Dead Matter (8 page)

After I put them on, I turned to Jane. She was sliding on her skirt, but ditched it when she saw what I was wearing. We were already at the her-own-drawer stage of our relationship so she walked over, pulled hers open, and fished out a pair of dark capris. When she was done pulling them on, we looked like a pair of German nihilists.

“Now is time on Sprockets when we dance?” she said.

I shook my head.

“Not quite,” I said, picking up my bat and looping it back onto my belt. “Now is time when we spy.”

“Hell’s Kitchen,” Jane said, checking up and down the darkened street for the hundredth time. “It’s not so bad, you know, given the name and all.”

Jane and I were in surveillance mode. We stood on Fifty-ninth Street pretending to hang out, leaning against a wall where we could keep an eye on most of Connor’s building. The streets were relatively quiet for this time of night. Even the cars were few and far between.

“You should have seen this neighborhood a decade ago,” I said. “It was pretty grizzly. I haven’t checked with Godfrey Candella down in the Gauntlet, but I bet if I asked our resident archivist, he’d tell us there used to be a demonic vortex here.”

Jane looked up at the building standing across the street from us. “Which one is Connor’s apartment again? It’s hard to tell from the outside.”

I pulled her closer to me and pointed up to a window just in view along the left side of the building. I counted up three floors. “There,” I said.

“I don’t suppose that’s Connor, then.”

“What?” I asked. “Where?” It was dark inside Connor’s apartment.

Jane grabbed my face and forced my eyes to the side of Connor’s window. She held out her finger in front of me so I could follow it. “There.”

“I don’t see anything …” I said, but stopped myself. One of the shadows
outside
Connor’s window moved. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I could make out what looked like a human figure inching along the brickwork. It stopped at Connor’s window and rested its arms along his window ledge.

“What
is
that?” Jane asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m curious enough to find out.”

I pulled off the lid of a nearby garbage can as slowly and quietly as I could. I was thrilled to see it full of recyclables. I pulled an old Snapple bottle out of it, took aim, and threw it across the street toward the figure, hoping to miss accidentally putting it through Connor’s window. Some of my extracurricular training for the Fraternal Order of Goodness must have paid off, because I hit the shadowy figure square between its shoulders.

“Hey, dick,” I shouted up to it. “You wanna come down here the easy way or the hard way? I got a trash can full of options right here.”

Like a nimble monkey, the figure descended the three stories in seconds, dropping the last ten feet or so to the sidewalk. He took off down the street.

“Either that dude has been spending a lot of time at Chelsea Piers on the rock-climbing walls,” I said, “or we’re dealing with Spider-Man.” I turned to Jane. “That might be cool.”

Jane grabbed my face, and pointed off. The figure was already halfway down the block.

“Focus, hon,” she said.

“Right,” I said, taking off after the figure. “Sorry.”

The guy was damn fast, darting in and out of traffic as he sprinted away. Already my legs were burning, but we were gaining on him. Not that I could make out much about him save that he was dressed for stealth much the same way we were.

After the first two city blocks, my body started giving out. My back still ached like hell, but I focused on our pursuit and pushed past the pain. I was closing the distance. The figure turned again and darted off across traffic, heading along the length of a sleek steel building on the other side of the street.

“Watch the traffic!” I shouted back to Jane and, ignoring my own advice, dove between two cabs that both laid on the horn for a solid ten seconds. By the time they stopped, I was almost caught up to the figure when he turned the corner at the end of the block.

I rounded it seconds later, recognizing in an instant where we were—the west side of Columbus Circle. As I tried to close the distance once again, I couldn’t help but notice the single building straight ahead that took up the entire city block. The front of it was an enormous glass pyramid like the one at the Louvre in France, and it dwarfed the buildings to either side of it. A dozen massive towers shot out of the top of the pyramid, rising high into the night, the entire structure looking like a city unto itself.

The figure dashed for a set of ten-foot-high steel doors off to the far left from the main entrance of the building proper. He flung them open and ran through, stopping only long enough to pull them shut behind him.

I beat Jane to them by a couple seconds and I pulled at the doors, but they were locked, as I suspected. When Jane arrived, she looked as winded as I felt.

“Remind me to leave a pair of cross-trainers at your apartment,” she said, gasping for air. “The shoes I’m wearing are
so
not made for long-distance running.”

She pointed toward a faceplate set into the wall that blended in with a subtlety that spoke of craftsmanship.

“Can you open it?”

I looked at it for a moment before shaking my head. “I can’t use my psychometry on it. It’s a pad for a keycard like we have on the door to the offices. It’s not like a numeric lock where I can use my power to see the code of the last person who entered. It also means I can’t pick it.”

“Crap,” she said, then looked around. She pointed off to a set of doors set into the tinted glass of the main pyramid area. Two men in identical suits stood sentry there like they were bouncers at a nightclub.

As we approached the doors, I looked the two of them over. They were both huge with black hair, though the larger one had his in a military cut and the other wore his a little longer, though still neat. Both of them looked straight out of a casting call for
Men in Black 3
.

I walked up to the doors with as much authority as my status in a secret paranormal investigative office held. In response, the two men stepped in front of the doors that led into what looked like a deserted shopping atrium. Neither of them looked very impressed.

“Can we help you?” the longer-haired one said. I held my ID out to him.

“We’re with the Department of Extraordinary Affairs,” I said, “in pursuit of a suspect.”

He took it from me and examined it. Jane was fishing around in the messenger bag she wore strapped across her body and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.

“My bad,” she said. She handed the paper to the larger of the two guards. “Mine’s only provisional for now until I get my honest-to-goodness badge. But it’s legit, I swear.”

The larger gentleman smiled at her, looked it over, and then took mine from the other guy. He folded them neatly closed and handed them back to us.

“Sorry,” the bigger guy said. “I’m afraid those won’t work here.”

“I’m sorry?” I said. That took me aback. I was suddenly pissed. “Weren’t you listening? We’re in the middle of an investigation.”

“This building here?” he said, gesturing behind him, a bit of rental-cop authority in his voice. “This
entire
area falls outside of your jurisdiction.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. I pointed to the emblem of the City of New York on my ID. “All of New York City is
part
of my jurisdiction. I may need a warrant to search private property, but I am getting in here.”

The big guy shook his head. His partner cleared his throat. “You’re familiar with that whole section of the city over by the United Nations, yes? Where all the embassies are?”

I nodded.

“Well, then,” he continued, “think of this area like one of those embassies. They’re off-limits to local police and such. They’re considered to be the sovereign land of the actual countries they represent. The Gibson-Case Center is kind of like that. Other than the public shopping areas, which are closed right now. Either way, you can’t enter. We’re under special permit from the Mayor’s Office.”

I stood there, silently fuming at their rebuke.

“Let’s just go,” Jane said, taking me by the arm.

“Fine,” I said, hissing the words out between clenched teeth. I gave the guards a final stare as Jane led us away down the sidewalk.

“Get a grip, will you?” she whispered. “You’re so riled.”

“I want to know who’s messing with my partner,” I said, rationalizing my behavior.

“That’s all well and good, sweetie, but you’re not getting answers from those brutes.”

“Who the hell am I supposed to get them from, then?”

Jane stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, spun in front of me, and suddenly kissed me, deep. After a long and blissful moment, she pulled away and looked at me.

“Calm now?”

I nodded.

“Good,” she said. “Now, as I was saying, those guys aren’t going to give you the answers you’re seeking, but they did say something promising.”

My mind was swimming from everything, including the kiss. “Do tell.”

“Now, what did they say?” she asked. “They said the Gibson-Case Center was under special permit with the Mayor’s Office, which means … ?”

“Dave Davidson at the Mayor’s Office of Plausible Deniability,” I said, feeling a momentary jolt of joy. Finally there would be someone I could yell at to get results.

The next morning I made sure to wrap up my dissolving clothes from the grocery store attack for Enchancellor Daniels. I threw them in my messenger bag and headed out with Jane, hoping to catch up with Dave Davidson at his offices downtown on Centre Street near City Hall. These “real” government offices were huge, ancient buildings that dwarfed everything around them, including those of our hidden labyrinth of fringe government. After about twenty minutes of wandering the empty halls of 42 Centre Street with nothing but the sound of our footsteps echoing out, Jane and I came to a door marked MAYOR’S OFFICE OF PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. In his role as liaison to the Mayor, Dave Davidson constantly came up to the Lovecraft Café for his dealings with the D.E.A., but given our need for urgency, we couldn’t wait for him to simply show up at random.

Without knocking, Jane and I tried the door, found it unlocked, and entered. We were met by the sight of David Davidson sitting at his desk. As usual, he was dressed to the nines, this time in a well-tailored dark blue business suit. His tie was knotted perfectly as always and his black hair, gray at the temples, was neatly parted. Startled by our sudden interruption, Davidson bolted up from his chair and was already backing away. Reaching back onto a shelf behind his desk, he grabbed a large Lucite award of some kind and drew it in front of him.

“Oh,” he said, lowering it when noticed who we were. “It’s only you. Hello, Simon. Jane. What brings Other Division and Greater and Lesser Arcana down here so early? Or at all?”

I walked right up to his desk. He must have sensed something in my look because he raised the hefty award again.

“How’s the plausible-deniability business these days, Davidson?” I asked.

“Good,” he said. His eyes were wary. “Plausibly enough. Although, truthfully, ever since your whole Fashion Week- zombies incident, most of what I’ve been spinning has been a bit dull … except for a few strange incoming calls about some new kind of creature bounding around town, but the zombie market seems to have dried up for now.”

“No pun intended,” Jane said with a giggle.

“Huh?” Davidson said, giving her a distracted look before turning his full attention back to me. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

I wondered if Davidson meant the monster that had attacked Jane and me two nights ago, but that wasn’t what I had come here for at the moment. “Let’s talk about something a little more implausible,” I said, taking a seat. Jane did the same. “Why don’t you tell me about the Gibson-Case Center?”

Davidson was in the middle of putting the award back on its shelf. He paused.

“That new building up on Columbus Circle … ?” he said. “What about it?”

“So you’ve heard about it?” I said.

“
Everyone’s
heard about it,” he said, looking at me like I was stupid. “I think Emeril’s got a place opening in there.”

“We were told it’s under special permit from the Mayor’s Office.”

“You want to tell us why it’s off-limits?” Jane asked.

“
Want
to tell you?” he asked with a laugh. “That’s debatable. The real question is
can
I tell you?”

“Fine,” Jane said, keeping her cool. I would have exploded by now. “
Can
you tell us?”

“That’s better,” Davidson said, leaning back in his chair, “but the answer is no.”

“Why not?”

Davidson shrugged. “It’s a big city. Do you know how much of this town is under special permit for one thing or another? There’s a lot of things I’m not privy to, okay? And I get to keep my job if I keep my nose out of things that aren’t my business. So a new building goes up! Emeril Lagasse wants to put a restaurant in! You think I need to sound the alarms? There are projects here that are not my bailiwick, so when you ask if I can tell you what’s going on, the answer is truthfully no.”

“Great,” I said. I leapt to my feet, slamming my hands down on his desk. “What’s the point of having a liaison with the Mayor’s Office? I thought you’re
supposed
to help us.”

Davidson narrowed his eyes at us. “Calm down,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what exactly happened? Are you implying there’s a paranormal element to something going on at the Gibson-Case Center?”

“Pretty sure,” I said. “Connor Christos has been off duty for a little over a month and he’s being haunted, so we checked it out, found some creepy crawler staking out his apartment. Traced it back to the Gibson-Case Center, only to be turned away with some ‘sovereign land’ bull. Something that’s literally driving Connor mad is in that building, but it sounds like you’d rather feign ignorance and hide behind your office. C’mon, Jane …”