Striper Assassin (26 page)

His name is Moshe Feinberg, but he isn’t Kirkland’s “boy”, never mind what Maroni says. For all matters involving magic, Feinberg is the number one man on the Minute Man force. He holds the rank of Inspector, which puts him just one step below Deputy Chief.

Sal Maroni flashes a big grin, then rejoins his troops across the street. Kirkland waits for Feinberg to finish looking around, then walks over to meet him.

“Good morning, Kirkland.”

“Morning, Inspector. Sorry to get you up early.”

“Perhaps you will explain why I’m here.”

The reason that Feinberg, rather than one of his flunkies, is here is because the Chief of Detectives has quietly passed the word on behalf of the Commissioner that what Kirkland wants, Kirkland gets. A little matter involving mass murders, execution-style mass murders, including as victims a number of execs and secs employed by a local firm called Exotech. That’s what Kirkland’s case is about and why he’s here in Germantown this morning. In answer to Feinberg’s question, he directs the inspector’s attention across the street to the line of perps kneeling by the security vans. “I’d like you to give them a quick scan, find out what you can, then have a look at the building.”

Feinberg looks toward the perps. “Are you asking me to read them or probe them?”

“There’s a difference?”

Feinberg briefly compresses his lips, as if mildly irked by the question. As a general rule, Inspector Feinberg seems mildly irked by most questions related to magic coming from non-magical persons, including cops.

“I’ll put it to you this way,” Feinberg says. “I can read auras all day. To actually probe an individual’s psyche requires time and energy.”

“Ahh… just read them. Maybe do a quick probe on the leader.”

“Right,” Feinberg says quietly, maybe a bit sarcastically. “I trust that you recall our discussion concerning the legality of hermetically obtained information.”

“Sure, that’s no problem,” Kirkland says with a nod. As far as the courts are concerned, information magically extracted from a suspect’s mind rates just slightly better than data obtained through torture. Little problem there involving civil liberties. But not a problem here this morning because Kirkland is fairly confident that the twelve prisoners have nothing to do with his case. They’re gangers who just happen to have taken up residence in the former site of Exotech Entertainment’s Special Projects Section.

“I just want to cover the angles,” he says. “The building’s my main interest.”

Feinberg spends a moment gazing across at the building, then nods. “Let’s begin.”

By now, the prisoners are lined up on their knees facing the security vans. Standing in a semicircle facing them are eight troopers sporting assault rifles and SMGs. Feinberg steps among them, looks the prisoners over, then stands back, facing them.

“Give me some room.”

Kirkland motions to the troopers, who all move back a few steps.

Feinberg draws a small book with a deep red cover from his coat pocket. As he opens the book, something appears on the ground beside him that wasn’t there a moment before. It sits on its haunches like a dog, and is about the size of a Doberman, but that’s all it has in common with any dog Kirkland’s ever seen. The creature has a head like a hawk’s and golden-feathered wings. Its forelegs end in claws, bird claws. The rest of its body resembles a lion’s. The sum effect suggests a griffin. Kirkland once looked it up in an encyclopedia.

The general consensus is that the beast is Feinberg’s familiar, but Kirkland knows no one who’s ever had the balls to ask.

Feinberg speaks, as if reading from the book.

“In gremio legis… in hoc salus. Ex facto ius oritus. Hypotheses non jingo.”

The griffin briefly flaps its wings.

A bluish aura comes into view, surrounding the female prisoner wrapped in a blanket. The girl abruptly stiffens and lifts her face to the sky. When the aura fades, maybe a minute later, she slackens, then begins cursing viciously.

Feinberg closes his book. The griffin vanishes. One of the tac troopers gives Kirkland a look of uncertainty. Feinberg turns his back to the prisoners, then steps over to Kirkland. Together, they move a short distance away.

“They’re all members of one gang,” Feinberg says.

“The Walking Wounded.”

“Yes.”

The Walking Wounded is headquartered in London, with a few chapters in Europe and here in North America. Kirkland suspects that if the founding members could see the motley bunch in their Philly division they’d zook all over themselves, by which he means, they would vomit.

Feinberg pauses a moment, drawing a pack of Dunhill Platinum cigarettes from his jacket. Kirkland offers a light. Feinberg accepts it, then takes a drag, holding the cig between his fingertips. “The female in the blanket fancies herself a shaman. She is unskilled, poorly trained, but very strong-willed. She brought the group here. In her view, the building is colored darkly… her words not mine.”

“What does that mean? Colored darkly.”

“It means that there is something bad about the place. There is much negative energy here. I sensed it when I first arrived.”

“And that’s what attracted the gang.”

“It attracted the shaman, who brought the gang.”

Right. “She got a totem?”

“G. saxi sexus.
Gargoyles. She subscribes to the myth that gargoyles are an ancient race of intelligent beings with the ultimate aim of dominion over the Earth.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kirkland doesn’t know about gargoyle totems, but he imagines that the anti-terrorist squad would be interested in hearing more about plans to take over the Earth. “We talking enslavement or eradication?”

“In what regard?”

“You wanna take over the planet, first there’s a lot of humans you gotta do something about.”

Feinberg takes another drag off his cig. “She has thus far been unable to contact her totem of choice. Making that contact is as far as her plans extend, in so far as I could determine.”

“So the human race is safe for the moment.”

“The threat seems negligible.”

Kirkland can go along with that. But it doesn’t mean the data isn’t worth submitting, if not to the terrorist squad then to the criminal intelligence division. Big ideas usually start small, small and apparently innocuous. Hitler started as an effing corporal in the Austrian Army, for chris’ sake. Napoleon was a runt. New York’s Forty-four-Caliber Killer worked for the post office. Serial murderers are usually considered the nicest guys on the block till the truth comes out.

“Shall we look at the building now?” Feinberg says.

“Sure thing.”

Sal Maroni declares the building clear, which makes leading a guy like Inspector Feinberg—who isn’t without connections—a whole lot safer for a guy in Kirkland’s position, which right now is somewhere between the Chief Executive Officer of Minuteman Security and the board of directors of the city corporation.

He pulls out his Predator II and pushes through the left of the front double doors. The lobby is wrecked: furniture smashed, graffiti on the walls, busted glass and ceiling panels scattered around. He shoves some of the crap aside with his foot, clearing a path. Feinberg pauses in the center of the room.

“Very intense psychic interference,” he says after a moment. “We’ll have to go upstairs.”

“What’s upstairs?”

“I’ll let you know.”

Great. Kirkland finds the door to the stairs. A stench assaults his nose as he presses the door open. It isn’t as bad as a two-week-old corpse shut up in a closed apartment, for example, but it’s close. Somebody’s been using the stairwell as a lavatory. What Kirkland can see of Feinberg’s face beneath the fedora, just the lower half, shows no reaction.

At the second-floor landing, Feinberg says, “Down the hall, third door on the right.”

“You been here before, Inspector?”

“I scouted ahead from the lobby.”

“You what?”

“The focus of the disturbance is like a lighthouse on a moonless night. Unmistakable.”

“You’re talking about that negative energy.”

“Correct.”

The smell in the air doesn’t get any better in the second-floor hallway. It gets worse. Kirkland feels a faint zephyr of a breeze against his cheek and suddenly his hackles are standing on end. A subtle film of sweat slips down from under his arms. He’s clenching the grip of his Predator II without really knowing why. The place is making him antsy.

He pauses a moment, listens, glances back at Feinberg. “Hear anything?”

“There’s nothing here to threaten us,” Feinberg says.

“You sure about that?”

“Are you magically active, Kirkland?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Many people are, to a limited extent. You’re probably picking up the vibrations running through this place. They’re very intense. I assure you, there’s no danger. We’re quite alone.”

Kirkland takes the man’s word, but only as far as it goes. Right this instant, they’re alone. His gut is telling him to watch it. The nervous tension running through him probably has his blood pressure up to two hundred and ten. He takes it real slow moving up the hall. It’s a long walk to the third door on the right, and every step of the way he expects someone or something to jump out at them.

The door in question is marked Lab 3. The door is ajar. Kirkland opens it and goes through it like maybe there’s a squad of terrorists waiting inside.

Dropping into a combat crouch, he sweeps the lab with the barrel of the Predator. The “lab” looks like a battlefield: everything smashed and scorched by fire. Lots of technical equipment, recalling to Kirkland’s mind police reports on the fire that swept through the place. Nothing moves. Nobody’s here. The floor is midnight-black and it crunches under his feet as he carefully walks around, checking the place out. The stench is incredible, worse than week-old corpses, and the air feels cool, almost chilly. Kirkland pulls out his handkerchief and holds it over his nose and mouth. There’s a big cutout in one wall, like for a window, about half the length of the lab. The room beyond is just as blasted as the main room. More technical gear, smashed, shredded, scorched.

When he turns around, Feinberg is standing in the center of the floor with his book open and the griffin sitting at his left. He gives another little spiel as he did outside, in some language Kirkland’s never heard before. The griffin flaps its wings, then sits still. An hour passes. Neither Feinberg nor the griffin move. Kirkland leans back against a wall and reflects. This lab, Lab Three, is where Exotech’s Special Projects Section conjured up the wet record for their hit simsense chip
The Summoning of Abbirleth
and others. If Kirkland’s guesses are correct, the creation of that wet record is intimately related to the recent slayings of Exotech executives.

If that fragger Ohara would just get him the records he wants….

Abruptly, Kirkland realizes that the air in the lab is getting cold, more than just chilly. The stench becomes so powerful his eyes start to burn and he comes close to gagging. Voices arise, echoing, babbling, laughing madly, exclaiming, even shrieking. The cold and the stench and the maniac screams and laughs become overpowering. Kirkland staggers toward the door, coughing, almost choking on his own bile, eyes watering, ears ringing. Along the way he grabs Feinberg’s elbow, intending to pull him from this noxious, infernal atmosphere. He pulls but Feinberg doesn’t move. It’s like he’s cast in stone.

“Feinberg!…
FEINBERG
!”

Abruptly, the room is silent and cool again. The stink is tolerable, putrid but tolerable. The griffin screeches and vanishes. Feinberg slumps to the floor. Kirkland manages to grab enough of the guy to slow the descent. Before he can check for a pulse, Feinberg is awake, lifting his head, slowly sitting up. The fedora never left his head, the book never left his hand.

“You okay?” Kirkland asks.

“Physically.” Feinberg sits up, rubs a hand around to the rear of his neck, then slowly stands up. Kirkland holds the man’s upper arm until he’s sure he’s going to make it. Feinberg takes out a pack of cigarettes, his fingers shaking as Kirkland provides a light.

“There is something new to this world, Horatio,” Feinberg says quietly. “Something undreamt of in your philosophy, and which you cannot arrest.”

Kirkland pockets his lighter, wondering if Feinberg is delirious. “Come again?”

“A war was fought here, Lieutenant. A small, vicious little war. Do you know what a shadow spirit is?”

Whatever it is, Kirkland doesn’t like the sound of it. He pulls at his necktie and considers lighting a cigarette of his own. For the moment, he prefers the feel of the Predator in his hand. “Better fill me in.”

“Shadows are a form of free spirit. Darker, more menacing than the average spirit. Most are elementals or former allies, but there are other kinds. Some can be described as demonic. They revel in bloodletting and can be difficult to control. Some authorities believe that shadow spirits may be addicted to the psychic energy of humans suffering great physical or emotional torment. They have been known to ally themselves with or to enlist the aid of criminals or the insane.”