The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Calcified Costumer, Part 2 of 6

Mickey Malloy keeps digging to get to the bottom of a perplexing death in a D.C. hotel, but as always, he might have gotten in over his head.

Months earlier, on a trip to Tennessee, Mick sees some old friends, if friends are something Mick has, and uncovers strange truths.

Then in Baltimore, even laid up and on leave, an official is always an official and injustice cannot be ignored.

Until Only Roaches Remain is available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 2 of The Case of the Calcified Costumer. To avoid spoilers, check out Part 1 first. It also features characters introduced in The Case of Friendless and the Six-Toed Cat.

Content warnings: violence, gun violence, death, alcohol use, tobacco use, general grossness, creeps.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 2, 1943
THE VAULT BAR, THE HAMILTON HOTEL
DOWNTOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The next person to darken the bar’s door was a young woman, early twenties, brunette. She was above-average height but not tall, with swimmer’s shoulders who looked like she knew how to throw a punch. She moved like a boxer, her every step certain and balanced on a set of flats. She kept her brown hair tied back tight, and didn’t wear makeup. Her Office get-up was plain and conservative, designed not to draw attention but allow her freedom of movement.

“Walt, this is Beasley,” Mick said. The young woman immediately stiffened and her hand went behind her back, under her jacket. Mick could see she had slipped her fingers through a set of tarnished brass knuckles.

“Deputy Regional Inspector Walter Ortíz, forty-two-oh-two blue,” Ortíz said. He offered her his hand. She relaxed when she heard his ID number and the daily color.

“Official Second Class Lynn Beasley, sixteen-fifteen,” she said, then took his hand. They locked eyes. She cracked a small smile, something she hadn't done for Mick.

“Alright, kids, we got a dead body packed with Black Dragon poison upstairs,” Mickey grunted. Beasley's smile faded and she glanced down at the floor. “What do you got for me, Ortíz?”

Ortíz grinned and let go of Beasley's hand. He couldn't look away from her smile. He passed a stack of papers to Mick, though since he was just looking at Beasley, the papers weren't anywhere near where Mickey was sitting.

“Thanks,” Mickey grumbled, then got up, grabbed the stack, and dropped back onto his stool. He began thumbing through the pile. There were ten women who'd gone missing near the district since the night before. Only four of them were viable, the rest too old, too young, or with mismatched features. Mickey looked up to get Ortíz's take, but the younger official was busy.

“I've been taking it easy since I got injured, but they used to send me up and down the east coast,” he was saying. “Though I've never had the pleasure of running into you.”

“I was working with ADA for a long time before they let me transition to a field liaison role,” she said. “I just got my Washington assignment last week.”

“ADA, huh?” Ortíz asked. “New Mexico, Bombay, or Westover?”

“New Mexico,” she said with a smile.

“I thought I recognized your voice!” Ortíz said, his own grin widening to match hers.

Mickey cleared his throat, but the ambient noise of happy hour was enough to drown him out.

“Were you in Baltimore looking up Legion nuts a couple months back?” she asked.

“That’s me!” Ortíz replied.

“How’d that end up?” Beasley wondered. “I never saw a follow-up report.”

“Oh, that problem took care of itself,” he said. “But you helped. How do you like Cataloging and Reference?”

“It’s lot of reading,” she said, laughing. “We're the ones who comb through every bit of captured intelligence, we preserve it and cross-reference it. It is mostly pattern recognition. It's boring, really.”

“Speaking of cross-reference,” Mickey started, but the two young officials paid him no mind.

“No,” Ortíz continued, “The Library's work is very important.”

“It's you all who do the field work,” Beasley protested.

“But we wouldn't even know what field to be in if it weren't for you,” Ortíz reassured her. Mickey rolled his eyes so hard he was afraid they might get stuck backwards. He’d give his badge to find just one young person who could focus.

Mick turned back to the bar and left the pair to their flirtations. He untied the string and dumped the contents on the hardwood. More than twenty faces glared back at him, some from mugshots, others candid pictures from Office surveillance teams, and others from newspapers or film clips.

Some were familiar. Everyone official knew about Patricia Little, Isotta Fortati, the infamous Rusalka, and Liesl Fremde the Shadow Bride. Most of them were classified 'Most Secret.'

There was even more new faces in there. Once free from the Abwehr, Cabhán Walsh had started singing like a canary. He’d worked jobs with scores of free agents who hired out to the krauts and he was happy to roll on every one of them. Mick had recently traded Walsh a comic book for the location of a Silver Legion safe house. The resulting raid had netted eight arrests and thirteen-hundred stolen hand grenades.

Mick took the clearest pictures he had from the individual files and set them in a stack on the bar top. An especially pencil-necked aide lingering a couple stools over craned said neck to check them out, but one growl from Mick sent him scampering away.

“Ortíz!” he snapped. “Perimeter!”

Ortíz jumped at Mickey's bark and adopted the best fake scowl he could, comically swatting at the closest bar flies. Beasley's giggle made Ortíz's goofy scowl flip into an even goofier grin. Mick rolled his eyes again, then slammed the last of his drink.

Damn kids.

The bartender returned with the night manager, giving Mick an excuse to ignore the other two officials and avoid getting any grouchier. He slid his empty tumbler down the bar, and the bartender went right to pouring him another one. He handed the full glass to the harried manager, then went back to getting himself out of the weeds. His annoyed customers were stacked six deep in front of him.

“Agent Malloy,” Mick said. He took the glass from the desk manager's shaking hands and sat him down in the stool next to him. “What's your name?”

“Francis Larkman,” the other man stuttered. He was sweating through his skivvies and quaking. Larkman was skinny and had a poor excuse for a mustache. He was probably a month too old for the draft after Pearl Harbor, but he was seriously attempting to pass for younger, probably in an effort to rescue any distraught damsels left in town.

Larkman was trembling like a cold puppy waiting outside the back door. Mick knew that no hotel manager wanted to be questioned about late night comings and goings this close to the Hill, but shaking in his boots? Of course it wouldn't do to have the cops nosing through the business of any powerful clientele, but his reaction was a little much.

“Mister Larkman,” Mick said, “I am here to ask about one customer and one customer only. I do not give a hoot about anything else you got going on here.”

“I don't remember,” Larkman snapped. More beads of sweat sprouted on his reddening forehead. He looked like he wanted to cry.

“Calm down, Frank, I haven't asked anything yet.” Mick considered handing Larkman his handkerchief but changed his mind at the thought of carrying the sodden thing around for the rest of the evening. Instead he handed him a glass of water. Larkman's hands were shaking so hard that half of it ended up on the floor. Mick tried again: “I have some questions about one woman who checked in last night.”

“I don't remember,” he said. The beaded sweat trickled off his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped it away with a sleeve. “I just don't. Please don't ask any more.”

“Mister Larkman,” Mickey growled, freezing Larkman mid-tremble, “I am Special Agent in Charge Michael Malloy. This is a matter of national security. If you do not tell me what I need to know, I will drag you out of here to be hung as a traitor to the United States of America.”

Larkman's jaw dropped open at Mick's bluff. He slumped onto the offered stool.

“I'll try...” he stammered. Mick knew that the hammer of justice swung heavy, but he'd never seen anyone crumble under it so abruptly.

“Tell me about Gladys Florentine,” Mick demanded. “She come alone? What kind of bags did she have? She do anything suspicious? Any outgoing calls?”

Larkman withered under Mick's barrage of questions. His eyes welled up and a throbbing vein stood out on his graying temple. Mickey had never seen someone so affected by conventional questioning. It usually took props to get that kind of response. Mick sat back and sipped on his drink. Ortíz and Beasley were still engrossed in each other, which left it to Mickey. He was going to have to use the soft touch.

“Okay, Frank,” Mick said, “Let's start easy then. Were you on the desk when Gladys Florentine checked in last night?”

Larkman nearly gagged at the question, and struggled to find his voice.

“Yes,” he finally managed to gasp.

“Okay, that's a start,” Mickey said. The quaking manager raised the glass to his mouth. It clinked against his teeth several times before he managed to get a sip.

“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary when she checked in?” Mickey asked. Larkman's eyes went wide, and a look of sheer terror flashed across his face. His mouth moved, but no sounds came out. Mickey tried suggesting some example behaviors, to see if he could jog Larkman's memory. “She have any unusual bags, or seem nervous? Maybe she paid in an odd way?”

Larkman's terrified expression was replaced with one of pained nausea. His face went white and the sweat began pouring again. He barely managed to shake his head.

“A normal check-in then?” Mick asked, to which Larkman nodded, though with strained hesitation. Mick picked the stacks of photos off the bar. “Tell me if one of these dames is Gladys.”

Mick held up the first photo. Larkman studied it quickly, then calm shook his head. Mick turned it over. Patricia Little, also known as Patrizia Klein, or Patty the Painter. Mick knew it wouldn't be her. Patty was an Abwehr-trained bomb-maker without equal. She'd earned her nickname when a belt buckle bomb she'd snuck onto a munitions plant foreman recolored the walls of an entire board room.

Larkman shook his head at the picture of Isotta Fortati as well. Mick was grateful. Fortati was a master thief and one of the Negoziatori, a guild of Italian cat burglars that stole anything valuable for their notorious black auctions. Mick didn't have the patience for padfoots: subtle crimes were not his forte. Give him a hit man or a mad bomber any day.

The next few pictures were all of Liesl Fremde, in one or another of her past aliases. The Woman with the Double-Jointed Face, as she was known throughout the Office, or the Shadow Bride, was an infamous spy known to manipulate the actual structure of her face to assume new identities. She'd honeypotted her way through the ranks more than once, stealing valuable information from beneath many senior officials' noses. It was even said that Commodore Dixon of the African Affairs Bureau had proclaimed his intention to shoot her on sight the next time he had the chance. If Fremde was the culprit, photos wouldn't do any good, and Larkman confirmed it by shaking his head at the whole lot of them.

Mick held up the next photo for Larkman. The trembling manager studied the picture, then froze in place. Not even the dangling drop of sweat on his nose dared ripple.

“See someone familiar?” Mick asked. Larkman gave no indication that he heard. “Is this who checked in last night?”

Mick pulled the photo away. Larkman didn't move. He didn't even breathe. His eyes were locked onto the space where Mickey picture had been, unblinking and unfocused.

“Frank?” Mickey asked. He poked Larkman in the shoulder. The manager blinked and slowly turned to stare at Mick. “Is this the woman you saw?”

Larkman's eyes wandered back to the picture. Recognition flashed in them, then terror, then revulsion. The tears that had threatened to flow from his eyes finally overcame his willpower and coursed down his face, mixing with stress sweat. His white face turned a shade of green.

Mickey turned the photo around and studied it himself. One of Walsh’s dropped dimes. Her name was Deidre Daniels, a researcher's secretary from Colgate University's psychology department. Thirty-one years old, five-four, brunette, otherwise unremarkable in appearance. Not too pretty, not too anything. Approachable. Had Mickey been twenty years younger and run into her in a bar, he might've tried to flirt with her after building up a healthy reserve of liquid confidence. Mickey had yet to skim her file, but nothing in that face told him what could inspire the reaction he was getting from Larkman. He held the picture an inch away from the manager's nose.

“Was Deidre Daniels the woman who checked in last night?” Mickey demanded. Larkman's dry mouth dropped open. The man swallowed once, but nothing came out but a strangled breath. Mickey set the photo down, got up from his stool, and stood over the gasping manager. He leaned in and growled:

“Well, out with it!”

Larkman's eyes rolled into the back of his head, he hurled a martini and most of a chicken salad sandwich onto Mickey's shoes, passed out, then crumpled off the stool into his own splattered upchuck. Ortíz and Beasley stopped their flirtations long enough to try real hard not to laugh at the mess.

“Don't know why I expected anything else,” Mickey muttered. He took his tin of breath mints out of his pocket and tossed it to Ortíz. “He'll need one of those when he comes to.”

He rolled the unconscious man off his ruined Oxfords and flopped back onto his bar stool. The bartender had a fresh drink in Mickey's hand before his creaking bones had finished settling back onto the seat.

TUESDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 1, 1942
”THE MENAGERIE,” ZOO BASE
OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE

Mickey Malloy’s steps echoed loud through the empty building. At the far end, he saw Charlie Cypress struggling with a full wheelbarrow.

“Hey, doc!” Mick shouted. “Got something for you!”

“I thought I recognized that plodding,” Cypress called back. He set down the wheelbarrow and wiped his hands on his shirt.

“Plodding?” Mick muttered to himself. The door behind him creaked and Gator Wayne grunted as he wheeled a hand truck through. The Lizard Man strapped to it hissed and snapped at Gator. He ducked back and pushed the thing inside.

“Where do you want this?” he shouted over the hisses.

“Right down here,” Cypress said. “Its enclosure is ready.”

Cypress pointed at a large glass cylinder about forty feet across and twenty high. A catwalk encircled its rim and the barred metal atop it. A couple feet of tannic blackwater lazed around the trunks of several crooked, squat trees inside. Plenty of room for a Lizard Man to lounge. Mick plodded on over while Gator wrestled the hand truck.

As soon as he was close enough to talk to Cypress, a strong stink wafted past his snout.

“What’s that smell?” he wondered.

“That’s me, I was getting ready to feed some of our other guests,” Cypress said. The wheelbarrow he’d been pushing was stacked with slimy dead fish.

“What’s already in here?” Mick asked. Cypress had just opened the Menagerie a month before. He knew the Office had a few critters in custody over the years, but Mick had no idea what.

“I do have a few alligators down at the far end of the building, for help developing my bait bombs, but most of those are for Nabi,” Cypress said.

“Nabi?”

“Our adolescent trench shark,” Cypress said with a shrug. Before Mick could respond, Gator parked the hand truck, gasping louder than Mickey could think.

“Where is this thing going?” he asked.

“This is its enclosure here,” Cypress replied. Mick wandered over and tapped the glass with a swollen knuckle.

“Bulletproof?” he asked. The way it distorted around the curve it had to be three inches thick.

“Bulletproof, acid-proof, shatter-proof, all the proofs,” Cypress answered. He pointed at the stairs running up to the cat walk. “The habitat is ready, close as we’re going to get to a South Carolina swamp. Let’s get it up top.”

“Easy for you to say,” Gator grunted. He mopped the sweat off his forehead. His red hair was plastered to his scalp from wrestling with the thing.

Between the three of them they managed to haul the thrashing critter up the stairs. It strained against the wide rubber bands holding it in place. Cypress grunted and lifted the trap door atop the enclosure up, while Mick and Gator braced and leaned the hand truck over the opening.

“Ready?” Gator asked. Mick could only grunt in response. It took everything he had to keep from tumbling into the tank himself.

“Cut it loose,” Cypress said. Gator pulled a thick buck knife out of a sheath on his belt and sliced through the rubber bands. They snapped and and the Lizard Man fell. It stuck out a claw, snagged a branch, swung around, and gathered itself to pounce right back out.

Cypress slammed the barred door right in its face. He slapped a padlock into its latch. The Lizard Man gnashed at the bars. Its hooked claws and yellow teeth dragged across the stainless steel.

“Jeez, he’s on one,” Gator said.

“They usually are,” Cypress replied. “We can handle this.”

The Lizard Man careened off the inside of its enclosure. Its claws squealed as it dragged them across the glass.

“It’s going to take more than a fish,” Mick said as he sopped the sweat off his face. He patted his pockets down for his smokes only to remember he’d left them on the dash.

“Watch this,” Cypress said. He cupped his hands and shouted “Cootie! Cootie! Psp psp psp psp!”

Gator laughed, incredulous, but within a few seconds a gray cat appeared out of nowhere, slinking across the floor like an oil slick. Both men recognized this particular feline.

“Ah hell,” Gator groaned. The last time they’d had to mess around with the Qutat al’Um they’d nearly been blown out of the water by a pissed-off U-boat wolfpack.

Qutat bounded up the stairs two steps at a time until she was sitting right in front of Cypress. He fished around in his pocket until he found a treat. She accepted it with grace and humility.

“You remember what she can do,” Cypress said. Mick nodded. He knew all too well the effect the cat had on other animals.

Cypress squatted and scratched Qutat behind the ears. Within a few seconds she was laid out, receiving a veritable back massage. Her purrs rumbled like shifting glaciers.

Mick’s aches and hangover gently shifted to the back of his mind. He almost felt relaxed watching Cypress pet Qutat in that mesmerizing rhythm. The cat’s fur flowed beneath his hand like he was stirring molasses.

“She’s still got it,” Gator said. Mick shook his head a little to wake up, only to see the Lizard Man laid out and lounging on a branch. Its golden eyes were closed, its ribs rising and falling in time with Qutat’s purrs. The thing was asleep.

“What do you think that thing is, doc?” Mick asked. Cypress gave Qutat one last scratch under her chin, then leaned over the enclosure to better study the snoozing creature.

“Well, it isn’t a lizard, I can tell you that,” he replied. “Those bumps on its skin? Those are feather follicles. This animal is either very sick, very stressed, or both. I imagine it has ripped out its entire plumage. I also cannot determine that it is male.”

“The other party who was after it called it something else,” Mick said, searching his memory for the words.

“‘Kíngó-Ngóla,’” Cypress said. “I read Doctor Ogden’s preliminary report.”

“It’s been two days,” Mick said.

“I needed to know what you were bringing,” Cypress replied. Qutat stood up when she determined that no more scratches were coming her way and slunk off. “I won’t have an animal thrown in a cage. I do my best to provide a proper habitat for them.”

“So what’d the words mean?” Gator asked.

“According to Doctor Abebe, they might be Lingala, a Congolese Creole language. If that is the case, it means ‘red throat,’” Cypress answered. The three of them stood and cocked their heads, looking at the boney thing’s bare gray neck. They shrugged in unison.

“Perhaps when its feathers grow back in,” Cypress said.

“Yeah, maybe,” Mick said. “Congolese, huh? I knew they had lions and giraffes and elephants and tigers in Africa, but I never heard of anything like this.”

Gator cut in before Cypress could correct Mick:

“Feathers though? I never seen a four-legged bird.”

“Or one with a tail like that,” Mick pointed out.

“It might be something else,” Cypress said carefully.

“Well don’t hold out on me, doc,” Mick said.

“Superficially, this animal possesses anatomical similarities to a few extinct species.” Mick groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. Eggheads always liked to bust out the big words with him when they thought they could get away with saying something stupid.

“What extinct species?” he asked. He’d have to drag it out of Cypress.

“It resembles an Archaeopterygidae archaeopteryx,” Cypress said quietly, then cleared his throat and became interested in his shoes.

“Pretend I speak that language,” Mick said.

“It’s a bird-like species of…” Cypress cleared his throat again. “Of, uh, Saurischia.”

“Sauri-what?” Mick asked, before recognizing the word. “‘Saur’ as in ‘dinosaur?’”

“Like what King Kong fights?” Gator asked.

“The resemblances are purely superficial!” Cypress objected.

“Oh my God, you really think we caught a dinosaur,” Mick said. He didn’t have enough empty space left in his gray matter to deal with that kind of thing. His eyes had to settle on something that made half a lick of sense to him. Qutat obliged by standing and stretching in a way that made Mickey’s old joints jealous.

“So you still got the cat,” he said. They watched Qutat finished her stretch and descend the stairs.

“She’s been absolutely essential here,” Cypress said, as eager to change the subject as Mickey was. “Many animals we rescue in the field or from enemy installations have been abused, injured, and traumatized. That cat is able to make them feel calm and safe.”

“What about the rat?” Gator wondered. They’d also rescued a green rat alongside Qutat.

“Baby is great! You wouldn’t believe how big he’s gotten in just a month,” Cypress said. “You should see him.”

“I’m okay, thanks doc,” Gator replied. Mick was fine not seeing some giant rat either.

“So you really think the krauts wanted Qutat to use on people?” Mick asked.

“I do,” Cypress replied. “I know you felt it when she started purring. She can affect all manner of beings. If one little man can whip up the Germans just by yelling at them, imagine how far over the edge they’d go with her kind of push.”

“I’d rather not,” Mick said.

“Exactly,” Cypress said. “And if they learned how she works, they could take it even further.”

“Like how, mind control?” Gator asked. Mick wanted to chuckle at that, but he’d seen too much weird stuff to not need the answer.

“Yes, influencing decisions, increasing biases, strengthening belief systems, any number of things.”

“You think the krauts could work someone like a puppet?” Gator wondered.

“In time, yes, I think they could,” Gator said. “People are resilient, but our bodies are all hundreds of interlocking systems. Tweak one, and the rest can change. And the mind is chemicals and meat. Find something that affects it, direct that effect, and you can attain predictable results.”

“Jeez, doc. Remind me to stay away from shiny pocket watches,” Mick said.

“It might be even more simple than that,” Cypress replied. “You could be trained to react to any stimuli in a way that you don’t realize is not your choice.”

“‘That I don’t realize?’ So the krauts could brainwash me without me even knowing it?” Mick asked.

“You probably already have reactions that you’ve set up yourself. Any smells give you a reaction? Any places give you a sense a nostalgia when you walk in the door?”

“Yeah, of course,” Mick said. The stink of cigars always turned his stomach, ever since he was a little kid and his mom would come home from the rolling factory.

“Well I think it’s possible to artificially generate those reactions. This is just me spitballing, playing out extrapolations of where research into Qutat doing what she does could lead,” Cypress said. “I’m not saying anyone is able to do that. But that’s something they might drive toward.”

“Good, great,” Mick muttered.

“The mind is meat as much as it’s anything else,” Cypress explained. “Anything that affects the body can change it. Sounds, sights, chemicals, suggestion, lights, smells. Hell, my bait bombs affect brain chemistry. That’s how they work.”

“Snakes and sharks ain’t people,” Gator pointed out.

“But they are meat,” Cypress replied. Mick was feeling hot under his collar.

The krauts already weren’t having any trouble recruiting in the States. New Silver Legion cells were popping up daily. But if they could point some device and get anyone they wanted on their side…

“Man can’t even trust his own mind, ain’t no one safe,” Gator considered.

“Food for thought,” Mick said. At the far end of the Menagerie, something howled.

“We kept Qutat out of the Nazis’ hands, stopped whatever plans they had,” Cypress reminded them, like that would end it. He knew as well as Mickey did that once the krauts had their eyes on something, they’d stop at nothing to get it, so that didn’t do much to sooth Mick’s mind. As of late, very few things did.

Speaking of which, his flask was feeling mighty light in his pocket. Zoo Base had to have a P.X. somewhere. If he needed a top-off, it wouldn’t hurt if it was tax-free.

“Yeah well, you keep her safe then,” Mick said, looking back for the distant door. That thing howled again, somewhere.

“Of course,” Cypress said, almost offended.

Mick nodded at the Lizard Man lolling on its branch:

“And whatever that thing is, it too.”

SATURDAY NIGHT, MAY 22, 1943
EAST LAMLEY STREET, BUTCHERS HILL
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

“Where do you think you're going, hombre?” the tailing man called out to Walter Ortíz as he stumped along. Ortíz smirked then stopped. He had his mark.

“Can I help you?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Might be you could,” the man replied. He propped himself up casually against a light pole. “You live around here?”

Ortíz leaned on his crutch, making it look like standing was an ordeal. The other man’s heavy trench coat hung off his shoulders like a cape. He pulled it closed despite the evening warmth.

“Yes, sir, I do. About two blocks over,” Ortíz answered eventually. He and his mother had moved to Butchers Hill on the Office's dime once the Legion-affiliated cops in Norfolk had gotten their names.

“Well you see, that's gonna be a problem,” the man who’d followed Ortíz said. He was almost six feet tall, white, with trimmed, graying hair. His blue jacket looked like it had been dipped in rubber and left hand was wrapped in copper wires and hung from his shoulder like it weighed a thousand pounds. His leather suspenders held up a heavy tool belt packed with batteries.

“Are you okay, sir?” Ortíz asked.

“I will be,” the stranger snarled. “You know me?”

Ortíz shook his head.

“You live two blocks from here and you don't know me?” the man asked. “I grew up here, all the way back when everyone knew their neighbors, when everyone spoke the same God damn language.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Ortíz said. He put his hand out. The man acted like he hadn't heard a word.

“Nowadays, you people are carving this place up,” the man continued. He held his arms out and spun around, showing off the dingy alleyway marked as a street. “Another five years, no one will even remember who built this neighborhood.”

Ortíz tried to keep a straight face. Of course he knew the man's name. Even on mandatory bed rest, with both his real and fake badges locked up in Earp's desk, he was still an official. His injury couldn't take that away.

He had made it his business to know who the rabble-rousers were in his new neighborhood. The Office had a dossier on the man standing before him, and its assessments didn't seem to be far off.

“Hey, turn around when I'm talking to you,” Joseph Trent snarled. He was a retired electrician, booted out of the Silver Legion in forty-one for being too violent. Since the Abwehr had taken over Legion recruitment, they'd probably welcome him and his attitude back. It seemed that he was clinging onto a grudge and had sworn off the Legion altogether, and they weren't fighting to get him back.

Even among poseur fascists, Joe Trent was considered a bit of an asshole.

“I said, 'turn your brown ass around!'” Trent roared. His voice rattled off the brick buildings on either side of Lamley. There were people inside getting ready for bed, but they hadn't cared to witness the previous two deaths Trent had caused, so why worry about a third?

“Sure thing,” Ortíz said. He slipped the luchador mask out of his jacket pocket and pulled it over his head. When he turned around, he wore the face of el Icono.

“What the Hell?” Trent stammered. He stumbled a bit trying to stand in place. He was drunk.

“Do you know who I am?” Ortíz taunted. He felt like he was standing taller. The man in the silver mask didn't limp, he wasn't scared or bitter, he wasn't wracked with pain every time he moved. The things that made Ortíz who he was were not what defined him while masked.

Until that moment, the silver mask had only been a piece of fabric.

El Icono Acerado was a fictional character that had become popular among younger Mexican migrants. He was some kind of wrestling hero, as likely to battle mummies as he was to fight in a ring. His mother had recreated his mask on commission for an impersonator. When Ortíz had decided to investigate the heart attack deaths of Pedro Martinez and Esteban Garcia himself, he needed plausible deniability. El Icono's silver mask was all he could find that fit the bill.

“Halloween is five months out, you nut. Besides, it don't matter who you are,” Trent snapped. He twisted a dial on the daisy-chained batteries hanging off his belt and a hum emanated from his contraption. “If I don't know you, you don't belong here.”

“You got a twisted idea of being neighborly,” Ortíz said. He barely recognized his own voice. He sounded bigger, bolder.

“I'm going to save this neighborhood from thugs like you,” Trent snarled. He held up his copper-wrapped hand. “I can make it quick.”

“Thanks for the offer,” Ortíz replied. “But I've been shocked before, I'm not looking for more.”

“'Shocked?'” Trent chuckled. “I'm not going to electrocute you.”

“Your toy could've fooled me.”

“This ain't a toy, gimp,” Trent said. He pressed his coppered palm against the light pole and twisted a dial on his belt. The streetlamp buzzed audibly, then dimmed and blinked out. The lights in the buildings on either side of the street began flickering before going dark.

Ortíz could hear people clamoring in the surrounding houses. They didn’t care about two men dying on their streets, but mess with their electricity and they had something to say.

When Trent pulled his glove away from the pole, blue arcs jumped between it and his fingers. The arcs broke with ozone snaps and all the lights came back on.

Trent wasn't shocking the lamp, he was pulling the charge from it. And if he could do that to a street lamp...

“You stole the electrical charge from the hearts!” Ortíz realized aloud.

“Served 'em right,” Trent said. “Bunch of thieves and thugs.”

Ortíz was nearly shaking. If not for the mask, Trent would've seen a young man, his face red and twisted with boiling anger, terminal frustration, and chronic pain. But that was not who el Icono was. What Trent saw was deadly calm, like a mirrored lake with an alligator waiting beneath.

“You should take that thing off and leave now,” Ortíz growled in the voice that was not his own.

“Oh really?” Trent asked. He took a step forward, hand raised.

“Really,” Ortíz replied. He struck like a snake. His leg hated him for it, but he’d been training to fight. His mother hated him for it too, but she still packed his knee with ice every night once he was done with his exercises. The swelling, the throbbing, the lightning shooting through his marrow almost made him give up.

But the look on Joe Trent’s face when Ortíz’s crutch knocked it halfway around his head made all that pain worth it.

Trent tripped over his own feet and scrabbled backward on the asphalt like a crab.

“How…” he whispered. He spat out the blood draining from his nose and struggled to his feet. His hand grasped at a sealed pouch on his belt, behind the batteries. The Walther P38 he withdrew was compact but deadly.

Ortíz whipped his cloak aside and snapped the sawed-down Ithaca 37 shotgun up, firing it in a single smooth, practiced motion. The weighted rubber ball round knocked the pistol out of Trent’s hand, sending it skipping down the road.

“You broke my God damn hand!” Trent yelped.

“Your nose, too,” Ortíz chuckled. His laugh was inhuman. As little as he recognized his voice behind the mask, that laugh was something else entirely. “Drop the glove and go.”

Trent looked for his pistol. Ortíz watched his eyes and racked the Ithaca. He let it roar again and the Walther bounced further away.

“Oh my!” a woman gasped. People were standing in the doorways around them, staring from the windows.

“Drop the glove and go,” Ortíz snarled.

Trent’s eyes narrowed.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“El Icono,” Ortíz told him.

“We speak English here,” Trent snarled.

“Then speak it. Tell everyone what you did,” Ortíz said. He racked the shotgun again. The purple shell thunked off his boot.

“What, defended our neighborhood?” Trent howled. He waved his arms at the people watching. “Saving it from hoodlums and thieves?”

“How’d you do that?” Ortíz asked.

“I culled the swarm,” Trent hissed. “Who’s going to miss two dead Mexicans?”

“You killed them?” someone asked from a window.

“And why shouldn’t I?” Trent yelled. “You weren’t about to do it!”

“You’re a murderer, Joe,” a man said through a screen door.

“A murderer!” Trent screamed, incredulous. “A murderer? I did what needed to be done.”

Ortíz stood over him while he ranted, shotgun in hand, leaning on his crutch.

“Drop the glove,” he said. Trent glared at him and lurched to his feet.

“Drop it, Joe,” someone said. They’d stepped outside so that Trent could see them under the street light. White faces, young and old, all scared of what they’d seen but even more disgusted by what Trent had been done in their names. There were so many of them they quickly encircled both Ortíz and Trent.

“Yeah Joe, drop it,” they urged.

“Drop the glove.”

“Shut up, all of you!” Trent yelled. “Don’t you get it? I’m doing this for you.”

“We don’t want this,” an older woman said, her gray hair done up in rollers.

That was more than the bleeding killer could take.

Trent lurched forward and grabbed her out of the crowd. Ortíz brought his shotgun up, but Trent put his captive between them, ducking down and glaring between her curls. His copper hand was wrapped around her throat. He snarled past her ear:

“I push one button and her lights go out.”

“Give us some space,” Ortíz told the crowd as he raised the shotgun. Trent was completely behind his captive, sneering. Ortíz didn’t have a clear shot. but he wasn’t shooting bullets. The hushed crowd edged away.

“You going to shoot through Missus Porting, huh?” Trent asked.

“Nope,” Ortíz said. He shifted his aim to the wall behind Trent, ran the angles in his head, and fired. The rubber ball whipped past and rebounded off the brick to collide with the back of Trent’s skull. The impact knocked him forward and Missus Porting pulled herself out of his grasp.

“Get him!” someone in the crowd yelled. Before Ortíz could fired again, they piled on top of Trent, ripping the wires out of his batteries and the glove off his hand.

“Call the cops!” another person shouted, which was all the motivation Ortíz needed to hoof it. He limped over to the next alley up and ducked away, into the darkness. He peeked around the corner. They’d trussed Trent up with his own contraption.

“Who was that guy in the mask?” he heard one of them ask. “Where’d he go?”

“What’d he call himself? El Icono? What the Hell does that mean?”

“It means ‘icon,’ like a saint or something.”

“A saint?”

“Yeah, but who ever heard of a saint with a shotgun?”