by J. R. Rain
The world spins and whirls around me: the shattered Funland boardwalk erupting in splinters and flame; the dark sky alive with squirming dreamers; the glowing ocean reaching to the curved horizon; the blank, black staring face and open maw of the Soul Eater. This close up, I can make out rows of tiny razor blade teeth, like those of a shark, receding inside each mandible of its open beak. A sudden gust of foul frigid air sweeps over me from inside it, and I almost faint from the stench of the Eater’s bad breath. A horrifying negative radiance bubbles up from its gullet as if from a crucible of endless oblivion…
And inside that absolute darkness, I catch a glimpse of a star-field as the sharp teeth tear at my clothes and into my leg while I wildly kick and scream.
Which is when I realize I’m kicking and screaming at Tamara, who is clutching at me in my bed, holding on for dear life in a grip like that of a little bear.
“Rishya! Rishya!” she sobs as she shakes me hard. “Now you wake up!”
ou pissed off at me?” Val is asking me. It’s kind of an awkward moment. “Was it the roses?”
“No, no, the roses were great. They were very romantic.”
“It’s just hard to read you, Richelle. I don’t want you to feel like I’m rushing you or anything, but at the same time, I don’t want the opportunity to slip by. You know, the ‘right person, wrong place, wrong time’ kind of thing.”
“I just had a bad night. Honest.” Then to the guy I’m kneeling on and cuffing: “You have the right to remain silent, but anything you say can and will be used in court against you. You have the right to consult an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning,” and so on. His partner, still wearing his hoodie, lies in a pool of blood―he’d turned his Bushmaster AR-15 on us the moment we’d walked in the store, and Val had taken him down with two quick shots. The other guy had then surrendered.
We’d stumbled on these two robbing a jewelry store just before lunch while we were canvassing the main street stores in Little Malta. It all happened so fast, I’m still trembling from it. But Val is cool as a cucumber; in fact, he really doesn’t seem to give a shit. All he wants to talk about is us.
“You do realize you’ll get a suspension while they do the investigation?” I tell him.
He shrugs. “The whole thing’s on the security cam footage.” Every alarm in the place is still going off, and ERV sirens wail in the distance. There are two other people in the shop―the Mediterranean-looking owner and a young Asian saleswoman; she’d collapsed behind one of the corners weeping, and he’s crouched down beside her trying to comfort her. From the way she’s clutching at him, I’m guessing there’s a lot his wife doesn’t know about their relationship.
“Hey,” says the kid I’m kneeling on, “You can get off now, bitch. I ain’t goin’ noplace.”
“You were carrying an AK!”
“It ain’t loaded. Check it out for yourself, you don’t believe me.”
“Besides,” Val goes on as if the kid hadn’t spoken, “You’ll be backing me up. I mean, the asshole was pointing at you, for Chrissake. Scared the shit out me.”
“Hey, that’s my brother you talkin’ about, motherfuckah,” says the kid before I can grind his face back into the parquet floor. “You killed him―and his piece ain’t even loaded, either! I be ‘memberin’ you.”
“Shut up,” I tell him. “Unless you want to lose some teeth.” I’d also pulled a battered looking Walther P-22―which was loaded―from his belt when I tagged him. This shit reminds me of my days back on patrol and weirdly, it calms me down.
“I figure I’ll get a week off now, tops. Maybe you can take some time, too, and we can go away together somewhere. Maybe Mexico?”
I just stare at him. “I’m still on the task force. Or had you forgotten? You know―the mayor’s dead daughter?”
“Can’t blame me for trying,” he says, with that piratical smile of his.
By the time we turn the foul-mouthed banger kid over to the responding officers and give our statements to Talkington and Di Angelo, who show up from my squad room as lead, we’re both starving, so Val and I walk across the street to La Trattoria Valetta and order lunch.
The music system is playing a pop song with a group chorus that goes something like:
“..bamboccu jhobbha bil-maxi
U tal-Makk bil-mini skirt” and over and over again: “Bil-mini, bil-maxi…”
“What I don’t get is why their assault rifles were unloaded,” I say to Val once we’re seated.
“Because they thought they’d pull a much lighter sentence that way if they got caught. Which might be true if the moron kid brother hadn’t also been hauling around a cocked and locked P-22 with a full clip and one in the chamber. Know what he says to me on the way out? That he’s still a minor. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him the DA would just stall the paperwork until he turns eighteen. What’s wrong now? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
That’s because I have.
At first I just assume that the restaurant, which seems to be inspired by the décor of The Sopranos, allows dogs, because there’s one here now trotting between the tables in front. I can even hear the clicking of its nails. Then it disappears in a patch of sunlight before sketchily reassembling itself in the shadows beneath the table of our booth. I recognize the little mutt’s pale coat and the black ring around one bright eye. Sluggo, the ghost dog from Funland.
He yaps at me in a nagging kind of way, then snaps at the cuff of my slacks. It’s trying to tell me something. I get up and excuse myself, then follow it to the back of the restaurant, where it walks through the door of the unisex restroom. I go inside, then lock it behind me and turn out the light. Instantly, Sluggo rematerializes in the pitch darkness, along with Bull McGuinness, the Gimp, and a short, very thin old man I don’t recognize, who’s smoking a long fat cigar and sitting on the toilet lid. Lucky thing for me, I don’t really need to use it.
“Where the hell did he come from?” I ask Bull. Meaning the dog.
“Followed me home last night,” he replies apologetically. Meaning my home. “He’s got a knack for finding you.”
Who doesn’t, these days? It occurs to me that maybe the dog’s a spy for the Soul Eaters. I mean, one showed up the only other time I’ve ever seen the damn thing. But no, Sluggo belonged to Bud―Mr. O.K. ―and visiting Bud with Tamara was Bull’s idea. Now, Bull says something to the Gimp, who grabs the string that still trails from the little dog’s neck and drags away out through the back wall.
“Pandolfo Zampa,” the old ghost says to me. “You saved my boy’s life today. You know, at the jewelry shop across the street―it’s our family business.” His accent sounds half-English cockney, half-Italian. “So when these men come to me and ask me to talk to you, I say okay. I am curious to meet a zonbi who is also a beautiful young woman. Besides, I am grateful to you, so I decide I will tell you something about this Drago. He is some kind of magician in life, uno stregone―sahhara, we say in Maltese. But in death, we are all equal, so I am not afraid of him.” He puffs his spectral cigar a few times.
“Maybe you should be, Mr. Zampa,” I tell him―which is dumb, but I can’t help myself. Not after what I saw last night at Funland. “He says he can summon the Soul Eaters.”
Zampa laughs. “I’ve never heard of these, but black magicians like that man are always trying to bring the demons and devil spirits to get them what they want. But I’m not afraid. There is a secret to driving away devils, you know, young lady. You just sing.” He takes his cigar out of his mouth and hums along to the tinny Maltese music being piped into the restaurant. “They hate music. Especially the Eurovision Contest songs. This Drago is an evil man―one of the three gangster lords who tried to take over the crime in Malta back in the 1970s before we kicked them out. The Sicilian Mafia made a deal with them, you see, to wash money. Not just the dirty money from Sicily from the drugs and gambling and prostitutes, but also a single big shipment of money
in marked dollars from the Vatican. Many, many millions packed in shipping containers―it was called the ‘Maltese Money Ship.’ It is a legend. Now, after all these years it is coming here.”
That makes sense in a weird way. It explains why the Horvaths need a squad of murderous zombies; to pull off a single big hijack.
“When?”
The old ghost shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think even Drago knows the date yet. But soon―any day.”
“Where did you hear this, Mr. Zampa?”
“That new house?” I assume he means the Trapanis’. “I hear him and Trapani talking about it. You know that baghal tore down my old house―the one where Gianni was born, where I died―to build his stinking damn new one. The son-of-a-bitch. So, sure, I shouldn’t do it, but I like to hang around the new house sometimes. Haunt it, I guess you could say. Watch that whore he married when she’s taking a shower or playing with herself―you know the feeling,” he says to Bull, who nods cheerfully. “You just get in the mood sometimes. But the place is pretty crowded now with the kid, so I’m back at the shop. Then this thing happens with those two animals who come in waving their guns today. Into my shop!”
He shakes his head at what the world is coming to. “So then Bull and Alvis come by asking their questions, and I say sure―but first they gotta kick the shade of the dead kid, the one your boyfriend shot, out of the shop for me.”
I start to ask him a few more questions, but sure enough, somebody picks that moment to start banging on the door.
“Anybody in here?” they yell, so I have to turn on the light and pretend to wash my hands. And that’s the last I see of Mr. Zampa.
My cell vibes again on my way back to the table and Val: Ayon’s third call of the day. This time I take it.
“Okay, bitch, I did your interview,” she says. “I pretended I was you.”
“What?”
“Well, somebody had to do it.” She sounds defensive. “Quirk was sweating blood that the media was gonna show up here at the stationhouse, so I gave an exclusive to Channel 4 over the phone. Fed ‘em a crock of bull. Told them that being married to Devon bored me stiff, so I started pretending to be a zombie in bed. Then, you know, got interested in the survivalist zombie lifestyle, bought the makeup, joined all the websites, did the cons and weekend meetups―and he was so dumb, he thought it was the real thing. They liked that angle.”
“Thanks, Mal,” I say, sitting down. “I owe you one.”
“Hey, you’re the one they’re gonna say eats brains for breakfast on TV. When do you plan to tell me what’s really going on?”
“Soon, I promise. But I need to go now. Val’s getting impatient.”
“Yeah, I bet he is. Well, your funeral.”
“Thanks a bunch,” I tell her. I guess now I’m the one who sounds pissy, but those last words of hers stung. “Like I said that when you were seeing Perkins.”
“You would’ve if you loved me. By the way, Quirk’s heading down to Central. He says to tell you he’s selling your story to the brass, whatever that means, and that you and your boyfriend need to get your asses down there and file your statements about killing the kid. Wanna tell me what’s goin on?”
“We’re meeting IAD there at two,” I say evasively.
Which gives us slightly over an hour to kill first. Which is mostly spent in Val’s bed back at his place. The second time round is always better, for me at least, mostly because now I get the full treatment: lots of compliments and tender talk, along with plenty of attention from his mouth and tongue. All over. And―this is a little weird―he pulls my butt up on a pillow both times he comes in me, as if he’s trying to get in as deep as he possibly can. I’m still not feeling much of anything physically, but all the flattery and attention definitely feels great. Not to mention the sweet heat-producing friction…
Afterwards, when he’s smoking a cigarette in bed beside me, he starts talking like a crazy man, asking me if I’ve ever wanted to just run off somewhere, get away from the city, start over with a new name. “I almost just did that last year,” he says.
“Huh?” I can already see we’re going to be late for our appointment at Internal Affairs; luckily, it’s only a mile or so away.
“I pulled a MisPer,”―a Missing Persons case―“a rich guy up in the Heights. I did a hitch once with the Fraud Squad doing a money laundering sting, and I could see how I could have just stolen this guy’s identity. It would have been so easy―I already had court orders to open all his accounts, even his offshore ones. I could have just walked away from all of this and started over in Switzerland or Argentina or someplace. I was really tempted.”
He takes a deep drag. “Another time, I was working a homicide, the mistress of a mafia boss who’d gotten her throat cut. He’d bought her an apartment downtown in the Hightower―penthouse, with one of those kinetic indoor pools, panoramic view of the city, every fucking gadget in the universe. So I moved in. Nobody knew or cared. I spent a couple months living there. Felt like a fucking king.”
I slowly put my clothes back on while I’m waiting to see where this is going.
“Richelle…” He stares at me soulfully with those big brown eyes of his. “This―this thing with you, whatever it is―is getting serious for me. You know, like when we’re together, I start feeling that happily ever after sort of shit. I want you to run away with me somewhere far, far away, make some babies together…because every king needs a queen.”
Yeah, he actually says that.
t takes a special kind of shithead to be a rat for a living. In the old days, they used to finger them at the Police Academy―you know, single out the super straight arrows, the misfits, the ones who would snitch on the other cadets for petty rules violations. Nowadays, they just recruit straight out of law school.
The woman who interviews us is younger than me, but already a lieutenant and obviously on the fast track upstairs, a pushy little bitch with dyed red hair who would, like Ayon, have failed the height requirement twenty years ago and probably flunked unarmed combat two or three times at the Academy before blowing some instructor. Her total time on the street I’d guess at less than a month.
She comes across like a Gestapo interrogator at first, before softening in the face of Val’s Bambi-eyed contrite puppy act; within minutes she’s fiddling with her top buttons and crossing and recrossing her little legs. Me, she doesn’t like so much. Val gets the mandatory week’s suspension while the case is reviewed (read: while the department waits to see if any relatives file a lawsuit or the ‘hood breaks out in ‘spontaneous’ torchings and stonings of local businesses). I get suspended for the rest of the week.
Somewhere in the building, I know, at this very moment Cap Quirk is trying to sell the commish’s people on my story. By now, they’ve almost certainly matched Burchhalter’s prints from the crime scene, and in a week to ten days, the DNA will confirm it. I mean, you can’t devour people’s guts in their own living rooms without leaving some saliva behind, let’s face it. No matter how much the department doesn’t want to. By now, the cover-up is probably already swinging into action―but too early for this badge-collecting bimbo across the desk from me to get the memo.
“Just view it like I do,” Val tells me on the way out. “Paid vacation.”
Yeah, but it goes in my jacket―one more strike against me in my pathetic crusade to make sergeant. Although, realistically, what are the chances that with my disability I’m going to last much longer as a cop in this town, anyway? It’s not like a zombie could ever make chief of police.
On the other hand, I decide, as a bunch of wooden-faced IA lawyer-cops crowd into the elevator behind us, maybe that’s the way to succeed here at The Job. The wave of the future; soulless, brainless yes-men. And women.
In fairness to Val, he’d protested my suspension back in her office. “I was the one who pulled the trigger,” he told the lieutenant almost angrily, the champion of the bullied girl on the playground. “We’ve got two wits.”
“We’ll have to review the security footage,” she snapped, glaring at me. “We’ll let you know when and if you’re reinstated.”
When and if, huh? At this rate, I can see I’ll have to come up with some career alternatives pretty soon, especially if I’m more or less immortal. Give or take a few dozen more bullet holes and maybe a barbecuing or two while summoned to commit murder and/or armed robbery, I mean. Because it’s looking more and more like that’s what the Horvaths are planning: to hijack the Maltese Money Ship. Using a few mulos like me and Burchhalter to pull off the job. It’s not that we’ve got superpowers or anything―it’s just that bullets won’t stop us. And that we can be totally remote-controlled like robots.
Or can we? Maybe the key is on the other side, with our etheric doubles, our astral souls. Does Gana Kali even know that we mulos are capable of existing on both sides at the same time? Does she know we can communicate with the shades here, gain allies among them, use them as spies? Or is she able to see into Shadytown, too?
Maybe, like Drago, she’s even in touch with the Soul Eaters. Makes sense, since she’s a witch, into Black Magic just like he was before Burchhalter tore out his heart and liver. Now that’s not a comforting thought.
But I don’t need any more bright ideas like that to scare me shitless. I’m feeling really ragged as it is. I’d spent most of what remained of last night trying calm down a hysterical rabbi. Tamara hadn’t liked what she’d seen of the Olam Ba-Ha, particularly the Eater. But in spite of being pretty into it at first, she was pretty negative about the rest of the experience, too.
