"Worst Assassination Attempt Ever"
May. 26th, 2022 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Worst Assassination Attempt Ever"
9/30/2014
I.
As a few minutes before nine, Jeremy Bane walked up to the four-story yellow brick office on 40th Street and 3rd Avenue. It had been more than two weeks since he had last been in his office. He had been wandering upstate, getting as far north as Cortland before making a vague semi-circle to the east and coming back down to the Hudson Valley. At Syracuse, the State Troopers had recognized him and had asked if he wanted to help out busting a drug ring from Colombia but he had politely told him he was already occupied with something now and moved on. All the way back to Manhattan, he had regretted his decision and had even turned around and started back up before deciding he had to stand by his decision. There was nothing Midnight War about ecstasy and heroin, and the police were better trained and equipped for that sort of thing. Maybe if vampires or Trolls had been involved...
Now, on this warm September morning, Bane stepped through the sliding glass double doors into a cool dim lobby. To his right was the walk-in clinic Emergency One. To his left was a bank of mail boxes. He unlocked the one marked DIRE WOLF AGENCY and found only a yellow index card that read PLEASE SEE MANAGER. Bane shrugged and walked up a flight of stairs to a wooden door with a frosted glass panel STEVEN GOLDFARB - BUILDING MANAGER. He knocked and a pleasant woman's voice told him to enter.
The Dire Wolf entered a tasteful reception room, nicely carpeted, with prints on the walls and a door to an inner office. Behind a desk sat a young, busty woman with lovely shiny black hair she took great care with. She was wearing a dark suit over a white silk blouse and put down a phone as he entered.
"Ah, Jeremy. We have something for you."
"Hello, Ellen. I've been away."
The manager's daughter handed him a plastic supermarket bag absolutely stuffed with mail. "Wish I lived as interesting a life as you do! All I get is tweets about what my sister had for lunch."
Bane took the bag and glanced in it. "I'm thinking about retiring."
"What, close the Dire wolf agency? Who would keep the creatures of night under control?"
He gave her one of his faint smiles. She was not jesting. The Goldfarb family had been victimized many years ago by the Preinarnators and a young Jeremy Bane had stepped in to intervene and save two children. Old Steven Goldfarb never forgot and it was the reason he overlooked the many building regulations Dire Wolf broke regularly.
"I'm don't need the money, Ellen. Maybe I'm only fifty-seven this year but they've been rough years."
"Oh, come on, you look maybe thirty at the most, and a really great thirty at that. I wish my boyfriend kept as slim and trim as you. Don't retire. I'd miss all the crazy characters who come here to see you."
Bane turned away. "Maybe I'll keep the office for consultations. Appointment only."
As he left, Ellen sang out cheerfully, "In any case, pick up your mail more often!"
Bane turned outside the door and trotted down the steps to the first floor. He did look young, despite all the damage he had survived. Partly this was the Tagra tea diet Tel Shai provided him with, partly it was that he never drank or smoke and had kept in peak athletic condition his entire life. There were few grey strands yet in a full head of black hair, and only faint lines at the corners of his mouth, he had not changed much. At the bottom of the stairs, he swung right down a short narrow hallway that ended with a metal EXIT ONLY sign. To the left was a brass plate DIRE WOLF AGENCY. Bane unlocked the door and stepped into a tiny reception room barely big enough for two chairs and coffee table with a few newspapers. It was stuffy. He turned on the overhead fan and tore off the sheet on the wall calendar.
Opening the door to his office, Bane turned on the air conditioner to blast fresh air in. Closing the door behind him, he flicked the overhead lights and crossed over to the desk. Strangely, he felt little enthusiasm where normally he was eager to get started. His phone blinked to indicate he had voice messages. Hanging his black sport jacket over his chair, he lowered himself down and started dividing the mail into the stacks. Bills and notices over to the left. Reports from his network of agents, to the right. Junk, in the wastepaper basket. Actual letters from people he did not know went into a stack in the center.
The bills and legal notices could wait. Everything had been paid up before he had left. The reports from his agents he skimmed through quickly. Bane paid retainers to a dozen or so people to keep him updated on anything relating to the Midnight War they spotted. Most were in the NYC area, but there was Golden Jaguar in Los Angeles, the Chen family in Hong Kong and Chelsea Muir in Lodon. He glanced over the reports, but nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be up. The truth was, the Midnight War had been in a slump for years. With the original KDF, Bane had wiped out most of the real masterminds like Karl Eldritch, Wu Lung, John Grim and Arem Kamende. Few crime lords of that caliber had emerged since. The creatures of the night and the denizens of the adject realm were appearing more rarely and more cautiously. The human race was mostly facing problems of its own doing these days.
By now, it was getting past ten-thirty, and Bane was still restless as ever. He got up, stretched, and paced around the office for a few minutes. The Trom security devices he had installed still blinked green. The protective Eldanar talisman over the door was cool to the touch. Bane squatted before the waist-high refrigerator next to the bookcase. Nothing perishable was ever in there. Bottled water, bags of peanuts and dried fruit, some corn chips and saltines. He took a water bottle and the corn chips and plopped down on the long leather couch under the window on 3rd Avenue.
Glumly, the Wolf stared up at the ceiling as he munched. Maybe it WAS time to retire. He had been fighting madmen and monsters all his life. Let the youngsters in the new KDF take over. Although he lived simply, Bane was a millionaire many times over; he could spent his time on the beach at Hawaii or skiing the Alps, eating gourmet food in Europe, just visiting old friends and colleagues around the world. When was the last time he had seen Steven Weaver? Or Tang Ming? For that matter, when had he spent more than a few days at Tel Shai? Bane had a sudden vision of himself with a white beard and a beer belly, politely listening to tales of old times in some beachfront bistro late at night. With a shudder, he jumped up and went back to his desk.
Going through the letters from people he didn't know, Bane discarded most of them. Some were offers for regular detective work, divorce cases or employee theft or runaway teens. Later, he would type out replies referring them to regular detective agencies in the NYC area. But some of these requests for his help were intriguing. Reports from three different observers in Oklahoma of what sure sounded like a group of pterodactyls. A baby was missing, and any number of dogs. Then, someone had seen chalky white-skinned naked men with red eyes coming up to parked cars in Florida. That was a new one. There were a couple more curiosities, including a report from California of an impending gang war between the Children of the Golden Jaguar and the Roar Devils. He wouldn't mind helping out Marisol and her Jaguars, they were okay, but LA just rubbed him the wrong way. Bane went through the requests again more thoughtfully, then put them back in their envelopes. From his desk, he took out a big manila envelope and managed to get all the letters in it. He had reached a decision.
Shrugging into his jacket, Bane turned off the lights and the AC, went through the tiny reception room and out into the hallway. The sunlight through the glass doors startled him after the subdued lighting off his office. Out on the street, he suddenly perked up and began striding quickly west toward 38th Street and Lexington Avenue.
II.
The Dire Wolf stood across the street and gazed up at the ten-story building. He was not a sentimental man by nature but even he could get a little lost. Kenneth Dred had lived here beginning in 1937, fighting the Midnight War with knowledge and connections. Then in 1977, he had hired a street punk barely 21 to act as his agent. The young Jeremy Bane (a name he had chosen himself) had responded to the first person ever to show trust and confidence in him, and had done the best job possible. With the death of the elderly Dred, Bane had inherited a fortune and the brownstone building and immediately assembled the heroes who made up the Kenneth Dred Foundation. Cindy Brunner, Michael Hawk, Ted Wright, Leonard Slade, Larry Taper, Khang... then Shiro Mitsuru, Steven Weaver, Sulak, Garrison Nebel, all the others. Gone now. Mostly killed in action. Twelve years ago (twelve...!? How was that possible?) Bane and Cindy had recruited a half-dozen youngster with the necessary powers and attitudes to form the new KDF and they had done a fine job. After the first year, he had stepped down to let them go their own way...
A big guy with a cigar in his mouth, arms loaded with brown carboard boxes, bumped in him. "Wake up, bub," he said genially.
Bane snapped out of it and barely smiled. He had been lost in thought. Crossing 38th Street, he stepped up to the door of the building he knew so well and up the seven steps. The heavy oaken door unlocked and swung open before he could touch it and voice from a speaker said, "Captain! Good to see you."
In the foyer, with its bench and end table and framed portrait KENNETH DRED 1900-1979, the inner door stood open. A woman in her early thirties stood there with a wide grin on her face. Sable Reilly was lovely in an unusual way with a pug nose in a roundish face, thick black hair swept straight back and large dark eyes. She was wearing light blue jeans, white sneakers and a black long-sleeved T-shirt. Sable seemed on the edge of hugging Bane but her innate reticence won out and she merely placed on a hand on his shoulder. "Long time no see indeed!"
"Hi, Sable. How is everyone?"
"The new team has really synced into a unit. They've figured out their strengths and weaknesses working together into different combinations. Come on in."
Bane followed her into the reception room, unchanged as far as he could see. "Oh, I'm glad to hear that. You've basically got a new team now, with so many members on part-time."
"You're telling me. Ashley is staying on part-time for the foreseeable future. Little April is two now and quite a handful. Megan and Archie are fading into civilian life. And Sheng is happy with his Fist For Hire Agency, he keeps busy."
"You know, Sable, you haven't changed anything here. Everything is just as I left it."
"I don't seen any reason to move things around just for its own sake. The conference room is still the same, too. But the Corby hangar on the top floor, now THAT is all new. Trom Girl goes nuts with updates and upgrades, I can go to the bathroom and when I came out she's got that helicopter rebuilt again."
Bane saw her hesitate. "You should sit behind the desk, Sable. You're in charge of the KDF team now, I stepped down."
"I wouldn't feel comfortable. Maybe in a combat situation where I would have to take command. Let's sit on the couch."
As they dropped down, Bane handed her the thick manila envelope. "I brought you something interesting, Sable. Possible cases. I still get mail asking me to help track down weird creatures all over. But I am trying to retire."
She snorted almost inaudibly. "Well, It's up to you, Jeremy, but I think you have at least another good decade of monster-busting left. It's what you're born for." She started skimming through the letters. "Oh. Oh, I like some of these. My team needs some action, they are almost getting stale. We broke up a Ghoul warren in Maine a month ago, nothing since. Thank you, captain."
Bane got up and looked at the fish tank, filled with bizarre creatures from Ulgor. "Where is your team, anyway?"
"Training, mostly. Trom Girl and Argent have the new recruits up in the Catskills, teaching them some woodland survival skills. Josef has taken a bodyguard job, he uses his days off to keep his career active. Johnny Packard still turns up every now and then, but he's too independent to follow rules and be a full member."
The Dire Wolf came back to sit next to her. "You've done a good job, Sable. Hard to be believe so much time has passed since the Second Team was formed. The clock is ticking faster."
"Ah, let's be honest. We have not faced the enemies your team did. You wiped out the really big villains and we have been handling lesser ones all around. Where is our new Angdros? Wu Lung? Or John Grim? Even the adjacent realms have been keeping to themselves lately. I wonder if the Midnight War might be finally winding down."
"Or just taking a breather. Listen, I have to get going. Are you having Pizza Night this Wednesday?"
Looking up, Sable flashed a stunning smile. "Absolutely. It takes a major crisis for us to skip Pizza Night."
Bane squeezed her hand for a second. "I will definitely make it. Take care, Sable. Help me think of a present to send Unicorn and her family, okay?"
"Will do." She saw him to the door, watched him salute lightly as he stepped down to the sidewalk and allowed herself a wistful sigh as he strode quickly away. Dire Wolf. He would never change, she thought, he was born to slap tigers in the face and race through the woods in the dark of the moon, and she would never want to see him any other way.
III.
On 38th Street again, Bane turned back the way he had come and then stopped. Waiting in his office was just an hour of paperwork, witing checks and signing forms. And he had not even started on his voicemail yet. To Hell with all that. He swung around and headed west at a trot, toward Times Square. It was not the Times Square he remembered fondly, not at all. The sleaze had been scrubbed away. Behind the porn theatres and peep shows and massage parlors had been gambling dens ansd drug factories and sweat shops. Gone now, Times Square was just a bright gleaming shiny tourist trap. All the sordid crime had merely gone elsewhere, of course. Bane stopped at a sports bar and shoveled down two hot roast beef sandwiches, curly fries and a club soda. Now he felt more sanguine. His enhanced metabolism gave him his great reflexes at the price of being always ravenous. He ordered a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie and took a bite as Bleak walked in and came up right up to him.
He had to be in his early seventies by now, but then Bleak had always looked dried and frail. He was maybe five feet nine, thin, wearing black slacks and a dress white shirt with the cuffs rolled up. A weathered face, thin blond hair and pale blue eyes completed an unimpressive package. Yet, Bane knew, Bleak had been a formidable night hunter back in his day. "Buy a beer for an old pal, Jeremy?"
"Sure, pull up a stool. How about a hamburger, too, I'm having another sandwich."
"If you don't mind..." Bleak said, gingerly seating himself. "As always, I've got something for you."
Bane shrugged. "I'm getting ready to retire. No big cases."
"Hah. The Dire Wolf hanging up his silver daggers? I'll believe it when I see it. Aw, this isn't anything earthshaking. Just a planned assassination. An ex-con and his two stooges are out to kill Kyle McKyle."
"Who...?"
"Kyle McKyle. My god, Jeremy, you'll never change." To the bartender, he barked "Cheeseburger for me, glass of Bud. Thanks." Turning back to Bane, Bleak said, "KMK, as they call him is the biggest boy singer in music today. Raking in millions too fast to count. He looks like a girl to me and sings like a robot, but I guess that's what 12-year-old girls love."
Digging into his third roast beef, Bane said, "I don't know anything about music. It doesn't register with me."
"Listen, as a fiend, do me a favor. One night a week, sit in a dim light and listen to the Beatles. Willie Nelson. BB King. Anyone... Alice Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Marvin Gaye, give it all a try. You're empty inside, Jeremy."
Bane thought for a second. "I know who the Beatles are. John Lennon was killed the first winter I started the KDF. If I had been a few blocks closer that night, I would have heard the shot."
Gulping down a bite of the cheeseburger, Bleak said, "Forget it. Listen, you know I can't go to the cops. But I think this is something you could clear up by tonight. There's a freak named Morgan Lee Elliot, thirty-seven, called Hellface because he has 666 on his forehead and a goatee. He got out of Napanoch this morning, did just over ten years for manslaughter. Killed a boy named Feeney for stealing a guy that Elliot was trying to seduce. Elliot is gay and obsessed with this Kyle McKyle, God knows why. He has written many thousands of letters, received no answer and now he hates the brat. Typical stalker."
"Sure. He feels the victim owes him for all the effort and the resentment turns mean. He intends to kill this singer?"
"He told a few people too many about it. Hellface even has a prison-made tattoo of Kyle's face on his calf. Stupid as hell, you ask me. Before his release, he started calling his two cousins to pick him up at the gate."
"Tell me about the cousins."
"The boy is 23, named Shayne, bodybuilder and MMA. He has probation not to leave the state. His sister is 25, Annie Lou, nice looking but a little twisted you know? They seem under Hellface's domination, think he's cool and will do whatever he wants."
"I can see where this is going. I need descriptions. Height, weight, hair and eyes, distinguishing marks." As Bleak rattled them off, Bane took in the details with complete concentration. "Got it. You know their car?"
"1994 Ford Taurus, yellow and rust. Couple million miles on it."
"I see. Okay, the next detail is, where this Kyle kid is going to be?"
"Oh, he announces everything. Book signing at a White Plains Barnes & Nobel, autographs at the children's hospital, then the big show at the Garden at nine tonight."
Bane was silent, chewing the last bit of his sandwich, but there was a new look in his grey eyes. The predatory gleam of a wolf peering over a snow bank at a rabbit. "Amateur killers always screw things up," he said at last."
"Yerp. Likely to shoot three innocent fans as getting anywhere near their target."
"You're right, Bleak. I suppose I should intercept these losers." Bane stood up from the bar stool like a different person from the tired man who had plopped down there. He took two fifties from his inner jacket pocket and quietly put them next to Bleak's beer. "I imagine you have more info."
"Not much. These guys won't have much money on them. My guess is that first they went to visit Hellface's uncle out by Binghamton. He's comfortable, owns a real estate office with four men working under him. He used to send care packages to Hellface but they dwindled down as he realized how crazy his nephew really was. His home is, let's see, 1147 West Vardon Road, just to the west of Binghamton itself. Near a Walmart."
Bane tugged his sport jacket down, left money for the meal and turned those cold grey eyes on Bleak. "Thanks for the heads-up." he said. "I think I might look into this."
"Now THERE's the Dire Wolf I remember!" said Bleak, trying to get more beer from his glass somehow. "Good hunting."
out on 46th Street, Bane broke almost into a run. He covered six blocks south and four blocks east faster on foot than a taxi would have in mid-day traffic. Within minutes, he trotted down the wide ramp into IMPERIAL GARAGE, paused to nod and say hi to the attendant and raced to where his new dark green Mustang stood. Behind the rear view mirror, two green and blue lights blinked regularly. The Dire Wolf jumped in, fired it up and rolled out onto the street. A lifetime like his had left him with wary habits he seldom broke. When he garaged his cars, they were always fueled up, with the tires and fluids checked, and a knapsack in the backseat holding a change of clothes, water and snacks and a few useful tools. Now he headed out ready for anything. He aimed for the Parkway, out of town.
III.
Four hours later, speed limits a vague memory, Bane braked hard at the entrance to the local Walmart and looked around, circled the fortress of cheap prices and slave labor, and spotted West Vardon Road to one side. In seconds, he pulled out onto it, counted the front door numbers on the rather posh looking houses, and squealed to a halt at a long one-story split building with a full scale pool and attached garage, Parked in front was a beat-up yellow Ford Taurus. Bane checked the .38 long-nosed revolver he carried in a hip holster, although he already knew he never went out without it being properly ready. The two silver daggers on his forearm sheaths and the Trom flexible armor under his clothes he could feel. The Dire Wolf stepped out of his Mustang, watchful but not tense, eyes moving smoothly to take everything in.
Bane walked toward the open front door. His ears were sharp from decades of training but he heard nothing. And he could scent death, not literally but with an instinct the average law-abiding citizen never knew. He moved through the open door into a cool dim hallway and almost stepped on the body of a pudgy middle-aged man lying face up just inside the door. For a long minute, Bane stood listening and watching. Then, pulling on thin rubber clothes from his side jacket pocket, he knelt over the body.
The man had been in his late forties, out of shape but well-groomed. The shoes alone were hand-made, Italian leather and expensive. Cause of death was obvious, as the head stared back over one shoulder at an angle no living man could match. Dead less than an hour, the postmortem lividity had not appeared. The pants pockets had been turned inside out. Clean handkerchief, pen, plastic pill tube that was empty but marked ENALIPRIL. (Blood pressure, if he remembered right). No keys, no money. Just inside the door was a smashed ash tray, thrown to the ground with considerable force. Bane noticed the pieces of glass were on top of the man's pants leg, so the ash tray had been broken in a tantrum after he was dead.. not part of the struggle.
Bane rose and slowly made his way through the house. Nothing seemed disturbed. The kitchen was clean, there were no half-filled glasses of soda or opened food to indicate Uncle there had offered anything to his visitors. The bathroom was spotless, washclothes neat, none of the items were out of line. The Dire Wolf figured Uncle Lou had done nothing more than meet his nephew Hellface and two companions in the doorway for a few minutes before being killed. They had asked to borrow his car, he had refused, and the weightlifter MMA kid had grabbed him, turned his head around like unscrewing the top of a soda bottle, seized the keys and taken the car anyway.
Going past the bedroom, as tidy as anything else in the building, he saw a small neat carrying case for a laptop on the nightstand. These killers were not thinking things through, he realized. Opening the top flap, Bane found a few toiletries like comb, breath mints, nail clippers. And a wallet. Yep. LOUIS P ELLIOTT. There was the registration for a 2012 blue Nissan Ultima. There was an American Express card and a Chase Visa card and a packet of tightly folded twenties behind the driver's license. Whatever estimation he felt for the killers dropped to near zero. Bane memorized everything about the car and put the wallet back. Leaving a murder scene was bad enough, but he usually tried not to remove evidence as he left.
Now it was time to get going. Stepping over the body, Bane gave it a curiously detached look. He had no idea what kind of man Lou Elliot had been. Running to the his Mustang, he circled and got on West Vardon Road but heading back east, just over the speed limit. It was a long drive back to the city, but he figured the killers were not far ahead of him.
After an hour, Bane reached into a carrying case in the driver's door beside him and took out a Link. These were Trom devices, once far in advance of Human science but (to be honest) in recent years Smartphones had been catching up to them. Megan Salenger, their Trom Girl, had crafted him a cover that made the Link look just like a regular phone. Pulling to the side of the road, Bane adjusted the voice distorter; he would sound like a normal person speaking but not with anything like his own voice. Then he tapped into the regular phone system, leaving the Trom signal untraceable. "New York State Troopers at Binghamton? This is a concerned citizen. I saw a dead body at 1147 West Vardon Road. Louis Elliot. Yes, quite dead. Two or three people have his car. 2012 medium blue Nissan Ultima. I think they are heading east. No, no, I do not want to give my name. Good luck." He hung up and replaced the Link.
Still rolling just above the speed limit, within ten minutes he saw two trooper cars hurtle past him in the opposite direction, lights flashing. Good luck, he thought again. He sped up a little himself. Bane was a licensed NY Private Investigator, and he was known to the governor and to a few local police forces for his work over the years. But it wasn't like he was above being taken in and questioned until the next morning if he got caught up in a crime scene. This had happened already way too many times.
A little further on, he pulled in a convenient mart to fill his tank. Bane also used the bathroom, picked up a bottle of cold seltzer and a mixed sub and was back on the road in a few minutes. He was thinking that Hellface was either so obsessed with his intended victim that he overlooked the obvious or (more likely) he was just hitting low intelligence. Never mind spotting the laptop sitting in plain sight with the wallet on it. Hellface could have gotten changes of clothes for himself and his cousins, enough to make IDs less easy for the cops. They could have stocked up on food and drink. Heck, maybe Uncle Lou had a few guns around the house that might be useful at some point. But no. Just break the neck, snatch up the keys and run for it. Dummy.
Now, back downstate. Bane sped up, relying on experience to push his luck. Getting a ticket would not be the end of the world for him as he had managed to keep his license clean but frankly this case was not high on his list of priorities and the cops were looking for the stolen car now. By the time he got to White Plains, he was back in more familiar territory. Manhattan was his homeland, he could have drawn a map from memory of even the streets down in Chinatown and filled in most stores and restaurants, but up here was only semi-known part of the world. He did spot the Barnes & Nobel with an unusually crowded parking lot. The Dire Wolf pulled up across the street, took a last swig of water, and crossed into the lot. Seemed like an awful lot of preteen girls, not something he had much experience with. He felt like he was at some wildlife exhibit showing a meerkat colony.
The Dire Wolf took the situation in quickly. Over in one corner of the lot was a Greyhound bus painted pink and purple, with styled KMCK symbols on it. Two black Lincolns flanked the bus, and three obvious bodyguards were posted at the correct distance. A fat man in a white suit, wearing a big cowboy hat and boots for color, was giving instructions. Maybe three to four hundred little girls, aged eight to twelve or thirteen, bobbed up and down and squealed. Bane circled warily. He saw no one who resembled any of the three potential assassins, no matter how well disguised, and no sign of the famous boy singer who was presumably lounging on the bus. As he surveyed the scene, a small SUV pulled up, with red letters on its side MHNN MID-HUDSON NEWS NOW.
Bane turned away and started striding around the parked cars. One or two had someone sitting behind the wheel, talking on a cellphone or reading a newspaper. There! A blue Nissan Ultima, sitting right at the exit. He could see a head in the front passenger seat. Swerving slightly, he came up in the blind spot. It was a woman, mid-twenties, long thick black hair, white freckled skin and blue eyes. A low-cut blouse showed a rose tattoo over a rather too-full left breast. No one else was in the car. Bane appeared next to her suddenly, making her start, and called out cheerily, "Annie Lou! What are YOU doing here?"
For a split-second, she grinned up at him, and then the mask went on as she remembered the situation. No matter, for that instant, she had reacted naturally to her real name and given herself away. "Buzz off," she growled, "I don't know you." She added, "Creep."
Bane took a thick roll of money from his pants pockets and waved it right under her nose. Her eyes bugged out as if she had been given a shock. "Maybe Morgan didn't tell you I was supposed to meet him here," he said.
Annie Lou Elliot was struck with conflicting orders and instincts. "You know... Morgan?"
Bane flicked the money, showing it was mostly twenties. "I was supposed to catch up with him with this. Where's our boy now?"
"Oh, him and Shayne went in the bookstore to use the bathroom." She turned those bright eyes on Bane, not knowing they were being wasted. "Hell, I am purely starving mister. We had tacos last night and nothing else. How about letting me take one of those twenties and getting lunch before I faint?"
"I don't see why not-" Bane's voice changed suddenly. "Don't move, there's something on your neck." As Annie Lou froze with horrified eyes, the Dire Wolf reached through the open window and dug the fingers of his left hand deep into her nape, pressing hard. With his other hand, he squeezed her mouth shut. In three or four seconds, her eyes rolled up to show the whites and she slumped into the seat. Bane watched her suspiciously. He never liked using pressure points. They were part of Kumundu and his Teacher Chael insisted on mastering them, but Bane never felt like the techniques could be trusted. He had always preferred a hard smack to the side of the head.
seeing that Annie Lou would be out for the next half hour or so (and would probably wake up with nausea and a ringing headache), Bane glanced around but no one seemed to have noticed the exchange. He reached across her snoring body and took the keys out of the ignition. In the back seat was a clutter of Taco Bell wrappers, empty cigarette packs, old newspapers, empty styrofoam coffee cups and more. Nothing useful to him. Seeing that Annie Lou was wearing ancient white sneakers, he yanked out the laces and tied her wrists behind her back with them. She wouldn't be getting loose until she met someone with a knife to help.
Again surveying the situation, the Wolf spotted two likely-looking men coming out of the front door of the Barnes & Nobel. Roughly the same size, just around six feet tall and two hundred pounds. Bane swept the inside of the car hastily, dug in the glove compartment and found a Glock. Great. It took a few seconds to wreck its mechanism, and by that time the two men were approaching him. Bane tossed the broken gun in the back seat and straightened up to face them.
IV.
Shayne Elliott at first seemed the more dangerous of the two young men. He had brown stubble on a wide jaw, longish brown hair and had been obviously spending a lot of time at the gym, he was wearing a tight T-shirt with thin straps to show off as much muscle as possible. The delts and biceps and lats were all impressive. But to Bane, the guy moved with a lack of balance, he was not always poised. No martial arts training. It was the other one who was the real threat. Morgan Elliot was thin and wiry and quick. He wore a white button-front shirt over a black T-shirt, cuffs unbuttoned and tail out. There was something hidden under that outer shirt, Bane could see immediately, a small caliber pistol just jammed in the waistband. Hellface was well named. He had a long, narrow face with a scruffy mustache and goatee, amber eyes under arched brows and the numbers 666 on his forehead in ugly prison tattooing. Those eyes were hateful.
"Something's wrong with this girl," Bane told them. "She made a choking noise."
"How about you stand clear?" Hellface snapped. "Shayne, took a look."
As the Dire Wolf stepped to one side, the muscular boy leaned in the window. "She's out cold. I dunno, Morgan, she's breathing and I don't see a mark on her."
"Epilepsy run in your family?" asked Bane casually, getting a venomous glare from Hellface.
"Look, mister, you just back off a bit. Let me... hey, her hands are tied behind her." As he spoke, Hellface's right hand whipped toward the small of his back where the gun was. Bane started moving at the same time, much quicker, seizing that wrist and yanking it up behind the man. With his other hand, the Dire Wolf tugged the little .32 revolver free and swung it backhand behind him to clip the approaching Shayne square in the middle of the face. The bodybuilder bleated like a goat and went back a few steps. Still in the same sequence, Bane tugged Hellface's arm so far up that the man lost his balance and fell heavily to the parking lot. Bane stuck the revolver in his jacket pocket and shifted so he was exactly between the two men.
Within a second or two, the Elliots had gotten their bearings and were moving toward him, almost touching each other. Bane decked Hellface full force with a left cross that snapped the man's head far to the side, then reversed that arm to catch Shayne with a backfist that exploded right on the side of the head. The blows sounded crisp as handclaps. Both men fell again.
"That's enough dancing," the Dire Wolf said. "You boys know the New York State Troopers are on their way here now, don't you? Your uncle back in Binghamton should be ready for the autopsy by now, hope you're proud."
Getting to one knee, Morgan Lee Elliot slid a four-inch knife from inside his boot and grinned maliciously.
"You're not going anywhere without the keys," Bane added. "Hotwiring cars isn't as easy as it used to be."
Quick with hundreds of hours of practice, Hellface drew his arm back and hurled the knife right at Bane's face. No one saw his arm move but suddenly Bane had his hand up in front of him, holding that knife by the blade between thumb and forefinger. He had not even been nicked.
"Not bad," the Dire Wolf said. "Your weapon is out of true, though. Bad balance."
Hellface was staring with his mouth open. Without looking behind him, Bane barked in a commanding voice, "You, Shayne, come around here! Stand next to your cousin." As the younger man obeyed, rubbing the sore side of his head gingerly, Bane got them both in sight. "Listen. You two are only alive because I let you live. Here come the troopers now." As the dark blue and yellow vehicles sped into the parking lot, Bane reached into his hip pocket and held up his ID case high so his New York PI license was clearly visible.
There was still some confusion for several minutes as questions were rattled off. Bane was recognized quickly enough as one of the officers had met him a year earlier. He surrendered the car keys to one trooper, along with the knife he had caught and Hellface's pistol. "I don't want to be caught suppressing evidence," the Dire Wolf said.
"You'll have to come with us," the senior trooper told Bane. "I'm afraid we'll be asking questions and filling out forms the rest of the day."
"I suppose," Bane said. A sudden burst of squeals and shrieks echoed from across the parking lot. At the end, a slim androgynous figure had stepped out of the tour bus. As the girls tried to swarm him, recorded pop music blared out. Being forced into the back seat of a cruiser, Hellface scowled over at Kyle McKyle and then glared up viciously at Bane.
"Can't decide which of us you hate more, eh?" asked the Dire Wolf.
7/18/2013
9/30/2014
I.
As a few minutes before nine, Jeremy Bane walked up to the four-story yellow brick office on 40th Street and 3rd Avenue. It had been more than two weeks since he had last been in his office. He had been wandering upstate, getting as far north as Cortland before making a vague semi-circle to the east and coming back down to the Hudson Valley. At Syracuse, the State Troopers had recognized him and had asked if he wanted to help out busting a drug ring from Colombia but he had politely told him he was already occupied with something now and moved on. All the way back to Manhattan, he had regretted his decision and had even turned around and started back up before deciding he had to stand by his decision. There was nothing Midnight War about ecstasy and heroin, and the police were better trained and equipped for that sort of thing. Maybe if vampires or Trolls had been involved...
Now, on this warm September morning, Bane stepped through the sliding glass double doors into a cool dim lobby. To his right was the walk-in clinic Emergency One. To his left was a bank of mail boxes. He unlocked the one marked DIRE WOLF AGENCY and found only a yellow index card that read PLEASE SEE MANAGER. Bane shrugged and walked up a flight of stairs to a wooden door with a frosted glass panel STEVEN GOLDFARB - BUILDING MANAGER. He knocked and a pleasant woman's voice told him to enter.
The Dire Wolf entered a tasteful reception room, nicely carpeted, with prints on the walls and a door to an inner office. Behind a desk sat a young, busty woman with lovely shiny black hair she took great care with. She was wearing a dark suit over a white silk blouse and put down a phone as he entered.
"Ah, Jeremy. We have something for you."
"Hello, Ellen. I've been away."
The manager's daughter handed him a plastic supermarket bag absolutely stuffed with mail. "Wish I lived as interesting a life as you do! All I get is tweets about what my sister had for lunch."
Bane took the bag and glanced in it. "I'm thinking about retiring."
"What, close the Dire wolf agency? Who would keep the creatures of night under control?"
He gave her one of his faint smiles. She was not jesting. The Goldfarb family had been victimized many years ago by the Preinarnators and a young Jeremy Bane had stepped in to intervene and save two children. Old Steven Goldfarb never forgot and it was the reason he overlooked the many building regulations Dire Wolf broke regularly.
"I'm don't need the money, Ellen. Maybe I'm only fifty-seven this year but they've been rough years."
"Oh, come on, you look maybe thirty at the most, and a really great thirty at that. I wish my boyfriend kept as slim and trim as you. Don't retire. I'd miss all the crazy characters who come here to see you."
Bane turned away. "Maybe I'll keep the office for consultations. Appointment only."
As he left, Ellen sang out cheerfully, "In any case, pick up your mail more often!"
Bane turned outside the door and trotted down the steps to the first floor. He did look young, despite all the damage he had survived. Partly this was the Tagra tea diet Tel Shai provided him with, partly it was that he never drank or smoke and had kept in peak athletic condition his entire life. There were few grey strands yet in a full head of black hair, and only faint lines at the corners of his mouth, he had not changed much. At the bottom of the stairs, he swung right down a short narrow hallway that ended with a metal EXIT ONLY sign. To the left was a brass plate DIRE WOLF AGENCY. Bane unlocked the door and stepped into a tiny reception room barely big enough for two chairs and coffee table with a few newspapers. It was stuffy. He turned on the overhead fan and tore off the sheet on the wall calendar.
Opening the door to his office, Bane turned on the air conditioner to blast fresh air in. Closing the door behind him, he flicked the overhead lights and crossed over to the desk. Strangely, he felt little enthusiasm where normally he was eager to get started. His phone blinked to indicate he had voice messages. Hanging his black sport jacket over his chair, he lowered himself down and started dividing the mail into the stacks. Bills and notices over to the left. Reports from his network of agents, to the right. Junk, in the wastepaper basket. Actual letters from people he did not know went into a stack in the center.
The bills and legal notices could wait. Everything had been paid up before he had left. The reports from his agents he skimmed through quickly. Bane paid retainers to a dozen or so people to keep him updated on anything relating to the Midnight War they spotted. Most were in the NYC area, but there was Golden Jaguar in Los Angeles, the Chen family in Hong Kong and Chelsea Muir in Lodon. He glanced over the reports, but nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be up. The truth was, the Midnight War had been in a slump for years. With the original KDF, Bane had wiped out most of the real masterminds like Karl Eldritch, Wu Lung, John Grim and Arem Kamende. Few crime lords of that caliber had emerged since. The creatures of the night and the denizens of the adject realm were appearing more rarely and more cautiously. The human race was mostly facing problems of its own doing these days.
By now, it was getting past ten-thirty, and Bane was still restless as ever. He got up, stretched, and paced around the office for a few minutes. The Trom security devices he had installed still blinked green. The protective Eldanar talisman over the door was cool to the touch. Bane squatted before the waist-high refrigerator next to the bookcase. Nothing perishable was ever in there. Bottled water, bags of peanuts and dried fruit, some corn chips and saltines. He took a water bottle and the corn chips and plopped down on the long leather couch under the window on 3rd Avenue.
Glumly, the Wolf stared up at the ceiling as he munched. Maybe it WAS time to retire. He had been fighting madmen and monsters all his life. Let the youngsters in the new KDF take over. Although he lived simply, Bane was a millionaire many times over; he could spent his time on the beach at Hawaii or skiing the Alps, eating gourmet food in Europe, just visiting old friends and colleagues around the world. When was the last time he had seen Steven Weaver? Or Tang Ming? For that matter, when had he spent more than a few days at Tel Shai? Bane had a sudden vision of himself with a white beard and a beer belly, politely listening to tales of old times in some beachfront bistro late at night. With a shudder, he jumped up and went back to his desk.
Going through the letters from people he didn't know, Bane discarded most of them. Some were offers for regular detective work, divorce cases or employee theft or runaway teens. Later, he would type out replies referring them to regular detective agencies in the NYC area. But some of these requests for his help were intriguing. Reports from three different observers in Oklahoma of what sure sounded like a group of pterodactyls. A baby was missing, and any number of dogs. Then, someone had seen chalky white-skinned naked men with red eyes coming up to parked cars in Florida. That was a new one. There were a couple more curiosities, including a report from California of an impending gang war between the Children of the Golden Jaguar and the Roar Devils. He wouldn't mind helping out Marisol and her Jaguars, they were okay, but LA just rubbed him the wrong way. Bane went through the requests again more thoughtfully, then put them back in their envelopes. From his desk, he took out a big manila envelope and managed to get all the letters in it. He had reached a decision.
Shrugging into his jacket, Bane turned off the lights and the AC, went through the tiny reception room and out into the hallway. The sunlight through the glass doors startled him after the subdued lighting off his office. Out on the street, he suddenly perked up and began striding quickly west toward 38th Street and Lexington Avenue.
II.
The Dire Wolf stood across the street and gazed up at the ten-story building. He was not a sentimental man by nature but even he could get a little lost. Kenneth Dred had lived here beginning in 1937, fighting the Midnight War with knowledge and connections. Then in 1977, he had hired a street punk barely 21 to act as his agent. The young Jeremy Bane (a name he had chosen himself) had responded to the first person ever to show trust and confidence in him, and had done the best job possible. With the death of the elderly Dred, Bane had inherited a fortune and the brownstone building and immediately assembled the heroes who made up the Kenneth Dred Foundation. Cindy Brunner, Michael Hawk, Ted Wright, Leonard Slade, Larry Taper, Khang... then Shiro Mitsuru, Steven Weaver, Sulak, Garrison Nebel, all the others. Gone now. Mostly killed in action. Twelve years ago (twelve...!? How was that possible?) Bane and Cindy had recruited a half-dozen youngster with the necessary powers and attitudes to form the new KDF and they had done a fine job. After the first year, he had stepped down to let them go their own way...
A big guy with a cigar in his mouth, arms loaded with brown carboard boxes, bumped in him. "Wake up, bub," he said genially.
Bane snapped out of it and barely smiled. He had been lost in thought. Crossing 38th Street, he stepped up to the door of the building he knew so well and up the seven steps. The heavy oaken door unlocked and swung open before he could touch it and voice from a speaker said, "Captain! Good to see you."
In the foyer, with its bench and end table and framed portrait KENNETH DRED 1900-1979, the inner door stood open. A woman in her early thirties stood there with a wide grin on her face. Sable Reilly was lovely in an unusual way with a pug nose in a roundish face, thick black hair swept straight back and large dark eyes. She was wearing light blue jeans, white sneakers and a black long-sleeved T-shirt. Sable seemed on the edge of hugging Bane but her innate reticence won out and she merely placed on a hand on his shoulder. "Long time no see indeed!"
"Hi, Sable. How is everyone?"
"The new team has really synced into a unit. They've figured out their strengths and weaknesses working together into different combinations. Come on in."
Bane followed her into the reception room, unchanged as far as he could see. "Oh, I'm glad to hear that. You've basically got a new team now, with so many members on part-time."
"You're telling me. Ashley is staying on part-time for the foreseeable future. Little April is two now and quite a handful. Megan and Archie are fading into civilian life. And Sheng is happy with his Fist For Hire Agency, he keeps busy."
"You know, Sable, you haven't changed anything here. Everything is just as I left it."
"I don't seen any reason to move things around just for its own sake. The conference room is still the same, too. But the Corby hangar on the top floor, now THAT is all new. Trom Girl goes nuts with updates and upgrades, I can go to the bathroom and when I came out she's got that helicopter rebuilt again."
Bane saw her hesitate. "You should sit behind the desk, Sable. You're in charge of the KDF team now, I stepped down."
"I wouldn't feel comfortable. Maybe in a combat situation where I would have to take command. Let's sit on the couch."
As they dropped down, Bane handed her the thick manila envelope. "I brought you something interesting, Sable. Possible cases. I still get mail asking me to help track down weird creatures all over. But I am trying to retire."
She snorted almost inaudibly. "Well, It's up to you, Jeremy, but I think you have at least another good decade of monster-busting left. It's what you're born for." She started skimming through the letters. "Oh. Oh, I like some of these. My team needs some action, they are almost getting stale. We broke up a Ghoul warren in Maine a month ago, nothing since. Thank you, captain."
Bane got up and looked at the fish tank, filled with bizarre creatures from Ulgor. "Where is your team, anyway?"
"Training, mostly. Trom Girl and Argent have the new recruits up in the Catskills, teaching them some woodland survival skills. Josef has taken a bodyguard job, he uses his days off to keep his career active. Johnny Packard still turns up every now and then, but he's too independent to follow rules and be a full member."
The Dire Wolf came back to sit next to her. "You've done a good job, Sable. Hard to be believe so much time has passed since the Second Team was formed. The clock is ticking faster."
"Ah, let's be honest. We have not faced the enemies your team did. You wiped out the really big villains and we have been handling lesser ones all around. Where is our new Angdros? Wu Lung? Or John Grim? Even the adjacent realms have been keeping to themselves lately. I wonder if the Midnight War might be finally winding down."
"Or just taking a breather. Listen, I have to get going. Are you having Pizza Night this Wednesday?"
Looking up, Sable flashed a stunning smile. "Absolutely. It takes a major crisis for us to skip Pizza Night."
Bane squeezed her hand for a second. "I will definitely make it. Take care, Sable. Help me think of a present to send Unicorn and her family, okay?"
"Will do." She saw him to the door, watched him salute lightly as he stepped down to the sidewalk and allowed herself a wistful sigh as he strode quickly away. Dire Wolf. He would never change, she thought, he was born to slap tigers in the face and race through the woods in the dark of the moon, and she would never want to see him any other way.
III.
On 38th Street again, Bane turned back the way he had come and then stopped. Waiting in his office was just an hour of paperwork, witing checks and signing forms. And he had not even started on his voicemail yet. To Hell with all that. He swung around and headed west at a trot, toward Times Square. It was not the Times Square he remembered fondly, not at all. The sleaze had been scrubbed away. Behind the porn theatres and peep shows and massage parlors had been gambling dens ansd drug factories and sweat shops. Gone now, Times Square was just a bright gleaming shiny tourist trap. All the sordid crime had merely gone elsewhere, of course. Bane stopped at a sports bar and shoveled down two hot roast beef sandwiches, curly fries and a club soda. Now he felt more sanguine. His enhanced metabolism gave him his great reflexes at the price of being always ravenous. He ordered a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie and took a bite as Bleak walked in and came up right up to him.
He had to be in his early seventies by now, but then Bleak had always looked dried and frail. He was maybe five feet nine, thin, wearing black slacks and a dress white shirt with the cuffs rolled up. A weathered face, thin blond hair and pale blue eyes completed an unimpressive package. Yet, Bane knew, Bleak had been a formidable night hunter back in his day. "Buy a beer for an old pal, Jeremy?"
"Sure, pull up a stool. How about a hamburger, too, I'm having another sandwich."
"If you don't mind..." Bleak said, gingerly seating himself. "As always, I've got something for you."
Bane shrugged. "I'm getting ready to retire. No big cases."
"Hah. The Dire Wolf hanging up his silver daggers? I'll believe it when I see it. Aw, this isn't anything earthshaking. Just a planned assassination. An ex-con and his two stooges are out to kill Kyle McKyle."
"Who...?"
"Kyle McKyle. My god, Jeremy, you'll never change." To the bartender, he barked "Cheeseburger for me, glass of Bud. Thanks." Turning back to Bane, Bleak said, "KMK, as they call him is the biggest boy singer in music today. Raking in millions too fast to count. He looks like a girl to me and sings like a robot, but I guess that's what 12-year-old girls love."
Digging into his third roast beef, Bane said, "I don't know anything about music. It doesn't register with me."
"Listen, as a fiend, do me a favor. One night a week, sit in a dim light and listen to the Beatles. Willie Nelson. BB King. Anyone... Alice Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Marvin Gaye, give it all a try. You're empty inside, Jeremy."
Bane thought for a second. "I know who the Beatles are. John Lennon was killed the first winter I started the KDF. If I had been a few blocks closer that night, I would have heard the shot."
Gulping down a bite of the cheeseburger, Bleak said, "Forget it. Listen, you know I can't go to the cops. But I think this is something you could clear up by tonight. There's a freak named Morgan Lee Elliot, thirty-seven, called Hellface because he has 666 on his forehead and a goatee. He got out of Napanoch this morning, did just over ten years for manslaughter. Killed a boy named Feeney for stealing a guy that Elliot was trying to seduce. Elliot is gay and obsessed with this Kyle McKyle, God knows why. He has written many thousands of letters, received no answer and now he hates the brat. Typical stalker."
"Sure. He feels the victim owes him for all the effort and the resentment turns mean. He intends to kill this singer?"
"He told a few people too many about it. Hellface even has a prison-made tattoo of Kyle's face on his calf. Stupid as hell, you ask me. Before his release, he started calling his two cousins to pick him up at the gate."
"Tell me about the cousins."
"The boy is 23, named Shayne, bodybuilder and MMA. He has probation not to leave the state. His sister is 25, Annie Lou, nice looking but a little twisted you know? They seem under Hellface's domination, think he's cool and will do whatever he wants."
"I can see where this is going. I need descriptions. Height, weight, hair and eyes, distinguishing marks." As Bleak rattled them off, Bane took in the details with complete concentration. "Got it. You know their car?"
"1994 Ford Taurus, yellow and rust. Couple million miles on it."
"I see. Okay, the next detail is, where this Kyle kid is going to be?"
"Oh, he announces everything. Book signing at a White Plains Barnes & Nobel, autographs at the children's hospital, then the big show at the Garden at nine tonight."
Bane was silent, chewing the last bit of his sandwich, but there was a new look in his grey eyes. The predatory gleam of a wolf peering over a snow bank at a rabbit. "Amateur killers always screw things up," he said at last."
"Yerp. Likely to shoot three innocent fans as getting anywhere near their target."
"You're right, Bleak. I suppose I should intercept these losers." Bane stood up from the bar stool like a different person from the tired man who had plopped down there. He took two fifties from his inner jacket pocket and quietly put them next to Bleak's beer. "I imagine you have more info."
"Not much. These guys won't have much money on them. My guess is that first they went to visit Hellface's uncle out by Binghamton. He's comfortable, owns a real estate office with four men working under him. He used to send care packages to Hellface but they dwindled down as he realized how crazy his nephew really was. His home is, let's see, 1147 West Vardon Road, just to the west of Binghamton itself. Near a Walmart."
Bane tugged his sport jacket down, left money for the meal and turned those cold grey eyes on Bleak. "Thanks for the heads-up." he said. "I think I might look into this."
"Now THERE's the Dire Wolf I remember!" said Bleak, trying to get more beer from his glass somehow. "Good hunting."
out on 46th Street, Bane broke almost into a run. He covered six blocks south and four blocks east faster on foot than a taxi would have in mid-day traffic. Within minutes, he trotted down the wide ramp into IMPERIAL GARAGE, paused to nod and say hi to the attendant and raced to where his new dark green Mustang stood. Behind the rear view mirror, two green and blue lights blinked regularly. The Dire Wolf jumped in, fired it up and rolled out onto the street. A lifetime like his had left him with wary habits he seldom broke. When he garaged his cars, they were always fueled up, with the tires and fluids checked, and a knapsack in the backseat holding a change of clothes, water and snacks and a few useful tools. Now he headed out ready for anything. He aimed for the Parkway, out of town.
III.
Four hours later, speed limits a vague memory, Bane braked hard at the entrance to the local Walmart and looked around, circled the fortress of cheap prices and slave labor, and spotted West Vardon Road to one side. In seconds, he pulled out onto it, counted the front door numbers on the rather posh looking houses, and squealed to a halt at a long one-story split building with a full scale pool and attached garage, Parked in front was a beat-up yellow Ford Taurus. Bane checked the .38 long-nosed revolver he carried in a hip holster, although he already knew he never went out without it being properly ready. The two silver daggers on his forearm sheaths and the Trom flexible armor under his clothes he could feel. The Dire Wolf stepped out of his Mustang, watchful but not tense, eyes moving smoothly to take everything in.
Bane walked toward the open front door. His ears were sharp from decades of training but he heard nothing. And he could scent death, not literally but with an instinct the average law-abiding citizen never knew. He moved through the open door into a cool dim hallway and almost stepped on the body of a pudgy middle-aged man lying face up just inside the door. For a long minute, Bane stood listening and watching. Then, pulling on thin rubber clothes from his side jacket pocket, he knelt over the body.
The man had been in his late forties, out of shape but well-groomed. The shoes alone were hand-made, Italian leather and expensive. Cause of death was obvious, as the head stared back over one shoulder at an angle no living man could match. Dead less than an hour, the postmortem lividity had not appeared. The pants pockets had been turned inside out. Clean handkerchief, pen, plastic pill tube that was empty but marked ENALIPRIL. (Blood pressure, if he remembered right). No keys, no money. Just inside the door was a smashed ash tray, thrown to the ground with considerable force. Bane noticed the pieces of glass were on top of the man's pants leg, so the ash tray had been broken in a tantrum after he was dead.. not part of the struggle.
Bane rose and slowly made his way through the house. Nothing seemed disturbed. The kitchen was clean, there were no half-filled glasses of soda or opened food to indicate Uncle there had offered anything to his visitors. The bathroom was spotless, washclothes neat, none of the items were out of line. The Dire Wolf figured Uncle Lou had done nothing more than meet his nephew Hellface and two companions in the doorway for a few minutes before being killed. They had asked to borrow his car, he had refused, and the weightlifter MMA kid had grabbed him, turned his head around like unscrewing the top of a soda bottle, seized the keys and taken the car anyway.
Going past the bedroom, as tidy as anything else in the building, he saw a small neat carrying case for a laptop on the nightstand. These killers were not thinking things through, he realized. Opening the top flap, Bane found a few toiletries like comb, breath mints, nail clippers. And a wallet. Yep. LOUIS P ELLIOTT. There was the registration for a 2012 blue Nissan Ultima. There was an American Express card and a Chase Visa card and a packet of tightly folded twenties behind the driver's license. Whatever estimation he felt for the killers dropped to near zero. Bane memorized everything about the car and put the wallet back. Leaving a murder scene was bad enough, but he usually tried not to remove evidence as he left.
Now it was time to get going. Stepping over the body, Bane gave it a curiously detached look. He had no idea what kind of man Lou Elliot had been. Running to the his Mustang, he circled and got on West Vardon Road but heading back east, just over the speed limit. It was a long drive back to the city, but he figured the killers were not far ahead of him.
After an hour, Bane reached into a carrying case in the driver's door beside him and took out a Link. These were Trom devices, once far in advance of Human science but (to be honest) in recent years Smartphones had been catching up to them. Megan Salenger, their Trom Girl, had crafted him a cover that made the Link look just like a regular phone. Pulling to the side of the road, Bane adjusted the voice distorter; he would sound like a normal person speaking but not with anything like his own voice. Then he tapped into the regular phone system, leaving the Trom signal untraceable. "New York State Troopers at Binghamton? This is a concerned citizen. I saw a dead body at 1147 West Vardon Road. Louis Elliot. Yes, quite dead. Two or three people have his car. 2012 medium blue Nissan Ultima. I think they are heading east. No, no, I do not want to give my name. Good luck." He hung up and replaced the Link.
Still rolling just above the speed limit, within ten minutes he saw two trooper cars hurtle past him in the opposite direction, lights flashing. Good luck, he thought again. He sped up a little himself. Bane was a licensed NY Private Investigator, and he was known to the governor and to a few local police forces for his work over the years. But it wasn't like he was above being taken in and questioned until the next morning if he got caught up in a crime scene. This had happened already way too many times.
A little further on, he pulled in a convenient mart to fill his tank. Bane also used the bathroom, picked up a bottle of cold seltzer and a mixed sub and was back on the road in a few minutes. He was thinking that Hellface was either so obsessed with his intended victim that he overlooked the obvious or (more likely) he was just hitting low intelligence. Never mind spotting the laptop sitting in plain sight with the wallet on it. Hellface could have gotten changes of clothes for himself and his cousins, enough to make IDs less easy for the cops. They could have stocked up on food and drink. Heck, maybe Uncle Lou had a few guns around the house that might be useful at some point. But no. Just break the neck, snatch up the keys and run for it. Dummy.
Now, back downstate. Bane sped up, relying on experience to push his luck. Getting a ticket would not be the end of the world for him as he had managed to keep his license clean but frankly this case was not high on his list of priorities and the cops were looking for the stolen car now. By the time he got to White Plains, he was back in more familiar territory. Manhattan was his homeland, he could have drawn a map from memory of even the streets down in Chinatown and filled in most stores and restaurants, but up here was only semi-known part of the world. He did spot the Barnes & Nobel with an unusually crowded parking lot. The Dire Wolf pulled up across the street, took a last swig of water, and crossed into the lot. Seemed like an awful lot of preteen girls, not something he had much experience with. He felt like he was at some wildlife exhibit showing a meerkat colony.
The Dire Wolf took the situation in quickly. Over in one corner of the lot was a Greyhound bus painted pink and purple, with styled KMCK symbols on it. Two black Lincolns flanked the bus, and three obvious bodyguards were posted at the correct distance. A fat man in a white suit, wearing a big cowboy hat and boots for color, was giving instructions. Maybe three to four hundred little girls, aged eight to twelve or thirteen, bobbed up and down and squealed. Bane circled warily. He saw no one who resembled any of the three potential assassins, no matter how well disguised, and no sign of the famous boy singer who was presumably lounging on the bus. As he surveyed the scene, a small SUV pulled up, with red letters on its side MHNN MID-HUDSON NEWS NOW.
Bane turned away and started striding around the parked cars. One or two had someone sitting behind the wheel, talking on a cellphone or reading a newspaper. There! A blue Nissan Ultima, sitting right at the exit. He could see a head in the front passenger seat. Swerving slightly, he came up in the blind spot. It was a woman, mid-twenties, long thick black hair, white freckled skin and blue eyes. A low-cut blouse showed a rose tattoo over a rather too-full left breast. No one else was in the car. Bane appeared next to her suddenly, making her start, and called out cheerily, "Annie Lou! What are YOU doing here?"
For a split-second, she grinned up at him, and then the mask went on as she remembered the situation. No matter, for that instant, she had reacted naturally to her real name and given herself away. "Buzz off," she growled, "I don't know you." She added, "Creep."
Bane took a thick roll of money from his pants pockets and waved it right under her nose. Her eyes bugged out as if she had been given a shock. "Maybe Morgan didn't tell you I was supposed to meet him here," he said.
Annie Lou Elliot was struck with conflicting orders and instincts. "You know... Morgan?"
Bane flicked the money, showing it was mostly twenties. "I was supposed to catch up with him with this. Where's our boy now?"
"Oh, him and Shayne went in the bookstore to use the bathroom." She turned those bright eyes on Bane, not knowing they were being wasted. "Hell, I am purely starving mister. We had tacos last night and nothing else. How about letting me take one of those twenties and getting lunch before I faint?"
"I don't see why not-" Bane's voice changed suddenly. "Don't move, there's something on your neck." As Annie Lou froze with horrified eyes, the Dire Wolf reached through the open window and dug the fingers of his left hand deep into her nape, pressing hard. With his other hand, he squeezed her mouth shut. In three or four seconds, her eyes rolled up to show the whites and she slumped into the seat. Bane watched her suspiciously. He never liked using pressure points. They were part of Kumundu and his Teacher Chael insisted on mastering them, but Bane never felt like the techniques could be trusted. He had always preferred a hard smack to the side of the head.
seeing that Annie Lou would be out for the next half hour or so (and would probably wake up with nausea and a ringing headache), Bane glanced around but no one seemed to have noticed the exchange. He reached across her snoring body and took the keys out of the ignition. In the back seat was a clutter of Taco Bell wrappers, empty cigarette packs, old newspapers, empty styrofoam coffee cups and more. Nothing useful to him. Seeing that Annie Lou was wearing ancient white sneakers, he yanked out the laces and tied her wrists behind her back with them. She wouldn't be getting loose until she met someone with a knife to help.
Again surveying the situation, the Wolf spotted two likely-looking men coming out of the front door of the Barnes & Nobel. Roughly the same size, just around six feet tall and two hundred pounds. Bane swept the inside of the car hastily, dug in the glove compartment and found a Glock. Great. It took a few seconds to wreck its mechanism, and by that time the two men were approaching him. Bane tossed the broken gun in the back seat and straightened up to face them.
IV.
Shayne Elliott at first seemed the more dangerous of the two young men. He had brown stubble on a wide jaw, longish brown hair and had been obviously spending a lot of time at the gym, he was wearing a tight T-shirt with thin straps to show off as much muscle as possible. The delts and biceps and lats were all impressive. But to Bane, the guy moved with a lack of balance, he was not always poised. No martial arts training. It was the other one who was the real threat. Morgan Elliot was thin and wiry and quick. He wore a white button-front shirt over a black T-shirt, cuffs unbuttoned and tail out. There was something hidden under that outer shirt, Bane could see immediately, a small caliber pistol just jammed in the waistband. Hellface was well named. He had a long, narrow face with a scruffy mustache and goatee, amber eyes under arched brows and the numbers 666 on his forehead in ugly prison tattooing. Those eyes were hateful.
"Something's wrong with this girl," Bane told them. "She made a choking noise."
"How about you stand clear?" Hellface snapped. "Shayne, took a look."
As the Dire Wolf stepped to one side, the muscular boy leaned in the window. "She's out cold. I dunno, Morgan, she's breathing and I don't see a mark on her."
"Epilepsy run in your family?" asked Bane casually, getting a venomous glare from Hellface.
"Look, mister, you just back off a bit. Let me... hey, her hands are tied behind her." As he spoke, Hellface's right hand whipped toward the small of his back where the gun was. Bane started moving at the same time, much quicker, seizing that wrist and yanking it up behind the man. With his other hand, the Dire Wolf tugged the little .32 revolver free and swung it backhand behind him to clip the approaching Shayne square in the middle of the face. The bodybuilder bleated like a goat and went back a few steps. Still in the same sequence, Bane tugged Hellface's arm so far up that the man lost his balance and fell heavily to the parking lot. Bane stuck the revolver in his jacket pocket and shifted so he was exactly between the two men.
Within a second or two, the Elliots had gotten their bearings and were moving toward him, almost touching each other. Bane decked Hellface full force with a left cross that snapped the man's head far to the side, then reversed that arm to catch Shayne with a backfist that exploded right on the side of the head. The blows sounded crisp as handclaps. Both men fell again.
"That's enough dancing," the Dire Wolf said. "You boys know the New York State Troopers are on their way here now, don't you? Your uncle back in Binghamton should be ready for the autopsy by now, hope you're proud."
Getting to one knee, Morgan Lee Elliot slid a four-inch knife from inside his boot and grinned maliciously.
"You're not going anywhere without the keys," Bane added. "Hotwiring cars isn't as easy as it used to be."
Quick with hundreds of hours of practice, Hellface drew his arm back and hurled the knife right at Bane's face. No one saw his arm move but suddenly Bane had his hand up in front of him, holding that knife by the blade between thumb and forefinger. He had not even been nicked.
"Not bad," the Dire Wolf said. "Your weapon is out of true, though. Bad balance."
Hellface was staring with his mouth open. Without looking behind him, Bane barked in a commanding voice, "You, Shayne, come around here! Stand next to your cousin." As the younger man obeyed, rubbing the sore side of his head gingerly, Bane got them both in sight. "Listen. You two are only alive because I let you live. Here come the troopers now." As the dark blue and yellow vehicles sped into the parking lot, Bane reached into his hip pocket and held up his ID case high so his New York PI license was clearly visible.
There was still some confusion for several minutes as questions were rattled off. Bane was recognized quickly enough as one of the officers had met him a year earlier. He surrendered the car keys to one trooper, along with the knife he had caught and Hellface's pistol. "I don't want to be caught suppressing evidence," the Dire Wolf said.
"You'll have to come with us," the senior trooper told Bane. "I'm afraid we'll be asking questions and filling out forms the rest of the day."
"I suppose," Bane said. A sudden burst of squeals and shrieks echoed from across the parking lot. At the end, a slim androgynous figure had stepped out of the tour bus. As the girls tried to swarm him, recorded pop music blared out. Being forced into the back seat of a cruiser, Hellface scowled over at Kyle McKyle and then glared up viciously at Bane.
"Can't decide which of us you hate more, eh?" asked the Dire Wolf.
7/18/2013
