A Coldness in the Blood

by Fred Saberhagen

  “It is an unimportant sideline. A shipment of certain materials that seemed to go astray.” He made an extravagant gesture, dismissing the subject.

  As they walked on, Dolly told Andy more about her grandfather. It sounded like she was not going to come right out and admit that Gramp had ever done anything illegal—not that she would have been likely to know about it if he had. Gramp’s business had been a total mystery to Dolly, and he hadn’t even tried to explain it to her until he was in the hospital. Then it was too late, for he was too sick, and even a touch delirious part of the time.

  It seemed to Andy only just that Dickon should have to answer a few questions, for a change. “So, this fire that wrecked your laboratory—how’d it happen to start, anyway?”

  The old man looked unhappy. “A cause has not really been determined.”

  “That’s not how Mr. Tamarack got killed, is it? Did he die here? In the fire?”

  “No.” For once Dickon was quick and determined. “That was an entirely separate accident. Truly, sorrows come in battalions.”

  Dolores asked Andy: “Your uncle never said anything to you about my grandpa or his business?”

  “No—he just sort of let on he was interested in finding someone named Flamel. The fact is, I can’t remember Uncle Matt ever talking about his own business; I don’t know what he does. Sometimes I get the impression that he’s retired.”

  “But how does he spend his time?”

  Scratching his head, Andy realized he didn’t know that either. “Actually I was just starting to teach him how to use computers.”

  Dolly nodded; she seemed to approve of the image of Uncle Matt that she was forming. “It’s good to see older people take an interest in things. Like learning computers, I mean.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  Now Dickon had dropped back a little, taking an especially good long look over his shoulder.

  Dolly moved a little closer to Andy, and lowered her voice. “Is Mr. Dickon really your uncle’s friend?” She sounded doubtful.

  “They know each other. I wouldn’t want to commit myself beyond that.”

  Already Dickon had caught up with them again. For a few strides the three walked on in silence. Coming up with another question for Dickon, Andy asked him why he and his partners had established their lab in this area.

  Dickon answered vaguely that certain necessary materials were easier to come by in Chicago than in most other places.

  Gold might be one, Andy supposed—but what else? Tiring of the game, he decided not to pursue the questioning.

  The version of the three partners and their mysterious enterprise that Andy was trying to piece together, listening to Dolly’s questions and Dickon’s short but evasive replies, didn’t make much sense to him—except for the part about being unwilling to trust the insurance companies. Andy’s life experience so far had left him with the impression that insurance companies were generally up to no good. So maybe there really was gold lying around, and it would make sense to get it out of the building as privately and unofficially as possible. If the old guy was trying to work some kind of con game now, Andy couldn’t tell what it was. It didn’t seem likely that Dickon could be making up such fantastic complications just for the chance to hit on a young woman he’d never met before.

  Dolores was talking, sort of wistfully, about her abortive attempt to educate herself on the subject of ancient Egypt. It sounded to Andy like her college career was going to be over before it had got started. It hadn’t been easy for a prospective freshman to sign up for any course that looked helpful.

  “Of course if you’re serious about it,” she was saying now, “you need to start out learning ancient Greek and I guess Arabic, besides the hieroglyphics and a few other languages. But when I asked around I got the impression that most of the people who study Egypt now are real Egyptians.”

  “So what is it about Egypt?” Andy waved an arm. “I was just asking Dickon the same thing. Ever been there?”

  “No. In my case, the only reason was because Gramp sometimes used it as a theme in his stage act. Now he’s dead … well, there’s no money for school now and no point.”

  Somehow Andy couldn’t help thinking there had to be more than that to Dolly’s sudden thirst for knowledge. For a moment he wondered if Dolly could have been having strange dreams too.

  Dickon was now leading the way, but not far enough ahead to be out of earshot. They were still walking residential streets. This neighborhood looked neither very rich nor very poor, and at the moment was about as quiet as the city ever got on an early summer evening. Automobiles of every age and economic status clung jealously to almost every parking space. Many of the small front yards were thick with residential shrubbery behind their waist-high fences. The bushes were gathering deep twilight shadows, among them fireflies now and then starting to glow magic green. Here and there a homeless human body sat on a curb or shuffled along the street, pushing a grocery cart.

  Most of the faces passing on the sidewalk and the street were white, but there was a sampling of what looked like every population in the world. A pack of multicolored children sped by, some jabbering into cell phones as they ran. Now, just a block ahead, there loomed a brightly lighted cross street, lined on both sides with a variety of shops. Everywhere traffic crept, horns sounded, people managed somehow to get across the streets. Smells of pizza and beer came wafting through deepening darkness, along with strains of music. Some kind of jazz. Street signs sternly warned the summer strollers against parking along this curb during snow removal.

  The closer they drew to their destination, the more nervous Dickon seemed to grow, the more often he kept glancing over his shoulder.

  Suddenly, as if Andy had been arguing the point with her, Dolores told him, keeping her voice low: “All right, maybe there is something crooked about this mysterious project, alchemy or whatever. But my grandpa worked hard, and earned his money honestly. If he got suckered into putting money into this, then I want to get it out.”

  “You were starting to tell me about his act on stage.”

  “He had a good act, and he worked hard at it. So if I can get his money back somehow, in gold or however, why shouldn’t I?”

  Andy said: “No reason why you shouldn’t.” He watched Dickon looking nervously over his shoulder again; that was beginning to make Andy nervous too.

  Dolly went on, as if she needed to build up her own determination: “I’ve been poor all my life, I don’t want to be poor any more.”

  Andy still wasn’t sure how all Dickon’s talk of old statues and mummies fitted in, and if his, Andy’s, own dream could have been just coincidence. It seemed there might have been some smuggling of antiquities out of Egypt, but Dolores’s grandpa had died before he could profit from the deal—if he had really been in on it at all. But what did smuggling statues and mummies have to do with alchemy?

  It sounded to Andy like there was almost certainly something shady going on, that Dickon and others had been bending the law, if not breaking it outright. Was this the kind of deal that Uncle Matt might have got himself involved in? Mysterious Uncle Matt, with all those old paintings, doubtless immensely valuable, on the walls of his apartment?

  Andy didn’t want to believe that of his uncle, and if it was true anyway, he didn’t want to know it. He couldn’t remember that Uncle Matt had any Egyptian art on display.

  Joe Keogh had been an honest cop in his years on the Chicago force, and had brought up his son with the same attitude toward the world.

  Dolores Flamel seemed as much in the dark about the secret project as Andy was. Suddenly he realized that his own objective had shifted since embarking on this evening stroll. Gaining information about Dolores Flamel had become less important than trying to keep her out of trouble, whatever her late relative might have been up to.

  But at the same time he still wanted to learn more about her. Now he asked: “What’ll you do when you get this settled? You said you wanted to get out of Chica
go.”

  “Do I ever. I’ll head west again. That’s what Gramp would be doing, if he’d had the chance. In fact, he had two first-class train tickets reserved for tomorrow. He bought ’em months ago, when he still had money, thinking he and his girlfriend would be traveling home in style. Except Miranda What’s-her-name up and disappeared, about the time she found out he was sick and broke.”

  “Train tickets, huh?”

  Dolly nodded. “Amtrak. Gramp eventually got so’s he was really afraid of flying—or maybe he was just angry with the airlines. He used to say they’d all declared war on their customers.”

  “Perfectly understandable.”

  “Here we are.” Dickon had slowed to a halt.

  Looking across the street in front of them, Andy saw that they had reached the site. The building before them had certainly suffered some fire damage, shown by black stains of smoke, and its windows and doors were boarded up. Now Dickon pointed it out to his companions, with an elegant though unnecessary two-handed gesture.

  From this angle, at least, the structure surrounded by yellow tape looked almost intact.

  The mental image Andy had been building up was pretty thoroughly erased. “I thought you said it was burned out.”

  “In fact the damage is rather greater than it appears from here. Apart from actual flames, it is amazing what havoc can be wrought by smoke and high-pressure hoses—not to mention firemen’s axes.” Dickon shuddered delicately. “But we may enter safely.”

  On the side of the building opposite the alley, the adjoining lot was vacant, and amid its rank weeds there sprouted the remnants of a foundation where some house or small store had been torn down. Whoever owned these lots, thought Andy, need not be much concerned about the loss of one more old building; the Near North Side was booming, and the land itself should have mouthwatering value.

  Except for one fern-windowed grill and bar, the remainder of the block in the direction of the busy street seemed to be occupied entirely by small shops, heavy on art and assorted kinds of upscale clothing, with a sprinkling of videos and books, incense and pottery.

  Gently shepherding Dolly across the street, Dickon murmured something into her ear. Andy couldn’t hear what it was. In the next moment, Dickon turned his head and looked at Andy as if wishing Andy would get lost. Andy stared right back.

  When they were halfway across the street, Dickon walked more slowly and altered course. Now that they were standing on the threshold of their goal, he seemed to be waffling, hesitating about going through with the promised transaction.

  Now the elder man was murmuring, indecisively: “It would be a good thing if I could just see to my automobile first.”

  There in the mouth of the alley was what Andy supposed had to be Dickon’s abandoned car. The red tape slapped across the windshield, and the metal boot on one wheel, strongly suggested that the car was being blamed by officialdom for not getting itself out of the way.

  Andy didn’t get it. “I don’t know what you can do about that. Looks like the cops have seen to it already, put a boot on it.” The steel clamp gripping one wheel was plainly visible. The auto had been effectively immobilized.

  “If you would just stand by, please,” Dickon murmured. “This will take only a moment.” But then again he hesitated, seemingly until the sidewalk was clear of nearby witnesses, as if he were fearful some passerby might blow a whistle and call the cops when they saw him lay hands on the marked car. What a coward, thought Andy. Then Dickon stepped into the alley.

  In a moment he was opening the trunk of his old car, doing something inside, then closing the lid again. Andy wondered if maybe it was the firemen’s fault that it was where it was, if they had pushed it to where it blocked the alley, in a rush to get it out of their way.

  Now Dickon, moving with unexpected quickness, had bent over the booted wheel and with a straining grunt was making an effort to wrench away the paralyzing clamp. He is crazy, after all, thought Andy.

  Dickon was wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt, garish in some crazy Hawaiian pattern, and the muscles in his thin arms briefly stood out in rigid cords.

  Then with a flick of his wrist he tossed aside the heavy steel gadget, now somewhat bent out of shape. Landing on the pavement, it sounded like something out of an advanced weightlifter’s kit.

  Andy moved a little closer, unable to believe what he thought he had just seen. “How in hell did you do that?”

  The gray-haired man smiled timidly. “Somehow they didn’t put it on properly.”

  “Oh.”

  Now, with its wheels all free to turn, it would seem that the vehicle was ready to be driven away—but where was Dickon? A moment ago Andy had been watching him closely, and now he seemed to have vanished, like some kind of ghost, into the gathering dusky night.

  Andy turned around, bewildered. “Where—?”

  Dolores pointed. “He went this way. He must have gone into the building.”

  On the floor of the alley just beside the burned-out building, shaded from the nearest streetlight by the thick shadow of a burly wooden utility pole, Andy could make out broken pavement and a deep mud puddle, from which the water recently poured out by fire hoses had no place to drain.

  Groping in heavy shadows, Andy caught up with Dolores as she rounded the building’s next corner and reached what ought to have been a small backyard. This was dominated by a clump of wild and weedy trees that had sprung up in what amounted to a vacant lot. The trees were thick and bushy, growing head-high, evidently making the most of their recent watering by fire hoses, and they cast heavy shadows.

  Now Dolly, practically secure from casual observation, was doing something at one of the boarded windows. If they did manage to get in, he thought, it would be very dark inside, and Dolly’s flashlight was going to come in very handy.

  Andy kept his voice low, though he was positive that no one was near enough to hear. “Are you sure this makes sense?”

  He didn’t get an answer.

  ~ 10 ~

  Andy supposed that Dickon might possibly have made his way into the abandoned structure as smoothly as a puff of smoke, though Andy wasn’t at all sure the strange man had even been moving in that direction when he disappeared. But maybe Dolly had seen something he hadn’t. Where else would the fellow have gone, after all his effort to persuade Dolly to come here with him?

  Anyway, Dolly was having her difficulties trying to get in. Andy could hear her muttering low-voiced swear words as she tried to dislodge a sheet of plywood now taking the place of a recently demolished ground-level window. Probably the agent of destruction had been some fireman’s axe, to judge by the savage dents and hacks around the window frame. But later, when the board-up people came around, they had not done too good a job.

  Andy could dimly see his companion’s small, strong hands dislodging a strip of warning tape, then prying fiercely at the edge of the plywood. He was about to offer help when something suddenly gave way, creating a footwide gap, leading into utter darkness.

  Turning to study Andy’s reaction, Dolly told him: “You don’t have to come in.”

  “What are my choices?” But she was already gone. Mumbling bad words in turn—Dickon really couldn’t have come this way, could he?—Andy climbed through the gap after her, necessarily straining to force it wider. As soon as he got through, he managed to tear his jeans on what must have been a projecting nail.

  Once inside the building, they had to pause to let their eyes get used to deeper darkness. Dolores had pulled out her small flashlight, and was peppering the darkness with little bursts of illumination. Thoughtfully she was aiming the light low, not wanting a stray beam to betray their presence to people outside.

  Actually this part of the structure did not seem much damaged, except that everything, floor and walls and even ceiling, looked soggy when the light hit it, and the bitter smell of smoke had saturated everything, and still retained an almost choking strength.

  Touching his companion’s arm
, Andy whispered: “So where the hell is Dickon now? Did he really come in here?”

  “He must have. He can’t have gone far.” But Dolores no longer sounded completely convinced.

  Groping his way to a doorway, Andy put his head through, and thought he saw movement, a room away. “Dickon?” he called in a soft voice. But there was no answer, and the movement was not repeated.

  When he went through the doorway, the surface beneath his feet threatened to give way. Hastily he backed up a step, muttering: “Watch out, this floor is treacherous.”

  Dolly, having the flashlight, naturally assumed the lead. They were in a hallway now, going in the opposite direction from Andy’s doorway. In the darkness he could hear water dripping in several places, each with its own separate rhythm. Doubtless the water was coming from persistent fire-hose puddles or broken plumbing, somewhere on the second or third floor. Each drop made an echoing, almost metallic sound as it landed in the flooded basement.

  Dickon had been right about the extent of the damage; once you were inside it was easy to see there had been plenty. Some of the interior walls were charred, and others were leaning crazily.

  Exchanging warnings about the floor, the two explorers made their way slowly forward, Dolly still a step ahead. In another minute they had come to the edge of a kind of crater, where they stood looking down into what had been a basement. Pools of deep mud rimmed a miniature lake, created by fire hoses or broken pipes. Jaggedly splintered two-by-fours, showing where some interior walls had broken down, projected menacingly upward.

  “Let’s be very careful here,” he murmured. It would be murderous to fall on one of those impaling stakes.

  No telling how deep the water was down there; the tiny beam of Dolly’s small flashlight bounced off the black and glittering surface of still water, then seemed to disappear.

  Then the searching light beam found the gleam of glass. “Look at that,” Dolly commented. “And that.”