Mummers' Curse Read online

  Misery, affliction, distress, sorrow, woe, despondency, grief.

  Suspicion, disbelief, distrust, doubt, misgiving. Honor, honesty, integrity, morality, scruples. Dilemma, difficulty, predicament, quandary, impasse.

  *

  Mackenzie wasn’t home when I called, and when I phoned him at headquarters, he sounded distracted as if, I thought with my new paranoia, he were removing himself emotionally and physically from my deceitful ways so that his buddies could arrest me.

  Yes, he said, he’d see me later, but he couldn’t say when.

  It was four o’clock. I felt as if my skin had turned gray and oily, as murky as my mind.

  I’d stayed after class for my Renata session. In the end, I compromised. Made a truce, conceded, settled.

  Caved in.

  But only halfway—she’d demanded not only a passing, but a good grade.

  She was not a person to whom you wanted to give a second chance. Nothing in her generated hope or trust. Still, I’d done it. I’d assigned her a ton of writing, variations of every theme her class had written, to be begun every day during lunch hour, at the back of my room, then completed that night at home.

  “If they are all of passing quality,” I told her, “and on time, you’ll most likely pass.”

  “Most likely?” she whined.

  “If you do the assignments, and do them well.” I counted on her innate duplicity to get us through. Her parents, or a writing tutor, would complete the essays. Then I could pretend to believe Renata had done them, and she could pass and I could remain employed. A win-win situation.

  Or maybe lose-lose, because I have seldom felt quite as disappointed in myself, and the year only a few days old, too.

  So, given the depressing weather, a briefcase packed with papers to mark, the cold night already shadowing the pathetic leftovers of afternoon, and C.K.’s continued absence, I did the logical thing. I went to the movies. Happily, there is a multiplex within a few leaps and bounds of school. I didn’t even need to relocate my car.

  There’s something satisfying about going to the movies in the daytime. It’s immoral in an innocuous way, a good kind of sneaking out of real life. The Puritan portion of my DNA springs into action, sending reminders about how the busy little bee doth spend her shining hours and fires-of-hell warnings about succumbing to sloth. This adds spice to the popcorn.

  The movie was somebody’s unbearable attempt to be lighthearted. Nothing worked. The acting was wretched, the lines strained, the story illogical. And the popcorn was stale.

  Audience reaction was mixed. A woman, one of the handful of spectators, really liked the script. I know this because she had a habit of guffawing, then repeating the line that tickled her, so that she could guffaw all over again. She did this loudly and often. However, a grizzled man a few rows behind me was unimpressed. He fell into a deep sleep, full of snores that set the seats humming.

  The complete cinema experience. By the time the credits rolled, I felt a whole lot better.

  I walked into an early-dark night whose damp and windy bite found every engineering failure in my coat. Up the arms, inside the collar, and so forth and so chilly.

  I made myself as compact as possible and hurried toward the corner. There is nothing like a deserted street on a January night in Philadelphia to make a person feel stranded on this planet.

  “Miss Pepper. Please, one moment.”

  I didn’t recognize him, but I didn’t think I should be scared. He was polite, his voice low-pitched and confident, and apparently he knew me. Besides, he was elegant. In his early forties, I thought, with prematurely silver hair uncovered despite the freezing wind, and looking none the worse for it. His topcoat was visibly soft, cashmere, I suspected, and his hands, encased in buttery brown gloves, held a leather-bound book with gold-edged pages. Automatically, I looked for the title, as if that were the key to something.

  “The Prince,” he said. “Machiavelli.”

  A literate man, interested in the classics. Nothing to be afraid of.

  “He’s good to reread every few years.”

  But Machiavelli. The admirer of Cesare Borgia. Wasn’t he the ends-justify-the-means fellow?

  Whether or not he knew me, I didn’t know him. I was now chilled in an entirely new way that had nothing to do with the temperature. I put my arm out, warding the man off.

  He laughed, either because my hand would have been of little use or because there was nothing to ward off. He didn’t reach out or physically detain me. But there was a potential in his posture and that brief laugh that paralyzed my mind.

  I was afraid to run, afraid he’d catch me, hurt me in some terrible way. If I made it to the corner and turned toward the school, the Square, the back alley parking lot, I’d be in even more deserted territory and in more danger.

  I looked around, amazed at how empty the area was. No wonder the I-went-to-Philly-but-it-was-closed jokes. I thought those days had passed—but where was everybody? The five or six other cinema patrons had either relocated to another of the auditoriums or exited in the opposite direction.

  “Who are you?” I asked, while I looked as discreetly as I could for escapes—brightly lit storefronts or restaurants. I wanted to appear in control, but I could hear my giveaway breathlessness.

  “We haven’t met before,” he said in a crisp, well-modulated voice.

  The city felt locked up and callous. Good citizens had gone home after work, not to a multiplex. Their doors were barred and they were safe, and I was alone on the street with a stranger. “How did you know where I was?” I worked to keep the desperation out of my voice. “How do you know who I am?”

  “I was with you in there. And surprised, frankly, that a woman with your literary and educational background would seek such trivia.”

  “You followed me? Followed me into the movie?”

  “Well…” he said with a small, almost-charming bow, “indeed. I was not the one snoring, however, although I considered that an appropriate response.”

  “Why follow me at all?”

  “It’s too cold to wait out here.”

  “No, I meant…” I didn’t bother to finish. He was the best-groomed crazy I’d ever met. The calmest, most gracious sociopath. “I want you to leave me alone. Go away right now!” That was supposed to work. I’d been taught it in a class. It might have been more effective if my voice hadn’t shaken on the right now part so that it sounded like a plea, not a demand.

  “Go away or you’ll…?” he asked serenely.

  “I’ll—” He wasn’t going to bait me, make the rules. But he wasn’t playing by the rules. He was supposed to have already run away. “Get away!” I moved back from the corner. I’d get around him and race to the theater. It had somebody in it, and a phone.

  He moved with me, as if we were joined by guide wires.

  I remembered a personal safety tip my mother had clipped and mailed me. “Help! Fire!” I screamed.

  People were supposed to respond, people who wouldn’t blink if I’d merely shouted “Help, police.”’ People were supposed to worry that they might be in danger and, therefore, pay attention.

  No people. Not a peep.

  “Fire?” The man looked around at the bare pavement, the concrete and stone building near us. He seemed on the verge of laughing again. “Where?”

  “In Florida,” I muttered.

  “I don’t enjoy the cold,” he said. “I get sinus headaches, so let’s get to the point, which is the gun.” His voice wasn’t loud, but each syllable crackled when it hit the chilled air.

  The gun! I was so shocked, I forgot about fear for a while. He wasn’t going to hurt me—he wanted the gun. But nobody except the police, my sister and brother-in-law, Karen, and Dr. Reed On the Air knew about the gun.

  If he knew Sam and Beth, wouldn’t he have said so? If he knew about the gun because he was with the police, where’d he get his wardrobe? But of course, he wasn’t a cop. He was the other side, whichever that was. Whic
h meant—who had spied for him at the police station?

  “You’re surprised,” he said, answering my unarticulated question. “Don’t be. This was easy. Have they given it back yet?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not mine, even if they call it a ladies’ gun.”

  He nodded and looked encouraging.

  “But it’s not this lady’s,” I snapped.

  My purse would have held a bazooka if I’d wanted one, but anything I’d carry would be a woman’s gun. There were no ladies anymore, except in the British court. And I wouldn’t carry a gun.

  “It’s not a put-down,” he said. “Those little things are also called gamblers’ guns. They’re favored by people who want to hide the fact they’re armed.”

  “That gun is not mine, and that’s the only point.” We had finished our business. The night seemed to thicken around us and I again remembered to be afraid. “I won’t be getting it back. It’s evidence.”

  “Of what?”

  I wasn’t up for a philosophical discussion, or for him. “You know what I know. There’s a gun, the police have it, it isn’t mine. End of topic. Now if you’ll excuse—”

  “Could you describe it?”

  I backed up a step, but he closed the gap immediately. “A gun!” I said, my voice shaky again. “A trigger, a grip…of course I can’t describe it. They all look alike.” Was that gun-prejudice? Would the NRA file a suit? Was I going crazy?

  “They can be personalized, given a different finish, a fancy grip, markings, inlays—”

  “A gun!” I said. “That is all I noticed. The kind of gun that killed Jimmy Patricciano.”

  “It’s never smart to leap to conclusions.”

  “I’ll think about that. Honestly. Now, let me—”

  This time he actually put a gloved hand on me, but gently, on my forearm. “Stick to teaching,” he said softly.

  I tried to yank my arm back. He increased the pressure of his grasp. I wanted to speak, to scream, to scare him off, but I felt paralyzed with a fear born of nothing visible, audible, nameable. More like a force field, the sense that his exquisite tailoring and barbering was a disguise pulled over something misshapen and deadly. And he had crossed a line. His hand was on me. He was staking a claim that wasn’t his.

  “You’re a teacher, not an investigative reporter,” he said with the calm assurance of a guidance counselor. “Stay in your area of expertise. It’s healthier. Let go of this Mummer story. Nobody needs publicity, more attention right now. You’ll only fan fires. People are concerned.”

  The infamous article. How had it happened that I could be in trouble with Mackenzie about a gun I hadn’t put in my bag, and in trouble with this elegant thug about an article I hadn’t written?

  I found my voice again. “There. Is. No—” I said each word separately, clearly, as if that were the key to getting the world’s hearing cleared up. “Article. I. Have. Not…”

  But what was I about to promise, to give away? I’d write it. If I felt like it. I was mightily tired of backing down, first with Renata, now with Mr. Cashmere. “I’m not writing about this murder, and that’s enough about this—let me go and—”

  “Murders, don’t you mean? Plural. Those Mummers. Patricciano and Serfi.” And he let go of my arm.

  I shook my head. Connecting the two events was a TV news gimmick, nothing more.

  “A man like Serfi, he doesn’t voluntarily leave town before the parade. What do you think?” the silver-haired man murmured. “Is Serfi an ingredient in King’s Sausage, the way people say?”

  “I don’t say. I never knew him, don’t know a thing about him, and none of this has anything to do with me, or with that—my—article.”

  “And that’s how it should remain. Stay in your own backyard, so to speak. But if they give the gun back to you, call me. I want to see it, that’s all. Look at it. I won’t keep it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a matter of honor, and I would make it worth your while.” He handed me a card on heavy ivory stock with ARTHUR in raised gold script against an embossed gold crown. Below was a telephone number, also embossed and gilded. No last name, no company, no occupation, no address. I had the sense I was supposed to know who he was without being told, but I didn’t, and I wasn’t going to admit it. “I’ll know if they give it back,” he said, “so you might as well benefit. A look, that’s all I ask.”

  And with a courtly nod, his hair catching moonglow that was evident nowhere else, he walked off.

  I didn’t stop shaking until, swamped with a primitive sense of relief, I reached home. I took a deep breath, rode up the elevator, and let myself relax, inch by inch.

  To my surprise, Mackenzie was there, eating Chinese food out of containers, surrounded by the day’s mail which he mostly tossed into a nearby wastebasket. He looked near exhaustion, and none too happy.

  I was learning that timing was as important in the everydays of a relationship as it was on the dance floor, and I decided that it might be best to let him get his day out of his system before introducing my encounter with Arthur.

  “For you, Man,” he said, sounding too tired even for my full nickname. He pushed forward a plain white box, the sort you can buy flattened out at Christmas time. This was the small objet d’art size, sealed with clear tape and tied with curly gold ribbon.

  I smiled for the first time in hours. Mackenzie had anticipated what a bad back-to-school day it was going to be and had gotten me a no-occasion gift. A sorry-I-was-so-suspicious-last-night kind of gift. What a guy.

  “It was outside the elevator when I came home. Messenger must have delivered it.”

  End of elation. Now I was afraid to touch it, so instead, I ripped open the envelope that had AMANDA PEPPER printed on it and read its contents out loud. “It says ‘When you wake up and smell the coffee, this might be appropriate. But please be aware that it, like many other things, is perishable.’ I don’t like the sound of it,” I said. “And there’s no signature.”

  Mackenzie leaned over. I turned the card toward him while I sniffed the box and shook it, then passed it to him for further inspection.

  “You can leave it and I’ll take it in later,” he said, “but it doesn’t have any earmarks of a letter bomb or anything dangerous.”

  So I untied the ribbon, tossed it to Macavity, and the box flaps opened. I gasped.

  Sealed inside clear wrap on a bed of green tissue lay a single bloated, mottled cylinder, looking like a short salami.

  “Sausage,” Mackenzie said. He looked at it more closely. “Blood sausage, of all things.”

  The Doomsday clock sat, showing me, graphically, that with every breath, I had less and less time left.

  Ten

  WE STARED AT THE SAUSAGE.

  “Odd thing to send,” Mackenzie said. “Think maybe it’s a late Christmas gift? Somebody signed you up with those food guys—Tom and Jerry? Dave and Harvey? Whoever’s sausage-of-the-month club?”

  I closed my eyes. He was trying to be sweet, to jolly me out of a severe case of the willies, but I felt patronized.

  “You must be hungry,” he said, “and I’ve eaten everything I bought.”

  “I had popcorn.” The sight of the fat sausage took whatever residual appetite I had away. Amazing what the overtones of a single cylinder of processed meat could do.

  “How about I scramble you some eggs and brown this up with it?” he asked.

  “What is blood sausage, anyway? Why is it called that?”

  “Because it has a lot of blood in it.” He retrieved a dog-eared sheaf of recipes his mother had given him when he went off to college. “Of course, we called it boudin noir. Other people call it black pudding. Ancient dish, served to Odysseus according to Homer. Aside from onions, salt, pepper, and spices, it’s a mix of pig’s blood, lard, pork fat, whipping cream, and eggs.”

  “I’ll pass. It’s probably poisoned.”

  “It doesn’t need anything but its own ingredients—it kills with cholestero
l.”

  “Blood sausage,” I said. “Don’t those words have an all-too-familiar ring?”

  “Coincidence.”

  “I think not. And that note—I’m supposed to wake up and smell the sausage which is, like many things, perishable?”

  “You’re paranoid. Those are expressions, and a reminder to refrigerate it. You have no earthly connection with the disappeared Serfi. Or did you meet him, too, when you were doing your…research?”

  His tiny but deliberate pause galled me. I could almost hear him reluctantly snipping out the words so-called. So-called research. Just because I was still formulating ideas and really didn’t have time to write.

  “I’m not sure it matters what I actually know or knew or connected with or not,” I said. “If people believe I know something, that’s enough.” Time to tell him about my encounter with Arthur. “I saw Featherbreath after school, and when I—”

  “Was it as bad as its reviews?”

  “Worse.”

  “Why waste your money?”

  The fact that it had been a worthy investment, cheaper than mood elevators or psychiatric care, and that I’d appreciated the film’s dreadfulness to the hilt involved lengthy discussion. Besides, I worried about Mackenzie at times like this when he lost hold of what was relevant and what was not. Mired in trivia as he tended to be, I didn’t know how he ever tracked down a killer. He certainly didn’t have a bloodhound style, nose to the ground, single-mindedly following a scent. “Later,” I said. “The thing is, when I came out of the movie this man—”

  “What man?”

  “No, wait.” I put my hands up in a referee’s time sign. “This is when you listen, Cisco. Later on, I listen and you talk. Got that?”

  “Cisco!” he shouted. “Cisco! I never thought—arrgh!” And he flopped off his chair, onto the floor, one hand clutching his throat, the other covering his eyes as he rolled hither and yon, continuing his arrghs. Precisely as I’d always envisioned Rumpelstiltskin when his name was guessed.

  I’d actually gotten it. I leaped up. “Cisco? Cisco K. Mackenzie! I got it, I got it! I can’t believe that after all this time, all those guesses, I actually—this is incredible! I hardly—”