The Wizard of Lovecraft's Cafe

by Simon Hawke

  “Oh, God. Oh, Jesus, no…”

  “They know where you live. You’ve got to get away somewhere.”

  “Christ. Why are you doing this?”

  “I told you, I lost my memory somehow. All I know is that I’m supposed to be somebody named Angelico, who’s also known as Johnny Angel, and apparently I’m involved with the mob. But if that’s who I was, I’m not that person now. I don’t want any part of it.”

  “This is on the level, isn’t it?” she said.

  “It’s a nightmare, that’s what it is,” Angelo replied.

  “They’re going to come after you, too, when you don’t do… what you’re supposed to do. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I know. I don’t care. I just can’t go through with it. I simply can’t believe I was someone like that, but Maldonado seemed to know me, and he said something about some work I did up in Detroit… I think I must be losing my mind.” His head was starting to hurt.

  “Hey, you all right?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I feel dizzy.”

  “Come on, we’ll go to my place.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

  “I heard, believe me. But you’re supposed to be working me over tonight, or maybe dumping my body somewhere. They’re not gonna come looking until tomorrow, at least. Meanwhile, I gotta get some stuff together so I can split and you look like you’re about to fall down. Come on, lean on me.”

  He suddenly felt weak. It seemed to him as if he were hearing voices in his head, like a distant chorus of whispers, but he could not make out what they were saying. She helped him down the street about two blocks to her building. They took an old freight elevator up to her loft. There wasn’t much to it. It was spacious, but very sparsely furnished. There was a black leather couch and loveseat, a coffee table, a few potted plants, a kitchen table and some chairs by the kitchenette at the back, an expensive entertainment system, a large futon bed with a mirror on the wall beside it, but mostly the place was bare, save for the paintings on the walls and an artist’s easel set up on a large, paint-spattered canvas dropcloth underneath the skylight. She helped him to the couch and headed for the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of vodka.

  “You look like you could use a drink,” she said, bringing it to him with a glass. “Sorry, I don’t have any Scotch.”

  He poured himself a glassful and took a healthy slug. It warmed him and he seemed to feel a little better. She sat down on the chair beside him.

  “You really don’t remember who you are?”

  “I can’t seem to remember anything.”

  “How do you know you’re Johnny Angel?”

  “I found myself in his apartment. I found the gun, the money, his ID bracelet, his suits… they seemed to fit like they were made for me. And then Maldonado called and recognized my voice. He said we were supposed to meet at Luigi’s and when I got there, he recognized me and waved me over. I didn’t know him from Adam. That’s where I learned everything else, listening to him while he told me what I was supposed to do. It seems the police have seized several of these shipments they’re bringing in—drugs, I guess—and somebody named Tommy thinks Joey’s got a big mouth. They know Joey’s been seeing you and they don’t like it. They think he’s been bragging to you, talking big and boasting about what they were doing, and they suspect you’ve been tipping off the police. And that’s about all I know.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. “We’re fucking dead. They’ll probably kill Joey, too.”

  “No offense, but for some reason, I’m not too worried about Joey.”

  “To hell with Joey. He’s a real sick puppy. Here I think I’ve met myself a real high roller and turns out all he wants to do is watch me with my tricks and then slap me around and call me names. He gets into my life and then I can’t figure out how to shake him. He scared me. with all his talk about his connections.”

  “So he did talk to you?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t say nothing to nobody. Like I said, he scared me. I was trying to find another place so I could move and maybe lose him, but it looks like I waited a little too long. Damn, we’ve gotta get out of here.” She got up, removed her heels, and started running around the place, collecting her belongings and throwing them into a suitcase. “You better call us a cab,” she said as she ran around, wasting no time.

  “Us?” he said.

  “Well, I can’t just run out on you after you saved my life,” she said. “You’ve got amnesia. Where you gonna go?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “You believe me?”

  She didn’t stop moving. “Yeah, I believe you.”

  “Why?”

  “Who’d make up a story like that?”

  “What if it’s just a bluff to get you to leave with me?”

  She stopped for a moment and looked at him, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. If you wanted to do me, you’d do it right here. Who’s around to see? Besides, you’re hurtin’, honey. I can tell.”

  “I appreciate your trust,” he said wearily.

  “Hell, the mess I’m in, I’ve gotta trust somebody,” she said, throwing things into a suitcase. “Besides, we’ve both gotta split and you’re the one with all the cash. Call that cab.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a hotel. Someplace they won’t think to look for us.” She thought a moment. “The Plaza. What the hell, you can afford it. We’ll figure out what to do when we get there.”

  Angelo reached for the phone.

  “He’s been here,” said Natasha, looking around the bedroom.

  “Are you sure?” McGuire asked, checking the drawers and the closets.

  “I’m sure,” she replied, picking up the white hospital gown from the floor beside the bed.

  “Oh,” said McGuire, a little sheepishly. “I would’ve found that, eventually.” He shook his head. “How the hell did he get all the way here from the hospital dressed like that?”

  “Maybe he took a cab,” Natasha said.

  “Is that right? Where did he keep his wallet?”

  “I’m picking up a real feeling of confusion,” she said, squeezing the gown in her hands. “He’s lost. He doesn’t seem to know who he is. I don’t think he even knew how he got here.”

  McGuire saw the light blinking on the answering machine and punched the playback button. “Angel? Where the hell are you? You were supposed to meet me here an hour ago, for Christ’s sake! 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—” The message tape clicked off.

  “He must have picked up the phone,” McGuire said.

  “Do you know who that is?” Natasha asked.

  McGuire shook his head. “No.”

  “Don’t touch the phone,” she said. “Let me see it.”

  He moved away. She rewound the tape and played it back again while she held on to the receiver, her eyes closed.

  “Maldonado,” she said, her eyes still closed as she held on to the receiver.

  “Vinnie Maldonado?” said McGuire.

  She opened her eyes. “Yes, I think that’s it.”

  “You’re good,” he said with admiration.

  “Yeah, you only want me for my mind. So you do know him.”

  “I know of him. He’s one of Tommy Leone’s chief lieutenants in the Lucchese family. Christine’s not going to like this. Did you get anything else?”

  “Something about a meeting.”

  “Well, that part’s on the tape,” he said wryly.

  She grimaced. “Let me try again.”

  She rewound the tape and played it back again while she held on to the receiver, concentrating. “Luigi’s.”

  “‘I know the place. It’s in Little Italy. You done with that phone?”

  “I guess.”

  He took it from her and called in, ord
ering a stakeout on ±t apartment, then he hung up and said, “Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Luigi’s Clam and Oyster Bar.”

  “Great, I’m hungry.”

  “I thought you just had dinner.”

  “All this psychic stuff gives me an appetite,” she said.

  He shook his head. “You’re an expensive date.”

  “Yeah, but on the other hand, I know exactly what you like.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She started making clucking noises, like a chicken.

  “Hell, come on,” he said with exasperation, taking her arm.

  “Ooph, I love it when you’re masterful,” she said as he pulled her out of the apartment.

  “They’re leaving,” Kira said, watching from the cab double-parked across the street as McGuire and Gypsy came out of the apartment building and got into their car.

  “That didn’t take long,” she said.

  They watched as McGuire’s car sped off.

  “They found something,” Kira said. “They seem in an awful hurry.”

  “Follow them,” said Wyrdrune to the cabbie.

  Without a word, the cabbie levitated the car and it skimmed off about a foot off the ground after McGuire’s unmarked unit. The cabdriver was a lower-grade transportational adept, which meant he only knew the basic spells of low-level levitation and impulsion, enough to get him his hack license. He would have been no match for Wyrdrune, even without his runestone. Wyrdrune had no real qualms about placing him under a spell of compulsion. It was strictly unethical, of course, but he told himself the cabbie wasn’t doing anything he wouldn’t have done anyway, more or less. He would simply find himself in another part of town much later, unable to account for a block of his time, and with nothing on his meter. But he would have a very large tip.

  “We’re heading toward Little Italy,” Kira said. “I wish I knew what they found out up there.”

  “They found out Angelo got a call from a hood named Vinnie Maldonado,” Wyrdrune said, “and he was supposed to meet him at a place called Luigi’s Clam and Oyster Bar in Little Italy.”

  Kira stared at him. “How the hell did you know that?”

  Wyrdrune pulled an amulet out from under his shirt. It was an exact match of the one Makepeace had given Natasha. “The reception is particularly good,” he said, tapping his head with his forefinger. “I guess her being psychic helps.”

  “Very sneaky,” Kira said. She punched him in the arm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t have a chance. Sebastian only slipped this to me as we were leaving,” he said, tucking the amulet back underneath his shirt. “We worked up the spell together about two weeks ago, as a way of trying to keep in touch with our friends. The only problem is, it’s limited by distance. There’s only enough resonance to broadcast clearly for about three miles, and the reception starts getting rapidly weaker after that until it fades out completely at about five. We were hoping to find a spell that would increase its strength, but the trouble is, you’d need larger and larger stones to a point where it gets impractical. But in this case, it comes in real handy.”

  “You don’t trust her?” Kira asked.

  “No, it isn’t that,” he replied. “Gypsy’s okay. She understands what we’re up against. I just don’t think she fully appreciates the danger. She’s impulsive and she strikes me as a risk taker.”

  “I guess it takes one to know one, huh?”

  “You should talk.”

  “Why would Modred go to meet some hood?”

  “Modred wouldn’t,” Wyrdrune said. “Angelo might, though. Gypsy told McGuire she picked up something thorn Angelo feeling confused and lost, not really knowing who he was. It fits with what Billy suggested. Modred’s probably got amnesia from the trauma. Either that or he’s just out of it. Maybe he’s not even Modred anymore, but someone new, a combination of Angelo and himself, the way Billy’s a combination of himself, Merlin, and Gorlois.”

  “So that means we’ve lost Modred?”

  “Not necessarily. We didn’t lose Billy when he changed, did we? He simply became something more than what he was.”

  “But he suffered a severe trauma, as well,” said Kira. “He almost died. Why didn’t the same thing happen to him?”

  “Hard to say,” said Wyrdrune. “For one thing, don’t forget both Merlin and Gorlois were a lot stronger than Modred. And then there’s the fact that Modred’s already died once before, in a manner of speaking. I don’t know. There’s also the fact that Angelo had been possessed by the Dark One and it sounds like he had his life force drained. There seems to have been enough left to sustain him for a while, until he got to the hospital, but he was pronounced brain dead shortly after he got there. The runestone had already bonded with him by then. It had to have happened just after the Dark One siphoned off Angelo’s life energy through his acolyte. The runestone bonded with a host that was hanging on by a bare thread. And Modred had been hurt. That’s a lot of damage to overcome and even the runestones have to have their limits.”

  “Can you pick up what they’re talking about now?” asked Kira, looking ahead of them through the windshield at McGuire’s car.

  Wyrdrune nodded. “McGuire’s worried that this thing is escalating more and more out of his control, not that he had any control to begin with. He didn’t tell the D.A. he was bringing Gypsy in on this, and he’s concerned about how he’s going to explain the whole thing to the commissioner. Gypsy’s picking up a lot from him, too, and I’m getting that, as well. It’s real interesting.”

  “How so?”

  “He knows she can read him, but he doesn’t seem very concerned about it. He likes her and apparently they’ve got some history.”

  “Oh, it’s like that.”

  “Sort of. Push never really came to shove, apparently. The thing that’s really interesting is that he doesn’t seem to trust Case, the local Bureau chief. He doesn’t like him to begin with, but he also thinks Case knows more about this than he’s letting on. At least to him.”

  “Well, we know that’s true enough,” said Kira. “The Bureau’s got a file on us, except they’ve got it backward. They think we’re the necromancers.”

  “McGuire could be useful,” Wyrdrune said. “I realize that part of what I’m getting is filtered through Gypsy’s perception of him, and she likes him, but look at what he’s doing. The deputy commissioner is not supposed to be working on a case himself. He’s got detectives assigned to this thing, but he’s decided to handle this personally. He took the book and tossed it right out the window, because he’s got his own way of doing things. Remind you of anyone we know?”

  “Mike Blood of Scotland Yard,” she said.

  “Bingo. Seems like they’re both cut from the same cloth.”

  “You’re thinking of bringing him in with us?”

  “Maybe. Let’s see what he does. But having the deputy police commissioner of New York City on our team would certainly make things a lot easier for us in this town.”

  “They’re stopping,” Kira said.

  “Yep, there’s Luigi’s,” Wyrdrune said. He had the cabbie stop a short distance down the block. “Okay, let’s see what happens now.”

  “McGuire, commissioner’s office,” he said, showing the bartender his shield and ID.

  “I know who you are, Mr. McGuire,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Was Vinnie Maldonado here today?”

  “He sure was, but you didn’t hear it from me.”

  “Did he meet anyone?”

  “Yeah, some guy. Don’t know his name. Dark hair, beard, flashy clothes. They were sitting over in the back booth there. Don’t know what they talked about, though. Don’t want to know.”

  “How long ago did they leave?”

  “I dunno. Couple hours, maybe. Can’t say for sure. Place was busy. Toni waited on ‘em.”

  “Can I speak to her?”

  �
��Sure.” He called the waitress over. The waitress essentially corroborated what the bartender said, except she gave a better description of the man Maldonado had met. It was undoubtedly Angelo. She pointed out the booth where they were sitting. It was occupied. McGuire went over to the middle-aged couple sitting there.

  “Excuse me, folks,” he said, showing his shield and ID to them. “I’m sorry to interrupt your meal, but there were some felony suspects sitting here a little earlier today and I’d like to ask you to let us examine this booth for a moment. I’m sorry for the inconvenience; if you’ll wait over by the bar, the department will pick up your tab.”

  The man looked at his wife. “Sounds like a good deal to me,” he said, sliding out of the booth. “Help yourself.”

  As the couple left, McGuire and Gypsy slid into the booth. “Well, can you get anything?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. They’ve changed all the silverware, of course, and there’ve been people sitting here since then. That’ll muddy everything out.”

  “Try.”

  She closed her eyes and sat very still for a moment. Then she made a face and shook her head again. “I’m sorry, Steve. I’m picking up more about the couple who just left than anything else.”

  “Damn. Wait a minute.” He waved the waitress over. “Toni, you still have the check for those people we asked you about, don’t you?”

  “Sure thing. Got it right here,” she said, taking it out of her apron pocket.

  “Would you give it to her, please?” McGuire said, indicating Gypsy.

  She handed the check to Natasha.

  “We’ll give it back when we’re finished looking at it, thank you,” said McGuire.

  The waitress shrugged. “Don’t know what there is to see. They had some wine and linguini is all. Take your time, though.” She went off to see to her other tables.

  “Anything?” McGuire said.

  Gypsy held the check in her hand, frowning slightly. “ Angelo didn’t touch it,” she said. “I’m getting the other guy, Maldonado. And the waitress. She’s having boyfriend trouble.”

  “I don’t want to hear about the waitress,” said McGuire.