by Jason Starr
At five fifteen he knew Alison wasn’t going to show up. For as long as he’d known her she’d been late only a handful of times, and she was usually early. Why would she blow him off when she was the one who’d suggested they meet? That wasn’t like her either; she always told Simon to “do what you say you’re going to do.” He just hoped everything was okay with Jeremy, that there hadn’t been some kind of medical emergency or something.
At five thirty he texted her:
Leaving. Please let me know all is well with u and J. ttyl xoxox
He gave it another few minutes, and then that was it—he had to get out of this hellhole. When he left Grand Central it was a relief to be able to be outside, breathing in fresh air; well, if you considered the air on Forty-second Street fresh. He figured he’d walk back to Charlie’s, but then he had a better idea. Michael had said he had a date tonight, right? And Charlie was working a twenty-four-hour shift at the firehouse and Ramon had a rehearsal for the Ibsen play, so this would be the perfect time to go to the brewery and search for the remedy beer.
Without giving it any more thought, Simon hailed a cab to Assembly Road in Brooklyn. The cabdriver didn’t know where the address was, so Simon had to get a map up on his phone to show him. Afterward, since he had his phone out, he decided to Google Hartman Brewery, just to see if the information jibed with what Volker had told him. There was a short Wikipedia entry for the brewery that described its history—how the brewery was opened in 1914 in Freiburg, Germany, by Heinrich Hartmann, how Volker Hartman had expanded the brewery’s operations to Brooklyn, New York, in 1949, and how the brewery had officially shut down in 2006. Of course, this was Wikipedia, and it was possible that Volker himself had created the entry, but it all seemed legitimate.
While Simon was surprised that so much of Volker’s story seemed to be true, he was also excited. After all, if the history of the brewery was accurate, maybe the rest of Volker’s story—as implausible as it had sounded—was accurate as well, including that there was a werewolf remedy beer hidden somewhere at the brewery in Brooklyn.
The cab meandered through the midtown streets and then got on the FDR. The traffic made Simon particularly restless and claustrophobic, and he had to stick his head out the window for air. He was seriously tempted to just get out and run, but especially now he didn’t want to do anything weird that would attract too much attention. Hopefully he didn’t have too much time left as a werewolf, but in the meantime he wanted to be as safe as possible.
Finally the traffic broke and they made it to Brooklyn. Being near the brewery was bringing back lots of bad memories, but Simon tried to focus on the positives—there was a finish line in sight, he had hope, this nightmare was going to end soon.
Simon got out of the cab and saw that the door was padlocked. He wasn’t expecting this. He tried to think of some other way in—through a window? around the back?—when he remembered he had superhuman strength now. With minimal effort he tore the lock apart. Wow, that was pretty cool, but he was going to need that strength and more if he was going to tear Michael’s jaw apart.
But first things first—he needed that remedy beer, if the remedy beer was even here. The brewery building was huge, and he had no idea where to look for it. Though he’d been to the brewery a couple of times before, he’d only been on the top floor and on the roof, and the building had ten floors. Ten big, industrial-size floors, as the building occupied about a quarter of the block. And Simon had no idea what he was even looking for. What, was there going to be a big bottle with the label WEREWOLF REMEDY on it? Whatever he was looking for could be hidden somewhere in the building, or not in the building at all.
He went up the dark stairwell to the second floor. It was pitch-black, but he was somehow able to find his way around. He couldn’t see objects, but he knew where they were without thinking about it. He sensed some movement to his left. It was something alive, with an animal scent, probably a rat or a mouse. Weirdly, the thought of a live rodent in his vicinity made him hungry, and he had to resist an urge to go after it.
He veered off into some large room. There was stuff—boxes mainly—in his way. But avoiding knocking into things wasn’t good enough; if he was going to actually find this remedy beer he was going to need some light. He felt along the wall near the door and found the switch. Would’ve been great, except when he flicked the switch, nothing happened. Avoiding some more objects, he made his way to the other end of the large space, to the opposite wall. After some searching he found another set of switches. He flicked all of them and one light in the room went on.
The room, like the rest of the building, had an art deco style and several large chandeliers—one was lit. The space was filled mainly with boxes and other junk. Going by all the cobwebs and dust everywhere, it didn’t seem like anyone had been here in a while. Struggling with that trapped, claustrophobic feeling again, Simon checked some of the boxes—some were empty, some filled with other boxes. If he went box to box, it would take hours to search the room, and he couldn’t handle being in here that long. He tried to harness his ability to detect scents, trying to hone in on a beer scent. For several minutes, he continued checking boxes, not smelling any beer, but then he did pick up something. It was very faint, though, and it seemed to be coming from one of the far corners of the room. He made his way over there and realized the scent wasn’t coming from the room, but from a vent in the ceiling. Okay, there was definitely beer somewhere in this building; now he just had to find it.
With some renewed hope, he shut off the light, then went back out to the dark stairwell and climbed the stairs to the third floor. The beer odor was definitely stronger up here, which encouraged him. He flicked some light switches and this time they all went on—the sudden brightness was startling, even a little painful, and he had to shield his eyes for several seconds before they adjusted. This was definitely where the beer odor was coming from, because he was in what had been a beer manufacturing area. Had been for sure because there were stainless steel beer-tapping tanks and what looked like bottle-filling machines and other equipment, all covered in dust and cobwebs, that seemed as if they hadn’t been used since the brewery had shut down. As Simon walked through an aisle between the equipment, it was becoming increasingly clear that this wasn’t where Michael had concocted any types of beer recently.
Then it hit him that he was going about this all wrong. Instead of trying to find a beer scent, he should be trying to find Michael’s scent. After all, it figured that if there was an active brewing area in the building where Michael had spent a considerable amount of time, and perhaps hung out there recently, then the remedy beer might be in the same area. Buzzed about this new strategy, Simon did a cursory look around the rest of the room, not detecting Michael’s scent, then left and went up to the next floor.
This was another seemingly inactive part of the brewery with a layout and equipment similar to the floor below. He couldn’t make out Michael’s scent here either, but just to make sure he gave the space a quick walk-through. He was inspecting the back of the room, where most of the tanks and other brewery equipment were concentrated, when it happened. There was the noise of footsteps coming from the floor he’d just vacated. He didn’t know how he knew this because the floors and walls in this building were thick, and with normal human hearing it would’ve been impossible to actually make out footsteps from a lower floor, but Simon didn’t have normal human ears and he was certain of what he’d heard. Then he heard another noise; someone laughing?
He went to the entrance to the room and shut off the light. Now he could hear the shallow breathing of the person and make out his strong manly scent. It wasn’t Michael; he was positive of that. It was a completely unfamiliar scent. But why was he trying to be silent, as if he didn’t want to be discovered in the brewery?
Simon couldn’t deny that the scent was igniting a hunger in him, the way the scent of the rodent had. He was about to shout, Hey, who’s there? when the realization hit:
> Someone had followed him here.
Stephen was in a large dark space with a lot of boxes everywhere, some kind of storage area or something, when he saw lights go on above him. Okay, Simon was upstairs, doing whatever he was doing with whomever. Stephen would just sit tight here for a while, then wait to see what the hell was going on.
The idea that this place was some kind of love shack for Simon and his girlfriend was fading fast. But Simon had something going on here he was trying to hide, that was for sure. Maybe this was some kind of brothel or something. Maybe upstairs there was a madam and a slew of Russian girls. Or maybe it was something that needed to be more hidden away, like a perverted sex club with underage kids. The thought disgusted Stephen, but the bright side was it would disgust Alison even more. Yeah, it was only a matter of time till she was on her knees, thanking the man who’d rescued her from her sick, child-porn-obsessed husband.
Then the lights went off upstairs and Stephen was in pitch-darkness again. Stephen heard footsteps going up to a higher floor, so, after waiting awhile, he went up to the next landing. He noticed a light on the floor above him, so Simon for some reason seemed to be going floor to floor. Stephen explored the floor he was on with the beam from his flashlight app. It looked like there was lots of dusty industrial-like equipment; well, the place had been a brewery, right? Hartman Beer. Wait, it was starting to ring a bell now. Wasn’t Hartman that skank beer he and the frat guys at Colgate used to drink? But they used to call it Fartman. Inadvertently, he laughed out loud.
Well, Stephen wasn’t sure what Simon was up to now. It didn’t seem like an underage brothel was going to materialize here soon. And why was Simon going floor to floor; was he searching for something? Maybe this was a crack den and he was looking to meet his dealer here. That would explain why Alison said he’d been going crazy. Didn’t crack addicts have mental problems?
Stephen was heading back toward the stairwell when the light on the floor above him went off. Stephen cut the light on his phone and was in darkness again. Okay, he’d wait here until Simon went up to the next floor or wherever he was going to go. He was thinking about Fartman beer again, trying not to laugh out loud, and then it was on him.
It because he had no idea what was attacking him, or what the hell was going on—one second he was smiling in the dark, the next some animal—animal?—had him pinned to the floor. It was growling and clawing at Stephen’s face and oh God, the pain in his face. Was it biting him? Yes, it was biting his cheek, his nose. He tried fighting it off, raising his right arm to push the thing off, but then there was sudden excruciating pain in his arms and, Jesus, it wasn’t there anymore, his arm was gone. The thing was biting into his neck, his face, and there was nothing but pain, the whole world was pain, and he was screaming, but he knew no one could hear him, and then it didn’t matter because he couldn’t scream anymore anyway.
FIFTEEN
“What do you got to smile about today?”
Shawn had just walked into Geri’s office at the Manhattan North precinct, where Geri was at her desk, trying to get some work done. Trying, because she was too distracted to focus, and kept seeing flashes of last night with Ramon.
“What’s the matter, a girl’s not allowed to be happy?”
“This the same girl I was with yesterday, I had to keep from trying to attack the police commissioner, the mayor, and anyone else who got in her way?”
“Yeah, well, that was yesterday,” Geri said.
When Shawn left, Geri tried to get back to work, getting some info together on a past case for a prosecutor downtown, but in her mind she was still in bed with Ramon, making love. Oh God, how many times had they done it last night? Did it really matter? There were really no times—the whole night was just one long-lasting experience, like one long orgasm that she didn’t want to ever end. It really was amazing how instantly connected they were in bed because, seriously, when had that ever happened to her before? It usually took being with a guy at least a few times before she even started to feel comfortable, but with Ramon she felt familiar with his body from the get-go and he was the same way with her, touching her exactly the right way, as if he had access to her brain and knew exactly how to turn her on.
And to think, she’d almost canceled and missed out on the most sensuous night of her life.
When she’d left the coffee shop yesterday afternoon and had some space away from Ramon, she wasn’t quite as, well, under his spell as she had been, and she felt stupid for falling for his whole Casanova act. Because that was what she was convinced it had been, an act, because the guy was an actor, right? He had a bunch of lines and, okay, he was convincing at the time and Geri had felt something, but that was what actors did—they made you feel something in the moment, but that didn’t mean the feelings were real.
But every time Geri tried to call him to cancel the date, she couldn’t go through with it. One time she actually pressed send and the call connected, but she ended the call before it rang. As much as she was convinced that he was a player, she kept remembering what it had felt like to be near him, to feel that heat between them. She’d never experienced that kind of intensity with a man before and, even if it was an act, she was willing to be entertained.
They had arranged for Ramon to come to her place to pick her up at seven. At exactly seven the buzzer rang and she buzzed him up. She was planning to give him a quick tour of the apartment—how long would that take? from the front door you could practically see the whole place—and then they’d head out.
Geri had gotten dressed up—well, dressed up for her. She was in a nice pair of jeans, heels, and a low-cut blouse, and she put on makeup, actually taking her time with it. She opened the door just as Ramon arrived, and she was as mesmerized as she’d been at the coffee shop. Just looking at him made her feel hot and a little woozy, as if she were a teenager and he were a rock star or something.
He took her hand and kissed the back of it, the way a sleazeball in a movie would, then said, “You look magnificent tonight.” He even made a corny line like that sound sexy.
“Come in, I’ll show you my place,” she said, aware that she was so flustered that her voice was unsteady.
Normally Willy and Wonka were curious about visitors and came over to at least sniff them, but when Ramon entered, both of their tails immediately stiffened, as if they were in danger, and then they darted under the couch.
“That’s so weird,” Geri said, “they never get like that.”
When Geri turned around, Ramon had moved closer to her, invading her space. But instead of getting creeped out, she liked it. He craned his head lower, as if to kiss her, but didn’t. He just stayed like that, looking in her eyes, so close she could feel his breath on her face. She knew what he was doing. He was teasing her, making her want him, but knowing what was going on didn’t make her want it less; it had the opposite effect. After a while, when her desire for him was almost unbearable, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, and they stayed there for the rest of the night.
Now, at her desk at Manhattan North, she heard herself actually moan. Okay, this officially had to stop. Thankfully no one had heard her.
She went down the corridor to the kitchen area, poured a cup of black coffee, and gulped some of it down. Fatigue wasn’t her problem, though; the problem was that she was dying to see Ramon again, and that couldn’t happen. She had to break away from whatever hold he had over her before it did serious damage to her career. He was a potential witness, or even a person of interest, in a series of possibly related murders and one disappearance, for God’s sake. Getting involved with him on a personal level was wrong and could even be a violation of her ethics as a police officer. She had to figure out a way to break away from him and forget that last night had ever happened.
Back at her desk, she finished getting the prosecutor what he needed, then tried to distract herself with more work. One problem was that she no longer had a current major case to focus on. She had been obsessed wi
th the Washington Heights shootings and now she had nothing to focus on except Ramon and how goddamn sexy he was. She didn’t even know what was going on with the Washington Heights case. She’d been avoiding Dan all morning, and she knew that getting an update would be frustrating whether they were making progress or not, because if there was a hot lead she would want to be a part of the investigation, and if the trail had gone cold she would want to get out there to find the son-of-a-bitch killer.
Geri hadn’t even read the papers this morning, or read anything online about the case, because she didn’t want to know and because she didn’t want to relive the humiliation of having to take a fall to save Dan’s ass. It had felt so awful to have to get up there in front of all of those reporters and basically lie. Even worse, she’d had to act like it was her fault to Carlita Morales’s family—well, her brother, anyway.
Something about the encounter with Carlita’s brother had stuck with Geri. It wasn’t just how angry he’d been; there was more to it than that. For some reason Geri had a feeling she’d seen him before, and she rarely forgot a face. But she’d been intermittently racking her brain and had been unable to remember where she’d seen him. Eh, whatever, she thought. She’d probably just seen him on the street or someplace random and it had no connection to anything.
