Gods of Manhattan

by Al Ewing

  O'Malley shrugged and picked up another glass. "Who was it?"

  The man in the tweed shook his head angrily; his wife's mouth had almost disappeared. "Oh, I don't know. They were singing something about 'taking Berlin'. Probably your socialist friends. Well, that sort of propaganda doesn't wash with me. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather have a thousand like Herr Hitler than one Bolshevik like Bartlet or Rickard. If you ask me, a strong leader like that is what this country needs."

  O'Malley scowled. Typical Brits - half of them probably mailed checks to Untergang from their cosy little armchairs back home. "Yeah, well, he's not exactly a good friend of ours, so you might want to watch that kind of talk while you're here."

  The man drew himself up to his full height - roughly a foot and a half shorter than O'Malley. "And you should watch your tone, Sir. I'm a guest in your country, and a customer, and the customer is always right."

  O'Malley breathed in, then out. Don't get mad at the customers. All it took was one bad report spreading through Assrapeshire and he could end up losing a hundred customers. Keep the Brits happy, that was the rule. That was the price for running an English bar.

  He could've taken his brother's advice and started a futurehead club, but no, he wanted to serve a 'better class of person'. What a schmuck.

  "Sorry, Sir," he muttered, concentrating on cleaning the pint glasses.

  There was a long silence. The Brits didn't say anything else for a while, and O'Malley was glad of that.

  After about a minute of strained silence, the bell over the door rang and a skinny guy with long, dirty blonde hair and a ratty beard walked in, sniffing the air like a dog. He looked as though he hadn't bathed in weeks. The Brits shrank back, looking daggers. The long-haired man just smiled, good-natured.

  "Hey, Larson." O'Malley smiled.

  "Uh, hey, O'Malley." Larson grinned, nervous, fumbling in his pocket. "Listen, can I borrow your phone?"

  O'Malley nodded. "Just remember to pay for the call. How's the fight against the Man? The cops still hassling you?" He took a perverse pleasure in needling Larson about his police phobia, especially with those damned supercilious Brits hanging on every word he said. Larson couldn't have come in at a better time.

  The man with the dirty blonde hair laid twenty bucks down on the counter. Larson was notorious for being broke - chasing the dragon would do that to you. This was more money than O'Malley had ever seen him with. "Damn, Larson, what have you been getting into?"

  Larson chuckled nervously. "Oh, uh, this and that." He wandered back behind the bar, heading into the back room, and O'Malley found himself surreptitiously listening in, trying to hear what was said over the loud tuts of the British heifer and her grim husband.

  "Disgusting," the British guy kept saying, over and over. "Disgusting country. Disgusting people."

  O'Malley ignored him.

  "Uh, never mind how I found you," Larson whispered into the phone. "I've got something you want..."

  Jesus, he'd better not be dealing drugs on my phone, O'Malley thought. Twenty bucks wasn't worth that.

  "Who was that awful man?" The woman hissed, her eyes wide with indignation.

  "College professor." O'Malley murmured, still trying to keep an ear on Larson. He didn't even seem to be speaking English any more. What was that, Spanish?

  The British man took another sip of his bitter, shaking his head. "I suppose that's the sort of person who enjoys your American 'concerts'. It's disgusting. Disgusting. They didn't even play your national anthem at the end. Shocking behaviour."

  O'Malley frowned, turning his attention back to the tourists. "Yeah, we don't use that much either. Mind if we drop the subject?"

  The man sniffed, as if something smelled bad. "Not very patriotic, are you? Not proud of your flag, not proud of your anthem. If some chap was like that back home, we'd say he was rather un-British, what? I suppose that would make you un-American or something!"

  The glass in O'Malley's hand cracked.

  His knuckles were white, and so was his face. He was sixty-three years old, old enough to remember the last time he'd heard that word, the word nobody ever said anymore. Old enough to remember where it had led. Old enough not to be able to hear the name McCarthy without flinching. Old enough to remember The Second Civil War, the six days of hell when you didn't know who was your neighbour and who was Hidden Empire. Six days when people you'd lived next door to for years took a knife to you, calling you a monster, a liberal, like it was a curse word, a fake American. An un-American.

  And the un-Americans didn't get to live.

  Sure, it was all mind control, or that's what most had told themselves so as not to tear the country apart for good when it was all over. Still, after that week, there wasn't a USA anymore. There couldn't be. So the big boys had made it official - sent the message that there'd never be another McCarthy, another Hidden Empire. This was the USSA, and that's how it was staying.

  There was a sign behind the bar: Doc Thunder drinks free. Pretty much every bar in New York had a sign like it, and everybody knew what it meant.

  Everybody except the tourists.

  Rudi O'Malley - who'd seen his parents hung in front of his eyes on his sixteenth birthday, who'd seen a man's entrails torn from his belly and wrapped around a flagpole while people laughed and cheered, who'd killed twenty-eight people in the battle for the White House and dreamed of twenty-eight screaming faces every single night of his life - excused himself, dropped the broken glass into the sink, and went into the back room to bandage his hand.

  Larson popped his head around the door. "Listen, O'Malley, thanks for the, uh... the... O'Malley?" He gingerly reached out a hand, as if to touch O'Malley's shoulder, then withdrew it awkwardly. "Are, uh... are you okay?"

  O'Malley looked at himself in the mirror, at the fat, lazy tears running down his old, worn face. At his lousy, horrible bar and his lousy, horrible clientele and his whole lousy, horrible life.

  "Yeah." He said. "Yeah, Larson, I'm fine. Go watch the bar for me, will you? I'll be out in a sec."

  Rudi O'Malley was a New Yorker.

  What else could he say?

  Here's a final story.

  In the penthouse suite of the Atlas apartments, Heinrich Donner looked out over the city. The twinkling lights of the gas and oil lamps shone up at him like fireflies, and for a moment he remembered other fires. And chimneys that belched black smoke laced with human fat.

  That had been a long time ago. He was old now, his white hair almost gone, his beard snow white, his blue eyes turned grey and clouded with the years. He leant on a stick, and rarely changed out of his dressing-gown. What was the point? He never left. Even his landlord had never seen him, or the man who brought his food - even the prostitutes who he took his frustrations at this half-a-life out on came and went blindfolded, so they couldn't see his face.

  He remembered once a blindfold had slipped. He'd found the strength to bludgeon her to death, then made some calls to the people he could trust, those in Untergang who still felt he had some value to the organisation. They'd come and cleaned up the mess, and warned him that further mistakes could not be brushed under the carpet so easily. He had to chuckle at the irony. After all, wasn't he a mistake? And had he not been brushed under the carpet, installed in this palatial tomb, a battered relic kept against the day when he might have value again?

  Once upon a time, Heinrich Donner was the heart and soul of Untergang. It had been his idea; a fifth column of Nazi operatives, working within American society to corrupt and disrupt from within, blurring the line between criminal activity and terrorism. After the disasters of the Russian campaign, it had been a reasonable success in terms of destabilising the country and spreading panic among the populace. And because the Führer could plausibly distance himself from Untergang - a terrorist organisation operating outside his mandate - Britannia had little to say on the matter beyond a tired shrug and a veiled warning to keep such tactics on American shores and out of the way o
f the Empire.

  Of course, Heinrich Donner was not the 'leader' of the group. That honour fell to a man named Mannheim, codenamed 'Cobra', whose job was to send long ranting missives to newspapers claiming full responsibility for the Untergang's actions. It served a dual purpose. Since 'Cobra' was only a man sitting behind a typewriter or a wax-cylinder recorder several miles away from any action, he could never realistically be caught - and if Mannheim was apprehended, another 'Cobra' would take his place. The public would see that those charged to defend them could not even catch one man, and panic and disquiet would spread.

  And, of course, Donner's hands would remain clean and pure.

  Heinrich Donner was a prominent industrialist, a noted businessman, a beloved philanthropist. All of New York had celebrated him when he'd stepped in to help rebuild the city after the horrific events of the Second Civil War. (And damn that fool McCarthy for his stupid, failed attempt. If he'd only swallowed his damned pride and worked with the Führer - but the past was the past, and there could be no going back.)

  As far as America was concerned, Heinrich Donner was a saint among men. They cheered his modest speeches, filled with gentle humility, wept at his tearful account of fleeing Germany as a young husband and father to escape Hitler's tyranny, of losing his wife and child to the madman's grasp. The only one who knew the full truth was Doc Thunder, and he could prove nothing in a court of law, of course. Besides, he knew that to expose Donner's secrets would mean exposing his own. He was effectively stalemated.

  It had all been going so well.

  Why had he become so obsessed with Thunder? Why had he never simply given up, washed his hands of the whole situation, focused on more achievable goals? All those endless attempts to kill him, to steal his blood, to have America's great symbol brought down, brought low... it had brought attention to him, over time. The wrong kind of attention. Eventually, he was caught in an explosion and believed dead, and the Führer had quietly suggested that he should remain that way. For a few years, he had continued to run Untergang's operations, but his heart was no longer in the work, and gradually it passed to other hands, younger hands... until finally he had nothing but this apartment, a monthly allowance for food, drink and whores, and handlers who were only seeing to his needs until the kill order came through and they could dispose of him once and for all.

  And the order would never come, he knew. The Führer had long since forgotten him. Untergang's latest leader had his own master plans and never gave Donner the slightest thought. He was a relic, a battered old antique, a souvenir of a bygone age. His place in the scheme of things had been taken by younger men with bigger and better ideas. The world had moved on.

  He still hated Doc Thunder. That was the worst thing. That burning, black hatred would never go away, and now it was matched by a bitter, bottomless frustration. To know that you would never look into your enemy's eyes again, never watch them squirm, know the sweet taste of their fear... to know he could never hurt Thunder again... it was unendurable.

  His lips moved, and he began to whisper.

  Please, mein Gott. Please. Give me one chance. Let me hurt him once more. Let me be the catalyst that brings misery and torture down on his head, him and all his kind, all the strutting fools in their masks and their ridiculous outfits, all the ones who made me suffer, who reduced me to this shell. Let me take my final revenge on them all...

  Be careful what you pray for.

  The sword slid through his back, between his ribs, piercing his heart. The man standing behind him twisted the blade, and Donner shuddered, his eyes bulging, then rolling back.

  El Sombra withdrew the sword from the man's corpse and wiped it on the curtains. He'd come straight here after he'd gotten the information, and by the look of things - he prodded the corpse onto its back with a bare toe, studying the features - his information had been correct. He'd half-expected the old man to go for a gun when he'd broken in, but he hadn't even heard. Probably deaf, or nearly deaf. Idly, he took a step backwards, listening to the ugly, wet sound of the bowel letting go, and then turned on his heel and wandered off to check for papers, or lists of names, or maps. Executing one of the Bastards was always fun in and of itself, but he didn't want this to become a dead end. If the Ex-King Of The Bastards had fallen from grace, maybe he'd gathered some insurance on the way down. Or at least something that could be used to find more of them.

  He found what he was looking for in the bedroom.

  Ignored, the body on the carpet began to cool, and stiffen. Two days and eleven hours later, it would be found by patrolmen after Donner's downstairs neighbour complained about the spreading stain on his ceiling, and the stench from above. The newspapermen would hear of it, and it would become front page news - the dead man who died a second time.

  And then all Hell would descend on Manhattan.

  And a lot of stories would come to an end.

  Chapter One

  The Case of the Stolen Lightning

  Night was falling, and the city was coming to life once again.

  As Rabbi Johann Labinowicz shuffled into the deli, he closed his eyes for a moment and took in the sound of the bell. A small, perfect little object that tinkled softly and gently, with a clear, resonant sound whenever the door opened, Johann had found himself wandering three blocks or more out of his way simply to hear it, and as a result this particular deli had, over a span of years, become his regular haunt.

  Johann was a man who took pleasure in small things. The ring of a shop's bell, the taste of a perfectly made salt beef hoagy with pickle and mustard. Having your habits and tastes known by your deli. Little things of that nature.

  "One salt beef, pickle and mustard." Mrs McGregor said it like a hello, as her husband had. Bill McGregor had passed away five years ago, but Alma had taken over the running of McGregor's Fine Deli and it was as though nothing had happened. She'd mourned, a deep and terrible wound in her had healed over time, but she'd done her mourning in between chopping egg and scattering cress, frying onion for the beef dogs and fine-slicing gherkin the way her husband had taught her. Only her regulars had noticed any change at all, and no change at all in the food. Mrs McGregor was a close and private woman, who played her emotions like cards against her chest. Johann had known her twelve years, and still considered being greeted in such a way to be an honour worth more than rubies.

  He'd already counted out the three dollars, fumbling in his pocket as he walked the last few steps from the door with its wonderful bell, and now he laid them out on the counter with a smile, before picking up the sandwich that had already materialised, prepared in advance of his arrival. "You know, Alma, maybe the day comes I don't walk in that door, eh? And then, you'll be out a fresh sandwich."

  Alma snorted, shaking her head. "Oh, that will never happen, Rabbi. You're an addict, you are."

  Johann shrugged. "What, I have no will of my own? A slave to the salt beef? Suppose I'm trampled by a runaway horse, eh?"

  Alma shook her head and went back to slicing pickles. "Then I'd come to the hospital and throw the damned sandwich in your face for being such a god-damned fool as to not look both ways and you'd apologise to me for being so foolish and the sandwich wouldn't have been wasted at all, now, would it?"

  Johann chuckled to himself. "Such language!" He sniffed the sandwich, enjoying the tang of the pickle and the waft of the fresh bread.

  The bell rang again.

  The boy who walked in was barely more than sixteen, but he was six foot and muscular with it. He slouched as he walked, and his hair was carefully shaved into three stripes - blood red, bone white and a livid blue that seemed garish and clown like against his black skin. He was wearing a powder-blue t-shirt with the familiar lightning bolt decal torn off and pinned back upside-down, with the same safety-pins that pierced both his ears. His jeans were ripped, and around each wrist was a studded leather band.

  On his left bicep, he wore a tattoo of a scowling McCarthy and the word: AMERICAN.

 
A futurehead.

  Johann stiffened, inspecting him carefully. Futureheads could be trouble, and this one was dressed to provoke. Still, usually with futureheads that was all it was - provoking a reaction. Shocking the old men. They were harmless. Oh, they'd turn the air blue if you crossed them, call you everything under the sun, but that was all they'd do.

  Johann allowed himself to drift into a daydream of the moments ahead. The young man would at the very worst say something he imagined to be shocking to the ears of an old Rabbi - little dreaming that an old Rabbi could already tell him stories that would make him faint - and the old Rabbi in question would play his part and tut and speak of kids today or it's just noise they listen to now and the dance would be complete. The two of them would go their separate ways, each having played a different game and each, in their own eyes, the winner.

  And in maybe five years, no more, Johann would see the boy grown to a man, dressed in ordinary clothes, and the boy would raise his hat respectfully and both would have forgotten this meeting had ever taken place, lost as it was in wild youth.

  It was a story Johann had played out countless times with countless disaffected young people, and it was a story he almost enjoyed. It was the story he would have preferred.

  "Gimme a sammich." the young man growled, and spat on the floor. Johann winced. Alma wouldn't take that well. Part of him felt he should leave, but he owed it to Alma to provide support in the face of what was sure to be an unpleasant customer interaction.

  Alma took the bait, as Johann knew she would. "May I have a sandwich please, you young hooligan! And no you may not after you spat on my clean floor! Were you raised in a barn?"

  The futurehead scowled. "I want a sammich."

  "Well, you're not getting one. Now clear off out of my shop before I throw you out! And don't think I can't!" Alma heaved and shook with indignation, her face beet red. In that moment, Johann believed that she really could have thrown the young man bodily out of her door, as big and surly as he was.