Raptor: Urban Fantasy Noir

by Bostick, B. A.

  Bishop hung back. The pack of toadies hadn’t followed Zaki down to the circle. They were probably still in the Star Box, drinking Cristal and toasting their connection to the rich and famous. Bishop could see Zaki and the horse with its garland of flowers. Their photos had already been snapped and Zaki was ordering the groom to remove the garland from the horse’s neck. A small man in a white coat was going over Quantum Leap with great concentration. He listened to the horse’s heart, looked in his eyes, ears, and mouth then felt his legs, running his hands up and down each leg, flexing them at the knee, examining the hooves. He hovered over a back leg and then popped something into his pocket. Finally, he waved at the groom, indicating that he could lead Quantum Leap back to the stalls. Zaki and he had their heads together when Bishop felt a tap on the arm. He jumped and swung around expecting freak-boy had crept up on him when he wasn’t paying attention.

  “Hey,” Rain said. “It’s only me. Me and my roll of cash. Let’s go catch some dinner, I don’t want to start handing over twenty dollar bills in front of this bunch of losers.”

  Bishop remembered he’d given Rain a twenty to bet for him. “What did I win?”

  “Five-hundred and fifty little green soldiers, man. I told you the Rain Mann knows what he’s doin’”

  “Five-hundred and fifty dollars? Me? What were the odds?”

  “Eleven to one.”

  “That’s too much.”

  “Too much? You gave me a fifty, man. I put it all on the nose.”

  Bishop felt a moment of vertigo. He’d almost lost fifty bucks. What was he thinking? Then he reconsidered. Hey, I won Five-hundred and fifty bucks! What about that?!

  “How much did you win?” he asked Rain.

  Rain made a little humming sound. “Don’t ask, man. Just don’t ask.”

  * * *

  Rain picked up the tab for dinner, which was very unusual. Bishop figured he must have won a packet. Otherwise he’d be waiving the bills in Bishop’s face and crowing about the amount. If it was too much to brag about, it was a lot.

  “So,” Bishop started. “That was a really fast horse.”

  “Fast? I’ve never seen a horse run like that in my life. If they didn’t booster test before every race, I’d have said he’d been doped. I bet there’s already been a complaint filed. But the track paid off so it’s just sour grapes on somebody’s part.”

  “I saw what looked like a vet going over the horse after the race. I think he took some blood. But I couldn’t really see him doing it.”

  Rain shrugged. “A good race horse is worth a lot of money. They have docs hanging all over them making sure they’re okay. That horse is going to be worth even more after this race, although he’ll never have the odds he had today. I would’ve thought they’d hold him back for a few races until he qualified for a big one, then let him beat the pants off everybody else’s winner for a high buck purse. Maybe Zaki’s too rich to care about the money. Maybe he just likes to win.”

  Bishop finished his beer. “I don’t know why, but that’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Rain threw some bills on the table for a tip. “You know, just because I’m celebratin’ doesn’t mean I haven’t noticed you’re not telling me what’s goin’ on.”

  “Hey, I don’t understand what’s going on. It’s complicated.” The image of the little man in the stripped suit popped back into Bishop’s brain. “And weird. Really, really weird.”

  - 15 -

  So much for having the last word: You come to town in a Mercedes and go home on the bus.

  Ariel hated the bus, but she didn’t want to chance jumping a train in broad daylight. She walked to the bus station, bought a ticket on the first bus going in the right direction and claimed a window toward the back. The guy who took the aisle seat next to her smelled like rancid Cheetos and three day old beer. He’d tried to start up a conversation, but one look from Ariel’s angry bird-of-prey eyes and he shut up. When he got off he was replaced by a kid with an iPod implant that was leaking an angry Rapper rant through the multiple holes he’d pierced in his face. Perversely, it seemed the perfect background noise for bus travel.

  Ariel wrapped herself tighter in her coat and shut her eyes. Tomas had been a bad call and a wasted visit. She’d gotten nothing, except she could tell that the photograph had caused the tiniest crack in the Raven’s glacial cool. She left it on the kitchen table when she stomped out. It wasn’t her problem now, it was his. Maybe. She made a mental note to check if Mouser had had any luck getting a lead on the other lost kids. If not, she was going to start turning over some rocks to see what crawled out. She hadn’t done that in a while. It would be fun.

  - 16 -

  Bishop asked Rain to drop him off at the old office building where he rented a space for Bishop Investigations. The building wasn’t far from his apartment and he needed to check his mail, send out a couple of invoices and throw out the latest in a long line of neglected potted plants before he called it a night. Bishop didn’t know why he kept buying plants for the office since he never took care of them. At least they weren’t puppies.

  As he climbed the steps to the front door, the target zone between his shoulder blades began to itch. It was the place in Bishop’s imagination where his own personal bull’s eye was painted. To the left of it, and higher up on his shoulder, was a real scar. The shooter had missed the kill zone, but Bishop still spent three weeks in the hospital and two more on pain killers while internal affairs raked his ass over the coals for shooting back.

  The office was a third floor walkup. Bishop liked to think of it as very Sam Spade, but that was mostly because nothing in the building had been up-graded since 1942. He had one big room with an old wooden desk backed up to a set of large, double-hung windows. Two client chairs faced the desk even though clients usually came to Bishop in ones, wanting to hire him to follow the person who might normally be occupying the other chair. A red couch, old leather recliner and a Salvation Army coffee table sat in a loose group against the opposite wall on an old oriental rug left behind by the previous tenant. A small closet had coat hooks on the back of the door and a sink inside with a mirror over it. The toilet was down the hall.

  The office was basic, it was cheap and it had been totally trashed.

  Bishop stood in the doorway, one hand on the knob, the other on the light switch, his mouth open in disbelief. All the drawers had been pulled out of his desk, file cabinets hung open, their contents scattered all over the floor. His furniture had been over-turned, gutted and smashed. Stuffing from the couch had been pulled out and tossed in all directions. His small television lay in a puddle of what he hoped was stale coffee from his broken coffee pot and his computer monitor had ended up in the wreckage of his recliner with a chair rail sticking out of the screen.

  There was also a disgusting stench that made Bishop think of rotting Gyros. He moved reluctantly into the room and shut the door. Except for the missing drawers, his desk seemed to be remarkably intact, all the better to display what the vandals had left behind.

  The reeking goat head on the desk top stared balefully at Bishop with dead, amber eyes. It had been a white goat with horns and a long, pointy tongue that now protruded obscenely from between its teeth. To make sure the tongue didn’t creep back into the goat’s mouth when no one was looking, a black handled knife had been jammed through the swollen organ to hold it to the surface of the desk. The goat’s pristine white coat was embellished with red and black symbols; whorls, triangles, squares and wavy lines. None of it made any sense to Bishop except he knew a dead goat when he saw one.

  Since his office phone had been ripped out of the wall, Bishop started to pull out his cell to call 911 when he heard the door open behind him. He whirled around, grabbing at his hip, only to remember his gun was still safely locked up in the metal box in his closet at home. He was about to grab a convenient chair leg off the floor when a familiar voice said,

  “Jesus, Bishop. You need to do something about the janitori
al services in this dump.”

  Rain shut the door behind him. “After I dropped you off I saw some little weasel in a striped suit come slinking out of the alley carrying what looked like a computer deck. He was behind me, so I only caught him in the mirror, but it gave me a bad feeling. I thought I’d come back and make sure you were okay.”

  “Just peachy,” Bishop said, setting the only un-smashed chair back up on its feet. “I was so busy admiring the rest of the redecoration I didn’t notice my computer was missing.” He walked around the desk, glanced into the knee hole, then stuck his head out the open window behind him.

  “Yup, gone. But there’s my desk chair, telephone and a dead Fichus sitting in the alley. Man, I’m going to miss that plant.”

  “Bishop?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “I didn’t want to say anything while you were taking your moment, but there’s a goat head on your desk.”

  “Yeah, that wasn’t there when I locked up the other day. What do you think it means?”

  “You have a fan club that’s into livestock?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then I think it’s some sort of warning. Maybe even a curse.”

  “Huh? Okay, a threat, sure. Divorce work’s a risky business. But a curse? What’s it supposed to do, doom me to buy new office furniture? And what’s all that red, squiggly stuff? And the knife? Somebody stuck a knife in my perfectly good, sixty year old desk. What am I supposed to do about that?”

  “Calm down, man. How did the guy get in here in the first place? Was the door open?”

  “Locked when I got here,” Bishop told him. “The window was open.”

  “So what you’re sayin’,” Rain pulled a pen out of his pocket and began to poke at the goat head. “Is somebody either had a key or he shimmied three stories up a brick wall with a goat head under his arm, trashed your office and stole your computer.”

  While Bishop pondered that concept, Rain worked on the goat head. He stuck his pen into the goat’s mouth and wiggled it around. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a white handkerchief. Wrapping it carefully around his hand, he pulled the knife out of the goat tongue, leaving a deep, triangular shaped hole in the desk. The head fell over onto its back. Rain grabbed its snout and started prying at something inside the mouth.

  “Are you dating a Gypsy with a jealous husband?” he asked, as he tried to make the jaws open a little wider around the swollen tongue

  “Of course not,” Bishop said. “That’s disgusting!”

  “You got something against Gypsies?”

  A wadded up ball of paper popped out of the goat’s mouth like a cork out of a bottle. Rain caught it before it hit the desk. He used his gloved hand and the side of the pen to unwad it and smooth it flat on the wooden surface. It was covered in strange brown letters and symbols that appeared to have been made with an old fashioned ink pen.

  “I meant what you were doing to the goat.” Bishop said. He peered over Rain’s shoulder at the paper. If the writing was a series of words, it was in a language he’d never seen before.

  “What is that?” he asked. “What does it say?”

  “I don’t read Romanian,” Rain told him, holding the paper up to the light. “But that thing I said about having something against Gypsies? You can start that anytime. I think this is written in blood.”

  - 17 -

  Bishop felt like an idiot. He’d let Rain drag him to a seedy part of downtown so he could stand in front of Madame Zebella’s Good Fortune Grotto, holding a plastic bag filled with ripe goat head like some lost shepherd of the damned. Rain had already rung the bell, only to be told in a heavily accented voice, Madame Zebella was currently with the spirits and would be with them in a moment. The electric lock clicked the door open and admitted them to an equally seedy waiting room containing four orange plastic chairs, a profusion of purple curtains and a collection of mystic trash.

  All religions were equally represented in the decor. Bishop particularly liked the 3D plastic portrait of a Hindu goddess with six arms and a necklace of skulls. The arms moved and the skulls smiled or frowned depending on how he tilted his head. Her eyes seemed to follow him around the room no matter what he did to avoid them.

  “When did you start hanging out with Gypsies?” Bishop asked, turning his back on the goddess.

  “Zebella and I go way back,” Rain told him. “When I was a beat cop I used to bust her on a regular basis for shop lifting and general grift. When she moved up in the world and I got my gold shield we came to an understanding.”

  “You mean she’s one of your snitches?”

  “I retain her services as a consultant,” Rain said primly. “She knows every con artist in the city.”

  The curtains on the back wall suddenly parted, launching an ocean liner of a woman draped in layers of colored scarves, skirts and shawls. Her pudgy arms were loaded with gold and silver bracelets, rings sparkled from every finger. Her hair was a tangle of dyed black curls and despite the purple eye shadow; her eyes were bright and intelligent.

  “Mr. Rain,” she said in mock admonishment. “You tell your friend lies about Zebella. I am an honest woman. I only tell the truth!”

  Rain took Zebella by the hands and surveyed her generous charms. “As gorgeous as ever, Bella, and not a day older than the last time I saw you.”

  “Pffft!” Madame Zebella gave him a small shove. “Who’s liar now? You don’t come to see me anymore. My feelings are hurt!” She looked over at Bishop.

  “Your friend smells like a goat. What you want from Bella, Mr. Rain?”

  “My friend needs a consultation. I think he may have acquired a bit of a curse.”

  Bella’s eyes took in Bishop’s plastic bag. “Come,” she gestured. “We go in the back. I think I need my special equipment.”

  The back of Madame Zebella’s Good Fortune Grotto was much more elaborate than the front. Behind the curtain was a steel reinforced door with several locks which Zebella shut behind them with a decisive thunk.

  “Thieves,” she explained. “You can’t be too careful.”

  Rain grinned at Bishop as Bella led the way to a round, satin draped table with a crystal ball in the center. The room was lined with dark mirrors that reflected the muted light of numerous sconces shaped like angel wings. The air was heavy with the smell of incense, which was probably a blessing considering the goat.

  “You sit.” She instructed. “Tell Madame Zebella your troubles and she will advise what to do.”

  Bishop put the bag with the goat head on the table and peeled back the plastic. “Somebody left this in my office with a note. Unfortunately I don’t read dead goat. Rain thought you might be able to help.”

  Madame Zebella’s ringed fingers flew to her mouth as if she was trying to catch the gasp she’d made before it got out into the room.

  “So it’s a problem?” Bishop asked.

  “This is bad, very bad!”

  “You want bad? You should see my desk. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to get that blood stain out.”

  “You have note?”

  Rain handed the note across the table and set the knife gently on the edge of the open plastic bag.

  Madame Zebella produced a pair of very un-Gypsy like reading glasses and leaned over the note without touching it. Her lips moved silently as she read, then clamped tight as if even mouthing what was written carried a risk. When she was done she snapped the glasses off and tucked them into a fold of her voluminous skirt.

  “This curse is in an ancient, pre-Christian dialect from the area we now call Romania.”

  Bishop goggled. Madame Zebella’s accent had totally disappeared.

  “It’s still spoken in some form today, mostly by Travelers, which people like you call Gypsies. The curse, in this form, is referred to as “The Revenge of Three”. It’s a very unusual invocation. Like many curses, it involves a blood sacrifice. The goat is the vessel that carries it to its target. All those markings on the head make
sure the curse doesn’t get lost on the way.”

  Bishop frowned. Madame Zebella was even more of a surprise than he’d anticipated. “What is this curse supposed to do?”

  “It’s a death curse. Meaning that it’s both revenge for a death, and a promise that blood will be spilled in return. This knife,” Madame Zebella indicated the wedge shaped blade, “is a traditional Romanian throwing knife. It’s often used in carnival acts where a performer is strapped to a spinning board, and a partner throws knives that barely miss hitting the body. A blessing is often done before the performance to protect the person on the board by repelling the blade. This curse attracts the knife, rather than repels it. The triangular shape of the blade repeats the rule of three as well as making quite a wound if you’re struck by it.”

  Bishop felt the bull’s eye between his shoulder blades light up like a neon sign. “Can you cancel this curse thing? Put a counter-whammy on it or something?”

  “Let me see your hand.” Madame Bella’s own fingers were remarkably warm, although Bishop imagined his own hand had gone stone cold because all his blood was in the process of rushing to his head.

  “Your fate is unclear,” Madame Bella intoned. “As long as those who initiated the curse are still alive the curse will be active. Therefore your death is in the hands of others. But I can see that you have strong and unexpected alliances. That means your life may also be attached to the will of other, more positive forces. There is hope, but I would be very, very careful.”

  Bishop took his hand back and examined the palm. “You saw all that in there? Before I start assuming any of this is true, let me ask you a question. Is this all an act? You don’t sound much like a Gypsy anymore.”