CHAPTER NINE
Eighteen hours later, in a Humvee—in the Arctic.
“It was under the permafrost,” Dr. Helman said simply. “But the permafrost melted—you know, global warming.” He emphasized global warming wearily. He was up front, beside the driver. That was Morris, the contract engineer, a round-faced Inuit in brown coveralls, sleeves rolled. Morris had a master's in archaeological engineering from the University of Toronto. It seemed to Loraine, when she watched him driving bumpily along, that the Eskimo engineer was having to work at not laughing at them.
Loraine sat behind Helman next to a young U.S. marine holding a carbine across his lap. The marine's expression, she thought, was a clear question: What the hell am I doing here?
I don't know much more than he does, Loraine thought. What was she doing here, in the Arctic, almost within spitting distance of the magnetic north pole?
She thought about asking them to open the Humvee's windows—the smell of everyone's insect repellent, deployed against the notorious arctic mosquitoes, was sickeningly strong. Her own repellent itched under the collar of her work shirt and at the cuffs of her heavy general-issue military trousers. The bumpy ride didn't help.
The Humvee bumped and fishtailed over the twisty dirt road, between rolling hills covered with low green and purple scrub. To the northwest, the sea off Ellesmere Island was startlingly blue, the kind of nearly black blueness you got when you dumped india ink in water; ice floes littered the horizon like broken Styrofoam.
She looked south, up the lower slopes of Mount Eugene, multicolored and green with lichen and short grasses; up higher, granite outcroppings glittered with ice. “It's on this mountain somewhere?” she asked.
“The dig site, yes, it is,” Morris said, nodding, though she'd been talking to Dr. Helman. “Yuh, but not far up it; it's just around the curve a dozen klicks, ay? Was under a glacier but she melted away. Biggest mountain on the United States Range, this one, but we won't be going high up. Just above the lake, there. Still in Quttinirpaaq Park.”
“You're keeping the park tourists out, Morris?” Helman asked.
Morris looked surprised. “Tourists? We never had many, almost none now, with the seas rising up, ay? You people south heat up the world, and...” He shook his head, knowing better than to risk his paycheck grousing over what couldn't be helped now. “Even the Inuit only come here a few times a year. Ritual ground is underwater, we had to make a new holy place on the slopes above!” After a moment, as he jerked the wheel to fishtail around a curve, he remembered to add, “But if we see any tourists, we'll keep them away from the site. With most of the wildlife gone these days, people mostly came to see where Peary had his camp, and that's all underwater now.”
“The whole island will need to be thoroughly secured,” Helman said, looking at Loraine in the rearview mirror.
She nodded, because he seemed to expect some response.
They jounced on again for another two miles, following the beveled outline of the mountain, finally coming out of its shadow into eye-bashing sunlight, some of it reflected brightly off a translucent-blue lake a quarter mile below. The lake looked to Loraine like a piece of smirched glass set into a hollow of the mountain, one end streaked with newly disturbed red and brown clay. The cause of the streaky murk was the dig site above the lake, a compound of concrete bunkers encircled by earthworks and hurricane fences topped by antipersonnel wire that glittered with a just-installed brightness.
The road descended two switchback curves, and a few minutes later they passed through the gate in the fence and pulled up in the graveled area near the bunkers. They climbed gratefully out of the Humvee, blinking in the pale sunlight. Arctic mosquitoes dove at them, some of them looking big as dragonflies.
“You put on the insect repellent, I hope, ay?” Morris said to her. “They'll take a bite out of you, fer sure. I use a seal-fat grease but I didn't bring any for you.”
It was a little too warm, even for summer in the Arctic. Loraine felt sweat break out on her forehead and, at the same moment, became aware of hungry stares from the two young marines who'd let them in the front gate.
How long have those wen been stationed here without a break? she wondered, walking over to the bank of dirt above the lake. She looked down at the lake about sixty feet below; terns circled over it, squawking, their bodies perfectly reflected in the glassy water.
“Right this way, Loraine,” said Dr. Helman. “We'll head directly to the dig.” He turned toward the marine who'd accompanied them. “Oh—Corporal? We're inside the compound, all is quite secure.
You can go into the...what do you call the cafeteria here? Get yourself some coffee or...whatever you like.”
The jug-eared marine nodded briskly. Taking a break was something he understood. “Yes, sir.”
When he'd gone, Helman murmured to her, “We'll soon transfer the marines out—we'll have only our own elite black berets here.”
Loraine followed Helman and Morris over to the dig site, a shallow pit between the bunkerlike buildings and the drop-off to the lake. Morris talking proudly about the retaining walls, how the archaeologists asked his advice, couldn't get along without him. Not at all snooty, that Dr. Pierce, but that Dr. Koeffel, now, he was a bit of a...
They descended a dirt path. Loraine looked down at the dig, estimated it was about a hundred feet across, the artifact just seven feet below the surrounding surface. Just above the dig was a flattened-out dirt terrace supporting four tents. A man in long sleeves and straw sun hat sat at a table in front of the largest tent, looking into a microscope. “That's Dr. Pierce over there, at the microscope,” Helman said. “Koeffel is probably in one of the tents poring over the diagrams. Difficult sometimes to drag him away from them.”
She only just glanced at the man across the pit; she was drawn to gaze raptly down at the artifact.
“It's been there over three hundred years,” Helman was saying. “Using the documents, and other indications, we estimate it was placed here in the year 1709.”
The artifact looked to her almost like a miniature Chinese pagoda, undecorated and composed of metal. It seemed made of brass—or was that copper? Could it be copper and still have new-copper sheen, after all this time?
“Did you polish it?”
“No!” Helman seemed delighted with the question. “It looks it though, yes? When I first saw it, I thought it must be a hoax, it can't be ancient, looking like that. But it is.”
“How'd they get down through the permafrost, when they buried it here?” she asked, as they trudged closer to the artifact, a little ahead of Morris.
“An intelligent question,” Helman said, patronizing as always. “We've found charcoal in the dig, and the broken heads of iron picks. We believe they brought fuel, melted the frost a layer at a time, used a work gang to dig down a ways, then melted the permafrost some more—quite an elaborate process, with a large crew. There are indications that the crew never made it back. There are bones under rocks in a gulley, nearby. We think they were killed to keep them quiet.”
She winced at that. To cross half a world, only to be murdered in this barren place—so far from home. “The artifact...it's not very big,” Loraine remarked, as they took a switchback on the path, ever closer.
“And what I did, you see,” Morris interposed rather loudly, “was I used a particular tool that moves dirt but at the same time never really risks the artifact. It's very precise—” “Morris!” Helman interrupted, coming to a stop and turning to him. The engineer seemed startled. “Yuh?”
“That'll be enough—why don't you go consult with Dr. Pierce on the other side of the site. I understand he wants to set up some kind of weather shelter for the artifact.”
“A weather shelter for the...Yuh, okay, I was just...” Morris stumped off toward the tents, muttering, shaking his head.
Helman gestured for Loraine to follow him, and they descended another loop in the path till they stood just thirty feet above the artifact on a graveled embankment. Helman made a gesture taking in the dig. “There was a nice pocket of clay and primeval sand here, so they didn't have to cut into the stone of the mountain. They wanted the artifact buried, and they wanted it up on the mountain, and they wanted this side of the mountain—the artifact had to be within a certain distance of the magnetic north pole.”
“But the magnetic north pole shifts around over time, doesn't it?” Loraine asked, staring at the object. Aware of her heart thumping; a thick feeling in her throat, like a difficulty swallowing. And another sensation—a feeling of loss. As if she'd just been cut off from something she hadn't known she was connected to. Things around her seemed unreal; missing some sheen of life that had been thenar before.
“The magnetic north pole does indeed shift a certain amount, yes, very good, Loraine,” Helman said, with his bobblehead nod. “But the magnetic pole stays within a certain elliptical zone, up here, otherwise compasses would never have been of much use, eh? You see?”
“The artifact is only four feet high?”
“Oh, that's just the top of it. We think its center column goes down another thirty-eight feet! It's shaped rather like a wand, with a ziggurat-style top. They probably brought it here in sections.” “How did you know it was here?”
“Newton's Cryptojournal, partly. We'd already known there was something anomalous going on in the area—satellite readings of magnetic fields, the unusual charged particles coming up out of the ground here. I'll tell you what has Dr. Koeffel excited, Loraine. Shall I tell you?”
Hadn't he just said he would? “Sure. Please.” She swiped at a mosquito buzzing too close to her eyes. That odd feeling of disconnection nudged her again. And another feeling like a hand pressing heavily on top of her head.
“Metal analysis suggests that the core of the artifact is from a much earlier era. Perhaps as far back as thirteen thousand years ago. Yes, the Lodge had found a more ancient artifact than what you see here—an artifact within the artifact. And that most ancient artifact is within this shell. Koeffel sneers, 'Some would call it Atlantean.' He doesn't want to admit that it is from Atlantis. If it wasn't from Atlantis—what civilization was it? There are no markings of known pre-Columbian societies on it. Nothing Native American or First Nations. Nothing Chinese. Nothing Viking. The object is too internally sophisticated for those cultures. No, nor could Newton's Lodge build it, except for some
detailing. No. All he did was repair it, set it up.... And clearly it's Earth-make—not from some...” Helman gestured toward the sky. “You know. Aliens.” He chuckled. “No.” “So Isaac Newton brought it here? Personally?”
“Not personally—but he was involved. His people brought it here from Norway, in the early 1700s. Newton—and a faction of the original Rosicrucians, the Lodge of Ten. They learned about it through a series of Sarmoung scrolls found in Athens—which directed them to a remote site in Norway. Magnetic north shifts from time to time, and it had drifted from Norway. There were dark things afoot in the world, in Newton's time—and they thought that if they could repair this artifact, activate it once more, it would protect them. Protect all of humanity, yes? So they brought it here, set it up, and activated it...and as a direct result, nearly all magic receded from the world! The artifact you see before you radically changed human history. It's one of the keys to history—and yet it's unknown to all but a handful of historians! Who are not permitted to speak of it.”
“And...it's still working? As a device?”
“It is what creates the 'dam'—the wall in the north, as the ShadowComms say. Yes, it is still working. And thank God for that. It is all that stands between humanity and chaos. It is the great magic-suppressor. The small ones we have at Central Containment are based on it. We've learned to amplify its signal, to intensify it in a small way—though we don't entirely understand it. There are particles emitted by the device we can barely detect and certainly can't quite identify.”
“If it's a working machine—what powers it?”
“It appears to take power from the fluctuation of the earth's magnetic field. The artifact transmits its suppression signal uniformly over the world, from here. It uses the magnetic field of the planet as a kind of carrier wave. It continues to put out its signal—but...lately, that signal is going out erratically. It is faltering—more. Has been erratic, we suspect, for thirty years. This has created some interesting effects, which we have taken advantage of. But it also creates a great danger—” Helman broke off to slap at a mosquito.
“Faltering more lately—because it was exposed by the dig?”
“That doesn't seem to have affected it—just made it possible for us to get a good look. We assume simple corrosion is reducing its output. We must know—we're trying, working feverishly to understand the artifact without taking it apart. So that we can repair it. Because if it stops working entirely...” He took a deep breath. “If it stops working, it just might be that the human world will spini° out of control.”
She looked at him, startled. “You're just...guessing that. It couldn't be that bad.”
“It's a calculated guess. Newton, and the ancients before him—they knew what they were doing! Newton and the Lodge of Ten discovered that a shift in the poles of the earth would open it up to new planetary influences...magic would flood over the earth! Civilization would have descended into chaos! But... there is a use for magic. If properly controlled.” Helman looked at the sky. “The air out here is really quite bracing. Strange smells.” He looked at her, pursing his lips. “Can you feel the energy from the artifact, by the way? Some can.”
“I think so. I do feel...something out of the ordinary. I'm not such an intuitive person, but...” She shook her head, unable to express it.
“You're sensing Newton's Wall of Force itself! We wanted you to get a sense of the”—he waved a hand at the artifact—”the importance of what's going on here. The mission of the Lodge of Ten goes on: the suppression of those forces that cripple science, or at least challenge it; forces that threaten to overwhelm reason with the chaos of the so-called supernatural. The mission that made the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason possible. You have an important role to play. You're to be our interface person, our liaison. A bit later. For now, I wanted you to look at this artifact and feel the awe, the sense of /ju/posethat...” Helman broke off, seeing Koeffel striding urgently toward them: a shaggy-haired, hyper-energetic man in a dirty white shirt, thick, dusty glasses. He waved a small archaeological brush, scowling. “Oh, I say, Helman! I want a word with you!”
“Koeffel is coming,” Helman said, half whispering to Loraine. “Do not speak of this to him. He knows some things, but...very little about CCA. He is almost useless to us now. We're going into a critical new stage of the process.”
But her mind was spinning around what he'd said a few moments before. ''You're to be our interface person. Our liaison. “
What had he meant by that?
And before that...
“If it stops working, it just wight be that the huwan world will spin out of control. “ w Quite suddenly, as Dr. Helman walked away from her to intercept Koeffel, she wanted badly to leave this place.
***
THAT SAME DAY, BUT far to the south. A park, late afternoon, in Brooklyn.
Bleak and Cronin walking along the path. Muddy was running along ahead of them, barking at a maple tree full of chirping blackbirds.
It was funny, Bleak thought, how small city parks were all pretty much the same, with a few old trees and a worn-out baseball field and whatever the fashion in playground climbing toys was—but you didn't feel “I've seen too many of those parks” the way you did about Starbucks or McDonald's. Each one had its own life; its own markings, like an old man's face. Like Cronin's face.
“I sometimes say, 'Ach, this boy is crazy,' to you, Gabriel, but I know what you see is real,” Cronin said softly.
Muddy was crouched under the maple tree barking at the birds; hundreds of them sang dissonantly in the tree, some perennial blackbird ritual.
“They used to do that sort of thing, those birds, gathering that way to sing together, in the spring, but nature is all confused now,” Cronin said, shading his eyes to look up.
“The time may come,” Bleak said, “when I have to tell you more about that world—about the Hidden.” As he said “the Hidden,” Muddy's barking persistence finally dislodged the birds from the tree, so that the whole black flock wheeled around the park, chirping wildly as it went, before returning, taking up their perches on the maple's branches again.
Cronin chuckled sadly and shook his head. “Soon enough, I'll know all about it. I'm old, and not feeling like I hold to this world too well. People think they would want to live forever, but old age helps give us some... some appreciation of death.”
Bleak looked at him. “Are you sick? I mean...is something...?”
Cronin shrugged. “Nothing special.”
Bleak suspected Cronin had chosen those words carefully. Nothing special. It wasn't exactly lying.
“Why,” Cronin asked, “do you have to tell me more about this Hidden of yours?”
Bleak sighed. “There are things happening—a new opening in the north. Things coming through. Danger coming down. Me, I seem to be right in the middle of it, though I don't know why. And it i could affect you. And—something else. A man told me my brother might be alive.”
Cronin looked at him with arched brows. “Vut is dis?” His accent reappearing in his startlement.
“He might be a kind of permanent guest of the government. And I don't mean prison. Not exactly.”
“I see. I thoughtyou were upset.” Cronin was articulating his English carefully now. “You seemed worried. You know—I think you sometimes try too hard to hide from that hidden world. You use it—but then you turn your back on it.”
Bleak looked at him in surprise. How did Cronin know that? He'd never talked about it that much with him. But he was a shrewd old man.
“But when you get closer to that hidden world—as an old man does”—Cronin shrugged—”you see that things in this world mean less, because they are so temporary. The suffering here is bad, people got to try to help. But to take it too seriously? No. Because this is just between then and there. The Hidden, what you call it—that is just where the ghosts live for a while. You said that once, yes? It's not...what would you say...beyond time?”
“No. It's kind of between time and eternity. It's where this world and the next one overlap, I guess. It stores up life energy—seems like it encourages life to find its way out of matter. The more life there is, the more it can encourage.” Bleak shrugged, a little embarrassed at explaining anything to Cronin, who was in many ways far more wise. “That's the impression I always got.” Though he'd never again managed to contact the being he'd thought of as Mike the Talking Light, he had spoken to lesser spirits, cogent enough to talk, including one that claimed to be the magician Eliphas Levi. And they had told him some things. “But it's also a kind of warehouse for spirits that aren't sorted out.”
“So, for them, this thing, the Hidden, is a waiting room. There is great power there, but it is still a waiting room. The real thing, the eternal thing, is what is beyond your Hidden. Think on that eternal thing, Gabe, and you will find the strength to fight anything in this world with so much yetzer ra. That is what kept us going in the camps. That, and one another. But always: this too shall pass. You read t\m Greeks—what is it Hera*us says, about the river—you cannot step into the same one twice. It always changes and flows, Gabe. That makes me thirsty, saying that! Now—shall we get a glass of beer? Enough with the chutzpadik from me, talking about such things. I know a bar where they will let Muddy come in. Their beer is not as good as mine, but it is still beer.... Do you know, I've been arguing with Lev about beer, he says some is kosher, I say it is all kosher—I don't want to shock him by telling him I am not so concerned with kosher—but he says barley, if it has barley, and I say...”
***
THE FOLLOWING MORNING. In a hotel in lower Manhattan.
Bleak lay in bed, in the small room, not quite awake but aware that he was dreaming. And Isaac Preiss, Cronin's son, was speaking to him. Isaac, who had been killed.
In the dream they were walking a patrol together, down a yellow-dirt track between rows of low clay and stone houses, both wearing Kevlar under their Rangers jackets. They were in a small town in Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. Isaac was a compact, dark-eyed man with heavy black brows and, usually, a taut, ironic smile—a smile that Bleak later saw in Cronin. Sergeant Bleak was carrying an M4 carbine assault rifle with grenade launcher; Lieutenant Preiss was carrying an M16A2 5.56 mm rifle: lightweight, air-cooled, gas-operated, magazine fed—simple. A desert-yellow LAV-25 trundled along ahead of them, about fifty feet, the gunner swiveling his M242 25 mm chain MG, and Bleak was thinking that it might be better if the vehicle dropped back to provide more cover, intel had Taliban operating within five miles.
It was a cold day, almost sunless, and when you did see the sun, it was a white, heatless orb screened through cloud. The place smelled of stock animals, a smell that Isaac disliked. But Bleak liked it. He'd made friends with a mule owned by a friendly.
Four other Rangers were on patrol, about thirty yards behind. Isaac outranked Bleak but he liked to walk with him, and talk. Mostly it was Isaac who talked, of his father, his cousin—a pretty girl he thought would be good for Bleak to meet, when they were back in the States—and how what had happened to his dad's family had led him to read about World War II as a kid, which led to his i thinking about a military career, which led to this. “And what did my dad want me to do? A German Jew, what do you think? He wanted me to study the arts, or be a doctor, one of the two. My mother was horrified, I can tell you, when I joined. My dad understood better, but...And you know, the funny thing is, I think I'd have been happier as a doctor. My mother was right. I can't stand it when my mother is right about something, God bless her yenta soul.”
Bleak sensed someone watching him, a little behind and to the right, from a small window. He knew it was a man. The man wasn't a friendly, but that didn't mean he was Taliban.
He looked from the man's point of view, seeing himself walking along, about forty feet away, with Isaac—and he didn't see a gun sight or crosshairs in the point of view. Which was encouraging
but didn't prove anything. He switched back to his own point of view and thought, Still, this'd be a good place for an ambush.
“That's right,” Isaac said, with that dry chuckle of his, “it's the same place the ambush happened. You're reliving it—the part that happens about three minutes before the ambush. Us walking along talking. But I'm changing the conversation. The ambush, see, is what your mind returns to first, when you think about me-and so here we are.”
“I'll tell the others, we'll spread out, Isaac—”
“Gabe, you're not listening—this is a dream. You can't stop the ambush. It happened years ago. You've been tormenting yourself because your gifts enabled you to see behind you, to create fields around you to divert shrapnel from the mortar—”
“That's right, that's it, I remember now, they're going to mortar us. Isaac, we have to call the armor back, we have to—”
Isaac dropped his left hand from his weapon, held it loosely in his other hand. “You see, I'm not even fire-ready, here.” He put his hand on Bleak's shoulder. His touch felt real, not like a dream. “It's all right. It's just a dream. Maybe this dream is confusing—but I tried some other ways to contact you, couldn't get through. Trying to call you back, really. You keep calling me to the world of time.”
“I'm sorry...” Bleak felt as if he might start sobbing. Isaac was dead. He didn't want to start i sobbing in front of Isaac and the men. “I didn't mean to draw you back.”
“Don't worry about it. You're not doing it consciously.”
“What's it like, after...1 mean—I can see into it. But I can't feel what it's like.”
“Can't describe it to someone in the temporal world. It's...being outside of time. It's much better outside time, Gabriel, believe me. Here in the stream of time, it's like I have to try to dog-paddle in quicksand, to keep my head up.”
“Is it really you? Or a 'dream you,' Isaac?”
“It shouldn't be me? Look, it's me, here I am. We only got about a minute before the ambush and I can't stay here in your dream long. I got to get to the point! First, Gabriel, stop blaming yourself...for being yourself. You were issued your gifts by the supreme being, so keep them oiled and use them when under fire. Second, tell my dad I'm okay. He's gotten so he doesn't doubt you anymore, he's ready to listen. Third, I'm not permitted to tell you certain things directly, because you might misunderstand and go the wrong direction...but I can tell you that your friend is your enemy and your enemy is your friend and love is part of the whole mixture.”
“Do you know anything about my brother? What's going on, Isaac? Is he alive? Why are they—”
“Listen—yeah, he's alive, and that was the fourth point, you are in way over your head. There's a thing whose name I don't even want to mention. It's broken through, and your brother is—oh, shit, I took too long, there's no time—or there's too much time—I can't hang on, Gabe—”
A familiar whine, a whistle, warning yells from behind, and Bleak instinctively reached out with his energy field, formed a shield just in time—then the mortar struck and the shrapnel that would have hit an ordinary man spun past him, but he still caught a lot of the shock wave and was thrown against the back wall of the nearest house, bounced to fall on his right side, lying on the ground with his head ringing, and heard the familiar deep-toned chatter of a Kalashnikov. He looked up and saw Isaac, Cronin's son, spinning around, the Kevlar holding, but shrapnel had sliced right through his neck, releasing a jet of dark red. Bleak forced himself to stand, glimpsed bits of Isaac's spine... caught the smell of his blood...
“Isaac!”
Bleak sat bolt upright, shaking, shouting the name of Cronin's son.
And was back in the hotel room. Fully awake now. Glad to be away from that place. Relieved. And ashamed of the relief. All but one other guy in the foot patrol died that day, killed by mortar strikes and small-arms fire.
Bleak had caught a mujahadeen running with a Kalashnikov—and Bleak shot him dead, no hesitation. Shouting about Isaac, though this man hadn't likely killed Isaac himself, he had no mortar. Bleak had started to walk away. Then someone ran from the nearest house, running up to the dead man, yelling in grief and firing a carbine wildly, one bullet creasing Bleak's side. And Bleak had shot him down too—right through the head. And a moment later he realized the second one was a teenager, probably the dead man's son.
And Bleak had felt ashamed...that he felt nothing much about killing the kid.
Then he'd just turned away and headed through the dirt alley, tried to catch the mortarman—and never found him. The LAV-25 found two other Taliban sniping on a roof and shot them to pieces. The house with them.
Bleak had found what was left of his men—three of them ripped up by a direct mortar hit. Mostly just lumps of oozing flesh.
Get up, he ordered himself. Get the hell out of bed and do something else. And do not have a drink. Don't go back to starting the day drinking.
Hands still shaking, Bleak got dressed, drank metallic-tasting water from the tap, and went down to buy a street phone.
They were stolen cell phones, usually. But no one would know to listen in to him, on that line, if he used a random cell phone, and he needed to make some calls. He had to earn money. He had to keep busy.
Drinking Turkish coffee at a table near the window, in Ata-turk's Coffee Shop on the corner of Avenue B, eating a gooey baklava, blinking in the morning sunlight coming through the flyspecked window...Bleak tried to remember the dream. Tried to decide...
“First, stop blaming yourself for being yourself. You were issued your gifts by the supreme being, so keep them oiled and use them when under fire. Second, tell my dad I'm okay. He's gotten so he doesn't doubt you anymore, he's ready to listen. Third, I'm not permitted to tell you certain things directly...but I can tell you that your friend is your enemy and your enemy is your friend and love is part of the whole mixture. “
Was it just himself talking to himself? Was that just dream psychology—or real advice? Or had it been, actually, Isaac Preiss?
A kind of taste, a scentless scent, a feel, went with encountering one of the spirits of the dead in this world. When he thought about it, yeah, that taste had been there. And it had all been too rational, too clearly articulated, to be like a mere dream.
So it had really been Isaac. What had he meant about his brother? About Sean?
“Hey, yo, blood, you wanta buya cell phone?”
Bleak looked up at the tall, skinny black guy in a threadbare New York Knicks fan jersey. He was twitchy, missing a front tooth, had tweak marks on his face and arms, and his eyes were going yellow. Alternating, once a second, between smiling and frowning.
Bleak surprised him by saying, “Yeah—I do wanta buy a cell phone.”
“Uh—that right? Forty dollar.”
“Ten.”
“Thirty.”
“Fifteen.”
“Twenty lowest I go.”
Bleak took a twenty out of a coat pocket, held it up with one hand, kept a grip on it, extending the empty hand. The turfy slapped a small cell phone in Bleak's palm and took the twenty. “You want anything else, chief? I can get you rocks, I can get you yella bag—”
“No, thanks, bro. This cell phone better work, though.”
“Worked a minute ago, I was using it all morning. Try it, I stay right here.”
Bleak was tempted to try it by calling Wendy. He was lonely; still feeling hollow, after the dream. He wanted the kind of comfort a woman could offer. She might still be at that number in Queens— maybe she'd digested what had happened by now. But she was probably asleep at this hour. She was a stripper, during the summer; wouldn't be up early.
A stripper with a BA in English, going for her master's. Sexy, good conversation. But he'd spooked her. She'd talked as if she was just fascinated with the supernatural, till he'd exposed her channeler as a charlatan. Wendy hadn't minded that so much, really—it was when he'd said, “You want to see something from the other world...” He'd reached into the Hidden—and infused the ghost of a little boy with enough energy that she could see it herself. That had scared her. She'd accused him of dosing her drink. They'd parted uneasily.
Should have known better...
He'd never really felt close, really close, to any woman. Intimate, yes, up to a point—but never deeply bonded. Never united. Something was always missing. Something he couldn't quite identify. Just the “it's not her, either” feeling. She was never quite the right one...as if he was comparing her to someone he'd never met.
Waste of time to call Wendy. Or any other woman. Business. He had a number written down for the Second Chance Bail Bonds outfit that had offered him work. If he was careful, maybe he could get paid without the CCA tracing him. The hot cell phone was the first step.
“You gonna try that phone? I got to go.” The turfy was fingering the twenty.
“Hold on. Gonna test it.” Bleak called Cronin. The phone was ringing. “Yeah, seems to be working, see you later.”
“Hey, yo, blood, you sure you don't want—”
“I'm sure. I don't want to end up selling stolen cell phones on f*cking Avenue B, man. Now do yourself a favor and f*ck off.” And Bleak gave the guy a look that drove him out the door. “7a, hello?”
“Cronin? It's me. On a phone that should be...never mind. You okay? How's Muddy?”
“We're okay. Big thing, you contacting me two days in a row. So? There's something? I'm an old man, I got to pee every two seconds. Can't stay on this phone.”
“I won't keep you, I just...” Should he really tell him about Isaac? “I wanted to tell you this in person but...I don't think I should come around now, until all this...stuff...is cleared up.”
“Tell me what, Gabe?”
“That...I had a dream about Isaac. He said to tell you he was okay.” A long silence. “Ja. Well. A dream is a dream.” “Not all dreams are just dreams,” Bleak said gently. “Well. Maybe. I got to...You're sure? That it was him?” “I really am. I'm sure.”
“You don't try to make a fool of an old man?” “You think I would?”
“No. Maybe it was a dream, maybe not. But, Gabe—thank you. I know, you maybe don't feel i sure you should tell me this. But it's a mitzvah, what you try to do. It's a mitzvah that you try.”
“I'll let you go. Give Muddy a hug for me.” Bleak cut the connection—and hoped he'd done the right thing.
He got the paper from his pocket and called the bail bonds company. And wondered if calling them was the stupidest thing he'd done all year.
Somewhere overhead, a chopper drummed on the sky.
***
SAME DAY. NOT MUCH LATER. Sitting in a police station.
“What I get for doing you this favor?” Detective Roseland asked, leaning back in a chair, looking across his desk at Bleak.
“Get?” Bleak mugged surprise. “You owe me!”
“I do? Then maybe I'll buy you a bottle of scotch, or a call girl. Might be safer than doing informational favors for a f*cking bounty hunter.” Detective Nathan “Rosie” Roseland was about six inches taller than Bleak, a freckled, red-haired plainclothes cop with a prominent nose and small blue eyes and a quirky little mouth. And with big hands that could knock a man flat or exert a precise pressure on a trigger.
“Booze or a call girl? What if I want both?”
“It's either-or, you greedy bastard.”
“Why is it cops always want to make everything right with a bottle of booze or a hooker?” “Tends to work. A lot of guys like that superexpensive single malt now. Also we drop charges and fix tickets if you can get us a good seat at the Super Bowl.”
“I don't need to get you tickets to any-f*cking-thing. You owe me.”
“Don't keep saying that. What do I owe you for?” A small smile flickered on Roseland's face, as they went through all this. He was enjoying himself.
Bleak found that little smile reassuring. CCA didn't usually work through the cops—and he didn't think an APB was out on him. Not yet. He could tell that Roseland wasn't worried about maybe having to arrest an old friend.
Roseland went on, “I'm supposed to be grateful because you gave me that lunatic from Tonga? He almost killed me, taking him in. Shot me right above the groin, under my f*cking vest. Missed the important bits but still...it was a major drag.”
“That was a big collar for you, Rosie.”
“You couldn't get the money from the bondsman on that Tongan guy anyway, be honest.” ° “Sure I could. Eventually.”
They were sitting in Sergeant Roseland's mostly glass booth, a paper-strewn corner office, in a busy Midtown precinct. There was barely enough room for the two of them and the desk between them. Roseland had closed the door because he never knew what Bleak might say and because they'd
made some borderline shady deals before. They knew each other from the army; from boot camp, and Rangers school, and then from the VA hospital, after. Roseland had been in Kurdistan; he'd lost a foot to an IED. His new right foot was a pretty efficient microchipped prosthetic. Bleak's wounds had been light—wounds hadn't got Bleak out of the Army. Punching out a second lieutenant had done that. The son of a bitch had held back on the intel that might've saved them from that ambush. Maybe at the behest of a certain Drake Zweig.
“So is it in the backpack, there?” Roseland asked.
Bleak nodded, taking out Coster's empty rum bottle, lifting it out with an index finger inside the opening so he wouldn't smear the outside. He held it up to a table lamp. “See the print, on the rum bottle there? I think that's from the last person to handle it. Guy said his name was Coster. A skid-row lush, currently. Might have a more impressive resume somewhere in his background.”
“Could get me in trouble. And don't say 'you owe me' again. How's Preiss's dad doing?” They'd met Preiss in Rangers' training, after boot camp.
“He's not bad, Rosie. He went through Belsen in the war, as a kid. What's Brooklyn gonna do to him?”
“You'd be surprised. Okay, I'll run this.... You want to wait? Might be able to get it lifted quick if my girl Bethany's in the lab.”
Bleak waited, alone in Roseland's office. Trying not to wonder if the CCA knew about his connection to Roseland. Yeah, I got him right here. I'll stall him till you come.
Paranoia. He'd known Roseland a long time. He didn't think Rosie would play ball with the feds, not on this. Unless he'd been secretly briefed, Roseland didn't know about the CCA nor about Bleak's special abilities—even if he did, Roseland wouldn't hold it against him. He figured Rosie would give him a heads-up, some way. And the detective wasn't keeping anything from him. Bleak usually knew when someone was lying to him. He had the Hidden on his side, an all-pervasive lie detector.
He'd had mixed feelings about Coster, though. Like, the rummy was lying and he wasn't...all at once.
“I didn't kill none of them women. “ A man's voice, speaking to Bleak, coming right out of the air.
Bleak grimaced, recognizing the feeling that came with hearing a ghost. He didn't even turn around. “It's too late to do anything about it,” Bleak said, not looking. “You should move on. Head right for the big tunnel, don't pass Go, don't collect two hundred dollars, just go right into the light. It's way too late for anything else.”
“Oh, I know it's too late, pretty much, to save me in this world,” the ghost said. “Seeing as I'm dead now.”
Surprised at hearing common sense from a ghost, Bleak turned around. He could see a man standing in the glass of the office window-wall—it bisected him right down the middle. As if the front half of him were pasted to the glass. He was a chunky, balding white man with a heavy forehead, a crooked nose, a slightly disfigured jaw. U.S. army tattoo on the back of his left hand. He was wearing gray repairman's coveralls, with GREG and ALL BOROUGHS APPLIANCE REPAIRS sewn on the left breast pocket.
“Glad you can hear me,” the ghost said. His voice had lost enough of that odd, distant resonance that ghosts usually have that he sounded as if he were just another person talking. “I thought maybe you might. You have the aura of one of those talented people. Hard to find. I went to a bunch of mediums, but they were all fakes. When I find the real deal, they're always too busy to talk to me. So I was trying to get right into it, see. Get you to listen. And here we are, havin' a chin-wag.”
“Greg, is it?” Bleak knew he shouldn't be having this conversation. Someone could see him through the windows of the office, talking to no one visible. For a while he'd worn a Bluetooth earpiece, one that didn't actually work, so if he spoke to “no one” in public it looked as if he were talking on a phone. Lots of people around nowadays looked as if they were talking to imaginary people. But he'd left the Bluetooth on his boat. Still, Bleak was bored with waiting and curious about the cogency of this ghost.
“Yeah, Greg Berne,” the ghost said. “Spelled B-e-r-n-e. You see what they did to my face? Sergeant Chancel beat me up with a nightstick, busted my nose and jaw. Said I tried to jump him in the interrogation room. But it was to get me to confess. Then he bandaged me up and called in the steno lady and said, “What do you have to say now?” and he was playing with that club, kind of tossing it hand to hand, so what was I gonna do? I figured I could confess and take it back later. But it got in the papers and my wife left me, and my kids wouldn't come to see me on visitors' day. And I got real depressed—always had a hard time with depression anyway—and I hung myself in my cell. Seemed to take forever to strangle with that sheet. Thought I was going to hell, when it was over. But it was just a precinct in Midtown.”
“Sergeant Chancel, you said? I've met him,” Bleak murmured, thinking. “He's still with NYPD. Why would he do that? They're not usually like that. They're no saints, but—” Bleak shook his head. “They don't pull that rubber-hose stuff much.”
“Someone was paying him, is why. I think it was the old man of the guy who killed them ladies. See, I wasn't the only one who went to those houses where they died—there was another suspect, this kid that was doing one of those Mormon walk-around things. Out in Queens, where I had those two assignments. Should never have gone out to Queens. Should know better. Anyway, I figure he'd be going on this Mormon door-to-door, and he'd see these ladies and come back later alone. They placed him at one of the houses. So the cops questioned him. But...they focused on me.”
“How'd you get picked up?”
“See, I was in two of those houses. Where the women were killed. The company sent me to do warranty repairs on dishwashers in that neighborhood, right? I was seen out there fixin' dishwashers not that long before them ladies were strangled. Tied up and raped. The guy used a condom and they found one, but it never got to evidence. Nobody never tested my DNA or his. I had an idiot for a lawyer. Anyway I didn't know about the condom till after I was dead, I heard somebody asking abouti” it in evidence. Making ajoke or something about this thing that coulda saved my life.”
Bleak snorted. “You are one glib goddamn ghost. Mostly they're like broken records. You know, if a ghost can think for himself, it means his soul's been reincarnated in the right direction a few times. He's got some good spirit stuff going on. You'd do well in the next world. You should just move on, man.”
“But my family still thinks I murdered two women! They think I'm a pervert! I don't want my kids thinking that...1 keep trying to get someone to listen.”
“I can't help you,” Bleak said, hoping he sounded firm about it. “Not my wheelhouse, pardner. But, uh...” He shrugged. “What was the name of the other suspect?”
“Kyle Braithwaite. College student. His dad is a rich guy, big shot at some Mormon temple out in the boroughs. One of those deals got the angel with the trumpet on the roof.”
“I see you got the tattoo.”
“Infantry, late in the 'Nam. Just a kid then.”
Bleak growled to himself. Oh, hell. “I was army too. Sergeant. If I ever hear of anything that could restart the case, I'll pass it on, but honestly, man, it's not very likely, and you'd be better off if you'djust move on, outside time, and—”
He broke off when the door opened and Roseland came in, looking at him curiously. The ghost backed through the wall, waving good-bye, and was gone.
Bleak was sitting sideways to the door so he put a hand to the ear Roseland couldn't see and said, “Gotta go, talk to you soon, man.” He pretended to take a Bluetooth out and put it in his pocket.
“Sitting in my office, chattering away, doing business, probably getting into my booze,” Roseland said, sitting down and dropping a folder on the desk.
“I didn't know there was booze in here or I would've. You do the search already?”
“She was between print searches. I got her to lift it and run it right away.” He grinned. “I may not look like much but the ladies—they like me.” “Yeah? I bet you said, 'You owe me.'“
“Nah, now I owe her. And she's gonna take it outta my hide too. I know that woman.” Roseland opened the folder. “She'll drain me dry. Here's your man, name's Coster all right. Emmerich Coster. He's got clearance for all kinds of things. Seems like he was a former spook because he's got clearance for CIA and...some agency they say is so classified they don't even give its name.” He shrugged and tossed over the folder.
CCA, Bleak thought, looking over the papers, frowning. A little military service, military intelligence early on. “Marines? Guy drinks like ajarhead, all right.”
Roseland laughed. “Don't let my captain hear you say that. You notice there isn't much there about him.. just the bare essentials. Not much use to you.”
“Actually—it's what I wanted to know.”
So Coster really did have clearance. Really did have major intel background. So maybe he had been inside at CCA. And maybe Sean was really there.
“Are we even?” Roseland asked, as Bleak took the papers, folded them, stuck them in his little backpack, and stood up.
“Almost.” Bleak slung the pack over one shoulder. “I still want the scotch.”
“You f*ck!”
“Hey—you know a sarge in the department named Chancel?”
The amusement dropped out of Roseland's face. He sighed. “Yeah. A real piece of work. One of those guys who likes to stick broomsticks up people. Probably on the take too. Why?”
“You remember a case about an accused named Greg Berne? Hung himself in your holding?”
Roseland winced. “Too f*cking well. What a mess. I guess he saved the state some money though.” “Any thought he might not have been guilty?”
Roseland leaned back in his chair, looked carefully expressionless. “Maybe. Some.” “There a condom with the evidence? A used one, with semen...that was never tested?” “Not that I heard.”
“I heard there was. And it wasn't DNA-tested against the other suspect. Kid named Braithwaite.”
“You heard that? Where?”
“Uhhhh...rumor?”
“Bullshit. Who told you this?”
“I already said, Rosie. Rumor.”
“Yeah? Well, it's a cold case. And I don't need enemies. And he's dead anyway.” “It's not that cold. And if the guy that hung himself was innocent—the real a*shole is still out there. Anybody been strangled lately?”
“Nah. Come on, Gabe—what's this about?”
“Just heard something. A ghostly little rumor, pard. Talk to you later. And, Rosie—I'll buy the iss scotch.”
Bleak waved good-bye and left before Roseland could ask anymore questions. Outside, the day was getting hot. Bleak flagged down a yellow cab, took it to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Breezier there, as he walked out on the bridge. He looked down at the water, listened to children laughing as they ran past on the walkway. A cooling wind sang in the steel beams, drew sweat from his forehead.
The cell phone in his pants pocket chimed and shivered against him. He felt a sympathetic shiver —he shouldn't be getting any calls on it, right now. He answered the phone, out of sheer curiosity. “Yeah?”
“Hello?” A boy's voice, maybe a teenager, Hispanic accent. “Is Lupe there?”
“No, this is the guy who bought Lupe's phone. Probably from the guy who stole it.” “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah—I'm gonna use it a couple times real quick, and then toss it, so when you see Lupe, tell her to have it switched off. Surprising she didn't get to it yet.” “She probably thinks it's in her school locker.”
Bleak hung up, and called Shoella. She answered after one ring. “I feel that's our man Bleak calling.”
“Shoella—Coster was from the feds, all right, at least in the past.”
“You found out? I tried to find out my way, but the ancestors, everyone is blocked out on him—”
“I don't trust him. I'm gonna get out of town but I need some money. I've got ajob lined up. When I bring in the skip, I want to send the money to your account, so I can do this without the CCA being all over me. I'll get the money later. You can keep twenty percent.”
“I will handle the money for you, and I don't need your twenty percent. You sure your phone is okay?”
“Unless they've identified you.”
“No. I have used much power to keep me safe from their eyes. They cannot see me, cher darlin . You do your job, have them send the money to me—and come to me, I will give you your money. They don't know who I am.”
Bleak wasn't so sure. But he needed money. He'd take the risk.
He made his other call, to Vince at Second Chance Bail Bonds, then he dropped the phone off the Brooklyn Bridge, into the dark green water far below.