Wildest Dreams

3

The security gate swung closed behind me.

A narrow brick path curved to the right, leading to another gate and another keypad. Janice hadn’t mentioned the added security, but it didn’t surprise me. After all, this was Circe Whistler’s home. I imagined she’d made some pretty formidable enemies in her time. To be sure, there was a fine line between careful and paranoid. But if I were Circe Whistler, I probably would have jumped across it a long time ago.

I reached for the keypad and a Doberman sprang from the shadows on the other side of the gate, raking its teeth across the bars and barking up a storm.

Three other dogs joined it in the time it took me to draw a breath. Squinting into the shadows, I saw that the gate led to a large enclosed pen. I shook my head-right about now, Janice Ravenwood was probably having a good laugh at my expense.

I looked for another way to go, and that was when I noticed a brick staircase half-hidden by braided vines. Brushing them to one side like tattered draperies, I descended through a lush jungle of ferns and orchids and hanging fuchsias to a swimming pool with a black bottom.

Black, to trap the heat of the sun and warm the water. But the sun was weak here. A ring of ancient redwoods snared the pool, transforming the day to muted twilight, and the water was as dark as the mythic Styx.

Something flashed beneath the water’s surface and caught my eye. Silver ripples broke at the opposite end of the pool, parting the water in a sculpted wake behind armored ridges of blue scale, sharp teeth parted over hellish smiles, and bright red gouts of blood that never flowed. All of it there on the surface for just a moment, and then came the slightest splash and the silver water closed around the thing as it submerged, moving as swift and strong as the steelhead in the little girl’s creek.

Whatever it was, it was coming in my direction. Coming very fast.

The water parted at the edge of the pool. White hands with painted black nails slapped the coping and a woman thrust palm down and carried her weight up and out of the water in one smooth motion, her arms straight now, silver water rolling down tattooed tapestries on her bare shoulders-armored ridges of blue scale, sharp teeth parted over hellish smiles, and bright red gouts of blood that never flowed.

The tattoos must have cost a lot. I figured that was the reason Circe Whistler didn’t want to cover them with a swimming suit.

Circe’s lips pulled back in a smile as she noticed me. She slicked long, too-black hair against her skull and twisted a final splash of water from it.

Like the payoff scare in a monster movie, another splash chopped the silence. Another pair of black-nailed hands on the coping, but but this time it was a man who came out of the water. At least I thought Circe’s companion was a man. I had my doubts-I’d never seen another like him. With a shaved bullet-head and long muscled arms he rose from the depths…with crude brands burned on his pale skin like souvenirs of hell…and it seemed he just kept coming, naked and grub white and breathing like a bellows.

Circe teased the tall freak. “You need to work on your stamina.”

“Try me on land next time.” He panted. “Exclusively-no more of this amphibian shit.”

Circe moved in and kissed the Egyptian ankh branded on his chest. Then she strained high on tiptoes and he bent down, and at last her lips found his. They embraced, and when they came apart I found myself thinking of the steelhead swimming upstream to spawn in the little girl’s creek.

But that was ridiculous. Circe Whistler was a beauty scaled with tattoos, but her companion didn’t much resemble a graceful creature of the water. I didn’t know exactly where he belonged, but the biped act he was attempting definitely seemed an evolutionary challenge. Awkward and insectile and at least seven feet tall, he carried a lean gym-sculpted torso on a pair of skinny legs that looked like they should collapse under the weight. As far as I was concerned, the ugly bastard broke about a dozen laws of nature. He looked like he belonged under a rock.

He gave me the once-over as he dried off. “This the guy?” he asked, and I could tell by his tone that he was almost as impressed as I was.

“Yes. This is the guy.” Circe snatched a towel from a chaise lounge and dried herself, but her eyes never left me. Not the bright blue pair set in the savage angles of her face, not the others that stared out from the faces of demons and children and monsters etched on her flesh.

“Toss me my robe?” she asked.

It hung over a railing at the bottom of the staircase. The freak headed for it. His legs were longer, but I was closer. Besides, he was still panting like a sled dog heading for the Iditarod finish line. By the time he got to the railing, I was holding the robe in my left hand.

Empty-handed, the bugman looked way past distressed.

“You can always take this,” I said, extending the backpack.

“Get that fucking thing away from me.”

He said it too quickly. I had him on the run, and I knew it. I jammed the backpack against the branded ankh on his chest.

Wasn’t that a laugh-the Egyptian symbol of eternal life. “Do you really think you’re going to live forever?” I asked. The bugman’s upper lip started to twitch.

“Now boys,” Circe said. “Play nice, or I won’t let you play at all.”

The whole thing was a joke now. I grinned and slung the backpack over my shoulder, and the freak grabbed a fistful of my right hand, his big hand swallowing mine like an albino spider.

He shook my hand like he wanted to break it. I let him have his fun. “Spider Ripley,” he said.

“Clay Saunders.”

Ripley eyed me hard. But when he released my hand, he didn’t have anything. I still had the backpack, and Circe’s robe.

The robe was silk. I liked touching it. It hardly weighed a thing. I turned my back on Spider Ripley, and Circe turned her back on me when I came near. Another horror movie scare-scales and tentacles and more eyes tattooed on the sleek, muscled plain of her back.

Circe held out her arms and I blinded the monsters, covering her in black silk. She looked better in silk. Her pool time had bought her strong swimmer’s shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist. The hem of the robe fell just under her ass, and the long legs that carried her were white and pure, as surprising as an unmarked canvas hanging in a museum. She wore no tattoos from heel to thigh, but her legs held my attention just the same.

Circe knotted the sash around her waist. “Did everything go all right?”

“I finished the job,” I said.

“Wonderful,” she said.

It wasn’t like we were talking about murder at all.

We entered the house. Spider Ripley went to dress. Circe didn’t. She seemed perfectly comfortable in her silk robe, and I was perfectly comfortable with her in it.

She led me to a large living room. A peaked wall of windows faced west. The view was beyond spectacular, only slightly marred by the barred security fence that surrounded the entire property.

Beyond the fence, the Pacific gleamed like a mirror under the setting sun. Jagged cliffs carved by wind and rain dropped to a beach hidden from view by the twisted skeletons of stunted cypress trees, but I had no feeling for the wind that had maimed them. All was still within the house.

There was no wind here at all. Still, the room was as tortured as the trees outside, the difference being that the room had been twisted by man. A circular staircase rose in one corner, writhing with barbed wrought iron railings. Lights grew on spiked steel stems. The walls and furniture were fashioned from carved redwood that was as dead as coffin wood, its live, earthy smell now no more than a faded rumor.

But there was life here, if you were willing to look for it. A bonsai tree sat on a low glass table, its limbs tortured by cunning twists of wire, harnessed just as brutally as the dead things.

The house exuded male pheromones, and I was willing to bet that they didn’t belong to Spider Ripley. Circe Whistler was the owner here, but her father had put his mark on this place and it was as indelible as the mark of the beast. Diabolos Whistler’s daughter could not erase it or cover it over with her own mark, try as she might. Circe’s father had claimed to be Satan’s successor, had built a cult with temples spread as far as Paris and Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro, and even in death his presence was as unavoidable as the ripe black stench of decay.

I could feel it.

And I could smell it.

I opened the backpack and placed Diabolos Whistler’s severed head on the glass table, next to the bonsai tree. The cult leader’s face wore a twisted expression frozen somewhere between a sneer and a smile, but no length of cunning wire had trained it.

I had trained Whistler’s death grin.

I had done the job with a seven-inch U.S. Army K-bar knife.

“Fucking hell.” Circe’s nose wrinkled. “Couldn’t you have kept it on ice or something?”

It was the wrong thing to say. I took a deep breath, and the stink of death burned in my lungs. Circe smiled as if she’d made a joke, but I wasn’t laughing. Not after what I d gone through. I wasn’t laughing at all.

I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have held that stinking breath in my lungs and not said a word. But I couldn’t do that.

“I didn’t much notice the stink,” I said. “Maybe because I stink, too. The last shower I had was at a hotel in Baja. That was four days ago. I drove straight through. I would have made it back sooner, but that would have meant flying, and I don’t think the folks at AeroMexico would have allowed my carry-on luggage. I bought a Toyota truck off some surf bum for the trip back. Paid way too much for it. It didn’t even have air-conditioning.

“Your father had it tougher, though. When I crossed the border, I duct-taped his head to the differential. That’s how he got the grease spot on his forehead and the burn mark on his cheek. But I don’t figure it bothered him much. He was already dead.”

“Okay,” Circe said. “Okay-”

“I just wanted you to know that I earned my money.”

“It appears that you did.” Circe knelt and stared into her father’s eyes. Her expressions was completely clinical, almost as serious as the one she’d worn on the cover of Newsweek.

“We’ll be running tests, you understand,” she said. “My father loved going to the doctor. The dentist, too. His medical records are nauseatingly detailed.”

“You act like I made this thing out of papier-mache or something.”

“My father starting using doubles after he received his first death threats back in the Haight-Ashbury days. That was thirty years ago. Some of them were nearly identical, right down to the tattoos.” She leaned closer to the head, staring into those dead eyes. “All I’m saying is that I have to be sure. You can understand that. After all, we’re talking about a lot of money.”

“You never said anything about doubles. As far as I’m concerned, I fulfilled my contract. I killed the man who lived in Diabolos Whistler’s mansion in Los Cabos. I returned with his head, as per your instructions. Apart from the transportation problem, it was a fairly easy job. Your father was right where you said he’d be. He was all alone, unless you want to count those mummies stacked like so much cordwood in his library. If you want to know the details, he went pretty easy. I came up from behind and stabbed him just above the first vertebra. He gasped a little bit. Then he started mewling. It didn’t last more than a second or two, but it was enough to make an impression. To tell you the truth, he sounded more like a newborn babe than a seventy-three-year-old master of occult sciences.”

Circe didn’t say a word. I took a deep breath. “After I cut off your father’s head, I stacked his body on top of the mummy collection in the library. That’s where the Mexican police found him. According to the papers, they’re investigating a number of leads. If you ask me, they’re investigating how quickly they can sweep the whole matter under the carpet. The last thing they want is to find your father’s head, let alone his killer. Mexico is a very religious county. Diabolos Whistler’s death has generated a shitload of negative publicity. The politicians who facilitated your father’s move south of the border aren’t eager to be exposed to their countrymen. I’m sure the little weasels are already in touch with your father’s lawyers. Matters will be settled in short order, and soon enough you’ll have a big fat inheritance to squander any way you please-”

“That’s enough.”

“It might be for you, but it’s not for me. If you don’t want to hear about it, pay me.” I grinned. “That’ll shut me up.

“Tests first. Money later.”

“I guess you like the sound of my voice.”

“Really, it won’t take long. Spider will take the head to San Francisco this afternoon-”

“Ripley’s taking it? Looked to me like he didn’t want any part of that thing.”

“Spider is a true believer.” Circe smiled. “But he does what he’s told.”

“He’s an idiot.”

“Draw your own conclusions.”

“It’s just that I’m a strong believer in first impressions.”

She cocked an eyebrow and waited.

“If you’re waiting to hear my first impression of you,” I said, “I think I’ll keep that to myself.”

“As you wish.” She returned her attention to the head. “At any rate, the preliminary dental exam should be completed by midnight. There are a few other formalities that you don’t need to worry about. But if all goes well, you’ll have your money by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Tomorrow afternoon I wanted to be on a beach.”

“There are beaches here.”

“I was thinking of the tropics.”

“Believe me, I can understand your impatience.” She shrugged. “But the tropics will have to wait.”

“And in the meantime?”

“At the top of the stairs, you’ll find a guest room. There’s a shower. I suggest you make use of it. There’s a bed, too. It’s comfortable. You can have a nap. Later we’ll have dinner. Just the two of us.”

I thought it over. A shower…a nap…dinner…it didn’t sound so bad.

She laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Saunders. But I’ve never had this much trouble convincing a man to spend time with me.”

“It’s not you.” I nodded at Diabolos Whistler’s severed head. “It’s him. I’m a little tired of his company.”

“I know the feeling,” she said.

I started up the circular staircase. A shower would be good. Really long. Really hot. I wanted to be clean.

I wondered what Circe Whistler wanted. I’d struck a nerve when I mentioned her inheritance, but I knew that she was after more than a few extra zeros at the end of her bank balance. One look at the house and I knew that she already had more than enough money.

I could see right through Spider Ripley. Just like he was a window. A first impression was all it took with a guy like that. Spider Ripley was all slot A in tab B, until he fit together like a kid’s toy. But Circe Whistler was something else. A puzzle box. The kind the Japanese made. The kind you couldn’t open unless someone showed you how.

I watched her through spiked wrought iron bars as I walked along the landing above the living room. Watched her black nails rake Diabolos Whistler’s long white mane. Watched her fingers curl into a fist. Watched her raise her father’s severed head, and watched it sway at her side as she disappeared down a dark corridor of redwood and stone, leaving only the sound of Diabolos Whistler’s bristling goatee brushing her naked thigh with every step she took.