Tales of the Red Panda: The Crime Cabal

by Gregg Taylor

  “He always looks a little like that.” His eyes stubbornly refused to wander.

  “And here’s a photo of our autographed ledger on the next page. O’Mally must be going out of his mind wondering how Jack Peters got that picture.”

  “I sent it to him before we planted the ledger in Tennutti’s car,” he said with a smile playing around the edges of his mouth.

  “You what?” she cried in amazement.

  “I thought you might get a kick out of that.” He grinned. “And I don’t mind the occasional curtain call, when we’ve been particularly clever.”

  “And the chance to really bother O’Mally?”

  He turned to her and met her eyes, just inches away. “Never even crossed my mind,” he said with mock sincerity. He smiled, “Is there more?”

  “More what?” she half-murmured.

  His brows knitted, genuinely puzzled. Kit felt her cheeks flush. She turned back to the papers.

  “There’s a nice little photo essay on page sixteen of the raid at the High-Hat Club. Apparently when they heard Big Joe’d been pinched, most of his soldiers took it on the lam. The cops didn’t have too much of a fight on their hands. They cleaned the last rats outta the nest and boarded the place up. The head of the Public Decency Committee says we should get a medal.”

  “Just one?”

  “Maybe they figure we can share.” Her cheeks felt like they were their normal color again, but she couldn’t be sure.

  “Speaking of shiny things, I made you something,” he said, turning back to the workbench.

  “You did? An’ here we are out of elbow macaroni and glue.”

  He turned back to her, with a look of triumph on his face, and a small rectangular membrane teeming with wires and microcircuits in his hand.

  She blinked at him twice.

  “Ta-dah?” she said at last, a little weakly.

  “You don’t like it?” He seemed surprised.

  “Well, it ain’t flowers an’ candy, but these days a girl can’t be too choosy. Maybe if you gave me the first idea what it was…”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes of course,” he said, leaning forward with excitement. “You know, of course, how I use low-level mental projection to convince our opponents that they see me in one place, when I’m really somewhere quite different?”

  “An’ then they shoot at nothing, you laugh and they start whimpering? Yeah, that’s one of my favorites,” she said with a smirk.

  “Well, it occurred to me you could use something similar of your own.”

  Her eyes popped open wide. “You’re gonna teach me hypnosis?” she said excitedly.

  “Er… no,” he said, shifting a little in discomfort. “It’s fun to do, but not to learn. You wouldn’t like it. There’s a lot of meditating.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” she said with her chin out and her brows knit.

  “It means sitting very still and very quiet.”

  “I can do that,” she protested.

  “For a few days at a time.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s just not on the list of things I can picture you doing,” he said gently.

  An evil smile crept across her face. “You mean there’s a list of things you can picture me doing?”

  He cleared his throat, just a little. She showed no mercy.

  “Where is this list and when can we start checking things off?”

  “Kit Baxter–!”

  “Yes, Boss,” she said triumphantly, not waiting for him to finish. “So what’s this whatsit and why is it better than hypnosis?”

  “This,” he said, returning to the device, “is a Ventrilloquator.”

  “I never heard of those,” she said skeptically.

  “That’s because this is the only one there is. I thought up the name just now.” Suddenly he was excited again. “Remember the sensors built into our gloves that detect certain preset patterns of muscular flexing in our hands in order to remotely control the push and pull of our Static Shoes?”

  “I have a vague recollection of that,” she smirked.

  “Well, these sensors detect the unconscious muscular movement in the throat associated with specific thoughts, and use them as a guide to target your voice.”

  “Target my voice?” She was genuinely puzzled now.

  “Yes.” He seemed not to have noticed at first. “The Ventrilloquator throws your voice. Didn’t I mention that?”

  “Sometimes, if you start a story at the beginning, then do the middle and then the end…,” she said like a patient schoolmarm speaking to a small, dull child.

  “Do you want it or not?” he deadpanned.

  “How does it work?”

  “Well, it’ll take some tweaking to tune it to your own muscular signature. I’ve been testing it on myself.” He seemed apologetic for some reason. “But once you’re used to it, it should be second nature. And completely hands-free. We’ll sew it into the bottom of your cowl, so the mask holds it up against your throat under the chin.”

  His hands reached up towards her and held the thin membrane against her neck. His fingertips brushed up against her throat. She swallowed hard.

  “Now,” he said, oblivious, “think about your voice coming from that filing cabinet to your right.”

  “What?” Kit said, still flustered. “I can’t–”

  “You don’t have to do anything. Just think about it, and talk normally. The device will detect the slight muscular effort and direct the sound accordingly.”

  Kit blinked a little as she watched him sitting there with a grin of expectation on his face. She tried very hard to think of anything other than grabbing him by the ears and kissing him.

  “Now say something,” he said.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  They both blinked in amazement. Her voice had come right out of his mouth!

  “That was a little strange.” He seemed cross with himself. “The settings must be all wrong.”

  “Wait, Boss, let me try again.” She closed her eyes and tried much harder to think of something other than grabbing him by the ears and kissing him. She peeked quickly at the filing cabinet to her right.

  “Hey! Lemme outta this filing cabinet!” came Kit’s voice from the cabinet’s third drawer, complete with muffled echo.

  “Boss! That’s amazing!” she cried, her momentary lapse quite forgotten.

  He beamed with pride. “Use it sparingly until I can get the settings refined. Go grab your cowl and I’ll get this fitted in.”

  “Then what?” she buzzed excitedly.

  “Then we hit the town.”

  Seven

  The Mayor sat quietly and gazed out the window as he waited for Chief O’Mally to calm down. Often, the sight of His Honor staring gravely into the middle distance was enough to rein O’Mally in. The mayor noted with some chagrin that this policy seemed to be growing less and less effective with every passing day. The Mayor tried to conduct himself in political matters with the dignity and reserve he had learned in his previous profession as an undertaker. He provided an island of calm reserve in a turbulent sea of emotion, just as he always had. It was a policy that had served him well in both occupations. Few of his officials’ emotional outbursts were more extreme than the grief of the recently bereaved. But for Chief O’Mally, it was quite a different matter where the Red Panda was concerned.

  A glance at the clock confirmed that the Chief had passed the seven-minute mark of this morning’s tirade, and showed no sign of slowing down. At last, the Mayor broke his stoic silence.

  “For heaven’s sake, O’Mally, is all this really necessary?”

  O’Mally wheeled around from the trench he had been wearing in the carpet of the Mayor’s office. He seemed slightly startled, as if he had quite forgotten that someone else was there.

  “Necessary? Just look at this headline!”

  O’Mally dropped a copy of the Chronicle on His Honor’s desk. “Terrific Twosome Thwart Train Terror!” blazed the headli
ne above a slightly out-of-focus photograph of a man’s back, which witnesses claimed belonged to the Red Panda, and beside a portrait of two women smiling broadly for the press.

  “Train terror indeed! They caught a purse snatcher on the station platform!” O’Mally grunted indignantly, jabbing his meaty index finger into the newspaper.

  “Do you have some objection to the purse snatcher being caught?” countered the Mayor, an eyebrow arched as if ready to pick a fight.

  O’Mally gaped for a moment. The Mayor’s office had always officially backed him up on all matters pertaining to the application of law and order. The possibility of a sea change brewing had simply never occurred to him.

  “With all due respect, Mister Mayor, that is hardly the point.”

  “Isn’t it?” The Mayor rose from his seat. He was a full four inches shorter than O’Mally, but he strode away from the Chief, rather than confront him directly, making his way to the window and forcing the Chief to speak to his back. “No one is questioning the dedication or the efficacy of your police force, O’Mally. But they cannot be everywhere. And there is simply no denying that these masked heroes–”

  “Vigilantes,” the Chief corrected sharply.

  “There is no denying,” the Mayor pressed on, ignoring the interruption, “that they have done immense good in the public interest. Their recent campaign against organized crime–”

  “–has cleared the way for him and that partner of his to take over the rackets themselves,” O’Mally growled.

  The Mayor turned sharply back to O’Mally. “And have you the slightest scrap of evidence to support that allegation?”

  “Allegation?” the Chief said, his cheeks reddening. “Do I have to remind you this is an outlaw we’re discussing?”

  “An outlaw who is entitled to the same presumption of innocence as any other citizen, Chief O’Mally.”

  There was a bewildered pause that the Chief finally broke with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t keep track of these things; is this an election year?”

  Now it was the Mayor’s turn to bristle. “What are you suggesting, O’Mally?”

  “I am suggesting that tying your political fortunes to the public’s adoration of this madman is a feat of lunacy. They’ll build him a statue for saving an old lady’s purse, but they’ll scream for his head when he finally crosses the line and kills someone, and then where will you be?”

  A small sneer crossed the Mayor’s face. “Don’t try and give me a politician’s answer, O’Mally. You don’t care about my electoral fate one way or another. You resent that he makes your police force look bad.”

  The two men were almost nose to nose now.

  “I resent that these masked menaces are applauded for using methods that my police force would be tarred and feathered for approaching, yes. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Then you admit that the Red Panda’s goals are in support of law and order, just as yours are?” said the Mayor triumphantly.

  “I admit nothing of the kind,” thundered the Chief. “Unless the agents of justice are answerable to the legal system, the courts and the people, what they offer is just another form of lawlessness. And you might appreciate it today, but if you don’t like it tomorrow, exactly what do you propose to do about it?” There was a pause while the Mayor considered this. He drew back, and lowered his tone of voice.

  “Well, it’s a very popular form of lawlessness, O’Mally. And you might do worse than to remember that.”

  O’Mally sighed. He could only fight battles on so many fronts at once. “What is it you would have me do, Mister Mayor?”

  The Mayor sat back behind his desk, exasperated. “No one is asking you to endorse the Red Panda’s activities, O’Mally, but if you could just be less outspoken against him. Every time you tear a strip off him in public, I get a dozen calls asking me if I support your stance. You put me in a position of taking a very unpopular stand, or displaying a public lack of confidence in your office.”

  “I ask again, Mister Mayor, what would you have me do? Put him on the payroll? We don’t even know who he is for heaven’s sake!”

  “So find out if you must, O’Mally,” the Mayor shot back. “Learn his identity and then if he does cross the line… if he does become a public menace, you and your men will be able to bring him to swift justice. But learn it quietly, and no one ever need know.”

  O’Mally stroked his well-trimmed mustache at the thought. “I have your support for this plan?”

  The Mayor looked sternly at his Chief of Police over the rims of his glasses. “Up to the moment that anyone asks me about it, Chief. Anyone at all. So keep this quiet.”

  O’Mally gave a curt nod of his head and left the Mayor’s office before His Honor could see the smile playing about his lips. As far as O’Mally was concerned, the Red Panda had crossed the line the moment he took the law into his own hands. The public may love their man of mystery, but when faced by the man behind the mask and forced to recognize his true motivations, they’d change their tune quickly enough. But the Mayor was right, this had to be done quietly, and the press seemed to have spies in every department at Police Headquarters. This would require extraordinary measures. But O’Mally was certain of one thing: the Red Panda’s days were numbered. Of that he had no doubt.

  Eight

  “The Red Panda’s days are numbered!” boomed the voice from the darkened stage. The echo played around the walls, revealing the room to be large and open. The murmur of voices in the room beyond stilled quickly as the speaker stepped into a small pool of half-light. The murmur began anew as the assembled men scattered in the darkened space recognized the speaker. He was less immaculate than had once been his custom, and bore a long scar running the length of his face, but it was unmistakably Malcolm, formerly the right-hand man of the Sclareli crime family.

  Once, that position alone would have cowed the thugs assembled in the darkness. But now that Vic Sclareli had joined his uncle Tony in a federal pen, along with most of the surviving members of his gang, there were derisive snorts at this bold statement. Malcolm called to a lieutenant on the catwalk above.

  “Simon. A little light on the subject, if you please.”

  A thin voice protested from above, “But Mister Malcolm, the heat–”

  “You let me worry about the police, Simon. You just worry about me,” Malcolm clipped angrily. It would be impossible for him to impose discipline on the loose assembly in the darkness beyond if he were contradicted by his own men.

  “Yes sir,” the voice called, and with a clunk, the lights sputtered and buzzed back to life, revealing a crowd of fifty thugs in the great hall of the High-Hat Club.

  It had only been two weeks since the capture of Big Joe Tennutti, but they had not been kind to the once-opulent Club. Little was left intact following the police raids and subsequent searches. Tables were smashed and overturned, and the long bar had been broken apart by police sledgehammers, supposedly searching for hidden panels. The club had been seized, boarded up and put on the market at once. But even with the dearth of gangland leaders left at large, few in the city would have dared to purchase and occupy the former stronghold.

  Scroungers had been the next wave through, stripping anything portable that might have value, however slight. There weren’t more than a half dozen working lights left in the place, and they only remained because they were far out of reach. But it was enough to illuminate the crowd of low-level soldiers and unaffiliated goons.

  Malcolm smiled. He had been an underworld leader for too long not to have accepted the one great truth of the criminal class: they were cowards to a man. Even now, he felt sure they would scarcely dare to defy him openly in the light. The impatient rhubarb faded at once, and Malcolm continued.

  “There was a time,” he said with a mock-gentle tone, “when there was more than enough to go around in this city. When independent operations could compete, stay strong and still make a pretty penny. Those days are, for the moment, beh
ind us.”

  Another murmur rose from the crowd. Malcolm ignored it.

  “Just look around you. Can anyone here see more than half a dozen men he counted among his allies a year ago?”

  There was silence in the hall.

  “We kept our independence, our own interests, our old grudges. We kept working to take each other out of the game like there wasn’t something new at our heels. The Red Panda exploited those rivalries and used them to destroy us. Those of us who are left must stand together, or we won’t stand at all!” Malcolm was hitting his stride now. “One city, one gang, and profit enough for all!”

  “What about the Golden Claw?” called a voice from the hall.

  A murmur ran through the crowd. Malcolm looked up in anger to see that the call had come from “Hook” Henderson, once a soldier for the underworld queen who had taken the name “Golden Claw.” Henderson strode forward into the open space before the stage, addressing the crowd of hoods and the man on the stage equally.

  “You all remember the Claw. She tied all the rackets in town under one big operation. The gangs she didn’t take over outright all paid her tribute to keep their operations running. Even the Sclareli mob,” Henderson said with a sneer towards the stage. “It was the biggest, the most organized mob this city’s ever seen–”

  “Even if you do say so yourself,” Malcolm interjected wryly, to the amusement of some in the crowd.

  “Laugh it up if you want, Mister Malcolm. But in her day, when the Golden Claw said jump, you jumped. Just like every Man-Jack here. And where is she now?” Hook Henderson called to the crowd. “In a federal pen, that’s where. An’ word is she’ll grow old an’ die there, all because of the man in the mask. If the Golden Claw’s outfit couldn’t stand up to the Red Panda, what chance does this bunch have?”

  The crowd was becoming agitated. They obviously agreed with Henderson. Malcolm would have to do something unexpected.

  “Mister Henderson is right,” he called. The crowd fell silent, baffled. “The Golden Claw built the best organization I’ve ever seen in a lifetime in the rackets. But those do-gooders took her down, because she was trying to run the whole city, without ever taking care of the masked man and his girlfriend. That’s why this group will succeed where everyone else has failed. Because before we take care of business, we’ll take care of the Red Panda!”