A Song In The Dark (21 page)

“Talking with Jewel Caine. She was happy about getting a job, wouldn't say where, and they was just gabbing. You know. Hen-talk.”

“Yeah. I know.” My mouth went dry.

“Just before Caine's number finished Jewel went out for a smoke. She said she didn't want to bump into him when he came backstage. With all this talking the girls was running late and stayed in the dressing room to get ready for the next show. Next thing they know the stage manager shoves his snoot in and tells 'em to stay put, then locks the door. They were still plenty mad about that, saying if there was a fire they'd be cooked, but—”

“Where was the stage manager all that time?”

“Well, after he found Caine he stayed in the hall to keep watch, so if there was a fire, he coulda let them out easy enough. He called one of the busboys over and sent him up to get me, then I ran into Strome on the way down. By then the manager got a couple more guys in to watch the other end of the hall. They didn't see anyone.”

“What about before he found Caine?”

“He was up in the lighting booth. There was a problem with one of the spots, and he had to find a spare bulb. The lighting guy backed him. The manager didn't leave the booth until after Caine was offstage.”

“So he had opportunity.”

“But no reason. He's not big, either; you've seen him. Caine was near twice his size. He could have fought him off.”

“Ya think?” asked Kroun. “If Caine was taken by surprise . . .”

Derner shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. The manager's been with us for years, and Caine was just another act to him. He cares more about this club's staging than anything else. Even if he had a reason to bump Caine, he'd have done it some other place. He's show people, and they're all crazy that way.”

“Okay,” I said. “He's off the suspect list until we get desperate. No one saw where Evie went?”

“The girls said she went with Caine into his dressing room. She was usually in there during his breaks. They thought they were being on the sly, but everyone knew.”

“So maybe Evie did do it,” said Kroun.

“When we find her we'll ask her,” I said. “And Hoyle. And Ruzzo. And Mitchell.” All I needed was to check hands and arms for scratches. I thought about sharing that detail with Kroun, but held back. Mitchell was still his boy. Under his protection.

“Mitchell?” Derner was surprised and glanced uneasily at Kroun for his reaction, only there was none.

“Just covering the bases,” I added. “Mr. Kroun doesn't mind.”

“It's business,” Kroun put in with a snort. “Biz-iii-nessss.”

I got Derner's attention back. “Have you seen Mitchell tonight?”

“Only earlier. I heard he left before the ruckus.”

“Find out for sure. See to it the guys are looking for all five of them and it's only to
talk.
I want everyone alive and undamaged. Let the boys know when
I
say talk I mean only talk. No sparring sessions, no turkey shoots.”

“What if the ones they're after shoot first?”

He got a look from me.

“Okay-okay!” He left to take care of things. After a minute of thinking about it, I moved to the desk and the phone there. Kroun still had his feet up on the edge.

“Nice shoes,” I said.

“Thanks.”

I dialed Lady Crymsyn's lobby phone.

Wilton answered pretty fast this time. “Yes, Mr. Fleming?”

“How di—ahh, never mind. Everything going okay there?”

“No problems. We had a good night. Good shows, lotta people. You want I should get Mr. Escott?”

“Nah. Just tell him or Bobbi that I won't be back, so they'll have to close. It's business.” They'd both understand. Wilton said he'd pass the message, and I hung up.

“Biz-iii-nessss,” Kroun drawled, then snorted again.

I checked the clock. “It's pretty late. If you're tired . . .”

“Just resting my eyes, kid. There's still one more errand to run tonight.”

Kroun had surprised me about overseeing the transport job. I'd have thought he'd want to stay well clear of a potential disaster if anything went wrong. Instead, he sat in the front seat of Gordy's Caddy with me on the passenger side. We were parked just up the street from Caine's hotel. It was so late that only the deep-night creeps were out—which included us and a select few others.

A gray panel truck sat backed into the alley between the hotel and the next building over. I couldn't see what was going on. That was good. None of us wanted the activity there to be visible to passing cars. I was mostly worried about cops. They would be the only others out at this hour. A sharp one might wonder why laundry was being delivered at this time of the morning.

Strome was one of the laundrymen. He'd turned up at the Nightcrawler with a couple of shut-mouthed goons, coverall uniforms, and the truck. An hour after the club was closed and the last straggling worker left, Strome helped the goons load in an exceptionally heavy laundry basket, then they drove off. Kroun and I followed at a distance.

Things went without a hitch. About five minutes after parking in the alley, Strome and his crew were out again and driving away. They must have used the service elevator instead of the fire escape stairs to get up to the right floor. No matter, so long as they weren't caught. Kroun had supplied the key. Wiped clean, it was to be dropped on the desk in the room, just like he told the clerk earlier.

There would be a hell of a stink over this tomorrow. I felt sorry for the poor maid, who'd likely be the one to find the body. I also hoped the night clerk would be unhelpful about descriptions of Kroun and me. When it came down to it, we had a pretty lousy cover. Two mystery men go up to Caine's room. Caine is found dead there the next day, but not seen to come in by the front entrance. Any halfway-good cop would tear into that pretty quick and backtrack to the Nightcrawler. The best I could expect from our interference was to confuse things, buy some time to find the killer. Then—if the hideous head pain would leave me alone for long enough—I could whammy him or her to marching in to the D.A.'s office to dictate a complete confession. We'd all be off the hook.

Of course, that was the ideal way for this to turn out. I focused on thinking about it, rather than the countless ways it could go wrong.

Kroun had cut the motor for those five minutes. He started the car again, and the heater blasted air against my legs. I winced. “You still cold?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I'd been fighting off shivering again, vowing to buy a heavier coat.

“Go home then. Get some sleep.” He didn't look remotely tired himself.

“I need to see to things.”

“What things? We're finished here. Even those guys are
flying back to their roost.” He gestured ahead, where the taillights of the panel truck made a turn and vanished. “Where's home?”

“Just take me to my club.”

“You live there?”

“I flop in the office sometimes. When it's a late night.”

“That's what we have here, ladies and gentlemen. A late night. Which way?”

As before, I gave directions, and he drove. He seemed to enjoy hauling the big car around corners.

Kroun dropped me at the front of Crymsyn, and said he knew how to get back to his hotel from there.

“Why are your lights still on?” he asked. “Someone in inside?”

“We leave 'em on to scare off burglars.” That was better than trying to explain about Myrna.

He tossed an easy good night at me and drove off, the well-tuned Caddy barely making a sound. I hurried to unlock Crymsyn's front doors.

Kroun was right about this chill not being related to winter. I shook from it, but my teeth weren't chattering.

Shut the door against the cold, cruel night, turned to check the lobby. The overhead lights glowed, as well as the one behind the bar, almost as though Myrna knew I'd be coming in and would need them.

I'd often been here before on my own, and each time noticed the silence. Of course, with my hearing I could pick up on every damn creak and pop, which was ignorable or twanged at my nerves depending on my mood. I was in a foul and fragile frame of mind for now. Something about
Kroun bothered me. The way he'd been acting at some points was worry-making.

The uncomfortable suspicion rolled through my head that Kroun might be immune to my kind of hypnosis. If he was crazy and able to hide it, then just pretended to be under the other night . . . I didn't want to believe it.

Distracted as I had been with the pain, he'd remained dead-eyed and not reacting the whole time—even when I'd vanished. No one could be that good at faking.

Unless he'd met another like me and knew what to do, what to expect. That might explain it. I was one of a rare breed. If Kroun knew about vampires that would account for his changed manner. He might see me as a possible ally to cultivate. Make me a friend, then I cease to be a threat.

Or I was imagining stuff, and this was all a load of crap.

I could just about hear Escott agreeing with me, too. Whatever I was reading from Kroun was certainly colored by what had I'd been through in the last week. There was no reason to trust any of it. I needed to take the advice I'd given to Gordy and get some rest.

Perhaps Kroun was just . . . I guess
relaxed
would be the word. He sure didn't match up with the ill-tempered man I'd first talked to on the phone or the commanding mob boss who could clear a room with just a look. Gordy said Kroun was scary. I wasn't seeing that anymore. Or feeling it. That must be what set off the doubts in my gut. Gordy wouldn't have used that word without good reason.

Capone was known to be as charming as all get out when he was in the mood for it. He was still a killer.

Maybe that was the scare about Kroun. Lull a person with the charm, then bang-bang-you're-dead.

Too late for me.

I went up to my office—lights were on there, too. The ledgers with Bobbi's neat entries were with that night's respectable take in the desk safe, meaning a bank run tomorrow. I put the money bag back, along with the .38 Detective Special I kept there. Sure, I was fairly bulletproof, but if I could head off trouble packing heat of my own, then why not?

Heat . . .

I turned up the radiator and hovered over it, hoping to thaw out.

It occurred to me that maybe I should have more blood inside my shuddering body.

Rotten thought.

I was
not
hungry, but the impulse strongly tugged to bring that living heat inside, to glut on it and drive away the death chill. In my mind I knew it would be futile, but the malicious darkness within urged otherwise.

Phone up a taxi
, it said. There was time to squeeze in a trip to the Stockyards before dawn. Time to drink myself sick again.

I fought it off by telling myself it was too much trouble, would endanger me if I got caught by an early-morning yard worker. I ran through a few dozen other discouraging excuses of varying degrees of likelihood. All served to delay until the craving passed, and depression firmly took over, finally immobilizing me.

It's a sad thing when self-pity becomes a safe and welcome alternative for heading off self-destructive activities.

Left the office, went down to Bobbi's dressing room. I had some spare clothes shoved into the back of the closet
there. No need to move her stuff out now that Jewel was dead.

Damnation.

Stripped and turned on the shower water as hot as possible, risking a scald to just stand with the spray square in my face. With no need to breathe I was there for a long while, the water hammering my eyelids. Lost track of how many times I soaped and scrubbed, soaped and scrubbed. I emptied the club's huge hot-water tank. Finally warm, or at least not cold, my skin was cherry red when I emerged.

Except for the long, thin, white scars.

I decided it was time to look at them. Adelle had said
the face of the enemy.
I should lose my fear of this, lose my hatred of them. On one hand the memory of getting them was as sharp as Bristow's knife, on the other, it was as though it had happened to a different man who had told me about a harrowing, but long-ago experience.

They still didn't seem to be fading. Was their trauma so great that they'd always be with me? How would Bobbi react to them?

If
she saw them. If we ever made love again. Certainly never as long as I was unpredictable, out of control. I didn't dare touch her.

And it wasn't a big help standing here in her empty dressing room in front of an empty mirror.

I dressed quickly, went up to the office where the radio I'd not turned on now played. I didn't recognize the band or their song, must have been new, and sprawled on the sofa and stared at the ceiling and tried not to think of anything at all.

And, God, it
hurt
.

Too much.

This time I foiled the seizure by vanishing quick, before it could peak.

The floating helped. No heavy body to twitch and flop, no pathetic groaning. Instead, through my muffled hearing I picked up the radio's music. The song, whatever it was, helped steady me. I hovered over the couch. Its cushions each had a bag of my home earth sewn inside for those sleep-over days. I didn't know if its proximity would help.

I held formless for a long time and thought about how I'd floated in the stock pond as a kid. This was very much like it, except back then I didn't have to shut out bad memories.

One other sense was left to me in this state: touch, and it was more muffled than my hearing. I could feel objects, get a general idea of something's shape, size, and the space around me. And people. I could touch them, leaving behind a profound cold.

I felt someone in the room with me. Couldn't think who it might be, but wasn't unduly alarmed. Escott and Bobbi had keys. Why would either of them come here at this late hour, though?