Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad

by Bryan Hall

  I scanned the cluttered table, the grubby shelves, and the dirty sofa. The ratiocinator hungrily devoured the visual data. Before long, I heard the familiar cold, analytical voice in my head.

  Ah, Inspector, you have obviously deduced that the body in the bath is that of a minor dealer in narcotics who has contravened the rigidly enforced strictures placed upon such fellows by their underworld moguls?

  “I have.”

  And you have no doubt also noted the preponderance of oriental souvenirs and mementos that clutter the mantelpiece, bookcases, occasional tables, and so on?

  “Yes, dealers like this spend a great deal of their time in Thailand and places like that. I was not surprised.”

  But would it surprise you, Inspector, to know that these remembrances and curios are all Indonesian in origin? Javanese, to be precise.

  “That I didn’t know.”

  Yes. And what is more, a recent monograph published upon the Aether-Telegraph concerned itself with a new strain of opiate that is finding itself transported from Jakarta to this city in considerable quantities.

  “Really?”

  Yes. I read it while you were concerning yourself with a more mundane piece on police procedure. This new opiate is a powerful and extremely addictive substance, and is therefore greatly prized by dealers of such substances. It has been given the grandiose if rather hackneyed appellation of jade dragon. The drug lords are feverish with excitement about its existence. They stand to make a great deal of money from this particular drug. Now, show me the body.

  I walked into the bathroom and allowed the ratiocinator to examine the bloody room and the wretched corpse in the bath.

  Inspector, the pattern of the blood and injuries would indicate that this unfortunate was dragged and dumped in the bath before any of the actual wounds we see were inflicted upon him. He was obviously tortured with some large blade before being executed by that slash to his throat. Then his body suffered further indignities.

  “I’d reckoned as much.”

  An elementary conclusion, to be sure. Nonetheless, a telling one as the perpetrators had no wish to disguise their identities. Indeed, they wished to advertise the fact.

  “And ...?”

  One of the Chinese gangs, to be sure. One with its origins in Shanghai, I’d venture.

  “But how can you be so specific?”

  The wounds are indicative of a particular Chai—or dagger—that is peculiar to the eastern seaboard of China. The injuries and desecrations to the body are horrific and yet precise. I’d be bold enough to state that the murderers are members of the Three Talon Brotherhood. They are renowned for delighting in such elegant atrocities. If memory serves me correctly, they operate out of a food wholesaler’s in Limehouse, catering for the oriental restaurant community.

  Sergeant Watson and I returned to Scotland Yard in an electric hansom, and I soon took a seat at my desk and powered up the analytical engine. Its screen blinked into life and I quickly accessed the Aether-Telegraph Network. Whilst I scanned its resources, I plugged a cable from the device into one of the sockets at the top of my spine so that the ratiocinator could search other areas of the information network.

  Everything the ratiocinator had deduced fitted with what I read on the ATN pages. What deeply worried me was the Three Talon Brotherhood’s reputation for being one of the most powerful and brutal of all the Chinese gangs, operating not only in London but around the globe. Drugs, extortion, prostitution, white slavery, smuggling, and all manner of crimes came under the Brotherhood’s remit, and they were on the rise.

  The ratiocinator’s findings only added to the frightening picture of a vicious gang increasing its power base in London.

  It would appear that the Brotherhood is increasing in power since it aligned itself with a western man of great intelligence. His identity is unknown, but he must be an individual of great intellect and capability. The Chinese gangs do not usually welcome European associates. I fear that the Three Talon Brotherhood will be a doubly fearful adversary now that it is in allegiance with this shadowy mind.

  I did not question the ratiocinator’s speculations. Over the next few weeks, ruthless and savage executions swept the London underworld. The Three Talon Brotherhood was doubtlessly expanding its narcotics empire by assassinating the foot soldiers and leaders of rival gangs. Watson and I attended one crime scene in which an Irish crime boss was impaled against a warehouse door with a stevedore’s bailing pike. On another occasion, we witnessed the grisly sight of a butcher’s cold storage vault in which Thomas Hewitt—a known senior member of the Scarlet Eye gang—and his entire family were suspended from the ceiling on meat hooks. The executions became ghastlier and more frequent. Beheadings, disembowelments, and disfigurements of all kinds became all too familiar in the wharf districts of London.

  And then the true damage of jade dragon made itself known, the ratiocinator reported to me:

  This terrible drug has crept out of Limehouse like an invisible miasma or infectious vapor. The streets are littered by stumbling or supine addicts as if a dreadful listless plague had hit the city. But it is not just the unfortunates of the warehouse and slum areas that fall to this horror. The drug has found its way into the salons and parlors of the wealthy and comfortable—particularly those who considered themselves to be somewhat bohemian, or members of the faster set. More than one heiress and several Right Honorable sons of families with solid reputations have been carried to asylums, hospitals, and mortuaries.

  Neither I nor Watson had any idea about what to do next. I thought that we would pay a visit to the wholesalers that were suspected of being the center of the Three Talon empire. If we were to go during daylight hours, I wouldn’t have to worry too much. Curious white men in Limehouse playing tourist or slumming it were a frequent sight before dark, as were those in need of jade dragon. Watson took his revolver.

  It would have been a lie to say that we were welcome in Limehouse, but we were not subject to open hostility, only smirking derision. We were obviously two Gwau-Lai on the hunt for opiates, whores, or some other shameful pleasure. The business premises took up the ground floor of a building that had once been a corn warehouse. We could not guess what went on in the many stories that towered above it—and, to be truthful, we did not want to.

  On entry, we found the interior to be a large, bare, wooden-floored area crowded with shelves and cabinets crammed with all manner of alien foodstuffs. Sacks of rice and less-familiar nutriments hindered our wanderings through this warren of foreignness. I was fascinated by much of what I saw, and I did not have to feign my role of a bewildered and intrigued sightseer too greatly. Watson, too, though he had seen much of the East in his former military career, found himself gawping with astonishment at the string sacks of chicken and ducks’ feet that hung from the ceiling.

  The proprietor and his underlings mocked us with their quiet smiles and dark eyes, but feared little from the two naive fools who browsed through their stock that—while mundane to them—was a fascinating treasure trove of wonderment to European sensibilities. However, no matter how odd and outlandish the trader’s produce was to our eyes, there was nothing to suggest any criminality or links with sinister gangs of thugs.

  It was not until we left that the ratiocinator spoke in my head.

  Did you observe the tattoo on the proprietor’s wrist, Inspector?

  “Yes, a swallow in flight, and what I took to be Chinese characters.”

  Indeed, you saw it. But, as usual, you did not observe it. The swallow, whilst an innocent enough creature in itself, is an identifying mark of members of the Three Talon Brotherhood. And the characters translate roughly as “pledged to the emperor of crime.”

  “The emperor of crime? That’s a little overblown, is it not?”

  Grandiloquent, certainly. But not necessarily inaccurate. It obviously refers to the shadowy mind that has aligned itself to, or perhaps from, that phrasing and taken leadership of the Brotherhood.

  B
oth Watson and I agreed that a raid of the wholesaler’s was in order, yet we needed something a little more substantial than a tattoo to gain the Commissioner of Police’s approval. He, I, and the ratiocinator stayed up most of the night searching through the Aether-Telegraph Network in independent directions, desperately seeking anything that would aid us in this case.

  It was, however, a more visceral source that provided us with our next clue. The following morning, the body of another crime lord rival of the Three Talon Brotherhood was discovered. This evil unfortunate had been found executed in the “Blood Eagle” style of the ancient Norsemen. His arms and legs had been stretched apart and he had been nailed alive through the palms of his hands and ankles to the base of a wooden cart. He had not died, however, until his sternum had been sawn through and chest opened so that his ribcage took on the appearance of two wings. After death, or in the process of dying, the contents of his torso had been removed and placed in a bloody, mucoid halo about his person. It was the symbol that had been scribed upon the corpse’s forehead in its own juices, however, that stirred the ratiocinator into activity. It was a single letter M.

  I could have been forgiven for thinking that the ratiocinator gave a start at that moment when the presence of the M was brought to its attention, and could almost believe that the cold, clinical voice betrayed something resembling emotion. But I was unsure what that emotion was—excitement, fear, even admiration seemed to underscore the tone the device’s voice took.

  Interesting, most interesting, Inspector. We have already established that some ominous, lurking figure is directing the actions of the Three Talon Brotherhood. We may be a step closer to establishing the identity of that individual. We may even be able to link this anonymous mastermind to a greater and wider campaign of criminal activities and evils.

  “How so?”

  In my research, I have encountered a suggestion time and time again that a single agent of some genius is the invisible puppeteer behind much of London’s felonious enterprises. I have always considered this possibility with suspicion, for I have never uncovered anything of suitable significance to authenticate the existence of this architect of corruption. This individual I have always considered to be nothing more than a product of criminal folklore or the wild imaginings and mythologies of London’s darker streets. And yet, this shadow may be gathering substance before our eyes. This unseen, malevolent hand and the engineer behind the Three Talon’s rise may be one and the same.

  It seemed so farfetched, and yet was it any more incredible than any of the oddities I had encountered in the preceding weeks? I pressed the ratiocinator on the matter:

  “How have you come to suspect that these two mysterious individuals are one and the same?”

  Because, my dear Lestrade, if this underworld suzerain is ever referred to directly—and that does not happen frequently—he is referred to by one of two titles. He is either denoted rather enigmatically as “the Professor,” or simply signified as “M.”

  Although it was hardly within the bounds of legitimate police work, both Watson and I agreed to a proposal put forward by the ratiocinator. To be blunt, we would break into the Chinese wholesaler’s one night and search the place and see what we would find. In dark clothes and with torches in our pockets, we took a cab as far into Limehouse as the driver dare take us. We continued on foot through the menacing alleys and streets, and, while we were subject to intimidating glances and verbal scorn by the neighborhood’s inhabitants, we thankfully arrived at our destination unmolested.

  The sergeant and I slinked down an alley that ran down one side of the building and found a low window, which Watson forced open. The two of us scrambled in and found the place in total darkness. There were no sounds that suggested anyone was on the premises. Snapping on our torches, we discovered we were in a storeroom of some sort. We commenced a search of the ground floor. After some time, we were confident that this level contained no office or similar room that would betray any illicit activity, so we made our way up a concrete stairway to see if the upper stories would be more profitable.

  The ratiocinator had been quiet, and I hoped that it was engaged in deductive cogitations. Now would be a poor time for its Reichenbach circuits to be failing. We moved from the staircase onto the next floor through a pair of heavy wooden doors to find ourselves in a corridor that extended a considerable distance ahead of us. Similar sets of doors were placed at regular intervals down both sides of the corridor. Watson and I walked on, not really sure what we were looking for, but trusting our intuitions to guide us. It was when we were halfway down the passageway that the Three Talon hoodlums fell upon us. They burst from doors ahead and behind us, wielding a fiendish array of blades and cudgels. Watson fell to a blow from one of these despicable fellows, but I was not to learn of his fate at that time as I, too, was struck upon the head by a weapon that was part chain and part iron bar. I fell painfully into unconsciousness.

  Equally painfully and wracked with nausea, I came to my senses some indeterminable time later. The pain of my awakening was doubled by the white glare that blazed into my eyes, as I had regained consciousness in a savagely lit room. I was bound to a chair and unable to move. A hand, its wrist tattooed with a swallow and Chinese characters, went to my forehead and put fingers to my throat, checking my vital signs.

  “Unlike your Sergeant, Inspector, you are alive,” said the man, I assumed the proprietor of the establishment.

  As my faculties slowly returned, I realized that I was in the most unlikely of environments. I was in a large room with the appearance of an operating theater. Indeed, on a nearby table lay a smartly dressed but otherwise nondescript European man. I could not tell if he was alive or dead. A masked surgeon and gowned assistants wheeled in a second table from an adjoining room.

  “Yes, we need you alive, but only long enough to remove that interesting device from your head and place it in its new host. It will be interesting to see what information he has gleaned from the databanks of Scotland Yard. What secrets, I wonder, has M uncovered for us?”

  And in that second, I was convinced I heard the cold, black chuckle of the Napoleon of Crime in my head.

  THE FUTURE OF FLESH

  BY JM REINBOLD

  At the bar at Garibaldi’s, Mike Gambone hunched over his beer. He kept his eyes on the big screen TV. A waitress brought a bacon cheeseburger to a guy at a nearby table. The smell made Mike’s mouth water. He sipped his beer and made a face at the flat, stale taste. He’d finished off the peanuts an hour ago, but the bartender hadn’t refilled the dish. Mike checked the Absolut clock on the wall behind the bar. One minute to eight. Wait for it ... the minute hand hit the 12 ... the houselights dimmed, the sports channel switched to music videos. The glorified beer jerk turned and stared at Mike’s glass. Time to order another or move along. Mike swallowed the last of his warm beer and reached for his jacket, dreading the five-block walk back to his room in the bone-chilling February wind.

  He had one arm in a sleeve when a blonde walked up to the bar, unsteady on her five-inch heels. Mike let the jacket slide off his arm and sat down. She wore a red dress so tight it looked sprayed on. The blonde turned in his direction, ghost pale with smudgy, dark eyes. She opened her mouth and ran her tongue over plump lips, glossed a shiny, shocking, wet red. Embarrassed, Mike looked away.

  Man, oh, man, she was hot. Mike couldn’t stop himself sneaking another look. A guy in a sharp black suit sidled over to the blonde. A few minutes later, by the time the bartender brought their drinks, the two were chatting like old friends. The blonde sipped her drink; the guy finished his in one swallow. She smiled at him between sips. Never taking her eyes off his, she stroked his arm. The guy put his hand on her back. She moved closer.

  Mike did not need to see this. He looked away and caught the bartender smirking at him. Mike glared and turned back to the couple just as the guy’s hand slid down the blonde’s back and over the curve of her ass.

  Mike winced at a cramp in
his chest. He clenched and unclenched his fists, but the knot only got tighter. Sweat beaded his forehead. He watched as the blonde climbed into the guy’s lap. Her dress couldn’t have been more than two inches below her crotch. The guy slid his hand up her dress. The blonde rocked her hips. Mike stared, every nerve on fire. It took a few seconds before he realized the guy was looking right at him. A flash of panic lit up his brain. He ducked his head and stared into his glass.

  When he looked up again the guy and the blonde were gone. What the hell had just happened? He shoved the empty glass away and grabbed his jacket.

  “Mike Gambone! How you doin’, man?”

  Startled at hearing his name, Mike jumped. He turned to find the guy in the black suit standing behind him.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Phil Demartini,” the guy answered with a grin. “From the old neighborhood.”

  The Phil Demartini Mike knew had buck teeth that could open beer bottles and a beak like a toucan. This guy looked airbrushed perfect, like he’d stepped off the pages of GQ. Mike pulled on his jacket and dropped a quarter on the bar.

  “Yeah, right,” Mike said.

  “Come on, man, we were best friends back in the day.”

  Mike snorted. He didn’t know who the hell this guy was or what he wanted, but him claiming to be Phil was bullshit.

  “The Phil Demartini I knew never looked nothing like you.”

  Phil laughed. “Just messin’ with you, dude. I knew you wouldn’t recognize me. I had some work done.”

  Mike squinted at the man claiming to be his childhood friend. “Work?”