Protected Entity

Protected Entity Part 1 of 2

***

A few minutes later, Riley and I are waiting in an eerily immaculate sitting room. Nothing around us looks like it's supposed to be touched. The air is acrid with cleaning solution and perfume, so I light a cigar and blow some smoke towards Riley.

"This place is icky," my partner says, flowing over a pristine forest of crystal tchotchkes. "Let's do what we gotta do and blow on to the next one." I nod slightly instead of answering, because I know someone somewhere is monitoring our every sniff and tremble on little black and white screens.

Mr. John R. Ballantine looks rather ghostlike himself when he shows up. His thin face creases into a perma-frown that radiates over his entire body. "I've already said all I need to say to the police," he says without leaving the doorway. "All I've gotten in return is stupidity and bureaucracy, none of which will bring back my boy. You can show yourself out."

"Sir," I say, but he simply walks away. Riley and I exchange a look and then I walk out and he floats to the corridor that Mr. Ballantine disappears into.

***

Outside, the block is completely still. Even the breeze is keeping its distance out of respect to the grieving. It's the end of summer, and the late afternoon sun plays a dazzling light show across the Hudson River. If I'd been able to touch Ballantine, I would've had a chance to penetrate his wall of grief and find something out, but the man was unapproachable. I close my eyes and take a long pull of smoke. The sorrow must be seeping from house to house like a biohazard, making families keep their children locked up in crisp air-conditioned bedrooms, throwing silence over dinner tables, wreaking havoc on fragile, middle-aged sex lives. Or was that how things were even without a spate of child-killings?

"It's the third house on the left," Riley says, breaking my reverie. "Some dude named Calhoun. New on the block."

"What about him?"

"I dunno, but sounds like everyone thinks he's to blame for all this. Let's take a look."

***

The Calhoun estate is every bit as magnificent as the rest of the block. Spiraling towers poke out above a terrace garden. This time we're ready when a white man comes to the door. "Could you tell Mr. Calhoun that the NYPD would like a word with him?" I say in my formal let's-get-this-done voice.

"You're talking to him," the white guy says with a grin. Yes, the Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts should've tipped me off that he wasn't the butler, but the whole day has thrown me for a loop. John Calhoun's in his mid-forties and sports a quickly retreating flop of light brown hair.

"Right, Mr. Calhoun."

"John," the guy says.

"John," I say. "You're..."

"Can I help you?" A touch of menace flickers around Mr. Calhoun. Riley catches it too. I get my game together and give him my cop spiel. He sizes me up for a moment and then flashes a cheesy smile and beckons me inside.

"Really horrible stuff, all this business with the young black kids dying and all," our host says as he leads us through an expansive foyer towards some glass-paneled sliding doors. I believe him – there's no anxiousness or guilt radiating out, and his voice is slightly detached but not forced.

My eyes dart across the room and Riley does a flash fly around. It's hard to describe what we look for in situations like this. Something that's not right, is the best way I can put it; something that may be harboring a malicious spirit or used to commit mass murder. But that could be anything. I've extracted some vengeful afterlifers from an old boot and executed a whole nest of errant house ghosts that were infesting a microwave. You have to learn to pick up on the little clues that things are not as they should be; tiny cries for help. Then there's the obvious ones, like the dried up animal parts that some bored traveler dragged home thinking they'd look cute on the mantle, or the blatantly haunted grandfather clock that shows whoever's near how they're going to die. Those are the ones that make you roll your eyes and try not to think about how the fool deserves whatever supernatural ass-whupping he ends up getting.

John Calhoun has none of that stuff though, at least not on the first two floors. He leads me up a winding stairwell, all the while chatting about the different families and how welcoming they were when he moved into the neighborhood and what a terrible shame it is about those black kids. We pause on a landing and I say: "Mr. Calhoun."

"Please," throwing his hands up, "just John."

"John, you are white, correct?"

Calhoun lets out a laugh like I'd just told a dirty joke. I half-chuckle, more out of discomfort than anything else. From somewhere above us, I hear Riley squirming and clattering around. "I mean," Calhoun says, acting like he's still reeling from the preposterousness of the question. He makes a show of checking the skin on his arm. "I am!" he says, still yukking away. "By golly!"

"Is this guy for real?" Riley says, floating down next to me. I shake my head back and forth, at a loss for words.

"How is it you came to live on the last remaining all black block in West Harlem, Mr. Calhoun?" I say. I really am curious.

"What is this, the 1960's?" Calhoun laughs. "Did I break a zoning law? Are you going to charge me with desegregation? Guilty as charged." I just stare at him. "Okay, look, in all seriousness," he says, wiping the big grin off his face and waxing professorial, "I have a great respect for African and African-American culture. I teach Pan-African history at Columbia. I've written several books on Nigerian culture and the Caribbean Diaspora. I've spent three of the past seven years doing field-work on one end of the continent or the other. I wasn't about to move into some hood, but I feel comfortable around black people. So here I am. I asked permission from the block council before buying the place, and frankly they were quite impressed with my extensive knowledge of pre-Colombian civilizations."

"Let's kill him," Riley says in my ear.

"Now, Detective," Calhoun finishes triumphantly, "if you will kindly step into my office, we can further discuss the tragedy at hand."

Riley and I both stop and let our jaws hang open. An entire army of sacred African masks and statues clutter around us from every corner and crevice. I recognize a few from the Afrofantastic table stores on 125th, but most of it's clearly some collector shit. A small cadre of cowry shell-eyed stone heads gape up at me from the floor around Calhoun's writing desk. Wooden Masai warriors guard either side of his file cabinets. Elaborate masks glare from the walls. Any number of these items could be covertly housing some irritable, child-killing demon. The air's thick with old wood musk, Calhoun's self-satisfaction and a chaotic mix of colliding spiritual energies. None of them jump out at me as being particularly malevolent, but there's still plenty to sort through.

"What's the matter?" Calhoun jibes. "Never been in a room with so many sacred objects at once? It is a little overwhelming at first, but you get used to it." Somewhere in the clutter of masks, digital fish float lazily across a screensaver.

"Did any of the kids from the neighborhood ever come up here?" I ask.

"Do you have any idea how valuable just one of these items is, Detective?"

"That's not an answer."

John Calhoun smiles. "No, Detective, none of the children ever came up to this room. I have had a couple of the families over for dinner in the past few months since I moved in, the Robinsons, the Eltons and the Ballantines, and I suppose I showed the adults my collection – I'm a bit of a show off – but none of the kids came up that I recall."

Riley's milling in and out of the statues, trying to untangle all the spiritual data colliding around us. Judging from his cursing, he's not having much luck. "The last officers I spoke to told me I wasn't a suspect," Calhoun says as he walks past me and holds the door open. Then I feel it: A wash of brittle frustration and rage. The suddenness of it almost knocks me into a battalion of statues. "Whoa there, guy!" Calhoun says, reaching out good naturedly as I right myself. "Told you it was a little overwhelming at first. Why don't you have a seat in my thinking chair?"

I don't like the sound of that at all, but the nausea's so intense I don't have much choice. I slump into an antique wooden chair with ornate pink cushions. Of course Calhoun would be one of these doofy intellectuals that needs his special chair to get anything done. If anything though, sitting makes the spiritual cringing even more fierce, like two giant sets of teeth grating somewhere at the core of my being. I leap up out of the chair and walk unsteadily to the door.

"Detective!" Calhoun calls after me, but I'm already making my way back out into the fresh early evening air.