Supernatural Noir (7 page)

“I was going to volunteer. How’s Jim? The operator says he was shouting at you.”

“He’s quiet right now. Sam, this whole case is strange. I’ve tried half a dozen times to call Mrs. Culpepper, you know, while her husband’s at work. No answer. They’re not listed in the telephone book. Jim’s the only one she’s talked to. And he’s . . . not good. Last night he was talking, yelling at someone who wasn’t there. And he told me someone was in his head. He’s been saying that for the last couple of days. It’s never been this bad.”

“Was it more than just shouting at you, Anne?”

She said, “This is what I’ve been afraid of.”

“Anne, I’ll be out there as fast as I can. Is there some place you can go meanwhile?”

“My aunt’s a few blocks over.”

“Go there right now. Don’t talk to Jim. Just leave. Understand?”

Anne said she did. I doubted her.

Then I made a call to Police Chaplain Dineen. Young Private Kevin Dineen had served as an altar boy in France for the famous Father Duffy of the Sixty-Ninth. He came back home and found a vocation. It was said that Father Dineen spiked the sacramental wine with gin, and he was reputed to get a bit frisky with the widows he comforted. But it was Dineen who got called when O’Malley at the Ninth Precinct, a fellow vet, was at the Thanksgiving table eating mashed potatoes with the barrel of his loaded revolver while all his children looked on. Dineen got O’Malley to hand the weapon over and had the kids smiling at the game he and their daddy were playing.

When I explained as much of the situation as he needed to know, all Dineen asked was, “Do we need an ambulance or a squad car?”

“Both,” I said. Before going downstairs to meet the chaplain, I took my service .38 out of the locked drawer, cleaned and loaded the revolver, buckled on the holster. I remembered doing the same thing in my dream the night before.

I called Up to the Minute and told Gracie I wouldn’t be back until late and not to wait up. She laughed. As I adjusted my hat and went out the door, I remembered something from the dream: Bertrade, lying among pillows and bedclothes, had looked right at me and spoken about bait and traps.

Ten minutes later, Father Dineen and I were in his brand-new Oldsmobile four-door, headed through the drizzle for Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn. His car had a siren and a flashing light. We went through red lights; traffic cops waved us on at intersections. Dineen was on the radio to a squad car out in Park Slope as we crossed the bridge with a motorcycle escort, and he cursed because we weren’t going faster.

Anger was what I felt: anger at the one who had maybe screwed around with Toomey’s mind and caused Anne pain. They weren’t even the object of this operation. I probably wasn’t either. It struck me that they and I were just bait in some game the Gentry were playing.

When we arrived at Sixteenth Street, a crowd had gathered in the drizzle, and homicide was out in force. Anne Toomey must have tried one last time to talk to Jim. She was at the bottom of the stairs. Jim had stood halfway up and shot her twice in the face before pumping two shots into his open mouth.

For the young homicide detective who took my statement, this was open-and-shut murder-suicide. The second bullet in the shooter’s mouth was nothing more than a dying twitch, not a sign someone else was operating Jim’s hand. And this young man was confident his career was not going to end like Toomey’s or mine.

What I wanted to tell him was, “The creature that had James Toomey in its control used Toomey’s own hand to eliminate him and cover its tracks.” My actual statement stuck strictly to the facts, with nothing more than a brief mention of the Culpepper case.

——

Father Dineen drove like a cop, as if he owned the road. He knew something was up, but not even a couple of belts from the ecclesiastic flask made me talk. The image of Anne and Jimmy dead in their house was burning a hole in my brain.

It was very late afternoon when the chaplain dropped me off in front of the main post office and told me to go home and get some rest.

On the ride back from the Toomeys’ I’d thought about the dream and Bertrade. Usually dreams are vivid when you wake up, but as you try to grab them they turn to nothing and disappear. This one had started out vague but seemed to linger.

Climbing the post-office stairs, I remembered another fragment. Bertrade, lovely as I’ve ever seen her, had worn nothing but a silver moon on a chain around her neck and touched my arm. So slippery was the memory that I began to wonder if this dream might have been planted in my head by an enemy.

The little unmarked window was where I always picked up mail from the Kingdom beneath the Hill. And I wanted to talk to that clerk and find out what he knew. The window was shut, which had never happened before.

The guy at the overseas window didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked about the window next door. He said this wasn’t his regular assignment, and that I should try the next day.

Walking slowly across that lobby, I thought of the ice-cold knife racing up my leg like I was a letter being sliced open, and I felt real small and insignificant. But I started to put things into some kind of order.

The elves had set up Jim and Anne Toomey as bait for me. First they invented the Culpepper job and hired Jim, who needed the work. Then they made sure he couldn’t function, and put it in his head and Anne’s that they should ask me. And I was the bait to lure Bertrade.

Taking my seat in the coffee shop across from the Van Neiman Building, it occurred to me that maybe on our first encounter Bertrade and Darnel had used me as bait to catch the elf. Knowing the ways of the Gentry, that seemed quite possible.

The waitress and counterman didn’t notice that I was a repeat customer. I figured that the elves wouldn’t probe as long as I was doing what they wanted. They didn’t have to worry. I was coming after them.

That they were keeping me in play, letting me stay alive, could mean they’d made Bertrade aware that I was in danger. And it would also mean they weren’t sure where she was or what she was going to do. That Bertrade was avoiding direct contact with me was a sign that she relied on me to play my part, walk into the trap and ensnare the trapper. It would also mean she knew that the spell that shielded my thoughts could be broken by the enemy.

Just then, Culpepper, whoever he was, came through the doors of the Van Neiman Building with his briefcase. I got up and followed him. It went like before. He walked west, and I followed on the other side of the street. I wondered how much Culpepper knew. What promises and rewards had they made to him?

Seeing him go through this routine reminded me of how in France, just before we went into action, I saw a couple of German prisoners, starving, flea-bitten men, cramming army rations into their mouths while our guys stared like they were exhibits in a zoo. That sight took away all of the enemy’s mystery.

I stopped on the east side of Tenth Avenue, watched from a doorway when Culpepper crossed and went into the apartment building. As I waited, a light went on in the third-floor window.

A rhythmic pounding came from over on the river. It sounded like they were driving piles. The earlier drizzle had become rain. Workers headed home at a brisk pace. The streets were getting empty.

Stakeout work is fine, outdoor labor, good for the health and spirits. But I’d noticed a bar on the corner with a clear view of the apartment house.

It was a Wednesday night, with a moderate-sized crowd and a cowboy movie on the TV above the bar. The guys drinking spotted me for a cop and looked away when I stepped inside. I ordered a rye and water and kept my eye on the apartment house doorway.

I was pretty sure they wouldn’t leave without me. There was a good chance I’d be dead before long. But death hadn’t come yet, and I’d given it several very good chances.

In the dark, a long freight train ran south on the elevated tracks. When I looked further west beyond Twelfth Avenue, the pier at the end of the street seemed lit up.

About the time I began to wonder if I was crazy and Culpepper really was just a guy stepping out on his wife, I saw through someone else’s eyes. They were moving uptown along the river’s edge. I saw a pier and a big yacht all lit up. Suddenly that disappeared. Was this skirmishing between elves and fairies?

Like it was a signal, the one called Culpepper came out the door of the apartment house. He carried an umbrella and held it over Mimi White. The game was on. They headed west, and I followed them.

A good detective recognizes a pattern. Once more, I was heading onto a pier at night to encounter the Gentry.

As we crossed Eleventh Avenue, a big ocean liner sailed up the Hudson with every light onboard shining. It looked like a floating city block. The tugboats guiding it honked at each other. I saw the liner, and then, for an instant, I saw it again from the viewpoint of someone down at the river. The pile driving paused briefly, and all was as quiet as Manhattan ever gets.

Approaching Twelfth Avenue, I saw that the old freighter from the day before was gone. In its place was the oceangoing yacht with lights on deck that I’d seen through someone else’s eyes.

At certain moments, time gets fluid. At Aisne-Marne, the platoon was pinned by machine-gun fire. The gunners had waited until we were within a hundred yards. The lieutenant was dead. Someone was screaming. Later I found out the whole company was pinned; the battalion had gone to earth. The minutes we were down went by like hours.

The machine guns fired a short burst right over me; fired a burst to my left, another further along. I knew that it was ratlike little guys going through the motions. It would be a bit before they’d come back my way.

I pulled a pin with my right hand. I jumped up with the grenade in my left. The Krauts were firing from a gap in an embankment a hundred yards away. I’d hurled dummy grenades in practice, knew their weight. I judged the arc and tossed. “Get down,” someone yelled. The grenade hit the side of the gap, bounced in the air.

As I dove for cover, I was knocked flat, and a cold knife raced up my leg. A muffled bang sounded, a man screamed, another cried out, the machine-gun fire stopped, and my war was over.

Crossing Twelfth Avenue, walking into the trap, I told myself that all I needed was a few seconds of clarity, like I’d had thirty-two years before.

Maybe Bertrade had given me up. But I was going to deal out payment for Jim and Anne. All I needed was those few seconds.

Culpepper and Mimi stopped just inside the gates at the end of the pier. A couple of hundred feet beyond them, the yacht had lights on the gangplank, atop the cabins, shining through the portholes.

A figure, tall and thin, wavering slightly, stood on the deck leaning on the rail. He was faced away from me. But I could recognize one of the Fair Folk, whether elf or fairy. He was too far away to hit with a handgun. I wished I had a grenade.

A scream in the night came from downriver. At almost the same moment the pile driver started up out in the water. Distant sirens sounded, but they were on fire trucks and going the wrong way. The Fair Folk didn’t want any human interference.

A breeze blew the rain in my face as I crossed the avenue with my raincoat open. My arms were at my side. The .38 in my hand was hidden by the coat flapping.

The ones I knew as Culpepper and Mimi faced me as I approached. I was going to tell them to get out of my way before they got hurt.

But their eyes were blank. For an instant I saw myself from their viewpoint as I walked past them. Someone was looking out through them like they were TV cameras. Someone was in my head.

Figures moved in the darkness beyond the lights. Fair Folk were out there. For an instant I caught an image of long, thin figures on a small powerboat.

The lights on the yacht flickered for a moment. The tall elf on the deck looked my way. He seemed amused. Bertrade’s image telling intruders to stay out got knocked aside like it was cardboard. He was in my mind. My feet moved without my willing them and my body shambled forward to the foot of the gangplank.

I saw myself through his eyes, an old man stunned and confused in a trench coat and battered hat, staring up at him. He sent that image out in all directions. The elf knew I had the gun and knew I was in his power.

Then the lights flickered fast. Out in the dark amid the noise of the pile drivers there were cries and gunshots. Suddenly Bertrade was inside me: “My left-hand man!”

Under a spell my arm moved. The elf couldn’t stop it. That left arm was magic. He blocked my breath and sent a bolt of pain through my head, stopped my eyes from seeing. But the arm rose. I couldn’t see him, but I fired. Nothing. My head spun.

For an instant my sight cleared. I saw the elf. I squeezed the trigger as my sight went dark. Nothing happened.

Blind, I fired to the left and there was a scream. My breath came back. My sight returned. Up the gangplank, the elf grasped his shoulder. I felt him stop my heart, but I blew his jaw off and it started again. I shot him in the head before I passed out.

——

The morning was long gone and done when I came home. Mrs. Palatino had actually turned off her television, put on street clothes, and was headed out to Thursday-afternoon bingo at Our Lady of Pompeii Church. She gave me a look full of disapproval and shook her head.

I needed to go upstairs and change my clothes, stop around at the office. In my jacket pocket was a letter to the Beyers from Hilda, saying she was alive and well and thinking of them. Bertrade had brought that with her from the Kingdom beneath the Hill. Our business relationship was still intact.

We’d parted half an hour before. That night was spent at the Plaza: part of our reward for smashing the elf and his espionage crew. After he went down, three of his fellow Gentry had come out of the dark and surrendered to Bertrade and her friends. Culpepper and Mimi and a couple of other mortals the elves had recruited bore the body into the back of a panel truck.

That dream I’d half remembered had been sent by Bertrade. In the game of cat and mouse she and the big elf had played, some of his magic was stronger than hers.