“They are horrible but I don’t think it quite calls for—hysterics.”
This amazed Ferguson. How dare she accuse him like that. “What would you say, madam, if those were engravings of real animals?”
“These are werewolves, Mr. Ferguson.”
“Doctor. And I assure you that those animals are very real. You can imagine my shock when I saw them engraved in a book of that age, when the discovery was supposed to have taken place only a few weeks ago.”
He left her to sort that one out. Too bad, too, she was a nice-looking woman, he wouldn’t have minded getting to know her. But not now. He went down to the basement cloakroom and picked up his coat. Outside it had stopped snowing and the pedestrian traffic had transformed the sidewalk into gray slush. He turned the collar of his coat up against the surging wind and walked toward Sixth Avenue. He was going to see Tom Rilker, to get his help in determining a logical forage in the city for these creatures. There must be some area where lots of homeless people congregated. Not the Bowery, it was surrounded by heavily populated areas. Rilker would have some ideas.
Then he stopped. “My God,” he thought, “those two cops have a point, what if the damn things are hunting me too?” Had they seen him with the cops last night? No way to tell. But if they had made the connection then he could be in mortal danger right now, even here in the middle of Forty-second Street.
He jammed his hands into his pockets and walked more quickly on. And he remembered the face of the nightmare in the moonlit window.
Dick Neff padded naked into the kitchen to fix himself another drink. He glanced at the kitchen clock—nearly noon. A shaft of sunlight shone in the kitchen window, as sharp and silver as a blade. First the snow had stopped and then the clouds had blown away. Now the wind moaned around the corner of the building and a bright dust of snow glittered through the sunlight. The glare hurt Dick’s eyes, and he fumbled as he fixed his third Bloody Mary.
His mind was working, turning in a haze of anguish that would not go away. Becky, shooflies, burns, sorrow. He took a long pull on the drink and went into the living room. Goddamn, he couldn’t believe what had almost happened to him, how close he had come to death. Burned and didn’t even know it. He had been moving with Andy Jakes for six months, really working in with him. Hell, the guy was the biggest dealer in the Northeast. The Goddamn biggest fuckin’ dealer. And Andy Jakes had been playing with Mr. Narcotics Cop. Jesus Christ! If he had collared Andy Jakes the shooflies would have laid off out of respect. Let it ride. But now he was just another victim of that brilliant crook’s mind.
He had been about to enter Jakes’s apartment, just heading toward the elevator when his teammates had gotten to him. Hold it, Dick, we got trouble. Bobby says the bug’s pickin’ up a lot of movement in there. Jakes’s supposed to be alone?
—Yeah, he’s alone. He’s got the stuff in there. Ten kilos, let me go.
—Not alone. Don’t go in. There’s people in there, lots of people movin’ around, not talkin’.
—Not talkin’? Shit, that must mean—
—They suspect a bug. And they suspect you. They’re waiting for you, Dick.
—Oh, shit shit shit.
And he had stopped. He had not gone in. Follow your instincts, boy. Don’t go in there. Another man might have shrugged it off and gone in. But not Dick.
And then they were off trying to get a warrant to bust the place when another call had come from the wire man. They were leaving. Christ! They had left. Surveillance followed them to Teterboro Airport, to a flight plan filed for Guadeloupe, Honduras, Brazil. Shit.
And they got the warrant and entered the apartment. So it’s empty, of course, completely empty except for the Goddamn note. A note on nice engraved stationery, just as nice as you please. “Sorry, Richard,” says the note. “I know how much of an embarrassment this will be to you. You be careful now. Cordially, Andy.”
The guys got a whoop out of that note. “Hey Richard, Andy’s some cool sonofabitch! Hey, beautiful, what a shit-heel.”
The other guys were almost happy that Dick hadn’t made his collar. Robin Hood. Sam Bass. The beautiful crook. Although there was also the other thing. Every gold shield in the division lusted after Andy Jakes and now it was open season on him again. Now other guys could take a crack, now Neff had blown it.
“Dick, you know what was waiting for you in there,” Captain Fogarty had said. Good old Fogarty, always looking on the bright side. “A Goddamn arsenal. Wires says six or seven people were in there creepin’ around as silent as cats. Waiting for you, Dick. Blown you away. I doubt if we’d ever laid eyes on you again, old buddy.”
Maybe that would have been better. Because another captain, Captain Lesser of the Internal Affairs Division, was closing in on Dick Neff. Another job blown. Somehow or other IAD had gotten wind of Dick’s little deal with Mort Harper. What the hell was it anyway, a nice clean gambling establishment. The best clientele, even the fuckin’ DA was there once. The fuckin’ DA playing blackjack and lovin’ it. Mort was protected! But he had put the finger on Neff, had built up his City Hall connections to the point that he didn’t need Neff’s silence anymore. “Hey, Mr. DA, y’know I got this monkey on my back, a little shit shakin’ me down—”
“What the hell, this is a decent place.” Movie stars. Politicians. Stockbrokers. Marble bar. Crushed-velvet carpets. Honest tables.
“Takin’ out a grand a month, Mr. DA.”
“Oh stop singin’, Morty, I’ll take care of it.”
Oh, Morty was beautiful too. Smarter than Dick Neff. Everybody was smarter than Dick Neff. Even the shoofly Captain with his funny questions. “How many bank accounts you got? Your wife? Fine, could we see your income tax returns? Just routine. Somebody turned up a little dirt, Dick. Nothing really. Just routine. I got to go through the motions is all.”
Go through the motions like hell! Dick Neff was due for a Board. Early retirement—hell, he’d be lucky to stay out of Attica! “You have a right to remain silent. You have a right to an attorney.”
Silent, damn right. An attorney, damn right. He swallowed the last of the Bloody Mary and went to the sliding doors, looked out on the bright snow that covered the balcony.
And what he saw there made him gape. Pawprints as nice and clear as you please. He stared at them confused and disbelieving. Pawprints? And on the glass door a smear of another print. He squatted down and examined it. It could just be… a smeared pawprint… where something had tried the door. These prints must have been laid in the early morning after the snow had stopped. Shit, Becky wasn’t imagining things after all. These damn prints were real. No way to deny it, and they didn’t belong here.
He felt suddenly exposed in his nakedness and returned to the bedroom to dress. He shook his head, physically trying to shake out the welter of thoughts that clamored for attention. Dressing automatically, he fought for clarity. Those two crazies were right then? That scabrous old shitkicker Wilson wasn’t senile after all. It seemed impossible, a trivial detail suddenly expanded to fill his whole consciousness with its importance. If she was in danger! If she was in danger and he didn’t help her he would kill himself. That was the size of it, he would take out his Goddamn .38 and put the barrel in his mouth and pull the Goddamn trigger. Let the department face that one.
He put on a conservative suit and brushed down his hair until he looked reasonably presentable. He had to get that Starlight camera out of Yablonski in the Photo Unit. He had to look the part. Would the good news about Dick Neff have traveled as far as Yablonski? Probably not. Just routine, gimme the camera. Orders? Shit, c’mon man, I got to use this thing tonight. Easy. Peaches.
He left the apartment, then returned. As soon as he had gotten into the hall he had felt the absence of his pistol. Like he wasn’t wearing underpants or something. The gun. He dropped off his overcoat and his jacket and pulled the holster containing the .32 out of his bureau drawer. The larger .38 he left behind. This pistol fitted neatly into a holster nestled in the small of his back, easy to get to, hard to spot. You weren’t too comfortable when you sat down in a hard chair but other than that the small of the back was a beautiful hiding place for a weapon.