Spook Squad

by Jordan Castillo Price

  We were both eager to see Lisa again and ask her what really happened. Reassurances that Richie and Laura were okay would be in order too. I also wanted to hear how Dreyfuss fared against Washington, whose goons had swept in and relieved us of a slime-covered corpse without batting a G-man eyelash. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that they would’ve gladly scooped up the GhosTV too, had Jack Bly not summoned the presence of mind to turn it toward the wall, throw a plastic sheet over the top, and cover it with lab equipment so that it blended in passably with the cabinetry.

  We found the restaurant and handed the car keys to the valet, while I wondered idly if there might be a tracking device hidden somewhere in the fob. It was a ritzy joint. Hopefully there’d be something identifiable on the menu.

  We ran into Bly at the coat check. I can’t speak for Jacob, but I was glad to see him. He wasn’t as battered as Jacob and me, but given what we’d all seen in the lab morgue, he was probably donning a few fresh scars on the inside. “Listen,” he murmured, once the coat check girl was out of range, “that homo thing I said before….”

  I got it—he’d been trying to pull me out of an impending funk by pissing me off. It worked, too. “I know.”

  “I’m fine with it,” he said. “Really. My favorite aunt is a lesbian.”

  The old me would have rankled at the idea that my personal life was anything for him to be “fine” with. But in my white light afterglow, I could tell he was attempting to stammer out an apology. And I appreciated it.

  “And I’ve never yakked at a scene before,” he told Jacob. “Never. But I could feel it, really feel it, inside the…body.” He looked a bit green just scanning through the memory. While my deathly experience had been a moment in the light, Bly had absorbed the emotions of Jennifer Chance trapped inside her own corpse. On psyactives, no less. Poor sap.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I said, “the shaved head, the tan, the workout, it all looks great on you. But the colored contacts are a little over the top.”

  Jacob stopped walking and stared. The hardcore critique must’ve seemed like it came out of left field to him, but the empath got it. Bly let out a breath and gave his head a rueful shake. “How long have you known? Not long—I can feel it, not long.”

  “Known what?” Jacob said easily, picking up on the new camaraderie between Bly and me in that mundanely empathic way of his.

  “Remember John Wembly?” I asked, while Bly made a small “shoosh” motion. I lowered my voice. “You know, the PsyCop, with the hair?” Recognition dawned on Jacob’s face. “The one who went missing,” I added.

  Jacob checked Bly out unapologetically, scrutinizing him from head to toe, then said, “Your trainer’s doing a great job.”

  Bly turned toward the dining room, smirking. “She’s a tyrant,” he threw back over his shoulder. “Made me give up soda. Cheese, too.” Sheesh, that was pretty extreme. Good thing he actually liked chard.

  Jacob watched the doorway where Bly had disappeared for a moment, then said, “Cheekbone implants. If it weren’t for those, I would’ve spotted him.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Says you.” I bumped him affably with my elbow. “Go find our seats—I’m hitting the can.” You never knew how long these dull multi-course affairs might last, and I didn’t want to navigate a dangerously upscale dinner with a full bladder. The lighting was elegantly subdued, meaning, the warren of hallways and private dining rooms was a confusing blur of linens, woodwork and candles. Right when I suspected I might have gone a full 360 and ended up back with Jacob, I saw Lisa flit past a doorway. She was looking pretty ripped, too. I guess all that yoga was starting to pay off.

  “Lisa,” I called after her. “Hey, Lisa, wait up.” But when she turned to face me, it wasn’t Lisa at all, just some other Hispanic girl with bigger hoop earrings and more makeup. “Oh. Sorry.”

  I backpedaled while the girl said, “No, it’s—”

  “Never mind.” I ducked into the nearest room, aghast at the thought I’d nearly grabbed the poor stranger by her shoulder. Nothing ruins a nice dinner like getting maced on your way to the john…which, it appeared, I’d actually managed to stumble into. It was one of those toilets with a lounge, the type that usually had an attendant waiting to awkwardly hand you a towel, or a breath mint, or a comb. The lounge was full of fresh flowers, or maybe incredibly realistic fakes. I was about to double-check that I wasn’t blundering into a public ladies room when I heard Crash’s voice, and then my awkwardness fell away, and I charged in to grab him up and squash him against me to celebrate the fact that Ash Man was only his chat handle, and not his physical state of being.

  But then another man’s voice joined his, breathy, unfamiliar, and unabashedly gay. “She’s perfect. Shakira and Mariah and Ashanti all rolled into one. Just a lil’ more sparkle.”

  Crash again: “Whoa, cowboy. Easy on the fairy dust. This isn’t a rave.”

  I rounded the corner into a restroom, but not the sink-and-stalls type I’d been expecting. The single opulent powder room was full of flowers, cushions, lights, and mirrors. Crash was there with his new-old boyfriend Red, each of them dressed to the nines, combs and attitudes poised, flanking a woman in a styling chair. Seated between them like a Hollywood diva, impeccably made up, hair piled high and sparkling with glitter, was Lisa. All three looked up, startled, and met my eyes in the various mirrors. “Uh…hey,” I said. “What’s going on?” Because it looked like Lisa was ready to star in a music video. Maybe with the dancers from the unfinished puzzle.

  While Crash had his eyes on me, Red seized the opportunity to spritz Lisa with another layer of shimmery spray. Crash turned a warning look on him, and he replied with infuriating nonchalance, “Now, you listen to me, Curtis. I know what I’m doing. Every girl’s a princess on her wedding day.”

  Beneath all the sparkles, I realized, Lisa’s salsa video tango dress was white. Not simply because she favored neutral tones, either.

  Wow.

  Just…wow.

  “Victor…” she attempted to pry herself from the chair, but she might have been glued there with glitter spray. Red gave her a hand up, patting her sparkly brown cascades of curls into place with his long-fingered hands as she turned toward me. “Constantine proposed this afternoon and I didn’t have time to tell you—it was all really sudden.”

  “Oh.” I forced a smile, not that I was angry or apprehensive or anything. Just blindsided. And cripplingly aware that this was one of those moments where I really didn’t want to say the wrong thing, because if I tainted her special day, she’d be within her rights to hold it against me for the rest of our lives. It made sense, of course. When Con Dreyfuss had a woman in his sights, he slapped a ring on her before she got away. But even I knew Lisa wouldn’t take kindly to that observation, so I decided to go with, “Well, you look fantastic.” I took her hands in mine and gazed into her eyes. I figured I’d better not make her cry or else a pretty spiffy makeup job would go to waste, so instead I quipped, “If you wanted a bigger tent, you should have said so.”

  She laughed, and the sentimental tears that had been threatening on the horizon receded, for now. “You’re okay? The exorcism—everything went okay? Because the sí-no—”

  Hopefully she hadn’t been checking up on me while I was one with the light. I strongly suspect that for those few seconds, I was technically dead. It wasn’t an unpleasant experience. Heck, it wasn’t even all that frightening. Nonetheless, it was an act I didn’t care to repeat. If that’s what it took to command spirits—ejecting your etheric form and hoping you’re stronger than the ghost you’re attempting to wrangle—I’d just as soon stick to my Florida Water and salt. “Jennifer Chance has moved on, right? I’m here. And I take it Dreyfuss survived the Washington goons if he lived to sweep you off your feet.”

  She nodded.

  “Then it’s all good.”

  I’m not much of a hugger, and neither is Lisa, but at that moment it felt perfectly natural to pull her close and plant a k
iss on the top of her head.

  Even if it did leave me spitting glitter.

  * * *

  Once I’d found the real men’s room and done my business, I was in the stall pulling a few singles out of my wallet to tip the attendant when a familiar voice spared me the effort. “Would you mind waiting outside for a few minutes?” Con Dreyfuss said to the attendant, undoubtedly slipping him an outrageous gratuity. “I wanted to have a private chat with my friend.” I wasn’t sure if he’d used his talent to find me alone, or if he’d been scoping out the facilities from the bar, but either way I didn’t actually mind.

  I tucked my wallet away and considered stepping out of the stall, but the fact that I couldn’t see him made it easier to say what needed saying. “Are we alone?” I asked.

  “We are.”

  “Whatever it was you did to make Laura Kim dump you…don’t even think about pulling it with Lisa.”

  “Sadly, you’re correct in assuming that I was never the one to initiate the divorce proceedings. You probably figure it was some horrible excess on my part that scared them away. Drugs. Gambling. Cheating.” Actually, I’d suspected he was a workaholic of epic proportions. “None of the above. Well, except a little toke once in a blue moon. No, it was the night terrors that drove ’em off. I don’t dream like regular people dream. Instead, I see people die. Every night. Back in my salad days, I used to think that meant I had a few screws loose. Then something called the Internet came along, and I discovered all these people actually did kick the bucket. That confirmation only made it worse, knowing that real people were buying it left and right, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do but watch it happen. Not only that, but I started obsessing on the idea that one of those days, it was going to be me. I’d be the one drowning or choking or falling into a wood chipper. Poor Laura. She was determined to fix me…and I guess I thought if anyone could, it was her. You can imagine what a failure she felt like when nothing she said or did would stop me from waking up five times a night in a cold sweat, flailing in the bed and screaming bloody murder.”

  Fucking hell. “No wonder you never had Lisa sleep over.”

  “Ha, I came off as a real gentleman, too. Until things got past second base…then I had to come clean. Miss Lisa’s seen some righteously fucked-up shit herself, though. She understood. Now, when I ask her if I’ll live to see another day, she tells me, Just you wait, buddy boy. And, well…I believe her. Somehow, it does the trick. My nightly wanderings are nowhere near as frequent or violent as they used to be.”

  Silence stretched between us, and I chose to relinquish the safety and anonymity of my stall. Maybe I wasn’t ready to hear any more personal details from him, or maybe I was worried I’d be lulled into sharing some of my own. But I did a startled double-take when I found some strange guy in a suit standing where I’d expected Dreyfuss to be waiting for me, a guy who’d recently stopped a few fists with his face.

  And then I realized it was him.

  He met my eyes in the mirror, then ran a washcloth under cold water and pressed it to his lip. “Not exactly the impression I’d been hoping to make on Lisa’s big sister.”

  Sister? That explained the mistaken identity out in the hallway. Ironically enough, I probably would’ve walked right past Dreyfuss without knowing it was him. Wild corkscrew curls? Gone. A short haircut instead—trendy and flattering enough that I presumed Crash or Red had clipped it. Baggy sweats? Gone, too. His sleek black suit fit perfectly, and it turned out he’d been hiding a bantam-weight boxer’s build under all those layers of fleece. The beating his face had recently taken was no doubt responsible for bringing the boxing comparison to mind. Between the split lip and the brand new shiner, he must’ve taken two punches, minimum, to buy me the time I needed with the body. Given that he had no reassurance of coming through his encounter with Washington at all, he must’ve counted himself lucky to escape with a couple of dings. But seeing them on the face of the Regional Director of the FPMP brought home that none of us were nearly as safe as we tended to believe.

  “Since I have you alone…” he dropped the cloth in the basin and pulled an envelope from his pocket. “Here’s your back pay. Plus a little extra for your trouble.” He shook the envelope and pills rattled inside. “Don’t take ’em all at once. That’s what cyanide’s for.”

  I took the envelope and squeezed it. Felt like a couple dozen capsules in there, easy. My inner neurotic rejoiced at the thought of a month’s worth of deep, dreamless sleep. That joy was diminished, however, by thoughts of psychic jellyfish floating along behind me on their goopy tethers. I gave the envelope a final longing squeeze, then slid it back across the countertop. “I’m thinking I should renegotiate my terms.”

  “This late in the game?” Dreyfuss shook his head. “I’ll do what I can, but no guarantees.”

  “I need to track down someone, a woman, a homeless woman. She was treated for alcohol poisoning in the emergency room at LaSalle Memorial Hospital—I don’t know her name, but I can get you the dates.”

  “Doable. Give whatever details you can to The Fixer. I’ll make sure she’s expecting them.”

  “And my partner, Bob Zigler. His talent is wasted at the Fifth Precinct. I want him to have a job, a meaningful job where he can make a difference, something that doesn’t eat his soul for lunch and shit it right back out. Something that pays decent, too.”

  “Zigler’s a fine investigator. The FPMP can make him an offer. Whether he accepts it or not will be up to him.”

  Dare I ask for another pair of tickets behind the fifty-yard line? I supposed it couldn’t hurt. “And one more thing. The last perp I brought in, a guy who stabbed his wife in the neck and threw her in the back of his truck…I need to make sure he doesn’t walk.”

  “Is that so?” Dreyfuss raised an eyebrow. “Never thought I’d hear Mr. Fifth Amendment asking me to fix a trial. What happened?”

  He knew damn well what happened. I’d go so far as to say he’d made sure the headline about the dog dish murderer had run somewhere I’d be likely to see it.

  Dreyfuss turned toward the mirror and fiddled with the top of his new haircut, frowning, and said, “If it were within my power, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But a stunt like that would require a significant amount of favors. Unfortunately, I’ve burned all my favors in planning our honeymoon.”

  “Where the heck are you two going? Cuba?”

  “Actually, Havana’s not a bad idea. But, no. It’s not the location that’s expensive. It’s the duration.”

  He eyed me via reflection while the actual meaning of what he was saying dawned on me. Dreyfuss and Lisa were about to redact themselves. “Not forever,” I blurted out. “I mean…when things blow over with Washington….”

  “Then it’ll just be someone else lurking in the shadows. Think about it. We’re the weapons that are too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands. If someone twitchy gets wind of what either me or mi novia can do, it’s game over.”

  “Unless Dr. K’s research panned out, and Psych became so common that you weren’t all that special anymore.”

  “People like us—Psychs with so much natural ability that we’re completely over the top—don’t have any chance of really blending in with the herd. Maybe someday, but not in this generation.”

  “But Dr. K said the field of Psych is like aeronautics and computers. We both remember typing on typewriters and looking stuff up in encyclopedias. You know how futuristic it felt to open up a browser window and type a search term for the first time—over a dial-up modem. Now we’ve got it on our damn phones. You just got finished telling me how the Internet helped you figure yourself out, so you can’t deny that change can happen in leaps and bounds.”

  “Someone pinch me…either I’m dreaming, or Victor Bayne reveals himself to be a closet optimist.”

  He tucked the envelope of Seconal back into his pocket, and the thought of swallowing a familiar red capsule made my mouth water. If I asked for one, just one, he’d probably g
ive it to me. Heck, he’d probably give me the whole envelope; Con Dreyfuss was nothing if not generous. But if I had a handful of reds in my pocket, no matter how hard I tried to resist, I’d end up taking one. Maybe two. And if I said or did anything loopy while I was under the influence, the sí-no would tattle on me and tell Lisa I got high at her wedding.

  I exited the mens room before I did anything I’d end up regretting.

  Maybe Lisa was fully prepared to take on the remote seer’s night terrors. But Dreyfuss would need all the luck he could get to embark on his new life under the scrutiny of the sí-no.

  Chapter 35

  When I got the call, Jacob was dozing in the passenger seat while I played designated driver. The gears of the FPMP machine turn fast. I was still full of grilled snapper, wedding cake and squelched, bitter tears when the new Regional Director tapped me. I said I’d need to think about it, but really, I was deciding whether I’d do Jacob the courtesy of discussing my next step with him first. As I considered the offer, I found myself making a right where I’d normally turn left, heading south down streets that were post-midnight empty, over the river, through Greektown, and past U of I.

  Although it was nearly two o’clock in the morning, Jim’s Original was still open. Apparently they never close. A half dozen drunk frat boys were pooling their spare change to try and alleviate their munchies. It took me a moment to pick out the dead panhandler from the crowd. I watched for a few moments, and there he was, in all his spectral glory. Matted hair. Frayed trenchcoat. Hunched shoulders. Everything about him screamed out to my cop-sense that he was up to no good. He meandered through the group of college kids, between them, in them, trying them on for size, one, then another.

  I’m told alcohol is a mild antipsyactive. But Jacob wasn’t wasted, only exhausted. He’d do fine—we had the element of surprise on our side. I shook him by the knee and his head jerked up. “Where are we?”