by Anton Strout
“Good,” Davidson continued. “Look, Connor, I know the D.E.A.’s not really up to speed on what’s been going on here. There’s been a lot of red tape over this whole project back at City Hall, and the Mayor’s Office felt it was better to keep you folks in the dark until certain goals and initiatives had been fully set up.”
“Why don’t you bring us up to speed?” I demanded. What the hell was the Mayor’s Office playing at?
Davidson sighed. For a second I thought he looked almost as worn down as his eyes did. Then he was back to his regular self in a flicker. “We’re talking about the cultists’ rights movement. The city has pushed through legislation legalizing and acknowledging the status of cults as part of the equal rights movement’s regulated standards and fair practices.”
I stared at Davidson in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?” I said. “Please tell me that you’re kidding!”
“Unbelievable,” Connor added. “We’re talking about people who perform ritualistic sacrifices on the living, for heaven’s sake! They’re bloody cultists!”
“Actually,” Faisal said, raising a finger to interject, “we don’t go by that term. It’s archaic. The politically acknowledged term is ‘Sectarian.’ Didn’t you notice the sign on your way in?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Connor said with as much bite to his words as he could muster. “Did I offend you?”
Faisal’s eyed flared with contempt. “It’s just this kind of blanket mentality—this stereotyping—that the Sectarian Defense League has been put in place to prevent!”
He turned his dark gaze fully on us and pointed accusingly.
“The world is changing,” he continued, “whether your high-and-mighty Enchancellors choose to deal with it or not, and we are the future of the new world order, gentlemen. Not you and your kind. You are dinosaurs, and like those pea-brained giants, you are headed down the same road.”
Connor pushed through the crowd toward Davidson, and I followed. I blocked the doors to stop Davidson in case he tried to leave, but he made no move. Connor drilled into him. “Is this how the Office of Plausible Deniability is handling things nowadays? For God’s sake, David, fighting people like these is part of the reason the D.E.A. was founded!”
“Listen,” Davidson said, throwing an arm over Connor’s shoulder. “These are complex times, Connor. You and Babe Ruth there can’t simply run around threatening everyone you meet with a Louisville Slugger.”
Davidson was trying to smooth things over, but it was too late. Whatever calming spell his voice had woven over us was now gone.
“I can’t believe you’re standing up for these guys!” I said. I reached for Davidson’s lapels to shake some sense into him, but my hands found no purchase. Dave Davidson moved with a speed I hadn’t thought possible, almost inhuman, and he was now standing a foot farther away.
“You don’t want to do that,” Davidson said with a cold stare. He adjusted his tie, all the while splitting his gaze between the two of us.
“You think these are complex times, eh?” Connor started. “Wait until Inspectre Quimbley tells the Enchancellors. Then you’ll see complex.”
Faisal Bane cleared his throat and the three of us turned.
“Gentlemen,” he said. He waved at his employees dismissively and they returned to their desks. “I trust that your business is with each other and it need not concern me or my staff. We’re terribly busy around here at the moment, much to do…”
“A shipment of sacrificial lambs coming in?” I scoffed.
Faisal ignored me and continued. “Mr. Davidson, I suggest that you and your two-man A-Team take your issues outside. Unless you’d like me to put in a call to the Mayor…?”
“Hey,” Davidson said, looking a little worried. He held up his hands in surrender. “Easy, easy.”
A second later his composure was back.
“No need to bother His Honor,” he said with a carefully balanced political chuckle. “I’m sure the D.E.A. and I can handle this back at their headquarters.”
“And just where would that be?” Faisal asked a little too quickly. Greed sparked to life in his eyes, like a lawyer’s at the scene of a fresh accident.
Davidson went to speak, but I beat him to it.
“That information is not part of the public record, Mr. Bane. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“You’re a government agency,” Faisal said, “much like ours and far more secretive than us, it seems. You’re required to be listed publicly. Just as we were.”
“You’re working under the assumption that we’re set up like you,” Connor replied. “Do you have any idea how long we’ve been around? Longer than the fat cats downtown and certainly much longer than any of these newly formed charters governing your institution. Don’t try to tell me how things run. We work under special charter, designated on a ‘need to know’ basis by the borough of Manhattan. I find it highly doubtful that anyone, including Mr. Davidson here, considers you and your group as a member of those ‘need to know’ types. Isn’t that true, Mr. D?”
“For the record,” Davidson said, “I’m not sure.” Connor’s question had thrown him. For once, something worked to our advantage. I was sure that Faisal Bane would love to know all about us, but until Davidson figured out the boundaries, he wouldn’t disclose anything further.
Davidson smoothed the lapels on his jacket and slowly backed toward the door, but I was still blocking the way. Connor nodded and so I reluctantly stepped aside.
“I’ll be in touch with both of your organizations as soon as I’ve had a chance to confer with both parties separately,” Davidson said, and slipped out of the doors before anyone could say another word.
A moment of silence followed in the reception area.
“So,” I said, raising the bat again. “Is there anyone I should slug?”
Connor smiled appreciatively, but shook his head no. “That’s all right, kid. Stand down. We’ll be leaving here peaceably.”
Relieved that I didn’t have to smack anyone’s bitch up, I waited for Connor to join me at the door. Not a single office employee attempted to bar our way. We were leaving in the nick of time as far as I was concerned. My nerves were shot. I had never been in a situation where I felt so outnumbered so quickly. I wondered if the bulk of D.E.A. operations went like this. With only a few months under my belt, it was hard to determine what was run of the mill and what was not.
“I’m going to make this easy on you, Bane,” Connor said, turning around. “This is the moment when you insert your ‘parting threat,’ but let’s just skip it, okay? I’ll save you the trouble and we can just quake in our boots in the elevator.”
Faisal stared at us for a moment and then held out his hand to his assistant.
“Jane,” he said through clenched teeth, “clipboard.”
The contempt was thick in his voice, and Jane handed it over as fast as she could. She flinched as he snatched it from her, raised it over his head, wound up, and threw it toward us. It flipped end over end before smashing into the glass of the door, sending a ripple of cracks out from its point of impact.
The clipboard and a small shower of frosted glass fell to the floor. Most of Bane’s workers were doing a terrible job of pretending to work. None of them wanted to draw his attention.
Having held our ground (although I was actually quaking in my boots), Connor and I threw the doors open and left.
“Have that door replaced,” I heard Faisal shout to Jane as he stalked off, “and bill it to the Mayor’s Office.”
13
We called in our incident at the Sectarian Defense League to the Inspectre, and after a quick rundown of what had happened, he dispensed a Shadower team to keep an eye on their Empire State Building offices. Connor and I headed back down to the D.E.A. but I wasn’t happy about it. Filing the paperwork on our encounter was going to be a nightmare.
When we arrived back at the Lovecraft Café, I had hoped for the comfort of my office chair, but I had no such luck.
There was already a buzz of activity concerning our discovery. Assistants were placing calls and scrambling hurriedly off into the bowels of the D.E.A. while the Enchancellors summoned the two of us to a private council. Once Connor and I stood before them, it was clear that I had misjudged the magnitude of our agency. The crowd consisted mostly of unfamiliar faces, faces that scrutinized Connor and me as we gave our account of our run-in with the Sectarian Defense League.
Afterward, we were dismissed from the assembly, but told to wait. Eventually Inspectre Quimbley emerged from the room with a serious look on his face and whispered something to Connor that I couldn’t hear. I had been on the verge of falling asleep with all that had happened already so I was surprised when, without any explanation, my partner grabbed my arm, led me out through the coffee shop, and hurried us toward the subway stop at Astor Place. That had been hours ago.
Connor was being tight lipped about just what we were doing, but if I were to guess, it had something to do with experimenting on how long it took my ass to fall asleep on the hard, orange plastic seats of the R train. While designed for commuting, they were clearly not meant for extended journeys. The blur of moonlit buildings and urban graffiti sped along outside the window as I stretched my back and shifted in my seat. We had covered the entire length of the R line several times over. The entire time, Connor had sat next to me, calmly doing crossword puzzles. Occasionally he would ask me for a three-letter word for “feline” or a twenty-letter word starting with “X” and having the clue “Ancient mythic cult from the Lower East Side.” Other than that, he seemed quite content to sit in silence all along the rails of the subway.
“Are we supposed to ride this train all night or what?” I finally asked.
“We ride until we get what we came for,” he said and erased one of his answers from the crossword.
“You sure we’re on the right train?”
“Yeah, kid, I’m sure,” Connor said, starting to sound annoyed. He folded the paper and set it down. “Look, Simon, consider this a lesson in patience. We’re waiting for a sign. We’re dealing with things on a cosmic and spiritual level. There is a whole subset of rules that we have to play by. Riding and waiting on the R train is just one of them.”
I had experienced enough exercises in patience for one day.
The train was just heading back underground on its return trip from Queens when the door at the far end of the car slid open. The click clack of the tracks filled our ears, and an elderly gentleman shuffled into the car. He was dressed in a brown workman’s jumpsuit and wore a tattered wool hat with earflaps, even though it was much too warm. His face was a mass of wrinkles, and I watched as his wild blue eyes darted around the empty car before settling on us. In his hand he carried a blue and gold paper coffee cup, and as he shook it, the sound of coins jingled rhythmically.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. I looked around, but there were only Connor and me. The man’s voice was thick with an accent similar to Faisal Bane’s, and once again, I couldn’t quite place it. Serbian, Croatian, something that smacked of the former Soviet Republic.
“Please pardon the interruption of your commute to wherever your destination lies,” he continued. “I’d like to perform a little number for you and if you can find it in your hearts to give…a nickel, a dime, whatever…it would be greatly appreciated.”
Since the subway car was empty, it was obvious that his impromptu “number” was meant only for the two of us. With great enthusiasm, he shook his cup of change and it jingled in a faster rhythm as he hopped around the subway car with superhuman agility. He pranced across the empty seats one second and swung from the bars overhead the next. What he was, I didn’t know. I threw open my coat and eased my hand toward my bat, but Connor’s grip stopped me. I turned to him and he shook his head.
The old man’s raspy voice belted out a song. I recognized the words as vaguely familiar, but couldn’t place them.
“At first, I was afraid, I was petrified.
“Kept thinkin’ I could never live without you by my side…”
“What the hell is he?” I whispered underneath the singing. The crazed man was now hanging upside down from the bars in the middle of the car. He flipped deftly down to the floor and swayed to his own rhythm. The sound of the coins went clink clink clink as his frantic pace increased, but not a single coin fell from the cup, no matter how fevered the rhythm or his dancing became.
I wasn’t sure how to react. I wanted to smile at the clear enjoyment this man-creature was getting from singing, but at the same time, with Connor and me the sole objects of his focus, I began to feel intensely uncomfortable. The smell of garbage washed down the length of the car and I had to fight back the urge to cough. “Is this who we’ve been waiting for?”
I found myself slowly recalling the words of the song he was singing, mouthing them as the old man continued. I knew them from my childhood, from a music style I had hoped would never rear its ugly head again—disco. “I Will Survive.”
The man finished the chorus and closed the distance between us by half. Now his scent was overpowering.
Connor shoved his crossword into the space between us while he dug deep into his pocket. He fished out his wallet and flipped it open as the man started to sing his next verse.
“Crap!” Connor muttered. He held up his wallet so I could see. Outside of a variety of credit cards and ATM receipts, it was empty. “Pay the man, kid.”
I nodded and pulled out my own wallet. “I’ve only got twenties.”
“So give him one!”
“Don’t you think twenty is a bit much for an old seventies disco song?” I asked.
“Just do it!” Connor whispered urgently. “Trust me on this; we need his help. Goes by the name of Gaynor. Or that’s what he lets us call him anyway.”
The man called Gaynor landed in front of us now. I coughed as a fresh wave of his stench rolled over me like a blanket. I held my nose and attempted to breathe through my mouth only, but still the strong scent remained. All the while, Gaynor’s cup rang out clink clink clink! and the man did a little two-step shuffle, jumping maniacally back and forth from foot to foot.
I slipped the twenty into his cup, and immediately Gaynor stopped singing to let out a dry cackle. Up close, his features showed the signs of more years than one mortal lifetime could possibly know. Luckily, we rarely dealt with the possible. His eyes danced momentarily toward the cup and he thrust his fingers in and fished around until he pulled out the twenty.
“Oh ho-ho!” his dry voice cackled merrily. “Your little gentlemen’s club must be wantin’ to know something pretty bad there, eh?”
Connor looked at the weathered old man and smiled gently. “Good to see you, too, old friend.”
“Eh!” said Gaynor, looking disgusted. “Enough with the ‘old friend’ crap. You in some kind of fucking comic book? Save your road-movie dialogue.”
“Sorry,” Connor said. I could hear the annoyance barely hiding itself behind his apology.
“And don’t apologize!” Gaynor shouted. “It makes you sound weak…”
The belligerent way he handled Connor was something I shouldn’t have found funny, but I couldn’t help laughing, which switched his attention to me. Gaynor turned as fast as a striking snake and crouched down. His manic eyes locked with mine and his earthy smell overwhelmed me, causing the laughter to die on my lips.
“You find that funny, do you?” he asked. His eyes scurried back and forth across my face. I felt the sudden urge to squirm out of my seat and dash as far away from the man as quickly as I could, but with the handrail to my left and Connor to my right, that was impossible.
“No,” I replied, hating the sound of weakness in my own voice, “I don’t find that funny…particularly.”
I turned my head as far as I could to avoid his gaze. I couldn’t explain it rationally, but I wanted nothing more than to make this creature go away.
Yes, creature. Although he looked human
, no human moved like he did or could have caused this sensation in me unless it fell under the category of supernatural. It didn’t matter how human it looked, it was still otherworldly—and that meant that it fell within my bailiwick in Other Division to deal with. I so didn’t want to.
“The kid’s new here,” Connor offered. “Give him a break, will ya?”
Gaynor turned his attention back to Connor. I felt my intense discomfort fall away.
The subway train pulled into Lexington Avenue, and the doors slid open. The platform was full of people, but none of them stepped into the car. En masse, they faltered for a moment as if something was repelling them, and then quickly made their way to another car. As the doors slid shut with the familiar bing bong, our car was just as empty as it had been. The train lurched out of the station.
“Twenty won’t buy you much time, ya know,” Gaynor said, twisting the bill in his shriveled but powerful-looking hands. He stood up and tucked the twenty into one of the side pockets of his coverall. He pushed his hat back to an almost impossible angle and scratched at the mad tangle of gray curls covering the front of his head. “Better get crackin’!”
“We’ve come about a wooden fish,” Connor said. He pulled out a pen and picked up the newspaper, sketching a rough image of the item stolen from Irene’s. “It’s about the size of a dinner plate and we think it’s sacred or something. No one at the Department can make head or tail of it. We haven’t come across any references to it in any of our research so far, but it was important enough for a group of cultists to nick it from under our noses.”
“Ahhh,” Gaynor said. He snatched the paper from Connor’s hands. Was that recognition I saw in his eyes—or madness? “No idea what it is, eh?”
“None, I’m afraid.”
Gaynor let out a sigh as he lowered himself to the floor of the train car and arranged himself cross-legged. He sat quietly as he gathered focus. Seconds later, his jaw fell open and his eyes rolled back into his head, reminding me disturbingly of my narcoleptic great-grandfather after Thanksgiving dinner.
