“Schoolteacher? You mean there are children down here?”
“You are naive. Many are here becausethey have children, and the evil state machine is trying to take them away and put them in foster care. They choose my world of warmth and darkness over your world of despair, scriblerian.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
The dry chuckle rose again from the hole in the cinder block. “That is you, is it not? William Smithback, scriblerian?”
“Yes, but—”
“For a journalist, you are ill read. Study Pope’s The Dunciadbefore we speak again.”
It began to dawn on Smithback that there was more to this person than he had originally supposed. “Who are you, really?” he asked. “I mean, what’s your real name?”
There was another silence. “I left that, along with everything else, upstairs,” the disembodied voice hissed. “Now I am Mephisto. Never ask me, or anyone, that question again.”
Smithback swallowed. “Sorry,” he said.
Mephisto seemed to have grown angry. His tone became sharper, cutting through the darkness. “You were brought here for a reason.”
“The Wisher murder?” asked Smithback eagerly.
“Your articles have described her, and the other corpse, as being headless. I am here to tell you that being headless is the least of it.” His voice broke into a rasping, mirthless laugh.
“What do you mean?” Smithback asked. “You know who did it?”
“They are the same that have been preying on my people,” Mephisto hissed. “The Wrinklers.”
“Wrinklers?” Smithback said. “I don’t understand—”
“Then be silent and mark me, scriblerian! I have said my community is a safe haven. And so it has always been, until one year ago. Now, we are under attack. Those who venture beyond the safe areas disappear or are murdered. Murdered in the most horrific ways. Our people have grown afraid. My runners have tried time and again to bring this matter to the police. The police!” There was an angry spitting sound, then the voice rose in pitch. “The corrupt watchdogs of a society grown morally bankrupt. To them, we are filth to be beaten and rousted. Our lives mean nothing! How many of our people have died or disappeared? Fat Boy, Hector, Dark Annie, Master Sergeant, others. But one shiny thing in silks gets her head torn off, and the entire city grows enraged!”
Smithback licked his lips. He was beginning to wonder just what information this Mephisto had. “What do you mean exactly, under attack?” he asked.
There was a silence. “From outside,” came the whispered answer at last.
“Outside?” Smithback asked. “What do you mean? Outside, meaning out here?” He looked around the blackness wildly.
“No. Outside Route 666. Outside the Blockhouse,” came the answer. “There is another place. A shunned place. Twelve months ago, rumors began to emerge, rumors that this place had become occupied. Then the killings began. Our people began disappearing. At first, we sent out search parties. Most of the victims were never found. But those we did find had their flesh eaten, their heads ripped from their bodies.”
“Wait a minute,” Smithback said. “Their flesh eaten? You mean there is a group of cannibals down here, murdering people and stealing their heads?” Perhaps Mephisto was nuts, after all. Once again, Smithback began to wonder how he would return to the surface.
“I do not appreciate the doubting tone in your voice, scriblerian,” Mephisto replied. “That is exactlywhat I mean. Tail Gunner?”
“Yes?” said a voice in Smithback’s ear. The journalist jumped to one side, neighing in surprise and fright.
“How did he get back here?” Smithback gasped.
“There are many ways through my kingdom,” came the voice of Mephisto. “And living here, in lovely darkness, our night vision becomes acute.”
Smithback swallowed. “Look,” he said, “it isn’t that I don’t believe you. I just—”
“Be silent!” Mephisto warned. “We have spoken long enough. Tail Gunner, return him to the surface.”
“But what about the reward?” Smithback asked, surprised. “Isn’t that why you brought me here?”
“Have you heard nothing I told you?” came the hiss. “Your money is useless to me. It is the safety of my people I care about. Return to your world, write your article. Tell those on the surface what I have told you. Tell them that whatever killed Pamela Wisher is also killing my people. And the killings must stop.” The disembodied voice seemed farther away now, echoing through the dark corridors beneath Smithback’s feet. “Otherwise,” he added with a fearful intensity, “we will find otherways to make our voices heard.”
“But I need—” Smithback began.
A hand closed around his elbow. “Mephisto has gone,” came the voice of Tail Gunner beside him. “I’ll take you topside.”
= 7 =
LIEUTENANT D’AGOSTA sat in his cramped, glass-sided office, fingering the cigar in his breast pocket and eyeing a stack of reports about the Humboldt Kill dive. Instead of closing one case, he now had two cases, both wide open. As usual, nobody knew nothing, nobody saw nothing. The boyfriend was prostrate with grief and useless as an eyewitness. The father was long dead. The mother was as uncommunicative and remote as an ice goddess. He frowned; the whole Pamela Wisher business felt like nitroglycerine to him.
His eye traveled from the stack of reports to the NO SMOKING sign outside his door, and the frown deepened. It and a dozen like it had gone up around the precinct station just the week before.
He slid the cigar out of his pocket and removed its plastic wrapping. No law against chewing on the thing, at any rate. He rolled it lovingly between thumb and index finger for a moment, examining the wrapper with a critical eye. Then he placed it in his mouth.
He sat for a moment, motionless. Then, with a curse, he jerked open the top drawer of his desk, hunted around until he located a kitchen match, and lit it on the sole of his shoe. He applied the flame to the end of the cigar and sat back with a sigh, listening to the faint crackle of tobacco as he drew in the smoke and bled it slowly out his nose.
The internal phone rang shrilly.
“Yes?” D’Agosta answered. Couldn’t be a complaint already. He’d just lit up.
“Lieutenant?” came the voice of the departmental secretary. “There’s a Sergeant Hayward here to see you.”
D’Agosta grunted and sat up in his chair. “Who?”
“Sergeant Hayward. Says it’s by your request.”
“I didn’t ask for any Sergeant Hayward—”
A uniformed woman appeared in the open doorway. Almost instinctively, D’Agosta took in the salient features: petite, thin, heavy breasts, jet black hair against pale skin.
“Lieutenant D’Agosta?” she asked.
D’Agosta couldn’t believe such a deep contralto could come from such a small frame. “Take a seat,” he said, and watched as the Sergeant settled herself in a chair. She seemed to be unconscious of anything irregular, as if it was standard procedure for a sergeant to burst in on a superior anytime he—or she—felt like it.
“I don’t recall asking for you, Sergeant,” D’Agosta finally said.
“You didn’t,” Hayward answered. “But I knew you’d want to see me anyway.”
D’Agosta sat back, drawing slowly on his cigar. He’d let the Sergeant say her piece, then chew her out. D’Agosta wasn’t a stickler for process, but approaching a senior officer like this was way out of line. He wondered if perhaps one of his men had come on to her in some filing room or something. Just what he needed, a sexual harassment suit on his hands.
“Those corpses you found in the Cloaca,” Hayward began.
“What about them?” D’Agosta snapped, suddenly suspicious. A security lid was supposed to be clamped down over the details of that business.
“Before the merger, I used to be with the Transit Police.” Hayward nodded, as if that explained everything. “I still do the West Side duty, clearing the homeless out of Penn Station, Hell’s Kitchen, the railyards, under the—”