Deader Still sc-2

by Anton Strout

  Julius took up a thick piece of rope attached to the cart beneath the Oubliette and started to pull it off through the curtains. It would have taken Connor, Wesker, the Inspectre, and me to move the cart an inch, but it was no trouble for the giant of a man. Once I had watched him go, I turned back to our group.

  “So where were we?” I asked. I stepped toward the director of Greater & Lesser Arcana. “Oh, yes. Wesker was just about to tell us just exactly how he was involved in this …”

  “Simon!” the Inspectre said with such force I swung around to him. His face was expressionless. “That will be enough. May I remind you that you are still a member of F.O.G. and although you are still a fledgling, you will conduct yourself in accordance with the Order.”

  The Inspectre was right. I knew better than to engage Wesker. Besides, I knew he was always wallowing in a sty of his own anger over the fact that he had been refused entry into our elite order. I shut up.

  “That’s better,” the Inspectre continued.

  Connor came over and slipped off his shoulder bag, handing it to me at arm’s length.

  “What’s this?”

  “Fresh clothes,” he said. He pointed down. A little puddle of rat goo had started to form on the ground where I was standing. I shivered from where it was still against my skin.

  “Now go get yourself changed,” Connor continued. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, picking up the bag, careful to hold it away from my body. “Really? What kind of surprise?”

  Connor smiled and shook his head. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, now, would it? Just go change, kid.”

  “Hold on,” Wesker called out. “Aren’t you going to clean up your … drippings?”

  I gave him a look and headed off in search of the rest-rooms.

  “I expect you to clean up this mess, Thaddeus,” the Inspectre said as I walked away.

  “Me?” Wesker shouted, half laughing. “Make Connor do it. Or better yet, Simon. Call him back here.”

  I stopped for a moment, waiting to see if I was going to get called back. I’d rather have had a rat slither into my mouth than give Wesker control over me. “Connor and Simon are part of Other Division,” the Inspectre said, twirling the end of his gray handlebar mustache with one hand and dabbing his other into a small pool of the goo. “This ichor that used to be rats is technically the result of a magical transformation, which is a matter for someone in your division. And as there is only one representative of Greater and Lesser Arcana here—namely you—I’ll leave that matter in your capable hands.”

  I turned away and hurried off. It was hard not to laugh. I just prayed I could control it, though. The thought of accidentally snorting any of the rat goo up my nose wasn’t appealing at all.

  I gave myself a truck-stop shower in the sink and changed into the clothes Connor had brought for me, then checked my ears one last time for any bits of rat before hitting the show floor. Connor was waiting for me outside the rest-rooms.

  “So, where’s my surprise?”

  “Follow me, kid,” he said and started walking off at a brisk pace into the heart of the convention center.

  The crowd was thick and I had to dart through it before I lost him.

  “My surprise is in here?”

  Connor nodded. “We’re gonna be working for a Department recruiting booth for a shift or two.”

  “Here?”

  Connor lowered his voice. “You’d be surprised how many Extraordinary types a convention like this attracts,” he said. “Besides, there’re a couple of side benefits to working here that I think you’ll find interesting.”

  “Such as … ?”

  “Well, two things, really,” he said. He stopped at one of the booths. Dozens of still-boxed action figures lined the booth. “First, think about the great scores you could find here with your powers.”

  I had been slacking in using my psychometry to supplement my government salary at the D.E.A., and my SoHo apartment’s maintenance fees weren’t going to pay for themselves. If I could get some good readings on some of the collectibles here and get them into the hands of the right consumer, I’d be set for a while.

  “Brilliant,” I said. “Thanks, partner. What’s the second?”

  Connor stopped and pointed ahead. I looked and saw our booth. There was nothing that suggested the secretive nature of our organization, but there was a table full of pamphlets and reading material … and the Inspectre was manning it.

  “What’s the Inspectre doing over here?” I said. “I thought he was just here to oversee the Oubliette.”

  Connor shook his head. “He’s also here to work the booth.”

  “Isn’t that kind of beneath him, playing booth jockey?”

  “You know the Inspectre,” he said. “He’s a hands-on kind of guy. Likes to take a personal interest in who’s coming into the Department. Like you. I thought you’d appreciate the bonding time I bought by volunteering us for this.”

  I was touched by his thoughtfulness. Before I could think of anything to say, Connor patted me on the shoulder and took off down the aisle toward the Inspectre. I followed him into our booth. Connor took a spot at the back of the space organizing stacks of papers while the Inspectre stood at the front, handing out information. The table was covered with a variety of pamphlets and handouts: Homebrew Potions: Ask Me How!, The Truth About Gated Communities: Ghost Dancing & Ancient Indian Burial Grounds, Your Neighbor Might Be Possessed If: Ten Signs It’s Time to Move.

  The list went on and on.

  “You know,” I said, approaching Connor, “for a secret organization, we’re sure making quite a spectacle of ourselves.”

  “Relax, kid,” he said. He sounded more curt than usual. “Most of the people just look at us as a marketing ploy for some new line of comics or something. They don’t even give us a second glance.”

  I looked around and noticed what he said was true. A five-hundred-pound guy dressed as Legolas took one of the leaflets the Inspectre handed him and moved on without batting an eye. No one was really paying us any attention.

  “So, do you think I passed the Oubliette?” I asked, switching back to my main concern.

  Connor paused, silently shuffling the papers in his hand.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Connor gestured for me to move closer, farther away from the Inspectre.

  “What the hell did you do back there?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “The Oubliette has rules. No outside items. You had your phone on you.”

  “What was I doing?” I said, angry. “I was surviving … because the fucking thing malfunctioned.”

  “Maybe that was part of the test,” he said with an air of superiority. “Did you ever consider that?”

  I hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to tell him.

  “Well, was it?” I asked. “Was it part of the test?”

  “Well … no,” he said, becoming less heated. “But you didn’t know that.”

  “Look,” I said. “Before you jump further down my throat, let’s talk about what I did know. First, the rules stated that no weapons could be brought in. I wouldn’t have thought my cell phone would be considered a weapon, and since no one’s ever done what Jane did before, you wouldn’t have considered it a weapon, either.”

  Connor glared at me, but conceded the point with his silence.

  “And second,” I continued, “I studied for that damned Oubliette for weeks.”

  Connor’s jaw tightened.

  “Not with me, you didn’t,” he said. And there it was.

  “There was nothing personal in my choice of Jane,” I said. “It’s just that Jane had more access to the books I needed.”

  Connor didn’t look convinced.

  “Just make sure you’re thinking with the right head when it comes to your girlfriend,” he said. “She’s working for Wesker now, and in the Black Stacks. That’s gonna change a girl.”

  Before I could defend my choice
further, the Inspectre appeared at the corner of my eye and put an arm on both of our shoulders.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m sure the two of you could go on for hours about the finer points of today’s fiasco, but let’s call it even, shall we? Given the sabotage, I think Simon did a commendable job. His time with the F.O.G.gies seems to have paid off, and I for one see nothing wrong with being resourceful in dire circumstances. Congratulations, my boy. You passed the Oubliette.”

  I was thrilled to hear I had passed, and I appreciated the Inspectre coming to my defense, but at the same time his sticking up for me was driving a wedge farther between me and my partner. Lately, anytime Connor attempted to correct me on anything, the Inspectre would intervene, and it was like an annoying Get Out of Jail Free card.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said with humility. It felt like a bittersweet victory with the unresolved issue of sabotage tainting it.

  The Inspectre turned to Connor. “As the two of you will be sitting and manning the booth, this would be a perfect time to get Simon to do his performance appraisal, don’t you think?”

  At the words “performance appraisal,” I withered.

  With a final pat on the back, the Inspectre turned and walked off to engage a group of bespectacled cyborgs that had gathered at the front of our booth.

  “We could just go cover me with rat goo again instead,” I offered.

  Connor shook his head. “Sit down, kid. You’ve been avoiding it for weeks.”

  “I’ve been focused on the Oubliette. I forgot about it. Plus, I don’t get why we need them. Isn’t being thrown into a pit full of perils performance appraisal enough? I mean, I’ve never really held a job where I was graded on my performance before, you know, having been a career criminal. The idea of actually reviewing myself mystifies me.”

  Connor pulled out a chair, laid the blank forms down on a table, and handed me a number two pencil.

  “What the hell am I supposed to write?” I asked.

  Connor shrugged.

  “I’ve got no idea, kid. The Inspectre’s still riding me about mine. I’m working on it, but at least he’s letting me ride you about yours in the meantime.”

  “Well, that takes the pressure off,” I said.

  “Easy,” he said. “Wesker will be by in an hour to collect them for the Enchancellors, so be happy you only have me to deal with right now. Just hurry up and finish it.”

  Finish it? I hadn’t even started it. Oh, how I already missed my rat-filled pit!

  A man can produce a surprising amount of writing in sixty minutes when the pressure is on. Sadly, I wasn’t that man, and I found easy distraction checking out scantily clad “booth babes” and the tantalizing collectibles I couldn’t wait to get my hands on. Before I knew it, forty-five minutes had passed and I was staring at the still-blank pages before me when I was interrupted by the sound of the Inspectre’s phone ringing. He motioned Connor over to him and they conferred, leaving me to a final fifteen minutes of staring.

  “Wrap it up, kid,” Connor said, patting me on the shoulder. “We’ve got a case to check out.”

  I shied the pages away from him, hiding the fact that they were still blank. Great. Wesker would be back any minute, and now I had to leave.

  “Stop hanging over my shoulder, would ya?” I said. “Give me a second to finish up.”

  “Simon …” Connor said impatiently and, at the sound of my name, I decided the least I could do was write it down on the sheet.

  NAME: Simon Canderous

  DIVISION: Other

  Then I scanned down the first page until I hit the only essay question:

  HOW DO YOU FEEL YOU PERFORMED THE DUTIES ASSIGNED TO YOU WITHIN THE CAPACITY OF YOUR DIVISION?

  I stared at it for a moment longer, then hastily scrawled:

  Didn’t die.

  I snapped the number two pencil in half, stood up, and headed off toward Connor. He handed me back my retractable bat and we pushed through a crowd of Sand People as we headed for the door. I resisted the urge to take my bat to them.

  3

  We stopped at a deli to fill my pockets with Life Savers, Connor’s treat. The guy behind the counter didn’t even blink an eye, but this was no surprise. We were only a block away from the Javits Center, and with two Spider-Men, one Co-nan, and three cross-dressing Buffy’s in line behind us, buying eighteen packs of Life Savers looked pretty normal.

  When we were done, we headed west toward the water, the cool wind of the river intensifying as we got closer.

  “You sure I’m going to need all these?” I asked. I looked down at my bulging pockets. I felt like a squirrel storing up nuts for the long winter.

  “Not sure, kid,” he said, darkness in his voice. “Just want you to be ready. We don’t want you sending your body into hypoglycemic shock.”

  If Connor was stocking me up with this much life-savery sugar, we were probably heading for something big.

  “You mind telling me what’s going on?” I asked.

  Connor shook his head.

  “I’d rather you see for yourself. I don’t want to put any ideas in your head before you get a chance to check out the scene.”

  We crossed the West Side Highway and headed north toward Pier 84. Police tape ran across the entrance to the pier and a few cops were lingering nearby, but none of them would make any sort of direct eye contact with either of us, which was unusual. More often than not, the regular cops regarded the Department of Extraordinary Affairs as a bullshit operation, and we were constantly the butt of their derisive jokes. This time, however, there was a cloud of quiet hanging over the cops that I liked even less than their usual disdain.

  Luckily, David Davidson, our liaison with City Hall, was waiting for us outside a small office complex farther along the pier. He was politics personified, but with one foot in our paranormal world, he was also the best friend we had when we wanted to get anything done in this city—when he wasn’t busy being just as helpful to a million other (and often evil) interests.

  After showing our badges to the cops manning the police tape line, we ducked under it and headed toward Davidson. The wind blew his tan trench coat out behind him like a superhero cape, making me wonder if he might be heading over to the Javits Center later to hang with that crowd.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, forcing a practiced smile. He shook hands with both of us, but the smile disappeared in a grim flash.

  Connor seemed unfazed by it all. “Still aiding and abetting the enemy, Davidson?” he said. “The Office of Plausible Deniability keeping you busy?”

  “Listen,” Davidson answered with smoothness in his voice. “The mayor has the interests of all his constituents to consider. Politics is a slippery slope. You know that, Connor. And when we took up the clarion call of the Sectarians Rights Movement, well … Even we make missteps sometimes.”

  I looked back over my shoulder at the somber faces of cops.

  “What’s got everyone so spooked?” I asked.

  Davidson cleared his throat and looked at me with eyes that often held a hypnotic quality, but didn’t today. “Harbor patrol dragged one of those booze cruise boats in today after the boating company reported that it hadn’t returned to port last night. Party boarded at six thirty; ship left at seven and should have been back around ten after circling Manhattan.”

  “A three-hour tour,” Connor said, trying to sound like Thurston Howell but failing on every level. “Were the Professor and Mary Ann on board?”

  Davidson gave him a look that shut him down. I reminded myself to thank him later. If I had to hear Connor call me “Lovey” one more time …

  The sound of footsteps coming from farther down the dock made me turn, and I saw a familiar figure from the D.E.A. heading toward us. Godfrey Candella was in a suit, as usual, with his dark hair neatly parted but threatening to fall down over his black horn-rims.

  “Godfrey?”

  “Hello, Simon … Connor,” he said, fidgeting with a notebook in his hands.
His face looked grave.

  “You get what you need?” Davidson called out to him.

  Godfrey nodded. “For now,” he said, and looked at Connor and me. “I’ll need to talk to you both back at the office when you’re done checking out the scene. For the Gauntlet archives, of course.”

  “You okay?” I said, noticing how green around the gills he was. Not that he wasn’t normally a little sickly looking, but today he somehow looked worse.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m just not used to such gruesomeness.”

  Connor turned to Davidson. “Since when do you call the Gauntlet in before the investigators get a look at the scene? I’m all for the paper hounds getting things down for historical records, for future generations and all. Hell, I’ll even nominate Godfrey for sainthood just for archiving Simon’s rambling oral history of the whole Sectarians Surrealist Underground thing at the Met, but there’s a protocol for an investigation. Members of the Gauntlet do not do field investigation, only reporting.”

  Davidson held up his hands. “Whoa, now. I didn’t call him.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Suit yourself,” Davidson said, giving up.

  Connor was clearly gearing up to lay into him, but Godfrey cleared his throat.

  “Actually,” he said, “I just happened to be in the neighborhood. I was following up on some leads we have in the archives on old ghost-pirate sightings on the river and one of them led to an old boathouse nearby. That’s when I spotted Davidson and his officers and I came over.” He gave a grim smile. “I’m lucky like that, I guess. Anyway, I thought I’d just get down some reporting notes since I was here. I know my job as an archivist is to observe and nothing more. I didn’t even touch the crime scene, I swear.”

  “I told you,” Davidson interrupted, the impatience thick in his voice. He walked farther out onto the pier, leaving the three of us behind.

  “You’ll stop by after you’ve had a look?” Godfrey asked. “I should get back to the Gauntlet.”

  I nodded. Godfrey gave a quick smile and headed toward the city.

  “Are you two going to check this out or not?” Davidson called out.

  “Keep yer panties on,” Connor said. We started toward the end of the dock, where a boat was moored.