“He works at Midtown North, right?” Donovan disliked being constrained but didn’t want to see Fullam get in trouble. “I’ll drop these off tomorrow.” He stuck the envelope in his pocket. “Why did you have to go see him?”
“Sketch artist. I got a pretty good look at Charming Man, or Mister X, or whoever he is. Hopefully Frank can make something out of it.” She finished her martini and waved for another round. When it came, she took another big swallow. “He told me what you did at the shark tank last night.”
“Not much. They got away.”
“He said you swung out on a rope over the tank while the sharks were still feeding.” Donovan could feel the weight of her disapproval. “What is wrong with you? What were you thinking?”
“That I could catch them.” He downplayed it even as his heart raced at the memory. “They were getting away, the other exits were blocked. It was the only way.”
“Sharks, Donovan? Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?”
“I couldn’t let them just get away with it. I had to do something.”
“Famous last words.” She took a deep breath. He could see the stress tightening her face, clouding the gold flecks in her eyes. “Well, talk to Frank. Maybe as an official consultant to the NYPD, you can get a carry permit or something.”
“Maybe.” The thought gave him pause. In spite of the circumstances that had created the possibility, and in spite of Joann’s perspective, he found himself intrigued by the idea. “I’ve never had a problem riding the subway late at night, or walking home after work, but this is a whole new world. A gun might not be a bad idea.”
“It is a whole new world, and a dangerous one. If you insist on being part of all this—and despite my fears, Frank seems to think you handled yourself pretty well—I want to be sure you come back to me in one piece at the end of the day.”
“Yeah, I’m a fan of that idea, too.”
“You’re my respite from all the political bullshit I face at work. You’re my connection to normal life, where people don’t shoot at each other, or chop each other to bits, or,” she raised an eyebrow, “jump over shark tanks. I need it. I need you.” She sipped again and waved a hand in front of her face as though erasing a blackboard. “I don’t want to think about investigations or work or the mayor or sharks anymore. We have really important issues to discuss. We have to set a firm date for the wedding. I was thinking next spring, maybe the beginning of April. April second, not the first.”
“We don’t want getting married to make us…April Fools?” He sipped his drink. “Careful. Might smile. Can’t have that.”
She stared glumly into her martini. “After today, it’s going to be a while before I smile.”
He leaned in and kissed the back of her neck, grinning at the goosebumps the kiss aroused. “That’s what you think.”
***
The next morning Donovan took the envelope from Fullam and walked to the Midtown North precinct house. Humidity layered the air even though it was barely ten o’clock. Every surface in the city smudged, slid or stuck to his hands.
He identified himself to the desk sergeant, who sent him upstairs to the detectives’ squad room. Fullam’s desk was in one corner. He was there with a young man who, in contrast to Fullam, was the kind of guy whose idea of style was to wear a baseball cap whose color matched his t-shirt. This t-shirt had a picture of a silhouette target with a smiley face shot out of it. Underneath, it read, “Police should be held in the highest regard. Our guns fire quick and our nightsticks are hard.” His baby face lit when Donovan entered.
“Hey, daredevil. How are you?”
“Do I know you?” Donovan asked.
Fullam made the introduction. “Donovan Graham, Josh Braithwaite.”
Braithwaite stuck out his hand. Muscles corded on his forearm as they shook. “Daredevil?” Donovan repeated.
“The shark tank.” The young detective tossed his head. “Man, I thought I was crazy.”
“Too bad I didn’t catch them.”
“Hey, you survived.”
Donovan looked at Fullam. “Got a minute, sergeant?”
“Josh?”
Braithwaite rose and offered his seat. “You want coffee?”
“I’m good, thanks.” Donovan handed Fullam the folded papers Joann had given him. “I guess this makes it official.”
Fullam glanced at and threw them into his “Out” basket. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
The sergeant leaned back in his chair, a move he’d practiced enough to avoid hitting the wall behind him. They sat looking at each other for a moment.
“Now what?” Donovan asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Now that I’m official, what can I do?”
“Not much to do yet. The wheels of justice grind slowly. We got some good forensic stuff, but it’s still in the lab. The giant’s fingerprints were cooked onto the steel pipe next to yours.”
“You have my fingerprints to compare?”
“You’re in the system.” Fullam glanced at him. “You were on the list for the Academy but let it lapse. They still have your fingerprints on file.”
“My father’s suggestion.” Donovan shrugged. “School and work got hectic. I had to choose.”
“None of my business. If you ever decide to stop getting high and you want back in, give me a call. You handled yourself pretty well at the aquarium; department always needs good men.”
“Thanks.” The compliment made Donovan smile. “Have you got anything I could offer input on now?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea Mister X is not working alone.”
“You mean besides Coeus the giant?”
“He had someone grab the cleaning truck and Katz. Someone also drove it and dumped it. We found it, abandoned and burned, out in Queens.”
“Really?”
Fullam cocked his head. “Something wrong?”
“After talking to Mabel Muglia, Father Carroll believes this is a satanic ritual. Satanists don’t usually work and play well with others,” Donovan said.
“They don’t have covens?”
“That’s witches, generally speaking. Satanism is different, darker. Its main tenet is the acquisition of personal power, so it tends to draw people who aren’t about sharing. People who are really serious about it, like Mister X obviously is, tend to be, ah, socially isolated.” Donovan shrugged. “Might mean nothing. Other Satanists need the immediate gratification of group worship, so they gather weaker people around them they can control. Charismatic leader kind of people. The people they gather don’t need to be Satanists, just pissed off or desperate enough to join a group whose leader tells or gives them what they want. That leader is the focal point for their emotion, which is what drives any magical ritual.”
“Pissed off or desperate enough? Kind of like the homeless?” His lips pursed. “Sorry about Joann. Raphael’s a good guy, but what I hear, he had no choice.”
“So Joann told me.”
“I told her I’d keep her in the loop if anything relevant comes up.”
“Thanks.”
“Speaking of relevant…” Fullam slid a file over to himself. “We found more of the red wax on the shark tank platform. I’ve got the chemical analysis. I emailed it over to Maurice. You want something to do? Give me an idea what it means.”
Donovan felt a charge. “Sure. Did it give you anything else?”
“There is some DNA—spit—in there, too, and human fat. Working on it, but no leads from it yet.”
“All right, sergeant,” Donovan said, standing. “I’ll get over to Father Carroll’s, see what we can come up with.”
“Listen—”
Donovan paused at the office door.
“Call me Frank,” Fullam said, with a slight angle of his head. “Sherlock Pothead Holmes or not, the aquarium was good work.”
***
Donovan rode to Father Carroll’s apartment with a grin that wouldn’
t go away. He parked the Vulcan near a halal street vendor and waved at the priest coming out the building door.
“I was just heading over to my campus office to get a few books,” Father Carroll said. “Care to tag along?”
“Sure.”
“What’s so amusing?”
Donovan jerked his head towards the vendor, his grin widening. “Guy just said to him, ‘I don’t care. I’m hungry.’ Not something you ought to say to a man who sells mystery meat on a street corner. A hot dog guy, maybe. You can recognize a hot dog.”
“I’m more a fan of pretzels, myself.”
“Want to take my bike?” Donovan asked. Father Carroll looked at him over the top of his glasses. “Just asking. Inject a little excitement into the day.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I need my brains unscrambled for a little while longer.”
Donovan fell in step as the priest walked to the corner to hail a cab. “I’m coming from Midtown North. I just had an interesting meeting with Sergeant Fullam—Frank.”
“On a beautiful Saturday like today? Where is Joann?”
“Shopping, I think. Licking her wounds from the work stuff. She wants to be alone for a little while.”
“Ah.” Father Carroll let two regular-sized cabs pass before flagging down a mini-van one. “Yes, she told me a bit about it at the aquarium. I saw the mayor’s press conference Thursday, as well.”
“She’s being the good soldier about it, but it hurt. Raphael gave her Friday off and told her to lie low for awhile. She thinks he’ll come up with something else for her, but…” Donovan’s mouth drew tight. “I wish there was something I could do to help.”
“Giving her the freedom to address this in her own way is doing something.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
“Give her time. Including you in her affairs is something she has to do herself. You can’t force yourself into her life.”
“We are getting married.”
“Nevertheless.”
Donovan grunted and changed the subject. “What are we going to get at your office?”
“I want to see what I have in the way of herb and plant reference material.”
“Is this about the list Frank emailed you?”
“It is,” Father Carroll nodded. “Most of the chemicals in the red wax were botanical.”
“Anything specific?”
“Benzoin, agrimony, myrrh, rosemary, and amaranth.”
“Amaranth?” Donovan said. “In magic, isn’t that used to…call forth the dead?”
“It is a summoning agent, yes.”
“Summoning what?”
Father Carroll shook his head. “We won’t know until we consider how it is supposed to interact with the other plants. However, there was one other substance in the mix that bears commenting upon: a combination of white blood cells, calcium phosphate, nitrogen, sodium, potassium, water, chlorine and epithelial cells.” Donovan looked blank. “It doesn’t sound familiar? Remember your parapsychology.”
“What is it, a healing poultice or—no wait. MIT.” The priest nodded, encouraging him to go on. “MIT did a chemical analysis of a sample of ectoplasm after a séance in…the eighties, I think. That’s what they came up with, right?”
“Something very similar. I recognized this as an example of a substance called SELER—Solid Ectoplasmic Life Energy Residue. The remnant of ghosts, or…souls.”
“Get out of here.” Donovan laughed. “Mister X made candles out of ghosts?”
The priest shook his head. “SELER isn’t an ingredient, it’s a remnant. As the candle is burned, it draws life energy forth.”
Donovan thought about this as the cab pulled up to the building that housed the university philosophy department. “I’ve got to say, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around these, ah, esoteric details.”
“You don’t believe in them?”
“I know what they’re supposed to do. I’ve certainly studied them enough to know other people, like Mister X, believe in them. I’ve seen a man eaten alive by sharks and fought someone—twice—who looks like he came off a mad doctor’s morgue slab. But candles with ghost residue? It sounds…ridiculous.”
“Now you’re getting into the spirit of things.”
“‘Spirit’?”
The priest realized his pun and smiled. “‘Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing.’ John, 20:27. Your doubt is understandable. In this field, sometimes even experiencing isn’t believing.”
“So I’m wasting a lot of time, studying things I don’t believe in.”
“The doubt philosophical hermeneutics inspires. You have a sound foundation for what you seek, I think, because you are engaged in a pursuit of truth. The question you may want to consider is,” Father Carroll unlocked the door to his office and entered, “do you have the ability and the courage to accept that truth, whatever it is, once you’ve found it?”
Donovan stood just outside, wondering if he did.
***
Twelve killings of ridiculous complexity against the largest, best equipped police force in the world…
Smoking cigarette after cigarette, Valdes sat in shadow. When he’d returned to the Cancer Hospital from the aquarium, he’d bid the others have a good time before sequestering himself in his room. Although they knew nothing of what was to come next, they understood they were helping him, and that was enough.
Now he sat contemplating what he’d accomplished, allowing the deeds to reinforce his new perspective on how the world worked, a perspective begun months earlier…
NINE
DENIAL IS AN EVOLUTIONARY DEAD END
Now what?
The March night had been cold and rainy. Valdes walked into the first place he could find to get a cup of coffee, a two-level delicatessen whose upper level was filled with sticky-topped tables and creaky booths. He took his steaming paper cup up there and chose a booth towards the back. The coffee was bitter. On the far wall, a bright red sign screamed “No Smoking.” He lit a cigarette and exhaled a cloud at it.
Fifteen years in prison because of them. They screw me, double-cross me, and then have me thrown out? Me, Cornelius Valdes?
“The only thing anyone remembers about you is the bad,” Paolo had said.
He gazed into his coffee cup, filled with anger but with no outlet through which to channel it.
They’ll remember more than that. I’ll make sure of it.
The high back of his bench creaked and the entire structure shifted as someone sat in the booth behind him.
But how?
“Mister?”
Lost in thought, Valdes ignored the question.
“Mister?” the voice persisted. “Are you Cornelius Valdes? Cornelius Valdes who just got out of jail?”
Valdes’s jaw tightened. The voice was harsh, gravelly, but the words sounded strangely childish. Annoyance fluttered across his face. Without turning, he responded, “What do you want?”
“I don’t want anything. Mister Fizz does.”
“I’ve got nothing for him. Nothing for anyone.” Valdes’ lip curled. “Tell him to try the Christian Yeoman Association. Every customer gets a free knife in the back.”
“I’m bigger and stronger than knives. But I got a message.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
Valdes stubbed out his cigarette and rose from the table. Immediately the booth shifted. Blocking his way stood the largest man he’d ever seen, a colossus at least seven-foot-three with muscles and shoulders so wide he’d have to turn sideways to go through doorways. His hair was black, his face a combination of whites: pale skin, bloodless lips, ivory teeth. Scars lined his acromegalic forehead just below the hairline, and the skin stretched tight over his face and protruding jaw like too little shroud trying to cover too much death. His clothing enhanced the misshapenness—undersized black coat and pants patchworked with Frankenstein stitches and a d
iscolored white t-shirt. Valdes noted some sort of tattoo marking the inside of each of the giant’s wrists, ink that disappeared up into the sleeves. Black gloves the size of baseball mitts covered his hands. His eyes shone like a gargoyle’s, and it took Valdes a second to realize the giant wore a black pair of biker sunglasses.
“Mister Fizz said you would be angry. I guess that’s why he chose you, too.”
“Deliver your message and get the hell out of my way.”
“‘Denial is an evolutionary dead end.’”
Valdes remained braced for a moment until he realized this was what the giant had wanted to say. “That’s it? ‘Denial is an evolutionary dead end’?”
“Mister Fizz said you can’t deny who you are.”
“Really? Who does Mister Fizz think I am?”
The giant smiled, a hideous Halloween grin. “Someone who wants them to really pay.”
Valdes stared at him, anger and fear dissolving into curiosity and the faintest hope that, at last, his luck had finally changed. The giant chuckled and turned away. Valdes left his coffee on the table and followed, out the back of the store and into that freezing March night.
Oily water stained the gutters, filling the air with fishy garbage stink. Commuters were long gone from the streets of downtown Brooklyn, chased by cold and the magic that turns Cadman Plaza into a ghost town after work hours. Valdes quickened his step to keep up.
“Where are we going?”
The giant didn’t respond. He made his way towards a subway station entrance and as he did, Valdes noticed something odd. Although he took no unusual measures to stay out of sight, the giant seemed always to be in shadow. Valdes thought about first seeing him in the deli. Were the lights brighter before our conversation? “Some imagination, Neil,” he muttered.
A sign stated the entrance was open until 7 p.m., and indeed it was now closed off by an iron gate and locked by a thick chain. The giant didn’t hesitate, lumbering down the stairs and slamming the gate with one open palm. The chain snapped with a sharp crack!
Faustus Resurrectus Page 9