The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Electrocuted Gangsters, Part 2 of 4

Mickey Malloy has entered the Grave. He’d never seen himself as a reasonable man, but seeing the Office’s secret prison first-hand raises a lot of questions for him. Mick is a man built on second chances, and he is gearing up to find his own line in the sand.

Crazy, Crazy, Crazy, All the Time is available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 2 of The Case of the Electrocuted Gangsters, so please read Part 1 before going any further to avoid spoilers.

Content Warnings: Mild Swearing, Violence, Gore, Death, Body Horror, Tobacco Use, Alcohol Use, Nazis

SATURDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 3, 1942
HUMAN ASSET RETENTION CENTER, LEVEL 0
“THE GRAVE”, CAMP X, ONTARIO

Mick tried his best not to jump when the foot-thick concrete doors slammed shut behind him. He was alone. His breath reverberated in the large room. Locked doors in front and behind, whining incandescent bulbs above that went silent when they dimmed. Darkness washed over him like a tidal wave of crude oil.

It was all he could do to not bolt, not lash out when the doors in front of his groaned open. Reluctant steel and grating concrete gave way to the clomping of boots, the creaking of an un-oiled hinge, and the tap of a walking stick. Mick knew he was surrounded before the lights snapped back on. He winced at the searing white brightness, looking down to let his eyes adjust. There was red paint on the concrete under his feet, big block letters that no one shuffling in chains could miss:

NO ONE ESCAPES THE GRAVE.

“This how you greet all your guests?” he grumbled to the blur in front of him. Four other blurs converged on him, snaking their hands into his jacket and pockets. His pistol, switchblade, car keys, and presidential stamp all went into a lock box.

“Actually, no,” the man said as the haze around him burned away. “By procedure, they should have bound you, blinded you, muzzled you, and strip searched you.”

The warden of the Office's prison was a small man, though they all seemed small to Mickey. He was white, old, bald, and stood askew, with one leg strapped into a medieval-looking metal brace. The walking stick he used was knobbed with metal studs, strong enough to support him if he ever needed to lean on it.

The quartet of officials that surrounded Mick were wearing all black, with padded armor so thick that gender was indeterminable. The featureless cloth hoods that covered their faces concealed any scrap of identity. Their only markings were white stenciled animals on their chests, centipedes and bats and salamanders. None said a word, they simply held their nightsticks, each asymmetrically studded like the warden's cane.

It would have been downright unsettling if Mick hadn't known there was a Nazi-fighting Ally behind each hood. The guard to Mick's right, tall with some kind of tarantula on their chest, snuck him a thumb's up and tapped their hip. Mick's hand drifted down to his own hip and found his flask still in his pocket.

“Ruben Turner, Junior,” the warden said. He held out a hand and Mick took it.

“Good to meet you,” Mick said. He knew the warden's name, and not just because he was the Fossor General and the designer of this hellhole. His father was also an architect, one whose works weren't buried in the ground. Mick smirked: “So what's my special treatment for?”

“The guards insisted one of the 'First Eleven' wouldn't pose a security risk,” Turner said.

“Well I always appreciate any opportunity to avoid getting hog-tied,” Mick replied. The old man's face crinkled into a scowl.

“I disagreed. Your connections to organized crime, your history of financial problems and alcohol abuse, and your colorful rap sheet as both a youth and as a sworn police officer are all questionable at best. My contemporaries overruled me.”

“Well all I got on me is some bus tickets,” Mick replied.

“As Inspector General Klavin told me,” Turner said. “The elevator is this way.”

Turner spun and hobbled through the inner doors. They concealed a short tunnel. More hooded guards waited behind bars on either side, each carrying a shotgun or Thompson. Mick followed Turner through the gauntlet and entered the subterranean prison's control center.

The room itself was a large circle nearly twenty yards across. The main feature was a central elevator assembly, a huge winch and crane that held a dangling cage that would seem crowded with three people on it. Mick realized with a start that they were standing over the Grave itself. The whole room was just a cap atop a mile-deep vertical mine shaft. Turner didn't seem concerned about the pitch black abyss on the other side of the floor, so Mick played it cool, too.

Several more masked officials sat at huge consoles gridded with glowing red lights. Each bulb was labeled with a floor and cell number. They all had headsets on and were answering calls and jotting notes.

“This is the Crow's Nest,” Turner said. “All internees process through here. We have medical facilities in the adjoining rooms, as well as a delousing station and a biographical information center.”

“A what?”

“We collect up-to-date identifying information: height and weight measurements, high-quality profile, aura, and thermal photographs, photos and analysis of unique scarring and tattoos, fingerprints, blood and hair samples, X-rays, dental impressions, voice samples, preliminary psychological profiles,” Turner answers. “All of which is submitted to ADA for cross-reference.”

“Well that's... exhaustive,” Mick said.

“Once the intake process is complete, the internee is assigned a security level and floor.”

“Security level?”

“Some of our guests are more dangerous than others. We have assassins trained to make their bodies weapons, like the yajirushi. Other carry dangerous diseases or information. Some are manipulative to the point that they cannot be communicated with directly. Each cell door requires a number of officials present to unlock. This is mechanical, and cannot be circumvented. The most dangerous internees here require at least four guards to open their cells.”

“Damn,” Mick muttered. “So you got Black Dragons here, huh?”

“One. In fact, you helped capture him. We currently have internees from Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, England, Iraq, and Canada. Though the most prisoners we have by far are Americans.”

“Americans?” Mick asked. “For what?”

“Traitors all,” Tuner answered, suddenly curt.

“Yeah, but are you saying 'treason' or 'sedition' or 'espionage' or what?”

“They were all involved in plots to hamper the Allied war effort,” was all Turner had to say.

“So name 'em, shame 'em, and get ‘em in front of a jury,” Mick objected. “If they’re guilty, we hang ‘em. That's what we do to traitors. Show folks the price of betraying your neighbors. People need to know that justice is being done, not that we're just out here disappearing folks.”

“The people our Americans were involved with dabble in dangerous sciences that the average civilian couldn’t even imagine, Malloy,” Turner said. “One of them gets a chance to run his trap, even for a second, those folks you're trying to protect will riot. We shield people from these things.”

“What, knowing what's coming for them?” Mick snapped, though just to be contrary. He actually agreed with that. The things he'd seen in that damn castle back ‘16, he fought long and hard so no one else would have to see them.

It was the same philosophy that had him in this hole in the first place. The few make sacrifices to hold back a tide so that the many never have to know that they almost got swept under.

“They just caught Nazis landing on Long Island in June, and those only because they turned themselves in.”

“I heard about that,” Mick said. “And they're going to get the chair, publicly, after being charged with something.”

“So what? You think this scum deserves their day in court?”

“Everyone does, that's the god damn point,” Mick snapped.

“You do not take the Lord's name in vain in my facility, Inspector,” Turner snapped back. His leg creaked as he shifted his weight. The operators all twisted around in their chairs to stare at them.

Mick took a breath then lowered his voice.

“All I'm saying is, you know who else throws people into jails and camps wholesale, right?”

“You think this a jail?” Turner asked. “It says exactly what it is on the placard. 'Human Asset Retention.' We are a warehouse. We store people. We don't punish, we don't rehabilitate. If I could freeze every person in this place into a block of ice, I would. This is like a library, and they only exist as books to be checked-out and read.”

“Sounds arbitrary to me,” Mick replied.

“We aren't the United States government, we're the Office,” Turner answered. “And we've determined that the assets held below are threats to everyone around them. This is not for punishment, this is to take dangerous players out of the game.”

Mick did not like that. 'Dangerous.' He knew what it was like for someone to decide that he didn't deserve what he'd had. He himself had been railroaded out of a career and a home. Not to say that the Nazis in the Grave deserved anything at all, but damn, there had to be a line. 'Dangerous' could mean anything.

“I've seen what Roosevelt approved, with the internment camps,” Mick said.

“These aren't shop owners and school children, Malloy,” Turner pointed out.

“That they are not,” Mick replied. “But there has to be oversight, some line, otherwise we're just like Adolf and Joe.”

“I don't pick them, I just receive them and lock them up until they tell me to let them go.”

“They ever let any go?”

“Not until you showed up today,” Turner said. “And you know you're not allowed to talk about 'Uncle Joe' like that any more.”

“I know, I know. All's I'm saying is that if we want the high ground in this fight, we got to take the high road,” Mick replied.

“The thing about the high ground is that you are exposed, inspector,” Turner told him. “Being easy pickings for a sniper isn't worth the chance to look down on everyone else.”

“So what do you do?”

“I did like every soldier is trained to do: I dug a hole and kept my head down.”

“That working out so far?”

“Better than when I had to dig trenches,” Turner said. He tapped his leg brace with his cane. He nodded at the elevator dangling before him. It looked like a canary cage, suspended from the ceiling by one thin cable. He asked Mick, smirking:

“You ready to take the low road?”

MONDAY EVENING, JUNE 20, 1942
UNITED STATES PENITENTIARY, ATLANTA
ATLANTA, GEORGIA

“Looks like it hurt,” Oswald Laska grunted. Mickey reached up and touched his fading shiner. He winced, eliciting a chuckle from the man shackled to the table in front of him.

“You know, it did. I could say the same thing for you, pal,” Mick said. The ex-fed sitting across the table had a black eye that mirrored his own, along with a split lip and a newly crooked nose. The matching injuries nearly made them twins. Both men were grizzled, tired, and gray, and neither looked like he'd take shit from anyone, despite everyone's violent insistence that they have a heaping plateful.

“Mine did, too,” Laska replied. “Who got you?”

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you,” Mick said. And even if he did, Mick wasn't excited to explain to anyone how his latest injuries came courtesy of a handful of hopped-up school teachers. “How about you?”

“Oh, you'd believe me, all right,” Laska said. He sat back in his chair and studied the man across from him. “But I can't tell you, 'cause if I do they got a two-for-one special going right now.”

“I hear that,” Mick said. “Got any speculations on why I'm here?”

“Not a clue, but I'm sure my friends in here do,” Laska grunted.

“You keeping the same company you kept outside?”

“You got my sheet,” Laska said. His chains clinked as he pointed at Mickey's breast pocket. The corner of Laska's folded file was peeking out ever so slightly.

“Your cell mate is an interesting guy, but I'm actually here for you,” he replied.

“I don't have anything else I can tell you, pal,” Laska grunted.

“Yeah, I figured,” Mick replied. “But I ain't here to talk about the past. I got a future lined up for you.”

“Sounds good, pal, we just got a hundred-fifty-nine months to iron out the details.”

“But who's counting?” Mick chuckled. Laska's face went hard as concrete, and he sank into his striped jumpsuit. Mickey tapped the little corner of paper in his pocket saying: “Still got a good eye, though.”

“It isn't something you lose,” Laska told him.

“I read your file, you were an investigator a long time before you were one of the Montuosos' cleaners.”

“Before, yeah, and while,” Laska confirmed.

“How'd you get in that mess?”

“The money was good,” Laska muttered, staring at the bare table between them.

“Not that good,” Mick replied. “Does Peggy ever visit, or the kids?”

“It's a long drive from Chicago.”

“Does she write you?”

“She's got a lot on her plate,” Laska snapped. “What's my wife got to do with anything?”

“I don't know if you heard, but somebody found her passed out on a park bench a couple months back. A Montuoso lawyer scooped her from the hospital, but not before she could answer more than a few questions from the cops.”

“She alive?” Laska asked. Mick nodded. The chained fed clenched and unclenched his jaw like her was chewing gristle.

“She is.”

“Good.” Laska was damn-near trembling.

“Now I bet that when you took the fall and wound up in here, the family said they'd look after her, didn't they?”

Laska clammed up.

“They're keeping up their end of the bargain, sounds like. So long as it keeps her away from the cops. You probably assumed that meant they'd stop selling her heroin, too.”

“My wife - !” Laska snarled, but Mick slammed the table with a fist shocking him silent. Keaton's barely visible silhouette behind the one-way glass jumped.

“Your wife got herself hooked. The Montuosos used it against you. They used her to get your skills, your connections. Don't try to bullshit me, I told you she answered questions. I put the rest together.”

“I wanted the money.”

“Loyalty is commendable, Oz, but it's a two-way street. They broke their promise to you. You're getting your face bashed in here with no protection, and out there, they're still poisoning Margaret. The only time they give two shits about either of you is when they might get in trouble. She's not getting better, and soon the both of y'all will be loose threads. Only difference is that you can fight.”

Laska's eyes bounced back and forth. His knuckles were white as knocked-out teeth.

“How long 'til those dope-peddling gangsters find a new dog they can leash? How long 'til they sic him on her?”

“They're still selling to her?” Laska whispered.

“Every day.”

“Jesus.” Mick knew the look. Oswald Laska, the fed on the Montuoso crime family's payroll, the bloodhound who could find any stool pigeon and destroy any evidence, felt helpless. No matter his reputation, and who he thought had his back, he couldn't do anything for the person he cared about the most.

“Why are you telling me this? What do you want from me?” he finally asked.

“Let me tell you what you need,” Mick told him. “You need real back-up. You need your family safe and healthy. I can line that up. Even if you don't want to help me, I'm going to do that anyway. They deserve that.”

“You're going to kidnap my family? You threatening me?”

“To be honest, I already relocated them. My people will keep them safe, give 'em a fresh start. We even got people who can help Peggy with what she's going through.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I'm a guy who understands the importance of second chances. Your old friends are dangerous people. You should know, you mopped up enough of their messes. You know what they do to anybody who trips them up. You think a cop's chatty wife gets a pass?”

“And what do I do in return for this generosity? I've taken offers like this before.”

“I ain't blackmailing you, Oz,” Mick said. “No strings. Your family is safe regardless, because that's what everyone deserves.”

“So what do you want? If I rat, I may as well hold up a shiv to my heart and run into a wall.”

“I need you out there. Things are getting crazier every day, and there's killers and spies running wild all over this country. I need a bloodhound who can hunt them down, one not afraid to go wherever he needs to go and lock up whoever he finds at the end of that trail.”

“Why do you think that's me?”

“Pal, you could find any witness the Montuosos needed you to find in twenty-four hours flat. There wasn't a single conviction in the family while you were on the payroll. You are an artist of manhunting. And when you were on the straight and narrow? Hell, you were one of Hoover's golden boys. You were the best. 'til you weren't.”

“Thanks, I think,” Laska muttered.

“What I'm out here fighting is Nazis. It's a different ball game. What you did for the mob, that is awful. But I get it. I had a wife, too, and she could be a headache. And if she put me in the same position you were in, I'd have done everything you did and more. And I'd've gone down for it, too. But all that, that don't count for shit compared to what these Nazis are doing and want to do. I'd free a hundred of you to take down even one of them.”

“Free me?” Laska said. He studied the gnarled man before him again. “Just who in the hell are you?”

Mickey sat back and pulled a rubber stamp and ink pad out of his pocket. He smoothed a letter out on the table and slid it across to Laska.

“You've never heard of me, but I bet you know Frank.”

Laska read as fast as he could. He slumped back in his chair. A presidential pardon, just missing the signature.

“This can't be real,” he whispered. His heart was racing, thumping against the inside of his bruised ribs.

“You want to help me keep your family safe?”

“How?”

“By keeping every family safe.”

Laska only nodded. Mick pressed the stamp into the ink pad then put his hand across the table. Laska took it; his grip was firm, unfaltering. When he let go, Mick mashed the stamp down on the bottom of the letter. When he lifted it up, there was F.D.R.'s signature, clear as day.

“We're good, George,” Mick said as he waved the letter at the glass. A pair of guards entered the room seconds later. Oswald braced himself, but the guards and unlocked his cuffs. Neither of them made eye contact with Mick or Laska. They took the chains and slammed the door behind them.

Laska rubbed his wrists. He shook his head and looked at the man across the table, wondering if he'd gotten himself into something worse than he'd just wriggled out from.

Mick knew the feeling. All he could do was make the landing soft.

“Welcome to the Office, Mister Laska. Take a breath, then follow me. Things about to get a lot weirder for you.”

SATURDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 3, 1942
HUMAN ASSET RETENTION CENTER, LEVEL -10
“THE GRAVE”, CAMP X, ONTARIO

The elevator groaned and creaked like a tree aching to break as it descended. Mickey Malloy's miner's helmet slipped down again, banging its hard edge against the bridge of his twisted nose. He re-adjusted the tin pot and wiped the sweat from his forehead. This hellish hoosegow was as hot and humid as a Louisiana swamp.

“Always this muggy?” Mick asked the warden. Warden Turner shifted around in the small cage to eye Mick. His leg brace creaked as loud as the elevator's mechanisms. Turner was almost as old as Mick, but he'd joined the Army proper during the Great War, giving him more time in the trenches to get tore up. Mick was sure the bum knee was just the first in a long line of ailments.

“You should feel it at the bottom,” Turner replied.

“Buy a guy dinner first,” Mick mumbled.

“What's that?”

“Nothing,” Mick replied.

The main fixture of the Grave, the mile-deep hole, was dark as space, darker than anything. Mick's helmet's weak lamp could not even illuminate the shaft's inner walls. The only senses left to Mick were his controlled breathing, the cable's groan, and the queasy sway of their descent.

“How deep are we going?” Mick said.

“Twelve more floors,” Turner replied, “Though 'floors' is relative. The deeper we go, the more distance between each level. No one is tunneling up to see their neighbor.”

“Smart,” Mick said. He studied the warden who was shifting uneasily. Turner's squeaking leg brace gave each fidget away. “Don't get too many prisoner withdrawals, huh?”

“Not typically,” the warden replied.

Mick and the warden were crammed into the descending elevator cage like sardines, dangling as if they were a treat for some immense cat that was waiting at the bottom of the Grave. It was enough to make Mick's stomach turn over, but a sudden desire not to make a bigger ass of himself in front of the warden kept his lunch down.

“Who else are keeping down here?” Mick asked to break the silence.

“Plenty of traitors and Abwehr affiliates. Some agents captured abroad considered too dangerous to remain overseas. I did have one mention you the other day during her interrogation.”

“Oh yeah?”

“We've had folks speaking to her every day for months, she played the deaf and dumb act until one of her subordinates let her name slip. She went by 'Mary Beth' back when you apprehended her in South Carolina.”

“Oh, one of the kraut broads who tuned up Sinclair?”

“Their ranking officer. She is actually quite bitter about her injured leg.”

“Who'd have thunk it?” Mick said. As far as he remembered, it was that kraut's friends who threw the grenade that pin-cushioned her leg, not him. “So what's she go by?”

“Elda Hexmacher. ADA had some information on her. Abwehr recruiter, infiltration specialist. Hardened against questioning. Generally, she is very irritating.”

“But she's talking,” Mick pointed out. “Might be you need someone to push her buttons.”

“Couldn't hurt. Maybe stop in and rattle her after you're done with the ones you came for.” Turner was the kind of warden who liked his prisoners to earn their keep. If a kraut like Elda Hexmacher could help the war effort, that was worth room and board in his opinion.

“Why do you keep 'em so deep?” Mick asked, changing the subject back to his current mission. “The Brownsville Boys, I mean. You got them deeper than assassins.”

“They have their own level for training, about three-quarters-of-a-mile down. Converted a natural cavern for them. They have a cushy set-up. Cushy for a bunch of convicted and executed murderers, anyway.”

“All five of them are ready?” Mick asked. He hated the treatment the Office was giving these scum bags, but the higher-ups had made that call.

“Maione, Strauss, and Goldstein took to German like they were jerries themselves. Abbadando and Magoon are getting there. They'll fit in.”

“And their combat training?”

“They all already knew how to handle firearms and blades, they just had to get the field work down. Chiron has been down there for a few hours every day teaching them guerrilla tactics.”

“So now we either got ourselves the most effective infiltration unit in the war or we taught a bunch of buttonmen to be even better at killing.”

“They won't get the chance to stab us in the back,” Turner told him.

“You know they did do that to a few guys,” Mick pointed out.

“Goldstein, Maione, and Strauss have about as much love for krauts as Adolf has for their people. And Magoon and Abbandando are in it for the money and to save their own necks.”

“I'm just the delivery boy, chief, you don't have to make the sale to me.” As Mickey grumbled, the elevator jerked to a halt, startling him enough to grab the rail. Turner smirked and raised his eyebrow. Easy to be cocky when he had a cane to steady himself.

“I-C-E One,” Turner said. He pulled a lever, activating a powerful hydraulic claw that locked the dangling elevator into place against a metal ramp that disappeared into darkness. Turner slipped past Mick, shoved the door open with a squeal, and clomped out onto the ramp. Mick re-adjusted his miner's helmet and straightened his tie before following him out.

His dim lamp revealed little save for the grate beneath his feet that reverberated with every step. He nearly ran into Turner's back before he realized he'd reached the shaft's circumference. The ramp intersected a circular catwalk that ringed the shaft, making a 'Q' a hundred feet across. A huge, circular hatch, big and brazen enough to be at home in the busiest bank in New York City was set in that wall. It had four circular keyholes, two on each side of it. A priority four cell. Three guards were waiting next to it, masked and silent.

“Jeez Louise,” Mick gasped. He thought he knew how to loom out of the shadows, but these cats had it down.

“Let's open her up,” the warden ordered. The three guards, marked with silhouettes of a bird, a snail, and some kind of beetle, took their nightsticks and slid them into over-sized keyholes on either side of the door. Turner inserted the studded end of his cane into the fourth keyhole. They turned their weapons with practiced synchronicity. Mick could hear reinforced bolts crank open, and the mechanisms inside slammed into place. A green bulb blinked on above the door. It took the four officials tugging with all their weight to get it open.

Cheerful sunlight flooded the mine shaft, emerald-filtered through rustling leaves. Mick covered his eyes. He had thought the depth and humidity of the Grave was rough, but at least the darkness had given his hangover a break.

When Mick's eyes finally adjusted to the glare, he found himself standing at the entrance to a massive cavern, thirty feet tall and several hundred yards in length, all artificially lit by a fake sun installed in the middle of a blue ceiling. Where he expected bedrock, there was pine needles and sod.

A cool breeze brushed through the door, chilling the sweat on Mick's face. He wiped his forehead again and took in the sight before him. Turner hung his miner's helmet on a hook next to the door and Mickey followed suit. There was already one helmet hanging there.

A muddy road extended from the bunker door through a copse of trees so thick that they closed in on it like a tunnel. Beyond the woods, Mick could see a bridge, a trench, and a stooped concrete bunker. The leaves rustled in the cool breeze, but nothing else moved. Mick started in but Turner put his arm across his chest, boxing him out.

“I knew those animals would try something,” Turner muttered. He barked orders to the guards over his shoulder: “Lock us in, no negotiations.”

Turner led Mick inside. His glare bounced from thicket to thicket, watching everywhere for hidden threats. The guards muscled the huge door shut. Its clang echoed through the massive room.

“What the hell is all this?” Mick wondered.

“Realistic training conditions for mainland Europe,” Turner answered. “Chiron was turning them from back-alley stranglers into infiltration and assassination specialists. He says that they need realism.”

“Looks real enough to me,” Mick said.

“I should hope so. You have no idea what a pain it was to lower sixty live oaks and thirty-six live pines down that shaft. And the concrete for that bunker?”

Turner was talking to talk. Anxiety made him loose-lipped.

“Chiron had U.S. Army engineers and French movie set designers down here for weeks preparing it. It was a security and logistical nightmare. All for five criminals.”

“Speaking of which, where are they?” No one was anywhere to be found.

“Chiron!” Turner shouted. His voice bounced off the distant blue walls and ceiling. There was no response. The warden lurched ahead, clomping along with his cane. Mick stuck close. He felt naked: they'd taken every weapon, key, and paper clip that he'd had on him.

“I thought they should let these monsters get the chair, but I was outvoted,” Turner rambled. “'Why force more of your family and neighbors to become killers than we have to?' they said. 'We have killers aplenty already. Put them to work.'”

“Where is everybody?”

“This is what I was afraid of. We allowed the wolf run of the henhouse, then taught it to use a machine gun.”

Mick grunted. If they were surrounded by killers with ill intent, insulting them wouldn't do them any good.

“Chiron,” Mickey yelled, more to shut Turner up than to find anyone, “I know you wouldn't let these black hats skin your sorry hide.”

“Your eyes are not what they used to be, fat man.” The voice came from the bunker, some hundred yards away. It was Gaétan Chiron, a retired French film director who'd taken on the task of training all Office recruits as the Preceptor General.

“You're one to talk, you old croaker,” Mickey yelled back. He'd fought alongside Chiron in that damn castle back when the Office first formed in 1916, him and van den Berghe, Queen, and the rest. He hadn't seen any of the survivors in a long while, and he hoped not to see any of the rest for even longer.

“Do not move...” Chiron called. Light flashed off a scope in the bunker's gunner's slit and a shot rang out, deafening in the cavernous room. Mickey could feel the round whip past his ear to hit a lumpy tree trunk a couple feet behind him.

“Shit!” a man grunted. The surface of the tree peeled away and collapsed at Mickey's feet, wheezing. It was Harry 'Happy' Maione, his clothes and skin covered in dirt, leaves, and paint in such a way that he was indistinguishable from a tree himself. There wasn't any blood. The bullet that had nailed in right in the gut was chalk tracer. It hit like a haymaker, but all it left was a puff of white powder.

At the other end of the cavern, two hundred yards away, Chiron emerged from the bunker. The Frenchman was still small and wiry, though he'd acquired a little paunch somewhere over the years. His brown curls had started graying and he'd let them get so long that he had to tuck them behind his ears. His outfit, more of a jumpsuit than anything else, was striped with paint in a hundred colors, and a yellow streak in his beard showed that he'd been painting recently. Despite his outlandish appearance, he walked with the same swagger that he had decades ago, when Mick had first met him.

“You may reveal,” he called out to the forest. There was no movement, save for Maione, gasping on the ground. The Frenchman's mottled gray hair blew in the artificial breeze. He looked perplexed by the lack of response and called to them again. “Show us where you are.”

Mick and Turner looked around. The remaining four convicted killers could be anywhere around them. Maione had recovered somewhat and had resumed scowling, showing off the foul grimace that had earned him his ironic nickname.

“Ah, I see,” Chiron finally said, then placed his rifle on the ground and took a step back. “They think I am testing their discipline.”

As soon as his weapon was out of reach, the forest came to life. Frank 'Dasher' Abbandando and 'Blue Jaw' Magoon peeled themselves off their own trees nearby. Their camouflage was as extreme and effective as Maione's. 'Pittsburgh Phil' Strauss had partially buried himself in the dirt and covered the rest of his body in leaves. He had been about six inches from having Turner plant his cane in his face. The last man, Martin 'Buggsy' Goldstein stood near the door, not ten feet from Warden Turner. He'd fashioned himself a suit of netting and rags, dyed the whole thing green, and covered it in foliage. He must have stayed stock still, because 'til he moved he looked like he was just another bush.

“They have been hiding for three hours,” Chiron called out. “I think Monsieur Maione may find your odor disagreeable, Michael.”

“My nose itched, frog,” Happy said. He scratched his beak with relief. “But this mook isn't any fresh daisy, either.”

Chiron slung his rifle over his shoulder and ambled on over while Mickey and Turner eyeballed the former gangsters. With their makeup and pasted-on sticks and bark, they hardly looked human. The Murder, Incorporated men studied them right back. Mick felt like a side of beef getting sized up by a butcher.

“Impressed, Malloy?” Chiron asked, a wine-reddened grin wide on his weathered face.

“It's not their skills I'm worried about. We already know what they're good at,” Mick replied. He studied his old comrade. “They all got the chair for it.”

“I see,” Chiron said, then thought for a moment. “Monsieur Strauss, why did you kill men before your execution?”

“Got paid five hundred a head,” Pittsburgh Phil answered.

“And Monsieur Goldstein, how much will you be paid per SS officer?”

“Six hundred, long as we bring his tags and patches,” Buggsy replied.

“With another four per artillery piece and eight per Panzer,” Blue Jaw added.

“What waits if you don't go?” Chiron asked.

“This hole or the chair,” Happy said.

“Correct,” Chiron responded as he paced amongst his trainees. “What waits for you there?”

“Redemption and reward,” all five men answered in unison. They'd been asked this question quite a bit.

“These men, retirees of a dead industry, have the chance to put back into use the sole skill they have,” Chiron told Mick.

“You make it sound like Murder, Incorporated was the same as the Pony Express or moonshining. They didn't run out of victims, they got busted. We reward them for that?”

“There are many American platitudes for this situation, Malloy.” Chiron stopped pacing put his arm over Happy's shoulders. “The enemies of enemies, ports in storms, beggars and choosers, but what these men truly embody is capitalist economics.”

Chiron slapped Happy on the chest, right on his chalk-marked bruise, nearly doubling the officially-deceased gangster over. He added:

“That is to say, these men supply that which is, in these times, very much in demand.”

“There are plenty of good men to...” Mick started, but the Frenchman interrupted him.

“We should be very lucky if there are any good men left after this war. The good are a resource to be hoarded. We should turn them into monsters when there are perfectly good monsters ready for the picking?”

“It ain't going to be any kind of cake walk, big guy,” Blue Jaw interjected. “You know how many krauts we got to bump off to come home?”

“Monsieur Magoon is right, Malloy,” Chiron said. “If they do not eliminate an SS officer each, every month, for the rest of the war, they shall lose their freedom. They will be hunted by the Germans, the Office, and every civilized government in the world for the rest of their lives. In addition to me. I will chase them down with hounds.”

“Great,” Dasher said.

“Chair's still warm if you don't think you can handle the task, gentlemen,” Turner said. None of the hit men seemed to appreciate his grim offer.

“Hey, I'm not turning down a free trip to France. The dames alone will be worth the trouble,” Dasher replied.

“That is not your mission,” Chiron said. His smile faded.

“Ingratiating ourselves with the locals is part of behind the lines commando work, professor, you taught us that,” Dasher quipped.

“I don't think the resistance will appreciate your enthusiasm at ingratiation,” Happy warned him.

“Hey, just 'cause were working don't mean we can't have a little fun,” Dasher said. He peeled bark off his face and grinned. “I'm dead, means I'm a bachelor now. And I got me a government job. Ladies love a working man.”

“You aren't gonna touch a hair on any woman's head,” Blue Jaw said. The other four gangsters turned to stare at him.

“What, you gonna rat me out again, Seymour?” Dasher sneered. “Get me Shanghai'd again? For what, roughing up a French broad or two? The war's bigger than that, that's why we're alive. We kill krauts, we get to do whatever we want.”

“What you do isn't right,” Blue Jaw said. He looked around, watching his fellow killers' reactions. It had been his idea to work for the feds, to offer their honed skills as killers for the war effort. Someone high up had liked his scheme, since he was still this side of the sod.

“'Isn't right?'“ Dasher scoffed. “We are dead. There aren't any laws for the dead. You're telling me different now, maybe I walk out.”

“Cram it, the both of you,” Buggsy snapped. He threw his hood back and shoved his way between the arguing killers. Buggsy'd been one their shot-callers when they were on the outside. Dasher didn't seem to think that distinction mattered any more:

“You're dead, too, boss. Don't forget that, they haven't. Soon as we're not useful or worth it, they'll make that stick. So I say we enjoy ourselves while we beat back the Hun.”

“No distractions, not if we want to get out of this alive,” Happy said.

“Yeah, yeah, I'll do the work,” Dasher said. “But I'm going to do it my way.”

“Any crimes you commit beyond the elimination of Nazi officers and materiel will be held against you,” Turner warned.

“'Crimes?' Old Squeaky Knee over here is concerned about crimes. You kidnapped us from under the nose of the State of New York, pal. Then you lock us in this warehouse and threaten to kill us all over again if we don't learn German and pay nice with your frog.”

“You want to go back where we found you?” Turner asked.

“I'll kill your Nazis, don't you worry. But if you want Dasher, you get all of Dasher.”

“Maybe I don't,” Turner said.

“Hey, warden, let's cool it,” Mick said, unable to believe he was the voice of reason there, “We ain't here to debate ethics or politics. Even if these scumbags end the war tomorrow, I'm just their chauffeur today.”

“The sooner they're gone, the better,” Turner grumbled.

“You heard Monsieur Malloy,” Chiron told his trainees. “Wash up, then chain yourselves for transport. You are heading overseas immediately.”

The five murderers looked at one another. They had no clue how long they'd been locked up together. Hell, they didn't even know they were a thousand feet underground.

“Bring nothing, save your uniforms. You will be thoroughly searched multiple times,” Turner added. With that, Chiron's words sank in. The five men ran for the bunker. They were whispering and trying their best not to whoop it up.

“Abbandando concerns me,” Turner said once they were out of earshot.

“Of an awful bunch, he is the worst,” Chiron agreed. “His crimes were reprehensible. He did not hurt people for his occupation. He would have done it for free.”

“We're loosing him on Nazis,” Mick offered, though he knew he was wrong when he said it.

“He will be loose among the people of France, people who will offer him access to their homes and supplies simply because he claims to fight the Germans. He will take advantage of them, in every way.”

“There is another American platitude,” Turner offered. “The lesser of two evils.”

“Still evil,” Mick muttered. He planted his rear on a stump, sweating rye like an old tap barrel. He needed a smoke. He pulled one out of his pocket. His hand ached, but he managed to get it lit. Turner was watching him like a hawk through the whole arduous process. He asked the warden: “Need one?”

“I quit a few weeks ago,” Turner said.

“I hope you don't mind, then,” Chiron said. The wiry Frenchman sat on the sod next to Mick, legs folded under himself like a snake charmer. The very thought of doing that himself made Mick's knees ache. Chiron removed a hand-rolled cigarette from the silver case he kept stashed in his faded greatcoat.

“Your gaspers always stank,” Mick said.

“I still use the same blend,” Chiron replied with a crooked smile. He struck a match and puffed his his twisted cigarette to glowing life. “I understand you have been a detective for some time.”

“Yeah, just kind of fell into it. And you, I hear you're in the talkies.”

“I made more films before all this babbling nonsense. Now, I teach.”

Mick hadn't seen any of Chiron's work, as it was mostly arthouse stuff that never made the leap across the pond. He'd heard 'divisive,' 'horrifying,' and 'transfixing' in the reviews he read over the years.

“You ever hear from any of the old guys? Lecuyer, Dixon, any of them?”

Chiron leaned back and stretched his legs out. He was rewarded with loud pops from both knees, sounds Mick was all too familiar with.

“How about this getting old thing?” Mick mused.

“It is a journey,” Chiron agreed. “I only speak to a few of the first officials, and really only as my duties dictate. Halistone, Miller, and Dixon are usually at sea. No one has been in contact with Lecuyer for years. He was never the same after the castle. I did go to London for Lander's funeral, and I saw Gonzales there. He does not leave Zoo Base if he can help it.”

“Everyone else is in the ground, then,” Mick said.

“Gagnon still flies sorties over the Channel, and Partridge is interred in this very prison. But yes, more of us pass every day,” Chiron said. They stayed silent for a moment, half out of respect for the dead, and half because the last things they had in common that either man was able to articulate had already been said. Turner's knee squeaked as he fidgeted. He felt like a third wheel, listening in on the old comrades' conversation.

“Olivier Bellegarde is buried on base, if you would like to pay respects,” he offered.

“I usually pay my respects belly-up to a bar,” Mick replied. He puffed and stared over the false horizon painted on the bedrock. He finished his cigarette quickly and stabbed the butt out against the stump.

“What have you been teaching those boys?” he asked.

“Mostly refining skills they had already learned,” Chiron answered cryptically. “Were you told what I-C-E stands for?”

“Integrated Commando External, right?”

“Precisely. These men are to be brought to Europe in chains, dressed in German uniforms, given loaded weapons, and lost into the madness of the occupied continent.”

“No oversight?”

“None. No one will know where they are, or their targets. All they have is a quota and a monthly check-in.”

“What will that accomplish?”

“Chaos, Malloy. Chaos.”

Chiron smoked his cigarette until the cherry was just an eighth of an inch from his thin lips, then threw it onto the ground.

“Have you heard of the Black Prince op?” Mick asked.

“A similar principle. Unit disruption, distraction. War is made difficult when one must also look over his shoulder for fear of an ice pick in the ear.”

“Not too subtle.”

“Murder rarely is.”

“So you just have these five, with fake papers and uniforms, speaking coached German, sneaking around SS camps, taking out Nazi officers for the rest of the war?”

“It is simpler in words than deed.” Chiron confirmed.

“Murder always is,” Mick said.

The five killers returned, each of them dressed in nondescript jackets and slacks, looking like any other New Yorker. They carried their own shackles slung over their shoulders

“Fall in!” the warden ordered. The former gangsters shuffled forward and stood in a row before Chiron and Mick. The old Frenchman looked them over. They were hardened, trained, and ready to fight.

“Monsieurs, I cannot say it has been a pleasure working with you, but I am prideful of that which you will accomplish through my efforts.” He let a long, tired breath escape his lungs, fluttering his wispy white mustache. “The Nazis have done terrible things to all of our people: French, Italian, American, and Jew. The worst of them deserve to reap the fear they have sowed.”

The five men nodded.

“Why do you kill?” Chiron asked them.

“Redemption and reward,” they answered in unison. Dasher smirked.

“If you work, and kill, and survive, you will come home to a life that few in the world can hope to dream of. A new beginning.” Chiron looked each of them in eye. “Inspector Malloy will take you to your ship, and from there you will travel to England before you drop into enemy territory. You know what to do from there.”

“Redemption and reward,” Mick interjected. He spit on the floor and ground it in with a scuffed wingtip. “I've seen your rap sheets. Killing men, burning women, sawing heads off with piano wire, nailing drunks to the floor, raping girls. Stabbings and beatings and shootings. For money. Ain't no redemption for you. Atonement, maybe, but not in any way that lessens what you done.”

Mick stalked down the row, glaring at each of them in turn. They didn't look like killers, they looked like regular Joes, pudgy, balding, soft. But every killer starts off as a normal person, then, like flicking alight switch off, they are no longer normal and never can be again. Mick knew the feeling.

He made sure each of the men knew he was talking to him before he continued.

“Like we said, you lot are a lesser evil, but that's only when you're standing next to a Nazi. My name is Mickey Malloy. I have made it my life's work to put down monsters like you. I don't take sick days and I work all weekend. I'm the guy you're going to look over your shoulder for if you try for anything beyond redemption or reward.”

The five men shifted, readying themselves to bolt as best they could without giving up the ghost. Mickey looked ready to commit violence. He knew their sins, he'd read the reports about the debtors with brains scrambled by ice picks and the fathers with their fingers chopped off and .22 slugs in each eye.

Mick uncrossed his arms and stepped forward, just a pace between himself and Dasher.

“But it looks like I am playing chauffeur today, not the hand of justice. Let's get you assholes killing Nazis before I clock back in to my full time gig.”

The sun went out, and before Mick realized what was happening a fist was buried wrist-deep under his solar plexus. He double over, wheezing.

There was a scramble around him, feet pounding dirt.

“Get your hands off of me!” Turner shouted. The darkness was absolute. This deep in the Earth had never been meant to see light, and it wallowed in the darkness like a happy sow.

“Who's doing that?” one of the gangsters shouted.

“Frank!”

“Get off him!”

“He's our way out,” Dasher grunted.

The artificial sun blazed back to life as suddenly as it had winked out. Mickey squinted to find Dasher standing behind Turner, his corded arm wrapped around the warden's throat. He held a carved wooden spike to Turner's jugular. The other four killers hadn't moved from where they'd lined up. Their eyes were bouncing between Dasher and Mick.

“Don't move, Malloy!” Dasher warned. “Or I'll stick this pig like a... “

“Tell me what you want, don't torture me by trying to be clever,” Mick said.

“I want out, I want freedom,” Dasher snapped. “You think you can just turn us into attack dogs?”

“Yeah, I do,” Mick snorted. “If turds like Buchalter and Anastasia could, you're damn right that we can, too.”

“Yeah, well at least we was doing it in style, not in a God damn war zone,” Dasher snapped.

“Yeah, shoving guys out of windows in Coney Island is real style, pal,” Mick said.

Dasher tightened his chokehold on Turner and began dragging him toward the door. The warden's bare scalp had started to turn pink.

“You're gonna get me outta here, got it? I already knew fifty ways to kill a man with a knife. Your pet frog taught me a fifty-first. You don't do what I say, we're gonna see if it works.”

Dasher started to chuckle, only to realize at the same time as Mick that Chiron was nowhere in sight.

“Wait, where'd he - !”

A gunshot sounded, and a puff of chalk dust, teeth, and blood erupted from Dasher's open mouth. He staggered backward, wooden spike and warden forgotten, clutching his ruined face. His eyes were wide.

Turner spun, suddenly nimble. He took a wide stance that squeaked his knee, hefted his walking stick like a hobnailed baseball bat, and swung it like a pro. Dasher's head cracked louder than the gunshot. He collapsed under the blow.

Turner laid a couple more hits into him, just to be sure, but Mick could tell that the first one had done the job.

“Anyone got any objections to what just happened?” Turner gasped. The hitmen looked at one another. They'd witnessed Dasher's proclivities and crimes, his was no great loss. Still, they'd known him for years; killed and drank alongside him. Turner wasn't going to risk any reprisals.

“Shackle yourselves,” he barked. Chiron walked up behind them, racking live rounds into his rifle.

The four remaining killers did as they were told. Their cuffs and manacles fit firmly on their wrists and ankles. The warden watched them, making sure they didn't leave any wiggle room while he caught his breath. When he was satisfied that they were secure, he studied the artificial sun that had faltered just long enough for Dasher to dredge up a little gumption.

He muttered to himself: “There are five layers of redundancy in my grid...”

“What now?” Mick asked.

“You get these animals out there killing Nazis, Malloy,” Turner snapped. “And I figure out what the hell is happening in my prison.”

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin.