Ghost of a Chance

by Dan Willis

  “Is there a café or a lunch counter near here?”

  “Sure,” the receptionist said. “Down in the lobby there’s a good place.”

  “Thanks,” Alex said, handing Leroy’s folder back to her.

  Alex called his office a half hour later and was surprised when Leslie picked up.

  “Back from the library so soon?” he asked.

  “If you didn’t think I was here, why did you call?” she noted.

  He heard the click of the touch-tip lighter on her desk and the sound of her inhaling. She’d used her money to buy cigarettes. He’d just spent most of his pocket money on a dry sandwich and this phone call.

  For a long moment, he was jealous. He still had the twenty dollars from Anne Watson, he reminded himself. Of course he needed that to pay Leslie, so he couldn’t very well use it to buy smokes.

  “Did you find out anything about the ghost’s victims?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “The ghost’s first victim was Seth Kowalski; he made a killing selling farmland out in Suffolk County to rich people wanting to building summer homes.”

  “The Hamptons?”

  “Yep,” Leslie said. “You see, he was the County Assessor up there for years, so he knew the whole area. When the rich and famous started looking for a place to build mansions, he bought up everything he could get his hands on and made a killing.”

  “Interesting,” Alex said. “Mr. Watson was a builder and there was surveying equipment in his display case in his den.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Leslie said, “but you’ll never guess where Watson’s company built their first house?”

  “Suffolk County?” Alex guessed.

  “Got it in one.”

  “How about the others?” Alex asked.

  “So far they don’t seem to have any connections to Watson or Kowalski,” Leslie said. “Betsy Phillips was killed second. She had money of her own, but I can’t tell where it came from. Her husband, George, is a stock broker.”

  “One of the survivors,” Alex said.

  “Last was Martin Pride,” Leslie read off her notes. “Get this, he died poor, but he used to be rich. Lost his money in the market crash.”

  Alex nodded as he made notes, even though Leslie couldn’t see him through the phone.

  “So they were all rich at one point,” Alex said. “So if they’re connected, it must be before Pride lost all of his dough. Is there anything else?”

  “Nope,” Leslie said, puffing loudly on her cigarette to rub it in. “That’s all I could find this morning. Now I’m back here in the circus.”

  “Are we still getting people wanting magic charms?”

  “Yes,” Leslie said, tension returning to her voice. “Some of them are very insistent. I think you should just make up a rune and sell it to them for a buck.”

  Alex laughed.

  “Oh, Lieutenant Detweiler would love to be able to pick me up for selling snake oil,” he said.

  “Well you need to wrap this case up quick, then,” Leslie said. “I’m not going to be able to get much done, what with it’s being Grand Central Station in here.”

  That gave Alex an idea.

  “Speaking of Grand Central,” he said. “I need to find out if Kowalski and Watson knew each other when Kowalski was County Assessor.”

  “You want me to call over to the Suffolk County Hall of Records and find out?”

  “I don’t see how that’s going to help,” Alex said. “What I need is for someone to go out there and talk to the current assessor, ask around town, that sort of thing.”

  “Are you asking me to get out of the city and go upstate?” Leslie purred through the line.

  “You’ll have to spend some of that scratch I got you,” Alex warned.

  “It’ll be worth it,” she said. “I’m looking up the train schedule right now. You want me to go first thing in the morning?”

  “No,” Alex said. “Go today and you can and stay the night. That’ll give you time to ask around. Call Iggy if you find out anything urgent,” Alex said.

  “What about the circus?” she asked.

  “Take down everyone’s name and what they want and we’ll figure it out once the rest of this is wrapped up.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Alex wished her Godspeed and hung up. This Suffolk County thing felt like a lead. It was too coincidental that two of the victims had been involved in land deals up on the Captain back in the day. Still, he was going to have to pay for Leslie’s trip, lead or not.

  “Time to track down the Lightning Lord’s missing motor,” he said.

  The building from which Barton’s motor had been stolen turned out to be an unassuming building in the west side’s Mid-Ring. Inside it, men labored at a wide variety of machines, turning out strange-looking parts that were then taken to one of several large areas where machines were being assembled.

  Alex recognized a nearly-complete Mark V Etherium Capacitor in one corner. As close as it appeared to completion, however, no one seemed to be working on it. All the activity seemed to be directed in another space where over a dozen men were assembling parts for something that had yet to take shape.

  “You Lockerby?” a big-shouldered man in a brown suit asked when he noticed Alex watching.

  Alex pulled out one of his business cards and handed it over. The big man had dark eyes and hair with a square jaw and bushy eyebrows. His skin was browner than simply being in the sun could account for, marking him as being of Latin descent. The accent, however, was all Jersey.

  “Mr. Barton said you’d be coming by,” he said. “I’m Jimmy Cortez, floor manager here at Barton Electric. The boss told me to take ya around and answer any questions you have.”

  He stuck out a massive paw of a hand and Alex shook it.

  “What are they building here?” Alex asked, pointing at the rush of activity.

  “That’s the new traction motor, to replace the one that got pinched,” Jimmy said. “Between you and me, Mr. Lockerby, I hope you find the old one real soon. I’m not sure we can get this done in time.”

  Alex watched as a man in coveralls finished grinding a curved piece of metal and hurried it over to a man with spectacles and rolled-up shirt sleeves. The bespectacled man tuned the part over in his hands, then consulted a blueprint that had been unrolled over a table and weighed down with bits of scrap metal. After a moment with the blueprint, the man placed the curved bit next to a neat row of parts on the floor. By the time he was done, another man in a coverall had another bit for him.

  “Looks like you’ve got it well in hand,” Alex said, turning back to Jimmy. “Barton said this motor weighs about six hundred pounds, is that right?”

  Jimmy thought about that for a second, then nodded.

  “Give or take,” he said.

  “How did a thief manage to steal it then? I mean that would take time and a crew, right?”

  “Ordinarily, yeah,” Jimmy said. “There’s always people here, day and night, and we’ve got security guards in the warehouse area and the loadin’ dock.”

  “You didn’t answer my question though,” Alex said. “How was the motor stolen?”

  “The guy was good, Mr. Lockerby,” Alex said. “He walked right into the dock just as the motor was loaded on a truck and drove it away.”

  “Where were the driver and the security guard?”

  “Once the trucks are loaded, the driver has to inspect the load and sign out the truck,” Jimmy explained. “He was in the office doing that when the truck drove away, and the guard was at the other side of the dock walkin’ his route.”

  That seemed like exceptionally good timing on the part of the thief.

  He must have watched the dock, figured out the pattern, and then waited for his opportunity.

  “Who knew your shipping schedule?” Alex asked.

  “You mean when the motor was goin’ out? Just me and the dock manager,” he said. “Oh, and Mr. Barton, of course.”

  “
Mind if I take a look at the loading dock?” Alex asked.

  Jimmy escorted him over to the other side of the building to where a cement dock stuck out from a set of carriage doors. A small shack stood on the far side and Alex could see a man working at a desk inside.

  “That’s Bill Gustavsen,” Jimmy said. “He runs the loadin’ dock.”

  The lot beyond the dock was paved and enclosed by a high fence. It was large enough to accommodate parking for several trucks. One bearing the name Barton Electric on the door was parked up against the fence on the far side. To the left was an opening big enough for a truck to exit that led out to the street.

  “Did your security guard report seeing anyone loitering around in the days leading up to the theft?”

  Jimmy shook his head.

  “No. We sometimes have to run drunks or vagrants out, so he checks when he goes by. But he didn’t see nobody.”

  Alex thanked him, and Jimmy returned to overseeing the building of Barton’s replacement motor. Alex stood on the dock for five minutes before he crossed to the other side and knocked on the open door of the little shack.

  “Yes?” Bill Gustavsen said, looking up from his desk. He was older, in his fifties if Alex had to guess, with white hair and a skinny frame. He wore trousers and a white shirt with a tie. His sleeves were rolled up and held in place by garters with his suit coat draped over the back of his chair in the August heat.

  Alex introduced himself, and explained why he was there.

  “I don’t know what more I can tell you,” Gustavsen said. “I was in here signing out the truck to the driver when it just drove away. It was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I was outside for quite a while,” Alex said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the dock. “I didn’t see your security guard come by at all.”

  Gustavsen chuckled at that.

  “No more deliveries are due today,” he said. “The guard only patrols when we’re working here at the dock. Otherwise he comes by every half-hour.”

  “How often do shipments go out of here?”

  “Out?” Gustavsen said. “Every other day or so. We ship out receivers for wireless power along with replacement parts for the Etherium Capacitors and anything else Mr. Barton might need.”

  “Doesn’t seem like enough work for a full-time dock manager?”

  Gustavsen bristled at that.

  “Shows what you know,” he said. “We get deliveries every single day. It’s my job to inspect everything, inventory it, and make sure it’s stored properly. I also make sure all our outgoing shipments are right.” He puffed up like a toad and thumped his chest. “In the twenty years I’ve been here, there’s never been a bum shipment...not until the motor was stolen.”

  Alex asked him who knew about the shipments in advance, and he gave the same answers Jimmy had.

  “Is that the truck that was taken?” Alex asked, pointing to the lone vehicle in the lot.

  “No,” Gustavsen said. “That’s the spare. The police have been looking for the truck, but it’s still missing too.”

  Alex wondered if there were any way to use the finding rune on the missing truck and find the motor that way. Unfortunately he’d need something connected to the truck and everything that fit that bill was likely to be on the truck itself.

  “What about the driver?” he asked. “Does he usually drive the missing truck?”

  “No,” Gustavsen said. “We have a contract with the Teamsters. They provide our drivers.”

  Foiled, Alex thanked Gustavsen and descended the stairs to the paved dock. He walked up to the opening in the fence and looked both ways.

  The lot emptied onto a side street that ran between the factory and a clothing mill next door. There wasn’t a good vantage point to watch the loading dock from anywhere on the street, no place that the security guard wouldn’t have seen.

  There was a narrow alley between the mill and whatever was behind it. Alex crossed the street and peered down the space. It ran along the mill until it intercepted the next side street. Boxes and crates were stacked behind some of the buildings on the opposite side and trash was strewn along the ground.

  Alex examined the ground around the entrance, looking for signs of surveillance. If anyone had been watching the Barton Electric loading dock, they cleaned up after themselves. There were no cigarette butts or apple cores to be found.

  He was about to leave, but suddenly wondered, What if the surveillance might have been a team? The crates just up the alley would be a perfect place to sit while your partner watches the dock.

  He walked down the alley to the crates and examined the ground but found nothing tell-tale there either. Cursing, he straightened up and shook his head. At this rate he’d never find Barton’s motor, and that meant he couldn’t pay for Leslie’s trip upstate. He had a feeling that the widow Watson wouldn’t want to pay either if he didn’t find the ghost.

  Turning back to the street, Alex wished he had found some cigarette butts; after all, one of them might be long enough to smoke.

  He was chuckling grimly at his own dire circumstances when a shot rang out and a bullet slammed into his back. It hit him on the lower right side, near the kidney and the sudden impact caused him to stumble.

  As Alex tried to catch his balance, three more shots rang out. Two hit him in the upper back and he lost his balance. The third shot skimmed his hip as he went down and distracted him enough that instead of catching himself, he landed on his face.

  The impact stunned him and he was vaguely aware of someone rolling him over and ransacking his pockets before taking his red-backed rune book and running off.

  10

  The Engineer

  Alex’s pocketwatch showed two-thirty when he used it to open the door to the brownstone and limped inside. The shield runes he’d written on the inside of his suit jacket had saved his life, slowing the bullets enough that they wouldn’t penetrate. That said, he still felt like someone had worked him over with a Louisville Slugger.

  His hip was another story.

  The bullet had hit below the protection of his jacket, scraping a trough out of his flesh. Fortunately it had only grazed him, but he still bled like a stuck pig. By the time he got home, his pant leg was wet with blood and the handkerchief he was pressing against the wound was saturated.

  “Iggy,” he called from the tiled floor of the brownstone’s vestibule. “I’m bleeding, bring your vault rune.”

  Even though Alex knew how to write cleaning runes now, he didn’t want to waste them on the Persian carpets that covered the floor between the vestibule and the kitchen if he didn’t have to.

  “What happened?” Iggy said, hurrying down the stairs from the direction of his room. He was dressed for the evening in just his shirt and slacks with a smoking jacket over top and slippers on his feet.

  “Somebody took a shot at me,” Alex said, holding up his blood-soaked handkerchief. “Several shots, in fact.”

  “How bad?” Iggy said, tracing a door on the wall with a piece of chalk he took from the pocket of his smoking jacket.

  “I took three in the back, but the shield runes stopped those. One took a bite out of my leg but it doesn’t look too deep.”

  “It’s bleeding enough to be serious,” Iggy said, lighting a vault rune. “You feeling light-headed?”

  “No.”

  Iggy opened his vault and motioned Alex inside.

  “What happened to your face?” he asked as he directed Alex to the table in the middle of his operating theater room.

  Alex touched his forehead and felt the bump there. He’d forgotten about that.

  “The shots took me by surprise,” he admitted. “I fell on my face. Damn near knocked me out.”

  “Can you take off your trousers?” Iggy asked as he rummaged through one of his cabinets full of potions.

  Alex unbuckled his trousers and let them fall to the floor. It was better than letting Iggy cut them off as it would take less magic to repair. />
  “Here.” Iggy handed him a small vial of red liquid.

  Alex drank it and handed back the container.

  “And this for that black eye,” he said, pressing a small square of flash paper to Alex’s eyelid. “Hold still,” he said, taking out a cigarette case and his lighter. A moment later he touched the smoldering end of the cigarette to the rune paper. It flashed and Alex resisted the urge to jerk back. He felt a tingling spreading out over the right side of his face and he knew the rune was taking effect.

  Iggy examined the gash in Alex’s hip.

  “Not too bad,” he said, getting out his sewing kit. “Now, lie on the table and tell me what happened.”

  “I was looking into Andrew Barton’s missing motor,” Alex said, laying on his side with his hip in the air. “It was stolen from the loading dock of his factory right after it had been put on a truck.”

  “Convenient,” Iggy said, using a cotton ball to dab an ice-cold liquid on the wound. Alex winced as he began sewing it up, but the cold had penetrated into the gash and he couldn’t feel the needle.

  “That’s what I thought,” Alex said. “Whoever did it had a window of about a minute to get in and get out with the truck. I figured they were watching from the alley across the street, so I checked it out.”

  “Find anything?”

  “Nope,” Alex said. “From what I can tell you can’t even see the loading dock from that alley. I was just about to leave when someone shot me in the back and stole my rune book.”

  “It’s probably a good thing you fell on your face then,” Iggy said. “If the man who shot you had realized you weren’t really hurt, he’d have shot you in the head for good measure.”

  Alex hadn’t considered that. His clumsy stumble might just have saved his life.

  “Did you see the back-shooting coward?” Iggy asked, washing the stitches with iodine.

  “Just his arm,” Alex said. “The rest was a bit...blurry.”