The Wizard of Lovecraft's Cafe

by Simon Hawke

  “Then he shall be your responsibility. Make sure he doesn’t interfere.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Remember that you have just as much to fear from the avatars as I do,” said the necromancer. “You are in my service now. They shall not differentiate between us.”

  “You’re saying they could come after me?” said Case uneasily.

  “If they are not stopped first.”

  “And I’m expendable, is that it?”

  “Not so long as you remain useful.”

  “Right. And what happens to me when they’re dead?”

  “That depends entirely on you. If you continue to remain useful to me, you would benefit highly from our relationship, I can assure you. If not… Remember what became of Agent Silver.”

  Case moistened his lips. “Yeah. I’m not likely to forget.”

  “What is the current situation?”

  “I’ve got to let McGuire finish his preliminary investigation. He’s taken a personal interest in this, because of all the attendant publicity. I could order him to back off completely, but if I flex my muscles too much, it would only aggravate the situation. I’ve got to at least pay lip service to the idea of working with him. In any event, whatever his forensics people come up with, it’ll be forwarded to me. That’s standard operating procedure in a case like this. The N.Y.P.D. forensics adepts aren’t idiots. They’re bound to come up with something. Obviously, they’ll realize Silver and Whelen were killed by necromancy, but they’ll think that Cornwall did it. If that’s even the name he’s using currently, which I strongly doubt. He’ll realize that alias has been compromised.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that you have no idea where they are now?”

  “Not at the moment. But they’re not likely to be leaving town. We’re watching all the bus terminals, train stations, and airports. We’re keeping tabs on all rentals. We’ve got their descriptions circulated all over the city. Those people are hot as coals right about now. They’re not going anywhere.”

  “That is not good enough. I want them found.”

  “We’re working on it, believe me. It’s our top priority case. I’ve had every field agent in this office drop everything else to concentrate on this exclusively. And the police are out combing the streets for them, as well. It’s only a matter of time, believe me.”

  “Do not make the mistake of underestimating them,” the necromancer said. “Remember that they are not ordinary humans. They are united with the spirits of the runestones. When that power is manifested, they are far more dangerous than you can imagine.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. In the meantime, what have you done with Detective Angelo?”

  The necromancer frowned. “Angelo? Angelo is dead.”

  “Well, for a dead man, he sure seems pretty spry,” said Case. “He had himself a walk, right out of the hospital.”

  The necromancer stiffened. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Well… I thought you knew. You mean… you weren’t responsible?”

  “No. No, I was not responsible.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Fool! It can only mean one thing. One of the runestones must have bonded with him. Angelo is now an avatar. That means they are still at full strength. He must be found, at all costs.”

  “That may not be easy,” Case said. “Angelo was on the D.A.’s Organized Crime Task Force, working undercover. That means his files are restricted.”

  “Restricted? What does that mean?”

  “It means only the D.A.’s office has access to them.”

  “Does not the Bureau have authority in crimes involving magic?”

  “It does, but we don’t have proof of any crime here. That is, any crime involved in Angelo leaving the hospital. The media is treating the story the obvious way, as if the hospital screwed up in pronouncing him dead prematurely. Getting hold of Angelo’s files could be tricky.”

  “Why are his files so necessary?”

  “Because without them, there’s no way of knowing where he’s been living, or what he’s been doing, or with whom he’s been associating. That’s the whole point of O.C.T.F. Specially selected police officers go undercover, acting as criminals in order to infiltrate organized crime operations in the city. They quite literally go underground. New lives are manufactured for them, and they establish new residences and entirely new patterns of behavior. They don’t check in with their superiors at the police department; they’re on loan to the D.A.’s Office of Special Investigations.”

  “All this is of no consequence,” the necromancer said. “If Angelo has bonded with a runestone, then he will seek to join the others. Find them and you will find him, as well. How you do it makes no difference to me. Just see that it is done, and soon, or else I shall take matters into my own hands.” He got up. “The next time I see you, I expect more progress. Or else…”

  Case suddenly felt a blinding pain in his skull, as if it were being crushed. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came forth. He grabbed his head in agony, gasping for breath, his eyes bulging. Then, just as abruptly as it came on, the pain vanished.

  “Merely a small reminder,” the necromancer said. “Do not disappoint me, Case.”

  The telephone rang in the apartment. Angelo stared at it for a moment. After three rings, the answering machine clicked on. A moment later, there was a beep, and the message began to record.

  “Angel? Where the hell are you? You were supposed to meet me an hour ago, for chrissakes! You think I got nothing better to do than cool my heels waitin’ on your ass? You’d better have some damn good excuse, that’s all I gotta—”

  Angelo picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Johnny? What the Christ? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Who is it? What, are you kidding me? It’s me, Vinnie, asshole! Where the hell have you been?”

  “I’ve… had some trouble.”

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble? With the police?” The word “police” seemed to ring a bell. “Are you okay? Did they bust you?”

  “Uh… no… no, they didn’t bust me. It wasn’t that. It… uh… was personal.”

  “Personal, my ass. I ain’t got time for personal. What’s the deal, are you gonna make it down here, or what?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Where do you think I am? I’m at Luigi’s, waiting for you, you clown. You were supposed to be here an hour ago! We’ve got business and I haven’t got all night. If you queer this deal, I’m not gonna be a happy man, you get my drift? I don’t care how well connected you are, nobody screws with Vinnie Maldonado, got me? Nobody! Now get your ass in gear and get down here.”

  The receiver was slammed down on the other end. Angelo frowned. Vinnie Maldonado? Was he supposed to know that name? Apparently, he was. They had a meeting scheduled at Luigi’s. Only where the hell was Luigi’s? During the call, he had heard noise in the background, people talking, laughing, music playing… A bar or restaurant, most likely. He looked around for the phone book and found one on the lower shelf of the nightstand where the telephone was. He opened it and, a moment later, found what he was looking for. Luigi’s Clam and Oyster Bar. The address was in Little Italy.

  Okay, he thought, I recognized the address. That’s something. And whoever Vinnie Maldonado was, he certainly seemed to know him. Apparently, they were business associates. Why couldn’t he remember? The obvious thing to do was go meet Vinnie Maldonado and see if it jogged loose any memories. For some reason, he had a strong feeling that Vinnie Maldonado was not a friend, not someone to be trusted. He opened the drawer where the gun was. It was in a shoulder holster. He took off his jacket and slipped the holster on, then secured it to his belt. It felt good. Familiar. He put the jacket back on and checked the mirror. There was no telltale bulge. The jacket had been tailored to conceal it. Whatever “business” he had with Vinnie Maldonado, he had a good hunch it wasn’t le
gal.

  “Sir, I have Ms. Ouspenskaya on the phone,” the sergeant said.

  McGuire snatched up the receiver. “Natasha? Where are you?”

  “I’m at the Frog and Dragon,” she said.

  “The coffeehouse down in the Village? What in God’s name are you doing there? Do you realize I’ve got an All Points Bulletin out on you?”

  “On me? Why?”

  “Are you serious? I bend the rules by leaving you alone at a crime scene and you simply disappeared! Do you realize the position that put me in?”

  “I’m sorry, Steve,” she said, “I just had to get out of there. I was on overload. The psychic impressions in that place were making me sick.”

  “None of the officers down in the lobby and nobody else saw you leave.”

  “I took the stairs down. I couldn’t go back in that elevator again. It was just too much. My head was spinning and I missed the first floor. I got mixed up, I guess. I kept going down the stairs until I got to the basement, so I went out through the parking garage and hailed a cab.”

  “Wonderful. Why didn’t you call and let me know where you were?”

  “Because I was drunk, that’s why.”

  “You were drunk?”

  “I had to numb my brain out. It happens sometimes, when I absorb too much. The only thing that takes the edge off is alcohol. It fogs my brain and dulls out my receptivity. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble, but don’t you think you overreacted just a bit? I mean, you really have an order out for my arrest?”

  McGuire sighed. “Hell, I didn’t know if something happened to you or if you were trying to pull something.”

  “What did you think I’d done?”

  “I didn’t know what to think,” he said. “I never should have left you alone up there. For all I knew, something happened to you, or maybe you took it in your head to do something stupid.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time, Natasha. I still remember the time you picked up one of your impressions in the East Side Strangler case and decided to check it out for yourself. It almost got you killed.”

  “Yeah, but you caught him, didn’t you? So is this going to be a lecture, or do you want to know what I found out?”

  “All right, go ahead.”

  “No, I think maybe you’d better cancel that A.P.B. first, before some off-duty cop comes in here and hauls me off in handcuffs. If that happens, I swear to God, I’ll sue.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll take care of it. But you stay right where you are. It’s not that I don’t trust you, Natasha, but… I don’t trust you. Stay put. I’ll meet you down there in about an hour. I have to meet somebody first.”

  “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere. I just ordered dinner. I’m always hungry when I’m getting off a drunk. I’ll see you when you get here. Oh, by the way, how’s that detective who went to the hospital?”

  “You mean you haven’t heard? It’s been on all the news shows.”

  “No, what happened?”

  “I’ll fill you in when I get down there. Just sober up and don’t go wandering off.”

  She hung up. “I’m pretty sure he bought it,” she said.

  “But that was taking a bit of a chance, wasn’t it? What if they had traced the call?”

  “It would have led them to a public telephone in Brooklyn,” Makepeace said.

  “How did you manage that?”

  “Fairy magic.”

  “Right. I had to ask. Anyway, the detective’s full name is John Angelo. I picked it up from McGuire when I asked about him. He’s easy when his guard is down. I also picked up something about how he had to get Angelo’s file from Christine. That’s Christine Mathews, the district attorney. He’s on his way to meet her now.”

  “Why would the deputy police commissioner need to get a police officer’s file from the D.A.?” asked Wyrdrune. “Angelo’s with the Organized Crime Task Force,” said Natasha. “It’s a special unit Mathews put together with the hacking of the mayor’s office. A specially picked group of police officers assigned to work undercover to infiltrate organized crime activities in the city.”

  “And he doesn’t have their files?” Wyrdrune asked.

  “They’re all working deep cover,” Natasha replied. “Only Christine Mathews and her immediate staff administering the task force have access to the details of the operation. It was a big controversy in the department. She said there had been too many leaks in the past, so the current operational files are all restricted. Only two or three people have access to them.”

  “It makes sense,” said Kira. “There’s a lot at stake. It wouldn’t be the first time police officials had been corrupted.”

  “So what happens now?” Natasha asked.

  “You go and meet McGuire at the coffeehouse,” said Wyrdrune. “Stick with the story we worked out. And try to find out as much as you can without seeming too obvious.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Oh, right. Of course.”

  “I wish we still had Archimedes,” Kira said. “He would’ve had no trouble getting us Angelo’s file.”

  “What happened to Archimedes?” asked Makepeace.

  “Unfortunately, he took a sniper’s bullet back in the penthouse,” Billy said. “I’m really going to miss that little guy.”

  “We’re not talking about a person, are we?” Natasha said.

  “No, but he was very much alive. Archimedes was a very special little computer,” Wyrdrune said. “He could have broken into any data bank in the country as easy as you please. But without Archimedes, we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

  “We follow McGuire?” Kira said.

  Wyrdrune nodded. “In the meantime, we’ll need to set up a new base of operations. We obviously can’t go back to the penthouse, and I don’t want to compromise Sebastian. It’s too risky for us here. Too many people coming and going.”

  “Leave that to me,” said Billy. “Sebastian will need to meet Jacqueline at the airport.”

  “What about me?” Gonzago asked. “How can I help?”

  “By staying here and holding down the fort,” said Wyrdrune. “If any of us runs into any problems, we’ll contact you. Until we know more, we can’t really make any other plans. We’ll have to play this on the fly. And Modred, or Angelo, might show up here while we’re gone. I hope. That would solve our biggest problem at the moment.”

  “What worries me is why he hasn’t come here by now,” said Kira. “You’d think this would be the first place he’d go.”

  “Unless he doesn’t remember that,” said Billy.

  “What do you mean?” asked Wyrdrune.

  “He took the full force of that attack and Angelo was brain damaged. There’s also no way of knowing to what extent the runestone itself may have been affected. In order to protect itself, keep both of you alive, and then effect the bond with Angelo, the runestone had to have expended a great deal of energy. The laws of magic can’t be violated. Even the runestones can be depleted.”

  “In other words, it’s possible that Angelo may not have recovered fully,” Wyrdrune said.

  “And with the trauma, he may not be able to remember anything,” said Billy. “Which puts him into even greater danger. We know there’s at least one necromancer out there, and he knows who Angelo is.”

  “And if he’s been following the news, he knows the cop who was injured in that raid has left the hospital,” said Kira.

  “Exactly,” Billy said. “It wouldn’t take much for him to put it all together.”

  They were all silent for a moment, until Wyrdrune swore softly.

  “I couldn’t have said it better,” Billy said. “We don’t have any time to lose. If the Dark One finds him before we do, he may not even be able to defend himself.”

  “And if the Dark One takes his life force, he’ll absorb the life force of the runestone, too,” said Wyrdrune. “And then there’ll be no stoppi
ng him.”

  The cab dropped him off in front of Luigi’s. He paid the .cabbie with money from the roll he’d found. There was more than enough left to support him for a while, but it would not last forever. And he was not sure where he would get more. He did not even know what he did for a living. By the look of things so far, whatever it was, it was probably illegal. He was not sure how he felt about that. It bothered him that he didn’t know, but it did not seem to disturb his conscience. Perhaps this Vinnie Maldonado, whoever he was, would be able to shed some light on matters. But he was not sure how much to tell him. I’ll simply have to play it by ear, he thought, as he went into the restaurant. Now the question was, how would he recognize Vinnie Maldonado?

  Luigi’s was hardly a fashionable, upscale restaurant. For all the working-class aura of its name, however, it was a very clean and pleasant, middle-income sort of place, small and intimate, with a long bar running along the right side and square-tabled booths covered with red and white checkered tablecloths along the left side. There were tables in the back, with Chianti bottles acting as candle holders in the center of each, and silverware neatly folded up in crimson napkins.

  There were posters depicting scenes of Italy and Sicily framed on the walls and the place seemed to do a brisk business. A nice little neighborhood Italian restaurant.

  “Johnny! Over here!”

  A man was waving at him from a booth along the back dividing wall that separated the rear section from the lounge He was looking right at him, with an impatient expression Apparently, this was Maldonado. Angelo made his way over to his booth and slid in opposite him.

  “Jeez, it took you fuckin’ forever to get down here,’“ Maldonado said. “I was starting to get real nervous about you, Johnny boy. There’s a lot ridin’ on this deal. You eat yet?”

  “Uh… no, actually.”

  Maldonado raised his hand and snapped his fingers loudly several times. “The linguini with clam sauce is real good tonight. Go ahead, it’s on me.”

  “Sounds fine. Thank you.”

  A waitress came and Maldonado gave her the order like an impresario. “And bring us another bottle of this nice Chianti,” he added, “and a glass for my friend, here.”