In "The District"
Officer Leonard McGuire was breathing heavily from the adrenaline pumping through him. It had been a good five minutes anyway since he'd caught sight of any of the others searching for the woman who'd been attacked on Baldridge Street and he was getting very nervous.
He was on the edges of "The District." Visible only a block away was a street of trendy shops that were in stark contrast to this place. There were several smells here-the smell of urine combined with an acrid burning odor from the smelters two miles away, and the occasional stifling and stale odor of death from the vermin and stray cats that roamed the area. McGuire wondered if those odors ever found their way to that fashionable street. He decided that the shop-owners had probably had a zoning ordinance passed against it.
He wasn't sure if he should draw his gun. Certainly he didn't need it to protect himself from the woman they were looking for-she was a victim, wasn't she? Of course, that fact posed two questions: If she was a victim, why had she run? And why to here? Good questions, he thought. And until he had the answers, it was wisest to play it safe. He unbuttoned the strap on his holster and withdrew his .38.
He had his back to the high windowless cement wall of an abandoned jeep factory. As he inched along the wall to the corner, and peered around it, deeper into "The District," he imagined that he smelled the tangy odor of oil mixed with other, far less pleasant smells.
He heard suddenly, from perhaps a hundred yards farther into "The District," "We only want to help you. Please come out." He didn't recognize the voice. "We only want to help you," the voice repeated urgently. "Please come out. Please tell us where you are."
And from deeper in "The District," he heard, "Detective Spurling. Over here!"
McGuire broke position and ran at a sturdy, fast clip toward the voice, his .38 pointed skyward.
~ * ~
Detective Third Grade Andrew Spurling thought, Hell, this is more like it! No more damned bad check warrants; now I'm going to get a little action. He was standing to one side of an open doorway, the cop who'd shot Benny Bloom was on the other. Spurling looked at the cop's name tag; he whispered, "What'd you hear, Mathilde?"
Officer Mathilde whispered back, "I heard someone groan in there." He nodded to indicate the darkened interior of the big red brick building; 40 years earlier, tank treads had been manufactured there.
"Male or female?" Spurting asked.
Mathilde smiled to himself. "It was kind of a neuter groan, Detective."
"Uh-huh," Spurting said. From behind him he heard the sound of running feet. He looked. McGuire was closing fast on them. Spurting waved urgently at him. McGuire veered off to the right. "Damned rookies," Spurling said to Officer Mathilde.
Mathilde smiled and nodded.
McGuire came up behind Spurling. "What's up?"
Spurling nodded urgently toward the doorway.
McGuire asked, "Is the perp in there?"
"Perp?" asked Spurling.
Mathilde whispered from the other side of the doorway, gun drawn now, "He means 'perpetrator,' Detective."
"What perpetrator?" Spurling asked.
McGuire answered, "The one in there, the one inside."
"He means the woman," Mathilde whispered.
And the three of them heard another low groan from within the building.
Spurling called, "Are you all right?"
Another groan.
"You in the building; are you all right? Are you hurt?"
Silence.
Spurling sighed. "I'm going in there. Cover me."
Mathilde nodded. McGuire nodded.
And Spurling launched himself into the building. He tucked, rolled, came up on one knee, gun pointed into the darkness. He heard a shuffling noise just ahead, as if someone were moving toward him across the huge room. He strained to see, but the fading daylight filtering into the building showed him little; he'd have to wait for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, he realized. "Stay right where you are!" he bellowed. He saw a shift in the darkness, a quick dull flash of green. "Stay right there!" He glanced quickly back toward the doorway. "Mathilde, McGuire, come in here." f He heard them move through the doorway.
"Jesus, it's dark in here," -McGuire said.
"Flashlight," Mathilde said, and moments later McGuire shone the strong white beam of a flashlight into the darkness.
And caught the midsection of a tight green dress. He raised the flashlight. A woman's face-huge brown eyes, full red lips-appeared. These words, velvet and sensual and inviting, came from it: "Welcome, welcome. I have need of you."
~ * ~
The Following Day
Item from the Buffalo Evening News
Psychic says: "Watch out, Buffalo"
Nationally acclaimed psychic Ryerson H. Biergarten said yesterday that a "psychic storm" is brewing in Buffalo and that residents would do well to keep their doors and windows locked.
"I'm not sure of the focus of this storm," he explained. "I can say only that I have sensed extremely powerful forces at work in the underbelly of this city, and that these forces, if allowed to gain a foothold, could cause a great deal of trouble."
While he apologized for seeming to be an alarmist, Mr. Biergarten said it is the first time in his career as a psychic investigator that he has made such a pronouncement. "This psychic storm seems to be the result of the commingling of a number of psychic influences-all of them very, very real," he added.
Asked to characterize the source of this psychic storm, Biergarten apologized yet again and explained that the only word that came to him would, as he put it, "play havoc with my credibility, although I believe that in this instance it describes very real and very dangerous entities."
That word? "Demons," Biergarten said.
~ * ~
The Same Day
Item from the Buffalo Daily News
Bizarre Incident on Baldridge Street
Authorities are still investigating the police shooting of Benjamin Bloom, 16, on Baldridge Street yesterday afternoon. According to Tenth Precinct Captain Jack Lucas, Bloom was shot by Officer Isaac Mathilde while Bloom appeared to be in the process of attacking an unidentified woman. That woman is alleged to have attacked, in turn, 33-year-old Lilian Janus, of Buffalo. Mrs. Janus is listed in satisfactory condition with severe facial lacerations at Buffalo Memorial Hospital.
The woman allegedly attacked by Benjamin Bloom is still being sought at this time. She was last seen in the Arnsworth and Peacock Street section of the city, an area commonly known as "The District."
A connection between this incident and a murder on Lawrence Street has definitely been ruled out, according to Captain Lucas.
~ * ~
Captain Lucas leaned back in his desk chair and put his hands behind his head. "Enlighten me, Mr. Biergarten," he said, "just what sort of demons are you talking about?"
Ryerson, who was seated in front of Lucas's desk, answered, "I can tell you only what I saw, and how I interpreted it."
"You mean in this 'vision' of yours? I'll bet you have lots of visions, right, Mr. Biergarten?"
Ryerson sighed. "Can you forget your animosity for just a moment? I'm trying to tell you that your city is in trouble, for God's sake-"
"And do you know that I could have charges of incitement filed against you, Mr. Biergarten? What in the hell did you go to the newspapers for?"
Ryerson ignored the remark; he began, "Captain, there are indeed, as I told the reporter, entities in this city-"
Lucas came forward suddenly, slapped his hands hard on the top of the desk. " ‘Visions’,’entities'?!-for Christ's sake, man, you sound like you've got rats loose in your head!"
Ryerson asked pointedly, "Why did you let me in here to talk to you, Captain?"
The question took Lucas aback. He stared at Ryerson for a few moments, then he stammered, "Well, Jesus … somebody's got to keep you in line."
Ryerson shook his head. "No. You let me in here because you know that what I'm saying is true, because you know that these … these entities I'm talking about are real-"
Lucas pushed himself to his feet, his face beet red from anger. "I want you out of my city, Mr. Biergarten! I am ordering you to get out of my city!"
Ryerson calmly shook his head. "You don't have that right, Captain, and you know it." He stood, winced against the psychic onslaught of Lucas's anger, went on. "What have you got now? Four people dead? Five? By the time the week is done, that number will probably triple."
Lucas pointed stiffly at 'the door. "Get out!"
Ryerson nodded. "We'll talk again," he said. And even as he said it, he read again, as he had during their first meeting, something within the man that shamed him so much he hid it even from himself. And he read this, too: The man did not look ahead. His outlook on himself was very, very limited. Most people thought of themselves not only in terms of the past, but also in terms of the future-what has been, and what will be, so the picture that presented itself to Ryerson was usually very broad. Not so with Lucas. Ryerson could see only half of the picture. Only the past. And he wasn't at all sure why.
~ * ~
Benny Bloom's surgery had gone well and he was recovering in a semi-private room on the hospital's second floor, near the maternity wing. He'd already received a lot of get-well cards and they festooned the area around his bed. On a small roll-about table there was a cute card from his playful Aunt Greta ("Hospitals," it read, "are okay if you don't mind," flip the page, "surly nurses, doctors with bad breath, cardboard food, basic beige, a morgue in the basement, going broke to get well-and that reminds me-get well soon!") and near it a handmade card from his Uncle Floyd, who wrote miserably confessional poetry for various small literary magazines, and around those two, arranged in a neat semi-circle-Benny had a wide streak of orderliness-there were half a dozen cards from classmates at Buffalo Pierpont High School, where he was a senior much liked by the high honor roll crowd.
On the floor, again set up in a semi-circle, were six more cards. One was from his mom, who'd written on the envelope, "To my little boy-may he feel no pain," another was from a great-aunt who saw herself as something of a homey, if confusing, philosopher; her card went on and on, in her own hand, about the rightness of suffering and pain, "if only," it proclaimed, "as a state of looking backwardness and gaiety yet to come." Benny took pleasure and consolation from all these cards. They told him that there were lots of people in the world who cared about him, regardless of the fact that he was more than a little odd.
He said now, to a young nurse named Carlotta Scotti, a tall, olive-skinned brunette who had only recently earned her R.N., "You're not surly at all, Carlotta."
She looked bemusedly at him. "Thank you, I guess," she said.
He nodded at his Aunt Greta's card. "That card says nurses are surly. But I think you're great." His voice was strong and sure, although the rest of him was still weak from surgery.
"I think you're great, too, Benny." She put one hand below his right shoulder, the other on his right thigh. "Do you think you could turn over just a little bit?" she said, and, with his help, she turned him so his buttock was exposed. "Hold it there for just a moment, Benny."
His head was turned away. She heard a strange, soft giggle come from him.
"We're not going to be using the needle today, Benny."
"I don't mind needles," he said.
"Well I do," said Nurse Scotti, smiling at his machismo.
"I really do think you're great," Benny said.
"Quiet now," said Nurse Scotti.
Another strange, soft giggle came from Benny, a little stranger than the first, a little less soft. "That didn't hurt at all, Carlotta," he said.
"I haven't done it yet," she said.
"Do it then," he said.