Black Angel

by Graham Masterton

  Houston Brough was waiting for him in his office, drinking strong black coffee.

  “You all right?” Houston asked him.

  “Surviving.”

  “El Chiefo wants to see us. The Press have got wind of the fact that we’re investigating the supernatural. He doesn’t like it one bit.”

  “Anything published yet?” asked Larry.

  “Not yet, but they’ve been asking.”

  “I’ll slaughter that Dogmeat,” said Larry.

  They walked along the corridor to Dan Burroughs’ office. Houston said, “I checked up on Edna-Mae first thing this morning. She’s under restraint, but reasonably stable.”

  “Is she coherent?”

  “She’s asleep most of the time.”

  Dan Burroughs was standing by the window, his hands in his pockets, smoking furiously. He didn’t turn around when Larry and Houston knocked on his door and walked in, but it was obvious from the set of his shoulders that he knew who they were.

  “That Fay Kuhn woman was on to me this morning,” he said, harshly. “She wanted to know if it were true that the investigating officer in the Fog City Satan case had attended a seance on Jackson Street last night.”

  “I’m seeing Fay Kuhn at eleven,” Larry replied. “I can talk about it then.”

  Dan Burroughs turned around. The sunlight shone through his cigarette smoke. “So it’s true, you did go.”

  “Sure it’s true. I’m looking into every possibility, natural and supernatural.”

  “Joe Berry wasn’t nailed to the floor by a spook, Larry.”

  “I didn’t say that he was. But whoever did nail him to the floor did it for a reason, and that reason could have been connected with the supernatural. People kill for religious reasons… you wouldn’t give me a hard time for checking out the churches, would you?”

  “Don’t get smart, Larry. Religion is one thing. The supernatural—the occult, whatever, that’s another. It makes for bad publicity.”

  “I don’t give a two-toned shit about bad publicity, Dan, I’m looking for a man who saws people’s legs off and sets fire to small children. If I feel the need to check out the supernatural, I’ll check out the supernatural.”

  Dan Burroughs came away from the window and circled around Larry and Houston like a school principal who had caught them drinking beer behind the bushes. “I don’t want to hear one more word about the supernatural in connection with this investigation. This investigation is going to be carried out by the rules of orthodox police procedure; and when you arrest the perpetrator, which had better be pretty damned soon, you are going to make sure that your evidence is complete, watertight and non-wacky. Do you understand me? I want to take this maniac into court and I want the prosecutor to have all the information necessary to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that he killed all of these people, and I want to see him convicted and sentenced and gassed.

  “If you screw up because you’ve been obtaining evidence from ghosts or ouija boards or crystal balls, then believe me, Larry, I’ll never forgive you.”

  Larry said nothing. Dan laid his hand on his shoulder and looked at him with one eye open and one eye closed against the smoke from his cigarette.

  “By the way,” said Dan, “I heard about your mother. I’m truly sorry. She was a fine woman. Fine, fine woman.”

  “Yes, she was,” Larry agreed. “Is there anything else?”

  “The mayor’s office keeps calling. I’d just like to know how close to our boy you think you are.”

  “Getting closer every day, Dan.”

  “But no ghosts, please.”

  “Give me some space, Dan. You’ll get your gassing.”

  *

  Dogmeat met him on Fisherman’s Wharf. The fog had completely lifted now, and the bay was glittering and bright. Larry had borrowed an ’82 Le Sabre with a whining transmission from the police car pool. He parked opposite Pier 39, and climbed out, putting on his sunglasses as he did so. Dogmeat was perched on the railings in his shaggy jacket and his skinny velvet pants like a huge tattered vulture.

  “Buongiorno, mon ami,” he said, flicking away the roach that he had been smoking, and breathing out grass fumes.

  “Good morning, you blabbermouth,” Larry replied. “If I can’t get you for possession, I can get you for littering.”

  “Hey, hey, pourquoi so short-tempered?” Dogmeat asked.

  “Because every time you and I have one of our little conversations, I don’t expect you to go running to the nearest telephone to tell Ms Fay Kuhn what we’ve been chewing the fat about, that’s pourquoi.”

  “Oh, come on, man, I have to make a croûte. Time was, the police department paid regular and good. These days I have to top up my income from the media.”

  “Time was, your information was regular and good.”

  Larry walked along the pier with Dogmeat hobbling along behind him on his worndown heels. It was still too early for tourists, although the wind was warm and the sun was dazzling, and the Bay was at her best. Larry leaned on the railings and looked down at the small boats bobbing like ducks at their moorings.

  “This time I’ve got something Grade-A,” Dogmeat told him. “But I have to see some Johnny Cash up front. Even an artist has overheads. Rent, tamales, guitar-strings, grass.”

  Larry opened his billfold and took out three twenties. Dogmeat held them up to the light one at a time. “Cops pass more counterfeit cabbage than anybody,” he sniffed.

  “So what’s this Grade-A information that you’ve got for me?” asked Larry.

  “I was talking to John de Villescas, he’s a set-designer and mask-maker, works for the Curran Theater. Kind of an oddball… doesn’t speak to anybody much. Believes that words are valuable, not to be wasted. Lives in this turret on Union Street. He’s not gay which is a huge rarity, but somebody once told me that he had a thing for sheep which was probably a vicious lie. Sheep are so passé and John is avant the avant garde. Now if they’d said llamas.”

  “How about getting around to the point?” Larry suggested. “I have an interview in twenty minutes.”

  “For sure. To schneiden a long story short, John was asked in January to make a mask. Like, it was a private commission, not for the stage or anything. But it was trés trés weird, a huge black full-head mask like a monster stag-beetle, with horns, and eyes, like nothing you ever heard of before. The guy commissioned it on the phone, and sent John used cabbage in the mail. Well… he was paying seven hundred fifty dollars for it, and John wasn’t going to tell him no. Seven hundred fifty dollars equals a lot of burritos, n’est-ce pas?”

  “How did your friend know exactly what kind of a mask the guy wanted?” asked Larry.

  “Oho, he was real particular. He sent an engraving in the envelope, along with the cabbage. Very detailed in every wayland jennings.”

  With a flourish, Dogmeat produced from the pocket of his ratty Afghan jacket a soiled and dog-eared sheet of paper. Larry took it, and unfolded it, and there it was. A detailed steel engraving of a huge figure in a black cloak, with the black horned head of a stag-beetle. Behind the figure, in the shadows, hundreds of naked bodies writhed like maggots, and lightning was crackling out of the clouds.

  He knew at once who the figure was. He didn’t even need to look down to the bottom of the illustration and see the name Beli Ya’al, Master of Lies.

  “Dogmeat,” he breathed. The engraving flapped in the bright morning breeze. “Dogmeat, you’re some kind of genius.”

  “Maybe worth genius money, then?” Dogmeat suggested.

  Larry nodded, and handed him another two twenties. Dogmeat scrutinized these two fresh bills with his usual suspicion. “You have to ask yourself, where does all the counterfeit money go, after a bust? Don’t tell me you burn it. Just like all that pornography and all that dope and all that unaccounted-for jewelry and stuff.”

  “What made you think I’d be interested in this?” Larry wanted to know.

  “You are interested in it, then
?”

  “Oh, for sure. This is the first piece of solid evidence I’ve had that I’m not losing my marbles.”

  “What are you trying to do?” Dogmeat asked, with exaggerated bewilderment. “Catch this killer or prove your sanity?”

  “I just want to know what made you think I’d be interested in this engraving.”

  “Because of the guy who commissioned it, naturlich.”

  “Don’t speak in riddles, Dogmeat, I’m not in the mood.”

  Dogmeat rummaged in his fringed hippie-style satchel and produced a fat, half-burned joint. “You don’t mind if I jolt, monsieur?”

  Larry watched him light up, and sharply suck the smoke through his teeth. “Ah… grass is not what it was. Gone is l’âge d’or. Can you smell this stuff? It’s like smoking your grandmother’s hedge.”

  Larry patiently waited for him to finish posturing, and then said, “Come on, Dogmeat. Tell me what happened.”

  “Aha!” said Dogmeat. “What happened was, the guy came to collect his mask in person. He said he wanted to make sure that it fitted good before he shelled out the necessary clams. John told me that the guy was already wearing a dark green ski-mask when he appeared on the doorstep, with nothing but holes for eyes. He came in, he took a look at the mask, he took it into the bathroom and tried it on. Avec the door locked, so John couldn’t watch him. But he came out of the bathroom and said that he liked it; and he paid the money, and split.”

  “He didn’t give your friend any indication where he lived, where he hung out, what his name was?”

  “Come on, lieutenant! What do you want, boysenberry jelly on it?”

  “Could he describe him?”

  “For sure. Huge, Caucasian, dark hair, mid-forties, huge.”

  “Sounds like our boy,” said Larry.

  “There’s something else,” put in Dogmeat.

  “Is this for free?” asked Larry.

  “Was the rest of the information worth paying for?” Dogmeat retorted.

  “Yes, it was, as matter of fact.”

  “Then this is worth paying for, too.”

  With a show of reluctance, Larry took out his billfold and stripped off another forty dollars. Dogmeat made them vanish faster than David Copperfield. “The point was…”he said; “John has a convenient peephole in his bathroom wall, left over from the time when the apartment was let by some voyeuristic weirdo to any girl with a good buster keaton. So, when the guy was trying on the mask… John took a look.”

  “Pity he didn’t have the presence of mind to take a photograph, too.”

  “You don’t even need a photograph to nail this chump, lieutenant. When he took off his ski-mask, poor old John practically lost his Magic Pan brunch on the spot. The guy’s head was shriveled and disfigured, with raw bits and leathery bits and patches of skin and sprouts of cheveux. His nose was all tilted up, his eyes were half-closed. Typical victim of our old friend Major Burns.”

  “He was burned?” asked Larry, suddenly alert. It was George. He burned them. That car exploded, just as it was starting to move, Exploded, and burned out.

  “Not like Freddie Krueger. Properly burned. Brown and scarlet, thick scar-tissue, face like a leather football.”

  Larry said, “The Black Brotherhood were burned.”

  Dogmeat’s eyes darted quickly and worriedly around the pier. “You—unh—found out their name, then?”

  “Wilbert Fraser told me their name.”

  “Well… let me tell you this, lieutenant. They never liked people mentioning their name back in the ’ ‘60s; and so I never do now. In my line of work, discretion is the better part of having your fries removed, comprende?”

  “Do you think that any of them could have survived?” asked Larry.

  “Who knows? A burned guy commissions a mask that could be connected with ritual-type killings… it’s a lead, n’est-ce pas, as one electrician said to the other.”

  “I’m going to find this joker,” said Larry; much more to himself than to Dogmeat.

  “Sure you’re going to find this joker,” Dogmeat agreed. “You know what happened to the queer king who got shipwrecked on a desert island with his court jester? After a month he was at his wit’s end.”

  Larry replaced his Ray-Ban Aviators and grasped Dogmeat’s bony fingers and gave him a crushing handshake. “I’ll be in touch, okay? Meanwhile keep your eyes open. Anything, anything, and I’ll pay you extra. Tell your pals to look out for burned guys, guys in masks, guys with heavy face-paint. Tell them I’ll pay them, too.”

  Dogmeat sucked at his joint. “This is a heavy one, es correcto?”

  “Hasta luego,” said Larry, and walked away from Pier 39 under a bright sky like broken mirrors.

  *

  Fay Kuhn was waiting for him at the Hall of Justice. She looked relentlessly smart in a beige suit with angular shoulders and a short skirt. An identity badge was already fastened to her lapel next to an enameled pin of Swee’ Pea. Larry jerked his head to indicate that she should follow him up to his office, and she did, heels sharply rapping.

  Houston Brough was waiting for him, too. It was obvious that he wanted to tell Larry something urgent, but when he saw that Fay Kuhn was closely behind him, he gave Larry an awkward smile and a shrug and said, “Okay—it’s okay. I can see that you’re all tied up. It wasn’t anything special.”

  Larry said, “Sit down,” and Fay Kuhn sat down, crossing her legs. She took out a notebook and pencil, which was rare. Almost every reporter used a tape-recorder these days.

  “You write shorthand?” he asked her.

  She smiled. Glossy scarlet lips, painted in perfect bows. “I was taught journalism by old men who knew how to compose sentences and how to take a proper note.”

  “Tom Wolfe?” he asked her.

  “Shit,” she replied.

  “Hunter Thompson?”

  “Shit.”

  “Good,” he nodded. He had suffered enough at the hands of gung-ho journalists. “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know whether you’re investigating every possible avenue in your hunt for the Fog City Satan. Or ‘so-called’ Fog City Satan, to quote Dan Burroughs exactly.”

  “Of course.” Larry leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Every possible avenue.”

  “Including the supernatural?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Fay Kuhn crossed her legs provocatively and impatiently. “Are you denying that you have any suspicion that the Fog City Satan may not be altogether earthly?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Miss Kuhn.”

  “If you’re not sure what I mean, why did you attend a seance held by the well-known Nob Hill medium Wilbert Fraser last night?

  Larry eased forward in his chair and drummed his fingers on his desktop. Linda and Frankie and Mikey were grinning at him out of their photograph frame. Unconsciously, he grinned back at them.

  Larry shrugged, didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve heard the rumors,” said Fay Kuhn. “People are saying that there’s some kind of—I don’t know, what can you call it?—some kind of psychic disturbance in the air.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean by that, either,” said Larry.

  “Lieutenant, we live in San Francisco. We live on the fault line. We’re sensitive to every kind of disturbance—climatic, seismic, political, emotional or psychic. We’re like human seaweed.”

  Larry stood up and circled around his office. Throughout the building, unanswered phones rang as if they had been orchestrated. Laurence Foggia and his Singing Telephones. He decided to take a long shot with Fay Kuhn. She wasn’t any kind of idiot—and no matter what Dan Burroughs thought about talking to the Press—she could conceivably be helpful.

  “There have been incidents of psychic disturbance, yes,” he agreed.

  Fay Kuhn looked up at him sharply. “Faces?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Larry. “Faces.”

  “Can you give me more specific d
etails than that?”

  Larry shook his head. “Not at this time. I haven’t yet investigated any of the reports personally, so I’m unable to verify them. But there have been an unusual number of incidents which appear to have no rational explanation. They may be connected with the Fog City Satan case.”

  “Very discreet of you, lieutenant,” smiled Fay Kuhn. “But I think they are connected with the Fog City Satan case. In fact, I’m sure they are.”

  He looked at her narrowly. “Go on.”

  She reached into her shoulder-bag and took out a musty-looking library book with a tattered jacket. “I found this,” she said. “The Day Before The Earth Shook, by Doris Kelville. It’s a detailed portrait of San Francisco on Tuesday, April 17, 1906… right up until that moment just after five o’clock the following morning when the earthquake occurred.”

  Larry returned to his desk. “What led you to research back that far?”

  She was flipping pages. “Oh… I was looking for something else altogether. A story about those long-lost city archives that were turned up in the basement of City Hall. Here we are—look.”

  She handed the open book across Larry’s desk. Five long paragraphs had been marked in red felt-tip pen.

  “Shortly after midnight on Wednesday morning, a woman was arrested while attempting to dig up the pavement at the intersection of Front and Green Streets. She had done no serious damage, but her manner was so “unGodly and abusive” that she was taken to the Hall of Justice (in those days on Kearney Street). She turned out to be the city’s most celebrated clairvoyante and palmist, Edith Nielsen, who the previous year had publicly warned the twenty-six-year-old Chief of the Fire Brigade, Dennis T. Sullivan, that he would be killed by “a bolt from the blue.”

  “Mrs. Nielsen said that she had discovered the ‘real perpetrator’ of six appalling mass-murders which had taken place in San Francisco during the latter part of 1904 and the early months of 1905; and that she was digging up the pavement in an attempt to forestall a seventh. She would not apparently say how, or why.

  “The mass-murders were known at the time as the Blue Letter Murders because after each killing the murderer would send a letter on azure bond to the editor of the San Francisco Morning Call, boasting about his horrific activities. (For a detailed account of the Blue Letter Murders, vide Arthur Strerath’s Murder On The Brink Of The World, Putnam, 1935.)