by Various
Rex smirked as the Science Pirate took a step backwards. The policeman stopped and said something, but Rex was too far away to hear. And then the Science Pirate did something remarkable.
She took her helmet off.
It was like a movie theatre. The crowd fell silent with a collective whoosh of inhaled air. A few seconds later came a couple of wolf whistles, and someone shouting something that everybody could hear, but nobody could make out. Then a rumble, low and quiet as, having recovered from the shock, people started talking to each other. The police kept the line, but most craned their necks around to see what was going on.
The Science Pirate was a woman. Her long brown hair unpiled from inside the helmet, and fell halfway down her back. Her face was flushed and slick with sweat, but at this distance Rex could see she was quite a looker.
A… girl? The Science Pirate was a girl. Well, thirty-something. Brunette. Attractive. Rex’s throat was tight. He still needed that drink, and his lips were still dry. He ran his tongue along them, but that was dry too.
The policeman was saying something and the woman in the costume said something back. The crowd’s baying obscured their conversation, but Rex wasn’t really trying to listen anyway. He ignored all as he stared at the unmasked rocketeer.
What was this? Did she have some kind of point to make, unmasking herself? Rex’s head was filled with a hundred questions. Were we supposed to know who she was? Were we supposed to feel sorry for her? Proud of her? Frightened of her? What, exactly? His face went hot with embarrassment that he’d been frightened of a goddamn woman, although he didn’t admit it, even to himself. He rubbed his aching head and the world spun a little. Keep it calm, keep it together. Concussion, was all. He’d had it before, several times, working with McCabe. Rex took a breath.
The policeman was shouting now and the Science Pirate was shouting back, but Rex wasn’t listening. He watched as the Science Pirate stamped and shouted and pointed at the crater, shaking off the cop’s hand as he made a grab for her arm. She stepped back, then took off vertically, the policeman staggering backwards to avoid the flame of her rocket boots. Holding her helmet under one arm, the Science Pirate disappeared over the city on a trail of glowing orange smoke.
Rex felt angry for a moment, then inspiration struck. The Science Pirate was a woman. Women were not an obstacle, never had been. Now he knew her weakness—her sex—then maybe he could take the upper hand. Maybe he could even usurp McCabe and his cronies, not only saving his own neck, but taking over the city completely. More importantly, there was an opening here to put a lean on City Hall. If he could capture the Science Pirate—no, remove her, dumping her body on the mayor’s desk, he’d be untouchable, top of the totem pole. Even McCabe would come crawling. He’d be the man who saved New York and put everyone—McCabe included—back in business.
It made perfect sense. The night was looking up.
Rex stood for a while as the crowd thinned and the police gathered around the crater in the middle of the street. He ran the idea over and over and over. It would work. It would be easy. He just needed to figure her out, watch her, trail her. The suit was a powerful weapon, but without it she looked like she’d be a tiny little girl. Easy.
The tall man and his lady walked by again but Rex ignored them. He was looking at the crater, with smoke rising and a ring of police gingerly keeping their distance.
He needed a drink. He needed several drinks, and then he’d see about the Science Pirate. Who would protect her now the Skyguard was gone? Nobody, was who.
Payday was a-comin’.
THREE
IT WAS HER. It was damn-well her. Rex ducked into a shop doorway, his fingertips pressing the ice-cold glass behind him as he leaned against the window. He couldn’t believe his luck.
With the fight over, a few of the crowd had loitered around the overturned Studebaker, and the police had finally turned their attention to moving it and Jerome out of the way. Rex skirted the scene carefully, checking the faces around him in case McCabe had sent some of his thugs in.
So far, so good. First step was a drink. Rex turned away as Jerome’s body was pulled from under the front of the car and jogged down the alley into which he’d been thrown in the crash. In the gutter ahead he saw his hat, damp but intact. He bent down and flipped it onto his head, and when he looked up, Rex saw her.
There, at the end, just turning a corner, was a woman with long brown hair. Rex came to a halt behind the pile of wet newspapers that had saved him, watching. Could it have been her? Surely not. Just a broad, taking a shortcut. Looking at her outfit, a working girl too.
Then she turned to look back down the alley, towards Rex. It was her. Cheeky bitch. She’d taken off, ditched the suit, and come back to watch the cleanup. She saw Rex, she must have, he was as large as life in the middle of the alley, but she just turned and disappeared around the corner. Rex flexed his fingers. This was a gift. No suit. Quiet back streets. Perfect.
He trailed her for a while, keeping his head down. He wasn’t good at following discreetly—there wasn’t much call for it in his particular line of work—and after an hour of hustling across downtown, it was obvious that the girl knew she was being followed and was trying to shake him off. A series of double-backs and dead-ends had led him a merry chase indeed. It was hard to get genuinely lost in Manhattan, or to get stuck in a cul-de-sac as there was always an alley or a passageway out.
But Rex’s luck held. The bitch had taken a wrong turn down a dead alley. Rex smiled and stuck to the damp wall. Perfect.
Although… Rex’s smirk vanished. Shit. What if she had been looking for a quiet, empty spot to fight? No. She wasn’t wearing the suit. Rex flexed his biceps under his trench coat. They were tight and he wasn’t a small man. And without her fancy rockets and suit of armour she was a tiny broad. A tiny broad in high heels and a red dress.
His smirk returned. Odd clothes to wear under the rocket armour. Rex laughed. Who knew what she got up to when off duty. Perhaps they were a set of working clothes. That wouldn’t surprise him.
Maybe she’d taken a knock to the head in the big fight and had concussion or some such, because coming back to the scene of the battle was a dumb move, lady, very dumb, especially after taking her helmet off in front of everyone. Now she was tottering around on those big heels, and she looked cold too, and frightened. But it was her. He’d taken a good, long look, imprinting her face in his memory. She was his meal ticket. He wasn’t going to lose her now.
Rex laughed. His head felt light. He peered down the alley, and saw she was still walking away, slower now. She seemed to be looking around, looking for a way out. This was it. He was about to “save” New York City, and after handing over the city’s most wanted he’d have the mayor and police chief right in his pocket. McCabe would come begging and his illicit empire would be able to expand, unimpeded. With freedom to eliminate the competition, within a few months he’d be in control of the whole goddamn city. He could buy a new car and a new driver.
He pinched the collar of his coat up, and pulled his hat back a little so the rim didn’t obscure his vision. She was trapped like a rat.
As he walked forward the clouds opened again, Mother Nature dumping her load on the already saturated city. He wondered how difficult it was going to be to kill a person with his bare hands. He’d shot people, of course, and in his younger days with McCabe he’d dealt out a variety of punishments with a selection of handheld weapons. But he was unarmed now. Jerome had insisted on being the triggerman and Rex had indulged him. He’d killed chickens and rabbits with nothing but his hands before, back on his uncle’s farm upstate. He’d been a teenager and it was easy, and now he was twice the size and the bitch was tiny—a thin, fragile girl. He balled his wet fists, feeling the solidity of his knuckles under his tight skin. This was going to be a piece of cake.
When the girl eventually stopped casing the alley and turned at the sound of Rex’s footsteps, she actually looked relieved. Her shoulders sl
umped, and her chest heaved as if she exhaled a heavy sigh, which Rex couldn’t hear past the steady patter of the rain. She took a few steps forwards and opened her arms out, like she was going to say something real important, and then stopped as she saw that Rex hadn’t slowed. She stood for a second, her arms still sticking out sideways, and then took a step backwards. Her mouth pulled down at the corners and her lower lip quivered as she spoke.
“Do you know the way back to Fifth and Soma? I’m not sure which way I’ve come. I just need to get home.”
Rex stopped, and held his arms straight against his sides. He tightened his fists, feeling the uneven trim of his nails dig into the fleshy pads at the base of each thumb. The rain skittered around the brim of his hat, and he could feel the liquid roll backwards as he tilted his head.
He hadn’t expected her to talk. He hadn’t planned on her making any noise at all, as a matter of fact. Her face was small and while her mouth was wide, the palm of one of his large hands would practically cover her entire face.
The girl took a half-step back again, getting both feet solidly underneath her. Her dress sure was damn short, and the heels were way too high. While it made her look taller and exaggerated the stretch of her legs, clutched together her knees were pushed forward like two ugly wrinkled grapefruit.
“Please, I just need to get home,” said the girl. She pushed her hair off her forehead with the heel of one hand, pulling the skin on her face tight as she did so. “Please, I have a headache, I just need to get home.”
Rex moved his head and the water in the brim of his hat finally reached bursting point and trickled over the edge and down in front of his face. He was taking too long. He had to quit thinking about it, and quit letting her gas on, and just do it, now, or it would be too late. It was like anything important. There was a moment, a brief alignment of the stars when the time was right; when that happened, if you were in the right place at the right time with the right idea, you could do anything. That’s what his uncle had always told him, up at the farm. Anybody can do anything. Don’t think, do. Rex hissed a breath out between clenched teeth and took a step forward.
The girl seemed to stagger backwards, now with both hands rubbing her forehead. When she looked up, her eyes seemed to spin a little. She looked like she was going to faint.
“Please, Fifth and Soma, which way is it?”
Rex clicked his tongue. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, lady. Ain’t never heard of no Soma Street. You really are lost.”
Dammit! This was part of it, now he was sure. She was a goddamn supervillain, and even without the stupid rocket suit, she was dangerous. She was playing him. The confusion, the conversation, it was all an act.
Don’t think, do.
Rex pushed off from the ground with the toes of his right foot, moving at something between a jog and a fast walk. He raised his fists, and swung back, and the girl dropped her hands. Before he could get a hand over her mouth like he wanted, she screamed.
PART TWO
THE CITY THAT SLEEPS
“Albeit, much about this time it did fall out that the thrice renowned and delectable city of Gotham did suffer great discomfiture, and was reduced to perilous extremity…”
— Washington Irving, Salmagundi, 11 November 1807
“Six months ago prohibition was about as much of an issue as Mormonism, pragmatism or the fourth dimension.”
— The New York World, 1914
FOUR
“WHAT KIND of name,” asked the man in the gas mask, “is ‘Rad’, anyway?”
Rad shuffled on the alley floor a little, trying to get more comfortable, when more comfortable meant a rectangular brick digging into his back instead of a triangular one. It was wet, and Rad was sitting in a puddle. He half-wondered how much the cleaning bill would be for his one and only good suit.
“‘Rad’ is my kind of name, is what,” said Rad. He didn’t bother looking up at his assailants. The masks and hats were a great disguise. Kooky. Instead he stared ahead and dabbed at his bottom lip with a bloody handkerchief.
The first goon’s shoes moved into Rad’s field of vision, black wingtips shining wetly in the cast-off from the streetlamp just around the lip of the alley. The rain had collected in the punch pattern on the shoes and each step threw a fine spray, some of which collected in the man’s pinstripe turn-ups. Rad figured it was all part of the disguise, the unfashionable shoes, the unfashionable suits, the unfashionable gas masks. The name of some annual affair near the end of the year that was all about ghosts and candy and weird costumes itched at the back of Rad’s mind, but he couldn’t remember what it was and the thought slipped away as he tried to grasp it.
The goon bent down and the gas mask came into view. Two circular goggles in a rubber face, single soup-can canister bobbing over where the mouth would be. The goon’s voice was clear as a whistle despite the business that sat between his lips and Rad’s ears, but echoed in the soup can like it was coming out of a radio set.
“What do you know about nineteen fifty?”
Rad pulled the handkerchief away and looked at it, then moved his jaw like he was chewing toffee. His teeth were all there, so he was happy. A fat lip he could live with. What he really wanted was a drink, something strong that you couldn’t buy, not legally anyway. He tongued the inside of his lip and the pepper-copper taste of blood filled his mouth again. That wasn’t what he had in mind.
“That’s the second time you’ve asked me that, pal,” said Rad. “And for the second time I’m gonna say I don’t know about nineteen fifty. If you’re looking for street directions, then there are nicer ways of going about it.”
The gas mask disappeared upwards and Rad shook his head. He felt his own fedora shift against the brick wall behind him. At least he’d kept that on during the fight.
Not that it had been much of a fight. One minute he was walking down Fifth, next an arm pulled him out of the light and into the alley, and after just one question a one-two landed with some success on his face, and he was sitting on the floor with a bruised tailbone and a wet backside and a cheekbone that alternated between needle-pain and numbness.
They weren’t after money. Once on the ground, the first goon—a tall wide no-neck, who seemed to be doing everything for the entertainment of his thin friend who just stood and watched behind his black goggles in silence—grabbed his wallet, and together the four glass eyes stared at his ID for a while before the card and wallet were returned to Rad’s inside coat pocket. This was no mugging. It was planned, calculated. They were professionals. The fist responsible for Rad’s aching face was on the end of a trained arm, and the crazy get-up wasn’t something you could pick up downtown. They’d collared Rad for nineteen hundred and fifty somethings. Nineteen fifty what? His office was 434 West Fourteenth Street, 5-A. His home was 5-B. Rad ran through addresses, locations, places that people in unfashionable suits and strange masks might have an interest in. No dice.
A hand under the armpit and Rad was on his feet again. The thin goon had his hands in his pockets and still hadn’t moved. No-neck let go of Rad and pushed him against the wall, stepped back, and pulled a gun out of the holster underneath his trench coat. The alley was dark, but the streetlight was enough to glint off a buckle and a shiny leather strap before the trench coat was closed again. Body holster. Rad had always wanted one because it was professional, but professional was expensive and it would have meant attention from the city, and he tried to avoid that most times.
The goon cocked the gun and then cocked his head to the side, like he was expecting something. Rad’s eyes flicked from the rubber face to the gun and back, and he thought he got the point. The gun was a revolver, but the barrel was wide, as wide as the soup-can respirator but a little longer, like a gun for flares or something. Whatever it shot, Rad thought it would probably do the job given the hot end of the gun was being held six inches in front of his face.
“Rad Bradley.” There was a click from behind the gas mask and the
n a pause, like the goon was thinking something over. His friend still hadn’t moved. Rad wondered if he was awake in there.
Rad licked his split lip again. “You seem to have a real problem with my name.”
The gun’s barrel crept forward an eighth of an inch. Rad kept his eyes on the glass portholes in the mask.
“You must be from the other side of town,” Rad continued. “You want directions to nineteen fifty-something avenue, why not ask a cop? There are plenty down on Fifth.” He flicked his head towards the glowing opening of the alley. People walked by in the rain, the bright light of the main thoroughfare rendering the alley and the goons and the gun being pointed at the private detective completely invisible.
Something blue and vaporous began curling out of the barrel. It made Rad’s nose itch and he wondered what it was, given that the gun hadn’t been fired yet. Over the goon’s shoulder he saw the thin, silent partner suddenly fidget and turn to the right, looking deeper into the alley while his hands stayed in his pockets.
The soup can in front of Rad’s face wobbled as the goon with the gun titled his own head slightly in the same direction. His voice was hollow, flat, metallic.
“What’s wrong?”
The alley was quiet, and Rad could hear the other goon’s sharp intake of breath amplified by the echo chamber of his gas mask. Something else followed the gasp, the start of a shout, or maybe a warning, but it was cut off in mid-flow. A moment later the thin goon was on the alley floor, not far from where Rad had originally fallen, enveloped in something large and black and smooth.