The Occupied Page 11

  “I told you once that I was open to the supernatural because of the Catholic neighborhood I was raised in. Actually, that’s only partly true. The other part is that I’ve done my own study. Dahmer wasn’t alone. There are others.”

  “Like?”

  “Henry Holmes, a doctor.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Most folks haven’t,” Valentine replied. “I read up on him. Holmes was around in the late 1800s in Chicago. The World’s Fair was in his backyard at the time, and people started disappearing. He was a butcher. Huge numbers of victims. When he was caught and convicted, he confessed to having a devil inside of him. An actual devil. And I think he meant it. Not as a dodge, or an excuse, but as a fact.”

  Valentine climbed into his car as I stood there in the parking garage. I heard the echoes of squealing tires from cars below us taking the spiral turns, speeding home for dinner. I wondered whether or not in the end I would lead them to the “one” they were looking for. Apparently I needed patience. So I would wait, like Valentine said. As it turned out, I wouldn’t have to wait long.

  22

  A week later—it was a Wednesday—Valentine and I were in the precinct station together. I had been asking him occasionally for updates on my assailant, Hanz Delpha. That particular day sticks in my mind for two reasons.

  That was when he told me that they had finally tracked down Delpha at a cheap hotel on 47th Street. The guy had looped a rope over the top of the door to his rented room, closed it tight, looped the other end around his neck, and then must have kicked the chair out from under him. He had been dead for a while when they found him.

  So, I thought to myself, okay, two demoniacs, both came after me, and both killed themselves. Of course, there were other similarities too. They both inflicted slashing wounds on the same part of their victims’ anatomy. And they were both hung up on a similar phrase: One had used Dead already? and the other, Already dead?

  I thanked Valentine for telling me about Delpha.

  Valentine asked me to hang around late until he finished the interrogation of a drug entrepreneur by the name of Carlos Alvarez.

  “We got him now, Black,” Valentine said when he met me during a break in the interrogation. “This guy’s the crown jewel. He’s the main link between dealers and that cartel in Colombia. Shutting him down will choke some of that supply line at least. But the guy’s cagey. Keeps saying the translator speaks the wrong dialect and he can’t be sure of the questions. Yeah, sure.”

  The news about Alvarez was a huge relief. I had heard some of the gossip in the police stations about Alvarez. He was suspected of possibly being the person who carried out killings on his turf very recently—a string of grisly mutilations. Hearts being cut out.

  “So what’s Castor going to do now?” Sid Castor was an NYPD cop who’d been undercover with Alvarez for two years. He probably deserved most of the credit for tagging him and bringing the cartel’s operations to a halt.

  “That guy has been in deep for a long time. But hopefully we’ve got plans for Castor.” Valentine got up to head back into the debriefing room, and I told him that I was going to grab some coffee. I strolled into the lunchroom alone where the table was littered with sports sections from the newspaper. The coffeepot had a thin inch of stale coffee left in the bottom, so I poured it into a Styrofoam cup and smothered it with Sweet’N Low.

  Most of the officers treated me pretty well. Only two of them gave me a hard time. Victor Chavez was one of them. He seemed like a decent guy, but a few years before that I had him on the stand during the defense of a client of mine who had been charged with armed robbery of a convenience store. During discovery I unearthed Chavez’s daybook containing his handwritten notes and found that he had taken down a description of the robber from the store manager that differed radically from his description in the police report that he later typed up. The surveillance cameras in the shop were on the fritz during the robbery, so the ID of the bandit was a crucial issue. I made Chavez look silly on the stand, and my client was acquitted. Police officers have long memories, I guess.

  The other one was Sid Castor himself. Every time he saw me he tossed me a wisecrack. Castor was a swarthy-skinned guy of ambiguous ethnicity, but with a look that helped him gain access to the Alvarez drug cartel. He was handsome, with a swagger and an arrogant attitude.

  That day, while I was in the lunchroom, Castor strolled in and spotted me. “Hey, Trevor, what’s on the docket today? Palm reading?”

  I smiled.

  He kept it up. “Maybe with your Gypsy magic, you’re after bigger stuff, like Wolfman or Dracula.”

  My smile was wearing out. Castor sauntered up closer to me, and pulled out a cigarette and lit it up.

  I didn’t miss that. I said, “I thought this was a no-smoking premises.”

  He tittered. Then he said, “Did you actually use the word premises just now? You lawyers are something else.”

  I nodded, still trying to be civil, but I was wondering where this was going.

  Castor returned to the subject of smoking and said, “I do whatever I want. You know what I mean?”

  I nodded again, but I really wasn’t sure what he meant, only feeling the need to keep the dialogue going and see where it went.

  “Okay,” he said, “you’re being a good sport. So, I’ve got this lead for you . . .” Then he started looking around the room. “I’m not sure I should tell you. At least not here. It’s about your buddy Dick Valentine.”

  “What about him?”

  “I said . . . not here. Let’s walk.”

  He took me outside, to the alley behind the station, where there were a few parked cars, a dumpster, and a layer of oily filth on the pavement. Then he opened up. “Okay, how much do you know about Valentine anyway?”

  I told him that I didn’t know him personally. Only through his work on a few cases that we had in common, but that I trusted him.

  “Well,” he said. “Internal Affairs had some concern about him. You know, pushing his way into the investigation of your wife’s death.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. You got to wonder what his interest was.” Castor was rubbing his hands together, the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and he took a step closer to me. “Ever wonder about that?”

  “No. I’ve got better things to think about.”

  “Do you, now? Well, I’m just trying to give you some friendly advice.”

  “Like?”

  “I’m not sure you belong here in the NYPD, swimming with the sharks. You could be somebody’s dinner. Maybe it’s time for you to head back to shore.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not ready to do that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  Now Castor was about a foot away. He plucked the cigarette out of his mouth between two fingers, blew a thin stream of smoke in my direction, tapped the ash off the end, and then decided to drop it to the ground. He ducked his head and crushed the butt with his foot, taking a long time to study the dirty pavement of the alley as he did.

  Then he looked up, and that is when I understood what this was all about.

  Castor was changing. Into something else. And I felt my guts exhale, like a deflated tire, and I only had time for half of a thought.

  Oh boy.

  His eyes evaporated. Now they were just empty eye sockets. Black, ugly, gaping holes where his eyeballs had been. His lips were gray. His face, caulk white. He struck out at me with lightning speed, pinning me against the wall of the building and choking me with both hands while he spoke.

  “Your wife, Courtney,” he grunted as he squeezed tighter around my larynx, “her eyes had this scared look while she was dying. Wondering why you weren’t there to save her. Think about that while you’re taking your last breath.”

  I swung my fist in a blasting uppercut to his chin. It should have broken his jaw. But this creature without eyes only twitched a little, like a dog with a tick. I slammed my
fist into the monster’s face again, and a trickle of thick black blood started oozing out of his nose. The thing that was strangling me twitched again, then squeezed harder and lifted me clear off my feet, holding me against the building while I dangled there.

  The grip around my neck was too much. I tried to yank his wrists away from my throat, but I couldn’t. I was getting woozy. Beginning to lose consciousness.

  I tried to kick at him, sloppily kneeing him in the chest. Flailing. Nothing was stopping him. Somewhere in my head, I was saying, The end. Things went dark.

  Then I felt my head hit the pavement of the alley. It jolted me back. Above me, I saw men fighting. Someone was growling like a mad dog. Ferocious.

  Things came into focus, and I saw Dick Valentine and three uniformed cops wrestling with Castor and pinning him to the ground, snapping cuffs on his hands behind his back. More growling like the sounds of a mad dog. In the air there was the scent of the Manitou landfill fires.

  23

  “Enough. I’m done.” I spoke it with my mouth half-full, finishing a corned beef on rye at the sidewalk café deli. But I wasn’t referring to the food.

  Valentine was biting into an egg salad sandwich. I was thinking, kind of a strange lunch choice for a guy like him. I figured him for a carnivore. After swallowing, he said, “Just so you know, you were able to do what nobody else could have done.”

  “Being strangled by a zombie?”

  “Bringing Castor to justice,” Valentine said. “Nobody wanted to touch him. He was a hero with the guys in the force. But I had been tracking some recent bloodlust killings. Heart extractions without benefit of anesthetic. Interestingly, the newest batch of victims started showing up just after the suicide of Hanz Delpha.”

  What Valentine told me wasn’t new. But it reinforced the question: what was the consistent link for all those similar mutilations, starting with poor Heather?

  Valentine continued. “I matched those new cases to areas that were geographically close to where Castor had his undercover dealings with Alvarez. We had Alvarez under surveillance, so it couldn’t have been him. But no one was watching Castor. It’s always tough to suspect your own.”

  “But you did.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t feel good.”

  I added things up. “Castor’s mayhem against me—that was what gave you the probable cause you needed.”

  “Right. That, coupled with what he said to you about how your wife died. As if Castor had some special insight into the details of the death of your wife, even though, strangely, she died alone in her car and Castor wasn’t anywhere near her location that day, which raises some very spooky questions, I guess. Anyway, we got a warrant to search his locker and his car. And his apartment. We found DNA evidence to link him to the mutilation killings.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “So that’s why I said that you did for us what we couldn’t do.”

  It was good to hear that from Valentine. “I was glad to help,” I said. “Maybe I was meant to be working with you for no other reason than that.”

  Valentine tossed his napkin onto his paper plate. “So . . . tell me again. About what Castor looked like. When he changed into that . . . that thing.”

  “Why? Are you trying to convince yourself it really happened?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Honestly, I don’t like talking about it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I decided it was time to share my plans. “I’ve decided to hang it up. The ‘consulting’ business, I mean. I’m leaving the city.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m thinking North Carolina. Our firm had a client with a big place down there on the ocean, along the Outer Banks. Hatteras Island. He took me deep-sea fishing a few times. I think maybe I’ll move down to that area.”

  “So, you’re a fisherman?”

  “When I was a young boy, my father would take me out on his little boat. River trout, and some lake fishing too, for bass, walleyes, muskies. But there’s something about ocean fishing that appeals to me now.”

  “Hatteras, you said?”

  “Actually, I’m looking for something on an island near there. A lot of sand and water, and sea grass and dunes. And quiet. Tourists come and go. But people leave you alone.”

  “Sounds remote.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Like a witness protection program?”

  “Huh.” I snickered. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. Anyway, my wife’s gone. My lawyering days are over. I finished the job for you. Time to move on.”

  “Too bad. You’ve done some good here in the city.”

  “Thanks for that. But I’ve also been stabbed in the chest and nearly choked to death in an alley.” I lifted up my swollen right hand. “And I think I may have broken a knuckle on that last one. Then there’s the daily thing. What happens to me, for instance, when I’m walking almost anywhere in this city. Crowds passing by, shoulder to shoulder, on the sidewalk. Then suddenly I pick up the scent. I wonder where in the mob of humanity is the person with the demon. Who’s going to butcher someone next. So I turn and look, trying to figure it out, knowing I can’t ever find them all, or even most of them. It weighs on you.”

  Valentine had finished eating, and he was leaning back in the little chair at the sidewalk deli, studying me. As people streamed by, Valentine looked over at them, and then back at me. He just nodded, saying nothing.

  I continued. “Dick, I think if I stay here and keep doing this, I’ll lose my mind.”

  “Don’t want that to happen. But I’m just thinking, maybe there’s some reason you have this particular ability. Things have a reason. Higher purpose.”

  I’d never told him about my inner transformation. It wasn’t just the dark, sinister things coming after me, but other things, good things too. I was on a path, though in terms of the immediate future, I had no idea where it was taking me. “Higher purpose?” I said. “I know that’s true. I didn’t used to believe that. But I do now.” For a moment I had a sudden regret about leaving the city. Admitting defeat.

  After a second or two, Detective Dick Valentine stood up and stretched out his husky hand to shake mine. “Good luck. Let me know where you settle.”

  24

  The very next week, I cashed out my 401(k) and my mutual funds. Courtney’s Benz had already been sold. Any hesitation about leaving Manhattan was quickly alleviated when the media got ahold of the Sid Castor arrest story. It didn’t take long before my name was dragged into the press frenzy. Trevor Black, disbarred attorney, was dubbed the “demon-chasing defense attorney” who had been secretly employed by the NYPD.

  I wanted out of town quick, but I figured it would take a while to sell the condo. Surprisingly, within four days of the listing my agent presented me with a married couple who were tired of renting. To top it off, they wanted to take the place furnished, so they paid extra for all of the designer furniture and artwork.

  At the closing, I wished them well, and I truly meant it. The condo had been a place of extremes for Courtney and me, ranging from glowing newlywed love to cold indifference and militant confrontation. I hoped that home could become a consistently happy place for the two of them.

  Patty, the wife, worked for a conglomerate that published several magazines, and her husband, Doug, was an account manager for a marketing outfit. They were friendly and asked me about my background. I told them I had left the practice of law.

  Doug was talkative and prodded a little. “What now?”

  “Oh,” I said, “I guess I’m a traveler in search of a destination. But only figuratively. I don’t want you good folks to think that I’m homeless and will be ringing you up from the lobby, asking if I can crash at your place for the night.”

  Patty gave out a hearty laugh. She had been eyeballing me closely, like she knew something about me but didn’t want to say. She asked, “No professional plans?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Professional activities require a layer of
professionalism—you know, the shiny coat of varnish. I’m afraid that’s been stripped off of me. Like a worn desk at a flea market.”

  Now they both smiled. But I noticed my real estate broker wasn’t amused. He had another closing right after mine. I rose and announced that we should let my agent get on his way, and shook both of their hands.

  As we left the closing room, Patty said, “You’ve got an interesting way of expressing yourself. Ever think about doing some writing? I mean, other than legal briefs?”

  In response, I shared a quick story about a court decision I had once read where the judge laid out his legal opinion in a lengthy rhyme, like a poem. “He was no Wordsworth,” I said. “Most lawyers, and judges too, probably have an overrated view of their own communication skills.”

  Ten days later I was riding over the series of bridges along the single highway that connects thin stretches of sandy turf and clusters of beach houses. The place where the Atlantic crashes into the shore on your left, and the marshy waters of the Pamlico Sound are on your right. At the Hatteras harbor I pulled my rig onto the car ferry that was bound for Ocracoke Island, North Carolina.

  I had traded in my Aston Martin for some cash plus a Land Rover, and hitched it to a trailer full of possessions. I had honed things down. Travel light, I told myself. More books than I should have kept. Only one suit, the Armani. All the Tommy Bahama shirts, and lots of wrinkled shorts and faded blue jeans. And every ball cap I ever owned. Particularly the sweat-stained Mets cap.

  I had bought, sight unseen, a cottage on the island based on pictures that had been e-mailed to me. It was located off of a dirt lane down from a cemetery belonging to ancient mariner families. Over the ages the inscriptions on the tilted headstones had become illegible.

  But my place had a clear view of the blue ocean just beyond the sea grass. I told myself that I had found contentment.

  I paid an obscene amount of cash for an impressive fishing boat, and took the safety classes and learned how to handle it. After a couple of months, though, I realized that the price of this kind of self-imposed exile was loneliness. I made the effort to be sociable and met a friend down at Howard’s Pub by the name of Roy Dance, and we would occasionally launch out to the Gulf Stream together where the fishing was legendary. I started hanging around every bar on the island, ignoring the internal gyroscope that had been guiding me since my spiritual awakening in my New York law office. In my new island life I was drinking too much bourbon, Fireball whiskey, and every rum drink ever made. Sadly, I was becoming a local barstool fixture. I knew down deep that there was a lot wrong with that picture, and that things had to change. When Elijah White gave me a call one day, out of the blue, asking me, “How are you traveling with Jesus?” it was like a punch in the spiritual solar plexus.