Men Who Walk Alone

by T. J. Martinell

  “Sean?” he asked. “What happened to you?”

  Stoic, Sean didn’t seem to notice them as he looked away, unconcerned with the disgusting material on his clothes. Ignoring Patrick, he flung out the smoking shells from the barrel and replaced them as he walked out of the house. The bloodbath outside still unfolded.

  He walked calmly back to his home. A guarded inspection of his house proved it to be vacated. He retired to his bedroom and locked the door, making his way to the closet.

  A fake piece of the wall came down as he closed his fingers around it, a measurable space on the other side.

  The contents were hanging in an apparent form on wooden pegs; the dark trench coat, the matching trousers, the fingerless gloves, the Webley-Fosbery revolver, a haunting face with empty eyes and mouth, a pair of polished military boots.

  He threw off his suspenders and hat, slipping on the trousers, trench coat, and boots. The revolver was slowly placed in the arm holster inside of the coat.

  He took the mask off of the pole and held it in his hands, a dark shadow cast over his figure. With a shrug, he brought it over his head, bringing it down gradually. When it covered his head, he turned around; the appeals for help no longer fell on deaf ears.

  It was done.

  The moment the Vigilante walked out the door, he saw two mobsters on his left. Readying his shotgun, he rapidly emptied it at them. The buckshot ripped through their backs, throwing them onto the concrete. They squirmed, maintaining a wobbly hold on their lives. He drew nearer to them, firing at point-blank until they ceased to stir.

  He then turned to his right; house-to-house fighting. A tenement complex was under assault, a collection of immigrants fending off killers inside of three black Mercedes. Short-ranged pistols and bolt-action rifles were the sole means of defense against machine guns and improvised explosives.

  His inconspicuous attire caught the curious attention of angst-filled people taking refuge behind dumpsters and wreckage. No one seemed to question his identity.

  Without a word to them, he strove down the middle of the street. His apparent confidence produced a ripple effect in the scores of people who followed behind him.

  The Vigilante narrowed his gaze when he was fifty feet away from the group of Mercedes, all of which were oblivious to his impending arrival.

  One of the mobsters, protected by grazing fire, got out to lob a grenade into one of the windows. He yanked out the pin, sprinting across the road to deliver his payload.

  The Vigilante capped him in the knee, sending him on his face. As he smacked the ground, he dropped the grenade. His recovery came fast, but he was dazed, forgot the explosive sitting in front of him.

  The mobster disappeared inside of a massive explosion. His comrades in the Mercedes were disquietingly indifferent as they noticed his burnt remains.

  A rupture of rifles spewed out of the dilapidated tenement complex. Hissing, the mobsters began to reload the machine gun nestled on the window sill, the meticulous process fraught with the lurid sight of their dead colleague.

  Just as he was ready to commence firing again, the toothless man gripping the machine gun saw the bright reflection of a knife flash across his face; an instantaneous cut came across his neck. He froze; he couldn’t breathe. A glance around him showed a demonic creature gutting the driver with a Bowie knife, impaling his chest repeatedly.

  He tried to reach his pistol.

  The Vigilante slashed at him.

  His hand was rendered useless.

  The machine gunner fell back against the other side of the car, losing consciousness; his vision was dull, but it was keen enough for him to watch as the hideous creature grabbed a grenade out of their crate and pulled the pin, relishing it for several moments before dropping it on the floor, stepping away calmly.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, the row of Mercedes blew up simultaneously. The surrounded vicinity fell silent.

  Eyes peered suspiciously out of windows; aside from the dead, and the charred automobiles, all they saw in the street was the lone outline of a man, one who they recognized, even though they had never seen him before.

  A large wave of immigrants poured out of the houses and residences, gathering around him. His monstrous exterior kept them at a distance. The scars, the burns, the gangly black hair, the revolting face. But they didn’t seem to be intimidated by him. In spite of his horrid face, they seemed to instinctively know he would not harm them.

  In the subdued atmosphere, a voice called out among the crowd.

  “What is this pestilence?”

  “This be gone on for far too long!” an old man cried irately, throwing his flat cap on the ground. “I’m tired of the dyin’, tired of the killin’. It ends today!”

  Voices cried across the flooded avenue.

  “What shall we do?” asked a young man with an uncertain grip on his rifle.

  “Aye,” stated a man with a goatee, wielding a cleaver knife. “All we got are these pitiful things. They’ve got machine guns and powerful rifles. We’re doomed unless we can get more, and fast.”

  “I don’t care if we fight barehanded, it’s better than livin’ like this for the rest of me life!”

  The Vigilante looked at him respectfully, raising a hand.

  “Follow me,” he said. “I’ll get you what you need.”

  The multitudes that trailed after him in a thin, tapered line were comprised of many people. Pretty young girls with dimples and ponytails, ugly old hags with wrinkled skin, missing teeth, and croaky voices, sickly children who were unaware of the nature of their journey, ardent fathers who held their children’s hands, rancorous mothers and enthused grandfathers.

  From afar, one would have thought the Vigilante was Moses, leading his people to the Promise Land across the breadth of a violence-induced desert that was the city of Beverly.

  ***

  “Sir, here is the information you requested from archives,” the wearied police officer said to me hurriedly as he handed me a stained folder.

  “Thanks, Jones,” I said offhandedly. I took it, opened it up with an anxious look.

  The policeman didn’t wait for my reaction. He took off, ran after someone who called for his name on the other side of the police station foyer.

  We were one among dozens that flooded the foyer. Voices drowned out each other like hail; cries of agony, yells of anger, screams for assistance, hollers for backup, pleas from civilians. Some were answered; most of them were not.

  I glanced up from the folder to watch the disorganized chaos unfold; it felt monumental. In a bad way.

  It had all started at nine o’ clock yesterday morning. I had been at my desk to review evidence on a homicide case, a two-week chore.

  The station had been quieter than usual. It had made me suspicious. I knew silence was only good for one thing; it made a fantastic entrance for the first gunshot.

  My pessimism, as unpleasant as it seemed, had been confirmed; with the evidence underneath my dim lamp, the electricity had gone out. Not terrible. The morning sun had perfectly sufficed.

  But that hadn’t concerned me.

  Revolver in hand, I had gone downstairs, witnessed a squad leave out through the front door to check the power lines. I had followed them, only to find the wires had been deliberately cut. It had had the quality of sabotage, but came off as a lousy prank. I had checked my revolver twice, tossed enough cartridges for two reloads in my coat.

  A wave of seriousness had descended upon our faces. I had trailed them distantly.

  I had yanked out my Zippo to light a cigarette when it had all started. It had dropped out of my hand as I stiffly watched a wave of gunfire erupt from abandoned sidewalk stores on the other side of the station.

  A setup, flawlessly executed. The squad had been massacred within the minute.

  The city seemed to have had been in the mood for a fight that morning. Joined by an enthusiastic gaggle of detectives, they had rescued me pinned down by my car. Our foe had been equally a
rmed. We had assumed it was a spontaneous attack, a brash one at that, easily contained.

  Assumptions were the liars of the unknown.

  A nine o’ clock, it was a small skirmish between thirty people; by noon, dozens of mobsters rampaged through the entire city.

  I had spent half the day cut off, placed against a rough, plaster wall in a tight corner as my only defense. As I had waited for someone to punch my ticket out for me, lives had expired around me along with the seconds. Smoke black as night had swarmed above, covered Beverly in a mantle of darkness. Mobsters had roamed the streets like locust, possessed by an uncanny penchant for death. They shot up houses, businesses, butchered citizenry with reckless abandon unlike anything I had never seen. It was as if they hadn’t care about their own fate.

  Then the sirens had rumbled. A police dispatcher had boomed the uncontainable distress in their urgent voice.

  “All units, we are in code-red, emergency mode! Repeat, code-red! All off-duty policemen and volunteers are to report to the police station. This is no damn joke!”

  The whole event had had the vibe of Armageddon, a doomsday judgment where evil was permitted to roam the world unhindered.

  As I stared at the folder blankly, Hardy passed by him without a word. We exchanged friendly glances.

  Men like Hardy had not allowed that fear to overtake our courage. He had stood side-by-side with me as we had poured concentrated fire into the ruptured streets.

  Even so, the outcome had been unknown when I had gone to sleep that night inside of the station, a verifiable fortress of officers and snipers, with a wall sandbags that surrounded the southern part of Cabot Street. But the valor I had seen had put my mind to rest as I slumbered at my desk while the battle had continued into the night outside of my window.

  My nightmares relived it all.

  The next morning, I had gotten up to witness a remarkable sight. I had carefully opened my barred window to find order restored on the streets.

  Through a combination of luck, well-coordinated efforts, many brave lives lost, Marzio’s once powerful crime syndicate had been routed, most of his associates killed or captured.

  Which had brought me to that particular moment.

  While on the street, I had recognized one of the many bodies. A request for identification had produced a speedy reply. The folder in my hands held the answer.

  Commissioner Elroy had visited the station earlier, given a brief tour of the city with Chief Barker in tow. The intent was to shown signs of societal order restored. The electricity had been repaired, telephone lines restored.

  The mayor had declared the city to be under martial law, placed Commissioner Elroy in command of the city until the City Council could convene. In turn, he had hired two hundred extra hands to act as temporary officers.

  I returned my eyes to the folder, turned aside documents that were of no concern. I didn’t care who the man’s name was yet. I wanted to know if the picture matched with the face of the dead one we had in the morgue. I finally found the photograph, smiled pleasantly.

  All it took was one look. Yes, it was him. That’s all I needed.

  I closed the folder, called out to a former enemy.

  “Hardy!” Moore yelled out.

  Hardy came over to me, his pristine blue uniform now blood-stained and soiled. He sweated profusely, wiped it away with a cloth in his hand.

  He sweated profusely, wiped it away with a cloth in his hand.

  “Yeah, Moore?” he asked tiredly.

  “That guy I thought I recognized. I did. Walter Shoupe. He was one of ours.”

  Hardy looked puzzled. He took the folder from Moore, skimmed over it.

  “So?”

  “He was found among a pile of dead mobsters. And he wasn’t carryin’ a buzzer or wearin’ a uniform.”

  I put one of my hands to rest at my side.

  “He’s also the cop behind the Rantoul Street massacre.”

  “Ya ‘think.’”

  “My sources are usually right.”

  “Usually. What are ya suggestin’?”

  I flashed a clever grin. “I’d like to explore this a little bit more. Somethin’ don’t seem right about it.”

  Hardy shook his head with preoccupation, closed the folder.

  “Whatever it was for, it’ll have to wait. We got the city stable, but it’s not gonna be that way for long if we don’t get everything repaired soon and send some squads over to Shingleville.”

  He handed the folder back to me before he left. I went back to my desk on the third floor, fell down in my chair as I leaned on the desk with my elbows, felt a mix of emotions.

  It occurred to me that I shouldn’t be alive. People had been shot next to me, places where I had stood seconds earlier.

  Why them? Why not me? Why not both of us?

  Who cared? Was life fair? No. Why should death be different?

  I drank some tepid coffee, tapped my desk with my fingers. It wasn’t over. Nothing ended so quickly. It couldn’t.

  That unsettled feeling crept back into my stomach. It was my intuition. That hunch of mine.

  Hardy’s voice came from the stairway; the same old voice, different mentality.

  “I want ol’ Fredo Marzio strung up by his entrails, ya got me? This guy bumped off a lot of people. He thought this was the freakin’ Western Front during the Great War. It ain’t; it’s my town, our town, not his. I want three squads to pick him up; no curve, either. If he ain’t realized he made a brodie yet, he’s gonna find out pretty freakin’ quick, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said determinedly. “I’ll inform Nelson. He’ll bring him in nice and clean.”

  “Yeah, and don’t let him get ya with the fancy clothes business. He likes to be doggy when he’s seen in public. I want the man in rags, got me?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  I felt unsettled.

  It wasn’t the same collection of borderline thugs that it had been a year ago. Some changes had been made. New officers had found their way in, decent people.

  Marzio’s men hadn’t received the memo. They had been properly informed.

  Suddenly, there was a knock at my door.

  Sean Blood stood at the doorway; sawed-off shotgun in one hand, his Webley-Fosbery revolver in the other. He wore his “Vigilante” getup, long trench coat, dark trousers, fingerless gloves, hauntingly realistic mask. His clothes were drenched in blood.

  His eyes were weary, but energized. He looked at me quietly, but with conviction.

  The false face couldn’t hide the strain that had consumed him for the past forty-eight hours. It represented the collective ache of twenty-five thousand people.

  ***

  Sean stood his ground, even as Hardy argued with me over his presence.

  “I do not want him in here!” Hardy hissed.

  I tried to calm him down; I took him aside, whispered in his ear. “Listen, boss, we just got word from Gershwin. The Irish communities got hit bad. The priests are all out buryin’ the dead while the rabble rousers are packin’ iron and screamin’ for blood. They’re blamin’ it on the guineas, thinkin’ they helped Marzio in this. Gershwin’s tryin’ to maintain some order, but he’s got a handful of officers against a couple thousand irate micks.”

  Hardy shook his head, a big cigar in his hand. “Whadya want me to do, Moore? Appoint him captain?”

  “No, but he can talk to them. They trust him, boss. So do the Italians. He might be the only thing stoppin’ an armed band of micks burning up every spaghetti joint they find up ‘til Fainsod Street. If he tells ‘em to calm down, I think they will.”

  Hardy stared at me for a moment reflectively, then marched up to Sean as though he were a subordinate.

  It was a bluff.

  “Okay....whoever or whatever you want to be called, here’s the deal,” Hardy sputtered out. “We need ya to talk some sense to the micks. They are ready to start a war with the Italians if we don’t get them to cool off their tempers.
I don’t know where they got all the gats to do it with, but it seems like they’ve assembled a freakin’ army, sittin’ and waitin’ for the first shot to be fired. Ya wanna help us? Make sure that first shot doesn’t happen. Talk to ‘em, reason with ‘em, do whatever it takes, but we can’t have geniuses runnin’ their gums.”

  He put a finger on Sean’s chest.

  “And here’s the final part of the deal,” he said sternly. “Ya work for me. I’m the boss around here. This whole vigilantism ends right now. Ya under my command, ya take ya orders from me, and ya obey what I tell ya. If ya can’t do that, then consider yourself free to go wherever ya want. I’m not gonna waste my time tryin’ to keep ya on a leash like a dog.”

  Sean was expressionless, but extended his hand in accordance. I eyed it keenly.

  “Agreed.”

  He took Hardy’s hand, lightly shook it for a brief moment. Hardy shot a glimpse at me.

  “You’re his contact, alright? He has any questions, they get relayed to ya. I have a thousand things hittin’ me right now, includin’ Marzio. Elroy and Barker want me to meet with them at City Hall in an hour; what’s left of it.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” I replied with a wink. “I’ll give ya an update in an hour on the situation.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sean kept an awkward distance from me. The young man covered his face, hid it with the large collars of his coat.

  Though I knew his two friends were alive, I could tell he had still lost some good people; there was always a telltale sign of grief. It couldn’t be concealed by even the most deceptive persons. I wanted to say something appropriate, but had no suitable way to offer condolences. Commiseration was a lost cause. Everybody knew someone who had died. What good did pity do we the living?

  “Ya gave them the weapons, didn’t ya?” I asked Sean.

  The answer was too fast. It was a proud deed.

  “Yes, I did.”

  Another awkward pause. Sean wouldn’t discuss it; his revelation of the hidden cache of arms in the old Gilbertson’s warehouse had produced a mixed bag of results. The munitions had definitely saved lives. Civilians had been able to quell the violence in their neighborhoods without a solid police presence. But the repercussions could prove fatal. That same decision could cost innocent lives.