“Sounds like my kind of place.” Bishop managed to get to his feet, avoiding the hand she held out to him. “My car’s parked down on the street. Maybe we could take the elevator?”
“Wuss.” Wings unfolded from beneath the Raptor’s coat. They were feathered, dark, glossy brown and matched the color of her hair. She flexed her shoulders and spread them wide like an athlete doing a stretch before attempting something strenuous, then settled them against her back.
Bishop’s face paled.
“H . . . How . . .,” he stammered.
“Trick coat.” Ariel showed him that the side seams of her long coat were open from the shoulder down to the hem, allowing the wings free movement.
“But . . .” he began. His feet lifted off the roof.
“No screaming,” the Raptor said.
- 4 -
Back on the sidewalk, Bishop fought the impulse to throw himself to his knees and kiss the ground. The Raptor had folded her wings away and was impatiently waiting for him to lead the way to his car.
Once in the vehicle, her directions were terse. Their destination turned out to be a semi-subterranean coffee house, bar and internet café with a wonky, half lit neon sign whose remaining three letters spelled the word Caf in faded red script. Inside, the walls were a patchwork of exposed brick, plaster and graffiti covered wallboard. The floor was dirty, the ceiling a low collection of exposed pipes, cracked beams and drifts of dust so old they’d solidified into part of the building.
A bar, with a beer pump and an ancient espresso machine ran down one side of the room. A few mismatching computer stations had been set up along the walls and a collection of thrift store tables, couches and chairs huddled in between. A gnarled and scary looking barista was busy picking his nose and wiping it under the bar.
Bishop had expected dimness, and that had been achieved by several old florescent fixtures whose ancient tubes gave off a sickly blue-white glare.
The Raptor led him through the clutter of tables and their occasional occupants toward an old chrome and Formica dinette set at the back of the room. A seated figure hunched over a battered laptop decorated with an impressive collection of decals and stickers. Despite the buzz of the fluorescents and the tapping of keys, Bishop could hear her toenails clicking on the worn linoleum floor.
Uninvited, the Raptor pulled out a chair, flipped it around and straddled it, resting her chin on her hands on the top of the backrest. The boy at the table barely looked up. His pale, long-fingered hands were flying over the keyboard. The strange blue light of the fluorescents, plus the glare from his computer screen, washed out any color he might have had in his face. His skin looked dead white under lank, mouse colored hair that stuck up in random tufts all over his head.
Holding up one finger to indicate that he was almost done, the boy finished his last key stroke.
“El!” He grinned. “Something told me I’d see you tonight. Hungry?”
The Raptor smiled. “The gentleman’s buying, Mouser. Knock yourself out.”
“Garcon,” the boy called to the ancient barrista. “One of your finest extra large bacon, pineapple and anchovy pizzas. Double cheese.”
The boy gave Bishop the once-over. “Who’s the wallet?” He said.
“His name’s Bishop,” El said as Bishop pulled an empty chair over to the table. “He needs you to find some information for us.”
“Are you on the internet?” Bishop asked. There were no wires connected to Mouser’s laptop.
“Satellite,” Mouser explained. “Super-fast; awesome firewall; untraceable IP address. Combine that with caffeine, pizza and beer and what more could a guy ask for?”
“A reasonable degree of sanitation?” Bishop’s shoes made a sucking sound as he tried to slide them under the table.
“Dude. A few germs just bolster the immune system. You want to survive the coming plague, don’t you?”
“Coming plague?” Bishop was sorry he’d asked. “I guess I didn’t get the memo.”
Mouser hunched forward. “It’s the drug companies, y’ know. Think about how much money they’ll make if they already have the cure to their own bio-engineered disease?”
“Mouser,” El interjected. “Can you put the multi-national corporate conspiracy theories on hold for a few minutes and help us out? There’s money in it for you.” She raised an eyebrow at Bishop.
“Oh, yeah,” Bishop said. “Money. My client will pay for information.”
“Cool. What’s the deal?”
The pizza arrived. It was the size of a small satellite dish and smelled like the beach at low tide.
“Whoa, my complements to the chef.” Mouser waved a hand at Bishop. “He’s paying, so bring us some beers, my man.”
Bishop started to ask Mouser if he was old enough to drink, but decided to shut up. For all he knew the kid was a 300-year-old extraterrestrial with an anchovy addiction. He was here for information, and if it took beer and pizza to get it, he was okay with that.
The pizza was surprisingly good.
* * *
Once the food was dealt with, Mouser was more than willing to hear what Bishop wanted. El had pulled over an empty chair and put her feet up, crossing her legs at the ankles. The better, Bishop thought, to show off her high insteps, long toes, and black, viciously pointed toe nails. Watching her flex her feet was an exercise in queasy anticipation. He still didn’t know exactly what she had in mind where he was concerned.
“Dude,” Mouser said after listening to Bishop’s questions about Tesslovich. “This town is lousy with demons. They got their fingers in everything, especially the tech industry. Whatever you do on-line, they know about it. You pay your bills electronically, they know who you owe, and how much. You order used panties on eBay, it goes in their data-base. You gamble, cheat the IRS, are into porn, or guns, little dudes or underage babes, they got your number.”
“So, aren’t you afraid anything you search for on-line can be traced back to you?” Bishop asked.
“Me? Naw. Not if I do it here. This place is shielded. It’s your basic demon-free zone. We’re the good guys.”
Bishop took a skeptical look around. Most of their fellow customers were either deep into their computers, or practically comatose like the bartender.
“Ah, don’t let appearances fool you, Bish, these guys are tougher than they look. Who do you want me to find?”
“It’s something bigger than just one guy,” Bishop said. “A lot bigger. Maybe a whole bunch of people or an organization that kidnaps and sells kids for adoption. What could you do with that?”
“A criminal conspiracy?” Mouser’s eyes took on a luminous shine. “Dude, you have just wandered right up my alley. Start at the beginning, hang left at the Milky Way and don’t stop talking ‘til you’ve told me everything.” The young hacker laced his fingers and pressed his palms outward until the joints cracked. “You mind if I take notes?”
* * *
Mouser switched from beer to caffeine somewhere around three in the morning. Four double espressos and he was flying. His fingers were little more than a blur on the keys and he’d begun talking to himself.
When the show tunes started, Ariel called it a night. She and Bishop stumbled out into the quiet, pre-dawn mistiness of a city holding its last peaceful breath before the chaos of a new day began.
“Can I drop you somewhere?” Bishop asked. “You probably have a nest full of little Raptors waiting for Mom to bring home the worms for breakfast.”
“Amusing,” Ariel said. “Don’t you know we eat our young? Anyway, I live alone. Where, is none of your business.”
“Isn’t flying around during commute time going to be a bit obvious?”
“I’ll take the subway. It’s still early, I’ll miss the rush.”
Bishop looked at her feet. “I bet you never have any trouble getting a seat,” he said.
“Piss off,” Ariel reached into her pocket and pulled out a tightly rolled pair of ankle high moccasins with thin
rubber soles. When she raised her leg to slip one on, Bishop was amazed to see a normal foot slide into the leather boot.
“Mouser should have what you want by tonight. He’ll crash until midnight, then be back at the Caf’ by one. See you then.” She turned toward the subway entrance at the end of the block. With a swirl of coat-tails, she was down the sidewalk to the stairs and out of sight.
Bishop stood alone on the street, wondering if he might be waking up from a strange ambulatory dream. Worse, was the thought that it had all been true. True, and not even half as weird as it would probably get. He climbed into his car and drove home to get some real sleep.
- 5 -
Bishop startled awake from a nightmare that seemed to have something to do with going down with the ship. His t-shirt was wet and the bed totally damp. He felt around under the covers--the ice pack he’d been holding to his face as he’d fallen asleep had melted all over the mattress.
Crap! He swung his feet onto the floor and stripping the t-shirt off over his head.
What time was it? He felt clammy and hot at the same time, and not very rested. He hoped none of his cuts and scrapes from the night before were infected. He headed for the bathroom mirror. Who knew what strange crud a demon might carry? He was almost afraid to look.
The battered face that stared back at him wasn’t as bad as he expected. Most of the swelling had gone down, and the black eye and puffy lip lent him a kind of piratical air. Maybe a hot shower would relax his muscles enough to allow him to stand completely upright so he could look a little less beaten-to-a-pulp and more hero-at-large.
Bishop fumbled open his medicine cabinet, poured four aspirin into his palm and washed them down with a handful of tap water. The digital clock on the bathroom wall said two p.m. Actually, what it really said was; 2:00:03-2:00:04-2:00:05-2:00:06.
The blinking was making him nauseous. He turned the shower on and stood under the hot water until it started to get cold.
Two strong cups of coffee later, he opened the morning newspaper. No mention of Tesslovich, his death, a headless body or anything like it. T.V. news was the same. Either no one had reported it yet or the police had somehow managed to keep it quiet while they looked into it.
By the same token, no progress had been made in the investigation into the disappearance of little Susan Elizabeth Morgan, age five. She was simply gone. A phone call to her father confirmed there was still no ransom demand. Mom was still sedated, and Dad sounded like he hadn’t slept since they’d discovered the girl was missing.
Bishop told him he was following some leads and would be by to see them when he had more information. He knew that wasn’t much comfort, but it was all he had to give.
Susan’s nanny seemed to have evaporated into thin air. Bishop was still trying to build some background on her. She’d been recruited from an international nanny placement agency and had moved immediately into the Morgan’s home. Susan seemed to like her and the Morgans had no idea who the nanny’s friends might be, or even if she had any.
Bishop had suspected the nanny the minute she disappeared, but since she was a foreign national he was having a hard time confirming her identity, let alone her history. Aliah Cherzen had been in the US on a work visa, and had glowing letters of recommendations from families in Germany, France and the Czech Republic. The agency said the references had checked out, but all Bishop had gotten was disconnected phone numbers and bounced-back emails. He’d given that information and the names of two other missing children cases he’d found in back issues of the local paper to Mouser, hoping for similarities, connections, people and places in common—anything.
Bishop was tempted to try searching for information on his own desktop, but Mouser had started him thinking about just how much privacy actually existed on-line. He looked at his watch again. 3:10. The public library was open until six. He still had time to poke around on their computers in relative anonymity.
An hour and a half later, Bishop had a pretty good over-view of Tesslovich’s long and profitable career. Counsel had made himself rich, cutting deals, lying to judges, coming up with surprise defense witnesses, intimidating jurors, bribing police or anyone else who might need some incentive to see things his way. He’d gotten a lot of important people out of serious scrapes and had ended up on some of the most exclusive invitation lists in the city. He had, however, never been connected to sale of pornography or pedophilia, except in his professional capacity as a defense attorney. He owned a Jag and a Hummer, but almost always used a limo. Both he and his driver had a license to carry a concealed weapon. He’d been accused of being less-than-human by the families of his client’s victims, but never of being a demon.
Bishop hoped Mouser was having better luck.
It was time to call in a marker. Bishop’s brief career in the police department had netted him some good experience on the street, a lot of animosity from both his peers and the higher ups for not being a go-along kind of cop, and eventually the loss of his job and a damn good partner, courtesy of internal affairs.
His ex partner Ray Mann, better known as ‘Rain’, possessed an uncanny ability with numbers and a talent for working the street. Bishop and he had had a long, wild ride in Vice. Rain Mann was still a cop, and at five o’clock his tour would just be getting started.
- 6 -
The 17th Precinct was a time warp. Everything was battered -- desks, walls, floors, perps and cops. There were still bullet holes in the ceiling of the lobby from one of the more exciting free-for-alls that sometimes happened when multiple arrestees with competing interests ended up in the same place at the same time. The glass in the old chicken-wire windows was cracked and dirty. Rumor had it they hadn’t been washed since 1932. Nobody cared because there was no view.
Vice was on the second floor along with Homicide. In a modern precinct, there’d be bullet proof glass and buzzers between visitors and their destination. If you worked at the 17th you took your chances on getting a nasty surprise just like everybody else in the neighborhood.
The desk sergeant knew Bishop and only gave him an eyebrow tilt as he started up the stairs. The Sarge was aware of his pariah-like status, but he didn’t like the Captain any more than anybody else and was probably hoping for a few fireworks from above to relieve the boredom of his day.
Rain was at his old desk in a corner of the bullpen at the top of the stairs, shuffling papers. When he spotted Bishop, his eyes flicked sideways to one of the partitioned offices along the side wall. The offices had windows that looked out into the room so the Captain and his weasel assistant could watch the activities in the pen. When the furniture started flying though, the blinds came down and the doors stayed shut. Two Homicide detectives, whose desks faced each other, had been in the middle of a friendly argument about something that hadn’t sounded work related. Bishop’s appearance stopped the conversation cold. He felt their eyes track him all the way to the front of Rain Mann’s desk.
As Bishop approached, Rain shoved his chair back. Instead of getting up, he did a slow lean back, put his feet up on one corner of the desk and laced his fingers over his flat stomach.
“Hey, Rain,” Bishop said.
Rain nodded. “Frank. Surprised you had the balls to come back up here.”
“All nerve and no brains, remember? I was hoping you could help me out on something. Old time’s sake, and all that shit.”
Rain didn’t say anything, just gave Bishop the perp-crusher stare that all cops eventually developed. But Bishop wasn’t watching his old partner’s eyes, he was watching his hands.
Rain was clicking the first and second fingers of one hand together, almost like scissors, but with one finger on top of the other. Then there was a flash of two fingers and a quick ‘o’ of thumb and first finger.
“Not interested,” Rain said.
Bishop gave a quick jerk of his head toward the stairs like the reply had stung him.
“Sorry you feel that way,” he shrugged.
He turned to
leave when one of the office doors flew open. Rain had already done the dirty work; this was the coup de grace.
“Get the hell out of here, Bishop!” the Captain yelled from the doorway, cheeks flushed with rage. “You burned your bridges. I don’t want to see your face anywhere near this precinct again, or I’ll bust your ass for vagrancy.”
Bishop took a step in the Captain’s direction. The color drained from the man’s face. His eyes darted around the room looking for help. Nobody was moving except Bishop, who took another step forward. Fully alarmed now, the Captain jumped back into his office, and slammed the door shut with such force the blinds danced against its window.
“Dick.” Bishop muttered, turning back to the stairs. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Rain was trying very hard not to smile.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Rain and Bishop were eating Mu Shu Pork and Imperial Chicken in an old, back-alley Chinese restaurant called The Hidden City. He and Rain had favored it when they were working together. It wasn’t a cop place, and the booths had high backs and curtains across the front for privacy. Bishop ordered a beer, reasoning it would help keep his muscles loose; an after-dinner coffee he could get at the underground café. If you measured the quality of your caffeine in sheer strength, an espresso from Hacker Haven was a four star buzz.
“That was frickin’ hilarious,” Rain was saying, his dark eyes dancing with delight. “I bet you made him crap his pants.”
“Didn’t mean to mess with your pension. I was just in the neighborhood.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t bother to apologize, I wouldn’t have missed that for the world. Besides, I probably got some points for kicking your ass back down the stairs.”
Rain took a bite of pancake stuffed with Mu Shu Pork and plum sauce. “You’re buying, by the way. Put it on your client’s expense report.”
Raptor: Urban Fantasy Noir Page 2
