I called Jonesy and he was around with the car before we could down our drinks. Dee insisted on sitting up front. She spent the short ride teasing the driver about his dreads, feeding him cherries from the glass she has liberated from the bar and generally flirting her super-slim fit jeans off. In the back seat, Liahna quietly thumbed away at her phone oblivious to my existence next to her. I stared out through the tinted glass onto twilight streets, fighting back the morning’s grisly crime scene visions at each intersection.

The Loft turned out to be an old two-story warehouse. A massive open common area comprised the front half of the first floor. It was sparsely furnished with junk store relics and curbside cast offs. A number of strung out party people were sprawled around the room or wandering about with a lack of focus specific to afternoon intoxication. Somewhere, unseen, someone was playing Victrola era pop standards on a ukulele.

I was relieved to find that Murzim had yet to wake from his afternoon disco nap. I was far too exhausted for another rhetorical pissing match. Further toward the rear of the space, the open area gave way to a rats’ maze of tiny make shift sleeping areas, cobbled together out of whatever was at hand from proper plywood sheeting to old wooden doors and lopsided bookcases.

Liahna led us through to a far back corner of the building where a properly constructed room stood with sheet-rocked walls that reached the ceiling and a locked, reinforced door. Dee pulled a hairpin from somewhere mysterious and with little effort picked the lock and kicked open the door. Then, without a word and only a funny sort of wave, she wandered off leaving us to our minor B&E.

Murzim’s library was impressive. Modern technology may have set most information free but it also increased the perceived value of the undigitized, the rare and the arcane. Secure libraries stocked with hand bound volumes of forgotten text have become sources of social leverage and personal power. By the looks of things, Jimmy Murzim had been hard at work assembling his very own great study. Liahna went to the shelves with familiarity and purpose, and returned with two slim, leather bound volumes. She laid them out in front of me on a table.

“I’ll grab some drinks, what’s your pleasure?”

“Anything brown, preferably with a cube of ice in it.”

She left to fetch drinks, leaving me unattended in the Pop Magus’ study. I opened the larger of the two books. The name Eon MacEndroe was inscribed on the title page like a child’s schoolbook. To be honest, after all my years of chasing down books, parchments and assorted items of supposedly occult provenance, I still cannot tell a real from a fake. It is my experience that the level of authenticity of an occult item can only be judged by the value its owner or more importantly, its seeker places on it.

I was not actually there to examine the books. What I wanted were answers to the other mystery. I wanted insight in to the Black Shuck. I scanned the room while casually turning the pages of MacEndroe’s precious tomes. On the table, I saw a pile of the braided rubber bracelets with the center strap empty. Next to the bracelet was a box of disposable syringes.

As I turned to the second MacEndroe book, the pages fell open to reveal a peculiar sheet of wax paper. My interest piqued, I picked the weighty piece of film up and held it to the light to get a better look. Within a sheet of folded paper was a flattened greasy mass. On closer inspection, I made out a flattened face, arm, legs and gossamer thin wings. On the books’ following page was a hand drawn likeness of the same creature but when it was alive and had yet to be flattened. It was a book pressed fairy. However, unlike the cute and colorful versions in children’s novelty books, this fairy looked more like a grayed piece of jerky with appendages. The gruesome sight sent my mind racing.

“How about that? Fucking Quincy had it right all along.”

“What’s that?”

Liahna had re-appeared suddenly. I quickly shut the book returning the sad little fairy to its parchment mausoleum.

“Nothing, just mumbling on about ancient TV shows.”

“All I could manage was warm Old Granddad in a plastic cup.”

“That will do fine. Thanks. Liana what’s the deal with the bracelets? I notice you don’t wear one.”

“Oh, it’s a totally cheesy money maker for Jimmy. A certain amount of cash for the cause gets you into his special club and a special bracelet to show it off. It’s very high school. He has sort of phased it out lately.”

“Do you know a girl named Phoebe Stevens?”

“Only in passing, she crashes here sometimes. She was at the party last night. Why Dick you looking for a bit of young tail?”

“No, but you may want to ask Jimmy about her.”

An unkempt spark of jealousy flickered in her eyes.

“No, no, I just… I don’t know. I’m exhausted the more strung out I get the more questions I ask. It comes with the job or the madness. I’m not sure which. I should probably get going.”

“What about the books?”

“Oh, yeah, they look authentic to me. I’ll call Henderson tomorrow and set up a meeting. Here I’ll give you my number.”

I gave her my cell number. Which meant I would have to ditch the phone when this was all over and start fresh, but if everything worked out as planned that would not be a problem. I let myself out, closing the front door just as I heard footsteps and growl of Jimmy Murzim fresh from his afternoon nap.

***

Defying protests from my aching muscles, I decided to walk back to the Serpent. I needed to let all the bizarre puzzle pieces float about on the night air. The entire tangled and gnarled scene mapped itself out in an unstable myriad of gray hues with few discernible outlines. Which MacEndroe did I trust least? How did Murzim’s stupidity weigh against his arrogance? Did that even matter, with a pile of dead kids stacking up in the street?

By the time I reached The Serpent, it was late for a weeknight. The welcome sound of booze-amplified voices drifted through the open windows. As I reached for the door, a heavy hand dropped on my shoulder.

“It’s a lovely evening Swingshift, what do you say we go for a moonlight stroll?”

Henderson’s smug grin greeted me as I turned around. We walked in silence a short way to a deserted industrial block. A warning sounded deep in my skull but I was too exhausted to out talk or out run the cheap goon. A blackout Lincoln was parked half way down the block with the engine running.

“Get in the back Swingshift. We’re going for a ride”

“Listen friend we already covered my aversion to cars…” Henderson pulled his cheap tweed blazer aside to expose a shoulder harness holding a mean looking Beretta.

“We’ll work out the carbon offsets later, alright?” He opened the back door and I got in.

Inside MacEndroe was sitting in silence. Henderson dropped the big town car into drive and pulled away.

“Henderson says you have good news for me. That you have found my daughter”

I was not surprised that Henderson had been tailing me but I could not say what he had seen or if he was just bluffing. The air conditioning in the town car, mixed with exhaustion, gave me the cold sweats. I was too spent to dance around with MacEndroe, especially now that he and his goon had the drop on me. My only play was to lean in on him hard and fast before he could turn me around.

“Yep, I tracked down your daughter and more importantly I tracked down the items you are actually looking for. I don’t particularly like being lied to and sent on a goose chase by my client, no matter how much money he throws around.”

There was a pause as MacEndroe lit a cigar.

“What are you playing at Swingshift?” He almost sounded sincere.

“The books, Mac, the two your lovely daughter lifted from you on the way out the door. The two texts she gave to Jimmy Murzim. She still has them but the problem is she drives a hard bargain. I can get them back from her but it will cost you $250K. She’s out for your blood over you locking down her trust fund and probably some other unresolved issues but I’d like to stay out of family affairs if I can.”

The car was silent. Out the window, I noticed that we were crossing the bridge into Manhattan. The warning sirens in my head were growing louder. A good five minutes went by without a word.

“Are you suggesting that all I care about are some raggedy old fairy tales? That they are more important to me than my own flesh and blood?”

His words were swirled in a massive exhale of putrid cigar smoke. He spoke calmly but I could hear the tension in his voice, the taught phrasing tearing at the seams.

“Yes, you half bright dandy, that is what I am saying.”

There was another leaden silence. The car was so full of smoke I could not make out MacEndroe’s expression from a few feet away. A creeping nausea rose inside me, coaxed up by the thick smoke and claustrophobic tension. I was fumbling to crack a window when the old man erupted in a jarring roar.

“You cheap no good hood. How dare you try to pull one over on me you low rent bitch. I should have you tossed in the East River but that would be too fucking good for you. You worthless shit.”

Henderson pulled the Lincoln up on a curb, yanked me from the car and threw me out into the traffic streaming off the bridge. I lurched and swerved about, just barely escaping being run over. As the Lincoln lurched off into the night, I could still hear MacEndroe cursing and spitting in the back seat.

I sat down on the curb hoping it would stop the world from spinning around me. I ended up pouring my guts into a sewer drain all the same. Once through the day’s coffee and whiskey as well as a few rounds of dry heaves, I lay back on the cool concrete sidewalk and looked up at the luminous night sky. The lights of the bridge twinkled in the corner of my vision. Cars rushed from the bridge and funneled into the LES’s tiny streets. I laid there on Delancey for some time, in the shadow of some long deserted storefront, silently re-evaluating the aggressive nature of my recent negotiating strategy.