by Jon F. Merz
Then for the people like me, it gets weird.
I opened the iron gate and nudged Jack up to the heavy oak door that had been lacquered black years ago. A small buzzer to the left beckoned and I pushed it once.
It took Arthur just over five minutes to find his way to the front door from whatever part of the huge building he’d been. Still, when the door opened, he didn’t appear out of breath even though he must have been pushing five hundred easy.
He squinted at me, making the crow’s feet at the edges wrinkle deeper. "Yah?"
"Good to see you again, Arthur."
His eyes opened a little bit more and then he cracked a smile. "Lawson. Good to see you, lad." His thick British accent still clung to him despite years of work abroad. He looked down at Jack. "Who’ve ye got with ye?"
"This is Jack."
Arthur nodded and stood back, opening the door. "Come inside before ye catch yer cold. It’s freezing out tonight, eh?"
"Sure is."
The reception hall looked much the same as the last time I’d been here. Big and spacious walls with mahogany paneling sprouted from the floors of thick carpeting. Framed portraits of old vampire leaders hung from the walls while a few plants in antique chamber pots marked time in the corners. A vague smell that seemed part musty and part exotic spice – like myrrh - lingered in the air.
I shrugged out of my coat and saw Arthur hadn’t answered the door alone. In his left hand was the same shotgun he’d cornered Zero and I with a few months ago before he realized we weren’t a threat.
"Still taking precautions I see."
Arthur smiled. "Zero tell ye I was once one of you?"
"He did."
Arthur chuckled. "Old habits, they die hard ye know?"
"Fortunately."
Jack was still standing in the hall just looking around. Arthur clucked, lowered the shotgun, and put a hand on his right shoulder. "Impressive, ain’t she?"
Jack nodded.
"Never been here before lad, have ye?"
"No, sir."
Arthur clucked once more and led Jack toward a doorway set back off the hall. I followed behind. We pushed into the kitchen and a wave of warmth swept over us. A raging fire in the wood stove kept the whole room toasty.
I leaned against a gray granite counter top while Arthur steered jack to a chair by the wood stove.
"You warm up some here, son. I’ll be back in a flash."
He came back to me. "Wanna tell me what’s up then?"
I filled him in quickly. Arthur might have been getting on in years, but he was still a professional. He didn’t stop me once during my run-down of the events of the past few days. I finished and asked, "Can you watch him for me?"
Arthur nodded. "Yah, but only until tomorrow morning before the Council arrives. If they find out he’s here it could raise some eyebrows. You know what gossiping buggers those lot are."
"I’ll be back before then. I need to find this guy. I just hope whoever ordered the hit hasn’t killed him yet."
"You find him, you’ll find the guy who supplied humans with Fixer guns. Sounds like a conspiracy ye know."
"I know." I frowned. "That prospect hasn’t cheered me any."
Arthur looked over at Jack. "All to get at a little boy no less." He sighed. "Times’ve changed Lawson. They really have."
"Power, Arthur. It’s all about power."
"It ought to rather be about the good of our society. Isn’t that why folks like us exist?"
"That’s what I thought…once."
He nodded and clapped me on the shoulder. "Find yer man. The little lad will be all right here. I’ll make sure he’s fed and gets his head down for a few hours."
"Can’t thank you enough Arthur."
"Ye killed the bastard that killed Zero. That’s all the thanks I could ask. Zero, too."
I nodded but the hurt was still fresh. You don’t get over friends like Zero for a long time.
And I knew Arthur hurt too.
Chapter Eight
The Volvo felt empty without Jack riding next to me and I grinned a bit in spite of myself. The little dude was growing on me. Still, I needed some alone time to go hunting. Arthur would keep him safe until I got back.
I was parked on Mission Hill – the highest point in the city, looking out over the city skyline. In the distance, the John Hancock and Prudential Tower poked out of the urban landscape and jutted skyward like tent poles holding up the night. Boston was a damned pretty town, especially at night.
I punched a number into my cellphone and waited for the ringing to start. The line picked up after exactly one minute.
"Hello Lawson."
The voice on the other end of the phone belonged to Benny the Phreak, one talented computer geek. When I say talented I mean that Benny never left the house anymore. Never showered either by the smell of his place the last time I’d been there, which wasn’t very often.
"Benny, what’s happening?"
"You tell me. You called."
Benny the Phreak didn’t like wasting time when there were secret government files to be hacked or porn sites to be admired. I always kept the conversation to the minimum.
"I need a rundown of new patients into area hospitals for earlier this morning."
"How early?"
"Between 1am and 5am."
"Which hospitals?"
"Start with the Longwood Medical area. They’re close to the site where the guy would’ve been wounded. Expand outward from there."
"Any other parameters?"
"Bullet wounds ideally but don’t rule out lacerations or other penetrating wounds. Single, white guy age between 18-35."
"Got it."
"How long?"
"Twenty minutes."
I whistled. "Call me back."
I’d met Benny a few years back when I’d needed a pay phone and the only one available was being used by Benny to crack into the phone company’s main computer and then hopscotch his way through other major corporations, finally ending up at the Pentagon. And like I said before, I maintain an extensive list of contacts with the kinds of skills I don’t have ready access to. So, I struck up the friendship and we’d been in touch ever since.
But Benny didn’t come cheap. His services and his expertise cost a lot even if you had money to burn. But each time I used him, the Council never blinked when I filed the expense report.
Benny’s age was almost indeterminable. I figured he was at least 30 years old, but the length of his matted salt and pepper beard, long stringy hair and thick bottle glasses made it difficult to pinpoint exactly. Plus, with the exception of the whores who visited him on a regular basis when he wasn’t pleasuring himself, no one really wanted to stay around ol’ Benny long enough to ask.
He had money, though.
Did he ever. Benny’d made himself a fortune capitalizing on the fact that there were plenty of ugly people out there not getting a steady stream of sex. For them, masturbation was one of the few outlets they’d have. And Benny’d positioned himself perfectly by being the mastermind behind most of the larger porn sites on the Internet.
Not overtly, of course. Nothing Benny the Phreak ever did was overt. He’d built himself a shell company complete with a puppet administration that claimed to run the companies. But behind them was the ever-vigilant Benny the Phreak.
He’d told me once that computers were the only real friends he’d ever known. And he hadn’t seemed particularly upset about it. He said that at least computers could be fixed and weren’t given to the peculiarities of human companionship.
I figured it was only a matter of time before Benny invented a real cybersex machine. Believe me, he had the brains to do it. Then he’d cut out human interaction altogether.
At least the cyberwhore wouldn’t complain about the smell.
After twenty minutes, the phone rang on cue.
I picked up. "Yeah."
"Okay, I got three possibles."
I grabbed a pen and paper.
"Go."
"One named Victor Cavanaugh who checked in at Beth Israel at 3am with a laceration that required stitches. Treated and released by five. Next-Fred Jones, bullet wound to the shoulder. He ran out of Mass General following the removal of the slug before the hospital could contact the cops. Finally, Chuck Derby required a surgical removal of various wooden objects at Beth Israel."
Wooden objects? "What time was Derby admitted?"
"Three-forty."
"Got any particulars on him?"
"Lessee, gave an address over the Back Bay. But the number seems too high to be legit. Hang on a second…"
I heard some typing and some beeps followed by a quick chuckle. Benny came back on the line. "Address is a fake. Want me to run it down and find the real one?"
"Can you?"
A derisive snort filled the phone. "Can I? Hmph. Hang on."
The line went to hold and all of a sudden Benny’s voice filled the phone complete with mellow mood music I recognized as Kenny G. Benny was hawking fictitious breath mints. If I hadn’t been in a hurry, I might have found it funny.
He came back on the line in five minutes, just as Kenny G was beginning to saw on my nerves. "Okay, I’m in the hospital security camera log file. Lemme get last night’s camera views up on screen here." More typing. More beeps. "Okay, fast forwarding to this morning and…here comes our boy right on cue. Freeze that." I head a chair swivel and a different scale of typing sounds.
"Okay, lemme hack into the Registry of Motor Vehicles computer here. Their system is so damned antiquated, it’s pathetic. Call up the name Derby, let’s see if he used his real name. Oh, look at that – he did."
"You have his face shot to compare?"
"I do indeed. And Houston, we have a match."
"And his real address?"
"Absosmurfly. Want it?"
"Please."
"Roslindale. Beech Street."
He read me off the number and as he did so, I heard his door buzzer in the background.
"Am I interrupting something there Benny?"
"Stay on the line much longer and you will be."
"Thanks for your help."
"You’ll get the bill."
I disconnected and sat for another minute watching a plane make its final descent into Logan. Derby’s wound sounded like one of my rounds. The wooden tips are designed to blossom on impact, spreading the wood like a fragmentation burst. On vampires it makes one helluva lethal hurt. On humans it probably felt like having your body riddled with splinters.
Not pleasant, but not deadly either.
The address made me pause though. Roslindale was five minutes from Jamaica Plain. The fact this guy basically lived in my backyard didn’t buoy my spirits any.
I u-turned out of the New England Baptist Hospital’s parking lot and dropped down behind the Veteran’s Hospital on to South Huntington, followed it back to Center Street in Jamaica Plain, and then up toward West Roxbury and Roslindale.
On the way, I passed the Faulkner Hospital where my father had worked for most of his life. He died young. Too young in my opinion. We were just getting to that stage when fathers and sons become more like pals than elder and junior. I still think back on those few instances when we shared a beer and a hearty laugh about women with a fondness I don’t reserve for much else.
Center Street dipped and then forked. To the right lay the VFW Parkway, pockmarked with potholes the size of small moon craters this time of year. Center Street continued on to the left, into Roslindale proper and beyond to West Roxbury.
I stayed with it just until the rotary by Holy Name church, then bore left past the police station being renovated and down another parkway toward the Burger King on Washington Street. At the lights, I cut left and then left again.
Roslindale in general and Beech Street in particular was decidedly middle-class. Some parts were lower-middle class, a few remote areas more upper-middle. Beech Street sat close to the projects further down Washington Street.
I slid the car to a slow stop a few houses before the address Benny had given me and killed the engine.
According to Hollywood movies and TV programs, cops and spies stake out a house for a grand total of thirty seconds before rushing in and kicking ass. Talk about so much bullshit. Do that in reality and you will live for a very short time.
And die for a very long time.
In reality, you need to adjust to the environment. The environment needs to adjust to you. That means you sit in the car for just as long as you can without looking suspicious. Then you check out the area and see if anything changed on your arrival. If it looks okay, then you exit the car and start your approach.
Slowly.
You do a lot of listening. The same way the sounds in a forest or jungle will change when the animals sense something amiss, so too do urban landscapes. A wise operator knows this and pays heed.
And while I am sometimes very short on wisdom, this was one area I observed the rules with a religious devotion normally reserved for maniacal cults in Middle America.
Nothing seemed to have changed since my arrival so I stepped out into a slush puddle next to my Volvo and quietly closed the car door.
Derby’s house looked like a two-family mashed into a triple-decker, but the second and third floors were dark. According to Benny, Derby lived on the first floor. It was dark, too, except for one room toward the back of the house that glowed a dull yellow.
The streetlight in front looked like someone had either shot it out with a BB gun or chucked a rock hard enough to break the bulb. Whoever had done it, I was grateful for the additional cover of darkness.
Normally, dealing with humans doesn’t concern me much. I can’t really be killed conventionally. I’ve been shot, stabbed, and almost blown up. Sure, I can get hurt like a bastard but killing me is another matter entirely. Over the years, vampires have built up incredible restorative powers.
Still, the fact that the goons from the other night were all equipped with Fixer guns put me on guard in a major way. Those bullets could kill me dead real fast. And I’m kind of addicted to living – at least right now – so I took my time getting close on the target.
First, I had to get past the rusted old chain link fence that seemed more a rarity these days than in the 70’s and 80’s. I lifted the latch, eased the gate open and stepped through, careful to replace it just so.
The broken cement pathway in front of me leading down the side of the house was only about two feet wide and crowded with heavy-duty green plastic garbage containers. I dodged them as best I could, ducking under the various windows that my head skirted.
Finally, I got close enough to the lit window and stood on my tiptoes to peer inside.
And couldn’t see anything thanks to the heavy drapes that covered the window.
I sighed.
It would have been nice to see Derby sitting there perhaps in a recliner watching the football game and eating chips. I could have made my entry and put him down before he could utter a word.
Now I had to go in without any idea of where the guy could be.
No one ever said it would be easy.
I chose the back porch over the front because it afforded me more time and cover to pick the lock. Fortunately, like the front, this house had two doors going to both apartments. I got down close to Derby’s lock, examined it, mentally pronounced it pickworthy and set to the task.
My philosophy on picking locks had changed a lot over the past few months. I used to prefer just kicking the door in, storming the place, and getting the deed done quick.
Zero always preached the more relaxed sneak-and-peek entry and to that end had mastered picking almost every lock and defeating virtually every alarm system he could find. It was a respectable achievement and since his death, I’d thrown myself into that same pursuit.
My skills were nowhere near as good as what his had been, but I was coming along. Needless to say it took me a little while longer to get through the deadbolt.
But I got through all the same.
The back hall stunk of old garbage and the stench hit me like a wall. I sucked in hard and fast, trying to acclimate myself to the smell, but it was bad anyway. To my enhanced olfactory sense, Derby must have dined almost exclusively on sardines, rotten lettuce, and spoiled milk with a healthy serving of whiskey.
A simple swinging wooden door led into the kitchen. I prayed the hinges wouldn’t squeak too loud, especially since the place was almost eerily quiet. No television sets, no radios.
Stone dead.
I kept my pistol in what special ops folks like to call the "low-ready" position, the muzzle aimed just below the imaginary horizon line in front of me. If a threat presented itself, I’d sight-acquire-fire and put the bad guy down fast.
I reminded myself I wasn’t here to kill Derby and using the gun was a last resort. Some questions needed answering. And I wanted those answers pretty bad.
I took another foul-ridden breath and eased through the door.
The kitchen looked like a garbage dumpster had exploded in it. The ambient light spilling out of the room next door illuminated piles of trash and dirty dishes. Empty beer bottles lay strewn about the counters, old pizza boxes with uneaten stale crusts loitered on what looked like a fifty-year old gas stove, and a pile of newspapers sat by the refrigerator.
Place was a goddamned fire trap.
Pretty much exactly what I expected, too.
See, professional operators maintain discipline in every area of their lives. If Derby was a top hitter, his place would be clean. But judging from how he and his gooney friends conducted themselves last night, the state of his dismal living quarters came as no shock.
I stood in the kitchen for three minutes.
Listening.
Cataloging the ambient sounds of the place. I wanted to make sure every creak and ping was carefully stored so I didn’t freak out if they popped while I was there.
I also hoped to hear some noise that would help pinpoint Derby’s location. But I got nothing. No floorboards creaked, no thumps bumped, no breathing breathed. Nothing.
