Ghosts of Manhattan

by George Mann

  It was dark outside, but the streetlamps cast their warm, radial glow. The street itself was deserted. Gabriel knew it wouldn't stay that way for long. The police would be on their way by now, and soon they'd be flooding into the wreckage that was once Johnny Franco's Sensation Club. He wasn't about to hang around waiting, though, not with people taking shots at him. He needed to get Celeste to safety.

  There were two identical cars parked outside the front of the club; black, sleek, and modern. Steam and smoke billowed out from the rear of one of them, and Gabriel knew he had no choice but to take it, with force if necessary. He rushed over to the driver's side and flung open the door. The driver-clearly a goon belonging to the same mob as the men pursuing them-looked up, startled. Then, just as he recovered himself and was about to reach for his weapon, Gabriel clubbed him across the temple, hard, with the butt of his revolver. The man crumpled into unconsciousness, and Gabriel grabbed his lifeless body by the collar and hauled him out of the vehicle, dropping him carelessly to the road. He glanced up to see Celeste standing by the car, unsure what to do. "Get in!" he screamed, and, startled, she leapt into the passenger seat, visibly shaking.

  Gabriel released the parking brake and slammed his foot on the accelerator, tearing away down the road just as a hail of bullets shattered the rear windshield and pattered into the armored plates covering the back end of the vehicle.

  The car careened down the road, swerving around other parked cars whilst Gabriel attempted to get it under control. He glanced in the rearview mirror, and then, sighing, tossed his revolver across to Celeste. "They're coming after us. Here. Fill this up with bullets. They're in my pocket. You'll have to find them while I drive."

  Celeste was clearly in shock. She turned to stare at him, her eyes wide. "You shot that man! After they killed Johnny Franco. You just casually pulled this ... gun ... out of your pocket and shot him dead."

  Gabriel took a deep breath. The circumstances had been ... different. It wasn't that he'd killed in cold blood. He'd shot to protect the woman he loved. He knew what those people were capable of. When he spoke, his voice was low and serious. "Shoot first. That's what they taught us in France. Always shoot first. Take them by surprise and don't give away your advantage. I was trying to protect you."

  "Protect me ..." She seemed lost, as if the horrors she'd witnessed down there in the cellar bar had somehow caused her mind to disengage. Gabriel decided not to press the point; didn't have time to consider the implications anyway. But later-later he would get to the bottom of why these men had gone to such terrible lengths to attempt to kidnap this woman he loved. What could they possibly want with a jazz singer?

  "Celeste!"

  She started, shocked by his forcefulness.

  "Fill the gun with bullets. We're going to need it ..." He trailed off as he swung the car wide around a sharp corner, narrowly missing a pedestrian crossing the road, an old man in a gray overcoat who looked more surprised than angry as they shot off along the slick tarmac, black smoke erupting from the twin exhaust funnels at the rear.

  The other car was gaining on them, and he could see two of the mobsters leaning out of the windows, tommy guns at the ready. He needed desperately to stay out of their range.

  Celeste, woken from her momentary reverie, was now fishing around in his pocket, attempting to grab hold of the stray bullets. And then, a moment later, she was screaming.

  Gabriel, trying to keep one eye on the road, turned about in his seat to see what was happening. A man-a mobster-was in the back of the car, leaning through the gap between the front seats so that he could grapple with Celeste, attempting to wrestle the weapon out of her grip. He must have been in the vehicle all the while, lying low in the back, waiting for his opportunity to strike. Gabriel chanced a proper look. He was a big man with a bushy black moustache, and he was wearing a satisfied sneer as he twisted Celeste's wrist, causing her to cry out again in pain. To her credit, she still had a tight grip on the revolver, but the angle of the man's attack meant that it was pointing away from him, forced low, toward the dashboard.

  Gabriel had to help her. But he had to keep moving, too. If he stopped the vehicle, the others would be upon them in seconds, and if he let go of the wheel, they'd likely end up as a burning wreck in the side of a building when the car veered off course. His choices were limited.

  He glanced at Celeste. Her eyes were pleading. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he tried to hold the vehicle on a straight path as he twisted around in his seat and jabbed his right elbow back sharply into the other man's face. It connected hard, jarring the crook's neck, and the man howled in pain. Gabriel tried again, this time catching the man in the mouth and loosening a couple of teeth. Blood spattered over the seats. The man momentarily relaxed his grip on Celeste. That was all she needed. Gripping the gun, she twisted around in her seat and pulled the trigger, firing a shot into the man's chest at point-blank range.

  The mobster gave a short, burbling cry, and then, blood trickling down his chin, slumped back into the rear seat, his eyes staring unseeing at the jazz singer, his hands folded across his lap, dark liquid oozing between his fingers. The smell of cordite filled the air.

  Gabriel grasped the wheel with both hands. He was breathing hard. "Are you okay?"

  Celeste was wearing a hard expression. "I'm okay." She resumed her search for the bullets in his pocket, feeding them into the chamber of the gun. Gabriel noticed that one of her gloves was scorched with residue from firing the weapon. He glanced in the mirror again.

  "They're gaining on us!" The incident with the man in the back had slowed them down; he'd taken his attention off the road. He pushed his foot flat to the floor, heard the engine roar in protest. The streets were getting busier here, and he had to dodge out of the way of an oncoming vehicle, another car, which sounded its horn expressively to signal its driver's annoyance.

  Rat-a-tat-tat. More gunfire. Gabriel found himself ducking instinctively as the projectiles hammered home. He heard the hiss of steam venting-a bullet had clearly punctured a valve. The vehicle slowed a little, losing some of its power.

  "No! Don't slow down now!"

  "I can't help it. They've hit a valve." Frustrated, Gabriel flung the vehicle around another corner, only to find them approaching Union Square. An immense holographic statue of Atlas stood proud over the city there, a true titan, towering over one hundred feet tall, supporting the celestial spheres on his broad, unyielding shoulders. The statue cast the surrounding streets and buildings in an eerie blue glow, washing everything as if it were being viewed through a filter, as if someone had painted the sky a different shade. The base of the statue, which housed the projection equipment, was at the center of a large park, around which the roads crisscrossed in a grid pattern.

  Gabriel forced the car around another bend at speed, causing it to shake dramatically and almost lose its grip on the tarmac. The other vehicle swung around behind it, and the onslaught of bullets continued. He realized that they weren't trying to hit him; more that they were attempting to riddle the car with so many bullets that it was rendered useless. They didn't want to harm Celeste.

  Gabriel watched her weigh the revolver in her hands. She looked across at him. "Do you love me?"

  Gabriel tried to keep his voice even. "I love you."

  "Good." She turned about in her seat, resting the barrel of the weapon on the seat back. Then, taking a deep breath, she squeezed the trigger. The shot was like an explosion in the confined space of the vehicle, and she flinched at the sound. But her aim was true, and the bullet caught the windshield of the other car, punching a hole in the glass and causing a spiderweb of fracture lines to spread out from the site of the impact. The other car swerved, and then the man in the passenger seat used the butt of his tommy gun to smash the broken glass out, sending shards of it skittering off the hood.

  Celeste ducked back behind the seat as a retaliatory burst of fire sprayed the rear end of the vehicle again, a stray bullet yipping through the hole
where the rear windshield had been, burying itself in the roof of the car not far from their heads. Both cars swerved again, circling the enormous sculpture of light, driving around Atlas's massive feet.

  Celeste took aim again, and this time she was ready for the noise. Gabriel watched her out of the corner of his eye, saw the look of intense concentration on her face. He tried to hold the car steady for a moment. She loosed a bullet.

  For a moment, Gabriel thought that she'd missed, that her shot had gone wide or had no effect. But then he saw the driver of the other car collapse over the steering wheel, and the vehicle careened off the road at high speed, mounting the curb and hurtling directly for the park. He watched in the rearview mirror as it shot across the grass verge, through Atlas's flickering blue foot, and over a wall, rolling onto its roof and sliding, with a loud crunch, into a large stone fountain. Hot coals spilled out across the plaza, and steam was gushing out of the engine housing in long, hissing jets. He had no doubt that the people inside were dead; there was no way anyone could have survived a crash like that.

  Gabriel turned to Celeste. She'd collapsed back into her seat, the gun discarded in the footwell, and she was weeping uncontrollably. He felt his heart break, then and there. All he wanted to do was take her somewhere, anywhere, away from all of this, to hold her in his arms and tell her she was safe. But he knew she would never be the same again. He knew that she was different, now. He remembered how it had felt to take his first life, back in the war, and how you never, ever recovered from the experience. He'd tried to shield her from that, to stop her from being damaged, like him. He knew that there was nothing he could say, now. Nothing he could do to make it better.

  The car was losing power as they pulled into a nearby side street, rolling up to the curb. Black smoke was curling dramatically from the funnels at the rear of the vehicle. And Gabriel was smarting, from the glass fragments that were still embedded in his back, and from the gunshot wound that had scorched his leg.

  He turned to Celeste, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. "I love you, Celeste. Whatever else, you need to believe that."

  She nodded, almost imperceptibly. Mascara was streaming down her cheeks and her hair had come loose, spilling down the side of her face. Gabriel thought she was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  She wiped ineffectually at her eyes with the back of her gloved hand. Then, turning her head fractionally to look at him, she whispered the words: "I'm sorry."

  He knew that they carried more weight, and more meaning, than he could possibly understand.

  "Come on, we need to keep moving. We don't want to be here when the police arrive. I'm taking you back to Long Island. I'm not sure you'll be safe at your own place for the time being."

  She didn't argue as he clambered out of the vehicle and circled round the front to help her out of the passenger seat. He stooped to collect the discarded weapon, too, slipping it safely into his pocket.

  Then, moving as quickly as they could to get away from the scene of devastation, they set off to find a taxi driver prepared to take them out to Long Island at this hour of the night.

  ight. That was his time. That was when the miscreants and crooks, the monsters and the nightmare things all spilled out into the open. That was when the city needed him most, and when he felt most alive. The city breathed that life into him, at this hour; gave him energy, gave him freedom. And in turn he coursed through its network of arteries and veins, searching out the demons, purging the rotten elements like a wrathful flame. He was the spirit of vengeance.

  The Ghost drifted lazily over the lip of a tall tenement building, firing his propulsion jets to give him enough lift to carry him over to another nearby roof terrace. Below, the city was stark in miniature; cars slid silently along the roads, their headlamps pooling on the black tarmac; revelers swarmed from restaurant to bar, and then back again, their voices lost on the wind.

  His ankles were still smarting from the blisters they'd received a couple of nights earlier, and his other injuries-although minor-were a constant, nagging reminder of his failure to take down the moss men. Now, though, he was ready for them. When he encountered them again, things would be different. He would make short shrift of their moss-covered bodies and brass frames. But for the time being he had a task to perform. He needed to speak with someone. He was looking for Jimmy the Greek.

  Jimmy the Greek was one of the lowliest, sniveling life-forms that the Ghost had ever encountered. He wasn't even Greek, but Cypriot, although that hadn't stopped the other felons he associated with from saddling him with the moniker by which he had become known. Jimmy was a minor crook, a pickpocket, a messenger boy for the mob. But more than that: he was also a snitch.

  The Ghost despised everything that Jimmy stood for. The man didn't even have the decency to honor his own kind. He couldn't be trusted, not for a moment. He would just as soon turn his own mother in for a free pass, or else a hit of his favorite drug. But that fact, in itself, made him useful to the police, and even more so to the Ghost, who was prepared to go even further in his exploitation of the criminal if it meant he could get closer to the crooks that really mattered. The men he had vowed to bring down.

  He'd already checked out most of Jimmy's usual haunts: the drinking place down on 12th, the whorehouse on 17th. Now, determined, the Ghost was heading over to the hovel that Jimmy called home, a small apartment in Greenwich Village. He'd been there once before, and the idea of spending any time there was repulsive to him, but he needed answers, and Jimmy was the most likely candidate to give them to him. He wanted information on the shoot-out that had gone down at the Sensation Club the previous evening: who was behind it, and what they wanted with the girl, Celeste.

  He had his own ideas, of course. The presence of the moss men had to mean it was the Roman. But if he could find out who was actually there-the name of the thin man in the evening suit-it might be enough to put him on the trail of the Roman himself. And that still didn't answer the question about Celeste, and why the Roman felt the need to try to kidnap her. He couldn't believe for one minute that it was down to a sudden appreciation of her music. There was something rotten at the core of it, and he very much intended to find out what.

  He touched down gently on the roof of the building, pulling the cord inside his trench coat to shut off the flames that roared from his propulsion canisters. He scanned the rooftop, the red lenses of his goggles flashing in the wan light. Just as he had expected, there was a fire escape on the roof. Jimmy the Greek kept his apartment on the third floor. It would only take a matter of moments to descend the emergency stairs down through the five intervening floors, and he knew there was less chance of being seen when coming in from the roof. He didn't want to alert Jimmy to his presence, didn't want to give him the opportunity to flee. That way, it would only get messy when he finally caught up with the snitch.

  The Ghost crossed the rooftop at a swift pace and tested the door that led down into the apartment block. Locked. He thought about using his flechette gun, but then reconsidered. It wouldn't do to make too much noise. Instead, he backed up a few paces and charged the door with his shoulder, slamming into the wooden panel with all of his weight behind it. The door didn't resist, bursting open on its hinges and bashing against the interior wall. The sound reverberated down the metal stairwell. The Ghost hesitated, waiting to see if the noise would attract any attention.

  A few moments later, when he was sure that the way was clear, he began his swift but cautious descent to the third floor, being careful not to miss his footing on the narrow, cramped stairwell in the darkness.

  The building seemed almost deserted. He could hear the distant rumble of music coming from somewhere down below, but on many floors the lights were out and there was little or no evidence of habitation. He wondered what had driven people away, aside from the squalor. Most likely the mob. If they were operating their usual protection rackets in these parts, it was unlikely that the residents would have been able to ma
intain their payments. They might well have been terrorized out of their homes, or have fled to escape the beatings. Or worse.

  Jimmy would have been looked after, of course. Jimmy had a hand in that sort of business, and that was exactly what made him useful.

  The Ghost reached the third-floor landing. He crept forward, peering through the glass pane in the door. A light was on in the corridor, and he could see three other doors branching off from it and a stairwell at the other end. Garbage had been heaped up in front of one of the doors: discarded food wrappers, some old blankets, a child's toy. He guessed that the residents of that apartment had been gone for some time. Now it was most likely infested with rats. He shuddered at the thought. Across the hall was the door to apartment number nine. Jimmy's place.

  Easing the fire escape door open, wincing as the hinges moaned, the Ghost slipped through into the corridor. Treading lightly, he paced along the hallway toward Jimmy's apartment. Then, when he was sure that there was no one else around, he rapped loudly on the wooden panel and waited for a response.

  There was the sound of cursing from inside, followed by a cupboard door banging shut. What was he hiding from view? The Ghost knocked again, louder this time.

  "I'm coming, I'm coming." The voice was muffled, but the Ghost smiled at the sound of it, all the same. There was no mistaking Jimmy's weasel-like tones.

  A moment later the door cracked open a fraction and Jimmy's thin face peered out. He looked pale and sweaty, and his eyes were tiny pinpricks in the half-light. He was either high on something, or coming down. He wasn't pleased to see the Ghost standing on his threshold. "Aww, shit." He tried to slam the door shut, but the Ghost was too quick and managed to get a booted foot between the door and the frame.