by AnonYMous
Simmonds sat back in his seat again and began fidgeting with his crotch as the cheap suit crowded his nether regions once more.
‘You should have let me press charges and send that loser to jail. He might finally have learnt something. Anyway, you get my point. I’m suggesting we fire your other charity-case employee.’
‘The only other person I’ve employed is Beth Lansbury.’
‘That’s who I mean.’
‘Why on earth would you want to fire her? She’s a delightful young woman.’
‘She doesn’t mix well with others. Eats lunch on her own in the canteen. And, of course, she has a criminal record.’
‘I’m well aware of her criminal record, thank you, Elijah. That girl had a very tough time of it as a child. I believe she deserves a break. That’s why I employed her. And her father, God rest his soul, was a friend of mine many years ago.’
‘Wasn’t Dante Vittori’s father a friend of yours too.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then.’
‘Well then what?’
‘Well then, that’s not a great reason for employing people, is it? I mean, don’t get me wrong, sir, I think it’s very noble of you to employ kids of your old friends, but it’s not good business sense. You know the rest of the staff are frightened of her? They call her “Mental Beth”. No matter how you dress it up, tough childhood and all that, she still murdered someone in cold blood, and that scares people. More work gets done when she’s not around. When she’s here it puts everyone else on edge. And what about that horrible scar across her face? Ugh! You must have noticed the reactions of many visitors when they see her. See? She’s even scaring off paying customers. Trust me, getting her off the payroll and out of this building can only be good for business.’
Cromwell picked his narrow-rimmed half-moon spectacles back up from the desk and put them on. He rubbed his forehead for a moment, frowning as he did so. Then he closed the accounting book in front of him. ‘Very well,’ he said, pushing the ledger back across the desk to Simmonds. ‘Send Beth down here when you get back upstairs. I will speak to her myself.’
Thirty-Five
Igor was still feeling the exhilaration of the previous night, when he had gorged on the blood of Patient Number 43, otherwise known as Casper. Now, while his companion in the blood feast, Pedro, had chosen to spend the afternoon with a hooker, Igor had decided to go for a drink downtown. An opportunity to flex his new immortal muscles was required. His first port of call was the Fawcett Inn right in the centre of town, the most popular drinking haunt for werewolves. Where the local vampires had taken control of the Nightjar, the wolf men had claimed the Fawcett Inn for themselves.
From the outside, the place looked reasonably quiet when he arrived. The front door was open, no doubt due to the humidity in the air. It was not an especially big bar; in fact, lightly modelled as it was on an English pub, it had the appearance of an old thatched cottage of the kind that one might find in northern England.
Once inside, Igor was disappointed to find that the Fawcett Inn was not particularly busy. He was looking to show off a bit, and so would have appreciated a larger audience. No more than fifteen paying customers were sitting around at tables to the left of the bar. As was often the case there was just the one bartender, a grey-bearded black guy named Royle. Royle doubled as the doorman in this place. He was big enough and tough enough to handle any of the customers that came in looking for trouble. In the past that had just about included Igor, but now the newly self-appointed head werewolf was ready to put that to the test.
‘Royle, get me a bottle of moonshine. And I’ll have this one on the house,’ he snarled in a confrontational manner. He was hoping Royle would be offended by his arrogance and challenge him to a test of physical strength. Sadly, he was disappointed. Royle did not oblige. He’d obviously heard about Igor’s new, improved and higher level of undead-ness.
The bartender picked up an unopened bottle of his best moonshine from under the bar and placed it, together with an empty shot glass, on the bartop in front of Igor.
‘Congratulations,’ he said, deadpan. ‘I hear you and Pedro killed a handicapped guy and drank his blood from the Holy Grail.’
Igor was not in the mood for any attitude from anyone. He had come dressed to kill in a bright white silk shirt unbuttoned to halfway, showing off an abundance of coarse black chest hair. Around his neck he wore a gold chain with a crocodile tooth hanging from it. And he’d been out that day and bought some pretty sharp black leather pants in which he was now only too happy to strut around, somewhat like Tom Jones. (Or so he hoped …)
‘Take caution in your tone,’ he snarled archaically at Royle, picking up the bottle of moonshine and uncorking it. ‘That sounded for a second like you might be mockin’ me, and if there’s one thing I don’t gotta take no more, it’s patronizing, shitty remarks from you or anyone else in this goddamn place.’ His voice rose as he spoke, to be certain that everyone heard. With no music playing, everyone did hear; indeed, they had all stopped having conversations of their own in order to show the necessary level of respect.
Igor looked around for a customer to eyeball as he poured himself a full glass of the moonshine and then downed it in one. No one seemed to be eyeballing him, so he poured himself another. ‘There’s a new sheriff in town,’ he called out, again loud enough to make sure everyone heard. He knew they were all hanging on his every word, but right at the moment no one wanted to look him in the eye. Instead, all of them were gazing in fascination at their drinks, or their shoes.
Eventually, irritated by the lack of confrontation, Igor shifted his giant frame around to face everyone full on and finish shouting out his announcement about the new sheriff. ‘And his name is Igor the Fang. No longer are us werewolves gonna be seen as second-class citizens. We’re not gonna take no shit from no vampires no more, neither. We’re gonna be equals.’ He paused for a pull at his drink, then went on. ‘The first three men in here to pledge their allegiance to me, right here and now, will be my lieutenants. Sign up now, guys, this is a once-in-a-lifetime offer to become a part of the number-one wolf crew in Santa Mondega. Women and riches will follow. Come and be a part of a clan that’s movin’ up in the world. A clan of wolves to match all the vampire clans put together. The baddest clan in the land.’ He took a step towards the occupied tables and shook a fist in the air. ‘Now, who’s with me?’
There was a pause as the lowlife wolfmen in the barroom absorbed what he was saying. The fifteen or so young males sitting at the various tables were all exchanging uneasy glances, each waiting for one of the others to say something. Eventually one brave young guy in a sleeveless blue denim shirt stood up from one of the nearby tables and walked over to Igor. He was the bravest of the bunch, all right, a scruffy young werewolf with thick, unkempt auburn hair, who went by the name of Ronnie. He was looking to move up in the world quickly, and if it meant taking a risk and showing he was braver than the others, then fuck it, that’s what he was going to do.
‘I’ll pledge my allegiance to you, Igor,’ he stated solemnly. ‘What would you have me do?’ Archaic language seemed to be catching on.
Igor looked him up and down, and nodded approvingly. This guy had balls.
‘What would I have you do? Simple. I want a drinkin’ partner, for a start. Royle, gimme another bottle of moonshine. On the house.’
Royle threw a dirty look at Igor behind his back, then rolled his eyes as he watched two more scruffy young men get up from the table at which Ronnie had been sitting. They hurried over to stand by their friend. Neither of them was quite as brave as Ronnie, so to be on the safe side they both hung back a foot or so behind him. All three of them stood facing Igor, who was now leaning back against the bar, looking full of himself.
‘Better make that another two more!’ the big wolfman bellowed without bothering to turn and look at Royle.
‘Fine,’ the bartender growled, smiling a sarcastic smile. ‘Reckon I’ll just he
ad out back get a couple more bottles for you.’ He shuffled out through the open door at the back of the bar.
Igor took a long look at his three new lieutenants, running the rule over them. They weren’t exactly well built, any of them, but they were all undoubtedly proud of their heritage as werewolves because each of them sported a good degree of facial hair, a sign of pride in a wolf.
‘So, what are your names?’ he asked them.
The first guy to have gotten up, Ronnie, who was still standing slightly in front of the other two, took a step back and trod on the feet of one of the guys behind him.
‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I changed my mind.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ said the other two in unison. They too each took a step back. All three of them had turned pale and were staring wide-eyed at the bar behind Igor. The newly self-proclaimed head wolf’s first instinct was that they were a little nervous, maybe even intimidated by him, fearing that he might be about to make an example of one of them. Then his sixth sense kicked in. Something’s not right.
‘What’s goin’ on?’ Igor asked, wiping his nose and then inspecting his fingers. ‘Have I got a booger hangin’ or somethin’?’
All three young wolfmen shook their heads in unison. They had seen something behind Igor that warranted a retreat of sorts. The rumours that Igor had killed the retarded kid brother of the Bourbon Kid were being verified for them. For behind Igor was a sight they had hoped not to see. It was that of a hooded man rising up from behind the bar, his face shielded from them by the shadow of his cowl.
The dark figure held its gloved hands in front of it and almost two feet apart, fists clenched. Wrapped around these black-gloved hands and stretched tightly between them was a silvery length of cheesewire.
By the time Igor’s instincts kicked in and told him he was in trouble, the cheesewire had been whipped over his head and wrapped tightly around his throat. Within a second the hooded man had dragged him over the bar and out of sight, kicking and choking as he went.
The Fawcett Inn emptied of customers in less than five seconds. No one was going to hang around to see the outcome of this. They had already seen more than they wanted to.
The Kid was back. And he hadn’t even had a drink yet.
Thirty-Six
Captain De La Cruz was sitting at the desk in his office, tapping away at the keyboard on his computer. He had stretched the buttoned-up collar on his red shirt quite significantly by tugging at it consistently for the last hour. Pulling at his collar was something he did when things were bothering him. And right now something was bothering him.
The blinds on the window behind him were closed, keeping out the last of the day’s sunlight. The thin shafts of pale blue light that did filter in through the slats lit up the dust motes all around his face, which were almost as much of an irritation to him as the computer screen he was frowning at. His frustrated look hinted that he wasn’t making much progress with whatever he was doing. With that in mind, Hunter knocked tentatively on the glass-panelled door of the office and waited for his captain to gesture for him to enter. De La Cruz duly did, and after kicking at the base of the sticky door, which had never opened easily, Hunter made his way in, pushed it almost shut behind him and then stood behind the chair on the near side of the desk, resting his hands on the chairback.
De La Cruz looked up at him. ‘Why does everyone have to kick my door, huh?’ he asked. ‘Why can’t people just push a little harder? I mean, how fuckin’ difficult is that?’
Hunter offered an apologetic, yet also sympathetic, smile. ‘You sound kinda agitated. An’ I gotta tell ya, I’m feelin’ it too.’ He took off his brown tweed jacket and hung it on the back of the chair, then sat down and tugged at the neck of his brown sweater. In doing so, he was inadvertently mimicking his superior officer.
De La Cruz slapped his keyboard one last time and turned his attention away from the computer’s monitor and fully on to his partner.
‘Feelin’ what?’ he asked.
‘I’m feelin’ bothered by what happened with the retarded guy,’ Hunter replied, scratching his chin.
‘Oh that,’ De La Cruz grimaced. ‘Nah, matter of fact that’s not what’s bothering me. Not exactly, anyway. It is bugging me, but not as much as what happened right afterwards. It’s bugging me more that Benson gave his name to the person on the other end of the guy’s cell phone. What the fuck was he thinking?’
‘Yeah, that’s pissin’ me off too. You reckon it was the Kid on the phone?’
‘You even doubt it?’ asked De La Cruz, tapping the space bar on his keyboard a few times to make a pointless little tune.
‘Yeah, I know. Benson’s ego is gettin’ totally out of hand. Discretion’s not exactly his middle name, is it? You think we should be doin’ somethin’ about it?’ Hunter already knew the answer.
‘Yeah. He’s becomin’, like, a liability. I got absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Kid’s gonna be after him now. And he may already be after us, too. We’ve lost our element of surprise here, Hunter, and we’ve killed the Kid’s fuckin’ retard brother. If he’s not after us yet, he soon will be, once he’s tracked down Benson. I mean, fuck …’ De La Cruz had succeeded in winding himself up, and he made it obvious when he smacked the space bar a bit harder. ‘Benson gave away his own name easily enough. He’ll give up our names to the Kid too, once he’s put under a bit of pressure. This is fuckin’ serious, man.’
De La Cruz’s mood was visibly darkening as he spoke aloud what they had both been thinking, but not saying, ever since the previous night’s kill.
‘You want me to make Benson disappear?’ Hunter offered.
‘I do, yeah, but there’s a problem. I can’t get a hold of him. The slimy bastard has fucked off somewhere. We’ll deal with him all in good time, but I think our first plan is to try and get to the Bourbon Kid before he gets to Benson and our beloved buddy starts singing like a goddamn canary.’
‘You don’t reckon Benson could handle the Kid?’
‘Hunter, you could handle the Kid and I could handle the Kid, but Benson’s just too much of a loose cannon. If our new strength is as great as we think it is, any one of us should be able to wipe the floor with that bourbon-drinking sonofabitch. But let’s not take any chances by sending Benson after him.’
‘Okay. So what you got in mind?’
‘Take a look at this,’ said De La Cruz spinning the monitor part-way around so that Hunter could get a good look at what was on screen.
‘What’s this?’ the other asked, checking out the black-and-white video image on the Captain’s screen.
‘CCTV footage.’
‘Of what?’
‘The massacre here at headquarters on the night of the eclipse last year, when the Bourbon Kid killed all the on-duty cops, as well as that good-lookin’ receptionist Amy Webster.’
Hunter took a look at the flickering CCTV footage, which was currently paused and hard to make out. ‘What part is this?’ he asked.
‘This is the bit where he kills Archie Somers by sticking that fuckin’ book into his chest.’
‘How in hell did you come by this?’ asked Hunter. ‘I didn’t know there was CCTV in the station.’
‘I found it on YouTube.’
‘You don’t say!’
‘No, dumbass. It turns out Internal Affairs secretly installed CCTV cameras some time ago in order to check up on all of us.’
‘But surely that’s illegal?’
‘They did it in Lethal Weapon 3,’ said De La Cruz, shrugging.
‘Oh well then,’ said Hunter, grimacing. ‘If they can do it in the movies, I guess they can do it here.’
De La Cruz shrugged again. ‘You got it, Dick.’ He tapped the space bar and the video started running again. Hunter watched the last few moments of Archie Somers on screen as the detective first attacked the Bourbon Kid and then, after a brief struggle and an exchange of words, staggered back in a ball of flames and finally turned to smoke and ash. Once
Somers was gone, the Kid (who had his back to the camera) made his way out of headquarters and the tape ended.
‘Nice,’ said Hunter. ‘We learnin’ anythin’ from this?’
‘Well, actually, yeah – I think we are,’ said De La Cruz, tugging nervously with one finger at his shirt collar. ‘You see, the Kid’s not what you think.’
‘Well, I think he’s a mass murderer. Is he a mass murderer?’
‘Well, yeah … ‘
‘Then he’s exactly what I think.’
De La Cruz faked a smile. ‘Funny guy, huh? But here’s the thing. I’ve seen this clip a hundred times before, and one thing has always bothered me.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Why does the Bourbon Kid leave The Book With No Name behind? Is it just because he’s not bothered about it, or is it because of this?’ He used the computer’s mouse to drag the ‘play’ bar on the screen back a little. Then he hit the space bar again and the video started playing again. ‘Look at this.’
Hunter looked more closely at the screen. He watched the footage unfold, and concentrated hard on trying to spot something he’d missed before. Nothing jumped out at him as once again he watched in fascination as the old detective departed for the depths of Hell in a fireball. As the clip drew to an end he watched the Kid put his hand up to his neck and then pull it away again to look at his fingers. A second or two later he pulled his hood back up over his head and walked out.
‘Well, he’s clever enough never to let his face be seen by the cameras that we didn’t even know we had hidden in this place,’ Hunter observed. ‘But we’ve always known he’s smart like that. We don’t have any footage of his face anywhere. Guy’s too smart, always knows where the cameras are. Even if we don’t.’
‘You missed the key moment there,’ said De La Cruz, once more resetting the ‘play’ bar on the screen. This time he went back a little further, pausing on the struggle between Somers and the Kid just before Somers began to smoulder and smoke. Hunter stared at the screen for a few seconds, then picked up on what De La Cruz was showing him. His captain was nodding.