“I was young. I think I stopped believing when I was about sixteen. After that, it was just a job.”
“You believe anything but the old wisdom. What the gypsies know.”
“You’re not a gypsy.”
“I am an old woman. I learned.”
“What about this police girl? She is in league with the devil?”
“I must find out more about her.”
“Find out. Please, Grandmother.”
“You’re going to do what?”
Joe Siry almost swallowed his cigarette butt. He spat it out, picked it up off the desk. It was out, so he threw it into the wastebasket.
“How many packs a day do you smoke, Joe?” Sara asked.
“Don’t start with the smoking thing,” he said. “What did you say you and Lazlo Kontra were going to do together?”
“He asked me to a concert.”
“What, a rock concert?”
“No, classical. New York Philharmonic.”
“And you’re going with him?”
“Tickets are hard to come by. I haven’t gone to a symphony concert in years. I figured it was about time.”
“What, you’ve taken a fancy to gangsters?”
Sara smiled tightly. “We know next to nothing about the newest gangs. The ethnic ones. The Russian is the newest. Well, maybe not the newest. Maybe there are ones we don’t even know about yet.”
“What’s to know about them? They all live in Brooklyn. They’ve been pouring into the country since the Soviet Union closed up shop.”
“That I know. I was thinking about getting some deep background. We have at least six suspected contract killings unsolved that might be Russian-related.”
“And you figure he’s going to tell you something, what, over cocktails before, or maybe late supper after? He’s going to turn state’s? Gonna pull a Gravano?”
“We don’t have any leads in any of those killings, Joe. Maybe I can tease one out.”
He regarded her sardonically. “Interesting word you used.”
She shot him an annoyed look. “You know what I mean. This is a unique opportunity. He came way out of left field. I’ve never . . . I mean, he just sprung it on me, and it took me a few seconds to see it as an opportunity. A Mafia don dating a cop. It’s like The Sopranos.”
Siry scowled at her. “I never saw anything about . . . oh, you mean like it’s being a security risk for him?”
“This isn’t a thing you’d write in a TV script. No one’d believe it. But this guy is a wild card. If he’s willing to get social with a cop, we should take advantage.”
“Yeah.” Siry appeared to be digesting it. “Maybe. But he’s not a don. First of all, he isn’t even Russian. He’s Bulgarian.”
“Romanian.”
“Whatever. And he’s ex-KGB. He’s not like most of the Russian gangsters. Most of them are thugs with lots of prison time. This guy has education, and he was smart enough to bail when he got into trouble, way back in the Eighties. He’s clean. He’s a born criminal mastermind. He can’t be dumb enough to spill something on a social occasion.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Not so sure about what?”
“That I can’t find out something useful. Few cops ever socialize . . .” Sara’s voice trailed off. “Hmmm. I better not say anything.”
Siry laughed. “Yeah, you better not. Seltzer might have a bug in here.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. Anyway, I view it as a unique undercover opportunity, in a way.”
“You make it sound as if he’s going to show you his books. If he keeps any.”
“I’m telling you, Joe, I want to do it.”
“Okay. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Seltzer.”
“Why does he have to know?”
“You know he oversees undercover operations. Makes sure our guys don’t get carried away with their roleplaying.”
“This isn’t undercover. I’m not playing any role. I’m going on a date with the guy.”
“Wait a minute. Where did I put that file . . . ?” Siry rummaged through the scrum of paperwork on the desktop, came up with a sheet. He eyed it a moment, then pointed at one line in particular. “Here. The guy’s married. Hey, I don’t know about this.”
Sara glared at him. “Joe, I’m not going to sleep with him.”
“I don’t . . . jeez.” Siry was nonplused.
She smiled. He was vein-popping again.
“What’s so goddamn funny? Look, I can’t tell you what you can do on your own time. But there’s such a thing as the appearance of . . . of . . .”
“Don’t worry. There’s not going to be an appearance of anything. He’s not my type.”
“I don’t give a damn about whether he’s your type. I’m worried about what it’s going to look like.”
“Yeah, so many cops have season tickets to the symphony.”
“You are a wiseass, you know that?”
“Yes, sir.”
The office door creaked open and Jake McCarthy stuck his head in. “Joe, did you want to see—Oh, hi, Pez.”
Siry jerked his thumb at Sara. “Know she has a date with a Mafioso?”
Jake stepped in, his jaw hanging. “Huh? Sara, is that right?”
Sara ignored him. “The Task Force summary talked about another term—Russian, what was it? ‘Chief Thief’ is the translation. No, that isn’t it. I have the brief on my desk.”
Jake said, “What did you say, Joe?”
“She’s going out with a gangster.”
“Huh?”
“She’s going undercover.”
“Watch how you phrase that,” Sara warned.
“Huh?”
Siry threw his arms up at McCarthy. “Are you going to keep saying ‘huh’?”
“Huh? I mean . . .”
Sara rose. “I gotta go. The concert isn’t for a couple of days, so there’s no hurry about this.”
“Pez, uh . . . how about a cup of coffee?”
“ ‘Thief-in-law,’ ” she said, snapping fingers.
“Huh?” Joe Siry said.
Jake looked at him.
“That’s the translation of the Russian term for crime boss,” Sara explained. “ ‘Thief-in-law.’ I forget what the Russian phrase is. But Kontra didn’t start out that way. The way I figure it, organized crime could only exist with high-level Soviet corruption. Kontra was probably a cop on the payroll, then became a player himself. But now he’s capo of his own little family.”
“Isn’t that Italian?” Siry asked, frowning.
Sara shrugged. “I don’t know any Russian.”
“I’m really sorry I sent you for the interview,” Siry told her. “I gave it to you because it was bound to be useless. I thought you couldn’t get into trouble. But . . .”
Sara said, “But?”
“Since you’re taking such an interest, I might as well loan you out to the Task Force temporarily. I put in a request for better coordination with the division. I don’t know, though . . .”
“Are you still bothered by that accident?”
“Forget it,” Siry said. “I backed you up.”
“I know you did,” Sara said. “I appreciate it. But there’s still going to be some nosing around about it. I’m still facing a preliminary investigative interview.”
“If it was an accident, it was an accident,” Siry tautologized.
“It was an accident,” Sara told him.
“Good. Remember that the Task Force is hooked up to the DA’s office. You’ll be working with the same people who might indict you for involuntary manslaughter.”
Sara asked, “Do you know something I don’t?”
“God, I hope not. Now get out of here and leave me to my misery. McCarthy!”
“What?”
“Don’t you know that when you come back from being out sick, you’re supposed to report to the Watch Commander that you’ve returned to duty?”
“Sorry, sir. I forgot. I’ve been
meaning to do it all day.”
McCarthy gingerly closed the door after following Sara into the corridor.
“Damn,” he said to himself.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Sara told him.
“I hate when that happens.”
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t happen often. You’re usually a stickler for procedure.”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. And that bug sort of knocked me for a loop. Got time for a cup in the break room?”
Sara shook her head. “I want to get home. I’m bushed.”
“What did you do all day? Besides hitting on Mafiosi.”
“He hit on me. No, what wore me out was writing that report on Whip. Trying to avoid making it sound ridiculous. Impossible.”
“So you didn’t succeed?”
“No. Nothing wears me out more than a stint in the Report Writing Room.”
“Otherwise known as the Whopper Room.”
“That’s exactly what Seltzer is going to think.”
“That you’re lying? That you threw Whip off that balcony? Whip wasn’t a big dude . . . I mean, everybody knows you can handle yourself as well as any guy, Sara, but . . . well, you know, you . . . uh . . .”
Jake looked thoughtful. Obviously, something at the back of his mind had been nattering at him as he spoke.
She looked at him clinically. “See? You have your doubts about me, too.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Jake was in a hurry to say. He tried to touch her arm as she suddenly turned and stepped away. She was too quick.
“Never mind,” she snapped.
“Wait, wait . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
“Forget it,” Sara said over her shoulder.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
After spending the early evening at the public library doing some light research (she found a good book on the new ethnic gangs), Sara ate alone at a fast burger place, perversely ordering salad and a baked potato. Then she went home and watched TV for three solid hours, not realizing how much time was passing.
Finally, she clicked the TV off and got up, looked at the clock. “What a waste.”
She sat at her computer, logged onto her ISP, and got her e-mail. She had three news service downloads and six commercial spam messages. No real messages. She deleted everything and logged off.
She sat and stared at the notebook computer’s dead screen.
Cops don’t have many friends, she realized as she brushed her teeth. Outside the force, that is. You try to mix in, you try to socialize with civilians, but as soon as you let loose what you do for a living, it kind of hangs there in the middle of the conversation like a huge icicle, and the temperature suddenly drops ten degrees. Someone makes a feeble joke. And over the next five minutes, you find that everyone has an excuse to move to the other side of the room. And you find yourself sitting alone with a stale drink, smiling stiffly.
And for her, it was usually worse. Men’s pupils became pinpoints; they coughed and look away. Cop? Did she say cop? And a detective, yet.
The only thing worse, she’d been told, is for a woman to say she is a deputy district attorney; or worse yet, a judge.
Do all civilians have guilty consciences? Seemed so, at times.
It didn’t bother her much. She rarely thought about such things. Only on occasion. By the time she finally crawled into bed, it was out of her mind entirely.
She woke. A weird glow filled the room, a faint spectral light, growing brighter, suffused with a pale greenish tint. Her eyes, adapted to dark, saw it as painfully bright.
Naked, she rose from the bed. The light emanated from her desk. It quickly became apparent that she had left the notebook on, though she could swear that she’d turned it off well before going to bed.
Odd geometrical bands of light played across the screen. The display looked like an elaborate screen saver, forming bright patterns and figures that constantly moved and shifted: concentric circles and squares, moires and zigzags, waves and grids, reticulated fields, all radiating a pale blue-green aura that tinted the walls.
She approached it carefully. When had she loaded this program? It must be something that downloaded itself from the Internet, unbeknownst to her.
A virus!
No computer of hers had ever caught a virus before. She was fascinated, in a way. She wanted to find out more about such rarefied phenomena. She wondered what she should do. Turn the machine off? Probably. Bring it to the precinct, let some expert in the white collar crime section take a look at it? Maybe it was a new virus no one had ever seen before.
The patterns on the screen grew busier, more complex. They interlaced and interweaved; they danced and cavorted, then, inexplicably, burst out of the screen and spilled across the desk, the floor, the walls.
She jumped back.
She froze as the pale green lines flowed around her and took her measure, calibrating and quantifying her every dimension. She felt nothing, but there was something strangely palpable about this light. It had a substance of some kind, she was sure. She felt a presence in it. And all at once she somehow knew this manifestation for what it was: lucent nerves in a sensorium cast out like a web by an unimaginable being far removed. She did not know what kind of being. She was not sure she wished to find out.
A cage of light surrounded her, shifting and flowing over her skin, gauging her, evaluating her. It lingered for several seconds, then moved toward her bed, there to coalesce around something on the nightstand.
The Witchblade.
She watched as the lines of light played across the bracelet. It seemed to resist. The stone glowed brightly, its light throwing a warm backdrop for the cold, alien display. The room came alive with weird color.
She made a move toward the nightstand. Something held her back. An adjunct structure of some sort extended from the green cage surrounding the bracelet and became force as well as light. Ghostly arms of restraint blocked her, held her back.
She struggled but couldn’t make any progress. The glow from the bracelet intensified.
She let out a groan and fell to the bare wood floor, strapped by unseen fetters. The lines of light felt like electricity now, crackling across her bare skin. Prickly threads of static pinned her under a net of force.
She managed to crawl a few inches. She could make progress a little at a time. Painfully, she got to her knees. The floor felt like a griddle, frying her kneecaps. She pushed forward toward the nightstand, reaching a hand upward.
There commenced loud crackling and discharge. Blinding flashes and displays leapt up all around her. It was as if a hundred loose high-tension power lines were whipping around the room, arcing and throwing sparks.
A whirlwind of fire surged from the Witchblade, engaged the pale green grid in a struggle of tension, and a contest between bright displays of color and energy began. Sara kept reaching, trying to touch the bracelet. She could not quite make it.
The battle continued for a full minute. Then, abruptly, the green forces seemed to lose vitality and began an orderly withdrawal to the screen, fighting a rearguard action. Pale fingers of luminescence dimmed and retreated, backing along walls, ceiling, and floor.
Sara finally made contact with the bracelet, grabbed it, and put it on her right wrist. She sat up and looked at the computer.
The green lines were back on the screen. Gradually, they faded; but the screen continued to glow eerily.
She saw faces in it. She thought she saw faces. Strange, inhuman faces.
No, not inhuman. She looked again. They were . . . non-human. Humanoid. Humanish. No, human-like. Simulacra, artifacts, constructs. They weren’t really alive. Those . . . things, there, could not have life in the normal sense. They were parodies of that which was human.
The eyes. She could not bear to look into their eyes.
Did she see them or was she imagining? She passed a palm across her face and looked again.
The screen was faintly glowing now. Fading.
&nbs
p; Screeeeeeeee.
She did not know where the hell-bird’s cry had come from, the sky or the screen. She looked out a window but saw nothing but blankness over the city.
By the time she had put on a robe and walked to the desk, the screen was completely dark, and the computer was not operating. She suppressed a motion to turn it on. Perhaps she should let it rest. She carefully lowered the screen and clicked it shut.
She didn’t bother looking at the clock. She knew it would be a long, long wait until morning, and that she would be up the whole time.
“Mr. Kontra, this is amazing.”
“What?”
The doctor leafed through a sheaf of reports. Behind him stood about two dozen interns, all with baby faces. To Kontra, they looked like a kindergarten class. “Your progress is phenomenal. Only three days later, and . . .”
“I heal fast.”
“I’ve never seen this kind of . . . these test reports.”
“I feel lots better today.”
The doctor turned to his charges. “I’ve heard of cases like this, but you people have been privileged actually to see one. Any questions?”
“How old are these kids?” Kontra wanted to know.
The doctor smiled. “They’re all through medical school. We just had a conference on you. Needless to say we’re very, very pleased with your progress. We should have you out of here in three days.”
“I want out tomorrow.” Kontra said.
“Well, that might be premature . . .”
“Tomorrow.”
The doctor gave up leafing through the charts. “I’m going to order an other set of X-rays first. Then I’ll let the floor nurse know. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Do you have any complaints, any symptoms?”
Kontra smiled and shook his head.
“It’s like magic,” the doctor said.
CHAPTER
NINE
Sara yawned, then said, “I’m sorry.”
The array of gray-faced men before her seemed affronted. Gray morning light filtered through dirty windows. It was a gray world out there, and it was pretty grim in here.
Witchblade: Talons Page 6