The Green Lama: Crimson Circle (9 page)

“Yes, I can see that,” the man said quietly, noting the long list of names Harrin had given him, deciding to visit the Browns first. He cleaned off his hands with a white towel, leaving it a bright scarlet. “Thank you, Mr. Harrin, you’ve been most helpful.”

Harrin shivered and slumped down in his chair. Tears streamed down his cheeks, cutting through the dried blood. “What happens now? Are you going to lemme go?”

A thin smile creased the man’s emotionless face. “I’m afraid there’s a problem.” Harrin closed his one good eye and let out a low, warbling sob; reminding the man of a bleating lamb. How pathetic
.
“You know my face, Mr. Harrin,” the man said calmly as he pulled on his gloves, “and that simply will not do.”

“But… I—No! I told you everything. I did! I swear!” Harrin sputtered. He leaned forward and fell off the chair onto his knees. He held out his broken hands, pleading. “You can’t! I swear, I won’t say anything! Please!”

“Come now, Mr. Harrin, don’t act surprised,” the man said as Harrin fell forward with a heavy
flop
. “Surely, you knew your involvement with someone like the Green Lama would make this sort of outcome inevitable.”

“No! No! I don’t want to!” Harrin shrieked, pulling himself across the floor, leaving a trail of dark crimson behind him.

“You disappoint me, Mr. Harrin,” the man sighed as he followed after him, his shoes clapping against the floor with a slow, methodical rhythm. “I expected someone with your experience to be a bit… braver.”

Harrin sobbed as he violently shook his head, tears pouring out of his eyes. “I don’t wanna—I don’t wanna!”

“Please stop, Mr. Harrin,” the man sighed. “Everyone dies.”

“It’s not suppose to be like this,” Harrin cried, struggling toward the door, but his body was too broken, in too much unrelenting pain to go any further. Terror flooded his mind; gooseflesh covered him. His body shook, frigid and warm all at once. His life wasn’t flashing in front of his eyes, he wasn’t hearing the angels sing above him. There was only the panic, the remorseless black deluge, pulling him down to the bottom, drowning him. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this!”

The man crouched down in front of Harrin. “That’s where you’re mistaken,” he said as he drew his pistol and placed it against Harrin’s temple. “This was the only way it could have ended.”

The magician sobbed. This was a mercy killing, the man decided, nothing less; he needed to be put out of his misery. The man pulled the trigger and Theodor Harrin’s skull turned concave, splattering brain and blood across the barroom floor.

Chapter 4
: Homecoming

“
PLEASE, SIR
, you havta lissen to me,” the woman begged, an unending flow of tears streaming down her cheeks, eyes blood red, a droplet of snot hanging from her nose. She wasn’t going to be winning any beauty pageant that was for sure. She stood on the tip of her toes, pushing her five-foot frame as far as it could go, her head just barely making it over the front desk. “You havta help me, please!”

Sergeant Evan Wayland sighed and leaned back in his chair so that only the woman’s black hair was visible. He would’ve cared more back in the early days, back when he was a dozen pants sizes thinner and his chin didn’t have a second and third brother, but that was a long time ago. “Ma’am, if ya haven’t noticed we’re a little busy,” he said in monotone, waving toward the long line of impatiently waiting citizens, each in some kind of physical or emotional distress, all of them pathetic. “So, if you just wait, someone will get around to you, I swear.”

“But please, sir, my husband!” the woman sobbed, her nails digging into the front desk’s soft, worn wood. “I no see him in seven days! He no come home!” she sobbed in broken English.

Wayland rolled his eyes. “You check the local pub? Probably just passed out under some barstool after drinking some…” he trailed off, trying to think of that Mexican stuff with the worm the spics always like to drink. “
Tock-keel-ah
,” he managed.

“No!” the woman protested, smacking her hand against the desk. “No! He no drink!”

“Right, and Grouch Marx’s mustache is real.” Wayland leaned forward, pancaking his stomach against the desktop. “Listen, sweetheart, why don’t you go home; take care of your kid, and we’ll let you know if he turns up. Okay?” he said in the sincerest voice he could manage, though his eyes were distant and numb.

The woman’s head slowly sank down behind the desk and Wayland thought he heard her whisper something that sounded like: “La ma-dray keh teh pareeoh.” He grumbled in response, knowing whatever she said probably wasn’t too friendly, not that he cared. There were too many of them, immigrants, sucking up work like some malicious sponge from real Americans like Wayland’s brother-in-laws. It stirred something up inside him that he couldn’t seem to push down.

“What was that about?” Officer David Heidelberger asked from behind him, watching the woman waddle mournfully out of the station. He had a clipboard tucked under his arm; a pen perched on his ear, ready for his shift at the front desk.

“Lost husband,” Wayland said with a shrug and wet sounding snuffle. “Probably dead drunk or ran off with the mistress. One or both.”

“I hate those, like it’s our problem to make sure your husband doesn’t decide to run off with some easy girl. Give us a real problem, like a madman trying to conquer the world or something,” Heidelberger grumbled. He and Wayland had been sharing front desk duty for the last few months ever since Caraway up and disappeared, effectively dissolving the Special Crime Squad. It was easy work, but it was also shit boring. They went from facing off against the toughest criminals in the city to sitting around waiting to check in drunks and prostitutes. “How’s it been tonight?”

Thunder clapped outside as Wayland gave him a sidelong glance and Heidelberger’s heart sank. It was as bad as he thought. Another day buried in boredom.

“Gonna rain again?” Heidelberger asked, though the answer was obvious.

“Gonna rain again,” Wayland sighed as he collected his files. “Hate this time of year.”

“You and me both,” Heidelberger sighed as he sat down in the chair, still warm from Wayland’s ample rump. He placed a foot against the desk and pushed himself back, tilting the chair. He stared out the door for several moments as a waterfall began to rush over the station entrance before asking: “You ever wonder where he is?”

“Sometimes,” Wayland replied with a shrug. “Not as much as I used to.”

Heidelberger felt himself frown. He had spent nearly every day trying to piece together Caraway’s whereabouts. Hearing that Wayland had essentially given up hope was oddly personal. “What’s your guess?”

“Dead.”

“Dead?” Heidelberger repeated, taken aback.

“Dead,” Wayland reiterated, in case there was any confusion.

Heidelberger furrowed his brow, his eyes shooting back and forth. “How do you figure?”

“That Green Lama. Boss went to go help him out with some case and got himself killed,” Wayland said before another phlegm-ridden snort. “Working with costumed vigilantes… Just a matter of time.”

“Since when were you down on the Lama?”

“Since always. Rubs me wrong that some guy can put on a hood and think he can go around acting like the moral decider, telling us what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s good or evil, without anyone saying yay or nay. Fascist is what—”

“Wayland! Heidelberger! Damn, it’s good to see you boys,” a voice boomed from the station entrance like thunder. The two officers looked up as Lieutenant John Caraway strolled through the door with a broad smile as if he had never left. “I miss anything exciting?”

• • •

JEAN PUSHED the backstage door open with her hip. The place was empty, dark and quiet. Daylight burst through the doorway, illuminating the dust floating in the air, reminding her of Central Park and falling ash. She pinched her eyes shut and pushed the memory away as the backstage door eased shut, the light dropping back to shadows. That world didn’t exist—wouldn’t exist. She and Jethro had seen to that. But perhaps that was why she was still shaken up from last night. She had put on her best brave face for Jethro—no need to worry him more than she had to—but she couldn’t get that man’s black bleeding eyes out her mind. Heydrich was dead, his head blasted off and body dropped into an unending abyss in R’lyeh. There was no coming back from that, but—as Jethro had once explained—he had done it before.

Jean made her way through the darkened hallway toward her shared dressing room by memory, not noticing the band of light leaking from beneath the doorway.

“What’s the deal, Red?” a familiar voice said as she entered the room. “I leave for a few months and you get a rock on your finger?”

Jean’s heart jumped as she caught sight of the face that had melted thousands of girls’ hearts across the country smiling at her through the vanity mirror—
if they only knew
. He was seated casually, feet propped up on the counter, her copy of the latest issue of
Broadway Tattler
in his hands.

A smile stretched across Jean’s face. “Like you weren’t running around, knocking boots with the first person who swaggered your way.”

“A man’s got needs, babe,” the movie star said with a shrug. He looked thinner than she remembered him. Older somehow. “Can’t blame me for following my urges.”

“Can’t blame me for doing the same,” she retorted as she sat on the edge of her vanity.

The movie star folded the tabloid, dropped it onto the vanity, and stood up so he could look Jean in the eye. He frowned and tilted his head in thought. “You know I’ve always wondered… Does he wear the cloak when you two go to bed, or is it only for special occasions?”

“Why can’t every night be a special occasion?” she replied with a cocked eyebrow.

He gasped. “Scandalous.”

“Look who’s talking, Mr. Matinee Idol,” she said jabbing him in the chest.

“Missed you, Red,” Ken Clayton said, giving her that dazzling smile

“Missed you too, Blondie,” she whispered before jumping into his arms. She squeezed him as tight as she could to make sure he was real; her best friend, back home. For a moment, she forgot all about the mad man with the obsidian blood. “Shouldn’t you be dancing around dressed like a lion looking for some wizard at the end of a yellow brick road?”

“Off to the merry old Land of Oz…” Ken shrugged. “Let’s just say I’ve had enough of those bloodsuckers.”

Jean leaned back and narrowed her eyes, trying to read his expression. “Do I even want to know what you mean by that?”

“Take it as literal and move on from there,” he said patting her on the shoulder. He fished into his jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He put one in the corner of his mouth and offered one to Jean.

Jean held up a hand. “I quit.”

Ken’s eyebrow shot up. “Really? Is this a Jethro thing?”

“It’s bad for my singing, and my lungs, despite what the ads say.”

“It’s a Jethro thing,” Ken said with finality as he slipped the packet away and lit up. “So, tell me, how’s New York been without me?”

“Cold, at least it seems that way,” she replied, conscious of the gooseflesh running up and down her arms. “World hasn’t come to an end, so I guess there’s that.”

“Well, we have
you
to thank for that,” he said, lovingly poking her shoulder.

“You were there, too,” she reminded him.

“Yeah,” Ken said with a painful chuckle. “Scared out of my mind. Lions and tigers and bears… Oh,
my
.” He paused to clear his throat. He unfolded the
Broadway Tattler
and eyed the voluptuous photo on the cover. “So… Jean Parker, huh? That’s a new one.”

“My mother’s maiden name,” she said, snatching the paper away from him. “Figured it was better than having ‘Jean Farrell, the Green Lama’s Girlfriend’ plastered everywhere.”

Ken considered this. “Fair enough…” His eyes dropped to her left hand. “So, where’s the diamond, Red? I expected to see it glittering from across the country.”

She playfully smacked him on the shoulder. “Please, if I were engaged, you would’ve been first to know.”

“I would certainly hope so. Pity though, I was looking forward to a green wedding.”

Jean rolled her eyes. “Ugh, really? That was the best you could come up with?”

“I’m an actor, not a writer, sweetheart.”

She chuckled but quickly fell silent as she looked down at the floor. “Have you seen him? Since you got back? Benn with two ‘N’s’?”

Ken silently shook his head.

“It isn’t the same, is it? Not after everything. It just isn’t the same, not anymore.”

“No, it isn’t,” he confessed, shaking his head. “I mean, I tried; I really, really tried, but it was like this itch I couldn’t scratch. No matter what I did, I knew I had to get involved.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” she said before telling him about her encounter last night. Afterwards they sat in silence for several minutes before she asked: “You think we’ve got a problem? Like we’re only happy when we’re in incredible danger?”