by Debra Dunbar
“Do you have anything besides gin, Loren?” Arnoud swept around them toward the table, inspecting the tray.
DeBarre shook his head.
“Well, would it kill you to put some juice on ice for once?”
“You don’t partake?” Lefty held his highball aloft.
The touch pincher wrinkled his nose. “Can’t abide the stuff. Not that I’m here to judge. Lord, no. Have at it, fellas. I’ve just never developed the stomach for hard spirits.”
DeBarre gestured upstairs. “There’s water a-plenty up top, Bradley. If you’re gonna grouse about your liver, best do it elsewhere and leave us grown-ups to the business.”
Vincent shoved a hand in to his pants pocket as he balled his fingers into a fist. This felt wrong. Yeah, the man seemed a real odd-ball, but DeBarre treating Arnoud like a child? It was…cheap.
The touch pincher returned a practiced grin and nodded to the rest as he turned back for the corridor.
“I’ll join you,” Vincent called out.
Lefty lifted a brow, but said nothing.
As Vincent stepped into the corridor after Arnoud, DeBarre and Lefty continued their business talk.
“I appreciate the company,” the touch pincher told him. “This old cannery can get so gloomy.”
Vincent trotted up to join him. “No sweat. Nice to meet another pincher.”
Arnoud turned as he walked and clapped Vincent on the shoulder. “Feeling is quite mutual, my friend.”
As they passed the interrogation room, Vincent stole a peek inside to find a seated, sweaty man slumped forward. A few lashes of jute held his wrists tight to the arms of the chair. There was no blood. No implements of torture. Nothing to indicate that the man had passed out from pain other than the pool of sweat that had gathered on the man’s shirt. Vincent shuddered as he continued on.
They reached the steel grating stairs and ascended to the main cannery floor. Sunlight poured through filmy windows near the vaulted warehouse ceiling, sending hazy beams at angles into the space.
“So,” Arnoud asked as he approached a work sink, “what brings you charming folks up to Philly on such a beautiful day?”
“Business for the Capo,” Vincent replied. “Inquiring on the pincher market.”
Arnoud snatched a greasy glass from the side of the sink and poured himself a splash of water. “Poor Corbi. Bad time to look into expansion.”
“That’s what I hear. To be honest, though…” Vincent peered at Arnoud as he took a long sip from the glass. “Mind if we cut to a delicate subject?”
Arnoud lowered his glass, eyeing Vincent with wide, mirthful eyes. “Well, this sounds positively delicious. Please, go on!”
“Rumor on the block is that you’ve had a run-in with a Hell pincher.”
Arnoud’s smile faded. “Ah. Well.” He sipped more water, then dumped the rest back into the sink. “There are fun rumors, you know. Rumors about who’s cheating on who, and what a dame looks like underneath her skirt, where someone got a tattoo, and whether his wife knows. Those sorts of rumors pass the time when we’re short on work and long on hours. But this sort of rumor,” he said with a lift of his finger, “isn’t so much fun as it is troubling.”
“You’re saying it’s all bunk?”
“No. I didn’t say that.” He stepped past Vincent. “I’m only offering you the opportunity to let this go.”
“Why would I do that?” Vincent pressed.
“Because the business of a Hell pincher has a way of ruining lives.”
“Well, I have a particular interest.”
Arnoud spun around with a sharp grin. “You’ve had an encounter, haven’t you?”
Vincent grimaced. “Maybe.”
He snickered. “No, you have. I can tell. What was it? A demon? A golem?”
“Golem?” Vincent blurted.
Arnoud laughed. “So, it was a demon then. I apologize if I’m stringing you along, good man. We two are in an exclusive fraternity of sorts. Precious few stumble across the trappings of Hell pinchers and survive.”
“So?” Vincent urged him on. “Tell me what happened.”
“Before I joined the fine folks here in Philadelphia…” He paused to snicker at his own alliteration. “I found myself driving with a former associate west from Harrisburg. We were trying to beat a winter storm and we lost the race. Got mired up in some dreadful roads outside of Amish country. We holed up near a village of folk who, according to my companion’s tortured German, weren’t allowed to turn us away in the weather, but were disinclined to host us within their town limits. Thus, they escorted the two of us to a set of dilapidated old cabins in the woods.” He gestured for Vincent to follow as he walked on. “They treated these woods like some sort of haunted forest. These cabins were their ‘shame lands.’ That’s if my companion’s grasp of the language was adequate. They sent people to these cabins when they were taken with the flu, or leprosy, or any other sort of devilry they couldn’t stomach.”
Vincent squinted at Arnoud. “I’m taking a stab, here. You ran into something unnatural in those woods.”
“Quick study! Yes. A vicious, frightening thing. Eyes aflame. Able to summon fire at will. A beast.”
“A demon,” Vincent corrected.
“You know the sort. We barely survived. Happily, the creature remained content if we left it alone—which by Jiminy, we did!”
“What did you learn, though?” Vincent prodded. “About the creature? And the Hell pincher?”
Arnoud paused and grinned, but the expression faded as he stared into space. “In the moment, precious little, though the remembrance clung to me like a wet sock. I couldn’t shake the image of that…thing. What power had summoned it? How could it exist on this Earth? I had to know. And so, I investigated.”
Vincent leaned against a tall steel tank and crossed his arms. “That’s where I am, now.”
“Then you understand the fever,” Arnoud said. “The need to know. How can there be this sort of violent, Godless magic in our world?”
“You a church man?”
He shook his head. “I put no faith in any institution man has erected.”
“Even the families?” Vincent jibed.
The touch pincher’s face adopted a brief flicker of menace, before melting back into its previous geniality. “Well, we’re talking religion here.”
“How did you investigate? Where’d you go?”
“To New York,” Arnoud explained. “Most of our history as pinchers has been chronicled by interested parties. Parties, I might add, that are privy not only to our existence, but to the existence of the Hell pinchers.”
“You keep acting like they’re different animals.”
“They are,” Arnoud stated. “Clearly. You and I? We were born with our abilities. Who knows why? But there it is. Those born without any special consideration—I suppose that’s the only way to politely describe it—can choose to accept that we are powerful. They can crave our power. They sometimes look to usurp our power from us.”
Vincent shook his head in confusion. “You a college boy, or something? I’m boiling only about half of what you’re pouring.”
Arnoud released a belly laugh, then covered his mouth. “I apologize. I’ve spent years with my nose down in books. I may come across a bit…artificial.”
Vincent unfolded his arms and sighed. “If that’s the worst you have to confess, then we’re square, you and I.”
“In the way of confession, I’ll have to say it now: I have no idea who summoned that demon into the midst of Amish country, but I have learned that demons do not simply stumble into our world and do as they please.”
“The Bible seems to disagree on that account.”
Arnoud’s brow shot toward his hairline. “Are you a believer?”
“I believe in what I see,” Vincent replied. “And I’ve seen things.”
The touch pincher nodded thoughtfully. “Whoever conjured that demon likely resides close by. I have theories—none o
f which I’ve been able to pursue. Not with my new masters.” His eyes drifted to the floor.
Vincent reached out and gripped his arm. “I understand. This sorta thing needs to stay inside…what did you call it? The fraternity?”
Arnoud pursed his lips, then nodded. He whispered, “I believe this Hell pincher learned his craft in the South. Perhaps he moved north as of late, but I have a strong inkling that he yet lives, and that he lives somewhere near Wilkes-Barre.”
Vincent leaned forward. “How sure are you?”
“As sure as anyone can be with these things. Alas, we might never know for certain who or exactly where this Hell pincher is.” Arnoud released a long sigh. “I have business, Mister Calendo. It’s been a joy chatting, but alas. I must return to my duties.”
Vincent stiffened, then nodded. “I’d like to pursue this. One day. You know, when things aren’t quite so sticky?”
Arnoud smiled. “Sure.” With a shrug, he moved back to the stairs. “Come on.”
They descended into the bowels of the cannery, and proceeded back toward the hidden lounge. Arnoud paused by the door to the poor sap he’d been interrogating, and gripped the jamb with a sharp inhalation.
Vincent asked, “What’s wrong?” Even as he asked it, he leaned over Arnoud’s shoulder to spy into the room beyond.
One chair.
Several lengths of rope lying limp on the floor.
And nobody else.
The touch pincher spat a profanity that Vincent didn’t recognize before bolting for the lounge. They both raced for the sliding steel door, slipping through to find Lefty and DeBarre sitting casually in their seats.
“Where is he?” Arnoud panted.
DeBarre lifted his glass to the ceiling with a smirk.
Vincent peered up to the low-hanging steel plates over their heads, where a panicked man in a sweat-soaked shirt gripped the light sconce. His body pressed against the ceiling, his eyes wide, searching the floor for some means of escape. He crawled away from the sconce as Arnoud approached, bustling on all fours along the ceiling as if it were the floor.
The touch pincher shook his head. “You naughty boy. I shall have to make you pay for this. Clearly pain isn’t working. Something extra…perhaps an itch you can’t scratch? Or…”
“Enough,” DeBarre snapped.
The man on the ceiling whimpered in the corner, releasing a string of babble in some language Vincent couldn’t recognize before his body lurched into freefall, dropping ten feet to the floor. He landed with a heavy thump, his head twisting unnaturally as he hit the ground.
Arnoud scowled. “It sounded like he was confessing.”
“Did you understand a word of it?” DeBarre asked.
“Given time, I might have—”
“He was done,” DeBarre declared with the last swig of his gin. “And you need to work on your knots.”
“Clearly,” Arnoud confessed.
Lefty and Vincent made a courteous exit shortly thereafter, as the two Philly pinchers were left to police the body of their quarry.
On the road, Vincent caught Lefty eyeing him from the passenger seat.
“What?”
Lefty shook his head. “Nothing.”
“You’re givin’ me the hairy eyeball.”
“You were quick to duck out with that touch pincher.”
Vincent nodded. “I needed to press the flesh, you know? Get the skinny on both of these pinchers.”
“That’s it?”
Vincent squinted. “That ball of wax you was rolling for DeBarre, shipping up the Bay, and such?”
“What about it?” Lefty grumbled.
“You weren’t just stringing him along, were you?”
“Of course I was. Couldn’t just jump directly into the subject of spare pinchers. Wouldn’t be seemly.”
Vincent sighed. “Tony coulda made this meet instead of us, if that’s what we were here to discuss.”
Lefty turned to stare out his window, offering nothing more.
As the road spread before Vincent, his thoughts were conflicted. On one hand, Vito’s poking around the boat-legging business behind Tony’s back filled him with a molasses-thick cloud of uncertainty. On the other hand, Vincent had finally contacted another pincher who’d survived a run-in with a legitimate demon. With any luck at all, he may have a direct lead on a Hell pincher. That would be something to tell Hattie on their next meeting—whenever that would be.
Chapter 3
Hattie stepped out of the battered Model T Runabout, and spied the Triumph two-seater parked in front of Lizzie Sadler’s warehouse in Locust Point. The car had made more appearances during the day as of late. It belonged to one of the Baltimore Crew—Tony something-or-another. The man was their liaison, the mobster in charge of coordinating the bootleg trafficking on the water, or “boat-legging” as they called it.
But there was something more to the arrangement between Lizzie and Tony—something romantic. Well, romantic was most likely an overstatement. Either way, Hattie and Raymond had learned weeks ago that if they spotted the Triumph in front of the warehouse, and the warehouse doors were closed, they would do better to stick around outside until everyone inside was fully dressed.
A voice called from the empty lot beside the warehouse, “You gonna stare at that car all day, baby girl?”
Hattie smiled as she turned to find Raymond looming next to a stack of lumber, a tiny white ball in his hand.
“What’ve you got there, boy-o?” she called.
He tossed the ball to Hattie. “It’s an egg!”
Hattie braced herself, wishing for a split-second that she could pinch time the way Vincent could. But this was the training she’d been working on with Raymond these past few months.
In the second that the tiny white orb floated in the air, Hattie pinched light around her body, reaching up to snatch the ball. Behind her, an illusion knitted into reality in the early summer sunlight. An egg smashed against the stone-dust pad behind Hattie, complete with a wet chunk.
“How did that look?” she asked as she dismantled the illusion.
Raymond nodded slowly. “Not bad.”
She examined the ball in her hand. It was hard, with just a little give.
“What is this?” she asked.
Raymond shrugged. “Lacrosse ball, I think. Found it outside one a them Catholic schools up the pike.”
Hattie tossed it back to Raymond. “Alright, so…let me have it. You said not bad. That means not good. What went wrong?”
He gathered his thoughts, then responded, “I saw the change.”
“Ball to egg?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t quite right. It was here, then it was there.” He lifted his hand in the air, then dropped it a few inches. “You weren’t lined up perfect.”
She shook her head with a sigh. “Try it again.”
He tossed the ball back to her, and she gave it another shot. Her illusion egg smashed against the gravel, and she sent Raymond a questioning glance.
He nodded. “Better.”
“Better’n not bad?”
He shook his hand in equivocation, and she beaned him with the ball. Raymond laughed as he tried unsuccessfully to sidestep the lacrosse ball, which smacked him in the hip.
“Hey, now! It was better than last time. Just a tiny bit off still.”
“Alright, I’ll work harder on lining things up.” As she headed toward the stack of lumber, she thought of Vincent and the way he’d always kept track of things as he pinched time. This was here, this was there—it all had to be in the exact same place before he released his pinch. She wondered how many times he’d had to exercise that skill before he perfected it.
Raymond walked alongside her as they delved deeper into the maze of crates and wood that filled the back end of the empty lot. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the Triumph still there.
“How long has that gangster been in there?”
Raymond shrugged. “’Bout five, ten minutes. Best to give the
m a half hour.”
Hattie shook her head. “He’s mighty quick, that one.”
“A half hour? That’s not so quick.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“What? Time you make a little conversation and get your clothes off and back on, there’s still a good twenty minutes left for what you came for.” Raymond looked over at the car.
“Ten minutes for conversing and getting naked?” Hattie shook her head. “And twenty…you think that’s adequate, do you?”
Raymond rubbed his eyes. “Don’t wanna talk about this sorta thing with you, Hattie.”
“What?” she teased with a shot of her elbow to the enormous man’s ribs. “You don’t want to think about me underneath some strapping young lad? Breathless. Frustrated because he’s too quick to—”
“God! No!”
Hattie snickered. Raymond was too easy to bait like this. He was as good as a brother to Hattie—more so now that the two of them could speak openly about her gifts. It was his idea to take these stolen moments at Locust Point to train her abilities. It made sense. As a boat-legger hauling booze across state lines, she needed to be able to think fast on her feet.
That was a quality Vincent demonstrated in spades. His capacity to size up a deadly moment in a hair’s breadth, then pinch time the way he did? That was skill honed through experience. Hattie might never be as good as the time pincher, but she was damned well gonna try. Which meant she needed to practice every chance she got.
“Alright, boy-o,” she declared as she came to a halt. “What’ll it be today? Besides eggs?”
Raymond rubbed his chin. “Yeah, I been thinkin’ on this all week. Ya told me once about how expensive your magic was.”
She nodded.
“How it costs more depending on how big it is, if it’s more than just sight—like, sound and smell, and how many people saw these mirages?”
Hattie cocked her head. “What’s the plan?”
“Take me inside one of these illusions, is what I’m thinkin’,” he declared. “Spin me something real. Something I’d get lost in. But only me. Other people walking by would just see two people sitting on the ground.”