I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (11 page)

Gritz took a sip of his vodka, went to put
the glass down, figured
the
fuck
not
and threw
back what was left in one gulp. He tapped the glass on the bar,
getting Jackie’s attention, then lost himself in thought looking
across at the shelf of booze.

This Mephisto serial killer guy. Wasn’t his
case, but Gritz had a feeling about this one. Guy—they were
invariably men in these kinds of things—was taking it out of the
city now, into Jersey. Threatening the local papers that they
better publish his manifesto or he would kill again, like that
Kaczynski fuck.

That other carnage over in the Bronx back in
the second week of September. Lots of blood and bullet holes, shell
casings, but only one body for all that. Guy’d been bled out from
the neck; someone had put a hole in his throat, drained him from it
like a spigot. Dead guy had a rap sheet on him too: breaking and
entering, trespassing, petty theft. From Gritz’s experience, what
you could learn about them from their papers was usually the tip of
the iceberg. And from the scene at the warehouse, it looked like
the guy had been involved in something lot more serious than B
& E.

Thing was, the guy was a known associate of
one “Goose Gossitch,” better known to Gritz as his friend
Frank.

The
hell
was
Frank
? Gritz hadn’t heard from him since…since he’d seen him
that night the suitcase pimp did his swan dive from the twentieth
floor. Was Frank avoiding him? Was he mixed up in whatever his guy
got himself involved in over there in the Bronx, gone to ground?
Gone to ground or worse? Frank could take care of himself, had been
as long as Gritz had known him. Thing was, even a cat that jumped
out a tree enough times wasn’t always going to land on its feet. It
was bound to happen.

Gritz smiled to himself, knowing he sounded
crazy. A cat was
always
going to land on its feet. The hell
was he thinking. Knew it wasn’t him, knew it was the vodka. Frank’s
whereabouts were just another diversion from his own case load.

“How’s the case going?” Jason had asked him.
A lot of people were asking Gritz that lately. And the truth was,
he had nothing to tell them, because the case wasn’t going
anywhere. For a few weeks over the summer, bodies were turning up,
dismembered, mutilated. Sure, there were clues—the feathers, the
cigarettes—but clues were only good if they led you somewhere, and
here was Gritz sitting in Jackie’s, staring at the bourbon bottles
on the top shelf as Jackie filled his glass.

That last night Gritz had seen Frank, the
jumper had gone splat on the sidewalk. Barely missed an old lady.
Landed on her dog.

Mephistopheles had come into Faust’s den in
the form of a poodle. Faust and his buddy Wagner were walking
through the streets, talking. The dog runs up to them and starts
running around their legs and Faust notices something is out of
sorts with the pup:
It
spirals
all
around
us
,
as
you
see
/…
and
if
I
do
not
err
,
a
fiery
eddy
/
Whirls
after
it
and
marks
the
trail
. Wagner doesn’t see a trail, tells his friend the
doctor it just looks like a dog to him.

So what does Faust go and do? He brings the
dog back home with him. And the dog isn’t acting right there
either, it’s still running around, sniffing at the window, snarling
and moaning. The poodle morphs into some kind of demon and then a
mist and Mephistopheles steps out of that cloud.

Or so it seemed to go, if Gritz was reading
it right.

The translation he had had the German on one
side of the page, the English on the other.

“True Gritz.”

“Foley.”

The coroner sat himself on the available
stool and ordered a drink.

“Where you going to be for tomorrow’s game?”
Foley asked Gritz.

“Probably right here.”

“Joe Torre is a god.”

“I won’t argue with you on that,” Gritz
agreed.

“Still, I’d feel better about it if
Strawberry was in the game. You know they took twenty-four inches
of colon out of him?”

Gritz liked Foley. The coroner wasn’t NYPD,
he clocked in at 520 First Avenue, the Office of the Chief Medical
Examiner. But Gritz knew Foley from innumerable crime scenes. Foley
was one of the best at what he did, had a good rapport with the
police, with Gritz. Foley shared some of the same interests as
Gritz, like the both of them showing up at the Rockefeller Overlook
the other morning.

Foley said something about David Wells having
an arm on him.

“Guy deserves a Cy Young,” Gritz
concurred.

“This is the first time the World Series and
the Super Bowl played in the same place,” Foley was telling him and
Gritz knew he was right, Jack Murphy Stadium or whatever they were
calling it these days.

Foley’s head was full of trivia like that.
Gritz pegging Foley as one of those guys could probably make a
killing on
Jeopardy
. Foley a repository for all sorts of
trivia, human body facts being his specialty, which only made sense
given his occupation. Some things everyone knew: like it was
impossible to sneeze without closing your eyes, or how the human
body was eighty percent water. But Foley had a command of that and
other, more esoteric things: like that the skull was made up of
twenty-nine different bones, or there were forty-five miles of
nerves in the skin.

Sometimes Foley got carried away with it,
wanted to play stupid little games like name the ten body parts
that were only three letters long:
eye
,
arm
,
hip
, etcetera. Got lost in details like Darryl Strawberry
having two feet of his asshole removed earlier in the month because
of his colon cancer.

“What is this?” Foley said. “New hangout for
a Hundred Blacks in Law Enforcement?” He referred to the music, a
rap song filling the bar. Caught up in his reverie, Gritz hadn’t
noticed.

“Hey, they
care
.”

100 Hundred Blacks in Law Enforcement Who
Care.

“Who cares?”

“Who else cares these days?”

“Good point.” Foley knocked back a quarter of
his rum. “These young guys,” he indicated the cops in street
clothes around them, “they like this kind of music. My kids listen
to this shit at home. Drives me crazy.”

Gritz, who prided himself on being a detail
man, hadn’t noticed the music until Foley pointed it out.

“Give me Mountain, some Foghat any day,”
Foley was saying.

“Those were the days, my friend.” Gritz and
Foley had this little game they played when they were together,
quoting rock songs in their conversations, see if the other got it.
“We thought they’d never end.”

“Let me tell you, my friend,” Foley departed
slightly from the lyrics, “we’re older but no wiser.”

“For in our hearts,” Gritz raised his glass
to Mary Hopkin, “the dreams are still the same.”

“Well said.” Foley drank his rum. “Better
than this shit,” referring to the rap song. “You know what this guy
is singing about?
Cocaine
. Cocaine, Gritz. This song was all
over the radio this summer. My kids listen to this shit. How I know
it.”

“Like you listened to Clapton.”

“No. Not like Clapton.”

“Like Casey Jones.”

“What?”

“Like Buck Cherry.”

“The hell is a Buck Cherry? You mean Chuck
Berry—I don’t see the connection.”

“Buck Cherry. Don’t keep up much on modern
rock, huh?”

“No. And what are you getting at. Don’t
equivocate.”

“Hate to break it to you, Foley, but rap’s
the new rock and roll.”

“Okay. Bullshit.”

“Cocaine Blues.”

“The fuck sang that?”

“Dylan. And Cash.”

“Bullshit, Gritz.”

“
She
don’t
lie
-
she
don’t
lie
-
she
don’t
lie
—”

“Yeah, have fun with your fucking—” Foley
lifted the cover of Gritz’s book to get a look “—Faust. My Christ,
is your life
that
boring or what?”

“‘preciate it.” Gritz saluted him with his
vodka and Foley left grinning.

The rap song cut off abruptly and someone in
the bar cheered, whether it was for the end of the song or because
the band was taking the stage Gritz couldn’t tell.

He gestured to Jackie as the opening chords
filled the bar. A group of burnt out, Grateful Dead wanna-be’s were
on stage.

“
Although
you
knew
you'd
never
get
away
…”

Gritz thought he could get into this. The
band’s sound reminded him of the Eagles and the Grateful Dead, the
tall guy singing sounded like Henley doing
Sunset
Grill
. He figured Foley was digging this if he’d stuck
around. Could see now why Jason Smith would bring his girlfriend to
Jackie’s, to hear—Gritz leaned back on his stool, got a look at the
name of the band on the bass drum—
Phantom
Redemption
.

“
Well
fading
memories
only
build
up
fear
friend
…”

Thought Cathleen would like this, yes she
would. Gritz thinking maybe he’d find out if they were playing here
again or where’d they be locally, he’d give Cath a call, see if she
wanted to see them with him. Cath used to like this kind of music
when they were younger. Gritz didn’t know what kind of music she
was into now. He figured Celine Dione on account of the
Titanic
, probably those Goo Goo Dolls or whatever they
called themselves too, had that song in
City
of
Angels
.

“
And
a
drowning
man
can
never
scream
…”

Yeah, that’s what he’d do, give Cath a
call.

That talk of Clapton before led him to Buddy
Guy and Robert Johnson and Gritz remembered reading
somewhere—where? A book or
Rolling
Stone
?—about
Robert Johnson at the Crossroads, making a deal with the devil,
swapping his soul, the devil tuning his guitar. Made a pact with
the devil, like Faust. Like another Mississippi bluesman, another
Johnson, Tommy. Guys like Tommy and Robert Johnson poor, coming
from nothing. Then there was a guy like Faust, established,
renowned, still primed for what was coming when Mephistopheles
walked into his room.
And
here
I
am
,
for
all
my
lore
/
The
wretched
fool
I
was
before
. The
doctor feeling that
for
all
our
science
and
art
/
We
can
know
nothing
.

When Mephistopheles shows up, Faust
recognizes him for what he is and
still
asks him to
stay.

And then comes the bargain, right there on
page one hundred and eighty one: Here
you
shall
be
the
master
,
I
be
bound
, pledges Mephistopheles,
And
at
your
nod
I’ll
work
incessantly
;/
But
when
we
meet
again
beyond,/
Then
you
shall
do
the
same
for
me
. Faust walks right into
it, and maybe walking right into it was the right metaphor, because
the doctor understood what he was pledging.

Or did he?

Of
the
beyond
I
have
no
thought
;/
When
you
reduce
this
world
to
naught
,/…
What
happens
is
of
no
concern
.

Gritz looked into the glass in his hand.
Robert Johnson was twenty-seven years old when he drank poisoned
whiskey, died of the strychnine. A lot of other musicians followed
in his footsteps, dying when they were twenty-seven:

The Stones’ Brian Jones.

Hendrix and Joplin, both in ’70.

Morrison a year after them.

That Cobain idiot four years back.

Gritz wasn’t at the end of his book yet, so
he wasn’t sure what was going to happen to Doctor Faust, though he
had ideas.

Tommy Johnson, at least, dropped dead at
sixty from a heart attack.

Gritz was still staring into his glass when a
guy leaning over the open stool on his left with money in his hand
said, “Ace, innit? The music that is.”

“Yeah. That they are.”

The man told Jackie what he wanted.

“Hey. Aren’t you…” It was the way the guy was
going about it, like he was only now recognizing Gritz. Feigning
ignorance. “Detective Gritzowski? True Gritz?”

“The one and only,” Gritz played along, being
friendly. Aside from his British accent, the other guy was
nondescript, looked like a dozen other white guys Gritz ran into
every day. Guy come up to him in a cop bar, Gritz didn’t peg him
for a troublemaker. Maybe one of the ones needed some time to work
up the nerve. There’d been those like that the last twenty-five
years, fewer these days. Gritz rarely doubted his intuition, but he
knew its limitations.

“Man, you were my hero when I was in the
academy.”

Were
my
hero
. Gritz
noted the tense. Told the younger man
thanks
.

“This one’s called
Ghosts
in
the
Garden
,” a man on stage announced before Phantom
Redemption broke into a new song.