Supernatural Heart of the Dragon

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Mary elbowed her in the ribs.

  “Mom! C’mon, this could be what we’re looking for.” She tugged nervously at her ever-present charm bracelet.

  “Yes, dear,” Deanna said. Rubbing her side, she tossed the librarian a conspiratorial smile. “Teenagers—what can you do?”

  “They certainly can be impatient,” the woman agreed.

  “But to answer your question, there is a section of the city we call Japantown—in fact, that’s where my parents live.”

  “Would you have any books that talk about the warrior you mentioned?” Deanna asked. “I’m afraid my daughter won’t let me rest until we find something.”

  “There’s at least one I can recall—but it may not help you much, I’m afraid. You see, it’s a text in Japanese. I can have it sent over, but unless you read the language....” She trailed off with a shrug.

  Jack stepped forward.

  “That won’t be a problem,” he said crisply. “How soon can the book be delivered?”

  The librarian shrugged again.

  “It usually takes an hour or so,” she said. “But I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able to have it before the library closes for the day.”

  “Can you hold it for us, though, to look at tomorrow morning?” Jack asked eagerly.

  “Absolutely!” the librarian said, caught up in his enthusiasm. “I’ll just need your name.”

  “John Riet. That’s R-I-E-T.”

  “Very well, Mr. Riet, I’ll put in the request right away, and set the book aside for you to look at in the morning. Just come back to this desk and give your name.”

  “Groovy.” He turned to Deanna. “I’ve got a friend who’s in the Oriental Studies Department at Berkeley. He owes my parents a favor, so he should be able to help out.”

  That settled, they headed for the lobby and out the door into the brisk San Francisco afternoon. The sun was bright in the sky, so the air was warm now, and there was a pleasant breeze. One of the things Deanna had loved about this city the last time they visited was the constancy of the weather. It was as if the place was enmeshed in a permanent spring.

  Mary peered curiously at Jack.

  “John Riet?”

  “John’s my real name, but since it was also Dad’s name, everyone called me Jack,” he explained. “You know, like Jack Kennedy. And ‘riet’ is Dutch for ‘cane.’”

  “Oh,” she said. “Groovy.”

  Deanna interrupted them.

  “Mary, you and I need to go back to the hotel to see if Samuel has checked in or not.” Then she turned. “Jack, we can give you a call when we know what the next step is.”

  “Right on,” he said. “Actually, I could come back with you, and we could have some lunch. I know a great place....”

  Mary’s face brightened, but Deanna knew how Samuel would feel about that. Beyond the fact that he was certain Jack wanted to get Mary alone, his disdain for other hunters was nigh-on legendary. He was sure to balk at sharing yet another meal with the young man, especially so soon.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” she said sincerely, “but not today. We’ll call you, all right?”

  “Sure thing.” Jack sounded as disappointed as Mary looked, so Deanna grabbed her daughter’s hand and practically dragged her toward the bus stop. It was just as she had said to the librarian.

  Teenagers—what can you do?

  * * *

  Samuel hadn’t held out much hope for assistance in Chinatown as long as he was posing as an FBI agent. In fact, just generally being Caucasian would work against him. Maybe he’d send Mary in later, have her play the open-minded hippie trying to grok the Oriental culture, and shadow her.

  So, after taking a nap, he decided to head to the first crime scene, where Michael “Moondoggy” Verlander met his death, located in the Inner Mission.

  He still wasn’t happy that Deanna had convinced him to keep Bartow involved. Samuel had tolerated his presence, and yes, he’d been the one to bring them this job, but Samuel just didn’t like being around other hunters. They always assumed you felt the same way they did, but as far as Samuel was concerned, a jackass was still a jackass—and a lot of them had turned out to be jackasses.

  As he walked down Guerrero Street, he saw a bunch of kids gathered together, shouting slogans. One of them was standing on a milk crate at the center of the group, making a speech. Some of the kids held signs that read things like PEACE and MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR. More than half of them were wearing tie-dyed shirts that gave Samuel a headache just to look at, and most of them were in desperate need of a haircut—including the women. Some were barefoot, others wearing sandals.

  There was a boy sitting next to the speaker strumming on a guitar, but the tune couldn’t be heard over the shouting.

  On the one hand, Samuel understood those who didn’t wish to fight in the war in Southeast Asia. Having served in both World War II and Korea, he knew there was a big difference. The former needed to be fought—the latter was mostly just an excuse to get people killed for no good reason. Vietnam seemed to be more of the same after Korea. But Samuel couldn’t in good conscience agree with the song by one of the Beatles who crooned: “Give peace a chance.”

  Because if you did that, then you’d already lost.

  The enemy wasn’t the Viet Cong, though, and it wasn’t the Chinese or the Soviets or the North Koreans. Hell, it wasn’t even the Nazis. The real enemy was largely unseen, and unknown, and a lot worse.

  The only way to stop the real enemy was to fight. The only alternative was to lose and die. And Samuel had no intention of dying any time soon.

  Still, he mused as he continued down Guerrero toward the apartment building, he couldn’t really bring himself to blame most people for feeling the way they did. Unless you knew—really knew—what the world was like, you’d think that giving peace a chance might be preferable to dying in a faraway jungle nobody cared about.

  They still needed haircuts, though.

  When he reached the third floor of the apartment building, he saw that the crime-scene tape was still attached to one side of the doorframe, hanging loosely toward the floor and fluttering in an almost imperceptible breeze. Given that the hallway hadn’t been swept and the windows not cleaned since before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, this particular bit of failed maintenance wasn’t much of a shock.

  He was about to knock on the door, which was covered with peace-sign stickers and other odd decals, when it opened to reveal a very angry face. A huge hook nose was framed by tiny eyes and a thin-lipped mouth, which was ameliorated somewhat by the thick mustache its owner wore. Unfortunately, it was brick red, while his hair—including sideburns in dire need of a trim—was dark brown. The contrast was comical, and only Samuel’s experience with disguises assured him that the facial hair was real.

  “Whaddaya want, man?” the face demanded.

  Recalling something from both Bartow’s conversation and Verlander’s casefile, Samuel put on his most stentorian voice.

  “Are you Frederick Gorczyk?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  Holding up the false identification, Samuel answered authoritatively.

  “I’m Special Agent Jones.” One thing he’d learned early on was that FBI agents never referred to themselves as just “Agent So-and-so,” and they never called themselves “FBI agents,” either. It was a small thing, but it could make or break an impersonation.

  Gorczyk blinked, some of the anger fading.

  “Okay.”

  Samuel continued.

  “If you are Frederick Gorczyk, I have some questions for you regarding the death of Michael Verlander.”

  “And if I ain’t him?”

  Samuel gave a very small smirk.

  “Then I’ll have to arrest you for trespassing.”

  Gorczyk made a noise like an exploding pipe.

  “I ain’t trespassin’, man, I’m Freddie Gorczyk.” Samuel noted that he pronounced it “gore-chick,” not “gore-zik.”

  “My apo
logies for the mispronunciation, Mr. Gorczyk,” he said, and he motioned into the apartment. “May I come in?”

  “Sure, fine.” Gorczyk, who’d been blocking the doorway the entire time, opened the door wide, turned, and led him into the small living room.

  On the left was a wall filled with metal braces screwed into it, used to hold up wooden bookshelves. Most of them were stuffed with books, but one shelf had a record player, with speakers sitting on the floor beneath it.

  On the right was a couch, and several stained posters decorated the wall advertising various concerts, festivals and exhibits. Samuel recognized a few of the bands from records Mary had asked him to buy for her as birthday and Christmas presents.

  The carpet was cheap, stained and faded, but he could clearly see that it had been vacuumed recently. There was also a rectangular section cut out of it, right in front of the battered leather couch. Samuel recalled a mention in Verlander’s file about the coffee table being burned and the ashes and carpet going to the lab for analysis. That explained the cutout.

  After looking over the living room in silence, Samuel turned to Gorczyk.

  “I need to know what Mr. Verlander was doing in your apartment.”

  “Messin’ it up, is what he was doin’! Look, I went east for Woodstock back in August, okay, man?” When Samuel didn’t respond, he continued. “And once I got there I realized that New York City, man, that’s where it’s at! So I stayed. I’d already asked Moondoggy—that’s ‘Mr. Verlander,’ okay?—to house-sit while I was at the festival, and I called him and told him to keep on keepin’ on while I tried to break in, okay?”

  “Break in?”

  “You know, get gigs. For my music, man.”

  “So what happened?” Samuel asked.

  Gorczyk started waving his hands wildly.

  “He lost my cat, man! Broke my stuff, even scratched my LPs! Practically burned down my whole apartment. And then he got himself killed, so I can’t even get no restitution or nothin’.”

  “I’m sorry for your problems, Mr. Gorczyk,” Samuel said with as much sincerity as he could muster—which wasn’t all that much, really—then added, “but I need details. Do you know who he might have entertained while he was here?”

  “Anybody who got him grass, is who.” Gorczyk swallowed, adding hastily, “Uh, not that I know nothin’ about that, man. Not my thing.”

  A glance into the kitchenette revealed a lot of empty potato-chip bags, and Samuel smiled to himself.

  “I’m investigating a murder, son—I couldn’t care less about what you or Mr. Verlander smoke.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Gorczyk didn’t sound like he believed that. Then he brightened. “Oh, hey, man, you know who you oughtta talk to? Mrs. Holzaur. She lives next door in 3C, and she’s always seein’ stuff. I asked her to keep an eye on Moondoggy, okay? She mighta seen somethin’. I don’t know if the pi—uh, the cops talked to her or not.”

  Again, Samuel smiled to himself, but he decided not to respond to the veiled reference.

  Instead, he crouched down near the cut-out bit of carpet, where he noticed some yellow crystals.

  Sulfur.

  Not that Samuel harbored any doubts at this point, but the sight of sulfur confirmed that this was something he and his family needed to take care of, and quickly.

  It may or may not have been a dragon, but a demon was definitely involved.

  Getting to his feet, he motioned to leave.

  “Thank you very much for your assistance, Mr. Gorczyk,” he said. “You’ve been a great help.”

  “Sure, man. Just hope you catch the guy. Moondoggy was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve what he got.”

  Stepping out into the hall, the door clicking shut behind him, Samuel knocked on the door to apartment 3C. Unlike the door to Gorczyk’s apartment, 3B, Mrs. Holzaur’s door was empty save for the tarnished brass number and letter.

  A short, wrinkled woman wearing a faded housedress, curlers in her hair, answered the door. A lit cigarette dangled from between her lips.

  “Are you Mrs. Holzaur?”

  “You a policeman, mister?” she asked in a raspy voice.

  “Federal agent, actually—Special Agent Jones.”

  “Too bad. I was hopin’ you’d be a policeman, on account’a I ain’t heard from none of ‘em.” She took a drag on her cigarette.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am?”

  Blowing smoke in Samuel’s face, Mrs. Holzaur coughed, then spoke.

  “I told them policemen when that man was murdered, I told ‘em to talk to me, that I knew stuff about the yippies and the aliens and the Chinee and whatnot.”

  “You’re talking about the murder of your next-door neighbor, Michael Verlander, yes?”

  “He ain’t my neighbor. He was watchin’ the place for my neighbor. One’a them yippies, or whatever they call ‘em. My husband was still alive, he’d’a shot ‘em both, and that’s the truth.”

  “No doubt, Mrs. Holzaur,” Samuel said quickly. “Now what’s that about aliens and—and the Chinee?”

  “The aliens, see, them’s the ones who made the mary-jew-ana. Smokin’ that stuff, see, that’s what leads to people turnin’ into aliens, and then they’re gonna take over. Been tellin’ the policemen this, every chance I get, but they don’t do nothin’!” She took another drag on her cigarette.

  One thing the Campbell family had learned early on was that the crazy ones were worth paying attention to—often there was good wheat among all that chaff. So he waited to see if Mrs. Holzaur would carry on about marijuana and the alien plot to destroy the youth of America. When she seemed to have abated, he began to ask questions.

  “And how does the Chinese person fit into this?”

  “It’s obvious ain’t it? That yippie fella asked me to let in his friend while he went out to meet with his alien buddies. Told me to let this guy—Albert—have something to eat.”

  Samuel brightened.

  “Albert?”

  “Yeah, told me to give Albert some chow. Like I need to feed some Chinee kook.”

  “Did you feed him?”

  More smoke in Samuel’s face for that one.

  “’Course not! Albert can chow down on his own damn time, you ask me. Damn Chinee, them people’re takin’ over! You watch, ‘fore too long, we’ll all be slant-eyed devils like them, and then where’ll we be, huh?” She dragged on her cigarette, then dropped it to the linoleum floor of the hall. “If my husband was alive, he’d take his shotgun to ‘em all, and that’s no lie.”

  Samuel nodded noncommittally, careful not to show any sign of the elation that swept over him.

  “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Holzaur. The FBI appreciates your input, and rest assured we’ll be giving your allegations the full attention that they warrant.”

  “Yeah, right—you’re just like all men, all talk and no action, that’s your problem. If my husband was alive, he’d take a shotgun right to your head, I’ll tell you that for free.”

  Samuel turned his back on Mrs. Holzaur, who continued to natter on to herself about aliens and yippies and the Chinee and what her husband would do with his shotgun. He had a spring in his step, because now he had a name.

  Albert.

  He somehow doubted that Moondoggy would want the loony lady next door to provide Albert with chow. But he might well ask her to let in someone named Albert Chao.

  Now Samuel just had to figure out who Albert Chao was and what he had wanted with Moondoggy....

  EIGHT

  David Severn would have been perfectly happy, except for the pain in his ankles.

  But it had been worth it. He’d been trying to find the perfect date, and this seemed to be it. Debbie was his best girl, and after a hard week working as a supermarket manager, he was darn well going to show her a good time.

  Their first three dates had been busts. She had sneezed a lot at Golden Gate Park, and didn’t enjoy Ghirardelli Square, saying that shopping wasn’t romantic—it was something she did with her mothe
r. And then there was the Fillmore.

  It had been against David’s better judgment to go to one of those loud music shows: a bunch of weirdos dressed like circus clowns playing music that was far too loud and not remotely melodious. David preferred his musicians to be clean-cut and well dressed and actually proficient, like The Ventures or Buddy Holly, God rest his soul, or like The Beatles before they started taking drugs.

  For Debbie’s sake, however, he had pretended to enjoy himself—she was his best girl, after all, and an absolute sweetheart—but he hoped she wouldn’t want to do that again.

  But as they’d left the Fillmore that night, they’d walked down Geary Boulevard and up Steiner Street to where David had parked his car. On the way, they passed Winterland. David knew it was an ice-skating rink, but Debbie mentioned that the owner of the Fillmore sometimes rented it for concerts that were too big to fit in the smaller venue.

  Then she commented on her love of ice-skating.

  Right then and there, David had the next Friday’s date planned out.

  Sure enough, she loved it. Debbie was an excellent skater, too—which was more than David could say for himself. He fell over several times, more than once on his rear end, but Debbie just laughed and helped him up and showed him how to do it properly.

  After a while, he’d gotten it down pat. But boy, did his ankles hurt.

  Still, on the whole the date had gone very well. Debbie had so much fun that they wound up making out near the locker room until the place closed down and the staff had to throw them out.

  As they exited onto Steiner Street, David put his arm around Debbie’s waist.

  “You really skated beautifully, doll.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled up at him. She loved it when he called her “doll.” “When I was growing up,” she said, “I used to watch Sonja Henie’s movies all the time. She was my hero.”

  “Wow—it’s kismet,” he said profoundly.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, a puzzled look crossing her face.

  “Well, you know that Buddy Holly’s my hero. That means that both of our heroes died in plane crashes!”