Genesis of Evil (19 page)

NEW SHOPPING MALL A KILLER!—CLOSED BY POLICE!

Gino read the byline and first three sentences. Then he yanked a copy from the rack and got halfway through the article before the checkout girl gave the old lady her receipt and asked Gino how he was. He tossed the copy of the tabloid onto the counter along with the chewing gum and dropped a five-dollar bill next to his purchases.

When he climbed into the Mercedes he handed the paper and the chewing gum to Birrell. “You better chew three or four sticks of gum,” he said, “before you read that.”

Birrell, who was in the middle of a nicotine panic, ripped the wrapper from a stick and stuffed it into his mouth before he paid any attention to the tabloid. He stopped chewing long before he stopped reading. Gino, who knew his boss better than he knew his own wife, pulled his head in like a turtle on a racetrack, gritted his teeth and waited for the explosion. When no sound came from the back seat Gino knew it was worse than he had expected. He heard Birrell pick up the phone and punch in some numbers.

Hicks’ receptionist answered on the first ring. “Gulf Coast Properties. How may I help you?”

“Let me talk to Hicks,” Birrell said.

“He’s not in at the moment. May I take a message?”

“This is Mark Birrell. Tell him to call me as soon as he gets back—not five minutes later. Not even one minute later. Understand?”

“Certainly, Mr. Birrell. The moment he returns.”

Birrell hung up on “Certainly.”

Norbert Hicks made it a policy never to be in if someone called for him. It was his theory that if he appeared to be always busy, he would be. Although engrossed in the latest copy of
Newsweek
when the phone rang, something penetrated his concentration. He looked up from the magazine and called out the door.

“Did I hear you say Birrell?” he asked the receptionist.

“Yes, sir. He said to call as soon as you got in. He said not five minutes later. He said…”

“Yeah. I got it.”

Hicks laid the magazine on the desktop, went to the wet bar and made himself a bourbon and branch then returned to his big leather chair and sat down again. He didn’t like the sound of that summons. Birrell never called for him that way. In fact, Birrell never called at all. Hicks glanced at his watch. It was already after 3:00. He decided to put off calling until the next day. He sighed, stood and went to the door.

“Josie, if Birrell calls again, I didn’t get back today at all. You didn’t see me after lunch. Okay?”

“Sure, Mr. Hicks.”

Norbert Hicks left quickly through the back door.

When Norbert Hicks had first approached Mark Birrell concerning backing for the shopping mall, Birrell’s first impulse was to tell Hicks to go scratch his ass. But the more he thought about it, the better he liked the idea. The project would be high profile and wouldn’t hurt his image a bit. Although Birrell still held the reins on prostitution and gambling he had let the drug dealing go to the South Americans after seeing his first overdose victim in person. He didn’t need to deal junk to stay rich, anyway, and he almost hoped Florida would legalize gambling so he could get out of that racket, too. He wasn’t getting any younger. He kept his hand in the rackets primarily to keep the young blood in line. Most of them still knew his reputation from the old days, so he didn’t need to expend a great deal of energy upholding that image, but it didn’t hurt. Besides, these young guys were soft. He hadn’t had to whack anybody for nearly eight years. But he hated losing money needlessly and he would not allow himself to look stupid.

The first thought Birrell had about the problems at the mall was to send Gino and a couple of the guys up to Trinidad. He figured they could fit Hicks with a lead necktie and take him fishing. But age had tempered his compulsive nature, so he waited for word from the realty agent. When Hicks finally called, it was the next day and Birrell had spent too much time thinking about the problem. He was back to considering heavy clothing and one-way boat trips.

“Where the hell have you been?” he snapped when he recognized Hicks’ voice.

“Out of town,” Hicks lied, doing his best to hold his voice steady. “Sorry, I didn’t think it was important.”

“We ain’t asshole buddies, Hicks. Whenever I call you it’s important. You got that?”

Hicks regretted his choice of words immediately. He noisily swallowed a dry lump of nothing that had apparently become lodged halfway down. “Right, Mr. Birrell. Sorry. What can I do for you?”

“Have you seen the latest copy of the
National Query
?”

“Jesus, Mr. Birrell, nobody reads that crap.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I just read it and I’m hardly nobody.”

“Uhm, right. What’s in it?”

“A headline about my mall. Says the fucking thing’s haunted. Says they closed it down.”

Hicks knew about the closing, of course, but he didn’t dream the news would get to Birrell until the problem was solved and the mall was open again. He decided to play dumb. “What? Closed? When did that happen?”

“Don’t feed me a ration of shit, Hicks. You’re right up there on top of the place. What’s going on, anyhow?”

“Well, now that you mention it, some guy and his wife shot the place up a few weeks ago. And the Police Chief’s wife got murdered in one of the stores. Oh, yeah, and some kid French fried his head.”

“He did what?” Birrell yelped.

“Poked his head in the French fryer,” Hicks said with difficulty. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. “And one of the night watchmen died sort of funny, although nobody’s sure how. Come to think of it…”

“Jesus Horatio von Christ! All of this in, how long, seven or eight weeks? Hicks, I want you to find out what the hell is going on and fix it. If that place loses money, I lose money. And it can’t make money if it’s closed. You got that, Hicks?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Birrell. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know anything.”

“You better know something in about two days, or I’m coming up there. And if I come up there it means I’m unhappy. Believe me, Hicks, I’m not good company when I’m unhappy, if you get my drift.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Birrell. Two days. Right away.”

Hicks hung up the receiver, blew out his cheeks, leaned back in his chair and mopped his face with his handkerchief. It came away wet enough to clean the bumpers on his car. After he caught his breath he raised his head and yelled to Josie to get the mayor on the phone. Right now.

Gerhart sat at his desk and watched His Honor the Mayor march back and forth in front of it.

“It’s simply a matter of money,” the mayor said for the third time. “You can’t arbitrarily cut off the income for almost five hundred people. Especially since they just got started. Not to mention the problem we’re going to have with management and stockholders and…” He trailed off as Gerhart held up a hand.

“Manny, when it comes to my job I don’t make arbitrary decisions. I closed the mall in the best interests of the community. I don’t want anybody else to get injured or killed.”

“I don’t either, but can’t you work around the problem while the place is open?”

“That’s what I tried to do. It didn’t work. The mall stays closed, at least until my consultants get here.”

Manning Richards stopped pacing in front of Gerhart’s desk. He spread his feet apart, jammed his fists against his hips and looked steadily at Gerhart with his most intense glare. “It won’t do, Chief. I want you to open that mall, and I want you to do it now.”

Gerhart sighed, swiveled about and looked out the window at the row of stores across the street. “Manny, I can’t. And get off your high horse. You should know by now that you can’t intimidate me.”

Richards leaned forward and placed both hands flat on the desk. “Chief Kable, open the mall. Now. That’s an order. Don’t forget who you work for.”

Gerhart swiveled around and glared back at Manning Richards. “Listen here. I’ll continue to do what I think is best until you fire me. I hate to do this, but let me remind you of who I picked up for purse snatching in that very mall not two months ago. The case file is still open, pending further investigation. If I so desire. How
is
your son doing these days, Manny?”

His Honor straightened up, swallowed and stared at a spot above Gerhart’s head. “Okay, okay. You’ve made your point. I owe you one.” He stuck a finger inside his collar and pulled it away from his neck. “But don’t push me too far.”

“Manny, blow it out your ass,” Gerhart said, raising an eyebrow. “Now get out of here so I can go back to work.”

“What am I going to tell people?” Richards asked.

“Tell ‘em what you told me when you hired me. As long as I’m the chief, I have your full cooperation. I’m the professional cop here.”

His Honor, Manning Richards, Mayor of Trinidad, Florida, grimaced, spun on his heel and left. Gerhart stood and hurried out to meet the spookhunters, who had just called to say they were rolling into town.

Gerhart, Maurice, Claudette and Archie stood in the center of the mall entry and looked about.

“Archie figured out what happened while he was driving down,” Maurice said. “It was because of the adjustment to the meters.”

Archie nodded. “Remember, we had to change the sensitivity because this entity was so powerful? Well, we forgot to set it back. The thing was still here, but I guess we had knocked it into a semi-conscious state, or something similar. The meter was set to pick up a strong signal, not a weak one. If we had set it back it would have picked up the thing. Look at it now.” He held up the device in question. The needle was pegged out of sight. “I set it back the way it was before we came in.”

“So what do we do now?” Gerhart asked.

“I want to find out exactly where the hot spot is. The readings vary depending on where we are in the building, but we never really worked to see if there’s one place that’s the center of the activity. If there is one, it may help to know where it’s located.” Archie picked up another meter and held it out to Gerhart. “Take this one. We’re going to split up, each with a meter, and see where the signal is most powerful. Plus, if we all go in different directions at the same time and the thing moves around, maybe we can track it.”

“How do you work this?” Gerhart asked, holding up the device.

“Turn it on here. Then just keep an eye on the needle and make a note of where you are in the mall when you get the highest reading. Chief, you take the north corridor, Archie the south, Claudette the area behind the food court. I’m going back out to the service areas where they unload the trucks. It shouldn’t take more than fifteen or twenty minutes to cover the whole place. Everybody ready?”

The team split up and moved off as Maurice directed. Gerhart set out at a fast walk, keeping one eye on the meter in his hand. At first the needle didn’t move, but as he went farther along the corridor away from the entry, it began to swing toward the lower end of its range. By the time he reached the anchor store at the north end of the mall the reading was barely in the low teens. Gerhart turned and walked briskly back to way he had come, still watching the needle. It started slowly toward the high end of the scale.

It was difficult for Gerhart to believe everything that Maurice and the crew had told him. Gerhart raised his eyes from the meter for a moment and looked around. Hell, this place was nothing but a lot of steel, concrete, glass and plastic. Demons didn’t exist. Did they? Everything that had happened was nothing more than a weird bunch of coincidences. That’s all they could be.

Gerhart shook his head and glanced down at the meter. It was nearly against the top end of the scale.

As he approached the entryway, the walls suddenly seemed to move away from him as though on oiled rollers until they were no longer visible. He walked through an endless tunnel of green. He could hear monkeys chattering in the banana palms and toucans calling their mates. A big cat, perhaps a tiger, roared in the middle distance. The heat and humidity was oppressive. Gerhart’s shirt was soaked with sweat. It had to be almost a hundred, he thought. He pulled off his cap, wiped his brow and looked up.

The sun was a white-hot ball hanging directly overhead, visible through the branches of the rain forest. In the distance, through the trees, he saw the mountains with their snow-capped peaks. It would be nice, Gerhart thought, to slide down one of those peaks through the snow. Something hissed nearby and he dragged his gaze down from the mountains.

In the center of the path, some five feet directly in front of him, was a king cobra. Its hood was spread and it held its mouth slightly open. Sunlight reflected from the white fangs in its mouth. The serpent swayed slightly from side to side in order to get a definite fix on its prey.

Slowly, gently, Gerhart inched backward away form the snake, easing his pistol from the holster as he moved. The snake slid silently forward, keeping the distance between them the same. Gerhart raised the pistol, steadied it in his left palm. When he had the head of the snake in the sights he slowly squeezed the trigger.

The cobra’s head disappeared in a red mist. As Gerhart let out his breath something roared directly behind him.

He spun around. The tiger he had heard a few moments before was crouched and ready to spring. Gerhart jerked the pistol up and emptied it into the tiger’s face.