The City That Never Sleeps Read online

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  New York, New York

  December, 1986

  Spector knew he was being followed. The tail was a young man who clearly wasn’t up to the job. His dumbass shadow was well groomed, had a nice blue suit, and was keeping in back of him by about thirty feet. Spector paused at the corner of Second Avenue and Tenth, the cold wind whipping his lank hair. New York City at Christmastime wasn’t as bad as it was in January, but it was still no picnic. A trio of Salvation Army folks sang “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” but not very well. There was an A&P a couple of blocks away. If the person following him came inside looking for Spector that would be his mistake; if not, Spector would do some grocery shopping.

  He’d been back in the city for less than two weeks. After Wild Card Day he’d decided Manhattan was just too dangerous for him. Lots of people wound up dead that day, including big-name aces like the Howler and the Astronomer and some lesser known ones like the dino kid. Spector had done the Astronomer himself, feeding his former boss’s his death memory hard and fast, and leaving the old bastard’s corpse fused inside a brick wall. That helped him sleep a little easier, but there were still plenty of people who wanted him dead again, not to mention the politicians and cops who were howling for the blood of the aces who’d brought terror to their fair city.

  So Demise had gone back to Teaneck and laid low for a couple of months. Still, he needed a roof over his head and food on the table, so he’d done a few random jobs for the local mob. He’d told them he was a chemist with a drug that could simulate a heart attack. His employers weren’t particularly curious about his methods and paid on time. The rubouts weren’t enough for Spector to live well, but he kept them on a scale small enough that he didn’t draw much attention, either.

  He ducked into the A&P and moved quickly to his left and down an aisle. The place wasn’t crowded, which suited Spector to a T. He heard the door squeak open and knew the man had been dumb enough to follow him inside. Spector headed for a corner of the produce section where the lighting was poor. He heard slow, uncertain footfalls the next aisle over. Spector couldn’t figure why anyone who knew who he was would follow him, much less confront him. Unless the guy was an ace; that could be big trouble.

  The man turned the corner.

  “Can I get a light?” Spector asked.

  “Uh.” The young man seemed surprised to see Spector pop up in front of him.

  “Following me is a bad idea.” Spector pushed his horrific pain inside the man’s mind. The agony of Spector’s own death from the black queen took hold. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head and there was a fresh corpse on the floor seconds later.

  Spector glanced around and saw no one. He heard the squeak of a grocery cart closing in and bolted around the corner. No one noticed as he exited the store. Still, someone knew he was back in town. Maybe they wanted to hire him; maybe they wanted to kill him. He’d know for sure soon enough.

  * * *

  Spector bought a mask at the first vendor he saw. In Jokertown, masks were easy to come by. He was tempted by a really ugly Santa mask, but instead picked out an angry-looking bird head. Spector didn’t particularly like birds, but the eye holes were large and gave him a decent field of vision. He’d downed a pint of Jack Daniel’s Black Label the night before to help with the pain. It took the edge off, but that was it. Pills would be better if he could find some.

  He felt reasonably safe looking for drugs in Jokertown, where they were as common as misery and deformity. Spector ducked into an alleyway and shoved a couple of wadded-up tissues under his mask, giving the appearance of a misshapen face underneath. He heard a wet, unhappy noise behind him and moved back out onto the sidewalk before it could close in.

  The sky was clear and blue, and there was only a hint of a chilling breeze. He decided to stretch his legs and take a long walk through Jokertown. Most people, other than jokers, would be scared to take a stroll here; too much ugliness and potential danger. Spector wasn’t nervous though. He might well be the scariest person in Jokertown at the moment. He didn’t like it here, but Jokertown was comfortable in a smelly-old-shirt kind of way.

  He hit Jube the Walrus’s newsstand first, not for any particular reason. The Walrus was one of Jokertown’s oldest citizens. There was a large joker under a pair of stitched-together coats picking up a newspaper with a pink, furry hand. It tossed a coin at Jube and wobbled away as Spector approached.

  “Want a Cry, friend?” the Walrus asked.

  Spector picked it up and scanned the headlines. “What? No ‘Hideous Joker Baby Eats Own Head’ story? Must be a slow day.”

  The Walrus shrugged, his skin rumpling around his neck. “That’s yesterday’s news. Got to keep current. Everything you want to know is inside.”

  Spector set a quarter down and picked up a paper. “If you say so.” He tucked the Cry under his arm and turned away.

  “Do I know you? Something about you seems kind of familiar.”

  “Probably not,” Spector replied. “Better if you keep it that way.”

  He headed for the Crystal Palace, in spite of the fact that it was a long walk. The Victorian décor wasn’t to his taste, but a man could get a drink or two there and generally be left alone. He’d keep his distance from Sascha the bartender, though. Sascha was an eyeless freak who could get into your head and pick up some thoughts.

  A joker crossed the street in front of him. It looked like someone had thrown a greenish-purple tarp over a group of giant scrubbing bubbles. The thing had more legs on either side than Spector could count in the short time he saw it, like a centipede. Other than the noise of legs on the sidewalk it didn’t make a sound. Yep, he definitely needed a drink or three.

  The Palace was done up for Christmas. There were matching human-sized nutcrackers flanking each side of the door into the main room, with holly strung across the arch. Sascha was behind the bar when he entered, wearing an off-kilter Santa hat. Spector avoided him and headed to the saloon area. The air inside was warm and he inhaled deeply. After breathing the December chill for so long his lungs needed it. He found an unoccupied booth and slid onto the comfortably padded bench. There was a birdcage filled with ornaments in the center of the table.

  A waitress walked to his booth, but before she could open her mouth, he said, “Get me a double shot of Jack Black and don’t be a stranger.” He handed her a ten and paged through the Cry.

  “Yes, sir. And a happy Yule to you.”

  The headlines were the fun part of reading the Walrus’s rag. “Joker Trapped in Freezer Eats Three of Her Own Legs to Survive,” “Mike Tyson, Ace or Joker?” and Spector’s personal front-page favorite, “Bat Boy and Family Found Living Under Jokertown Precinct Building.”

  The wait
ress arrived with his order, setting the glass carefully in front of him. She attempted to hand him his change, but Spector waved her off.

  “Keep it. Like I said, don’t be a stranger.” He liked the way she smelled. At least, he thought it was her.

  He heard heavy footfalls approaching his booth. A broad shadow fell across the tabletop. Spector sighed. Would they just once leave him the fuck alone?

  “She wants to see you.”

  Spector looked up from his newspaper. It was Elmo the dwarf, the bouncer at the Crystal Palace. Elmo was crazy strong and very good at his job. He was wearing mirrored sunglasses.

  “Let me finish my drink,” Spector said.

  “Bring it with you. She won’t mind.” Elmo turned toward the bar. “Sascha, you too.”

  “Not him.” Spector didn’t want that mind-reading asshole around. He could lose the ability to take the initiative if things were going to get ugly. “Or I’m out of here.”

  Elmo shrugged. “You’re fine where you are, Sascha.”

  Spector, drink in hand, followed the dwarf into a large back room. The interior looked the way Spector would imagine Buckingham Palace looked if he’d ever bothered to imagine Buckingham Palace. Chrysalis sat behind a large desk, hands folded. Her transparent skin revealed muscle, sinew, and an occasional glimpse of bone. She had on mirrorshades, too. He wondered how she slept with transparent eyelids. Some people said she looked creepy or ugly. Spector had seen plenty of both and to him Chrysalis was neither. She was a powerful person in Jokertown, though, and could make his life harder if she wanted to.

  “Mr. Spector, or should I call you Demise?” Her accent was phony British. It sounded funny coming out of her mouth. She motioned him to sit in the chair opposite her desk.

  He took a seat. “Call me what you want. I’m more interested in why you want to see me in the first place.” Spector got the sense she was into formal niceties, which was not how he operated. He killed his drink with a final swallow of Jack Black.

  “Since seeing you can be the last thing some people do—” She paused. “—you can assume I want something else.”

  Spector nodded. “Who do you want killed?”

  “No, you don’t understand. I was informed by an anonymous person that you were back in Manhattan. This person would like to meet with you to discuss a business matter. They asked that if I encountered you to put you in contact.”

  So someone Chrysalis knew wanted someone killed. There was no other reason to contact him. It was all he did. “Fine, you can give me their phone number and I’ll call them or I won’t.” He set his empty glass on her desk. “What’s the payoff for you?”

  She smiled, or appeared to. It was hard to tell without being able to see her skin. “I deal in information and favors. One often leads to the other. By arranging a meeting with you, I now have a degree of credit with this person. If the meeting is beneficial to you, perhaps you’ll be inclined to help me at some point in the future.”

  “There’s never a shortage of people other people want dead.” Spector felt on familiar footing now that he saw the entire game.

  “That’s not exactly what I was inferring. As I said, I deal in information. A person who travels in the circles you frequent might come across some interesting tidbits now and then.” She handed him a card with a local phone number written on it. “Elmo will show you out.”

  Spector took the card and stood. “Maybe so. You could give me a bottle of Jack Black to keep me sweet if I do happen across something.”

  “Sascha will take care of you when you leave.”

  * * *

  Spector had made his way halfway through the bottle and still couldn’t make up his mind. After surviving Wild Card Day, he’d decided to work for himself. That wasn’t a practical idea, though. He had exactly one marketable skill—killing people—and he couldn’t exactly set up a storefront to do that kind of business. No matter what way he turned it around in his mind, he’d be taking risks for other people. Doing their dirty work. Maybe if he strung together a bunch of high-profile jobs he’d have enough money to retire. He’d been an accountant, although not a very good one, before the Wild Card took him, and knew a little about investing money and making it grow. With a nice nest egg he could kick back, relax, and stick to killing the people who pissed him off. There was no shortage of those.

  Spector knew the law wouldn’t be a problem. He didn’t leave any evidence behind when he took someone out, so there was nothing the cops or the DA could make stick in courtroom. He also knew this was a world of aces, with people like Fortunato and the Astronomer, people who also didn’t care about the legal system and could kill him easily enough. Low risk–low reward versus high risk–maybe dead. What the hell, he was an ace. He could handle pretty much anything.

  He grabbed the phone and set it on his lap, then punched in the number on the card. It rang for a while before someone picked up.

  “Hello. How may I help you?”

  Spector recognized the voice. It was the smooth-voiced, nameless asshole who’d sent him after some notebooks and mob bosses on Wild Card Day. He thought about hanging up, didn’t. “I think I’m the one who’s going to be doing the helping, if my information is correct.”

  “Ah, I’m so glad you decided to contact me. We have unfinished business.”

  While he was in Jersey, Spector had asked around with his mob employers and they had given him a possible name, St. John Latham. Latham was a big-time attorney with suspected underworld connections. “No shit, Sherlock. You owe me.”

  The man cleared his throat. “I can hardly be blamed for not making payment in light of your disappearance.”

  “So you tracked me down to pay me?” Spector didn’t think for a minute this was the case, but he didn’t see a need to be an open book when dealing with someone this slippery.

  “No. Not entirely. I have a something of significant mutual benefit to propose.”

  “Maybe I should come to your office. I’m guessing you have one, right?”

  “That won’t work. Let me think.” There was a long pause. “It’s problematic for me to be seen with a person of your reputation. Perhaps I could send an intermediary.”

  “Bad idea,” Spector said. “Remember what happened to the last punk you put on my trail. He was a total amateur.” The last part was a guess, but obviously an accurate one.

  “He was a temp, whose only job was to determine if you were, in fact, you. In that regard he was a success.”

  “Whatever.” Spector didn’t mind dealing with cold-blooded assholes. He wouldn’t mind putting them down if it came to it. “No more go-betweens. I’m dealing with you, or I’m not dealing at all.”

  “Well, that would require a location with sufficient privacy.”

  “Jokertown. You can wear a mask. I’ve already got one.”

  Another pause. “That’s not exactly ideal for me.”

  “How about the Crystal Palace? They know you there.”

  “No. The bartender is a problem. Our discussions wouldn’t remain private for long.”

  So he knew about Sascha. That made sense. “Okay, the Dime Museum then.” Spector expected a pause. Got one. “It’s only two bucks, and you can wear a mask.” Jokers were welcome at the Dime Museum. Some rich-guy joker supposedly owned it.

  “I suppose that could be workable.”

  “Okay, a couple of things. First, meet me at four in the afternoon. I’ll be wearing a bird-head mask, hanging out by the Turtle’s shell. Second, bring my fucking money.”

  “Four o’clock.”

  Spector hung up the phone and took another swig of bourbon. That had gone about as well as he could have hoped.

  * * *

  The doorway to the Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum had fake holly draped above the doorway, strung from plastic ace and joker heads. He paid the two-dollar admission fee and entered. There were only a few people wandering around when Spector arrived. He’d made a point of being ten minutes late, just to em
phasize that he could take this job or leave it. A couple of kids, a boy and a girl, were slowly making their way around the Turtle’s Volkswagen shell, pointing and smiling.

  “He’s dead, you know,” Spector said.

  “Nuh-uh,” said the taller of the two kids, a scrawny, sandy-haired boy. “People have seen him.”

  “You’re a liar, Mr. Bird-Face,” the girl chimed in.

  “Swamp gas, kid. That’s what people saw.” He leaned in close, his mask almost touching the boy’s face.

  The girl took the boy’s hand and hauled him in the direction of the Four Aces display. She gave Spector a hard look he figured she usually saved for teachers or her parents.

  “If looks could kill, sir,” came a cultured voice from behind him, “you’d be on your way to the grave.”

  Spector recognized Latham’s voice and turned around. The man was wearing a perfectly tailored dark gray suit and a gold human-faced mask. He inclined his head slightly to one side, giving Spector a slow once-over.

  “Maybe the Turtle really is dead,” Spector said. “People get that way all the time.”

  “Indeed.” He passed Spector a heavy envelope. “For your previous efforts on our behalf. I assume you prefer cash.”

  “That works best.”

  “Before you decide whether or not to continue your relationship with us, I’d like to explain some of the potential benefits we can offer.”

  “I’m all about the benefits,” Spector said. He wondered if those included a regular supply of drugs.

  “Yes. Since you’re officially dead, you’re required to work on a cash basis. We could provide you with a new identity; including ID, bank accounts, a passport if you chose to leave the country, investment opportunities, and so on. You would be free to move around and your funds would be much more secure than stuffed under your mattress.”

  Spector hadn’t really thought about all this long-term. He was mostly focused on staying alive and taking care of the pain. Still, there was something to be said for it. “Lots of people do fake IDs. And I know something about accounting myself.”