Cities of the Red Night

  “This man who offered you the quarter-ounce of H. You’d seen him before?” I asked.

  “Yeah. When I first came here he steered me to a score. I figure he is creaming off a percentage.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Gray face, pockmarks, stocky medium build, fancy purple vest and a watch chain. Like he stepped out of the 1890s. Didn’t seem to feel the heat.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Funny smell about him, like something rotten in a refrigerator.”

  “Please describe the ritual you witnessed,” I said.

  “Allow me,” interrupted Dimitri. He looked at the boy and said, “Ganymede” and snapped his fingers. The boy shivered and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. When he spoke, his voice was altered beyond recognition. I had the impression he was translating the words from another tongue, a language of giggles and turkey gobbles and coos and purrs and whimpers and trills.

  “Ganymede Hotel … shutters closed … naked on the bed … Jerry’s picture … it’s coming alive … gets me hot to look at it … I know he’s in a room just like this … waiting … there’s a smell in the room, his smell … I can smell what’s going to happen … naked with animal masks … demon masks … I’m naked but I don’t have a mask. We are standing on a stage … translucent noose … it’s squirming like a snake … Jerry is led in naked by a twin sister … can’t hardly tell them apart. There’s a red haze over everything, and the smell—” The kid whimpered and squirmed and rubbed his crotch. “She’s tying his hands behind him with a red scarf … she’s got the noose around his neck.… It’s growing into him … his cock is coming up and he gets red all over right down to his toenails—we call it a red-on.…” Adam giggled. “The platform falls out from under him and he’s hanging there kicking. He goes off three times in a row. His twin sister is catching the seed in a bottle. It’s going to grow.…” The boy opened his eyes and looked uncertainly at Dimitri, who shook his head in mild reproof.

  “You still think all this happened, Adam?”

  “Well, sure, Doctor, I remember it.”

  “You remember dreams too. Your story has been checked and found to be without factual foundation. This was hardly necessary since you have been under constant surveillance since your arrival in Athens. The heroin you were taking has been analyzed. It contains certain impurities which can cause a temporary psychosis with just such bizarre hallucination as you describe. We were looking for the wholesalers who were distributing this poisonous heroin. We have them now. The case is closed. I advise you to forget all about it. You will be released tomorrow. The consulate has arranged for you to work your way home on a freighter.”

  The boy was led away by a white-coated attendant.

  “What about the other witnesses, who wore masks?” I asked Dimitri.

  “I surmised that they would be eligible for immediate disposal. A charter plane for London leaving Athens the day after the ritual murder crashed in Yugoslavia. There were no survivors. I checked the passenger list with my police contacts in England. Seven of the passengers belonged to a Druid cult suspected of robbing graves and performing black-magic rituals with animal sacrifices. One of the animals allegedly sacrificed was a horse. Such an act is considerably more shocking to the British sensibility than human sacrifice.”

  “They sacrificed a horse?”

  “It’s an old Scythian practice. A naked youth mounts the horse, slits its throat and rides it to the ground. Dangerous, I’m told. Rather like your American rodeos.”

  “What about the twin sister who hanged him?” Jim demanded.

  Dimitri opened a file. “‘She’ is a transvestite, Arn West, born Arnold Atkins at Newcastle upon Tyne. A topflight ultraexpensive assassin specializing in sexual techniques and poisons. His consultation fee to listen to a proposition is a hundred thousand dollars, nonrefundable. Known as the Popper, the Blue Octopus, the Siren Cloak.

  “And now, would you gentlemen care to join me for dinner? I would like to hear from you, Mr. Snide, the complete story and not a version edited for the so limited police mentality.”

  * * *

  Dimitri’s house was near the American Embassy. It was not the sort of house you would expect a police official on a modest salary to own. It took up almost half a block. The grounds were surrounded by high walls, with six feet of barbed wire on top. The door looked like a bank vault.

  Dimitri led the way down a hall with a red-tiled floor into a book-lined room. French doors opened onto a patio about seventy feet long and forty feet wide. I could see a pool, trees and flowers. Jim and I sat down and Dimitri mixed drinks. I glanced at the books: magic, demonology, a number of medical books, a shelf of Egyptology and books on the Mayans and Aztecs.

  I told Dimitri what I knew and what I suspected. It took about half an hour. After I had finished, he sat for some time in silence, looking down into his drink.

  “Well, Mr. Snide,” he said at last. “It would seem that your case is closed. The killers are dead.”

  “But they were only—”

  “Exactly: Servants. Dupes. Hired killers, paid off with a special form of death. You will recognize the rite as the Egyptian sunset rite dedicated to Set. A sacrifice involving both sex and death is the most potent projection of magical intention. The participants did not know that one of the intentions they were projecting was their own death in a plane crash.”

  “Any evidence of sabotage?”

  “No. But there was not much left of the plane. The crash occurred outside Zagreb. Pilot was off course and flying low. It looks like pilot error. There are, of course, techniques for producing such errors.… You are still intending to continue on this case? To find the higher-ups? And why exactly?”

  “Look, Colonel, this didn’t start with the Green case. These people are old enemies.”

  “Do not be in a hurry to dispose of old enemies. What would you do without them? Look at it this way: You are retained to find a killer. You turn up a hired assassin. You are not satisfied. You want to find the man who hired him. You find another servant. You are not satisfied. You find another servant, and another, right up to Mr. or Mrs. Big—who turns out to be yet another servant … a servant of forces and powers you cannot reach. Where do you stop? Where do you draw the line?”

  He had a point.

  He went on: “Let us consider what has happened here. A boy has been hanged for ritual and magical purposes. Is this so startling?… You have read The Bog People?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, a modest consumption of one nude hanging a year during the spring festivals … such festivals, within reason, could serve as a safety valve.… After all, worse things happen every day. Certainly this is a minor matter compared with Hiroshima, Vietnam, mass pollution, droughts, famines … you have to take a broad general view of things.”

  “It might not be within reason at all. It might become pandemic.”

  “Yes … the Aztecs got rather out of hand. But you are referring to your virus theory. Shall we call it ‘Virus B-23’? The ‘Hanging Fever’? And you are extrapolating from two cases which may not be connected. Peter Winkler may have died from something altogether different. I know you do not want to entertain such a possibility, but suppose that such an epidemic does occur?” He paused. “How old was Winkler?”

  “In his early fifties.”

  “So. Jerry was a carrier of the illness. He did not die of it directly. Winkler, who was thirty years older, died in a few days. Well … there are those who think a selective pestilence is the most humane solution to overpopulation and the attendant impasses of pollution, inflation, and exhaustion of natural resources. A plague that kills the old and leaves the young, minus a reasonable percentage … one might be tempted to let such an epidemic run its course even if one had the power to stop it.”

  “Colonel, I have a hunch that what we might find in the South American laboratories would make the story we heard from Adam North sound like a mild Gothic romance for ol
d ladies and children.”

  “Exactly what I am getting at, Mr. Snide. There are risks not worth taking. There are things better left unseen and unknown.”

  “But somebody has to see and know them eventually. Otherwise there is no protection.”

  “That somebody who has to see and know may not be you. Think of your own life, and that of your assistant. You may not be called upon to act in this matter.”

  “You have a point.”

  “He sure does,” said Jim.

  “Mr. Snide, do you consider Hiroshima a crime?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you ever tempted to go after the higher-ups?”

  “No. It wasn’t my business.”

  “The same considerations may apply here. There is, however, one thing you can do: find the head and exorcise it. I have already done this with the body. Mr. Green agreed to burial here in the American cemetery.”

  He walked across the room to a locked cabinet and returned with an amulet: runic lettering on what looked like parchment in an iron locket. “Not parchment—human skin…” he told me. “The ceremony is quite simple: the head is placed in a magic circle on which you have marked the cardinal points. You repeat three times: ‘Back to water. Back to fire. Back to air. Back to earth.’ You then touch the crown of the head, the forehead, and the spot behind the right ear, in this case—he was left-handed—with the amulet.”

  There was a knock at the door, and a middle-aged Greek woman with a mustache wheeled in the dinner of red mullet and Greek salad. After dinner and brandy we got up to take our leave.

  “I have said you may not be called upon to act. On the other hand, you may be called upon. You will know if this happens, and you will need help. I can give you a contact in Mexico City … 18 Callejón de la Esperanza.”

  “Got it,” said Jim.

  “My driver will take you back to the Hilton.”

  * * *

  “Nightcap?”

  “No,” Jim said. “I’ve got a headache. I’m going up to the room.”

  “I’ll check the bar. See you very shortly.” I had seen someone I knew from the American Embassy. Probably CIA. I could feel that he wanted to talk to me.

  He looked up when I walked in, nodded and asked me to join him. He was young, thin, sandy-haired, glasses … refined and rather academic-looking. He signaled the waiter and I ordered a beer.

  After the waiter had brought the beer and gone back to the bar, the man leaned forward, speaking in a low precise voice.

  “Shocking thing about the Green boy.” He tried to look concerned and sympathetic but his eyes were cold and probing. I would have to be very careful not to tell him anything he didn’t already know.

  “Yes, isn’t it.”

  “I understand it was uh well, a sex murder.” He tried to look embarrassed and a bit salacious. He looked about as embarrassed and salacious as a shark. He was cold and fishy like the Countess de Gulpa. I remembered that he was rich.

  “Something like that.”

  “It must have been terrible for the family. You didn’t tell them the truth?”

  Watch yourself, Clem.… “I’m not sure I know the truth. The story I actually told them is of course a confidential matter.…”

  “Of course. Professional ethics.” Without a trace of overt irony, he managed to convey a vast icy contempt for me and my profession. I just nodded. He went on. “Strange chap, Dimitri.”

  “He seems very efficient.”

  “Very. It doesn’t always pay to be too efficient.”

  “The Chinese say it is well to make a mistake now and then.”

  “Did you know that Dimitri has resigned?”

  “He didn’t say so.…”

  “He was the object of professional jealousy. Career men resent someone with independent means who doesn’t really need the job. I should know.” He smiled ruefully, trying to look boyish.

  “Well, perhaps you can avoid the error of overefficiency.”

  He let that roll off him. “I suppose these hippies go in for all sorts of strange far-out sex cults.…”

  “I have found their sex practices to be on the whole rather boringly ordinary.…”

  “You’ve read Future Shock, haven’t you?”

  “Skipped through it.”

  “It’s worth looking at carefully.”

  “I found The Biologic Time Bomb more interesting.”

  He ignored this. “Dimitri’s dabbling in magic hasn’t done him any good either … career-wise, I mean.”

  “Magic? That seems out of character.”

  I could tell he knew I had just been to Dimitri’s house for dinner. He was hoping I would tell him something about the house: books, decorations.… Which meant he had never been there. A slight spasm of exasperation passed over his face like a seismic tremor. His face went dead and smooth as a marble mask, and he said slowly: “Isn’t your assistant awfully young for the kind of work you’re doing?”

  “Aren’t you a bit young for the kind of work you’re doing?”

  He decided to laugh. “Well, youth at the helm. Have another beer?”

  “No thanks. Got an early plane to catch.” I stood up. “Well, good night, Skipper.”

  He decided not to laugh. He just nodded silently. As I walked out of the bar I knew that he deliberately was not looking after me.

  No doubt about it. I had been warned in no uncertain terms to lay off and stay out, and I didn’t like it—especially coming at a time when I had about decided to lay off and stay out. And I didn’t like having Jim threatened by a snot-nosed CIA punk. The Mafia couldn’t have been much cruder.

  “Your assistant very young man. You looka the book called Future Shock maybe?”

  When I got to the room I found the door open. As I stepped in I caught a whiff of the fever smell—the rank animal smell of Jerry’s naked headless body. Jim was lying on the bed covered by a sheet up to his waist. As I looked at him I felt a prickling up the back of my neck. I was looking at Jerry’s face, which wore a wolfish grin, his eyes sputtering green fire.

  PORT ROGER

  Page from Strobe’s notebook:

  The essence of sleight of hand is distraction and misdirection. If someone can be convinced that he has, through his own perspicacity, divined your hidden purposes, he will not look further.

  How much does he know or suspect? He knows that the capture was prearranged. He surmises an alliance between the pirates and the Pembertons, involving trade in the western hemisphere, the planting of opium in Mexico, and the cultivation of other crops and products now imported from the Near and Far East. He suspects, or soon will, that this alliance may extend to political and military revolution, and secession from England and Spain.

  What does he think is expected from him? The role of gunsmith and inventor, which is partially true. I must not underestimate him. He has already quite literally seen through Mr. Thomas. How long before he will see through the others? Must be careful of Kelley. The most necessary servants are always the most dangerous. He is a cunning and devious little beast.

  Noah writes that I am interested in printing his diaries “for some reason.” Does he have any inkling what reason? He must be kept very busy as a gunsmith lest he realize his primary role.

  How long will it take him to find out that Captain Jones and Captain Nordenholz are interchangeable? To grasp for that matter the full significance of his own name? To see that I am the de Fuentes twins? Finally, to know that I am also—?

  * * *

  Scarf around his neck immediately arranged between them turning to leer and wink at the armory. I am Captain Strobe, a slim siren. Coat glittering in the sun flute from a distant star in their buttocks. Now I was smoke called Kelley pale in my mind together with a Yes. Sandy hairs, member erect marching around was cleared. Dancing boys to the music played their bags wriggling pale groin toes twisted. We now have double crew down the Red Sea area. Story started with an argument sentences to hang. The sentence preyed on merchant vess
els carrying the cargo beautiful hanged back to life women dancing lewdly and ensuring protection against their bodies once one had been rescued. He claimed to have learned the gallows smile. Gasping his lips back surged erect he ejaculated noose and knot feet across the floor. Spirits around his neck. Spurting six.

  * * *

  Today we reached Port Roger on the coast of Panama. This was formerly Fort Pheasant and had been used as a base by English pirates sixty years ago. The coast here is highly dangerous for the navigation of large vessels, owing to shallows and reefs. Port Roger is one of the few deepwater harbors. It is, however, so difficult to reach that only a navigator with exact knowledge of the passage can hope to do so.

  The coastline is a distant green smudge on our starboard side. Strobe and Thomas scan the skyline with telescopes.

  “Guarda costa…” the boys mutter uneasily.

  Capture by the Spanish means torture or, at best, slavery. If overtaken by a Spanish ship we will abandon ship in the lifeboats, leaving The Great White to the Spanish. The boarding party will receive a surprise, for I have arranged a device which will explode the entire cargo of powder as soon as the doors to the hold are opened.

  Now the ship rounds and heads towards land. Strobe, stripped to the waist, has taken the wheel, his thin body infused with alertness. Two boys are taking soundings on both sides, and the escort ship is a hundred yards behind us. We are sailing through a narrow channel in a reef, Mr. Thomas and Kelley calling out orders as the ship slips like a snake through a strip of blue water. The coastline is ever clearer, trees slowly appearing and low hills in a shimmer of heat. An inaudible twang like a loosed bowstring as the ship glides into a deep blue harbor a few hundred yards from the shore, where waves break on a crescent of sand.