The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Holy City Head Hunter, Part 4 of 7

Mickey Malloy knows there is something funny about the Holy City Head Hunter, and he’s brought in an expert to help stave off disaster. Meanwhile, British official Hampton Sinclair begins his own spy hunt.

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 4 of The Case of the Holy City Head Hunter. If you hadn’t had a chance to read Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 yet, stop now and check them out first.

Content Warnings: Violence, Mild Swearing, Tobacco Use, Alcohol Use, Creeps, Nazis

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TUESDAY AFTERNOON, MAY 5, 1942
OFFICES OF L.H. CALHOUN, M.D.
EASTSIDE, CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

“Can I get you anything while you wait, Agent Malloy?” the doctor's assistant asked. She smiled cooly at him, carnivorous. His stomach grumbled. Between his long day sampling every old fashioned between the waterfront and Broad Street, then tying on another few at Fuller's, he needed a break from the hard stuff.

“No thanks, Miss...”

“Nurse Starling,” she replied. The buxom nurse was done up to the nines, with red lipstick, her raven-black hair curled, pinned, and perfect, and set of real pantyhose. The gold locket she wore so low that is rested within her ample cleavage was engraved with an 'L.' Mick smirked: the doctor was dipping his pen in company ink. She must have thought he was sneaking a peak at her chest, because she gave Mick a mischievous wink and said: “Suit yourself.”

She leaned over to fiddle with the bottom drawer of her desk, giving Mick a quick peek down the low-cut collar of her blouse. He suddenly found the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that walled the doctor's waiting room very interesting. She was moving too slowly, angling herself too deliberately, for that view to be an accident. She slid that drawer shut and emerged with a bottle of white rum and a couple glasses.

“It's not often we get a law man in here,” she said. “You sure I can't tempt you?”

“Maybe on my way out,” Mick said.

“Is there anything I can help with?” she wondered. She took a sip of the clear liquor, keeping a straight face. Her eyelids didn't so much as flutter.

“I'm looking for some patient records,” Mick said. Starling set her glass down so suddenly that Mick was surprised it didn't splash.

“That sounds like something you'd need a warrant for,” she said.

“Just a friendly inquiry,” Mick said.

“Discretion is the most important service we provide to our patients,” she explained.

“Yeah, I understand all that,” Mick said. “Patriotism?”

“Are you just saying the word 'patriotism' to me?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, agent, but still not without a warrant.”

“It works sometimes,” Mick said, shrugging.

“How many times?”

“At every high-end doctor's office before this one.”

“The industry isn't what it used to be,” Starling said, shaking her head and chuckling as she sipped her drink.

“'Isn't what it used to be?'” Mick laughed. “What are you, twenty, twenty-two?”

“Twenty-four,” Starling snapped. “I may not have been doing this forever, but that doesn't mean I don't known how things should be done.”

“Okay, fair enough,” Mick said.

“Why don't you take a seat, agent,” Starling said. She looked like she was done humoring him. Mick settled into a padded leather chair and studied the ceiling for a while. He didn't expect her to offer additional drinks or cleavage flashes, and she didn't surprise him with any more.

It was another fifteen minutes of awkward silence before the small door to Starling's right squeaked open.

“Agent Malloy, Doctor Calhoun,” the nurse announced. Mick stood up and brushed the wrinkles out of his slacks, then held out his hand. Calhoun was a trembly little man, with thin hair combed over a bald spot and glasses that seemed perpetually ready to take a swan dive off his nose. He shook Mick's hand, only for Mickey find them covered in a thin film of flop sweat.

“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Mick said. “Special Agent Michael Malloy.”

“Laythan Hartley Calhoun. Always happy to meet someone serving our country,” Calhoun stammered. “What can I do for you, agent?”

“I have some questions about some former patients,” Mick said.

“Ah, that can be a very sensitive subject,” Calhoun said, rubbing his hands like a clammy fly.

“I understand discretion is very important in your line of work,” Mick told him. Starling scowled at that. “But, your country needs you today.”

“My country?” Calhoun stammered.

“Yes, sir, this is a matter of national security,” Mick said. Calhoun's droopy face lit up. He stood two inches taller.

“Step into my office,” he said.

“Doctor, would you like for me - !” Starling started.

“We'll be fine, doll,” Mick said. He followed the doctor through the door and closed it behind them, shutting the suspicious nurse out.

Calhoun's office was like his waiting from: wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves packed with medical, historical, and philosophical texts. There was another door on the left side of the room, left wide open. Sterile white light leaked out, and Mick could see stainless steel fixtures and ivory tile within, a harsh contrast to the hardwood and plush carpet of Calhoun's office. The wormy doctor took a seat behind his over-sized desk, while Mickey let out an irrepressible groan as he settled into a deep leather chair across from him.

“Rheumatoid arthritis?” Calhoun asked. “Your discomfort, your swollen joints...”

“Yeah,” Mick said, rubbing his perpetually sore knuckles. “All that and I just keep busting 'em up. You X-rayed 'em today, my mitts probably look like rubber gloves full of gravel.”

“Unfortunately, that is not my area of expertise, but I could write you a referral,” Calhoun offered. “There are several esteemed rheumatologists in town who I would recommend.”

“Thanks, doc, but I'm only in town for a few more days,” Mick said.

“Well if you change your mind, give Nurse Starling a call.”

“Say, you read all these?” Mick asked, gesturing at the veritable library surrounding him, eager to get the subject of the conversation off himself.

“I have tried,” Calhoun confessed with a chuckle. “But there is always another book, and the new one always seems more exciting than the one I already have. I don't think I ever get any closer to finishing them, but I never get behind, either.”

“I get that,” Mick said.

“But for each one I have yet to read, there are others I've come back to a dozen times.”

“Any you'd recommend?”

“Of course! There are books here that changed my life. Are you familiar with Gall? Or Combe?”

“Can't say that I am,” Mick replied.

“Franz Joseph Gall was a revolutionary in medicine, centuries ahead of his time.”

“Sounds a little kraut to me,” Mick pointed out.

“Gall died nearly a hundred years ago, long before all this mess,” Calhoun said. “George Combe worked in the same field, but with a wholly different approach. Whereas Gall was an anatomist, Combe was a physicist. He dedicated his life to psychophysics, psychoaccoustics, cranioscopy, and phrenology. Gall mapped the land, while Combe laid the roads.”

Mick understood about a third of that gobbledegook, but he knew phrenology was bullshit. It had been a fad in policing for a while, but it had fallen out of favor a long ways back. He couldn't remember the reasoning, just that it was for kooks. If faux science a hundred years out of date what what Calhoun wanted to talk about, Mick didn't know how much more he'd be able to stand buttering the man up before he got to the point.

The packed shelves did make space for a few framed photos. Calhoun's medical degree was behind glass, along with a few newspaper clippings. Mick squinted, barely making out a photograph of a younger Calhoun in a packed military hospital.

“You serve?” Mick asked.

“Not on the front lines, no,” Calhoun said. “Did you?”

“Yeah, spent too long in France, a while in Belgium, far too long in Germany. You?”

“Austria,” Calhoun answered.

“How's that?”

“I was a fellow at the University of Strasbourg before hostilities broke out. I was arrested after the we declared war on the Central Powers, and made to treat Entente prisoners of war. It was a trying time, to be sure. I was provided little help and few resources. My operating room was the children's wing of the central library. Still, I managed to perform dozens of surgeries per day and to save many lives there.”

“That's a rough go,” Mick said.

“After the war, I lost the taste for trauma surgery, and opened my own practice. Family medicine, something quieter, and more peaceful.”

“I can understand that,” Mick said. “Speaking of peaceful, this is an interesting neighborhood to open a practice, doc, especially one that caters to more discerning clientele.”

“In what way?”

“I mean, this don't seem like an area any of your usual folks would ever visit. Your building backs up to the warehouses for the docks. I bet it can get pretty noisy and dirty around here. It's a lot closer to real life than I expect most of your patients ever try to get.”

“Oh,” Calhoun said. “Well, you see, most of my business consists of in-home visits. Only serious treatment or testing is ever conducted here. And I have found that when a patient needs that kind of attention, they prefer to do it in a location where passers-by would be less likely to recognize them.”

“Discretion must be an important part of your business,” Mick said.

“One of the most important parts, yes,” Calhoun agreed.

“That trust between a patient and their doctor is quite important,” Mick noted. “Takes a lifetime to build that trust.”

“Indeed, I offer care for patients from before they're born to their deathbeds. I have been doing this for twenty-five years, agent, watching families grow in my care.”

“So it must've hurt hearing about these Head Hunter murders,” Mick said, quiet and reverent.

“I delivered Hazel, Wyvous, and Milton myself,” Calhoun said, confirming Mick's suspicions. Every doctor's office he'd visited so far had enviously claimed that Calhoun was the go-to guy for delivering rich babies. Occupying his patient list as a mother-to-be was a status symbol in this town.

None of the other practices would confirm or deny whether the victims were their current patients, but Mick wasn't looking for such modern history. No, he needed to start at the beginning for these kids, and the very beginning kept leading him in Calhoun's direction.

The doctor interrupted Mickey's musings. He was whispering, introspective, his gaze lost in the wood grain swirls of his desk:

“I bounced them on my knee, helped them teethe, gave them their shots and exams. Beautiful children. It is terrible what happened to them, absolutely awful. They will be missed, greatly.”

“Is there anything about them you can tell me that I won't find in the police reports?” Mick asked.

“Whatever do you mean?” Calhoun demanded.

“Anything unusual with the births?”

“No, everything was as it should be as far as I recall,” Calhoun said. “What are you getting at, sir?”

“I'm not talking about the medical procedure, I meant with the patients. Were the mothers acting funny?”

“Not that I recall, Agent Malloy, and I don't see how this is relevant to the cases at hand.”

“Think on it, doc,” Mick growled.

“It was almost twenty years ago,” Calhoun said.

“Were the mothers nervous? Was there was anyone odd in attendance?”

“No more nervous than any woman birthing a child,” Calhoun replied. “And no, no one present then seemed out of place, no one that stuck out over twenty years.”

“Yeah,” Mick grunted. Mick could see a wall of filing cabinets in Calhoun's exam room from where he sat. Before he could ask to start pawing through them, a knock on the door, a pause, and three more knocks shattered his line of thought. Nurse Starling stuck her head.

“Doctor Calhoun, we'll have to start packing for your five o'clock,” she said.

“Packing?” Mick asked.

“As I said, most of my business is in home visits. I'm afraid we must be going,” Calhoun said. He began gathering his things into a leather satchel.

“Thanks for your time, doc,” Mick said. Starling gave him a wide berth as he sauntered out. Mick smirked to himself when he stepped outside. He'd rattled their cage, alright. The doc and his little helper knew something was up. Those files had to contain the three dead kids' original birth certificates. Mick was interested in seeing who'd signed them under 'father.' Donovan Damascus certainly seemed like the kind of guy to never deny someone an autograph.

Mick took a moment to lean on a nearby lamp post and have a smoke. He lit up a cigarette and listened to the neighborhood. Calhoun's office was only two or three streets away from the water and the bustling port authority. Things were winding down there, but he could still hear trucks rumbling, porters yelling at each other, train cars and containers banging into each other. The air was thick with exhaust and salt. It would take a lot to get some laced-up socialites down here. Calhoun's reputation for keeping his lip zipped would have to be outstanding, and supremely valuable.

A low murmur caught Mick's attention, but not in the way that'd make him start. He know the tone: that grumble of someone pissed off but trying to be cool about it. Mick turned slowly, scanning his surroundings inch-by-inch, careful not to let whoever was nearby know he was looking.

There, across the street and one building down. Mick only counted two of 'em: a couple of heavies, thick-necked bruisers playing at keeping an eye on Mick without looking right at him. They were stressing-smoking cigarettes right down the filter and passing a flask of liquid courage between them.

Mick smiled. He was ruffling feathers. He'd be getting answers soon enough.

SATURDAY MORNING, APRIL 18, 1942
S.S. HENRY HOOD
49°07'32.6"N, 44°19'48.4"W

Hampton Sinclair had known the Nazis'd made him before they did. It gave him time to scramble, and to ditch his disguise.

The head kraut, undercover as 'Mary Beth' and blonde as an Afghan hound, had mentioned her suspicions first. They'd run into Sinclair, 'Corporal Brown,' too often. One of her companions, the broader one with the strawberry blonde bob, 'Suzanne,' suggested she had an admirer. The third, 'Harmony' with the golden curls, sided with Mary Beth. They had seen ‘Brown’ too many times for it to be an accident.

The consensus had been to avoid contact with him in the short term, or report him as a peeping tom to the captain if he remained persistent in running into them. They didn't decide to murder him until they found one of the microphones he'd hidden in their bunk.

The three blondes stalked the Hood's halls like a pack of foxhounds. Though the ship was packed with people, each group stayed relegated to their assigned spaces. Only the small crew navigated the interim areas, and they were too busy manning the ship and watching for u-boats to be everywhere at once. When the Nazis came for him, Sinclair could only run.

He had been listening in from a closet not ten yards away when Mary Beth spotted the mic he'd patched into their ceiling light. The feedback screamed when she ripped it out. He didn't wait to hear them destroy the other two devices, either. He bugged out.

Sinclair gathered up his meager gear and hauled himself out of the window. His spider gloves let him slither up the Hood's outer hull, bringing him up to the top deck and at least three floors away from his pursuers. It was well after midnight, just a couple days after the new moon with only a silver sliver to light the sky. Every ship in the convoy was running dark. He moved like an ermine in the inky blackness, sneaking from hideaway to hideaway. He finally ducked under a tarped life boat and took a second to breathe.

His radio was the first priority. He unrolled his covert set, all soft wires wrapped up in a flexible bundle no larger than a set of riding gloves. It was barebones, but effective, a miniature one-way transmitter with only enough charge to send a single message out. He tossed its coiled, silk-thin antenna over the rail and let the sea breeze uncoil it for him. It flapped ethereally like an unmoored cobweb. Sinclair turned it on, made sure the blue light was glowing, then picked up the tiny mic, cupped his hands around it to block any wind, and whispered:

“Snakehouse, Snakehouse, Cowboy transmitting. My hat has blown off and there are three, count three, banditos on my trail. Will evade. Civilians not involved. Arrival still on schedule.”

Sinclair hadn't used his natural accent in days, and his voice box thanked him for it. His constant forced Yankee drawl was leaving him hoarse with a sore throat.

With that, the little radio died. It had one job and it had done it well. He balled it up and gave it a burial at sea. Sinclair was fine with that: even if it had another transmission in it, he didn't have any more intel to impart and he didn't foresee his situation changing.

Sinclair knew the folks at the HYDRA station would pick up his transmission, no problem. Those thirsty towers slurped up every drip of wayward radio waves them could find, and the folks listening and transcribing never missed a thing. He hoped. Once they'd unscrambled it and figured out it was him, standard operating procedure would be to alert the Hood's captain to an AWOL stowaway aboard. Sure he might get roughed up and taken to the brig under suspicion of being a spy, but it was better than whatever the Nazis'd do to him. Once they docked in Charleston, the Office would have someone there to claim him, if he was still alive. So it was a race: would he be able to hide long enough to get caught by the good guys, or would the three Nazis find him first?

No one came across him the entire next day. He'd been hoping to have been had by then, with either a warm meal or a cold knife in his belly before it got dark again. Either way, he wouldn't have to deal with the frigid Atlantic cold for another night.

It was well after midnight on Monday morning when alarm bells sounded all over the Hood. Sinclair groaned and stretched. He'd been crammed into the lifeboat for a night, a whole day, and most of a night. What aches immobility hadn't given him, the freezing air had. It took him another minute to realize that it wasn't an attack bell, but a fire alarm. He caught a whiff of smoke.

“Bloody hell,” he whispered. He peeked out from under the tarpaulin. He couldn't see it yet, but there was a fire burning belowdecks. Crewmen were shouting, dragging firefighting equipment, corralling the panicked passengers. If things got much more out of control, the life boat would no longer be a good place to hide. Sinclair gathered his things and slipped out. He stepped out of the shadows and found he wasn't alone.

Mary Beth was standing on the deck, wind whipping through her golden hair. She was holding a truncheon, tapping her palm with it. She smiled cooly, then whistled.

Harmony and Suzanne materialized on either side of Sinclair. One held a taut makeshift garrote, the other a small knife. Sinclair's only options for escape were through one of them, or over the rail.

“Hello, Corporal Brown,” Mary Beth said.

“Good thinking, the fire,” Sinclair said. The Nazis hadn't let their assumed accents slip, so neither would he.

“Smoke gets the pests out,” she hissed.

“People'll be up here pretty soon,” Sinclair told here.

“So we will do this quick, I'm nithered anyway,” Mary Beth replied.

“Sure,” Sinclair said. “Let's dance, doll.”

Sinclair shrugged out out of his coiled riata and hefted it in one hand. He slipped his other into a spider mitten and activated the charge within it. He felt the little legs coating his palm wriggle awake.

Suzanne came at him first with her blade. It wasn't much of a knife, but it was big enough to carve him up. Sinclair whipped his riata around, tossing its open loop out in front of her. As she stepped into it, he hauled back, tightening it around her ankles and ripping her feet out from under her. She hit the deck, hard, sprawling out long enough for Sinclair to confront Mary Beth.

Her truncheon came down hard, intending to brain him with a single strike. He managed to ducked out of the way, then grabbed at it with his gloved hand. The barbed bug legs on his palm dug in as soon as he made contact, locking it into his grip. Mary Beth's eyes went wide as she struggled to regain control of her weapon, but Sinclair would not, and could not, let go.

Harmony leaped on his back, bringing her garrote up and over his head. He dropped his riata in time to grab at the rope closing around his throat. He kicked out with both feet, knocking Mary Beth back as he twisted the club out of her grip. The hit threw him, and the shrieking Nazi on his back, off balance. Sinclair twisted as he fell, making sure that when they landed he'd be mashing Harmony into the deck with all of his weight. She wheezed and let up, giving Sinclair the opening he needed to scramble back to his feet.

Mary Beth crouched before him like a cornered tiger ready to pounce, disarmed and declawed but deadly all the same. Suzanne was busy sawing at the riata lassoed around her ankles. He wished her luck. Wormline was one of the strongest substances the Office had ever developed and a pilfered butterknife just wouldn't cut it.

“Yer getting on me last nerve,” Mary Beth hissed. Sinclair risked a look back at Harmony. She'd be back on him in seconds. He'd have to hit like a truck. Another zap put the creepy-crawlies on his palm to sleep, letting him flip the club around.

Sinclair lunged at Mary Beth, swinging her own weapon at her head. She weaved around the blow, battering his head and chest with a flurry of punches. He staggered back, only to trip when Harmony wrapped her arms around his knees from behind. He swung the truncheon over his shoulder, conking her on the back of the head, then heaved it at the charging Mary Beth. The Nazi ducked out of the way and truncheon sailed past her and over the rail, into the sea.

Harmony was still shrieking and kicked at Sinclair's kidneys. She landed a few dagger-sharp hits before he spun around and climbed atop her like a wrestler. He placed his mitten over her mouth and pressed the button, then slid his hand out and rolled off of her before Mary Beth could reach him.

If Harmony's screams had been bad before, they became absolutely chilling. Sinclair could not imagine what it must have felt like to have the thousands of barbed microscopic legs dig into her face and lips at once. Once awake and gripping in their brainless, relentless way, he might as well have welded the mitten into her flesh. Her sheer terror was enough to stop Mary Beth in her tracks.

Sinclair didn't hesitate. He knew these Nazis were ready to slice his throat open. He surged to his feet and hit Mary Beth low, digging his shoulder in up under her ribs and taking her to the deck in a heavy rugby tackle. He left her in a heap and went after Suzanne next. She'd given up on cutting the wormline and had instead nearly untied the knot around her ankles. Sinclair didn't give her the chance.

Instead, he scooped up the loose end of his riata, tossed it over the guard rail and looped it around in a quick double half hitch. When it was secure, he snagged the wormline from the middle, gave it a hard tug to lock it all the way in around Suzanne's ankles, then drop-kicked her over the side.

The wormline snapped taut and twanged like a guitar string when Suzanne reached its end. He could hear her screaming expletives. She'd given up on her cover and starting swearing in German.

A body thunked to the deck behind him, and Sinclair spun to find Harmony collapsed, wheezing as she bled from where she'd clawed at the adhered mitten. He remembered Mary Beth in time to feel her arm snake around his throat. She locked her arms in and Sinclair could feel the pressure in his head built as she cut off the air and blood to his brain.

“Don't be mardy now,” she hissed in his ear, her accent still all Yorkshire. Sinclair stood to his full height, only to find she was taller than him. She wrenched her arms tighter, flooding his sight with black fog and shooting stars. He gave up trying to rip her arms away from his neck and began swinging his elbows wildly. He connected once or twice, but she leaned forward and pushed her hips back, increasing the pressure on his throat while staying out of his reach.

Sinclair felt his brain shutting down. He dropped like a dead fish, but she fell with him, stuck like a barnacle. She wrapped her long legs around his waist and locked his knees in place. He tried kicking out one last time, but she moved with him, bouncing off the deck in stride. He either didn’t hurt her or she didn't care.

It felt like they laid there for hours. All he knew anymore was pressure. He could hear the trapped blood sloshed around in his head. His airless gasps sounded as loud as a misfiring truck engine. Hs bones felt like rubber and it took years for his arms to the respond when his brain begged them to move.

Mary Beth's breath tickled his ear. She twisted around again to stomp on Sinclair's feet. To his horror, he felt his spider socks come alive. His squirming soles locked into the deck, and she unhooked her legs and put both knees in the small of his back. She grunted, then hauled back on his neck as hard as she could, bending his spine backward like she was stringing a bow. If Sinclair could have screamed, he would have. The last wisps of air hissed out of his compressed lungs.

Something popped in Hampton Sinclair's head and everything went black.

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Copyright © 2022 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

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