City of Iron

by Williamson, Chet

  Joseph shrugged. "It seems weird, but fluctuations in temperatures are common in old buildings. No big deal."

  "What about the poltergeist activity?" Laika asked.

  "The presumed poltergeist activity," Joseph said.

  "Sure, somebody threw that stuff around, but it wasn't a ghost."

  "And the lights?"

  "We'll see about the lights. How about some dinner first? We've got a few hours till midnight."

  At 11:45, they stood across the street from the townhouses and waited. Twice they were accosted by panhandlers, but a few threatening words from Tony drove them away.

  Two minutes before midnight, they saw the light in the window on the left. Laika, in spite of herself, felt a chill. It was a white light, dim at first, then brightening slightly be-fore it moved to the other window, where it remained for several seconds and then vanished without fading, just winking out like an extinguished candle.

  "Well?" asked Laika. "You think somebody's in there?"

  Joseph shook his head. "Not that room. No, I believe Melton when he said they investigated the light. They just didn't do it the right way." He smiled. "Borley Rectory. More so than they think?"

  "Huh?"

  "Never mind, Tony." Joseph lowered his voice. "All will be revealed . . . in time. Nyah-hah-hah."

  Tony frowned. "You make this job a lot of fun, Joseph."

  "I strive constantly to amuse. But I am getting tired—shall we return to the bat-cave? I long to go to sleep with the memory of that screaming ringing in my ears."

  Though he was joking, an hour later Laika found that was precisely what she was hearing. She put her new opera on her Discman, trying to get the sound out of her mind, along with thoughts of James Winston.

  How had he found her? She hoped he had taken Tony's warning seriously, because if he showed again, things would be worse for him—a lot worse. She didn't want him to die. There were too many good memories along with the bad for her to be comfortable about that.

  Finally she sat up in bed, took off her earphones, and decided to get herself a drink. The Company always stocked their safe houses with liquor.

  She was surprised, when she went into the living room, to find Tony Luciano reading a paperback, his feet propped on the coffee table. On the television screen was a home shopping show, the sound turned all the way down. Tony was holding a rocks glass containing an amber liquid and melting ice.

  "Don't get the wrong idea," he said. "I'm not an alcoholic, or anything. I just thought a drink might help me get to sleep."

  "I had the same idea." Laika went to the sideboard and poured some scotch, then got some ice cubes from the kitchen. She sat in an easy chair in the living room and glanced at the TV. "Why do you have the sound off?"

  Tony took a sip of his drink. "I don't care about it. It's just company while I read." He held up his book so that Laika could see the title, Down in the Zero. Cheery stuff, she thought. "What'd you think about tonight?" he asked, looking at her. "The spook house?"

  "I don't know. It was unsettling . . . that scream."

  "Yeah, I still hear it. Old Joseph, he's really got brass balls, hasn't he?" He shook his head in grudging admiration.

  "Yes, he does. Nothing seems to rattle him. The only thing about being so confident is, what happens if you find out you're not always right?"

  "You don't think he's right? About the house?"

  She shook her head sharply and took a long drink. "No, he's right, I'm sure. I just don't know if he's . . . right about everything. After all, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—'

  "'Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.' "Tony grinned. Laika thought he was feeling the drink. "And you thought I was dumb."

  "No, I didn't."

  "Sure you did. Dumb dago, all muscle and no brains."

  "You forget I saw your record, Tony. Graduated cum laude from Columbia. Your score on the Company's qualifying test would blow every other agent I ever knew out of the water, including me. No, I never thought you were dumb."

  "Well . . . I feel dumb tonight. Joseph is so dammed savvy about all this shit, and me . . . I'm like one of those pop-eyed black guys in the Charlie Chan movies . . . 'Oh Lawd, Missah Chan, I done seed a ghost!" He suddenly became embarrassed, as though he had just remembered Laika was black. "Sorry . . ." he muttered.

  "'Ey, datsa arright," she said in a cheesy Italian accent. "Issa no problem, paisano." They laughed together, and the racial tension fled.

  "Ah, you know what I mean, though. I don't really believe this stuff, but hell, it's gotta give anybody the creeps, and Joseph just acts like . . . like—"

  "I know how Joseph acts. Like a superior smartass."

  "You nailed that right on."

  Laika thought for a moment. "But Skye knew what he was doing. We need a total skeptic, and I don't think it's unfair to any of us to say that Joseph is the brains of this outfit. He's got the interest, the experience, and the attitude. If there's a rational answer, he'll find it. With our help."

  "Well." Tony raised his nearly empty glass. "Here's to us and our help." He emptied it and set it down on the coffee table next to another book that he picked up. "Now, this one's Joseph's. You believe this? This guy is a total skeptic, and look what he reads. The Alabaster Hand, a collection of old ghost stories. Like a dentist who spends his vacation looking in people's mouths."

  "He doesn't believe in it, so maybe it is escapist for him." Or maybe he just wants to believe, she thought, but didn't say.

  She finished her drink and stood up. 'Better try to sleep, Tony. Big day tomorrow."

  "The Case of the Vanishing Sculptor, huh? With Frank and Joe Hardy, and, uh...." He pointed at her. "Their girlfriend—what was it, Ilona?"

  "Iola."

  "Yeah, Iola. Goodnight, Iola."

  "Goodnight, Joe." She started walking out.

  "Iola?" he called. She turned and looked at him, and he winked. "Smugglers."

  "Smugglers." She went to get some sleep.

  Chapter 19

  The next morning, Quentin McIntyre was looking over the newspapers in his office at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. It took him from half an hour to an hour to do so, but since he always arrived an hour early, he never felt guilty about it cutting into the time during which he should be performing his duties. Besides, who was going to criticize an assistant director?

  Another rationale was that he considered this daily scanning of the papers part of his duties. He was exploring the country, seeing what strange things popped up in front of his face. His assistant had suggested he do the same thing on the Internet, but it was not possible. On the Internet, you depended on keywords and branching searches, and he never knew what it was that he was searching for until he found it. As for the Bureau's official readers, their heads held nowhere near the storage capacity that Quentin McIntyre, twenty-five years in the Bureau, possessed.

  So, three cups of black coffee already under his belt, he attacked the pile: fifteen morning newspapers from across the country, as well as weekly tabloids such as the Star, the National Enquirer, and even The Inner Eye.

  It was there that he had seen a photo of a confidence trickster, who had vanished fifteen years before, selling "psychic tangrams" out of a post office box in Trenton. The man had lost a hundred pounds and several inches of hair and had grown a beard, but McIntyre had recognized him instantly.

  Federal agents staked out the post office and arrested him when he came to empty his box. Ever since then, McIntyre went over the tabloids with as much zeal as he did the New York Times.

  This morning, it was not the headline on the fifth page of The Inner Eye that attracted McIntyre as much as it was the smaller of two photographs that accompanied the article. The first was of a desolate piece of earth surrounded by pine trees. A blackened chimney was all that remained upright of a burned building whose ashes darkened the ground.

  The second was of a man and a woman getting into a car. The woman's back was toward
the camera, but the man's face was visible. He wore sunglasses and a baseball cap with no insignia, but McIntyre still thought he recognized him. It was a square, craggy face, but still somehow gaunt, with high cheekbones and a pouting mouth. The neck was thick and the shoulders wide, and if the car was the model that McIntyre thought it was, the man would be about Tony Luciano's height as well.

  McIntyre finally read the headline: "Secret Gov't Psi-Team Investigates Immolated Immortals!" He chuckled and read the rest of the story, by one Taylor Griswold, "Special to The Inner Eye." It stated that a top secret government team of psychics had been sent to Plattsburgh, New York, to try and establish psychic contact with the spirits of eleven charred corpses found in a burned-down lodge near the town. The Inner Eye's on-staff psychic and seer, Imelda Santana, gave reporter Griswold the tip.

  "These men are immortal and cannot die," she was quoted as saying. "Their souls remain in their ruined bodies, and the government has sent psychics to contact these miserable souls in the hopes of finding the secrets of immortality so that the President, his family, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other important officials can survive in the event of nuclear or ecological destruction."

  McIntyre snorted and hoped the chain of immortal command would extend down to his level. He pushed a button on his desk and was answered by Phillips's voice. Good, he was there early. It seemed McIntyre's influence was rubbing off. "Al," he said into the speaker, "got something for you here."

  In a matter of seconds, Alan Phillips was standing on the other side of McIntyre's broad desk. "Sit down, Al. See that fella in the picture there? I think that's a guy named Anthony Luciano, a CIA operative. Got to know about him when he performed a number of low-level political sanctions a few years back. We had some interest in one or two. Read that and you'll know as much as I do about it. See if you can find out anything."

  Phillips had been reading the article while listening to McIntyre. "New York State," he said. "That's a little out of CIA territory, isn't it?"

  McIntyre smiled. They both knew damn well that certain subdivisions merrily broke the CIA charter right and left. Sometimes McIntyre thought that as many clandestine operations were going on within the country as there were outside it. It was a rare month when his agents didn't trip over a spook or two operating within the U.S. They could go crying to a congressional subcommittee about it, but after all, they were all on the same side. Most of the time.

  "Just see what you can learn," McIntyre told Phillips. "Try and find out if it's Luciano, if it's CIA, what it's all about, and who in the Company is responsible for it." He thought for a moment, then added, "You might see if Richard Skye has his long fingers in it."

  Phillips nodded and left the room with The Inner Eye.

  Yes, this was something Richard Skye could be involved with, all right. The CIA charter had never bothered Skye in the past, and Skye was unlikely to have changed his outlook on such things in the six years since McIntyre had last crossed swords with him. Skye had stepped on the agency's toes back then, and McIntyre had figuratively kicked Skye in the shins, an act from which Skye was probably still smarting.

  The psychic tie-in was what had made him think of Skye. Several years before their semi-official run-in, Skye had been involved in a project that had entailed kidnapping Russian psychics working with the KGB and smuggling them into the States. It was when they arrived stateside that McIntyre had entered the picture. Skye, unwilling to compromise his hold over the purported psychics, would not turn over responsibility for the human cargo to the stateside bureau, and by the time the orders to do so came down from on high, the Russians had disappeared. Though the bureau was never able to determine what had happened to them, McIntyre was sure that Skye had "disappeared" them.

  Or maybe he was wrong. Maybe even now the psychics were being held prisoner in some secret Company cell, using their powers to the CIA's—and Skye's—advantage.

  McIntyre laughed at the thought, as he did each time he had it. Psychics, he was convinced, were bullshit.

  Chapter 20

  Laika was unimpressed with the building in which Peder Holberg's apartment and studio were housed. It seemed utilitarian to the point of absurdity. There were hardly any windows looking out onto the busy midtown street, the wall was a flat gray sheet of concrete, and the door was a slab of dull steel with a handle. "Hardly what I expected," she said, and Tony and Joseph murmured agreement.

  She pressed a recessed button beside the door, but no voice came through the speaker grill. Instead there was a sharp click, and when she pulled on the door handle, it opened. They stepped inside.

  A long stairway rose in front of them, and against the light at the top, they saw a thick-set man in an ill-fitting suit. "You the people from the science institute?" he called down.

  "National Science Foundation, yes," Laika called back, starting to climb the stairs.

  "Come on up, then," the man said gruffly, and disappeared.

  "How hospitable," said Joseph softly.

  At the top of the stairs was a short hall. On the left side was a carved wooden door, and on the right was another steel door similar to the one downstairs. It was open, and they went in.

  At last Laika was impressed. Peder Holberg's studio was huge, with mammoth constructions of iron everywhere. The anarchical sculptures were so disordered that it took her a moment to notice the scene of the explosion. An entire wall at the top of a wooden staircase had been taken out, leaving only a jagged hole behind.

  "Blew this place a new asshole, didn't it?"

  Laika turned to the chunky man. His hair was fashionably cut, but the rest of him was as rumpled as the two chins that hammocked beneath his twisted mouth. "I'm Detective Sergeant Havisham."

  "Great Expectations," Joseph said quietly.

  Havisham's mouth pulled up on one side in what Laika figured was a smile. She was sure it wasn't the first time someone had alluded to the literary significance of his name. "Hope I don't disappoint you. And you guys are from . . . what is it again?"

  "National Science Foundation, Division of Special Investigations," Laika said.

  "You mind showing me your IDs?" When they presented their cards, Havisham nodded. "And this ranks in your book as something special, huh?"

  "Apparently, somebody thinks so," said Laika.

  "Yeah, well, God forbid that the cops should try and figure anything out when there are always feds to do the job. No offense."

  "Some taken," said Tony. "Don't you like us, Sergeant?"

  "I think you're just peachy, fella."

  "Really? Well, you know, I don't even give a shit."

  Christ, thought Laika, if it wasn't Joseph smartassing Melton, it was Tony with this cop. "Okay," she said. "Would you just show us the scene?"

  Havisham's face was starting to redden, but Tony was so cocksure that the cop said nothing more to him. "Sure," Havisham said tightly. "I was told to give you the utmost cooperation—that was the exact phrase—so sure. Come on."

  He led them up the stairs to the opening in the wall. "There it is. Holberg went in and never came out. Boom. No Holberg."

  "And there were no traces of body parts? No blood or tissue?" Laika asked.

  "None at all. You got the reports?" She nodded. "Then you know that the lab found quantities of plastic explosive. And what probably was part of a timing device."

  "Any idea," Joseph asked, "whether Holberg had made the bomb, or it was planted by someone else?"

  "Well, I wouldn't know," said Havisham. "You see, we got orders from the feds to cease our investigation before we could ask the boyfriend much of anything about Holberg. For all I know, he could have made it."

  "You mean . . . the boyfriend?" Joseph asked. "This, uh—" He referred to a clipboard. "Adam Guaraldi?"

  "That's the guy. He's living in the apartment across the hall."

  "Anything else you can think of that might be helpful?" Laika asked.

  Havisham half-closed his eyes and shrugged. "You've got th
e witness list and all the reports. The boyfriend's expecting you. Here's my card." With nicotine-stained fingers the man withdrew a gleaming sterling silver card case from his coat pocket, opened it, and proffered a perfect white pasteboard to her. Surprised, she took it, thanked him, and put it into her shoulder bag, as Havisham walked down the stairway and out the door without another word.

  "Cheery sonofabitch," Tony said.

  "He resents us." Joseph was looking around the room, brightly lit by police floodlights. Every detail of the destruction was starkly visible.

  "Look," said Laika, joining the search. "This was a table. The bomb must have gone off—" She looked around at the way the wood had shattered and splintered. "Yes, on top of it. The impact pressed these boards down."

  "I don't get this," Tony said. "Look at these statues here . . . if that's what they are."

  "See what you mean." Joseph touched the bent and twisted iron. "You'd think the blast would have ripped these apart . . . at these welds. But instead, they're just twisted."

  "Corkscrewed," Laika suggested, and Joseph nodded. "Like it got caught in a tornado, but wasn't picked up or knocked down," she added. "Weird."

  "Weird's a good word for it," said a strange voice.

  Laika spun around to see a man standing on the other side of the blown-out doorway. He appeared to be around thirty, and his arms and shoulders were bared by the sleeveless T-shirt he wore. He was of medium height and muscular, but they were the muscles that grew from hard work, not the kind that were sculpted in a health club. Laika noticed a number of red scars on his forearms, as though he had been burned. "I'm Adam Guaraldi," he said in a high-pitched but husky voice. "I was Peder Holberg's companion."

  Laika introduced herself and the others. "You're still living here, is that right?"

  He nodded. There was nothing at all effeminate about him, Laika thought. "I own the place now. I didn't know, but Peder had named me his sole heir. His parents in Norway are dead, and he had no brothers or sisters. So. . . ."