03 City of the Snakes Page 4

  Holding on to Ama, I follow her down the stairs into the unknown, only dimly aware of the coffin sliding back into place overhead, plunging us into total, all-encompassing darkness.

  part two

  assassin

  1

  in the name of the father

  My father was a demon. He killed thousands of people, wicked and just, innocent and guilty—it made no difference to him. Paucar Wami was tall, black as the devil’s heart, bald, with uncanny green eyes and colorful tattooed snakes running the gamut of both cheeks, meeting just beneath his lower lip. He butchered for pleasure and gain. He lived solely to destroy. Ten years ago he passed from the face of this Earth and his unique strain of evil passed with him.

  Between murders, Wami fathered a crop of children. I was the firstborn. I’ve spent the past decade trying to revive my father’s twisted legacy. I’ve become his living ghost. I’m an assassin’s shade, death to all who cross me.

  My name is Al Jeery.

  Call me Paucar Wami.

  Friday, 23:00. I’ve been shadowing Basil Collinson since early evening. If the pimp sticks to his schedule, he should roll out of the Madam Luck casino shortly after midnight and head for a club. That’s when he dies.

  Basil’s a poor gambler but he never drops more than a thousand in a single sitting. He’s careful that way. Likes to maintain control of his life. Dresses in the same smart suit every day. Takes care of his wife and kids, hides the true nature of his business from them. Cuts a slice of his profits to all the right people. On drinking terms with influential police officers and lawyers. Even pays his taxes in full and on time.

  Basil’s only weakness is his violent appetite for the women who work for him. He has between fifteen and twenty ladies on the books at any given time, and though he sees that they’re fairly paid, every now and then he takes one off for a weekend and goes to work on her. He drops the façade, hits the bottle and subjects his victim to a torrent of abuse and torment. Mostly they limp away nursing bruises and cuts, but occasionally he’ll put one in the hospital, and at least twice that I know of, the damage has been fatal.

  Pimps don’t ruffle my feathers—live and let live—but murderers are fair game.

  My motorcycle’s parked out back of the casino, ready if I need it, though I doubt I will. Collinson normally walks to a nearby club when he’s done gambling. I’m waiting for him in an apartment on the fourth floor of the building opposite the casino. It belongs to a guy called George Adams. He works nights. Lives alone. He’ll never know I’ve been here. I prefer to stake out prey from the comfort of an apartment or office. Beats loitering on the streets, disguised as a beggar, hidden behind layers of soggy newspapers and cardboard.

  Midnight comes and goes. The air fills with the vicious beat of fuck-it-all music, guilty laughter, drunken cheers and jeers, the growl of taxis, occasional gunfire. The city’s hotting up. There’s been a lot of unrest recently. Gang clashes, street riots, attacks on police. Word is The Cardinal Mk II has gone AWOL. If it’s true, it’s bad news. I have no sympathy for Dorak’s successor, but at least he held things together. If he’s been killed or abducted, this city will erupt and the streets will run with blood.

  Collinson exits through the arched, glittering doorway of Madam Luck. I check my watch: 01:23. Later than usual. Must have been on a winning streak. Letting myself out of the apartment, careful not to leave any trace, I slip down the stairs and tag Basil as he turns the corner at the end of the street. He’s alone, which is a bonus. A companion would have complicated things. Now it’s simply a case of picking the ideal moment to strike.

  Keeping to the sides, stepping over broken glass and sleeping bums, I close on Collinson, unseen, unheard, a child of the shadows. Ahead, my prey hums and clicks his fingers in time to the tune. Chances are he wouldn’t hear me even if he weren’t so self-absorbed. I’ve had nine years of practice. Only the very rare victim sees or hears me coming. To the rest I materialize out of the night like the monsters they were told not to fear when they were children.

  Basil turns onto Hodgson Street. Angling for the Nevermind club—’90s retro. He’ll have to detour through Steine Avenue. The lights are inadequate there at the best of times. Useless these last four nights, since vandals smashed two of the lamps. That’s where I’ll take him.

  I get close enough to Basil to identify the tune he’s humming. Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” A good song, and he carries it well, but I turn a deaf ear to it. Can’t afford to think of him as human. He’s a pimp, a killer, prey. I’m Paucar Wami, self-appointed executioner. I show no mercy. Fuck his taste in music.

  Collinson hits the darkened Steine Avenue. Picking up speed, I stroke the varnished human finger hanging by a chain from my neck and slip up silently behind him, sliding a long curved knife from my belt. The blade’s freshly honed. I take no chances. Murder’s messy if you don’t put your target down with a single swipe.

  At the last moment Basil senses me. He begins to turn, but too late. Bringing the knife up, hissing like the jungle cat I become at the moment of death, I slash it sharply across his throat, using the momentum of his swiveling head to drive the blade deep into his flesh, all the way across from right to left.

  Basil’s dead before he hits the floor, though it takes him awhile to realize it. He jerks spasmodically, blood arcing high into the air from his severed throat. I stand clear of the spray, letting the wall take the burst, watching emotionlessly as his legs and arms go still. When he’s at rest and the flow of blood has subsided to a steady trickle, I step forward and crouch, working quickly. I’m wearing disposable plastic gloves. Dipping my index finger into the pool of blood spreading around his head, I rip the front of his shirt open, then scrawl on his chest (pausing to re-bloody my finger several times), THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO PIMPS WHO MALTREAT THEIR WOMEN. P.W.

  Done, I close Basil Collinson’s eyes and say a silent prayer over him. “This son of a bitch is yours, Lord. Do with him as you will. Just don’t send him back.” The prayer’s instinctive. I mutter similar words over many of those I kill. A force of habit I’ve never bothered to break, though I should—wasted seconds.

  Standing, I check I haven’t been seen, then slip away, offering myself to the shadows of the streets and alleys. As usual they accept me, and soon I’m invisible to all but the city itself.

  I wake early, before seven. I’d have appreciated another couple of hours, but once I’m awake there’s no slipping back to sleep. Better to get up and on with the day than lie here thinking about Collinson and the other lives I’ve taken. I can reconcile myself to the life I lead when I’m active

  (when I’m Paucar Wami)

  but if I sit back and brood, doubts flood in, and doubts will be the end of me if I give them their head. I have to keep busy. My sanity depends on it.

  Temperatures have been hotter than usual for this time of year, but it’s cold this morning and I start with a series of push-ups to warm up. I break three hundred before the first beads of sweat flow. I’ve spent most of the last ten years exercising. Approximately six hours of sleep each day, a couple of hours wasted on eating, washing, cleaning and shopping, the rest working out or pounding the streets. No leisure time. I don’t read, watch TV or listen to the radio. Sometimes I dip into newspapers, do research in libraries and scan computer files to check on certain facts, but otherwise I’m continually on the move, acting and reacting, thinking only of the challenges at hand.

  I finish with the push-ups and segue into sit-ups, focusing on my abdominal muscles. I’m in great shape for a man pushing fifty. I have to be. The streets devour the weak. I must be stronger than those I hunt and kill.

  My eyes flick to the photograph hanging on the wall at the foot of my bed. This is a small apartment, a bedroom, living room, kitchenette and bathroom. The wallpaper was old when I was young. The smell from the alley is suffocating in hot weather. But it’s home. I deserve and long for no better.

  In the photo, an off-duty police
officer has an arm draped paternally around the shoulders of a young amateur actress. They’re beaming at the camera. I’ve loved both of them, in different ways, and hated them more than I’ve loved. The woman died by my hand before I became Paucar Wami. The man is missing, presumed dead, but I believe he’s still alive. My sole purpose in life is to find him, put a gun to his temple and blow his brains out. On that day the killing can stop, and so can I. Until then I act out the part of my father and roam these streets without rest, hunting, killing, searching.

  I start on neck rolls. Whisper softly to myself as I rotate my head, a word or short sentence each time my chin touches my chest. “Paucar. Wami. I am. Paucar Wami. The night. Is mine. No rest until. He dies.”

  He—Bill Casey, the cop who destroyed me, who robbed me of everything I ever had and was, reducing me to this pale shadow of my inhuman father in the process. I have Bill’s small left finger—the digit that hangs from my neck—and one day, if he’s out there, I’ll have the rest of him too.

  I think about Bill and Paucar Wami every day, every hour. Even when trailing prey, they’re foremost in my thoughts. Everything I am, I owe to them. Everything I do is in response to the hell of their creation.

  Wami was my father, a legendary serial killer, beloved of The Cardinal. A beast who tormented and murdered to pass the time. Somewhere along the line his path crossed with Bill Casey’s. I haven’t worked out what Wami did to Bill—I suppose he butchered someone close to him—but it drove Bill mad. He swore revenge and spent decades plotting a bizarre retribution. Befriending me as a child, he guided me through much of my life, keeping me close by his side, only to strip me of everything I valued when the time was right, slaughtering those close to me, pinning the blame on Wami in the crazy belief that I’d take up arms against my father and kill him.

  I confronted Bill once I’d unmasked him. When I asked why he didn’t kill Wami himself, he cited poetic justice. That didn’t make sense then, and it hasn’t grown any clearer with the passage of time. Unless Bill’s alive, and I can find him and squeeze the truth out of him, I doubt it ever will.

  My head comes to a stop. I take several deep breaths, then head for the kitchenette to prepare breakfast. A simple meal—dry cereal, toast, slices of cold meat. Food doesn’t interest me. I eat to keep my body—my engine—ticking over. It’s fuel. Without it, I’d stop. And stopping’s something I can’t allow myself to do, not until Casey’s severed head rests on a spear before me.

  And if he really died in the blast he engineered—the blast that left my body scarred and burned—and didn’t plant a corpse in his place? Then I’ll carry on until I grow old and withered, and perish on the streets of blood that I have chosen to make my own. Either way, there can be no rest. Not for the wicked.

  I was an alcoholic once. In the nightmare months after Bill’s awful revelation, I almost gave myself over to the bottle. That would have been the easy way out. I often wish I’d taken it. But I hung tough, and gradually, when only the abyss loomed large in my life, the plan presented itself.

  My father wasn’t human. The original Cardinal, Ferdinand Dorak, said he’d created Paucar Wami out of thin air, assisted by blind Incan priests who’ve controlled this city for centuries. He said he’d created others too—Ayuamarcans. Whenever he destroyed one of his creations, a green fog crept over the city and gnawed away at people’s minds, eliminating all memories of the unreal person.

  I don’t know if The Cardinal was telling the truth or if he was a hundred percent bugshit, but there was something supernatural about Wami and the others. I’m the only one who remembers the Ayuamarcans. When The Cardinal died, those who were left faded out of existence and memory, except for Wami, whose legend lived on vaguely.

  The plan was to re-create the serial killer, and thus lure Bill out of hiding. Since Bill had devoted so much of his life to destroying the hated Paucar Wami, I figured he wouldn’t be able to stop. He’d pursue his crazed quest, even if he was no longer sure whom he was chasing. The trouble was, with Wami gone—banished to the realms of nothingness when The Cardinal died—there was no one for him to chase, no reason for him to come out of hiding.

  So I gave him one.

  Following the food with half a pint of milk, I edge into the tiny bathroom and relieve myself. While washing my hands, I study my reflection in the mirror. I’m dark skinned like my father, very similar in appearance. The main differences—Wami was bald, with green eyes, and sported tattoos of twisting, multicolored snakes, one down either cheek, their heads locking in the middle beneath his lower lip.

  I started with the hair. Scissors and a razor rid me of that. Green contact lenses for the eyes. Then the tattoos (which, as a bonus, hid the worst of my scar tissue). It took awhile to find a tattooist capable of replicating my father’s serpentine design, and several lengthy, painful sessions to ink in every last coil, scale and link, but eventually it was done and I took on the full look of Paucar Wami, down to the leather jacket and motorcycle that were favorites of his.

  All that remained was to kill.

  I used to remove the contact lenses each night, before retiring, but now I leave them in, not caring about the damage that must be doing to my eyes. They help keep me in character. Such small touches have become second nature. They have to, if the disguise is to work, if I’m to truly become the killer I seek to mimic and tempt my tormentor out of hiding.

  I realized it wasn’t enough to look like Paucar Wami. To be him, I had to act as he had. I had to murder. At first, when the madness was fresh upon me, I thought to kill indiscriminately. The world had treated me cruelly and I meant to react in kind. I imagined myself butchering bloodily, freely. I got as far as shadowing a randomly picked woman to her home, slipping in at night while she was asleep and pressing my knife to the soft flesh of her throat.

  I went no further. After an eternity of indecision, I withdrew, having shed no blood, to marvel at how close to true evil I had sailed. If I’d killed her, I genuinely would have become my father, and in time I’m certain I would have abandoned thoughts of revenge and lost myself entirely to viciousness.

  Instead I ran home, moaning and weeping, and prayed for death. I almost took my life in the dark hours that followed, but the blade that had wavered at the woman’s throat crept away of its own accord every time I raised it to mine.

  Over the next few days, between fits of rage and remorse, I found myself readjusting my plan. I couldn’t bring myself to kill the innocent, but I knew from experience that I was capable of dispatching the guilty. I’d killed during my years working for The Cardinal, as one of his Troops, and when I’d been betrayed by a woman in league with Bill and the villacs. This city’s full of criminals, deserving of death. If I left the innocent alone and set my sights on the scum…

  Coming out of the bathroom, I wipe my hands dry, get down on the floor and launch into a punishing set of squats, hard and fast, thinking, Machine. Machine. Machine. Al Jeery grimaces as I break the hundred mark. Paucar Wami licks his lips and asks for more. His wish is granted. Two hundred. Three hundred. Four…

  The New Munster hotel, 14:00. Three ground-level rooms packed with booksellers and buyers. Long tables overflowing with first prints and rare editions. Very little in the way of popular or pulp material—this is a fair for serious collectors. Most of the clientele are middle-aged and formally attired. Very little cash exchanges hands. It’s all credit cards these days.

  I mingle unobtrusively with the rich as they fawn over the tomes, discussing print runs, volume conditions and prices. They also talk a lot about other fairs. Apparently Paris is the hot city at the moment, wonderful finds lying in wait on dusty shelves for those prepared to look. They take no notice of me, assuming—if they assume at all—that I’m with security.

  I’ve removed my contact lenses and covered my tattoos with flesh paint, and I wear a wig of tight black curls. A shabby but acceptable suit. Neat shoes. Sometimes it’s better to go abroad as Al Jeery. These people would flee in
terror at the sight of my nocturnal face.

  I’ve been to dozens of fairs over the years, and I visit all the bookstores in the city on a regular basis. Books were Bill’s great love. He had a massive collection of first editions, a collection many of the people here today would happily steal, mug or even kill for. When he disappeared ten years ago, he took the books with him. That’s how I knew he

  (probably)

  wasn’t dead. He often said he didn’t care what happened to his books once he died, so since he’d taken the time to spirit them away before blowing up his house, I assumed it was because he hadn’t yet finished with life.

  I don’t really expect Bill to show his face at a fair like this, but I come anyway, to mingle, observe, hope. These people get around—some have flown in from distant cities and countries, just to circulate for a few hours in search of a missing volume—and they tend to know, or know of, everybody within their exclusive circle. Maybe one of them has run into Bill, or knows somebody who has, and I’ll overhear them talking about him. A thin straw to clutch at, but when you’re as desperate as I am you’ll clutch at anything.

  I spend four hours in the dry, studious, murmur-filled rooms, circling silently, eavesdropping, studying faces. I ask no questions of the buyers—I tried that in the early days, but it only aroused people’s suspicions—though sometimes I’ll stop by a quiet table stacked with the sort of books Bill favored (Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dickens) and linger a few minutes, prompting a bored proprietor to start a conversation. On such occasions I’ll casually steer talk around to an old friend of mine—“Bill Casey. A police officer. Had a full set of Hemingway firsts”—and gauge the reaction. Some recall him, but all believe that he died in the blast. Nobody’s heard word of him in the decade since.

  As the fair draws to a quiet close, I make my exit. I’m not disappointed but I feel downhearted. It’s at times like this that I realize just how blindly I’m casting about for my old friend. He has all the world to hide in, and I’ve no clue where he might be. The odds against my finding him are immense. If I were in control of my senses, I’d cut my losses and call it quits. But I’m not. Haven’t been for ten years. So I’ll continue, like the senseless, dogged, single-minded beast that I am.