Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

  She whispered the words of an ancient prayer and reached into her battered army-surplus jacket. On the tail end of her hymn, she drew out a brass key on a slender chain. The lid of her jar unlocked with a faint metallic click, then whispered open on hinges of oiled stone.

  A swarm of gnats boiled from the jar, flooding the hash-brown-scented air. The other diners were impassive as the gnats landed on their food and tangled in their hair, not seeing them at all. Dora rose and walked with the swarm. She cradled the empty jar under her arm while the insects buzzed around her face. She pushed open the diner’s door and set them free.

  The black and churning cloud blew across the street, washing over the auction house, slithering into every crack and open window. Everywhere they touched, the world changed.

  * * *

  Pamela Land had run from Boston to LA. She’d changed her hair, her name, her career—she would have changed her face if she could have afforded plastic surgery on her fourteen-dollars-an-hour paycheck. Every time she moved, he found her. Sometimes it was a few weeks later; once she’d lasted three months on the run. Even after her ex-husband lost his job on the police force, kicked to the curb after violating the restraining order so many times his buddies couldn’t cover for him any longer, he kept coming for her.

  Last time had been in Michigan. She got fourteen stitches, two broken ribs, and a nose that never healed straight again. He got probation.

  It was a hot, muggy day, and her ribs ached. They always ached when the weather changed. She walked the side alley of the auction house, guarding the approach to the loading dock. “Guarding.” She almost smiled at the thought. The biggest trouble she’d faced since starting this job was chasing away kids trying to tag the alley wall. Still, the auction house moved ten million dollars a month in merchandise. If they told her to guard the alley, she’d guard the alley.

  “Pamela.”

  She knew the voice. Knew what she’d see before she even turned around. Her ex-husband stood there, showing her his empty hands, ten feet behind her. Wearing those conciliatory puppy-dog eyes again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for what happened last time. Look, you just—you just get me so angry sometimes, you know? If you’d just—”

  She drew her revolver and shot him six times.

  She didn’t think. She just did it. Standing outside her body like she was watching a movie, she emptied round after round into his chest. The hammer clicked down on an empty chamber. He hit the alley floor, his glazed eyes staring at the smog-shrouded sun. Pamela stood there, trembling, back inside her own skin.

  Dora stepped over to the body. She reached into her jacket, pulled out a tiny .22 with a taped grip, and tossed it onto the pavement next to the dead man’s hand.

  “He had a gun,” Dora said. “It was self-defense.”

  “He had a gun,” Pamela echoed, staring at what she’d done. “It was self-defense.”

  Dora walked past her, up the alley, unchallenged.

  * * *

  Inside the cluttered warehouse, thick doors and the whining of forklift engines drowned out the gunshots. A dozen men, their backs stained with cold sweat under their safety vests and lifting harnesses, hauled wooden crates across the floor and ran through shipping manifests. Half the warehouse was being shipped out to lucky bidders; the other half was incoming and needed to be prepped for that evening’s auction. The endless circle of work.

  The overhead lights flickered, and Jeph, one of the worker bees, sighed. He knew what was coming next.

  “How many times, Jeph?” his supervisor shouted from the far end of the floor. “How many times I gotta ask?”

  “On it,” he sighed for what must have been the twentieth time that week. He wasn’t on it. He’d taken to using his electrical-maintenance duties for extended smoke breaks. The building was old, sure, but it wasn’t falling to pieces. He needed his cigarettes more than the auction house needed upkeep.

  “I mean it,” his supervisor yelled back. “You said you had this shit fixed yesterday, and you said the same thing two days ago. I see those lights flicker again, you’re getting written up.”

  No smokes for Jeph today, at least not on company time. He could tell when he’d pushed the boss a little too far. He trudged over to the circuit breaker box and opened it up, trying to estimate the least amount of work he could get away with.

  He didn’t see the cloud of gnats roiling in the wires, stripping plastic and loosening screws, brushing hot connections together. Or the ones swarming in the employee bathroom just off to his left. The old toilet, as neglected as the wiring, overflowed. Water bubbled over the lid and spilled, rolling out under the bathroom door, the worn grooves of the warehouse floor guiding the stream to form a puddle under Jeph’s feet.

  “Huh?” he said, hearing his shoes splash. He looked down, distracted, as his hand brushed the metal of the breaker panel.

  Later, they’d call it a one-in-a-billion accident. The perfect storm of building fatigue, a near-impossible wiring mishap, and sheer bad luck. As Jeph shook, paralyzed by the lethal current running through his body, the lights flickered one last time and died.

  Heads turned as his corpse crashed to the ground.

  Workers ran to his side, one dialing 911, another checking his pulse as they gathered around him. In the lightless gloom, their backs turned toward her, Dora strolled by without anyone noticing.

  * * *

  “You left your computer unlocked,” was all she said.

  Keller, of Keller and Sons, sat behind his desk. He pressed the phone to his ear and faced the unthinkable. He’d never left his computer unlocked. Never.

  “You…you invaded my—” he stammered.

  “You didn’t even bother closing your…pictures,” his wife said. “How could you do this?”

  “I can explain—”

  “Children,” she said. “It was like you wanted me to find it. Like you wanted me to find out what kind of monster I married.”

  “No, it’s not like that. Look, we can work this out!”

  “Work it out with the police. I already called them. They’re on their way.”

  She hung up. He set the phone down and sat in stunned silence as his world crumbled around him.

  Then he opened his top desk drawer, took out the glossy black revolver he carried for protection, and shot himself in the head. His corpse sagged halfway out of his swivel chair, gun limp in his hand and his blood guttering onto the carpet.

  Dora let herself in. She stepped around his body and over to the packing crate on his desk. Her hand lightly brushed against the shipping label. The ink writhed under her fingertips, black text running and marching across the white label like a swarm of ants.

  Aubrey Weinstein, Long Island broke up and dissolved. The ink ants marched. When they settled once more, the label read Vanessa Roth, New York City.

  Dora eyed her handiwork, nodded with approval, and left. The first ambulances were pulling up to the curb as she left the auction house, followed by a pair of police cars. Nobody gave her a second glance.

  A couple of blocks away, someone had opened up a fire hydrant, and kids danced and shouted in the spray. The springtime sun fought through the blanket of smog and turned the arc of mist into a rainbow. Dora smiled at the sight. She followed the trail of spilled water into an alleyway. The tail end of the spill spread out in a basin of cracked concrete, forming a dirty puddle. She crouched beside it and waved her hand over the water. It rippled, and her reflection tore away.

  The Mourner stared out at her from the puddle, her face shrouded behind heavy lace veils. “Sister,” she hissed.

  “What’s done is done,” Dora said. “The Oberlin Glass is getting shipped straight to our girl’s doorstep, postage paid. Let’s hope she figures out what to do with it. I couldn’t exactly send an instruction manual.”

  “If she is truly worthy of our mother’s esteem, her intuition will guide her.”

  “True. True. Did your pet gangster
come through with the knife?”

  “My pawn has just begun his work. He will be successful.”

  “You sound confident,” Dora said.

  The ivory veils rippled as the Mourner let out a raspy chuckle.

  “He hasn’t failed me yet. Faust is a resourceful man. Cunning, when cornered. And at the very least, always entertaining to watch from a distance.”

  Thirty-Nine

  Daniel Faust had a routine, and he stuck to it. One drink right before a job. Just enough hard liquor to steady his nerves, not enough to blunt his edge. He nursed a Jack and Coke in a piano bar in Hollywood, some see-and-be-seen joint with polished brass along the bar and leafy ferns dangling from wicker baskets.

  He hated Los Angeles.

  His phone rang. A familiar Kentucky drawl crackled across the line.

  “Sugar,” Jennifer said, “you got a problem.”

  Jennifer was the chairwoman of the New Commission, the biggest crime syndicate in Nevada. Those weren’t words you ever wanted to hear coming from her lips.

  “Tell me about it,” Daniel said. “Lemme guess: the three stooges I took out in the storm tunnels have buddies, and they’re sniffing for payback.”

  Jennifer snorted. “If that was it, wouldn’t have even called ya. Woulda just taken care of that on my own. You ain’t been in Dallas lately, have you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Didn’t think so. Problem is, somebody hit a stash house for ink dealers. Killed everybody on the scene.”

  “And that’s a problem why?” Daniel asked.

  “Check the pic.”

  He tilted the phone, calling up the photo she’d just sent him. Corpses lay scattered across a warehouse floor, throat-cut and sprawled like rag dolls. Black flies nestled in puddles of sticky blood.

  Playing cards jutted from their wounds. They were even his usual brand.

  “Aw, hell,” he said.

  “My thoughts exactly. Somebody sure wanted to make it look like you did the deed. Considering you’re supposed to be dead, that’s gonna put a crimp in things. Hate to add injury to injury, but do I have to tell you who was first on the scene?”

  He felt a fist-sized stone in the pit of his stomach.

  “Don’t say Harmony Black.”

  “I won’t say it, then,” Jennifer replied. “I’ll just think it real loud in your general direction. Anyway, looks like somebody’s setting you two up for a rematch.”

  His phone buzzed as a text came in. The Palmer’s lobby cameras just went blind, it read. You’ve got one hour.

  “I’ve got to run,” he said, “just got word from Pixie.”

  “Yeah, when are you gonna tell me what you’re doing in LA? We hate LA.”

  He remembered the Mourner’s admonition about secrecy. “Private job for a special client. I’ll catch you up when I get back.”

  He tossed back the last swallow of his drink. The empty glass clinked against the lacquered bar. He left a rumpled twenty next to it, folded a newspaper under his arm, and slipped outside. His tailored jacket billowed behind him in a gust of hot wind as he jogged across a clogged intersection. With a coffee-colored sunset at its back, the spire of the Palmer Building rose up like an art deco monument. Built of sandstone and silver, it was a pyramid for the hippest of pharaohs.

  The cavernous lobby was a relic from the forties, plush velvet divans edging a kaleidoscope tile floor mural, scarlet and gold sizzling in an endless whorl. The air conditioning was on at full blast, prickling Daniel’s skin as he walked across the room like he had every right to be there. Confidence was the most important key to any successful infiltration.

  The second most important was having actual keys. That morning’s recon had taught him that the elevators were locked by electronic access cards. Residents only. He sat on a divan near the elevator banks, unfurled his copy of the LA Times, and pretended to read. Three people came and went. None of them was right. Then came lucky number four, stepping off the elevator with his card still in his hand. The bronzed door rumbled shut behind him as he stuffed it in his left hip pocket.

  Daniel got on his feet, moving fast, calculating the perfect trajectory. The two men collided halfway across the lobby floor. As their shoulders thudded, Daniel pretended to try to steady his target with one hand, giving him an extra shake and throwing him further off-balance as his fingers dipped into the mark’s pocket.

  “Jeez,” Daniel said, “sorry, sorry about that—”

  The man pulled away from him, holding up his open hands. “It’s okay.”

  “Sorry. Wasn’t looking where I was going. Sorry.”

  Daniel strolled to the elevator banks. The stolen card, glossy and black, nestled against his palm.

  Finding Andre Lefevre’s address had been easy: a twenty-dollar bribe to a studio intern did the job. Another twenty for his limo driver got the down-low on the celebrity chef’s schedule, to make sure he wouldn’t be home when Daniel came calling. Lefevre was not popular with his staff.

  So far, this was a picture-perfect breaking and entering job. That didn’t make Daniel happy. He’d been around long enough to know that when everything seemed smooth as glass, there was always something nasty lurking beneath the tranquil waters. Alone inside the mirrored cage, he reached into his jacket and took out a pair of thin leather driving gloves. He slipped them on as the elevator drifted upward.

  He got off on the seventh floor and eased down a narrow, dimly lit hall, brass-numbered doors alternating between patches of garish vintage wallpaper. If his info held up, 716 was Lefevre’s place. He looked left and right, ears perked in the cold silence, and crouched as he fished out an olive oilskin case. His lockpicks were nestled inside, a baker’s dozen with a menagerie of angled hooks and tips.

  One by one, the tumblers rolled over for him like a dog doing tricks. The lock let out a satisfying little click, and the chef’s door drifted open.

  “Mr. Lefevre?” Daniel called across the threshold. “Your door was open. Everything okay?”

  Better safe than sorry. No answer, though. He had the place to himself. He shut the door behind him and switched on the lights.

  Lefevre had dropped a million on this place, but he was paying for the prestige of the address. His condo was a borderline dump, with cheap wallpaper and clashing colors. Cracks ran the length of the yellowed crown molding. He’d spent some serious cash on the kitchen, though, renovating it with bright white tile, track lighting, and stainless steel everything.

  Daniel whistled and popped his head into the refrigerator. He didn’t expect to see the knife he was hunting; he just wanted to know what a celebrity chef had in his fridge. Hot sauce, mostly. Bottles and bottles of sauce stood at attention, mingled with brands of imported mustard he couldn’t even pronounce and mounds of leftovers stuffed into plastic cubes. He pried up the corner of a Tupperware container to take a peek inside.

  It was a human face.

  It had been surgically removed, perfectly intact with its eyelashes and eyebrows plucked, and roasted medium-rare. Part of the chin and bottom lip were missing, eaten away. Lefevre had plated it with a small radish-and-cucumber salad.

  Daniel put the lid back and stepped away from the fridge. His gaze slid to the long, oversized meat freezer alongside it.

  “Aw, hell,” he breathed. “Come on. No.”

  He pried up the freezer lid, took one look inside, and let it fall shut again.

  After that he didn’t linger. Daniel tossed the kitchen fast, rummaging through drawers and cabinets as he hunted for the Mourner’s knife. Lefevre had no shortage of kitchenware—and knives for days, each one of them sharp enough to split a hair right down the middle—but no sign of the right blade.

  The bedroom was his next stop, and Daniel approached the scarlet-sheeted bed and closed closet door with a surge of anxiety. Fortunately, the chef kept his murderous habits to the kitchen: nothing but dust bunnies under his bed, and the closet was stocked with a row of tailored suits. He dipped his fingers in poc
kets and checked inside each jacket, feeling for a hidden sheath or anything big enough to hold the missing knife.

  A business card fluttered to the floor. Daniel crouched down and scooped it up. The card was rich cream, with calligraphic text in stark black.

  The Hollywood Gourmands’ Society

  Est. 1923

  No address, no phone number. He flipped it over. The back simply read Admit One.

  He pocketed it. After that he took one last walk-through. He made sure everything was left exactly the way he found it and shut the lights off on his way out the door. Then he went back across the street, back to the piano bar, and had another drink.

  For a moment, he thought about chucking the job and going home. He had that old familiar feeling, teetering on the edge of some bad craziness and waiting for the fatal shove before he went tumbling headfirst into it. Then he thought about the Mourner. She wasn’t the kind of person who took no for an answer.

  He needed backup. He took out his phone.

  “Caitlin. Hey, am I interrupting?”

  The woman’s faint Scottish burr warmed his ear. “Not at all, pet. I’m mired in paperwork, but you make for a welcome distraction. Are you back in town? I was thinking we could go out for dinner tonight.”

  “Still in LA, and I don’t think I’m going to have much of an appetite tonight. Or tomorrow. Or anytime soon. Hey, you spent some time in Hollywood back in the day. I mean…you know, not recently. A while ago.”

  “Are you trying to avoid bringing up my age, Daniel?”

  “Yes. That is absolutely what I’m doing.”

  “That’s adorable,” she said. “But yes, my previous tenure on Earth did see me attend a party or two in that neck of the woods.”

  “You ever hear of an outfit called the Hollywood Gourmands’ Society, would have started up in the early twenties? I’m running on a hunch here, but I’m pretty sure they eat people.”

  “You’d think I would have, but no. I’ll give Freddie Vinter a call.”

  “Freddie?” He furrowed his brow. “She’s in Chicago.”

  “She also eats people,” Caitlin said. “I’ve found that cannibalism is a curiously social vice. She may network with them. And why are you looking for these…individuals?”