Supernatural Noir

I thought about that as Avery J. Culpepper, wearing a light-gray suit and a dark felt hat, carrying a briefcase, and looking just like the photos his wife had supplied, came through the revolving door of the Van Neiman Building. A punctual guy, Mr. Culpepper, in his late thirties and in better shape than your average philanderer.

This was the first time I’d tailed him. Twice before Jim Toomey had followed Culpepper and ended up riding the crowded F train all the way out to Forest Hills. When Jimmy talked to me about it on the phone, even that routine assignment had him ready to jump out of his skin.

The time with me was a little different. Mr. C. came out the door and headed west along Thirtieth Street. I followed him for a few blocks through the rush-hour crowds pouring out of offices and garment factories.

He turned south on Ninth Avenue then turned west again on Twenty-Ninth. These blocks had warehouses and garages, body shops, but also some rundown apartment houses. Here, the crowds heading east for the subways were longshoremen, workers from the import-export warehouses. I stayed on the other side of the street, kept an eye on him, and watched the sky, which was getting dark and cloudy.

Culpepper crossed Tenth Avenue. A long freight train rolled over the elevated bridge halfway down the block. On the north corner of the avenue was an apartment house that must once have been a bit ritzy when this was mostly residential but now looked rundown and out of place. That’s where he turned and went in.

I glanced over as I passed to make sure he wasn’t lingering in the entryway, waiting to pop out and give me the slip. As I did, a light went on, up on the third floor. I noted it and wondered if that’s where he was. Then I continued walking till I was under the train tracks. Already the streets and sidewalks were getting empty.

At the end of the next block, beyond Twelfth Avenue, was a pier with a tired-looking freighter moored, and beyond that, the river. A string of barges, each with its little captain’s shack, went by pulled by a tug.

It was growing dark and all the warmth had been in the sun. I paused and turned like I’d forgotten something. Culpepper had not come out of the apartment house.

I crossed the street then walked back to the building he’d gone in. I spotted no one watching me. The outer door was open. One side of the entry hall was lined with mailboxes, twenty-four of them. I took out my notebook and copied the names. Many times when the husband strays it’s with someone the wife already knows.

The third floor was where I’d seen a light go on. So I gave those mailboxes my special attention. Number fifteen in particular had a recently installed nameplate. Mimi White, it read. If that’s where Culpepper was, the name seemed too good to be true.

Somebody upstairs had the news on the radio. In the first floor back, the record of “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d Have Baked a Cake” got played a few times.

As I finished copying the names, an old lady came in carrying an armload of groceries. Like the building itself, she looked like she’d seen better days. I held the door for her, said my name was Tracy, that I was from the National Insurance Company and was looking for a Mr. Jameson, who was listed as living at this address in apartment number fifteen.

She thought for a moment, then said number fifteen had been occupied for years by an Asian couple. They had moved out, and it had stayed empty for a while. A young lady had moved in just recently. I thanked her and noted that.

As she headed upstairs, I heard footsteps and voices coming down. I went outside, crossed the street, turned, and walked slowly back towards Tenth Avenue. I noticed the third-floor light was off.

When I paused on the corner, I saw the couple. Mr. Culpepper had left his briefcase upstairs. The lady he was with wore a short camel-hair coat, a nice black hat set on her blond hair, and high heels. She looked like her name could easily be Mimi and like you could take her places.

Culpepper glanced neither left nor right as they walked to the corner and he hailed a cab. In my experience, a guy stepping out with a good-looking woman usually wants to see who else notices. Culpepper apparently was made of sterner stuff.

Walking back across town, I was amazed at how easy this assignment was and wondered why that bothered me. I’d detected no presence of the Gentry in the last couple of hours. That probably meant the one or ones I’d felt earlier had found whoever they were looking for.

Or maybe they had discovered I was right where I was supposed to be and doing what they wanted me to. Being involved with the Fair Folk had always left me feeling like a dollar chip in a very big game.

I remembered a face, elongated and a little blurred, that I’d once seen. It was a tall elf with a smile that said, “How stupid these mortals are.”

On the A train downtown, I got a seat and thought over that first time I felt an alien presence and how close I came to dying from it.

In ’41 I did undercover work, none of it strictly official. My old regiment was the Sixty-Ninth, “The Fighting Irish,” and our colonel was Donovan—the one they called “Wild Bill.” Later he was the guy who started the OSS and became the US intelligence chief in World War II. But even before that war, he had co

The colonel remembered me. I got called down to his office on Wall Street. Right then, my marriage was over and there was a limit to how long the wedding of the police department and me was going to last.

So I got seconded to Wild Bill along with half a dozen other chewed-up old vets on the force. Most of what we investigated turned out to be minor stuff: crazy little Krauts up in Yorkville who wore Kaiser Wilhelm helmets and sent out ham-radio reports about freighters leaving the port of New York; German bars out in New Hyde Park on Long Island where the neighbors reported the patrons said “Sieg Heil,” gave the Nazi salute, and had pictures of Hitler up above the bar.

Rumors and stories about mysterious strangers came in from all over the city. We went crazy trying to keep up with them. Then we stumbled on a sleeper operation out on the Brooklyn waterfront. They were accumulating operatives, waiting for the great day when we’d be at war and they could start blowing up bridges. We nabbed a couple of them. But the rest melted away.

Right after that, a call came in one night about activity on a pier in Red Hook. We were stretched thin. I had no backup. Maybe I was tired and that made me careless. Maybe part of me wanted to use up whatever leftover life I had. But I went out there without even a driver.

The one who’d made the call must have dreamed about someone like me showing up: a dumb asshole with plenty of information about Wild Bill and his band of veterans. The gate on the street was open. A long wooden shed stood on the pier. A dim light shone in a window. I knocked. Nothing. I tried the door and it swung open. A light shone somewhere at the end of an empty two-hundred-foot shed.

I took a step inside. Someone had me by the throat and started to choke me. I spun around. No one was behind me. I drew my .38. Something knocked me flat, and the gun fell on the floor. My arm might as well have gone with it. I couldn’t feel it, couldn’t make it move.

That long face with that amused smile flickered. It wasn’t a thing I saw with my eyes. It was inside my head. And I felt every bloody memory get sucked out of me: Colonel Donovan, the other cases I’d worked on, friends and family, the telephone number of a waitress I was seeing, my batting average when I played twilight baseball as a kid in 1914.

When the one that had me found all it wanted, my lungs stopped, my lights started going out. I wasn’t coming back and thought I was stupid enough that I probably deserved to die. But to go like this pissed me off royally.