Gods of Manhattan

by Al Ewing

  There was also a mask.

  It was made of leather and designed to fit over the whole head, with a blood-red metal plate in the front that covered the face, with eight lenses set into it, like the eyes of a spider.

  The last thing in the trunk was an ornate box containing a set of immaculately-printed business cards. On one side, the cards showed a spider design, in red. On the other:

  Where all inhuman

  Devils revel in their sins -

  The Blood-Spider spins!

  As he popped the buttons on his white dress shirt and slid it off, Crane felt a strange sense of peace and contentment envelop his mind. It was a wonderful feeling to strip away the cares of the world, the outward show that was Parker Crane, gentleman of leisure, and to become his true self. How had that editorial put it? The spider at the centre of a web of blood and vengeance.

  How true, thought Parker Crane. How very true.

  He lifted one of the black shirts, inhaling the fresh scent of the laundry. Jonah had done a capital job, as ever - bloodstains were hard to get out of any fabric, and black clothing had a tendency to turn grey if improperly handled. "You're quite the most invaluable member of my web, Jonah," Crane murmured, as he slid an arm into a black sleeve.

  "One does one's best, Master Parker." nodded Jonah, deferential as ever, then turned respectfully around as Crane continued changing.

  The mask was the last thing to go on. That was the moment when it really happened. When he felt the weight of that dreadful playboy pose - that vicissitude, that narcissism, that languid sloth that felt as heavy as lead on his back - all fall away, replaced by the cold, bright, beautiful clarity of his cause. His mission. To purge the world of the criminals. To wipe out the inhuman.

  It was Parker Crane who raised the mask to his face, but it was the Blood-Spider who tightened the straps.

  Occasionally, he wondered if there was anyone else who felt as he did, who could lift a mask to his face and become an entirely different person, stronger, faster, harder, colder, better. If such a person existed, he should like to meet them one day. To compare notes.

  If they were in agreement with the cause, of course.

  Otherwise, they would have to die.

  "Telephone." hissed the Blood-Spider. Jonah bowed, then turned to open a small cupboard near the door. Inside was a black telephone, connected to an unlisted line separate from the club's own. The gloved hands snatched it up, fingers dialing the numbers, stabbing savagely at the apparatus as if possessed. Then he lifted the receiver to that strange, almost-featureless mask and waited, as the spider waits, patiently and remorselessly, for the fly.

  David Sikorsky jumped as the phone on the wall rang. "Christ!"

  Marlene smiled, shifting her weight on the couch. "I was expecting that. Be a dear and fetch it for me, will you?"

  David frowned. He was a man in his mid thirties, lean and twitchy, with a mop of black hair resting on top of his head like a bird's nest and an unkempt goatee sprouting from his chin. He had a penchant for dark-coloured turtlenecks, cheap black coffee and 'breaker' music, which blared tinnily from a clockwork gramophone in the corner of his studio; the thumping, insistent beat of the drums colliding with the insistent jangle of the telephone. He stared at it for a moment, then looked at his model, brow furrowed with impotent irritation. He'd asked her not to take calls while she was modeling. He'd told her a dozen times, he couldn't have his concentration broken during a shoot, but did she listen?

  For a moment, his eyes dueled with hers - two sapphires, gleaming with superior amusement - and then his will broke and he turned to the ringing phone with a heavy, theatrical sigh. Passive aggression had always been David's forte. Rather than answer it himself, he simply lifted the receiver off the hook and, adopting an exaggerated air of indifference, carried it across the studio, the long extension cord stretching as he held it to Marlene's ear.

  She was not in a position to take hold of it herself, of course. The black leather singleglove cinching her arms prevented her doing much more than rolling the balls of her shoulders, while the leather straps keeping her ankles bound to her thighs kept her in a kneeling position on the red velour couch, the heels of the tightly-laced ballet boots pressed tightly against her bottom. The black ribbons that kept her hair piled up on top of her head, and the one wound decoratively around her throat, formed the rest of her couture for the afternoon.

  Marlene enjoyed working with David. If only he wasn't quite so spineless, she might have added him to her catalogue of lovers. She smiled sweetly at him, then spoke into the receiver. "Marlene Lang."

  The voice on the other end was a muffled growl, a hiss like steam escaping from some terrible industrial press.

  "You were told to return home and wait."

  "But if I'd gone home, darling, you'd have called here and you wouldn't have reached me. So I was just being efficient, really." She smiled sweetly, for the benefit of no-one. David was staring moodily into one corner, as if to give her some measure of privacy, though his arm still held the receiver stiffly in place. There was silence on the other end of the line.

  "What's the matter?" She purred the words lazily, like a cat. "Am I being terribly immoral? I suppose I am, really. I shall have to watch that."

  The voice on the other end was cold. "Bring the car around to the usual place no later than nine tonight. We have a murder to investigate." The line went dead.

  Marlene wondered for a moment if she'd made him jealous. But then, to feel jealousy, one would have to feel, and Marlene was not entirely convinced the Blood-Spider had any feelings beyond that cold, hard anger that informed all his movements. Perhaps that was what made him so fascinating to her - or the deliciousness of the cause, their shared war on crime. She had never imagined that a life of pursuing the common good, without recognition or reward, could be quite so wonderfully decadent.

  "There, done. You may put the receiver back, David." She smirked, watching him bristle as he marched stiffly back to replace the apparatus in its cradle, then adopted a contrite look, pouting as he turned his wounded eyes back on her. "Have I been very naughty?"

  David shook his head, stuttering a response and blushing. "It's not that, it's... I kind of wish you wouldn't... I mean, I've told you before..." Frustrated, he moved to the equipment he'd laid out on the table, out of the camera's view. "You're not going to be taking any more calls, right? I just need to concentrate for this."

  "No more calls, darling. I promise." Marlene smiled, arched her back, and opened her mouth for the ball gag.

  There were still little phantom shivers of rubber on the tip of her tongue and a pleasant ache in her shoulders as her hands gripped and spun the steering wheel of the Silver Ghost, tearing it around a corner in a cloud of billowing steam.

  She was dressed somewhat more conservatively now, although not by much. The belted leather jacket that formed the top portion of her uniform certainly covered up her torso admirably - although the tight fit drew the eye somewhat - and the peaked cap added an air of authority. The leather miniskirt was slightly more of a problem. It only came down to mid-thigh when she was standing, never mind sitting down, and the high heels on the black pumps she was made to wear did little to distract any passengers from the curves of her legs.

  Not that the Silver Ghost carried any passengers apart from the Blood-Spider himself, of course. Perhaps he did have human feelings after all.

  Or perhaps he saw her as merely a luxurious component of a luxurious vehicle - for 'luxurious' was really the only way the Silver Ghost could possibly be described. A sleek silver bullet, filigreed with the thin, clustered piping that kept the high-pressure steam turning the wheels and driving the whole apparatus forward, the air-intake surrounding the nosecone looking like the maw of some strange and terrifying undersea animal, the blazing twin gas lamps on either side forming its eyes. It looked delicate in its majestic complexity, but Marlene had been in the driving seat when the agents of E.R.A.M.T.H.G.I.N. - that strange re
verse-organisation, a gang of madmen existing to mock, détourn and destroy all symbols, the futurehead ethos gone wild and rabid in the streets - had roared out of an alleyway in their own patchwork auto, looking like nothing so much as a squat metal slug, and raked the Silver Ghost with machine-gun fire.

  "Us am vigilantes! Am us not men?" they'd howled, a terrifyingly accurate parody of the Blood-Spider's hiss, distorted as if played through a sped-up gramophone, the bright red clay headgear they wore to signify their 'de-evolutionary status' refashioned into crude, cruel mockeries of the Spider's signature mask. "Us use violence to effect social change! Am us not men? Us bring terror to underclass, make streets safer for overclass! Am us not men? Am us not men?"

  The Blood-Spider had turned, bullets missing him by inches, and dispatched each of them with a single shot, shattering the clay helmets and painting the fragments a different shade of red. A final shot had smashed through the slug's bonnet, bringing forth an explosion of hissing steam and sharp metal fragments and sending the auto careening into a nearby gas lamp, a charnel-display of rotting meat left as an example to any others who might consider impeding the Blood-Spider in the performance of his terrible duty.

  The Silver Ghost, meanwhile, had suffered barely a scratch. It was built to last.

  Marlene parked the auto near the mouth of a secluded, seemingly deserted back alley, filled with shadows and scurrying rats. As she opened the door, one shadow detached itself from the others, uncoiling like a snake, pitch darkness suddenly assuming form and substance. Marlene smiled.

  "Darling."

  Eight blank lenses gazed back at her as the Blood-Spider took his seat.

  "The Atlas building. West thirty-eighth." He opened the glove compartment of the sleek silver machine and withdrew a large grappling hook, connected to a loop of strong steel wire. "I have a personal call to make."

  "Yes, Sir." purred Marlene, gunning the engine and sending the Silver Ghost on into the New York night.

  The hard part had been getting to the roof without being seen.

  After that, it was a simple matter of placing his hands on the smooth stone of the wall and then vaulting over the roof edge, letting the intricate network of suction-cups on his gloves and the soles of his shoes affix themselves so he could climb down the wall to the window. This was his great secret - how he appeared and disappeared without warning, how he could strike from everywhere at once. The powerful suction of the rubber allowed him to cling expertly to any surface and reach the highest and most inhospitable nooks and crannies, there to watch and wait, as the spider waits in cracks and crevices for his prey.

  The Blood-Spider clung, like a spider clinging to a wall, over a drop that would not only shatter and pulverise his bones but liquefy his very flesh if he fell - and he thought no more about it than a normal man would if standing upon the edge of a high kerbstone.

  Danger was meaningless. The risk of death had been weighed, judged and found to be acceptable. All that remained now was the task at hand.

  The cause.

  Slowly, patiently, the Blood-Spider used a glass-cutting tool from his belt to carve a circle in the window large enough to gain him entry, pushing gently with his palm until the circle of glass popped into the room, landing almost silently on the deep plush carpet. He disliked compromising the crime scene in such a manner, but the police department had taken their turn with it. His job now was to find those things they had missed, in the places they had not bothered to look.

  As he crossed the threshold of the window, he looked to his left, at the dried blood still mixed with the fibres of the carpet. A man had died there. He had been stabbed in the back by a coward, and it was the duty of the Blood-Spider to find out who that coward was. As the soles of his boots sank into the lush carpeting, he devoted all his attention to that stain of blood, to that spot where Donner had been killed. That was the first piece of the puzzle. He would find the others, and piece by piece he would build up the truth of the matter. Strand by strand, the Spider would spin his web.

  He sank to one knee, brushing his fingertips over the dried, crusted stain, the map of a forgotten continent. Slowly, he examined its contours, his whole attention focused on determining its secret meaning, the clues buried in its unique shape.

  And so he never noticed the hands reaching for the back of his neck.

  Not until they were at his throat.

  Chapter Four

  Doc Thunder and The Ape Detective

  Monk had big hands.

  Large, hard things, they were. Great clubs of meat and bone and sinew, flexing dangerously, constantly twitching and moving. A carpet of rough hairs growing from the back of each, dirt and grime under the thick fingernails that he could never quite get out. Rough calluses on the fingertips, like sandpaper.

  Killer's hands.

  He'd taught them gentleness, painstakingly and over too many years. But every so often he would pick up a boiled egg and the shell would crack, or he'd handle a paperclip and it would bend between his fingers. Monk would wince, imperceptibly, and it would haunt him for days, making him hesitant about shaking a hand or putting his arm around a shoulder.

  For at least a week after such an incident, he would sleep on the couch downstairs. Doc and Maya had grown to accept it. Gradually, his confidence would return, and so would he. But it always took time.

  He had to be careful. So careful, all the time. And he was careful. He was careful when he twisted the cotter pin in the lock of the penthouse suite to let himself in, and careful when he examined the room Donner died in, lifting, inspecting, replacing exactly, each object treated like a Faberge egg, every clue a museum piece of untold worth.

  "Go take a look at the crime scene," Doc Thunder had said. "Pick up what you can, then get straight back to me. No risks, understand?"

  Monk had shrugged. "Sure, Doc. You think Donner got mixed up with something?"

  Doc had laughed humourlessly. "Mixed up isn't the word. He was the man behind Untergang. I could never prove it, but he was. The secret figurehead - businessman and philanthropist by day, inhuman monster by night. And he hated me more than any human being I've ever known."

  Monk had raised an eyebrow. "Lars Lomax?"

  Doc had almost smiled. "Lars hated me, all right. He would have burned the entire world to see me dead. But... Heinrich Donner would have burned the world to see me stub my toe on the ruins. He was the one who murdered-" Doc had suddenly gone quiet, as if he'd almost said too much. Monk waited.

  "We finally had it out in 1959. We were fighting in Paraguay. He had this secret bunker set up... the whole damn place was full of nitro-glycerin and he pulled a gun on me." Doc shook his head sadly. "I had him. I really did. I had hard evidence, I was going to bring him to trial, but he just..."

  He'd tailed off, looking into the middle distance. "He knew bullets didn't work on me. He knew that. One of them bounced off my chest, hit the nitro... and boom. Goodbye, Heinrich. Nearly goodbye me." He'd paused. "I think the evil little son of a bitch just wanted to kill us both." Monk remembered being surprised at the venom in Doc's voice. He'd never spoken that way before about anyone, even Lomax. Donner's hatred hadn't all been one-way. "I really thought he was dead. I've taken down Untergang leaders since then - the Purple Wraith, Queen Tiger... they must have been figureheads, like Cobra was. It was Donner. All the time. All the time..." He'd shaken his head, covering his eyes, and Monk had flinched. He'd never seen Doc look that way - that look of despair. "I need to know what he's been doing since 'fifty-nine. I need to know who killed him, and why, and if he's really dead this time. I don't think I can go to the police yet. I just... I don't know, Monk. I don't quite know what to do."

  He'd looked at Monk with those steel-blue eyes, and they'd looked lost, like a kid's.

  I don't know what to do.

  The most frightening words Monk had ever heard Doc say.

  "So... you want me to take a look? Bring back some intel?"

  Doc had nodded, and suddenly
the old certainty was back. "That's what we need." He'd smiled. "Remember, no risks. Take the flare gun. And listen, the slightest hint of anything and you get out of there. This is Untergang we're talking about - old school Untergang. They don't play games. Oh, and one last thing. Maya's had a dream; a man in a red mask, standing over one of us. She thinks it could be connected, so... keep an eye out."

  Monk had just smiled. "Sure thing, Boss. No risks. You can rely on me."

  And here he was, putting the picture together. A jigsaw puzzle. A portrait of a man's life, a life now ended. Under his breath, he began to murmur to himself. At the orphanage, some funny guy had given him a copy of The Jungle Book. Real funny, a laugh and a half for the popular crowd. The joke was on them. He'd devoured it, cover to cover, maybe just to show them, but that one book had started a fire for reading, for knowledge, that'd never gone out. Monk wished he could remember the funny guy's name. He'd wanted to thank him a lot in the years since. Send him a pound cake for Christmas or something.

  Anyway, after The Jungle Book he was hungry for more Kipling, so he'd moved on to the Just So Stories, and there was a verse in that one that came back to him sometimes, on a case like this one.

  "I keep six honest serving-men, they taught me all I knew. Their names are what and why and when and how and where and who."

  Six questions. Get the answers to all six and you had the puzzle solved.

  He was in the where. The police knew the when and the what. They even figured they knew the how.

  According to the police, Donner had probably known his killer enough to let him in the door, and to turn his back. There'd been no sign of forced entry.