The Polyphemus Investments Trust occupied the top five floors of the Ward Building at the intersection of Water Street and Wall Street. A walk-in temple was situated on the first floor, but these offices were the true sacred spaces of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Shredders whirred as parchments were cut into ritual ribbons, a blasphemy fostered out to interns with blood under their nails. Great computer cabinets groaned as reels whirred and punch cards were spat out. A restored tickertape machine, which had prompted a tycoon to shoot himself during the crash of ’29, coughed up a stream of arcane symbols.
Squid, star, knife, toad, serpents . . .
Curwen’s calves still ached. If he walked, one of his shoes squelched. Sores wept blood into a silk sock.
They had needed to be in a high place to see the signal flares across the city. To share the thrill of the beginning of the Age. After that, practicalities intervened.
Of course, the elevators of the Empire State Building weren’t running.
The only way down was one hundred and two flights of unlit stairs.
Randy Zann sang a complaint on every step. Curwen hadn’t approved his request for individual autogiros. After thirty flights, Ralf Martense screeched and started throttling the musician. Aza Whateley intervened, unpeeling rubber gloves and snapping arcs between his fingertips. His electric eel touch separated the squabblers. The wizard was so boneless he could roll down the stairs without sustaining any harm.
Curwen kept going down, ignoring his shrieking muscles.
This body was wearing out, as others had done. Even the dawn of a new age couldn’t obscure the fact. His left arm was dead and rotten. People too afraid to mention the stink wrinkled their noses in his presence. It would soon be time for a change.
Curwen thought he might like to wear Robert Redford.
Though it was difficult to be taken seriously with a well-known face. He should look for someone like Robert Redford. Preferably, a young Robert Redford. A limitation was that he had to browse for a body among his own flesh and blood. He could only pass the baton of his consciousness to lineal descendants. For a while, it seemed the family was withering. He established trust funds for new births and laid down other inducements to proliferation. His own baby boom. A new crop of Curwen-Ward offspring was scattered at colleges and in company sinecures. He employed people to keep tabs on the possibles. Three young men and an athletic girl were in the frame. He hadn’t worn a woman in a while.
For the moment, this middle-aged, distinguished body would have to do—despite the aches, the sores, and the stink . . . despite the tumors, the boils, and bad teeth. As Walker Phillip Ward, he commanded respect in the Trust and the wider world of politics, finance, and the law. He had private numbers for Henry Kissinger, F. Christ Trump, and Bob Guccione in his Rolodex. He could turn up unannounced and secure a prime table at Sbirro’s, though the restaurant was officially booked solid for years ahead. His high-degree membership in the National Rifle Association and plutonium key-holder status at the Playboy Club entailed privileges unadvertised to dues-paying lower orders. Elevated position was of considerable use. As the waters rose, there would be struggles. The Esoteric Order must hold this city.
On the expanse of desk, an executive toy seesawed. A fish tank on gimbals sent a trapped wave crashing one way then the other. Minuscule creatures swarmed in oily liquid, thickening and slowing its infinite shape-shifts. He could watch microscopic civilizations rise and fall for hours.
A buzzer rasped and Hester Tilling, his English PA, strode into the office. She wore a blouse with puffed medieval minstrel sleeves, an electric green miniskirt, and six-inch heels. Her short red-brown hair was permed into a helmet of coiled springs. She plumped a stained parcel on his blotter. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
“Personal delivery, guv’nor,” she said. “Messengered from uptown.”
Hester had killed two other girls to get her job. She did it with teeth and nails filed to pretty points. Faint blue gill-lines were tattooed on her neck, scallop marks like scales inked on her lower back and thighs. A fashion among congregants not born with the Innsmouth Look. Some had surgery to round their eyes or flatten their noses. They all wanted to look like Carolyn Marsh, who spun her fish-face into a vogue when she made her bow as designer-model.
Changes in the culture—in what people considered attractive or appealing—were revelations that the world was increasingly under the influence of the Great Old Ones. Pat Boone was out. Tiny Tim was in. That Americans could lust after Sonny or Cher was a sign of the coming deluge. This was not the era of “tekeli-li tekeli-li” but of “sock it to me sock it to me!”
Curwen prodded the parcel with his letter opener. Where the brown paper dimpled, it reddened.
“And a government bird is here to see you,” continued Hester. “She ain’t got an appointment, but says you’ll know her name.”
The PA laid a calling card on the desk.
Curwen glanced at it, not quite distracted from the parcel.
WHITNEY GAUGE
SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE
Them! The nuisances.
Of course, he had known they would take notice and take feeble countermeasures. The woman would have to be seen. He clenched his jaw—one of his wisdom teeth was rotted through, ground down by biting. The sensation was like pain, but more exquisite. There was a sour taste, a pleasurable tang.
Yes, he would relish a meeting with SAC Whitney Gauge. It was too much to hope he could accept her surrender and get on with the great work, but there should be time for a little gloating. Like the green flares, it was a part of the ritual, a curlicue in the grand design.
“Show her in,” he told Hester.
“She said you should open the pressie first.”
“Did she bring it?”
“No—a messenger, as I said. A, uh, colored man. In uniform, like a chauffeur. But she blew in about the same time.”
Curwen shooed Hester away.
. . . and looked again at the parcel.
He stuck his forefingers through the paper and tore a hole.
Dead eyes looked out at him. One blue, one brown.
“You have to admit that’s some message,” said a woman.
Special Agent in Charge Whitney Gauge was in his office. Hester loitered behind her, ready to bring coffee or hemlock as required.
Curwen looked up from Martense’s eyes to his visitor.
She was tall and blonde. A tiny question mark scar under her right eye. Tailored black suit and mannish shoes. Holstered gun in her armpit. A government woman.
He did not stand. She did not sit.
“You know who I am and which agency I’m with,” she announced. “We know who you are and what you did.”
He didn’t deign to confirm or deny anything.
One phone call and she was reassigned to Podunk. One payment, and she was an unsuspicious single-car accident. But that would be too much bother. Whitney Gauge and her bureau were old business, which would wait. Once, between the wars, they had maybe been a threat . . . dynamite at Devil’s Reef, the Fall of the Sister City. Then the Esoteric Order did what every other interest group and church in America did, and bought influence. The real battles weren’t fought in cellars by young men in hats with guns and gas-grenades, but in Washington backrooms by older men with cigars and briefcases. Now, the Unnameables were under oversight committees, kept on a leash by the White House and the Black Lodge. An irrelevance.
Even if she had brought him a new paperweight.
“That wasn’t us,” Gauge said, pointing at the parcel. “That was your new friend.”
Curwen didn’t like her tone.
Whitney Gauge walked around his office, light on her feet. Hester watched with watery eyes.
“Your people recently eliminated six competitor cults,” said Gauge. “All on our watch list. Considerable agent-hours and resources devoted to investigations all over town can now be written off. We were close to making cases against two o
f your targets. And we had angles on all of them. Some were ready to make truce. Live and let live, in the Age of Aquarius . . .”
“. . . Another water sign, I think you’ll find. One not in the zodiac you use.”
“Teuthis, the squid?”
“Closer.”
“Cthulhu, the syllables of a sneeze.”
Curwen wasn’t amused.
“Of course, taking down all those cults has freed up a lot of our manpower. In theory, we could devote all our attention to your so-called church.”
“Our religious freedoms are protected by the Constitution.”
“I know—you pay no tax. Manson didn’t either.”
“Is this a declaration of hostilities?” he asked. “A call for unconditional surrender?”
He showed her his yellow teeth.
She laughed at him.
“Not at all,” said Gauge. “This is a courtesy visit, to inform you that we shall take no further action against you. Our agency is standing down. You didn’t even have to call in favors in D.C. Yes, we know what you did for CREEP. We intend to pursue Other Matters. I’m going to Fire Island to spend time with my boyfriend. The director is taking his first vacation in eight years. The wiretaps you know about are discontinued . . . and the one you don’t will be pulled tonight. Here’s a tip—when buying government surplus, be suspicious of a bargain. Manhattan is yours. The Bronx and Staten Island too. Hell, have Queens while you’re at it.”
“May I ask why you’re taking such an enlightened approach?”
Now she looked at him almost with pity.
“You never research, do you? It’s all predestined and inevitable and the way it was meant to be . . . so why bother checking up?”
“Are you being deliberately and annoyingly nonspecific?”
“Not at all. In Harlem, at the hounfor, you killed Brother Sebastian Cutter. He recently replaced Brother Mordecai Vault as bocor. High priest, chief chicken-killer and bottle-washer, Lord of the loas, master of zombis, so on and suchlike. His congregation were slaughtered by shoggoths—yes, we know that too—but he’s the one you should have left alone. The stupid thing is that you’re rich and Cutter was greedy. You could have paid him off and we’d all be underwater by Lammas-tide, gurgling praise be to the Googly Oogly Oldie Ones and working hard on growing gills. But you didn’t want to open the encrusted coffers and dip into your stash of untaxable doubloons, and so you’re . . . what did you say, Ralfie?”
She picked up the parcel and held it to ear like a child listening for the sea in a shell.
“The Esoteric Order is . . . how to put it tactfully . . . ‘fucked like a ten-dollar whore when the Fleet’s in . . .’”
Gauge dropped the parcel into a wastebasket.
“There’s no need for such language,” he said.
“Iä! Iä!,” mocked Gauge. “You, fish-features, tell your boss here who Brother Cutter was married to. I know you’ve done the reading. If you want to break that glass ceiling, you have to put in the study hours. It’s a requirement. Along with the murders.”
Curwen looked at Hester.
“Sebastian Cutter is—was—married to a bit of all right called Nefertiti Bronze,” said the PA. “She competed in the Mexico Olympics, in the women’s decathlon.”
“Surely you remember the photo in Time?” said Gauge. “The African American Amazon making a Black Power sign on the winners’ podium.”
“She’s also a pop singer,” said Hester.
Curwen was genuinely puzzled. “So . . . ?”
“She’s John Bronze’s daughter,” said Gauge. “Dr. Bronze. Doc Civilized, patronizing white folks used to call him. You should remember him, because he kicked your Esoteric asses out of New York in 1941. He gunned Walter Willetts Ward, who you’ll remember. You were walking around in his skin at the time. John Bronze was a pulp hero in real life. Tricked-out limousine, secret lair, band of fellow adventurers. Scientist, explorer, club-owner, detective. A mover in what they called Darktown back then. The bureau even gave him a badge—without telling Hoover, of course. His daughter isn’t a heroine. Not in that sense. She’s a Fury. Want to know how fearsome Nefertiti Bronze is? I’m afraid of her. And I’ve been to the Moon and faced the Switched-On Satan. At the bureau, we just hope not to get on her wrong side. We don’t have strategies for her. She took on the Kthu Khlux Klan and burned them in their bedsheets. She fought in the Kreature Kumite and defeated all comers, including a Mi-go, a jiangshi, and a freakin’ Robot Green Beret. She came back alive from the Island of Dr. Eismond. She’s mistress of all seven disciplines of the Mystic Arts. The Astral Plane is where she parks her daddy’s car. If Godzilla ever attacks the Big Apple, I’ve picked out my safe spot—standing right behind the Woman of Bronze. She’s bad juju in frou-frou and she’s got voodoo up the wahoo . . . and, just now, she’s pissed at you-you . . .”
A sheen of sweat shimmered on Gauge’s forehead.
She was worked up. Excited.
“Nefertiti Bronze,” mused Curwen.
“Better whisper it.”
“A wench,” said Curwen. “A colored wench.”
Now, he laughed. It hurt him to laugh. Stomach acid leaked in his gut.
Even Hester looked alarmed at the sound coming from his chest. Then, she caught his drift and giggled.
“I’m not afraid of . . . the boogey woman,” he said.
Gauge touched her shoe-tip to the waste basket—the parcel had landed so Martense’s eyes looked straight up—and smiled at him, then left the office. She didn’t seem bothered by his scorn.
Eventually, he stopped laughing.
“This Bronze bird . . . ?” began Hester.
“Oh, don’t bother me with trifles,” he said, waving his hand. “Show some initiative . . . kill her. And empty the damn bin!”
His PA nodded.
V
“. . . And she sent Curwen the head—tee hee hee. Poor Ralf, I’ll wager he didn’t foresee he’d wind up a disembodied noggin . . . tee hee hee haw.”
Aza Whateley chortled, wobbling like a jelly mound.
Baron Exham thought of the wizard as a Michelin Man turned to flab. Ballooning, treadless spare tires piled one on top of the other. Whateley’s floral muumuu was the size of a tent. Strategic slits let him breathe and gobble without using his facial apertures. Those were for snorting and sniping. He wore a pointed beard and a Carolian wig of pressed ringlets. Grape-sized fleshbulbs were squeezed between his chins. He looked as if he’d just trounced the Fat Man from The Maltese Falcon and King Tut from Batman in a pie-eating contest and celebrated with a cask of green beer which soaked him inside and out. Six or seven nipples pressed against damp fabric. What seeped from his teats wasn’t milk, though Exham knew Whateley fed the sour ooze to his familiars—the homunculus Purple Bronson and Pyewicket the Dead-or-Alive Cat.
Exham didn’t find what happened to Ralf Martense amusing. It had been a mistake to trust the inbred milksop. Typical Curwen blunder.
The strong blood of the Delapores fit the Baron for primacy in the circle. It should have been obvious.
He was the end product of generations of English landed gentry, and Normans before them. Fierce people, who fought for heritage. Conquerors, not spoilers. Pirates in armor. Men with lands, livestock, and titles. Men with rights gifted by gods. Demanded from other men. Insisted upon, with arms.
Curwen—an old mind in a rotten body—was prone to fatheadedness. He had brought them to this shore, but could go no farther.
Moses didn’t enter the Promised Land.
In this new chronicle, someone had to be Joshua. It wouldn’t be Zann, for all that his music could crumble bricks. Or the pop-eyed twit Carolyn Marsh. And certainly not Aza Whateley. Who would follow such a blob?
The Vermin Lord of Hell’s Kitchen would rise.
Exham received the wizard in what had been the Chapel of Satan on West 44th Street.
The meeting room was decorated with broken black candles and jointed parts of former com
municants. Choice human cuts, with heads and limbs still attached. The goats—back on all fours, human matter speared on their horns or matted in their beards—poked about, still chewing on morsels. Whateley kept pinching little red twists of meat from goats and popping them in one of his lower mouths. He fed himself by forcing the sphincters in his chest to gape and knot like misplaced assholes.
Here, in Hell’s Kitchen, there was no resistance.
The Christian Devil was defied and Shub-Niggurath installed in the nook above the fouled altar. The Goat of the Woods reigned here. There were rats all around. A cockroach carpet scuttled over flagstones. And armadillos showed up, which no one could explain.
News from uptown was grim. The Martense Manse was ashes and cinders. An armory had been raided by a black militant group, and a small force of Vietnam veterans were fighting a war under the streets—flame-throwers, machine guns, and mortars against monkey-men with 18th-century weapons. Without leadership, the walleyed white apes were useless against experienced tunnel-fighters. Their reptiles were caught and eaten. In vacant lot skipping games, little girls competed for alligator teeth necklaces. Every other hussy in Harlem wore a new pinkish-white fur coat.
Rats swarmed away from the conflict.
What the rats knew, Exham knew.
He saw through their million eyes.
Brown faces striped black with makeup. Search and destroy patrols through sewers, subways, and access tunnels. Bright, searing explosions. The smell of cooked man-ape meat and spent fuel. Chips of stone and hot metal. Music played through loudspeakers . . . electric guitar riffs, horn sections, wailed social protests, selections from Wagner. Expert knife thrusts and kung fu kicks.
The Lovecraft Squad: Dreaming Page 30
