Oasis of Night (7 page)

“Just checking.” Ricketts rocked back in his chair, peering at me like he was thinking of asking me for something. I couldn't help but think this whole conversation was merely a prelude. “Stoyles, you know this town pretty well—almost as good as me, and I was born and brought up here.”

“Uh-oh.”

He ignored me. “You're not, as you already told me, a cop, so you can go places and… do things that my office doesn't allow me to do. Are you following me so far?”

“Yeah, I'm with you. I don't like where this is going, but I'm with you.”

“I'm wondering if you mightn't have a look for him.”

“For Picco.”

“Yes.”

“You want me to look for Constable Picco.”

Ricketts lifted the telephone and spoke some words into it. A secretary appeared with a pot of coffee on a tray. It smelled heavenly. “Doreen makes a fresh pot every morning at ten thirty on the dot.” He poured for us both; it tasted as good as it smelled.

“Why do I think this is a bribe?” I added an extra lump of sugar to mine and sipped it gratefully.

“I can't pay you—departmental budget doesn't allow for it—and I can't even congratulate you publicly.” Ricketts's chair squeaked alarmingly as he leaned forward. “Stoyles, I wouldn't even be asking if I didn't think you were the man for the job. This can't become public knowledge. You know how that would look. ‘Rogue Policeman Loose in City' and all that garbage.”

“Where do you think he might be?”

“Could be anywhere. The only family he's got is his sister. He lives with her over there on Long's Hill. He's got no social life as far as anybody can tell, and he runs as regular as the trains. What I'm saying, Stoyles, is that he shouldn't be too hard to find. What I am also saying, Stoyles—” Ricketts paused to refill our cups. “—is that you will have my eternal gratitude if you can manage to find Constable Picco and bring him here before the newspapers blow this way out of proportion.”

 

 

I
MADE
my way back to the Heartache by my usual route, and my familiarity with St. John's stood me in good stead, because I didn't see a thing. What Sergeant Ricketts had told me had me intrigued, but I wondered what, exactly, he expected out of me. Sure, I knew the town, but I didn't have the foggiest where someone like Picco might be, or even where to look. It wasn't like we were friends. Picco couldn't stand me, and he considered my cafe a den of vice. He showed up at my door at least once a week, looking for some excuse—any excuse—to close me down.

Chris had, as I'd predicted, a pot of coffee waiting for me when I got in, and fresh bread from the bakery around the corner. The Cafe wouldn't open till later, so we had the place to ourselves for a little while, and we made the most of it with french toast and hot coffee and a little conversation. I'd promised Ricketts I wouldn't say anything about what he'd told me, but Chris wasn't just anybody.

“So these Greek guys—Ricketts thinks maybe Picco's indirectly responsible for getting their guy killed?” Chris reached over to refill my coffee cup.

“That's the theory, and Ricketts wants me to find Picco before this whole thing blows sky-high.”

“Are you going to?”

I caught his gaze and held it. “Would you be okay running the place by yourself for a few hours?”

“Yeah.” His eyes slid away. “Julie called. She said she might come by later on… if that's okay?”

“It's okay.” I remembered what he'd said about camouflage, but it still hurt a little bit. “She's welcome any time.” I took my cup and plate to the sink. “I'll try and get back before the lunch rush gets too hairy.”

“Jack.” He caught me by the wrist and pulled me toward him. “Be careful, huh?” His thumb brushed my bottom lip. “I… just watch yourself, all right?”

“I will.” I wondered if I should kiss him, but I decided not to push my luck. Maybe he'd mentioned Julie on purpose, as a way of telling me something like
don't take things for granted
or
don't get too comfortable.
That was fine by me. I still didn't know how I really felt about that kiss, and I needed some time to sort it out.

I decided to try Picco's sister over on Long's Hill. The hill slopes down off the more-or-less main drag of Harvey Road, home to numerous fish-and-chip shops, the Knights of Columbus Serviceman's Leave Centre, and a couple small mom-and-pop stores. At the bottom of the hill, there's the Theatre Pharmacy, a bunch of churches, and the usual stuff you'd expect to find in a city of this size.

Picco's house was near the bottom of the hill, one of those triple-decker Victorians that seem to make up the greater part of the city. I knocked on the door and waited, knocked again, and was just about to leave when the door opened and a face peered out. “Oh, excuse me. I'm looking for Alphonsus Picco's house. I must have the wrong place.”

The girl couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old, tentative and skinny, wearing a faded print dress and a cardigan sweater. “This is Phonse's house. I'm his sister.” She had the same gray eyes as her brother, the same narrow, pale face. “Do you want to come in, or what?”

“If that's okay with you, sure.” I didn't want to presume too much on the girl's hospitality, so I stood in the porch. “Miss Picco, I'm a… friend of your brother.”

Her pale eyes examined my face. She was chewing on a strand of her dark hair. “Phonse got no friends. He keeps to his self.”

This wasn't getting off to a great start. “Uh… I wonder if I could speak to your mother or father?”

“Mom's dead. Dad's overseas. How come you wants Phonse?”

“Well, I can't really say.”

“He never came home last night.” She sucked on the wet strand of hair, then drew it across her pale cheek. “You married?”

“No. Uh, no, I'm not married. You say Alphonsus didn't come home last night. Have you heard from him at all?”

“No, only some fellow came here this morning and dropped off a parcel for him.”

“A parcel. Does he get many parcels?”

She shook her head vigorously, her stringy, dark hair slapping back and forth. “Come in, look, I shows ye.”

I wiped my shoes carefully on the mat and followed her down the narrow, dark corridor to the kitchen. To one side of the passageway, there was a sitting room filled with some unmatched pieces of furniture: a couch, an easy chair, a telephone table. The furniture was threadbare and had seen better days, but everything in the room was spotlessly clean. A cabinet radio sat near the window, and there were some books on a table near the door. Obviously someone in this house was a reader, but I couldn't see it being the girl. There was something about her that was just a little bit… off. There was something odd about her, something that didn't quite fit. She reminded me of a girl I'd known back in Philadelphia named Nettie. She lived up the street from me and earned her living cleaning houses for people. She always had a wash bucket with a variety of mops and cleaning implements protruding from it. She said the same thing to anyone she met, regardless of the day or the circumstances:
It's a great day, ain't it?
I never heard her say anything else.

“I opened the parcel. I didn't know what was in it. I suppose he'll get mad at me now.” She showed me a brown-paper package she'd left on the kitchen table, next to a stack of utility bills, some of them bearing the ominous stamp FINAL NOTICE. The parcel had been neatly slit along one side. “I cut it open.”

“So you don't know who left this for Alphonsus?”

“No. He wouldn't want me taking parcels from strange men. Phonse wouldn't want that. Do you think he'll get mad because I opened it?”

I smiled at her. “I don't think so.” There were five hundred dollars inside, all in American greenbacks, but no note, except for a tiny slip of paper, on which were scrawled the words PAID IN FULL. “Did Alphonsus loan anyone any money that you know of?”

“No. He don't make that much. He got to take care of us, pay the electric, and stuff like that.”

“The man who brought this parcel—what did he look like?”

She didn't really remember, she said, except he talked funny, like some of the sailors. “He wasn't from here.” She tugged at my sleeve. “Do you want to see his room?”

“Alphonsus's room?” It couldn't hurt. Maybe he'd left something behind that might yield a clue; you never knew about these things.

I followed the girl up the narrow, creaking staircase to the second floor landing. She led me to the first door on the left and opened it. There was nothing unusual about the room. It was your typical bedroom, with a single bed placed against the wall, a chest of drawers with a mirror, and a rug on the floor.

“You can have a look around.” She started down the stairs, calling back over her shoulder as she went. “I got to finish cleaning the vegetables for dinner. Phonse might be home then.”

I went through Picco's room methodically and left nothing untouched. It felt kind of funny to be up here, searching through his underwear drawer, but I told myself it was for a good cause. If Picco really had gone missing—whether of his own accord or otherwise—it was important to get to him as quickly as possible, for a lot of reasons. If he'd gone into hiding, he needed to be coaxed out, and if he'd been snatched, they probably didn't intend to keep him as a house guest.

I turned over his pillows and lifted the mattress, but found nothing. I half hoped I'd come across a girlie magazine or maybe even some dirty postcards, but if his bedroom was anything to go by, Picco was almost monastic in his habits, and then some. I found a Bible on the table by the bed and a handful of religious tracts in the drawer. There was some sort of devotional booklet laid on the windowsill and, directly opposite Picco's bed, a framed picture of Jesus gazed down sorrowfully from where it was mounted on the wall.

No—not sorrowfully, not sorrowfully at all. I moved closer and took a good look at it, then reeled back a little. It was a crucifixion scene, but it had to be the weirdest one I'd ever laid eyes on. The man on the cross was naked except for a brief loincloth, and his contorted body rippled with muscle. His head was thrown back, but the facial expression was all wrong. His features were taut with erotic anticipation and his mouth was open. Moving closer, I could clearly see the outline of an erect phallus through the loincloth. The image was that of a man mere seconds away from sexual completion.

Oh, Constable Picco, you naughty boy.

I was still smiling when I descended to the kitchen and said my good-byes to Picco's sister. She was engrossed in cutting up the largest mound of carrots I'd ever seen, and barely looked up when I left. I wondered what would happen to her if Picco wasn't found—or if he wasn't found in time.

I stopped into the Theatre Pharmacy to use the phone. Chris picked up on the first ring, and I told him I was going to ask around a few of the George Street pubs to see if anyone knew anything. I wasn't hopeful—lowlifes tend to be close-mouthed, in this or any town—but it was worth a try.

Picco was well-known around downtown, but nobody in any of the bars I visited had seen him in a couple of days. I dropped word that I was looking for him, hinted darkly that he was in some kind of serious trouble, and left it at that. I would let the underground network do the rest for me.

I got back to the Heartache around three in the afternoon, long after the lunch rush had come and gone. Chris was mopping up the bar and tidying things away when I got there. “I'm sorry.” I sat down on a bar stool. “I honestly didn't mean to be gone so long.”

“It's okay.” His grin didn't reach his eyes, and I figured maybe he was pretty mad at me.

“No, it isn't. I promised I'd be back in time to help out. I had no right leaving you here to mind the shop all by yourself. I'm sorry and it won't happen again.”

He raised his soft brown eyes to mine. “You got dirt on your nose.”

I raised my hand reflexively. “Yeah?”

He swiped at it with a towel. “And there's a guy waiting to see you in your office. I offered him a drink on the house, but he didn't want anything.”

“What guy?”

“One of these foreign-types. Wearing a real nice suit. He showed up around two o'clock, and when I told him you were out, he asked if he could wait.”

“Huh. Okay.” I slid off the bar stool. “You want the night off?”

His cloth moved in slow, meditative circles. “Nope.”

I went back to my office and opened the door, and he was there—the Egyptian—and all of a sudden the air went out of my lungs.
We are sailing down the Nile, just as you wished… the least you can do is pay attention.
“You.” My mouth was dry. “It's you. You came back.”

“Yes, I came back.” He extended his hand to me and I grasped it gladly. We held on to one another for a few moments, merely looking and smiling. “You seem very glad to see me.” That same humor was there in his voice, just under the surface, warm and gentle.

“I am very glad to see you. Some coffee? Tea? Can I offer you a drink?”

“I am a Moslem, Mr. Stoyles. My religion forbids the consumption of alcohol—but thank you. Perhaps we can have coffee another time?”

“Yeah, sure.” I couldn't believe he was actually here, in my cafe, in my office. “Jeez, the last time you left here, I didn't think I'd ever see you again. You were asking for directions.”

“You seem surprised that I came back. Did you not expect to see me again?”

“I, ah… yeah! I mean, no, I didn't—Mr. Halim, I don't want to seem—”

“Sam.” He smiled and my heart started beating double time. “Please, call me Sam. May I call you Jack?”