Grimm - The Icy Touch (13 page)

Finally, he gave the room his attention.

“Garnick—do you have the report I asked you for?” Denswoz demanded, as he put his briefcase on the table.

Garnick’s scowl deepened.

“Naturally,” he replied.

Denswoz would have growled at him, had he been woged. Instead, he merely glared.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” he said coldly. “You’re as fallible as anyone else, Garnick. Let’s have the report.”

Garnick tossed the folder on the table disdainfully.

Denswoz wished for a moment that he had the coins with him. Garnick would melt, would fall entirely under his sway, if he used the Coins of Zakynthos. That would change the arrogant Steinadler’s attitude. But Denswoz had used them only once since he’d had them stolen from Grimm safekeeping, a few months earlier. They’d given him power over
La Caresse Glacée
ritualists—a sublime authority he’d never experienced before.

He was determined to use the coins sparingly. He knew they could destroy the fool who overused them. They were empowering—but they were dangerous.

Denswoz decided to let Garnick’s bad attitude slide for now.

“Danielle—could you set up a paper shredder?”

“Mais oui,”
she said mildly. She got up, went to the corner, and pushed a wheeled paper shredder over to the table.

“As usual,” Denswoz said, “we will practice information hygiene. All these documents are to be shredded— computer files are to be kept as encrypted as possible. Has the room been swept for bugs, Danielle?”

“Bien sur.
It is clean.”

He looked around. “Where is Grogan?”

“Here,” a voice said.

Jase Grogan was just coming in the door. He was a big, red-haired man with a wide sunburned face, green eyes, a mild Dublin accent. His hair had receded well back from his freckled forehead but he let it grow past his collar to his broad shoulders. He wore a rumpled brown suit that barely contained his hulking barrel-chested frame. There was a peculiar tattoo involving a mermaid and a Christian cross on the back of his right hand. Grogan was a
Mordstier
Wesen, and a bull-like man he was.

“You’re late, Grogan,” Denswoz told him. “Sit down.”

“Rather do that than stand,” Grogan said, typically facetious.

He sat to Denswoz’s left, leaned back, laced his fingers and cradled the back of his head. He liked to appear above it all, to the point of seeming almost to ooze contempt.

Grogan was a valuable man; had trained their primary West Coast enforcers. His people had taken out the Shadow Heart gangsters working in Canby. He’d made his point.

“I have decided,” Denswoz said, “that we will move ahead with the
Vernichten
list. And I suspect we’ll add a few more to it.”

“I’m all for removing those people,” Garnick said. “But I think we should wait for the right moment—the right chance. You’re talking about assassinating the governor of Oregon, for starters.”

“We’ll use our cobra-hooded
ami
,” Danielle said. “The governor has had some heart trouble. They’ll call it a heart attack.”

Denswoz nodded. “Good. He has to go. The man is going to sign this new law enforcement bill. The lieutenant governor is... a friend of ours. He’ll veto the bill, once he’s governor. We don’t want Oregon overrun with police. And we want a new governor we’ll have in our pocket.”

“There have been a
lot
of targets lately,” Garnick said, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“Things getting too hot for you?” Denswoz asked, calmly. “There is an expression about kitchens—when they’re too hot.”

“That’s unfair, Denswoz,” Garnick said. For a moment irritation made him drop his mask and his eagle-like Steinadler visage showed through. Then his face snapped back to human. “We should vote on this.”

“Pointless, man,” Malo said. “Mr. Denswoz has the final word.”

“To put it on the record. For the council bosses.”

“I
am
one of the council bosses,” Denswoz pointed out. “I’ll let them know how you feel. We’ll wait a few weeks on the governor, however. He won’t sign the thing for more than a month. Now, as for that private investigator in San Francisco...”

“Him
you can kill as soon as you like,” Garnick said, dismissively.

“Good. Why don’t you take him out?”

“Me? I’ll have it done, if you like.”

“Don’t like to get your hands dirty?”

“I did my share in my time,” Garnick said, his voice tense, creaking with eagle-like overtones. “And I think those three should be moved up your list.” He pointed at the file he’d tossed on the table.

Denswoz opened the folder and read out the names.

“Nick Burkhardt, Portland PD detective. Hank Griffin. Partner. And a Blutbad named... Monroe? Where’s the rest of his name? That first or last?”

“Ah, we haven’t yet secured that information,” Garnick said. “He was seen leaving the late Lemuel Smith’s place with the two cops who found the body—Burkhardt and Griffin. And our Wesen watching the place said he recognized the guy with the cops as a Blutbad named Monroe. But that was all he could tell us. Our guy then followed him to a house... the address is there in the briefing. Apparently he watched the place for a while. Must have some kind of connection with the people in that house. Name of Perkins...”

“We need to find this guy, lure him out in the open,” Malo said. “If he’s working with the cops, he’s got to go down. Hard.”

Grogan chuckled. “Federico, you’ve been watching too many mafia movies.”

Malo’s cheeks reddened. “I just mean—if ever we had to make an example, this is the time. These guys took half a ton of
Seele Dichtungsmittel
off us. That much scopolamine... took a long time to get that much pure enough.”

“Talk to our friend in the PD, get it back,” Denswoz said. “We have more coming in. There are already three pounds here, in town.”

“What about Griffin and Burkhardt?” Grogan asked.

“It’s risky, eliminating cops,” Denswoz admitted. “But add them to the list. We just wait to implement their
Vernichten
till the time is right—ideally we can take them out together. Grogan—think of something. Now, what can we do to provoke this Monroe character into coming out into the open?”

Grogan straightened up, stretching his arms.

“I get a good moment to take the cops out, maybe their car ran into that river out there—you want me to just go for it?”

“Check with me first—unless it’s too perfect to wait on, then it’s your call. Sooner or later I want these detectives...” He looked at the report. “...Griffin and Burkhardt... to be thoroughly done for and gone. They’re sticking their snouts into way too much. Malo’s right. They hurt us already—and the word will get around.”

Grogan nodded. “There’s something else. They might’ve seen our boys flying their Wesen colors.”

Steinadler looked startled.

“What makes you think that?”

“Couple of our guys were staying woged while guarding the shipment, down in the tunnel. They didn’t expect to see anyone but Wesen and if they did see anyone who
wasn’t
Wesen, they figured to just, you know, kill ’em. Thing is— this Burkhardt might be the guy we’ve been hearing about. Some of our Wesen connections say there’s a Grimm in the Portland PD.”

“A Grimm!” Steinadler exclaimed. “And...does the Verrat know about him, I wonder?”

“Chances are they do.”

“You think he’s working with the
Gegengewicht
? Supposedly they’re making contact with Grimms...”

“I don’t know. Not even sure this Gegengewicht thing is for real.”

“Oh they’re real all right.”

Burkhardt. That name...

Denswoz knew that name from somewhere. It troubled him. Hadn’t he seen it in his documentation on the Kessler family?

Burkhardt.

Kessler...

Early in a foggy autumn afternoon, in the first years of the reign of Queen Victoria, a young gentlemen strode along a particularly narrow, crooked, and malodorous London byway in search of a murderer. The young man was David Kaspar Kessler, and the murderer was known only as “the Sacker.”

“The Sacker” was the vulgar term, used by prostitutes and wine shop keepers. David’s father had suggested that the moniker derived from the state in which the victims were found: the bodies resembling an empty leather sack shaped vaguely like a human being, their guts mysteriously emptied out of them. The victims were men and only men. The killer was thought to be female, but David had his doubts.

David Kessler had hopes, too—he wished to be a detective in Sir Robert Peel’s new police force. The new force of “bobbies” didn’t have a good reputation with the ruck of the populace, since many of the constables were much too free with their truncheons. In fact, most of them were brutes. Still, the bobbies were more comprehensive than Fieldings’ Bow Street Runners. David assumed that, in time, the Peelers would become the framework of a better police force. And being his father’s son, David knew he’d find many an opportunity to turn his police work to double duty.

For he had another duty, already—that of a Grimm.

David stepped over a puddle of filth, and paused to put his perfumed kerchief to his mouth. He was not over-nice about smells, though he’d been raised on a country estate far from the worst of London’s odorous excess, but he’d learned to keep the scented linen with him in some parts of the great city. If one was occupied with vomiting from the reek of raw sewage, rotting offal, and the disgustingly befouled old River Thames, one could scarcely do one’s duty.

Turning a sharp corner in the street—and what street was it?—David stumbled over a gin-soaked drunk, perhaps a woman, he wasn’t sure. Though it was but three of the clock in the afternoon, he wished he’d thought to bring a lantern. Coal fires darkened the sky, so that a man didn’t know, often enough, if the cloud would yield rain or ash. The cobbled lane was so narrow, its three-and four story structures of blackened brick leaning so ponderously over the alley, it might have been an hour past dusk here. The only light was from lamps shining weakly through grimy windows, and the occasional muted ray of sunlight struggling between the clouds.

“Turn here, ginnelsor,”
the old procurer had told him.
“Walk ye back and yet back till yer heart dies in ye and ye’ll come to the Sacker’s ground. May God protect ye.”
It had taken David a moment to understand that what sounded like “ginnelsor” meant “gentle sir.”

David wondered if his half crown had indeed bought him the right directions, or was the old pimp now sitting having a hearty laugh over a pint with his cronies back in his rancid alehouse?
“Ooh, I wonder wut is down that reeking skulk of an alley! Damn me if I know!”
Quite possibly.

He came, then, to a small common area between the houses, not so much a courtyard as a widening of the way. Here, there was a bit more light and air.

Fifteen long steps across the cobbles was the streaked back wall of a house, where an old man and a young woman sat on a back stoop, in front of a cracked wooden door. The man was a toothless costermonger in a half-crushed hat, his basket on the cobbles beside him; the rather dirty young woman wore a grime-gray bodice and skirt, which might’ve once been white or yellow, and curious wooden sandals. Her black hair was piled on her head, held in place with small wooden pins; it tufted out here and there over her ears. But it was her slenderness that first struck him, and then something else—her eyes. They were the dark brown, almond-shaped eyes of an Asian, something one only rarely saw in London.

Her gaze was expressionless as it settled on him. In her slender hands was a brown stoneware gin bottle, without label or mark. David found himself staring at her fingers— she had unusually long fingernails. She passed the stone bottle to the toothless costermonger who cocked his eye at David and made a croaking sound that might’ve been an invitation to buy whatever wares he kept in his basket.

David smiled, and shook his head at the old man.

“If I may be so bold as to observe,” David said, walking closer, widening his smile for the young lady. “You, madame are far from—”

But the old man interrupted him with a raw sputum-thick noise that must have been laughter.

“Eff ’e may be so bold!
Why, they’re all bold with
’er!”

The girl gave a tinkling laugh and jabbed the old man with her elbow.

“Don’t listen to him, sir,” she said to David. She had a soft accent he could not place. “I am perhaps wayward, but I do not permit boldness—not of just anyone.”

“I... I am gratified to hear it,” David said. The young woman fascinated him. “May I ask where...?”

“I hail from Japan, sir,” she said. Her voice was high pitched, lilting. Her lips were curiously rouged so that they appeared to be forever pouting. He could see no other makeup on her.

The old costermonger creaked out something else, unintelligible. After mentally processing the remark, David decided he’d said something about the young woman having been away for “nigh to five year or more.”

“Five years away from here, and soon going away for five more,” the woman said, her voice sounding dreamy.

“And did you return to Japan, in those five years, madame?” David asked.

“Ooh ’e’s got fine airs wif his ‘madame,’” the old man muttered, gin dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

“Return to Japan?” She looked at him in something like surprise. “No, I cannot travel so far alone, sir. There is one who has given me shelter, in Normandy... to that one I return. But, now and then, I must...” She shrugged and waved a hand to indicate the grubby vicinity.

“May I ask your name?” David inquired.

“Akemi, sir.”

“And how came you to Britain when first you arrived? Was it your benefactor who brought you?”

“Why, so it was.”

“May I ask his name?”

She gazed vaguely up at him and reached up to twist one of her errant hairs.

“His name? I don’t suppose it will matter, now that I have chosen you. His name is... Denswoz.”

“A Frenchman?”

“Just so. He was impressed with
geisha,
on a visit to Japan, and wished for one of his own. He bought me from a geisha house. Sometimes I remain with him and sometimes I do not.” She shrugged. “He rarely beats me.”