Montague & Strong Detective Novels Box Set: Montague & Strong Detective Novels Books, 1 through 3 (Montague & Strong Case Files)

by Orlando A. Sanchez

  He turned around and walked back to Hades’s office.

  “Well, that was cheery,” I said, looking for a doorknob. “You ready?”

  Monty was still lost in thought. “Before we go in and speak with him, we may need to reframe our thinking.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if Charon is not missing?”

  “So, what, he quit and forgot to tell his boss?” I asked. “It’s not like he can just take a few days off, go on a long weekend to—where would a soul transporter go?”

  “No,” Monty said. “If he’s not missing—”

  “Then someone grabbed him,” I finished. “Who could do that?”

  “I think the better question is who would profit from it?”

  Monty placed his hand on the plaque and the door unlocked, opening inward with a creak.

  I could have sworn my brain seized as we looked inside. I stopped and looked back to the hallway, with the gleaming wood and metal finishes. The huge diamond from the Terra Sur logo gleamed and glinted in the light. I looked back in and saw the inside of a New York delicatessen.

  The first thing I noticed was the smell of pastrami wafting through the air and grabbing my nostrils as we walked in.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked Monty, pulling him close. “Why are we standing in a deli?”

  “It appears Thanatos is also Azrael,” Monty said, as if the sentence made sense. “Or in this case Ezrael.”

  I looked around and knew where we were, but still couldn’t believe it.

  “This is clear across town and doesn’t look like it should be called ‘Arkangel’ anything.” I looked around and took in the scene. “Death hangs out in Katz’s Deli?”

  Photos of celebrities covered the walls. Small tables, which sat four, filled most of the floor space. Some of the tables were occupied with patrons either eating or having lively conversations. A large wooden counter ran across one wall with men behind it who were serving drinks or food.

  A bearded man dressed in a white shirt with black pants and a black vest was sitting in a corner alone. He was poring over a thick book. Monty made a beeline for his table and pulled out a chair.

  “May we join you?” he said, looking at the older man.

  The old man didn’t bother to look up and motioned for us to sit down. I grabbed the other chair and sat across from what appeared to me to be an old Jewish scholar. Monty peered across the table at the book and raised an eyebrow.

  “Why would you need to read the Zohar?” he asked.

  “Don’t you mean why are we sitting in a deli?” I said, confused. “Who is this and where is Arkangel Industries?”

  “Stop being such a kvetch,” the old man said and looked at me. “Such a pain in the tochus.”

  The yarmulke he wore was covered in runes that gave off a faint glow as he read his book. I almost reached out and touched it, but Monty gave me a stink-eye and I decided against it.

  “This is Ezrael, also known as Azrael or the Angel of death,” Monty said, “or Death for short—with a capital D.”

  The old man waved the words away. “So many names, Ezra is fine,” he said and closed the tome. “The deli is because there is no greater expression of life than sitting in one and having pastrami on rye. Besides, Willy said I could borrow the décor. I tried to keep it as authentic as possible.”

  “Is this the real deli?” I asked. “Or some dimensional replica?”

  “Oh, it’s real and it isn’t,” Ezra answered without answering. “You go out that door” —he pointed at the exit—“and you’ll find yourself on 2nd Avenue.”

  “Ezra, Hades sent us to you,” Monty started. “About Charon.”

  “I know,” Ezra said, and closed the book. “Have you eaten?”

  He pulled a waiter walking by our table.

  “I could eat,” I said as the smells wrapped themselves around my head and created a chain reaction in my stomach that resulted in a loud rumble. “Sorry.”

  “Two pastrami on rye with mustard. And bring them some sour pickles and an egg cream for this one,” he said, pointing at me. “You can thank me later.”

  The waiter took off and left us alone.

  “Pastrami? Ezra, I really don’t—” Monty began.

  “Eat meat, I know. This won’t violate your diet or your energy management.”

  “We really shouldn’t,” Monty said. “We can’t stay long. We have to—”

  Ezra just stared at Monty until he ran out of words. An event that had never happened in my lifetime.

  “It seems neither of you will be having a final meeting with me for a long time,” Ezra said. “You” —he pointed at Monty—“because of magic. And you” —he looked in my direction with a squint—“because you wanted to be a shamus with that meshuggah, Kali, and she cursed you.”

  “I had no idea she would react that way, really,” I said. “In my defense, Shiva said I…Forget it.”

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Ezra said, moving his book to an adjacent table. “And by ‘we’ I mean you. You two are going to enjoy your lunch—on the house. Then you’re going to be a pair of mensches and find Charon before we are completely schtupped.”

  “Do you have any idea why he would leave his post?” Monty asked. “Or was it something else?”

  Ezra rubbed his index finger across his nose and pointed at Monty. The waiter arrived at our table with enough food to feed five people, or one Yama, I imagined.

  “I don’t usually accept visitors, but you two, I like,” Ezra said and pushed back his chair. “So let me tell you what I think.”

  “Any insight would be greatly appreciated,” Monty said. “Thank you.”

  I didn’t say anything because the pastrami on rye kept my mouth busy.

  “Charon would never leave his post, but someone knew who and what he was collecting and wanted him out of the way. You find out who had access to that information, you find the Ferryman.”

  “Wait,” I said after swallowing a bite. “To remove him we have to be talking major leagues here. Charon isn’t a low-ranking soul transporter. He is one of the most powerful.”

  “The most powerful, so that should narrow it down for you,” Ezra said. “I have to be off. Oh, one more thing, Charon is the only one missing. That should mean something too.”

  He grabbed his book, moved behind the counter, and disappeared into the back. Monty turned to stare at me.

  “Really, you couldn’t restrain yourself for a few minutes before attempting to devour that sarnie monstrosity?”

  “He said eat,” I said, preparing for another bite. “I don’t argue with Death, so I ate. Try it, it’s amazing.”

  Monty gave the sandwich a reluctant bite and he groaned in pleasure. My phone rang and I saw it was Ramirez.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he yelled.

  “You don’t want to know. What’s up?”

  “We have a situation and you’d better get your asses here—yesterday,” he said. “I’m sending you the address.”

  He hung up and I took another bite before getting up.

  “If Ramirez is going to be summoning us every hour, we may need our own vehicle,” Monty said as we left the deli. “Cecil may have something for us.”

  “Do you even know how to drive?” I asked. “I mean, in this part of the world, not backwards like you do ‘across the pond.’”

  “How hard could it be? We certainly can’t have SuNaTran pick us up every bloody hour.”

  I looked down at my phone when it chirped and read the text from Ramirez.

  “Shit, this is bad,” I said. “We need to get back uptown now.”

  TWELVE

  NEW YORK CITY taxis—or yellow kamikazes, as I call them—are the fastest way to travel above ground in the city. I hailed one. The driver, seemingly eager to test the tolerance of his brakes, screeched to stop a few feet away from us and beckoned us to enter his mobile torture chamber.

  “What is Ramirez up in
arms about now?” Monty said as he got in. “We just saw him.”

  “He has a few of your high caliber sorcerer friends at the museum,” I said, sliding in next to him. “I thought sorcerers lived for centuries? Now all of the sudden they have the shelf life of yogurt. What’s going on?”

  “You’re confusing sorcerers with mages and wizards,” he said. “Sorcerers derive their power from the dark arts, which take a toll on the body. It’s a real distinction you need to learn.”

  “I thought the magic would keep them alive,” I said. “So, the dark arts…Not a fan?”

  “I can access them, of course, but I choose not to,” he said. “The cost is too high and the side effects aren’t pleasant.”

  “Is it like those ads?” I asked. “‘May cause baldness, blindness, rashes, nausea, diarrhea, and hemorrhoids’?”

  “It’s usually something a bit more final, like ‘death after loss of limbs, unbearable stench, demonic attack, human sacrifice, and servitude to lower powers.’”

  “How could anyone resist that?” I said. “What’s the appeal?”

  “It’s the fastest route to power, takes less study, and requires little effort.”

  “Like magical CliffsNotes. They get to skip all the boring parts.”

  “Except those boring parts can keep you alive,” he said, looking at the driver. “Do you intend on letting him know where we’re going?”

  “Hi, we need to get to MoMA ASAP,” I said to the driver, who remained looking at me with a pleasant smile on his face. “Hello?”

  “This is why I hate taxis,” Monty said. “It’s not even a proper color.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, pushing him aside. “All real taxis are black.”

  “Do you realize a London taxi driver takes two to four years to learn the knowledge? They have to know the city.”

  “We have the knowledge here too,” I said. “We just happen to be a bit more sophisticated and call it by its American name—GPS.”

  I slid the small door of the partition to one side and looked at the driver’s name: Khan, Amir—who, it seemed, was very happy on the day he took his license picture, judging from the immense smile. The same smile flashed at me when he had turned back to look at us.

  “Where to, sir?” Amir asked with a thick South Asian accent.

  “Amir, there’s a twenty-dollar tip in it for you if you can get us to the Museum of Modern Art in under twenty minutes.”

  Amir gave me a blank stare for a few seconds.

  “Where to, sir?” Amir asked again.

  “Brilliant,” Monty said, looking through the partition. “English probably isn’t his second language, it seems more like a distant third or fourth.”

  “Amir,” I said, and he smiled at me again, “11 West 53rd Street.” I pointed at my watch and then showed him the twenty. “This is for you, extra, if you go fast—twenty minutes.”

  As if on cue, Amir turned on a small screen to the left of the steering wheel, which displayed a map, and our location in the city.

  “Very good, sir,” Amir said, and gave me a head wobble. “Twenty minutes.”

  He punched in the address I gave him and I turned to see Monty searching the seat for something.

  “What did you lose?”

  “Nothing, I’m looking for a bloody seatbelt.”

  “In a cab? In New York?” I asked, suppressing laughter and dread in equal measure. “You see those?”

  I pointed to the straps that were bolted to the interior on both sides of the passenger area.

  “Of course I see them. I’m not bloody blind.”

  “Those are the seatbelt substitutes. Grab one because English may not be his first language, but he understands the language of money.”

  I saw Amir smile as he executed a U-turn off the sidewalk, cutting off three cars and nearly hitting another as he swerved into traffic. He shot down 2nd Avenue and screeched onto the FDR Drive going uptown. The three-lane parkway named for our 32nd president was usually a traffic nightmare in the afternoon. I was about to suggest against it, when I saw him swerve around one vehicle and cut another off, all the while keeping a huge grin on his face. For Amir, the FDR had just become a giant slalom course.

  “Bloody hell,” Monty muttered, and bounced off one side of the cab. “Did you have to offer him extra money?”

  “No, but then this wouldn’t be as fun,” I said and laughed at his expression of misery. “Stop being such a control freak. We’ll get there in one piece.”

  “Oi!” Monty yelled. “Stop trying to kill us!”

  Amir sped up in the center of the three lanes and then cut across sharply to the right, sliding into the far lane and then even farther into the service lane. I thought we were going to hit the dividing wall, when he shifted suddenly to the left and then back to the right to prevent another cab from passing him.

  We veered off to the left, taking the exit on 61st Street as Amir swerved around the curve of the exit onto 2nd Avenue, and sped downtown. He ran through several yellow lights amidst a chorus of horns and screeching brakes. I marveled at how a squad of NYTF cruisers didn’t appear behind us as we weaved through traffic, endangering life and limb.

  “I thought—I thought yellow meant slow down?” Monty asked as we shot past an intersection and he bounced in his seat.

  “That doesn’t apply to taxis in New York,” I said. “For cabs it means step on the gas and beat the red light.”

  Amir turned right on 53rd Street and headed across town. As he approached 5th Avenue, I felt Monty tense up next to me.

  “Bollocks,” he whispered as a fireball slammed into the cab, flipping us over.

  THIRTEEN

  SOMETHING VERY INTERESTING happens to your brain when faced with imminent death. Some people get hysterical. The majority of people get that deer-in-the-headlights reaction and don’t know how to respond. I was somewhere between stunned and I need to get my ass moving. Everything seemed to slow down and a part of my brain kicked me into gear. Monty usually assisted with that part.

  “Simon.”

  I heard my name muffled as if from a great distance. The cab was rotating slowly onto its roof as the fireball began melting the outside. Monty, who reacted faster than I did, was standing and moving with the impact of the strike.

  One of his arms was extended while the other rested on the roof, making it appear he was doing a cartwheel. After about a second, I noticed the cab stopped rotating and we remained tilted on one side. The fear etched on Amir’s face snapped me back to the present.

  “Simon!” Monty yelled. “Get up there and get the driver out! I can’t hold it like this all day.”

  Monty was sweating from the strain of keeping the cab in place and snuffing out the fireball that tried to melt us to slag.

  “What?” I said. “Oh. Shit!”

  I kicked in the partition and jumped into the driver’s area, where a petrified Amir screamed at me in a language I didn’t understand. Definitely in the hysterical group. I kicked open the passenger-side door and poked my head out. On the corner across from us, in front of the Rolex building, stood a man dressed in dark robes with black eldritch energy arcing around his body. He stood with his arms apart and screamed when he saw me looking at him.

  “Monty, I think there’s a sorcerer on the corner and he sounds really pissed,” I said as I scrambled to the other door and kicked it open.

  “Fancy that,” Monty grunted. “What gave it away? The friendly fireball he launched at us or the fact that he’s gathering negative energy to hurl this way?”

  “I’m going to go with door number one. Fireballs are never friendly.”

  “Would you be so kind as to get your arse out of the taxi?”

  I scrambled out of the cab and motioned for Amir to join me. He scampered out, still yelling at me in his native tongue. I held out the twenty and he gave me the ‘are you an idiot?’ look.

  “Hey, deal’s a deal,” I said as the cab creaked behind us. “We may want to move n
ow.”

  “You bloody bastards are insane,” he said in perfect English. “Stay away from me!”

  Amir snatched the twenty from my hand and took off running in the direction of the museum. I looked down the block and saw NYTF squad cars blocking 5th Avenue and the entrance to MoMA. I moved away from the cab, keeping it between the angry sorcerer intent on testing my immortality and me.

  It wasn’t that I doubted being immortal. I had plenty of heavy hitters—gods, and other nearly omnipotent beings—tell me I was. It’s just there was only one way to verify immortality. You have to die—and then come back. Or, even better, not die at all from something that should end you.

  I had no problem with the ‘coming back’ part of the equation. The dying part, though, chafed. Mostly because I knew it involved pain. Then there was the other niggling thought that just wouldn’t go away. Kali was an evil, conniving and vindictive goddess—on a good day. I wasn’t just on her shit list; I was on the ‘obliterate with extreme prejudice’ list.

  Her curse may have made me immortal, which I still didn’t understand, but she could have twisted it with some condition like—‘upon death, Simon will turn into a roach and live forever, even after being stomped on repeatedly.’ Science has proven they’re indestructible anyway. I just wouldn’t want to be one.

  So I tried to avoid dying as much as possible. Lately though, I wasn’t having much luck staying out of potentially fatal situations.

  I got about thirty feet away when the cab flew apart in several pieces. Monty stood in the wreckage, looking incredibly calm for someone who had just avoided incineration.

  “Simon, you may want to step back,” he said. “I’ll deal with this amateur.”

  “You sure?” I asked. “I have the Ebonsoul.”

  He gave me a look and responded by spreading his arms and scattering the remains of the cab with a blast of air, clearing a path.

  “No, then,” I said, and stepped back even farther. I loaded the Grim Whisper and made sure I was out of the line of fire.