Oasis of Night (16 page)

I sat beside him on the bed, and pretty soon we both got really quiet. He asked me if I could turn out the light, so I did. We sat there in the dark, listening. The city noises filtered into the room through the open window: passing cars, a bicycle, a man whistling a sea chanty. The clock ticked closer to the appointed hour, and I remembered it: San Quentin, midnight, and a cold mist from the Bay clinging to everything.

I'd come up from Frisco just for it, and I was grateful for the chance to walk with him as far as they would let me go. We'd grown up together, he and I, had gone into the service as young men just out of school, but somewhere along the way, I'd lost track of him. He got down on his luck, took to drinking heavily, and beat his young wife to death one night in a fit of drunken rage. Yeah, it was the same old story. At the foot of the scaffold, he reached to shake my hand, but I dragged him close to me, holding him. In the back of my brain, I had some weird idea that if they saw how much I loved him, they would turn him loose. He hugged me and made some kind of joke, and then the guards were taking him away and he put his hand on the railing and started the climb.

Everybody says there are ten steps to the gallows, and when a man walks up those ten steps, he thinks about all the things that he's ever done wrong in his life—repents of his sins, I guess you could say. I think that's a load of bull. I watched him walk it and I saw his face, and there was nothing there but naked horror. He didn't mind dying—I knew him—but he was afraid of pain, and worse, he was afraid of making a fool of himself, of crying out or begging them for mercy that wasn't theirs to give.

And we were at midnight. The clock on the Basilica tower chimed, and Chris made a strangled noise and started up. I caught him at the bedroom door; he fought me but I held on.

“Goddammit, Jack, let me go!”

“I can't do that, Chris. You know I can't do that.” I wrapped my arms around him, and he sagged against me, all the fight gone out of him.

If the initial drop breaks the condemned person's neck, a hanging death is quick, almost instantaneous. If the neck doesn't break, the death can take as long as twenty minutes. The tolling of the cathedral's bells seemed to measure out the end of Julie Fayre's life.

I held Chris in my arms while he cried, and when he turned his head to seek my mouth, I didn't refuse him. We lay together on my bed, kissing and touching, and when he took my hand and guided it to the warm bulge of his clothed erection, I didn't refuse him that either.

I wasn't stupid, I knew this wasn't love or anything like it. I knew it was comfort, and I knew he needed something from me, something I was glad to give. I stripped him tenderly and laid him down and smoothed my palms down the warm expanse of his beautiful body, following those caresses with warm kisses and murmured words. I pressed my mouth to the center of his chest and licked each of his nipples gently, teasing each tiny nub to hardness. I parted his thighs and took his swollen cock into my mouth and sucked him, while he shivered and wept above me, his hands clenched in my hair. His body rode the swelling tide of pleasure, strong thighs contracting, hips pumping, and I reached around to cup his tight buttocks, holding him close to me.

His breathing quickened and his hands slid out of my hair to clench at his sides. “Jack… oh Jack, I'm gonna come… you come with me, Jack….”

I let his cock slip out of my mouth. I lay on top of him and kissed him, and we rocked together, rubbing ourselves on each other, bodies shuddering toward the end. Then a bright light burst inside my head and I came so hard I saw stars. In a stroke or two, he was there too, crying out as his cock pulsed his hot seed over my belly and chest. He shivered down to sanity, and we lay there for a long time, the breeze from the window cooling our bodies.

“You said his name.”

“Huh?” I turned my head and gazed into Chris's eyes. There were tears clinging to his lashes.

“You said Sam Halim's name, Jack.”

“No, Chris, you're wrong. I couldn't have.” Sam Halim, with his big, dark eyes and his gentle hands and his voice—Sam Halim, who was missing and presumed dead, except I didn't really believe that.

“You did.” He traced the outline of my lips, consummately gentle. “Any idea where he is?”

“No.” I sighed. “No, I… have some ideas, but… no, Chris. I don't know where he is.” Maybe he had gone back to Cairo.

Chris's gaze was steady. “Then you should go and look for him, Jack.”

He didn't need to say the rest. I knew exactly what he meant.

I knew.

 

 

W
HEN
I
woke up the next morning, Chris was gone, but he'd left a note on the pillow:
Thanks for everything. You're a true friend.
I knew he would be all right. It would take a while and he'd feel pretty rotten in the meantime, but he would be okay in the end. That's the thing about people. We're resilient because, really, when you get right down to it, we don't have any other choice.

I made a pot of coffee and took a cup to one of the tables in the back. A boy had already been around with the morning papers. I made a mental note to stash them as soon as I'd finished reading them—the last thing Chris needed was to see the news of Julie's execution splattered all over the front page—but when I unfolded
The Daily News
, I got the shock of my life: RICKETTS FIRED, RESULTS OF POLICE PROBE, and underneath, in smaller type,
Constabulary sergeant took bribes, freed prisoners.

I'd hardly had time to digest it when someone knocked at the door. Dave looked out from the kitchen, but I told him I'd get it. I threw off the lock, and there was Sergeant Picco, spit-shined and as neat as a pin. He was almost civil, for a change. “Stoyles.”

“Don't stand in the doorway, Picco. Come on in.”

He grimaced. “Thank you.” He stepped across the threshold and looked around him with an expression of distaste. By now I knew it was just something he did—a part he was playing, a way of pretending he was above all this sin and transgression.

“Something I can get for you?”

“I… came to see your bartender, Mr. DuBois.”

I noticed the small package under his arm. “You brought him a present.”

Picco's gaze was full of anguish. Clearly he was torn between doing the right thing and doing the human thing. “What happened to Mr. DuBois's lady friend wasn't his fault. He must be feeling horrible right now.” He thrust the parcel at me like he was afraid it might explode. “Please give this to him when he comes in.” He made to turn away, but I caught his arm.

“Sergeant, I wanted to thank you for your help. I'm afraid I haven't been as… polite to you as I could have been, other circumstances notwithstanding.”

He understood immediately what I meant, and a slight smile curved his lips. He blushed and ducked his head. “If you ever tell anybody about that, I'll kill you.”

I crossed my heart and hoped to die. “You're a good cop, Picco—a real good cop—and as you know, I tend to get into scrapes. I'm hoping I can call on you to help me out sometime.”

He fixed me with a glance. “You heard about Ricketts?”

“Yeah.”

He sucked in his breath and made the tutting noise that, around here, is shorthand for acute disapproval. “He was taking money from Octavian. Octavian and Ricketts had that money delivered to my house to try and make me look bad.”

“That diverted suspicion away from Ricketts and onto you.”

“Yes. Once Octavian had Ricketts where he wanted him, he needed to get me out of the way for a while—so Octavian's men hauled me off the street and stuffed me in that cave over on the Southside.”

I gave him the benefit of my biggest grin. “Yeah… that cave.”

“I meant what I said.” He narrowed his eyes, and his accent was suddenly very strong. “I'll kill ye. I'll break your fuckin' legs, I will.”

I couldn't help but laugh. “Take it easy, Picco.” Something occurred to me. “So Octavian turned on Julie Fayre, is that it?”

“I don't know. Octavian almost certainly had something to do with Johnny Mahoney's murder. I think him and Parsons got too close to that Greek ship down there in the harbor. Octavian was probably bringing something in here, but he couldn't offload whatever it was with Mahoney and Parsons hanging around all the time, so he stuck a knife in Johnny Mahoney—or paid someone to do it. Lots of people around here are hard up for a dollar.”

“So Octavian, Ricketts, and Julie Fayre were probably splitting the Fort Pepperrell money three ways. Octavian's company didn't bother to bid on the project because it was easier to have a dummy corporation—or a stand-in like Fayre Construction—do it, and he could control matters behind the scenes.”

Picco nodded. “You're not half bad at this, Stoyles. What I mean is, you got a brain. You ever think about being a police officer?”

I waved it off. “There's more to this—Octavian, the Greek ship, Johnny Mahoney, Fort Pepperrell—it all points to something more than just skimming money off various construction projects. Julie killed Ken Cartwright to shut him up about the site problems—that meant more money for Octavian and his buddies. She poisoned me and was coming after Chris because we caught on to her, and she couldn't have that. But what else is Octavian doing? There's more to this—that Greek ship, for one thing.”

“Stamos, huh? That's a Greek name.”

“My mother was Greek.”

I knew why Sam Halim had disappeared. Consular attaché, my ass.

I must have looked like I was having some kind of seizure or something, because Picco grabbed my forearm. “Hey! You all right?”

“Phonse, you're a goddamn genius.” I grabbed him by the shoulders and planted one on him, right there in the middle of the Cafe.

 

 

T
HE
YOUNG
lady behind the counter at Western Union was pretty, polite, and seemed genuinely interested in helping me when I explained what I wanted to do. “But, Mr. Stoyles, sir, what if there's no one by that name to receive your cable? You'll have wasted your money.”

“Oh, someone will receive it,” I said. “They're the police, right? They're always looking for information.”

“All right, Mr. Stoyles, if that's what you want.” She handed me the message form. “Write your message here.”

I knew exactly what I wanted to say, just two words: I KNOW.

I paid the lady and walked away smiling.

 

 

W
HEN
I
got back to my cafe, the lunch rush was in full swing and Dave was busy in the kitchen. I had given Chris the day off, but Anita and Janice were busy serving customers, and my other bartender—a silent Dutchman named Piet—was busy mixing drinks.

Anita unloaded a tray of sandwiches and Cokes to a table in the corner and came over. “Jack, there's a fellow over there waiting to see you.” She nodded at a thin, somber-looking gent in a pale gray suit. “He says he's from the government.”

Great. Tax trouble was all I needed. I went over and introduced myself and offered him a drink, hoping to lessen the blow—but he wasn't from the tax department. He was from the museum.

He offered me a thin, dry hand to shake. “Morris Blount, Mr. Stoyles. I'm from the Newfoundland Museum. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

“Uh, sure. Step into my office.” I showed him to a chair and shut the door. “So, what am I in for? Did I steal something from one of the exhibits?”

He gazed at me, expressionless and flat-eyed, and I felt like a minnow right before it's eaten by a shark. “Last week we were moving one of our exhibits, and we found something that doesn't belong.” He reached into his briefcase and brought out a small wooden box. He placed the box on my desk and opened it to reveal a little bowl, about as large in diameter as the palm of a man's hand and seemingly carved out of a single piece of speckled, gray-and-pink stone. “This is a diorite bowl, Mr. Stoyles. It is Egyptian, late third dynasty, and was unearthed in an area about two kilometers south of the Giza Plateau, near Cairo.” He lifted it out reverently and laid it on my desk.

“Pretty.” I didn't dare touch it. I had an idea how much a thing like that was worth, and I was terrified I'd break it. “So this was in… your museum?”

“Correct, and that is not all.” He reached again into his briefcase and brought out a plain manila envelope, the contents of which he dumped onto my desk: a slip of folded paper, a book of matches from the Heartache Cafe….

…and the gold cartouche given to me by Sam Halim.

“I don't understand.”
If ever you have cause to question me—now, or in the coming days—remember that I am your friend.

“The bowl was located at the rear of our exhibit dealing with the early peoples—the Thule, the Dorset Eskimo—on a ledge that is normally inaccessible to museum visitors.” Blount folded his hands and regarded me quizzically. “Why someone should leave an ancient Egyptian artifact in such a place is, frankly, inconceivable, but it was the addition of the items which you now hold in your hands that puzzles us the most.”

“The gold cartouche was a gift from a… dear friend.”
There. I give you a cartouche of your own….
“I guess he left the book of matches too. I'll be honest, Mr. Blount. I don't have any idea where the bowl comes into it.”

He gestured at me. “A thread, Mr. Stoyles.”

“Huh?” I glanced down at my shirt, thinking maybe I had a button loose. “What do you mean?”

“Are you familiar with the legend of the Minotaur?”

“Yeah—Greek or something, isn't it?”
My mother was Greek…. Stamos is a Greek name….