by Jackson, Gil
‘And me?’ Western Belle said.
‘Especially you.’ Spannocs said, adding, ‘what about you over there, what’s your name?’
He was looking at the back of a girl wearing an Indian dress. She stood away from the rest of them and hadn’t looked at him once.
‘She’s not with us,’ the Belle said. ‘Are you, hon’?’
Long black hair with a tribal war-band atop of her head. He could tell the attractiveness of this girl without her having to turn round and he was intrigued. Around her waist she sported a belt with a pouch on one side; the other a sheath, held a hunting knife.
The redhead turned to Spannocs. ‘She didn’t come with us, I think she’s another from your past.’
‘I’ve never seen her before,’ the Austrian said.
She turned and looked at them.
‘When you’ve all finished talking I should like to be introduced to Mr. Spannocs,’ she said.
‘MMM’m! Get her,’ the Toga said, ‘you wait your turn Indian.’
‘Now, now,’ Spannocs said, ‘there’s plenty to go round.’
The Austrian looked at the other girls and smiled. ‘Yah, the big boy his taking all four of us on maybe, yes!’ She smiled again. ‘By the time his enjoyed two of us it’ll be lights out ladies; one more going to not make any difference to the rest I’m thinking, yah!’
They laughed.
‘You right, Heidi,’ the redhead said, knowing he was looking at her and that she was to be the first — possibly the only one for that night — that would mean a large tip in more ways than one.
Spannocs shouted at them. ‘Enough of this. Champagne! Champagne for everyone, Alfonse!’
Alfonse looked up from the hospitality bar he was attending. And pleased to be having an especially good night serving this man. ‘Champagne, Mr. Spannocs, coming right away, sir!’
‘Drink up ladies; I’ll be back for you soon.’
He left them at the bar and felt that sense of ill ease again: something was not quite right and he could not put his finger on it. It must have been that damned Ritchie, he thought to himself, still no matter the man would be dead anytime soon.
* * *
Ritchie collapsed out of the arresting arms of the officer as Charlie looked on. The officer let him fall watching him piss himself, but not urine. There was enough blood on the pavement to fill a body. What was left resembled a toy balloon that had been left out in all weathers for too long and had gone down of its own accord. He was no more than a shell.
Hamilton was at his side. Could you do with some help?’
Charlie smiled. ‘Wondered how long you’d stay away?’
‘Just can’t keep a good man down, so you can’t.
Charlie smiled. ‘Who, you or me?’
Who’s that, friend of yours?’ Hamilton said.
‘Another paedophile doing the work of the Lord with no favours. Meet the tele-Evangelist, and former employee of the Billy Graham organisation, Reverend Bernard Ritchie! Although to be fair to both, he was a pervert before he never found God.’
‘So how was it you persuaded him to turn from the dark side?’ Hamilton said.
‘I didn’t, he did it all by himself, and little good it may do him. There’s no forgiveness here, or in heaven, not for his kind. He had a brain tumour. Funny how they turn to God when the cards’ are against them.’
A car drew up and another. The second was forensics, the first, Charlie recognised as Agent Blaine, part of the Annie Carter’s team. No questions asked, they’d do their duty, log everything, report to nobody – for the time being at least – hold inquiries in secret. They were good at what they did. Out of necessity, they were responsible for the Hudson river cover-up.
She left them to it and came over to where Hamilton and Charlie were. ‘That your mole?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘Unfortunately he was ejected out onto the pavement so what’s going on in there, I haven’t a clue.’
She looked around. ‘They don’t know we’re here...? That car over there. Who’s that’s? Chauffeur’s looking edgy?’
Charlie looked at it. ‘Very expensive, very fast, very Bentley Turbo RT. That’s got to be Spannocs’s.’
‘Well, if it is, and that’s his chauffeur, he’s about to radio someone. Can’t have that.’ agent Blaine said. He ran to the car grabbing at the driver before he had a chance to close the window. Two others were at the side door pulling on it. The chauffeur had it firmly locked and was starting the engine. Another plain clothed officer picked up a battering ram and placed it firmly into the side window and into the face of the chauffeur. He opened the door, shook his head and yelled across to another who immediately ran toward the entrance to the building to raise the alarm. He was shot in the back before he’d made the first two steps. The chauffeur grabbed the throat of the officer with the battering ram as he was putting it down to deal with him. He hadn’t needed to hit him a second time. His neck was broke. The chauffeur ran to raise the alarm; the same officer that had brought the first man down, fired at him, catching him in the leg. The chauffeur rolled over.
Charlie ran over. ‘It’s all over, and for your boss. Would that be Frederik Spannocs, better known as Marco Giuseppi?’ The man smiled. ‘What’s your name? Tell me NOW!’
The chauffeur looked him in the eyes. ‘Don’t you recognise me? I do you, you’re sergeant Charlie O’Hare.’
Charlie stared at him. His face was vaguely familiar. But, he couldn’t make a connection. He’d called him sergeant. ‘How? How do you know me?’
‘I’ve been Frederic Spannocs’s eyes and ears for more years than I can remember. I was there when your partner was shot. I was there when his son was bombed out of that restaurant.’
Charlie got hold of him by the neck and lifted his head from the pavement. ‘You were responsible for the death’s of my friend and his son, is that what you’re saying, you foocking deformed leprechaun.’
‘You still don’t recognise me, do you? Plastic surgery is a wonderful disguise, sergeant. Your own people killed your lieutenant and his son, sergeant. The same people that were the dockyard overseers, remember them now?
Charlie was back in the 1920’s. His beat that was Lower East Side, Manhattan. ‘Tony ...’
The chauffeur looked at him, popped a cyanide pill into his mouth. ‘Phillip Maddox—’
Annie grabbed at the man’s hand. ‘Get it out, Charlie, he’s taken something ... turn him over.’
Charlie put his hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s too late, and we’ve bigger fish to fry.’ Charlie undid his collar and looked at his neck. The marks were still there, each side of his throat, where Fariq Mihalyvich had tortured him. He pulled up his shirt sleeve, the knife scar that Mihalyvich’s wife had given him could still be seen.
Hamilton came up to him. ‘Who is it?’
‘Was. Tony Di Sotto. Marco Giuseppi’s sidekick and one time friend from Naples. Their families came to America in 1905. When they came of age, and embarked on their careers your grandfather and me first had dealings with Marco and his union. There were arrest warrants out for the both of them for harassment, and violence against others. Di Sotto had a separate one for what we thought at the time, the murder of his partner, and harassment of the Mihalyvich family. He didn’t get all his own way. The Mihalyvich’s saw to that. Hence the scars.’
Hamilton walked into the Diamond centre, before either Annie or Charlie could stop him. All he had on his mind was his murdered father and grandfather, figuring that whoever were responsible were connected with the man inside.
* * *
Spannocs had not felt like this before. Apart from the odd transmission from his host, that was to be expected, this though, was something different. Perhaps he had been with mortals too long. Was she buried? Doubt was giving way to his confidence of power. Alfonse approached:
‘Your champagne, Mr. Spannocs.’ He stared at him, his eyes were becoming slanted. He became nervous of the man, started to shake. ‘You aske
d for champagne, Mr. Spannocs?’ Spannocs turned on him in a fury smashing the tray from his hands. People dancing close by immediately stopped to see what the noise was, and like a ripple on a pond it quickly spread to others until the band, playing that ridiculous Campdown Races, stopped their instruments one at a time in various states of disarrayed notation until silent. Everyone was tensely silent in an expectation of something about to happen. Only Spannocs knew what. He knew it now. There could be no question. She was among them. He started to run from woman to woman turning them round, pushing their partners away, round and round the floor. They moved back from this madman but still he continued. He started screaming: ‘Where are you mother bitch, where the fuck are you? Show yourself!’ Still he continued looking, punching and pushing people to the floor. The hall became a shambles. Uproar. Men tried to restrain him and wrestle him to the floor but they were no match for what he had become he was throwing them around like rag dolls. Attacking them one after another, women as well as the men. They were beginning to realise what price they were paying for their depravity. Hitting him with chairs and glasses and anything else they could lay their hands on. Still he came at them, slashing at them with broken glass, until he stopped short of the bar. The only person in that bloodied mess that had paid no heed to his violent rants was sitting at the bar, her back to him. She had her fist wrapped round the handle of a knife. ‘You!’ He screamed the word. His voice boomed like nothing that had ever been heard by another human. Like a scream in the night from the inside of a wood. The sound vibrated the crystal chandeliers above and the plastered ceiling gave way crashing to the floor. Then silence. ‘Who are you?’
She turned to face him. ‘I’m your nemesis, Marco Giuseppi.’
‘I AM FREDERIK SPANNOCS! PRINCE OF DARKNESS!’
***
Tears were rolling down her cheeks and she was shaking at the sight of this abomination before her. Not out of any sense of fear, but the ugly nature of child abuse at this man’s hands.
* * *
People that were able tried to escape this carnage of maimed bodies and devastation but they were too late. Most of their sick lives too late. Faces became blank shadows. Watches stopped with no means of natural rhythm of Universe to direct them. Darkness dropped an instantaneous blanket of suffocation that only the predawn of time was familiar. And they became as pillars of salt.
Frederik Spannocs smiled at her statuesque half movement of attack walking away from her. The magic had worked again and he could see no reason why he should ever fear the likes of her kind again. God’s messengers’ were finished along with Him as he had always predicted they would be. And a sense of satisfactory evil washed over him. His walk, however, took him back to her, recurring time and again in a constant four dimension. Came the click ...
* * *
Hamilton stopped running at the top of the stairs. The place was like a nightclub in an earthquake zone. God this was some party, he thought. Whatever are they on? A flashlight illumination that appeared to come from a camera caught him in the eyes causing him to fall sideways through a doorway.
***
... and within a split of time that resembled a second, had time still existed, created an explosion of Universal magnitude energy ... as a bomb ... came and he sensing that millisecond of time remaining to get away, his reaction, not quick enough. Her knife came down upon him in a flash of light slicking a piece of his arm onto the floor spilling a brown blood trickle out after it, black and treacly; he moved the speed of an express train; the ball of fire that followed him engulfed everyone and everything left over from his original carnage; and the town of Becland, in the State of Texas, population 6500, shook the shook as of two stars colliding.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 27 – 1997
To Charlie and Annie the experience of being in the middle of a town the size of Becland; having witnessed the white light explosion, the like of which he had witnessed once before. And them still alive and unscathed, apart from a covering of grey dust over which a finality of equalised pressured air had balanced made for a settlement of ill ease and anxiety. The realisation in Charlie O’Hare’s mind that Hamilton Fitch was no longer with them and gone into that building brought with it panic turned to terror; added to which, the possibility that once again he was still alive and another Weinberg having perished within reach of his hands was not a situation he relished having to pass to the last of the line: the aged, infirm, and bitter, Sarah Weinberg.
They hurried into the building, calling out his name. Annie’s face was creased with something resembling disbelief. Behind her, hardly daring to believe what had happened, Charlie O’Hare a man in panic not wanting to move in case his fears were realised. Annie led them forward, searching among the charred remains of what were once human beings; all perforated with blowholes. Their skins tightened black across bones that returned to dust when touched. Hair not burnt, but melted like pitch tar clinging to what had once been heads. Charlie was more despondent at this scene of carnage and began despairing. What amazed him as the last time, was that no part of the building, apart from a small section to one side that had collapsed, and the ceiling that was probably due to fall down any time before, there had been no other damage to the structure. It was the dead, so many. He wondered if this was how a neutron war would be conducted, where only people were killed and buildings’ left intact.
Annie recognising the look of a broken man quietly said, ‘Pray, Charlie, and keep looking, he must be somewhere, we are.’
He nodded, but kept the likelihood of prayer for his mind. It never came. His prop had deserted him in his hour of need and there would soon be others’ arriving before they had had the chance to take Spannocs alive and like as not dispose of them now they knew what they were.
Charlie replied. ‘We were outside, Hamilton wasn’t.’
‘There’s a whole town dead out there, Charlie. We’re still alive.’
He nodded and carried on his half-hearted search. His eyes looked down upon a specimen he took to be a male a withered penis nestling like a slug that had turned itself inside out.
Annie looked down at the floor. ‘Well I suppose we’d better keep looking.... Look at that, Charlie. That’s some knife isn’t it? Look at the size of it, like something Crocodile Dundee carried around with him, look there, next to it some brown ... what is that, meat, bread?’
Charlie carefully retrieved the knife with a handkerchief from the large slice of what had been someone’s arm. He examined it closely. Tony Di Sotto had carried that injury and he knew who was responsible. He strode with purpose to the other end of the hall and began studying a gaping whole in the wall that he had not seen before. Said to himself in a whisper, Like its gone straight through.... He added with a raised tone, ‘With someone up its arse — at speed. She’s become flesh alright and he’ll lead her right into the hands of the lunatic asylum. And destroyed another Weinberg. Had a good crack, this night, this lad. By God he’s going to have some answering to me when I get hold of him.’
* * *
Hamilton had been watching them. Trapped behind a pile of what had once been the wall of the Guys and Dames washroom with the frustration at not being able to release his arms and remove the toilet roll that had been against one wall and was jammed across his mouth. There in a pincer movement of wall, mouth full and further wall, his head was locked. Not being able to shout owing to the obstruction and not a little put out with the feeling that they had given him up for dead and carried on the conversation of this event between the posturing of the evidence before them and what Charlie was to say to his grandmother; decided that he had had enough and with one mighty effort had kicked what remained of the wall from his legs, blew the roll from his mouth and screamed out. ‘When the two of you have quite finished fannying around would you kindly come over and give me a hand!’
Annie looked across at the man. Sitting on what remained of a toilet seat. In a what remained of a water closet. His shirt torn and b
lowing in the draught that was coming through the broken window, the top of his trousers open with his underpants showing, she said: ‘We’ve finished. Whenever you are. Are you, perhaps, requiring anything wiping?’
Charlie was dumbfounded. ‘Praise be, Mary, Sweet Mother of Jesus, you’re alive, so you are. What the fooking hell you playing at frightening us like that?’ He rushed over to extricate him from what was left of the rubble that was still trapping his leg. Apart from grazes and bruises it was a miracle he’d survived and told him so.
‘We don’t do miracles, Charlie. I’m one of the Son’s of Abraham, remember?’
Charlie smiled one of his beamers. ‘Well remember this, Abraham, there’s only one page in the Bible separating us, we’ve no less in common than that, so we haven’t. But I’ll concede you’ve had a helping hand from Job chapter 19, verse 20: I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.’
Charlie and Annie grabbed his arm and between the two of them had Hamilton up and brushed down. Charlie took him by the hand and said with a rolling tear. ‘But I am glad to see you, for all that.’
Annie said to Charlie, ‘So who’s this all down to? All this killing and destruction. Her? Overdone this a bit wouldn’t you say, Becland’s been destroyed, you’ve to start asking yourself, Charlie, who’s on whose side here?’
The thought of betrayal against Lucy; and coming from Annie’s lips, was too much for him. ‘When God’s wrath is up, He is merciless; He’ll rain pestilence on the earth to bring us back into line. Look at the war’s of the twentieth century, men no older than boys slaughtered in the Great War. And him,’ he pointed to Hamilton, ‘His people. Six million wiped off the face of the earth by a megalomaniac from His own loins, and you ask who’s on whose side.’
‘But that wasn’t God, that was man,’ she replied.
‘Yes! Man. You’ve acknowledged only part of the equation. Man. Created in His own image, thought and deed, His miserable attempt at creating something worthwhile. We are all Him. We are all of us Him, and He is wrath through