by Rob Rogers
“The school fundraisers,” Costas Kalodimos said, “I could put him in a room with a young boy, make it look bad, run him out of town.”
The Robber Baron had smiled at their enthusiasm and shaken his head. Instead, he had looked deeper into the background of D.A. Warren Sims and found a college sweetheart, the one who got away. Her name was Hope. She was still single, a human resources manager in Charlotte, North Carolina, who had reached a plateau at her company and had begun sending out résumés. And so the Robber Baron found her a job in Devil’s Cape—a good one, but not so good as to be unbelievable. He’d never tried to corrupt her. He never even met her. All he did was reach out from the shadows, get her a job that she was well-qualified for, and make sure that she was invited to one of the same parties as Warren Sims. That was all it took.
Six months after the party, Sims married his old sweetheart, marveling at the good fortune that had brought her back into his life. Three months after that, they were expecting their first child. And then the Robber Baron had his lever.
* * * * *
July, three years ago
The Robber Baron laid it out for Warren Sims one warm July evening. Sims was walking out of the courthouse to his car. The air outside Government Center was thick with humidity, and the district attorney’s shirt, crisp and white that morning, was now wrinkled. His gray blazer was tossed over one shoulder, his tie was loose, and perspiration showed under his arms. He was walking briskly, probably intent on getting home to his pregnant wife.
He took note of the limousine parked next to his own car, a dark-blue Chrysler, but brushed past it, concentrating on pulling his keys out a pants pocket and no doubt looking forward to getting the air conditioner running.
The Robber Baron rolled down the tinted window beside his seat and Sims turned with a start. His eyes narrowed when he recognized the other man’s scarlet mask, but if he felt any fear, he didn’t show it. “Baron,” he said, turning to face the other car fully and dropping his keys back into his pocket, “why don’t you take that mask off and face me like a grown-up?”
The Robber Baron smiled. He reached a gloved hand up as though to pull off the mask, but instead simply scratched at the corner of his eye. “I prefer my air of mystery,” he said. He dropped his hand back down, then opened the car door and stepped out, pulling a shiny brass cane with him. He swept his cape across his back and stood, leaning slightly on the cane, shutting the door firmly. Behind him, the window he had rolled down raised back up as the chauffer thumbed the button. “You don’t have much tolerance for mystery, do you, Mr. Sims?”
Sims shrugged, his neck muscles tense. “I don’t have much tolerance for crime,” he said. “What is it you want?”
The Robber Baron feigned surprise. “Why, it’s a lovely evening,” he said. “The grackles are darting to and fro, the sunset is fusing streaks of rose and orange and purple into a collage, and I believe I can smell someone grilling peppers and pork sausages nearby.” He inhaled deeply. “I thought we could take a walk together.”
Sims was obviously in no mood for a stroll, but he’d had few opportunities to meet the Robber Baron face to face. He sighed, then nodded once. He unlocked his car door, tossed the blazer inside, and swung the door shut.
A tall Hispanic woman in a floral dress, a briefcase in her hand, stopped short when she spotted them. Her heels clicked on the sidewalk.
The Robber Baron swept off his hat and bowed to her. “Good evening,” he said.
She smiled and waved back, blushing. “Good evening, Mr. Baron,” she said. She stepped quickly out of the way and headed down the street. They soon heard her on her cell phone. “Guess who I just saw,” she said. “No, guess . . .”
Sims snorted.
At first, the two men didn’t speak as they walked down North Sanderson Street toward the heart of Government Center. The buildings on North Sanderson Street dated nearly to the city’s founding. Granite slabs fronted the buildings, which were decorated here and there with different colors of marble. Many of the materials used to decorate the city, particularly in the first few decades after its founding, were stolen from Spanish, French, Dutch, and British merchant ships. The results sometimes seemed haphazard since the pirates founding the city made do with what fortune and theft brought them. For example, half of the old mercantile building was decorated with pink marble, the other half with white. And the rooftop of the Devil’s Cape Public Library featured half a dozen angel statues flanked by a pair of gargoyles. But the older streets carried a certain charm.
Devil’s Cape’s Castelo Branco City Courthouse featured a spectacular stained glass window depicting the Great Flood. It had been commissioned for a cathedral in St. John’s, Antigua, but the masked pirate St. Diable had taken it as part of the plunder seized from a British ship he raided in 1733. There had been talk over the years of returning it to Antigua, but nothing ever came of it, and the finely detailed design was featured on many postcards of the city. That evening, the window glimmered with the orange light of the sunset that the Robber Baron had praised.
“What do you want, Baron?” Sims asked again. The sidewalk was crowded with office workers heading home for the night or moving toward one of the dozens of bars at the edge of Government Center. The prosecutor and the crime lord were going against the flow.
The Robber Baron took a few more steps, leaning slightly on his brass cane as he walked. People turned and gaped at him as they drew near. Several made a point of giving him a wide berth, yet others nodded to him in respect. A police officer walking by tipped his hat, then noticed Sims and turned quickly in the other direction. “Most people seem to like me better than you do,” the Robber Baron said, coming to a stop.
Sims shook his head, reaching up and wiping sweat away from his eyes. “They’re afraid of you,” he said. “You and your mask.”
The Robber Baron smiled. He squinted toward the sunset and raised the head of his cane until it sparkled in the dying sunlight. “You have a thing against masks,” he said.
Sims started walking again. “No one has any business hiding his identity,” he said.
The Robber Baron began walking again, his cane clicking against the sidewalk. “The courts disagree, don’t they?” he asked. “Take the precedent set in City of Miami v. Trainwreck.” He stopped talking for a moment as though surprised, touching the tip of his beard with his knuckles. “Why, that was your case, wasn’t it? And you lost?”
The district attorney snorted. “So you’ve read up on me,” he said. “That’s fine. I’ve done the same on you. You’ve been much subtler than the Hangman was. The details of your life and your crimes are much better hidden. But I’ll get you anyway.” They walked under a series of buildings decorated with gargoyles, their claws and wings outstretched, their mouths gaping. “I’ll send you to jail, mask or no mask.”
The Robber Baron nodded as though in agreement. “As I said, you do not like me much.”
“No.”
“And this walk is not going to make you like me any more.”
“Probably not.”
“But we will come to an agreement tonight,” the Robber Baron said.
Sims stopped. The shadow of a gargoyle stretched across him, the edge of one of its wings striping his face. “I doubt that,” he said. “Are you going to threaten me now?” he asked. “Is that what this is about? If I don’t back off, you’ll have me killed?”
“No,” the Robber Baron said simply. He reached his hand into a velvet pocket in his waistcoat. He brought up a small device not much larger than his palm. It had a video screen—the image of the glowing gadget incongruous against his silk glove and the rest of his antique finery. “I’m not here to threaten you,” he continued. He held up the device, tilting the screen so that Sims could see it. “I’m here to threaten her.”
Sims exhaled softly then, almost a sigh, and his shoulders slumped. He reached lethargically for the object and stared at the screen. He could see his wife in their house. She was
in the room they were preparing for the baby, standing on one of their dining room chairs, patiently spreading a wallpaper border with little ducks on it across the top edge of the wall. As he watched her spread glue across the back of the border with a plastic spatula, he noticed a tiny red dot on the screen. It began on her temple, then slowly made its way down her chest, finally settling on her belly, right about where their child was growing. At first he thought it was something being displayed on the screen, something there to intimidate him further, as though he needed that. But then he saw her bend down and brush at her belly as though swatting a bug. The light moved away then, and she returned to the wallpaper, but the light quickly returned, running down the side of her face again, and finally settling once more on her belly. He knew then that the light was a laser scope. There was a gun trained on her.
The Robber Baron cleared his throat, breaking the silence apologetically. “This is something called real-time streaming video, I’m told,” he said. “Any delay between what you see on the screen and reality is so slight as to be meaningless.” He took the device back and dropped it back into his pocket. “We can achieve this”—he broke off, searching for the right words—“sense of intimacy at any time.
District Attorney Warren Sims stared at a crack in the sidewalk. A tuft of grass was breaking through. He had stopped sweating. “All right,” he said, his voice cracking as though his throat were dry. “I’ll quit.”
The Robber Baron chuckled. “Oh, no,” he said, clapping Sims on the shoulder as though they were old friends. “That’s the last thing in the world I want.” He tapped his cane on the sidewalk. “Your predecessor never saw a bribe he didn’t take. He was a fawning sycophant. Useful, of course. But there were no teeth there. Everyone assumed, more or less correctly, that he was a marionette and I held the strings. You, on the other hand . . .” He chuckled again. “You hate me. You made it clear when you were elected that you were gunning for me and you have the credibility of a zealot. When you do my bidding, no one will suspect it and you will be infinitely more useful to me because of it.”
Sims shook his head. He looked smaller, as though he’d lost weight and grown stooped and old all in the space of a few heartbeats. “I’d rather die,” he said.
“Oh, no,” the Robber Baron said. “No, you won’t be doing that. Because if you kill yourself to escape me, I’ll kill her anyway. Horribly, of course, to make the point to anyone else who finds himself in your situation.” He shook his head. “If you leave town, I’ll find you and kill her. If you kill yourself, I’ll kill her. If you defy me, I’ll kill her. And your child, too, once it’s born. The only possible option you have is to do whatever I say, when I say it.” He patted Sims on the shoulder. “I’ll give you small victories, Warren,” he said. “You’ll still triumph from time to time.” A bus chugged by, black exhaust billowing out. The sun sank finally behind the horizon. “It won’t all be terrible,” the Robber Baron concluded.
But it was terrible, of course. Warren Sims was free to pursue anyone unaffiliated with the Robber Baron. In fact, the Robber Baron made the convictions of those who opposed him nearly a foregone conclusion. But Sims was dead inside. Even the scent of his baby daughter’s hair seemed tinged with ashes. Every moment with his new family was shrouded by his fear of what the Robber Baron could do to them. He had no more free will.
* * * * *
Five hours ago
So when the Storm Raiders, the heroes of Vanguard City, contacted the district attorney’s office to inform Warren Sims of their plan to come to Devil’s Cape to arrest a long-forgotten band of carnival freaks reported to have joined the Robber Baron’s employ, it took the highly respected, reputedly incorruptible Sims less than five minutes to get the details to the Robber Baron. If it was a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life, it wasn’t the first.
Police in Montevideo are still searching for clues in the gruesome deaths of an American businessman and his entourage. “It was the worst thing I ever saw,” said a police source who refused to be named. “The American was bitten to death by some kind of wild animal. One of his bodyguards was burned to death, a second had a crushed skull, and his secretary was strangled.” Three months have passed since . . .
— The Associated Press, Montevideo, late January, twenty-one years ago
Chapter Thirteen
Devil’s Cape, Louisiana
Three hours ago
Lodged amid a parched concrete landscape of warehouses and industrial buildings called Gray Flats, Butler’s Billiards had never been a draw for Devil’s Cape’s tourists. A neighborhood fixture since the late 1950s, the pool hall usually pulled in a small after-work crowd, which was quickly reduced to an anemic group of regulars by dinnertime. For the past week, though, even the regulars had been giving the place a wide berth. A new element had moved in.
“I am tiring of this place,” Errando Geringer said. He idly flicked cigarette ashes onto the green velvet of Butler’s newest pool table, watching as one hot orange ash faded to gray.
His companion, who was bent over his cue, preparing to sink the seven ball in a side pocket, raised his head and gave Geringer a dark look. “So leave,” he said flatly, standing so that his heavy paunch pressed against the side of the table. Hector Nelson Poteete didn’t look like much. He was only about five-foot-seven, his thin red hair turning to gray, his weight heavy around his stomach. But Geringer knew he could melt steel in his hands if he wanted to. He could burn Geringer into ashes without even stopping to set down the pool cue.
Geringer’s nose wrinkled. “This place stinks of piss and cigarettes.” He brushed a long lock of greasy brown hair out of his face. The fact that he was smoking himself didn’t seem to occur to him.
“So leave,” Poteete said again. The stick slammed into the cue ball, which slammed into the seven ball, which slammed into the pocket. But the cue ball rolled off to the wrong side of the table, and Poteete’s next shot would be much more difficult. He grunted and reached for the chalk.
Geringer dragged on his cigarette, exhaling through his nose. He opened his mouth, then closed it. “Hector—” he said.
Poteete walked to the other side of the table, bent to look at the layout of the balls. “Just spit it out,” he said. “Whatever it is, you’ve been dancing around it for an hour and a half and I’m sick of goddamn waiting. Spit it out.”
Geringer ground the cigarette out against the side of the pool table. The veneer smoldered and turned black. “Why’d you bring us here, Hector?”
Poteete looked around the room. The other people in the pool hall, even the bartender, shifted nervously under his gaze and looked away. The jukebox in the corner kicked into some country song, and the man standing by it jumped guiltily as Poteete’s eyes cut toward him.
“I don’t mean this place, Hector,” Geringer said quietly. “I mean Devil’s Cape.”
Poteete turned back to the pool table. He lined himself up for a bank shot, grunted, hit the cue ball, and shook his head in disappointment as it careened into the eleven and nothing went anywhere close to any of the pockets. “We’ve been a lot of places,” he said.
Geringer didn’t reach for his cue. He put his hands in his pockets and just stood there looking at Poteete. Tall, slender, and masculine, Geringer would have looked like he belonged on a magazine cover except that there was something missing in his gray eyes.
“What?” Poteete said.
Geringer tilted his head. “Please don’t blow me off,” he said. “You know this is different.”
Poteete and Geringer and the rest of the Cirque d’Obscurité had been a lot of places. After they were exposed in Vanguard City, they’d gone to Rio de Janeiro. Then Sao Paulo, Montevideo, and up and down South America. After that, there’d been the Caribbean. Then Africa for a time. Eastern Europe. Thailand and Malaysia. Perth for a few days before the Aussies had chased them off. They’d spent a while in Germany and Austria, where Geringer had been the only one to speak the langu
age. He’d liked that. They’d been back to America a few times, but never for long. And here they were in Devil’s Cape, just a few miles from Langdon Fork, where they’d been changed. And they were doing something that they’d never done before. They were growing roots.
Poteete sighed and blew smoke out of his mouth, although he didn’t have any cigarettes. “I expect a lot of questions out of Stecker,” he said. “But not out of you.” He set the pool cue down on the side of the table. “I bring you along because I know you won’t drag me down with a lot of unnecessary questions.”
They both knew this bullshit. He brought Geringer along because they were the only ones who could pass for normal.
Geringer shrugged. He picked up his own cue and walked around the table. He barely took the time to line up, but pulled off a double bank shot, sinking the fifteen ball into a corner pocket and lining himself up just right for a shot at the eleven ball. “Everyone’s wondering,” he said. “We run for more than twenty years and then we stop running and you don’t even talk about it with us?” He sent the eleven into one side pocket and the twelve into the other with a single shot. “Sasha’s got family not ten miles from here, but she doesn’t know what to do about it. Stecker’s—” he shrugged again. “You know him. Things he does, only reason we haven’t had more trouble over him is we move on so fast no one has a chance to take measures. And now we’re even on the TV.”
Poteete was looking at the table, his eyes unfocused. “I’m tired of running,” he said. A black waitress in a denim miniskirt and a low-cut, tight blue T-shirt that read Come break your balls at Butler’s Billiards walked by, carrying a beer to someone else, but Poteete snatched it off her tray. She started to say something but walked away quickly when she saw his expression. He watched her legs, then turned back to the pool table and sipped at the beer. “Moving around was a kind of insurance,” he said. “I think I’m getting us another kind of insurance.”
