by P. J. Lozito
“Doc Wylie? A character on the news stands? Chris, you’ve really flipped,” Allred looked up from the drawer and sprang from his chair. Here’s my way out, he thought. The bird with goods on me is out of his tree.
“Brent, there’s a real Doc Wylie. He wasn’t just dreamt up by a committee of editors. You can use the warehouse he keeps his planes in for a headquarters. He has his own cab company to cart you around in. He’ll even lend a hand. Isn’t the man of miracles like his pulp makes him out to be, but he’s a top-notch scientist. Got stuff even the Germans wouldn’t believe. Roosevelt’s a big fan of his mag.”
Allred looked incredulous. He was still not pulling up stakes and moving.
Corrigan took a breath and continued, “Silver Manticore had a life in magazines, too. Didn’t you know?”
“Well, no,” admitted Allred slowly, brow wrinkling, “really?”
Why hadn’t Bob told him that? He’d ask.
“Sure, look,” he pulled a ragged publication from out of his brown briefcase. “Careful, that’s over sixty years old. Found it in a bookshop down on La Brea in L.A., by Pink’s. Not many survived. Nobody saved ‘em.”
Allred flipped through the brittle, flaking pages, “I remember. You thought popular stuff was a better indicator of what goes on than news. I wasn’t much interested in the news biz back when we worked together.”
“Despite your father’s insistence this’d all be yours someday?” shrugged Corrigan.
“Before Bob showed up with that mask, I was so bored...” He trailed off, realizing he had just admitted something he hadn’t meant to. Allred had been hoping to avoid that. Corrigan is slick, he thought, lulling me into a sense of privilege. Being distracted by that ancient show-and-tell dime novel didn’t help, either. He hands me a boomerang and asks if I throw. Oh, well, in for a penny, in for a pound.
“I haven’t come across any other ex-operatives of ours liquidating the bad guys,” began the lawman, “in a mask.”
“When the Luciferro incident was all over, I got a call,” Allred closed the dime novel with a sigh, “from the morgue.”
“Where they keep stiffs cold?”
“Examiner’s morgue, it’s where we hold back issues. One of the people who helped break up the gang was down there with shutterbug ‘Speed’ Martin.”
“He goes back to your G-9 days.”
“Yeah, Speed and my cousin Bob were looking up everything we had on Luciferro. Bob hadn’t wanted to see me. He knew I had inherited the Examiner and assumed I’d take my dad’s side in the falling out he had with Governor Wynn.”
“Oh?”
“It was over the mask. Tom Wynn was Uncle John’s best friend in the old days. Raised Bob like one of his own when Uncle John went missing.”
“Must’ve made your father pretty mad, huh?” prompted Corrigan.
“Yes, of course. Gov. Wynn had a low regard for dad’s type of yellow journalism. But my cousin and I hit it off. Anyway, Bob told me everything. Like how my uncle cleaned up the Old West as the Silver Manticore, how Gov. Wynn had given Bob the mask, how it saved his life.”
“Snakeskin mask saved his life?”
“It was bunched up in Bob’s jacket pocket when Luciferro shot him with a high-faluting dart gun. Guess you know what happened to that?”
“Shoots glass bullets full of sleep gas now,” nodded Corrigan.
“Bako reworked it. His old training makes him a whiz at that kind of thing.”
“I guess there were plenty of glass phials in Luciferro’s lab you could use for bullets,” surmised Corrigan.
“Yup, we took plenty. As the Manticore, I even distributed untraceable loot stashed there to the poor.”
“Giving Silver Manticore that Robin Hood rep,” commented Corrigan.
“I need eyes and ears everywhere. Greased palms help. Anyway, we all ended up researching Luciferro together,” continued Allred. “The more I found out, the more I became convinced he was financed by Hanoi Tsin.”
“Your other friend from Shanghai,” Corrigan breathed softly.
“It was the last straw. Dad was right.”
“You had to finish Hanoi Tsin, here and now?”
“Hanoi Tsin heads a Cabal of Seven. I meant to stop him, kill him if necessary. Before the rest came calling, that is.”
“But without jeopardizing your new life?”
“Yes, so I had to go hooded. Bob in that mask made us realize we could the same thing Uncle John did.”
“Us?”
“My father, me, those old Army Air Corp buddies,” explained Allred. “Dad wore the mask for a few years in the 1890s.”
“Unofficially fighting lawlessness,” surmised Corrigan. “I can understand that in the Old West but what makes a crusading newspaperman do something like that now?”
“Many years ago, dad showed me a picture, an old illustration. Men in horrible devil masks had broken into some evildoer’s home.”
“And were beating him with sticks? I’ve seen it,” affirmed Corrigan.
“That’s us right there. Chris, the criminal justice system in this country stinks. Prison is finishing school for saps unlucky enough to get caught. They come out as better crooks. We’ll scare ‘em out of business or eliminate ‘em once and for all.”
“Brent, you’re talking organized vigilantism. Mob rule. It’s against everything this country stands for.”
“Then why do you want anything to do with us?” demanded Allred.
“You’re no ordinary man. The government gave you the best possible training in assassination. We need you. But bringing local crooks to justice is what the paper is for, what the cops are for.”
“It isn’t enough. Ever since the Volstead Act, they’ve been gaining power, influence.”
“Prohibition did make a lot of crooks wealthy, I grant you that,” Corrigan conceded.
“Why, I saw slick crooks getting off on technicalities every day in my own paper. My father convinced me to use my old training to organize our secret operation. So an old folk legend is back to wipe out crime, even if the criminals think he’s just a rival crook.”
“All of the pieces were right in front of you. Is that it?”
“Right. Bob continued his clandestine work; we had the gas gun, a supply of the stuff, and Louise’s father whipped up more as needed.”
Corrigan’s nod indicated Miss Scott outside, “So she’s in?”
“She’s in.”
“How? After all, a dame…”
“Bob rescued the lady from a tight spot with Luciferro. He also recruited a cabbie named Evan White. Another old war buddy named Burberry is communications minister.”
“Trust them? Not to sing, I mean.”
“They’re completely loyal and I need them all. Miss Scott even sewed a beak cover that White rigged up into the snakeskin. If I’m going to go hooded I might as well conceal a gas mask there. Speed got his race car engine into one of Luciferro’s bulletproof cars...”
“Wait a while,” the fed swiped air. “Why’s a cabbie rigging up gas masks?”
“Unemployed metal smith. Can’t get work in his profession because he’s colored. Still proud of what this country stands for?”
Corrigan merely shrugged; his job was to fight espionage, not bigotry. “The Corrigans came here as indentured servants, Brent, long after White’s people. How come the coloreds talk right?”
“If you knew any colored people, Chris, not just ones in the movies, you’d know they talk properly.”
Corrigan sidestepped it. “So Bob started out wearing the cloth over his face?”
“Yes, he was going to quit until I convinced him to carry on. But down in Mexico he got unmasked,” explained Allred.
“So you faked his death. Now the Silver Manticore can’t possibly be Bob Wynn. But Wynn pretends to be you, when you’re out wearing the mask,” Corrigan recited.
“I’m only temporary. With dad retiring to Texas, I’m calling the shots. Bob’ll soon be back under the ho
od.”
“But I still don’t understand what motivated you to do this,” pleaded Corrigan. “You’ll have to explain it better.”
“My mother died when I was quite young,” Allred sighed.
“Yes, that’s in your file.”
“Hell with your damn files. Ever hear of the Black Arrow Syndicate?”
“Black Arrow Syndicate? They tried to take over some Western Territories in, uh, what? The 1890s,” Corrigan looked puzzled. “Oh, the same time your father was in the mask…”
“One of them recognized my mother as someone who helped the Manticore.”
Corrigan put it together, “I’m sorry, Brent.”
“Your files don’t tell everything,” Allred returned to the dime novel, skimming in the manner of a practiced editor, “‘My Story. By the Silver Manticore, as Told to Ned Buntline. First of Two Exciting Parts.’” Hmm. ‘Buntline,’ now why’s that familiar?” Allred looked up, puzzled.
“Made Buffalo Bill Cody a household name,” stated Corrigan.
“And what took you to L.A.?” asked Allred reading.
“Mr. and Mrs. Richard Ingalese,” said Corrigan. “Rumor has it that they were experimenting with some kind of ‘oil of life.’ Get this: they were old, but didn’t look it. Now, they’re dead and sure look it.”
Again L.A., eh? Allred made a mental note to have Burberry call that Pevsner guy and maybe Evan White’s friend in the colored section, Rollins.
“Brent, from now on you’ll be answering to me and you’ll be the Silver Manticore full time, not Bob,” declared Corrigan, shaking up Allred from his planning.
“You certainly put me in a position, Chris,” Allred admitted. “If I don’t go along with you, what, then?”
“Why, then, I’ll have to arrest you,” Corrigan said, holding up handcuffs.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHANGHAI
It was more than twenty-five years ago, purple kimono clad Bako recalled, that he had met Brent Allred. The small, delicate Japanese with the narrow, dark eyes and hair parted Prussian style was preparing his kaiseki. He occupied an apartment surreptitiously maintained across the hall from the man he always addressed as Mr. Brent. The master and servant charade was performed only around outsiders. And Bako had his own life, separate from Mr. Brent’s.
One flight down Mr. Brent’s spiral staircase lead to a door. This faced the front door Bako’s own modest, secret apartment. The smells of tradition Japanese cooking now filled it. A touch of sake --“water from heaven”-- might be just the thing today. There had been so much pain the night he had met Mr. Brent; pain Bako had hoped to forget.
His quarters were festooned with ukiyu-e, Japanese art, some shoji screens and thirty one-syllable waka. Here the pair kept their weapons and night work clothes. Indeed, an enormous fusama painting slid back to conceal them from all but the most thorough search.
And here Bako stored his mori, his supply of gemaichi and matcha teas, and his tea service. He was not complete without his tea towel, tea funnel, tea boat, tea tray, and dregs spoon, now eyeing the accessories for serving the beverage. Bako mused, was it not said that if a man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty? The Japanese variety was more fragile than its Chinese counterpart. Simply steep in water that is between one hundred seventy to one hundred seventy-five degrees for one and a half minutes, and you can use the leaves again.
Here, too, he stored soy sauce that Mr. Mike Axelrod humorously referred to as “bug juice” when he had stayed with them.
It was in this work shop that Bako had made certain adjustments to the poison-needle gun taken from Luciferro. Now it fired glass ampoules of the efficient anesthetic gas Hanoi Tsin himself had developed. The place was ideal for Bako and Mr. Brent to practice their Zen meditation. This Spartan room was also their dojo, where they practiced ninjitsu. Here also, Bako coached Mr. Brent on bushido and worked to develop his zanshin, the ability to sense danger.
Bako’s supposed room in the Allred residence was really their secret entrance, through the wall, to the garden apartment’s garage where the Pegasus waited. Bako had wanted to build an underground car park quite like the one in the Union Square neighborhood, but Mr. Brent had come up with a simpler idea involving Bakelite and an automobile mold.
Bako possessed documentation claiming he was Filipino. Should the police ever burst in here with a search warrant, Bako was quite prepared with the story that he had been merely raised in Japan and, thus, loved that culture. But he had still been avoiding the Nihonmachi district, as he had for years, and would continue to in the future. Last night, on the way in, Mr. Brent had warned him all of that it might not convince a bulldog like Chris Corrigan.
That comment last night had stirred up the old and forgotten. Bako fingered his bamboo shakuhachi in a rare agitated state. Ah, such pain he had endured that night. Mr. Kyoto, as Bako was then known, was willing to die in the service of his emperor. That could very well happen in the Japanese Secret Police, but he would rather have lived. The story replayed in Bako’s mind like a Victrola set on automatic with a stack of “blues” 78s of Floyd Dixon he borrowed from Mr. Evan.
Bako could still remember the scents and sights of “the Paris of the East,” Yu Garden, the oddly named “Rue Frelupt,” the cable cars of Nanjing Road, the area once known as the French Concession, that house with the Italianate fountain along Avenue King Edward VII. He couldn’t help but remember that night in Shanghai in 1916, back before gray crept into his jet-black hair…
Word had reached the Japanese Secret Police that a ship bearing property of Dr. Hanoi Tsin was arriving in Shanghai. It held some fabulous weapon Russians were coming to buy. She sought to avenge herself on Japan for a humiliating defeat some dozen years earlier. Hanoi Tsin was just the one to provide Russia with a weapon for that purpose. Japan was not about to let that happen.
A highly-placed, detained member of Japan’s Black Dragon Gang had come through with the information in exchange for leniency on another, unrelated charge. Black Dragon was a Japanese offshoot of the Fi-San, Hanoi Tsin’s criminal organization. Mr. Kyoto and the Secret Police had no reason to doubt its veracity. The Fi-San did not know Mr. Kyoto. He could freely roam the bicycle-dominated city of Shanghai. A handpicked team of assistants, under the pretext of being rootless Japanese expatriates, assisted him. None would take note of them in this city overrun with Russians, French, Belgians, Italians, Australians and Americans.
Walking among the Russians would the wanted American killer and mercenary Alexander Kentov. Too bad, Mr. Kyoto had thought. Mostly, he liked Americans. But Kentov would make a good prize along with this supposed “super weapon,” the grandly named Darkness of Doom. Could it really interfere with the function of mechanical devices? Nonsense, indeed.
Play my cards right, as the Americans say and I can wrap this up very nicely, very nicely, had been Mr. Kyoto’s thought. He expected that Kentov would be frequenting jazz venues, if he remembered the police file correctly.
The team had fanned out in the shipping district, where every building was damp. Sought was an unguarded ship, for Hanoi Tsin had no need of sentries here. A likely vessel was located on the city’s docks and Mr. Kyoto’s seppuku dictated he be the one to go aboard. Dressed in Chinese clothing, he approached. A chilling wind blew in from the river. Suddenly, a Han Chinese challenged Kyoto from the shadows. Even in the dock’s fog he could clearly see the man’s deadly looking knife, artlessly concealed by his side.
“Son of Nippon,” he hissed in Mandarin, “Why do you approach this humble junk? And dressed as a peasant. You seek to mock us?”
“Fool,” Mr. Kyoto exclaimed in the same language. His command was more than serviceable. “Does the fog blind you to this?”
He held up his left hand, tattooed with a stylized pitchfork symbol of a Black Dragon enforcer. It was carefully copied from the yakuza in custody. Mr. Kyoto hoped to wash off the vile thing soon. “Hanoi Tsin sends me to inspect your work.”
<
br /> “I heard he was in England, finishing off Enemy Number One.”
So, confirmation and a hidden guard for this cargo. Mr. Kyoto realized that it is even more important than he could have imagined.
“Do not believe all you hear, dragon. My report will be satisfactory, but you should not have accosted me.”
“Why?”
For an answer the Chinese got a face full of that same tattooed hand. Stunned, the Chinese had no defense against his very own knife slitting his throat. Mr. Kyoto could kill without blinking. He deftly tossed the corpse into the frigid Huangpu River.
A search of the ship revealed an unknown device covered by tarpaulin. With the Russians rumored to be close, Kyoto knew he would have to sacrifice this wondrous weapon. Better that than allowing it to fall into the hands of his nation’s enemy. A bomb of picric acid hidden in a cigar cylinder would be enough to sink this hulk. He worked carefully and made good his escape.
Mr. Kyoto headed to the busy part of the city; he scanned about for the Maxwell motorcar his people had hired. He longed to return to his homeland, to comforting Japanese food, customs, and language. Hurrying but not running, Mr. Kyoto heard the report of the explosion. He did not turn to gloat over his handiwork.
The last thing he remembered was feeling a sharp prick at his neck. Was it shrapnel? No, no shrapnel feels like a fukidake dart. The hard, damp ground rushed up to embrace him. He knew that this was the last breath he would ever take. The Mauser he drew from a chamois holster fell from his grasp, unfired.
Mr. Kyoto couldn’t have been more surprised when he came to his senses and found himself alive. He was gagged and secured on an old bed, in only his ruined white pants. “Wire jacket,” that was the name of the device that held him, he was sure. Despite the rundown surroundings, the place was clean. Chinese herbs and spices told him someone was cooking. Kyoto heard the sounds of activity far in the background.
“Ah, we were going to start while you yet slumbered,” came Chinese-accented Japanese. “How amusing that would have been.”