Tink

Barty's Kitchen, Gove Street, Manhattan

‘Morning Bill! Whadda ya want? I’m cooking!’

Detective Bill Malfiosi stares at the Elemental wearing a kitchen apron and wielding a skillet at Professor Bal-Bardo’s antique oven range. Tink has returned to her barfly persona with a dash of ‘ I Love Lucy’ goofiness thrown in. She is manifesting as young, blonde and elfin but this elf has to be thrown out of bars in the early morning and sleeps on friend’s sofa’s. Late twenties, long limbed with unnaturally large eyes emphasised by coal dark eyeshadow. Her short blonde hair is as tatty as her ragged net skirt and sequinned corset and whenever Bill sees her in this form he can’t help thinking of her as a vaudeville act very much down on her luck. Tink is grinning just this side of psychotic and waving a spatula with her other hand. The Elemental looks wired to Bill. On the edge of that switch she can throw at any moment. Bill isn’t conscious of doing so, but he squeezes his left arm against his shoulder holster to check it’s there.

‘We got bacon and eggs and ham and pancakes and sausage and French toast and real toast and butter and jello and grits if you wan’- em, do you wan-’em Bill?’

The professor’s kitchen looks as though a team of cooks had staged a battle and then retreated. The sink is full of debris, a mountain of used pans and trays sticky with oil and sugar, eggshells, used spatulas and wood spoons and empty packaging all piled together. The kitchen is hot, every gas burner on high and the air above the range shimmers. But the family table is set neatly and in the middle of the chaos the Professor sits calmly with his journal, curating a mug of coffee.

‘Bill?’ Tink asks him again.

‘Just a coffee.’

Tink pulls a face.

‘Aww Bill, you can’t fight crime and keep the city safe on a mug of Joe?’

Definitely Lucile Ball circa 1950.

Barty looks up at him.

‘Morning Bill. Order the special, it’s easier.’

‘What’s the special?’

‘Oh you will love it,Bill. One special coming up.’

Bill pulls out a chair at the end of the table closest to the stairs of the professor’s Village townhouse and studies his friend. The man looks terrible, eyes hooded from a lack of sleep, his shoulders slumped as if they are too heavy to bare, hands trembling from exhaustion and stress. All in all he looked pretty sharp for a dead guy.

Bill has seen a lot in his twenty years with the force, probably everything New York can throw at you when it’s in nightmare mode, and then he got ‘promoted’ to the Deviant Incidents team and that felt good until he realised he was the Deviant Incidents team. Bill quickly learnt his real role was to get fired when there were any manifestations as proof the brass had everything under control and the officer responsible for the incident had gone. That was on the day he gained access to the DI files and discovered he was the thirteenth detective to be promoted to the role in ten years.

Then he met Barty. Barty came across as some Eurotrash aristocrat with a triple barreled name and tenure at NYU, which basically means a job for life and Bill is not jealous of that at all. And he speaks several languages. Most of them dead. And he has a damn ponytail for Christ sake.

As Bill got to know him the incompatibilities between Bill and the Professor grew until that night in the Holland Tunnel. Bill got pinned to the cold wet tarmac by a truck driver with a knife at Bill’s throat and insanity in his eyes, and the Professor talked the possession down. The Professor would be annoyed if he knew Bill still thought of manifestations as possession, but forty years of Catholicism sinks deep roots. Bill can recognise pure evil when its stench is in his face. Chalk and Cheese does not begin to describe the differences between the two men, but from that night on Bill loved Barty like a brother.

‘You OK with this?’ Bill asks, jerking a thumb at Tink banging the skillet against the hob.

‘I may need help with the washing up.’ Barty replies

‘Always with the coping mechanism.’

The professor points at Tink

‘This is hers’

‘Playing a DesiLu clone?’

‘I am in the same room you klutz,’ Tink replies. ‘You want spit with your sausage, officer?’

‘As we have spent all night stabilising the shard about her positive persona, a respectful demeanour and appreciation of her progress are your weapons of choice Officer Malfiosi, or you can clean up the ensuing mess, and I am not referring to the washing up.’

‘How stable is…’

‘I’m still here, BILL!’

If possible Tinks eyes are bigger and she has paused in her clattering at the range. Bill snatches his hand away from cutlery that discharges the surge in atmospheric static to his hand with a fat spark.

‘Tink has made strong progress overnight, Bill. She has worked very hard to centre herself.’

‘Oh Barty!’ Tink is instantly back in cameo, beaming at the professor.

‘Barty loves me Bill. He says he doesn’t but he really does.’

‘Yeah, of course he does. Your… adorable’ Bill agrees with no detectable conviction.

'Did you find out who called in the bar incident Bill? Was it the bar owner?’

‘Nobody called it in.’

‘How does that happen? Someone has to call it in. You wouldn’t have got the call and then call me.’
‘I know how it’s supposed to work Barty, but thats not what happened. I spoke to the bar owner, he didn’t call it in. I checked with the precinct, there is no record of any complaint.’

‘So who called you?’

‘It came from the top Barty, I told you where it started.’

‘So who called the chief?’

‘I don’t know. Nobody is saying. I just got chewed out by the Lieutenant to call you.’

The Professor sat back in his seat and both men thought about the implications for some time as Tink rattled and clattered pans at the range.

‘So how come they knew about Tink wrecking Lenny’s bar before it happened?’

‘That is the question, professor.’

Barty turned to Tink. ‘Tink, how did you get to Lenny’s bar.’

‘I told you I am sorry about that, how many times have I got to apologise?’

‘I need to know how you got there.’

Tink shrugged, ‘The usual Barty, I got picked up by some creep in Bemelman’s and we went on a crawl. Nothing special.’

‘Who was the creep?’

‘How’d I know, he was interested in me, I wasn't’t interested in him, just the free drinks. Big spender though, we hit so many bars.’

‘You went by cab.’

‘Nah. Creep had a real nice car. Lincoln something. Gangster car.’

‘You mean aTown car?’

‘No Barty, are you deaf. He was a gangster.’

---

Lenny’s Bar has its entire front boarded up so Bill pounds on the wood panel covering the door until Lenny opens the door a crack.

‘You blind pal. We ain’t open… oh, it’s you.’

He opens the door to let Bill in. The lights are on in the bar and it stinks of alcohol. The floor is wet and the shelves and racks clear of all the glass Tink had smashed. There is no heating in the bar and Lenny is layered in sweaters and a large coat with a scarf round his neck. He puts the broom he was using against the wall.

‘You catch her yet?’

‘She’s under house arrest, Lenny.’

‘House arrest. Well ain’t that nice for her. I want the bimbo in jail Detective, and I want her to pay for the damages.’

‘I need to know who she arrived with.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s ‘why officer’ to you. Now answer the damn question. Did you know him?’

‘Sure I know him. Not personally. He isn’t the sort of guy you want to know personally. Family man, if you know what I mean.’

‘That’s great, that cuts it down to about twenty gangs. Do better, Lenny.’

‘I ain’t giving no specifics to the police. That ain’t healthy. But you should know, they go to your church.’

The Sicilians. Although their hold on crime had diminished to a degree, or migrated to more sophisticated methods, there were still five mafiosi families in New York with a strong handle on organised crime. All five families have some contact with the church, but one in particular has closer ties for political reasons.

‘Made man?’

‘Nah, not cruising around with his own driver and shotgun. Like I said, family man. Inner circle guy.’

‘And when were you going to tell me this? Never mind that. What happened.’

‘He came in with the freak and had a drink then left her there. I am not surprised, she’s real low rent for him. And she was getting loud.’

‘He just left her.’

‘Yeah, like he had somewhere else to be. That pissed her off for a minute then some other dork started paying and she settled in. You know the rest. Only, there was one thing. Before he cut out I think he had wised up to what she was. Could be why he left her.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘She went to use the ladies just after they got here.’

‘So?’

‘I think he had realised what she was. It scared him. He was real discrete about it, but he made the sign of the cross.’

The five Mafia families of New York can be divided by those who are religious and those who use religion for their own ends. All five are Catholic by nature because of their cultural heritage, or as the professor would describe it, because of the archetypes they possess, but of the five the Bonnano family are closest to their heritage. The man who left Tink in Lenny’s bar was religious, but Bill can’t see a Bonnano man driving her round the city to get her drunk first, which is operationally the same as arming a bomb and placing it where you can guarantee its going to trigger. That takes calculation more in keeping with the Genovese who were the quietest and most ‘corporate’ of the five. Bill logs a ‘maybe’ against the Genovese in his long list of potential suspects. But what was the motivation is setting of a psychophysical time-bomb in Lenny’s bar and what had that to do with the Van Astor family?

Bill has had cases like this in the past. Ones where the potential suspects explode in all directions, although that is an unfortunately metaphor. In Bills experience every DI case comes in two flavours, immediate and obvious in its solution, or impossible to solve. He was looking at the latter. Frustrated and weary, Bill leaves Lenny, gets back into his car and points the wide bow of the Cadillac towards Greenwich Village.

And it’s Christmas. It’s difficult to remember it’s Christmas when you are deep in a killing. Somehow the celebrations become superficial, New York’s Christmas pantomime an irritation rather than a pleasure. Bill has a drowning sense of unease about the whole case. The killings were horrific. He had seen uglier deaths before, a road traffic accident could do that. But there is something deeply sinister about the Van Astor slayings, something cruel and vengeful. Something inhuman. Bill switches on the cars radio and it is playing Christmas carols. Bill promises himself he is going to make Midnight Mass this Christmas Eve. His soul needs it.