The Devil's Own Crayons Read online

  Her contact, the priest with the port-wine stain on his forehead.

  Feigning shock, Rossi covered her face with her hand and swayed backwards. Two officers caught her arms and walked her off the bridge and into the back of a squad.

  “Acqua,” she groaned. “Per favore.”

  They disappeared to get her some water. She pulled out her cell and gave the Legats another try. Borden answered, and she told him where she was and what had happened, from the encrypted note slipped under her door to her spotting of her contact under the tarp.

  “Crap, Red! Why didn’t you call us before running over there?”

  “I tried.”

  “Great. This is great.” He exhaled with exasperation. “Don’t say anything else to the Italian cops. We’ll be right over. We’ll make up some shit and get you out of there. The bosses aren’t going to want any of us tangled up in this mess.”

  A couple of officers were milling around the car door, and she slumped to one side and covered her face, as if crying. She didn’t want them to see she was on the phone. “What’s it all about?” she asked. “Can’t you tell me? Why am I in Rome? Who was that priest? Why would he kill himself the day before he was supposed to meet me? If he left me the note, why would he...”

  “The bosses didn’t tell us anything, except that we were suppose to haul your butt over to the hotel and hand you your orders.”

  “Maybe we should be cooperating with the police.”

  “Don’t talk to them,” he said. “Whatever you’re doing in Rome, I know for a fact it doesn’t involve sticking your nose in some poor bastard’s suicide.”

  Borden and Klauss must have airlifted over to the bridge, so quickly were they at the scene. The pair arrived at her car window the same time as the water she’d requested. The Italian officer with the acqua opened the car door and was summarily elbowed aside by the two Legats. Borden fished Rossi out of the back of the squad and hurried his colleague off the bridge, his arm hooked around hers.

  “I’m not a cripple,” she fumed in a low voice, trying to shake him off. As she passed a cluster of cops, they stared at her.

  With a forceful jerk, he yanked her closer and kept his quick pace, looping around the police barricade. The crowd had thinned and they had no trouble weaving around the stragglers. “I told them that you’re my...uh...”

  “Your what?”

  “My cousin, a crazy chick who has a kinky thing for cops and crime scenes.” He smiled. “They found that rather hot, and two of them asked for your phone number. Wanted to know if your interest in police work extended to a fondness for the equipment. How do you say handcuffs in Italian?”

  “Manette,” offered Klauss, who was walking behind them.

  “They bought such a lame story?” she asked.

  “I know most of the night crew in homicide,” Borden said. “Besides, we’ve both got carrot tops. Could pass for relatives.”

  “I knew about the port-wine stain on the priest’s forehead,” she said. “How would I have that information?”

  “One of the bystanders got a gander at the corpse and told you about the birthmark,” said Klauss.

  “You’re both stellar liars,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

  “I wouldn’t talk, Red,” said Borden. “That fainting act had them all fooled. Cops running around, trying to beat each other out to see who can come up with a bottle of water for the lovely, stricken signorina.”

  The Audi was parked on a side street, a few blocks from the pedestrian bridge. She sat in the front passenger seat, firing off questions to Borden while he drove. Slouched in the back seat, Klauss was half asleep.

  “Did the cops say how he did it? I didn’t see a rope or an entry wound or...”

  “Pills or poison,” said Borden. “They’ll do a toxicology workup, but that’s what they think. Pills or poison.”

  “Potaverunt me aceto,” she said numbly.

  “What?” Borden asked.

  “How do they know he did it to himself?” she asked.

  “There was a letter in his pocket.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Who in the hell cares?” said Klauss.

  “I don’t think he killed himself,” she said, and repeated the words in English. “They gave me vinegar to drink.”

  Borden didn’t say anything and Klauss yawned.

  “Did someone see him swallow something and drop dead on the bridge?” she asked.

  “No one saw what happened,” said Borden.

  “How’s that possible?”

  “Middle of the night, not hard to believe. He popped some pills, went for a walk on the bridge and dropped dead during a lull in the foot traffic.”

  “All those bystanders...”

  “Came around after the polizia pulled up.”

  “Do you really believe he killed himself?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” said Borden.

  “Am I safe at the hotel?”

  “Beats me,” said Borden.

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “You want me to find you another hotel?”

  She rubbed her temples. In a couple of hours, the sun would be up. “I’ll stay put,” she said tiredly.

  “We could plant ourselves outside your room,” Borden said.

  Klauss groaned, but didn’t protest his partner’s offer.

  “Forget it,” she said. “What should I do about this meeting? I was supposed to hook up with the dead guy at a restaurant down the street.”

  “Show up at the designated time and place. See if another priest shows up. That’s what I’d do.”

  “What about the encrypted note?”

  “Take it to the meeting,” he said.

  “Maybe I should call headquarters,” she said.

  “If you do, please keep my name out of it,” said Borden.

  “Mine, too,” said Klauss from the back seat.

  She paused and thought about it. “Guess I won’t call.”

  “Thank you,” said Klauss.

  They braked in front of her hotel. Borden stayed with the car while Klauss took her up to her room. He did a quick sweep of all the floors and returned to her room to report. “All clear. No suspicious characters.” He dragged his hand down his face. “Sure you don’t want me to stay in the hall?”

  “Appreciate the offer,” she said, and she meant it. “I’ve got my gun to keep me company.”

  He nodded and went down the hall. She locked the door. After slipping the coded message in a makeshift evidence bag, Rossi spent the rest of the early morning sitting stiffly in a chair, surfing through television channels and waiting for dawn.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Staring up at the cobweb-laced pipes running across the ceiling of his basement bedroom, Petit was just starting to enjoy his night. He put a fat joint to his lips, inhaled until there was no oxygen left in the room, held it in for as long as he could and exhaled slowly, enjoying the intoxicating haze hovering around his face. On the CD player was David Gray, wondering whether the walls had eyes. Singing about how a life in slow motion didn’t feel real. Catching slow flakes in his hands.

  Petit held up his left hand. He hadn’t been completely honest when he’d answered Babette that afternoon.

  “Did you chop off your fingers because you were mad at them?”

  “No, I wasn’t mad. You don’t get mad at your own hand.”

  The thing was a clumsy, useless piece of shit. As he released another cloud of smoke, he wiggled the two remaining fingers – the pinky and the ring finger. They flapped up and down weakly and awkwardly. The broken wings of a small bird. If it had to happen, why couldn’t he have carved those two losers? His eyes moved to the reddish bumps next in line. No. He had to hack off the thumb, index and middle.

  For months after the accident, he imagined he could still feel the missing fingers. He’d wake in the middle of the night, the ghost fingers itching and throbbing. Twitching and moving under the covers. He’d turn on a
light to check and make sure they weren’t there, that he hadn’t dreamed the whole accident. His girlfriend would roll over and watch him watching his hand by the light of the bedside lamp. That weirdness had spooked her, and she moved his stuff out of her place while he was at work.

  Then work dumped him. The body shop said it didn’t have anything to do with the hand, but it did; the missing digits had slowed him down. He tried to grab equipment as if he had all ten fingers. He dropped tools. Broke a car window. Lost control of a sprayer.

  Last straw was Ma kicking him out of her house. He needed to “man up” after the accident, she told him. What a bunch of crap. The sight of the maimed hand had freaked her out. More than once, Petit had caught her eyeballing the mess at the end of his left wrist and scowling. His own mother!

  Petit had a revolver – one of the few things his old man had left him before walking out. He’d gone so far as to buy ammo for the thing, but when it came down to doing it, he didn’t have the guts.

  That had been a couple of years ago, and he knew it was time to get over it. After all, he hadn’t lost an entire arm or a leg. He knew people who’d lost a limb; it wasn’t uncommon around farm country. A guy from high school lost both arms in a combine accident, and went right back to working the field with his prosthetics.

  Funny how thinking about someone else’s misery made his more bearable. For a little while.

  He blew another cloud over his head, coughed and again flexed the useless fingers. Closing his eyes, he tried to visualize the three missing digits. For as long as he could remember, he’d had a vertical split running down the middle of the thumbnail. He’d bashed it when he was a kid, while pounding boards in a tree fort, and the thumbnail had never healed right. The index finger had had a slight dent halfway down, a more recent souvenir from one of his sister’s mutts. The bitch was sampling something that she ended up eating later. Who knows? Maybe dogs could see into the future. That middle finger was always good for signaling other drivers, when he didn’t want to take his right hand off the steering wheel.

  Lids still shut, he brought his bad hand down to his face and imagined scratching his chin stubble with that dented index finger. All he felt were the two useless digits. He brought the bad hand to the left side of his face and raked his cheek. Felt two fingers dragging down the skin. Then...five.

  Petit gasped and bolted upright in bed. Inspected his left hand. Dumb ass, he told himself. Two fingers and three bumps. Nothing else there. The bumps were acting up tonight, though. No hallucinating about that. He could feel a dull ache. It happened when the weather changed. Sort of like having an arthritic knee. He usually popped Tylenol for it. He would have preferred something stronger, but he didn’t have health insurance. Tylenol – and reefer – would have to do the job. He transferred the joint to his left hand – okay, so the two fingers weren’t entirely useless – and licked his thumb and index finger. Used them to extinguish the glowing tip of his joint. He needed to conserve his medication.

  He fell back against the mattress and tucked both hands under the pillow, behind his head. The last track on the disc was David Gray lamenting about how the disappearing world looked so pretty. With its reflective piano chords and lyrics, it wasn’t the best song to listen to if you were already feeling low to the ground. Then again, it was the perfect song.

  Perfect for a mangled man mopping floors and living with a bunch of nuns. Sleeping in a room with stone walls and no window. No light. The bed was the size of the one he’d had as a kid, not nearly long enough for his six-foot-two frame. The covers on it were afghans the old ladies had crocheted. Life wasn’t moving in slow motion; it had sputtered to a dead stop.

  The gun and the bullets were under his bed, in a shoebox. About once a month, he felt low enough to take them out. The revolver was solid and heavy, and gave him control over one thing in his life: The choice to end it or not.

  Was this the night to make the monthly visit?

  As he thought about it, he shifted his hands under the pillow and froze. That sensation was back, the unsettling feeling that those ghost fingers had returned from the dead.

  Keeping the digits buried in the pillow behind his head, he lifted one finger at a time on his right hand. Thumb. Index. Middle. Ring. Pinky. The left hand. Pinky felt fine. The one next to it was good.

  He paused and tried moving a finger that wasn’t there: The middle one.

  Something pressed up into the pillow.

  “Bullshit,” he said to the ceiling.

  Petit wasn’t going to try to bend the other fingers because there were no others. He wasn’t about to act crazy and examine that left hand, either. He kept it under the pillow. Reaching over with his right hand, he punched off the CD player. Clicked off the bedside lamp. Flopped onto his back with one hand still behind his head. The bad hand. The one that had lost him his girlfriend and his job and his home. His dignity.

  “You’ve got all your fingers in the picture. Count. Ten fingers. Five on each hand. Count them, Mister P.”

  Even orphaned little kids felt sorry for him. Pathetic.

  In the tomb-like blackness, Petit fell into a deep sleep.

  A white room. A bright light was coming from somewhere, but he couldn’t pinpoint the source. Must be from the windows. Tall windows, on all four walls. No. Not windows. Those fancy doors. French doors. Long, sheer curtains hung from them. All the doors swung open at once, and a breeze blew the curtains inside. The space was filled with air and flapping sheets of fabric, and he was standing in the middle of it with his arms straight out from his sides. Spinning around and around, he became entangled in the blowing white cloths.

  The wind died and the curtains settled down, but the doors stayed open. Walking the perimeter of the room, he peered through each opening. One after the other, they showed the same view. Nothing but flat whiteness, as if paper had been taped over them. The last door offered something else: Another white room, with a white grand piano in the middle of it.

  He stepped through the doors and walked up to the instrument. Propped atop the piano was a closed book. Its pages fell open and sheets of music floated to the floor. Sitting down at the piano, he saw that there was one sheet left: The drawing Baab had made for him.

  “You’ve got all your fingers in the picture. Count. Ten fingers. Five on each hand. Count them, Mister P.”

  He brought his right hand up to the piano and counted his fingers as they hovered over the keys. He could hear his own voice ticking off each digit.

  “One...Two...Three...Four...Five.”

  Lowering his hand to the keys, he began to play. The sound filled the white room, making a noise closer to blowing wind than to music. As if it were sheet music to follow, he stared at Baab’s drawing. The page turned all by itself, and the same drawing was behind it. The grinning, gray janitor with the set of massive hands.

  The music changed. The birthday song. He was playing too slow, though. He needed more fingers. He brought up his left hand.

  There they were, all five of his fingers. Raising his left hand in disbelief, he inspected them. Clenched his fist and opened it.

  Before his eyes, his restored hand burst into flames.

  Sister Jane was taking a late-night load of laundry down to the basement when she heard him scream. She dropped the basket at the foot of the stairs and ran back up. A squad of women in bathrobes returned. The leader of the pack – Sister Rose Estelle – was still in her habit, supplemented by a wooden baseball bat. As the cluster approached the bedroom, another shriek emanated from the other side of the closed door.

  “I’m getting Mother,” said a novice at the rear of the group, and she turned and jogged up the stairs.

  Sister Rose put her hand on the doorknob.

  “Careful!” someone whispered.

  Sister Rose turned the knob, pushed the door open and brought the bat up. A ribbon of light from the hallway fell onto the figure of Trey Petit. On the floor next to his bed, he was writhing and groaning amid
a heap of bedcovers. Fumbling around the wall, Sister Rose flipped up the light switch. She handed the bat to the woman behind her and entered the room. Crouched over the young man. “What’s wrong, Mister Petit? Trey?”

  He was curled up in a ball on his side, hugging his left hand to his chest. “God, make it stop!”

  The women in the hall parted as the abbess pushed her way through. Like Sister Rose, she was in full habit. She rushed to the man on the floor. “What’s going on here?”

  “Make it stop! Oh Jesus!”

  The older nun stood up and stepped back so Mother Magdalen could take over. The abbess went down on her knees next to the lump. “Trey, son...What’s wrong? Is it your hand?”

  “It’s killing me!”

  Sister Rose said authoritatively, “PLP.”

  The abbess looked over at her for an explanation.

  “Phantom limb pain,” said the elder nun.

  “I’m not imagining,” Petit groaned. “I know what that phantom stuff is; I had it right after it happened. This is something else.”

  The mother superior tried to extract his hand from the pile of blankets. “Son, let me see.”

  He kept it tight to his chest. “No! It burns! Don’t touch it!”

  In a firm voice: “Sit up and let me see it.”

  Slowly, he uncurled his body and sat up, propping his back against the nightstand. His hand was still tucked into his chest. He squinted in the bright overhead light, and saw the other women in the hall. “This ain’t a freak show!”

  “Go back the bed,” Mother Magdalen said to the women on the other side of the doorway. They started shuffling away.

  Petit to Sister Rose: “You get out, too.”

  The older nun sniffed. “It’s nothing. Phantom pain. It’ll pass.”

  “You pass outta here.”

  Sister Rose walked out, closing the door after her. The young man and the mother superior were alone. “Let me see,” she said.