“Boss?” said the messenger. Boss Murphy stared at him blankly across the surface of the desk. This was hard enough news to deliver, without the boss already looking like he'd seen a ghost, and definitely without that creepy bald guy standing in the background. “Boss, can you hear me?”
All Murphy could do was stare at the man's moving lips and try to think through the buzzing of a hundred thousand bees in his ears. Then Murphy heard the voice of God command him.
“You can hear him,” Curly said softly.
“What!?” Murphy demanded. “Why are you here? Why are we wasting time?” He knew that God's time was valuable, and it was not to be squandered. God would not have let him hear this man unless there was something important to be heard. Curly smiled a truly, horribly ugly smile to himself.
“Boss, um, I don't know how to say this...”
“Speak up! Tell me!” Murphy bellowed.
“Well, that big casino operation? The really big one that owned a piece of with some of the other syndicates? It got hit.” The words lodged in Murphy's brain with little significance or meaning. He began to worry that it was he who was wasting God's precious gift of hearing; him, and not the messenger.
“God forgive me!” Murphy cried to the heavens, shaking his fists skyward. Everyone in the office shifted uncomfortably, except Curly. Curly oozed.
“Hit by whom?” Curly asked, straining to speak clearly through his harelip. Everyone around Murphy had become even more uncomfortable about the ex-carny's position and influence. He appeared to have become Murphy's right-hand man overnight, in spite of the trouble with the bank job to which he'd been a party. He also seemed to speak for Murphy quite a lot of the time, and Murphy barely understood what was going on.
“Well, sir,” the messenger said awkwardly, still trying to address his remarks to Murphy, “a vigilante, we think. Somebody independent.”
“The vigilantes are all in Heaven now!” Murphy proclaimed. “As we all will be one day!” The buzzing was starting to come back and he feared that God was angry with him.
“Well, yes, um, sir a lot of them are dead.” He paused momentously. “Especially the Biathlete, as we are all well aware. But he was a postwar guy. A lot of the old ones died in the war, or moved on or just up an' quit. But we knew The Reaper was still around somehere. We just hadn't heard from 'im in years.” Curly touched Murphy's ear, then his eye, then the back of his head. The stocky, ruddy-faced Irish crime boss went glassy eyed and sat down slowly in his desk chair, which Curly then rolled over into the corner of the room. Curly placed his hands on the desk blotter possessively and met the eyes of the messenger.
“Who or what is `The Reaper'?” Curly's eyes flickered. He felt them start to roll back in his head, but he forced himself to stay in the moment. There would be time enough for trances and invisible worlds of writhing beauty later. He would have to make the time for several prolonged, controlled trances; it was the only way.
“A local guy, showed up around `31, `32 I guess. After the Superstition in New York and the White Blade in Chicago, but before all the other guys. Archway had a couple others too, after him but some folks say they was just The Reaper all over again, with a different name.”
“Tell me all you know of him,” Curly insisted in a low tone, still fighting the encroachments of the other world.
“Not much, I guess,” the messenger said, scratching his head. “Dresses in a black coat and hood, wears a white skull mask. He seems to have magic powers or somethin', some way he can put a whammy on yer mind and you don't know what happened. Plus, he's killed a lotta' guys. I mean, he started out pretty tough, shot up some of our businesses, killed a buncha' pimps for some reason... then he went after the Chinee gangs and tore through them somethin' fierce! I mean, not a Chink left standin' when he was done! He blew up two opium warehouses and sank a whole wharf with dynamite charges. Cops hadda' jacket ready for `im for a while, after he whacked two badges that was on our payroll. Shit, he even killed a priest once an' claimed the man was a pederast who worshipped devils or some crazy batshit story. Who knows? Then, after Pearl Harbor he ups and takes off. Not too many headlines about `im, not like the flying guys and the cape guys with ray guns and such, but I guess his body count over there just kept climbin'.”
“And he has now returned to America to smash our casino? Is that it? I thought these sort of men were all taken care of,” Curly said, spitting on the blotter as he became irritated.
“It's like I said, he just showed up out of nowhere. No rhyme or reason, he just busts in and kills a couple dozen triggermen, a few customers, and grabs some guy named Zauberer and leaves.”
“Zauberer? Who is this?”
“Important guy. Rich important guy. Businesses, politics, you name it. Prob'ly the richest guy in Archway,” the messenger replied. “Nobody knows what this Reaper wants with `im. The Reaper used ta' do stuff like this alla' time.”
“Well, whoever he has abducted is no concern of mine. I wish to know more of this man, this 'Reaper.' Find him.” The messenger started to protest the very obvious fact that finding a man who had slaughtered so many so quickly may not be wise. “FIND HIM!!” Curly retorted. “I want him before me, groveling for his life! I want to see this monster in human flesh that makes your organization tremble after one night's violence!”
No comments:
Post a Comment