“Like the songs that sea nymphs sing to lure unwary sailors to destruction.”
“These aren’t sea nymphs. These are bugs in cocoons.”
“We don’t know they’re bugs,” I said.
“I’m way sure they aren’t puppy dogs.”
“I think maybe we got out of that bungalow just in time.”
After a silence, he said, “It’s crap like this that takes all the fun out of the end of the world.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to feel like a piece of chum in a school of hammerheads.”
The tape was duped. I took the copy to the composition table and, picking up a felt-tip pen, said, “What’s a good neo-Buffett song title?”
“Neo-Buffett?”
“It’s what Sasha’s writing these days. Jimmy Buffett. Tropical bounce, parrothead worldview, fun in the sun — but with a darker edge, a concession to reality.”
“‘Tequila Kidneys,’” he suggested.
“Good enough.”
I printed that title on the label and inserted the cassette nto an empty slot in the rack where Sasha stored her compoitions. There were scores of cassettes that looked just like it.
“Bro,” Bobby said, “if it ever comes to that, you would low my head off, wouldn’t you?”
“Anytime.”
“Wait for me to ask.”
“Sure. And you me?”
“Ask, and you’re dead.”
“The only fluttering I feel is in my stomach,” I said.
“I figure that’s normal right now.”
I heard a hard snap and a series of clicks, followed by the same sounds again — then the unmistakable creak of the back door opening.
Bobby blinked at me. “Sasha?”
I went into the candlelit kitchen, saw Manuel Ramirez in his uniform, and knew the sounds I’d heard had been from a police lock-release gun. He was standing at the kitchen table, staring down at my 9-millimeter Glock, to which he had gone directly, in spite of the dim light. I had put the pistol on the table when Bobby’s news about Wendy Dulcinea’s kidnapping had left me shaky.
“That door was locked,” I said to Manuel, as Bobby entered the kitchen behind me.
“Yeah,” Manuel said. He indicated the Glock. “You buy this legally?”
“My dad did.”
“Your dad taught poetry.”
“It’s a dangerous profession.”
“Where’d he buy this?” Manuel asked, picking up the pistol.
“Thor’s Gun Shop.”
“You have a receipt?”
“I’ll get it.”
“Never mind.”
The door between the kitchen and the downstairs hall swung inward. Frank Feeney, one of Manuel’s deputies, hesitated on the threshold. For an instant, in his eyes, I thought I saw a veil of yellow light billow like curtains at a pair of windows, but it was gone before I could be sure that it had been real. “Found a shotgun and a.38 in Halloway’s Jeep,” Feeney said.
“You boys belong to a right-wing militia or something?” Manuel asked.
“We’re going to sign up for a poetry class,” Bobby said. “You have a search warrant?”
“Tear a paper towel off that roll,” the chief said. “I’ll write one out for you.”
Behind Feeney, at the far end of the hall, in the foyer, backlit by the stained-glass windows, was a second deputy. I couldn’t see him well enough to know who he was.
“How’d you get in here?” I asked.
Manuel stared at me long enough to remind me that he was not a friend of mine anymore.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“A massive violation of your civil rights,” Manuel said, and his smile had all the warmth of a stiletto wound in the belly of a corpse.
19
Frank Feeney had a serpent’s face, one without fangs but with no need of fangs because he exuded poison from every pore. His eyes had the fixed, cold focus of a snake’s eyes, and his mouth was a slit from which a forked tongue could have flicked without causing a start of surprise even in a stranger who’d just met him. Before the mess at Wyvern, Feeney had been the rotten apple on the police force, and he was still sufficiently toxic to cast a thousand Snow Whites into comas with a glance.
“You want us to search the place for more weapons, Chief?” he asked Manuel.
“Yeah. But don’t trash it too much. Mr. Snow, here, lost his father a month ago. He’s an orphan now. Let’s show him some pity.”
Smiling as if he had just spied a tender mouse or a bird’s egg that would satisfy his reptilian hunger, Feeney turned and swaggered down the hallway toward the other deputy.
“We’ll be confiscating all firearms,” Manuel told me.
“These are legal weapons. They weren’t used in the commission of any crime. You don’t have any right to seize them,” I protested. “I know my Second Amendment rights.”
To Bobby, Manuel said, “You think I’m out of line, too?”
“You can do what you want,” Bobby said.
“Your boardhead buddy here is smarter than he looks,” Manuel told me.
Testing Manuel’s self-control, trying to determine if there were any limits to the lawlessness in which the police were willing to engage, Bobby said, “An ugly, psychotic asshole with a badge can
“Exactly,” Manuel said.
Manuel Ramirez — neither ugly nor psychotic — is three inches shorter, thirty pounds heavier, twelve years older, and noticeably more Hispanic than I am; he likes country music, while I’m born for rock-’n’-roll; he speaks Spanish, Italian, and English, while I’m limited strictly to English and a few comforting mottoes in Latin; he’s full of political opinions, while I find politics boring and sleazy; he’s a great cook, but the only thing I can do well with food is eat it. In spite of all these differences and many others, we once shared a love of people and a love of life that made us friends.
For years he had worked the graveyard shift, the top cop of the night, but since Chief Lewis Stevenson died one month ago, Manuel had been head of the department. In the night world where I had met him and become his friend, he was once a bright presence, a good cop and a good man. Things change, especially here in the new Moonlight Bay, and although he now works the day, he has given his heart to darkness and is not the person I once knew.
“Anyone else here?” Manuel asked.
“No.”
I heard Feeney and the other deputy talking in the foyer — and then footsteps on the stairs.
“Got your message,” Manuel told me. “The license number.”
I nodded.
“Sasha Goodall was at Lilly Wing’s house last night.”
“Maybe it was a Tupperware party,” I said.
Breaking the magazine out of the Glock, Manuel said, “You two showed up just before dawn. You parked behind the garage and came in the back way.”
