CHAPTER 26
A mosaic of memories regarding Bernard unexpectedly appeared in my mind, though this time they were random—his face, a smile, quick flickers of trivial past events—a reflexive parade of flashes and subconscious recollections of no particular import. They grew fainter the moment Claudia continued speaking.
“The first time I saw him it was just after dark. He was cruising Weld Square. A lot of the girls on the street knew him on sight as a regular, he cruised the square three, four times a week. I hadn’t worked that area in a long time and I’d only just started working it again, so I had no idea who he was, but a lot of the girls liked him, said he was an easy date, never any hassle, always paid and usually just wanted head or a straight lay. They all saw him as the harmless lonely heart type, you know? The kind who’d take you out to breakfast afterward or try to be your friend. The kind you can string along, work for extra cash or whatever. I was in his car ten seconds and figured him for a pure mark, and let me tell you something, Plato, I’m not wrong very often. I had way too much experience to misread people, especially men, and in that world a fuck-up can cost you your life. But I was wrong about him. Totally wrong.” She spun the chair around so that it faced her then straddled it and sat like a rebellious teenager. “Bernard played up the sad sack image, and same as the other girls, I bought it at first. Like I told you, he was a trickster. That’s what Bernard did. He deceived. But every now and then he’d let his guard down, the mask would slip a little and you’d see pieces of the demon behind it.”
The sun shifted in the sky, betrayed by a fresh beam of light that crept from the front of the cottage and struck a small section of kitchen just over Claudia’s shoulder. There must have also been a slight breeze, as ash from an ashtray on the counter momentarily swirled and flew a few inches into the air before gracefully spiraling to the floor like tiny black snowflakes.
“I’m sure you know what I mean,” she said.
“Yeah,” I answered. “But I guess I just never knew there was anything behind that mask besides an eccentric, sad and lonely guy. A childlike, harmless sort of guy.”
“You and everybody else. And that’s what he found his power in. Deception.” Claudia scowled. “The only thing behind Bernard’s mask was evil. I know. I saw it.” She reached into her back pocket, pulled out a red bandana and mopped her forehead with it. “Fucking hot,” she mumbled. She moved the rag to her neck then slid it across her chest, over the tops of her breasts and between them, soaking up the perspiration as she went. “Bernard got to be one of my regulars. I built up a group of them. They’d call me and we’d meet on neutral ground for dates. It was easier and safer than walking the street, and these were clients I knew I could count on to pay me and not give me a hard fucking time. Bernard was a steady for a couple weeks before we really started to get to know each other. He had this dork side to him but there was something else there too. It was below the surface and it took me a while to see it, but once I did I knew he was more than just some stupid mark like the rest of them. There was shit going on behind those eyes, you know? In that head.” Another far off look overtook her as she absently wiped herself with the bandana. “When you’re in the life, and especially if you’ve walked the darker roads out there, you get like this radar almost, this sense where you just know when you come across somebody else who’s been there too. Everybody who’s been in the dark—the real dark—has a way about them, and we can see it in each other. It don’t go away no matter how far from the dark you run. It’s always with you, like a brand. Kind of like the way all us jailbirds can pick each other off. I can spot somebody who did hard time in a second, and they can spot me. Same thing. I knew Bernard was moving in the darkness, knew he was more than he pretended to be, and I knew he had some sort of plan, too. People in the dark always got some sort of plan. Most of them never pull it off because the dark has a way of beating you down to where you just don’t give a shit anymore, but I could tell Bernard wasn’t like that. The dark didn’t control him like it did me and all the others I knew. He controlled it.” She dropped the sweat stained bandana on the table. “And that told me something very important about him. It told me he wasn’t new to the dark, that he’d been moving in it and mastering it for a long time. Years. Nobody who moves in the dark is ever that confident unless they’ve been there for years.
“It was all real subtle at first,” she went on. “He never really talked about it or anything but we both knew what the other was about. We started to hang out a lot more, not just on dates but other times too. He’d always pay, didn’t seem to have anything else to spend his money on, and like I said, he had a plan. Figured I fit into that plan somehow, and he brought me into his world slow and careful. For me, I was still strung out then, still pumping that shit into myself every chance I got, so Bernard was good for me. He’d supply me with the cash I needed to buy it, and sometimes he’d even get it for me. Sometimes he’d fix me himself. Got good at it, actually.”
I searched her bare arms. A few old scars; mostly faded. She no longer bore the typical ravaged flesh many addicts did, but glimpses of those same arms bruised and bloodied flashed before my eyes anyway. I pictured Bernard on his knees, administering a syringe of heroin into this woman’s veins.
“Couple times near the end I fixed him, too,” Claudia said. “He wanted to try it and liked doing it now and then, but he never got deep enough into it to get hooked. He had other addictions.”
“Like what?”
As if staged, the shaft of sunlight that had invaded the room earlier slipped away, returning the kitchen to near-darkness. “The other side,” she answered. “Torture and death. Destruction. Blood.”
A chill swept through me, temporarily defusing the humidity. “The other side,” I said, “like an afterlife?”
She nodded. “That was part of his deal, getting shit ready for when he crossed over to the other side. He believed what he did in this life would determine the kind of power he’d hold in the next one. Ain’t about Heaven and Hell to those like Bernard. It’s all about power. Only power he had here was what the darkness gave him, but on the other side he thought he could be different.”
“He was insane.”
Claudia raised an eyebrow. “You think?”
“Don’t you?”
She watched me a while. I could almost hear her thinking. “We got close, me and Bernard. Wasn’t really something I wanted but I was a drug addict, and drug addicts ain’t exactly got a lot of options. He kept me fixed, and he made me feel powerful too. Like I told you, I’d been around, seen and knew a lot of things before I met him, but Bernard let me get in close so I knew what he was doing. And it was fucking intense. Besides, I hadn’t left the dark yet myself, still thought it was where I belonged, and he was all I had.”
“You knew he was killing people?” I asked.
Claudia stood up slowly, gradually, and slid the chair out of her way. She moved around the side of the table with a slinking, feline-like stride, until she was right next to me. I looked up at her, uncertain of her intentions.
She reached down and touched my t-shirt, running her fingers across the collar and onto my throat. Her flesh was damp and slightly warm, as was mine. “Come here,” she said in a loud whisper, and in one motion, grabbed hold of my t-shirt and pulled me from the chair. I cooperated and allowed her to stand me up. I was taller than she was, and had to look down to meet her eyes. She stepped closer, so close that her chest touched mine. She smelled of cigarettes, sweat and cheap perfume. Her arms wrapped around me and she smiled as her hands roamed along my back to my waist, past the gun on my belt and onto my ass. One hand slid between my legs. I swallowed nervously as she clutched me—hard—then ran her hands along the insides of both thighs.