The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Calcified Costumer, Part 5 of 6

Deidre Daniels’ shadow looms large over Mickey’s case. But despite her vicious reputation, no one who’s run afoul of her has anything to say about it.

Might be there’s a good reason for that.

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

This is Part 3 of The Case of the Calcified Costumer. To avoid spoilers, check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 first.

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

SATURDAY MORNING, JULY 3, 1943
WARNER'S EARLE THEATER
PENN QUARTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Deidre Daniels’ projected voice, initially kind and soothing, had twisted in on itself into something alien and threatening.

“Children, you are wonderful! You are powerful! You can protect your home!”

Mickey’s skin prickled and his mouth was suddenly dry. He could feel her words trying to chew through his resolve, but they were nibbling like minnows, more distracting than disabling.

He should’ve been in lock-step with Gold. He groaned and tried to piece it together but didn’t come up with an answer. More than anything, he wanted fries and a hot dog.

Mick stumbled down the hallway, trailing his free hand against the brick for support. Gold must have hit him harder than he'd thought. He reached the small staircase and hauled himself up to street level, sweating pure ethanol by the time he poked his head around the corner.

The voice was even louder as it reverberated through the lobby. Rice was across the large room, leaning against the front desk with his back to Mick, telephone to one ear, the other hand cupped over his other. Mickey let out a bourbon-tinged sigh of relief and stepped out of the tight stairwell.

“Protect your home, child,” the voice hissed from a speaker in the corner.

“Good catch, Rice,” Mick said. “No psychologist dame's pulling a fast one on you.”

Rice moved in bits and starts. He set the handset back on its cradle and leaned forward, across the desk, still facing away from Mickey.

“Do everything you can to protect your home.”

Mick stopped just a few steps out of the stairwell. Rice picked up something from behind the desk, something large and steel that could send six hundred rounds-per-minute at him.

“Ah, hell.”

Rice snapped upright and spun on his heel, the Browning Automatic Rifle already roaring in his hands. Thirty-aught-six rounds ripped past Mickey's head, into the brick and plaster behind him. He tripped backwards and scrambled back into the stairwell.

Shattered floor tile burst upward and cut deep into Mick's cheek as he lunged forward, tumbling down the stairs to land in a heap in the basement.

The roar of gunfire stopped, leaving the ethereal voice alone in the air. Wisps of brick dust floated down the stairs.

“You are proud to protect your home. You make your family proud. Protect them.”

Mickey didn't know if Daniels' voice was strong enough to send Rice in pursuit, but he wouldn't risk it. He hopped to his feet and dashed to the boiler room door. He hefted his club, yanked the door open, and rushed in, ready to brain the first hypnotized zombie to come at him.

Mick tripped over his own heavy boots and landed at Beasley's perplexed feet. Ortíz was standing next to her, and Reed and Capano were still ‘cuffed to their chairs.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

The voice drifted through the open door.

“Welcome home, child.”

“What is that?” Ortíz asked. Beasley already knew. She hopped over Mick and slammed the door shut, cutting off all noise from outside the room.

“We waited too long,” Mick wheezed.

Beasley knelt and dragged him to his feet. Ortíz leaned against his crutch and grabbed Mick's elbow when he was halfway off the ground and helped him the rest of the way up.

“She's got it over the airwaves, don't go up there,” Mick grunted, loosing a blast of bourbon breath right in Beasley's face. She wrinkled her nose and leaned away.

“Is he hit?” Ortíz asked, and Beasley began giving him the once-over, looking for bullet holes to plug. The blood coming from his face looked worse than it was.

“No, I'm good,” Mick said, swatting her away. “It's just my mug, and that's had worse.”

“You said she had Gold and Rice?” Ortíz asked.

“I gave Gold a shot upside the head, but Rice opened up on me with a BAR, so I had to pull back.”

Ortíz pulled a shortened Ithaca 37 shotgun with hold-out grips from under his long coat.

“Rice coming after you?” he asked.

“You'd shoot another official?” Beasley gasped. She took a step away from him.

“Rubber ball rounds,” Ortíz replied. “Don't worry, I'm only handing out headaches today.”

He took a shell out of his pocket and tossed it to her. Mick saw it over her shoulder: an orange casing with a black rubber ball the size of a shooter marble peeking out of the end. It looked heavy enough to put a gorilla on its ass. Reed raised a skeptical eyebrow at the mention of rubber bullets but kept his trap shut when he saw Mickey's glare.

“Good plan, 'cept for the part where you can't leave this room without getting all wonky,” Mick grunted.

“I may have a solution for that,” Beasley said. She handed Ortíz set of the same sound-blocking ear muffs that their prisoners had been wearing. “The recording that she's playing only works if you can hear it. These could protect us from its effects.”

“Two things,” Mickey said. “One, I heard that creepy jazz, so how am I not brain-washed? And two, you're not - !”

“You're drunk!” Beasley shouted, then caught herself. She cleared her throat then continued: “Inspector Malloy, sir.”

“I'm not, damn, I mean I had a couple or four, but...” Mick stammered. No one had ever called him on his sipping, especially not some school-fresh dame.

“Sir, alcohol affects your brain's neurotransmitters, inhibiting your ability to process sensory input,” she explained. Mick's gaping mouth forced her to break it down further, slower and louder. “You're intoxicated, so your mind interprets sight and sound a little slower than the rest of us. Being off just one tick seems enough to disrupt Daniels' carefully-calibrated hypnosis, and you're more than a few ticks off.”

“Well, hell,” Mick said. He patted the empty flask in his pocket and beamed. He knew it was good for something.

“That being said, you're still drunk and bullets are flying,” Beasley continued. “I'm not sitting back and babysitting these two. Gold's down, but Rice and six other heavily-armed officials are out there, plus whoever else she's gotten. You need back-up in your condition, and I specialize in non-lethal combat.”

Beasley pulled a pair of tarnished brass knuckles out of her waistband and slipped one over each hand. She flexed her fingers and shifted her weight, assuming the stance of an experienced fighter.

“I was certified by Dangerous Dan himself,” she stated.

“Fairbairn okayed you?” Mick asked. Of course he knew the name, and the weight a claim like that carried. William 'Dangerous Dan' Fairbairn was one of the deadliest knife-fighters in the world, trained in battle on the bloody streets of Shanghai against gangsters and killers. He’d become the Office's head close-combat instructor at the Bell Towers. Anyone endorsed by the man would be a tornado in a fist fight. “So why are you with the Library and not in the field?”

Beasley rolled his eyes and pointed at her skirt. Mick nodded.

As progressive a meritocracy as the Office was, some of the decision-makers were still locked in old ways of thinking. The outfit had been started by military types, after all. The rustier an idea was, the harder it got to swap it out for a fresh model.

Sometimes they needed an extra nudge.

“Fine,” Mick said. “Ortíz is on point, you and me are batting clean-up.”

“Yes, sir,” Beasley said. She smiled at Ortíz, who still hadn't picked his jaw off the floor since she’d mentioned Fairbairn. The old copper had probably given the kid a run for his money in training, like he did for everyone. Mick let him stand silent for a second, then snapped him back:

“You ready, kid?”

Ortíz shut his mouth and nodded, his shotgun steady in his hand.

“Then ears on,” Mick said. Beasley and Ortíz clamped the noise-canceling ear muffs onto their heads. They looked at each other then gave Mick the thumb's up.

“Let's go,” Mickey said to himself. He hefted his club and reached for the door.

“I'm in, too, Malloy,” Reed piped up.

“And you ain't leaving me here if there's loony feds running around with machine guns,” Capano added.

“Are you kidding me? I don't need criminals behind me when I got killers out front,” Mickey growled. “What am I going to do with a couple masked nutcases?”

“You're pulling my leg, right?” Reed asked. Mickey's face screwed up in confusion. “Are you that drunk, or have you not read a paper, ever?”

“Shut up and say what you want to say,” Mick said.

“Both, then. We have a dame swinging brass knuckles with a Philadelphia accent and a Mexican on a crutch shooting rubber bullets.”

“And?”

“I've written enough articles about vigilantes to recognize Brassy Knuckles and Saint Shotgun when I see 'em,” Reed exclaimed. “And you don't work too hard at being anything other than the Bastard you are.”

Mick stared slack-jawed for a second, then turned to the two younger officials.

“This true?” Mickey asked. They cocked their heads. “Ears off, ears off.”

“What is it?” Ortíz asked when they had removed their ear protection.

“Brassy Knuckles, Saint Shotgun?”

The two officials looked at each other nervously.

“What the hell?” Mickey groaned. “What kind of assholery is this?”

“To be honest, I thought that's why Miss Queen got me assigned with you in the first place,” Ortíz said sheepishly.

“And why's that?”

“Because you're, you know, the Billy Club Bastard,” Ortíz answered.

Mick was wore out, but he tried to improvise a pithy response:

“Does everybody know this?”

‘Think.’ He’d meant to say ‘does everybody think this.’

“Damn it,” he muttered.

“I didn't,” said Beasley.

“Me neither,” Capano added.

“I did,” Reed quipped.

“Can it, you,” Mickey growled.

“You were the first to adopt these tactics, boss,” Ortíz said. “You showed me how to do it, how to stand up if the system couldn't fix something.”

The others nodded like they were in on it.

“And now here you all are,” Mick said. “My proteges. My sorry legacy.”

“I've stopped killers,” Ortíz said.

“I busted a spy ring myself,” Beasley piped up.

“And I knocked over half the hop joints on the south side,” Capano added.

“I got whole crew of corrupt cops locked up,” Reed concluded. “And that thing with the monkeys,”

“I don't want to disappoint you idiots, but what I did, I did to get paid,” Mick said. “Always bad guys, but for the money.”

“That's not why you did it,” Reed said.

“Yeah, I like to hurt people, too.”

“You did it because it had to get done,” Reed continued. “You saw something that didn’t add up and you corrected the math, Malloy.”

“I’m not some avenging angel. I am an animal. I’m a mad dog. I’m a god damn wolf.”

“And wolves run in packs,” Ortíz added.

“Yeah, yeah, shut your traps, both of you,” Mick mumbled. He looked at the people around him, the people who lived by his example: the wounded soldier, the overlooked woman, the disenchanted journalist, and the betrayed gangster. He stood in the middle, a drunk old man.

“So the Chicago Slugger, Brassy Knuckles, Saint Shotgun, and the Big Apple Bandito want in on the Billy Club Bastard's racket, huh?”

“The Pacifist,” Reed said.

“What?”

“I'm called the Pacifist, not that other name.”

“Clam up and listen. Same rules as before: kid gloves for the hypnotized, anything goes with the dame. Since I can't get you all liquored up, you're going in deaf 'til we knock out that recording. That sit right with everyone?”

The four people around him nodded in agreement.

“Good. Unlock these two, slap on those ear muffs, get ready, we're going in two.”

Beasley uncuffed both men and handed them ear protection. Reed slipped on his holsters, checked that his Peacemakers were loaded, and tugged his floppy cowboy hat down to his brow.

“Careful with those pea-shooters, Reed,” Mick cautioned. “You're going to be shooting at colleagues of mine.”

“I have never shot anyone in my life,” Reed said. “Sure, I've shot at people, but nobody ever caught lead.”

Mick smirked. He remembered how Reed had blasted the guns out of a couple goons' hands when they were in a spot back in New York, and that was just with a snubnose revolver. With the pair of cavalry shooting irons he was packing, Mick figured the young reporter could shoot the point off a mosquito's nose.

Capano slid the heavy helmet over his angular face and hefted his steel shield. With his bat-turned-mace in hand, he looked more a barbarian warrior than the inner-city extortionist he once was. Capano slammed his shield into the concrete floor with a echoing clang. It was solid as the side armor on a Sherman.

“You're on point, Capano,” Mick said.

“I got stipulations,” the gangster growled, echoing behind his solid steel face plate.

“We negotiating now?” Mickey said. He stepped up to the glowering gangster and glared into the shadowy eye slit of his black helmet. The eyes behind the mask belonged to someone else.

“I'm in the wind after we take this broad down,” the Chicago Slugger declared. He stepped up to Mickey as well, so close that the cold metal of his mask brushed Mick's mashed nose.

“Then what?” Mick asked.

“I finish clearing Stino's crew out of Chicago.”

“I can live with that,” Mick said. He looked to Ortíz and Beasley for accord. They'd both donned their own absurd disguises, Ortíz in a silver wrestler's mask that laced up the back and Beasley wearing a red bandana and blonde wig. They were too busy with their get-ups. Mickey shook his head and put out a big paw. The Slugger took it and Mick locked on with an iron grip.

“I'm going to need something, too,” Mick growled. The other man’s hand squirmed in his own, but Mickey didn't let go. He could feel bones grinding together as he squeezed.

“What?” the Slugger managed to sputter, nearly masking the pain from his voice.

“Next time you hear a peep about a noseless Nazi, I’m your first call.”

“Yeah, anything,” the Slugger said. “Now get your dirty ape mitt off'a me.”

Mick released his hand and grinned.

“Deal. You talk, you walk,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘I don't, I won't.’ I've heard the tough cop act before. You got a deal, G-man,” the Slugger said, then shook the feeling back into his crushed hand and hefted his bat. He glanced around the cramped boiler room like the shifty crook he was. “Now point me at the jokers you want me to beat on.”

Mickey's ragtag crew took a few more minutes to ready themselves. Reed's pockets rattled with impatient live brass, and he checked and re-checked his Peacemakers obsessively. He winked at Mick, then tied his bandanna over his nose and mouth, concealing his boyish grin.

Beasley stretched and loosened her whip-like muscles like an acrobat, ready to spring into action.

Ortíz adjusted his silver mask so the eye holes wouldn't shift while he was moving, then made sure that his rubber ball shells were within easy reach in his coat pockets. He bent his bad leg at the knee, groaned at the pain of the old wound, and leaned on his crutch. When he noticed Mick watching him, he merely set his grimace and stared back, letting his shotgun swing on its leather sling.

Mick studied his insane assemblage for a minute longer, shook his head for what he claimed would be the last time, and pulled his black bandanna over his knobby face. The air tasted different filtered through it. It was cleaner, clearer.

The Billy Club Bastard inhaled. He had his club, he had his target: everything made sense again.

“Stack up on Slugger,” he growled. Even the Bastard’s voice was different: deeper, feral, ursine. The assembled brawlers stared at him. “Saint next, shotgun ready, then the Pacifist. You and me, Knuckles, we sweep up after.”

All five masked lunatics nodded as one. The Bastard massaged his forehead, feeling his concussion-scrambled, bourbon-marinated gray matter throbbing inside his thick skull. The Bastard knew the damage a man had to endure in order to wear a mask, and to see it in so many others all at once was near-overwhelming.

“Ears covered, everyone's deaf 'til we shut Daniels up,” the Bastard said. The Saint, Knuckles, and the Pacifist clamped their ear muffs over their heads, while the Slugger jammed wads of cotton under his helmet.

The Slugger posted up by the door and hunched down behind his heavy shield. The Saint reached past him and yanked the boiler room door open. Daniels' wavering voice, smooth as a cobra's belly, slithered into the room. Her inhuman timbre played against Mickey's eardrums, but the booze numbed all its undertones away.

“They are coming for you, child.”

The Slugger led the group out of the boiler room and into the cramped hall, stepping over Gold's unconscious body. They snaked after him, careful to remain in the protective shadow of his shield. He took the stairs slowly and peeked into the lobby like Elmer Fudd hunting wabbits.

They were a ten-legged centipede that ate criminals and shat justice.

The Bastard, tucked in the back, couldn't see anything when the BAR roared. Round after round rang against the Slugger’s steel shield. He tucked low, leaning in against the deafening barrage. The Saint pressed up against him, waiting for Rice’s twenty-round box magazine to go dry.

The Saint popped up the second the BAR clicked empty. Rice reloaded with autonomic efficiency and his machine gun roared again, dinging rounds off the top edge of the shield. The Saint fell back behind the Slugger's cover, almost tumbling down the stairs in his rush.

Brassy Knuckles grabbed him by the collar and kept him on his feet.

“Madre de dios,” Saint Shotgun gasped. “He reloads faster than anyone I've ever seen.”

“You got a shot?” the Bastard shouted. The Saint didn’t have to hear him to know what he was asking.

“Don't need to see him to hit him,” the Saint replied. He twisted around to survey the room, ignoring the bullets impacting nearby. He squinted one eye, and the Bastard could see the gears in his head turning.

“What are you doing?” the Slugger yelled.

“Geometry,” the Saint shouted back. He looked at the Pacifist, miming for the other man to prepare to shoot. “Get ready to clip his wings.”

The Pacifist understood and nodded, and with that the Saint pointed his shotgun at one of the lobby’s walls. He stuck out his tongue, bit it, adjusted his aim upward by a degree or two, then fired.

The rubber bullet struck the brick wall and bounced, careening upward where it clipped the ceiling. It ricocheted into the opposite wall, bounced again, then slammed into Rice's exposed back, all in a twelfth of a second and with the force of a Bob Feller fastball.

Rice stumbled, sending a few rounds into the lobby floor. The Pacifist had him in his sights before he could recover. The Peacemaker in his right hand roared once with deadly confidence. Its huge slug blasted the hypnotized official's BAR into pieces.

The broken gun fell out of Rice's hands, clattering to the bullet-pocked floor. Rice looked up to see Brassy Knuckles' metal fist crack him in the temple. He went down in a pile of cheekbones and elbows.

The Bastard snatched the broken BAR butt stock off the floor and chucked it across the room, knocking a speaker off the wall. The Pacifist's Peacemakers took care of the rest in the lobby. Daniels' spell dimmed, only reverberating from within the large auditorium.

The Bastard concentrated, trying to remember the theater’s floor plan. Daniels was holed up somewhere backstage with a cadre of hypnotized hostages including politicians, lobbyists, officials, theater staff, and a whole can-can line. The fastest way to her would be up the gut: through the auditorium and all the guests, onto the stage, and into the dressing rooms.

Best to let the bullet sponge go first.

The Bastard tapped the Chicago Slugger on the shoulder and pointed at the big double doors. The armored Italian nodded. The Bastard tugged on the sleeves of his two gunners and mimed instructions. First priority was shooters, then officials, then civilians. Saint Shotgun and the Pacifist nodded. They understood the game plan. The Bastard gave the Slugger a thumbs up and the two men readied themselves on either side of the doors.

Three seconds later, both doors blasted inward as the Chicago Slugger slammed through them. Daniels' voice hissed through the auditorium:

“Don't let them take from you, children. Protect your family, protect your home. Strength comes from within.”

Fernandez and Ipswitch were keeping watch from the stage, looking over a milling sea of dazed civilians.

The officials reacted in an instant, spraying the doorway with buckshot and full-auto .45's. The Slugger presented too juicy a target to neglect. He grimaced and turtled low. Lead clanged and shattered against his shield and helmet.

The civilians were slower to react: violence was not muscle memory for them. The elderly politicians, their staffers and spouses, the donors and the caterers, they all growled and charged, swinging chairs and throwing bottles and plates. Lead whizzed inches over their heads.

The Pacifist leaned around the door frame, a pistol in each hand. He ignored the bullets splintering the wall around him and fired twice.

One shot pierced the receiver on Ipswitch's shotgun, the other knocked the Super Colt out of Fernandez's hands. Their shots silenced, Saint Shotgun opened up and sent a flurry of rubber balls into the auditorium. One bounced off the wall and took Ipswitch in the gut, doubling him over with a whimper. Two more glanced off the floor and hit Fernandez in the shins, sweeping the tall Californian off his feet and cracking his stubbled chin on the hardwood stage.

The Bastard moved to advance, but suddenly he was falling, the wind knocked out of him by a terrific impact from the side.

The Chicago Slugger had hit him, his shield no softer against the Bastard's ribs than a Packard's grille. The Bastard rolled when he fell, ready to lash out after the sucker punch. The Slugger stood over him, tucked behind his steel wall.

“She got you, you son of a - !” the Bastard started, only to be silenced by a hail of bullets, whipping through the red, white, and blue curtain blocking the stage. The soft lead hammered against the Slugger's shield.

“Ears!” Saint Shotgun shouted, and he tossed a checkered yellow canister grenade over the Bastard and the groaning crowd.

The drum grenade bounced across the stage and rolled under the curtain. It belched a tremendous low-frequency thrum that shook the whole building, all sound and fury without any explosive power. Still, it was loud and deep enough to get the Bastard's covered ears ringing, and it ripped the lower half of the tattered curtain entirely free.

He could feel it reverberating in his chest long after the booming sound had died away. Red, white, and blue tatters fluttered off the stage.

Two men in cheap gray suits, one pudgy and white, the other gnarled and Black, had been lying in wait in front of the stage door. The Bastard recognized officials’ outfits when he saw ‘em. Saint Shotgun fired twice more, knocking both of them off their feet.

A gloved hand appeared in the Bastard's face. The Slugger easily hauled the much larger Bastard to his feet.

“Thanks,” the Bastard mumbled. The Slugger did not reply, simply nodding instead, silently marking that save down in an extensive mental ledger. The Bastard dusted himself off.

“Don’t get too comfy,” the Slugger growled. The crowd was gathering themselves and surging. They clutched their makeshift weapons and advanced, damn-near drooling.

The Billy Club Bastard and Brassy Knuckles took point, letting their nominal weapons lead the way.

They collided with the ensorcelled mob like a pair of thunderbolts.

SUNDAY NIGHT, APRIL 25, 1943
BETHPAGE STATE PARK
FARMINGDALE, NEW YORK

“Hey, whoever you are, I see you back there!” the Pacifist shouted into the tree line from the sixteenth green. He watched the figure shift behind the landscaping, stumbling between shaped bushes. He drew his Peacemakers and yelled again: “Why don’t you come on out of there with your hands up?”

Twigs and leaves crunched, branches snapped. Whoever the guy was, he wasn’t trying to hide. He moved like he was hurt, or sick.

“Pete Mallard, if that’s you, we need to talk!” the Pacifist called out. The movement stopped dead and the sounds of the golf course at night took over: the buzz of insects, the cries of birds, the bays of a bloodhound snuffling around two holes over.

After a moment’s silent standoff, the Pacifist raised one of his huge revolvers and pointed it at the shape behind the trees.

“You should know I’m armed, Pete. Come on out now, slowly,” he said. He wasn’t about to shoot the guy, but Pete Mallard didn’t have to know that just yet.

The figure groaned and clomped forward through the underbrush, stomping seedlings and sticks, shoving aside the bushes and branches that got in his way. When he stepped onto the fresh cut grass, he held his hand over his eyes like the starlight was blinding him.

The guy was white, in his mid-fifties, stout, with a couple days’ worth of gray beard on his face. He was wearing a set of olive drab coveralls, still stained with pneumatic oil. If he wasn’t Pete Mallard, the Pacifist had no idea who he could be.

“Show me your hands!” the Pacifist warned. Pete groaned and lurched closer. Starlight gleamed off something in his right hand. The Pacifist took a step back and shifted his aim to the object.

“Don’t come any closer,” he warned. Pete wouldn’t, or couldn’t, hear him. He raised the thing over his head: it was a monkey wrench, stained red with dried blood.

“Not one more step,” the Pacifist growled.

Pete took one more step, and the Pacifist fired. The heavy slug collided with the wrench and knocked it out of Pete’s grasp. The birds went silent and the shot echoed through the entire park. The search dog’s howls doubled in volume.

The old mechanic stumbled but continued at the Pacifist. His hand, though relieved of his weapon, remained twisted into a claw, like he was still holding it.

“Pete, let’s talk,” the Pacifist offered, but they both knew he wasn’t there to talk. If he’d wanted to just talk, he’d have left his pistols, bandana, hat, and duster in the car and shown up with a face, and a name. The Pacifist hadn’t entered the park that night looking to report the news. He’d gone in looking for results.

Not so long before he would have called reporting the news results. But ever since he’d exposed Robert Granton, since he’d seen the Billy Club Bastard at work, his perspective had shifted. People didn’t read the news anymore: they wanted sensation. Shootouts and larger-than-life characters were the only thing that caught their attention. If people needed to know something, like how a secure military base had been infiltrated in Long Island resulting in a plane crash and a government cover-up, it needed extra flair.

What it needed was a six-shooting cowboy on scene to get them talking. Sensation was the only way to beat a cover-up. When even the people sweeping everything under the rug were too excited to zip their lips, that’s when the reporting could really begin.

But Pete Mallard was not interested in the Pacifist’s philosophies on the the informational appetites of John Q. Public. No, he simply groaned and lunged.

The Pacifist ducked to the side, but Pete managed to grab his duster’s long coat tails and haul him back.

“This one’s on you, Pete,” the Pacifist grunted, then spun and smacked the other man upside the head with a Peacemaker. Pete stumbled and fell, catching himself on his hands and knees.

“You okay?” the Pacifist asked, heart pounding from the sudden adrenaline rush. Pete was breathing heavy, his arms shaking, barely able to hold himself up off the ground. The Pacifist holstered his irons and squatted next to him, a tentative hand on the other man’s shoulder.

“Can you tell me what happened?” the Pacifist asked. “Can you tell me what happened to the plane?”

Pete Mallard was a ground crew chief across town at Republic Aviation. Just two days prior, an experimental fighter plane experienced an oil leak that caused a fire in the cockpit. The plane went down in someone’s back yard, test pilot along with it. Pete had given the all-clear before take-off, and then the last anyone saw of him he was walking into the woods without a word.

It was suspicious, if nothing else, and the cops and the folks from Republic wanted to have a chat with him. The man might have been a saboteur, a spy, a murderer, or all three.

But in that moment, more than anything else, Pete Mallard looked sick.

It had been two days since the crash. From the dirt on Pete’s clothes to the leaves in his hair, he’d been out there the whole time. He was likely hungry and surely dehydrated. He was pale and stared blindly at the ground, shaking, gulping down shuddering breaths, sweating like a draft horse.

The oil stains on Pete’s coveralls were the last piece of the puzzle. He’d caused the leak, the fire, the crash, the death. What the Pacifist did not yet know was ‘why.'

“Pete? What happened with the plane?” the Pacifist asked again.

Pete Mallard’s eyes focused for an instant, then crossed. He reared backed then whipped forward to hurl a gut-full of yellow bile across the emerald putting green. He whimpered then collapsed onto his face, out like a light.

“Okay, that’s new,” the Pacifist muttered. A loud bark made him look up. The cops were coming, they’d heard the shot. Once they were there he wouldn’t be able to ask Pete a damn thing. He’d’ve been lucky if they didn’t shoot him on sight.

The Pacifist dug around in his duster’s inner pocket and found his vial of smelling salts. He twisted its lid off and held it next to Pete’s nose. The older man jolted awake, gasping at the stink. He pushed himself off the grass and sat up.

“What?” he stammered. The Pacifist capped and pocket the vial.

“You’re at the park, it’s been two days since the plane crash, tell me what happened,” the Pacifist demanded. He didn’t have time to mess around. The cops were just a few hundred yards away.

“Plane crash?” Pete asked.

“There was a test flight, you were the ground chief. It crashed and you disappeared. What happened?”

“The test flight’s not ‘til Friday…” he said. He looked up at the costumed man squatting in front of him, finally seeing the get-up. “Who are you?”

“Never mind that. What day is it?” the Pacifist demanded.

“Wednesday,” Pete answered. “Right? It’s Wednesday?”

It was Sunday.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” the Pacifist asked.

Pete massaged his face in his hands.

“My alarm went off at five, I washed my face, kissed Julia on the way out, grabbed some eggs at Tim’s, headed in to work…”

“And then?”

“Then my ass is in the grass and some cowboy is yelling at me!” Pete yelled. The dog barked louder, closer and more agitated. Flashlight beams snapped onto their position. The Pacifist could hear the cops yelling, too.

“Do you remember anything else? Anything off?” the Pacifist demanded. He had just seconds left.

“No, just that…” Pete grabbed his melon like he was suddenly hungover.

“What?”

“There was some dame at Tim’s, sitting at the counter. She wanted to talk planes. But she must have been down on her luck, she was trying to hock a pocket watch,” he said. He groaned and sweat slicked his forehead. “Then I’m here.”

“Hey!” the cops shouted. The baying hound drowned everything else out. Flashlight beams settled onto the two men. The three cops and a dog all barked and shouted, their voices blending together: “Hands up, hands, hands, hands!”

The Pacifist stood slowly, palms visible. The officers had their pistols drawn.

“What the Hell is this?” one shouted.

“It’s that Big Apple Bandito!”

The Pacifist grimaced at that name.

“Hands where we can see ‘em!”

“The Big Apple what?” Pete stammered, blinded by flashlights.

“Peter Mallard! You’re under arrest for treason and murder!”

“Murder?” Pete gulped.

“Yeah, that test pilot you killed!” one yelled over the dog.

“Hey, calm down boys!” the Pacifist said, hands still high. “Let Pete talk!”

“Don’t you move!”

“Pete was just telling me, he ran into some woman who - !”

“Cram it, you loon!”

“Yeah, there was a woman…” Pete said. He groaned like talking hurt and said: “Some brunette with a watch.”

The three cops froze and went silent when they heard that, their faces slack. The dog lunged against its lead, but the cops didn’t move. The Pacifist tensed. It was like a spell had fallen over them as soon as they’d heard those words.

“A woman…” one cop whispered. His eyes unfocused like he was looking at someone twenty yards behind Pete and the Pacifist.

“She told me I was safe…” Pete continued.

“Safe…” the three cops repeated in unison.

“What?” the Pacifist said, his whole body suddenly going tense. The cops seemed to be looking through him. If he’d moved like that in any other circumstance, they’d have started shouting, if not shooting.

“Safe…” Pete whispered, then he doubled over and puked again.

“Keep your home safe,” the cops chanted together.

They raised their pistols as one, silent and mechanical.

Otto ‘Hardscrabble’ Reed had worked a touring Wild West show, plinking quickdraw bullets off tossed horseshoes at three bookings a night for thirty years. He’d married Marybeth Eckels a year-and-a-half into that stint. She’d gone by ‘Slick-Shootin’ Mary’ back then and people’d pay a nickel to see her unload twelve rounds in two seconds. When they’d had Clarence, they’d taught him everything they knew, combined and improved. He’d passed that on to his own son.

At that instant, the Pacifist had nearly a hundred years of combined experience fueling his every action. His hands moved like rattlesnakes, like bullwhips, dragging his grandfather’s Peacemakers out of their holsters. The ancient revolvers roared.

The flashlights burst first, then the pistols exploded in the cops’ hands. The men stumbled back, bloody and disarmed.

The bloodhound ripped out of its stunned master’s grasp and lunged, teeth bared. The Pacifist dropped one revolver, snatched the airhorn out of his pocket, and blew it right in the dog’s face.

The hound backpedaled and whimpered, then scampered away, leaving the five men alone on the putting green.

Shocked out of their murderous stupor, the three cops crumpled to the grass, doing their best imitation of Pete hurling.

The Pacifist let out a shuddering breath then slipped his airhorn back in his pocket and his pistol back in its holster.

“What woman?” he asked the kneeling officers. He squatted and picked up his dropped revolver, checked it. It had a soft landing on the turf and was engineered to take a beating.

“What woman?” a cop repeated. His hand had been pretty badly cut when the Pacifist shot the gun he was holding, but he was just letting it bleed into the grass. He had no idea.

“Yeah, you said there was a woman,” the Pacifist repeated as he wrapped the wound in gauze from another pocket. “You guys saw the same woman that Pete did?”

“The woman…” the cop repeated.

“What did she say to you?”

“She said we can’t…” the cop paused to dry heave. The other two and Pete gagged at the sound, almost putting the Pacifist over, too. The last thing he wanted to do was puke with a bandana tied over his mouth. The cop recovered enough to continue: “We can’t remember.”

“What?”

“No one can remember…” he tried again, but he was violently overcome. The Pacifist had to jump back to avoid any bile splashing on his boots.

When he looked up, he remembered that he worked with words far more often than bullets. Words mattered. Word choice mattered.

“Wait, you’re unable to remember or you’re not allowed?” he asked.

The only thing coming out of the talkative one’s mouth was upchuck. The Pacifist had to look away just to avoid joining him in that activity.

“Any of you?” he asked the rest. All of them, including Pete, puked at once. The synchronized vomit backed the Pacifist away another five paces. When he looked up, he saw more flashlights in the distance, closing in.

“Out of time,” he whispered to himself. He gotten very little, but he’d gotten enough.

It was only twenty yards to the tree line, and the Pacifist closed the distance in seconds. He was further than the incoming cops could follow by the time they’d find their debilitated comrades.

Even if his witnesses couldn’t remember what they’d seen, it wouldn’t be too hard to track down a woman who left people puking at the mere mention of her existence. It would be like following a stinking snail trail, and following trails was the Pacifist’s day job.

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Bruce Connors.