Текст книги "Known Devil"

Автор книги: Justin Gustainis

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We went over there and I stuck my hand out. “Chris,” I said. “Been a long time.” I had to raise my voice so that he could hear me over the din caused by all those car alarms.

“How ya doin’, Stan,” he said as we shook. He was speaking louder than normal, too.

I saw him looking over my shoulder. “This is my partner, Karl Renfer,” I said. “Karl, meet Chris Dennehy. He’s a Statie who gets blown up for a living.”

“Not if I can help it,” Dennehy said, and shook hands with Karl. As he let go, I saw a puzzled look on his face – maybe because Karl’s grip, like every vampire’s, is colder than a banker’s heart. Dennehy might have realized then that Karl was undead – but if so, he was smart enough to let it go.

“Have they got a positive ID on the body yet?” I asked.

“Yeah, one of the guys who works in the rug store was in back when the bomb went off, so he wasn’t hurt . He looked at the body for us. When he got done puking, he confirmed that it was Castle.”

I made a head gesture toward the street. “How d’you figure it went down, Chris?”

He looked toward what had once been the front of Mystic Rugs, Magic Carpets, narrowing his eyes against the flashing lights. “Looks like the bomb was in a trash can in front of the store. Nailed Castle from about twenty feet away, along with a lot of the surrounding real estate.”

Karl looked at him. “Radio-controlled, right?”

“Had to be. No way somebody could’ve cut it that fine with a time bomb.”

I nodded agreement, then said, “Can you think of any local experts who might have been able to put something like this together?”

“Uh-uh. Only guy from around here who was good at stuff like this was Mickey McCormick,” he said, “and he spread himself over two city blocks in Hazelton last year, in what I can only assume was some kind of on-the-job accident.”

I took a slow look around at the broken glass and scorched pavement. “Whoever he was, he used something pretty powerful. You don’t get results like this from a couple of cherry bombs taped together.”

“Judging from the blast pattern, I’d say it was some kind of plastic,” Dennehy said. “C-4, maybe even Semtex. We might have something more definitive on that in a couple of days.” He shrugged. “Or not. You know how it goes.”

“A remote detonator and Semtex,” Karl said. “Not exactly amateur night, is it?”

“It’s professional work, alright,” Dennehy said. “And since Mickey McCormick’s in the ground, probably buried in a shoebox, I’d say somebody brought in out-of-town talent.”

“Where you gonna find somebody like that?” I said. “I’m pretty sure they don’t let bombers advertise on Craigslist.”

“Best bet’s one of the big cities,” Dennehy said. “And even then, you’d have to know the right people to talk to. There’s two pros I’ve heard of in New York, although they mostly do work for the Five Families. And if you looked hard enough, you could probably find bomb specialists in Boston, Chicago…”

“Maybe even Philadelphia,” Karl said.

“So, when you said Philly, you were thinking of the Delatassos,” I said to Karl. “Right?”

“Course I was,” he said.

We were on our way to a bar – but not because either one of us wanted a drink. Drinking on duty’s against department policy, anyway.

But Renfield’s is more than just a place where you can get any drink known to man – as well as a few that most men wouldn’t want to know. As the biggest supe bar in town, it’s often been a good source of information for Karl and me. You get an interesting mix of customers at Renfield’s, and some of them have been known to be talkative, given the right incentive.

I glanced at Karl. “Why would the Delatassos want to take out Victor Castle?”

He shrugged. “Could be he was trying to fuck with the Slide trade. When we told him about that stuff the other night, he wasn’t a happy camper, remember? I don’t know what pissed him off more – that somebody was selling shit like that in Scranton, or that he hadn’t heard about it yet.”

They say that bad news travel fast. You may also have heard the expression “the dead travel fast”. So you can just imagine how fast bad tidings travel among the dead, the undead, and the formerly dead. The news of Victor Castle’s murder had gone through the local supe community like a prairie fire.

I realized that as soon as Karl and I opened the front door of Renfield’s. For one thing, the place was packed – pretty unusual, even for Saturday night. But when catastrophe strikes, the members of any community will tend to draw together – whether to mourn, to commiserate with each other, or just to gossip about what had happened and share details that are mostly rumor, fantasy, or speculation.

And if the size of crowd didn’t tell me that news of Castle’s death had already spread, what happened when Karl and I came in would have made it crystal clear. We hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps into the room when the level of conversation went from what I’d call “medium-loud” to what anybody would have to describe as “silent as a fucking tomb”.

That wasn’t normal. Sure, they knew Karl and I were cops, but we’d been coming into Renfield’s together for more than a year without any problems, not to mention all the times before that when I’d drop by with my old partner, Paul DiNapoli. And these days, Karl was even what you might call a member of the supe club.

Our footsteps sounded loud in the silence as we made our way to the bar. I don’t know if the customers were expecting us to make some kind of announcement, or start arresting people, or even shoot up the place. But once it became clear that none of that was going to happen, the level of tension slowly eased. By the time we reached the bar, the buzz of conversation had started again. Over the next few minutes, it gradually returned to its former level.

Tending bar was a thirtyish brown-eyed blonde with a pug nose and a perky manner. I was a little surprised to see her on a Saturday, since she usually works weeknights.

“Hi, Sam,” I said. “Where’s Elvira?”

The regular weekend bartender has a persona based on that campy sexpot who hosts a TV show in LA devoted to bad horror movies. The cleavage alone probably gets our local version a lot of tips.

“She took some vacation time and went back to Minneapolis – I guess her mom’s pretty sick,” Samantha said. “What can I get for you, Stan?”

“Club soda for me and a…” I glanced toward Karl.

“Type O, lightly warmed,” he said.

I was a little disappointed when she didn’t just twitch that cute nose of hers and cause the drinks to appear by magic. But I knew that Samantha wasn’t a real witch – she just played one on the job. And magic doesn’t work like that, anyway.

As she moved off down the bar, I said to Karl, “I’m a little surprised you didn’t order that ‘shaken, not stirred’.”

He gave me a half-smile. “I save that for when I want a Bloody Mary.”

As you might imagine, the Bloody Marys in Renfield’s are made with real blood.

I slowly turned in my stool and scanned the room, looking for my favorite informant. I could’ve used the big mirror over the bar to check the place out, but that’s not always reliable. On any given night, some of Renfield’s patrons won’t necessarily reflect in mirrors.

When I heard Sam’s voice behind me say, “Here you go, fellas,” I turned back around and reached for my wallet, since Karl had paid the last time.

Dropping a ten on the bar, I asked Sam, “Barney Ghougle been in tonight?”

“Not so far, Stan. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen him all week.”

That was too bad. Most ghouls love gossip the way pigs enjoy mud, and Barney Ghougle was usually hip-deep in it. If anybody had any scuttlebutt about what had been going on in town lately, it would be him. Then I noticed a sometime informant of mine sitting in a corner. Robin was alone but probably wouldn’t be for long.

Looking at that corner table, all you’d see was a tall brunette in a tight blue dress who sat there sipping a drink and oozing sex appeal. If that’s what you saw, you’d be partially right. She was a beautiful woman – but only some of the time.

Robin was a succubus – which meant that, like all of her kind, she was also an incubus. A succubus/incubus can take on either a female or male aspect at will, each one extremely attractive and highly desirable. Whether you were male or female, gay, straight, or bi, Robin could be exactly what you wanted – for the right price, of course. She was believed to be the most successful prostitute in town, if not the whole Wyoming Valley. A few more good years, and she’d probably be able to buy the Wyoming Valley.

Every cop who’s been on the job longer than ten minutes knows that prostitution goes on. But in Scranton, like a lot of towns, we mostly leave the working girls alone. As long as they’re discreet and don’t cross over into something like robbery, blackmail, or drug dealing, they can ply their trade without being harassed by the law. There’s enough real crime – involving humans and supes alike – to keep the police busy without us becoming guardians of public morality as well.

Due to the size and variety of her clientele, Robin came across a lot of information – some of which was even true. I caught her eye and made a slight gesture with my chin in the direction of the restrooms. Then I said to Karl, “I’ll be back in a couple minutes. See if you can find anybody who’s feeling talkative.” Then I slid off my stool and headed toward the men’s room around the corner.

Two minutes later, I was standing at one of the urinals when Robin came in. There was nobody else in the place – I’d checked the stalls, just to be sure – but even if another guy came in, he wouldn’t have noticed anything unusual, since Robin now looked like a man.

Hell, Robin was a man – a dark-haired, good-looking guy with nothing remotely feminine about his features. Even the clothing was different – the male version of Robin was wearing designer jeans, a chambray shirt and a sport coat that probably cost what I make in a month. I’d never understood how the physical transformation could be accompanied by a change in outfit, but I guess magic is magic. If you can shift from one gender to the other in a matter of seconds, changing your wardrobe is a pretty small trick by comparison.

I was standing at one of the urinals, pretending to take a leak, when Robin walked up to one a little to my right and unzipped his pants. I assume that what he pulled out was a porn star-size schlong, to be consistent with the rest of his studly persona, but I didn’t check. As Guy Rule Number Four clearly states: “You never look at another man’s dick in a public restroom.” I hear there are some towns where that rule has exceptions, but Scranton isn’t one of them.

Robin must’ve known Rule Number Four as well. He kept his eyes looking straight ahead as he said, quietly, “What’s on your mind, Sergeant?”

“Lot of bad shit going down lately,” I said. I kept my voice down, as well. No sense broadcasting this conversation to anyone on the other side of the door.

From the corner of my eye, I could see the smile that briefly creased the handsome face. “‘Bad shit going down.’ How Seventies. I didn’t think anybody said stuff like that anymore.”

“Yeah, well, some of us do.”

“Perhaps if you could be a little more specific….”

“Alright,” I said. “We’ve got a gang war going on, with Scranton as the prize. The Delatasso Family from Philly wants in, which means they have to move Calabrese out.”

“I understand that it’s not Delatasso Senior who’s behind the hostile takeover attempt – it’s his son, Ronnie.”

“Yeah, I’d heard that, too.”

Robin finished his business at the urinal and went over to the sink. “The smart money says that Calabrese is going down,” he said.

“Yeah? How come?”

“The reason varies, depending on who you talk to. Some say the Vampfather has had it too easy for too long. He’s gone soft.”

I bet the two guys that Calabrese staked out to greet the sun would disagree, I thought.

“What else do you hear?” I asked.

“That Delatasso the elder isn’t bankrolling Junior. But Ronnie seems to have found a sugar daddy somewhere – he’s got all the money he needs. Enough to put a lot of soldiers on the ground, anyway.”

“Anybody know who the sugar daddy is?”

“There’s a lot of speculation, but not a lot of facts to hang it on.”

“What kind of speculation?”

“One of the New York families, or maybe a family from some other city, or the CIA, the DEA, the FBI, some eccentric billionaire.” He shrugged those well-tailored shoulders. “It’s all smoke.”

Robin tossed the wad of paper towels he’d been using in the trash and said, “Will there be anything else this evening, Officer?”

“Slide,” I said. “Also known as Hemoglobin-Plus.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about it. So?”

“So, who’s selling it?”

“The Delatassos, of course. You must know that much.”

“I do,” I said. “I mean who specifically?”

“Vamps – some vamps, anyway.” He thought for a few seconds. “Elves, too, or so I hear. There’s even been a rumor that some humans are dealing the stuff.”

That last one was more than just a rumor, but I decided to keep the fact to myself.

“Where’s it come from, do you know?” I asked him. “I mean, who makes it?”

“I haven’t the faintest,” Robin said. “I remember that one of my… clients told me he’d heard that it first showed up in Australia, a year or so ago. But then, my clients are sometimes full of shit.”

Mine, too, I thought. Let’s hope that you’re not one of them. Not this time.

Aloud I said, “I guess you heard about Victor Castle.”

“Of course I have. Everyone has. It’s a damn shame.”

I gave him raised eyebrows. “It’s a shame, because…?”

“Because he was a good guy,” Robin said impatiently. “Not a prick, like Vollman. Pity he wasn’t more vigilant – Castle, I mean. He should have seen this coming, or something like it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because not everybody in the community agreed that he was a good guy.” He shrugged again. “Or maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe he was just in the way.”

“In the way of who?” I said. “Or what?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Robin said. “And if I did, I probably wouldn’t say.”

I gave him a hard look. “You’re not usually so shy about sharing information, my friend. You scared of something?”

“Maybe I am,” he said. “Maybe you should be, too.”

Before I could think of a comeback to that, Robin turned away and walked the two steps to the door. His hand on the knob, he looked back at me, his handsome face as grim as I’ve ever seen it.

“I’ve been around a very long time, Sergeant,” Robin said. “And one of the things I’ve learned is – when the winds of change start blowing, you either bend or you break.”

Pulling the restroom door open, he said to me, “Take care you don’t get broken, yourself.”

Then he was gone.

“‘Take care you don’t get broken,’” Karl quoted as he drove us toward Spruce Street. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Something to do with those winds of change, I guess.”

“So somebody took out Castle because he – or she – wanted to be the capo di tutti supi. If we can pin a murder rap on the bastard, fine. But otherwise, why should we care?”

“Well, you might care, a little,” I said. “Being one of the supi and all.”

He thought about that for a second. “OK, maybe as a vampire it matters to me – a little, like you said. But as a cop, I can’t see how it makes much difference who’s in charge. As long as he’s somebody we can do business with, that is.”

We’d gone another couple of blocks before I said, “But what if he’s not?”

He took his eyes off the road just long enough to give me an odd look. “Say what?”

“I mean, say the new guy isn’t interested in doing business with us. Maybe he’s some kind of supe separatist and sees all cops as the enemy.”

He frowned. “I didn’t think we had any of those around here.”

“Me, neither. But there’s a first time for everything, I guess.”

Ever since supes began “coming out of the coffin” after World War Two, most of them have wanted nothing more than to integrate with human society. And they’ve been successful at it, too – with a few exceptions, on either side.

There are the supe haters, and some of those assholes are organized into groups, like the KKK used to be. And there are some supes who consider humans an inferior species and want nothing to do with us – until they get hungry, that is. Put those two groups within sight of each other and you could have a scaled-down version of a race war.

Race war. Something about that phrase sent a thought skittering across the back or my mind, but before I could grab it for a good look, Karl said, “This must be it, up here – on the corner.”

“Let’s go by it slow. I want to see if they have off-street parking.” The idea that had been trying to get my attention a moment earlier was gone now.

We drove past the small apartment building that Roger Gillespe, busboy and Slide dealer, apparently called home, then turned the corner on to Penn Avenue, to get a side view. There was no room behind the building for cars to park. That meant Gillespe’s vehicle – assuming he owned one – would have to be parked on Spruce Street, since there was no parking allowed in this section of Penn.

“Go around the block and back to Spruce,” I said to Karl. “I saw an open parking space – looks like it has a clear line of sight to the front of the building. We’ll see him when he comes out to his car.”

“What if he’s walking?” Karl said.

“Then he’ll have to walk right past us, if he’s on his way to work – and he oughta be. Manny said the kid’s shift starts at 6.”

I could have called the Motor Vehicle Bureau to find out if Roger Gillespe had a car registered in his name, along with the make and model, but I didn’t. When you ask Motor Vehicles for that kind of information, they take down your name and shield number. Same thing if a cop does a search for that stuff online. In case anything went wrong in the next few minutes, I didn’t want my interest in Roger to be part of any official record.

I just hoped that the guy hadn’t spent the night someplace else with his girlfriend, if he had one. Or boyfriend.

It was 5.42 by the dashboard clock when the front door of the building opened. The street lights showed me a slim young guy with red hair who came out, bounced down the three steps to the sidewalk, and turned left. He walked maybe fifty feet and stopped next to the driver’s door of a dark blue Volkswagen Geist that was parked at the curb. He reached into his pants pocket, as if searching for keys.

“That’s him,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Roger Gillespe didn’t even have the Geist’s front door open when we pulled up next to him, parked at an angle to prevent his car from going anywhere, even if he did get started up. He was still gaping at us when I rolled out of the passenger seat and showed him my badge.

“Police officer!” I said. “Don’t move!”

Karl was out too, his Glock pointed at Gillespe from across the hood of our car.

“Take your hand out of your pocket – slow!” I told him. “And it better be empty when I see it.”

He complied, so I said, “Turn and face the car, hands on the roof. Do it!”

As I began to frisk him, I said, “You got anything in your pockets I need to know about – any needles or sharp objects?”

“No, man, I got nothin’ like that.” His voice, deeper than I would have expected for his size, was unsteady. Not surprising, considering the big pile of shit he’d just found himself dropped in.

In the left-hand pocket of his jeans I found what I’d been looking for – a half dozen zip-lock plastic baggies, the small ones that are called “snack size”. Each bag was about half full with a gray-looking granular powder.

I slipped the bags into my jacket pocket and finished the search, but none of his other pockets contained anything interesting. Then I took the handcuffs off my belt.

As I pulled his hands behind his back, one at a time, I said, “Roger Gillespe, you are under arrest on suspicion of trafficking in illegal substances.”

He tried to look at me over his shoulder. “But that’s not… I mean, I don’t….”

“Shut up and face front,” I said.

When the cuffs were locked in place, I said, “You have the right to remain silent,” and went on with the rest it, reciting the same Stoker warning that I must’ve said a thousand times over the years.

“Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?” I asked him. That’s part of the routine, too – even if it didn’t apply in Roger’s case.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, “But you don’t–”

“I sure as hell do,” I said. “Come on – get in the car.”

A few seconds later he was in the back seat, I was in front, and Karl had us rolling out of there.

We didn’t take Roger Gillespe back to the station house for booking and interrogation. We skipped the booking entirely, and the interrogation took place behind the loading dock of a warehouse that I knew wouldn’t open for business until 8 o’clock.

As soon as Karl shut off the engine and killed the lights, Gillespe said, “What’re you guys doin’? This ain’t the police station! What the fuck’s goin’ on?”

I took off my seat belt and twisted around so that I was facing him. “This is us, giving you the chance to stay out of jail, Roger.”

“Jail? They can’t send me to jail – that stuff you took off me is legal. Ask anybody!”

“Oh, we will, Roger,” I said. “But first my partner here has a couple of questions for you.”

“I don’t need to answer no fuckin’ questions – you already said so. I want a lawyer!”

“Look at me when I talk to you, Roger,” Karl said quietly. He’d tilted the steering wheel up to give himself room and was turned facing the suspect now.

Roger made eye contact with Karl and started in surprise – but he didn’t look away.

“Listen to me, Roger,” Karl said. “You hear only my voice, and you’re going to do exactly as I say. Aren’t you?”

Roger swallowed a couple of times. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you say.” His voice was calmer now, and he kept his eyes on Karl.

Karl had told me a while back that he’d been practicing with the mental-control ability that vampires call Influence, and said he was getting pretty good at it. I saw now that he’d been telling the truth.

“That Slide you’ve been selling,” Karl said. “Where do you get it?”

“I buy from a guy called Larry.”

“What’s his last name?”

A shrug. “He never said. I never asked.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“At a party – at some guy’s house in Dunmore.”

“When was this?”

“’Bout four months ago.”

“How did he approach you?”

“He already knew my name, and my job at the deli. He asked if I wanted to start making some real money.”

“Selling Slide.”

“He called it HG, but yeah. He said when supes get a taste, they always want more. And there’s lots of supes in this town.”

“You try it yourself?”

“Larry said it has no effect on, like, humans.” Another shrug. “I snorted some, anyway. All it did was make me sneeze.”

“How much do you get for it?”

“Fifty bucks an ounce. That’s what one of them little bags holds.”

“What do you pay Larry for the stuff?”

“Twenty-five an ounce.”

“How do you take delivery?” Karl asked him.

“I meet him every Friday, in the food court at the mall. Noon sharp. He always sits near Taco Bell.”

“What happens at the food court?”

“I slip him an envelope with the cash in it – enough to pay for last week’s supply. He fronts me the money, a week in advance. He’s got a bag with him, from one of the stores in the mall. He puts it on the table. We shoot the shit for a couple of minutes, then he gets up and leaves. He don’t take the bag.”

“What store is the bag from?”

“It ain’t always the same.”

I muttered to Karl, “Description of Larry.”

“What’s this Larry look like?” Karl asked.

“Black hair, dark eyes. ’Bout average height. Looks like he lifts weights some.”

“How old you figure he is?”

“Pretty old – at least forty.”

Karl gave me a look, eyebrows raised. He was asking if I still wanted to end this the way that we’d discussed. I nodded.

He turned back to Gillespe and said, “Roger, that Slide that you were carrying is gone – you can’t remember what happened to it.”

“Can’t remember.”

“And Larry – he’s gonna be pretty pissed when you can’t pay him for last week’s supply.”

“Yeah, he’ll be pissed. Real pissed.”

“He might do something bad to you, when he finds out.”

“Something pretty bad.”

“Your best bet is to leave town, before he finds out.”

“Gotta get out of Dodge – quick.”

“You’re gonna pack a couple of bags, throw them in your car, and start driving – west.”

“Drive west. Yeah.”

“And you’re never coming back to Scranton,” Karl told him. “It’s not safe for you here anymore.”

“Can’t come back. It’s not safe.”

“And you’re gonna forget everything that happened since you came out of your building this morning. You never met us. This little talk never happened.”

“Yeah, sure. Never happened.”

We dropped Roger Gillespe back where we had picked him up. He got out of the back seat and slammed the door without giving us a second glance. Then he walked toward the entrance to his apartment building – moving quickly, like somebody with a lot to do in a short time.

“We’d better do some hustling ourselves,” I said to Karl as he drove us away from there. I looked at my watch. “The sun’ll be up in–”

“Nineteen minutes,” he said calmly. “Plenty of time.”

When we were a block away from the station house, he said, “Well, we got one Slide dealer off the street. Didn’t even have to arrest him – for real, anyway.”

“We got more than that,” I said. “We also have six ounces of his product, obtained at no cost.”

“Just think of the money we saved. It’s better than coupons.”

Once Karl was on his way home, I went back up to the squad room. I needed to tell McGuire what we’d learned at the bombing scene and at Renfield’s.

When I’d finished, McGuire sat back in his chair and said, “Doesn’t give us a lot to go on, does it?”

“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “But I did get one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Six ounces of Slide, divided into one-ounce packets.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do I even want to know where that came from?”

“Not to worry, boss,” I said. “It’s not like I was carrying heroin. Slide’s legal, remember?”

He made a face, like I’d just reminded him that he was going to die, someday. “So, why are you carrying it around at all?”

“I want to have Louise send some to the State Police Crime Lab for analysis. If we can figure out what the shit actually is, maybe we can get a handle on where it comes from.”

“What good you figure that’s gonna do?”

“Maybe none – but I won’t know until I get some answers. I’m also thinking about sending some over to a couple of profs I know at the U. One’s a biologist, and the other one’s in the Chem department.”

“How come? The crime lab’s pretty good.”

I shrugged. “Second opinion – and quicker results, too, probably. I’m also going to leave some with Rachel. She said she’d take a look at it, see if magic might have any effect on its addictive properties.”

“Not a bad idea,” he said. “Can’t do any harm, anyway.”

“That’ll leave me with two ounces,” I said.

“Got any big plans for those?”

“Well,” I said, “Karl’s got a birthday coming up. And since he’s a supe and everything….”

“Get the fuck out of here, Markowski. Just get out, and go home.”

I got out, but I didn’t go home – not immediately, anyway.

My first stop was the desk of our PA, Louise. I left one of the packets of Slide with her and told her to send it on to the State Police Crime Lab.

“You might also add a request that they rush it,” I told her.

She looked up at me. “You figure that’s likely to make any difference?”

“Sure,” I said. “But then, I put out cookies and milk for Santa every Christmas Eve.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

I went downstairs to see Rachel.

Once I explained what I’d brought her, she held the plastic baggie up to the light and shook it gently.

“So this is the famous – or should I say infamous – Slide,” she said.

“Also known as ‘HG’, or ‘Hemogoblin-Plus.’”

“Is that the base ingredient?” she asked. “Blood hemoglobin ?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” I said. “All I know is that’s what the dealers call it.”

“And a drug dealer would never lie about the contents of the shit he’s selling.”

“Course not. Is an ounce gonna be enough for you to work with?”

“I should think so.”

“I’ve got a couple of spares, so let me know if you need more.” I nodded toward the baggie on her desk. “You going to be able to do anything with that?”

“I have some tests in mind, as well as a couple of spells I want to try,” she said. “But with magic, as in life, results are not guaranteed.”

“Yeah, I hate that about life – and about magic, too.”

“Another neurotic heard from.”

I gave her a hard look that I didn’t mean, and she knew it. “You saying I’m neurotic?”

“Yes, but you’re in good company – most of the human race, I expect.”

“Good to know I’m special,” I said.

“You understand the difference between a neurotic and a psychotic, don’t you, Stan?”

“Maybe.”

“A psychotic thinks that two plus two equals five. Or maybe nine. A neurotic knows that two plus two is four – but can’t stand it.”

“You know, I really can’t stand jokes like that,” I said with a smile.

“Who said I was joking?”

The sun was up by the time I left the building. Christine would already be home and at rest by now, so I decided to stop by Jerry’s Diner on the way home. I hadn’t been in there since the robbery attempt a few nights ago.

No way was I going to drink any of Jerry’s notorious coffee at this hour, since I hoped to get in some sleep before sundown. But I found myself with a hankering for one of their ham and cheese omelets. I also wanted to see how Donna, the cashier, was doing.

The possibility that she might not have come into work never occurred to me. Unless it was her day off, Donna would be there. She’s descended from a long line of coal miners and is tough as a three day-old bagel.

When I walked in, she was behind the register.

“Hey, Stan. Crushed any elves lately?”

“Not since the other night, but the week’s not done yet. How you doing, Donna?”

“You mean after all the excitement? Ah, I’m OK. Takes more than a couple of diffies with guns to shake me up.” Diffy is a term some people use when referring to elves. Others consider it as bordering on an ethnic slur. Donna’s got lots of good qualities, but she’s never been what you’d call politically correct.

“I’m glad you didn’t let it get you down,” I said.