"That Awful Paisley Shawl"
May. 28th, 2022 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"That Awful Paisley Shawl"
6/7/1944
I.
"Lots of men would love to see me with this little green dress on," said Kelly O'Connor. Then, recognizing that Jim was not going to volunteer to buy it for her, she added, "Of course, lots of men would like to see me WITHOUT it on."
That got his attention. He turned away from a card table laden with ash trays, coffee mugs and small kitchen utensils. Seeing the impish expression on her face, he could not keep from grinning. "Nice try, Red."
The origin of Jim's several nicknames for Kelly was obvious. She did have full, thick hair of that bright crimson hue which catches sunlight like a cat's eyes. Her own rather large eyes were green, and with her upturned nose and full lips, she had a face almost everyone liked at first sight. A simple cloche hat was tilted at an impudent angle. "It's my favorite color," she added. "Any fellow would be proud to have a pretty girl on his arm if she were wearing this."
At the moment, Kelly was wearing a pleated white skirt, a wide black leather belt with a brass buckle and a white long-sleeved blouse under a black bolero jacket. At five feet seven, trim and athletic, she looked great in that outfit and she knew it.
"That dress is too big for you," he said. "Taking it in would ruin its lines. You have a high waist and long legs, honey, so finding clothes for you is always tricky."
Hanging the dress back up on a clothesline strung between two trees, she made sure no one at the flea market was within earshot. "I already own another green outfit I feel like wearing, if you get my drift and I think you do."
"No one has taken a shot at you all week? You haven't been chased around the block by mobsters? And not a single Axis spy has tied you up? No wonder you're bored."
"Sad but true." She held up a straight-lined black dress with horizontal rows of white fringes across its front. "Doesn't this number melt your stone heart?"
"Kelly! That rag is twenty years old. Some flapper wore it during Prohibition."
"Oh, all right. Alas! I lost my heart to a police detective with no flair."
Examining a battered tea kettle dubiously, Jim Harkins countered, "But I do have good taste in girlfriends?"
"Oh, I'll tell the world you do. And I know a good-looking slab of beef when I trip over one. You have the loveable face of a bassett hound. What? That's a good thing."
Jim was indeed not much over six feet tall, but he was massive, with broad shoulders Kelly could actually hide behind and not be seen. His dark blue suit with a red tie was neat and fit him well, but it was deliberately ordinary-looking. The fedora pushed back on his pomaded hair was badly in need of blocking, though. "There's something about a carrot-top...."
"But do you lovvvve me?" she asked in a little kid's voice.
"You know I do. I never told you this before but the first time I almost arrested you, I tumbled hard. The world went away. All I could see was your face."
Kelly got in close and stretched up to kiss him gently on the cheek. "Awwww. That touch of the poet comes out in you at the most unexpected times. I'm surprised you can't hear my heart go thump thump when we're together. How long do we have before you have to punch in at the station?"
"Not much. I'm doing the six to two AM for a while. I want to get there a few minutes early anyway so Captain Beachum can chew me out and get it over with."
"Don't let the old man ruffle your fur," she said, dragging him by one arm. "One more table, I swear I hear some scarves calling my name."
The crowd at the flea market had thinned out. Even in the comforting warmth of an early summer day, most people were thinking of dinner at this hour. An elderly man with a mane of white hair swept straight back watched them approach. "Hi, folks. We got shawls, scarves, a stole or two, some gloves and even a real elegant muff. It won't be June forever."
"Interesting selection," Kelly said as she leaned over the table, figuratively sniffing for something good. "Everything matches."
"All these items belonged to my late wife Agnes. She left this life almost five years ago."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I'm not. She broke more than one lamp over my head." The old man chortled to himself.
An ancient paisley shawl, five inches wide and twenty inches long, caught Kelly's eye. It was pale green with red flowers and those were her emblematic colors. She reached out and touched it at the exact same instant a wide, meaty paw of a hand grabbed the shawl at the other hand.
"Mitts off, skirt. This is for my old lady." The man speaking was shorter than Kelly's five feet seven by several inches, but much wider and more intimidating. A remarkably homely face with a long upper lip and deepset blue eyes reminded her unavoidably of an ape. Thick bristling black hair added to the impression, as did the fact that his arms were actually a few inches longer than his legs. He was wearing a white jersey with thin horizontal red stripes and a pair of work pants that had seen better years.
Speaking very distinctly, Kelly declared, "I. Saw. It. First," and kept hold of the other end. Meeting the angry man's eyes, she added, "One dollar."
"Five dollars!"
"Ten dollars!" the redhead snapped.
From beside her, Jim Harkins muttered to himself, "Where do people get the idea the Irish have tempers?"
"Twenty dollars! Cold hard cash, right here in my hand," said the apelike man.
Kelly hesitated. She was riled up at someone trying to intimidate her but still, twenty dollars for an old shawl that had seen better days? "Ummm..."
From several feet away, a deep baritone boomed, "One hundred dollars!"
II.
Everyone gasped at that. You could buy a decent lady's fur coat for a little more than a hundred dollars. They stared at the newcomer. The man himself was good-looking enough with his sleek black hair and finely-cut features shaved down to each pore but his clothes caught everybody's attention. He was remarkably well dressed, in a grey pinstripe double-breasted suit that looked as if it been sewn together on him while he stood there. Handmade Italian shoes, a diamond stud stickpin that matched his cufflinks, a white fedora as crisp and perfect as when it had been crafted. A thin ebony cane with a wolf-head handle added a further distinguished touch.
In his free hand, he flourished a roll of bills. "Here you go, sir! As I say, one hundred dollars."
Adrenalin was coursing through Kelly like burning gasoline in her veins. Trouble was in the air. This felt like something exciting and dangerous. She had a strong irrational desire to be in her Green Devil outfit. "Holy cow. That's enough clams for a party of five."
The simian-man was visibly trembling. His face was two shades darker. "Back off, friend! I ain't got that much on me but I can go get it and be back here. I want this shawl. It, uh, it looks like the one my wife's mother used to wear alla time."
The well-dressed man snorted and slapped his money down on the table. "Here you go, my good man. I suggest you accept my generous offer. Surely it is better than any you had expected to receive today?"
Behind the table, the seller laughed nervously as he pocketed the cash and tugged the shawl free. He handed it to the dandy and said, "All yours, champ. Whoo. Tell the truth, I was going to accept fifty cents just to get rid of that ugly thing. Guess I'm done for the day."
The seller began tossing his remaining items into two Macy's shopping bags, eager to clear out of the flea market, While the tall man leered at Kelly, his voice remained polite, "So sorry, my dear, but I took an immediate fancy to this item."
"No skin off my nose," she said blithely. "I've already got a dozen paisley shawls at home."
But the apelike man was still fuming. "I got a bone to pick you, Mr.. Mr..?"
"Strait is the name, sir. With no 'g' or 'h.'And you might be?"
"Bill Gibbons. I have to talk to you about that shawl! We can come to some sort of arrangement. Come on, be a pal."
"That matter is concluded. I have spoken." With that, the man turned on one heel and strode vigorously away. With only the slightest hesitation, Bill Gibbons followed him at a distance.
Left behind, Kelly exhaled sharply and laughed, "Well! What was THAT all about? Jim, you were watching?"
But the big police detective sounded less than amused. His eyebrows were drawn down so far they almost met. "I don't like it, Red. That short gorilla seemed mad enough to attack the tall bird, and the tall one was teasing him. If I didn't have to report in for my shift..."
Kelly shifted her huge brown leather handbag over one shoulder and affectionately rubbed his upper back. "Hah. See that? Waiting with the crowd on the corner, that's Strait. If that is his real name. And monkey boy is tailing him. Plenty of time for me to join the parade."
"Oh Hell. I know it's hopeless to ask you to just go home and listen to the radio tonight. You've got that daredevil spark in your peepers. But promise me you'll stay safe and out of trouble."
Already moving to follow one man who was himself following another, she called back, "Don't worry. You've got my word Kelly O'Connor will be a good little girl today." And, under her breath, she added, "I can't say that about the Green Devil, though."
III.
The next twenty minutes had her heart racing with zest and enthusiasm as she tailed the two men south into a seedier neighborhood. At twenty-four, despite all her nerve-wracking experiences, Kelly retained the confidence of youth about being untouchable by death or trauma. As soon as she was out of a life-threatening situation, she had already dismissed it as no big deal.
Keeping far enough back from Bill Gibbons, she kept altering her appearance slightly, carrying her hat in one hand for a minute and then tilting it forward so her distinctive red hair wouldn't be visible if the man glanced back. She buttoned her jacket and then opened it wide so she would present either a black or a white mass to the man. At a distance of one block, she hoped that would be enough to mislead him.
That name 'Strait' kept tickling her thoughts. She knew but somehow it was familiar in some connection. Three years reporting for the HERALD and covering crime in particular had filled her memory with a great deal of gruesome events and unsavory people. Strait... Nope, nothing surfaced in her thoughts.
Neighborhoods changed dramatically within only a few blocks. Kelly followed the two men from a quiet residential area that still had a few family house to the edges of the Bowery itself. Everything got shoddier, even the sidewalk had multiple cracks and the streets were mined with potholes. There were boarded-up windows, litter in the gutters, a chop house with insanely cheap prices in the window. Sullen men in their undershirts sat on stoops, staring at her not with lechery but resentment. She didn't let it deter her. If there was something shady about the two men who had competed over a threadbare old shawl, Kelly wanted to uncover all the details.
A full block ahead, she saw the well-dressed man swerve and disappear into an alley. The apelike man sped up his pace and Kelly grinned in antipation of trouble. She stepped into the deep recess of a store that had been closed for years, hoping that the shadows would give her some concealment. In a flash, she had unsnapped her skirt, turned it inside out and fastened it on again to reveal its other side was black. She buttoned up the snug bolero jacket to conceal her white blouse. Within a second, her clothing had changed to all black. Kelly had practiced changing into her various Green Devil outfits obsessively in her room at the boarding house.
Tightening the strap on her handbag so that it would stay closer to her side and not swing all over, she unzipped the top and found a silk bundle by touch. Now she was ready. An instant before she would have reached the mouth of that alley, a man's voice cried out in anger and pain.
Even as she broke into a run, Kelly yanked the green silk mask down over her head and tucked her hair up inside it. Only her face below the nose was exposed now. It had to be an illusion, a mere psychological trick, but a surge of confidence swelled up inside her. She felt ready for anything. She dove eadlong into the alley and nearly skidded to a sudden stop.
The man who called himself Strait was nowhere to be seen. The other end of the open alley showed only a horse-drawn milk wagon standing placidly by the curb. But lying on his side, blood splattering both his chest and his back, Bill Gibbons was dead. He had been stabbed entirely through his body.
III.
A few seconds later, Kelly peeked out the other opening of the alley, saw no one looking in her diretion, and swung out to walk away as casually as if she had just stepped out of her apartment. She had reversed her skirt again, shrugged out of her bolero jacket and draped it over one arm, and tucked the silk mask back into her handbag. After reaching the corner without anyone trying to stop her, Kelly's heartbeat slowed to its normal rate. At the intersection, she swung north again. Time to get out of this neighborhood.
She had amazed herself by daring to go through Gibbon's pockets. The man had only died a few seconds earlier. If a flatfoot had strolled up and found her crouched over a stiff, while she was wearing a mask, no less...! What was wrong with her that she did these things, she wondered. There hadn't been anything unusual on the man, anyway. A pack of Luckies, matches, twenty three dollars and some change, a handkerchief (clean, thank God), a comb. And the keys.
Kelly glanced down at her left hand. She was holding his keys.
Why had she made off with them? In the past few years as the Green Devil, she had developed instincts about what innocuous items might be vital later. She had turned into a mysterious crime-fighter like the Sceptre or Mark Drum. As she strode more quickly up into a better part of town, Kelly pocketed the keys and went over the events of the day, getting them down in order. Everything had been normal until she had gone over to the table which held that awful paisley scarf.
Eventually, she made her way to Times Square and the building on Seventh Avenue where the HERALD had its offices on two floors. There was always someone there, even late at night, doing rewrites and making calls. Sure enough, when she stepped out of the elevator, the big windows of the bullpen were bright. Nine battered desks with their Upwood typewriters and phones and ash trays. For once, the blue haze of cigar smoke wasn't thick as the cloud over a bonfire.
Only old Frank Giacomo was at his desk, scratching his head with a pencil stub as he scowled at the litter of loose papers. That worn old seersucker suit seemed to be the only clothing he owned, and she had never seen the top shirt button closed or the tie pulled up neatly. Giacomo looked up as she came in and muttered, "Hiya, gorgeous. Yer day off, ain't it? Today's Sunday, right?"
"Hello, Frank. I'm working on a story that's pretty weak so far. What have you got?"
"Some guff about the orphanage over in Jersey. Seems they've been farming the boys out to do housework, I might be able to get a scandal out of it. Play up the tearjerker angle, ya know?"
"Good luck." With that, Kelly headed toward the back of the bullpen where a door with a frosted glass panel awaited her. It was never locked. She clicked on a naked light bulb dangling from a cord and closed the door behind her. There were green metal filing cabinets on either side, pigeonhole wooden shelves up to the ceiling, stacks of folders and manila envelopes leaning recklessly on top of everything. One chair, itself holding a pile of loose papers. Keeping this morgue organized would require a full time employee doing nothing else.
Kelly had spent many many hours digging through this mess. She had a general idea where to look and after a few minutes was holding a folder marked STRAIT, VITUS and bearing the numbers 1938 and the underlined letter C for "crime." Her heart sank. There wasn't much in there, some galley proofs of a story from that year about two murders out in Colorado and the arrest of a man named William J Gibbons. She studied the pages, remembering now what she had heard about a mystery that had happened before her time. Gibbons had been a suspect but apparently had never been brought up on charges due to lack of solid evidence.
There was a single-spaced page giving background on Vitus Strait. From Hungary it seemed, a well-regarded defense attorney with five published books on law for the lay public. He had been mixed up in the Colorado deaths somehow but the police hadn't been able to figure out how. The murders themselves were described much too vaguely to suit her, all that was mentioned was that two near-derelict wanderers had been found stabbed behind a greasy spoon diner outside of Denver.
Very dissatified and annoyed at the lack of useful information, Kelly O'Connor replaced the folder and caught herself starting to tidy up the room. That was as hopeless as trying to get fifty stray cats to march in a parade. She turned out the light and went back out to the bullpen. Old Giacomo wasn't paying any attention to her, being preoccupied with using two fingers to hunt and peck on his beat-up machine. She went over to the shelves which held long rows of phone books and started with the Manhattan directory.
Luck for once gave her a nudge. Strait was actually listed, with the words 'Tudor Apt 1039' in smaller print after his name. Tudor Apartments, over on Second Avenue. For the first time since this tangle had started, her rather smug smile returned. Working on a newspaper was the perfect job for a masked vigilante who needed information. Now she was getting somewhere.
At the front of the bullpen was a table with an ancient coffee pot and the assorted mismatched mugs, pitcher of creamer and sugar bowl one might expect. A tray held only two sugared jelly donuts and a buttered hard roll in wax paper. Claiming the roll for herself, she called over, "Hey Frank, can I fling you some java?"
"Huh? What? Oh not for me, my stomach's bothering me. Thanks anyway." He was frowning at the typewriter as if everything wrong in the world was the machine's fault.
"Get your head near a pillow once in a while, Frank. Seeya."
IV.
On her salary, Kelly seldom took a taxi but she stepped out of one that evening, paid the driver but didn't tip and got a surly "Thanks a heap, lady" in return. She walked briskly through a courtyard into the Brock Tower of Tudor City. The apartment hotel stretched up into the clear night air, twenty-six stories of red brick capped with some Art Deco eagle heads and a flagpole at each corner of the roof.
Tudor City was only three blocks away from Grand Central, where she caught her rides nearly every day but she had never actually been in the complex before. Beyond the building she was entering, a glimpse of the Tudor City private park could be seen. This place is ritzy as the dickens, she thought. Maybe after she was awarded a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize in journalism, she would move here. Of course, sneaking out to play Green Devil would be trickier here than it was in the humble boarding house where she was staying. Hmm, maybe she would need a hidden lair, a sort of Devil Cave...
Disappointed that there was no uniformed doorman to admit her with a salute, Kelly marched through a lobby with gleaming marble floor, high narrow windows and uncomfortable-looking chrome tube furniture. Behind the service counter, a clerk was tangled in some heated debate with a pot-bellied man whose stained coveralls suggested he was the live-in janitor. She was glad they were too preoccupied with their dispute to pay her any attention.
She figured out that studio apartments on the ground floor ran along two hallways and found the first one marked 1001 right by the lobby. Couldn't be clearer, she thought, moving briskly along as the door numbers got higher. The corridor was immaculate. Four foot high plants she didn't recognize sat in glazed ceramic pots at intervals and there were wall niches holding small statuary or frame oil paintings. Despite her concentration on the mystery she was investigating, Kelly's thoughts turned again to the allure of big money. Should she skip this crime fighting nonsense and put all her energies into getting promotions at work or moving up to a higher prestige paper like the TRUMPET?
Then, nearing the end of the hall, she heard angry voices from behind the final door. 1039 sure enough. With a furtive glance to make sure no one was in sight, Kelly pressed up against the door. She couldn't make out words clearly enough. Drat darn heck. She reversed her skirt to black again, buttoned up her jacket and fastened her handbag tighter so it wouldn't swing free. There was that unmistakable deep voice booming something that sounded like "Over my dead body!" She secured the green silk mask so the eyeholes were aligned properly and her hair was completely covered. That mop of blazing red hair would give her away more than fingerprints would. That thought reminded her to pull her pair of thin cotton gloves from her handbag and tug them on as well.
Holding her breath, the Green Devil leaned up against the door and slowly turned the knob, intending to open that door a crack and listen to the argument. The knob twisted and the door swung abruptly inward. Off balance, Kelly spilled headlong to the floor inside the apartment.
V.
Instantly up on her feet again, the Green Devil blurted, "I meant to do that," but her wisecrack was met by three stony unfriendly faces. Vitus Strait held his cane in both hands in front of him, still facing the most mismatched pair of men Kelly had ever seen.
One was a huge bruiser several inches over six feet in height, broad and menacing. His abnormally large hands and long lantern-jawed face prompted Kelly's memory of a disease called acromegaly. This hulk sure looked as if he might be suffering from that condition. Reaching his shoulder was a scrawny specimen no bigger or better developed than a twelve-year-old boy. Over a sourpuss face hung a thatch of yellow hair. Both of these men seemed furious at her entrance.
The little one closed the door as the Green Devil jumped up. "Crazy broad," he spat, "She couldn't know I had my hand on the doorknob in case the house dick tried to cut in."
"It's a good habit, Bantam." The big man loomed up over Kelly, scowling hard enough to scare a snowman.
But she was hard to intimidate under any circumstances. She tugged her jacket down and smiled with sublime self-assurance. "Maybe you chumps can help a lady out. Any shawls you can spare?"
The sound from Vitus Strait was genuinely alarming, but he was outraged, not choking on food. "Jove! Bantam, Riese, do you know who this is?"
"Some dame with a mask," the small man said. "Does it matter?"
The fashion plate shifted his cane to one hand. His posture had changed from being ready to fight the other men to being concerned about this newcomer. "Oh absolutely. New York City has been absolutely infested by insane men and women acting as vigilantes. Lately they have been wearing ridiculous masquerade costumes."
"In those rags, you've got a nerve to talk," she scoffed.
That obviously touched a nerve. "And what is wrong with my apparel? I'll have you know my tailor is from Savile Row in London."
"Never mind that now!" thundered the giant in a basso profundo. "Yeah, we know about the Sceptre and the Monk and Victory Eagle and that whole posse of lunatics. But who is this girl and why should we care?"
Planting her fists on her hips, Kelly cocked her head at the dandy. "Make my introduction dramatic, scarecrow."
"This is the Green Demon."
"DEVIL!"
"If you say so," Strait conceded. "Boys, we better put aside our differences for the moment. We can't afford to let her go, she'll not only talk, she'll yell from the rooftops."
"I hear ya," said the towering Riese. He reached over to the radio cabinet and turned up swing music uncomfortably loud. The clarinet sounded like an air raid siren.
Kelly knew what this meant. Well, it would be on their heads. She planted her feet further apart and brought her open hands up to waist level. The blond runt called Bantam had pulled a .38 automatic out of one pocket and a beer can-sized rubber cylinder from another.
In almost five years of using her strange ability, Kelly had gained some control of its effects. Mark Drum had explained she wasn't actually deflecting attacks with her flesh. She was unconsciously creating a small area of something called gralic force next to her skin. However it worked, her power was the reason the Green Devil had been able to survive all her encounters with the underworld and with Axis agents.
Bantam finished attaching the silencer but he hesitated before raising it. "Waste of some nice gams if you ask me."
"Hey, big fella," said Kelly. "Would you stand closer to your friend?"
Despite his puzzled reaction, Riese did in fact take step over so he was standing next to his smaller partner. "I don't get it, girlie. Why would you want me to do that?"
"This trick is harder when the shooters are a few feet apart," she replied, shifting her weight again and willing her arms and shoulders to loosen up. Every time she had to do this, she worried that her ability would fail and she wouldn't know it until the bullets perforated her. Bantam braced his gunhand on his other forearm and fired twice. Even with the silencer, the shots were loud but muffled enough that most people wouldn't recognize the noise.
Faster than her conscious mind could have directed them, Kelly's arms whipped around in a tight figure 8 pattern and her palms stung. Bantam caught one of the bullets in his mouth, and it exited up through the top of his head. In a macabre touch, his eyes rolled up as if he was trying to see the wound. The giant Riese took his slug in the center of the chest. He lived long enough to look first surprised and then outraged at the realization he had been shot. When he dropped to his knees and fell over to one side, his mouth was working silently.
V.
Wheeling around to face the stupefied Strait, Kelly said, "I bet you'll remember the name Green Devil NOW!" She hurried over to claim the automatic that Bantam had dropped and eject the magazine before tossing it aside. She obviously wouldn't want it on her if the police insisted on complicating this adventure but it wouldn't do to have Strait snatch it up when she wasn't ready.
Kelly had agonized over using her ability this way. But, it was always in self-defense. She wasn't the one trying to shoot someone, she was only keeping herself from being killed. The way she had learned to direct the ricochet directly back at the gunman was harder to justify. It bothered her sometimes.
Keeping a baleful eye on the well-dressed man, who was having trouble digesting what had just happened, the Green Devil patted Riese's still-warm body and found he was unarmed. Good. She straightened up and glared at the sole survivor of the three men who had been arguing when she had ungracefully entered this room.
"That makes a total of three deaths because of that awful paisley shawl," she snapped. Through the holes in the silk mask, green eyes shone with genuine anger. "What's the deal with it anyway?"
"How did you do that? It looked as if you.. slapped those pills away in mid-air!"
"You don't want to know what else I can do!" she replied. "What about the shawl?"
"I don't know. I bought it on a whim, because that hairy gentleman offended me. Those two over there showed up and began browbeating me over where it was, I have no idea why."
"Pull the other leg," Kelly scoffed. "The creep who looked like something out of the zoo? I saw him follow you in that alley. I found him dead a few seconds later. He wanted the shawl too. Why? Give me some answers."
"Give me a second, please. I'm quite shaken. I just saw two men die right in front of me. Their bodies are lying on my imported carpet." As he said this, he gestured dramatically past the Green Devil toward the corpses. It didn't work. She was experienced enough to keep her eyes on him.
In one smooth continuous movement, Strait twisted the handle of his cane to pull out a slim steel blade three foot long and to lunge with it quick as any fencer. Kelly's hand blurred to smack the sword aside. Committed to his attack, the dandy was thrown off guard by having his momentum redirected and he lost his balance completely. As Strait fell on his face to the carpeting, the Green Devil bent and wrested the sword from his hands.
"If you're not careful, you're going to make me mad at you," she said. Kelly twirled the thin blade and threw it to the other side of the room. "Our friendly neighborhood police would be tickled to compare that little point to the wound in Bill Gibbons' carcass, I should get them in on this. Mind if I use your phone?"
"You wouldn't dare!" he growled as he got up and straightened out his clothing. "Your fingerprints are on that gun, not mine. My story will be about the notorious Green Devil shooting both of them."
"Nope. Wearing gloves. Howzabout you spilling the beans and..." Her sentence was interrupted as the well-dressed man unexpectedly whipped a triangular-bladed stiletto from its sheath at the small of his back and dove right at her. Even unprepared, the Green Devil sidestepped nimbly and slapped his knife hand away from her, towards his own chest. Again, Strait fell heavily to the floor but this time the impact drove the stiletto directly into his heart. Kelly O'Connor gasped. She was looking at the fourth man she had seen die that day.
Then there came a sharp knocking on the apartment door. "Mr Strait! Mr Strait, are you all right?"
V.
Kelly made a sound that can best be rendered as "Awrk!" and spun on her heel toward the window in the far wall of the apartment. Before she reached it, though, something caught her eye. There on a writing desk was the scarf itself. Snatching it up, she flung the window up and dove through without taking a second to check what was outside.
Tumbling to warm asphalt, the Green Devil bounced back up on her feet and whirled around to close the window behind her and to get out of any line of sight from within the apartment. She could hear more knocking and the voice calling for Strait again. She looked wildly around her and found she was in a small parking area with several new model cars in their slots. This must be at the rear of the Tudor City apartment building, because a side street ran at the other side of the lot and beyond it was a much older and rundown structure with a used furniture outlet on its ground floor.
No one was in sight. As far as she could tell, her acrobatic maneuver had gone unseen. Gee but my luck runs hot and cold, she thought. Kelly tugged off her mask and gloves, tucking them into her handbag seconds before a car rolled down the side street. Time to be anywhere else. If that had been the building manager knocking, he would have a pass key and that meant the NYPD would be getting an interesting phone call about three fresh corpses. Jim was on duty. It was always awkward running into her hearthrob when he was on the job and she was playing Green Devil.
Striding briskly to the edge of the lot, Kelly found she was on 40th Street and Second Avenue. When she started to lengthen the strap on her handbag again, she realized she was still clutching the paisley shawl that seemed to be worth human lives. As curious as she was, there would be time to examine it later. As she reached the corner, a gleaming new DeSoto pulled up next to the curb and the driver's window rolled down.
"I can tell you all about that shawl, miss," a mellow cultured voice said.
One more surprise in a day packed with them, she thought. Even though prudence suggested she run as fast as she could, the Green Devil in her made her bend down and peer at the driver. "Is that a pick-up line I haven't heard before?"
The thinnest man she had ever seen watched her thoughtfully. His face was almost skeletal, and the thinning white hair far back on a high forehead didn't improve his looks. The left lens of his eyeglasses was blacked over. "Hardly. I was watching for Riese and Bantam when I witnessed you plunging out the window. You're quite nimble."
"You're imagining things, my friend. I have to be going."
"If you leave, you'll never find out why that ratty old shawl is so precious," he said. "Is that what you want?"
Kelly thought furiously, then gave in to her risky side. "Tell you what, howzabout you get out and we walk and talk?"
"There are others coming, like the men in that apartment," he replied. "Neither of us need to meet them. That shawl is one hundred and twenty years old, young lady, and it has claimed eighteen lives that I know of."
"My mother taught me never to get in cars with strange men. What's the story with that awful paisley shawl? Is it cursed?"
"In a way. We really need to get away from this area, miss. I urge you to get in for both our sakes."
"In for a penny..." she mumbled as she hurried around the rear of the car and slid into the front passenger side. She had learned to trust her instincts. For whatever reason, this goon with the blacked out lens didn't give off any signals to alarm her. The Green Devil settled back into the cushions and reached up to grasp the overhead strap. "It's jake with me if you start gabbing, cousin."
"My name is Wilson Piper," he began. "Architect. Or I was until ten years ago, when I started working for a remarkable man. That's who we are going to meet now, miss. I saw you take off that green mask a few minutes ago."
"Deny everything, those are the words that I live by," she scoffed. "Keep your lips flapping please, my ears are open."
"The three men in that apartment were all killers," he said. "You were in extreme peril the entire time you were with them. I saw the window flash twice. Gunshots with a silencer?"
"Sounds reasonable. Where are we going anyway?"
"A place right next to the Chrysler Building," Piper said. He slowed to a stop at a red light. "You're not much for straight answers, miss. Can I assume that all three men... Strait, Bantam and Riese are dead?"
"I wish I could help you," she replied. "But I might advise you not to buy as many Christmas cards this year."
"Good enough." They had reached a newer building in severe Art Deco style, with lots of aluminum and glass and stylized jagged bolts on a strip above a concrete ramp. Piper slowed and rolled down that ramp into an underground garage. Three slots were painted RESERVED in red letters and he pulled into one of these.
"You can relax now, Miss O'Connor," the skinny old man said as he got out from behind the wheel. "I assure you the excitement is over for tonight."
"I'm from Missouri. Well, actually, I'm from Red Hook but you know what I mean." She stood up next to the car, adjusting the strap on her handbag. "Lead on, sport."
Piper buttoned his suit jacket. He was so thin he resembled a child's stick figure drawing. Going over to one of the massive concrete pillars which supported the ceiling of the garage, he opened a section which swung on concealed hinges to reveal a combination dial.
"What do you keep in there?" Kelly asked, peering over his bony shoulder.
Instead of answering, Piper spun the dial left and right, then pressed it inward with a click. A door swung open in the pillar to reveal a wood-panelled compartment barely large enough to accomodate the two of them. Piper entered and, despite some misgivings, Kelly squeezed in next to him. After the door closed, a humming sounded and she felt motion. They were rising. Through the opening of the door, the wall could be seen moving down quickly.
"Tickle my feet!" she laughed. "Is this a secret elevator? How clever."
"I feel you can be trusted knowing about it," he responded with a shrug.
Several minutes later, the car stopped and a door in the wall swung open. They stepped out into an elegant hallway with subdued recessed lighting. When the elevator door closed, a chime sounded overhead. In the wall facing them, a plain unmarked door slid open.
That day, the Green Devil had met five odd-looking men but at the moment she felt her breath taken away at facing the largest man she had ever seen in her life.
VI.
His shoulders touched both sides of the doorway and his head scraped the top. Kelly estimated this giant was a full foot taller than her five feet seven and must have weighed two hundred and seventy.. but judging by the trim waist, none of that was fat.
He was wearing a white lab smock buttoned to the neck.
The big square face was stern, not exactly handsome as much as imposing. His skin was dark, almost the same color as that of Lincoln on the penny, and he had short-cropped light blond hair. As Kelly gaped, he extended a huge hand for her to shake.
"Thank you, Piper," he said in a resonant voice. "Please come in, Miss O'Connor. I've wanted to meet you for quite a while now."
Kelly made a croaking noise, cleared her throat and managed to say, "Hi." She was ushered by the towering man into a brightly lit room where two enamel-topped tables were covered by assorted glass flasks and bottles holding variously-colored liquids. One open jar steamed as if it contained dry ice.
Pulling a stool over for his guest, the big man remained standing himself. "Allow me. I am Dr Mercado Vitarius. An Alchemist. I am considerably older than you might think."
"Ah. Yes," she squeaked. "How do you do?"
"My sources tell me you have already worked with several of my colleagues in the Midnight War," he continued. "Mark Drum, Arcangel, the Sting and his partner."
Kelly didn't answer for a second, then got a grip. "Deny everything, that's my motto."
"Quite all right. I don't expect you to admit being the Green Devil for the moment. Today, you encountered four dangerous men, treasure hunters and guns for hire. Soldiers of fortune, you might say. The body of William Gibbons has been found and the police are investigating. They are also at Tudor City right now, questioning everyone in the area."
Kelly made no comment. As overwhelming as this Vitarius was, she was determined not to give anything away. So far she had not confirmed anything.
Dr Vitarius placed a shallow metal tray on the table next to Kelly, then filled it with a pungent colorless liquid from a flask. "Please be careful not to touch the solution," he said, then held out an enormous hand. "The shawl?"
Without knowing she was going to do it, Kelly drew the strip of cloth from her handbag and passed it to him. She was surprised to feel relief at getting that doomful thing out of her possession.
Using a pair of stainless steel tongs, Vitarius laid the shawl down in the tray and swished it back and forth. "The shawl in itself has no value," the Alchemist said. He held the cloth up to drip for a second, then stretched it out on the table top.
Kelly leaned over to see. All color had been bleached from the material. Fine black lines remained showing strange outlines. What on Earth? Suddenly, she blurted, "A map! It's a map!"
"It is indeed a map," Dr Vitarius told her. "More than a century ago, criminals buried a fortune in Aztec gold because they were on the run from the Mexican police. They had someone sew this fine iron wire into the shawl to mark where the treasure was hidden."
Piper broke his silence. "That was why those men died. They knew the secret of the shawl and were more than willing to kill for it."
"Ugh. How horrid." Kelly lifted her eyes to meet the Alchemist's gaze. "But now, who is going to claim that gold? You?"
Dr Vitarius smiled with a touch of sadness. "No one will, Miss O'Connor. That treasure is now deep beneath a government building on the outskirts of Mexico City."
4/14/2022
6/7/1944
I.
"Lots of men would love to see me with this little green dress on," said Kelly O'Connor. Then, recognizing that Jim was not going to volunteer to buy it for her, she added, "Of course, lots of men would like to see me WITHOUT it on."
That got his attention. He turned away from a card table laden with ash trays, coffee mugs and small kitchen utensils. Seeing the impish expression on her face, he could not keep from grinning. "Nice try, Red."
The origin of Jim's several nicknames for Kelly was obvious. She did have full, thick hair of that bright crimson hue which catches sunlight like a cat's eyes. Her own rather large eyes were green, and with her upturned nose and full lips, she had a face almost everyone liked at first sight. A simple cloche hat was tilted at an impudent angle. "It's my favorite color," she added. "Any fellow would be proud to have a pretty girl on his arm if she were wearing this."
At the moment, Kelly was wearing a pleated white skirt, a wide black leather belt with a brass buckle and a white long-sleeved blouse under a black bolero jacket. At five feet seven, trim and athletic, she looked great in that outfit and she knew it.
"That dress is too big for you," he said. "Taking it in would ruin its lines. You have a high waist and long legs, honey, so finding clothes for you is always tricky."
Hanging the dress back up on a clothesline strung between two trees, she made sure no one at the flea market was within earshot. "I already own another green outfit I feel like wearing, if you get my drift and I think you do."
"No one has taken a shot at you all week? You haven't been chased around the block by mobsters? And not a single Axis spy has tied you up? No wonder you're bored."
"Sad but true." She held up a straight-lined black dress with horizontal rows of white fringes across its front. "Doesn't this number melt your stone heart?"
"Kelly! That rag is twenty years old. Some flapper wore it during Prohibition."
"Oh, all right. Alas! I lost my heart to a police detective with no flair."
Examining a battered tea kettle dubiously, Jim Harkins countered, "But I do have good taste in girlfriends?"
"Oh, I'll tell the world you do. And I know a good-looking slab of beef when I trip over one. You have the loveable face of a bassett hound. What? That's a good thing."
Jim was indeed not much over six feet tall, but he was massive, with broad shoulders Kelly could actually hide behind and not be seen. His dark blue suit with a red tie was neat and fit him well, but it was deliberately ordinary-looking. The fedora pushed back on his pomaded hair was badly in need of blocking, though. "There's something about a carrot-top...."
"But do you lovvvve me?" she asked in a little kid's voice.
"You know I do. I never told you this before but the first time I almost arrested you, I tumbled hard. The world went away. All I could see was your face."
Kelly got in close and stretched up to kiss him gently on the cheek. "Awwww. That touch of the poet comes out in you at the most unexpected times. I'm surprised you can't hear my heart go thump thump when we're together. How long do we have before you have to punch in at the station?"
"Not much. I'm doing the six to two AM for a while. I want to get there a few minutes early anyway so Captain Beachum can chew me out and get it over with."
"Don't let the old man ruffle your fur," she said, dragging him by one arm. "One more table, I swear I hear some scarves calling my name."
The crowd at the flea market had thinned out. Even in the comforting warmth of an early summer day, most people were thinking of dinner at this hour. An elderly man with a mane of white hair swept straight back watched them approach. "Hi, folks. We got shawls, scarves, a stole or two, some gloves and even a real elegant muff. It won't be June forever."
"Interesting selection," Kelly said as she leaned over the table, figuratively sniffing for something good. "Everything matches."
"All these items belonged to my late wife Agnes. She left this life almost five years ago."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I'm not. She broke more than one lamp over my head." The old man chortled to himself.
An ancient paisley shawl, five inches wide and twenty inches long, caught Kelly's eye. It was pale green with red flowers and those were her emblematic colors. She reached out and touched it at the exact same instant a wide, meaty paw of a hand grabbed the shawl at the other hand.
"Mitts off, skirt. This is for my old lady." The man speaking was shorter than Kelly's five feet seven by several inches, but much wider and more intimidating. A remarkably homely face with a long upper lip and deepset blue eyes reminded her unavoidably of an ape. Thick bristling black hair added to the impression, as did the fact that his arms were actually a few inches longer than his legs. He was wearing a white jersey with thin horizontal red stripes and a pair of work pants that had seen better years.
Speaking very distinctly, Kelly declared, "I. Saw. It. First," and kept hold of the other end. Meeting the angry man's eyes, she added, "One dollar."
"Five dollars!"
"Ten dollars!" the redhead snapped.
From beside her, Jim Harkins muttered to himself, "Where do people get the idea the Irish have tempers?"
"Twenty dollars! Cold hard cash, right here in my hand," said the apelike man.
Kelly hesitated. She was riled up at someone trying to intimidate her but still, twenty dollars for an old shawl that had seen better days? "Ummm..."
From several feet away, a deep baritone boomed, "One hundred dollars!"
II.
Everyone gasped at that. You could buy a decent lady's fur coat for a little more than a hundred dollars. They stared at the newcomer. The man himself was good-looking enough with his sleek black hair and finely-cut features shaved down to each pore but his clothes caught everybody's attention. He was remarkably well dressed, in a grey pinstripe double-breasted suit that looked as if it been sewn together on him while he stood there. Handmade Italian shoes, a diamond stud stickpin that matched his cufflinks, a white fedora as crisp and perfect as when it had been crafted. A thin ebony cane with a wolf-head handle added a further distinguished touch.
In his free hand, he flourished a roll of bills. "Here you go, sir! As I say, one hundred dollars."
Adrenalin was coursing through Kelly like burning gasoline in her veins. Trouble was in the air. This felt like something exciting and dangerous. She had a strong irrational desire to be in her Green Devil outfit. "Holy cow. That's enough clams for a party of five."
The simian-man was visibly trembling. His face was two shades darker. "Back off, friend! I ain't got that much on me but I can go get it and be back here. I want this shawl. It, uh, it looks like the one my wife's mother used to wear alla time."
The well-dressed man snorted and slapped his money down on the table. "Here you go, my good man. I suggest you accept my generous offer. Surely it is better than any you had expected to receive today?"
Behind the table, the seller laughed nervously as he pocketed the cash and tugged the shawl free. He handed it to the dandy and said, "All yours, champ. Whoo. Tell the truth, I was going to accept fifty cents just to get rid of that ugly thing. Guess I'm done for the day."
The seller began tossing his remaining items into two Macy's shopping bags, eager to clear out of the flea market, While the tall man leered at Kelly, his voice remained polite, "So sorry, my dear, but I took an immediate fancy to this item."
"No skin off my nose," she said blithely. "I've already got a dozen paisley shawls at home."
But the apelike man was still fuming. "I got a bone to pick you, Mr.. Mr..?"
"Strait is the name, sir. With no 'g' or 'h.'And you might be?"
"Bill Gibbons. I have to talk to you about that shawl! We can come to some sort of arrangement. Come on, be a pal."
"That matter is concluded. I have spoken." With that, the man turned on one heel and strode vigorously away. With only the slightest hesitation, Bill Gibbons followed him at a distance.
Left behind, Kelly exhaled sharply and laughed, "Well! What was THAT all about? Jim, you were watching?"
But the big police detective sounded less than amused. His eyebrows were drawn down so far they almost met. "I don't like it, Red. That short gorilla seemed mad enough to attack the tall bird, and the tall one was teasing him. If I didn't have to report in for my shift..."
Kelly shifted her huge brown leather handbag over one shoulder and affectionately rubbed his upper back. "Hah. See that? Waiting with the crowd on the corner, that's Strait. If that is his real name. And monkey boy is tailing him. Plenty of time for me to join the parade."
"Oh Hell. I know it's hopeless to ask you to just go home and listen to the radio tonight. You've got that daredevil spark in your peepers. But promise me you'll stay safe and out of trouble."
Already moving to follow one man who was himself following another, she called back, "Don't worry. You've got my word Kelly O'Connor will be a good little girl today." And, under her breath, she added, "I can't say that about the Green Devil, though."
III.
The next twenty minutes had her heart racing with zest and enthusiasm as she tailed the two men south into a seedier neighborhood. At twenty-four, despite all her nerve-wracking experiences, Kelly retained the confidence of youth about being untouchable by death or trauma. As soon as she was out of a life-threatening situation, she had already dismissed it as no big deal.
Keeping far enough back from Bill Gibbons, she kept altering her appearance slightly, carrying her hat in one hand for a minute and then tilting it forward so her distinctive red hair wouldn't be visible if the man glanced back. She buttoned her jacket and then opened it wide so she would present either a black or a white mass to the man. At a distance of one block, she hoped that would be enough to mislead him.
That name 'Strait' kept tickling her thoughts. She knew but somehow it was familiar in some connection. Three years reporting for the HERALD and covering crime in particular had filled her memory with a great deal of gruesome events and unsavory people. Strait... Nope, nothing surfaced in her thoughts.
Neighborhoods changed dramatically within only a few blocks. Kelly followed the two men from a quiet residential area that still had a few family house to the edges of the Bowery itself. Everything got shoddier, even the sidewalk had multiple cracks and the streets were mined with potholes. There were boarded-up windows, litter in the gutters, a chop house with insanely cheap prices in the window. Sullen men in their undershirts sat on stoops, staring at her not with lechery but resentment. She didn't let it deter her. If there was something shady about the two men who had competed over a threadbare old shawl, Kelly wanted to uncover all the details.
A full block ahead, she saw the well-dressed man swerve and disappear into an alley. The apelike man sped up his pace and Kelly grinned in antipation of trouble. She stepped into the deep recess of a store that had been closed for years, hoping that the shadows would give her some concealment. In a flash, she had unsnapped her skirt, turned it inside out and fastened it on again to reveal its other side was black. She buttoned up the snug bolero jacket to conceal her white blouse. Within a second, her clothing had changed to all black. Kelly had practiced changing into her various Green Devil outfits obsessively in her room at the boarding house.
Tightening the strap on her handbag so that it would stay closer to her side and not swing all over, she unzipped the top and found a silk bundle by touch. Now she was ready. An instant before she would have reached the mouth of that alley, a man's voice cried out in anger and pain.
Even as she broke into a run, Kelly yanked the green silk mask down over her head and tucked her hair up inside it. Only her face below the nose was exposed now. It had to be an illusion, a mere psychological trick, but a surge of confidence swelled up inside her. She felt ready for anything. She dove eadlong into the alley and nearly skidded to a sudden stop.
The man who called himself Strait was nowhere to be seen. The other end of the open alley showed only a horse-drawn milk wagon standing placidly by the curb. But lying on his side, blood splattering both his chest and his back, Bill Gibbons was dead. He had been stabbed entirely through his body.
III.
A few seconds later, Kelly peeked out the other opening of the alley, saw no one looking in her diretion, and swung out to walk away as casually as if she had just stepped out of her apartment. She had reversed her skirt again, shrugged out of her bolero jacket and draped it over one arm, and tucked the silk mask back into her handbag. After reaching the corner without anyone trying to stop her, Kelly's heartbeat slowed to its normal rate. At the intersection, she swung north again. Time to get out of this neighborhood.
She had amazed herself by daring to go through Gibbon's pockets. The man had only died a few seconds earlier. If a flatfoot had strolled up and found her crouched over a stiff, while she was wearing a mask, no less...! What was wrong with her that she did these things, she wondered. There hadn't been anything unusual on the man, anyway. A pack of Luckies, matches, twenty three dollars and some change, a handkerchief (clean, thank God), a comb. And the keys.
Kelly glanced down at her left hand. She was holding his keys.
Why had she made off with them? In the past few years as the Green Devil, she had developed instincts about what innocuous items might be vital later. She had turned into a mysterious crime-fighter like the Sceptre or Mark Drum. As she strode more quickly up into a better part of town, Kelly pocketed the keys and went over the events of the day, getting them down in order. Everything had been normal until she had gone over to the table which held that awful paisley scarf.
Eventually, she made her way to Times Square and the building on Seventh Avenue where the HERALD had its offices on two floors. There was always someone there, even late at night, doing rewrites and making calls. Sure enough, when she stepped out of the elevator, the big windows of the bullpen were bright. Nine battered desks with their Upwood typewriters and phones and ash trays. For once, the blue haze of cigar smoke wasn't thick as the cloud over a bonfire.
Only old Frank Giacomo was at his desk, scratching his head with a pencil stub as he scowled at the litter of loose papers. That worn old seersucker suit seemed to be the only clothing he owned, and she had never seen the top shirt button closed or the tie pulled up neatly. Giacomo looked up as she came in and muttered, "Hiya, gorgeous. Yer day off, ain't it? Today's Sunday, right?"
"Hello, Frank. I'm working on a story that's pretty weak so far. What have you got?"
"Some guff about the orphanage over in Jersey. Seems they've been farming the boys out to do housework, I might be able to get a scandal out of it. Play up the tearjerker angle, ya know?"
"Good luck." With that, Kelly headed toward the back of the bullpen where a door with a frosted glass panel awaited her. It was never locked. She clicked on a naked light bulb dangling from a cord and closed the door behind her. There were green metal filing cabinets on either side, pigeonhole wooden shelves up to the ceiling, stacks of folders and manila envelopes leaning recklessly on top of everything. One chair, itself holding a pile of loose papers. Keeping this morgue organized would require a full time employee doing nothing else.
Kelly had spent many many hours digging through this mess. She had a general idea where to look and after a few minutes was holding a folder marked STRAIT, VITUS and bearing the numbers 1938 and the underlined letter C for "crime." Her heart sank. There wasn't much in there, some galley proofs of a story from that year about two murders out in Colorado and the arrest of a man named William J Gibbons. She studied the pages, remembering now what she had heard about a mystery that had happened before her time. Gibbons had been a suspect but apparently had never been brought up on charges due to lack of solid evidence.
There was a single-spaced page giving background on Vitus Strait. From Hungary it seemed, a well-regarded defense attorney with five published books on law for the lay public. He had been mixed up in the Colorado deaths somehow but the police hadn't been able to figure out how. The murders themselves were described much too vaguely to suit her, all that was mentioned was that two near-derelict wanderers had been found stabbed behind a greasy spoon diner outside of Denver.
Very dissatified and annoyed at the lack of useful information, Kelly O'Connor replaced the folder and caught herself starting to tidy up the room. That was as hopeless as trying to get fifty stray cats to march in a parade. She turned out the light and went back out to the bullpen. Old Giacomo wasn't paying any attention to her, being preoccupied with using two fingers to hunt and peck on his beat-up machine. She went over to the shelves which held long rows of phone books and started with the Manhattan directory.
Luck for once gave her a nudge. Strait was actually listed, with the words 'Tudor Apt 1039' in smaller print after his name. Tudor Apartments, over on Second Avenue. For the first time since this tangle had started, her rather smug smile returned. Working on a newspaper was the perfect job for a masked vigilante who needed information. Now she was getting somewhere.
At the front of the bullpen was a table with an ancient coffee pot and the assorted mismatched mugs, pitcher of creamer and sugar bowl one might expect. A tray held only two sugared jelly donuts and a buttered hard roll in wax paper. Claiming the roll for herself, she called over, "Hey Frank, can I fling you some java?"
"Huh? What? Oh not for me, my stomach's bothering me. Thanks anyway." He was frowning at the typewriter as if everything wrong in the world was the machine's fault.
"Get your head near a pillow once in a while, Frank. Seeya."
IV.
On her salary, Kelly seldom took a taxi but she stepped out of one that evening, paid the driver but didn't tip and got a surly "Thanks a heap, lady" in return. She walked briskly through a courtyard into the Brock Tower of Tudor City. The apartment hotel stretched up into the clear night air, twenty-six stories of red brick capped with some Art Deco eagle heads and a flagpole at each corner of the roof.
Tudor City was only three blocks away from Grand Central, where she caught her rides nearly every day but she had never actually been in the complex before. Beyond the building she was entering, a glimpse of the Tudor City private park could be seen. This place is ritzy as the dickens, she thought. Maybe after she was awarded a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize in journalism, she would move here. Of course, sneaking out to play Green Devil would be trickier here than it was in the humble boarding house where she was staying. Hmm, maybe she would need a hidden lair, a sort of Devil Cave...
Disappointed that there was no uniformed doorman to admit her with a salute, Kelly marched through a lobby with gleaming marble floor, high narrow windows and uncomfortable-looking chrome tube furniture. Behind the service counter, a clerk was tangled in some heated debate with a pot-bellied man whose stained coveralls suggested he was the live-in janitor. She was glad they were too preoccupied with their dispute to pay her any attention.
She figured out that studio apartments on the ground floor ran along two hallways and found the first one marked 1001 right by the lobby. Couldn't be clearer, she thought, moving briskly along as the door numbers got higher. The corridor was immaculate. Four foot high plants she didn't recognize sat in glazed ceramic pots at intervals and there were wall niches holding small statuary or frame oil paintings. Despite her concentration on the mystery she was investigating, Kelly's thoughts turned again to the allure of big money. Should she skip this crime fighting nonsense and put all her energies into getting promotions at work or moving up to a higher prestige paper like the TRUMPET?
Then, nearing the end of the hall, she heard angry voices from behind the final door. 1039 sure enough. With a furtive glance to make sure no one was in sight, Kelly pressed up against the door. She couldn't make out words clearly enough. Drat darn heck. She reversed her skirt to black again, buttoned up her jacket and fastened her handbag tighter so it wouldn't swing free. There was that unmistakable deep voice booming something that sounded like "Over my dead body!" She secured the green silk mask so the eyeholes were aligned properly and her hair was completely covered. That mop of blazing red hair would give her away more than fingerprints would. That thought reminded her to pull her pair of thin cotton gloves from her handbag and tug them on as well.
Holding her breath, the Green Devil leaned up against the door and slowly turned the knob, intending to open that door a crack and listen to the argument. The knob twisted and the door swung abruptly inward. Off balance, Kelly spilled headlong to the floor inside the apartment.
V.
Instantly up on her feet again, the Green Devil blurted, "I meant to do that," but her wisecrack was met by three stony unfriendly faces. Vitus Strait held his cane in both hands in front of him, still facing the most mismatched pair of men Kelly had ever seen.
One was a huge bruiser several inches over six feet in height, broad and menacing. His abnormally large hands and long lantern-jawed face prompted Kelly's memory of a disease called acromegaly. This hulk sure looked as if he might be suffering from that condition. Reaching his shoulder was a scrawny specimen no bigger or better developed than a twelve-year-old boy. Over a sourpuss face hung a thatch of yellow hair. Both of these men seemed furious at her entrance.
The little one closed the door as the Green Devil jumped up. "Crazy broad," he spat, "She couldn't know I had my hand on the doorknob in case the house dick tried to cut in."
"It's a good habit, Bantam." The big man loomed up over Kelly, scowling hard enough to scare a snowman.
But she was hard to intimidate under any circumstances. She tugged her jacket down and smiled with sublime self-assurance. "Maybe you chumps can help a lady out. Any shawls you can spare?"
The sound from Vitus Strait was genuinely alarming, but he was outraged, not choking on food. "Jove! Bantam, Riese, do you know who this is?"
"Some dame with a mask," the small man said. "Does it matter?"
The fashion plate shifted his cane to one hand. His posture had changed from being ready to fight the other men to being concerned about this newcomer. "Oh absolutely. New York City has been absolutely infested by insane men and women acting as vigilantes. Lately they have been wearing ridiculous masquerade costumes."
"In those rags, you've got a nerve to talk," she scoffed.
That obviously touched a nerve. "And what is wrong with my apparel? I'll have you know my tailor is from Savile Row in London."
"Never mind that now!" thundered the giant in a basso profundo. "Yeah, we know about the Sceptre and the Monk and Victory Eagle and that whole posse of lunatics. But who is this girl and why should we care?"
Planting her fists on her hips, Kelly cocked her head at the dandy. "Make my introduction dramatic, scarecrow."
"This is the Green Demon."
"DEVIL!"
"If you say so," Strait conceded. "Boys, we better put aside our differences for the moment. We can't afford to let her go, she'll not only talk, she'll yell from the rooftops."
"I hear ya," said the towering Riese. He reached over to the radio cabinet and turned up swing music uncomfortably loud. The clarinet sounded like an air raid siren.
Kelly knew what this meant. Well, it would be on their heads. She planted her feet further apart and brought her open hands up to waist level. The blond runt called Bantam had pulled a .38 automatic out of one pocket and a beer can-sized rubber cylinder from another.
In almost five years of using her strange ability, Kelly had gained some control of its effects. Mark Drum had explained she wasn't actually deflecting attacks with her flesh. She was unconsciously creating a small area of something called gralic force next to her skin. However it worked, her power was the reason the Green Devil had been able to survive all her encounters with the underworld and with Axis agents.
Bantam finished attaching the silencer but he hesitated before raising it. "Waste of some nice gams if you ask me."
"Hey, big fella," said Kelly. "Would you stand closer to your friend?"
Despite his puzzled reaction, Riese did in fact take step over so he was standing next to his smaller partner. "I don't get it, girlie. Why would you want me to do that?"
"This trick is harder when the shooters are a few feet apart," she replied, shifting her weight again and willing her arms and shoulders to loosen up. Every time she had to do this, she worried that her ability would fail and she wouldn't know it until the bullets perforated her. Bantam braced his gunhand on his other forearm and fired twice. Even with the silencer, the shots were loud but muffled enough that most people wouldn't recognize the noise.
Faster than her conscious mind could have directed them, Kelly's arms whipped around in a tight figure 8 pattern and her palms stung. Bantam caught one of the bullets in his mouth, and it exited up through the top of his head. In a macabre touch, his eyes rolled up as if he was trying to see the wound. The giant Riese took his slug in the center of the chest. He lived long enough to look first surprised and then outraged at the realization he had been shot. When he dropped to his knees and fell over to one side, his mouth was working silently.
V.
Wheeling around to face the stupefied Strait, Kelly said, "I bet you'll remember the name Green Devil NOW!" She hurried over to claim the automatic that Bantam had dropped and eject the magazine before tossing it aside. She obviously wouldn't want it on her if the police insisted on complicating this adventure but it wouldn't do to have Strait snatch it up when she wasn't ready.
Kelly had agonized over using her ability this way. But, it was always in self-defense. She wasn't the one trying to shoot someone, she was only keeping herself from being killed. The way she had learned to direct the ricochet directly back at the gunman was harder to justify. It bothered her sometimes.
Keeping a baleful eye on the well-dressed man, who was having trouble digesting what had just happened, the Green Devil patted Riese's still-warm body and found he was unarmed. Good. She straightened up and glared at the sole survivor of the three men who had been arguing when she had ungracefully entered this room.
"That makes a total of three deaths because of that awful paisley shawl," she snapped. Through the holes in the silk mask, green eyes shone with genuine anger. "What's the deal with it anyway?"
"How did you do that? It looked as if you.. slapped those pills away in mid-air!"
"You don't want to know what else I can do!" she replied. "What about the shawl?"
"I don't know. I bought it on a whim, because that hairy gentleman offended me. Those two over there showed up and began browbeating me over where it was, I have no idea why."
"Pull the other leg," Kelly scoffed. "The creep who looked like something out of the zoo? I saw him follow you in that alley. I found him dead a few seconds later. He wanted the shawl too. Why? Give me some answers."
"Give me a second, please. I'm quite shaken. I just saw two men die right in front of me. Their bodies are lying on my imported carpet." As he said this, he gestured dramatically past the Green Devil toward the corpses. It didn't work. She was experienced enough to keep her eyes on him.
In one smooth continuous movement, Strait twisted the handle of his cane to pull out a slim steel blade three foot long and to lunge with it quick as any fencer. Kelly's hand blurred to smack the sword aside. Committed to his attack, the dandy was thrown off guard by having his momentum redirected and he lost his balance completely. As Strait fell on his face to the carpeting, the Green Devil bent and wrested the sword from his hands.
"If you're not careful, you're going to make me mad at you," she said. Kelly twirled the thin blade and threw it to the other side of the room. "Our friendly neighborhood police would be tickled to compare that little point to the wound in Bill Gibbons' carcass, I should get them in on this. Mind if I use your phone?"
"You wouldn't dare!" he growled as he got up and straightened out his clothing. "Your fingerprints are on that gun, not mine. My story will be about the notorious Green Devil shooting both of them."
"Nope. Wearing gloves. Howzabout you spilling the beans and..." Her sentence was interrupted as the well-dressed man unexpectedly whipped a triangular-bladed stiletto from its sheath at the small of his back and dove right at her. Even unprepared, the Green Devil sidestepped nimbly and slapped his knife hand away from her, towards his own chest. Again, Strait fell heavily to the floor but this time the impact drove the stiletto directly into his heart. Kelly O'Connor gasped. She was looking at the fourth man she had seen die that day.
Then there came a sharp knocking on the apartment door. "Mr Strait! Mr Strait, are you all right?"
V.
Kelly made a sound that can best be rendered as "Awrk!" and spun on her heel toward the window in the far wall of the apartment. Before she reached it, though, something caught her eye. There on a writing desk was the scarf itself. Snatching it up, she flung the window up and dove through without taking a second to check what was outside.
Tumbling to warm asphalt, the Green Devil bounced back up on her feet and whirled around to close the window behind her and to get out of any line of sight from within the apartment. She could hear more knocking and the voice calling for Strait again. She looked wildly around her and found she was in a small parking area with several new model cars in their slots. This must be at the rear of the Tudor City apartment building, because a side street ran at the other side of the lot and beyond it was a much older and rundown structure with a used furniture outlet on its ground floor.
No one was in sight. As far as she could tell, her acrobatic maneuver had gone unseen. Gee but my luck runs hot and cold, she thought. Kelly tugged off her mask and gloves, tucking them into her handbag seconds before a car rolled down the side street. Time to be anywhere else. If that had been the building manager knocking, he would have a pass key and that meant the NYPD would be getting an interesting phone call about three fresh corpses. Jim was on duty. It was always awkward running into her hearthrob when he was on the job and she was playing Green Devil.
Striding briskly to the edge of the lot, Kelly found she was on 40th Street and Second Avenue. When she started to lengthen the strap on her handbag again, she realized she was still clutching the paisley shawl that seemed to be worth human lives. As curious as she was, there would be time to examine it later. As she reached the corner, a gleaming new DeSoto pulled up next to the curb and the driver's window rolled down.
"I can tell you all about that shawl, miss," a mellow cultured voice said.
One more surprise in a day packed with them, she thought. Even though prudence suggested she run as fast as she could, the Green Devil in her made her bend down and peer at the driver. "Is that a pick-up line I haven't heard before?"
The thinnest man she had ever seen watched her thoughtfully. His face was almost skeletal, and the thinning white hair far back on a high forehead didn't improve his looks. The left lens of his eyeglasses was blacked over. "Hardly. I was watching for Riese and Bantam when I witnessed you plunging out the window. You're quite nimble."
"You're imagining things, my friend. I have to be going."
"If you leave, you'll never find out why that ratty old shawl is so precious," he said. "Is that what you want?"
Kelly thought furiously, then gave in to her risky side. "Tell you what, howzabout you get out and we walk and talk?"
"There are others coming, like the men in that apartment," he replied. "Neither of us need to meet them. That shawl is one hundred and twenty years old, young lady, and it has claimed eighteen lives that I know of."
"My mother taught me never to get in cars with strange men. What's the story with that awful paisley shawl? Is it cursed?"
"In a way. We really need to get away from this area, miss. I urge you to get in for both our sakes."
"In for a penny..." she mumbled as she hurried around the rear of the car and slid into the front passenger side. She had learned to trust her instincts. For whatever reason, this goon with the blacked out lens didn't give off any signals to alarm her. The Green Devil settled back into the cushions and reached up to grasp the overhead strap. "It's jake with me if you start gabbing, cousin."
"My name is Wilson Piper," he began. "Architect. Or I was until ten years ago, when I started working for a remarkable man. That's who we are going to meet now, miss. I saw you take off that green mask a few minutes ago."
"Deny everything, those are the words that I live by," she scoffed. "Keep your lips flapping please, my ears are open."
"The three men in that apartment were all killers," he said. "You were in extreme peril the entire time you were with them. I saw the window flash twice. Gunshots with a silencer?"
"Sounds reasonable. Where are we going anyway?"
"A place right next to the Chrysler Building," Piper said. He slowed to a stop at a red light. "You're not much for straight answers, miss. Can I assume that all three men... Strait, Bantam and Riese are dead?"
"I wish I could help you," she replied. "But I might advise you not to buy as many Christmas cards this year."
"Good enough." They had reached a newer building in severe Art Deco style, with lots of aluminum and glass and stylized jagged bolts on a strip above a concrete ramp. Piper slowed and rolled down that ramp into an underground garage. Three slots were painted RESERVED in red letters and he pulled into one of these.
"You can relax now, Miss O'Connor," the skinny old man said as he got out from behind the wheel. "I assure you the excitement is over for tonight."
"I'm from Missouri. Well, actually, I'm from Red Hook but you know what I mean." She stood up next to the car, adjusting the strap on her handbag. "Lead on, sport."
Piper buttoned his suit jacket. He was so thin he resembled a child's stick figure drawing. Going over to one of the massive concrete pillars which supported the ceiling of the garage, he opened a section which swung on concealed hinges to reveal a combination dial.
"What do you keep in there?" Kelly asked, peering over his bony shoulder.
Instead of answering, Piper spun the dial left and right, then pressed it inward with a click. A door swung open in the pillar to reveal a wood-panelled compartment barely large enough to accomodate the two of them. Piper entered and, despite some misgivings, Kelly squeezed in next to him. After the door closed, a humming sounded and she felt motion. They were rising. Through the opening of the door, the wall could be seen moving down quickly.
"Tickle my feet!" she laughed. "Is this a secret elevator? How clever."
"I feel you can be trusted knowing about it," he responded with a shrug.
Several minutes later, the car stopped and a door in the wall swung open. They stepped out into an elegant hallway with subdued recessed lighting. When the elevator door closed, a chime sounded overhead. In the wall facing them, a plain unmarked door slid open.
That day, the Green Devil had met five odd-looking men but at the moment she felt her breath taken away at facing the largest man she had ever seen in her life.
VI.
His shoulders touched both sides of the doorway and his head scraped the top. Kelly estimated this giant was a full foot taller than her five feet seven and must have weighed two hundred and seventy.. but judging by the trim waist, none of that was fat.
He was wearing a white lab smock buttoned to the neck.
The big square face was stern, not exactly handsome as much as imposing. His skin was dark, almost the same color as that of Lincoln on the penny, and he had short-cropped light blond hair. As Kelly gaped, he extended a huge hand for her to shake.
"Thank you, Piper," he said in a resonant voice. "Please come in, Miss O'Connor. I've wanted to meet you for quite a while now."
Kelly made a croaking noise, cleared her throat and managed to say, "Hi." She was ushered by the towering man into a brightly lit room where two enamel-topped tables were covered by assorted glass flasks and bottles holding variously-colored liquids. One open jar steamed as if it contained dry ice.
Pulling a stool over for his guest, the big man remained standing himself. "Allow me. I am Dr Mercado Vitarius. An Alchemist. I am considerably older than you might think."
"Ah. Yes," she squeaked. "How do you do?"
"My sources tell me you have already worked with several of my colleagues in the Midnight War," he continued. "Mark Drum, Arcangel, the Sting and his partner."
Kelly didn't answer for a second, then got a grip. "Deny everything, that's my motto."
"Quite all right. I don't expect you to admit being the Green Devil for the moment. Today, you encountered four dangerous men, treasure hunters and guns for hire. Soldiers of fortune, you might say. The body of William Gibbons has been found and the police are investigating. They are also at Tudor City right now, questioning everyone in the area."
Kelly made no comment. As overwhelming as this Vitarius was, she was determined not to give anything away. So far she had not confirmed anything.
Dr Vitarius placed a shallow metal tray on the table next to Kelly, then filled it with a pungent colorless liquid from a flask. "Please be careful not to touch the solution," he said, then held out an enormous hand. "The shawl?"
Without knowing she was going to do it, Kelly drew the strip of cloth from her handbag and passed it to him. She was surprised to feel relief at getting that doomful thing out of her possession.
Using a pair of stainless steel tongs, Vitarius laid the shawl down in the tray and swished it back and forth. "The shawl in itself has no value," the Alchemist said. He held the cloth up to drip for a second, then stretched it out on the table top.
Kelly leaned over to see. All color had been bleached from the material. Fine black lines remained showing strange outlines. What on Earth? Suddenly, she blurted, "A map! It's a map!"
"It is indeed a map," Dr Vitarius told her. "More than a century ago, criminals buried a fortune in Aztec gold because they were on the run from the Mexican police. They had someone sew this fine iron wire into the shawl to mark where the treasure was hidden."
Piper broke his silence. "That was why those men died. They knew the secret of the shawl and were more than willing to kill for it."
"Ugh. How horrid." Kelly lifted her eyes to meet the Alchemist's gaze. "But now, who is going to claim that gold? You?"
Dr Vitarius smiled with a touch of sadness. "No one will, Miss O'Connor. That treasure is now deep beneath a government building on the outskirts of Mexico City."
4/14/2022
