by Ed Gorman
A CRY OF SHADOWS
Ed Gorman
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
© 2012 / Ed Gorman
Copy-edited by: Patricia Lee Macomber
Cover Design By: David Dodd
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OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS PRODUCTS BY ED GORMAN
Novels:
Nightmare Child
Serpent's Kiss
Shadow Games
The End of it All
Novellas:
Cast in Dark Waters (co-written by Tom Piccirilli)
Jack Dwyer Mysteries:
Murder in the Wings
The Autumn Dead
Robert Payne, Psychological Profiler Mysteries
Voodoo Moon
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In memory of my good friend Doc.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Three people helped me by reading the first draft of this manuscript and making many valuable suggestions—Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini, and Barb Kramer. Thank you, folks.
E.G.
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or
just walking dully along . . .
—W. H. Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts"
Chapter 1
There were at least 2,341 other things I wanted to be doing that December morning. Tramping around a dirty alley in fifteen-below temperature was not one of them. The alley lay behind the Avanti, the sort of chic restaurant where BMWs just naturally go of their own volition, not unlike homing pigeons, and where a mid-westerner like myself can pronounce no more than three of the items on the menu.
The backs of the buildings ran to two stories and dirty brick. Near the rear stoops were Dumpsters and garbage cans with all the attendant scrawny dogs and cats prowling for sustenance. Earlier I'd seen a freezing tiny tabby female. I'd picked her up and put her in my overcoat pocket so she could get warm for at least a while. Even beneath my lined gloves I could feel her frail ribs tremble with cold. I carried her around and every once in a while she'd poke her head up and look at me with those sweet little eyes, but then she started clawing in such a way that I thought she might need to pee. So 1 set her down and damned if she didn't immediately lift her cute little tail and make a small clump of snow corn yellow. Then she bounded off and I wondered if I maybe shouldn't have taken her home. Donna Harris, the woman I see, was gone a week on a skiing trip with advertising people and I was in need of company. But the tabby was gone before I could make up my mind. In some peculiar way, I felt jilted by the kitty, which should tell you something about the state of my self-esteem.
I had no idea what I was looking for. One of the Avanti's three owners, a rather imperious blond man named Richard Coburn, had simply told me that the place had been having "some trouble" and wanted me to check the alley to see if there was any way that anybody could get into the rear of the place without a key.
The first thing I checked was the restaurant's back doors.
One of them was a typical steel FIRE EXIT setup, with a nonfunctioning knob outside and an inside knob that would trigger a fire alarm. The other door was an employee entrance and its outside knob was always locked. You had to ring a buzzer to be let in. Deliveries also came through this door. All delivery personnel had to sign in and out and a restaurant employee was supposed to be with them at all times. The inside knob was always left unlocked in case of emergencies. City fire codes mandated this.
On either side of the two doors, and up four feet, were windows covered with wire mesh. I dragged a crate over and checked each grid of mesh. Tight, secure. No evidence of tampering.
So I started roaming the alley, which was where I found the tabby and which was also where I found the priest rooting through the garbage can.
By this time I was pretty cold. I clapped my hands together. I covered my running nose with one of my black gloved hands. I cupped my gloves seashell-like over my ears. About all I could do with my toes was wriggle them and make sure they hadn't frozen off. Vanity notwithstanding, I decided then and there rather in the way a drunk takes an oath of sobriety—to start wearing woolen socks and long underwear. It was time I start taking a few fashion risks, anyway. Donna always joked that I looked like a floorwalker in the men's fashion section of K-Mart.
The priest wore no coat, just his short-sleeved cleric's shirt and Roman collar. I didn't think he was a priest, but then I didn't have any idea what he might really be. He stood over a garbage can, eating a scrawny chicken leg he'd just plucked from inside. He ate with a frenzied, feral quality that was ugly to see, like stumbling on the sight of somebody's darkest sexual secret. He was my height, perhaps six feet, and slender. He was probably in his sixties. He was sleekly bald with little fringes of gray hair riding above small pink ears. If he was freezing—and he had to be—he didn't let on.
He ate the dirty chicken leg with relish. When he was finished, he dropped the bone and gristle back into the garbage can. He bent over and was about to root around for another delicacy when he sensed me.
He stopped in mid-motion, not looking up yet, but preparing himself. I was no more than ten feet away. I could see the long muscles in his neck tense. I assumed he was going to raise his head, confirm my presence, and then take off, scared. Snow blew grainy against my face, flying up the rusty iron fire escapes on the buildings.
He raised his head. The madness of his blue eyes was unfathomable. Pain, rage, and lunacy lay behind his blue blue gaze. His voice surprised me. It was a good, steady, appealing bass. No frenzy in it whatsoever. He said, "'I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger.' Do you know who said that, traveler?"
"Jesus said that."
"Were you raised to believe in Jesus?"
"Yes, I was."
"Have you deserted his teachings?"
I nodded to his arms. "Do you know there's a shelter two blocks from here?"
He smiled with stubby gray teeth long in need of a dentist. "'But they flattered him with their mouths; they lied to him with their tongues. Their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not true to his covenant.' That is the shelter."
"They'd give you clothes. And some food."
He fixed me with his sad crazed gaze. "They feed the body, traveler. They do not feed the soul."
The priest saw him first, coming up behind me. All I heard were running feet crunching through the snow.
By the time Richard Coburn came abreast of me, a terrible fear was in the priest's eyes and he was already turning from the garbage can and starting to run away to the other end of the alley. He looked almost comic, sliding and slipping on the icy snow, a scarecrow of a man.
"You sonofabitch! You get away from my place and you stay away!" Coburn shouted to the retreating man.
By the time Coburn reached me, the freezing air was laden with his cologne
and his hot quick rage. I saw now why the derelict had been so frightened. Coburn carried a tidy .45 jammed into his fist. He waved it in the air as he passed me and ran down the alley after the priest.
"You sonofabitch!" Coburn kept shouting. "You sonofabitch!"
The derelict disappeared around the corner. Coburn quit running. He turned back around, panting heavily, and came back up to me. Handsome and sleek as he was, he was still thirty pounds overweight and this kind of anger and exertion had spent him. "That sonofabitch," he kept saying in gasps. "That sonofabitch."
Chapter 2
"You ever work in a restaurant, Dwyer?"
"Yeah."
"It's a bitch."
"I know."
"If you've got an upscale demographic, as we do here, then you've got to constantly be kissing the customers' asses. They are all of the opinion that they deserve the kind of service enjoyed by popes and rajahs. You know?"
"I know."
"We used to have a rich woman who wore a ratty fox stole and walked with a cane because of arthritis and every night she'd drink three martinis, she'd pick a fight with me about this fly in her water glass. She'd always demand a new glass of water."
I said, "Of course there was no fly in her glass."
He laughed. "Then you know what I'm talking about."
In fact, my busboy days in high school were some of my worst memories. If the maitre d' wasn't gnawing on you for giving vile offense to this or that customer, then the headwaiter was stealing your share of the tips. Plus I wasn't exactly graceful. I must have dropped at least as many dishes as I'd bused. Combat soldiers couldn't have had a much higher stress level. Finally, I quit and took a graveyard-shift gig at a Shell station. That way all I had to worry about were teenagers with guns who wanted my money."
Coburn said, sighing, "We've got one real sweetheart here. Tim, this stockbroker who's a real punk. He always gets drunk and hits on the waitresses. He more or less raped one of them out in the alley one night."
"More or less?"
"She agreed to accept a car for not pressing charges."
"He still come in?"
"Oh, sure. He'll probably be in tonight."
"Why not throw him out?"
"Can't."
"It's your place."
"He's too important."
"Ah."
"Someday I'm going to take the kid and pound the hell out of his face. Maybe in the next couple of weeks. As a Christmas present to myself."
He picked up his glass. He killed it off in a swig. It was rye and water, heavy on the former. It was also 10:34 A.M. But I was raised to believe that a man's problems are his own unless he pays you to do something about them.
"So what did you find out in the alley?"
"Not much."
"No sign of anybody breaking in?"
"None." I paused. "You ever going to tell me what's going on here?"
He stared at me. He was a big man in all respects. In his brown turtleneck and Harris Tweed jacket, he seemed even bigger, like a professional wrestler tamed and groomed to greet people politely. "Just having a few problems is all."
"Anything American Security can help you with?"
"You trying to drum up business?" Every other line or so, he sounded angry. Somewhere in there was disappointment, too, as if at some point in his life he'd had big hopes for the world and it had let him down pretty badly.
"Sure. Everybody needs business."
That made him smile. "Just some bullshit is all. Going on here, I mean."
"That's pretty vague."
He wasn't paying attention anymore. He slammed down his empty glass and shouted, "Can't you see what the hell you're doing to that floor, Earle?"
He was addressing a young black kid, maybe eighteen, who was carrying a stack of chairs across a small dance floor. The kid had mud on his shoes. Goopy dark tracks marked his passage. The kid reminded me of me in my busboy days.
"Oh, God, Mr. Coburn, I'm sorry," the kid said. "I'll go get a mop and clean it up right away."
Christ on the cross couldn't have looked any more miserable.
"I'm surrounded by idiots," Coburn said, self-pity and anger keeping his voice loud enough for the kid to hear him.
The kid disappeared. Coburn dropped his head momentarily. He seemed to be doing some kind of deep-breathing exercises. Getting back in control. Then he raised his head and raised his glass. A very pretty lady bartender nodded to him. She had been watching it all. She seemed neither shocked nor upset by his outburst. Just weary.
"Sometimes I wonder if all the bullshit's worth it, you know?" he said to me while he waited for his drink. Despite his size and his formidable rage, he sounded like a youngster.
The bartender brought the drink over on an elegant seashell tray. She set it down in front of him with a great air of formality. She picked up the glass he'd just finished with.
This drink looked even meaner than the last. She glanced at me. She had intelligent brown eyes and a sad sweet face. There was an air of irony about her, as if she had seen enough to know that little of it was worth any personal grief. She carried an extra fifteen pounds with erotic elegance. In her white blouse and black slacks, she looked newly showered and fresh. She had radiant, thick dark hair that tumbled to frail shoulders. She smelled wonderful.
She said, very quietly, "You wanted me to count them off."
Instead of getting angry, Richard Coburn sighed. His shoulders sagged. "I know how many it is." He stared at the drink. "Three."
"Three," she said, and the way she said it, resigned but concerned, made me wonder if she might be more to Coburn than simply an employee. "Why don't you have some coffee to go with it?"
He patted her hand. "Maybe next round."
She looked at me. Obviously I was an intruder. Obviously she wanted to say something private to him. She decided to say it. "That means you're planning on a next round?"
I stood up. "I think I'll find the men's room."
Coburn didn't try to stop me. He just kept staring at the woman. It wasn't a difficult task.
Nothing is lonelier than a shut-down restaurant. Fine as this one was, now there was something tawdry and melancholy about it, with all the chairs and tables stacked and cleaning people moving up and down the aisles. Without the glow of nighttime lights, you could see where the flocked wallpaper was starting to unravel in places, where smoke had stained some of the heavy white curtains on the west wall, where a mercury crack snaked down one of the full-length mirrors.
The bathroom was big and white and newly tiled. It was an ideal place for people to do cocaine while checking out their tuxedos in the mirror. I used a urinal clean enough to eat off, not that I'd want to try. In a square of window above a vent shaft I saw the slate gray, overcast sky. Fifty below with the wind chill factor. I thought of the crazed priest again. No coat. I also thought of how angry Coburn had been when he'd seen him. Irrationally angry, really.
When I got back to Coburn's table, the bartender was gone and in her place was a different type of beautiful lady, a cold beauty who inspired fear as much as desire. She was tall, blond, dressed in a tailored gray suit. She was every Japanese businessman's American wet dream.
Just as I reached the table, she leaned into Coburn and slapped him. She slapped him very hard. His head jerked back and for a moment, stunned, his eyes went shut.
Apparently, I'd come back a few minutes too early.
I stood at the table not knowing what to do.
Coburn, eyes opened again, surprised me by laughing. It was quite a hearty laugh, and every bit as loud in the morning silence as the slap had been. The lady bartender was back behind the bar again, cleaning glasses and watching intently. Coburn said, "Dwyer, this is my wife, Deirdre."
Having absolutely no idea of what etiquette called for at a moment like this, I mouthed my usual inappropriate remark. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Coburn."
She glared at me. "Who's he?"
"A private investigator."
>
"Ducky. Just fucking ducky. And what are we doing with a private investigator?"
Coburn looked nervous. He also looked as if he'd forgotten all about being slapped. Maybe it was something that happened frequently. "We'll talk about it later."
I'd been engrossed enough in the melodrama that I hadn't noticed the new man appear. He wore a blue double-breasted suit, a very white shirt, a very red tie, and dark hair slicked back with so much grease he might have been a gigolo in a Cole Porter musical. He was tanned, he was trim, and he was obviously displeased with everything he saw.
"I don't give a damn what you two do in private," he said. "But I resent you doing it in a place I own a full third of." He glared at Coburn and said, "And just what the hell are we doing with a private investigator here, Richard?"
Coburn nervously introduced the man as his partner, Tom Anton, then started to say something in his own defense but Anton didn't let him. "I want this guy out of here. Now."
This was Coburn's morning for getting ultimatums. He sat there squirming, this big forlorn guy whose only real weapons were his fists.
He said, in a croaking voice, "Maybe it would be better if you left, Dwyer. Just send me a bill."
His partner, glossy and enraged, said, "I want to know what the hell he's doing here in the first place."
"Just send me a bill, Dwyer," Coburn said. "All right?" He sounded miserable.
I nodded, glanced at the beautiful wife and the handsome partner, feeling shabby and a little sweaty by contrast, and then left.
On my way out, I ran into Earle, the black kid who'd been tracking up the dance floor. He said, "They're crazy in this place, you know that?"
I grinned. "Yeah, that's just what I was starting to think." He grinned back.
