Noir Fatale

by Larry Correia

“Two double cheeseburgers, two orders of fries, and a Coca-Cola,” Crash said. Henry looked over at the dainty girl, impressed. “What? Using my Power makes me hungry. Besides, you’re paying.”

  “Hey, lover boy,” his brother snapped. “Pay attention. This one is dangerous. I’m talking maybe even Iron Guard dangerous. If the cops find him, he’s going to pop a bunch of them like balloons before they take him down.”

  His brother had the ability to put ideas into your mind and twist thoughts, nothing near as strong as Dad, but if he used his Power and ordered Henry to back off, it would suddenly sound like the best suggestion he’d ever heard. Only Mouths had to tread carefully when dealing with their loved ones, and despite the name calling and rivalry, the two of them had way too much mutual respect for that kind of thing.

  “I’m begging you, Henry, stay out of this.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Lance’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “I’ll tell Mom.”

  “Oh, that’s low even for you.”

  Their intercom started squawking, but Moody put their car in reverse and backed out. Lance rolled up the window as they drove away.

  “Your brother seems nice.” The sparkle in Crash’s eye matched the tiny bits of broken glass still stuck in her hair.

  “He’s a good sort in his own unique and annoying way.”

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  It was sad that after all these years, Lance was still under the mistaken impression that anyone could get Henry to back off once he’d set his mind to something.

  On the bright side, now Henry knew they were doing the right thing. Normally, Jack Moody could track anyone. A Justice could come to a fork in the road and simply ask the Power which way his target had gone and it would tell him. With the Bomber warded, Jack was as blind as anyone else, and yet the experienced knight had still wound up looking in the same place that they had.

  The victims were the key. The killer was picking them somehow. If they figured out how he was choosing them, then they could get ahead of him.

  For the next few days, he and Crash hit up every spot the victims had last been seen. They went to restaurants, bars, even a movie together. Ronald Reagan played a cowboy. They’d shared a bucket of popcorn and, afterwards, watched the people coming and going, but saw nothing suspicious. All of the subsequent fishing expeditions went better than their initial brawl. He was really enjoying the company. Except for the hunting-a-maniac part, these were some of the more enjoyable dates he’d had.

  They interviewed people at each spot, trying to play it gentle, never identifying themselves as cops. All these folks had already been grilled by Richards or his men and left with business cards, so the last thing he wanted was for one of them to call the detective and ask why they were getting hassled again.

  Once they’d exhausted the leads listed in the first file, he’d tried to break back into the task force room to swipe a more up-to-date file. Only Richards must’ve realized they’d been burgled, because the locks were new and improved, and they’d left another uniform there for the night. Stymied, Henry had just gone on with his shift.

  On his night off, Crash had come over to his apartment after she’d gotten off work. They were supposed to go out sleuthing, but he was out of ideas. A corkboard was taking up one wall of his tiny kitchen. He’d put up a map of the city with a tack stuck in it representing each body. A red string ran from each tack to a photo of the vic while they were still alive. The board was getting mighty crowded.

  “That’s creepy,” Crash said as she hopped up and sat on his kitchen counter in a very unladylike sort of way. She was still in her uniform. Main difference between his and hers was that she had to wear a wool skirt and he at least got to wear pants.

  “I’m trying to be thorough.” He had his notebook open and was going through the things he’d written down after each interview. “We’re up to fourteen victims. Eleven men, three women. Ages between eighteen and fifty. He’s not picky. So why these?”

  “Targets of opportunity?”

  “Maybe that’s part of it. But my gut tells me it isn’t all of it. They’ve got different kinds of jobs, from assembly lines in Hoboken to banks on Wall Street. Different political parties: democrats, republicans, and one communist.” He snorted. No great loss on that one. “One openly magical, one possible who was keeping it to herself, and the rest were normal, so it wasn’t magically motivated. Half didn’t go to church and the other half were all different religions. Different educations, from nothing at all to one guy with a masters. Backgrounds from lower middle to upper class. Nobody real poor. Don’t know why that is…”

  “Luck of the draw maybe? My folks are safe. Yours aren’t.”

  If the Bomber made a move on the Garretts, that would be the end of the Bomber. They’d fought Iron Guard and won. “He’s not robbing them. He’s left wallets, purses, and nice watches behind. There’s no rhyme nor reason to where they’re killed compared to where they’re last seen. Nobody ever sees the killer with them. He’s highly mobile and leaves no trace. He moves around the city with impunity, and even with everybody so nervous, not so much as a single eyewitness.”

  “Can Boomers turn invisible?” Crash asked. When he looked over at her to see if she’d lost her mind, she was grinning at him. “I’m being silly. Henry, come on. You’ve basically been working round the clock. You’re frazzled and it shows. Why don’t we take tonight off and just stay home?”

  It was sorely tempting. And he liked the way she said we. Crash was adorable and virtually indestructible; it was a nice combo. Only he couldn’t let go of the feeling he was close to the truth. Every minute the killer went free was another minute his city was in danger.

  “While you ponder on it, I’ll make dinner.” She slid off the counter, turned around, and opened his cupboard. “You’ve got…one can of green beans and, wow, that’s a lot of Spam… How are you still alive?”

  “He knows the streets really well,” Henry muttered to himself. He was chewing on his pencil, which he tended to do when he wasn’t smoking. “He knows all these spots where there won’t be witnesses, and he knows when it’s quiet. You’re onto something. He’s not invisible, but he’s damn close.”

  “You’re fixated again.” Crash sighed. “If you want to just stare at your murder board all night, I’m leaving. This girl’s got standards. I deserve better than green beans and Spam. You could at least be a gentleman and offer to drive me home. I had to take the subway to get here.”

  Henry owned a car because he’d been given this one for his eighteenth birthday. Crash didn’t have her own car, but that wasn’t too odd in a city that had lousy traffic, no places to park, and plenty of other ways to get around. “Yeah. Sorry, let me get my keys.”

  And then he stopped, and glanced back at his board, scowling.

  “What now? You get this funny look on your face when gears start turning.”

  “New York State requires licenses to drive. When they were trying to identify the victims, the ones they got quick were because they had license cards in their wallets with their names and addresses printed on them, but that was only a few of them. Most took longer to identify because they had to be compared to missing persons reports because they didn’t have a license.”

  “So?”

  Henry started flipping through his notepad. “When I talked to one vic’s doorman, he said our guy’s car was in the shop. So the doorman hailed a taxi to take him to a restaurant that evening.”

  “Which one? Because I liked that Italian place we tried on Wednesday. We should go again.”

  “He ate, left, and was never seen again. He would’ve taken a cab home.” He started flipping through the pages faster and faster. “Most of these, they weren’t seen after leaving the establishment. We don’t know how they planned on getting home. I don’t remember in the inventory anybody having subway or bus tokens on them.”

  Cabs weren’t invisible, but they were so common that nobody noticed they were around unless you
were trying to hail one.

  “You can put a warding spell on your own skin, but that’s really challenging. Only the most talented spellbinders I know can pull that off. Carving one on a vehicle is comparatively easy. You’d just scratch it someplace nobody would see. The second anyone got inside, they’d be camouflaged to demons, Finders, Justices, the works.”

  It was starting to dawn on her. “Cabbies know the streets better than anyone, every back alley and short cut.”

  “Why’d you take the subway to get here tonight?”

  “Because you were too distracted to pick me up at the precinct.”

  “And?”

  “And because the subway’s cheaper than cab fare… He’s not sparing the poor, they just don’t ride in cabs as often!” Crash came over and stood next to him, staring at the board. “Oh my gosh. It all makes sense.”

  “The Bomber is a taxi driver.”

  They both stared at the map for a long time as the enormity of the challenge sunk in. Finally, Crash asked, “Now what?”

  There were thousands of taxis in New York City. He could’ve emptied out his savings account to pay for cab fare, and caught rides from dawn to dusk every day for the rest of his life, and still not had good odds of getting picked up by the Bomber.

  “I don’t rightly know.”

  “This is too big for us. We need to take this to the task force.”

  Henry shook his head. “From what I’ve seen of Richards’s ham-fisted methods so far, if he believes us, he’ll probably just send dicks to every taxi company in the city to browbeat them into identifying any driver they’ve got who might be able to do magic. The Bomber’s not stupid. He’ll find out we’re onto him and go to ground. We’ll never catch the guy.”

  “Elephant in the room. What about telling your brother?”

  Lance was sharp. There wouldn’t be any fumbling around. He’d pull some strings, call in some favors, do the legwork, and then some random cabby would just disappear into thin air. The killings would stop. Nobody would ever know why. Problem solved.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I know you want to be the one to do this, but don’t let your pride get in the way. You want to prove something, but there’re lives at stake. Call Lance.”

  The Grimnoir had the most effective way, but it wasn’t always the right way.

  The killings had evened out. They were having one every three days. Henry figured that was because that was how long it took for the killer’s Power to charge back up after completely obliterating someone. There had been a killing last night. That meant they had roughly forty-eight hours before the next body dropped.

  He tried to deliver the next line with more confidence than he felt. “I’ve got a plan.”

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  “Taxi!”

  Henry waved one hand and stepped aggressively into the darkened street. He really wanted to catch this particular cab.

  It was raining hard. A cold, sopping downpour that leeched the warmth right out of his flesh. Yeah…the rain. That’s the reason.

  The yellow cab pulled to the curb. He confirmed the number painted on the side was the one he was looking for. This was it. Henry took a deep breath, opened the back door, and climbed inside.

  The interior was uncomfortably warm. The heater was going full blast. The windows immediately began to fog. The wipers were beating a fast rhythm.

  “Where to?” asked the Bensonhurst Bomber.

  Or at least he hoped it was the Bomber and this wasn’t a wild goose chase. But that was why they were going to take a nice long ride together to find out. He rattled off an address across the river.

  He could see the cabby had tilted his head to look at him in the rearview mirror. It was dark enough that the only thing he could make out were the eyes. He wanted to describe them as piercing or cunning, but really, they seemed completely normal. Heavy-lidded. Maybe a little tired. It seemed they were just two regular guys stuck on the night shift.

  The cab pulled out. At this hour there wasn’t much in the way of traffic. The headlights behind them belonged to his Chrysler, with Crash at the wheel. They’d been following this particular cab for a while as he picked up and dropped off fares, knowing that he didn’t like to strike until it was late enough to avoid witnesses. The hour was getting late. When the cabby had stopped for a coffee, they’d had the opportunity to get ahead of him. Crash had hated the idea, she’d begged him not to do it, but Henry had told her he’d be fine and gone for it.

  He had to know if this was the one.

  Some cabbies liked the quiet. Others liked to make conversation. Henry needed him to talk. “Hell of a night, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is.” Luckily, it appeared this cabby might be a chatty one. “Where you from?”

  “All over. Here mostly,” Henry answered truthfully. “How about you?”

  “Nowheresville.” The cabby had a normal voice, not too deep, not too high, no lisp, no rasp. He’d kind of been expecting a psycho killer to at least sound different.

  They drove the next few blocks without a word, except for the thump of the wipers and the sound of rubber on wet road. They stopped at a red light. Now he could see that the cabby was younger than expected. They were probably about the same age.

  When all else failed, talk about the weather. “It’s pouring cats and dogs out there.”

  “Yeah.” The cabby sounded a little wistful. “I kind of like it though. The only time this place smells clean is when it rains.”

  “That never lasts long.” Henry kept one hand in the pocket of his trench coat, wrapped around the grip of his snub .38. “It smells like garbage before, and then it smells like wet garbage right after.”

  There were pedestrians walking by beneath umbrellas. Henry studied the back of the suspect’s head. He was wearing a tweed cap, and the hair beneath was brown and bristly.

  The light turned green. The cabby looked at him in the mirror again before proceeding. He was doing the math. Tonight was a killing night. This fare would take a while. It was either pop this one, or take his chances finding somebody after. At least that’s what Henry assumed was going through that crazy mind. Who could tell?

  He must have made his decision because he put his eyes back on the road.

  “Things don’t have to be dirty, you know. If there was somebody strong enough, they could clean this place up. Make everything work right. It just takes will.”

  “Uh-huh.” Henry tried to keep it noncommittal to keep him talking. “So you don’t like the new mayor?”

  “That’s not what I mean. If somebody had the will and the power, they could really turn things around, fix the country, fix the whole world even.”

  That sounded like old-fashioned Imperium propaganda, from back when Okubo Tokugawa’s eugenic madness conquered a third of the world. Unfortunately, the Imperium didn’t have a monopoly on that kind of authoritarian crazy. “The world sure does have a lot of problems.”

  “Those problems are too big for regular folks to fix. It would take God to fix things. Only if he’s real, then he sure don’t care about us anymore. When somebody don’t care about doing his job no more, he needs to be replaced.” Those eyes flicked back to the mirror again. This was probably the part where his fares started feeling uncomfortable and saying they’d just get out here, but Henry kept his mouth shut.

  The cabby started up again. He seemed enthusiastic about the topic. “You know, somebody had the chance once to become a god, but she chickened out. You ever heard of the Spellbound?”

  Not only had he heard, they were on a first-name basis. “Nope.”

  “The story goes that there was once this Active who was extra special. The Power loved her more than any of its other children. So whenever somebody died near her, she took their magic for herself. She got stronger and stronger. All the magic in the world was hers to take if she wanted it. And you know what she did when she needed to do something extra hard?”

  He already knew. “She kil
led her enemies and stole their magic.”

  “I thought you said you hadn’t heard of her?”

  “Just a guess.”

  “Well, that she did. She took what she needed to do what needed doing, but then after…nothing…she walked away. Gave up her magic entirely. Can you imagine? Being able to change the world however you wanted, but then just leaving it alone? Ruthlessly alone.”

  “It’s hard to imagine.”

  He waved one hand at the passing city. “But how could you leave it like this? This filth. This squalor.”

  The longer he talked, the more erratic he sounded. Was he compelled to explain himself to all his victims? Did he try to justify it as he was driving them to someplace other than their destination? Was he still talking as they walked away and he was drawing his Power together to blow them to pieces? The cab was approaching the Brooklyn Bridge. On the other side, they’d either go to his destination or divert to a killing ground. Henry needed to push him. He needed to be sure this was the one.

  “It’s a big job, being a god,” Henry said.

  “Yeah, but somebody’s got to do it.”

  “I feel bad for all the poor bastards who’d have to die just so their magic could get stolen.”

  “Sacrifices get made for the greater good. You know, a few months ago, I picked up this old man. And while we were driving, he had a stroke. Can you believe it? He had a stroke right where you’re sitting now. Died on the spot…I tried to help him, swear I did, but there was nothing could be done.”

  “Tragic.” At least the cab company would’ve disinfected the seat.

  “But right afterwards, I felt something. He’d had magic. Only after he died, it lingered, like it didn’t know where else to go. I couldn’t let it go to waste. So I took it. Made it mine.”

  That was impossible. It had taken one of the greatest minds in the history of magic to come up with a spell that could do that. It sure as hell didn’t happen by accident. This guy was delusional.

  “Problem is that spell’s long gone,” Henry stated, flat and calm. “It was one of a kind. It was undone. Gone. Kaput.”

  “No it’s not.”