Dead Matter

by Anton Strout

  Jane’s eyes settled on my wall-to-wall shelves of psychometrically assessed antiques, collectibles, and books, half of which I meant to turn a profit on if I could find the right dealers. The stuff was piling up, threatening to take over, and Jane scrunched up her face up at it. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

  “If you get the sudden urge to tidy up,” I said, knowing the type of response my faux chauvinism would provoke, “be my guest. Really, the place still needs a woman’s touch.”

  Jane gave me a dark but playful look, her eyes burning into mine.

  “Oh, I’ll touch you, all right,” she said. Jane leapt at me, knocking me back and onto the couch.

  I hissed out a breath as my muscles screamed out in every direction at once. Jane immediately pulled herself up into a sitting position on top of me.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, hoping I sounded a little manlier than I felt. “My arms and shoulders are sore. Guess I was just swinging my bat a little more enthusiastically at those gargoyles last night than I thought. At least, I hope it’s from all that. I refuse to blame any of my aches and pains on today’s paper shuffling.”

  Jane’s hands ran up my chest and onto my shoulders. She started rubbing them and I let my head fall back, my eyes sliding shut.

  “Mmm,” I said. “You’re so much better than Connor at this.”

  “I should hope so,” she said, giving me a hard squeeze. “And ew.”

  “Sorry.” I moved to sit up. “We really should get some sleep. I’ve got to meet with Enchancellor Daniels to go through the remains of my clothes from the other night, and then there’s more follow-up paperwork on the whole churchyard incident. On top of all that, I think I should put aside a little time to figure out just what the hell is going on with Connor.”

  “We can go to bed,” Jane said, standing up and taking me by the hand, “but I don’t know about sleeping.”

  Jane pulled me to my feet and led me off in the direction of my bedroom, running her hand along the walls in a seductive manner. Even the way she flicked the lights off was a turn-on. When we reached my bedroom, she flicked on the lights and turned to make sure I was watching. She reached behind her back, unzipped her skirt, and let it slide to the floor. She leaned over, showing off her curves, then picked the skirt up and laid it over the back of one of the chairs.

  Next, she undid her ponytail, letting her hair fall over her shoulders.

  Without looking away, I started undressing, undoing my belt and unbuttoning my pants . . . only to realize my bat was still holstered to the belt I was wearing. The weight of it pulled my pants to the floor, accompanied by a dull metallic clang, the bat rolling back and forth on the hardwood floor.

  “Sorry . . .” I started to say, but Jane simply raised a finger to her lips to shush me. The woman was determined. Who was I to stop her?

  I pulled my shirt off as she did hers, leaving her standing there in formfitting red lingerie that definitely had my attention. Jane walked toward me and kissed me deep, pushing me gently toward the edge of the bed. I fell back onto it and her body pressed down on top of mine.

  Jane reached out toward one of the bedside lamps, her eyes sliding shut as she concentrated. A tiny string of electronic-sounding gibberish whispered out of her lips and every light in the room turned off.

  “Thanks,” I said, smiling even though she couldn’t see me. “Just what I wanted. My own personal Clapper.”

  When my eyes finally adjusted to the dark several seconds later, I could see Jane and she wasn’t smiling.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I’m sorry. Is it because I called you something from the ‘As Seen on TV’ commercials . . . ?”

  Jane put her hands on my chest as if to calm me. A lingering hint of electricity jumped between us, sending a different sort of tingle through my body from the one she was already giving me.

  “It’s not that,” she said.

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’m sorry to ruin the moment, but I just had a thought about what you said right before I dragged you off to bed,” she said, “about Connor.”

  Normally the last thing I wanted to hear about in my bed was another man, but the look of concern on Jane’s face pushed aside all that.

  “What about him?”

  Jane rolled off of me, slipped out of bed, and headed back over toward her clothes hanging from the chair.

  “You’re right,” she said. “We need to be thinking about what we can do to help him.”

  “I’m sure it can wait till morning,” I said. “Not to be insensitive, but he’s probably sleeping right now anyway.”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “He hasn’t been sleeping, remember?”

  “He’s been having those dreams he told us about . . .”

  “But what if Connor’s not dreaming?” she said, pulling on her shirt. “What if what he told us he dreamt about is actually happening to him?”

  The implication hit me and I was out of the bed like a shot, all thoughts of the pleasure I had just been about to experience pushed aside. I headed over to the bottom drawer of my dresser, rooting through it before opting for black jeans and a black T-shirt. This felt like a covert-ops kind of scenario, anyway.

  After I put them on, I turned to Jane. She was sliding on her skirt, but ditched it when she saw what I was wearing. We were already at the her-own-drawer stage of our relationship so she walked over, pulled hers open, and fished out a pair of dark capris. When she was done pulling them on, we looked like a pair of German nihilists.

  “Now is time on Sprockets when we dance?” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “Not quite,” I said, picking up my bat and looping it back onto my belt. “Now is time when we spy.”

  7

  “Hell’s Kitchen,” Jane said, checking up and down the darkened street for the hundredth time. “It’s not so bad, you know, given the name and all.”

  Jane and I were in surveillance mode. We stood on Fifty-ninth Street pretending to hang out, leaning against a wall where we could keep an eye on most of Connor’s building. The streets were relatively quiet for this time of night. Even the cars were few and far between.

  “You should have seen this neighborhood a decade ago,” I said. “It was pretty grizzly. I haven’t checked with Godfrey Candella down in the Gauntlet, but I bet if I asked our resident archivist, he’d tell us there used to be a demonic vortex here.”

  Jane looked up at the building standing across the street from us. “Which one is Connor’s apartment again? It’s hard to tell from the outside.”

  I pulled her closer to me and pointed up to a window just in view along the left side of the building. I counted up three floors. “There,” I said.

  “I don’t suppose that’s Connor, then.”

  “What?” I asked. “Where?” It was dark inside Connor’s apartment.

  Jane grabbed my face and forced my eyes to the side of Connor’s window. She held out her finger in front of me so I could follow it. “There.”

  “I don’t see anything . . .” I said, but stopped myself. One of the shadows outside Connor’s window moved. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I could make out what looked like a human figure inching along the brickwork. It stopped at Connor’s window and rested its arms along his window ledge.

  “What is that?” Jane asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m curious enough to find out.”

  I pulled off the lid of a nearby garbage can as slowly and quietly as I could. I was thrilled to see it full of recyclables. I pulled an old Snapple bottle out of it, took aim, and threw it across the street toward the figure, hoping to miss accidentally putting it through Connor’s window. Some of my extracurricular training for the Fraternal Order of Goodness must have paid off, because I hit the shadowy figure square between its shoulders.

  “Hey, dick,” I shouted up to it. “You wanna come down here the easy way or the hard way? I got a trash can full of opti
ons right here.”

  Like a nimble monkey, the figure descended the three stories in seconds, dropping the last ten feet or so to the sidewalk. He took off down the street.

  “Either that dude has been spending a lot of time at Chelsea Piers on the rock-climbing walls,” I said, “or we’re dealing with Spider-Man.” I turned to Jane. “That might be cool.”

  Jane grabbed my face, and pointed off. The figure was already halfway down the block.

  “Focus, hon,” she said.

  “Right,” I said, taking off after the figure. “Sorry.”

  The guy was damn fast, darting in and out of traffic as he sprinted away. Already my legs were burning, but we were gaining on him. Not that I could make out much about him save that he was dressed for stealth much the same way we were.

  After the first two city blocks, my body started giving out. My back still ached like hell, but I focused on our pursuit and pushed past the pain. I was closing the distance. The figure turned again and darted off across traffic, heading along the length of a sleek steel building on the other side of the street.

  “Watch the traffic!” I shouted back to Jane and, ignoring my own advice, dove between two cabs that both laid on the horn for a solid ten seconds. By the time they stopped, I was almost caught up to the figure when he turned the corner at the end of the block.

  I rounded it seconds later, recognizing in an instant where we were—the west side of Columbus Circle. As I tried to close the distance once again, I couldn’t help but notice the single building straight ahead that took up the entire city block. The front of it was an enormous glass pyramid like the one at the Louvre in France, and it dwarfed the buildings to either side of it. A dozen massive towers shot out of the top of the pyramid, rising high into the night, the entire structure looking like a city unto itself.

  The figure dashed for a set of ten-foot-high steel doors off to the far left from the main entrance of the building proper. He flung them open and ran through, stopping only long enough to pull them shut behind him.

  I beat Jane to them by a couple seconds and I pulled at the doors, but they were locked, as I suspected. When Jane arrived, she looked as winded as I felt.

  “Remind me to leave a pair of cross-trainers at your apartment,” she said, gasping for air. “The shoes I’m wearing are so not made for long-distance running.”

  She pointed toward a faceplate set into the wall that blended in with a subtlety that spoke of craftsmanship.

  “Can you open it?”

  I looked at it for a moment before shaking my head. “I can’t use my psychometry on it. It’s a pad for a keycard like we have on the door to the offices. It’s not like a numeric lock where I can use my power to see the code of the last person who entered. It also means I can’t pick it.”

  “Crap,” she said, then looked around. She pointed off to a set of doors set into the tinted glass of the main pyramid area. Two men in identical suits stood sentry there like they were bouncers at a nightclub.

  As we approached the doors, I looked the two of them over. They were both huge with black hair, though the larger one had his in a military cut and the other wore his a little longer, though still neat. Both of them looked straight out of a casting call for Men in Black 3.

  I walked up to the doors with as much authority as my status in a secret paranormal investigative office held. In response, the two men stepped in front of the doors that led into what looked like a deserted shopping atrium. Neither of them looked very impressed.

  “Can we help you?” the longer-haired one said. I held my ID out to him.

  “We’re with the Department of Extraordinary Affairs,” I said, “in pursuit of a suspect.”

  He took it from me and examined it. Jane was fishing around in the messenger bag she wore strapped across her body and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

  “My bad,” she said. She handed the paper to the larger of the two guards. “Mine’s only provisional for now until I get my honest-to-goodness badge. But it’s legit, I swear.”

  The larger gentleman smiled at her, looked it over, and then took mine from the other guy. He folded them neatly closed and handed them back to us.

  “Sorry,” the bigger guy said. “I’m afraid those won’t work here.”

  “I’m sorry?” I said. That took me aback. I was suddenly pissed. “Weren’t you listening? We’re in the middle of an investigation.”

  “This building here?” he said, gesturing behind him, a bit of rental-cop authority in his voice. “This entire area falls outside of your jurisdiction.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. I pointed to the emblem of the City of New York on my ID. “All of New York City is part of my jurisdiction. I may need a warrant to search private property, but I am getting in here.”

  The big guy shook his head. His partner cleared his throat. “You’re familiar with that whole section of the city over by the United Nations, yes? Where all the embassies are?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, then,” he continued, “think of this area like one of those embassies. They’re off-limits to local police and such. They’re considered to be the sovereign land of the actual countries they represent. The Gibson-Case Center is kind of like that. Other than the public shopping areas, which are closed right now. Either way, you can’t enter. We’re under special permit from the Mayor’s Office.”

  I stood there, silently fuming at their rebuke.

  “Let’s just go,” Jane said, taking me by the arm.

  “Fine,” I said, hissing the words out between clenched teeth. I gave the guards a final stare as Jane led us away down the sidewalk.

  “Get a grip, will you?” she whispered. “You’re so riled.”

  “I want to know who’s messing with my partner,” I said, rationalizing my behavior.

  “That’s all well and good, sweetie, but you’re not getting answers from those brutes.”

  “Who the hell am I supposed to get them from, then?”

  Jane stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, spun in front of me, and suddenly kissed me, deep. After a long and blissful moment, she pulled away and looked at me.

  “Calm now?”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” she said. “Now, as I was saying, those guys aren’t going to give you the answers you’re seeking, but they did say something promising.”

  My mind was swimming from everything, including the kiss. “Do tell.”

  “Now, what did they say?” she asked. “They said the Gibson-Case Center was under special permit with the Mayor’s Office, which means . . . ?”

  “Dave Davidson at the Mayor’s Office of Plausible Deniability,” I said, feeling a momentary jolt of joy. Finally there would be someone I could yell at to get results.

  8

  The next morning I made sure to wrap up my dissolving clothes from the grocery store attack for Enchancellor Daniels. I threw them in my messenger bag and headed out with Jane, hoping to catch up with Dave Davidson at his offices downtown on Centre Street near City Hall. These “real” government offices were huge, ancient buildings that dwarfed everything around them, including those of our hidden labyrinth of fringe government. After about twenty minutes of wandering the empty halls of 42 Centre Street with nothing but the sound of our footsteps echoing out, Jane and I came to a door marked MAYOR’S OFFICE OF PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. In his role as liaison to the Mayor, Dave Davidson constantly came up to the Lovecraft Café for his dealings with the D.E.A., but given our need for urgency, we couldn’t wait for him to simply show up at random.

  Without knocking, Jane and I tried the door, found it unlocked, and entered. We were met by the sight of David Davidson sitting at his desk. As usual, he was dressed to the nines, this time in a well-tailored dark blue business suit. His tie was knotted perfectly as always and his black hair, gray at the temples, was neatly parted. Startled by our sudden interruption, Davidson bolted up from his chair and was already backing away. Reaching back onto a shelf behind hi
s desk, he grabbed a large Lucite award of some kind and drew it in front of him.

  “Oh,” he said, lowering it when noticed who we were. “It’s only you. Hello, Simon. Jane. What brings Other Division and Greater and Lesser Arcana down here so early? Or at all?”

  I walked right up to his desk. He must have sensed something in my look because he raised the hefty award again.

  “How’s the plausible-deniability business these days, Davidson?” I asked.

  “Good,” he said. His eyes were wary. “Plausibly enough. Although, truthfully, ever since your whole Fashion Week- zombies incident, most of what I’ve been spinning has been a bit dull . . . except for a few strange incoming calls about some new kind of creature bounding around town, but the zombie market seems to have dried up for now.”

  “No pun intended,” Jane said with a giggle.

  “Huh?” Davidson said, giving her a distracted look before turning his full attention back to me. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

  I wondered if Davidson meant the monster that had attacked Jane and me two nights ago, but that wasn’t what I had come here for at the moment. “Let’s talk about something a little more implausible,” I said, taking a seat. Jane did the same. “Why don’t you tell me about the Gibson-Case Center?”

  Davidson was in the middle of putting the award back on its shelf. He paused.

  “That new building up on Columbus Circle . . . ?” he said. “What about it?”

  “So you’ve heard about it?” I said.

  “Everyone’s heard about it,” he said, looking at me like I was stupid. “I think Emeril’s got a place opening in there.”

  “We were told it’s under special permit from the Mayor’s Office.”

  “You want to tell us why it’s off-limits?” Jane asked.

  “Want to tell you?” he asked with a laugh. “That’s debatable. The real question is can I tell you?”

  “Fine,” Jane said, keeping her cool. I would have exploded by now. “Can you tell us?”