Known Devil by Matthew Hughes Page A

taken over by then, and he finally turned us loose. Since my shift was already long over, I didn’t have to go back to work. I’d been feeling hungry the last hour or so, so I decided to stop for something to eat on my way home.
    I didn’t go to Jerry’s Diner this time – I had a hankering for something that wasn’t served with a light coating of grease. Fortunately, Wohlstein’s Deli and Eatery downtown serves everything on their menu all day long.
    Whoever wrote “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” must have been thinking of Manny Wohlstein’s turkey club sandwich – and if not, he should have been. I was halfway through mine when I saw the ghoul come in and take a seat at one of the corner tables.
    You can’t ID a ghoul just by looking – although if you get close enough to smell their breath, it’s what you might call a dead giveaway. But this one I recognized. He goes by “Algernon”, and he’s the brother of a guy everyone calls Barney Ghougle, a local undertaker and one of my most reliable informants.
    I knew who Algernon was because he’s got a little problem that sometimes gets him into trouble – a habit of taking his cock out in front of people and waving it around. I hoped he’d be able to resist the impulse as long as he was in Wohlstein’s – I was off duty. Besides, I’d seen ghoul cock before and hoped never to have to look at any again.
    Taking another bite out of my sandwich, I began to wonder what the hell Algernon was doing there. Wohlstein’s offers a large menu, but they don’t serve the kind of stuff that ghouls eat. Just as well, really – a menu item like Human thigh, sliced thinly and served au jus would probably turn off a lot of human customers, me included.
    All of the waitresses are Manny’s daughters, and the tall one, whose name is Clara, stopped at Algernon’s table, order pad in hand. The ghoul said something that I couldn’t hear, but Clara went away and returned a minute later with what looked like a glass of iced tea. She said something to Algernon, who shook his head, and she went off to her other tables.
    I continued eating but kept an unobtrusive eye on Algernon. I was waiting for him to drink some of his iced tea. But although he tapped the straw out of its paper wrapper and put it in the plastic tumbler, it never touched his lips. He just sat there, staring off into space.
    After a while, one of the busboys came over to Algernon’s table. I didn’t recognize him, but that meant nothing. Manny has four daughters but no sons, so busboys come and go. But I did think it was strange for a busboy to wipe down a table while the customer was still sitting there.
    The busboy, was a slim, red-haired human in his early twenties. He gave the table a quick once-over with a damp rag and said something to Algernon without looking at him. Then he turned, stashed the rag in his apron, and walked across the dining area to the men’s restroom. Half a minute or so later, Algernon stood up and went in there, too.
    The two of them were in the bathroom together for a couple of minutes, then the busboy came out and went directly into the kitchen. I started counting silently to myself, one thousand one , one thousand two … When I got to ten, Algernon came out and headed for the door without returning to his table.
    I knew what I’d just witnessed, as any cop worth his badge would. Restaurants are prime locations for drug dealing – always have been. You’ve got people coming and going all the time, and nobody pays much attention.
    Sometimes the restaurant owner is in on the action, other times not. I’d known Manny Wohlstein for years, and I’d have bet my pension that he had no idea how one of the employees was supplementing his salary. If Manny ever found out, I hoped the busboy had some very good health insurance – the kind with catastrophic coverage.
    Ordinarily, this kind of thing was none of my business. I’d just drop a word to a guy I know in Vice, Gus