Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

He didn’t give me much to go on. The guy they were after, last calling himself Stefan Zeitsheim, had stepped off a boat out of Odessa that had arrived here in New York a few days ago. He had no papers, but had given everyone the slip. He was being hunted. So my job was to find him first.

I may not have the quickest brain this side of the Atlantic, but I figured out pretty sharply that if these handsome guys were good buddies of Mr. Zeitsheim, he would have made a beeline for them once he’d slipped the ship. But obviously he was looking forward to meeting them with as much enthusiasm as a vampire would greet a priest. So he’d gone to ground. Lookin’ at them, I’d say Zeitsheim had his head screwed on.

“We don’t want to meet him,” gurgled my new employer. For the one and only time he took his hand out of his coat. Thick black glove, so no surprise there. He also had a thin black file, which he dropped on my desk. Taped to the front of it was a key. I recognized it: safety deposit box, Grand Central Station.

“Your pay. Half of it. The rest when the job is completed, Mr. Stone.” He shoved his hand back in his pocket, as if it had already been exposed to the air too long.

“So what do I do when I find him? Buy him lunch? Show him around the Big Apple?”

No hint of a smile. “It’s all in the file, Mr. Stone. You kill him.”

That was it, no frills. Just simply, you kill him.

“He is persona non grata. Find him quickly. No one need know.”

Yeah, except for whoever the hell else was hunting him. Like the law, or more likely the KGB, or whatever they call themselves these days.

“You have a suitable weapon?” growled the overcoat.

“If you mean a gun, yeah. Or is this a knife job? Or maybe a glass of something very strong?”

“We leave the means to you, Mr. Stone. But once you have killed him, and this is vital, you must incinerate him.”

There was what the poet once called a pregnant pause. Incinerate him?

“You would rather not accept this commission?”

Oh yeah, with these three monoliths looming over me, like I was going to refuse? I said not.

“Everything you need is in the file. We will contact you again, one week from now, at the same time. Be alone. Provided you have completed the task, the rest of the money will be in the same deposit box.”

* * *

I decided not to waste any time. My initial stop was Grand Central. The first helping of money was in the box all right. I could have moved out of town and set up on the West Coast right there and then, but I had this feeling that the three goons wouldn’t take too kindly to it. I read through the file. I have it safely tucked away. You guys are welcome to it when you want it. It’s not the snappiest read since Spillane. Just a few details about Stefan Zeitsheim, coupla mug shots so’s I’d know him. Looked like he’d spent a month or two in a jail, fed on bread and water once a week.

I grabbed a few hours’ sleep then decided to check out the docks. It was nearly 6:00 a.m. when I got there. Zeitsheim was supposed to have come in on one of the huge rust buckets, with some tongue-twisting Russian name. Easy enough to find the tub, but it would have been a needle-in-a-haystack job finding out from someone where he took off from. Yet already the quayside was crawling with unaccustomed life. Your boys in blue were out in force—maybe you know which ones?

I saw someone I knew over in the shadows of a warehouse. Never mind who: just a bum who tips me off from time to time. In a job like mine, you need eyes and ears everywhere. These guys are my lifeblood.

I eased over to him and slipped him a smoke. “So what’s the story?”

“Hi, Nick. Some guy left that big tub last night and walked straight into the next world. Cut himself up. No kiddin’. Real messy. Seems a long way to come to end it all.”

Suicide? That didn’t make any sense. “Don’t tell me. Name of Zeitsheim?”

“You knew him?”

“Of him. You?”

“All I know is, some of the boys got word there were some weird characters on the waterside. Expensive suits. You know, not regulars. Not the Mob either. They must have been waiting for the guy. He didn’t want to meet them, big time.”

I described the three uglies that had visited me.

“Nah. These were slick. More like FBI. But they weren’t quick enough to stop the Russkie toppin’ himself. See, over there.” He pointed to a group of shadows, men cleaning up the quayside. “Bled a river before they hauled his carcass out of here.”

“Who took him away?”

“Meat wagon. Down to the morgue. The slicks didn’t hang around. I guess they’ll be on the other side of the state by now.”

So my work was already done for me. Or it seemed like it. But this whole thing stank. Like my man had said, why come halfway across the world to cut yourself up?

“Get me any information you can on the suits. Where they went, who they spoke to,” I said and started for the local morgue. I needed to tie up some loose ends before I collected the second half of my takings.

* * *