The New Adventures of Foster Fade, The Crime Spectacularist

by Adam Lance Garcia

  She gasped and grabbed his arm. “Mark?”

  Fade motioned at the unconscious operator. “Still out.”

  “Thank goodness.” She adjusted her hat. “Well, now what?”

  He wondered if he could salvage his reservations. “I'll babysit our friend here. Get me a cuppa joe, will ya?”

  Din gave him a dirty look then left, shouldering her way through the crowd. A few minutes later she returned with two policemen in tow. A shortish, bespectacled man in a tweed suit brought up the end of the train. Din stood back to watch as the cops dragged the semiconscious man away.

  “Where's my coffee?” Fade asked, feigning irritation.

  “Still in the pot,” she replied. She indicated the little gentleman at her side. “Fade, this is Mr. Stoker.”

  Fade frowned at her. “Yeah? Nice to meet you.” He offered his hand.

  “I sincerely hope you can help me, Mr. Fade,” Stoker said in a reedy, breathy voice.

  “What's the problem?”

  “Well,” the man coughed and lowered his voice. “You see, I'm an electrical engineer. I have been working with the Army Air Corps on a new process for targeting and...”

  “Go on.”

  “I'm pretty sure if you can't help me, I'm going to be murdered.”

  Fade sighed. “Mr. Stoker, wouldn't it be more appropriate to take this up with your superiors?”

  The man shook his head firmly. “Absolutely not!”

  “What makes you think so?” Fade asked.

  The other reached into his suit pocket and produced several folded sheets of paper. He handed them to Fade. Unfolding them, Fade found each contained death threats constructed from letters and words cut from newspapers and magazines.

  Each of the notes was on U.S. War Department letterhead.

  He refolded the notes.

  “Well, Mr. Stoker, let's go up to my office to discuss this, shall we?”

  THE END

  THE BLACK ROCK CONSPIRACY

  by Adam Lance Garcia

  Chapter 1

  FACES ON THE TRAIN

  The moon shimmered in the haze of midnight, the stars barely visible behind grey clouds and the Three Hills. Heavy breaths and panicked footfalls echoed through the town. Somewhere a door burst open, a coin dropped and a rotary dial turned.

  “Foster… Foster, it’s me. Foster, are you there?”

  There was a short electronic sizzle on the other end of the line, followed quickly by the crackling voice of the Crime Spectacularist. “Hello, this is Foster Fade, and you are listening to an experiment in telephone message recordings, using a number of magnetic tapes and a few other—it would take too long to explain. Either way, I’m not currently available to take your call, but if you leave your name, number and a brief message after the tone, you will help advance communication into the next century! Thank you! …Now, Din press that button over—”

  The caller leaned his sweating brow against the wall. It was over. He waited for the tone to sound.

  “Foster. It’s all true. Every word of it. I know it sounds impossible but they did it. I saw it with my own eyes…” The caller let out a stuttering breath. “But, they found me and there’s no coming back from this, ol’ buddy. Just make sure you—”

  The line went dead.

  The police found the body six days later, sprawled out on the bed of an abandoned cabin atop South Grand. There had been no sign of a struggle, no manner of bruising or injury to the body save for a single puncture wound just behind the left ear. They called Fade up to identify the body. Fade had stared at the cold form for several minutes with glass eyes before he simply nodded in uncharacteristic silence. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a heart attack and the case was marked “solved” before it was sealed up, stashed away, and forgotten under dust.

  But as the years ticked by, Foster Fade never forgot, not once, listening to the message over and over until he nearly wore off the magnetic strip, the voice recording becoming more and more distant with time, but always reverberating in Fade’s mind.

  He knew the killer was out there. He just needed to find the right bait…

  ***

  The conductor gripped the back of a seat as he called out their arrival at Poughkeepsie Station. The brakes squealed and the world outside slowed to a stop. Travel worn passengers filed into the aisle and out onto the platform, leaving the car sparsely populated. Despite a few fresh faces, only a handful of riders remained for the trip back to New York City.

  “Grand Central Station, next!” the conductor shouted as the train pulled away from Poughkeepsie, his voice echoing in the near empty car. The setting sun stuttered through the windows with increasing rhythm. “New York City next!”

  “George,” an older woman whispered excitedly to her husband, tugging at his coat sleeve as they took their seats. “George… Do you think that’s him?”

  Her husband looked over to the tall redheaded man sleeping in the seat across from them. His fedora was tilted over his face, his hands laced together over a folded copy of the Planet. One leg extended out into the aisle, the toe of his shoe touching the back of the chair two rows in front of him. His suit hung loose over a bony frame, giving the appearance of a man stretched beyond normal dimensions.

  “No, sweetheart,” her husband said after some consideration. By his tone it was clear they had this sort of conversation often. “Foster Fade wouldn’t be caught dead riding the train. Let alone second class. Probably has his own private airplane.”

  “Those exist?” the woman said in breathless shock, as if the Wright Brothers had just invented air travel that day.

  “Oh, of course, dear,” her husband said, suddenly eager to school his wife on the various mysteries of the world. “Folks like that have a private everything. Plane, boat, car, even a train, I’d imagine. But why ride the rails when you can soar through the sky?” He waved a hand in the air with flair. “I’d imagine Foster Fade even has a direct line to Howard Hughes, comparing notes on all their gadgets.”

  The woman shook her head. “Such a strange man.”

  “Hughes?”

  “No! Fade,” she added under her breath. “Him and the Stevens woman… Have you read their articles? Going around, acting like some sort of… well, you know, one of those.”

  “Those what?”

  “Vigilantes,” she said with disgust. “It’s all for show, I think. That whole Post Box Killer fiasco, how do we know any of that actually happened? For all we know the story was invented just to sell papers.”

  Her husband furrowed his brow; surprised his wife had a seemingly cognitive thought. “Well, I guess you have a point there.”

  “Oh, I don’t need any help moving papers.”

  The husband and wife blanched as they turned to face to the redheaded man.

  “Excuse me?” the husband asked, squaring his jaw.

  The stranger tilted back his fedora with his thumb, a grin on his handsome face.

  The woman’s eyes fluttered and her pale face turned a few shades whiter. “You—You’re…”

  “Foster Fade? I should hope so; it’s on all my stuff,” Fade said pleasantly as he placed his newspaper and fedora on the seat next to him. He ran a hand through his lengthy hair and crossed his significant amount of legs. He looked younger than either of them expected, his eyes sparkling with a wicked genius. “But, we’re moving away from the point. You handed me some pretty deep criticisms, which, if I were a sensitive individual, would have terribly wounded my pride, but I work in the news business and I’m made of sterner stuff. I’ll just drink away my sorrows in a flood of tears over my typewriter. That is if I ever sat over a typewriter. I tried it once, but my fingers moved too fast and I broke the keys. I’ve never seen Din so mad…”

  The woman opened and closed her mouth several times without producing a sound.

  “Please don’t take offense,” Fade said holding up a conciliatory hand, eliciting a small metallic click from his wrist. “I love mee
ting my critics. Always makes for some stimulating conversation. Please, continue. You were in the middle of saying that the whole Post Box Killer affair was made up to sell newspapers. I’m fascinated to hear what evidence you have to support that theory, or a thesis, or whatever the right term is, I don’t have a dictionary on me. Honestly, it’s a miracle I can even speak English. So,” he leaned on the seat in front of him, rested his cheeks on his hands and looked at them attentively, “enlighten me.”

  The woman pursed her lips, cleared her throat, and arched her back, her fur and feather coat bristling. It reminded Fade of a peacock, or a bull about to charge, or some strange chimera between the two.

  “Kathleen,” her husband said, suddenly panic stricken. He placed a hand on her knee. “Perhaps we should—”

  “Mr. Fade,” the wife said, undeterred. “I should have you know that I am the—”

  “I don’t care who you are, Kathleen. You could be the Queen of India for all I care. Though I’m sure you’d be a lot more fun if you were. They really know how to use their hips. Oh, don’t be so prudish. Here, let me show you something.” Fade opened his jacket revealing a complex patchwork of machinery wrapped around his chest like a robotic vest. He unhooked a palm-sized piece off and held it up, a thin wire strung to the device. “It’s really quite impressive stuff, came up with it last week while I was… Well, let’s just say I was neck deep in concrete at the time.” His eyes focused on his memory. “Weird day…”

  “It looks like a phone,” Kathleen commented.

  Fade smiled, brought back from his reverie. “Look at you! Not as thick as you look. It is a phone! It only calls one number and it weighs a ton, but it’s completely portable. At least, with this vest. And there’s a brace involved. And you need to switch out the battery every hour. But it’s completely portable. It will revolutionize communication. If it works, that is. Spent the whole day testing the range. Went all the way up to Albany and now back. Mostly it’s been… static. Lost my screwdriver up in Troy, which is an awful little town. Actually, and here’s the funny thing, if you were to arrange the components incorrectly you’d get a pretty spectacular bomb, but don’t worry, it’s totally harmless like this. Just think of the possibilities! It’s perfect for when you’re traveling or in a spot of trouble and need help before you end up neck deep in… concrete, which, mind you, happens to me on the regular. And before you ask, no, I haven’t thought up a name yet. I never think up names for these things. It would be like naming a child that was, you know, made of bibbly bits that winked and turned… Sorry, I’m getting away from myself. Din’s the writer. I just talk.”

  Kathleen sniffed. “Clearly… Mr. Fade, I don’t know who you think—”

  “Hey, I just paid you a compliment!” Fade said, clutching at his heart. “Besides, you haven’t really answered my question, which I’ll admit, is rather rude considering I’m going out of my way to show you all this exciting stuff! You don’t have to get all prissy.”

  Kathleen slapped Fade across the face.

  “Come on, George,” she said sternly, grabbing her husband’s hand and dragging him into the other car.

  For his part her husband tipped his cap in apology. “Mr. Fade…” he said beneath audible levels.

  “For the record private planes are really expensive!” Fade called after them. He hooked the handset back onto his belt and rubbed his cheek until the stinging went down. It always hurt more than he expected it to. He even felt a tear well up in his right eye. Why did that always happen? He had barely broken a sweat when he had been shot in the past, but a woman slapping him always made him tear up. He decided to blame physics.

  There was a soft chuckle behind him.

  He glanced to the bald man seated a few rows back. “I probably deserved that,” he admitted with a shrug.

  “I think you did, Mr. Fade,” the bald man agreed with a pleasant smile. He looked nearly as tall as Fade, with a significantly more muscular frame. His head was a smooth as a cue ball, his face covered in the shadow at the back of the car.

  “To be honest, I’m not even sure what I was trying to prove. Maybe I’m just feeling…” he trailed off, his eyes briefly losing focus. “Bitter.”

  “But it was an impressive show,” the man offered.

  “Always the entertainer,” Fade said with a crooked grin. He fixed his fedora and tucked his long chestnut hair behind his ears. “I had originally planned on starting a vaudeville act, magic, gizmos, pratfalls and whatnot. Foster Fade, The Spectacularist. It would’ve looked great in lights. Then I went ahead and solved a crime—a murder if you were asking—and boom! The Crime Spectacularist was born. Don’t tell anyone I told you that. It’s all a lie. Or at least you can’t prove otherwise.”

  “Not something you’d want in print?” the bald man asked conspiratorially.

  “There are a lot of things I don’t want in print. Hell, even the stuff I want in print gets me in trouble.”

  “I heard about that.”

  “Everyone’s heard about that,” Fade sighed, waving dismissively to the aether. “The Sentinel, the Herald-Tribune, hell, even the Times ate me alive. I couldn’t even walk two steps without hearing my name on the radio. The studios want to make a picture about it. Not that I’ll see a dime, mind you. They’ll fictionalize it all, call it something ridiculous like ‘Murder by Mail.’ Which is not what happened by the way,” he added with a wag of his finger. “It was lot more disturbing than that.”

  “No, I read the articles, Mr. Fade,” the bald man said reassuringly. “I am a fan of yours.”

  Fade pinched his eyes shut. “Please don’t say that. I have had enough of my fans already. I’d rather that Kathleen woman come back and slap me around a bit more than deal with any more of my fans.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind either,” the man said with a laugh.

  “Well as long as everyone’s happy.”

  The bald man leaned on the seat in front of him, his arms slung out, the silver and gold ring on his right middle finger glinting in the evening light. His face came into view. It was plain and unremarkable, unscarred and unblemished; brown eyebrows over empty brown eyes; a sloping nose, thin lips curled at the ends, high cheekbones and rounded chin. He looked young, perhaps no older than Fade; and save for the shaved pate and pale skin, there was nothing instantly identifiable about him. He could be just another face in the crowd, easily ignored and forgotten. “Can I ask you a question, Mr. Fade?”

  “Only if it’s ‘a’ question and not secretly ‘several.’ I’m hoping to get to the dining car before it closes so I can grab myself some ice and liquor. For my face and stomach, though I’m not sure which is which just yet.”

  “Why don’t I join you then?” the man suggested, waving in the direction of the dining car.

  Fade’s eyes narrowed as he considered the offer. “Only if you agree to buy a round.”

  “It’ll be the first.”

  Fade smiled, lightly patting the man on the back. “You are quickly becoming my best friend.”

  Chapter 2

  CATCH AND RELEASE

  Fade watched the liquor and ice swirl together in his glass. The drink was better than he expected, not that he ever had high standards for this sort of thing. Din obsessed about it, throwing away whole bottles of wine if the first sip didn’t match her expectations. As long it got him toasty, Fade couldn’t care less how it tasted.

  He was seated diagonally, the tips of his shoes sitting in the aisle, which was probably a fire hazard he realized, but when was the last time there was a fire on a train? That sort of stuff stayed in the Old West, or at least in the films that purported to be about the Old West. He glanced out the window, watching as three small hills rattled by and felt suddenly nostalgic. “You know, I had a friend who grew up not too far from here,” he said before he could stop himself.

  The man smiled with genuine interest. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, little place called Black Rock,” Fade said, sipping
at his drink. He gestured at the small town flashing between the trees. “Not many people have heard of it. Doesn’t even have a train station. Mostly just farms and a couple of municipal buildings so it can qualify as a ‘town’ and not a ‘village.’ I visited there a couple of times. It seemed nice.”

  “Grew up between the Three Hills, did he?” the man chuckled. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a matchbook and a dented chrome cigarette case, the letter “X” engraved in the center.

  “Right beneath Tinwood. Small little place, just him and his dad. You know, most people who get into my line of work, adventuring and detective-ing, I mean, they all have this weird childhood trauma. But, you know, I had it pretty good. But, my friend, from what he told me, he had it better than anyone.” Fade shrugged. “Maybe I was even a little jealous of him. A happy childhood. Who wouldn’t want that?”

  “It’s very rare,” the man commented as he lit himself a cigarette and replaced his case. “I take it you’re from there as well.”

  Fade frowned and waved his hand. “I’m from here and there. Never in one place long enough to call it home. There’s a name for that. Or possibly a song, or both. Though I’m damn certain I’ve read a book about it once or twice.”

  “You probably have,” the man said with a smile.

  Fade took a thoughtful sip of his drink and realized they had shifted far from the matter at hand. “I don’t think you asked me your question.”

  The man nodded. “I didn’t.”

  “And here I am blabbing away, which, admittedly, is my wont. I usually tell people I love the sound of my voice and I’m afraid that is very much the case. Were I not in print I’d probably be telling my stories in the picture shows, which I’m sure one day will be in everyone’s home sent wirelessly…” He absently patted at his jacket pockets. “Which I’m sure I have a schematic for on me somewhere…”

  The bald man smiled. “There was an article I read a few months back, damned if I can remember the title. It was after, you know, that whole…” He twirled his hands.