Norman Partridge - Wildest Dreams

“Very well.” The undertaker smiled knowingly. “Very well, indeed.”

The undertaker’s name was Albert Parsons. I didn’t like the smell of Parsons’s work room any better than I liked his company. I didn’t like show tunes either, but that was what blared from Parsons’s stereo. Specifically, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera.

The music of the night.

There was no use complaining. I wasn’t setting the soundtrack for this scene, no matter what I thought. The man in the black suit was.

Parsons bent over Whistler’s coffin, tsking and tasking over the dead man’s remains. I ignored the undertaker’s running commentary. I didn’t want to know what he was doing or how he was doing it, as long as Whistler’s head ended up attached to his body.

I turned my attention elsewhere. Spider Ripley lay on a stainless steel worktable, his hands and legs bound with black funeral bunting. The satin pillow from Mrs. Cavendish’s casket was jammed under his head. Fear shone in his eyes, black pupils pulsing as he watched the undertaker going about his work.

I imagined that Diabolos Whistler’s tortured gospel was racing through the bodyguard’s head. Ripley struggled as the undertaker fussed and fidgeted. I glanced at Parsons out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t look long-the stainless steel instruments that filled his hands made my gut churn.

But disgust was quite different from fear. I was convinced that there would be no twisted miracle in Whistler’s coffin. As far as I was concerned, I’d tested the tenets of Whistler’s faith at the bottle house. The result amounted to nothing. It would be the same with his corpse once head and body were reunited.

I was sure of that. Soon enough Ripley would feel the hard slap of reality, and I knew I had to get to him before that happened. I had to find out what he knew about Circe Whistler while he was still afraid.

Parsons came toward me, gore on his rubber gloves. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need an instrument from the cabinet behind you. Can I get it myself, or would you like to do the honors?”

“Get it yourself,” I said, and as he stepped behind me I asked, “How much longer to finish the job?”

“You say it doesn’t have to be perfect?”

“Or pretty.”

“Then I’d say about five minutes should do the trick.”

“Hear that?” I took Spider’s crucifix from my pocket and dangled it before his eyes. “Like they used to say at the Roman Coliseum-you’ve got five minutes, Christian.”

Ripley didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. He bucked and writhed on the table and nearly fell off. I hit him once, hard, in the mouth. All of a sudden he stopped moving-everything but his eyeballs, which rocked and rolled as if they were trying to escape his head.

I dangled the crucifix above his nose, and Ripley managed to focus on it. “Tell me about Circe,” I said, “and maybe I’ll let you get out of here before Daddy wakes up.”

Spider took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Behind me, Parsons closed the cabinet door.

Spider’s eyes flashed open, and I recognized the cold cast of those black pupils.

I didn’t like what I saw.

Spider said, “You’re a stupid fuck, Saunders.”

“Yes, you are,” the undertaker agreed.

A pistol filled his gore-stained grasp. He told me to get my hands in the air and I did. Then he came toward me. I glanced at Spider, and he was smiling.

“What do you think, Albert,” Spider said. “Should we do this fucker the same way we did Lethe?”

“I’m not so sure,” Parsons said as he reached under my belt and took my weapons. “I’ve got a brand new trocar I’d like to try out.”

“Whatever,” Spider said. “Just as long as I get dibs on Saunders’s knife…and his face.”

A dry laugh parted the undertaker’s lips. I felt his breath on my cheek. He was that close.

“I guess I was misinformed,” I said. “I heard they had to twist your arm to get you to handle Whistler’s corpse. But it looks to me like you’re a true believer, after all.”

“Oh, yes. I’m a religious man, baptized in darkness by Father Whistler himself. In fact, I used to be one of Diabolos’s doubles in the days before he moved south of the border.”

I wanted to kick myself. I’d recognized the resemblance-the long white hair, the goatee, even the stern expression-but it hadn’t given me pause.

Parsons knew he’d put one over on me. He flipped his ponytail over his shoulder and smiled, a living mockery of Whistler’s deathgrin. “Of course, I didn’t really see the light until I met Circe. She provided me with a retirement job, financing my funeral home with funds from one of her less controversial corporations. I’ve always had a certain aptitude for mortuary science, but I find it best to keep my religious affiliations to myself. That’s the prudent policy for a man in my business. I’ve always found that it pays to be prudent.”

“Prudent doesn’t always cut it,” I said.

Parsons arched an eyebrow.

A fraction of a second, a fraction of an inch.

The same amount of time it took to bury Spider Ripley’s crucifix in the undertaker’s eye.

Parsons got off one shot before I could finish him, of course. The prudent ones always do. I was lucky. The bullet missed me.

It didn’t miss Spider Ripley, though. The slug splattered his face like a ripe melon.

I dropped the bloodstained crucifix on Spider’s chest.

On the stereo, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom sang of loneliness and desire. I stood on one side of the table, staring down at Spider’s corpse. Ripley’s ghost stood on the other. I asked him a few questions, hoping he really did know something about Circe, but he didn’t seem to hear me at all.

The wispy revenant Spider Ripley had left behind didn’t say a word. That thing was no heavier than a breath, and it stared down at its own bloody corpse, at a crucifix covering an ankh scar.

Spider’s ghost tried to pick up the cross. Again and again and again, spectral fingers dipping through dead flesh and bloodstained silver.

I watched him do it. Maybe the angels in heaven watched him, too. Maybe the devils in hell had ringside seats.

But if they were there, I didn’t see them.

I only saw Spider Ripley.

A dead man scooping up handfuls of nothing.

As I drove, Whistler’s coffin did the shake, rattle, and roll in the rear compartment of Parsons’s Cadillac hearse. I didn’t take it as a sign of life.

I took it as a sign that the hearse wasn’t designed for four-wheeling. But the black Caddy got me where I wanted to go-down the bumpy dirt road that cut through the forest where I’d first met the little girl and across the beach that led to the bottle house.

Dark combers licked the whitewall tires as I traveled a hard-packed strip of concrete-colored sand, following the familiar curve of the scythe-shaped beach. I downshifted as I crossed the dunes at the southern end of the beach, but it was still rough going.

Another fifty feet and the whitewalls threatened to dig their own graves in the softer sand. I pumped the brakes and the Caddy slid to a stop. As far as I was concerned, one spot was as good as another for a funeral.

Outside, the rain had returned to a steady rhythm. Beach grass clawed the cliff like angry fingers, whipped by a wind that promised more violence.

It seemed inevitable. Violence, leaving pain in its wake So far I’d gotten off easy, with a rack of sore ribs and a bullet crease on one arm. But I wasn’t out of the woods just yet.

The undertaker’s trench coat wasn’t much of a fit, but at least it was dry. I slipped it on as I climbed out of the hearse. Then I opened the rear door and pulled Whistler’s coffin off the rolling slab that held it in place.