The Grendel Affair: A SPI Files Novel (15 page)

“Clever,” I said. “Think the key that opened the door on the other end will fit?”

“Don’t see why not.” Ian gave it a try. It was a perfect fit.

He closed the door in the wall, locked it, and clicked the tile back into place. “That’ll do until we can get back here with Yasha and Calvin to do a pickup.”

I made my way across the former restroom/present storage room, and pulled on the exit door handle.

Locked.

That wasn’t good.

Then I saw the dead bolt. Ian came up behind me, key ring dangling from his fingers. “We’ve got one more key that has yet to have a lock.”

I stepped aside to let him try. “Here’s hoping . . .”

It took a little key wiggling and maneuvering, but the dead bolt reluctantly slid aside. Ian opened the door just enough to see out, and apparently didn’t object to what he saw and pulled it the rest of the way open.

The subway station was full of people bundled up against the weather topside. Across the platform was an orange-tiled section of wall that said “25th Street.”

“I’ll be damned,” Ian said. “We’re a block from Green-Wood’s main entrance.” He inclined his head in greeting to a woman with an appalled expression who’d just seen the two of us come out of what had once been a subway men’s room. The station was busy, but no one else even batted an eye—at least the other women didn’t.

“How convenient,” I said, catching the knowing smirks of several men, whom I proceeded to stare down. “Yet, creepy and disgusting.”

“There has to be another exit from that tunnel,” Ian said. “There’s no way those crates and cases were hauled through one of Brooklyn’s busiest subway stations and into a locked storage room.”

Even the most jaded New Yorkers would notice that.

Ian took out his phone, looked down at it, and blew out his breath in annoyance. “When are they gonna make a phone that can get a signal in a subway?” He crossed the platform to a pay phone, and I stuck close. Ian quickly made the call, and I recognized Yasha’s mobile number. I was standing right next to him and I still could make out only a word or two over all the noise around us.

“Was he surprised when you told him where we were?” I asked Ian when he’d hung up.

“Yasha’s not the surprised type.”

We waited, and it said a lot about Yasha’s creative parking skills that we didn’t have to wait long. He and Calvin came down the stairs into the station carrying tool boxes and wearing a pair of navy coveralls like our agents at Green-Wood had worn, but instead of the cemetery’s logo, the patch on the left side of his chest said “Sarkowski Plumbing.”

Matching outfits. Cute.

“Aren’t those the same coveralls our guys were wearing in Green-Wood?” I asked.

Ian nodded. “We keep coveralls and a selection of company patches in all of our vehicles,” he said. “Velcro. Tear one off, slap another one on. Quick and virtually unquestioned access.”

“Uh, but the restroom is closed,” I said. “Storage rooms don’t need plumbers.”

Ian indicated the men’s room door. The sign over the door said Men; there was nothing to indicate it was anything else. “Some are still open; most aren’t, and a lot of the time, they don’t have signs saying otherwise.”

“Mean trick to play on someone who has to go.”

“Other than the one we just came out of, have you ever been in a subway bathroom?”

“No.”

“Trust me; the mean part would be having to use them.”

Yasha and Calvin ignored us completely, but as they passed us, Yasha said, “Half block west,” and headed straight for the men’s room. Calvin hung a Closed for Maintenance sign on the door, and both men disappeared inside.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

Ian pressed something into my hand. “Here’s a key to the SUV. Yasha parked half a block west. I want you to get in and lock the doors. We’ll be there within twenty minutes.”

“You don’t have a uniform.”

“I will when we come out. Right now, I’m just a guy who needs to take a leak and thinks signs don’t apply to him.”

“How are you going to haul a monster head in a crate out of there?”

“Tell anyone who gets in our way that it’s a busted toilet.”

“That’d stop my questions.”

“And anyone else’s. Always does.” His expression turned doubly serious. “Go directly to the SUV and don’t stop for anyone.”

Ian turned on his heel and headed purposefully toward the men’s room, a man on a mission.

This was one time when I was perfectly fine waiting in the car. I had no desire to go back through a claustrophobic tunnel that went under a cemetery. Also I’d be sharing the backseat with a monster head in a box soon enough; I didn’t feel the need to rush it.

While sitting would be more than welcome, I’d really rather do it someplace other than an SUV parked in subfreezing temperatures. I hadn’t eaten since the pre-dawn stale doughnuts at headquarters, so just the thought of food set my mouth to watering. Even Kenji’s wasabi peas would be manna from heaven right now. Note to self: fighting ghouls and running down a little old lady killer with a tractor really takes it out of a girl.

I went through the turnstile and up the stairs to the street in search of hot food and even hotter coffee. I knew I wouldn’t have to go far to find either one. New Yorkers liked their coffee, and they liked having places to get it close by, regardless of where they happened to be at any given moment in their day or night. Before I even got to the top of the stairs, my nose told me that coffee was close; and where there was coffee, there were baked goods. Since this was Brooklyn, those baked goods were sure to include bagels. Though at this point, I wasn’t going to be picky. I’d eat cardboard if someone smeared cream cheese on it.

It wasn’t hard to spot the behemoth black SUV. Yasha had parked it almost on top of a pile of snow left at the curb from the latest plowing, and it had one of those magnetic signs on the driver’s side door that said “Sarkowski Plumbing.” Unfortunately it was in the opposite direction from where my nose insisted that there was coffee. The SUV wasn’t going anywhere, but I was making a detour.

The line at the coffee shop wasn’t long, and soon I was headed back to the pile of snow with the giant SUV perched on top with a mega grande mocha latte in one hand and a hot, whole grain bagel packed with honey walnut cream cheese eagerly clutched in the other.

I climbed the mini mountain, got into the SUV, locked the doors, and happily hunkered down to do some serious eating, but not before burning my tongue on the nuclear-hot coffee.

I glanced over at a newsstand and saw it.

Oh no.

Today’s issue of the
Informer
.

The headline screamed at me and anyone else with working eyeballs and a taste for the bizarre.

SoHo Sasquatch!

To make it even worse—if that was remotely possible—there was a photo of the monster in all its grainy glory. Apparently SPI wasn’t the only one with cameras around Ollie’s shop. The resolution wasn’t the best, but it was good enough for a front page, smack-you-in-the-face headline. And if the
Informer
had it on their front page, it’d be only a matter of time until someone got themselves slaughtered in front of witnesses, any or all of whom could be taking pictures or video and instantly uploading them to Twitter or YouTube. If they hadn’t already . . .

Crap.

I took out my phone and searched Twitter and YouTube, then Googled “SoHo Sasquatch.”

Nothing.

For now.

The stack of the
Informer
was twice the height of what it usually was. It looked like they’d printed plenty of extras. My old editor would want to entice as much money as possible from the sensation-loving public. It was half past two in the afternoon; that stack must have been huge when it’d been delivered this morning.

I put down my bagel, took my coffee with me to cool it down, and climbed out of the SUV to get a copy.

It read like a fluffed-up police report, and seeing the name on the byline, I knew it’d been fluffed up with silicone.

I’d been my editor’s favorite reporter because I was a good reporter who got the story. Scuttlebutt had it that Trixie Shaftner was now his favorite, but for completely different reasons. Trixie was good at getting people to talk to her—especially men. Her sources were bigger and higher up than mine, but then so were her boobs. All she had to do was aim her girls at them, and the poor, besotted bastards were one question away from becoming her next “source close to the investigation.”

I gave the article a quick scan to see if Trixie had managed to get anywhere close to the truth.

The article was sensational, panic inducing, and full of gruesome details—vintage
Informer
. Sounded like Trixie had gotten her hands on the coroner’s report or had rubbed her bounty up against one of the first responders, or both. Falke’s method of demise was described with near ghoulish glee. The coroner believed the weapon to be a curved knife, like a sickle. Trixie said that Falke’s slash wounds were caused by claws, and that his arm had been torn, not cut, from his shoulder.

One point for Trixie.

She had the same information that we did on Falke’s background, but there was nothing on why he had been in New York. She also didn’t know what Falke had been doing in the proprietor’s office at Barrington Galleries when he was murdered; and of course, all efforts to locate Oliver Barrington-Smythe led to a dead end. In an unexpected and imaginative twist, Trixie all but accused Ollie of being the Dr. Frankenstein/mastermind behind the monster, and inferred that his gallery was a front for occult criminal activity.

Ollie? A criminal mastermind?

Snort.

Nice try, Trix, but no cigar.

Conveniently, Ollie wasn’t around to refute her story or sue the pants off of her and the
Informer
. Though if he were here, he’d just stay open extended hours to take financial advantage of his notoriety, and offer tours of his office at twenty bucks a pop.

The official police statement was that a body was found and that they were currently investigating.

I had coffee in one hand, the tabloid in the other, and was drinking the former and reading the latter while walking across an icy sidewalk back to the SUV. It was multitasking at its finest. It was also what kept me from seeing the yuppie vampire stroll right up next to me and put a vice-clamp grip on my upper arm.

“Fools and their money are easily parted,” he murmured in my ear.

He was wearing sunglasses. Oakleys. That kept his eyes from doing a repeat of trying to hypnotize like he’d nearly done last night.

I did some panicked fumbling through my brain’s filing cabinet for what I knew about vampires and daylight. Younger vamps couldn’t take the light at all. Middle-aged ones could be out in the light, but “time to turn so you don’t burn” was literal with them. Vamps older than five hundred years had no problem being out and about during the day, but shades were advisable.

In addition to sunglasses, the yuppie vamp had every square inch of skin covered—suit, tie, wool coat, gloves, and scarf. Only his face was exposed, but it was shaded under the brim of a stylish fedora. Middle-aged variety. Check.

I’d like to say that I didn’t do a repeat of my stand, stare, and stammer bit from last night. I’d like to say it, but I couldn’t.

“The sun doesn’t agree with me, either,” I eventually heard myself say.

The vampire took the
Informer
from me then firmly linked my arm through his. “I thought as much with your kind.” He said the last two words as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. “Then you will be agreeable to finding a more private place to continue our conversation.” He tossed the tabloid in the nearest trash, which was really where it belonged.

I wasn’t running this time; and with my arm locked down, I couldn’t. Besides, vampire or not, I’d seen him rip the ass out of his pants. That and knowing what color underwear he wore took a little of the edge off my fear. It was also broad daylight and we were in the middle of a relatively crowded street. If I had to, I had a scream that’d put a banshee to shame.

The vampire jerked me in closer, facing him. “Is the package in place?”

“What?”

“My package. Is it in place?”

I resisted the urge to look down at the front of the vampire’s pants. “Uh . . . yes?”

“Good.” His fingers curled in a crushing grip around my hand. “Now explain to me why you apprehended the assassin and delivered the keys and flash drive into SPI’s hands?”

I didn’t know him, but he obviously thought he knew me. Plus, the homeless guy knew Ian. This was officially beyond confusing.

When in doubt, go with the truth. “She killed our source.” I remembered Ian dumping out the contents of the purse. “The SPI agent took the keys, and I didn’t know about the flash drive.”

“Tarbert had far outlived his usefulness, and paid the price for his greed.” He lowered his face to mine, and I could smell whoever he had for breakfast. “The head of the beast does not matter to me, but if you do not wish to share Tarbert’s fate, you
will
retrieve that flash drive.”

“I . . . I don’t think I can do that.”

“You derive great enjoyment from toying with me, demon. Perhaps our employer is correct and you have outlived your usefulness as well.” He adjusted his grip on my arm to get a better hold. “Your behavior has become increasingly erratic, and the risk of exposure is too great.”

A black van with blacked-out windows pulled up to the curb. The door slid open. I caught a glimpse of two men in black suits, white shirts, black ties, and sunglasses, putting off a serious
Men in Black
vibe.

“Get in,” the vampire ordered.

It didn’t matter where you were from—backwoods or big city—you didn’t get into a van full of strange men, and they didn’t come any stranger than this.

I didn’t act. I reacted.

With a scream that could be heard for blocks—probably above and below ground—I punched the vamp in the face with the hand holding the scalding coffee. I’d forgotten until that moment that I was still wearing the brass knuckles under my glove. I felt teeth break. The vamp’s hold on me loosened, and I yanked my arm free, inadvertently knocking off his hat and sunglasses in the process.