She mouthed the words one sec at him as she prepared several drinks at once. Conveniently, Aldo had just started the solo to "Born to Be Wild," so Dean occupied himself by enjoying the music by the person he considered most likely to be a murderer.
My life is seriously screwed up, he thought with amusement.
Jennifer gave the drinks to the old guys, who cleared out for their own table, each holding two drinks.
"Another Brooklyn?" Jennifer asked.
"Uh, yeah." Something seemed off in Jennifer's tone.
She poured the drink in silence, then said as she put it on the napkin, "Dean, listen—I really appreciate what you been doin', but I gotta ask you somethin', okay?"
Shrugging, Dean said, "Shoot."
"Where you goin' with this?"
Dean frowned. "Whaddaya mean?"
"I mean, where you goin' with this? You said you're from outta town. I assume you're goin' back outta town soon, right?"
"Yeah, I guess, I just—"
"So, basically, the only place this can go is a one-nighter? Or maybe a two-nighter if you're in town long enough."
Dean found he had nothing to say to such brazen honesty. For starters, honesty wasn't usually a big component of his flirtation methods (or a lot of the rest of his life), so its use was unfamiliar to him.
"Look, Dean, you're sweet, you're bright, you're incredibly good-looking—"
At that, Dean couldn't help but beam.
"—and you're totally aware of it, but not in a vain way."
"Uh, thanks—I think."
"Oh, it's a compliment, believe me. But—" Jennifer let out a long breath. "Ten years ago I'da been right there with you, but now? I'm too old for one-nighters, Dean. I've been there and I've done that, and if I'm gonna be with a man, I wanna be with a man, y'know what I'm sayin'?" Then she broke into a huge smile. "Dean, you look like I ran over your cat."
Blinking furiously, Dean tried to wipe that look off his face, though he had no idea how it had gotten there. "Look, Jennifer, I'm—I'm sorry, I didn't—"
"Christ, Dean, do not apologize! Hell, you've made my week. Trust me, I'm gonna dine out on this with my girlfriends for a year. You know how long it's been since someone even half as hot as you hit on my fat ass?"
"Jennifer," Dean said, "of all the words I would use to describe your ass, 'fat' is the absolute last one."
"Thank you."
Then, deciding he had nothing to lose, he added, "And one other thing—you're right, with me it'd only be one night, maybe two." He grinned. "But it'd be a helluva night."
He ran back to the table before she could reply. Of course, she was right—there was no chance of anything beyond a good romp in the hay or two. He had learned the hard way with Cassie that his life wasn't built for a relationship. And that was why he'd mostly focused his sexual energy on young women who were only interested in hooking up for one night. He was sure that half of them didn't believe the crap he spun to start talking to them, but just liked playing the game.
As soon as he sat down, Sam got all worried looking at him. "Dude, what happened? You look like someone ran over your cat."
Dean just drank his beer.
THIRTEEN
The Afiri house
The Bronx, New York
Sunday 19, November 2006
It needs to stop. Why won't he love me?
It had all started with the strange-looking man who looked a lot like Uncle Cal. Said he was a Reaper and his job was to prepare her for the afterlife. But that was wrong. If she was going to the after-life, it meant she was done with her before life, and that meant she was dead, and that was something she just couldn't just accept, that was crazy, after everything she went through, she just couldn't just be dead!
She refused. No way, no how, she was not going with him, even if he did look like Uncle Cal, who was always so sweet to her, and the only one who'd still talk to her when she went into rehab, everyone else just abandoned her, the bastards, but Cal was always there for her and she trusted him completely. She wouldn't go with him. That was where she drew the line. After that happened, she couldn't let go. She wouldn't let go. Couldn't couldn't wouldn't wouldn't.
The Reaper who looked like Uncle Cal tried to convince her that she was being foolish, that there was nothing left for her, that she couldn't do anything to change what happened, but she refused to believe that, refused to accept it, refused to even listen to it. She wasn't dead, she wasn't dead, she wasn't dead, she wasn't dead.
It needs to stop. Why won't he love me?
Throughout life, she hadn't asked for much. When things had gone wrong, she had owned up to them and fixed them. She was cured, as much as anybody could really be cured. She hadn't drunk anything since she got out of rehab, so that should've been that and that was all there was to it, period, full stop, end of sentence.
So there was just no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, she should die like that. Something had to be done.
At first she just waited, figuring that everything would play out.
But no.
Manfred went out every morning to work. He went to the Park in Rear every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to play with the damn band, and then he just came home.
Every time he came home, she hoped.
Every time he came home, those hopes were dashed.
After a while she couldn't take it anymore. How could she? How could she expect to just sit there and take it, just sitting there, just being there, just existing, not alive, not really dead, either, just floating around while life went on without her and nobody cared!
Eventually, she snapped.
Now, when the Scottso gigs were done, she was there. Over and over, every time he came back from the goddamn Park in Rear, she hoped, she prayed, she begged, she pleaded, but nothing, nothing, nothing!
It was terrible. It was awful. It was the worst thing in the world, worse even than dying, and she didn't think anything could possibly be worse than dying, but somehow this was.
She wondered if maybe she should have listened to the Reaper the way she'd always listened to Uncle Cal, who looked just like the Reaper—or was it the other way around? She didn't know anymore, didn't care anymore, she just wanted it to stop stop stop stop stop stop!
And then it got worse.
Yesterday, someone else came in who wasn't anyone from Scottso. It was two new people, and they shot her!
It was the worst feeling ever in the whole world, worse than dying, worse than rehab, worse than knowing nothing changed, worse than when she discovered her shellfish allergy, worse than anything ever.
And she would make them pay. Oh yes, she was not going to take this any longer, nosireebob, she would have what she wanted and that'd show all of them the truth!
As soon as she pulled herself together. It had been really weird, actually. She saw the two guys, and they shot her, and then—
Nothing.
Emptiness. No longer tethered to Manfred's house, no longer tethered to anything, no longer able to see or hear or touch or—
Well, actually, she couldn't do most of that stuff anyhow, but she had something. She had consciousness. Didn't she? How else did the Reaper that looked like Uncle Cal talk to her if she wasn't able to be talked to?
But after those two guys shot her, pfft. Gone. She had to get herself back together. They were coming. She could feel it. She couldn't feel much of anything, but she could feel that. They were coming. They were coming. She had to show them what was happening before they shot her again. So she tried to focus.
That was a challenge—focusing was hard, even back when she was alive, and the more time passed after she died, the harder that got. She had no idea what it was that those two guys shot her with, but whatever it was was deadly stuff. Probably some kind of poison or something.
No, that didn't make sense. Poison? She was already dead. But it wasn't regular bullets. Or buckshot, or whatever it was that shotguns shot. What the hell did she know about that, she was
a girl from Morris Park, all she knew about shotguns was that guys in cowboy hats carried them in old movies. Uncle Cal always showed her those movies when he babysat her when she was a kid. Mom and Dad were off getting stoned somewhere every Saturday night, so Uncle Cal would take care of her, showing her his favorite old movies. My Darling Clementine. Calamity Jane. Rio Bravo. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The Magnificent Seven. A Fistful of Dollars. Unforgiven. Tombstone. All the men wore funny hats and all the women wore poofy dresses and they were just so cool, she loved it so very very much.
They were coming.
It needs to stop. Why won't he love me?
She gathered up everything she had, however she could, forcing herself to come together again as the two strangers who shot her walked through the door.
There they were—she saw them. She couldn't talk to them, though. Whatever they shot her with when they shot her last night was keeping her from talking, but she could see, dammit, and she saw that they were coming in, the tall one with the shaggy hair and the short one with the short hair. They both wore little black bracelets and dressed the same sloppy way kids in their twenties dressed these days. Dammit, when she was in her twenties, she knew how to dress cool, not like these post-Grunge losers. She'd show them. She'd show them real good. Concentrating harder than she'd ever concentrated in her life or in her death, she focused on that stupid picture of Manfred and his kids upstairs where Manfred had that stupid smile on his face and the kids were all squirmy like they wanted to be anywhere but with Manfred. Why did Manfred even have that picture anyhow? It was so pathetic. He didn't raise them and they didn't even care about him, so why have the stupid picture?
The picture flew off the wall and headed straight for the tall one. Unfortunately, he heard it coming—and he had, like, killer reflexes—so he batted it out of the way with his forearm, which took all the fun out of it.
"I think she's pissed at you, dude," the shorter one said.
The tall one she almost hit said, "Pissed, period, I think."
She tried again. She had to hurt these guys after what they did to her.
"Roxy, you there?" the tall one said suddenly. "Look, we don't wanna hurt you."
How'd they know my name?
And yeah, right, they didn't want to hurt her. How could anybody say that with a straight face twenty-four hours after they shot you?
Then the short one said, "But we will if you throw more picture frames at our heads. Look, this house belongs to a friend of ours, and—"
She hadn't been paying any attention to him, busy as she was trying to focus on the Fillmore East poster in its metal frame. Eventually she got it to fly free of the wall and hit the short one in the back of the head.
The tall one helped him stand back up, and the short one put his hand to the back of his head and winced. "Okay—ow."
"You all right, man?"
"No, I'm not freakin' all right, some spirit bitch just hit me in the back of the head with a priceless concert poster!"
She couldn't help herself. She laughed at that. She laughed long, she laughed hard, and she laughed loud. It was even funnier than that time when her brother actually snorted glue, thinking that "sniffing glue" meant you took actual glue up your nose like you did cocaine.
The walls of Manfred's house shook, she laughed so hard.
Both of the strangers lifted their shotguns, and suddenly she stopped laughing. She couldn't face that again, not yet.
Instead, she went away, like she always did once Manfred left. She'd bide her time, be patient, like they kept telling her to be in rehab, and then she'd show them what she was made of the next time they came back from that stupid bar. She had no idea when that would be—days of the week no longer meant anything to her, she just knew when all of Scottso were together at the Park in Rear—so she'd wait until it was time again.
It needs to stop. Why won't he love me?
Dean stared down at the EMF reader and shook his head. "Nothing. There was that fit of the giggles, and then nada."
Sam lowered his shotgun. "Weird."
"Yeah. And those two shots she took at us were pretty weak."
Nodding, Sam said, "Yeah, I'm thinkin' she hasn't come all the way back from the rock-salt dispersal." He knew that it was different for every spirit. Some only stayed dissolute for a few minutes. Others were permanently torn apart by the rock salt, though that was pretty rare.
"Well, it looks like she's gone," Dean said. "We can tell Manfred it's safe."
"Yeah." Sam sighed. "Tomorrow, I'm gonna do a little digging online, then Monday check the libraries, see if I can find out anything about this house. I mean, we're assuming it's Roxy because of that King's Reign T-shirt—"
Dean winced and snarled at the same time. "It's Queensrÿche."
"Whatever." Sam managed not to break into a grin, since he'd messed up the band's name completely on purpose just to annoy Dean. "But there may be another spirit here that we just don't know about."
Giving Sam a dubious look, Dean said, "That happens to look just like one of Scottso's ex-girlfriends, down to the same love for Queensrÿche?"
Sam had to concede that point. "Yeah, it's a stretch, but it's not like the band's been all that forthcoming. And I don't know about you, but I can't tell if she reacted to us calling her by name."
"Yeah, me either. Okay, we'll try that. What about the Poe thing?"
Sam shrugged. "Keep looking for Arthur Gordon Pym. I'll make some calls tomorrow—or Monday, I guess, since tomorrow's Sunday—and see if I can track down who owns the server space that website's on." Then something occurred to him. "Hey, didn't McBain say she was with missing persons?"
Dean tensed up. "Yeah, so?"
"Maybe we can run Roxy's name by her."
"We don't need to bring her into this, Sammy."
Sam sighed. "C'mon, Dean, I think we can trust her. Like you said, she didn't arrest us, and she knows Ballard."
"What the hell does that have to do with—"
"If it weren't for Ballard, we'd both be in jail right now, and you know it. She helped me dig up the body we needed to find, and she shot her partner and let us go. We trusted her, I think we can trust McBain. Besides, she is Missing Persons, and that means we can check for missing persons without having to make something up." Dean was still antsy, so Sam came up with a compromise. "Look, we're gonna need her help on Monday anyhow, so let's ask her then."
Frowning, Dean asked, "Why're we gonna need her help on Monday?"
"There's two more sites left to complete Samuels's sigil, but we don't know which one of the two it'll be. Dad's notes didn't specify what order the points had to be drawn in. So unless you want me on one and you on the other—"
Dean held up a hand. "Fine, whatever, we'll get her to cover one, and then we can ask her about Roxy. Happy?"
Chuckling, Sam said, "Thrilled beyond all possible imagining."
"Hey, fellas, can I come in yet? Freezin' m' ass off out here!"
Sam turned toward the front door, through which Manfred had yelled. It was much colder tonight than it had been the previous night, and there was no reason to keep Manfred out of his own place. "It's clear!" Sam yelled.
FOURTEEN
Webster Avenue and East 199th Street
The Bronx, New York
Monday 20, November 2006
Dean hated waiting.
There were a lot of reasons why he had gone to Stanford a little over a year ago to fetch Sam, but at times like this he liked to think the main reason was because Sammy was actually good at the piddly crap. And the last two days had been chock full of piddly crap, ending now with the pair of them sitting in the Impala on Webster Avenue in the Bronx, waiting for something to happen.
Sunday had been pretty dull. Sam left messages on several people's voice mails, one of which was finally returned this morning, saying that the Poe website was paid for by a corporation called Pendulum Pit Incorporated ("Oooh, subtle," Dean had muttered at the time). It took no t
ime at all for Sam to use his research-fu to find out that Pendulum Pit Inc. was a self-owned corporation owned and operated by one Arthur Mackey.
Unfortunately, he didn't dig that up until after sundown, and they needed to try to stop their Poe nut—who Dean was still convinced was Pym or Mackey or whoever he was—from killing someone else.
Dean and Sam had volunteered to take Webster Avenue and 199th, which was a major thoroughfare containing parking lots, auto parts stores, and mechanics, with three or four floors' worth of apartments over many of the stores.
McBain took Fordham Road and MLK Boulevard—which was a huge intersection that had the Church of St. Nicholas of Tolentine and Devoe Park, as well as several more apartment buildings. Webster was pretty quiet at night, whereas the other location was fairly well traveled. They all agreed that it was better for the two fugitives to take the quieter spot.
The problem was, there were several spots where the next killing could take place, most of which were in apartments. Dean and Sam knew they couldn't just wander around looking too much, as this was a predominantly Latin American neighborhood and they stood out.
At least the car wasn't as big a deal as it might have been. One of the mechanics had a couple of vintage vehicles, and a 'fifty-four Buick was in the parking lot down the street from where Dean had parked. Generally, the Impala was a bit conspicuous, and Sam once made the mistake of bringing up the possibility of abandoning the vehicle for something less distinct, since they were now on the run. Dean made it clear that Sam was never to even consider the possibility of bringing that subject up again. He'd sooner cut off his left nut than give up the Impala.
Their third (and, God willing, final) excursion to the Park in Rear last night hadn't been much of an improvement. They had pretty much run out of excuses to bring up Roxy, and besides which, they seemed to have gotten as much intel as they were likely to get on that score. Roxy was just one of a long line of girlfriends these guys had bagged and tossed to the curb over the years, and Dean was convinced that half the stories they told about Roxy were actually about some other chick. To make matters worse, Jennifer wasn't working Sunday night, and all the other women in the Park in Rear were part of a couple or simply not his type. He'd been hoping that Jennifer would at least call—he'd given her his cell number before they left Saturday night—but so far, zip.
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