Michael McCraw watched the workers through the office building windows. From his perch in the Georgian oak tree the workers he spied on could have been mistaken for any of the others in the same building, but with time differences became clear. The workers on the third floor that Michael observed had a uniformity, a sameness to them, from their red ties to the regularity in which they worked. Perhaps most importantly, though, when five o’clock rolled around and the other floors’ employees began tricking out to their cars in the parking lot, while none of the employees on the third floor did.
As light began to fade, Timothy gripped his rope and flashlight and considered his next action. His pondering was interrupted by a voice below that said, “What are you doing up there?”
Michael followed the question down, seeing a man at the base of the tree that couldn’t have been more different than himself; he was tall with skin like a blackened copper, eyes so white that they stood out in the dark, the irises like hard marbles. He knew the man, Stephen Thornfield, and Stephen knew McCraw. So rather than equivocating, Michael asked, “Can I see him?”
“Which one?”
“He was my grandfather.”
Thornfield shook his head with an impatience that suggested he was tired of having this conversation. “J.H. McGraw was your great-great-great-great grandfather. And none of the biologicals in that office are him.”
“This isn’t fair.”
“Neither was your ancestor owning and exploiting my ancestors. And you having to pay for their crimes wouldn’t be either. So here we are.” Prepared to protect his property, Thornfield took out the heavy flashlight he carried and gestured for McCraw to get out of the tree. “Now get out of there before I have to call the police.”
Michael put away his own flashlight to have his hands free for his descent. On the way down, he said, “Can I at least speak to him?”
With his feet flat on the ground, Michael turned to face Thornfield, who pushed the blunt end of his flashlight into the other man’s chest. “Wouldn’t do you any good anyhow. The clone template built from J.H. McGraw was modified – the somatic progeny don’t have freewill like you or I understand it. And he doesn’t have any of your ancestor’s memories.” Thornfield finished pushing McCraw into the tree. “They wouldn’t know you from Adam.”
“They know you.”
“Because my family owns the genetic stock for McGraw and your other slave-owning ancestors and will for the next 213 years. They are genetically programmed to be deferential to me and my kin.”
Michael looked up at the third floor of the building as the lights went out and the warm glow of the clones’ suspension pods came on. “This is monstrous.”
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button below.
I had a limited time in which to make some decisions – barring freezing conditions, corpses start to stink within a few hours. While the spring weather still kept the tenement relatively cool, the pimp wouldn’t last long.
Regardless of this knowledge, I sat on the couch and watched the body, trying to get the useless and countervailing voices in my head under control. Panic had set himself down in several sections of my brain, alternatively begging the pimp to get up or screaming at me that I had to do something now. I tried to ignore that voice to paw through my options, but I probably spent more time sitting on the couch, breathing deeply in and out of my nose, trying to regain focus.
I didn’t have to ask what had happened – the path of destruction through the apartment laid that out. Jardin had come to speak with Sophie (or maybe never left) and the pimp had either followed her back or leaned on one of the other girls for a location. He had shown up, angry and seeking recompense for his wounded pride and wanted a rematch with Sophie. Surprise had given him a temporary upper hand, wrecking what appeared to be most of our worldly possessions, only to realize he had made some wild miscalculations in regard to his own and Sophie’s abilities. Now he was dead on top of our flattened coffee table.
This was the result of Sophie’s actions, so I thought about calling Alon. He liked Sophie, after all. That was a no-go, though; being charmed by a woman was quite another thing from being willing to transport a corpse for her. And if he got a peek at the body he might panic. I considered trying to get a car from the casino, but most of the autos were operated by services, not the house itself. Hell, I even thought about calling Atwell, but decided doing that might end up with two bodies that needed hiding.
It might have been fatigue affecting my mental processes, but after a time I decided to change the body from a liability into an asset. The pimp might not have been anyone important in life, but he could cause trouble in death.
I left Sophie with instructions to find something to wrap the corpse in. I wasn’t hungry for breakfast, but I headed to Simon’s anyway. There was a small mid-morning crowd there which kicked up my agitation, as if I had the pimp in my pocket and everyone could smell him on me. I had to reassure myself that even if someone saw me and remembered me, it wouldn’t matter. I was just another customer.
I walked past Simon who was taking an order from a couple with the crumpled clothes and bleary eyes of those who have been out all night. A glance at the back mirror showed me more of the same in the goon who had just stumbled in. I gripped the umbrella tightly and went to the bar to sit and wait, trying my best to appear as if I were just very anxious for my morning’s first coffee.
I must have done a pretty good job of it as Simon set an espresso in front of me without me asking for it. “Petit déjeuner?” he asked while keeping an eye on his morning crowd.
I shook my head and replied, “Mobile?” I don’t know why it came out as a question, maybe some part of me afraid Simon had lost it or thrown it away. The question got his attention, though, and caused him to give me an appraising stare. I met his gaze and, after a moment, he nodded.
Wherever he was keeping it couldn’t have been far because he returned a moment later holding the black flip-phone in his hand. He set it down on the counter, across from my coffee, and walked away to tend to his other duties as if he had just forgotten it there.
I curled my fist around it and said, “Et je reviens,” even though I doubted he was still listening. I headed out the back. I swept around the bar, following the black and white tiles that crawled down from it to form the floor that led through the gray pots and silver cabinets of the kitchen. I found a small door at the back where deliveries came in and trash went out. It let out into an alley that I was satisfied was narrow enough that I couldn’t be seen without seeing.
I called the only number the phone had been used for, trying to shake the tension out of my shoulders and voice. I found myself pacing through the alley’s Old World filth, so compact and tidy compared to an America I hadn’t seen in years. A part of me suddenly very much wanted to be some place I had once called home.
The phone rang and rang until I was worried no one would pick up, panic becoming emboldened until it started clawing through my empty options if no one answered. I hoped that whoever picked up didn’t hear my sudden inhalation of breath.
“Da,” came the same inscrutable voice that invited me to Mitnick’s party. If there were any misconceptions about how much time they wanted to spend on the line it was cleared up with a quick, “What is it?”
Uncertain of the protocols surrounding requests within the Eurasian underworld, I stated quickly, “I need an automobile.”
He came into the gas station just on the edge of town. Charlie, the cashier, didn’t see or hear a car, the Stranger just walked right in. Tall, thin, with a chin that stuck out from the shadow of his hat, the Stranger smiled like he was chewing on barbwire. He bought a Yoo-hoo. Charlie might not have paid him any mind if he hadn’t seen his right hand when the Stranger took the 16 cents in change. It was dark and crimson as if he had dipped it in blood.
The moment the Stranger walked out of the station, Charlie called Sheriff Thomas. Sheriff Thomas started calling everyone. When the Mayor told the Sheriff to do something about it, the officer refused, and so the Mayor ordered some of his boys out. Loyal to the fat old man and his largesse, the boys got on their bikes and took out their chains and rode out to meet the Stranger with their mothers weeping for them as they left. No one saw them again.
By the time the Stranger got to the town square it was filled with the innocent and the guilty, each of them waiting. It had been years since his last visit and everyone remembered the fire. What disaster would accompany the Stranger now?
He wandered through the town square, people on either side, ignoring everyone. Not seeing whom he had come for, the Stranger laid a hand on a girl of sixteen and said to her, “Bring me the Mayor.” But the girl dropped dead at his touch, so he moved to speak to another. Seeing this, and that he was close to the chosen, the Sheriff ran to the small town hall where the Mayor was hiding.
The skies around town had long ago blackened with the tar of the refineries and the fields long lay fallow, and the Mayor had filled the cemetery with anyone who cared. Now the Stranger had arrived. The Sheriff couldn’t pull the Mayor out of the Hall, and the Stranger kept making his way down the line, touching one townsperson after the next, each dropping, until more and more of them headed to the Hall to help the Sheriff. But the Mayor stayed inside, the fat fuck shouting excuses, citing the shield of his office, until someone showed up with a gasoline can and the liquor store empties. They started filling bottles with petrol and stuffing their necks with rags.
When the Stranger walked out of town again, the Hall was on fire and the blaze spreading. For the townsfolk, learning the same lesson again hadn’t made it any easier.
To start at the beginning go here. To hear an audio reading of the chapter, hit the play button below.
“I want know where Cheryl’s buried.”
It was Atwell’s turn to be surprised, blinking in an attempt to find some understanding of my request. The heat in my fists became almost irresistible watching him try to recall who Cheryl was. Her death was as unimportant to him as the flies on the Citroen’s windshield. He confirmed this by repeating, “What?”
I breathed slowly through my nose, then responded, “She was my wife.” That produced a change in Atwell, not of recognition but at least he seemed to grasp the significance. “She died in Venice.” To give him something to hold onto I added, “When I was arrested for helping Sophie with her problem.” Even obliquely referring to Verdicchio caused an image of his face to come up, bug-eyed and tongue out, my hands around his throat. I tried to think of Cheryl, to hear her voice, for her to tell me that she was glad someone like Verdicchio was gone and that now wasn’t the right time for Atwell to join him. It helped a little.
“Right.” As thick as Atwell might be, even he recognized the sensitivity of the subject, at least pretending with his one word response that he knew what I was talking about.
“The police took me away before I could,” I stopped, feeling a catch in my throat. I swallowed, continued with, “have anything done with the body.” Blink, keep going, “I don’t know what was done.” I tried not to think about strangers callously handling Cheryl. Instead I gave my most optimistic claim, “She’s probably in a potter’s field somewhere.”
Like a man in a minefield, Atwell didn’t move. When I didn’t continue he prompted me with, “OK.”
“I want to know where she’s buried.”
I couldn’t tell if this request touched Atwell in some human way or if he had regained his ability to lie now that he didn’t have any need to focus on driving the tiny automobile. Either way he responded like he meant it. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I nodded and got out of the car, letting it bounce. I stretched a bit as Atwell drove away, feeling cramped after having spent so much time in the tiny automobile. I took a deep breath, smelling the sulphur of urine and tang of rotting trash, both of which there was plenty of in L’Ariane. Feeling the pride that comes with the possibility of having maybe accomplished something, I started walking towards Triaite and home.
The entrance to the apartment block was the same as it ever was, the hour such that I landed after any early morning shuffling of tenants. I lurched over the subway tiles and passed the always empty mail slots and opted for the stairs, the long hours in the car producing a desire for exercise. It wasn’t until I hit our floor that I heard the crying.
The sound of weeping was not an uncommon noise in our apartment block. A child’s crying, someone coming off a bender, a wife who was the recipient of a husband’s abuse. But this was different. It stopped me at the top of the stairs and caused me to tune in on it, its quiet stuttering that someone was trying to control, the edge of its hysteria just out of their reach. There was something in its craze that caused me to move towards it cautiously, confirming it was issuing from our door. I grasped the doorknob, twisting it slow and breathing deep to control my rising heartbeat.
I tried to only crack the door open enough to let my bowling ball of a head in for a peek. The entry was in disarray, the wooden pole of my reliable hat rack broken on the floor. Whatever force had done this had dented the wall and torn portions of the already peeling wallpaper. What I could see of the kitchen, Sophie’s normally well-organized domain, was also in ruin, the table flipped over, dishes broken on the floor.
But the crying persisted and I doubt any of the hard boys Sophie and I had been dealing with would be weeping. I stepped inside quickly, opening the door as little as possible, and prepared myself for being wrong in that estimate. I eyed the kitchen as I moved down the short hall, no one there, so I kept moving.
The den was a mess in every way, auditorily, physically, the jagged crying of Jardin on the couch, being comforted by Sophie. Her gentle cooing, always a balm for the soul, was almost a distraction from the dead man on the floor. Lying on top of the smashed remains of the coffee table, broken bits of porcelain scattered about him, I could imagine him arriving at the tenement, interrupting a discussion over coffee between the two women. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered how he had tracked them down, but all good predators have their secrets. Whatever his were, they hadn’t been a match for Sophie and the skillet that sat nearby, a rust colored stain on its back.
The pimp wasn’t tall, but had thin, powerful arms, nearly hairless, pale against the black short sleeve shirt he was wearing. He was face down, dark, wiry hair nearly covering up the dent in the back of his skull. There was very little blood, but that was one of the advantages of blunt force trauma. To confirm what I already suspected, I awkwardly bent over the remains of the coffee table to feel his wrist for a pulse. There wasn’t one.
Still kneeling, I looked up at Sophie, who continued to comfort the inconsolable Jardin. She had her arms wrapped around her so I could see Sophie’s face over the other’s shoulder, Jardin’s dark hair sticky with panic sweat. The corner of Sophie’s mouth was bruised. I tried to button down the irrational anger this provoked, rising from some selfish place that didn’t care about Sophie’s compassion for the woman, but only the trouble it had brought our way.
I couldn’t keep it all in, though, and a bit of it escaped with, “What the hell is this?”
Sophie’s eyes narrowed, returning my anger with her own. Challenging me to go further with it she replied, “Practice?”
I retreated by placing my brow in the space between thumb and forefinger, resting all the past night’s fatigue and future worry there. While I paused and tried to think Sophie smoothed out Jardin’s hair and kissed her forehead, comforting her as if she were a child. She then stood, and taking Jardin by the hand, led her to the kitchen, away from the body. When I got up to follow Sophie had sat her down in the room’s one still-standing chair and was making her a cup of tea. I watched her do this until she had placed a warm mug into the other woman’s hands. Jardin’s crying had subsided, but she was pallid, her eyes wide with shock. I flipped the table back over so she had a place to set her mug.
When I was certain she could be left alone I gestured for Sophie to follow me back into the den. We both stood just inside the doorway, not saying anything. After a moment I muttered, “I wish he was smaller.”
I am a killer, a poisoner by trade, and a thief by convenience. Of course, it was not always this way.
On this occasion, though, it was well past Twelvetide when I found myself in the inhospitable mountains north of Dunhill, away from its smokestacks and soot-stained hovels, riding through the cold and blinding snow to the country hall of Lord Melkor. I had been invited there by his son, Franz, because his Lordship refused to die in a timely manner and Franz required access to the family’s mine holdings. Franz had, it seemed, many gambling debts.
Such is the way of Dunhill’s nobility. I would complain, but it keeps me in food and powders.
I arrived at his Lordship’s manor as a storm blew in, snow so thick over the pass that the house guards couldn’t see me through the whiteout. This required of me the undignified task of yelling at the gatekeepers while keeping my near-frozen horse under control. Nonetheless, I was finally granted entrance so I could establish that I had, in fact, been invited and there was no need to turn me back out into the snow. I heard Chester’s ghost chuckle at this casual cruelty, but I ignored it, as I always must.
I knocked snow from my wide-brimmed hat as a servant guided my mount to the stables, I learned that Franz was not present and I would be dining with Lord Melkor alone. I was informed by another that the other guests had learned of the storm and remained in Dunhill. His tone suggested I should have done the same. An adjustment of the pistol and rapier on my baldric silenced that, though, and I was shown to my room.
While most guests would have been warming themselves by their room’s fire and changing into dinner attire, I peeled the frozen layers off me and snuck down into the kitchen. There I added some final ingredients to the meal.
It must be said that in certain circles of Dunhill I am a bit famous. Or infamous. It is, after all, how Franz Melkor came to know of my talents. However, it was interesting that when Lord Melkor descended to the dining hall I saw more recognition in his eyes than surprise at his servants absence.
“My son invited you,” he said with no other introduction. When I said he had, Melkor laughed as he hobbled to his seat. “Then sit and eat.”
I obeyed, knowing I had properly steeled myself against my additions to the meal. Melkor nibbled and sipped with the same nonchalance in which I consumed my first bowl of hearty winter stew.
After I finished, Lord Melkor said, “I would have the servants offer you more, but they seem conspicuously absent.”
“Indeed,” I replied while rising to ladle more into my bowl.
I returned to my seat while Melkor stared at me with his baleful old eyes. “In which dish did you place your poison?”
With no hesitation I indicated the entirety of the table’s spread with a circular gesture of my spoon. The old man merely laughed and said, “Of course.” His glared at me over his goblet. “Naturally, my servants have tested it. Does that explain their absence?”
I smiled. The servants were merely under the influence of a halothane, but I couldn’t resist a, “You suspected it was poisoned and yet you let your people eat it?”
Melkor waved a bony hand as if a mite hovered over his wine. “What does that matter? There’s not one of them that can’t be replaced.”
“Then why did you eat of it?”
Melkor laughed, a cantankerous and awful sound, throwing his head back in victory before responding, “I’m immune to your poison, Cole McDowell. Oh yes, I know you, poisoner.”
The casual sip I took from my cup robbed the old man of his satisfaction, confusion clouding his face as I said, “How would you prepare for a poison without knowing which one was used?”
Sensing an opportunity to gain the upper hand, Melkor laughed again. “I have an occultist under my thumb. The herbs she provides me with stays any toxin.”
“Oh,” I breathed it out slowly, as if remembering a forgotten detail. “You mean Lavinia, the herbalist?”
Lord Melkor’s mouth pinched at that. “That stupid witch has been under my thumb since I had her father thrown into debtor’s prison.” He picked up his glass and swung it with an enthusiasm he didn’t seem to have for anything else. “He only continues to live at my say-so. Otherwise, he could never afford the price of rations in that place.”
“True. Which is why I convinced your son to set him free.” Those words choked Melkor, wine dribbling down his chalky chin. It might have been surprise that caused that, but I knew it was something more. As such I stood and began making my way down the table. “Once you’re gone, of course.”
Melkor brought his hand to his throat, trying to clear his airway even as the poison closed it. I finished my wine, then set it down next to his lordship’s. “Lavinia is a dear friend of mine, my Lord. We compared notes before I came. While she has prescribed broad preventions for you, there were a few toxins we were able to select that work.”
His Lordship continued to choke, but managed to get out, “You have killed me?”
“Oh, no. Lavinia would never have been satisfied with that after all you’ve done. What was in the stew will hardly kill you. Combined with the Hircine root and other tinctures Lavinia gave you, though,” I paused, keeping a promise to my herbalist friend that Lord Melkor should understand his fate. “It will transform you.”
I could see this already happening in Melkor, his eyes bursting with new veins, his face stretching as his spine bent him into a new shape, paralyzing him in his chair. I dropped my napkin in his lap. “Naturally, I’ll leave a door open for you so you won’t be trapped in here to terrorize your servants when your metamorphosis is complete. You will still recognize them, but you won’t be able to control the beast you’ve become.”
I touched Melkor on his shoulder on my way out of the hall, leaning down to whisper, “Maybe shit on fewer people in your next life, Lord Melkor. Perhaps it’ll earn you a natural death.”
