Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman (5 page)

4. THE BAR OF GOLD

“
What do you mean, he disappeared?” Dobbs demanded.

Carter Evans cringed. He didn’t mind so much getting yelled at when he’d fucked up; that was natural, you had to expect that. But he hated it when his boss blamed him for things he couldn’t control. And he wished Dobbs would sit down. When the tall, gangling bar owner waved his big, bony hands around like that, Evans was reminded of his old man, the way he’d wave his big hands around just before he’d start cuffing you.

“
I mean he friggin’ disappeared!” Evans insisted. “He goes inside the fuckin’ jakes, and he never come out. I watched for a while, didn’t I? Then I goes in, and looks around, see? And he ain’t there. Nothing. Nobody. Zip, zilch, nada. Into thin air, like.”

The very air of Dobbs’s private office, reeking of cigar and bourbon, evoked Old Man Evans as well. The beery, cigarette smoke-fogged atmosphere of the Bar of Gold itself, with its overtones of unwashed bodies and grace notes of vomit and antiseptic, was comfortable and familiar. When swimming through it, Carter Evans felt like one of the sharks. In Dobbs’s office, on the other hand, he felt like a delinquent kid.

Hanover Dobbs sighed, set his cigar in the ashtray, and sat down. He’d been thinking he could have had this interview at a corner table in the bar, but with the turn it had taken, he was glad he’d brought Evans back to his small private office. He looked steadily at Carter Evans. The scruffy little turd blinked, but he didn’t back down. He believed what he was saying, that much was clear. Mutants were often rumored to have strange powers, but Dobbs was not ready to believe that even a mutie could walk into a men’s room and vanish. Evans wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer; the mutie could have slipped by him.

“
Anyone else come or go from the jakes?” Dobbs asked.

“
Sure, several guys, but not the mutie. I’d have seen him. I were watching close, Dobbsey, swear to the gods I were.”

Dobbs mulled this over. A few of the men Dobbs employed on errands were either so completely intimidated by him, or else so worshipfully devoted to him, they would do his bidding to the letter. Evans fit into both categories. If Evans said he watched close, he had watched close. Dobbs felt sure of that.

The little man had followed the mutie from the bar last night to an apartment—presumably the mutie’s own, though it was a bit more upscale than most mutants could afford. Evans hadn’t been able to tell which apartment he’d gone into, but the mutant had stayed there the night through and left in the morning. Evans had followed him to a dentist’s office, where the mutant spent an hour or so, and then to the Bock Street tram station, where he’d pulled his vanishing act. Dobbs considered the possibility that Evans had missed the mutie’s exit from the jakes because he was tired from watching the apartment all night. Possible, he thought, but less than likely.

“
You sure you didn’t just nod off and miss him?”

“
Absolutely. Oh, I might have dozed a bit while I was watching the apartment, but not once he left in the morning. Popped a couple of crackers about four-ish, just so’s that wouldn’t happen.”

Crackers, Dobbs thought. That’s why he looked so wired. Dobbs wasn’t into uppers himself, but he knew enough about the drug to know that if Evans was on crackers when he was watching the jakes, there was no way he’d have dozed off. Nevertheless, even muties couldn’t vanish into thin air, so the fucker had to have snuck by Evans somehow or other. Had the fucker known he was being followed? Evans broke in on his ruminations. “I didn’t think I should follow him into the jakes. That woulda give the game away, wouldn’t it?”

“
Shut up,” Dobbs snapped, and Evans cringed. Fuck, Dobbs thought, I shouldn’t blame Evans. If the mutie was a clever dick, it was Dobbs’s own fault for setting Evans to follow him, instead of someone with two more brain cells to rub together. “No, Carter,” he said finally, “it’s alright. You did right. Go have yourself a drink, whatever you want. Tell Briggs I said it’s on the house. Then go home and get some sleep.”

Evans burbled multiple thank-yous and bowed his servile way out.

Hanover Dobbs poured himself a drink from his private reserve and re-lit his cigar. He hated mutants. He served them in his bar because the law said he had to, as long as they could show they were properly registered with the city. Once upon a time Dobbs would have scoffed at the law, and any mutie who dared enter the Bar of Gold would have found themselves unceremoniously chucked out. But since he had decided to run for council two years back, Dobbs had changed his policies. He didn’t buy from runners anymore, his hooch and pot had all the proper paperwork and taxes paid on them, his little kitchen passed muster with the health inspector, and his games were all straight. Well, mostly straight. If his resident card sharp was caught cheating by city officials, Dobbs was prepared to fire him and pay the appropriate fines.

Still, although he might be compelled by law to serve the muties, he didn’t have to make them feel welcome, and he didn’t. Yet this particular mutie continued to visit the Bar of Gold each Thursday and Friday night. Dobbs guessed the guy was just used to the stares and cold reception and didn’t give a shit. He didn’t stay long, anyway. He’d come in, have a couple of drinks, and leave. But his continued presence had drawn Dobbs’s interest. One time Dobbs had gotten behind the bar and served the guy himself, just to get a close look at him. He was tall—almost up to Dobbs’s own 6’ 1”. And strong. Dobbs had spotted the body of an athlete beneath his nondescript clothing, long and lithe, like a swimmer or a runner. He had no tail, no extra limbs; he wasn’t obviously distorted or crippled like some mutants. His mutie status was betrayed only by his albino coloring: pale, white skin and hair and pink eyes. For Dobbs this somehow made it worse. Mutants whose knees worked backward like an animal’s or who sported other obviously nonhuman traits were bad enough, but those whose appearance made them seem almost normal really twisted Dobbs’s short hairs.

Dobbs couldn’t have said exactly why he was so interested in this particular mutant, except for the question of why the fucker kept coming to a bar where he obviously wasn’t welcome. But now he had a reason. You didn’t vanish—or appear to vanish—from public restrooms unless you had something to hide. And Dobbs had a feeling he knew what the mutie was hiding. There was a killer loose in the city, and given the nature of the killings it was a good bet the Beast was a mutant.

By six o’clock the following friggin’ bleary gray morning, Dobbs sat in his runabout outside the City Arms apartments. He wasn’t really a morning person, but he could drag himself out early when he needed to. Evans had seen the mutie leave his apartment at eight to go to the dentist, but dental appointments meant variations in schedule; there was no telling what time the mutie customarily left his place in the morning, so Dobbs was there extra early to make sure he didn’t miss the fucker. Dentist appointment, Dobbs mused, that’s pretty mundane for a mutie serial killer. He supposed even the Beast had to get fillings now and then, but wondered if there were something darker behind it. Have to look into the dentist. Meanwhile, he thought, keep your eyes glued to that front door.

Watchful as he was, Dobbs might have missed the bastard if it hadn’t been for the coat. It was about eight when he noticed the stylish blue trench coat. There was no doubt in his mind that the coat on the man coming out of the Arms belonged to the mutie; Dobbs had seen it too many times to mistake it. He set down his paper cup of coffee in the runabout’s drink holder and stared. The dark hair and glasses and the olive skin tone were wrong, but once he’d recognized the coat Dobbs ignored the man’s appearance and concentrated on his movements. The body language was right, he decided. It was the mutie disguised as a normal.

That had to be how he got past Evans. The mutie had gone into the jakes and changed into his normal disguise. This was getting better and better. The mutie—he had charged his drinks once, and Dobbs had discovered his name was Aguilar Cordoba, but Dobbs still thought of him as “the mutie” or just “the fucker”—headed off toward the tram station. Dobbs got out, locked the runabout, and followed.

5. WOLF

Neither Roth nor Weldt felt the need to be present, so it was just the three of us and Chief Gage who walked into the lobby of the City Administration Building, the scene of the killing of Treasurer Czernoff. Cavernous and marble-clad, two stories high, the lobby was split by a broad central stairway, with banks of elevators to either side and a security desk at the front, where a group of guardsmen clustered. Outside the thick glass doors, wide steps ran down to an open plaza. To one side of the steps lay a bloody corpse, presumably that of the treasurer. The place had already been cordoned off by the guard, essentially making the whole front of the building inaccessible from the plaza side.

The corpse lay in a pool of congealing blood, several steps down on a broad step that was virtually a landing. It was barely recognizable as human. One arm was twisted beneath it; the other, severed, lay two steps down from it. The chest was opened as if for an autopsy, white ribs gleaming amidst red and brown muscle and fat. The face had suffered several parallel slashes, exposing eyeballs, nose cartilage, and teeth. We’d seen worse, but not often. On the pavement beside the body a mark was painted in blood—three vertical slashes above a squat oval, presumably the “mark” we’d heard referred to. Investigator Auden joined us as we surveyed the scene.

“
Chief,” he said to Gage.

“
Auden,” the Chief nodded in return.

The investigator favored me with a slight head movement that, had it been allowed to live, might have grown up to be a nod. He turned back to Gage.

“
Czernoff was apparently on his way home for the night,” he said. “Perp caught him coming out of the elevator. Looks like a quick job, no sign of struggle. Man on the desk heard nothing. Tyburn came down five minutes behind Czernoff and found him this way.” His nod indicated a man in the over-robe of an Allworld priest who sat to one side of the broad stairway. The man was tall, his hair long but thinning on top, and he had a mournful look that I suspected was as much due to his customary demeanor as it was to the tragedy of the killing.

“
No witnesses? Who was on the desk?” asked Gage.

“
John Hamblin. Swears he didn’t hear a thing.”

“
Hamblin?” said Gage suspiciously.

“
Yeah, I know,” Auden sighed. “Ran a breathalyzer on him. He’s clean.”

“
And we’re sure it was the Beast?”

“
No question. Like his technique isn’t distinctive enough already, he left his usual mark.”

Gage regarded the mutilated corpse in silence for a moment. Finally he took a breath. “Are all the pieces accounted for? Do we know yet?” he asked.

Auden scrubbed a hand across his face. “We’ll know for sure when the coroner gets here,” he said. “But you want my guess? No. There’s... parts unaccounted for.”

There was an awkward silence.

“
Kind of blows our theory to hell, doesn’t it?” Gage said at last. “Czernoff was well known as an atheist.”

“
Theory?” I asked.

“
We hadn’t got to that yet,” Gage said apologetically. “The only connection we’ve made so far among the victims has been that each was involved in some sort of religious activity. We were considering that if the Beast’s killings aren’t just random, there might be some religious motivation behind them.”

“
There still might,” said Auden, staring at the body. “There are religionists who can’t stand the idea of an atheist.” He looked at me.

“
I suppose,” Gage allowed. “So why’s Tyburn still here?”

“
Some sort of ritual thing, helping his friend’s spirit move on. Thought it was polite to let him stay, seeing he’s a city official and Czernoff was a close friend. He promised to stay out of our way, and he did.”

“
I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” I said. “We could have contacted the dead man’s spirit and had the best witness of all. If this guy has seen the victim’s soul off to the other side, he’s just made collecting evidence from the spirit impossible. Excuse me a minute.”

I walked over to where the mournful-looking Allworlder sat. “Brother Tyburn,” I said, using the Allworlders’ title for their priests, and held out my hand. “Wolf am I, Walker of the Rails Between the Worlds. Twenty-three blessings of Soul-Are upon you and yours.”

He responded with the customary Allworlder greeting as he shook my hand. “Never thirst, Railwalker. I am Thudisar Tyburn. What can I offer?”

“
Byer leave,” I said as I sat down next to him, “Share words with me. I understand Treasurer Czernoff was a friend of yours. My condolences.”

“
Thank you. Yes, Phillip was a close friend.” He glanced toward the body, and then quickly away, as if not wanting the sight of his friend’s remains to replace the mental image of the person he’d known. “A true man of the spirit, for all he professed disbelief in souls or godhead. In the sense of being a generous, caring person, he was more spiritual than many who wear the cloth of their own denomination. I’m sure you know what I mean; you have undoubtedly met such in your own travels.”