Flesh and Blood Page 26

  “No,” Kincaid said. He rotated the bowl in his hands. “Her sister.”

  “Gilda?” Frank asked.

  Kincaid returned the bowl to its place before him on the mat. “Yes.” He took a brown stalk from the floor and plucked a few of its parched leaves from the shaft. “It is an old story: the serpent comes into the garden.” He crushed the leaves in his fingers and sprinkled them onto the liquid. “Hannah.”

  “The serpent?” Frank asked immediately.

  “She came with money,” Kincaid went on. “Came into paradise. Into a little village in the jungle.”

  “San Jorge?” Frank asked.

  “San Jorge,” Kincaid told him. “She came with money, lots of money.”

  “Why?” Frank asked, his pencil holding steadily over the notebook as he prepared to write Kincaid’s answer down.

  “To find something wonderful,” Kincaid said. He stirred the crumbled leaves into the liquid. “The miracle potion, the jungle magic that would make the world beautiful.”

  “A drug?” Frank asked.

  Kincaid laughed softly. “She found a place to make it,” he went on. “Later, she paid a man to bring the people in.”

  “Pérez?” Frank asked.

  Kincaid looked at him quizzically.

  “I’m talking about Hannah’s husband,” Frank added, “Emilio Pérez.”

  “They found the jungle magic,” Kincaid said, “but it was from the Devil.” His eyes fell toward the bowl. “From the mouth of hell.”

  Frank stepped toward him slightly. “What was this ‘jungle magic’?” he asked.

  Kincaid did not seem to hear him. “And so they began to get sick,” he said. “They grew weak, and their bones grew twisted. Their skins broke and a yellow ooze poured out of them.” He drew in a long, painful breath. “Then they began to die. And so we stacked their bodies by the river.” Something in his eyes darkened almost imperceptibly. “Hannah would come out on the veranda and watch them from a distance. She would stand in her long white dress and watch Pérez lead more of them into the factory that made the jungle magic. They would work, then they would die, and we would stack their bodies by the river.”

  “What bodies?” Frank asked immediately.

  Kincaid did not answer. His eyes drifted toward the crutch, and the bloodstained cloth that hung from it. “Hannah had lost her soul. Her eyes were dead.” He looked at Frank, and a strange pride swam into his face. “But not her sister’s eyes. Not Gilda’s.”

  “What about Gilda?” Frank asked quickly.

  “She went into the factory every day,” Kincaid said with a sudden, luminous smile. “You would have to be an exile to understand how much I loved her.” His voice seemed to break on the last words, but he stopped, regained himself, then went on. “She knew. She knew. She allowed herself to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “That the jungle magic was from hell,” Kincaid said. He picked up a small pouch from the head of the mat and sprinkled its contents, a dull greenish powder, into the bowl. “‘I will show you,’ she said, and she worked with the people every day after that, until she got like them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Kincaid shook his head. “I made a crutch for Gilda.”

  Frank drew his eyes over to the crutch which still leaned against the wall beside the small table. In his mind, he could see Gilda as she hobbled along the riverbank or simply stood beneath the low-slung branches and stared out into the jungle depths.

  “She kept after Hannah,” Kincaid continued, his voice suddenly grown dark, grim. “She never let it rest. She threatened to leave the village.” He looked vehemently at Frank. “Then she died,” he said. “But her crutch was still beside her bed.”

  “The drug, the magic,” Frank said. “It killed her?”

  “Yes,” Kincaid said matter-of-factly. “They took her body and burned it by the river.”

  Frank could see the fire as it licked slowly at Gilda’s dress, then consumed it. He could see the black smoke that rose from it, coiling upward into the thick, overhanging limbs.

  “Was she murdered?” Frank asked.

  “By her heart,” Kincaid replied. He dipped his finger into the bowl, then lifted it to his face, and raked it across his forehead, leaving a long, pinkish line. “There are two good times to die.” He dipped his finger into the bowl once again. Then he drew it slowly down the right side of his face. “You should die when your heart is dead.” The finger continued down the side of his face, etching his bony jaw and halting at his chin. “Or when it has finished with its work.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then he opened them. “Such a year,” he said mournfully. “Such a year of death, for assassination.” He shook his head. “I should have known that one death must always lead to another.”

  For a time, there was only silence in the room and the three motionless figures who remained within the shadowy light of the candle.

  “Pérez,” Frank said, this time pressing harder, insistent, determined. “Was he the first?”

  Kincaid seemed to come back into the room from a great distance. “What?”

  “Emilio Pérez,” Frank said. “Did you kill him?”

  “Yes,” Kincaid said. “He left, then returned. It was for his mother’s funeral.” Once again he dipped his finger into the bowl. “Revenge can be its own reward.”

  “For Gilda’s death?” Frank asked.

  Kincaid’s mind seemed to detach itself from Frank’s question. He took a small yellow seed from a brown earthen bowl which rested at the head of the mat and chewed it slowly. “They had a beautiful story, the people of the village,” he said.

  “Revenge for Gilda’s death?” Frank repeated emphatically.

  Kincaid continued to chew the small yellow seed. He did not answer.

  “Is that why you killed Pérez?” Frank demanded. “And Hannah?”

  Kincaid glanced about the room, his eyes suddenly very steady as they gazed first at one object, then another. It was as if each object bore its own secret message, and he was collecting them methodically, gathering them for storage in some final, but undetermined home.

  “When did you come back to the United States?” Frank asked sternly.

  “A beautiful story,” Kincaid began again, obliviously. He closed his eyes and painted each lid with the mixture on his finger. “A story with a moral,” he added. His eyes flashed open, glittering wildly in the shifting light. “That revenge is the only justice for the dead.” He leaned forward, as if in an act of prayer, and swiftly pulled a machete from beneath the mat. “When your work is over,” he said, “it is time to die.”

  Frank reached for his pistol. “Put that down,” he said coldly as he pointed to the machete.

  Farouk drew his gun, wrapping both hands around the grip and sighting down the barrel. “Do not move,” he said.

  But Kincaid was already moving toward them, the machete whirling over his head.

  Farouk dropped to a kneeling position, the barrel of his pistol pointed steadily at Kincaid’s head. “Do not move,” he shouted.

  Kincaid took a small step forward, lifting his face toward the ceiling, his eyes following the whirling blade. “I come!” he cried.

  Frank stepped back and cocked the hammer of his pistol. “Drop it!” he screamed.

  The blade continued to whirl above Kincaid’s uplifted head, swinging over him. turning to flame in the flickering candle. For a moment he seemed frozen in a terrible suspension, then he stepped forward with a sudden, galvanizing determination and in one smooth movement drew the machete across the bare, brown flesh of his throat. A dark red wave spilled over its wide blade as he staggered to the right.

  Frank dropped his pistol and rushed toward him, blood spurting across his chest in rhythmic crimson geysers from Kincaid’s throat.

  “Call an ambulance,” Frank screamed as the two of them sank helplessly to the floor.

  Farouk holstered his pistol and ran from the room, his heavy body thundering do
wn the stairs.

  Frank could feel the warm spray of Kincaid’s blood as it pumped upward from the wound. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it hard against the gaping cut which ran in a deep valley across Kincaid’s throat. He felt the warm flow as it soaked through the handkerchief, then ran down it in a stream that grew thinner and thinner with each passing second, until Kincaid’s eyes rolled upward and his chest grew still, and the blood on Frank’s grasping fingers slowly thickened and grew dark while he rocked Kincaid gently back and forth, cradling him in his arms like a child.

  28

  Frank’s body bolted upward at the sound of the knock, his eyes focusing on the disarray that surrounded him, the dusty, unswept floor, the cluttered desk, the bloodstained clothes that hung from the chair at the other side of the room.

  He stood up, pulled on a pair of pants and walked to the door.

  Tannenbaum nodded expressionlessly. “Hope it’s not too early for you, Frank.”

  Frank rubbed his eyes roughly.

  “Had some trouble sleeping lately?” Tannenbaum asked.

  “What do you want, Leo?” Frank said.

  “Well, you know how it is, Frank,” Tannenbaum said. “Things have to be settled, so we’re going to have to ask a few more questions.”

  Frank nodded.

  Tannenbaum smiled politely. “May I come in?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Frank said dully. He stepped out of the doorway and let Tannenbaum pass in front of him. “You want a cup of coffee?” he said.

  “No, don’t bother,” Tannenbaum said, waving his hand dismissively. “I’m just here to clear up a few last details.” He shrugged. “I mean, there’s no question about what happened yesterday. The suicide, I mean. You know that.”

  “So what do you need?” Frank asked as he eased himself down behind his desk.

  “Well, it’s about the Karlsberg murder,” Tannenbaum said. “We’d like to put the lid on that one, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But we have to be absolutely sure that Kincaid was our man,” Tannenbaum added. He took out his notebook and opened it to the first blank page. “You understand the procedure, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just a few details, that’s all I’m here for,” Tannenbaum said as he sat down in the chair in front of Frank’s desk. “Now, according to what you told the officer on the scene, Kincaid said something about revenge. Could you go over that with me?”

  “What part?”

  “Well, for one thing, did you suggest the subject to him?”

  “The subject of revenge?”

  “Yes.”

  Frank shook he head. “No, I didn’t.”

  “How did it come up?”

  “He was talking about Gilda, about her death,” Frank said, straining to remember the exact details.

  “That’s when he mentioned revenge?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That it could be its own reward,” Frank told him. He took a cigarette from the package on his desk and lit it. Then he offered one to Tannenbaum.

  “No, thanks,” Tannenbaum said. “Too early.” He glanced back down at his notebook. “Did he say anything else about revenge?”

  “Yes,” Frank said. “Something … I …” He pulled open the drawer of his desk and brought out his notebook. A few of its pages were stuck together by Kincaid’s blood, and he had to pry them apart carefully. “Here it is,” he said finally. Then he read from the page. “‘Revenge is the only justice for the dead.’”

  Tannenbaum copied it quickly into his own notebook. “Don’t throw that notebook away until everything’s closed on the Karlsberg case,” he said when he’d finished.

  “I won’t,” Frank assured him.

  “Did Kincaid say that he killed Pérez or Miss Karlsberg out of revenge?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say he killed Emilio Pérez?”

  “Yes, he did,” Frank said, casually allowing his eyes to drift toward the drawn shade of the front window.

  Tannenbaum looked at Frank pointedly. “Did Kincaid tell you that after killing Pérez, he cut off his hand?”

  Frank’s eyes shot over to Tannenbaum. “No,” he said.

  Tannenbaum wrote it down.

  “Did he cut off Pérez’s hand?” Frank asked immediately.

  “Yes, he did,” Tannenbaum replied with a slight smile. “At least that’s what the Colombian police have told us.” He wrote something in his notebook, then looked back up at Frank. “Saved it, too.”

  “Saved it?”

  “We found the skeletal remains of a human hand in one of Kincaid’s closets,” Tannenbaum said. “It was male, so we figure it must have belonged to Pérez.” He handed Frank an envelope. “We found a lot of stuff in his apartment. Here’s a copy of the inventory.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tannenbaum nodded peremptorily, then went on to another subject. “That village,” he said. “San Jorge. It’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “A ghost town. Since 1954.”

  “So that stuff about poison,” Frank said. “It was true?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What was the poison?”

  “They still don’t know,” Tannenbaum said. “We told them about what Kincaid said, a magic drug. They grow some weird stuff in the hills up there. It could be that Hannah was trying to refine it somehow, get some extra strength in it.” He smiled. “People are always looking for a better lift. Out in California, they got this new drug they call ‘ecstasy.’” He laughed. “Can you believe that?” He looked back at his notebook. “When Kincaid made that crack about revenge, what did you take it to mean?”

  “I took it for his motive,” Frank said matter-of-factly. He snuffed out the cigarette. “It’s as good as any.”

  Tannenbaum laughed lightly as he wrote it down. “Well, it’s an old one, right?”

  “Hannah had caused Gilda’s death,” Frank said. “Along with Pérez. That’s the way Kincaid saw it.”

  Tannenbaum nodded in agreement. “Tell me this, Frank: Do you think Kincaid had come back to the United States specifically to kill Miss Karlsberg?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think there might be any other targets? I mean, in this country?”

  “He didn’t mention any.”

  “Did he say how he found out where she was?”

  “No.”

  “Well, like they say, Frank, it’s a big country.”

  Frank said nothing.

  “And she’d changed her name,” Tannenbaum added.

  “He didn’t say anything about how he found her,” Frank told him.

  Tannenbaum flipped a page of his notebook. “He worked at this settlement house, right?”

  “That’s what the super told us.”

  “Us?”

  “Me. Farouk.”

  Tannenbaum smiled. “Oh, yeah, Farouk,” he said. “How’d you get involved with him?”

  “We met. At a bar.”

  “No kidding?” Tannenbaum said brightly. “Which one?”

  Frank said nothing.

  Tannenbaum smiled thinly. “Maybe that little illegal after-hours dump on Tenth Avenue?”

  Frank did not answer.

  Tannenbaum laughed. “No need to get nervous, Frank. We’ve known about that little dive for years. Who gives a shit, huh?” He returned to his notebook. “This settlement house business,” he said. “We’ve checked that out, too. Kincaid worked there, all right. Strictly voluntary. Always with Latinos.” He shook his head wonderingly. “He loved the Hispanics, I guess.” His eyes wandered over to Frank. “A lover of humanity, right?”

  “In a way,” Frank said.

  “That what you think?”

  “Yes.”

  “Slashed her up pretty good, though,” Tannenbaum said darkly.

  Frank said nothing.

  Tannenbaum closed his notebook and stood up. “Well, I guess tha
t’s it,” he said. “Everything checks out.”

  Frank walked him to the door.

  “We checked Kincaid’s machete, too,” Tannenbaum said as he stepped into the hallway. “It could have been the one that killed Hannah.”

  “Could have been?” Frank asked.

  “Well, it only had Kincaid’s blood on it,” Tannenbaum said. “He’d had plenty of time to wash it. But as far as the wounds on Hannah’s body, it fit them pretty well.”

  “That’s not the same as evidence,” Frank said.

  “No, but Kincaid’s machete was a homemade affair,” Tannenbaum added. “They make them in Colombia. Mostly for the cane fields. They’re not imported here.” He smiled. “Which means you just can’t go down to Times Square and pick one up.” He dropped his hand onto Frank’s shoulder. “Thanks for the help,” he said. “I mean it. Nobody’s happier than me to put this case to bed.” Then he nodded quickly and headed for the stairs.

  Frank walked slowly back to his desk, took out the bottle of Irish and poured himself a drink. For a while he sat silently, his mind drifting wearily back over the preceding hours. Once again he saw Kincaid rise from the mat, the machete dancing over his head until it finally sliced downward and Kincaid staggered forward, his knees bending slowly as he fell into Frank’s astonished arms.

  After that, it had been long hours of talk, as the ambulance arrived, then the police, and finally the Brooklyn homicide detectives who’d kept him in the small brown grilling room at the precinct house. They had paced around methodically, as he had paced around so many others during the days when he was, himself, a homicide detective, firing questions, then repeating them, until they had finally settled for the fact that neither Frank nor the “big Arab”—as they continually referred to Farouk—had murdered Benjamin Kincaid.

  Dawn had already broken over the city by the time he’d returned to his office, and so he’d simply slumped down on the sofa and twisted about fitfully until Tannenbaum had delivered him from a sleep far worse than waking.

  Now, as he lit a second cigarette, Frank knew that he could not return to the sofa. Instead he opened the envelope Tannenbaum had left, drew out the papers, and spread them across his desk.