Necropolis

by Michael Dempsey

  The drummer from the swing band reeled over. He leaned against the bar, reeking of cheap gin and cheaper cologne. “Hey, pal, how much she cost?” He leered pop-eyed at Maggie, and then batted my arm.

  “Pardon?” I said.

  “These holowhores is getting good.” He nudged me conspiratorially. “Almost feel like the real thing.” Unbelievably, he actually reached toward Maggie’s breast for a touch test. I smacked his hand away and stood.

  “Get lost,” I said, voice low.

  Maggie’s spine straightened in alarm. “Donner…”

  The drunk’s ogling face contracted into something ugly. He opened his band jacket to show me the walnut grip of a pistol.

  “Meet Roscoe,” he said.

  Why did guys always think packing iron made them tough?

  “Drop it in the Hudson before you hurt yourself.”

  “Maybe I’ll drop you in a cemetery where you belong, corpse.” He put his hand on my shoulder.

  The change in my eyes panicked him. He made the mistake of reaching for his piece. Bad move. A punch-kick combination lashed out of me automatically. His left arm became useless and he crashed to his knees, shins on fire. The gun hit the floor and I sent it skittering across the floor toward the bandstand.

  It should’ve ended there, but like most inexperienced fighters, the guy didn’t know when he was done. He struggled up and threw a wild roundhouse at my head. The hatred on his face for me—no, for what I was—was so raw that my mind exploded in a red haze and a roar came from my lips. Somewhere Maggie was yelling.

  When I returned to myself, the drummer was out on the floor with a crumpled face and left side, the bartender had his bat out and I was being pulled from the bar by Maggie.

  “Go!” Maggie hissed. “C’mon, now!”

  Outside, a taxi floated curbside liked a bored bumblebee. Maggie pushed me in and waved her wrist at the armrest scanner. “Home,” she instructed. Her address materialized in the windshield and the cab pulled away.

  I stared into empty space. “What… ?”

  “You broke his jaw! And his collarbone, from the look of it!” She fell against the seat. “Jesus, If I hadn’t pulled you off him…” She fixed me with a disturbed look then, as though seeing with fresh eyes. “You were going to kill the man.”

  My voice wanted to fall apart. I clamped down hard. It came out mechanical and low.

  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” I said.

  ***

  Maggie got him home and into bed without too much more trouble. She looked at Donner’s face, tight and unhappy even in sleep, and stepped quietly out of the bedroom. She activated her telephony program and waited for the connection.

  “What?” came a gravel-filled throat.

  “We had an incident.”

  “Did you handle it?”

  “Of course. But I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

  12

  DONNER

  The next day, Bart’s displeasure at hearing from me was palpable.

  “You got me into this,” I said, shading my eyes against the Venetian blinds, wondering what the morning sun had to be so damned happy about.

  I recounted my meeting with Ms. Struldbrug. I wanted background on the murder of Crandall’s associate, Dr. Smythe.

  “They weren’t connected. Different M.O.s,” he said.

  “You’re sure? Where’d it happen?” I asked.

  “An S&M Club in Harlem.”

  “S&M? You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours?”

  It was an old cop joke. I felt him smiling on the other end of the line.

  “Meet me at the scene in twenty minutes,” he said grudgingly, and gave me the address.

  ***

  As the taxi slid north of 90th street, the landscape changed. At first, I couldn’t peg the difference. The buildings looked the same: vintage row houses, store fronts and apartment buildings. We passed Graham Court at 116th, a regal landmark commissioned by John Jacob Astor. I’d been inside once. Eight elevators.

  So what was different?

  The vehicles, for one. They were blockier, with squared-off cabs, fat fenders and toothy radiators. And the natives—black interspersed with white and Latino. The men wore v-necks, bow ties and spectator shoes. Some of the preppier ones had wide-legged cuff pants that dragged the ground—oxford bags, I think they called them. The women wore figureless, backless dresses of silk, georgette and crepe. They adorned themselves with beads or pearls and feathered bandeaux, their hair short and waved, covered in low-brimmed, boyish hats. It seemed incredibly formal for street wear—

  —and then it fell into place all at once. I’d driven into the 1920s.

  Harlem had returned to its heyday, the Harlem Renaissance—the age of Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington and Zora Neale Hurston. Of bohemians and flappers, speakeasies and hooch joints, the Cotton Club and middle-class black doctors and lawyers on Striver’s Row, struggling for respect.

  It’d been silly to assume a city as large and diverse as New York would have adopted only one retro style. And naïve to think that black culture, so fiercely independent, wouldn’t develop their own identity distinct from white Manhattan.

  The cab pulled to the curb. I couldn’t see an address. “Is this right?” I asked the hackie.

  The man gave me a look. “You wanted Acquiesce, right? Down the steps.” He added sarcastically: “Have a good time.”

  I went down the steps to the basement level entrance, and sure enough, the name was enameled on the black door. I rang the buzzer. A slot shunted back, revealing dark eyes.

  “Appointment only,” the husky voice said.

  A hand that was mottled with age spots reached past from behind me and flashed a badge. The eyes in the slot blinked and disappeared.

  I turned to regard Bart. “Retired, my ass. I didn’t hear you at all.”

  He suppressed a look of pride. “Semi. Semi-retired.” He looked like he’d slept an hour last night. In his clothes.

  “Thanks for meeting me here.”

  He threw me some half-hearted annoyance. “Couldn’t very well leave you twisting in the wind.”

  The door opened, revealing the dark eyes’ owner. The bruiser gave us a cement glower. His cream leather pants showcased a prodigious crotch. He was shirtless, other than a white vest. Arms and chest were covered in violent tats. An Aryan Brotherhood Chippendale dancer.

  “We told you we’d be back, Danny,” said Bart. “That wasn’t very polite.”

  Danny didn’t seem recalcitrant. “This thing is bad news.”

  A tall, black reborn woman in an evening gown appeared in the narrow hall behind Danny. “We don’t like bad news, do we, Daniel?”

  “No, Madame St. Clair.” The brute sounded like a shy school kid around the woman.

  Bart gave the woman a two-finger salute. “Afternoon, Queenie.”

  She didn’t like the moniker. She angled her head at me. “Who is the gentleman?” It came out in a French Caribbean accent. “Who iz zee jentlemahn?”

  “Paul Donner. He’s an investigator.”

  “You’re so fresh, mon chéri you still have zee dirt in your ears.”

  I flushed. Danny sneered.

  “Crime scene is still intact, I hope,” said Bart.

  “As you requested. Me and Bumpy, we cooperate with the police.”

  Something clicked in my head. Harlem… Bumpy… Queenie… Jesus! This was Queenie St. Clair, back from the grave! She’d been a powerful crime boss in the 1920s, and Bumpy Johnson had been her right-hand man. She’d run the famous extortion gang known as the Forty Thieves, as well as numbers rackets. This was one hard woman. Within a year after immigrating from Martinique with $10,000, she’d been worth more than half a mil. In that day, for a black woman to take over a predominantly Caucasian gang of cut-throats like the Thieves… well, it spoke to her powers of persuasion. She’d grown so powerful that even the Italian families didn’t encroach on her turf. If she and
Bumpy were back, then Harlem had new landlords.

  “Yeah, where is your number one?” asked Bart.

  “Who can tell?” she said. “Maybe on holiday.”

  Bart sucked his teeth. “You know, Queenie, you wouldn’t have tolerated this crap in the old days. Bumpy’s pimping.”

  “This eez not a whorehouse, Detective. Eez a club. Consensual and legal. Nobody sells sex here.”

  “Just renting handcuffs, eh?” I said.

  Queenie bobbed her broad shoulders. “Ah, oui.”

  “Okay, let’s see the dungeon.”

  We followed Queenie in, past a long series of doors on either side of the corridor. I’d busted enough places like this to know that behind them were mattress-filled mini-rooms for patrons who wanted more privacy than the main space.

  We descended an iron spiral staircase. Stucco walls gave way to stone. Electric flambeaux were mounted every ten feet on brackets. The place felt like the Tower of London.

  “Quaint,” I said.

  Queenie paused. “I don’t want you disturbing my guests.”

  “Your guests are already disturbed,” said Bart. “Donner, why do people go in for S&M?”

  I grinned. “Beats me.”

  We both chuckled. Queenie rolled her eyes and proceeded.

  The main dungeon was impressively equipped. Chains hung from the walls. Various devices with restraints were scattered across its thirty-foot expanse. Holo emitters projected hallucinogenic gothic montages of hardcore rock, vampires, bondage and a hundred other bizarre things, accompanied by music so poundingly physical it disrupted your heartbeat.

  Of the twenty-five patrons or so currently partying, most were on the floor. They were tattooed and pierced, uniformly clad in skin-tight black or red leather, plastic or mesh. The group was young and surprisingly attractive. My attention went to a cage floating nearby, where a bound male was being whipped by a preppy-looking girl while several older dominatrixes watched, adjusting their corsets and poking at the concrete floor with their spiked heels. Two males passed in rubber suits with chain harnesses binding their chests; their masters walked in front of them, leashes in hand. A tanned man in his sixties sat on something resembling an oversized cat perch, a red ball tied into his mouth beneath a delicate lace blindfold. “Burn me” was scrawled across his chest in lipstick.

  I shook my head.

  Four enormous bureaus occupied the end of the room, doors open to reveal all manner of accoutrements—hoods, crops, nipple and genital clamps and a hundred varieties of leather straps. There were lubricants and oils, too, but these cost money.

  A sign by the entrance explained the policy of the establishment; what was legal and permissible, and what went too far. Guests had to sign a complicated waiver. It was for show. No way that this place’s patrons would play by rules.

  Further in, there was an arched stone entrance to an inner antechamber. It had been sealed by yellow police tape. Bart swept it aside and we moved into the smaller room. Apparently Danny had better people to harass, for he disappeared.

  A heavy wooden chair sat in the far corner. I examined the metal cap and restraints. Cable ran from the chair to the wall and up to the head cap.

  I turned to Bart. “This is a real electric chair.”

  “Bump bought it from Sing Sing when they retired it,” said Queenie. “One of his old haunts.”

  “It can’t be functional… can it?”

  “Oh, oui, it runs some current—not so much as would kill you. It’s just for… attitude adjustment.” She smiled, the white enamel of her teeth flashing in the torchlight.

  Bloodstains covered the seat and arms of the chair. I bent to examine the arm more closely. Queenie opened her mouth, but Bart raised a finger. He smiled as he watched me.

  “Okay, Donner. Let’s hear it.”

  I rubbed my jaw. “Even though he was big—over two hundred pounds—Smythe was a bottom. Someone had to be topping him for him to allow himself into the chair. He was restrained at the time of the assault.” I pointed to blood-free banded areas along the chair where wrists and ankles would rest. “Leather shackles. I presume they were removed by NCSI for testing.”

  Bart nodded, and rolled his hand for me to continue.

  “From the pattern of the blood, most likely the killer stepped up to the vic like this, and slashed his throat from right to left with an edged weapon—which makes him either left-handed or ambidextrous. He severed the right carotid artery, probably in a single stroke. The stroke likely also severed the windpipe and neck tendons. This spatter here on the wall—” I pointed to an impressionistic blob to the left of the chair “—came from the weapon as it finished its arc. This other distribution, on the chair seat and floor, is arterial spray. The guy bled out in minutes.”

  Queenie patted her hands together in silent, grim applause.

  I turned to Bart. “Suspects?”

  “This room was empty except for our two participants.”

  “Would a bound man be left unattended like this?”

  “Oh, yes,” replied the Madame. “That’s part of the game. Bound and gagged, left, maybe for hours… You never know when or how someone will decide to… play with you.”

  I looked at Bart. “Any sign of electrocution?”

  “The ME said no. The chair was off.”

  “It requires a key and a trained operator,” added Queenie.

  I scanned the floor around the chair. “No drop patterns leading away from the chair.”

  “He dropped the knife next to the chair. No prints.”

  “Wiped?”

  “No.”

  “So gloves. Either a pro or a very cool customer.”

  “Could point to premeditation.”

  “He?” said Queenie. “How do you know it was a he?”

  “Not many females cut throats,” I said. “Too up close and nasty.”

  “In your world, maybe,” she replied. “But here? It might suit many tastes.”

  I realized she was right.

  “Blade was a Ka-Bar 12-inch fighting knife,” said Bart, consulting a small notebook. “Sandvik high carbon, high chromium, stainless steel blade. The handle was a Kraton G thermoplastic elastomer.”

  “A combat knife?”

  “Combined tactical and utility.”

  “So it could be military issue.”

  “Or bought from any one of a hundred retailers. It hasn’t been cutting edge since the turn of the century.”

  My eyebrow arched. “Cutting edge?”

  He hid a smile. “Sorry.”

  A shriek of pain, delight, or both, came from the dungeon.

  “No one saw the killer exit?”

  “No one in the main dungeon remembers seeing that door open again after Smythe went in, until the body was discovered, an hour later.”

  “These witnesses were, at the least, distracted,” I said.

  “Sharon would have seen,” said Queenie.

  “Who?”

  “A submissive,” said Bart. “Bound to one of the St. Andrews facing the door. She swears no one went in or out.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Great. So we have a respected genetic scientist with a kinky side who winds up with his throat cut by a ghost in a dungeon.”

  Bart’s mouth wriggled in distaste. In this light, he looked all of his years. “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Could our missing Dr. Crandall have been the doer? A professional rivalry taken to the final level?”

  Bart shook his head. “Crandall was alibied by four assistants. Besides, from all accounts, they got along famously.”

  “So we have no real way of knowing if Smythe’s killing has anything at all to do with Crandall’s disappearance.”

  “Right.”

  “Great.”

  “We’ve got the rest of the research team under surveillance, just in case.”

  I nodded, then looked at my watch. “Shit. Gotta go.”

  “What, you got a full social calendar already?” />
  “An appointment with Surazal’s head of research.”

  Bart grimaced. “Gavin? Oh, you’re going to love him. He’s a genius, and he’ll make sure you know it.”

  “Madame St. Clair, thanks.” I took the surprised woman’s hand and laid a kiss across her knuckles. The giggle that emanated from her could’ve been from a school child. The abrasive old broad must have a deeply-buried soft side.

  I turned to Bart. “See you in the funny papers.”

  “Hey, Donner,” said Bart, shuffling. “You did good.”

  My throat tightened as I walked out.

  13

  DONNER

  The building looked like it had been blown from glass. It twisted at impossible angles, a silver sculpture. That people worked within seemed an afterthought. The sun made its spires glow so brightly that I wondered if the glare was a driving hazard to the serfs below. There was an outer morphinium shell over the building’s superstructure that slowly, over the course of the day, undulated and changed shape. You could actually see it flow if you stood there long enough. There were thirty of the same sort scattered around Manhattan, the gimmick being that New York’s skyline was never exactly the same.

  I crossed the courtyard toward a triple set of revolving doors. Nestled between them was a plaque with brushed copper letters that read simply: THE SURAZAL CORPORATION.

  I rode the elevator to the fiftieth floor and the company’s Research and Development Division. A receptionist took my name and blinked out of existence.

  The décor was deliberately expensive and deliberately ugly. Visitors weren’t wanted here. Images flowed across the wall opposite me. A scientist. The Blister. A double helix. Captions like “Surazal Corporation—Protecting the World.”

  From me, I thought.

  Two men entered, lost in conversation. The first one I immediately placed. The resemblance to Nicole was remarkable. Adam Struldbrug, President of Surazal Corporation. Her twin. One of the most powerful men in the country.

  His features were severe but handsome, his thick black hair slicked into place. Something subtle in his coloring suggested Mediterranean ancestry, but he had the same piercing blue eyes as Nicole. His body was so symmetrical that he could have bought off the rack and looked tailored. But the fabric that swathed his limbs was a thousand dollars a yard.