I scanned the café. Aside from Francois clattering away in the open-air kitchen at the back—culinarily hallowed ground, if you ask me—there were only two other people: a heavy-set Italian man and a beautiful Japanese woman, both in their thirties, wearing big sunglasses and baggy clothes. The woman had an athletic build and the lithe stride of someone accustomed to intense physical activity. She had an expensive black wig that went down to the middle of her back, and the man wore a rather shaggy toupee … either that or he had a really bad barber. I’d watched them slink in—well, she slinked, he sort of trundled—exchanging hushed whispers as they walked by. I knew right away they were hiding something, and they took up a booth in the corner behind me. In a flash, I’d decided they were guilty of adultery, but I was too engrossed in the malice of my briefcase to give it much more thought.
I polished off the remains of my café au lait and mechanically set it aside. With a heavy sigh, I slid my briefcase in front of me. I made a series of microscopic adjustments to line it up with the edge of the table until it was perfect. It’d take a micrometer to gauge any variances, I thought cheerily. Then I gritted my teeth, realizing what I was doing. With a silent curse, I opened the fucker … prepared for the worst. With quick, stiff motions I pulled out the New York Times, slammed the briefcase shut, and set the paper down on top. The headline mocked me, and it was all I could do to keep from flipping the goddamn table over.
CANNIBAL BAGS 15TH VICTIM
With his rampage in its sixth week, the Cannibal continues to elude the FBI. The remains of his latest unidentified victim were found in Central Park this morning. As usual, the murder scene was covered in blood, with only bits and pieces of the victim found at the scene.
Anonymous sources inside the FBI have said that the Agent in charge of the investigation has been relieved. Sources close to the Bureau indicated that the Agent might be suffering from delusions. A specialist from Washington D.C. will be taking up the investigation as of tomorrow morning….
I slammed my fist down on the table.
The hushed whispers behind me came to an abrupt halt just as a fresh café au lait drifted into my peripheral vision.
“Something wrong?” Francois asked smoothly in a French accent so think you could stand a fork up in it. He set the cup beside the newspaper.
My eyes followed from the cup, along the crisp, white of his sleeve, straight into his worried face. Francois was bald and clean-shaven, with wild, dark brown eyebrows that went in every direction imaginable … as if his eyebrows had exploded forth rather than growing from his skin. As always, his chef’s shirt was spotless and hid what I knew to be an exceptionally athletic build. I didn’t know if he went to the gym or kept that fit from doing chef things, but the guy was tireless.
“Sorry, Francois,” I said, nodding towards the paper. “Bad day at the office.”
“I heard about that,” he said, moving the empty cup and saucer to the edge of the table. He sat down across from me and asked, “So … did they … fire you?”
I smiled weakly. Francois was lean on tact, but he’d been a sort of confessor for me for years.
“Well,” I said slowly, “I’m sure Dickerson thought about it. I sort of blew my top when he told me about my replacement, but my record’s too good for him to un-ass me for anything other than gross negligence. The little prick doesn’t like having old dogs like me around who know the game better than he does. It reminds him of how wet behind the ears he is when he’d rather bluster the FNGs. He got the job because his uncle is a piece-of-shit Senator who spends most of his time blowing corporate douche-bags.”
“FNGs?” he asked, confused.
“Fucking New Guys,” I said with a grin.
He chuckled and nodded. “So … what happened?”
I took a deep breath, pondering what I knew and what I didn’t. “I think I know what’s committing these murders.”
“Don’t you mean who?”
“I mean what …” I locked eyes with him. “It’s not a man doing the killing, Francois … it’s a monster.”
He looked at me with the same disbelieving eyes that had decorated Dickerson’s face before the guy gave me the chop. Francois was slow to speak. “A monster,” he said, confused. I could see him trying to give me the benefit of the doubt and coming up woefully short.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I grumbled. “I’m not crazy.”
He gave me a thoughtful but noncommittal smile. “What sort of monster are we talking about?”
I let out a long sigh and shook my head. “I don’t know,” I finally replied, almost embarrassed. His raised eyebrow was question enough. “Look, in all this time … fifteen murders … we haven’t found a body … only small bits and pieces of flesh and bone and lots and lots of blood.”
“Oui,” he said nodding his head. “I’ve read the papers.”
“No footprints, drag marks … nothing. Just a long swath of blood that always disappears into water.”
“Perhaps the killer is simply covering his tracks.”
I nodded. “That’s what I thought at first too, but something came up after we found number fourteen.” I opened my briefcase and pulled out a small, glass vial with a rubber stopper. There was a small, clear smear of viscous liquid just beneath the stopper. “I took two of these. One went to evidence, but I kept this one to keep the old noodle working.” I tapped my temple for emphasis. I handed it over to him, and he stared at it intently. Then he looked at me with decidedly unimpressed confusion.
“What is it?” he asked, handing it back.
I chuckled. “Snot.”
“Quoi!” he shouted, frantically wiping his hand on his shirt in disgust.
“Mucus, Francois. It’s mucus … but it’s not human. The lab boys said they needed more time to tell me anything more than that. And then Dickerson stepped in and told them to ignore it. I think I said something about him being a useless twerp with a god complex.” I stared at the vial, running through it all in my head. “Anyway, I found a wide streak of this stuff on the rocks by the shoreline.”
“A streak?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head. “And there was something else. There was no ground litter where the streak had been, like it was picked up by a wide vacuum. You remember the other killings, right?”
He nodded.
“We stumbled upon those crime scenes, no less than a day after the killing took place. But number fourteen … I was on the scene less than thirty minutes after it happened. The victim had screamed when he was attacked … a homeless man, we think … and it brought the cops running. They called the Bureau immediately. When I got there, the scene was still fresh … the ground wet.”
“And …?” He didn’t look convinced.
“Whatever this is,”—I held up the vial again—“it came from that thing.”
Francois’ eyes shifted to something behind me, and I heard footsteps. He did a double take, and on the second pass his eyes went wide.
“Sacre merde!” he shouted. “What are you two doing here?”
I turned to see the couple walking up to us.
Smiling unrepentantly, the man said with glee, “Spying on you, Frankie.” There was no missing his Brooklynese origins.
“We’ve both caught you in our restaurants, trying the food in that ridiculous derby and fake goatee,” the woman said with a raised eyebrow. She had that generic accent you hear on the news, but she articulated every word carefully, I’d almost say perfectly, as if each word was a conscious, deliberate act meant to fill the universe with its import.
Francois looked embarrassed.
“Quid pro quo,” she added. It was an accusation and reprieve all at once. She turned her eyes to me, and her face went serious. “How wide was the slime trail?” she asked.
“What?” The question caught me off guard.
She repeated slowly, “How wide was the slime trail?”
“Nearly two meters,” I replied with a fair amount of dread
. “Which means the god damn thing is huge, whatever it is.”
Her eyes shifted to Francois. She lowered her voice and said, “Il doit être un escargot ….”
So, she speaks French too, I thought. I’m not French, but to my ears her French sounded as precise as her English.
Francois froze, and then all three chefs looked at each other with eyes full of what could only be described as avarice. “Non,” he said in denial.
“Oui,” she assured. “Dans les égouts.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” I interrupted, glaring at them. “The goddamn thing is huge!”
“Oh, we heard you, alright,” Francois said, and his disbelief had shifted to a wicked little smile as he turned to me. “Perfectly.” The bastard started rubbing his hands together like Ebenezer Scrooge. He raised a questioning eyebrow at the other chefs. “Split three ways?” he asked. “And my friend here,” he nodded towards me, “gets the head … so he can get his job back and be a big American hero. We begin tonight at midnight.”
“Agreed,” the other two said in unison.
Francois rose from his seat.
“Permit me to introduce to you Yoshiko Tanaka and Ennio Gabriella.” He placed his hand on my arm. “This is FBI Agent Alex Pierce.”
“Yeah,” I snapped, “that’s great. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I was ready to flip the table over again. “Now, would someone mind telling me what the fuck you people are talking about?”
Francois winked at me. “Just meet us at the north side of the bridge over the lake in Central Park tonight at midnight. We’re going hunting.”
“And bring a flashlight,” Yoshiko added.
“A shotgun wouldn’t be a bad idea either,” Ennio added.
My mouth dropped open. All I could do was watch as the couple walked out with Francois close behind. He opened the door, nodded as they walked out, and closed the door behind them. He flipped the Open sign to Closed and turned back to me. My mouth was still open as he walked back.
“Fret not, mon ami. Everything will be right as the rain by morning.” He gently lifted my arm and guided me out of the booth. “Just be there, and come prepared for battle.”
He led me out, handed me my briefcase, and closed the door with a jingle of the bell overhead.
As I turned to head home, dumbfounded by what had just happened, the door opened a few inches and he stuck his head through the narrow gap. “Oh, and bring the snot,” he added.
I just stood there blinking at him as the door closed. He disappeared into his café, the Closed sign swinging back and forth behind the glass.
* * *
A light rain, little more than mist, speckled the reflections of New York’s blazing skyline on the lake, fitting my mood perfectly. The drizzle tapped and hissed on my hooded windbreaker like a needle stuck in the dead zone at the end of an old LP.
I’d sent a couple of NYPD patrols fading back into the shadows with a frown and a flash of my badge. The cops all knew who I was. Aside from the occasional patrol, Central Park was empty. Hell, with a reign of terror gripping the city, most of New York was empty at night. Shrugging into my windbreaker, I turned at the sound of footsteps coming up the path from the parking lot.
Four silhouettes approached slowly, three humans and a dog. The people swiveled their heads as they approached, clearly wary of something. I’d seen the behavior before … plenty of times … from people who didn’t want cops to know what they were doing. And there was something odd about their faces …. The humans seemed to be wearing binoculars or something attached to their heads, and they all wore black.
I opened my windbreaker and slipped my hand over the MP5 dangling on a strap under my arm. The thing had been a gift from my last partner, a slick little nine-milli machine gun with a laser sight—basically a bullet hose. The glare of far-off headlights flashed behind them, and their outlines resolved for just a moment. It looked like it was the three chefs coming straight for me, but why one of them— I guessed Francois—would bring along a dog, was beyond me. One of them—Yoshiko, I think—turned again, and I finally got a better look at what was on their heads.
No … I thought. It can’t be.
They were all wearing military grade night-vision goggles.
They strolled calmly down the last twenty yards of the path, curious smiles on their faces. Francois had a large, weathered backpack on. He was the one holding the leash, although the animal was right at his heel. Yoshiko had a smaller backpack over her shoulders, and the handle of something sticking up above her right shoulder.
The butt of a rifle or shotgun stuck up over Ennio’s left shoulder. He held a large trash bag slung over the other, and was carrying a … I had to look twice … because Ennio had what could only be a fucking Thompson machine gun.
And just when I thought it couldn’t get any weirder, the dog, wearing some hinky, modified flak jacket, made a sound that would never, ever, ever come out of a dog. It was a low, grunting, snorting sound.
I looked closely at the thing and realized what it was. I blinked my eyes, wondering if I was seeing things.
It was a pig.
I stared in utter disbelief as they stepped up to me.
I didn’t know where to begin, but my brain finally engaged and I figured I’d start with the big stuff.
“Technically, all that hardware is way way illegal. I should haul your asses into jail and call it a night.” They simply smiled back at me, waiting. I took a deep breath and pictured a retirement spent on a sunny beach fading into improbability if the night continued the way it was going. “Where did you people get all this shit anyway?”
“French Foreign Legion,” Francois said matter-of-factly.
Yoshiko tapped the goggles. “Two tours in Afghanistan,” she said. She reached up and pulled a katana partway out of a scabbard across her back. “And this was my father’s.”
“Antique gun-sellers license,” Ennio added innocently as he hefted the Tommy. “There ain’t much you can’t buy in Brooklyn if you know who to ask,” he said, winking once. “And technically, the Tommy’s legal.”
“Don’t split hairs with me,” I barked. “You’re not supposed to have one in Central-fucking-Park.”
Ennio shrugged.
“And Francois ….” I pointed to his porcine companion. “That’s a pig, which I’m pretty sure isn’t supposed to be inside city limits.”
“This is no ordinary pig! This is Charlemagne!” he cried proudly. “After the greatest hero in French history.”
“Riiight,” I said slowly. I rubbed my face and pinched the bridge of my nose, my Spidey-sense telling me that the mother of all headaches was about to grab me by the base of my skull and use my head as a croquet ball. It occurred to me that if we did bag whatever was out there, the report I filed at the Bureau was going to read like bad fiction. I looked at him finally, trying to put into words what couldn’t be said. Three false starts later, I settled on the only words I could get to cross my lips. “It’s a fucking pig, Francois.”
“Oui!” he said fiercely. He stood up straight and locked eyes with me. “And if our prey is what we think it is, then Charlemagne will lead us straight to it!”
“It,” I said dryly, ignoring his fervor. “And what … exactly … is it?”
Yoshiko spoke up, “We can’t be certain.”
Ennio added, “And we’d rather not say till we eyeball the thing. You wouldn’t believe us if we told you, and we need you here to keep this whole thing legit.”
Yoshiko added with a smile, “Better that you see it for yourself.”
“Rest assured,” Francois said, “if our theory is correct, then you will know soon enough what we face.”
I was silent for a long time. I contemplated the very strong possibility that if this whole thing went south, Dickerson would have his “gross negligence.” I’d be out on my ass in a heartbeat. I’d lose my pension and probably the respect of a lot of people in the Bureau. And then I thought about the fifteen dead bodie
s … or what was left of them, anyway. I couldn’t let one more person die if there was a way to stop it—regardless of what it cost me. Double or nothing was the only play I had left. I looked at each one of the chefs and finally fixed my eyes on Francois.
“So, what’s the pig do?” I asked, resigned to my fate.
“Have you ever heard of the pigs in France trained to sniff out truffles … the emperor of all mushrooms?”
“Uh … no,” I said a bit more blandly than I intended.
He looked at me as if I’d just told him I didn’t know what soup was. But the look didn’t last more than a couple of seconds. “Charles was similarly trained, but not to sniff out mushrooms … something better.”
I took a deep breath. “Great.”
He held out his hand. “The vial if you please?”
I handed it over.
Francois kneeled in front of Charlemagne. At first I thought he might tip over with that giant pack on his back. From how deeply it dug into his shoulders, the thing obviously weighed more than he did, but the tough little guy seemed to barely notice it. He started whispering into Charlemagne’s ear. The damn thing snorted and grunted in response. Back and forth they went—like they were having a conversation.
“Êtes-vous prêt?” Francois finally asked, loud enough for us all to hear.
The fucking pig actually snorted and nodded its head.
Francois popped the cork off the vial and wafted it under Charlemagne’s nose. I’ll be damned if the thing didn’t snort three times and then take off like a shot over the bridge, his little hooves clattering like crazy.
Francois leapt to his feet and ran after the pig. “Allons-y!” he hissed over his shoulder. “He’s got the scent!”
Yoshiko and Ennio dashed after them, and I realized I was about to be left behind.
Paranormal Short Stories Page 3