dirty red-and-white checked tablecloth draped over it. After laying the cards face down on it in a line she slowly turned them over one at a time. In an attempt to create some suspense she said nothing as she did this. She allowed the cards themselves to do the talking.

When Kacy saw the sixth card her heart leapt into her throat. This was no normal tarot card. This one was special. There was no other card like it in all the different sets of tarot cards in the whole world. It had no picture on it, just writing, and it said:

She turned to look at Dante and immediately grabbed hold of his hand to steady herself. He had stolen her breath away. This man she loved, this well-renowned moron with half a brain cell, had taken her completely by surprise. She was all his.

‘Yes,’ she mumbled, her eyes welling up. ‘I love you too, you muppet.’

‘Cool,’ said Dante, leaning over and kissing her full on the lips. ‘Now let’s get the fuck outta here and go get drunk.’

‘You bet.’

Dante winked at the old fortune teller on the other side of the table, muttered a quick
Thanks
under his breath, and led Kacy out of the tent. Once they were back in the open air he pulled her tightly to him and they kissed as passionately as they had ever done. Kacy didn’t want to let him go. Her heart was bursting as though it was ready to flee her chest, such was her happiness.

‘I’m gonna make you so happy,’ she whispered to her new fiancé.

‘You already did,’ he whispered back. ‘You said “Yes”.’

A third voice, a man’s, interrupted them.

‘Dante Vittori, you’re under arrest.’

As statements go, it brought Dante and Kacy crashing back to earth in an instant. Dante spoke aloud for both of them.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’

Standing in front of them were two burly men in smart black suits with grey ties and very dark sunglasses. Dante pulled away from Kacy and faced up to the pair.

‘So what have I done now?’

Behind the two men, a number of families and odd-looking carnival folk were wandering around the fairground, oblivious to Dante’s predicament. There were a hundred more exciting things to catch their attention, like coconut shies and merry-go-rounds. Two men in suits speaking to a scruffy young couple was low on anyone’s list of Things to See and Do.

The man who had spoken first, a big, heavily moustached character with an Arabic look to him, held up and then flipped open a wallet to reveal an ID card with his picture on it tucked inside. He didn’t give Dante and Kacy enough time to read what was on the card before he flicked the wallet shut again.

‘I’m Special Agent Baez, and this is Special Agent Johnson,’ he said, indicating the other man. ‘You’re wanted in connection with a series of murders in Santa Mondega. It is in your best interests to come quietly. If you choose to struggle we’ll be forced to restrain you with whatever force may be necessary. Don’t test me on this.’

Madame Sangria popped her head out of the tent entrance to see what was going on.

Dante threw her an icy glare. ‘Some fuckin’ fortune teller you are,’ he complained. ‘Gimme my Goddam twenty bucks back, you useless old hag.’

The old woman smiled at him. ‘I guess that fool card was you, then?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Dante, turning back to face the smartly dressed figure of Agent Baez. ‘Look at that.’ He pointed to the sky behind the agent.

‘I’m not falling for that old trick,’ Baez sighed, shaking his head.

‘You already did,’ said Dante.

Special Agent Baez looked confused for perhaps a tenth of a second, which was all the time Dante needed to lunge forward and headbutt him in the face. There was a loud crack as the man’s nose broke, followed by a soft thudding noise as Dante kicked him in the balls. As the agent doubled over in pain with blood spurting from his nose, Dante grabbed him by the back of the head and brought his knee up full into his face. Baez collapsed in a heap on the ground and began to vomit as he did his best to squeeze his stomach down and force his balls back out from wherever they were now situated.

Dante whirled round, looking to deal with the other guy. But the second agent was way ahead of him. As soon as he had seen Dante attack his colleague, Johnson had pulled a gun from inside his jacket and pointed it at Kacy’s head.

‘One more clever move from you, friend, and your girlfriend’s gonna feel my pain,’ he warned.

Dante recoiled. This was a fight that couldn’t be won. ‘Yeah, bite me, dickhead,’ he said bitterly.

A third man suddenly materialized from behind Dante. Before Kacy could warn him, the new arrival (who happened to be Special Agent Robert Swann) had knocked the young man unconscious with a single swift blow to the back of the neck.

‘This is definitely our guy,’ he said, looking down at Dante’s crumpled, unmoving form. Then he looked over at Kacy and grinned. ‘Hello, missy. My, you sure are a pretty little thing, ain’t you?’

Dante and Kacy had spent an extremely unpleasant evening travelling in the back of a security van. Both of them had suffered the indignity of having their wrists handcuffed behind their backs and black cloth bags placed over their heads and tied at the neck. When the van had eventually come to a stop, the young lovers had been taken out and separated. Dante had no idea what had become of Kacy, and her welfare was paramount in his thoughts when, after what seemed like an interminable walk guided by at least one agent, the bag he was wearing was finally removed.

He looked around and discovered he was sitting in front of a desk in a smart oval-shaped office. It had no windows, but the royal blue carpet, bright white walls and smart mahogany furniture gave the impression that it was the office or meeting room of someone who earned a lot of money. That person was most probably the guy sitting opposite him. The smooth-headed, smartly suited, sunglasses-wearing Mr E.

‘Is this the White House?’ Dante asked.

‘Yes, it is,’ Mr E said, without any expression on his face. ‘And I’m the
real
President of the United States. That guy you see on TV? He’s just an actor.’

Dante wasn’t totally convinced.

‘Is that right?’ he asked warily.

‘No.’ Mr E shook his head. This guy Dante Vittori didn’t disappoint. He was living up to his billing. The perfect fall guy. ‘Have you any idea why you’re here?’

Dante shrugged. ‘Is it anythin’ to do with sellin’ pirate videos?’

Mr E rubbed his forehead with his left hand. It had not taken long for him to realize that talking to Dante was going to be frustrating; indeed, merely sitting opposite someone of such low intelligence was beginning to irritate him already. Mr E prided himself on his own high intelligence. He didn’t want it sullied.

Standing behind Dante’s left shoulder was Robert Swann. Mr E gestured to him with his other hand. Swann immediately twisted Dante’s head around to the left a little to face a giant plasma TV screen on the wall. Then he flicked a button on a remote control in his hand and barked an order.

‘Watch this. It should answer that “How much shit am I in?” question you’ve been asking yourself.’

Dante watched the videotape re-enactment of events in the Tapioca during and after the eclipse. The actor playing his part looked nothing like him, but watching and recollecting the events as they unfolded on the screen caused him to smile and nod to himself in approval of his character’s handiwork with a gun. The actor did a pretty good job of blowing holes in Jessica the Vampire Queen.

‘Pretty cool, huh?’ He smiled smugly as the film ended.

‘Not so much,’ said Mr E, shaking his head again. ‘That’ll get you the electric chair, my friend. There’s a hundred dead bodies there. So far no killer has been tried, let alone sentenced for their murders.’

Recognizing an opportunity to be annoying, Dante grabbed it with both hands. ‘They sure don’t look like no dead bodies to me. Look more like mannequins. I don’t reckon it’s a crime to kill a mannequin, is it?’

Mr E sighed in frustration, completely failing to realize that Dante was jerking his string. ‘It’s a re-enactment, you fool. The mannequins are there for show. We could hardly use the real dead bodies, could we?’

‘One of ’em looks like Kim Cattrall.’

‘Oh, for Chrissakes, is this guy for real?’ asked Mr E, looking for sympathy from Swann.

‘He’s being a cock,’ Swann suggested from where he
stood, just behind Dante. ‘I think he wants to go to the chair, myself. Making crap jokes like he’s doing is a sign of guilt if you ask me. Reckon he killed all those other folks, not just the dying girl. Be easy to try him for all their deaths too.’

Dante recognized that the time for joking had passed. ‘Well, I didn’t kill ’em all. It was that fuckin’ crazy in the hood. He must have fired off about two hundred shots in two minutes. Me? I only shot the psycho vampire broad on the floor. And you can’t murder someone who’s already dead. Which everybody knows vampires are.’

Swann patted Dante on the shoulder.

‘That’s as may be, kid, but there’s no evidence to show that it wasn’t you who killed several of the other victims, is there? And we haven’t ruled out the possibility that you were working as an accomplice of the Bourbon Kid.’

‘Well,’ said Dante, removing Swann’s hand from his shoulder and turning to eyeball him. ‘I reckon the video footage you just played shows quite clearly that I was in the bathroom with the candlestick and Professor Plum. If that’s all you got on me, I’ll be on my way, thanks.’

Mr E glanced over at Swann. The two men exchanged a quick look that was wasted on Dante. It was a look that said,
Hey, this is definitely our guy. He’s got balls.