Crossfire

by Dale Lucas

  "Uncle Barnabus bucked and squirmed and said the most awful things…but the drugs worked. He was out soon enough, and that Hoodoo Man carried him down into the basement and helped me better barricade the door. He told me to come see you as soon as the sun was up, and to bring back your bag."

  "Glad to know he's looking out for me," Dub said with a slight smile. "I never knew you had it in you, Miss Farnes."

  "What?"

  "Petty larceny."

  "Maybe if you'd been here—"

  He held up his hands. "Enough. I understand. Charges won't be pressed. And for the record, I'm very sorry I wasn't here. Sounds like you had a hell of a night. You needed someone. At least the Hoodoo Man was there for you, right?"

  She nodded, then leaned forward over her coffee and shook her head absently. "God, those eyes of his. Black and deep, like a couple of open manhole covers. And that voice…"

  "Can I fry you up some eggs?" Dub asked. "Make you some toast?"

  She nodded absently, off in her own world. He set to work on their breakfast. When he'd eaten and she still picked, he excused himself to get dressed before venturing back to her house with her. When he emerged, Fralene sat blank-faced over her breakfast plate, food half-eaten. She looked like she wanted to collapse, but wouldn't allow herself the luxury.

  "Are you sure you're up for this?" he asked. "You could stay here for a bit if you liked. Let me handle—"

  "No," she said with finality. "I can't sleep until I know he's safe. Let's be on our way."

  So, off they went, he with his medical bag in hand. When they reached the Farnes house, it was just past seven in the morning. Beau was in the parlor, sleeping on the sofa. He stirred when the two of them entered, but Fralene urged him back to sleep, assuring him she'd wake him in time for school. The exhausted young man obliged.

  The place had a drear, funereal pall upon it, as though someone had just died. Dub noted with some surprise how clear and unmistakable the feeling of wrongness was in the air—even when he was not horsed, not sensitive to such things. Anyone with even passing sensitivity would notice it, he assumed. One glance at Fralene told him he was right. She looked like she was standing in the foyer of a haunted mansion in the Jersey pine barrens—ancient, gloomy, frightening—instead of the entryway of her own house. She wrapped her arms around herself, shuddered the slightest.

  "Do you feel it?" she asked.

  He nodded. No need to lie. "Yes, I do. Where is he?"

  "The basement," she said, indicating the door beneath the stairs, barricaded with the familiar sideboard. Dub set down his doctor's bag, laid his shoulders against the sideboard, and with a few, grunting shoves, managed to slide it out of the way. Then he took up his bag and looked to Fralene.

  "Is there light down there?" he asked.

  "There's a light bulb—but who knows whether he's broken it or not. Here—" she hurried out of the room and when she returned, offered him a little stub of candle in an old-fashioned candlestick. She struck a match on the sideboard and lit the candle. "This should do, at least until you orient yourself."

  Dub took the candle and studied her one last time. She was exhausted and terrified. He leaned close and kissed her forehead. "Stay here," he said, then slipped into the basement and closed the door behind him.

  14

  It was a morning like any other: Dolph Storms taking breakfast at Mischki's Delicatessen while the boys—Toby, Spengler, and Monk—watched and waited. When they showed up for duty every morning, they should've already eaten (Dolph had told them this more than once), so that Dolph could nosh in peace while he read the morning papers, went over the racing forms, and drank copious amounts of black coffee spiked with schnapps (courtesy of the flask in his coat pocket). The boys could slurp a little coffee if they wanted, but that was all. No noshing on the big man's clock. Those were the rules.

  Monk Lasky was glad of it this morning. If he had tried to eat with Dolph in the midst of the plotz now unfolding, Monk thought he probably couldn't digest. They were usually guaranteed at least one shit-fit every week during breakfast—Dolph wasn't a morning guy, and he sometimes took bad news—even the sort in the newspaper—personally. But this? This was bad. Monk wouldn't be surprised if some unlucky schlub who crossed Dolph's path today suffered a completely unwarranted beat-down because of it.

  It all started when Dolph saw the thing about the darkie vigilantes on page eight. It was a tiny article—just a column, maybe four or five paragraphs—but somehow, Dolph had glommed onto it. He was hot before he even finished it.

  "Goddamn nigger meshuggeners jumping Moses on a pogo stick!" he roared. There had been half a dozen other patrons in Mischki's then. By the time Dolph's tirade was done, most of them were dropping change on tables and making for the doors.

  Monk shared worried looks with Toby and Spengler. Not good. What could get the boss so bent this early in the morning?

  The boss yelled for Mr. Mischki to bring him a phone. Mr. Mischki took up his Ameche and trailed it, long cord and all, over to the boss's table. Dolph barked at the operator for his connection and waited. He was calling Mr. Flood.

  Monk shuffled his feet and stared at the boss's unfinished breakfast—bagles, lox and cream cheese. The boss had only finished half of it. The smell of those lox made Monk want to yark.

  "Yeah, Harry," the boss said when Mr. Flood picked up, "you see this happy horse-shit on page eight? Yeah, yeah! What the fuck is that jungle bunny cunt up in Darktown doing, anyway? Yeah, I know they're not a gang—I can fuckin' read, you condescending prick! But, seriously, what's goin' on up there? Didn't it occur to anybody that arming niggers who ain't on our payroll is bad for business? Next thing you know, they're gonna think they got the law behind 'em!"

  Monk and the boys waited. On the other end of the phone line, Mr. Flood said his piece. Whatever he said, the boss didn't buy into it. His face got red and his mouth twisted into a snarl.

  "Look, Harry, you can handle this garbage any way you like, but I do business up in Harlem, and I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna let some fly-by-night vigilance committee tell me when and where that business transacts! I'm telling you here and now, any of those scattergun spooks cross my path or interfere with my business, I'm gonna give 'em what for, and how!"

  Mr. Flood countered with his own tirade. The boss seemed to take that a little calmer. He was past the point of arguing now. His mind was made up. Monk and the boys knew that once the boss's mind was made up, things would quiet down. It was the making up of his mind that caused trouble. Making up his mind—especially when someone else tried to make it up for him—always put the boss out of sorts.

  "You told me to wait, Harry! You told me you had a plan for those preachers trying to rain on our parade! It's been a week now, and what's happened, huh? Just where the fuck are we compared to last week? I waited for you to try it your way, and now we got niggers with guns out in the streets—and they ain't even our niggers!"

  Flood interrupted. The boss was getting hot, but he fought to control it. Monk was proud of him. The boss had come a long way keeping a lid on his rage. It'd been nearly a month since he'd killed anybody, and at least a week since he knee-capped that mouthy shyster up in Queens.

  "I'm done," the boss said finally. "Far as I'm concerned, the best defense is a good offense! I think it's time we showed these sons of whores that they ain't the only vigilance committee packin' heat. Nah. Discussion's done. Finish your fuckin' bangers and mash you poncey Mick."

  The boss hung up the phone then. There was a long silence as he drew out his flask, topped up his half-full cup of coffee with schnapps, then drank the whole brew down in a single gulp. He then picked up his uneaten lox—leaving the bagels and the trimmings behind—and ate the cold pink fish with relish.

  "What's the deal, boss?" Toby asked. Toby always asked when they were all wondering. He could get away with it.

  "Deal is, we're goin' on safari," Dolph answered. "I've had it up to my eyeballs with uppity niggers. All F
lood sees is dollar signs. He don't understand that keeping the natives in line is part of runnin' a business uptown."

  "So we gotta keep our eyes peeled," Toby asked, "in case these jigs with the guns come around?"

  "Eyes peeled, hell," the boss said, a crooked smile bending his livery lips. "We're takin' the fight to them, Tobes. We're gonna light those porch monkeys up like the Fourth of July."

  "Nice," Toby said.

  "Fuckin' A," Spengler added.

  Monk figured he better chime in, too. "Open season," he said, but he didn't really know what that meant.

  The boss stood up, yanking crumpled bills from his pocket and tossing them on the table. "First things first, boys. Those preachy niggers need to be put down for some dirt naps. Hoodoo Man or no Hoodoo Man."

  15

  The only relief from the greasy darkness in the basement were three tiny slivers of murky light filtering in through a trio of cloudy little windows at street level. In that wan and sickly light, the brick walls were bleached of color and character, while the huddled shapes of old furniture, shelves of jarred jam and canned vegetables, and drawers and boxes full of tools and memories glowered in the tombish air, made nebulous and sinister by their swaddling of shadows. Dr. Dub Corveaux stopped at the foot of the basement stairs and blinked, trying to allow his vision to adjust to the darkness.

  It was no use. He might as well have been stumbling through a black and white flicker-show, a world of deep blacks and pale grays, with little substance or gradient between them.

  "Who's that?" someone said.

  Dub knew that it was the reverend—though the voice was tinged with a venomous razor-edge that he'd never heard before.

  "Reverend Farnes?" the doctor asked.

  "You know better than that, buck," the demon said with the reverend's lips.

  Dub stepped closer. Would it recognize him? Would the guise of Doc Voodoo still be apparent to the thing in the preacher, even if Dub no longer wore it?

  "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," he said in his most reasonable voice. "It's Doctor Dub, reverend. Fralene asked me to come take a look at you—"

  "Where's your met tet, horse?" the thing in the reverend said.

  Dub stopped where he stood. This was going to prove more difficult than he thought. If Fralene came down here and heard this thing calling him out…

  "I'm still all trussed up and waiting for you, buck," the thing said. "This scarf of yours—it's got me wound up tight. Where'd you ever get such a thing?"

  All right, then. He had to sedate the reverend again, fast. He crouched at the foot of the stairs, opened his doctor's bag, and went rooting inside. There was a small flashlight in the bag. When his hands fell on it, he drew it out, activated it, and allowed its weak little beam to stab into the dark in search of his adversary.

  There. The reverend lay where Doc Voodoo had left him, over in the very center of the cellar. He smiled devilishly under the probing flashlight beam. Dub felt a chill run down his spine when the old holy man's eyes flashed like the eyes of some wild beast in a forest. The look in those eyes… the malign grin… that might be the reverend's body, but it wasn't the reverend's soul animating it. The Serpent d'Ogou scarf still held him, tight as a hungry boa constrictor.

  "Go on, buck," the demon said. "Let me out of this thing and we'll talk."

  Dub shook his head. "I don't think so." He lowered his eyes and the flashlight beam to his open doctor's bag. He had more morphine and a hypo needle ready to go, loaded before he and Fralene had even left his apartment.

  XX

  Fralene stood near the basement door for some time after Dub had gone down into the darkness. She watched it as though something might suddenly happen. The door might buckle. Her uncle might prove to be wide awake and attack the good doctor. A row might erupt and she'd have to come to Dub's aid. She prayed that none of them would come to pass. She prayed for hope. She prayed for sleep, the sort her brother Beau was enjoying right now on the sofa.

  But moment after moment reeled by, and nothing happened. There was no noise, no upset, no violent upheaval or ambush. The downstairs hallway where she stood remained still and quiet save for the insistent ticking of the big grandfather clock at its far end and the intermittent creak or subsidence of the old house's framework. She had noticed all those tiny noises before and they'd never struck her as anything but the moans and sighs of an old structure accepting its age. Now, all those tiny sounds set her on edge. The ticking clock, especially. She had half a mind to go stop its big, swaying pendulum herself, just for a measure of peace and quiet.

  Something creaked above her. It was not the typical, mouse-small sound that the house made in its everyday affairs. It was a heavy, deliberate sort of sound—a creaking in the floorboards and beams just above her, a telltale sound that she'd heard a thousand times before. She waited a breath, then two, hoping she would not hear any sequel to the creaking, a sound that could only mean one thing—

  There it was. Again, the fall of weight and the creaking of the floorboards.

  Footsteps.

  Someone was upstairs. They moved slowly, even surreptitiously—but they were there. Fralene had lived here long enough to know what footsteps upstairs sounded like from below.

  Her breath seemed to freeze in her throat, her ribcage a sudden, constrictive corset around the weak and wavering tissue of her lungs. She opened her mouth to call for Dub, but thought better of it. What if her call for help woke her uncle? What if he attacked Dub and had to be forcibly immobilized again? What if Dub got himself hurt in the process? She couldn't have any of those outcomes on her conscience.

  There, again. One footfall, followed by another. It sounded like someone moving slowly and deliberately, as though blind or lost in the dark. Was she hearing things? Was the house simply playing tricks on her now that she was sleepless and frightened?

  She once more considered calling to Dub, but knew that wouldn't do. He should be left to his work. Likewise, she could wake Beau—but she wanted him to go to school today, no excuses, so he needed the last few minutes of sleep she could give him before she had to roust him out and shove him out the door. No, if she wanted to know what was happening, she needed to check it out herself. That thought gave her little comfort—but what else could she do?

  So, Fralene Farnes moved slowly, cautiously, to the stairs. When she heard the hollow clump as her heel fell on the stair, she decided she needed some advantage over the intruder. She bent, slipped off both her shoes, then continued up the stairs in her bare feet.

  At the top of the stairs, she peered down the length of the upstairs hall. The footfalls had been almost directly above her, perhaps a little to her left. They had come from one of the street-side bedrooms—her own, or her uncle's. When a cursory glance down the hallway showed her nothing, she resolved to carry on, and willed her stocking feet to carry her forward. They moved sluggishly, as though in a dream. When she reached the door to her uncle's room, she set her hand on the knob and waited, listening.

  Again, she heard the footfalls. Or, more rightly, she heard the after-effects of the footfalls, but not the cause. It struck her as terribly strange: she heard the floorboards buckling a little beneath the weight of a passing body, heard the beams beneath creaking—but there was no sound of actual, physical contact. No slough of a boot-sole, no thump of a heel or toe. She wanted to burst into the room and see what it was she thought she heard, but all of the sudden, she could not move. She was rooted where she stood in the hallway, one hand on the doorknob, the other clutching the lapels of her jacket.

  There it was again. The groan and creak of weighted passage, with no other indicator of physical contact. And if she was not mistaken, those last two steps had come closer to her, nearer the door.

  Suddenly, the doorknob trembled in her hands, as if someone else grasped it from the other side. Before she could let go of it, something even stranger happened: in just a breath, the doorknob turned cold as a church-bell on a
January morn. It became so frigid, her skin burned against it. Fralene snatched her hand away and took a hasty step away from the door.

  The floorboards creaked again—the stranger on the far side of the door preparing to open the door and step through. Fralene watched, breathless and silent, as the doorknob turned and the door swung inward with a sudden heave. The sudden thwack of the door against the inner wall of her uncle's bedroom drew a tiny scream out of her and she shrank against the balustrade.

  But there was no one in the doorway—not a soul in sight.

  She blinked. Stared. Was she going crazy? She'd felt it, hadn't she?

  Something had drawn it open with terrible force—something that was now completely, utterly invisible to her.

  Then she noticed something else—something almost as strange and unnerving as the door opening by itself. She moved forward and stood in the doorway, studying the scene before her.

  Her uncle's bedroom was a frenzied mess—ransacked. Drawers were half-open. Clothes lay strewn about. Cologne and tonic bottles littered the floor in front of his bureau. His bedclothes were loose, rumpled, half-torn from the mattress and coiled about the floor. Fralene studied the mess. This was most assuredly not her uncle's work. He'd had no opportunity to come up here last night before his outburst, and she knew him to be a neat and fastidious man under normal circumstances. Was someone searching the place? After something? Just playing a prank or intent on frightening her?

  Something squeaked off to her right, and the rodent squeak was followed by a fluid rush. It had come from the bathroom that adjoined her uncle's bedroom. It was the sound of the bathtub faucet being turned on, a gush of water thundering into the old claw foot tub.

  Fralene moved forward. Was that where the intruder had disappeared to? The bathroom? Why take refuge there if he'd been discovered? Why turn on the water and make his presence known? The door to the bathroom hung slightly ajar, but she could not clearly see inside, could not discern if someone waited there for her, or if once more she'd find an empty room and think herself mad.