Beth rubbed her arm, still sore from the battery of tests Kander had performed on her. “Care to finally tell me where we’re going? Not like I can run away or anything.”
Thorne looked up from the tablet. “Ocean City, New Jersey.”
Fuck, New Jersey again. Beth was beginning to think the Garden State had earned a new moniker: Unluckiest Place on Earth. “Why Ocean City?”
Thorne rolled her eyes, then approached Beth. “Shift over,” she said, sitting down. They could have been two gal pals out for a round of chardonnay and gossip, just in a helicopter instead of a wine bar. Thorne tapped the tablet’s screen, bringing up a map of New Jersey.
“Here’s Ocean City.” A red dot appeared beneath Thorne’s well-manicured finger. “A number of attacks that fit the—ahem—vampire profile began almost two years ago.”
“The profile?” Beth asked, almost to herself. She knew those creatures’ profile cold.
“Yes. Along with a few that don’t fit. But that might have been the work of the Asbury Park anomaly.”
Anomaly, Beth thought. That’s one way to put it.
Thorne tapped again, and a series of red dots flashed northward. It was almost a direct line from Ocean City to Asbury Park and then on up to the Fishkill junkyard. Next to each dot was written the date, flowing in chronological order. “Agent Ross believes that the Asbury Park anomaly first appeared here.”
“Ocean City is a big place,” Beth said, eyes still on the map. “Are we just going to fly around looking for evidence? Maybe some graffiti that reads Monster was here?”
“We have a witness,” Thorne answered. “Of sorts.”
Beth felt a growing pressure in her ears as the helicopter began its descent. “Of sorts?”
“A junk dealer named Cyrus Conrad. He filed an insurance claim after a storage locker he’d won at auction was destroyed.” Another tap, and a PDF of the claim form popped up alongside a photo of the man himself. In the Description of contents box, he’d scrawled, Carnival oddity and accompanying refrigeration unit. “I can’t imagine what the adjuster who got that must have thought when he saw it.”
“Right. And you think this is what you’re after? Seems pretty thin.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. Or what you think. What matters is what Agent Ross thinks. He’s had a team sifting through anything even the slightest bit out of the ordinary since Asbury Park. And I mean anything. Agent Ross is . . . preternaturally thorough, I’ve found.” Thorne’s voice cracked slightly at that last comment.
Outside the window, the ground loomed closer. The surf pounded the coast in white-capped ribbons of blue. A boardwalk lined with attractions snaked downward, demarcating land and sea. The people who had seemed like insects only a moment before now looked almost big enough to be dolls. “So how much do a carnival oddity and accompanying refrigeration unit go for these days?” Beth asked.
“Fifty-five thousand dollars,” Thorne answered without a hint of irony. “That’s what Conrad’s claim was for.”
“Not bad. Did the insurance company give it to him?”
“No,” Thorne said. “That’s what we’re here to do.”
The helicopter touched down in the middle of a derelict softball field.
“Our intel puts the subject about a quarter-mile away,” Thorne said, stepping from the chopper. “We’ll walk.”
“Great,” Beth said, also alighting. They left chopper and pilot in the field and headed toward the boardwalk.
The air was stifling, but Beth knew it would be breezier closer to the water, and she hoped that at least some of that quarter-mile would be headed in that direction. Her new wardrobe didn’t help with the heat. While at the compound, she’d been given a few pairs of jeans and black T-shirts. Which was fine by Beth. But for this outing, Thorne had insisted that Beth dress the part and had loaned her one of her own skirt suits, a subtly striped designer number in summer-weight wool that looked as if it cost as much as six months’ rent back in Beth’s daylight life.
Their attire garnered a fair amount of looks from the swimsuited and tank-topped beachgoers, even sending a couple of the more grimy characters scuttling. Beth pegged them for low-level pot dealers. She knew the type. She wasn’t much for suits, but she had to admit the intimidation factor had its perks. Maybe there was something to the Division’s signature look after all.
Beth drew the line at pumps, however, opting for a sensible pair of flats. By the time they hit the boardwalk, she knew that had been the right call. More than once, Thorne’s heels would get stuck in the slats. “Why did you need me for this, anyway?” Beth asked as they cruised past a particularly crowded hot-dog stand and rounded down an alley.
“I didn’t,” she answered, eyes still on the tablet map. “Agent Ross wanted you to accompany me. He seems to think you might pick up on certain subtleties in the subject’s story.”
“And he thinks I’m going to share them with you if I do?”
“He’s certain of it,” Thorne said matter-of-factly. “And he also believes you would appreciate the fresh air. His words.”
Beth shook her head. If Ross thought a little field trip to the Jersey shore was going to turn her all Chatty Cathy for the Division, he was in for a shock.
Thorne came to an abrupt stop. “This is it.”
As if on cue, a gaggle of people ambled past, led by a smiling man in a Hawaiian shirt so loud it might have been powered by batteries. They were headed for the parking lot. A sign above the place read Oceanfront Storage. “Step this way,” the man barked at full auctioneer volume. “And step lively.”
“That’s him,” Thorne said, pointing to another man hanging toward the back of the group. Beth recognized him from his photo. He was in his late forties, dressed in linen slacks and a well-worn guayabera that was a size too small for his spreading girth.
Thorne headed straight for him. “Cyrus Conrad?”
The man froze, looking over at them with a carny’s shiftiness. “You two looking to serve him papers?”
“No, sir,” Beth answered. “Nothing like that.”
“Then I’m Conrad. What the fuck you two want? I don’t remember orderin’ a copy of The Book of Mormon.” Conrad’s eyes followed the rest of the pack as it continued farther into the parking lot and the auction beyond it.
“Can we have a word in private?” Thorne asked, stepping into his path.
Conrad craned his neck over her. “I’m workin’ here. So unless one of you ladies is interested in a date—and I mean one I don’t pay you for—then you can call my cell.”
He was already reaching into his shirt pocket when Thorne said, “We’re here regarding an insurance claim you submitted. It was for the contents of the locker you purchased at auction from Seaside Self-Storage. This was a few years ago.”
The card stayed where it was. “Yeah, I remember. Thought you said you wouldn’t pay that. Act of God clause or some other shit.”
“We’ve had a chance to reexamine the claim and found some discrepancies on our end,” Thorne continued. “We apologize.”
“Apologize? That’s a first,” Conrad said, trying to duck past them, anxious to get back with the group before the action got under way.
Thorne blocked him. “And we are prepared to cut you a check right now for the damages, plus interest, of course.”
Conrad held them there with slitted eyes. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch.”
“Fine, then. Make the check out to Cyrus Conrad,” he said, finally barging past them. “And that’s Conrad, spelled C-A-S-H.”
“We just need some information for our files,” Thorne called to Conrad’s retreating back. “And then we’ll be on our way.”
He stopped, shaking his head as he watched the last of his fellow buyers file into the Oceanfront Storage building, shutting the door behind them. “Can’t we do that later? Kinda busy here.”
“We can come back,” Beth interjected. Thorne shot her a What the hell are you p
ulling? look.
“That’d be great.” He was already quickening his steps.
“How’s September look, Mr. Conrad?” Beth said, and responded to Thorne with a That’s what the hell I’m pulling smile.
“Fine.” He sighed wearily. “We’ll do it now. Why don’t we take a stroll over to my office? And call me Cy.”
Thirty-Nine
OCEAN CITY, NEW JERSEY
Conrad’s “office” turned out to be a late-model F-150 crew cab coupled to a box trailer. “Least I’ll save on gas haulin’ this back empty,” he said as he leaned against the trailer’s riveted wall. “You’re really gonna cough up the whole fifty-five large?”
“The company is,” answered Thorne.
“Okay, what dya need?”
“I’m recording this,” Thorne began, pulling out her tablet and tapping the screen. “Hope you don’t mind.” Conrad waved twice, indicating that he didn’t. “You listed the item as carnival oddity. Can you give us more substantive details about what it was?”
“I already told you clowns what it was on the phone.”
“We’ve only just been assigned to this claim,” Beth chimed in. Maybe she didn’t want to help the Division, but her curiosity about what they’d seen in Castle Amusements burned deep and hot. “What did you tell the other claim agent it was?”
Conrad threw up his hands in exasperation. “The Minnesota Mermaid.”
“Mermaid?” asked Thorne. To Beth, it sounded as if she wasn’t asking for clarification but rather confirmation.
“Yeah,” Conrad continued. “Minnesota Mermaid.” He waited for some sign of recognition and got nothing. “Ahh, you’re both too young to remember it. But that’s why I put in for the full fifty-five grand. Once I found out what it was, I knew was worth every penny I paid. More, even. One of a kind. Real piece of history.” Again, he scoured their blank expressions. “They didn’t tell you any of this? Jeez, I sent in a fax of the flyer and everything.”
“Flyer?” Thorne asked.
“Yeah. Still got it in my office. Hold on.”
After a moment rummaging in the back of his truck, Conrad returned with a crumbling flyer and handed it to them. “Here. Lady friend of mine found it on the floor. Only thing in there besides . . . you know.”
The placard was at least thirty years old, yellowed with age and dog-eared at two corners. It had been silk-screened on tricolored pasteboard in the time-honored tradition of carnival posters everywhere. Dead center was a block-print silhouette of an alluring young girl. She sat on a rock outcropping, waves splashing around her, nude from the waist up and fish from the waist down. The poster’s banner line read Minnesota Mermaid.
“I remembered it from back when I was a kid,” Cy said. “They were showin’ it down on the boardwalk one summer back in the seventies. Two bucks a pop. Was supposed to be some fishermen found her in Lake Superior, frozen solid in an ice floe, and now some scientist guy was tourin’ the world with her. Real P. T. Barnum shit. The kids on my block were ravin’ about it. Said you could almost see her tits. Pardon me,” Conrad said, taken by a sudden bout of modesty. “No Internet back in those days. Naked ladies were a rare commodity.”
Beth nodded in mock understanding. “So were mermaids, I’d imagine.”
“No kidding. I begged my old man to take me, but he said no way was he standin’ in line for an hour to look at a block of ice with a JCPenney’s mannequin stuck in it.” A wave of whimsy washed over Conrad’s hardened expression. Beth could almost see a glimpse of the boy he’d once been.
“It wasn’t just the tit—ahem—the naked part,” Conrad continued. “It was the idea of layin’ eyes on a mermaid, a real effin’ mermaid. Growin’ up as a dock kid, I’d gut and scale fish on the pier for pocket money, see? Nickel per, quarter for the big ones. And you’d hear these stories from the old-timers. Stuff they’d seen out there.” He gestured in the direction of the surf. “Out there, where all bets are off and you never really know what’s beneath the surface. And after a couple snorts of mid-morning Bacardi, you can bet every one of them old salts came ’round to talkin’ about the time they saw a mermaid.” Conrad waved at the nostalgia in the air as if it were cigarette smoke that annoyed him. “All the other kids said they were full of shit. But I believed ’em. Least back then I did.”
Beth had never cleaned catch for spending cash, but she’d grown up a brick toss from the New Harbor wharves. She’d played with kids whose dads fished for both food and profit, and she’d heard the same stories. “What changed your mind?”
“What changed it?” Conrad scoffed. “I saw her, didn’t I? Stuck in that ginormous effin’ ice coffin. Don’t get me wrong. This was ace work. Hollywood shit. Hell, my lady friend, Terry, swore it was a body in there. Some Mafia shit, she thought, and almost tossed her lunch over it. Then we saw the tail. And the flyer. And we put it all together. Just a hoax. But shit if it didn’t look real for a hot minute.”
Thorne pressed closer. “You said your friend also saw it. Anyone else?”
Conrad shook his head. “Nah. Just Terry. She thought we should rent a stall on the boardwalk and show the thing. Sideshow crap is hot with the hipsters. They go apeshit for kitsch, you know. We thought we might even try to get one of those reality TV shows to come down here. ’Course, we were a few pitchers deep by then, but still. Return of the Minnesota Mermaid, we said they should call it. Man, we were gonna make T-shirts, towels, replica Lucite paperweights, you name it. We were going to make a mint. Then Sandy came along and fucked it right up.”
“Sandy?” asked Thorne.
“Hurricane Sandy.” Conrad stared at them as if they’d just beamed in from Alpha Centauri. “Jeez, they really did send you two in clueless, huh? Yeah, Hurricane Sandy. Shoulda seen this place after that bitch blew into town. Looked like effin’ Atlantis. And after, the mermaid was gone . . . long gone. Nothin’ left but the front frame of that ice coffin, rivets popped right from the steel, glass shards sticking out like shark teeth.”
“What did she look like?” Beth asked. “The mermaid?”
Conrad paused, hauling up the memory. “Real,” he said finally. “She looked real. Better than any of that wax museum shit.”
“Can you describe her?” Thorne held the tablet’s microphone out closer.
“Sure. Late teens. Twenty, maybe. She was naked, and yeah, you could almost see everything. Her skin was creamy white, Irish-like. And she had this wild red hair and piercing green eyes. Fuck, they looked alive, those eyes. They looked like they were awake. And there was the tail, sure. Couldn’t see much of that. It snaked back to where the ice got all cloudy. But the top half . . . beautiful, she was just beautiful. Like one of those museum paintings. You know, that look like photographs, with the knights and the ladies-in-waiting and all.”
“Pre-Raphaelite?” hazarded Beth.
“Yeah. That’s it. But . . .” Conrad’s eyes scraped the ground.
“But what?” Beth pushed.
“But she looked like she was in pain. Like she was screamin’, really.” He shook the memory. “Guess whoever made her had a pretty sick sense of humor.”
“Guess so.”
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Conrad.” Thorne was already producing an official-looking check ledger. “We’d like to get sketches of the . . . mermaid and the refrigeration unit—”
“Shit, you shoulda seen that fucking thing!” he interjected, excitement getting the better of him. “Like it came from a tag sale at David Cronenberg’s house. Cree-ee-py. But sketches? Sorry, I’m not much with a pencil past stick figures.”
“We’ll send one of our artists to meet with you this afternoon. Would that be all right?”
“For fifty-five large? Shit, he can sketch me in the nude if you want.”
Beth tried to banish the image of Conrad in his saggy birthday suit. “The lady friend you mentioned?”
“Terry?”
“Would she be able to meet with our artist, too? We’d like to get as
complete a picture as possible. She’d be compensated, of course.” Beth flashed a smile at Conrad, but it was meant for Thorne.
“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Conrad scratched his hairy belly through the pucker between buttons on his shirtfront. “She’s in there.” He hooked a thumb toward Oceanfront Storage. “Probably crushin’ the rest of the rubes. She’s got game, that one. Compensated, you say. What kind of compensated?”
“Five thousand,” Beth said, checking anything Thorne might have said to counter with an even wider smile. “And another thousand for you for your trouble.” If the Division was opening its checkbook, she might as well soak them for all she could.
“Shit yeah. She’ll be there.” Conrad reached back into his shirt pocket and produced cards for both of them. “Have your guy call me with the when and where. And trust me, Terry probably looks a lot better naked than I do.”
“Yes, very humorous, Mr. Conrad. We’ll be in touch.” Thorne quickly scribbled out two checks, then tore them from the ledger and thrust them into the man’s waiting hands. “Would it be all right with you if we kept the flyer for a few days? We’ll mail it right back.”
“No skin off my ass.” He shook his head in disbelief as he stared at the two checks.
“Good day, then, Mr. Conrad.”
“Yeah,” he said, eyes still wide on the money. “Now it is.”
As they made their way back to the softball field, Thorne glanced over to Beth. “A beautiful woman of about twenty, with milk-white skin, red hair, and striking green eyes. And naked. Sound familiar?”
Beth nodded. It did sound familiar. All too familiar. “Don’t forget the tail.”
“Guess the lead wasn’t so thin after all,” Thorne added. “That was smart, by the way. Asking Conrad to bring his friend in. Maybe Ross was right about you.”
Beth bit the inside of her lip so hard she tasted metal but said nothing.
Thorne had her cell phone out by the time they reached the helicopter. “Have one of the New Jersey cells send a sketch artist to this location ASAP,” she said into it, then rattled off an address and the number on Conrad’s card. “And also have the team dig up everything they can on something called the Minnesota Mermaid. I want it by the time I touch down in New Harbor.”
As the Worm Turns Page 54
