Late morning found me sitting across a desk from Tony Fleming again. The detective squadroom smelled of overcooked coffee, warring aftershaves, and old scuffed schoolroom floor tiles.
Tony sipped from a styrofoam coffee cup emblazoned with an insanely cheery convenience store mascot.
"You don't drink the coffee here?" I asked.
He smiled over the lid. "I don't think anyone does, not more than once. The pot's just here for the smell. There's a Seven-Eleven on the corner across the street. They love us. Not only do we buy a helluva lot of coffee, but there isn't a safer mini-mart anywhere in the city."
He set the coffee on his desk blotter and glanced at his watch.
"I can give you about ten minutes before I need to be somewhere," he said. "What's up?"
"Remember how you suggested I keep you informed on StormFront and the like? I'd like to trade some info with you."
He looked me levelly in the eyes and started speaking in someone else's voice. "‘You know that's not how we do things around here.'"
"Is that your lieutenant?"
"The captain."
"I've never met him."
"Too bad," he said. "The guys say I do him dead-on. Anyway, even though that's not how we do things around here, that's how we do things around here. Whaddaya got?"
"Three days ago, your boys looked in on a semi-suspicious death in Montrose Park named Darren Piper. Looked like natural causes."
He shrugged. "I wasn't on it. What about him?"
"Piper was a member of StormFront."
He cocked an eyebrow and looked as much like Jack Nicholson as a black man could.
"Is he related to what you're working on?"
"Looks like it."
"Of course, since you won't say what you're working on, that doesn't help me."
He waited.
"That's it?" he asked.
"Pretty much, yeah."
"That and a buck'll get you hash browns. What are you looking for in exchange?"
"Piper's truck wasn't at his home. As soon as it's found, I want to know where."
Tony leaned forward. "The fact that you know so much about an open case is more than a little disturbing. You think it was stolen?"
"I doubt anyone went out of their way to jack a ten-year-old half-ton Silverado. I think it got left where Piper really died."
"So. You want to come and investigate right alongside us."
"I'm sure I'll have a viewpoint that will shed some light on your investigation," I said.
His eyebrow stayed arched as he watched me and thought.
"And if you run across the truck first you'll of course tell us," he said.
"Of course," I replied. I didn't say anything about how soon after finding it I'd call him. He knew that. Tony doesn't miss a trick.
And right in the middle of these complex negotiations, my cell phone rang.
I intended merely to glance at the number and stow it away, but the caller was Ernst Vielstich.
"I need to take this," I said, and turned ninety degrees in my seat in that gesture that we modern people believe somehow gives us greater privacy.
"This is Rennie," I said.
"Miss Avalon," said Vielstich, enunciating clearly into the phone. "There is a man here in my apartment to whom I think you should speak."
"All right, put him on."
"No, I misspoke. I believe you should come over here and visit with him."
"And who would this be, Mr. Vielstich? One of your archival associates?"
"No, this is a man whom I have never met before. He says his name is Philip Castler."
** ** **
I don't even know what excuse I tossed Tony as I scrambled out of the police station and behind the wheel. From Vielstich's demeanor, Castler wasn't threatening him. That could mean he meant to break ranks with Mueller. I wanted to get there before he changed his mind. All the same, I made sure my holster was firmly clipped to my belt under my jacket before I left the car.
It took conscious effort to calm myself before I knocked on Vielstich's door and was ushered into the library-smelling living room. This time I didn't even notice the colors and the dust motes in the sunbeams. Castler dominated the room from where he stood.
Not because of size, or even any particular magnetism. He just looked so terribly out of place, and he knew it.
I had never seem Philip Castler up close before. He wasn't any taller than 5'11", and fairly slight for a blue-collar worker. But his simply cut black hair and full untrimmed black beard gave an impression of bearishness, accentuated by the dark wiry body hair sprouting up from his workshirt collar and hanging down from his rolled-up sleeves. His awkward body language treated the books around him not as cozy furnishings, but as foreign and possibly dangerous items. Which they were, I guess, though I doubt he knew that.
I extended my hand. He took it, shook it, and ran his hand through his hair nervously.
"I have been asking Mr. Castler," Vielstich said, "to please have a seat, but he seems to prefer to stand. No doubt the result of too much coffee this morning. Perhaps he will consent to sit for you, Miss Avalon, while I make some tea."
"I can't stay that long," Castler protested. "I took an early lunch. I have to get back soon."
"In that case," I said, "perhaps we'd best cut to the chase. Can someone bring me up to speed on what's already been discussed?"
"I know Hans Mueller," Castler blurted. "Hans mentioned Mr. Vielstich's name when he was showing us... when he was talking about..."
"Miss Avalon knows about the book," Vielstich said.
"Yeah. That book." Castler looked like he was about to start pacing, and sat abruptly. I sat opposite him, and Vielstich settled into his own chair.
"God, it seemed like such a good idea," Castler said. "Hans came to us with this great idea. He said we could get this magic book that Himmler had but was too scared to use, and it would give us the power to get rid of the.. the non-whites, once and for all. You'd think we'd start laughing when he started talking about magic. I thought I would. But I didn't. Hans was so intense. You just couldn't disbelieve him, whatever he said. He had no home; he'd lost his job back east because his new boss was a nigger, and he just hitchhiked until he found us. But he was just so commanding in person. Like a king without a throne."
Vielstich didn't go for the tea. We just sat there, listening, afraid that any movement on our part might shut him up.
"Then Darren died. When we did the ritual. And Hans... he changed. He was sincere before, and dedicated, but now he was more than that. Hard, and cruel, and cold. And he started doing things that normal people just couldn't do. Things like--"
But the sentence was never finished, and we got a firsthand demonstration of what he was talking about. Something impacted on Vielstich's front door twice, like a battering ram.
Then the door cracked and flew open, Vielstich's shiny new deadbolt splintering through the wood of the doorjamb.
And Hans Mueller stood there, jaw set in stone, eyes flashing like the chosen messenger of some dark god.
