In Plain Sight

11 The List

“You seem a little rattled.”

Leslie’s voice startled Alex and he sat up in his chair. His receptionist stood at the open door to his office holding a cup of coffee in each hand. She stepped to his desk and set one down, then sat down in the chair Sorsha had occupied only moments before.

“Was that…?” Leslie nodded toward the door. Alex opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Scotch.

“Yep,” he said, pouring some in his coffee. “Irish?” he said, offering the bottle to Leslie. She smiled and shrugged, holding out her cup so he could add some of the amber liquid to it. Leslie sipped at her coffee.

“What did they want, besides that book?”

“It looks like Thomas Rockwell may have been involved in the theft of government secrets,” Alex said.

“Must be a big deal if they got the Ice Queen down from her floating castle to chase leads.”

“It’s powerful magic.” Alex nodded. “So powerful everyone who meddles with it disappears without a trace.”

“Like Thomas Rockwell.” Leslie sipped her coffee. “What are you going to tell the skirt?”

Alex thought about it for a long moment. Sorsha Kincaid was probably right about her thief reaching out to runewrights for help. It was possible that Thomas didn’t know where the runes came from, but it was equally possible that he was in on the theft. Either way, it was probably best if Evelyn stopped looking into her brother’s disappearance.

“I’ll tell her the truth.”

“That her brother might be a thief?” Leslie asked with a raised eyebrow. Alex chuckled.

“Well, maybe not that much truth,” he said. “I can tell her that her brother got mixed up in something that likely got him killed and that the Feds took his book.”

“Think she’ll leave it there?”

“I wouldn’t,” Alex said.

“Neither would I.” Leslie stood and headed for the door. “While you were meeting with the frosty blonde, Danny called.”

“Does he have that list yet?”

Leslie didn’t answer, but returned a moment later with a pad of paper. “The customs people wouldn’t give him the names of the foreign governments who use the warehouse, but here’s everyone else.” She handed Alex the pad.

Alex scanned over the list. There were a dozen companies, everything from a furniture maker to banks to tool & die companies to jewelry stores. All of them were businesses who would have reported a theft to their insurance companies and moved on. Whatever was stolen, it had to be something priceless. One of a kind. That might mean it was smuggled in. Insurance companies didn’t pay for their client’s smuggling losses, so the owner would have to take steps personally to recover his property.

“So what are you going to do?” Leslie asked, still sipping her coffee.

Alex wanted to follow up on Beaumont. If he really was a high-end thief, he’d have left a trail. A trail that would go colder while Alex chased all over the city trying to find out who killed Jerry Pemberton. He owed it to Father Harry to find out who was responsible for his death, but the more rational part of Alex’s brain pointed out that he wouldn’t be finding anyone from behind bars. He drained his coffee cup and set it on his desk.

“I’d better get going,” he said, tearing off the top sheet from the pad of paper. “It’ll take me at least two days to run through all of this and I’ve only got three. Everything else can wait.”

Leslie nodded as if that were the answer she expected.

“Anything you want me to do?”

“Stay by the phone,” Alex said, pulling on his jacket. “I may need you. If Evelyn Rockwell calls, put her off. I’ll settle things with her when this is all over.”

“And if the Ice Queen calls?”

“Take a message.”

Alex put on his hat, folded up the list and slipped it into his pocket, then walked out.

He took a crawler to the first address on his list, a company that made grand pianos. They’d been expecting a shipment of ivory to make keys. The owner was genuinely surprised by Alex’s presence and his line of questioning. He clearly thought that a Police Consultant was some kind of actual policeman and Alex didn’t bother to disabuse him of that notion. Eventually, the owner took Alex into the workshop in back and showed him a bin full of elephant tusks and the craftsmen in the process of cutting and shaping them into the smooth rectangles that would cover piano keys. It was fascinating, but ultimately fruitless. The business owner simply wasn’t a good enough liar to be hiding anything. After a wasted hour and a half, Alex thanked the man and left.

Before he caught the next crawler, he stopped at a drug store to call the office. With any luck Leslie would have some news for him.

“Sorry, kid,” her voice flowed over the wire to him. “Danny just called to see if you were having any luck. He hasn’t found anything.”

Alex swore. “If he calls back, tell him I could use some help following up with the list. At the rate I’m going, he’s going to be looking for a new job soon.”

“When was the last time you ate?” Leslie asked.

“Breakfast with Danny.”

“Stop by the Automat and get a sandwich on your way to your next interview,” she said. “You’re getting grouchy.”

Alex was about to tell Leslie where she could stick a sandwich, but that made him see her point. She always looked out for him.

“Thanks, doll,” he told her.

One crawler ride and two Automat ham-and-cheese sandwiches later, Alex stood in front of the Garland Bank, a private bank that lent exclusively to businesses. Once he explained to the manager that someone had been robbed at the customs warehouse and that there was a murder involved, the man couldn’t wait to help. He showed Alex the gold bullion that had been brought in, along with his bills of lading, which matched the information on the warehouse manifest exactly. It only took an hour this time, but Alex was able to cross another name off his list.

By the end of the day, Alex felt as if he’d walked all the way from Brooklyn to the south-side waterfront. He’d crossed six more names off his list, but that still left five to go and he wasn’t any closer to finding out who killed Jerry Pemberton, or why. His pocket watch told him it was six-thirty. He wanted to stop at the public library and look into Charles Beaumont, alleged thief, but he desperately needed some food and a soft chair. Not necessarily in that order. Between crawler rides, breakfast with Danny, and the Automat, he was down to his last fifteen cents, so he hopped a crawler and headed for the brownstone.

“There you are, my boy,” Iggy called when Alex finally staggered in through the vestibule. “I was hoping I hadn’t missed a call from you needing me to bail you out.”

He found Iggy out behind the kitchen in the attached greenhouse. The brownstone had a very small, walled back yard that opened onto an alley. When Iggy had first moved in, he’d taken up half the space with a glass greenhouse where he grew orchids. Due to the labor-intensive nature of cultivating orchids, Iggy spent many hours a day in his greenhouse. He even had a wicker reading chair in one corner in case he just wanted to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

“Is there anything to eat?” Alex asked, sliding down into one of the carved wooden chairs that surrounded the heavy dining table. Iggy chuckled, pulling the greenhouse’s insulated door closed as he exited.

“Is that all I’m good for anymore?” he asked with a grin. “To be your butler and bring you food?”

“Don’t forget putting a roof over my head,” Alex said. He reached into his pocket for Bert’s pack of smokes, but found it empty. He’d smoked the remaining ones during his steeplechase around the city. He wanted to curse, but Iggy didn’t allow it in his home, so Alex bit back the profanity and wadded up the empty pack, dropping it on the table.

Iggy removed the crumpled pack and replaced it with a bowl of orange soup. Alex was hungry enough that he didn’t ask, he just spooned it into his mouth.

And nearly choked.

“It’s cold,” he said once he got the first mouthful down.

“In the kitchen, as in the field, one must anticipate one’s adversary,” Iggy said.

“Meaning?” Alex was too tired for riddles.

“Meaning if you expect your flat mate to be late, prepare something that’s meant to be eaten cold. That’s gazpacho, you eat it cold.”

It took a minute for Alex to process, but then he just shrugged his shoulders and started eating again.

Iggy sad down beside him at the table and let Alex get halfway through the bowl before interrupting. “Since you seem determined to make me ask, how did it go with the police?”

“Captain Rooney stuck his neck out trying to catch the thief at the customs warehouse,” Alex said, between spoonfuls of the cold vegetable soup. “Now he needs a scapegoat, and if I don’t figure out who killed Jerry Pemberton by Monday morning, he’s going to make it me.”

“That’s dirty pool,” Iggy said.

“You said it,” Alex agreed, even though he had no idea what Iggy meant. “Worse, he’s going to take Danny down with me, so that’s priority number one.”

Alex then told Iggy about his day, searching for whomever had their goods purloined at the warehouse.

“So far everyone seems to be telling the truth,” he said as Iggy set a plate with a slab of cold ham on it in front of him.

“You’re sure one of them is guilty?” Iggy asked.

Alex nodded, slicing the meat into bite-sized chunks. “All the government pouches were sealed and accounted for. That just leaves the businesses.”

“Well,” Iggy said, picking up the newspaper. “It sounds like you had an eventful day.”

“That’s not the half of it,” Alex said, finishing the second bowl and pushing it away. “The Feds came to see me this morning.”

Iggy lowered the paper so he could peer over it. “What did you do to draw their attention?”

“Client of mine’s brother disappeared,” Alex said. “Feds think he was involved in a theft at a government research facility.”

“Was he?”

“I don’t know,” Alex admitted. “He’s an accountant by trade and a runewright on the side. Nothing about him says criminal mastermind.”

Iggy raised the paper back up and continued reading. Alex stood and picked up his bowl and spoon, intending to take it to the sink.

“Hey Iggy,” he said. “You’ve been around a while. Have you ever heard of something called the Archimedean Monograph?”

Iggy nearly ripped the paper in half as he jerked out of his seat. His eyes were as big as saucers, and the color had drained from his face. He recovered quickly, but Alex had been looking right at him and had seen his reaction.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, going to the icebox for two cold beers. He opened them with a church key, then put one in front of Iggy, who had retaken his seat, the torn newspaper forgotten in one hand.

“Where did you hear that name?” he asked, his voice nothing more than a whisper.

“From Sorsha Kincaid. She’s consulting with the FBI on the theft. Six runes were stolen from the government, and all six are supposed to be from the Monograph. Why don’t you start by telling me what it is?”

Iggy put his hand on Alex’s, and it was trembling badly.

“No,” he said, his voice a gasp. “You can’t go looking for it, Alex. You mustn’t.”

Alex put his other hand atop Iggy’s.

“I’m not looking for it, Iggy. I swear. But my client’s brother may have had a part in stealing six pages from it that the government had. I need to know what it is, so I can figure out why he disappeared.”

Iggy took a shuddering breath and leaned back in his chair.

“All right,” he said. He rose and beckoned Alex to follow him. “This is a story that needs a fire, a cigar, and some cognac.” He led Alex into the library and opened the liquor cabinet on the back wall. “Make up a good fire, please,” he said. “I feel a chill.”

Alex poured coal in the grate, then tore out a fire rune from his rune book and lit it over the pile. In a few seconds the coal caught and warmth began to fill the room. Iggy poured a dark brown liquor into two large snifters, then set them in angled holders that tipped them on a forty-five degree angle. Just below the wooden holders were two small tea candles whose flames touched the glass, warming the cognac.

While the candles did their work, Iggy trimmed two cigars and handed one to Alex. Once each man had lit his cigar, they removed the snifters from the warmers and blew out the candles. Alex sipped the cognac and felt a warm glow spread through his body.

“You need to understand something, Alex,” Iggy began. “I’ve only shared this story with one other person in my entire life. There’s a reason I don’t share it.”

“Who did you share it with?”

“My best friend. His name was Felix Tafford.”

Alex caught the slight emphasis on the word was. “What happened to him?”

“All in good time,” Iggy said. “I suppose this story starts when I was in my third year at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. I had it in me to join His Majesty’s Navy and become a ship’s doctor. For a young man with my background, that was a big step up. Problem was, in order to join the Royal Navy and become an officer, I needed someone to sponsor my commission.”

He paused and took a long drink from the snifter, then sat back and puffed on the cigar. To Alex it looked as if the old man were steeling himself for the memories that would come.

“That’s where Felix Tafford came in,” Iggy continued. “He and I were pals at school, only his father was a Captain of the Line. With his connections, Felix could choose any post he wanted.”

“So he used his family connections to get you a commission.” Alex guessed. Iggy nodded.

“Just so. The only condition was that I had to meet Felix’s father and impress him, something that was rumored to be very difficult. I realized that if I was to have any chance at all, I had to present myself to Captain Tafford in person. So, I left school just as our Christmas holidays were starting and traveled south to the naval station on Gibraltar, where Captain Tafford was stationed. As it turned out, I impressed the Captain quite easily. He had picked up a case of the clap and didn’t want that on his service record.”

“Or getting back to his wife,” Alex said with a grin.

“Precisely,” Iggy said with a nod. “I wrote him up a cleansing rune that had him right as rain in a few days and he signed my commission papers right off.” Iggy chuckled at the memory, then his face turned serious again.

“I was waiting for my return ship to England when a strange thing happened. A ship was brought into port having been found adrift at sea with no one on board. This was no little sailboat, mind you, but an American brig, just drifting in the north Atlantic. Her stores were intact, so it was no act of piracy, and the ship was in good order, considering that she drifted over a month. The crew was just … gone.”

Alex sipped his cognac as he listened. Iggy’s voice was as powerful a weaver of magic as his hands.

“It made all the papers,” he said. “It was a sensation. All kinds of theories were offered as to what had happened, but there just weren’t enough facts to come to any conclusion. The admiralty put out a call for help to anyone with scientific, magical, or medical knowledge. Captain Tafford recommended me and I found myself on the deck of the Mary Celeste. That was her name.”

Something stirred in Alex’s memory. “Didn’t Arthur Conan Doyle write a story about that?” he asked. “You had me read it along with his other works.”

“Doyle changed her name to the Marie Celeste, but it’s the same ship.” Iggy nodded. “As I said, everyone had their theories. Anyway, I had just refined my first ghostlight formula, so I searched the ship for any signs of magic.”

He paused, staring into the fire, which was burning brightly now, filling the room with a ruddy warmth. Of course, that might also be the cognac.

“I take it you found some,” Alex said.

“In the captain’s cabin,” he said, his expression sad. “I was excited at first. In the middle of the floor, I found the rune. The finding rune.”

“The one from the Monograph,” Alex said. “The one that’s supposed to lead to it.”

“Yes.” Iggy leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I wish I’d never found it, or that I’d destroyed it, but I was young and ambitious. And foolish. I copied it down for the Admiralty. They were all very excited; my commission was assured. It was only after they left that I saw the shadows.”

“Shadows?”

Iggy trembled as if a cold wind had blown across him.

“There were ten crew aboard when the Mary Celeste left New York, including the Captain and his wife and daughter. They were all there, in the cabin, or rather what remained of them was. I didn’t see them until I was done with the rune. I looked up and there they all were. Ten shadows on the wall, each contorted as if they had been blinded by a bright light. It was all that remained of them when the rune exploded.”

Alex had seen runes explode before; they tended to do significant damage to the surfaces they were inscribed on. “How could you have found the rune’s residue if it exploded?” he asked. “Wouldn’t it have left a hole in the deck?”

“It wasn’t a physical explosion,” Iggy said. “It was pure magic. It had no effect on the wood of the ship, but it disintegrated the fragile bodies gathered around it. All that was left were their terrified shadows on the wall.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“No one would listen. You see, the captain of the Mary Celeste left a Lore book behind that detailed his search for the Monograph. Once the admiralty understood what it was, they wanted the Monograph for England. Unfortunately, many in the admiralty couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Stories began to circulate about the Monograph and the rune that would lead the worthy to it. The government hushed it up, of course, but enough people knew that it began to be fashionable for runewrights to search for the book.”

“Is that what happened to your friend?”

“I should have destroyed my notes,” Iggy said, sadness in his voice. “Eventually I broke the finding rune down into a more basic version.”

“That’s why I knew what it was,” Alex said. “The finding rune you taught me is made from the one in the Monograph.”

“Yes. I made the mistake of showing my finding rune to Felix. We had developed many of our runes together and he knew the limit of my abilities. From the moment he saw it, Felix knew I hadn’t come up with it on my own. He pestered me until I told him the whole story. From that day on, he was a changed man. He abandoned his commission and chased any mention of the Monograph all over Europe. We lost track of each other, but I heard rumors that Felix found other runes from the Monograph, but never the book itself.”

“Is he the one who gave the runes to the British?”

“Probably,” Iggy said. “Then one day he called me. Out of the blue. He said he’d figured it out, the finding rune, and that soon the Monograph would be his. He wanted me to come to his house. He wanted to share the book with me.”

“Sounds like a good friend.”

Iggy nodded and puffed his cigar.

“The best,” he agreed.

“Did you go?” Alex asked, afraid he already knew the answer.

“When I got there, Felix was gone.” A tear trickled down Iggy’s face and into his prodigious mustache. “I wanted to run, to just leave his flat and never return. But I … I had to know. I lit the ghostlight and there, on the wall, was Felix’s shadow, arms held over its head as though trying to block out the sun.”

Alex stood and poured more cognac into Iggy’s empty snifter.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” he said.

“It isn’t just Felix,” Iggy said. “In the years since the rune leaked out, hundreds of runewrights have disappeared, their invisible shadows burned into the walls of their flats and workshops.”

Alex remembered what the Sorceress told him.

“Sorsha said the government stopped researching the Monograph because twelve of their brightest minds went missing,” he said. “I take it their shadows ended up on walls somewhere too?”

After a long pause Iggy nodded.

“You see why I must insist, Alex,” Iggy said, grabbing his wrist. “You must forget about the Archimedean Monograph. Everyone who pursues it thinks they’ve broken the code and they all end up dead. Promise me.” He gripped Alex’s arm with more force than Alex would have given him credit for having. “Promise me that you will tear up whatever copies you’ve made of these runes. Promise me you’ll leave it alone.”

There was pain in the old man’s voice, but more than pain, there was panic. The idea that Alex would pursue the Monograph and its killer finding rune literally terrified Iggy. Alex knelt down by the old man’s chair and looked him square in the eyes.

“I promise you, Iggy,” he said. “I have no interest in becoming a shadow on the wall. I won’t go chasing after this book. Not now, or ever.”

Iggy closed his eyes and released Alex’s hand. Relief washed over his face and he leaned back in his chair and sighed.

“Good lad,” he said, patting Alex’s shoulder. “Thank you, Alex.”

Alex grinned and helped him up. Iggy had done so much for him, taking him in and training him to be a detective and a powerful runewright. To Alex, Iggy was a second father, well, third after Father Harry.

He really hated lying to the old man.