Cloud clapped his hands together and said, “But the money is nice too.” He pointed his index fingers at Anthony. “And speaking of money—a certain Sal ‘the Panther’ Maroni has placed a sizable bounty on your head, Anthony. Something to do with a kidnapping, a few months ago? Normally, I’d have nothing to do with a brute like Maroni, but in this case I might just make an exception. You’ve rapped my knuckles once too often for me to let this opportunity slip through my fingers. First, however, I’m going to extract my pound of flesh.”
Cloud reached behind him, under his coat, and pulled out an ivory handled straight razor. “You remember Abigail, I trust?” he purred. With a practiced flick of his wrist, he unfolded the razor. “Damascus steel and Kenyan ivory. She only got in a single kiss, last time we danced. This time, I think she’ll have you crying.”
Anthony grimaced. He still had the scar from the cut Cloud had made on his arm the last time they’d tangled. That razor of his was ungodly sharp, and Cloud was as good with it as any Parisian street apache. It was time to go.
Cloud strutted toward him, the razor dangling from his hand. “I think I’ll take it out of your face,” he said. “We’ll leave enough for the Panther to recognize you, but I’ve got a mind to make a fancy bookmark out of the rest. Hold him, gentlemen. He’s a squirmy one.”
Anthony let Cloud get within arm’s length of him. He felt the yacht roll with a wave, and the men holding him automatically shifted their weight to retain their balance. It was just the sort of opportunity Anthony had been waiting for. With a jerk of his shoulders, he stepped back and swung his captors around in front of him, slamming the two men together. They staggered in surprise and Anthony slid free of them. Before they could recover, he grabbed the arm of the closest, jerked the man aside and drove stiffened fingers into a point just below his armpit where a nerve cluster lurked.
The man made a tiny sound and toppled like a felled tree. His partner tackled Anthony, driving him back against the wall. A framed picture of Cloud shaking hands with Al Capone fell off and smashed on the floor. The bruiser had Anthony pinned with his weight and he proceeded to drive a fist into his opponent’s side, and then into his belly. Anthony grunted in pain as the thug worked his chest and stomach like a heavy bag. He got his arms up and brought both elbows down on the man’s shoulders. As the thug sank down, Anthony caught his chin with a raised knee. The man staggered back, shaking his head like a clubbed bull.
Anthony lunged forward and hooked the thug’s thick neck with the crook of his arm, flipping him head over heels. However, even as he crashed down, his partner staggered to his feet, fists raised. Anthony spun and caught the latter by the throat, grabbed the back of his coat, and slammed him down to the floor, hard enough to rattle the remaining pictures on the wall. Nonetheless, the second man rolled over with a groan and grabbed his leg. Anthony kicked him in the head, and he slumped.
Anthony whirled, his eyes seeking out the desk and the record books. He started forward. “I’m the best in the world at calculating odds, Anthony,” Cloud snarled, stepping between Anthony and the desk. He still held the straight razor. “The best since day one. And no one gets the better of me twice, not even a super-detective!” Anthony hesitated in mid-crouch. Cloud’s free hand twitched. Anthony’s heart rate sped up. Everything seemed to slow down. Cloud’s arm snapped up, and the spring-loaded automatic slapped into his waiting palm, even as Anthony lunged for him. The bullet creased Anthony’s side as he caught Cloud’s wrist and slammed it down on the edge of the desk, forcing him to release the pistol.
Twisting in his grip like a snake, Cloud brought the straight razor down across Anthony’s cheek, and blood dappled the air. Anthony pivoted and drove his elbow into Cloud’s jaw. Cloud stumbled and slashed wildly at him. Anthony jerked back. Cloud regained his balance. The two men circled one another warily. Anthony knew he had the edge in strength and skill, but Cloud was a born killer, and it wasn’t smart to underestimate him.
Cloud darted forward. Anthony slid aside and caught the gambler with a rabbit punch. Cloud grunted and drove a foot down on Anthony’s instep. Pain flared up Anthony’s leg as he jerked his foot free and rammed a fist into the small of Cloud’s back. He could hear feet pounding down the hall outside of the office. Now it was really time to go.
Cloud staggered and Anthony grabbed him by his lapels and spun him about. With more power than grace, he pitched Cloud toward the trio of gunmen who suddenly busted into the office, alerted to their boss’ predicament by the gunshot. Cloud squalled like a cat as he crashed into his men and they went down in a tangle.
“You’re the best in the world bar one, Reinhardt,” Anthony said. Then, as the men began to get to their feet, he turned, snatched up the books, shoved them into the waterproof pouch, and dove through the oversized porthole. Cloud’s curses followed him all the way down. Anthony cut through the water in an Olympic-calibre dive. Bullets punched past him as he sank down, leaving trails of bubbles in their wake. Holding the record books tight to his chest, he began to swim.
3.
Anthony swam toward the mangroves with long, smooth strokes, clutching the edge of the waterproof satchel containing the record books in his teeth. Cloud had parked his boat just outside of Cuban waters, close enough to tease wealthy tourists on board, but far enough away that he could leave in a hurry, if the situation required. Cloud was smart enough to know that although he had President Batista’s tacit approval for his presence, there was no guarantee that it would last. Especially given that Cloud had netted more than one member of Batista’s government with his schemes.
Anthony didn’t worry overmuch about Cloud coming after him. The gambler was dangerous, but ultimately more concerned with self preservation than anything else. Too, Anthony had taken the precaution of making sure that he had a quick ride out of trouble. He grinned around the edge of the satchel when he saw the silvery shape of the Grumman G-21 Goose island hopper parked amongst the trees. He’d bought the plane after seeing what one could do during a previous case. It was an amphibious aircraft, which made it perfect for certain delicate operations Anthony occasionally had to undertake on behalf of his investigations.
The plane’s twin 450 horsepower nine cylinder air-cooled radial engines gave a communal cough as soon as the heavyset man lounging in the pilot’s seat caught sight of the bronzed figure swimming toward him. The pilot swung halfway out of the door, one brawny hand resting on the butt of the .45 automatic holstered on his hip. “That you Jimmy-boy?” he called out, his words edged with a prominent Gaelic lilt.
Tom Gentry was a big man, red-faced and wide-shouldered. Next to Anthony’s lean pantherish frame, Gentry was a gorilla. He was a pugilist, a puncher, and one of the best pilots that Anthony had ever had the good fortune to know.
He’d known Gentry since they were both boys, and both had lied about their age to enlist when the Great War had spread its shadow over Europe and its satellite states. The big Irish lad of sixteen had beaten the then fourteen year old Anthony into uniform by several months, taking off to join the Canadian air service; he’d flown every type of aircraft available and had traded lead with more than one trophy hunting German ace over the course of his time in uniform. Now, he played professional dogsbody for his friend; Gentry acted as chauffeur, pilot and, when necessary, bodyguard for Anthony. Some people thought it was a step down for the son of an award winning physicist, but Gentry seemed content.
“Who else would be swimming toward you wearing yellow trunks and carrying the records for a waterborne blackmail scheme?” Anthony said as he reached the plane. He reached up and Gentry hauled him out of the water.
“How am I supposed to know? Maybe you were a mermaid,” Gentry said.
“Do I look like a mermaid?”
Gentry peered at him. “Maybe an ugly one,” he said, after a moment.
Anthony snorted and handed him the satchel. “You were right, by the way—Cloud saw through my disguise.”
“I told you,�
� Gentry said. He shook his head. “What did I say, Jimmy? I said Cloud was a paranoid so and so, and that he’d be looking for us.”
“Yes Tom, thank you,” Anthony said as he climbed, still dripping, into the back of the plane. “Can we go? Or would you like to say ‘I told you so’ a bit more?”
“Naw, I can say it while we fly,” Gentry said with a grin.
As the plane eased out of the mangroves, Anthony toweled off and sat back to flip through the record books. It took him some time. They were written in Cloud’s personal cipher. It would take a few days to decode it, but he had enough experience with the way Cloud thought to make a go of it. The gambler recorded everything, either on paper or on tape. His empires were built on a shifting slope of information—facts, percentages, and decimal points, all coded in a unique cipher.
Anthony leaned back in his seat. Right now, if his previous encounters with the gambler were anything to go by, Cloud would be clearing out his bank accounts and making ready to scuttle his boat. He didn’t hang around long, once his schemes had been uncovered. Where he’d go after that was anyone’s guess. Anthony had no doubt that he’d run across Cloud again. Like Rado Ruric had been before his timely death, Cloud was a burr under Anthony’s saddle. Much like Sal Maroni.
Thought of the latter made him recall the bounty Cloud had mentioned. If Maroni were offering a fair price for his scalp, things could get dicey. Anthony had faced any number of hitmen, assassins, and bounty killers in his career, but they’d only rarely been after him personally. And never in the sort of numbers that Maroni’s ill-gotten wealth could attract. The Sicilian Panther wasn’t a subtle sort—he’d throw hired gunsels at Anthony by the fistful, consequences be damned. Still, that was a problem for later.
He closed his eyes. He had been awake for almost three days, following the trail, and then infiltrating Cloud’s boat, first disguised as a stevedore during a routine supply delivery, and then as a well-heeled tourist. Anthony could go without sleep for longer than the average man, but it wasn’t something he particularly enjoyed. The adrenaline of the moment had faded, leaving him feeling wrung out and tired. His body ached from the struggle on the boat, and the cuts and bruises he’d suffered only added to the weight of his exhaustion.
When his eyes popped open, the Grumman Goose was touching down at Meacham Field in Key West. Groggy from sleep, he pulled on a pair of loose linen trousers and a short sleeve silk shirt. Gentry taxied the plane toward the large, ramshackle hangar that Anthony owned, and where his giant silver Douglas airplane, the Thunderbird II, was currently waiting to transport them back to New York.
Anthony owned a larger hangar in Newark, where the Thunderbird II was normally stored when not in use, as well as several smaller ones, like Meacham Field, scattered across the United States. He had learned the hard way that it paid to have such properties available. The Thunderbird II, much like its predecessor, had an actual bathroom in it, including a shower, which Anthony gratefully made use of while the plane was made ready to fly.
Afterwards, he saw to his hurts. The cuts he’d received from Cloud’s razor weren’t deep, but they were painful nonetheless. Rather than using a sticking plaster, Anthony applied a thin coat of cyanoacrylate spray, which would seal the wounds beneath a temporary semi-permeable membrane. The bruises, unfortunately, would have to fade on their own.
While Gentry guided the Thunderbird II toward Newark, Anthony settled back to resume his well-earned rest in the larger plane’s sleeping compartment. As he waited to fall back asleep, he went over the stack of newspapers that the hangar attendant had stocked his plane with. There were samples from every major broadsheet based in New York City. Bastions of journalistic endeavor, such as the Bugle and the Globe, warred for space in the stack with yellow journalistic rags like the New York Inquirer. And on the top of the pile was the latest edition of his own paper, the Daily Star. He’d bought the struggling newspaper on a whim, and it had since become one of the most trusted newspapers in the country. For a time, he’d considered the Star to be his own private information-gathering service, before an old foe had attempted to use Anthony’s employees as pawns in a murderous gambit. After that, he’d reduced his participation in the day-to-day affairs of the paper. Now, he rarely visited, unless he needed to make use of the concealed field lab he kept in the building.
He scanned the papers for anything of significance. He noted incidents in Tacoma, Sovereign City, and Chicago, all of which bore further investigation, if only for curiosity’s sake. New York, as always, had the lion’s share of attention-grabbing tidbits. According to the Daily Star, the so-called ‘Red Hook Butcher’ had claimed his seventh victim in the eponymous New York neighborhood. Anthony had considered becoming involved in the Butcher investigation, but had restrained himself. If the NYPD required his assistance, they had his number. The Bugle, meanwhile, was concerned about the public murder of a hostess at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem by an unknown man, who had attacked her in a seeming rage before escaping.
Elements of the latter incident reminded Anthony of the Death’s Head Cloud incident he’d become involved in several months earlier, and he frowned. The cloud’s creator, the so-called Death’s Head Man, had been caught under the wheels of a train and dragged to his doom. His body had, as yet, not been recovered, but Anthony thought that it was unlikely that the criminal chemist had survived. Nonetheless, he marked the article for further review.
Only once all of the papers had been examined did Anthony drift back into a restful slumber, lulled into a relaxed state by the drone of the plane’s engines, his mind working through the information he’d absorbed. He didn’t require much sleep—two to three hours was usually enough to restore his physical faculties and mental acuity to prime function. If pressed, he could get by on an hour every other night, though even his impressive constitution would become taxed if that went on too long.
His eyes opened a minute before the Thunderbird II touched down at Newark. He and Gentry left the plane to the care of the hangar ground crew and transferred themselves and Cloud’s record books to the small garage attached to the hangar.
Anthony owned a fleet of cars, including the plain looking little black coupe parked in the garage. Its plain exterior belied a bellyful of secrets. The coupe was armor plated, and little short of a tank round could dent its chassis, and the tires were made from a specially treated rubber that could absorb more punishment than the average Firestones. Even more impressively, its backseat held a fully stocked chemical lab; everything Anthony might need in the course of a case, all sealed in an intricately designed set of collapsible, foldout shelves hidden in the back of the seat and the floor. There was also a small bar, which Anthony ignored as he situated himself in the back seat, focusing instead on the humidor hidden beneath the backseat.
Anthony extracted two thin cigars from the humidor, and handed one to Gentry, who took it eagerly. The cigars were the only export of a certain South American tribe, and were made from a form of tobacco entirely unique to the isolated valley that said tribe occupied. Anthony had made the acquaintance of the tribe during a brief sojourn to Maple-White Land, and had grown fond of the leaf. The tribesmen used pipes, but Anthony preferred cigars.
Gentry, at the wheel of the coupe, didn’t bother to ask where they were going, and he pointed the motorcar toward Manhattan. He and Anthony had only gotten a third of the way through their cigars when the Waldorf-Anthony suddenly rose like a gleaming chromium and black monument into the sky.
Built in 1897 and then gradually enlarged until it had reached its current height of eighty six floors, the Waldorf-Anthony was one of the greatest examples of modern structural engineering and the most expensive hotel on the East Coast. Or, it had been, in years past. Now it was merely one of the most expensive. It was also Anthony’s home in the city. He occupied the top three floors on a more or less permanent basis, staying mainly in the penthouse.
Gentry took the car into the underground garage, a feature known onl
y to a select few of the hotel’s more permanent residents, via the entrance on the corner. Anthony had had a hand in designing the garage and the entrance both, just after he’d left the university. While architectural design wasn’t something he counted among his talents, he felt he hadn’t done too bad a job. The garage was a small thing, built around a descending spiral.
The coupe settled into a parking space a few minutes later. Anthony slid out, and Gentry followed, carrying Cloud’s record books. They headed for the private elevator Anthony had installed soon after the garage had been completed. The elevator was an express, not stopping at any floors other than the top three. As the doors closed, Anthony went to the control panel and opened a hidden panel, revealing a tumbler mechanism. It could be turned by a key, or, as in this instance, by twisting the tumbler itself in a specific combination. The elevator car shuddered as it began to rise.
“Feels good to be home,” Gentry said. He’d been silent for the whole return trip, well aware of Anthony’s need for rest after his grueling investigation. Though Gentry would never admit it, Anthony knew the big man worried about him, and about how hard he pushed himself. Gentry shifted the record books in his hands and patted one. “Think you’ll be able to crack Cloud’s codes?”
“Given time,” Anthony said. He scratched his chin. “Not soon enough to catch him before he heads for the horizon, but soon enough to help those he’s blackmailing. Which, in the end, is all we really wanted.”
“I still don’t get how taking these will do that,” Gentry said, peering down at the books. “I mean, he still knows everything he knew before.”
“Yes, but now so do we. A secret isn’t a secret when more than two people know about it. And Cloud’s hold on his victims was predicated on keeping their secrets safe—how much money they lost, who they slept with, etcetera—but now, well, those secrets are out. Cloud will cut ties and vanish, rather than risk me using what’s in those books to catch him. It’s not as elegant a solution as I’d like, but this was never about catching the blackmailer, so much as rendering what he knew useless to him.”
The New Adventures of Jim Anthony, Super-Detective Page 2
