The Dragons of Babel (30 page)

“Murder,” said one of the cops.

Toussaint whistled once, low and long, as if he hadn't already known. “Which floor?”

“Second.”

They waited for the elevator, though the stairs were handy and it would have been faster to walk. Salem Toussaint would no more have climbed those stairs than he would have driven his own car. He made sure you understood what a big mahoff he was before he slapped you on the back and gave your nice horse a sugar cube. As the doors opened, Toussaint turned to Ghostface and commented, “You're looking mighty grim. Something the matter?”

Ghostface shook his head stiffly. He stared, unblinking, straight ahead of himself all the way to their destination.

There were two detectives in the frigid apartment, both Tylwyth Teg, golden-skinned and leaf-eared, in trench coats that looked like they had been sent out to be professionally rumpled. They turned, annoyed, when the cop standing guard at the door let the three of them in, then looked resigned as they recognized the alderman.

“Shulpae! Xisuthros!” Toussaint slapped backs and shook hands as if he were working the room at a campaign fundraiser. “You're looking good, the both of you.”

“Welcome to our humble crime scene, Salem,” Detective Xisuthros said. He swept a hand to take in the room: One window, half open, with cold winter air still flowing in through it. Its sill and the wall beneath, black with blood. The burglar bars looked intact. A single dresser, a bed, a chair that had been smashed to flinders. A dribble of blood that led from the window to a tiny bathroom with the door thrown wide. “I should have known you'd show up.”

A boggart sprawled lifeless on the bathroom floor. His
chest had been ripped open. There was a gaping hole where the heart should have been.

“Why didn't the concierge have a key?”

“She did. Buggane put in a dead bolt. You can imagine what the old bat had to say about that.”

“Why wasn't there a haintward on the door?”

“Didn't need one. Doorman in the lobby. Only one haint in the building.”

Will squinted at the wall above the door. “There's a kind of pale patch up there, like there used to be a ward and somebody took it down.”

Detective Shulpae, the quiet one, turned to stare at him. “So?”

“So what kind of guy installs a dead bolt but takes down the ward? That doesn't make sense.”

“The kind who likes to invite his haint buddy over for a shooting party every now and then.” Detective Xisuthros pointed toward the dresser with his chin. A set of used works lay atop it. “The concierge says they were so thick
that some of the neighbors thought they were fags.” He turned back to Toussaint. “Alderman, if you want to question our work here, fine, go ahead. I'm just saying. There's not a lot of hope for the boy.”

“Will's right!” Ghostface said. He went to the window. “And another thing. Look at all the blood on the sill. This is where it happened. So how the hell did he get all the way into the bathroom? Somebody ripped his heart out, so he decided to wash his hands?”

Now both detectives were staring at him, hard. “You don't know much about boggarts,” Xisuthros said. “They're tough. They can live for five minutes with their heads ripped off. A heart's nothing. And, yeah, that's exactly what he did—wash his hands. Old habits go last. One of the first things we did was turn off the water. Otherwise, I thought the concierge was going to have a seizure.”

Ghostface looked around wildly. “What happened to the heart? Why isn't it here? I suppose you think the haint
ate
it, huh? I suppose you think we're all cannibals.”

In a disgusted tone, Detective Xisuthros said, “Get Sherlock Holmes Ju nior the fuck out of here.”

Salem Toussaint took Ghostface by the elbow, led him to the door. “Why don't you wait outside?”

Ghostface turned gray. But he stamped angrily out of the room and down the hall. Will followed. He didn't have to be told that this was part of his job.

O
utside, Ghostface went straight to the alley below Buggane's window. There were no chalk marks or crime scene tape, so the police obviously hadn't found any evidence there. Nor was there a heart lying on the pavement. A dog or a night-gaunt could have run off with it, of course. But there was no blood, either, except for a stain under the window and maybe a stray drop or two that couldn't be seen in the dark.

“So what happened to the heart?” Ghostface paced back and forth, unable to keep still. “It didn't just fly away.”

“I don't know,” Will said.

“You be Buggane.” Ghostface slapped a hand against the brick wall. “Here's the window. You stand here looking out it. Now. I come up behind you. How do I rip your heart out in a way that leaves all that blood on the windowsill? From behind you, I can't get at your heart. If you turn around to face me, the blood doesn't splash on the sill. Now, those ignorant peckerwood detectives probably think I could shove my hands through Buggane's back and
push
his heart out. But it doesn't work like that. Two things can't occupy the same space at the same time. If I make my hands solid while I'm inside your chest, I'm going to fuck them up seriously. So I didn't come at you from behind.”

“Okay.”

“But if you turn around so I can come at you from the front, the blood's not going to spray over the sill, is it? So I've got to be between you and the window. I don't know if you noticed, but Ice didn't have any blood on him. None. Zip. Nada. Maybe you think I could rip somebody's heart out and then make myself insubstantial fast enough that the blood would spray through me. I don't think so. But even if I could, the blood's going to spatter all over the floor, too. Which it didn't. So you tell me—how could I rip your heart out and leave the blood all over the sill like that?”

“You couldn't.”

“Thank you.
Thank you
. That's right. You couldn't.”

“So?” Will said.

“So there's something fishy going on, that's all. Something suspicious. Something wrong.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know.” Abruptly, Ghostface's hands fell to his sides. Just like that, all the life went out of him. He slumped despondently. “I just don't know.”

“Ghostface,” Will said, “why does all this matter? You called this guy Ice. What's he to you?”

The haint's face was as pale as ash, as stiff as bone. In a stricken voice, he said, “He's my brother.”

T
hey went to a diner across the street and ordered coffee. Ghostface stared down into his cup without drinking. “Ice always was a hard case. He liked the streets too much, he liked the drugs, he liked the thug life. That's why he never made anything of himself.” He picked up a spoon, looked at it, set it down. “I dunno. Maybe he did it. Maybe he did.”

“You know he didn't. You proved he couldn't have.”

“Yeah, but that's not going to convince a judge, now is it?”

Will had to admit it would not. “You guys keep in touch?”

“Not really. I saw him a few months ago. He was all hopped up and talking trash about how he'd finally made a big score. He was going to be smoking hundred-dollar cigars and bedding thousand-dollar whores. Maybe he stole something. I told him to get the hell out, I didn't want to know anything about his criminal activities. My own brother. The last time I saw him, I told him to go to hell.”

They were silent for a bit. “Nobody said anything about finding anything valuable,” Will observed.

“Sometimes the cops will pocket that kind of stuff.”

“That's true.” Will dipped a finger in his coffee and drew the Sigil of Inspiration on the linoleum counter. Nothing came to him. He sighed. “What would the Big Guy do in this situation?”

“Him?” Ghostface said bitterly. “Probably hand out cigars.”

“Hey.” Will sat up straight. “That's not a half bad idea. It's pretty cold out there.” He counted cops through the window. Then he called the waitress over. “Give me four large coffees, cream and sugar on the side.”

Leaving Ghostface hunched over the counter, Will carried
the cardboard tray out to where the police stood stamping their feet to keep warm. They accepted the gift with small nods. All four had dark skin, short horns, and the kind of attitude that came from knowing they'd never, ever make detective. The oldest of the lot said, “Working for the spook, are you?”

“Oh, Salem's okay.”

The cop grinned on one side of his oak-brown face. “You're what the micks would call his Hound of Hoolan. You know what that is?”

“No, sir.”

“It means that if he says he wants to drive, you bend over and bark.”

The cops all laughed. Then three of them wandered away, leaving only the rookie. Will took out a pack of Marlboros, offered one, took one for himself, then lit both. They smoked them down to the end without saying much. Will flicked his butt away. The rookie pinched the coal off of his and ate it.

Finally Will said, “This Buggane guy—you know him?”

“Everybody knew him. A real bad character. In jail as often as not. His girlfriend's cute, though. Used to come to the station to bail him out. Skinny little thing, no tits to speak of. The big lugs always seem to like' em petite, you ever noticed?”

“Some of the neighbors thought he was queer.”

“They sure wouldn't of said that to his face. Buggane was a bruiser. Used to fight some under the name of Dullahan the Deathless.”

“No kidding,” Will said. “His gym anywhere around here?”

“Down the street and over a couple of blocks. Place called the Sucker Punch. You can't miss it.”

G
hostface was still in the diner, so Will left a note on the dash of the Cadillac. A few minutes later, he was at the
Sucker Punch A.C. If there was one thing Will had learned working for Toussaint it was how to walk through any front door in the world and act as if he had a perfect right to be there. He went in.

The gym was dark and smelled serious. Punching bags hung from the gloom. Somebody grunted in a slow and regular fashion, like a mechanical pig, from the free-weight area. There was a single regulation ring in the center of the room. A trollweight bounced up and down on his toes, shadow-boxing.

“Go home, little boy,” an ogre in a pug hat said. “There ain't nothing here for you.”

“Oh, it's not about that, sir,” Will said automatically. By
that
meaning whatever the ogre thought it meant. The alderman had schooled him never to meet aggression head-on.

“No? You don't wanna build yourself up, get the girl, and beat the crap out of whoever's pushing you around?” The ogre squeezed Will's biceps. “You could use it. Only not here. This is a serious club for serious fighters only.”

“No, sir, I'm with Alderman Toussaint.” By the ogre's expression, Will could see that he recognized the name and was not impressed. “I was hoping you could tell me something about Bobby Buggane.”

“The bum. What's he done now?”

“He was murdered.”

“Well, I ain't surprised. Buggane was no damn good. Coulda worked his way up to the middle of the card, but he wasn't willing to put in the effort. Always jerking off somewhere with his spook buddy, when he shoulda been working out.”

“Somebody said they got into doing crimes together.” It was a shot in the dark, but Will figured the odds were good.

“Yeah, well, like I said, I wouldn't be surprised. There's a lot of crap a gorilla like Buggane can pull off if he's got a
haint accomplice. You go into a jewelry store and pinch the ward when the guy ain't lookin' and replace it with a sprig of plastic fennel. Looks just like the real thing. Then that night the spook slips in and shuts off the alarm. If you're like Buggane and can rip a safe door off its hinges, you can walk off with a bundle. Somebody pulled something like that at a warehouse down in the Village about six months ago. Got away with a fortune in slabs of raw jade. I remember it because Buggane quit the gym right after that, and I always wondered.”

“Raw jade's got to be hard to sell, though,” Will said. “I mean, in bulk.”

“Not if you got connections. Even if you don't, something big like that could be moved through your regular fence, provided you waited until things had cooled down some. Not that I'd know personally. But you hear stuff.”

“Huh,” Will said. “This girlfriend of his—you remember her name?”

“Naw. Daiera, Damia, something like that. Maybe Danae. Only reason I recollect at all is that I asked Buggane once was she a pixie or a russalka or what and he said she was a diener. Deianira the Diener, that was it. That's a new one on me. I thought I knew all the ethnics, but I ain't never heard of a diener before. Listen, kid, I really have got work to do.”

“I'll be out of your way, then,” Will said. “Thanks for your help.” He took one last look around the gym. “I guess Buggane should have stayed in the ring.”

“Oh, he wasn't a ring boxer,” the ogre said. “He was a pit boxer.”

“What's the difference?”

“Pit boxing's strictly death-match. Two fighters climb down, only one climbs out. Buggane had a three-and-two record when he quit.”

“How the fuck,” Will said, “can somebody have a three-and-two record, when he's fighting to the death?”

The ogre grinned. Then he explained.

L
ess than an hour later, Will, Salem Toussaint, and Ghost-face stood waiting in the shadows outside the city morgue. “Okay,” Ghostface said, “I thought I knew all the racial types, from Litvak night-hags to Thai shit demons, but you say this girl is a
what?
”

“A diener. It's not a type, it's a job. A diener is a morgue attendant who's responsible for moving and cleaning the body. She also assists the coroner in the autopsy. I made a few calls and Deianira's on night duty this week. Though I'm guessing she might take off a little early tonight.”