by Dan Willis
“I don’t have any evidence,” Alex said. “Not yet, anyway.” He explained about the timing and how the thief must have known the loading dock schedule down to the second in order to get in and steal the truck at exactly the right moment.
“It points to an inside job,” Alex explained.
“That’s the easy explanation,” Barton admitted, his voice still full of resentment.
“There’s also the guy who took a shot at me yesterday,” Alex said. “I was across the street, checking out the alley just down from the loading dock. I wanted to know if someone could have watched from there and learned your schedule, but it turns out you can’t. When I went to leave, someone shot me in the back and stole my rune book. They probably thought it was my notebook.”
“You don’t look like a man who got shot in the back,” Barton said.
“Shield runes,” Alex explained. “I do find it interesting, though, that someone was waiting for me in that alley. How did they know when I’d be here?”
The anger in Barton’s eyes abated a bit.
“You think someone here called the gunman and tipped him off?”
Alex nodded.
“Who knew about the shipment the day the motor was stolen?”
Barton thought for a moment, then raised an eyebrow.
“Only Jimmy Cortez, Bill Gustavsen, and myself,” he said.
“What about the men who loaded it on the truck?”
“Jimmy would have called them in to load the motor, but they wouldn’t have known beforehand.”
Alex leaned back in the chair and thought for a moment.
“What about Gustavsen’s log book? Could someone have looked in there and seen the shipment?”
“No,” Barton declared with certainty. “He didn’t know when it was supposed to be shipped out until that day. I called him in the morning.”
“So the only people who had time to tip anyone off were Cortez, your floor manager, or Gustavsen?”
“The idea is preposterous,” Barton said, his indignant tone coming back. “I’ve known both of them for years! They’re loyal men.”
Alex held Barton’s gaze for a long moment, the shook his head.
“There is one other possibility,” he said. “But you’re not going to like it either.”
“I’m listening,” Barton said.
“If no one here tipped off the thief, then maybe this was a crime of opportunity.”
Barton laughed out loud at that.
“You came highly recommended, Mr. Lockerby, but I must say I’m not impressed. Why would someone take the motor if they didn’t know what it was?”
“They just wanted the truck,” Alex explained. “I noticed that you have spaces for two trucks to park in your loading dock, but there’s only one there now. The other truck is still missing, isn’t it?”
Barton tacitly admitted that it was.
“If the thief only wanted the truck, then they might have just dumped the motor. If they dropped it in the river, that would explain why the rune can’t connect to it.”
Barton’s expression didn’t soften one bit.
“There’s just one hole in your theory, Lockerby,” he said, darkly. “If the theft of the motor was a crime of opportunity, then who shot at you in that alley? Assuming you were telling the truth about that.”
He had a point. The idea that some random person had shot Alex in the back and then stolen his rune book didn’t seem likely.
“People in my business make enemies, Mr. Barton,” Alex said. “It’s possible one of them followed me here from somewhere else and just waited for me to leave before jumping me.”
“Well, I can understand how someone might want to shoot you,” Barton said. “If you’re guessing right, there’s very little chance I’m going to get my motor back. To make matters worse, there’s no conspiracy by my competitors so there’s no chance I can get the deadline extended.” He clenched his fists and Alex could hear a humming noise like an electric motor under a load. “I suppose I need to put all my efforts into making sure the new motor is ready on time, then.”
Barton reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a roll of cash that had a thousand-dollar bill on the outside. He opened it and peeled off a twenty and a five, handing them to Alex.
“Your daily rate, I believe,” he said. “I won’t be needing your services any longer.”
Alex accepted the money.
“There’s still a chance,” he said as Barton turned away. “Give me till Saturday to find your motor.”
Barton looked back and shook his head.
“I never throw good money after bad, kid,” he said.
“Are you a betting man, Mr. Barton?”
Barton’s handlebar mustache turned up in a smirk.
“You’re speaking my language,” he said. “What do you have in mind?”
“You give me till Saturday, double or nothing,” Alex said.
Barton considered him for a moment, looking Alex up and down.
“For someone who seems to be right out of clues, you seem awfully confident,” he said, then he stuck out his hand and Alex shook it. “Done then,” he said. “You have till Saturday to find my motor. Good luck.”
With that, Barton turned and swept down the hall and out onto the metal stairs that led to the factory floor.
“Coffee,” Alex told Doris as he dropped his hat on the stool in front of The Lunch Box counter. “And some poached eggs on toast.” She smiled and nodded at him, laying out a cup and saucer.
Alex moved to the pay phone on the wall and dropped a nickel in the slot. He didn’t know if Leslie would be back from Suffolk county yet, but he gave the operator his office number anyway. The phone rang for a long time until Leslie’s voice came on.
“How was your trip?” Alex asked.
“Divine,” she said with a smile Alex could hear. “I’m not even mad at the mass of people already here who want anti-ghost runes.”
“Wow,” Alex said. “Is Randall as happy as you are?”
“You’re just jealous.”
“So, do you have anything for me? Other than gloating I mean.”
“Be nice,” Leslie said. “Randall worked late last night and we found twenty-three names of people who worked for Seth Kowalski.”
“Good,” Alex said. “I’m at The Lunch Box right now, but I’ll come by as soon as I eat, and we can go over it.”
“That’s great, but there’s more,” Leslie absolutely purred. “I convinced Randall to look for any suspicious activity during Kowalski’s tenure.”
“Did he find anything?”
“Not yet, but he’s going to call me this afternoon if he finds anything.”
“You must have made quite an impression on him.”
“What can I say? I’m very good at my job.”
“See if you can run down any of the names on that list and I’ll see you soon,” Alex said.
“Wait,” she said before he could hang up. “Did you find the guy who was kidnapped?”
Alex sighed. He didn’t want to talk about Leroy. Despite Iggy’s assurances, he didn’t have any better idea how to proceed now than he had at breakfast.
“You need to call the wife right now,” Leslie admonished when Alex explained his situation. “She must be going crazy, Alex.”
He sighed again. Leslie was right, of course. He’d been a heel to make Hannah wait by the phone for any word on her husband. The news wasn’t good, but she ought to know the truth.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll call right now.”
He said goodbye, then dropped another nickel in the slot. Pulling out his notebook, he gave the operator the number for Hannah Cunningham’s apartment.
“I’m sorry,” the operator came on a few minutes later. “Your party doesn’t answer.”
Alex thanked her and hung up, being sure to retrieve his nickel from the return slot. He’d try her again after he’d finished his eggs.
“You look like hell,” Mary sa
id, setting down Alex’s plate. She winked at him as he came back to the counter. “You need to eat better,” she said. “Come by more often.”
“Sorry,” Alex said. “I’ve been up to my neck in impossible cases.”
Mary opened her mouth to ask him about it, but right then a half dozen people came in and she had to vanish back to the kitchen. Alex hated to admit it, but he was grateful not to have to talk about his frustrations, even to Mary.
It felt good to just sit and eat and not have to think.
“Hey, where are you?” Danny’s voice suddenly cut through his thoughts.
Alex looked up from his empty plate and was surprised to find his friend sitting next to him. He checked the clock on the wall and found that nearly three-quarters of an hour had gone by.
“Sorry,” Alex said, finding it difficult to focus. “I guess I was lost in thought.”
“I’ll say,” Danny said with a concerned look. “I was talking to you for a couple of minutes before I noticed that you’d punched out.”
“You here for lunch?”
“As I tried to explain, Leslie told me where to find you,” Danny said. “I was wondering if you could help me with all these thefts. The Captain is leaning on Callahan and he’s leaning on me and I don’t have any idea where to look next.”
“Join the club,” Alex said.
“What?”
“I don’t know if I can help,” Alex said. “I’ve been officially forbidden from helping the police.”
Danny gave him a steady look.
“When has that ever stopped you before?” he asked. “Besides, I really need your help.”
Alex rubbed his eyes. He could feel a headache coming on.
“All right,” he said after a long minute. “Come by the brownstone tonight and bring your case file. We’ll go through it and see if there’s anything you missed.”
Danny slapped him on the back and Alex winced. The spots where the bullets hit him were still bruised and tender.
“Thanks, I really appreciate it,” Danny said, oblivious to Alex’s discomfort.
Alex nodded and stood.
“Where you off to now?” Danny asked.
“I’ve got a lead on your ghost killer,” Alex said, heading for the phone. “Need to run it down.”
Alex called Hannah one more time with the same result. As he hung up, her absence bothered him. Why would a woman whose husband was missing leaver her phone unattended? He should have thought of that before. It didn’t feel right.
Dropping the nickel back in the phone, he called Leslie.
“Did Hannah Cunningham call you recently?” he asked once Leslie picked up.
“No, but I was out most of yesterday and all of this morning, remember?”
“I’ve tried her twice with no answer.”
Leslie started to respond but stopped, picking up on Alex’s tone.
“You think something’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he said, surer now that there was. “I’ll be by as soon as I can, but I’m going to go by Hannah’s apartment first.”
“Be careful,” she said. “Remember somebody out there took a shot at you.”
“You’ve been talking to Iggy,” Alex accused.
“Just be careful,” she said with a sigh. “It’s starting to look like you might actually get paid soon.”
“You’re all heart,” Alex chuckled.
12
The Tail
Hannah and Leroy Cunningham lived in a six-story apartment building of stained, brown brick on the Outer-Ring side of Alphabet City. Alex left the crawler station two blocks away and turned south. The streets were lined with beggars and the lucky few who had boxes of apples or newspapers to sell. Since the market crash large parts of the city were overrun with the desperate, the drunk, and the vagrant.
Alex felt for them as he passed, ignoring their entreaties for money. He had a roof over his head and enough to stay fed, but he couldn’t even buy his own cigarettes. He chuckled humorlessly at the thought that he was only about a week away from joining these ragged souls.
When Alex reached Hannah’s building, he checked the address written in his notebook. The building wasn’t very far into the outer ring, but no outer ring building would have an elevator, so of course, Hannah’s apartment number was sixty-four.
A few minutes later, Alex reached the sixth-floor landing, sweating in the sweltering August heat. He pushed for a moment to catch his breath, then moved down to door sixty-four and knocked.
No sound came from inside, so he knocked again.
This time, a door across the hall opened and a middle-aged woman with a plump face, black hair, and too much perfume peered out.
“Do you know if Mrs. Cunningham is home?” Alex asked, putting on his friendly smile.
“You get out of here,” the woman hissed, closing her door so that only her eyes were visible. “I’ll call the cops this time.”
Alex held up his hands in a gesture of peace.
“Easy there,” he said. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m a private detective. Mrs. Cunningham hired me to look for her husband.”
“Well she don’t want to talk to anybody,” the woman growled. “Not after last time. You better get lost.”
With that, she slammed the door and Alex could see her setting the bolt on the other side.
He wasn’t sure what had happened, but it wasn’t nothing. Concerned, he pounded on the door again.
“Hannah,” he called. “It’s me, Alex.”
“Go away,” a ragged voice came from inside. Alex barely recognized it as Hannah’s. She was hoarse and clearly scared.
“I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me,” Alex said, firmly. “Now open up before I get the superintendent.”
A long pause followed and then he heard the bolt on the door being drawn back and the lock clicked. The door opened and Hannah stood inside, huddled as if she were cold. Alex could see that she had a black eye and a bruise on her cheek.
“Please,” she gasped. “They said they’d kill him if I talked to anyone.”
The apartment beyond the door was disheveled, with a broken chair leaning against the dining table and a trash can overflowing with shards of broken dishware. Alex pushed the door open and Hannah shuffled back.
“Please,” she said, holding out her arm. “They’ll know.”
Alex took her by the wrist and gently turned her arm so he could see the underside. A symbol had been burned there, as if Hannah had been branded with an iron. The symbol was rectangular with a rounded square on top of three curled shapes below. Inside the square was a cartoonish pair of eyes in a rounded head, with what looked like a stone on top. The stone had one large hole in the center and three to each side.
It reminded Alex of a television screen with an octopus staring out of it, its legs dangling down and a clay ocarina on its head.
He didn’t have to break out his ghostlight to tell it was magical; he could feel the power in the symbol when he ran his thumb over it. Hannah winced when he did and Alex noticed that the skin around the mark was still pink. Whoever had done this to her and busted up her place had done it recently.
“Someone told you to stop looking for Leroy?”
She nodded, tears streaming down her face.
“They barged in yesterday,” she said. “They told me they’d killed you. They even showed me your red book.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, forcing the tears out onto he cheeks.
“They said if I talked to anyone else, they’d kill Leroy.”
“They told you if you kept quiet, that they’d let him go?” Alex guessed.
She nodded.
“Then they put this paper on my arm and it burned me,” she wept. “They said if I talked to anyone, they’d know. That this,” she nodded at the symbol. “That they’d use this to kill me.”
Alex looked closely at the octopus symbol. From Hannah’s description, it worked just like a rune. There were
three schools of runes: the Geometric school, which Alex used; the Kanji school that used Oriental characters; and the Arabic school which favored artistic, flowing script.
“I’ve never seen this kind of rune,” Alex said. “But I know runes. This isn’t complex enough to kill someone. They did this to keep you quiet.”
It was mostly true. Alex suspected the rune could very easily be a tracking rune, so whoever they had watching Hannah’s place could follow her if she gave them the slip. He leaned back out into the hall and checked up and down the corridor. So far as he could tell, they were alone. Whoever was watching, and he was sure now that someone was, they must be outside.
Alex stepped back into Hannah’s apartment and shut the door behind him, pausing to set the bolt.
“Hannah,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “I know you’re scared, but I need you to listen to me, okay?”
She took a deep shuddering breath and nodded.
“Whoever did this is trying to scare you, to keep you quiet while they do whatever it is they took Leroy to do. Whoever they are, they’re not going to just let your husband go once they’re done. He knows who they are by now — he’s been with them almost a week.”
Hannah gasped, and her trembling got worse. It was clear she was moments away from simply breaking down.
“There’s good news, though,” he went on. “Doing this,” he took hold of her wrist and turned her arm to reveal the rune. “This means they’ve got someone watching you, making sure you don’t leave this building.”
“How is that good news?” she wanted to know, her eyes darting to the door to make double sure Alex had bolted it.
“It’s good news because it gives us a way to find Leroy, but you’ll have to be very brave for it to work.”
To her credit, Hannah stopped shaking and stood up straight.
“What do I have to do?” she asked with only a hint of controlled fear in her voice.
“You need to do exactly what they’re afraid you’ll do,” Alex said. “I want you to go down to the station and catch a northbound crawler. Go straight to my office. Stay at the station when you change crawlers and don’t stop along the way, understand?”
