A Furnace Sealed Page 4

  Okay, sure, every once in a while you got some nutjob with delusions of Dracula-dom, but if the intended victim was able-bodied, he or she could probably take the vamp in a fight. These guys were total wusses. And while bullets couldn’t kill them, they still hurt a lot and the wounds took forever to heal.

  I may’ve had one or more of those nutjobs on my hands here. I may’ve had something else. There wasn’t much blood pooled under the body or at the wounds, and the carotid artery bleeds like crazy when it’s ripped open like this. But then, a vampire would’ve gulped down whatever gushed out, so there wouldn’t be much anyhow.

  Whatever it was, though, I had a feeling I wasn’t gonna like it.

  The next six hours were spent wandering gingerly around the dog run, keeping an eye on four gallivanting werewolves, pretending my entire body hadn’t turned into a giant bruise, and wondering why the heck a vampire would kill an immortal.

  Just as the sun was starting to brighten the sky, all four werewolves started rolling around on the grass, making weird mewling noises. Except Anna Maria—she just gurgled. Their hind legs straightened, their forelegs shortened, their snouts and wolf ears receded even as their noses and human ears grew out.

  The really hilarious part—and why I could watch them change back, as opposed to being grossed out by the first change—was that all their fur just fell off. It was like watching a Maine Coon cat shed at high speed. Funniest thing ever, though I wasn’t so rude as to laugh. Besides, laughing hurt right now. Hell, breathing hurt right now.

  I reached over the fence for the backpack. That hurt, too.

  “Hurry up, hurry up,” Mark was saying anxiously like he always did, both his arms crossed over his crotch. One of his fingers would’ve been more than enough to cover up what was down there, if you know what I mean.

  “Jesus Christ, Mark, get over your big self, willya?” Anna Maria was totally unselfconscious in her nudity, despite a figure that could generously be called Rubenesque. In fact, the first time I met her, I’d used that word, and she had just laughed and said, “It’s okay, honey—I’m fat. I could be skinny, but then I can’t eat latkes anymore. Small price to pay.”

  The mere thought of latkes reminded me (again) that I hadn’t eaten since before my dustup with the unicorn. But of course, I couldn’t go eat yet—I had to wait for the cops …

  Just to piss off Mark, I gave Anna Maria her clothes first, and Mark his last. “You guys gotta get a move on,” I said, indicating Mather’s corpse. “The cops’ll be here any minute.”

  “Shit,” said Tyrone, who always made that word about three or four syllables, depending on his mood. “I always liked that crazy white dude, too.”

  Mark’s eyes went wide as he climbed into his pants. Everyone else wore pullovers, and both Anna Maria and Katie wore skirts, while Tyrone wore sweats. Mark kept insisting on button-down shirts and slacks instead of something quick to get in and out of. “We didn’t do that, did we?” he asked, aghast.

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “I would’ve remembered something like that,” Anna Maria said, “but all I got is rolling around in the dirt.”

  Mark was now fumbling with his shirt buttons. “I’ll take your word for it.” How much werewolves remembered from when they changed varied from person to person—usually, if someone remembered their dreams, then they remembered most of their wolven antics. Anna Maria always remembered everything—which was why she couldn’t deny being the culprit in the flower-bed-eating incident—but Mark never recalled a damn thing. Tyrone and Katie just recalled bits and pieces.

  “I’m out,” Tyrone said. “Gotta take the kid to school.” He dashed off before he had finished tying the drawstring on his sweats, heading down the pathway to the bus that would get him to his ex-wife’s place. Ever since the divorce—she couldn’t handle the werewolf thing, apparently—he’d made sure to always make as much time for his daughter as he could.

  Mark finished buttoning his shirt and went up the hill toward where he’d parked his car on Johnson Avenue without saying goodbye. Guess giving him his clothes last really did piss him off. I lived with the disappointment.

  Anna Maria and Katie both took the time to say goodbye. Katie added, “You know, I’d love to thank you some time. Maybe get together for coffee? There’s a great new café that opened up over on Riverdale Avenue.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t expected that at all. Then again, I’ve apparently been flirted with half a dozen times and totally missed it. If it wasn’t for Miriam or Velez or one of my fellow Coursers telling me after the fact, I never would have known. So her asking me out kinda had me gobsmacked.

  My initial thought was that Katie was too sweet a person to get introduced to my crazy life of hunting the monsters of the world. My second thought was that, to most folks, she was one of the monsters of the world. And a sweet person in my life would be kinda nice.

  However, now wasn’t the time to check our metaphorical calendars. “Look, the cops really will be here any second, you guys need to get a move on. Give me a call and we’ll figure out a time, okay?” I knew she had my number, as Miriam had made sure we all had each other’s cell numbers just in case.

  That got me a big, bright smile from Katie that I had to admit was really appealing. I’d gladly sit across a table from that smile over coffee at the very least. “Great! Talk to you soon!”

  “Take care, honey,” Anna Maria added. “And next month, I’ll make sure to bring more cannolis.” Then she leaned in close and whispered, “Thanks for saying yes.”

  Before I could respond to that, she jogged to catch up with Katie and elbowed her playfully in the ribs. “Toldja to just ask.”

  I really am oblivious. Shaking my head, I went to remove the ward from the fence.

  Two uniforms from the five-oh showed up two or three minutes later. The short one with the flat nose and the nameplate that read rodriguez came up to me while the taller one went to look at the corpse.

  “You found the body?”

  I nodded. “Abe Goldblume.”

  “Jesus,” came the voice of Rodriguez’s partner from by the tree. “It’s Warren.”

  “Who?” Rodriguez had a blank look on his face.

  His partner looked up. He had a pockmarked face and a thick mustache. “Y’know, the panhandler. Always drinkin’ the good shit?”

  Rodriguez shrugged. “I don’t pay attention to those guys.” He looked at me. “Can I have your address and phone number, please?”

  I gave them that, told them I worked as an ER doctor at Montefiore (telling them my other occupation would just complicate things, which was also why I went with the name on my birth certificate), then I told them that I found the body when I was taking a pre-sunrise walk through the park.

  Rodriguez wrote all this down in his pad, then asked me a few more questions, before finally saying, “Okay, Dr. Goldblume, I don’t think we need anything else. If we do, someone’ll call you.”

  The one with the pockmarked face had walked toward us while Rodriguez questioned me. Now I could see his nameplate, which told me he was Officer Samuels. “That ain’t likely. I mean, Warren was a decent guy for a skell, but he was still a skell. Basically, this means we get to sit on our thumbs for three hours while we wait for the ME to show up, then we fill out paperwork, then we go home.”

  “My kinda shift,” Rodriguez said.

  I smiled. “Well, then, I’ll let you guys sit on your thumbs in peace.”

  As I started to walk off, Samuels put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Doc, you okay?”

  “Uh, yeah, why?” I was kinda surprised that they’d ask me that—then I remembered who I was talking to. Guys who got shot at while wearing Kevlar vests probably knew exactly what someone walking with bruised ribs looked like. “Oh, right. Yeah, my dog crashed into me—golden retriever, doesn’t know his own strength. Don’t worry, though, they’re just bruised.”

  “Well, you oughtta know,” Samuels said. “Take it easy, though, those things take for-fuckin’-ever to heal.”

  “Thanks!”

  I gave the cops a little wave, and then headed up the incline of the park. More than anything else in the universe, I wanted to go home to my hot shower, my prescription drugs, and my bed.

  That wasn’t an option, however. Miriam needed to know about Warham Mather, and she needed to make a decision on what to do about his murder.

  But I was for damn sure stopping at the bagel place for some coffee first …

  Chapter 4

  After getting coffee and bagels—poppy seed for me, an everything bagel with cream cheese and lox for Miriam—I went to Seward Place and filled Miriam in. She was still pissed with me for about half a second before she saw how bad I looked. Not sure how bad I actually did look, but if it was even the tiniest fraction of how bad I felt, Mather’s corpse probably seemed the picture of health by comparison.

  I gave her the high points and promised a more detailed report after I’d slept for a year. She thanked me for the bagel and shooed me out so I could go home and collapse.

  My house was a nice little three-story brick place that looked like eighty gajillion other three-story brick places all over the Bronx: a one-car garage and a small apartment on the ground floor, larger (and identical) apartments on the second and third.

  Miriam’s place was only about a seven-minute hike from me, though that morning I did it shuffling like a zombie. I shambled in the front door just as my cousin Rebekah was running out, a small white box from the drug store with the copy machine under her arm. Those were probably flyers for whatever talk, rally, or march she was currently involved with.

  “Oh, hey, Bram.” Rebekah shoved her large plastic-framed glasses up her button nose. Her dark hair was flying in several directions at once, and there was an ink smudge on her cheek. She’d put on her sweater inside out—once upon a time, before Rebekah was born, that was fashionable, but she just hadn’t noticed it was on wrong. At least her socks matched, which usually only happened once a month or so.

  My cousin, I loved her. But she tended to get caught up in causes. If she’d stayed under the same roof as her parents (my uncle Isaac’s philosophy had always been, “Let things work out on their own, why don’t you?”), there’d have been homicide, so I let Rebekah have the ground-floor apartment in my townhouse to keep peace in the family. It was a nice little one-bedroom, it was close to where she went to school at Manhattan College, it got her and Isaac and Judy out of each other’s hair, and, as an added bonus, I got a free housecleaner. Twice a week, Rebekah would come upstairs and vacuum and dust and deal with my inevitable clutter.

  Okay, it wasn’t really free, since I could’ve rented the place for at least a thousand a month, but at least she knew about what I did for a living, which wasn’t something I wanted to have to explain to a renter. Or, for that matter, to a housecleaner, especially for the third-floor apartment, which I used as a workshop, workout space, examination room, and armory.

  “Hey, kid. How’re your mom and dad?” I asked. Rebekah was still a good daughter, and usually went by Isaac and Judy’s place for Shabbos dinner, and I just assumed she was there last night.

  Rebekah tended to look down when she talked. Judy always used to say that she liked talking to the floor. “I didn’t go to Mom and Dad’s.”

  How Judy reacted to that didn’t bear thinking about. My aunt was convinced that Rebekah never ate unless Judy was a witness to it. Based on what I’d seen, she wasn’t that far off—Rebekah kept forgetting to eat …

  She added, “I finished that book on the Algonquins you lent me—I left it on your couch. Thanks!”

  I smiled. “No problem.” Rebekah loved to read, and I had amassed a huge library over the years. The book she was talking about was a hardcover illustrated history of the Algonquin peoples of New York City that I’d picked up at an estate sale a few years back.

  “Oh,” she said, looking at the box under her arm so suddenly that her glasses fell back down her nose, “I’ve got some flyers here. Can you hang some up for me? It’s for Dr. Grofsky.”

  As she opened the box and yanked out several eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheets of paper, I asked, “Why do I know that name?”

  “He’s a doctor at an abortion clinic in Yonkers—he got shot at last week.”

  Then I remembered. A couple of the other ER doctors at Montefiore were talking about it in pretty disgusted tones. “One of these decades, I’ll catch up on the news.” I took the flyers from her, making a mental note that I was sure to forget to put them in the car. “I only just found out that Dewey defeated Truman.”

  Rebekah actually looked up for that. “Huh?”

  I sighed. “Chicago Tribune, 1948? They called the election for Governor Dewey even though Truman actually won reelection?”

  “Okay.” Rebekah looked back down and said to the floor, “I can’t believe anybody would do something like that.”

  “Like what, try to kill someone?”

  “Try to kill someone who helps people, who does good in the world. He’s a doctor.”

  I shrugged. “It’s all relative. Far as they’re concerned, they’re righteous—shooting at doctors who, to their mind, commit murder.”

  “They shouldn’t have the right to do that, to just kill good people. That’s why we’re protesting.” She looked up at me for a second then said, “Gotta go. Seeya!” She dashed out past me.

  Shaking my head, I took the flyers upstairs with me to my second-floor apartment, my ribs barking in pain as I did so.

  Mittens, my twenty-pound gray-and-white Maine Coon, was waiting for me at the door, expecting scritches on his head. I obliged, even though bending over hurt like a sonofabitch. I checked his food and water bowls in the kitchen; both were empty. Looking down at the oversized moggy, who’d waddled into the kitchen behind me, I said, “I just filled those yesterday afternoon! You swallowed a tapeworm, didn’t you?” I shook my head. “Maybe I will need to rent out downstairs, just to pay for your food, you little freser.”

  “Mrow,” was all he’d say in response.

  After dumping enough dry food to last a normal cat for two days—which meant Mittens would devour it in an hour or two—in one bowl and refilling the other with tap water, I dropped the flyers and my denim jacket on the living room couch right next to the Algonquin book. Rebekah had cleaned Friday morning, and the place was spotless, with only a bit of gray cat fur on the big blue chair that Mittens usually spent half his day on—it got the best sunbeam. Otherwise, it was swept, vacuumed, and dusted. Almost gleaming.

  Okay, probably not worth a thousand a month, but still pretty damned nice.

  Stopping in the bathroom to pop some painkillers—it’s handy working in a hospital, prescriptions get filled so easily—I stumbled toward the bedroom and fell right to sleep without even bothering to undress.

  In the dream, my parents were still alive.

  They were practicing medicine in their offices on the ground floor of the building we lived in on Henry Hudson Parkway. I was there, not as a fellow doctor, but as a patient, my ribs having been bruised by a unicorn. Mom said, “I warned you this would happen if you spent all your time roughhousing, Abe.” Dad shook his head and said, “Stop fussing over the boy, Rachel!” Mom tut-tutted. “I’m his mother and his doctor. What else should I do but fuss?”

  But Mom wasn’t speaking in her own voice, it was Miriam’s. And Dad sounded like Velez.

  Then the unicorn came crashing through the office window and stabbed Mom and Dad right in the chest with its horn, despite their being on opposite sides of the room.

  I woke up in a cold sweat, bedclothes tangled around my legs. I didn’t scream, though—this wouldn’t even have cracked the top one hundred of worst nightmares I’d had since becoming a Courser.

  Looking over at my nightstand, the numbers 4:27 glowed at me in green. I’d slept most of the afternoon away, which was actually what I was hoping for. Just wished it hadn’t ended quite like that.

  Slowly, I untangled myself from the sheets and climbed out of bed—the painkillers I’d popped before collapsing had long since worn off—and gingerly removed my now-very-wrinkled clothes, tossing them into the hamper. I stumbled to the bathroom, Mittens just looking up from the blue chair long enough to give me a desultory “mrow” before falling back asleep.

  First I popped some more pills, then started the shower going on hot. I figured that between the pelting hot water on my shoulder and the pharmaceuticals, I’d be almost lifelike.

  Staring at myself in the mirror, I saw a tall, lanky Jew with short brown hair that probably should’ve been styled in a manner other than “comb it once and hope for the best,” a thin beard that was an attempt to deal with my being too lazy to shave, and a very un-macho thatch of chest hair. I could also see red and purple on my abdomen where the unicorn bashed into me last night.

  It had been a while since I’d dreamt about Mom and Dad. Not sure what prompted it this time, honestly. Probably the painkillers wearing off while I slept.

  We really did live in a co-op apartment on the tenth floor of a big building on the service road for the Henry Hudson Parkway, with Mom and Dad’s medical practice one of many that took up the ground-floor spaces. “Easiest commute you could ask for,” Mom always said.

  When I was a little kid, Dad had carried on like trash about how he wanted a house with a back yard so he could have a garden. Mom would just look at him and say, “What’re you gonna do with a garden besides kill it?”

  Dad was stubborn, and Mom always believed in letting people make their own stupid mistakes, as long as she got to say “I told you so” afterward. So Dad bought the house, the garden was a total disaster filled with weeds, overgrown grass, and dead flowers after two years, Mom said, “I told you so,” and then they sold it and bought the co-op in the same place that already had their practice.