by Dan O'Brien
Mobsters, Monsters & Nazis
Written by Dan O’Brien
Illustrated by Steve Ferchaud
© 2014 Dan O’Brien
People called it “the city.” Derrick thought of it more as a sewer with rats the size of horses. Standing in front of a rundown hotel, he pulled the lapels of his coat around his neck and cradled an object in his hands. The courier had been frightened; sweat stains and an odor that had a place on the docks poured from him like sunshine at the beach. When he handed him the poorly wrapped box, he ran off before Derrick had a chance to ask him what he had become a part of.
There was a feeling in the air, a sense of foreboding that should have come with ominous theme music. The object’s exterior was dark burgundy and had a sharp beak. It looked like a corpulent little bird that had stuffed its face too full. The object was heavier than it appeared. Derrick turned the object and the burgundy became obsidian. He felt a connection to it that startled him.
He felt as if he was supposed to possess it.
Where had he felt this before?
The Fat Man had made it quite clear that the object was valuable beyond measure: those were his exact words. As usual, there was not much discussion beyond that; small talk had been replaced with slobbering grunts and commands.
Despite the thick coat he wore, the chill of the night snuck in and Derrick’s thin frame felt it.
They say nothing good happens after midnight; the silence of the night made Derrick wonder about that very adage.
A strange compulsion grabbed him then: he pressed his thumbs against the wings of the flightless raptor and the shell gave way.
A bright light filled his vision.
He glimpsed ancient bronze gears that seemed to move like a clock. They were complex and intricately carved, as if fashioned by a master smith in some great forge somewhere. A voice whispered from within; Derrick could not understand the words. It became a hymn, latching onto his mind as he watched the gears turn.
His breath quickened and he felt his heart thud in his chest.
Closing the object and extinguishing the light, he looked across the street: he felt like someone was watching him.
Was it paranoia?
He felt the approach before he saw the shadow; there was something familiar about the way the figure crashed into him. They fell to the ground, struggling against one another like a beast at war with itself. As they struggled, Derrick spied slender shadows in the distance that bent and contorted as they moved along the walls of the nearby alleyway. The shadow did not strike him or punch him; instead, it seemed to root around Derrick’s body, groping, looking for something. Finally extricating himself from the shadow’s grip, Derrick managed a single punch that pushed the figure back. And as quickly as the shadow had been upon him, it was gone. Derrick reached out wildly to try and grab his feeling assailant. The gesture proved futile. With a sigh, Derrick watched as the figure ran into the night.
Touching his pockets and then looking around on the ground in front of him, Derrick realized the awful truth: the object had been taken in the scuffle. The shadow had been upgraded to a thief. Contemplating his options and the ensuing conversation with His Corpulence, Derrick decided to give chase. A few wheezing breaths later, coupled with a hacking cough, Derrick was reminded of the toll smoking took on his ability to run down marks. Private investigators rarely had to worry about being track stars, but every once in a while the situation turned that way.
The thief proved elusive, dodging in and out of alleys like lightning through the clouds of a thunderstorm.
The hymn persisted; the steady rhythm of the gears of the object drew him like a moth to a flame.
A sense of the city emerged as Derrick realized where he had chased the thief: The Monarch.
Patrons called it the Yellow Monarch because of the iridescent, winged, creature that seemed to rise from above the foyer. Derrick approached slowly, feeling as if he was being watched from a distance. Turning, he looked back into the dark alley and saw nothing. He had been on the job long enough to know that just because he couldn’t see what was hunting him it didn’t mean there wasn’t anything there. Knowing that answers were inside the building––deep within a hum seemed to permeate its thick walls––Derrick stalked across the street toward the Yellow Monarch.
Serpentine and dressed to the nines, the reptilian thugs watched through thin eye-slits as Derrick walked across the empty street and past the board announcing Ava Harpy as the crooner of the night. They slithered along the wall, bodies bending to get a better vantage point. He did not have the object: that was all that mattered to them. They slinked back into the shadows, waiting for their prey.
Above them, the thief watched from the fire escape. From his vantage point, he could see Derrick greet a well-dressed thug outside the club with some gruff words. He disappeared inside the building and the thief waited patiently. Things had been set into motion––things that had to happen no matter what. Holding the object tenderly, the thief turned it over and over. The hymn drifted through the night air. Turning and disappearing into the shadows, the thief started to hum quietly.
In the sky above bulbous clouds crashed into one another and a dark wind blew across them all.
From the outside, the Yellow Monarch didn’t look like much at all. Once inside, it was the Roaring 20s all over again. Jazz music filled the air and women with blood-red corsets carried trays filled with cigars and scotch. Small round tables were covered in thick cloth and men sat in little clouds of cigar smoke, obscuring their features to the casual observer.
However, Derrick was not a casual observer.
Farther in the back sat the Fat Man––a local gangster and Derrick’s point of contact for the acquisition of the object––on a throne befitting his considerable mass. Beside him was the fish-eyed proprietor of the Yellow Monarch, a wretch called the Weasel. The Fat Man’s face seemed cluttered with a mass of tentacles that created a slimy beard beneath beady black eyes. The fez atop his head looked like the lost thimble of a giant seamstress. The Weasel noticed Derrick first––his sharp, beak-like, mouth opening and closing. Wide eyes, like great pools of water, watched him suspiciously. He then whispered to the Fat Man, who turned to look at Derrick.
It was her voice that drew his attention away from the chattering fools.
Mysterious and soulful, there was something about Ava Harpy that drew Derrick in immediately. She moved slowly on the stage, her hair falling across her face and hiding her eyes for a moment. Then, there they were again: powerful and hazel and deep. The dress she wore opened in a slit along her leg, revealing the hilt of a small blade. Her blonde hair flowed in waves over her shoulders. There was no denying it: she was a siren. The somber tune soldiered on through peaks and valleys in the smoke-filled room. As she finished, Derrick felt as if he had been taken slowly across a strange world.
The tune was hauntingly familiar; her voice felt otherworldly.
And then, once more, the hymn from inside the object burrowed deeper.
His mind spun.
Were it not for the clammy hand of the Weasel on his shoulder, he might have approached Ava right there.
“The Fat Man wants to see you,” croaked the Weasel.
Derrick turned and grimaced. “Been down at the docks again?”
The Weasel looked at him strangely with a wide-mouthed Martini glass in hands.
Wafting his hands as if smelling something, Derrick smirked. “It’s the smell: fishy with the slightest twist of sweat.”
Derrick pushed past him and took three long steps until he was standing in front of the Fat Man. Up close the tentacles were indistinguishable from a matted beard that befit a lumberjack. As it was, th
e tentacles would wobble and squirm like serpents that couldn’t quite find their way home. His rotund body was hidden well beneath a thick suit jacket.
His voice warbled as he addressed Derrick. “Do you have it, Diamond?”
Pulling out a case and extricating a single cigarette––though not before closing the silver housing––Derrick lit it with a match. “You know I don’t.”
“Is that so?” countered the Fat Man, looking past Derrick at a table of crisply dressed Nazis who were looking in Derrick’s direction. “How would I know such a thing?”
“As a purveyor of secrets and a Nazi sympathizer––not to mention an all-around scumbag––I imagine there is no limit to the kind of information you can obtain.”
The Fat Man did not seem particularly amused. A large wolf-faced troglodyte behind the shady gangster took a step forward.
“Stand down, boy,” Derrick cautioned. “You should keep your dog on a leash.”
The werewolf thug backed off and the Fat Man leaned forward. “Did the courier not deliver the object as promised?”
Derrick blew out a column of smoke and then tossed the still-lit cigarette into the Weasel’s martini. “He did.”
The Weasel started to say something, but the Fat Man interrupted him. “And yet you return here empty-handed? Enlighten me.”
Derrick reached over and pulled a silk handkerchief from the Weasel’s suit jacket and wiped his hands before throwing it on a table. “It was stolen.”
“From the great Derrick Diamond?” scoffed the Fat Man.
Her voice drew him away again like a cool zephyr on a hot summer day. “So, you’re Derrick Diamond. I thought you would be rougher looking.” Ava had sauntered over. She tossed her hair back and cocked her hip forward, revealing just a glimpse of her long legs.
“Rough enough,” Derrick answered with a grin.
A waitress came by with a new martini for the Weasel, which Ava grabbed and took a small sip––shooting a glare at the slippery proprietor. “Tell me about yourself, Derrick Diamond. What does His Corpulence want with you?”
The Fat Man reached out to grab her hand, but she brushed it away. “Ava…” he began.
“Listen, sweetheart, I think you should sing your tune somewhere else,” interrupted Derrick.
Ava took a quick step forward and poked Derrick in the chest. “We don’t know each other well enough yet for me to be your sweetheart.” She placed the martini glass down on the table and stalked away, making sure to sway her hips suggestively and flick her hair for effect.
The Weasel whistled, which amounted to little more than a slobbering sound. “Not quite the charmer you think you are, Diamond.”
“Weasel, you’re a ghoul. Go haunt someone else,” retorted Derrick as he watched Ava go.
There was something about the siren that he could not quite place his finger on; she had a quality about her that made him want to know more. He turned and looked back at the Fat Man, who had not yet moved––though his tentacles wobbled and wiggled. “As for the object, I will have it back soon enough. I tracked the thief here, to the Yellow Monarch.”
The Weasel skulked away, looking at the table of Nazis and then the darkened corner of the room where yellow eyes watched the exchange. The Fat Man reached forward and grabbed the thick tumbler of sickly colored liquid and took a noisy swig. “You think my men took it?”
Derrick shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t send me to retrieve it and then just lift it off me in the street. This felt like deliberate misdirection. The real question is: why did he come here after lifting the object?”
“Are you sure it’s a he?” growled the grizzled enforcer just behind His Corpulence.
Derrick ignored him. “I’m going to take a look around…if you don’t mind.”
The Fat Man waved him off and returned to the smoldering cigar in the dish in front of him. Derrick always wondered how puffing like a chimney didn’t make his tentacles dry out like barnacles left in the sun. The werewolf’s comment hadn’t escaped Derrick. The insinuation was obvious: Ava. If he had to guess, and he was most certainly prone to some deductive reasoning, he would say that Ms. Harpy was not exactly popular with the Fat Man’s goon squad. The main lounge of the Yellow Monarch funneled back into a single dark hallway, which was guarded by a gruff-looking, squid-faced, thug.
“You can’t go back there,” the grim-faced goon warned.
Derrick looked at him and then back at the Fat Man, who nodded imperceptibly.
After a moment and a grunt, Derrick stood in a red corridor with long horizontal yellow stripes that seemed to lead to Hades’ door; as if on cue, the air seemed to thicken and the smooth jazz became a cacophony of bass and up-tempo notes echoing through thick walls. He touched his coat and realized he had left his revolver behind. What little light filtered from the lounge appeared broken and still, like moonlight through the deep ocean. He could feel the music in his chest in a way he could not earlier.
His breath came quicker as he rounded a sharp corner that led to a thick door.
Taking one last look back into the club, he pushed the door open and immediately felt the cold kiss of the night air. A black wind seemed to whisper in the shadows. A small amber light, rising and falling, caught his attention: it was Ava. Leaning back against the wall with a cigarette in her hand, she looked at him with half her face hidden by the darkness of the alleyway.
“Gets stuffy in there,” she commented.
Derrick nodded and took a few confident strides forward. “It does. A bit dangerous for a beautiful woman like yourself to be out here alone with all the mobsters, monsters, and Nazis lurking about….”
She smiled. “I can take care of myself just fine, Diamond.”
It was Derrick’s turn to smile. “I can see that. Mind if I join you?”
Ava shrugged. “Free country…for now.”
Derrick lit a cigarette and took a long drag, neither one of them noticing the yellow-eyed creatures that cast darting shadows on the wall behind them. “Not if those Nazis in there have anything to say about it. About earlier….”
She flicked her cigarette away and pressed her arms against the wall. “I don’t care what you and those goons were talking about.”
“Is that so?” mocked Derrick.
Ava was clearly hiding something. “Well, perhaps I was a little bit interested.”
“How long have you worked for the Fat Man?”
Ava breathed out and crossed her arms underneath her breasts. “I don’t work for the Fat Man.”
Derrick smirked and blew out a perfect ring of smoke. “Pardon me. How would you put it?”
“I’m an entertainer. I work lots of places.”
“Are they owned by His Corpulence as well?”
She sighed and leveled a glare at him. “He owns a lot of clubs, but he doesn’t own me.”
“No need to get your feathers ruffled, doll––just making conversation.”
“Then make a different type,” she cautioned with a slight smile hidden beneath irritation.
Derrick laughed and threw his cigarette on the ground, crushing it with the heel of his shoe. “Alright then. Why do you sing?”
“You don’t like my singing?”
“Did I say that?” Derrick retorted.
“I like the way it makes me feel. When I’m singing, the rest of the world melts away…”
Something behind them, deeper in the alleyway, banged around––drawing their attention and interrupting Ava.
“Looks like you might have an admirer of the lurking variety,” spoke Derrick as he positioned himself between Ava and the creeping darkness.
And once more that night, he regretted leaving his gun behind.
Yellow eyes emerged from the darkness. Long faces filled with razor-sharp teeth: the reptilian thugs slithered out from the shadows.
“Derrick Diamond,” hissed the closest one.
“Was that a question?” chided Derrick as he pushed Ava back more. “You
might want to consider a speech therapist.”
She grabbed his hand and stopped him; clearly, Ava had no intention of running from a fight.
The assassins moved quickly, one of them leaping into the air and the other nearly crawling on the ground. Ava moved out of the way and cracked the snake across the face with a balled-up fist. Derrick didn’t have time to comment as the other wrapped its scaly arms around his chest from behind––for which it received a painful elbow to the face.
Ava grabbed a trashcan and slammed it over the back of the lizard assassin, scattering garbage all about the alley. She then backed into Derrick, who was looking around furiously for a weapon. Given the noise level in the club, it was doubtful anyone heard them struggling outside; and even then, he wasn’t sure the Fat Man would lend any aid even if he did know.
“I don’t have the object,” Derrick barked.
The two assassins had regrouped; they weaved in between each other as they stalked close.
“It doesn’t seem like they care,” spoke Ava as she felt the wall behind her once more. As she took a few shuffling steps, she felt a long cylinder move at her feet. “I think I have something here,” she said, bending down and retrieving a short pipe. She knew the knife would not be a sufficient weapon against these thugs.
Derrick extended a hand, as if to take it, just as the assassins leapt.
Ava stepped into the swing like she was at Fenway, knocking the first one back. With a heavy thud, the lizard thug collided against the wall. She then swung the pipe across her body and smashed the pipe into the other reptilian assassin––who collapsed to the ground in a heap. “Plenty more where that came from,” she called breathlessly.
Derrick grabbed her hand and pulled her forward, causing her to drop the pipe.
They fled just as the assassins climbed back onto the walls in pursuit.
