Fist First

by Nigel Mustard

  ‘..Apple.’

  Von Klatt smiled to himself, but in truth the power of the joke had been tempered by the length of time it took him to find the apple then pull it out of his pocket. It was still a comical play on words though, to give some credit to the man.

  Stoker grabbed the bars with his hands.

  ‘Why, Von Klatt? Josef was always a good Chief, and a good man. He treated all of us like his sons.’

  ‘Yes, yes. A good man. Yadda yadda yadda. He was weak. And unambitious. I am the new face of the police. And New York is about to bleed. About to bleed coins into my purse.’ He laughed, wickedly.

  ‘You snivelling wretch. I should have killed you back in Brooklyn ten years ago. I knew you were corrupt then.’

  ‘Mr Stoker, I have to agree with you. It appears you missed your chance. And now, it’s time to die.’ With a smile, he turned his head approximately eighty, maybe eighty five degrees to the right.

  ‘BRING THEM IN!’ He screamed down the hall.

  Stoker sat down on a bunk and waited for the show to begin.

  Three men marched round the corner like gigantic two-legged gorillas. They had greased curly black hair, wore leather jackets with white t-shirts underneath. Combs dangled in their back pockets fashionably. Their jeans were faded and blue. They all stood well over six feet tall.

  Stoker recognised the Tiramisi brothers instantly. They had raised hell for a decade on the south side until, about seven years ago, Stoker locked them away for good.

  The Tiramisi boys had been Mafiamen enforcers on the outside. Word was, they still carried on the family business in New York Jail.

  The two younger brothers Oleg and Luigi were twins, and six feet four. The older brother, Eustace, was four inches taller still. Though well into his forties, he was looking as mean as Stoker ever remembered.

  Eustace, not just the biggest but also the ugliest, smiled through cracked teeth.

  Teeth knocked in half by a savage roundhouse seven years ago from a certain cop not too far away from here (Frank Stoker).

  ‘Frank Stoker. We’ve been waiting for this moment for years, ain’t we boys?’ His accent was half Italian and half immoral.

  The twins nodded and raised their fists.

  ‘You gonna fight back, Mr Policeman Sir?’ The three brothers hooted with glee as they fanned out in front of Stoker.

  Stoker obliged.

  Chapter 44

  Janney woke up, bound and fastened to an uncomfortable chair with only a thin spongy cushion as padding. The cushion really was barely contributing any form of insulation or wadding, but Janney grudgingly admitted it was better than nothing.

  ‘Rustle, Rustle. Squirm, Squirm’, said Janney’s wrists as he frantically tried to pull free.

  No dice. The ropes had been tied fast.

  A hood had cruelly been placed over his head, assassinating his peripheral vision.

  Janney’s marine instincts kicked in. He cleverly used his ears to listen out for any clues.

  Nothing noised, it was as silent as a dead frog after mating season.

  ‘Dammit’, said Janney, stupidly making noises with his larynx which could be heard in the real world.

  And in the real world, dear reader, monsters do exist.

  Janney’s hood was ripped off with force, the rough cotton grazing the end of his nose severely. He barely had time to feel it.

  Looming over him, stood the biggest man Janney had ever seen.

  Hitoshi was perhaps two inches below seven foot, and as wide as a jukebox, but half as quiet. And believe me, you would not want to put a quarterdollar into a slot anywhere on his person.

  He wore a bright red kimono, his hair scrunched in a vertical topknot, the rest hanging down in a neat and masculine bob. His feet nestled in silk black slippers.

  His facial features placed him at anywhere between forty and forty five… Japanese men’s ages are, factually, notoriously difficult to estimate.

  His neck was as thick as a bull’s, and his biceps bulged underneath the silk kimono.

  A quick look around the warehouse proved fruitless. The place was huge, and deserted. A few old canning machines stood around in small clusters. There was nobody around to help.

  But Janney soon forgot about all that shit and focussed on the one thing that mattered.

  In a scabbard behind the monster’s back sat the fearsome samurai blade. Nearly as tall as Hitoshi was long, the blade was gleaming bright in the gloomy warehouse.

  Janney glanced over to his right and saw Chloe, his love, his angel. She was tied up too, blood dripping from her right lip, but she was alive.

  Thank God, she was damn well alive.

  Between the two of them sat a barrel, filled with murky river water from the Hudson.

  Janney’s eyebrows jumped up like little Mexican beans.

  ‘Why the hell is there a frigging barrel here?’ is the sentence he would have thought in his brain if he had the time. Instead, Hitoshi began to speak.

  ‘You two, pretty faces, die today. First, we see if Stoker come, trying to save you. Then, you die. I kill you. Then I kill Stoker.’

  Janney looked over at the beauty and then shouted at the beast.

  ‘Why? Why kill her?’

  ‘She know too much. Magnelli want her to die.’

  ‘And as for me, not that I damn care?’ Janney was a tough kid.

  ‘Magnelli say you have been… nuisance. Once trapped, you both die. Become dog food. Feed dogs. Ha ha ha.’

  His laugh was evil, and poisoned by the stench of his oriental tobacco.

  Janney yawned in terror, then the world went black as Hitoshi put the bag back over his face.

  Chapter 45

  Stoker had to move fast. The Tiramisis weren’t juvenile street youths, they were seasoned gangpunchers. Stoker knew if he gave them a chance to surround him, he could be toast.

  Dead toast.

  He had one chance to weigh the odds more in his favour, as they would likely be expecting him to plead or beg rather than attack straight away.

  These brothers must be rusty. People who knew Frank Stoker well knew that he never begged.

  Stoker moved fast. His memory quickly reminded him that Oleg was the slowest of the three.

  He threw his head at him, connecting his brow with brow of the head of Oleg.

  Oleg’s faced caved in like a bag of suet being struck by hammerhead shark fired from a cannon. Stoker knew he was dead as soon as he hit the floor.

  He raised his head and coolly wiped the blood from his eyes.

  ‘Which one of you pricks is next?’

  Eustace screamed at the death of his younger brother and charged towards Stoker.

  Stoker managed to trip him and throw him to the floor. He fell on top of him with a devastating elbow drop to the small of his back. Stoker was up again and deflecting a spinning heel kick from the surviving twin, Luigi.

  Stoker had seen this guy fight as a kid in his twenties, and knew he was lethal.

  Stoker deflected what he could of the blow but his heel just caught him in the side of the head. Before Stoker could look up, Luigi Tiramisi was lining up his next attack, a brutal uppercut that might have meant the end for Stoker, if he didn’t have the street smarts of a twenty year beat cop, and the reflexes of a performance-enhanced cat.

  Stoker knew that if he leaned back, Luigi would still catch him later in his upswing, and doubtless do some serious damage, so instead he lowered his head and absorbed the punch on his forehead.

  It hurt like hell, but Stoker knew Luigi had come off worse when he heard the bones in his fistball break.

  Fighting more than one men at a time was about buying time when you could, and taking the chances you were given.

  Stoker had been doing it for nearly thirty years, and there wasn’t a trick he didn’t know.

  But damn if the Tiramisis weren’t some of the toughest men he had come up against.

  Luigi kept throwing his broken fist into Stoker’s b
ody, Stoker managing to fend him off until Eustace grabbed Stoker’s arms from behind and held them up against his back.

  Stoker kicked Luigi away for as long as he could before he caught a savage punch in the stomach and missed a beat. Eustace saw his chance and released Stoker’s arms, throwing fists into the back of his head and the front of his kidneys.

  Eustace did him from the rear, and Luigi from the front. Stoker was like the tenderised meat in a man sandwich, and even he wouldn’t last long under this assault.

  Each punch carried with it the hatred of a vicious killer who has lost seven years of their lives at the expense of the punchbag. Not to mention the brother they had just seen the punchbag kill before their eyes.

  Stoker felt close to blacking out, but still managed to spin and deflect what blows he could.

  He waited.

  A crashing blow hit him in the temple, sending a ringing noise through his head.

  He waited.

  A rising judo chop to his kidney nearly took him off the floor.

  He waited.

  Luigi took a breath and lined up one last savage piledriver - the fist to end all fists.

  Stoker had seen that move before.

  But Stoker knew there was no fist to end all fists.

  There would always be fists. There would always be fights.

  He had the second he needed, and ducked to the side just as the blow was about to hit his Adam’s apple. The punch sailed over his right shoulder and into the chin of Eustace. Sure, it had lost some pace by the time it connected, but it still sent the older brother reeling backwards.

  Luigi looked up in shock at what he had done.

  He saw his bloody fist. He saw his brother fly back against the wall. He saw the boot of Frank Stoker rising up into the air, up, up, and closer, closer.

  He saw the boot meet him in the mouth.

  Saw his teeth sent flying to all four corners of the cell.

  Saw Stoker spin, lightning fast, and drive his knee into his right eyeball.

  Saw a savage left jab hit him in his left cheek, cracking his cheekbone and fracturing his eye socket.

  And then Luigi Tiramisi never saw anything again. He fell to his knees, and knew the end was coming. He raised his hands, blind, praying for mercy. Praying for life. Praying for a gift from God.

  Ask and ye shall receive. He got Frank Stoker’s boot in his windpipe.

  Two dead brothers, and the most dangerous one left to go.

  Stoker whirled round and saw Eustace holding his face, once again, seven years later, facing Frank Stoker with a mouth full of broken teeth. Blood foamed from his lips, as vampiric as it was epileptic.

  Then Eustace charged.

  Stoker found the toughest enemies were those who weren’t emotional. A killer needed to have a clear mind.

  Stoker let him come. Eustace had twenty pounds on him, and the reach.

  But he wasn’t as strong, or quick. The first haymaker was easily dodged. The second a near miss. But the third was wild and out of control. Tiramisi was letting his emotions and rage get the better of him, and when you fight Frank Stoker, you don’t get to make a mistake twice.

  As Eustace Tiramisi lost his balance on his follow through from his third missed punch, Stoker drove his right boot through his shin, splintering both the tibia and the fibula through the skin. As his opponent fell to one knee, he slammed the heel of his size sixteen boot on his right hand, smearing it like putty across the cell floor.

  Then, with one last defiant look, Eustace spat teeth and blood at Stoker.

  ‘Fuck you, pig. You’ll burn in Hell.’

  ‘Not for some time yet, Eustace Tirimisi. You tell Satan to get things ready for me.’ Replied Stoker, coolly.

  He cracked Eustace twice on each side of the head, extraordinarily hard. Six punches to the nose finished the job.

  But Stoker wasn’t finished.

  He hobbled to the cell bars and called out for the guard.

  ‘Hey! Hey! You got three dead or dying guys in here and I’ll bet you don’t wanna write this up without trying to save them.’

  Sure enough, the guard came gingerly round the corner.

  Stoker recognised him. Kid called Dingleberry… a good cop. Young. Honest. Loyal.

  He pointed his Police Gun at Stoker in trembling hands. He was just about soiling his knickers, staring down the most legendary cop the city has ever known.

  ‘L...Listen Frank, don’t you try anything. I’ll shoot you, I don’t wanna, but I will.’

  Dingleberry walked slowly closer to the cell. He was careful to leave enough distance so that he couldn’t be grabbed through the bars.

  And he couldn’t be grabbed… by you. By anyone you know. By virtually anyone in the damn country. Except Frank Stoker, who had the wingspan of a brown bear.

  In a flash, Stoker turned to the side and jammed his hand through the bars.

  His damn biceps nearly got stuck - he had to scrape them through, pulling off skin as he did.

  The bars flew up to his right shoulder, and he stuck what he could of that through too, but he was too muscled to get more than an inch past.

  His fingers touched cloth, touched a leather strap, touched a flailing hand, and then finally grabbed a handful of shirt.

  Stoker wrenched Dingleberry towards him with incredible force. The kid was knocked out as hit the bars.

  Stoker noticed he had pulled his Police Gun out and had flicked the damn safety off. One fraction of a second later, and Stoker would have been sucking bullets.

  Stoker rummaged in the kids pockets for the cell keys, and found them. He coolly opened the door from the outside and quietly peered round the corner. No sign. All quiet. For now.

  He put Dingleberry in the recovery position.

  ‘No hard feelings, kid. You’re good police.’

  Stoker picked up the gun and held it in his hands. He looked down the sights. It felt good in his hand. It had been so long since he’d fired a gun.

  He threw the damn thing to the ground.

  ‘No. Not that way.’

  Stoker did a quick stock take. Three dead Mafia enforcers. Blood and teeth spewed all over the floor. One unconscious cop. Stoker had mild concussion, a couple of rebroken ribs and cuts all over his face.

  He felt fine.

  He deduced that the only way out of the Police House, aka The Slammer, was back through the main office. Impossible. Not even Stoker could fight his way through there.

  And even if he could, he was done fighting cops. He couldn’t risk injuring or killing a fellow Badgewaver.

  Stoker knew he didn’t have long to act. There must have been someone who heard the commotion - only twenty seconds or so had passed since Eustace died, but cops would be flooding the first floor any second.

  Then, it came to him.

  The Amish builders had constructed a stained glass window at the front of the building, round the corner and back past the top of the stairs from the ground floor. The glass was lead lined and over an inch thick. There was a twenty foot drop to the floor below. But it was all Stoker had.

  He sprinted round the corner, hearing footsteps from the stairs.

  Sure enough, as he neared the window, a two-armed cop panicked and tried to grab Stoker with both as he reached the top of the stairs.

  But Stoker was running at top speed, and simply knocked him to the ground, took two more paces, and threw himself at the window.

  Chapter 46

  Thomas Magnelli stood beneath a lady who was over one hundred and fifty feet tall.

  This sounds ridiculous, until you get your thick head round the fact that he was in fact standing by the famed Statue Of Liberty.

  The Statue of Liberty is the tallest non-building building in New York, and the seventh tallest in the modern world. If that doesn’t give you some perspective as to its (her) height, then I really don’t know what will.

  The Green Lady, as Yankees conceivably might call her, was a gift from the cynical and corrupt la
nd of France, Europe, in thanks or apology for something or other that happened a long time ago. She is the symbol of American freedom and overindulgence - and when she falls, America the state will be no more, America the idea will wither and burn, and her people will drown in blood.

  Anyway, Magnelli shoved cigarettes in and around his mouth like a teenage girl who had broken into her mom’s make up box and found a packet of lip(s)sticks. He smoked passionately and relentlessly - literally blowing smoke up the skirts of the Godzilla-sized statue behind him.

  He was nervous, but excited. This had been a hell of a story - by this stage that really is undeniable - and he realised if things went his way, he would be more powerful than ever before.

  He saw Lowenstein hobble over, unathletically. Magnelli wondered if Lowenstein had ever played any team sport at all.

  ‘Mr Magnelli, sir. We stand in the eye of the storm. Mr Spang will arrive in a matter of minutes.’

  Magnelli looked up at the sky, held his mouth open and chewed on the raindrops that gleefully parasailed between his lips.

  He rotated, slowly, three or four times.

  Lowenstein could only watch.

  Sure enough, a mere matter of minutes later, Johnny Spang arrived, Chinesely jumping over a railing from a passing speedboat. He wore a bright white mink dinner suit, clearly tailored by the finest tailor in all of London. His white top hat was studded with costly diamonds. His shoes were worth in the region of two hundred dollars. Beneath that, his hair had been coiffured (whatever that means) into a lacquered shine - he looked the very model of a millionaire madman.

  ‘Mister Magnelli-san! How wonderful to see you’ Said Spang, falsely bowing.

  Magnelli could play this game too.

  He bowed back, his lower back and upper butt neatly folding into a near ninety degree angle.

  Spang bowed, lower, his soft pink palms scraping the floor and the back of his suit trousers, under duress from the sheer depth of the bow, hoisting to rise above his ankles.

  Magnelli wasn’t to be beaten. He wrenched his chin section and lower head to meet his shin-middles, his back cracking as he moved. His chin stroked his shin with the grace and control of a Nasa moon landing. His bow was total, and perfect. He resembled an upended, well dressed stapler.