Desperate Souls Read online

  As Malachai strode into the lobby, the doorman looked up from a newspaper spread across his workstation.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  Malachai held out his cell phone for the doorman to see. “You know her?”

  The doorman looked at the image on the phone’s screen, then back at Malachai. “Sir, I’m not really allowed to discuss tenants in the building with strangers …”

  “Is this Dawn Du Pre! Yes or no.”

  The doorman’s expression became constipated. “Yes, it is. But that’s all I can say.”

  Oh, shit, Marcus thought.

  Malachai glanced at the elevator doors. “When was the last time she was here?”

  “I swear I don’t know. I just work the day shift when people are at work. She’s the subject of a missing person’s case. There are police upstairs in her apartment right now.”

  Malachai and Marcus looked at each other, then exited the building.

  “I’m going to kill that bitch,” Malachai said as they climbed into their ride.

  The elevator door opened, and Maria and Bernie got off.

  “I got drafted by Homicide and a rogue missing person’s case all in one day,” Bernie said. “I don’t know if my heart can handle the excitement.”

  As they passed the doorman, he raised one hand, like a kid in grade school. “Um, Officers? I mean, Detectives?”

  Maria and Bernie exchanged looks.

  “Yes?” Maria said.

  The doorman looked around the lobby, as if trying to maintain discretion. “Two men were just here. African American gentlemen. They were looking for Miss Du Pre.”

  Maria felt her blood pumping faster.

  “They seemed rather agitated. They showed me a photo of her taken on a cell phone and seemed surprised when I told them that yes, the photo was a picture of Miss Du Pre.”

  With her voice tightening, Maria said, “How long ago?”

  The doorman seemed surprised by the question. “Sixty seconds?”

  Maria bolted for the doors, flung one open, and ran to the curb. Looking left and right, she saw no sign of anyone suspicious on the sidewalk.

  No, no, no, no, no!

  Bernie appeared in the doorway, and as she ran back to the building, he held the door open for her. She marched to the doorman’s station. “Did they give you their names?”

  “No, I got the impression they didn’t want me to know who they were.”

  “Describe them.”

  Bernie joined her side as the doorman described the two men who had intimidated him.

  Malachai, she thought. “You need to get a security camera in here!”

  “But I don’t own the building. I just work here.”

  “It was Malachai,” she said to Bernie. “I know it was.”

  Malachai entered Katrina’s apartment alone. Assuring Marcus that he wouldn’t kill her until they agreed they had milked her for every benefit they could, he sent his chief lieutenant and Forty-five on their way. But they didn’t tell him what to do any more than Katrina did. He was his own man, and he made his own decisions. He would give the bitch one chance to explain herself, and if that explanation failed to satisfy him, he would kill her with his bare hands.

  “Hey, baby,” Katrina said in a silky voice, materializing in a bedroom doorway. She wore a sheer black top over midnight lingerie. “How did it go? Did you deliver the message?”

  “I’m no messenger boy,” Malachai said.

  “Of course not. You’re the motherfucking king of New York.” She walked toward him, hips swaying and lips parted. “Did you give him the message?”

  “Yeah, I gave it to him.” Maybe he would fuck her one more time and then kill her.

  “What did he say?”

  He said you were rolling in the mud with a pig behind my back. “He talked a lot of shit and said he’d call you at nine. He also said he dumped our drugs.”

  She draped her arms around his taut neck. “We’ll make more Black Magic. We’ll make more zonbies.”

  Then she kissed him on the mouth, pushing her tongue against his, and grinded her pelvis against him. He felt his cock hardening against her and his gun pressing against his hip. He didn’t know which weapon to use.

  Before he could decide, she drove the long blade of a dagger between his ribs and into his heart.

  “L.T.!”

  Lieutenant Mauceri turned in the men’s room doorway, a startled expression on his face as Maria intercepted him. “Yeah, Vasquez?”

  “I want to issue an APB on Prince Malachai,” Maria said between gasping breaths.

  “What for?”

  “He was involved in Edgar’s disappearance; I know it.”

  Mauceri’s expression hardened. “I told you to stay away from that case, Detective. You’re supposed to be working two and a half homicides involving three hundred missing fingers, three hundred missing toes, and I don’t know how many missing teeth. I should think that would be more than enough to keep you occupied.”

  Bernie joined them, coffee in hand.

  “The Mutilation Murders are connected to the Machete Massacres, and the Machete Massacres are linked to Malachai. The doorman at Dawn Du Pre’s building says Malachai was there looking for her today.”

  “That’s circumstantial as hell. Isn’t Malachai already wanted for questioning for the Papa Joe murders?”

  “Yeah, ‘for questioning,’ but we can’t find him. He’s gone underground. That’s why I want the APB.”

  Mauceri managed to shake his face without shaking his whole head. “No deal. You don’t have enough. All you’ll do is scare him off.” He turned to Bernie. “Is this how you try to impress your new boss? I heard you were a by-the-numbers kind of guy. I don’t need another freethinker around here.”

  Bernie shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Bring something more concrete, and you can have your APB, Vasquez.” Mauceri entered the men’s room.

  Maria followed him. “If I get him into the box, I’ll get what we need to convict him.”

  With his hand frozen on his zipper, Mauceri said, “It doesn’t work that way. You think he’s tied to all these headline crimes? If he’s that big, we can’t afford to risk letting him off on any technicalities.”

  “Please, L.T. Edgar could be alive somewhere. Malachai is all we’ve got.”

  Mauceri met her gaze. “You know, I think every cop should be given one opportunity to take a chance and bend the rules, throwing all caution to the wind and jeopardizing their careers. Do you want this that bad?”

  “Fuckin’ A.”

  “All right. Have it your way. Issue an APB. But only question Malachai about Papa Joe and Edgar. Don’t you dare taint whatever leads we develop on the Machete Massacres and the Mutilation Murders.”

  With her eyes tearing up, Maria exhaled. “Whatever you say. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  “You can thank me by finding Edgar alive.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now get out of here and let me piss in peace.”

  Katrina knew she was taking a risk by sending Malachai to meet with Jake, but she couldn’t do it herself and obviously couldn’t send a zonbie in her place. As soon as she saw Malachai’s eyes, she knew that Jake had sown the seeds of dissent in his brain. So she picked up the dagger from its hiding place behind a vase of flowers and plunged it into her lover’s heart.

  Malachai’s eyes went wide, and his mouth fell open. He reached for the blade protruding from his chest but hesitated as if afraid to touch it. With blood gushing out of the wound, he looked at Katrina’s face, and she flashed her best smile at him. Then he pitched face forward, the impact driving the blade even deeper into his heart.

  Katrina felt no remorse. She had found Malachai vulgar and impatient and a bad lay and the manner in which he spoke to her distasteful. She had looked forward to killing him for quite some time. But timing was crucial, and she believed she had waited until the perfect moment. Rolling him over onto his back, she gave littl
e thought to the growing puddle of blood on the floor. With the fortune she had amassed, she would leave this shit hole soon enough.

  Malachai gaped at her, his face spattered with his own blood. “Bitch …”

  Katrina stood straddling his chest, so that he had no choice but to gaze at her body. Then she made a face that was half smile and half sneer. “It was all me, Mal. Or should I call you Daryl?”

  She crouched on top of him, feeling his hot blood lick her thighs. “My ideas. My powers. My success.” She rubbed her crotch against his, teasing him. “You were nothing but my instrument, a method to realize my goals.”

  She pulled the dagger out of his heart, and his chest made a sucking sound.

  “You’d be nowhere without me. And look at you now.” Staring him in the eye, she ran her tongue over the blade, licking his blood from it. She grabbed his hair and pulled his head up, then pressed the dagger against his throat.

  “Bitch,” she said.

  She slit his throat, and he gagged on his own blood. She watched him die, then dragged him by the ankles across the floor to the door of her special room. Opening the door, she measured his body, which she knew so well, with her eyes. Then she slid his body around so his head faced the wooden boards in the doorway that prevented the soil from spilling out. It took a lot of work, but she managed to push and pull him onto the dirt. And then she rolled him into the fresh grave that she had dug an hour earlier.

  As he stared up at her with dead eyes, she pitched a shovelful of dirt into his face. In a short while, she had buried him and patted the dirt down with the shovel’s blade. Then she stripped off her lingerie, so that she stood completely nude, and set her bongo drums on top of the layer of dirt that covered him. Kneeling over the grave, she beat the drums with her hands, creating a familiar rhythm. Her head rolled on her neck, her eyes half closed with pleasure, and she felt tremors rippling through her body.

  The earth beneath her began to move, and she turned moist between her legs.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Forty-five steered the SUV around the Brooklyn block for the third time.

  “I like it,” Marcus said as they rolled along Forty-fourth Street and parked before one of several boarded-up buildings.

  “I’m hungry,” Forty-five said. “Can we get some Mickey D’s? I need some Chicken McNuggets.”

  You need a bowl of lettuce without any dressing, Marcus thought. “After we check this place out. I don’t want to hear any shit if Malachai calls.”

  “You right about that, but what makes you think he’s gonna call? He didn’t pick up when you called to tell him we found this new spot. He and Katrina are probably knocking boots.”

  I hope you’re right, Marcus thought. He wanted Katrina out of the picture, preferably dead, but not now when everything was so insane. The bitch made Malachai crazy, but she also knew how to calm him down. “After this building.”

  Forty-five sighed. “Awright.”

  They got out of the SUV, and Forty-five locked the door with his remote control. The sun descended behind the apartment building, so they took flashlights with them. They looked up and down the street and saw a few black and Hispanic faces regarding them with curiosity.

  Future customers, Marcus thought as he mounted the cracked concrete steps leading to the building’s front door. Seizing the graffiti-covered plywood behind the cross board in both hands, he pushed and the plywood fell against the door with no resistance.

  “Someone’s been here already.”

  Forty-five shrugged. “So? Kids, maybe. Or junkies. No matter.”

  Marcus slid the plywood aside, revealing the broken panes of glass in the front door. He opened the door and stepped between the boards, entering the vestibule, where he faced an inner door with a hole where its knob should have been.

  Forty-five looked at the empty space between the planks. “You’re playing, right?” Together they removed one of the remaining boards, and Forty-five joined Marcus in the vestibule. Without discussion, they drew their guns and entered the building’s darkened lobby. Forty-five carried a silver version of the weapon he had been named after.

  Marcus gagged. The place reeked of human waste.

  “Goddamn,” Forty-five said.

  “Shut up.”

  Their flashlight beams crisscrossed each other at the stairs, which they climbed. A hallway window on the second floor glowed with fading sunlight, outlining the metal railing at the top. Forty-five’s heavy footsteps echoed around them.

  Fucking Horton Hears a Crackhead, Marcus thought, listening to his corpulent companion’s heavy breathing.

  At the top of the stairs, he gasped as a creature with dead white features stepped into his flashlight beam. Before he knew it, Forty-five’s gun appeared inches away from his face. The creature opened its jaws, and Marcus saw two rows of yellow teeth. Marcus swatted Forty-five’s gun away with his Glock. “It’s just a scarecrow! What are you trying to do, blind me or make me deaf?”

  Moaning, the creature turned away, and the darkness swallowed it.

  “Sowry,” Forty-five said.

  They crossed the hallway, which reeked of Black Magic. Flickering light escaped from the space between an open door and its frame. Raising their guns, they looked inside. Half a dozen naked men and women sat and laid on the floor, firing up glass pipes. They resembled animated skeletons, and a pair of children played in filth. Somewhere in the darkness, an infant cried.

  “This ain’t right,” Forty-five said, his whisper still echoing.

  None of the scarecrows reacted to his voice.

  “Neither is turning our dead people into slaves, but you’re still wearing that chain, aren’t you?”

  Forty-five glanced at the gleaming gold chain hanging from his neck, as if he had forgotten it was there. “Right…”

  “Then stop your crying and let’s go.” But he felt sick to his stomach. It’s just the smell…

  They opened another door and gazed into an empty apartment. And then another and another after that.

  “There’s plenty of room in here for our sellers,” Marcus said. “Let’s go get those McNuggets now.”

  Forty-five made a face. “I lost my appetite.”

  As they turned back in the stairway’s direction, they heard the echoing sound of wood striking the lobby floor, followed by dozens of hurried footsteps.

  Jake tried the door to Laurel’s place, but it was locked, so he rapped on it several times. Light shone through the red curtain in the window that hid the parlor’s interior from the world outside.

  A minute later, Laurel opened the door with a surprised look on her face. Her eyes settled on his eye patch.

  “You should have known I was coming,” Jake said, raising a brown paper bag. “I brought Chinese.”

  She opened the door. “I’m glad to see you’re still alive. I had my doubts. Edgar and I have been watching the news. You’ve been busy.”

  He stepped past her, and she closed the door. “That’s me: always a busy social calendar.”

  She followed him to the round table. “The city’s recovered dozens of bodies.”

  “That will keep them busy at the medical examiner’s office,” he said, setting the food down on the table. “Where’s Edgar?”

  “This way.” She lifted the bag and took him into her living room, where a sofa and a coffee table faced a TV.

  Perched on the swing in his upright cage, Edgar crowed at Jake, his legs shifting from side to side on the swing. Seeing him again swelled Jake’s chest. Jesus, what an insane situation!

  Laurel went into the kitchen and returned with two plates. “Do you want some wine? Oh—no. I’m sorry.”

  Jake studied her. “That’s okay.”

  “Your secrets are safe with me.” She served the food. “To what do we owe this honor? Shouldn’t you be out exterminating zonbies?”

  He sat beside her on the sofa. “The last time I had scores to settle, I ate alone in a restaurant my wife and I used to frequent.
I thought it might be nice to have some company this time.”

  “What’s happening tonight?”

  “I know who all the players are and what they’re after. First I’m going to make Katrina restore Edgar; then I’m going to put a permanent stop to her zonbies.”

  “Afterlife?”

  “It’s scary how you do that.”

  “That disc contains deadly information, Jake. Apocalyptic, even. You can’t turn it over to her, even to bring Edgar back.” Laurel looked at the raven. “He’s alive. His soul remains in his body. Share that information, and there will be repercussions that you and I can’t imagine.”

  “Would you like me to share it with you?”

  Her lips parted, her eyes opened with sudden temptation, and her body stiffened, like a recovering addict just offered a fix. “Once, maybe. But not now.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “You should destroy that disc.”

  “I’ll consider it.” Opening a fortune cookie, he plucked out the piece of paper. “’Loyalty is its own reward.’“ He laughed.

  Marcus ran to the stairway with Forty-five pounding the hallway floor behind him. Flashlight beams danced on the walls below, and he prayed the intruders were cops. Peering over the railing, he saw a small army of zonbies, armed with machetes, running up the stairs. The dead things spotted them.

  “Aw, nah!” Forty-five said, his deep, flabby voice squealing.

  “I don’t think they’re here to move in early.”

  “What the hell did we do?”

  Good question. Marcus moved sideways to the top of the stairs. “Get your fat ass over here.”

  “No, let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  “We stand a better chance of picking them off right here.”

  “Ah, shit.” Stepping beside Marcus, Forty-five pulled back his gun’s slide.

  The zonbies stormed upstairs, and the drug dealers opened fire on them. The semiautomatic gunfire slowed the ghoulish creatures down but stopped none of them.

  Marcus shouted to be heard over the deafening noise. “Their heads! Their heads!”

  “I’m trying!”