by Jack Conner
He shifted her weight on his lap. “Next time, Angela, love. I’m currently tracking a notorious murderer.”
“You look like you’re enjoying a fan-dance.”
“I can’t do both?”
“Lynchie . . .” She twined a finger through his hair. With her other hand, she brought his hook to her lips and breathed on it. Her hot breath fogged the metal.
Aware of the affection she held for him ever since he started haunting the area, and a humanitarian, he had allowed her to visit him in her off-hours as he had been drifting on opiate clouds at Madam Wan’s. He recalled her lush flesh now, her moist lips, her rocking pelvis, nipples shiny with sweat, with rearing golden idols and the crashing of a gong in the background, and his resolve to wait for the artist weakened.
“Not tonight,” he said, his voice thick.
Too brusquely, he scooted her off his lap.
“What’d you do that for?” She glared at him. “It was her again, wasn’t it?” When he didn’t answer, she pressed, “You were dreaming about her again.”
He drained his thick beer, wiped his mouth, and pressed the heavy mug into Angela’s hands. “I’ll take another, dear, if you don’t mind.”
She glared at him a moment more, giving him the full force of her displeasure, then wheeled about and left. She barely glanced at him when she returned, and as he sipped -- with her watching out of the corner of her eye -- he realized she had done something to his drink. No matter. What she wanted was for him to make something of it. Better just to swallow whatever it was and hope it didn’t kill him.
Nonchalantly, he finished his sip and sat the beer down without glancing her way. She sniffed and stormed off.
“You have an amusing way with women.”
The voice, so near his ear, made Lynch start. He jerked about to see a man stooping over him. The fellow wore all black and where the light of the cabaret touched his face beneath his hat it revealed wasted, grayish flesh. Yellow-rimmed eyes stared out of it, and there was something less than wholesome about the way the man licked his rat-like teeth.
“Do I know you?” Lynch asked.
The man doffed his hat. “Who I am is unimportant, but my master . . . ” He gestured to the shadows of the room, to a far corner, where a dark figure sat in a booth. “He would like a word with you.”
“And who is he?”
The yellow-eyed man did not answer, and it was not necessary, for just then the man in the booth leaned forward to light a cigarette, and Lynch sucked in a breath. The man wore elegant eveningwear and top hat, as if he were some aristocrat from a different age. Light winked off the round spectacles that covered his eyes. The man smiled directly at Lynch and indicated the seat across from him.
Lynch never went anywhere in the Blight without protection, and a .22 pistol rested in his right pants pocket, but he couldn’t remember if it was loaded or not. Of course, if it came to it, there was always his hook.
“Very well,” he said, rising. “Let us meet.”
Chapter 2
Smoke curled up from the cigarette the gentleman smoked on a long-stemmed cigarette holder. Lynch had to consider the way he held it as somewhat effeminate, as were his clothes, which Lynch now saw were a shade of dark purple -- velvet? -- as was the band that went round his top hat. His glasses were shaded red. Behind them lurked unseen eyes in a handsome, pale face. Even without seeing them, Lynch could feel the force of the man’s personality.
Carrying his beer, Lynch plopped into the booth seat opposite him and slurped noisily. “Too bright in here for you?” he asked.
The artist -- for who else could it be? -- smiled. Slowly. “I find it useful when my enemies can’t see my eyes.”
Dramatic, aren’t we? “Am I your enemy?”
“You have been asking questions about me all over the district. No, don’t bother denying it. As you have been hunting me, so I have been hunting you. Oh, not deliberately, not as such. But there are mechanisms in place.”
“Meaning you pay people to tip you off if someone starts to pry.”
The gentleman touched his hat. “Even so.” He sat back, shrewd and silent, and as he did his face fell into shadow. Lynch could only see the vague red gleams where his eyes should be. Smoke drifted across them.
“Why are you killing people?” Lynch asked.
“I am killing no one. I have witnesses who will testify to my every movement during the times of the murders.”
“I’m sure.”
“So sad about those men. They left no trace in this world -- no medical examination records, not even a body.”
He was showing off. “Are you really that powerful?”
The artist waved the question away. “Their fates were tragic. As will be anyone who pries into their deaths.”
“That’s the second time today someone’s warned me off.”
“I find it easier to give people the choice whether or not to be my enemy. Most find it healthier not to be.”
Lynch sipped his beer. “I’ve put you in a spot, haven’t I?”
“How so?”
“I’ve asked a lot of people about you. Were I to disappear, suspicion would immediately be cast on you.”
“If it is a question of money . . . I know your family is not what it once was.”
Lynch stared at him, at the shape in the darkness. “What do you know about me?”
“I’ve had hours to gather information. I like to know who I’m up against. And it’s an interesting story. Lynchmort James. A man from a family of country gentry whose fortunes were in decline. He becomes an officer, joins the air force, but is not a pilot for more than a year when he’s shot down. A group of infantrymen lead him back from the warzone, but they are outnumbered, surrounded. The young pilot is forced to take up arms. Somehow they make it back, but a change has taken place . . . an alchemy. The young pilot is now afire with bloodlust. The smoke, the carnage, his dripping bayonet . . . He realizes his place is battle, down and dirty, not high above, lofty and missing the fun. So he joins the Ninth Regiment -- and the rest, as they say, is history. A warrior is born. A madman to some, a decorated hero to others. Until the fall, of course. A German bomb, disfigurement, capture, a mad escape. Is it true you gnawed off your own hand to break free? No, don’t tell me. Let me savor the mystery. But when you returned to your people, they did not accept you back. You could not fight, not without an eye, a hand, and you were consumed with fever besides. They sent you back home, a warrior without a war, and you sank into drunkenness and depravity. Some say there was a woman, but who knows? I only know that when you returned home your family was no more, you are their only representative left on earth, and the fortunes they once had are exhausted.” His cigarette flared in the darkness. “So I say again: is it a question of money?”
Lynch’s beer was forgotten. When he spoke, his voice was strained. “Get. Out.”
“Pardon?”
“Get out of here before I find out whether or not my gun has any bullets left.”
“You have made your choice, then,” the artist said.
“I have.”
“Tis a pity.” The artist threw a few crowns on the table and left, sweeping up his servant in his wake. On his way to the door another servant, equally gray and strange, peeled himself from the shadows and joined them. Without a backward look, the three shoved through the door and vanished.
Lynch waited a few beats, then followed. When he stepped outside into the freezing night, he barely registered the chill that washed over him, barely saw the leaves swirl around his feet and the rearing skeletal trees that lined the way.
The artist’s limousine idled at the curb, its tailpipe venting exhaust into the air like the exhalations of some beast. One of the grayish servants opened a rear door for his master, and the artist ducked inside without a backward glance while the servant followed him in. Before the first servant could do likewise, Lynch stepped forward. By the light of the street-lamps, he strained his eyes to make out the li
cense plate --
Figures shambled out from the alley. Slinking, scurvy things with rotting teeth and filthy hair and clothes. The first of the artist’s two servants said something to them, but Lynch didn’t catch it.
The rough men approached Lynch, fanning out. They must be the thugs the artist employed to inform him Lynch was at the cabaret, and they had stayed there to make sure Lynch didn’t leave before their boss arrived. Doubtless others waited in the back alley in case Lynch left through the rear.
The men advanced. Four of them. Lynch swore.
One carried a lead pipe, one a length of chain, one a knife, one a revolver. Behind them the remaining servant watched the show, one hand on the limo’s roof, one foot perched on the interior lip, as if unwilling to miss Lynch’s demise. Perhaps the artist watched through the rear window.
Lynch had hoped he’d been right about giving the man pause to kill him, but apparently the artist was willing to raise a few eyebrows.
Lynch didn’t waste time on the thug with the revolver. He wouldn’t shoot, not here on a busy street. Even now a few people strolled here or there -- pimps, pushers, johns, whoever. Lynch withdrew his .22 and pointed it at the man with the lead pipe. The huge, hulking fellow paused. It was a small gun, but it did not take a big one to kill or maim at this distance.
The man with the revolver aimed but did not fire.
The other two rushed in.
Lynch raised his hook. It gleamed in the light of the street-lamp, its inner edge honed to the sharpness of a razor for precisely this sort of occasion, a curving scythe of a weapon, and without wasting a moment stepped forward under the sweep of the chain-wielder, and links rattled over his head. In the same motion, Lynch swung. He felt the contact, the rip of fabric, the tear of flesh. The chain-wielder screamed and stumbled back, his abdomen oozing, a loop of intestine jutting out. He stumbled into the man with the knife and the two went down together. The man with the gun, seeing that Lynch meant business, fired, but Lynch had already slipped around the man with the pipe, screening himself from the view of the gun-man.
The man with the pipe leapt at Lynch. Lynch squeezed the trigger of his gun. Clicked on an empty chamber.
The lead pipe nearly took his head off.
He barreled forward, smashing into the brute shoulder-first. Drove him back. The brute raised an arm to drive his elbow down into Lynch’s skull, a blow that would have laid Lynch out.
Lynch raked his hook along the man’s leg. Felt denim and flesh tear. The man screamed, lost control, dropped his pipe, and Lynch shoved him back into the man with the gun, who panicked and fired a shot -- it went wild -- even as he fell to the ground, the weight of the brute crushing him. His arm stuck out, squirming, and Lynch grabbed the revolver, raised it just as the man with the knife rushed him. At seeing the gun, the man’s eyes widened. He fled.
Lynch stalked toward the limo, aiming --
The gray, deathly servant met him, his rat-teeth bared in a sneer, pale viscous sweat peeling down his decrepit flesh. His hand chopped down, batting the gun away. Another hand grabbed Lynch by the lapels and reeled him in.
Before Lynch could gut him, the man did something Lynch could not have prepared for: he coughed. It was a strange, racking cough, as though the servant gathered air from deep inside himself, then expelled the air directly into Lynch’s face. A yellowish vapor engulfed Lynch’s head. He held his breath, or tried to. He swung his hook, feebly, but the man shoved him away and ducked down into the limo.
Weakness stole over Lynch. The world spun around him. What just happened? His eyes itched, his tongue burned. Something buzzed in his ears.
He tried to aim his gun, but the limo shot down the streets, its taillight blurring and swimming in his vision.
Dimly he heard scrabbling noises behind him. He spun to face the man with the pipe and the other whose gun he had taken, but they were just vague shapes fleeing down the street. The street-lamps danced like fireflies overhead, the stars capered, and the buildings waved like grass . . .
Lynch staggered out into the street.
Cars honked. One swerved around him with a squeal of rubber. He shoved the gun into a pocket, tried to maintain his feet.
“Taxi!” he shouted, his voice hoarse and far away. “Taxi!”
***
He stumbled out of the cab, threw a handful of cash at the driver, who seemed relieved to be rid of him, and tottered up the stairs of his brownstone. He had traveled across town in a journey that seemed to have taken a thousand years. The brownstone reared above him, brick-faced and sturdy, its flanks touching the sides of two identical brownstones next door. Gas-lamps illuminated the street, but as it was the dead of night only one in ten were lit, their white glow suffused by the fog, which roiled and eddied about. Trees hunched like ogres.
Lynch beat on the doors with his one fist, again and again. Finally they cracked and Ambrose stood in the opening with a candle in his visible hand and probably a shotgun in the other, blinking his eyes. About fifty and balding, the stout former soldier and now manservant bore a wine-colored birthmark on his cheek.
“Why, it’s you, sir!”
“Tis indeed. Good evening, Ambrose.”
Ambrose ushered him in -- and indeed the manservant did carry a shotgun, Lynch noted with approval -- and locked the door behind them. The noise of banging and voices had roused Lynch’s other two servants, his cook and his maid. Yawning and blinking, they drifted out like ghosts, but their eyes opened wide at seeing Lynch.
“It’s you, boss!” exclaimed his maid, fussing over him.
“Good lord, sir!” said Sam the cook, an abnormally thin man to occupy such a position. “We feared you were dead.”
“We had even checked the hospitals,” added Nancy, nodding for emphasis, her pretty blond locks shaking.
Lynch laughed. “Well, as you can see, I’m still alive, for the moment.” They bustled him into the drawing room and began peeling off his rags.
“What is that smell?” Ambrose said. “Rotten eggs? A dead animal?”
“Ah, that.” Lynch plopped down on the couch. “It appears a fellow belched poison gas in my face.”
“Gas?”
“We should get you to a hospital!” cried Nancy.
“No doubt,” Lynch said. “But there’s nothing they could do for me. I saw gas during the war. It either kills you or it doesn’t, there’s no miracle the doctors can perform to drive it from your system. Fortunately I held my breath while I was exposed, and I don’t expect I took in enough to kill me. I could be wrong, though. Am, fetch me a drink. I don’t intend to die sober, if it comes to that.”
The manservant brought a snifter of brandy and Lynch took a long sip. It burned his throat nicely.
“Did you say . . . a man belched gas on you?” Ambrose pressed.
“It was not an everyday occurrence, I must admit.” Lynch took another sip, stared into the snifter’s amber depths. It did not provide any answers. “However it was done, I mean to find out.”
He marched upstairs. Gilded mirrors and beautiful oils looked down on him, but he could only think of the lowly state he, and thus his family, had reached. When he had returned from the war, the taxes on the family’s mansion in the country had been too much for him to pay, and he’d had to sell it and purchase this brownstone, keeping only three retainers when he made the transition. Most of his family’s furniture, paintings and jewelry he had had to sell off to pay back taxes and various business debts accrued by his father. Now there was little left. Soon he would have to sell the brownstone, release Ambrose, Sam and Nancy, and with the brownstone’s meager equity buy some squalid condominium in one of the slums -- the Blight, perhaps. That would be convenient. There he could finish up his days shuffling in an opium dream back and forth between the condominium and Madam Wan’s until at last the dreams took him away for good and he made his final shuffle. He had always hoped it would be a dream of Eliza that did it.
He mounted to his bedroom, and the t
hree servants chattered over him as he tore off the last of his clothes, downed another snifter of brandy, and fell naked and exhausted into bed, barely aware of the silken feel of the sheets on his body or the down beneath his head.
Sunlight drenched him in sweat when he awoke. Blinking, he glared at the drapes aglow with light. Nancy must have parted the blackout curtains to allow him some light, and he reminded himself to chastise her later. He forced his way out of bed and stumbled out to the balcony, where he stared up at the sun burning through a veil of blue. His skin beaded with sweat, and he relished the warmth. At last he moved to the bathroom, showered, popped some painkillers, an antacid, a shot of vodka, and staggered downstairs. Sam made him French omelets with English toast and English tea. The smell of Earl Grey delighted Lynch’s nose. Ordinarily he preferred Italian bread, but of course these days that was impossible.
He read the paper as he ate, and the news sobered him more than the tea. The Nazis’ advance continued unceasingly, and it appeared more of Her Majesty’s secret agents in France, helping organize the resistance there, had been ferreted out and shot, but not before being tortured by the Gestapo.
Depressed, Lynch retired to the study. Smoking half a cigar and snorting a thumb-full of cocaine fired his brain and helped him shed his worry.
H mused on the problem of the artist. Some conspiracy was running amok in the city, and the artist might just be the tip of the iceberg. Franklin’s and the others’ murders had not been ends in themselves, clearly, but means -- otherwise, why the conspiracy? Why involve the police? Lt. Omsky hadn’t just been letting a criminal go but actively helping hide the bodies, and he was only part of a much larger network doing the same thing. But a means to what?
Nancy bustled in, a smile on her face, her blond curls bouncing. “Sir, you’re alive! I just knew you’d make it.” She blushed when she saw he wore only a bathrobe.
She carried what looked like a formal letter. It was this, he realized, and not his mere survival, that had caused her to beam so.
