Creepers (19 page)

"Well, it's not the plants," Louise said as she examined one skimpy cactus in a clay pot with "Welcome to Acapulco" emblazoned in russet on it.

"What? What about plants?"

"Your friend Quinn was supposed to take care of his nephew's plants...or pets." Apparently Quinn hadn't told Frank which, nor had the doorman when they collected the keys. Louise clucked her tongue loudly, and a matched pair of Siamese cats strolled majestically into the room. "That's the answer--cats." Louise held out her hand, and immediately both cats went to her and rubbed against her legs. "They say Siamese are arrogant, but not with me." She lifted them both into her lap and began stroking them under their chins.

Corelli turned away. He was in no mood for relating to animals. All the way downtown he'd been trying to remember something Dolchik had said yesterday. At the time, it had been meaningless, but in light of what had transpired since then, he'd begun to think the captain had been telling him something--consciously or not. Dammit! He couldn't remember. So there was only one way to find out--call the bastard himself. Quinn had said the captain had been out all morning, but he should be back by now.

He left Louise with her cats and slipped into the bedroom to make the call. He dialed the office at Fifty-ninth Street, hoping Quinn had returned from the street where they'd rendezvoused. "Detective Quinn," he instructed when the phone was answered.

"Quinn's gone for the day," an unfamiliar voice informed him.

"Then let me speak to Dolchik." Corelli recognized the voices of all the men in the office; this guy was a complete stranger.

"Dolchik's on vacation."

"Vacation?" Corelli shouted. "What the fuck are you talking about?" Quinn would have known about that, and he hadn't said anything.

"Sorry, that's the way it is. Can I help you? Who's calling?"

Corelli almost answered out of anger. Goddammit, he almost fell into the trap. They were waiting for him to call, waiting for him to tell them where he was. "The name's Duck. Donald Duck," he carefully enunciated the name. That should jibe with what the hospital receptionist had no doubt reported.

"Is that you, Corelli?"

The sound of his own name sent a shiver of fear up Frank's spine. Shit, they were waiting for him!

"You can tell me anything you'd tell Dolchik," the voice confided. "What's on your mind?"

"Who is this?"

"Doesn't matter. What does matter is, we'd like to talk to you."

"Like you wanted to talk to Louise Hill?" There was silence on the other end. "Look, I don't know what your game is or who you are, but unless you ease up, I'm heading straight for City Hall, with a quick stop at the newspapers on the way--just like I promised Dolchik." That threat had worked before, and there seemed no reason it wouldn't work now.

"Go anywhere you want. It won't do you any good. All we want to do is help you."

"Like you helped Lester Baker?" He was playing all his cards now, but goddammit, he was angry.

Corelli wasn't the only one who was angry. "Listen, you smart-ass prick, you're in one helluva lot of trouble. If you just go our way, you'll be out in the sun once again."

"And if I don't?"

"We just missed you at the Hill woman's place; the next time you won't be so lucky."

"That's a risk I'll have to take. See you around the pool." He slammed the phone down and immediately checked his watch; he hadn't talked long enough to be traced, so he was safe, momentarily. No one except Quinn knew where he and Louise were, and he'd never tell. Or would he? For one uneasy moment Frank pictured his buddy being pressured and spilling the beans. Everyone knew they were great friends; it was logical he'd call Quinn if he were in trouble, and it was just as logical that they'd question him about Frank's whereabouts. But Quinn hated the system as much as Corelli did; he'd die before giving his pal away.

Corelli returned to the living room more worried about his time running out than ever, and still annoyed that he wasn't able to remember Dolchik's aside. Dammit, that was irritating. Louise was still holding the cats in her lap when he walked into the room. Both animals had their eyes closed and their necks craned out under her loving caresses.

"Right about now I could use some of the same treatment," he only half-joked.

"I doubt you could sit still that long," she countered. "These babies are so docile. Siamese cats have a reputation for being vicious. People think they claw and tear at everything. God, how do these myths ever get started?"

Corelli was only half-listening, but Louise's words stuck in his mind. Like Dolchik's crack, it was meaningless in itself, but it connected on some level to everything else. "What did you say?"

"I said the cats are so docile--"

"No, after that," he coaxed.

"I just wondered how these myths get started."

"That's it," he shouted, startling both cats off Louise's lap.

"That's what?"

Corelli shook his head. "I've got to go out for a while. Lock the door behind me. Stay here and don't answer the phone or the door. I shouldn't be too long."

Louise's face grew somber at the thought of being deserted. "Where are you going?"

"To the library, of course! Where else?" Corelli was already out the door before Louise could answer.

Corelli strode down Forty-second Street, heading quickly away from the Times Square subway exit. He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that a car running a red light at Eighth Avenue almost clipped him. Goddamned fucking Dolchik! Jesus, Frank Corelli--tough, smart Frank Corelli--had fallen for that redneck act while the captain ran rings around him and made him look like a fool. He was probably still laughing up his sleeve at the way he'd conned him into believing he was too dumb to be anything but innocent in this whole subway mess. But Dolchik had made one mistake, he'd let one bit of information slip, and that was enough to tie him in with this whole lousy plot to get him and Louise, to put them away for good: Dolchik had mentioned the creepers.

Corelli stopped for a light on Ninth Avenue and wiped a patina of sweat from his forehead. Though it was still warm, the humidity at least was below a tropical level; the first hints of autumn's impending crispness were in the air. He hated summer in New York almost as much as he loved fall. During the brief respite between the Hades of August and the Siberia of February, being alive and in Manhattan was not only bearable but also gratifying. It was typical of New York's perverseness that the city sprang back to life at the very time when nature shriveled and died. And it was typical of Frank Corelli that he should accept the possibility of something as monstrous as the creepers as fact--not just TA folklore.

He quickened his pace and turned up to Forty-third Street, barely noticing the hookers and derelicts who called this dead part of the city home. This area's human quirkiness had long since failed to impress or shock him. And in his present frame of mind, nothing short of an explosion could stop him from reaching his goal: the New York Public Library's newspaper collection just down the block between Tenth and Eleventh avenues. If there was anywhere in New York he'd get a real bead on the creepers--if they actually existed--it was here where history was reduced to miles of microfilm and the past waited patiently to become present...and future.

Corelli could have shrugged off the whole idea of the creepers with a laugh and a wink of knowing condescension; it was probably what had kept their existence a secret for so many years. After all, anyone looking for the creepers was the type who'd drive into the North Woods looking for Paul Bunyan and his great blue ox, Babe. They, too, were sure to be there if you just looked hard enough. Or maybe you'd get lucky and be the one picnicking by the verdant shores of Loch Ness with a fully loaded Nikon handy when the fabled monster reared its head and posed for a series of candids. Monsters and creatures of the night existed to serve specific psychological functions; they externalized the primordial fear, the cosmic fear imbued as sperm collided with egg, and made it fanged and clawed and living under the bed. Then, at least, it wouldn't eat you alive from the inside out. Monsters were a dime a dozen.

Yet Frank Corelli took the creepers seriously. He was on the verge of immersing himself in the past, as recorded by the New York Times, in search of a legend peculiar to the New York subway system. If it weren't for everything that had happened in the past week, Corelli never would have wasted his time. And if it hadn't been for a story Jake Morley had told him a long time before.

Jake Morley was an engineer who'd retired long before Corelli graduated from the academy. He worked part-time at the academy as a janitor--"custodial engineer, if you please"--during the day and would bend anyone's ear who would listen later, any night, while he held court at the local gin mill. Morley was full of stories, mostly about sex, mostly concerning long-legged women. But occasionally after four or five drinks too many, Jake always told of the night he spilled his "first blood"--the first time his train ever killed a man on the tracks.

"I was just easing up on the local run into Fourteenth Street over on Lexington Avenue when I saw something scurrying along the tracks, trying like hell to get out of the way of the train's headlights. First I thought it was a dog or some kinda animal, but as we gained on him, I saw it was some kinda man; funny-shaped, though. You know, bent over low along the ground. I blasted the whistle and applied the brakes, but it was too late. This little fellow ran the wrong way and fell under the car. Hell, to this day I can still feel the thump when we rolled over him. You never seen such a mess in your life. And what was left of him was something I never want to see again. One of the old-timers later told me I'd run over a creeper. I thought he was full of bull. Then I got to rememberin' what this little fella looked like, and sure enough, I'd be hard pressed to say it weren't no creeper."

That particular night Corelli'd bought Morley another shot and a beer and laughed at the story right along with the other rookies. Put a bunch of guys together anywhere, and you're bound to get tall tales, bullshit, ego-boosters. Climbers have the Yeti, the abominable snowman; campers have Bigfoot; why the hell shouldn't the oppressed workmen of the New York subway have a creature to call their own? It'd give them something to think about during the long, tedious hours working without sun. Sure, everyone working in the system had heard of the creepers, but no one really had claimed to have seen one. Even Morley never said so, for sure.

Yet here I am, Corelli thought as he entered the grim building in the West Side netherworld once called Hell's Kitchen, acting like a prize chump chasing bogeymen through the dark. But as the door closed silently behind him and he was enveloped in the hushed world of the recent and long dead, Frank thought of the mutilated body of Ted Slade. And the macabre story Lester Baker had spun. And he knew, in his gut, he was in the right place.

After a short but rancorous argument with a pasty-faced librarian about using the microfilm equipment without having a library card, Corelli prevailed--a sharp threat, accompanied by his TA badge, had done the trick. He was courteously shown to a machine and provided with a stack of microfilms that ran backward in time from the previous year to the mid-1940's. It was only after being told that the library carried copies of the Times from September 1851 that Corelli realized the Herculean task he'd set for himself. At least he didn't have to go that far back; the New York subway system hadn't opened until 1904 and he doubted if the trouble reached even that far back. Still, he was in for a long siege.

Random sampling of the files was the only way not to stay in the library for months. To read every newspaper was impossible, but choosing one issue a month, while scientifically reprehensible, was feasible. Reading back through 1910 or so when the subway was still in its infancy would mean reading through almost a thousand newspapers. It wasn't an appealing prospect, but it was a move in the right direction. If similar disappearances to what was happening now could be traced back over the years with any regularity, a case might be made for investigating the cause of those disappearances--the creepers. However, if out of the thousand newspapers, nothing was garnered, Corelli promised himself he'd give up there and then, come out of hiding, and proclaim himself a victim of the delusion that one man might effect some change for the good in the monster known as New York City.

By four o'clock Frank was in agony. His shoulders, tensed with anticipation for hours, ached; the back of his neck was stiff, his eyes were bloodshot, and each time he tried to focus on a new page, his vision blurred. Feeling more like an old man than a man in the prime of robust good health, Corelli deserted his table and walked out into the hall for a drink of water. Two hours and I'm only back in the 1950's, he thought morosely. And even then he'd begun skipping months. The sampling was becoming more scattershot than random.

He massaged the back of his neck and leaned against the wall, wishing he had a cigarette. The newspapers were useless. Sure there were disappearances, but the wrong kinds. He'd become adept at speed-reading headlines, skipping over those with no bearing on what he wanted. It was a grueling task. The weight of thirty years of murders, wars, famines, droughts, suicides, and general human mean-mindedness was starting to take its toll. He felt dirty and depressed, caught up in a sticky universal web of selfishness, the scope of which he'd never begun to imagine before. What he needed right now was something to get him back on the right track. But unfortunately, all he could do was get back to work.