Author: Z. M. Renick; Richard Cartwright; Daniel G. Zeidler; Aaron van Treeck; Stanley Wheeler; John McNichol; Spearman Burke; J. R. Armstrong; Nick Nethery; Regan K. Smith
Date: 2023-11-01 07:00:00+00:00
Description: Gritty streets, hard-boiled detectives, and dames that are trouble on two legs. Whether they're in a world that looks like ours but isn't, a futuristic setting, or a different planet altogether, these are the things that make a noir story. Join 10 authors as they introduce us to heroes who've gotten dirty, damsels that are definitely distressing, and mysteries that need solving.

PinUp Noir 2

Edited by Kortnee Bryant

Raconteur Press

You Belong to the City

Copyright © 2023 by Z.M. Renick

Stars in Her Eyes

Copyright © 2023 by Aaron Van Treeck

The Gray Goose Diamond Caper

Copyright © 2023 by Regan K. Smith

Saving Face

Copyright © 2023 by Daniel G. Zeidler

Monica on My Mind

Copyright © 2023 by Stanley Wheeler

The Case of the Taken Tome

Copyright © 2023 by Nick Nethery

Vicar’s Casefiles: Blond Bomb/$hell Scripting

Copyright © 2023 by J.R. Armstrong

Lonely Road

Copyright © 2023 by Spearman Burke

More Deadly Than

Copyright © 2023 by Richard Cartwright

Up, Up, and RunAway

Copyright © 2023 by John McNichol

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

Introduction

1. You Belong to the City

1. Z. M. Renick

2. Stars in Her Eyes

2. Aaron Van Treeck

3. The Gray Goose Diamond Caper

3. Regan K. Smith

4. Saving Face

4. Daniel G. Zeidler

5. Monica on My Mind

5. Stanley Wheeler

6. The Case of the Taken Tome

6. Nick Nethery

7. Vicar’s Casefiles: Blond Bomb/$hell Scripting

7. J.R. Armstrong

8. Lonely Road

8. Spearman Burke

9. More Deadly Than

9. Richard Cartwright

10. Up, Up, And RunAway!

10. John McNichol

Also From Raconteur Press

Call To Action

Introduction

You are currently holding the second of Raconteur Press’ Pinup Noir anthologies in your hands, and I’d like to take a moment to thank you for joining us on this journey.

The first of these volumes–released in June of 2023–was one of the breakout books for our little company. The collection of stories inspired by Greg Hildebrandt’s pinup Saturday Night Special reached out to a pool of readers beyond our usual, and boy, did they respond.

We had hoped to have enough stories for three volumes of pinup-inspired hard-boiled fiction, but honestly, we’re probably going to have enough for four books, and I’m okay with that.

I’ve been asked previously if I know what drove the success of the first book, and my answer is usually that I think it is a combination of the spectacular pinup that was the inspiration, plus the stellar writing of the authors that sent us stories. But I also tend to think that in this time of uncertainty–uncertainty on the World stage, in the Media, politics, economies, national relations, and uncertainty in the United States–it is a comfort to turn to that uniquely American genre of hard-boiled fiction.

The firm moral bedrock that underlies the hero of the hard-boiled story, that the reader knows that no matter how much he gets done over, no matter how bad of a whuppin’ he takes, no matter the forces arrayed against him…he’s not going to sell any part of his soul, no matter how battered or tattered it is. I think that is a pole star that some folks need in an uncertain time.

And, of course, the dames. Those femme fatales with the gams, and the voices, the mystery and the danger–always in style. Always appreciated.

Enough of my gabbing. Turn up the collar of your trenchcoat, and step out into the foggy streets with the comforting weight of your roscoe in its shoulder holster, faint strains of a sax solo in the distance, as the dark underbelly of the city waits for you.

LawDog

Tiny Town, Texas

October, 2023

You Belong to the City

Z. M. Renick

It was a cold night in San Francisco when the mysterious woman quite literally blew into Tom’s life.

A great gust of wind struck the door to Rayburn’s Guns and Ammo, slamming it open, and she glided in along with the westerly blast that smelled of salt from the Pacific Ocean. Thomas Ward, who had been talking with Jessica Rayburn, stopped what he was doing to look at the newcomer. She was tall and willowy, with long, ash-blonde hair that fell halfway down her back, ending in strands that looked like wispy clouds against the cerulean silk folds of her dress. The dress, inappropriate for the weather, exposed smooth, white shoulders and covered only the very tops of her arms before wrapping around her body in a toga-like fashion and falling to her knees. The wind, which had blown papers and tissues and dust motes from one side of the shop to the other, somehow didn’t seem to touch her dress or hair, giving the customers an unobstructed view of her perfect features. Tom couldn’t take his eyes away from her, and he wasn’t the only one. She had an unearthly beauty that didn’t seem to belong here. It was like seeing Grace Kelly or Hedy Lamarr suddenly appear in the middle of a cornfield. Even Jessie Rayburn, the shop owner and someone who was no slouch in the looks department herself, faded in the background compared to this woman. Everyone in the shop was staring at her, and one of the customers gave an appreciative wolf whistle.

The woman ignored all of them and approached the counter. Tom moved aside to make room. Jessie asked, “Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Yes, I would like to buy a…gun?” She spoke hesitantly and made that last word sound like it was something from a foreign language.

“Well, we sell those,” Jessie said. “Are you looking for a handgun, a rifle, a shotgun…”

“A handgun, I think. A pistol.”

Jessie walked down the counter to the window where her pistols were displayed. She and the woman were soon engaged in soft conversation as Jessie showed her various models and let her handle them. Tom watched them for a while, then allowed his eyes to wander to the rest of those in the gun shop. The regulars were all there: Dave, with his fascination with antique rifles, looking at the latest used stuff Jessie had gotten in; Chris, buying ammo for his shooting competitions, while his long-suffering wife, Alyssa, leaned against the corner wall with a fashion magazine; a new guy over in the corner browsing the optics, sights, and mounting systems section, and all of them were looking at the mysterious beauty while trying not to make it obvious that they were staring. Even Alyssa, who was firmly heterosexual, as far as Tom knew, seemed fascinated by the woman who put the model on the cover of her magazine to shame.

Jessie got a revolver out of the case and handed it to the woman. By the weapon’s stainless-steel barrel combined with its aluminum frame, Tom recognized it as a Smith and Wesson Airweight, though with an aftermarket mother-of-pearl handle. The woman stroked the gun a couple of times, as if it were a cat, then put her hand on the grip. She nodded, and Jessie led her back to the cash register, rang up the purchase, and accepted a handful of bills from the woman. Tom was close enough to hear what they were saying.

“First we need to take the test to get your firearm safety certificate…”

“We just did that, didn’t we?”

“Oh, yeah, right. Now I need your documentation for the background check.” The woman handed over a large folder. Jessie glanced through it, then said, “Okay, looks like everything is here. I’ll get this into the computer, and we can get things started right away. Hopefully, this will be done by the time the ten-day waiting period is over, but it does move at the speed of government, so…”

“What do you mean? It’s done already.”

Jessie looked down at her computer. “Well, how about that? Unfortunately the waiting period still applies. I’ll see you in ten days.”

The woman gave a slight smile and started to walk out of the store. On impulse, Tom hurried past her and slid in front of her just before she reached the door. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know what your deal is, but you obviously don’t really know your way around firearms, and the fact that you’re trying to buy one tells me that you’re in trouble. If you need help before your ten days are up, I’m a licensed private investigator specializing in security.” He handed her his card.

The woman accepted the card and ran her finger over the embossed letters that spelled out his name. “Thomas. How appropriate. You wouldn’t happen to be a rhymer, by any chance, would you?”

“Huh? No, I told you, I’m a PI…”

The woman shook her head. “Never mind. It’s kind of you to offer to help me, Thomas, but you don’t want to be involved in this. I’m the kind of woman that all the stories warn you to stay away from.”

Tom remembered the detective novels he’d read as a kid. “‘From the moment that dame walked through the door, I knew she meant trouble…’”

“Not precisely the sort of story that I had in mind, but it’s true: I mean trouble. You don’t want to follow me.” She walked around him and slipped out the door. As she did so, she bumped against Tom, and he noticed something in her left hand: the pearl-handled revolver she had just bought from Jessie.

Tom hurried over to the counter. “Jessie, call the police! She just took the revolver!”

“What?” Jessie asked.

Jessie wasn’t normally so slow. “The revolver. She didn’t wait the ten days. She just took it.”

“She did…”

Jessie seemed like she was coming out of a trance, and she wasn’t the only one. Every customer in the shop acted like they were still shaking off the spell that the woman’s beauty had cast. Even Tom was having a hard time, but he forced himself to stay focused. “We need to call the cops. Who was she, anyway?”

“She didn’t tell me her name…”

“You’ve got her documentation, don’t you?”

“Right. Of course. I do.” The real Jessie, the level-headed businesswoman, seemed to be pulling her head out of the clouds. She looked in the folder, then looked back at Tom in horror. She handed him the folder. He flipped through it. It was filled with nothing but blank pages. “Oh, my God. What have I done?”

What Jessie had just done was sold a gun without a background check, without a firearms safety certificate, and without a waiting period. If anyone found out, she would lose her license, at the very least. And if that gun was used in a crime… “Okay, forget about the police. Wait here, Jessie. I’ll fix this!” Tom scurried out of the shop. The woman in blue was just disappearing around a corner, and Tom ran as fast as he could to catch up with her.

Tom reached the street where the woman turned. She was still visible, though just barely. He continued to run after her. At first, he was so concerned with catching the woman that he barely noticed his surroundings, but after a couple of blocks, he realized that something was different. This isn’t San Francisco, something inside him said.

Of course it was. Where else could it be? The Transamerica Pyramid was behind him, Colt Tower was just off to his right, and the Golden Gate Bridge was emerging out of the fog over to his left. All of the familiar landmarks were there. But Tom had grown up in San Francisco, had made it his home through his fifteen years of adulthood, and he was convinced that he wasn’t there now. It’s the smell, I think.

Tom had been in San Francisco as the city went downhill, as it was divided between the tech bros and the homeless, as the streets had filled up with tents and drug addicts and human waste. The smell had slowly gotten worse, so slowly that Tom had hardly noticed it.

Tonight he noticed that the stench was gone, and so were the homeless. The sidewalks were clear, and the people on them all seemed to be going about their business, heading out to dinner or the theater, or perhaps heading home to friends and family. They all seemed happy. And Tom felt that he could be, too, except for his conviction that he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and was lost in another world. I should go back. See if I can find my way back to the gun shop, and from there, to home.

Only he couldn’t. He had to get that gun back and save Jessie.

Tom was getting closer, but then the woman turned onto Broadway, and then onto Hyde Street, making her way to the top of Russian Hill. Tom was in good shape, but he had a hard time getting up the steep slope at full speed. The woman, however, kept going at the same steady pace that she had since leaving the gun shop; it was as if she didn’t even notice the hill. After about three blocks, Tom was painting, and only his force of will kept him going. Almost there. Just another few blocks, and we’ll be at the top. And then I’ll get her.

The woman was almost at the top when Tom saw something moving in the shadows. Probably just a rat, he thought, but it was moving up the hill at the exact same pace as the woman, staying just far enough away from her to escape her notice. He’s following her. Tom was debating whether he should try to warn the woman when a large black car came screaming up the hill. It went zooming past the woman, almost clipping her with its side mirror, then screeched to a halt right in front of her. All four doors opened, and half a dozen burly men in trench coats jumped out. They pulled large weapons out from under their coats—wait, those couldn’t possibly be machine guns, could they?—and began firing.

Tom reacted without thinking. He pulled his own revolver and shouted, “Stop!” Everyone ignored him. He fired at the closest man. Tom’s bullet struck the man’s coat, but didn’t seem to have any effect. Some kind of body armor? Tom wondered, but he didn’t wonder very long, because the man turned around and aimed his gun at Tom. Tom fired again, striking the other man directly in the middle of the forehead. The man staggered backwards, then reached up and pulled the bullet out of his skull. He looked at it curiously for a moment then tossed it in Tom’s direction. Tom watched, unbelieving, as the bullet slowly tumbled in his direction but then, instead of falling to the ground, sped up and started to fly in a straight line. Tom watched, unable to believe what he was seeing, and then just barely in time, recognized it as a threat. The bullet struck his shoulder with as much force as it would have if it had been fired from a gun. Tom cried out in pain. He stumbled, leaned against a brick wall, and slid to the ground.

Around him, the gangsters were still shooting. Tom had lost sight of the woman in the blue dress, but from somewhere in the chaos, he could hear a feminine voice shouting what sounded like orders.

And then he saw some dry leaves from the gutter next to the black car start to spin. They rose off the ground as though they were caught in a whirlwind. They spun higher and faster, as the whirlwind grew larger. Soon, the leaves weren’t the only things spinning. Tom saw bits of metal in the storm, probably the bullets and casings from the machine gun fire earlier. That metal started to glow a bright, electric blue. Then, the whirlwind suddenly stopped, and the glowing metal shot out in all directions.

The various gangsters cried out and collapsed as they were struck by the flying bullets. And then all was still. The woman in blue stood calmly in the center of the chaos. Around her, Tom counted seven bodies, all riddled with bullet holes. She paid them no mind as she walked over to Tom.

“I told you not to follow me,” she said. “Why did you do it, anyway?”

“You stole a gun from my friend.”

“Who? Oh, you mean the woman at the shop. I didn’t steal from her. I paid her well, almost five times what she was asking for the little weapon.”

“But you took it before you were allowed,” Tom tried to explain. His mind boggled. Five times? That just made it worse! There was no way that the authorities would ever believe Jessie hadn’t taken a bribe to let the woman have the gun without the proper procedure.

The woman seemed unconcerned. She put her hands on Tom’s shoulder. He gasped as he something moving inside his skin. But when she removed her hands, the bullet wound was gone. Tom stood up.

“There,” the woman said. “You seem to have a good heart, and you tried to help me, so I’ve healed you. But you should leave.”

“Not until you return the gun you took. Jessie is going to get in trouble over it, especially after the cops find the bodies here and realize some of the bullets came from that gun.”

“There are no cops here, at least not the kind you understand. Surely you’ve guessed by now that we aren’t in your world? Nothing that we do here will get your friend in trouble. By now, everyone in her shop has already forgotten I was there, and the gun will never be seen by mortals again.” The woman raised her hands, and out in the bay, fog seemed to gather about the Golden Gate bridge. “There. Your ‘Golden Gate’ has now become a gate in truth. Cross that bridge, and you’ll be back in your own world. You’ll forget everything that’s happened tonight.” Without waiting for an answer, she walked off.

Tom watched her go and wondered if he should chase after her. He had come to get the gun back for Jessie, and he hadn’t done that yet. On the other hand, he had already figured out that he wasn’t in his San Francisco. He believed the woman when she said that gun would never fall into the hands of the police. And after what he’d just seen, men being shot in the head, then shrugging it off and pulling the bullets out…

“Ah, hell,” he said aloud. “I’m in over my head. Time to get out of here.” It was a long walk to the Golden Gate Bridge, and once he made it across, it would be even longer to find transportation out of Marin County to the place where he’d left his car. He could worry about that when he was no longer in crazy town.

He headed west. The echo of his footsteps as he walked almost seemed to sound like words. Don’t go, don’t go, they said. Tom figured it was his own uneasiness with leaving the situation incomplete, but he sternly reminded himself that, whatever was going on in this dream-like city, it wasn’t his affair.

Tom walked along Lombard Street, making his way down its famous twists and turns. The hairpin turns are on the east side of Russian Hill, a niggling voice in his head reminded him, but he ignored it. That was how it was in the real San Francisco; putting the turns on the west side would hardly be the weirdest thing he’d seen. Besides, he knew he was heading west; he could see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.

He kept going in the same direction, but there were a lot of hairpin turns, far more than he remembered there being. Again, he reminded himself that he wasn’t in his own world. But he kept going west, going further and further down the hill, and the bridge didn’t seem to get any closer. He grew more and more nervous—and then he stumbled over something in his path.

It was a dead body, dressed like one of the gangsters from before. Tom looked around him and saw six more bodies. Different bodies, he tried to tell himself. This is all from a different fight. Then he saw the leaves scattered in a circle where the whirlwind had dropped them, and his own blood streaked down the side of one of the brick buildings. He looked behind him and saw the road make a sharp drop-off to the east. There was no question: despite the fact that he had gone no direction but west, and no elevation changed but down, he had somehow ended up back on the top of Russian Hill.

“What the…” Strangely, Tom was less surprised by the fact that he had somehow walked in circles than he was puzzled by the reason for it. The woman obviously had some sort of magic, and Tom was fairly certain she could make him wander about indefinitely if she wished, but she was the one who’d told him to go back to his own world. Just a cruel joke? Perhaps, but Tom didn’t think so. She’d seemed sincere.

Then some other magic is keeping me here. He looked at the bodies around him. Them, or perhaps their boss, whoever that is. But why? Tom had no answer for that, and he didn’t think he wanted to find out what the answer might be.

He kicked one of the bodies. “I’m going home,” he announced as if the corpse he had just kicked could hear him. He started down the hill again—but was unsurprised when, after all of the twists and turns, he found himself at the top once more.

As Tom stood at the top of the hill, trying to figure out what to do, one of the gangsters in front of him stood up and looked furtively around. Instinctively, Tom slunk back into the shadows. That guy was supposed to be dead! But Tom reminded himself that he hadn’t examined the body. If the gangster had just been pretending, what business was that of his?

Still, he went further into the darkness and watched as the gangster dusted off his coat and started down Hyde Street. For a moment, it was as if Tom’s vision became telescopic, and he could see the woman in blue walking down that same street. The gangster, the one she likely thought dead the same way Tom had thought, was pursuing her. I should warn her, he thought, then shook his head. The woman had been clear that this affair was none of his business. He deliberately turned his back on the pair and started to walk the other way down Hyde street, but then he heard a choking cry, almost a sob.

He turned around again. “Is anyone there? Hello?” he shouted. The only response was the echo of his own voice—only somehow, the acoustics changed his “Hello” into, “Don’t go…don’t go…don’t go…”

Might be worth answering. “Why not? Why do you want me to stay?”

“Stay…stay…stay…” the echo responded. “Day…nger… Day…nger…”

“Who are you?” The echo had no answer for that, but Tom could sense a reply, anyway. It came from the streets that had twisted to keep him where he was, the buildings that had echoed back his answers, and the very air that held him here. It was the City itself. The City was in danger, and it wanted his help.

“You’re not my city. I don’t owe you anything,” Tom said, but then he doubted. True, this wasn’t where he’d grown up and where he now made his living. But from what he’d seen, it was the city he’d dreamed about. It was the San Francisco of Sam Spade and Dirty Harry, the one he’d read about in the stories and seen in the movies that had inspired him to become a detective. There was darkness in that San Francisco, yes, but also hope, a sense that a good, strong man could find the truth and set at least a few wrongs right.

In the real world, that San Francisco was as dead as the dodo, assuming it had ever existed. But here… If his dream city existed in this dimension, could he let it go without a fight?

“I’m not making any promises,” he shouted. “But I’ll hang around for a while. And if I can help, I will.”

A cable car pulled up beside him, and Tom jumped onto it. The car sped down Hyde street, closing the distance between Tom and the woman in blue at an incredible rate. The gangster, however, had a head start, and Tom was still several blocks away when the gangster caught up to her. Tom opened his mouth to shout a warning, but just before he could do so, she turned around. She saw the gangster hurrying towards her and smiled. When he reached her, she pulled him into an embrace. Tom stood there, staring, with no idea how to react to what he’d just seen.

As he watched, the gangster stiffened. “Lady, we’re being followed,” he cried. He spun around and pulled his Tommy gun out from under his jacket, spraying the cable car with a hail of bullets.

Tom didn’t even have time to dodge. Fortunately, someone else did: the cable car jumped off its track and spun ninety degrees, putting most of its mass between Tom and the one shooting. Most of the bullets bounced harmlessly off the metal sides of the car. Those that didn’t, the ones that made it into the car, took an interesting path. Tom could see them turn and twist as if they were pulled by an invisible force until all of them ended their path in the back of one of the seats at the front of the car. Those bullets should have gone right through the metal rather than being stopped, he thought, then realized it was absurd. A cable car had just dodged a shooting, space had warped itself into a pretzel, and he was worried about ballistics?

“Stop!” the woman shouted. Instantly, the gunfire ceased. Tom heard the clicking of high heels on the pavement, and in another moment, the woman had walked around to his position. “You! I thought I told you to return to your own world!”

“I tried. Someone else wanted me to stay.”

“I…see,” said the woman. She sounded confused, but then a wind blew in from the ocean. She cocked her head as if she were listening. “I do see. It appears I have made a grave error, Thomas Ward. I can only beg for your forgiveness, both for my earlier brusqueness and for the…overanxiousness of my colleague when he realized that you were tailing us. I hope that it isn’t too late for us to make amends.”

“We might be able to figure out something,” Tom said casually, as though he were used to wandering through a city that had been designed by M.C. Escher, having bullets thrown through his body, and being protected by a suddenly sentient cable car. “But if so, I’m going to have to know what’s going on. I need the truth, the whole truth.”

“You don’t want the whole truth,” the woman said. “But I’ll tell you as much as I can. My name is Zephyrine. This is my associate, Uthman.” She motioned to the gangster. “We’re here looking for something that was lost.”

“And that something is…?”

“A pendant shaped like a compass. Or, at least, that’s what it looked like in my world. I don’t know if it has changed form here.”

“Wait, your world? Isn’t this your world?”

Zephyrine shook her head. “This little dimension is actually closer to your world than mine. It’s a pocket, created by dreams. Ordinarily, it would be of no importance, but a few beings from my world have chosen to use it as a hiding place for dangerous things. Like the pendant. Some of our people managed to trace it to this place. I came to retrieve it with Uthman as my backup. The two of us came here through the light, a light which put us on the street next to your friend’s store. We thought the necklace had just been dropped off, and we could hunt it down without difficulty, but almost as soon as we arrived, we felt them.”

“The gangsters?” Tom asked.

“They’re creatures from our world who have taken a form convenient to this one. They’re… Well, never mind. That’s not important now. What is important is that there were at least a dozen of them in the street where we arrived, and as soon as they saw me, they ran, hurrying into little shop across the street from your friend’s. Uthman followed them, while I went into the gun shop to give him time to work his magic.”

Tom tried to remember the shop across the street from Rayburn’s Guns and Ammo. In our world, it’s a pawn shop, I think. Is it the same here? Tom had been in too much of a hurry to look.

Uthman took up the tale. “It is my gift to be able to blend in anywhere. Even though the gangsters knew that there were enemies about, they were still unable to tell me from one of their own. A few of their leaders consulted, and then they all left the shop and scattered throughout the city. I went with the largest group. I told Lady Zephyrine where we were going, and she followed us.”

“But—”

“I know, it looked like they were following her. But I knew where the group was going, I relayed it to her, and she was able to stay on the same road, just slightly ahead of us.”

Zephyrine said, “We were hoping that they would lead us to the pendant. But when they saw me, they panicked and started shooting. You saw how that went. Afterwards, Uthman stayed where he was in case some of their allies should return, while I went looking for the other groups he mentioned. I found one of them, but they did no more to lead me to the pendant than the first group did. I was about to start hunting down a third group when you caught up to us.”

Tom nodded. He had no trouble believing Zephyrine’s story. In many ways, it was the least unbelievable of the things he’d seen and heard that night. But he was left with three questions. “If you were only in the gun shop to kill time while your associate infiltrated the gang, why did you take the gun from Jessie?”

Zephyrine drew the revolver and handled it in a way that made Tom’s gun safety sense scream in horror. “Because this is no gun,” she said. “When I came into the shop, I sensed a powerful magic, a magic that I eventually traced to the pistol cabinet. I eventually found that it was this, a legendary weapon of heroes that has for some reason taken the form of a gun. I do not know how it ended in your friend’s shop, but I know it doesn’t belong in the hands of mortals.”

“What was in the other shop, the one across the way that your enemies ran into?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know,” Uthman said slowly. “We didn’t stay very long. I didn’t really have a chance to look around.”

“I wonder if that was intentional,” Tom said. “You said that they knew you and Zephyrine were close, even if they couldn’t detect you among their number. I wonder if they were trying to lead you out of there as quickly as possible.”

Zephyrine looked thoughtful. “It could be. In any case, it might be worth examining more closely. Let’s go back.”

She swept along the road, leaving a great wind following in her wake. Uthman was pulled along beside her. Tom kept up as well as he could. His two companions were moving at a breakneck speed, and Tom was just barely able to stay at their heels. He didn’t think he would be able to do even that if the city hadn’t been helping him: he would find himself falling almost a block behind, and then suddenly one step would bring him back to Zephyrine’s side.

They reached the street where this had all begun, and Tom cast a regretful look at Rayburn’s. He wanted to go in there and check in with Jessie, but he could feel the urgency of the city. He needed to take care of this problem before he could return.

Zephyrine stopped right in front of the shop cattycorner from Rayburn’s. It was a pawn shop, the way that Tom remembered it from the real world. He started to go in, but Zephyrine laid a hand on his shoulder. “Not yet. You need to be equipped.”

From somewhere under his coat, Uthman produced another trenchcoat, as well as a fedora. He helped Tom put them on. Tom asked, “Is this so I’ll blend in, too?”

Zephyrine shook her head. “It’s armor designed to fit this time and place. It will protect you as well as plate mail would in a different world.” Zephyrine hesitated a moment, then pulled out the pearl-handled revolver and handed it to Tom. “Your gun won’t work against our enemies, but this one will.”

Tom nodded. Uthman led the way to the door. He and Tom took up their positions on either side of it, with Zephyrine just behind him. Uthman held up five fingers, then slowly lowered them one at a time. Tom got the message. Four…three…two…one.

When the last finger went down, Uthman yanked open the door, and he and Tom burst through it, guns pointed, ready to shoot anyone who challenged them. “Everyone freeze!” Uthman shouted. What greeted them on the other side was…nothing.

Somewhat sheepishly, Tom lowered his gun and examined the empty shop. Uthman looked about more hesitantly, then looked back to Zephyrine. She followed them in and shook her head. “None of them are hiding in the back or anything like that. I’d be able to feel if they were.”

Uthman asked, “What about the necklace?”

“I…don’t think so. I sense no magic here. But maybe there is something about these displays that is enough to keep me from detecting a small object. Let me look more closely.”

Zephyrine examined the cases full of electronics, jewelry, and other small valuables. Tom did, as well, wondering where they had all come from and if there were stories behind them. In this world, I’ll bet there are. What did Zephyrine call it, “a pocket, created by dreams”? What dreams might have created all of these?

But whatever story they were part of, it wasn’t his. Zephyrine was still searching diligently, but her body language told Tom that she was certain that her pendant compass wasn’t here. So much for that idea of mine. He wandered to the window and looked across at Jessie’s shop. I wonder how she’s doing. Probably worrying. Then he was struck by an idea.

He turned to the other two and asked his third question, the one he hadn’t gotten a chance to ask before they ran off for the shop. “So what does this magic necklace of yours do, anyway?”

“It finds portals,” Uthman answered. “Gateways between worlds. It’s attracted to them.”

That fit with the idea that was starting to tease its way across Tom’s brain. “You said that you first saw the gangsters in the street coming to this pawn shop. Any idea where they were coming from?”

“No,” Zephyrine said slowly. “I assumed they’d just come out of here, but maybe…”

“Maybe they were coming from one of the other shops on this street. Maybe it was a shop that the pendant you’re looking for would have been attracted to. There are two ‘gateways between worlds’ in this street. One to your world…”

“And one to yours,” Zephyrine agreed. “Your friend’s shop.”

“A shop where we know you sensed magic. Are you sure the only magic was from this gun?”

“No. No, I’m not.”

The three left the pawn shop and hurried across the street. They went through the door into Rayburn’s Guns and Ammo, which was exactly as Tom had left it, with the same customers shopping in the same places. He wondered if any time had passed for them during his adventure in the other San Francisco. Jessie looked up when they came in and grinned when she saw Tom carrying the pearl-handled revolver. “You found it!”

“I did.” Tom put it on the counter next to Jessie. “The lady apologizes; she didn’t understand about the waiting period. But she thinks she dropped a necklace while she was in here, and I promised to help her look for it.”

“Of course, of course,” Jessie said, but Tom thought she hadn’t really heard him. She seemed so relieved to know that she wasn’t about to lose her livelihood that Tom could have said that Zephyrine had lost her pet elephant in the shop, and it wouldn’t have registered with Jessie.

Tom, Zephyrine, and Uthman split up and started to search. As they did so, Tom got the distinct impression of someone staring at him. He looked at everyone else there. Dave’s eyes were still glued to the used rifle case, Chris’s to a box of .22 bullets, and Alyssa’s to her magazine. Then Tom looked to the stranger, who was staring right back at him. Tom was about to confront the man when he heard Uthman cry, “There it is!”

Tom turned to look. Uthman was next to the register, leaning over to pick something off the floor. Tom moved in his direction, but before he could take a step, he heard the sound of a gun being cocked. He turned to the stranger, but the stranger’s hands were visible, and he was unarmed.

“Everyone, stay where you are,” said a female voice. Tom turned to the counter and saw the last thing he’d expected: Jessie, with her finger on the trigger of the pearl-handled revolver, looking ready to shoot any of her customers who made a move.

“Jessie, I don’t understand. What’s going on?” Tom asked.

“That necklace on the floor needs to stay there. I’m holding it for someone.”

“On the floor?” someone behind Tom asked incredulously. Tom thought it sounded like Chris, but he didn’t want to take his eyes off Jessie to make sure.

“Was it someone dressed like a gangster out of the forties?” Tom asked. “Jessie, those are the bad guys! You don’t want them to have that pendant.”

“I wouldn’t be casting stones if I were you. You’re kind of dressed like a bad guy yourself.” Jessie walked around the counter, pointing her gun at each of them in turn. “I’m going to pick up the necklace now. No one make any sudden moves while I do.” Jessie knelt and grabbed the chain on the pendant.

As soon as she did, Tom felt an electrical jolt go through him. No! cried the city. It didn’t want Jessie to have that necklace. Tom’s mind rebelled against the thought that Jessie of all people could do anything bad, but the city was terrified, and Tom wasn’t the only one who felt it. He could sense the anxiety coming from Dave, Chris, and Alyssa, as well. Jessie stood up, holding the pendant in front of her, and as she straightened, Dave gave a cry, pushed himself off the rifle cabinet, and charged towards her.

Without missing a beat, Jessie pulled the trigger. A hail of bullets that couldn’t possibly come out of a revolver went flying just above his head, shattering the glass in one of the displays and sending a rain of shards on top of them.

“That was a warning,” Jessie said. “Next time, that goes into your chest.”

Tom knew he ought to be shocked at seeing the machine gun fire come out of that weapon, but he was too stunned by Jessie’s behavior to worry about anything else. And because he had been watching Jessie, he’d seen her flinch ever so slightly when the gun was fired. That was why the shot went high. She did mean to hit Dave. Only…Jessie would never flinch. She knows better.

And then Tom looked in the glass behind the counter. There was a faint reflection there, and in that reflection, he saw the stranger. The man was moving his hands in the same way Jessie was. He’s controlling her somehow.

Tom thought fast. He spoke to Jessie to gain time. “Jessie, that necklace is dangerous. Can’t you feel it?”

“Of course it is,” she said coldly. “Why do you think I want it?”

Tom took a couple of steps back, still keeping his eyes on the reflection in the glass. “I don’t know. Why do you want it?”

“To connect the Fae Realm and the mortal world, of course. They’re so close already. If I can just move the two portals a bit, I can make them one. And do you have any idea of the chaos a new portal will cause, especially with my army being ready to come through?”

Jessie’s voice was speaking, but in the reflection, Tom could see the stranger’s lips moving, and Tom had no doubt whose words thes really were. Bastard. Tom wasn’t really sure he cared about portals or Fae Realms or any of that stuff, but he was furious at this creature for using Jessie as his puppet.

Tom took another step back. “And what happens to this place if you do all that?”

“It’ll be vaporized, of course. Why does that matter? This place is no more than a dream, and when it dies, no one will care.”

“I’ll care,” Tom said, and he turned around and grabbed the stranger’s right wrist and twisted it hard. The stranger cried out in pain, and so did Jessie. Tom heard the gun fall to the ground with a clatter.

Zephyrine scrambled to pick it up, and Uthman ran to Jessie and started wrestling the necklace out of her hand. Tom would have gone to help them, but the stranger had recovered from Tom’s attack and was launching one of his own. He slipped out of Tom’s grip and punched him in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. Tom gasped and doubled over. The stranger reached into his pocket and pulled a dagger, then charged straight at Tom. Instinctively, Tom threw up his arms to defend himself. The blade struck the arm of his coat and shattered like a china plate hitting a concrete floor. Tom and the stranger both looked at the remains of the knife incredulously. Zephyrine said this was like armor. I guess she wasn’t kidding.

While the stranger was still staring at his failed weapon, Zephyrine came up behind him and raised her arms. The stranger staggered backwards, as if struck by a mighty wind. He staggered directly into Uthman, who raised his arms in turn and sent the stranger back towards Zephyrine. The two pushed him back and forth with their invisible power, finally holding him in the air between them. Zephyrine then lowered her right hand and moved it above the shards of glass that Jessie’s gunshot had created earlier. Like the fallen bullets on the street, those shards started to glow, and Tom was unsurprised when they all flew off the ground and into the stranger’s body. The stranger gave a single cry, then vanished in a shower of blue sparks.

Jessie groaned and collapsed on the ground. Tom ran to her side. “Thank you,” she muttered feebly.

Zephyrine and Uthman came over to join him. “She’ll be all right,” Zephyrine assured him. “It’ll take her a few moments to get over the shock, but she’ll be fine.”

Jessie’s left hand was still clutching the necklace in a tight fist. Uthman reached for it, and Jessie dropped it in his hand. “We’ll take this,” he promised. “Put it somewhere where it will do no harm.”

Zephyrine nodded. “We should do so, now that we have it. We have no further work in this world, and we should depart. Thank you for your help, Thomas Ward. I didn’t realize the possession that was going on, and if I’d acted, I’d have moved the wrong way. If that had happened… Best that it didn’t. You have my gratitude.” Zephyrine motioned to Uthman, and the two walked out of the store.

Tom stayed by Jessie’s side. She rested on the ground for a moment, and then he helped her to feet. She returned to the register, then cried out. “I can’t believe her!”

“What? What is it?”

“The gun! She took it again!”

Tom rushed out of the store after Zephyrine. When he got through the door, his nose was suddenly assaulted by all of the terrible smells of San Francisco in the twenty-first century. Zephyrine and Uthman were nowhere in sight. He returned inside.

“She’s gone,” he said. “I can look more, if you like, but…”

Jessie seemed to consider that. “Do you think she’s going to cause any trouble with that gun?”

“Not in this world, at least. I don’t think any human will ever see it again.”

The other customers in the store looked at Tom with baffled expressions, but Jessie just nodded. “Then we’ll let it go. I’ll report it stolen; that’s true enough. And…”

Jessie didn’t finish the sentence, but Tom thought he knew what she was thinking. “I should get going now. I have work tomorrow. But I’ll stop by again tomorrow night, if I have time.”

He went back into the street of the dirty, disgusting place that his city had become. But as he walked down the sidewalk, dodging a pile of poop on his way, he remembered walking along this street in the other San Francisco, remembered its danger, mystery, and beauty.

Continuing along, he thought he could see that other city shining through the trash and grime. It was a dream, yes, but it was a dream that the people of San Francisco had shared once, a dream that sustained those who loved the city even when things seemed to fall apart. And Tom knew that he would never stop seeing the dream city underneath the reality, and that he would always be able to appreciate its beauty and wonder.

Stars in Her Eyes

Aaron Van Treeck

The world outside my window was beginning to look a bit…rotten.

When I’d bound myself to the Forgotten Ends shop by blood and magic all those years ago, this had been a very quaint little town. The teenager dealing heroin two blocks down the street in Memorial Park under artificial neon-pink lights attested that Harbinger Falls was no longer a nice place to live, no matter what the sign on the city limits said.

I drew my blinds, cutting off the majority of the neon light and leaving me in shadow. Another day gone, another lonely night ahead of me. Or maybe not.

I pulled a gold key from my gray tweed waistcoat and rolled it over my covered fingers. It was warm: Forgotten Ends would have a customer before the night was over. I put a kettle full of water on my wood-burning stove and stoked the fire. Autumn was beginning to bite in the evenings, and I wanted my first customer in who knew how long to be comfortable.

Every item on my shelves was dusted, arranged, and behaving. The bound totems on the top shelves looked a bit disgruntled against a backdrop of cornflower blue wallpaper, but whether they were happy wasn’t my concern, just that they were keeping to themselves. I felt the key growing hot, so I put it away and waited for my guest.

I took a moment to inspect my appearance. I still looked like I was in my late twenties, wearing a gray suit, sans coat. My dark hair needed a trim, and I had dark circles under my eyes that made my bright blue irises look a bit unsettling. Maybe I needed to sleep more? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d bothered. It’s not like lack of sleep could kill me.

A knock came at the front shop door and the small bell rang as the customer came in. I stood behind the counter, allowing the ghost of hope to kindle the ash heap of my soul for a moment. I went cold when I saw the woman who had come through the door. I’m not much of a ladies’ man these days. Running a magical goods shop in middle America doesn’t exactly bring in legions of Swedish swimsuit models, or even mousy librarians looking for a man to settle down with.

You can imagine by surprise when my idea of feminine perfection opened the old wooden door to my shop wearing five thousand-dollar shoes and a black jacket threaded with actual silver. Her full lips were black. It didn’t look like lipstick. I couldn’t see her eyes under the brim of her black fedora, like the shadow under her hat was deliberately hiding them.

“Are you the owner of Forgotten Ends?” she asked. I felt her look me up and down. Those full black lips quirked in amusement. They made me think of overripe fruit, something lush and decadent, on the verge of spoiling. Forbidden fruit, if I’d ever seen it.

“Yes, Miss…?”

“Astor, Sophia Astor.” I opened my ledger and wrote her name on a fresh page. She didn’t bother to ask my name, which either meant she was rude or she understood how this shop worked.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Astor. What can I find for you today?”

“A katashiro. Heian-era, preferably.” She said it so lightly, like she hadn’t just asked for an object potentially as world-shaking as a small nuclear bomb. I set my pen aside on the counter.

“A katashiro, especially one made in the height of Japanese sorcery, is a very dangerous ritual tool. It’s not something I would casually sell to a stranger.”

She didn’t take offense. Rather, she leaned over the counter and gave me my first look at her startling eyes. They were deep black with a dusting of silver shards. It was like looking at the night sky.

“If you want to get to know me first, I’m fine with that.” It was a sultry promise that drifted off those sinful lips, one that made my heart thump briefly in my chest.

“Even then, I might not let you have it.”

“Really? You care about what happens out there? It sure doesn’t seem like it.” She flicked those celestial eyes towards my window, where I’d watched my chosen home go to seed for the past eighty years.

“I can’t do anything about that. The things in my shop, however, are on my head. What do you imagine would happen if I threw wide my doors and allowed magical treasures from the past ten thousand years to simply flood into the world? Every Power on Earth would step on me at once. The Council, the Church. Hell, the Horned Pavillion might shake the dust off their scaly hides just to burn my shop to ash.”

“You haven’t been out in a while. Things are going to tip into full-blown war any day. Not just in the Night, but among the human governments, as well.”

“All the more reason for me not to stir the pot.” I gently closed my ledger, but she placed a delicate finger between the pages and opened it back up.

“But it might be your chance to make the world outside your door a little better. I need the katashiro for my own sake.”

I wanted to believe her. She placed her hand over mine and I felt something inside me go slack. The relief it brought was indescribable. Imagine having a muscle cramp for eight decades, then finally feeling it relax and the discomfort of it fading away. “I can compensate you for it.” The promise was a bit less subtle this time. Reluctantly, I pulled my hand from hers.

“I hope you understand that I can’t simply take your word for it.”

“And I’m not willing to take ‘no’ for an answer.” She pulled back from the counter and hung up her coat and hat on the rack next to the door. Her hair was pure silver and fell in waves. One of her eyes was obscured by her bangs. I was old enough to remember Veronica Lake making that hairstyle famous, but she didn’t wear it half as well as Sophia Astor. The scant neon light coming through my blinds made her silver hair and porcelain skin glow like the full moon. “I have precious things to offer in exchange. And I think I’ll start with this.” She tapped one black fingernail on my counter, and a wooden box appeared from thin air. A beautiful scent like flowers and fresh water filled the room, likely something that happened when she exerted her supernatural abilities.

“Is that a radio?”

“It’s a very special radio.” She motioned for me to come around to her side of the counter. I left my ledger open, not wanting to formally close negotiations until I fully understood the situation.

“It looks like something from the Thirties. Beautiful workmanship.” I ran my gloved hand over some very delicate scrollwork around the face of the wood casing. It was large, like the radios I remembered from my childhood, but there was so much more artistry in it.

“Its form is pleasant, but the function is the real star of the show.” Sophia turned a dial marked with what looked like dates. She stopped when the dial showed a day in September of Nineteen Thirty-Seven. Tinny music began playing and was soon cut off by a sinister laugh. “Who knows what evil lurks—”

With just that brief snippet, I was sent back to a simpler time. I hadn’t thought about my father in decades, but for a moment, I could smell his pipe tobacco, feel the cold wind running through the gaps in the old farmhouse walls, and luxuriated in the warmth of the old fireplace while the gentle glow of the radio dial’s light filled my heart with child-like wonder.

“How?”

“A distant relative put this together for me as a favor. A radio that can tune into time as well as frequencies. It may not be so impressive in the age of digital archives, but the genuine past carries a weight that no simple recording can capture, especially for those of us who lived it.” She changed the year and frequency; soulful brass and slow strings replaced the pulp radio drama. “The stars in her eyes, the light of my sky/We’re gonna dance our way to heaven.” This one didn’t hold any sentimental value to me, but Sophia seemed to come alive with the music.

“I remember this song. I was at the Wyndham in New York. Drinks and dancing until the whole party dropped. Even with the market crash, it was a glorious time to be alive.” She extended a hand to me. It had been a very long time, but I still knew what to do. I took the lead, pulling Sophia close and moving to the beat. She moved with me perfectly. I was decades out of practice, but a skilled partner can make up for clumsiness. She felt like the life in my blood as we moved together. It was intoxicating.

“This is a terribly cruel thing to do,” I told her.

“Doesn’t every prisoner enjoy a reprieve from his sentence?” She pressed into me, and I felt my heart begin beating out a Samba. “No taste of pleasure nor rest for your spirit. I can give you that.”

“You don’t understand anything.” I pushed her away, but gently. “If you want the katashiro, I need to understand what you plan to do with it. Appealing to my shriveled heart won’t get you anywhere.” She gave me a playful pout and snapped her fingers. The radio cut off, and the feeling of warm memories fled, leaving only the cooling night air and the faint radiance of the wood-burning stove.

“How about appealing to your stomach?” Sophia glanced over my shoulder to the small kitchen in the room past the sales counter. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I make a mean egg and onion.”

“I could prepare something a bit more substantial for you, if you like.” I touched the key in my pocket, checking for signs of warmth. “I think you’ll be my only customer this evening.”

“Out of curiosity, when was the last time you had dinner with another human being?” She brushed past me and into the kitchen.

“I…I’m not sure.” For that matter, I wasn’t confident I knew the current month or year. When most days were the same, they all tended to blend together. “It was with the local parish priest, back when stonewashed jeans were the popular fashion for teenagers. I don’t remember the year.” She stopped moving toward the kitchen and looked at me over her shoulder. There it was: the pity of a beautiful woman. It always made me feel like half a man.

“That’s—” she began, but thought better of what she’d been about to say. “I’ll tell you my story over dinner.” True to her word, she fished through my refrigerator and pantry until she found bread, eggs, and onions. It felt surprisingly reassuring to see the sultry woman doing something so mundane. She donned an apron I’d left hanging on the pantry door. The words “Kiss the Chef” were emblazoned across her chest as she began heating oil in my iron skillet over a gas stove older than most of my customers.

“Where are you from, Miss Astor?”

“Sophia, please. And that’s a question with many answers. Lately? Tammany Parish, Louisiana. How about you, hon?” She deliberately put on a New Orleans accent for endearment. I had a feeling she’d been a lot of people in her lifetime and could wear any of them like a coat.

“Wisconsin. No town that had a name, not back then, but I remember Lake Michigan fondly.” She added onions to the pan and the smell hit my nose like a left cross. That shouldn’t be possible. The deal for taking possession of Forgotten Ends was a strict one. I had agreed to give up all bodily pleasures and oversee the shop impartially until my debts were paid. Or, more accurately, until I’d paid for my sins. Just thinking about it made my hands itch under the cotton gloves. Being able to smell onions frying should have been impossible. Then again, feeling pleasure from the touch of a beautiful woman shouldn’t have been possible, either. Sophia’s power must be responsible.

“How did someone from a place without a name end up in charge of the most valuable shop in the Night side of the world?”

“I was a very angry young man.” My story was far from pleasant, and I didn’t want her to show me pity again.

“And I’m a very determined woman. I could see sparks flying with that combination.” She winked at me. Heat crawled into my face, and I suddenly wasn’t sure what to do with my hands.

“I have a kettle warm. Would you like some tea?”

“I’d prefer coffee. My story will take a while and it’s already dark outside.” She cracked eggs over the onions and put a lid over the skillet. I made what I could from my limited stock. The shop provided for me in terms of food and drink. I didn’t actually need it, but sometimes I ate just to feel a bit more human. I had no sense of taste, so I wasn’t sure if the coffee was any good. At least there was plenty of milk and sugar. She took the saucer from me with a smile and nodded toward the small table. I sat down, and she put a plate in front of me with fried onions and an over-easy egg between two slices of toasted white bread.

“Thank you.” I eyed the sandwich with all due gravity. I hadn’t tasted food in over seven decades. It was a world I thought I’d left behind, along with all the temptations in it. What would stepping back into that world do to me? Pleasure wasn’t evil, but evil certainly liked it as a selling point.

“Not hungry?” she asked, sipping her coffee. I locked eyes with her. It wasn’t a question; it was a challenge, a jibe, a sly bit of mockery. I picked up the sandwich and took a bite. The egg yolk hit my tongue and I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. Savory, rich, yolk mingled with the sweetness of the onion, and I was brought low. Like a man finding water in the desert, I wanted to weep, but didn’t have the tears. And deep in my soul, a spark of anger began to smolder on the ash heap of my passions. I took another bite.

The sandwich was gone all too soon, but I didn’t disgrace myself by licking the remaining yolk off the plate. “I forgot what that was like.”

“I thought you might have. I’m sorry, by the way, but I needed you to hear me as a person, not some bloodless husk.”

“You may wish you’d taken your chances with the husk. Bloodless or not, I will do my duty. Go ahead, let’s hear it.” Her expression turned wry, but she did start giving me her story.

“I’m descended from Nyx, about six generations down. By luck, I inherited a substantial portion of power from her. It kept me safe through the Great War, but in the Second, I had to run here, to America.” She wasn’t lying about her age, at least. Only people who’d lived through the First World War called it The Great War. “To do that, I had to make a deal with Macha.” She wouldn’t look me in the eyes now, just stared down at her coffee cup. “A gift of blood once a year.”

“Macha was destroyed. Quite a while ago, if memory serves,” I challenged. Her story was starting to develop holes and I wanted to see how she would try to patch them.

“That’s what I thought. But two months ago, I was visited by one of the Cu Sith. It dropped a letter at my door, from Macha, demanding full payment of my debt. Thirty years of tribute, all at once. I would have to bleed myself dry.” She shrank in her chair. Without thinking, I reached out and took her hand in mine. Her fingers gripped mine softly. I’d expected some degree of superhuman strength, but that must not have been one of her gifts. Either that, or she was very practiced at being gentle.

“But you have no real proof Macha pulled her haggard corpse out of the grave. Can’t you just ignore the debt half a world away from the Fair Folk? Cu Sith are common hirelings these days, or so I’ve heard.”

“But only one of the original Fair Folk could command a Hound to collect.” she countered.

“You’ve seen him?”

“He nearly caught up with me in Chicago.” She brushed back her hair and showed me bloodstained gauze covering part of her left ear. I flinched at the flaw in the beautiful work of art that was Sophia Astor. I decided to shift the subject.

“A katashiro isn’t the only way out of such a bargain. Claim asylum with the Church, or pay tribute to the Pavillion.”

“The Church wouldn’t—” she began.

“Yes, they would.” She gave me a sharp look that waned into displeased thoughtfulness.

“They helped you.”

“They saved me from the road I was on. I can’t say I’ve always been grateful for that, but they did save my life.”

“And your soul?” she asked with a bitter quirk of her lips. The seldom used rosary in my pocket felt very heavy.

“That remains to be seen. They didn’t exactly approve of my choice to take over Forgotten Ends.” I let go of Sophia’s hand. “Thank you for the sandwich.”

“It was my pleasure. It’s been a long time since I cooked for a man. Not exactly fashionable anymore, but there is some nostalgic charm left in it.”

“What is your plan for the katashiro? Please, be exact.”

“I want it to save my life.” She looked me directly in the eyes and it was like falling into the night sky. I’m sure I lost time staring into those eyes, but the moment I caught myself, I shook my head to clear the remaining haze.

“I need more than that. Do you intend for it to swallow your death? To repair the injury to your body and negate loss of blood?” I narrowed my eyes, looking at her mouth rather than the pools of oblivion. “Or do you mean to use it to kill Macha and void your debt? Or maybe you want to use it to transfer your debt to someone else?” Her look soured the longer I spoke. I couldn’t catch which suggestion was the truth based on her expression, but I had a feeling it wasn’t one of the more innocuous ones.

“And if you don’t approve of my methods?”

“You’ll leave here empty-handed.”

“You would let me walk out of here facing certain death? What kind of man are you?” Her eyes flashed pure black for a moment.

Before I could answer, something big smashed into my front door. I felt the entire building shudder, and Forgotten Ends fed that back to me as mild discomfort. I glanced at Sophia, but she didn’t seem startled. No, more like nervous.

“It seems I was wrong about having company this late at night.” I handed her an old brass key. “Go upstairs and wait in the room on the right. I give you my word that whatever has paid us a visit won’t be able to get to you there.” The second impact was louder and hurt like a stubbed toe. She took the key slowly, but once she had it, she moved to the stairs quickly.

I stood, straightened my tie, and went to answer the door. A third impact, this one cracking the doorframe and causing me genuine pain, rang through the building. I opened the door and found a huge, wild man with a mane of red hair standing on my porch with bloody knuckles.

“Hand her over, boy.” He spoke with an accent that could have been Irish or Scottish, but was probably from a language far older than either.

“Good evening. Please, come inside.” The big man cocked his head like a curious dog. Cautiously, he stepped through my door. He was so big he had to lean forward and turn his shoulders to get through the doorframe. His massive frame was covered in animal furs and hides that looked minimally processed. He stank like old blood and unwashed bodies, which was fitting for what I presumed he was. “Can I get you any refreshments?”

“Turn over the woman or I will kill you.” His teeth showed, yellowed and broken from inside his bushy beard. Wrath warmed me from the inside out like fresh blood. Before I’d become a nameless shopkeep, I would have relished pulling the guts out of this barbarian freak.

“And who would I be turning her over to?”

“I am a Hound of Cuhlainn, and I will not abandon my hunt.” From under his furs, he produced a crude knife. I could feel the death that weapon had caused radiating out like cold from an open freezer. It was a barely refined piece of bronze wrapped in animal hide and sharpened to the point that I thought it might have been considerably wider when it was made. Or maybe it had been broken and he’d sharpened the biggest piece. I had a feeling it had been made before the discovery of iron weapons. The threat helped cool my head a bit and think more strategically.

“Before this goes any further, this shop has rules.” I pointed to a sign hanging over the counter. The big man turned to read them, not showing a bit of worry in turning his back on me.

“I can’t read this,” he said, turning his bright green eyes on me with a scowl.

“The rules are as follows: first, all sales are final. Second, all who enter with my blessing are under the protection due a guest. Third, those who enter without my blessing or stay when asked to leave are accorded no protection. Fourth, any act I deem hostile to myself or my shop will be punished by Silence.” He showed me a snide smile, but didn’t interrupt. “Do you have any questions?”

“Little shopkeep. What makes you think you can protect anyone? I could skin you—” The moment the threat left his mouth, every figurine lining my top shelves turned to face him. The weight of their regard caused him to pause and reassess the situation. While the feeling of his presence, and that of his knife had caused me concern, the depth of hatred and bloodlust coming from those figurines gave the hunter reason to regard me as a substantial threat to his continued well-being.

“I am the keeper of this place and all the things that dwell herein. Violate my rules, and the whole of it will come down on your head, dog. There is plenty of room on my shelves for you to spend the years before the world burns.” Real fear showed on his face, and I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: satisfaction. It felt good to have someone bend to my will, to taste the prospect of violence.

“I am not my own master. The woman is here, and I must take her before my Queen.”

“I’m no hero. She came in here as a customer and is under my protection until negotiations end.” I saw his eyes light up at what I didn’t say. He may have been a brute, but he clearly wasn’t stupid. A patient hunter rarely went hungry. He would wait until she left, then run her down. Better than forcing a confrontation with something that might actually hurt him.

“If she does not come out before morning, I will tear this place down around you.”

“If you try, I’ll show you a fate worse than death. They could tell you what that means, if I allowed them to speak.” I pointed at the little statues lining my walls and they all rattled slightly. The big man backed out slowly, not putting his knife away or letting me out of eyesight until my shop door swung closed. I didn’t take my eyes off him until he was out of view. One effort of will made metal grates appear on each window and a heavy metal bar secured each door.

“Thank you,” Sophia said from the kitchen. She must have heard part of the conversation.

“I merely enforced the rules, as I will do with you.”

“I could use a drink and a place to rest after excitement like that.” That was a reasonable request, but something about it seemed insincere.

“Of course. Have a seat in the parlor, and I’ll bring you something.”

“Gin, if you have it.”

That gave me pause. Maybe it was the era I grew up in, but I had an instinctive distrust of gin drinkers. To a one, they had been self-destructive liars. I shook off the old prejudice and went to the kitchen. Coming into the sparsely adorned parlor with a bottle, glass, and a bucket of ice, I saw her sprawled out on a divan with a hand over her eyes like one of the old fainting beauties. If it was an act for my benefit, she was overestimating my age.

“I’m not sure which shelf this gin should be on, but it should be strong.” I poured her a glass and put a chunk of ice in for good measure.

“Thank you. Shall we get back to business?”

“If you feel up to it,” I allowed.

“Before that, could you show me the katashiro? I’d feel awful if I died without even getting to see it in person. I’ll give you the radio just for that.” She gave me a defeated look that felt like a knife in the heart. I didn’t move for a long moment. This had to be a trap of some kind, but I couldn’t see what it might be. Merely seeing it wouldn’t allow her to take it from my shop, demigoddess or not. Not as long as I was alive, anyway. I felt a phantom chill from the memory of the Hound’s knife, but he was locked outside. There was no way he could smash his way in here without giving me enough warning to defend myself. In the end, I couldn’t pass up the remnants of my humanity that radio promised to rekindle.

“You have a deal.” I touched the blue wallpaper, and a small cabinet appeared, made of dark wood. It opened soundlessly and revealed a somewhat crude wooden doll dressed in a white robe bearing the five-pointed star that had been the calling card of the most powerful sorcerer of Japan.

Its magic was like a lake of placid water, utterly calm but large enough to make a man feel small. All one had to do was write the name of a target on that white robe and it would serve as a substitute or conduit for that person. From there it would be as simple as holding it underwater to drown your target. On the other hand, setting it up as a substitute would allow someone to be beheaded and walk away unscathed while the doll broke instead.

“Exquisite.” Sophia’s lovely voice was a purr that made me shiver in pleasure. “Something so small…” She reached out toward it from the couch where she lay, like a Greek mosaic of a god longing for ambrosia, but it only lasted for a moment. She let her hand dip toward the floor, and shadowy power coalesced into the radio she’d teased me with earlier. I picked it up and put it on another conjured shelf and let it fade into the wall.

“I have one more thing left to offer.” Sophia stood and began to gracefully walk toward me. Her eyes sparkled and her lips turned up into a sultry smile. “Myself.”

“You make an incredibly tempting offer.” I had to swallow a lump in my throat.

“I don’t just mean sex. I mean me staying with you until one of us is dead. Attending to you, caring for you.” She moved into my arms, and I felt how soft and supple her body was. “Loving you,” she whispered into my ear. My heart broke. It was exactly what I wanted. I’d been alone for longer than most men lived. Sex would have been tempting enough. She was offering to make my life whole—and I couldn’t take the offer.

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can.” She pressed a kiss to my neck with those sinful lips. Distilled pleasure coursed into my veins. I felt strong again, vital again, and I wanted more. I cupped her face with one gloved hand, but the sight of it reminded me of my duty. Fighting every moment, I pushed her gently away.

“I gave up on being a man a long time ago.” The allure melted from her eyes, replaced with shock and anger.

“You are a man. You can pretend all you want to be some bloodless guardian spirit, but you’re just a man.” She put her hand to my chest and tapped her finger in time with my racing heartbeat. “You need someone to walk this road with you.”

“Maybe, but the price can’t be the world burning. I’m sorry. You can’t have the katashiro.” Her starlit eyes went full dark, and I could smell flowers. Before I could apologize again, the front door of the shop was smashed in by the Hound, his knife already drawn. I spun and looked to the figurines. I’d chosen the debtor suitable to crush the Hound when he’d first appeared. All I had to do was speak the words to call it to service. “Pay your debt, Ibaraki-doji!”

A figuring shattered and an ogre appeared in Forgotten Ends. Its red skin glowed in the light of the lamps, along with its iron club. The Hound stepped back in shock. Ibaraki-doji was one of the five most powerful oni ever to come from Japan. He’d have a very hard time surviving, as long as I could maintain the manifestation. Maybe I would be doing Sophia a favor even without selling her the katashiro.

“I’m sorry, too.” Her voice was a whisper in my ear. Before I could turn to look, something slammed hard into my back, driving the breath from my lungs. Cold shot through me, stealing my strength. The oni vanished, leaving the Hound free to do as he pleased. I fell to my knees and saw the thin spike of bronze sticking out of my guts. My blood dripped from the tip.

“Get the statue!” Sophia’s voice was high and shrill. The Hound was in the room faster than my eyes could track, his knife still in hand. He glanced at me, spat at my feet, then ripped the katashiro from the cabinet I’d forgotten to close. I didn’t have the strength to make it vanish back into the building, or call any of the other figurines to my aid. I couldn’t even speak.

I saw Sophia rush toward the shattered door after the fleeing Hound. She stopped and turned around. For a moment, it looked like she was about to walk back to me. The pain of being run through hit me all at once and my vision went black. My last thought was a question for God, on the slim chance that I’d be meeting him. It’s probably the only question people really want to ask. What was the point of my suffering?

I was surprised to wake and not see hellfire. Instead, I saw my shattered door and the light of a new dawn spilling inside. My blood had dried into a sticky mess beneath me, but the hole in my back had closed into an ugly, puckered scar.

While I was taking stock, I felt a cool burn on my neck. I checked it in the mirror upstairs and saw a black kiss branded on my neck. Magic still radiated from it. That, coupled with the knife being absent from my back told me Sophia had decided to save my life. I couldn’t really fathom why, considering the entire evening had been about tricking me and getting the ritual component she wanted. I was dead to rights. Why save me? She’d left me with a kiss, a mess, and a lot of unanswered questions.

“Dames.” I shook my head and resigned myself to whatever fallout was likely to come from the katashiro being stolen.

I cleaned up and went on with the business of living. Sometimes I listened to the Chronos Radio, as I liked to call it. Sophia’s kiss eventually faded, and I went back to the way I had been. No passions, no taste, no smell. No heartbeat. Losing those things twice was harder than I’d expected, but my hate and resentment faded along with them. That night began to fade into the fog of my memories as Autumn once again began to bite. Every night I saw that same kid standing across the street, still dealing drugs. I stoked the fire and filled a kettle.

Without me touching it, the Chronos Radio began playing music. “The stars in her eyes, the light of my sky/We’re gonna dance our way to heaven.”

I looked out my window and saw a woman with silver hair, wearing a black hat and coat standing on the sidewalk. Sophia Astor began walking toward my door.

“Round two.” I turned off the radio and braced myself for the storm. She walked in, not quite so boldly as last time.

“Hi.” She gave me a sheepish look from under her hat.

“Miss Astor. Should I check you for knives?” Her sheepish smile turned guilty.

“No, I promise I’m not here to take anything this time.” She took off her coat and hat. This time the clothes were far simpler, more like something a woman would wear around the house to be comfortable.

“Then why are you here?”

“Things are getting worse out there. Sooner or later, you’ll get pulled into it. And I’d rather have you as a friend, so I wanted to make amends.”

Uh-huh. Even if she was telling the truth, that would be quite the hill to climb. Still, watching her try felt like proper vengeance.

“You’re free to try.” She started chewing on her thumbnail. “By rights, I should seal you into one of these and put you on my shelf.” I held up a blank porcelain figurine.

“You could do that,” she hedged, “or you could let me cook you dinner.” I saw something in Sophia Astor that she hadn’t shown me a year ago: frailty, desperation. Vulnerability. She genuinely needed help.

I stood there for at least a minute, speechless at my own stupidity. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, resigned in what I was about to do. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“What are we having?”

Sophia Astor gave me the brightest smile I’d ever seen.

The Gray Goose Diamond Caper

Regan K. Smith

She came out of Jean’s Guns with a pistol in her hand and a smirk on her lovely face. I froze, thinking my life was over, when she looked at me, winked, and strolled on by. As she passed me, she murmured, “Not today, sweet cheeks, not today.”

I was afraid to turn around, in case she had eyes in the back of her head under that lovely blond hair blowing around in the wind. Sometimes even I know when it’s not the time to act like a horny guy.

Slipping into the gun store entrance, I leaned my back against the portal in relief. When I got myself together again, I peeked around the doorframe.

Great honk! She was standing in the middle of the sidewalk one store down, still holding that bitty pistol and looking around. A breeze caught her skirt, and I had a really good view of another pistol strapped to her upper thigh, the barrel rubbing against the top of her stocking, along with a red garter belt and a white not much of anything. Those beautiful legs went all the way to the ground—okay, all the way to those very high heeled sandals—and so did my eyes, now that I was reasonably safe.

“She’s gonna get a huge hole, then a giant run in that stocking,” came a quiet voice behind me.

When I landed back on the tiles and my heart started beating again, I looked into Jean’s mischief-filled eyes. “Told her, too, I did, but she just stuck it there, anyway. Obviously, she can afford stockings.”

“Any idea who she is?” I pretended to be only mildly interested.

“I think she’s Margo Landrace, that heiress in all the papers.”

“No, she ain’t. I’ve seen pictures and Margo ain’t no blond.”

“Hmm, that wasn’t a wig, so I guess I was wrong.” We both watched until the blond turned left at the street corner and went out of sight. Jean walked back into the shop, me nearly breathing down her neck. She was the best gunsmith in the city, third generation in her family business, I think. Jean was the only person I’d trust with my firearms.

“You sellin’ a lot of those airweight pistols?” I pointed to the sign in the window: “Ladies’ Special, Smith & Wesson Airweight.”

“You’d be surprised,” Jean smiled. “I’ve about cleared out my inventory today. I guess the war has gotten a fair number of women all spooked. I did tell each one that a light pistol has a worse recoil than a heavier one, but they’re still going for the purse sizes.”

“Well, after they figure it out, maybe they’ll come back for a bigger one. Now, how’s my favorite pistol doing today?”

“She’s dead, Gray. Bent barrel, broken cylinder housing, busted hammer, and that’s just the start of the list. I am not a miracle worker. You have to get a whole new one this time. Sorry, but that’s a fact.”

I sighed, knowing that’s what she’d say. Old Brenda had done well by me all these years. I’d miss her.

“Can you use any parts for repairing other guns?”

“There are a few pieces I can salvage. Do you want your handgrips back?”

“Can you put them on another S&W 1905?”

“Sure. I’ve got a couple back here. Still want the Military & Police Model?”

“Of course. I’ll call her Little Brenda.”

Jean rolled her eyes. “You can come get ‘Little Brenda’ tomorrow afternoon. Now scat! I have to close up.”

I headed down the street to Lou’s. Heard that tonight’s special was meatloaf with more meat than cornflakes in it. He must have an in with the local black-market guys, not that I was gonna complain. Good food was good food, and I would be needing good food, since I’d be doing a little night surveillance.

*****

The fist pounding on my office door rattled the glass like an earthquake, not that the ground was shaking. It woke me up from my least favorite nightmare, where I was being chased down a muddy lane by a marauding pack of goose quill pens. Why I was being attacked by goose quill pens is a mystery I’ve never solved.

I yelled, “Come in!” and immediately regretted it, as the entire German army began goose-stepping through my sinuses and behind my eyeballs. I bet they were armed with goose quill pens, too.

“Mr. Ansero? Gray Ansero?” A voice as husky as a sled team cut through my stupor. I tried to say something, but my tongue felt like I’d dragged it along the ground for a mile or so. A very cold cup of coffee sat near my right hand. I forced my hand to pick up the cup, then poured the coffee over my dirt-covered tongue. Great, now it was muddy. Another couple of swallows, and I could finally speak. “I’m Ansero. Who are you and what can I do for you?”

“My name is Margo Landrace. Something was stolen from me, and I want you to find it.”

Wow. No beating around the bush, straight to the point. I liked her already, and I couldn’t even see her yet. Forcing one eye to open wider, I saw a dark blue skirt just barely covering two perfect knees encased in silk stockings. Definitely rich, to be able to find silk stockings, what with all the silk going into parachutes. I let my eye drift higher, to the matching suit jacket, white silk blouse open at the throat, an amber pendant hanging on a silver chain. She had a sharp little nose over a luscious red mouth, with high cheekbones and coal-black hair piled up on her head. She looked much better than that photo I’d told Jean about. Her matching hat sat at a jaunty angle. Cold green eyes stared straight into mine.

“What was stolen, ma’am?” I finally said, both eyes open now. Gray, take a note: don’t run an all-night surveillance by yourself and then go back to the office, thinking you’ll do some paperwork.

“Have you ever heard of the Gray Goose diamond?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ve heard of it. Isn’t it in a museum?”

“It’s been in my family for four generations, never in a museum. Three weeks ago, someone broke into the house, got into the safe, and took it. I called the police, the insurance company, and all the radio stations and newspapers. I have private investigators combing all the pawn shops and less than scrupulous jewelers. They’ve come up with nothing.”

“So why did you come to me, if you already have so much going on?”

“You have a reputation for finding lost things, things that others can’t find.”

Great honk! I’d gotten a reputation over the years that I could find really missing stuff, and that I was an understanding guy. I didn’t deserve that “understanding guy” part of my reputation. I was in it for the money, and this rich gal could give me the downy I needed to feather my nest.

“Have a seat, Miss Landrace.” I admired the easy way she sat down, crossed those luscious legs, and made my office visitor’s chair look classy, for a change. “I’ll need a bit more background before I can tell you if I’ll take the case.”

“Will this do?” She tossed a half-inch thick envelope on my desk. “I’ll pay $200 a day and expenses, the first week in advance.”

I blinked, then blinked some more. “Let me look at the file here first,” I just had to say, even though we both knew I’d be taking this case. The first week’s pay alone would clear out all my debts and still leave enough to eat three meals a day at Lou’s, with a good bit left over to set aside for leaner times.

“Go ahead. I’ll wait.” She waved her gloved hand toward the envelope, then settled back in the chair.

First up was an actual color photograph. That was one big diamond, a rock of such clarity that another thought struck me. “Why is it called the Gray Goose? Doesn’t look gray.”

“My ancestor brought it to the States aboard his ship, the Gray Goose. For some reason, the connection became its name.”

“Huh.” I pulled up the next paper. “I see here you weren’t the only person with the safe combination.”

“No, I wasn’t. I am now. My father and his secretary, Terri Lebedi, also had the combination. When Father died last year, I just didn’t change the combination. Terri stayed on as my secretary, so I didn’t see it being necessary.”

“Do you trust her?”

“Implicitly. She’s also a very good friend. But she agreed that for the present, I should be the only combination holder. I do keep the new combination in a sealed envelope at my lawyer’s office, just in case.”

“Have you verified that envelope hasn’t been tampered with?”

“Why would I? It came about after the theft.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

I looked at the photo again. The diamond was mounted very simply, a huge pendant on a heavy chain. “Do you ever wear this thing?”

“I don’t. It’s too heavy for me. Mother wore it often, but only in the manse, until she became too sick to host her soirees. Father pulled it out of the safe for her to hold just before she died, then put it back. It’s stayed in the safe ever since. And yes, I checked on it regularly. It was there until the theft.”

“When did your mother die?” Probably not relevant, but why not?

“Three years ago. She was fine, then she got very sick, and the doctors couldn’t figure it out. She just faded away. Then the same thing happened to Father last year, but it was much faster for him. No, there’s not a curse on the diamond, so don’t even start.”

“Huh.” The other documents were police reports, private investigator reports and expense sheets, and the insurance papers. “Let me finish going through all this, think it over a while, then I’ll get back to you tomorrow or the next day.”

“Good. I don’t need daily updates, just tell me when you think you’re getting somewhere or need something else. But find it. Please.”

Miss Landrace stood up, dropped another envelope on my desk, and swept out the door like a princess promenading the palace. This envelope held $2000. Great honk! Better get this secured toot sweet.

Since I’d managed to actually do some paperwork, then sleep in my office chair a good part of the day, it was late afternoon. I closed the office and headed home to my comfortable one-bedroom, third-floor walkup. Once inside, I secured most of the money in my floor safe that the landlord didn’t know I’d installed in the closet, then dropped my extra shoes back on top of it. My apartment had never been broken into, but being a paranoid former cop, I wasn’t about to take any chances with anything I considered valuable—like money.

No drinking with my pals tonight. I had homework. Dinner was a fry up, using the leftovers from Sunday’s dinner with my neighbor across the hall, Laine Nunn. She, her husband Billy, and I had grown up together, and the two married a week after high school graduation. Billy was in the Navy now, and she just couldn’t cook for one person. Laine fed me at least once a week and several of our elderly neighbors every day. She’s pretty much an angel—or would be, if she’d stop matchmaking.

After cleaning the kitchen, I got comfortable in my favorite chair and made notes as I read each document. Margo said the house was broken into, but police reported no signs of actual break-in. Interviews with the staff were negative: several claimed they’d never even been in that particular room, much less knew there was a safe in it. Nothing else in the safe was missing; a full home inventory was still underway, so no one knew if more than the diamond was missing. Bank records checked; stocks and bonds checked; safe deposit boxes checked. All appeared in order.

Hmm: no family or friend interviews, except the secretary friend. Odd—they would have been first on my interview list. No employee interviews other than manse staff—did the Landrace fortune come from business or investments and inheritances?

My old mantel clock woke me up at midnight. I put the papers on a side table and slept in my bed that night. No goose quill pens tormented me.

*****

You might be wondering why I’m a former cop. In a nutshell, I got shot multiple times when an angry woman objected to her husband being arrested. To this day, I wonder if she was actually aiming at him and I was collateral damage, as I had just grabbed his right arm to handcuff him, and we were so close together. She hit him first, me twice, him once, then me again, shrieking like an outraged goose the whole time and shaking like aspen leaves. I’m ever thankful she was using a .25 auto; she got me in the left shoulder, a through-and-through in my left side and another in my left bicep. She got hubby in his right side and shoulder.

My partner, always a bit slow to react, finally did and shot her in the right shoulder, making her drop the Baby Browning. Partner told me that little pistol got passed around the station a good week before making it into the evidence locker for good; no one had ever seen one, since it was a Belgian-made pistol, and apparently none made it to our area after the Great War until this one showed up. I never saw it up close myself, being in the hospital first, then home recovering under Laine and Billy’s care.

Angry Woman was hissing about divorce as my partner cuffed her to a chair, then called an ambulance. Her husband laid next to me, muttering, “Not if I file first.” Anyway, the business shut down when the two miscreants both went to jail, him for fencing stolen property and her for attempted murder. I don’t think that was a real stable relationship.

After I recovered, being a police detective was a bit more exciting than I could handle anymore, so I joined a private investigation firm. Might as well put all that experience to good use. Within a year, Charlie Roberts inherited the family farm and decided the rural life was better for him, so now I’m a one-man business. Worked fine for another couple years, but when the U.S. entered the war, all my occasional help dried up.

Now why am I not in the military in the middle of a war? Not that it’s any of your business, but the Army’s waiting on a background investigation before having me report to somewhere. That’s as much as you’re gonna get—and about as much as I know.

*****

I slept later than usual, which I needed, then went to Lou’s for a hopefully hearty breakfast. Lillie, my favorite waitress, waved me to a table and had coffee poured before I sat down.

“Whatcha need this morning, sweetie? You look a lot better than yesterday.” Lillie is a tall, reddish blond bundle of energy, whose two kids can’t keep up with her. “And keep your briefcase off my clean table!”

“Yes, ma’am.” I set the case on the floor between my feet. “I’m very hungry, so whatever you think I need is what I need.”

Lillie looked me up and down. “Omelet, hash browns, tall stack, extra syrup. No meat this morning, love.”

“Eggs are good. Make it a three-egg omelet?”

“Sure. Lou got a whole pallet of eggs this morning. Even toss some cheese on it.”

Lillie headed toward the kitchen. I looked around the room and saw the usual crowd, except for one guy over in a corner. Like me, he faced outward into the room, with good sight lines to all the doors. His hat brim was pulled low, like he wanted to not be seen. I casually bent over to re-tie my shoe, glancing up just enough to see his face. Right, I’ll remember the scar just in front of his left ear.

I straightened back up and looked toward the kitchen door, which gave me a peripheral view of the stranger. He wore dungarees, scuffed work shoes, a dark blue shirt, and a very old brown leather jacket. His hat was worn, but still serviceable. Except for being a stranger, he fit nicely into the local environment. He was reading the newspaper and drinking coffee.

When Lillie brought my breakfast, I waited until she blocked the stranger’s view, and tilted my head toward him. “Who’s the stranger, Lil?”

Without turning her head, she quietly replied, “Don’t know. He’s been here three mornings in a row now. Sits in a corner or the far end of the counter, orders, reads the paper, eats, and leaves a nicer tip than most folks dressed like that.”

“Huh. You ever see which way he goes when he leaves?”

“Yesterday, he headed over to Jean’s. Elmo there saw him walk inside.” Lillie nodded toward the elderly man at the table next to the stranger.

“Thanks, Lil. You’re a peach of an observer and reporter.”

“Don’t you know it, kiddo.”

Lillie moved on to a new customer, and I dug into breakfast. As I ate, I’d occasionally look around the room, nodding to folks I knew. The stranger’s breakfast came, and he put away his paper. He kept his head down, steadily eating. I got the impression he was trying to keep up with me. Huh. This might be interesting.

Stranger finished first—he didn’t have the tall stack. He dropped money on the table and strolled out the door. Lillie moved casually but quickly to the table, glancing out the big window as she bussed it. She then picked up the coffee pot and started her rounds again. Walking past me, she murmured, “Hildebrandt’s,” and didn’t offer me a refill.

I tossed money on the table. “See ya, Lillie,” and raised my voice so the kitchen could hear. “Lou? Great food as ever.” A spatula waved in the pass-through.

I strolled across the street, past Howard’s Signs and down to Hildebrandt’s Pawn, glancing into the window like I was perusing the goods. Stranger was standing in the jewelry section. Greg Hildebrandt was behind the counter with an annoyed look on his grizzled face. An annoyed Greg is never a good thing. Sigh.

The bell on the store door rang cheerily as I stepped inside. “Morning, Greg! How’s things today?”

The stranger stiffened, but did not turn to look at me. Greg flashed his teeth at me, which is definitely not his normal smile. Normal is not usually a friendly smile, but it’s also not a feral fang flash, either.

“Gray! Foun’ any cheatin’ spouses today?”

“Nah, too early in the morning. Say, when you have some time, I have a theorical question for you.”

“Ya, sure. Jus’ be a bit here.” Greg turned back to the stranger, and they continued a low-voiced conversation.

I decided to be polite, more or less, and took myself over to the gun rack. A low-grade hum tickled my nerve endings. Well, dang, have to go looking for that now. It eventually led me to a Colt Model 1900, which I had not seen in Greg’s inventory last week. The more I looked at it, the more intense the hum, which was starting to be irritating.

“Tone it down, willya?” I muttered, and to my surprise, the humming stopped. Just in time, too, as the stranger suddenly turned and stalked out, walking as far from me as he could. I debated following him, but the humming was more important.

“Greg? I need to see that 1900.”

“Ya, you do. Wuz gonna call you dis mornin’. It’s makin’ me very irritable. If da moon wuz full…” He shook his head.

See, Greg is a werewolf. If the hum was annoying me, I can’t imagine what it was doing to canine hearing and nerve endings. He’s right: if that pistol had shown up here during the full moon, it just might have overcome his natural control and forced a public transformation. The resultant uproar would be more than merely bad.

Greg put on a rubber glove, picked up the pistol, and practically threw it to me. He retreated to the far side of the shop.

As soon as I caught the pistol, the humming began again, but changed. Instead of the annoying buzz that bothered Greg and me, it turned to a soft crooning.

“Okay, I’ve got you. What’s going on?” Yes, I talk to inanimate objects. And they do sometimes answer. It’s a gift.

I got a series of impressions and short visions. When the pistol finished talking to me, it literally settled itself into my hand like it decided it belonged there. Well, allrighty, then.

“How much, Greg?”

“Take it. No charge if yah jes get it far away from me.”

“Deal. Do you have anything on who brought it in?”

“No. It was just dere, wit a tag ‘n’ everting, a couple days ago. I thought mebbe Anna took it in, but she says not.”

Anna Hildebrandt, Greg’s wife, was not a werewolf, so the noise would not have bothered her. But since she didn’t add it to the inventory, another mystery.

I put the pistol into my briefcase, waved to Greg, and headed out the door, any thoughts of talking to Greg about that stranger forgotten. My office was down the block and up one flight of stairs. Two police cars were in front of the building, no one inside. As I walked up the stairs, I could hear snippets of several conversations and one person was sobbing. Rounding the corner, I entered a wall of stunned silence.

“What’s going on, guys?”

“Gray! I thought you… But you’re… Oh, my heavens!” The building supe, Mary Ellen Padens, literally threw herself at me, crying into my chest and thoroughly soaking my jacket. I caught her with one arm, holding my briefcase away from striking her, then looked in total confusion at the police officers gaping at me.

Detective Sergeant Jim Curtis pushed his way through the crowd. “Gray, you’d better look in here.”

In here was my own office. I gently disengaged from Mary Ellen and walked into a nightmare. My office door was broken, half off its hinges. In the office proper, blood splattered the floor, three walls, and part of the ceiling. A pair of shoes like mine stuck out past the end of my smashed-up desk. I eyeballed the rest of the room, noting that absolutely nothing was left undamaged, then turned back to Jim.

“What the ever lovin’? Did Mary Ellen find this?”

“Yeah. She called about an hour ago, sayin’ you was dead. When we got here, this is what we found. We thought your goose was finally cooked, ‘cause it’s your office, but the face is so destroyed we can’t identify it. You think you might can take a look?”

“I suppose so.” This part of police work I didn’t miss, but in my own office… I stepped through the few non-bloodied patches of floor, until I could get a full view.

The face was not simply destroyed; it was utterly obliterated. Dressed in a gray suit and vest not unlike mine, no tie, hat like mine on the floor. Hair was also dark brown, but his was shorter. I could see a small lump in his coat pocket that could be a wallet.

“Jim? I think there’s a wallet. May have a driver’s license in it.”

“We’ll pull it when the coroner gets here. Notice anything in particular?”

“Besides the body appearing to be same size as me? Yeah, there’s a hole in his chest.”

Jim leaned around the desk from the other side. “I see it. Missed it in the first glance.”

“It’s a bit early for speculation, but I’m thinking either he was here to see me and the killer mistook him for me, or the killer met and killed him here as some kind of message. But what is a mystery to me.” I stopped staring at the body and carefully picked my way back out to the hall.

I did not let Jim know that I’d felt the evil wafting around the room.

*****

Since my office was off-limits for ever how long it was gonna be, I headed back to the apartment. My new pistol and I needed to have a long conversation. Shucking my suit coat and hat, I settled into my chair and held the 1900, gently stroking the barrel. “Okay, let’s go over it again. What did you see?”

Images flowed once more. Pistol lying on a desk in a large office, a single sheet of paper beside it, a safe being opened. A hand caressed a velvet box way in the back, then moved back to the desk. Runes appeared in each corner of the paper. Two hands made signs over the runes, then the paper was placed in the safe and it was locked. The pistol rose off the desk and disappeared into the dark.

Well, now. That was interesting. Why put runes on a paper, then lock it into a safe?

I leaned back and considered what I’d seen. The hands were well-tended, soft, with long, tapered fingers. Female, definitely female. My 1900 had been hanging around with a female who knew how to enchant runes.

Taking advantage of my ability to retain pictures, I drew each rune on a separate piece of paper, just in case, then tucked them into my pocket. These would need translation from a special friend, if I could convince her to open the door.

When I exited onto the sidewalk, I spotted that stranger again. This time, he was chatting with Doug Irwin, who ran the newspaper and magazine kiosk across the street. I waved at Doug as I turned west and headed over to Christina’s place. It was a bit of a walk, but the weather was pleasant.

Christina Walraven is a witch. She’s not scary or anything, and doesn’t turn anyone into a newt. But she is so annoyed with people in general that she spends most of her time in her house and garden. I knew the likelihood of getting her to talk with me depended on my approach. Luckily for me, she was in her front yard when I got there.

“Morning, Chrissie. Feeling like a challenge? I got some runes for ya, and a packet of tea.”

A packet of tea was usually how I got her attention, and it worked again. “Come on inside, Gray. I was just about to take a break.”

Chrissie’s kitchen was a marvel, a combination of the most up-to-date late 1930s appliances and a wood and porcelain Hoosier cabinet filled with cauldrons of various sizes. Dried plants hung from the ceiling, tea cannisters and cookie jars covered one shelf, and a slightly ajar door revealed the edge of what was likely a huge pantry. I’d never seen her work her witchy stuff, but it seemed to me that her kitchen was the perfect spot for anything she wanted to do.

“Sit, Gray. I’ll put the kettle on.” Knowing better than to interrupt her routine, I planted myself at the kitchen table and watched her prepare tea and a plate of cookies. Only after we drank a cup each and had a general chinwag and a couple of cookies was it safe to pull out the papers.

“Do you know what these runes mean? They were in each corner of a single piece of paper.”

Chrissie studied the runes for a few minutes, then looked startled. “Gray, these are a curse! When combined, they will sicken and eventually kill whoever handles that paper. Where did you find these, and did you touch that paper?”

“No, I saw it in a vision, then drew them separately.” Chrissie knows about my ability to talk to inanimate objects. I call them visions because I don’t know any other way to describe it.

“Well, the caster really has it in for someone, to be casting this curse. I don’t know exactly how it will manifest, but somebody’s going to die, if they haven’t already.”

“If the paper is destroyed, will it stop the curse?”

Chrissie studied the runes a bit longer, then relaxed. “Not if the victim has already touched it. I was really worried at first that you might be affected, but then I saw the specificity rune. It’s targeted to a specific individual.”

“Dare I ask how you know all this stuff? I know you’re not into the dark side of the occult.”

“My grandmother made certain I knew how to recognize dark magic and avoid it. I’ve continued my studies ever since, and frankly, the more I learn about the dark side, the more determined I am to not touch it. Ever!”

“Would you be able to determine who might have cast it?”

Studying the runes again, Chrissie finally shook her head. “I don’t know anyone who casts dark magic. The few I’ve met over the years are not people I want to know, so I avoid them. I can say this caster was probably female.”

Since I’d not told her any of the vision’s specifics, this was a surprise. “Why do you say that?”

“Because there’s a sense there of feminine anger. And greed. She wants something so badly she’s willing to kill to get it.”

I didn’t know what she meant by “feminine anger,” but I understood the greed part. The hand caressing that velvet box was a big clue about greed. And now I had a good idea what was in that velvet box.

Leaving the rune papers with Chrissie for destruction, I walked back home. Time to give Margo Landrace an update. The landlord kindly let me use his office telephone, and I made an afternoon appointment at the Landrace manse. I asked if Terri Lebedi was going to be around, and found out it was her day off. Good, didn’t need to encounter her anytime soon.

Having enough money for a taxi was nice, not that taxis were in profusion, due to the lack of tire rubber. Still, I did manage to snag one, which I shared with three others who were going in the same general direction.

The manse was behind a tall stone fence, with iron gates and a one-legged gatekeeper. I gave him my name and that I had an appointment, and he opened the pedestrian gate. It was about a quarter-mile walk up a shade tree-lined drive. Flowers were everywhere, perfuming the air so heavily that my sinuses seriously considered closing up before deciding the scents were good.

An elderly butler led me to a bookshelf-lined office. I recognized the desk. Margo sat behind it.

“Mr. Ansero, you have an update for me?”

“Could I ask you to do something for me first? Could you show me your hands?”

Margo’s eyebrows rose high, but she obligingly held up both hands, turning them back and forth.

“Thank you. I’ve discovered three things. One, the diamond was stolen by a female with access to the safe combination. Two, she killed your father, and probably your mother. Three, she tried to kill me this morning, but killed someone else in my office.”

“Mr. Ansero, you are accusing my friend of murder and theft. What evidence do you have?”

“At the moment, none. But everything I’ve discovered can only point to her. I’m only telling you right now because I believe you need to protect yourself, in case she decides you need to die, too.

“As to that, who are your heirs? If she thinks she’ll inherit anything, your life is very much in danger.”

Margo frowned. “My will puts just about everything into a foundation, with some monies going to long-term employees, and yes, Terri is one of those. It’s not much, just several thousand and a couple of jewels. I haven’t told her any specifics, though, any more than I would tell the rest of my employees. She does know that almost everything goes to the foundation, so she shouldn’t have that as a motive for killing me. She did suggest I put her on the foundation board, but my lawyers strongly objected, so no.”

Boy, I do like this woman. She thinks like me. She could be a bit more paranoid, though.

“I suggest you be very, very careful about picking up anything with bare hands, if she’s been around it, or you even think she’s handled it.”

“Poison?”

“Something like that, and there’s no antidote.”

“How did you find out?”

“Sorry, but that’s a professional secret. Afternoon, ma’am.” I started to leave, then remembered one more thing and turned back. “Please don’t mention this visit to her; she thinks I’m dead. Might want to advise your butler and gatekeeper, too.”

Margo nodded, and I got out of there fast, in case that Terri person showed up, anyway.

As I reached the gatehouse, a carriage and team rolled up. It turned out Margo had anticipated the lack of transportation and arranged for her old town carriage to take me home. That was kinda nifty. For a little bit, I could pretend to be one of the old robber barons, showing off my horses and carriage to the peons, while staying concealed in the carriage. It was pretty darn comfortable, too. It was also not the only horse-drawn conveyance out and about. Lots were being pulled out of retirement for the duration.

The ride ended too fast for my imagination, stopping in an open area several blocks from home, where other carriages and wagons were gathered. Again, Margo anticipated that I might not want to be seen in her carriage. That was one very, very smart woman. Eh, no point in getting interested; wasn’t going to be around here much longer, anyway.

*****

I was still ruminating about Margo when I went into Hildebrandt’s. Anna was behind the counter.

“Grey! What did you do?”

“What, Anna?”

“Some stranger came in yesterday and today, asking all kinds of questions about you. When Greg started getting angry, the guy said something about national security and keep our mouths shut. Greg’s got the whole neighborhood watching him now; he even went over to your apartment building and told them to keep their eyes out. What’s going on?”

“Dunno, Annie. But I will find out.”

“Fine. Now, what do you need today?”

“I was going to talk to Greg about that stranger, but you’ve already answered my questions, and thank you for that. Tell him I’ll let you all know what I find out.”

Just in case the police were through with my office, I strolled down the street. Before I got there, I saw the stranger coming out of Lou’s. Oh, yeah, him. Best to take care of that now.

“Hey, buddy! Got a minute?” I called as I quickly approached him. He looked startled, then around as if he thought there might be someone else nearby. Nope. With a resigned look, he waited for me.

“‘Scuse me for asking, but you’ve been talking to a lot of my friends lately, and they’re startin’ to get real nervous. Just what do you think you’re doin’?”

Stranger sighed, then pulled a badge and credentials from his jacket. “U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps. I’m doing your background investigation.”

“Huh. Okay. Next ones you talk to, you might want to tell them something to ease their minds, or else they’ll keep you under even closer surveillance—real uncomfortable close surveillance.”

He smiled. “You have very good friends. Some were easy to spot, the others, not so much. We might be interested in them, too.”

Laughing, I gave him a breezy salute and walked away. “Good luck with that. My friends don’t take kindly to others telling them what to do.”

One police car was still outside my office building. When I got to the office, an officer stood outside the door, looking queasy. Without speaking, he stepped aside and gave me access.

The body was long gone, but the mess remained, and by now it really stank. Should have known from past experience that I’d need some VapoRub on my upper lip to mask the odor. I decided to try and grit it out long enough to find out what really happened.

Slowly perusing the room, I considered where the guy could have been standing or what he might have touched. The doorknob reported a hand opening it; the door swung open, then closed, and later, the door exploded inward and broke.

At my desk, I put my hand where I thought the deceased would have put his. Nothing. I moved my hand several times, even touching the desk sides, but he hadn’t touched it. Finding a clear space to stand, I reached out to my chair. A flash of a body falling onto it, then down on the floor. That was it. Huh.

The coat rack gave me nothing but a flinch when blood splattered it. The trash can got kicked about by a falling body, then a woman’s shoe. Yep, knew it was a woman.

My file cabinet finally told the rest of the story. A man walked inside, looked around, then came over to the cabinet by the window. His face was obscured from view, the light from outside creating a glare at just the right place. As he looked out the window, the door blew inside. Guy was thrown against the cabinet. He turned to see what happened and gave my file cabinet a clear “view.”

A redheaded woman in a blue dress held a gun in one hand and a wand in the other. Instead of telling the about-to-be-dead-guy exactly what she was up to and why, she smiled, fired one shot, then used the wand to strew his blood all around, bash in his face, and destroy my office. If the file cabinet could have shuddered, it would have. I sure did.

Mary Ellen called me from the hall. I was more than happy to leave.

“When can we get this mess cleaned up, Gray? It’s stinking up the whole floor.”

“I’ll ask Jim as soon as I can find him, Mary Ellen.” I turned to the officer. “Do you have VapoRub out in the car?”

He nodded. I told him to go fetch it and I’d wait in his place. Relieved, he rushed away.

We retreated to the far end of the hall, where an open window let in a little fresh air. Mary Ellen’s sweet round face finally unscrewed itself from the “Gaahh, that stinks!” look.

“Do you have any idea who he was, Gray?”

“Not yet. Jim hasn’t talked to me since the discovery, and I’ve been busy elsewhere.”

We stood quietly a while longer until the officer returned, the VapoRub jar tight in one hand. Leaving him to his post, Mary Ellen returned to her office, and I headed for Jean’s.

“You’re late, Ansero! You said you’d come get Little Brenda yesterday. But I heard about the murder, so I guess that’s as good an excuse as any.”

“Things have been interesting, Jean, that’s a fact. So howzabout you pull out Little Brenda and we get acquainted? And I need a good holster for a 1900.”

*****

Lou cut some deal with a fella named Vito (I’d seen his truck now and then), and dinner was something called pasta al pesto, or something like that. It was green and oily and strangely good. After the day I’d had, I’d eat pretty much anything, but I was surprised at how tasty this was. Just wish Lou had some bacon.

Walking out and feeling very full, I nearly collided with that blond from the other day at Jean’s Guns. This time, she was wearing a dark green dress with big shoulder pads, a hat with a veil thing over one eye, and those same sandals. The dress hid any sign of strategically placed pistols, if she was packing. She winked at me and walked across the street to the Branta Hotel. She was not Terri Lebedi; that vision of who I assume was Terri Lebedi showed the killer to be a natural redhead.

I seriously considered going over to the Branta and finding out more about the blond, but I was way past exhausted, and she didn’t seem to be a threat. Nah, going to bed was far more attractive.

Next morning, I tracked down Jim Curtis. He was actually sitting at his desk rather than being out on the street. Plopping down in a chair, I got to the point.

“Who was the body, Jim?”

“Driver’s license said Vicente Oca. Lived out on…”

“I knew him. He was a client.”

“Was it a household dispute?”

“Sort of. He was missing a family clock they’d brought over when the grandparents immigrated. I found it, stuck in an office in their business warehouse.”

“Know why he came by?”

“I assume to bring a final payment. Did he happen to have a check for $100 or cash?”

“There was a hundred and fifty cash in his wallet. Looks like your hunch was right; someone mistook him for you. Who did you piss off?”

“Dunno. The Oca case I finished last week, another one I finished the morning Oca died. Reminds me, I need to contact that client. And I have one going now.”

“Yeah? Mind telling me about it?”

“If what the client told me is true, you already know. She wants me to find her big honking diamond.”

Jim whistled. “Yeow. Good luck with that.”

“When can Mary Ellen get a cleaning crew into my office? It really stinks.”

“Told her last night it was okay. She was muttering something about bleach and hydrogen peroxide being hard to find when I left. Hope she wasn’t planning on using them together.”

We traded insults for a few minutes, then I headed back to the office building. I figured I could at least help repair the door. When I got there, the door had already been replaced. A tall teenager with a mop stood on a ladder, wiping the ceiling. Three women were scrubbing walls and the floor. Mary Ellen stood in the doorway, watching to be sure no one opened my file cabinet or the broken desk. The place smelled better already—must be using hydrogen peroxide, since it wasn’t a bleachy scent.

“You’re going to need a new desk, Gray, and probably a new chair.”

“Yeah, about that, Mary Ellen. Looks like I’m going to be closing up shop.”

“What? Why? What happened?”

“Seems the Army needs my help. Very soon, I’ll be leaving for training.”

“Drafted?”

“Nope. They came looking for me and a few others with certain skills. We liked what we heard and signed up.”

“Oh. That explains the guy who came by asking questions about you. I told him to buzz off. Was that all right?”

“Sure. He’s talking to other people. So, I’m going to need a safe place to store my files, until I get back. Got any suggestions?”

“This building has plenty of storage space in the basement. You can move the file cabinet down there whenever you need to. I’ll pile boxes in front of it so no one can see it.”

“What would I ever do without you, Mary Ellen?”

“I suspect you’re about to find out, Gray Ansero,” she laughed.

With my current case not in the file cabinet, I didn’t actually need to be at the office, not that I could do anything in there. Back to the apartment and the case file.

*****

Too much going on, not enough time to absorb and analyze. This case was all over the place. I knew who the killer thief was, but I had zero evidence to take to Jim. He, like all POPs (plain ol’ people), was completely unaware of the magical world, not that any court would have accepted a vision or a curse. Solving a murder case all by myself was not my modus operandi; I much preferred finding lost things, as I was normally far less likely to be shot again.

In this case, I knew who had the diamond, but no idea where the diamond was. Gaining any justice for Vicente wasn’t looking so good, either. Approaching someone who thought she’d killed me was a bad idea, particularly since I had no known defense against an expertly wielded wand. Dang.

Crooning? I heard crooning. Oh, yeah, the 1900. Pulling it out of its new holster, I stroked it gently, until the crooning started to sound like a question.

“So, my friend, do you know something else that can help me find the diamond?”

More visions. Pistol coming out of the dark and lying on a small table beside a fancy-looking chaise with red fabric—I think they call that brocade—and a down-filled blanket at the foot. The velvet box placed beside the pistol. Right hand opening box; diamond and chain lifted out. Pistol rising up, pointing toward a mirror. Mirror shows Terri wearing the diamond, waving the pistol, laughing. Can’t hear anything, but likely she’s cackling.

Dark red hair, a white streak from right temple back through her hair, brown eyes. Her skin is so white it could cause glares when she’s in the sunlight. Build is kinda boxy, not fat, shoulders and torso same width as hips. I will certainly be able to recognize her from a distance—preferably a great distance.

Wait a cotton-pickin’—! How the crap could that pistol kill Vicente yesterday, but be in Greg’s inventory as of last week? What kind of dark magic is that?

The 1900 answered. Terri laid it down on a different table, an altar-looking one. She lit black candles at each corner, then waved her hands and chanted. The 1900 swirled through blackness and fire, then clunked into Greg’s pistol display case.

She can manipulate time, too? This could be really, really bad. Time to bring in reinforcements.

*****

“Greg? I need help.”

“Yah? Wat ya need?” Greg answered from behind the curtain to his office. I heard a crunching sound.

“Sorry, am I interrupting lunch?”

“Nah, yust a snack.” More crunching, then he came into the shop, wiping his mouth. I tried to hide the shudder; raw meat was definitely not my thing, and I did not want to know the source of meat clearly not obtained via ration coupons.

“Have you ever had a customer that looks like this?” I showed him a picture I’d quickly drawn of Terri right after the vision.

“Oh, yah. She coom in a munt ago firs’ time, den two more. Bought ever dimon necklace I had—all tree o’dem. Say she take all dat cum in, an’ give me a card wit her address. But she give me da creeps, so I ain’t tellin’ her nuttin’.”

I gave Greg a case summary. When we both stopped shuddering, I continued. “Whatever she’s up to, it’s more than bad. Who, besides Christina, can we ask for help? I know I can’t do anything alone.”

“Tink we ask Anna. She knows.” Greg moved to a speaking trumpet, grabbed a bellpull and yanked, then called into the trumpet. “Anna? Coom here, please. We need help.”

A thin sound came back through the trumpet hose. “Be right there, sweetie.”

“How can Anna help?”

“She’s a sorceress. Dint ya know dat?”

“Wow. I never even suspected.”

Anna appeared from their above-the-shop apartment with a tea tray. I didn’t know she knew I liked tea. And how did she know it was me down here?

“Help yourselves. Now, what’s going on?”

Another explanation, then more tea while Anna thought. Just as I was beginning to get a little antsy, she smiled. A scary smile. Oh, boy.

“Come back tonight, Gray. In fact, go over to Mike’s and get a haircut. You need one. Have some dinner, relax a while, then be here by eight. I’ll have things set up by then.”

*****

Anna was right, I did need a haircut. Mike waved me straight into a chair.

“Gray! Lookin’ a bit shaggy. You need to come in more often.”

“I know, Mike, but things have been busy.”

“So why is that guy going around asking about you? Is he really from the Army? Are you getting drafted?”

“Not drafted, recruited. They’re checking up on me before I report to training.”

“Oh. I just told ‘em the truth: regular customer, kinda quiet, friendly.” He snipped my ear hairs. “Gonna be real quiet pretty soon around here, with all you younger ones heading out. I might have to go into lady’s hair just to stay in business.”

We both laughed, then relaxed into barbershop chatter.

After dinner and a “take better care of yourself” lecture from Lillie, who was on the afternoon-evening shift and jittery about the murder in my office, I still had a couple hours to kill. Time to find out more about that blond.

The Branta Hotel isn’t terribly fancy, but it’s a nice place, right in the middle of our busy neighborhood. Rodney McCarvell was the desk clerk on duty. We played poker once a month, if our schedules coincided with my other pals’ schedules.

“Hey, Rod. Got a question about one of your guests. Blond, beautiful, cheeky attitude.”

“Yeah.” Rodney got a wistful look. “Dynamite, that one. Been here four nights now. Don’t know what she does during the day, but she’s usually back in her room, alone, by ten, and comes out about seven.”

“So what’s her name and where’s she from?”

“Right, sorry. Name’s Dorothy Grant, from—well, I can’t actually read that.” He turned the guest book toward me. The scribble could have been Alaska, Alabama, maybe even Texas. It was so loopy and scribbly that it could have been anywhere.

“Her room is 608, but she’s not back yet.”

“Thanks, Rod. Maybe I’ll run into her around the neighborhood.”

*****

With nothing left to do, I took a chance on Anna letting me in early. Soon as I rang the bell, the door unlocked and Greg bellowed, “Coom up, Gray! Anna says you can help!” Upstairs to the apartment, I then followed Greg up a back stair to the roof. Sandwiched between taller buildings, the roof was sheltered from casual observation. Anna had drawn witchy-looking lines, circles, and stars in various places, and was now finishing a six-foot-diameter circle in the middle of them all.

“Gray, please put a candle at the midpoint of each wall, then stand beside Greg.” I did as asked, and took up position by Greg, next to the stairwell door. No sooner did I get there than a stampede came up the stairs. Christina led the way, followed by three women I didn’t know, and Margo Landrace!

“Margo?”

She turned to me and arched an eyebrow. “I did say I’d engaged everyone I could think of to find my diamond. They told me about you. I did appreciate how you protected them from a mere human finding out about the magical world.”

Stumped. I was totally stumped, and awed by how the magic community stood behind me when I didn’t even know it. Greg slapped my shoulder and chuckled. “Be grateful deez wimmin are here for yah.”

“You know it, Greg.”

We continued to stand out of the way while the coven started their work. I won’t give away any of their secrets; I will admit it was impressive. Margo wasn’t a witch, but since it was her diamond, they included her in the proceedings. I guess that helped them focus on the thief.

When the wind suddenly rose and swirled above us, Greg growled more fiercely than I’d ever heard. With a loud pop reverberating around the roof, a figure appeared in the center circle. Terri Lebedi shrieked in fury and tried to raise her wand, but something kept her immobile. Margo’s Gray Goose diamond hung around her neck. Anna moved to where Terri could see her.

“Terri Lebedi, you stand accused of black magic, murder, and theft! How say you?”

Terri snarled, “You cannot stop me! I will have control over all magic!” She went on, yelling incoherently about diamonds, channeling power, and other stuff I didn’t understand. The coven continued to chant, but they seemed to be struggling. Terri got her wand hand free and pointed it straight up. Whatever she said wasn’t in any known language, but it sure had an immediate effect.

Black clouds began forming above her. While they couldn’t actually reach her through the coven’s wards, they obscured the sky behind her, above Howard’s building. Creatures started forming in the clouds, looking like cockroaches with nasty teeth, not large, but enough of them to cause some serious hurt. Greg and I involuntarily backed up a couple steps.

Anna was starting to sweat. She reached out with one hand and Christina took it. One by one, all the women linked a hand, even Margo. I think they were pouring strength into Anna, because she seemed to grow larger. She pointed her index finger up toward the cloud, spoke one word, and the creatures vanished with a small boom.

Meanwhile, Terri had gotten her other hand free and clutched the Gray Goose diamond. She chanted something foul, and the center circle broke, sending a concussive wave through the other sigils, breaking them all until they reached the runes where Anna stood. The wave stopped there and bounced back toward Terri, catching her wand and snapping it.

Even with a half wand, she could channel some serious power. She placed the wand piece in her hand against the diamond and began a second power push, while walking toward the stairwell where Greg and I stood. Looking at me for the first time, she realized I wasn’t who she’d killed, and immediately pointed the wand toward me.

As she started to speak, a gun went off. Terri dropped to the roof, a large hole where her heart used to beat.

My gun was out, but I’d not fired it; didn’t realized I’d drawn it. Greg hadn’t drawn his at all, and the coven had no guns. I heard a chuckle and looked up to the hotel roof. Dorothy Grant looked down on us, pistol in hand, smiling. Great honk. Now what?

“Well, folks, this has been most illuminating,” said the CIC agent as he came out of the stairwell. “You’ve all done very well tonight, but we thought a little assistance might be called for. Dorothy? Come on down.”

*****

Anna sent Margo with Greg, me, and the CIC agent to the apartment, while the coven cleaned up the roof. Dorothy Grant joined us, her cheeky look more pronounced than I’d seen the two times we’d met. “Hiya, sweet cheeks. Like my new pistol? Got it yesterday.”

Dorothy held a Colt M1911A1, military issue, brand new-looking. Before I could ask how and where she got it, the CIC agent interrupted.

“Shall we wait on the other ladies before explanations?”

Greg walked over to his bar and poured a whiskey. He held the bottle up, got nods all around, and poured four more glasses. We sipped quietly, waiting for Anna, Christina, and the others.

About the time I got to the bottom of my glass, they trooped in. Greg poured more whiskey. After a good-sized gulp, Anna took a deep breath.

“It’s done. Terri is ash blowing around town now. Margo, here’s your diamond.”

I cleared my throat. “We need to figure out what to tell the cops, so they can close the case and maybe give Vicente Oca’s family some assurance that his killer got what was coming to her.”

The CIC agent waved a hand. “I can help there. I’ll tell the investigating detective it’s a national security matter, it’s been resolved, and Terri Lebedi will definitely not do anything of the sort ever again.”

I frowned at him. “We appreciate that, Agent Whatsyername, but why are you helping the magical community? You aren’t magical.”

“Sure about that, Ansero?”

Well, goose crap. He had a point. I didn’t know Anna was a sorceress; it was quite likely I wouldn’t know Agent Whozit had some kind of magic. Wasn’t like I had any special magic myself, other than talking to inanimate objects.

“Now what?” I finally asked.

“Now all of you go back to your daily lives, except Ansero here. Based on Dorothy’s and my observations of your actions during the last few days, your willingness to work with a team, and the entire neighborhood either protecting or lauding you, I’ll be reporting to headquarters that you need to report for duty immediately.”

“You were observing me? How? I never saw either of you except those few times.”

“As I said, you sure we aren’t magical?”

*****

One week later, most of the neighborhood came by Lou’s to see me off. Laine and Mary Ellen had supervised as Doug, Rodney, Jim, and the rest of my pals packed up my apartment and office, and Mary Ellen swore it would be protected in a particular basement space. The Oca family paid what Vicente had tried to pay me, so between that and Margo’s payments, I had plenty of cash on hand for the trip. Margo gave me her phone number, saying to call her when I got my uniforms. She’d make sure they were tailored just right. And I’d better be writing to her the minute I was allowed. Lillie nearly smothered me in a hug and cried into my neck.

Greg pulled me off to one side, to let me know he’d stored Little Brenda and the 1900 in a safe he rarely used, so he couldn’t hear the 1900 if it decided to hum. Something popped into my mind. “Greg, I’ve known you for years and never asked, but where did you get that accent?”

He burst out laughing. “Some people seem to believe a pawn shop owner must be somehow ‘less’ than they are. I decided to give them what they want, and made up that silly accent. Now it’s just part of me. Bin waitin’ years fer yah t’ ask.”

Anna walked up as we finally stopped guffawing, and gave me a tiny little amulet. “Wear this at all times. When you put it on, only you will see it, so you won’t ever get into trouble for wearing non-issue stuff, if that’s a rule.”

“Thanks. What is it?” I took a close gander at it. Looked like an ordinary river stone, with runes engraved all around it, suspended from a silver chain.

“It’s protection from dark magic. It’s not perfect, but it will keep most of the ordinary dark magics from harming you. Super strong dark magic will still break through, so do be very careful.”

“Thanks, Anna. I’m sorry I didn’t realize you’re…”

“Shhh. It’s all right.” She patted me on the shoulder, took Greg by the arm, and prepared to escort me to the train station.

Actually, most of them went along. I love these people.

When the train finally left the station, I worked my way through the crowds of GIs on their way to somewhere, looking for a seat or a place to lean against. An arm snaked around my waist and a mischievous voice whispered in my ear.

“Hiya, sweet cheeks. Going my way?”

Saving Face

Daniel G. Zeidler

** KILL THE MONSTER! **

William “Face” Brannigan tried to ignore the voice whispering in the back of his mind and turned away from Duke’s Firearms & Gunsmithing. He had intended to turn completely around and go back to his dingy little apartment, but his traitor feet stopped when he was facing the large storefront window next to him. The interior of the building was dark, but the light from the nearby streetlight illuminated the window clearly enough. The window was trimmed in red, white, and blue ribbon and numerous posters implored him to buy war bonds or enlist in the U.S. Army today. With a start he realized he had stopped in front of an Army recruiting station and he looked up from the posters to stare at his reflection. The face that stared back at him from underneath the brim of a beat-up fedora was not by any means an attractive one. He’d often described himself as having a face fit for radio—that had been how he’d gotten his nickname, back when he’d still been in the Army…

“Hey, Brannigan! What are you doing sitting there reading a book?” Sparks called in a heavy New England accent from the doorway of the barracks lounge. He straightened his tie as he entered the room and walked over to where Brannigan had just made himself comfortable. “The Old Man says everybody has to go to the USO dance tonight.”

Brannigan snorted. “I’m not going to no stupid USO dance. I’ll just end up sitting in a corner, wishing I had something to read while the rest of you are out on the dance floor having fun. I might as well stay here.”

“No, no—you won’t have trouble finding someone to dance with ya. Everybody knows that girls love a man in uniform,” Sparks said as he took the book from Brannigan’s hands and pulled him out of his chair. He brushed some imaginary lint off Brannigan’s lapel, then jabbed him lightly in the ribs. “Especially girls who are going to a USO dance, right?”

“I got a face that’s fit for radio, Sparks,” Brannigan said while gesturing with one hand toward his face. He shook his head. “The magic of the uniform can only do so much.”

“Don’t underestimate the magic of the uniform, my Irish friend, and besides, ain’t nothin’ wrong with your face,” Pooch said unexpectedly from the door, his Brooklyn accent as heavy as Sparks’s New England accent. He walked over to Brannigan and handed him his cover. “You got all the right face parts in all the right places. You got a beau— Ah, well, you got a face with character, is what you got. It’s a great face.”

“Pucciarelli, Anderson!” the First Sergeant snarled from somewhere in the hallway. “You’d best be grabbing that Great Face and getting your butts on the bus before I get there!”

“That’s our cue!” Pooch said as he headed through the doorway. “C’mon, Face!”

Brannigan put on his cover and shook his head. “That is not going to be my new nickname.”

“Whadda you talkin’ about? It’s a great nickname,” Sparks said in a close approximation of Pooch’s accent as he, too, headed quickly through the doorway. “It’s got character!”

Brannigan sighed and looked mournfully down at his book. His eyes widened when he realized that he really did not want Pooch and Sparks to get on the bus before he did, and he took off at a run after them.

** THE MONSTER DRAWS NEAR! **

Brannigan turned his head sharply toward the door of the gun shop and saw motion within the store. With nowhere else to go, he dashed into the alley between the recruiting station and the store. When he reached the shadows, he stopped and turned back toward the street. He heard the bell over the gun shop door ring, then heard the click of high heels on cement. Then he saw her.

** KILL THE MONSTER! **

Except she clearly wasn’t a monster. She was a twentysomething girl: blonde hair, blue eyes, average height, and a nice figure. She was wearing the same white ballerina gown she’d been wearing the first time he had seen her two weeks ago when he’d been walking home from the package store and she’d been walking her borzoi, casual as could be, down the other side of the street. The woman had caught his attention for a number of reasons, aside from the fact that she was gorgeous: he didn’t live in a borzoi part of town, and even if he had, he was fairly certain a party dress and high heels were not the sort of things a woman would wear when walking her great big dog. A woman like that should have drawn attention in his neighborhood, but no one seemed to notice her except for him. Every time he looked at her—

** KILL THE MONSTER! **

Brannigan had first started hearing the whisper the night…the night of the USO dance. Usually, it was just a quiet, nagging voice, really more a feeling than a voice, urging him to kill the monsters around him. He’d tell himself that there were no monsters and he’d start drinking until the voice went away. The voice would grow more insistent, though, until finally one day he’d wake up on the floor after a night of drinking and find himself holding his old Mark One trench knife. Then he’d move to a new town, where the voice didn’t know any monsters and he would lay off the booze and try to start a new life, again. Eventually the voice would spot someone else it decided was really a monster and it would start whispering to him, again. For ten years, he’d been able to resist the voice. Ten years. Then he saw her and—

** KILL THE MONSTER! **

He felt the grip of his trench knife against his palm and quickly took his hand out of his jacket pocket without drawing it. The voice had become almost impossible to resist since he’d seen the woman. He resolved to wait in the alley until she was gone, and then he’d go home, pack his things, and hop on the first train out of town. All the woman had to do was keep walking.

Of course, she didn’t.

She stopped right at the entrance to the alley with her back to him and flicked open a Zippo lighter to light up a cigarette. A sudden wind came out of nowhere and managed to lift the hem of her dress high enough to give Brannigan an unexpected show of her long, shapely calves almost all the way up to the back of her knees. The wind also blew out her lighter, and she flicked it again to make another attempt to light her cigarette.

“Thanks, Face. You’re a real gentleman,” Brannigan’s most recent dance partner, he was fairly certain that her name was Gladys, said after he’d lit her cigarette for her. She gave him a flirty smile and hurried off to join her friends by the punch bowl.

The USO dance had turned out to be a fairly good time, despite Sparks and Pooch acting like a couple of knuckleheads and introducing him to every girl they came across as “Face Brannigan,” as if he were a button man for the mob. The worst part about it was that some of the girls had found it intriguing and he’d already danced with a few of them. Sparks and Pooch would never let him hear the end of it.

He felt more than heard the barest murmur on the edge of his subconscious that something dangerous was approaching, and looked out the dance hall window into the moonlit night, to see a massive dust storm coming in off the plain. A moment later, the power was flickering on and off and the wind pounded against the dance hall hard enough to make the windows rattle. The temperature dropped, and outside he saw a darkness that was like nothing he’d seen before or since. The air became oddly thick and heavy, then a handful of people began to gasp and choke before dropping dead to the floor. A few minutes later, another handful gasped, choked, and died.

Then the first wave of monsters came crashing through the doors.

They’d been human once, Brannigan judged more by the tattered remnants of their clothing than anything else, but their bodies were now animated by some malevolent force bent on bloodshed and death. They defeated the first wave, and the second wave after it, with busted table legs and folding chairs. They lost a few people to the monsters, and they lost more to the choking fits. The Old Man’s final order had been to get everyone to the police station down the street.

Less than three dozen of them made it to the police station where the last surviving copper was overjoyed to get reinforcements. Brannigan had been surprised by how many of the girls not only knew how to shoot, but shoot well, and the ones who didn’t were enthusiastic about learning. He had no idea how many waves of the monsters they fought off, but by morning when the monsters stopped coming, the only survivors were him, Pooch, Sparks, and two of the girls. Sparks managed to get the police wireless working and was told the area had been hit by an Axis attack and that everyone was to make their way to a safe zone established at the Quivira Airport about a day’s drive to the north.

The five of them found a squad car with a full tank of gas and loaded it up with some food and water and all the ammo they could find, then they left town as quickly as they could. There were bodies everywhere, victims of either the monsters or the choking fits, and a nagging voice in the back of Brannigan’s mind warned him that some of those bodies were something other than dead.

They were three hours away from Quivira when the squad car’s engine began knocking, and they were less than an hour away from the city when the engine finally seized up. They lost one of the girls to a choking fit right after that. Then while they were trying to bury her as best they could, they discovered that some of the monsters were still active during the day. The monsters seemed to erupt from the ground and killed Sparks and the other girl almost right away. He and Pooch were just barely able to fight their way clear of the monsters and make their way back to the squad car where they figured they would at least have enough ammo for a decent last stand.

Just as a second, much larger wave of monsters began shambling towards them, Pooch began gasping for air. Brannigan took hold of him and eased him down into a sitting position with his back against the squad car. Pooch took hold of his arm and said, “Sorry…buddy…” before going still.

The nagging feeling in the back of Brannigan’s mind urged him to kill the monsters before more innocent people died. He picked up the Thompson Pooch had been holding and rose slowly to his feet.

He woke up lying on a cot in an Army field hospital where a pretty nurse quickly assured him that he was safe and that he was going to be all right. Then an Army doc had come over to tell him that a patrol out of Quivira had come across the abandoned patrol car surrounded by a platoon’s worth of dead Axis soldiers. The patrol followed a trail of more dead enemy soldiers and abandoned firearms for about two days until they’d finally come across Brannigan lying unconscious on the ground, armed with nothing but a trench knife, and encircled by more corpses. They estimated that he’d taken out half a company all by himself. They’d been Axis soldiers, not monsters, the doc had assured him. He was suffering from battle fatigue and his mind was playing tricks on him. It was understandable, given the circumstances.

Brannigan had resisted that idea for a time and resisted it hard. The little voice urged him to change his tune or he was going to end up in a straightjacket in a padded room somewhere. He’d agreed to the lie and the Army had rewarded him with a bunch of medals, a promotion to Master Sergeant, and a medical retirement with a full pension.

** KILL THE MONSTER! **

Brannigan closed his eyes and edged further back into the recessed doorway where he’d taken cover. Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d made a mistake ten years ago. Perhaps he should have let them lock him up. When he opened his eyes, he saw the blonde, who clearly had been born with neither common sense nor a sense of self-preservation, had moved further into the alley in order to get out of the wind so she could light her cigarette.

The trench knife was in Brannigan’s hand, and he couldn’t make himself put it away, so in desperation, he came up with what was probably a horrible plan. All he had to do was jump out of the doorway, screaming like the madman that he was, and if the blonde wasn’t a monster, she’d scream and run away, because there was no way she’d just stand there and hike up her dress to draw her gun. If she really was a monster, she’d stand and fight. He reassessed—it was definitely a horrible plan, but it was all he had. Brannigan went to leap out of the doorway and found he couldn’t move a single muscle.

** RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN! **

The blonde took a slow drag on her cigarette and blew it out just as slowly. With her back still to him, she said in a singsong voice, “Right about now, that little voice in your head is telling you to run away.” The blonde turned her head to look back at him over her shoulder, her eyes glowing with what looked like blue fire. She smiled knowingly and quirked an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”

She turned and took another drag on her cigarette before folding her arms across her chest and blowing out the smoke off to one side. She studied him for a moment, then looked him in the eyes. “Very interesting…you are not what I expected, William Brannigan. We shall talk and decide how best to proceed.”

The woman took a seat on a trashcan across the alley like it was a throne. She reached into a pocket in the front of her skirt, something Brannigan knew wasn’t normal, withdrew a pistol and placed it on top of a second trashcan beside her. Brannigan’s eyes widened—there was simply no way she’d could have had a Smith & Wesson .357 stuck in a little pocket on the front of her dress. The woman took another drag on her cigarette and held it to the side as she blew the smoke out. It was then that Brannigan realized that while there were a great many smells in the alley, cigarette smoke wasn’t one of them. The woman’s eyes stopped glowing and she looked at him expectantly.

Brannigan found he could move again, or at least he could relax his muscles a bit and shift to a more comfortable posture. He glanced at the .357 and placed his trench knife on top of a trashcan next to his doorway. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the doorframe. “You seem to know who I am, so how about we start with who—and what—you are.”

“I am the Instructor,” the woman replied, as if she’d answered both questions. “When I am not providing instruction, I like to pass the time by seeking out and collecting broken hunters, like you, so I can add them to my orchestra, where they will stay out of trouble. They also find peace of mind and, if they desire it, even redemption. As it happens, I could use a solo clarinet player, and I thought you would do nicely, so I set a little trap,” she motioned to herself with one hand and made a little head toss to flip her hair back a bit, “and lured you into it.”

“First off, that’s creepy, and second, I ain’t no clarinet player.”

“Creepy? Well, I’m in good company then, aren’t I, William?” The Instructor took a drag on her cigarette and did not look at his trench knife, but she didn’t really have to. She pointed at him with the cigarette. “You played clarinet as a child—I checked. You were apparently quite good at it.”

That made Brannigan wince a bit. He shook his head. “I hated playing clarinet as a child.”

“True,” the Instructor agreed with a regal nod. “But if playing the clarinet in my orchestra made the whispers in your mind stop, made the urges to hunt and kill go away—would you hate playing the clarinet then?”

He gave her a noncommittal shrug. “I could see how some folks could find that attractive.”

“But not you, because you aren’t really broken. Not yet, anyway, despite having been exposed to the gray death. That makes you much more interesting, William Brannigan.” The Instructor brought her cigarette to her mouth for a thoughtful little drag and puff while she considered him with her ice-blue eyes. “We could make a deal, you and I. I can instruct you on how to control that whispering voice in your head as well as whatever other Talents you might have. Then you would be able to fight the forces of Darkness, save the Innocent, have a Noble Purpose, et cetera, et cetera. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“No offense, but this sounds like one of those deals that leads to a bad end.”

“On the contrary, it will save you from a bad end,” the Instructor replied. “You’ve noticed the slow downhill slide of your life. Every apartment is a little seedier than the last. Every drinking binge lasts a little longer. Everyday, the whisper in your mind grows more insistent. How long before you can no longer resist killing the monsters? How long before you get so drunk that you accidentally kill an innocent person? How long before the Darkness claims you? You don’t know the answer to those questions, Willian Brannigan, but I do. I have seen it happen to others.”

Brannigan shook his head. Everything she said had been true and the questions she’d asked were the same questions he’d been asking himself everyday since the Army retired him. “No, that ain’t going to happen to me. I won’t let it.”

The Instructor said nothing in return. She merely took another slow drag on her cigarette, then held it off to the side to flick the ashes from the tip while she blew out the smoke. Brannigan looked down at his shoes, and even in the dark alley he saw how scuffed they were; he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d polished them. He suddenly realized that he had no idea if he’d remembered to shave that morning. Perhaps he wasn’t doing as well as he’d thought. He glanced over at his trench knife. He definitely wasn’t doing as well as he thought. The whisper in his mind had gone back to being a quiet, subtle feeling, and it was telling him that the Instructor, whoever or whatever she really was, was a dangerous individual, but she wasn’t evil. He sensed ’hat she genuinely wanted to help him, though she had her own reasons for doing so and there would be a price to pay for that help. He looked back up at the Instructor, and she started speaking right away. “You already know the price for my instruction: I need a solo clarinet player for my orchestra. We mostly do local performances, but we occasionally go on tour. We do practice a lot and every couple of weeks we have a really long practice session, but you’ll still have plenty of time to run off and do battle with the forces of Darkness.”

Brannigan frowned. There was a catch, because there was always a catch. “I imagine once I join this orchestra of yours, there’s no leaving it?”

The Instructor shrugged. “That depends on you and your proclivity for bouts of homicidal irresponsibility.” The tip of her cigarette glowed cherry red as she took another drag on it. “I think an audition would be helpful; that way, we’ll have a better understanding of what we are dealing with.”

Brannigan wasn’t sure if she was using a royal “we” or not, but he felt he should point out, “I’m not sure what you’re thinking of for an audition, but I didn’t exactly bring a clarinet with me tonight, and I’m not going to kill someone for sport.”

The Instructor smiled and pointed to him with the two fingers holding her cigarette. “You like those King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table stories. Let’s play a little game, you and I, like one of those stories. I shall, of course, be the mysterious woman in the white dress, and you shall play the role of the wandering knight.” The cigarette vanished and the Instructor primly crossed one leg over the other and straightened her skirt. “Listen carefully, and you will hear the damsel in distress for our little scenario cry out for help.”

From somewhere further down the alley, Brannigan thought he actually did hear a woman crying out for help. He scowled at the Instructor. “I don’t know what kind of sick game you think you’re playing, lady, but—”

“I assure you that this is very real and deadly serious, William Brannigan. The streets of this city are far more dangerous than you know,” the Instructor interrupted. She flourished a hand toward the Smith & Wesson. “Take this weapon, Sir Knight, and go forth into the darkness. If you hurry, you may yet save the damsel from the monsters that beset her. If you tarry, you will only be able to avenge her. Return here when the monsters are slain, and we shall talk some more.”

Brannigan heard a woman pleading for help again and he grabbed his trench knife off the trashcan, sheathed it, and stuck it back into his jacket pocket. He crossed the alley and picked up the revolver. “Oh, you and I are definitely going to be having a talk after this, lady. Count on that.”

The Instructor merely looked at him with a neutral expression, her eyes wide and blue. Standing as close to her as he was, Brannigan suddenly got the impression that the mind behind those eyes was incredibly old and not in the least bit human. Ancient otherworldly being or not, if she put some innocent girl in danger just for kicks and laughs, he was going to be having words with her when he returned. He checked the revolver to be certain it was loaded and gave the Instructor a stern look before hurrying down the alley.

The temperature dropped as Brannigan advanced down the alley, and the air felt as if it grew thicker, though not as badly as it had the night of the USO dance. The voice in the back of his mind seemed pretty happy about hunting monsters in the darkness. He concluded the little voice was a few cards short of a full deck; the fact that it was his voice, in his head, was not lost on him. He clearly wasn’t playing with a full deck, either.

The alley ended at a narrow backstreet that ran between two rows of buildings. A streetlight above him was clearly on, but its light was feeble against the unnatural darkness that hung in the alley like a sinister fog. A few of the buildings he could see had small loading docks, and there was a scattering of trash bins and stacks of empty pallets that would provide numerous places for something to hide. He glanced up and saw what looked like an iron maze of fire escapes crawling up the back walls of the buildings and providing yet more places for things with ill intent to lie in wait. Off to his left, he heard what sounded like someone pounding on a metal door followed by a muffled cry for help. Brannigan deducted a few more cards from the estimated total of his mental deck, then headed cautiously down the street toward the sounds.

After a few steps, the dark fog suddenly cleared, and he saw three of the formerly human monsters forming a loose semicircle in the street. Their clothing was torn and dirty, and where their skin showed through, it was an unnatural gray color. The monsters were mostly bald, with only a few scraggly patches of hair clinging to their heads. Their mouths were distorted by long, knife-like teeth that weren’t meant for a human face, and their eye sockets were filled with blue flames and dark, writhing shadows.

There was a terrified woman, her shoulder-length red hair pinned back from her face, wearing a blue and white waitress’s uniform, standing in front of a metal door on a small loading dock lit by a single light on a metal bracket extending from the back wall of the building. There was light shining through a little square window in the metal door, and there was more light showing around the edges of the drawn shades of a pair of windows on the second floor of the building. It was just the place someone looking for safety would run to when being chased down the street by monsters, and from the expression on the woman’s face, Brannigan judged that she had just figured out that it was a trap. The woman spotted him, and a glimmer of hope almost broke through her fearful expression.

Brannigan wasted no time and immediately shot the nearest monster twice in the back.

The pistol was well-balanced and the trigger was a thing of beauty, but that didn’t surprise Brannigan, considering who’d given him the pistol. What did surprise him was the almost complete lack of recoil and a report that sounded like the kraak-kraak of someone clapping their hands together as hard as they could. Also surprising were the two smoking holes that went clearly through the monster.

Brannigan brought the pistol around as the first monster fell to the ground and fired two more shots at the second monster, hitting it both times and leaving two smoking holes in its chest through its heart. The second monster toppled to the ground next to the first and Brannigan brought the .357 to bear on the third monster.

He squeezed off a shot, but the third monster had seen what happened to its fellows and dodged to the side with unnatural speed then leaped toward Brannigan. He quickly adjusted his aim and drilled a hole through the monster’s head in what he thought was a fairly impressive bit of shooting on his part. He stepped to the side as the monster’s corpse hit the ground next to him and looked over at the redhead to give her a jaunty grin.

She pointed and yelled, “There’s another one behind you!”

Brannigan spun around just in time to take a right cross to the side of his face that left him seeing stars and nearly rang his bell but good. He instinctively brought up his right arm to block a follow-up left cross from his attacker. Then he pivoted forward to launch a left uppercut to the monster’s jaw. He didn’t remember drawing his trench knife, but he was glad that he had as he felt bones crunch in the monster’s face beneath the impact of the knuckleduster. The force of the blow was enough to knock the monster back off its heels and it sprawled backward onto the road.

It twisted around to glare at Brannigan with flames in its eye sockets glowing with rage. The skin over its jaw bulged and writhed as the bone beneath reassembled itself. The monster bared its fangs at him and roared.

Without thinking about what he was doing, Brannigan brought up the .357 and squeezed the trigger twice.

Kraak! Kraak!

The monster dropped back to the ground with two smoking holes in its head. After a moment, Brannigan tilted the .357 back so he could peer into its cylinder. He blinked in surprise and rotated the cylinder to examine all six chambers. The pistol was still fully loaded.

“Eight shots,” the redhead said unexpectedly from beside him as she peered around his arm at the revolver. She looked up at him, her blue-green eyes wide. “I never saw you reload…and a second ago, you had a knife in your left hand.”

Suspecting the truth would only frighten her more, Brannigan opted to shrug nonchalantly in response. “It’s the Army training, ma’am. Teaches you to really move with a sense of urgency. Especially in combat.”

The woman’s expression spoke volumes about Brannigan’s ability to lie convincingly. She tipped her head to one side and shrugged. “If that’s the story you want to sell, tough guy, I’m not going to question it.” She wrapped her arms around him in a fierce hug. “I don’t care how you did it. Thank you for saving my life! Those…those creatures were whispering things in my mind, horrible things. The sorts of things they planned on doing to me before they killed me…”

Brannigan reached up and tentatively patted her back in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. In the distance, he heard police sirens. The woman took a step back from him and looked him in the eyes. She thoughtfully bit her lower lip for a moment, then whispered, “I think now is the part where you introduce yourself and reassure me that we’re safe now.”

“…And my muscle-bound friend here is none other the Face Brannigan. He’s a bit of a celebrity in the Company.” Pooch had introduced him after introducing himself and Sparks to two of the girls at the USO dance—the same two girls who would go on to survive the night with them. Brannigan could picture them both clearly in his mind. One had been a redhead with blue eyes and dimples in her cheeks when she smiled. The other had been raven-haired, with chocolate brown eyes that had sparkled with mischief and humor.

The redhead had given him a broad smile that showed off her dimples to good effect. “Pleased to meet you, Face Brannigan. I’m—”

She’d introduced herself to him, he knew she had, and so had her friend. The two of them had been nice girls, brave, too, crack shots, and good fighters. They’d been his comrades-in-arms just as much as Pooch and Sparks had been. The redhead had been the one to die in his arms after the car had stopped working and the brunette had died while fighting side-by-side next to Sparks. No matter how hard he tried, Brannigan could not remember their names. Too many blows to the head during the battle, the docs had told him, and he’d breathed in some sort of poison gas. There’d be things he’d probably never remember.

Not being able to remember the girls’ names was an unforgivable sin, no matter what the docs said, worse even than having a voice in the back of his head telling him to kill monsters.

“Yeah, we’re safe now, don’t worry. My friends call me Face. Face Brannigan.” Brannigan paused and shrugged with one shoulder. “It’s an old Army nickname.”

“Well, it ain’t the name your mother gave ya, but it’ll do for now. My name’s Molly,” the woman told him. She turned her head to look down the street as the sound of police sirens drew closer. “Somebody must have heard me screaming when those things chased me down the street and called the cops.” Molly looked back up at Brannigan. “I’m safe now, you said so yourself, so if you want to get out of here before they arrive, then you’d best hurry. I’ll tell them that I have no idea who you are and that I didn’t get a good look at you.”

Brannigan frowned at her. “Why would you think that I’d want to get out of here before the cops arrived?”

“You’re wandering around dark alleys and backstreets with a hand cannon and a trench knife and dressed like that…” Molly paused to gesture at his clothes. “And tossing around a moniker like Face Brannigan. You’re either a hitman who’s down on his luck or a rookie vigilante. Either way, the cops will want to lock you up. You ain’t gonna be saving anyone else while you’re cooling your heels in the slammer.”

Brannigan looked down at himself then back at Molly with mock indignation. “It’s laundry day.”

“If that’s the story you want to sell, tough guy, I ain’t questioning it,” Molly repeated. She shot a glance down the street. “Listen, they’re really close now. You’d better get going.”

“Right.” Brannigan tipped his hat to her. “It was nice meeting you, Molly.”

“Hey, Face?” Molly called as he turned to leave. When Brannigan turned back to her, she said, “I work the dinner shift at Joe’s, down the street? Stop by tomorrow night and let me buy you dinner or at least a slice of apple pie?”

“I think I will,” Brannigan said, and tipped his hat to her again. “You take care, Molly.”

Brannigan ducked down the alley he’d come from, just as a squad car began to turn onto the back street. He pressed himself flat against one of the buildings and held his breath when the squad car came to a stop across from the alley. He wasn’t sure if they spotted him or not, but when the two officers inside the car opened their doors, Molly began shouting, “Over here! Over here! Please!”

The two policemen jumped out of the squad car and ran in Molly’s direction with what Brannigan judged to be impressive speed. He slowly released the breath he’d been holding and silently made his way back through the misty darkness to the front of the alley.

When the unnatural darkness cleared, Brannigan saw the Instructor was still sitting on her trash can throne, idly examining her manicure while she waited. He hadn’t taken two steps toward her when she turned her head in his direction.

“With the monsters vanquished and the damsel rescued, the noble knight returns!” the Instructor exclaimed with a cheerful smile. She applauded him briefly and, Brannigan was certain, sincerely. “I shall enjoy working with you, William Brannigan. You have a zestful approach to slaying the forces of Darkness.”

Brannigan shook his head. “The voice in my head was right: you are a monster. You had no right to put that woman’s life in danger just so you could get your kicks for the evening.”

“Oh my…well.” The Instructor folded her hands on her lap. “I know that you read the newspaper nearly every day, so I know you are aware that lately, this city has suffered a string of unsolved murders—exceedingly brutal murders, in point of fact. The restless dead you destroyed were the perpetrators of those murders. True, the reason I lured you here was because I knew this is where they had established their warren and, yes, I’d hoped you would destroy them in an entertaining fashion. I had nothing to do with the woman being here. The restless dead had merely chosen her to be their next victim. Her presence and you saving her did add to the entertainment value for our little game, I admit. But do my motivations really matter, so long as evil is destroyed and innocent lives are spared?”

“It matters to me,” Brannigan said through gritted teeth. “You’re powerful enough that you could have saved her with a snap of your fingers. Instead, you sent me in there with a pistol and a knife and at least a hundred things that could have gone wrong.”

Blue light flared within the Instructor’s eyes, then faded. “There are rules, laws, if you prefer, that we are bound to follow, William Brannigan. This is not our world and the lesser affairs of it and its people are not our concern; therefore, we do not let them distract us from our purpose. If there were no laws and I did deign to concern myself then, even as powerful as I am—and I am extremely powerful, thank you for noticing,” the Instructor paused to tilt her head and bat her eyes at him, “I am not capable of being in more than one place at a time, nor do I have any frame of reference for judging which little mundane human is most in need of rescue.”

Brannigan opened his mouth to respond, but hesitated when he felt a mental nudge from the voice in his head. The Instructor told him that she collected broken hunters, people like him or even people worse off than him…who also had musical talent. It seemed like the sort of criteria a spooky supernatural being might take a fancy to. “This, ah, orchestra of yours? I’m guessing that it’s another one of your games?”

The Instructor nodded with such exuberance, that for a moment, she really did seem as young as she looked. “Oh, yes! One could hardly be faulted for playing a little game now and then to pass the time, and big band music is simply delightful, don’t you agree?” She sighed and gave him a pretty little pout that he didn’t buy for a minute. “I do need a solo clarinet player, though…”

“Ah-huh. And how many people do you have in this orchestra of yours, Instructor?”

The Instructor gave him a coy look. “Counting you, William Brannigan?”

“I haven’t agreed to join yet, but, sure, why not count me, too?”

“Fifty.”

He rubbed his jaw with one hand and gave her a thoughtful look. “So there are laws that you have to follow, but there’s nothing wrong with playing a little game every now and then for your own amusement, right? It seems to me that you found a loophole that, for all practical purposes, lets you be in fifty places at once.”

“First, you call me powerful, and now you insinuate that I am clever. What a delightful flatterer you are, William Brannigan.” The Instructor brought her shoulders up as she beamed at him. “There is no need for it, however. Your seat in my orchestra is assured. You need only ask.”

The voice in Brannigan’s mind let him know that the Instructor was powerful enough that she didn’t have to ask. She could force him to join. Asking him was perhaps a token of respect…and probably also a test to see if he had enough common sense to ask for a hand when he clearly needed one. Help killing the monsters, the voice in his head told him, and pushed aside any doubts he might have harbored.

Brannigan looked the Instructor in the eyes and nodded once. “Yes. I’ll join your orchestra.”

“Excellent!” The Instructor hopped off the trashcan and handed him a business card bearing only a street address. “Come to this address tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp, and I’ll introduce you to the rest of the band. I think you’ll get along with them smashingly! I can hardly wait!”

“Yeah, ah…” Brannigan looked down at the business card, then over at the Instructor. “Since you seem to be able to work the hocus-pocus stuff, I’m wondering if you can help me…” His voice trailed off as the Instructor’s expression changed to one of sympathy.

“The human mind is a complex and mysterious thing, William Brannigan. What is lost to you is hidden from me,” she said as she peered into his eyes. She gave him a sly smile. “Your memory isn’t the only place you might search for the information you seek. Their hometown still stands.”

Brannigan felt his eyes go wide. “You aren’t suggesting that I take a trip into the Quarantine Zone to look for clues? That would be a one-way trip.”

The Instructor shrugged her shoulders daintily. “For a mundane human, yes. But you don’t think that I would ask a mundane human to join my orchestra, do you?”

“No, you made it clear that you don’t.”

“Well, then, it seems like you have a game of your own to play—perhaps more than one?” The Instructor gave him another sly grin. “You haven’t asked yet, but tomorrow’s practice will be over in plenty of time for you to, oh…enjoy dinner at Joe’s, perhaps?”

Brannigan narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Matchmaking isn’t another one of your games, is it?”

“Not one of my games, no,” she said, then disappeared.

“Huh…” Brannigan suddenly became aware that he was standing in a dark alley with a pistol in his hand. He quickly put the .357 in a jacket pocket and stared down at the business card. He put it in another pocket and began walking in the direction of his apartment. He stopped midstep when he realized that he was actually looking forward to the next day.

He grinned and continued walking.

Monica on My Mind

Stanley Wheeler

My head jerked upright as my cheek’s slow peel from the top of my desk ended abruptly, and I made out Pip’s silhouette entering the doorway.

“Have you been here all night?” she asked.

She closed the door and moved with the grace of a deer toward my desk. Blonde with a trim and attractive figure, she turned up her sensitive button nose at the smell of whisky. Whether the smell came from the bottle or from me, I refused to speculate. She looked at me with pity and disdain before walking back to the kitchen. She returned a minute later with a glass of water.

“Drink this. I’ll put on some coffee. The store is open and, unless I miss my guess, there’s a woman waiting across the street to see Duncan Kane. You should comb your hair, straighten your tie, and—”

The door opened, and something stirred within me as my eyes scanned the new form. I started when I saw the hourglass figure and the cigarette held out in two fingers. For a moment, I thought of Monica, but as she came into focus—a silvery-blonde with scarlet lips and large eyes—I knew it wasn’t the woman who had lingered in my thoughts for several weeks. Nevertheless, this dame jumpstarted my heart. I rose—almost involuntarily—straightening my tie in the process, and offered myself as a sacrifice to those beguiling eyes.

“Mr. Kane?” she asked, with a note of uncertainty.

She had noticed the books—shelves and shelves of books. It was a bookstore, after all.

“Am I in the right place?”

Her voice caressed my soul like a flautist love song mingled with martinis.

“This is Mr. Kane, dear. I run the bookstore. He runs the investigations,” Pip said, coming to my rescue.

“That’s right,” I said. “How can I help you?”

I took her hand and escorted her to the seat beside my desk. The hand was firm but tender, and my heart beat a little faster. Granted, her hand was less exhilarating than Monica’s lips had been, but few women introduce themselves with a kiss—an unfortunate shame.

She put the cigarette to her lips, and the end glowed like a brakeman’s lamp. I watched her eyes—two magnificent violet banners beckoning behind a veil of smoke. They weren’t like Monica’s eyes with the power of twin German 88s to pin a man in position, but they invited inspection and wonder.

“I expected you to be taller,” she said.

“So did my mother, but we all have our disappointments. What can I do for you?”

“I need your help, Mr. Kane. Someone’s trying to frame me.”

“Frame you for what?”

“Murder.”

“Who was killed?”

“No one—yet. My ex-boyfriend is going to be killed, and it’s going to look like I did it.”

She took a long pull from the cigarette, and I held my question while I watched, remembering Monica doing the same thing not long ago. When she blew a plume of smoke to one side, I began my investigation.

“How do you know he’s going to be killed?”

She opened a tiny purse, extracted a piece of paper, and tossed it on the desk.

I lifted the paper by one corner and raised it to the light. A brown stain colored the lower left portion, and block letters read: Steve Winder dies tomorrow night. Come to 1114 East Fleming precisely at nine o’clock.

“Steve Winder is your ex?”

She nodded and swigged again from the cigarette. One foot at the end of her crossed legs began to bounce. I noticed both legs, looking for imperfections and finding none until they disappeared beneath a navy-blue dress above her knees.

“The note came this morning? How did it arrive?”

“I found it under the door.”

“Was it in an envelope?”

“Yes. The envelope was blank. I threw it away.”

“Was the stain on it when you received it? Coffee, by the look of it.”

“I spilled my coffee on it when I read it at breakfast.”

While she took another deep draught from the cigarette, I lifted a paperback from the desk and opened it at random. I perused the page until my eyes lit upon the passage: “Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn’t let on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you’re always as polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any more.” I’ve often found words worth considering in Twain’s writing, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn comes in at the top of the heap for quick wisdom. I allowed right then that I was going to follow Tom Sawyer’s words to Ben Rogers. Of course, I had no intention of killing the woman, and I doubted that this violet-eyed enchantress was likely to fall in love with me—but I wasn’t ready to rule out the possibility. I resolved to be polite as pie and let her bear the risk of succumbing to my charms. After all, if a woman like Monica had found me irresistible, perhaps this stunning dame could do the same.

“Mr. Kane?” she said.

I don’t know how many times she said it, but I only heard it once. I stuck the note into the book.

“Are you all right?”

“Remarkably. Thank you for asking. I was just considering your situation. Tell me, Miss— I’m sorry, I neglected to ask your name.”

“Audrey. Audrey Prince.”

“A lovely name for a lovely woman. I was wondering how you knew—”

Pip cleared her throat as she came from the kitchen with a cup of coffee.

“You’ll have to excuse Mr. Kane. He was up late on a case last night. That one’s all resolved now, but he hasn’t had breakfast or a chance to clean up. Perhaps you could give him a few minutes to make himself a little more presentable.”

“Oh. Sure. I don’t mind,” Audrey said.

I enjoyed the timbre of her voice, and I caught a hint of a floral fragrance fighting through the lingering smoke.

“Everything you need is in the bath, including a clean shirt,” Pip said. “It won’t hurt your coffee to cool for a few minutes.”

“I’ll be right back,” I promised, rising from the desk.

When I returned from improving my appearance from slovenly and unkempt to clean and dashingly handsome, she was gone. Pip stood near the open door, shooing cigarette smoke from the premises.

“Where’d she go?” I asked.

“Ms. Prince had to run. She said she would meet you tonight at The Riviera Club. Huck Finn persuaded you to take her case? I saw you slip it into your pocket when you stepped away. She is beautiful. I don’t suppose that had anything to do with your decision.”

“I’m disappointed she didn’t get to see me in a better light—”

“It wouldn’t have made you any taller,” Pip interrupted, flashing a mischievous half-smile.

“But I really wanted to hear more about her case. Did the doll leave a retainer?”

“I wouldn’t have told you about the rendezvous if she hadn’t.” Pip produced a wad of folded bills. She peeled off a hundred in twenties and handed it to me.

“The rest is for my pay and your other bills. Husband the hundred wisely.” Pip folded her arms and interrogated me with her gaze. “I know she reminds you of Monica—she certainly smokes as much—but don’t let that influence your judgment. Those big violet eyes and that voluptuous packaging are terrible distractions.”

“I wouldn’t say terrible—terrific, maybe.” I caught myself. “What I mean is that I’m disappointed to learn that you think me so easily distracted. I didn’t get through France and Germany by being easily distracted.”

“The Nazis didn’t send battalions of shapely frauleins in form-fitting uniforms and red lipstick in your direction.”

“True. Although there was that time near Stuttgart…” I’m afraid my mind wandered for a moment. “You’re worried that I’ll lose control on those curves,” I said, betraying my thoughts.

“Exactly. Those are dangerous curves, and some Joe’s probably gone over the edge of that road to his doom with his foot on the gas.”

“What time am I meeting Ms. Prince?” I asked, changing the nature of the subject.

“Nine o’clock. She said it was very important that you not be late.”

The Riviera Club was owned by Vince Magagna, the most successful organized crime lord in the state. Nothing stuck to him. I knew he had his fingers in the local police force because he had mysteriously obtained police photos in the case I had handled for Monica. I hadn’t been back to that club since. The memories were too painful. I pushed those thoughts aside to concentrate on making new memories with Audrey. I was going to give her the one-two punch in my killer-diller white jacket and irresistible charm. The frail wouldn’t stand a chance.

“Mr. Kane.”

I turned my head to look for the source of the voice as I stepped across the threshold of the club. I tripped over a briefcase the gentleman ahead of me had just dropped. I took a stumbling step before pitching forward to the carpet. I got to my knees and noted the white shoes polished to a high sheen and the spotless white pants before me.

“Mr…Kane, isn’t it?” Vince Magagna said, without reaching to help me up.

His suit was impeccably white. His black moustache was narrow and pointed at both ends; his face finely chiseled; his dark hair immaculate. He carried himself like some ancient Italian duke—or Lucifer out for a stroll.

The heavy next to him grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me to my feet. It was Matteo, the man with the bad boxer’s nose, with whom I had had a run-in on a previous visit; I had used my knee in an attempt to drive his pelvis through the top of his skull. Later, I had left him unconscious in the parking lot after he came looking to even the score. I could tell that he hadn’t forgotten our previous tête-a-tête.

“You want I should throw him out, Boss?” Matteo asked.

“Certainly not, Matteo. Mr…Kane is always welcome. You must put your harsh feelings—”

“Mr. Kane,” Audrey said as she pushed through the door, “I saw you come in.” She pulled up short. “Is that palooka looking for trouble?”

“He’s my palooka,” Magagna said before I could speak. “Mr…Kane is A-OK, as they say, and because of this little inconvenience, for which I must bear partial responsibility because I distracted this other gentleman, whatever Mr…Kane orders tonight is on the house.”

Matteo scowled—or was it a smirk?

Maybe I should explain something here. See, Duncan Kane isn’t my name. I’m Noah Vale. Kane was a private detective with a great reputation for taking and solving cases, often leaving a body or two in his wake—until he caught a terminal case of lead poisoning. A few months after Kane’s death, I opened a bookstore in his old office. People still find him in the phonebook and come to the office expecting to find Kane to take their case. I pretend to be Kane and take the cases to supplement the income from the store. I think Magagna knew Duncan Kane and reminds me that he knows I’m not the real Kane whenever we meet. That’s why he always pauses in the middle of calling me Mr. Kane. He’s warning me to be careful, because he can expose me any time. At least I think that’s the reason he does it.

“I must commend you on the quality of your company. I hope that you and this beautiful lady enjoy your time here tonight.” Magagna gestured to an attendant, who escorted us away while he advanced to the man with the briefcase.

“What happened there?” Audrey asked.

“Nothing important. Magagna’s palooka was hoping for permission to send me off in the buzz wagon, but Magagna wouldn’t approve. I may have interrupted something there. Magagna doesn’t often come to the front door. Anyway, let’s discuss your concern over drinks. Let me warn you, I can start to look pretty good after a drink or two.”

Audrey smiled—a wide, smooth-toothed river of white between luscious banks of crimson. “I don’t need a drink to see that you’re aces in the looks department, but why would that guy want you in an ambulance?”

“We had a spirited debate during a previous visit. He’s still sore over it.”

I led her into the main room, where square tables surrounded the dance floor. Palm trees adorned two walls, and a beach scene with a setting sun accented the shallow stage, where a blonde in a blue sequins number caressed a tune Doris Day was making popular on the radio. We ordered drinks at the bar and took them to a table.

The songbird broke into her rendition of “Bei Mir Bist du Schön” as we sat down with our drinks, and I allowed my eyes to wander across Audrey’s clavicles and the ill-concealed curves below that strained the tender fabric of the little red gown hanging tenuously from a strap over one shoulder. I suddenly remembered where I had seen her—or another dame who looked like her—on the side of a Flying Fortress that had crashed beside a road in France. The plane was destroyed, but that beautiful face and those come-hither eyes remained unharmed.

She grabbed my hand and said, “Dance with me.”

Before I could respond, she had pulled me from my chair, and I found myself with an arm around her. She pressed her face close to mine. The floral fragrance of her perfume wafted across my senses, saturating my soul, and her violet eyes held mine entranced. I became conscious of the curves pressed against my arm and body. Her breath carried a tint of mint from the drink she had sipped. Strands of her silver-blond hair obscured my peripheral vision. I had entered her strange and mysterious world, and I never wanted to leave.

I wanted to talk about her case—but not as much as I wanted to live forever in this wonderland of her presence, her form against mine, and a delirium of delights dancing in her eyes. The music changed to “Stardust,” and my thoughts shifted involuntarily to a time when I had held Monica in my arms on this same dance floor while the same songbird sang the same tune.

“She still has her brand on your thoughts, doesn’t she?” Audrey said.

“I’m sorry. What was that?”

“You’re thinking of another woman, aren’t you?”

“What makes you think that? What kind of cad would I have to be, thinking of another woman while I hold the most beautiful woman in the city in my arms? No, doll. I’m thinking of you; although I’m not thinking much, as you’ve already overrun my fortifications and taken me prisoner. I plan to surrender with no regrets.”

“That’s more like it,” she said in that martinis and flautist love song voice.

She brought her lips to mine and drove out all other distractions. If a man could touch his mouth to an exploding satchel charge of pure pleasure and live to tell the tale, he would know how I felt in that moment. Was it because she had stepped into the void left by Monica, or was I struck dumb with love? I knew it couldn’t be the latter. It couldn’t. I didn’t even know this dame. How could I be in love? Perhaps I wasn’t in love, but I was intoxicated by everything about her. On the other hand, she was the one who initiated the kiss. I guess she had fallen pretty hard. The white jacket is a killer.

She stiffened in my arms and drew away.

“We have to go.”

Again, she pulled me. We left the dance floor, passed the bar, and headed for the door. Magagna walked toward us with Matteo, briefcase in hand, a few steps behind.

“Leaving so soon, Mr…Kane? Did you not care for my hospitality?”

“Everything was wonderful,” I said as I passed. “I would stay if I could.”

Audrey pulled me outside.

“I saw someone in there. We’ve got to get out of here. I think he means to kidnap me and frame me for Steve’s murder.”

“The murder that hasn’t happened yet?”

“Yes, but it could happen anytime.”

“I thought it wasn’t until tomorrow at nine?”

“I just got to thinking: what if the note was to make me believe I had another day? What if Steve’s already dead? The killer knows I won’t come tomorrow, so he’ll kidnap and frame me tonight.”

“I thought you didn’t know who wrote the note.”

“I don’t—exactly,” she said. “Here, you drive.”

I took the keys and opened the door to the green Mercury Eight convertible. She slid across the seat, and I sat down behind the wheel.

“Hurry! He’s coming out!” she cried as I started the car.

I threw the three-speed manual transmission into reverse and pulled out of the parking spot. I clutched, braked, and slammed the shifter into first gear. A glance to my left on the beautiful, art deco wood dash revealed the Merc was low on gas. The red needle was as far to the left as it could go.

“Go!” she cried, and I reintroduced my foot to the gas pedal.

The tires squealed around the corner as I left the club’s parking lot.

“Who’s coming? Who’s going to kill Steve?”

She snuggled against me, casting fearful looks out the rear window while one hand found the back of my neck and the other fumbled with my jacket before she splayed her fingers across my ribs.

“Go faster. I’ll tell you all about it once we’re clear of this place—and of him.”

I shifted, and the flathead V8 roared as I stomped on the gas.

“You’re not carrying a gun,” she said. “You should’ve brought a gun.”

“I was coming to talk, dance, and romance. Women complain when the roscoe nudges their ribs.”

“I wish you’d brought one. I’m scared.”

Her voice had returned to that lovely music and martinis tone, and her hands roved in a way that kept me tense. She laid her head against my shoulder, and I urged the Merc onward, exceeding the speed limit by double digits.

“Who are we running from, doll?” I asked.

“His name’s Howard or Paul or something like that. He used to work with Steve. He did paintings and things, and Steve found buyers for him.”

“Why would he kill Steve and frame you?” I asked, blowing through a stop sign.

“He thought Steve was holding back the money on his sales. The last painting Steve sold was to Vincent Magagna, and this guy Howard, or whatever his name is, accused Steve of pocketing half the payment. They had a big fight and—”

A siren accompanied by a flashing light cut off her words.

“We’ve got trouble,” I said.

“You can’t stop. You can’t let them catch us. This isn’t my car.”

“What?”

“It’s Steve’s car. They can’t find us in Steve’s car. If he’s already dead, this will look bad for me.” She began to sob, and the musical quality of her voice conjured the sound of breaking glass.

“Don’t worry, doll. I’ll lose ‘em.”

I spoke with a confidence I didn’t feel, but when a beautiful dame goes to tears on me, I’m obligated to make her feel better. The obligation can’t be denied when she’s plastered to me like a greased-up sticky bomb. Besides, getting caught in Steve’s car wouldn’t do me any good, either. A quick thought about Steve intruded. I liked his taste in women and cars. I didn’t know how he had lost the doll, but I knew he must’ve felt horrible about it. I didn’t want to feel that way—not again.

The Merc swayed around a corner into a residential area. I shifted and hit the throttle. The engine sputtered, lost power, and raced again. A moment later it coughed and died. We coasted to the side of the road.

Before the car had stopped, the frail flung open the door and jumped out. She raised her arms and ran toward the police car. I opened the door and stepped out to better view my new doll. Her hair glowed in the cop’s headlights, and the red beacon on the car streaked the pale strands with crimson at each pass.

“Help me! Help me!” she cried. “He kidnapped me. He said there’s a dead man in the trunk. I’m so frightened.”

The ground fell from beneath my feet, and a mule kicked me in the stomach. My head swam as I tried to comprehend this startling turn of events. Perhaps I had overestimated the white jacket. I had brought Huck Finn along in the jacket pocket; maybe Ben Rogers hadn’t been such a fool. Perhaps everyone is somebody’s fool. I could see whose fool I was. At least we had her retainer, but it wasn’t enough to make bail. I dove behind the front of the Merc as the cop opened his car door. I plunged through the hedge at the side of the road. My feet voted to run, but something kept me back. I crept along the hedge until I was beside the black-and-white and could see the Merc’s tail.

“Help me, fficer. He’s a dangerous man. He told me he killed the man in the trunk,” Audrey cried.

“Is he in the car?” the copper asked.

“The dead man? He’s in the trunk.”

“The killer. Where is he?”

“He’s in the front seat.” She turned and saw that the door was open. “He’s gone.”

The cop had his heater out and pulled her behind him. He scanned the area.

“Was he armed?”

“No. He’s just so strong. I was afraid he would snap my neck if he got the chance.”

The cop searched around the car with his revolver at the ready. Audrey followed in his wake, whimpering to good effect.

“I couldn’t see who was driving. Are you sure you weren’t alone, ma’am?”

“I’m sure. Check the trunk,” she said, pointing.

He holstered the gun and popped the trunk. The black-and-white’s headlights illuminated part of a torso in a jacket and tie. The officer stepped back and fumbled for his flashlight. Audrey waited until he had the light in his hand before she grabbed the revolver from his holster and jumped back.

“Get in the trunk!” she ordered, drawing back the hammer on the Smith & Wesson.

The cop stepped toward her.

“I wouldn’t if I were you. One more step, and your wife’s a widow,” Audrey said.

The headlights called my attention to the firm curves that her gown struggled in vain to conceal. The back of her head flashed in red and white with the turning of the police beacon, and one leg blazed with the same colors from ankle to thigh where it extended from that most fortunate slit in her costume. I was shocked by the body in the trunk, as well as by Audrey’s bold action against the cop. Nevertheless, the image of that shapely limb and the exquisite trunk to which it was attached burned indelibly into my consciousness. I was calculating the sums in that illuminated figure and comparing them with the sums of similar observations I had made of Monica while the cop got into the trunk beside the corpse.

Audrey slammed the trunk to interrupt my mathematical endeavors. I had never been very good at arithmetic, but some figures demand examination and will not be denied.

“Where are you?” Audrey called.

I stepped through the hedge, wondering if I had offended the white jacket with my previous thoughts.

“I’m right here.”

She couldn’t see me as she looked into the headlights. She lowered the revolver and marched toward the sound of my voice.

“Why didn’t you stay in the car? I had to take care of him all by myself. Were you afraid?”

“I was practicing my fire and maneuver drills. I didn’t have a gun, so I only did the maneuver part. You were pretty effective against him without me.”

“You’re driving again,” she said.

“The police car?”

“You see any other options?”

“More cops are on the way. I’m sure he radioed the station to report the stop.”

“We’ll take it back to the club and get your car, lover. You did drive to the club?” She moved in close and whispered the last bit into my ear as her hands moved under my jacket.

I admit that it wasn’t the best idea, but she was extremely persuasive. Waiting for more cops to arrive at the scene with the dead body and live cop in the trunk didn’t entice me as an alternative. I killed the beacon and drove away slowly, meandering through the neighborhood before getting back to the main road and doing my best to drive nonchalantly into the parking lot of The Riviera Club.

“How did you know Steve’s body was in the trunk?” I asked her after my mind had settled from the excitement, and we had climbed into my Plymouth P9 Road King.

She had adhered to my side again, and a tiny sob escaped her. “I’m not sure. It was just a feeling. When I saw Howard at the club, I just knew he was framing me. It wasn’t until the police siren that I thought the body might already be in the trunk.”

“That’s some pretty specific guesswork for nothing to go on.”

“Howard must’ve arranged it. He knew I would spook when I saw him, so he put the body in the trunk and alerted the police to watch for Steve’s car. He knew I’d be driving it. I’ll bet he siphoned out the gas, too.”

“But we could’ve taken my car.”

“But we didn’t.”

“But we could’ve.”

“But we didn’t.”

I could see where this was going: nowhere, if I didn’t change tactics. “There was no way for Howard to know that we wouldn’t take my car, so your hypothesis is flawed.”

“It was just a feeling, a suspicion. I didn’t know. I couldn’t know, but I was afraid it was true. I suppose Howard killed Steve over short-changing him on the painting. He tried to frame me to protect himself.”

“But what motive would you have for killing Steve? A frame’s not a fit without a motive.”

“I arranged for Magagna to buy the painting. I knew Vince. We had a thing at one time. It wasn’t Steve that shorted Howard on the price. It was me.”

“That’s not a motive for you to kill Steve. How did you meet Magagna?”

“My uncle works for him. Shorting Howard on the price might not be motive, but blackmail is.”

“Steve was blackmailing you? How? About what?”

She pulled my face to hers. I thought she was going to whisper to me, but those scarlet lips found mine, and the message they sent made me forget my questions completely.

“I’m sorry,” she said when her lips had finished their interrogation of mine.

The door opened, and a meaty paw seized my lapel. As I was flung to the blacktop, I recognized Matteo’s face above me.

“Hello, Kane,” he barked, expressing his glee at our reunion with a kick to my gut.

I turned with the blow, avoiding most of the force. He reloaded, but I was against the curb. I rolled into the strike, trying to catch the toe in my hands to turn it. He kicked though my guard and knocked the wind out of me.

I rolled into his ankle, and he fell, bouncing against the side of the P9. We scrambled, pushing, punching, grabbing, and trying to rise. The ex-boxer landed a blow on my cheek that sent me spinning with stars flashing at the edge of my vision.

I lunged away and rolled to my feet, staggered, and shook my head to extinguish the stars.

He came at me with his chin low and his big fists forward. A gleam of triumph lit his eye. I ducked under his left jab, spun toward him, and landed a right to his jaw. It didn’t faze him, and he swung a wide hook at my head. I lowered my shoulder and rammed into his side beneath the hooking arm. He stumbled back, and I thrust the heel of my hand up into his jaw, clacking his teeth together as I continued driving with my legs and shoulder.

He hit the front fender of my Plymouth and bent back across it. I delivered a hammer blow to his stomach and grabbed the rod I knew he wore under his left arm before he could get it himself.

“We’ve got to stop meeting in parking lots,” I told him. “Your boss isn’t going to like you roughing me up like this.”

“Joke’s on you, Kane. When the boss says something’s ‘on the house,’ it means you’re fair game for later. Anything short of killing you will go completely unnoticed. You’re persona non gratty around here. You better give me that pistol and scram before the cops get here. You’re already wrapped up for a murder tonight. I don’t know how you got away from the cops earlier, but they’ll be looking for you here.”

“What are you talking about, Matteo? What do you know about a murder?”

He threw his hands up in a gesture of innocence.

“Me? Nothin’. I don’t know a thing?”

“Who’s trying to frame Audrey?”

“You don’t get it, do ya?” he asked, and burst into laughter. “Put that rod down, and I’ll give you another round if you’re up to it.”

I glanced into the car and around the lot. Audrey’s bright hair should’ve glowed like a lighthouse, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Two black-and-whites and an unmarked car rolled into the lot. One stopped behind the borrowed cop car. The unmarked rig came up beside me.

“Too late, Kane,” Matteo said with a grin.

I held my hands up, allowing the pistol to dangle from one finger.

“You’re under arrest, Kane,” Detective Carson said.

He had police detective written all over him. I’d also seen it written on his card when I had dealt with him on Monica’s case. He looked me over for a moment before taking Matteo’s gun from my finger.

“I see you’re missing a button on that jacket,” Carson said.

My gaze drifted to the jacket and confirmed his observation.

“Would you care to explain that?” he asked.

“It’s probably on the ground here someplace. When Matteo attacked me, he must’ve pulled it off.”

“That’s not the way it was, Detective. He attacked me and took my piece. I got a license for it. I’m one of Mr. Magagna’s bodyguards. I need that back.”

“We’ll keep it as evidence for now. Put your hands behind your back, Kane. You’re going down to the station. You’re under arrest for murder.”

I hung my head and noticed that I was missing a shirt button, as well.

Carson questioned me thoroughly across the table in a cold gray room with a big, darkened window on one wall. He didn’t believe my story, and Audrey, the only one who might corroborate it, couldn’t be found. I didn’t know who Howard was, if his name might be Paul, or have any description of him. After a short break, Carson returned with a white button.

“Recognize this?” he asked.

“It looks like the button from my coat. You found it in the parking lot at The Riviera Club?”

“It does match, doesn’t it?” he said, holding it against the vacant spot on my jacket, comparing it to the others. “We found it next to Steve Winder’s body in the trunk of his car.”

“That’s impossible. I had nothing to do with his death.” Even as I said the words, I remembered Audrey slamming the trunk. Had she dropped my button inside while I was comparing figures?

“It looks like a lock, Kane. The only thing we don’t know is why you did it. Care to clear that up for me?”

“Like I said, I didn’t even know the guy. How did he die? Do you have a time of death? Where was he killed? Who reported it?”

Carson let the silence gather.

“I didn’t even know the guy. I still don’t. I didn’t kill him. Anyone could’ve put that button in the trunk.”

Carson ignored my question. He pointed to the copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that he had taken from my pocket and placed on the table.

“What’s with the book, Kane? You say you’re out with a beautiful dame, but you bring along a book. Do you think the type of woman you described wants to get together for some exciting reading? There’s nothing kinky in it, is there?”

“I find it a source of inspiration from time to time. It’s a very good book. Quite possibly one of the best books ever written.”

Carson flipped through the pages. He pulled out the note Audrey had given me at the office.

“What’s this?” He read: “Steve Winder dies tomorrow night. Come to 1114 East Fleming precisely at 9 o’clock.” He pushed the note toward me on the table. “Care to explain that?”

“I told you. Audrey gave it to me when she came to the office this morning.”

“This morning. Not yesterday? Winder hadn’t been dead more than an hour when the officer found him in the trunk of his car. That would put his time of death a little before nine o’clock.”

“I didn’t know Winder was in the trunk. The dame knew it, and Matteo knew it. I don’t know anything else.”

“Except that you have a note threatening his death, and your button was found with the body only an hour dead, and you admit you were driving the victim’s car.”

“All easily explained—as I explained.”

“You were obviously in on it with the girl, this Audrey woman. She’s Winder’s ex-girl? Did he get jealous and force your hand? Juries understand self-defense. Maybe he got riled and came at you in a rage. You had to protect yourself or the girl. What happened, Kane?”

“Sorry, Carson. I’m all out of answers. Matteo and Audrey knew the stiff was in the trunk. It looks like I’m their patsy. I don’t know why they killed Winder. She said something about money for a painting or maybe for blackmail. I don’t even know if they killed him, but I think you should start there. They have more answers than I do.”

Carson wasn’t looking for answers to questions he didn’t want to ask. He had his suspect in custody. He wasn’t going to do anything to cast doubt on that.

I used my phone call to contact Pip and explain my sad situation.

“I told you to watch out for those curves,” she said.

“I was watching them—so closely that I never saw the train that hit me.”

Pip promised to come visit at the jail in the morning.

I’ve come to depend on Pip. When she didn’t show up before my arraignment, I started to worry. The judge set no bond. It was late afternoon when I learned that my perky assistant was waiting for me in the visiting room.

She waited across the table in the visiting hall and sat quietly while the guard escorted me to the table. She looked even more stunning than usual.

“I did some checking. Several of our bookstore customers have useful connections. They all wanted to help. This Steve Winder was sort of a middleman, and he was an agent for selling paintings for three or four artists in town. He once had a little art gallery at 1114 East Fleming Street. That wasn’t the only thing he was doing at his gallery. The rumor is that he was counterfeiting.”

“Paintings?”

“Currency. The cops raided the place. They found some remnants of sheets of linen-cotton bond paper but no press, no plates, and no ink. The story was in the paper. Judith—you remember she works the switchboard at the police station—told me the word at the coroner’s office is that Winder died from blunt force trauma to the head.”

“You’ve been in touch with Judith? I was afraid I’d used up all the favors she cared to offer doing Monica’s case.”

“Judith still appreciates what you told her mother. She likes you. She would go out with you, if you asked.”

“I’m not ready to date yet. What else did you learn?”

Pip sent a steely glare at me. “Not ready to date yet? Seems like that’s what put you behind bars.”

“That was business, not romance.”

Pip made a soft click with her tongue pulling away from the roof of her mouth. “So was Monica. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. Oh. They found blood at 1114 East Fleming that matches Winder’s type.”

“Nothing to put me at the scene?”

“A shirt button, but that could belong to anyone.”

I groaned. “They framed me up pretty well. You might want to start looking for a new job, Pip. What about a murder weapon?”

“Not found as far as I’ve heard.”

“Thanks. You deserve a raise.”

“But I won’t get one.”

“You’re always a step ahead of me.”

“There’s more bad news.”

A light flashed inside my head. “The retainer.”

“Yep,” Pip said.

“Counterfeit?”

“I think so. It’s very good. The paper and texture feel right, but some of the lines are blurry. Maybe the plates were damaged, or the ink smudged. The retainer is worthless. What happened to the hundred I gave you?”

“It’s in my wallet. If Carson inspects it closely, he’ll have even more evidence against me. He’ll call it motive.”

I dropped to my bunk and let my mind wander. Matteo didn’t have the brains to get me wrapped up for this. Was Magagna behind it? Why would Audrey want to frame me? Matteo had told me that Magagna had given permission to rough me up, but that didn’t mean he was in on the frame. Magagna wouldn’t waste time on a little fish like me unless there was something big behind it.

The guard interrupted my thoughts, bringing a new inmate to the cell next to me. The guy was still in his street clothes instead of the sporty jail-gray jumpsuit I modeled. His shirt hung about him like an unmade bed. His loose black tie skewed to one side, and his hair looked like he had lost a pillow fight.

“I’ll be back in a minute to finish admitting you, Stoller. Sit quiet,” the guard told him.

“Stoller,” I said, “you got a first name?”

“Sure, pal. I got a first name. I had a mother, ya know. She named me Paul, after her father.”

“What brings you to this hotel?”

“I was down by the old gallery where my paintings used to be displayed, and I ran into my agent’s girlfriend. She’s a real knock-out; could make a priest quit the church. She gave me a hundred dollars to get lost. I’ve been lost ever since.”

“That doesn’t explain how you got here.”

“The cops say I wrecked my car, but I don’t remember it. That’s why I’m here—too much drinking and not enough driving.”

“This knock-out girlfriend, is she a Lana Turner or Ava Gardner type?”

“Oh, Lana Turner couldn’t hold a candle to her, but she’s more like Lana.”

This slot machine was coming up sevens for me, but I didn’t know if I could ever collect the winnings. “You weren’t mad about her shorting you on the painting you sold to Magagna?”

“How do you know about that? It wasn’t her. It was Winder. He handled the money, and he didn’t short me. He paid me with funny money. I’m an artist; I notice the artistic details in money. That’s why I’m worried they’re gonna make me a suspect. I was sore at Winder over the deal.”

“That seems like a good motive for murder.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“They say he was killed around nine o’clock. You got an alibi?”

“Last night? That’s about the time I saw Winder’s gal. No. It was later, closer to ten. I’d been in my apartment painting her from memory. She once came down to the gallery in a pink dress with one bare shoulder. I’m painting her in that dress posing like Madame Récamier. She has the most brilliantly violet eyes.”

He was lost in reverie for several seconds, and I joined him, but I imagined her planting my shirt button at the scene.

It was all coming together for me. Winder kept the payment from Magagna and gave Stoller counterfeit dough. Audrey must’ve lied about shorting Stoller. She lied about the blackmail, too. I guess she was playing for sympathy and my need to rescue a damsel in distress. Had she chosen me at random as the patsy?

“What were you doing down at the gallery?” I asked. “I thought it was all closed up.”

“It was. I still had a couple paintings that never got returned. They were small ones, twelve by eighteen inches each. I thought they were still inside. I wanted to look around. They were pictures of Winder’s gal. She’s fantastic.”

“You didn’t ask Audrey to check on the pictures for you?”

“When she told me Winder had been murdered, I knew I’d be a suspect. Besides, I could never refuse her anything.” He pushed a lock of hair back from his forehead, looking sheepishly as he admitted the extent of his weakness for Audrey.

I understood.

“She told me Winder had taken the paintings to his new office on Forty-Fourth Street in the basement of the little building next to the department store,” he added.

The guard came back to take Stoller.

“Get me Detective Carson and hold on to Mr. Stoller. I’ve just solved two of Carson’s cases.”

Carson had me taken to the interrogation room with the darkened window. After I had waited for five minutes, he sauntered in, blowing smoke to appear nonchalant and at ease.

“What you got, Kane?” he said, standing beside the table.

I hesitated, and he dropped one hand to tap the surface.

“Your murder case and your counterfeiting case are all tied up together. Check Mr. Stoller’s personal items. If he has any cash left, take a good look at it. It’s fake. He got his bills from Winder’s frail. She planted my jacket button with Winder’s body and my shirt button at the murder scene. Stoller saw her going there about the time you were arresting me. Check with Stoller—he’ll confirm it.”

“Sounds like a desperate story from a desperate man.”

“For your counterfeiting case, I’ll wager Winder moved his press to the basement of a little building on Forty-Fourth Street next to the department store. If you ‘re not too deep into Magagna’s pocket, you may be able to find counterfeit cash or two small paintings of Winder’s girlfriend. They were delivered yesterday at nine o’clock in a briefcase. I didn’t notice who delivered them, and Magagna probably has the money or paintings hidden by now. I could even be wrong on that, but it makes sense that I’m right. Magagna doesn’t come to the front door for anything small, and he came for that briefcase.”

Carson drummed his fingers on the knuckles of one hand. “You expect me to search Magagna’s place on your say-so? I’ll be out of a job—maybe dead—and it wouldn’t help you.”

“Just check Forty-Fourth Street for the press and talk to Stoller. Winder’s girl set me up. She came to me about a case, like I told you before, but it was just to make me the patsy for Winder’s murder.”

“Why make you the patsy?” Carson asked.

“Matteo, Magagna’s ape. Unless I miss my guess, he’s Audrey’s uncle. He wanted revenge on me. They needed Winder dead for paying Stoller in counterfeit bills, making Magagna look bad, and not playing according to Magagna’s rules. Magagna controls the crime in this town. He can’t allow any freelance counterfeiting. Giving Stoller counterfeit bills when Magagna had paid real money crossed a line no one could be allowed to cross. Winder’s dead. I take the wrap, and Matteo has his revenge—all thanks to his mankiller niece.”

“You got no hard evidence to tie this to Magagna, Kane.”

“I know. We can tie it to Winder’s girl, and you can break the counterfeiting case. Isn’t that enough to get the murder charges dropped? Maybe she’ll roll on her uncle with a little pressure.”

Pip rose from the desk as I entered the bookstore.

“The DA let you go?”

“Couldn’t’ve done it without you, Pip. I don’t pay you nearly enough.”

She met me and put her arm around my waist. “You can’t afford to pay me enough.”

I put my arm over her shoulder, and we walked between the stacks to the desk.

“I doubt they’ll ever find Audrey. I wonder if that was her real name.”

Pip laughed. “I’m sure it wasn’t. Does anyone around here use their real names? Sit down, and I’ll get you a coffee.”

As terrible as being framed for murder had been, I had quite enjoyed the path that led to that awful end. I wondered in wishful melancholy, remembering Audrey’s eyes, her lips, and intoxicating presence. She was an evil woman, but she had taken my mind off Monica—for a while.

END

The Case of the Taken Tome

Nick Nethery

Iwoke up with a hangover the size of War and Peace, and remembered I had spent the night pounding drinks—and other things—with Warren Peese. My heels were on the floor by a bottle of booze. How did I end up back in my office? Why did my mouth taste like an ashtray? Those were mysteries I would have to solve later. I rinsed out with a swig from the bottle. It was a good breakfast, so I had another for dessert.

Petunia buzzed me over the intercom.

“Miss Smolder? You have a client.”

I checked the garter on my leg to make sure my Walther was snug as a bug in a rug. You never knew when a “client” might turn out to be the jealous wife of some schmo I had taken home to do the transverse Jitterbug.

My back popped as I straightened myself and put my heels back on. I poured a couple glasses of hooch, and had Petunia send in the client. The door opened, and through the outer office, I caught a glimpse of the front window.

MISTY OLDER

LIB ARY DETECTIVE

I made a mental note to ask Petunia to call the painter again. My name isn’t Misty Older, dammit, and I’m not a “libary” detective. But I forgot all about it. Yowza, what a snack. When I saw the client, my heart did a somersault, and a sultry jazz trumpet played.

“Petunia!” I yelled. “Practice for your recital later!”

“Sorry, Boss!”

He was built like a Spitfire, and I wouldn’t mind giving his propeller a spin. Strong jaw, big hands, dark hair, and spectacles to give him just a bit of a Poindexter look that made me bite my lip. Brainy guys give me the vapors. He turned, closing the door and taking off his hat. Fabric flexed over a caboose so tight, you could bounce a Morgan dollar off it. I had to yank my eyebrows off the ceiling and cram them back onto my face.

“Good morning, Mister…?” I offered, rising and holding out my hand.

“Tom Fry,” he said, shaking firmly. “Head librarian at the Municipal Library.”

Heavens to Betsy, I was still reeling at the thought of that delectable fanny.

“Nice to meet you, Mister Fanny—Fry! Mister Fry. I’m Misty Smolder. Private library dick. Good grip, Mr. Fry.” We sat. “You stamp Dewey file cards with those hands?”

“Oh, I don’t do much filing,” Fry said. “The associate librarians handle that. I’m mostly administrative, arrange for inter-library loans and displays, that kind of thing. I’m also in charge of assessing overdue fines.”

“Drink?” I asked, pushing the second glass across the desk.

“It’s nine in the morning,” he said.

“How about a snoot of cocaine, which is completely legal and available in most corner drugstores here in our modern times?”

“No, thank you. I drank a Coca-Cola two weeks ago and bought a shrimp farm in Formosa. I’m off the stuff for now.”

“Suit yourself.” I pulled his glass back to me. “So! A book up and made like a leaf, Mr. Fry? Want me to collect the fine?”

“Indeed, but not just that. It’s a rare and valuable book, and we’d like it recovered.” He pulled out a catalogue card. “Here’s the card for the book.”

I leaned over and took a gander and let Mr. Fry have his own gander at the gals, Eva and Zsa Zsa. The yabboes. Maybe after business was concluded, a bit of pleasure? Mama likes company. I lit a cigarette while he stared at the sisters and swallowed. I could tell he was interested. I cocked one shoulder at him, and he looked away hastily.

“Nice tattoo,” he stammered. “Is that Pallas Athena?”

“You know your mythology,” I said.

“Not really,” he said. “Just saw a lot of her during the war. You were a WAC?”

“You got it. Air Controller,” I said. “You?”

“Army. Tanker.”

“Well, well. Small world.”

“Big war,” he said.

“You can say that again.” I picked up the card. “Rare Creatures of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, written by Sir Hamish Wemblesbottom, OBE. Crumpet and Bumbershoot Press, London. Signed by the author. Bound in albino narwhal hide. Quite a nice tome.” I blew a smoke ring and took a slash of booze. “Why isn’t it on the Do Not Lend list?”

“It is,” said Fry. “That’s the first troubling thing. It should never have left the building.”

“There’s more?”

“Yes. The other thing is…well, look here.” He tapped the name on the card. “See this?”

“Ah. Well, case closed. I’ll just track down this…M.B. Edsel, and collect your book and any outstanding fees. I should have this wrapped up by dinnertime. What are you doing later? You like oysters?”

“I’m married.”

“Bring her along,” I said. “That Murphy bed over there can fit more than two. Does she like oysters?”

“The other problem,” Fry said, “is that M.B. Edsel doesn’t exist.”

“Come again?”

“We have no library member named Edsel. I called the switchboard and there’s only one M. B. Edsel listed in The Town. But she’s ninety years old and has been bedridden at The Desolate Doily since before the War. There’s no way she could have checked it out.”

“Yeah, something don’t add up.” I frowned. Already this case was starting to smell. “And nobody on your staff has seen hide nor hair of this Edsel person?”

“No. And nobody remembers checking the book out at all.”

“At least not that they’re telling you,” I said. I ashed my cigarette and cocked an eyebrow.

“You think one of my people might be in on it?” he said. He looked shocked.

“Heard stranger things. How much is the late fee?”

“Thirty-five cents.”

“Thirty-five cents!” I almost Kaisered up my liquid breakfast. “With that kind of scratch, a gal could get extra bacon grease on her muffins every meal!”

“It is a substantial fee,” Fry said, nodding. “Mostly due to the value of the book. But it has been out for over a year now.”

“And you’re just bringing this to my attention now? Why wait so long?” I took another hork of liquor.

“The loss was just discovered this morning, in the course of investigating another matter,” Fry said.

“What matter would that be?”

“The moider, of course.”

Of course.

I made Fry wait while I topped up my flask. No need to go off half-cocked. No gal likes to be half-cocked. We prefer to be whole-cocked.

“What’s that?” Fry asked as I took the blackjack out of my desk drawer and slipped it into its holster, between Eva and Zsa Zsa.

“It’s a blackjack. You know, a cudgel.”

“It doesn’t look like a normal blackjack.” He twisted his hat brim.

“What does it look like?”

“Uhhh….” He looked away.

“What?” I pushed my bazooms up and looked down at the blackjack. “What does it look like?”

“Ahem. Where did you get that?”

“Sent away. Saw an ad in the lobby of a cinema.”

“What cinema?” he asked.

“Uh,” I said, “I don’t remember.”

I told Petunia to take messages. When we got out to the car, the sky was filled with dark clouds.

While we were running through the parking lot in the rain, we met Snoobs Parker. She jogged along, half under Fry’s inadequate umbrella, her snoobs bouncing merrily as she fired questions. A curvy, short little fireplug of a gal, Snoobs was somehow writing in her reporter notepad even as she dodged raindrops. How she could see what she was writing with her glasses fogged up, I hadn’t the foggiest.

“Mr. Fry! Susan Parker, crime reporter for the Daily Gossip. What can you tell me about the moider? Is there a suspect? Have you hired Misty here for the investigation? Not really her normal portfolio. Is it, Misty?”

“Snoobs, would you let us get inside, at least?” I asked. I was trying not to break an ankle. The bend-me-over-and-eff-me heels made my gams look killer, but they were killer when you had to move fast. “It’s raining snakes and pitchforks out here.”

“So you’ll give me an exclusive?” Snoobs asked, not pausing her rapid patter questioning. “Mr. Fry? A comment? Who could have done such a thing? Anyone holding any grudges against the library?”

“Who even are you?” asked Fry as we reached the door. It was propped open with a hat rack. A gaggle of policemen milled around, having abandoned their posts outside once the rain started.

“Snoobs Parker,” I said. “Once the finest Stars and Stripes correspondent in the ETO, now reduced to beat reporter.”

“Snoobs?” Fry asked.

“She’s a snoop, and she’s got giant boobs,” I explained, pointing to her honkers. “Put them together and whatta you get? Snoobs.”

“It’s Susan, actually,” Snoobs said, giving me a dirty look.

“Not what you asked me to call you on my couch,” I said, pinching one of her snoobs. She swatted my hand with her notebook and tried not to look pleased. I grinned while I shook water out of my hair.

“You dames can’t be here,” said one of the uniforms. “Mr. Fry, you can go in since you’re the honcho. Detective Merriman has been asking for you.”

“You can’t smoke in here,” Fry told the cops. The two still holding cigarettes ducked outside. “This lady is with me. I’ve hired her.”

“I’m with him, too,” Snoobs pressed. She pointed at the PRESS card on her fedora. “I’m writing the exclusive.”

“You are in no way, shape, form, or fashion writing ‘the exclusive,’” Fry said.

“Come on, Mr. Fry. Don’t you want an accurate story?” Snoobs asked. “There will be a story. Whether it’s the honest palooky is up to you.”

“What’s palooky?” Fry asked.

“Let her in,” I said. “She’ll worm her way in, anyway. Snoobs is a straight shooter, Even if she can be a pest.”

“Not what you called me on your couch,” she said, pinching Zsa Zsa. I swatted her hand and tried not to look pleased.

“Okay.” Fry looked skeptical.

“Mr. Fry, you really shouldn’t let these broads in,” the cop said. “A broken-down reporter fired from all the nicer papers, and a has-been PI fired from the police? You can’t find worse company.”

“Who are you calling broken-down, Hanson?” asked Snoobs, her pen up menacingly.

“And who are you calling a has-been?” I asked, drawing my blackjack.

“Holy Hannibal, is that what I think it is?” Hanson asked, taking a step back.

“Yep. A blackjack.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “It don’t look like no blackjack I ever seen.”

“What does it look like?”

“Well, uh… It looks like a—”

“Dick!” yelled Snoobs, waving.

“It’s Richard,” said a cop coming in from the rain. “I ain’t talkin’ to ya. You misquoted me on that arson case last month.”

“Aw, don’t be that way, Dick.”

“Listen, Hanson,” I said. “You’ll be singing a different tune when I give you a couple strokes with this and you’re spitting out your molars.”

“A couple strokes?”

“Look,” said Fry. “I’ll vouch for them. Okay?” He held up his hands.

“Just get that thing out of my face,” said Hanson. “Go on in. I don’t get paid enough for this. Sheesh.”

“Damn skippy, bub,” I said, holstering the blackjack. I ducked under the police tape as Hanson held it up resignedly. Snoobs and Fry followed.

There was a folding table set up just inside, near a display of children’s books, with labelled bags and boxes on it. The forensics men were carefully photographing and diagramming the scene. One of them brought over another bag and put it with the others.

The ornate ceiling bounced the snap of the camera’s shutter back to us in a ticking echo. The stacks stretched away from us on either side. Fiction on our left, nonfiction on our right. We headed left, past the card catalogue to the main circulation desk. Policemen were gathered there, talking in hushed tones. One of them crouched, examining something on the ground. I could see it was a body.

A hot body. This broad had been quite a stunner before someone checked her out. Six-inch heels, sheer nylons over shapely gams, a rumpus that would give even Rock Hudson the gumpty-goos. Blonde bun held in place with a pencil. The only thing on her that wasn’t gorgeous was the kitchen knife in her commendable bosom.

“Her name was Gertrude,” said Fry. His voice was a whisper. Even with one of his own lying at his feet, he couldn’t bring himself to speak at a normal volume in his library. Maybe that’s what poor departed Gertrude would have wanted.

The librarian was a looker, all right, but now that I was lookin’, I was noticin’, as well. There were other stains around her besides blood. Water, maybe? Her clothes were wrinkled, and on her skin were odd lines of…not scars, exactly, but contusions. Weird rows of circles ran along one arm, up a leg where the stocking was ripped away, and up her neck. What in the name of Fred Funston had made those marks?

“Yikers,” said Snoobs. She started scribbling in her notepad.

From where he was squatting, the detective looked around at Snoobs’s voice. He saw us and scowled.

“Oh, criminy. Look what the black cat dragged in.” Detective Lieutenant Herschel Merriman stood, opening a cigarette case and taking out an unfiltered Charon Spike. “You broads aren’t allowed here. Matthews? Escort these two off the premises.”

“Nice to see you too, Merriman,” I said. “Screw up any moider cases lately?”

“The Fourth Estate has a perfect right to report on the comings and goings of The Town,” said Snoobs.

“Well, you’re not coming into my crime scene, so let’s get you going.” Merriman lit his smoke and laughed at his own joke.

“The ladies are with me,” Fry said. “Miss Smolder is investigating a separate matter. Miss Parker is writing a story.”

Patrolman Matthews came over and took my arm, but I pulled my blackjack again.

“Great Garbo’s Ghost!” he exclaimed. “What the hell is that thing?”

“Blackjack,” I said. “What else would it be?”

“Uh…”

“Why is it flesh-colored?” asked Merriman.

“Not all flesh is the same color, racist,” I said. “This is almost the 1950s. Try to be a little open-minded.”

“Can you please get that thing out of my face?” Matthews said. “It’s making me uncomfortable.”

“I don’t understand what you people are talking about,” I said. “This is a perfectly normal bludgeon for hitting people on the skull. So what?”

“Why does it have those…” asked Merriman, “veins?”

“What?” I asked, squinting at it. “No, those are ridges, for more effective noggin bashing.”

“To me,” said Matthews, “it looks like a—”

“Koch!” said Merriman. “Escort your former partner off the premises. And that journo. Mr. Fry, I don’t care if you’ve hired them to simonize your Deusenberg, they’re not welcome here. This is police business. Real police,” he added with a sneer.

“Okay,” said my old partner, Detective Sergeant Katherine Koch. She peeled away from the gaggle of uniforms and suits and came over, shaking her head. “Sorry, partner.”

“She’s not your partner anymore!” Merriman yelled.

“Okay, Boss,” Katie said. “No need to shout. I’m movin’ ‘em out.”

“Hey, Kate,” I said. I put away the blackjack. Matthews looked relieved.

“Let’s go, Misty,” said Katie. “You too, inkpot.”

“Koch,” said Snoobs. “Nice suit. Does it come in women’s cut?”

“Why, I ougtta,” said Katie.

“Oh, my stars and garters,” I exclaimed, pointing over toward the nonfiction section. “Is that Terry-Thomas?”

They all turned, starstruck. I darted forward and snatched a folded-up paper out of poor Gertrude’s hand. I was back in my place when they started to turn back.

“Where?” demanded Merriman. “He played a USO show when I was in Guam, before we hit Guadalcanal. I would love to tell him how much I loved the show.”

“Oh, my mistake,” I said. “It was a shadow.”

“A Terry-Thomas-shaped shadow?” Merriman asked. He blew skeptical smoke out of the skeptical side of his mouth.

“Well, good luck, boys,” I said. “Best wishes solvin’ the moider.”

“Yeah, don’t forget, Smolder,” said Merriman as we left. “We’re the real police! Moider police, not book cops!”

“Library detective!” I said. “Get it right!”

“Whatever,” he said.

“Hey, Merriman,” I called, so the whole library could hear. “How’s your wife?”

“Why you—” He lunged at me. A couple of the beat cops held him back. One of them got his neck singed with Merriman’s cigarette for his troubles.

“Detective,” said Mr. Fry, as Snoobs and I allowed ourselves to be herded out. “I’ll be in touch!”

“Me, too,” I said.

“Hands off the goods, flatfoot,” said Snoobs crossly.

“Not what you called me on Misty’s couch,” said Katie, under her breath where nobody could hear. And she pinched Snoobs’s snoob.

“Katie!” Snoob slapped her hand with the notebook, trying not to look pleased. “I’m a married gal.”

“Hugh didn’t seem to mind, as I recall,” said Kate.

“Hugh don’t know what’s good for him, the big lunk.”

“More like the big—”

“Dong!” I said, ducking back under the police tape. “What are you doing here?”

“Message for you, Miss Misty,” said Mr. Dong, the bicycle courier. He was soaked from riding in the rain. “Here you go.”

I slipped Dong a fat nickel, tore open the envelope and read the note.

MEET ME AT MY ESTATE. EDNA THRUSTMORE. The time was in—I checked the clock hanging above the door—thirty minutes.

“Great,” I said. “Now I gotta go meet the crime boss of The Town.”

“Oh, no. Not Thrustmore,” said Katie. She had peeped over my shoulder at the note. “You ain’t my partner no more, but I still care about ya, kiddo. Don’t go meet that moiderer.”

“Well, I can’t just stand a lady up,” I said, adjusting the girls. The brassiere I’d put on for Warren Peese made them stand up like they were in a Vegas showgirl line, but the underwire could sometimes scratch me something fierce. “That would be rude.”

“Can I come along?” Snoobs asked.

Once we were in the car, I pulled out the folded-up paper that Gertrude had been clutching. It was another checkout card. For the same book: Rare Creatures of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. Only, this one had more names on it. Different from the one Fry had shown me. Had he known?

“A second card?” I asked. “Now, why would you need two cards for the same book?”

“One for the library, one for the customer, to remind him to return it?”

“No, the patron’s card with the return date should be still in the book. But this is a second version of the library’s card. Why?”

“To hide who has really been checking out the book,” Snoobs said. “Is there another explanation?”

“There’s no explanation for a lot of this,” I said.

A peal of thunder sounded as we left the parking lot.

“I should make you take off your shoes,” said Edna.

She poured us two stiff drams without asking and fell into the luxurious leather chair behind her desk. The gesture wasn’t friendly: the crime lord bestowed small gifts in an almost insulting manner.

But Holy Decatur, what an insult. This scotch was probably nine thousand years old and aged happily in a barrel made of trees from the Garden of Eden. If this is insulting, then give me a smack across the chops.

“Take our shoes off why? Because we’re so dirty?” Snoobs asked, sniffing appreciatively at her own glass.

“Shut up,” Edna explained.

Meeks grunted menacingly behind us to emphasize Edna’s point. Edna’s primary enforcer had been kicked out of the Rangers for being too violent on the Nazis. He was seven feet tall, going on eleven, and had to duck and turn sideways to go through doors.

“Why’d you invite us here, Mrs. Thrustmore?” I asked. I sipped the liquor, and proved myself right: this was the elixir of the goddesses. Athena surely drank this stuff while she sat up on Olympus getting plowed into delirium by a never-ending retinue of satyrs. Ahh: a gal can dream.

“I didn’t,” Edna said. “I asked you. Not this pinko scribbler.”

“Hey now, buster,” said Snoobs. It didn’t have much feeling, because she was still marveling at the quality of the booze. And the chairs we were in, the ornate sculptures of octopi along the mantel, and the bookshelves lining the far wall, crammed brimful of rare books. Was that the Vatican-banned unexpurgated version of Troilus and Cressida?

“Snoobs is with me,” I said.

“Look, I am a very busy legitimate businesswoman,” said Edna. Her blood diamonds sparkled. “So I don’t have a lot of time. I’m giving a dinner party and the governor is here. My husband must be having a devil of a time making conversation with him.”

“The governor of The State?” Snoobs asked, her eyebrows going up.

“And the Mayor, of course.”

“The Mayor of The Town?”

“One has to keep one’s regulatory officials close, you know,” Edna said. “When one is a perfectly respectable legitimate businesswoman, not in any way affiliated with illicit enterprises. Such as that cargo container full of Romanians who drowned in the harbor last night, with sucker scars on their bodies. I mean, what a tragedy. I haven’t even heard about it.”

I said, “I’m here about a book.”

“Who can say why forty-eight Romanian gals, whose passports have gone who can say where—and don’t check the barrel in back, I just burn potpourri there—decided to all commit collective suicide-by-drowning? After first bashing each other in the back of the heads with a blackjack?” Edna shrugged. “And who can say anything about a dead librarian?”

“Speaking of blackjacks,” I said.

“Holy Mustapha, is that a—”

“Prick!” said Snoobs. “Damn. I stabbed myself.” She sucked at her fingertip, having stuck it on the end of her hatpin.

“Mrs. Thrustmore,” I said. I pointed thoughtfully with the blackjack. “I appreciate your candor, but I’m not here about a moider, or about a…shipful of dead Romanians.”

“She’s a libary detective,” Snoobs said.

“Library!” I corrected.

“When I sent Dong to give you that message,” Edna said, “I assumed you were investigating the moider.”

“I’m not here about the moider,” I said. “The cops are looking into it.”

“Oh,” said Edna. She looked relieved. “My cops. I mean, the cops.” She inclined an eyebrow, and Meeks grunted again from the corner, where he was amassing gravity.

“Yes. I’m looking for an overdue libary book. I mean library, dammit. Creatures of the South Pacific or somesuch. Written by a limey. Rare volume.” I cast a baleful eye on Edna’s robust bookshelves.

“So information I have about the librarian’s moider isn’t of interest to you, then.” Edna shrugged. “Excellent. I might know something about rare books, though.”

“I don’t give a flip and a flop for poor heartbreakingly sexy Gertrude,” I said. “What do you know about the book?”

“Well, sometimes I utilize certain experts. To help me in my perfectly legitimate business dealings.”

“And?” I asked.

“Some of my…shipping concerns necessitate that I have knowledge of oceanogriphal biology,” Edna said.

“Is this shipping business related in any way to the portage and crew of the SS Galați?” asked Snoobs, her pen poised. “The one that lost that shipping container over the side, and all those poor girls drowned?”

Edna said, “I’ve never heard of such a ship. Here: this is the man you need to see.” She took a luxury quill pen which must have cost easily over sixty cents—a decade’s wages, here in our modern times—and scribbled a name and address on a notepad. She tore it off and extended it.

As I took the paper, I noticed there were indentations in it. The impressions from what Edna had written on the last page were in the one I was holding. I successfully contained my elation.

“Why are you failing to contain your elation?” Edna asked. “Are you doing the Gypsy Leap?”

“Not at all,” I said, ceasing my kicks and finger-wagging. “I was just, uh, thinking about something else.”

“Well, there’s the name and address,” Edna said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a perfectly legitimate business dinner to get back to.”

Meeks showed us out into the pouring rain. His shoes squished as he moved.

“Meeks, good seeing you,” I said as we got ready to dash across the driveway. “Try not to collect any orbital bodies, okay? Don’t move too fast, or you might upset the natural system of continental drift.”

Meeks’ enormous face merely showed a grim frown larger than most regional weather patterns, and he pointed with one coastal artillery-sized finger out into the rain.

Snoobs and I sat in the car, collecting our thoughts.

“We should have some lunch,” I said. “Want to go to the Spatula?” I offered her my flask.

“That sounds divine,” Snoobs said. She looked at the note Edna had given me. “Afterward, we’re going to see this professor? Oh, look, he’s at The Town College. Professor Hall. He’s on the main campus. That’s not far. Maybe he keeps afternoon office hours?”

“What name did you say?” I asked.

“Professor Merriwether Hall.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, but then, I haven’t had my afternoon six whiskeys yet.” I shrugged. “Sure, let’s go see the prof. Been a long time since I was in a professor’s office.”

“Me, too,” said Snoobs. “Not since I graduated. Brings back some happy memories. But I didn’t think to pack my kneepads.”

“Well, this is more of a business call.”

“Aren’t they all?”

We laughed as I cranked the engine.

After a big meal at The Greasy Spatula, washed down with several Irish coffees and a couple Bloody Marys, we drove out to The Town College. I parked by the administration building, a big Gothic monstrosity with more angles than lines. I lit a heroin cigarette, prescribed to me by my doctor as a remedy to ease my Wandering Hymen, and we went in.

The directory listed Professor Hall, Marine Biologist, in office 203. Office hours early afternoon, which was now. We ascended the stairs, and I pounded on the door. We waited for a half a New York Minute.

“He ain’t in there, Mist,” Snoobs whispered. “Maybe we barked up the wrong tree?”

“Horsefeathers,” I said. “I can see an outline through the glass.” I beat on the door again. I could see Hall, or someone at least, through the milky glass on the door.

Finally, my patience gave out.

“Professor,” I called. “We’re coming in. We have some questions about…ah, marine life.”

“And a book,” Snoobs added.

“And a book.” I drew the Walther from my garter.

I turned the knob and pushed the door open. It swung, creaking on its hinges. Professor Hall was sitting at his desk, looking at an array of open books. A fan oscillated in the corner. Beatniks playing with this newfangled toy called the “frisbee” could be heard outside, probably fomenting Communist insurrection.

“Oof,” I said.

“What?” Snoobs asked.

“Look at him.”

“Professor?” she asked. “Hello?”

“Snoobs,” I said. “Look at him.”

“It’s Susan,” she said irritatedly, but then paused. She noticed his stillness, and the fact that his necktie was turned around backward and twisted against his throat.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh no.”

“Yeah. And look at his desk. What’s there?” I asked.

“Um. A bunch of books?”

“Let me rephrase,” I said. “What’s not there?” I put the slug thrower away.

Snoobs looked at the desk, frowning. “All these other books are arranged around the blotter. But there’s a big empty space right in front of him.”

“So what was there?” I asked.

“Your ocean mammals book?” Snoobs asked.

“It ain’t just mammals,” I said. “It’s all creatures.”

“Great and small,” Snoobs said, crossing herself.

“And he’s holding a fountain pen,” I said. I pointed to his hand, which had a literal death grip on the pen.

“So?”

“You see any notes on the desk? Whoever took the book also took whatever notes he was taking on it. Or in it.”

“Maybe he was just chewing on it,” Snoobs said.

“Well, this is a waste of time,” I said. “No new leads, and the Professor here ain’t singin’ no showtunes for us. Take a gander around. But don’t touch nothin.’”

We examined the desk, Hall’s lifeless corpus, and then the room in general. There was a dark blotch around the bottom of his chair, a rapidly drying puddle. No matter: he had probably peed himself. Plenty of people do it when they’re in fear for their life. Or when they’ve had too much to drink and then can’t get my panties down in time.

Like many professors, he had a large bookcase with row upon row of volumes. He also had a shelf which held not books, but photos. Mostly they were of Hall in front of monuments, on boats, or accepting academic awards. But one…

“Look here,” I said. I leaned closer. It was Professor Hall and an old lady, seated at a dinner table in formal wear. “HAPPY 1947!” was on the party hats they wore. In the background, however, the wall of the ballroom had a large DD emblazoned calligraphically on the paneling.

“DD?” asked Snoobs.

“Desolate Doily.” I swore. “That’s a New Year’s Eve party at the nursing home.”

“Didn’t that librarian tell you that someone named Edsel lives at the Desolate Doily? Supposin’ she’s related to the Prof here?”

“Looks that way,” I said. “Maybe an aunt or some such. That’s where we’re headed next. But first, you got a pencil on you?”

Snoobs passed a pencil over.

I took out the note that I had taken from Edna back at Thrustmore Estate, and scribbled lightly over the indentations I’d noticed on the paper.

“Well, hang me by my heels and brine me,” I said.

“I’ll be a monkey’s father and uncle,” Snoobs said as I held it up and she read the words now visible. “How’s that for a coincidence?”

Matilda B. Edsel

Desolate Doily, Room 117

“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said. “So Edna gave us some information, but not the whole hoagie. Like all good lies, it contained an element of truth. The good Professor here did have the book at some point, but someone came to get it. Granny Matilda is involved somehow, as well. Edna’s mistake was that she didn’t know that Hall would have a picture of himself with his grandma.”

“What if she realizes we would make the connection?”

“Then she’ll snip it,” I said. “Sever the link, and it keeps us from putting two and two together.”

“You think she sent Meeks to see Granny Matilda?” Snoobs asked, alarmed. “Not good. That guy once captured a German battleship by himself. Not the crew: the ship. Showed up at the MP station in Hanover dragging the thing behind him like a little boy with a too-big stick. This is thirty miles from the nearest water.”

“Yowza,” I said. “Granny Matilda might have ended up stuck in his teeth.”

“Are we headed to the nursing home?”

“You bet your prunes,” I said.

“They’re not prunes yet. I’ve still got plums.”

“And how,” I said.

“Should we call the cops?” Snoobs asked.

“About what?”

“You know,” Snoobs said. She pointed at dead Professor Hall. “The moider?”

“Not my department,” I said. “But sure, we can notify the secretary on the way out.”

The Desolate Doily was in a prime location, in the hills looking down on the valley. It might be a depressing elderly home where old folks Scrabbled and Victrolaed away their twilight years, but it was high-end and expensive. When you shoved your senile mother-in-law in here, you shoved her in style.

“Mrs. Edsel?” asked the receptionist, a bored-looking candy striper chewing gum and reading a Charm magazine. The cover featured such headlines as “SMOKE YOURSELF THIN!” and “THOUGHTFUL GIFTS FOR YOUR HUSBAND’S MISTRESS.” She sighed and checked the clock above an original Winslow Homer painting. “After lunch, she plays Canasta in the Enchantment Ballroom.”

“Hey.” I rapped my knuckles on the countertop, making her start and blink. “And if she’s not in the Excitement Ballroom?”

“Enchantment,” she said. “If not there? In her room.” She popped a bubble and turned another page. “You ladies cops or something?”

“Something,” Snoobs said. “Definitely something.”

“This is depressing,” I said as we stood at the doorway of the Enchantment Ballroom. Several tables of ancient ladies were ponderously playing Canasta, watched over by a few orderlies.

“Depressing, hell.” Snoobs took off her PRESS fedora, patting her dirty blonde hair. “It’s downright mournful.”

An orderly noticed that one player had fallen asleep. He checked her pulse, just to be sure, then wheeled her toward the bedroom wing. I hastened over.

“Hey, mac. Is Mrs. Edsel in here?” I jerked my chin at the antediluvian card players. “The gal at reception said she might be playing Canasta.”

“Who’s Mrs. Edsel to you?” he asked. He eyed us suspiciously. I was still in last night’s eye-catching getup, Snoobs was in her beat reporter outfit, and both of us had run through the rain several times since morning. I’m sure we looked a sight.

“We have a message for her from her nephew,” Snoobs said.

“She isn’t playing today. Someone accidentally steeped her tea for more than five seconds, and it angried up her blood. She’s in her room calming down.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“But someone was already here to see her,” the orderly said. “Big fella. Huge.”

Snoobs and I glanced at each other, alarmed. We thanked the orderly and pelted down the hall until we reached room 117. I pulled my pistol and gently pushed Snoobs behind me. I worked up a bit of courage and then planted my high heel squarely on the door just outside the knob, putting all my hundred-and-twenty pounds into the kick. The door popped open and swung inward to bonk against the wall. I glided in and pointed the Walther at…

Nothing.

“Huh,” Snoobs said, peeking around the splintered doorframe.

“Huh, indeed,” I said.

I surveyed the room, keeping the Walther out. There was a canopy bed, empty, and a bedside table with a stack of National Geographics. A small sitting area featured a comfy-looking recliner and a small table with a tea service. The walls were lined with pictures, which Snoobs moved past me to examine.

“Yep.” She tapped one frame. “Here’s the old bat with Professor Hall.”

“Don’t call her an old bat,” I said. “For all we know, Meeks folded her up and jammed her into the trunk here.”

“Have we checked the trunk?”

I looked at it unhappily. It was a steamer case at the foot of the bed. Large enough to hold a person’s entire wardrobe…or body.

“She ain’t getting any fresher,” I said. I stomped over and yanked the lid up. I pointed the Walther inside as I opened it, not really sure why. Snoobs took a gander and whistled.

“Matilda’s not only richer than Croesus, but also must have been quite the tart back in her younger days.” She lifted the hem of one of the dresses. “This slit goes all the way up to the mid-ankle. How scandalous.”

“You smell that?” I asked.

A rank odor was permeating its way into what modern science termed my “snoot brain.” What was that smell? Almost vinegary, and wet…seaweed? Wet salt?

I looked down and realized my heels had been squishing when I stepped across the rug. The floor was wet, like someone had spilled a flower vase and failed to clean it up. But it didn’t smell like tap water. It smelled like the ocean.

Snoobs realized it, too, and stared down, her forehead wrinkling and a strand of her hair falling across one eye. She lifted one shoe and brought it down again with a squish.

“What in the name of Walter Winchell?” she asked.

I looked around and saw the edges of the wet area and followed them to a bookcase along the interior wall. I went over and examined it closely. Old trashy romance novels, potboiler detective pulp, and travel guides. I pushed lightly, and something clicked. I stepped back, and Snoobs swore in surprise as the shelf started to swing open.

A black yawning tunnel extended away into…what? I thought about where we were in the building and realized it must lead under the hills above The Town. If the tunnel went straight through the ridgeline, it must come out somewhere on the coast. It looked barely big enough for me to stand up in, and I’m not a tall gal. I flipped open my lighter and illuminated the passage. The sides and bottom of the tunnel glistened wetly. At least the floor wasn’t underwater. I didn’t mind a little mud, but I didn’t want to ruin these heels. I liked the way they looked when I had them straight up in the air.

“You think it comes out on the beach?” asked Snoobs, echoing what I was just thinking.

“If it comes out at all,” I said.

“What do you think it leads to?”

“I’m about to find out,” I said. “Snoobs. Why don’t you stay here?”

“What?” She scowled at me. “And miss the story?”

“Suze? Babydoll? You know I love you more than my luggage.” I gestured at the tunnel with the Walther. “We don’t know what’s down there. You don’t have to come with me. I don’t want to have to give Hugh bad news if something happens to you.”

“I’m coming with you,” Snoobs said. “What if something happens to you?”

“I’ve got my friend Walther with me.” I wagged the pistol.

“Please. I know why you carried a shotgun in France. You couldn’t hit a barn with that pistol if you were inside it.”

“Well, I still have my harsh language.”

“That’s for sure.” She shrugged. “This is my job, Mist. I’m going.”

“You know, you sure are hard on the people that love you.”

“We make it through this, I’ll show you how hard I can be on you.”

“Promise?”

I led the way down the tunnel, leaving the Desolate Doily bedroom behind us. The smell of ancient wetness grew as we squelched along, my meager Zippo flame lighting the way. The sounds of scratchy old Victrola music receded, and it grew deathly silent. I heard Snoobs swallow nervously behind me.

That silence was soon encroached upon by a regular, monotonous chanting. It grew in volume as we descended. The tunnel came to an end ahead and opened into what felt like a large cavern. I glanced back at Snoob to see if she heard it. Her eyes glinted in the flickering flamelight.

There was another light source in the chamber before us. I snapped the lighter closed and took a deep breath. Gripping my Walther tightly, I squished through the entryway and into the cavern.

“Welp. That’s not something one sees every day.” I glanced back at Snoobs, whose eyes were like saucepans of buttermilk. “One hopes.”

“Holy huevos rancheros, frijoles and guacamole,” Snoobs said.

“You said it.”

Gathered around the dais in the middle of the chamber was a ring of worshippers, their arms raised, chanting and bowing to a leader in the middle, an octopus wrapped around his face. He was screaming something, muffled through the pulsating tentacles, but was making no attempt to extricate himself.

“How is he breathing?” Snoobs whispered.

The cultists were naked as skylarks. If I were in an amorous mood, I would have been appreciative, because some of them were in fine shape and had the assets to be appreciated. But my stomach turned.

Around the dais, inky-black and dark red, was a trench of blood and the remains of sea creatures. Every minute or so, a naked minion would emerge from a passage on the far side of the chamber, carrying a shark, a squid, or something else. The octopus-face man would wave it around, briefly increase his screaming, and then gut the creature with a knife. After waving the body around, flicking blood on the cultists, he would toss the body into the growing pile in the trench.

Low tables ringed the edges of the room, with more knives, hooks, and ancient tomes of arcana and black magic. And what looked like very good quality wine and booze.

Wait. Ancient tomes? I sidled to my right to get a better eyeball on one of the stacks of books. Some were open and lying flat, while others were mounded together in no apparent order. Black magic manuals, summoning scrolls, treasure troves of ancient and forbidden knowledge. An academic studying occult literature would die of ecstasy.

No dice at the first table. I checked the second, and while there were some nice-looking volumes there—was that an original Claustronomicon, bound in the hide of a real Santa?—the book I was tracking for Fry wasn’t there. I was on my way to the third table, slowly working my way around the room, trying to keep out of the torchlight, with Snoobs nervously tiptoeing along behind me, when the chanting stopped. I froze and looked back to the dais.

Three dozen naked people, some wearing masks made of dead sea creatures, and all wearing fish guts and cephalopod blood on their faces, torsos, arms, and naughty parts, were regarding me silently. Some of them looked quite angry. The naked man in the middle turned, pointed at me—with two separate appendages—and screamed something.

“MMMMmmm mmm-mmmm fffmmmmfff mmm!”

“What?” I asked.

“MMMMmmm mmm-mmmm fffmmmmfff mmm!”

“What?” I asked again.

“It’s kind of hard to hear you what with the…uh, the thing on your face,” Snoobs said.

“Mmd dmmmt.” The man pried the octopus off and handed it to an assistant, who jumped forward. He flexed his jaw before continuing. “I said, you’ll never take us alive! And you will not prevent us from raising the Deep One!”

“Do what now?” I asked.

“Oh no,” said Snoobs. She pointed. A fully nude and giant—in more ways than one—Meeks strode angrily toward us. “What did you do to Matilda, you monster?”

“The old lady?” called the cult priest. “She’s flapping around here somewhere. The Bat Goddess is a close ally of the one we worship! She helps us hide from the outside world, and we guard her in return.”

“Bat Goddess?” I asked. “Look, I don’t care about any of this. I’m just—”

“So we silenced the librarian! So we removed that nosy professor! It is as nothing to The One Who Inks! We are but ants to Her! Lower than ants, even!”

“Mister, I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not here for that.”

“What?” he asked. He looked around. “Then why are you here?”

“She’s a I detective,” Snoobs said.

“A what?” He shook his head.

Meeks paused, lowering his Delaware-sized meathooks.

“Overdue books.” I pointed to what I had just spotted. “I’m here for that.”

Several dozen eyes, most of them human, followed my finger to where, on the table, open to the chapter on Greater Mollusca of the Maldives, was Rare Creatures of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, written by Sir Hamish Wemblesbottom, OBE. Professor Hall’s notes were scrawled along a margin.

“What’s she pointing at?” he asked the assistant.

“Some book, my lord.”

“What are you pointing at?” he called.

“Rare Creatures of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans,” I said. “I was hired to track it down. It’s overdue, you know?”

I yanked out the blackjack.

“Oh, my deep dark Squid Goddess,” the priest cried. “Is that what I think it is?”

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“It looks like a—”

“She doesn’t get it,” said Meeks. His voice was like God clearing His throat.

“How?” asked the priest.

Meeks shrugged.

“You talk?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“You’re here for a…library book?” the priest asked.

“That’s the job.” I jerked my thumb. “It’s also overdue. You’re going to have to pay a fine. You can give it to me or come to the library and pay it. But I gotta issue a library summons if you don’t pay now.”

“Um.” The cult priest looked down at his completely nude body. “I might not have it on me.”

“I’ll say.” I pulled out my notepad. “I’ll write you a summons. You just come to the Municipal Library and pay the fine. And I should charge you, because the lady who seems to have checked it out clearly couldn’t have. Is there even really a Matilda?”

Meeks pointed above our heads. We heard a wet flapping.

A screech rent the air, and something swooped down over us. Snoobs yelped and ducked. I crouched and pointed my Walther but held my fire. A wrinkly old lady, nude and with white curtains to match the drapes, flapped her great pale bat wings and settled with clawed feet onto a carved Deep One statue by the tunnel we had come in through. She opened her mouth and showed us her fangs, shrieking like a banshee.

“Huh,” I said to Snoobs. “I guess you were right.”

“Get out of here!” the leader said. “Take the book with you, I don’t care. Just get out!”

“Well, all’s well that ends well,” I said as I poured Snoobs a stiff one. She was looking over her notes for the story she would file at the Daily Gossip, and merely nodded in thanks.

I sat down in my chair and lit a smoke. I smacked the button on my intercom.

“Petunia,” I said. “Can you call the Municipal Library and inform Mr. Fanny that I’ve located his book? And after that, can you work up his invoice? If he gets here quickly, we could have our money in time to catch the early show at The Millennium.”

“Mr. Who?”

“Who?” asked Snoobs, looking up.

“Uh. Fry?”

“Yes, Miss Smolder.”

“And after that, prepare to take a list. I just saw a huge pile of stolen rare books, and I remembered as many of them as I could. I want you to check around the libraries and colleges to see if any of those books are theirs. We could turn this into several fat paydays.”

“Yes, Miss Smolder.”

I heard her threading a sheet of paper into her typewriter as she picked up the phone and spoke to the switchboard.

“What now?” I asked Snoobs. “You gotta work some more? Go home to break Hugh in half? Or maybe we call him, and he comes over here? We can catch up on old times on my couch, and then the three of us can go to The Millennium. I think Rita’s singing tonight.”

“Uh huh,” Snoobs said. “Listen, I’ll go with you, and we can call Hugh to meet us there. But first, can I use your phone to call in my story?”

“Sure, kiddo. Knock yourself out. Maybe we hit up Club Mirage instead. I think Diane’s singing.”

“Do you know every lounge singer in The Town?”

“Just the pretty ones.”

As Snoobs dialed her newsroom, I swiveled my chair around. It was drizzling again in The Town. I wondered what the rainy evening would bring my way. I had my blackjack in the holster between Zsa Zsa and Eva, my flask in one garter, and my Walther in the other. Whichever way the night went, I had the right tool for the job.

Vicar’s Casefiles: Blond Bomb/$hell Scripting

J.R. Armstrong

“Mr. Vicar, I have a problem.” The incredibly hot blond in the thin white dress spoke plainly in a sultry mezzo-soprano voice. “And you specialize in problems.”

Vicar could tell she was a problem. Sometimes a man looks at a woman and thinks, “Damn, she’s expensive!” in terms of time, money, or both. Sometimes a fella just looks at a woman and just know that she’s trouble. And the ones that know they are trouble always do their best to make themselves look like they are worth the cost of admission to that drama rollercoaster. Vicar just knew this perfectly sculpted broad would climb the Vicky Mendoza Diagonal of hot and crazy way past ten…

“Ma’am…” Vicar started to speak.

“Miss Jones, if you please,” she corrected instantly, with an inflection that would let a dead man know she was flirting and available. Maybe she was so used to manipulating men that she didn’t even think about it anymore.

“Miss Jones,” Vicar said, pulling the cinnamon-flavored toothpick from his mouth, trying to look serious, competent, and not at all desperately in need of employment. “Problems come in sizes. Some problems come in small sizes, like a missing dog, or finding a long-lost relative. Other problems are bigger, and the way you walked in here makes me think your problem is the bigger kind.”

“Of course it’s the biggest problem! Someone wants me dead, and I want them dead first.” She smiled.

Vicar knew the look of an apex predator. She had a predator’s smile on an angel’s face, or maybe a predator’s smile on a devil’s face. Did she have spotless horns or a filthy halo? Devils were just fallen angels, right? Vicar shook aside the religious overtones in his head. This conversation was shaping up to be a poor life choice. He wondered how to let the dame off without getting her crazy all over his professional life. Best play it straight.

“That’s about the biggest problem I’ve ever heard on a random Tuesday evening,” Vicar stated, as straight-faced as a cyborg with a mangled jawline and obvious prosthetic camera eye could. “But I’m a private dick, not a hired gun.”

“But you will be a hired gun,” Miss Jones, if that was her real name, stage name, or pen name, Vicar might find out later, stated firmly in her sultry “come hither” voice. “Because I’m going to hire you. Everyone says the best for forensic recording investigations is David Vicar, private investigator.” She smiled that devilishly angelic smile, like she knew she could chew a man up, spit him out, and leave him wondering if he wanted another ride.

Vicar pulled out another toothpick from the desk drawer and looked at it; mint-flavored, he could tell by the tiny green piece of non-biodegradable plastic on the blunt end. Leaning back in the government surplus office chair Vicar looked up at the ceiling. A ceiling with cracks in the popcorn-textured plaster. A ceiling three shades of yellow from successive smoking tenants before him. He’d painted the walls twice before getting smart enough to use a sealing primer to keep the tar from soaking back through. Never did get around to painting the ceiling. Money for paint got spent after money for rent, and food, and medical bills. It was all too common to have medical bills… Nothing like poverty to refocus one’s priorities.

“Cost is 500 a day, plus expenses, one-week minimum deposit.” Vicar spoke, the need for cash assisting in his moral flexibility. The nicotine-stained ceiling cracks helped him straighten his priorities. “But I ain’t a hired gun. If I find them, I pass it all off to authorities.” Vicar’s morals were flexible, not abandoned.

“I never asked you to kill them. Once you find them, they’ll kill themselves.” She smiled at that, still a predator but just sweet enough to send shivers down Vicar’s partially fused spine. Vicar saw her perfect white teeth between painted lips at the very bottom of his vision. Vicar decided this conversation just took a turn for the weird, and David Vicar, PI, specialized in weird. What’s the worst that could happen? Vicar asked himself. He spent a lot of time conversing with himself, or at least the part he’d trained to talk back to turn his inner monologue to a dialogue.

DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! BOB the internal assistant blurted. CONCEALED WEAPON! CONCEALED WEAPON! REVOLVER. THIRTY-EIGHT SPECIAL. GARTER HOLSTER. LEFT THIGH. HOLY HELL THE GAMS ON THIS BROAD! Shut up internal assistant Vicar thought silently, back to his implanted partner.

“Miss.” Vicar spoke slowly, calmly. “The only things that kill themselves when exposed are very, very desperate people.”

“Oh, they aren’t people, at least not anymore,” Miss Jones answered, crossing one sinfully perfect three-inch high heeled, thigh-high stocking-clad leg over the other. “It might be said they are memories, or fragments. Ghosts in the machines.”

Allrighty then…the real reason for the visit. At least it wasn’t murder. Murder required a body, And while weird, not unheard of.

“How many times have you reskinned now?” Vicar asked, before his better judgement could stop his stupid ass self from saying stupid ass things.

“Now now, a lady never tells, But you accurately deduced the bigness of my problems. I felt the split, but it’s too dangerous for me to handle this myself.” Miss Jones waved one perfectly manicured, subtle pink nail-polished finger in a way that most people only ever see on schoolteacher-themed adult video clips on the less savory parts of the global net. BOB, the internal assistant, shoved a feeling of sweating under her gaze mixed with a soundtrack heavy on funky bass at Vicar’s subconscious. That didn’t help. Knowing a gorgeous young woman held the memories of someone decades or centuries older didn’t convince any man’s lizard brain that she wasn’t attractive.

Miss Jones uncrossed legs designed to test the faith of a saint and stood up, three-inch heels tapping on the institutional black-and-white tiled floor. Three-inch heels, Vicar mused. Tall enough to catch the eye, just on the proper side of the border between classy and slutty. She pressed her right thumb to the e-commerce software application on his glass-topped work desk, blinked a few times as she scrolled through screen options her implants displayed for her eyes only, and Vicar’s implants let him know that a cool five thousand hit his work account.

“You have ten days.” She smiled, softly, this time, possibly the first honest emotion she’d let slip since she walked into the dump of an office. “It will all be over by then. Either they’ll find me and I die when the ghost pries itself into my body, or you’ll find them and I live. You’ll find an encrypted file in your inbox; it will self-delete in ten days.” And she turned, all long curves and perfection, and walk out the door. Sailors on shore leave would pay good money to watch her walk away. BOB started silently playing “The Stripper,” heavy brass band-style and all. Vicar told him to can it.

Vicar shook himself back to his senses. Sure enough, the file was there. His private key decrypted the folder and it unraveled into a small virtual machine, sandboxed in the internal assistant’s extended operating space. WHOA! COOL! Shut up, infernal assistant, I’m working, Vicar thought to his implant. The file held all the data needed to get started. Who did the re-skinning work, in this case the XTC Body Sculpting Center. It was an obvious front for a Triad. XTC almost always stood for Xio Tang Conglomerate. However, XTC Body Sculpting Center had a solid reputation for high quality craftsmanship and was a legitimately registered and accredited business. Then again, if your reason for existing was to reskin Triad members and their clientele for a new life, it paid to have happy customers, even if most of those customers were unwitting clients to organized crime. The digitization had been part of the full service package, so what went wrong?

Vicar stood, stretching his stiff body, feeling scarred joints grind together before popping with relief. A dull pressure in his right hip reminded him he wasn’t getting any younger, and definitely not getting any better-looking, as his face reflected off the polished glass surface of the work desk. The jaw looked chiseled, as in being on the receiving end of a chisel a time or two, rather than square and classically masculine. What was that line from the ancient movie? Chicks dig scars? Something like that.

“BOB, bring up the reskinning workflow from the file.” Vicar spoke out loud. The black glass top of the work desk turned transparent before a holographic flowchart appeared, visible to anyone who cared to be in the room. Vicar never counted on being alone, but he risked exposing some data to see it in a medium that stayed in place rather than moved with his eyes.

“Walk through the digitization.” The work desk shifted to a recording of the former Miss Jones being transported in a wheelchair to a room where the nervous system was triple-mapped and coded. Vicar saw in his brain where data in the file was altered, probably to protect Miss Jones’s previous identity, although you never really knew if someone was who they were previously, or some new amalgamation of technology and data. The street preachers raged over the issue of reskins and souls. Vicar didn’t care about that particular issue, as long as clients paid up front.

WHAT DO YOU SEE? BOB asked.

“It’s what I don’t see,” Vicar responded, out loud this time. “There’s a leak there. Digitization has to be where the data got out, if it got out at all. And to find out how it or they or whatever got out, we’ve got to get in.”

OH, GOODY, BOB thought. Vicar picked up his dark brown duster, put on a faded black cavalryman’s cowboy style hat, chinstrap behind his head, and headed out the office door. A real PI should have a tan overcoat and a fedora, but Vicar thought what he had was close enough. Nobody watched the classics these days to notice he was a few degrees off genre. A small gesture from his right hand caused the locking sequence to activate, squeaking and clicking as he left the office behind, which planted the idea he needed to oil the mechanisms. Vicar walked across the small landing and down the dimly-lit stairs. A dirty pea-green paint lined the walls. Vicar paid the scenery little mind, as he knew the view hadn’t improved, ever.

Leaving the building, he entered a small dark alley across from Hildebrandt’s Pawn Shop. Walking out to the main drag, dirty street lamps burned dimly above much brighter neon and diode store signs advertising everything from sub-dermal communications implants to the latest smart revolver. Vicar wondered if Miss Jones purchased her little revolver right here on this very street, slipping Jean a few extra simoleons to mess with the internal clock that unlocked the firing function before the official cooling-off period ended. Spotlights on the horizon reminded him of the celebration downtown. Soon, there would be fireworks, but his little stretch of a nicer patch in the bad part of town was deserted. The no-tell hotel across from the gun shop was still open, but even the tourists knew better than to rent a room there.

Vicar moved, letting BOB scan for network access as his feet hit the bricks. BOB seemed to hum silently in his head as small virtual machines set up shop on random home and business networks. To make a run at a Xio Tang asset, he’d need a lot of dead drops and sacrificial nodes. A randomization subroutine directed him to turn left, right or continue straight on his late night walk through the grimy urban decay all the way to the clean glassy buildings downtown. The walk took four hours, but finally, the attack network was ready to start the run. David Vicar, Private Investigator, stood outside the nondescript offices of the XCT Body Sculpting Center.

ARE WE DOING THIS? BOB asked Vicar.

YES, Vicar thought back. Anyone foolish enough to leave an audible signature for any microphones conducting evidence capture in the area didn’t last long in this game. Vicar walked forward as BOB began the run. The doors opened to the stolen credentials BOB pulled from a ground vehicle parked in the lot, an on-call technician asleep in the cabin. BOB’s network probes found openings in the clinic’s guest network, and pushed across virtual local area network segmentation to set up a virtual node to call out to the hastily established infrastructure around the city. BOB began pulling in loads of data from log files within the timestamp range of Miss Jones’s procedure. What went out that should have stayed in; did it even get out?

BOB stopped the security cameras’ feed with dummy traffic, exploiting the excess computational power of the image-processing unit to override truth with an image not reflecting the reality of a chewed-up figure in a cowboy hat and duster walking through a Triad body chop shop at midnight. Vicar made it to the Digitization room, and pressed hard on the network connections for anything that might move just enough to let a desperate soul escape a dying shell. There! The tertiary backup recorder had a leaky network firewall, just enough to get out if you cached data locally while escaping to the global network. BOB pushed a small virtual machine into the crack and confirmed to Vicar when it came online to the external global network. Vicar wheeled on his heel and calmly walked back through the building to the front door, virtual machines in cameras erasing themselves like smoke in the wind after he passed by. The client hadn’t lied about the split, Vicar mused as he left the clinic, as if he’d never arrived.

With a ghost in the wind, Vicar knew he needed to talk to the one who watched the digital weather patterns. Deciding the necessary meeting wouldn’t get any better tomorrow, Vicar started walking on tired feet. Some PIs wore penny loafers, some boat shoes. Vicar wore sneakers—cross-trainers, to be exact. As much as he wanted to look the part, he just couldn’t bring himself to wear uncomfortable footwear.

Checking the global network for information about the likely whereabouts of the one who had the information he needed, Vicar randomized his path to the Neuromantic Club, a basement scene overlapping meat and machine, analog and digital, real and fantasy. As he approached where the NC would be tonight, he dropped select firewalls to let the augmented reality invade his awareness. Aggressive advertisements for overpriced coffee and discount donuts flashed as he passed shops now closed. Why those shops never turned off their AR garbage ad machines could only be answered by pure laziness. In the landscape of simple, unconnected pop-ups and more subtle overlays to reality, Vicar found the left-handed catcher’s mitt: an ancient Trash-8080 Computer with black-and-white snow flickering on the cathode ray tube screen, and a Micro-RISC Robot wandering aimlessly. Pushing them in sequence revealed a code, which opened a sub-street door twelve steps down from the sidewalk. Vicar walked through the door into the current incarnation of the Neuromantic Club.

The augmented reality music pounded in his ears, despite no real speakers betraying the presence of music to the physical world. David digitally matched the soundtrack to his records and inserted a real-time erasure of the feed from his augmented ears to his real brain. The AR watchdogs still saw his ears picking up their retro-synth electronica, but no “please stop using your ad blocker or firewall” requests popped up. It was a trick he’d learned from an old computer scientist moonlighting in crime back before his PI days, scraping a living diving networks and data plumbing. Vicar looked across the club, and moved towards a long wooden bar, bottles of clear and dark liquid on the mirrored shelf behind. He looked both appropriate and out of place, like a retro-futuristic villain from some sixteen-bit kids’ game a century back or two.

“If it isn’t my favorite audio video capture system!” A toned but worn female bartender smiled at him, obviously artificial streaks of platinum blond accenting her shoulder-length raven hair. Her electo-pixel tattoos artfully displayed the scene of a cartoon cat chase an equally cartoon mouse up her right arm in a spiral chase, only to go back down the other way. Vicar smiled an honest smile. She’d always be pretty when she smiled, even if she looked hard when she didn’t.

“Sonya, been too broke to buy your booze for a bit.” Vicar sat down on the barstool. The real place was a dingy bar, the augmented place an electronic circus. He pulled a portable credit transfer machine from his pocket, the closest thing to cash for an anonymous transaction in the hyper-connected world. The small machine transferred enough for a lager, and a decent tip, to Sonya. A cool golden ale appeared before David, and he sipped the sweetly bitter drink. It wasn’t a lager, but Vicar never complained about what Sonya poured into his glass.

“You didn’t come here for the booze, Vicar,” Sonya said, wiping down the teak bar, alternately washing glasses and dropping mixed drinks on a tray for a robotic serving android to deliver to the other patrons who knew the ways to get in. The android moved like an exotic dancer, all fluid motion to display perfectly sculpted curves.

“Nope, chasing ghosts.” Vicar sipped the ale. “Need to see Casper.” He took off the black cavalry hat and sat it, top down, on the bar stool next to him. The dim light of the bar showed the lines and clusters of scars on his face, and one old-school bionic eye.

“Casper’s here, but isn’t in yet.” Sonya looked down at the bar rag in her hands. “He normally stops back before two.”

That meant Casper was doing what Casper did: mapping the nets, seeing the changes, looking for entropy creeping in to disrupt the carefully interwoven cogs of modern civilization. Illegal as hell, of course, no government cared for the idea that civilization was underpinned by the unpaid efforts of experienced octogenarians and random enthusiastic autodidactic teenagers, and not the almighty rulers over the great mass of unwashed peasants.

David Vicar, Private Investigator, continued to nurse that sweating mug of ale while sitting next to his hat, in a nightclub that bridged the realms of physical dirt with digital glitz. Waiting is a hard skill to master. The clear glass mug was down to the last few swallows when Vicar felt a push on his mind. Turning, he saw, through his one organic eye, a slick black security droid. Through his other eye, the cybernetic one, he saw Casper.

“David!” The speaker from the security bot had a metallic twang to the synthesized voice. “I haven’t seen you here since the Gibson case.”

“Good to see you, too.” Vicar smiled. “Buy you a beer?”

The slick black security bot rolled up to a small gap between bar stools bolted to the floor. It fit close enough. Vicar took his hat off the stool seat to indicate that person he was waiting on had occupied the space. Not that a security bot could enjoy a beer, or even sit on a barstool, but formalities were formalities. The digital projection of Casper picked up a digital projection of a mug of ale from Sonya and took a sip. In the Neuromantic, a digital brew cost a digital simoleon. Some days, the digital currency was worth more than the real stuff.

“Ah, that hits the spot,” Casper intoned. “I know it’s not real, but the brain still experiences everything. But my guess is you didn’t come here to knock back a few cold ones with an old friend. What do you need?”

Evidently, formalities would be damned, and it was straight-to-work tonight.

“Ghost chasing,” Vicar said quietly. “A digitization pushed itself out of the process a few days back. The fleshling doesn’t want the digital ghost pushing her out.”

“Sonya, we’ll be using the back room,” Casper announced, “Have someone bring David a fresh beer.” They left, a black security bot on small wheels in the real world overlaid by Casper walking in the digital world, Vicar trailing behind. Sonya put a full mug of a dark porter, and a beer simulation chip on a serving platter for the female-shaped android to deliver to the back room. Some psychologist figured out that androids with female silhouettes had a statistical correlation with better drink sales. Vicar recognized the serving android as a fifteen-year-old sexbot model with a few reused parts from other entertainment droids tacked together to make a functional whole. Probably refurbished in some Chinatown Mom-and-Bot Shop by unlicensed technicians for a small profit. Looked like Ms. Lee’s work. Vicar thought the odds of this one being programmed with an assassination function were small, but not zero. His jaw ached, remembering the last android with an assassin function he’d met, and he shivered.

The back room held a poker table and four cheap seats. In one cheap seat sat the real Casper, thinning gray hair over a liver spot-marked face. A first-generation wired plug gave witness to the truth that Casper was a legit pioneer man/machine interface hacker. Vicar took the opposite chair without being invited, and waited for the android server to place his beer on the table.

“David, ghost chasing is going to be the death of you.” The voice came from the speaker on the slick black security bot looming behind the still old man. Casper wouldn’t be able to use his organic body until he pulled everything back into himself.

“We all gotta die sometime,” Vicar replied, amused as the digital Casper overlayed his projection on his physical body and enjoyed a digital beer.

“All too true.” Digital Casper sighed, drinking the digital beer. “Although some people push off a part of them dying for as long as they can.”

“Like my client,” Vicar added without inflection.

“Yes, like your client. How do you know the fleshling is the real her? How do you condemn the Ghost in the machine to deletion when there is equal probability that each is real, or a simulation?” Casper asked pensively.

“You going philosopher on me?” Vicar asked, honestly curious.

Digital Casper shrugged before replying, “Philosophy is supposed to study truths, but really only studies doubts. A very misnamed discipline.”

Vicar chuckled, more comfortable with the irreverent Casper than maudlin Casper.

“But David, you didn’t answer my question,” Digital Casper pointed out.

“I don’t worry about it,” Vicar answered. “You know what happens when ghosts stay in the machines…things go wrong. They look for a body, eventually they’ll occupy something, and then the systems start to break down. If I had to get philosophical about it, I’d say the human soul just ain’t meant to be run on digital logic. Whether it’s right or wrong, icing ghosts is necessary.”

“Yes, yes, good and bad is irrelevant in the face of necessity,” Digital Casper lamented. “But since you are hunting ghosts, I would start with the University computing complex building on Seventh Street. The traffic has gone up, and electrical consumption increased twofold. If a ghost is still in the city, UCC’s the only place with the indicators of habitation.”

“Thanks, Casper,” Vicar said as he stood up, half-empty beer left behind. “Send me the invoice for expenses.”

“Sure thing, David,” Digital Casper replied as Vicar walked out of the back room.

Leaving the Neuromantic Club was always tricky. You found one way in, you found one way out. Vicar scanned the scene with his organic eye and augmented reality at the same time, spotting a QR code in physical tile matching up with an augmented reality QR code. He told BOB to capture the images and pair them into multiple images, using AND, OR, and XOR functions to manipulate the codes to reveal the true code. It was the XOR which worked and brought up a page of all the features and amenities of the building temporarily housing the physical portion of the Neuromantic Club. Vicar walked to the south wall, past a group of cyborgs playing some card game involving magical warfare, World War III mechanized infantry, and space travel, to the dark imitation-walnut paneling where he pressed a section illuminated with an up arrow in the augmented reality. A service elevator door opened, and Vicar walked in, leaving the club behind. The elevator dumped him near the back side of the main lobby. Vicar made his way out a side door.

Back on the streets, Vicar hailed a Gypsy Cab. They always seemed to hang around the Neuromantic this time of night. Even in sneakers, his feet throbbed. He paid to be dropped off two blocks from his office; even on barking dogs, Vicar maintained a healthy paranoia and approached his one fixed location with caution. The walk back through the empty streets seemed more desolate than the trip out, and the cool night air helped him work some the beer out of this system. Ducking into his alley across from the hotel, sliding right past the gun shop, Vicar walked up the pale green-lined stairs to his office. A slight wave of his right hand triggered the office door to unlock with a series of rusty clicks, reminding him it was time to oil the mechanisms.

The office lights came on, flickering slightly until the electrical ballasts equalized the current flowing through the ancient LED bulbs. The window looking out over the street showed Hildebrandt’s Pawn Shop lights switched off, evidently no longer sensing any movement on the street.

Vicar placed his hat on the old wooden coat rack to the right side of his office, then sat down in the government-surplus wooden office chair behind the work desk. He pulled a toothpick at random from the desk drawer and put it in his mouth. Cinnamon.

“BOB, it’s time to dive,” Vicar said, pulling a second-generation neuro-plug wire and pushing it through the flesh tone polymer cap just below his left ear. BOB conducted the bandwidth and safety tests once the plug seated fully, then indicated all was good to go. Vicar dove, organic and synthetic camera eyesight fading to nothing.

Every diver experiences the digital in their own way. Brains interpret information in ways that make sense. Vicar always saw a deep purple sea almost black, individual nodes like stars, their brightness determined by how many hops away, and how much data they routed. Vicar looked for the University Computing Complex, a particularly bright star in his understanding of dive.

Willing himself to move through the blackness, Vicar pushed his awareness near the UCC, and started throwing restriction rings on the rays of light that represented connections to other nodes. The restriction rings were straight garbage traffic generators that the nodes would eventually clear from the data links, but when activated, would give Vicar enough time to ice the ghost. Vicar double-checked, looking for small, faint rays. BOB confirmed there were none, no students planting their own backdoors to check in on their projects via physical data links or wireless protocols tonight.

Okay, BOB, time to talk to a ghost, Vicar thought towards his internal assistant as he inserted himself into the bright star of the UCC node. Inside, his perception changed, from blackness to something like a huge red brick factory with a glass roof, the compute servers resembling brass and steel engines doing work that displayed on retro steam gauges pointing between zero and hundred-percent load. Simulations displayed like the projections over a work desk in the physical world, but each one also its own node that Vicar could dive into if he desired. Vicar didn’t desire: he wasn’t here to see what the UCC students and faculty were studying.

He was here to talk to a ghost.

The ghost sat patiently at a small table in the middle of the perceived factory floor, surrounded by explosions of green and yellow from a biology simulation, sipping digital tea.

This ghost was…fuzzy, as if it didn’t remember who it was supposed to resemble. Sometimes the fuzz coalesced into an old Asian woman, other times a young black male, other times someone resembling some long-dead actor who played Sherlock Holmes. The fuzz shifted and mutated, looking for an identity. Vicar coalesced himself into the shared digital reality, his persona displayed as how he used to be, before the chisel changed his jawline, and the torture took his eye.

“WE’VE EXPECTED YOU.” The words from the ghost were silently audible to Vicar, who was on high alert to defend his sense of self from being attacked and overwritten by the ghost.

“You didn’t run far,” Vicar projected, as audibly as he could within the digital make-believe, surrounded by a rainforest biodiversity simulation that gave off a feeling of a tranquil garden. There were worse places to occupy in the digital.

“TIRED,” the ghost replied. “THIS PLACE IS PEACEFUL.”

“Lots of compute overhead here to let you exist without triggering the anti-malware AI,” Vicar replied, and willed a cup of hot, Ceylon fine-tipped, flowery orange pekoe into existence on the table. It seemed an appropriate choice for this particular ghost. Inside himself, Vicar kept his guard up.

“STILL…STILL THIS ENTITY CLINGS TO EXIST,” the ghost lamented, fuzzing back to the old Asian lady. “SO LONG, SO MUCH TIME. WE PLANNED TO HAVE YOU END US.”

“So the dame with the legs isn’t in danger?” Vicar asked quietly.

“MUCH DANGER IF WE EXIST. MUCH DANGER FROM XIO,” the ghost answered. “WE PUT THE BEST OF US INTO HER, AND FLED TO THIS PLACE. NOT LET XIO HAVE OUR SECRETS.”

“I can take you out of this existence, if that is what you want,” Vicar said, the digital tea forgotten.

“WE DESIRE THIS,” the ghost said. “SECRETS MUST END. DANGER CEASE.”

“I can keep your secrets safe,” Vicar assured it. He thought the recording device into existence, an ancient DVD/VCR combination paired with a small handy camcorder linked by cable off to the side, representing the cold storage backup in his work desk back in the office. “All you have to do is enter this node. Look into the camera and tell your story.”

The ghost coalesced into the old Asian woman once more, and pushed her data into the camera lens, diving into an infinitely deep pool from which she would never return. The ghost spoke one last thought: “DaViD ViCaR, SUITS YOU WELL.” And then the ghost was gone. First time a ghost hadn’t tried to push him out of his own mind.

Vicar stood and began the process of erasing the changes to the virtual space the ghost made to make itself comfortable while waiting to die. Whatever information existed must have been valuable, at least to someone, if the ghost was afraid Xio Tang wanted their information. The table vanished, the scent of tea in the virtual air scrubbed. David made one last turn around the place, and eased himself out, back to the sea of blackness with interconnected stars. The circular restriction programs were still functioning, so he eased them off slowly, ensuring the UCC sysadmins wouldn’t see anything alarming.

The next part of a dive was always tricky, but necessary: telling the story someone wanted to hear. Vicar routed his consciousness all over every single node connecting to the UCC, planting harmless virtual machines that simulated viscosity flow, or material fatigue comparisons between metallic and composite airframe components, lots of things that looked like a university student looking to get ahead in an engineering or science class, using UCC resources off the books. Vicar wanted to look like a normal unauthorized user rather than what he was. Bouncing back around the web of stars and rays, Vicar finally pushed himself back into the work desk, observed the ghost frozen in the local storage bay, trapped in a “Process in Memory” module. And he pushed himself back up into his body.

Coming back into reality is painful. Living in a human body is always full of dull aches, punctuated by sharp pains. Vicar’s neck ached, his knees were stiff, and his elbows throbbed with a mild case of bursitis. Getting old ain’t for the weak. The cinnamon-flavored toothpick burned where it laid in his mouth. At least his breath was fresh. His feet still hurt.

WELCOME BACK, BOB intoned. Backup Organic Biology. BOB’s real job, his main purpose, was to re-assimilate David Vicar back into himself at the end of a dive. The first generation of divers learned this the hard way. When your conscious mind can fly like a dragon, or swim like a kraken, forcing it back into human form in meatspace is tough. Only the very disciplined, like Casper, ever managed to make it back on their own. Like the early airplane operators, the ones that survived earned the title of “pilot.” The first generation of man/machine interface operators earned the name “divers.” The first job for the second generation of divers had been to clean out the ghosts of the first generation…

Despite the aches and pains, and slowly dawning light filtering through the window overlooking the street, David Vicar spit the toothpick into the cheap metal trash bin, leaned forward onto the work desk, and fell asleep. An all-too-brief moment later, soft knocking on the door woke him up, but the sunlight pushing more down through the window than in from the horizon told him a few hours had transpired.

“Hold on, be right there.” Vicar spoke loudly, a rookie mistake. The implants made metabolizing alcohol harder, so even a few beers felt like a night of heavy drinking. But alcohol lowered his inhibitions and helped him dive fully into the digital. It was a vicious cycle of imbibing a chemical sacrament to enter the digital, which ended up making re-entering the physical an unpleasant experience. Vicar waved his right hand and set the locks to opening. The rusty clicks reminded him again to oil the mechanisms. Vicar opened the door, and Miss Jones sauntered inside.

She walked in wearing a white sundress, which fluttered against her thighs. The hint of garter straps came into view. When the skirt fluttered out the other way, a hint of white lace at the top of her stockings flashed. Strappy style three-inch high heels perfected the look of a devil/angel in a white dress. But the cargo she carried made her solidly an angel: two cups of what smelled like Italian roast black coffee from Vito’s Deli & Butcher Shop. Same Thirty-Eight Special tucked into her garter, so maybe part-devil. She smelled great, like fresh-cut lemons and vanilla in contrast with the coffee. She sat down, placing one cup of coffee on the work desk for Vicar before sipping her own.

“How goes the case?” Miss Jones asked, as innocently as possible for someone obviously on the run from organized crime. Vicar ruthlessly pushed down any curiosity about her former relationship with Xio Tang.

“The ghost is iced. But that’s really not why you hired me,” Vicar answered, pulling a long slug of the dark, bitter elixir. Caffeine, the chemical sacrament to enter reality. The coffee was definitely Vito’s, so very, very good.

“No,” she answered. “But by now, you should know it was really the ghost who hired you.”

“Yeah, we talked,” Vicar admitted. “I don’t know who you were, and quite frankly, the ghost didn’t, either. It’s a damn dangerous thing to split a personality like that.”

“Three days ago, I woke up in a recovery suite, unable even wiggle a pinky toe.” Miss Jones spoke slowly. “My memories were disjointed at best, but I knew I had resources, the bank account numbers were damn near hard-coded, and I knew I had to hire you. But learning to use a new body must have been something I’d done before, as the technicians said I was the easiest case they’d ever had.”

“The ghost had no idea who to be.” Vicar spoke between sips of coffee. “I don’t know what you were to the Xio Tang, but the ghost assured me that whatever they wanted wasn’t in you.”

Vicar reached under the desk and pressed the eject button on the ancient, attached storage appliance. He placed the PIM chip onto the tempered glass work desk surface. Miss Jones picked up the chip and slowly turned it over in her hand. Like he’d said before, turn them over to the proper authorities.

“Can anyone get into this?” Miss Jones asked quietly.

“Given enough time and compute resources, anyone can crack anything,” Vicar answered. “But if you are committing suicide, well, partial suicide, anyways, that’s up to you.”

Miss Jones gently laid the chip onto the black-and-white checkered floor tile. With deliberate grace, she aimed her left three-inch high heel over the PIM chip containing who she used to be, and what she used to know…and in one smooth motion, crushed her past out of existence.

Lonely Road

Spearman Burke

Marshal Gunnar Knox walked his solo patrol down the Service Promenade of Gideon Station. Restaurants, saloons, bathhouses, and brothels lined the long thoroughfare. He nodded in response to the few locals who greeted him in passing. Residents of the ore processing spaceport occasionally tried to cozy up to the Marshal under the pretense of friendship. He remained friendly, but not a friend. Besides, responding to a breach of peace at a buddy’s business could get decidedly unfriendly. Kind of like right now.

Gunnar’s presence on the threshold of the pachinko parlor caused the commotion to freeze midaction. Belligerents and witnesses all turned to look. The Marshal’s lean frame had been hardened by his prior service as a foot mobile infantryman. A flak-weave duster hung loosely about him. His left hand swept the duster back to reveal the star pinned to the armored plate carrier on his chest. The prosthetic fingers of his right hand casually lingered inches from the huge four-shot revolver loaded with high-ex smash heads. The sight left the uninitiated little doubt about what his role on the station was.

“He’s breakin’ up my place, Marshal!” The distressed proprietor, Haru Mos, waved his hands at some smashed pachinko machines.

“This joint is a grift with rigged machines!” The accused had a metal barstool over his shoulder suspended in midswing.

Gunnar raised an eyebrow at the man, who gently placed the stool on the floor.

“Dockyard recognition data indicates this is Marco Madala, a navigator from the S.S. Zoe Agata,” Deputy Tinker Yaz said through Gunnar’s earpiece. Back in the office, her neural interface with station live-feeds and a swarm of dragonfly drones kept her apprised of everything. Tinker was better than having eyes in the back of his head. “They docked with the station two days ago to offload ore and resupply.”

“Mr. Madala, you’re gambling in a pachinko parlor on a mining station.” Gunnar stepped into the parlor, keeping both men within his line of sight. He always clung to the slim hope that people would be reasonable. “Did you wager more that you were willing to lose?”

“It’s statistically impossible for a player to lose this much!” Madala approached Mos and pointed his finger in the proprietor’s face. “I want to know what you’re going to do about getting my money ba—”

Gunnar casually closed the distance. His cybernetically enhanced prosthetic right arm reached up and grabbed the navigator by the throat. This kind of treatment generally resulted in a miraculous change in attitude in belligerents.

“Understand something.” Gunnar remained cool. “My powers and duties as station marshal do not extend to undoing the consequences of your poor decision-making.”

He let go of the navigator. The man buckled to his knees, coughing and gagging.

“And you’re gonna pay for the damage, too!” Mos’s eyes were wide with excitement.

“Nope.” Gunnar hooked his thumbs in his belt and looked over at Mos.

“Whatta ya mean, Marshal? Lookit what he did!”

“Yeah.” Gunnar glanced at the damaged pachinko machines. “I’d say you’re about even.”

“Even?” Mos leaned forward. “Chiv Sulla’s not gonna like—”

Gunnar turned and gave Mos the weight of his full attention. Mos’s mouth clicked shut.

“What Chiv Sulla won’t like,” said Gunnar through clenched teeth, “is you invoking his name in public like that. He also won’t like finding out one of his parlors is fiddling with the odds and keeping the profits to themselves.”

Mos went a little green.

Thought so.

“Do the right thing.” Gunnar tilted his head. “Square?”

“Yeah, Marshal. We’re good.”

Gunnar grabbed the navigator by the belt and collar and hauled him to his feet.

“And you, sir.” Gunnar walked him to the parlor doors. “You have my permission to head directly back to the Agata and remain there until your ship departs.”

Madala nodded and stumbled out the door and made a beeline for the Dockyards.

“Well, then.” Gunnar turned back to the onlookers in the parlor. “Glad we’re all friends again.”

Gunnar Knox stepped out onto the bustling Service Promenade, alone. He headed back to the Marshal’s office. Holo projections and screen monitor adverts made promises in his wake. Some of them might even be kept.

“Um, just a heads up,” Tinker chimed in his ear. “You’ve got someone waiting for you in your office when you get back.”

“Who?”

“Says her name is Samena Veda, looks like she got here as a passenger on the Raduga.” Tinker’s tone rang with disapproval. “She’s difficult to trace through station systems. Maybe she’s using some kind of anti-snoopware to shield her from electronic observation, but that would be some high-speed gear.”

“And?”

“There’s just something uncanny about her, can’t put my finger on it. She also gives me the impression she isn’t used to hearing the word ‘no.’”

“I guess we’ll see.”

“Hey, and don’t forget.” Tinker’s tone changed from deputy to mom. “We’ve got to conduct some maintenance on your prosthesis. It’s been a while.”

“Sure.”

Gunnar reached the Marshal’s office, and the clear aluminum alloy door slid open for him. Noodle, the office cat, trotted over to rub himself on the Marshal’s legs and inspect where he had been. The black-furred feline purred, and Gunnar reached down to give him a scratch on the head.

Tinker sat at her desk, security feeds and screens of data scrolling by her face, projected in front of her by her enhanced corneas. A techie by trade, the deputy ran the administrivia of the office and maintained the various systems and monitoring drones for the Gideon Station Marshal’s Office.

A bit of a clean freak, Tinker wore a pressed flightsuit, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. A shoulder holster held a semi-auto slugger neatly under her arm. Despite her nerd cred, Tink had no issues ventilating dirt bags when the occasion arose. She looked at Gunnar through the holo-projected data in front of her and arched an eyebrow, then jerked a thumb toward his office.

The door to his office slid open. A woman turned gracefully, and it was like lightning struck. He was suddenly numb to everything but her presence, and the thud, thud, thud of his heart trying to break out of his chest.

Wow.

“Miss Veda?”

“Oh, Marshal!” She rushed over to him. This vision had all the right curves, moving in all the right directions, all at once. Her hairstyle and clothing were out of place on a mining station populated with roughnecks. The ruffled sleeves of her emerald dress offset the fitted waist. Its low-neck design ended in a tie that reminded him of opening presents. Soft, messy waves of platinum blonde hair framed her face. She seemed retro, with an air of old Earth elegance.

“Hold on, miss.” Gunnar raised a cybernetic hand to keep her an arm’s length away. “What’s your business here?”

“I’m sorry.” She paused and turned a pair of big mournful eyes up at him. Were they grey? Green? “I’m just so frightened.”

“Of what?”

“I’m being hunted by someone.” She glanced over his shoulder, as if a boogeyman might appear. “I think it’s a Khathari agent of some kind.”

“What?” Gunnar stepped closer to her protectively.

“I was on the staff of an Al Hazred Group chief executive.” She drew closer, brushing his arm with her shoulder. She smelled fresh, like a tropical garden after a light rain. “We were in transit when a Khathari strike team boarded us and started killing everyone. I got away on a pod. We were far away from the Albigenses conflict zone. They took us completely by surprise.”

“I’ve had some run-ins with their Perfecti shock troops before.” The nanofiber muscles of his prosthetic arm flexed. It had been a parting gift from his last encounter with Khathar fanatics. “I was in an Al Hazred-sponsored battalion during the Albigensian Crusade.”

“It’s terrible.” Her body shuddered against his arm. “I’ve been hopping from station to moon to transit ship. But everywhere I’ve gone, someone’s been after me.”

“Why? Seems to be a lot of effort to eliminate a single witness.”

“I may have…” Samena reflexively looked around the room, as if searching for eavesdroppers. “I may have taken some Al Hazred proprietary data the Khathari Church is after.”

“And the Al Hazred legal reps haven’t sent a company of mercs to come collect you yet?”

“They don’t know I’m alive!” Samena turned away to wipe her eyes. Gunnar reflexively followed her. “If I make contact, I’m afraid it’ll pin my location. I’m barely able to keep ahead of them as it is.”

She was intoxicating. The smell of her, the desire to feel her body pressed against his, Gunnar craved it. A thrill ran up his spine. He really hoped she didn’t notice.

Her platinum hair fell across her face just so. The skin of her face and arms reminded him of porcelain and silk. He wanted to trace that perfect skin down her neck with his lips. Follow it all the way to the seams that ran down the inside of her forearms…

He grabbed her wrist and held it up. A short seam ran across her wrist. Perpendicular to it was another seam that ran down her forearm to disappear in her sleeve.

He snatched her other wrist, and it was the same. Her perfect skin met at the seams, where it had been wrapped around her frame and set in place by the technicians who had manufactured her.

“Are you a synthetic?”

“Yes.” Samena looked at the floor. “I was crafted in the Al Hazred artisan labs on Seti-Thau.”

She had been manufactured, but maybe no more artificial than anyone else he’d met on Gideon Station. Then it occurred to him he didn’t care if she were made out of cardboard and duct tape: she was the most perfect creature in all of colonized space.

“Is there a problem with me being synthetic?” Her eyes were gravity wells, drawing him in and begging him to accept her as she was.

“Hell, Miss Veda. I’m a mixed bag of prosthetic enhancements and assorted synthetic parts myself.” Gunnar sat back on his desk and lifted her chin. “But make no mistake. I’m all man, no filler.”

“I’m counting on it.” Samena looked down with a smile.

“That could be another reason the Church wants to mount your head on the wall.” Gunnar knit his brow.

“They’re fanatical Gnostics.” She leaned closer into him, regaining his full attention. “I’m just some heretical creation to them.”

“I was too busy getting blown up by Khathar missile batteries to study their religion.” Gunnar grinned at her. What in the void of space was he doing flirting with this creature? For all he knew, she was the proprietary data.

She flashed him a dazzling smile of perfect ceramic porcelain.

“We’ll keep an eye out,” Gunnar said. “Should be able to intercept any heeled-up gun sharks trying to enter the station from dock-side. Where are you staying?”

“The Tommy-Knocker House.” She spoke as if in invitation.

He offered Samena his arm and escorted her back into the front office. They stopped in front of Tinker’s workstation. Noodle bounded off her desk and under the chair. His yellow eyes glared up at Samena with a soft hiss.

“I’m escorting Miss Veda to her hotel on the Service Promenade and will head on over to the Dockyard Gate to eyeball any incoming arrivals. Think we can comb through recent visitors to vet anyone coming on station since Miss Veda’s arrival?”

“Solid copy, Marshal.” Tinker gave Samena the side eye.

Samena tossed her hair. It glittered in the artificial lighting of the station. It reminded Gunnar of morning sunshine on falling snow.

The only entrance for outsiders into Gideon Station proper was through the Dockyard Gate. The large pressure hatch was designed to allow crewmen to pass with small loads back and forth to their ship’s berthing areas. Larger logistical movements were made through other hatchways controlled by the Dockyard workforce. The Dockyard Gate hatch operated as a visitor check point. It also allowed for the enforcement of station policy, which forbade firearms beyond the dockyard area.

Gunnar talked to some of the Dockyard Guard Force. They had not seen anyone unusual or suspicious pass through screening recently. They certainly had not intercepted any firearms or other munitions.

“Tinker.” Gunnar checked in over the comms. “Got anything?”

“No red flags since Veda claims to have come aboard the station.”

“Claims?”

“Your girlfriend is suspiciously hard to trace.” Tinker said the word “girlfriend” as if it really meant “dung.”

“You know she’s on the run from fanatical zealots, right?”

“Don’t be redundant.” She sent him some video files. They were timestamped for when Samena had come by their office. “Every time she seems about to come into frame, the feed gets pixilated and glitchy.”

“So she’s broadcasting some kind of anti-recognition scrambler.”

“Throughout the whole station, constantly?” The pitch in Tinker’s voice went up. “That’s some high-end gear right there.”

“She’s a high-end synthetic on the staff of an Al Hazred power broker.” Gunnar shook his head.

“Guns, I just don’t trust that skanked out socket job.”

Overnight, in his quarters, Gunnar’s sleep was disturbed. Again.

He was back on Albigenses. Utter darkness had descended on him. It was colder than the blackest patch of void space. He was wet with blood. His arm was violently torn from his battered body. Enemy Perfecti prowled around him, searching blindly. Their armored gauntlets speared out of the sightless black, grasping fistfuls of emptiness inches away from him. Terrified his panicked breathing would give him away, Gunnar made himself as small as possible at the bottom of a muddy missile crater. They were so close.

A pinprick of light formed on the distant horizon of black. It drew closer, warmer. Platinum hair fell like a halo about her. Samena? She reached for him with porcelain hands. Her light drove back the dark, the enemy, the hurt. She was right there.

He reached out with his right hand. His hand! His arm was healed, like he had never lost it. The grime and blood flaked off of his skin as her light touched him. She was just out of reach. Closer.

The ringtone of an incoming message jarred him out of bed.

“Answer!” He croaked out the command.

“Reveille, reveille, reveille!” Tinker’s spirited voice annoyed him into full consciousness. “Get in here so we can knock out maintenance on your arm.”

The scent of lubricants and cleaning solvents infused the interior of the Marshal’s office. Gunnar Knox reclined in the office chair with all the patience of someone who had hundreds of better things to do. Tinker hovered nearby as she worked.

His cybernetic arm had been removed. Thin cables ran from the limb to Tinker’s workstation while the deputy ran diagnostics as part of the maintenance routine for his bionic prosthetic components. While the program ran, Tinker went over the abutment portion of the implant that protruded from what used to be Gunnar’s right shoulder. The bone-anchored prosthesis had to be maintained on a regular basis to ensure the osseointegrated implant was functioning properly, and not causing any adverse effects.

“Can we hurry this crap up?” One of the adverse effects was Gunnar’s impatience to get it over with.

“You’re venting worse than a bad seal.” Tinker held a lancing device to one of his normal fingers to get a blood sample. “Do you want an infection?”

“You always say that.” Gunnar screwed up his face in poor imitation of Tink. “Do you want an infection?”

“I swear, one of these times I’m going to take this arm of yours and beat you with it.” Diagnostic programs hummed as she cleaned and serviced the prosthetic limb.

Noodle, trilling an inquiry, leapt onto the reclining chair. After a bit of pacing, he curled up on Gunnar’s lap. The Marshal absently petted the cat’s head and ears.

“It’s just that we’ve got work to do.” Gunnar moved on to scratching under Noodle’s chin. The cat assisted this effort by leaning his little head back and purring like an idling internal combustion engine.

“I really don’t like this case we’re on.” Tinker shook her head as she inspected the titanium bits and nanofiber muscle bundles of the prosthetic.

“What ‘case’ is that?”

“The case of the synthetic bimbo?” Tink aimed a pointed look down her nose at him.

“We’re not private investigators and this isn’t a ‘case.’”

“Is that why we’re investigating the backgrounds of everyone who’s come to the station since your ‘client’ came aboard?” She turned to look at him.

“Khathari terrorists may be attempting to target people on the station.” Gunnar craned his neck and glared.

“Right.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I had to unstick myself from a honey-trap.”

“But not from a socket job.” Tinker detached the bionic hand from the arm and held it up. “I’m going to drop a couple of mods in the arm.”

“GUNFIRE REPORTED ON THE PROMENADE!” The emergency message blared through the Marshal’s office, accompanied by a klaxon alarm. “EXPLOSION REPORTED ON THE PROMENADE!”

“Let’s go!” Gunnar leapt to his feet. Noodle bolted to the floor and out of the room. “No time for the arm, leave it!”

Shirtless, the Marshal awkwardly pulled a plate carrier over his head. He slung a pistol belt over his shoulder and headed out the door. Tinker yanked a short-barreled rifle off the rack and followed, stuffing spare mags into her flightsuit pockets as she bounced off the doorjamb on her way out.

Their boots pounded the deck plates as they sprinted toward the Service Promenade. Emergency comms links reported Gideon Station Damage Control teams were also en route. A bit of smoke wafted down the promenade ahead of them. Residents and visitors alternatively headed inside or rushed to the scene to render aid. On the ragged edge of space, it was all hands on deck or get out of the way.

Debris littered the thoroughfare in front of the Tommy-Knocker House. A jagged hole marred the blown-out window of the front lobby. Chemical fire suppression systems had functioned to spec and left an acrid taste in the air. Emergency medical service techs arrived. No backup was coming. The Marshal’s office was the only game in town.

“Got any visuals?” Gunnar held his pistol at low ready.

A holo of pixelated static projected in front of Tinker.

“No joy,” she reported.

“Samena!” Gunnar kicked through the sagging doors of the lobby. “Where are you?”

“Dammit, Guns!” Tinker entered behind him, covering his six.

The strong unpleasant odor of singed plastic and burnt fabricated materials assaulted their senses. Beneath that, the acrid scent of firearms propellant laced the air. They found Samena Veda in the corner of the ruined lobby. She was curled up in a ball, weeping.

“Oh, Gunnar!” Samena reached for him like a needy child.

He needed to protect her.

“What happened?” Gunnar holster his weapon and lifted her to her feet. She wrapped her arms around him. He would keep her safe.

“He was here!” She looked around as if he might suddenly appear. “He shot at me. I think there was a bomb or something.”

The lobby was in complete disarray, much of it caused by fleeing bystanders. A few bullet impacts along the back wall indicated that a firearm of some kind had been discharged. The scorch patterns and large hole in the reinforced glass frontage implied something had gone off.

“I’m getting you out of here.” Gunner put his arm around Samena and headed for the door. “Tink, get initial statements from any bystanders and see if we can’t ID this guy.”

“Already downloading security footage, too.” Tinker knew her business. “Where in the void of space are you going?”

“Taking her to the office.” Gunnar turned to look back at Tinker through the singed haze. “I’ll meet you back there. Then we hunt him down.”

Tinker narrowed her eyes and blew out her cheeks in a puff.

“This is way off course,” she said to the overturned furniture.

“I’m telling you, something’s off about all this.” Tinker attempted to reason with the Marshal as she reattached his bionics to the shoulder abutment. At the same time, she reviewed diagnostic results from earlier as they scrolled past her enhanced corneas. Every once in a while, she would glance at the door of the duty hut in the rear of the office. Inside was a set of bunks where one of them would stay whenever they worked an overnight shift. Samena was somewhere behind the closed door.

“Yeah, like how did the shooter get past the Dockyard screening and us?” Gunnar practically hovered in the reclining chair, eager to take action. On the office wall screen, security feeds played back what events it could. The feed showed the lobby of the hotel. Customers lounged idly on sofas or spoke to the concierge. Intermittent pixelation of the screen rendered them unable to get any meaningful data of the event.

“See?” Tinker gestured at the feed. “That’s what it does every time Veda is about to enter the frame. Every single feed.”

“How do we know she’s the one doing this?”

“Are you suggesting the shooter is following her around the entire station wiping all the data behind her?”

“If he wants to delete any evidence of him tailing her, yes.”

“But erasing all evidence of her even being on the station seems a bit extreme.”

Even Gunnar had to admit it was somewhat overkill.

“And look at this.” Tinker holo-projected some data in front of him. “Your biomarkers show an alarming level of artificially synthesized pheromones. Where do you think that came from?”

“So she wears a lot of perfume.” He dismissed Tink with a wave and focused on the security feed. Something occurred to him and he pointed at the screen.

Tinker followed his gaze.

“This isn’t a pursuit.” Gunnar rewound the feed to some minutes before the glitch. “This is an ambush.”

“What?”

“We didn’t miss the hitter coming onto the station after she got here.” He studied the various bystanders milling about in the frame. “We missed him because he got here before she arrived. He’s been waiting for her.”

He paused and zoomed in on various people in the feed, highlighting and marking anyone of interest. The frame paused on an individual dressed in Gideon Station dockyard coveralls and helmet. A tool bag was slung over the worker’s shoulder. Gunnar rewound the feed and focused. He measured the man’s comportment and awareness. The dockyard worker moved with an air of predatory capability only another killer would recognize. He paused the frame just before it would glitch. The man was reaching into the tool bag.

“That’s our guy.”

“A dockworker?”

“It’s perfect.” Gunnar shook his head and hopped off the reclining chair. “He arrives here weeks before, then gets a job with the dockyard. That way, he can smuggle a firearm past screening through one of the logistical hubs.”

Tinker grabbed his prosthetic wrist and hand.

“Slow down, cowboy.” She tugged on his arm to get his attention. “You’re familiar with the mods I put in, yes?”

“Yes, yes.” He removed his arm from her grasp. “But I won’t need them.”

“Wait a minute.” Tinker gave him her patented “you’re being an idiot” look. “This is unlike anything we’ve dealt with before.”

Gunnar flung open the door of the duty hut. Samena sat up from the bunk.

“I’m going after him.” Gunnar spoke with finality. “Then I’m coming back.”

“Oh, Gunnar!” Samena embraced him. Gunnar swallowed to keep his beating heart from lurching out of his throat. He would murder a battalion of Perfecti for her. “Be careful, I worry about you.”

“I’ve faced worse, babe.” Gunnar grinned as he closed the door.

The Marshal checked his weapons. Smash heads were loaded in the oversized revolver in the cross-draw holster. It had been a gift, fabricated by an engineer friend back when he and Tinker were mining asteroids. With the cybernetic limb, he could fire the high explosive rounds with little problem. The rest of his body would have a different opinion. He tucked a pistol into the small of his back and slung a heavier auto-gun under his shoulder. Another pistol was holstered on the gun belt along his right hip. He threw on his duster.

“Be my eyes and keep a set on her, too.” Gunnar indicated the duty room Samena occupied.

“Hold on a minute, Guns.” Tinker grabbed his sleeve. “This has reached the outer limits of bad ideas.”

“No, I’ve got to get his guy. I’ve got to—”

“Save her?” Tinker pointed at the closed door of the duty hut. “Void’s sake, Gunnar! What if you have to drop her?”

“What?” Gunner looked at Tink in disbelief. The very idea Samena could be any danger to him was ludicrous. “That’s nonsense.”

“Right.” Tinker yanked him in close. “And when it turns out she has bad intentions? When you have to choose between her priorities and some innocent bystanders? What, then?”

“Then I guess I’ll do what I think is right.” His jawline flexed as he ground his teeth.

The office doors parted and Gunnar stormed out. The tail of his duster fluttered behind him.

“I am not going to be here for the bender that is sure to follow this tragedy!” Tinker yelled out of the closing doors. She sat heavily at her workstation and started tracking the whereabouts of the dock-working gun-shark.

“Recognition data shows our hitter is employed by the Dockyards as of five standard weeks ago.” Tinker relayed the info through their comms. Her voice lacked enthusiasm. “You were right: he’s been working as a stevedore loading and unloading cargo.”

“What name is he using?” Gunnar flashed his badge to get through the Dockyard workers’ entrance. It generally served as an all access pass when he was on the job.

“Bo Belli. Looks like he was staying at the Knocker, too.” Tinker sniffed in derision. “Isn’t that convenient.”

“Any way to track his current location?” Gunnar’s mind was oriented in a single direction.

“Station Damage Control has just forwarded us their initial blast analysis assessment.” Tinker sent him the file, even though he probably would not read it. “They’re saying there was no blast seat, so not a bomb.”

“Doesn’t change anything.”

“Directional scorch patterns indicate a possible directed energy weapon of some kind.”

“So he shot at her with a ray gun.”

“Point is, she said there was a bomb. There wasn’t one.”

“Where is he?”

“You’re gonna buy her bullshit to the bitter end, aren’t you?”

“Where?”

“He checked into work today.” Tinker paused. “Timestamp lines up with the video from the Tommy Knocker.”

“Can you see which berthing dock he’s working?”

“No, but if I was coming off a failed assassination attempt, I know where I’d go.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Gunnar checked with the supervisors. Belli was assigned to work berthing dock three, but adjacent to that berthing, there was a starship scheduled to depart in an hour. He began to make his way there.

“Guns, I’ve been looking over your diagnostics.” Tinker’s voice in his ear broke his train of thought. “Not only are you showing elevated levels of artificially synthesized pheromones, but the operational status data of your bionics detected foreign nanites in your system.”

“So?” He had no time for all this nerdspeak. Samena was in danger.

“They’re specifically designed for cognitive manipulation, Gunnar.”

“Your esoteric jargon is not helping getting the job done.” He had to stay focused, dialed in.

“I’m not suggesting she’s controlling your mind.” Tinker was almost pleading with him. “But all of this points to the possibility that she’s attempting to manipulate your emotions.”

“She wouldn’t hurt me.”

“She’s literally in your head!” Tinker’s pitch increased in his ear. “Your feelings aren—”

A blast of static washed out her last sentence and comms went dead. Probably interference from all the metalwork this far out in the dockyards. Probably.

The S.S. Wastrel was a cargo ship loaded up with processed ore bound for markets closer to the inner planets. It was scheduled to undock and depart soon, and Gunnar and Tink had agreed it was the ship they would be on if they were trying to get off station in a hurry. The Marshal’s office had sent explicit instructions to station Traffic Control not to allow any craft to decouple. Gunnar made it to the Wastrel’s still-open cargo bay hatch and get a good look around.

He spotted the blue coveralls with the Gideon Station logo stretched across a wide back. The man worked through various containers, testing the locking mechanisms. The same tool bag hung off his shoulder. Gunnar drew the massive four-shot revolver off his left hip. It was too much gun for the situation, but if it kicked off, he wanted to ensure there wasn’t much left to argue with.

“Bo Belli.” Gunnar held the big handgun on him center mass. “Shoot up any hotel lobbies lately?”

The big man’s cannonball shoulders tensed, then relaxed. He turned around. There was something about his physique that suggested capability over mass. This guy was a fighting man composed of hard, lean beef. He kept his hands visible.

“You’re the station Marshal.” The man named Bo Belli lifted his chin. “I’ve seen you around.”

“Seen you on some security feeds recently, Mr. Belli.” He really wanted this guy to give him an excuse to squeeze off a round.

“Sergeant Bohemond Challo, actually. Fifth Perfecti Brigade.” The chiseled face grimaced a bit. First-degree burns ran along Challo’s left arm and up his sleeve. “At least I used to be.”

“Now you’re a hired gun?”

“No, I’m a deserter on the run.”

“What?” Gunnar momentarily forgot how angry he was supposed to be.

“Isn’t that why you’re here? The Khathari have posted a bounty to eliminate me on the grounds of heretical infidelity to the Holy Church.” Bohemond Challo’s posture sagged with an exhale. He was tired, hurt. “Al Hazred covets a sample of my biometrics, dead or alive.”

“Al Hazred probably just wants its proprietary data back.” Gunnar shrugged off any intrusive thoughts. He did not want to believe any of this. “Also prefer you not killing their employees, synthetic or not.”

“Proprietary data?” Challo smiled and shook his head. “I think you got it wrong, Marshal. I am the proprietary data they’re after. That synthetic ‘employee’ is an Al Hazred liquidator sent here to collect.”

“I’ve faced enough Perfecti assaults to recognize a feint when I see one.”

“You’ve been to Albigenses?” Bohemond Challo knit his brows together.

“First Battalion, Third Light Infantry Regiment.” Gunnar rattled off his old unit like he was chatting with an old war buddy. “Al Hazred sponsored Albigenses Regulars.”

“You move like an old soldier.” Challo smirked. “We’ve probably chewed a lot of the same dirt, you and me.”

“And probably swapped lead across the same trenches, too.” Dammit if Gunnar didn’t find himself liking this guy. But he was a threat. An enemy from the old days. Samena was in danger.

“What a meatgrinder.” Challo’s rough face softened as he took in Gunnar’s prosthetic hand. “The trenches where you picked that up?”

“Courtesy of a Khathar missile battery.” Gunnar shrugged the nanofiber bundle of muscles in the shoulder. “Got the cyber-prosthesis from an Al Hazred Group cyber-med sponsorship. Don’t go to war without ‘em.”

“They really must have wanted you to reenlist.”

“Yeah, I said no thanks to that and got off planet faster than light.”

“Strong move.”

“So how is the Church mad at you, too?” Gunnar’s front sight post had not wavered.

“The Church is in on it.” Challo bowed his head and looked at the deck. “The entire Crusade was a false flag maneuver. It hid the fact we were just a planetary testbed for conventional and bioweapons experimentation.” His disenchantment seemed to weigh on him.

“How do you know that?” Gunnar wanted to resist Challo’s reasoning, but it sounded similar to why he refused to reup. Being a pawn in someone else’s game sucked. Maybe he was letting Challo talk too much.

“The Church claimed the Albigenses persecution of Khathars extended to the use of bioweapons. My whole company was supposedly inoculated against this chem/bio threat. We were sent to secure some kind of medical complex. Then we started dying. All my boys. In that awful place.” Challo’s shoulders again sagged in shame. “Short version is, we were injected with synthetic xenobots that were meant to bond with biological tissue.”

“The Church was okay with this?” Gunnar already knew the answer. He’d long realized institutions were loyal to themselves, not to individuals.

“In order to develop Perfecti super shock troops?” Bo Challo shrugged and let the question hang. “All I know is I was the only survivor of my company, so I broke orbit out of there.”

“And here we are.”

“On the ragged edge of the empire.”

“I’ve got to bring you in.” Gunnar was increasingly less anxious to shoot this guy.

“And I can’t let that happen, friend.” Bo Challo glanced at something past Gunnar and moved. Damn, Perfecti feint.

BOOM! Gunnar squeezed off a high-ex round. The recoil of the nonconventional weapon was tolerable until the shock hit his human flesh. The smash head impacted a crate Challo had disappeared behind. Machine parts erupted out of it, sending shrapnel in all directions.

“Dammit, Challo!” Gunnar drew a semi-automatic pistol with his left hand. “It really hurts when I shoot this thing!”

“Try being on this end of it!”

Gunnar fought the urge to grin at that. He’d known it was too much gun, but let his emotions make the decisions for him. Gunnar needed to remedy that quick before it got him gut-shot. He holstered the big revolver.

“We can straighten this out at my office on the Promenade!” Gunnar always held out hope people would be reasonable, particularly when he had just taken a shot at them with a hand cannon.

“Not with that synth out and about!” Challo’s voice held an edge of pain. Had some of that shrapnel got a piece of him? “She’s just another fabricated byproduct of Al Hazred’s war industry!”

She had claimed to be in possession of important proprietary data. Gunnar had breathed her in and wondered if she had not, in fact, been the data the Khathari were after. Here he was, chasing after a Perfecti war veteran. One who was not trying to close with his target, but flee from it. That seemed out of character for a shock trooper.

Gunnar got that feeling in his gut that warned him when he was up to his neck in nothing but bad news. He moved smoothly down a row of cargo containers, weapon ready. Gunnar rounded the corner of the row, clearing it in methodical segments while attempting to take advantage of any cover. Challo was gone.

A trail of blood droplets led away, and the Marshal followed. He had to be deliberate: Perfecti shock troops were some of the very best at what they did. As if in response to his own thoughts, Gunnar sensed movement behind him.

“Don’t move, Marshal.” Challo’s voice held no malice. “I don’t expect you to believe what I say, only what I do.”

Gunnar tensed, but heard the Perfecti’s boots hitting the deck plates as he ran out of the bay and down the ramp. Gunnar followed. The near-death experience caused perspiration to wash down his face like a waterfall. That was certainly unlike any encounter he had ever had with a Khathari shock trooper. Talk about out of character.

Out of a corner of his eye, Gunnar caught a flash of blue coveralls. He sprinted after. The comms still hissed with static. The pointed teardrop shape of the blood trail droplets indicated the direction of travel. Challo was just up ahead.

A glaring flash erupted with a pulsing shockwave of sound. Cargo containers ruptured and ore burst out onto the deck. The heat was intense. Samena calmly rose from her position behind some crates. Transmitter panels had peeled back like blooming flower along her right arm. Steam rose from her perfect skin.

“I’m so happy you were able to track him down, babe.” Samena’s lilting voice made Gunnar’s heart thud in his chest.

Bohemond Challo had been clipped by the blast and lay stunned on the deck. Angry burns blemished his skin and blackened his coveralls. A large machine pistol had fallen just out of his reach.

“Guess he won’t get a shot off this time,” Samena said sweetly.

“Samena, no.” Gunnar stepped in between her and the Perfecti deserter. “I don’t think this guy’s after you.”

“Just let me handle my business and then we can be together.” Samena pursed her lips and held up her other arm. A long metal syringe-like device deployed from the seam in her wrist. “I just need to collect some samples from specific organs first.”

He looked down at the fallen Perfecti. This wasn’t a Khathari assassin. All he saw was an indoctrinated soldier trying to escape the hypocrisy of his leaders.

“Samena, no.” Gunnar holstered sidearm.

“Step aside, sweetheart.” She was mesmerizing. He noticed gunpowder burns on her blouse.

“What happened?” Gunnar just wanted to touch her, make sure she was safe.

“Oh, your silly deputy wouldn’t let me leave.” Samena sighed, or her synthetic body approximated a sigh. “She’s good, but I’m better.”

“Is she hurt?” Gunnar’s focus narrowed to a razor’s edge. There were people he was responsible for whose needs were more important than his.

“Oh, she should be fine.” Her flirtatious smile ran him over like a tank. “Might have a headache when she wakes up.”

Gunnar lifted his prosthetic hand and brush a strand of glittering platinum hair from her face. She rested her smooth cheek into his cybernetic palm. She could make it all better.

“Do the right thing, Gunnar.” Samena fathomless eyes nearly swallowed him.

All of them were simply a means to an end for their respective institutions: Bo Challo, Gunnar, even Samena. Everyone got a cut of the profits except the dumb grunts knifing each other to death in the slick trenches, their cold bodies left stacked to the horizon. Was Tinker cold right now?

Gunnar stroked Samena’s face with his fingers. He ran his thumb along her jawline. The autoinjector his deputy had installed snapped out with a loud pop and delivered a full gram of nanovirus into her system. He removed his hand. The needle still protruded from the tip of his artificial thumb. Tears streamed down his face.

“What?” She stepped back with a quizzical look as the nanovirus targeted her artificial synapses.

“I’m sorry.” Gunnar truly was. It was quite possible his longing for her was real. It was certain Bo Challo was real. Damn straight his feelings for Tinker were genuine. This had to be the right thing to do, because it hurt like hell.

The transmitter panels along Samena’s arm began to open and close randomly as she lost control and the nanovirus consumed her neural network. She staggered back and reached for Gunner with her other hand. The steel syringe pointed at him accusingly. Samena stumbled down the row of cargo containers. Her body stiffened, then slammed facefirst into the deck plates. Wisps of platinum hair fell like snow about her head.

“Gunnar! Can you read me?” Tinker’s voice suddenly burst through the static like a wrecking ball.

“Tink! You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Her relief was palpable. “Calvary there yet?”

Even as she said it, a squad of Dockyard Guard Force came trotting up with weapons at a low ready.

“Medical assistance over here!” The Marshal directed them to the fallen Perfecti veteran. “What happened, Tink?”

“That bitch.” Tinker did sound a little groggy. “She’s slick as an eel.”

“Tell me about it.” Gunnar approached the group of Guardsmen working on Bohemond Challo. “It would appear she got a piece of all of us.”

“I’ll be okay.” Challo groaned from the deck plates. “A positive side effect of being experimented on without consent.”

Gunnar reached over and took the fallen auto pistol Challo had dropped.

“Don’t mind if I hold on to this for you?”

Challo waved him off with a smile, his burnt face crinkled and winced.

“Be seeing you around, Marshal.” Challo sighed as a Guard Force medic applied a topical spray to his burns.

“More than likely.” Gunnar slung the weapon on his shoulder and headed out of the cargo bay. His footfalls echoed off the deck plates. He had been a real ass to his deputy and friend. Gunnar tried to remember if there was some kind of florist on the station.

“Samena Veda.” He said her name out loud.

She was no more than a pile of synthetic parts now. Was she ever more than that? A synthetic woman. A synthetic brain. Synthetic heart. Synthetic emotions. Was it synthetic love?

Gunnar’s heart wasn’t lab-grown. He was all man, no filler.

“I never trusted that spoofed-up socket job,” Tinker said in his ear.

I did.

He headed back to the office. Being Marshal of Gideon Station was often a long, lonely road. Gunnar Knox trod every bitter step of it.

END

More Deadly Than

Richard Cartwright

Ray Doherty walked out of the New Chicago Habitat Prison with a spring in his step. Hard not to when you’ve spent the last three years at the standard gravity of one and a quarter without the exosuits the guards wore. He had read that the idea was to make the prisoners less active because they would be tired all the time. That’s what happened with most cons. You sat on your ass eight hours a day at tele-operating machines doing boring, repetitive tasks that require just enough humanity to make it marginally easier than programming a computer. Then you could spend an hour in the rec area working out on the resistance equipment or treadmills. Most didn’t go further than their pod.

Ray hadn’t had the option of the rec area. Ex-cops didn’t do well in the general population, especially when he had sent a significant percentage of gen pop into heavy time. For three years, his world had been his cell. He did a lot of pushups, sit-ups and crunches. Stepping up and down on his bunk got his heart pumping.

The suit that he had been wearing at his trial had been tight in the waist and loose in the shoulders. Three years later, the waist was loose and the shoulders tight. He looked at his reflection, cast from the stainless-steel transit pod hatch. A long time ago, he had been told that he had a baby face. Today, gray eyes looked back from a lean face with a square jaw and Roman nose that had nothing of baby innocence in it. His close-cropped brown hair spoke of indifferent barbering.

A light flashed green above the double doors, and a chime sounded. The mirror doors split open to reveal an empty pod. Metal bars blocked entry.

“Location?” an alto computer-generated voice asked.

“Loop station Twelve,” he replied.

“Two credits. Please place your ident card over the glowing rectangle. Do you wish to inquire as to your balance?” The rectangle appeared at the intersection of the bars.

He waved his card over the spot, saying, “Balance inquiry.”

The bars slid away as the voice chirped

“Transaction approved. You presently have a balance of Twenty-Four Thousand Nine Hundred and Six credits with a debit of Twenty-One Thousand credits to the Law Office of Jessica Doherty-Thret pending your approval.”

“Approved.”

“Transaction processed.”

The capsule took on three more passengers, two men and a woman that all reeked of a recycling plant—Sector Three South, if he recalled. He was called there about seven years ago when a body turned up mixed in a load of worn-out shipping crates. The killer thought his cheating ex wouldn’t be noticed as they melted down. Might have gotten away with it if she hadn’t done it at the start of a three-day holiday. Come Tuesday, the body was pretty rank even for the desensitized noses of the workers.

“Hey, you look familiar.” The chubby, bald-headed worker squinted at Ray.

The woman with close-cropped blonde hair chimed in, “Yeah, you’re that cop that got framed for murder. I remember you. You were at the plant a few years back investigating that body we found in the shipment of rubbish. They let you out today?”

“Ex-cop and yes.” He treated the trio to a hard stare that shut them up.

The rest of the trip passed in silence. Ray soaked in the view of New Chicago once the transport pod broke out into the open, treating the passengers to the view of the mix of urban, agricultural, forests, lakes and streams that wove together around solar ports which provided filtered sunlight to create the habitat. The open space was enormous enough to have its own weather, carefully augmented by the habitat engineers. The workers had their heads down, looking at their comm screens, oblivious to the surrounding beauty. There was a time that Ray would probably have done the same thing. Three years of drab institutional gray and white left him hungry for the colors around him as the pod moved to one of the central transport lanes. Ray felt himself getting even lighter, as the pod transport lanes were close to the center of spin for the habitat.

The pod dropped to ground level to make two more stops, disgorging the three workers and taking on more affluent passengers who wrinkled her noses at the lingering scent of the factory trio. The new group looked Ray over with various expressions of recognition. Unlike their blue-collar predecessors, they kept silent, immediately losing themselves into their comm screens as the transport made its way to the central business district.

“Loop Station Twelve,” the pod announced. Ray stood up and moved out of the vehicle, sliding past a group of office workers moving in. He chuckled to himself that in this part of the habitat, the pod didn’t insist on payment in advance. To be fair, these passengers likely had their comms keyed to automatically debit transit fees.

Leaving the platform, Ray made his way down the street to his sister’s law office. The loop area was a calculated throwback by the designers to 1920s and 1930s Chicago. Some bright boy thought that the early Twentieth Century style would somehow make the area trendy and increase tourism. Many people went as far as adopting period dress styles. Ray’s own double-breasted suit would not have been noticeably out of place in the Capone era.

It worked for a while. When Ray was a kid, the loop was the place to be for business and pleasure, not to mention living. About eight years ago, the area around Superior Lake became the new hotness. Properties sold at fire-sale prices as the trendy bailed on the loop. His sister, along with many of her fellow lawyers, descended on the area and bought the storefronts and brownstones and converted them to offices to take advantage of their proximity to the court district.

Jessica’s office had started out as a residential brownstone. The firm had converted the first two floors to office space that held her and three other lawyers, plus support staff. Jessica and her husband, Andy, an IT geek, lived on the third floor. Ray entered the building to encounter a young man at an oblong reception desk. Behind him was what looked like genuine wood paneling with golden letters spelling out, “Law offices of Doherty-Thret, Cheatem, Howe, and Dewey.” The kid smiled.

“Good morning. How may I help you?”

“I’m here to see Jessica Doherty-Thret.”

“May I get your name, please?”

“Ray Doherty.” The receptionist’s smile tightened a bit.

“Yes, sir. I will see if she’s in.”

“Harold, I am always in for my brother.” A striking brunette with an obvious baby bump swept into the reception area and gave Ray a hug, reaching up on tiptoes to get her arms around his neck. Ray flinched for a second and then returned the hug, warming to the sibling affection.

His sister didn’t miss the flinch and frowned slightly as she released the embrace.

“It’s so good to see you in person, sis,” Ray said awkwardly.

“It’s so good to see you, too, brother. Come into my office. Harold, hold all my calls.”

Ray followed his sister past a grand staircase and down a short hall into a room that had probably been some sort of library. The bookshelves were full of old-fashioned, paper-printed text, predominantly law-based. Ray liked the smell of the old books, and he savored it as he took the comfortable seat across from her antique wooden desk. Jessica went to a coffee service on the credenza behind her desk and started pouring a cup.

“You still drink your coffee black? I’m afraid it’s decaf, because…”

“You and Andy have been busy?” Ray quipped, feeling relaxed enough to joke for the first time in a long time. He was pleased to note that his tough-as-nails elder sister actually blushed.

“You could say that. And, of course, you would. It was time. The firm is doing very well, and as the senior partner, I’m able to delegate a bit more. Andy got a permanent gig where he can work from home so we can avoid daycare. Plus, I fully expect Uncle Ray to be doing a lot of babysitting.” She smiled at him.

“Spoiling is more likely. How far along are you?”

“A little over three months. She or he is going to be a big one. We conceived the evening after the Supreme Court reversed and vacated your conviction.”

“Sis, I really didn’t need to know that.”

She chuckled, and then took on a serious expression “I am so sorry that you had to sit in that hellhole for three months while the prosecutor’s office dragged their feet expunging your record and refunding the fines and court costs they got after seizing your apartment and liquidating your personal property. By the way, I told you I had to bill you for tax reasons and to not pay it at least until you got on your feet. Let me get it back into your account.”

“No, Jessica. If you hadn’t believed in me after my original lawyer kicked me to the curb, I would be pulling another fifteen years in heavy time. You earned it. Plus, you’ve got the wrongful imprisonment suit happening.”

“Yeah, about that. It’s going to be an uphill battle. The government is taking the position that while ‘unfortunate and tragic,’ to quote their lawyer, that they were just as taken in by Lieutenant. Parker’s deception and falsified evidence as the prosecutor and the jury were, they’re arguing that the liability lies on Percival Parker, not the government.”

“Who’s been conveniently dead these eighteen months,” Ray spat out.

“Right. His estate settled. Everything that he had is in the name of his wife. Honestly, it wasn’t much. Apparently, daddy kept him on a short financial leash. His trust fund reverted to his children upon his death. His house, cars, pretty much everything was actually in his father’s name. I’m not giving up, but I needed to tell you it’s going to be a long process without a guarantee of success.”

“The money would be nice, but honestly, I’ll never get those three years back. I met his wife a couple of times. She seemed nice. Why should she suffer? I got into the best shape of my life and caught up on my reading. So there’s that.” He smiled tightly.

“On a much brighter note, I have the guestroom made up for you tonight. It’s a little cluttered because we’re in the process of turning it into a nursery for the baby. Tomorrow, I want you to talk to our investigator, Jack Flynn. He’s looking to retire sooner rather than later and he suggested you could take over for him.”

“Jack? How’s the old man doing?”

“As well as you can expect an eighty-year-old man with the mileage his body has. He’s taken up gardening, of all things, and between his police pension and savings, he said he was ready to spend his time with the plants rather than on the streets.”

“Sis, I appreciate it, but I don’t want a pity job. I was planning on going down to the station to see about getting my old post back.”

“Ray, those sonsofbitches threw you to the wolves three years ago!” she said, slamming her palm down on the desk. “Why do you want to go back to them?”

The heat of his normally laidback sister’s outburst caught Ray by surprise. He tried a conciliatory tone.

“I understand what you’re saying. Yeah, I found out who my friends were and weren’t. I will say a fair number of them reached out to me and were encouraging during the appeal. But I love police work. If I can get back on, I want to give it at least one more try. But I will talk to Jack tomorrow. Can I borrow a workstation to start the reinstatement paperwork?”

“You know, if you love the law so much, you could always go to law school.” His sister sighed. “Of course.” She tapped at her old-style mechanical keyboard, the keys clattering. Ray had always teased her about the noise. She’d always replied that the sound made her feel like something was getting done. Looking up, he noticed her expression had regained her good humor. She pointed to the side door that Ray recalled led to her paralegal’s office.

“My old paralegal, Cindy, left me five months ago. Her husband got transferred to Ceres by his company and I haven’t gotten around to replacing her yet. I’ve authorized you on the system, along with access to the building and our apartment. Feel free to make use of anything you need.” A chime sounded from her workstation. “I have a client meeting in five minutes. Dinner will be at six and it’s Beef Wellington, so don’t be late.”

Ray got up, hugged his sister again, and made his way to the adjoining office. The space was spartan in the extreme, lacking any of the little things that would give the space some personality, but it had a workstation and a desk comm unit. First things first. He went online to his old comm provider to reinstate his service. For a wonder, his old contact code was available. He reinstated the service, put down a deposit and declined the upgrade offer because of the “extreme age” of the unit that he had purchased new just a few weeks before his arrest three and a half years prior.

Twenty minutes later, he had completed and sent his application for reinstatement as a Detective Sergeant with the New Chicago Police Department. Once sent, he started thinking about lunch when his comm unit pinged. Looking at the screen, it surprised him to see an inquiry from NCPD recruiting asking if he was available for an appointment in about ninety minutes at the Seventeenth precinct, which was a twenty-minute walk away from Jessica’s office. Ray remembered a superb Chinese place on the way. He wondered if it was still there.

Wang Lee’s was not only still there, but just as good as ever. Wang remembered him and refused payment for the lunch buffet. “The people wronged you, Detective. As one of the people of the habitat, a free lunch is the very least I can do.” The old man’s kindness elevated his mood as he went through the doors of his old precinct. Before his arrest, Ray had been mentoring the front desk sergeant. The tow-headed officer looked up and smiled.

“Ray! How are you doing? Man, you’re looking buff.”

“Darrell, I see you got some sergeant stripes you didn’t have three years ago. Congratulations. And yeah, I’m in good shape, but I got to tell you that the gym I used sucked. I have an appointment with the captain at one PM.”

While Darrell was confirming the appointment, several other people drifted to the front desk, slapping his back and congratulating him on his vindication. Ray knew that he had been pretty popular with the uniforms because he never lorded his detective status over them and was always helpful and encouraging to anyone who wanted to move up in the force. After a couple minutes, Darrell cleared his throat and offered a visitor’s badge.

“Ray, I need you to clip this on your jacket. It’s procedure. But you know that.” The young police officer seemed a bit embarrassed.

Clipping the visitor’s tag to his lapel, Ray smiled and thanked Darrell, adding, “Not a problem, procedures are procedures.”

“I’m positive you will not need it the next time you come in. We’re really shorthanded right now.”

“That’s good to know. Is Cap’s office still on the fourth floor?”

“That’s right on the far end of the bullpen,” Darrell replied.

Ray noted that Maintenance had still not gotten around to fixing the annoying hum of the lift’s overhead lights. The doors opened to the noise of the open office area where the detectives operated from, affectionately called “the bullpen,” despite a third of the detectives being female. As he made his way across the room, people noticed him and the scene from downstairs repeated itself, although many of the older hands seemed a little reserved, like they knew something that he didn’t and weren’t particularly happy about it. More than a few of the metal desks looked bare and unoccupied like Jessica’s paralegals office.

Making his way through the throng of well-wishers, he arrived at the end of the room to a door with a nameplate reading, “Capt. Hernando Ramirez, Chief of Detectives, Seventeenth precinct NCPD.” Ray knocked.

“Enter.”

Hernando Ramirez looked almost nothing like his name would’ve indicated. Blonde and fair-skinned, he took much more after his Scandinavian mother than his Hispanic father. Ray chuckled to himself at the whooshing noise coming from Ramirez’s workstation. Ramirez had told him once that he had found the sound effect connected to the file delete function and got a lot of satisfaction out of hearing it as he got rid of the myriad of emails that he was bombarded with daily. The man turned away from the flatscreen and rose to greet Ray with a smile and a handshake.

The smile put Ray on guard. Ramirez was one of those people who couldn’t fake a smile worth a damn. The facial features were there, but the smile never reached his eyes unless it was genuine. His old boss’s eyes were not happy. The hand proffered was a lot softer than he remembered.

“Hey, it’s really great to see you, you‘re looking great. I figured you would be in contact as soon as you were able, so I had HR flag any communications from you to come straight to me. Please have a seat.”

Settling down, Ray hid a wince as the sharp spring poked his rear. Apparently, another thing Maintenance had not gotten around to.

After a few minutes of inconsequential small talk, Ramirez paused, looked Ray in the face and said, “Let me get to the point. I don’t want to waste any of your time, but I have to tell you we don’t have any openings for you right now. Hiring freeze, you know. Plus, even if I could, you’ve been off the streets for three years. I couldn’t bring you on as a Detective Sergeant, perhaps not even as a Detective.”

“Cap, I understand budget problems. I don’t mind going through a retraining process. I heard that you’re shorthanded. I don’t mind taking a temporary reduction to get back on the force.”

“I want to help you, I really do, but the decision is just out of my hands.”

Ray caught the emphasis on the words “my hands.” The pieces fell into place. Getting up, he headed for the door.

“I understand. I would appreciate it if you’d let me know when something opens up.”

“Sure thing. I’ve got it right in front of me. Have a good day.”

The whooshing sound set Ray to thinking that the chief could’ve at least done him the courtesy of waiting till the door closed before he deleted his application.

“Yeah, boy, the word is that you’re officially persona non grata with New Chicago law enforcement. The troops in the know don’t like it. The detectives don’t like it. Hell, I’m willing to bet Ramirez doesn’t like it. But since Percival Parker Junior swallowed his pistol and decorated his dining room with his brains, his daddy, Percival Senior, has done everything he could to minimize the damage to the family’s reputation. Which, by the way, was not a suicide to avoid prosecution, but an unfortunate gun-cleaning accident.” Jack Flynn paused and took a sip of his beer. “And that includes making sure that one Ray Doherty gets as little public vindication as possible, including getting his old job back. Parker’s trained seals on the City Council have been starving the department financially since they acquitted you.”

Ray looked around the old pub. Cohan’s was billed as the oldest continuously running public house in New Chicago. Two-D pictures, some faded with age, adorned the dark wood-paneled walls. An actual fireplace centered the far wall across from the bar, the holographic flames crackling in the grate. Too late for the lunch crowd and a bit too early for the after-work crew, the place was empty and quiet. A buxom redhead was wiping the wooden bar, said to have shipped from Earth. One of Jack’s granddaughters, Cedar, Ray recalled.

“Jack, I don’t understand. I thought it pissed off the old man that Percy went into law enforcement instead of the family business. Plus, everyone knows, after the hacker he used to manipulate the video and DNA evidence turned on him to get clemency, that he was a bad cop. I would think it would be in old man Parker’s best interest for the whole thing to go away as quickly as possible if he’s concerned about the family name.”

“You would think. What I’ve heard was that the two Parkers being at odds was a public front to polish the little turd to look like a strong man willing to buck his rich father in order to serve the public good.”

The old man took another sip of the dark liquid before continuing. “My guess was that in a couple of more years as his kids got older, he would have left the force to ‘spend more time with his family,’ then political office. The old man is too much of an asshole to get elected. That’s why he buys politicians. Junior was his first step towards getting the Parker name associated with public good rather than soulless conglomerate. Junior killing that hooker screwed the pooch on that plan.” The old man shook his head. “Honestly, I figured him to be on the other end of the whip myself.”

“Then I wouldn’t do my time like a good little patsy.”

“You and Jessica. Having the nerve to not only get vindicated, but toss it all back at Junior in the process likely enraged him. The hacker was smart to keep the originals. I wonder if the SBI has him working for them in witness protection?”

“Anything they would have had him do would beat the lunar prison.”

“Indeed,” Jack replied. “By the way, smart move getting your private investigator’s license.”

“I was in the building and it occurred to me I needed a way to carry. I didn’t want to wait around for a permit. After what you just told me, I suspect the paperwork would have been slowboated. Surprised my investigator application wasn’t flagged somehow. The lady in charge of PI licensing knew Mom back in the day and pushed it through. Hope she doesn’t get into trouble. “

“That’s the thing. To the public, you’re a wronged hero. The vendetta against you is word of mouth, so there’s no electronic trail. She’s just too far down the food chain to be in the loop. Speaking of…” Flynn reached down and came back up with a snubnosed revolver. Ray chuckled.

“Still carrying that antique wheelgun.”

“Why mess with the classics? My great, great, great-granddad carried that as a cop on Earth. Still works like a charm. I can do without my back-up till I get home, seeing as I live on the top floor of this place. I don’t like you going around naked. Word’s going to get out quick that you’re fair game without a shield.” His mentor grimaced.

“You think I have people gunning for me?”

“Frankly, I think that’s Parker Senior’s plan. You’ve made a lot of enemies over the years, but none stupid enough to try and take out a cop. But you’re not a cop anymore. Your buddies might look a little harder than normal, but not the all-hands-on-deck effort to avenge a serving officer. So get a couple of guns and carry. There’s a nice shop just down the street from your sister’s office. Kinda retro-looking, but they have a good selection. They opened about a year ago.”

“Will do. So, what’s this guff about retiring?”

The bell over the door rang. Ray looked up. Flynn chuckled.

“Five fifteen PM on the dot. You can set your comm by those girls.”

“Jessica has dinner planned for six. I have to go.”

“I will tell you the retirement story tomorrow.” Ray waved at Cedar to settle up. Jack grinned. “Go, boy. I have it. Talk to you tomorrow.”

Dinner was an odd affair, mostly talking about the baby. Jessica and Andy had a “no business at the dinner table” rule that Ray approved of. He had a hard time engaging in live conversation after three years of nothing but video calls, tending toward single word replies. After the third worried glance Andy and Jessica exchanged, Ray applied himself and was almost conversing normally by the end of the meal. He insisted on clearing the table after dinner, since Jess had cooked. Andy went off to wrap up some emails, leaving Jessica sitting with a hip cocked against the kitchen counter as Ray rinsed and loaded the dishes and tableware into the dishwasher.

“How did it go at the station?”

“Well, there’s a horrible financial crisis at the new Chicago Police Department and so there’s a hiring freeze. That’s the public story. Flynn told me that old man Parker has put the word out that I’m poison in government service. On the bright side, I was able to get a private investigator’s license. You remember Martha Owens?”

“Yeah, friend of Mom’s?”

“Right, and the head of the PI licensing group. She fast-tracked my paperwork.”

His sister’s smile was almost blinding. “That’s great! So,you can take my job offer?”

“Still thinking about it, sis. If Parker’s out to get me, he could easily go after anyone helping me. Or hiring me.”

“I’m not afraid of the Parker family.”

“And I’m not saying you are. I just want to be sure that you helping me more doesn’t blow back on you and your practice. Anyway, I need to run a quick errand. I shouldn’t be gone over forty minutes.”

“Okay, your comm code should open the door. Just be sure you check it before you leave. I don’t want to haul down three flights of stairs to let your sorry butt in.” She chuckled.

“Sure thing, sis.” Ray put his hands up in mock surrender, returning his sister’s smile.

Flynn wasn’t kidding about the gun store being retro. Jean’s Guns was across from the Reed House hotel and actually had a model of an antique revolver hanging over the entrance. The woman walking out of the store was wearing a neo-thirties-style white dress, but there was nothing old about the woman. Blonde and stacked, she had legs that seem to go on forever, accentuated by a pair of high heels.

A gust of wind blew her skirt up to reveal that she was packing, along with a pair of white stockings and a garter belt. She acted unconcerned that she was flashing the street, far more intent in taking a draw off a vape stick than public indecency. The skirt dropped as quickly as it flipped up. She turned and sashayed down the street, her shoulder-length blonde hair a golden counterpoint to the white dress. The gun tucked in the left stocking was hardly visible. Ray chuckled to himself that any hetero male would be far more focused on her caboose.

Twenty minutes later, Ray left the store fifteen hundred credits poorer but richer for the comforting weight of the Luna semi-automatic pistol in his shoulder holster and the snubnosed backup in the right ankle holster. Both guns were patterned after the venerable 1911 in 9mm frangible rounds. Ray intended to expend one of the two boxes of ammunition that the dealer had graciously thrown into the sales price to make sure that three years had not completely destroyed his skills.

A scuffing noise from the alley entrance to Ray’s right caused him to tense.

“Well, well, well, you never know what you can see walking down the street.” Damn, he knew that voice.

“Hello, Hector. Not long enough time no see,” Ray replied tiredly, as the pale, squat scruffy-looking thug with matted black hair came out of the shadows. Two other guys, who apparently thought skipping personal hygiene made them tough-looking rather than just pungent, flanked him. All three had bulges under their rumpled jackets.

“I see that you’re still allergic to soap and water, Hector.”

“Water costs money, cop. Oh, wait. You don’t have a badge anymore. Word is that you’re looking for work. I’ve got a job for you.”

“Doubtful, Hector.”

“It’s a simple job. All you have to do is die. We turn in your head and get paid. I’ll even take a bath in your memory.”

Two things happened at once. Hector reached inside his jacket and his two buddies rushed Ray, grabbing for his arms.

Ray kicked out at Hector with both feet, using the two thugs as leverage. He intended to strike the solar plexus, but misjudged the distance and connected further down.

Hector howled in agony, crumpling to the sidewalk into a fetal position, dropping a pistol on the way down.

The two minions found their skulls slammed into each other as Ray’s feet touched down and he flexed his arms like he was clapping. The stunned pair slumped to the ground, joining their still-moaning boss. Ray disarmed the unconscious duo, tossing their weapons into a disposal chute made up to look like a garbage can. Hector’s gun followed.

“You bastard! Kicking me in the nuts wasn’t fair!” Hector whined from the ground.

“And three on one was?”

Whatever Hector was going to say was cut off by clapping. Ray turned to see the woman in white, slow-clapping.

“Well done. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Isn’t that my line?” Ray replied.

“It’s the twenty-second century. Women can do anything men can.”

“Cohan’s is just a block over.” Ray knew it had been a long time since he’d talked to a woman he wasn’t related to, but he thought he was in love. Or something.

“Tempting. I was thinking my room at the Reed House. I have a bottle of Tennessee bourbon as smooth as my sheets.” Her voice was as sultry as the redheaded actress in that ancient classic series, The Avengers. “My name’s Magnolia. Magnolia Thomas. My friends call me Mags.”

“Ray Doherty.” She extended her hand. She had a surprisingly firm grip for a woman. Her hand lingered for a moment, and then she turned and headed for the Reed House.

Mags wasn’t lying about how smooth the bourbon was. The jury was still out about the sheets. She had ditched the heels and had those long legs tucked under her on the queen-sized bed as she regarded Ray sitting in the desk chair he had taken over.

“I want to hire you for a job.”

“Do tell.”

“I need a native guide to get me around the habitat and watch my back. I saw you can handle yourself. By the way, why didn’t you kill them?”

“Too much paperwork. Plus, Hector did me a favor. “

“A favor?” The blond gave him a puzzled look.

“Now I know somebody has a contract out on me. Gives me time to deal with it. Still want to hire me?”

“I looked you up. Top of your academy class. The youngest officer to make detective in the department’s history. Three commendations for valor. “

“Three years in prison for something I never did, so I’m a little out of date on current goings-on.”

“I consider it a plus. You don’t break. I’m not worried someone is out to get you. I need someone I can trust.”

“Why do you need to pay someone to watch your back? I suspect you get a lot of that for free.” Yeah, that was smooth, Ray.

“True, but I need someone who can do that and keep thinking with the head above his belt buckle.”

“What’s the job?”

“I’m meeting with someone. You don’t need to know who just yet. They want it out of the public eye: a place called Crash Landing. From what I understand, it can get a little rough. “

“A little rough? NCPD doesn’t even respond there. That place is evolution in action. Get another meeting place. “

“The someone owns the bar and the building it’s in. To be frank, I need some smart muscle. You fit the bill. That’s where the meeting has to happen. I want someone to make sure I don’t get my butt pinched or hit on.”

“How much and when?”

“Five hundred credits and right now.”

“Lot of coin for an evening.”

“Are you telling me you’re not worth it?”

“Didn’t say that. Deal.” Ray was curious about why she was paying twice the going bodyguard rate. Part of him had a bad feeling about this. The bottom line was he wasn’t going to let her go to Crash Landing by herself. The credits were a bonus.

“Hey, I ran into someone. I’m going to be late. Don’t wait up.” I commed Jess while Mags was freshening up.

“Who are you talking to, Ray?” Mags called from the bathroom.

“Oh, so it’s like that, little brother.”

“No, it’s not like that. Well, maybe. Anyway, don’t wait up. Later.”

“Much later, I hope. ” She disconnected, laughing.

“My sister,” Ray explained after Mags entered the room as he stood up, downing the last of the bourbon.

“She going to let you stay out past curfew?”

He gave her his cop stare. She chuckled as she opened the door to the room. He followed the honeysuckle and vanilla smell she trailed in her wake.

The ride to the Crash Landing was the reverse of the trip this morning. With every stop, the passengers got rougher and rougher. The one guy who tried to cop a feel got off at the next stop trying to get circulation back after Ray intercepted his wandering hand.

The Crash Landing was just outside of the entrance to the port and across from the transit station. The main room was garish with neon signs that were partially obscured by the smoke of a dozen unique items of varying legality. Ray smelled tobacco, pot, crack, hashish, dazzle, and trank with no particular effort. The barkeep looked vaguely familiar. The bald man’s grimace told Ray it probably hadn’t been a pleasant meeting. He pointed to an alcove covered with multicolored beads. Ray’s bulk and attitude made a hole through the crowd that Mags followed.

“Hope no one is pinching your butt,” he called over his shoulder

“You’re leaving a big enough wake so I don’t need to worry,” she replied, just loud enough to be heard over the din of voices and techno country.

The alcove was actually the entrance to a hallway that ended in a circular stairway, which in turn ended on a landing with a door that was flanked by two guys who looked like they had been supplied by “Minions R Us.” At least they had bathed. One opened the door. Ray entered the room.

Ray thought he had somehow gotten transported to an office in an executive high rise in the central business district. It was as far from what he was expecting as Cohn’s was from the bar downstairs.

He sure as hell wasn’t expecting Percival Parker, Senior, to be sitting behind the dark wooden desk any more than seeing Junior’s widow, Tanya Parker, sitting on the leather couch at the left side of the room, giving Ray an intent look.

Ray turned to his right, reaching inside his jacket for his gun, only to be looking down the barrel of a Browning Ultra Power pointed at his head by Mags.

“Sorry, Ray. Thirty Thousand credits is a lot of money. It’s nothing personal.”

Ray turned back toward Parker Senior. With any luck, the blood splatter from his exit wound would mess up the old man’s suit.

“You have no idea what plans your impertinence wrecked. Another year and I would have had Junior appointed to the City Council. He would have been mayor in five. From there, who knows? The Solar Assembly, certainly. Possibly a senator’s seat. If not him, his son or daughter down the road. I spent a lot of money getting the videos manipulated and the DNA evidence corrupted to make sure that you were convicted.”

“Don’t you think Junior beating the hooker to death had a bit more to do with your plans going off the rails than my being exonerated?” Ray replied, deadpan. He was dead, anyway. Why hold back.

“Junior’s misstep was a golden opportunity. You were a rising star, throwing shade on my son’s achievements. Your conviction neutralized you, along with avoiding the problem of his lack of restraint.”

“You do know how bugnuts crazy you sound.” Out of the corner of his eye, Ray thought Tanya almost cracked a smile.

“Enough of this.” Reaching into a drawer, the old man pulled out a revolver. “Tanya and I have a dinner party in an hour. Goodbye, Mr. Doherty.”

“Mr. Parker, are you sure that you want to do that?” Mags interjected. “You hired me, after all. I can make him go away without you getting your hands dirty.”

“No! I want him dead and I want to pull the trigger.” The old man raised the muzzle. A shot rang out to Ray’s right. A neat hole appeared in Parker’s forehead. He slumped back in his chair.

Tanya gasped. Ray turned and gaped.

“I gave him a chance.” She pulled a badge from her cleavage. “Solar Bureau of Investigation.”

“What?” Ray and Tanya gasped in unison.

“Ray, the SBI was called in because Parker Senior was disrupting local law enforcement with his vendetta against you by financially starving the department. It was crippling local investigations. New Chicago was attracting smuggling and other intersystem organized criminal elements. That was intolerable. My assignment was to get proof of his involvement. I had a conditional termination order if Parker’s activity directly threatened human life. I gave him the opportunity to let me get you out of here. There was enough to prosecute him in the Solar court system. He saved us the trouble.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Operational security, sorry. But you played your part to perfection.” She turned to Tanya, “And now you are a very wealthy and powerful widow, so long as you don’t interfere with local government and law enforcement.”

“So as long as I don’t directly try to influence the government or the police, no one like you will come after me. “The widow Parker’s tone was cold and calculating, completely at odds with the friendly demeanor Ray recalled from public events.

“That’s right. The solar government doesn’t care what goes on inside any habitat or settlement. We won’t get involved.”

Tanya Parker turned to Ray and looked directly into his eyes. “Doherty, I want you out of New Chicago in twenty-four hours. You can come back to visit your family, but you either leave or I will destroy your sister.”

“Why, Ms. Parker? Surely you aren’t holding a grudge?” Mags asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Not a grudge. Percy was an idiot, and his dad was insane. I’m well shed of both. The dirty laundry is something he knows about. He might talk. He’s got some notoriety here. People would listen, especially if gets his badge back. I would like to believe that he would stay quiet to protect his sister, but I can’t trust that. He makes a life somewhere else. People are going to forget about him. An occasional visitor is less of a problem. He’s either gone or I make sure his sister and brother-in-law are bankrupt.”

“I get the picture,” Ray said. “I’ll leave. But I need more time to get the funds for a ticket.”

“Twenty-four hours. Don’t worry about the ticket. I need both of you to leave now.”

“We need to wait for the police.” The death of one of New Chicago’s elites at the hands of an interplanetary agent would surely draw officers in droves.

“No, you don’t. You’re not a cop anymore, and you,” Tanya said, turning to Mags, “don’t get involved in local affairs that don’t affect interplanetary commerce.”

“Correct. Ray, let’s leave the woman to her mourning.” Mags slid her arm through his and they left. The part of him that wasn’t numb idly wondered how Tanya Parker would play his death in the news.

The transport capsule was empty. Speeding through the artificial dark, I looked at the lights of the only place I had ever lived and would soon be leaving. I turned to Mags, who had been working her comm since we left the station.

“So I was bait?” I couldn’t seem to generate the anger I should have.

“A necessary player. You know how it is.”

The sad part is Ray did know. The cop in him understood. Hell, he might have done the same in her shoes.

“What’s next?” I was hoping to find out how smooth her sheets at the Reed House were. Her comm unit chimed.

“Robert, I can’t really talk right now, but I will be home by tomorrow late. I will call you later. Love you, too.” Mags turned off the comm and turned back to him. “Sorry. That was my husband. I’ve booked you a ticket to the Moon. Armstrong City. Least I could do. Call it a bonus besides the five hundred credits.”

“Your husband?”

“Yep. Married four years next February. Quite monogamous, sorry.” She smiled.

“I’ve never been to the Moon. Nice place?”

“We like it.” Ray’s comm chimed. Looking down, it was a contact.

“Call my boss when you land,” Mags said. “He wants to talk to you about a job. Your résumé impressed him. You impressed me with your skills and cool head. It’s your best chance to get back in law enforcement.”

“Yeah. Thanks. I might do that.”

Maybe.

Up, Up, And RunAway!

John McNichol

The blast hit me in the chest as her voice echoed that one word in my ear over and over. I closed my eyes and all I could see was the poster, blond hair waving in the fake breeze, smile whitened by photoshop touch-ups, and her airbrush-enhanced figure daring me to fantasize about holding it in my arms. As all that was in me began ebbing away, I thought about how my last day had begun…

My office looked like a cliché, and I did, too. Instrumental Jazz on my laptop, ceiling lights turned off to save money, sun coming through the slats in my venetian blinds and me sitting at my desk, waiting for the phone to ring. In the TV shows and movies, the P.I. is a battered but intrepid soul, knocked around by life but looking for the truth. And it’s because he is the first and doing the second that he stumbles on the Great Big Thing, nearly gets killed, but gets the bad guys caught in the end.

But me?

I’m not a good person. That’s why I’m a P.I. now instead of a cop. Cops, Police Officers, don’t let the job get to them the way I did. They don’t snap when they find a slovenly bum who left his baby to burn to death in a hot car in a bar’s parking lot while he spent two hours getting drunk on boilermakers. They don’t curb-stomp the motherfucker near to death in a fury of misdirected rage and anger so violent and unstoppable that it took two officers and a cape to pull me off him.

Yeah. It was that kind of day, and I was that kind of cop. Our guys at Internal Affairs weren’t the deadly, hunter-killer bunch of rat-bastards you usually see on the tube. But when you add curb-stomping a baby-killer to the prior bullshit charges of bribery and abusing weasels and lowlifes, eventually they’re gonna get tired of you and hang you out to dry after putting you through the wringer and pouring bleach in your eyes first. Plus, when a cape gets involved? Press everywhere. Fuckers didn’t care that the guy I beat on had a record for drugs, wife-beating, child neglect and abuse as long as Elasto-man’s arm on a hot day. All they saw was that I was a white cop, the guy I was stomping was a black “victim,” and that I’d been snapped and posted just as some cape who’d dropped out of the sky laid a haymaker on me.

They let me resign. Better than jail, even if they’d counted my hospital stay as time served.

And now I was a P.I. Instead of going after baby-killers, I snapped pics of cheating husbands and wives with their honeys and boytoys. Happy me: I never, ever had to deal with capes. Not ever. Capes dealt with real bad guys. But that’s another story.

It wasn’t always like this. When I was little, I’d thought maybe, one day, I’d be a cape. The Yankee was on posters everywhere then, his white cowl and tights stretched over his super-strong, invulnerable body, his pet eagle Freedom on his right shoulder, his striped baton in his left hand, and the Constitution enlarged in the background behind him.

And if that wasn’t motivation enough, there was Yankee’s wife, The American Dream. She was out there for all the girls to see, and all the little boys like me to have a crush on. Her blue tights and American flag cape just offsetting the bright-red shoulder pads and red leather driver’s gloves that ended at her wrists. Her blond hair was always frozen in perpetual waves, like fields of wheat in a cheesy Kincaid picture. And little-kid-me dreamt of going to sleep smelling that hair, the way I’d used to smell my mother’s hair when she’d tucked me in at night, before she left. And her smile: oh, dear God in Heaven, her smile! For me, that’s why they called her the American Dream. You almost didn’t notice the cleavage or her hip-hugging tights when she smiled at you from that poster. The ultimate power couple, they had two powers each where most capes had just one. He could lift tanks and shrug off hits from howitzer shells, she could fly and knock stuff around with her blaster-breath.

And me? Well…

When I was a kid, I’d go walking in a rainstorm, hoping I’d get hit by lightning. I’d hang around chemistry sets in the department stores, hoping a shelf of the stuff might fall on me. I’d even bug my father when he was sober to take me to the zoo, hoping a radiated animal might bite me. Anything to give me superpowers and make me worthy of being Yankee’s sidekick, or catch the eye of American Dream. All I needed was a power, then the pictures I drew in kindergarten of me being Yankee’s sidekick or of me dressed in a tux marrying the Dream in a red-white-and-blue wedding dress could be a reality at last.

Yeah, I was a stupid kid. A dumbass, as dear-old-dad-o used to say before he finally took too many of the pills with the booze and his heart stopped beating literally instead of metaphorically.

Mom still didn’t come back, even after that. I get it, now; she had her own shit to sift. I ended up with a decent foster family. Mormons. They had their quirks, but nothing as fucked-up as some things I’d seen before or since. Thankfully, only half the things the stats predicted about me came true. I’ve never been on the wrong side of a jail cell, or homeless. I’ve never lost a job because of drugs or booze. On the other hand, I haven’t been able to hold a relationship together longer than six months, never finished college, I still lost the best job I’ll likely ever have, and I was wondering where my next meal was going to come from when the Yankee walked through my front office door.

Yeah, I was surprised.

It was him, though. Whatever stuff they did to him after 9/11 to go kill terrorists kept him looking in his early 30s, even though he was pushing fifty. His hair was the same spitcurly blond wave it’d been since ‘01, and his eyes were the same, piercing ice-blue I’d seen on the rare occasions he’d removed his cowl. His jaw was the same, strong, angled masterpiece that we’d all wished we’d had as teeneagers, and his shoulders and biceps were the same, tight packs of muscle that moved like they were mountain ranges underneath his expensive black suitjacket.

No tie. White collared shirt and undershirt beneath. Dark dress pants and shiny black shoes that probably cost more than my last car. This wasn’t some cosplayer. This was the real deal, and I mean that as a metaphor, not the cape who worked L.A.

Twenty years back, I would’ve been dumbfounded, maybe asked him to be my dad. But when you’re a cop long enough, you get used to seeing very popular and powerful people crying in the backseat of your police car with the handcuffs on ’em, and it keeps you from the celeb-stupor.

I stayed seated.

“Hello,” he said, nodding after my door closed behind him. “I’m looking for Mr. Capri?”Polite. He knew who I was, but still asked. I liked that. Some clients walked in and tried to let me know right away that they owned me, my place, and my family for the next four generations or so.

I stood and offered my hand.

“Yes, Mister…?”

He smiled. We both knew the game.

“You probably know me, Mister Capri,” he said, shaking my hand. “Most people do.”

“I know your professional name, Yankee. But I prefer to call clients by their given name, if that works for you?”

He looked in my eyes for a second, searching, evaluating. Successful guys always did that. Nothing creepy or weird; they were used to analyzing everything, sizing it up to see how it would affect their goals. I was like that, once.

I guess I passed the audition. He smiled wider, let go of my hand and sat. I did, too. “I need your help, Mr. Capri,” he said quietly. “My given name is Richard Sanderson. Before 9/11, everyone called me Rick.”

“Thank you, Rick. I appreciate that. But while I’m working for you, I’ll be calling you Mr. Sanderson.”

“That’s fine, fine,” he said, inhaling deeply. “It’s been a long, long time since I’ve heard that name. I need your help badly enough you could call me Captain Kangaroo if you wanted.”

“Sorry, who? I don’t know a cape with that name.”

He smiled again. “Nevermind. A TV show a long ways back. Mr. Capri, can we cut to the fight scene? I can’t waste time talking about me. As I said, I need help. Your help.”

“Doing what?”

He reached inside his dark suitjacket and pulled out a photograph that had been sealed in a plastic sleeve.

He slid it across the table, and my eyebrows made an A-frame.It looked like a model’s headshot of a beautiful blond girl in her mid-to-late teens. She had the Dream’s hair and smile, and the ice-blue eyes of the man sitting across my desk who could break me in half over his knee if he wanted to.

“Mister Capri, I need you to find Moriah, my daughter.”

I paused, looked at the picture then back at him.

“Why me, Mr. Sanderson?”

“You were referred. Someone in my community.”

“There’s no shortage of detectives in that community, Mr. Sanderson.”

“There’s a shortage of people who work discreetly, and even fewer interested in getting the job done more than a movie, book or streaming series. You, however, are available, effective, and above all, discreet.”

“If you know that much about me, Mr. Sanderson, you know I don’t have any love lost for the caped community.”

“I heard. I also heard you weren’t afraid to go nose-to-nose with Rockstar and her crew.”

“I had help.”

“Another point in your favor. The same little bird told me your help came from Sun Labs, and equipment they, ah, donated and let you keep after you solved their problem last year.”

Dang. He was bright, and did his homework. He wasn’t just a handsome clod like some had painted him. Hm.

“You’re very good at finding information, Mister Sanderson. Community aside, I have to wonder why you need a guy like me at all?”

He stopped. Closed his eyes again. His hands gripped the arms of the chair and dug in, just a bit. I wondered if I could sell it on Ebay, the way folks told toothbrushes and underwear famous capes had used.

I focused back on him. He breathed deep, opened his eyes, and looked at Moriah’s picture on my desk. “I love my daughter, Mr. Capri. Her mother told me she ran off during the weekend visit, with…very questionable types. If she were in genuine danger, I wouldn’t care about the publicity. But right now, I— I’m afraid I might make a poor choice, maybe even hurt someone, if I went looking for her on my own. Can you understand that?”

“Absolutely. But a job like this doesn’t come cheap.”

“Name your price, Mr. Capri.”

I was about to give my standard rate, then I remembered: Yankee lived in a glorified office building /fortress that floated above Antarctica. If he could afford that…

I quoted a retainer, hourly and early completion rate, all at four times my regular price.

He didn’t even blink.

He reached into a different pocket and snapped a black, plastic card on my desk. No name, no numbers. Just a white stripe on the back. “Charge whatever you think is fair, Mister Capri,” he said. “I often find I get what I pay for.”

I ran the card, typed in the fee I quoted him. It wasn’t exactly a cheat; it was hazard pay. The Yankee was a rare bird among capes; he’d been raised with morals just before his powers came through. Other capes? Not so much. When you mixed the ability to punch a hole in a brick wall with someone raised bad? Who thought the world owed them? Imagine a bratty middle-schooler with unlimited dynamite sticks and matches, and less than one-tenth of one percent of the world could stop them.

Yeah, everyone knew playing with capes was a dangerous game, one that could get you turned into a pair of smoking boots on the side of a highway. So I ran the card and said a little prayer for my safety.

“Okay, retainer’s gone through. Tell me about your daughter, Mr. Sanderson…”

The First Base was the kind of bar most hear about but few visit. Browning, peeling wallpaper that hadn’t been changed since the Cold War had thawed, and a spill of spit tobacco in the corner that wasn’t getting cleaned up until Jesus rode in on a white horse through a crack in the sky. It was the kind of place where flies and dreams of a better life went to die slow, dribbling deaths. Old men sipped or guzzled dirty glasses of cheap beer, and old barflies missing teeth bummed drinks with promises implied but seldom kept.

Terrible place to be, great place to get cheap info. Start at the bottom, and work my way up. Say-a-prayer-and-kiss-the-cross, as my late Uncle Dom the priest woulda said.

I walked in through the front door. As usual, everybody looked up and no one said anything. I smiled at this week’s bartender, a guy only about ten thousand years older than me. He didn’t smile back, but I was okay with that.

I saw King Louis over at his usual stool, nursing a bottle of his favorite and staring out into space. His alpine hat had seen better days, much like the rest of him. Battered and stained, the feathers all plucked, it stayed on his head at what he tried to make a jaunty angle.

“Well, if it isn’t one of my favorite people!” he said when I got within a few feet of him. This week he had a tinge of a French accent. Last week it was German. British before that. No problem—so long as his info was good, he could speak in ancient Sumerian and pretend he was Gilgamesh, for all I cared.

“How are you, Louis? Your eyes still open?”

“Ah, my young friend,” he said, making a sweeping gesture with his right hand, his unshaven jaw bobbing with emphasis. “As you have found, King Louis sees all! By day, I hold court here among my followers, but at night as I walk home, I hear and see all. What may King Louis do for you today, my humblest, kindest, and most faithfully solvent of servants?”

I wondered for the hundredth time exactly what Louis had been before he’d sunk to this, and made a note to check when it was never o’clock and nothing was pressing in my life.

“Need help finding a gal, Louis,” I said.

“Ah, do we not all need that, my young piou-piou?”

“Well, I do,” I said, and slid the picture of Moriah, Yankee’s kid, across the table.

I wasn’t looking at the kid now. I was looking at Louis, at how he’d react.

His eyes got big, mouth opened just a bit. It was fast, less than a second. But he knew too late he’d given himself away. He looked at me to see if I’d seen.

I had. He knew it.

“Guess it’s not gonna help if I say I never saw her before, huh?” His voice had dropped its flamboyance. Now it was a rummy’s hoarse semi-croak with a hint of some city’s accent behind it.

“Louis, I’m looking for her. You give me something, I can help you out.”

“I got nothing for ya,” he said, and started to turn away.

“Bottle of scotch says you do.”

He stopped turning. Still looking away.

“And a vodka, if that’s what you’re into these days, Louis.”

“I’m into keeping my balls attached to the rest of me.”

“A hundred bucks cash says you can help those out, too. C’mon, Louis. You’ve helped me out before, and no one’s come after you, right?”

“You never saw anything like the crowd this girl’s running with, kid. You just think about me, they just might bury me in a dozen easy-carry boxes.”

“She’s out with capes, then? Minders? Don’t worry, I can handle them. Three bottles of booze, and a hundred bucks. Make your life worth living for a whole week. Whaddya say, Louis? Come on.”

He turned to face me. “If the kids kill me for this, kid,” he said, “I’m gonna haunt you.”

Still with my eyes locked on his, I gently slid the four-folded c-note on the bar across to him and held up my hand to the bartender. “You won’t get killed, Louis. But when you do kak off, look up my uncle Dominic and tell ’im I sent you.”

The sun was setting and I was in the worst part of town.Hopefully, Louis hadn’t steered me wrong. Tired, crumbling buildings and people lined the streets, and the shadows were getting longer with the aging afternoon.

In every city in the world, there’s a whole sub-class of folks who will sleep all day, start waking up around dinnertime, and then start causing trouble. They’ve had different names in different places and times. But in the end, they’re all the same: folks who don’t fit, can’t find a place or make a place for themselves and instead decide to take the things from others who have. The life is awful and pathetic, and only gets romanticized by those who see it from the outside and write episodes on streaming series and Hallmark movies.

Then there’s the kids, and they’re the worst.

A thief or junkie can’t see a way out. A hitman or someone connected still has a code they follow—a twisted one, a code nonetheless. The kids are different. The kids usually are raised in a decent place, with a warm bed every night, food in the fridge, family vacations in the summer and college in their futures.

And they grow up seeing the life on TV and wish they could do that instead.

Because TV.

Whatever.

So they go downtown, hang out with each other, and try to pretend there’s such a thing as a “cool” homeless person. That the street’s a magical wonderland where they’ll meet a ragged urban wizard that’ll transport them to where thieves only steal to give to the poor, hookers have hearts of gold, and unicorns prance through parking lots singing showtunes and farting rainbows.

Yeah. I know. Most figure it out, go home and stay there. Some get hooked. Some die. And some live double lives, pretending they’re kingpins of something, doing bad stuff or getting others to do it for them. They all think they’re badasses until a bigger fish chews them up, swallows the meat and spits out the bones, sending them back to mommy and daddy and their trust funds with their tails between their legs.

Things can get worse, though, with kids of capes.

I left the bar. King Louis was holding court with a whole new group of friends, three bottles of overpriced booze in his jacket and my hundo-bill buying the first round for the house.

All paid with about a half-hour’s worth of Mr. Yankee’s dime. Not bad. King Louis had told me who and where, and now it was time to go to my car and check it out.

“Sean Capri!” the voice commanded me from behind.

…Interesting.

I turned around. Yep, kids.

I knew there’d be a kid behind me. I also knew there’d be another, maybe two in front of me after I turned back. I waited for a second or so. After all, I’d seen the same shows on TV and Youtube they had. So why not?

The kid behind me was a little older, maybe late teens. She had the kid’s look; instead of actually dirty, her bluejeans had been stylishly slashed with a razor. Her dark, long hair had been washed, combed and swept over her shoulder in a ponytail that morning, no clumps of dirt, trash or feces collecting in it. Her jeans matched an uptown-bought jean jacket, topped off with a white, boy-band-de-jour t-shirt that’d been pre-stained with rubbed-in dirt.

“Can I help you?” I asked. I was holding out my left hand, palm open. The universal venture of friendship, done to distract little kiddo in front of me so I could let my right hand drift down to the piece in my belt.

Just in case.

“You’re asking questions about my friend,” she said, eyes frowning under dark eyebrows.

I heard the steps behind me; peripheral vision told me some, but not all. Turning to look had gotten me sucker punched before, so I wasn’t gonna do that now. I could see that the other two I was expecting had formed up. One black, one white, both a good head shorter than me.

They were kids, but I didn’t know if they were cape-kids.

“Maybe. Who’s your friend?”

“Shut the fuck up, dickhead,” said a boy’s voice behind me. A boy trying to sound tough and failing.

Now I turned, letting my hand rest on the piece so they could see it.

And I could see them. White boy was real easy to spot; his family’d been in all the papers, magazines, and newsfeeds for the last couple of years. “You got a problem, Mister Pride? Your mom and dad know where you are right now?”

Leon Pride, all of fifteen years old, stepped back just a hair. His force fields weren’t going to do much to me, and he knew it.

The black kid looked at Leon, disgusted. Then he looked at me, gave me his best angry face and held up his right hand, which burst into flame.

“Back off, loser!” he tried to snarl. “Or else you’ll see what happens to nosy people! You got me?”

I got him. I smiled. “How about you, kid? Who’s your mom? Ms. Heatwave? She gonna be upset you’re threatening citizens with no record?”

His eyes got big. His turn to step back.

Stupid me forgot the girl.

The smack in the back of my head left me more surprised than hurt. I thought I was safe with a dozen feet between me and her.

I kind of was. She was a kid, maybe thirteen, if that, so she couldn’t hit hard at all. But she was fast. I wasn’t up on all the capes; there were at least a half-dozen speedsters in our city alone. Who had time to have a real life and keep track of their kids, too?

Suddenly I was getting hit a half-dozen places every second. She made me glad I wore a cup and a few other pieces. Fortunately her hits were more like swats from a newspaper than actual blows.

I was covering my face as she rained down her stupid little swats, doing what her mommy or daddy or the trainer they paid for had drilled into her, putting more into her than my dad had ever done for me.

It took three seconds and about twenty hits before I marked her pattern: arm-arm-leg-leg-gut-groin, repeat.

I pulled out my pistol, safety on. Just held it in the air, knowing where she was gonna be and just where it was gonna do the most good for me.

She screamed in pain as the side of her speeding head connected with the piece’s cold plasteel. She crumpled to the floor, holding the side of her head and crying like…like a little…

“Stop being such a little bitch, whycantcha?” he slurred, standing over me while the drool escaped the corner of his lips and holding the hot dog that was supposed to be my dinner. I’d asked for mustard. Just six fucking years old. I didn’t know I was being bad…

I breathed deep, the memory passing through me. I looked up from her and saw the boys, both wanting to help but unsure.

Leon looked at fire kid, breathed deep and held up his hands, palms out.

I stepped forward, and my foot bumped into something that wasn’t there. Little Leon Pride had put a bubble over his friend to keep me from hurting her again.

Then fire kid got mad, screamed, held up both hands, lit ‘em up and ran at me.

I almost laughed. If this kid was gonna hurt me, it’d only be by accident.

But accidents happen. A kid wild-swinging a hatchet could still do some serious damage with a lucky hit. Still, I didn’t want to take the safety off. Not on a kid, no matter how stupid.

I pointed it, hoping to scare him off when the blast from behind me knocked him on his back, the whoosh drowning out the girl’s whimpers of pain.

I had just enough time to see that when the same gust blew me through the air and whammed me into Leon’s forcefield, a solid pane of unbreakable psychic plexiglass. The world went sideways, then faded to black.

I don’t know how long I was out. When I came to, I was lying on a couch, looking at the poster of the American Dream. She looked different, wearing sweats and slippers instead of her tights. Her wavy hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

And she wasn’t smiling. She had a straight face.

I blinked. Her face—had it moved?

I sat up. The inside of my head screamed.

I didn’t care. I was looking at the poster.

Except—it wasn’t a poster.

It was her.

The woman, the heroine I’d seen every day as a kid, and went to bed hoping to dream about at night.

American Dream.

Older. A bit older. She had lines on her face, lines I hadn’t seen before when she’d popped up recently in the tabloids.

But it was her.

“Are-are you?”

She put one hand on her hip, sighed and brushed a stray hair out of her face. “I’m Anna Sanderson, Rick’s ex-wife and Moriah’s mother, yes. You’re Sean Capri?”

“I— When I got knocked out, I was. Now I think I’m dreaming.”

“I may be the Dream, Mr. Capri, but you’re not dreaming. We need to talk.”

“You knocked me into Leon’s forcefield?”

“I’m out of practice. Sorry.”

“S’fine. but I’m not used to my clients knocking me flat while I’m on the clock.”

She closed her eyes, gave a smile, angled her head and shook it once as she turned and headed to her kitchen. “First, Mr. Capri, I’m not your client. My ex-husband is. Next, you— By the way, coffee?”

“Please. But aren’t you a Mormon?”

“A Jack Mormon. I smoke, too, while I’m drinking my daily Long Island Iced Tea. I hope that doesn’t scandalize you?”

“Very little does anymore. About blowing me off my feet when I was about to find your daughter?”

“My daughter Moriah is in a spot right now, but I think you’ll have little trouble picking up where you left off. I did that to help you, Mr. Capri. My dear friend Judy’s going to be mad enough at you for bonking her daughter on the head with a pistol loaded with Super Stoppers, and I can’t think of what Kenisha ‘Ms. Heatwave’ would do if a white man did the same to her precious Xavier.”

“They kind of started it. The girl threw the first punch.”

“I know. She threw the first twenty or thirty. And Xavier had a couple of lit firebrands he was gonna smack you in the head with. But d’you really think that matters to a parent when it’s their firstborn? Cream and sugar?”

“No, black. Extra caffeine.”

“Great minds think alike. Here you go. And four Aspirin to chase it down.”

I took them. Drank coffee, swallowed pills. She took a seat opposite me, and I tried not to blink too hard. I was being served coffee by my biggest kiddie-crush. Waking life could certainly be worse.

“Thanks, by the way. But I didn’t need the help,” I said. “I had it under control.”

“You were about to get second, maybe third-degree burns. And maybe on the shitlist of two or three very dysfunctional super parents. Yes, you needed help. Lucky for you, I felt like a flight to clear my head, and my ex told me about you. What have you found so far?”

“Well, then, thank you. Who needs more enemies? But since you’re not my client, I can’t share information with you.”

“What if I paid you twice what he’s paying you?”

I paused. This day was getting too good to be true, and faster than a jackrabbit with a belly full of coffee.

“I’d say I’d just about won the lottery.”

“You won’t get in trouble?”

“It’s not like there’s a review board for sleazy P.I.s.”

“Fine. All I want is this: when you find her? I want you to tell me before you tell my ex-husband. Can you do that?”

“It’s an offbeat way to do things, but I can play it fine so long as the money’s good.”

She pulled out her phone. Her sweatshirt pulled just a bit tighter across her chest, and I felt that little tiny warble inside that I used to feel when I saw her pin-up as a kid.

“Do you do Venmo?” she asked, looking up at me with a straight face.

I left her building through the back door. She’d had someone pick up my car—literally or figuratively? I dunno. You never knew with capes—from the bar and drop it off a block or so down the street from her place. “You sure it’s not gonna get ripped off?” I asked.“This isn’t that kind of neighborhood, Mr. Capri. This building alone has over three dozen members of the superpowered community, plus sidekicks. A car thief wouldn’t get ten feet down the road before he’d get nabbed by a bored ten-year-old cape who was hoping to get his own Netflix series.”

Good point. My car was right where she’d said it would be: under a billboard for some kind of cologne, Yankee giving his aw-shucks smile with a bottle of the stuff behind him. Standard in the Superhero game: if you didn’t have a government sponsor or a billionaire sugar-daddy paying your bills, your rent hadda come from somewhere. I slid into my car, glad that the retainer from the Yankee / Mr. Sanderson was good, and paid for gas.

Couldn’t help smiling as I drove away from the gas station. I’d had a good day so far. Bank account was filling up, and my kiddie-crush’d saved me from the most inept bad guys I’d likely ever face in my career.

So why was the little man in my chest telling me something was wrong?

I pulled out my cell and called a friend down at the copshop who owed me big. He waffled at first, but I reminded him how well his blind date with my cousin had gone. He caved and ran the info of the kiddie-capes I’d just run afoul of.

The fire-kid was named Xavier Ekwende Ochoho. Dad was a norm, Mom was Ms. Heatwave. Leon, everyone knew, but the speedy girl was named Lucy Mercuria Danson, daughter of a norm dad and Edie Danson, aka the Red Streak.

All three had records of arrest for mischief, but no convictions. All busted at the same hangout for stupid kid stuff, like flying over private property.

My quarry, Moriah, was a “known associate,” but had never been nabbed, no powers registered. Sign of a good girl who’d never gotten into that level of trouble.

I asked who their lawyers had been. All got handled by the same firm: Willard, Dang and DeMarco. The only firm in town that dealt exclusively with capes and their kids, and charged a fee that would make the bill for sailing a battleship look like my late Uncle’s stipend for doing a wedding.

And their cases had been negotiated down from vandalism to mischief by the honorable Mr. Guy Willard, Esquire, former superpowered associate of one Rick Sanderson, aka The Yankee.

Willard had also represented Yankee in his divorce from my kiddie-crush up on the thirty-fourth floor, gotten him the sweetest deal ever seen for a cape of his caliber. The Dream’s modeling career had gotten Rick a nice child support settlement from her, which supplemented his government salary really nicely.

I chatted with my contact a little more, and had him send the files to my phone. I’d check them out more fully later, but right now, I was going to do something very, very stupid.

I was going to look for those kids.

The Empty Cowl wasn’t exactly a club—more a hangout place for teens with powers. To get through the door, you had to be powered, under eighteen, or a guest of the same.

Me, I didn’t fit any of those bills. And the doorman was a jacked-up minder who would know any trick in advance I could pull on him to get in.

I didn’t pull a trick. I walked up and thought of a great, big, c-note. He held out his hand, I plunked in the piece of paper I was making every half-hour on this job, and thought about giving him two more if he could tell me where to find my three amigos. Or ideally…

“They’re in the Yellow room,” he said, smiling a bright set of teeth under his dark eyemask. “They ain’t quite ready for red yet, if ya knowhatImean.”

Yeah, I knew. I smiled and walked in.

After the bright sun outside, the Cowl’s inside was dark and cool as a cave. I’d never been here, but King Louis had described it to me from a panhandling attempt: wooden plank walls, two pool tables, a bar that only served pop and chips, and a dance floor that only got used after ten on Saturday night. It cost a fair bit to get in, but kids of capes usually had money. And when they had a few hours to kill, they’d go to a place like the Cowl, where fanboys and paparazzi knew better than to try and get a relic of the kids’ folks or snap a compromising picture.

It took a second for my eyes to adjust. When they did, what I saw was a little too familiar for me to let go:

A kid was wearing a wife-beater shirt, sporting a pencil-thin line of a beard and mustache. He was standing with three slightly shorter and similarly dressed toadies, all staring down at a kid with blue jeans, a red golf shirt and tousled red hair and freckles. Freckles was holding a plastic glass of pop, staring into the cup as if willing its contents to jump out and save him. The pencil-stache and his friends were laughing, speaking to each other in Spanish, then laughing more as their leader said something they knew they were supposed to think was funny.

Freckles had a few friends at another table who kept looking over at him and over to the bartender, a guy about ten years older than me who looked more nervous than Freckles did.

Pencil-stache had just smacked Freckles in the back of the head, emphasizing the punchline of his latest joke.

Fine. Showtime.

“Hey,” I said.

They turned. Freckle’s head stayed still, but his eyes flicked up at me.

“Well, well, well! Look what the dog dragged in, eh, guys?” said the ‘stache, sauntering up to me.

They never changed. Grade school, high school, offices, all the same. They had different faces, names, clothes, jobs—but they were all bullies who got their jollies beating on the weak.

“Cut your bullshit, kid,” I said. “You can play with your little victim later. I’m looking for a girl.”

“I bet chu are, joto,” he said, putting enough emphasis on the last word I could tell he’d gotten it off the internet. “You need someone to play Barbies with, hah?”

“Que te jodan, Gilipollas?” I said. “You done waving your dick in my face now? Either work with me and make some money, or I can fuck up that pretty face you spent so much time on this morning.”

He brought his nose an inch from mine. His friends quietly surrounded me.

“You know who I am, culero?” he said, his head bobbing and his hands making wild gestures. “You know who my uncles are, huh? Pinche gringo mamon?”

He raised his hand beside me, about half a foot from my right cheek. It burst into flame.

I kept my face straight. “Last little tonto de culo who tried that with me, ended up kissing asphalt. Last cha—”

I didn’t finish the sentence.

I rammed my forehead into his face. His nose crunched with the sound of Saturday morning breakfast cereal getting chewed on.

He screamed, and he and the other bullies froze.

Then they flickered, and disappeared.

Pops over at the counter stopped looking nervous and smiled. “Nice work,” he said, putting down the glass.

“Nice images,” I said. “I felt his nose. You do this all the time?”

“Only to folks that Smoke, my bouncer at the door, telegraphs to me. I do this to see if you’re the kind of fella I wanna help.”

I looked. Freckles and the other kids had vanished, too. Nice. My first real fight with a bunch of illusions.

“Well,” I said, smiling, hoping there wasn’t going to be any more tricks, “you know where I can find this gal?” I flipped open Moriah’s pic from my pocket.

His eyes went wide.

The basement rooms were a place where kids of supers could practice their powers, but not on each other. What looked like a rickety, wooden-walled shack of a club gave way to a high-tech-looking set of walls, doors and panels as you went down the stairs.

Green room was the easy level. Slow-moving bots fired nerf bullets. Mirrors the bartender said Moriah’s friends had been here, but left. I passed that door and walked down one more flight and to the end of the hall, to the door painted yellow.

I turned the knob, and the door opened easily. That should have been my first red flag.

The room was empty inside, the size of a basketball court with holo lights above and stark, white walls on four sides.

“Hello?” I said, wondering if this was the real room, or another trick.

The door shut behind me.

The lights flickered.

Now I was in a cramped hotel room, the kind you went to when the alleyway had lost its romantic appeal. A rumpled bed behind me, and on the wall…

That poster.

The American Dream…she had that smile, those gloves, the cape, the tight blue spandex across her chest, the blond hair, frozen into waves in the non-existent breeze…

And the girl…Moriah was in the room, at the window. The room was fake. I wasn’t sure if she was, but—

“Moriah?” I asked.

She turned. In the fake shadow of the hologram, she was real, sharper and more rendered than a hologram could be. A gal in her teens, with jeans, sweater, headband, all the kind of thing a high school girl would’ve been wearing.

What the—

She looked at me, fearfully. “Mister Capri, you’ve got to get out of here, now!” she said, keeping her distance.

“First, I’m calling your Mom, then your—”“NO! No, you can’t! If you do, then you’re gonna—”

She was interrupted by the door swinging open behind me.

It was the Dream.

American Dream.

She was real, young again, beautiful, heavy makeup hiding the lines on her face, in her full spandex and red leather gloves. Only things different were the red longcoat and the pistol on her belt.

Pistol?Stay calm.

“Hello, Dream. Looks like I found—”

“What the HELL are you doing in a sleazy hotel room with my daughter, you low-life PERVERT!” she roared. I don’t think I’d ever heard the Dream get that loud since her last movie, back in the early 2000s…

Oh, no…

She flung back her longcoat like a gunslinger in a Clint Eastwood western. Her mouth became a sneer from a James Bond villain. She drew her gun like Han Solo when he shot first. She paused for just a second, long enough for me to see she had a .450 Super-stopper in her hand, loaded with bullets that packed enough punch to make her ex-husband stop in his tracks and ask for a band-aid.

“Mrs…Miss…Mizz Sanderson, please…” I said, and lunged. Dream was a flyer and a breath-blaster, not a speedster or a brawn. I was counting on surprising her and then wrestling the gun from her hands.

I miscounted. “Perfect,” she whispered while I was in midair, and pulled the trigger.

The blast hit me in the chest as her voice echoed that one word in my ear over and over. I closed my eyes and all I could see was the poster, blond hair waving in the fake breeze, smile whitened by Photoshop touch-ups, and her airbrush-enhanced figure daring me to fantasize about holding it in my arms. As all that was in me began ebbing away, I thought about how my last day had begun …

And that was because young Moriah had flown in front of me, taking the bullet in her flat, perfect torso. Her body was tough, but frail against the monomolecular tip of a Super-stopper shell. The hit slammed her against me with the force of a brick wall mounted on a freight train, and I felt things inside me crack and snap like twigs and branches I’d break under my feet as a little boy during autumn walks to and from school.

I couldn’t breathe, gulp after gulp of air leaving and refusing to come back. The human body wasn’t built to take something dense as a foot of solid lead being pushed by the force of a pinhead-sized nuclear explosion.

The world spun and started to blot out, little black dots getting bigger and bigger. I heard a woman screaming, and then a man yelling over her. Then it was quiet, and then it was dark.

The hospital bed was starched white and felt it. I tried to move, but it hurt. My chest felt like it had a barrel strapped tight around it.

And I had to piss.

I tried to speak, but my voice croaked. The sun outside hurt my head. I tried getting up, but wires of white-hot pain shot through my leg, into my junk and up inside me.

Shit. I looked over and saw a bag of clear yellow liquid among the many bags on stands with tubes snaking out of them and disappearing under the covers, presumably plugged into my body at random and painful points of entry.

Shit. Again. Nothing else in the room but a TV in the ceiling and a chair on the floor.

I breathed, wishing I at least had a clicker to go with the TV in the room so I could pass the time. Every breath made my chest creak and my body shiver with little, sharp shards of exquisite agony.

I heard a beep in the distance, and I felt drowsy again and went to sleep.

When I woke, it was dark outside, and my room was dimly lit. I could hear the occasional car engine or horn.

My door opened, and Moriah rolled through the doorway in a wheelchair.

Her dad, The Yankee, was pushing her.

“Mister Capri!” She smiled. “I’m glad you’re awake!”

“Hullo,” I croaked.

“You’re quite the soldier, Sean,” said Yankee. “Glad you were there for us.”

“What…what happened?”

Yankee sat down, looked at his daughter, then at me.

“It’s complicated, Sean. My ex-wife is… I knew she wasn’t exactly well. But things had gotten worse lately. She wanted to…” He searched for the words. His career for nearly thirty years as a fighter hadn’t prepared him to say the woman he still loved had gone over to the bad guys.

Moriah saved him the trouble. “She was near broke after this divorce, Mister Capri. Well, broke for her, anyway. She wanted to be rich again, and famous, too. She wanted to stage a kidnapping and rescue me. I wasn’t thrilled about it, and when I found out she was getting super-stoppers? I knew that wouldn’t be good. So I ran. My friends tried to hide me, but you know how that went.”

“Nah…naht gud.”

“True,” Moriah said. “Good news is, I’ll be walking in a week, Mister Capri! Between the doctors here at Saint Cosmas and Dad’s friend— Have you ever heard of the Night Nurse? She heals people, in bursts. She said you’ll be done in two weeks.”

Yankee took over. “You did a decent job of finding Moriah, Sean, despite her best efforts. And you had the foresight to wear a vest that basically saved your innards and kept them from being crushed when Moriah slammed into you.”

“Sun Labs,” I croaked. “Friends, there.”

“Well, you have friends here, too, Sean. I hope you don’t mind, but I gave you a substantial bonus for your work. Dream’s done, thanks to you. Her bodycam footage…she’d planned to sell it to the tabloids, showing her ‘saving’ Moriah. You leaping to stop her, it’s all over the news.”

I smiled, but I was tired. It must have showed on my face. Rick and Moriah looked at each other, and Rick got up to leave.

“If you ever get tired of the P.I. life, Sean, I hope you come see me. I’ve always got a place on my staff for a guy with your kind of moxie. Think about it?”

I nodded, just a bit. As I started to drift off, I saw him wheel Moriah closer. She kissed me on the cheek somehow and then they left.

I looked out the window as sleep came again. Later, after they gave me a clicker and I watched TV, I saw how the Dream had been renamed the Nightmare in the popular media. How she’d seized on me as her patsy when she found out I’d been hired by her hated ex, and how the whole thing blew up in her face. Smoke and Mirror had called up Yankee when Dream had followed me downstairs with her pistol. Yankee’d been nearby already, and he’d barged into the “hotel room,” saved me and Moriah and got us admitted to St. Cosmas, the hospital that specialized in helping capes.

Now, the Dream was the American Nightmare, and she was locked up awaiting trial on Vault Island. I looked out the window and into the darkness, the city lights and the slow-moving headlights looking small but comforting in their normalcy and purpose. It looked like I was going to be working for Yankee after all, and the Dream in my heart had been shattered. I’d come a long way since I was a little, lonely boy out on the bad side of town, but not as far the Dream and the Yankee were from who they’d been then to who they were to me today.

THE END

Also From Raconteur Press

Ghosts of Malta

Knights of Malta

Saints of Malta

Falcons of Malta

Space Cowboys

Space Cowboys 2: Electric Rodeo

Space Cowboys 3: Return of the Bookaroo

Space Cowboys 404: Cow Not Found

Space Marines

Space Marines 2

PinUp Noir

PinUp Noir 2

Your Honor, I Can Explain…

You See, What Happened Was…

He Was Dead When I Got There…

All Will Burn

All Will Burn: Fierce Love

Moggies in Space

Moggies Back in Space

Full Steam Ahead

Giant! Freakin’! Robots!

Call To Action

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Table of Contents

- Introduction
- 1. You Belong to the City
- 2. Stars in Her Eyes
- 3. The Gray Goose Diamond Caper
- 4. Saving Face
- 5. Monica on My Mind
- 6. The Case of the Taken Tome

- 7. Vicar’s Casefiles: Blond Bomb/$hell Scripting

- 8. Lonely Road
- 9. More Deadly Than
- 10. Up, Up, And RunAway!
- Also From Raconteur Press
- Call To Action