TO “THE IDEA OF FEAR”
One of my newest series revolves around a group of New York City cops who, upon reaching twenty years of service, all retire together to start a quiet little business in a sleepy little village in New England. In a town named…what was that again…oh right, Arkham.
THE IDEA OF FEAR
“We are terrified by the idea of being terrified.”
—Nietzsche
He looked the house over from the street. Dark and old and tall and musty, like every other dilapidated dump in town, he knew. They were all the same, all creaking, all spongy—alive with mosses and spores and gas leaks—all filled with a thousand crinkling noises. The man stared out the window of his car and despaired dragging himself out onto the sidewalk.
Some detective, he thought. You sure aren’t going to give Phil Marlowe a run for his money anytime soon in this town.
Franklin Nardi had left New York City after its police force had used up his strongest, bravest days. Many envied the life—work a job for a mere twenty years and retire with benefits beyond the dreams of most. With only the slightest of salaries on top of such a retirement package, it was said, a man could support a family in style.
Yeah, he thought, taking another long drag on his cigarette, and all it takes to earn those fine benefits is walking out the door with a target on your back. Every day. Every stinking, miserable day. For twenty goddamned years.
Frankie Nardi had no family. He did not lose them tragically, except in the sense that it was tragic they had never existed at all. Nardi did not by nature enjoy the company of women. He had witnessed the eternal grinding down of his father and his uncles, all men to be proud of, except when they ventured into the presence of women and their guts turned to cheese. He listened to them complain, watched them live their lives afraid to speak, afraid to contradict, afraid of what they might do to these women they loved if they ever stopped reining themselves in.
The detective was not afraid of women. He went out with them and played their games to the extent those rounds gave him what he wanted—flesh and momentary contact free from the rock-heavy drag of commitment.
“Ahhh, fuck,” he snorted. He took another long look at his assignment for the night and then crushed his smoke out on the roof of his car, adding, “no one ever said life was easy.”
Window up, bags grabbed from the back seat, car locked, up to the front door. Nardi assessed the ring of keys he had been given and with his usual skill picked the correct one on the first try. Throwing open the old door he threw his bags inside and surveyed his home for the evening. With a crunch of muscles he stretched his arms out, flexing his back and shoulders unconsciously. Even though he expected nothing more than a night’s sleep, he was still a man who did his job.
After twenty years of not blinking, of watching over his shoulder, behind his back, of sizing up each and every human being that came near him, figuring their angle, investigating their souls in the split-second before contact, moving to Arkham was supposed to have been a breeze. The town was known for importing New York’s finest. One supposed the New English hamlet would have preferred Bostonian coppers, but as the mayor of Arkham had put it to Nardi when he asked:
“This town has enough drunks with their hands out. We need real men. Manhattan is the attitude that goes over well here when people want protection.”
It was true. New Yorkers took charge. Taking charge of his life, Nardi had left the city he simply could not stand any more and turned his back on it for trees and fields and runaway dogs. His idea was to open his own detective/security agency in Arkham with three other New York cops—one that had retired a year earlier, Tony Balnco, and two others, Sammy Galtoni and Mark Berkenwald, who were right behind him on the escape track. They had all agreed instantly—the one already retired fastest of all. In three months they were the fastest growing business in the city of Arkham, Massachusetts.
And why not? People cheated on their spouses in New England same as anywhere else. They stole from their bosses, needed background checks, wanted to find lost property or people from their pasts, required security like everyone else. Nardi had seen Bloods selling crack behind the playground at Allan Halsey Memorial High School the same way he had behind the playground at Thomas Jefferson High in Brooklyn, and every other high school throughout the five boroughs. There was no “safe” America anymore. The green was going to hell in all the same ways as the concrete—just a little slower, that was all.
Which is what had made Arkham perfect for Nardi and his pals. For five years they had built their business and life was good for them. They held the security contracts for nearly three/fifths of the businesses in town. They were the first contact point on the speed dial list of four/fifths of the town’s lawyers. They had all the work they needed; which was what angered Nardi when Berkenwald took a job like the one he was stuck with that night.
“So?” he asked the house absently. “Let’s make with the spooky noises. Let’s get this over with.”
In New York Nardi had found plenty of opportunities to placate the wealthy. Those with money were always finding some new way to waste it. Years ago the slugs bleeding cash could not move into a new property without calling in a fung shui master to make certain it was properly positioned in the universe. Now, in Arkham, the chic move was to have your home desensitized by a supernatural security team.
“What a crock of shit,” muttered Nardi.
Berkenwald, getting wind of the new chump rage, had let it be known to only a few, close personal friends, mind you, that the agency had been called in to clear a few major hauntings back in New York. Hinted at terrible moments, let it be known they simply did not do that sort of work anymore. Too stressful. The hideous terrors that awaited the uninitiated…
The suckers had begun throwing money at the agency immediately. Any new bride or social matron who heard a noise she did not like, felt a draft that seemed a little too frigid, awoke in a cold sweat, et cetera, knew what to do—buy some peace of mind.
But Berkenwald had booked more work for them that week than they could cover. And thus Frankie Nardi, himself, the owner of the company, who should have been working on his model railroad set-up in his basement at that very moment, and dreaming of a date with his hammock for the next day, was instead stuck doing a point-by-point sweep of some ancient rathole for ghosts.
Ghosts, for Christ’s sake.
“Does it get any stupider than this? I don’t think I want to know if it does.”
“Don’t tell me you want the world to smarten up, Nardi,” a voice said from behind the detective. “That would lose you a lot of business.”
“I’m retired, remember?” He threw the line over his shoulder to the woman coming in the doorway. “The more business I have the less I like it.”
“I think you’re just afraid to run into the Headless Horseman or one of his pals. Something like that would be hard work,” she said with a bite in her voice as she dropped her bags heavily on the floor, “and we all know you’re afraid of that.”
“Yeah, nothin’ with tits is a feminist when there’s heavy-liftin’ to do.”
The woman was Madame Renee, her profession, medium. Born Brenda Goff, she had cultivated her over-whelmingly Middle Eastern looks until a nose too big and brows too bushy had begun to work in her favor. As her love of all things covered in, filled
