Weird Detectives

by Neil Gaiman, Simon R. Green, Caitlin R. Kiernan

  The time with me was a little different. Mr. C came out the door and headed west along Thirtieth Street. I followed him for a few blocks through the rush hour crowds pouring out of offices and garment factories.

  He turned south on Ninth Avenue then turned west again on Twenty-ninth. These blocks had warehouses and garages, body shops, but also some rundown apartment houses. Here the crowds heading east for the subways were longshoremen, workers from the import/export warehouses. I stayed on the other side of the street, kept an eye on him and watched the sky, which was getting dark and cloudy.

  Culpepper crossed Tenth Avenue. A long freight train rolled over the elevated bridge halfway down the block. On the North corner of the avenue was an apartment house that must once have been a bit ritzy when this was mostly residential but now looked run down and out of place. That’s where he turned and went in.

  I glanced over as I passed to make sure he wasn’t lingering in the entryway, waiting to pop out and give me the slip. As I did, a light went on up on the third floor. I noted it and wondered if that’s where he was. Then I continued walking till I was under the train tracks. Already the streets and sidewalks were getting empty.

  At the end of the next block, beyond Twelfth Avenue, was a pier with a tired-looking freighter moored and beyond that the river. A string of barges each with its little captain’s shack went by pulled by a tug.

  It was growing dark and all the warmth had been in the sun. I paused and turned like I’d forgotten something. Culpepper had not come out of the apartment house.

  I crossed the street then walked back to the building he’d gone in. I spotted no one watching me. The outer door was open. One side of the entry hall was lined with mailboxes—twenty-four of them. I took out my notebook and copied the names. Many times when the husband strays it’s with someone the wife already knows.

  The third floor was where I’d seen a light go on. So I gave those mailboxes my special attention. Apartment #15 in particular had a recently installed nameplate. Mimi White it read. If that’s where Culpepper was, the name seemed too good to be true.

  Somebody upstairs had the news on the radio. In the first floor back, the record of “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d Have Baked a Cake” got played a few times.

  As I finished copying the names, an old lady came in carrying an armload of groceries. Like the building itself she looked like she’d seen better days. I held the door for her, said my name was Tracy, that I was from the National Insurance Company, and was looking for a Mr. Jameson who was listed as living at this address in apartment #15.

  She thought for a moment then said #15 had been occupied for years by an Asian couple. They had moved out and it had stayed empty for a while. A young lady had moved in just recently. I thanked her and noted that.

  As she headed upstairs, I heard footsteps and voices coming down. I went outside, crossed the street, turned and walked slowly back towards Tenth Avenue. I noticed the third floor light was off.

  When I paused on the corner I saw the couple. Mr. Culpepper had left his briefcase upstairs. The lady he was with wore a short camel hair coat, a nice black hat set on her blond hair and high heels. She looked like her name could easily be Mimi and that you could take her places.

  Culpepper glanced neither left nor right as they walked to the corner and he hailed a cab. In my experience, a guy stepping out with a good-looking woman usually wants to see who else notices. Culpepper apparently was made of sterner stuff.

  Walking back across town, I was amazed at how easy this assignment was and wondered why that bothered me. I’d detected no presence of the Gentry in the last couple of hours. That probably meant the one or ones I’d felt earlier had found whoever they were looking for.

  Or maybe they had discovered I was right where I was supposed to be and doing what they wanted me to. Being involved with the Fair Folk had always left me feeling like a dollar chip in a very big game.

  I remembered a face, elongated and a little blurred, that I’d once seen. It was a tall elf with a smile that said, “How stupid these mortals are.”

  On the A train downtown, I got a seat and thought over that first time I felt an alien presence and how close I came to dying from it.

  In ’41 I did undercover work, none of it strictly official. My old regiment was the 69th, “The Fighting Irish,” and our colonel was Donovan—the one they called “Wild Bill.”

  Later he was the guy who started the OSS and became the U.S. intelligence chief in World War II. But even before that war he had connections in Washington and an interest in foreign espionage in New York City. He got to do something about it.

  The colonel remembered me. I got called down to his office on Wall Street. Right then my marriage was over and there was a limit to how long the wedding of the Police Department and me was going to last.

  So, I got seconded to Wild Bill along with half a dozen other chewed up old vets on the force. Most of what we investigated turned out to be minor stuff: crazy little Krauts up in Yorkville who wore Kaiser Wilhelm helmets and sent out ham radio reports about freighters leaving the port of New York, German bars out in New Hyde Park on Long Island where the neighbors reported the patrons said “Sieg Heil,” gave the Nazi salute, and had pictures of Hitler up above the bar.

  Rumors and stories about mysterious strangers came in from all over the city. We went crazy trying to keep up with them. Then we stumbled on a sleeper operation out on the Brooklyn waterfront. They were accumulating operatives, waiting for the great day when we’d be at war and they could start blowing up bridges. We nabbed a couple of them. But the rest melted away.

  Right after that a call came in one night about activity on a pier in Red Hook. We were stretched thin. I had no backup. Maybe I was tired and that made me careless. Maybe part of me wanted to use up whatever leftover life I had. But I went out there without even a driver.

  The one who’d made the call must have dreamed about someone like me showing up: a dumb asshole with plenty of information about Wild Bill and his band of veterans. The gate on the street was open. A long wooden shed stood on the pier. A dim light shone in a window. I knocked. Nothing. I tried the door and it swung open. A light shone somewhere at the end of an empty two hundred foot shed.

  I took a step inside. Someone had me by the throat and started to choke me. I spun around. No one was behind me. I drew my .38. Something knocked me flat and the gun fell on the floor. My arm could as well have gone with it. I couldn’t feel it, couldn’t make it move.

  That long face with that amused smile flickered. It wasn’t a thing I saw with my eyes. It was inside my head. And I felt every bloody memory get sucked out of me: Colonel Donovan, the other cases I’d worked on, friends and family, the telephone number of a waitress I was seeing, my batting average when I played twilight baseball as a kid in 1914.

  When the one that had me found all it wanted, my lungs stopped, my lights started going out. I wasn’t coming back, and thought I was stupid enough that I probably deserved to die. But to go like this pissed me off royally.

  A little later I came to and found myself in a movie. The light was dim and this woman and guy, tall and slim, who looked like the stars of this movie, crouched over me, elegant and seeming to flicker slightly around the edges.

  As that came into my mind they looked at each other and smiled. I realized they knew what I saw and thought. Her name was Bertrade and his was Darnel. I knew all that without being told. Still being mostly numb probably made everything easier to accept.

  “You’ll be well,” she said. There was an accent I couldn’t place. “We have taken care of your friend.”

  Bertrade turned her head and somehow I had a glimpse of what she saw. The one who’d attacked me, a tall guy with his head shaved, sat on the floor, leaned against the wall glassy eyed. I understood they had him under a kind of spell.

  “An elf on a mission,” Darnel said, “And a mutual enemy.” I knew without them speaking that they were Fey, loyal subjects of th
e King Beneath the Hill. They were lovers, tourists in the city. Even half in shock I knew that the first was true and the second was a cover. They were operatives.

  Things weren’t good between their people and The King of Elfland. My city, my world was a kind of buffer between the two countries. Elfland favored Germany in the war going on in Europe.

  They’d been watching our elfin friend when I showed up and they nailed him as he smothered me. From thinking this was a movie, I gradually decided it was a dream and a crazy one. I tried to push myself up.

  As a kid I’d thought I was right handed. Then I broke some fingers when I was maybe twelve and learned I was better with my left. Now it was like the left arm was gone. I fell back and banged my head. “I’m useless,” I said.

  They touched my memories of my short, bad war and long lousy marriage. She frowned and shook her head at my misfortunes. “I’d want you to be in any unit where I served,” he said. First Darnel and then Bertrade touched my dead arm, quietly spoke words I didn’t understand. The two said good-bye and that we’d meet again. Then they were gone and the elf with them.

  Feeling came back and my arm was better than new. I never told anyone else what had happened that night. Walking up Sixth Avenue to the Bigelow Building ten years later it felt like a movie and a dream.

  I let myself into my office, sat down and called the answering service. It was night now and Gracie was off duty. The young lady who answered gave me a few messages. A call about a case that was going nowhere, one from somebody who wanted to sell me things, a couple of calls from people who wanted me to pay them: all calls that were going to wait.

  Then there was a message from Anne Toomey asking me to call. I looked over my case notes, scribbled a few more details, and dialed the Toomey’s number. I let it ring three times and three more to be sure. They didn’t have an answering service and I decided they could wait until tomorrow.

  Instead I went out and had a bite to eat and a drink or two at McNulty’s where the cops go. After that I spent some more of the Beyers’ fee at Moe’s on Third Street where the cops and the hookers go. I finally settled in at the Cedar Tavern over on University Place because Lacy Duveen who tends bar there would rather talk to me than listen to painters arguing.

  Lacy got his nickname for working over Tiger Shaughnessy’s face with the laces of his gloves after Tiger hit him in the groin during a preliminary bout at the Garden. He and I go back to when we played pick-up ball games on the East River as kids.

  We talked about the time he was catching, and all the way from deep center I tossed out a skinny Italian guy at home plate. It was twilight baseball, the light was fading and the other guy claimed I hadn’t thrown anything and that Lacy had pulled a ball out of his pocket. In fact I’d thrown a perfect left-handed strike right over the plate. Naturally, it ended in a fight that we won.

  Next morning I woke up in my room with that throw on my mind. I’ve awakened in worse shape and there was still a bit of the morning left. I’d had a dream of Bertrade that got away from me as I grabbed for it.

  Out the window I saw it was a chill drizzling day on Cornelia Street. When I had washed and shaved and dressed, I put on my trench coat and wide-brimmed fedora.

  When I came downstairs Mrs. Palatino, the landlady, had her door on the first floor open and her television on as usual. She liked to show off that TV. Some guy in a chef’s hat was chopping celery and talking in a French accent.

  Mrs. Palatino knew my late mother from church and that’s why she rented to me even though I’m not Italian. She sat on the couch in her robe and slippers and looked at me long and hard. This was a woman who thought the worst of everyone and never saw anything that made her doubt her judgment.

  “You decided to dress like a detective today,” she said, like she couldn’t decide why this was wrong. I nodded and tipped my hat. Mr. Palatino died some years ago. I pegged him as a coward who took the easy way out.

  On the way to my office I thought about Bertrade and the dream and how in it she had told me some things I couldn’t quite remember.

  For some years after that encounter in Red Hook in ’41, I didn’t see Bertrade. When she reappeared she was still beautiful and young despite being a couple of decades older than me. But she looked maybe frayed and Darnel wasn’t with her.

  They had both served in something called The War of the Elf King’s Daughter—fairies versus elves. At one time the idea would have made me laugh. But not after Bertrade let me see a bit of what she’d gone through.

  Her war occurred at about the same time as WWII and looked in some ways just as bad. Spells and magic: getting tortured to the point of suicide by hideous nightmares, seeing friends with enemy minds in theirs who tore their own throats out. Darnel hadn’t come back. He wasn’t dead because the Fair Folk never die. “Lost to this world,” was how she put it and I knew it made her sad.

  For other guys maybe it was Garbo or Hayworth they thought about. For me, ever since that first encounter, it had been Bertrade. And whenever she came back here and wanted to be with me it was like a daydream became real.

  She knew more, had seen more, than anybody I’d ever met. Something she once showed me which I thought about as I walked to work that day was a whole unit of trolls, ordinary soldiers like I had been if you ignored how they looked, caught by tall elves. Rifles fell from their hands as their minds were seized and twisted by the Gentry. They fell dead wiped out without a sound made or a shot fired.

  Weapons were beneath the Fair Folk she told me. You could walk up to one, pull out a gun and shoot him, provided you could somehow keep all thought of what you were about to do out of your mind.

  At the Bigelow Building I went into the big pharmacy on the first floor, got a few black coffees to go and took those upstairs, drinking one on the elevator. It was still just short of noon. My energy and purpose amazed me.

  The mail had already been delivered: a couple of bills, a few flyers and a report on the whereabouts of a bum who had skipped out on the alimony and child support he owed a client of mine. All but the last got tossed in the wastebasket. I’d had nothing from Bertrade except maybe that foggy dream.

  I called Up to the Minute and got Gracie. “You have six calls including four so far this morning from Anne Toomey.” She paused. “Mr. Grant, this is none of my business. But a couple of times a man, I think it was her husband, was yelling at her. It sounded bad.”

  “Thanks.” This time Jim must really have jumped the rails.

  I hung up and made the call. Anne answered halfway through the first ring. She spoke softly like she didn’t want someone to overhear. “Sam, I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you.” She did sound very sorry. “And I’m going to have to ask if you’ll do it again today. I promise I’ll get . . . ”

  “I was going to volunteer. How’s Jim? The operator says he was shouting at you.”

  “He’s quiet right now. Sam, this whole case is strange. I’ve tried half a dozen times to call Mrs. Culpepper, you know while her husband’s at work. No answer. They’re not listed in the telephone book. Jim’s the only one she’s talked to. And he’s . . . not good. Last night he was talking, yelling at someone who wasn’t there. And he told me someone was in his head. He’s been saying that for the last couple of days. It’s never been this bad.”

  “Was it more than just shouting at you, Anne?”

  She said, “This is what I’ve been afraid of.”

  “Anne, I’ll be out there as fast as I can. Is there some place you can go meanwhile?

  “My aunt’s a few blocks over.”

  “Go there right now. Don’t talk to Jim. Just leave. Understand?”

  Anne said she did. I doubted her.

  Then I made a call to Police Chaplain Dineen. Young private Kevin Dineen served as an altar boy in France for the famous Father Duffy of the 69th. He came back home and found a vocation. It was said that Father Dineen spiked the sacramental wine with gin and he was reputed to get a bit frisky with the wido
ws he comforted.

  But it was Dineen who got called when O’Malley at the Ninth Precinct, a fellow vet, was at the Thanksgiving table eating mashed potatoes with the barrel of his loaded revolver while all his children looked on. Dineen got O’Malley to hand the weapon over and had the kids smiling at the game he and their daddy were playing.

  When I explained as much of the situation as he needed to know all Dineen asked was, “Do we need an ambulance or a squad car?”

  “Both,” I said. Before going downstairs to meet the chaplain I took my service .38 and holster out of the locked drawer, cleaned and loaded the revolver, buckled on the holster. It seemed I remembered doing the same thing in my dream the night before.

  I called Up to the Minute and told Gracie I wouldn’t be back until late and not to wait up. She laughed. As I adjusted my hat and went out the door, I remembered something from the dream. Bertrade lay among pillows and bedclothes, looked right at me and spoke about bait and traps.

  Ten minutes later Father Dineen and I were in his brand new Oldsmobile four-door headed through the drizzle for Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn. His car had a siren and a flashing light. We went through red lights; traffic cops waved us on at intersections. Dineen was on the radio to a squad car out in Park Slope as we crossed the Bridge with a motorcycle escort and he cursed because we weren’t going faster.

  Anger was what I felt: anger at the one who had maybe screwed around with Toomey’s mind and caused Anne pain. They weren’t even the object of this operation. I probably wasn’t either. It struck me that they and I were just bait in some game the Gentry were playing.

  When we arrived at Sixteenth Street, a crowd had gathered in the drizzle and homicide was out in force. Anne Toomey must have tried one last time to talk to Jim. She was at the bottom of the stairs. Jim had stood halfway up when he shot her twice in the face before pumping two shots into his open mouth.