I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (13 page)

“Know it don’t taste as good without your
roaches or whatever,” Bianchi standing there with a full tray he’d
snatched out of some inmate’s hands.

Werner stood off on the side, not moving to
intervene.

Renfeld scurried away, Bianchi winging the
tray at him. “Ya fuckin’ ding, get outta here,” Bianchi cupping his
bandaged elbow in his hand.

Dickie reached up, straightening out his
track jacket, lifting his crucifix up off his chest, checking it
was still there.

“What’d I tell you boss?” Disgust in
Carlucci’s voice. “
è
pazzo
.”

The guard, Werner, just standing there,
shaking his head, like bad move.

Gritz was stopped at a red light in his Crown
Vic, the wait interminable.

He retrieved his flask from his blazer
pocket, unscrewed the cap and took a slug, looking over at the car
next to him as he swallowed. Woman in there with her kids, looking
at him, shaking her head. Gritz smiled at her, considered flashing
his badge her way but the light changed and he had to drive.

He’d figured a few things out about Doctor
Faust.

For one, the guy wasn’t motivated by fame. He
had fame. He wanted knowledge. He’d
studied
philosophy
,/
Jurisprudence
and
medicine
,
too
,/
And
,
worst
of
all
,
theology
. And still Goethe had the doctor complaining,
saying
here
I
am
,
for
all
my
lore
,/
The
wretched
fool
I
was
before
.
Faust
feeling
that
for
all
our
science
and
art
/
We
can
know
nothing
.
It
burns
my
heart
.
Gritz liked that part:

worst
of
all
,
theology
.

He’d figured out that Gretchen was Margaret,
that for some reason halfway through the play Goethe starts
referring to the apple of Faust’s eye by a different name. The hell
he’d done that for? Margaret the only one suspicious of Faust’s
companion, Mephistopheles. The demon referring to her as a monkey.
He’d figured out that Faust had gotten Margaret or Gretchen or
whatever her name was pregnant. That’s why her brother, Valentine,
had shown up. Royally pissed.

Maybe if he was in a college somewhere, in a
German Romanticism or philosophy class—wherever they’d teach this
stuff—
maybe
then Gritz would feel some sense of
satisfaction, some semblance of achievement. In the meantime, out
here in the real world, things weren’t going the way he needed them
to.

The way they were looking at him at the
precinct. Captain Rose hadn’t said anything to him since the other
day, and he wouldn’t. He trusted Gritz, trusted that when his
once-star detective said he was working a case, things were getting
done.

Gritz took another sip from his flask.

Were they?

There was the pressure they put on you to
close cases and then there was the pressure you put on
yourself.

In the short term, Gritz was troubled that he
couldn’t catch a lead in the Swallows murders. That’s what they
were calling the bloodbath from the porn shoot, after the ingenue’s
nom
de
porn
. Also her speciality. There were a
lot of her videos making the rounds at the precinct—cops never
needed an excuse to watch porn, Gritz thought, then corrected
himself. Men didn’t need an excuse to watch nudie flicks.

The younger detectives, when they weren’t
“studying the evidence,” could talk about him at their desks. Gritz
hoped they enjoyed it. A shit storm was brewing in this city and
they knew it. The vacuum Nicolie’s incarceration left out here on
the street. The mob wasn’t what it was a generation ago when Gritz
was starting out. The succession wasn’t clear; it wasn’t a matter
of okay-now-this-guy’s-gone-and-this-guy-moves-up-a-notch. The way
these things got settled these days, there were usually bodies
lying around afterwards.

The shooting hadn’t started yet.

So there was that.

Cathy wasn’t answering the phone or returning
his calls. Gritz couldn’t think of anyone he could reach out to to
contact her. Cath’s friends were her friends, and Gritz, well Gritz
didn’t exactly have friends. Guys from work and drinking buddies,
like Foley, he didn’t count.

Faust, though, Faust had had Mephistopheles
to intervene in the matter of Margaret, the demon visiting
Margaret’s friend Martha’s house when he knew Margaret was going to
be there. Martha Schwerdtlein her full name, Gritz remembering
that. Mephistopheles lying, telling Martha her husband was dead in
Padua, in Italy. It was the little details like that, stuck with
Gritz.

Mephistopheles telling Martha he’d come back
with his buddy, his buddy could confirm her husband’s demise:
what
is
testified
by
two
/
Is
everywhere
known
to
be
true
. Mephistopheles serving as Faust’s
wingman.

That line from earlier in the poem sticking
in Gritz’s craw, when Faust first sees Margaret and is enamored.
Mephistopheles telling him
she
is
well
past
her
fourteenth
year
. Her
fourteenth year? That the age of consent back then?

Yanks against the Padres tonight, game one of
the World Series. At Yankee Stadium. Gritz hoped his Yankees
destroyed San Diego. He drank to that.

The flashing lights in his rear view caught
his eye.

“Shit.”

Gritz pocketed the flask and pulled his Crown
Vic over to the side of the road. He reached into his jacket and
got his badge ready.

A solitary cherry light flashed on the car
behind him, looked like a Mercury. Three men had gotten out of it,
standing around the vehicle. Not dressed like cops. They were
waiting for him to get out.

So Gritz got out.

He was good with little details, with names
and faces. The guy in front of the car was no stranger to him,
though he wore a badge on a chain now. Gritz made him for the guy
from the bar the other day, guy with the accent, had offered to buy
him a drink. The other two guys he didn’t recognize: a wiry white
guy whose sideburns grew into his mustache and a black man.

“Guess you didn’t pull me over for my
autograph, Brian.”

“No. That I did not.” The man smiled and held
out his hand. Gritz played along, took it. Gritz feeling good but
not that good, figured they wouldn’t know he’d been drinking.
Figured let Brian talk, see what this was about.

“Detective. Levon and Dec.” Introducing Gritz
to the other two men. The one named Dec sporting the Franz-Josef
saying, “True Gritz,” no trace of a British accent. Sounded
American.

Brian leaned back on their car, Gritz seeing
he’d been right, it was a Mercury Grand Marquis. Fewer of them
around on the street these days. “Let me ask you something,
detective,” Brian asking, “When you were a lad, were you ever
scared of monsters?”

“Monsters?”

“Monsters.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“What if I told you, you were right. To be
scared.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a cool one, mate. I know you want to
tell me to sod off, but you’re not. I respect that. I’m going to
tell you a little story. You don’t believe it, it’s like I never
told you, innit? But you should believe me. Because what I’m going
to tell you is the god’s honest truth.”

“God’s awful,” offered the black man, Levon,
sounding as American as the one with the mustache.

Passersby saw four official looking men
standing around two cars, one with a light flashing on top, two of
the men talking to each other. One impassive, arms at his sides,
doing most of the listening. The other gesticulating and animated,
carrying the conversation.

When Brian had finished, Gritz said, “Wow,”
because he couldn’t imagine this guy was in his right mind.

And he was wearing a badge.

“So what you’re telling me—basically—is
there’s this whole dark secret world under the surface of this one
with vampires and monsters and—and—hey, you know? You’re right. It
is kind of hard to believe.”

“Like I’d said, you’re of a mind to tell me
to sod off. I get it. If I stood where you do, I’d think me
mental.”

Gritz nodded, thinking it prudent not to
comment.

“Your choice, detective. You believe…” Brian
produced a folded sheet of paper, handed it over. Gritz took it but
didn’t look at it. “…or you forget this conversation ever
happened.”

“Let’s say you’re not just fucking with me,
for whatever reason you might be fucking with me.”

“We’re not fucking with you,” said the one
named Dec.

…
what
is
testified
by
two
, a line from Goethe,
Is
everywhere
known
to
be
true
…

“Let’s say you’re not. What’s next?”

“We’ll be in touch.” Brian and his guys were
getting back in their Mercury.

“Again—” Gritz called to him. “Let’s say
you’re not just fucking with me. How do you guys know so much about
these vampires?”

“We’ve got a bloke on the inside.”

Gritz walked back to his car. The Mercury
pulled past him, Dec in the back seat saying to him out the window,
“We’re not fucking with you.”

He sat down in his Crown Vic and tapped the
sheet of paper against the steering wheel, thinking. Gritz unfolded
the paper. A flier. Some kind of lecture, a talk.
The
Promise
of
Prometheus
:
Myth
in
the
Service
of
Truth
. By some professor
or somebody Gritz had never heard of before. At the City University
in Manhattan couple days from now.

Gritz looked up but the Mercury was already
gone.

He’d wired a late-80s Mustang and drove
himself and the kid over the bridge into Manhattan before pulling
over, switching spots with the kid. The kid with his hair done in
cornrows tonight, had it in a bun the other day. Dodd could tell
the boy thought highly of himself, thought he was some kind of big
man among his friends, and maybe he was when he was with those
little faggots.

The kid—Luther was his name—more subdued now
in Dodd’s presence.

“Keep goin’ straight,” Dodd told him. “And
stay under thirty-five, you hear me?” The kid’s foot heavy on the
accelerator, the Mustang the kind of car going to respond to it.
Kid had his head up behind something, Dodd wasn’t sure, probably
smoke. Dodd wasn’t going to take kindly to drug use, not out in
open in front of him on a job. So long as the kid could function,
be where he needed to be when Dodd needed him to be there, keep it
together.

The first thing Dodd had done when the kid
had gotten into the car is he had handed the kid a hundred dollar
bill, the kid’s face saying
whoa
, the kid playing it cool,
like he was used to being handed that kind of money.
You
play
this
straight
, Dodd had told him, there’s
more where that came from. The kid askin’,
yo
and
where is
this
comin’
from
, Dodd telling him
you
wouldn’t
believe
me
I
tell
you
. Not that he would tell this Luther kid.
Fuck seemed the type to talk.

Luther, who liked to be called Luke by his
friends, stopped at a yellow light going red.

Dodd had placed a .38 revolver on the console
between them, was checking the load on a second handgun, a 9mm.
Luke reached over, picked up the .38, looking it over.

“What you think you doin’?”

“I’m a take this one.” Luther thinking it
made perfect sense, thought he was being proper, deferential and
all, taking the smaller piece, letting Dodd have the nine.

“You gonna take shit, Luther,” Dodd snatched
the revolver from his hand—Luke saying “Luke,” Dodd ignoring
him—Dodd muttering, “Give me that shit.” Luke looked at his empty
hand hanging there in space. “Green light, Luther.”

Luke drove, asking about his lack of a
pistol, “What am I going to do then?”

“What you gonna do about what?” The .38 had
disappeared under Dodd’s jean jacket, the nine on his lap.

“’Bout a strap I’m talkin’.”

“Shit, Luther, Luke, whatever you call
yourself. Your ass gonna sit in the car. Wait for me. You take a
left up there, by the light.”

“What if they come out shooting?”

“Shootin’ at what?
You
? They come out
shootin’ I’m a be shootin’ right back at ‘em. You wait, let me get
in the car. Then you drive.
Fast
. But slow down now,
nigger.”

“How’m I supposed to protect myself?”

“Protect yourself? Protect yourself from
what? You are high, aren’t you? You know what? Maybe it was a bad
idea askin’ you.”

“Nah, dawg. It’s good. My head’s
straight.”

“I ain’t your dog. And it better be,” meaning
the kid’s mental state. “There it is coming up on the left.” The
kid started to slow the car as they neared a skyscraper on the
avenue, Dodd telling him, “No, keep goin’. Pull over up ahead
there, by the pump.”

Luke pulled the Mustang over next to the
hydrant further down the street, these blocks in Manhattan
long.

“You and your boys back in Moses,” Dodd had
twisted around in the passenger seat, looking back the way they’d
come, “you all play tough. None of you ain’t done nothin’ like this
though, right?”