Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW

by ADRIAN COLE

DAWN HAD JUST started to edge the clouds behind the blocked silhouettes across the river, a white-grey mist. For a few moments the Manhattan skyline looked alien, like something Cyclopean, a hundred suns away. But the two men hardly registered the change in the light. Engrossed in their thoughts, they sat on a bench, focused on the shared inner dilemma that had occupied them throughout the night and previous evening.

The man wearing the distinctive blue of the NYPD, a sergeant, leaned back and yawned: he looked exhausted. Beside him, no less tired, the police detective watched the cold water thoughtfully. From the pocket of his raincoat he pulled a small audio tape, idly turning it over in his fingers. The other looked at it uneasily, hands shoved deep in his own pockets, as though a sudden chill breeze had ruffled him.

“So what’s the deal, Hal?” said the detective, though his eyes were still on the river. “You want to hear this again before I turn it over to the chief?”

The other considered a moment. “I guess we’ll all look pretty stupid. It’s not just the private dick that’ll sound like a fruitcake. Me most of all. I was the one who went in after him.”

“You think anyone will believe this stuff?”

“Do you, Ed? You’ve known me a long time. You think I’m cracking up?”

The detective shook his head. “Nah. If you say you saw something, then you saw it. But you’re certain? It was late, Hal. You were tired.

The light wasn’t good, that’s what they’ll say. It’s not the sort of thing people want to hear. You know?”

“Yeah, sure. Let me think about it.”

“Okay, but we don’t have much time. They’ll expect us back at the precinct pretty soon. One way or the other, we have to decide on our story.”

Again he flipped the tape recording.

As the dawn dragged itself skywards, they mentally went over the tape’s contents one last time.

Transcript of the interview recorded by Detective Sergeant Ed Mullins, NYPD. October 14th, 2002. In attendance, police sergeant Hal Vanner.

The voice is that of Mr. N. Stone, a private investigator.

In my line of business, you can’t afford to be picky. Some days, some months, you have to take the rough, as there’s no smooth. Putting it bluntly, these days there’s not a lot of smooth. Smooth is something I get from a whisky bottle. Okay, I draw the line at some stuff: I don’t do divorce cases, snooping on some sucker who’s screwing around, or some wife who’s looking for a new life away from her loaded husband. You can keep that kind of grime. Otherwise I’ll take on the more obscure stuff and brother, I’ve seen some bizarre things. There may be a Hell waiting in the afterlife, but I’ve been there already, more times than I care to mention.

I know a lot of the guys in this town call me Nick Nightmare, usually when I’m out of earshot. That’s about all you need to know about me. You’ll have a file on me. There’s always a file, right? Nick Stone, Private Eye, Public Fist. Tackles the cases other dicks won’t touch, kind of like that beer ad.

So anyway, you want to know about this case. Yeah, well, it’s pretty weird, I’ll give you that.

It started with a phone call. I was workin’ late the night before last, catchin’ up on some paperwork. I’d had a lean week, so I shut myself away to get on with it. I don’t have a secretary. They’d only go nuts tryin’ to work for me. Anyway, this phone call was from some guy who sounded like he was talkin’ through a hole in his throat. Maybe he was, given the kind of crap he was mixed up in.

Wanted me to find a man. Here in New York. Wouldn’t be easy, said the guy. The man he was after was an illegal immigrant, gone to ground. They had a few clues about where he might be, a trail.

I asked for some details, but gravel-voice didn’t want to stay on the phone. Maybe he thought my wire was tapped. It’s not, I promise you. I like my privacy and I have some good contacts for that kind of wire work.

The guy said, was I free now. This was 2:00 a.m. But it suited me. Especially when he told me how much he would pay. You don’t need to know that. So I said, come on over.

Less than an hour later they were knockin’ on the office door. Three of them. I know it’s October, but these guys were done up like they were headin’ for the Russian Front. I thought maybe they had at least three trench coats on, they were so god-dammed broad. And the slouched hats were classics. What little I saw of their faces were white. Not pale, but white. I’m not sayin’ they were zombies, but they did not look healthy. And they never showed their hands. Just kept them at their sides, deep down in their pockets. Shooters, I guessed. Why be different from everyone else in the neighborhood?

Only one of them spoke: the batteries on the other two must have run down. I guess he was the guy I’d spoken with on the phone. His voice was a gargle, foreign, maybe Eastern bloc, like he was full of runny cold. I know the light in my office was pretty poor, but his eyes were colourless. No emotion. Flat. Very cold fish.

He didn’t give me much to go on. The guy they were after, last calling himself Stefan Zeitsheim, had stepped off a boat out of Odessa that had arrived here in New York a few days ago. He had no papers, but had given everyone the slip. He was being hunted. So my job was to find him first.

I may not have the quickest brain this side of the Atlantic, but I figured out pretty sharply that if these handsome guys were good buddies of Mr. Zeitsheim, he would have made a beeline for them once he’d slipped the ship. But obviously he was looking forward to meeting them with as much enthusiasm as a vampire would greet a priest. So he’d gone to ground. Lookin’ at them, I’d say Zeitsheim had his head screwed on.

“We don’t want to meet him,” gurgled my new employer. For the one and only time he took his hand out of his coat. Thick black glove, so no surprise there. He also had a thin black file, which he dropped on my desk. Taped to the front of it was a key. I recognized it: safety deposit box, Grand Central Station.

“Your pay. Half of it. The rest when the job is completed, Mr. Stone.” He shoved his hand back in his pocket, as if it had already been exposed to the air too long.

“So what do I do when I find him? Buy him lunch? Show him around the Big Apple?”

No hint of a smile. “It’s all in the file, Mr. Stone. You kill him.”

That was it, no frills. Just simply, you kill him.

“He is persona non grata. Find him quickly. No one need know.”

Yeah, except for whoever the hell else was hunting him. Like the law, or more likely the KGB, or whatever they call themselves these days.

“You have a suitable weapon?” growled the overcoat.

“If you mean a gun, yeah. Or is this a knife job? Or maybe a glass of something very strong?”

“We leave the means to you, Mr. Stone. But once you have killed him, and this is vital, you must incinerate him.”

There was what the poet once called a pregnant pause. Incinerate him?

“You would rather not accept this commission?”

Oh yeah, with these three monoliths looming over me, like I was going to refuse? I said not.

“Everything you need is in the file. We will contact you again, one week from now, at the same time. Be alone. Provided you have completed the task, the rest of the money will be in the same deposit box.”

* * *

I decided not to waste any time. My initial stop was Grand Central. The first helping of money was in the box all right. I could have moved out of town and set up on the West Coast right there and then, but I had this feeling that the three goons wouldn’t take too kindly to it. I read through the file. I have it safely tucked away. You guys are welcome to it when you want it. It’s not the snappiest read since Spillane. Just a few details about Stefan Zeitsheim, coupla mug shots so’s I’d know him. Looked like he’d spent a month or two in a jail, fed on bread and water once a week.

I grabbed a few hours’ sleep then decided to check out the docks. It was nearly 6:00 a.m. when I got there. Zeitsheim was supposed to have come in on one of the huge rust buckets, with some tongue-twisting Russian name. Easy enough to find the tub, but it would have been a needle-in-a-haystack job finding out from someone where he took off from. Yet already the quayside was crawling with unaccustomed life. Your boys in blue were out in force—maybe you know which ones?

I saw someone I knew over in the shadows of a warehouse. Never mind who: just a bum who tips me off from time to time. In a job like mine, you need eyes and ears everywhere. These guys are my lifeblood.

I eased over to him and slipped him a smoke. “So what’s the story?”

“Hi, Nick. Some guy left that big tub last night and walked straight into the next world. Cut himself up. No kiddin’. Real messy. Seems a long way to come to end it all.”

Suicide? That didn’t make any sense. “Don’t tell me. Name of Zeitsheim?”

“You knew him?”

“Of him. You?”

“All I know is, some of the boys got word there were some weird characters on the waterside. Expensive suits. You know, not regulars. Not the Mob either. They must have been waiting for the guy. He didn’t want to meet them, big time.”

I described the three uglies that had visited me.

“Nah. These were slick. More like FBI. But they weren’t quick enough to stop the Russkie toppin’ himself. See, over there.” He pointed to a group of shadows, men cleaning up the quayside. “Bled a river before they hauled his carcass out of here.”

“Who took him away?”

“Meat wagon. Down to the morgue. The slicks didn’t hang around. I guess they’ll be on the other side of the state by now.”

So my work was already done for me. Or it seemed like it. But this whole thing stank. Like my man had said, why come halfway across the world to cut yourself up?

“Get me any information you can on the suits. Where they went, who they spoke to,” I said and started for the local morgue. I needed to tie up some loose ends before I collected the second half of my takings.

* * *

No one takes too much interest in the comings and goings of a mortuary at 6:00 a.m., not unless something really big has gone down, so when I got there, it was quiet. Zeitsheim’s suicide would have been no great shakes here. I knew the guy on the desk, Raglo. I won’t say I’m a regular, but we’d played poker together a few times. He’s the worst poker player I know, but I let him win more than lose. That way I don’t always have to pry information out of him with a crowbar.

“Much happenin’?” I asked him.

“Quiet night, Nick. Three or four heart attacks, one drunk fished out the Hudson, brawl victim. Usual intake. What’s your angle?”

I flashed him a glimpse of Zeitsheim. “Fresh off the night boat from Odessa.”

He knew the case, of course, but his face clouded and he pulled back. “No, I don’t think so. You got the wrong morgue.”

“Don’t go cold on me, Raglo. He’s here.”

My man was sweating. “I don’t know nothin’.”

I smiled my horrible smile and leaned over the counter. “I know that. But tell me anyway.”

He knew what I was like when someone upset me. “Three guys came in, flashing badges at me.”

“Let me guess. FBI?”

He looked appalled. “You know about them?”

“A little. So what did they want, apart from a peek at Zeitsheim?”

He looked even worse, like he had acute guts ache. His face was like chalk. “They wanted more than that. They wanted his corpse. I mean, they wanted to take it away.”

I started sliding notes across the counter, lots of them.

“Listen, I saw the guy when we unzipped his bag and put him in the locker,” said Raglo, face even whiter.

“A mess, right?”

“You got that right. Nick. Used a long knife on himself. You know I ain’t squeamish, but this was about as bad as it gets. The guy was dead, right. You don’t get no deader. Think I don’t know a stiff when I seen one? Jimmy and me slid him home into a locker and turned the key.”

I straightened up. “So?”

“When I took the three suits back there and Jimmy unlocked it—jeeze, it was crazy. The smell was like nothin’ I ever smelled before. I tell ya, I’ve known every kind of horror in this place, Nick. Makes you thick-skinned and you can take anything, sights, smells, whatever. But this was one stench. Like a drain outta Hell itself.”

“The body?”

“Body? Shit, there was no body. Just a pool of… what the hell can I call it? Green slime. Yeah, slime. Inch deep in the locker.”

“You’re telling me that the body had decomposed that quickly? Turned into a pool of green slime in—what, minutes?”

He shook his head. “No. Weirder than that, pal. Jimmy spotted the rest of it. You want to see? Only you betta be quick. The dicks’ll be here in a minute.”

“Lead on.” I followed him out through the back into the cold room.

Jimmy, his attendant, was slumped at a desk, head down, snoring. We didn’t wake him. Sounded like he’d had enough for one night.

“This is the locker. But look, that’s what Jimmy noticed.” He pointed to the polished floor. Going across it was a kind of trail. I went over to look at it and bent down. Green slime was right. Like some big fat slug had dragged itself across the room. I got up and walked through an open door to a small washroom out back.

“I haven’t touched anything,” avowed Raglo. “The Feds told me not to. They said they’d be back.”

I nodded. “I haven’t been here, okay? And you were right about the stink.” It made me cough. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, vile. But if you guys have been down there, you’ll know that.

Raglo pointed to the window. It was busted, like something far too bulky had been shoved through it, hard. More slime.

“Nick, what in hell is goin’ on? Who’s done this? Jimmy says no one could have got in here. No one could have gotten that body out of the locker without him knowin’.”

I shoved some more dollar notes into his shaking hand. “I guess you’re right. So we have to consider the other possibility. Well, you don’t, but I do.”

He gaped at me like a beached guppy.

“The guy was alive,” I said. “He crawled out. Where does the window lead to?”

* * *

I left him to it and none too soon. Minutes after I quit the morgue, a couple of police wagons drew up. At least I had a short head start on them.

Round the back of the building I found the alley system that was fed by the window from which Stefan Zeitsheim (or whatever had consumed him) had made his escape. I was beginning to see the attraction this guy had for his various pursuers. My current employers had told me that Stefan was hunted. No wonder. FBI? I had no contacts there. My guess was that they wanted him alive, while my employers wanted him dead. Maybe he had the dirt on them.

I picked up the slime trail, but it wound its way through a dozen alleys and petered out. After that there was nothing much to go on. So what was I looking for now? The mother of all maggots, or Houdini’s older brother? If this was a trick, a fake suicide and a weird escape to follow, it had taken some pulling off.

I went back to more familiar haunts and pored over what I knew so far with a pot of coffee and a fried breakfast at Fat Duke’s. Halfway through the bacon, a guy came in, noticed me in the corner and helped himself to the chair opposite me. I chewed slowly, waiting. This was no chance encounter. Another nice suit. The mountain had come to Mohammed.

“Mr. Stone.” Nice voice. Nice salary too, I guessed.

“You want a coffee?”

He shook his head. “We have a mutual friend. I think you know to whom I am referring.”

“Yes, I think I know to whom you are referring. Tell me something, is this friend of ours dead or still wandering the streets of our fair city?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that, Mr. Stone.”

“So why are you interested in him?”

“It’s rather a complicated story.”

“Isn’t it always?”

He sort of smiled, but he made it look like he had the gripe. “Our friend is wanted for questioning. Not just by us. It’s an international matter. Security. And he is a very dangerous character. I can’t tell you how dangerous.”

I carried on chewing, occasionally breaking to sip my coffee. “I guess a man like that makes more than a few enemies.”

“It doesn’t pay to get mixed up with this sort of people.”

Ah, did I detect a chill note creeping into the voice? A coldness of expression? I grunted.

“So what is your interest, Mr. Stone?”

“Let’s just call it curiosity.”

“If you say so, Mr. Stone. Is the payload worth the trouble?”

“A man’s got to eat.”

“You know who I represent? It’s a powerful outfit.”

It was taking him a long time to get round to the threat. But this had to be it. “Sure.”

“How much would it take to eliminate your curiosity?”

“Like I said, a man’s got to eat.”

He named a figure that would have fed a sell-out at the Yankee Stadium. “You want me to forget about our mutual friend.”

“Completely.”

“Somebody might be disappointed if I did that. Somebody with a bad attitude. It could affect my health.”

“We can take care of that for you. If you help us.”

The idea of the FBI and my three employers going head to head was an interesting one. I just didn’t want to get mashed in the middle of it. “I’ll think about it.”

He nodded and got up, pushing the chair back slowly. “Good. We’ll talk again, Mr. Stone. I’ll be in touch. I know where you live,” he added, with a grin.

I forgot to shudder and just did my casual wave. But the fact was, I was deep in the mire. Whatever I did now, someone was going to be very upset.

* * *

Later in the day, one of my sewer rats came up with a lead. He’d been in and out of the wharf cafés, bumming smokes and a crust or two, when he’d tuned in on an intriguing conversation. Now this guy, a dropout called Shivers, is a real pro. He can blend in with the walls, or the furniture, or the garbage. You wouldn’t know he was there. He lives by the skin of his teeth and traffics in gossip. And he makes a point of knowing his market. So he knew that Nick Nightmare had an ear out for anything to do with the dockside “suicide”. Word had already got around.

In another bar, tucked away in a thick wooden booth, the air hung with smoke as thick as curtains, he spilled his news. He’d overheard two guys. One of them was a major link in an illegal immigrant chain, a man who could arrange to shift people from place to place with no questions asked. I knew the guy by reputation. Let’s call him BoBo.

According to Shivers, BoBo was talking to a weird guy—I interrupted him to show him the mug shot of Zeitsheim.

“Jeeze, Nick, that’s him, I tell ya! That’s the guy. White as a corpse.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“He was lookin’ for passage along the coast. Not by any normal channels. He kept turnin’ round as if Satan himself was blowin’ hot air down his neck, so I guess he was on the run.”

“How did he smell?”

Shivers nearly choked on his beer. “What the—? You know about that? Real bad, Nick. I mean, real bad. Fish gone off. I been in some places, but man, this guy was stinkin’ fit to make a guy retch.”

I merely nodded. Sailor Stefan it was, then.

“He spoke low and with a weird kind of voice, like he had a mother of a cold. But I heard him mention one of them old Massachusetts seaports. Innsmouth. He wanted to get to Innsmouth. BoBo took his time about answerin’. Sounded like Innsmouth was bad news to him. But he agreed. The fish guy gave him a wad of notes, must’ve been a fortune. BoBo told him it would take a few days to sort out. The guy would have to hole up until then.”

“You know where he is now?”

“Yeah.” He gave me the address of an old warehouse down by the docks. Good place to hide a needle. “Want me to take you?”

“Not yet. But keep an eye on him. I don’t want him leaving New York before I get a chance to meet him.”

My man was living up to his name, shivering like it was snowing out. Maybe it wasn’t just the cold and maybe the beer and the fug hadn’t done enough to warm him. I’d already given him some money, but I dragged my coat from the chair beside me. It had had its day. “Here, keep this. You need it more than I do.” If this panned out the way I hoped, I’d be picking up a dozen new coats before this affair was closed. Maybe even get myself a slick suit.

He struggled into the coat like it was something alien, but grinned a crack-toothed grin. You could have got two of him inside it. “Thanks, Nick,” he muttered. Then he was gone.

I was left to chew over what he’d told me. Innsmouth. Meant nothing to me. So it was library time, for a bit of research.

* * *

It took some digging out. I spend half my life glued to old newspapers: the good ladies at the library are getting used to me. I think they find me kinda romantic. Must be my old-fashioned charm. Whatever, they came up trumps on Innsmouth. And I had my connection.

Years ago, way back in the winter of 1927–28, it seems that the Government had investigated some pretty weird goings-on in the port, following complaints about demon worship and likewise subversive cults. The Feds had gone as far as to blow up or burn down whole parts of the town. There had been a lot of arrests. One report referred to a submarine diving down into the deep waters off the port to a reef known as Devil’s Reef, where something had been torpedoed. There had obviously been some sort of lunatic cult based around the area. And it seemed like overkill for bootlegging. Whatever they had really been up to would probably remain a mystery, but the Government had obviously taken it seriously enough to send in their heavies.

It had been a long time ago and I couldn’t find out anything more, but maybe there was still life left in the place and Stefan Zeitsheim wanted a piece of the action.

Evening was drawing on. Time to look up the errant sailor. In spite of my instructions, I didn’t plan on killing him. I reckoned he’d be worth more alive.

* * *

I knew where to find the warehouse Shivers had told me about. I parked a few blocks away, checked my Beretta and used the thickening shadows to mask my approach. Shivers wouldn’t be far away. He’d see me when others wouldn’t.

I was within a hundred yards of the building, when I heard a commotion up ahead. And I knew in my guts it was going to be bad news. I wasn’t wrong.

There was a mob. These streets were usually dead at this time of the day. Something had stirred them up, like a kicked hornets’ nest. They were crowding round the sidewalk, opposite the warehouse.

I moved in, looking down.

“Hey, Nick,” breathed a voice beside me. Another of the local dropouts.

“What gives?”

“It’s Shivers. Some punk shot him.”

I started muscling people aside. Sure enough, Shivers was sprawled across the edge of the sidewalk. I bent down to him. He was alive, but only just. His face was grey, his expression a mixture of agony and disbelief. I felt his chest. It was a mess.

Only one bullet, but it had done the job. I felt the fury rising up in me, but fought it down.

“A car,” he breathed through teeth clenched on pain. “The gun… silencer. Jeeze, I’m so cold, Nick. So cold.”

I pulled the coat tighter around him. The coat, goddam it. My coat. He was wearing the coat I’d given him. The bullet had been meant for me.

“Who did this, Shivers?”

He managed only half a word before he died. But it was enough. Suit. It had been some guy in a suit. It figured. The Feds had warned me off. They really had meant business.

“Cops are on the way,” someone above me said. I got up and stood aside. In a minute or two I’d slipped to the back of the crowd. No one paid me any attention, all eyes on the curled-up form of Shivers.

I made my way along the street and crossed it where I thought I’d be least noticed. I guessed the Feds would have gone, thinking they’d taken me out of the picture. It was the one advantage I had on them. I was going to find Zeitsheim before they did, so help me.

At the far end of the warehouse there was an alley running alongside it. The light was fading away, but I could just about see enough to ease my way down it. It suited me. I flattened against the wall and moved forward by inches. Shivers would have known exactly where Zeitsheim was holed up inside, but now I was going to have to flush him out. I had a feeling it was going to be damn tough. My quarry had already shown his credentials in the hide-and-seek stakes.

I was about halfway down the alley when I noticed the breeze. Nothing unusual about a breeze, especially in these city canyons. They come and go. But there was something about this breeze that made my skin crawl, like it was the breath of some huge beast, crouched back there in the darkness.

Something scratched along the alley. A ball of newspaper. The breeze stiffened and in a minute, other bits of lightweight garbage came tumbling along. Couple of paper cups. More paper. Discarded bags.

I heard something far overhead, a distant roar. Maybe there was a storm brewing up. Very sudden. But what the hell, it was October.

I had my Beretta out, catch off. My nerves were dancing. More scraping sounds behind me. I swung round, aiming the gun. A tin can rolled, followed by more paper, a crushed cardboard box. The breeze was a light wind now. I could feel its strength growing, cold on the face. It kept cuffing stuff down the alley like it was a wind tunnel.

At the end of the alley was a mesh fence, eight feet high, beyond it a pile of crates and other junk, heaped up so that the fence bulged at its base, fit to burst. There were broken tea chests and tumbled stacks of newspaper this side of the fence. The wind was driving more captive garbage towards them, a growing procession.

Moving on down the alley, I fetched up against some metal bins, beyond which was a door into the warehouse. It didn’t look like it had been opened in a long time. I reached for the rusting handle.

“You don’t want to go in there, Mr. Stone,” called a soft voice from across the alley. I recognized it. The Fed from Fat Duke’s.

I was instantly down on one knee, partially masked by the bins, gun trained at the shadows across the way. I could already imagine the slug smashing into me.

“Easy, Mr. Stone.” He was well hidden, but I could see half of him. And a gun. Either he or one of his companions had killed Shivers. “I told you we would take care of this.”

I shifted back a little, getting more of me behind the bins. I was getting angry again.

The wind abruptly rose a tone or two, gusting down the alley, rolling another wave of litter forward. It struck me for the first time that there was something freakish about the moving garbage. There seemed to be an unusual amount of it.

“There’s still time for you to leave,” came the voice.

Sure, and take a bullet like Shivers had. I wasn’t planning on making the first move. And I wasn’t going to make polite conversation.

“You’ve no idea what you’re dealing with, Mr. Stone.”

“Suppose you enlighten me.”

“I can’t do that. It’s a case of—”

He didn’t get to finish. Near to the shadows that hid him, a pile of the litter seemed to erupt upward, cartons and cans and paper all bursting every which way. The Fed swung his gun arm round as if he would start pumping shots into the mass of paper. It was all I needed.

My Beretta spat once. At that range I don’t miss, never mind the poor vision. I heard the bullet smack into flesh and bone across the alley. The Fed’s gun spun from his grasp and clanked as it hit the ground. He gasped, his forearm shattered, and crashed back into the recess behind him.

The pile of garbage revealed itself to be some poor wino whose drunken stupor had been interrupted by the arrival of the Fed and me. Arms flapping like a scarecrow, he gabbled and shrieked something unintelligible and sat down hard among the huge pile of garbage that was his home. A half-full bottle of something rolled from his fingers into the middle of the alley. A few thin beams of light played on the moving contents inside it.

I was across the alley quickly, picking up the Fed’s gun and pocketing it. I was risking that he only carried one. He’d gone quiet. I guessed he’d passed out.

The wino suddenly started to blubber, shouting something crazy about the garbage trying to eat him. I watched as the wino, no more than a filthy bundle of old rags, leapt to his feet, beat at himself as if he was on fire, then tried to run off back up the alley. Paper clung to him like a cloud of huge moths.

I looked down at the bottle. The wino must’ve been totally freaked out to leave it.

I pulled out my lighter and snapped it on. I needed to see the Fed. Cautiously I went toward him. In the flickering glow I could just make him out. He was conscious, his good arm tightly clutching his bad, very bad, one. That was no flesh wound. He’d need attention pretty soon.

But I was in no hurry. Obviously I didn’t want his death on my hands, but there would be time yet to call the medics.

I held my gun up, aimed at his forehead. “You want to tell me why you tried to kill me? Why a man is dead instead of me?”

He shook his head, eyes shutting and opening against the pain in his shattered arm.

“You’re going to have to talk to somebody. If not me, the cops. I’m a man who likes to trade. Tell me about Zeitsheim and you can go back to your buddies in one piece.”

The wind was now howling overhead. I hadn’t been taking any notice. But again I got the feeling something was really freakish about it. More litter came rolling and tumbling down the alley, like a paper wave breaking on a beach. I turned to the Fed, about to step up our little chat. But something even more weird was going on.

The garbage. It had heaped itself around the Fed and, just like it had with the wino, it started to heave and bulge upward. Not another goddam wino!

But it wasn’t. The Fed started to scream. No exaggeration. He screamed. The wind was shrieking around us now, like a banshee, but the Fed’s scream tore right through it. I shuffled back, my gun aimed at the garbage pile. I swear to God it was bunching itself together. Shaping itself into something. And the wind was doing it. Like a potter kneading clay. All that garbage that had come rolling down into the alley was now gathering itself.

And the Fed went on screaming. The garbage shape raised itself. It now looked about the size of a man, hunched over, neck-less, its rounded, incomplete head a massive paper blob on huge shoulders.

I fired twice at it. Trust me, those bullets went right into its guts. But it didn’t make any difference. I stepped back, but my heel came down carelessly on the wino’s discarded bottle. I was over on my back before I knew it, the air punched out of me by the landing, Beretta spinning away. I could just about see the garbage-thing bending over the Fed.

A few seconds later the screaming stopped. And the thing turned round to look for me. I say look for me, but it had no face, no eyes. Like a dried papier-mâché golem gone wrong, it shambled forward, spurred on by the wind, which seemed like it was howling with glee, encouraging its malformed offspring. The contorted arms that reached out for me were wet and dark with the Fed’s blood.

No time to think. Just do. Whatever. Instinct took over.

My left hand was inches from the bottle that had betrayed me. I grabbed it. The limbs of the thing above me were a couple of feet from my face. I was still holding my lighter in my right hand: I stuck it in my teeth. I rolled aside, snatched up some sheets of paper, made crude spills of them and rammed them down the neck of the bottle. Still on my back, I faced the oncoming shape again. I used the lighter to ignite my impromptu touch paper. Please God it was meths or something like it in that bottle.

I shoved the bottle up into where the mouth should have been. Something soft and pulpy gave, like I was punching a bowl of jelly. But the wine bottle stuck firm. I rolled over a few times, just in time to avert the sudden whoosh of fire as the spirits ignited. The mock arms that had been about to grab my face were suddenly beating at the head and chest of my assailant. With all that tinder at its disposal, the fire caught on fast. It crackled and snapped and the shape swung aside, blundering into the mound of debris by the fence, an instant bonfire. I watched as the bulging head dissolved into smoke and the upper torso streamed red fire.

I was on my feet fast, picking up my gun. I would just have a moment to look at the Fed. He was slumped down, but alive. His good arm groped for me. I yanked him to his feet and he almost swung round into the garbage and an early cremation. But I dragged him away. The smoke was coming in dense clouds. There was going to be one helluva conflagration in no time.

I put my arm round the groaning Fed, straining to get him across the alley. I could feel my eyebrows singeing in the ferocious heat. Nothing for it now but to get through the door into the warehouse. We made it across and I yanked at the handle so hard that it snapped off. But the door swung open. I pushed the Fed in, took one last look at the inferno behind me and got the door as near shut as I could.

He grunted, something clutched tightly in his good hand. It was a mobile phone. I prized it loose, but it was thankfully useless, squashed like an empty can, I guess by the paper monstrosity. But that suited me fine: I didn’t want the Fed calling up a swarm of his buddies. I flung the phone aside.

There were stone stairs going up. I flipped my lighter on. It would do. I got the Fed up the first flight, turned a corner and let him slump down.

I held the flame close to his face. There was blood on it. The guy was a real mess. But I couldn’t tell if mâché-man had drawn more blood or spread what was leaking from the gunshot wound.

“Can you hear me?”

His eyes opened, blinking tears, and he nodded.

“Pal, you have to talk to me,” I snapped. “What in hell is going on here?”

As if suddenly coming round to our position, he jerked upright. “Where is it? That thing—”

“Gone up in a blaze of glory,” I told him, waving the lighter.

“There may be more—”

“Not from the alley. It’ll take a fleet of fire wagons to clear it. So what was it? Tell me I’m not going nuts.”

“He sent it. Zeitsheim. He has very strange connections,” the Fed gasped, wincing as more agony lanced through his arm. “He’s protected. For the love of Mike, don’t try going after him, Stone. He’s in this warehouse. But you’ve seen what he can do.”

“So he’s some kind of magician?”

“He has equally dangerous enemies. You work for them. I doubt if you know who they really are.”

“While you obviously do. Explain. You ain’t going nowhere. We’re stuck here. Once that smoke gets in, we have to enter the warehouse. So talk to me. Tell me about what’s happening down at Innsmouth.”

It was a long shot, but it hit home. “You know about Innsmouth?”

“Enough.”

“Damn diseased place,” he coughed. “Zeitsheim is one of its progeny. There are other enclaves in Europe. He’s on his way back from there. We have to get to him before he gets back to Innsmouth. It’s too far for even one of his kind to swim.”

“So the FBI wants him alive?”

“Yeah. Your employers are his own kind. They don’t want us to get hold of him. Not outside Innsmouth. Down there, he’d be safe enough. They have ways of protecting the community you wouldn’t believe. On his own, here, he’s vulnerable. So rather than let him fall into our hands, they want him dead.”

“Incinerated,” I corrected.

“What?”

“Incinerated. If Zeitsheim burns like that paper zombie out there, there’ll be no more than a small pile of ash to interrogate. That was my job. What I was paid to do, anyhow. Which is why, I assume, you guys wanted to remove me. And why a friend of mine ended up bleeding to death on the sidewalk.”

The Fed grimaced, but I won’t say it was remorse. “You seemed determined not to take a hint.”

“So, what did you mean when you said that Zeitsheim sent that thing?”

“You won’t believe it—”

“After what I saw out there, at least try me.”

“Not all of his kind want him dead. Others want to help get him back to Innsmouth. Whatever transpired in Europe, they want to know about it. So they send him help when he calls for it. Did you notice the wind? How freakish it was?”

“Sure.” The wind that had sculpted the garbage man.

“Does the name Ithaqua mean anything to you? Or the Wendigo?”

I nodded at the latter. “Indian spirit.” I was combing my mental files for a reference. “Walker on the winds.” Ah, illumination, of a sort.

“That’s it, Mr. Stone,” the Fed grunted. “The winds. But it was around long before the Indians called it the Wendigo. Zeitsheim and his kind call it Ithaqua. They worship it and other very strange gods. Gods that have been around longer than the solar system.”

“They wouldn’t be gods otherwise,” I said flippantly.

“Doesn’t pay to laugh at them.”

“No. I wasn’t laughing when that thing came at me. So you’re telling me that Zeitsheim summoned the wind—the wind-walker? And it moulded the garbage thing?” But I’d seen it, goddam it. It had happened right in front of me. That was no illusion. For the moment I was going to have to go along with all this bullshit.

The Fed started coughing and I noticed the air getting thick. The damn smoke was seeping in fast. We had to get up into the warehouse. I dragged the Fed to his feet, pulled his gun out of my pocket and stuck it into his left hand.

“You may need this. But forget about taking me out of the equation, pal. Next time I shoot at you, it’ll be here.” And I tapped him lightly between the eyes. He knew I wasn’t kidding.

We made our way up the stairs. The stairwell was filling with smoke now. I guessed the fire outside had really got going. Maybe the whole block would end up in flames. Well, it’s what my employers wanted, assuming Zeitsheim ended up on the pyre. We went through some doors onto a floor of the warehouse.

My night vision isn’t bad, but I wouldn’t have seen anything if it hadn’t been for the fire below in the alley. Waving red light danced on the walls opposite, so that we could see around us. The place was lit in dull, wavering orange, the deserted spaces like an alien landscape. Which was appropriate, I guess.

“How do you know Zeitsheim is still here?” I said softly.

The Fed leaned on one of the iron columns. “We’ve got all the exits covered. Cellars are shut down. He can’t walk through walls.”

“Sewers? Seems to me if a guy stinks like he does, a little excrement isn’t going to make a lot of difference.”

“He couldn’t get into the system. Sealed a while ago for safety.”

I nodded. “He knows you’re after him and he knows his mock suicide didn’t work. How did he do that, by the way? The word is, he was dead. Down at the morgue, they do know a dead body when they see one.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Oh, but I do. One more impossibility isn’t going to spoil my day.”

“All right. Can’t do any harm to tell you. No one would believe you. He’s not human. Not completely. None of them are in that damn seaport. They spend most of their lives in the sea, god damn it. The sea!”

A momentary reflection came to me, something I’d read in the papers I’d been researching. “Isn’t there some kind of reef?”

“Devil’s Reef? Yeah, you’ve been doing your homework, Mr. Stone.”

“Your mob torpedoed it some seventy-five-odd years ago. I guess they didn’t finish the job.”

He shook his head. “Guess you’re right. They’ve spawned anew. And we can’t just go in, guns blazing. We’ve sent investigative bodies in to Innsmouth, but they cover themselves. We have nothing to go on. No shred of evidence that would hold up in court. But if we could take Zeitsheim…” He suddenly gripped my arm, his face knotted in pain. “Stone, I’m going to need medical attention soon. Lost a lot of blood. Listen to me. You have to keep away from Zeitsheim. You have to let our men take him. Never mind what you’re being paid. We’ll treble it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just stay cool. But I think I know where our man will be.”

He looked as if he was going to slip into unconsciousness, but he managed to nod. I let him down, resting his back against the column. His lap was full of blood. He’d be lucky if his arm survived this. But he was luckier than Shivers had been.

I left him there and went back to the stairs. But they were thick with smoke. Instead I crossed the huge, empty floor and found another stair. If Zeitsheim could talk to the wind, the best place to do it would be up on the roof. I went up after him, though I had no concrete plan.

The roof was several flights up, beyond a half-dozen empty floors that offered no hint as to where Zeitsheim was. I went up the last steps very slowly. There was still enough of a glow from below to show me the terrain here. Beyond it, opposite where the fire was, the dark waters of the Hudson stretched on either side.

Zeitsheim could have been hiding behind any number of vents up here. The fire was roaring away noisily below and I could hear sirens. This whole block was in danger of going up if they didn’t control it soon. But the wind had died down, back to what it had been during the day.

I ducked and weaved between vents, using the shadows to cover me. Then I found what I was looking for, or rather, my nose did. It was that stench again, the one I’d first encountered at the morgue. And sure enough, the green slime. I picked up a length of wood that had come away from the vent housing and dipped the end of it in the slime, holding it up before me. It was no illusion. Whatever it was, it was real. Like the viscous oozing of a snail, only a human-size one.

The slime trail led to another opening in the roof and more stairs. Carefully I peered down and, as I did so, I heard shots—several of them—a few floors below. It could only be the Fed. Dammit, Zeitsheim had conned me. He’s gone back down after him. Divide and conquer.

I hurtled down the stairs, practically breaking my neck in the process. When I reached the floor where I’d left the Fed, the whole area was lit up by the bonfire below. I could see the slumped form of the Fed. But Zeitsheim had made himself scarce again. My guess now was that he’d be making for the water. The Fed said these people had an affinity for the sea, so maybe that was where Zeitsheim would have to end up.

I reached the Fed. He gazed up at me like a beached fish, his gun hanging from limp fingers.

“It was here. I emptied the gun into it,” he croaked.

“Looks like you missed.”

He shook his head weakly. “Bullets don’t hurt them.”

“Crap. You missed him.”

He shook his head more emphatically. “No, Stone. That’s the point. They’ve been working on something. Their breeding program. Zeitsheim is back from Europe. The enclave over there must be more advanced. They’ve had years to develop, hidden away deep in the Eastern bloc. They morph. From their true form. At best I may have wounded it, but it’s still alive.”

“Heading for the river?”

“It’ll dive in. It’ll have to swim out to sea. Try for another ship to get it up to Innsmouth. It’s desperate to get there, to pass on what it can do. Leave me here. Find it. Stop it. If it gets to Innsmouth and starts breeding—”

“Tell me again why my employers want it incinerated? Don’t they want its secrets themselves?”

“They are terrified of the possibility of us taking Zeitsheim alive. Nothing is worth that risk to them. And, God help us, Stone, there will be others coming over. They have been patient. Time means nothing to these creatures. Zeitsheim is just the forerunner.” He sank back, exhausted.

I left him again, making for the far side of the warehouse and steps that would lead down to the wharf-side. I was being cautious about my descent but even so, I nearly slipped and went headlong. More slime, so I was on the right track. I could just make out the ground floor below me. There was a door, which must lead out on to the wharf.

I kept very still. If Zeitsheim was there, he would have heard me. I had one last card I could play. I held the Beretta tightly, even though the Fed had told me its bullets would be useless.

“Zeitsheim!” I hissed. I repeated the name a couple of times. “I’m from BoBo. He told me you’d be here. You hear me? I’m from BoBo.”

I inched my way down the slippery stair. The light below was very poor, but something shifted in the shadows. I called him again. Then at last I saw him, though he was no more than a blur. He was on the next landing down, halfway between me and the floor!

“Zeitsheim. That you? I’m from BoBo. You can’t stay here. We gotta find you another bolt-hole until the ship for Innsmouth is ready.”

He eased out from cover. From here, he looked human enough, though I couldn’t see his face properly. I kept my gun out of sight.

“The Feds are lookin’ for you,” I told him, easing down another step. “Can’t stay here, pal. BoBo has a better place.”

He didn’t look hostile, so maybe he was buying it. But I wasn’t about to find out. The outside door opened, letting in a pale shaft of streetlight. Zeitsheim swung round and over his massive shoulder I saw a figure slide into the building only to take immediate cover in the pitch darkness behind the door.

“Don’t move up there!” barked a voice. “NYPD! I have a gun trained on you. One move and I will shoot. You hear me. I will shoot. Now, come down the stairs very slowly with your hands on your head.”

The cop edged forward and I could just make him out. He had his weapon held in both hands, trained like he said on Zeitsheim.

Impasse. What the hell was I supposed to do now?

But Zeitsheim made up my mind for me. He swung round and hauled himself up the stairs, his shape blurring for a moment as he did so. Like I said, the light was very poor, the whole place one mass of shadows. But Zeitsheim was changing. His trunk thickened, his neck disappearing. In that darkness, he was just like a single mass rising up the stairs. And he meant to burst past me. Or over me.

Down below, the cop opened fire. I was too mesmerized to turn and make a bolt for it. I took out my own gun and let the Zeitsheim-thing have it. I didn’t miss and I guess the cop’s bullets found their mark, too. At any rate, the combined force of the bullets achieved something, because the shape crashed into the steel rail at one side of the stair, snapped it clean off like it was made of balsa wood and then went tumbling out into space.

It landed with a sickening smack on the cement floor, making a sound like a huge sack of eggs bursting. I was grateful for the darkness, because the thing exploded. It’s the only word for it.

And the shafts of light from the open door picked out the details in appalling, gory splendor. Like a bathful of slime. One very big bathful.

The cop staggered back against the door, pretty shaken up, his gun hanging at his side. He hardly noticed me as I began a slow climb down.

But the fun was only just beginning. As I looked down at the widespread remains of Zeitsheim, I realized that they were moving. Rippling, to be precise. The extremities of that slick pool were beginning to flow towards the door. And gradually the whole mass started to shiver and edge forward, like fluid running off toward a drain.

The sea! That was it. This damn thing was flowing back to the water beyond the wharf outside the door, no more than a few yards away.

The cop was just gaping, rigid as stone.

“Shut the door!” I yelled. “For Chrissake, shut the door!”

It snapped him awake, but panic swept over him and he blasted away with his last couple of rounds. The bullets whanged off the floor and walls, powerless against the moving slime. But one of them clanged into a pile of oil drums that had been stacked beyond the shadows. Faintly I could hear the glug, glug of oil that had been released.

I flicked on my lighter and held it up. Sure enough, oil was leaking out over the floor, running thickly to the edge of the pool of moving slime.

I had my instructions.

I tossed the lighter floor-ward. It bounced and came to a halt in the widening oil slick. For a moment I thought nothing would happen. But the oil caught. And I had my second blaze of the night.

Without another glance, I raced down the last of the stairs. The oil had really caught now and fingers of flame were reaching out across the floor. The cop didn’t know which way to look, like a man in a dream.

Almost beside us, the slime suddenly rose up, seemingly in an attempt to reshape itself into a human form, the fire engulfing its base as though the slime were as combustible as the oil. A wild, wide mouth formed somewhere where the head was supposed to be and a dreadful hissing, an agonized shriek, emerged.

“What the—?” gasped the cop.

“Don’t ask,” I told him, gripping him by the elbow and marshalling him to the door. Behind us, Zeitsheim was swaying to and fro, his shape completely distorted now, like someone trying to break its way out of a thick cellophane shroud. But the flames just roared into it. It would be over in seconds.

I pushed the cop out on to the wharf, which was easy enough given his stupefaction, and dragged the door shut behind me. I turned round—to find myself looking into the mouths of three more guns.

“FBI,” said one of the gunmen, holding up a badge briefly.

I’d already put my empty Beretta away out of sight. “You better go quickly if you want to pull your buddy out,” I told them, jerking my thumb up at the warehouse. “He’s gonna need medical help.”

The first of them swore, speaking urgently into his mobile phone.

“What about Zeitsheim?” another of them growled, almost in my ear.

I looked down. A smear of something dark had oozed out from under the door. I was about to comment, when a small tongue of fire licked out and covered it possessively. There was a brief crackle, like fat on a fire, then it was over.

“He’s all yours,” I told them.

They were far too interested in their quarry to pay the cop and me any more attention. So we simply walked away.

The Feds had parked their car along the wharf. Just behind it, another cop was leaning against the bonnet of a patrol car. “What’s all the fuss, sarge?” he said to the cop beside me. “I heard shooting, but the Feds told me to keep my nose out of it.” It didn’t look like it had bothered him.

The cop with me just shook his head, like a man in a dream.

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just leave you boys to it,” I drawled, making a move to do just that.

But the cop beside me finally came to. “Hold it, pal. You’re not going anywhere until we’ve cleared this mess up. We have arson—two fires, dammit—we have Feds crawlin’ about the place—we have that… thing in there. There’s a whole lot of questions that need answering, down at the precinct.”

I shrugged in resignation. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

The cop looked out again at the river, shaking his head. “I know what I saw, Ed. It’s just like Stone says on the tape. He didn’t make that up. Not the last bit anyway. Damn, I saw it!”

“We can’t hold him forever. We have to charge him, or let him go.”

“What about the Feds?”

“If they found any trace of this illegal immigrant, they’re saying nothing. And they’re not filing any charges against Stone for shooting up their pal. And by the time that fire’s finally done with, there’ll be nothing left of that warehouse worth sifting through.”

“So all we have is that tape,” said the cop, eyeing the audio dubiously, “and my statement. Joe didn’t see anything. First sound of shooting and he’d have ducked under the dashboard. The Feds’ll deny all knowledge of involvement. They’ll want this covered up, whatever the hell was goin’ on. And I’ll tell you what else. I for one don’t want to go snoopin’ round that Innsmouth place. Back of hell and beyond.”

“You got that right. And I’ll tell you another thing, Hal. This is one case that ain’t gonna win you promotion.”

Hal nodded slowly. “So what the hell did I see?”

“Beats me. But maybe setting it alight was the best thing for it.”

Hal took the tape, considered it for a moment, then flung it far out into the river. “Let Stone go. No charges.”

“A wise decision, Hal.”

“What was it that dick called himself?”

“Stone?”

“Nightmare. Nick Nightmare.”

“That about says it all.”

Hal nodded again, watching the river. Suddenly he felt very tired.