In Plain Sight

3 The Missionary

Alex didn’t bother with a barrier rune this time. There was a five-and-dime just across from Pemberton’s building and he wanted to tell Leslie the good news. He held his hat down and sprinted across the road.

The rain was coming down harder than he’d thought and he was soaked by the time he reached the store. He muttered a curse and pulled out his rune book before the dampness could soak through his jacket and ruin the pages. They were made of flash paper, the kind bookies used. It was nothing more than paper soaked in sodium nitrate then allowed to dry. The benefits were that if you set the paper on fire it would burn away to ash in less than a second, great for bookies who didn’t want to get caught with evidence and runewrights who wanted to create their runes ahead of time and use them later. The downside of flash paper was that it had to be very thin, so when it got wet, it turned into pulp.

Alex stepped inside the store and a bell rang as soon as the door opened. A girl in a floral print blouse, a white apron, and a paper hat leaned on a lunch counter lined with stools. She had brown hair and eyes, with freckles on her nose and a bored expression on her face. She brightened noticeably when Alex came in.

“Really starting to come down out there,” she said as Alex brushed the rain from his coat and shook out his hat.

“You said it,” he answered with a smile.

The girl reached below the counter and offered him a clean hand towel.

Alex set aside his rune book and wiped his hands until they were completely dry.

“Got a match?” he asked, tearing a moderately complex rune from his book. The girl pulled a box of stick matches from the front pocket of her apron and offered it to Alex. He stuck the rune to his already-wet hat, put the hat on his head, then set it alight. The paper disappeared in a flash and instantly Alex felt the clammy cold of wearing a wet hat disappear.

“Oh!” the girl said, her eyes growing wide.

Steam began to roll off of Alex as the rune’s magic dried out his clothes. This was one of his emergency runes, the ones that cost too much to use on a normal day but were worth having if the need arose. One of the few benefits of being a runewright was being able to have runes written in advance, ready when you needed them.

“That’s pretty impressive,” the girl said. “I wish I’d known you when I got caught in the rain in my silk blouse.” She signed. “Now it’s all full of water spots. I hate it every time I see it but the thing cost me a week’s salary, so I don’t have the heart to throw it out.”

Alex flipped to the back of his rune book. Here were a few blank pages, ready for whatever he needed. He pulled a pencil from his trouser pocket and drew a square. Flash paper tore easily, so he went slowly and used a pencil with soft lead.

“What’s that?” the girl asked.

Alex shushed her and focused on the symbol. Inside the square, he drew a circle, then a magical symbol that looked like a lighthouse being attacked by a steam shovel. As he drew, he felt power being drawn through him from whatever place magic occupied in the universe, through his pencil, and onto the paper.

“There,” he said, tearing out the page and handing it to the girl in the paper hat. “Put that on your silk blouse, carefully light just the paper on fire, and it’ll be good as new.”

The girl’s eyes lit up. They were very pretty eyes. “Really?” she said, her voice raising about an octave.

“Cross my heart,” Alex said with a smile. She clutched the delicate paper as if it were gold foil, then a sly look came over her.

“Can you make one that’ll fix the runs in my stockings?”

“Sure,” Alex grinned. “Trade me for some poached eggs on buttered toast?”

“Hard or soft?”

“Soft.”

“Deal,” she said. She returned his grin.

“I’m Alex,” he said sticking out his hand.

“Mary,” she said, taking it. “One Adam and Eve on a raft with axle grease coming up.”

“You got a phone in here, Mary?” Alex asked as he began drawing another Minor Restoration Rune.

“In back,” Mary said, pointing, as she set a pan of water on to boil.

He handed her the rune and made his way to the phone booth. Closing the door, he dropped a dime in the slot and dialed the number of his office.

“Lockerby Investigations,” Leslie’s voice came across the line, sounding tinny and flat.

“It’s me,” Alex said. “I just got done with the police job.”

“Any luck?”

“Yeah, they hired me. I even used a Temporal Restoration Rune, but I only charged them sixty for it. Be a doll and get a bill over to Police Headquarters right away, my usual fee plus the rune.”

“I’m already writing it up,” she said. “Do you have anything else on the docket or are you coming straight back?”

“I thought I’d have lunch first.”

“You know it’s two-thirty, right?”

“I haven’t had lunch,” he explained.

“Well,” Leslie said, that business tone coming back into her voice. “Father Clementine wants to see you.”

Alex swore. “Is his roof leaking again?”

“Yep,” Leslie said. “And it’s coming down pretty hard here. I didn’t want to tell you if you had work to do.”

“I always have time for the Father,” Alex said, irritation creeping into his voice. “You know that.”

“What I know,” Leslie replied, her voice going hard as well, “is that you spend a lot of time and resources helping the Father when you should be making money.”

“Give it a rest, Leslie,” Alex said. “I owe the Father plenty. Call him and tell him I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

Leslie promised that she would and Alex hung up.

Father Harrison Clementine ran the Brotherhood of Hope Mission out of an old ramshackle church smack in the middle of the west side’s outer-ring. In former days it had been a dance hall. Now it was a large open building with a three-story dormitory attached. Alex had spent five years living in that dormitory, between the ages of twelve and seventeen. His father had been a professional runewright, scribbling away minor restoration runes, like the ones Alex had just given to Mary, for a nickel apiece. The Lore Book that he inherited had some good runes in them, but Alex’s dad just didn’t have the talent to write them. He believed that if he only worked harder and longer than all the other runewrights, scribbling away for nickels, that somehow he wouldn’t be dirt poor. The only thing he got from all that scribbling in their cold apartment was pneumonia and an early grave. Alex’s mother had split the moment it became clear dad was never going to amount to anything, so that left Alex a twelve-year-old orphan.

Some suit from city hall wanted to put Alex in one of the city’s orphanages, but those places were hellholes. Kids as young as toddlers were crammed in with kids all the way up to seventeen, and they all were run by sadists who were in it for their government check. Alex saw enough of that right after his father’s death not to want any more. That was where Father Harry came in. Harrison Clementine had been their pastor for years and when Alex’s father died, he demanded that Alex be placed in his care at the mission. When the state said that only a licensed orphanage could apply to take Alex, Father Harry got the license. In the end, Father Harry put a roof over Alex’s head and food in his belly until Alex was old enough to do it himself. The Father also encouraged Alex to study his dad’s Lore Book and learn to write runes. If it wasn’t for the Father, Alex had no idea where he would have ended up, but it probably wouldn’t have been anywhere good.

He owed the Father more than he could ever repay, so if Father Harry needed new runes to keep the mission roof from leaking, Alex was happy to do it. Leslie didn’t understand, she couldn’t understand, and he didn’t blame her for that. She was right, helping the Father and his Mission was a drain on the business, but Alex simply didn’t care. Family was family, and Father Harry was family.

“Gonna have to take a rain check,” he said to Mary as he made his way back to the lunch counter.

“You sure?” she asked, her lips in an adorable pout. “It’ll only be another minute and a half.” As if to punctuate her words, the toast popped up from the toaster. The aroma of perfectly browned bread made his stomach growl.

He hesitated. Every minute he sat here was another minute water was pouring into the Mission’s great hall. On the other hand, it would take him at least thirty minutes to get there on the crawler and anything already wet wasn’t going to get any wetter if he took five minutes to eat.

“All right,” he said, sitting down. It didn’t hurt, of course, that Mary was such agreeable company.

Almost exactly a minute and a half later, she presented him with a plate of perfectly poached eggs on generously buttered toast.

“What did you call these?” he asked through a mouthful.

“That’s Adam and Eve on a raft with axle grease,” she said with a giggle.

Alex had heard this before, of course; waitresses and cooks in diners were always yelling such unintelligible nonsense around.

“You worked in a diner?”

“I love to cook, so I moved to the big city to try my hand here,” she said. Her voice had a lilting, far-away quality to it as she spoke. “Then, when I got here, I found out that being a cook anywhere is a serious boy’s club. The only jobs a woman can get cooking is places like this where you have to look good. No one ever wonders what the cook looks like in a diner, or a five-star restaurant for that matter.”

“Well, these eggs are perfect,” Alex said. He liked them soft, with the yokes hot but runny and the whites cooked hard, something an inexplicable number of cooks couldn’t seem to master.

“Thank you, Alex,” she said, beaming. When she smiled like that, Mary was really quite attractive.

Alex wolfed down his food and gave Mary a dime tip.

“Are you really a good cook?” he asked. She raised an eyebrow and leaned across the counter at him.

“Come back sometime,” she said. “Try me.”

Alex pulled out his pocket notepad and scribbled an address on it.

“There’s this place a few blocks from the park called The Lunch Box,” he said, tearing out the paper and handing it to her. “It’s a bit of a dog-wagon, but I know the owner. Ask for Max and tell him Alex Lockerby said you need to cook for him. He’ll give you a fair shot.”

“Hasn’t he got a cook?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But he stinks. The old cook retired and Max brought this new kid. He’s terrible. I hate to eat there anymore.”

“Why go?” Mary asked.

“It’s the only place near my apartment.”

“Thanks, Alex,” Mary said, tucking the paper into the pocket of her apron. “Will I see you again?”

“Sure,” Alex said. “I expect you to start cooking at my favorite place. You’ll see a lot of me then.”

“I think I’d like that,” Mary said with a very agreeable smile.

Alex doffed his hat, then took out one of Burt’s cigarettes and lit it. He tore a Minor Barrier Rune out of his book and cast it on himself.

“See you soon, Mary,” he said, then stepped out into the downpour.

The promise of paying work for the police let Alex justify the taxi ride over to Danny’s crime scene, but helping out Father Harry meant taking the crawler. Most big cities had a streetcar service, but New York’s was unlike anything in the world. The Crawler was one of J.D. Rockefeller’s inventions. Most sorcerers got rich marketing various enchanted materials, like Barton with his power capacitor in the Empire Tower, or Sorsha Kincaid, the Ice Queen who enchanted the metal disks used to keep iceboxes cold. Rockefeller was a whole different kind of sorcerer; when he put his power to work, he made tens of millions. When he first showed off the crawler, people said he’d finally gone insane.

Alex rounded the corner and made his way down the block to the crawler station. A half-dozen people were crowded under a metal awning that covered a single bench. As Alex approached, they all looked down the block expectantly, so he quickened his pace. The crawler swept into view, two blocks away, but it still made it to the station before Alex. It looked like a normal two-decker streetcar from the wheel carriages up, but it crawled along the ground on dozens of legs made of blue energy. It looked more like a giant, glowing centipede than a streetcar.

The crawler skittered to a stop and Alex jogged the last few feet to board. As he stepped up, he felt his weight cause the streetcar to shift a bit, then its legs adjusted and leveled it. The car was crammed with passengers, all huddling away from the doors to stay out of the wet and cold. Alex’s barrier would work for at least another half hour so he sat in one of the front stairwells and watched the city go by. The big advantage of crawlers was that they could go much faster than an electric or cable-driven streetcar, and they rode a lot smoother. They seemed to flow over even the roughest ground as if it were still water. For a dime, it was quite a ride.

Alex got off a few blocks from the Brotherhood of Hope Mission. Crawlers needed reliable power for their energy legs, so they never ventured too far into the outer ring. As he walked, Alex could feel his barrier rune beginning to fade and he quickened his pace. By the time he reached the mission, he was just beginning to get damp.

His knock at the door was answered by an old black nun who looked a hundred if she was a day. Despite her frail appearance, she let out a whoop of joy at the sight of Alex and hugged the stuffing out of him.

“How are you, boy?” she said when he’d finally disentangled himself from her. “Why haven’t you been around more lately?”

“I’m sorry, Sister Gwen,” he said. Alex blushed and didn’t hide it. “Things have been busy at work.”

Sister Gwen grunted, a sound that clearly indicated she thought this was a poor excuse.

“I hear the roof is leaking again,” he prompted, changing the subject. The old nun nodded and turned away, motioning for him to follow.

“Father Clementine’s been expecting you.”

She led him down familiar paths, past the dormitories and the kitchen and into the main hall. It was vast and open, like a warehouse, and Alex could see several unbroken streams of water falling down into strategically placed buckets. As he watched, two men in cassocks pulled a full bucket out from under one of the streams while an older man in a simple robe replaced it with an empty one.

“Be careful dumping that,” the man in the robe said. “I don’t want to have to mop the vestibule again.”

Alex gave Sister Gwen a parting hug and stepped up beside the older man. He was tall and worn with a craggy complexion and an enormous nose in the middle of his face. A thick crop of unkempt hair adorned his head, still jet black despite his being at least seventy. His hands were rough, calloused, and big, like boxers’ hands. As far as Alex knew, however, those hands had never been used in anger.

“I think two grown men can handle a bucket full of water,” Alex said.

“Alex,” the big man said, tuning to envelop Alex’s right hand in his. “How are you, son?” Before Alex could answer, he went on. “Sorry to bring you down here again, but…well, you see.” He waved at the leaks, as if somehow Alex might have missed them.

“No problem, Father,” Alex said. “Always happy to help out. In fact, I should have come down sooner to check on the runes.”

“You’re always welcome, Alex, you know that, but you’ve got your own life to lead.” He put his huge hand on Alex’s shoulder.

“Thanks to you,” Alex said, and meant it. “Now, do you have those roof tiles I need?”

Father Harry pointed over to a corner of the hall where the roof still seemed to be in good shape. “Brother Thomas has them on a table over by the good light.” He led Alex over to the table that stood under a shaft of bright light. “This corner is closer to Empire Tower,” Father Harry said. “This light never goes out.”

Alex laughed, setting his bag down next to a stack of fired clay roof tiles.

“I remember,” he said. He took a sharp metal stylus and a hard pencil from his bag, then added a jar of grayish paste and a small putty knife.

“I appreciate this, Alex,” Father Harry said. “I hate having to interrupt you at work.”

“It’s really no trouble, Father,” Alex said, tracing a modified Barrier Rune on the first tile. Once he carved it into the tile with the stylus and filled the cut with the wax solution of camphor oil and coal dust, the rune would cause all the nearby tiles to repel the rain.

Father Harry drew up a chair as if he intended to watch. From experience, Alex knew that he really wanted to talk. Alex had only lived here five years, but Father Harry had been like a real dad to him. He’d never admit it, but Alex looked forward to these talks.

“Maybe you should make the cuts deeper this time,” Father Harry said. “So they last longer.”

“You know it doesn’t work that way,” Alex said, smiling at the suggestion. “Runes wear out — that’s just what they do. If you want this roof to not leak permanently, you need to hire a sorcerer … or a roofer.”

Father Harry chuckled and sighed. “Too expensive. Thank God I’ve got you.”

“You do good work here, Father,” Alex said. “I enjoy helping. After all you did for me, it’s the least I could do. How’s the mission going these days?”

Father Harry’s countenance brightened.

“We’ve got two dozen people living in the guest wing, and we feed over a hundred every night.”

“Sister Morgan still do the cooking?”

“No,” Father Harry said. “She got too old. Asked to be transferred to a convent in Arizona. We’ve got a whole crop of new Brothers and Sisters now.” He looked sad for a moment as the years seemed to weigh on him. “The work goes on, though. There are always the poor and the forgotten to be cared for.” His countenance brightened after a moment. “So, how are things with you?”

Alex sighed.

“That bad?” Father Harry said, concern on his face. When Alex just shrugged, he grabbed Alex by the chin and pulled his face around so they were eye to eye. “You listen to me, boy. You’re a good detective and a fine runewright, God will give you a break one of these days.”

“God sure is taking his time about that,” Alex said, trying not to sound resentful.

“In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread,” Father Harry quoted.

“Genesis, chapter three, verse nineteen,” Alex recited. Father Harry had drilled the scriptures into his head while he lived at the mission.

“You know where it’s found but you don’t know what it means,” he said. “God doesn’t just give us the things we want, he expects us to work for them. To earn them.”

Alex flashed back to the lessons he’d had in this very hall. “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” he said.

“So you were listening,” Father Harry said, and smiled. “But did you learn the lesson?”

“If I keep working, the good Lord will bless me,” Alex said.

“In his good time,” the Father said with a compassionate smile and a nod. “We all must be patient.”

Alex looked up from his work and met the old man’s eyes.

“Thanks, Father,” he said. “I’ve been so busy, I must have forgotten.” He meant every word. It was impossible to let the world get the better of you when Father Harry spoke. He carried the light of his faith around like a torch that drove back the darkness. Alex wondered why he didn’t come back to the mission more often.

“So,” Father Harry said, a sly look crossing his face. “Have you found a nice girl yet?”

“Didn’t you just give me a lesson about patience and the Lord’s good time?” Alex asked, remembering why he didn’t come back very often.

Before the Father could rally, a Sister Alex didn’t know came hurrying across the floor.

“Father Clementine,” she said. “Sister Catherine can’t get the stove lit again.”

“Sorry, Alex,” Father Harry said, rising to his feet. “Duty calls.”

Saved by the bell, Alex thought.

Alex continued casting runes until the stack of tiles dwindled to nothing. As he finished each one, a Brother in a black cassock would take it up to a walkway that ran around the upper level, fitting it into a slot Alex had cut for them years ago. As each one went into place, the nearby leaks abruptly stopped.

As he worked, a thousand things came back to Alex. The time he scuffed up the floor with a pair of dime store roller skates. Sister Gwen had stayed up all night watching as Alex polished out the marks on his hands and knees. When Father Harry caught him smoking and made him eat the whole pack of cigarettes. He hadn’t touched another until he was out on his own. It wasn’t the plaza, but there were far worse places to grow up.

Somewhere in the middle of the stack, Father Harry came back and they spent the rest of the time catching up. It was one of the more pleasant evenings Alex had spent in a long time. Eventually, the smell of potato soup began to percolate through the hall. Based on the smell, a local butcher was giving the Mission his fresh scraps to add to the pot. Every little bit helped.

By the time Alex finished casting his runes on the roof tiles, the Brothers and Sisters of the Mission were setting out the evening meal to feed the poor. Alex couldn’t see it, but he knew that a line of ragged, downtrodden people had formed in the rain outside.

“Stay and eat with us,” Father Harry said, as Alex closed up his runewright kit and pulled on his suit jacket. Alex shook his head.

“Looks like you’ve got plenty of mouths to feed without mine. Call me when the roof leaks again.”

Father Harry put his hand on Alex’s shoulder and leaned close, as if he didn’t wish to be overheard.

“Can you come back on Saturday?” he asked quietly.

Alex thought about it, then shook his head. Saturdays were busy days in the detective business and he needed to be at the office. “I can’t on Saturday, but how about next week? I’ll come by and take you to lunch.”

Father Harry looked as if he would object, but then nodded.

“That sounds good,” he said, shaking Alex’s hand. “There’s a matter I need to discuss with you. In private.”

Alex was about to ask why the Father was acting so secretive, but his hand came away from the handshake with a five spot tucked inside.

“You know I can’t accept this,” he said, holding the bill up. Father Harry put one of his massive hands over Alex’s, closing it around the bill.

“Nonsense,” he said. “You really helped us out.”

“I can’t have you robbing the poor box to pay me,” Alex said.

Father Harry didn’t loosen his grip.

“I get a stipend from the church,” he said. “I put most of it into running this place, but I keep some back for my own use.” He looked Alex right in the eye, something he’d done often when Alex was growing up. Father Harry had a way of looking right into your soul with that gaze. “Let me do this,” he said. “The laborer is worthy of his hire.”

Alex smiled and nodded. For a moment, he was back in the mission school with the other neighborhood kids.

“First Timothy,” Alex said. “Chapter five, verse … twenty?”

“Eighteen,” Father Harry corrected. His craggy face wore a look of pride but there was sadness in his eyes.

“I’ll come by on Saturday,” Alex said. “Around noon.” His business would suffer for it, but he didn’t care. If the Father needed him, he would be there. It was as simple as that.

“Thank you, Alex,” he said. “Now get going. I’ve got work to do.”

Alex cast another Minor Barrier Rune and walked out into the rain, past the line of poor bedraggled men and women waiting for a simple meal. He made a mental note to tell Leslie about his Saturday appointment first thing tomorrow morning. She wouldn’t like it, but Alex didn’t care. If it hadn’t been for Father Harry, he might be standing in that line, soaked to the bone and waiting for the one decent meal he’d have all day.

It was late and Alex felt the strain of the last hours he spent scribing and casting runes. Magic taxed the body and mind as much as any physical work. He lit another of Burt’s cigarettes, then turned up his collar and headed for home in the flickering glow of the streetlights.