by Kim Fielding
“You’re out of booze. We’re going to find you some, and then you’re going to take it home and drink it.”
“But—”
“You look as if you’ll collapse any minute. I can’t babysit you now.”
Abe bit back anger; Thomas was right. Abe wasn’t his responsibility, and the notion of collapsing into bed with a bottle of alcohol appealed greatly. Besides, he had two séances scheduled for the next day. “Fine.”
They continued toward the Tenderloin, searching for one of the men who sold gin from their coat pockets.
15
After Abe had boarded a streetcar with two bottles of gin in his pockets, Thomas had gone to Bianchi’s for meatloaf and potatoes. He’d eaten there alone many times since arriving in the city, yet this time he couldn’t get comfortable in his seat. The empty side of the table seemed to mock him.
Over coffee and pie, Thomas read the evening paper, making notes in his book: magicians who advertised shows, spiritualists offering séances. There was Abe France, of course, with séances by appointment only, but there were others too. Any one of them could have been interested in the Prince of Gandhara. Of course it might be someone else entirely, but this was a good place to start.
The problem was in contacting them. He went to his office and tried to ring a few of them, but nobody answered. He didn’t much fancy skulking around their shows, and he was certain that knocking on doors would get him nowhere this late at night.
The sensible thing, then, was to go home and get some sleep.
Instead he walked to Twelfth Avenue, where a light shone in the upstairs window. He imagined Abe sitting in bed with his rotgut close at hand, drinking the spirits away. Not getting drunk, because as far as Thomas could tell, Abe never did. Thomas was poised to ring the doorbell, but he let his hand fall to his side. Instead he spent an hour or so sitting on the stoop, a cigarette in his fingers and the sounds of mortar shells faint in his ears.
Eventually he stood and stretched and brushed his overcoat clean. He started toward home but somehow found himself detouring to Calvary Cemetery. It had taken little effort to scale the fence, and now he wandered the gentle hills crowded with grave markers.
Rest in Peace. Wasn’t that a joke!
A nearby streetlight cast the gravestone in an eerie glow, and Thomas wondered how many spirits Abe would find in this place. Maybe none, since none of these people had actually died in the cemetery. They’d breathed their last somewhere else, their souls going wherever souls went before their carcasses were put in boxes, dragged here, and buried six feet under. If Abe was right about how spirits operated—and Thomas had no reason to believe otherwise—they’d have little affinity for their rotting flesh and bones. If they chose to reach toward this side of the veil, they’d do it somewhere more meaningful than this. It was a bloody spooky place nonetheless, and Thomas didn’t know what had drawn him here.
He’d read in the paper that they’d stopped burying people within the city limits nearly thirty years earlier, when he and Birdie had been children in England. Now the people of San Francisco were clamoring to have the graves dug up and moved elsewhere so they could build more houses.
“Progress,” Thomas said to a weeping stone angel.
When he returned to Abe’s house sometime later, the lights were out.
By late afternoon the next day, Thomas was frustrated and ready to punch someone. Didn’t much matter whom. He’d paid visits to every magician he could track down. Some were pleasant, some decidedly not. Some, like Abe, were clearly skilled showmen, while others were hucksters who must have relied on the drunkenness and stupidity of their audiences to get by. As far as Thomas could tell, none of them knew anything about the amulet or the murders.
Of course any of them could be lying. It occurred to him that Abe could allow Birdie to possess him and then use his powers to force true answers from these people. But there would be a cost to that. The experience with Townsend, while it hadn’t lasted long, had put Abe out for a good part of the day. Besides, there was the danger that Birdie would get stuck inside of Abe, and Thomas didn’t want that.
Did he?
He ran out of tobacco and had to walk two blocks to buy more. When he returned to the hallway outside his office, the phone was ringing. He fumbled the lock open—bloody postwar tremors—and hurried to pick up the receiver. “Donne.”
On the other end, Abe muttered something in another language. Then more clearly, in English, “Helen’s dead.”
“How?”
“In her apartment. I— Come meet me here. Please.”
Thomas hung up the phone and raced for the door.
He took a taxi to the Tenderloin, paying the driver extra to go as fast as possible, and leapt out of the car almost before it had stopped. Helen’s apartment was on the third floor; Thomas didn’t wait for the lift but took the stairs two at a time. Abe was in the hallway, leaning against the wall beside her closed door. He held his hat in one hand.
“She didn’t show up for the afternoon séance,” he said as Thomas was still walking toward him. “It was Rosie’s turn this morning, and that went fine. But then Helen didn’t come this afternoon. I did the séance without her.” His voice was cool and even, as if he were reporting on the weather, but his expression was drawn.
Thomas waited to enter the room. “Do the police know?”
“Nobody does, except the two of us. I got worried—she’s usually reliable. She doesn’t have a phone, so I couldn’t call her. I came over to check.”
“Was her door locked?”
“Yes.” Abe didn’t need to explain; they both knew that locks posed little obstacle to him.
“What did you do after you found her?”
“I ran down to the corner and called you.”
“Why not the police?”
Abe simply shook his head. He remained in the hallway when Thomas went inside.
It was peaceful, as murder scenes went. A young blonde lay on her back on the floor, eyes fixed sightlessly on the ceiling. She was dressed as if for an evening out, in a sparkly dress and shiny beads, but one shoe had fallen off. No blood was visible, and her white neck was unmarred.
Although her flat was a bit messy, Thomas didn’t think it had been the killer. He guessed that Helen just hadn’t been a particularly neat person. Clothing lay in small rumpled piles, and dirty dishes filled the sink of the kitchenette. A few issues of Photoplay occupied a chair. The wall bed had been pushed up and out of the way, but sloppily, with a blanket corner hanging out.
Thomas scanned the room for an idea of what had killed her. It took him a few moments to notice the decorative pillow on the floor beneath a chair. It was small, but big enough to cover her nose and mouth.
Thomas left the apartment and found Abe still leaning against the corridor wall.
“Where are you going?” Abe asked.
“To make a telephone call. Stay here.”
“Poor girl,” Munroe said, shaking his head as he crouched over the corpse. “How old was she? Twenty?”
Abe answered quietly from the corner. “Twenty-three, I think.”
“She have family?”
“They’re in Missouri. I don’t know exactly where.”
Looking displeased, Munroe straightened up. “I’ll have the boys look into it.” He took a slow drag from his cigarette and exhaled even more slowly. “Three, Donne. That’s quite a collection.”
“If you’re going to arrest me, go ahead and do it.”
“I feel like the good citizens of San Francisco would be safer if I did.” But Munroe made no effort to approach him. “Why don’t you tell me instead what you know about the guy who’s doing this. Or the dame, I suppose.”
“It’s almost certainly a man. This murder and Zook’s took a fair degree of physical strength.”
“Okay, yeah, I see that. When ladies kill, it’s usually with a gun. Or sneaky-like, with poison. What else?”
“I think he knew all three of the
m.”
Munroe nodded. “Right. And you didn’t.”
“I’d seen Gage and Zook once, the night they were killed, but didn’t speak with them. This afternoon is the first time I’ve seen this woman.”
“Hmm.” Another long drag, then Munroe swiveled his head to look at Abe. “But you knew all three of them.”
If the implied accusation rattled Abe, he didn’t show it. “I employed Helen and Roy as assistants. I’d met Zook a few times.”
“So maybe I oughtta run you in.” He seemed to be seriously considering it.
It was unlikely the police would dig up enough evidence against Abe to make charges stick, but he’d spend weeks or months cooling his heels in jail while they tried. Jails were a nasty experience for anyone, but what would happen if he were stuck in a cell with a couple of unhappy spirits? Dybbuks, maybe. There weren’t many righteous men in jail.
Townsend had probably told Munroe some basic details already, so Thomas didn’t worry about indiscretion. “Gage stole something from Townsend. Somebody else wanted that something too, and killed Gage to get it. Possibly killed Zook because he was a witness, but I don’t know about that part.”
Munroe gestured toward the corpse. “And the girl?”
“I don’t know what she had to do with it.”
“She and Roy were friends,” Abe said quietly.
Munroe went to the window, opened it, and flicked out his cigarette butt. Thomas didn’t mention littering or creating a fire hazard, but such prudence took quite some effort.
“What did Gage steal?” Munroe asked.
Thomas shook his head.
“That mean you don’t know or you won’t say?”
“Ask Townsend.”
“Right.” Munroe huffed. “And who’s the someone who wanted the thing you can’t or won’t tell me about?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Did he get it?”
Thomas shrugged. He’d been wondering the same thing. He suspected yes, since neither Zook’s nor Helen’s flat had been tossed, but without knowing more about the circumstances of the murders, he couldn’t be sure.
After a long pause, Munroe sighed, fished a cigarette out of a pocket, and lit it. “I did a little background on you, Donne. You had a PI license in Boston before you came here.”
“And I’ve a valid California license now.”
“I know. But I got to wondering what led you to migrate west. I hear you made a few enemies in the Mob.”
That was true enough. But the real reason why he’d left Boston wasn’t the gangsters per se but rather that certain members of Boston’s Finest were on the take from the Mob.
Munroe was watching him carefully. “We have plenty of criminals here in San Francisco. I never have to worry about having enough work, that’s for sure. But we’re not Boston or Chicago or New York. We’re not even Los Angeles. The Mob hasn’t fully sunk its claws into my city yet, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“We’re in agreement on that,” Thomas said wryly.
“So this mess… it has nothing to do with anything in Boston?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“I guess that’ll have to be good enough,” Munroe said with a frown. “Okay. You two, scram. And I sincerely hope that this is the last stiff we’ll meet over, Mr. Donne.”
“Again, we’re in agreement.”
“I’m worried about Rosie,” Abe said when they were out on the street.
“You’re running out of assistants.”
“These are people! Maybe you don’t care about them—maybe hardly anyone does. But they’re my—” His voice stumbled and halted.
“Your what?”
Abe’s jaw worked. “Almost nobody knows me, right? Some people have heard of Abe France, but me, Abraham Ferencz? Not so much. Roy, Helen, Rosie—none of them were perfect, but they talked to me and I could talk to them. They’re what I have. What I had.”
“What about Magnus?”
“Old news. We see each other a few times a year. But I don’t need a mentor anymore, and his tastes run younger than me.”
Loneliness was as much a part of Thomas as his arms and legs. He wouldn’t have known how to function without it. But looking into Abe’s eyes now, he saw a reflection of his own. “I’ll find the killer.”
Abe smiled. “A mensch.”
“Come to my office and—”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Thomas looked at him quizzically, and Abe shrugged. “I have a little money put away. I’m going to stop by the bank, and then I’m going to Rosie’s place. She could use a nice vacation.” He winced. “I’m going to have to tell her about Helen.”
“Be careful along the way.”
Abe’s answering smile was warm and sweet.
When Abe showed up at the office ninety minutes later, he looked tired. “A refill for your desk drawer.” He set two bottles of Bacardi on the desk.
“How’s Rosie?”
“Shaken. But she’s always wanted to visit New York City, she says, and now she has a chance to go. I gave her some tips on where to stay. She’ll be on a train within the hour.”
“And you?”
“I’ve been to New York.”
Thomas grunted. “How are you?”
“My life has never been so interesting. But maybe yours has. What Detective Munroe said about Boston, is it true?”
“For the most part.”
“Is that the only reason you moved here?”
“This is about as far as I could get from Boston without leaving the States. Los Angeles is too bloody sunny.”
Abe opened his mouth, but before he could rummage further into Thomas’s business, the outer door swung open. As Abe froze, Thomas set his Smith & Wesson on the desktop and placed his hand nearby, not quite touching it.
“Hello?” The male voice wasn’t familiar.
“In here.”
Thomas tagged the fellow for a cop right away. Something about the way he moved with mingled confidence and caution and the way he swept the room with his gaze. It landed on the desktop with the gun and the booze. “Mr. Donne?”
“That’s me.”
“I’m Ralph Crespo.” He reached into his breast pocket, and as Thomas’s fingers grasped the pistol, Crespo pulled out a wallet and flashed a badge. “Agent Ralph Crespo,” he clarified.
Thomas pointed at the bottles. “You going to run me in?” Apparently that was the theme for the day.
“I’m no revenuer.” Crespo stepped further into the office and held out his hand. “Bureau of Trans-Species Affairs, in fact.”
“What the hell is that?”
Abe approached the desk, eyes wide. “I’ve heard of them,” he told Thomas. “They have jurisdiction over… over the Hamlet stuff.”
“The Hamlet stuff?” Crespo seemed bemused.
“Otherworldly. Monsters.”
Now Crespo smiled widely. “There are a lot of monsters. I worry mostly about the non-human ones. And who are you, if I may ask?”
“My name’s Abe Ferencz.”
“Really?” Crespo looked as if he’s just won a prize. “Abe France. Sorry I didn’t recognize you offstage. This is great! I’ve been meaning to meet with you too. What a stroke of luck to find you here!”
“Why are you here, Agent Crespo?” Thomas asked pointedly.
Although he hadn’t been invited to do so, Crespo sat down opposite Thomas and laid his hat in his lap. Abe took the other chair, which he angled to have a better view of the newcomer. Then they all stared at one another. Crespo was in his late thirties or early forties, with thinning dark hair and narrow eyes that made it appear as if he was squinting. An interesting scar—a trio of long parallel lines—marred one of his cheeks, and although the marks were old and faded, they caused that side of his mouth to droop a bit. His suit was neither cheap nor expensive, and he wore no jewelry.
“I’m feeling a little dry,” Crespo said. “Mind if I have a
little of that rum?”
Abe ended up pouring, possibly so he could give himself extra. Or possibly so Thomas could keep his hand near the gun. “I didn’t realize federal agents could drink on the job,” Abe said as he handed Crespo a glass.
“The Bureau gives us more leeway than most.”
They all drank; Abe finished first, of course. Crespo smiled pleasantly at them, as if this were a social call. Finally, though, he leaned forward. “I’m going to be frank. I’m not good at small talk anyway, and neither of you seems very chatty.”
That was fine with Thomas. Whatever this business was, he’d prefer to get it over with, especially if it wasn’t going to end in his or Abe’s arrest. “Why are you here?”
“Well, the Bureau… we’re fairly new. President Wilson signed us into existence nine years ago, but we’re still feeling our way. Our mission is to deal with disruptions related to… well, as Mr. Ferencz said. The otherworldly. Last week, for instance, I helped destroy a jiangshi in Chinatown, and when I leave here, I’m heading to Lake Tahoe, where there’ve been reports of a dragon.”
“A dragon,” Thomas repeated doubtfully.
Crespo’s smile was wide and white. “Sure. Most of ’em are fine as long as you leave ’em alone, but now and then we get a nasty one. They’re kinda like people that way.”
Maybe a dragon wasn’t any less believable than his dead lover’s spirit possessing a living man. If you accepted the existence of one impossible thing, you had to allow that more impossible things might be out there as well.
“Do they really breathe fire?” Abe wanted to know.
“Some species, yeah. But it’s the venomous ones you really gotta watch out for.”
“I don’t know anything about dragons,” Thomas said.
“I can recommend a book if you want to learn. But that’s not exactly why I’m here. Up until now, the Bureau’s been run entirely out of DC, but the West Coast is active and too far away for that to work. We’re building a regional headquarters in LA, which is great, but right now our coverage here is pretty thin. Too much territory and not enough agents. We don’t even have a regional chief yet—we kind of borrowed someone from DC.” Crespo made exactly the same face that Thomas’s fellow soldiers had made when complaining about officers. Dissatisfaction with one’s superiors was an almost universal condition.