Deader Still (10 page)

The Inspectre looked up and gave me a fatherly smile.

“Almost ready,” he said.

He slipped on his protective headgear, the kind a boxer wears, and over his chest he pulled on an umpire’s padded vest with a large red heart painted where one would expect the actual heart to be, only it had a target on it. The padding made him appear even more walruslike than his mustache did, but I knew all too well that was only in appearance. Looks could be deceiving with Inspectre Quimbley. You didn’t live to be his age in his field unless you had serious skills.

“You F.O.G.gies don’t mess around when it comes to fighting,” I said.

The Inspectre was still giving me that paternal look when he stood up. “The forces of Darkness certainly don’t mess around when it comes to attacking us, so why should we hold back? Especially vampires. I’d rather have you prepared, my boy, than dead. Now, then …”

He pulled a long black cape off the back of the chair he had been sitting in. As he tied it on, I almost laughed. I was pretty much looking at a walruslike version of Count Dracula. He scooped up an enchanted coatrack in both his hands and brandished it like it was a staff. The little metal coat hooks at the top of it snaked to life like tiny metal pincers. All of this certainly helped dissipate the patriarchal mood and any humor.

I looked around the general clutter of the room for something weapon-y of my own.

“That’s your first mistake,” the Inspectre said.

“Sir?”

“Unorthodox Fighting Techniques at this level provides very little in the way of conventional weaponry. Open your mind to the art of improvisation during conflict. Few fights ever go as smoothly as they look in the movies, do they? You never know under what circumstance you might be called upon to defend yourself. Or with what.”

I missed the lower levels of this class. In those, I had fought with weapons like carnivorous sofa cushions, fire stokers that kept blowing soot into my face, potted trees that screamed when you hit them, pool cues, fountain pens, living lawn gnomes, and once, purely by accident, normal swords.

This time, however, nothing really jumped out to me and I was at a loss.

“You’ve already got the best weapon,” I said, backing away. Even the length of the coatrack gave it a considerable advantage. I was unsure of what to do, but I was still in the mood for a good fight. I had so much pent-up anger and frustration over the whole Jane situation.

“Use your head, boy,” the Inspectre said, smiling and moving cautiously toward me, “for more than just a place to hang your hat.”

His smile betrayed him. Even in a fight, the Inspectre couldn’t help throwing encouraging clues at me. A place to hang your hat, I thought to myself … would be at the top of
another
coatrack. I glanced quickly around the room and there it was, another coatrack blending in to the wall on the opposite side of the room. The Inspectre moved into swinging range. I had to act.

I turned and dashed across the room, feeling my hair stir as the air from the Inspectre’s swing blew by me. Ever the gentleman, the Inspectre waited until I got my hands on the other coatrack before charging me. The hooks on the rack sprang to life and I relished the chance to finally let my growing aggression out. All of it—the discovery of the people on the booze cruise, my troubles with Jane, the fact that someone had tried to sabotage the Oubliette—all of it came flooding out in quick, vicious attacks, all of which the Inspectre was trying his best to counter. On the plus side, he had landed very few strikes against me, so I considered our score pretty even by my count.

The old man spent the better part of an hour putting me through the wringer.

As fatigue started to set in, our coatracks clashed together as we struggled across the floor of the fight studio. For once, I realized I had the Inspectre on the defensive and pressed my advantage. I lunged toward him with the business end of the coatrack. The hooks waved like tentacles as they sought to disarm Inspectre Quimbley. I thought for sure I had him, but he sidestepped and parried. My weapon smacked harmlessly against the wall, and one of the hooks latched on to a light fixture, forcing me to stop while I untangled it.

“Good form,” the Inspectre said, “good form.”

I was too caught up in freeing my weapon, and the Inspectre knew it. He swung his own rack low and caught me behind the knees before I could turn back to him. They buckled, causing me to fall flat on my back, and I stayed there, the wind knocked out of me.

“The hardest part to mastering the coatrack,” he said as he triumphantly planted his on the floor, “is forgetting that it is
not
a staff. Most apprentices treat it like they’re sixteenth-century warrior monks from a Hong Kong action movie. Well, who ever heard of a monk using a coatrack to fight? Staff forms are the totally wrong fighting technique for them to practice … when what they should master is the tricky art of the rack.”

He offered his hand and helped me up.

“Of course,” he continued, his breathing a little labored, “if you were using this combat technique and a vampire was involved, the smart thing to do would be to snap off the end of it to make a stake to impale him with, but, bless my heart, these coatracks are so bloody cute with their hooks. They’re like little baby fingers.”

I pulled at my own tangled coatrack, which was now swinging playfully from the light fixture. It grumbled as I tugged it free, and I turned, readying myself. The Inspectre, however, looked winded and was leaning heavily on his own rack. The hooks seemed to be petting his shoulder.

“Sir … ?”

“No worries, my boy.” He looked up and smiled. “That last parry simply took a lot out of this old man. Guess it
is
best that we’re training a new generation. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, after all.”

I hobbled to the table at one side of the room and helped myself to a fresh donut there.

“Ahh, the spoils of victory,” the Inspectre said.

Putting in the extra hours being part of F.O.G. added to my already overloaded work schedule, but at least there were snacks.

“You keep this up,” I said, “and you’re going to have to roll me out of here. Remind me to hit the gym more often. Or maybe at all.”

“You might want to look into that, son. It’s just one of the perks of being a
F.O.G.gie
, you know. It’s free. I wouldn’t want you to put on the ‘Fraternal Fifteen’ on my account.”

“Sure it’s free,” I said. “You want to get me on a treadmill so I can get better at running from even nastier things than I’m already used to running from.”

The Inspectre nodded.

“I think I’m starting to learn that ‘more perks’ really means I stand a greater chance of dying. The more access I have around the Department, the shorter my life expectancy, right?”

“Well, don’t beat around the bush,” the Inspectre said, letting out a hearty laugh. “Perks aside, ‘doing good’ is supposed to be its own reward, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have free donuts and an elliptical machine. Ready?”

“Do you mind if I ask you more about the Fraternal Order of Goodness?” I asked. The Inspectre shook his head. “We’re the most-talked-about secret society I’ve ever heard of. Divisional managers like Wesker call the order a bunch of snobby do-gooders.”

“ ‘Dangerously underqualified’ is what we call blokes like him,” he said, then paused. “My boy, you don’t get to be Inspectre without learning to read people over the years. I can sense some kind of trouble with you, and I know what turmoil can do to a young agent.”

I looked up, drawn in by the kindness in his voice.

“I still don’t feel right about being in charge of Connor,” I said. “I mean, he is my mentor, after all. I just don’t know if I’m ready for this. And frankly, he’s touchy on a good day. Then there’s the responsibility of calling the shots … What if I make the wrong call and do something rash?”

I expected the Inspectre to try to reason with me, to quell my nerves or tell me to stop acting like such a child, possibly even a no-nonsense chiding.

“Well,” he said. He put down his towel and grinned. “There’s rash and then there’s
rash
, isn’t there?”

I cocked my head. “I don’t think I follow you, sir.”

“Well,” he said, “there are distinctions in the details, aren’t there? There is
stupid
rash and there is
noble
rash. Both can make you dead, I suppose, but one at least stands a chance of causing great heroics, yes? For instance, and this is all hypothetical, mind you … If I were in a position where I had a chance to take down something as dangerous as a vampire before the local government could even get through all the red tape, some might think it incredibly foolish of me to act upon that.”

I nodded. “Connor’s always telling me to keep an even head about things,” I said, “to not let my emotions get in the way, and to think clearly. But now I’ve got to worry about putting him in harm’s way as well.”

“Yes, well, Connor’s right in one sense when he talks about absolute clearheadedness. That is what works for
Connor
.” He poured himself a glass of water and began drinking. He leaned over, drawing conspiratorially close.

“You and I are men of
action
, Simon. So are the rest of the F.O.G.gies. Most people don’t understand that. Most people never will. Sometimes all we have to go with
are
our emotions. That may be the one thing that gives us an edge, the one thing that saves us all in the battle between good and evil, especially in the face of bureaucracy.”

I swallowed hard. I felt the pressure of failing coming on once again. I had vampires to deal with. The Inspectre clapped me on the back.

“Don’t worry yourself about it too much,” he said cheerfully. “If you die, at least you’ll die spectacularly. That’s the mark of a true hero.” He clapped me on the back. “Same time tomorrow?”

I nodded, thinking, And the day after and the day after … until I either become the most expert vampire slayer since Buffy or die trying.

I cleaned myself up after my training session and headed back down to the main floor. With the graveyard shift arriving, the offices were dead and of
course
Supply was closed, so after making a quick copy of the form I’d had Jane sign, I slid it under their door. Then I headed back out through the movie theater and into the coffee shop up front. With its bare brick walls, classic movie posters, and big, comfy, secondhand chairs, I thought it would be the perfect place to brood. I had seen many a dark literary writer gravitate to this place with their laptops, and once I had my coffee, I navigated through a sea of them until I found an unoccupied large purple chair to curl up in. I set my coffee down on a table in the center of a few other chairs, one of them occupied by Godfrey Candella. He was furiously writing away in one of his notebooks.

“You know, a laptop would be faster,” I said.

Godfrey looked up from his writing.

“Excuse me?” he said, somewhat distracted.

“A laptop,” I repeated. I gestured toward his pen and notebook. “It would be faster.”

“Ah,” he said, and his face lit up, “
but
would it be as reliable?” He held up his notebook like he was displaying it on QVC. “The Moleskine notebook is a near-legendary form of record keeping, used by great minds for well over two centuries. Hemingway, Picasso, even Van Gogh …”

“My apologies,” I said, cutting off his little nerdgasm on the history of notebooks. I raised my coffee mug in salute. He did the same and we drank in silence for a moment, but it didn’t last long. Godfrey started flipping back through his notebook until he found whatever he was looking for.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few follow-up questions about what happened earlier today?” he asked. “The incident involving the Oubliette? I just wanted to clarify a few things.”

I sighed. Maybe helping Godfrey clarify his historical documents would help me with my own, or at the very least provide some form of distraction. Besides, I liked Godfrey, despite the quiet loneliness that radiated from him—or maybe because of it. I knew a thing or two about loneliness.

“Go ahead,” I said, settling back in my chair. “Shoot.”

“Great. Thanks.” Godfrey smiled and looked down at his notes. “So, earlier the Inspectre mentioned something about the Oubliette and you … ? Unfortunately, Director Wesker yelled about it so much at the time, I kind of missed what exactly happened.”

“It’s a wonder we ever get anything done around here with Wesker shouting,” I said. I couldn’t shake the image of his hand resting against Jane’s lower back. I tried to push it out of my mind by telling Godfrey Candella all the details I could remember about the incident at the Javits Center. It seemed to help. When I finished, I was no longer thinking about Jane and Wesker together, but instead about being swallowed up by a sea of rats and then being knee-deep in rat goo. Believe it or not, the nostalgia of being knee-deep in rat goo was a mental step-up.