Nightworld

MANHATTAN

"W' happen t' yer car, buddy?"

The drunk had been staggering along the glass-littered sidewalk; he'd veered toward Jack's Corvair as it pulled into the curb in front of Walt Duran's apartment building.

"Ran into some bugs," Jack said as he got out.

The drunk stared at the torn top. He was fiftyish, overweight, and needed a shave; he wore a gray wool suit that looked to be of decent quality, but it was filthy. A liter bottle of Bacardi Light dangled from his hand. His complexion was ghastly in the yellow light.

"Tore her up bad, didn't they," he said, then his face screwed up and he began to sob. "Just like they tore up my Jane!"

Jack didn't know what to do. What do you say to a crying drunk? He put a hand on the guy's quaking shoulder.

"Hang around. Maybe I can help you out."

The guy shook his head and stumbled off down the sidewalk, still sobbing. Jack hurried up the steps to Walt Duran's apartment house. He pressed the button for Walt's room but got no answering buzz. The glass panel in the front door was broken. Maybe the buzzer was too. Jack reached through the shattered pane and turned the inside knob. Then he hurried up to the third floor.

Despite repeated knocks, Walt didn't answer his door. Concerned now, Jack pulled the piece of clear, flexible plastic he kept in his back pocket, slipped it between the door and the jamb, and jimmied the latch. The door swung open.

"Oh, jeez," Jack said as he viewed the carnage within.

The front room was a shambles of shattered glass, torn upholstery, and broken furniture. Jack dodged through the wreckage and hurried to the bathroom where he'd installed Walt last night. Empty, damn it. He went to the one remaining place to look, the tiny bedroom.

Blood. Blood on the sheets, on the floor, on the transparent daggers remaining in the frame of the smashed bedroom window.

"Walt," Jack said softly, staring at the dry brown streaks on the glass. "Why didn't you come back with me last night? Why didn't you stay locked up like I told you?"

Angry and sad, and not sure which to give in to, he wandered back to the bathroom. Walt's metal-working tools were set up across the rust-stained tub. But where were the necklaces? He probably hadn't finished them, but Jack knew he'd started them.

And what was Jack going to do without the copies?

Then he spotted something silvery gray and serpentine in the tub, under the work board. He dropped to his knees and reached in. Out came a necklace.

Jack cradled it in his hands and stared at it. The sculpted, crescent-shaped links, the weird engraved inscriptions, the pair of topazes with dark centers. The look of it, weight of it…a deluge of memories, most of them bad, engulfed him. He especially remembered the night he had worn the genuine article, how it had kept him alive when he should have died, how removing it had damn near killed him.

He shook off the past and felt a lump form in his throat for the man who had made this.

"Walt," he whispered. "You were the best."

He reached into the tub and found the second necklace. But when he got a good look at it, he groaned. It was only half a necklace. The links on the left side were blank. Walt hadn't got around to engraving them before…well, before whatever had happened to him.

One and a half necklaces wasn't going to cut it. Jack's plan required two phonies to get the two real ones.

He got to his feet and stuffed the completed necklace into his pocket. He'd have to come up with a new plan.

Out on the street again, he looked around for the drunk and spotted him sitting on the curb at the corner. He called to him, but the guy was absorbed in staring down at the sewer grate beneath his feet. Jack walked toward him.

"Hey, fella!" he called. "I'll get you to a safe place where you can sober up."

The guy looked up. "Somebod's downair," he said, pointing into the sewer. "Can't see'm but I hear 'm movin' 'round."

Jack wondered if people were hiding in the sewers from the night things.

"Swell. But I don't think you'll fit through that opening, so—"

"Probly c'use a drink," the guy said and reached down to pour some of his rum through the grate.

Something flashed up from the sewer, something long and thick and brown whipped out and grabbed the drunk by his neck and yanked him down face first onto the grate, nearly breaking his spine in the process. Then it began tugging him into the opening in the curb face. Not slowly, smoothly, inexorably, but with violent heaves, accompanied by sprays of blood and frantically but futilely flailing arms and legs. Three heaves did it. Before Jack could recover from his shock and take a single step forward to help, the man was gone. All that remained behind were splashes of blood and a bottle of rum on its side, slowly emptying its contents into the sewer after its owner.

Jack backed up a few steps, then turned and ran for Ralph. There weren't people hiding in the sewers from the night things, there were night things—big night things—down there hiding from the day.