Deader Still

by Anton Strout

  “Then why’d you get so pissed at me?”

  “I don’t feel like breaking in another partner,” he said. “Even as dumb as you are sometimes. Besides, you look like you’ve suffered enough for one night.”

  “Well, thanks,” I said, feeling all warm and fuzzy but kind of confused.

  “Don’t get too comfy there. The night’s not over yet. Get yourself cleaned up while I tell the Inspectre about this, minus some of the details.”

  Connor started walking off.

  “Oh,” I said, “I almost forgot. You’ll be thrilled to hear that there may actually be vampires involved. I’m pretty sure I ran into one this time, no question.”

  Connor sighed, shook his head, and pointed over toward the incident sign. I started heading for the ladder.

  “We’re gonna discuss protocol when we’re done with all this,” he said. “If we live through it all, of course.”

  Returning to the scene of Para-lyzed felt much safer with half of the Department crawling all over the subterranean exhibit. A change of clothes and new wrapping on my wrists had also helped to change my spirits for the better. The smell of roasted zombies, however, did not.

  The investigation was already in full swing by the time Connor and I got there, and I was surprised when Wesker appeared from behind a stack of crates with three familiar faces in tow.

  “Well, well, well,” Connor said. “If it isn’t the Illinois gypsies.”

  The Brothers Heron looked somewhat panicked. Marten was in yet another hideous tweed suit and Lanford looked a little more sickly than usual—the result of being on the run, I guess. Julius looked just as healthy and robust as ever, towering over us all.

  “Returning to the scene of the crime, eh?” I said. “Or just a follow-up sales call?”

  Marten shook his head. “Sorry we had to run out on you at the convention,” he said, all manners now, “but the look on your face told us you weren’t willing to be reasonable.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I wasn’t willing to be. Not much has changed on that front.”

  “He said he was sorry,” Julius’s voice boomed out.

  Wesker stepped out from behind them. “I caught these three attempting to liberate those two chupacabras from one of the glass cases where they were being stored. It looked like some sort of art exhibit in progress, but damned if I could tell what Cyrus was going to do with them.”

  “Something that tied in to Will Wegman,” I said. Everyone turned to stare at me. “Hey, I don’t know what the hell that means; it’s just what he said.”

  Marten nodded. “We tracked them here after Lanford followed you to the park to where that unfortunate jogger met his demise,” he said. “If we had any idea that splitting them up would have caused such a string of tragedies, believe me, we never would have sold one of them to that guy dressed as an undead pirate in the first place.”

  “Your sincerity is underwhelming,” Connor fired back. “You were still trafficking paranormal livestock. That’s a crime in the tristate area.”

  “How could you even think to bring something so heinous into this city?” I asked.

  Marten looked shocked, like I had slapped him in the face.

  “What did we do wrong?” Lanford asked, turning to Julius.

  “Heinous?” Marten said, talking to me directly now. “How can you say that? Would you say the same thing about a shark for simply doing what it was meant to do?”

  “I say,” the Inspectre’s voice called out. “Is that the analogy you’re going with?” He was standing by the entrance to the exhibit proper, but came over to join the conversation. “When a shark attacks a person, it’s only when we’ve entered its natural environment. Last I checked, gentlemen, the chupacabra is not native to New York City. It’s an introduced creature, and as the introducers, you are accountable for its crimes.”

  Marten looked at me strangely, squinting not just at me but into me.

  “Stop that,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. “What are you doing?”

  “I see the curse wore off,” he said. He looked concerned. “So soon. I didn’t expect that.”

  “Yeah, well, you’d be surprised what a little bit of panic does to help a guy take charge of his life again,” I said. “So how are you involved with Cyrus, exactly?”

  “I take it he’s the pirate-looking gentleman?” Marten said.

  “I think ‘gentleman’ is too kind a word for him,” I said, “but yes.”

  “Wait,” Connor said. “You’re telling me you didn’t even know the name of a person you were selling those . . . those . . . things to?”

  Marten gave a sheepish grin. “In our business, it’s sometimes better if we don’t ask too many questions. Not if we want to make enough to support our little clan back in Illinois.”

  “How very familial of you,” Connor said, “but where you’re headed, I think they’re going to have to fend for themselves for a while.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be happening,” said Marten, and he flourished his arms in a grandiose and arcane gesture. Lanford and Julius joined in, too. I braced myself for whatever was about to happen.

  But when the gesturing stopped there was nothing but silence and the three of them still standing there.

  Lanford looked at both of his hands, then turned to his shorter, balding brother.

  “Marten . . . ?”

  Director Wesker stepped toward them. “Did you really think that when we found this little exhibit, we would be stupid enough to just let you run rampant with your feeble brand of folk magic? The first thing any agent of Greater and Lesser Arcana worth his salt does is create a nullification field.”

  I was impressed, despite all my recent misgivings about the man.

  Connor stepped forward and got in Marten’s face. “I’ll ask you again,” Connor said. “How do you know Cyrus?”

  All the life and theatrics fell from Marten’s face. Now he just looked like a tired, middle-aged man with a failing head of hair and a paunch.

  “We had never met before,” he said with a slow shake of his head, “and until you told us his name, we had no idea who he was.”

  Connor kicked one of the nearby crates and stormed off. I followed him as Wesker dragged the gypsies away.

  Connor moved from the crowd and sat down on top of one of the crates. I hoisted myself up onto the one next to him.

  “So these guys are useless to us,” I said.

  Connor nodded. “Other than getting them off the street for being a menace all their own, I don’t think they can help us out.”

  “There’s got to be something here in all this evidence around us to help,” I said. “Something that will give us some kind of clue as to just what the hell Cyrus has been up to these past few months.”

  “You said your friend Mina was caught up in all this?” Connor said, perking up.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call her a friend,” I said. “More of an old psychopath I used to work with. One that had been serving time in the same facility as—”

  “Faisal Bane,” Connor said, getting up from the crate he was on. He headed off past the Inspectre in the direction of the little colored candy trail that led back to the exit. Connor already had his phone out and was dialing. “Thaniel Graydon, please.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t remember why. After the day I had been through, though, I was surprised I could remember my own name. I limped off after him.

  37

  “Since when do you own a boat?” Connor said as we walked down one of the west side docks toward the silhouette of a thirty-foot motorboat. Empty, it looked like a creepy little ghost ship. I expected to see spectral figures floating around inside the small cabin on its deck, but was relieved to see nothing of the sort.

  “Well,” I said, “technically I don’t own a boat, but the Fraternal Order of Goodness does. You said you needed one, so I got us one.”

  “And if I said I needed a supermodel?” Connor said. He
undid the knot cleating the boat to the dock without an ounce of difficulty.

  “I’d have to check the supply room for one of those,” I said.

  Connor crossed down to the far end of the boat, undid the cleat there, and stepped onto the deck with one foot while pushing it away from the dock with the other.

  He waved to me like he was leaving on the Love Boat. “You coming, kid?”

  I hesitated as the boat floated away, but jumped over onto it before the gap spread too wide.

  “I take it you’ve done this before?” I said, searching for the ladder leading up to the steering on top of the darkened cabin. “ ’Cause I don’t know how to drive one of these things . . .”

  “A couple of times,” Connor said. “Not with this boat, mind you. I usually had to rent one, then expense it and wait to be reimbursed months later. Nice of you to save me the trouble this time. Maybe you F.O.G.gies aren’t worthless after all.”

  I found the ladder and climbed up. I fished out the keys the Inspectre had given me and moved to the controls, but Connor held his hand out. “Keys, kid.”

  I gave them over and Connor fired up the boat, leaving only the bare minimum of running lights on. He pulled away from the dock and out into the Hudson River at a good speed, heading north. “Boating isn’t that hard,” he confided. “The secret is not to hit the land or other boats.”

  A fine mist rose around us as we sped toward the distant lit-up structure of the George Washington Bridge. I rode along for several minutes in silence, simply enjoying the disconnect from the city and the feel of the open water, but eventually my curiosity got the better of me.

  “You want to tell me who this Thaniel Graydon is now?” I asked.

  “Not who,” Connor shouted over the sound of the engine, “what.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It sounded like a proper name.”

  “It is, or rather was. You should know him; he’s part of your old-boys network. Thaniel Graydon was a F.O.G.gie. What I know about him is limited to his involvement with the early years of the D.E.A., but I think he had something to do with one of our founding fathers being a necromancer.”

  This all felt oddly familiar, and then it hit me. “Benjamin Franklin,” I said.

  Connor turned and looked at me. “How do you know that?”

  “I think I was Thaniel Graydon,” I said. “For only for a few seconds. Back when we were working on Irene’s case, I accidentally triggered off this book that Wesker was carrying around and I got the most horrific flashes of this rotting creature . . .”

  I shuddered, not sure if it was from the cold on the water or the ancient necromancer’s image that once again filled my head. “So I doubt we’re going to see someone well over two hundred years old,” I said. “Umm . . . are we?”

  “Given our chosen profession, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility, I suppose,” Connor said.

  “True,” I admitted, “but where are we going?”

  “The Thaniel Graydon Center is a special annex to the Rikers Island facility.”

  “Rikers?” I said, confused. “Isn’t that in the East River, closer to Queens? We’re going to have to circle Manhattan. Not that I mind. It’s a nice night and all . . .”

  “Rikers Island is in the East River, yes,” Connor said, “but the Thaniel Graydon Center isn’t attached to it. It’s free-floating. It’s a prison barge where they keep a lot of their special cases.”

  Connor took one hand from the wheel and pointed forward at a speck that looked like a giant, floating Lego that grew larger with every second we sped toward it.

  I wondered if this was the prison where Mina had first heard my name again and met Faisal. Although she possessed no special powers that I knew of, she definitely qualified as “special” in a lot of ways, and given her somewhat dangerous and erratic behavior, she had probably earned a quick place within the prison community.

  Up close, the barge was impressive, a miniature four-story city crammed onto the deck of an immense boat. Blocky white buildings were guarded by tall searchlight towers at the four corners of the barge. Even if you were able to escape the confines of your cell and avoid the lights, there was still the open water to contend with. It seemed a perfect place to house someone like Faisal Bane.

  A searchlight picked up our approach and we docked. Men bearing shotguns came from a small workstation hut to help us board, and without a moment’s hesitation checked our Departmental IDs. Not much for small talk, two of them escorted us to one of the larger buildings on deck before turning us over to a single officer, also not terribly talkative. He signed us in to a large room filled with rows of tables and benches.

  “Looks like a slow night for visitors,” I said to Connor.

  The guard laughed.

  “These aren’t the type of people who get visitors,” he said, speaking up for the first time, “and if they do, they come in ones or twos, usually late at night.” He thought about this for a moment. “Kind of like you two,” he continued, sounding almost philosophical. The guard held his hand out, and I wondered if I was supposed to tip him. As I reached for my wallet, Connor reached into the pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

  The guard snatched it from him and looked down at what was written there. His eyes widened.

  “This one might take me a while,” he said. He reached up and pressed the button on his communication device. “We’re going to need three men to Level C. I repeat, three to Level C. Make that four . . . and dress for a mess.”

  He folded the paper back up, handed it to Connor. “You two wait here,” he said, then started off toward another door at the far end of the room. He rapped on it, and then there was a short buzz. He let himself out before slamming it back shut.

  “ ‘You two wait here’?” I said. “Where the hell does he think we would go?”

  While Connor and I waited, the clanging and buzzing of doors opening got closer and closer until the door nearest us buzzed. It slid aside to reveal the imposing figure of Faisal Bane strapped to a tall cart with wheels on it. He was in a straightjacket with his arms lashed around him, and tight straps ran up and down the length of his outfit. The only part of him exposed was his head of dark hair. His sharp European features were a little more drawn out than usual, bordering on the side of sickly. Incarceration wasn’t treating him well, even though his face was a stone mask of indifference as the guards wheeled him into the room and deposited him in front of us.

  The sway of the barge caught all of them off balance, and the cart Faisal was on tipped forward, putting him in danger of slamming down on his face with no way to break his fall. All five men strained to upright the cart and luckily stopped it before it fell all the way over. They set it firmly on the ground and backed away from it with caution.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Do you keep him all Hannibaled up like this all the time?”

  The guard shook his head.

  “Why do you think it took me so long?” he said, with a laugh. “Nah, we usually let the prisoners roam free among themselves . . . No one really cares if one prisoner goes after another out here, you know? But, well, we can’t really have him running free around you outties.”

  I refrained from joking that I was an innie and instead gave a respectful nod. This seemed to satisfy the guard. He walked over to Faisal and looked him in the eyes. Faisal stared back at him, impassive.

  “Now, I’m gonna be right over there,” he said, pointing to an enclosed surveillance room with windows along one wall, “while you conversate with your little friends here. You do or say anything out of line and we’re gonna have a problem. You know, the kind of problem that only a stun baton can solve. Alright?”

  There was no reaction from Faisal whatsoever, unless you counted blinking.

  The guard and his four companions headed off toward the surveillance room, talking amongst themselves, their laughter giving me the creeps as it echoed in this dreary and depressing place.

  “Hello, Faisa
l,” Connor said. “Not quite as nice as your old office at the Empire State Building, is it?”

  Faisal ignored Connor the same way he ignored the guard, choosing to change his stare to me. “I wondered when you might show up,” he said, the traces of something Slavic running through his accent.

  Seeing Faisal again brought back all the fear and intimidation I had felt when we first met, but there was a new fire of hate in his eyes. And why not? I had driven Jane to betray him, depriving him of her. Thanks to Wesker, we had even thwarted his assassination attempt on her with his corporate “headhunter.”

  “I get the impression you’re not too excited to see me,” I said.