The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite, Part 6 of 6

Mickey Malloy’s case aboard the Elysian Empress comes to an end. Old enemies and new allies do their best to make Mick’s life hell.

This story is featured in the anthology Bourbon, Bullets, Broads, and Bourbon, which is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, or as a DRM-free ePub.

This is Part 6, the finale of The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite. If you’re just starting out, check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 before reading any further.

Content Warnings: Violence, Gun Violence, Death, Mild Swearing, Tobacco Use, Alcohol Use, Nazis

WEDNESDAY NIGHT, DECEMBER 24, 1941
EL LAGARTO VERDE
YBOR CITY, TAMPA, FLORIDA

“Yes, Mister Malloy, we know exactly who you are,” the little man was saying. His boys were stacked up behind him like they were going to do something.

“So give me a chance to win my money back,” Mick grunted. He waved his empty glass around. “Where is Tommy? Tommy's got me. Where is he?”

“Tomás no longer works here, sir,” the man said. Mick squinted and studied him. He was short, with a sharp suit. His humorless smile held one gold tooth. Mick disliked him immediately.

“Well everybody here knows I'm good, ask 'em all,” he said. He looked around but the folks who'd gotten him sloshed every night for the last year refused to meet his eye.

“Sir, if there was anyone for you, you would not be here tonight,” the man said. Mick thought that could've been a jab, but he gave the little guy the benefit of the doubt. The holidays and few eggnogs had him feeling jolly.

“Say, pal, what's your name? Let me buy you a drink,” Mick said. He tried to stand but he couldn't quite get his feet underneath him.

“We're no longer able to extend your beverage tab either, sir,” the man said. Mickey suddenly felt his pulse in his temples.

“You can't what?” he stammered. He shoved himself up from the table. He suddenly felt dizzy and nearly fell over. He caught himself, but not before jostling the collection of empty glasses in front of him. When he looked up, he found that the little man's goons had advanced a pace. They looked ready to run him out on a rail. He leaned forward, supporting himself with both hands flat on the table.

“What is your name?” he asked without looking up.

“Mister Garza,” the little man said. “Does the name 'Mister Losa' carry any weight with you, Mister Malloy?”

“Losa's that gangster in Miami, right? A real piece of work. Why, is he here?”

“Mister Losa recently purchased El Lagarto Verde,” Garza said.

“Well congratulations to him,” Mick muttered. He lifted his glass to his lips, only to be dismayed when he found it empty.

“Mister Losa also purchased your debt.”

Mick carefully set the glass down, found his center of gravity, and stood up all the way. He towered over Garza and his goons.

“My debt is my business,” he growled.

“Believe me, Mister Malloy, it is in your best interest to pay it sooner rather than later,” Garza advised. ”Mister Losa is aware of your skills and your contacts. There is always something he could use from a man like you. If you would like to decide how your debt is paid, pay it with money and pay it today.”

“Is this really worth your time, boys?” Mick said. “How much could I - !”

Garza handed him an itemized bill. Mick squinted at it. He patted down his pockets.

“In case you do not have your glasses, allow me: nine-thousand-seventy-eight dollars.”

“Is that all?” Mick laughed. The total was absurd. It was three years' salary back when he was on the force. Now, on his own, he had no idea how it'd take to earn.

“That is bolito losses. Your bar tab is another eight-hundred-forty-four.”

“Ah, hell,” Mick sighed. “What about the hundred I just brought by?”

“Seventy dollars. That was October, Mister Malloy.”

“Hey, what the hell do you want from me?” Mickey snapped. “I don't have this kind of scratch.”

“If I were you, Mister Malloy, I would leave here now. Do not come back. Do not dig yourself deeper. If you cannot pay, they will figure out something else.”

“Send your leg breakers,” Mick grunted.

“Mister Losa prefers to avoid violence when possible. He will arrange a trade. Services against your debt. If you can procure the money, you should. Whatever it is he asks of you will be far more taxing than however you earn your daily bread.”

“I'm a god damn P.I., nothing's ever easy, and nothing is ever new.”

Garza laughed at that. He took a gold-plated lighter out of one pocket and a pearl cigarette case out of the other. He retrieved one cig and lit it. The lighter's flicker reflected flatly in his right eye; it was glass. He scratched absently at a puffy, new tattoo on his neck, the visage of a snarling wolf. Smoke swirled in his mouth, cooling and tumbling over his chin as he told Mickey:

“Mister Losa can be quite creative. I'm sure he'll find you something to do that you never thought you could.”

SATURDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 21, 1942
THE ELYSIAN EMPRESS RIVERBOAT CASINO
LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

Wall panels splintered above Mick's head. The Nazis were closing in. The shots were deafening, gunsmoke was drifting through the bridge. Cordite was filling the air, stinging Mickey's lungs. He pulled up his bandana again, desperate for even one clean breath.

The Bastard drew in one long inhalation. The gunsmoke, the blood, the sweat, it was home for him. The thrumming pipes and the slant in the floor. The roar of engines and gunfire and huddled, terrified people. It was familiar in an unwelcome way. Old memories accompanied the smells and the sounds:

Steel puppets, whistling and stomping through mud. A friend's blood cooling on his neck. Glowing eyes shrieking at him in the dark. The clank of rusty chains and the nonsense fables mumbled of a madman.

Shit, he needed a drink.

The wall behind the Bastard was tatters held up by familiarity. When the flanking Nazis set up by the door to storm the bridge, he burst through straight through. The pair of them didn't know what they were looking at. He was a human battering ram, covered in splinters and shredded wallpaper.

The Bastard's wide shoulder caught one low, under the ribcage. He continued through, pancaking the man into the wall. His fetid fascist breath whooshed from his lungs under the impact. He crumpled like a wet paper bag. The Bastard dropped with him and came in low.

The second Nazi fired his carbine, but the Bastard scuttled under his aim like a spider. He jammed his wood sliver downward, straight through the man's shoe. Shock flooded the Nazi's system and he dropped his gun. The Bastard rose up to his full height before him. He raised the gavel and brought it down like a gavel: once, twice, and three times. The Nazi was down for the count.

Pistol shots stuttered from the bridge behind the Bastard. He spun to find the first Nazi with a curved knife tumbling out of his fingers. It fell to the deck with a clatter as he stared in horror at the spreading red on his shirt. The Bastard peered through the busted wall to see Roberts holding a smoking sixgun in his trembling hand. The Nazi gasped like a landed catfish then slid to the floor, dead. Between the pulsing blood leaking out of his foot and his scrambled skull, the Nazi the Bastard had brained wouldn't be far behind him.

“You!” a man roared from the far end of the hallway. The Bastard looked up to find Eizhürst staring at him from the top of the stairs at the end of the hall. His peeling face made his incredulousness even funnier to the Bastard. Eizhürst stammered, “How are you here?”

The Bastard laughed, a rolling cannonade that shook the walls and rattled Eizhürst's bones.

“You should've stayed locked up, pretty boy,” he finally replied.

“Many people will regret your presence,” Eizhürst promised.

“You sound like my ex-wife,” the Bastard grunted.

Eizhürst pulled a flare gun out of his pocket and aimed it over the bannister, above the gambling floor and the hundreds of hostages corralled there. Searing spotlights flooded the ship from every angle, forcing his arm over his eyes. The beams weren't coming from the police boats below, but from above.

The Bastard didn't know what the lights were and he didn't particularly care. He put his head down and charged. Eizhürst was a skilled fighter, but there was no way he could take a hit from two-hundred-sixty pounds moving at a good clip.

That's why he didn't.

The wiry kraut had eyes in the back of his ragged head and side-stepped at the last instant. The Bastard sailed past him, into the open air over the stairs. He reached out for something, anything, to arrest his fall and found a handful of Eizhürst's shirt. The Nazi yelped as the big man yanked him off his feet. The pair bounced down the stairs and hit hard on the first landing. Eizhürst's knife clattered out of reach.

Both men found themselves groaning and gasping for breath. The stairs hit like mule kicks. Eizhürst was the first on his feet. The Bastard was on his hands and knees when the Nazi hauled back and buried his foot in the Bastard's gut, sending him sprawling back out. Eizhürst staggered back and lifted his flare gun only to stare at the gambling floor in confusion.

The Bastard realized only then that the barrage that had been shredding the bridge from below had gone quiet.

“What?” Eizhürst managed. His upper lip and mustache had almost come completely free and it flapped in front of his mouth when he spoke. The Bastard rolled onto his back and wheezed, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever the kraut was seeing.

The hostages were milling about in confusion. Where they had been huddled on the floor, now they were standing, bloodied and confused. Their minders were nowhere to be seen.

“Carl? Peter? Lyle? Max?” Eizhürst croaked.

The crowd parted and Ruby and Zano appeared, dragging a body between them. It was one of the Aryan goons with the addition of new head hole courtesy of a high-caliber slug. They dropped the corpse at the foot of the stairs. His cored skull slatted when it hit the carpet.

Eizhürst spun on his heel. He knew that neither Ruby nor Al was carrying a heater big enough to do that kind of damage. The lights outside converged on him. He raised his hand and used it like a visor to block the glaring spotlight. His eyes widened and he dove away from the window just as the few shards remaining burst inward.

A man in olive drab BDU's swung through the window boots first. He released his hold on a rope and hit the deck in a roll, coming up an instant later with a military-pattern Thompson to his shoulder. All around the Empress, more windows were exploding inward as more soldiers boarded. The Bastard fell back to the deck.

Eizhürst leveled his flare gun and pulled the trigger. Green flame erupted outward and enveloped the soldier who stumbled backward and batted out the flames. In the chaos, Eizhürst scrambled away, melting into the crowd.

The Bastard charged after him, only for his way to be be blocked with rifles in his face. The soldiers were already looked down the ship, and a masked man was an area of concern for them.

“Let him go! Find the Nazi!” the smoldering soldier shouted as he patted the soke out of his clothing. The two riflemen peeled off into the crowd.

The soldier yelling orders was a short man, stocky, young but already balding. The green flame had singed his uniform but spared his face. He'd wouldn't even get a scar. If he hadn't been carrying a sub-machine gun, the Bastard wouldn't have thought to look at him twice except for his patches.

He had the stars and stripes on one shoulder and a familiar emblem on the left, one the Bastard had last seen on an old business card. These boys were from the Office, and they wore the Eagle, Eye, and Sword.

“Round up the civilians, find Eizhürst. He is dangerous, so shoot first!” he shouted. “And someone shut down this boat!”

A pair of soldiers in skin-tight black diving suits sprinted past him and up the stairs barefoot, a pair of tall blonde men who looked like twins. The Bastard recognized them from Tampa, the Lanes. They'd taken a U-boat by themselves. They were tough as nails.

The Bastard hoped Corbeau and Roberts had smarts enough to keep their hands all the way up. He didn't hear any shots, and the howling engine slowed to a murmur. All interior and exterior lights glowed back to life, illuminating the blood, the bodies, and the bullet holes. The ship looked like a carnival built around a slaughterhouse.

With the Empress calmed, the Bastard could hear the absolute din going on outside. It sounded like a thousand motorcycles sputtering inside a wind tunnel. The only thing that could cover up a ruckus like that was a giant ship sputtering steam and tearing herself apart from the inside on purpose.

The other soldiers threshed through the mob of hostages like cattle dogs, eyeballing each and every person there, alive or dead. After a few minutes, they divided into pairs and began the lengthy process of kicking in every door on the ship. Once they'd been in every nook and cranny, they reported back. There was no sign of Eizhürst anywhere aboard.

“Radio!” the lead soldier called. A rifleman with a heavy pack trotted over. The leader picked up the headset on its side and began spouting orders.

“Buzzard One, this is Raindrop Actual. I have a shark in the water. We need an immediate search pattern. Put the locals on high alert. Shoot on sight for Eizhürst.”

The spotlights above pulled back and began circling the ship in a widening spiral on the lookout for anyone in the water.

“Mister Malloy,” the lead soldier said, sighing. The Bastard looked at him and his uniquely plain face.

“Who?” the Bastard grunted after long pause. It was almost convincing.

“Do you prefer Mister India?” the soldier wondered. The Bastard chuckled and dropped the act. He pulled the bandana down around his neck and groaned.

“Mickey is fine,” he said. He could feel every one of the stairs he hit on the way down and he knew he was going to have a bruise that was the exact replica of Eizhürst's shoe blossoming on his gut here in a minute.

“George Keaton, deputy field inspector,” he said. The joker from the phone. “It's a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

“Just Mickey, Keaton,” Mick muttered. He took Keaton's offered hand. When he let go, Keaton's palm was gleaming with blood. Mick looked at his own hand. He'd split it open on the sharp edge of the wood he'd used as an ad hoc dagger.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Not a problem,” Keaton told him. He raised a hand to his face so he could project when he yelled: “Medic!”

Mick waved off the approaching soldier.

“Don't bother with me, you got civilians injured down there,” Mick said. He took off his tie, finally, and wrapped it around his hand. The pain was sharp and hot, and the pressure dialed it up but dulled it. He clenched his fist and bore it.

“Keaton, I know you,” Mick said after moment. Keaton looked confused, so Mick spelled it out for him: “You're the one that had Eizhürst locked up after the mess in Tampa. Want to explain to me how he's out here in the wild?”

“We had him aboard a direct flight to a cell, but he feigned unconsciousness until our man let his guard down. He strangled a young official to death then parachuted out somewhere over Ohio. We assume local fascist elements took him in after that.”

“Local fascist - !” Mick started, but stopped himself. Instead, he said: “I'm sorry about your man.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You get the mook in the engine room?” he asked.

“One of our frogmen cut in through the waterline a few minutes ago. He took three suspects into custody and found a fourth one deceased.”

Corbeau's men had taken care of business, with or without direction.

“And the bomb?”

“We had another go through the hull at the bow. He discovered and neutralized the device. And he arrested a very angry man trapped under a pile of furniture.”

Mick chuckled. The Lanes. First those two took down a whole U-boat by themselves, now they're paddling through swamp water to infiltrate gambling boats.

“I forgot all about Andrew,” Mickey said. “You know, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you mind if I took it with me?”

“What, the bomb?”

“You're right, never mind, just a bad joke.”

“You're lucky we were listening to the police band,” Keaton said.

“I figure y'all listen to everything,” Mick said. He ambled over to the gambling floor and scooped a tumbler of something brown off the closest table. He didn't care what it was. He took the drink in one slug. Its burn was muted by the melted ice. It was probably bourbon.

“That's true, but takes a lot more interest than that to get this kind of response,” Keaton pointed out. There were at least three dozen soldiers aboard the Empress, dragging away corpses, administering to the wounded, taking witness statements.

“I got y'all riled with my call, then the nonsense the Carollos reported back to you got your hackles the rest of the way up,” Mick said.

“Folks only look for our help when things have reached a very dangerous level. I had a feeling about this one.”

Mick watched the soldiers, the officials, march the members of the Muddy Water Gang up from their hiding places. He knew their faces. Al Zano, Jefferson Crépuscule, Wink Alderman, Gator Wayne, Ruby, Roberts, Corbeau.

The officials also laid out the dead Nazis. Eight of them had been drilled by long-range rifle rounds, another with a goose-egg and a terrible steam burn, one shot with a small-caliber pistol, one with a cracked skull, and one from the engine room who'd caught a shiv more times than Mick cared to count. He did not see Max, the one who'd shot all the civilians. Though Corbeau'd tagged him a couple times, he seemed like a tough cookie. He could probably make it to shore.

Mick told Keaton about his suspicions. Keaton waved the radioman back over and relayed the info to his team.

“The krauts back at the pier went down fighting,” Keaton told Mick. “Locals left 'em so full of holes that you could count shooting stars through them.”

“Could've gone way worse,” Mick said. “Their accomplices, Corbeau and his crew, were coerced. Once they knew the score, they flipped on Eizhürst. This rig would be in a million pieces and the Big Easy would be ten feet underwater right now if it weren't for them.”

“I'll mention their cooperation in my report,” Keaton said. “How were they coerced, if I may ask?”

“Knowing these Nazis, they have people on the outside who are at risk.”

“With Eizhürst and at least one of his men unaccounted for, we'll take action to protect any threatened civilians.”

“Good,” Mick said. He watched the battered gamblers starting to puff up once again now that the situation was in hand. Some were demanding answers in the way only men who thought they were were in charge did. None of the officials seemed particularly phased by their bullfrogging. Mick decided to ignore them before they made his headache any worse.

“Any way to get off this scow?” he asked.

“I could lend you my ride,” Keaton answered. They walked to window together a Keaton pointed out one of the strangest contraptions Mick had ever seen.

“The hell is that?” he muttered. He was looking at what appeared to be an airplane with its wings snipped off and replaced with long scaffold arms sticking straight out the sides. A wailing motor running a giant propellor like an industrial fan capped each arm. Sliding doors in the middle of the fuselage hung open, with men leaning out swinging machine guns and spotlights on gimbals. Strangest off all, the things were hanging in mid-air, dangling like Christmas ornaments.

“Rotor-copters,” Keaton answered. “We call 'em Chickenhawks. Couple of our boys stole one from the krauts in Egypt. We just started making our own. Pretty neat, huh?”

“Something like that,” Mick said. He wouldn't be caught dead within a hundred feet of one of those things. They looked rickety as hell and just floating there made them sitting ducks. No, sir.

“They are so stable that our snipers can fire from inside. We keep two marksmen per squad on board,” Keaton continued. He pointed at the row of headshot Nazis, struck down before they could turn their guns on the hostages. “You saw how that worked. To be honest, this is their first live-fire mission, but their potential is great. Imagine flying a whole squad in exactly where you want, no runway necessary.”

Mick understood, but damn did they look like they'd fold in half around themselves and chop everyone inside to pieces if the wind hit 'em wrong.

“I'll wait for a boat if it's all the same to you,” Mick said.

“Didn't you fly on the Westphalia? And with the Silver Fox?” Keaton was grinning. Mick realized Keaton was younger than he let on, maybe not even thirty yet. He was damn-near as green as green got.

“And what happened to them?” Mick snapped. He didn't need to be reminded of the bad times, he saw them every time he tried to sleep. These officials thought of him like some kind of sideshow curiosity. They couldn't possibly be dumb enough to think he was a hero. He didn't do what he did in the last war because he wanted to, he wasn't proud of it. He did it to protect a friend, and he'd failed.

“I apologize, sir,” Keaton said. He looked like a kicked dog. He stepped away to assist his men with the wounded. Mick considered saying something to Keaton, but he didn't. Heroes weren't real. What was real was dying or surviving.

Mick dragged a chair out from under a charred poker table and took a seat. He felt like a damn speed bag. He patted his pockets until he found his deck and pulled it out. It was crushed. Mick didn't know if it was the tackling, the punching, the falling down the stairs, the squeezing between pipes and into closets, but his cigarettes were toast. He tossed the ruined pack onto the floor and leaned back in the chair. The back dug into a bruise he didn't know he had.

“Damn,” he groaned. He spotted the wet-suited brothers, the Lanes, lingering by the stairs, whispering and staring at him. He rolled his eyes and looked for another drink. There wasn't anything intact within reach. The next thing he knew, they were standing over him, eyes as wide as baby birds'.

“Are you back, Mister Malloy?” one of them asked.

“Back?” Mick grunted. “And call me Mickey.”

“He never left, right Mickey?” the other said, elbowing his brother in the ribs.

“I ain't back in anything,” Mick said. He squinted at the pair. “Which one are you?”

“Chris.”

“Alex.”

They said it at about the same time, which did not clear anything up. They took his question as an invitation and pulled up their own chairs at his table. They stared at him like a couple puppies.

“And you two got under this boat?” Mick asked.

“Dropped off Buzzard Four in a Chariot torpedo,” one, maybe Alex, replied.

“Sawed our way right in,” the other, also maybe Alex, added.

“Like you did with that U-boat last year?” Mick asked.

“You remember us?” maybe Chris yelped. His eyes were full of stars.

“Yeah, just like that U-boat,” another maybe Chris said, playing it cool by nearly suppressing a grin.

“This ship has a surprisingly thin hull,” the first noted.

“Good to know,” Mick said.

“So you're back, right?” the second asked.

“Sorry to break it to you, but I didn't come here to mop up krauts,” Mick said.

“What do you mean?”

“You called this in.”

“I needed a lead, that's all,” Mick tried to explain. Before he could elaborate further, he saw the radioman rush past and whisper something in Keaton's ear. Keaton listened close. His face drained of color. He looked like he was about to collapse.

“What's that about?” Mick asked.

“I'll find out for you,” one Alex or Chris said.

“Hey, Eckertt!” the other Alex or Chris shouted. The radioman trotted over.

“What's that about?” the first Alex or Chris said, nodded at the shaken Keaton.

“Buzzard Three found a body in the water,” Eckertt said. He was a country boy with an accent as thick as his neck. “Not Eizhürst or any kind of Aryan. A cop. And the locals are reporting that one of their boats is missing.”

“Shit,” Chris and Alex said in unison.

“So Eizhürst is in the wind,” Mick concluded.

“Neither hide nor hair,” Eckett said.

The hair on the back of Mick's neck stood up. The grinning son of a bitch was free. He had names and he had grudges. Whoever he'd threatened to get Corbeau and his crew involved was in immediate danger.

Mickey shoved his chair out and stood. Alex and Chris followed suit, though they weren't sure why. Both of Mick's abused knees popped. He ignored them and stalked over to Keaton. His pair of puppies weren't two steps behind him.

“You going after this guy?” he demanded of him.

“Of course,” Keaton snapped. “He's a high priority target.”

“I want him,” Mick said. “He is dangerous, he plays with lives. I want him.”

“Sir, I cannot recommend that any civilian pursue enemy agents under any circumstances,” Keaton said. He looked up into Mick's eyes, unflinching. Mick's gaze broke first.

“Is that what you want? You boys so desperate that you want to drag the old rust-bucket out of the garage?”

“Have you read about what they're doing overseas, Mickey? What the krauts are doing to the Jews? What happened in Bataan?” Keaton asked. “Sorry for my language, but hell yes, we are desperate. If I thought you could slow then down by even a centimeter, I'd put a badge on you tonight.”

“Then get me one, god damn it,” Mick snarled. “I am not letting that grinning piece of trash hurt one more person.”

THURSDAY MORNING, MARCH 19, 1942
PREFAB DINING FACILITY B: “JOE AND EGGS”
ASSET RETENTION CENTER 0-4, CARSON, COLORADO

It was cold, colder than anything Quijano Corbeau had ever felt before. Sure, he'd seen snow once or twice on the odd run up to northern Missouri, but this was something else. And, as he learned recently, those had just been flurries. The stuff piled up here, higher than his knees. And the mountains? There were miles of jagged rocks reaching skyward in every direction. He felt like he was in the bottom of a pit even though he was so high above sea level that he couldn’t walk and talk at the same time. It was more than he was ready for.

The instant coffee in his mug helped push that cold back, but god damn it tasted like dirt. He hunched forward and let the steam warm his cheeks, let the mug put some feeling back in his fingers. He watched families shuffle by through the diner's big front windows. The place was designed, not built, designed, to look like the most generic spot you could find in middle America. Its exacting, measured quaintness was more off-putting than anything else.

After the Empress, hell, after the Peacock, Corbeau had expected to end up in chains, if not in a noose or strapped to Old Sparky. Instead, they brought him to this place. The folks running it weren't cops, and they weren't soldiers, despite how they'd made their entrance. No, these folks were something else.

He was, too. Not quite a prisoner, but they weren't letting him leave. They'd made it look like a town, that's for sure. There were stores and a theater and even two bars, but only accepted ration cards for purchases and the food was stamped, labeled, branded, and sealed as military surplus. The movies were all second-run and the library was only half-full. It was like a prison, but everyone had unlimited yard time and instead of bars he had a white picket fence. Everybody here smiled, but each and every one of them looked of their shoulders.

Corbeau hadn't met too many folks yet. The duplex they'd put him in shared a wall with a Chinese woman who cooked up a storm. On the second night he was there she'd brought him some kind of spicy glazed chicken that was drop-dead delicious, but she spoke as much English as he spoke Cantonese. They waved and exchanged awkward hellos whenever they came or went at the same time, but that was about it. He was determined to cook something for her one day but his latest specialty had been mud bugs and there didn't seem like much of a chance of finding them here.

He wasn't used to this. He'd been on the run for half his life and waist-deep in mud in the middle of a swamp for the last four years. The strange little fake town was a shock to his senses. He knew it was intended to feel welcoming and familiar, but nothing about it represented his life. The weather, the altitude, the landscape, the starchy clothes he was given, the people always looking over their shoulder, everything put him on edge.

The cook, a swarthy older white woman with her gray hair wrangled into a net, slid his breakfast to him across the counter, shocking him out of his contemplations. Corbeau went to eat but saw the woman standing there, tattooed hand outstretched.

“Sorry,” Corbeau said. He fumbled through his pockets until he found his ration card. The cook took it, punched a little star in his Wednesday column, then ambled away, half-singing a song in a language he didn't recognize.

Corbeau looked down at his plate. Gritty powdered eggs, soupy oats, smash-fried Spam, toast so thin he could see light through it, and a glass each of powdered milk and powdered orange juice. It was the best breakfast he'd seen since Schmidt had dragged him out of Sulphur.

He dug in. It was all he could do. He had ruined lives, gotten people he cared about killed, wasted his life. He never had an easy go of it, but that didn't mitigate his actions. Stuck in some weird government purgatory with pasty eggs and a frozen beard wasn't what he imagined his life of crime would earn him, but it was far better than he expected for himself.

“Key?” a small voice asked. Corbeau jumped in his seat and spun to find the littlest Billiot girl standing behind him. She was so bundled up that she could barely see out of the gap between her thick coat's high collar and her floppy sock hat. He didn't know what to say.

“Tadpole?” was all he managed.

“It is you! What happened to your hair?” she asked. He reached up and felt for his braids. He'd forgotten they were gone.

“Cut 'em” he mumbled through his mouthful of eggs. He tried to swallow them down in one gulp, but they were so dry that he choked and spit them on the counter. She laughed.

“Gross!”

“Sorry,” Corbeau said. He wiped egg out of his beard and off the counter. “What are you doing here?”

“Dad said we had to move,” she told him. “But this place is awful! Look at that snow!”

Corbeau watched the blizzard coming down outside.

“It's real cold, huh?” he asked. All he could think to talk to her about was the weather. He had so much more to say, so much to apologize for.

“It just keeps coming and coming! It already buried our snowman from yesterday, so now we got to make a new one!”

Corbeau cracked a smile.

“That sounds tough, kid,” he said.

“Here you go, little girl,” the cook grunted. She had come around the counter holding a tray of tin cans and some butcher paper bundles tied with twine.

“Thank you, Miss Double-Shannon,” Tadpole said as she packed her tote bag with food off the tray.

The cook grinned then crouched next to the little girl.

“Dubrovčanin, say it with me, Doo-brow-sha-neen. Dubrovčanin.”

“Dubrovčanin,” Tadpole said. She grinned, showing off a couple lost teeth.

“Perfect,” the cook said. She stood and patted Tadpole on her poofy hat and pulled her loose scarf a little snugger. “Go home, thank your father for me.”

“Will do,” Tadpole said. “Bye Miss Dubrovčanin, bye Key. I'll let my dad know I saw you, he'll be so excited. He never stops talking about you.”

“Bye,” Corbeau whispered. He watched Tadpole shove the door open with her little boot, rearrange the tray and its contents, then disappear into the blizzard. He had no doubt that Cyrille wanted to kill him and now he knew the man was walking distance from where he sat eating gritty powdered eggs.

“She is good girl,” Miss Dubrovčanin said. “You know?”

“I know it,” Corbeau said.

“It is shame she is here,” Dubrovčanin said, “Shame shame, shame. Everyone here is marked to die, did you know? Why would someone want to kill sweet little girl?”

“Probably got mixed up with the wrong crowd,” Corbeau said. He looked down and found his plate empty.

“Do you have job yet?” Dubrovčanin wondered as she gathered his plate and silverware. It seemed like Tadpole vouching for him had earned him some goodwill.

“Not yet,” Corbeau said. “Why, you hiring?”

“Can you wash dish?” Dubrovčanin asked, laughing.

“I think I could figure it out,” Corbeau replied.

“You need job here. For purpose,” Dubrovčanin told him. “You need reason to... to be. Yes.”

“Yeah,” Corbeau said.

“Maybe you work in Pykrete factory,” she said, shrugging.

Corbeau stared into his coffee mug, studying the intact crystals sitting in the bottom. The diner's front door creaked open, ringing a little bell. A man wrapped up like an Eskimo stood there, letting the frigid wind blow in around him. Snow had piled up on his shoulders and encased his boots.

“Close the door,” Dubrovčanin shouted. “Be warm.”

The man began peeling off layers of coats, covering the rack until is looked like a willow tree dripping slush. He hung his hat on the hook then sighed and took a seat at the counter, right next to Corbeau.

“Two fresh ones, please,” Corbeau said, sliding his empty mug across the counter. Dubrovčanin filled his mug and another and handed them to him. He added: “Thank you.”

Banjo's shivers were so bad it looked like he was sitting on a paint mixer.

“That should thaw you out,” Corbeau said to him. He handed one of the mugs over. Banjo wrapped both hands around it and let it warm his hands before he took a big gulp. He face screwed up in shock when the liquid hit his tongue.

“Don't say anything, just enjoy the warmth,” Corbeau advised.

“Sugar?” Banjo rasped.

“Here,” Corbeau said, pushing over one shaker of beet sugar and one of powdered creamer. Banjo dumped both into his mug like he'd never have the chance to again. By the time he was done his coffee smelled like caramel and was as white as birch bark.

“That's the stuff,” Banjo said after a moment. His shivering died down and he leaned back in his chair, staring at Corbeau. He asked: “Why'd you call me?”

“I wanted to hear your thoughts on something,” Corbeau said.

“You can talk, but it's just talking,” Banjo replied.

“Fair enough. We're safe here, and stable. Better'n what a lot of us had in a long time,” Corbeau said.

“True. But just cause a turd's glistening don't make it a diamond. We're still locked up here.”

“Exactly. We're here 'til they decide we're better off in a regular jail, or 'til they cut us loose.”

“I could do the time, you know that,” Banjo said.

“But,” Corbeau prodded.

“It ain't all about me any more.”

“Me neither,” Corbeau agreed, then added: “The people that are in danger because of us are here, we can't risk that.”

“Nope.”

“And we took that blame on. But the blame ain't ours,” Corbeau said.

“How so?”

“Because we're not the trigger men. This thing wasn't our decision. It was someone else. We been treating these Nazis like they're inevitable, but they ain't. They're people, and you and me, we can deal with people.”

“They aren't going to let us go around knocking kraut heads,” Banjo pointed out.

“No, but you and me and the gang, we got strengths that no one else does. The krauts knew it, and the folks in charge got to know it, too.”

“So what?”

“So we get them to let us do what we do best: we slam the door shut on the snake's head. Cut off the sons of bitches threatening our people. Pull out the threat by the roots.”

“You trying to get back on the water?” Banjo asked.

“Trying to get all of us back on the water, and to make up for everything we done.”

“There's no erasing the past, you know that,” Banjo said.

“I know, but if we do this right, maybe nobody'll have to grow up like you and me did again.”

Banjo nodded, sipping a coffee so thick that it nearly poured like syrup. He set the mug down, stared at it a long while, then said:

“Well, what's step one, skip?”

---

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Copyright © 2022 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.