Nightwise (7 page)

“She's washing her hair, Roman,” I said. He backed up a little and ran at me in a classic football tackle. He hit, and I didn't shift an inch. I did, however, give him an uppercut that closed his mouth pretty solidly. The force of it staggered him, and I felt the satisfying crunch of broken teeth. As he stumbled backward, I relieved him of the gun. I cocked it and aimed it at his bloody face. It seemed Roman only had two facial expressions, rage and confusion. I was getting confusion now.

“What do we need to do to make this not happen again, Roman?” I said. “What does she owe you?”

“Thuck yoth,” Roman said through torn lips and shattered teeth. He sounded like a little boy.

“Now, Roman,” I said, “you still have your kneecaps.” I lowered the pistol to his knees. “One last time, or I cripple you and go back to my Cocoa Puffs? What is your beef with this girl?”

“Da bith owth me twenty K,” he said, backing away from the door, getting ready to bolt with his pristine knees.

“That include the vig?” I asked. “She gives you twenty grand and she is square, no interest, no more visits from you and your mouth guard?”

Roman was slowly shifting back to rage. He nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll have it to you by this afternoon. She have your number?”

Again the nod.

“We will call you and tell you where to meet us, understand? And bring the pictures you owe her, or no deal. You got that?”

“Yeth,” he said. The eyes seethed with hatred.

“Now go get yourself some breakfast through a straw,” I said, and shut the door in his face. I turned around and the girl was standing there, her arms wrapped around her chest, holding herself. She wore a black wife beater and purple panties. The ink I had seen on her shoulder earlier was part of a whole canvas. She had a slogan in Italian running along her left shoulder and collarbone, partly obscured by the sleeveless T-shirt; there was a skull with a bloom of roses behind it on her outer left thigh. With her raven hair, dark eyes, and olive complexion, she looked like she could be Greek, or Italian, or Middle Eastern—maybe all of them. I finally decided on Gypsy. Superman has kryptonite, I have Gypsies. She was small, about a half foot shorter than me, and she had very feminine curves. Her eyes and her body language reminded me of a doe—shy but curious, ready to bolt at the first sign of aggression. The guarded smile returned.

“Thank you,” she said again with the accent that hinted of many places. “He would have hurt me very badly.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that,” I said. “Why are you into him for twenty grand?”

She moved to the couch and settled in a corner, her knees tucked up and a pillow now clutched tightly in both arms. I joined her, dropping Roman's gun on the coffee table.

“I'm a fool,” she said. “That's the short version. I have been in the city for about a year now, I came from Canada—Calgary, in Alberta.”

“That where you from originally?” I asked.

“I'm not really from anywhere originally,” she said. Her smile widened for a second, and then she withdrew it.

“Anyway, I work as a model, a fetish model, mostly. I met Roman at a club, and he told me he was connected and could get me a professional photo shoot and some good gigs, he'd pay for it.” She shook her head and chuckled; it was a sound of slight amusement and disgust. “He said I was his ‘investment.' Yeah. So, the photo shoot was amazing, great stuff, would really enhance my portfolio. The jobs, they were … less amazing. They sucked.”

“Porn,” I said, more than asked.

She nodded. “Nasty, raunchy warehouse porn. I've done a lot I'm not proud of, but I've never done anything like that, Mr.…”

“Laytham,” I said. “Laytham Ballard.”

She extended a hand, and I saw a tattoo of a boxy little robot on her wrist. I shook her hand. “My model name is Miss Magdalena. My real name is—”

“Megan,” I said, shaking her hand. She looked surprised as she drew her hand back. “I have scary wizard powers,” I said. “And Christine told me last night. We're roomies. Hi.”

I got the full smile, and it was worth the wait.

“Megan McGilvey,” she said. “I like Magdalena better, though. Hi. Thank you for buying me some time with Roman, but I don't have the money he says I owe him for the photo shoot and backing out of the pornos.”

“I got it,” I said. “I just got paid for a little job I did in Egypt, and I feel like sharing the wealth.” I could feel her emotionally withdraw. She was wary, had been down this road too many times with men.

“No strings,” I said. “No porno, no sleeping with me, no nothing. Scout's honor.”

“You,” Magdalena said, “were never a Scout.”

“I was!” I said, feigning insult. “For about two weeks, until there was an incident involving the den mother and my knot-tying merit badge.”

Magdalena laughed. “I like a man who knows his knots,” she said.

A wonderful, unspoken exchange happened then. The acknowledgment of a secret shared and offered. I smiled back.

“Okay, I'm trusting you,” she said. “And I will pay you back, I promise.”

I nodded as I groaned and stood.

“Things tend to balance themselves out,” I said. “Okay, I'll figure out a good, safe place for us to meet Roman tonight and then get dressed and get some work done.”

“Thank you, Ballard,” she said.

I almost told her not to thank me yet, but then I thought better of it.

*   *   *

“This,” Grinner said, spinning in his high-backed swivel chair and holding up a thumb drive that looked like Boba Fett, “is everything from every dark, greasy corner of the Net about Dusan Slorzack, who, I might add, sounds like an enormous tool.” He handed the drive to me.

By the time I had showered and changed clothes, Grinner and Christine were home, and Grinner took me into what he lovingly called “the lab.” It was a cold, dark room honeycombed with rows of metal shelves full of server slices, microwave transmitters, satellite jammers and receivers, and shit that I couldn't begin to guess at its function. They all had little yellow, green, and red lights twinkling like fireflies. Cables and cords flowed everywhere and in every direction. Grinner's throne and the monoliths of computers and massive flat-screen monitors were islands of light in a sea of shadow. A little blue police call box bobble was bouncing gently on the upper edge of the massive monitor that sat behind him. The monitor currently showed the feed from all of the police traffic cameras in lower Manhattan. Rob Zombie's “Living Dead Girl,” one of Grinner's favorites, thrummed over the speakers mounted to the ceiling and hidden in the air-conditioned darkness.

“It's not sexy,” Grinner said, nodding to the thumb drive. “He's covered his tracks very well. Elite well. It's mostly old news reports, a few really decrepit docs from his political days, and a few hints about his connections and hobbies. Some kink stuff and some of the occult stuff, but it's all old and not really a huge amount of help.

“To summarize, Dusan Slorzack was born in 1945 in Belgrade. His father was a Nazi war criminal, Erich Gebhardt, who incidentally was a member of the SS and the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum. You know them, right?”

“The Thule Society,” I said, nodding. “Occult society that cozied up to the Nazis.” Grinner nodded, then went on.

“His mom was a barmaid, and prostitute on the side. Here's a tidbit, he was born a
zduhać,
someone whose birth caul, or placenta, is intac—”

“I'm familiar with that,” I said, interrupting. While it's pretty much a crap shoot as to who is born to work magic, there are no coincidences when it comes to most magic itself. There is pattern, form, and direction, omens and portents. Sometimes the patterns are so complex, so chaotic, you can't see them, and sometimes they smack you in the face.

“Anyway,” Grinner said, noticing my agitation, “supposed to mean you are born with innate magic powers. Big-league stuff.

“In his twenties, he was a supporter of numerous nationalist groups that opposed Tito's regime. He also studied mysticism, psychology, and philosophy, and was a disciple and eventual leader of the Black Hand. Ever hear of them?”

“Vaguely,” I said.

“They were founded in 1911, kind of an occult terrorist group,” Grinner said. “They were all about Slavic reunification at any cost. They were responsible for assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which started World War One, which eventually led to World War Two.”

“There are a bunch of occult theories about the assassination,” I said. Grinner nodded as he continued to sort through what looked like video files on the monitor.

“Back when I was in the navy, in CYBERFOR,” Grinner said, “I was working in Bosnia. We hacked the Serbian air defense system, spoofed it so they couldn't shoot down our planes. The Black Hand was still creeping around the region even then. Lots of rumors they were mixed up in the ethnic cleansing going on. Two world wars, mass genocides. Damn. For such an obscure little group, they know how to make a statement.”

“Yeah, resulting in the murder of millions,” I said. “That much death is a hell of a lot of energy for a working, like nitrous in a car. Maybe the ethnic cleansing was the same kind of thing.”

Grinner turned, gave me a hard look. “You think a bunch of occult assclowns started two world wars and practiced genocide just to charge up their Ouija boards? That is pretty fucked-up, man.”

“I've seen worse,” I said. “What else you got?”

He shook his head as he turned back to his keyboard.

“Well, by the early '90s, Slorzack was in Radovan Karadžić's inner circle and apparently helped push him to become president of the Republika Srpska—the Serbian territory carved out of Bosnia.

“From there, he weaseled his way into a position associated with Ratko Mladić, the scumbag who established and oversaw the ethnic cleansing and rape camps. Omarska, Čelebići, Keraterm, Trnopolje, Manjača, all the camps. Your boy Slorzack was hardwired into the administration at all of them, not just the one Boj's lady was at.”

“Excuse me?” I said. “How did you…”

“You think you are the only one who can be all Dr. Strange, bro?” Grinner said, obviously very happy to have surprised me. “I found your muddy tracks all over Slorzack's trail. I cleaned them up as best I could, which is to say, epically, and also covered the track back from you to poor old Boj. That man was truly badass, the patron saint of stylish violence. It's a damn shame what happened to his wife. If anyone did that to Christine, I'd…”

He got quiet, looked away, lost in the click of the keys. This was a place I really couldn't gain admittance to. I had never had a Mita, or a Christine. Almost, a few times, but I was too chickenshit to see them through, to make it work. And then there was Torri Lyn and that … didn't work out.

I spent my life at the frayed edges. I didn't have anyone to be that invested in, to make my breath catch or my heart race. No one to protect or to avenge. Most times I was cool with it, part of the price I had chosen to pay for the power and the Life. But sometimes, sometimes …

“Thank you,” I finally said. “For covering my ass and Boj's too.”

“You'll get the bill,” he said. “And by the way, I saw you got some big-ass bloodhounds on your tail too, serious mojo, lots of money and power. Long-ass reach. I'm keeping you to your word. I want you completely gone in the next twenty-four hours, Ballard, you feel me?”

“Yeah, of course,” I said.

“And don't screw Magdalena over either, okay,” Grinner said. “She's a good girl, and she doesn't need your special brand of fucked-up, okay?”

“Got it,” I said.

A grainy black-and-white video image bounced into focus on the massive seventy-inch flat-screen monitor. It was a cluster of men in very bad suits talking, joking, and glad-handing as they got into a row of boxlike little cars on a rubble-strewn street in what appeared to be a partly bombed-out city. There was no sound, and a video camera time and date stamp in the corner of the video image said these pictures were taken on October 21, 1994.

“This is the last-known picture I could find of Dusan Slorzack. That's him there, talking to Mladić.” Grinner froze the image. Dusan Slorzac was smiling, a cruel razor cut of a smile, and he was shaking the hand of the man who orchestrated the death of hundreds of thousands. Slorzack was tall and broad from bone and muscle. He had the build of a brawler more than a magus, with a mane of black hair that feathered away from his wide face and fell below his collar. It was a terribly out-of-date haircut looking like something a teen idol in the '70s would sport, and it looked even more incongruous on Slorzack, whose weathered, craggy face and bent, formerly broken nose marked him to be in his fifties at least. I was paying more attention to his eyes. They were dead. Black, immortal eyes—shark eyes, cobra eyes, the dead places between the stars. The slit smile was a poor attempt to appear human. He wasn't very good at it. I felt a pang of understanding, and that troubled me.

“Now check this out,” Grinner said, and tapped a key. The flow of time resumed on the video. Slorzack glanced over Maldić's shoulder. I saw the moment he caught sight of the camera. The slit of a smile faded, and my prey narrowed his eyes. It was as if he was looking right at me, across time, across the electron sea. I looked back and I felt the power in my body begin to coalesce, to rise. It was pure fight or flight. We locked eyes and we knew each other. He arched his head slightly. The video distorted, warped, as if a powerful magnet had been suddenly put beside the camera. Slorzack's face twisted and blurred, and then the images were lost to a wall of electronic rain. Grinner was facing me again. We were both silent. The static made the shadows in the room dance.