“Mr. Fresh,” said Ray. He was a beta male, so open confrontation wasn’t really his game. Passive aggression being the beta weapon of choice.
“Ray,” said Minty Fresh. “Good to see you landed on your feet.”
Ray turned behind the counter a bit so Minty Fresh could see he was wearing a revolver on his hip, the gesture made overly obvious by Ray’s inability to turn his head. A bullet to the neck had ended his career as a cop and doctors had fused his vertebrae. Ray Macy looked at life head-on, whether he wanted to or not.
“Did you just turn so I could see you had a gun?” asked Minty Fresh, amused.
“No,” said Ray, turning back quickly.
Ray must have been a horrible, horrible cop, Minty thought. He said, “I need to talk to Carrie Lang. This is her shop, I’m told.”
“She’s not available,” said Ray.
“I’m right here,” a woman called from the back room. “I’ll be right out.”
“She must have just come in,” Ray explained.
A blond woman in her midthirties came out of the back room.
“Whoa,” she said, when she spotted the big man. She stopped and backed up a step. “You’re a tall drink of water.”
“Honey,” said Ray, “this is Minty Fresh. Remember, I told you about him. Him and Lily.”
Minty considered the “honey” and gave Carrie Lang a second look: she was short, but weren’t they all? She wore an awful lot of silver Indian jewelry layered over denim and chambray, but she had a sweet smile, a nice shape, and there was a spark of intelligence in her eyes that really should have put Ray out of the running for her attention. It’s a lonely business, Fresh thought.
“Ms. Lang.” Minty offered his hand over the counter. “A pleasure.” As he took her hand he looked at Ray and nodded approval, giving the non-cop props for achieving out of his league.
“Mr. Fresh,” said Carrie Lang. “I’ve been by your store in the Castro. I always mean to stop in. What can I do for you?”
“I wonder if there’s someplace we can speak in private.”
“We’re pretty busy,” said Ray through gritted teeth.
“It’s about that special part of your business,” Minty said. “I, too, deal with very special secondhand items.”
Carrie Lang’s perky smile wilted. “Mr. Fresh, I don’t discuss the details of my business.”
“Under normal circumstances, neither do I, as the Big Book instructs, but these are really special circumstances.”
Ray turned to Carrie. “Big Book?” She patted his arm.
“I have an office in the back,” said Carrie. She turned and walked back through the doorway through which she’d come. “Watch your head.”
“Always do.”
Ray Macy audibly growled as Minty Fresh stepped behind the counter and ducked to go through the door.
Ray blurted, “You know Lily did me once in the back room at Asher’s.”
Minty Fresh stood to his full height and looked back over his shoulder at Ray. Carrie Lang popped back through the door, walked under Minty’s armpit, and glared at Ray.
“That is not news to me, Ray,” said Minty. But he’d bet it was news to Carrie Lang. “Miss Severo and I have parted ways. She is far too young.”
Carrie Lang held up her index finger to Ray, marking a place in the conversation where they would return at a later time—for fucking sure. Ray understood completely, and had he been able to nod, he would have, but instead he assumed the expression of someone who had just accidentally plunged an ice pick into his junk and is trying to hide the effect. Carrie exited under the big man’s armpit. “My office,” she said, leading him across the stockroom.
Her office was utilitarian, small, with all metal desk, chairs, and filing cabinets. Minty Fresh sat in a guest chair across from her. His knees touched her desk and the chair was backed flush against the door.
Lang sat, sighed. “Mr. Fresh, you know the last time we started
talking—”
“That’s why I’m here, Ms. Lang. All those secondhand dealers who were killed a year ago, ten of them, I think. They were all like us.”
She nodded. So she knew? What she didn’t know was that she’d been saved by the Squirrel People, who had knocked her out, duct-taped her up, and thrown her in a dumpster until the danger passed. They’d come in the dark and she’d never even seen them. Fresh knew.
“I don’t think they’ve been replaced. We—myself and a couple of other Death Merchants—think that the soul vessels they should have collected are still out there somewhere.”
She shrugged. “The Big Book says that stuff just gets taken care of. We don’t need to worry about what other—what did you call them, Death Merchants—are doing with their soul vessel?”
“I know, but apparently, they’re not taken care of. Look, have you noticed an increase in the number of names, or any strange circumstances? More important, have you seen any weird shit when you’re out and about?”
“You mean like giant ravens or voices coming out of the sewers.”
Minty Fresh tried to push back in his chair, but there wasn’t room to do it and he bumped his head on the steel door. “Yes.”
“No. I did before, last year. But it’s been quiet since. The soul vessels are about the same. I bring them in, they go out.”
“Good. That’s good. And Ray, he doesn’t know?”
“I think he suspects I’m a serial killer, but he’s clueless about the other thing.”
“You know Charlie Asher was one of us?”
“Yes. That’s how I met Ray. I went to Asher’s shop after the Latino cop told me what had happened and picked up the soul vessels that had been taken from me. The cop said it was over.”
“Rivera didn’t know. He was just being a cop. He’s one of us, now.”
“So maybe the others have been replaced, too.”
“No way to tell. We only knew about you because Charlie Asher went in your store once and saw the soul vessels. We don’t know what rules are still in effect. That’s what we’re trying to find out. I won’t contact you again unless it’s an emergency, just in case our contact is bringing up the forces of darkness like before. You can always reach me at my store if anything strange happens.” He threw a business card on her desk. “My mobile’s there. Anytime. Even if it’s just to fuck with Ray.”
She laughed. Her eyes had been getting wider and her expression more frightened as he had spoken, but now she smiled. She picked up his card. “Okay.”
“Just one more favor, then I’m in the wind.”
“Sure.”
“I need to look at your book. Your calendar.”
“We allowed to do that?”
“Who knows?”
“Okay.” She opened her desk drawer and pulled out a leather date book, and slid it across the desk to him. “There’s only one uncollected. Just appeared today.”
“I’m looking for a specific name. Mike Sullivan. Sound familiar? Within the last six weeks or so?” They’d figured out long ago that Death Merchants had the forty-nine days of bardo, the transition from life to death, to collect the soul vessel; sometimes they got it before the subject died, sometimes after.
“Nope,” she said.
He opened the book to the current date and she saw another entry on the page. “Two, I guess,” she said. “That last one wasn’t there this morning.”
Minty saw the newest name on her calendar and the number of days she had to retrieve the soul vessel: one.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
“What? What? What?” She stood and leaned over, trying to get a better look at the new entry.
“I know this guy. He’s a cop.”
Sundown. Rivera was sneaking into a house when his phone buzzed in his jacket pocket and he che
cked it: Minty Fresh. He hit mute and soldiered on, walking into a bedroom where a portly man in pajamas was holding a pillow over the face of a thin person propped up in a hospital bed.
“Just a little bit more,” said the man. He looked to the clock on the nightstand as if timing himself.
After being restrained for twenty-five years by warrants, or at least knock and announce, Rivera was still getting used to sneaking into a house under the cloak of kinda-sorta invisibility. He kept reminding himself that he was not here as a cop. But then the guy looked over at him.
“Holy—!” The fat guy leapt back, threw the pillow in the air, and grabbed his chest. The woman’s head in the hospital bed lolled to the side. She was dead.
“You can see me?” said Rivera.
“Well, yeah.”
“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news, then.”
“Worse than you walked in on me smothering my mother?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Who are you?”
Rivera badged him. “Inspector Alphonse Rivera, SFPD Homicide.”
The guy was backed against a dresser, trying to catch his breath, still holding his chest. He looked quickly to the dead woman, then back to Rivera. “Well, this is awkward.”
“You think?” said Rivera.
“It’s not what you think. She asked for it.”
“Okay,” said Rivera. He noticed a crystal perfume bottle on the dresser behind the fat guy, glowing a dull red.
“No, she really asked for it. She’s been sick. She’s my mother.” He looked at the dead woman again. “Was my mother. I have a videotape of her asking me to do this. We even discussed show tunes I could sing to cover the noise of her struggles.”
“Uh-huh,” said Rivera. “Decided to skip the singing, then?”
“Forgot. How did you get here so fast? You guys are a lot better at this than cops on TV. It usually takes like forty minutes to find the killer on TV.”
“Yeah, that’s not real,” said Rivera.
“So, do I need a lawyer? Are you going to take me in?”
“That depends,” said Rivera. He looked at the names in his case notebook that he’d copied out of his calendar. “Is that Wanda DeFazio?”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” said the fat guy, breathless once again.
Rivera nodded, referred back to the notebook again. “You wouldn’t be Donald DeFazio, would you?”
“Donny,” said Donny.
Rivera nodded again. He’d wondered what was going on when he had the two names appear on his calendar with the same surname. He figured it might be a car accident, husband and wife thing. He’d wanted to call Minty Fresh to ask him about it, but then, no . . .
“Donny, give me that perfume bottle behind you on the dresser.”
Donny DeFazio did what he was told, handed the crystal bottle to Rivera, who slipped it in his jacket pocket.
“You live here, Donny?”
“I have been. I had to move in six months ago to take care of my mother.”
Rivera nodded. Noncommittal cop nod. “So your possessions, they all here in the house?”
“Yes, why? Are you going to seize my stuff when you take me in? Freeze my accounts?”
Rivera shook his head at his notebook, flipped it shut, put it into his inside jacket pocket. “Nah, you’re good to go, Donny. I’m going to have a look around, though. Which is your room?”
“Down the hall.” Donny moved away from the dresser. “Wait, don’t I need to get a lawyer? Don’t you want to see the video? She was in pain. She asked me to do it?”
“I know. You feel bad about it?”
“Well, of course. I feel horrible about it. It’s the hardest thing I ever had to do.” He started gasping again.
“Well then, I’m sorry for your loss.” He pointed. “Just down the hall this way?”
Donny nodded, then grabbed his chest again, and either from relief or stress, stiffened, twitched, and slid down the front of the dresser to a splay-legged sitting position on the floor. He twitched for a few seconds, then slumped forward.
“And there we go,” said Rivera. He looked around, just in case Donny’s soul vessel might be sitting out like his mother’s, but nothing else was glowing. He backed out of the room and headed down the hall.
His phone buzzed again. There was also a text that had come in during the DeFazio deaths. Pick the fuck up, it said.
Rivera hit talk. “You said we weren’t supposed to talk unless it was an emergency.”
“Where’s your partner?” asked Minty Fresh.
“He’s watching my store while I’m out on a collection. I didn’t hear from you on the Lily girl, so he’s filling in until I find someone.”
“Where are you, not near him?”
“No. In Noe Valley. Looking for a vessel. I found another Death Merchant, and there’s more—”
“Yeah, we’ll get to that. Y’all might want to sit down, Inspector.”
Nick Cavuto was reading a Raymond Chandler short story called “Red Wind” behind the counter when the banshee stepped out of the stacks.
“AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Cavuto dropped the paperback as he slid off the stool into a crouch, drew a ridiculously large revolver from his shoulder holster, and leveled it at the banshee. One motion.
“I will drop you, raggedy,” he said.
“I come to save your life, you great dolt, and you cast aspersions on me frock?”
Cavuto kept the gun trained on her and looked around it. “Save my life, huh?”
“You need to get out of here before dark, lad. There’s a nasty bit of business heading your way. They’re not strong enough to move in the daylight yet, but they’ll be here soon.”
“Raven women coming to take my soul?” Cavuto lowered the gun to his side. “Stay there.”
“They can’t kill a man for his soul, don’t know why, just the way of things, otherwise you’d all be rotting in the fields. But they will kill you for the sport.” She moved toward him, gestured that she was moving wide of the counter, toward the front door. “Let’s go, love, have a ride in your lovely carriage. I’ll hang me head out the window when I scream.” She smiled, black lips and bluish teeth—batted her sooty eyelashes.
Cavuto glanced over his shoulder and out the window. The streetlights were on and the little stripe of sky he could see was dying pink.
“There’ll be no screaming.”
“Aye, lad, let’s go, then.” She made a motion as if shooing errant chickens toward the door, the long tatters of her sleeves making trails like smoke.
There was a rumble from behind the shop and they both looked to the single window at the back of the store, high and narrow, four steel bars across it. As they watched, the window, lit yellow from the light in the alley, went black.
“Back door locked, then?” asked the banshee.
Cavuto nodded, not looking away from the window.
“Spendid. We’re off, then. Come along. Go swiftly and stay long, I always say.”
The rear window cracked and the shadow of a thousand birds oozed in between the cracks and down the back wall, spreading, form and light exchanging as it moved, like oily lace woven into the shapes of flying things. The shadow slid down onto the hardwood floor, splashed in waves over the shelves as it approached them. At one narrow, central shelf where Rivera displayed recently acquired books—soul vessels—the shadow coalesced, covered the whole shelf like a shroud.
The banshee could see the five souls, glowing dull red, and one by one, as the shadow enveloped them, they started to fade.
“Mad dash, love. Mad dash,” she said.
“You go,” said Cavuto. He trained the .44 Magnum on a spot at the middle of a dark shelf, fifteen feet away.
As the last soul vessel went dark, the shadow
throbbed, gained dimension, split into three distinct masses that then undulated, changed, formed into three female figures, human to a degree, shimmering with fine, blue-black feathers; talons sprouted from the tips of their fingers, long and hooked like marlin spikes, the silver color of stars.
“Gun,” said one, her voice like gravel swishing in a pan. “I hate guns.”
“Well, lad, you’ve shat the bed now,” said the banshee.
14
Perchance to Dream
It was a Wednesday night in San Francisco, and despite the fog having laid a soft blanket over the city and the foghorn singing its sad and low lullaby, no one slept well.
RIVERA
Inspector Alphonse Rivera was electrified by the shock and grief of finding Nick Cavuto dead in his bookstore. There were four units and an ambulance on the scene by the time Rivera got there. The EMTs were working on the big man on the floor—compressions on his chest, squeezing the bag to breathe for him, slamming syringes of adrenaline, and hitting him with defibrillator paddles. As soon as they got a heartbeat they would move him, they said.
There was blood, but not a tremendous amount, on Cavuto’s cutaway shirt.
Rivera could still smell the gunpowder in the air, as well as the more smoky aroma of burning peat. Cavuto’s big stainless-steel revolver lay on the floor by him.
“How long?” he asked the first officer he saw with a notebook who wasn’t interviewing someone. Nguyen on his nameplate. Rivera going into autopilot, not allowing what was happening a few feet behind him to become part of his reality.
“They’ve been working about ten minutes—since I’ve been on scene.”
“Gunshot wound?”
“Probably not,” the cop said. He cringed. “EMT said it looks more like a stab wound. Thin blade. Ice pick maybe.”
“Witnesses?”
“People all over on the street, drinkers, diners, people walking their dogs, you know this neighborhood. No one saw shit yet, still looking. ‘Shots fired’ call came from the nail place next door.” The officer looked at his notes. “Seven-oh-two. First unit on scene a minute later. Found him like this.”