Before Elroy could say his name, Seth Moore introduced himself openly.
“Surprised to hear from me!”
“Quite. You’re somewhat tenacious.”
“Tenacious? I’ve been called a lot of things, but tenacious is a new one for me. I figured ya use ‘tedious’ instead. Or ‘tetchy.’ See? I ain’t so dumb.”
“I take it you know where Barker is.”
“Well, last time I saw him, he was steppin’ on the express train to the world hereafter, first class. Hardy punched his ticket for him, in case ya was wonderin’.”
Elroy’s eyebrows slanted as he gripped the phone tightly. “You’re a fool! You’ve admitted to me personally that you and Captain Hardy are responsible for the—”
“Yawn. Borin’. I just called to tell ya somethin’, Elroy. I’ve got a warrant for ya arrest. I’m bringin’ ya in for the murder of God only knows how many people in this freakin’ city. Ya gonna hit the electric chair so fast the impact’s gonna kill ya before the sparks do.”
“Under what authority do you think you can arrest me?”
“The DA. I showed him all those files Barker tried to destroy. And even if I didn’t have him on my side, I’d still be comin’ for ya. I’m done playin’ this game. The game’s over. Legally or not, I’m bringin’ ya down today. Your plan dies with ya.”
“You would kill a fellow police officer, your superior?”
“Ya ain’t a cop. Ya a mobster, just like Marzio. I read the files. Ya did business with him, pocketed big dough from his operations. Then when ya realized ya could get more runnin’ things on ya own, ya planned to bump him off, destroy his organization while puttin’ ya own boys in their place. It’s a lot harder to fight against those who are supposed to uphold the law, ain’t it?”
Elroy leapt up from his chair. His arm quivered as he held the phone to his mouth. His demeanor changed so rapidly that it drew the notice of people other rooms. There, the light formed a thin, frail silhouette of him.
“You are to surrender yourself, along with Hardy, to my custody,” Elroy commanded in as authoritative a tone as he could employ. “If you do not, I will have no choice but to order a shoot to kill policy under the rules of conduct per martial law. Since you are not wearing a uniform, my men are free to shoot you if they suspect you to be a mobster.”
Moore’s laugh was so loud that Noble could hear it from the other side of the room.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it. We can talk when we get there. If I was ya, I’d give up. But to be honest, I hope ya don’t. Scum like ya and ya brunos don’t deserve to live. And I’ll rot before I see ya spend the rest of ya life in the slammer paid for by the people whose families ya butchered. See ya in hell!”
Elroy slammed down the phone. Unable to control his temper, he took out his anger at Noble as he yelled at him. “I want that son of a bitch found! Tell all officers they are to arrest Detective Seth Moore on sight. If he resists, shoot him!”
“I’m not a policeman,” Noble said diffidently.
Sputtering a series of curses, Elroy flung open the door to his office, screaming at a lieutenant who happened to be walking by. “Get an arrest warrant out for Seth Moore! He’s lead detective in homicide. He is to be considered armed and dangerous. Do you get that? Armed and dangerous!”
Startled, the lieutenant nodded as he ran off to issue the message on the phone. Elroy walked back into his office, his features tense and his eyes strained. “We cannot let this man ruin the press conference. He has been a thorn in my side for too long. I can’t believe Hardy is working with him. Hardy! He used to work for Costa. He was one of his biggest allies!”
“The Vigilante was my friend once, too,” Noble said.
“You are the Vigilante now.”
The building shook as a tremendous roar of a hundred voices and scores of gunshots blasted into air, drowning out the sound of the rain. The window behind Elroy shattered into pieces as bullets zipped through it. Elroy ducked down, as did Noble. They remained on the floor with their hands over their heads until the shooting had turned elsewhere. Screams of panic swept through the rest of the floor as officers ran for their weapons.
Baffled, Elroy cautiously approached the empty sill as raindrops swept onto their faces. Noble crept up next to him as they both peered down.
On the wet streets below, an enormous mob had formed behind a barricade of vehicles around Cabot and Thorndike Street. Like a swarm of insects, they fired rifles, pistols and submachine guns at the hired gunmen outside the station. They seemed to shoot out of the ground like weeds as they appeared out of foliage and the thick debris. Many were bold enough to stand in the middle of the road and fire. Every single one of their faces bore a fatalistic expression.
“What is this?” Elroy asked. “Why are they doing this?”
As to answer his question, a distinct figure emerged from one of the alleys. It was impossible to mistake them for anyone other than the Vigilante as he marched openly up to the front of the barricade. His countenance, as appalling as it appeared, beamed like that of an angelic creature carrying out a sacred task. A triumphant roared swept across the environs and rose up like a voice crying out from beneath the ground.
“Impossible,” Elroy whispered. “You killed him.”
Strangely, Noble did not appear disappointed. In fact, the sight of his mortal enemy seemed to bring him the sort of joy only a brother or dear friend could. With animal-like curiosity, he tilted his head as he examined the Vigilante’s staggered gait.
“He’s dying,” Noble declared with a keen gaze.
The Vigilante’s eyes turned up towards them, he held his hands out defiantly, his infamous revolver in his hand.
Noble’s eyes glistened eagerly, while Elroy shook his head.
“The fools!” he cried. “I’ll order the Sheriff and his deputies to organize a posse and come to our aid! They will be shot down like rabbits!”
“He doesn’t care,” Noble said. “He wants to die. But he wants to kill us first.”
“Well, kill him! And make sure he’s dead this time! Do whatever it takes. Once the shepherd is slain, the sheep will scatter.”
The newly bestowed power intoxicated Noble. His breathing hastened as he walked out of Elroy’s office, crazed look apparent. As he rallied the officers on the floor to join him, he spoke quietly under his breath.
“Yes, brother. I’m going to avenge you. I’m going. He won’t bother us any longer. Today, it ends.”
Having amassed a large force, Noble led them down to the first floor. They all seemed apprehensive as they loaded their weapons. His presence, however, encouraged them. Before, they had kept their distance, intimidated by his grotesque appearance and peculiar demeanor. Now, his liability had become indispensable. They needed him.
Noble smiled broadly. In a scene of death, he couldn’t have been happier.
***
“What the hell is happenin’?” I asked over the radio as I saw smoke rise from the southern part of the city.
“He’s goin’ —— nuts, I tell ya! Nuts! He’s got a freakin’ army with him. It’s a damn battle over at police headquarters!”
“Who?”
“The Vigilante! He isn’t human, I tell ya! They’re hittin’ him, but he ain’t goin’ down!”
I looked over at Hardy, who sat in the driver’s seat as we drove towards the smoke. Both of us shared somber frowns.
It had come to this finally. I had done what I could have to stop it. But it had come.
“What do ya want us to do?” the officer asked. “Do we engage or stand down?”
I tacitly asked Hardy with a reserved gaze, a raised eyebrow.
“Well? It’s ya call.”
Still reserved, Hardy gestured dismissively. Good enough for me.
I spoke into the radio with a large grin. “Stand down, ya here? None of our boys is to interfere. If the civilians asks, tell ‘em ya with me and we ain’t got nothin’ to do with this.”
“I
’ll try.”
“Keep us updated.”
I threw down the radio, rubbed my right temple as I furiously smoked a cigarette. This was bad. Elroy had been given the perfect excuse to grant himself further authority in the crisis. With the Vigilante’s attack, he could even call in the National Guard, outside help. The mayor would go along with whatever he said.
Marzio’s files that incriminated Elroy had been locked in a safe. When the proper time came, they would be brought out, expose Elroy for what he was.
The last thing we needed was some disaster to make even more of a hero out of him.
I couldn’t take my eyes away from the pillar of smoke that rose like a dark, imperious skyscraper. It seemed to join connected with the clouds in the sky like a tornado.
***
The Vigilante fired the last round from his revolver, killing yet another officer in the midst of shooting him. The officer joined a number of his comrades in pile at the Vigilante’s feet inside the foyer. Amidst the moans and wailing, he struggled to reload his weapon from the last shells in his pocket. His hands slipped from the rain as he attempted to grab the bullets.
Blood mixed with sweat drenched his clothes, dripping down his leg from a wound he had sustained while entering the police station. He also had several wounds on his chest and arm. A line of blood ran from the top of his head down to his wet chin. The injuries slowed his movements, but they did not stop him. In spite of the gravity of his condition, his countenance seemed unaltered. There was a resolute, determined grit in his expression as he held back the pain.
The police headquarters’ foyer resembled a slaughterhouse. Once the militia had managed to penetrate the outer defenses, they had stormed inside, killing indiscriminately. They showed no mercy as they gunned down officers behind their desks or pled for mercy with small white handkerchiefs.
On the right, an older Italian man blasted away at the wall with his shotgun as he provided suppressing fire for several Irishmen, who moved underneath his protection.
His revolver reloaded, the Vigilante took aim, firing down the hallway ahead of him. Two of Elroy’s men dropped down, thrashed about like fish on dry ground before a grenade silenced them.
On the Vigilante’s left stood the aged bard, Wolfe Grattan, editor for McKinney’s Press. With a keen eye, he picked off men with his German Mauser C96.
Above the thunderous din resulting from a hundred weapons discharged at once, the Vigilante heard a voice call out to him.
“This is it! It’s finally come! I’m coming!”
Around the corner to the hallway, Ross Noble appeared. His entry into the fighting renewed fortitude of the officers beside him and confounded the Irishmen and Italians opposing him, as he looked precisely like the Vigilante.
With his bushy white eyebrows, Grattan peered at Noble, then at the Vigilante.
The thirst for blood, guilty or innocent, glimmered across Noble’s face as yelled above the gunfire.
“He’s with me! My brother’s here! He’s here with me! You can’t stop me!”
Noble then waved his hands around to signify he held no weapon. No knife. No revolver. Just his hands.
“Fight me!” he cried. “Fight me!”
The Vigilante placed Noble between his sights, but held his fire. Other men aimed at Noble as well, but they too refused to pull the trigger. It was for different reasons, though. They couldn’t kill a man who looked so similar to the Vigilante.
Noble seemed to be all the more heartened by what he perceived as weakness.
“Don’t be a coward! Put down the gun and fight me like a man!”
The Vigilante said nothing.
“I can’t believe it was you!” Noble scoffed. “The whole time I had the Vigilante within my grasp, and I let you go!”
The Vigilante looked down his himself. His stationary pose was too much for one of the policemen. He pumped his shotgun as he prepared to shoot; Noble intercepted him with a chop of his hand, pulled out a knife, slicing his throat and chest. He then glared at the other officers who had seen it, tacitly warning them not to touch the Vigilante.
“He’s mine!” Noble said. “I will kill him!”
The Vigilante told men next to him to do the same. They nodded approvingly as they moved away, providing the two with some private space.
With nothing left between him and the Vigilante, Noble charged, slashing his knife through the air as he dove forward. He stabbed at the Vigilante’s neck, missed by an inch as the Vigilante sidestepped him. As Noble moved past him, the Vigilante struck him hard with a blow from the side, disorienting him. Noble recovered instantly, however. His demonic grin suggested that the pain he received made him stronger, not weaker.
“It’s finally come,” he said, looking back at the Vigilante. “I’m doing what should have been done the first time I saw you.”
He drew close to the Vigilante, a permanent smile on his face. The Vigilante held his hands up like boxer. His calmness, and the difference in his fighting stance, seemed to puzzle Noble.
“Come to terms with your impending death?” Noble asked mockingly.
“Aye,” the Vigilante said quietly.
“Good.”
Noble stretched his hands out widely. “My brother is with me now. He’s here, acting on behalf. He’s guiding me, aiding me, strengthening me. He speaks to me. I can hear his voice. What chance do you think you have against me?”
The Vigilante didn’t reply. He stood still in his readied stance, as if unaffected by Noble’s remarks.
Noble screamed wildly, slashing at him again with his knife. This time he aimed for his arm. The Vigilante blocked it with his elbow, then threw a haymaker into Noble’s chin. The powerful blow knocked him backwards.
Noble paused, wiped away a small amount of trickling blood from his jaw. Shrieking, he attacked again. He kicked high at the Vigilante’s head, then spun around to avoid a potential blow to his side. As he turned, he ducked down and thrust his knife out at the Vigilante. This time the blade sunk into the Vigilante’s flesh; he winced as he knocked the knife away, reeling against a wall as blood soaked his hand.
Noble held the reddened blade up to his face. With the electricity cut in the building, darkness permeated the foyer, aside from the few rays of light that managed to penetrate through the windows. None of those rays touched Noble, leaving him in the shadows. Yet his resplendent eyes, and the unquenchable hunger displayed in them, were visible as he laughed.
“This is it!” he proclaimed, lifting the knife up into the air. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see what this is? It will be the last thing you will ever see!”
The Vigilante looked down at his side as more blood flowed out.
“You are nothing without your mask!” Noble declared. He paced in front of the Vigilante like a lion preparing to pounce on its wounded victim. “That’s all you ever were, an imposter with a mask.” He grabbed the burned skin on his face, running his fingers through the deep lines.
“See my face? I am the Vigilante. There is no mask, no masquerading. It is authentic. It is genuine. It is real. You are the fraud! You are the imposter!”
The Vigilante looked at him with a strange glimmer in his eyes, studying him with a slight tilt to his head. Then, he raised his fists up, assuming a fighting position.
A self-confident smile appeared.
***
I glared out through the front of the police car as Hardy drove them towards the police station. I held a shotgun in my hand, shoved shells into it as I looked behind us at the line of police vehicles full of good cops that stretched down both lanes. Any cars that approached us quickly got out of the way.
In total, an entire squad had sided with us. After they had heard my account, none of them had had had any reservations about what I proposed to do. It had been a critical victory.
On my right arm was a black band. Hardy had one, too, as did the other two officers in the back. Every officer had been issued one. It was the only way for us to
tell the good from the bad.
“How much longer?” one of the officers asked.
“Ten minutes,” Hardy said. “If we don’t get into trouble.”
Up at the intersection, a police car appeared as it turned the corner. It was followed by three others, all with their sirens on.
I tried to get them on the radio. No response.
Not a good sign.
“Drive up next to them,” I said.
Hardy brought us up alongside one of the cars; I flashed my badge, looked at them carefully.
“Where ya think ya goin’?” I asked through an open side window.
“Haven’t you heard?” the policeman driving the car replied. “The station is being attacked by a mob! They need every man they can get!”
“Sorry, but Elroy’s the perp.”
The policeman instantly recognized me; the expression on his face indicated that he was in on Elroy’s scheme. He hadn’t been duped.
The policeman went for his revolver. He was too slow, looked down for too long. The combined firepower from our car obliterated his vehicle, sent it off into the sidewalk. It crashed up into the front of a building.
The other police cars ahead of us saw what had happened. They stopped, swerved so they formed a protective line. As Hardy put some weight on the brakes, the officers loyal to Elroy poured out of the side doors. Submachine guns in hand, they poured a thick cloud of lead over us.
Hardy swore, jerked the wheel to steer us away from the gunshots. We slammed against the corner of a brick building. Smoke seeped out from the hood.
I recovered first; I checked the officers in the back, confirmed they had been uninjured. I then kicked the door opened, eased out as I surveyed the state of mayhem on the street.
It was supposed to have been a pitched battle, with clear lines drawn between the two forces. Instead, it speedily descended into a medieval battlefield. Our boys charged across the open road like Viking berserkers; all the rage they had stored up had been finally unleashed.
Elroy’s pawns attempted to reload their guns. Before they could, however, we were on top of them; the fight switched to close quarters as we smashed up against them like two ocean waves. Rifles were thrust like spears, pistol brandished as clubs. No mercy was asked by either side nor given.
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