Shade of Pale Read online

  O’Connor pointed at the door. “If that’s the way they want it, fine with me. We’ve been wronged by both sides, so what’s the difference? The way I see it, there’s a score to settle all around.”

  He let his finger drop back to his side but kept his gaze on the door, as if he expected his enemy to smash through it, guns blazing. O’Connor sighed, turned back to Dolan, and let his voice soften.

  “But it’s not about politics that we’re meetin’ this time, although never were the two sides further apart, but I’ve got a feelin’ that this is something that cuts across party lines, cuts across all lines.… Except family lines, and that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what it’s all about. The families.”

  Dolan nodded. “They need you, Paddy. We all need you.”

  “When he gets here, I want you to let me do the talkin’,” Padraic said. “The less they know, the better.”

  Dolan sighed. “I hope he’s not bein’ followed.”

  O’Connor squinted at his old friend. Dolan looked pained. They’d had this discussion a thousand times.

  Dolan said, “We’ve made too many enemies. They all think we’re a bunch of murderin’ anarchists. Too free with the bombs, they say; too indiscriminate with the targets, they say; too violent, they say.”

  “Aw, piss on ’em all! Here’s to the Cause!” O’Connor shouted, hoisting his glass high. Dolan joined him. “Here’s to the day we’re free from all oppression.”

  They drank in silence. Out on the street, some military vehicles rumbled past, shaking the old pub like a mild earthquake.

  “I used to think we could change the world,” O’Connor said suddenly. “The ancients always believed that, you know. They believed we would one day be the soldiers of destiny to a new world order.”

  “Those are pretty words, Paddy, but are they still true?”

  O’Connor shrugged. “Who knows?”

  Dolan looked down. “I’m tired, man. I’m old and I’m sick of fighting.”

  O’Connor contemplated his glass and the fraction of amber fluid it held. He’d known Dolan all his life, they’d grown up fighting together, but in Padraic’s mind the skinny son of a bitch was getting soft. All this talk of wearying of the fight was nothing but cowardly horseshit. Every time he felt himself losing his passion he thought about his brothers dying in the street. It always made his blood boil.

  Padraic O’Connor was a hard man.

  Morrison appeared at the prearranged time, tapping the window three times, then twice again.

  “That’s the sign,” Dolan whispered.

  He hurried to let the man in, making sure no one saw them. Morrison was thin, bald under his knit cap, with a florid face and deep-set, joyless eyes. Dolan led him to the bar and added another glass to the fray.

  “You’d be Morrison,” Dolan stated.

  “And you’d be Dolan then, and the big feller there is O’Connor.”

  “That’s right,” Padraic spoke.

  “I’ll not waste your time,” Morrison said with a ragged voice. “I bring word from America. As you may have heard, young Killian’s dead, blown up, popped open like a can of stew. There’s been some fightin’ on both sides, but no one claims him.” He turned to face O’Connor, leveling a gaze that could chill blood. “I think you and I know what killed him.”

  “Did you see the body?” O’Connor asked.

  Morrison nodded. “I saw it. It’s her; there’s no mistakin’ the mark she leaves,” Morrison answered. He stopped to throw back his whiskey, and his words hung in the room.

  O’Connor leaned forward. “You’re sure?”

  Morrison nodded. “He was bein’ stalked; he told me so. It was only a matter of time.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  Morrison laughed. “You shouldn’t. But think on this. As long as she’s out there, all our families suffer, our male children.… Listen, O’Connor; I know that you could care less what happens to the likes of us. But it’s the blood of the ancient clans that runs in all our veins,” yours as well as mine.”

  He emptied the last trickle of whiskey from the glass into his mouth. Dolan, the observant bartender, hurried to replace it.

  “This is a curse that will never end,” Morrison continued. “I would go there and kill the bitch myself, but you know I’d be dead within a week. You’re the only one, O’Connor, damn you. You’re the only one can stop her, the only one left with the ancient knowledge.”

  Another pair of military vehicles rumbled past the door.

  Morrison cleared his throat. “That’s why I’ve come. God knows how she got over there, but it’s our chance to stop her once and for all. The old families are fewer and far between in that part of the world. It should be easier to flush her out.”

  “In New York?”

  “We have connections there.”

  O’Connor coughed. “So have I. I’ll not be needin’ any of your help.”

  “Yes, you will,” Morrison snapped. “You’ll need all the help you can get. I have some money.”

  He pulled a thick manila envelope out of his jacket and placed it on the bar.

  “That’s 30,000, the other half when you do the job.” He paused, watching O’Connor’s reaction. Padraic fingered the envelope.

  “How many have you lost?” Morrison asked. “A father? A brother? Myself, I can’t even remember anymore. It’s gotten so that any male child in my family is damned from birth. I’m the last.”

  O’Connor picked up the envelope and looked inside. He sighed and slipped it in his pocket.

  Morrison knew what that meant.

  Dolan spoke. “And with Killian there was no bomb? You’re absolutely positive about that?”

  “No, no bomb, no trace of explosives.… The police are baffled.”

  Dolan shook his head. “There could have been a mistake.”

  Morrison sneered. “Don’t you think I thought about that? I’m no fool, Dolan. Why would I spend the money if I wasn’t dead sure? There’s no mistake; I wouldn’t be here riskin’ my life if there was.”

  O’Connor blanched. His eyes narrowed as he leaned into Morrison’s face. “How did you know to come here?”

  Morrison lit a cigarette and exhaled slowly. “The old lady sent me.”

  “Mother Willis?”

  Morrison nodded as Dolan poured another round. O’Connor should have been feeling the effects of the alcohol now, but instead of the familiar warming buzz, he felt a cold shiver down his back.

  “She said you’d understand,” Morrison concluded.

  Padraic O’Connor, the cold-blooded terrorist, actually felt a touch of fear. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered.

  Morrison looked off, his eyes distant in the smoky little pub. “We may be enemies, Mr. O’Connor, sworn to fight to the last”—his eyes swung back into Padraic’s face, flashing with passion—“but we’re still men. And we’re still Irish, damn it.”

  As always, O’Connor left by the back door. He moved soundlessly through the dark alley, a shadow among shadows. He hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when an explosion rocked him off his feet. He fell forward, instinctively hitting the ground and covering up. The shock wave passed over him like a sonic freight train.

  Behind him, the pub burst into flames. O’Connor got up and ran. He hoped whoever planted that bomb hadn’t seen him leave.

  He packed his bag that night and left for New York on the first flight the next morning. He knew what he had to do and that he was the only man in the world who could do it. He felt the hands of destiny touch him. Padraic O’Connor set out to make history.

  O’Connor breezed through Customs with a counterfeit passport, collected his baggage, and hailed a cab.

  The gray, cheerless New York streets unfolded before him like layers of dead skin. This is a town where a man can get anything he wants, he thought, anything at all.

  He bought a gun first, then set out to purchase some very unusual, bizarre items. Through the yellow pages he found
an electronic surveillance retailer, a metalworks shop, and a store that sold human bones.

  He thought of Morrison’s last words. “We may be enemies, Mr. O’Connor, sworn to fight to the last, but we’re still men … and we’re still Irish, damn it.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “It’s Loomis. He’s dead.”

  Jukes stopped being careful, stopped everything. He got an odd, cold feeling when he heard the word “dead.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s pretty bizarre.”

  Jukes shifted the earpiece of the phone from one hand to another. “Are you sure it’s him?”

  “You forget, I’m his doctor. The cops called me in around six this morning. He was carrying his billfold, full ID, everything, and, get this, no money was taken. What a mess. You won’t believe it. He was difficult to identify.”

  “I just saw him. He was supposed to come back today.”

  “You saw him?”

  “Yeah. I told him to go home and rest and meet me back at the office today. Jesus, I was probably one of the last people to see him alive.”

  Jukes could hear other voices in the background over the phone. He could hear Will saying something. In a moment he was back on the line.

  “The cops want to see you. Can you come over?”

  “Where are you?”

  “City morgue.”

  “Yes. I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”

  “Jukes?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not gonna believe this. He was murdered, ripped apart.”

  Will was right, Jukes thought. Declan Loomis’s earthly remains were little more than a science project. When the coroner’s assistant unzipped the bag, Jukes couldn’t believe his eyes. It was not so much a corpse as a collection of loose organs. The top half of Loomis’s body appeared to have been savagely mauled.

  “The worst I’ve ever seen,” said the assistant coroner.

  “What could have done this?”

  Will Howard was thinking. “I don’t know; a large carnivorous predator?”

  “Be serious. In New York City?”

  The coroner grunted. “He wasn’t even near the park.”

  Will Howard looked back and forth from Jukes to the coroner’s assistant to all that was left of Declan Loomis and made his whistling sound again. “Jukes, I don’t know. The preliminary look showed no mastication, no saliva, no slash marks, no powder burns, no nothing. It’s as if the guy just spontaneously exploded from the inside out.”

  “This is weird. All week long he’s raving about the Banshee, saying how he’s gonna die any minute, then this—”

  “I think we can rule out suicide,” the assistant coroner quipped.

  Will pointed to the area of Loomis’s lower torso. “What do you make of this tear? Looks like, before he … exploded, he … ahh … seems to have split down the middle. Look how the skin separates here.” He pointed. “It’s torn irregularly along a central axis.”

  “Bizarre.”

  Will nodded to the coroner’s assistant to rezip the body bag. The unpleasantness receded.

  “There’s nothing else to discern with the naked eye at this time,” Will said. “The cops have requested a full autopsy, which should commence within the hour.” He glanced at his watch. “There’s nothing to do but wait.”

  It was barely eight o’clock in the morning. The two men decided to have coffee; breakfast was out of the question.

  During his second cup, Jukes Wahler started to talk. “Will, Loomis was suicidal, in my opinion.”

  “The coroner didn’t think that was possible.”

  “Who knows what to think? This whole thing is disconcerting. There must be an explanation, and I, for one, want to get to the bottom of it. Loomis was capable of suicide, especially if he slipped into a state of clinical depression. That shouldn’t be ruled out.”

  “You saw his body. It would seem unlikely he could find a way to do that to himself.”

  “I was going to send him to Sheppard-Pratt for some treatment.”

  “Shocks?”

  Jukes nodded. “They’re doing wonderful things with electricity these days. They can be very selective.”

  “What about all this Banshee talk?”

  Jukes poured some half-and-half into his coffee and stared at the caramel clouds. He’d been thinking about having this conversation all morning, and still he didn’t know how to begin.

  “I don’t know, Will. You must admit, it does seem strange. Loomis was completely convinced the Banshee was stalking him; I’ll say that much. He was raving. The mind can do extraordinary things under the right circumstances.”

  Will Howard frowned.

  Jukes raised an eyebrow and said, “There must be some logical explanation.”

  Will cleared his throat. “I’ve been practicing medicine in this town for thirty years, and I’ve never heard of anything like this. The man was violently split open like a sausage in a microwave. The cops are automatically thinking homicide.”

  A stocky man with an iron gray flattop haircut, in his early fifties, approached the table, his suit unfashionably wrinkled. He walked confidently, back straight, belly forward, an unlit cigar between his fingers and his tie, one of those skinny black ties that looks as though it’s been knotted with a pair of pliers, loosened at his brawny neck.

  He was built the way NFL linebackers used to be in the 1950s, squat, bulldoggish.

  “Detective George Jones, NYPD Homicide Department,” he said. He had a five o’clock shadow even though it was only eight o’clock in the morning. “The coroner said I’d find you here; mind if I join you? I’m investigating Loomis.”

  Jukes stood and shook hands with George, two firm grips wrestled momentarily, then parted respectfully. Will Howard did the same.

  “Please, have a seat,” Jukes said.

  “I missed you at the morgue, Dr. Wahler. Mind if I ask a few questions?”

  “Not at all. I’d be happy to help.”

  George pushed back a chair and sat down casually, as if he was used to pushing his way into things. His head seemed disproportionately large for his body, padded by chipmunk cheeks and a double chin. He smelled of coffee and cheap cigars. There was also an aroma of exhaust.

  A native New Yorker who knew the city well, George Jones had a reputation as a no-bullshit guy. That’s why he’d become a cop: to keep the bullshit down, to keep the city safe for people—people like his parents, who hadn’t been so lucky. They’d been shot during a robbery attempt when George was still a teenager. Now he took it personally when somebody got out of line and started killing people. George was in a position to do something about it. And the city needed him.

  George was the bizarre-murder expert.

  “This case has some distinctive features that I’d like to discuss with you, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  Jukes looked at his friend and back at Jones. “Sure.”

  “OK.” The cop flipped open a tattered notebook that looked like it had been run over by a truck. The pages were greasy, dog-eared, fingerprinted, and covered with scrawl. He looked up, cleared his throat, and began. “When was the last time you saw Declan Loomis alive?”

  “That would have been around five o’clock yesterday evening, when he left my office. He didn’t say where he was going.”

  “Was Declan Loomis under your care?”

  Jukes nodded.

  “Well, Dr. Wahler, the department definitely suspects foul play here. As of right now, this is a criminal investigation. Dr. Howard here says that he referred Mr. Loomis to you because Mr. Loomis thought he was being followed—stalked, I believe is how he put it—by a mysterious woman.”

  Jukes looked directly into George’s eyes and said, “I have every reason to believe that the mysterious woman was a figment of his imagination. Mr. Loomis was deeply disturbed.”

  “Uh-huh. Did he describe the woman to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you tell me that desc
ription?”

  Jukes described the woman.

  “Why did you believe she was a figment of his imagination?”

  Jukes sat up straight. “That was my professional opinion, based on the limited exposure I had. Loomis was irrational; he thought the woman was some kind of monster. He insisted he saw her everywhere. He even tried to take her picture, but there was nothing on the film … and I think he would have realized eventually that there was nothing on the film because she only existed in his imagination. It’s not uncommon for paranoid schizophrenics to have delusions like that.”

  “Did you know if Loomis had any enemies? Someone who would want him dead?”

  Jukes shook his head. “We’re walking on a thin line here, Detective. The line between cooperating in a police investigation, which I am eager to do, and violating the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, which I am loath to do. I hope you understand.”

  Jones closed his notebook. “Look, Doc. I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’ve got a shitty job to do, OK? I’m skunked. That’s the damnedest corpse I’ve seen in a long time. Any information that would lead to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for whatever the fuck happened to that guy”—he hooked his thumb in the vague direction of the morgue—“would be greatly appreciated. I’m not suggesting that you violate any ethics, but … I think we have a moral imperative here.”

  Before Jukes could respond, Jones spoke again. “And what’s all this about a Banshee? What the hell is that? Some kind of ghost?”

  Jukes looked at Will. “Did you tell him that?”

  Will nodded sheepishly. “I thought it might be important.”

  Jones cleared his throat. “Every bit of information, no matter how trivial, or unbelievable, is important,” he said.

  Jukes leveled his gaze at Jones. “It was just another delusion. Loomis was convinced that the woman stalking him was the Banshee. But there are no such things as Banshees; we all know that.”

  Detective Jones rolled his eyes and smiled. “A homicide in New York City could be anything. I’ve seen copycat killers, fake vampires, satanic cults, crazed dopers, gang bangers, serial killers, secret agents, you name it. A Banshee, hell, that fits right in around here. Tell me, how does a Banshee kill its victims?”