The Wizard of Lovecraft's Cafe

by Simon Hawke

  The waitress said, “Certainly, sir, coming right up,” then turned, smiled at Angelo, and gave him a wink.

  “Hey, I think she likes you,” Maldonado said as she left. “You oughtta get yourself some of that. Sweet. Anyway, here’s what it is.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice, “The shipment’s coming in soon, but I don’t trust those bastards. They’re actin’ like they’re tryin’ to do business, but I wouldn’t put it past ‘em to pull a fast one. And the padrone wouldn’t like that, you know what I mean? We already lost those two big shipments last month and that stuff doesn’t come cheap. Once maybe, they get lucky, pick up some noise on the street, who knows? Twice in a row, it doesn’t look so good. Somebody’s got a big mouth. Word is you did good work up in Detroit. You came highly recommended and Tommy says you made a real favorable impression. He’s got his eye on you for bigger things. Anyway, the thing is, he thinks we may have a problem with Joey.”

  “Which Joey is that?” asked Angelo.

  “Joey Battaglia, you know, you met him. Cocky little son of a bitch, with the attitude and the fuckin’ earring, likes to talk big?”

  “Oh, him,” said Angelo, not having any idea who he was.

  “Yeah. Tommy wouldn’t have taken him on, but he’s Franco’s sister’s boy and, well, you know how it is. But the lid’s a punk. He’s got no class, and not much smarts, either. He’s taken up with a goddamn whore, for Christ’s sake. She got a place over in Soho, works the lounges over on Spring street, pickin’ up on the gallery crowd. Makes like she’s an artist. Bullshit artist, if you ask me. Personally, the kid wants to make it with a hooker, it’s no skin off my nose. It’s his gonads that are gonna fall off, not mine. But maybe he’s been talkin’ too much. He ain’t exactly subtle, and they’ve been seen around together a lot. It’s bad for business, if you know what I mean. Like, it wouldn’t take much for some cop to lean on her a little. Tommy thinks Joey’s got a mouth on him, and he wants to find out if he’s been talking to the broad. And if she’s been talking to anybody else.”

  “And you want me to find this out?” said Angelo.

  “You got the picture. Tommy’s real anxious about this, so if Joey is the leak, we gotta find out now. I figure you and me take a ride over to Soho. I know where she’s gonna be tonight. She’s got habits like clockwork, that broad. I point her out, then you take it from there.”

  “I’m not sure exactly what it is you want me to do,” said Angelo.

  “Whatever it takes,” said Maldonado, looking him directly in the eyes.

  “Right,” said Angelo.

  The waitress brought the food.

  “Enjoy your meal,” Maldonado said.

  McGuire sat leafing through the folder. “Angelico, huh? Wasn’t that a little obvious?”

  “Maybe, to somebody who knew him. But he worked street-level undercover vice before, under a number of different names, and he wasn’t in contact with any of the people he’s been investigating on this assignment. We worked with the F. B. I. to manufacture a cover identity for him as Giovann Angelico, alias Johnny Angel, former mob muscle from Detroit. They had a mob lieutenant there nailed cold and turned him into an informer. They set it up so Angelo was able it use him as a reference. Besides, Angelo looks completed different now. When he was working Vice, he looked like real dirtbag. Even his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him. He’s got a real talent for changing his appearance.” She paused. “Or should I say had?”

  McGuire shook his head.”I don’t know. This zombie thing… it gives me the creeps. Sounds like something out of a horror movie. Magic is one thing, but this…”

  “If his body is being controlled by someone, you don’t think he… it… would have gone home, do you?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I’m still not really sold on the idea, but at least it will give us a place to start. Our adepts tell me that when someone is possessed like that. theoretically, the controlling adept has access to his memories. Of course, none of them have ever tried it, so they don’t know for sure. It’s not the sort of thing they teach in graduate programs of thaumaturgy.”

  “So then how do they know?”

  “The B.O.T. holds periodic briefings for police adepts in necromancy. Apparently, they’ve encountered it before. But our people tell me they’re not sure how it works with a corpse. If he were still alive when the possession occurred, or very recently deceased, then possibly the controlling adept would be able to have access to his memories, but that sort of thing is really beyond their level of expertise.”

  “Then shouldn’t we be bringing the Bureau in on this?” she asked.

  McGuire pursed his lips. “Technically, we should. It’s their jurisdiction. But then, technically, as deputy commissioner, I shouldn’t even be involved directly in a police investigation.”

  “Except?”

  McGuire sighed. “Except I don’t have the sense to mind my own business.”

  “This thing really got to you, didn’t it?” she said. “I don’t like not knowing what the hell is going on. And I don’t like the feeling I have about this case. I also don’t like the feeling that the Bureau knows a lot more about this than they’re admitting to. My department was played for a bunch of suckers, and I especially don’t like that.”

  “You know, I just had a real unpleasant thought,” said Mathews. “If your police adepts are correct in their supposition that whoever is controlling Angelo’s body might have access to his memories, then what happens if he goes back to being Johnny Angel?”

  McGuire shook his head. “I don’t know. How much about your operation does he know, beyond just his end of it?”

  “A lot.”

  “Then I guess you’d have a real problem.”

  “Are you done looking at that file?”

  He handed it back to her. “I got the gist.”

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  McGuire raised his eyebrows. “Go where?”

  “To Angelo’s apartment, where else?”

  “I don’t think that would be smart,” McGuire said. “Let me take it from here.”

  “No way, Steve. I’ve got to know. I’ve got to find out if the task force has been compromised. If so, then we’re going to have to move very, very quickly to pull all our people out.”

  “Chances are we won’t find anything at that apartment,” said McGuire. “And I don’t want to put you at risk. You’re an attorney, Christine, not a trained police officer. And I’ve got just as much of a stake in this as you do. Your task force people are my officers, after all. Look, I promise to keep you personally posted on everything we learn, as soon as we learn it. Fair enough?”

  She moistened her lips nervously. “I suppose it will have to be. But I want you to know I’m not very comfortable about leaving the Bureau out of it. If anything goes wrong, you’ll have your head handed to you.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? Thanks for the help, Christine.”

  “Don’t mention it. And I do mean, don’t mention it. We never had this discussion.”

  He smiled. “Would you perjure yourself by swearing to that under oath?”

  She did not return his smile. “Just watch me.”

  He watched her leave and then glanced at his watch. He still had twenty minutes to meet the Gypsy. He hoped Natasha would still be there. She was a gifted psychic, no question about that, but when it came to things like keeping her appointments, she was not very responsible. Come to think of it, she was not very responsible about a lot of things, he thought.

  The drive down to the Village was expedited by the siren and the flashing light, one of the perks of being deputy police commissioner. Another perk was carrying a gun. He hadn’t carried a gun in a long time, but before he left, he had taken his old semiautomatic out of its box in the desk drawer and strapped on his belt holster, though as he drove down to the Frog and Dragon coffeehouse on Bleecker Street, it occurred to him that there might not be much point to shooting a man who was already dead.
r />   A part of him did not want to involve Natasha in this any further, but another part of him knew he’d need a psychic to figure out this crazy case. He already had several detectives working on it, assisted by police adepts. Why was he getting involved personally? It probably wasn’t smart. But Christine had been right. This thing had gotten to him. And for some reason, he didn’t trust Case.

  He couldn’t put his finger on why, but his cop instincts had always been good. They hadn’t had a workout in quite a while, true, but his nose was telling him that there was something wrong with Case. Part of it, he had to admit, was personal prejudice. He simply didn’t like the man. Ever since he took over the New York Bureau office, Case had maintained a condescending attitude toward the department, as if they were mere scut workers while it was the Bureau that handled all the important matters. To some extent, of course, that was true. The department was neither trained nor equipped to deal with magic crime, except for minor misdemeanors and the like, but Case had an attitude problem. He was a petty power junkie.

  McGuire had seen his type many times before and they were always the same. Little men who sought comfortable niches in bureaucracies that would enable them to lord it over people. Unlike people who had real power, they could not discriminate. They took refuge in things like policy and regulation and were utterly inflexible. More often than not, they could be found holding down a desk at a public utility or in an administrative branch of some hospital or corporation, where the pecking order was rigidly established and their authority was clearly defined. At best, they could be merely irritating. At worst, they could be maddening impediments to progress. There was usually only one way to deal with them, and that was to go over their heads to someone with more clout, play the game their way, and either use a connection or become a mild irritant to someone in a position well above them. Suspend an anvil on a string above their heads and then draw their attention to the scissors in your hand. Then suddenly they became very cooperative and polite.

  Case, however, was one of the worst examples of the breed, a man who had actually managed to worm his way into a position of some significant power. The only way to go over his head would be to go to Bureau Headquarters in Washington, and McGuire had no legs to stand on. No one in the Bureau owed him any favors, and while there were some favors he could call in with people who would have some influence, this was not the time or the situation for that. He was clearly out of bounds. He had purposely delayed in having the forensics reports submitted to the Bureau office, and instead of turning the entire matter over to Case, as he was supposed to do, he was poaching on the Bureau’s turf, to say nothing of acting outside the limits of his office by playing detective.

  “You’ve lost your objectivity, McGuire,” he mumbled to himself. The proper thing to do was tell the driver to turn this car around, levitate it right back to the garage, then get those reports to Case and just forget about the whole damned thing. That was exactly the right thing to do. “Screw that,” he said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE LOUNGE, AS Maldonado called it, was really no more than a bar and nobody seemed to be lounging. It was a large, high-ceilinged room with a heavily varnished wood floor and a long mahogany bar behind which three bartenders were kept busy. The place was crowded and few people were sitting. Everyone was milling about, dressed very fashionably in outfits of neo-Edwardian and renaissance punk, seeing and being seen, posing and deprecating other poses. There was music playing, some kind of high-stress, metronomic, syncopated dirge punctuated by inner-city noises such as sirens, shots, and jackhammers. The undertone of conversation blended with it in a strange, ethereal way. It gave the atmosphere of the place a decided edge.

  “That’s her over there, with the legs,” said Maldonado, pointing out a young woman in a chain-mail and black leather jacket, a short red skirt slashed clear up to her hips, so that it was practically a loincloth, and graceful, high-heeled sandals. She had long blond hair artfully streaked with blue, and she wore bright, wet-looking lipstick. She was rocking her head slightly in time to the music and, at the same time, casually looking all around the room. She had, thought Angelo, the look of a hungry tigress.

  “Her name’s Donna, but she calls herself Blue,” said Maldonado. “Rents a loft just down the street, calls it her studio. Has a roommate, an artist’s model or something, but she never seems to be around. Joey’s been bragging that both of ‘em have pulled the train for him. Who knows, maybe they have. If you like what you see, nothing says you can’t have yourself a little fun before you start takin’ care of business. Do what you gotta do. Nobody’s gonna cry over a slut like that. Call me tomorrow and let me know what you found out.”

  Maldonado clapped him on the shoulder, got up, and left. Angelo simply stood there, not knowing what to do. Maldonado’s words had been ambiguous, but the implication was clear. He was expected to at least rough her up, “whatever it takes,” to get information out of her about Joey Battaglia, whom he didn’t even know, or if he knew him, he could not remember. And Maldonado had even hinted that if he killed her, no one would shed any tears.

  What kind of people was he mixed up with? What was this shipment that was coming in? It sounded like drugs, or something equally illegal. Jesus, I must be with the mob, thought Angelo. What was this work he was supposed to have done in Detroit? Was he a killer? That thought brought him up short. He suddenly felt certain that he had killed before, not once or twice, but many times. And at the same time, he felt repugnance for the thought.

  I can’t go through with this, he told himself. But at the very least, I’ve got to warn this woman. Simply because she was a prostitute, that was no reason for her to be beaten up or even killed. And if he didn’t do it, someone else probably would. And what would happen to him if he didn’t do it? Maldonado expected to be called tomorrow. He didn’t even know Maldonado’s phone number. Perhaps it was somewhere in the apartment. He suddenly decided he would not go back there. The place had felt vaguely familiar, but it wasn’t home, and there was nothing there he wanted. And when he did not do what was expected of him, it was the first place they would look for him.

  He waited until there was an empty space at the bar and walked up next to her. Her eyes slid over him as he took his place at the bar. She smiled. “Well, hi,” she said, and slowly moistened her lips. “What’s your name?”

  “Johnny.”

  “Hi, Johnny, I’m Blue.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Will it cheer you up if I buy you a drink?”

  She laughed. “Hey, that’s original, I like that. I like guys who are quick. But not too quick.”

  “What are you drinking?” he asked.

  “Vodka and tonic.”

  “A vodka and tonic for the lady,” Johnny said, “and I’ll have…” What did he drink? “I’ll have your best single malt Scotch,” he said, which was the first thing that came into his mind.

  “Oooh,” she said, “a man who’s serious about his Scotch.”

  “So…” He wasn’t quite sure how to begin. “I see you’re alone here. Are you waiting for someone?”

  “No, just hanging out. Why, what’s on your mind?”

  “That could be a dangerous question,” he said.

  “So give me a dangerous answer,” she replied. “What do you like?”

  “Are you working?”

  “Everybody works. Why, you a cop?”

  “Do I look like a cop?”

  “Cops dress sharp and grow beards these days,” she said.

  “Maybe you’re a cop,” he said.

  “Then where am I hiding my gun?”

  “Under that jacket, maybe.”

  “The jacket comes right off,” she said, slipping out of it. Underneath, she wore a chain-mail halter that left nothing to the imagination. “So, you like what you see?”

  “Nice,” said Angelo.

  “I’ve got a place just down the street. You interested?”

  The bartender brought their drinks. Angelo t
ook out his roll to pay for them. Her eyes got big when she saw it.

  “Well, I guess you do all right,” she said, staring at the roll greedily. “Two hundred and I’m off for the whole night.”

  “Okay,” he said, and started to peel off the bills.

  “Hey, not here, all right? Come on, we’ll go to my place.”

  She tossed back her drink, put her jacket back on, took his arm, and walked him outside. On the sidewalk, she snuggled closer to him and bumped her hip up against his side. Abruptly she pulled away.

  “Hey, that’s a gun!” she said. “You are a cop, you scumbag!”

  She started to move away, but he grabbed her arm. “Wait…”

  “Let go of me!”

  “I’m not a cop,” he insisted. But for some strange reason, that sounded wrong somehow.

  “Yeah, bull—shit!”

  “Listen to me, you’re in danger.”

  “Yeah, from you, asshole. Let go of me!” She tried to jerk away.

  He kept his grip firm. “Not from me. From Joey Battaglia’s friends.”

  She stopped struggling suddenly and stared at him. “What the hell is this? How do you know Joey?”

  “Joey ever talk about any of his friends?” said Angelo. “Tommy? His uncle Franco? Vinnie Maldonado?”

  “What are you, a narc? Who the hell are you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I mean something happened to me and I woke up in a hospital the other day and I couldn’t remember a thing. I seem to be somebody named Johnny Angel and Maldonado just brought me here to work you over so I could find out if Joey’s been talking about the shipments. Maybe even kill you. But I’m not going to do it, I swear. I just wanted to warn you.”

  “Holy shit,” she said, turning pale. “Holy fucking shit.”

  “Look, I’m not going to do anything,” said Angelo, “but I’m supposed to call Maldonado tomorrow and let him know what happened. When he doesn’t hear from me, he’s probably going to come looking for me. And Joey’s friends are going to come looking for you.”