by Anton Strout
“I’ll ask Quimbley,” Connor said, “but I suspect he’ll be about as receptive to that as the Sectarians were to our request for the wooden fish.”
14
“I really shouldn’t be cavorting with the enemy,” the Sectarian Defense League’s Jane said with a vicious smile from across the table. “But that’s what us cultists are all about, right? Embracing temptation and not always doing the right thing?”
I was as surprised as anyone to be sitting at Mesa Grill across the table from Faisal Bane’s right-hand woman, but Dave Davidson had arranged a little reconciliatory powwow between the D.E.A. and the Sectarians. Since I had been the one who had rashly taken my bat to their reception desk, Connor thought it fitting that I had to lie in the bed I had made for myself.
Negotiation wasn’t really my strong point (hence the bat incident), and in coming to this dinner, I hadn’t known what to expect. Faisal Bane’s personal-assistant-in-Darkness had negotiated that she at least get a decent dinner out of the meeting-courtesy of my rapidly dwindling expense account, of course. Mesa Grill didn’t come cheap.
I relaxed after inspecting my third glass of wine in a row for any obvious signs of poisoning before taking a sip. It worked its magic over me, the sound of craptastic light jazz mixed with the pretheater crowd around us. I found the idea of breaking bread with the enemy terribly uncomfortable. Especially when the enemy’s tight black top left little to the imagination.
Jane’s casual dinner outfit was far more appealing than the clipboard and business attire I had last seen her in. Even her face seemed less harsh with her blond cascade of hair no longer pulled back into a bun. It softened her features immeasurably.
Jane looked down at my hands. “Nice gloves.”
I didn’t want to really get into my psychometry with the enemy, so I quickly changed the subject.
“You don’t strike me as the cultist type,” I said. I attacked the chile releno before me. It was true. Cute, flirty, and sassy didn’t really fit the cultist mold I had read about in the pamphlets circulating the office-and that’s what Jane had proved to be over the appetizers.
“Is there a type?” she asked coyly as she poked around the greens and blue corn chips on her plate.
“Well, I don’t want to sound like we stereotype,” I said, “but we do a fair amount of profiling. There are plenty of telltale warning signs of cultism. Ritualistic tattoos or scarification, nocturnal goings-on, joining the church of Scientology. You just don’t fit the bill.”
Her smile widened as if she was relishing her evilness, but then her face crumbled. “It’s that obvious, is it?”
I nodded.
“Look,” I said openly. “I’m not here in any capacity except to smooth things over in the City Hall sense, but you’re totally not what I had expected the Sectarians to send. How does someone like you even fall in with that crowd?”
“Same way I expect people fall in with yours,” she said defensively. When I refused to take umbrage at her words, she softened and continued. “Actually, it all happened a bit oddly, really. Months before coming to work at the Sectarian Defense League, I had been temping, doing all kinds of meaningless jobs for a host of ridiculous companies. Answering phones for law firms, cutting fabric swatches in the Fashion District, hole punching countless binders, playing hours of Solitaire and Minesweeper.”
It sounded wretched. “It sounds wretched,” I said.
“It was okay, honestly. Being a temp is all about being an outsider. It gave me freedom. I never grew too attached to any one job, no matter how promising it might seem, because I knew full well that the next day I’d probably be working in an advertising office sorting headshots for a coffee commercial.”
She stopped going a mile a minute, and averted her eyes back to her food, smiling apologetically.
“Maybe this is a bit more ‘Dear Diary’ than you’d like to hear over dinner,” she said shyly.
“No,” I encouraged her, “go on.” Hopefully the wine and letting her guard down might lead to me finding out something useful.
“My whole life I’ve felt like an outsider,” she said, leaning in and lowering her voice, “until the job with the Sectarians came along. Shandra, my handler-handler-geesh, I sound like I worked for the CIA! Anyway, she said there was a new client trying out our temp agency, a potential cash cow. So it was important for me to make a good first impression. ‘A happy client is a repeat client,’ she said. I wasn’t even sure what a Sectarian was, but I knew it was important to Shandra and that was good enough for me. So here I am.”
“Unbelievable,” I said.
I found it ludicrous that a temp had risen so easily to become the right-hand woman to one of the most dangerous cultists in the Tri-State Area. I could be with my department for years and never come that close to the seat of power! It didn’t seem fair that she had garnered such a lofty position by sheer chance. That type of job should have gone to someone like the old badass version of me. I used to have evil down pat.
“So they just jobbered you into a cultists’ rights organization and threw you headlong into evil?”
Jane laughed, covering her mouth. “Oh, no! The first week was a bit boring actually. A lot of filing, transferring of calls, typical office stuff, and then there was the incident where Mr. Bane’s original assistant director-a horror show of a woman-just disappeared. Not much of a loss if you ask me. I didn’t care for her from the start, honestly.”
“Why? Was shetoo evil?” I asked. I wondered if the forces of Darkness got all snippy with each other around the water cooler.
“No, Mr. Snarky,” Jane said, “but as Mr. Bane’s go-to girl, she knew she could be a condescending bitch and get away with it.” She blushed. “Then one day, she was just…gone.”
“Gone?”
Jane turned a bit more serious, and pushed her salad to the side. “Up and disappeared. Flew the coop or something…” She sipped at her wine then dabbed her lips with the napkin. “There’s a ridiculous rumor circulating that one of the filing cabinets consumed her, body and soul, but that’s just crazy talk. As if!”
She laughed, but I didn’t. Having recently been the survivor of an assault by a rampaging, carnivorous bookcase, I thought the rumor was most likely true.
Dinner arrived and Jane fell quiet until the waiter stepped out of earshot. “At least itseemed crazy until the Big Boss requested a meeting with me. That’s when I found out I worked for cultists.” She dug into her chicken.
“And that doesn’t bother you?!” I asked. I dropped my knife and fork as I tried to contain myself.
“Sure it did,” Jane nodded. She cut another piece of chicken and held it up. “This is to die for, by the way. You want to try?” I shook my head, trying not to look too offended by what I was hearing. She popped the chicken in her mouth. “At first I was shaken by the idea, but you’ve never been a temp before, have you? Frankly, after whoring out my secretarial services for some of the shadier law firms in this town, the League seemed downright pleasant comparatively. Mr. Bane talked me through what it meant to be part of the cultist lifestyle. He assured me that cultists are just like anyone else, except possibly more ambitious than average and definitely more likely to own their home.”
I gestured to the waiter for more wine. Though the conversation was getting to me, I reminded myself to keep my rising anger in check. The meeting was not just a political patch job; it was also an opportunity for some recon. I couldn’t afford to blow my cool, and I needed the Department to get their money’s worth out of our forced meeting.
Who cared if I felt uncomfortable dining with the enemy? Jane was a talker when it came to her life, and I prayed that she would be just as forthcoming with information about her boss. Still, I didn’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity or be outraged at how easily she accepted working for the forces of Darkness.
“Finding out that I was working for a cultists’ rights group actually came as a relief,” she said. “It explained a lot of t
hings I had noticed around the office. For one, outside of the front office, a lot of the employees look a little gray around the gills. I thought it might just be the fluorescents washing them out, but no. Zombies…some of the nicest zombies you’d ever have the pleasure of working with, but zombies nonetheless.”
I pushed my food out of the way and leaned forward conspiratorially. “Jane, do you hear yourself? Do you hear what you’re saying? When they made you the offer of becoming Faisal Bane’s personal imp, weren’t you a bit hesitant? Sure, an important-sounding job and a title to go with it are flattering, but didn’t some kind of alarm bells go off in your head? Like maybe ‘Hmmm…I was sure I had heard or read somewhere that working for the forces of Darkness’-capital “D” there, Janey-‘is somewhat questionable.’ Didn’t that occur to you?”
“Don’t call me Janey,” she snapped.
Her eyes narrowed and her face regained a little bit of the viciousness she had exhibited back at her offices.
“I told him that I’d have to think about it,” she said. People around us were starting to stare at our heated exchange. Jane lowered her voice, but the hostility was still there. “I knew it went against many of the beliefs I had been brought up with back in Kansas and I needed time to think it through.”
“I’m sure the Master of Darkness took that well,” I fired back. Maybe it was the wine, but more likely it was my own stupidity for thinking a civil meeting of our agencies could yield anything other than grief.
When I looked up from my plate, Jane was on the verge of tears, which made me feel even more uncomfortable. Evil was hard enough to contend with without its appointed representative going all blubbery.
“I assessed my life that night,” she said as the tears began to fall, “and found it came up lacking, okay? I had spent five years in New York City, and what did I have to show for it? Friends? None to speak of, really. How do you make any astemporary employment, Simon? The closest I came to friendship was this one likable guy I started talking to, and all it earned me was a week of phone calls going on and on about the troubles he and his wife were having with their sex life. I think you know wherethat was headed.”
I could sympathize with some of what she was saying. I knew the role of the outsider well. While my loner status was more due to my unpredictable power, I had to admit that my own dance card of friends was just as empty as hers. But no matter how you sliced it, we were on the opposite sides of the same coin. Every day I made a choice to break my foot off in evil’s ass, and technically she was on the receiving end of my boot.
Her composure returned and she wiped away the tears. “The more I thought about my life, the more I realized that I had been merely treading water, waiting for something to happen. What’s that John Lennon quote? ‘Life is what happens while we’re making plans’? I was sick of waiting. If I had ever needed a sign, it was then. That’s when my door buzzed.”
“Oh, well, that’s manna from Heaven!” Part of me hated the edge of moral superiority in my voice.
“Shut up,” she said. “I know the doorbell ringing wasn’t an actual sign! It was a courier from the S.D.L. delivering an envelope.”
“What was in it?”
“The answer to all my doubts.Benefits -401K, incentive programs, stock options, a signing bonus, dental…you name it, it was in there. But the clincher was that my ob-gyn was already listed as In-Program.”
I gestured for the check.
15
I left the restaurant and took three separate cabs back to the Lovecraft Cafй to make sure I wasn’t being followed. Pounding out a report was the last thing I wanted to do at this late hour, but I wanted to get all the details of my conversation with Jane down before they faded. Surprisingly, the Inspectre was still in, and he sat me down in his office to go over my dinner conversation with the enemy. I recounted the details as best I could while the old man poured himself some tea and processed everything I had told him. I could have kissed him for the hours he saved me on paperwork.
“I think she could break, sir,” I said with confidence. “She hasn’t been with them for long, and I think she might be our best chance at getting some useful intel on Irene and the wooden fish.”
“You really think so, my boy?” the Inspectre asked, sipping his tea.
I nodded.
“Hroomh,” he said. “I already have several avenues being pursued concerning this Sectarian Defense League, but if you think you have an angle…I say go for it.”
“Me?” I said and caught myself before I broke out laughing. “I’ve got a mountain of paperwork waiting for me as it is, sir. Maybe we could get a Shadower team on it…”
“Nonsense,” the Inspectre said. “You think I want Wesker’s lackeys in on this? Besides, they’re already overburdened. I’ve got faith in you, my boy.”
“That’s very kind of you, Inspectre,” I said, hoping I was coming off as polite as possible, “but it’s not really my jurisdiction. I really am swamped and Connor will kill me if-”
“Blast it, son!” he yelled, slamming his cup on the desk. Tea flew over the rim and soaked into the pile of papers beneath it. “Not your jurisdiction? What part of theOther in Other Division do you not understand?”
Quimbley wanted more intel, and that meant I would have to do my own surveillance work. I was looking forward to that in the same enthusiastic way I might look forward to a debilitating kick to the crotch. I didn’t mind offering up my services to the Department as far as my psychic abilities were concerned, but the type of work Shadower teams did was far too invasive for my liking.
“I’m not really comfortable with the idea of spying on someone, sir.”
“Well, then,” he said, reaching into one of his drawers and pulling out a pad withFraternal Order of Goodness written across the top in Gothic-looking script. “What better way to get acquainted with surveillance work than with diving in both feet first! That’s a good lad.”
He wrote on it briefly, tore off the sheet, and held it out to me.
“Here,” he said. “Give this to whoever’s on duty in the supply room. I’ve made a list of surveillance equipment you’re going to need. Get some rest tonight, though. You look horrible. I want you out there skulking and stalking like the best of them tomorrow night, understand?”
I stood there, staring at the paper in his hand, but I didn’t reach for it.
The Inspectre sighed and stroked his mustache with his free hand. “I appreciate your concern over being a Peeping Tom, Simon, my boy. I truly do. But blast it, man, buck up! That’s an order.”
I took the paper from him and turned toward the door.
“That’s my boy!” he said, sounding like a dad at a father-son picnic. “Now go be lascivious!”
As high-tech as the spy gear in the black aluminum case was, the weight of it was almost more than I could contend with. Combined with the rest of the workload I brought home with me, it made an inconspicuous entrance into my apartment impossible.
Not that it would have mattered. When I opened the door, Irene was waiting expectantly on the couch and rose to greet me.
“Any luck?” she asked and the hope in her eyes just about killed me.
“The wheels of government-sponsored paranormal investigation turn slow,” I said, paraphrasing something I had heard Dave Davidson say.
Her face fell. “Well, how was your day anyway? Did you do anything exciting?”
I was reluctant to bring up my dinner “date” with the enemy so I simply shook my head. “Nothing special.”
“Well, I do hope you and Mr. Christos have better luck in the future,” she said. She sat back on the couch, but she was still visibly upset.
“I’m sorry, Irene,” I said, sitting on the couch next to her and throwing the aluminum case on the floor, “but on the plus side, I have this.”
The weight of the case had shaken the floorboards when it hit.
“What in God’s name is in that?” she said, eyeing it suspiciously.
&n
bsp; “Technically, it’s part of your case,” I said. I flicked it open. The contents were a collection of gismos and gadgets that James Bond would have been in awe of. “I’ve got a little reconnaissance that needs doing.”
“Oh my,” she said. “I hope it’s nothing too dangerous.”
I slipped on my gloves. I picked up a pair of electronic eyes, fished out the instructions, and started reading up on how to calibrate them.
“Let’s hope not,” I said. “I signed on with the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, not the Department of Life-Threatening Affairs.”
She smiled.
“Does it have to do with anyone I know?” she asked. “Or anyone I would know if I could remember anyone I know?”
She was trying to make light of the situation, but her body flickered in and out for a second, showing her frustration.
“No one I can discuss yet,” I said, avoiding any talk of Jane for reasons both personal and professional.
“Well, whatcan you talk about then?” she snapped, and I looked up at her, taken aback. “Sorry.”
I thought for a moment of something safer to talk about while I fiddled with the light sensitivity on the eyes. How the hell was anyone supposed to figure these things out even with the instructions?
“Do you know anything about a wooden fish?” I asked. It seemed harmless enough to bring up something that I knew had been her property.
“A woodenfish?” she said, laughing. “No, I think I’d remember that.”
“Does the name ‘the Westmore’ mean anything to you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Sounds like a hotel or an apartment complex. Did I die there?”
“I can’t really tell you,” I said, “but off the record? No. Not there.”
Nothing I mentioned was triggering any memories of her past.
“Speaking of apartment complexes,” she said, “I do believe you had a call from your building manager. He was going on about you falling behind on your maintenance…”