The Stars Never Rise (The Midnight Defenders Book 2)

by Joey Ruff

  Ape didn’t say anything.

  “You mad at me now?” I asked. Again, no answer. I tried to shrug it off, took a deep breath.

  The long drive ended in a tear-drop shape at the porch where it circled a large, ornate fountain. The sculpture at the center of the waterspout was a great, winged lion with an eagle’s beak and talons for forelegs. It was a gryphon.

  Ape parked, and as I got out, I watched the fountain and said, “I like the artwork. Your friend has good taste.”

  “He inherited the house.”

  “Okay. So what does he need us for exactly?”

  He considered me before he answered, then he said, “Don’t laugh.”

  “Why the fuck would I laugh?”

  “Apparently, the house is haunted.”

  “It was rhetorical.”

  “I’m serious.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not this again. These sodding idiots and their old houses.”

  “I told him we’d check it out, that’s all.”

  “I don’t have time for this shit.”

  “Jono…” His tone sounded like a warning.

  I sighed. “Lead the way.”

  I followed him up the steps to the front door, and he rang the bell.

  The man that opened the door was a large black man with a tank top and overalls, a hard hat, and three days’ worth of stubble. He wore work gloves and didn’t offer to shake our hands.

  “Yeah?” he asked, gruffly.

  Behind him, a gaggle of workers milled about, carrying timber, buckets of paint, or a ladder. Scaffolding was erected to one side, and two men in paint slickers were rolling the high, domed ceiling a brighter, fresher taupe. A boombox at the scaffold’s base was playing Guns N’ Roses in the static clarity of the local FM rock station.

  “I’m looking for Alessandro,” Ape said.

  The black man nodded, let go of the door knob, and walked over to a bucket of paint. Without looking back, he said, “He’s in the kitchen.”

  We entered and stood in the open space with all the mustered wonder of visitors in a museum. “Great,” I said. “So where’s the kitchen?”

  Ape shrugged, mumbled, “follow me,” and pushed his way past the construction crew into a dark sitting room and beyond that to a hallway. In the hallway, away from the radio, we could hear more voices, and Ape must have recognized one of them as he picked up his pace.

  The corridor emptied into a rather large, open kitchen that overlooked a media room with a massive leather sectional and a flat-screen television that took up half the wall. To our right, windows stretched to the high ceiling and overlooked a big in-ground, lagoon-style swimming pool, the bottom of it black.

  In the center of the kitchen, stood a man in an immaculate Italian suit, black with grey stripes. Below that, he wore a mauve shirt and a matching necktie. He spoke with two large men in hard hats, one with a sleeveless shirt and a mullet hair cut, the other with a burly beard and prison tattoos. They looked like people from that show about duck calls. As we stood in the doorway, the man in the suit noticed us, turned to us mid-sentence, and said, “Terry!!”

  The man’s hands went up in the air as if to catch a leaping toddler, and he moved to Ape in a brisk stroll, grabbed him by the shoulders, and kissed him on either cheek.

  “Rino,” Ape said with a grin. “It’s great to see you.”

  “Good to see you, Terry, my boy. It’s been almost a lifetime.” I considered the man with his slicked-back, black hair and neatly-trimmed mustache, the heavy way he accented every syllable as though he were ordering from a menu at a fancy Italian restaurant.

  “It really has,” Ape said. He turned and motioned to me, “Rino, this is my partner, Jonothan Swyftt. Everyone calls him Jono. Swyftt, this is Alessandro Marciano.”

  “Rino,” the man said, moving to me and embracing my shoulders. “Any friend of Terry’s becomes family to me.”

  “Cheers,” I said. “Don’t kiss me.”

  He smiled at me and clapped me on the shoulders. Rino turned back to the construction workers and clapped his hands loudly. “Don’t you mooks have some work to do, or was I not clear enough the first time?”

  Without a word, the two moved past us and down the hallway we’d just come.

  Rino turned back to us. “How do you like the place? It’s nice, no?”

  “It’s very nice,” Ape said.

  “Kind of someone to die and leave it to you,” I said.

  Rino eyed me curiously and broke into a hearty smile. “Their loss, right, my friend?” The laughter that followed wasn’t required, but it was too genuine to be forced.

  “So, Rino. Ape, errr…Terry never mentioned you before. Where do you guys know each other from?”

  Rino eyed Ape curiously. “Never mentioned me?” There was a trace of disbelief in his tone.

  “Never came up,” Ape said with a shrug.

  “Well, Jono,” he said, turning back to me. “Terry and I go way back. We first met in New York in, oh…” He looked at Ape. “’77? That sound right?” Ape nodded. “He was a kid then, this guy. I suppose we both were, really, but I knew the lay of the land, as they say.” He looked at me, nodded as though satisfied. “Been a few years, though. Ten, at least.”

  “So…you worked together?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “First case we did together was, what? That Rougarou? Or, wait. There was that goat-boy in the park.”

  I looked curiously at Ape, but his face remained neutral and betrayed nothing, only watching Rino as he talked. I had to wonder about what I was hearing, wonder why Ape never mentioned any of it to me in the past.

  “You’re a night hunter?” I asked.

  Rino looked just as surprised as I felt. “Yeah. I thought you knew.” He glanced at Ape, then back at me. “That’s why I’m surprised he never mentioned me.” He flashed a bright smile and clapped Ape on the shoulder. “I’m the one who trained him.”

  I stared at Ape. It never came up, I thought. Bullshit.

  10

  Ape never talked about his past.

  We’d met when we both belonged to a group of night hunters called the Hand of Shanai. Solomon Huxley trained me, and that group taught me the ins and outs of the down and dirty, taught me everything I needed to know about slaughtering the worst kinds of nightmares there were: the Midnight.

  I was with them for ten years. Ape was only there for maybe two of those, and he came fully formed, so to speak. He knew how to handle himself, how to handle a weapon, how to keep his cool when a penanggalan was flopping around after you. Few did. Hell, most experienced hunters didn’t even know what the bloody hell a penanggalan was, let alone how it could be scared off with a wedge of fucking pineapple.

  He was a rarity and a curiosity from the moment we met. For him to say that his past never came up was not only absurd, it made him a fucking liar. I was half expecting his pants to start smoking and catch fire.

  Eventually, I stopped asking because I was getting tired of the same fucking answer: “Jono, I can’t talk about it. I took an oath.”

  Bullshit.

  Knowing Rino may have some answers made me like him a little more. Hell, it made him downright intriguing, but it also made me trust him about as far as I could throw Ape’s new car. People only kept secrets when they had something to hide.

  Rino had led us away from the kitchen and given us the tour, as friends do, showing us the expanse of house, the game room, the ball room, and so on. In one of the upstairs corridors, after passing the third or so luxuriously decorated bedroom, I had to ask, “What’s with all the fancy lace and shit in all the rooms?”

  He smiled at me. “During prohibition, the house was used as a speakeasy. Many, many beautiful women entertained in these bedrooms, and many of them had expensive taste.”

  “Who owned the house?” Ape asked.

  “The place was originally built by Gino Labruzzo, a cousin of Joseph Bonanno. Rumor has it, he worked with Roy Olmstead.”

&n
bsp; “Seattle’s Rum King?” I asked, slightly impressed.

  He nodded. “Eventually, it came under the ownership of Frank Colacurcio and was run by the Seattle crime family.”

  “And you inherited it from?”

  “The family,” he said simply.

  “Like a granddad?”

  “Jono,” Ape said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  “I’m just trying to get the facts,” I said. “Was it an uncle, your father?”

  Rino smiled knowingly. “I inherited this house from a member of the family. I never said it was a blood relative, right?” He smiled proudly, “Old blue eyes, himself spent some time here.”

  “Sinatra?” I turned to Ape. “Is this where you met him?”

  “No,” he said, and his tone suggested I was being ridiculous. “I met him in New York. It was a long time ago.”

  “Uh huh,” I said. I’d known for a while of their meeting. Ape only let it slip after my continued ridicule of his choice of music: the Rat Pack’s greatest hits and other assorted jazz like Ella Fitzgerald. However, like so much else about his past, he was very mum about the details. I knew, from photos that hung in the house, that as a young man fresh out of college he’d spent time in New York and Italy. It all seemed to come together, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Alright, then,” I said and turned to Rino. “So which one of these whore rooms is haunted?”

  “That,” he said, and his voice softened a bit, “is in the basement.”

  He led us down a different stairway, this one in the back of the house, and he moved through the parlor to a back room that held baskets of soiled laundry and a freight elevator. We entered, and he took us below, into the basement. Nobody said much, apart from a few awkward comments exchanged between Ape and Rino. We moved past several wine cellars and at least one rather large walk-in refrigerator, to a door at the end of the hallway that looked like it might lead to a hobbit’s hollowed out stump. Large and round, the door was composed of planks of wood that were splintered, split, and ancient. The only thing that looked modern about it was the polished brass bracing around the perimeter that held it together.

  We paused outside of the door, and Rino turned to us. “As I told you,” he said. “This house was a prohibition-era speakeasy. Beyond this door is a warren of tunnels that runs the length of the property. It comes out about… two miles away, at the coast. Roy Olmstead shipped barrels of rum from Canada by boat and the workers brought it undetected through the tunnels.

  “Originally, I didn’t even know the tunnels were down here, but as the crew was performing renovations, we stumbled upon it. Many of the tunnels have caved in, and we got as far as we could before the accidents started to happen.”

  “What accidents?” Ape asked.

  “The first worker had a drill go through his leg.”

  “That’s not a big stretch,” I said.

  “While it was unplugged?” Rino asked. “The man was on break, and the drill turned itself on and came after him.”

  “They say,” I said, making no effort to mask my skepticism.

  “The second man was buried alive in a cave-in. It took two hours to dig him out.”

  I nodded.

  “The third accident I witnessed myself,” Rino said. “After the first two accidents, the workers began to talk, right? They say the tunnels are haunted, so I come down with the foreman, and we’re looking at the progress that they made. One of the workers fell on his own pickaxe. I know it doesn’t sound suspicious, but I felt…something…in the cave just before it happened. You know, Terry, I have a pretty good instinct for supernatural stuff, yeah.”

  Ape nodded. “Why has none of this been reported?”

  “So far, nobody’s died.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I’ve got a better question.” I looked directly at Rino. “You’re a hunter. Why the fuck do you need us?”

  He shrugged, and something about the action made him look impossibly small and helpless. “I never hunt ghosts,” he said simply.

  “It’s not a ghost,” I said. “If you were any kind of hunter, you’d know at least that much. It’s elementary. It’s fucking hunter 101.”

  For a moment, Rino looked taken-aback, and then he started to look angry. Ape stepped in before anyone could react, put a calming hand on Rino, and looked at me. “Jono, the group that Rino belongs to is…” He looked back at Rino and considered his words. “They’re a highly specialized group of hunters. They aren’t like the Hand.”

  My mouth about fell open. “What the hell do they specialize in then, Ape?”

  Ape closed his eyes and turned away from me.

  “It’s our thing,” Rino said, his demeanor gentle once more. “I can say no more about it.” He looked down at the ground. “Believe me, Jono. I have lived my life as a warrior. I have fought for so many years, and I have protected those around me that I love. I know I’m not perfect, yeah, but I’m strong, and I’m proud. Hell, I’m Sicilian. It’s a very humbling thing for me to have to come to you guys with this, and it’s not something I do lightly. I’m just lucky Terry, here, was in the area and could help out. I wouldn’t have been able to go to an outside service on this.”

  I frowned, and before I could say anything, Ape said, “It’s okay, Rino. We’re happy to help.” Then he emphasized, “Both of us.”

  Rino nodded, stepped forward, and pulled open the round door. Beyond was darkness so thick you could taste it. Rino reached his hand in, felt along the wall on the left, and flipped a switch. A series of rough construction lights had been strung along the ceiling of the corridor, and they flickered to life slowly. Each light was an exposed bulb protected by a small metal cage, and the cable that linked each one had been stapled roughly to the rock overhead. The lights were the only sign of civilization.

  The hall itself was carved straight out of the rock. While the floor was well-worn and smooth, the walls and ceiling were jagged with bits of granite and limestone. Still, most areas were tall enough to walk without care, and we walked maybe a hundred yards, twisting and turning before our tunnel teed with another, emptying into a much larger and longer cave. This new one was wide enough for a pickup truck to drive through, and it was maybe ten feet to the ceiling.

  Although the lights carried on in either direction, he motioned to the left and said, “It’s this way.”

  “What’s to the right?” I asked.

  “The Puget Sound.”

  I stared off towards it, and while I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel, I could almost imagine the sound of crashing waves. “It must’ve taken a long time to build these tunnels,” I mused. I ran my hand against the hard stone wall and noticed it was smoother here.

  “The foreman said some of the tunnels, like this one, looked to be natural,” Rino said. “Water erosion and things like that.”

  “Did you find an underground spring down here?” Ape asked.

  Rino shook his head. “We haven’t been through the entire area. You’ll see when we get up here. The place in question is impassable.”

  As we walked, I asked, “So, Rino. This seems like a lot of work. What’s the plan for this place? You gonna reopen the speakeasy?”

  “We’ll see. I’ve not quite decided yet.”

  “You’re just spending a lot of money on repairs and renovations to…what, then…live here?”

  “Jono,” Ape said. He shook his head.

  “I’m not being rude. It’s just a question. He said we’re family now. I’m just trying to see what Christmas will be like this year.”

  Rino laughed heartily. “Of course, of course,” he said. “You come for the holidays. We have goose.”

  I turned to Ape with a grin and slapped him on the shoulder. “See, mate. We have goose. A big, horny Christmas goose in a whorehouse.”

  “Do you think the ghost is someone like that?” Rino asked. “A prostitute?”

  “More like one of the rum runners,” Ape said. “It’s unlikely any of the
girls were allowed in the tunnels.”

  “Why are we even discussing this?” I asked. “Rino, it’s not a spirit at all. Or, at least, it’s not the spirit of a dead person.”

  Ape looked at me, and his eyes said, “Can we not discuss this right now?”

  Rino nodded and said, “It’s up here.”

  The tunnel in front of us had been sealed by a pretty serious rockslide. Tools were scattered about on the ground, and there were wooden crates of charges and sticks of dynamite.

  “Is this where the second worker was buried?” Ape asked.

  “No,” Rino said. He pointed just behind us to a much smaller opening that wasn’t visible on our approach. “It was in there. We tried to go around.”

  I motioned to the explosives on the ground. “I’m assuming you tried to blow it?”

  “Yeah,” Rino said. “We tried alright, but fires won’t light here.”

  “What about a bazooka, maybe a grenade?”

  Rino shook his head. “You got a bazooka handy, feel free to try it.” He grew silent for a few breaths, and then almost reverently, he said, “Do you feel it?”

  We stood about twenty feet from the rock slide, and even from that distance, the tension in the air was electric and unmistakable. There appeared to be a spirit of some kind at residence. What made things tougher, was the darkness. The construction light that had been installed nearest the rockslide was cold and grey.

  “Looks like you need a new bulb,” I said.

  Rino shrugged. “You see what I mean, then. That was the fifth one.”

  I moved forward warily. It wasn’t dark to the point where I couldn’t see anything; plenty of light was filtering in from the hall we’d come down, but it was dim. A torch would have been nice, but given the evidence already, I wasn’t sure it would even work.

  Ape moved behind me, and Rino, alone, stood at the cusp of the light, watching us nervously. I moved to the left, and Ape went to the right. I’m not sure what we were looking for. There wasn’t anything to really see. The explosives were stacked further back, and the few pickaxes and the hardhat on the ground weren’t going anywhere, and they certainly weren’t out of place.

  Ape moved a little faster than I did, his monkey eyes possibly more attuned to the darkness, and he stopped about midway in the tunnel, at the base of the caved-in rocks. There was a bit of commotion as he moved a couple of rather large boulders to the side. He stood up and looked at me. “Jono.”