TO WAKE THE DEAD Page 4
George ran into his arms, licking his face, damn near knocking the cigarette out of his mouth. “Yeah, that’s my good boy. Sure you are. Bet you’re hungry, huh?”
The thick, brown tail swished.
“Come on then. See what Barney’s got fer ya.” After propping the museum door open, Barney walked to his car. The dog kept ahead of him, glancing back impatiently, brown eyes twinkling in the meager streetlight.
“Hold your horses, boy.”
Barney unlocked his car. Reaching into the glove compartment, he took out a cellophane bag containing a ball of raw hamburger. “Isn’t much, fella,” he apologized. “You like it, though, don’t you? Sure. You keep coming back for more. A satisfied customer.”
He opened the bag. The hamburger was still partly frozen, but it was soft enough to break up. He twisted off chunks and gave them to George. Some he tossed for the dog to catch, enjoying the quick snap that snatched the pieces out of the air. Others he held in his hand. George took these like a gentleman, lifting them delicately away with his front teeth before swallowing.
“That’s all, pal,” Barney said, smiling.
George looked up, eyes wide, hopeful.
“All she wrote, fella.”
Kneeling, Barney let the dog lick his fingers. “Yep. All gone. You come back tomorrow night, though. I’ll have some more tasty bits and pieces for you.”
He walked back to the open door of the museum, George prancing beside him.
“Gotta say good night, George old pal.”
He patted the brown fur of the dog’s back and pulled the door shut. Then he turned on his flashlight and climbed the stairs. Would have to leave maintenance a note about the bulb down there. A guy could break his back there in the dark. Only took one little slip.
At the first landing, he pushed open the metal door and stepped into the lobby. It was dimly lighted. Switching off the flashlight, he hung it back on his belt, then headed for the front doors. Better be certain they’re still secure before making the tour of the main floor.
As he turned away from them he heard the thump.
Like something wooden falling to the floor. He listened for more sounds, but the museum was silent.
He thought: That’s grave silence, Barney, a silence to be felt.
It had probably been nothing, that thump: a shelf giving way upstairs, or a wire snapping so a piece of that ancient junk fell to the floor. On the other hand…
Damn it, he should have kept an eye on the door while he was out feeding George. Some kids might have sneaked in. Or some bum looking for a place to sleep. Or even a damn cat.
Silently, he walked to the main stairway. As he climbed, he scanned the second-floor balcony through the rods of its railing. The area looked clear.
He wished he had his piece, just in case. Damned museum wouldn’t let him carry a gun; said they didn’t want anybody hurt. “If there’s trouble, Barney, call the cops.” Sure. I call the cops, and they find a pussycat in the Callahan collection. That’d confirm to everyone down at the station that old Barney was a washed-up piece of horseshit all right. Calling out a SWAT team to save Barney from some liddle puddy-cat. Yeah, right.
Hell.
Did seem like the noise came from there. He wondered how he got that impression: just because the Callahan room was closer to the stairway than the others? He stepped to the entrance. Peered in. Dark. Very dark. No light in the room. He could only see vague shapes. Reaching down, he unhooked the cordon and let it hang. His fingers found the switches. Snick. A dozen bulbs, concealed above tinted ceiling panels, filled the room with soft light.
Well, how’d that happen?
The lid of the mummy’s coffin lay on the floor.
Barney, standing motionless, scanned the room: the display case full of jewelry that was a mass of golds and sky blues, the chariot wheel, the dozens of statuettes, the stone jars, the coffin.
No one there.
Unless some intruder was crouched at the far end of the display case? They can see me but I can’t see them. Are they watching me standing there? Hoping that I shrug and turn away? Nothing doing? Time to move on to the next floor?
No. Barney with all those years on the force wasn’t going to be fooled so easily.
Silently, he walked along the case to its end. It concealed nobody.
Okay, so how did the coffin lid get on the floor?
Disturbed by a cat?
Hardly.
Toppled by kids?
Maybe.
Wish I’d got my piece.
Colt .38. Hollow-nose slugs. Pop one of those caps and the perp was going down.
He pushed the coffin lid with his toe. Heavy sucker. Stepping over it, he looked into the coffin. He stared at the mummy, feeling a tightness of nausea in his throat.
Hell… she looked like hell.
Once, when Barney was still a rookie cop, he had helped a fireman drag a charred body from the debris of a burnt apartment house. A crispy critter, the fireman called it.
This gal wasn’t a crispy critter, but she didn’t look any better than one. Looked worse, for that matter. Like someone had let the air out of her tits.
He didn’t like seeing that red hair on her head either. How glossy, even how beautiful it looked, though the rest of her body was such a wreck.
Glancing down her naked body, he saw that she had no pubic hair. Well, damned if he was going to dwell on it. Best put it out of sight.
He crouched. Lifted the coffin lid. Heavy as a door, Christ. But he managed to get it onto the coffin.
Turning away, Barney swept his eyes around the room. Everything appeared fine. He walked to the doorway, turned off the lights; darkness swooped back into the room… and he jumped at the crash of wood behind him.
He whirled around. In the gloom he could make out that the coffin lid was on the floor again.
“Holy shit,” he muttered.
He stared at the lid. Felt sick and chilled… and for some reason his balls seemed to shrivel up into the pit of his stomach. A prickling sensation ran up his forearms as the hairs stood on end. He was feeling for all the world like a hideous spider had dropped from the darkness onto his bare arm and was scurrying up toward his head determined to climb into his mouth. He rubbed his face. If felt cold. It felt numb too, as if his nerve endings were in retreat from that awful darkness.
He wanted out; he wanted out fast. But he was afraid to turn his back on the coffin. Afraid, if he turned away…
It happened.
The thing he dreaded in the pit of bones that was his skeleton.
It happened like deep down he knew it would.
Swift as someone startled from sleep, the mummy sat up.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Hey, A-rab… move your ass.”
Imad sipped his neat gin; didn’t acknowledge the man.
“You hear me? Move your ass. My lady friend wants that stool.”
“Sir,” Imad intoned, “your lady friend is that stool.”
“Yeah, what’s that supposed to mean?”
Imad looked at the girl. She wore tight, faded jeans and a dirty T-shirt. The T-shirt only half there; cut off just below the breasts. The breasts were tiny with points like nails.
Her eyes, with half-shut lids, had a lazy and insolent look.
Imad sipped his drink. “Does my meaning evade you, sir?”
“Huh.”
“Your lady friend is shit… and you’re a fly.”
The fist slammed the side of Imad’s head, knocking him off the bar stool. His back hit the floor. Shouts filled the bar.
The man had him by the wrists, was dragging him across the floor, was pumped up with fury. The girl in jeans hopped alongside him. Imad could see up her shirt. Saw the two small mounds of breast had no jiggle. A shame. He liked a little jiggle. These were made of stone; hardly arousing at all.
The man flung open a side door. “Gimme a hand,” he snapped.
“Sure, Blaze.”
Blaze? A cute n
ame. A name for a horse.
The girl bent down and helped lift Imad. He staggered between them. Raising his head, he saw that they had brought him into a deserted alley. The walk of the building pressed close. Far down the narrow passageway, cars passed on the street. The alley smelled ripe with garbage.
“Now we’ll see who’s a fly on shit, camel-fucker.”
Blaze jerked Imad away from the girl. Shoved him against a garbage can. The ripe, fetid smell leapt into Imad’s sensitive nostrils with every breath.
The girl giggled. “Blaze on him!”
As Blaze gripped the back of his collar, Imad reached deep into the sweating garbage. He found a beer bottle. As Blaze jerked him round he swung the bottle and broke it against Blaze’s head.
The girl went silent. Now the lazy eyes snapped suddenly wide. Wondering what was coming next.
Blaze dropped to his knees, then fell forward, his face hitting the ground with a slap.
Imad turned to the girl.
She laughed once through her nose. One side of her mouth smiled. “Guess you fixed him.” She tried the door of the bar. It was locked.
Softly he spoke. “Come here.”
“You better try nuthin’.”
“Come here.”
She took a hesitant step toward him, then stopped. “Say, mister… you wouldn’t hurt a girl, would you?”
“Come here.”
She glanced up the alley. Laughed quietly. “ ‘Bout time somebody fixed Blaze,” she said, stepping toward him. “He’s such a prick.”
She flinched as Imad touched her cheek.
“You are a beautiful woman,” Imad told her.
“Me? Hell, you called me shit, I’ve got ears.”
He slid a hand under her T-shirt. Her small breasts felt firm, but not like concrete. Not at all. The turgid nipples were pliant under his fingers.
Her smile trembled.
“You are a flower,” Imad murmured. “A lovely, fragile flower.”
“Yeah?” She shook her head.
“Come with me.”
She looked down at Blaze, who was still motionless in the ripe goo that dripped from the trash can. “Just a sec,” she whispered. Crouching, she shoved a hand into a front pocket of Blaze’s jeans. It returned with a pack of bills fastened into a thick, square mat with paper clips.
“Two hundred bucks,” she said. “We’ll split it even-Steven, okay?”
“Is it yours?”
“Is now.”
“Did this man take it from you?”
“Hell, no. It’s what’s left of his pay from Market King.”
“Market King?”
“You know? The grocery store? He’s a checker. That’s how we met.”
“Let Mr. Blaze keep his money,” Imad told her.
“No.”
“I do not countenance theft.”
“Huh?”
“I won’t allow it. Return the money.”
“Aw, shit.”
“At once.”
“Please, mister?”
“At once,” he commanded.
With a frown over her shoulder at Imad, she tucked the pack of bills into Blaze’s pocket.
Imad held out his hand. She went to it. Took it.
“Where we going?” she asked, walking with him down the alley.
“To my home.”
“Yeah? Where’s that?”
“In Greenside.”
“Greenside Estates? In Burlingdale?”
He nodded.
“Sure. I’ll believe that when I see it.”
When they reached his gray Mercedes, she looked at him with suspicion. “This yours?”
“Certainly.” He opened the door for her and she climbed in.
Imad went to the other side to slip into the driver’s seat. As he started the car, the girl said, “You must be one of them Arab oil bastards, huh?”
“Wrong. My parents were Egyptian. I have nothing to do with oil. In addition, my birth was entirely legitimate.”
“Yeah? How you come to live in a ritzy place like Greenside?”
“How come you don’t?”
She laughed. “Shit, who’s got that kind of money?”
“I do.”
“You’re so loaded, how come you were over at a dump like Shannon’s?”
“One meets an interesting set,” he told her.
“Set, huh?” She leaned against him. “How’s mine?”
“Just fine,” he said. Putting an arm behind her, he slipped his hand under her T-shirt. He stroked the smooth skin of her side. Stretching, he reached the breast.
He’d had many women in the months since Callahan’s death. He’d met them at parties, in bars, at a university class in anthropology that he took only for that purpose, at church. Whenever possible, he brought them home for the night. He didn’t like being alone in the house he’d inherited.
Not at all. It held too much pain for him.
His shame at running away.
His confusion at Callahan staying to be killed.
The memories of the terrible morning when he returned to the house. Finding Callahan naked on the bedroom floor, his skin tattered, chunks torn from him and scattered about as if a beast had tried to devour him but found his flesh unsavory and spit out mouthfuls on the carpet.
The hunt for the mummy. Finding it, at last, wedged behind the refrigerator. Glossy red hair hanging down. Eyeless sockets in the face: twin pits of darkness. Shriveled lips. White teeth.
Nailing it into its coffin.
Then the grim business of the dogs. Carrying them, one at a time, upstairs to Callahan’s bedroom. Using their teeth on the grotesque body, tearing the dead flesh until all traces of human teeth were obliterated. The police interrogation. Always back to the gun. Where’s the gun, the .22 Callahan used on the attacking dogs? Imad only shrugged. The cops knew it was all wrong: no gun, not nearly enough blood in the room. They suspected Imad. Guessed he’d had a hand in all this. After all, he would inherit the estate. Without evidence, though, they never arrested him.
Alone in the house, he felt haunted by what had happened there. With a woman he had little trouble keeping the memories away.
This one looked at him, half-grinning, as the iron gate swung open.
“I got it,” she said. “You’re the chauffeur.”
He began, as usual, with a tour of the house. Though the girl was obviously awestruck by the lavishly furnished rooms, she kept grinning wryly, shaking her head, making sarcastic remarks.
Until they reached the master bedroom.
That was when Imad turned her to face him. He pulled the T-shirt over her head, enjoying the way her small breasts moved as she raised her arms. He unfastened the waist of her jeans. The open zipper revealed a deep V of pale skin, curls of pubic hair, no panties. He peeled the jeans down her legs. She kicked off her sandals and stepped out of the jeans.
She moved back, fixing him with a crooked smile. “Find what you’re looking for?” she asked.
“I believe so, yes.”
“Know what to do with it?”
“The bathtub’s that way.” He pointed to a door behind him. “You may have half an hour.”
“What for?”
“To bathe.”
She laughed. “Afraid you’ll get your pretty hands dirty?”
“I do not intent to wallow in the residue left by my predecessors.”
“Huh?” The heavy-lidded stare again. Insolent. Ignorant somehow.
“Take your bath. I’ll shower in the other room and prepare drinks for us. What do you prefer?”
“Rum and Coke.”
Imad grinned. “Certainly.”
Wrapped in a towel, she entered the bedroom. Her wet hair clung to her head; her skin was rosy.
“You look delightful,” Imad told her. He handed her the drink.
“Here’s how,” she said.
They drank. Imad’s neat gin tasted fine. He put down his glass and reached for the girl.
“Not so fast,” she said. “We’ve got a little matter to settle first.”
“Ah.” Imad smiled, hoping to hide his disappointment. “A financial matter, I assume.”
“You’re quick on your feet.”
“Would a hundred dollars be appropriate?”
“Two hundred.”
Imad laughed. “In that case, you’d best get dressed. I’ll call you a cab.” He turned toward the door.
“Hundred-fifty,” she offered.
“I’ll make the call.”
“One-thirty.”
“One hundred… with a bonus if you deserve it.”
“Who decides that?”
“I do, of course.”
“How much bonus?”
“Whatever I think suitable. Agreed?”
“But a hundred for sure?”
“One hundred for sure.”
“Why not?” She plucked a corner of the towel. It dropped away.
Imad stepped close to her. She slipped open his cloth belt. Parted the bathrobe. Her eyes widened. “God Almighty, where’d you get a thing like that?”
“I inherited it from my father.”
She took it in her hands and it grew mightily. “Who was your father, Babe Ruth?” She laughed at her joke. “Bet you’ve hit a lot of homers with this.”
He nodded. “Yes, indeed, I have frequently scored.” He arched his back, trembling with pleasure, as she drew her tongue up the underside of his erect shaft.
CHAPTER SIX
Susan was watching the TV news when her doorbell rang. “Who is it?” she asked.
“Tag.”
She let him in. “So how was your class?”
“I didn’t go.” They sat down together on the couch. “Turned out there’s this girl who finds me irresistible.”
“It’s your aftershave,” Susan said.
“I don’t know what it is, but she showed up in front of my door.”
“Who? I thought you meant me.” Susan felt a knot of anxiety. Here it comes… so long… thanks for everything… stay just good friends, huh?
He shook his head. “Mabel Rudge. Took me a while to get rid of her.”
“Three hours?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes. Seemed like hours, though. Then I had a shower.”
“Together?”
“Geez, no. She was on the other side of a locked door by then. But I didn’t feel much like facing anyone, you know?”