Fifteen

Michelle Pfeiffer was leaning over to kiss me.

“Looks like he’s waking up,” she said softly.

The only trouble was, as her lovely face came slowly into focus, it turned into the homely mug of McNulty. Rats!

Hovering over his shoulder was Holmes and, from what I could make out, the rest of the room was awash with paramedics. From where I lay, propped up on one of the sofas, I could see two black body bags being carried out on stretchers. Linda and Nicky—united in death, at least. So Linda had kept her man, though she’d undoubtedly have preferred a less passive union.

“At a guess I’d say this place looks like the last scene of one of those Elizabethan tragedies. Only isn’t everybody supposed to be dead?”

“McNulty, that mordant sense of humor of yours will be the death of me. If it hadn’t been for the dog in the night time, I wouldn’t presently be among those present myself.”

I felt a wet tongue lick my face and it most certainly wasn’t Michelle Pfeiffer’s. Nor, fortunately, was it McNulty’s. Mike was sitting by the side of the sofa and hearing my voice had brought on this bout of spontaneous affection. I reached out with my uninjured hand and scratched his ears.

“Thanks, pal. I owe you one.”

I’ll say you do. You owe me several.”

McNulty obviously wasn’t a dog owner. He assumed I was talking to him.

“The doc’s patched you up for now. He says you’re lucky it was only a rinky-dink little bullet and it missed anything important—supposing you had anything important. You’ll be as good as new in a couple of days—not that that’s saying a lot. Now, how about telling your Uncle Mac just what went down here tonight before the US Cavalry got here?”

So I did—most of it. I left out the China Connection. Somehow conspiring to deal in drugs, even non-existent ones, wouldn’t look too good on my report card. But crime passionelle, now that sounds really sexy.

“So Nicky’s out of the game?” he said when I’d finished. “The Pomonas will probably send in some other goon to replace him—but then again, maybe they’ll think it’s more trouble than it’s worth. After all, we’re a long way from St. Louis. We can but live in hopes. Pity about Linda Grace, though. I used to fantasize about her when I wasn’t worrying about my acne… . God, that was how many years ago?” He paused for a moment’s thought. “Guess that was part of her problem. Right?”

I sat up, so that I could see the rest of the room better. The pain wasn’t too bad at all and I guessed I’d been given a jab of something or other.

Outside the window Nature seemed to have decided that it had given us its best shot with the storm and all—or maybe it felt it couldn’t compete with the theatrics going on indoors. In any case, it had shut up shop for the night and now—would you believe it?—a full moon was trying to con us that it had been there all the time.

As I turned towards the doorway, Nana Kane came towards me, flanked on each side—I was relieved to see—by two policewomen. She’d been cuffed but had managed to raise both hands so that she could suck her thumb.

“We found her like that when we got here. Haven’t been able to get a peep out of her. The only time she’s taken her goddam thumb out of her goddam mouth was when we cuffed her and then it went right back in again. Personally, I think she’s out to lunch and I wouldn’t count on her being back for tea.”

When she was opposite me, she turned her head in my direction.

McNulty was right. The eyes were empty caverns measureless to man. Deep in their recesses Nana was probably arguing with Anna and who knew how many other schizoid siblings but they could keep the outcome to themselves, as far as I was concerned. I dropped my own eyes and the parade passed by.

“What about the old man?”

“Doc says it’s a stroke and they’ve taken him to the hospital. But he’s a tough old buzzard, that one. He’s not ready to call it a day yet and there’s nothing much they can do for him. My guess is they’ll send him home and wait for Father Time to take care of things. He’s got more nurses there than the Good Samaritan anyway and there’s not a damn thing we can charge him with.”

I reflected that Osgood Kane—Otto Kreizer—or whatever his name was had been living in his personal hell for many a year now. He’d just moved down one layer. But the thought seemed too existential to bother McNulty with at the moment.

“Well, I think that about wraps it up for now, Watson, mon vieux. We’d better get you home. You can come in and make a statement when you’re felling up to it. None of these squirrels is going anywhere. I’ll get one of my guys to drive that heap of junk you call a car. You really should invest in a new one—you make my crime scenes look shabby …”

I thought of the torn scraps of Kane’s check that had been earmarked for just that purpose. Ah, well …

“Come on, pooch. Sounds like you earned your keep tonight.”

And McNulty reached over to scratch Mike’s ears, too. Twice in one day. And they say dogs don’t grin. Ear to ear and a thump from that apology for a tail.

Home, James …

“I beg you not to exert yourself, Watson. With your medical training you of all people should know that rest is of the essence. I would offer to help but under my present circumstances …”

Holmes, Mike and I were back in the apartment and, due to my invalid status, I had been given the choice of chair. I had also been allowed the last beer in the house, even though the qualified competition for it was not significant and I had had to fetch it myself. Hence Holmes’s strictures.

“Holmes,” I said, not quite catching his eye. “I want to thank you for what you did back there. But for you, I’d be a crime statistic by now.”

“My dear old fellow,”—and I thought I heard a small catch in his voice, too—“how often have you not done something of the sort for me in other days?”

Then, so as to change a potentially embarrassing subject for both of us, he went on—“Of course, had you taken your old service revolver, as I suggested, instead of that piece of glorified tin, a lot of effort could have been saved. However…

“I suggest we now review the events of the last few days, for I am sure you will want to add this little affair to your other chronicles in due course.”

I was too tired to understand what he was referring to but I let it pass.

So we did as he suggested and then I came to the question that was still bugging me.

“So there never was a Borgia Bird—a real one, I mean? All that killing was for nothing?”

“Oh, most certainly there was a Bird but it was the idea of the Bird that led to the carnage—as it always has. It was enough for each of them to think they possessed it.”

“But where is it now?”

“We’ll come to that in good time, old fellow.” He would tell me when he was ready and nothing would hurry him.

“The saddest aspect of the whole affair is undoubtedly the daughter. Kane himself, of course, is as close to pure evil as one will ever see. He reminds me of earlier adversaries of ours—Grimesby Roylott and Charles Augustus Milverton are two who come to mind. You may wish to refresh your memory of those cases before you take up your pen on this one.

“So Nana Kane may well have inherited those tainted genes but that does not necessarily doom the offspring. What undoubtedly did was the conditioning she received at her father’s hand. Good and evil clearly fought an ongoing battle in her developing mind until the tension became too great to bear and she created sister Anna as an alter ego.

“Young Sigmund Freud was doing some fascinating work in this area of—‘schizophrenia’, I believe he called it at the end of my time in practice. He would have relished this case. I don’t know if you ever met him, Watson? Ah well, it is of no matter.

“Alas, the dark power was the stronger, as it so often is, and from that point the outcome was inevitable. But try and remember Anna Kane, Watson. In her own way she was every bit as real as Nana and she clearly felt some affinity for you, felt that you might be able to help her. And had things been otherwise—who knows? But seeing her lover lost to her …”

We sat in silence for a few moments and I noticed the first tentative fingers of dawn toying with the venetian blind.

“But the Bird, Holmes. Where is the Bird?”

“Where it has been all along, my dear fellow. And where you will discover it when you have had some sleep. No …” he raised his hand in protest, as I started to get up— “on this occasion I am your medical advisor. And besides, it is not going to fly away, I promise you.”

And with that, he folded his hands in front of him, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. I could tell from a contented whiffling sound that Mike was already in doggie dreamland, no doubt fantasizing about which other human body parts he could append himself to, Dog-on-the-Arm having been such a palpable hit. Come to think of it, I was feeling more than a little sleepy mys …