Stefan nodded, “Okay, so our killer stores the bodies somewhere. He probably is a madman—”
“But why not Andrassy and Polillo? The only real difference is that we’ve identified them.”
18
Wednesday, March 11
Iago stood before a long table. The table had chairs for twelve, but only ten elders faced him. Deaths had emptied the last two seats. Despite that present evidence of danger, the audience was both the most impassive and the most hostile he had ever performed before. Out the windows beyond them, the gray-black skyline—night—dark and wrapped in smoke from the Flats—was more attentive, and more welcoming.
He had come here to warn them, the greatest in each circle that ruled Cleveland and the surrounding state. None wanted to hear what he had come to know; about the being calling himself Eric Dietrich; about the humans Polillo and Andrassy; or about the deaths that had emptied the chairs at this high table.
When Iago had finished, the room fell silent. For a while the only sound in the boardroom was the soft moan of the waning winter wind outside. Inside, under stares from the soft-lit portraits on the wood-paneled walls, Iago waited for a response.
Lucian, first among all that were here, was first to talk, as always. “Iago, your information serves you and those of the blood well.” Lucian leaned back, narrowing his ebony eyes, taking away half of what he had given, “But I do not hold such a high regard for your opinions.”
That was it, Iago felt. He faced the most senior and powerful of their kind that were in the region. Lucian had known Moses Cleaveland when he’d stepped off at settler’s landing in 1796, the two women here had been in the Indian communities here before then. Every one of the faces looking at Iago were of the blood before the Civil War— when he was still a human actor drafted into the Union Army.
They were old enough to be too conservative. To be too blind.
Byron, second to Lucian, but a power in his own right, spoke, echoing the elder’s words. “The two humans, as you say, may have been in the process of coming over to the blood. Their deaths, so entwined with our peers Laila and Anacreon, speak to that. And, what that loss has meant to your circle has not escaped us.” Byron shook his head. “But to accept the word of a human prostitute that her master is Melchior? That creature was destroyed long before any here was born.”
Not before Laila, Iago thought. She would have been the only one of you to know him for what he was. He did not speak. He could not interrupt the elders. If he did, the impropriety would prevent any of them from hearing what he said.
Byron continued. “Again, while there may be a grave violation of the Covenant here, and the humans’ master is likely responsible, there is little evidence that that master is, in fact, the man Eric Dietrich. That man has been photographed abroad in the daylight, and none here or abroad claims him as one of the blood.”
To do both would be too powerful for you to credit, Iago thought. If they couldn’t accept that Dietrich was the ancient Melchior, then of course they couldn’t accept him abroad in daylight. The chief vulnerability they had, aside from the thirst, was the light from the sun. In all of history, there had been only half a dozen of the blood who had achieved enough of a level of power and self-control to walk under the sun without turning into so much dead flesh.
Believing Iago was wrong was much easier than accepting that there might be a hostile presence here, millennia old, and more powerful than any who sat in this room.
Raphael, several seats down from Byron and Lucian, looked at Iago with what might have been sympathy. “The Covenant has been broken, even if not by whom Iago suspects.”
One of the women, Jana, asked, “Has that ever been established?”
“It would be wise to treat it so,” said someone else.
“That means that someone is attacking the Council directly,” said another.
Iago noticed Raphael looking across at Byron and Lucian as he said, “That’s not necessarily so. There were the two humans who had nothing to do with us.” That seemed to head off the scent of panic that the question had begun to spread through the room. Iago frowned. He thought that these old fools could use a little panic. At this point, some more fear would be constructive.
It seemed wrong. He remembered the panic through his own circle. Centered around Anacreon the circle had been chaotic, but powerful. If Anacreon had still lived, it would have been him to speak after Lucian, not that smarmy Byron. And from what Iago saw, Byron was little better than a thrall to Lucian. Byron led a circle which seemed little more than an extension of Lucian’s own power.
Iago didn’t listen to much of the debate, after it began. Debate was a kind word. It was little more than a war of assertions, each gaining weight with the seniority of the proposer. None contradicted the root assertions by Lucian and Byron, that Iago was wrong, and that Melchior was so much ash scattered on the hills of Bavaria.
Iago left the building lost in disappointment. The leaders of his kind would treat this as a simple matter of murder, not as the threat it was. He slogged along the sidewalk downtown, wondering what was going to happen to his people.
He kept walking until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Raphael standing behind him. He hadn’t sensed him approach. That made Iago even more nervous. Raphael came from an era of ships and whaling a hundred years before Iago lived. If Raphael hid himself so well from Iago, what hope did any of the elders have against a being that was millennia old?
“Iago,” Raphael said.
Iago nodded. “Sir.” The word tasted sour in his mouth.
“Eric Dietrich is doing too much good for many of the Council to move against him.”
It wasn’t what he was expecting to hear, so Iago didn’t respond for a moment. He just stood, staring at Raphael’s face, wondering what the other was thinking.
“Whoever he is,” Raphael continued, “he is warring with human forces that some of our own would like to see diminished. As long as Dietrich is an enemy to certain criminal elements in this city, parts of our Council will not move against him.”
Iago nodded. “I see.”
“There is worse,” Raphael said. He reached out his hand. “But I need a pledge of fealty from you before we talk further.”
Iago looked at the hand. “Why?”
“Because otherwise I cannot say what I need to say. Because you have no friends on the other side of the table. Because Anacreon’s circle is disintegrating without him.”
Iago looked at Raphael and said, “What about my loyalty?”
“To Anacreon? He is no more. Your only loyalty is to help avenge him.”
After a long time, Iago took Raphael’s hand and said, “By the name I’ve chosen between us, I so pledge.” In his heart he apologized to Anacreon.
The event was small in ceremony, but it hung heavy with power. It felt as if the center of gravity shifted between them.
After their hands separated, Raphael said, “Perhaps you know that there are those who are not grieving for the loss of either Laila or Anacreon....”
19
Friday, March 20
A month into the Safety Director’s special assignment, Stefan’s apartment was papered with notes, charts, and copies of police photographs. His spartan apartment had become a shrine to the murders. The investigation was the last thing he saw when he went to bed, the first thing he saw when he woke up in the morning.
He and Nuri would spend hours poring over the papers, looking for common threads binding the murders together. They also reinterviewed dozens of people the initial investigation had talked to. Stefan managed to confirm to his own satisfaction that the man who called himself Iago was seen in the company of both Andrassy and Polillo, but little else new surfaced.
The only connection between Andrassy and Polillo seemed to be their sordid pasts. Both frequented the Roaring Third Precinct, a morass of tenements, bars, flophouses, and pool halls. Polillo was a prostitute, and Andrassy had been involved in pimping
men and women.
It seemed likely that they met, might have even known each other, but there was nothing to confirm it. Stefan, however, was growing convinced that when Iago had said, “Andrassy’s whore,” he was referring to Polillo.
Because they were covering so much ground, on four murders, by themselves, it wasn’t until a month into it that Stefan drove his Ford up Walnut Street and pulled in front of a run-down hotel. “Here we are.”
“This is it?” Nuri asked.
The building was in sad shape. Most of the windows were gray, except where yellowed newspaper covered a break in a pane. The brick walls were black with grime. On the stoop, under the rusted sign, two old men were sharing a bottle between them.
Stefan opened the door and stepped out. “Time to check out Polillo’s last known husband.”
Nuri got out of the car and lit a cigarette. He shook his head. And said a phrase that he’d started chanting before every one of the past dozen interviews, “This is not going to be another vanishing lead.”
Stefan walked around the car and patted Nuri on the back. “Come on.”
The manager had a little fly-specked office off of the lobby. There was barely enough room for him to sit, so Nuri and Stefan were left to crowd the doorway. After the man had made the obligatory noises about already telling the police everything, they got down to questioning about Polillo’s past.
“She came back from Washington, D.C., with a new husband?” Stefan asked.
“Don’t know where she been,” the manager said, “but she called the guy her husband.”
“Harry Martin,” Nuri prompted.
The manager nodded. “That’s the name he gave. Queer, that guy. Didn’t like him. Misused her, I think.”
“Misused her?” Stefan asked. “How?”
“She got too damn pale.” The manager tapped under his eye. “Shadows like bruises. Seemed hurt a lot. Then there was screaming from the room.” The manager looked up at both of them. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t mess with my tenants’ business.”
“This was through the end of 1934?” Nuri asked.
The manager nodded.
“Can you describe the Harry Martin gentleman?” Stefan asked. From the files, the police had yet to find the man.
“Yeah, sure. Hard to forget. Tall, blond, hair too long. Foreign-like. Gave me the willies just by hanging around—”
Nuri surprised Stefan by pulling out a photograph and handing it to the man. “Is this him?” Nuri asked.
The manager took the picture, his eyes widened. He began nodding vigorously, “Yeah, yeah. That’s the guy right there. Never forget those eyes.”
The manager handed the picture back to Nuri, and Nuri handed the picture to Stefan. Stefan looked at it.
It was the picture of Eric Dietrich from the immigration record.
Back in the car Stefan said, “I guess Ness is on to something.” He didn’t want to admit it. The crowded morass of the Roaring Third slid by the Ford. For a while they both sat in silence. Eventually Nuri said, “You really don’t like Ness, do you?”
Stefan snorted. “He’s a glory hound, in it for the press coverage.”
“Come on,” Nuri said, “He strikes me as one of the most honest cops in this town. The force could certainly be cleaned up. You told me that yourself.”
“Maybe I’m wrong,” Stefan said, “But I think he’s too in love with his own image. The gangbuster from Chicago.”
Nuri shrugged. “Well, we have a connection with Dietrich now.”
Stefan nodded. The car slid past a pawnshop, the window was crowded with misplaced objects. One of the objects was a golden crucifix that reflected sun into Stefan’s eyes as they passed. “We can’t question him directly,” Stefan said. “Not if we’re to maintain this secrecy.”
“What should we do next?”
“The obvious thing is to get missing persons records from Washington, D.C. If that was where Polillo met ‘Harry Martin,’ there’s a chance that’s where ‘Martin’ met the other victims, if he’s involved. And since Dietrich is a businessman, we should uncover any business he had in D.C.” Stefan shook his head. “What do we know about this fella anyway?”
“He’s an immigrant from Hungary, he’s wealthy. We don’t have a lot else.”
“Is he a Nazi?”
Nuri shrugged.
“The Nazis are into rituals. Think that may have something to do with what’s going on?”
Nuri shook his head. “From what I’ve heard about the Nazi Party, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“That’s worth following up. His political affiliations. How he arrived in the country... Do we know how he arrived in the country?”
Nuri nodded, “He had his own ship. The Ragnarok, a small freighter, German registry. From the information I have, it’s in port here.”
“You don’t say?”
Night was falling as Stefan drove the Ford toward the docks. He pulled to a stop a few blocks short of the warehouse they were interested in. Beyond, the lake was visible. On it, the bulk of the cargo ships nearly dwarfed the small form of the Ragnarok. The small freighter that Dietrich owned was marked by the red and black German flag. People moved over the docks, and lights blazed through the night. Except on the Ragnarok and the warehouse.
“Doesn’t seem to be a lot of activity around Dietrich’s property,” Stefan said. “Are you sure that he’s still using it?”
“According to the shipping records,” Nuri said while shuffling a stack of all the papers that the two of them were able to liberate without a warrant. “This warehouse and the ship have been seeing constant activity back and forth from Europe ever since Dietrich emigrated.”
“Does it say where in Europe?”
“Spain.”
“Figures.” Stefan opened the door and looked toward the darkened warehouse. “Shall we go take a look?”
“Without a warrant?”
Stefan shrugged. “I don’t think we’d be able to get one and maintain Mr. Ness’ secrecy.” He shut the door behind him. The wind off the lake carried the smell of rotting fish and diesel fumes. It chilled his skin. “Besides, whatever connection we have between him and Polillo, this is still a fishing expedition.” He walked around to the rear of the car, opened the trunk and removed a flashlight.
Nuri got out of the car as Stefan slammed the trunk shut. “Let’s see what Mr. Dietrich is bringing into the country.”
“Who says he’s bringing stuff into the country?” Stefan asked.
Nuri shrugged.
The two of them walked down the darkening aisle between the waterfront buildings. The temperature dropped, and a light dusting of snow drifted past the lights around them, a swirl of pallid motes against the darkling sky. The noise of the docks, the sound of engines and of foremen shouting orders, all seemed muted the closer they came to the darkened warehouse.
They stopped in front of the massive double doors closing the loading dock. Low and to the right was a more human-sized door, dwarfed by its neighbor. The building carried no markings identifying it, the entrances plain and whitewashed. Stefan tried the knob on the smaller door, and found it locked.
He stepped back. “Are you sure this is Dietrich’s warehouse?”
Nuri nodded. “I did some work on Dietrich’s background. I unearthed as much of his business holdings as I could without drawing attention to myself.”
Stefan looked at Nuri, “You were doing this in your spare time?”
“You didn’t like him as a suspect, but I had the feeling he was going to turn up.” Nuri turned to face Stefan. “I hope you don’t think I was going behind your back.”
“No. No.” Stefan shook his head. He felt uneasy again. He hoped that it wasn’t his distaste for Ness that kept him from following up on Dietrich sooner. “So this is it?” He looked back at the massive locked portal. “It looks abandoned.”
“Dietrich owns it.”
“Does he use it, I wonder.” Stefan edged around t
he side of the building. There were windows on ground-level, but they’d been whitewashed, too. Stefan’s unease heightened. Something was being hidden in here. For a moment he wondered if it would be a good thing to know what it was.
He kept edging down the alley between this warehouse and the next, the only light filtering through the frosted windows of Dietrich’s neighbor.
Halfway down the alley, the way was blocked by a new fence, about eight feet high. Stefan could see, through the boards of the fence, a metal ladder bolted to the side of Dietrich’s warehouse. He looked back at Nuri, who was following, and pointed above the fence with the end of the flashlight. There the ladder was visible, hugging the wall all the way to the roof. Then he handed the flashlight to Nuri, grabbed the damp wood of the fence, and began climbing.
His body protested the exertion. His joints were too old to take these kind of athletics with good grace. However, he managed to reach the top of the fence. Straddling it he could see into the fenced-off alley beyond. Another fence blocked off the other side of the alley from the ladder. Next to the ladder, a side door led back into Dietrich’s warehouse.
Stefan looked down and waved Nuri up. Then he dropped down on the other side. He heard a ripping sound and felt a sharp pain as a nail caught his pants leg. He fell to the ground and stumbled, trying to keep his balance.
Nuri dropped down afterward. “Are you all right?”
Stefan nodded as he looked at his left leg. The pants were torn up to the knee, and a narrow gash followed the line of the tear up his leg. It bled badly, but Stefan could feel that the wound was shallow. “Not bad, just a scrape.”
Nuri pulled the flashlight from his belt, where he had shoved it. He walked up to the side entrance and tried the door. “Locked here, too.”
“Let’s go up and take a look around.” Stefan walked up to the ladder and started pulling himself up.
“Are you sure you’re up to that?” Nuri was staring at his leg.
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