Empire State (16 page)

  The place didn't have a name on the outside, but as soon as he hit the bottom of the stairs he imagined it had a name on the
inside
, one only the regulars knew. He'd walked for most of the night, or at least it felt like most of the night, and had found nothing but empty streets lit in weird, dead yellow light. No people, no cars, no lights on in any buildings except one house down a side street, a big old brownstone. But also no restaurants, cafes, clubs, milk bars, not even any stores where he could get some cigarettes. Rendered in an uncomfortable yellow monochrome, this was a part of downtown that Rex vowed never to return to after he'd shown the authorities where the body of the Science Pirate was tucked away. It just... it felt wrong. He didn't recognise the
buildings
, let alone the streets. He was near the Hudson and the ferries, of that he was sure, but every new street he turned down presented a fresh surprise.

  And then he found some people. Rex was nervous suddenly, so he hung back in a shadowed alcove for a while, watching. It wasn't many people, just a handful, walking back and forth across the street, coming up out of or heading down into a set of basement stairs hidden in pitch darkness. Some were casual. Some were trying to be casual, out for a night stroll but maybe swaying a little, or spending too much time trying to nonchalantly adjust a tie or do up a shoelace. There was no sound, no light from the black stairwell. But every so often, every now and again, there was a smell. Subtle but distinctive, a smell that dried Rex's throat out completely. He knew the signs all too well. At last, somewhere to get a drink.

  At the bottom of the stairs and through the door, the place looked more like a cafeteria than a bar. Reasonably dark, lit mostly by small table lamps with old orange shades. The weak light filled the room with shadows, casting what few customers were present into an array of long silhouettes. It was also quiet. No music, just hushed conversation. Exactly how he liked it.

  The man behind the bar had a blue towel slung over his shoulder, and regarded Rex with a fixed look, two fists clenched against the bar top.

  "Can't sleep again?"

  It took Rex a moment to realise the barman was talking to him. He smiled at him, but the barman's expression didn't flicker. Rex walked up and cast his eyes over the neat rows of teacups and saucers on the shelf behind. Right place, for sure.

  "The usual?"

  Rex rubbed his eyes, and nodded at the barman, who turned away before he could ask what the usual was. The seconds collected like peanuts in the bowl on the bar in front of him, and then the barman turned back around with a cup and saucer. Rex squinted down into it, but the cup looked empty. He turned it by the handle, and caught a rippled reflection. It wasn't empty and while he knew it wasn't going to be tea, the vapour coming off its surface was something much stronger than Rex was used to. He wondered who the supplier was and which gang's territory he'd accidentally crossed into.

  "Ah...?"

  The barman frowned again, then nodded. "OK, but I'll be calling it in at the end of the week."

  Rex closed his mouth, and listened to the buzzing in his head as he lifted the cup and looked around. The only other person sitting at the bar was a young man with rakish hair hooked around to the left to frame his face. He watched Rex, his big blue eyes glittering in the pale light. The young man nodded a greeting, and sipped from his own teacup.

  "Got a smoke?" asked Rex. "I'm out."

  The barman hissed between his teeth, but turned away. The young man didn't say anything, but set his cup down with a gentle clatter. Rex glanced around the room, at the dozen or so people at tables, all with cups and saucers in front of them. The air was stale and had the tang of alcohol in it, but was otherwise clear. Nobody was smoking.

  Rex turned back to the barman. "Hey, barman. Do you sell cigarettes?"

  The barman's shoulders seemed to tense up before he turned around.

  "Pal, you know better than that. Don't ask again." He turned back to his teacup polishing.

  "Huh," said Rex, to himself mainly. He looked to his left, and saw an empty stool where the young man had been sitting.

  He sighed, and took a sip of his drink. As soon as it came into contact with his tongue, his whole mouth seemed to catch fire. Rex gasped at the sensation, then as the warmth spread over his whole body, he tipped the cup and drained the moonshine in a single gulp. It sure was strong stuff, more like Harlem hooch than downtown refined.

  "On my mother's grave," he swore, loudly, causing the people in the bar to pause their conversations for a second, before the background murmur returned. Rex ran his tongue along the back of his teeth, tasting the last stinging citrus of alcohol. He frowned. He didn't know anyone that peddled that kind of gut-rot. He'd have to look into it.

  The world swayed left, then right, and the orange globes that lit each table seemed to flare suddenly. And then the buzzing stopped, just for a moment, before creeping back in.

  The drink might have been industrial cleaner for all he knew, but it was doing the trick. Rex ordered another from the frowning barman, and drank until the buzzing faded and his eyes were filled with orange light.

 

 
 

 
 

IT WAS LATE WHEN RAD got back to the office, and he heard the phone ringing from down the hall as soon as he hit the top of the stairs. He stopped, drew a wheezing breath and used the air to swear loudly, then thudded down the corridor to his door. His fingers were hot and swollen slightly from the trip up the stairs, and he fumbled at the lock. The phone kept ringing.

  It was always late when Rad got back home. This last week he hadn't seen any daylight. What was that thing you needed the sun for? Photo-whatsit? Vitamin something-or-other? Or was that plants? Huh. He was feeling pretty green himself. He needed light.

  The door opened and the phone stopped, and Rad swore again, even louder this time. He slid his hat off the back of his head and tossed it like a discus onto his desk. Sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep. He glanced at the handsome grandfather clock in the corner, his pride and joy and the only thing that Claudia had let him take without any argument, but he couldn't work out which day of the week the time it showed belonged to.

  There were a hundred questions running in his head. About Captain Carson and his peculiar manservant, about the underwater equipment and the ironclad. He wasn't sure who he could ask. Kane was up to his neck in it too, and now, for the first time in all the years that he'd known the young reporter, he was beginning to have doubts about whether he could trust him. Rad didn't like the feeling.

  No, he was just tired. He needed sleep. Being upset with someone, a close and trusted friend, was a sign of sleep deprivation. That was all.

  But still. How much did Kane know? And Carson's photos. Tall hills, jagged shards of a uniformly white material, the airship hovering over water. Rad wanted to ask the Captain about that. Or... maybe not. He waved a hand to nobody, dismissing the idea for now. Sleep. He closed the front door behind him, and headed for his adjoining one-room apartment.

  The phone sprang into life suddenly. Rad froze, heart beating, then shook his head and darted for the desk. He grabbed the phone and leaned over the desk on one elbow. It wasn't comfortable, but then until he got his forty, nothing would be.

  "Hello?"

  The line crackled. It was bad, very bad. Rad thought of Katherine Kopek and what on Earth he'd have to tell her if she was on the other end of the line. My dear Ms Kopek, he rehearsed in his head. Your lover is dead and smashed to a pulp and we hid her behind a dumpster in an alley. Don't worry, we paid a corrupt cop to take her away before the rats got to her. Say, can you advance me another check?

  The seconds fizzed away in Rad's ear, until he heard a breath being taken from somewhere very, very far away.

  "Mr Bradley?" It was a man, and not a voice Rad recognised, although he couldn't really tell, the line was so bad. The accent was familiar though. It was strange, different from how everyone else spoke.

  "Rad Bradley, private detective." He paused. "Who is this?"

  The voice took another breath and made a sound that, if the line had been clear, Rad supposed might have been an "Ah!" of success.

  "Mr Bradley, we have been trying to get hold of you for quite some time. And time is something that, due to our respective circumstances, we have a great deal of difficulty controlling."

  Rad tapped the top of the desk and then stood up. He knew the voice now, despite the bad line. Deep, melodious, with a slow, clipped accent.

  "Captain Carson?"

  There was a tutting sound which could have been the phone or could have been the caller.

  "My name is Nimrod. We haven't met, although I think you know two of my employees."

  Rad curled around the desk and slumped into his chair. "
Sonovabitch
. Those goons were yours? You got a lot of nerve." He took a deep breath. "So what is this? The threatening call? The 'back off or the girl gets hurt' warning? The 'don't mess with the big boys' spiel? Standard fare in my game, Nimrod." Rad paused. "What kind of a name is Nimrod, anyway?"

  The tutting came again, and Rad realised it was Nimrod's laugh, distorted by the appalling quality of the phone line.

  "Mr Bradley, this call is indeed a warning, although not of the kind you are used to. Tell me, what do you know of nineteen fifty?"

  Rad sat up and his eyebrows kept travelling. He stared into the empty middle distance of his cold office, remembering his encounter in the alley with the two goons in gas masks. He shook his head.

  "If you sent your thugs to ask me that very same question, why bother calling me about it? Or why bother sending the heavies in when you could just have called?"

  "Calling you is a considerable difficulty, Mr Bradley."

  "That so?"

  "Indeed yes," Nimrod said over a pop and a crackle. His voice matched Carson's perfectly. Maybe they were related. "I would have come personally, but that is not advisable under the current circumstances."

  "That so?" Rad repeated.

  "It is, Mr Bradley. Now, I want..."

  "Oh, now look here, Mr Nimrod, or whatever you call yourself," Rad cut in swiftly. He was tired and had really had enough of mysteries, for possibly one entire lifetime. "Nineteen fifty what? Dollars in the bank? Flowers in the park? Number of times you're going to ask me what I know about nineteen fifty? It's late, I'm tired, and I don't appreciate your calling, and I certainly don't appreciate that little visit from your friends. If you have a job for me, then money talks and I'm all ears. Otherwise it's good night, I think. And don't call again."

  Rad gripped the earpiece. His blood was boiling and he didn't have time for games, but he knew well what nuggets you could pick up on the end of a phone when the other person thinks you've gone. He waited, and as the gap in the conversation grew so did the static in the earpiece, expanding to fill the void. When Nimrod spoke again, his voice cut through the background roar with surprising clarity.

  "I apologise, Mr Bradley, but we had to be sure."

  "Huh," said Rad. "Sure of what?"

  The tutting again. "That we had the right man. And it seems we did. Nineteen fifty means nothing, does it?"

  Rad let a whispered curse slip out, happy for it to be lost across the bad connection. "
Criminy
... nineteen-fifty what, Mr Nimrod?"

  The white noise grew again, but this time the voice came back quickly. "We must talk, Mr Bradley. Face to face. It will be difficult. Do you understand? Travelling to your city presents certain... problems to overcome. We will need your assistance."

  Rad pressed the earpiece against his hot ear and drew the mouthpiece up until it was almost touching his lips. Finally, someone was talking.

  "I'm listening," he said at last. "Tell me what to do."

 

 
 

 
 

RAD WAS NERVOUS, there was no doubt about it, but it was amazing the difference some hours of sleep made. And a stiff drink. He balanced the delicate teacup between thumb and forefinger, and considered maybe that Jerry's liquor was not the best breakfast beverage. But then it was already six in the evening, and dark outside, and the rain had returned, so Rad considered that maybe this was a pre-dinner drink, and therefore perfectly acceptable.

  He'd slept, and the sleep was the most glorious he'd ever had. Rad was keen on sleep. He was a fan. Not just for the addictive quality of it, the natural means of recharging and refreshing that every human being needed. He was keen on sleep because in his line of work – where days were filled with loose ends and blind alleys, and leads that go nowhere and questions that go unanswered – it
fixed
things. With the conscious mind, with all its stupid questioning and unhelpful, confusing thoughts out of the way, out for the night, it was the subconscious that took over, the
real
power behind the throne. Left alone and unbothered by the waking mind, it could spend the sleeping hours collating and crosschecking data, filing memories, analysing observations. The number of times a case had been solved, or at least progressed to an appreciable degree, thanks to nothing more than a good night's sleep, was high.

  Although on this morning – afternoon, evening, whatever – Rad had nothing. The subconscious had been busy, that much he knew, but had been unable to piece anything together that was of much use. Rad tried not to let it bother him. He had a feeling that the case of now-confirmed dead Sam Saturn was going to involve Kane and his captain friend more than it should, but Ms Kopek hadn't called in yet for an update like she said she would, so there was time still to get some answers. The case was going to be handy for paying a few bills, which was a remarkable motivator. As Rad ordered a second drink, he carefully checked the contents of his wallet. With Jerry's open slate, poverty hadn't been as good for the soul or body as Rad had hoped.