“It was Spend, no, Span.” He looked me in the eyes, suddenly lucid, and snapped his fingers. “Spengler!”
The seer’s head exploded in a spray of red mist.
24.
Sniper!
A flock of pigeons soared from their perch on the roof’s railing, startled by the gunshot. I hit the ground, my body pressed to the hot asphalt. I frantically scanned the horizon for some glimmer of light, the reflection of a riflescope, but the shooter was a ghost. The seer’s corpse lay sprawled on the ground. Nothing was left of his head but some torn flesh and splintered bone at the end of a shattered spinal column.
Fifty-caliber round. Jesus. They weren’t taking any chances.
I trench-crawled the few feet to my car door, looking up at the handle as though it were a million miles away. The low wall encircling the parking deck gave me a little protection, but I’d have to stand up at least a little bit to open the door and get in, exposing me to fire.
And the longer you wait, the more time they have to reload and drop a bead on you. Move!
I held my breath, got up on my knees, and yanked open the car door, clambering inside and lying flat on the front seats. Bracing myself, I swung up into the driver’s seat and scrambled to jam my keys into the ignition. I nearly dropped them, my hand shaking, but the engine revved to life and I threw it into reverse. I spun back out of the parking spot, the car door still open and swaying on its hinges, then stamped my foot on the gas.
The car hit the ramp hard enough to bottom out. The chassis jolted and threw up sparks. I hauled the wheel around, bending low with my head just high enough to peek over the dashboard. My phone vibrated in my pocket.
“Not now,” I muttered through clenched teeth. The car fishtailed as I swerved around the next lane and down the ramp to the third floor. Every tier of the garage had a railed balcony open to the sky, a shooter’s paradise.
I whipped around to the next level, careening straight toward an elderly tourist in the middle of the lane. She clutched a token cup for the penny slots. I slammed on the brakes, tires screaming, and stopped hard enough to throw myself forehead-first against the steering wheel.
I pressed my fingers against my head, checking for blood. The skin was sore to the touch but unbroken. The engine rumbled. The old woman looked at my car, looked at me, and flipped me the bird before hobbling along.
“Yeah,” I breathed, adrenaline coursing through my veins. “I deserved that.”
My phone rang again. I tugged it out of my pocket and checked the caller ID. Nicky.
“What,” I answered flatly.
“This is Justine, and Juliette is with me, and you’re on speakerphone. You almost hit that old lady. That was terrible.”
“You should feel bad,” Juliette added.
“Yeah?” I said, sitting up in my seat. “Well at least I didn’t just shoot somebody in the fucking head!”
“Probably because you can’t afford a gun,” Justine said.
“What’s the point of buying a military-grade sniper rifle,” Juliette asked, “if you’re not going to use it? I made that shot from almost twelve hundred meters. Can you make a shot from almost twelve hundred meters, Danny?”
“What we’re saying,” Justine added, “is people should take pride in their work.”
“What,” I seethed, “do you two psychopaths want?”
“We want to make sure you understand that man was crazy,” Justine said.
“Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” Juliette added.
“He had to be put down,” Justine said, “like a rabid dog. It was for his own good. What did he say to you?”
Why don’t you ask your seer? I wanted to say. Oh wait, you can’t. For once, Nicky and the twins were flying blind. If they didn’t know he had spilled the beans about tonight, that put me a step ahead of them. That was a first.
“He told me you were going to kill him.”
“A seer and a prophet,” Justine said. “What else did he tell you?”
“He was about to tell me something about Nicky, but then something happened. What was it? Oh, yeah, you shot him.”
“Oopsie,” Juliette said.
“He would have lied to you anyway,” Justine said. “Besides, he was so painfully boring. You should come have a chat with my sister and me. We’re much more fun.”
A horn blared. I jumped in my seat. The headlights of a car flashed in my rearview mirror. I waved a feeble apology, put the car into drive, and rolled down the ramp toward the exit.
“I think I’ll pass,” I said. “Give my regards to your boss.”
I hung up the phone and pulled up Spengler’s number in my contact list.
Two weeks in Saudi, he’d said back at the Tiger’s Garden. This thing I found? People are gonna be breaking down my door trying to throw money at me. You just wait, you’ll see.
People were going to be breaking down his door all right.
“Hey, it’s the big guy!” his voicemail message said. “I’m out doing important stuff with important people, so leave a message at the beep and if you’re important, I’ll call ya back.”
“Spengler, it’s Daniel. You’re in danger. Call me. Now. As soon as you get this.”
Spengler’s house was a good forty minutes away. I leaned on the accelerator, clutching the wheel as I speed-dialed Caitlin with my free hand.
“Daniel,” she said, picking up on the first ring.
“You were right. The seer fingered Nicky. He’s got some kind of crazy scheme to put his dad on your prince’s throne.”
“Impossible. Flatly impossible. Prince Sitri has held that throne since the dawn of the Byzantine Empire. There’s no scheme he hasn’t seen coming from decades away. It’s been rumored that half of the plots against him were started by him, just for his personal amusement.”
“Yeah, well, Nicky seems to think he’s got a good shot, and selling you to the Kaufman brothers was part of the plan.”
“Choir of Pride,” Caitlin seethed. “Insufferable. Every last bloody one of them. Where’s the seer? Is he with you? Bring him to me.”
“The twins got to him first. With a sniper rifle.”
“Are you all right?” she said, suddenly alarmed. “Did they hurt you?”
“No. They made sure I knew they could have, though. Nicky doesn’t want a war on his hands. He’ll find a plausibly deniable way to kill me. They just wanted the seer taken out before he could spill the beans.”
“Khlegota! No chance of intercepting the seer’s soul, either. I guarantee they had someone waiting on the other side for him.”
“You can do that?” I asked. Admittedly, the afterlife is something I try to spend very little time thinking about.
“Right now, that man is likely chained to the floor of a very deep, very dark, very unpleasant pit, where he can’t tell anyone what he knows. I’m sure they’ve taken his mouth as well.”
Something about the casual way she said that, like it was business as usual, sent shivers down my spine.
“At least we know we’re on the right track,” she said. “Nicky’s guilty. He’ll pay in good time. And pay dearly.”
I leaned on the gas, shooting through a yellow light and weaving around a gas truck.
“There’s more,” I said. “The inner circle over at Carmichael-Sterling has their own game. They’re going after a friend of mine tonight, a fence named Spengler. I’m on my way to stop them.”
“Do you need help?”
Yes, I thought, but they’ve still got the magic that made you Kaufman’s thrall the first time around, and I’m not putting you through that again.
“I’ve got this,” I told her, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “This all ends tonight. We send these out-of-towners running back to Seattle with their tails between their legs. Then we can focus on putting the screws to Nicky. Easy as that.”
Nothing was ever that easy.
#
Spengler lived in a McMansion at the end of a sleepy suburban str
eet, every house the same shade of forgettable beige. I always figured he’d go for something as big and ostentatious as his personality, but I guess when your job risks landing you on more Interpol watch lists than your average terrorist, you learn the value of camouflage.
I pulled in behind his BMW and jumped out, running to his front door. I leaned on the doorbell, listening to it hammer out a staccato chime inside, wondering if I should chance picking the lock. If I was too late…
The lock clicked. Spengler pulled the door open, the big man draped in a black silk kimono spattered with white flower patterns.
“All right, all right already!” he said. “Oh, hey, Dan. What’s up?”
“Do you not check your goddamned voicemail?” I said, shepherding him inside, shutting the door, locking it, and sliding the deadbolt tight. Spengler’s home was the kind of pristine you only get from hiring a cleaning service once a week. Art from the Renaissance masters decorated the walls. A few of the pieces were real, long missing from a smattering of museums across Europe. A better investment than gold, he always said.
“My phone’s charging, and I’m kinda getting ready for a date here. My sexy little Candi is coming over in about fifteen minutes, and I’ve got a sweet tooth, if you know what I mean.”
“Call her and cancel.”
He looked down at me, not sure how seriously to take my tone. “Dude, Candi’s two hundred dollars an hour, and if I cancel now I’m going to have to pay her anyway.”
“Spengler,” I said, “listen to me very carefully. There are people coming here, right now, to kill you. Now pick up your phone. Cancel. Your. Prostitute.”
While he called Candi, I tried to call the cavalry. I put out calls to Bentley and Corman, Mama Margaux, Jennifer, getting nothing but messages and busy signals. The idea of the two of us taking on a whole team of adept magicians at the same time didn’t fill me with hope. Plan B was taking Spengler and getting the hell out of here, but not without figuring out what Carmichael-Sterling was after. At the very least, I had to deny them their prize.
“You’d better be serious about this,” Spengler said, hanging up his phone. “Because I can’t be paying women and not having sex with them. It’s wrong. It’s wrong on so many levels.”
“Let me make a long story very short.” I cornered him, leaning in and talking slow. “A pack of magicians is coming over here to kill you and steal something from your collection. They’re determined, ruthless, and they’re responsible for several murders already, so don’t think for a second you’re going to talk them out of it. I need to know what you’ve acquired in the last month or so. It has to be something recent, or they would have come after you before tonight.”
He shook his head, looking worried as reality sank in. “Man, do they not know I’m protected? I’m the supplier to the stars, and I don’t just mean the occasional bump of Peruvian marching powder. Everybody knows I can get you your heart’s desire, so why would anyone kill the golden goose?”
“Because,” I said, holding up a finger, “they only want one egg. These aren’t our people, they aren’t a part of our community, and they don’t give a fuck whose toes they step on. You’re a bump in the road to them.”
“I’ve only made one buy in the past couple of months, from my trip to the sandbox.”
“Saudi,” I said, “the big score you were talking about at the Tiger’s Garden?”
He nodded and gestured for me to follow him through the house. Mahogany bookshelves lined one wall of his study from floor to ceiling, looming over an overstuffed leather armchair and an antique standing globe. He gave the upper half of the globe a twist, pulling it back on concealed hinges. A snifter of cognac and a pair of glasses waited inside.
“We do not have time—” I started to say, but he cut me off with a wave of his hand.
“Under normal circumstances,” he said, lifting out the bottle, “I wouldn’t show this to anybody. I’m gonna have to ask you to keep quiet about it.”
He reached into the recess, hooking his fingers around a catch, and gave it a tug. A section of the bookshelves clicked and swung open.
“Welcome to my safe room,” Spengler said.
25.
The room behind the bookshelf was about ten feet square and fortified like a bunker. Grainy footage from outside the house, front and back, flickered on a bank of monitors along with a bird’s-eye view of the street from what looked like a camera mounted on a tree branch. To the left of the security console, a pump-action shotgun and a pair of stubby handguns hung from a chrome wall rack.
I whistled low, tracing a finger along the shotgun’s barrel. “You planning for a siege?”
“Hope for the best, plan for the worst,” Spengler said, pulling the door shut behind us and twisting a lock that looked like it belonged on a bank vault. “I’ve got about two months of surplus military MREs and bottled water in those boxes behind you. The room’s fireproof, with a rooftop ventilation system that draws and purifies air from outside. I can shut off the ventilation in an emergency, but only for a couple of hours.”
“Better odds than the Alamo, but I still think we should hit the road. Show me what you found in Saudi Arabia.”
He pulled back a green tarp, unveiling a wooden crate against the back wall of the safe room. Its weathered slats bore customs stamps and faded brands from half a dozen nations.
“Getting it back here was almost as hard as finding it in the first place,” Spengler said, lifting the lid, “but totally worth it.”
Nestled in a bed of sawdust and paper clippings, the crate held an ebony casket just big enough for a toddler. My first instinct was to recoil, to yank the crate lid from Spengler’s hand and slam it shut, to seal the casket away in darkness.
“I know, right?” he said, reading the look on my face. “You get used to it, but the first reaction is pretty strong.”
I shook my head and took a step back. “There’s something in there.”
I didn’t know how I knew it. I just knew it. Something lived in that casket, something much older, much crueler, than any infant. Something with the patience of a trap-door spider and nothing but time. Swirling carvings adorned the casket’s face, hard to make out at first. I traced the lines with my eye and they resolved into the figure of a man, impossibly thin and long, clutching a pan flute.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to tear my gaze away.
“It’s the Etruscan Box.” His eyes blazed with a mixture of pride and raw greed. “The Etruscan Box. My holy grail. I’ve been chasing this thing for a decade, putting out feelers from here to Siberia, and finally I picked up its trail. Poor bastard I bought it from had no idea what he’d inherited from his old man.”
“But what is it?”
“Lotta stories about that,” Spengler said. “Legends passed down from explorer to explorer, all from people who spent their lives hunting the Box and never caught a glimpse. Remember, we don’t know a whole lot about the Etruscans before Rome finally rolled over them, but they were around for a long time, a really long time. They had some savage witchcraft up their sleeves.”
He reached into the crate. I held my breath as he grabbed hold of the casket’s lid, but it refused to budge.
“See? It doesn’t open. It doesn’t want to open. Doesn’t matter. I’m just selling the box as-is. I put it up on the Internet under a coded auction listing, and you wouldn’t believe the people I’ve got bidding on this baby. Some of the biggest players in the occult underground from coast to coast—throwing cash at me like it’s Judgment Day and they’re trying to get rid of all their money before Jesus comes back. The top bid is already over two million bucks and climbing.”
“So these stories,” I said, “what do they say is inside?”
“The stuff that dreams are made of. They say it’s your heart’s desire, whatever you want most in life, just waiting for the first person to open it up and reach on in. All you have to do is figure out how it unlocks and everything you ever wanted is yours
for the taking. It’s like Excalibur in the stone.”
I reached up and closed the crate lid. I still felt the casket and its occupant, buried in darkness, listening to us.
“Excalibur,” I said flatly.
“That’s the story, but who knows? Nobody’s ever gotten it to open, and if you ask me, nobody ever will. Some ancient wizard’s bad joke. As far as my heart’s desire goes, well, you know me. My dream is cold, hard cash. This is the score of a lifetime.”
Spengler was bush-league compared to the rest of the regulars at the Garden, just magically aware enough to qualify for entry, but no real talent. Even so, I couldn’t believe how casual he was, unable to feel the chill radiating from inside the crate on the wings of a gale-force wind.
“Let’s hope you’re right about it staying sealed,” I said, backing away from it.
“Why’s that?”
“Because something is alive inside that casket,” I said, “and I think it hates us.”
The doorbell chimed.
We looked at each other, then rushed to the security monitors. A pretty girl in her twenties, platinum blond with a California tan, stood on the doorstep and smiled hopefully up at the security camera.
“Candi,” Spengler breathed.
I slapped his arm, glaring. “You were supposed to tell her not to come over!”
“I did! I swear I did! She was almost here when I called, and she said she was going to turn around and go home!”
She gave a little wave up at the camera, flashing a perfect smile, and pressed the doorbell again.
“Something’s wrong.” I paced the safe room.
“Dan, if she’s on the doorstep when these guys show up, what will they do to her?”
“Nothing good,” I said, eying the screen, “but we have to think about this. Are you sure that’s her? Absolutely, one hundred percent certain?”
“That pleated skirt,” Spengler said, pointing at the tiny screen. “I asked her to wear that for me. Even if somebody was screwing with the camera feed, projecting an illusion or something, there’s no way they’d know what she was going to be wearing. It’s her.”
The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels Page 237
