"I —" Eichord started laughing before he could get it out.
"I swear, man. If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'."
"Oi. It's been a long day. Let's go get somethin' to eat and get outta here," he said, draining the last of his Light.
"Okay. Where you wanna eat?"
"Colonel Sanders?"
Eichord liked Bud Leech a lot. He was good people. Jack could imagine how much the incident of the lost tail would goad Leech every time he thought about it. He was a good cop and it could have happened to anybody. What Eichord didn't know was that very soon Bud Leech would acquit himself of his great sin.
But Jack's thoughts kept returning to that teaser from the very frightened Mr. Rikla. The "bullshit" story about a chief enforcer waging his own solitary vendetta. His SEE NO EVIL brainstorming and hunch-playing finally had the vestiges of a motive to chew on. One superkiller. What if they were dealing with a mad enforcer on a rampage?
They were on their way to chow and picked up the call on the two-way. Eichord knew what it was before he heard the word Russo in the clear. Multiple-shooting fatality. One male, two female Caucs down. Christ. The house had been under "loose surveillance," which meant that once an hour or so a scout car would slowly roll by, what they call a "boogie man." Wonderful.
Eichord knew he'd find Angelina and her mother dead. All the way out there be thought about the unpunished crimes. The crimes committed every day by land barons, police officials, network executives, union bosses, TV evangelists, petrochemical tycoons, political figureheads, automakers, commercial mavens — all the dirty, mendacious hypocrisy. The bush-wacking, degenerate, back-shooting no-good bullshit that people get away with. It kept his head busy till they got to the crime scene.
The killer had massacred the bodyguard, the maid, and Rosemarie Russo. No sign of forced entry. No sign of Angelina Russo.
A news reporter had phoned the archdiocese to inquire about the state of health of Auxiliary Bishop O'Consky, and while he was on the phone and they were chatting he happened to comment about the terrible thing — how awful for the lovely Russo family — he was a personal friend, and with James and Phillip taken like that, sure 'n' it would be so hard on the rest of the family. And the newsman seemed so unusually solicitous, the man on the other end told him how there was a special service being planned, and one thing led to another, and in the course of the conversation the caller discovered that the bishop had never actually met any of the Russo family, and one thing and another.
So when the bishop himself called from the archdiocese to inquire if he might come 'round tomorrow just to pay his respects to the Russo family, and give them some mementos of the deceased, also to show them some material that had been donated to the Cardinal Glennon College Seminary School, of course he'd be welcomed in and greeted by the grieving survivors, Mother and Daughter Russo.
"Dominus vobiscum," the good bishop whispered, crossing himself in his own special way as he made his way up the steps.
"Et cum spiritu —"
A passing motorist might have observed the bishop himself helping the exhausted and grief-stricken Angelina Russo down the steps and into a waiting vehicle. Ominous vobiscum.
Angelina, now hog-tied, gagged, blindfolded, weeping silently on the floor of the back seat, would be the next visitor to learn of the peculiarities of Spain's house. They traveled down a long, winding gravel road. The house was located on four lonely wooden acres.
Following the road, rather indifferently maintained county gravel, one reaches the end of the county's responsibilities. Winding past a small family cemetery with its overgrown headstones and massive, horrifying ironies, an old graveyard beginning to push up remnants of the long dead. Past the weed-choked graves in dark, deep thickets, where old bones are working their way toward the surface.
The last hundred yards of this dirt road becomes a mudhole in heavy rain. You want to make certain you're never caught out on this road in a rainstorm because should your vehicle bog down and you go to the nearest house for help, your gracious host may prove unpredictable. He might be witty, urbane, even comforting. All the amenities of telephone, warm fire, even a libation, might be offered.
The next few minutes might be uneventful. Simply a pleasant, comforting respite from the elements while you waited for a taxi or a tow truck or a friend. And then again, there could be minutes that would drag like days. Minutes that would plunge you down into an unspeakable world of sudden and exquisite pain. Because your host is two, very different, wildly unpredictable men.
Both of the men who call themselves Spain kill. But the second Spain, the one whose madness has taken him far out over the edge and flung him screaming down into the bloody nightmare of his psychoses, this Spain kills without reason.
These split halves of the killer live in that ordinary-looking brick residence by the side of the lonely, gravel road. Spain the psychotic. The cold-blooded, trained assassin who is killing in a blood lust of revenge. The Spain who plots to take Ciprioni and Dagatina down. The one whose kills are premeditated. Carefully prepared.
Then the other half. Even more dangerous because he kills from some unknown, dark, and motiveless wellspring. Taking human lives at random. Lashing out without cause or fear of consequences, murdering blindly, spurred by some psychotic fountainhead that has burst within his soulless center.
Here, in the house that had heard the tortured screams of Blue Kriegal, the house of Ben Lowenstein's final agonies, in a murder laboratory less than two yards wide, this is where Angelina Russo's blindfold is removed. And the first thing she sees is the face of the smiling madman, and behind him the bloody wall of the charnel in which she now awaits his pleasure. And the split halves of Spain silence her scream in a steely-fingered grip telling her, "Now now now now now. There now," in his soft, measured speech, "there, there now. Calm down. You could wake the dead." And her tears flow and, angry now, she forces the crying to stop and spits in his face. And she knows she is dead and only hopes it will be quick and merciful as she says to herself. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of . . . And she sees him laughing as he carefully wipes her spittle from him and says to her, "You should meet my wife. You and Pat have a lot in common. Perhaps later. Yes, very soon, in fact, I'll let you say hello to Mary Pat. And you and the bitch can talk over your mutual interests. She has a great thirst ... for companionship. And she's dying to meet you." And he chuckles again and asks her, "Do you believe in demons?" And her throat is very dry now and a faintness is coming over her like an ocean wave and he says, "Would you be surprised to learn that I am what you would call in your quaint underworld patois a worker? That I was your society's chief enforcer for many years? That I was the cutting edge of your Capo di Tutti Capi and never in all the contracts went shy? Never. Would you be surprised to know that succubi transfuse me while I sleep? Do you believe in magic?" And he touched her then and she fainted.
"Did you have a nice rest?"
"You crazy face da borco —"
He slapped her viciously and spoke in his soft tones. "You can make this hard, you know. Very hard. And your life will end for you in a soundless and tongueless scarlet sheet of awful, mind-mangling pain. Say hello to me missus."
"Hu — hello." The point of a knife was touching her throat. She imagined a trickle of blood.
"Say, Hello, Mary Pat."