“You’ve…” he said hesitantly before taking a long step in. He cleared his throat. “You’ve got a package, sir.”
Fade’s lips formed a white line at the sight of the small box in the boy’s hand. A part of him felt as if he should be dismayed, but instead, he only felt numb. He walked around his desk and dropped into his chair. “Put it here,” he said with an idle wave. “And carefully.” He steepled his fingers and watched as the boy delicately placed the box on the desk and hurried away as fast as his scrawny legs could carry him.
Stern slowly took his cigar from his mouth and leaned forward. “Is that…?”
“What you think it is,” Fade finished for him. “Yes. I’m afraid it is.”
“Lucky number seven,” Din said sardonically as she strolled over.
“Thank you for the commentary, Din.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
Stern extinguished his cigar angrily into Fade’s ashtray. He pushed up his cap revealing for the first time the extent of the wine-stain birthmark, extending all the way from his eyebrow to the corner of his mouth.
“Congratulations, Captain. You finally get to experience the unwrapping of the murder weapon.”
“Lucky me,” Stern whispered.
Fade fed his finger under the brown paper wrapping and sliced sideways, tearing the tape free. He placed the discarded paper neatly to the side before pulling the cardboard box open.
Just as Fade expected, the note had a simple typewritten number seven above the guns model and make, a Browning Highpower M1935 9mm caliber. “‘For all the ways that the laws of our city fail, Foster Fade acts as a counterbalance,’” he read the quote aloud. “‘It can be argued that he protects the innocence of our citizens at the expense of his own.’” He massaged his eyes and took a long deep and quavering sigh. “Jesus Christ, this is from the first article.”
Stern stepped over, wrapped his handkerchief around his hand, and picked the gun out of the box, delicately turning it over as if it were made of fine china when he suddenly blanched. “No,” he gasped. “No, it can’t be.”
“Captain, what is it?”
“It’s not possible.”
Fade grabbed at Stern’s wrist. “Captain.”
Stern looked up from the gun and met Fade’s gaze. “I know this gun.” He tilted the gun toward Fade. “Right here, this skull and crossbones scratched into the handle. It’s from the Sanderson Murders. Before your time. Nineteen Twenty-Eight or thereabout. This gun belonged to Austin Breslow, a hit man for the Murder Corporation, back before Nord took it over. They liked to call him Breslow Bones, partially because his face looked like Lon Chaney on a bad day, but mostly cause, well, he was a sick son of a bitch. He took the name to heart and started marking his guns with a skull and crossbones. Did it himself with a screwdriver, or so we heard. Maybe it was just to prove them right or maybe it just showed how crazy he is, one of the two. Anyway, we found the bodies, couple of young girls and this boy, Greg Sanderson, son of some mob boss, probably no older than seventeen, trussed up like turkeys on Thanksgiving. We knew it was Breslow; had it on some authority he was given the boy as a mark and the girls, well… wrong place, wrong time. Of course, there were others involved, Breslow’s thugs, but we had Breslow. We arrested Breslow. We confiscated his guns, but then we could never link him to the murders, not conclusively enough for the courts. It was all circumstantial and hearsay so the trial went down the drain and Breslow went back out into the world.”
Fade eyed the skull and bones carved into the gun. “Could this just be another one of Breslow’s guns?”
Stern shook his head. “On my life, this is the same gun.”
“Well,” Fade sighed, “now, we know who our next victim is… Or was, for that matter.”
“We can’t know that for certain.”
Fade firmed his lips. “No, Captain I think we can…”
Chapter 4
NO EVIDENCE
The evidence room sat in the bowels of the police department, a massive, vaguely organized closet stacked high with boxes, folders and files. Having struggled through New York City traffic, Fade, Din and Stern arrived there later than they hoped, with the sun a narrow sliver on the horizon. Sergeant Scott Tipton met them by the elevator, his uniform smartly pressed, hat tucked beneath his arm.
“Mr. Tipton, thank you for your time,” Fade said cordially, though his gaze was focused the small sign above the entrance: “Authorized Personnel Only.”
“That’s Sergeant Tipton, but you can call me Scott, if you prefer, Mr. Fade,” Tipton said with a firm shake. “Captain Stern tells me we might be of some assistance. Seems like you’ve got some things that might belong here.”
“I sure hope so, Scott.” Fade glanced back at Din, scribbling in her notebook. She looked up briefly and met his eyes, giving him a small nod. Din might not have been the investigator he was, but she knew the game was starting to get interesting.
“My wife’s been a fan of your column since the first,” Tipton was saying as he led them into the evidence room. “Reads it everyday like it’s the King James. I read an article or two here and there, but me? I listen to the radio.”
“Well, I appreciate that, Scott,” Fade said, distracted as he looked over the room. “I’m always eager to hear about my fans. If you have something, I’d be happy to sign it for your wife. Just let me know her name.”
Tipton smiled. “That’s awfully kind of you, Mr. Fade, but you’re not here to help me get brownie points with my old lady. Come; let’s see if we can make it into print. Woodward, Lee!” he called out.
Two narrowly built clerks appeared out from the maze of boxes and shelves.
“Yes, sir?” asked Woodward, the taller of the two, a young man with rapidly thinning hair. He pulled off his green eyeshade and wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve.
“Can you two show Mr. Fade and Captain Stern around? Help them find whatever it is they’re—”
“We’re looking for box one-twenty-four,” Stern interjected.
Woodward stood up stock straight at the request, as if he had been suddenly told to stand at attention. “The Sanderson Murders, Sir?”
Stern gave him a slow, sure nod. His eyes dropped to the floor before looking up at Fade. “The Sanderson Murders were my Waterloo, not about to forget a thing like that.” He held Fade’s gaze and for the first time they understood one another.
Woodward cleared his throat, beads of sweat forming on his brow. “So, what is it you’re looking for?” he asked.
“Guns,” Fade replied.
“More specifically, the absence thereof,” Din added while she jotted down every note she could.
“Mm,” Woodward sounded, rubbing his chin. He pulled a folder off a shelf and handed it to Fade. “This has everything on that aisle, all itemized, listed by box number and what’s in it.” He pointed over to a narrow walkway to his left. “If it was ever in here, it’ll be listed there.”
Fade skimmed through the folder until he came to the page listing box number one-twenty-four. He read down the list of items and suddenly felt lightheaded, as though someone had walked over his grave. He found the Browning 9mm listed, even with a description of the skull and crossbones etched into the handle. But there were other guns listed alongside some familiar names: Brandon McMillan, Michael Capitelli, Kevin Howard, Matthew Weglian, David Guida, and Alfonso Brown… All victims of the Post Box Killer. Only four suspects in box one-twenty-four were presumably still alive: Austin Breslow, Jonathan Pomatto, Pete Barry, and James Nord… He looked to Stern and Din then turned to the other clerk, Lee, who was shuffling behind them, his hand stuffed into his pockets. “Tell me, Mr. Lee, who else handles the evidence before it comes here?” Fade asked already knowing the answer.
Lee’s eyes dropped to the ground, his face flush.
“We get most evidence here directly from the investigating officers,” Sergeant Tipton answered for him. “Hold onto them until the trials—if there is
one, you never know these days. Little kids getting shot down while they climb off a boat… no one catching the killers.” He tsked in disappointment. “Things like that. If no trial comes, or if it falls through, we keep it all here just in case. You never know when a cold case might get warm.” He leaned over and whispered to Fade: “And don’t mind, ol’ Anthony, he’s one of your biggest fans; clips out your article as if he’s starting a scrapbook. Makes my wife look like she’s never even read one. He’s just nervous, is all.”
Fade gave Anthony a sidelong glance. “Huh. That so?”
“You know those clubs you mail away for in the funny books?” Woodward suggested. “You should start one up for yourself, you’ll probably rake in the dough with guys like Anth.”
“Very good idea, Mr. Woodward. Din? Make a note of that. Gubb will eat that up in a second. The man loves money, making it and spending it. An idea like that, Mr. Woodward, calls to both his demons.” Fade caught Din subtly twirling her finger around in a circle and put himself back on course. “But we’re moving away from why we’re here: box one-twenty-four.”
Woodward nodded. “I’ll get right on it,” he said, dashing down an aisle.
“Scott, how many clerks work down here?” Fade asked.
Tipton counted in his head. “About five, maybe six. We work in rotations for the most part, so I only see about two or three of them at a time.”
“Thank you,” Fade said. “Excuse us a moment.” He beckoned Din as he pulled Stern over to the side.
“Don’t tell me you’re thinking it’s one of my officers,” Stern whispered firmly to Fade, his lips snarling. “That’s crossing the line.”
“The line’s been crossed, Captain,” Fade replied sharply, careful not to raise his voice. “We didn’t do the crossing, but we’re already far on the other side. If the guns were taken from here, it stands to reason that someone who works here must be behind the murders.”
Stern shook his head in disbelief. “That’s impossible… You can’t tell me—”
“Captain…” Fade said softly, placing a conciliatory hand on Stern’s shoulder. “I really don’t see a way around it…”
“My gut tells me Woodward,” Din said. “The way he acted when you asked for box one-twenty-four… I’m no ‘Crime Spectacularist,’ but I know a guilty conscience when I see one.”
“What about Lee?” Fade asked with a slight nod toward the diminutive clerk. “Even Tipton said he clips out my articles and our killer—”
“We’re jumping at shadows,” Stern snapped. “Might as well say Tipton or Tipton’s wife are the killers. Just because someone works here or happens to be a fan of yours doesn’t make the—”
“This about the Post Box Killer?” Lee asked meekly, speaking up for the first time, nervously lacing and unlacing his fingers.
Fade turned to consider Lee. “Perhaps.”
The tip of Lee’s tongue mollusked out from the corner of his mouth and ran hesitantly along his top lip. “Been reading lot about that. People been calling him a hero, killing gangsters and all, kinda like how you capture them, but a bit more final, y’know? How many has it been now? Seven? Eight?”
“Seven,” Fade said, slowly walking toward Lee. Despite his placid expression, Fade’s heart was going mad in his chest, jostling around like a soda bottle ready to burst.
Lee’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “That so!”
“But then again, the seventh gun only just came in today. Now, tell me, Mr. Lee,” he calmly said, towering over the clerk, “because I am curious—quite curious—as to how you would know that…”
Lee shrugged and stammered. “I—I dunno. Just guessed.”
“Fade…” Stern tried to interject. He placed a hand on Fade’s narrow arm. “Maybe you should step back.”
Fade raised an eyebrow, ignoring Stern. “‘Just guessed?’”
“I suppose,” the clerk whispered nervously, his eyes fluttering. “I mean… guy like that pr—probably won’t stop on his own, not unless you—”
“Sir!” Woodward suddenly shouted, his feet pounding against the floor as he raced toward them, his face white.
Fade felt his fingers tremble and his jaw tighten up when he saw Woodward’s pale expression.
“What is it, Woodward?” Sergeant Tipton asked sharply. “Where’s box one-twenty-four?”
Woodward shook his head in disbelief. “That’s the thing, sir… It’s empty.”
Chapter 5
MASKS
Breslow’s body was found in a park two blocks away from his home, a 9mm bullet lodged in the back of his head. Stern and Fade discovered the body themselves, placed under a tree like a present on Christmas morning. Stern was stone-faced throughout; watching quietly as the body was photographed, bagged, and shipped off to the morgue. It wasn’t until the car ride back to the Planet that he spoke up.
“That was my case,” he growled through his teeth. “Breslow was mine, I was supposed to be the one—” His voice choked for a moment before he composed himself. He slammed his hand against the wheel. “He’s not making it better, you understand?! I don’t care if the people think he’s a hero, he’s not making it better.”
Fade looked out the window as the lights of the city strolled by. “I know, Captain, believe me, I know.”
“If we could only have taken him then.”
“We need to catch him in the act. You know that better than I, Captain. Without that, we have no proof.”
Stern sucked at his teeth. “I want you to promise me something; you listening, Fade? You need to promise me that if this thing works, he’s mine. You get me. I’m the one taking him in. Write want you want in the papers, I don’t give a rat’s ass what it says, so long as I’m the one throwing the cuffs on that weasel’s puny wrists and the city knows that we will not let vigilantes—That vigilantes will not be suffered. Not anymore.”
Fade glanced over at Stern, the wine stain redder than ever. “Promise.”
***
“All right, my money’s on Lee,” Din said awhile later, watching Fade furiously pace his lab in the back of his office. He had laid out his plan to her, what little of it there was, though to call it a plan was generous at best. A “favor” was perhaps more apt.
“Sorry, but you already made your bet,” Fade replied halfheartedly, throwing a thick, heavy garment next to an assortment of gadgets on the central worktable. “Can’t change it now.”
Din measured him for a moment, taking a thoughtful puff of her cigarette as the gadgets piled up. “You sure this is going to work?”
“Sure,” he said with a nonchalant shrug as he examined a small microphone the size of his thumb, recalling the next name on the list below Breslow’s.
Din cocked a suspicious eyebrow. She tapped the end of her cigarette into the ashtray. “I’m going on record that this isn’t the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.”
“Thank you.”
“But you’ve had better.”
“As long as I’ve had worse,” he paused to lean over the worktable, looking over his small mountain of machines. He picked up one that looked like a spring-loaded wrist brace. “But if you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”
Din let out a sardonic laugh. “Naw, you do the heroing. I’ll stick with the printed word. Helluva lot safer.”
“The pen is mightier than the sword,” Fade retorted, strapping on the wrist brace.
“Too bad we’re dealing with guns.”
***
The man closed his eyes in ecstasy and let out a long quivering breath. Sweat had begun to form at his brow and his hand dug deeper into his pocket, his fingers fiddling with his piece. It wasn’t his weapon, not really, but for the time being, while he was fulfilling his mission—the one He had given him—it would be his to carry. And to have met Him, to have stood so close to Him, to know they had shared the same air; it made the man feel alive, invulnerable.
He watched his target move behind the windows, a tall tower of a silhouet
te. The list had named him Jonathan Pomatto, known by his compatriots as “Wits,” perhaps because he had too many or too few, the man didn’t care. He was a criminal, a parasite leeching off the city, a roach ready to be crushed, killed by his own gun.
The light switched off in Pomatto’s apartment and the man instinctually cocked back the hammer of the old fashioned Colt Military Model 1902, confiscated during a raid back in twenty-nine, when the cops had more gumption than they did now. Apparently, Pomatto had been something of a war hero before he went sour and turned to a life of crime. Despicable, the man thought, spitting a yellow wad of phlegm to the ground. To serve one’s country and then debase all it stood for. Pomatto deserved this. They all deserved this.
Overhead, clouds blanketed the sky. It would rain soon and empty the streets. The man smiled.
He moved toward the side of the steps and discreetly adjusted his pants, suddenly feeling exposed. This part always confused and mortified him. He wasn’t supposed to feel this way, he was sure of it, but as with the others, he was stiff as a board, excited and shivering.
He lowered his hat and adjusted the scarf resting beneath his nose. His suit, overcoat, fedora and scarf were all black as midnight, making him look nothing more than a shadow, a spider on the wall. He needed his identity to remain a secret. It was protection, a way to ensure the mission could continue as long as possible.
The door opened and Pomatto strolled down the steps, tugging the front of his fedora down over his eyes. He paused at the bottom of the steps to button his coat around his narrow frame and headed down the street. The man let out a long quavering sigh as Pomatto walked past. The man smiled. He pulled out his gun and followed after his target, careful not to get too close until the right moment.
Pomatto turned right at the corner, his long legs moving him faster than the man could have anticipated. The man broke into a jog, struggling to keep up. His breath was growing short—he wasn’t as young as he used to be—and found he was humming despite himself, like this was all some kind of game. But then again, wasn’t it? The stakes were larger of course, so important, but it was a game nonetheless. Cops and robbers, heroes and villains. He waited until Pomatto rounded another corner and cut through an alleyway before he allowed himself to catch up with his prey.
The New Adventures of Foster Fade, The Crime Spectacularist Page 3