Graves' end Page 4

  Potter’s Yard was a place she dearly loved, especially at night, when it was hushed and lit only by the stars. It felt like a shadowy oasis out here in the middle of the industrial suburbs, one that was always awash in some sort of fecund, flowering life, all year round. She breathed in the familiar olfactory chorus of damp, green, earthy smells, and as always, she felt immediately soothed. She even shivered pleasantly in the chilly air.

  Lia knew she couldn’t relax yet, however. She might, in fact, never be able to properly relax again, if she wasn’t careful. Those insect women were out there somewhere still, regrouping, and they might even know her name. If they did, it meant they’d never quit. She didn’t need her Tom to tell her that.

  Her eye landed on a number of pale green mantises sitting primly on a palm leaf nearby. They seemed to be watching her. That in itself wasn’t so troubling, but when Lia looked down, she realized that an entire line of tiny red ants trailing across her path had also paused, and every one of them seemed to be staring up at her, too.

  Only then did she become aware that the night had gone unnaturally silent around her. There wasn’t a single cricket to be heard.

  The ants resumed their usual brisk pace as soon as they knew she’d noticed them.

  Lia took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing down the panic that was rising in her chest. She knew what this was, all right: a witch test. An assessment of her comfort level in the face of wild improbability. Her Tom had warned her about such things, but she’d never been the subject of an otherworldly assessment like this one before. The surreal occurrence had happened so quickly that an ordinary person would’ve shaken her head, blinked her eyes, and walked away. Someone who knew the Tzitzimime for what they were, however, was apt to react to unusual bug behavior with stark raving terror, thereby marking her sorry self out as a holder of occult knowledge.

  Black Tom quietly confirmed her suspicions about this, mind-to-mind.

  The King’s consorts weren’t too bright in their insect forms, so Lia figured it was unlikely that this little lapse on her part would catch their attention. Only a big reaction would alert them. Maybe the distinctive stinger-holes in her car’s roof had helped them to spot this place from above, but human faces all looked more or less alike to them, and it seemed they didn’t know her well enough yet to recognize her by sight alone-which was a good thing. They’d want to be sure to get the right girl, and they wouldn’t pounce until they were certain they had her.

  If she made a wrong move, though, every bug hidden away within the greenery of Potter’s Yard would be on her in the space of a heartbeat.

  She forced herself to giggle aloud, as if chiding herself for imagining she’d seen a thing that simply couldn’t be, before stepping casually over the ant superhighway and moving on, ignoring the attentive cluster of mantises who rubbed their tiny, greedy hands together. Tom hugged close to her ankles until they reached the very back of the Yard.

  Lia knew the only thing she could do now was seal herself in and hang on till daylight. Tzitzimime were insidious things by nature, and they’d get in through vents or under doors-at any place a tiny bug or a point of light could. Hiding out from them was a tall order. Fortunately, she happened to be prepared for just this sort of thing.

  The nursery’s rear storage corner was packed with pots, planks, bags of soil, and a small forklift. There was also a big, upended concrete cylinder that could’ve been some sort of a well, all of it situated behind a low chainlink fence with a gate marked ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY.’

  Lia was relieved to hear the crickets start up again behind her after three points of light that might almost have been mistaken for shooting stars departed from the Yard, rising up into the night sky like meteors in reverse. It meant the Tzitzimime had moved on in confusion, and that she had a moment or two before they’d come around to thinking she might have been their prey after all. But a moment was all she needed in order to drop out of sight.

  Lia scooped her tomcat up and tucked him inside her coat. She hurried over to the wide concrete tube that seemed to be planted in the earth, swung her legs over the lip, and climbed down a steel ladder bolted to the inside of it.

  Some feet below ground level was a hatch. Lia turned a big spoked wheel to unseal it, then pulled it open and climbed on down, letting the hatch door slam shut after her with an ear-hammering metallic clang. She spun a second wheel, a less-corroded twin to the exterior one, in the opposite direction now that she was inside and underground. There was a bolt that locked the hatch in place and Lia threw it, battening herself in for the remainder of the night.

  Lights buzzed and flickered to life when she hit a wall switch before climbing down the ladder’s last few rungs and into her home of the last ten years. She thought of it as Bag End, her hobbit hole, buried deep in the sheltering earth. Old signage on the unpainted walls indicated that the big concrete bunker had originally been intended for use as a bomb shelter.

  Lia opened her peacoat, letting her tomcat out. She dumped the coat over the back of a chair and kicked off her Chuck Taylors as she picked her way over to the dark corner of the room that housed her bed.

  The furnishings she twisted past were all cleverly repurposed objects. There was a dented surgical crash cart for a dresser, while a pharmacist’s cabinet with cracked, chickenwire-embedded glass doors served as an overcrowded bookcase. Her table was a carved mahogany door she’d topped with a salvaged slab of green-edged glass. There were pictures, toys, and bits of statuary all over the place. Many things that looked alive, as Lia was an animist by inclination and therefore always felt a need to make objects with personality feel welcome when they showed up, wanting to spend a part of their long, strange lives with her. As a result her place felt funky, weird and witchy, although it was undeniably cozy, too.

  Lia stopped by her bed and took the tarnished, Navy-crested Zippo from her pocket. She considered it for a long moment before setting it on a wooden shelf stuffed with secondhand books, wondering who might’ve owned it before her and how they’d come to leave it outside an office belonging to the Aztec God of the Dead.

  She didn’t imagine the antique’s previous steward was apt to come looking for it, in any case.

  Lia flopped down onto her futon, fully clothed, on top of the covers. Tom curled up next to her and purred loudly. Within minutes they were both asleep.

  Ignored and unnoticed, the dead man’s lighter warmed up by gradual degrees, until its case smoldered in an ominous shade of orange. Slight curls of smoke rose from the shelf it sat on.

  Now that its dormant magic had been kindled by a witch’s touch, the heated anchor on its side pulsed like the slow and steady beat of a living heart-bumpbump, bumpbump-as it silently called out to its former owner.

  Retrospective No.1 ~ 1950

  Six decades ago…

  Dexter Graves lit a cigarette, snapped his lighter shut, then tipped the brim of his fedora back so he could look all the way up the tall front of an old, brick office building located on the southern edge of Hollywood. A few of the local oldtimers still called it the Silent Tower, though Graves had never learned why. The sky was clear and blue above it, and the structure itself was as silent as a tomb, lacking identifying signage of any kind. It was in obvious use and good repair, however, despite its half-century of wear and weathering. Most of its neighbors were newer by decades, and in truth next to nobody remembered its name anymore. Graves had done a fair bit of digging before turning it up himself. At thirteen stories high, the Tower must’ve been one of the first tall buildings erected in this area, back in its day, but the public records regarding it were as sketchy on that score as they were on any number of others.

  As soon as the little-used street in front of it was entirely clear of both pedestrian and motor traffic, Graves ambled across with perfect nonchalance, making a low-key beeline for the building’s front door. He drew a leather wallet that bristled with lockpicking rakes from his trenchcoat’s inside pocket, meaning to admit himse
lf to the so-called Silent Tower on his own recognizance. He was aces at getting in where he hadn’t been invited. But then the only tension bar in his entire goddamn pick set broke off as soon as he leveraged it against the lock’s sturdy tumblers, and that was it for the subtle approach. Graves snarled a curse, glanced around, then just kicked the door right the hell in.

  He dove for the deck when a startled thug stationed in the front hall reflexively unloaded a shotgun in his direction, and a burst of jamb shrapnel filled the air.

  The wild blast tore the fedora from Graves’ head, but he managed to tackle the gunman around the knees (aided greatly by gravity and luck), and took him down to the polished parquet floor. The scattergun discharged a second time, causing jagged chunks of ceiling plaster to rain down on the guard’s undefended head. He was knocked senseless.

  Graves stood up and dusted off his coat, taking his good luck in stride. He claimed his adversary’s plaster-dusty hat to replace his own, shook it off, and put it on his head. Then he picked up the man’s shotgun, cocked it, and pushed forward before nerves could get the better of him. He knew full well that he wouldn’t get another chance at this. Not now. But he had reason to believe that a lady of his acquaintance was being held here against her will, and that was the sort of thing Dex Graves wouldn’t let slide.

  He heard footfalls and ducked behind a potted palm situated outside a fancy set of double-doors at the end of the hall. A bare instant later three new thugs in big-shouldered suits burst through them at a full run, but failed to see him.

  Graves was grinning when he darted through the swinging doors, wholly unnoticed by the trio of Johnny-come-latelys-only to run smack into a man he recognized as Juan San Martin, Miguel ‘Mickey Hardface’ Caradura’s chief enforcer. Big Juan, as they called him, was an ugly mountain of muscle overlaid with flab and wrapped in dark blue pinstripes. They’d never met before, but Graves knew better than to mount an assault on somebody else’s turf without doing his homework.

  Big Juan grabbed hold of Graves’ shotgun before he could bring it into play. With his other hand he hoisted Graves up by his shirtfront and hurled him back through the double doors, separating him from the weapon. Big Juan raised the gun as Graves tumbled ass over tits back down the hallway he’d just escaped. The doors banged off the walls and bounced shut again, catching Big Juan’s shotgun barrel between them. The noise made the troop of lackeys who were almost out the front entrance realize they’d missed their quarry, and they came running back in Graves’ direction at full tilt.

  Graves hurled himself against the double-doors, down near floor level, pinning Big Juan’s gunbarrel between them. He clamped his hands over his ears (as well as over the brim of his fedora) a split-second before Juan let off a deafening, double-barreled blast, scant inches above his head.

  Big Juan’s blind shotgun barrage splattered the fastest of the three returning goons right out of commission. Graves winced and the other two men dove aside, out of the line of fire.

  He reached up, grabbed hold of the trapped gunbarrel with both hands, and yanked on it viciously, with all the force he could apply. He felt an unbalanced Big Juan topple face-first into the closed doors, and heard him bellow when his nose made solid, crunching contact with the heavy planes of polished wood.

  In the instant after he felt the impact and heard Juan’s resultant shout, Graves was able to rip the shotgun right out of the big man’s hands with a second, well-timed pull. San Martin grunted, stumbling to his knees as the doors swung open before him.

  Graves kicked one of them hard, whacking Big Juan square in the face with it for a second time. The human mound fell backwards into the foyer as Graves whirled, cocking the shotgun he’d recaptured from his oversized adversary, and fired twice after the two henchmen who were caught in the front hallway.

  The swinging doors fell shut.

  An instant later they banged open again and Graves strode into the foyer. Big Juan looked up as Graves loomed over him and trained the shotgun’s long barrel right down between his eyes.

  “Where’s Caradura?” the detective asked, getting to it without preamble.

  Juan, dazed, his nose bleeding freely from its two collisions with the door, reluctantly pointed upwards. Graves looked across the foyer. There were three elevators and a door marked ‘STAIRS.’ He nodded, and then looked back down at Big Juan. “Good talk, amigo,” he said.

  Graves flipped the shotgun upside down and whacked Juan San Martin decisively in the face with the stock. The fat henchman’s eyes rolled back to the whites, and then he lay still. Graves didn’t like to kill people if he didn’t have to (although if he did have to, he could make his peace with it). He’d figured gunplay might be a part of this deal-he just hadn’t expected so much of it so soon.

  Graves lit another cigarette while his elevator car noiselessly ascended, using his silver Zippo with the gold US Navy insignia on its side.

  Now this, to say the least, was not how he would’ve chosen to spend his day. His PI work tended to be staid and predictable. Embezzlement, infidelity-those were his normal bread and butter. Cheating husbands and crooked beancounters. Stakeouts and papertrails. A snore sometimes, sure, but frankly, Dex Graves had worked the need for thrilling heroics out of his system back in the war.

  The only thing was, he’d recently shared a cup of joe at an all-nite diner with a woman he knew, an occasional singer at his local watering hole, and she’d chosen that moment to confide in him. At least in part. It seemed she’d had an affair with a shadowy underworld character named Mickey Caradura, given birth to his baby in secret, and then put the kid up for adoption to keep it safe from its psychopath father. After all the regrets and second thoughts settled in, however, she’d gone and tracked her baby down again, through whatever orphanage had taken it in, and Hardface had somehow gotten wise. Now that he knew the kid existed, Caradura meant to claim and raise it as his heir. Ingrid (that was the mother’s name) told Graves she was planning to go and talk with her former fiance, to try and convince him to leave the child alone. Then last night she hadn’t shown up for her set at the joint where Graves liked to listen to her sing, and it didn’t take a mathematician to put two and two together. He didn’t even know this Ingrid person all that well, but he’d grown up an orphan himself, and he’d be damned if he was going to let any kid get snatched away from a mom who cared about it.

  So here he fucking was, despite all his better judgment.

  Still, he was in it to win it now, as somebody once said. Not in the name of action or glory or any other idiot ideal, but because he was the only person in any position to clean up this shit. The proper authorities wouldn’t even try to touch the mysterious man called Hardface, and that was a fact.

  In it to win it, then, Graves reminded himself, and to hell with the goddamn odds. That philosophy might not’ve been designed to maximize longevity, but it had somehow carried him through the Pacific Theater just the same. The guys he’d served with had even come to call him ‘Death-Proof Dexter,’ in honor of his uncanny ability to dodge the Reaper time and time again. It was as though he were drawing from a Tarot deck with no Death card, only Jokers. And now he was gambling on that odd imperviousness once again. He could only hope he hadn’t played his lucky streak out yet.

  So musing, he cast a glance up at the trapdoor in the car’s roof.

  A moment later, the bell over the middle of the three elevators dinged. The doors slid open onto a top-floor hallway, and another waiting pair of Mickey Hardface’s enforcers unloaded their sawed-off shotguns into the car. They each got off three or four noisy rounds before realizing there was nobody in there.

  The pudgy palooka in charge (the man was nowhere near as hefty as Juan San Martin, but still) raised a hand to signal a cease-fire, and then he crept up to the car while the second clown covered him. It looked as though they expected Graves to be hiding inside the door. The fat guy darted in with his gun at the ready, but there was nothing to see. No Graves.

 
“Look out! Above you!” the taller, skinnier mug shouted. So he was the functioning half of this dyad’s brain. As a pair they reminded Graves of an unwholesome Laurel and Hardy.

  ‘Ollie’ complied with his partner’s directive just in time to see Graves’ face and hat dart back from the edge of the open trapdoor in the elevator car’s paneled ceiling.

  Ollie jumped, grabbed the portal’s lip, and started to pull himself up. ‘Stan’ scrambled to boost him. “Get up there, already,” Stan squealed, sounding keyed up with murderous excitement. “Get him, he’s trapped up there!”

  Up in the dark and narrow elevator shaft, Graves jumped across to the top of the next car, catching hold of the taut, greasy cables it dangled from for balance. There was no way he could see of escaping this vertical tunnel, not with another armed man waiting out in the hall. As Ollie began cramming his well-fed bulk up through the middle car’s trap, he craned his sweaty, porcine face up towards Graves and grinned.

  “Give it up now, why dontcha?” Ollie said. “Ain’t no place left to go-”

  “But down,” Graves supplied, as inspiration struck him and he blasted the elevator cables above the fat man’s head with the one shell he had remaining in his shotgun.

  They twanged and frayed dramatically, down to a thread.

  The elevator car lurched and skinny Stan had sense enough to dive back out of it, into the hallway. Graves heard him shouting. Ollie had one single instant in which to favor him with a look of horrified dismay before the last steel strand holding his perch aloft snapped and the car fell away, noiselessly, down into the engulfing darkness below it.

  Some seconds later Graves heard a decisive crunch. He nodded in satisfaction, pried open the new trapdoor at his feet, and dropped down into the next wood-paneled carriage over from the one in which he’d ascended, absorbing the impact with a bend of his knees.