Ghost of a Chance

22 The Calm

Alex trudged up the stairs to his fourth floor office, pausing on the landing as he caught sight of his door. Lockerby Investigations was written on a frosted glass panel in gold paint. Down in the bottom right corner, the ink-pot and quill symbol was painted as well, announcing that the office offered runewright services in addition to detection. It wasn’t an elegant office, or particularly well appointed, but it was his. The sight lifted his spirits.

A sign hung on the door handle that read, closed for the day.

Taking out his key, he let himself in, but left the sign on the door. He had work to do, and with Leslie gone, he didn’t want to be interrupted by potential clients. That hurt a bit, but it had to be done.

Locking the door, he went straight to his office. A stack of notes sat there, all from Leslie. Thanks to the story in the Sun, a lot of people had come in seeking his services.

There were a few legitimate cases among the notes, mostly missing valuables, cheating spouses, and even a lost dog. They’d be easy money provided he could get his finding rune working. With a sigh and a wish for a better class of cases, he set them aside.

Many of the people in Leslie’s notes wanted runes done. Even though the runewright symbol was on his door, he almost never sold runes from the office. Simple barrier and mending runes could be bought from runewrights who sold their wares in shops or off carts. Most people who came in here wanted Alex’s finding rune — but that came with his services.

With a sigh, Alex read through the list of desired runes. It would take several hours to write them all, and he simply didn’t want to do it. That didn’t change the fact that he needed the money, by tomorrow if he wanted to take Jessica somewhere nice for dinner, and selling the runes for which he had orders would make that happen.

The thought of money made him check his pocketwatch. If Danny and Callahan found the bank robbers today, he could collect double his fee from Barton. That would be one hundred and fifty clams, enough to catch up Leslie’s salary.

Of course there was a good chance that the cops wouldn’t find the tunnel until tomorrow. If that happened, Alex’s double or nothing bet with the Lightning Lord would roll over to nothing.

Time to take another gamble.

Alex picked up his phone and gave the operator Barton’s number.

“Yes,” Gary Bickman’s voice answered.

“This is Alex Lockerby. I need to talk to your boss.”

“One moment.”

If Bickman was glad to hear Alex’s voice, he hid it well. Of course he was a professional valet, dispassion was probably in the job description.

“Lockerby!” Barton’s voice rolled down the line like thunder. “I was beginning to lose faith in you. What’s the good word?”

“I found your truck,” he said. “It was part of a group of vehicles that have been stolen in recent weeks.”

“Is the motor intact?” Barton’s voice was eager, almost desperate. Alex guessed that the new one wasn’t coming along as quickly as Barton had hoped.

“The motor was missing,” Alex said.

“I’m not paying you to find trucks, Lockerby,” he growled. “I need that motor.”

“Take it easy,” Alex said. “I know why the thieves took your motor.”

“I don’t care why they took it, I just need it back.”

Barton’s voice was angry now. Absently, Alex wondered if the Lightning Lord could electrocute him through the telephone line.

“And the police are looking for it right now,” Alex said in as soothing a voice as he dared. “The people who took it want to use it to help them rob a bank.”

There was a long pause.

“How would my motor help anyone rob a bank?” he asked, his voice now intrigued.

Alex told him about the thefts and the kidnapping of Leroy Cunningham, and how that added up to a robbery.

“I never thought about using my motor in mines,” Barton said. “That might be a whole new industry. You say the cops are searching for these kidnappers right now?”

“There are a lot of buildings they’ll have to search, but they’ll find your motor sooner or later.”

“I appreciate the update, Lockerby, well done.”

“I was hoping I could get some consideration for that well done work,” Alex said, trying to keep his voice calm and even.

“Like what?”

“One more day on our bet,” he said. “The cops will find your motor by then and it’s a cinch the thieves didn’t take it apart, so it’ll be ready to show off to the railroad. Based on what we thought at the start, it’s the best possible outcome.”

“You’ve got brass,” Barton said, amusement in his voice. “All right, one more day, double or nothing. But only because I like you.”

With that, Barton hung up.

Alex slumped back in his chair, letting out an explosive breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Now all he needed was for the cops to find the bank robbers. They wouldn’t want to release the motor, since it was evidence, but Alex had no doubt that once Andrew Barton got involved, that wouldn’t be a problem.

He opened the desk drawer where he kept his liquor bottle and found it empty. He’d forgotten that he’d emptied it when Hannah Cunningham had come to see him. That seemed so long ago.

Tossing the empty bourbon bottle into his waste basket, Alex got up and moved to the wall where his vault door had been painted in neat lines on the otherwise blank sheet rock. Taking a vault rune from his book, he activated it to reveal the heavy door, then opened it with the ornate skeleton key on his key ring.

Inside, he had another bottle of bourbon on the file cabinet next to his writing table. This one was almost empty too.

He poured himself a shot and downed it.

Looking at his angled writing table, Alex decided that he might as well start writing the runes he needed. He’d done all he could for Leroy and Barton, and it was up to the cops to catch the ghost.

He set the bottle aside and turned to make his way back to his office where the list of runes awaited him, but paused as a thought struck him. He walked to the secretary cabinet where he kept his important papers and a duplicate investigation kit. Opening the writing table, he rummaged through the drawers until he found an ornate paper card with a red border and gold Chinese dragons in the corners. The name, Lucky Dragon, had been printed in the same gold lettering across the top over a single line of handwritten text.

Mister Lockerby and party are my guests.

It was signed, Chow Duk Sum, though Alex knew there was no such person. The name was an alias for Shiro Takahashi, Danny Pak’s father — leader of the Japanese Mafia in New York.

Alex had gotten Danny in some trouble about a year back and had to appeal to Shiro for help getting Danny out of it. Apparently Alex’s work met with the man’s approval, because that card arrived in the mail a week or so after the fact. It was inside a folded sheet of paper with a single word written on it.

Impressive.

Alex had worried that the obvious invitation was some kind of set up, but in the year that passed, no further communication had been received. It was probably safe. Besides, the Lucky Dragon was swanky, located in the inner-ring. Jessica should be suitably impressed.

Making up his mind, Alex put the card in the back of his rune book, then walked back to his office and scooped up the list of needed runes. He had just turned back to the open vault door when his phone rang.

Hoping it was Danny with good news, he scooped it up eagerly.

“Hey, handsome,” Leslie’s voice greeted him. “I tracked down the reporter you wanted.”

“Just a second,” he said, pulling out his notebook and sitting down at the desk. “Go ahead.”

“William ‘Billy’ Tasker, born in Georgia and studied English at Duke University. He graduated in twenty-nine and got a job with the Miami Herald. He won an award for some exposé he wrote about corruption in the state senate. After that he got hired at the New York Times.”

“He what?” Alex was shocked. “How did that muckraker go from the Times to a rag like the Sun?”

“I couldn’t find out,” Leslie said. “I don’t know why he left the Times or when he got hired by The Midnight Sun. I did find a story by him in the Sun that’s two years old, so he’s been working for the tabloid at least that long.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, I talked with Hannah. She wants to know how you’re doing.”

“Tell her the police are on it now and we should know something in a day or two,” Alex said. “How is she holding up?”

“She’s great,” Leslie said, a trace of sarcasm in her voice. “But she’s eating me out of house and home. I hope you get paid soon.”

“Sorry,” Alex said. “She must be a nervous eater.”

“No,” Leslie said. “I suspect she’s in a family way. She threw up this morning. Blamed it on her nerves.”

Alex’s head dropped down on the desk. He’d been feeling the pressure to find Leroy, to get him home to his sweet wife, but that had mostly vanished now that he had the police involved. With the news that Hannah was likely pregnant, that weight dropped right back on his shoulders.

“Leroy will be thrilled,” he said, not bothering to hide the weariness in his voice.

“Just find him, kid,” Leslie said. “For both our sakes.”

“Are you coming back here?”

“No,” Leslie said. “It’s after five, I’m headed home.”

Alex thanked her and hung up.

Despite Hannah’s condition, there wasn’t anything Alex could do to speed Leroy’s recovery along, so he pushed them out of his thoughts.

Turning to his notes, he couldn’t believe that Billy Tasker, the tabloid hack, had worked for the Times. A while back he’d made a friend of their sports editor, a man named Jared Watson. Alex resolved to give him a call, then remembered Leslie saying it was after five. Sports reporters didn’t work late, so he’d have to call in the morning.

With a sigh, Alex put away his notebook and picked up the discarded rune list. Making his way back into his vault he assembled the pens, paper, and inks he would need and set to work. He started with the hardest ones first. It was an old habit he’d picked up from Father Harry.

Always do the hardest jobs first, he would say. Then when you get down to the end and you’re tired, the work is easy.

It had been a year since Father Harrison Clementine had died. As Alex thought of it, he was ashamed. In all that time, he hadn’t been back to the grave once since the funeral.

Resolving to go on Sunday made him feel better, and he set to work on a complicated cleaning rune that someone wanted for a painting that had been damaged by smoke. He kept going, rune after rune, until he found himself drawing a circle inside a square then adding a symbol that looked like a lighthouse being attacked by a steam shovel.

Once the minor restoration rune was done, he did it three more times, then crossed it off Leslie’s list, last of all, and set his pencil aside. His back ached and his hand was cramping, so he poured himself another drink, then got up to pace around a bit and get his blood flowing.

Since the vault had no windows, he had no idea how much time had passed, but a quick glance out into his darkened office told him it must have been a few hours. He checked his watch and found it was seven-thirty.

“Iggy’s going to be mad that I’m late,” he grumbled, heading back to the drafting table. He picked up the stack of runes he’d drawn and carried them out of the vault, shutting off the light and locking the door after him.

Leslie had their mostly-empty cashbox in her desk drawer and Alex locked the runes in there, leaving a note on the desk telling her where to find them. In the morning she’d call the people who ordered them and, hopefully, get paid.

He had just put on his hat when the phone in his office rang. A wave of weariness flooded him, but the thought that it might be Danny with good news impelled him back into his office.

“Lockerby,” he said, picking it up.

“Alex,” Iggy said.

“I know I’m late,” Alex said with a smile. He was surprisingly glad to hear the old man’s voice. “I had a few things to finish up here. I’m just on my way home.”

“Stay there,” Iggy said. “There are cops here looking for you.”

Alex felt a surge of adrenaline burn away his exhaustion. Had the Mayor or Chief Montgomery changed their minds and loosed Detweiler on him?

“I’m sending them over to you now,” Iggy went on before Alex could ask why cops wanted him.

Iggy wouldn’t tell the cops where he was if they intended to lock them up, that much was sure.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Get your kit together,” Iggy said, his voice heavy and serious. “The ghost has killed again.”