“Mr. Stone.” Nice voice. Nice salary too, I guessed.
“You want a coffee?”
He shook his head. “We have a mutual friend. I think you know to whom I am referring.”
“Yes, I think I know to whom you are referring. Tell me something, is this friend of ours dead or still wandering the streets of our fair city?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that, Mr. Stone.”
“So why are you interested in him?”
“It’s rather a complicated story.”
“Isn’t it always?”
He sort of smiled, but he made it look like he had the gripe. “Our friend is wanted for questioning. Not just by us. It’s an international matter. Security. And he is a very dangerous character. I can’t tell you how dangerous.”
I carried on chewing, occasionally breaking to sip my coffee. “I guess a man like that makes more than a few enemies.”
“It doesn’t pay to get mixed up with this sort of people.”
Ah, did I detect a chill note creeping into the voice? A coldness of expression? I grunted.
“So what is your interest, Mr. Stone?”
“Let’s just call it curiosity.”
“If you say so, Mr. Stone. Is the payload worth the trouble?”
“A man’s got to eat.”
“You know who I represent? It’s a powerful outfit.”
It was taking him a long time to get round to the threat. But this had to be it. “Sure.”
“How much would it take to eliminate your curiosity?”
“Like I said, a man’s got to eat.”
He named a figure that would have fed a sell-out at the Yankee Stadium. “You want me to forget about our mutual friend.”
“Completely.”
“Somebody might be disappointed if I did that. Somebody with a bad attitude. It could affect my health.”
“We can take care of that for you. If you help us.”
The idea of the FBI and my three employers going head to head was an interesting one. I just didn’t want to get mashed in the middle of it. “I’ll think about it.”
He nodded and got up, pushing the chair back slowly. “Good. We’ll talk again, Mr. Stone. I’ll be in touch. I know where you live,” he added, with a grin.
I forgot to shudder and just did my casual wave. But the fact was, I was deep in the mire. Whatever I did now, someone was going to be very upset.
* * *
Later in the day, one of my sewer rats came up with a lead. He’d been in and out of the wharf cafés, bumming smokes and a crust or two, when he’d tuned in on an intriguing conversation. Now this guy, a dropout called Shivers, is a real pro. He can blend in with the walls, or the furniture, or the garbage. You wouldn’t know he was there. He lives by the skin of his teeth and traffics in gossip. And he makes a point of knowing his market. So he knew that Nick Nightmare had an ear out for anything to do with the dockside “suicide”. Word had already got around.
In another bar, tucked away in a thick wooden booth, the air hung with smoke as thick as curtains, he spilled his news. He’d overheard two guys. One of them was a major link in an illegal immigrant chain, a man who could arrange to shift people from place to place with no questions asked. I knew the guy by reputation. Let’s call him BoBo.
According to Shivers, BoBo was talking to a weird guy—I interrupted him to show him the mug shot of Zeitsheim.
“Jeeze, Nick, that’s him, I tell ya! That’s the guy. White as a corpse.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“He was lookin’ for passage along the coast. Not by any normal channels. He kept turnin’ round as if Satan himself was blowin’ hot air down his neck, so I guess he was on the run.”
“How did he smell?”
Shivers nearly choked on his beer. “What the—? You know about that? Real bad, Nick. I mean, real bad. Fish gone off. I been in some places, but man, this guy was stinkin’ fit to make a guy retch.”
I merely nodded. Sailor Stefan it was, then.
“He spoke low and with a weird kind of voice, like he had a mother of a cold. But I heard him mention one of them old Massachusetts seaports. Innsmouth. He wanted to get to Innsmouth. BoBo took his time about answerin’. Sounded like Innsmouth was bad news to him. But he agreed. The fish guy gave him a wad of notes, must’ve been a fortune. BoBo told him it would take a few days to sort out. The guy would have to hole up until then.”
“You know where he is now?”
“Yeah.” He gave me the address of an old warehouse down by the docks. Good place to hide a needle. “Want me to take you?”
“Not yet. But keep an eye on him. I don’t want him leaving New York before I get a chance to meet him.”
My man was living up to his name, shivering like it was snowing out. Maybe it wasn’t just the cold and maybe the beer and the fug hadn’t done enough to warm him. I’d already given him some money, but I dragged my coat from the chair beside me. It had had its day. “Here, keep this. You need it more than I do.” If this panned out the way I hoped, I’d be picking up a dozen new coats before this affair was closed. Maybe even get myself a slick suit.
He struggled into the coat like it was something alien, but grinned a crack-toothed grin. You could have got two of him inside it. “Thanks, Nick,” he muttered. Then he was gone.
I was left to chew over what he’d told me. Innsmouth. Meant nothing to me. So it was library time, for a bit of research.
* * *
It took some digging out. I spend half my life glued to old newspapers: the good ladies at the library are getting used to me. I think they find me kinda romantic. Must be my old-fashioned charm. Whatever, they came up trumps on Innsmouth. And I had my connection.
Years ago, way back in the winter of 1927–28, it seems that the Government had investigated some pretty weird goings-on in the port, following complaints about demon worship and likewise subversive cults. The Feds had gone as far as to blow up or burn down whole parts of the town. There had been a lot of arrests. One report referred to a submarine diving down into the deep waters off the port to a reef known as Devil’s Reef, where something had been torpedoed. There had obviously been some sort of lunatic cult based around the area. And it seemed like overkill for bootlegging. Whatever they had really been up to would probably remain a mystery, but the Government had obviously taken it seriously enough to send in their heavies.
It had been a long time ago and I couldn’t find out anything more, but maybe there was still life left in the place and Stefan Zeitsheim wanted a piece of the action.
Evening was drawing on. Time to look up the errant sailor. In spite of my instructions, I didn’t plan on killing him. I reckoned he’d be worth more alive.
* * *
I knew where to find the warehouse Shivers had told me about. I parked a few blocks away, checked my Beretta and used the thickening shadows to mask my approach. Shivers wouldn’t be far away. He’d see me when others wouldn’t.
I was within a hundred yards of the building, when I heard a commotion up ahead. And I knew in my guts it was going to be bad news. I wasn’t wrong.
There was a mob. These streets were usually dead at this time of the day. Something had stirred them up, like a kicked hornets’ nest. They were crowding round the sidewalk, opposite the warehouse.
I moved in, looking down.
“Hey, Nick,” breathed a voice beside me. Another of the local dropouts.
“What gives?”
“It’s Shivers. Some punk shot him.”
I started muscling people aside. Sure enough, Shivers was sprawled across the edge of the sidewalk. I bent down to him. He was alive, but only just. His face was grey, his expression a mixture of agony and disbelief. I felt his chest. It was a mess.
Only one bullet, but it had done the job. I felt the fury rising up in me, but fought it down.
“A car,” he breathed through teeth clenched on pain. “The gun… silencer. Jeeze, I’m so cold, Ni
ck. So cold.”
I pulled the coat tighter around him. The coat, goddam it. My coat. He was wearing the coat I’d given him. The bullet had been meant for me.
“Who did this, Shivers?”
He managed only half a word before he died. But it was enough. Suit. It had been some guy in a suit. It figured. The Feds had warned me off. They really had meant business.
“Cops are on the way,” someone above me said. I got up and stood aside. In a minute or two I’d slipped to the back of the crowd. No one paid me any attention, all eyes on the curled-up form of Shivers.
I made my way along the street and crossed it where I thought I’d be least noticed. I guessed the Feds would have gone, thinking they’d taken me out of the picture. It was the one advantage I had on them. I was going to find Zeitsheim before they did, so help me.
At the far end of the warehouse there was an alley running alongside it. The light was fading away, but I could just about see enough to ease my way down it. It suited me. I flattened against the wall and moved forward by inches. Shivers would have known exactly where Zeitsheim was holed up inside, but now I was going to have to flush him out. I had a feeling it was going to be damn tough. My quarry had already shown his credentials in the hide-and-seek stakes.
I was about halfway down the alley when I noticed the breeze. Nothing unusual about a breeze, especially in these city canyons. They come and go. But there was something about this breeze that made my skin crawl, like it was the breath of some huge beast, crouched back there in the darkness.
Something scratched along the alley. A ball of newspaper. The breeze stiffened and in a minute, other bits of lightweight garbage came tumbling along. Couple of paper cups. More paper. Discarded bags.
I heard something far overhead, a distant roar. Maybe there was a storm brewing up. Very sudden. But what the hell, it was October.
I had my Beretta out, catch off. My nerves were dancing. More scraping sounds behind me. I swung round, aiming the gun. A tin can rolled, followed by more paper, a crushed cardboard box. The breeze was a light wind now. I could feel its strength growing, cold on the face. It kept cuffing stuff down the alley like it was a wind tunnel.
At the end of the alley was a mesh fence, eight feet high, beyond it a pile of crates and other junk, heaped up so that the fence bulged at its base, fit to burst. There were broken tea chests and tumbled stacks of newspaper this side of the fence. The wind was driving more captive garbage towards them, a growing procession.
Moving on down the alley, I fetched up against some metal bins, beyond which was a door into the warehouse. It didn’t look like it had been opened in a long time. I reached for the rusting handle.
“You don’t want to go in there, Mr. Stone,” called a soft voice from across the alley. I recognized it. The Fed from Fat Duke’s.
I was instantly down on one knee, partially masked by the bins, gun trained at the shadows across the way. I could already imagine the slug smashing into me.
“Easy, Mr. Stone.” He was well hidden, but I could see half of him. And a gun. Either he or one of his companions had killed Shivers. “I told you we would take care of this.”
I shifted back a little, getting more of me behind the bins. I was getting angry again.
The wind abruptly rose a tone or two, gusting down the alley, rolling another wave of litter forward. It struck me for the first time that there was something freakish about the moving garbage. There seemed to be an unusual amount of it.
“There’s still time for you to leave,” came the voice.
Sure, and take a bullet like Shivers had. I wasn’t planning on making the first move. And I wasn’t going to make polite conversation.
“You’ve no idea what you’re dealing with, Mr. Stone.”
“Suppose you enlighten me.”
“I can’t do that. It’s a case of—”
He didn’t get to finish. Near to the shadows that hid him, a pile of the litter seemed to erupt upward, cartons and cans and paper all bursting every which way. The Fed swung his gun arm round as if he would start pumping shots into the mass of paper. It was all I needed.
My Beretta spat once. At that range I don’t miss, never mind the poor vision. I heard the bullet smack into flesh and bone across the alley. The Fed’s gun spun from his grasp and clanked as it hit the ground. He gasped, his forearm shattered, and crashed back into the recess behind him.
The pile of garbage revealed itself to be some poor wino whose drunken stupor had been interrupted by the arrival of the Fed and me. Arms flapping like a scarecrow, he gabbled and shrieked something unintelligible and sat down hard among the huge pile of garbage that was his home. A half-full bottle of something rolled from his fingers into the middle of the alley. A few thin beams of light played on the moving contents inside it.
I was across the alley quickly, picking up the Fed’s gun and pocketing it. I was risking that he only carried one. He’d gone quiet. I guessed he’d passed out.
The wino suddenly started to blubber, shouting something crazy about the garbage trying to eat him. I watched as the wino, no more than a filthy bundle of old rags, leapt to his feet, beat at himself as if he was on fire, then tried to run off back up the alley. Paper clung to him like a cloud of huge moths.
I looked down at the bottle. The wino must’ve been totally freaked out to leave it.
I pulled out my lighter and snapped it on. I needed to see the Fed. Cautiously I went toward him. In the flickering glow I could just make him out. He was conscious, his good arm tightly clutching his bad, very bad, one. That was no flesh wound. He’d need attention pretty soon.
But I was in no hurry. Obviously I didn’t want his death on my hands, but there would be time yet to call the medics.
I held my gun up, aimed at his forehead. “You want to tell me why you tried to kill me? Why a man is dead instead of me?”
He shook his head, eyes shutting and opening against the pain in his shattered arm.
“You’re going to have to talk to somebody. If not me, the cops. I’m a man who likes to trade. Tell me about Zeitsheim and you can go back to your buddies in one piece.”
The wind was now howling overhead. I hadn’t been taking any notice. But again I got the feeling something was really freakish about it. More litter came rolling and tumbling down the alley, like a paper wave breaking on a beach. I turned to the Fed, about to step up our little chat. But something even more weird was going on.
The garbage. It had heaped itself around the Fed and, just like it had with the wino, it started to heave and bulge upward. Not another goddam wino!
But it wasn’t. The Fed started to scream. No exaggeration. He screamed. The wind was shrieking around us now, like a banshee, but the Fed’s scream tore right through it. I shuffled back, my gun aimed at the garbage pile. I swear to God it was bunching itself together. Shaping itself into something. And the wind was doing it. Like a potter kneading clay. All that garbage that had come rolling down into the alley was now gathering itself.
And the Fed went on screaming. The garbage shape raised itself. It now looked about the size of a man, hunched over, neck-less, its rounded, incomplete head a massive paper blob on huge shoulders.
I fired twice at it. Trust me, those bullets went right into its guts. But it didn’t make any difference. I stepped back, but my heel came down carelessly on the wino’s discarded bottle. I was over on my back before I knew it, the air punched out of me by the landing, Beretta spinning away. I could just about see the garbage-thing bending over the Fed.
A few seconds later the screaming stopped. And the thing turned round to look for me. I say look for me, but it had no face, no eyes. Like a dried papier-mâché golem gone wrong, it shambled forward, spurred on by the wind, which seemed like it was howling with glee, encouraging its malformed offspring. The contorted arms that reached out for me were wet and dark with the Fed’s blood.
No time to think. Just do. Whatever. Instinct took over.
My left
hand was inches from the bottle that had betrayed me. I grabbed it. The limbs of the thing above me were a couple of feet from my face. I was still holding my lighter in my right hand: I stuck it in my teeth. I rolled aside, snatched up some sheets of paper, made crude spills of them and rammed them down the neck of the bottle. Still on my back, I faced the oncoming shape again. I used the lighter to ignite my impromptu touch paper. Please God it was meths or something like it in that bottle.
I shoved the bottle up into where the mouth should have been. Something soft and pulpy gave, like I was punching a bowl of jelly. But the wine bottle stuck firm. I rolled over a few times, just in time to avert the sudden whoosh of fire as the spirits ignited. The mock arms that had been about to grab my face were suddenly beating at the head and chest of my assailant. With all that tinder at its disposal, the fire caught on fast. It crackled and snapped and the shape swung aside, blundering into the mound of debris by the fence, an instant bonfire. I watched as the bulging head dissolved into smoke and the upper torso streamed red fire.
I was on my feet fast, picking up my gun. I would just have a moment to look at the Fed. He was slumped down, but alive. His good arm groped for me. I yanked him to his feet and he almost swung round into the garbage and an early cremation. But I dragged him away. The smoke was coming in dense clouds. There was going to be one helluva conflagration in no time.
I put my arm round the groaning Fed, straining to get him across the alley. I could feel my eyebrows singeing in the ferocious heat. Nothing for it now but to get through the door into the warehouse. We made it across and I yanked at the handle so hard that it snapped off. But the door swung open. I pushed the Fed in, took one last look at the inferno behind me and got the door as near shut as I could.
He grunted, something clutched tightly in his good hand. It was a mobile phone. I prized it loose, but it was thankfully useless, squashed like an empty can, I guess by the paper monstrosity. But that suited me fine: I didn’t want the Fed calling up a swarm of his buddies. I flung the phone aside.
Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth Page 12