Known Devil

by Matthew Hughes

“Rachel, that’s fantastic!” I said

  She made a face. “No, it’s not.”

  Karl and I looked at each other, then he said to Rachel, “Sounds like there’s something here we don’t know about.”

  “On the contrary,” Rachel said. “I’ve told you all there is to know about my experiments with the stuff. What you’re not getting is that my results have no practical value.”

  I thought for a few moments, then told her, “I think I see where you’re going with this.”

  “Well, I’m not too bright,” Karl said, “so I wish somebody would fucking explain it to me.”

  “What I can do in my workroom doesn’t affect what’s going on out in the street, Karl,” Rachel said. “I can hardly expect the… dealers, pushers, whatever they’re called, to drop by so that I can render their product useless before they go out and sell it. From their perspective, it would be a pretty bad business decision, wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh,” Karl said, followed a moment later by “Shit!”

  “OK, it was worth a try,” I said. “Thanks for giving it a shot, Rachel. Guess we’ll have to deal with the Slide problem the old-fashioned way – by busting the dealers and trying to squeeze them into giving up their suppliers.”

  “Except we can’t bust the fucking dealers,” Karl said, “cause the shit they’re selling isn’t even illegal – yet.”

  “Well, yeah, there’s that,” I said.

  “I sympathize with your plight, guys,” Rachel said, “and I only wish…” Rachel stopped speaking, and I saw that she had a faraway look in her eyes, like somebody who’s trying to think of three things at once. She dropped back into her chair, as if her knees had suddenly given way.

  “Rachel? Are you alright?” I asked.

  She didn’t reply for a few seconds. “Me? I’m fine – apart from being a total fucking idiot, that is. Leave that out, and I’m doing just great.”

  I looked at Karl, and it was clear that he didn’t know what was going on, either.

  “Sympathize,” Rachel said. “I told you that I sympathize with your plight.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, just to be saying something.

  “Sympathetic magic!” She slammed her small fists down on the desk’s polished surface. “That’s the fucking answer. Dear Goddess, I ought to have myself committed to an institution for the terminally stupid!”

  “Rachel,” Karl said, it’d be good if you’d stop beating yourself up long enough to tell us what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Alright, sure,” Rachel said. The distracted look on her face was gone, replaced with something that looked to me like triumph.

  “You guys know what sympathetic magic is, right?” she asked.

  “More or less,” I said. “You cast on a spell on some object that represents another object, or maybe a person. Kind of like voodoo dolls – stick a pin in the doll, and the person it represents feels a stabbing pain.”

  “That’s essentially it,” Rachel said. “I don’t mess around with vodoun – a lot of it comes under the heading of black magic. But I know that for the spell to work, the doll must not only resemble the intended victim, but also has to contain something that was physically part of him – or her.”

  “You mean like hair, fingernail clippings, stuff like that,” Karl said.

  “Exactly,” Rachel said. Then she turned to me. “You told me earlier that you had some baggies of Slide left, Stan. Do you still?”

  “Yeah, two of ’em – they’re in my desk,” I said. “Are you telling me that you can cast a spell on a few bags of Slide, and that will affect all of the shit, no matter where it is?”

  “Not by myself, I can’t,” she said. “Something like that, you’d need a great deal of magical power to make it work – a lot more than I possess.” She grinned at us. “But I bet I know where I can get some help.”

  “The local coven, you mean,” Karl said.

  “Yep. Quite a few of my sister witches are as concerned as I am about what Slide has been doing to our town. I bet they’d jump at the chance to help render the stuff harmless.”

  “I want to be sure I’m following you,” I said. “You think you can change Slide – all of it – into something that won’t be addictive to supes anymore?”

  “I would think so, yes,” she said. “We’d be able to alter its molecular structure – always assuming we can make the spell work, that is. No guarantees in the Art, as you know.”

  “I’m no expert on magic,” Karl said, “but that sounds fucking brilliant to me, Rachel. Way to go.”

  She shook her head. “Congratulate me if I can–”

  “Don’t say it, Rachel,” I told her. “Just… don’t.”

  As we walked back to the squad room, I said to Karl, “I just had the beginning of an idea. I think I’m gonna send an email to an old buddy of mine.”

  “It’s always good to keep in touch with your friends, I guess.”

  “Well, we used to be friends – at the U, before I dropped out to join the cops. Turned out, this guy became a cop, too – even though he stuck around to get his degree first.”

  “He’s on the force? What’s his name?” Karl asked.

  “Ted Kowal – but he doesn’t live around here. After college, he moved to Philadelphia – I guess he’s got family down there. Spent a couple of years doing this and that, then he joined the Philly PD. He’s a Detective Second in their Organized Crime Unit, now. Or he was, last I heard from him.”

  “If you wanna talk to the guy, why not just call him?”

  “Unlike you and me, he works days.” I glanced at my watch. “He’s probably in bed by now.”

  “OK, and you’re gonna reach out for this dude because why?”

  “Two reasons. One is Teddy probably knows as much as anybody – on this side of the law, anyway – about the Delatasso Family.”

  “The original one, you mean – that Ronnie D’s old man controls.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I don’t get it – you figure that by finding out about the old man, it’ll somehow help us deal with his kid up here?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You’re being mysterious again, Stan.”

  “I prefer to think of it as enigmatic.”

  Karl looked at me. “Reader’s Digest?”

  “Yeah. The January issue, I think. Or maybe it was February.”

  “I must’ve missed that one. So enigmatic is like mysterious, huh?”

  “Yeah, more or less.”

  After a few seconds, Karl said “Two.”

  “Huh?”

  “You said you had two reasons for getting in touch with this Kowal guy. What’s the other one?”

  “Teddy owes me a favor – a big favor.”

  I got through the rest of our shift by drinking enough coffee to float a battleship. Fortunately, it turned out to be a quiet night – too quiet, like they say in the movies. It was as if the whole city was holding its breath – waiting. That’s a worn-out cliché, I know. But sometimes even clichés are true. You could see the tension in the way people walked and held themselves, hear it in the way they snapped at each other over stuff that usually would get no more than a shrug.

  When I got home it was still dark, but the birds in nearby trees were already chirping in anticipation of the sunrise. I checked my watch and estimated there was about half an hour until dawn.

  Christine was sitting at the kitchen table, eyes focused on the screen of her laptop. When I walked in, she looked up at me, glanced down at the computer again, then did a double-take. Her welcoming smile quickly turned into a frown of concern.

  “This may sound like pots and kettles coming from me, Daddy – but jeez, you look like death warmed over.”

  “And only lightly warmed over, at that,” I said. I hung up my coat and went over to look in the fridge. “Oh, you got me some pineapple juice – thanks, sweetie.”

  “No problem, she said. “Would you like me to make some coffee to go with
it? We could hook up an IV drip and put the stuff directly into your bloodstream.”

  “I’ve had more than enough coffee already,” I said. “Besides, I’m done fighting sleep. In a little while I’m getting into bed, and sleep and me, we’re gonna embrace like horny teenagers.”

  “Fatigue seems to make you poetic,” she said. “Have you really been awake for two days straight?”

  I sat down and had a big swallow of juice, closing my eyes in sheer pleasure as it slid down my throat. Getting my eyes back open took some effort. “Afraid so,” I said. “A couple of things I had going didn’t quite work out as planned.”

  “Like what?”

  Knowing there wasn’t much time until dawn, I ran it down for her as briefly as I could. Making myself focus was hard. It felt like my brain was swimming through a river of sludge.

  When I’d finished, she said, “Holy shit,” and shook her head slowly. “Poor Karl. Poor you, for that matter.”

  I lifted my shoulders in a shrug that took more effort than it should have. “It all worked out, eventually. Things are actually looking up, a little.”

  “What Karl did with the cross, though – that’s just… fucking awesome. I can’t wait to talk to him about it.”

  I gave her a crooked smile. “Guess you vampires aren’t the spawn of the devil, after all.”

  “I never thought I was,” she said, smiling back as she shut down her laptop. “I’m the spawn of Detective Sergeant Stanley Markowski, who’s only devilish once in a while.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve got the beginnings of an idea that might take ‘devilish’ to a whole new level.”

  “Really? I’d love to hear all about it.” She stood up, glancing toward the window. “But now it’s time all good vampires to go off to bed – and I’d say the same about one Detective Sergeant as well.”

  “No argument from me,” I told her. “I’ll fill you in on the rest at breakfast.”

  “I can hardly wait,” she said, then bent over to give me a kiss on the cheek. “Goodnight, Daddy. Sleep well.”

  “I think that’s pretty much a sure thing,” I said. “’Night.”

  I set my alarm twice that day. The first time was for 11.00am so that I could put in a call to Ted Kowal in Philadelphia. Fortunately, I caught him at his desk in the Organized Crime Unit, and it didn’t take much persuasion for him to agree to what I wanted.

  “Alright, Stan – I’ll send it to you as a Word doc attachment before I go off shift,” he said. “You sure you want me to use your personal email address for this?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Christine nagged me into upgrading our home computer setup, so I’ve got a pretty good printer here.”

  “Uh-huh. And I suppose once I’ve sent it, you want me to delete the message from my ‘Sent Mail’ file, and then get amnesia about this whole conversation.”

  “Exactly. You’re a pretty smart guy, Teddy,” I said. “Makes me glad the Pittston cops never found out about that time in high school when you–”

  “Oh, go fuck yourself, Stan.”

  “I tried that once – threw out my back something awful.”

  I reset the alarm clock for half an hour before sunset and went back to sleep. If I’d known what was waiting for me, I would’ve just stayed awake, exhaustion be damned.

  I was chasing Patton Wilson, who looked the same as the last time I’d seen him – iron-gray hair, tan, slim build. He ran pretty damn well, too, for somebody in his sixties. I pursued the bastard all over Scranton, but it was a Scranton without people except the two of us – deserted streets, abandoned cars, all the buildings silent and dark. There were storm clouds above us with big, dark thunderheads. I was kind of amazed at my ability to keep up with Wilson for so long, but also frustrated because I wasn’t gaining on him. He stayed about fifty feet ahead of me. He couldn’t seem to find the speed to pull away, but I wasn’t closing the gap, either. Fifty feet between us, all over town. Then Wilson started taunting me, throwing words back over his shoulder like mud balls.

  “You’ll never catch me, Markowski! You’re too old, too slow, and too stupid!”

  “I almost got your ass last time, in that warehouse!” I yelled. As devastating retorts go, it left a lot to be desired.

  “Close only counts in horseshoes, you Polack cocksucker!”

  I’d read that Wilson had gone to some fancy college years ago. Harvard, Dartmouth, one of those places. Apparently it hadn’t helped him develop a refined vocabulary.

  “Know why you’ll lose, Markowski? Rules! You have to follow all those stupid cop rules, and I don’t. I do what I want, when I want, to whom I want.”

  At least, he’d known enough to use “whom”. A point for the psychopath. It occurred to me that Wilson was starting to sound like a James Bond villain, and I wished Karl was here to see it – he gets a kick out of that stuff.

  He was right about the rules, though – damn his rich, crazy ass. But I was finally starting to run out of steam, and my lungs were burning. I’d have to stop soon, and Wilson would get clean away and finish his plans to get control of my city. One of the rules cops have to follow is that you can’t shoot a fleeing suspect, if he’s unarmed. You’re supposed to catch and subdue him “using nonlethal means,” as the manual puts it.

  Well, fuck the manual – and fuck the rules, too. I reached under my jacket to draw the Beretta from my hip holster. And the holster was empty.

  Ahead, Wilson came to a sudden stop and whirled to face me. He was holding my gun. “This what you’re looking for?” he said with a smirk. “Then, by all means, let me return it to you – one bullet at a time.”

  He cocked the weapon and aimed it right in the middle of my face. His expression said, “I win again, sucker. I always win.” Then he squeezed the trigger.

  The alarm woke me up before I had the chance to die.

  I sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, trying to shake what was left of that fucking dream out of my brain. Then I got up and checked my email. Teddy hadn’t let me down. The document attached to his message was exactly what I’d asked him for, and I started printing it – all ninety-four pages’ worth.

  Over breakfast, I told Christine about the plan to pass on the news about Phil Slattery’s verbal indiscretion to the Times-Tribune.

  “That ought to have him spitting blood over his morning paper,” she said.

  “I hope so,” I said. “Karl really wants to be the one to do it – maybe I should let him.”

  “Why’s he so eager?”

  “He thinks if he leaks the story, he can get the paper to refer to him as ‘Deep Fang’.”

  She chuckled, then took a sip from her cup of Type O. “Deep Fang – if that isn’t the name of some porno film, it should be.”

  “What do you know about porno films?” Sometimes it’s hard to stop being a parent.

  “Me?” She touched the fingertips of one hand to her chest, like some Southern belle in the movies. “I don’t know a blessed thing about such matters, Daddy. I’m as pure as the virgin snow.” She gave me a wicked grin. “Or I was – until I drifted.”

  I decided this wasn’t a topic I wanted to explore with my daughter, so I said, “Well, Slattery drifted, too – with some help from Karl.”

  “Think he’s likely to drift far enough to sink his own flotilla?”

  “Flotilla?”

  She shrugged. “Just preserving the metaphor.”

  “No, that won’t sink him – not all by itself,” I said. “Fortunately, I have only begun to fuck with him.”

  “Good one, John Paul Jones,” she said. “Are those the devilish doings you referred to last night?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Tell me,” she said.

  So I did. It took quite a while.

  When I was done, she sat there and looked at me for several seconds. “I knew you could be a tough son of a bitch, Sergeant – you have to be, in your job. But this kind of ruthlessness is something I haven’t seen in you before. I�
��m not sure I like it.”

  “Yeah, well, extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures. Somebody said that once, although I forget who.”

  “No, don’t hide behind clichés. That’s for cheap politicians – and whatever else you are, you’re no cheap politician.”

  “What do you want me to say? That I’m happy about it? That I rubbed my hands together and cackled fiendishly when the idea came to me, like some fucking mad scientist in the movies?”

  She shook her head slowly. “I know you better than that. It’s just that…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t get to look myself in the mirror anymore,” she said. “But you do – every damn day. Question is, will you still be able to do that, after this shit you’re talking about goes down? Always assuming you can make it work, that is.”

  I rubbed one hand over my face, slowly. “I don’t know, honey. I really don’t. But I do know this much – I won’t be able to look myself in the mirror again if I let this city go right down the fucking tubes, without doing everything I can to stop it. And I mean everything.”

  The mug she’d been drinking from had left circles of moisture on the table. She traced each one with her fingertip slowly, as if she had all the time in the world. Then she looked up and said, “Well, if that’s the way it is, Sergeant, then all I can say is – get out there and kick some fucking ass.”

  This time, I was the one who’d suggested the Brass Shield Bar and Grill as a meeting place. My motivation was basically the same one that had brought Louis Loquasto here the first time – safety, but a different kind of safety. Before, Loquasto had wanted to be close to all these off-duty cops as protection against the Delatassos’ bombs and bullets. Now, I wanted to be seen talking to him in here, because nobody in his right mind would even think about engaging in a criminal conspiracy while surrounded by all these guys wearing badges. At least, that’s what I planned to say to Internal Affairs, if it ever came to that – and it might.

  We’d agreed to meet at eight o’clock, an hour before my shift was due to start. I figured that would be plenty of time – after all, how long does it really take to light a fuse?