Ghosts of Manhattan

by George Mann

  "That's not very polite, Jimmy."

  The other man looked sheepish. "Now's not a good time. It's really not. You can't come in here."

  The Ghost gave him an appraising look. "Are you going to stop me, Jimmy? Do you think that's wise?"

  Jimmy backed away from the door, allowing it to swing open. "Well, if you put it like that ..." He looked pained, as if he was scared that the Ghost might discover something, as if he'd been up to something nefarious that he didn't want anyone to see.

  The Ghost stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him with a deliberate click. "Very wise, Jimmy. Just what I would have done, if I were you." He glanced around. He couldn't see any signs that the man had been up to anything he shouldn't have been. And if he were honest with himself, he didn't much care. Jimmy was too smalltime to be a real concern.

  The Ghost wrinkled his nose. The place smelled like a cesspit. It didn't look much better, either. He couldn't understand what led a man to want to live like this. Poverty was one thing, but Jimmy worked for the mob. Perhaps he just found it comforting in some sick, twisted way.

  The man himself was skinny and unshaven, and was dressed only in a pair of brown felt trousers. His hair was long and unkempt, and fell about his shoulders. His rib cage was showing through his papery skin, and his hands were describing nervous gestures in the air as he tried to work out what this man-this bizarre, terrifying manwanted in his apartment.

  The Ghost decided to oblige him with an explanation. "I'm looking for some answers, Jimmy, and I think you're the man to help me out."

  "Wh ... wh ... what makes you s ... s ... say that?"

  "I know who your friends are." He rubbed a hand over his chin. "I know what company you like to keep."

  Jimmy continued to twitch nervously. "My friends, they won't like it. They don't like what you did at the bank the other night. They think you're trouble."

  "I am trouble, Jimmy. More trouble than you could ever imagine. What you need to decide is how much of that trouble do you want?"

  The man was visibly shaking now. "I don't want any trouble. No trouble at all. But mister, I'm telling you, if I spill to you, those friends of mine, they'll give me trouble of their own."

  The Ghost sighed. "Now, they don't sound like the right sort of friends to me, Jimmy." He stepped forward, and the other man let out a whimper. The Ghost's voice was suddenly serious. "There was a raid last night, at a joint called the Sensation Club. A lot of people ended up dead. All you need to do is tell me who was behind it."

  Jimmy shook his head, frantically, from side to side. "I don't know what you're talking about. I have no idea. I don't know who was behind anything." He indicated the door. "I really think you should leave now."

  "I'm not going anywhere, Jimmy, not until you give me what I need."

  Jimmy took a step backward. "I really can't help you. I don't know what you're talking about."

  The Ghost decided to try another approach. He glanced around the room, looking for a cupboard. The apartment was small, and the kitchen was next to the living room, separated by a tall, open archway. Cupboards lined the walls. He pushed his way past Jimmy into the small space. Then, grabbing hold of one of the cupboard doors, he flung it open. Inside was a stack of plates and other assorted china. They were covered in a thick layer of grime and dust. He turned to the snitch. "What were you doing in here, Jimmy? What were you up to when I arrived?" He opened another door. This time the cupboard was bare, save for a packet of crackers and half a loaf of bread.

  Jimmy started forward. "No, look, I'd tell you if I knew anything. You know I would. There ain't nothing in those cupboards to worry you."

  "How can I be sure about that? How can I be sure there isn't something in these cupboards about the Sensation Club and what happened last night? That proves you were there, and that you've got yourself all mixed up in someone else's business?" As he spoke, the Ghost continued to open the cupboard doors, one by one, working his way along the length of the small kitchen.

  The crook looked appalled. "That business ain't got nothin' to do with me! I ain't never had a part in that sort of thing. I keep my hands clean."

  The Ghost reached into the cupboard he had just opened, pulled out a small brown envelope. He tipped the contents onto the floor, watching the individual leaves of paper scatter like a multicolored waterfall. He glanced at the mess he had made. They were photographs. Images of the strange, clockwork geisha girls that could be found-and bought-down in Chinatown; images of Jimmy doing things to them. They stared at the camera with their blank porcelain expressions, as the thin, gaunt body of the snitch paraded before them, or touched them, or worse. If they'd been real girls, the Ghost would have sworn he could see sadness in their eyes.

  So that's what Jimmy had been up to when he'd arrived. Nothing but some cheap pornography. The Ghost had been suspecting something different. Something he could use as leverage. He couldn't care less what Jimmy got up to in his own time, what his proclivities were, or what sort of pictures he liked to look at.

  Jimmy stepped back, his hands in the air. "I ain't never seen those pictures before. Seriously! You just planted those in my cupboard to make me look bad." His voice was a high-pitched whine. He looked terrified.

  "Is this all, Jimmy? A few photographs. Is this why you're so scared? Wouldn't want your friends to know about it, though, would you? About your particular ... tastes. They wouldn't be as openminded as me, would they?" The Ghost stepped over the pool of photographs toward the snitch.

  "You ... you wouldn't. You wouldn't do that ... would you?"

  "No, Jimmy. I wouldn't. And there's the difference between you and me. But you better start talking, and fast."

  Jimmy stuffed his hands in his pockets and then withdrew them again, folding them across his chest. He seemed somewhat relieved by the Ghost's reaction to the photographs. "I told you, I ain't got nothin' for you-"

  The Ghost moved like lightning. One moment he was in the kitchen, staring at the sad, half-naked snitch, the next he had crossed to the living room and had his right hand around the other man's throat. He raised his left hand and brought it down, hard, across Jimmy's face. The crook gave a low moan, like a keening animal. "Still going to tell me you don't have anything for me?"

  Jimmy blinked and gave a quick shake of his head.

  "Good." The Ghost relaxed his grip and the thin man slumped to the ground, his back to the wall. "Now, I'm going to make this easy for you. Who was responsible for the raid on the Sensation Club last night?"

  Jimmy swallowed. His response was barely a whisper. "The Roman."

  "And who was the thin man in the evening suit? The guy in charge."

  Jimmy looked up at him, panic behind his eyes. The Ghost had seen that look before, back during the war. The look of a condemned man, haunted by the knowledge that he was about to die. "G ... G ... Gideon R ... Reece. Gideon Reece. He's the Roman's right-hand man. He's trouble. Real bad trouble."

  "What would Reece want with the jazz singer Celeste Parker? Why did they come after her?"

  Jimmy stared up at him, his eyes pleading. "I don't know. I don't know why they wanted her. They do what the Roman tells them to do. That's all I know."

  "You're doing well, Jimmy. Now, tell me where I can find them."

  "You can't. You can't find them. No one knows. They find you. That's how they work. They always come to you."

  The Ghost dropped into a crouch, bringing himself level with the snitch. His voice was forceful, full of menace. "Jimmy, where can I find Gideon Reece?"

  The snitch wouldn't meet his gaze. His eyes flitted nervously from side to side. For a moment the Ghost thought the other man might piss himself.

  "Jimmy, I'm going to count to five. One, two, three-"

  "Okay! Okay! There's something going down tonight. Across town from here. I don't know the details, but they're doing over some doctor. Over on Suffolk Street. Reece will be there."

  The Ghost stood. Suffolk Street. He c
ould be there in ten, fifteen minutes. He glanced at his watch. A quarter after eleven. He hoped he wasn't already too late. He looked down at the sniveling wretch by his feet. "Clean yourself up, Jimmy. You owe it to yourself."

  He stepped over the slumped figure, pulled open the door, and left. Behind him, Jimmy the Greek let out a long, whistling sigh of relief.

  The Ghost dropped down onto the iron rungs of an external fire escape that clung, limpet-like, to the side of an apartment building. It was similar, in many ways, to the building from which he had just come, but this part of town was considerably more affluent than the neighborhood where Jimmy the Greek made his home, and the buildings and streets had been maintained to a far superior standard.

  He'd come across the rooftops again, using his propulsion jets to help him make the leaps where needed. He didn't yet know what he was looking for. A doctor. He wished now that he'd pressed Jimmy for a name, but in truth he suspected that the snitch wouldn't have known the details of the hit; he wasn't high enough in the pecking order to be trusted with information like that. In fact, he'd probably only picked up the details he did have from another goon who didn't know how to keep his mouth shut.

  The Ghost crouched on his haunches in the darkness, surveying the street for any signs of life. His goggles overlaid his vision with tiny blinking readouts and washed everything with a warm, red glow. A couple of pedestrians passed beneath him, and he adjusted his lenses, focusing in on their faces. A man and a woman, out for a late-night stroll. Civilians. People in love. He felt a sudden stab of jealousy. Some days-most days-he wished he could lose himself in that same, blissful ignorance in which most of the city's population breezed through their days, unaware of what was truly happening around them, of the lurking danger that bubbled just beneath the surface of their lives. To most of them, he was one of the monsters, a myth of the city, a creature that lived in other people's nightmares but would never touch their own. They thought of the mob in the same way. Let it happen to other people. We'll be alright. It won't affect us. He supposed that was for the best. Better that they lived their lives in ignorance than fear.

  A car engine roared up ahead. The Ghost shifted his position so he could see. No headlamps. It could have been any one of the three parked vehicles across the street. He toyed with his goggles, trying to get a closer look. Too late, he saw the column of steam release from the rear of one of the cars, and then two men appeared from the doorway of one of the apartment blocks, crossed the sidewalk, and opened the rear doors of the vehicle. Both men were wrapped in heavy winter overcoats, but there was no mistaking one of them: Gideon Reece. He was tall, thin, and carried himself with an immaculate, graceful air. His hands were held in a thin steeple before his chest, and even from high up on the side of another building, the Ghost could see that the uppermost half of his left ear was missing. The other man was unfamiliar to him: a goon, or else another of the Roman's deputies.

  The men ducked into the car, and the Ghost, leaping into action, swung down from the fire escape, taking the steps five, six at a time, dropping the last ten feet and crunching onto the graveled courtyard a few seconds later, his trench coat billowing out around him like long, unfurling petals.

  He'd been too slow. The car was already speeding away from the curb, heading toward him, its headlamps still dimmed so as not to draw attention. He thought about trying to give chase, about leaping onto the hood as it sped past, but he knew it wouldn't get him anywhere, except perhaps a wooden box, six feet beneath the churchyard in his home town. He watched as the vehicle rushed by, sputtering as its furnace consumed coal from the hopper, superheating the water tank that fed steam to the paddles. And that was when he noticed the third exhaust funnel, rising out from the back of the vehicle like a finger, pointing at the stars. He smiled beneath the brim of his hat. A third funnel. He'd never seen a motor car with a third funnel. It was clearly there to compensate for some modification that had been made to the engine, most likely to increase the capacity for extra torque and speed, to help Reece extract himself from any threatening situations as quickly as possible. But now he had a means of finding Gideon Reece again. It was a needle in a proverbial haystack, of course, but if he could find the car with three funnels, he could find Gideon Reece. And if he could find Gideon Reece, he was sure he could find the Roman.

  The Ghost watched the vehicle recede into the distance, swallowed by the impenetrable night. Then, turning toward the building from which he'd seen Reece and his crony emerge, he crossed the street. He didn't know what he was likely to find inside, but if there was any chance he could save the doctor, he had to take it.

  The lobby door was still hanging open where it had been forced by the mobsters, the lock smashed, the hinges partially wrenched from the frame. Inside, an electric bulb was swinging chaotically on its wire, causing the light to take on a bizarre stuttering effect, as if the room beyond was dipping in and out of existence, there one minute, gone the next.

  The Ghost stepped through the opening, flicking the lenses up from his goggles so that his eyes could better adjust to the harsh electric light. The lobby was small; a mailbox, marked with the names and numbers for each apartment, a garbage bin, a door leading off to the first-floor apartments, and a staircase leading up to the floors above. The decor was plain and modern: magnolia walls and red tiles. But it was clean, and, he imagined, a rather expensive building to inhabit.

  The Ghost approached the mailbox. It stood against the wall near the foot of the stairs, a series of small wooden cubbyholes, ready to receive the residents' mail. Some of the partitions were stuffed half-full of unopened letters and packages of various shapes and sizes. Each one was labeled with the name of the occupant and the apartment number. He scanned the names on the top row, and then began working his way down the rows, one cubbyhole at a time. About halfway down, right in the middle of the third row, was a name that immediately stood out: Dr. Henry Sinclair, Apt. 11.

  The Ghost quickly counted off the apartments. That would be on the third floor. He rushed to the stairs, taking them two at a time, and sprinted across the landing toward the doctor's apartment. He hadn't misjudged it: the door was open, light bleeding out onto the dimly lit landing. Cautiously, he edged inside.

  If he'd had any hopes of getting there in time to save the doctor, those hopes were dashed by the sight that confronted him when he passed along the hallway of the apartment and into the living room. It was perhaps one of the most disturbing sights he had ever seen, certainly since the war. Surrounded by opulence-bright, colorful works of art, elaborate furniture dating back to the last century, a chandelier, a bookcase filled with fine bindings-was the doctor himself. He'd been stripped naked and positioned in a chair beside his desk. One hand rested on the arm of the chair, and his legs were crossed, his feet situated carefully on a blue and white rug. His head had been cleanly removed, leaving a bloody, oozing stump, and was now tucked beneath the other arm in a grotesque parody of a headless spirit, carrying its burden into the afterlife. The face was frozen in a rigid expression of terror, the lips curled back in a horrifying scream. Over the eyes had been placed two shining brass coins, as if in bizarre tribute to some demonic spirit.

  The stench was foul; the iron tang of blood filled his nostrils and throat with its cloying scent, making it difficult for him to breathe. He stood for a minute, unable to take his eyes from the grisly diorama that faced him. After a moment, he realized what was wrong with the scene. The head had been removed, cleaved off with a clean blade, but there was no sign of any blood, other than that still seeping ponderously from the wound itself, dripping onto the milky-white flesh of the doctor's chest.

  The Ghost decided to search the apartment. The murder must have been committed in another room, and then the body deliberately moved to its position in the living room, probably even cleaned up before being displayed. He repressed a shudder. He had the terrible sense that Gideon Reece had enjoyed his work that day, had sought and found some sort of appalling thril
l in what he'd done to this Dr. Sinclair. He had to be stopped. Not simply because of his connection to the Roman, but because of his deadly sadistic streak, and because he wanted to lay his hands on Celeste.

  After a few moments' pacing between rooms, he found what he'd been looking for. The bathroom was like a scene from an abattoir. The glistening white tiles had been decorated with a spray of dark arterial blood that covered nearly every surface: the walls, floor, ceiling-even spattered over the mirror above the sink. The bathtub itself was cracked and splintered where it had received a series of blows from a sharp implement, suggesting the doctor's head had been hacked off over the side of the tub. Supporting that theory, the Ghost could see two tools had been dumped in the bottom of the tub, a bloody machete and a hacksaw. They rested in a long puddle of sticky gore. It seemed much of the gritty substance had been swilled down the plughole.

  Bloodstained towels had been discarded haphazardly on the floor, and puddles of water marked where the body had been washed down after the event.

  The Ghost felt bile rising in his gullet. He wondered what the doctor had done to warrant such a vicious, deliberate reprisal from the Roman. Turning away from the scene of the butchery, he made his way back to the living room, where the body of the late doctor was still waiting for him in silent vigil. Grimacing, he crossed to the blue and white rug and stooped to examine the body. He'd heard, from news of the other murders committed by the Roman's men, that the coins were a calling card, both an admission of guilt and a terrible warning to those who might consider opposing the mob boss. Or else they were some kind of ritualistic symbol, placed over the eyes to appease the gatekeeper that blocked the way to the afterlife; compensation, of a sort, that would enable the souls of the Roman's victims to buy passage into the spirit realm. The Ghost had heard talk that the coins were originals, too, real Roman currency, nearly two millennia old. But the coins in front of him didn't look like originals. They were far too pristine. All the Roman coins he'd seen displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art had darkened and oxidized over time, or else had been damaged by the years they had spent in the soil, turned over by plows, struck by spades. These, though, looked as if they had hardly been touched, as if they had only recently been minted. He reached out and gingerly prized one of them free, turning it over in his gloved fingers. It had to be a replica. If not-if they were real-they must have cost the Roman a fortune. He knew where he could find out. He'd ask Arthur. Arthur would know.