The Gypsy

by Stephen Brust

  "UP THE ROAD"

  Early morning: Cigany sat cross-legged in his hidey-hole beneath the overpass and stared at his knife. It would need to be cleaned, he. knew, before he could fully trust it again. Until it was, it could draw the Fair Lady to him, and who knew what form the attack would take? He was not invulnerable, he knew that.He had lived a long time because of his wits, and skill, and luck, but now the Fair Lady had seen him,and he Her, and the battle was joined in earnest, and he knew that She had the power to destroy him if he wasn't careful.

  Death didn't frighten him, but the idea that he could die after all of those forgotten years, and all of that heartache and pain; this was not to be borne.

  As he stood up, the sun's rays struck him across the face, and he shuddered, knowing that today someone would try to kill him. He made the sign of the cross in the air and looked around for a piece of wood to touch. There were none, so he picked up some gravel and threw it in front of him saying, "May my road be higher than the river and lower than the sun, and may my feet find a safe way home."

  He brushed his hands on his shirt and set off, keeping to alleys as much as possible, always staying alert for the police. As he walked he found a clothing store and stole a snakeskin belt (the only snakeskin he could find), pulled a twig from a hazel tree, and begged a small quantity of holy water from a confused priest. He drank a bowl of tasteless soup and a cup of weak coffee at a Howard Johnson's, then continued to forage. As he walked, his vision began to blur, and he felt his headache coming back. He took the piece of paper out of his pocket and tried to remember how the scribbling on it could cure the headache, but it was no good- He laughed grimly to himself. "When my head doesn't hurt," he thought,"I don't think of it, and when it does, I can't read it." He took wheat flour from a grocery store and a white candle from a pharmacy. He took a piece of bark from an oak, and, with the knife, scratched designs of the moon and the stars on the bark.

  Armed with these things, he made his way back to his place beneath the overpass and waited for the rising of the full moon of autumn.

  1980's

  They said. "Why are you here?"

  I said, "I'm doing time,

  'Cause I'm willing to break laws

  But I won't commit no crime."

  "NO PASSENGER"

  It was humiliating to be a coachman and to be forced to ride in a cab; a humiliation only partly alleviated by riding up front, with the driver. Sometimes they wouldn't let you do that, but this man, big and burly like an innkeeper and gnarled like a peasant woman,didn't seem to mind. His nod was an implied shrug,and as the Coachman settled into place he said, "Whereto?"

  "The bus station," he said. More humiliations in store.

  The cab pulled away. "Meeting someone?"

  "No, going somewhere."

  The driver frowned for a moment then shrugged. The lack of luggage probably puzzled him. He said,"Where ya going?"

  "I'm looking for birds," he said, only coming to realize it as the words were spoken.

  "Birds?"

  "I have to find a Raven and an Owl before the Dove kills himself."

  The driver cleared his throat and twitched nervously, obviously having second thoughts about having this wacko in the front seat "Whatever you say,buddy," he finally said. They spoke no more during the journey.

  13 NOV 09:47

  My partner doesn't even know my name.

  If he did I think I'd hate him

  Just the same.

  "STEPDOWN"

  Stepovich wished he were driving. Durand always talked while he drove, and flapped his right hand at Stepovich, as if that were an essential part of talking.

  "So the lab guy says, 'Yeah, that bastard drove that knife into her like he was trying to shove it clear to China, but that wasn't the weirdest part of it, though,'so I says, 'Oh, yeah,' kind of casual, and he says,'No, the weirdest part was the wound configuration.I didn't know what the hell it was, I thought maybe the killer had a defective knife or something, but one of the older guys, he looks at it and says, hey, will you look at the hilt impressions on this wound?' "

  The taxicab at the corner barely curtsied to the stop sign before it swung out in front of them. Durand crammed on the brakes and Stepovich's palm, slapped the dash as he braced himself.

  "Shit," hissed Stepovich, and spent a few futile moments groping for the ends of the seat belt, but as always it was stuffed somewhere in the crevice of the seat back.

  "Yeah!" Durand agreed enthusiastically, hardly pausing in his story. "You know, a hilt impression.It's a mark around the knife wound when a blade gets really driven in. This one was really weird. The lab guy tells me the old guy said the knife must be a custom job. It left these three little bruises around the wound, like there were little studs sticking out from the guard. That knife-"

  "Durand." Stepovich spoke without looking at him, but his cold tone stopped the story in midsentence. "It's a homicide, isn't it?"

  "Well, yeah," Durand sounded sulky.

  "Then leave it to the homicide guy. They hate it when guys like us sniff around in their shit. You won't get any thanks for it. No one's going to think you're Sherlock Holmes. Even if you come up with something, you won't get the credit. The only thing you'll get is a reputation as a hotshot boy scout who can't mind his own business. Worse, they're gonna figure you're out to make them look bad, so they're going to devote a little time to making you look bad. Only they're going to be better at it. You're suddenly going to find that you've screwed up any crime scene you're called to, that you've mishandled evidence and handled witnesses all wrong. And that's going to go in your file. You get what I'm saying?" Dumbshit.

  "Fuck."

  "Yeah," Stepovich agreed, and leaned back, scanning the street and listening to the gabble and hiss of the radio.

  "But don't it count for nothing that we were there first, that we found her? And that we probably even had brought them the guy, cause the description from the tenant next door matched our bust. Hell, we had that gypsy, all locked up, and it never woulda happened if some fuckup hadn't cut him loose before…"

  A sick, cold little animal had gotten into Stepovich's belly, and now it was stretching. He hadn't been listening that closely to Dumbshit's story, and he should have. "You talking about that old gypsy woman? And the guy we'd hauled in from in front of the cemetery, on suspicion of the liquor store killing?"

  "Shit, yes! I wouldn't a been pumping the lab guy if I didn't think we had a stake in it, and…"

  "Say the thing about the knife again," Stepovich cut in, but he didn't really need to hear it again. He could feel it, cold under his thumb as he pressed down on the little stars and wondered what they signified. He hadn't really thought about what kind of marks they would leave when he was sitting on his bed looking at the piece of evidence he hadn't turned in. Hadn't thought of anything at all but getting rid of it. Of returning the damning evidence to the murderer…

  "Couldn't have been," he said, suddenly remembering that he'd had the knife when the gypsy woman was killed, that it had been tucked away in the drawer of his night stand. But whoever had one custom blade was likely to have two, or would at least know where the other one had come from, hell, it could be some kind of cult, all of them using the same weapons, and maybe Durand had been right, they'd had the thread that could unravel it the day they'd had that John Doe Gypsy.

  "You okay?"

  Durand's question was very careful, and Stepovich suddenly realized it had been very quiet in the car for some time. He looked at his hands braced against the dashboard as if to hold off some sudden collision. He forced them to drop down, felt his elbows rubbery with tension. "Just stretching. And thinking. That lab guy, he say anything else?" He stared out at the passing panorama of Cushman Street. Transition blocks.Old hotels that were more like cheap rooming houses now, lobbies full of snoozing winos and the smell of dirty carpets, interspersed with cheap bars and sex show places. LIVE NUDES ON STAGE flashed with the sign. Well, hell, at least it didn't
say DEAD NUDES ON STAGE. Maybe that would be next week's show. "I mean, was there anything else weird about the killing?" he nudged Durand. Shoulda been listening before, he chided himself.

  "Thought you said it wasn't smart to get mixed up in a homicide investigation?" Durand asked coyly.

  Stepovich flicked his eyes at his partner, and away. Like Joey Petmann, he suddenly thought. Ted Petmann's little brother, and when Stepovich and Ted were kids and best friends, Joey had followed them everywhere, bugging the shit out of them. But his favorite thing to do had been to get something they wanted, and then hold out on them. Bubble gum or the latest Blackhawk comic or a Polaroid picture of Stevie Caldwell's big sister in the bathtub- That's how Durand's face looked right now, just like Joey Petmann's face had looked as he leaned over the edge of the tree fort with the rope pulled up and waved the Polaroid out of reach.

  Stepovich turned and looked out the window and said, "Well, those lab guys are taught to be pretty tight-lipped. Probably wouldn't part with anything important anyway. Not to some patrol cop in a bar,anyway. Hey!" Stepovich interrupted as Durand's mouth opened in an "oh, yeah!" face. "Hey! How in hell did Willy get back on the street so soon? I thought Rich and Trope busted him hard for beating one of his girls."

  "Where?" Durand demanded, and nearly sideswiped a parked car craning his neck to look back.

  "You missed him. Or maybe it wasn't him." Durand hated Willy. The wiry little pimp was meaner than hell, and completely unafraid of cops. No one liked to bust him because Willy had ways of making it unpleasant for the arresting officers. Cut up the upholstery in one squad car. Smeared the chili burger he was eating down another cop's uniform. Rumor had it he'd taken a dump in the back seat of Kelly's patrol car. And the first time Durand had collared him, Willy stuck his finger down his throat and threw up all down the front of him. The guy was crazy.

  "Where was he?" Durand demanded again- His bottom teeth clamped against his upper lip. Looked like a bulldog. Tenacious as one, too-

  "Hell, he's gone now. You want to take a coffee break pretty soon?" Stepovich smiled at him.

  "I guess." Durand kept glancing in the rearview mirror, and then over at Stepovich, as if unable to decide which to pursue. "There was one other weird thing about the dead gypsy woman," he offered.

  "Yeah? Well, turn left at the next light and go about six blocks, get us out of this hole. I don't wanta get served by some waitress that probably gives hand jobs on the side. Let's go to Norm's, okay? It's clean and cheap."

  "I mean, the knife was weird enough, you know,but it gets weirder," Durand offered desperately -

  Hey, Joey, we don't wanta see your stupid Polaroid. We got a whole Playboy at our fort, and it's fulla pictures of real girls, not somebody's sister. Stepovich flicked a glance at Durand. "Yeah?" he offered, then,"Or we could go to that new place, the one the Korean guy opened on Fifteenth. I hear it's clean. You been there yet?"

  "No- Uh, Norm's let's go to Norm's. But there was something weird about that killing. I mean, besides the knife with the little studs. Four separate stab wounds, I tell you that? Every one right to the hilt. Lab guy says the first one was the fatal one. She musta known she was already dead, but she kept on fighting. Can you beat that?"

  "Mean old ladies are like that. Harder to kill than cats." Stepovich knew he just had to wait now and he'd get all that Durand had.

  "Maybe. Yeah, maybe. But stuff had been done to the body."

  Stepovich was silent, a little sick. What could she have done to make someone want to kill her? And what kind of a person could push a knife into another human being, not just once, to kill her, but over andover as she was struggling and dying? He thought of the Gypsy with his black unreadable eyes and empty face. Could you do it, he asked the image in his mind,and the Gypsy in his mind shrugged his wide shoulders and told him nothing.

  "Not rape. It wasn't anything like that. Someone had cut a lock of hair from the back of her head, down underneath at the nape of her neck."

  "Souvenir?"

  "Maybe. Or maybe proof that a job had been done."

  Stepovich shook his head wearily. "Lock of grey hair is too generic. They'd have taken something more personal, a piece of jewelry, something like that.Sounds like a souvenir to me."

  Or a cult killing of some kind, some kind of crazy with a special knife who kills her and takes a lock of her hair, some kind of a wacko. Or a very personal revenge of some kind. Or a total crazy, with no reasons at all, only impulses. The Gypsy in his mind was smiling secretively now. That day they busted him,he hadn't even seemed sure of his name. Chuck maybe, but he wasn't sure, so they'd made him John Doe. Man like that, couldn't remember his own name,maybe he wouldn't remember what he'd done the day before. Maybe he'd look in Stepovich's face and seem baffled and innocent.

  "Here's Norm's."

  And he'd sent Ed after him, to look at things a little. Great, Stepovich. Don't just fuck your career up by withholding evidence, and then turning over what might be a murder weapon to some whacked-out gypsy by a cemetery. Go ahead and drag Ed into it,send him out to look for someone who was probably psycho, who'd probably cut up your old buddy and take a hair sample when he was through. Great. Some cop you are.

  "We going in, or what?"

  "What?"

  "You want to get a cup of coffee here?"

  They were parked outside Norm's, Stepovich noticed belatedly. He wondered if Tiffany Marie was working, hoped she wasn't. She always looked so damn glad to see him. He didn't want to deal with any kid grinning and chattering at him right now. He shouldered the door open, nearly banging it into the parking meter, and stumbled out. He felt as if he'd been asleep and had suddenly wakened. Durand was looking at him funny. He restrained the impulse to glare back, and followed him into Norm's. They claimed a couple of stools at the counter and ordered coffee. "Back in a second," Stepovich told Durand,and headed for the phone. Time to start cleaning up the mess he'd made.

  Ed's phone rang. Four. Five. Six. "Hello." Pissed voice.

  "Ed, it's me. Listen. About that little thing I asked you to look into. Don't bother. It's fizzled out into nothing, no big deal. No sense you messing with it."

  "For this I come in all the way from the garage? To hear you tell me to forget it, it's nothing. Shit. Just when I thought I had a hot tip for you, too. Hey. Guess what? This is gonna make you laugh but it ain't really funny. I opened the trunk of the Caddy this morning, and you know what I find? A big hole in the carpeting. I look around a little more, and I find this wad of paper and fiber in the spare tire well. A mouse nest. I got a mouse living in my car. Chewed the hell out of the carpeting in the trunk and I think part of the nest is made from my upholstery stuffing,so God knows how much damage it's done. Pretty weird, huh?"

  Weird? Weird is cutting a lock of hair off the nape of a dead granny's neck. Weird is killing someone with a knife with little stars on the hilt that leave telltale bruises. "That's pretty strange, all right. Set a trap for him, Ed. What was this hot tip, anyway?"

  "Hell, nothing probably. Guy I got it from's been doing coke so long that he's only got three brain cells left and none of them connect to the others. Told me something about a guy driving a horsedrawn cab in the parks on Sundays when the regular guy's off. According to him, this guy probably knows every gypsy in the city. But he also says he's usually drunk. People been complaining about him because he don't always keep the cab on the right path, you know. Guess they caught him on the bike trail one day. Regular guy's called Spider. Has a rig with two horses, a grey and a brown. Anyway. You coming over Saturday night? Game's on at six. You bring the beer, we'll have spaghetti."

  "Yeah. I guess so. Hey, thanks, Ed. Sorry this came to nothing like this."

  "Yeah. Me, too. That info cost me ten bucks, pal.But I'll forget it if you bring some munchies to go with the beer. Hey, why not bring your kid? Jeff's old enough to watch a game now."

  And Jennie had warned him that she'd have his visitation rights reviewed the first time he
started taking the kids around any of his "cop buddies." "Not this time, Ed. He asks too many questions. Maybe another time. We'll see you."

  "Okay. And if I get any more back on the feelers I sent out, I'll let you know."

  "Forget it, Ed. It's dead, come to nothing, I told you."

  "Sure. Go ahead, treat me like an old man. I can still kick your ass, if it comes down to cases. Tell Durand I said hi. And lighten up on the kid. He's not that bad. Not too different from someone else I knew as a rookie."

  "Bullshit," Stepovich told him, and hung up.Damn Ed and his instincts.

  He went back to the counter, sat down heavily on the stool. Durand held up his coffee cup and a passing waitress gave him a refill. "Tiffany's not working today?" he asked her. She shook her head, went on without speaking. Stepovich sipped at his own still-brimming cup. It was lukewarm and on the bitter side.

  "Know what?" Durand said.

  "What?" He tore open two sugar packets and stirred them in.

  "I think we should go back to that bar where we picked up the gypsy. He might be a regular there,they might be able to tell us where to find him."

  "Waste of time." He tasted the coffee.

  "Maybe not. I really think he was our man. And if not, I suspect he's a lead. I'd like another look at that knife."

  Stepovich's cup rattled as he set it back in the saucer. He centered the cup carefully, mopped up the few spilled drops and motioned the waitress for more. the cold little beast in his belly was sharpening his claws now. He didn't dare ask, couldn't stop himself."What knife?"

  "Gypsy had a knife when we shook him down. You don't remember it?"

  "Whoa, that's plenty. Thanks," and he motioned the waitress off. Added another packet of sugar, hoping that keeping his hands busy would cover the slight trembling. "No," he lied carefully, and lifted his cup. It tapped against his teeth twice before he had it steady and could sip at it. Hot.