Wisdom's Grave 01 - Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

  “It’d be real smart for you to cooperate right now,” Marie told him.

  The kid slunk lower in the back seat. “Told y’all, I don’t deal ink. The baggies and scales are for my weed business.”

  “You’re not helping your case here,” Marie said. “Are we close?”

  The kid peeped over the back seat. “Yeah, yeah. Corner right up there. Shit, he’s gonna see me.”

  Tony pulled over. The unmarked sedan nestled snug against the curb, camouflaged behind a string of empty cars. On the corner ahead, a sallow-eyed young man in a battered jacket too heavy for the spring weather was leaning against the wall of a Caribbean deli.

  “That the guy?” Marie asked.

  “That’s Juicy. Everybody in the neighborhood gets their shit from him. He’s the only ink hookup for twelve blocks.”

  “If you’re lying, you’re gonna see us again before the sun goes down,” Tony warned him.

  “I’m not lying! Swear to God, he’s my hookup. You’re gonna leave my name out of it, right?”

  “Never even met you,” Marie said. “Congratulations, we’re too busy to bust you today. Get out, walk away, and keep walking.”

  He gave her a hopeful look. “Can I have my shit back?”

  She turned in her seat and stared at him.

  “Five seconds. Four. Three.”

  He was out of the car and scrambling down the street before she finished counting.

  “What do you think?” Tony said. “Try and sweat him?”

  Marie shook her head. “Every time somebody busts an ink dealer, one of three things happens: turns out they’re dealing just enough to pay for their own habit and they don’t know anything, they’re low level and still don’t know anything, or they’re just high enough on the food chain to be more afraid of their bosses than they are of us.”

  “And every damn one of ’em gets bailed out, then vanishes.” Tony sighed. “You’d think some judge might take that as a hint and start holding them on remand.”

  “That’d require actual thought. Let’s sit on this guy for a while, see if anything interesting shakes out.”

  It was a smooth operation. A few times an hour, a car would coast up to the corner. Old beaters, family SUVs, the occasional luxury sedan—Juicy had friends all over the city. He’d lean in for ten seconds of brisk conversation and make the money disappear into his coat. Then the car would take the next right, turning the corner and cruising out of sight, while he tapped out a quick text on his phone.

  “Figure he’s got a partner with the goods squatting on the next block,” Tony said. “Juicy never touches the drugs himself so there’s nothing illegal on him, just a bankroll. He calls ahead, and the customers slow down just long enough for his buddy to toss the goods through their passenger-side window.”

  Marie slouched in her seat, studying from a distance. “Probably a kid. These guys like using minors to hold their stash. Slap on the wrist if they get caught.”

  “Plus,” Tony said, “the little shits can run fast.”

  “There was a convenience store a couple of blocks back, wasn’t there?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I need an ATM,” Marie said.

  She walked him through the plan then she took out a hundred in cash, folding the twenties in a plain white envelope. Then they cruised back up the block. Tony adjusted his silk tie and checked his hair in the rearview mirror.

  They stopped at the corner. Marie’s window hummed down. Juicy checked them out from the far end of the sidewalk, then slow-shuffled his way over.

  “You lookin’ for directions?”

  Tony flashed a pearly smile. “Looking for ink. Queens is dry, but a brother told me you’re solid.”

  Juicy squinted at him like he had X-ray vision and he was hunting for a badge under Tony’s jacket.

  “This brother got a name?”

  “Nope,” Tony said. “Neither do I and neither do you.”

  Juicy thought about it for a second, then nodded to himself. Weighing risks and rewards. “Yeah, all right, how much?”

  Tony glared at Marie. “Girl, get the damn money out already. Don’t be wasting this man’s time.”

  Marie pitched her gaze low and pulled her shoulders in tight, making herself look harmless and cowed. Undercover work was an acting job at heart. Selling a character, selling a story, sometimes with nothing but body language. She pulled the envelope of cash from her blazer, keeping her holster carefully out of sight. Juicy took the envelope, peeked inside, and made it vanish.

  “Take a right, and drive slow up the next block. Look for my boy in the red-and-white kicks. He’ll run it out to you.”

  He started to turn away. Tony held up one hand.

  “Just one thing, my man. Assuming your shit’s quality—”

  “It’s quality, all right,” Juicy told him.

  “Assuming so, I’m a party promoter, among various and sundry other pastimes. I’ve got a rave coming up, an under-the-radar deal, and I need to make a big buy. Can you handle a bulk order?”

  Juicy had that squint again, like he was counting dollar signs in his head. “How much bulk?”

  “Five g’s worth.”

  He blinked. “That’s a lot of weight.”

  “Hey,” Tony said, “if you can’t handle it, I totally understand.”

  “Nah, nah, I can handle it, okay? Just not right now, I don’t keep that much on me.” Juicy rubbed his chin, staring up the street, desperate to keep a fat fish on the line. “But I can get it. Tomorrow. Tomorrow morning.”

  “First thing? The party’s tomorrow night.”

  “First thing,” Juicy said. “You gonna bring cash, right? Small bills?”

  “Crisp and clean. And just so we’re clear? We’re gonna do the hand-off at the same time, got it? I’m not giving you five thousand dollars then driving around the corner and hoping I get my shit. This goes right, there’s more business in it for you. A lot more. My guy’s not reliable anymore, and I’m looking for a new regular hookup.”

  “Whatever, it’s cool. Just be here.”

  Tony threw the car into drive and cruised around the corner. Halfway up the block, a kid in bright sneakers ran up and pitched a baggie through Marie’s open window. He couldn’t have been more than twelve years old.

  The crystals of ink glistened inside the transparent plastic, spiky and oily-black. Marie tossed the baggie in the glove compartment.

  “Right now,” she said, “Juicy’s deciding if he’s the smart kind of dealer—the kind who stands to make a lot of easy money over the long haul—or the dumb kind who’s going to try and rip us off for the cash.”

  “I’m betting on smart,” Tony said.

  They rounded the corner and circled the block. They found a parking spot at the far end of Juicy’s street, watching from a distance. The dealer was pacing, anxious, talking on the phone.

  “And that’s him calling his supplier,” Marie said.

  Juicy hung up and started walking.

  “And that’s him going to his supplier,” Tony said. “Excellent plan, Detective Reinhart.”

  “Well executed, Detective Fisher. It’s almost like we’re partners or something. C’mon, we’d better tail him on foot. He’ll notice us creeping up on him in the car.”

  Even on foot, trailing a block behind, it was dicey. Juicy had one of the most important qualities of a successful drug dealer: a healthy sense of paranoia. They had to duck into doorways more than once as he stopped to check his six. He disappeared down the stairs to a subway platform and they scrambled to keep up, thankful for the bustling crowd while they waited for a train twenty feet away from him.

  He got off the train in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Tony and Marie stayed on his tail.

  Juicy led them down a tangle of gutted streets and sidewalks strewn with crumpled litter and pigeon spatter. Marie gazed up at towers of crumbling brickwork, the windows shrouded by tacked-up bedsheets.

  “I thought Bed-Stuy was going hipster,�
�� she muttered.

  “Stuyvesant Heights is,” Tony said, keeping his voice low. “This ain’t Stuyvesant Heights.”

  Juicy squirmed through a torn gap in a sagging chain-link fence. Tony and Marie hung back at the edge of the lot, using the corner of a boarded-up bodega for cover. Beyond the fence lay a razor strip of yellowed grass, a parking lot, and the dirt-brown facade of a storage depot. The weathered sign out front read AJ Shipping and Freight. From the look of their knockoff logo—a curling AJ monogram in a yellow shield—and the squat brown delivery trucks lining the parking lot, they were taking their best shot at riding on UPS’s coattails.

  Juicy walked up to the side door and rang a buzzer. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking over his shoulder, anxious. The door opened just wide enough for him to slip inside before it slammed shut.

  “A shipping company,” Marie said. “Opens up all kinds of possibilities for moving product in and out of the city.”

  “We should call it in.”

  “Better idea.” Marie wriggled her way through the gap in the fence. “Let’s get a closer look first and find out how exactly much backup we’re going to need.”

  “What?” Tony whispered. “No. Marie—”

  She was already off and moving, loping across the parking lot in a low crouch. He sighed and followed her, cursing under his breath as the fence’s broken tines scraped against the fabric of his new jacket.

  Thirty-Seven

  “You keep looking at your phone.”

  Nessa glanced across the dinner table at Richard. They sat at opposite ends, the gulf of glass and wrought iron marking the no-man’s-land between them.

  “Expecting a text from work,” she said.

  “Huh.”

  She speared a sprig of broccoli on her fork. Her medallion-sized filet was bloody rare, the plate drowning in watery scarlet, and she wiped the broccoli back and forth in the juices before popping it between her teeth. Richard sucked on his bottle of beer and watched her across the gulf.

  Nessa hated that table.

  He’d insisted on buying it for entertaining guests, once every two or three months. The rest of the time they ate on opposite ends of the dining room, isolated by the span of polished glass. Together, but not.

  “You haven’t taken your meds,” he said.

  “I took them before I came down for dinner.”

  “No,” Richard said. “You didn’t.”

  She glanced up at him, arching an eyebrow. “And you know this how?”

  He sighed, pushing his chair back. He walked across the room, looming over her, and slapped her pill bottle down next to her plate.

  “I counted.”

  “You…excuse me?”

  “Dr. Neidermyer called me. He said he didn’t think you’d been taking your medication. So I counted. Eighteen pills in the bottle, same as there was this morning.”

  “I am not a damn child, Richard—”

  “Then stop acting like one!” he shouted. He drew his hand back, her face shadowed by his clenched fist. He froze.

  Then he dropped his hand to his side, unclenched it, and stomped back to his end of the table.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” he asked her as he dropped into his chair.

  She didn’t have anything to say, couldn’t speak. She was still trapped in a single breath five seconds ago, looking up at his fist. Wondering how close he’d come to using it.

  “Take the pill,” he told her. “Now. While I watch. If you’re going to act like a child, I’m going to have to treat you like one.”

  Her fingers were numb as she unscrewed the cap. She tapped the pill into her shaking palm. Then she tossed it into her mouth and washed it down with a swallow of Perrier.

  “This is how we’re doing it from now on,” he said. “You’ll take your meds in front of me, because I obviously can’t trust you to take care of yourself.”

  She stared at him, still in shock. Her voice came out as a strained whisper. “What is wrong with you?”

  “With me?” He blinked at her. “What’s wrong with me? Jesus, will you look at yourself once in a while? I have given everything I have to take care of you. I’ve stood by you while other men would have walked out years ago—I mean, you really don’t know, do you? What about Dad’s party?”

  “What about it?”

  Richard threw a hand in the air and tossed back a swig of beer. “That I had people coming up to me all night, looking at me with pity in their eyes and asking if there was anything they could do to help, you know, with our situation. Because my darling wife was standing in a corner, staring at a wall and talking to herself.”

  Nessa shrank in her chair. The room, the table, her husband—everything seemed to loom larger by the heartbeat, towering over her, like she was aging in reverse. Turning back into a helpless little girl with her feet barely touching the floor.

  “I wasn’t—I mean—I don’t talk to myself.”

  Richard sighed. His anger softened along with his voice.

  “No, Nessa. You think you don’t talk to yourself. You had a twenty-minute conversation with the goddamn wallpaper in the middle of the living room. I saw it. Our friends saw it. Everyone saw it.”

  Fear and humiliation washed over her in a white-water torrent, so strong she clung to the edge of the glass table. She felt like it might sweep her away forever. Part of her wished that it would.

  “How do you think that makes me feel?” Richard asked her.

  “I’m…sorry,” was all she could manage.

  “Hey. Hey. It’s all right.” He gave her a tired, sad smile. “I just want you to get better, hon. And you will. I need you to trust me, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Nobody is going to take care of you,” he said. “Nobody but me. And I’m going to protect you, and I’m going to love you. Always. It’s just you and me.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  * * *

  After dinner Nessa sat alone in her workroom, penned in by the black octagonal walls and her half-finished canvases. She held a sketch pad on her lap. The art wouldn’t come. Not even a single stroke of her pencil, as she felt a too-familiar fog settling over her brain. Her thoughts wrapped themselves in wooly gauze.

  Marie hadn’t texted.

  She’s a detective, Nessa thought. She works odd hours. Long hours.

  She’s avoiding you.

  I helped her yesterday, she thought. She was happy to see me.

  She was faking it. The second you left she and her roommate talked about what a crazy stalker you are and how to get rid of you.

  Nessa squeezed her eyes shut. Her fist clenched. The pencil snapped against her palm.

  She tossed it aside, broken splinters clattering across the wooden floor, and picked up a fresh one.

  As much as her brain wanted her to, she couldn’t believe that. She could believe Richard, could believe Dr. Neidermyer, but…not that. Marie was special. Marie was real.

  Marie was hers.

  She stood and walked to her last canvas. The charcoal sketch of the three faceless women, dancing ecstatically around a bonfire. In the sky above the flames, she began to draw. The curves of a familiar face, the hard angles of a suit of armor. Slow, careful work. It made one little piece of her happy, the tiny chunk of her mind that struggled to rise above the brain fog like a sailor drowning in a maelstrom.

  Something wasn’t right. The world and her brain weren’t lining up. She thought of Dr. Neidermyer, raising her prescribed dosage when she’d been feeling better than ever, and felt a hot flash of angry suspicion.

  Which is how crazy people react, she told herself. That’s paranoia. You know this.

  Even so.

  She set down her pencil, took out her phone, and sorted through a database of psychiatrists. Somebody with no ties to her husband’s family, somebody with a practice nowhere near Neidermyer’s. She poked her head outside the workroom door, making sure Richard was out of earshot, and lowered her voice
as she cupped her hand over the phone.

  “Yes, my name is—” She paused, thinking. “Vanessa Fieri, and I’d like to make an appointment with Dr. Robinson. Yes, I’m a new patient. Tomorrow? That’s…that’s perfect, actually.”

  Normally there’d be at least a week’s wait, the receptionist told her. Her nine o’clock had just canceled, an illness in the family, ten minutes before Nessa called. A lucky accident.

  She returned to her canvas and picked up her pencil. The faceless, shadowy women danced around the fire, charcoal flames crackling as the smoke rose ever higher.

  Thirty-Eight

  Dora moved by day. No one saw her.

  The sun struggled to push through the gauzy Los Angeles smog. Only the heat made it through, sidewalks simmering and the air gritty and dry. Dora ducked into a half-empty diner across the street from the Keller and Sons Auction House and took a seat in the back. She didn’t bother ordering, and nobody behind the counter noticed her.

  They didn’t notice the jar under her arm, either, as she set it on the scratched wooden table before her. It was the size of a thermos, carved from white soapstone and sealed with a silver cap. Letters glittered along the pale surface, runes in a dead and forgotten tongue.

  By now, her coven sisters would have their own missions well underway. The Mourner had already sent her pawn to retrieve the knife Nessa would need. Their mother would be using a wayward witch as a cat’s-paw, delivering chaos to their mutual enemies and slowing their progress. Now it was Dora’s turn. She raked her fingers through her dreadlocks and stared out the window.

  There was nothing extraordinary about Keller and Sons. The warehouse had good security and an auction hall up front. It was closed today, though, as they packed and prepared to deliver the goods from yesterday’s sales. If she let her vision slide out of focus, the walls disappeared, leaving the people behind. They scurried this way and that, going about their lives, trailing wounds and mistakes and secrets behind them. They couldn’t see how they were all joined by invisible thread, their fates conjoined.