Fist First

by Nigel Mustard

  Not a single one uttered a smile from their lips.

  They evacuated themselves from the plane via the stairs in double file behind Spang.

  ‘The Chinamen marched out two by two…’ sang Lowenstein as he watched from the runway. He hadn’t planned that joke – it just sprung into his head like some kid’s jack in the box.

  Reuben Lowenstein was simply the cleverest man in New York. He had an IQ well into triple digits. Lowenstein was a World Chess Champion, despite having only played for 5 years. He worked the stock markets, but only for fun, diabolically altering the market with his machiavielillelalian (wicked) dealings.

  He stood on the edge of the runway waiting for Johnny Spang to walk over.

  Spang was an Oriental, so was not a tall man. Coupled with that, he was not a fat man. These two facts conspired to result in the fact that Spang was a small man. However, what he lacked in physical size, he made up in presence.

  His first present was a jade dragon, intricately carved and smelling faintly of an Oriental perfume. He handed this to Lowenstein, who took it, bowing.

  His second present was a golden opium pipe, which had a musky Oriental scent associated with it. Lowenstein took this as well, bowing.

  The final present was a deadly ivory throwing star, which was odourless, light, and utterly deadly. Lowenstein took this as well, bowing.

  ‘Mr Magnelli will be most pleased with these tributes. I’ll ensure Hitoshi gets this throwing star.’

  ‘Twibutes?! TWIBUTES?!’ Spang laughed, a high pitched titter which was immediately echoed by each of his eighty four henchmen who still stood behind him in double file.

  ‘These are not twibutes, Lowenstein-san, they are meely gifts. The day that Johnny Spang twibutes a gwai-lo white man, is the day Tofu turns into Soy Sauce…’

  ‘Of course, Mr Spang, you know… I was only…’ Lowenstein spluttered like a turtle.

  ‘Heeeheeheeheeheehee’ tittered Spang again. ‘You Americans are sooooo quick to apologise.. Relax. I am here to do business, not to start a war. At least, not a war with you.’

  Lowenstein breathed a sigh of relief. He hated the idea of Spang encroaching on the New York Underworld. He had heard rumours about Spang’s modus operandi (way of doing things) that sent shivers up his spine and down his spine.

  Spang hoisted a small, intricately carved fan into the air and walked past Lowenstein into the awaiting Humvee limousine. The forty two men dressed in black felt trousers, black felt top hats, black wool shirts and black socks followed him in.

  The remaining 42 soldiers, dressed in crisp white trousers, white shoes, white socks, white shirts, white ties and white bowler hats, climbed onto 21 Kawasaki motorbikes (Two Chinamen to a bike) and split themselves fore and aft of the limousine.

  With a rev of the engine, Johnny Spang disappeared into a huge airplane hangar (like a house for planes) a couple of hundred yards away.

  The shutters on the airplane hangar shut fast behind the convoy.

  Lowenstein stood, shaking his head. Something bad was afoot.

  He turned on his heels and walked towards a helicopter that was lazily sitting on the helicopter pad like a fat owl. Inside the helicopter were two men. One had a captain’s hat on, and held the navigation rod of the chopper hungrily between his hands. He was clearly the helicopter driver. But the other man… well, it was the Mayor of the City – Eddie Crawford!

  Crawford spoke words, nervously. ‘This is bad, Lowenstein. You didn’t tell me Spang was coming with 84 of his most wicked henchmen. And don’t tell me they were guitars in those guitar cases!’

  Crawford stopped speaking.

  Lowenstein started.

  ‘Look, Edward, you just worry about your family. Mr Spang has some business with Mr Magnelli – there should not be an overabundance of bloodshed, as long as you ensure the troublesome New York NYPD stays out of our hairs.’

  ‘I’ll never speak your language, Lowenstein. It’s like you got two brains.’ Crawford was referring to the electric wit of Lowenstein, whose dazzling grasp of the English language equally shocked and impressed.

  ‘And I’ll never expect you to, Mr Mayor.’ Replied Lowenstein, quick as a flash.

  Crawford sighed and scratched his finger softly on the back of the neck of the chopper driver. A clear sign to depart.

  Up up and up they went!

  Up!

  Lowenstein simply watched the chopper disappear into the squid-black night, and placed a call from his portable phone.

  ‘The wheels are in motion. Nobody expects a thing.’

  He hung up. Lowenstein didn’t speak the caller’s name out loud, so for the moment, it will remain a mystery.

  Lowenstein laughed, a high pitch screech which echoed over the asphalt surface of the runways.

  Chapter 16

  Stoker came to with a slap in the face.

  ‘Hmph… that all you got?’ He asked coolly.

  He was strapped to a work bench with firm leather straps round his left ankle, right hand, left hand and right ankle.

  The Japanese monster loomed over him like a demon. He held a blow torch in his hand.

  Stoker grimaced. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

  A voice appeared phonically.

  ‘Not so fast, Hitoshi. I want to hear what this prick knows.’

  Stoker angled his head up. ‘Welcome to the party. Don’t remember sending you an invitation though.’ Quite unbelievably, Stoker was acting cool and still emitting snappy dialogue as if he was back in the office with the boys – not strapped into some torture device!

  Magnelli (the owner of the voice that appeared earlier) continued to speak:

  ‘Well, Frank Stoker… It appears you’ve met your match. I’m Thomas Magnelli – I own this city and I don’t appreciate pigs snuffling around in my business. When you disturbed my plan to… interfere… with that bitch Chloe Crawford, you angered me.’

  Stoker interrupted, like this:

  ‘Fair warning: Call her a bitch again, and I’ll knock you unconscious. Maybe not now… but sometime soon.’

  Magnelli paused… just the briefest of pauses, but enough to let Stoker know he had rattled him.

  ‘You’re in no fucking position to make threats, you piece of shit.’

  ‘You hear what I said?’ continued Stoker, unphased and as cool as a lollipop.

  Magnelli fumed. ‘You’ll meet that bitch in hell – along with her dumb Irish father, the May…’

  ‘Mayor of the City? Don’t think I don’t know. I know more than you think. I know that he must have done something to piss you off. I know that you wanted to harm his innocent daughter as a punishment. I also know that Mafiamen like you don’t waste time chatting to their torture victims. So let’s get this over with.’

  ‘I have respect for a man who is willing to accept his fate. Hitoshi – keep him alive for only a couple of days. He can die slowly, but not the worst you’ve done. I’m beginning to like this guy.’

  Magnelli walked out of the room with authority; like a confident lecturer at a middling but respectable British university.

  Hitoshi leered at Stoker:

  ‘Now… you mine. Much pain, you will feel.’

  Stoker replied, coolly:

  ‘How the hell do I order room service in this place?’

  Hitoshi didn’t speak more than fifty words of English, but something about the confident tone of this handsome man with long, thick black hair clearly made him uneasy. He bowed twice, grunting, then went to work on Frank Stoker.

  Chapter 17

  Time dragged…

  The minutes felt like longer minutes…

  The hours felt about 75 to 80 minutes long (rather than 60)…

  Hitoshi used electric shocks, waterboarding and a baseball bat to work on Stoker.

  Stoker had been tortured before, under interrogation by the Mexican cartel. He had shrugged it off for a while, and never talked. Eventually he managed to escape using a combination of brains and brawn
which would have to be (and could realistically easily be) told in a prequel.

  But this was different. No questions. No demands. No breaks. Just constant abuse, too diabolical to commit to the page. Stoker guessed he had been with Hitoshi for 12 hours, and the monster had not once left to eat, drink, or even use the bathroom.

  Stoker waited patiently for an angle. Any sign of weakness. But nothing was shown.

  ‘Leather strap. Unbreakable.’ Laughed Hitoshi, as Stoker struggled initially. He smashed the baseball bat onto Stoker's hands every time he struggled.

  Stoker went into himself, remembering the teachings of Sensai Wilson.

  ‘One cannot be hurt, if one withdraws into one’s shell, like a turtle’s head.’

  Stoker disappeared. Sure… he was still on the table, receiving constant abuse, but he floated away, reciting fine prose from fine literature that he had read, or playing symphonies written by credible classical composers that he had learnt in his own time. Stoker was not only a tough guy, but he had a grasp of fine art and literature that was really surprising and unique.

  This went on for hours. He came to every now and then, to smile at Hitoshi and spit on the floor. He kept goading the oriental monster, despite being subjected to gross torment. Stoker still managed to play it cool, even in these circumstances.

  Some guy, this man.

  Stoker waited for any weakness, any gap.

  Sure enough, one came.

  Hitoshi grudgingly left the room for a moment when called by Magnelli. He had seen that Stoker was seemingly unconscious, which gave him some comfort. But the truth was that Hitoshi simply enjoyed torture too much to cease it, even for a minute, without regret.

  He left Frank Stoker alone, bound by leather straps and half dead by torture.

  Bad move.

  Stoker came to, and quickly deduced he was alone. How long did he have? He thought, rhetorically. Stoker wasn’t a man to leave a rhetorical question unanswered.

  By way of an answer, he wrenched his hands and feet in their straps. He had lost a lot of blood. His muscles had been bruised and battered for hours. Stoker was weak.

  But a weak Frank Stoker is still one hell of a lot stronger than a normal guy.

  The straps were thick leather. The kind used to keep psychopaths restrained to tables in nuthouses.

  Hell, Stoker had no earthly right to be able to break them.

  Guess what?

  He did.

  He crunched his toned abdominal muscles and brought his arms down to his chest with an almighty crash.

  The damn leather just broke like it was some kid’s chewing toffee.

  He undid the buckles around his feet. Blood dripped into his eyes and over the latch mechanism, making it slimy. He fumbled but managed to unlock it.

  Just in time.

  Footsteps shouted from behind the door. Hitoshi was about to return.

  Stoker lept down from the table and set his big, elegant feet on the floor, crouching down to one knee.

  As the cacophony of normal-volume footsteps got louder and louder, Stoker deduced exactly when Hitoshi was in front of the door.

  He breathed deeply, then through his 280 pound frame at the door, like a muscular torpedo (with arms and legs). His shoulder hit the door with the force of a college linebacker riding a thickset bull.

  Two things happened.

  The door slammed into Hitoshi, sending him flying back and over a railing on the balcony overlooking the warehouse shop floor.

  The door then bounced off its hinges, smashing into itself and then over itself – into precisely one thousand smithereens.

  The damn thing had been made of grade-1 American oak.

  Stoker smiled to himself.

  ‘Hmph. I’ll have to make a complaint to the manager. The service here sucks.’

  He picked himself up, brushing shards of oak from his clothes, and saw Hitoshi sprawling on the floor thirty feet below the railing. Nobody else seemed to be in the warehouse. The door to Magnelli's office to the left was open and the room was empty. ‘Magnelli must have left immediately after giving Hitoshi his orders.’ Thought Stoker (and he was exactly correct, because that is what had happened).

  He stared down again at Hitoshi, who was alive, but winded and writhing around on the floor. He looked up at Stoker with rage in his eyes. Stoker laughed in the very face of the very devil.

  ‘Did somebody order tenderised Japanese beef?’ He shouted, and ran his hand through his dark oily (coloured) hair.

  He walked calmly down the stairs into the main warehouse, past the barely conscious body of Hitoshi, and climbed out of the nearest window.

  ‘Hell Stoker, too old for this nonsense anymore’ he said to himself aloud as he fell from the other side of the window onto a wooden pier.

  He dove into the Hudson River, and with the grace, speed and technique of an Olympic swimmer, coolly swam into the night.

  PART 2

  Chapter 18

  Across town, a couple of hours later, things began to happen in Mayor Crawford’s office. Things including the arrival of Thomas Magnelli, Reuben Lowenstein and the reprehensible Johnny Spang. Things like the lining up of Spang’s Chinese thugs down the corridor outside the office, causing consternation amongst the suits throughout City Hall.

  The sight of forty two Chinamen lining up anywhere in City Hall would have caused a few eyebrows to be elevated… but forty two outside the Mayor’s office? It was unprecedented. If all the brains behind the brows in New York were aware – all the (eye)brows beneath the eyes would have been lifted.

  But despite being nervous, Mayor Eddie Crawford wasn’t about to tell Johnny Spang to leave.

  Oh no.

  No chance.

  That just wasn’t gonna happen.

  It really was unlikely: Johnny Spang was a despicable crime baron, and Crawford was a lowly Irish coward.

  So, Crawford sat in his office and listened, his small ears defying their diminutive size and listening quite well actually. Crawford’s personal bodyguard, Michael Janney, stood behind Crawford with a handsome expression on his face.

  Thomas Magnelli strode in like a legged snake… slithering on his heels like a cobra. He slammed his fist down on the table, causing a noise to scream from his knuckles. He span in his chair, 360 degrees, intimidatingly. His potent cigar (lit, aflame) protruded arrogantly from his dry lips as if it had all the right in the world to be there.

  Lowenstein looked nervous and tired. His face dangled from the edge of his head like the end of a kid’s toy train set. He shuffled papers and fingered his calculator.

  Johnny Spang sat cross legged on the corner of the table. He was meditating in a time-honoured oriental way. His mouth was stuffed full of Beijing Red Dragon Fire Leaf, a toxic tobacco plant known to be deadly to all but the most oriental people on the planet.

  And Crawford completed the trio (plus one) by toying with his small, greasy pipe at the end of the table. He held the instrument between his thumb and forefinger and sprinkled tobacco (soon to be callous ash) into it. He sat and waited for conversation to begin commencing taking place.

  He didn’t have to wait for long.

  That’s because… Magnelli started talking.

  ‘Can someone tell me why the fuck Frank Stoker is walking the streets of god damn New York City as if he is alive?’ Screeched Magnelli, overstatedly.

  Mayor Crawford piped up. ‘Maybe if your henchman had done his job and tied him up properly – or per-fucking-haps he might have just killed the guy straight away rather than torturing him?’

  Magnelli stood up. He walked over to Crawford and slapped him in the face. ‘Don’t ever question me again. Your boots are getting too big for your damn feet. Remember who runs this city. And Hitoshi needs… entertainment. If you want to keep a pet monster, you have to feed him nightmares. I’m more interested in why no cops have picked him up since he escaped. How much do I have to pay you to keep the cops on my side? How the hell can he have got away?’
>
  Lowenstein jumped in, intellectually: ‘Mr Magnelli, sir, indisputably this turn of affairs is anything but the desirable outcome – but we should act prudentially. Simply fulminating will do nothing to expedite the agreeable outcome. May I suggest…’

  Lowenstein stopped because someone else had begun speaking. A classic interruption. The perpetrator? Crawford.

  ‘You may suggest nothing, you stupid Jew fuck… nothing you’ve done has protected us from this situation and we got a fucking cop who thinks he’s a damn hero loose on the streets, and a damned tough bastard at that. If I lose my Mayorship and my family because of this damned fucking mess… I swear…’

  Magnelli’s turn to interrupt: ‘Your Mayorship is the least of my fucking troubles. I’m gonna have the District Attorney so far up my ass he’ll be wearing my sphincter as a leg warmer. We need this prick Stoker dead.’

  Lowenstein tried to calm the situation. 'Mr Magnelli, are you utterly sure that the massacre of the gentleman is the only feasible option? I strongly counsel against the elimination of serving Police Officers. It can only bring undue attention from the bureaucrats at City Hall.'

  'You're a damn coward, Lowenstein. Sometimes you've gotta get your hands dirty.' Magnelli sneered at him. 'Life ain't like that boardgame chess which you seem to like so much.'

  ‘SILENCE, white fools.’ Screamed Spang. ‘Enough talking. You want this Stoker to pay, no problem. I make it happen. You want his family dead… No problem. I make it happen. My diabolical gang of ninjas has never had a problem wiping inconvenient policemen off the very face of the cursed earth. I make it happen.’

  Lowenstein countered with the following clever words: ‘But, Mr Spang, with respect, Frank Stoker has no family. He can’t be corrupted, or intimidated. He has proven a most problematic antagonist.’

  ‘Oh… Please… my naïve American friend. All men can be punished. All men have friends they call family… or family they call friends. We simply… wipe them out.’ Spang’s words even seemed to shock Magnelli, who was a seasoned Mafiaman.