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

Friggin’ Boone.

Mierda
.

The problem with Boone, he didn’t respect the
game. That’s what Jay had told Hamilton and Maddy. He wondered
where those guys were now, how they were doing. Jay hoped they were
well. Boone he could really care less about.

Maybe he’d give Ham or Maddy a call one of
these days, but not yet. He was here in Europe with his woman. The
men who had hurt her had paid, got what they’d deserved, and it was
over. They could relax now. Sure, they wouldn’t be welcomed on the
east coast, but why ever set foot there again? Nobody back there
knew where they were, and the people here didn’t know who they
were. They could put it all behind them, get on with their
lives.

She’d been all over the world. He had not.
Jay looked forward to travelling with her, to seeing what the globe
had to offer. Maybe one day they’d return to his village in Central
America. Jay wondered if there was anyone left there he’d remember.
He barely remembered the place himself.

They’d been coming to this café for a few
weeks steady and were known to the wait staff, who gave them
smiles, happy for their love, awestruck by her beauty. Only Jay had
ever seen Tisiphy as she was and lived to tell of it. And he would
never tell, because even in her other form, she was magnificent in
his eyes. His old self would have warned him it was not good what
they were doing, following a pattern, being seen here together
day-in and day-out each morning.

His old self.

What was left of it? Who was going to try and
find them? What was done was done. He kept up with the papers. The
capo of the family, Nicolie, guy was headed to jail and would never
get out. The family had enough concerns on its hands, Jay
considered, what with the question of succession, to not give
himself and his woman another thought.

He looked up and there she was—his
Tisiphone—crossing the street towards him. It was like everything
and everyone around her froze in a blur and only she was in focus
for his eyes, only she was moving. She came to him through the
crowd, nearly six and a half feet tall in her heels. Her mid-thigh
rain-jacket glistened, slick and glossy. Her eyes hidden behind
sunglasses, cheek bones pronounced, full lips. All this time
together, she still took his breath away. Her magnificence.

Mierda
, Jay whispered to himself, just
to look at her.

He ground out his Moore in the ashtray as she
sat down across from him, gracing him with a smile. Suddenly it was
like people were moving again, crossing by in the street, the
sounds of the city back in the air. A few of the passersby—men and
women—looked at her, nearly mesmerized by her pulchritude.

“Hello baby,” he said when he could.

He was the luckiest bastard on the face of
the earth.

Olga Coyle had a phone on the wall in her
kitchen and a second on the end table abutting her bed. Her son,
Eddie, had a separate line in his own room. The phone in Eddie’s
room had not rung in the days since he’d gone out and failed to
return home. Even if it had, Olga would not have answered it. Her
Eddie’s phone was her Eddie’s phone. Her boy kept his room locked,
thinking his mother couldn’t get in if she wanted to. Her boy
thought his mother didn’t know what he kept in his closet.

The phone next to Olga’s bed rang.

She answered it. The voice on the other end
told her where she could find her son. The other party disconnected
and Olga called her best friend, Sarafina, for a ride.

Sarafina and her car were a mismatch. Olga’s
friend was short and quiet, often deferential in Olga’s presence;
her 1976 Ninety-Eight Oldsmobile was long, wide and loud. A four
door hardtop, black over blue, with Cadillac-type tailfins, the
Ninety-Eight’s rear wheels were recessed behind the quarter panels.
The car, one of the largest General Motors ever made, rumbled and
shook behind the 455 Rocket V8 engine, the exhaust system in need
of work.

Seated on a stack of cushions, leaning
forward with both hands on the wheel, Sarafina drove. Olga’s cats,
Leroi and Warrior, were in the back. Leroi was stretched out behind
the headrests of the rear seats, under the window, purring. Warrior
stood on his rear legs, his forepaws pressed to the passenger-side
window, looking out at the streets passing by.

The cats didn’t get to go for many rides.

Olga sat across from Sarafina on the front
bench. A large woman, obese, Olga’s girth took up a great deal of
the bench. She had her hands in her lap and was forcing herself to
be quiet, forcing herself to keep still.

Her boy, Eddie.

He needed her.

The address they’d been given was for a
maintenance building at a public park.

It was late and the park was vacant as the
Olds rumbled to a stop at the curb, the brick building looming a
short distance away. Olga braced herself against the car door and
car roof, Sarafina helping her from the vehicle.

She placed one leg in front of the other,
unsteady but determined. Warrior and Leroi weaved in and out
between Olga’s stout legs as she made her way. Tennis courts and a
baseball field loomed on either side, deserted at this time of
night. The maintenance building was boarded up, looked unused.

Sarafina walked next to her friend, Olga
gripping her arm for balance.

Olga’s son had been gone long enough now that
Sarafina knew whatever they were going to find in that building, it
wasn’t going to be good. Not for her, not for her friend. Oh, Olga.
Younger than she looked, Olga would be sixty in two years. Life had
been tough on Sarafina’s best friend: Olga’s husband had been gone
all these years; her oldest son, Billy, dead five years now. Olga’s
weight had crept up on her with the years, slowing her down.

“Thanks Sarafina, my arthritis…”

They reached the maintenance building, the
door opening under Olga’s hand. Leroi and Warrior immediately
disappeared inside, into the pitch-black, no fear. Sarafina
produced a flashlight and flicked it on. The torch flickered and
Sarafina tapped it, the light shining true. The two friends stepped
into the darkness together.

“Eddie?” Olga called out to the black.
“Where’s my boy?”

…
my
boy
, her voice echoed back
to them.

Sarafina panned the room with the light,
revealing a vast, largely empty space. The remains of rusted
industrial equipment took up much of one corner. Copper wiring and
whatever else could be traded for money had been stripped long ago.
Dried leaves were scattered about the floor from another time,
another season.

“There.” Sarafina went to point with the
flashlight when it died. She tapped it against her leg, jiggling
the batteries, bringing it back to life. Sarafina directed the beam
on what she’d seen, the two cats circling a heap on the floor
further into the room.

“Who…” Olga lifted a leg and planted one foot
in front of the other, breathing heavy, sweating. “…who could have
done this…” Her weight an encumbrance, no amount of hustle would
change what they’d come here to find. “…done this to my boy…”

They stood above Olga Coyle’s son.

“Oh Eddie, my Eddie.”

His body lay stretched out on the ground,
amid the leaves, arms at his side. Eddie’s head had been set on his
chest. The lower half of his face was all gum and teeth, his lips
and most of the skin around his mouth and cheeks cut away. His ears
had been sawed off and an orbit was vacant its eye.

“…my little Eddie...”

Sarafina’s flashlight flickered and she
cursed the thing, cursed it between her tears, rapping it with the
palm of her hand, angry at herself, she should have changed the
batteries. The light returned.

“…oh, Eddie baby, my baby…” Olga had sunk
down next to her boy and was cradling his head, caressing his hair,
her son’s head half a skull. “I promise you, mommy promises you
this...”

The light in Sarafina’s hand dimmed.

“…whoever hurt you,” Olga paused, something
caught in her throat, “whoever did this to you baby, they’ll—”

Sarafina’s flashlight died.

“—they’ll have hell to pay.”

They were alone in the dark together for some
time, Sarafina’s sobs punctuating the quiet.

When Olga spoke, the words were of an ancient
and lost tongue. A light sprang to life in the palm of her hand.
The effulgence radiated outwards from the woman, its brilliance
filling the room. Shadows vanished and the stark emptiness of the
scene was revealed to them. Warrior and Leroi scurried about,
agitated, their tails raised.

“Sarafina.” The otherworldly fire burning in
her hand, Olga looked up from her boy to her best friend. “Give me
a hand, would you? My knees…”

Sarafina bent down to help her mistress back
to her feet, Olga saying “I’m going to need help,” as she wrapped
her pudgy arms around Sarafina’s neck, Sarafina heaving, Olga
rising, standing, “need help getting Eddie to the car.”

The light radiating from Olga’s hand burned
neither of them.

Olga stood there, above her boy,
determination and something else in her eye. It was the something
else that concerned Sarafina,
scared
her.

“Yes,
magistra
.” Sarafina moved to
help her high priestess.

Dawn was still in process as Detective Will
“Gritz” Gritzowski arrived at the scene. A homicide was what they
were saying over the radio. What they weren’t saying—this Gritz
could
feel
—Mephisto had struck again. He pulled off the
Palisades Parkway at the Rockefeller Lookout, parking his Crown Vic
beyond the marked police cars and emergency vehicles. Gritz got out
of the sedan in his coat and tie, a little older and slower than
the day before, a steaming blue and white cup of coffee in his hand
to help chase away last night’s drink.

He had no jurisdiction here across the river.
The place was swarming with law enforcement: the Englewood Cliffs
police were heavy on the scene; their medical examiner’s people; a
number of Jersey State troopers with their Sam Brown belts and
their saucer-shaped hats, badges on those hats. A collection of
blue-on-white Parkway police cars and State Trooper vehicles
filling the pull off.

Gritz made his way through the crowd towards
the taped off scene, greeting the Englewood P.D. like he knew them
until he came across one he did.

“Pull any black guy’s over lately?” Gritz
mustered a grin. Heck if he could recall the man’s name. Didn’t
mean he wouldn’t bust his balls. Maryland and Jersey State Police
had been in the news lately over racial profiling, pulling black
motorists over in disproportionate numbers on the Turnpike and
95.

“Hey,” the cop replied, smiling back,
recognizing Gritz. “I just do what my supervisor tells me.”

“Yeah, we’re all good Germans,” Gritz
commiserated, wanting to ask the man a question but he’d already
gone.

Gritz got as close as he could and stopped to
watch. The forensics boys were there in white, bagging evidence. A
photographer worked the scene. A couple detective-types in jackets
were talking to one another, looking in his direction. He could
tell they recognized him, could tell they thought he was past his
expiration date. Gritz raised his coffee to them, “Fuck you, boys,”
saying it so only he could hear it.

A white sheet was tarped over a body.

Gritz rubbed a hand on his jaw. He needed a
shave.
Nah
. He’d needed a shave three days ago. This was
getting ridiculous.

Rotors reverberated overhead, a news chopper
covering the traffic backup on the Palisades.

Gritz knew what they said about him behind
his back. They used to call him True Gritz, respect in their
voices. Nowadays they called him Bad Lieutenant like Keitel in that
movie. Or worse, a drunk. Not that there wasn’t an element of truth
to it. Gritz liked him his drink. Carried a flask. Gritz could kid
around about it with himself, thinking it was like that old joke:
what’s the difference between an alcoholic and a drunk? A drunk
doesn’t have to go to those stupid meetings.

And he didn’t.

Every day, Gritz was feeling more and more
like someone’s stereotype of a policeman: the grizzled, veteran
detective who’d seen it all and learned to shrug his shoulders at
the inhumanity. There was another side to that coin, even less
attractive, the middle-aged, washed-up, burnt out cop. Gritz didn’t
know if he’d go so far to say he was corrupt, but he’d turned his
head to enough bullshit in the past twenty-five years. Only in the
earliest days did any of it trouble his sleep. These days he
carried the flask, which helped.

Foley came over to stand next to him. Foley
with his kit, straight out of the New York City Medical Examiner’s
Office. Foley looked past the crime scene, beyond the river.

“What are we looking at Foley?”

“Looks like Spuyten Duyvil to me.” A part of
Riverdale over in the Bronx.

“They found a note.” Gritz didn’t ask him if
he’d spoken to anybody from the Jersey M.E.’s office.

“They found a note,” confirmed Foley,
proceeding to fill Gritz in on the details. Gritz listened and
nodded, sipping at his coffee now that it was cooling. Foley wasn’t
telling him anything he didn’t know, hadn’t seen before. This guy
called himself Mephisto, guy had an M.O.

As Foley talked, Gritz thought he had another
reason to drink these days. The bullshit was mounting. Cases he
couldn’t solve; others he stood powerless on the sidelines of; a
troubled marriage. Hell if it could even be called a marriage
anymore. He and Cathleen were estranged, their kids wouldn’t talk
to him.

“Why’s he hunting them outside the city
now?”