“No…please…” He caught back a sob, and pushed the scorched cigarette into his mouth when he felt the awful force of the cowboy’s silence.
“Hold still, now. Real still. I don’t think I believe there’s a Santa Claus church.” His hand flashed to the Colt and wrenched it smoothly from the holster in an eyeblink. The gun boomed, more brick splinters hit Teegarten’s face, and the cigarette was clipped in half. Teegarten wet his pants, his mouth clamped on the smoking butt.
“It’s the Cathedral of St. Francis!” he shouted. “I swear it! The Cathedral of St. Francis, on Vallejo Street!”
“Okie-dokie. Is that the priest’s real name, or is he made up too?”
Teegarten choked on smoke, and tasted hellfire.
He heard the Colt’s hammer click back.
“Lancaster,” Teegarten moaned, tears trickling down his face. “Father… John Lancaster. That’s his name.”
“Good,” Travis said, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet smashed into the fleshy bulb of Teegarten’s nose and took it away in a splatter of blood and flesh fragments. The shock threw him off the chair and against the bullet-pocked bricks; he cried out in agony and grasped his bleeding face.
“Shucks.” Travis blew smoke from the barrel’s tip. “I missed.” The Colt spun around his finger, was returned to the well-used leather. “Stop cryin’. I hate that sound. I’m gonna tell you a story now,” he decided. “Once upon a time there was a cowboy who had so much love in him it busted his heart. Just—boom—blew it all to pieces. So Dr. Fields—oh, yeah, him, the bastard—said shut him away so he can’t never love nobody again. And I was doin’ so damned good before I heard that music. On a radio at night. Out there in that big country, where all the music floats in and tangles up in the air. Now, I told Bethy to behave. I swear I did. Oh, she was a willful thing!” He rubbed his hands together, trying to dry the palms. “Willful. I said you want me to cry blood, I’ll show you I can, by God, and then I went and had him do it. You know. The guy on Tenth Street out by the fairgrounds.”
Hoss Teegarten held his face as if trying to keep the rest of his dangling nose from falling off. His eyes were bright and staring with pain, and he began crawling away from the blotches of his own blood.
“I think he had a needle that made me sick,” Travis wandered on, through the haunted land. “Bethy and those red shoes, I swear!” He blinked, watching the fat man crawl. “No,” he said, and he pulled his gun out and shot the detective through the left knee. Then, as Teegarten sobbed and howled and sobbed some more, Travis opened the Colt’s cylinder and began to reload with bullets from his holster. “I always had a thing for blonds, but I like me brunettes too. Hell, redheads I won’t kick out of bed for eatin’ crackers. Cheri Dane and Easee Breeze were blonds. Debra Rocks is a brunette. You see Super Slick?”
Teegarten kept crawling, desperate and insane now, dragging his ruined leg across the wet concrete.
“There’s a scene where they all looked at me. Right at me. The three of them, together. And when they opened their mouths I heard that music, and I knew right then that California wasn’t such a long way from Oklahoma. See, the movie was made in California. So I came here. I mean, to Los Angeles first. Cheri Dane went to the openin’ of her new movie. Girl Trouble. But that’s not near as good as Super Slick. So I followed her to her place, just like I followed Debra Rocks when she was at that bookstore. Oh, they try to change cars and all to shake you, but once ol’ Travis gets his heart set…” He watched the wounded man crawling, and then he lifted his reloaded gun and put a bullet squarely through the right elbow.
“I found out from this guy in a theater that he saw Easee Breeze in person at a place right here in San Francisco. So I came on to find her. I loved her, see. Like I loved Cheri Dane. And like I love Debra Rocks. I mean…they love me too, ’cause I figured out the music.” He clicked the hammer back. “I knew what they were really sayin’, all the time.” He took aim. “They were sayin’, ‘Travis, come make us cry blood.’”
The gun went off.
Hoss Teegarten lurched and fell on his face, his skull pierced at the right temple.
“And that’s the end of that story,” Travis said. He spun the Colt gracefully and sank it away. The barrel’s warmth bled through his jeans. “That wicked, wicked priest. We’re gonna have to do somethin’ about him, ain’t we? She’s my date.” He went around blowing out the candles, but before he extinguished the last one he walked to his sleeping bag, surrounded by hamburger wrappers, and picked up a coil of rope. Then the final candle went dark, and he followed the flashlight’s beam out.
23
THE TELEPHONE RANG.
John almost fell out of bed in his haste to get to it. He grasped the receiver. “Hello?”
“Howdy.”
Whose voice was that? John had been expecting to hear from Hoss Teegarten…
“This Lancaster? Father John Lancaster?”
“Yes. Who is this?” Rain was still tapping at the window.
“Somebody who wants to see you.”
John glanced at his wristwatch on the small bedside table; he couldn’t make it out, so he switched on the lamp. Three minutes before two. “It’s a little early for games, isn’t it?”
“Not this game. The time’s just right. I’ve got a message for you from your girlfriend.”
“My…” His heart seized up. “Who is this?”
“I can bring the message to you, if that’s what you want.”
“Just tell me now.”
“Oh, I can’t do that.” The voice sounded as if the man might be smiling. “No, sir. You got a place we can meet…say, in about ten minutes?”
“The sanctuary,” John said. “What’s this about?”
“The sanctuary,” the man repeated. “I like the way that sounds. Safe. Listen, you a Catholic?”
“Of course I am.”
“You Catholics…like…have a little box you go into, don’t you? Thing about the size of a closet? You go in there and listen to people tellin’ you what all they’ve done wrong?”
“A confessional, yes.”
“And you don’t see each other’s faces, do you? It’s like one box talkin’ to another box.”
“Roughly speaking.”
“That’s where I want you to be.”
John frowned. “What?”
“In your box. In ten minutes. That’ll be…two-oh-seven. Whoops. Two-oh-eight. Then you leave the front door open, and I’ll come and get in my box. They’re right out where you can see them, ain’t they?”
“Yes,” John said cautiously. His skin was beginning to crawl.
“Well, that works out pretty as pink. You be there, and I will too. Oh. Hold on, now. Let’s get this straight up front: what I’ve got to say to you is between you and me. There ain’t gonna be nobody else there, right?”
“If there’s anybody else there, I won’t come in. I won’t tell you what your girlfriend in apartment number six with that pretty long black hair wants you to know. You be there alone, now.” The man hung up.
John’s first impulse was to call the police. But for what? Someone was coming to confessional; maybe the time was strange, but… And anyway, John wanted to hear what the man had to say. He was shaking like a wild leaf; if this really was a message from Debbie, had she found out about him? Oh, my God…had Teegarten told her?
Mysteries, mysteries.
John hurriedly put on his jeans. His black shirt with its stiff white collar was lying nearest to hand, so he put that on and buttoned it up. Then a thick beige cardian pulled out of the closet. He slipped on his sneakers, without socks, and ran from his apartment to the sanctuary.
He checked the doors; they were still unlocked. The lights were low in the sanctuary, saving electricity, and he decided to leave them that way. He checked his watch. Almost time. This was ridiculous, but he had to find out what was going on. He walked to the confessional booth, entered it, and sat down on the velvet cushion to
wait.
Two-oh-eight.
Two-oh-nine.
Two-ten.
And John sat alone, feeling like more of a fool every passing second.
Two-eleven.
Two-twelve.
He heard the hinge creak quietly as the front doors were pushed open. He sat up straight, his heart pounding, and put his hand on the latch.
“Which one you in, Father?” the man’s voice called.
“This one. Here, on your left.” He started to open the latch and peer out, but the man said, “You stay in there, now. Got somethin’ real important to tell you.”
John’s fingers burned to open the door, but he sat listening to the sound of boots coming across the marble. Had he heard that sound somewhere before?
The footsteps halted. “You nice and snug in there, Father?”
“Come on and let’s get this over with!” John said, his nerves about to snap. “What do you want to tell me?”
“I want to confess,” the man said, and John heard him enter the confessor’s booth.
“Look. It’s late. Just tell me, all right?” What was that smell? John thought. A strange, pungent odor…
“I know all about your girlfriend, Father. A big fat dick told me.” The man bent down, and in the low light John could see a pair of pale lips at the screen.
A burnt smell, John thought. That’s what it was. “Meaning?”
“Meanin’ your ass is cooked, Father John. I heard the music, not you.”
“Music?” Was this guy nuts, or what? “What music?”
The man laughed quietly. “Sure, you know what I mean. All you guys know the secret. That’s why you went after Debra.”
“I’d like to know who you…” He stopped. Debra, the man had said. Not Debbie. His eyes widened.
“She’s my date,” the man said.
There was a metallic click.
Gunpowder, John thought. That’s what I smell.
He jerked his face back from the grille and instinctively lifted his right hand in a gesture of protection because he remembered hearing that click when he was inside a toilet stall, and now he knew what it—
The gun went off, a gout of fire blasting through the grille. The palm of John’s open hand exploded, blood spraying across the opposite wall. Pain seared him, and as he grabbed his wrist and fell off the velvet cushion the pistol went off a second time.
This bullet creased across the front of John’s throat, shocking his larynx like a punch. He grunted with pain and slid to the floor as the third bullet passed through the confessional over his head in a shower of wood splinters.
Travis peered through the broken grille, could see the bastard lying there and blood all over the wall. The bastard’s collar was turning crimson. Got him right in the neck, he thought. Bleed to death real quick. The priest’s eyelids were fluttering, but he was a goner for sure. “She’s my date,” Travis repeated, and he holstered his Colt, got out of the confining little closet, and ran for the doors. Then out into the rain, toward Moby Dick’s Chevy parked up on the curb.
He pulled away, heading for his girlfriend’s place.
And two minutes later, Father John Lancaster burst out of the confessional and fell to the hard marble, his bleeding hand clasped to his chest. He squeezed the wrist with the other hand, trying to constrict the veins and stop the ghastly flow. His face had gone white, and blood crept down his throat over the crimson collar. His first thought was to scream for help—not that anyone was around to hear him—but when he tried that, his voice came out as a pained croak.
Oh, my Christ, he thought. Oh, Holy Mother… I’ve got to get up.
Bleeding. Bleeding all over the floor. The monsignor was…going to…split a gut…
His consciousness ebbed, came back again, ebbed and returned. Pain throbbed up his wrist and through his shoulder, his hand felt as if it had been caught in a freezer, but his face was on fire.
She’s my date, the maniac had said.
My date.
“Oh, Lord,” he gasped, but it came out as the grunt of a wounded beast. Got to get up…got to get up…now.
He got to his knees. His head was starting to clear a little, but dark pain still sought to drag him under. The smell of blood was sickening, and his palm kept oozing though he squeezed his wrist with all his strength.
Get up…get up…damn you, get up!
That maniac was stalking Debbie…no, stalking Debra Rocks. But Debbie was the one who wore her face.
John stood up, wavered on his feet, clenched his teeth, and staggered through the door that led him into the administrative wing. A telephone, he thought. Got to get to a telephone. The first office was locked. So was the second. His own office was locked, and his keys were in his apartment. He staggered on, leaving a trail of blood drops.
In his apartment, he couldn’t make his fingers close around the telephone’s receiver. They jittered and jumped, but would not obey. Nerve damage, he thought. He lifted the receiver with his left hand and jabbed at the O button with his elbow. Circuits clicked and whirred. “Operator.”
He wanted to say I need the police, but nothing would come out. Sweat broke from his pores. “I…need…” he croaked.
“Is someone there?” the operator asked. “Hello?”
“I…need…the…” His bruised larynx refused to let the words come out as anything but a harsh moan.
“Hello? Is anyone…”
Blood was trickling down John’s right wrist, and he knew at that moment that if he did not get to Debbie she was doomed.
He looked at his bicycle, next to the door. The operator hung up.
He had to make it. He had to, wounded or not. By the time he got to the police, she might well be raped or…worse, much worse. Anybody who used a gun like that wasn’t going to be satisfied with rape. And now John had to pull whatever guts he had up from his shoes and reach Debbie, because the clock was ticking and time was fast running out.
He went to his black pants, hanging over a chair. He yanked the belt out and tied it as tightly as he could stand around his right wrist, using his left hand and his teeth. Then he shook the cobwebs out of his head, and he thought of Debbie coming face-to-face with that maniac—that killer, possibly—and he jumped on his bike and pedaled furiously down the hall to the stairs.
Blood spotted the floor behind him.
He went through the street door pedaling, out onto Vallejo and into the drizzle. The chilly air served to knock some of the sluggishness out of his legs, and he pedaled harder. His right hand twitched, the palm a red oozing mass and the rest of the hand bone-white. He sped across Broadway and into the night.
24
HE WENT UP THE stairs, all the way to number six, and there he buzzed her door.
Debbie opened her eyes. What was that? Somebody at the door? She waited, not sure she’d heard anything at all but a wish. And there it was again: the buzzer.
She sat up in bed. “Lucky,” she whispered.
John was pedaling hard, but the world had slowed down. The streets were made of black, gleaming tar, and the air had thickened. He took a corner fast, and suddenly the tar let his tires go and he was slung into a group of garbage cans.
Debbie put on her white robe, stepped over Unicorn—who liked to scuttle around in the darkness—and flipped on lights as she hurried to the door. On the kitchen counter was an airline ticket, and it was good Lucky had come because there were a lot of things she needed to say to him.
She started to open the door, in a rush to see his face. But at the last second she stopped herself and peered through the spyhole.
It was a guy with a blond crew cut, wearing a rain-damp canvas coat. He was studying his hands.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice sharp now that she realized it wasn’t him after all.
The guy looked up at the spyhole. He smiled, and she could see weird tattoos at the outer corners of his eyes.
Up again, and speeding onward.
Hurry! he told h
imself. His legs were cramping. Forget the pain. Hurry, damn it! His vision kept going in and out, but now he had control of himself and he wasn’t going to lose consciousness again. Still, he had a long way to go yet. He grabbed the belt with his teeth and gave it a tightening jerk. Then, his head over the handlebars, he raced toward North Beach.
“Howdy,” Travis said. His heart was thudding. Oh, she was so beautiful, so…within reach.
“You want me to call a cop?” she asked warily, ready to spring back from the door.
“No! Oh, no!” His smile went crooked. “I’ve got a message for you from your boyfriend.”
“My boyfriend?”
“Sure. You know. Fa…” He paused. “John.”
“John?” How many Johns did she know? she thought. This guy must be cracked! But then it dawned on her. “John. You mean Lucky?”
That seemed to turn a light on, he decided. “Lucky,” he repeated thickly. “Yeah, he’s sure lucky, knowin’ you and all.”
Still, something wasn’t right. Debbie could smell it. “How do you know him?”
“Oh, we go way back. We’re just like this.” He held up a hand with two intertwined fingers.
Debbie still didn’t open the door. If you don’t know the face, she thought, don’t let ’em into the place. “What’s the message?”
“Let me in and I’ll tell you.”
“No. Sorry. Tell me from out there.”
“I don’t think you want your neighbors hearin’ this.”
“They’re heavy sleepers. Let’s hear it, Jack.”
“Travis,” he told her with a pained expression. “Travis, from Oklahoma.”
“Okay, great. What’s the message, Travis?”
He paused, studying his hands again. The warped wheels went round and round. Finally he looked up into the spyhole and gave her his best smile. “Your boyfriend’s a priest.”
Her mouth slowly opened. Her face contorted; then she shook her head and grinned. “Travis, you’re crazier’n a one-legged grasshopper!”
“Father John Lancaster,” he went on. “The Cathedral of St. Francis. It’s on Vallejo. A big white place.”