Belladonna, page 21
For the first time in years, the woman’s mind flashed back to the day Robert had been killed. There he’d lain on the floor in a puddle of his own blood, staring sightlessly at the ceiling as the fine pink blade was pulled from his body. He’d understood so much about business, yet he hadn’t understood the most basic part of his wife’s nature at all. Jealousy had ruled her from birth. It had ruled Robert into death. Jealousy—and the woman they’d called Amanda.
RUDGE KNEW HE POSSESSED an uncanny knack for blending into his surroundings, no matter what they might be. He used that ability now to melt into the shadows of a Chinatown alley. Ignoring the rain that fell in great blowing sheets and the thunder that crashed like an earthquake, he watched the door through which Malone’s cousin Ronnie had passed some fifteen minutes earlier.
She wasn’t with them; he’d eavesdropped and learned that much, though precious little else, thanks to the storm. It didn’t matter. Malone would go after her. He’d find her, too. Love did that to a man—gave him second sight where the object of that feeling was concerned.
From there it would be easy. Rudge would incapacitate Malone and take Bella. If he took her where he was supposed to take her, though, watch out, devil, because fur and feathers would fly—as all hell broke loose in the City by the Bay.
CHEN-LI SAT ALONE in his apartment after Malone and his cousin left. Matthew had been dispatched to a friend’s home—under protest to be sure, but he’d gone. So now, at last, Chen-Li could contemplate in peace the pieces of this most-intriguing puzzle.
Romaine. He didn’t know what that name meant or to whom it belonged, but of Belladonna, he had an idea.
Should he have told Malone all that he suspected? No. He was old, and his visions had their flaws. The shadow of the raven had passed by his window twice. Only once when he’d looked at her had Chen-Li’s mind flashed a picture of Bella dead.
He’d been unable to hold the image or to summon it again. If he could have done that, perhaps he could have laid to rest some portion of his fear.
He studied the photos in Bella’s picture case again. The blond woman in both of them was called Amanda. But not Amanda Conlan, as Bella had been brought up to believe. Bella’s father had been Robert Swift, so that had likely been Amanda’s surname as well.
Bella’s surname was also Swift. Her mother had died in a car accident in Alaska. The body had never been recovered. Her father had been murdered, stabbed with a pink knife. Where his body was or whether his death had been reported were mysteries to Chen-Li.
Oh, there was so much more to all of this than Bella realized, more even than Chen-Li understood.
She was related to the Birds of San Francisco. But who were the Birds now? Robert Swift was gone. So was Hobson Crowe, n£ Hobson J. MacCawdor. That left only the females—Charmaine Parret and an unknown commodity.
The puzzle shifted subtly in Chen-Li’s head, and quite unexpectedly, he saw it. Rather, he saw a snippet of it, perhaps a very important snippet. He closed his eyes. Charmaine… Yes, of course, Charmaine and Robert.
Breathing deeply, he allowed his mind to expand. He saw again the shadows of two ravens and Bella lying dead. Bella, whose sole recollection as a child had been a name—her name, she had told the woman who’d taken her in. Belladonna…
Chen-Li rested his head against the chair back. Perhaps he had found one of the keys to the riddle, but the shadows of the ravens had still crossed her path. It could go either way. Just like Romaine. And therein, he suspected, lay the truth of Belladonna.
“I HATE CRYPTIC CHINESE,” Malone grumbled testily. “We won’t find her in the warehouse, he insists. How the hell does he know that?”
Palms up, Ronnie shrugged. “I don’t know, but it looks like he was right. It was quiet in there. Too quiet, if you ask me.”
“They’ve moved the women,” Malone said in disgust. “Wherever they’ve taken them is where Bella will have headed. But where would they take them?”
“To the ship, d’you think?”
Malone gave his head a perfunctory shake. “It’s still offloading. They’d have to have gotten the women out right after Bella escaped. Even paid off, indifferent or whatever, the police might have listened to her. The Birds couldn’t risk that.”
“So where do we look then? The fireworks place?”
Malone nodded, glancing at the sky. It had started raining more than an hour ago, and not a light rain, either. This precipitation slanted down in icy, windblown sheets that made the fog feel tropical by comparison.
Although they hadn’t scoured the warehouse, and although he wouldn’t have acknowledged it to anyone, Malone sensed a certain hazy truth underlying Chen-Li’s assertions. She wasn’t here; he could feel it. Better to search the Birds’ fireworks factory or the more esoteric House of Mann. Motioning to Ronnie, he ducked out of the alley and around the corner to his cousin’s rented Escort.
Esoteric, he thought darkly. Now there was a word to describe Chen-Li. In the end, the old man had told them nothing. Well, nothing except that the photos—including, Malone assumed, the one of Bella given to him by Rudge— were misleading. Wonderful. But what the hell did he mean?
“I can say nothing more,” Chen-Li had told him regretfully. “If I’m mistaken, you may use the wrong approach in your search. I will study the matter further while you are gone.”
“The man’s a bloody loon, if you ask me,” Ronnie maintained as Malone pulled away from the curb. “How can pictures be misleading, especially ones as straightforward as those?”
Malone didn’t have the answer, and he had no time to ponder it in any event. “Oh, hell.” He swore, glancing in the rearview mirror. “We’ve got company.”
“What? Where?”
Ronnie started to turn, but Malone grabbed his arm, preventing him. “Don’t,” he warned. “I want to catch him off guard.”
“Catch who? Tock?”
“Rudge.”
“Ahh.” Sitting back, Ronnie gripped the edge of his seat. “It’s like musical tails around here lately. How did he get behind us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he followed you to Chen-Li’s. Or maybe he just got lucky.”
“Stop scowling, Malone. At least with Rudge on the scent, you can be pretty sure the Birds haven’t nabbed Bella yet.”
“Unless Tock got her.”
“Well, yes, there is that, but wouldn’t Tock be on the Birds’ bad side right now? After all, he sold out to Crowe, and we know what happened to him.”
“Exactly, and if it happened to Crowe, it could happen to Bella. Hold on.”
Teeth set, Malone gave the steering wheel a yank and skidded the gritty little Escort sideways. The tires squealed; the back end fishtailed, then spun until the car came to a stop facing in the opposite direction. Nearby motorists leaned on their horns and, red faced, swore at the violators as Malone gunned the engine and the car sped away.
“I don’t think we’re very popular,” Ronnie observed in a shaky voice. Prying one hand loose from its grip on the door handle, he dabbed at the beads of sweat on his upper lip. “Please tell me that Rudge didn’t match that move.”
Malone squinted into the mirror. “He did, but it put some distance between us. We should be able to lose him in a few blocks.”
“And if we don’t? We can’t lead him to Bella, and we can’t leave Bella to fend for herself with the Birds. When they realize she’s looking for them, they’ll be there with wings on their feet—no pun intended.”
“Yes, I know.” Malone controlled his snappish response, glancing back again. He couldn’t see Rudge, but then it was only blind luck that he’d spotted him in the first place.
Five more minutes, he decided, jerking the wheel to the left. That’s all he could spare for this game of cat and mouse. It was the cat-and-Bird game that really counted.
“Hang on,” he told Ronnie, swinging a hard right.
For some reason, Chen-Li’s parting words had begun to echo in his head. They rose eerily above the squeal of rain and tires.
Ramrod straight in his chair, the old man had gazed at the photographs of Amanda and Bella. As he did so, he’d remarked in a wise but weary voice, “As individuals, we have within us the capacity for both good and evil. So it is in this instance, I fear, only more, so very much more.” He’d lifted solemn eyes to Malone’s face. “Find her, Mr. Malone,” he’d said with quiet urgency. “Find her and pray. Pray for Belladonna.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Where do we go?” Florrie whispered as she and her friend bound another guard hand and foot. “We can’t just sashay onto the street in our underwear. And you probably know I’m not a big fan of the police.”
“Chen-Li,” Bella said suddenly. She handed one of the women a blanket. “He might be able to help you. But you’ll have to go to the police after that. The Birds did this. They should pay.”
“Yeah, right.” Shivering, Florrie looked around. “I heard this shanghai stuff still went on, but I thought it was just a story. Who are these Birds?”
Bella pushed the unruly tangle of hair from her face. “They’re more like vultures, I think. I’ve never seen them. Well, I have, but not clearly. It doesn’t matter. Just go to Chen-Li, okay?”
“All fifty of us?”
Were there that many? Bella had stopped counting several cages ago. “No.” She peered down an ancillary corridor, saw no one and glanced back at Florrie. “You’ll have to go straight to the police. We’ve tied up four workers, but there are bound to be more.”
“Lots more,” Florrie declared. “They’re probably sloughing off, waiting until they have to bring us food or wine or move us out or…” Her eyes widened and she clutched at Bella’s arm. “Listen! Oh, my God, they’re coming. Can you hear them?”
Above the rain and wind and running feet, Bella hadn’t heard anything, but she did now. Male voices, garbled by the closer sounds, approached from the front of the building.
Her heart skipped a beat. She had to stay calm, even if the the lump in her throat was threatening to choke her.
“Run,” she whispered to Florrie, whose panicky eyes scanned the circle of faces around them. Louder, she repeated, “Run!”
They scattered like fleeing deer. Bella didn’t know who ran where, but none of them followed her. Somehow she wound up alone in an unexplored part of the building.
The acrid scent of gunpowder assailed her. The darkness pressed in as if to smother her. Corridors sprouted off at bizarre angles—corridors, rooms and funny little wroughtiron stairwells.
She was isolated here—and yet she wasn’t entirely alone.
As if summoned, ghosts began to float out of the darkened corners of her mind. There should have been an order to their release, but somehow she knew there wasn’t.
She saw Amanda smiling at her, holding out her hand. She saw herself playing with Amanda’s silver ring—her mother’s only ring, her only piece of jewelry.
She saw a red bicycle lying on the ground. The tires had been slashed, the shiny paint scratched, a rather unnerving sight.
She saw a gray pony with a white mane, and her hand holding a bunch of carrots up to his mouth. Then the carrots vanished, and she saw herself, angry and launching toys at a wall. First a doll, then a puzzle, then a pair of red leather boots.
“Now, now, darling,” she heard Amanda soothe. “You can’t get everything you want in life. It simply doesn’t work that way.”
Another memory overlapped—a recollection of her face in a mirror. Her lower lip jutted petulantly, her dark eyes guttered with spite, her hair was loose and disheveled, and there were faint claw marks on her cheeks.
Amanda spoke again. “No, you mustn’t hurt the kitten. Bella, come here and pick it up nicely. Yes, that’s it. You see? It won’t scratch you if you don’t try to smother it.”
Had she been cruel to animals as a child? Bella was appalled. Maybe she didn’t want to remember her past, after all.
A voice similar to, yet different from, Amanda’s took over. “How dare you, Robert!” it accused. “You have sex with a whore, then you have the nerve to try and justify it…. Don’t you call me two-faced, you snake. Romaine. You promised that it would always be Romaine.”
“And Belladonna,” Robert said calmly in reply.
“Belladonna comes later, much later. Romaine is the present, and all you want to do is screw it up. You think your whore’s worth that much, do you? Well, I don’t, and I have just as much say around here as you do. You see me as a silent partner, but only because I let you. When all’s said and done, Robert, I run the show. I always have and I always will. I am Romaine….”
The darkness of the factory became suffocating. Bella felt dizzy, disoriented. What was Romaine? What did it mean? The woman’s accent sounded so similar to Amanda’s. The voice itself—she couldn’t tell. Was it Amanda talking?
Out of nowhere, Lona’s voice came to her, efficient, practical and achingly familiar. Bella’s throat burned with emotion. “You are Belladonna, yes? Belladonna Conlan.” Then Lona said firmly, “I will call you Bella. There will be no poison in your life, child, as long as I am a part of it….”
The memory faded, and Bella’s thoughts shot forward in time. “Just like Romaine,” she heard Lona saying sadly. “That’s what Amanda told me.”
But what did Romaine mean? Bella screamed in silent frustration. What did it represent?
She detected a tiny noise and froze. All memories dispersed.
Were those footsteps she heard? Possibly. She shouldn’t be standing still, in any event. Find the Birds, that was her goal.
She hesitated. Was that her goal or was she being a fool? Surely it was foolish to hunt the thing that hunted you— unless, of course, you happened to be more powerful, which she definitely was not. Not powerful, not even whole at the moment. What on earth was she doing?
Malone…
Of its own volition, his name slid through Bella’s thoughts. She loved him, but the Birds would kill him for daring to help her. That must never happen. And that was really why she’d really come here—not to overwhelm the Birds but to prevent them from killing Malone in order to get to her.
A grating sound, only faintly perceptible, reached her ears. Keep moving, she thought, but which way? Not back to the cages, and certainly not toward the front of the factory.
She decided to circle. A place like this would have any number of exits.
Careful to make no noise, she changed directions and started down a corridor even more dismal than the one she’d been standing in moments before.
The sound came again, a stealthy, scraping noise perhaps fifty feet behind her.
Lack of furtiveness had one advantage. Whoever approached was gaining on her. Bella crept forward for several more nerve-racking seconds, heard the noise again and realized she’d never outdistance the person behind her.
Spying an alcove, she ducked into it, crouching swiftly behind a wooden barrel filled with flammable red rockets. Breath held, muscles protesting at her cramped position, she pulled her jacket tighter, swept the hair from her eyes and waited.
Time might have stopped, that’s how long it felt between footsteps. When the next one finally came, it emanated from a point directly to her left.
Knuckles pressed to her mouth, Bella risked a glance around the barrel. Don’t sneeze, she thought, then promptly wanted to kick herself. Power of suggestion. She’d probably sneeze up a storm now.
Her strained mind flashed intermittent pictures—of Malone waking up in Chen-Li’s apartment; of Lona tipping sideways in the hotel lounge; of Hobson Crowe with two circles—or wheels, as she’d interpreted them—painted in lipstick on his cheeks; of two women in black wearing netted hats and sunglasses; of Amanda in the picture case; of herself with Amanda.
She’d been playing with a kitten in one shot. She’d been smug and empty-handed in the other. Only Amanda’s expression hadn’t changed. There she’d sat in her faded denim pantsuit, with her silver Navaho ring on her finger and Hobby’s stable behind her.
The flashing images continued. Disconnected fragments appeared, memories both old and new: a pony, a smashed red bicycle, The Pirates of Penzance playing on the stereo. Her mother’s dressmaker whispering to her husband, who was the gardener. A gold wedding band being flung to the floor. A thin pink knife, bloodstained and glistening before her eyes, yet visible to her only in the mirror across the room. Amanda pulling on her hand, saying, “We have to go….” Malone pulling on her hand aboard the Sun Sen, pulling her away from Charmaine Parret. The funny, tingly feeling she’d had when she’d met Charmaine. Amanda taking her hand, sneaking her out into the night…
The last memory stuck. Bella recalled that Amanda’s ring had felt cold against her skin. Amanda’s silver ring. Her only piece of jewelry. Denim. The dressmaker coming and going…
What was wrong with these memories? Why didn’t the puzzle fit? It seemed to Bella as if some of the pieces came from another puzzle entirely.
She pressed herself deeper into the corner. The barrage in her head had to be stopped. She needed to concentrate on her current predicament.
Malone, she thought, and felt an instant release of tension. Yes, think of him. Focus on the present. He’d rescued her. Now it was time for her to return the favor—if she survived, that is.
The footsteps sounded just around the corner. Eyes trained on the shadow that fell across the wall, Bella steeled herself to face whoever loomed behind it.
It was a female shadow; even in the gloom she could see that.
“Bella? Are you there?”
At the halting question, Bella’s pent-up breath came rushing out. She leaned her head against the barrel in relief. “Florrie,” she breathed. “Thank God.”
Florrie heard her and halted. “Bella?”
“Back here.” She stood, wincing at her cramped leg muscles. “I thought you were one of the Birds.”
“Me, a Bird? Not a chance. Anyway, top guns never do their own dirty work, do they? I bet they wouldn’t be caught dead in this grungy old building.”
