Wicked City (17 page)

“He'd hardly be the first person to privately practice what he publicly condemned.”

Mrs. Brandon laughed abruptly and then stopped. “No. Indeed not, Miss Hollis. I'm sure you have much experience with that.”

I did, but it surprised me that she would have guessed such a thing. “I imagine you see even more at City Hall.”

She smiled. “Speaking of which, do you have any news about that other matter for me to pass on to Jimmy?”

“I've talked to the former leader of the Turn Boys. He's agreed to meet with the mayor.”

She dropped the letter in a pile on her desk and hurriedly flipped to a clean sheet in her blotter. “At what time?” she asked. “Does he have the original material?”

“I don't know,” I said, and wondered when I had gotten so accomplished at lying. “And Nicholas isn't the type to keep to a schedule. He said he would contact the mayor soon. Today, I hope.”

Mrs. Brandon looked affronted at the idea, but then shook her head and dashed off a note. “Once he contacts the mayor, I'll make sure James puts in a call,” she said.

“Even if Nicholas doesn't have the original?”

She frowned. “Do you have any reason to expect he won't?”

“Oh, no. I just want to make sure I've fulfilled my side of the bargain.”

“As long as the mayor gets to talk to the original distributor, he will consider your obligation fulfilled.”

I shifted. But Jimmy Walker couldn't possibly get to Amir. I would be safe. “Thank you,” I said.

It struck me that the mayor would be calling in a very big favor in exchange for my help. But for all I knew, such derailment of legitimate police investigations were de rigueur in this administration. I felt thankful to have Mrs. Brandon as an intermediary—at least she understood the political waters that seemed to be crashing far over my head.

“Mrs. Brandon,” I said, “it seems strange to me that you—and the mayor—are so concerned about these particular murders. Pardon my bluntness, but you haven't evinced much concern for vampires before.”

“Vampires are a vital part of our city's population,” she said, with surprising passion. A flush stained her cheekbones. I remembered how Jimmy Walker had once admonished me during a demonstration for vampire rights:
“For heaven's sake, they're not
people.
”

Perhaps being the mayor's Other advisor was a more thankless task than I had previously appreciated. Certainly, looking around Mrs. Brandon's cramped office, it was hard not to come to that conclusion.

“I can't tell you how glad I am to hear you say so,” I said. “The mayor is lucky to have you on his side.”

She leaned forward. “You must understand that I would never work for this bill if I thought that Faust itself posed any threat to the well-being of any vampire who consumes it.”

Elspeth and the others would argue that Faust did, in fact, harm the well-being of vampires. Though it probably didn't murder them. “But I wonder how a murderer would poison the drink?”

I hoped this might prompt her into giving me something specific to look for in Nicholas's bottle, but she just put her hands flat on her desk and sighed. “We're investigating several possibilities,” she said. “I can't say more than that for now. With some luck, the mayor will be able to give many answers to the press this evening.”

This made me recall my original purpose in coming here, made even more urgent by the news of Zuckerman's death. “Actually, I was hoping I might persuade you to let me see the bodies.”

“You mean visit the morgue? I'm sorry, Miss Hollis, but that would be quite impossible,” she said, with such regretful finality that I saw it would be fruitless to argue. I shrugged.

“I understand. I appreciate you telling me what you could.”

“It was the least I could do. Such a terrible situation … Miss Hollis, do remember to confirm your alibi. I would hate to see you mixed up in another investigation.”

I bit my lip at the thought. “I will, thank you.”

I stood, but with so little room to maneuver, I accidentally knocked the folding chair to the ground. As I knelt to pick it up, I caught sight of a tiny photograph of a young man nestled in an antique keepsake frame at the far corner of Mrs. Brandon's desk. She'd arranged it so it was only clearly visible at eye level.

She caught me staring. “My late husband,” she said, before I could ask. “He used to be Mayor Walker's Other advisor. He grew quite ill and had to resign. He died a few months after. James was kind enough to offer me the substance of Michael's position.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said, inadequately.

“Don't be,” Mrs. Brandon said, reaching for a newspaper at the top of a pile. “It will all work out in the end. I've become quite indispensable to James over the years. I believe—”

Someone rapped sharply on the door and pushed it open. It was the mayor himself, his hair unaccountably mussed, sweat beading his forehead, and his cheeks flushed red. He gripped the edge of the door like he would rip it from its hinges.

“Judith,” he said, his raspy voice hinting at a quaver. “I need you to see something. In my office. Now, if you please.”

Mrs. Brandon's eyes widened and she scrambled from behind her desk. “Of course, Jimmy,” she said. “What is it?”

He stared at her bleakly. I wondered if he was even aware of my presence. “It seems my father has come for a visit.”

*   *   *

The mayor's office was dark as twilight. At first I thought storm clouds had gathered outside, but the sun was clearly visible through the windows. It was just dark, like the light existed but couldn't pass through an invisible barrier. Mrs. Brandon and I had entered the room, but the mayor hovered on its threshold. He grimaced as though he couldn't quite bear to approach and was furious at himself for his weakness.

He had my sympathy. Billy Walker had been our mayor's role model and a consummate Tammany politician to the end, but anyone dead for eleven years had no business paying his son a visit.

“Where did the spirit show himself, James?” Mrs. Brandon asked.

Mayor Walker took a shaking breath and stepped into his office. “The Boss spoke to me from the fireplace.”

Mrs. Brandon fearlessly approached, while I forced myself to remember everything Daddy had ever taught me about hauntings. Not much, as it turned out—there hadn't been much opportunity for personal experience in Yarrow.

“You built a fire in this heat?” Mrs. Brandon asked.

Jimmy Walker shook his head in frustration. “Heavens, Judith, of course not! The thing just lit up, and the rest of the lights went down.”

Even now, however, the strange gloom was receding. Light streamed through the window, dissipating the haunting that had prompted the mayor's mad dash to the subterranean office of his Other advisor.

“The grate is cold,” Mrs. Brandon said, running a finger through the ash in front of it.

“I assure you, I didn't imagine this.”

“I would never dream of suggesting such a thing, Jimmy. The spirits work mysteriously, though I must say it's rare to hear of one so … forcefully entering our world.”

The fireplace had been as immaculate as the rest of his office when I'd last visited. The fine layer of ash that seemed to have settled in a perfect radius around the grate struck me as unnatural.

I knelt beside Mrs. Brandon and ran my own finger through the muck. Sulphur and scorched earth.
The aroma of hell?
I wondered. But there was a hint of something else, something less like brimstone and more like the inside of a cathedral, a censer swung by a priest, trailing a fog of myrrh and frankincense and burnt oranges—

I knew that smell. Bloody stakes, but I knew it too damn well.

I sneezed. Mrs. Brandon and the mayor, thankfully, were too focused on the mystery of the apparition to note my discomfiture.

“He's gone, isn't he?” The mayor sank into the nearest chair and buried his face in his thin, pale hands. He looked so unguarded and lost at that moment I looked away in embarrassment. Now that it appeared the danger had passed—dubious though I suspected it to be—I wondered if I could make a discreet exit. Mrs. Brandon had invited me to come along because of my “history with such matters,” though I wondered if that referred to the affair with Rinaldo or my unusual upbringing.

But the only way out was past the mayor, and indecision kept me in place.

“Whatever spirit was here has departed, James,” Mrs. Brandon said, walking over to him. “Did he say his reason for contacting you? Even with the aid of a medium experienced in such matters, it can be quite difficult for a spirit to contact someone among the living. For your father to have found a means of haunting you himself…”

Mrs. Brandon looked down with a jerk of her head and bunched her skirt in her hands. Aileen had said Mrs. Brandon always tried to contact her husband but never succeeded. That explained the grief and frustration that flashed across her face.

“He wanted to talk about Faust, Judith. He said I'd been making a hash of things, that there are these poor souls of the dead vampires there with him … ‘down
here,
' he said. Oh God—”

The mayor's hands trembled; his Adam's apple bobbed, but he couldn't seem to force out another word. Mrs. Brandon hesitated, then rested her hand on his shoulder.

“I wouldn't read too deeply into it, Jimmy,” she said, softly. “I believe our conceptions of heaven and hell to be misleading descriptions of the spirit world. Perhaps he meant ‘down' just as you would say you went down to Washington, D.C.”

Jimmy Walker sat up straighter in his chair, palpably relieved to hear her sensible, matter-of-fact explanation. “The Boss didn't
sound
tortured,” he said slowly. “Though he did sound rather far away, like I was talking to him through a subway tunnel.”

Mrs. Brandon turned back to look at the fireplace, with me frozen beside it. “Just stunning, Jimmy. The Society has been keeping records of visitations and hauntings, but I have never heard of such a strong event before—”

“I don't want this public, Judith,” the mayor said, sharply.

Mrs. Brandon blushed. “Of course not, Jimmy.”

“The ghost … your father was telling you about Faust?” I asked, because if I was going to be the third party to this uncomfortably intimate conversation, I might as well learn something for myself.

Jimmy Walker blinked several times, like he had mistaken me for a chair. “He said I shouldn't go through with the vote. And I asked why not, and he said the ghosts with him, the dead vampires, had died in agony and it was too dangerous for the city.”

“He said all that?” I asked.

The mayor managed a shade of a smile. “He was very specific, Miss Hollis. I daresay you agree with him.”

But Mrs. Brandon looked all the more worried. “The spirit said the Faust itself had killed the vampires?”

“I'm not sure. He wasn't terribly clear at that point. He just kept repeating it was dangerous, that the ghosts had told him so … then his voice faded and I went to find you.”

Mrs. Brandon smoothed out the wrinkles her hands had bunched into her skirt.

“This is just
so strange,
” Mrs. Brandon said, as though part of her longed to use a more pungent adjective.

“Perhaps the dead vampires begged him to intercede,” the mayor said, gloomily. “Just what I need right now—the Boss reprising the role of my conscience.”

Someone ought to do it,
I thought, but just barely refrained from saying aloud.

“Anyhow,” the mayor continued, “I can't just ignore him. If the vampires died because of the Faust…”

Mrs. Brandon shot a look at me. “You know that's unlikely,” she said, widening her eyes at the mayor. Hinting about the autopsy reports?

“But the ghosts said—”

“Ghosts aren't always accurate!” She clapped her hands together and stalked to the slightly ajar door. She slammed it home. “It's the nature of their distance from us. We can't just change policy based on…”

“A visitation?” the mayor said, and gave Mrs. Brandon a strange smile.

“I've never heard of vampires having ghosts,” I said. “I thought that was part of what turns.”

This observation made both Mrs. Brandon and the mayor stare at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. “I'm hardly an expert, of course,” I said, just to cut the silence.

But the mayor was shaking his head, the sunlight and conversation apparently dispelling his terror. “No, you're quite right, Miss Hollis. Now that I think of it, the idea of vampire ghosts is quite odd. But intriguing. Do you think it's possible, Judith?”

Mrs. Brandon gasped. She stared at the mayor and then gave one jerky nod. “I do.”

The mayor grinned now and clapped his hands. “Well, then. Thank you, Boss,” he said, nodding his head at the ash-filled grate. “I believe I know what we will do.”

“Jimmy, what?” Mrs. Brandon looked a little terrified at the gleam in his eyes, and I didn't blame her.

“You always worry so, Judith. Don't—it ages you prematurely. Would you mind showing Miss Hollis out? I'm afraid I've neglected a bit more work than usual this afternoon.”

Mrs. Brandon and I shared a long, worried glance, but there was nothing either of us could do but comply.

*   *   *

“Amir!” I called from the fountain in City Hall Park. A few dozen pigeons fluttered away from me and an old man feeding them stale bread fixed me with a baleful glare. “Amir,” I said, “if you don't show up right now, I'll—”

“Refuse to make a wish? Lecture me on moral laxity?”

He had somehow come up behind me, startling me so much I yelped and stumbled. I would have fallen into the fountain if not for his arm gently putting me upright.