I remembered a face, elongated and a little blurred, that I’d once seen. It was a tall elf with a smile that said, “How stupid these mortals are.”
On the A train downtown, I got a seat and thought over that first time I felt an alien presence and how close I came to dying from it.
In ’41 I did undercover work, none of it strictly official. My old regiment was the Sixty-Ninth, “The Fighting Irish,” and our colonel was Donovan—the one they called “Wild Bill.” Later he was the guy who started the OSS and became the US intelligence chief in World War II. But even before that war, he had connections in Washington and an interest in foreign espionage in New York City. He got to do something about it.
The colonel remembered me. I got called down to his office on Wall Street. Right then, my marriage was over and there was a limit to how long the wedding of the police department and me was going to last.
So I got seconded to Wild Bill along with half a dozen other chewed-up old vets on the force. Most of what we investigated turned out to be minor stuff: crazy little Krauts up in Yorkville who wore Kaiser Wilhelm helmets and sent out ham-radio reports about freighters leaving the port of New York; German bars out in New Hyde Park on Long Island where the neighbors reported the patrons said “Sieg Heil,” gave the Nazi salute, and had pictures of Hitler up above the bar.
Rumors and stories about mysterious strangers came in from all over the city. We went crazy trying to keep up with them. Then we stumbled on a sleeper operation out on the Brooklyn waterfront. They were accumulating operatives, waiting for the great day when we’d be at war and they could start blowing up bridges. We nabbed a couple of them. But the rest melted away.
Right after that, a call came in one night about activity on a pier in Red Hook. We were stretched thin. I had no backup. Maybe I was tired and that made me careless. Maybe part of me wanted to use up whatever leftover life I had. But I went out there without even a driver.
The one who’d made the call must have dreamed about someone like me showing up: a dumb asshole with plenty of information about Wild Bill and his band of veterans. The gate on the street was open. A long wooden shed stood on the pier. A dim light shone in a window. I knocked. Nothing. I tried the door and it swung open. A light shone somewhere at the end of an empty two-hundred-foot shed.
I took a step inside. Someone had me by the throat and started to choke me. I spun around. No one was behind me. I drew my .38. Something knocked me flat, and the gun fell on the floor. My arm might as well have gone with it. I couldn’t feel it, couldn’t make it move.
That long face with that amused smile flickered. It wasn’t a thing I saw with my eyes. It was inside my head. And I felt every bloody memory get sucked out of me: Colonel Donovan, the other cases I’d worked on, friends and family, the telephone number of a waitress I was seeing, my batting average when I played twilight baseball as a kid in 1914.
When the one that had me found all it wanted, my lungs stopped, my lights started going out. I wasn’t coming back and thought I was stupid enough that I probably deserved to die. But to go like this pissed me off royally.
A little later I came to and found myself in a movie. The light was dim and this woman and guy, tall and slim, who looked like the stars of this movie, crouched over me, elegant and seeming to flicker slightly around the edges.
As that came into my mind, they looked at each other and smiled. I realized they knew what I saw and thought. Her name was Bertrade and his was Darnel. I knew all that without being told. Still being mostly numb probably made everything easier to accept.
“You’ll be well,” she said. There was an accent I couldn’t place. “We have taken care of your friend.”
Bertrade turned her head, and somehow I had a glimpse of what she saw. The one who’d attacked me, a tall guy with his head shaved, sat on the floor, leaned against the wall, glassy eyed. I understood they had him under a kind of spell.
“An elf on a mission,” Darnel said, “and a mutual enemy.” I knew without them speaking that they were Fey, loyal subjects of the King beneath the Hill. They were lovers, tourists in the city. Even half in shock I knew that the first was true and the second was a cover. They were operatives.
Things weren’t good between their people and the King of Elfland. My city, my world, was a kind of buffer between the two countries. Elfland favored Germany in the war going on in Europe.
They’d been watching our elfin friend when I showed up and they nailed him as he smothered me. From thinking this was a movie, I gradually decided it was a dream, and a crazy one. I tried to push myself up.
As a kid I’d thought I was right handed. Then I broke some fingers when I was maybe twelve and learned I was better with my left. Now it was like the left arm was gone. I fell back and banged my head. “I’m useless,” I said.
They touched my memories of my short, bad war and long, lousy marriage. She frowned and shook her head at my misfortunes. “I’d want you to be in any unit where I served,” he said. First Darnel and then Bertrade touched my dead arm, quietly spoke words I didn’t understand. The two said goodbye and that we’d meet again. Then they were gone, and the elf with them.
Feeling came back, and my arm was better than new. I never told anyone else what had happened that night. Walking up Sixth Avenue to the Bigelow Building ten years later, it felt like a movie and a dream.
I let myself into my office, sat down, and called the answering service. It was night now and Gracie was off duty. The young lady who answered gave me a few messages. A call about a case that was going nowhere, one from somebody who wanted to sell me things, a couple of calls from people who wanted me to pay them: all calls that were going to wait.
Then there was a message from Anne Toomey asking me to call. I looked over my case notes, scribbled a few more details, and dialed the Toomeys’ number. I let it ring three times, and three more to be sure. They didn’t have an answering service, and I decided they could wait until tomorrow.
Instead I went out and had a bite to eat, and a drink or two, at McNulty’s, where the cops go. After that I spent some more of the Beyers’ fee at Moe’s on Third Street, where the cops and the hookers go. I finally settled in at the Cedar Tavern over on University Place, because Lacy Duveen, who tends bar there, would rather talk to me than listen to painters arguing.
Lacy got his nickname for working over Tiger Shaughnessy’s face with the laces of his gloves after Tiger hit him in the groin during a preliminary bout at the Garden. He and I go back to when we played pickup ball games on the East River as kids.
We talked about the time he was catching, and all the way from deep center I tossed out a skinny Italian guy at home plate. It was twilight baseball. The light was fading, and the other guy claimed I hadn’t thrown anything, and that Lacy had pulled a ball out of his pocket. In fact I’d thrown a perfect left-handed strike right over the plate. Naturally, it ended in a fight, which we won.
——
Next morning I woke up in my room with that throw on my mind. I’ve awakened in worse shape, and there was still a bit of the morning left. I’d had a dream of Bertrade that got away from me as I grabbed for it.
Out the window I saw it was a chilly, drizzling day on Cornelia Street. When I had washed and shaved and dressed, I put on my trench coat and wide-brimmed fedora.
When I came downstairs, Mrs. Palatino, the landlady, had her door on the first floor open and her television on as usual. She liked to show off that TV. Some guy in a chef’s hat was chopping celery and talking in a French accent.