"Blackouts On Demand"
May. 28th, 2022 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Blackouts On Demand"
2/22-2/23/1934
I.
Callagan had been expecting trouble from Black Bill all night. Around three-thirty, the carousing and singing had ebbed to silence as most of the regulars had drifted out the door into the freezing night. All that remained were a few near-limp barflies, a faded hooker past her prime earning years and two elderly Chinese gentlemen playing some esoteric card game in the corner. The haze of cigarette smoke and the stink of the kerosene heater in one corner did not improve the ANCHOR's usually dismal aroma.
Black Bill had evidently earned his nickname from the bristling ebony beard which stood out from his jaw as stiff as a whiskbroom. His greasy hair, parted in the middle, was the same hue but the bright red of his bulbous nose made a lively contrast. Bill was big enough, well over six feet and maybe two hundred and fifty pounds of which everything except the round belly was hard muscle and bone. And he had been making loud comments toward J. Erwin Callagan with the intention of provoking a fight since he had come into the bar.
Until Bill's entrance, Callagan had been unobtrusively occupying a table in one corner, putting away rotgut not hastily but steadily. Four inches shorter and almost a hundred pounds lighter than his tormentor, Callagan seemed to be an unimposing man about fifty, with short reddish-blond hair under a pushed-back captain's cap, and his dark blue eyes were watchful. But he had taken off his peacoat in the warm room and the arms showing below his rolled-eyed sleeves were as dark and gnarled as if carved from oak. There were numerous white scars on his knobby knuckles, too.
When Black Bill announced to an uncaring clientele that anyone who had ever sailed on the UNDINE under Dutchman Dirkan was still picking lice out their hair, Callagan sighed. This would keep escalating until Bill was yelling in his face from inches away. Might as well get it over with. He pushed back his rickety chair and rose, hitching up his faded bellbottoms. "Aw, Bill," he drawled. "You know I'm retired from the bare-knuckle game."
"Because you was afraid you'd gonna have to take a pastin' from ME!" the huge man roared, thumping a fist to his own chest. "I was in Manila the last time our paths crossed, a lot of money was changing hands with each slugfest. But you never showed."
"Got enough savings to live on," Callagan said simply. "I'm still an Able Bodied Seaman, I'll sign on for a few more jobs as needed but I don't care to pick other men's teeth out of my mitts anymore."
Black Bill raised his fists and began weaving them in small circles. "Yeah! So you say. I claim yer yellow. You lost your nerve. Come on, I'll leave you an opening, take yer best shot."
"Fine. Be that way. Over here, away from the furniture." Callagan took a few steps toward the most open area. He noticed the two Chinese had unobtrusively headed for the door, but the old floozy was watching with interest and making a gleeful comment to the bartender.
Black Bill circled clockwise, surprisingly light on his feet considering how overweight he was. He faked a left jab and threw a right in the classic maneuever. While his right fist was still moving on its trajectory, his head was rudely slewed around by a left cross that nearly broke his jaw. The impact sounded like a hammer hitting a frozen slab of beef. Black Bill sagged at the knees and Callagan followed with a straight right arm to the abdomen, shoving the dazed man off his feet to land in a heap.
Stepping back, Callagan kneaded his hands together to keep them from stiffening. Toughened as he had made them by years of striking ropes tied around masts, human fists hadn't evolved to punch solid bone without taking some damage. He concluded that Black Bill wasn't kayoed but he was stunned enough to not be enthusiastic about sudden movement for a while.
Wrestling his long peacoat on and finishing his shot glass, Callagan regretted that this meant he had better go home now. Even if Bill didn't demand another chance, it would be awkward having him sprawled there. It made drinking uncomfortable. He bundled up, got his wool scarf adjusted around his neck and headed for the door.
"Hey, Callagan? Can I ask you something?" said the bartender.
"Questions are free," was the reply. "You may not like the answers."
"Did I see that right? Did you throw your punch after Bill had already started to swing? How is that even possible?"
Callagan gave his crooked wry grin and laughed. "What I think is, he heard his conscience finally trying to get his attention. That slowed him down some, arf arf."
That got some guffaws from the five people at the bar, and Callagan touched the shiny bill of his white cap as he swung open the door and stepped out into Winter's last assault. Snow still lingered in many spots, hard as rock as the temperatures hadn't gotten risen much above freezing for a week. Callagan hunched his shoulders up and swung left on the cobblestone street. He should have bought a bottle at the bar to take with him, but he didn't want to go back in there. From a pocket, he drew out a corncob pipe already packed and scratched a match into flame with his thumbnail. A fragrant minty aroma drifted around him.
At the corner of Fleet Lane ahead, a long gleaming Pontiac stood with its motor running. Callagan watched it suspiciously, always ready for trouble. But the driver door opened and a slightly built man in a well-tailored suit with white topcoat called over, "Jack? Ah, J. Erwin Callagan. There you are. Do you have a minute? I would like a few words."
Recognizing Kenneth Dred, Callagan raised an eyebrow and strolled over with sudden curiosity. Whenever Dred turned up, the Midnight War was near.
II.
Comfortably settled in the front passenger seat of the big car, Callagan relaxed in the pleasant dry warmth and sighed. "Hello, Kenneth. Long time no mayhem." He had already tapped out the pipe and stowed it away.
That got a smile from the driver. In his early thirties, Dred was a short gnomish man with receding brown hair over a high forehead and an inquisitive face. The thin leather gloves with which he gripped the wheel were handmade, another unobtrusive sign of substantial income even in these hard times. "You have a point. Both times I've met you, I've sent you into situations where you dealt with, shall we say, rough company? And before the dust settled, there had been considerable action."
"I like the understated way you put things," the old sailor said. "Last time I listened to you, I nearly got my blood sucked dry and only lived to see another day more by luck than by cleverness. What is it this time? Zombies? Ghouls?"
Kenneth Dred was headed uptown, moving along a deserted Fifth Avenue at three AM. "No, no. Merely an unscrupulous Human committing some crimes. Just flesh and blood, with no fangs or talons. Although I do suspect he has a wild talent of some sort."
"Before we go any further, let's mention some compensation. I know your personal check is good, Kenneth."
"Heh. Yes, I have already prepared a check in your name for one thousand dollars. I can give you that now. That covers your expenses on this mission. When I come back from England in a week, you will receive the five thousand remainder if the assignment has been carried out. Is that satisfactory?"
"It'll do. I'd like not having to ship out into freezing North Atlantic waters this time of year if I can." Callagan was unbuttoning his long coat as he adjusted to the warmth of the car. "So, next thing is for you to unload one of your pep talks where you tell me how grave the threat is and how I'm the only man who can handle, am I right?"
"You are. I have to be at Idlewild in a few hours but I think a certain tough old sailor I know can investigate some odd events. As far as I know, nobody else has spotted a pattern yet. I was talking to Inspector Blancshan and to Dr Fenwick at Metro General, and then I heard from an old friend who shares my love of the inexplicable."
Callagan made a disgusted growl. "Skip the appetizers, get to the meat, man! What's going on?"
"Very well. Over the past few months, more than a dozen people in the New York area suffered sudden blackouts. They were unconscious for up to half an hour. Their doctors are baffled. No high blood pressure, no sign of a stroke, only one of them drank and he swears it was two glasses of beer that night. They were all in their own houses or apartments when it happened. And none of them have reported any unusual symptoms since."
"That IS queer," the old sailor muttered. "Can't say as I got a clue what that means."
"Ah, but there's more. Four of them were robbbed while they were comatose. Cash, jewelry, furs, antiques... whatever could be carried. Jack, the most disturbing event happened to a nineteen year old woman up by Central Park West. She and her mother both passed out, the mother evidently was left alone but the girl was sexually violated. Evidence on her body and the state of her clothing is clear. As you can imagine, she's having the hardest time dealing with this."
"Garh, that makes my blood boil," Callagan said. "Slugging it out with big beefy men is one thing, but I can't abide abusin' defenseless females. What's going on, Kenneth? How do you explain all this?"
"There's your boarding house up ahead," Dred replied. "Jack, I suspect I know how you stay so resilient and tough. Few bare-knuckle boxers are still winning bouts at the age of fifty-one. Not that I would ever tell anyone, of course.
"I keeps a lot to meself," the old sailor admitted. "I doesn't want anyone to learn my secrets!"
"Here's the point," Kenneth Dred said as he rolled up to the curb in front of a dingy old three story home with a porch light still burning. "I think someone is causing these blackouts so he can rob and rape as he likes. He's using his wild talent for the most vile purposes. Are you interested in finding this man and making him harmless?"
"Interested?!" Callagan gave his short, barking laugh. "I'll tell the world I am."
III.
At the corner of Yancy Street where Franz Grossman still sold salamis and wurst from his cart, Callagan swung into a side street so narrow it might have started as an alley. Two adults could not walk abreast down it. Glancing back to make sure he was unobserved, he stepped up to a plain wooden door with a peephole and rapped his knuckles sharply three times.
The wooden panel slid aside enough to reveal two hostile and very bloodshot eyes. They narrowed at the old sailor and a voice demanded, "What do you call a dog with no legs?"
"It doesn't matter because he won't come no matter what you call him." In a flash, the peephole clicked shut, the door swung inward and he was urged inside by strong hands seizing his coat.
"You derned fool swabs, you know Prohibition is over!" Callagan complained. "You doesn't have to be a speakeasy no more."
"Ah, pipe down, you old barnacle," said the short fat man who had yanked him inside. He was wearing an apron which had once been white over a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of trousers which had seen better decades. "Old habits die hard. Tell yer what, though, first shot of gin is on the house."
"Yer a prince," replied Callagan, bestowing a friendly swat to the shoulder that nearly floored the man. He surveyed the interior and found nothing had changed since his last visit here. Two pool tables, three round card tables, all in use. Ashtrays long overfilled with cigar and cigarette butts, the tinny sound of big band music swelling from a waist-high radio in the corner.
"Like coming home, Padre," he said to his host. They walked over to a long table which displayed twenty different liquor bottles in different levels of emptiness, as well as a box of shot glasses and some white rags by a jug of water. "Got any of that Three Rabbits brand, it were smooth as barbed wire."
"Sure, sure, here ya go." The man called Padre watched his new patron gulp down the Scotch without any signs of feeling it. "Got a hot poker game burning over there, Deaf Jimmy has already lost his car."
"Reckon I'll mingle," said Callagan. "I might be shipping out soon, I wants to know anything lively afoot these parts." With that, he drifted over to watch the pool games at a respectful distance. Nothing out of the ordinary going on there. One of the poker games was surly and intense, with three participants glaring at the fourth man who had all the cash and markers piled in front of him.
At a round table in the far corner, the other game was between two elderly gentlemen, both with white hair and both wearing thick-lensed glasses as they studied their cards with no signs of either moving. Callagan pulled out a chair and reversed so that he sat straddling it, his arms resting across the back. "Don't tell me you boys has forgotten whose move it is, arf arf!"
The heavier of the two oldsters cleared his throat and launched a wad of chewing tobacco that missed the brass spittoon nearby by a good six inches. "Ahhhh," he rumbled. "Your bare-knuckles game is sure in a slump these days, Jack. Folks don't have as much loose moolah to bet with."
"I'm gettin' too long in the tooth to be trading punches," Callagan said.
"Who you kidding? You're made out of rawhide and steel springs. Yer a born bruise-maker."
The other old man made a show of rearranging his cards. "Word is that a new hustler might be hiring one or two boys."
"I'm interested," Callagan said. "I need a second nickel to rub against the one I got."
"Seems like a fancy pants boy from the outskirts of high society is entering our badlands," the poker player said. "Word is that he has a knack for second story jobs and wants helpers to carry all the swag that's too heavy for one trip."
"Well, me morals ain't that stringent," responded Callagan. "I might be the boy he's looking for."
The poker player smiled. "I don't know if you've been down by Bleeker Street lately. Right on the corner of Franklin, a place called CONTINENTAL CURIOS. If you're bored, you might find some innaresting old antiques to look at."
Callagan shoved the chair back and stood up, stretching his arms up behind him with a crackling noise. "Soon as I'm flush, I'll be standing you geezers a few rounds, you know, to show my appreciation."
"You've always stayed on good terms with us, Jack." As the old sailor strolled away, the card player mumbled to his partner, "Come to think of it, I thought it was your turn."
"Me?! It's been your move for an hour now...."
Callagan drifted around the dive a while longer, congratulating one of the billiards artists on a flashy break, getting another drink from the man called Padre, even enjoying a few drags on his corncob pipe as he sat by the door.
"What the devil are you smoking?" demanded the proprietor, sniffing hard.
"You doesn't like my own blend?"
"I don't mind, it's clean and fresh. Reminds me of wintergreen."
"Imported stuff," Callagan said. "I'm going back to Old Apache label soon. Getting light out, I'll shove off. Be seeing you, Padre."
"I'll keep an eye on the police beat in the MESSENGER to see what yer up to," he said.
Heading back out into the cold, Callagan rubbed his leathery hands together in glee.
IV.
Noon the next day found the air still merciless as a steady icy wind blew across Manhattan. In a doorway across the street, the watcher in the delapidated raincoat looked up from his newspaper but did not otherwise react as Callagan found the address he had been given. An unlocked door between a tobacconist and a shoe repair shop creaked alarmingly. The old sailor moved up three narrow flights of stairs. The rooms were tenanted, judging by the saturated smell of boiled cabbage and the canned laughter of an episode of MY YOUNGEST DAUGHTER on the radio. Callagan stopped at the third floor landing and pushed his captain's cap back off his forehead.
In front of a door with a frosted glass panel reading ORIENTAL CURIOS - APPRAISALS, a heavyset thug squatted on a chair with a pulp magazine help up close to his eyes. Serge trousers, a well-worn corduroy coat, a white turtleneck and a derby made up an expected uniform. The guard slowly rose to tower a good six inches over Jack Callagan.
"I recognizes your mug, all right," he announced, dropping the magazine to the floor. "Yer supposed to be a tough yegg but honestly you don't look like much to me."
"Then it's a good thing you ain't the man I'm here to impress," Callagan replied pleasantly. "I'm here to talk to someone more important than the likes of you."
At this point, the door opened. A soft, egg-shaped man with only a wisp of baby-fine hair across his cranium blinked out myopically at the two men. "I say, Eugene, who is this?"
"Sez you. Listen, mister, I'm looking for work. I'm an able-bodied seaman with lots of experience.Tough as boiled leather and aces in a scrap. Maybe you got something for me?"
When the huge hulking Eugene stepped forward to grab the old sailor, he was stopped short by a brutal hooking punch into the pit of his stomach. He doubled up as if trying to touch his toes. Callagan shoved him aside and the goon fell to the bare wooden floor while remained preoccupied with catching his breath.
"Big palookas like him is always soft in the middle, I says," Callagan laughed. "He doesn't do a hunnert leg raises each morning the way I does. Jack Callagan is my name, pal."
"Heavens, you play rough," the man said uneasily. "I am Pinkerston, Horace Pinkerston."
"Aw, yer buddy there will be okay in a minute. I din't hit him as hard as I could on account his backbone woulda popped out and he wouldn't be good for much after that."
"I see. Please come in, sir. I believe Mr Krieghund would be interested in meeting you."
Ushered into a bare, Spartan office without decorations or niceties other than a simple unadorned desk and several chairs, Callagan suddenly felt for the first time in years that he was in actual immediate danger. His fists tightened unconsciously until they made popping noises.
Rising from behind that desk was a magnificent brutal specimen of a man in a dark blue military uniform without insignia. The material was snug enough to show hard bulging muscles, including biceps round as cannonballs. Above that stiff collar was a square face under a white-blond crewcut and two absolutely hateful blue eyes glared at the visitor as if barely restraining a murderous urge.
"Excuse me, Mr Krieghund, but this gentleman indisposed Eugene with a single blow. He says he is seeking employment."
"Is he now?" the blond beast replied. His voice sounded neutral as if he had carefully learned to remove any accent. "I am not sure about the shape of his skull. Do you have any Jewish blood?"
"As it happens, I be Irish on both sides back to the battle of Clontarf," the sailor snapped. "But even if I was a Rabbi's little boy, what business would it be of yours?"
"Take care, sir," Krieghund rumbled. "You are not safe at the moment."
"Save the scary talk," Callagan shot back. "You're big all right but I'd make you ashamed of yerself."
Surprisingly, a crooked grin tilted the brute's thin lipped mouth. "Hah. The fellow has spirit. Perhaps you may be of some use. Let us start over on more civil footing. Be seated," he said as he went back behind his desk. "I take it smuggling is not unacceptable to you."
"Nah, not a problem. Well, I doesn't do blackbirding or whoring. Shipping humans against their will goes against me principles. But I got no problem bringing a hold full of bootleg whiskey or rifles to them what pays for it."
"Good, good. I must start by telling you many of my clients are on the Continent. Europe is not an easy market for a businessman."
"I'll say it ain't," Callagan grunted. "They're starting up Part Two of that 1918 war. Some folks never learn."
"Come here late tonight. Say, eleven o'clock," Krieghund said. "You will accompany my Eugene to pick up and deliver a package. He will not hold your little encounter against him, Eugene fights all the time."
"So this will be me job interview, so ter speak? Eugene'll be judging me. Fair enough. I've smuggling in back streets of Manila and on the dirty waterfronts of Shanghai, it's all the same to me."
Standing up, Krieghund allowed the cold appraisal in his sapphire eyes to lessen. "When you return after your assignment, a small payment will be made. With each satisfactory job, I will pay you more."
"Mr Krieghund, that suits me right down to the ground." Callagan extended a gnarled hand and Krieghund shook it with obvious reluctance. As he left the office, the old sailor's face was somber. That handshake had not been an attempt at intimidation but even the brief clasp had told him that Krieghund was terrifyingly strong... strong enough to crack bones within his grip.
V.
The room he rented at Colonel Hopper's boarding house was reasonably decent. Mrs Hopper provided fresh sheets and towels every other day, but he was responsible for his laundry. The bathroom at the end of the hall had to be shared with two other guests but Callagan had spent so much of his life on ships that he was used to that. Aside from the ancient iron-framed bed and a few assorted chairs, the room mostly boasted a dresser on top of which sat a round-topped RCA radio which worked fine.
What was most important to Callagan were the two windows which got a lot of sun. On the sills inside, over the single radiator which often worked, he had six flower pots going with several tiny plants in each bravely making it through the winter. These had arrow-head shaped leaves of a distinctive purple hue. As soon as a new leaf was safely underway, Callagan crushed up an older one to mix in with his pipe tobacco.
It had been five years since he had found the plant by chance on a remote South Seas island otherwise noticeable by the local population's fondness for cannibalism. Going back there for more plants would be a risky proposition.
After getting a sleeping most of the day and thereby missing the boarding house afternoon coffee klatch, Callagan found the bathroom unoccupied and washed up hurriedly with hot soapy water before going back to his room to change. He would skip shaving for the moment. It seemed to others like he wore the same clothes for long stretches, but actually his three sets of blue bell-bottoms and five short-sleeved white pullover shirts with black collars were identical.
During all this fiddling about, he was hardly aware of his surroundings. He was mulling over everything that Kenneth Dred had told him the night before. The two men were hardly friends, but Dred sometimes showed up with a substantial payment if Callagan would undertake some remarkably dangerous mission and Callagan found himself accepting every time. He had been on the outskirts of the little-known Midnight War for years. It was Dred who pulled him headlong into the secret nightmarish world that most people never knew as even rumors.
Out in the hall, with its low benches between roomers' doors and its framed prints of seascapes, he ran into Chester. A dumpy middle-aged man, Chester scraped by selling vaccuum cleaners and hairbrushes door to door. In this Depression where money was not so much tight as nearly extinct, he usually made one sale for every twenty doors slammed angrily in his face. Helping him somewhat was his unshakeable confidence and enthusiasm.
"Morning, Jack, sleep well, I didn't even have dreams I was so tired after pounding the pavements yesterday, my God I bet I covered the entire West side from the docks up to Harlem before I had to call it quits--"
"Hiya, Chester." Callagan had learned to interrupt no matter where Chester was in a sentence because the man left no openings. "Ya think there's any leftovers?"
"Oh I'm sure of it, you know Mrs Hopper she always weighs the table down with enough food to take care of the Chinese army, the liver was okay but the bacon was really crisp today, I'd bet there some left--"
"I'm gonna see if I can filch some," the old sailor said as he swung around and trotted down the creaking staircase. In the living room, the imposing bulk of Evangeline Hopper took up half the couch. She gave him a suspicious eye over her morning copy of the DAILY MESSENGER.
"Morning, ma'am," Callagan said, holding his cap in one hand while indoors.
"Rising at the crack of dusk," she snorted, rustling the paper with suppressed fury. "Then carousing out until the wee hours. Bless me. But then you ARE a sailor and my late mother told me about your ilk."
"I was wondering if I might fix meself a sandwich...?"
"Oh, why not. There's a plate of bacon in the Frigidaire and a loaf of rye bread on the sideboard. Would that be satisfying your gallivanting heart?"
"I couldn't ask for more if I wuz at Heaven's Gate," he replied, and strolled into the kitchen. A moment later, he emerged with a thick sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin. "Smells like maybe a roast in the oven, Missus Hopper?"
"Not that you'll be seen afore the cows are coming home." Her tone softened. "But I do admit you pay your rent promptly and you're quiet as a mouse. Even if you reek of whiskey, you never come in singing."
"No, ma'am," he said and headed outside. The front door had a tiny bell at its top that jingled whenever anyone entered or left. Callagan turned back to smile farewell as he closed that door behind him. Out onto the crowded streets of the Lower East Side, he found a heartless wind biting at him. Callagan turned up his collar and began striding briskly toward the address where Krieghund had told him to go.
VI.
The meeting at Krieghund's office had been brief and unemotional. The huge guard Eugene had regarded Callagan without any obvious resentment. Given a small box wrapped in a waxed brown paper, the old sailor barely glanced at it before tucking it away in a capacious pocket of his peacoat. "I reckons we know the sign and counter-sign well enough," he said. "Mebbe me and me new mate will be shoving off then."
"Be discreet," advised Krieghund. "The streets at night are not safe in these times when men go hungry. Keep your eyes open. Watch each other's back."
"Thanks kindly, mister. But I sailed ports from Yokohama to Liverpool, and everything's still on my body where I growed it." With Eugene right behind him, Callagan left the office and strode down the stairs of the now silent building and back out into the night. Few cars were on the street. Those who still owned autos were hard pressed to supply gas for them. The movie theatres had closed for the night. As the two men walked rapidly further south, they found themselves in front of a building which had lights on in only its second floor windows.
Couples could be seen slowly circling in their emraces to smoky moody blues. Painted in black cursive paint were the words HEAVENLAND - 22 BEAUTIFUL GIRLS - A DIME A DANCE. Eugene came to a halt. "We're meeting the trader in the rear."
Knowing better than to ask questions at this point, being still judged and weighed whether he was trustworthy, Callagan followed compliantly into a narrow dead end alley where five men stood under the dim glow of a tiny yellow bulb over a side door. They had their coat collars up, hats pulled down low and showed as little of themselves as possible. All were tall and broad, as if selected to be imposing.
Eugene stepped forward, hands jammed down in his trousers pockets, feet well apart. Callagan came to a halt beside him.
In a marked gutteral accent, one of the men said, "The supply you have, yes?"
"Ah, that's not the question we were supposed to be asked," Eugene retorted. "Sign and counter-sign, you know, real cloak and dagger stuff."
"What patience have we with such child's games?" the man growled. He raised a hand from his right coat pocket and pointed a big black .45 automatic at the two men. "Der Krieghund has gone rogue. No more do we trust him."
Callagan had been tapping his deck shoes against a loose brick that had worked loose from the alley floor. Keeping his voice even and mellow, he said, "Boys, boys, everything's negotiable, I always sez," and with the last word, he reached down and hurled the brick hard and straight into the center of the gunman's face with a satisfying crunch. The gun did not discharge as the agent fell over backwards.
In the next few seconds, Jack Callagan had vaulted right into the midst of the remaining strangers. He entered what he sometimes thought of as the 'fight cloud,' where he struggled against multiple opponents at such close range that they became a squirming tangle of arms and legs. One pistol did bark and he heard a grunt but he himself felt no wound. Callagan struck blows as if he gripped a hammer in each hand, wherever he struck a man went down with a broken jaw or cracked sternum. Several punches glanced off him, some hard enough to stun a normal man but he hardly noticed. Only one of the traders was left, the one with a bleeding nose where the brick had struck. He had been the one to loose a wild shot. Springing in close, Callagan drew his right arm back behind his own ear and blasted a wide looping roundhouse that twisted the man's head around on his neck like the cap of a beer bottle being unscrewed.
Even as he caught his breath and flexed his bruised hands, the old sailor grinned in self-congratulation. He had lost none of his timing or his judgement of distance. As far as he could tell, he still brawled as he had at twenty when he had first sailed. That had even been fun in an adrenaline-pumping way.
Then he turned and saw Eugene propped up against the alley wall. In the dim light, the spreading blot of blood on his shirt looked black. Callagan rushed over.
"It's no use," Eugene gasped. "I'm a goner. I'm breathing my last."
"Aw, don't be melodramatic," Callagan snapped. "Lemme take a peek. It's a good one, right through your lower side below the ribs. Yer bleeding like a soda fountain but I doesn't think yer lungs or yer gizzard have been perforated. Come on, I'll help you up."
"I'll give you my mother's address," Eugene said. "Call her. Tell her how I died..."
Tugging a massive arm across his shoulders, the sailor hauled the bigger man out into the street. One block over had been the lights of a drug store that stayed open late. Callagan reeled under the weight, but he half dragged Eugene through the glass doors of the DR FINSTER PHARMACY and let the brute sag down onto a bench. No one was in sight, maybe the owner was in the back room.
"I regrets now all my sins, Jack, I been a no-good bilge rat..."
"Shaddup, you ain't gonna die." In one corner was a pay phone. Digging in his pockets for a nickel, Callagan called the number of the local hospital he had been carried into a few times. He explained the situation in tones that left no uncertainty how serious he was and was told an ambulance was already warmed up and would be on the way.
After he hung up, Callagan gave his short barking laugh. "Arf, arf, membbe I shoulda mentioned the boys I left in the alley. They might needs a few aspirin and bandaids. Good luck, Eugene."
"You're not going to leave me here to die alone...?"
"Jeez Louise, for a bouncer you sure don't handle injury well. I got shot worse than that and still walked twenty miles through the Gobi Desert. See ya later." Callagan rushed out of the drugstore as a bearded man in a white smock emerged from the storeroom. Now was no time to start answering questions.
VI.
Close to one in the morning, streets deserted of cars because of the Depression and sidewalks empty of people because of the Arctic winds, Jack Callagan made his way back to EUROPEAN CURIOS where both Krieghund and his lieutenant were waiting. Plopping down into a chair, unfastening the tabs on his long coat, Callagan pulled out his pipe and began packing it without being asked.
"Report." The single word from the grimly staring blond beast showed real self-control. He didn't ask where Eugene was or how the assignment had gone. He had the patience to hear Callagan's version of events first.
The old sailor related what had happened with only a few colorful phrases and bouts of self-praise. "So I left Eugene in good hands. I seen the ambulance pull up, he'll be seaworthy in a week or less. Then I ankled my way back here."
"So the client never showed," Krieghund muttered angrily. "That rival group from the East must have tortured the meeting location from him. Hand over the package, if you will."
Callagan lit his pipe and inhaled deeply, letting twin plumes of smoke out of his nostrils. "Aye, there's a snap, sir. At a street light, I couldn't help but inspect what had caused such a fracas. There was no name or destination of course but I could see words embossed in the wax paper. Words in German."
"That pipe tobacco you smoke is so familiar. Mint. I have smelled it somewhere before..." Krieghund began.
"I figger you boys are involved with those whacky blackout crimes which have been going on. You was going to sell the way to cause them, ain't that it?" Callagan took another satisfying drag, filling the room with wintergreen tang, then tapped the pipe out against his heel. "I ain't much fer spies, fellas. But I watch the newsreels and I read the papers, and I got an idea what's going on in your Fatherland."
Suddenly, the big blond man loomed up over the seated Callagan, leaning forward on stiff arms. "I will the package have now."
Without a reply, the old sailor removed the box from his pocket and slid it across the desk. Instantly, Krieghund spotted the torn edges of the wrapper. "You opened it? How dare you?"
But even as the brute spoke, Jack Callagan had whipped out a thin glass tube from his pocket and snapped it between his fingers right under the man's aristocratic nose. A sticky black vapor clung to Krieghund's face. Although he pawed at the fumes, he had by bad luck been inhaling and he got a lungful. Krieghund reeled, clutching at the air with his beefy paws and fell right on top of his luckless assistant. A second later, Pinkerton had breathed in enough that he passed out as well.
Still holding his breath, Callagan backed out of the room and into the freezing cold hallway. Only then did he exhale a cloud of his special pipe mix. There had been a payphone in the foyer on the first floor. From earlier exploits where he had been acting on behalf of Kenneth Dred, Callagan knew not only the number of the New York office of the FBI but how to reach their new Department 21 Black, established to fight saboteurs and Fifth Columnists.
That was quite an invention in those glass tubes, a smoke which caused instant blackouts in people. Callagan had decided he should destroy the chemical before the Feds got there. Maybe he was too cynical to be as patriotic as he should, but he wasn't sure anyone could be trusted with such a weapon. After phoning 21 Black and then also calling Kenneth Dred, Callagan rubbed an aching shoulder and started trudging up the stairs to keep an eye on the prisoners. This had all gone as smoothly as anyone could ask. His one twinge of regret was that he had been looking forward to a knock-down slugfest with that Krieghund palooka. Now fully realizing what he was wishing for, Callagan hoped someday he'd get a bout.
11/17/2020
2/22-2/23/1934
I.
Callagan had been expecting trouble from Black Bill all night. Around three-thirty, the carousing and singing had ebbed to silence as most of the regulars had drifted out the door into the freezing night. All that remained were a few near-limp barflies, a faded hooker past her prime earning years and two elderly Chinese gentlemen playing some esoteric card game in the corner. The haze of cigarette smoke and the stink of the kerosene heater in one corner did not improve the ANCHOR's usually dismal aroma.
Black Bill had evidently earned his nickname from the bristling ebony beard which stood out from his jaw as stiff as a whiskbroom. His greasy hair, parted in the middle, was the same hue but the bright red of his bulbous nose made a lively contrast. Bill was big enough, well over six feet and maybe two hundred and fifty pounds of which everything except the round belly was hard muscle and bone. And he had been making loud comments toward J. Erwin Callagan with the intention of provoking a fight since he had come into the bar.
Until Bill's entrance, Callagan had been unobtrusively occupying a table in one corner, putting away rotgut not hastily but steadily. Four inches shorter and almost a hundred pounds lighter than his tormentor, Callagan seemed to be an unimposing man about fifty, with short reddish-blond hair under a pushed-back captain's cap, and his dark blue eyes were watchful. But he had taken off his peacoat in the warm room and the arms showing below his rolled-eyed sleeves were as dark and gnarled as if carved from oak. There were numerous white scars on his knobby knuckles, too.
When Black Bill announced to an uncaring clientele that anyone who had ever sailed on the UNDINE under Dutchman Dirkan was still picking lice out their hair, Callagan sighed. This would keep escalating until Bill was yelling in his face from inches away. Might as well get it over with. He pushed back his rickety chair and rose, hitching up his faded bellbottoms. "Aw, Bill," he drawled. "You know I'm retired from the bare-knuckle game."
"Because you was afraid you'd gonna have to take a pastin' from ME!" the huge man roared, thumping a fist to his own chest. "I was in Manila the last time our paths crossed, a lot of money was changing hands with each slugfest. But you never showed."
"Got enough savings to live on," Callagan said simply. "I'm still an Able Bodied Seaman, I'll sign on for a few more jobs as needed but I don't care to pick other men's teeth out of my mitts anymore."
Black Bill raised his fists and began weaving them in small circles. "Yeah! So you say. I claim yer yellow. You lost your nerve. Come on, I'll leave you an opening, take yer best shot."
"Fine. Be that way. Over here, away from the furniture." Callagan took a few steps toward the most open area. He noticed the two Chinese had unobtrusively headed for the door, but the old floozy was watching with interest and making a gleeful comment to the bartender.
Black Bill circled clockwise, surprisingly light on his feet considering how overweight he was. He faked a left jab and threw a right in the classic maneuever. While his right fist was still moving on its trajectory, his head was rudely slewed around by a left cross that nearly broke his jaw. The impact sounded like a hammer hitting a frozen slab of beef. Black Bill sagged at the knees and Callagan followed with a straight right arm to the abdomen, shoving the dazed man off his feet to land in a heap.
Stepping back, Callagan kneaded his hands together to keep them from stiffening. Toughened as he had made them by years of striking ropes tied around masts, human fists hadn't evolved to punch solid bone without taking some damage. He concluded that Black Bill wasn't kayoed but he was stunned enough to not be enthusiastic about sudden movement for a while.
Wrestling his long peacoat on and finishing his shot glass, Callagan regretted that this meant he had better go home now. Even if Bill didn't demand another chance, it would be awkward having him sprawled there. It made drinking uncomfortable. He bundled up, got his wool scarf adjusted around his neck and headed for the door.
"Hey, Callagan? Can I ask you something?" said the bartender.
"Questions are free," was the reply. "You may not like the answers."
"Did I see that right? Did you throw your punch after Bill had already started to swing? How is that even possible?"
Callagan gave his crooked wry grin and laughed. "What I think is, he heard his conscience finally trying to get his attention. That slowed him down some, arf arf."
That got some guffaws from the five people at the bar, and Callagan touched the shiny bill of his white cap as he swung open the door and stepped out into Winter's last assault. Snow still lingered in many spots, hard as rock as the temperatures hadn't gotten risen much above freezing for a week. Callagan hunched his shoulders up and swung left on the cobblestone street. He should have bought a bottle at the bar to take with him, but he didn't want to go back in there. From a pocket, he drew out a corncob pipe already packed and scratched a match into flame with his thumbnail. A fragrant minty aroma drifted around him.
At the corner of Fleet Lane ahead, a long gleaming Pontiac stood with its motor running. Callagan watched it suspiciously, always ready for trouble. But the driver door opened and a slightly built man in a well-tailored suit with white topcoat called over, "Jack? Ah, J. Erwin Callagan. There you are. Do you have a minute? I would like a few words."
Recognizing Kenneth Dred, Callagan raised an eyebrow and strolled over with sudden curiosity. Whenever Dred turned up, the Midnight War was near.
II.
Comfortably settled in the front passenger seat of the big car, Callagan relaxed in the pleasant dry warmth and sighed. "Hello, Kenneth. Long time no mayhem." He had already tapped out the pipe and stowed it away.
That got a smile from the driver. In his early thirties, Dred was a short gnomish man with receding brown hair over a high forehead and an inquisitive face. The thin leather gloves with which he gripped the wheel were handmade, another unobtrusive sign of substantial income even in these hard times. "You have a point. Both times I've met you, I've sent you into situations where you dealt with, shall we say, rough company? And before the dust settled, there had been considerable action."
"I like the understated way you put things," the old sailor said. "Last time I listened to you, I nearly got my blood sucked dry and only lived to see another day more by luck than by cleverness. What is it this time? Zombies? Ghouls?"
Kenneth Dred was headed uptown, moving along a deserted Fifth Avenue at three AM. "No, no. Merely an unscrupulous Human committing some crimes. Just flesh and blood, with no fangs or talons. Although I do suspect he has a wild talent of some sort."
"Before we go any further, let's mention some compensation. I know your personal check is good, Kenneth."
"Heh. Yes, I have already prepared a check in your name for one thousand dollars. I can give you that now. That covers your expenses on this mission. When I come back from England in a week, you will receive the five thousand remainder if the assignment has been carried out. Is that satisfactory?"
"It'll do. I'd like not having to ship out into freezing North Atlantic waters this time of year if I can." Callagan was unbuttoning his long coat as he adjusted to the warmth of the car. "So, next thing is for you to unload one of your pep talks where you tell me how grave the threat is and how I'm the only man who can handle, am I right?"
"You are. I have to be at Idlewild in a few hours but I think a certain tough old sailor I know can investigate some odd events. As far as I know, nobody else has spotted a pattern yet. I was talking to Inspector Blancshan and to Dr Fenwick at Metro General, and then I heard from an old friend who shares my love of the inexplicable."
Callagan made a disgusted growl. "Skip the appetizers, get to the meat, man! What's going on?"
"Very well. Over the past few months, more than a dozen people in the New York area suffered sudden blackouts. They were unconscious for up to half an hour. Their doctors are baffled. No high blood pressure, no sign of a stroke, only one of them drank and he swears it was two glasses of beer that night. They were all in their own houses or apartments when it happened. And none of them have reported any unusual symptoms since."
"That IS queer," the old sailor muttered. "Can't say as I got a clue what that means."
"Ah, but there's more. Four of them were robbbed while they were comatose. Cash, jewelry, furs, antiques... whatever could be carried. Jack, the most disturbing event happened to a nineteen year old woman up by Central Park West. She and her mother both passed out, the mother evidently was left alone but the girl was sexually violated. Evidence on her body and the state of her clothing is clear. As you can imagine, she's having the hardest time dealing with this."
"Garh, that makes my blood boil," Callagan said. "Slugging it out with big beefy men is one thing, but I can't abide abusin' defenseless females. What's going on, Kenneth? How do you explain all this?"
"There's your boarding house up ahead," Dred replied. "Jack, I suspect I know how you stay so resilient and tough. Few bare-knuckle boxers are still winning bouts at the age of fifty-one. Not that I would ever tell anyone, of course.
"I keeps a lot to meself," the old sailor admitted. "I doesn't want anyone to learn my secrets!"
"Here's the point," Kenneth Dred said as he rolled up to the curb in front of a dingy old three story home with a porch light still burning. "I think someone is causing these blackouts so he can rob and rape as he likes. He's using his wild talent for the most vile purposes. Are you interested in finding this man and making him harmless?"
"Interested?!" Callagan gave his short, barking laugh. "I'll tell the world I am."
III.
At the corner of Yancy Street where Franz Grossman still sold salamis and wurst from his cart, Callagan swung into a side street so narrow it might have started as an alley. Two adults could not walk abreast down it. Glancing back to make sure he was unobserved, he stepped up to a plain wooden door with a peephole and rapped his knuckles sharply three times.
The wooden panel slid aside enough to reveal two hostile and very bloodshot eyes. They narrowed at the old sailor and a voice demanded, "What do you call a dog with no legs?"
"It doesn't matter because he won't come no matter what you call him." In a flash, the peephole clicked shut, the door swung inward and he was urged inside by strong hands seizing his coat.
"You derned fool swabs, you know Prohibition is over!" Callagan complained. "You doesn't have to be a speakeasy no more."
"Ah, pipe down, you old barnacle," said the short fat man who had yanked him inside. He was wearing an apron which had once been white over a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of trousers which had seen better decades. "Old habits die hard. Tell yer what, though, first shot of gin is on the house."
"Yer a prince," replied Callagan, bestowing a friendly swat to the shoulder that nearly floored the man. He surveyed the interior and found nothing had changed since his last visit here. Two pool tables, three round card tables, all in use. Ashtrays long overfilled with cigar and cigarette butts, the tinny sound of big band music swelling from a waist-high radio in the corner.
"Like coming home, Padre," he said to his host. They walked over to a long table which displayed twenty different liquor bottles in different levels of emptiness, as well as a box of shot glasses and some white rags by a jug of water. "Got any of that Three Rabbits brand, it were smooth as barbed wire."
"Sure, sure, here ya go." The man called Padre watched his new patron gulp down the Scotch without any signs of feeling it. "Got a hot poker game burning over there, Deaf Jimmy has already lost his car."
"Reckon I'll mingle," said Callagan. "I might be shipping out soon, I wants to know anything lively afoot these parts." With that, he drifted over to watch the pool games at a respectful distance. Nothing out of the ordinary going on there. One of the poker games was surly and intense, with three participants glaring at the fourth man who had all the cash and markers piled in front of him.
At a round table in the far corner, the other game was between two elderly gentlemen, both with white hair and both wearing thick-lensed glasses as they studied their cards with no signs of either moving. Callagan pulled out a chair and reversed so that he sat straddling it, his arms resting across the back. "Don't tell me you boys has forgotten whose move it is, arf arf!"
The heavier of the two oldsters cleared his throat and launched a wad of chewing tobacco that missed the brass spittoon nearby by a good six inches. "Ahhhh," he rumbled. "Your bare-knuckles game is sure in a slump these days, Jack. Folks don't have as much loose moolah to bet with."
"I'm gettin' too long in the tooth to be trading punches," Callagan said.
"Who you kidding? You're made out of rawhide and steel springs. Yer a born bruise-maker."
The other old man made a show of rearranging his cards. "Word is that a new hustler might be hiring one or two boys."
"I'm interested," Callagan said. "I need a second nickel to rub against the one I got."
"Seems like a fancy pants boy from the outskirts of high society is entering our badlands," the poker player said. "Word is that he has a knack for second story jobs and wants helpers to carry all the swag that's too heavy for one trip."
"Well, me morals ain't that stringent," responded Callagan. "I might be the boy he's looking for."
The poker player smiled. "I don't know if you've been down by Bleeker Street lately. Right on the corner of Franklin, a place called CONTINENTAL CURIOS. If you're bored, you might find some innaresting old antiques to look at."
Callagan shoved the chair back and stood up, stretching his arms up behind him with a crackling noise. "Soon as I'm flush, I'll be standing you geezers a few rounds, you know, to show my appreciation."
"You've always stayed on good terms with us, Jack." As the old sailor strolled away, the card player mumbled to his partner, "Come to think of it, I thought it was your turn."
"Me?! It's been your move for an hour now...."
Callagan drifted around the dive a while longer, congratulating one of the billiards artists on a flashy break, getting another drink from the man called Padre, even enjoying a few drags on his corncob pipe as he sat by the door.
"What the devil are you smoking?" demanded the proprietor, sniffing hard.
"You doesn't like my own blend?"
"I don't mind, it's clean and fresh. Reminds me of wintergreen."
"Imported stuff," Callagan said. "I'm going back to Old Apache label soon. Getting light out, I'll shove off. Be seeing you, Padre."
"I'll keep an eye on the police beat in the MESSENGER to see what yer up to," he said.
Heading back out into the cold, Callagan rubbed his leathery hands together in glee.
IV.
Noon the next day found the air still merciless as a steady icy wind blew across Manhattan. In a doorway across the street, the watcher in the delapidated raincoat looked up from his newspaper but did not otherwise react as Callagan found the address he had been given. An unlocked door between a tobacconist and a shoe repair shop creaked alarmingly. The old sailor moved up three narrow flights of stairs. The rooms were tenanted, judging by the saturated smell of boiled cabbage and the canned laughter of an episode of MY YOUNGEST DAUGHTER on the radio. Callagan stopped at the third floor landing and pushed his captain's cap back off his forehead.
In front of a door with a frosted glass panel reading ORIENTAL CURIOS - APPRAISALS, a heavyset thug squatted on a chair with a pulp magazine help up close to his eyes. Serge trousers, a well-worn corduroy coat, a white turtleneck and a derby made up an expected uniform. The guard slowly rose to tower a good six inches over Jack Callagan.
"I recognizes your mug, all right," he announced, dropping the magazine to the floor. "Yer supposed to be a tough yegg but honestly you don't look like much to me."
"Then it's a good thing you ain't the man I'm here to impress," Callagan replied pleasantly. "I'm here to talk to someone more important than the likes of you."
At this point, the door opened. A soft, egg-shaped man with only a wisp of baby-fine hair across his cranium blinked out myopically at the two men. "I say, Eugene, who is this?"
"Sez you. Listen, mister, I'm looking for work. I'm an able-bodied seaman with lots of experience.Tough as boiled leather and aces in a scrap. Maybe you got something for me?"
When the huge hulking Eugene stepped forward to grab the old sailor, he was stopped short by a brutal hooking punch into the pit of his stomach. He doubled up as if trying to touch his toes. Callagan shoved him aside and the goon fell to the bare wooden floor while remained preoccupied with catching his breath.
"Big palookas like him is always soft in the middle, I says," Callagan laughed. "He doesn't do a hunnert leg raises each morning the way I does. Jack Callagan is my name, pal."
"Heavens, you play rough," the man said uneasily. "I am Pinkerston, Horace Pinkerston."
"Aw, yer buddy there will be okay in a minute. I din't hit him as hard as I could on account his backbone woulda popped out and he wouldn't be good for much after that."
"I see. Please come in, sir. I believe Mr Krieghund would be interested in meeting you."
Ushered into a bare, Spartan office without decorations or niceties other than a simple unadorned desk and several chairs, Callagan suddenly felt for the first time in years that he was in actual immediate danger. His fists tightened unconsciously until they made popping noises.
Rising from behind that desk was a magnificent brutal specimen of a man in a dark blue military uniform without insignia. The material was snug enough to show hard bulging muscles, including biceps round as cannonballs. Above that stiff collar was a square face under a white-blond crewcut and two absolutely hateful blue eyes glared at the visitor as if barely restraining a murderous urge.
"Excuse me, Mr Krieghund, but this gentleman indisposed Eugene with a single blow. He says he is seeking employment."
"Is he now?" the blond beast replied. His voice sounded neutral as if he had carefully learned to remove any accent. "I am not sure about the shape of his skull. Do you have any Jewish blood?"
"As it happens, I be Irish on both sides back to the battle of Clontarf," the sailor snapped. "But even if I was a Rabbi's little boy, what business would it be of yours?"
"Take care, sir," Krieghund rumbled. "You are not safe at the moment."
"Save the scary talk," Callagan shot back. "You're big all right but I'd make you ashamed of yerself."
Surprisingly, a crooked grin tilted the brute's thin lipped mouth. "Hah. The fellow has spirit. Perhaps you may be of some use. Let us start over on more civil footing. Be seated," he said as he went back behind his desk. "I take it smuggling is not unacceptable to you."
"Nah, not a problem. Well, I doesn't do blackbirding or whoring. Shipping humans against their will goes against me principles. But I got no problem bringing a hold full of bootleg whiskey or rifles to them what pays for it."
"Good, good. I must start by telling you many of my clients are on the Continent. Europe is not an easy market for a businessman."
"I'll say it ain't," Callagan grunted. "They're starting up Part Two of that 1918 war. Some folks never learn."
"Come here late tonight. Say, eleven o'clock," Krieghund said. "You will accompany my Eugene to pick up and deliver a package. He will not hold your little encounter against him, Eugene fights all the time."
"So this will be me job interview, so ter speak? Eugene'll be judging me. Fair enough. I've smuggling in back streets of Manila and on the dirty waterfronts of Shanghai, it's all the same to me."
Standing up, Krieghund allowed the cold appraisal in his sapphire eyes to lessen. "When you return after your assignment, a small payment will be made. With each satisfactory job, I will pay you more."
"Mr Krieghund, that suits me right down to the ground." Callagan extended a gnarled hand and Krieghund shook it with obvious reluctance. As he left the office, the old sailor's face was somber. That handshake had not been an attempt at intimidation but even the brief clasp had told him that Krieghund was terrifyingly strong... strong enough to crack bones within his grip.
V.
The room he rented at Colonel Hopper's boarding house was reasonably decent. Mrs Hopper provided fresh sheets and towels every other day, but he was responsible for his laundry. The bathroom at the end of the hall had to be shared with two other guests but Callagan had spent so much of his life on ships that he was used to that. Aside from the ancient iron-framed bed and a few assorted chairs, the room mostly boasted a dresser on top of which sat a round-topped RCA radio which worked fine.
What was most important to Callagan were the two windows which got a lot of sun. On the sills inside, over the single radiator which often worked, he had six flower pots going with several tiny plants in each bravely making it through the winter. These had arrow-head shaped leaves of a distinctive purple hue. As soon as a new leaf was safely underway, Callagan crushed up an older one to mix in with his pipe tobacco.
It had been five years since he had found the plant by chance on a remote South Seas island otherwise noticeable by the local population's fondness for cannibalism. Going back there for more plants would be a risky proposition.
After getting a sleeping most of the day and thereby missing the boarding house afternoon coffee klatch, Callagan found the bathroom unoccupied and washed up hurriedly with hot soapy water before going back to his room to change. He would skip shaving for the moment. It seemed to others like he wore the same clothes for long stretches, but actually his three sets of blue bell-bottoms and five short-sleeved white pullover shirts with black collars were identical.
During all this fiddling about, he was hardly aware of his surroundings. He was mulling over everything that Kenneth Dred had told him the night before. The two men were hardly friends, but Dred sometimes showed up with a substantial payment if Callagan would undertake some remarkably dangerous mission and Callagan found himself accepting every time. He had been on the outskirts of the little-known Midnight War for years. It was Dred who pulled him headlong into the secret nightmarish world that most people never knew as even rumors.
Out in the hall, with its low benches between roomers' doors and its framed prints of seascapes, he ran into Chester. A dumpy middle-aged man, Chester scraped by selling vaccuum cleaners and hairbrushes door to door. In this Depression where money was not so much tight as nearly extinct, he usually made one sale for every twenty doors slammed angrily in his face. Helping him somewhat was his unshakeable confidence and enthusiasm.
"Morning, Jack, sleep well, I didn't even have dreams I was so tired after pounding the pavements yesterday, my God I bet I covered the entire West side from the docks up to Harlem before I had to call it quits--"
"Hiya, Chester." Callagan had learned to interrupt no matter where Chester was in a sentence because the man left no openings. "Ya think there's any leftovers?"
"Oh I'm sure of it, you know Mrs Hopper she always weighs the table down with enough food to take care of the Chinese army, the liver was okay but the bacon was really crisp today, I'd bet there some left--"
"I'm gonna see if I can filch some," the old sailor said as he swung around and trotted down the creaking staircase. In the living room, the imposing bulk of Evangeline Hopper took up half the couch. She gave him a suspicious eye over her morning copy of the DAILY MESSENGER.
"Morning, ma'am," Callagan said, holding his cap in one hand while indoors.
"Rising at the crack of dusk," she snorted, rustling the paper with suppressed fury. "Then carousing out until the wee hours. Bless me. But then you ARE a sailor and my late mother told me about your ilk."
"I was wondering if I might fix meself a sandwich...?"
"Oh, why not. There's a plate of bacon in the Frigidaire and a loaf of rye bread on the sideboard. Would that be satisfying your gallivanting heart?"
"I couldn't ask for more if I wuz at Heaven's Gate," he replied, and strolled into the kitchen. A moment later, he emerged with a thick sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin. "Smells like maybe a roast in the oven, Missus Hopper?"
"Not that you'll be seen afore the cows are coming home." Her tone softened. "But I do admit you pay your rent promptly and you're quiet as a mouse. Even if you reek of whiskey, you never come in singing."
"No, ma'am," he said and headed outside. The front door had a tiny bell at its top that jingled whenever anyone entered or left. Callagan turned back to smile farewell as he closed that door behind him. Out onto the crowded streets of the Lower East Side, he found a heartless wind biting at him. Callagan turned up his collar and began striding briskly toward the address where Krieghund had told him to go.
VI.
The meeting at Krieghund's office had been brief and unemotional. The huge guard Eugene had regarded Callagan without any obvious resentment. Given a small box wrapped in a waxed brown paper, the old sailor barely glanced at it before tucking it away in a capacious pocket of his peacoat. "I reckons we know the sign and counter-sign well enough," he said. "Mebbe me and me new mate will be shoving off then."
"Be discreet," advised Krieghund. "The streets at night are not safe in these times when men go hungry. Keep your eyes open. Watch each other's back."
"Thanks kindly, mister. But I sailed ports from Yokohama to Liverpool, and everything's still on my body where I growed it." With Eugene right behind him, Callagan left the office and strode down the stairs of the now silent building and back out into the night. Few cars were on the street. Those who still owned autos were hard pressed to supply gas for them. The movie theatres had closed for the night. As the two men walked rapidly further south, they found themselves in front of a building which had lights on in only its second floor windows.
Couples could be seen slowly circling in their emraces to smoky moody blues. Painted in black cursive paint were the words HEAVENLAND - 22 BEAUTIFUL GIRLS - A DIME A DANCE. Eugene came to a halt. "We're meeting the trader in the rear."
Knowing better than to ask questions at this point, being still judged and weighed whether he was trustworthy, Callagan followed compliantly into a narrow dead end alley where five men stood under the dim glow of a tiny yellow bulb over a side door. They had their coat collars up, hats pulled down low and showed as little of themselves as possible. All were tall and broad, as if selected to be imposing.
Eugene stepped forward, hands jammed down in his trousers pockets, feet well apart. Callagan came to a halt beside him.
In a marked gutteral accent, one of the men said, "The supply you have, yes?"
"Ah, that's not the question we were supposed to be asked," Eugene retorted. "Sign and counter-sign, you know, real cloak and dagger stuff."
"What patience have we with such child's games?" the man growled. He raised a hand from his right coat pocket and pointed a big black .45 automatic at the two men. "Der Krieghund has gone rogue. No more do we trust him."
Callagan had been tapping his deck shoes against a loose brick that had worked loose from the alley floor. Keeping his voice even and mellow, he said, "Boys, boys, everything's negotiable, I always sez," and with the last word, he reached down and hurled the brick hard and straight into the center of the gunman's face with a satisfying crunch. The gun did not discharge as the agent fell over backwards.
In the next few seconds, Jack Callagan had vaulted right into the midst of the remaining strangers. He entered what he sometimes thought of as the 'fight cloud,' where he struggled against multiple opponents at such close range that they became a squirming tangle of arms and legs. One pistol did bark and he heard a grunt but he himself felt no wound. Callagan struck blows as if he gripped a hammer in each hand, wherever he struck a man went down with a broken jaw or cracked sternum. Several punches glanced off him, some hard enough to stun a normal man but he hardly noticed. Only one of the traders was left, the one with a bleeding nose where the brick had struck. He had been the one to loose a wild shot. Springing in close, Callagan drew his right arm back behind his own ear and blasted a wide looping roundhouse that twisted the man's head around on his neck like the cap of a beer bottle being unscrewed.
Even as he caught his breath and flexed his bruised hands, the old sailor grinned in self-congratulation. He had lost none of his timing or his judgement of distance. As far as he could tell, he still brawled as he had at twenty when he had first sailed. That had even been fun in an adrenaline-pumping way.
Then he turned and saw Eugene propped up against the alley wall. In the dim light, the spreading blot of blood on his shirt looked black. Callagan rushed over.
"It's no use," Eugene gasped. "I'm a goner. I'm breathing my last."
"Aw, don't be melodramatic," Callagan snapped. "Lemme take a peek. It's a good one, right through your lower side below the ribs. Yer bleeding like a soda fountain but I doesn't think yer lungs or yer gizzard have been perforated. Come on, I'll help you up."
"I'll give you my mother's address," Eugene said. "Call her. Tell her how I died..."
Tugging a massive arm across his shoulders, the sailor hauled the bigger man out into the street. One block over had been the lights of a drug store that stayed open late. Callagan reeled under the weight, but he half dragged Eugene through the glass doors of the DR FINSTER PHARMACY and let the brute sag down onto a bench. No one was in sight, maybe the owner was in the back room.
"I regrets now all my sins, Jack, I been a no-good bilge rat..."
"Shaddup, you ain't gonna die." In one corner was a pay phone. Digging in his pockets for a nickel, Callagan called the number of the local hospital he had been carried into a few times. He explained the situation in tones that left no uncertainty how serious he was and was told an ambulance was already warmed up and would be on the way.
After he hung up, Callagan gave his short barking laugh. "Arf, arf, membbe I shoulda mentioned the boys I left in the alley. They might needs a few aspirin and bandaids. Good luck, Eugene."
"You're not going to leave me here to die alone...?"
"Jeez Louise, for a bouncer you sure don't handle injury well. I got shot worse than that and still walked twenty miles through the Gobi Desert. See ya later." Callagan rushed out of the drugstore as a bearded man in a white smock emerged from the storeroom. Now was no time to start answering questions.
VI.
Close to one in the morning, streets deserted of cars because of the Depression and sidewalks empty of people because of the Arctic winds, Jack Callagan made his way back to EUROPEAN CURIOS where both Krieghund and his lieutenant were waiting. Plopping down into a chair, unfastening the tabs on his long coat, Callagan pulled out his pipe and began packing it without being asked.
"Report." The single word from the grimly staring blond beast showed real self-control. He didn't ask where Eugene was or how the assignment had gone. He had the patience to hear Callagan's version of events first.
The old sailor related what had happened with only a few colorful phrases and bouts of self-praise. "So I left Eugene in good hands. I seen the ambulance pull up, he'll be seaworthy in a week or less. Then I ankled my way back here."
"So the client never showed," Krieghund muttered angrily. "That rival group from the East must have tortured the meeting location from him. Hand over the package, if you will."
Callagan lit his pipe and inhaled deeply, letting twin plumes of smoke out of his nostrils. "Aye, there's a snap, sir. At a street light, I couldn't help but inspect what had caused such a fracas. There was no name or destination of course but I could see words embossed in the wax paper. Words in German."
"That pipe tobacco you smoke is so familiar. Mint. I have smelled it somewhere before..." Krieghund began.
"I figger you boys are involved with those whacky blackout crimes which have been going on. You was going to sell the way to cause them, ain't that it?" Callagan took another satisfying drag, filling the room with wintergreen tang, then tapped the pipe out against his heel. "I ain't much fer spies, fellas. But I watch the newsreels and I read the papers, and I got an idea what's going on in your Fatherland."
Suddenly, the big blond man loomed up over the seated Callagan, leaning forward on stiff arms. "I will the package have now."
Without a reply, the old sailor removed the box from his pocket and slid it across the desk. Instantly, Krieghund spotted the torn edges of the wrapper. "You opened it? How dare you?"
But even as the brute spoke, Jack Callagan had whipped out a thin glass tube from his pocket and snapped it between his fingers right under the man's aristocratic nose. A sticky black vapor clung to Krieghund's face. Although he pawed at the fumes, he had by bad luck been inhaling and he got a lungful. Krieghund reeled, clutching at the air with his beefy paws and fell right on top of his luckless assistant. A second later, Pinkerton had breathed in enough that he passed out as well.
Still holding his breath, Callagan backed out of the room and into the freezing cold hallway. Only then did he exhale a cloud of his special pipe mix. There had been a payphone in the foyer on the first floor. From earlier exploits where he had been acting on behalf of Kenneth Dred, Callagan knew not only the number of the New York office of the FBI but how to reach their new Department 21 Black, established to fight saboteurs and Fifth Columnists.
That was quite an invention in those glass tubes, a smoke which caused instant blackouts in people. Callagan had decided he should destroy the chemical before the Feds got there. Maybe he was too cynical to be as patriotic as he should, but he wasn't sure anyone could be trusted with such a weapon. After phoning 21 Black and then also calling Kenneth Dred, Callagan rubbed an aching shoulder and started trudging up the stairs to keep an eye on the prisoners. This had all gone as smoothly as anyone could ask. His one twinge of regret was that he had been looking forward to a knock-down slugfest with that Krieghund palooka. Now fully realizing what he was wishing for, Callagan hoped someday he'd get a bout.
11/17/2020
