by Curran, Tim
And then we heard gunfire.
Someone shouting.
A police whistle.
Screaming.
It was coming from the north end. Tommy and I were already running, ducking through the marble forest of tombstones. I leaped over slabs and leapfrogged markers. Guns were still shooting and men were still shouting. We came around a stand of gnarled elms and saw shapes in the darkness.
I pulled my .45 out of the speed rig under my left arm and almost started pumping metal into a pair of stone death angels flanking some rich guy’s grave. And then suddenly there was a third angel, only it was no angel. The guy advanced on me with an upraised shovel. I yelled at him to drop it, but he waded right in. I put three slugs in him and it dropped, but he didn’t. I tried a fourth and fifth but I might as well have been plugging a bag of wet cement for all the affect it had. Suddenly he was on me and I was bathed in a putrid stink like a morgue drawer full of spoiled beef. He took hold of my arm and nearly broke it he was so goddamned, unnaturally strong. He tossed me around like a scarecrow stuffed with straw. And at 6’3 and over 200 pounds, I’m no lightweight. I punched him and he didn’t even notice so I went for his eyes, clawing at his face…and it came apart under my fingers like dry, rotting plaster. My nails scraped the skull beneath and then he tossed me through the air and my head struck a stone and Goodnight, Irene.
A few minutes later, Tommy was pouring a flask of whiskey into my mouth. I came awake coughing and gagging and swinging, completely disoriented. I felt like I was sewn up in a bag of black velvet. The mists parted and Tommy helped me up.
“They got away,” he said in a hopeless voice. “Never seen nothing like it. I gave one of them four rounds, point-blank, and that meateater went through me like nobody’s business.”
He brought me on a quick tour of the carnage. One cop was dead. His head was nearly twisted from his shoulders. He was laying on his back, a broken arm tucked under him. But to see his face, you had to flip him over. Two other cops were beaten and busted-up.
Tommy scanned the area with a flashlight. In the distance I could hear sirens. We came up to a body sprawled in the grass, arms outstretched to either side. There were so many bullet holes in it you could have used it as a watering can. Tommy put the light on the face. It was decayed, gray, and flaking, eaten away in places as if by insects. There were tiny worm holes in the nose. One glazed eye stared up at us.
Tommy looked at me. “You know this guy?”
I nodded dumbly. “Yeah…I think…I think it’s Johnny Luna.”
“Yeah, it’s him, all right,” Tommy said in a dry voice. “And Johnny Luna died six months ago.”
8
The next night, I stuck to Marianne Portis like a birthmark.
I sat there in the darkness, my brain spinning like a top in an oil drum. This was all connected to Quigg somehow. The D.A. who’d convicted him was dead. Now two of the jurors. Tommy had placed cops at the houses of the others. But there were other people involved in putting that headcase away—the judge, Tommy, me, plenty of others. And how did all that tie in with glomming corpses and, worse yet, with walking dead men? Two days ago, you asked me if I believed the dead could walk I’d have laughed in your face. Now I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t know what to think.
But I did know a few things.
One of which was that Franklin Barre was missing, presumed dead by Tommy and his people. The links to this business were being cut like apron strings and I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before I got snipped. And Marianne Portis? We now knew she was a colleague of Quigg’s. At one time she had been chairwoman of the City Folklore Society. We also knew she was somewhat respected in the field, publishing assorted papers on folklore and the occult in various trade magazines.
But what did it all add up to? Anyone’s guess. That’s what.
Just before midnight the black sedan rolled up again. Marianne came out and got in it. I followed at a discreet distance. They drove slowly through the city traffic, but like a hooker paid by the hour, they were in no hurry. I followed them down the main stem over the bridge and right out of town. They hit the highway and then cut down a few deserted country lanes. My lights off, I followed at a safe distance.
I started to get that feeling in my gut. The one that tells me I’m onto something, that things are about to become…relevant. Either that or the salami roll I had for supper was starting its march to the sea.
Out in the middle of nowhere, the sedan whipped through a set of black iron gates and into yet another cemetery. I waited a few minutes before following. Just another boneyard—lots of monuments and scraggly trees. I piloted my heap down the lonesome dirt drive, shadows reaching out and clawing over the ruts. Above there was no moon, just gray clouds and skeletal boughs scratching against them. I got lost. I’ll admit that. I‘ll also admit I was starting to get the creeps just driving around and around, maybe half wondering if I’d ever find my way out. Wouldn’t that be a goddamn set-up? Stuck in some spookworld where I drove endlessly through a cemetery?
But, eventually, I found the sedan.
It was way out back. There was a big mausoleum crowning a barren hill. Two stories of rectangular gray stone set with huge black windows. A real inviting place…if you were a corpse. I killed the engine on the heap and coasted into a stand of trees, just off the drive. The sedan was parked up there pretty as you please. There was a delivery wagon and a truck up there, too. I sat there, smoking in the dark, wishing I had Tommy and his boys backing me up. But I was alone, so I did the first fool thing that popped into my head: I walked on up there.
The front door was a massive affair you could’ve driven a tank through. I went around back and cased the joint. I could see lights in a few windows, but there were drapes covering them so I couldn’t see what my pals were doing. I started checking doors and windows, but they were all locked. Then I found a cellar window that tilted up. I slid through like a greased eel and landed in the darkness. I sat there waiting for a reception committee, but none came.
So far, so good.
It took my eyes awhile to adjust to the darkness. I had a flashlight with me, but I didn’t dare use it. I could see that I was in a storage room of sorts—crates and boxes stacked up, a few metal barrels against the wall. It was all pretty pedestrian, except for that funny smell which I knew was formaldehyde. There were other odors, too. A sweet, sickly stink of decay and death hung in the air. And something like a spice cupboard that had been shut up for too long.
I kept moving around down there, feeling up the walls like a teenager under Mary Jane’s sweater until I found my way into a cement block corridor studded with doors. Way it was stinking down there, I just didn’t feel really curious about what was behind those doors. Finally, I found a set of steps and went up. I was in a marble hall, the walls of which were studded with brass nameplates bearing the tags of the deceased. It was cold in there. I kept going, wandering down more and more corridors until I saw lights and heard voices.
I cracked open a heavy oak door just a bit and the gang was all there.
I could see Marianne and another thin, cadaverous-looking guy with a face only Frankenstein could love. Next to them were three or four other people, their backs to me. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I sure as hell could see what they were doing. The room was set up like an embalming chamber…or so I thought at first. It was dimly lit, but there was no mistaking the metal drums of chemicals or the hoses and suction devices, floor pumps, trays of instruments. Just as there was no mistaking the stiff spread out on a metal table like Sunday’s wash. He was rancid. About as fresh as a wormy hamburger on a hard roll.
Marianne and the others all had aprons on and little surgical masks. I was ready to ask if I could borrow one before I heaved up my dinner. To this day, I still can’t be sure what it was they were doing exactly. I saw them douse the body with chemicals. I saw Marianne take a syringe and shoot something in the cadaver’s neck. I saw another sprinkle powders a
nd rub the graying flesh down like a Christmas goose. And then I saw them dump what looked like bloody meat the entire length of the body. The stink of whatever they were using overpowered the death smell. Reminded me of biology class in high school.
Maybe I can’t really be sure about any of what they did. My heart was hammering like Gene Krupa and my belly was full of jumping frogs.
So, I can’t be sure.
But I am sure of what happened next…the body, that goddamn stiff they’d dragged out of some moldering grave, it began to move. It began to shudder and writhe like there was a high voltage cable shoved up its ass. About the time it sat up and let out a mournful, agonized shriek, I was on my way out. Back down the stairs I went, drenched now in cold sweat, scared like a kiddie at a monster show. At the bottom of the steps I walked right into something (I don’t know what) and it tipped over and shattered. Glass sprayed everywhere. I froze up like a Roman statue, just my heart thumping away.
But everything was still quiet.
I tried to negotiate my way in the darkness. It was no easy trick. Maybe if I’d had half a brain I would’ve broke out the flashlight. But I didn’t. Not yet. I found a door and I was sure it was the one. I slipped into the mulling darkness and the room was colder than a meat locker. That awful stink of putrescence and formaldehyde was stronger. In fact, it was gagging. It was like being trapped in a body bag. I bumped into something again, but nothing fell. And, dammit, I’d had quite enough. I pulled the flashlight out of the pocket of my overcoat and clicked it on.
And then instantly wished I hadn’t.
I was in another cellar room, but not the one I’d landed in earlier. No, this one had tables arranged in rows from end to end with little walkways in-between. They were like mortician’s slabs, each draped in a white sheet. And there was no doubt what was under those sheets: I could see the forms easily enough. Now and again, a hand had slipped from beneath its covering, dead fingers dangling in midair. I could see the toes of some of the taller ones. Quickly, I went from slab to slab, looking down on those ruined faces. I recognized quite a few.
It was about that time, my skin all clammy and my fingers stiff as pencils from the cold, that I first sensed it. I don’t know how to adequately describe it. It was like the air around me had changed, was charged with something. I could feel the hairs along the back of my neck stand up. Gooseflesh spread down my spine like ripples in a pond. The air was suddenly full of static electricity, thrumming with it, some noxious stored potential was beginning to vent itself. I caught a sharp aroma of ozone like lightening was about to strike.
And then it did.
My head reeling with that savage smell, that dark and rising sweetness, the bodies on the slabs all began to sit up. I saw sheets shudder and slide from sunless, graveyard faces. A lot of them were little more than skulls knitted with tight dry flesh like tanned leather.
I didn’t wait to see what came next.
There was a window on the other side and I went for it, smashing through it with my flashlight and diving into the cool grass. And then I was running and stumbling and sliding down the hill on my ass. I could see my heap waiting for me and then I saw the two heavies next to it.
Unarmed, smelling like a litter pile in a death camp, they came at me. My .45 slid out from the speed rig and I started drilling those bastards, knowing that you can’t kill something already dead, but sometimes you can sure give ‘em a bad day.
I emptied the clip and drove them back and then I was in the heap. I had barely started rolling when she was hit hard. I thought a truck had rammed into us. I was practically knocked against the passenger side door. Another thud and that old Chrysler went up in the air a few feet, balancing on two tires and then hammering back down, the shocks squeaking like honeymooner’s bedsprings.
Then I saw.
It was no truck that hit me. It was worse.
Out of my window I saw him standing there, his huge and moonish face grinning like a skull in the desert: Tony “The Iceman” Buscotti. Remember him? He was the human ogre and former syndicate hitman that was supposed to be feeding the worms out at Harvest Hill in that grave big enough to drop a Steinway into. Yes, sir, old “Frankenstein” himself. Big Tony could have given Karloff the cold sweats.
His hand smashed through my window and I covered my face against the implosion of glass shards. His hand—big enough to palm a football—came snaking in, fingers clawing for purchase. And those fingers…I could see the bones popping through the knuckles, the skin hanging in ropy loops. I slammed down on the accelerator and almost went right into a tree. I threw her in reverse and mowed down the other two goons that I’d given the gift of my bullets to. I rolled right over one of them. Then Big Tony was there again, the yellow of his skull showing through the holes in his face which looked like a wormy shroud hanging from a clothesline. Those gargantuan hands took hold of the door and at the exact second I gave the old heap the gas, there was a sudden lurching and screeching metallic groan as Big Tony ripped the door clean off the driver’s side.
Then I was peeling away in a spray of dirt and that big, dead hulk was standing there with the door in his paws like a cue card. I don’t remember very much of my escape. Only that I sideswiped tombstones and bushes as I thundered down that winding maze of dirt road. Drenched with fear-sweat, I exited those black gates like a train rocketing from a midnight tunnel. Then the road. The highway. The city lights.
And me, shivering like a sick kitty in a high wind.
9
Ninety minutes later, after half a pint of rye, I was back out there.
This time Tommy Albert was with me. Him and about twenty cops, local johns—sheriff’s deputies—and assorted whitecoats from the coroner’s office. The place was wriggling with badges. You know what we found? Squat. Yes, that’s right. The bodies were gone. As were Marianne and the ghoul glee club. But they hadn’t completely sanitized the place. There just wasn’t time.
Downstairs we found the slabs. We also found the room where they did their thing with the stiffs. All the equipment was pretty much in place. We found blood everywhere. Sticky fluids. Scraps of raw animal meat. A linen bag of human bones so fresh they still had red-brown stains on them. But that was pretty much it.
“It happened,” I was telling Tommy. “Don’t look at me like some kind of freak. I saw it.”
He stopped looking at me. “I believe you. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.”
I dragged off my cigarette. “These guys never will.”
“They don’t have to, Vince. What we got out here is more than enough justification for me to call in all these boys.” He stuffed a cigar in his mouth. “I gotta pick up that Portis broad. You know that. She’s behind all this and only she can fill in all the holes.”
Holes? Sure, we could’ve dropped most of the Midwest through the holes there were in this one. Graverobbing. Cannibalism. Murder. Walking dead hoods. Any minute now, I expected Chaney and Lugosi to be brought in for routine questioning. That’s how bad this mess was. It stunk worse than a trucker’s underwear.
A uniform came running in from the outside. “Inspector, we gotta a dead cop,” he said to Tommy. “In the city.”
Then we were back in Tommy’s Ford sedan screaming towards the concrete jungle, lights blaring and siren shrilling. There was no more to do out at the mausoleum. Those already there could handle it. Once we had the streets beneath us and the concrete and brick wrapping us up like mama’s arms, I started to feel better. On the West Side, down near the docks, was where the cop was. He was sprawled in a pool of his own blood.
There was a sheet over his body, reporters barely held at bay by a defensive perimeter of uniforms. Another detective—a thin, asthmatic guy named Skipp—was breathing through a handkerchief. You could smell the wharfs, the docks. That stagnant fishy smell of the bay blowing in with fingers of mist.
Skipp pulled the sheet back. “This your boy?” he said.
Tommy nodded. “That’s Mikey Ryan. He worked
vice.”
I knew Ryan. We’d gone to the academy together. We’d pounded a beat together, drank out of the same bottle, raised hell. I was at his wedding. Now he was dead. Another good cop gone in a city that can’t afford to lose too many.
He hadn’t been mutilated. He’d been stabbed, though. Skipp said he’d been stuck at least fifteen or twenty times. “Took the last jab right in the pump,” he told us. “Then as an afterthought, his killer did this.”
Ryan’s neck had been snapped. The side of his throat bulging with a shank of protruding bone. “Wasn’t an easy way to go,” Skipp said and resumed breathing through his hanky. It sounded like there was a whistle lodged in his throat every time he sucked in a breath. “Goddamn night air…it’s not good for me.”
“It’s even worse for him,” I said.
“He didn’t die right away, though,” Skipp said.
He held up Ryan’s hand, it was wet with blood. That didn’t mean a lot until you saw what was scratched in blood a few inches away:
LUN
“He lived long enough to leave us a message.”
Tommy just kept staring at it, shaking his head. “L-U-N…what in Christ you suppose that means? Could be a plate number…could be just about any goddamn thing.”
But I knew. There was no doubt in my mind. “He was telling us who did this to him,” I pointed out. “LUNA. As in Johnny Luna.”
Tommy looked at me. “He’s in the morgue.”
But I just stared at him, boring holes in his face.
10
It didn’t take too many phone calls to find out Luna was missing from the deep freeze. The attendant on duty covered his ass by saying maybe he was picked up by a private mortuary. And it sounded good. But Tommy and I knew different: Johnny Luna had walked out of there. Only good thing was nobody saw him do it.