Supernatural Noir

“I was going to volunteer. How’s Jim? The operator says he was shouting at you.”

“He’s quiet right now. Sam, this whole case is strange. I’ve tried half a dozen times to call Mrs. Culpepper, you know, while her husband’s at work. No answer. They’re not listed in the telephone book. Jim’s the only one she’s talked to. And he’s . . . not good. Last night he was talking, yelling at someone who wasn’t there. And he told me someone was in his head. He’s been saying that for the last couple of days. It’s never been this bad.”

“Was it more than just shouting at you, A

She said, “This is what I’ve been afraid of.”

“A

“My aunt’s a few blocks over.”

“Go there right now. Don’t talk to Jim. Just leave. Understand?”

A

Then I made a call to Police Chaplain Dineen. Young Private Kevin Dineen had served as an altar boy in France for the famous Father Duffy of the Sixty-Ninth. He came back home and found a vocation. It was said that Father Dineen spiked the sacramental wine with gin, and he was reputed to get a bit frisky with the widows he comforted. But it was Dineen who got called when O’Malley at the Ninth Precinct, a fellow vet, was at the Thanksgiving table eating mashed potatoes with the barrel of his loaded revolver while all his children looked on. Dineen got O’Malley to hand the weapon over and had the kids smiling at the game he and their daddy were playing.

When I explained as much of the situation as he needed to know, all Dineen asked was, “Do we need an ambulance or a squad car?”

“Both,” I said. Before going downstairs to meet the chaplain, I took my service .38 out of the locked drawer, cleaned and loaded the revolver, buckled on the holster. I remembered doing the same thing in my dream the night before.

I called Up to the Minute and told Gracie I wouldn’t be back until late and not to wait up. She laughed. As I adjusted my hat and went out the door, I remembered something from the dream: Bertrade, lying among pillows and bedclothes, had looked right at me and spoken about bait and traps.

Ten minutes later, Father Dineen and I were in his brand-new Oldsmobile four-door, headed through the drizzle for Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn. His car had a siren and a flashing light. We went through red lights; traffic cops waved us on at intersections. Dineen was on the radio to a squad car out in Park Slope as we crossed the bridge with a motorcycle escort, and he cursed because we weren’t going faster.

Anger was what I felt: anger at the one who had maybe screwed around with Toomey’s mind and caused A

When we arrived at Sixteenth Street, a crowd had gathered in the drizzle, and homicide was out in force. A

For the young homicide detective who took my statement, this was open-and-shut murder-suicide. The second bullet in the shooter’s mouth was nothing more than a dying twitch, not a sign someone else was operating Jim’s hand. And this young man was confident his career was not going to end like Toomey’s or mine.

What I wanted to tell him was, “The creature that had James Toomey in its control used Toomey’s own hand to eliminate him and cover its tracks.” My actual statement stuck strictly to the facts, with nothing more than a brief mention of the Culpepper case.

——

Father Dineen drove like a cop, as if he owned the road. He knew something was up, but not even a couple of belts from the ecclesiastic flask made me talk. The image of A

It was very late afternoon when the chaplain dropped me off in front of the main post office and told me to go home and get some rest.

On the ride back from the Toomeys’ I’d thought about the dream and Bertrade. Usually dreams are vivid when you wake up, but as you try to grab them they turn to nothing and disappear. This one had started out vague but seemed to linger.

Climbing the post-office stairs, I remembered another fragment. Bertrade, lovely as I’ve ever seen her, had worn nothing but a silver moon on a chain around her neck and touched my arm. So slippery was the memory that I began to wonder if this dream might have been planted in my head by an enemy.

The little unmarked window was where I always picked up mail from the Kingdom beneath the Hill. And I wanted to talk to that clerk and find out what he knew. The window was shut, which had never happened before.

The guy at the overseas window didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked about the window next door. He said this wasn’t his regular assignment, and that I should try the next day.

Walking slowly across that lobby, I thought of the ice-cold knife racing up my leg like I was a letter being sliced open, and I felt real small and insignificant. But I started to put things into some kind of order.

The elves had set up Jim and A

Taking my seat in the coffee shop across from the Van Neiman Building, it occurred to me that maybe on our first encounter Bertrade and Darnel had used me as bait to catch the elf. Knowing the ways of the Gentry, that seemed quite possible.

The waitress and counterman didn’t notice that I was a repeat customer. I figured that the elves wouldn’t probe as long as I was doing what they wanted. They didn’t have to worry. I was coming after them.

That they were keeping me in play, letting me stay alive, could mean they’d made Bertrade aware that I was in danger. And it would also mean they weren’t sure where she was or what she was going to do. That Bertrade was avoiding direct contact with me was a sign that she relied on me to play my part, walk into the trap and ensnare the trapper. It would also mean she knew that the spell that shielded my thoughts could be broken by the enemy.

Just then, Culpepper, whoever he was, came through the doors of the Van Neiman Building with his briefcase. I got up and followed him. It went like before. He walked west, and I followed on the other side of the street. I wondered how much Culpepper knew. What promises and rewards had they made to him?

Seeing him go through this routine reminded me of how in France, just before we went into action, I saw a couple of German prisoners, starving, flea-bitten men, cramming army rations into their mouths while our guys stared like they were exhibits in a zoo. That sight took away all of the enemy’s mystery.

I stopped on the east side of Tenth Avenue, watched from a doorway when Culpepper crossed and went into the apartment building. As I waited, a light went on in the third-floor window.

A rhythmic pounding came from over on the river. It sounded like they were driving piles. The earlier drizzle had become rain. Workers headed home at a brisk pace. The streets were getting empty.

Stakeout work is fine, outdoor labor, good for the health and spirits. But I’d noticed a bar on the corner with a clear view of the apartment house.

It was a Wednesday night, with a moderate-sized crowd and a cowboy movie on the TV above the bar. The guys drinking spotted me for a cop and looked away when I stepped inside. I ordered a rye and water and kept my eye on the apartment house doorway.