The 5th Witch Page 3

  “No, no, you should answer me,” said Vasili Krylov. “I ask you if you like Tchaikovsky.”

  “I like any kind of music,” said Russ Pepper uncertainly.

  “Of course this is a pity,” Vasili Krylov told him. “Miska… show this gentleman what happens to people who insult the name of Russia’s greatest composer.”

  The woman in the yellow dress covered her face with her hands, as she had done before in the reception area. There was no mirror in this office, but Russ Pepper was clearly reflected in the light-sensitive glass of the windows. As he stood there, a reflected image of one of the men walked around the table toward him, although the real man stayed where he was with his arms folded.

  “Any way I can help you, Mr. Krylov?” asked Morton Kravitz. “You obviously came here with something on your mind.”

  Vasili Krylov raised one finger to indicate that he would answer in his own time. As he did so, the reflected man took hold of Russ Pepper’s right wrist and forced his arm sharply upward.

  Russ Pepper stared at his own arm in shock. “What the hell?”

  He turned around in bewilderment, his arm still upraised. “Somebody grabbed me! Who the hell grabbed me?”

  In his hand he was holding a gold mechanical pencil. But he suddenly gripped it tighter, as if somebody were squeezing his fingers together so that he couldn’t let go of it.

  He began to move the pencil slowly toward his right ear, although his arm was shuddering with effort, and he bent his head to the left as if he were desperately trying to keep away from it.

  “Russ!” shouted Morton Kravitz, getting up from his chair. “Russ, what the hell are you doing?”

  He turned to Vasili Krylov. “What is this? Hypnotism? Put a stop to it, now!”

  He tried to take hold of Russ Pepper’s arm, but the reflected man in the window pushed him away so that he stumbled backward and fell against his chair.

  “Oh my God,” gasped Grace Trilling. “Oh my God, what’s happening?”

  Russ Pepper grunted like a hog in his efforts to stop himself. There was a moment of high tension when his fist was trembling, only two inches away from the side of his head. But then he stabbed the mechanical pencil deep into his ear, and a narrow jet of blood spurted out all over the collar of his lemon-yellow shirt.

  He gave a high-pitched eeeeeee! of pain and dropped to his knees on the carpet, wrestling to pull the pencil out. For a long count of five, the reflected man in the window wouldn’t let him, until the side of his neck was smothered in blood, but at last he allowed Pepper to take his fist away from the side of his head.

  “Russ!” said Morton Kravitz.

  Russ Pepper fell sideways, kicking his loafers and shrieking, “No! No! For Christ’s sake! No!”

  But even while he was struggling and shouting, he bent his arm around and started jabbing at his left ear. He missed two or three times, but then, with a crunch of cartilage, he plunged the mechanical pencil straight into his ear canal.

  Again, the reflected man in the window forced him to keep the pencil in his ear for five or six seconds. At length, however, the reflected man stood and let Pepper slowly extract it. It came out with a bloody string of connective tissue attached and a flap of skin from his eardrum.

  Russ Pepper lay on his side, his breathing harsh, his florid face blotchy with shock. Grace Trilling knelt beside him and loosened his necktie, while Dominic Serrantino passed her a clean white handkerchief.

  Morton Kravitz looked at Vasili Krylov, and he was shaking with anger. “I don’t know how you made him do that, but that was the most sadistic act that I have ever witnessed in my entire life. This man is my friend, as well as my associate. Do you seriously think that I would consider doing any kind of business with you after that?”

  “I think that you would be a fool not to, Mr. Kravitz. That was only a small demonstration of what I can do.”

  Vasili Krylov smiled down at Grace Trilling as she dabbed the blood from Russ Pepper’s ears. “You should see what I can do with women, Mr. Kravitz. You think you have ever heard a woman cry? Believe me, I can make a woman cry.”

  “You creep,” said Dominic Serrantino. “I’m going to see you locked up for this for the rest of your miserable life.”

  “Miserable? My life is not miserable. My life is very joyful. It will soon be even happier, when you and I make some arrangements together.”

  “Do you have any objection if I call the paramedics?” asked Morton Kravitz.

  “You’re asking his permission?” said Grace Trilling. There was blood spatter on her cream-colored skirt and on her knee.

  “I said before you call nobody.”

  “He could die.”

  “Of course, yes, he could die. But first of all, you and me, we have to talk about business.”

  “What the hell do you want from me?”

  Vasili Krylov turned and smiled at the woman in the balloon-shaped yellow dress. She had perfect bone structure, with high Slavic cheekbones and a squarish jaw, and if she hadn’t been so white skinned and her eyes so colorless and cold, she could have been beautiful. But she had a frigidity about her that made Morton Kravitz feel deeply unsettled, almost as if her icy hands were sliding all over his body under his clothes.

  Vasili Krylov said, “You are the legal representative for Coastal Productions, yes?”

  “That’s right. What about it?”

  “Coastal Productions make big new movie with David Link, yes? Columbus discovers America, only America is just like it is today—buildings, automobiles, McDonald’s.”

  Morton Kravitz looked down at Russ Pepper, who was holding his ears and weeping in pain. “Hold on, Russ. Hold on. We’ll get you some help as soon as we can.”

  Grace Trilling said caustically, “I don’t think he can hear you, Mort. He’s pierced both of his eardrums.”

  Morton Kravitz turned back to Vasili Krylov. “The picture’s called The New New World. What of it?”

  “Twenty-five percent of gross profits.” Vasili Krylov smiled.

  “What?”

  “For Coastal Productions, seventy-five percent. For Vasili Krylov, only twenty-five percent. I am not a greedy man.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What on God’s earth possesses you to think that Coastal will give you twenty-five percent of its gross?”

  “Easy. Either they agree, or David Link will stub out his cigarette on his own eyeballs.”

  Chapter Four

  Dan could see thick gray smoke billowing up from seven blocks away. He pulled his grimy black Pontiac Torrent to the curb behind the fire chief’s truck and climbed out. A pink-faced female officer approached him with her hand raised and called out, “You can’t park there, sir! Move on, please!”

  He showed her his badge.

  “Oh,” she said. “Detective Fisher. I’ve heard of you.”

  “Nothing good, I hope.”

  She blushed even pinker, and lifted the police tape for him to duck underneath. Santa Monica Boulevard was crowded with fire trucks, squad cars, ambulances, and TV vans. A police helicopter was clattering overhead, so low that Dan could hardly hear himself think.

  Ernie Munoz was waiting for him beside the charred wreckage of the Crown Victoria. The blackened bodies of the three Narcotics detectives were still sitting inside it, with Cusack’s head protruding from the passenger’s window. Their arms were held up like monkeys begging for a treat, and they were grinning from the heat.

  “Christ,” said Dan. “What the hell went down here?”

  Ernie patted his shiny bald head, then the folds of fat around his neck with his bunched-up handkerchief. “So far,” he said, “we don’t have the least idea.” Ernie was short and big-bellied, with bulging eyes and a heavy black mustache, and a liking for glossy green mohair suits. Dan always called him El Gordo, the Fat Man.

  “Like I told you on the phone, the eyewitnesses are pretty confused. But they all agr
ee on two things. One, there was a woman standing close to the car, waving. Two, the guys appeared to catch fire first, before the vehicle.”

  “So what are you trying to say? This was, like, spontaneous human combustion?”

  “Well, no,” said Ernie. “But nobody saw a firebomb or a can of gasoline or nothing like that. Although one witness said that the woman was holding something that was smoking.”

  “So where is this woman? Have you talked to her?”

  “She’s still inside the restaurant with the Zombie. I was waiting for you to show up before I interviewed her. You know—you and the Zombie having so much history and all.”

  “She’s still inside? What, eating? After three guys got cremated right outside?”

  Ernie shrugged. “I don’t know about eating. But I told them to wait, and they said they weren’t in any kind of hurry.”

  Kevin Baleno, the fire investigator, came waddling over in a bright yellow Tyvek suit.

  “Any ideas?” Dan asked.

  Kevin Baleno shook his head. “We’ll have to get the bodies back to the lab. There’s no odor of accelerants, and the pattern of burning is very unusual. In fact I don’t think I ever saw a vehicle fire quite like this before. It looks like the eyewitnesses could have been right and the detectives burst into flame before their vehicle did.”

  “Is that possible?”

  Kevin Baleno shrugged. “If it happened, Detective, it must be possible.”

  “What about Speedy?”

  “Don’t know yet. They took him away a couple of minutes ago. No visible injuries. My first guess is that he suffered a heart seizure. You’ll have to ask the ME.”

  “Okay,” said Dan. “Keep me in the loop, will you? I’m just going inside to have a word with my old friend Jean-Christophe. El Gordo, you coming?”

  He and Ernie went into the Palm. Under the rows of globe ceiling lights, the dark wood-paneled restaurant was almost empty. Most of the usual lunchtime crowd must have left after the blaze outside, but there was still an air of subdued hysteria, and the white-aproned waiters were hurrying from one side of the restaurant to the other, whispering to one another.

  Three Lithuanian movie producers had remained, crowded into their brass-railed booth in the center of the room, with beers and four-pound lobsters; as well as a party of five overdressed women who looked and sounded like department store executives from some city in the Midwest.

  Jean-Christophe Artisson was still there, too, and so was the emaciated girl with the face like a fire axe and the clinging gray dress. The Zombie was sitting at his favorite corner table underneath the signed caricature of Fred Astaire, with his floppy black beret hanging on the chair beside him.

  When Dan and Ernie came across the restaurant toward him, two of his bodyguards sitting at the next table rose to their feet, buttoning their coats as they did so. The Zombie waved them both to sit down.

  “Bon jou, mesyés,” he said, as Dan came up to his table. “Ki sa ou vié?”

  The Zombie was very delicate-featured, almost pretty, although his nose was more bulbous than his friends would have dared to tell him. He wore his shiny black hair in ringlets and a diamond earring like a miniature chandelier. He smelled strongly of some floral perfume, like gardenias.

  “You can cut the Creole crap,” said Dan. “We just lost three good men out there, and I want to know how.”

  “You don’t think I had anything to do with that, Detective Fisher? I have always been very good friends with the police, as you know. Even with vice and narcotics.”

  “Who’s this?” Dan asked, nodding toward the girl in the gray dress.

  The girl lifted her head and looked at Dan with defiance.

  “Ki non ou?” Dan asked her.

  “She is a cousin of mine from Haiti. She has come to Los Angeles for a vacation.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “My name is Michelange DuPriz,” said the girl, haughtily. “You want to ask me some question?”

  “Wi, Ms. DuPriz. We have eyewitnesses who saw you waving or making gestures at our detectives shortly before their car caught fire. Is that true?”

  The Zombie smiled, pushed his plate a little way across the table, and held out his fork. “You feel like something to manjé, Detective? Sesame-seared Ahi tuna with field greens and soya vinaigrette. You should taste it.”

  Dan ignored him and said, “Well?”

  Michelange held his stare. “I felt that something bad was about to happen to your friends.”

  “What do you mean—something bad?”

  “I saw a dark loua over their heads.”

  “A loua? What the hell is a loua?”

  “A spirit.”

  “A spirit? You mean like a ghost-type spirit?”

  “That’s right. Not a rada, not a sweet spirit. A bitter spirit. A petro.”

  “You’ve lost me. You saw a dark spirit over their heads, and that’s why you were waving at them?

  “Sekonsa. I warned them to get out of the car. But it was too late. They catch alight.”

  “I don’t get it. The spirit set them on fire?”

  Michelange nodded.

  “So what are you? Some kind of medium? Is that what you’re saying? You can see spirits?”

  The Zombie said, “Michelange is a manbo. But, yes, you could call her a medium if you like. She connects between the physical world and the spirit world.”

  “Oh, really? Sounds to me like she’s been watching too much TV.”

  The Zombie forked up more tuna. As he ate, he kept grinning at Dan, so that Dan could see the brownish flakes of chewed fish between his teeth.

  “I’m so glad this hasn’t affected your appetite,” Dan told him.

  The Zombie said nothing, but grinned even wider.

  Michelange said, “It is true, mesyé. Who knows why the petro wanted to burn your friends. It did not speak. It gave me no sign. Maybe it was the spirit of some bad man who want his revenge.”

  “This is bullshit,” Ernie retorted.

  “You think so?” asked the Zombie. “That is not a wise way to think.”

  “Oh, no? Let’s forget about spirits for the moment. One witness saw you holding up something that was smoking.”

  Michelange looked away. “Different people see different things.”

  “Maybe they do. But why would anybody say that?”

  “Maybe they saw my cheroot. I am always smoking a cheroot.”

  “A cheroot?” said Ernie. “Who are you trying to kid?”

  Dan leaned close to the Zombie’s ear and very quietly said, “Jean-Christophe, I want to know what the hell this is all about. Don’t try to tell me that there’s no connection between you and those three detectives who died out there. Or Speedy Lebrun either. And don’t tell me this has anything to do with spirits.”

  The Zombie wiped his mouth with his napkin. “You always believed in magic, didn’t you, Detective?” He turned to Michelange and said, “Detective Fisher is a very talented magician in his own right. He could have been a professional if he hadn’t decided to become a policeman.”

  “I am very impressed,” said Michelange, although she didn’t sound it.

  “Show her, Detective. Show her your famous jackpot trick.”

  “Your jackpot trick?” asked Michelange.

  “You should see it,” said the Zombie. “He swallows a quarter, then pulls down his arm like a slot machine and spits out a whole handful of quarters. Isn’t that right, Detective?”

  “Forget it, Jean-Christophe. I’m investigating four suspicious deaths here.”

  “Of course you are. But you asked me what the hell this is all about, and I’m trying to tell you. This is all about magic. This is all about radas and petros and maybe jackpot tricks, too. Haven’t you sniffed it in the air? Haven’t you sensed it? Magic has come to town, Detective, and believe me, everything is going to change.”

  “This is double bullshit,” said Ernie. “Those guys out there, they all had famil
ies—wives and kids to take care of. I ought to run you in for depraved indifference.”

  Jean-Christophe held out his wrists, as if he were offering himself up to be handcuffed. “Michelange, she was nowhere near your friends when their car caught fire. Neither was she anywhere close to Speedy Lebrun, when he collapsed. As for me, I was in here enjoying my lunch. There was nothing that either of us could have done to prevent these unfortunate events. What, exactly, do you think we’re guilty of?”

  Back outside on Santa Monica, Ernie said, “What do you make of that?”

  “What, the spirit story? She was trying to make fools of us, that’s all. She knows why that car went up, and, believe me, it wasn’t torched by any goddamned loua. The question is, how was it torched?”

  “I’ll run a check on her,” said Ernie, taking out his notebook and scribbling in it. “At the very least we could have her deported back to Haiti.”

  They walked back to the burned-out Crown Victoria. The bodies of the three detectives had been carefully pried out of their seats, although fragments of crisp black flesh remained stuck to the seat springs. Ernie crossed himself and said, “Rest in peace, Detectives. We’ll find out who did this to you, trust us.”

  Dan checked his watch. “Listen, I have a couple of errands to run. But I’ll drop into the station later and see what CSU has managed to come up with. If forensics can work out how these guys were burned, my feeling is that it won’t be too difficult to work out who did it.”

  He opened the door of his SUV and was about to climb in when he became aware that Michelange DuPriz had stalked out of the front door of the Palm, with the Zombie close behind her. She stopped, took off her sunglasses, and shaded her eyes with her hand.

  “She’s looking this way,” said Ernie.

  “You’re right. She’s staring at us.”

  Michelange was saying something to the Zombie, but she was too far away for Dan to hear her. Whatever it was, though, it made the Zombie laugh.

  “You know what I’d like to do to that bastard?” said Ernie. “I’d like to cut off his cojones and make him eat them raw with salsa ranchera.”