by Rick Wayne
I was scanning municipal documents as fast as I could.
“And?” she prompted again a moment later.
It took me another minute to find it. “According to their SEC filings, Rex Magnus & Associates is part of a property development consortium called APEX Partners. Jesus . . .” I sighed. “This is complicated. Okay, so, there are a shit-ton of company names here. Shells, I guess. Paper entities.” I shook my head. “I dunno. It would take a while to go through them all.”
“They’re good at hiding,” Dench said flatly.
“Let me try something.” I accessed the Department of Health network. “The grocery co-op sold cooked duck, among other things.”
“So?”
“So, that’s a prepared food, which requires a food service license—wholly separate from any financial or real estate documents. That license requires not only the name of the food service company but the owner of the real estate where any food is served. By law, both have to maintain offices within the city.”
Milan and Dench watched me tapping.
“Boom.” I turned the tablet. “Per the New York Department of Health, the local offices of APEX Partners, LLC, occupy the top floors of a high-rise in the financial district. Get this. Right in the middle of the big circle.”
Milan stared at the screen. “The center of the labyrinth . . .” She went immediately for the door. “If we hurry, we might get there in time.”
But she didn’t say it to me. She said it to Dench. I think they intended to leave me.
I got up on wobbly legs. “Oh, hell no.”
My legs felt stronger, or at least less of a nauseating burden to operate. Part of it, I’m sure, was the water I had drunk, which was slowly being absorbed through my GI tract, increasing my blood volume—not to mention the tireless efforts of my bone marrow, which cranked out more red blood cells as fast as it could. But most of it, I think, was the sense of excitement and purpose. I felt like I had in Africa, where the only thing stopping us from doing the right thing was our own initiative. We were off to face some kind of evil, I knew not what, and despite the severe nausea that came and went, I felt significantly better than I had in days.
I watched from the back of the Jag as Dench loaded his revolver with silver bullets—bullets etched in tiny arcane symbols. He snapped the cylinder back into the casing with a flick of his hand.
“Shouldn’t we all have weapons?” I asked.
Milan was again behind the wheel. I got the impression that was never up for debate. The big engine roared the whole way there, which was surprisingly short. We caught every green light—some of which changed as we were approaching at speed—and made it over the bridge in what had to be some kind of record, which only quickened the feelings that gripped me.
Dench clicked the safety and holstered the gun.
“I was being serious,” I said. “Shouldn’t we all have weapons?”
Dench cleared his nose. “He’s scared,” he said.
“Actually. Yeah. I am.”
“Good.” Dench turned to me. “You should be.”
“So. What’s the plan?”
“Tell me, Doctor,” Milan asked, “do you believe in saints?”
“Saints?” I had to think for a second. I’d never considered the possibility. “I’m not Catholic, if that’s your question.”
“It’s not.”
“You mean like guys who can walk on water and heal by touch and all that?”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “Whatever they may do, a saint is human. Probably the most human of any of us. And no human is all good or all bad. But some people try—in difficult, often painful ways—to stoke the light inside themselves, just as others stoke the darkness.”
“Okay . . .”
“To pierce the veil that separates us from the dark place, the seekers of the dark must scourge a saint until he renounces the light.”
“Scourge?”
“Torture him,” Dench said. “And then eat him. Alive.”
I looked down at the gun. “Are we getting to the part where we all have weapons?”
“Gun isn’t gonna do much good,” he said. “Not against warlocks.”
“It did plenty at Granny’s,” I suggested.
“That’s different. Zombies got no magic but what’s cast over them.”
“Just do exactly as we tell you,” Milan said.
She hit her blinker and went to turn right, but a patrol car with flashing lights was parked at an angle in the road, blocking enough of it to let everyone know they weren’t supposed to go that way. I saw another set of flashers at the other end of the block. But it was damn near one in the morning, and while the roads certainly weren’t deserted, there were few cars. It was easy enough to go around. Milan navigated a no-turn lane, merged back into traffic, and headed to the south side of the block. Our destination was one of four buildings that faced a pedestrian square, which would be easy enough to cross on foot from the other side. Milan double-parked and hit the hazard lights.
“The cops are right around the block,” I objected.
“Don’t worry,” she said as the both of them hopped out. “The Jag won’t get ticketed.” She removed her necklace and handed it to me. “Stay behind us and hold onto this.”
“What is it?”
“It refracts the light of what can’t be seen. If there is danger, it will get dark. Then you run. Understand?”
Across the street, Dench was already striding up a set of concrete steps two at a time.
She looked into my eyes. “Don’t wait for us. Got it?”
I nodded.
“Yo,” Dench called from the top of the stairs. “We got a problem.”
Milan and I glanced at each other and then followed him into the square.
There was a fountain at the center, although it was still then. Flanking it on two sides were a pair of corporate sculptures, apparently part of a set. They had swoops and angles and didn’t seem to stand for anything, but they were shiny and confident about it, which seemed to me like appropriate symbolism for where we were. The buildings around us were mostly dark, the workers having gone home hours before. But a few dedicated souls remained at their desks, and the sporadic light from their offices made the towers look like giant servers, obliviously doling fate in bits and dollars, and I realized just how arcane all of that was, how all those formulas and transactions and chants on the trading floor magically turned the labor of millions into money for a precious few—as if conjured out of nothing. I thought about Ollie’s rant that day on the way to the Chinese grocer, how so much of what people say is nonsense. I wondered then how much of the mumbo-jumbo we take for granted in the world was actually magic.
My eyes ran to the top of the skyscraper across from us. It was obscured by a deep violet fog backlit by floodlights on the roof. I’d read about it once. It was a night effect. It happens in the city sometimes. Refraction of light from the water droplets creates a violet glow. I knew it was just optics. It wasn’t anything sinister. But that’s not how it looked. The whole scene was eerie.
A few steps ahead, Dench’s eyes were fixed on our destination, which was cordoned off with yellow caution tape.
Milan cursed.
The tape stretched around the entire front of the building. I saw a couple uniforms milling about, including a portly patrolman just past the far stairs. He was nearly as wide as he was tall and his arms swung a little as he walked.
Dench looked at me as if he was waiting for something.
“Right,” I said.
I walked across the square, passed the fountain, and stood at the top of the wide staircase looking down. Yellow tape was wrapped around the railing at the center and stretched away at an angle in both directions. Something had definitely happened in our building. I saw what looked like a pair of detectives, and there was a mess of TV vans parked irregularly on the street, the same street the patrol cars were blocking.
“Something else, huh?” a voice asked beh
ind me.
A man in an expensive suit and dark overcoat stood barefoot in the fountain. I saw no reason why I shouldn’t have noticed him before, but I hadn’t. He shifted his feet back and forth rhythmically, as if he was trying to cool them off in the water.
“The sky, I mean.”
“Oh. Right.” We both looked up at it. “It’s a night effect, I think. Something about droplets in the fog and all that.”
“Looks damned creepy to me. You with the police?”
“Not exactly. Why do you ask?”
He shrugged. “It’s just, you don’t look like an investment banker.”
But he did. He had the pomaded hair and leather gloves and tie pin and everything.
“Especially not with a piece of costume jewelry in your hand.”
I looked down at it. I put it in my pocket. “You work there?” I motioned to the building.
“I did,” he said with exasperation. “But this is the kind of thing that makes you wanna move to a new office, if you know what I mean.” He smiled. “Or at least bargain the landlord way down on the lease.”
“Any idea what happened?”
He shook his head as he stepped from the fountain. “I’m guessing that someone met a very messy end, judging from the crew and equipment that just went up the elevator. Sad, but it happens.”
“It does?”
“Sure. Some guys can’t take the pressure. Couple times a year, one of them will snap.”
I wondered then if that was the truth or if it was just what we were sold.
The banker’s shoes were in his hand. He set them on the concrete. The bare skin of his feet was steaming, although I couldn’t tell if that was because he was hot or because the cool, dry air was wicking the moisture from his skin.
“What kind of crew was it?” I asked.
He sat on the lip of the fountain to pull on his socks. “Hazmat. Or something. Are those friends of yours?” He nodded to Dench and Milan, peering at us from the other end of the square.
I wasn’t sure how to answer that.
“None of my business,” he said. “Sorry. It’s just, you guys don’t look like reporters either.”
“Believe it or not, I just met them a few days ago.” It was the most honest answer I could give that didn’t make me sound completely insane.
“Really?” he said, as if surprised by the concept. “That’s great. I can never find time for that kind of thing. Bit married to the job, I guess.”
“What job is that?”
He smiled.
“Hey!” The portly cop had noticed us and started up the stairs with an air that suggested he was gearing up to exercise his authority.
“Hey there.” I walked down and lifted the plastic tape over my head.
He raised a hand. “Come on, pal. You guys know the rules. No reporters past the line without an escort.”
“I’m not a reporter. We were just—” I turned to point to the banker, but he was gone. I didn’t see him anywhere.
The cop put his hand on my arm. “Why you guys always gotta make things difficult?”
I glanced around for the man, but not seeing him, quickly recovered. “Hold up.” I kept my feet and pulled free of his grasp. “I’m with the feds, hoss. Working with DoH.” I handed him my identification. “We’re investigating some recent illnesses. Maybe you heard about it.”
He squinted at my credentials. “That thing on TV?”
I nodded. Down the steps near the front of the building, a news crew began recording a segment. A bright light on top of a heavy camera lit a solemn young African American woman in heavy makeup and a drab coat meant to give her viewers a visual clue that this was a somber occasion. It didn’t match her ruby shoes, which remained off-camera. Her real coat, a bright yellow number, hung from the side mirror of the station van.
He handed my ID back to me. “Got something to do with this?” He motioned to the building.
“Well.” I glanced back to Milan and Dench, who had retreated out of sight. “It might,” I said.
“Good luck, buddy. That’s all I can say. It’s a total mess up there.” He waved me off with both his hands.
“What happened?”
“Some guy. One of them 99-percenters. Tried to blow up the offices of a capital investment firm. You know, ‘take back the economy’ and all that. Left a note and everything. Only he cocked it up. All the bastard ended up doing was embarrassing his family and making a lotta work for everybody else. The EMTs can’t even find all the pieces! Bits of him are hanging from the goddamned ceiling.” He shook his head. “I feel sorry for the poor schmuck down at the ME’s office who’s gonna have to put little Humpty Dumpty back together.”
“I hope it’s Pratt,” I mumbled.
“Huh?”
I shook my head. “I don’t suppose you have a name?”
“Yeah, Alonso something. Do-gooder from Spanish Harlem.” He saw my face. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah. Just fighting a little food poisoning.” I’m sure I looked sick. I motioned to the building. “You know what, sounds like you guys have your hands full. I’ll get the details at the office in the morning. Thanks.”
“Wait!” he called sternly after me.
I froze.
He waddled closer. “You guys gonna find the bastard who killed that kid?”
I smiled. “You bet.”
A chill breeze whipped across my legs and reached under my shirt with icy fingers.
We were too late.
The labyrinth had done its awful work.
Milan pulled her jacket around her as I approached. She read it on my face. “It’ll be long gone by now.”
I assumed she meant the book. The three of us looked up at the fog-shrouded building together for a long minute. I didn’t know what to say.
“We should get back,” Milan said.
I’m certain she was worried about finding a corpse in Etude’s bed.
“Can we give you a lift somewhere?” she asked.
“Actually”—I looked back toward the fountain—“I think I’m gonna go for a walk.”
“You sure?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Legs are doing a lot better. Thanks.”
The three of us turned to look at the building once again. We had found the center, but not in time. I handed the necklace back. She took it without a word.
What had happened up there, I wondered, in that violet glow? Had he been surprised? Or had they explained it to him? Had he begged for his life? Had he struggled? Were there candles and dark robes, or were they all dressed in Armani suits, stopping in the conference room for a snack between late-night calls with Tokyo? Had they simply killed him? Or had they actually eaten him, too? Had they joked about women and talked sports as they rinsed the blood from their hands in the executive washroom? Were they picking him out of their teeth as they drove home? Did they feel full? Powerful?
I started walking.
“Dr. Alexander,” Milan called from the car window a moment later.
I stopped.
“Take care of yourself.” She said it like she meant it. “This city . . . There are things in it . . .”
I nodded in understanding. Then I turned up the street. A moment later, I heard the car roar as it pulled away. I don’t even know how far I walked. I just kept going. I stopped at an all-night diner and had half a burger and two milkshakes. I called Marlene to let her know I was okay and asked how they were. Whether she cared still or not, I did. I called Ollie and left a voicemail on his work line. I said I was fine and they could call off the dogs, if there were any, and I’d catch him up later. I crossed the Manhattan Bridge as light broke over the horizon. I stopped halfway and watched the sunrise. I went back to my hotel. I tried to sleep, but I could do little more than doze.
There was something sharp nagging my mind.
You always hear people talk about having a splinter, but for me it seemed more like a mosquito bite between the lobes of my brain. Not a big painful one. Just a
n uncomfortable itch that made me wish I could pull open my skull and scratch. I knew I had all the pieces. I just couldn’t figure it out. Somehow I just knew. A poking, prickly mosquito of a feeling.
I’d missed something.
The residential street was upscale but not posh. Recently gentrified. It was also quiet, especially that early in the morning. I was leaning against a tree when she came out, box in hand.
“Dr. Alexander.” She stopped in shock on the stairs of her upscale three-story condo building.
Not Uchewe. Not Alex.
“Jeez, you surprised me.” She stepped down slowly. “What are you doing here?”
“Going somewhere?” I nodded to the car parked at the curb. The trunk was open. There were suitcases and a couple boxes, just like the one in her hands.
She lifted it as if to show off and smiled. “After what happened to Alonso, I dunno. That kind of thing really makes you examine your life. I guess I figured it was finally time to move on. Not exactly the best of circumstances, but believe it or not, I’m pretty excited.” Her smiled faded. “Are you okay? You don’t look so well.”
“Did I tell you about the fieldwork I did in Africa? For my dissertation? I can’t remember if I mentioned it.”
“I’m so sorry,” she interjected as she walked to the trunk. “I know it’s rude, but I really can’t talk right now. I’m in a bit of a hurry. But I have your number. I can call.”
“I never thought I’d see that many dead people again.”
“Dead people?” She set the box with the others and turned. “What are you talking about? Are you sure you’re not sick?”
“I couldn’t figure it out,” I said. “I knew I had all the pieces. But I just couldn’t figure it out.”
“I’m going to call an ambulance,” she said and turned for her purse.
“No one was supposed to care, right? Half a dozen junkies die every day in this city. Every. Fucking. Day. Plus a handful of homeless. No one even knows. It’s not like they get an obit in the paper. You said it yourself. No one would have cared about a bunch of dead illegals, either. Not if I hadn’t sent out that health alert. Just like no one cared about Cheri Cardenas.
