Part 9 (2/2)
”Evers, you mean?” I said. ”How deeply addicted to heroin was he?”
Karo grimaced and looked at the floor. ”Real bad,” she said. ”He kept fooling himself, saying he could handle it, because you snort Persian instead of shooting it, but he got to be a world-cla.s.s junkie by the end.”
”Do you think that's what prompted his suicide?”
She looked up and considered me. ”I don't think he committed suicide.” Her voice rang with defiance. ”I think he was murdered. I just can't see how they did it.”
”They?”
”Whoever it was.” She shrugged. ”I don't mean 'they' like in 'I know who it was and there were a couple of them.' Just they.”
”Okay. What about this Brother Belial?”
”Bill told me he'd spilled the beans about that.”
”He did, yeah. Celia LaRosa wonders if Brother B was really human.”
”I heard her say that maybe a hundred times, but I didn't buy it. I think he was loaded, is all, and talked funny. And he always hid his face and wore gloves, so it was easy to make up stuff about him and what he must have looked like under all of it. Doyle always said Belial had a phobia about germs, but then, you couldn't trust a d.a.m.n thing Doyle said, so who knows.”
”I can see why everyone speculated about Belial.”
”Elaine agreed with Celia, sort of. They used to like to scare themselves, giggling about demons.” Her voice abruptly cracked. ”G.o.d, poor Elaine! Last night I couldn't sleep, you know? I kept thinking, they got Elaine and now Bill, and what do you bet I'm next?”
I looked at Ari, who nodded a yes when I raised a questioning eyebrow.
”You've been given police protection,” I said. ”If you look out the window you'll see a plain black sedan-”
”The unmarked car, you mean?” Karo managed to smile. ”They're always so obvious.”
Ari winced.
”I thought they suspected me of something, like the drugs,” Karo went on. ”But I guess not.”
”You know,” I went on, ”you can ask to be put in the witness protection program if you receive any sort of threat or see any signs of threats. If you feel you're being followed when you go out, for example.”
”You think Bill was murdered, too, don't you?”
”Yeah.” I saw no reason to lie. ”But it's only a secondary theory at the moment in official circles. I'm not a member of the San Francisco police force.”
”I noticed that from your ID, yeah.” She turned slightly to look up at Ari. ”Interpol, huh? There must be something real big behind all this, then.”
”Heroin trafficking is always big,” Ari said. ”Especially high-grade heroin sold to middle-cla.s.s customers.”
”Oh. Yeah, I guess it would be. I wish Bill had never touched the s.h.i.+tty stuff.” Karo paused to rub her face with both hands. ”We used to fight about it, but Doyle-G.o.d, that creep Doyle, and what he did to Elaine! They said on the news that Johnson shot him. The one decent thing that super creep ever did in his life.”
For a moment I thought she was going to cry, but she swallowed a couple of times and looked at me dry-eyed. ”I bet you're wondering how I met Bill. It was through Elaine. I'm a tarot reader, and I did the cards for her a lot when she was getting her divorce, and so she invited me to the meetings.” She paused for a twisted little smile. ”Elaine kind of collected unusual people. But she was nice about it. It wasn't condescending. I think she was mostly real bored. Too much money, and everything was too easy for her.”
”Do you know how she met Doyle?”
”In a singles bar on Union Street. She was real flattered that he was interested, because he was so much younger than her.”
Nothing occult or unusual there. I realized I'd been hoping for some weird detail that would give us a new line of inquiry.
”Was there ever someone named Caleb a.s.sociated with the coven?” I said.
”I never heard about any Caleb.” Karo caught her upper lip between her teeth, thought, and let the lip go again. ”No, sorry. It's a name I'd have remembered. You don't hear it much.”
”All right. Anyone else?”
Karo looked away and thought some more. Finally, she shrugged and looked back at me. ”Doyle did mention one other guy, but only in a real vague way. Something about the man who spoke to the Peac.o.c.k Angel. You know about Tawsi Melek, right? It was on the TV news about the Silver Bullet Killer.”
”Yes, we do know about the cult. Do you think it's satanic?”
”No. I wouldn't have had anything to do with that. It's stupid, Satanism.”
”I was wondering if you'd ever heard anything about sacrificing children to this Tawsi Melek.”
Karo's expression changed to authentic revulsion, wide-eyed and lip-curling. ”No,” she said. ”I wouldn't have stuck around if they'd talked about that.” She shuddered, then went on. ”No, this angel was supposed to be G.o.d's right-hand man. Someone on the side of the Good and the Lovely, anyway. Doyle said there was someone who spoke to him and looked for converts. A missionary, kind of like those Mormons who show up at your door and won't go away.”
I wondered if this missionary lived in our world or on Interchange, where Doyle came from. I suspected the latter. ”Did he ever mention a name?”
”No. Sorry. But if you're looking for a suspect, I'd put my money on Brother Belial. He was the guy in charge.”
”I'll take that under advis.e.m.e.nt.”
I considered asking her about Evers and blackmail, then decided to leave that to Sanchez. I stood up, and Ari followed my lead.
”Thanks for your cooperation,” I said to Karo. ”If you think you've spotted trouble, call the police. Lieutenant Sanchez of Homicide is the name you want to invoke.”
Karo laughed and scrambled to her feet. ”Invoke,” she said. ”I like that. I'll keep it in mind. Don't worry.”
As we were going down the stairs, I realized that of the three coven members we'd interviewed, only Evers had recognized me from the ceremony I'd spied upon. He must have possessed a certain amount of psychic talent. Most likely, that very talent had made him vulnerable to whatever ensorcellment had driven him to his death.
A fourth coven member had survived, of course: Brother Belial. I could only hope that he, whatever he might have been, would fail to recognize me, too.
CHAPTER 5.
WHEN WE RETURNED TO THE APARTMENT, Ari called Sanchez to tell him what we'd learned from the coven members. LaRosa had impressed both of us as an investigative dead end, but Karo interested me. Since people tell their tarot readers the d.a.m.nedest things, she had plenty of chances to supplement her income by blackmailing her clients, some of whom she shared with Evers. On the other hand, I'd received a strong sense of honesty from her. Beyond the SPP, even, I couldn't see a criminal type living in a toy box like her apartment.
Sanchez would either hand this information over to the correct department or suppress it, depending on how much pressure the local powers that be put on him. Not my problem, either way, though Ari reported on the situation to Interpol, just in case there were ”ramifications,” as he called them.
”A great many people have been pressured into spying for one government or another,” he said, ”by blackmail.”
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