The Supernaturals (21 page)

The cop nodded his head.

“And the charge is...?”

“Aggravated assault, panhandling, and disturbing the peace.”

“That’s three charges. You said two.” The detective held up a hand to silence the officer, and spoke into his phone. “Yes, this is Jenkins. Let me speak to security, please.” He addressed the officer. “What’s the last name of the boy that was allegedly assaulted?”

“Addison,” the cop answered.

“Is he a local businessman’s son?”

“Yes, his family owns the restaurant not far from—”

“Not far from where he was combing the beach for change,” the man from New York finished.

“Yeah.”

“Yes, I have Cordero,” the detective said into the phone. “The judge’s name is Bennett, and the charges are bullshit. Right, right... Okay, I’ll be here, just let me know.”

The detective returned the phone to his pocket and turned to the man sitting on the floor, ignoring the officer.

“Mr. Cordero, you’ll be out of here by ten o’clock in the morning. I’ve made arrangements for you to come to New York.”

“I don’t want to go to New York,” the man said with a thick Spanish accent.

“A man you may know said to tell you...” the detective pulled out a small note pad and referenced Cordero’s page. “That he’s going back into the house, and that he needs your expertise. You’ll be paid two hundred thousand dollars for the four days leading up to and including Halloween.”

The police officer momentarily lost control of his jaw as it fell open.

“House?” the shaggy-haired man asked, his eyes still closed. “Just who is this man?”

“Professor Gabriel Kennedy.” The detective closed his notebook.

Cordero’s eyes opened. His demeanor seemed instantly more alert and aware, as though he had just awakened after a long sleep.

“Summer Place, isn’t it?” Cordero said with a growing smile. “That stupid bastard is slapping that bitch again? What can I say—count me in.” He stood and felt at his beard. “Can I get a shave and a haircut?” he asked his jailer.

“Yeah, in the morning, before you see the judge.”

The detective looked at the cop. “I don’t think he’ll be seeing your local magistrate after my bosses make their calls to your city council—which they should be doing right about now.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll be sending one of your local barbers down to see to Mr. Cordero. He has a plane to catch.”

“Summer Place...You know, I always wanted to pork that bitch myself.” Cordero had a gleam in his eye that made him look for all the world like Charles Manson’s twin brother.

“Mr. Cordero, if I may ask, what is it that makes you important to Professor Kennedy?”

The man in the cell thought a moment, pulling on his long beard.

“I’m a clairvoyant.”

The policeman laughed as he left the holding area. The man from the network was now alone with the nutcase in the cell.

“You’re kidding. If that’s so, why didn’t you see your arrest coming?” the detective asked.

“Maybe I did, and I just wanted to spank that little bastard anyway. My sense of justice has always been out of whack. And I’m hard-headed.”

The detective nodded. “See you in a while, Mr. Cordero.” He handed his card through the cell’s bars, and didn’t notice Cordero touching his fingers as he accepted it.

“Hey, Mack, tell me something?”

The detective stopped and turned around. Cordero pushed his bearded face through the cell bars.

“If I can.”

“You know the little bastard I’m supposed to have assaulted?’

“What about him?”

“You know he’s responsible for ten fires in the past two years? Three lives were lost in one of them. That’s the real reason I beat his ass.”

“And you know this how?” the detective asked. He took four steps back toward the glaring man behind the bars.

“I sensed it when he laid his hands on me to snag my metal detector. You know, he actually has an erection when he sets his fires...”

“You’re nuts,” the detective said and he turned to walk away.

“Yep,” Cordero said. “I’m just as about as nuts as you were, after you caught your ex-wife in bed with that fella she worked with at the school district, and in your very own house.”

The detective stopped dead in his tracks and his shoulders stiffened. His ex-wife had been a teacher and her boss had been the school superintendent, back on Long Island. He had caught them in bed, and had beaten the man almost half to death. He’d been a split second away from hurting his wife. How had this man known that?

“You have to take me serious about this punk; he’s going to kill more people.”

The man from New York walk away. Behind him, Cordero returned to the floor and crossed his legs again, shaking his head. “Oh, Gabe, what have you gone and done? That house just may well win it all this time around.”

Five hours later
, a freshly shaven man by the name of George Cordero stepped out of his jail cell in Ogunquit, Maine. His hair was cut and combed. He seemed actually human, for the first time in his long stay on the island, and not bad looking, either. The policemen looked stunned when he walked out into the station wearing a new suit and shoes.

Before the tall detective could show him to the door, he was taken by the elbow and steered to a small room down the hall. The man who had pulled the strings to set him free nodded his head at the police detective sitting at his desk. The man twirled a small monitor on his desk outward to face Cordero. On the screen was a young man sitting beside a man with a suit, and what looked like two police officers across from him.

“Recognize the kid?” the policeman at the desk asked Cordero.

George leaned in and stared at the cleancut teenager who sat stoically with a smug look on his face. He nodded his head. It was the same kid he had been accused of assaulting and the one that broke his metal detector.

“His name is Chad Addison. Thanks to you, or the warning we received from your friend here, he was taken into custody. The arrogant little bastard confessed to a string of arsons like they were good deeds done for a merit badge, the little sick fuck. Well, his father’s lawyer showed up and he clammed up quick enough, so it looks—”

George Cordero turned away and headed for the front door. The policeman and the detective would never understand that his abilities were what had driven him away from society. He had come to fear that everyone he ever knew had deep, dark secrets to be kept, and that his days would be forever filled with the thoughts of bad people.

Cordero opened the door and took a breath of fresh air. He knew the deal he had just struck for his trip to the Pocono Mountains would be the last deal he would ever make. He knew, if what he heard and felt was true, he was going to a place that would end his torment.

“Summer Place.”

Loveland, Colorado

The dinner party was proceeding proceeded far better than Leonard Sickles would have ever thought possible. The young man from Los Angeles had held his own with intellectuals from both Hewlett Packard
and
IBM. Every once in a while his language would revert back to the streets from which he sprang, but more times than not, he would mentally corral the harsh words that were boiling over to get out.

Leonard Sickles, former gang banger, was famous for rising from the front ranks of the Crips in East Los Angeles, to become one of the most gifted software designers in the world. His talent had been discovered by accident by a former professor at USC. It took two years for the professor to gain the trust of Lenny “too smart” Sickles and then another year for the kid to recognize his own genius. Leonard was a prodigy. He had just graduated at the top of his class, completing six years of instruction in only four. It had taken the death of his younger brother in a drive-by shooting to make him focus on bettering himself. He knew his mother could not take another death in their small struggling family.

The dinner party was an excuse for Electro-Light Design Incorporated of Fort Collins, Colorado, to thumb their noses at the people from IBM and Hewlett Packard, who had not been able to land the brilliant former gang member for their own.

His new boss and the owner of Electro-Light Design, Thomas Reynolds, pulled Leonard away from one of the hired kitchen helpers—to whom he was telling a very sordid joke—and smiled his way into the hallway with his arm around the boy.

“Leonard, you have visitors at the front door. A couple of men from New York.”

“Really?” he asked.

“How did anyone know you were here?” Reynolds asked. He nodding his head to one of the guests in passing. “Is there something you’d like to tell me? I mean, we
do
have a deal in principle, right?”

“Sure, my word is righteous.”

“I mean, you wouldn’t hang me out to dry by talking with another company, would you? Computer Associates in New York, or some other east coast outfit?”

“Look, Mr. Reynolds, I said I would sign the contract. What’s the matter, my word ain’t good ‘nough?”

Reynolds placed his arm around the smaller black man. Leonard got very uncomfortable every time his new boss performed that particular gesture. It was as if he was trying to act like his father. The clothes Reynolds had purchased for him for the dinner party were starting to feel just a little tight.

“Okay, son, just checking. Maybe you better go and see who your visitors are. I’ll make nice with the sharks in the dining room.”

“Sure,” Leonard said. He returned to the kitchen worker he had been speaking to earlier.

“Hey baby, where’s the front door to this funeral parlor?”

She pointed to the left and Leonard treated her to his once-famous slumped-over walk, winking at her before he rounded the corner.

When he was out of sight, he straightened up into the practiced calm and confident stride that made white society take him seriously. He approached two men in dark suits, who stood just inside the door. His mind was racing, but on the outside he remained cool.

“I didn’t do it, number one. And number two, I was actually invited here.”

“Sir?” the larger man on the left asked.

“It’s obvious you’re cops. Come on man, I really was invited.”

“No, sir, we’re private security from the UBC Television Network in New York.” The two men looked at each other, and then at a file photo that the shorter one held. Leonard shifted. He’d jacked some cars from the UBC lot in LA, once, but that had been a long time ago.

“Mr. Leonard Sickles?”

“Come on man, just say you’re cops.”

“Sir, we are here to offer you a job for seven days and one night—Halloween night. The offer is for—”

“Get the fuck outta here, man,” Sickles said. He slapped at the air and started to turn away.

“Two hundred thousand dollars,” the man finished.

Sickles tuned back around and looked at the two men.

“Two hundred large?” he smiled. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. You’ll have to spend the week before Halloween in New York doing some technical work.”

Leonard looked the smaller of the two over, and then eyed the larger.

“Get the fuck outta here,” he repeated. “This is a fuckin’ joke, right?”

The two men exchanged looks. “No joke, Mr. Sickles, Professor Gabriel Kennedy asked for you personally.”

“Professor Gabe? Where’s he at?”

“We don’t know,” the large one said. “We are to retain your services and get you to New York within the next 24 hours.”

“Is he in trouble again?” He fidgeted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

“We don’t know, sir.” The smaller man pulled a sheet of paper out of the file he was holding. “There is this.” He handed the paper over to Sickles.

He eyed the man and then slowly reached for the paper.

“Bring your Infra-Spectroscope design—I found you the money to build it.” He read down the page, looking for a signature, but there was none. In its place was one word that he read aloud. “
Punk!
That’s Professor Gabe all right—the asshole.”

“Hey, hey, what’s going on here? You’re taking a hike on me and my company for New York?”

The three men at the door turned to see Thomas Reynolds standing angrily in the outer entranceway.

“Spying, Mr. Reynolds?” Leonard asked, his right eyebrow rising. “Is this the kind of trust I can expect from you and your company, man?”

“I’m paying you enough to buy your trust. Now what’s this about?”

“What this is about, is the man who saved my life. My shrink from a long time ago. He needs me, and I’m going to help him. I’ll be back—” he looked questioningly toward the two men.

“The day after Halloween, sir.”

“Yeah, the day after Halloween. Then I’m yours. And don’t think I’m not going. I owe this man everything I am, and all that I
will
become.”