San Francisco Night

by Stephen Leather

  “We won’t be sleeping,” said Dragan. “But you have a good night.”

  Nightingale put his phone away and took the stairs up to Chen’s floor. He knocked on her door and when she opened it he could see from the look on her face that something was wrong. “What is it?” he said.

  She gulped some red wine from the glass she was holding, turned without answering, went back to her sofa. Nightingale closed the door, took off his raincoat and tossed it over a chair before going over to sit down next to her. “Amy, what’s wrong?”

  “One of those things was here. It tried to kill me.”

  “When?”

  “An hour or so ago.”

  “Are you okay?”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “Well obviously I’m okay or I wouldn’t be here. But it was a close thing.” She shuddered.

  “How did you kill it?”

  “Water. I threw water at it and it just… vanished. Like the one in the alley.”

  “Did you call anyone?”

  “Who? The cops? You know what happens, you kill them and they vanish, like they were never here.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Nightingale.

  “Sorry for what? It’s not your fault.”

  “For dragging you into this. For putting you at risk.”

  She waved her free hand at him. “This isn’t your fault, it’s those fucking Apostles.” Her words were slurred. The bottle was half empty, Nightingale realized. She wrinkled her nose and moved closer to him, sniffing. “You smell of smoke,” she said.

  “That’ll be the Marlboro.”

  “More than usual. What happened?”

  Nightingale explained about finding Dukas and the house being torched while he was inside. And about being hauled in by the cops.

  “Who were the detectives?” she asked.

  “Gil Rizzitello and Randy Sullivan.”

  “Rizzitello is a good cop,” she said. “Old school. I’ve met him a few times. They thought you started the fire?”

  “Or killed Dukas and his maid. They weren’t specific.”

  “I’m surprised they let you out so quickly.”

  “You and me both,” said Nightingale. “It was all a bit weird. They were giving me the third degree but then a senior officer turned up and told me they had to let me go. Sullivan took it personally and said that I had friends in high places.”

  “Your friend Wainwright?”

  “Maybe, I’ll call him later. Are you okay, Amy?”

  She flashed him a tight smile. “Of course I’m not okay. But I’m alive and I’m grateful for that.” She caught him looking at the wine bottle. “Half a bottle. I earned it.”

  “It’s more than half, but yeah, you’ve earned it.”

  She waved at the kitchen area. “Get yourself a glass.”

  Nightingale stood up and fetched himself a glass. “Speckman and Carr were both at The Elms, an hour before the thing attacked me,” she said as he poured himself some wine.

  “Are you sure?”

  Her face tightened. “Of course I’m sure. You think I’m making this up?”

  “I’m sorry, yeah, that was stupid.”

  She pointed at the iPad on the sofa between them. “Just in case you don’t believe me. You’re the one who always wants to see for himself, right.”

  “Amy, that came out wrong. I was surprised, that’s all.” He picked up the iPad and looked at the screen. “Yeah, there they are. Bastards. So they took part in the ritual to summon the Elemental.” He cursed. “Your card, remember? You gave Lucille Carr your business card. That’s all they needed to send the Elemental after you.”

  “Gee, do you think?” she said, her voice loaded with sarcasm.

  Nightingale put down the iPad. “But that’s all the evidence we need, don’t you get it? That proves that Speckman and Carr are in the Apostles and that the Sabbats take place at The Elms.”

  “It proves it to you and me but I don’t see a judge is going to grant us a warrant on the basis of two illegally-planted tracking devices,” said Chen.

  “The kids are in that house, Amy. I’m sure of it.”

  “You’re probably right. But that doesn’t get us inside. And if we go inside without a warrant, nothing found there is admissible.”

  Nightingale shook his head. “Not if we find the kids. If we get the kids back safe and sound no one will care where the information came from.”

  “I suppose we could call it in anonymously.”

  “No, they’ll have them well hidden. You saw how well guarded it was, it’ll take the cops time to get in, there’s no way they can catch them unawares. And we don’t know how good their contacts are within the police.” His phone rang and he went over to his raincoat to retrieve it. It was Wainwright.

  “Dragan tells me that you had a run with the cops?” said Wainwright.

  “Dukas is dead. Whoever killed him set fire to the house. They hauled me in but they let me go pretty quickly. Did you have a hand in that?”

  “Nothing to do with me,” said Wainwright. “First I heard of it was five minutes ago when Dragan called me. So no sign of the Grimoire?”

  “I couldn’t find it so either whoever killed Dukas took it or it went up in the fire. Either way I’m screwed. It was the only thing that might have told us how to stop the ritual. But the good news is that I managed to get that copy of Les Oeuvres d’ Agrippa back for you.”

  “That’s something,” said Wainwright. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m with my cop friend, I’ll talk it through with her.”

  “Keep me posted.” The line went dead.

  “So that’s what I am,” said Chen. “Your cop friend?”

  Nightingale grinned. “I couldn’t think of any other way of describing you. Sorry.”

  “I’ve been called worse,” she said. She held up her near-empty glass and he refilled it for her. “What the hell are we going to do, Jack?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “But we’ve got forty-eight hours to figure something out.”

  CHAPTER 74

  Nightingale opened his eyes to find Chen standing over him. “Wakey wakey, rise and shine,” she said. She was wearing a gray suit, had her hair tied back with a black clip and was holding a mug of coffee. “I’m off to work.”

  “Can’t you take the day off?”

  “I’ve got back-to-back case meetings all morning,” she said.

  “I need your help, Amy.” He sat up and took the mug from her. “The blue moon is tomorrow.”

  “I know, but today is frantic.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Can I use your car?”

  She looked as if she was going to say no but then she nodded. “Okay, but be careful with my baby. The keys are by the door. There’s a set of door keys, too. And get your coat cleaned. It stinks of smoke.”

  She left the apartment and Nightingale shaved and showered and changed into clean clothes. She was right about the coat so he dropped it off at a laundry on the way to Haight Street. It took him almost an hour to get there and he realized how much he’d been relying on the SatNav. He saw that two police cruisers had stopped outside the Written In The Stars store, their blue lights flashing. Nightingale pulled in to the side of the road. Two unformed officers were running police tape across the sidewalk, blocking off the shop.

  There was a dark blue Ford parked behind the cruisers. The sort of car that detectives would ride around in. Anonymous and economical. Nightingale took out his phone and called Chen. “Amy. Any idea what’s going on at a shop called Written In The Stars? Haight Street.”

  “What do you think’s going on?”

  “There are cruisers here and I’m guessing Homicide are here.”

  “And you’re there because?”

  “I wanted to talk to the owner. Gabriel Starr, the astrology guy. I was hoping he could tell me something. Last time I was here the shop was shut up.”

  “Give me a minute.”

&
nbsp; He heard a thud as she put the phone down and he lit a cigarette as he waited. An ambulance drove up from the other end of the street and parked behind the Ford.

  “Jack?”

  Chen was back on the line. “I’m here,” said Nightingale.

  ‘Well I suggest you get the hell out of there,” said Chen. “Starr’s dead. Pretty much butchered, the back room of his shop is awash with blood.”

  “I’m driving away as we speak,” said Nightingale. He drove by the shop, taking a quick look as he went by, and parked close to Pagan World. Margaret Romanos was in the back room amongst the books when he walked in, but came out into the main shop when she heard the bells. She gave him a friendly smile this time, it appeared he was more popular for some reason.

  “Hello again,” she said. “How can I help you today?”

  “Some fairly unusual items, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’ve made a list.”

  He handed her a sheet of paper on which he’d written down everything he would need to purify himself.

  Ms Romanos scanned the list. “This is all straight forward,” she said. “Though you’ll need a priest to bless the water and wafers. A sympathetic priest, of course.”

  “Would you know one?” asked Nightingale.

  “It so happens I do. Father Kevin often helps me with these things. I assume a hundred dollars for his fee would be no problem?”

  Nightingale nodded.

  “Money’s not an issue,” he said. Just so long as you can give me what I need. And I need it now, if that’s at all possible.”

  “I’ll call him now and he can probably come around in ten minutes. He doesn’t live far away.”

  “I can wait,” said Nightingale.

  “Do you mind me asking what you’re planning to do with all this?”

  “Just a purification spell, nothing major,” he said.

  “Are you expecting trouble?”

  Nightingale shrugged carelessly. “Just being careful,” he said. Nightingale’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number but he took the call. “Jack? It’s Karl Woods.”

  “How’s it going, Karl?”

  “I’ve been doing lots of research, Going way back. Been to City Hall and the Public Records Office and spent hours online. Found some very strange stuff.”

  “I’m all ears, Karl.”

  “I’m happy to give you what I’ve got so far. Are you around this afternoon.”

  “Sure. Where and when?”

  “I’m a bit rushed, my editor has just hit me with a travel feature that’s got to be done by tonight. I’ll be at a place called The Cellar. It’s an underground tourist attraction. Can you meet me there? Three o’clock.”

  “I’ll be there.” He ended the call and turned to see Margaret watching him carefully.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  “Everything is just hunky dory,” he said.

  CHAPTER 75

  The Cellar was San Francisco’s newest tourist attraction: an underground recreation of Gold-rush era bars, camps and settings, complete with animatronic figures and a boat ride down a river with prospectors and waterfalls. Nightingale paid his twenty dollars and walked in. He was met by a grizzled old prospector dressed for the 1880s. “He he he, good to see you son, and welcome along to The Cellar. This here’s The Descent, a gen-you-whine 1860s elevator, get you down to where it all happens. Don’t you worry none about the bumping, it’s got a nice thick rope that hardly ever snaps, and we get it checked every year or so. Not had anyone killed in weeks, he he he.”

  Nightingale wasn’t amused.

  “You have stairs?” he asked. “I’m not a big fan of elevators.”

  “No siree, the Elevator’s the only way down and it’s a whole heap of fun.”

  Nightingale was a hundred percent sure that there’d have to be safety stairs, but causing an argument with the management probably wasn’t the best way to start a secret meeting. The elevator would have to meet modern standards, so the spiel about the fraying rope was strictly bull. He shoved his white knuckles into his pockets and clenched all the way to the bottom. As advertised, there were plenty of bumps and jerks on the way down that did nothing to improve his temper.

  He had to admit that The Cellar was well done. The animatronic figures and dioramas were far more realistic than his memories of Madame Tussaud’s in London on the only occasion he’d ever visited. He supposed that Disney had similar displays, but Nightingale had never been inside a theme park. Something else he’d missed from being childless. It was in the Gold-rush room that he finally saw Woods. The journalist was scribbling in a notebook and he waved his pen in the air when he saw Nightingale. “Sorry about this, Jack,” he said. “The girl who was supposed to be writing this got sick so it got dropped in my lap. Tag along, will you. I’m on a tight deadline.”

  The river ride was the next along, and Woods got into the third boat from the front. Nightingale climbed in after him, and the boats set off, Nightingale assumed they ran on a track under the water. The boats in front and behind were empty, there were few visitors this early in the morning. There was a middle-aged woman in the front boat, but far enough away to be out of earshot.

  Woods waited until the boat had rounded the first bend and was out of sight of the jetty before he reached inside his bag and pulled out small black thumb drive and handed it to Nightingale. “That Dukas, his family goes back a long way,” said Woods. “I went to the Library of Congress database and went through their newspaper archives. Looks like one of his distant relatives was a witch.”

  “A witch?”

  “That’s what she was accused of, anyway. It’s all in that file. Hard to spot because the original story was under her married name, but before she married she was a Dukas, the daughter of Greek immigrants. I found her death certificate – she died in the 1906 earthquake. Or more specifically, the fire. She was burned to death.”

  “I suppose that’s decent background for any story you write.”

  “There’s more,” said Woods, nodding at the thumb drive. “What you said about Satanism and the missing kids got me thinking. So I started digging. And guess what?”

  He looked across at Nightingale, clearly wanting him to speak. “What?’ said Nightingale, playing his part.

  “A week before the earthquake, a week before the so-called witch died, two children went missing. They didn’t call them abductions back then. But two kids were taken and never seen again.” He paused for effect and Nightingale had to fight the urge to throttle the journalist. “And here’s the kicker, Jack. The missing kids were a ten-year-old white boy and a ten-year-old black girl. What are the odds?”

  Astronomical, thought Nightingale. Unless history was about to repeat itself.

  CHAPTER 76

  Pagan World usually stayed open until 6pm but customers seemed few and far between and Margaret Romanos had things to do at home so she locked up her shop up early and headed down the road towards the bus stop. Five minutes later she boarded the bus for Union Square and sat down near the front. She always went to and from work on public transport –the bus and the cable-car. She owned a car but daytime parking wasn’t easy on Haight Street and what parking there was cost a lot. Besides, she enjoyed the bus and the cable-car, it gave her time to people-watch which was one of her favourite past-times.

  At Union Square she got off the bus, just behind a middle-aged woman in dark-brown tweeds who also walked over to the cable-car stop. A few minutes later the bell announced the arrival of the cable-car. The driver pulled the lever to unclamp the car from the giant. perpetually-moving cable which ran along the street and the car came to a halt. Margaret climbed up and sat towards the back, since she was only going a few stops. The driver reclamped the car to the cable and the vehicle started its ascent. The little woman in brown sat down next to Margaret. The conductor took their fares and moved down the car.

  The little woman smiled at Margaret. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  Margaret nodded. �
��It has been so far,” she said.

  “Well let’s hope it stays that way,” said the woman.

  CHAPTER 77

  Chris Caldwell was ten and thought that The Cellar was pretty much the coolest place in San Francisco. His mother had brought him and his sister Sally down for a treat, and he’d loved every minute of it. The rats in the Chinatown Black Death room were just awesome. He’d been through every room, gone round on the boat ride twice, and now that it was time to go he was dragging his feet, trying to make it all last as long as possible. His mother and Sally had walked on ahead, but Chris was determined to miss nothing.

  “Chris, come on,” said his mother. “They’ll be closing soon. We can go and have pizza.”

  “I’m coming. This place is just so cool, look at all these smugglers.”

  “We’ve seen them once,” said his mother, secretly pleased that he was having such a good time.

  “Hey, look, there’s one fallen over here. Maybe the smugglers killed him. He’s dressed kinda different though.”

  “Hey, Chris,” said his sister, “you’re not supposed to touch any of them.”

  “I know, I didn’t hurt it,” he said.

  “Come on Chris, “ said his mother, taking his hand. “Now what have you got all over your hands? Is that blood?”

  “Wow, that must have come off the dead guy. So cool.”

  His mother pulled back her hand and stared at it in horror. “That’s blood. Real blood.”

  “Awesome!” shouted the boy.

  CHAPTER 78

  Nightingale was sitting on the sofa, reading the contents of the thumb drive on the big screen television. He heard the front door open and looked over to see Chen, carrying a pizza box. “It took you more than thirty minutes so I guess I get it for free, right?” said Nightingale.

  “It’s not for you,” said Chen, closing and locking the door. “You can go out and buy your own pizza.”

  “I was joking,” said Nightingale.

  Chen put the box down on the coffee table. “So was I.” She took off her gun and holster as she walked over to the fridge. “White okay?”