Ghost of a Chance

30 The Day After

Despite going to bed in the late afternoon, Alex slept clear through until the following morning. Despite all that sleep, it still took him four cups of coffee to wake up enough to get to his office by nine.

Even with a head start, Leslie still managed to beat him into the office. As a result, she had a stack of work ready and waiting for him. He’d given Billy Tasker a hard time for imperiling his relationship with the police, but he had to admit, walk-in business had picked up since the stories about the Runewright Detective had appeared in the tabloid.

Alex spent the next few hours calling potential clients and making appointments to use finding runes or do research for clients who wanted information found. By the time his intercom buzzed, it was nearing lunch.

“You have a visitor,” Leslie said, somewhat enigmatically, when he answered.

Exiting his office, Alex found Gary and Marjorie Bickman waiting for him. Both of them beamed at him.

“Thank you so much, Alex,” Marjorie said, stepping up to give him the hug that her very proper British husband never could.

Alex was a little taken aback since he’d seen, and been thanked, by both of them only last week.

“Master Barton paid us an advance to help make up for the money the Atwoods absconded with,” Gary said, holding out a white envelope. “Since the master provides us an apartment, we don’t need very much, and we wanted to make sure you were paid.”

Alex took the envelope without looking inside and tucked it into his inner jacket pocket with his rune book. He then shook Gary’s hand and got another hug from Marjorie.

“If there’s ever anything we can do for you,” Gary said, putting his arm around his wife.

“Just tell anybody who might need some help to look me up,” Alex said with a smile, then he bade them goodbye and they left, arm in arm.

Alex took the envelope out and dropped it on Leslie’s desk.

“If that’s the hundred bucks they owed me, it should catch you up on your back pay,” he said.

Leslie picked up the envelope and pulled out a fifty, two twenties, and a ten.

“We only need twenty more to make rent,” she said. “But I still have a bunch of those rune orders to collect on. With luck, we’ll be all caught up in a few days.”

She was about to say more when the door opened, and Andrew Barton walked in.

Leslie’s jaw dropped open and she blushed, standing up quickly.

“Really, Lockerby?” Barton said, looking at Leslie. “Another beauty? I need to start keeping you around.” He crossed the room and held out his hand for Leslie to take. “And who is this lovely creature?”

“Andrew Barton, this is my secretary, Ms. Leslie Tompkins.”

“Enchanté,” he said in French, kissing the back of Leslie’s hand.

Leslie blushed harder, keeping up her million-dollar smile.

“How can I help you, Mr. Barton?” Alex asked, nudging Leslie with his hip.

“Excuse me,” she said, snapping out her trance. She picked up the envelope the Bickmans had given Alex. “I need to put this away.”

She stepped around the desk and busied herself pulling the lock box out of the desk drawer.

“You should write dating advice for the newspaper, Lockerby,” Barton said, still watching Leslie. “You’d make a fortune.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Alex said, not trying hard to hide a grin.

Barton finally tore himself away from Leslie and smiled at Alex.

“I was going over my files and I discovered something in my Operations Filing.”

“What’s an Operations Filing?” Alex asked, not really interested, but willing to see where the sorcerer was going.

“It’s a document the state makes you file if you want to have a big company,” Barton said, sounding a bit bored himself. “Anyway, as it turns out when I set up the company, I established a bounty for anyone who exposed a traitor in my organization.”

“What kind of bounty?” Alex asked, his interest returning.

Barton grinned at him. He’d apparently been watching the expression on Alex’s face match the wheels turning in his head.

“One hundred and fifty dollars, cash,” Barton said, handing Alex an envelope that looked remarkably like the one the Bickmans had just handed him.

Alex didn’t know why the government would want a paper on how a business operated, or even if there was such a thing. Barton had been right when he refused to pay Alex at the museum. Technically Alex lost that bet. If he had paid Alex after the bet expired and anyone found out, he could lose prestige and maybe leverage in negotiations. Bargaining at any level was a lot like staring down a predator — whoever blinked first usually lost.

The envelope and the story about the bounty were Barton’s way around that. If anyone asked, Alex lost the bet, and Barton didn’t pay him. Coincidentally, Barton paid off the exact amount he would have owed… as a bounty for exposing a traitor in his organization.

“Glad I could be of help,” Alex said, accepting the envelope. “Did you get the motor back all right?”

Barton nodded.

“It’s being transported to Baltimore as we speak. The kid that Jimmy and his miscreants grabbed actually did a good job of adapting it for mining. We didn’t have to do much to get it ready for the contest.” Barton stuck out his hand. “I’ve got to catch a train,” he said as Alex shook his hand. “Thanks for all your help.”

“Good luck in Baltimore.”

Barton winked at Leslie, then withdrew.

“Did we just get paid?” Leslie said, not trusting what she heard.

Alex dropped the envelope on her desk with a smile.

“Yes, we did,” he said. “This means not only are we in the black this month—”

“But we can buy cigarettes again,” she finished.

“Take a fiver across to the five and dime and pick up a couple of packs for us,” Alex said.

Leslie grinned at that.

“Sure thing, boss,” she said, pulling the lock box back out of the drawer. “Right after I take care of this.”

An hour later, Alex found himself in a little room in the Manhattan Central Office of Police. He’d been through the rune books taken from Jimmy and at least three of his accomplices. Most of the strange glyphs looked familiar, since Alex had seen them in the book Alex had taken off their dead colleague. A few were new, and Alex faithfully copied them down in his notebook.

He wasn’t sure what he would do with them, because without knowing what they actually did he couldn’t make them work… or didn’t dare try. So far, Lieutenant Callahan hadn’t found where Jimmy and his cohorts were keeping their lore books, either. Those would have details about writing the glyphs and what they were for, though they wouldn’t necessarily enable Alex to use them himself. Each school of runes had their own methods for using magic and the didn’t play well with each other. Still, Alex had to find the missing lore books to know for sure.

Once he finished, Alex returned the books, and Callahan took him down to lockup to see Jimmy.

“What do you want?” he grumbled, once a uniformed officer brought him into one of their interrogation rooms.

“Just to talk,” Alex said, trying to put him at ease.

“We’ve got nothing to say to you, traitor.”

Alex raised an eyebrow at that. How did Jimmy think of him as a traitor?

“Because I ratted out a fellow runewright?” Alex scoffed. “I don’t owe you anything. Now who is we?”

“What?”

“You said we,” Alex explained. “Just who is it that doesn’t have anything to say to me?”

Jimmy clammed up, just staring at Alex.

“These are nifty,” Alex said, paging through the glyphs he’d copied into his notes. “Where’d you learn something like this? I never heard of a Mayan glyph school of runes.”

Jimmy started at that. Alex had struck a nerve. He didn’t expect Alex to have figured out that the glyphs were an unknown form of rune magic.

“The Maya are an old people,” Jimmy said. “Our magic is old too.”

“You still haven’t said who us is?

“The magic of the Maya is in our Talons,” he said. The phrase sounded ritualistic as he said it, like a chant or maxim repeated by students.

“So what were the Talons really looking for in that museum?” Alex asked.

“Gold that belongs to our people,” Jimmy said.

Alex managed to keep from laughing out loud at that. Jimmy was no altruist, that was for sure.

“What’s the entropy stone?”

Jimmy’s eyes went hard and flat and he crossed his arms. He was putting on a brave face, but Alex could tell that he was desperately afraid of something, or maybe someone. Alex tried to get him to say more, but he just sat there, mum.

Eventually Alex called the guard and sent Jimmy back to his cell. Whatever the entropy stone was, Jimmy had been terrified by the idea of Alex knowing about it. He thought about interviewing the other thieves, but Jimmy was probably telling them not to talk to him right that minute.

He was at a dead end.

A moment later the guard returned, this time with Edmond, or rather with Duane King.

“I thought I’d be seeing you again,” he said as he sat down on the opposite side of the table. Alex smiled back at him, not bothering to hide the fact that he was glad to see him.

“They treating you okay?”

King laughed at that.

“I spent twenty years in the joint,” he said. “This is fine.”

“Has Billy come to see you?”

“He just left before you got here,” King said. “I wanted to thank you, Alex, for finding him. I know it probably doesn’t mean much coming from me, after all I did, but I’m grateful. It’s like somehow I’ve got Beatrice back, you know?”

“I’m glad,” Alex said.

“So tell me,” King said with a sly smile. “Was it worth it?”

“Was what worth it?”

“Whatever you spent all your life energy on.” King reached up and touched his white hair. “Same as me,” he said. “And you’ve got the shakes too. Whatever you spent your life on, was it worth it?”

“Yeah,” Alex said after a moment. “It was.”

“I can feel my body breaking down,” King said. His voice was sad but held no tenor of fear. “My eyesight has started to go, and every day it’s harder to wake up in the morning. I bet I don’t last to the end of my trial. My only regret is Billy. I won’t get much time with him.”

The door to the interrogation room opened, and the guard that had brought King leaned in.

“Five minutes,” he said, then withdrew.

“I guess visiting hours are over,” King said. “Thanks for coming to see me.”

“I need to ask you something first,” Alex said, leaning forward.

“Let me guess,” King said with a wry smile. “You want to know where I got those escape runes?”

Alex nodded.

“He said you’d ask,” King said.

“Someone said I’d ask about the runes?”

“Not you specifically,” King said. “I got these runes from a guy I met in prison by the name of Sam Enderby. I told him my plans while we were inside, and he said he’d help once I got out, so I tracked him down. He was the one who came up with the idea of using the letter. He also tattooed the runes on my arm. Didn’t even ask me for money to do it.”

That didn’t sound right. Escape runes were expensive to produce just in materials, never mind the time it took. No old prison friendship would justify that.

“And he said someone would ask about it,” Alex pressed.

King nodded.

“Sam said if I got caught that whoever figured it out would want to know about those runes and where they came from. I told him I’d keep it a secret, but he said that anyone smart enough to catch me deserved to know.”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s all,” King said.

“What did this Sam Enderby look like?”

“He was a Brit, about five foot ten with dark hair and a Roman nose.”

The door opened, and the officer came in.

“Anything else?” Alex pressed as the guard waited for King to rise.

“He had a tattoo,” King said. “Not a rune, but some kind of arrowhead on the inside of his wrist.”

King smiled as the guard led him out.

“It really was nice to meet you, Alex. Come see me again before the end.”

“I will,” Alex said, and then he was gone.

Alex didn’t know what to think. The thought that occupied his mind the most was King’s list of symptoms: not being able to wake up and failing eyesight. He already had one of those. How much time did he have left?

Shaking his head, Alex stood, forcing the morbid thoughts from his brain. Someone had given Duane King over a grand’s worth of runes without asking anything in return. That wasn’t right. Sam Enderby obviously had some bigger game in mind, but what?

Alex picked up his kit and left the interrogation room. It was time to call Iggy.

“I just got done at the Central Office,” Alex said once Iggy picked up the phone.

“Did you find out anything about our glyph rune cousins?”

“Just that they’re probably actual descendants of the Maya,” Alex said. “Jimmy called them the Talons, like they were some kind of organized group.”

“That might explain why we’ve never heard of them,” Iggy said. “If they’re a small group, it’d be easy for them to stay secret. Did Jimmy say anything about the entropy stone?”

“He clammed up hard when I mentioned it,” Alex said. “He didn’t even like me knowing the name.”

Iggy laughed at that.

“I think we should look into it, then,” Iggy said. “Did you talk to the curator over at the museum?”

“I did,” Alex said. “He wasn’t thrilled, but since he owes me one, he said we can look around after closing time. Meet me there at seven and we’ll go over the place.”

“Will do,” Iggy said. “What about Duane King?”

Alex filled Iggy in on his conversation with the former ghost, leaving out the bit about his life rune symptoms.

“You’re right,” Iggy agreed once Alex was done. “I don’t like this Enderby fellow. The only reason he would have to set King up with all those runes was if he wanted something out of the deal.”

“Maybe he hated one of the people King wanted to kill?” Alex suggested.

“No, he didn’t know who was involved in North Shore Development until after he got that job in the Hall of Records.”

“Maybe he was testing that anchor rune through the mail trick.”

“That’s a possibility,” Iggy said. “Though it seems like an awfully expensive test.”

“Well, I’ll think about it some more,” Alex said.

“Yes, and we’ll need to find out everything we can about Sam Enderby and why he was in prison,” Iggy added.

“I’ve got to get going,” Alex said, checking his pocket watch.

“What are you going to do until the museum closes?”

“I’ve got three family heirlooms to track down with my finding rune,” Alex answered. “Then I have to see a woman about tailing her cheating husband.”

Iggy laughed at that.

“Just don’t be late,” he said.