Hell's Horizon (33 page)

I removed the gag from Priscilla’s mouth.

“Coward,” she laughed.

“Yes,” I agreed sadly. “I am.”

“I thought you meant business. I should have known better. You’re a waste of flesh. What sort of man are you, that you can’t take it upon yourself to avenge the murdered love of your life?”

“Who said I won’t avenge her?” I tapped the barrel of the gun. “I might not be able to torture, but I can kill.”

“Any fool can kill. You might as well leave me for the chair if that’s all you’re going to do. If you were a real man, you’d torment me the way I tormented Ellen. You should have seen the way she jerked and—”

“I don’t want to hear it. I took the gag off so you could make your peace with your god. I don’t know if an afterlife awaits, if you believe in one or not—”

“I do,” she assured me. “I do.”

“—But if you want to depart this world with as clear a conscience as possible, tell me what happened to Bill, where I can find him, who your sun god’s
agent
is.”

“Al,” she tutted. “You don’t go looking for one with the power of the sun—
he
finds
you
.”

“Even so. Humor me.”

“You won’t like it,” she mocked. “Ignorance is bliss. You’ll hate it if you make me tell.”

“Leave me to worry about that. Who is he?”

She let out a fake sigh. “Lean close and I’ll whisper his name in your ear.”

I expected her to spit or bite my lobe, but she had something far more effective in mind—the truth.

“Here’s a clue. His first name rhymes with
kill
.”

Then she kissed the side of my face, threw her head back and cackled hysterically until I fired a bullet through the middle of her eyes and sent her twisted soul screaming on its way to hell.

I left the gun by the corpse and went to the bathroom to wash. The water was cold, fast, fresh. I ducked my head under the tap to wet my neck and head. I needed the cold shock to the system. Things had been hot in that room. Hot as

(rhymes with
kill
)

hell.

My mind was stuck in low gear, reeling from her final blow. Maybe it had been a vicious final tease. I knew it wasn’t, but I prayed to whatever gods there might be that it

(rhymes with
kill
)

was.

I saw a couple of Priscilla’s vodka bottles lying around. I picked one up and sniffed from its open top. I could have done with a drink. More than ever before. One for the road, to gear me up for the confrontation to come. One wouldn’t hurt. Just one little…

I put it down.

Not yet. Not until this was over and there was nothing left but the drink and the grave. When the last hand was played, I’d toast my damnation and let the alcohol have its wicked way. But not before. Not while there was still a round

(rhymes with
kill
)

to go.

I changed clothes, grabbed the few articles I needed, stepped over the body and exited. There were facts to be checked. Deductions to be drawn. I knew what rhymed with
kill
but I didn’t know how he tied in with Priscilla, Nic and the rest. I wouldn’t face him till I’d pieced at least part of the jigsaw together.

One of the blind
villacs
was outside. His white eyes were fixed to my window and he was chanting in the strange language of theirs, his face a picture of rapture. I didn’t stop to question him. Priests, Incas and sun gods didn’t matter anymore. I got on my bike, turned a blind eye to the blind priest, and set off for Party Central.

It was quieter than it had been the day before. From what I gathered, the search for Capac Raimi had been called off, though nobody knew why. I wasn’t bothered. The Cardinal’s games meant nothing to me any longer.

With the aid of several secretaries, I took to the floors above the fifteenth and waded through the masses of paperwork. I was there all night—the secretaries called for replacements when it became too much for them—and well into the next day, becoming one with the records, picking apart the woven webs of deceit, layer by heartrending layer.

I started with Howard Kett because he was the easiest to connect to Bill. The pair had been colleagues for fifteen years. Though they were never close, it would have been a simple matter for Bill to keep tabs on his superior. Kett himself told me Bill had been with him when he first busted Nick. Bill must have known about them before he moved on Nicola. Known of the brother’s and sister’s penchant for playing tricks. Told Nick to set Kett up, so he could be used to lead me on.

I tried finding further insidious links between Bill and Nick, couldn’t, so moved on to Nic. There was no hard evidence that they’d ever met, but I didn’t need any. I could connect the dots using a little imagination. For starters there was the lie she’d spun about her reasons for joining AA. She had said her brother forced her to seek help. I’d thought nothing of the lie when it surfaced but now I reconsidered. If she’d set out to ensnare me, she must have known I was a member. I’d kept my membership secret from everyone except Ellen and Bill. Someone else could have found out and put her up to it, but I saw no reason to ignore the obvious—Bill sent her.

Allegro Jinks had been arrested several times, but it was only when I checked his files more thoroughly that I noted the name of his last arresting officer—the good Bill Casey. Jinks had been a perpetual offender, yet his record since being paroled (he got out early on the recommendation of Officer Casey) was spotless. Had he seen the light and mended his ways?

Had he, fuck! According to the files, he’d been as active these last few years as ever, but recently he’d had a guardian angel looking out for him, somebody who’d persuaded cops to change statements and drop charges, convinced informers to forget Allegro Jinks, kept things quiet. The records didn’t state the name of this upright citizen, but I had no difficulty supplying it.

Valerie Thomas was a tricky customer. Not much on her. Nobody knew where she came from, what her background was, how old she was, or even if that was her real name. She’d never been arrested or cautioned. She would have been entirely unconnectable to the case, except for a copy of the form she’d filled out years earlier when applying for a job at the Skylight. The two references she listed were a certain Rudi Ziegler and William Casey. There were no copies of the references they’d submitted, but I’m sure they had nothing but praise for the hardworking Miss Thomas.

Apart from their names appearing together on Valerie’s form, it took me a long time to find anything linking Ziegler to Bill. There was nothing in their immediate files to connect them, and it was only when I asked the secretaries to check for mentions of anything Incan that results rose like dead fish after an underwater explosion.

Over the years, there had been many public meetings of those interested in the city’s Incan history, and the names of Bill and Rudi cropped up regularly, usually as audience members, though in a couple of instances Rudi had given lectures. There was no proof that the two had met at the meetings, but I took it for granted that they had.

My inquiries were exhaustive. I even managed to link Bill to Ho Yun Fen, the unfortunate tattooist who created Allegro Jinks’s serpent design, only to run afoul of the original lord of the snakes. He used to return home to mainland China every few years and had brought back small parcels of valuable fireworks on a couple of occasions, for use by his friend Bill Casey.

Pinning down evidence of a partnership between Bill and Priscilla proved damn near impossible but I was determined to do so, not wanting to believe the very worst of my oldest friend until my nose was rubbed in it. Priscilla was the key link in the chain. She introduced Nic to Ziegler and dragged her into the world of sun gods and human sacrifices. Manipulated Valerie and Rudi, acting as the main line of communication between Bill and his team of puppets. I refused to leave Party Central till I’d tied her to him.

It took laborious hours and countless dead ends, but eventually I found it. A photograph in Bill’s file that I’d previously passed over, an innocuous group shot taken at one of his fireworks displays several years earlier. He was pictured with a group of girls in pirate costumes, young actresses who’d performed a short play as part of the show. He had his arm around one of the fresh-faced beauties, a cute waif of a girl, recognizable on closer scrutiny as a younger version of the viperous Priscilla Perdue.

Tucking the photo away, I took a break, shoveled food down and showered. While drying myself, I wondered how I was going to locate Bill and if he was aware that I knew about him. I was sure he did and, after more thought, figured I knew where I’d be able to find him.

Returning to the upper floors of Party Central, I set about cross-referencing the players, connecting Priscilla to Jinks, Nic to Valerie, and so on, just for the hell of it. I’d barely made a start when my cell phone rang. It was Paucar Wami.

“Events are coming to a head,” he told me, sounding unusually agitated. “The secrets of the Ayuamarca file are about to be revealed, and you, lucky boy, are invited to the grand unveiling.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Cardinal is laying his cards on the table and I have a fly on the wall. It promises to be an invigorating experience.”

“I don’t have time for this,” I sighed, then said, “I know who set us up.”

I expected a gasp of surprise and a hundred questions, but all he said was, “Good for you. Now get your ass over here.”

“Don’t you want to know who it is?” I asked, taken aback.

“Tell me later. This is far more important.”

“Not to me.”

“Oh, but it is,” he disagreed. “I was
told
to invite you to the grand unraveling. Can you guess by whom?”

I only needed a second. “The
villacs
?”

“Ten out of ten. Interested now?”

I didn’t want to get sidetracked at this stage of the game, but glancing down at the reams of paperwork, I suddenly lost the heart to dig any further. I asked Wami where he was and learned he was holed up in an empty office on the sixth floor of Party Central. I said I’d be with him presently, asked the secretaries to tidy away the files, checked to make sure I was leaving nothing of any importance behind and headed down for what would prove to be the most surreal few hours of my life.

The room stood next to a doorway by the stairs. Wami was within, perched on a bare desk, half a headset plugged into one ear. I started to speak, only to be shushed, directed to a chair and offered the second earpiece. Fitting it into my left ear I found myself eavesdropping on a conversation between The Cardinal and a man whose voice I didn’t recognize. I listened while he regaled The Cardinal with the story of a strange trip he’d taken and a woman who claimed he had died years before.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to Wami. “Who is this?”

“Capac Raimi. He is an Ayuamarcan. He fled the city when The Cardinal put a death warrant out on him and retreated to the town he seems to have come from. I will tell you more later. For now, listen.”

And I did, as Raimi spun a grave-robbing yarn of sneaking into a cemetery late at night with his “wife” and digging up the coffin in which he had allegedly been laid to rest. Inside he found a corpse, which the woman identified as her late husband. The pair got into an argument, which ended with his caving her head in with a shovel and burying her along with the corpse.

“Nice fellow,” I muttered drily. “Any relation?”

“Shh!” Wami snapped, in no mood for levity.

It was The Cardinal’s turn next, and his tale made Raimi’s sound halfway believable. He started with his past, a fascinating history of a grubby street urchin who mutated into The Cardinal. Then he went off on a fantastical tangent and made far-fetched claims that would have landed any other man an instant spot in the nearest lunatic asylum.

According to him, he had the ability to make people, to actually
create
human beings. As a teenager he’d imagined the face of Leonora Shankar and thought how wonderful it would be if she were real. The next day he wandered into a puppet shop and met a couple of blind priests (I paid special attention to this part) who ran him through a bizarre ceremony that involved taking blood from his hands and daubing a puppet with it. The day after, Leonora Shankar turned up and took him under her wing.

He found he could keep eight or nine of his Ayuamarcans—the name he’d coined—on the go at the same time. His bent finger was a result of his fiddling with the laws of reality—every time he made somebody new, it bent a little more. To unmake someone, he pierced the heart of that person’s puppet (each had a look-alike puppet, which explained the marionettes of the fifteenth floor) and the blind priests summoned a magical fog—our famous green fog—that spread through the city and wiped out people’s memories of the dead.

Raimi didn’t believe him—he could smell bullshit and wasn’t afraid to say so. He asked where the blind priests were. The Cardinal told him they were in the basement of Party Central and the pair descended for a powwow. Something odd happened—I couldn’t tell for sure, but Raimi seemed to have some sort of vision—at the end of which the would-be successor stood as a convert, a firm believer in every crazy lie the madman had fed him.