Edward Lee - Incubi

Yes. This…is…perfect , she realized.

The rush of joy flooded her, exhilaration like soaring heavenward. Perfect denoted the unachievable, yet that’s what she felt she achieved. The background was perfect.

And now it was time to unleash the theme. It was time to paint herself in hand with the burning man.

As she sat back down to work, she felt as though she were being watched from above, or looked upon by gods.

Devils , Jack thought. It was not what the old man had said as much as how he’d said it. It just…bothered him, like a jag of déjà vu. Why the hell should I care, anyway ? he reminded himself. He was off the case.

“Shooter, Jack?”

“I’d love one,” Jack admitted, “but I’m through with booze, for good. How many times you heard guys say that?”

“Hundreds,” Craig said. Jack didn’t know if he was joking or serious. The Undercroft was empty in its post-happy-hour lull. Craig stacked glasses in the rack, whistling something by Elvis Costello. At this moment, just the two of them there, the bar felt haunted. Devils, Jack thought again.

“I got suspended today,” he finally said.

“Suspended?” Craig questioned. “Why?”

“Drinking. Fucking up the case.” He shrugged.

“Well, sometimes fucking up is the best thing we can do. When we see how stupid we can get, we keep ourselves in check.”

“Good point. Too bad I still want a drink.”

“Here you go.” Craig set down a shooter. “A virgin Mary. That’s tomato juice and vodka, without the vodka.”

Jack shot it back. “Thanks, I needed that.”

He thumbed through a local magazine called The Critique , one of several TSD had found in Susan Lynn’s bedroom. It contained a poem called “Love-Epitaph,” which seemed grimly fitting. It was the last poem Susan Lynn would ever have published.

“But I’ll tell you, Jack,” Craig continued. “A bar isn’t the place to be if you’re trying to quit.”

“The test of will is man’s ultimate power. It’s true, I read it on the bathroom wall the other night.”

“Try this.” Craig set down a brown bottle. “Drink like a killer, think like a killer.”

It was Patrizier, the nonalcoholic stuff that Susan Lynn’s murderers had ordered. “Not bad,” he said after a sip. “Know what it tastes like?”

“Beer without alcohol.”

“Right.”

Craig went down into the pit to load the reach-ins. Jack turned to the page of the magazine that carried Susan Lynn’s poem.

This bar is my grave and my power. Amid it even my own demons cower to these wan nights which slaver and devour like the strange faceless men who come and pluck me like a flower.

You hit a homer with this one, honey , Jack thought. Had she been writing about the Undercroft? Power. Demons. Faceless . He closed the magazine and slid it away.

“Would you cheer up!” Craig yelled, coming back up. “Every day above ground is a good day. It’s true, I read it on the bathroom wall.”

Jack knew he was putting off the question. Through his pants pocket he could feel the print of his HPCs. “I also read your phone number on the bathroom wall, didn’t I?”

“You must’ve put it there after the last time you fucked me.”

“I’m a cop, I fuck people every day. It’s my job,” Jack said. But it probably won’t be for long , he reminded himself. “Actually I need your advice. I need some more of that barkeeper’s wisdom.”

Craig flipped a Marlboro Light into the air and caught the filter end in his mouth. “Shoot.”

“When does an ethical person know when it’s time to do something unethical?”

“Since when are you ethical?”

“Funny.”

“Are we talking legal or illegal?”

“Let’s just say that my intentions do not fully conform to the parameters of the law.”

“I don’t know if I should hear this, Jack. Isn’t there a little something in the books about accessory foreknowledge? Failure to report the knowledge of a second party’s criminal intent?”

“Are you a bartender or a fucking lawyer? Call it creepery with intent to mope.”

“Is that anything like balling with intent to hold hands?”

Jack laughed. “Now you’ve got it.”

“Here’s the best advice I can give you.” Craig struck a book match one-handed and lit up. “Ready? This is deep.”

“I’m ready.”

“A man’s got to do what he’s got to do.”

The statement’s bald unoriginality felt like a mental impact. To hell with ethics, Jack decided. What have I got to lose except a career that’s probably lost already? “Thanks for the advice,” he said. “See ya around.”

He hopped off his stool and went out of the bar.

What would he get if he got caught? A fine? Probation before judgement? They wouldn’t put a cop in jail, for God’s sake. Not for a first offense illegal entry.

Nevertheless, illegal entry it was, just as shit by any other name was still shit. Jack had never been very good at this. Once he’d picked an apartment utility room to get at the phone box. There’d been this cowboy dealing crack through the Jamakes, so Jack had bugged his ringer and listened in long enough to tag the next pickup time and place. Later the deal went down and the county narcs had been waiting, presto. Breaking the law to bust lawbreakers was only fair. Unethical? Definitely. But so were crack dealers and killers.

He’d given Veronica’s keys back the night they broke up. He remembered the dying lilacs on the bar, and how cold she’d looked as she sat there on the stool waiting for him, how shivery. He remembered how gray her voice had sounded, and how desperate he’d felt to plead with her, to beg her to give the relationship one more chance as he watched it all fall to pieces in front of his face.

Jack remembered everything.

She had a little condo off Forest Drive, quiet neighbors, no skell buzzing around. Look normal , he reminded himself. He approached the door as though it were his own. The dead bolt was tricky; he had to maintain a perfectly even pressure on the tension wrench as he stroked the 18mm keyway with his double-hook. It took several restrokes before the pins gave. The lock opened as swiftly as if he’d had the key.

He thought of a vault opening as he opened the door. Veronica’s only windows faced the woods in back; turning on the lights wouldn’t give him away. The place seemed smaller, less airy, and the silence seemed amplified. At once Jack felt like exactly what he was: a trespasser, a burglar. He could see himself being cuffed and hauled away by city cops.

First he checked the pad she kept beside the kitchen phone. Eggs , it read. Milk, tomato paste , and Call Stewie about Abrams contract. “Shit,” he mumbled. He went into the bedroom.

More memories here. More ghosts. Just leave , he told himself, but he couldn’t now. Here was the bed in which he slept with her, and had made love to her. Here was the shower they’d bathed in together, and the mirror in which he’d dressed himself so quietly in the mornings so he wouldn’t wake her. He would see her sleeping in the reflection as he knotted his tie. How many times had he stood in this selfsame spot? How many times had he told her he loved her in this selfsame room?

His trespassing rubbed his face in loss. It was part of his past that he stood in now, another dead providence. What am I doing? he logically wondered for the first time. This was crazy, pointless, masochistic. He’d come here simply for a clue to Veronica’s whereabouts, and now he felt inundated in the blood of a love relationship that was dead. It’s dead , he thought, staring. Dead, dead, dead. She doesn’t love you anymore. Her love for you is dead.