“But if our previous case was any indication, you’re already quite well known — not just to the police, but to all the criminal cartels, as well. Wouldn’t you say?”
I got worried for a second that he was getting at something, but it was an innocent question. Allen was smart, but it didn’t know about me and the Iron Hands. Not yet.
“It’s different with civilians, Allen. It would cramp my style if everyone knew about me and what I do. Plus, people stress me out.”
I almost fell out of my chair when the phone rang, bouncing its way to the edge of the glass table before I grasped it and held the receiver to my ear. The laboured breathing of the person on the other end came through. From just that, I guessed that whoever was calling me was elderly, smoked, and didn’t have much time left.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice. She sounded distraught, but calm, like she’d just smoked a pack in order to get herself down to a conversable level. “Is … is this the man who takes jobs the police don’t?”
“Maybe,” I stated. Allen narrowed its eyes. I put my hand over the receiver and pulled it away from my mouth. “What, Allen?”
“Answer her properly.”
The woman was still struggling to say something, making noises of hesitation. I interrupted her before she short-circuited on the other end.
“What’s the issue?”
“My … my son, he disappeared. He was visiting me for a quick moment — he comes over once a month to check up on me, bring me scratch cards and food. He left to grab something from his car, but he never returned. I looked outside, and his car was gone. And he would never run out on me.”
“Well, ma’am, there’s a first time for everything. I’m sure you’ll see him next month, as usual —”
“Please, I know he’s in trouble. Call it a … a mother’s intuition, but my son needs help, and if the police won’t look, I need someone who will.”
The police won’t look — meaning they’d been paid off by the Mob in the area. The Iron Hands? No, they didn’t do that, not anymore. Last I’d checked, the only people who pulled poor saps off the street were junkies needing a ransom to get high, but they’d never steal a car. I had to admit, I was intrigued. That, combined with the look Allen was giving me, made me decide to accept the call.
“Where?”
“Where he could be, I don’t even — oh, you mean … The apartment building on the corner of Park Avenue and East 31st Street.”
Kips Bay. “Ten minutes.” I slammed the phone down, stood, and grabbed my coat. Allen jogged after me, no doubt curious as to why I’d accepted it so quickly, so I filled it in.
“It’s in Kips Bay. Kips fucking Bay is a shithole and a breeding ground for fights. I forgot they’ve been pulling people off the streets in Kips to use as meat shields during raids, which means that lady’s son is in a bad position. Lord knows they wouldn’t kidnap people from any other neighbourhood.”
“If I didn’t know you any better, Detective Roche, I might think that you cared about this young man’s life.”
“No one deserves to get manhandled by the Maranzano Mob, Allen, and I’ll be the one to hammer that in. Grab your gun.”
I pulled my Diamondback from its holster and popped it open to check the cylinder. Fully loaded with seven rounds, and more in my pockets. Allen pulled out its 1911, the one it was borrowing from Commissioner Robins. I turned, swung the door open, and began walking down the hall. When I glanced back, I realized that Allen wasn’t following me. It was still standing in the doorway, looking at its gun as if it had just been pulled off a corpse. It must be stuck in a bad memory; it had used that gun to take its first life.
I walked back and grabbed the 1911 to ensure Allen didn’t jerk the trigger back in surprise as it was shaken from its daydreams.
“Allen, we good?”
“Yes, I apologize, Detective. Let’s go.” It holstered the gun, following behind me as my apartment door slammed shut.
A lot had happened in the past month. Maranzano was getting greedy; he’d started moving more of his forces into Gramercy from Kips. The Iron Hands were quiet, which was always a bad thing, and the distinct lack of legitimate Night Calls had been eating at me. Whatever I was about to find saving this kid’s life, I doubted it would be good.
I’d told the old woman we’d be there in ten minutes, which meant I had a schedule to keep, for once.
Allen drove, getting us to the building in seven minutes flat. We rolled up to the apartment complex and parked in front of the entrance. The streets were dead quiet for a change. It was an odd time, just after dusk; the city had an uneasiness, like the calm before a storm.
The view out the window gave me all the insight needed about the area: it was cramped, dingy, looked far older than it actually was, and had too many crevices and cracks to count. The alleys could be hiding Brunos, junkies, or victims — three very good reasons to stick to the main road. The snow on the street was untouched, pristine, retaining everything that pressed into it like a fingerprint.
The few yards of snowy street in front of me held a pair of tire tracks, confirming that a car — possibly Jeremy’s — had indeed been here, but was now gone. There was also a single set of footprints leading to and from the front of the apartment building.
“Ready to roll?” I asked Allen.
The machine was fiddling with its gun, making sure everything was in working order. “Yes.”
“Good, let’s get the info we need and move quick. I don’t want to wait around for this kid’s corpse to show up in the newspaper.”
We stepped out and headed to the apartment entrance. The lobby was illuminated by a single dangling lightbulb. Behind the glass doors stood a small old woman biting her nails, tapping her foot sporadically — a nervous wreck. She was short with a bent back, puffy grey hair, and eyes that I could tell would burn a hole in your heart if you even thought about disrespecting her. In contrast, the building she stood in looked like the place where hoodlums lived, not defenceless old women.
“Oh, Mr. Nightcaller, thank you for coming,” she said as I opened the door. I rolled my eyes, but Allen cleared its throat, snapping me back to attention. “My son, Jeremy, he’s done nothing wrong in his life. He’s an accountant and he visits me often, brings me a meal each time he visits. Speaking of which, would you two like something to eat? You must be famished at this time of night.”
I peered over at Allen, who took the lead. “We would love that, ma’am.”
Minutes later, we were in her rinky-dink apartment on the second floor. Allen and the woman sat at a tiny table fit for a single occupant while I leaned against a nearby door frame, inspecting the place. The wallpaper was intact behind hanging pictures of her now adult kids. It was also surprisingly clean. Her son must come over to help her with that. Good kid, better than I ever was.
I peered through the window adjacent to the small table. From here, she had a clear view of the street below, but given her age, she could be excused from missing a scuffle, if one had taken place.
Allen was busy stuffing itself with beef stew. I had decided to forego the meal; she’d need the food if her boy was going to be out of commission for a while. She didn’t seem to notice Allen was eating, preoccupied as she was.
“Could you tell us what happened, ma’am?” Allen asked.
“Oh, it was terrible. He brought me the stew and told me he had a present for me, something he had been working on for a while. He’s such a talented painter, I wonder why he never pursued it. Anyway, I waited for what seemed like forever, and when I looked down, he was gone. The tire tracks were all I saw. I called the police, and they said he must have run off. I pleaded and I begged them for any kind of help, and finally they gave me your phone number.”
And here I thought the 5th was trying to be careful when giving my number out. It seemed like almost every precinct in the Lower City was pointing people in my direction. Come on, people.
“How long ago was this?” Allen inquired
.
“Maybe two hours ago? Took forever to speak to the police.”
“What kind of car does he have?” I piped up. The old woman turned around in her seat to face me.
“Oh, an old one, that’s for sure. A Model T, I believe. He did love that car so very much. He wanted to buy me one, but I refused, told him to save his money. I wouldn’t be able to drive it, anyhow.”
They hadn’t been after the car. Her son must have had something valuable inside it. But if it had been something for this old dame, it couldn’t have been anything terribly expensive. That led me back to my initial assumption: they’d needed him. To what end was the question.
“You have a picture?” I asked. “Of Jeremy, I mean.”
The old woman stood, went over to a nearby frame, and handed me a picture of her son. It was his graduation, class of 1922, Cornell University. That would have been my alma mater, had I stayed. Jeremy was lean, smart-looking, with a head of black hair and a square face. We’d need this photo to identify the guy. Or the body.
“Please bring him back safe. Please find him,” she begged.
I nodded. “I’ll do my damnedest.”
I signalled to Allen to follow me out. We needed a better look at the scene. It spoke some encouraging words to the old woman, and then we departed through the decrepit apartment back downstairs.
The tire tracks in the snow were interesting. Judging by how prominent they were, the vehicle must have been carrying something heavy. The tracks led eastward. The car could have been dumped at the docks. Perhaps driven away by someone extra weighty? Jeremy’s location was much harder to predict.
Allen kneeled beside me to inspect the tracks, breaking my train of thought. “Heavy-set. Must have been carrying something big.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“Then we have a lead. Eastward it is.”
It got up and started off in the direction the car had gone, but I stopped it.
“No, Allen. The car is useless to them. We need to track the person. The car they would have just dumped in the bay. But since there are no footprints … Wait a minute.”
“What?”
“The only footprints on this street are ours and the kid’s, and his are obvious here. The street is clean, as well. So where did the people who kidnapped him come from?”
Allen was perplexed. “I’m … not sure.”
“I don’t think this is Maranzano’s doing,” I stated.
“I concur, Detective. In studying the rise in Mafia activity detailed in the 5th’s reports, I’ve noticed the Maranzano Mob seems to be focusing its efforts outside of direct confrontation, on the south and west sides of Manhattan, away from their main areas of operation. You know from previous experience with them that kidnapping is one of their methods. But given the lack of, well, evidence that anyone was here, we must be careful assuming who is responsible.”
“Right. That leaves us with street junkies who could’ve mugged and killed him, but it makes no sense that they took his car, since they can barely drive hopped up on the shit they get from their dealers. Plus, no footprints. No regular human could just appear out of thin air … which means it was most likely an Automatic that took him.”
“Do you know any Automatics that leave no trace?”
“I know of one, but I sincerely doubt it’s the same machine …”
I looked at the old woman’s building. The walls were made of crumbling brick, plenty of holes for little critters to hide in, and plenty of handholds for something to climb up and leap at the car from. I hoped it wasn’t the machine I thought it was.
“Since Maranzano doesn’t like using Automatics outside of straight-up hits, that leaves the Iron Hands,” I finished.
“And what do they do to people they kidnap from the streets?”
“Leave them in halfway houses. They call them the ‘less than dead,’ because people search for corpses, but not for junkies. There’s a house a few blocks east of here that keeps getting raided for druggies.” I snapped my fingers and Allen threw my keys. “Let’s narrow down this search, Officer Erzly.”
“Of course, Detective.” Allen smiled as it jumped into the passenger seat.
I turned the key in the ignition, but the engine failed to catch. I turned it again. Still nothing.
The hairs at the back of my neck spiked. I turned swiftly to Allen, who was still climbing in, and gave it a kick across the central console, forcing it out of the car before diving out of my side. Hands covering my head to protect my eardrums, I waited for the explosion.
Moments passed, and nothing.
The car was intact, I was alive, and it was still freezing.
Allen stood up from where it had landed and rounded the car to help me up, brushing snow off my jacket.
“Detective, are you quite all right?” it asked, concerned about me and my sudden change in demeanour.
“Allen, sorry, holy. I’ve heard stories from bystanders of car engines that don’t catch, and moments later they explode. The Mob sometimes hooks up a bomb under the hood to deal with people too dangerous to face in person. I just thought …”
No. No, they wouldn’t do that, not without pissing her off.
“Perhaps the cold caused the Fuel Gel to stick, and we just need additional time to warm up the engine before it can properly turn over,” Allen suggested.
“Yeah. Older cars do have issues in the cold.” I tried to shake off the adrenalin. No one would dare fuck with me, not even in Kips. “Pop the hood and give it a manual crank.”
I got in the driver’s seat, and Allen manually turned the engine over. It climbed back inside the car and stared at me for a while in silence.
“Detective.”
“Yes?”
“You kicked me out. You tried to save me before saving yourself.”
“Not a word, Allen.”
It nodded. I knew it was smiling when I looked away. The damn thing was making me go soft. I couldn’t let that happen.
The halfway house looked like a place right out of Harlem: boarded-up windows, rats running around outside, and moans echoing through the shattered windows. Yup, this was definitely the place we were looking for. A halfway house usually denoted a place where people went to sober up, so it would have been more accurate to call this an opium den, like the kind that had dotted England in the 1800s.
There was an empty door frame where there had once been a legitimate entrance. Allen walked in unarmed, but I kept my hand on the handle of my Diamondback in case any junkies got bright ideas. The floor creaked under the machine’s heavy frame, but the moans within continued despite our intrusion.
The hallway was cramped, bordering a stairway to our right and several doors to the left. Inside each room, bodies were curled up in blankets and newspapers around firepits dug into the wood flooring. Used syringes and empty bottles covered the floor.
I elected to go up the rickety stairs alone while Allen searched the lower rooms for our boy. I still had the picture frame in my jacket pocket, bouncing against my hip as I walked. After this call I could get back to scanning the police chatter to see if Robins needed some muscle. The faster I got away from this hell, the better.
The upstairs hallway was even narrower, bordered by more rooms and a shattered bannister. The first room looked and smelled like a bathroom — no porcelain, just darkness. No movement inside, though I doubted anything in this house moved much, anyway. I was beginning to wonder if the smell from the dark room was shit or a corpse.
Walking toward the next room, I didn’t have a chance to react when someone came running out. The barely human creature collided with me, but quick footwork kept me from going down and breaking my back on the stairs. The man was tiny, his skin tight against his frail arms, scraggly hair pouring off his head. His hollow eyes were filled with a single emotion: desperation.
He made a gasping noise, trying to speak, but lacking the energy or words to do so. Pushing him back was easy enough, but he came at me ag
ain, so I had no reservations about letting him tumble over the bannister and down onto the stairs, putting a dent in the rotten wood below. The crash was much louder than I had anticipated. I moved to the next room to put distance between myself and the scene.
The room at the far end of the hall was desolate, more worn down than the ones downstairs. It contained several ruined mattresses, blankets, and some piles of black and brown material. I pulled my shirt up to my nose, trying to filter out the smell as I got to work identifying the five bodies inside.
They were all much the same as the guy now taking a dirt nap on the stairs: somewhat awake and somewhat alive, with dinner-plate-sized pupils and wasted muscles. The first was a man with little to no hair left on his body, the next a woman with vacant eyes, missing patches of hair, and flea bites covering her hands and feet. At least one of the bodies was definitely dead, with rigor mortis setting in.
The last body in the room seemed fresher, still writhing underneath a blanket. I pulled the blanket off the junkie to see he was restrained; duck tape was wrapped around his limbs and over his mouth. He was tweaking out hard, thrashing so violently that the restraints were actually preventing him from hurting himself. I had a feeling our search was over.
“Allen, up here,” I shouted.
I turned the body over and recognized the guy from the photo. He was balding and less malnourished than the junkies in here. But there wasn’t much need for accountants in the Depression, and he must have been bringing his mother most of his own food, because he was still far too thin for his own good. A good son. It hurt to see him like this. He was only a few years younger than me.
Allen arrived and snapped off the duct tape restraints. To our surprise, the guy was spry, jumping up and backing against the wall, his hands groping the solid surface, searching for something to use as a weapon, I guessed. He was wild, looking at me like I was a carcass ready to eat.
“Easy, easy. Jeremy, yeah?” I spoke as softly as I could. “Your mother sent us to look for you.”
Midnight Page 2