Conquer (The John Conquer Series Book 1) Read online

  CONQUER Copyright © 2020 by Edward M. Erdelac. All rights reserved. “Conquer Comes Calling” first appeared in Occult Detective Quarterly #2, Ulthar Press, May, 2017. “Conquer Gets Crowned” first appeared in Occult Detective Quarterly #3, Ulthar Press, November 2017. “Conquer Comes Correct” first appeared in Occult Detective Quarterly Presents, Ulthar Press, September 2018. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or fictitious recreations of actual historical persons. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors unless otherwise specified. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Cover Illustration: Juri Umagami Worldwide Rights Created in the United States of America

  CONQUER

  By

  Edward M. Erdelac

  In Memory of Sam Gafford, who saw Conquer as fit to print.

  Contents:

  Who The Hell Is John Conquer?

  Keep Cool, Conquer

  Conquer And The Queen of Crown Heights

  Conquer Cracks His Whip

  Conquer Comes Calling

  Conquer Gets Crowned

  Conquer Comes Correct

  Conquer: Fear Of A Black Cat (Preview)

  Who The Hell Is John Conquer?

  The zebra striped walls had heard Billie Holiday sing You’re My Thrill in their mutual heyday, and Coltrane had blown Giant Steps once to a packed house. James Baldwin had celebrated his birthday here, on the anniversary of the riot kicked off by Margie Polite and Officer Collins in 1943, and Alex Haley had interviewed Malcolm at one of the tables only ten years ago.

  Now the dingy, tiled dance floor was crowded with cheap red pleather seats and scarred, liquor stained tables. The stage stood empty and absurd on a Wednesday afternoon, the heavy air filled with Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic cranking out of an ugly old Wurlitzer Zodiac parked in a corner. The machine hadn’t seen a new record since Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book, and as Isaac’s platter wound down, Superstition came on to prove it.

  Each table was an island, and bore a squat, ugly candle in a textured glass holder, glowing like an irradiated pineapple in the thick fog of swirling bar smoke. The dark patrons gathered as though around campfires, when they leaned back in their chairs, as indiscernible as nocturnal fauna, the glint of their watches and jewelry, the glow of their cigarette ends were like the shine of predatory eyes in the dark.

  The owner shoved some of the table aside and brought in a three piece on Fridays and Saturdays, but nobody much felt like dancing during the week anymore.

  Behind the bar was an old man in a purple bowling shirt, who’d bussed tables at Baldwin’s birthday party and would tell you way too much of what he knew about him and Bayard Rustin if you were foolish enough to get him going. On the business end of the bar there perched a broad-shouldered, stoic cat in an oxblood leather coat, and a young brother in blue jeans and a t-shirt pawing at the stack of business cards next to the register while he waited for his beer, reading each one and replacing them in disarray, to the old man’s annoyance.

  “Who in the hell is John Conquer?” the young customer chuckled.

  “Boy, give me that,” the old bartender said, snatching the red and gold business card from the young man’s hand and putting it back on the stack. “Where you breeze in from?”

  “Center Point, Alabama.”

  “Cen-ter Point, A-la-bama!” the bartender announced, loudly.

  There were whistles and jeers from the men in the dimness, all except the quiet one on the newcomer’s left, sipping Black Label and smoking a Kool.

  “Hey, you know how you know you in a hotel in Center Point, Alabama?” the bartender asked the room. “When you call the desk and say ‘I got a leak in the sink’ and they answer ‘well, go ahead.’”

  There were a couple of laughs.

  The newcomer shook his head.

  “Well, Country, you need to be told,” the old man said, fixing his sights back on his young captive audience. “You in New York City now. This is the center of the world. The very best and very worst of everything, right here. This is the crossroads of eyes and ears and hearts and souls. It is nineteen hundred seventy six and we in a time of bankers and gangsters, liars and fools, con men and kings. You livin’ with the ghouls and ghosts, wizards and witches of the real N-Y-C now.”

  And when he said those letters, he jabbed each one at the newcomer on the end of his finger.

  “OK,” said the new man. “But who is John Conquer?”

  “Let me finish,” the old man snapped, sliding him his beer in a smudged glass. “In the heart of this city you got the red bricks of Harlem. The home of the boogie woogie rumble, dig? God put Harlem on the map to give colored folks a place to go in a snowstorm, and He put John Conquer in Harlem with a shovel to keep back all that white the Devil throws our way.”

  “How come it says on that card he a detective and he stay in the East Village, then?”

  “He’s a detective, yes. Elliot Ness, Sherlock Holmes, Batman, and Charlie Chan ain’t got nothin’ on him. You don’t need to stay in Harlem to be of Harlem. Do Nina Simone live in Harlem? Do Sammy Davis Jr.? Lena Horne? Sugar Ray Robinson?”

  “Sugar Ray Robinson’s from Georgia,” said the Alabaman, sipping his beer.

  “His ass is from Georgia, but his heart belongs to Harlem. You stay here a little while, ‘Bama, maybe you understand some day. Now where was I?”

  “In Harlem. With a shovel,” said the Alabaman dryly.

  The old man poured himself a cold one and nodded.

  “Maybe his ancestor was St. Malo, or Gaspar Yanga, or Dutty Bookman, or maybe the blood of all of ‘em and more soaked so long and so deep in the earth that John Conquer sprouted up from it. But he come to us armed with love and laughter, the son of Voodoo Queens and two-headed Hoodoo doctors, so tall he gets his hair cut in Heaven and his shoes shined in Hell.”

  “Hoodoo,” the Alabaman grumbled. “Ain’t no such thing as no hoodoo.”

  The old man looked like he would spit his beer across the bar top.

  “Ain’t no such….? ‘Bama, what do you know about it? They is Hoodoo, they is Voodoo, and they’s other things besides. Plat-Eyes and haints, demons and saints. And when the Devil hisself comes knockin’ at your door, boy, that’s when you call John Conquer. Ask Big Bob!” he said, pointing suddenly to a bespectacled figure huddled with a beer in the dim corner booth, who raised his hand at the sound of his name. “Big Bob was DJ at the Empire Roller Disco in Crown Heights the night John Conquer rexed with a fine ass big-tittied vampire out in the middle of the floor till the sun come up and she crumbled to dust in front of everybody. Ain’t that so, Big Bob?”

  Big Bob nodded, unsmiling in the candlelight, and there were words of assent all around the bar.

  “Shit, man!” The old man said, and spat on the floor. “I seen John Conquer kill a werewolf in the street right outside that door with the silver hood ornament on his brand new Cadillac.”

  “Yup! I seen that too!” someone called out.

  The old man’s blood was up now, and he testified like a preacher, the other denizens of the bar affirming like a congregation between each testimony.

  “And didn’t he kung fu Frankenstein off the marquee of the Apollo, and bust him to pieces with John Henry’s hammer? And didn’t he come out the Victoria showing of Cleopatra Jones with the actual Cleopatra on his arm? He went fishin’ at the Meer and hooked the Creature From The Black Lagoon and thew him back ‘cause he was too small! John Conquer beat the Devil at spade
s in front of St. Andrew’s church and then went up 125th with the ghosts of Malcolm X and Dr. King! He played ball with Dr. J in Rucker Park and he let him win! He put Superman in a full Nelson and made that honky buy him lunch at Sylvia’s!”

  By now the bar was in a fit of laughter again, and the Alabaman was laughing along.

  The dude in the oxblood coat had had enough, though. He got up, slapped down his money, and said;

  “Bullshit.”

  “Say what, blood?” the old bartender said, sweeping his money off the bar.

  “First off, that wasn’t no vampire that night at the Empire. Second, silver don’t do shit to werewolves,” he said, slapping his pack of Kools and sliding one out. “That’s just the movies.”

  “How the hell you know that?”

  “Cause I’m John Conquer,” he said, lighting another Kool as he went out the door, the bell jangling. “And if I had me a brand new Cadillac I wouldn’t be drinkin’ here, blood.”

  Keep Cool, Conquer

  John Conquer walked down St. Marks Place, grinding broken glass and hypodermics under the heels of his Stacy Adams. He ignored the desperate, bloodshot eyes of the winos and junkies congregating in the shadows, reserving all the practiced, nonchalant attention he could muster for the jittery fry who’d been inexpertly tailing him since Astor Place station.

  Conquer didn’t need this shit. It was four in the morning and he was dead dog tired. He’d spent all day shadowing an energetic preacher around Harlem at the behest of the man’s tearful old wife. He’d figured he was in for a short one-off job and hated taking the paranoid lady’s allowance. Once the sun went down though, the boisterous holy-roller had cruised in his Fleetwood over to 42nd street and picked up a diverse sampling of the Lord’s creations, two by two. Conquer had spent two or three hours stretched out on a rooftop with his Canon AE-1, building a pyramid of pistachio shells and snapping pics of the preacher’s sexploits through the window of a scuzzy flophouse deep in the darkest heart of the Deuce. All that Holy Spirit really kept a man going, apparently. It’d been damn near three in the morning when that vigorous Noah had finally staggered into his ark and gone home.

  Conquer had his 8-inch Colt Python under his arm. The big magnum was practically a camera accessory. You couldn’t walk the streets with an expensive photo rig and not pack heat, certainly not on the New York transit line. He should have taken a cab, but getting one to stop for a black dude downtown after midnight was like cruising 42nd Street for virgins. Anyway, his sympathy for the bawling preacher’s wife had induced him to foolishly wave his expenses. He’d never do that again.

  Conquer had a black belt in kenkojuku from Baba Fred Hamilton’s dojo on 125th Street for the junkie if he couldn’t reach his pistol, and even if the turkey could get over his shakes enough to get a hold of his camera bag, the inside, like his coat pockets, was dressed with Essence of Bow-Down oil, a Hoodoo wash he’d learned from his mother that could stop a mugger dead in his tracks with one word.

  Conquer reached the door of his buttermilk white building and was heading for the stair under his Conquer Investigations sign, deliberating on what he was going to do to his shadow if the fool decided to make his play, when the junkie quickened his pace and croaked, in a raspy voice from the dark;

  “John?”

  Conquer turned and took a good look at him as he shuffled into the stark glow of the streetlight.

  He was a thin, light-skinned cat in white hospital orderly togs. Except for his threads, he looked like any other Sherman Square zombie.

  “I know you?” Conquer asked.

  “Maceo. Maceo Peace. From NYU remember?” the junkie said, stepping further into the light, washing the shadows from his eyes and cheeks.

  Conquer did remember. He’d met Maceo in night school at NYU years ago. The dude had been a janitor by day, knocking out his general studies courses and hoping to get into med school. He had dozed with Gray’s Anatomy for a pillow when he’d slept at all. Conquer remembered Maceo milling around the Bobst in his Marine jacket. He’d been a corpsman with the 3/1 at Quang Ngai, so they’d spent more than a few late nights after class dapping and swapping war stories over Sicilian slices at Joe’s on Carmine.

  The brother looked like he’d gotten in on the wrong side of his chosen racket, yet, there was a plastic photo ID card clipped to his shirt. His clothes were baggy on him, even for loose fitting hospital duds. His face was gaunt, his eyes bugged, bloodshot, and ringed, and his hands quivered on the ends of his narrow wrists, his whole shambling body caught up in that crazy, sporadic rhythm that played when the wrong kind of needle dropped.

  “I remember,” Conquer said, lighting up a cigarette.

  “I’m in a bad way, brother,” Maceo mumbled. “I seen you were in the book. Man, I think I need help.”

  Conquer blew smoke. He didn’t like the idea of letting a junkie into his pad. That was like picking up a snake. Still, he hated to see what had become of the hard working brother he remembered. Plus, Semper Fi and all that jive. He deliberated for a long drag, then blew smoke and shrugged.

  “OK, blood. Come on up.”

  Conquer made him walk ahead.

  Conquer lived in his office, or more accurately, his office occupied a portion of his living space. It was a sweet pad with a lot of room to wiggle, though you’d never know it from the address. The landlord never came around, so he’d knocked down and put up walls where he wanted. He occupied the whole floor. His office overlooked the street, and doors branched off from that to his kitchen and bedroom.

  Conquer herded Maceo into his office, let him sink into the chair reserved for clients in front of the nicked desk. He smelled like the street and looked worse under the light of the lamp; cancerous. The deep shadows on his ashy, desiccated face lengthened like those of the doorways in which his kind skulked and dreamed, shrinking from the harsh truths of the avenue streetlights.

  “Long time, man,” said Conquer, taking his oxblood leather coat off and hanging it on the tree in the corner.

  “Yeah. Yeah, man. Long time,” Maceo agreed tiredly, affecting a rictus smile. His gums looked distended, but he didn’t have that rotten junkie grin yet. “Hey you got a lotta far out shit here, brother.”

  Conquer followed Maceo’s glance to the Songye shield hanging on the wall above his flickering candle shrine. It hid his wall safe. Junkies. They seemed to sniff out the most valuable thing in the room. Maceo’s nose had failed him though. The bookshelf behind him contained a couple of extremely rare titles; nothing the average hockshop owner would recognize, but some that a certain kind of people would pay most any price for.

  “What’re you on?” Conquer asked, coming over and sitting on the edge of the desk, folding his arms.

  Maceo didn’t answer, just leaned with his elbows on his knees and cradled his ghoulish face in his hands.

  “I’m tired, man. Been walkin’ all night. Yo, John. You got anything to eat? I’m hungry as a motherfucker.”

  Conquer shrugged.

  “How about a sandwich?”

  “Yeah. Naw. Yeah, that’d be good, man,” Maceo said, fidgeting, crossing and uncrossing his arms. He thrust out his skinny legs and let his chin drop to his chest.

  Conquer went to the adjoining door and flicked on the kitchen light. He propped the door open with the trash basket.

  “Don’t go nowhere, dig?” Conquer warned. This was where the dude would make a grab for something and run for the door. Anything he could pawn.

  But Maceo only raised his hand in weak acknowledgement, then let it fall. He put his head back on the chair and closed his eyes.

  Conquer fried up an egg and a piece of ham, ducking back now and then to check in on Maceo in his office. He didn’t stir from the chair.

  By the time Conquer put the ham and egg between bread, Maceo was asleep.

  Conquer bit into the sandwich and leaned in the doorway, wondering again what the dude’s story was. Conquer came closer and studied his ID tag. Harlem Hospita
l, Morgue Attendant. Well, maybe not as glamorous as a full blood MD, but he sure had job security. It was a step in the right direction. Maceo had been so motivated, it was a crying shame to see him strung out.

  Conquer’s door buzzed and he stiffened. The dawn light was glowing around the edges of the window shades. It was near five in the morning. Who the hell was at his door this early? His business hours were posted downstairs.

  He waited for a minute, but the door kept buzzing.

  He laid the plate on his desk.

  “Who is it?” he bellowed through the door, in a tone that told most junkies to fuck off.

  “Police department,” came the answer.

  Conquer squinted through the peephole.

  There was a brother in a mustard tie and beige topcoat and a big mustache out there. He looked the part.

  “Bullshit,” said Conquer. “Let me see a badge.”

  The dude in the hallway stared through the peephole at him, reached in his inside pocket, and pulled a badge. But it wasn’t any NYPD shield he’d ever seen.

  “Where’d you get that jive, man? A Cracker Jack box? Split, or it’s your ass!” Conquer turned away from the door with a yawn and a laugh.

  Conquer reached his office and was about to flick off the foyer light when to his surprise, the front door handle clicked and turned. Not only had his front door been securely locked, it was dressed with his own Shut-Out oil. Nobody was supposed to be able to open it but him.

  Conquer reached for his gun, but found himself strangely unable to move. Every muscle seized up, from his toes to his ears. He couldn’t even twitch his nose as the door swung wide open, banging against the wall. The dude in the topcoat strode in, a .38 cocked and ready in one hand. In the other, he held something Conquer had heard about but never seen in person; a Hand of Glory. The severed, dried-out hand of a condemned criminal, slow-burning wicks shoved under the fat-dipped fingernails, five flickering tapers; it was the magical equivalent of a set of bump keys and could not only open any door, it was supposed to paralyze the property owners when lit.