Recall Night, page 8
part #2 of An Eli Carver Supernatural Thriller Series
Turns out Inner Vision is a new age shop. Sells incense and tie-dye and all that crap. So maybe Sal was answering about Papa Night, not Andretti. Then again, maybe it’s an Andretti business front. And maybe it also belongs to Night. I guess there’s only one way to find out.
Maplewood is a nice suburb, all leafy green streets and smart, two-story detached houses. It’s not too busy with traffic, the shops and businesses are small and neat, nestled in between the homes on their squares of manicured lawn. Some of these houses must be worth big money, the place looks affluent to me. Then again, I’m no investor. Regardless, when I find Inner Vision, I’m surprised. It’s a double storefront, two big plate glass windows either side of an ornate door with ironwork in strange patterns over the glass.
It’s two stories high, the upper floor looks like apartments of some kind. A single-story building, a Peruvian restaurant, is attached on one side, and a narrow alley runs down the other. Next to the alley is another single-story building, a boutique clothing place. At the end of the alley are trees and healthy green grass, a few cars parked there. The back of Inner Vision is huge, like an old warehouse. From the street it looks sort of quaint and old-fashioned, creamy weatherboard and pointed gables above. At the back it becomes quickly industrial, the walls of the warehouse brick, with no windows.
Hanging in the windows of Inner Vision are dreamcatchers and T-shirts, hemp shoulder bags and sarongs. There’s shelving with resin dragons and fairies and dolphins and skulls. The musky aroma of incense drifts out into the street. Inside, the place is jammed with row upon of row of new age paraphernalia. There’s one shelf dedicated to tarot decks, there must be over a hundred different designs. Glass cases of jewelry stand around all over, another shelf dedicated to semi-precious gemstones in all their polished colors. The woman behind the counter is a waft of diaphanous silks and fire-engine red hair, her arms jingling with a hundred bangles. Her knuckles are mountain ranges of rings, silver spiders and turquoise and quartz.
“Can I help you?” she asks, singsong and soft.
“Just taking a look around.” I smile, trying to be relaxed. I can’t do much to cover my identity in here, wearing a jacket rather than a hoodie, but I have to take that chance. There are cameras in every corner, technological eyes looking over the superstitions of the past.
“This fucking place.” Alvin sneers, crouching to look at a witch riding a broomstick in a snow globe.
“What about it?” Sly asks.
“Wall to wall bullshit!”
Sly shakes his head. He looks worried. “Don’t discount this stuff. One thing we know for certain is that we don’t know everything.”
“That doesn’t mean there really are witches and angels,” Officer Graney says.
“This shit offends God,” Dwight says, lip curled in general disgust.
“Assholes like you offend God,” Sly says.
I walk away from them, sick of their bickering. What do I expect to find here? It’s a hippy shop that may or may not be an Andretti front, but that’s it.
“Here.” Michael stands in a back corner, looking up at a poster on the wall.
It has a photo of a black man with a shaved head, his face made up in corpse paint to look like a skull. It reminds me of something I can’t place for a minute, then I remember. The Baron Samedi character from that old Bond film, Live and Let Die. He had a face like this toward the end, only the guy in this poster has far more detail in his. It looks almost uncanny, like it’s not really make-up. Maybe it’s a digital effect in post, but it looks real enough. The poster advertises private meetings with Papa Night, but it doesn’t say what for.
“You think you’d like an audience?”
I suppress the urge to jump at the wafting woman sneaking up behind me. She drifted from the counter without me noticing, which makes me nervous.
“Maybe she’s a ghost!” Graney laughs at his lame joke.
I turn away from the poster, but it feels for a moment like the eyes in the picture follow my movement. I resist the urge to look back.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “What’s an audience for?”
“Isn’t that the question.” She smiles enigmatically.
This is all some pretty bullshit. But at least I know Night has a connection to this place, and that might be the only lead I have to Andretti and Cora. I need to stake it out for a while.
“An audience is whatever you need it to be.” The voice is deep, soft. It reminds me of mahogany. That’s an association that makes no sense but there it is.
This time I can’t suppress the slight jump at the unexpected appearance. These people are fucking ninjas. I turn slowly to see the man from the poster. He’s tall, over my own 6’2” by a good couple of inches, and lean. He wears a beautifully tailored charcoal silk suit, with a pale blue shirt underneath and a purple tie. On the tie is a strange design of an eye, encircled by a series of lines and shapes that make me queasy to look at. As I tear my gaze away from it he’s smiling broadly. Behind him one of the display cabinets has opened, a secret door revealing a small room beyond. I see the edge of a table and chairs, a candle burning. Incense drifts out, thick and cloying. That smile is disarming me, too wide. At least he’s not wearing the corpse paint.
“Do not fuck with this guy,” Sly says, and stalks away. The others stand around to watch, clearly interested. Michael has his eyes narrowed, distrust evident. I share his sentiment.
“Whatever I need it to be?” I ask. “What does that mean?”
“What do you need?” His smile, impossibly, widens. “What do you seek?”
“I’m always on the lookout for answers, but the questions change all the time.”
He inclines his head in acceptance of that, his eyes never leaving mine. His irises are a strange color, dark but with an almost purple tinge. He must be wearing contact lenses, part of the act. I’m not impressed with this vaudeville shit. “But one question always stays,” he says. “Doesn’t it?”
“And what question is that?”
The smile falls from his face, like water draining away. “Why are they always here? Trailing you, dogging you, what do they want?”
My heart races slightly, I’m wrong-footed by the comment. “Who?”
“I think you know.”
I think I might, but how the hell can he? These haunts are not real, surely. Have I accepted them yet as either real or psychosis? It seems to be a question I constantly avoid, if I keep trying. I push it away again, ignoring the nag of it. I need to be away from here, away from this freaky guy. I’ve got all I need for now.
“I’m looking for a gift, actually. For my sister.” I turn from Night back to the woman.
She nods. “Okay.”
Night smiles and glides back into his chamber, the cabinet door swings silently shut. All that’s left is the thick scent of incense.
Five minutes later and I have a stupid ceramic dragon in a bag marked with the Inner Vision name and logo, an eye in a pyramid in a kind of parody of the Illuminati. I carry it with me across the street and look up and down. Leafy suburban places like this are hard to hide in. Too open, too much neighborhood watch.
“What about that?” Michael points to one of those big two-story homes, diagonally opposite Inner Vision. It looks like all the rest, houses and no shops all along that side of the road. Only the color of the siding, the choice of plants in the front yard, really make it look individual.
“What about it?”
A woman jogging by, looking fit in lycra, side-eyes me as I talk to myself.
Michael nods at the end of the driveway. “Look at the mailbox.”
It’s jammed with letters and flyers, mostly junk mail as far as I can tell, and a lot of it sticking out is weather-worn like it’s been there a while. Looking over the house it seems dark inside, still. It sits there, waiting for something.
Before I draw curious eyes, I stroll on along the sidewalk, then make sure no one is paying direct attention. Seems I’m a non-entity right now, so I turn into the driveway and walk quickly down alongside the property, out of sight of the road. The grass in the large back yard is overgrown, not kept neat like the front. I get the feeling some real estate agent is keeping the place presentable to the public eye. Maybe it’s in the middle of a sale, perhaps a deceased estate. Something like that. Regardless, it’s currently empty and serves my purposes.
I find some tools in a small shed at the back of the yard and set about making this place mine for a short while. It almost certainly has an alarm system, but that’s easier to deal with than most people think. I find the power box outside and use a hammer to crack off the small padlock holding it closed. I flip the breakers and any power to the house is gone. That includes the alarm system, but they often have a battery backup. The tools make quick work of picking the lock on the back door, and I hurry through the house and find the alarm panel is right beside the front door. It has a keypad to enter a pin, and a locked section below that. I don’t need a key for plastic casing, the hammer takes care of that. I flip out the battery and that’s it. Any sensors are disabled, with no backup power. Sometimes a security firm will respond to a power outage, but more often than not they don’t. Power flickers on and off more than people realize and security companies get complacent. So far I haven’t put a finger on anything except the hammer, but from here on I’ll have to remember to wipe anything I touch.
“Add breaking and entering to multiple homicide,” Graney says, standing there with his hands on his hips. “You’ve barely had a clean slate for five minutes, thanks to Carly, and here you are racking up the felonies again.”
“I cannot help it, said the scorpion to the frog. It’s my nature.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You dumbass piece of shit cop,” Dwight says. “Even I know the parable of the scorpion and the frog. Crossing the river?”
Graney shakes his head. “Fuck me, it’s a sad day when this piece of shit knows something I don’t.”
The house is like a show home, furnished but clearly unlived in. Seems like it’s sitting museum-like for some reason.
“Maybe the owners already moved and they’re leaving an agent to sell,” Michael says.
Sly shakes his head. “No For Sale sign out front.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I don’t plan to be here long.”
An upstairs bedroom with a single bed and frilly-edged vanity has a window that gives me a clear view of the front of Inner Vision and the alleyway down the side. I can’t see all of the alley, but I can see over the small clothing boutique which gives me a view of most of the leafy parking lot behind the warehouse at the back of the store. Pretty good, I don’t think I’ll get a better spot than this.
Using tissues to open cupboards, so I don’t leave prints, I discover the kitchen is entirely empty of food. I’ll need some supplies. Thirty minutes later and I’m back, food and drink in hand. I even found a pair of leather driving gloves in the service station shop, so I can touch things without fear. I’ll leave the power out, I don’t plan on using any lights. Now it’s a waiting game.
* * *
I’m woken by a phone ringing about 7:00 a.m. and it takes me a few moments to figure out where the hell I am. The burner phone Lombardi gave me is buzzing on the small table beside where I lay fully dressed atop the bed. As I grab the phone I see there’s hardly any battery left. I don’t have a charger for it, that’ll be back at the Bridgewater house, I expect.
“Yeah?” My voice sounds like a 90-year-old man with emphysema.
“Where the hell are you?” Lombardi sounds more scared than ever.
“You told me to get on with the job. I’m getting on with the job.”
“The party we’re trying to find apparently lost four assets yesterday. You know anything about that?”
“Would it make a difference if I did? Or didn’t?”
There’s silence but for heavy breathing for a moment, Lombardi clearly trying to control anger. I recognize that sound from Vern. They’re really quite alike considering how different they first appear. Except Vern is long dead, of course.
“It brought a world of pain down on me,” Lombardi says.
“Retaliation?”
“Of course retaliation!”
What can I tell him? “There are casualties in war.”
“You want maybe there should be another casualty? Maybe one you arrived with?”
If he thinks threatening Bridget will affect me, he’s an idiot. He knows she’s the only chip he’s got to bargain with and I think he’s reached a point where he genuinely needs me. If he lost more men yesterday, perhaps his numbers are growing thin. No wonder he sounds scared.
“You wanna make an omelet, etcetera.”
He’s quiet again. He gets the reference. Then, “You got anything to tell me?”
“I’m following a lead right now. Last night it was a bust.” And that’s an understatement. The shop had a total of three more customers all day, then the woman in all the silks and silver closed up and went down the alleyway to her car. Interesting she left through the front, but her car was parked out the back. I watched the place all evening, finally giving up about midnight when fatigue got the better of me. I didn’t see Papa Night leave, so figure maybe he lives there. Perhaps the back is his domain.
“And if it’s a bust again today?” Lombardi asks.
It might well be. “I plan to give it a little while, then force the issue.”
“How long is a little while?”
“Is this situation suddenly time-sensitive?”
“How long?”
I suck in a breath, thinking. Honestly, anything happening at this front will likely be after business hours. Am I wasting my time? Movement out the front of the shop catches my eye. I think it’s the woman shopkeeper at first, but it’s too early for that. Then I start as the person lets themselves into the store with a key and I catch their face as they glance back before going in. Alfie. Lombardi’s butler. What the fuck?
“Give me twenty-four hours,” I tell Lombardi as Alfie disappears inside Inner Vision. “Tomorrow morning I’ll come back there and fill you in on everything, and by then I expect to have plenty to tell you.”
“Twenty-four hours!” Lombardi says, like he’s imposing the deadline instead of simply agreeing to what I just told him.
“You got it.”
I hang up and watch the shop intently. Alfie was carrying something in a canvas bag, I couldn’t see what. But he had it pressed close to his chest like he didn’t want it to be seen. No lights come on and I can’t see inside, so I sit and grind my teeth. About ten minutes later, Alfie comes out again and locks up behind himself. He doesn’t have the bag with him anymore. He heads off down the street and I can just make out a car on the next block. He gets in and drives away.
“Well, isn’t that an interesting development,” Michael says. “Alfie working for Andretti?”
“Or Papa Night,” I say. “He’s the only one we know is connected to this place so far. And that might explain how Stella knew to give me the name.”
“Maybe Alfie gave it to you.”
“Nah, he tried to warn me off. I think it was Stella, she seemed rattled. She’s bothered by something.” I glance up at Michael. “You’re being more friendly and helpful than usual.”
He grimaces. “Don’t think you’re forgiven, asshole. You shot me in the fucking head.” He turns the ruin of the exit wound to make sure I get a clean view. It’s a bit much to witness before breakfast, his broken teeth working wetly where his cheek should be, distended bone instead of an ear, pink brains pulsing slightly behind.
I look away. Sly leans against the wall, the massive shotgun hole in his torso glistening in the morning light, organs slick and shining. Dwight and Alvin have almost matching bullet holes between their eyes, the backs of their heads open in frozen bone explosions. They both turn to show me. Officer Graney leans forward to let blood drop from his torn open throat, the other two bullet holes staining his pale blue uniform shirt. Why the fuck are they all displaying like some kind of twisted floor show, a catwalk of mortal destruction.
“You lot got something you want to say to me?”
They gather around, dripping blood and sneering. I guess it’s a display of hate, nothing more. They can’t hurt me, can’t affect me, if I don’t let them into my mind.
“You piece of shit,” Alvin says. “No warning, just boom!”
“Murdered me through a fucking door,” Graney says. “I left a wife behind, two grown-up kids.”
“People miss me too,” Dwight says, and even the others find that hard to believe.
It gives me the break in tension I need and I laugh right in his face. “If I didn’t shoot you, someone else surely would have before long. Nobody liked you, Ramsey. You’re a grade-A asshole.”
Sly laughs, stepping back. “That much is true. You deserved it.”
“You all fucking deserved it!” I yell at them, and before they can protest, I add, “Just like I’ll deserve it when my time comes.”
“Live and die by the sword, huh?” Michael asks.
“Yes! As if it was ever any other way. We’re not good men, any of us.”
“I was a cop! I did the right thing by society.”
I turn to Graney. “You know what, out of everyone here, you maybe have a genuine grievance against me. But tell me, were you truly virtuous? Did you never plant evidence? Did you never hurt someone for pleasure?”
“He killed a black man and called it self-defense,” Sly says. “Like so many pig racist cops, you are not a nice guy, Officer Graney.”
They stare hard at each other for several seconds, then Graney shrugs. “No point arguing now, I suppose.”
