“I got all this by toeing the line,” she said when Jersey Jack was finished. “Ever since I started out, that’s the way I’ve done business. You’ve done a good job for me, Jersey Jack.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You came in on that bus out of Newark two years back and told me you wanted to make something of yourself.”
“I did, ma’am. I do.”
Heydan Larroux made sure he could see the cat as she spoke. “I think we’re gonna let it go this time, but I can’t let you go out of here unmarked. I’ve got a business to run and I can’t let anyone think I was hesitant or weak.”
Jersey Jack swallowed hard. “I un-ner-stand.”
“Lift up your shirt. Turn around and hold on to the chair’s arms. Hold tight.”
He was so tense that he was shaking as he bent slightly and grasped the arms of the chair, his eyes squeezed closed. Heydan Larroux brought the cat up and snapped its tails down against Jersey Jack’s back. He gasped in pain. His upper body spasmed and went rigid. She hit him again, and blood sprayed into the air.
“I think that’ll be sufficient.”
Jersey Jack struggled to his feet, biting his lip. His shirt slid back down. His eyes were still bleeding tears.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You won’t let me down again, will you, Jersey Jack?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Leave me.”
He turned and walked gingerly to the door, each step driving shards of pain through his back. He closed the door behind him.
Beyond this office was a private sitting room. None of Heydan’s employees, not even the highest in her chain of command, had ever been inside it. Heydan moved through the door and locked it behind her.
“Well?”
Her question was aimed at a shape sitting cross-legged in the center of a bare wood floor that had also been lifted from the first cathouse where the Larroux legend had been born. The shape belonged to an ancient woman with thin, long wisps of white hair and skin the consistency of dried parchment. The pupils of her eyes were virtually indistinguishable from the whites, looking as though they had been painted over. She had been blind since the time Heydan Larroux had met her and long, long before that.
Some said the Old One had seen enough of the Civil War to be able to write chapter and verse on the individual battles. Legend had it that she had come over on a slave ship from Africa, bringing with her the black arts from her native country. She’d had eyes then, and the legend said that she had traded them for immortality. But the dark forces she had bargained with had fooled her: while she would indeed live forever, she would continue to age and waste away until little more than her bones remained.
The Old One wore dark rags for clothes. They swam over her frail frame, as if they had outlasted the generations as she had. It seemed to Heydan Larroux that this was the very same outfit the Old One had been wearing the day they had first met. Heydan had taken her in off the street where she had been begging, offered her food and shelter. The Old One paid her debt with the only thing of worth she had. That was three years ago, and they had been seldom far apart since.
The Old One was her most trusted adviser. Never did Heydan make a major decision until she had consulted with the Old One. This ragged bag of bones was able to look with blind eyes into a pool of water and direct Heydan’s actions based on what it showed. The Old One had been proven right more times than even Heydan wished to admit. It had been the Old One who had told Larroux of Jersey Jack’s indiscretion.
How could she have known?
Heydan Larroux had stopped asking such questions long ago.
“Well?” Heydan Larroux repeated.
“What do you seek, child?”
“You know what I seek, Old One. Don’t tease me.”
“I cannot see what is not yet before me.”
Heydan tucked the folds of her Giorgio Armani dress beneath her and sat on the floor in front of the Old One. A large bowl of water rested between them.
“Take the stones,” the Old One instructed, and eased her crinkled hand outward.
In it were a half-dozen ordinary stones. Heydan took them.
“Begin, child.”
“Have I rid myself of the evil?”
Heydan Larroux punctuated her question by dropping one of the stones into the bowl.
Plop …
The Old One angled her eyes at the rippling water as if she could see. Her right ear was her good one, and she cocked it toward the water as well.
“It still comes,” the Old One told her. “Not from within. From without.”
“What do you mean?”
“Another stone, child …”
Heydan let the second one fall.
Plop …
“You have been marked. It comes for you.”
“Who?”
Plop …
“Not who.”
“Righting my wrongs didn’t help….”
“It does not approve.”
“What can I do?”
The Old One just looked at her. Heydan let the fourth of her stones drop into the water.
“Nothing. Wherever you go it will find you. Whatever you do it will seek you.”
“When?”
“For each question …”
“Yes. All right.”
Heydan closed her hand on the two remaining rocks. When they were gone, no more answers could be had before the next session. An hour from now perhaps. Or tomorrow. Or next week. With the Old One she never knew.
Plop …
The old woman listened and turned her blank gaze up at Heydan. “Soon, child. Very soon.”
Heydan heard a scream ring out from somewhere on her property. A brief burst of machine-gun fire came next, followed by an even worse wail.
“Now,” the Old One said.
Heydan lunged to her feet and rushed to a small writing desk. She pulled a pearl-handled 9mm pistol from its bottom drawer and charged for the door.
“You can’t fight this with guns,” the Old One advised.
“What am I fighting?”
The last stone splashed water from the bowl on both of them. The Old One flinched.
“What am I fighting!” Heydan demanded.
The Old One’s head raised slowly. “No answer comes to me.”
Heydan rushed through the door back into her office. The invaders were clearly inside the house now. And if the screams were any indication, the guards she had posted based on the Old One’s warnings were falling quickly despite their weapons. The sounds she heard from beyond the heavy door made her shudder. The 9mm pistol felt pitifully worthless in her hand.
The invaders were almost to the office now.
Heydan Larroux charged back into her private chamber and bolted the door behind her.
“Old One, I must—”
She stopped. The Old One was gone, only the bowl of water left in her place.
You can’t fight this….
The lavish Oriental rug that adorned the center of the floor had been pulled back enough to reveal the entrance to the secret tunnel, part of the old Underground Railroad, that ran beneath her property.
Heydan pulled the hatch up to reveal a ladder. A smell of dirt and mustiness flooded her nostrils. Gathering her skirt around her, she held it with one hand while she used the other to grasp the ladder and begin descending. She managed to get the hatch closed again behind her and was almost to the ladder’s bottom when she heard the sound of the door crashing inward in the room above.