Hound of Eden Omnibus

by James Osiris Baldwin

  The windows above me were open, venting a noxious oily pink smell into the night air. Someone was talking loudly on the phone. I tuned into the conversation, searching for a distraction. A nasal New Jersey accent carried out on the heavy, damp air.

  “Yeah, look, okay. No, I believe you, but I just have to make sure. Like, if I’m going to tell this guy where to go... yeah, they’re not the kind of people you fuck around with, Carmine. You’re sure that’s where they’ll be? And you’re sure they’ve got that houseplant?”

  Carmine? Houseplant? Still panting, I froze back against the wall and pulled my hand out of my pants, scrambling to redo my belt.

  “Alright, and you’re sure? Okay. Good. Dad knows how to get in touch with the Deacon. What? No, of course not, no one’s here... I’m at that fucking fag bar across the bridge to drop off Silvo’s snow and pick up our cut for the month. Cool it, and get in position for when that Soldier fuck comes calling, okay? Can you, uh, work some hocus-pocus to figure out who’s going with the Russkies to do the handover?”

  I glanced across the alley. The window was across from the dark doorway. I swallowed, then tried to relax the muscles down along my spine and weaved out into the red light like a drunkard, using the wall to guide my way. I sagged into the doorway and looked up.

  The man upstairs was bullish and slovenly. He had a heavy, sensual face, hair down to his collar, and wore a pale pink business shirt with the top two buttons undone over a gold necklace and a thatch of chest hair. He was scowling, pacing beside the window with a cigarette between his stubby fingers. He had a cellphone the size of a brick jammed between ear and shoulder, and a scar that twisted up from the corner of his mouth to his ear when he turned to the left. A weird, twisted smile curled my lips.

  Perhaps there was a GOD after all.

  It was Celso fucking Manelli.

  Chapter 31

  At first I couldn’t believe my luck—but then it dawned on me that I was exhausted, already on the run, and I’d left my gun in the car. The cops were hunting me, and I needed to keep a low profile... but it didn’t sound like Celso was going to be at the Ninth Circle for long.

  Heart racing, I kept moving down the alley to see what I found at the end. As it turned out, that was a parking lot. A parking lot with a red stretch Humvee parked across three spaces and a bored driver sitting inside. He was reading a magazine and smoking out the window, hands visibly trembling.

  According to Doctor Levental’s information, Celso never went anywhere without bodyguards. I was willing to bet they were inside with him, and the driver was holding the fort alone, a gun resting on the seat beside him. I wasn’t sure I had enough energy for magic, but I needed to find the strength for it. Hanging back in the shadows, I drew a deep breath, held it, exhaled, and closed my eyes as I lay a hand on the wall beside me.

  The distant music pulsed rhythmically around me, making the Phi in the air throb and whorl in slow, stately dances. The building itself was charged with the sexual release, frustration, passion, love, and despair of its many residents, turbulent and heady, and after my experience with Troy, I was looped into it. I drew on that energy, pulling it through my right hand and into my body.

  I found one security camera, which I disarmed with the same word of power I’d used for Yegor’s office—Kaph, the regal letter of the open palm. When I felt the tension discharge and the camera fail, I focused on the driver. He was scratching his arm and neck, picking sores in his flesh with his nails. He had the junkie itch.

  The man glanced up as I weaved toward the car, disheveled and visibly intoxicated, and reached across to the passenger side seat. I held up my hands to show I was unarmed, and called out. “Hey man, you look bored. You looking to score?”

  “Maybe.” His eyes narrowed. “What’re you selling?”

  “Good clean girl.” I’d never been high in my life, but had known enough tweakers that I could fake it in a pinch. “Only got a couple hits left. Three Jacksons for both.”

  The man’s throat worked. He wasn’t desperate yet, but he wasn’t going to turn down the chance to grab a couple of baggies and run. “Sure. Bring it over here, I’ll have a look.”

  He kept his hand low as he turned to face the door, and I knew he wasn’t holding his wallet. I made a show of pushing my jacket back and fishing around in my mostly-empty hip pocket on the way over. I pretended to palm something small, keeping my hands where he could see them, and turned slightly as I approached the door. I turned so that I was almost side on and hunched in. “Here, make it quick. Tzain.”

  He lifted the snub-nosed pistol he’d been concealing beneath the window, mouth twisting in a sneer as he armed the threat behind it. The spike of condensed matter around my fist took him in his open mouth and punched out through the back of his head in a narrow wedge-shaped spray. His eyes rolled, and he toppled to the seat like a ragdoll.

  ‘Tzain’ was quickly becoming my favorite piece of Phitometry. I looked back to make sure no one had seen what had happened. Some people were lingering far back in the alley in the darkness, but they were oblivious to what had taken place. I shoved the dead driver over onto the passenger’s side, gingerly picked the gun off the floor, and frantically wound the window before anyone caught us.

  All the windows were one-way, mirrored on the outside. A black screen of plate glass divided the front and rear passenger seats, no magic. The car itself had magic worked into it—alarms and defenses to stop locks from being picked or broken. The decor was all cherry-themed. Cherry-scented mirror hanger, cherry carpet, and now cherry-colored goop all over the place. I found the keys on the seat underneath him, and sure enough, it had a custom cherry-shaped metal keychain with a scrawl of steel text.

  “The Cherry Popper,” I muttered. “Bozhe moy. You have got to be kidding me.”

  The driver was glassy-eyed, bleeding out from the back of the head. I felt like I was being watched while I used his blood to draw on the screen and windows: precise letters and symbols I’d memorized to build Jenner’s sound insulation wards.

  About fifteen minutes later, Celso came out from the back of the club with a pair of bodyguards, one in front and one behind him. I pulled a glove off and rolled the window down enough to get my hand out to give them a thumbs-up, then wound it back up and started the car with blood-stained keys.

  I heard them load in, and jumped when an intercom in the dash crackled. “Take us home, Paulie.”

  Instead of driving off, I locked the doors and pressed the button that rolled down the screen between driver and passengers. Then I braced Paulie’s hand-cannon against the top of the seat. The first guy was sitting with the back of his head to me. He didn’t even have time to turn around before I put the barrel to his skull and blew his brains out across the men in front of him. The sound triggered momentary panic. Celso and his other bodyguard scrambled for weapons and door handles, then simply stopped.

  Covered in gore, they stared open mouthed at me, the now-glowing sigils, and their friend as he slowly slumped forward in his seat.

  “Before you do anything stupid, I’d like you to know that I have had a very bad week, and I am not in the mood for anything other than prompt, courteous compliance.” I spoke slowly, calmly, coldly. “Hands where I can see them.”

  Celso wasn’t some inexperienced street tough, and neither was the blockhead sitting beside him. They were shocked, but I could see them sizing me up as they slowly raised their hands.

  “Good.” I braced the pistol on the back of the seat to keep a steady aim. “Now. It’s storytime. What the fuck is going on with this ‘Tree’?”

  “Tree...?” Celso repeated numbly.

  I gestured with my free hand. “Trunk? Branches? Some leaves, maybe? You too stupid to know what a tree is?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other wiseguy start to go for his jacket. I shot him in the chest—the right side of his chest. The sigils absorbed the sound of the shot, as well as Celso’s shout of terror when he flinched and scr
ambled across the seat.

  “You crazy fuck!” His voice had risen a full octave.

  “Tell me who is doing what with the GOD-damned MahTree.” I kept the gun trained on the bodyguard as he slumped, clutching at the bloody hole in his jacket.

  Celso purpled. “Do I look like one of those fucking guys that makes fucking poodles out of shrubbery, asshole? You can’t fucking shoot me anyway! Go ahead, try it! See what happens when my spook’s-”

  With a small amount of effort, I burned some energy and made the sigils on the cabin roof flare with bright violet light. He glanced at them, the words dying on his lips.

  “Your spook isn’t as good as me. Wrong answer.” I shot his bodyguard a second time—this time, in the leg. The guy screamed.

  The color drained from Celso’s face. I turned the gun on him, and he shrunk back against the seat.

  I stared at him. “It’s a Tree from Eden, isn’t it?”

  “Kill me,” he rasped. “I ain’t tellin’ you nuthin’. You can kill me, but they’ll eat my fucking soul. I’ll go to the Father like a man.”

  The gravity in his words chilled me. I noticed the necklace that was framed by his open collar. It wasn’t the usual Catholic crucifix, now that I could see it up close. It was a pendant with the eye and cross, the symbol of the Templum Voctus Sol.

  “Then I suppose we’ll be doing this the hard way,” I replied, and aimed at his knee.

  He lunged forward at me, trying to grab the pistol from my hands. I pulled back, dragging him forward. I yanked his head over the screen and smashed him over the skull a couple of times. He snarled, flailing for me, until he accidentally grabbed the remains of Paulie’s face and flinched, horrified. The brief distraction was all I needed to strike the big nerve in his neck. Celso went down like a sack of hammers.

  I shoved him back into the cabin, opened the door and let myself out, closing it behind me and getting into the back cabin. The wounded bodyguard was struggling to get his gun again, but a sharp tap to his chest was enough to discourage him. I used my knife to cut off Celso’s shirt, hit him a couple more times when he came out swinging from his brief KO, and trussed him up with torn, wet strips of fabric. I searched him for weapons, took everything I found, and turned to the bodyguard.

  “You.” I pointed at him. “You tell this man’s father that the Yaroschenko Organizatsiya did this. You tell him that Nic Chiernenko and Sergei Yaroshenko have declared war on your family, their allies, businesses, and associates. You hear me?”

  He made a thin, raspy sound, helpless fury burning in his eyes.

  “You tell him that the Russian Mafiya is going to kill anyone who gets in their way,” I said. “So he’d better try get us first, next time.”

  With that, I opened the passenger’s side door and kicked him out to roll around on the wet asphalt, then went back around and started the engine.

  First, I headed for the docks. The waterfront was quiet on a Tuesday night, with old warehouse hulks and ruined buildings. Celso’s car was basically a tank. I drove it straight through a chain-link gate into one of the brownstone shells, cut the engine, and had a proper look at the back. There was cleaning gear in the trunk, along with handcuffs, zip ties, baby wipes, a first aid kit, and rubber dishwashing gloves. They were the mark of a professional. One never knows when one has to cap someone in one’s fancy limo, after all.

  I cleaned up as best I could, rolled the bodies in the dirty towels, and left them underneath some rubble. By the time all that was done, Celso was awake and furious, ranting at me from behind his gag and squirming around on the floor of the passenger cabin. I kneecapped him for good measure, and stuck him in the trunk.

  My plan to get in touch with Talya had been to go to Zane’s gym in the morning and talk to him about everything that was happening. I doubted Ron had shared our brief contact with the others. Zane probably knew what Talya had found on the computer drive. If he didn’t, he could get me a meeting with her so she could tell me herself. We could put everything we knew together into a comprehensive picture. Celso complicated that slightly—but on the other hand, presenting a captured TVS agent was a good way to convince Zane of my sincerity.

  The gym where Zane trained was an unassuming, grungy little joint in Bushwick, a garage converted into a training circuit for cage fighters and boxers. Zane was both of those things, and he trained every day for anywhere between thirty minutes to an hour at six in the morning. I brought the hulking Cherry Popper to a slow stop out front at half-past five, backing it up into place, and cut the engine. My stuff was in here, retrieved from the stolen Volvo and stashed on the now-clean front seat. Celso’s car provided me with a weird sort of camouflage for now, a car so distinctive that no one was likely to assume I was in it until word had gotten around, and even then. I cracked open the driver’s side window to vent the lingering raw meat and piss smell in the cabin, and waited.

  Sure enough, the familiar deep blue and red rumble of a large motorcycle appeared at about ten to six, purring its way up the cracked road toward us. The Harley cruised to a stop a couple of bays down. Zane was already staring at the car as he pulled his helmet off, astonished. “Rex... Where have you been? And why the hell are you driving a pimpmobile?”

  “I thought I’d try my hand at something new.” I tried to stay casual in the hope he wouldn’t notice just how nervous and angry I really was. “It’s called ‘The Cherry Popper’. I’m not even joking.”

  Zane squinted at me. “How is the, uh, ‘Cherry Popper’ related to you being AWOL for two days? Jenner’s been going nuts wondering where you are. Did something happen?”

  “What?” I braced an elbow on the edge of the window to lean out. “Jenner... what has she been saying?”

  “Just worried about you going missing. First Angkor, now you.” Zane frowned. “Why? What’s going on?”

  Well, well, well. Ron had lied to me. “Get in, and we’ll talk. I need you to direct me to Talya’s house so we can pick her up and go somewhere private. I’ve got company in here.”

  “Company?”

  “Celso Manelli. I picked him up in Greenwich Village. This is his car.”

  Zane blanched, green eyes widening. “You... picked him up in Greenwich? Celso Manelli? The mobster? Why?”

  “He’s a high-ranking TVS member, that’s why,” I said. “So we’d better get this sad excuse for a car somewhere discreet.”

  “There’s nothing about this car that’s ‘discreet’,” Zane said. “Okay… look. Me and Tally are staying at a safehouse right now, alright? There’s an auto shop underneath. How about we ride there together, park the car inside, and put Celso in the basement so you can talk to him?”

  I nodded. “Perfectly acceptable. By the way, is there a stove there? Like a camp stove or something?”

  “At the shop? There’s a lab. I’m sure they have a stove.”

  “Wonderful.” I pulled back in the window and started the car. The Hummer coughed back to life, drowning out the faint sounds of Celso’s thumping in the trunk. “Oh, and by the way, I have to pick up some sugar.”

  Zane eyed the Cherry Popper with deep suspicion. “You mean you want to go cruise around Hunts Point a while before we take it in?”

  “No. I mean, literal sugar.” I paused, thinking. “And butter. I need about a pound of each.”

  “Sugar and... Rex, I swear to GOD. You always manage to make my life that bit more surreal. You know that?”

  “Well, the idea is-”

  “I don’t want to know. Come on. Let’s go home.” Zane pinched the bridge of his nose, then turned and stomped back to his motorcycle.

  Chapter 32

  The Humvee handled like a refrigerator on wheels and barely got thirty miles to the gallon, but we thankfully managed to avoid any accidents on our way to Jamaica. The safehouse wasn’t particularly safe, and it wasn’t really a house, either. It was a dilapidated apartment over a mechanic shop. The Twin Tigers MC had an affiliated motorcycle repair shop that was a le
git business, owned and operated by Cliff. This place was not that repair shop. ‘A&J Motors’ was for cars and meth. It handled all their stolen cars, taking them in as functional vehicles and reducing them to collections of parts. They had an adjacent scrapyard guarded by two bullet-faced pit bulls. They ran up to the fence and barked alarm as Zane got the garage door open and guided the lumbering car inside.

  It seemed appropriate that the Cherry Popper barely fit in the building, but we squeezed it in. The bumper was flush with the closed garage door, and the trunk pushed up against the workbench at the back of the stained concrete room. The door into the building was on the right, so I got out on the passenger’s side.

  “Okay, so, I guess I kind of want to know about the sugar,” Zane said, shuffling past. “Because I was thinking about it, and… well, you know. Curiosity got the cat and everything.”

  Speaking of cats. I concentrated for a moment, eyes closed, and sagged with relief as Binah’s presence kindled in response. She was upstairs.

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” I replied. “Thank you for getting Binah. Where’s Talya?”

  “You know Binah’s here?” He turned to look back.

  “She’s my familiar: of course I know she’s here. I’ll take Celso downstairs – can you bring me a pot and some water? I need to get it boiling. I only need about a cup.”

  “Sure.” Zane shook his head, contorted himself around the end of the car, and disappeared upstairs.

  This particular act of revenge was far, far more satisfying than the hit on Yegor. Celso Manelli had been the one who’d gunned down Mariya in her shower. He and Snappy Joe Grassia had gone to her house to kidnap Vassily. On whose behest, I still didn’t know. I was going to find out.

  I popped the trunk, having to force it up past the edge of the workbench. “Good morning, Celso. Bright and fresh as a daisy, I hope?”

  “Yrmm fckin psychmm!” Celso was a mess. He’d pissed himself overnight, exacerbating the misery of being tightly bound with swollen, shattered knees. His hair was ropey with dirt and sweat. “M’ frrkin kll mmrrh!”