The Portal Read online

  “What are you talking about?” he said, looking as blank as he could.

  Oates looked irate for just an instant, and then masked the emotion.

  “Remember our deal with the platinum-blond whore on your first beat? She’d polish your knob twice a week, and you’d let her work. There was a dividend there for me, since it left her free to let others indulge their weaknesses.”

  Scaravelli frowned. That was decades ago. He absolutely never told anyone about that.

  “When you resold the heroin you skimmed from the Quintaro bust in ’08,” Oates continued, “it fired off a host of crimes, addicts committed to buy the brown dust. Again, nice dividends.”

  Scaravelli went ashen. These were Scaravelli’s most sordid moments. No way Oates could know all that shit.

  Oates snapped his fingers. Scaravelli’s desk chair zipped forward, caught Scaravelli in the back of the legs, and he dropped into it. Oates snapped his fingers again and some invisible force pinned Scaravelli to the chair. The massive, unseen weight on his chest threatened suffocation. The color drained from Scaravelli’s face. Oates winked.

  “But, my friend,” Oates continued, “the best was when you flipped Orasco over to the Gambino family.”

  Scaravelli’s jaw dropped. Detective Danny Orasco had been deep undercover in the Gambino family for several years, with the evidence to bring the family’s top tier to justice. For seven grand to clear his bookie’s marker, Scaravelli had blown Orasco’s cover to a Gambino contact. That night, cops found Orasco beaten to death, tongue ripped out, all his fingers and toes amputated. Oates couldn’t possibly have known about Scaravelli’s betrayal.

  Oates approached Scaravelli’s side of the desk. With each step, Scaravelli’s panic rose. Oates patted Scaravelli on the cheek. His hand had all the warmth of a slab of rotten meat. “So like you’re thinking, who could know all this stuff? Who might be listening, might be encouraging you to take that darker, easier path?”

  Oates’ face elongated and reddened. A bony crest swelled on his forehead. He smiled and his teeth had turned to sharpened points. Fear paralyzed Scaravelli. Satan morphed back into Oates.

  “Yeah, surprise!” Oates chuckled a scratchy, forced little excuse for a laugh. “All that Sunday sermon stuff was right.

  “But lately, Chief, I’m greatly aggrieved to say, our business, it hasn’t been so good. You been hiding out here on this island, and I get nothing from you. It’s disappointing. If our relationship withers like this, I’ll have to call my marker.”

  Scaravelli did not like the sound of that. “What marker?”

  “Your soul, Chief,” Oates said. “You sold it many times over. I get it at my convenience. You don’t deliver for me, it becomes more convenient for me to collect.”

  A sharp pain lanced Scaravelli’s upper jaw and shot straight into the center of his brain. Something wiggled against his gums. A gush of warm, coppery liquid swelled his cheeks. He coughed out a spray of blood. A bright red, sticky mess splattered the distended belly of his shirt and the wide legs of his pants. A white molar teetered on one of his shirt buttons.

  Scaravelli shrieked. Oates buffed the edge of his fingernails against his shirtsleeve and held them up to the light.

  “See? I mean business,” Oates said, still checking his nails. “So let me tell you how you can make up for lost time.”

  Scaravelli couldn’t take his eyes off his extracted tooth.

  “Whaaat doo you want?” he gurgled through a mouthful of blood.

  Oates passed his hand in front of Scaravelli. The blood flow stopped. The last of it dribbled down the chief’s chin.

  “There’s gonna be a heinous crime here in Stone Harbor,” Oates said. “At 7 p.m., you’ll get a call at home from Colleen Olsen. Her daughter will be missing. You’ll listen compassionately and say you’ll look for her. You’re gonna head alone to the woods north of Canale Road. You’ll see Carl Krieger’s broken-down excuse for a van parked along the old dirt road. He and the girl will be inside. By the time you get there, the girl will be dead. You’ll confront Krieger about his crime, he’ll be armed –”

  Oates pulled a snub-nosed .38 revolver from his pocket and put in on Scaravelli’s desk. The serial number had been gouged away.

  “– and he’ll resist,” Oates continued. “You’ll have to shoot him. Fatally, I’m afraid. Then you’ll close off the crime scene. The whole five acres from the road to the hilltop. At 9 a.m., you’ll start your investigation there. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Scaravelli’s jaw quivered. He’d done some shit in his life, but he hadn’t killed anyone. It was going to be cold-blooded too. Scoring some dope or leaning on a whore was one thing. But murder….

  “C’mon, Scaravelli. Don’t go all holier-than-thou on me. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about killing someone.”

  “Well, yeah, but….”

  “I’ve been in your head. Seen the envy when other cops talked about wasting some perp. You’ve wanted this excuse for years.”

  Oates knew him better than he knew himself. That realization sent a shudder down his spine.

  “Have no qualms, Chief,” Oates continued. “Remember the Dickey girl’s disappearance last year? She didn’t fall overboard. She was murdered here in Stone Harbor, never made it to the boat. Krieger was responsible for that too. When you search the disgusting rat hole he infests, you’ll find a souvenir he kept.”

  Oates reached over and spun around the wooden nameplate on the desk to show the gold letters saying CHIEF OF POLICE.

  “You, Chief, will be the hero. You never believed that Dickey girl drowned, and you had suspected Krieger all along, right?”

  “Uh, now that you mention it….”

  “Of course,” Oates said. “A top cop like you can sniff these things out.”

  Scaravelli flinched at the sarcastic tone.

  “So you save the island from a child-molesting serial killer. No one’s gonna push for an investigation. They’ll be too happy Krieger’s gone. You’ll end up with a lifetime contract protecting this island of sheep from nothing. Above all….”

  A tooth on the other side of Scaravelli’s jaw wiggled. Scaravelli quivered, eyes wide. His heart pounded faster.

  “Your co-operation means I don’t have to call my marker. Capisce?”

  Scaravelli nodded so fast it made him dizzy. “Deal.”

  “That’s good,” Oates said. “Now you go home, you wait for Mrs. Olsen’s call. Then out to Canale Road. Don’t forget to bring the evidence.” Oates pointed at the .38.

  He walked toward the door, paused, and turned. “Consider our arrangement sealed.”

  He raised a hand in Scaravelli’s direction. Suddenly Scaravelli felt like someone took a blowtorch to his shoulder. A wide lance of excruciating pain ripped through him all the way to his shoulder blade.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Oates dropped his hand. The pain disappeared. Oates managed a grim little smile. “And put the tooth under your pillow, and you’ll get a quarter,” he said.

  Oates left Scaravelli’s office. The force that bound Scaravelli to the chair vanished and he nearly collapsed on the floor.

  Scaravelli’s heart slowed down. It ached from the jump into overdrive. He plucked the tooth from his shirt. Then he pulled his shirt open. A circular brand containing two inverted triangles was burned into his skin.

  “Holy shit.” He sagged back in the chair.

  He rationalized that that encounter could have gone a hell of a lot worse. All in all, Scaravelli figured he’d come out way ahead. Krieger’s the only loser as he grabs a few feet of well-deserved turf. The guy’s a scumbag anyway. And if Scaravelli decided to actually play cop and arrest him instead, some liberal asshole judge would let him walk with some crybaby defense. In retrospect, the whole setup was looking too good to be true.

 
Scaravelli was not in the habit of looking too closely at things that were too good to be true. When the card said BANK ERROR IN YOUR FAVOR – COLLECT $200, he just collected the money and rolled the dice again. He did wonder what Oates meant when he said he’d ‘take care of the rest’ after Scaravelli secured the crime scene.

  Screw it. He’d figure that out later, still having a jaw full of teeth.

  Chapter Eleven

  The apartment’s intercom to the security desk buzzed. Camille’s black stilettos clicked as she crossed the white marble kitchen floor. She pressed the response button with a long onyx fingernail. The tiny screen beside it popped to life. Luis, the night shift doorman, smiled at her. Like everyone else Camille spoke to, he flashed one of those nervous smiles that poorly masked fear.

  “Uh. Ms. Camille, you’ve got a visitor, but he’s not on the log.”

  The view switched to a man standing in the lobby in front of the doorman’s post. He wore a suit but no tie, and his blue shirt was open at the neck. He was tall and muscular; his short-cropped dark hair screamed soldier or cop. He looked around the lobby as if sizing it up.

  “Says he’s Mr. Rene Kyler,” Luis continued. “Says he represents a Mr. Oates?”

  Camille’s pulse spiked. Years of waiting, years of preparation. All for this. She swept her long black hair back and over one shoulder. “Send him up.”

  It was only fitting that she be the first of the five to know. After all, Oates had selected her first, before she became Camille, before she became free.

  * * *

  Back then, Camille was twelve going on twenty-one and had already overdosed on being a ward of the state. She was then named Consuela. Her mother had abandoned her at birth in the hospital. She shuttled through a string of foster homes, always the Hispanic kid in a non-Hispanic household. Each place hosted a horror all its own. First, there was the filthy house where rats scurried in the halls under empty fast food wrappers, and the blackened toilet had no seat. Then there were the crystal meth heads, who financed their habits with her state support check while she starved in the garage. And who could forget the Muellers, that lovely couple who shared a penchant for cheap booze and the belief that a lit cigarette against young skin was the highest form of entertainment? Each family was a different nightmare, with one common thread: indulging their sicknesses was more important than a borrowed little girl.

  Finally, after another screaming session with the glowing red tips of a pack of Salem Lights (the box said cool and refreshing), Consuela climbed through a window and into the night. She carried everything she had with her, which amounted to the clothes on her back and a desire for self-preservation.

  Life on the road meant hiding, scavenging, and starving. Theft became a survival skill. She avoided becoming a victim by shunning human contact. Whoever they were, they were out to hurt her for their own gain. Or worse, they might be some religious do-gooders who would ‘save’ her and return her to a foster home. Thanks, but no thanks.

  One night about 3 a.m., in an alley behind an upscale steakhouse (they tossed the best trash if you needed a meal), Joey Oates first appeared. Consuela sat invisible in the shadow of a dumpster. Oates walked down the alley like he owned it. He warded off the night’s chill with the plushest camel’s hair coat the girl had ever seen. He shed the coat, revealing a black pinstripe suit, and left the coat on the steakhouse steps. He backed away, then turned to face exactly where she hid.

  “Ain’t no point in being so cold,” he said. “The coat’s yours.”

  He retreated a few more steps, but Consuela was wary. It spooked her that the man knew where she was hiding, when she was certain he could not see her. In addition, everyone was after something. No way this guy wasn’t.

  But she sensed no danger. God knows she had developed a nose for it over the years. She crept forward from the shadows.

  “Go ahead, try it on.”

  Consuela sidestepped to the coat. Her eyes never left Oates. She picked up the coat. The thick, clean, plush wool held the promise of warmth. She slid an arm inside to the smooth caress of the silk inner lining. She inserted her other arm and shrugged the coat up onto her shoulders. It reached past her calves. She pulled the front closed and the coat almost wrapped around her twice. She’d never worn such luxury.

  The pockets brushed heavy against her knees. She reached into her right and extracted one of several paper packs. Her eyes widened. Cash. The band read $100. She thumbed through the corners. All hundreds. If she added up every dollar she’d touched her whole life, she wouldn’t have a fraction of this amount, and her left pocket felt as full as her right.

  “You know what’s overrated?” Oates asked. “Freedom. You got total freedom now, how’s it feel?”

  “Cold.”

  Oates gave the air an exaggerated sniff. “And it stinks. What defines true freedom? Cash. Piles of it. There’s more for you where that came from if you want it.”

  A warning bell rang for Consuela. “I’m not screwing you. Or anyone else.” She hadn’t made it this far without being molested to give it up for a decent coat.

  “No fears there,” Oates said. “In fact, just the opposite. Part of the deal is that you don’t have sex.”

  Consuela tugged the coat tighter. This was the kind of deal she wanted to hear more about.

  The back door of the steakhouse swung open. A scrawny cook in a white apron walked out with a bulging black bag of trash. He took one look over Consuela’s head at Oates, and froze. Oates stared at him. The bag slipped through the cook’s hand and hit the ground with a splat. He backed through the door, and it closed behind him.

  “Now that there is real freedom, the freedom of power. That’s the freedom I’m gonna give you.”

  The idea of being able to protect herself with a look that inspired terror was pretty appealing. “I’ll be able to do that?”

  “No, sweetheart. I’ll turn you into someone who draws power over men from the other end of the spectrum. Same end result though. You ask. They do.”

  “In return for…?”

  “Very little. Next to nothing.”

  And Oates told her the deal. He would have some of his followers instruct her in the Dark Arts, give her a place to stay, meet all her needs. The word witchcraft never came up, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think that what this man was talking about was anything else. She had to practice, stay chaste, and remain silent about it all. In the end, he’d give her dominion over others and eternal life by his side.

  A long list of people were due her revenge. She took the deal.

  He didn’t say he was the Devil. He didn’t need to. From the second he appeared, Consuela just understood he was, as if she and all humans had a sensor inside to detect the Prince of Darkness. But she felt none of the abject terror he inspired in the cook. Instead she felt a sense of something mesmerizing and unique. She felt family. She’d been alone and abandoned all her life. The key to her happiness, to her being complete, was to be with Oates.

  Oates kept his word and delivered her to an Upper West Side New York penthouse. After the Cleansing, she shed the trappings of her previous life. She also dropped her given name, taking Camille at Oates’ insistence. Then she learned the spells and mastered the potions that drew her vast power. Soon her mere presence could enthrall any man.

  But what Oates had her practice the most was the Incantation of the Portal. Each day, she recited the Latin prayer until she could chant it without thinking, producing every tone and inflection to perfection. Oates explained that when the time was right, she would use that spell to open the door to his kingdom, and then pass through it to reign with him forever.

  Over the years, other girls had joined Camille in the swank penthouse. One by one, Oates scooped other lost lasses from the city’s human flotsam and cloistered them in the upscale refuge. Ivana, Donna, Andrea, and Katrina all joined the coven by the time C
amille turned fifteen. Society never missed these girls as they slipped through the cracks and entered Oates’ underworld. The girls never missed society, or as they called it, the mortal world. Pain and emptiness had primed them to embrace all that Oates offered.

  He gave them great freedom with a few restrictions. No one could leave the penthouse without two others. No one entered the penthouse except the five. Most critically, no one had sex. Within these boundaries, they could practice their witchcraft, indulging any whims they might have. They all chose to tattoo a thin necklace of thorns around the base of their necks to symbolize their bond to each other. It was a wonderfully hedonistic life for all of them. All they had to do was await Oates’ call.

  * * *

  Rene Kyler stepped out of the elevator and knocked on the penthouse door. He could have done this with a phone call or an email. But a decade of being Oates’ right-hand man taught Kyler to do all business in person, and that the man’s orders needed to be followed, not questioned.

  He’d taken his own path to end up in service to Oates, as voluntary as Camille’s, but as tied to murder as Carl Krieger’s.

  At an early age, Kyler had discovered that inflicting suffering and death was a lot of fun. He’d started with animals, learning that flies lived briefly without wings and that ants popped in a puff of smoke under a magnifying glass. By the time neighborhood pets began to disappear, Kyler had realized two things.

  First, oddly, the population viewed his acts with abhorrence. Nothing in his head even hinted that his little torture experiments were wrong. Kyler’s switch that fired up the guilt circuits was grounded out. In fact, he experienced little emotion at all. Sure, he had a pleasurable feeling when at age six he lit the Burnses’ dog on fire (he relished the pun, it was why he chose the victim dog), but even that fleeting sensation felt shallow. The remorse, the love, the compassion people went on and on about were alien concepts. A girlfriend told him that was his loss; he replied that it was his liberation. Let the rest of the world act constrained by emotions. He could follow whatever path he chose.