Cuts Through Bone (18 page)

“All right, Mike. We appreciate the beer and sandwiches. I'll let the bigwig get you next time.”

Across the hazy bay, Brooklyn lay humpbacked and slumbering beyond Governor's Island. Daylight drained from the sky like bathwater. Standing outside Mako's, Guthrie called Justin Peiper. After a disjointed phone conversation loaded with exasperated pauses, the college student gave Guthrie an address for a midtown club where he would be available all night.

“I think that kid gets high,” Guthrie said to Vasquez as they walked back to the Custom's House for the car. “Or maybe he's got some nervous tic.”

The club was on Third Avenue. Coming into midtown, the big buildings hovered overhead like pregnant clouds. They towered above Everland, a redbrick building squatting behind a chain-link fence and a narrow parking lot. A row of loading-dock doors into a stepped-down sublot on one side suggested brewery. Fresh entrances had been carved through the brickwork, but paint and a smeared patina of decorations didn't hide the grilles of industrial windows near the roof.

Everland's vast interior space was wrapped in a mezzanine disguised as a crenellated wall, and crudely divided with rough-sawn lumber. Wide cloth banners drooped in ranks from the high ceiling, dampening the sound. The gamer club still had the bones of industrial machinery thrusting through its medieval facade like the knobby knees and heavy boots of giants. Banks of computers lined side bars and filled booths. Music washed over the crowd, but they were talking, not dancing.

Vasquez spotted Justin Peiper at a side bar, tapping flurries on a keyboard and talking to himself. A cheap tapestry of a dragon hung above his head on the high wall. He wore blue jeans and a collared shirt, but the crowd swirling around him was decked in medieval pageantry—gowned ladies, armored knights, bards, robed wizards—while two tall men in armor battered each other with padded staffs on a raised platform. The crowd hooted and jeered each blow.

Guthrie and Vasquez pulled chairs from nearby tables to sit on either side of Peiper, and discovered that his conversation was with an earpiece, not an invisible friend. Vasquez prodded him with a fingertip, but he only glanced at her before returning his attention to the computer.

“We need some answers,
chico,
” she said. “Don't waste our time.”

Peiper grimaced but didn't look away from his computer screen. “Shouldn't you bring somebody big to do the bruiser part?”

Guthrie ignored the jab. “Where were you on the twenty-third?”

“In there,” Peiper replied, pointing briefly at the screen before turning to face Guthrie. A sly smile brightened his face, but even the hint of malice left him charming. “I think somebody wants to challenge you, Mr. Detective.” His finger flicked at a crowd gathering around them like wings spreading from the two tall men wearing armor and visored helms. “You must've said something to the wrong lady on your way over here.”

Guthrie glanced at the crowd, then turned back. “I ain't got time for nonsense, son,” he said.

One of the armored men extended his staff and rapped the little detective on the side of his head. His brown fedora rolled beneath the table. Guthrie spun to his feet, scanning the crowd. The tall men held their padded staffs poised, while the crowd began chanting, “Joust! Joust! Joust!”

With their faces hidden in visored helms, the tall men were unreadable. One thrust his staff at Guthrie. The little detective swiveled his hips to dodge, and caught the tip of the staff in a firm grip; while they struggled for the weapon, Guthrie slid slowly closer along the smooth floor. The other jouster swished his staff like a bat. Guthrie's head rolled like a ripe melon. He doubled over, still clinging to his grip on the outstretched staff.

“O, foul!” one of the costumed ladies cried.

Vasquez caught Peiper's wrist when he tried to stand, and shoved him against the side bar. “No,
chico,
you stay here with me,” she said.

He grinned, raising his other hand in mock surrender. “No problem.” He leaned against the bar, watching, as the crowd scattered to avoid a wide slash from a padded staff.

The little detective unrolled a sloppy somersault on the floor, ramming the legs of one jouster. The other tall man jabbed with his staff, but he missed. Guthrie sprang to his feet, clinging to the leg of the man standing over him. Guthrie's punch connected solidly with the tall man's crotch, folding him onto the floor. The crowd groaned in sympathy.

Guthrie sidestepped to avoid a hammer blow. The jouster backpedaled, recovering his staff, while the little detective paused to wipe a thread of blood from his nose. His face wrinkled with a disgusted frown. A lady and her bard pelted the tall jouster with jeers and square leather cushions from a nearby bench.

The jouster slashed. Guthrie ducked, then sprang forward with a kick before the backswing began. The jouster fended him away with a cross-check, then tried a jab, but the little detective slipped inside and slapped his visor. The jouster landed on his ass amid a chorus of laughter. Guthrie kicked him in the chest and he slid into a sprawl.

“Another blow receives banishment!” A pair of hefty bouncers dressed as English foresters pushed through the crowd. The onlookers swirled and scattered, while the bouncers pulled the tall men to their feet. Guthrie crawled beneath the table to retrieve his fedora before looking them over once their helmets came off, but he didn't recognize them.

“You got plenty of friends, Justin,” the little detective said, dusting himself off.

“I can't help that you piss people off, Mr. Detective,” Peiper said. He shrugged.

Vasquez prodded the young man again. “That was your little man,
chico,
the one that fell down?” She pointed at the unattended computer.

“Fuck!” Peiper stepped to the computer, and his fingers blurred on the keyboard. “What happened to the clerics? Morons!” He dropped back into his chair, and the snarl vanished from his face. “Don't matter … just a game.”

“Right now, you got real-world problems,” Guthrie said, “besides playing games with me. You need to account for your time on the twenty-third of July.”

The young man turned to face Guthrie, grinning nastily. “No problem, Mr. Detective. I was in my dorm room, raiding with my guild. They'll vouch. We popped a Quarm on Time on the twenty-third, and it was my drop. I had a buyer waiting with five hundred to buy costume jewelry to wear during chat.” He pointed at the costumed gamers around them. “Like those. This's where it turns freaky, though. I stayed in the dorm because I was running another account, selling crack—clarity—in the Nexus. Usually I wear my headset, but that Thursday I didn't. It wouldn't work without tinkering every few seconds. I didn't feel like being bothered, so I ditched it.”

“Usually your mates could hear your voice when you played, but that Thursday, not so much?” Guthrie asked.

“My guild can vouch,” he repeated. “I'll send you names. Anyway, that freak Olsen used his own gun to kill Cammie—that's in the papers, Mr. Detective.”

Guthrie nodded, handing over a business card. “Sure. The same gun he kept at the Grove Street apartment in the Village. You remember that place? How many times did you have the key?”

Peiper laughed without missing a breath. “Silver-spoon central, right? Who cares? So I've been there.” He turned back to his computer.

Unsatisfied, the detectives left Everland; the midtown night was under way. Traffic on Lexington was like a swing orchestra, and people rushed like blood from beating hearts on the sidewalks. Vasquez paused after she started the old Ford. “You looked pretty good in there,
viejo
, after you warmed up.”

Guthrie shot her a sour look and wiped his nose.

“He was real comfortable on that computer,” she offered.

Guthrie nodded. “Maybe enough to leave it behind after he took what he wanted,” he said. “We're lucky he gave us the alibi. We ain't cops, to beat it outta him. That piece of crap is dirty. I can smell it. Boxing him in a corner is gonna be the hard part.”

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The detectives drove crosstown to the office. Guthrie took his Colt revolver from the desk drawer and slid it into a shoulder rig beneath a ragged field jacket from the secondhand store. When Vasquez came from the bathroom after changing into fatigues, he handed her a small holstered pistol. She paid him with a puzzled look.

“It's just like the one you're already carrying,” he said. “A Chief's Special, forty caliber, except this one's got blue bullets. They're plastic. Next to the other one, this one won't kick.”

“What's it for?” she asked.

The little old man took a deep breath. “Sometimes you might want to give somebody a warning,” he said. “The plastic stings, might even draw some blood, but it ain't doing permanent harm except maybe to an eye. You can use that pistol to hammer away, even in a crowd. Especially if I'm standing there. If something happens, I'll tangle them up and try to keep you out of it, so you can get a clean shot.”

“The same way you did with Ralph Gaines,” she said.

“Sure, like that. Just don't get too in love with the idea that you can weigh in with this particular argument. Weitz drew trouble for that a few times. Probably it's a good thing you didn't have this earlier.” He handed her an extra clip, already loaded. “Put your pistols in your jacket pockets for tonight, so they'll be handy. Some of these underground types ain't friendly. I don't want you ending up like Stoop-O for not having a pistol out quick enough to back somebody off.”

Vasquez drove them up Eighth Avenue to Harlem. The night was already deep and dark by the time they parked and locked the old Ford on 151st Street. August heat still lingered on the street and reached out from the redbrick buildings to slap at them while they waited. Expectation transformed the abandoned lot. As a porch on the doorstep of unknown lands, the manhole oozed uneasiness the way a jack-o'-lantern spills flickering light.

A half hour before midnight, the Gaines brothers lurched from the alley across 151st Street and rushed the manhole like a badly organized tag team. Rodney went straight for the manhole. Ralph craned his head as he swung along, until he spotted Guthrie. He became a fast limper when he wanted to be somewhere. The little detective reassured him about the money, but he had the ill grace of a deprived addict. They all joined Rodney at the manhole. He peeled open the warped iron door to reveal steep stairs, and they went down into darkness. The hatch closed with a squeal and a clang.

Rusty stairs dropped twenty feet to a dirty brick tunnel running north and south. Guthrie and Vasquez lit it up with big halogen broad lights, saw that it shrank back into dark holes in both directions, then switched to smaller handheld lights. Rodney had a penlight, but he slipped it back into his pocket. Empty light sockets hung on the walls like eyeless watchers, spaced among conduit and piping. The Gaines brothers blended smoothly with the rough graffiti on the bricks, the scorch marks from campfires, and old bottles, cans, and bags littered beneath the piping at the bottom of the walls.

The tunnel was stand-up spacious and wide enough for the Gaines brothers to walk side by side. Rodney paused to fortify himself from a pint bottle of cheap vodka, then led them south as he fumbled it back into his pocket. The brothers shuffled along mostly side by side, but, like on the street above, Ralph would fall behind and then Rodney would pause to wait. In the bright, stabbing beams of the flashlights, they often looked like headless bodies, with the dark tunnel only present underfoot and in the puddles and swoops of light reaching ahead. Guthrie came along last. They walked south, passing dark openings that yawned silently and stank of still water, relieved by an occasional whiff of the distant river. Old repairs showed like dirty bandages on the piping along the walls, while the bricks changed colors like strippers doing sets, and alternated between running and English bond.

“We coulda come in closer?” Guthrie asked after a few hundred yards of darkness were behind them. His voice was quiet but seemed loud and sudden against the backdrop of silence under the city.

Ralph grunted assent. “Harder climb down, though.”

A stiff leg saved them a climb down a ladder, at the cost of a long detour in darkness. They walked south. Rodney turned left into the ninth clear-out, kicked a clutch of ringing bottles out of his way, and muttered something about rats and a beating. Sour beer and the smoke from a recent fire failed to mask the stench of the drain. A slope of rough and dirty steps allowed them to scramble down, then drop a handful of feet onto fine gravel that was moist with seepage. Their handheld lights illuminated the naked tails of rats, which scurried to put distance behind them before turning to glare with shining eyes. The drain ran downhill, angling away from the access tunnel, toward the Harlem River in the dark distance.

Up the slope, a ragged opening marred the rounded wall. The corners of jutting bricks emerged from the mortar like shattered teeth. The opening revealed a brick-walled room, roughened by the use of vandals and the passage of time. Trampled garbage carpeted the floor. A half-rotten piece of plywood leaned against the back wall. Rodney Gaines crossed the room, gripped one edge of the plywood, and tugged. With a squeal, it swung aside, revealing a dark opening.

The rotted plywood was only a faceplate on a spring-hinged door, braced neatly into the opening. Guthrie paused to admire it, while Ralph waited to close it behind them. The brickwork was pierced with lines as smooth as saw kerfs. Waiting beyond, an earthen tunnel smelled of damp and old metal. Ralph tugged the door in an over and down motion to secure the latch, needing two tries to close the puzzle box.

“The man is crazy smart,” Ralph Gaines whispered. “Like now, there was supposed to be people watching the door. They'll catch it for going off without leaving nobody.”