The Queen and I (22 page)

“What the fuck was that?” Sean yelled in fear.

“Did you see that? Was that incredible?” Abby did not hear him over her own excitement. She was only thinking back to what she had just seen, actual proof that there was a ghost living in the cabin and that it was sentient enough to not only speak to them, but to threaten them and display supernatural powers as well.

“We have to go back, but we must be more prepared the next time,” she exclaimed.

“You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I am going anywhere near that place again!”

“Stop being a baby, Sean,” she snapped. “What we just witnessed was something that nobody can ever say that they have. We have proof that there is such a thing as the afterlife.”

“The only thing I saw was that there is a ghost living in this town, and I’m not waiting around long enough for it to find out where I live.”

Abby dismissed his concerns and added with a starry expression on her face, “Did you see her? She was beautiful.”

“Sounded like a goddamned bull frog,” Sean replied.

“She was so delicate, except for the voice of course. She must have been cursed by someone very powerful to have to live out her supernatural life with that face and that voice. She must have done something very wrong when she was alive.”

Sean sped closer to town and spit out the window, having it fly right back in his face before saying, “Well, I’m telling Malcolm about this shit.”

Abby turned on him and ordered, “You will do nothing of the sort! He’ll just contact those assholes in Ithaca, and before you know it there’ll be all kinds of arrogant college kids crawling around town. They’ll probably scare her off.”

“Good!” Sean shouted. “I want that damned thing out of here.”

Abby ignored him and said to herself, “She was so pretty. She kind of looked like Melissa Foreman.”

Chapter Thirty-Five: The Cat Show

Heinrich Schultz paced around his office occasionally staring at the phone, which was not ringing, and stroking the back of Herman’s head. His friend, Mendel Fujikawa, sat back on the sofa and thumbed through the latest copy of
Vogue
and laughed at how far the fashion sense of the celebrity actress had fallen over the years.

The two of them had decided to meet at this time so they could discuss the search for Jeffrey David Rothstein that apparently had come crashing to a halt practically overnight. There was no word from Louis Grecko, and no matter how hard Heinrich had tried, he’d been incapable of getting any information out of the odd bounty hunter’s mother. She was either unaware of his whereabouts, or she was unwilling to divulge them.

As he looked at the clock, he rapped his knuckles against the desk and exhaled heavily at his companion for some assurances that he was being silly and that everything was under control. The two of them had been certain that once Louis was on the case Jeffrey would be tracked down and brought to them within the week; that had been over a month ago, and they had not heard from Louis in more than two weeks.

Mendel had tried his own investigation and had come up empty, in spite of his violent means of interrogation. He had left Rachel’s assistant with a scar she would have for the rest of her life, and the strange man who had been in her apartment would most likely never walk without a limp again. He reclined further in his seat and enjoyed the article he was reading about what Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were up to and looked across the room at his large friend.

He stretched and asked, “What is wrong with you, Henry?”

Schultz looked at him and replied, “Wrong with me? We set a lunatic loose on the world to track down a man for us and we have lost him!” He poured a glass of Scotch and drained it quickly, pouring another immediately. “That little prima donna Stone hasn’t returned any phone calls either and is the toast of the town. I made that little son of a bitch, and he can’t even be bothered to check in every now and then.”

Fujikawa shook his head and added, “Well, he’s young and getting his schmekel polished on a regular basis; you can’t blame him for that.”

Herman leapt from the desk toward the sofa and cuddled beside the little man. “Good boy, Herman, yes you are. Do you want your schmekel polished?”

“Don’t talk dirty to my cat,” Schultz yelled. “What are we going to do about Rothstein?”

Fujikawa brushed aside the question and said, “The cat doesn’t understand me, Henry. Look at him, as long as I scratch his ears, he will never leave me.”

Schultz walked to the sofa, lifted Herman away from his associate, and continued, “I want Rothstein found, and I want you to leave my cat alone. You’re going to traumatize him with that weird Japanese voodoo that you do.”

Fujikawa laughed and returned to his reading. Schultz looked at his cat and gently stroked him as he watched the traffic below move slowly by, thinking about where Louis could possibly be and how to locate his other man of the moment.

After a few moments of silence, Mendel asked, “Where do you think Jeffrey could have gotten to? I’ve been racking my brain about it for weeks and cannot figure out for the life of me where he could have possibly gone. It’s very strange.”

Schultz thought about it for a minute and answered, “I really don’t know, but wherever it is, he had better be enjoying himself because he’s only making it worse.”

“Making it worse?” Mendel asked surprised. “How could it be worse? You have a madman stalking him, and when he catches him, you are going to ship him off to an island where a bunch of billionaire Euro-trash are going to hunt him like a gazelle on the Serengeti.”

He watched as Schultz now cuddled with his cat, kissing the cat’s ears ever so softly, and asked, “Do you want me to leave, Henry?”

Schultz stopped what he was doing and replied, “Herman likes it when I lick his earlobes, don’t you, Herman?”

“Cats don’t have earlobes, Henry.”

“Why don’t you go and make some phone calls or something. Find out where that miserable Rothstein is, and get Jacob Stone up here immediately, if not sooner.”

Fujikawa slowly got up and grabbed his coat. He watched as Schultz walked his cat toward the desk and opened a can of food, sticking his fingers in it, allowing the cat to lick from his hand the food it craved. Mendel watched in muffled disgust as the large man continued to coo and talk in baby talk to his pet. It was uncomfortable enough to watch, but to have to listen to the play-by-play commentary was a bit nauseating.

As Fujikawa left the office, Saul watched as the big man continued to fondle his cat and make cooing sounds that were borderline pornographic. This was better than anything Saul could have hoped for when he stowed away on the bus from Zion to New York.

He had spied out a lot of information that he knew could prove useful to Jeffrey, and even some tasty, juicy tidbits that could be used in the script for the play. What better way to destroy a man of wealth and fame than to reveal some of his dark and dirty secrets? Schultz had an unnatural affection for his cat, bordering on bestiality, and Fujikawa was obviously obsessed with female stars of the stage and screen. What was even worse for the two of them was that they had discussed the hiring of an unstable bounty hunter who had apparently gone rogue. Things like this often turned out to be negatives that the public was not so quick to forgive.

Saul looked around the office for any more nuggets of the sordid kind, and decided that he had enough information for now. What was more important was that he returned to Zion as quickly as possible to warn Jeffrey of the evil that was hunting him down.

He knew he had to be quick; Jeffrey was all alone at the cabin by now and had no idea of the horror coming his way. He also thought about Rachel and what he had done to upset the relationship that his new friend had with her. He would find where she lived by calling Melissa from Schultz’s own office and go to her. It would mean revealing himself, but for Jeffrey it was worth it. You do these things for your friends, and it was time for Saul to prove just how much the friendship meant to him.

* * *

Louis Grecko walked the streets looking for inspiration. Inspiration from powers that existed only to him to reveal what his next move should be. So far, the man whom Heinrich had asked him to find had eluded him, and that was unfamiliar territory for the man who made a living by seeking those who were weaker and introducing them to the Way.

He knew there were still stones he had left uncovered, but this was a game to him, and as such, he knew he would be robbing himself of the pleasure of trying to beat the power that controlled the game if he uncovered those stones. He wanted to be the master, and the only way he could do that was to outsmart those forces that governed everything that he did and thought on a daily basis.

His mother had advised him to search the darkest recesses of his soul in an attempt to channel the voices that could guide him to his prey and deliver what he wanted most, the elusive Jeffrey David Rothstein and his girlfriend. What he was going to do with Rothstein would be quick but extremely painful. He would not deliver him to Schultz as he had promised, but keep him for himself and deliver what was left as a gift for his mother. Louis’s gift would be the girl. He was infatuated with her and found that she dominated all of his thoughts, confusing the task at hand. He needed to end this game as quickly as possible so that he could take her for his own and make her a follower of the Way. It was what he wanted; it was what the music wanted.

He knew she had been unfaithful to Rothstein, and that alone deserved extreme punishment for her disloyalty. What he needed to do before anything else was find the man who she had strayed with and see to it that he could no longer defile her in any way that was unbecoming a future possession of his.

His skill and innate gift of tracking had lead him to this place, this very place where he knew this man was held up writing what he hoped would be the next great novel. The man’s name was Richard Kearney, and Louis knew that he was home and unaware of the destruction that awaited him when Louis came knocking. It was Louis’s right as judge and executioner for the music to determine who was fit to walk this earth and who was not. He knew that this man was not fit, but for now the music wanted him to learn only the Way and not the salvation that death would bring him.

A light drizzle began to fall, and Louis stared up at the second floor window that fronted the loft apartment where Richard Kearney now lived. He knew the man had just recently returned from upstate New York and some quiet little town named Zion, a fitting name, since it was the one in the Bible assigned to the heavenly Jerusalem, and from what Louis had heard of the place, it was full of Jews. Perhaps Louis would visit this town one day and test the name and the place.

He tried the door to the lobby of the building and found that it was not locked. Louis smiled to himself; in this day and age, for the tenants and landlord of the building to not see to the security of the building only meant that the residents did not care about themselves or the welfare of their neighbors. Louis was of a mind to visit each and every apartment and teach the inhabitants the error of their ways, but decided that this venture would take more time than he could spare at the moment.

Louis read the names on the mailboxes and found Kearney’s name next to apartment B4. He decided it was now time to introduce himself to the man who was currently sleeping with the woman who would be his and to show him that the Way suffered no fools in this game that was being played.

He chose not to take the elevator since that would mean being out of control of the situation, and he did not want that. Louis was a man who needed to be in control at all times and only relinquished such control to his mother, and that was out of respect more than fear or anything else. The stairwell was cold and damp and smelled of mildew. It obviously was not used very often or tended to, and Louis found that disturbing. The lack of attention to the smallest details irritated him and fed an anger that his mother always wanted to keep in touch with. That was why she had them live in such squalor when they could have been living a very comfortable life. It was like a dog fighter who trained his prize to be vicious through various means of psychological and physical torture to nourish and harness that anger; his mother was doing the same thing with him.

Inside the apartment, Louis could hear music playing and disapproved immediately. A man like Kearney had no business being allowed near the music, and this enraged Louis all the more. He wanted to kill him at that very moment; he wanted to tear him apart and leave nothing behind, but he knew he needed to find answers about the girl, answers that might lead Louis to Rothstein.

He knocked on the door and waited. He heard the music being turned off and the sound of footfalls as he waited for the door to open for him to make his entry.

“Who is it?” the voice from behind the door asked.

Louis was hoping to not have to talk, but answered in a slightly English accent that he had been practicing, “Mr. Kearney, my name is Nigel Blackthorn of Purple Rose Publishing. I would like to speak to you about your manuscript.”

There was a momentary silence, and Richard continued, “I’ve never heard of any Purple Rose Publishing.”

“Your friend, Rachel Benjamin, sent us some of your work,” Louis lied, but knew that it was a good one. There was something about the way her apartment had been laid out that told Louis she was a woman who enjoyed being in control, and that meant she would have had no problem submitting his work without telling him. “She was quite persistent about us talking to you.” Louis thought that last touch was especially clever, and it seemed to work.

“Hold on one second, let me get some clothes on.”

That disgusted Louis and caused his stomach to turn. It was the middle of the day, and this man was walking around without clothing; he definitely needed to be taught a lesson.

The door opened, and Richard stood in front of Louis with a cane supporting his weight and extended a hand. “So sorry to make you wait. Damned knee has me a bit hobbled.”

“Good lord,” Louis feigned concern. “Is this a bad time? Shall I come back, maybe make an appointment?”

“No, not at all; please come in.” Richard welcomed Louis into his apartment and escorted him into the living area of the loft and offered him something to drink. Louis declined and took a seat on the white sofa, which made Louis hot with rage. How could a grown man be as pompous and superficial as to have white furniture?

“You were saying something about my book?” Richard asked.

“Oh my dear, Mr. Kearney,” Louis said, smiling. “We have so much more to talk about than your book.”