Known Devil

by Matthew Hughes

I felt Karl tense up next to me, but his voice was calm and businesslike as he said, “None taken – and it’s Detective Renfer.”

  “Then I sure am sorry,” Eisinger said, “Detective.”

  Before this got out of hand, I asked the question that had prompted me to come in here in the first place. “Gillespe here – how did he die?”

  “Coroner’s report isn’t out yet,” Eisinger said. “Hell, they ain’t even done the autopsy, which you should know, since the dude is still lying here on the floor.”

  I looked at him. “What, in your professional opinion, was the deceased’s cause of death?”

  He gave me an exaggerated shrug. “Well, I’m no pathologist, but I’d say those plastic baggies that are jammed down his throat had something to do with it. Looks like there’s at least a dozen of ’em stuck down there. You want, I’ll send you one as a souvenir, once the post is done.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said.

  “What’s your interest in this dude, anyway?” Eisinger asked. “Him being human and all.”

  “He was one of our CIs,” I said, which I guess was technically true. Roger Gillespe had given us information, and we had kept his name to ourselves, even if it wasn’t for the usual reasons of confidentiality. “Well, thanks for the info,” I continued, keeping most of what I felt out of my voice. I turned to go, but then noticed that Karl hadn’t moved. He was looking intently at Eisinger.

  “Detective,” Karl said softly.

  “What?” Eisinger looked at Karl, and I saw their eyes lock. The two of them stood, in what someone else would have taken to be a stare-down, for at least half a minute.

  Then Karl said, in that same quiet voice, “We’ve all done things that we’re ashamed of, things we hope nobody ever finds out.”

  “Yeah,” Eisinger said dully.

  “Why don’t you tell us,” Karl said, “about the one thing you’ve done in your life that you’re most ashamed of. Say it nice and loud.”

  Another few seconds went by before Eisinger said, in a monotone that was still loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, “When I was fourteen, I started fucking my sister, Kathy. She was twelve. I said I’d kill her if she ever told anybody. It went on for over a year, two, three times a week – whenever our parents left us alone together. I made her do everything – oral, anal, the whole nine yards. And then one day she got one of my Dad’s guns and shot herself. Right in the heart. But she never told on me. Not even in the note she left.”

  “Thanks, Detective,” Karl said, and broke off eye contact. “Thank you for sharing.” Then we got the hell out of there.

  As we went down the stairs, I said quietly to Karl, “What the fuck was that?”

  “Two things,” Karl said. He kept his voice down, too. “One of them was payback – and don’t tell me the bastard didn’t have it coming.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” I said. “But what was the other thing?”

  “Practice.”

  We didn’t say anything as we walked back to where we’d parked the car. Once he was behind the wheel, Karl clicked the button that would unlock the door on my side. I got in as he was buckling his safety belt. I got my own seatbelt on and waited, but Karl didn’t start the engine. Instead, he sat there, staring straight ahead.

  I didn’t ask what was bothering him – I knew it was the same damn thing that was bothering me. After a couple of seconds, Karl said, “He wasn’t supposed to be there!” As he said “be,” Karl slammed the steering wheel with the butt of his palm.

  “I know,” I said.

  “He was supposed to be halfway to fucking California by now, not dead on the floor of his fucking living room!” He slammed the wheel twice more for emphasis as he said that.

  “Karl.”

  “What?”

  “You’re gonna break the steering wheel, you keep that up.” Vampires are a lot stronger than humans, but Karl sometimes forgets that – especially when he’s pissed off.

  “Oh, right. Sorry. But dammit, Stan…”

  “Yeah, I know. I know.”

  After a couple of seconds went by, I said, “Is it possible your Influence didn’t work?”

  “Didn’t work? Shit, you heard the kid, Stan. He spilled his guts to us that night, and he didn’t do it cause we offered him a candy bar. It worked, alright.”

  “I was thinking more of what you told him to do later,” I said. “The post-hypnotic suggestion, or whatever the hell vampires call what you did. Maybe it… wore off after a couple of hours or something. Can that happen?”

  Karl looked away. “Fuck, I don’t know. Anything’s possible, I guess. I never said I was an expert at this stuff.”

  “You did pretty well back there with Eisinger – which was pretty fucking ingenious, by the way. How’d you know he was going to say something like that?”

  “I didn’t,” Karl said. “But everybody’s got some kind of dark secret they carry around with them. A guy like Eisinger, I figured it would be particularly nasty – and I was right, too.”

  “Good work,” I said. “But you’ve earned yourself an enemy for life. You know that, right?”

  “Fuck it – I don’t figure he was all that fond of me before, anyway,” Karl said. “What with me being one of the bloodsucking undead and all.”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  “Anyway, what I did back there was short-term. I don’t know if I’ve got that other stuff down, yet – what you called ‘post-hypnotic suggestion’.”

  “Is there anybody you can ask about it?”

  “Maybe, but what’s that matter now?” Karl said. “It’s not gonna do Roger any fucking good.”

  “I was thinking for future reference,” I said. “In case you need to do it again sometime.”

  “You mean with Slattery?”

  “Maybe – assuming we get a crack at him.”

  Karl sighed, which is a good trick for somebody who doesn’t need to breathe. “Yeah, alright. There’s some older vamps I could talk to about it. Hell, I could even ask Christine, I guess. She’s been undead a while, haina?”

  “Seven years,” I said. “No – closer to eight.” I tried to keep what I was feeling out of my voice, and I think I succeeded. On the other hand, with a vampire, you never know for sure.

  It had been almost eight years since I had convinced a vampire to bring Christine across to the world of the undead. It was either that or watch her die of leukemia. Selfish of me, maybe – especially since Christine had been unconscious from the painkillers and couldn’t give her consent. But after losing her mother, I just couldn’t stand the idea of being without the one person in my life who still loved me. After the change, Christine and I both had some issues to deal with, but we’d resolved them pretty well by now. I hope.

  “I’ll ask her about it next time I see her,” Karl said.

  Yeah, when the two of you aren’t busy fucking.

  I didn’t say that out loud, of course. And as soon as the thought entered my head, I tried to push it out again. Guess I still had a few issues of my own.

  Karl started up the car. “I suppose we oughta tell McGuire about what happened to Roger.”

  “Yeah, along with the news that there’s a hit man in town with access to Claymore mines.”

  “Yeah,” Karl said. “He’s especially gonna love that part.”

  Back at the squad room, we brought McGuire up to speed. As Karl had predicted, nothing we had to say made the boss very happy.

  “I was in the Air Force, not the Army,” McGuire said. “But even I know what a Claymore mine is. Never heard of one being modified to kill supes, though.”

  “Word is that John Wesley Harding’s got himself quite a reputation,” I said. “Guess it had to come from somewhere.”

  “Guys like that, their rep usually comes from the body count they rack up,” McGuire said. “Not ingenuity.”

  “Maybe in Harding’s case, the one leads to the other,” Karl said.

  McGuire took a swig from hi
s coffee and put the mug aside. “And speaking of ingenuity, I guess you could apply that term to what happened to that informant of yours, Gillespe.”

  We’d never told McGuire about the vampiric Q-and-A session we had with Roger Gillespe the other night, since it probably violated five or six department regulations. So in discussing Gillespe’s death just now, we’d explained our interest by saying that the guy had been one of our regular street sources of information. Which was true, really – except for the “regular” part.

  “You mean the way they killed him?” Karl asked.

  “Uh-huh,” McGuire said. “That thing with the baggies must’ve taken some time and trouble, even if they did have a couple of guys to hold Gillespe down. Shit, they could’ve just shot him in the head and been done in about two seconds. I’d say somebody’s trying to send a message.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Karl said. “But what message? And who’s it intended for?”

  “The use of the baggies to kill him suggests that Gillespe was dealing,” McGuire said. “If that was the case, could be the stupid bastard tried to stiff his supplier. Or maybe he found his own source and decided to go into business for himself. In the drug trade, either of those things can get a guy killed.”

  “So you think the message was intended for the other dealers?” I said. “Here’s what happens when you fuck with us.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time that kind of thing’s been done,” McGuire said. “You ever hear of a Colombian necktie?”

  Karl and I both shook our heads, although I thought the term seemed vaguely familiar, like something I’d read about, years ago.

  “The Colombian cartels,” McGuire said, “who control the wholesale end of the cocaine trade, have a way of dealing with people who piss them off. Been using it since the Sixties, I think. They slash the guy’s throat, and once he’s dead they take his tongue and yank it out through the wound so that it’s lying against his throat. Hence the term ‘Columbian necktie.’”

  Karl made a face. “I wonder if somebody’s gonna come up with a cutesy term for the way Roger Gillespe was killed.”

  “If it happens often enough, somebody probably will,” McGuire said. He shook his head. “They’ll probably start calling it the ‘Scranton Appetizer’ or something. Not the kind of fame the city needs.”

  “There’s another possibility,” I said. “Could be that his supplier found out he’d been talking to us.” Roger Gillespe had only done so once, and involuntarily, but I thought it best not to mention that. “So maybe the message to the other dealers is Here’s what happens when you open your mouth to the wrong people.”

  “And at the same time,” Karl said, “it’s a big fat ‘Fuck you’ to the cops who make use of guys like Roger for information.”

  “It might also fit in with something else that happened tonight,” McGuire said.

  We both looked at him, but instead of explaining, he nodded toward the squad room behind us. “Pearce and McLane caught it. You can get the details from them. Once you’ve heard what they have to say, let me know what you think.”

  We went over to where McLane and Pearce were sitting, each one busy on his computer. Like Karl’s and mine, their desks were pushed together, facing each other.

  I said to them, “The boss says you guys have a case that might fit in with something we’re working on. Mind telling us about it?”

  “Sure, why not?” McLane said, and I noticed his partner nodding. “Gotta be more fun than filling out these goddamn forms.”

  Karl and I got our own chairs and rolled them over close to Pearce and McLane’s desks. Once we were seated, I said, “Lot of weird shit going on lately, even by the standards of the Spook Squad.”

  “Tell me about it,” Pearce said. He’s a big guy who used to box in the Golden Gloves. If his build didn’t give that away, his nose would – it’s been broken more times than a hooker’s promise.

  “You’re talking about the gnome, right?” McLane asked. An awful case of acne as a teenager had left his face severely pockmarked. In another age, you’d figure him for a smallpox survivor. When he said “gnome”, I felt my pulse go into overdrive. I glanced toward Karl before telling McLane, “I don’t know – the boss didn’t tell us. He just said your case would interest us. And if it’s about a gnome, I’d say he was right.”

  “Well, that’s what the vic was, no doubt about it,” Pearce said. “Four feet tall, more or less, white beard, big nose – he fits the profile to a T.”

  “Then there was the name on his driver’s license,” McLane said. “Pedric Bonbink.”

  “Yeah, that’s a gnome’s handle, alright,” I said.

  “So what happened?” Karl asked.

  “He lived in the basement unit of this building over on Adams Avenue, the Cody Apartments,” Pearce said. “Know it?”

  Karl looked at me. “Didn’t we question a guy who lived there, couple of years ago?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I said. “We thought he might be involved in a fairy dust smuggling ring that was operating in town, but nothing came of it.”

  “Well, something sure as hell went down there, this time,” McLane said. “The super gets a call from one of the other tenants, who says there’s a really nasty odor coming from the basement. So he goes down there and sure enough, it smells like a boat full of mackerel that’s been left out in the sun all day. The gnome’s the only one living in the basement. The super bangs on the guy’s door. Gets no answer. So he uses his master key, lets himself in, and almost pukes because the smell is so overpowering. Then he gets a look at what’s causing it, runs outta there, and calls 666.”

  “So the call gets routed to McGuire, and he sends us over there,” Pearce said. “The super was right about the stench – I’ve smelled some pretty nasty shit on this job, and I damn near heaved my guts out once we got inside that apartment. And that’s before we got a look at the gnome’s body.”

  “Yeah, dead gnomes rot a lot faster than humans, or any other supe species I know of,” I said. “And they tend to smell a hell of a lot worse.”

  “The corpse didn’t look so bad, actually,” McLane said. “We’ve seen a hell of a lot worse. The gnome was on the floor, with a bullet hole in his forehead, right between the eyes. Looks neat as you please – until you take a gander at the exit wound, which took out most of the back of his skull.”

  “You get a look at the round that killed him?” Karl asked.

  “There was a bullet hole in the wall, behind where the gnome had been standing,” Pearce said. “We knew the guys from Forensics would throw a fit if we dug it out ourselves, so we waited for them to do it. They took the slug with them to the lab for ballistics, but let us have a look at it first.”

  “Nine millimeter,” McLane said. “Cold iron.”

  “No surprise there,” I said. Gnomes are one of the many species of faerie, and all of them are vulnerable to cold iron. That’s why there’s a fey wing of the county jail where each cell’s bars are made of iron, not the steel that’s used elsewhere.

  “No, but here’s something that is kinda surprising,” McLane said. “We waited around while Forensics tossed the place, looking for evidence. And guess what they found in Pedric Bonbink’s closet?” He waited, as if he really wanted us to take a stab at it.

  “If you’re gonna make me guess,” I said, just to get it over with, “I’ll say a blue pinstripe suit from Brooks Brothers, size Extra-Extra-Small.”

  That got a laugh from the other three, but not much of one.

  “Not bad, but you’re wrong,” McLane said. “What they turned up was a red conical hat – the one you always see in cartoon drawings of gnomes. You know – the kind that real gnomes hate with a fucking passion.”

  Karl and I looked at each other. “Well, now,” I said.

  “We thought you’d find that interesting,” Pearce said. “We did the interviews with those vamp goombahs who were outside Ricardo’s when the bomb went off – the only living witnesses,
if you can call them living.” He glanced at my partner. “No offense, Karl.”

  Karl just nodded, his face impassive.

  “We interviewed them separately,” McLane said. “And each one said more or less the same thing. That the driver of the bomb car, who jumped out and got into another vehicle that drove off just before the explosion, was a gnome – complete with that red fucking hat. Now, what does that sound like to you?”

  “A little too good to be true,” Karl said.

  “More than that,” I said. “It sounds like somebody’s cleaning house.”

  We spent the next couple of hours in the squad room, catching up on paperwork while we waited to be sent out on a call. But when McGuire called us into his office, it wasn’t to give us an assignment – he gave us a big chunk of bad news instead.

  Inside the office, we didn’t even have a chance to sit down before McGuire said, “I just heard from Slattery’s campaign manager. In order to show his respect for the forces of law and order who keep our city safe” – McGuire kept most of the sarcasm out of his voice – “Mister Slattery has agreed to come to police headquarters, accompanied by his attorney, of course, to answer questions pertaining to our investigation.”

  McGuire took a second to look at Karl and me before he went on. “I’ve been told that because of his busy campaign schedule, the time of his appearance is not negotiable. Slattery will be here three days from now – at 11am.”

  “Well, shit,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s one way to fucking put it,” McGuire said bleakly. “Pretty much puts the kibosh on our little plan to get Slattery and Karl in a room together, doesn’t it?”

  “Where does this asshole get off telling the police what time we’re going to talk to him?” I said.

  “There’s no arrest warrant out for him,” McGuire said with a shrug. “He’s not under indictment for anything, either.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, “but we still get to bring people in for questioning – on our terms. The law says so.”

  McGuire nodded. “Sure it does. And if we exercise our power under the law with Slattery, what do you figure is gonna happen?” Before I had a chance to say anything, McGuire answered his own question. “It’ll go down like this,” he said. “Slattery calls a press conference to tell the world how even though he offered to cooperate with the ongoing criminal investigation, the city government is using its police power to harass its political opponents in an effort to stifle the democratic process and blah, blah, blah. Shit, it might even win him some votes.”