“For the past few years, though, he’s been concentrating mostly on Canada and Mexico … a little to Alaska, too. Nothing there, though, just business as usual as far as I could make out. And then, going through the records from four months ago, I come across something that got me thinking. He had a client who needed fifty boxes shipped out of Romania. Bam. Out of nowhere, he’s dealing with Europe again.
“So, I looked into it. It was right around the time that the King Michael coup over there deposed Antonescu and got Romania out of the Axis and back with the Allies. It was legit enough, but, like I said, it came from out of nowhere. Fifty boxes, six and a half feet long, three feet wide and three feet deep.”
The old man leaned back in his wheelchair. He looked like I spat on him. “What’s the matter?”
He stared into the distance. “Nothing. Just renewing an acquaintance. Pray continue.”
“Well, I checked the manifests and records. The boxes arrived on Tuesday, April 30.”
“Walpurgis night,” the old man said. He motioned me to go on.
“That’s the last day Monica Landau saw him alive.”
“Where are these boxes now?”
“That’s where it gets screwy. I was in his office all day yesterday. Vincenzo is still putting in full days; I think she manages the cash flow and she’s paying herself, hoping that Landau comes back and that there’s still a job for her. I was getting close to the end of his business records, so I stayed on until late into the night, paging through them. Landau Consignments is right across from the Beroil Club, you know. I had my feet on the desk and I was smoking a cigarette. The air was unusually hot and my tie was open. The Beroil has a neon sign and—”
The old man smacked a desiccated fist on the arm of his wheelchair. “Yes, yes, yes. And the neon light beat a steady tattoo on the wall and somewhere I heard a melancholy saxophone play. I know. Get on with the story man!”
He got on my last good nerve so I gave it to him hard and plain. “I suddenly felt that someone else was in the room. I looked up and there was Landau, standing in the doorway. I had been carrying his picture with me for the past few days, and he’s impossible to miss. Tall guy. Was blond once, but now a little gray at the temples. Jowly, but not fat. He was wearing a dark suit, probably the one he was wearing the day he vanished because it has dirt stains on the knees and elbows.
“I got up and made my way around the desk. I was about to ask him where he’d been and let him know his wife was worried when he snarled at me like an animal and grabbed me by the wrist. He pulled me forward and I slammed into the wall hard enough to crack it. I shook my head to work the brain when he came at me again. His eyes were glowing red … I swear to God, his eyes were glowing red. And his breath. Jesus, he smelled like rotten meat and stale farts. He reached for my collar and I ducked and weaved around him.
“I’m not brave. I knew something was wrong with him, and I wasn’t about to try and make friends with the guy. I slammed my fist into the nape of his neck. It’s a punch that would’ve floored an elephant, but he stayed standing.
“Without missing a beat, he takes a backhanded swipe at me. I had ducked back a bit, but he caught me on the shoulder and I staggered back and over the desk. I came down on his office chair, and it slid between me and the wall. Good thing. I was able to haul myself up out of it and pulled my gun. I drew a bead on him and told him to raise his hands and get nice and quiet.
“But he didn’t. He just … growled. It was low and guttural, like he went blood simple. His teeth were, well, huge. And his eyes … red light shone out of them … like hot coals burning inside of his head. I don’t scare easy, but I felt my insides melt and turn to mush. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just aimed and fired.”
The old man was silent for a minute, staring into space. I let him think before I talked again.
“The first shot hit him square in the chest, maybe eight inches under his chin. A black hole burned through his tie and white shirt, but no blood. He stopped at the impact and looked down at the bullet hole. A little wisp of smoke was coming out of it when he looked up at me. I panicked and fired again, making another hole right next to the first one, but closer to the heart. It ripped through his suit jacket, but still no blood. I didn’t wait for him to react to that one. I took my gun in both hands and aimed at his head. I heard the bullet smack into his skull.
“The force of the shot knocked him against the wall and he buried his face in his hands. Then, slowly, he looked up at me again. His forehead had torn open, and ragged strips of flesh hung down around his eyebrows. Gray, moldy pulp that I knew to be his brains dribbled down his nose, but still no blood. He wiped the mess away from his face with his sleeve and snarled. And that was it, I knew I was dead.
“But as he took his first step, we heard the sirens blare. There had to be a squad car parked right near the Beroil, or maybe a security guard in the building called. Either way, the cavalry was coming. Landau comes on me slowly and stops so close I can smell him. It was a stink like something long dead. He smiles at me with those teeth and then wags his finger at me like I was a naughty kid. Then he turns and walks out.
“Well, I’m not going to stand around and explain this to the bulls, so I pocket my gun and get out of there. I was thinking about it all day, and the only person I figured I could come to was you.”
He was still silent, looking over at the old picture of the moustached man. “I only called him John, you know,” he said. “Never his surname. I don’t know why he said otherwise in those lurid accounts of his, but I knew him only as John.”
“Excuse me?”
He turned to me. “Nothing. The curse of old age is long memory. You have something to show me, I perceive.”
I reached into my jacket pocket. “Yeah. I pulled the last few pages from the ledger when I left. It had the address on Edgecombe of where the boxes were shipped. I was at the city office today … it’s an old house that was recently bought. Landau acted as agent for the sale. It’s not far from his office.”
“Your motor car is outside, I presume? Then fetch my hat and coat. We haven’t a moment to lose.”
Getting him out of there was not that easy. I asked him if he could walk and he said yes, but slowly. I helped him out of his dressing gown; it had gone unwashed so long that parts of it had petrified. Though it was now May and summer heat had already hit California, he insisted on a tweed suit with vest and a greatcoat that had seen better days. Into this he stuffed a large flask of whiskey. He grabbed a heavy, black walking stick with a weighted knob as the handle and a battered gray homburg, which surprised me. “Blame the illustrator,” was all he said when he caught my look.
For convenience, I pushed him out in his wheelchair. The nurse’s station was empty, which was lucky, and I got him down to my car, a ’34 green La Salle that a Chinaman gave in payment for a case years ago. The old man gave it one look and murmured, “right again.” I virtually picked him up and put him in the front seat before folding the wheelchair into the back.
“Is that a wireless?” he asked as I got in, pointing at the dashboard. I said yes. He pulled a heavy turnip watch from the folds of his vest. “Time for The Shadow,” he said, reaching for the knob. “I’m slavishly devoted to it.”
He listened to the show as I drove, paying no attention to me whatsoever. During the station break he lowered the volume and spoke. “Outlandish fiction, of course, but it pales beside reality. What can you tell me of our destination?”
I shrugged. “Large brownstone. Private home forty years ago, but pretty much abandoned when the neighborhood changed. Has a large foundation, which makes me think it’s got a big basement.”
“Yes, he would need that.”
“Who?”
“Nothing. Is that a petrol station I see up ahead? Capital. Let’s stop there.”
I looked at the gage. “We don’t need gas.”
“Ah, it’s starting again,” he said, turning up the volume. “Be a good fel
low and get a small canister of gasoline. I’ll just wait for you in the motor car. Invisibility is quite ridiculous, isn’t it?”
I figured that if he knew what he was doing, it would be best if I just followed orders. And if he didn’t, well, what did I have to lose? There’s a dead man walking around Los Angeles with three of my bullets in him, and I was ready to do or believe anything. I got the gas can out of the trunk and had the attendant fill it. Then I put it in the trunk and started the car.
“It would’ve been best if we started out in the morning,” the old man said, “but some things can’t be helped. By the way, have you reloaded your revolver since last night? Well done. It won’t be of any practical use against our antagonists, but it may help create a diversion. Isn’t it curious how life is like a wheel?”
“If you say so.”
“It is,” he wheezed, taking out another of my cigarettes. “Like a wheel it goes round and round and the same spoke comes up. I had thought all of this was finished in ’97, but, of course, I couldn’t go to the Continent for the end of it, so the job wasn’t finished properly in my absence. It creates an unhealthy optimism in the criminal classes once I’m outside of London.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “So it all ends in the New World, I suppose.”
I let him rant.
“John never believed a word of it, of course. But, you know, it’s fascinating that he was completely taken in by that whole fairy business a few years later, which is the most extraordinary thing. Of course those photographs were faked! A child could see it.”
“Sure,” I humored him.
“I’m of the opinion that images will provide our greatest deceptions in years to come. Imagine, a society that looks instead of thinks. Have you seen those ridiculous moving pictures supposedly based on my life? And I accused John of being lurid. And that actor is ridiculous. Imagine people thinking my nose is that big.”
“Edgecombe is about three blocks away.”
“Wonderful. Please stop the car here. We should walk the remaining few blocks.”
I circled around once and found a spot. When I helped the old man out, he wheezed deeply, leaning on his cane for support. His bones popped like a car backfiring.
We slowly made our way down to Edgecombe. The night was hot and damp, the mean streets slick and dangerous in the light mist. The old man would sometimes bump against my arm, and it was then that I could feel the lump of my .45 in its holster. It made me feel good.
I saw the house we wanted up ahead. “Stop. Landau is here.”
The old man was all attention. “How do you know?”
“That’s his car.” I pulled out a matchbook on which I had made a note of his plate number. The numbers on the black sedan matched. “Yeah, that’s his.”
“Capital,” the old man said. He let go of me and hobbled over to the car, moving faster than I expected. “Now, I understand you can lift the bonnet and disable it?”
It took five minutes to pull out the sparkplugs. “Capital. All of that stuff about bats is nonsense, you know. But, still, we should cut off all opportunities for escape.”
“What about bats?”
“Never mind. Let’s see if there is anything else here to be learned. Must you break the window to get inside of this thing, or can you pick the lock? My specialty is safes, and I’m afraid I’m a little rusty.”
I started working on the lock while the old man talked, something he liked doing a lot. “Of course, I have had a somewhat limited experience with motor cars, but I do believe that they can be invaluable to the logician. Don’t you agree? Fewer things offer more opportunities for deduction, except, of course, boot laces and belt buckles. Wrist watches will never be as instructive as pocket watches, I daresay, but they too have points of interest. Can I help you with that, young man?”
Fortunately the door opened and he shut up. The old man gingerly lowered himself into the driver’s seat and ran his hands along the wheel, reached into the ashtray, poked and prodded the door pockets. He pulled his pince-nez from under his vest and peered at the neighboring seat and then, to my surprise, sniffed it.
“Interesting,” he said, “and good news, as well.”
“What?”
“No blood. The contagion could not have gone very far. Possibly no farther than Landau. My friend is biding his time.”
“What contagion? And what friend? You said something before about renewing an acquaintance.”
He only smirked in reply and I called him an infuriating old bastard. He pretended not to hear. I helped him out of the car and traveled up to the brownstone. I reached for my lock pick, but the old man simply turned the door handle and let us in.
“He has nothing to be frightened of,” he said, stepping inside. “Of course, I doubt he knew that I was in America. Fascinating how these Continental types underestimate their foes. Rather like Herr Hitler, right? A ludicrous figure, of course, but never, never underestimate the incalculable damage one unstable personality can do.”
The hallway was dark. The old man took a pocket flashlight out of his coat and aimed it toward the living room. Like a lot of old houses, it had a high ceiling and lots of carved details over the doors. The furniture was covered with white sheets, and at the far end of the house, a gauzy white curtain fluttered in the faint breeze. “Our denouement will take place in the cellar, most likely. They do have a predilection for underground spaces. Only natural, I suppose. Or perhaps I should say unnatural. Just what to say is so confusing in situations like this, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.”
He flipped the light switch and the living room chandelier came alive. “Appalling taste,” he said, looking around. “But I do like the chandelier. The Professor tried to kill me with one just like it in ’05.”
Something crashed overhead. I reached for my .45; the old man blandly looked up.
There, at the top of the stairs, was Landau. He had changed his clothes since last night, so the two bullet holes in his chest were now hidden. There was a long, jagged line of stitching where he tried to sew up the hole my bullet left in his head. The torn bits of flesh had been pulled away, leaving pale white pockmarks. His teeth, white and bestial, gleamed. His eyes were red and they squinted when they took in the old man.
“Mr. Landau,” he said, leaning on his cane as he stepped closer. “This is a rather lamentable state of affairs, and I assure you that I understand it all came about through no fault of your own. You were only doing your job and fell victim to a most despicable nobleman. He has a history of exploiting and then victimizing such as you. Perhaps the Fabians had a point after all. At any rate, I’m afraid that we must swim through bitter waters before we reach the sweet, and what must be done must be done. A heavy heart and all that, but it can’t be helped.” The old man turned to me. “Shoot him dead, there’s a good fellow.”
I didn’t think this was the time to point out that I had already shot him three times, but I didn’t argue. I brought my gun up and aimed for his head once again. I fired three shots, knocking him against the stairwell wall. The first shot took off the top of his head, splattering the wall with what looked like gray, moldy bread. The second tunneled into the stitching he used to fix the first head wound, and my third shattered his cheekbone, pulling out the check and forever exposing half of his teeth. Then Landau slowly slid down the wall and crumpled on the stairs.
The room was filled with smoke. I lowered my gun as the room cleared; I could hear the old man’s raspy breathing. “Did we do it?” I asked, but the old man shushed me with a hand.
I looked up at Landau. His right hand twitched, then his left. Slowly, he grabbed the banister and pulled himself upright. His head was nothing more than a ruin — hair pulled away from the first shot, most of his forehead missing now and half his face cleared away to the skull. The half of his mouth still there smiled wickedly. And then … he hissed. Deep and guttural, it was a sound like nothing I ever heard before.
The old man turned to me. “H
ere it comes.”
Before I could say anything, Landau leapt from the top of the stairs, sailing across the length of the living room with hands outstretched, and careened directly into me. He knocked me over, my .45 flying across the room. In seconds he was kneeling on my chest, his horrible breath like the blast of a slaughterhouse choking me. I couldn’t focus my vision, bits of brain dribbled from his head and splashed into my face. I screamed and grabbed his lapels to pull him off, but it was like he was made of stone.
I writhed underneath Landau as he tore at my collar with one hand, and pushed up on my chin with the other. He drooled a bit as he got closer to my throat.
And then, a sound like rain, or a pipe leaking. I shook some of the goo out of my eyes and squinted up. It was the old man, standing over us like the referee at Friday night’s fight. He was slowly emptying his whiskey flask over Landau’s back. With a nonchalant gesture, he tossed the flask over his shoulder and took one of my cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He lit that with a wooden match, and then dropped the match on Landau.
One moment, a very solid dead man is holding me down and making a beeline for my throat; the next, the back of him is up in flames. His eyes popped wide open and his head shot up. He howled and jumped to his feet, spinning around in circles. He clawed at the flames, but his jacket and shirt went up fast — the fire burning away what hair was left on his head. He looked at the old man for help. The old buzzard only took another drag on his cigarette and watched him burn.
Landau continued to spin, screaming as the room filled with black smoke. I fought the urge to puke as his flesh burned. Then, the old man toppled him with the tip of his cane and the flaming husk that was Landau fell, writhed and went still. “Use one of those sheets to put him out, there’s a good fellow.”
Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes Page 27
