He took out his notebook and flipped it open. ‘“Coop sign pianos” and “gang up you start”. I’m sure it means something.’
‘Sure it does,’ said Walter. ‘“A bird in the hand makes it really difficult to blow your nose.”’
Walter returned to his apartment well after eleven p.m. that evening, and he was exhausted. He hung up his trench coat in the narrow hallway and then went through to the kitchen. This morning’s half-empty coffee mug stood on the draining board by the sink, next to a plate that was covered in yellow semicircles of solidified egg-yolk.
He went directly to the fridge and took out a Miller, which he popped and swallowed straight out of the can, loosening his necktie with one finger. Then he went through to the living room and collapsed backward on to his sagging brown corduroy couch. He switched on the television and it was Shatner’s Raw Nerve, William Shatner interviewing Rush Limbaugh, a repeat, so he switched it over to Nightline, although he kept the sound muted.
He lay there for a while, trying to relax, but grisly images of Maria Fortales’ severed arms kept jumping into mind’s eye, like pictures from a flicker book, with that Mexican bracelet and those silver rings.
He was deeply troubled by the Maria Fortales case. It was like a jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces seemed to belong to two different pictures, or even more, and he had the feeling that even if they managed to complete it, they wouldn’t understand what he was looking at, like Washington Crossing The Delaware all mixed up with American Gothic, with maybe a bit of wallpaper from Whistler’s Mother thrown in. The perpetrators he usually collared fell into one of four predictable categories. They were either creepy psychotic stalkers with halitosis who tortured and killed people to compensate for their own personal inadequacies; or moronic blue-collar bullies with tattooed necks and the temperament of pit-bull terriers; or equally moronic members of the Folks or the Latin Kings or the Waste Five gang who felt it was a matter of honor to stab or shoot anybody who disrespected them; or gray-suited office-workers who had simply cracked under the strain of everyday life — losing their jobs, or losing their children in some heartbreaking custody settlement.
But whoever had taken and dismembered Maria Fortales had much more obscure motives than any of these. He and Charlie hadn’t been able to get any kind of handle on how he had abducted her, let alone why. To begin with, he had been skeptical about Charlie’s intuition that Mago Verde was somehow involved, but in truth he had a nagging suspicion that Charlie maybe on to something. This was no ordinary missing persons case. This was all about nightmares and circuses and conjurors and clowns. And what about Netta? Netta had experienced nightmares that were almost identical, but of course there was no apparent connection between Netta and Maria Fortales. One was a trainee lawyer and the other was a hamburger waitress with screwy eyes, and so far as he knew they had never met. All the same, Walter felt that he had been deliberately given a very forceful nudge. How, or by whom, he couldn’t begin to understand. But just like Charlie, he was beginning to feel that the circus was coming.
He jolted, and opened his eyes. He had been dropping off to sleep.
Walter heaved himself upright. As he did so his cellphone rang. He rummaged in his pocket until he found it, and then he snapped, ‘What?’
‘Sorry, Walter, didn’t mean to disturb you. It’s Charlie.’
‘What’s up, Charlie?’ he asked him. ‘Don’t you ever fucking sleep?’
‘I was lucky… I think I got a rough translation of what that rat-thing was saying to Netta.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘No. I was talking to some of the guys at the station and one of them speaks Spanish. He said that “pianos” sounded like “piernas” which is Spanish for “legs”. So “coop” could be French for “cut” and “sign” could be German for “sein” meaning “yours”. So the whole phrase could be a multilingual mishmash that actually means “cut off your legs”.’
‘Come on, Charlie, that’s stretching it a bit, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe so, if the context was different. But what we have so far is “beware Mago Verde, he will cut off your legs”. And that makes sense, doesn’t it, considering what happened to Maria Fortales—’
‘OK, OK, I’ll go along with it just so far as it goes. What about the other bit? “Gang up your start” or whatever it was.’
‘I was lucky there, too. Detective Smit overheard us, and he still speaks pretty good Dutch. He said that “gang up your start” sounded like “gang op uw staart”, which means “walk on your tail”.’
‘So what this rat-thing was saying to Netta was: “Watch out for Mago Verde because he’s going to cut off your legs, and you’ll be walking on your tail.”’
‘Exactly.’
‘You realize this could be total bullshit, and it doesn’t mean anything like that at all?’
‘It makes sense, Walter. What else could it mean?’
‘You need to remember who said it, Charlie. A creature that looked like a rat, from out of some waitress’ nightmare. It’s not real. It’s Alice In Fucking Wonderland.’
‘A recurring nightmare, Walter. A nightmare she’s been having so often she can actually remember what the rat-creature was saying to her.’
Walter suddenly thought of the popcorn that he had smelled, as he dozed off on the couch, and the off-key music, and the thumping of the circus tents in the wind that blew across the meadow.
‘OK,’ he said, grudgingly. ‘Let’s talk about it in the morning. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we need to go on a clown hunt.’
ELEVEN
Heavenly Twins
Springer said, ‘Two more Night Warriors will be joining you tonight. That will make six in all.
He counted them off on his fingers. ‘Dom Magator, the Armorer; An-Gryferai, the Avenging Claw; Zebenjo’Yyx, the Arrow Storm; you, Xyrena, the Passion Warrior; as well as Jekkalon and Jemexxa, the Lightning Dancers. We’ll be going to see Jekkalon and Jemexxa right now.’
‘Do they already know they’re Night Warriors?’ asked Rhodajane.
Springer shook his head. ‘Not yet. But they very soon will. They’re staying here, in this hotel, on the second floor.’
‘Do you want us to come with you?’ John asked him. He didn’t feel too enthusiastic about it, but at the same time he was Dom Magator, the senior ranking Night Warrior, and he was the only one amongst them who had yet had any experience of combat in the world of dreams. Because of that, he thought that he had some responsibility to give Springer his support — and besides, the more backup you had when you were fighting in somebody else’s nightmare, the better. He didn’t yet know what a Lightning Dancer actually did, but it sounded as if a whole lot of lethal voltage was involved, and that could only be to the Night Warriors’ advantage.
‘Yes, please come along,’ said Springer. ‘I think it would help a great deal if they met you face to face. You know yourself that it isn’t exactly easy, accepting that you’re a Night Warrior.’
‘OK. What are their names?’
‘Jekkalon and Jemexxa. “Jekkalon” means “acrobat” and “Jemexxa” means “twin”.’