“You’re awfully close to being indicted. Well, let’s just say that Morrison wants to convene a grand jury, but I still have Albert convinced you’re a good cop who’s simply misunderstood. A maverick, you go your own way, get into lots of trouble bucking authority, that sort of thing. He’s bought it so far, and he’s still buying it. But Morrison’s been working on him, and just about has him worn down. Old school ties aren’t unbreakable. They only hold up under so much weight. And your indictment is hanging by a thread.”
“They still don’t have any evidence I’m a hit girl for the mob.”
“No, I don’t think they do,” Siry agreed. “What they have is a lot of gruesome crimes that have only one connecting factor: you. You are very handy and not very well liked in some quarters. Partly because you refuse to toe the line, partly because you’re a girl. Uh, I’m sorry, woman.”
“Funny, around you I always feel ‘girl’ is the more appropriate term,” Sara said as she came in and took a seat.
Siry grunted. “I’ll take that as a compliment. As I was saying, you are prime material for taking the fall.”
“Oh, yeah? I play the sap for no one, see. Gosh, Cap. Let’s do more 1930s B-movie dialogue. It’s fun.”
“Goddamn it!”
Sara sobered up and sat up. “What’s wrong, Joe?”
“Here I go to bat for you, trying to save your skinny little ass, and you sit there and make silly jokes. Don’t you think an indictment is going to reflect badly on me? Or do you always think just of yourself?”
“Sorry, Joe. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was just trying to cheer you up. You look tired. I’ve been worried.”
“I look tired? I am tired. Sick and tired of this job, this endless battle with the brass. They expect me to run this department on a shoestring, and instead of backing me up, instead of giving me all the moral support I need, they sit up there on their salaried butts and think of ways to cut the ground out from under me on a daily basis. And I’m damned sick of it, Sara. I’m sick to death of it.”
Siry suddenly grimaced and clutched his left shoulder. “Damn it,” he muttered.
“What is it?”
“Pain. Right here at the tip of the shoulder.”
“How long have you been having it?”
“Christ, I dunno. Couple of months.”
“How bad and how often?”
“Never mind. It’s bursitis.”
“Whenever you have pain there, at your age, it’s cause to see a doctor.”
“To hell with doctors. Overpaid quacks.”
“You ought to get it checked out.”
“Don’t nag. We were talking about you. I’d like to see you change your attitude. You think you’re invulnerable. You’re just laughing this business off. But it could happen. They not only could boot you off the force, they could drop a conspiracy charge on you like a bag of hammers.”
“Nice image.”
“There you go again!”
“Sorry, Cap. It’s just that it’s hard to take Morrison seriously, let alone Seltzer. They are both so totally clueless. They haven’t the slightest idea of what’s really going on.”
“And you know what’s really going on?”
“No, but I have my own fall guy.”
Siry’s expression softened. “You do?” he asked with genuine interest.
“Yup.”
“This guy have a name?”
“Yup. Erwin Strauss. Austrian by birth, former STASI officer. East German secret police and intel. I had some Eurocops fax me his file.”
“What’s he do?”
“He’s been a general utility hit man for the Organizatsiya for over ten years. He’s very good. Skilled, intelligent, crafty, and has never been arrested in his life.”
“Sounds good. And he’s here in New York?”
“For the moment. He did the Bubnov hit, and I think we can make all these weird murder cases stick to him.”
“Wonderful,” Siry said. “But that doesn’t sound like you. Anybody else, I would say, how can we set him up? But you’re not usually so cynical. What happened?”
“He’s so slimy, he deserves anything he gets. I read his file. He supervised torture. It was his specialty. He’s cesspool slime.”
“I can show you a hundred guys in Attica who are worse just on paper. I guess you’re not really turning cynical after all. Okay, I like him for all this stuff. When can we pick him up?”
“I’m working on it, Cap. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay, okay.” Siry was nodding and looking better. “Yeah. Good.” He sat back and continued nodding.
Sara decided this was a good moment to get up and get out. He was still nodding, heaven knew to whom, as she closed the door.
“Good night, Joe.”
“Huh? Yeah, good night.”
* * *
New York was quiet that evening. A hush pervaded the million-footed city. Baba sat at a small table, laying Tarot in patterns on its top.
Sophia sat in a comfortable chair off to one side. “What do you see, old woman?”
“Death.”
“I hate that card. Whose death do you see?”
“A woman’s. She is powerful, but she will die.”
“That is a good sign for us.”
“I see no good at all,” Baba said.
“We will avenge Lazlo.”
“Is that so important?”
“It is to me. Besides, we cannot run his business with such a potent adversary about.”
“Why do you think you can take a man’s role?”
“I was the only thing giving him substance. He would never have risen in the ranks if I hadn’t pushed him. I grew weary of being the woman behind the man. Now he is gone. I grieve for him, but now I am free. I will stand where he fell and carry on.”
“You dream,” Baba said, laying another card. “Ah,” she added, nodding.
“Oh, play your cards, do your magic. Mr. Strauss is doing the actual work.”
“He works with what I give. He has nothing himself.”
“Except strength and brains and skill.” Sophia snorted. “Nothing, my eye.”
“My eye sees the future. It is not good to summon demons to do one’s bidding. They will turn. They always do. They are smarter than we. They are dangerous.”
“I don’t know if I entirely believe in that nonsense. Like Lazlo, I tend to be skeptical.”
“It is working beyond my wildest dreams,” Baba said. “If I had known, I could have been queen of Romania, and Hungary, and perhaps all the Russias. Had I known. Had I the courage. But I am only a poor old woman. I do not really think it is my magic. It is the witch woman’s.”
“Oh, hush. How can that be? The witch woman casts an evil spell on herself?”
“I do not understand the nature of her familiar. But he is wily, and perhaps treacherous. Succubi are that way.”
“And this succubus is really doing the magic. Against her?”
“That is the way I see it. As I say, I do not completely understand, but I see.”
“Ridiculous. Mr. Strauss is a skilled magician himself.”
“Oh, he knows more than he can actually do. He is evil incarnate himself, but he has limitations.”
Sophia looked at her grandmother-in-law suspiciously. “Sometimes you surprise me. Most of the time you play the idiot. But you are shrewd in your way.”
“That is the way I choose to play my cards,” the old woman said.
Sara got home late and didn’t know what to do. She wanted to worry about her predicament, feeling somehow obliged. It was serious enough. A man had been assigned the task of killing her, and his past history tended to speak highly of his qualifications for that job. He was a professional and had a track record of fulfilling his contracts.
For some reason, though, she could not muster an overall sense of urgency, the sense of danger and alarm most people would feel with a price on their head. She was more worried about not being worried than s
he was . . . well, whatever.
There was a sense of improvisation hanging over this entire affair, and she had to get to the bottom of it. Someone was behind it. She could not take werewolves seriously. Or Mah Jongg dragons. The werewolf had not taken himself seriously, at times.
The city of the temple, though, for some strange reason, she took as real. Which was all the more strange, because it struck her as the most improbable of the recent apparitions. Nevertheless, those surpassingly strange beings seemed in deadly earnest.
Why on earth would they want her as a goddess? They weren’t human. Wouldn’t they require an anthropomorphic god from their perspective? Judging from the design of their cities, they were avian. Birds. And their resident (if you could use the term) god was definitely of the same genus. Why would they want an alien creature, which she certainly was, for a goddess? Not a lot of sense there.
Then again, humans have had human gods and nonhuman gods. Maybe the bird worshipers wanted to trade theirs in on a new model. She wondered about the consequences of such blasphemy. Would not the resident god be. . . .miffed?
Rather miffed, one should think. Then again, who says this god is a jealous god? Don’t model your theology after the earthly kind.
The Witchblade began to pulsate.
Ah-hah. And why would that be? Suddenly her hearing became more acute. The door seemed to vibrate with echoes from the hallway, echoes of heavy footsteps. The sounds came from the stairwell, growing louder and nearer.
She got out her .38 special and looked it over, pondering. She had a suspicion, and if it proved accurate, the gun would do her no good. Joe had warned an indictment was imminent. What she needed was a good lawyer, not a representative of the firm of Smith & Wesson. She put the gun back in the drawer of the nightstand.
A bothersome thought occurred. Hell, she’d spend the night at the Tombs, and they’d take the bracelet. She had never thought of that. Damn it, that could not happen. And in jail, without the Blade she would become a fish in a barrel. Through his mob connections, Strauss could reach his tentacles into the Tombs like a giant squid probing a sunken cathedral.
How many disgruntled former informants would there be in the Tombs, more than ready to act out their revenge fantasies by whacking a supposed dirty cop? Plenty. Sure, she’d be segregated, in the women’s wing, and probably in special custody reserved for dirty cops. But who knew what guards were on the Organizatsiya payroll?
What could she do? Nothing. Her taking a powder would not only reflect badly on Joe Siry; it could cost him his job and retirement.
An authoritative rap sounded on the door. Sara opened it.
“Detective Pezzini?”
“Yes?”
A strange-looking man flashed a badge at her. He was flanked by four equally odd-looking ducks.
“Who the hell are you?” She didn’t see any reason to be civil. “Never seen you before. What precinct do you work out of?”
“We have a warrant for your arrest.”
“That so? What charge, exactly?”
“Criminal conspiracy.” He fluttered a blue-slipped paper at her.
“So they didn’t go for the RICO rap? Okay, come in.”
They followed her into the apartment.
“We also have a search warrant,” the leader said.
Sara narrowed her eyes. “What’s your name and rank? I’d like to know who’s commanding this detail.”
“Detective Smith,” the man said.
“Okay . . . Smith.”
“You have the right to remain silent,” Smith recited.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you free of charge. Do you understand these rights?”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me you have a search warrant, when you don’t need one on a bust. You can trash this apartment if you want to. You’re telling me the DA doesn’t know this?”
Smith’s eyes suddenly grew . . . strange. Everything was simply wrong. All these jamooks had an odd look.
The Witchblade’s pulsing was verging on the painful. Sara took a few steps back from “Smith.”
“Sara Pezzini . . .” the creature named Smith began.
“You’re not from New York, are you?”
Smith shook his head. “No, Sara Pezzini. We want you to come with us.”
“Come where?”
“To our world. Please accompany us. We will escort you.”
She turned and took them all in. They were simply standing around as if not knowing what to do. Perhaps the others could not even talk.
“Please do come. We invite you.”
“Who are you?”
“We are the Order of the Raven,” Smith said simply.
“And what is that?”
“It is hard to explain.”
“Okay, Order of the Raven. What the hell do you want?”
“We need you to reign over us, as our deity. You and the symbiotic entity.” He pointed to her wrist.
“The symbiotic entity?” Sara held out her right wrist. “This bracelet?”
“Yes. You are one thing, it is another. Together, you are yet a third. A godhead.”
“And you want me as your . . . deity?”
“Yes. We desire it with every fiber of our collective being. Will you come?”
“No. You come from a funny kind of place.”
“Funny?”
“Yeah. Most places, you go to them. Your world is the kind of place that comes to you. I’ve been there. It’s not my kind of town. No offense.”
“Ah,” Smith said with deep regret. Somehow he looked crestfallen, for all that his mask-face had not changed one iota.
Sara did not understand how that could be, but set the issue aside for the moment. “What I want to know is, why? Why do you want me as a goddess?”
“Relations with our present god have become strained beyond all possibility of repair.”
“I see. I don’t understand, though.”
“Again, it is not easy to cast into terms which you could understand in your present state of consciousness.”
“No doubt. How can I get a change of consciousness?”
“We believe you will come to understand through the altered states afforded you by virtue of your symbiosis.”
“I don’t think of it as a symbiosis,” Sara told him. “I am an independent, self-contained individual. I do feel a kind of obligation to this thing on my wrist. It’s chosen me for a role in a drama that’s been going on for a long time. Exactly what that drama is all about, I really don’t know. I’m still struggling to understand. But that is the extent of my relationship with it.”
“We are not entirely knowledgeable of some things. We do not completely understand the entity you wear on your person, and your own nature is mostly a mystery to us. Forgive our presumption in posing some hypotheses.”
“I forgive you. I’m going to confess that I haven’t the foggiest notion of what you people are all about. And frankly, again no offense, I wish you’d leave me the hell alone.”
“If that is your wish, we cannot refuse. However, we cannot let the issue rest. Not yet. Our humblest apologies.”
“Smith” bowed deeply, turned and walked out of the apartment. Single file, his buddies followed.
The door closed softly.
“Sheesh,” Sara said, shaking her head.
After microwaving a frozen dinner and eating it while watching TV, she went to bed and dreamed about dark skies full of birds, and creepy guys with masks all running about below, getting crapped on and liking it.
Next morning, she stopped into her favorite coffee shop and bought a hot mocha latte with whipped cream. A square of cinnamon crumb cake took her fancy, and she got that, too. Then, sitting at a table eating it, she remembered that a contract was out on her life, and that she should get her butt out of public view, pronto. So she gathered up the cake on a paper napkin and,
coffee in the other hand, walked to the station. Some patrolman was kind enough to open the door, but he let it go prematurely. She got bumped in the rear and got her hand scalded. She dribbled coffee and crumbs all the way to her desk.
“Sara, I’ve got something to tell you,” Jake said behind her back.
“What . . . oh, damn. Jake, did you know you had a way of sneaking up on people?”
Jake looked down at the crumb cake, now on the dirty station floor. “Oops. Sorry.”
“Rats, that was good, too. Okay, what is it now?”
“Uh . . . Jeez, Sara, I don’t know how to tell you this . . .”
“Tell me. It was a bad night and it’s been a bad morning so far. Nothing you could say could put me in a worse mood.”
“Wanna bet?”
“No. What is it?”
“You’re under arrest.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
The worst thing about a stay in the Tombs is the smell, a multi-layered phenomenon. On top of everything sits the fumes of a strong disinfectant, capstone to a wall of odor that permeates the place. The stink of all manner of body effluent, from armpits to excrement, lives in the mid-levels. And bottoming all of it, on the floors and along the walls and baseboards, in drains and pipes, amongst the dust bunnies beneath the bunks and in the musty stuffing of mattresses, dwells the dank smell of mold, mildew, and fungus of every variety, a century in the growing.
The women’s wing was a little better than the men’s, but not much. Sara had spent all day here. It was evening now, and there was nothing to do but lie in the bunk. At least the sheets were clean. Well, as clean as they could get. The fabric looked to have been woven sometime in the 1950s. It was threadbare and rife with holes. At least the blanket didn’t smell. Not much, anyway.
She hadn’t been alone. Joe Siry had come and gone, promising to pull every string he could to get her special treatment. She did not tell him not to. No way. She needed every break she could get. One good thing, she had no cell mates. If there had been another cop in jail at the time, maybe. She was alone in the cell, though there were two other cots.
One toilet, the usual stainless steel affair, open to public view.
Witchblade: Talons Page 16
