The Poison Sky (6 page)

“My mind is just fine.” He sipped the coffee. It was dark, burned, and strong, and he liked it. The women at the next table were slowly laying out tarot cards and overdoing their responses. They were too emotional, too underlined, outsized. That's what a man would think, he thought.

“Are you a policeman?”

“I'm just a poor agnostic who looks for missing children.”

“You're a cult deprogrammer.”

“Not that either. I've never made anyone go anywhere against their will. Jimmy's mother asked me to try to find him and find out if he's okay, that's all. Can you tell me where he went?”

“Are you asking if I
know
it, as you mean knowledge, or if I can divine it?”

“I'll settle for what you have. I'm not finicky about epistemology.”

From somewhere she had brought out a small glass vial of amber-colored liquid and she toyed with it absently with one manicured hand. Her filmy dress rippled with every move.

“I don't know where he is, but he's all right. He's a high-minded person.”

“Did you have a fight when you last saw him?”

It was the first frown he'd seen on her face and the effect was startling, giving him a sudden heartache, as if his big clumsy paw had bruised something helpless.

“He was upset because he wanted to test the waters in my covenant for himself. I had to tell him he wasn't really ready. He wasn't. He was full of confusion and anger at his father, amongst other things.”

“Other things?”

She shrugged.

“He didn't threaten anything or say where he was going?”

In the corner of his eye he saw Faye come in and browse the magazines. The stretchy top that she wore looked as out of place as a zebra on Wilshire Boulevard.

Jill Annunziata sighed. “He said he would show me he was ready. I honestly don't know what he meant. I don't read minds. My beliefs may seem quaint to you, Mister…”

“Jack Liffey.”

“Mr. Jack Liffey, but I don't engage in trickery. In what we call the Burning Time, they killed tens of thousands of decent women just like me for trying to worship and heal in their own way. We're just thankful that Pat Robertson and the pope no longer have that kind of power.”

He saw Faye drift to the coffee counter and begin talking to the woman there.

He showed Jill Annunziata the “88.” “Do you know what this is?”

She grimaced. “If it's his, it's only a joke.”

“But you know what it is.”

He could tell that she really didn't want to say, but she seemed to decide it would be worse not to. “
H
is the eighth letter of the alphabet. The ‘88' stands for ‘Heil Hitler.' There's a handful of skinheads at school who bought ink stamps like that and went around stamping things. They're just sad, unloved boys. Jimmy isn't like that and he had nothing to do with them. If anything, he probably took it away from someone.”

“Would I find Marta here?”

“Marta Rodriguez?”

He didn't reply.

“No, you wouldn't.”

“Is there some coffeehouse that specializes in her religion?”

Her smile threatened to return. “Quite a few of them. She's Catholic.” She got out an ordinary address book and gave him Marta's phone number. Across the room Faye Mardesich was in animated conversation with the two women who had been sitting with Jill. The wailing music broke off and a hypnotic drumming started up.

Jill Annunziata leaned across the table without warning and dragged her forefinger lightly across his forehead to leave a trail of musky scent from her vial.

“I hope that doesn't turn me into a frog.”

This time the smile broke through the clouds. “It's musk and rose and cherry. They're all oils that relate to love. You will look more warmly on every woman you see tonight, and if you are open to it, you will fall in love and marry one of them.”

“I predict that a girl who looks like you is going to get in a lot of trouble rubbing love potion on men my age.”

“Blessed be.”

H
E
waited outside on Lankersheim, watching the sporadic traffic. All of a sudden he noticed a sooty homeless man up the street who stood with his feet set wide in a planter in front of a dentist's office. His craggy face was so filthy he looked like he'd just ridden a tramcar out of a coal mine, and he was hurling blades of ice plant torn from the planter at the passing cars. Now and again a driver stopped and got out and glared, but saw the tattered clothes and dirt-encrusted hands and decided there was nothing to be gained by picking a fight. Jack Liffey eased his way up the block to talk to the man.

“What's up, man?”

“I testify there is nothing anyone can do against me in the flesh!”

“Is somebody trying to hurt you?”

“I set myself against them all, every one! They can't harm me!”

“They'll harm you, old man, if you keep throwing things.”

He hurled another stalk, but it skimmed harmlessly across the pavement ahead of a Toyota four-wheeler.

“Can you make a finger?” Jack Liffey asked, and he demonstrated, thrusting his middle finger angrily at the Toyota.

The old man watched him, fascinated.

“Come on,
curse
them. You're all
bastards
!”

The old man worked one hand into the proper gesture with his other hand, tugging the fingers into position one by one as if he had arthritis. He kept glancing at Jack Liffey as a model.

“Bastards!” Jack Liffey shouted at an MTA bus that rumbled past.

The old man took up the shout, too. “Bastards! Make your plans for my internal organs, will you! Take me to hospital, gang up on me!
Bastards
!”

“You can't touch us! You're all swine!”

“Swine! Swine!”
the old man picked up.

A woman in a Volvo looked at the two men gesturing wildly at her car and quickly looked away as she accelerated.

Jack Liffey walked back to his car with a smile of satisfaction. He sat on the front fender to wait for Faye as the old man carried on whooping and gesturing at the traffic. The night was warm and airless and Jack Liffey smelled musk and fruit on the air, then realized it was steaming off his own forehead. He wiped a sleeve across the perfume brand. Luckily it wasn't a homeless
woman
in the planter, he thought. He'd have had to marry her.

Faye Mardesich finally came out carrying a paperback book. She heard the commotion and watched the old man cursing and waving his middle fingers at the street.

“I taught him that,” Jack Liffey said equably.

She caught a whiff of something and leaned closer to him, sniffing the air. “You smell like condensed sex. Just add hot water.”

He rubbed again. “It'll do until the real thing comes along. What have you bought?”

They got into the car and shut out the old man's howling. Jack Liffey glanced at the title of the book she held.
Craft and Rite,
a misty drawing of Stonehenge on the cover.

She scowled. “I thought it might tell me something about them, but it probably won't. Do you ever feel there's too much belief in the air? It's like a big toxic spill of wishes and notions. The bottom falls out of Pandora's box and everybody's grabbed onto something, just whatever fell nearby, and everybody's waving these notions at each other like that old wino until you can't hear yourself think.”

“We've probably had enough detecting for one night,” he said, and he U-turned back up Lankersheim. He waved at the old man as he passed. The old man gave him the finger with both hands.

4

IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU'D BE HOME NOW

I
T WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT, AND AS USUAL A FEW KIDS WERE
still hanging out in the courtyard, sitting on the retaining walls and laughing languidly in the blood-warm night as one of them bounced a basketball. The air was so heavy even the feathery bottlebrushes behind them were motionless. He'd seen most of these kids around but he didn't know any of them by name.

“'S up,” one of them offered as he passed, a rare tribute to an old white guy.

“Not much,” he said. He could have come up with a swifter reply, but it might have been seen as getting competitive and there was no percentage in that.

“A couple a your homies was in to visit, cuz.”

He stopped. “You mean into my house?”

“Uh-huh. Your Mexican lady let them in.”

His blood froze. “When was this?”

“Couple hours, it didn't look like nothing.”

“Did one of them have red hair?”

“Ye-eah. Like a real enough jarhead.”

“Thanks.”

Jack Liffey slipped into his alcove and listened. No dog, no radio, just the steady
thut-thut
of the basketball behind him and a car alarm cycling through its warnings far away. He thought of going back to ask if any of the boys was packing, but there wasn't much chance they'd own up to it.

He stared glumly at his front door. This was the second time this week he'd come home on something unexpected, and the odds were bound to get him sooner or later. Once again he noted that it was easier to keep your routine and risk death than make a scene. He knew perfectly well you had to live with the results when things didn't go right, that was the deal.

He let himself in and immediately heard a scrabbling from the back, like a playing card in the spokes. A light was on in the bedroom.

“Mar,” he called.

The bike speeded up and became erratic, dog claws on a door.

“Shut up, Loco, I'll get to you.”

For some reason, his Mennen Speed Stick lay on the floor of the hallway with its plastic cap off and crushed underfoot.

“Mar!” he called again.

The claws grew frantic on the closed bathroom door as he eased down the hall toward where the light was on. He pushed the door open slowly to see Marlena on the floor with her back against the bed, her wrists handcuffed awkwardly beside her to the bed frame. She was gagged with silver duct tape and what looked like a wad of his favorite blue shirt. There was shock in her eyes and something was wrong with her complexion.

The instant he pulled off the gag, an exhaled sob set her heaving and bucking and made whatever she was trying to say incomprehensible. He clasped her and held on through the worst of the ride, wriggling himself around to find a comfortable position.

“Shhh, shhh, Marlena. It's okay now. I'm here. Shh.”

He hadn't checked the living room or the closets but she wasn't behaving like someone with assailants still in the house. He was overwhelmed by a sicky-sweet smell and then he saw they had swabbed his deodorant all over her face. When he pulled back a little, he smelled cigarette smoke and ash, too, and he saw someone had smoked one of the cigarettes that he left lying around and stubbed it out into the carpet. He hadn't touched tobacco for years, but he left cigarettes around because he enjoyed the ascetic buzz he got out of beating the temptation day after day.

“Jack, it was
horrible
!
They said they were friends. I opened up for them.” He wiped gently at her face with the shirt that had been used to gag her. Little flakes and chunks from the Speed Stick clung to her cheeks.

“It's okay. They're gone.”

“How did you make them so
mad
?”
she asked, and there was an undertow of blame, as if he'd purposely set them on her.

“I don't know.”

“They said you do,” she complained. “They said to leave it alone.”

They always say that, he thought. “I don't know who they were, Mar. Really. Did they say anything else?”

“Only a foreign name, Ethel something I think. The one with red hair said it to the other one.”

“Did they hurt you?”

She nodded, then shook her head as if overcome by the strictest of scruples. “It was more like making fun of me.”

“Why did they use the deodorant?”

“I don't know. They pushed it against me hard. They joked about my breasts and kept asking if they were real or chemicals but they didn't do nothing to me but touch.”

“I'll be right back,” he said. “We've got to get those cuffs off.”

He kept his tools in a storage closet off his patio. He unlocked the door and dug around in the mess until he came up with a big red bolt cutter with three-foot arms. It made short work of padlocks and would probably work on the handcuffs, though he'd noticed they were a good pair of Peerless, the kind the police used.

Loco was still scratching away when he came back. The inside of the bathroom door would be a mess, he thought, but dogs had to wait. That was just the way it was. He didn't have time to deal with the displaced aggression that opening the door would unleash.

“Lean forward, Mar.”

One powerful bite of the bolt cutter severed the three-link chain between the cuffs, and she brought her arms around front and slumped to one side.

“Let's see a wrist.”

It was a good-quality stainless steel and wouldn't give up without a fight. They'd snugged it tight and he was a bit worried the loop might deform and cut her when it broke.

“I'm scared.”

He picked a point of attack and rotated the cuff so the hinge point was away from her wrist artery. Resting one arm of the bolt cutter on the floor, he put all his weight on the other arm and suddenly the tempered jaws bit through the cuff with an audible
clack
and the metal fell away. She wasn't as lucky on the second one and ended up with a blood blister where a bit of skin was pinched.

She fell against him to hug his neck. “I want you to know they didn't spoil me.”

“Mar—”

“No. They didn't, they just touched me.”

“Mar, nobody can
spoil
anybody. If one of those jerks picked up…” He looked around and saw a Wallace Stegner on his night table. “Say that book. It's a good book. If he sat there and read it, it wouldn't
spoil
the book. I'd still like it.”