Chapter Two
"Will there be anything else, sir?"
Palmer stared blankly at the bellhop for a double heartbeat before answering. "Uh, no. No, I don't think so." He stuffed a couple of dollars into an outstretched white glove. The bellboy grimaced as if Palmer had just hacked a gob into his hand.
Well, he wasn't going to let some college student's wounded sense of self-worth sour the pleasure of having his very own suite at the Hilton.
Palmer shrugged out of his jacket and plopped down on the couch in the sitting room. He rang up room service and ordered a New York Strip and a couple bottles of imported beer, all courtesy of the good Dr. Pangloss. He wasn't sure what his employer was a doctor of, but it sure paid well.
While he waited on his food to arrive, Palmer thumbed through notes scribbled during his time as Pangloss's "houseguest."
1. is sonja blue really pangloss's grand-d?
2. is s.b. into illicit drugs? prostitution?
3. is pangloss?
4. what the hell am I doing here?
So far he'd failed to turn up answers to any of those questions, although placing a jet flight between himself and his employer made #4 seem less pressing than when he first wrote it.
He glanced at the stiff, cream-colored envelope jutting out of the breast pocket of his jacket. No doubt the letter would give him some answers, but that wasn't how the game was played. At least not when he was on the field. Still, for a man supposedly desperate to locate his grandchild, Pangloss had been stingy with personal information concerning the girl. After some questioning, Palmer had finally learned that she might be traced through a boyfriend, if that was the proper word to use, named Geoffrey Chastain, better known as "Chaz."
From what little Palmer had pieced together, this Chastain was an expatriate Brit with a taste for hard drugs and unsavory sex partners. Your basic lowlife hustler. Palmer scrounged a pencil from his hip pocket and added to his notes.
5. is chastain s.b.'s lover? connection/pimp?
6. pangloss sure s.b. no longer in area, but thinks it good place to start
Palmer looked at the photograph of the elusive Chaz that Pangloss presented him with before he left the estate. Odd that Pangloss should have a picture of the bad-ass boyfriend but not a single snapshot of his own granddaughter. It looked like a passport photo, either that or a mug shot. The man glowering at him from the other side of the camera was in his late twenties, his hair combed in a rebellious rooster tail. There was still a hint of masculine beauty in the shape of his cheekbones and the tilt of his eyes, but what physical attractiveness Geoffrey Chastain had once possessed had been eaten away by his addictions. The drug hunger was obvious even in a photo. Still, it was easy to see how a young, impressionable girl might become fascinated with such a sleazeball.
Room service brought him his steak and beer. He always prepared himself for a night on the prowl by eating his fill of red meat. It put him in the proper mood for the hunt.
"You know this guy? "
It was roughly the four hundredth and fifty-seventh time Palmer had asked the question that night. His feet were tired and his bladder ached from too many beers.
The man with the anarchy symbol chalked across the back of his black raincoat glanced first at Palmer then the snapshot. He took a swig from his beer and shook his head.
"Sorry. Can't help ya."
A slightly built youth seated on the opposite side of the man in the anarchist coat craned his head over his companion's shoulder, looking mildly curious.
"How about you? You know this guy?"
"He don't know him, either," snapped the man in the raincoat. "He don't know nobody I don't know, do ya?" This he addressed to the boy seated next to him. It didn't sound like a question.
The boy cringed, smiling nervously at this friend. "Course not, Nick. I don't know nobody."
"Fuckin' A."
Palmer cursed under his breath and headed for the men's room. This wasn't the first time he'd run into such aggressive ignorance. He'd come close to getting somewhere at least twice, only to have the parties in question suddenly clam up on him.
As he relieved himself at the urinal, he heard the rest room door open and close behind him.
"Hey, mister?"
Palmer glimpsed enough out of the corner of his eye to recognize Nick's boyfriend.
"What is it, kid?"
"I know that guy. The one in the picture."
"Do you now?"
"Yeah. Chaz. He's from England."
"How come your friend didn't want you talking to me?"
"Nick? Oh, he's just jealous, that's all." The boy giggled. "He and Chaz crossed swords a couple of times, so to speak. Chaz muscled in on a couple of his boyfriends."
Palmer shook off and made himself presentable before turning to face the boy. The kid couldn't be more than seventeen, his strawberry blonde hair cut short in front with a long, braided rat-tail at the base of his neck. He wore a pair of designer jeans and a Psychic TV T-shirt.
"What's your name, kid?"
"Terry."
"Look, Terry, can you tell me where I could possibly find this Chaz? I'll make it worth your while..." He produced a twenty from his pocket, holding it tight between his knuckles. It was obvious the boy was interested, but his eyes flickered away whenever Palmer tried to look him in the face. "Is this Chaz a friend of yours? Are you afraid you'll get him in trouble?"
Terry snorted. "Chaz? A friend? I always thought he was a creep! Always looking at me like he knew what was going on inside my head. Besides, no one's seen him in almost a year. Not since what happened to the Blue Monkeys."
"The Blue Monkeys?"
"Yeah. This gang Chaz used to hang with. Bunch of real hard-asses. Used to dye their hair blue. He was friends with 'em... but they only hung with him on account of the blow he always had."
"Where can I find these Blue Monkeys?" Palmer handed Terry the folded bill.
"You can't."
"What do you mean?"
"They're dead."
"Dead?"
"Well, not all of them, but enough got killed off to deep-six the gang."
"What happened?"
"No one's real sure. It got hushed up pretty quick. But there was this gang war, or something, in the back of some bar. Those that weren't killed got crippled up bad. I... wait a minute. Jimmy!"
"Jimmy?"
"That was the kid Chaz was seeing. He was the only one that didn't get trashed."
"Where can I find this Jimmy?"
Terry grinned and stuck out his hand, looking like a kid asking his father for this week's allowance. "That's worth more'n a twenty, dude."
Palmer grumbled and produced another bill. Terry's hands moved so fast he couldn't tell which pocket the money disappeared into.
"His name's Jimmy Eichorn. He lives with his mom somewhere over on Thirty-Ninth."
"You're learning quick, kid."
Terry shrugged his narrow shoulders as he turned to leave. "Nick's stingy when it comes to buying nice things."
"Mrs. Eichorn?"
The woman peering at him from the other side of the burglar chain scowled, as if deciding whether she should answer.
"Mrs. Eichorn, my name is Palmer..."
"Whatcha want? You from th' Welfare Department? If so, it's too late for a business visit!"
It had taken him a couple of hours to find the right house. Terry's instructions had been off by a few blocks. It was long past Palmer's supper time and his scar was giving him trouble. He'd been forced to climb five narrow, badly lit flights of stairs, the smell of human piss and old garbage pungent enough to make his gorge hitch. He felt his temper start to flare.
"Mrs. Eichorn, do I look like a fuckin' caseworker?"
Where Mrs. Eichorn was concerned, there was no such thing as a rhetorical question. He could feel her taking in his shaved temples and narrow goatee, lingering on his wavy, gray-shot hair, combed straight up; a holdover from the days, more than a decade gone, when he used to slam dance down at Club Lies.
"I'd like to talk to Jimmy, Mrs. Eichorn. Is he in?"
Mrs. Eichorn blinked. "Yeah, he's here. He's always here. Whatcha want with my Jimmy?"
Palmer slid a crisp twenty through the crack in the door. "It's important, ma'am."
Jimmy's mother hesitated then closed the door, taking the twenty with her. A second later the door reopened, allowing Palmer a better view of both her and the apartment.
Mrs. Eichorn was an unsmiling woman with pale, washed-out hair that had once been blonde. Her skin was pasty and her eyes so light a shade of blue they seemed to lack any color at all. Deep lines creased the corners of her mouth. The only color evident on her face was a purplish-red lipstick smeared on her mouth. She wore a much-washed yellow waitress's uniform with the name "Alice" stitched across the bosom in red thread. The few items of furniture in the living room looked as worn and overused as their owner.
"Whatcha want with my Jimmy?" She pulled a filtered cigarette from her apron pocket and clamped it between purple-red lips. Palmer wrinkled his nose in distaste. Funny how other people's smoking got on his nerves. "You better hurry it up, whatever it is. I gotta leave for work in a few minutes."
"Mrs. Eichorn, was your son a member of a gang called the Blue Monkeys?"
The look she gave him was hard enough to cut glass. "You a cop?"
"No, ma'am, I'm a private investigator. I'm not familiar with what happened. I heard there was a gang war - "
Mrs. Eichorn snorted smoke from her nostrils. "You believe that shit?" She gave him another look, this one not quite as hard as the last. "You're not from around here, are ya? Shoulda figured when you asked if Jimmy was in. Not that it matters. People forget things, get the stories wrong, make up stuff because they like the way it sounds. You know how it is."
"There wasn't a fight?"
"Massacre is a better word for it. I'm just thankful my boy was spared, that's all. The rest of those sleazebags you could've flushed and no one would've cared. But Jimmy... he was new to the gang. They hadn't had time to mess him up yet, least not much." The creases at the corners of her mouth deepened.
"Can I talk to him?"
"You can try."
She led him down a narrow, unlit hall and opened a door with a Metallica poster tacked to it. It was dark in the small room, although enough illumination spilled through the window facing the street to allow Palmer a quick glimpse of a narrow child's bed in one corner and heavy metal posters plastered on the cracked and peeling walls.
Jimmy Eichorn sat in a wheelchair, staring at the world beyond the windowsill.
"I left the room the way he had it." Mrs. Eichorn's voice dropped into a lower, softer register, as if she was in church. "I think it makes him happy." She went and stood beside her son's wheelchair, one hand absently stroking the back of his head. "The blue's almost grown out. I hated it when he dyed it. He always had such pretty hair, don't you think so?"
Jimmy's hair was the same mousy noncolor as his mother's. The boy slumped in the wheelchair looked to be sixteen years old, although his slack features made him seem even younger. He was dressed in a pair of pajamas, a blanket draped over his lap. Jimmy ignored the adults standing to either side of him, his attention fixed on the street below.
"Jimmy? Jimmy, look at me, sweetheart. This nice man wants to ask you a question."
Jimmy took his eyes away from the lamppost across the street and tilted his head in order to stare at his mother. After a couple of seconds his lips pulled into a smile, drool wetting his chin. He reached up and clasped his mother's hand. Mrs. Eichorn smiled indulgently and brushed the hair out of his eyes.
"Jimmy?"
The boy's eyes flickered toward the window then shifted to Palmer. They were the eyes of a preschooler, wide and clear and uncertain of strangers.
"Jimmy, I need your help."
"Go ahead, darling. It's all right." Mrs. Eichorn squeezed Jimmy's hand.
Palmer pulled the photo of Chaz out of his jacket and held it up so the boy could see it. "Do you know where I can find this man, Jimmy? Do you know where Chaz is?"
A muscle in Jimmy's face jerked. Palmer couldn't tell if the boy had shook his head "no" or suffered a muscle spasm. Before he could press the issue, Jimmy gave a weird, high-pitched squeal and began to twitch.
Palmer stepped back in disgust as the boy voided his bowels. Jimmy's eyes rolled in their sockets and then glazed, staring at some unknown fixed point.
"Get out! Go on, get out!" snapped Mrs. Eichorn.
"But - "
"Just get out! I can't deal with him with you in the room!"
Jimmy clawed at his own throat, as if trying to pull an invisible attacker from his windpipe. Palmer glimpsed what looked like puncture marks in the shadow of the boy's chin. He stood awkwardly in the Eichorn's drab front room, listening to the mother soothe her imbecile son. Palmer looked at his hands and noticed they were shaking.
"He was such a happy baby."
Mrs. Eichorn stood slumped against the doorway, lighting another cigarette. Her hands were trembling as well.
"He used to laugh like nobody's business," she continued. "His daddy thought the world of him, because of that laugh. It made him stay around a couple of years longer than he would have if Jimmy had cried like most babies, I guess. When he ran off in '79, Jimmy was just five. Things changed. I... I was just fifteen when Jimmy was born. What did I know about bringing a kid up by myself?" She looked at the cigarette in her hand then glanced at Palmer, as if daring him to say otherwise. He suddenly realized this hopeless, washed-out woman was seven years his junior.
"It's not my fault he got like this... someone did that to him." Her voice tightened and she looked away. "He wouldn't be like that if he hadn't been with the gang that night. I asked him not to go - to break it off. But he wouldn't do it. He said being a Blue Monkey was important to him. More important than anything. You know what they made him do to be a part of their goddamn special gang? They made him suck their... their things! I couldn't believe he still wanted to have anything to do with them after what they made him do, but he was proud of being a Blue Monkey." She shook her head in disgust. "I told him that night I didn't want him hanging around that bar with those scum. I told him that if he went there he better not come home. He cursed me out! His own mama! And he went anyway." Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, but her cheeks remained dry. "I guess we're both paying for our sins, huh?"
Palmer couldn't bring himself to look at her. "Mrs. Eichorn... I'm sorry, I didn't realize my questioning your son would... upset him."
She shrugged. "No way you could know. It's funny what sets him off sometimes. But you didn't have to ask him, though. I could have told you where to find Chaz."
"You know Chaz?"
"Yeah, I knew him. He's dead. Died the same night the Blue Monkeys got into trouble. Jimmy brought him here once or twice. I figured him for a dealer. I told Jimmy I didn't like the kind of trash he hung out with, so he stopped bringing Chaz over. Rumor had it Chaz got himself bumped off."
"You mean it was a hit?"
"That's what it looked like, at least. I wouldn't have been surprised. Chaz was the kind of jerk who'd cross the wrong people just for kicks."
"Mrs. Eichorn, this is real important: Did Jimmy ever mention if Chaz had a girlfriend?"
"Not that I recall. But, then, Jimmy and I didn't exactly talk a lot by then."
"I don't want to delay you anymore than I already have, Mrs. Eichorn. I appreciate everything you've been able to tell me." Palmer slipped a couple of fifty-dollar bills into her apron pocket as he left.
"You know something?" she said, opening the door for him. "It's funny, in a way, but I can't bring myself to really hate whoever it was that did those things. In a way, I got what I wanted. I got my little boy back. Don't you think that's funny?"
Palmer simply nodded and hurried away. On the third landing he paused long enough to sneak a pain pill. By the time he reached the street, his ribs no longer felt like they were being cracked open with a lobster mallet. He did not look up to see if Jimmy was watching over him.
That night Palmer dreamed he was in a wheelchair, being pushed down a long, poorly lit corridor. The wheelchair needed to be oiled and squeaked whenever it moved. Everything seemed so vivid, so real, Palmer thought he was back in the prison infirmary. Then he remembered he'd been released. Confused, he twisted around to find out who was propelling the wheelchair.
Loli smiled back at him, looking both sexy and menacing in her starched white nurse's uniform. Palmer was acutely aware of the erection tenting his hospital johnny.
"Did you miss me, darling?" asked Loli, her lips painted the color of fresh blood.
"Yes. Very much." He hated to admit it, but he did miss her, no matter what she'd done to him. It made him feel stupid, powerless and degraded, but his dick was hard enough to cut diamonds.
"I missed you, too. But I won't this time!"
Loli halted the wheelchair at the top of a flight of stairs that seemed to stretch, Escher-like, into another dimension. Palmer's head began to swim. He tried to stand up, but his arms and legs were strapped to the wheelchair.
He twisted his head around, hoping to catch another glimpse of Loli. Instead, he found himself staring down the bore of his gun. He knew he was dreaming and knew what would happen next. He also remembered an old wives' tale - or was it a disputed scientific fact? - that if you dreamed you were killed, you'd die in your sleep. Surely even an imaginary Loli couldn't miss at this range.
Palmer threw himself headfirst down the warped, endlessly replicating stairwell. Miraculously, the wheelchair remained upright as he caromed off gothic arches and past half-glimpsed crumbling facades. He could hear Loli shrieking obscenities from the top of the stair, along with the sound of receding gunfire. He wasn't sure where he was going, but at least it was away from Loli, with her bleeding mouth and punishing .38.
For a brief, giddy moment, Palmer knew what it was like to be free. Then he saw the massive brick wall blocking his way. And in front of the wall, standing in a policeman's firing stance, both hands wrapped around the handle of the gun, was Loli.
"Fooled you!"
When he woke up, he realized he'd wet the bed.
Palmer looked at the rows upon rows of cold marble and granite, then back at the map the caretaker had given him at the gate. According to what information there was, Geoffrey Chastain, better known as Chaz, was buried in Sector E-7. Most of the headstones in the area were newer models, some even looked machine made. The names and dates were still sharply defined and easy to read. It would be several years before the wind and the rain rendered the inscriptions as vague as those found on the older stones.
It was early February and frost crunched under his heels as he made his way among the stones. Palmer was cold despite his anorak, and his mood had not been helped by the nightmare that had jerked him awake, sweating and shivering, at four that morning. He'd been unable - unwilling? - to go back to sleep, his scar throbbing like a bad cigarette burn.
He rechecked what little information he'd been able to get from the cemetery caretaker's files as he trudged along. Chastain's plot had been paid for anonymously - in cash. The only point of interest was that the deceased had originally been interred in Potter's Field, then dug up and replanted in a proper grave, complete with headstone, a month later. Palmer was certain Sonja Blue was behind Chaz's change of address. But why? Was it out of guilt? Sense of duty? Love?
He literally stumbled across Chaz's grave by accident. His feet had become entangled in the faded remains of a funeral wreath, and to keep from falling, he had leaned against a nearby tombstone. When he'd finally freed himself, he saw he was resting his butt on Geoffrey Chastain's monument.
Palmer stepped back and stared at the nondescript granite marker: GEOFFREY ALAN CHASTAIN 1961-1989. There was no other information, sentiment or religious symbol to be found on its chill face, except for a stonemason's mark at the bottom.
Palmer cursed himself, the self-deprecations rising from his lips in puffs of mist. What had he expected to find out here in the first place? The missing heiress's forwarding address chiseled into her dead lover's tombstone?
Then he saw the flowers. At first he thought they were part of the same wreath he'd originally tripped over; then he realized they were wrapped differently. He bent and lifted the bouquet from its resting place atop Chaz's grave. What he thought were long-dead flowers were relatively fresh roses the color of midnight. Palmer handled the bouquet gingerly, since the bundled stems were full of thorns.
Black roses. With the florist's name and telephone number stenciled onto the ribbon binding them together. Palmer smiled as he pulled the ribbon free, wincing as a thorn bit into the meat of his thumb.
He stared at the bead of blood - as shiny and red as a freshly polished ruby - for a second before bringing it to his mouth. As he sucked, he glanced up and saw a gaunt young man dressed in an unseasonably light jacket watching him from a few yards away, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. Palmer caught the odor of burning clove on the crisp morning breeze. When Palmer looked again, the man was gone, although the scent of his French cigarette still hung in the air.
Palmer was sure he'd seen the stranger's face before. Was it possible he was being followed? Pocketing the florist's ribbon, he turned and hurried back the way he'd come. He wondered where the man could have gone so quickly. He also wondered how the stranger could stand hanging around a graveyard on an overcast February morning in nothing warmer than a silk jacket. He stopped and turned to look back in the direction of Chaz's grave. He reached into his anorak and pulled out the snapshot that Pangloss had given him.
Impossible. He could feel the sweat trickling down his back. His scar tightened. It was the lack of sleep doing it to him. And the dreams. Even though it was a perfectly rational explanation, it didn't make him feel any better. He had to do something about the dreams before they drove him completely out of his mind. But not now. It would have to wait until after the case was out of the way.
"Yeah, that's ours, awright," said the florist, studying the length of faded yellow ribbon Palmer handed him.
"I was wondering if you might be able to help me find out who placed the order."
"Look, fella, we sell a lot of flowers..."
"Black roses?"
The florist pulled his bifocals down a fraction of an inch and squinted at Palmer. "Black roses, you say?"
Palmer nodded. He was on the trail, he knew it. He could feel the familiar, almost electrical, thrill of connections being made, invisible machinery dropping into gear. "A dozen of them. Delivered to the Rolling LawnsCemetery."
The florist moved to a filing cabinet. "Deceased's name?"
"Chastain."
The florist grunted and pulled a manila folder from one of the drawers. Yeah, I remember filling that order. Customers usually don't order roses for grave decorations. Mother's Day, St. Valentine's Day, anniversaries, birthdays, sure. And black roses, at that - specially this time of year."
"I take it they're expensive."
"You could say that." He tapped the order form. "Says here it was a phone order. Long distance. Paid for it with a credit card."
"Could I see?"
"I don't know - My partner wouldn't like me letting strangers look at our files."
"Uh, I understand. Say, how much for one of those thingies over there?" He pointed at a large floral display shaped like a horseshoe, GOOD LUCK spelled along its rim in white carnations.
"That runs around seventy-five, a hundred bucks, depending on where you want it delivered."
"I'll take one." He peeled five twenties from the roll in his pocket.
"The order was placed a week ago and was paid for by Indigo Imports of New Orleans, sir."
Palmer let himself grin. He could feel it coming together. For the first time in his professional life he knew he was on a real case, like the ones Sam Spade and the Continental Op solved, the kind that cloaked his profession in glamorous clouds of cigarette smoke, whiskey fumes and gunpowder. The years spent staking out hot-sheets joints with a Polaroid in his lap seemed to melt away, reviving the romanticism that he'd thought had died long ago.
As he headed for the shop door, the florist called after him. "Sir? Sir! Where and when would you like the display delivered?"
"Send it to the same place the roses were delivered to. There's no hurry."
Carnival
During a carnival men put on masks over their masks.
- Xavier Forneret