The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Broken Fixers, Part 1 of 4

Mickey Malloy’s world, Hell, the whole world, has changed. Giant monsters are ravaging the Pacific, the sunrise is red as fresh blood, and anonymous rabble-rousers are blaming the Office for all of it.

As the Billy Club Bastard, he’s done his part to head off trouble at the pass, fighting every madman and monster they threw at him and locking them up. But something is happening beneath the surface, and he’s determined to get to the bottom of it.

The Case the Broken Fixers is the first part of the fourth Billy Club Bastard anthology, Old Dogs Still Got Teeth. It takes place after the conclusion of Until Only Roaches Remain and revisits characters and situations introduced there and in other Vigilance stories.

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Content warnings: Mild swearing, violence, gun violence, death, gore, alcohol use, drug use, tobacco use, Nazis.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 24, 1943
LAKESIDE OF SHUCKSTACK MOUNTAIN
SWAIN COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA

“Are we even close?” Mickey Malloy wheezed. The mountain was steep, the trees were crushing inward, and the sky was far too wide. It was too far and too close, all at once. He grunted and took the slope one step at a time.

“The cairns are right past that ridge,” Doctor Ladybird Ogden replied from behind him. She was hardly out of breath. “See? We’re almost there.”

Mick hadn’t looked at anything except the ground in front of him for an hour. He stopped, leaned against a rock, and looked up. Daylit fog was peeking through the trees. They were almost out of the woods.

Mickey was not built for hikes. He was big, a roughnecked bruiser who’d had his fair share of outdoors already. He preferred the city. At least with buildings all around he knew there was people nearby. In the wilderness, he could never be sure.

All that and he was still getting over having been shot in the arm three weeks before.

One of Mick’s perks as a founding member of the Office for the Cataloguing of Unusual Occurrences was the company he kept. During his stint, off and on since they’d yoked him during the Great War, the Office had only brought in the best, most selfless and unique people they could find, all dedicated to fighting fascism by any means necessary.

Birdie was one of his favorite colleagues. She looked like she’d been sculpted to stride through endless glades. She had long legs and moved over the roots and rocks like a deer. Her blonde braids swung with each step, just starting to get ribboned with silver. For someone who billed her time as a ‘consulting folklorist,’ she was spry. As she told it, not all stories were in books, so she had to be as at home on a mountain trail as she was in a library.

“Dear gods,” the third member of their party gasped. Trivaldus Epoch, as he’d named himself, stumbled, his long hair dangling in sweaty ropes that kept tangling in his jangling array of medallions and talismans. He was loaded down with pounds of candles, jars, incense, and other nonsense. Epoch had insisted that all his accessories were necessary no matter how much they’d tried to convince him to leave it all in the car.

“Almost there, boys,” Birdie assured them. “Just a bit further.”

She strode past Mick and crested the ridge, then ducked right back behind a tree.

“Shit,” she hissed and put his finger to her lips. Mick got low and scrambled to her side.

“What go we got?” he asked.

“Exactly what we were looking for,” she replied. “Grave robbers.”

Mick took a look. Sure enough, six men in rumpled Silver Legion uniforms were hauling rocks while a mosquito-netted goon supervised.

“Department Three,” Birdie whispered. The overseer had a bold and proud SS skull patch on his shoulder, its ossified pate crowned with a halo of shovels. If Mick remembered his latest briefing correctly, that made him a member of the April Arm.

“What are they doing?” Epoch wondered. “Some rite?”

“Hardly,” Birdie snorted. “I visited here last fall, investigating tales of giant people. Turned out is was just rumors cooked up by racists. They want to prove that white people built ancient structures found all over the country.”

“What structures?” Mick asked.

“Monk’s Mound in Illinois, Castillan Springs, Grave Creek, Mound City, and others. There are innumerable massive earthworks all over the country that existed hundred of years before Europeans arrived here. Revisionists have been trying to downplay the role of indigenous people and attribute them to a mythical race of Aryan giants.”

“Giants…” Epoch considered.

Mick snorted. He was a big guy, and just a couple week before he’d gone toe-to-toe with all seven feet of ‘Mangler’ Hobbes and come out on top, albeit wrung like a dish rag. Having run into more than his fair share of the uniquely massive and having seen far more than his fair share of the utterly weird, he could get his head around giants.

But he also trusted Birdie. If she said it was bullshit, bullshit was what it was.

“So what’s that?” he asked, pointing at the large pile of stones that the legionnaires were busy disassembling.

“It is indeed a funeral cairn, but this region was originally within the Cherokee nation. When I investigated the giant stories here last year, I learned that the Cherokee bury their passed relatives. The use of cairns is a Scottish tradition.”

“So there were white men here?” Epoch asked.

“Yes,” Birdie confirmed. “In the eighteen-twenties. It took all of two afternoons of genealogical research to find that the men buried under those mounds are the late patriarchs of the Drummond and Lister clans, who died on their way over this mountain. Their children buried them overlooking the lake and continued south.”

“So these guys are digging up bodies for no reason,” Mick said.

“They had all the chances in the world to learn that their theories are wrong and chose not to take them.”

“Sounds about right,” Mick said. He didn’t expect much else from Department Three of the Waffen-SS. They were the Germans’ secret cabal dedicated to winning the war via the alternative martial sciences. If they showed up with an expectation of how things were supposed to go, they pulled out all the stops to make sure it went that way.

Basically, they used mad science and dirty money to create weapons more cruel and horrifying than the cruelty and horror already inherent in war. Recent intel, captured in Italy, had shown that Department Three was made up of eleven separate branches, Arms, that each wanted to fight via their own means. The fourth branch, the April Arm, sought to warp the past in order to shape the future.

They had come to North Carolina to dig up graves.

“I heard they’re twelve feet tall,” one of the sweating legionnaires wheezed as he struggled with a slab. He was young and white, with an asshole’s smirk. He rubbed his raw, soft palms. He’d never done hard labor before.

“Cannibals, I bet,” another quipped, another sun-burnt yacht kid.

“No, these were white men, it was the natives that were the cannibals,” the first snapped.

“You cretins are hardly qualified to make historical analyses,” the loitering Nazi said, silencing them. “Uncover the remains. In silence.”

Mick knew a kraut accent when he heard one, and the net-draped man was about as kraut as they came.

“I don’t see any heaters,” he whispered to Birdie and Epoch, who had finally caught up. A debilitating odor had come with him. Mick pinched his nose and hissed: “What is that stink?”

Epoch worked some black mass around in his mouth like he was chewing a cud before he answered:

“Wurm weed,” he answered, like that meant anything. Green fibers laced his teeth while he chewed and his breath smelled like rancid gasoline.

“Holy hell, just keep your trap shut,” Mick said. “All the way.”

He didn’t have time for Epoch’s nonsense. Mick had worked with the self-titled consulting occultist a couple times, and the kid kept getting weirder and weirder. That mess out in the Sargasso probably didn’t help. But whatever he saw out there, he still had a job to do. Mick just had to make sure that Epoch was getting his orders from the Office, and not his other boss, the formerly ‘Most Evil Man in Europe,’ Aleister Crowley.

“They are wore out, and only got hand tools to their name,” Mick said after giving the traitor work crew another once-over. “That means we’re not shooting ‘em. Scare ‘em, yeah, but this mountain is too tall to carry a corpse down.”

After a quick discussion, Birdie went right and Epoch, left. Mick steeled himself to go down the middle, right up the gut.

He took a deep breath, pulled on his sap gloves and stretched his hands wide before balling them into fists. His knuckles popped so loud that only the sound of idiots throwing rocks around could’ve drowned them out.

Mick hefted his club. It had been a chair leg once, singly dedicated in its goal of keeping people off the ground. In Mickey’s possession, its aim had flipped. More Nazis, spies, assassins, and gangsters had been knocked senseless with the length of oak than he cared to count.

The goons who’d gotten the first taste of it had named the man who carried it. It was a name borne of fear, confusion, and rage. They named the masked man in black after his weapon. He was it as much as it was he.

Mickey Malloy pulled the black bandana over his oft-broken nose and became the thing they thought he was:

He became the Billy Club Bastard.

His fury grew while he watched the legionnaires work, whirling up like a nascent tornado. Their ‘work clothes’ were all brand new, still starch-creased from the store. The tools they’d brought were shiny, unmarred by an honest day’s work.

They were not hardcore Nazi-trained commandos but spoiled kids. The Bastard knew them by the little silver pins on their lapels: Noble Sons.

The Sons were a Legion cell mostly known for fund-raising, street harassment, and ruining family reunions. The rich kids that made up their ranks all thought their inheritances were at stake because someone that didn’t look like them got a chance once. The only way they’d figured on staying on top was by beating that other guy back down, all with the most expensive toys and lawyers backing them up. They had all the best defiance daddy’s money could buy.

In another time, in another life, with a different face, the Bastard had been forced to deal with spoiled little shits just like them. One such shit, Lyle Lohmann, had been hurt by accident back then, but he’d deserved it if anyone did. Lyle had really been where the Bastard was born. And the Noble Sons all wore that same damn smirk that Lyle had.

That smirk lit a fuse in the Bastard, and if Birdie had chirped the signal even a minute later, he might have popped.

The Bastard tore through the underbrush like a wild boar on a bulldozer. The Sons were caught by surprise, because of course they were. They were assholes playing dress-up.

One was quick enough to try to raise the rock he had pulled off the cairn, but he wasn’t strong enough to do anything with it. The Bastard knocked him into a daze and the Son dropped the stone onto his own damn foot.

Another Son pulled a pearl-gripped chrome Colt 1911 out of some hidden pocket, but he fumbled the draw, giving Birdie the opening she needed to clean his clock.

The Bastard swept through the rest, his club finding skulls, wrists, ribs, and noses.

They came at him with picks and shovels, their attacks slow and awkward. They fought like they’d never lost a fight before. The Bastard fought like a monsoon. He taught them how to lose.

Bodies crumpled to the ground, tossed aside, knocked over. The six legionnaires were unconscious or groaning before they could fully comprehend what had befallen them.

In seconds, only the Department Three man remained on his feet.

“There is no need for violence,” he said, clutching a stick grenade in his trembling hands. “We are here for an ethnographic study.”

“Your idea of an ethnographic study is robbing American graves?” Birdie asked.

“Americans?” the Nazi scoffed. He didn’t make any move for a weapon, which almost pissed off the Bastard more. The kraut continued: “You could only wish they were of your sad ilk. These remains are from before, and beyond, your sad fledgling nation.”

“You must not read the papers coming out of the Smithsonian,” Birdie chided. “I don’t often agree with Aleš Hrdlička’s opinions, but his dismissal of your theories is quite concrete.”

“That Czech fool and your Washington propaganda factory?” the Nazi spat.

“You think the pea-brains at the RuSHA know what the Hell they’re talking about?” Birdie demanded.

“Explain how a neolithic culture might have arranged so much - !” the Nazi started, but the Bastard shouted him quiet:

“Quit it with that kraut bullshit!”

His voice echoed through the foggy mountains like a train crash. Even the groaning legionnaires gave it a break. The only sound anyone heard was the Nazi’s nervously rattling grenade.

The Bastard took step closer and the Nazi tensed up. He popped open the grenade’s cap and snatched the draw string.

“Let’s not do anything hasty,” the Bastard warned.

“Mister Schmidt, please,” one of the legionnaires whimpered.

“Another Schmidt, huh?” the Bastard asked. Schmidts were popping up everywhere, stirring the pot. The whole country stank of Schmidt.

“Schweigen!” the current Schmidt snapped. He lifted the grenade high. Zealots always liked to put on a show.

“Give it up,” Birdie said. “The only bones under those rocks are those of two elderly Scotsmen, dead from dysentery. I’d put ‘em about five-foot-four.”

“What?” the legionnaire groaned.

“Schweigen!” Schmidt shouted again, his voice carrying through the fog. He stopped trembling. His hand tightened around the grenade’s ignition string.

“Hey,” Trivaldus Epoch said behind him.

Schmidt spun to find the occultist just two feet away, draped in red and purple robes, face concealed in the shadows of a deep hood, holding a flickering candle. Before the Nazi could react, Epoch lifted the flame to his lips and blew. His breath ignited into a roaring fireball that engulfed the other man’s head.

Flames climbed through his mosquito netting. Schmidt screamed and stumbled through the burial site. His minions crawled away from him. The fire burned with a hunger and the kraut’s frantic flailing caught his toe on a loose stone. He tripped and fell, tumbling over the edge of the cliff.

Birdie made as if to chase after him but the Bastard caught her by the arm. She twisted out of his grip but the couple seconds he delayed her were just enough. The stick grenade went up, sending a wave of force and shrapnel up the mountain.

Schmidt was gone in a rolling puff of smoke and the blast echoed off the rocks for a long while.

Epoch paced between the fallen legionnaires. They each recoiled away from him like he was radiating heat. He looked every bit as devilish as he’d hoped to, his amulets and curving blades clanging with each step, wafting wurm weed clinging to him like a stinking aura. The Ordo Templi Orientis man perched on the edge of the cliff and muttered some incantation in a language the Bastard could not understand.

“When are you arresting us?” one of the Legionnaires moaned. “I need my phone call.”

“I bet you do,” the Bastard muttered. He stood over the whimpering boy. The kid couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. He should have been drafted, but he’d probably bought his way out of that. If he ended up behind bars, his dad would have had him out by dinner time. “I am arresting you, but not ‘til you put every one of these god damn rocks back where you found it.”

“Screw that,” the legionnaire spat.

“You know who I am?” the Bastard asked. He knew they recognized his outfit: the black coat, the black gloves, the club. They’d read about him. He was one of their boogeymen, and having a pagan and a woman fighting alongside him cemented their fears even further.

With a circulation in the millions weekly and anonymous authorship, the Bastion Americana Freedom Journal had become the Nazis’ most effective weapon on the American home front, even after only putting out a single issue. It appealed to fear and stirred it up like a whirlwind. They’d already dedicated column inches to the Bastard alone.

On page three, but still: he was the scary story that the Abwehr told their little puppies in the dark.

“You can’t do anything to me,” the kid sneered, though he’d lost some of his spice.

“Everything I’m gonna do I already did,” the Bastard said. The whole gang of legionnaires were busted, broken, bleeding, and swollen.

“So why would I pick up a single pebble?” the kid snapped.

“Because I could leave you with him,” the Bastard suggested, pointing at Epoch.

The conscious legionnaires twisted around where they were laid out to see the leering occultist watching them, candle and sacrificial dagger in hand. To up the ante, Epoch was still muttering in tongues.

Within a few minutes, each one of the Noble Sons had dragged himself off the ground and was working, laying the Scotsmen back to rest, stone by stone.

The Bastard pulled down his bandana and let the pressure drain out of his chest. When he set next to Birdie, he was Mickey Malloy again.

“I guess this is how it is now,” he said.

“How’s that?” she asked.

“Scared folks believing whatever bullshit gets shoveled their way.”

“These are scary times,” Birdie replied. “The sky’s bleeding, Mick.”

“When the sky runs red, the first gods feast,” Epoch croaked. The legionnaires froze in place.

“Hey! Keep stacking rocks!” Mick yelled and they jumped out of the their socks before getting back to work. He pointed his club at the glowering occultist: “And you! Stop saying odd shit.”

Once he was satisfied that everyone was doing what he needed them to be doing, he continued his conversation with Birdie:

“Don’t mean they have to hang on the word of the first huckster to make sense in their withered little brains,” he said. “Take these kids: they get a little scared that the things they’re so comfortable with might change, so what’s the first thing they do? Throw on a silver shirt and start buying guns. There’s got to be a way to get to them before the Abwehr does.”

“I trade in stories, you know,” she told him. “People always adhere to the easier thing. Whether that is some kind of forest creature or bog witch, or a grand conspiracy that answers all their questions in one fell swoop.”

“And now they have the Office to pin that on,” Mick agreed. Seeing the Office as the boogeyman was easier than figuring out racial injustice, economic divides, and overseas atrocities. Mick knew better than anyone that self-reflection was hard and it could pull out ugly truths.

Smashing the mirror was always easier than looking into it.

“So what’s the fix?” Mick wondered.

“Talking, listening, walking in other folks’ shoes,” Birdie suggested. “It takes longer than getting all worked up about something, but that’s the only way to stop this kind of thing in its tracks: patience, critical thinking, and empathy.”

“Good luck wringing that kind of stuff out of this lot,” he replied.

“We have to try,” Birdie told him. He looked in her green eyes: she believed it, hook, line, and sinker.

“I got a different method,” Mick grunted. He squeezed the club’s leather grip so hard it creaked. Birdie looked disappointed, but that look only lingered for a second before she shuffled it away. That second was too long for Mickey. He cleared his throat, adding: “But this dog ain’t too old to learn new tricks.”

She gave him half a smile and turned her attention back to their wards.

Mick bit his tongue. He need something to replace the foot in his mouth. He patted down his pockets for a moment before he realized that he’d left his flask in the car at the bottom of the damn mountain.

“Hey, hurry it up!” Mick barked at the legionnaires. They jumped at the sound of his voice and put some extra pep in their limps. “We got a long walk down, boys.”

WEDNESDAY MORNING, JULY 28, 1943
“THE GRAVE”, LEVEL -8
CAMP X, OTTOWA, CANADA

“It was Schmidt!” the pale, sweating traitor blurted. His comrades' eyes went wide for a second, not believing what they'd just heard from the stoolie shackled between them. The broken man looked like he was about to hurl before his cell mates jumped on him like wolves, sending folding chairs clattering across the spartan room. Their arms were chained behind their backs but still they attacked, butting heads, biting, kicking with their bare feet.

Old as he was, Mickey Malloy was still big, and unrestrained. He waded into the pile of thrashing Silver Legionnaires and threw punch after punch. These were men from the White Champions cell, and they were nastier than most. True believers. His arthritic knuckles cracked heads with each blow. Even so, the American-born fascists tore at their own like they were rabid. The talkative man's blood was flowing.

“Get the hell offa - !” Mick grunted, only for a bare heel to slam into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. He staggered away from the scrum, his big hands on his aching knees. He talked to himself as he wheezed the air back into his lungs: “Too. Old. For. This. Crap.”

Mickey Malloy was nowhere near the oldest investigator for the Office of Unusual Occurrences, but he was the grayest man still doing field work, not that his superiors, subordinates, or peers appreciated his war-honed wisdom and street-molded insights. He took a deep breath, balled his wrecking-ball fists, and charged back into the fray.

The foot lashed out at him again, but now he knew that trick and caught it. The adrenaline was flowing, washing away every arthritic pang and wave of hangover he was feeling. He held the foot in both hands and twisted 'til the ankle popped and its owner screamed. The quisling thrashed in his grip and the limp tissues holding his ankle together flopped with each movement. Mick went up the leg, latched onto the man's calf, and pulled him out of the pile so hard that he skidded across the polished concrete floor and collided with the wall. He howled and nursed his leg, but he didn't get back up.

Mick picked one of the fallen chairs up and folded it closed, holding it by its legs with both hands.

“Hey!” he shouted, his voice bouncing off the bedrock. The snitch was still screaming as the three men tore at him. Blood was running down his face where someone had bitten his cheek.

“Hey!” Mick tried again, but no one cared. Something was driving them to kill this man. Mickey swung the chair like a wood ax, bringing its steel frame down on the man atop the pile. He would have preferred his club, but there were no weapons allowed in the Grave save for those that guards carried, the same guards he had ordered to stay out of the cell, no matter what.

The chair hit hard, sending a spasm through the top man's back. He arched his spine and rolled off the pile, lost to pain and shock. Mickey swung again and again, laying out the other two attackers with broken collarbones and split scalps. The stoolie scampered into the far corner, his knees tucked up over his chest as he whimpered.

The fight was over as quick as it started, leaving Mick with a rumpled, sweaty suit, a room full of bleeding fascists, and a name he already had.

Mick shook the dented chair until it creaked open and he set it down in the middle of the floor, in the midst of the groaning men. He pulled a small flask out of his jacket pocket and unscrewed the cap. He’d managed to convince the guards to let him hold onto it. Bust up a mass assassination by being hammered and they slipped him a little leeway here and there, go figure.

He held the flask out to each of the senseless fascists in turn, a mock peace offering, before swigging its foul, warm contents himself. It was a Canadian blend, the cheapest he could find on his way to Camp X. He twisted his face at what it tried to pass off as flavor and choked the hooch down. His belly warmed around the weak poison.

“Thanks for nothin', you mooks,” he said, though confirmation wasn't exactly nothing. Mick's number one snitch, Cabhán Walsh three floors down, had given him the name 'Schmidt' as well, though the paddy had bilked a radio out of him for it.

It wasn't a new name.

The Library had dozens of references to Schmidts, dating back to the thirties. He’d watch one blow up half-a-week before. A Schmidt had been there at the formation of the Silver Legion, donating their first dollar and leading their charge to build Hitler’s mansion in Los Angeles, the Murphy Ranch.

Mick’s chair scraped against concrete as he stood and made his way to the door. He rapped his knuckles against the thick steel in the pattern the guard had shown him. After a moment, he heard the heavy mechanisms within grind together. The door opened a couple inches and stopped, just large enough to fit a tear gas canister through. The masked guard glared at him through the crack, then studied the moaning men behind him.

“They're going to need some medical attention. And the one that's worst off should get his own cell, unless you want his throat gnawed out,” Mick said. The guard said nothing. He twisted his night-stick-sized key once more in the door, allowing it to open another two feet. Mickey squeezed his bulk through, then the door closed behind him.

“I said you need - !” Mick objected, only for the guard to cut him off.

“Medics are already descending.” The grim man had no accent whatsoever, a product of his training.

“Oh. Good.” Mick knew that meant there were listening devices in the cells. Not that anything the Silver Legion or Walsh said was classified from a man like Warden Turner, but he didn't appreciate being spied on.

The dangling elevator materialized out of the gloom, the cage packed with three medics and an additional guard. It creaked on the single cable holding it aloft, dangling over the impenetrable darkness of the mine shaft below.

“Here's my ride,” Mick told the guard. “I'm going down to sixteen, to see the dame.”

The man glared at him for a second, studying Mick through his gray fabric mask, then relayed the call up to the elevator operators in the Crow's Nest. The men on the surface knew Mick had near-full access to the Grave, but even so he knew they would double-check with the warden. Mick was sure the old man was up there hovering over their shoulders, leaning on his cane to rest his bum knee.

A radio crackled an affirmative as the elevator cage clamped onto the catwalk that encircled the shaft. The medics and backup guard, all masked with featureless gray fabric, pushed past him and went to administer to the dazed Silver Legionnaires. Mickey stepped into the cage. The cable wobbled and groaned under his weight, but he knew it would hold.

Mickey stayed silent as the cage detached from the catwalk. It swung free in the blackness, then lurched as it began its descent. He counted the floors as he went past. Ten is where they’d kept the Ice Pick Brigade. Eleven was where his Irish snitch was. The space between floors increased the deeper he went. When he finally reached sixteen each level was thirty yards apart; there wouldn't be any spoon-hewn tunnels for visiting anyone’s neighbor there.

The guard on level sixteen wasn't any cheerier than the ones upstairs, but he unlocked the cell all the same. Sterile blueish-yellow light flooded the shaft, and Mickey stepped through it. This cell only held one occupant, and it was at least slightly furnished. Mick took a seat by the door as it closed.

The woman across from him shifted uncomfortably on her cot, trying and failing to relieve the sharpening ache in her right knee. She flexed her leg, serenading Mickey with a cacophony of pops from her poorly-healed injury. He winced at the sound. He'd been the one that put the hitch in Elda Hexmacher's step more than a year before.

“Does my injury bother you?” she asked, ignoring the dried blood flaking from his knuckles. She sat, staring at him with an attempt at poise. There was no trace of a German accent in her voice. She had been trained well.

“I've seen worse. Today, even. Hurts to hear all that, is all,” Mick replied.

“I am so sorry it causes you such discomfort,” she muttered. She hadn't forgotten that it was Mickey who'd folded her knee over his club, either.

“They take my medicine away at the door,” Mickey said, patting his pocket like his flask wasn't in it. “Otherwise I'd offer you a slug or two of bourbon. For the pain.”

“American liquor tastes like a Belgian's piss,” Hexmacher hissed.

“That is suspiciously specific,” the big official chuckled. The imprisoned Nazi glared at him, but said nothing. Mickey leaned back in his chair and studied her.

Fourteen months of captivity below ground had not treated Elda Hexmacher with kindness. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, and loose. Whatever glop the Office served its prisoners, it didn't seem to agree with her. Her hair, once an entrancing, glimmering blonde, had become dull and greasy. She slumped forward, her elbows on her knees, her blue eyes shooting daggers at Mickey.

The Grave might have diminished her superior bearing, but her attitude remained the same. Hexmacher looked down on Mick like she was still a high-ranking Abwehr agent in charge of the Nazis' entire cross-Atlantic smuggling operation and he was a half-drunk old fat man.

“Now I know you're not really one to talk too much, and today that is fine with me,” Mickey said. “I just spent my whole afternoon five floors up listening to an Irishman spill every bean he had on the Silver Legion, and then I got it verified by some new arrivals who were very eager to tell me about their friends on the outside. My ears need a break. So I talk and you listen. If this happens to turn into a conversation, I might be able to swing a helpful person a perk or two. I got that paddy upstairs a radio.”

Hexmacher said nothing, she simply continued glaring. Mickey had baited the hook, he just had to wait for a bite.

“I hear they make some cherry bratwurst.”

“Cherry?” she asked, a look of confused disgust on her face.

“Good bratwurst, tasty,” Mick clarified. He suppressed a smirk. He'd already gotten her talking, even if it was one solitary word. Every collapse starts with a crack. He leaned back, careful not to show how much stock he was putting in her single utterance. “What do they feed you down here, anyway?”

Hexmacher nodded toward an untouched plate coated in a thick layer of brown mush.

“Kidney beans and potted meat on stale bread,” Mickey said, identifying the glop. “Ate just about the same slop myself when I was on your continent in 'sixteen.”

He stood and lumbered over to the plate.

“You mind?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes and grunted, waving her hand in dismissive disgust at the congealing food.

“Thanks,” Mick said, then grabbed the plate and returned to his seat. He scooped a mash of soft beans and softer meat onto a thick finger and shoveled it into his mouth. It was tasteless save for salt, texture-less save for slime. He didn't even have to chew; it dissolved on his tongue and trickled down his throat.

“Tastes like France,” Mick confirmed aloud. Hexmacher wrinkled her nose. He mushed through another mouthful of the stuff. “I lived off this gunk for weeks, you have no idea.”

He leaned forward and dropped the tin plate into her lap. Brown flecks splashed onto her green cotton jumpsuit. Hexmacher's scowl grew deeper. Mick sat back in his chair and noticed the dozens of tally marks scratched into the wall behind her.

“Oh, right,” Mick said. She grimaced at the food, then set the plate on the floor next to her feet. Mick kicked back, balancing on two legs while he watched her. The Nazi twitched when she saw Mick relax. Months in solitary confinement had made her reactions raw and unpracticed.

Time to get to business.

“Do you know one of yours named Eizhürst? He’s another Schmidt, just like you,” Mick asked. Hexmacher's oily face became stony. She did. “There was a ruckus here a little while back. Four floors up, about nine months ago, remember?”

Mick gave her a moment.

“He was here, for weeks, feet away from you,” he continued. “It would've been a flick of a key to get you out. Too bad your bosses couldn't be bothered.”

Mick watched a storm of emotion boiling under what she must have thought was an impenetrable facade.

“He left you in here to eat slop.”

“Four hundred thirty-seven days,” she muttered.

“That is a lot of slop,” Mick agreed.

“Liters.”

“While he left you here, we've been tracking that noseless animal all over the country. Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, New York, Canada, Montana, and wherever else. And you get slop.”

Hexmacher didn't respond.

“I got an Irishman ten floors up begging to tell me everything I want to hear, you know.” Mick said. Cabhán Walsh was a strongman who’d been recruited as a mercenary by the Abwehr. He'd also been singing like a canary since Mick had arrested him in Kansas. His intel on the Silver Legion and the Tridente Cremisi had already netted a couple dozen arrests, including the White Champions he’d just left. He was Mick’s next stop.

“This mick says that a goon named Schmidt has been recruiting or replacing underworld leaders everywhere. Your old colleagues have been wining and dining the richest, most decadent, most despicable men in America. Using the contacts you developed. All while you eat slop.”

A flicker of a frown showed Mick that that one hurt but not surprised. She’d known the Schmidts’ plan, which was better than what Mick was doing. For all the Office's research, he hadn’t come close the getting to the root of the Abwehr problem, just cleaning up the symptoms that spread every time a Schmidt showed up.

Every Legionnaire they arrested knew the name, despite never seeing a face. Schmidt was the catalyst. Those fingerprints were all over the Murphy Ranch. It had been an enigmatic Schmidt who had convinced Norman and Winnona Stephens to build Hitler's summer mansion in the mountains outside Los Angeles. Still, no one could identify him. He was always two steps ahead.

Mick had it figured though. A Nazi could only be in two places with two faces at one time if there were two of them. ‘Schmidt’ was a community alias for every kraut recruiter in the Western hemisphere. He was made to seem prolific, omnipresent, legion. Every Department Three move was built in layers. Schmidt was no different.

Hexmacher might have known all about the Schmidts’ work, but what she wouldn't know about was developments on her home continent. No one was ready for what Department Three had pulled in Italy, or what the Office was doing in Eberkopf. The whole thing in Japan would blow her mind.

Time for a change of tack.

“You haven't seen anything other than concrete in a long time, Elda,” Mick said, “So let me tell you about the weather: your crew blackened the sky.”

She sat up straight at that.

“Y’all blew up a volcano and wiped Naples off the map. The papers are calling it the Bloody Dawn. They were too busy to pick you up, but with all the time in the world to kill hundreds of thousands of men and women. Civilians, and children. And your allies. What would they do for you?”

“Salz sämann,” she gasped, almost too quiet for Mickey to hear. Her jaw hung open, like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. She stared at the smooth floor. Mick translated her utterance:

“What is the 'salt sower?'” he demanded. Mick wasn’t fluent in German but he knew enough to interrogate one. He rocked forward in his chair, slamming the two front legs back onto the hard floor. Hexmacher snapped back into focus. She realized she had said too much, but it was too late for such information to ruin anything. Besides, a Nazi couldn't stand not gloating.

“A protocol, official,” she sneered. Some of that arrogant Aryan gleam had returned to her eyes. “If the command is threatened, it will be destroyed, along with its aggressors.”

She looked triumphant.

“Your master stroke took out three officials,” Mick said. He let her consider the waste of resources, Reichsmarks, and lives that the destruction of Naples had wrought, and how little that act had gained. “And we learned that Vesuvius was just a single Department Three cell, no need to pretend it was the whole potato anymore. In fact, we took out Eberkopf too, and plans are in motion for a dozen other sites.”

Her mouth snapped shut.

“If every one of your facilities uses that damned protocol, the Earth is going to be pretty damn salty soon, and it's only going to be your people buried in it.”

Mick picked up the discarded plate and studied the cold, mashed beans for a moment.

“Things are moving fast out there, Elda,” he said. “The Japanese are fighting monsters large enough to wipe out fleets, the krauts are razing cities, Eizhürst is killing folks left and right, and your Schmidts are here, trying to mobilize the underworld.”

The stoic woman didn't deny it.

“I need your help, and you need mine.”

Hexmacher gave no response. Mickey sighed. He stood and stalked over to her. He shoved the plate into her arms, spilling more of the slop onto her jumpsuit.

“Whatever the Abwehr is planning, it doesn’t include you. You’re going to be here for a long while.” Hexmacher didn't seem to hear him; she simply stared into the brown mush in her lap. “Help me make your stay more comfortable. The more you give me, it doesn't even have to be anything important, the less I visit and the better your accommodations become.”

Mick held his huge paw out, presenting the stark concrete cell to her, all rough walls and hard corners.

“How about real food?” he asked. “You know, they have chefs upstairs from six different countries cooking fourteen cuisines. Soap and hot water might do you good, too. A book, maybe? Though we might not have too many extra copies of Mien Kampf laying around.”

She considered her plate of slop and her thin mattress for a moment.

“What are the Schmidts trying to get back to Europe? Weapons, money, secrets? Why does he have Eizhürst running around like a chicken with its head cut off?” Mick prodded. “Why does he need gangsters?”

“You are a fool,” she muttered.

“I got you locked up here, so how's that again?”

“You talk like Schmidt and Eizhürst are different,” she hissed.

“They are, I killed a Schmidt last week. Hell, you went by Schmidt.”

“There are Schmidts, and there is Schmidt. One man put meaning behind that name. One man made it the name to fear.”

“And you’re telling me that’s Eizhürst? That he started all this and now you latecomers just use it for credibility?”

Hexmacher sat back and smirked.

“Why do you obsess over him?” she asked, checking her gnawed nails. “He is truly a boring little man.”

“He killed a friend of mine.”

“Then you have the chance to make many more friends, you’ll have that in common with them.”

Mick set his jaw. He wasn’t going to let the Nazi get to him.

“Do you know how wars are won?” she asked.

“I've won one,” Mick replied, unconsciously flexing his aching knuckles. Red flakes broke away and drifted to the floor.

“It is not the army in the field that ends war. It is the people who cannot fight who do. Bring horror to them and war is won.”

“So all you want to start the fight here, with gangsters and militias?”

“It is the cascade,” she whispered. She took a deep breath, then moved the plate from her lap to the cot beside her.

“Cascade?”

“I was removed from planning eighteen months ago, Malloy,” she hissed.

“Generalize then,” Mick said. He knew her outdated intel wouldn't yield too much in the way of specifics, but he needed anything he could get, and right then he didn't even have a start.

“You will see to better accommodations?”

“Soft carpets, hot baths, and all the sauerkraut you can eat,” Mick swore, his lumpy hand over his scarred, misshapen heart.

“The cascade is Eizhürst's plan to distract you from fighting overseas. The Abwehr is recruiting smugglers, thieves, revolutionaries, militias, assassins. Anyone who refuses to join is replaced by someone more willing. Once they have enough influence, it will happen. It starts slow and build into an avalanche. Rumors, propaganda, bribery, blackmail, strikes, accidents, kidnappings, riots, murders, bombings, and panic. Your attention will turn inward.”

“And how does Lobo Losa fit in? Is he another errand boy?” Mick asked. The Cuban gangster had been too close to too many of the Smiling Man's plots for Mickey.

“He was my first contact in America,” Hexmacher admitted. “His organization was extensive before, but with the Abwehr's resources and influence, it has been shaped into the rapid-response smuggling, murder, and communications network we needed to mobilize your underworld. He does not realize how we formed him.”

“So when does this all go down?” Mick asked.

“When Eizhürst is ready. Perhaps it has already begun,” she replied. Mick cursed silently. Losa had been off the map since Mickey had passed on Tommy Capano's intel that Losa's newest lieutenant, some goon called Cartula, was an Abwehr plant. Losa had taken that news suspiciously well over the phone. In the past two weeks, however, no one had heard a peep from anyone in Losa's network.

It was troubling, especially with Eizhürst still in play.

“And when he is ready?”

“It is a cascade,” she purred. “The ground moves, cracks forms, and when one falls the rest are pulled with it. When the slide begins, it cannot be stopped.”

Mickey slumped back. The Abwehr had been building something for years, setting up a delicate balance that would only take one displaced pebble to upset. For all Mickey knew, it could have already started.

Every avalanche started with a pebble, but Mickey had only been watching for wrecking balls.

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

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