“Can you spare me a cigarette first?”
“Of course.” Ortega pulled the pack and a lighter from her briefcase and slid them across the table.
He tapped one free and lit it with a flick of her lighter, exhaling a ribbon of gray that might keep the ghosts at bay, before passing it back to her.
She put the pack away and met his gaze. “Now, tell me what happened.”
“Sure,” he murmured, watching the smoke spiral into imaginary dragons. “But don’t expect it to be pretty.”
Chapter Four
(12:21 p.m.)
Daylight settled in, but Rick hadn’t left the night behind. He leaned against the hood of his Cadillac Eldorado, nursing the last drag of a cigarette when Frank showed up with coffee—black, no sugar, still too hot to drink. Neither of them spoke. They knew each other too well for small talk. Rick simply took the cup, climbed into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. Frank slid into the passenger side, yawning into his sleeve. It was past noon, but it felt closer to dawn—both of them running on barely six hours of sleep, last night’s chaos still clinging to their bones.
As they pulled into traffic, the Mokasset skyline unfurled around them in a jagged silhouette of contradictions: looming Art Deco towers and bold geometry, with Gothic gargoyles perched like sentinels, their wings blackened by soot and age. Stone viaducts arched across the avenues still shrouded in morning fog, fusing into the fractured angles of Calgrave’s dingy, smog-ridden dystopia. The rain had stopped, leaving the roads wet, potholes turned to mirrors. Puddles splashed under the tires of too many cars, even on Saturday. But it wasn’t the weather that soaked into you here. It was everything else.
Calgrave wasn’t just a city. It was a winding, sprawling cathedral of shadows, Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from steel bones and concrete skin, half-drowned in fumes and regret. A conurbation suspended between eras, where vintage Packards rumbled beside electric streetcars, and chrome diners sat beneath buzzing neon lights. A metropolis in drag, wearing too many faces. Rick didn’t trust any of them.
He leaned one elbow out the Eldorado’s window, letting it all in. The city’s stench. Its secrets. He wore his usual: dark suit, patterned tie, khaki trench coat over it all, a gray fedora tipped forward. Old habits. Old armor. Calgrave had a hundred ways to rot a man from the inside out. Rick just fought harder than most not to let it.
Frank, slouching beside him, had his tie loosened and a toothpick bobbing in the corner of his mouth. His hat was shabbier, stained by years of use, and his coat always looked like it’d seen more winters than it should’ve. He was a comfortable wreck of a man, a worn jazz record that skipped in all the right spots. “You know,” he said, stifling a yawn, “I miss the days when murder stayed in its own damn zip code.”
Rick kept his eyes on the road. “This place doesn’t have zip codes. It has scars.”
Frank grunted. “That’s deep. You writing a memoir I don’t know about?”
He allowed a flicker of a smile. “If I did, you’d be the comic relief.”
“I’d better be.” Frank reached into his breast pocket and fished out a roll of mints. A habit he developed since he’d quit smoking. He popped one, then offered it over. “Mint?”
Rick took it, mostly out of politeness.
They rode in silence for a while. Spire District’s early skyscrapers clawed at the dark clouds, soaring monoliths that plunged neighboring streets and buildings into perpetual shadow. Lincoln Square slid past in shades of gray. Fontaine’s boulevards groaned around them, a labyrinthine sprawl of rusted bolts and concrete cruelty. But as the Eldorado steered farther west toward the waterfront, the panorama changed.
Before them, the Rockwell Bridge stretched its stone spine across the Bellona River. The townscape thinned there—the traffic hushed, the skyline dissolving into mist. On the far bank,the skyline shifted, grew darker, meaner. New Town rose ahead like a warning.
Frank cleared his throat. “You heard from Vivian lately?”
The mint clicked against Rick’s teeth as he eased into the bridge traffic, a slow crawl of brake lights and exhaust fumes. Below, the river churned dull and sluggish, barges drifting like corpses. “She sent the final papers last week,” he said at last. “Signed. Notarized. It’s official now.”
Frank nodded, quiet. “That why you’ve been living on Java and hooch?”
Rick gave a humorless laugh. “Isn’t that the usual diet?”
“Yeah, but usually you at leastpretendto sleep.” Frank glanced at him. “You okay?”
Rick shifted his grip on the wheel. “I’m fine.”
“That bad, huh?”
Rick sighed through his nose. “We weren’t happy for years, Frank. If we ever were. I kept thinking things would get better if I tried harder, but… they never did.”
Frank was quiet for a moment, fiddling with the roll of mints. “Was it because of the whole Wolf Man thing? Or…”
Rick’s jaw tightened. His gaze flicked sideways, meeting Frank’s briefly before turning back to the road.Or because you'd rather fuck pretty boys than your wife.That’s what Frank meant but wouldn’t say. His partner knew—had known for years, probably figured it out before Rick did. It had never been an issue between them, but some things you still didn’t name aloud. Not in the department. Not anywhere that mattered. “She knew what I was from the start,” he said. “Thought she could handle it. The affliction runs in her family, too—her uncle has it. She grew up with the rules, the lunar calendars, the precautions. Figured marrying me wouldn’t be any different.” He gave a dry chuckle. “Turns out knowing a thing isn’t the same as living with it.”
Frank grunted, thoughtful. “I bet. Even monsters need more than matching bloodlines.”
