Bookburners: Season One Volume One

by Max Gladstone

  • • •

  Theories were for people with more patience than Sal Brooks, but the Brooklyn-bound Q train stopped over the Manhattan bridge, so she had time to make up a few. “I’m crazy,” the nuclear option, didn’t compel. The doctor said she was fine, physically. People snapped all the time, zero to nuts in sixty seconds, but this kind of snap didn’t match her experience. If she were cracking, her story would make more sense, or less, or both. She’d met people on this very train who told her with overwhelming conviction that they were the product of genetic experimentation by the United States government using alien DNA, and they’d built a prototype transport beam to take them home, which they’d show her if she visited the compound in Jersey they shared with their four lovers chosen to embody the classical Chinese elements. As if she’d trust someone who asked her to go to Jersey.

  So far she wasn’t ranting about conspiracies or screaming obscenities at passersby. Count crazy out, for now, though crazy people probably did that too. Once you reject the possibility you’re mad, anything you do, no matter how strange, must be sane. Keep going in that direction and you’re one step away from the creep with the chopped-off index fingers in his ashtray.

  The train crossed the river.

  But assume you’re not crazy, she thought. Perry didn’t come to you because of an argument with his roommates; he didn’t drop by to say hello. He was afraid. Maybe he thought they wouldn’t follow him into someone else’s apartment. Or maybe he knew he could escape somehow, if he just had time to—

  To read that book. Which made no sense.

  She rose out of the subway onto a long, wide Brooklyn street with three-story brick houses on both sides, blank dark windows, Italian bakery, convenience store. Newly opened coffee shops indicated these blocks were a hairsbreadth from hip. When the neighborhood crossed over, Perry and his friends would have to move. Providing, of course, whatever mudhole they’d stumbled into didn’t swallow them first.

  Perry’s roommates knew something. If they had seen him this morning, they could tell her how he looked, where he said he was going when he left. If not, they had lied to cops, which gave her leverage.

  Not that she’d need much with Aiden and Todd. The boys scared easy.

  She took a quick turn around the block. Dead for ten o’clock in the morning, most of the locals at work somewhere else. Cold November air tossed a Sun front page down the sidewalk, and Sal shouldered deeper into her jacket. She walked past the boys’ townhouse, which was the only one on the block still decorated for Halloween. A big rain-soaked felt-and-wire spider clung crookedly outside Perry’s window.

  Parked cars lined the street, mostly foreign-made. One finned pink Cadillac belonged in a Mary Kay reward brochure or a museum. And an E-Z Carpet Cleaner van.

  Every instinct in her screamed, keep walking. Call backup at least. Only idiots and martyrs throw themselves into situations they don’t understand without cavalry waiting.

  She didn’t know it was the same van. She was already on shaky ground back at the office. And the people who’d broken into her house seemed to have no personal feelings about their intrusion. If she remembered the conversation she’d overheard correctly, they even thought they had saved her from—something.

  Still, though.

  If Sal really wanted to rule out any chance she was crazy, she shouldn’t have walked straight to the van, drawn her gun, thrown open the rear doors, and told the two monitor-lit figures inside, “Hands where I can see them.”

  The Chinese woman rolled her eyes, then raised her hands to the level of her shoulders. “I told you we should have switched vans.”

  The redhead backed away from the keyboard and swiveled in his chair. “She was out cold. How was I supposed to know—”

  “Where the hell is my brother?”

  “That’s an interesting philosophical question, really,” the guy said. Nice accent. That was the concussion talking. Focus.

  The Chinese woman shifted forward in her chair.

  “Don’t move,” Sal shouted.

  “Excuse me, Detective Brooks,” said a voice from the sidewalk behind her—a man’s, deep, older, and studiously calm. The voice from the door. Sal drew back from the van and turned to include him in her field of vision. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

  He was tall, Hispanic, and wore a priest’s black shirt and collar. He held a tray with three coffees in one hand, but the other was raised, palm up, between blessing and surrender.

  “Who are you? What the hell is going on here?”

  “I’m Father Arturo Menchú,” accent on the second syllable, “and as for your other question: I can explain, if you’ll let me.”

  • • •

  They stood on the sidewalk beside the van. Menchú had wanted to talk inside, but Sal gave him a what-kind-of-idiot-do-you-take-me-for look, which ended that line of conversation fast. Red looked uncomfortable out in the open—he kept shifting from foot to foot and glancing over his shoulder, hands deep in his pockets. The woman just watched, arms crossed. A bandage wrapped the knuckles of her right hand, and there was a lot of lean muscle hiding beneath her black jacket. Sal liked her. After a confusing day, straightforward hostility felt refreshing.

  “You’re priests,” Sal said, skeptical.

  The woman laughed, once.

  “I’m a priest,” Menchú said. “Grace, of course, is not. Liam’s a lay brother.”

  “Why did you break into my apartment last night?” She considered adding how, in reference to everything: the broken door, the book, the corrupted tape. Decided against it. One problem at a time.

  Menchú set the tray of coffees atop the van. “Your brother’s in possession of a rare manuscript that does not belong to him. It used to belong to the people we work for. It was stolen seventy years ago. Turns out the volume spent the last seven decades in the Metropolitan Museum’s sealed collection. Two weeks ago, someone broke into that collection and made off with a number of books, including this one.”

  “You’re saying Perry was part of the museum heist.” She remembered Astoria, yesterday: severed fingers and an ashtray full of blood. White male, mid-forties. Shots fired. Hope of recovering—Christ—fingerprints. “No way.”

  “Not directly. Your brother and his friends were one of many parties looking to buy the stolen texts.” Father Menchú kept his voice calm, maintained eye contact, presented himself to her at an angle. He was good at seeming non-threatening; part of the job, Sal guessed. Her attention drifted back to Grace, who grinned, baring teeth. “There were others, willing to pay more. Your brother stole the book from the original thief, and left a copy in its place. We reached out to your brother, hoping to resolve the issue without violence, but he ran to you. And then he ran from you. The book is valuable, if only to a collector, and the people he stole it from don’t like to lose. We can keep him safe, if he works with us.”

  The fingers had been wedged into the gaps in the ashtray meant to hold cigarettes. Their nails pointed out: sunrays of flesh and bone.

  “He should go to the police.”

  “We are the police,” Menchú said.

  “Bullshit.”

  “We’re special consultants to the police department on this matter. If you’ll permit me.” He reached, slowly, for his breast pocket. She nodded. From within he produced a business card with a cell phone number Sal recognized. “This is Chief Gallagher’s card. She’ll confirm my story. We were overzealous last night, for which I offer my apologies. Perry is in great danger.”

  And there it was, beneath the professional polish, beneath the professional assurance Sal had heard too many times from priests and lawyers—Menchú cared.

  “I’m sorry,” he continued. “I know this has been a huge shock. I know you’re worried about your brother. So are we. We need to find him.”

  “One man,” Liam said, “off the grid, in a city like this. Paying with cash. No problem. Anyone else you’d like me to find while I’m at it? Elvis? A
melia Earhart?”

  Father Menchú ignored him. “It’s possible his friends know something. But they’re scared. They won’t talk to anyone they don’t know.”

  “We’re wasting time,” Grace said. “We should just knock down the door.”

  Liam nodded. “Great idea. Worked so well last night.”

  There were a thousand procedural reasons Sal should leave. But Perry was in danger, and if these people had the chief’s blessing, she could help them without breaking orders. Technically. “I can help.”

  “No,” Menchú said. “I’m sorry. We can’t involve you.”

  “I’m involved already. This is my brother we’re talking about. Every second counts. If you go in there without me, you’ll learn less than the cops did this morning.”

  “We know what we’re doing.”

  “So do I.”

  Menchú’s eyes were deep, and sad.

  Liam cleared his throat. “Let her in, Father. We’re shorthanded anyway.”

  The priest sighed. “Very well.”

  “One question,” Sal said, to break the silence as much as anything else. “You said you’re consultants. Where from?”

  The old man raised one finger to his collar. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  3.

  “Jesus Christ,” Sal said when Liam handed her the bug. It was barely visible against the cosmetic tape. When she set it against her skin she didn’t feel the slightest chill of metal. “This is good gear.”

  “My specialty. And this one.” Liam offered her a thin silver cross on a chain.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Stuff,” he said. “Just put it on, okay?”

  “I don’t believe in God.”

  “He believes in you.” He laughed as if he’d made a joke. “Think of it as a temporary deputization.”

  Grace checked her watch. “We could have been inside twenty minutes ago.”

  “Talk normally,” Liam said. “And we’ll hear. If there’s trouble, use the cross.”

  “Panic button?”

  “More like a mood ring, only in reverse. If you see something strange, try touching it with the cross. There are,” he wiggled his fingers, “circuits and stuff.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and left the van.

  • • •

  A skull knocker stared out at Sal from the boys’ front door, a half-inch left of center. Drill holes covered with duct tape pocked the door to the knocker’s either side—they’d tried to screw the knocker in three times without measuring the door’s actual midpoint, and after the third attempt agreed to celebrate their success.

  The mailman had given up on the overstuffed mailbox, its contents congealed by rain into a sodden block of wood pulp and ink. Layers of junk mail formed a newsprint marsh on the front step, sporting an impressive array of greenish molds.

  Sal stared into the skull’s glass-chip eyes, squeezed her own eyes closed, opened them again, and reached for the hinged lower jaw.

  Before she could touch it, the door jerked open to reveal Aiden, tall and gangly, wearing pajama bottoms and a dirty flannel shirt. He stopped the door with his foot, but he was too skinny to quite fill the small gap. “Sal, this is a really bad time.”

  She shoved the door. He stumbled back, upsetting a pile of mud-caked boots, and she pushed through into the narrow musty hall. The door slammed behind her. “Where’s Perry? What the hell have you gotten him into?”

  “Perry’s fine, Sal. Come on. This is, like, illegal search or whatever. I know my rights.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the weed you have in your desk, Aiden. Perry’s in trouble. True or false?”

  “Perry’s, um . . .” Aiden spread his arms to span the hall and block her path, between a rack of mud-splattered coats and a cross-stitch Perry’d made of Darth Vader’s mask. “Perry’s fine. We’re fine. We had, a, you know, small disagreement last night, but we’ve taken care of everything. Maybe we could go out for coffee and talk about it?”

  “Let’s talk here. Unless there’s something you’re trying to hide.”

  “Hide? No, of course not. What would we try to hide from you?”

  She jerked forward as if to duck under his left arm; when he braced to grab her she jagged right and he fell into the coats while she swept past into the living room, a sea of pizza boxes and USB cables. A rust-dotted Ren-faire sword hung on the wall. Something green bubbled in a beaker on a Bunsen burner atop a claw-foot table she’d rescued from curbside recycling for them. Stairs rose from the mess to the second floor, where the boys slept when they slept at all. Todd—black, older than Perry and Aiden, though he didn’t act it—sat at the couch flanked by two monitors, with a heavy leather-bound book open on a stand on the coffee table. He looked up and blinked at Sal through goggles. Aiden’s coat-muffled cursing from the hall mixed with music from upstairs, or something like music: a stream of bleeps and blips she remembered from sitting cross-legged on the carpet, eight years old, playing Nintendo.

  “Sally! Great to see you. Didn’t expect you to drop by. Perry didn’t say anything.” The prescription goggles warped Todd’s eyes to silver dollar size. “But this is a really bad time.”

  “Aiden said. The bad time wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with my brother’s disappearance, would it? Or the museum theft?”

  Todd let go of the book, too fast. His blue latex gloves left a trace of powder on the brown leather, which was embossed with a vine-and-knot pattern. Or were those vines, after all? “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Sal. Like we told the cops, Perry came by this morning. He was fine. He looked scared, but that’s it.” He swallowed hard. “Theft, though? You think Perry was mixed up in something—”

  “I haven’t seen that book around here before, Todd.”

  “Look.” He raised his hands, fingers spread. “Perry’s the one who gets the books. We analyze, translate. Upload. It’s all aboveboard, as far as I know. Maybe Perry got himself in deep with the wrong people, but I don’t know who or why.”

  “You just read the books.”

  “That’s it,” he said.

  “So if I came back here with a warrant, what would I find?”

  “You don’t want to do that, Sal. I mean, really.”

  “I want to know where my brother is.”

  “He doesn’t want to see you.”

  “He came to my house last night, terrified. Nothing’s changed between now and then.”

  Behind her, in the hall, Aiden recovered.

  “Sal.” Sweat ran down Todd’s temple to his cheek. “Maybe we can talk this over somewhere outside?” His eyes jerked up and left.

  She turned. Three bedroom doors upstairs—one for Aiden, one for Todd, one for Perry. Perry’s, the one with the Japanese cartoon scroll, was slightly ajar. “That sounds like a good idea,” she said, then ran up the stairs and burst through the door into Perry’s room.

  Monitors illuminated the unmade bed, the bare bookshelves, the piled clothing. There should have been sunlight, but the Halloween-store spider hung outside Perry’s window blocked the sun.

  And Perry himself sat in ripped jeans and bloodstained shirt, curled like a shrimp over his keyboard, unblinking eyes inches from his central monitor. Barefoot. Hair tousled. One-day growth of beard. Jaw muscles snaked, relaxed, snaked again as he rocked in his chair, typing.

  “Perry!”

  Except.

  Detective Brooks, a lawyer might ask someday, how did you know the person sitting in the chair was not your brother?

  And she’d open her mouth before the courtroom but no words would come out. An audience would stare at her. The judge would drum her fingers. The lawyer would lean forward. Any time, Detective Brooks.

  The clothes were Perry’s, the body language ditto.

  But still, when she said, “Perry?” the second time, her voice was uncertain.

  He stopped typing, uncurle
d himself vertebra by vertebra from the keyboard, and turned to her. His eyes focused on the wall behind her. He smiled woodenly. “Sal. Sister. I’m sorry you had to come here.”

  “Perry.” She’d imagined hugging him when she saw him again, imagined hitting him too. Neither seemed possible now. “Perry, you’re here.” As if saying that would make it true.

  “I am. And you should go, Sal.” What a reasonable suggestion. “I have work to finish, if you don’t mind.”

  She didn’t. But her not-minding was strange. Wasn’t it? “Perry, what happened last night?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I was pushed, you see. The Bookburners chased me, and I took help where I could find it. I’m perfectly fine. Better than I’ve been in a long, long while. You’re a . . . police officer,” he said, as if he’d just looked the fact up in a large and fine-print list. His words didn’t match the movements of his mouth. She focused through the fear—and why fear? He was her brother.

  But maybe he wasn’t, right now.

  His mouth was not moving in time with his words, because the words he spoke were not English, even though that was the language she heard. “It must feel like this when you solve a case. When the whole world makes sense at once. I’ve been working on a puzzle for a long time, and I just needed the right push.”

  He reached for her.

  There seemed to be a great deal of space between them all of a sudden, but his arm grew longer to bridge the gap. A finger of ice pressed against her skin above her heart, so cold it burned. As the hand approached it no longer looked like a hand at all, not like a hand of flesh. Torn corrugated tin twisted around paper and woven plastic bones, forming fingers. Black oil dripped from ragged joints. The arm was a length of rebar wound with trashbags and shredded cloth. Bottleglass eyes reflected the monitors’ blue glow. Thin lips parted to reveal metal teeth, wet with more oil.

  But some traitor impulse still insisted this was Perry, her brother, there was no reason to pull back from him, there was no reason to run, she should let this thing touch her, that the oil on its metal skin was not oil in fact but a whisper, a voice that might help her if it only got inside—