“You see any other way, Allen? All we have to go off are cartridges and the killer’s ability to fight. We have nothing else.” I took another drag, calming down. “Hold down the fort, try to find something, anything, and I’ll narrow down our search. Can you do that for me?”
“Elias, I think —”
“Can you?”
“I can,” it said, straightening up. “Just don’t get killed.”
I nodded, and we stood there for a moment. For once, I felt we had a mutual understanding, a connection that made us empathize with one another. Allen was seeing the things I had to do to keep it and myself safe, and I was seeing that it was doing its damnedest to help me in the right way. We were each going to go off to do what we were supposed to do, what we were good at, though neither of us wanted to do it. Not with so much on the line.
“Nothing in this city can kill me, Al.” I smiled. “I proved that years ago.”
Allen turned to begin searching the basement for evidence. “I hope so.”
Emerging from the basement into the smoky air outside, I remembered to do what I’d said I would earlier and look over the crowd to see if that same guy I’d noticed previously was here. There were twenty or so people around, most of them firefighters, and three or four officers from the 7th skulking about. Everything looked well and fine, and a quick search of the cruisers yielded nothing substantial or implicating. As well, the firefighters were all unfamiliar, many perturbed when I asked to see their faces more than once.
I was beginning to lose hope when I spotted the man in question near the mouth of an alley beside the burned building. I called out to him, attracting attention, but he disappeared down the alley. I ran after him, my Diamondback instinctively drawn.
The alley went straight for about fifty feet before splitting off into a T-junction. The disappearing figure turned left, and I sprinted to catch up. That part of the alleyway terminated in a line of trash bins and a chain-link fence. The man was standing there, his back to me. I took that as a signal to cautiously approach, my Diamondback levelled and my free hand reaching to grab his shoulder and turn him around.
I froze. I hadn’t recognized his face from a distance, but now, standing inches away from me, his identity was very clear. One Mr. Edgar Masters, former Black Hat, the FBI agent I’d “apprehended” on my previous case with Allen, and current corpse. I was sure I’d done enough damage to kill him. I pulled back and pushed my weapon into his sternum.
“Surprised?” he asked with condescension.
“You’re dead.”
“Correct.”
“So, what, am I supposed to believe you’ve been killing people?” I chuckled, and so did he.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Not directly, and not alone. Is your head breaking yet?”
I pulled back the hammer on my revolver. “Not just yet.”
“Soon enough it will, though. After all, you climbed out of the cave, now you have to tell everyone else they’re watching candlelight.”
“Shut up.”
“Now you have to tell them that their reality is nothing but walking shadows. But they will grasp that and keep themselves bound to ignorance. And even you, a free man, are still bound to some sort of ignorance to dull the pain of the truth. Your idea of justice — that’s your personal painkiller, right? The same thing you clung to the last time we spoke.”
“I said shut up!”
“You’re chasing ghosts again, Roche. Be careful that you don’t become one,” Masters said.
“Detective?”
Viessman’s translator came up behind me, looking concerned. He must have followed me when I ran to the alley.
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Who were you talking to?”
I turned to see that the apparition was gone, and I was pressing my revolver against the chain-link fence. I slid the weapon back into my holster and disengaged the hammer.
“Myself.”
CHAPTER 20
ONLY MEN WITH DEATH SENTENCES came looking for her here.
I walked up to the centre of Bow Bridge, looking over the side to see the Plate reflecting off the water. The bridge’s colour scheme matched the dead trees and snow-covered grass, making it seem like part of the earth itself. As I’d expected, Central Park was empty; no one was a fan of this place, and Bow Bridge was as far north as anyone would come in the park. I looked south and west. The wind was fleeting, the silence of the world comforting.
Then the wind died down, and the world grew too quiet. Dead. She was here.
I didn’t move. If I turned around or left my spot on the bridge, I was dead. Some people learned that the hard way. On clear days, you could see some of her previous employees at the bottom of the lake.
“Hello, darling,” I said.
“Elias,” she responded. “I heard through the grapevine that you wanted to speak to me.”
“That’s right. I know you wanted me to stop investigating this assassin or whatever he is, but that ain’t in my nature. If you wanted a lackey to nod and obey every word you said, you wouldn’t have hired me. So I need to know, did you hire him? Who’s causing all this shit? Or is it the Rabbit? I can’t believe it just came out of retirement for no reason, especially not during a spate of killings like this. You know I don’t like being out of the loop. I need to cross you off my list.”
She sighed. Without seeing her body language, I wasn’t sure how she felt.
“I need you to find the Vierling Killer.”
How did she know we’d been calling him the Vierling Killer? “You threatened my life for investigating, and now all of a sudden you want me on this? Is this some sort of joke?”
“The killer did help us substantially in dealing with the Maranzano Mob. But their use has come to an end since this job in Hell’s Kitchen. We need them dead.”
“Now you have a sense of fair play? What does some whorehouse of Maranzano’s mean to you? Why not let him clean up your shit while you sit back and reap the rewards?”
“That whorehouse wasn’t Maranzano’s, it was ours.”
I almost spun around. “What?”
“Rossi was on our payroll. You think all of Maranzano’s boys work for him? Rossi sold us his soul over a year ago, and we’d been using his place as a springboard to sell to the mainland. That storehouse in the basement was full of our parts, some of them high-end. The moment the killer torched the place, they didn’t just ruin the sex trade there, they ruined one of our best underground shipping hubs. And now Maranzano knows that it was mine, because he never would have dared put a smuggling safe house in Hell’s. He’s an old-school naval shipment kind of mobster.” I heard the spark of her lighter as she lit a cigar and puffed on it a few times before speaking again. The ashes fell into the water and drifted south to my side of the bridge.
“And when were you planning on telling me any of this?”
“You don’t need to know the intricacies of the Iron Hands’ operations.”
“Bullshit! I am the Iron Hand! I’m your goddamn mascot! What if I had gone in there on a hunch and shot up the place? What if it had been me who put Rossi’s head on a pike? Letting me in on more of these secrets might prevent stuff like this from happening!”
“It’s a need-to-know basis.” I heard her exhale slowly and tap the cigar against the concrete railing.
“If you want me working for you, I need to know!” I yelled, facing the water below. “What if this wasn’t intentional? What if he hit your place by accident?”
“There are no accidents in this world. If they kill my people, they get put in the ground.”
“Why not recruit him like you did me? You could use him to your advantage, turn him from some random guerilla into something more dangerous than me.”
“Elias, look at me.”
Was this a trick? I froze, not willing to turn, not wanting to make any hasty decisions.
“Now,” she said.<
br />
“I don’t want to get shot.”
“You won’t.”
I turned to look at her. She leaned against the railing, cigar in her fingers, a black veil over her face. Even in the sunlight, the fabric was completely opaque. I still had no idea what she looked like.
Come on, Allen taught you enough, look for height, foot size, weight, build. She was tallish. Shorter than me, about five-eleven, tall for a woman. Foot size: no clue. She was thin, but not gaunt. Her slacks were tight, but her jacket was baggy. I estimated a hundred and twenty pounds, if that.
Goddamn, I’m not good at this.
“This situation is going to cause a war if we can’t play this off,” she said. “This Vierling Killer has done enough damage. I want them dead. I need my merciless, relentless, unquestioning Iron Hand once more. There will be no redemption, no more hiring packages — just you and the Rabbit.”
I pulled out my own lighter, twiddling it with my thumbs, flicking the flame on and off, resisting the urge to smoke.
“Something the matter?” she asked.
“I’m tired.”
“Of what?”
“This. All of this. I’m tired of this city-wide tension, these lies I’m not in the loop about, the Rabbit and everyone else in the city either running scared from me or putting a gun in my face. I gave you this city on a silver platter. Now there’s nothing left to hunt in it but ghosts and thunder.”
“If you came here for another reason, spill it.”
“I came here for the investigation, but this doubt has been nagging at me for some time. I want out.”
She didn’t laugh, didn’t sigh, just stood there. “Elias …”
“I know you need me or want me or whatever the hell I am to you, but things are different now.”
“They’re always different, always changing. Loyalties shift, money changes hands, people die, others are recruited. This game changes all the time, and only now do you have gripes with it? You can’t keep doing this. This conversation is almost a monthly routine.”
“I’m serious.”
“No, you’re not. I’ve let you go multiple times, and every time, within the week, you come running back. You left the first time because you were tired of the senseless killing, but came right back when you ran out of money. In ’32 you wanted to be a ‘real’ cop, yet after three days of trying to be one, you came back when you remembered that the law and justice are two very different things. This cycle repeats itself over and over. For a man with such impulses, you’ve had a severe lack of conviction for … what, two or more years now?”
Did I ask that often? I couldn’t even remember all those times. What is wrong with me?
“Things are different,” I stated.
“As you’ve said. Because of Allen?”
“I just don’t want it to get hurt. Or Robins, or Sinclair. The Masters case opened my eyes to a lot that I’ve been missing. I’ve found it very, very hard to work for you these past few weeks. I mean, come on, I took a barbed knuckle in the side for you.”
She leaned back and groaned. “You wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t been so sloppy.”
“You sound like Nightingale.” I lit a dart. I was craving the embrace of tobacco too much. “If I was really your Iron Hand, I wouldn’t have asked to leave so many times. You know it, I know it, and I’m tired of pretending that I’m still the man I used to be.”
“Then stop pretending. I tried reminding you.”
“By making me use the goddamn hammer again?” I threw the cigarette over the side of the bridge. No need for tobacco when adrenalin would do the job. “I gave that to you so you could bury it, throw it over the side of the Plate, anything! I don’t need a reminder of what I used to be, what I used to do! I’m not like that anymore, and your trying to coerce me into it won’t do either of us any favours.”
“You do need to remember who you used to be!” She was agitated and stepping toward me. Not too many people could make me flinch, but she was one of them.
“I was a goddamn monster.”
“You were and still are the biggest asset both I and the police have ever had.” She moved closer still, her voice no longer telling me facts, but spitting them at me instead. “I made you what you are today, Elias, do not forget that! Are you so ungrateful that you’d throw away everything I’ve done to transform a worthless ex-cop into a verified force of nature? You were once the most dangerous thing on two legs, more powerful than any agent on the Plate. Now you’re a washed-up has-been who’s going to give himself up to the FBI. What is wrong with you?”
There’s gotta be a bug in my apartment. “I’m nothing like I used to be.”
“Evidently so.” She threw the cigar into the water. Her tone wasn’t so much angry now as disappointed. “I didn’t kill Hartley or McIntyre or whoever else the Vierling Killer has put in the dirt. You want out? Fine, but you’ll be back by New Year’s. Whether you’re some radio star or vigilante or nameless cop or whatever else you want to be, just know what kind of threat this killer is to the stability and delicate balance you have set for this city. I want them found, and I want them dead. And if you want out, this is your last assignment. I can’t force a horse to drink from the stream, but I can tire it out so that it begs for water. Are we clear?”
“Absolutely,” I responded.
“I don’t know what Masters said that changed you so much, but I suggest you try to figure things out, then come back to us.” Her voice was soft. She wasn’t demanding anymore, but showing me a sliver of sympathy. It was weird. “If it was about Masters. If it’s about Allen, that’s another story.”
“It ain’t Allen. The robot is just a vehicle for my doubts, not the source.”
“We need you. The city needs you. Robins, Shen, all those cops, all those people … The Iron Hands might be a cartel, but we want stability as much as the police do. But if you cut those ties, we’ll be back to where we were in the Morello and Luciano days. I want you to take some time off and really think about where you fit into all this.”
“All right.” I turned around to look at the water and bit down on another dart. “But I don’t want a target on my head the moment I leave the big house.”
“Trust me, you won’t be going there.”
A few moments later, the wind blew once more, carrying voices in the distance; I glanced toward their source. When I turned back to the Eye, there was nothing there but her shoeprints in the snow. She hadn’t said goodbye. I looked around for a moment, then kneeled beside the prints and made some rudimentary measurements.
“Hm … big feet for a human,” I said to myself.
I stood and pulled my lighter out once more, and the engraved eye stared back at me as I lit my dart. I shoved the device back into my pocket.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” Allen said glumly, reclining in the passenger seat of the Talbot. “Like you said, everything incriminating burned up in the fire. How about your investigation?”
“The Eye didn’t order the hit,” I said, concentrating on the road. “Funny thing, though: those Automatic parts were hers. Maranzano’s man was working for her, and she smuggled her parts out of his safe house.”
“What do you think will happen?”
I sighed. “The Five Families started skirmishes over less. Sal is one of those old bastards, so he’s the same way. A war in the Lower City is the last thing we need. She wants me to take the helm in preventing it.”
“And will you?”
I turned onto 6th Avenue, slamming on the horn as some jackass cut in front of me. “No.” Allen looked at me, stunned. “I think I’m retiring from this business. From working for her, I mean.”
“Is that wise?”
“I guess we’ll see. The only reason I kept working for her was to keep the people I care about safe. She thinks I’ll be back … I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”
Allen turned away from me, looking out the window. I had a feeling it was smiling. Maybe it did h
ave a positive influence on me.
We drove into the executive parking lot of GE. Allen had already talked to Schafer and examined her Vierling, but I wanted to take a turn putting the squeeze on to get something, anything, useful out of her. Maybe we’d missed something. Maybe another round of questions would crack this nut. The security guards outside immediately recognized my vehicle and urged me to leave. Allen talked them down — or, at least, distracted them while I made my way across the snow-covered lawn, through the workers’ entrance, and into the main foyer. The floor was clean, but I swore I could still see a few stains from my bloody nose the last time I’d been here, about a month ago. I swaggered up to the receptionist, who was on the phone.
“One second, I need to —” She looked up, and her face went blank. “Oh no, not you again.”
“Relax. Elise Schafer is expecting me.”
“She had better be.” The woman picked up a phone and dialed. “Miss Schafer, a certain gentleman is here to see you … Understood.” She dropped the phone. “She told me to ask you not to cause a ruckus, or I’ll have them drag you out of here.”
I turned to where she was gesturing and saw two new security guards, one with his hand on his baton, the other talking into his wireless radio.
“Great.”
Schafer was more jaded than usual, wearing a casual business suit, gloves, and an expression of irritation. She didn’t seem in the mood to shake my hand. Allen was still outside, either arguing with security or driving around, biding its time.
“Roche,” Schafer said, her voice a monotone.
“Schafer.” I smirked. She didn’t. “I have a sensitive question to ask you. I’d prefer it if we could step somewhere private to keep things from getting out of hand.”
“Out of hand?” She looked enraged by this. “Do not try to manhandle me, Roche. You’re not going to pull a fast one by dragging me to some dark corner and making threats about my life and reputation. I’ve done this little song and dance before.”
Midnight Page 21
