Shaking myself clear of whatever ruminations had set in, I passed through the rather opulent front office and room of waiting usually occupied by my secretary and assistant, ‘Peaches’ McCoy and made for one of the only two doors along the back wall. Glancing at my watch as I moved, I knew Peaches would expect me to not even be out of the bunk yet, so I wanted to be sure I was hidden well away as to catch Peaches unawares.
I grinned, enjoying my little planned jibe, as I waved at the small indentation about waist level along the edge of my door. A whisper of whirring tickled my ears as the mahogany door slid to the right and opened my way into what passed for the office of the Executive Vice President of the Daye Foundation.
If this had been the office of any of the other notable moguls in Sovereign, the following description would be rife with words like ‘extravagant’, ‘impressive’, and maybe even ‘ostentatious.’ Of course, if this had been an office with some other muckety muck, the name ‘Thomas Pariah’ wouldn’t be on the directory downstairs or on the door closing behind me. There was Mabellyn, my often abused and scarred roll top desk that had been with me every since a dying frontier lawman turned Hollywood cause célèbre left it to me right before I shot him. I’d named her after I “inherited” her, primarily because I spent several years working out of a waterfront tenement office with her as my only company.
Behind Mabellyn hid a straight back wooden chair, no relation to Mabellyn, but just my preference. Soft cushions make me relax and although I’d much prefer to be draped in pillowy extravagance, I prefer that it be blonde, brunette, or redhead, not cloth or leather. Two chairs sat in front of Mabellyn, red leather client chairs. And that was what the office of the Daye Foundation Vice President consisted of for decorum and affectation. At least, to the eye that didn’t know any better.
I made my way across the office, shot a gander at the desk top, bare except for what I expected to see every morning. A black telephone wired to Peaches’ desk so all calls came through the recording and tracking device Doc had invented and installed when the Tower was built. The main switchboard had an identical gizmo wired to it. It just made figuring out who called from where so much easier when Doc and company, myself included, were working on ‘Foundation business.”
Beside the phone was a single sheet of paper filled from the top to the bottom with Doc’s precise, nearly elegant handwriting. For the last three years that I’d squatted in this office at Doc’s expense, there’d been a piece of paper covered in writing every morning. Even when Doc was at one of his multiple outposts or even off on his own case, that being more rare than ever before lately, I always found his instructions every morning. Half daily directions and half rumors and hints of things possibly to come, I’d found that that little idiosyncrasy of organization of Doc’s yanked my bacon back from the abyss more than once.
It was Doc’s daily dialogue that occupied my hands, eyes, and mind for the next five minutes after taking my seat at Mabellyn. Loose ends to tie up on a few past cases, one of those making sure the Sovereign City Zoo relocated a hairy snow man back to his Himalayan home; a reminder to ship newly developed strains of orchids to an old friend in New York; new developments Doc made the night before on the 38th Floor, the ‘Daye Discoveries’ arm of the Foundation, these being related to tracking certain markers as of yet unidentified in blood, both human and other species. The final item on the page, the one consuming more than half of the paper and the one on which I decided to settle in for the day, meaning feet gingerly placed on Mabellyn and chair precariously reclined on its back legs, was the one that would have jumpstarted my day even if the phone hadn’t rattled and screamed like a banshee chained to my desk.
“Purr for me, Peaches,” I cajoled as I slipped the receiver between ear and shoulder, barely breaking my self imposed recline.
“Mr. Pariah,” came the most cultured, best practiced and refined voice ever to grace an office line. Whatever might be said for Peaches McCoy off the phone, on the phone there was no more pleasant sounding professional tone anywhere. Even when that almost genteel voice was reporting mayhem. “Mr. Pariah, there’s been an incident in the lobby, sir. One of the utmost import, I would think.”
“That means,” I said, still not coaxed out of my typical Vice Presidential repose, “that either Jeanette’s Emporium of Excellence has caught fire once again or someone’s distressed, wounded, or dead somewhere below us.”
“The latter, sir,” replied Peaches curtly, but politely. Good ol’ Peaches. “Quite dead apparently. And only in the last minute or so. I answered the call as I returned from retrieving the mail box from the up chute.” Although there was a mailroom that handled all deliveries for the 36th floor and below, the upper floors each had small pneumatic tubes, up and down chutes, that brought mail to and from the lobby.
“Ah, Mabellyn,” I said despairingly into the phone, swinging my feet off her corner and standing, the phone still nestled on my shoulder, “our renewed affair must wait, my dear.”
Ignoring my flirtations with office furniture, Peaches said, “Mr. Pariah, the identity of the deceased is of some note. “ A slight hesitation, either out of respect or maybe because the name left a bad taste in Peaches’ mouth. “Rothguard, sir.” As Peaches would say, it was the latter. “August Rothguard. Should I notify Doctor Daye, Mister Pariah?”
“No,” I said. “Doc’s workin’ on blood and orchids this morning. This isn’t something to bother him with yet, even if it is ol ‘Mustaches’ Rothguard. I‘ll check it out. I‘m betting you‘ve already called the propers.”
“Yes sir, I called Chief Tate’s direct line due to it being-“
“Right,” I interrupted. I returned the phone to its cradle, retrieved my snap brim coffee colored fedora from its seat in the leather client chair on the left, and left my office the way I’d entered it.
From Peaches McCoy’s desk to my automatic door is approximately 25 steps for a normal person. In the time that it took for the door to slide open and disappear into the recessed wall, Peaches had crossed the Foundation front room in three large bounds. This is only noteworthy because it would amaze most anyone that someone of Peaches’ build and physique was so limber and agile. There aren’t many six foot four inch tall gravel gray haired former boxers and mercenaries for hire who can turn on a dime and leave change. And he sounded good on the phone, to boot.
“Tom,” Malcolm ’Peaches’ McCoy blurted, his voice face to face absent of any of the gossamer that lined it when he spoke on the phone, sounding more like the barrooms and back alleys that had birthed him. “You sure ya don’ want me to holler at the Doc? I mean, Rothguard. That’s much geetus bleedin’ all over his tailormades and our marble tile down there!”
“Geetus doesn’t matter, Peaches,” I said, “dead’s dead. You go ahead and sort the mail. I’ll go let the chief in.”
As I spoke, Peaches rumbled back to his desk, his hands on the metal mail box. “Yeah, yeah, figured ya’d say that, Tom. You want to keep all the funsies to yerself.”
“It’s a cadaver,” I said playfully as Peaches unlatched the hook locking the box and lifted its lid. “If it were armed robbers or genius dinosaurs like the last time, then I’d let you come-”
“Dames and doughnuts!” Peaches roared as I started out into the hall, this exclamation spinning me around on my heel, not nearly as gracefully as Peaches, but suitable. Whenever McCoy shouted out his two favorite things as a phrase, something had just caught his attention. This time, his usually small, cynical eyes were wide with astonishment and disbelief. And both staring daggers at whatever was in the metal mail box he’d just opened.
“What?” I joked as I made my way to his desk. “You get another poison pen letter from that chickie you met on McCall’s floating casino last week?”
Peaches said nothing, but he turned the mail box so I could get full view of what had captured his focus and his tongue. And when I saw it, August Rothguard suddenly became a dim memory.
Lying the
re in the box atop an envelope from the Sovereign City Home for The Forgotten and another with a governmental seal in its upper left corner, at least what of it I could see on account of most of it being stained scarlet, was a man. Not a finger or an ear, or even a hand. But a fully formed man wearing what appeared to be a miniature version of an off the rack suit, the coat torn to shreds but still clinging to his arms. Blood pooled around him, soaking the letters and what was left of his clothes. He lay fully prone, arms stretched out as if reaching for something or maybe diving at something. A man. In the mail box. And no more than four inches tall.
“All right, Peaches,” I said, “now we bother Doc. This trumps blood and orchids.”
***
Crowds make for interesting conundrums. We talk of getting lost in them, of how they are ‘maddening’, of how it’s just blamed easier sometimes to go along with them. All in all, crowds, in the psyche of the general American Joe anyhow, seem to be veritable forces of human nature. Yet there are those certain individuals, people of unique composition and personality, that no matter how small they may be in physical size or how well they blend in to almost any situation and scene, there are those who simply cannot be contained, controlled, or confounded by a crowd, be it a handful of people or a thousand. Or a lobby full of uniforms, flatfoots, and spectators of the human condition.
Sovereign City Police Chief Lawrence Tate was one of that rare sort.
I approached the rippling throng that ebbed and flowed around the corpse purported to be August Rothguard and even from my first step from the elevator onto the lobby floor, I was fully aware of the presence of Chief Tate. Standing five feet tall and change, Tate hopped and jumped back and forth around the crime scene, first kneeling beside the body, then up on his feet barking orders and indignation at some plainclothes gumshoe who had no taste in ties, and then at the other end of the tumult faster than you can say tumult, chastising some mother of three for letting her ankle biters witness such horror as now lay before them. Even though most of the men who worked for him and even several of the women woven into the action packed display before me stood taller than him, the Chief was easy to spot, his close cut, well groomed shock of snow white hair rising up and down like the crest of a wave as his stocky, tightly muscled frame paced anywhere it wanted to.
Chief Tate caught sight of me as I was just short of the first line of spectators. His dime size blue eyes sparkled, just enough that the wrinkles of wars fought and battles won around them vanished briefly and to let me know that he was now aware of my presence. As he rolled into another command to another officer, I glanced over at the lobby desk and saw young Yemen sitting there. The look of disbelief and fear that marred that matinee idol face of his told me that he’d at least been in the vicinity when Rothguard shook off what living he had left in him. Letting Tate continue his one man show, I made for Frank.
“Mr. Pariah,” Yemen’s words staggered out with the staccato of a man shaken to his very core. He stood and remained so even though I waved for him to sit back down. “I…honest, Mr. Pariah…I don’t know what happened…All I did was…” he held up his right hand, the usually pale skin tainted a slight shade of copper, “All I did was touch him!”
“Easy, Frank,” I said, extending my right hand so he would offer his left. He did and after the shake, I continued, “We’ll sort all this out. You know how to play this. Start from when the doors parted and Rothguard followed.”
He did just that, explaining Rothguard’s first angry, then fearful demands and pleas to see Doc Daye and how he said ‘they’ were going to kill him ‘like the others.’ I couldn’t help but stare at his hand when he related the part of where Rothguard’s chest simply imploded, pulling Yemen’s right hand into the man’s body. “The police,” Frank said, his words coming even slower, more erratically, “they cleaned off my hand, pulling some of…the pieces off and putting them in some sort of bag. But this, this color,” he waved his penny tinted hand at me, “it won’t wash off. Is this because there was so much…blood?”
“No, Frank,” I said, switching mental tracks from nonchalant executive to determined detective, “not any longer than your hand was covered in it. Does it hurt or feel different at all?”
“No, sir. Not a lick.”
“When you had your hand on his chest,” I pointed with my chin in the general direction of Rothguard’s remains, “did you feel anything, like a ripple or a shudder. Or hear something, maybe? Something that didn’t make any sense at the time?”
Yemen shook his head, beads of sweat lining up as if for parade on his upper lip. “Honest on my mother, Mister Pariah, I just had my hand on his chest, trying to get him to calm down, to keep him from bolting past me. And…” he looked at his hand again, this time as if it might actually be some sort of awful weapon. No more words came.
“It’s all right, Frank,” I said. “Take it from someone who’s seen death just as strange as what you’ve just experienced. Whatever this was had nothing to do with you. I want you to go up to my office, though, when the Chief is through with you. Tell Peaches that I sent you. I want Doc to look at that hand of yours.”
“Now that is simply inspired.” The throaty growl of Lawrence Tate’s voice reached me before sight of his diminutive sharply dressed in charcoal gray suit and all matching accessories form did. His face was all twisted up like a junkyard dog intently seeking someone which to bite. Intensity flared from his eyes as they set on Yemen first, and then darted to me. “You come in and in less than one minute amongst us wage slaves and badge shiners, you decide the man may need a doctor. Not only that,” Tate made a circle around me, his hands clenched into fists, and said fists slicing the air as he spoke as if they were conducting his symphony of rising anger, “but you determine that he needs to be seen by not just by any Caduceus slinger, oh no, he needs to see Tempus Daye.” Tate stopped in mid step and spun on me, his teeth bared as he looked up at me. Had he been able to spit bullets, someone else would have been telling this tale. “Simply brilliant.”
“Well, Chief,” I said, making sure my trademark ‘don’t give a damn’ grin marked every word I said, “there is, after all, something to be said for convenience. And this is Doc’s building. Whatever has colored poor Frank’s hand may well leave an indelible mark on the very tiles we stand on. Do you want Doc to have to worry over such things as indelibly marked tiles? And besides,” I felt my grin growing too wide to believe, “that is August Rothguard lying dead over there, isn’t it? Surely you’d give Doc the pleasure of being involved in the investigation of such a dear, dear friend as-“
“Pariah!” Veins erupted in Tate’s neck like great serpents rising to the surface of his skin. Not known to use names to address he anyone he spoke to except in times of extreme fury or duress, the latter being something I’ve never witnessed where the Chief was concerned, Tate raised his right fist, letting his index finger escape from it to shake at me. “I know full well what Rothguard thought of Daye and what your good Doctor thought of him if he let himself, so save the slop for the hogs! I want whatever this is from you now! And straight!”
“Of course, Chief Tate,” I said with as much syrup as my voice could hold, and I gestured behind the lobby desk. “We can step into this floor’s anteroom if you’d like.” The only response that got from the chief was the one I expected, a mad growl from somewhere deep in his throat and a fade around me in the direction I’d indicated.
I sidestepped quickly, taking my place just ahead of Tate. Neither the outburst nor the hasty exit surprised anyone who worked for the Chief or who had ever witnessed one of our often played dances. I stopped at the solid wall behind the desk, waved my hand waist level and waited as the panel slid open. I bent slightly at the waist and ushered Tate in first, getting nothing but a fiery glower for my effort, and then followed him in. As the wall slid shut after us, we both quickly took a place on walls opposite from each other in the room, little more than a four by six space devoid of furniture and walled and fl
oored with large crimson ovals of material two feet in diameter.
As the panel clicked shut, an electric buzzing filled the tight quarters and our ears for about ten seconds. In all reality, this room, like its matching siblings on the other thirty five floors as well as larger versions on each of the upper five floors, was in no way an anteroom. It worked to Doc’s benefit to let everyone think he preferred an antiquated term to reference his private meeting areas when actually these little cracks and crevices scattered throughout Daye Tower and most of Doc’s other properties, were Anti-Rooms.
Through a combination of electronic, radio, and various other signals as well as regulation of air pressure, extraction and inclusion of certain harmless chemical aerosols and gases, and manipulation of the flow of energy, magnetic, kinetic and otherwise, via the red ovals all over the floor and walls, Doc had created a room where everyone in it was safe and stable, mental dysfunction aside. The Anti-Rooms were pressurized in such a way that, if Doc wanted, people could be fully and physically restrained with no ability to move or even talk without a single strap or rope used. They were sound proof, explosion proof, bullet proof, escape proof. Everything proof, both inside and out. Conditions were such that guns would not discharge and flames would not light. Physical reactions, such as blood pressure, fever, and even impending cardiac arrest had been known to be slowed or stopped by the Anti-Room. Each room, such as the one the Chief and I now stood in, was set on a default that basically allowed for movement to and from the door, but little else. Doc controlled how much ‘Anti’ each room was from his perch on the 41st floor, adjusting it whenever needed for special circumstances. These little hideaways served a lot of purposes, the least of which was to give Doc somewhere he could go whenever he started to succumb to his own condition. Or to hide an alliance between a certain dapper adventurer turned Vice President and a short but surly officer of the law.
The Adventures of Doc Daye, Book 1 Page 2