A Cosmic Christmas

by Hank Davis

  The Purple thugs got off the bench when they saw him coming up the stairs. The lead tough intercepted him before he could reach the door. The kid was barely old enough to shave, but had already developed a street swagger, but everyone was tougher when they had two buddies standing behind them. He tossed his cigarette into the snow. “Whadda you want?”

  “I want to talk to Mr. Horowitz.”

  “You got an appointment? You don’t look like you’re here to buy sugar.”

  “Tell Mr. Horowitz it’s about a mutual friend, Arthur Fordyce.”

  The three thugs exchanged a look that told him they recognized the name, but the kid didn’t budge. “Who’re you supposed to be?”

  “Jake Sullivan.” He looked over the group. Unfortunately, he didn’t recognize any of them. “Isadore Lebowitz around? He can vouch for me.”

  “Buddy, Izzy got put in the ground weeks ago. He ain’t vouching for nobody ever again.”

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  They were starting to fan out around him. “He got shot in the teeth. If you was his friend, you should’a knew that,” said the second thug as he walked behind Sullivan. The sharks were circling.

  “Mr. Horowitz said no visitors,” said the last, this one with the bleary eyes of someone on the weed. “Not till the bone man leaves town.”

  “Shut up, idiot,” hissed the second.

  Sullivan didn’t have time for inter-gang nonsense. “Why don’t one of you guys go ask Mr. Horowitz if he wants to talk to me.”

  The kid snickered. “Yeah? Well, he’s busy. You should come back . . . oh . . . never.” His buddies all had a good laugh at that. “Now beat it ‘fore we beat you.”

  Sullivan’s magic was collected in his chest, waiting. He’d saved up quite a lot. He activated the Power, using just a bit of his reserves, and tested the world around him. The weed head had something dense enough in the small of his back to be a pistol. The leader had something metal in his pocket. The Spikers loading the truck both stopped and looked over his way, having sensed the subtle flux in gravity.

  “I’m not leaving until one of you asks Mr. Horowitz if he’ll talk to me.”

  The leader glared at him and the look in those cold eyes said that he’d seen a fair share of blood spilled in his young life. “Last chance to walk away,” he said.

  Sullivan took his time taking out a cigarette, putting it to his mouth, and striking a match. The thugs watched him light up, incredulous as he took a puff, held it for a moment, then let it out. “Last chance to get your boss.”

  He had to hand it to the kid. He was fast with that straight razor. It came out in a silver flash. “You know what time it is now, big man?”

  Sullivan shrugged. “Can’t say I do.”

  The kid held the razor low at his side. “Now’s the part where you say you don’t want any trouble.”

  “Does that ever work?”

  “Nope.”

  The kid lunged. The razor zipped out like a striking rattlesnake. Sullivan grabbed his Power and twisted gravity. When in a hurry there was no time for finesse. A small piece of the world broke. Up was down and down was up. The kid’s feet left the ground as he tumbled, surprised, toward the overhang. He slammed into the sheet metal cover overhead. Sullivan let him hang there for a moment, just so that he could know he’d barked up the wrong tree, before cutting his Power. The kid hit the concrete in a shower of dust and snow.

  Sullivan turned just as the weed head went for the gun under his coat. He had plenty of Power stored up, and it never hurt to make an example of idiots, so Sullivan drastically lessened the strength of gravity around his target before he slugged the punk square in the face. Weedy left the ground, flew back to the end of Sullivan’s range, then fell and bounced down the steps. A little nickel-plated pistol went skittering off into the snow.

  There was one Purple left. He was just standing there, too flummoxed to move. Sullivan removed the cigarette from his mouth and pointed at him. “Like I said . . . I’ll wait here while you go tell Mr. Horowitz.”

  The punk jerked open the doors and ran for his life. Sullivan looked over to see the two Spikers coming his way. One of them had picked up a length of pipe. “Brothers, you don’t want to try me. I may be like you . . .” Sullivan let a bit more of his Power slip so they could feel the obvious surge. Gravity distorted. Falling snow stopped and hung in mid air. The workers looked at each other, surprised at the display of control. Sullivan cut it off before he wasted too much precious Power. The snow resumed falling. “But I’ve got way more practice.”

  The Heavies returned to their truck, but they kept an uneasy eye on him. The punk at the bottom of the stairs was moaning about the condition of his face. The kid with the razor was out cold. That’s what they got for picking a fight with someone who’d survived Second Somme and Rockville. Sullivan took a seat on the bench and finished his smoke.

  Two minutes later the door opened again. This time four Purples filed out and they all trained shotguns on him. “Mr. Horowitz will see you now.”

  Abraham Horowitz sat behind a giant oak desk, thick arms folded, and prepared to listen to Sullivan’s request. The bootlegger was a steely-eyed killer, past his physical prime now, but this was a man who’d grown up busting heads and collecting protection money. This was not somebody to shortchange, so it was probably wise to start with an apology. “Sorry about your boys downstairs, but I didn’t do anything until the kid tried to carve me a new smile.”

  “Well, they should have asked me first. There was no need to be impolite to guests. Bad for business.” Horowitz grunted. “From your rep I’m surprised you didn’t just kill ‘em all. You’re a living legend. Way I hear it, you got a early release ‘cause you’re so good at it . . . You cut a deal with the enemy to take down dangerous Actives, right? You wouldn’t happen to be here on the government dime, are you, Mr. Sullivan?”

  “No, sir. Far as I’d tell anybody, you run a sugar mill, that’s all. As for the enemy, any man would make a deal with the devil to get out of Rockville. It’s a hard place. I just do what I’ve got to get by, same as anybody.”

  “I’d appreciate it if no Purples ever show up on your list, Mr. Sullivan, ‘cause that could be unpleasant for everybody.”

  If one of the Hoover telegrams had a member of the Purple gang on it for him to help catch, Sullivan would make damn sure he had plans to get the hell out of Detroit real quick afterwards. “I’d like that very much too, sir.”

  “Respect . . . Let me tell you, I wish you would’a taken Isadore’s job offer after the UBF strike. A Heavy like you could make a lot of money working for the Purples. My Heavies down there said you’re downright frightening how much Power you got.”

  Of course he was good; he’d done nothing but practice the entire time he’d been in Rockville. “You honor me, Mr. Horowitz, but I’m just a simple man,” Sullivan said.

  “Isadore said you were a whole lot smarter than you talked, too. My people appreciate an educated man, especially a self-educated man such as yourself. Izzy, may he rest in peace, said you read books like some sort of professor.”

  “Reading’s my hobby. Keeps me out of trouble.”

  “Seems like a man who’s avoiding trouble wouldn’t end up in the middle of it so often.”

  “Just curious I guess . . . Like I’m curious about Arthur Fordyce. His wife hired me to find him.”

  Horowitz chuckled. “I liked old Arthur. You’re probably wondering how we knew each other. Well, let’s just say that Arthur didn’t care much who he Mended as long as their dollars were green. Last time I used him was ‘cause I’d started losing my vision and couldn’t feel my toes. He fixed me up good as new and told me to quit eating so much sugar. Ha! Not with this sweet tooth.” Horowitz pounded one meaty hand on the desk, then he paused and frowned. “Well, shit . . . Now that he’s gone I might have to cut back . . . Arthur did other things for the Purples too. If one of my boys got shot and I needed him back in action quick, I’d go to Arthur
. He was good at pulling bullets out but not asking about who put them in, if you get what I’m saying. Son of a bitch charged an arm and a leg, though.”

  “You know who might have taken him?”

  The gangster shrugged. “Lots of folks. Maybe somebody who needed something fixed couldn’t afford to pay an arm or a leg. Sick folk can get mighty desperate.”

  “These are desperate times,” Sullivan agreed. Detroit was better off than most of the country, but even here there were tent cities growing on the fringe. Lots of people were out of work, hungry, and hurting.

  Horowitz made a big show of studying Sullivan for a long time. “Maybe not just sick folks get that desperate . . . Come to think on it, maybe I know somebody else who couldn’t afford a Healing, but might need a Healer real bad . . . Maybe I could tell you something that would help us both out of a jam.”

  He was looking for an angle, but men like Horowitz always were. “I’m listening,” Sullivan said.

  “You ever hear that old saying, kill two birds with one stone? You got to find somebody and I don’t get to eat sweets because the only Healer in Detroit is gone . . . and maybe, just maybe I know somebody who might have taken poor old Arthur. Maybe there is this crew mucking around in my area, robbing banks where they shouldn’t be, but maybe this crew have been muscle for another group that the Purples don’t want to mess with. Maybe this crew works with the Mustache Petes . . .” Sullivan knew that the Mustache Petes were the Sicilian-born gangsters that ran New York. The word was that Purple gang had an uneasy truce with them. “Maybe this crew was caught robbing a bank and got themselves shot to bits by policemen over Albion way. Maybe they’d be desperate enough to steal a Healer . . . Maybe this is something I’d like to take care of myself, but my hands are tied on account of business reasons. What do you say to that?”

  That’s a lot of maybes. The last BI telegram had said the Maplethorpe gang had gotten hit in Albion. They certainly wouldn’t be above kidnapping. “That’s very . . . forthcoming of you, Mr. Horowitz. If this crew was to get rolled up by the law they’d be out of your hair.”

  “You find your man, this other crew goes away. Two birds, one rock. Bam. As long as you never said where you heard it from . . .”

  “Of course. How about you let me know where this crew is and I’ll go get your favorite Healer back?”

  “Doubt it. Johnny Bones enjoys killin’ too much, likes to cut on people so they die slow, and his brother Snowball’s damn near as mean. The second he got his crew Mended, Arthur probably died. Let me put the word out. As soon as I know where that crew is I’ll be in touch.”

  Sullivan knew when he’d been dismissed. Horowitz didn’t offer to shake on their deal. As far as the gangster was concerned selling out Johnny Bones was like taking the garbage out to the curb for pickup. Sullivan stood to leave.

  “One last thing, Mr. Sullivan. When you come up against Johnny, you’re gonna have to kill him fast. Shoot him, squish him with your Power, whatever you got to do. Don’t try to talk to that crazy Shard. He’s sly. He’ll cut you to pieces or his crazy brother will freeze you just to watch you shatter like glass. Mark my words. Take them fast or you’ll regret it.”

  Sullivan debated his next move. Mae was still coming up with nothing. If Horowitz was right, Arthur Fordyce was probably already dead. Until he got a lead on where the Maplethorpes were holed up, he was at a dead end. If Horowitz was wrong, he was wasting his time.

  Well, not exactly wasting . . . Which was why Sullivan’s last stop for the evening was at the Detroit office of the Bureau of Investigation. Horowitz wasn’t the only man that liked to kill two birds with one stone.

  The BI office was near the Fisher Building. The giant art deco skyscraper was impressive, even if they were turning the lights down at night to save money now. It was late, the snow was still falling, and most everyone had gone home for the night, so Sullivan left a note for the agent in charge of the manhunt to contact him.

  He got home around 11:00. Sullivan’s mind was too spun up to go to sleep, so instead he found himself pulling out a book he’d purchased last year on the history of the First Volunteer. He’d found it a fairly accurate, yet rather dull account of the events in question. To be fair, it would be rather difficult for some academic historian to chronicle the unrelentingly bleak meat grinder of the trenches, the sheer mind-numbing spectacle of Second Somme, or the final march into the blackened ash wasteland that had been Berlin.

  Even though Sullivan had been the most decorated soldier in the unit, there was only one picture of him, and it was a group shot of some Spikers taken somewhere in France. All of them were tired, dirty, starving, cold, suffering from dysentery, wearing their rusting Heavy suits, carrying their Lewis guns, and lucky to be alive. The book only had two pages about the Gravity Spikers. That was it. All that fighting, all those sacrifices, condensed into two lousy pages, and sadly one of those pages was mostly about his own exploits. He didn’t deserve his own page. He’d just been lucky. Of the men in the photo, only ten percent had come home alive.

  But it wasn’t bitter reminiscence that had caused Sullivan to open the history book. There were photos for most of the officer corps and Sullivan was looking for one in particular. When he found Captain Arthur Fordyce’s entry at first Sullivan thought that he’d found the wrong picture . . . He checked again, just to be sure, and it was correct. Fordyce certainly didn’t look like what he’d expected.

  Fordyce had to be in his sixties in the picture, and it had been taken back in 1916 . . . Fifteen years ago . . . Has it really been that long? Sullivan had been so young that he’d had to lie about his age to enlist, and he was quite a bit older than Emily Fordyce now. For that reason Sullivan had been expecting a younger man. That was not such an odd thing, especially for a man of Arthur’s success, to have such a young beautiful wife.

  Too damn young to be a widow.

  He fell asleep after midnight, which made it Christmas Eve.

  Sullivan checked on Bernie and his cats in the morning, but still nothing from Mae. Bernie said that was a very bad sign, meaning that the target was not in an easy-to-find state, as in above ground or in one piece. Since he was actually a little worried about Bernie’s health, Sullivan made sure to drop off another sandwich.

  The BI agent in charge of the manhunt had Sullivan come into the office to talk. Most of the G-men tolerated him, a couple respected him because he was very good at his job, and a few openly despised him for being an ex-con. But like it or not, when it came time to arrest somebody who could bend the laws of physics, Sullivan was damn handy to have around.

  The head of the Detroit office was a weasel named Price. He was a ticket-puncher, a man who existed primarily to get promoted. Price loved getting in the papers. Hoover didn’t like sharing the spotlight with his underlings, but Sullivan had no doubt that Price would end up in politics as soon as he got an arrest big enough to make headlines.

  The agent in charge of the manhunt was a homely fellow by the name of Cowley, fresh off the morning dirigible from D.C. Apparently he was one of Hoover’s personal favorites. Which inclined Sullivan to dislike him automatically. Sullivan briefed the agents about what he’d heard, though he was careful never to mention the Purple gang.

  Despite looking like he’d be much more comfortable behind a desk, Cowley had listened intently enough that Sullivan had come away suspecting that the agent might actually have a clue about being a decent cop. He also didn’t seem dismayed to find out that Sullivan was an Active. Cowley’s primary concern was that if Arthur Fordyce was alive, he be returned safely. Price was mostly worried about how the arrest of the Maplethorpes would play in the news, but rescuing a Healer . . . Sullivan could see the wheels turning there.

  Cowley showed him sketches of the members of the crew. He memorized the names and faces, but since none of them were Actives, he wasn’t as worried about them. Kidnapping was a local matter, not a federal crime, but both Maplethorpes were on the most wanted list, so it w
as agreed that if Sullivan helped capture them it would count as two against his quota. He made sure he got that in writing.

  The rest of the day was spent chasing leads to nowhere. Nobody had heard anything, and if they had they weren’t talking. He placed a telephone call to Mrs. Fordyce to inform her that he was still looking, but had no real progress to report. He’d tried to sound encouraging but failed.

  When darkness fell, Jake Sullivan returned to his office to prepare. His magic was ready, Power built up in his chest, just waiting to be used to twist gravity to his will. But Power burned quickly, and once it was gone, it took time to replenish. So that meant guns.

  One of the Lewis Mk3 machine guns he’d brought back from France was kept hidden under the floor boards of his office. He dragged the huge weapon out, cleaned and oiled it, and loaded the huge drum magazines from boxes of military .30-06 ammunition. Twenty-six pounds of lethal steel, the Lewis was big, ugly, and effective, sort of like Sullivan. It was a lot of gun, but the BI hadn’t specified that the Maplethorpes needed to be taken alive.

  He’d fought his whole life. He was good at it. As a soldier for his country, as an inmate for survival, and now as a . . . what am I? Somebody who didn’t know anything else? A slave to the G-men? No. It was better if he told himself that he was doing this one for a young widow and to avenge another First Volunteer. It seemed more pure that way.

  The Lewis went into a canvas bag. He went downstairs, ordered a late dinner, and waited. Burning Power was like hard physical exercise, so he treated himself to a real good meal in preparation. Mrs. Brooks was glad for the business and didn’t even inquire about why the usually frugal Sullivan suddenly seemed to be Mr. Big Spender. A ten-year-old serving as a Purple gang runner showed up while he was polishing off his coffee, gave him a note, and took off.