The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Old Wizard's Woods, Part 5 and 6

Mickey Malloy is in the rescue business, and business is good. He’s faced down some long odds in the woods of Maine, nearly getting got in the process, and now he’s got to prepare for the next one.

Meanwhile, traitorous inventor Ned Garver takes the next steps to enact the Garrisonian Party’s twisted plans.

These are Parts 5 and 6, the finale, of The Case the Old Wizard’s Woods. If you’d like to avoid spoilers, read Parts 1 and 2 and Parts 3 and 4 first.

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

THURSDAY MORNING, AUGUST 27, 1943
DRESSLER-GROSS WELDING CO.
KOSSUTH, MISSISSIPPI

“Hold still, you cretin…” Ned Garver said, biting his tongue to steady his hands as he lined up the gauntlet with its power supply conduit.

“I’ve been sitting here for hours, doc,” Frank Gutermuth complained, getting antsy in the re-purposed dentist’s chair. Stuck in place with that big light overhead, he felt like he was about to get sawed open. He was certainly sweating like he was. His cigarette had burned down to a nub.

“You can rush me and make it take three times as long, or I can do it right the first time,” Garver hissed. The white armor was coming together nicely and his modifications had integrated well. All he had to do was keep the hungover boy in the chair long enough to make sure they weren’t missing any pieces.

“Yeah, yeah, take your time,” Gutermuth grunted. Oil-slicked monkeys were running a can-can line across the back of his eyes. All he wanted was a glass of water and a soft bunk.

“I assumed you would want this done correctly,” Garver continued, twitching his little mustache. His thin hair had wormed free of his comb-over and was dangling in front of his face but he did not notice.

“Yes, doc,” Gutermuth mumbled. He had been up late drinking mead with that Viking, Klingenträger, popping go pills with America’s Safeguard, Abe Allison, and dancing with the girls Art Kerper, the Pinkerton boss, had sent over. He was ready to melt into a puddle and sleep for days. Instead, he had to sit and sweat it all out while the egg-head bolted him into a sardine can.

“The Heartland Heroes’ weapons are countered easily enough, but one faulty bond in this armor would expose you to…” Garver started, then caught his tongue. He wasn’t used to doing that, but the fading bruise under his right eye reminded him to mind his manners, especially around the amped-up Legionnaire. “Well, you know better than most.”

Even an oblong reference to his father, the late Knight of Eagles Wilbur Gutermuth, was enough to get Frank’s hackles up. He bit back the urge to slug the mouthy nerd again and kept his composure. It wasn’t all him growing as a person and as a leader in the Garrisonian Party: he was also afraid that any sudden movement would make him loose his guts and fill his trousers.

Plus, Garver was right. The ‘Heroes’ used technology far beyond what Gutermuth understood. They could freeze folks solid, mesmerize them, shoot them full of holes in calibers he’d never heard of, and flay the flesh from their bones with screaming electricity. Garver claimed he could counteract all that and Gutermuth wasn’t about to muck it up just because the furious slurry of honey wine and amphetamines he’d downed the night before had given him a short temper and raging bubble guts.

“What is all this?” he asked, desperate to distract himself from his gastrointestinal duress.

“Most of it was sent by anonymous Garrisonian supporters,” Garver answered. “I built the rest.”

“You built it?” Gutermuth wondered, suddenly concerned.

“This is not some slap-dash jalopy built in a garage,” Garver huffed. “This machine contains hundreds of years of research distilled down to the purest components.”

“Aren’t you a participant physician or something?” Gutermuth asked.

“Particle physicist,” Garver replied.

“The hell does that mean?”

“It means I so rarely get to design and construct items,” Garver said. He sat back and finally pushed the stringy hair out of his face. “Well, not so rarely any more.”

“Huh?”

“Until recently, I only dealt in theories and proposals. I studied the fundamental forces. The things that make up all matter and energy. I would see how we could use those forces to our advantage.”

“So what are you doing now?”

“I’ve been tasked with putting those theories into practice,” Garver replied. “And every other task the Party comes up with that requires the slightest bit of technical savvy.”

“So you’re the guy,” Gutermuth said.

“The guy?”

“Yeah, from the paper. The one with all the answers. You know what’s going on and how it works.”

“I don’t - !” Garver tried, but the hungover young man cut him off.

“You used to work for them, huh? Those Office assholes?” he said. Garver nodded. “I hear they got broads and Jews and coloreds running around, just to have ‘em and show ‘em off. It’s happening everywhere now, you know. Bunch of foreigners and college folks trying to act all high and mighty with their trophy hires while leaving real Americans like you and me out to dry.”

Garver kept his mouth shut. The Garrisonians were his patrons. He did not approve of the company they kept, but their end goals were the same, despite their distasteful motivations: to get those in power to recognize their contributions.

“Why’d you sign on with ‘em?” Gutermuth asked.

“I wanted to study things no one else was,” Garver answered honestly. “But then when I found those things, I was ignored.”

“Because you’re a white man,” Gutermuth said, nodding.

“It wasn’t that,” Garver muttered, but wasn’t it? Wang was in charge of his own team, and they handed Cypress his own facility. Hell, when Doctor Okorie began her analysis of the Telsa papers, she’d declined his input altogether and brought in Doctor Abebe instead.

“Sure it wasn’t,” Gutermuth said. He winced as something sharp and careless chipped flakes off the inside of his skull. “I read all about you. Your boss was some wetback, wasn’t he?”

“Gonzales,” Garver confirmed.

“‘Gonzales,’” Gutermuth sneered. “Sounds like you got held back, doc. Had to let some of the whining little mutts get their handouts before the purebreed.”

Garver almost objected out of habit, but it made sense. The Office was disgustingly transparent about their intent: they sought to hire anyone and everyone that wandered through their doors, no matter their formal education. They wanted pats on the back for being so inclusive, results be damned. It was as if they were checking boxes for skin tone, not qualifications.

For Pete’s sake, he was the preeminent authority on high-frequency radiation applications in the western hemisphere and even their up-jumped secretaries looked down on him. He was glad he’d blasted his way out of there and kicked down the curtain so everyone could witness their deception.

He turned his ratchet as he fumed, tightening the last bolt clamping the gauntlet around Gutermuth’s arm.

“Ow, shit!” the Legionnaire yelped. He swung his free hand around, knocking the sense out of Garver with an open-handed slap that sent him staggering away. “Pay attention!”

Gutermuth was nursing his encased arm, apparently where the armor plates had pinched him.

Garver caught his breath, steadying himself against a workbench as the ringing in his ear died down.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he wheezed.

“Oh yeah?” Gutermuth snapped. His sudden burst of movement had left him dizzy. His empty stomach roiled and black spots invaded the edges of his vision. Still, if there was one thing he’d learned from his dad, it was that he could never back down, never show weakness. He lurched to his feet, uncertain if he could even stand until he was doing so. Words gurgled out of his mouth like bile: “And why’s that, doc? Ain’t you just some four-eyed Benedict Arnold?”

Garver watched him sway for a moment but stayed frozen like a damn baby deer.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Gutermuth muttered. He collapsed back into the chair. His abused stomach roiled and he threw his bare arm over his face to block out the harsh spotlight.

“Apologize,” Garver said after a moment, almost a whisper.

“What’s that?” Gutermuth asked, not even bothering to to look at the other man.

“Apologize to me,” Garver repeated, louder, with more weight behind it.

“Shut the Hell up and finish your job,” Gutermuth grunted.

“I am the reason those Office flunkies won’t fry you where you stand,” Garver said. He straightened his thin tie and stood up straight. “You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

“I hear you’re going to be going out into the field with us, slim,” Gutermuth replied. “Seems to me like only one of us has been training since we could walk. You start watching that mouth, I’ll keep watching your back.”

“You have our positions reversed, you sniffling child.”

The bass in Garver’s chest rousted Gutermuth out of the chair. He stood three inches taller and far broader than the other man. Even with six feet between them, he towered. The drills his father had run him through every morning since he was four had paid off. He looked every bit the soldier of liberty he’d been raised to be.

Garver, on the other hand, was thin, stooped, rumpled, and weak. He had no right to talk to anyone with that much attitude, much less the heir to the Knight of Eagles and the next great hope of the Garrisonian Party.

Gutermuth stepped up to him. He didn’t need fancy toys bolted to his arm to teach old wimps lessons. He closed in on Garver only to run into something he couldn’t see.

“What the Hell?” he wondered. He voice reverberated around him. He pushed against nothing, trying to move forward. It was as if the air in front of him had solidified. “What is this?”

“A terahertz radiation fence,” Garver answered. His voice seemed to come from every direction. Gutermuth tried to back away only to find himself hemmed in from behind, locked into some invisible cell.

“The Nazis stole my invention and iterated upon it,” Garver continued. He twisted a knob on his wristwatch and Gutermuth felt the invisible force shove him back. Garver continued: “The Garrisonians stole it back for me.”

He adjusted another knob and the air around Gutermuth rippled awake, a heat mirage blooming around him in an instant. The hangover sweat that had beaded on his forehead began to run, stinging his bloodshot eyes and dripping off his chin.

“You see, Frank, helping you is beneath me,” Garver said. He adjusted his watch again and his voice boomed. The temperature rose around Gutermuth. He struggled against the enclosing force but it continued to shrink. A spark snapped against the gauntlet, throwing him back into the phantasmal fence.

“I should be directing the technological future of this nation,” Garver continued. “Instead, I’m babysitting a herd of half-wit Neanderthals who don’t know a vacuum tube from a transistor.”

Gutermuth tried to mutter some response but the air was closing in on him, hot and thick like he was drowning in molten metal. The invisible walls were hardly wider than his shoulders and still closing in.

“But, in circumstances like mine, one must make the best with what one has,” Garver sighed. “You and I aren’t meant to be friends, Frank. We’re hardly even the same species. But we share the same vision for the future, and one day, you and I might be neighbors in our saved America.”

Garver seemed to snap out of it then and smacked the face of his watch. The crushing forces around Gutermuth evaporated in an instant, leaving him sprawling on the workshop floor. He wheezed, not sure if he was going to vomit, pass out, or trying slugging the pencil-necked creep again.

Garver made the choice for him. Another manipulation of his terahertz controls pressed a weight down on Gutermuth’s back. He groaned as his cheek ground against the filthy floor.

“I expect you to remember that I make the fences, Frank,” Garver whispered. His voice reverberated through Gutermuth’s bones. “And good fences make good neighbors.”

The weight persisted for another second, pushing the breath out of Gutermuth’s lungs.

“Why don’t you get back on the table,” Garver suggested. His fingertips brushed against his watch and the weight dissipated as a wave of hard air slid beneath Gutermuth to shove him to his feet like an unseen spatula flipping him like a burger patty. He struggled and ended up having to grab the dentist chair to steady himself. Garver grinned, then picked up the next segment of the waiting ivory armor.

“Sit down, Frank, and don’t move. We have a lot more work to do, and I wouldn’t want you to get pinched again.”

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, AUGUST 29, 1943
TESLA RESIDENCE, WILD RIVER WILDERNESS
WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST, MAINE

The bugs came back before the sun did. A gnat buzzed into Mickey Malloy’s ear. He swatted at it, slapping the still-sore scar he'd picked up in Tallahassee. He winced and wished his flask was still safe and sound in his pocket.

It was an hour before the Earp’s other officials arrived. They parked on an old timber road a couple miles away and made their way through the forest on foot, following the fascists' trail.

Tesla's wife emerged from the cabin to tend to Earp. She cleaned his cuts and splinted and bandaged his wounds. She smiled, calm and calming, wiping the blood from his face and eyes and leaving him clean and comfortable.

“Nikola says this may help,” she told him, resting her hand on his shoulder. She poured a test tube containing a milky blue substance into Earp's lolling mouth.

“Spearmint?” he groaned, smacking his split lips.

“Quiet, Wailey, relax,” was all she said to him. Earp leaned back against his tree and rested his eyes. She asked Mickey: “May I help you, Michael?”

Mick couldn't place her New England accent specifically, but she was an all-American woman.

“No thanks, ma'am, unless you got some hooch,” he replied.

“Ma'm? My name is Edna, Edna Smolk. Or Edna Tesla, I haven't gotten used to it yet though. And as far as the hard stuff goes, I may be able to find something for you,” Edna chuckled, taking her blood-stained towels and making her way back to the cabin. Mickey hadn't asked for her name before, he figured Tesla was keeping that to himself for a reason, but he was glad to have met her.

When the officials finally arrived, Earp insisted he stay to supervise the clean-up operation, but Mickey volunteered for it just to get him out of there. Two women placed him onto a stretcher, lifted him up, and took off with a medic and fireteam escort. They slipped between the trees and Earp was gone.

Three officials from the Library, backed up by another pair from Oak Ridge, scoured the battlefield. They scooped up the the shattered remains of Tesla's teleforce gun first, eager to examine the horrible weapon's remains. Another trio of combat medics had bound the stricken Waldgeist to a back board, padlocked by her hands, feet, neck, and waist. They only began administering fluids and checking her vitals once they were sure she was totally immobile.

Tech and prisoner secured, they began scraping hollowed Tridente corpses out of the pine needles. One hooked Eighteen's guts out of a tree and transferred them to a body bag. Mick spit in the dirt and wandered over to the cabin. He’d lost the stomach for watching half-crisped stiffs getting shoveled into buckets way back.

“Philadelphia, sir,” an official said, startling Mick out of a stupor. He didn’t know how long he’d been leaning against a tree staring at the ground, but he’d counted enough pine needles that his cigarette was burned down to a nub. He dropped it and looked up.

“What’s that?” he grunted as he ground it out.

“Surviving identification indicates the aggressors were a Tridente Cremisi cell based out of Philly,” the younger man replied. “We have their headquarters’ address: a chimney and smokestack cleaning service in - !”

Mick cut him off:

“I know you?”

The official was familiar: white, clean-shaven, average height, a little pudgy, close-cropped red curls atop his head, and a hint of a limp.

“Irving Malinowski, sir,” he said. He shuffled his notes around ‘til he had a free hand. Mick took it.

“We tuned you up in Washington, didn’t we?” he asked, recognizing the name. Malinowski had been one of the officials Diedre Daniels had mesmerized during her attack on the fundraiser in D.C. back in July.

“That witch got the drop on us, sir,” Malinowski replied, suddenly sheepish.

“Won’t happen again,” Mick said for him.

“No, sir,” Malinowski chirped. He shuffled his notes again until he found a specific scrap of paper and held it out. Mick could see an address on it.

“Send it to Marge, in Baltimore,” he said. “I’ll visit their little fort later.”

Malinowski nodded and set off in search of a radio. He didn’t make it three steps before Mick thought better of it.

“Irv!” he said. The official stopped and spun. “On second thought, send it to Quint Castaño. Let the Heroes handle this one.”

“Can do, sir,” Malinowski said, then strutted off.

Mick rolled his eyes, muttering to himself:

“And don’t call me ‘sir.’”

Busting a crew of turncoats who’d been inducted into a Nazi murder cult in a major metropolitan area was exactly the kind of thing the Heartland Heroes were made for. That would make good headlines in everything but the Journal.

Mick left the officials to the grisly tasks and pushed himself up from the tree that had been holding him off the ground. He let a wave of familiar exhaustion wash over and through him then went in search of his host.

Tesla had shut himself in the cabin once the officials had arrived, not so much as peeking through the curtains while they worked. Mick's hesitant knock elicited a frenzied chorus of high-pitched yips from the other side of the door. Tesla opened after a moment and beckoned Mickey inside.

“Peraje!” Tesla snapped at the little white dog to no avail. The mutt had a mind of his own. He jumped two feet straight up in the air, barking all the while, flying over the other dogs who were perfectly content to hold the floor down. Tesla sighed and told Mickey: “Now you have to hold him.”

Mick scooped the yapping pup out of mid-air. Peraje scampered up his arm and perched on his shoulder like a fluffy parrot. The dog stared at him intently with bright little brown eyes, then went to town, licking Mick's lumpy face up and down.

“Hey!” he objected, only for Peraje to lick inside his open mouth. Mick sputtered and tried to hand him off to Tesla, but the scientist backed away.

“He likes you,” Tesla said. He sat down at a hand-built table and left Mickey to Peraje's mercy. The little dog kept kissing, only taking breaks to growl every time Mick attempted to set him down. The big man relented and allowed the dog to have his way. He tried his best to ignore the tiny tongue cleaning the deepest recesses of his ear canal while he spoke:

“They're taking your death ray,” he told Tesla.

“You might as well give an ant a light bulb,” the scientist said.

“Okay, Nick,” Mick muttered. “So what now?”

“I do not know, inspector,” Tesla said. He sighed. He still sounded exhausted. He looked frail again, and pale. His cheekbones stuck out wide and hollow. “For all my preparations, I have not kept my family safe.”

“You two were by yourselves,” Mickey said. “You don't have to be.”

“At what cost? The things I’ve made? You would offer me my wife's safety in exchange for a more efficient means for murder?” Tesla seethed.

“No trade,” Mick said. “I'm no blackmailer, and neither is the Office. We keep people safe. It is our function, in word and deed. You know the oath, you know how far we'll go for you and yours.”

“'Until I can lift a hand in defiance no longer,'” Tesla recited. He had taken their vow once long before in a different life.

“I'll find you and Edna a new home, somewhere safe,” Mick told him. Peraje's raspy little tongue dug deep into his ear again. “Okay, a home for all of you.”

Tesla's other dogs and chickens huffed and clucked respectively, and his wife hummed some unfamiliar tune in the kitchen. The scientist smiled softly. He loved his home.

“This is the war that is being fought?” he asked after a moment. “To take this away?”

“It is,” Mickey confirmed.

“And it is not ending?”

“Not the way we want, not yet, but we're getting there.” Mick thought about their victory today. The Axis didn't stand a chance against the combined talents and determination of free people. They knew their little empire was burning to the ground and they wanted everyone else to go to ashes with them. Mick needed to make sure those flames didn’t spread.

The Office had the Legion on the ropes, the Tridente were hurt, bad, Eizhürst was running out of places to hide, and the Germans were getting scraped out of their holes back in the Fatherland.

The Allies were going to win the war, dragging the kicking and screaming Garrisonians with them.

“Inspector?” Tesla ventured. Mickey shook the hope, that unfamiliar feeling, from his bruised brain.

“What?” he rasped, thirsty, his throat dry.

“I never want this to happen again,” Tesla said. Mick looked out the window at the masked officials shoveling smoldering corpses into bags.

“It doesn't have to,” Mickey told him.

“Then you have me, as the man and the husband and the American and the inventor, but never again as the creator of weapons.”

“Good men are worth more than the guns in their hands,” Mickey said. “Everyone who steps up to this bullshit gets us that much closer to ending it.”

The Case of the Old Wizard’s Woods is complete. Read Parts 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 6 and the rest of Old Dogs Still Got Teeth.

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Copyright © 2025 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

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