by Joey Ruff
Ape was sitting Indian-style in the center of a mine field of scrapbooks and photo albums, shoeboxes of postmarked letters, all open to some favorite passage, some deeply sentimental image. There was a look of mourning somewhere between his puffy cheeks and red eyes.
Cool jazz was playing softly from the computer speakers. Ape usually listened to Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, and the rest of that Rat Pack shit; it wasn’t much of a stretch to hear something like Louis Armstrong.
I closed the door behind me and walked closer. He didn’t look up from the picture frame he held in both hands.
“So I just got out of jail,” I said. “Seems my best mate abandoned me in a vandalized sporting goods shop when the police were knocking on the front door. I was cuffed in the back of a squad car and interrogated by Stone. We lost another kid, and the worst part is, I never got my lobster dinner, but you probably don’t care about any of that, do you?”
There was silence for a minute before he said, “Jono, shut up.”
I smiled.
“It’s not always about you. Tonight, I had to put a bullet in the head of my favorite uncle because he tossed me around like a ragdoll and tried to use you like a chew toy. Because somehow he came to be in league with some immortal evil and was convinced to befriend little girls and then run off with them into the night.” He sighed. “But you probably don’t care about any of that, do you?”
He looked up at me, cast his picture frame at my feet. The glass crunched, and I bent and grabbed the frame. The picture was of a much younger Arthur Towers, dressed to look like Amelia Earhart and standing before a single prop engine biplane, an airport hangar in the dim background. The old image had gone yellow, edges frayed, and Arthur smiled under a thick handlebar mustache.
“I’ve been sitting here for hours,” Ape said, not looking at anything in particular. “And all I can think about is the apple tree.”
I scratched my head. “Which apple tree?”
“The one out back. Crestmohr said it lost some limbs in the storm.”
“Okay.”
“I planted it,” he said. “When I was a boy.” He grew silent, drew a deep breath, a faint glimmer played in his eye, maybe the flash of a memory. “When I turned ten, my parents threw me a huge party. I didn’t look…like this, then. All of my cousins and school friends were there, and my parents had hired a small circus to perform. There were pony rides and a petting zoo and acrobatic clowns.”
I smiled rudely, but he didn’t notice.
“Everyone had such a good time, except for me.” His eyes saddened. His shoulders drooped. “Everyone was there that I loved. Except for Arthur. All I wanted was my Uncle Arthur, but he was traveling Asia in a hot-air balloon. He’d been gone for months, but he swore before he left that he’d be back in time for the party.”
Slowly, as he talked, he had wound his way over to the one window in the library. It overlooked the rear of the estate. From where I stood, I couldn’t see the yard, I could only see his reflection in the glass, the forlorn look on his face. I knew he was looking at that damned tree. That miserable, broken tree.
“Almost a month after that, I remember coming home from school and seeing his Cadillac parked out front. I ran into the house, dropped my bag on the floor, and ran through every room. He and my father were in the den drinking brandy and talking about his travels. I remember leaping on him, nearly knocking him over, and he just grabbed me and smiled warmly. He said he was glad to see me, that he was sorry he’d missed the party.
“I’d nearly forgotten about it, but he hadn’t. And I knew by the look in his eye that he had something special. ‘I felt so terrible, that I got you the best present I could find,’ he said and pulled out a box, square, about the right size for a baseball and handed it to me, watched eagerly as I tore at the paper.”
He turned back to me, his cheeks moist and slippery, his eyes big and glassy. “He didn’t….” A deep breath. “He didn’t seem to be upset by my reaction. But I was confused and disappointed when he promised me something so great and all I pulled out of the box…was an apple.”
I didn’t need to flash on any memory to see the scene unfold. I knew from pictures what Ape looked like as a boy and could see him sitting on the knee of Arthur with a mop of shaggy brown hair and toothless gaps in his smile. I imagined his Uncle looking just the way he did in the airplane photo.
“An apple?!” little Ape whined.
Arthur wasn’t fazed by the reaction. “This isn’t just any apple.”
Ape stopped short, one brow bowed low, the other arched, a look of total, boyish skepticism. “What is it?”
Arthur chuckled. “This apple,” he said, “is from a very special garden.”
“What kind of garden?”
“A magic one. Very far from everywhere. And that apple you’re holding is also magic.”
“What do I do with it?”
“Eat it, of course. And when you get down to the seeds, you plant them in your backyard and grow a big tree of magic apples.”
“Whoa,” little Ape breathed, clearly enchanted by the idea. “Will something happen when I eat it?”
“Of course it will,” he said. “You’ll become more special than anyone else.” And he winked at the boy.
“It was crap,” big Ape said and moved away from the window. “There was no magic in the apple. But I planted the seeds, and I grew a tree.”
I cocked my head to the side and looked at him. “You don’t think you’re special?”
He eyed me suspiciously. “No. I’m not special. If anything, I’m cursed. I don’t know what happened to me, Jono, but the apple didn’t turn me into a freak. There is no magic garden.”
I shrugged, not convinced, but let it go.
“I tried not to think of it as an omen, that the storm should tear apart the apple tree the same day I began my search for Arthur. I kept thinking about that tree because like so much else about Arthur…none of it was what it seemed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t say it lightly; it wasn’t a word I used that way.
After a moment, he said, “I feel like my entire life has been a lie.”
“That’s a load of cobblers.”
“You know my family. Nobody speaks to me just because…” He grabbed handfuls of the hair on his arms and pulled on it so that it stood straight up. “Because of how I look,” he said softer. “Like I have any control of that.”
I never questioned Ape. I was given my gift just because. As far as I knew, so was Nadia. I never thought there had to be a rhyme or reason to why he was the way he was. I accepted him and maybe that’s why he always accepted, no…put up with, me.
“When my parents died, it felt like the only thing in my life I had any claim to, besides all this…stuff,” he said, “was Arthur. I visited him regularly until Rebecca made sure I couldn’t do that anymore. And now…goddammit, Jono. What the hell is happening? What did my uncle turn into?”
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure whatever it was, it wasn’t his fault either. You can’t hate the man for the things he did or what he became any more than it’s right for your family to hate you.”
“I don’t hate him. I can’t hate him. I love him. But…I don’t know.” He looked at me with the glossy look of a sad puppy. “I’m just so angry,” he said. “I don’t understand. I need…to understand.”
“He was possessed.”
“By what? A demon?”
“Still working that one out.”
“You heard that thing in the store. Whatever it is thinks it’s a god.”
“I know.” It frightened me, seeing him like this. He was my logical center. He didn’t do maudlin. I knew what happened with his uncle tore him apart, but from a jail cell, I couldn’t see how badly. “Nadia thinks it’s a Bogey.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I saw it. Well, a glimpse of it, anyway. There was so much fear, Ape.”
“Bogeys can’t possess people.”
“We’ve been over that.” Then a thought came to me, something I hadn’t considered before, something I’d heard once. “Huxley told me that Bogeys knew what you were afraid of and used it against you when they fed. Maybe they have some kind of telepathic ability?”
He shrugged. “It’s not telepathy. At least, not like you think: erasing memories, projecting illusions, reading thoughts – that kind of thing. It’s more like a heightened empathy. They read emotion from facial cues, body language…things like that.”
Absently, I picked up a photo album and started flipping pages. It wasn’t much different than the others I had seen, with Arthur smiling and waving out of nearly every image. Here he was getting ready to scale a mountain, sponsored by Coors Light. There he was getting ready to dive the barrier reef with a film crew. Every page, every single photo captured a new adventure. Another showed him excavating an Egyptian tomb. “He lived some life,” I mused. “Built quite the legacy that you can be proud of.”
He sneered. “He was a monster.”
“At the end, yes. But you don’t have to remember him that way.”
He held me for a minute with wounded eyes. “I thought you’d make fun of me. I thought you’d find a way to turn this into one big joke.”
“I’m laughing on the inside, believe me.” I put the photo album down and picked up a shoe box full of notebook paper. The sheets were folded into three sections, accompanied by a stamped and addressed envelope. “What are these?”
“Letters. Most of them are to Arthur from all of his many wives. He travelled and was gone much of the time.”
“Love letters?” I scoffed. I scanned the pages, lined sheets filled with boring words in an elegant and feminine hand. “Dearest Arthur,” I read. “’I hope your travels find you well. Your absence is felt in this old home and I miss you like desert rain…’ What the hell? Who did he marry, fucking Charlotte Bronte?” I tucked it back in the box and looked at a few more. “This is crap. Who keeps this stuff?”
“Who wouldn’t keep their old love letters?” Ape said. “They’re precious memories.”
“Like you’ve ever been in love.”
He didn’t say anything.
I grabbed another letter and read the first line, My dearest Dewey…
“Ape…?”
“What is it?”
“Who the fuck is Dewey?”
He shrugged. “It was a name Arthur went by sometimes when he was younger. Lots of people go by their middle names, Jono.”
“His middle name was fucking David.”
“And Dewey is short for that. Like John or Jono…”
“You’re fucking kidding me!”
He stared at me blankly. “What’s the big deal?”
“The homeless guy from the house yesterday.”
“Yeah?”
“Anderson got an ID. His last name was Pearson. Julie Easter’s imaginary friend was Pierce.”
“Okay.” There was a tone to his voice that let me know he saw where I was going.
“Adam Gables, the latest boy I was hired to find, his imaginary friend was called Dewey.”
He took a deep breath, his eyes going wide. He seemed to be sobering up from his pain and pity party. “What is going on?”
“I’ll tell ya what. While you were off doing your own thing, trying to prove some bullshit to yourself, the guy you were looking for was nabbing my client’s brother. Well, granted, probably not at the same time. You get the point.”
There was silence for a few minutes, neither of us looked at the other, just around. Eventually, Ape broke the silence. “Jono, I…”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
He picked up an open photo album from the floor and closed it with a snap, sent a puff of dust into the air. Ape didn’t normally use swears, so it took me by surprise when he said, “When we find this fucker, I’m gonna tear his head off myself.”
I smiled.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked.
“Anderson said they’re gonna try to find a central location from sticking pins in a map like in the movies…try to find a pattern on the hits. We need to find this…fucker first.” I said fucker with a smile, showing my approval of his use of the word. “I could try to hit up Seven again. I got the distinct impression before that he was hiding something.”
“Okay,” Ape said. “I’m coming with you.”
“There’s just one problem,” I told him. “I don’t know where he is. He won’t be back at the Song for some time. We could try the other places…”
Ape shrugged. “If he’s as guilty as you say, he won’t be there. He’ll be lying low.” He slid his photo album onto a nearby bookshelf. “It’s too bad we don’t have something of his. We could track him down like…”
I thought for a minute, and Ape put a couple more photo books back in place. I bent and started to put the box of letters back together that I dropped. “Where would we find something of his? I guess we could go back to the Song, see if there are any pieces of him lying around from last night.”
Ape stopped, looked up at me. “What did you do, cut him?”
“I pulled my knife on him. But I think he busted his lip…” I stopped.
“There’s only one reason you want to go back to the Siren’s Song, and we both know it isn’t Seven. Maybe seven pairs of them.”
I wasn’t listening. I’d remembered something Stone had said and slipped my hand into my pocket, pulled out a little plastic baggie that held what looked like tree bark.
“Jono…”
“Haha, tits. I get it,” I said and held up the bag.
“What is it?”
“When Stone had me in the interrogation room, one of the lab techies brought this in. She said there’s blood on it, but it isn’t human. They ran it against…” I decided to choose my words carefully. “…Against the body from the sporting goods shop. It didn’t match.”
“The bum from the house?”
“Would have had the same type of blood.”
“So…”
“I haven’t been in that many fights lately.”
“Slow week?”
“Take this to your lab,” I said and tossed him the piece of my old leather coat. “Dollars to donuts that blood’s from a Kory, which means it’ll lead us straight to Seven.”
26
Once we’d confirmed the blood was Seven’s, it didn’t take long to pull together a seeker sack and head off in the El Camino. I was dressed in my usual: dark denim jeans, a black tee with a white ringer neck and my new leather BMX jacket.
Ape wore his ninja shoes and gray pinstripe pants with a matching suit vest and fedora. Under the hat he wore a black do-rag like one of those street gangsters.
Because we were going to war, Ape came prepared. Typically, he relied on his own brute, monkey-ass strength – which was quite formidable, don’t get me wrong – but when he really wanted to move mountains, he brought his sword-cane.
The head of the cane was a silver eagle’s talon clutching tightly to a yin-yang symbol, fashioned out of ivory and jet; it was also the sword’s handle. The blade was just over three-feet long, cold iron inlaid with a silver riser that began to glow a soft violet in the presence of the Midnight. When it was sheathed, the white kanji symbols carved into the ebon cane turned purple.
It was a gift from Arthur for his sixteenth birthday, though his uncle wouldn’t say where it had come from, just that he’d acquired it in his travels. I tried to flash on it, many years ago, and the resulting surplus of images nearly put me back into a coma.
After about an hour of driving, basically in circles, through the greater Metro area, the bag started to smoke when we entered SoDo.
As part of the Industrial District, SoDo was a healthy mixture of active factories and one-time factories that had been converted into studio apartments or office spaces. Originally getting its name for being the neighborhood South of the Dome, SoDo had since come to mean South of Downtown, as the Kingdome was destroy
ed at the turn of the century. Prior to its implosion, it was renowned for housing the Seahawks, the Mariners, the Supersonics and the real football players, The Sounders. But I digress.
The building we pulled up in front of was a real shithole. The boarded windows and doors were meant to keep out the area’s sparse homeless population, but somehow, a piece of shit like Seven still found a way in. It didn’t look out of place on the street, as many of the buildings were in the same condition, but it was a bit hard to believe the world headquarters of Starbucks was only a few blocks away.
We got out of the car and stood there on the street, staring up at the fourth-story windows. “So,” Ape said. “What’s the plan?”
“Don’t have one. I didn’t really expect him to be holed up in the Ritz, but…really? I think Seven could do better than this place.”
“Well,” Ape said, coming around to my side of the car. “I guess we look for a way in.”
We circled the building, not finding any discernible entrance, but a couple of the boards on a low back window were loose enough to pry off without much effort. The glass had been broken long ago, and I used one of my Glocks as a hammer to knock the few jagged pieces from the edge of the frame. I clicked my light on and shone it inside, finding nothing but a dirty, empty room with clouds of dust as thick as a Biblical plague of locusts hanging heavy in the sparse lighting.
“It’s clear,” I said, turning to Ape. “You go first.”
He stepped forward, put one hand on the edge of the window sill, and stopped. “I’ll bet you Seven doesn’t live in here. He lives under here.”
Pin #2 on my office map was Pioneer Square, the front door to the Seattle Underground.
The original city of Seattle was mostly old wooden buildings, and in 1889, when a cabinetmaker overturned an oil lantern, 25 blocks of the city was destroyed in hungry fire. Rather than attempt rebuilding what was already there, the city leaders declared all future buildings to be crafted of stone and brick and decided to raise the street level one to two stories above the original.