“Why?”
“？‘Give me your hands, dearest brother and sister, for now we call upon the Lords of Air, the Princes in Yellow, to witness our rites,’？” she recited carefully, setting the cup down. “I’m pretty sure those were the words.”
The black-and-white clock of Felix the Cat moved its eyes and its tail to a steady, hypnotic rhythm.
“What did you say?”
“It’s Ewers’s line, in the scene we dubbed. Remember? And then he crowns himself king. ‘Witness our rites.’ Ewers’s magic relies on being heard and seen. His spells don’t exist without a spectator.”
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
“Exactly. He needed a coven so they would observe him. It was part of the magic.”
“It sounds nuts.”
“No. Look, when Valentino died, what happened? Thousands of people lined the streets of Manhattan to see his coffin go by. Women were hysterical. Some of them even threatened to kill themselves when they heard he had passed away. A riot broke out because so many people wanted to view his corpse. We remember Valentino even if we’ve forgotten actors who were equally as famous as he was, perhaps even more famous.”
“I don’t get your point.”
“Ewers’s plan was to kill himself, remember? He was going to die and be resurrected by his coven. I bet it would have been a grand spectacle, a super performance. And then he expected to spring back to life. Only it didn’t happen that way because he was mugged. I wonder what happened to the body? I doubt his lover paid for a nice funeral.”
“So you’re saying that, what, if Ewers had had a big funeral celebration he would have come back from the dead?”
“Well, no. The film was never completed, and Abel said that caused a short circuit. But he did expect to be reborn, after his film was done and he killed himself by his own hand. I think I’m missing a clue—”
“Momo—”
“When we dubbed the film, when we completed that part of the circuit, maybe it changed something. Like putting a new pair of batteries into a remote control.”
“We’re not sorcerers. We can’t have started anything.”
“What if it was a piece of code he had already written, and all you had to do was press a key? Or a VCR that you’ve set to record something? All you need is someone to pop in the tape,” she said. “I know this goes against Ewers’s ideas of hierophants having to be special people with a precious lineage, but maybe he had no idea what he was talking about. Even if he knew, he might not have admitted it, because he was incredibly racist and obsessed with all that Aryan bullshit.”
She was breathless. It was because she was nervous and excited by her line of thought, though, as Tristán liked to point out, she did tend to run on a bit. Before she could continue Tristán spoke up.
“This sounds fucking creepy, and I’m alone in an apartment surrounded by candles, so please stop.”
She could picture his hand shaking as he lit a cigarette, the smoke rings coming out of his mouth.
“You were the one who wanted to prove to me you were not imagining Karina not so long ago.”
“Yes, and exorcising her, if needed. You are going on about weird and frankly scary theories. I want to forget the whole thing,” he said. His voice had an edge. His eyes would be very bright right now, his hands clenching like they did when he was truly upset.
“Tristán—”
“Momo, our friend is dead.”
“I know. I found his corpse,” she said, her voice growing harsher in response to his. “And the reason why I’m telling you all of this is because I want to know what happened to him, not because I’m trying to spook you. I’m trying to understand. Don’t you want to understand?”
“I can’t say that I do.”
Montserrat let out a loud grunt and tugged at the phone cord. She lay back on the couch with the phone resting on her stomach.
“Momo? You there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” she said, pressing the phone against her ear.
Tristán sighed. “Look, I said I’d help you find Alma Montero and I will. But that doesn’t mean I want to discuss spells after midnight. I’ll never go to sleep like this.”
“Would seven a.m. work better for you?”
“Haha. Very funny.”
“Tristán, I don’t think he was mugged.”
“Huh?”
“Abel said what happened to Ewers was bad luck. He was killed before his project could be completed. But that sounds like a big coincidence to me. What if someone wanted him gone before the spell was cast? What if that same person killed Abel, fearing Ewers would come back from the dead?”
“That would be who, Alma?”
“Maybe.”
“She would be in a wheelchair by now.”
“You can cast spells in a wheelchair.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Tristán—”
“I’m asleep,” he said. His voice had lost its edge and was growing drowsily pleasant. He sounded quite lovely when he spoke like that; no wonder he had nabbed several dubbing gigs. No wonder, too, that soap opera viewers had once been thrilled when he uttered his hammy lines. Hooked, from the very first scene.
“Jerk.”
“I do have to go to sleep.”
“Go to bed. I’ll be fine,” she said, picking at a loose thread from her sweater.
The silence on the line was velvet soft, and she pictured him licking his lips, which he did much too often when he was nervous.
“I’m sorry you had to find Abel on your own. I should have been with you. Are you okay?”
She was tired and she was stressed, and when that happened her old leg acted up, but all things considered she figured she was doing fine. The eyes of vampires and monsters watched Montserrat from the posters on the walls. The garish artwork comforted her. She stretched a hand and set it beneath her head.
“Nothing an aspirin won’t fix,” she said.
“I won’t leave you alone again. I’ll keep the pager clipped on. I’ll return any phone calls.”
“You’ll check on me before bedtime.”
“I am checking on you. Keep me informed.”
“I know. Thanks.”
She hung up. The TV in the living room beckoned her to explore its late-night programming. There would be cheap thrillers on Cinemax or perhaps she might catch the last half hour of a colorized, bastardized classic on a channel showing classics. Cable offered many more delights than the TV set with the rabbit antenna had provided in their childhood. But the day had been long and she felt wrung out. She placed the album, the book, and the letter in her office and went to bed.
15
When Tristán desired something badly enough, he usually obtained it. The only problem was that he easily lost his impetus. Determination and steadiness were Montserrat’s tools. He relied on charm. And charm he did during the next couple days, swiftly going through his address book and calling friends and associates and anyone he could think of until he managed to jot down Alma Montero’s number.
He spoke to the old lady’s niece, who was her caretaker these days, and told her that he and a friend were working on a documentary piece on Abel Urueta and wanted to discuss his unfinished film. Although the niece requested that any questions be submitted beforehand, Alma Montero was willing to talk to them without delay.