A Gathering Evil Read online

  Marit stepped into the reception room, and immediately a number of people called her name. She descended into the throng, kissing cheeks or hugging people. Some of the men held her closer and longer than she might have liked, and for those she really detested, she put up a mock protest that immediately darkened the expression on the face of the man's date.

  Before I could trail after her, a man in a midnight blue suit cut me off. "I'm Captain Williams, Brad Williams."

  "Günter."

  "Günter, good." He looked over at Marit and smiled. "Look, these are the ground rules: Don't speak unless spoken to. If you spot trouble, you report it to me. If Marit looks like she's trapped in a boring conversation or a situation that is getting ugly, walk over and tell her she has a call. If something weird does go down, leave the shooting to us. If you find you have to extricate Marit from a situation, try not to kill any of the guests."

  "Not a problem."

  "Good. No drinking for you, but help yourself to food."

  "Thanks." I drifted into the room, leaving him to pick off the next bodyguard and brief him. I spotted Marit working her way around to the right, still in greeting mode. Descending another step, I gave the arc I could see a quick look to spot any potential problems and saw none. Knowing I would not feel secure until I had done a full circuit of the room, I descended the rest of the way to the floor and headed off on the trail Marit had blazed.

  The reception itself, while being sponsored and hosted by Lorica Industries, was for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. At a number of places around the room, and on the interior, nonrotating wall, paintings and sculptures had been set up with a small tote board beside each. A Lorica employee stood next to each work and spoke about it and the artist who had created it. I also noticed them accepting small pieces of paper from people and, after reading them, punching numbers in on a small keypad. On the toteboard, beside the pieces, an LCD display flashed up the current bid in what appeared to be a low-key silent auction.

  The guests appeared to represent the upper crust of Phoenix society. I easily identified a white-haired, aristocratic-looking man as Darius MacNeal, the man who had created the Build-more Corporation, because of the ads I'd seen on television earlier in the day. I could not, however, place a name on the two young women clinging to his arms, though judging by age, I imagined they had to be his granddaughters. He laughed uproariously at the joke Phoenix's boy-mayor told him, then showed how affectionate his family was by nuzzling one woman's long neck.

  Waiters and waitresses wandered throughout the gathering bearing trays of drinks and hors d'oeuvres. I passed on placing a drink order, but did indulge in food when a woman carrying a tray of sushi came within striking range. The tekka-maki tasted good enough that I wondered if Osome was doing the catering.

  Marit came back for me and linked her arm in mine. "Incoming. You'll want to see this performance, I'm certain."

  Without saying another word, she dragged me half-way around the room until I got to where a broad sta irway descended from the 91st floor suite to the reception room. We took up a position just upstream of the bottom of the stairs and slowly drifted down toward them. Off to our right I spotted Alejandro, but before I could point him out to Marit, Nerys Loring made her appearance at the top of the stairs.

  My instant assessment of her was that she was a strikingly handsome woman. She looked to be in her mid-forties and had a mature confidence in herself that made her actively seductive. She wore her black hair cut to hang just above her shoulders and to frame her strong face. Her dark eyes and brows combined with her incarnadine lipstick to make her face seem almost vampire pale. The bodice of her black, strapless gown sparkled with a decidedly modest number of sequins and hugged her hourglass figure in a most flattering manner. The velvet skirts flared out to hide her feet, yet she did not appear the least bit inconvenienced as she descended the stairs. A string of pearls encircled her throat and a diamond ring glittered from her right hand as she maintained her balance through feather-light finger-contact with the bannister.

  She smiled with the pleasure you might expect to see on the face of a potentate being welcomed by groveling peasants. She knew she deserved the homage, but she also welcomed it. Part of me resented her basking in our attention, but I knew that was like the sun resenting the beauty of a flower it nourished. Here was a woman who was attractive, smart and powerful—a nasty and very erotic combination—and she clearly knew that she could use one or all of those assets to get her anything she wanted.

  As she reached the same level as the rest of us, people whispered greetings almost reverently. Nerys paid them scant or no attention and headed straight out into the room. I felt Marit pull herself up to her full height and turn her smile on full force as Lorica's CEO homed in on her. She braced herself for what might, in light of her history with Lorica, be a very nasty encounter.

  Nerys dismissed Marit with a casual glance, then offered her hand to me. "We've not been formally introduced. I am Nerys Loring." She enfolded my hand in a firm grip and gave me a smile that threatened to swallow me up. "Had I known you were in Phoenix, Mr. Caine, I would have invited you to our party myself."

  Even given twice the warning I had, the late Shakespearean actor Mel Gibson could not have covered his surprise at her greeting. I saw my surprise reflected in her eyes, and her grip tightened ever so slightly. I forced a smile and let blood flush my cheeks. I met her black stare, then looked down.

  "Forgive me, Ms. Loring. I would have let you know, but I knew you were quite occupied with business." I reforged eye contact. "I also felt it would have been presumptuous of me to wheedle an invitation out of you. Ms. Fisk asked me to accompany her, so I felt this was the easiest solution to the situation."

  "Ah, Marit," Nerys said without looking in her direction.

  "You are looking quite...fit, Nerys," Marit returned. She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. "Darling, I think I'm going to bid on a picture for my place. I'll be back."

  She retreated, and Nerys let a satisfied grin twist up the corners of her mouth. "You are an interesting man, Mr. Caine. I understand two of my employees left Lorica because of you, yesterday."

  What game are you playing? "Independent contractors, they must have been. They were clumsy and stupid, so I assumed they could not have been yours. I don't like being spied upon."

  She slipped her arm through mine, leeching away the warmth lingering from Marit. "I prefer jobs to be supervised. I think of it as quality assurance."

  With forewarning, I was able to conceal my pleasure at her admission that I had been hired to perform a job. Given the equipment I found, and the amount of money I had been given, I felt certain I'd been hired to kill someone. If what Natch Feral had said was true, that Nerys had been looking for her father after a snatch had been put on him two months ago, I thought chances were good that he might have been my target.

  I kept a plastic smile on my face as we began to stroll through the party, but let an edge drop into my voice. "If you hire a specialist to do a job, what standards can you use to judge his performance?"

  "Please, tell me, Mr. Caine."

  "End product."I looked up and out the window. "I think you'll find your problem has just dropped off the edge of the earth."

  She smiled appreciatively, but kept a note of caution in her voice. "The world is round, Mr. Caine."

  "Only to those who don't know how to find the corners." I patted her hand and gently disengaged it from my arm. "I should not monopolize your time, for you have many other guests."

  "You are an interesting man, Mr. Caine. I had not expected to actually meet you. If not for the men who recently left my employ, I would not even know what you looked like." Her eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. "The cost of a professional specialist is very high."

  "But the cost of an amateur is yet higher. Don't worry, your money was well spent."

  "As I expected, based on Fiddleback's excellent recommendation." She opened her hands and encompass
ed the entire party. "Please, enjoy yourself—despite your unfortunate choice of companion—and if you choose to bid on anything, I would find myself in debt to your generosity."

  I brought her right hand to my lips and kissed it gently. "It has been my pleasure to be of service to you."

  She answered with an elevated eyebrow, then she withdrew and quickly greeted those individuals she had snubbed when she saw me. Their resentment melted like wax beneath a blowtorch, or their spirit died beneath one of her withering stares. Within 10 seconds she had vanished from sight and part of me wondered if she had been there at all.

  "La Bruja took to you like a vampire to a hemophiliac." Alejandro sipped a slender glass of champagne. "Did she say anything useful?"

  My eyes half shut as I concentrated. "Whatever I was here to do, it was because she was paying the freight. She'd put the two guys from Ernesto's on me, but she made no apologies for their having tried to kill me. I wonder if they weren't working for another faction within Lorica as well?"

  "I don't know." He fingered the buttons on his double-breasted, navy blue pinstriped suit jacket. "I do know there is still some factional fighting within Lorica. There have been a couple of purges."

  "Is there any chance you can find folks who knew her father before the ouster? Long-time aides who got booted after he was gone?"

  The art dealer nodded. "That's easily doable, I should think. Some of them even live in City Center."

  "Any in Eclipse?"

  "I can find out."

  "Excuse me, Mr. Higuera?" A middle-aged woman touched Alejandro on the right sleeve.

  He turned and smiled broadly at her. "Mrs. Rosson, what can I do for you?"

  She smiled and mouthed the word "Hello" to me, then spoke to Alejandro. "I don't recall ever seeing other surrealist work by Elizabeth Turner in your gallery before, but the piece being auctioned here is being offered by you. Is she another one of your exclusive discoveries?"

  Alejandro nodded conspiratorially to her. "I found her two months ago. She's been doing these pieces for years and just sticking them away. I've convinced her to part with some of them."

  Mrs. Rosson smiled sheepishly. "I must confess the piece she has here is already too much for me, but I would be interested in other examples of her work. Shall I call on your shop tomorrow?"

  Alejandro nodded solemnly. "I have two other pieces I've not yet framed. I will look forward to your visit." As she walked away, he looked back at me. "Sorry, that pays the rent. Anything else from Loring?"

  "She used the word 'Fiddleback' as if it were a codename for someone. Sound any buzzers?"

  "No, I'm afraid not."

  "Maybe it will with some of those ex-employees, if you can find any."

  "We can hope."

  Marit came walking over and restaked her claim to my left arm. She wore a big grin on her face, and I sensed her mood had shifted greatly since she departed. "This is wonderful!"

  "Yes?"

  "There is the most ghastly piece over there—no offense, Alejandro—called 'With a Not in my Stomach,' by Elizabeth Turner. It's, well, it's..."

  Alejandro pointed toward the place where the painting had been set up. "You have to see this thing to believe it."

  Marit nodded in agreement, so the three of us cut through the crowd to look at this picture. It was a painting of a human form, but it was done in necrotic flesh tones with hints of the green-gray of dead skin. The figure's flesh appeared to be more rubber than skin and had been tightly wrapped up into a ball at the center of the piece. The contorted body's face was hidden in shadows, but it had a mouth, complete with clenched teeth, situated at the figure's right heel.

  I shivered. It was truly a horrible vision, yet I could sympathize with it because I saw myself in it. The hidden face was my lost identity, and all that it would take to unlock the mouth to spout the truth would be a some trigger memory. The flesh being sloughed off was how I felt about trying to shed whatever I had been. Nerys Loring clearly felt she had hired me as an assassin to kill her father, and I might have actually come to do that, but I had no desire to be a murderer.

  "It is definitely an expressive piece," I offered.

  Alejandro smiled. "It spoke to me when I saw it. Hideous image, but excellent technique and command of anatomy."

  "But could you live with it in your house?" I asked him.

  He shook his head, and Marit giggled. "That's what is so delicious." She herded us back away from the piece before she said anything more. "I think it is morbid and creepy, but I've placed a bid on it. Nerys immediately topped my bid, so now I have a little war going on with her. She'll win, but it will cost her."

  I raised an eyebrow. "How do you know she isn't just bidding you up to stick you with the painting?"

  Our male companion shook his head. "Nerys never loses, except, perhaps, when her father overrode her and let Marit out of her 'noncompetition' clause in her contract. That is the soul of their animosity. She will never give in."

  "Which means she'll have that thing to look at for the rest of her life," Marit hissed.

  Up on the 91 st floor balcony, I saw Nerys staring down at the painting. She nodded slightly and a new bid went up on the tote board. With that I saw a satisfaction on her face, but I knew it came from more than her having topped Marit's latest bid.

  She, too, identified with the painting and, I felt certain, would enjoy staring at it for hours on end.

  The next morning, when the elevator doors opened, I thought certain I had descended into hell. The heat hit me with the force of a punch. I stepped out into it, hoping, expecting that I would pass back into another cool zone, but I did not. The blazing heat remained constant and, as I breathed in through my nose, I felt the air cauterize my nasal passages.

  Natch Feral crossed the street. "Welcome back to reality, Caine-man."

  "Good evening...." I started to say to her, but I realized it was noon. "I mean..."

  "Save it. It's always night down here in Eclipse." She turned and walked away, silently willing me to follow her. "I think we have a line on a dude you'll want to jaw with. Gotta get Bat first, though."

  I nodded at her back and quickly caught up with her. At the party Nerys Loring made short work of Marit's bidding war, and Marit, bloodied but unbeaten, made a great show of retreating. Because Nerys had spoken with me for a short but visible amount of time, Marit nibbled on my ear as we left, suggesting Nerys might have won a battle, but the war had yet to be concluded.

  We returned to her home, and she apologized most eloquently for having used me so shamelessly to get back at Nerys.

  I awoke without remembering any dreams and left Marit to her well deserved rest. In her media room I punched up the Municipal Library's online index service and sought any information I could find on "Fiddleback." The best thing I got was a very authoritative article on the brown recluse spider, which is also known by the name Fiddleback. While they are present in Phoenix, the black widow is much more prevalent, and fiddlebacks are treated pretty much like myths.

  Like Coyote.

  By 10 a.m., Alejandro called and said he had worked with Jytte to come up with a list of people who fit the parameters of Lorica old guard being retired when Nero Loring was Leared by his daughter. He said the majority of them were in retirement villas around the state, with their bills and "care" paid for by Lorica. He left no doubt in my mind that they were being held by Nerys until any information they had concerning the company had lost its market value.

  He did point out that Jytte had uncovered the name of a man who had been with Lorica for as long as the company had been around. Phil Costapain was a black man who had worked as a janitor for his full tenure at Lorica. The reason she added him to the list was because he was Nero Loring's first employee and Nero himself had attended the man's retirement dinner. She noted the two of them always took their vacations at the same time and Alejandro said she thought they might have been very good at keeping their friendship quiet.

  "Natc
h, do you really think you know where Costapain lives?"

  She nodded. "I do, but he's real scared of something. Word's been spread that he's dead."

  "Dead?"

  She shrugged. "There's dead and there's D-E-A-D, Caine-man. Costapain doesn't want folks finding him, so outsiders hear he's dead. I just happen to know better." She glanced at the street, then nimbly darted between the cars. On the other side, she looked back at me and shook her head.

  I waited for a bit more survivable break in traffic, then joined her on the sidewalk in front of a concrete bunkerish building. "I'm dying in this windbreaker and jeans. How can you be wearing so much?"

  Another shrug elevated and dropped the padded shoulders of her oversized leather jacket. Beneath it she wore a loose striped shirt and beneath that a dark green leotard. Her jeans had been expertly slashed in parallel lines from hip to ankle, revealing black Spandex-clad legs. Her white high-tops looked new and the laces certainly had never been tied.

  "Man, I've lived down here all my life. This is only the end of June. It don't get hot for another month. Damned slush duck." She jerked her head toward the bunker door. "C'mon, in here."

  I eyed the building with suspicion. "Where is 'here?'"

  "Here is 'The Trench.'" Natch jammed her hands in her pockets and headed for the door. "Bat works here."

  That little amount of information made me very dubious about the place, and stepping through the door confirmed everything I had imagined, and more. Because The Trench lacked sufficient light, the first thing I noticed about it was the reek of sweat and smoke and blood and beer. Human bodies huddled in shadows, slumped in chairs as if they'd been lashed to them by the shoulders and had their spines removed. The Du Drop Inn was to this place what the Lorica reception had been to my encounter with the Reapers.

  Realizing my eyes would only adjust to the gloom in geological time, I followed Natch into The Trench by feel. I caught, in the backlight of a cash register, a glimpse of a bar running the length of the left wall. Avoiding waitresses who looked gorgeous except in the eyes, we plunged deeper into The Trench until we approached what looked like, to me, to be a line of people facing the absolute blackness of the back wall.