Dead to Me

20

I couldn’t leave Jane there for their corporate headhunter to find so (in four separate cabs) I took her to a hotel over on the Upper East Side and checked her in. I headed home around 5 a.m. There was still no sign of Irene and I slept for a fitful three hours before heading up to the Lovecraft Café. I grabbed a coffee and went back to the offices to face the Inspectre. His door was shut and the muffled sound of arguing came from behind it. I sat down and waited.

I bet myself a new armoire from the ABC store on Eighteenth that it was Director Wesker getting yelled at. It was hard to imagine anyone more deserving of getting chewed out than him.

When the door to Inspectre Quimbley’s office opened, it shook in its frame and revealed an extremely agitated-looking Thaddeus Wesker. He hadn’t changed since last night—wearing the same suit, tie, and look of disdain. His disdain doubled when he noticed me sitting there waiting, and he stormed off down the stairs. I stood when I heard an exasperated sigh from within the office and walked in to find Quimbley sitting at his desk, his head in his hands. He, too, was wearing the same clothes from last night.

“Sir…?” I shut the door behind me.

Quimbley jumped at the sound of my voice, but when he saw it was me, he relaxed. He picked up his glasses, fitted them on his face, and grabbed the folder lying before him. “Simon, please…have a seat.”

I sat in the leather chair opposite him. “Is everything okay, Inspectre? Director Wesker seemed in a far fouler mood than usual.”

The Inspectre peered over the top of his glasses at me and smiled. “You noticed that, too, eh?”

I smiled back cautiously. My limited encounters with my superior left me wary in his presence. Connor was much closer to our Other Division leader. I wasn’t sure how political I should be in responding to any questions concerning my personal feelings about Director Wesker. I didn’t want to step on any toes, so I chose to speak with caution and voice as few of my own opinions as possible.

“Wesker’s mood on his way out was kind of hard to miss, sir.”

Quimbley sat silently for a moment, possibly weighing his thoughts. “True.” Another pause. “You don’t like Director Wesker, I take it? Given last night’s events, I mean…”

“Truth be told, Inspectre, I don’t think I’m in a position to judge.”

“No?” the Inspectre said. “And why not, dear boy? You must have an opinion one way or the other. Come, come!”

I shifted in my seat uncomfortably as I thought it over. “Well…”

Quimbley dropped the folder and softened as he looked at me, his wise old eyes without any gleam of judgment.

“I’d be hesitant, too, if I were you, Simon. Here you are, so new to the D.E.A. and already dealing with such bizarre and unusual circumstances. You’re worried you might say the wrong thing or drop the wrong word in the wrong person’s ear? Perhaps you’re concerned that if you speak against another agent or director, you’ll be seen as disloyal.”

I nodded. “I guess that’s part of it, sir.”

“I want to assure you,” he offered conspiratorially, “that nothing you say here will get back to Thaddeus Wesker. This is not a test of your honor or loyalty, boy. I would simply like to hear your take on the events of last night.”

If the Inspectre only knew all of the events last night, I thought, he’d kick me out of the Department altogether. I shut those thoughts out of my mind and tried to relax a little, finding, much to my surprise, that I was able to.

“Very well then,” I said. “No, sir, I don’t particularly care for Director Wesker, not after last night. Coming into my apartment like that…”

“If you remember,” he said, “I came into your apartment as well last night. A bit winded, to be sure, but I was there also. Yet you hold no ill will toward me, Simon.”

“Yes,” I countered, “but you didn’t come in flinging accusations…acting like something illicit was going on, that somehow I was compromising the Department.”

“And why do you think Director Wesker did that, boy?”

I pondered the question for a moment, but the answer seemed clear. “Because he knows I’m allied with you and Other Division.”

Quimbley smirked, nodding slowly as he ran his thumb and forefinger through his mustache. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I can see that. But I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, boy. It’s no secret that Thaddeus Wesker has no love for me, but it’s also no secret that there’s nothing he can do about it…yet. Let him gather all the power that he can and then we’ll see.”

“But then it’ll be too late!” I practically cried out. “And what will he do to you when he does? Connor is just as worried about this. Both of us have questioned his allegiance to the Department.”

The mirth on his face from a second ago was gone, and had been replaced by a look of utter seriousness.

“My boy,” he said, “what I’m about to tell you is strictly between the two of us, something only a few other people know around the Department. Director Thaddeus Wesker, head of Greater and Lesser Arcana, is a member of the Sectarian Defense League.”

Thank God I was sitting, because I felt like my legs had just been knocked out from under me. The very idea that Wesker—like Jane—worked with the people that I held responsible at least in part for Irene’s death made my head spin.

“I knew it!” I said, punching the air.

“It’s not like you think,” Quimbley said, waving his hands at me. “It’s terribly complex, Simon, and there’s much that I’m simply not allowed to tell you. But what I can tell you is this: A lot of people who have come to work for us over the years have come to us from…shall we say, suspect backgrounds. Involvement with the dark arts, telemarketing, and worse. Need I remind you of your own life as a petty criminal before coming into the fold?”

My embarrassed silence was enough of an answer.

“I have been assured,” he continued, “by the Enchancellors themselves that Thaddeus Wesker is a loyal agent of the D.E.A. He was chosen as the perfect covert operative to send in. Standard black ops work…feeding their intelligence officers misinformation so that we may continue our work here uncompromised. Despite all the running around everyone is doing over your discovery of the Sectarian Defense League, the Enchancellors have known about them for a while, but we’re stepping up our investigation into them now that it’s public.”

It slowly began to come together. “So being an evil, abrasive prick is just a cover for around the office? A front he has to maintain so that when he reports back to Faisal Bane, he’s convincing?”

“Oh no,” the Inspectre said. “He really is a ‘prick,’ as you call him. I personally don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, and given my sad showing of physical fitness last night, it wouldn’t be very far. But someone higher up seems to believe he’s trustworthy, and that is good enough for me. And it will be good enough for you, too, Simon.”

He picked up the folder before him again as I sat in awkward silence, wondering if I had been dismissed or not. I knew the Inspectre disliked Thaddeus Wesker almost as much as I did, which made it all the more difficult to swallow my own feelings for the sake of such a delicate mission. But I would.

“Am I in any trouble for yelling at Wesker?” I asked.

“No,” the Inspectre laughed. “If everyone who ever thought ill of Wesker was in trouble for it, we wouldn’t even have enough people to run the coffee shop out front, let alone the Department.”

A wave of relief washed over me.

“Now go home and get some rest, my boy,” he said. “You look positively exhausted. I want you to come back later in the day, though. I need you to figure out three things: One, find out where Ms. Blatt disappeared to. As long as she’s out there missing, she’s still a target for Bane and his cultists and we need to know why.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Two, I need you to find out what happened to Jane after Wesker cut her safety line.” At the mention of her, I held my face like stone, hoping that I wasn’t giving away the fact that I knew exactly where she was. “Like you said, she’s relatively new to the Sectarian Defense League, so we may be able to sway her.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And three, I’m still waiting on that report on the Oracle.”

“Oracle?” I asked.

“Gaynor,” the Inspectre said. “The train mystic.”

With all the craziness in my life right now, I had totally forgotten Gaynor. Connor and I would have to sit down sometime relatively soon and hammer out the details so far on Irene’s case. But first, there was the riddle Gaynor had left us with.

I nodded to the Inspectre, and headed for the door as thoughts of Irene—and now Jane—filled my head. They would have to wait until later in the day. Right now, the call of sleep was already weaving its comfy tapestry around me and I had a date back home with a pillow that I didn’t want to miss.