"Fugitives From a Funeral Parlor"
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dochermes"Fugitives From a Funeral Parlor"
1/24-1/25/1992
I.
The optimistic sign on two posts, COMING SOON - A NEW MONDOMART FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE had been there for two years with no apparent progress having been made. The vacant lot on 146th Street had been littered by debris, loose stacks of half-burnt lumber and broken rubble for at least a year before the sign had gone up. The building had been demolished after a fire had ruined the sweatshop staffed by Chinese immigrant women, a blaze in which three of them had died because of a jammed exit door. At just before midnight, the Dire Wolf parked his dark green Mustang in a dead-end alley just off the street and sat for a few minutes remembering the tragedy.
The buildings on either side were dark and deserted, one had its windows boarded up or broken, and he could see some structural damage even from sitting in his car. Bane imagined that at some point the whole block would likely just be plowed over for a fresh start with this proposed giant concrete and mortar superstore. It was as good a place as any to meet an informer.
No cars had gone by for a few minutes on this viciously cold January night. Getting out, almost invisible in his black outfit of slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket, Jeremy Bane was a tall gaunt figure who moved with a restless energy as if he wanted to break into a full run every second. In the gloom, his pale grey eyes moved over the area with an intense scrutiny. Even when in a secure setting like his office he was on guard, so out in this area he acted as if in an active war zone. At thirty-four, he had survived so much.
In the shadow of a heap of scrap wood, plasterboard and broken stone, a beat-up metal barrel stood with burnt garbage sticking up from it. The inevitable marker of the homeless and the addicts. As Bane approached, he could tell someone was crouching behind the pile and he said quietly, "Here I am, ready to listen."
Standing up suspiciously, looking around in all directions, Bobby Bassett relaxed only slightly when he recognized Bane. Bassett was a small middle-aged black man not more than five feet six and wiry in a warm-up jacket and baggy pants. His hair was short-cropped with a noticeable bald circle on top, and he wore a thick bushy mustache to compensate. Although he wore knit wool gloves and a scarf, he did not have a hat on. "Thank God you got here," he said with a visible puff of condensation every time he exhaled. "I don't know how much time we have."
The Dire Wolf was still surveying their surroundings. "Then you should start talking fast, Bobby."
"Anybody but you, I would be doin' my award-winning impression of a clam--"
In the new half-second, Bane had seized the older man in a bear hug and swung him around away from the street. The Dire Wolf bent his head forward over Bassett's shoulder just as the black Lexus SC400 slowed going past and an AR-15 Armalite jutting out of the rear window blasted a clip right at them. Bullets punched across Bane's shoulders and upper back like a flurry of murderous hail. The big V8 engine roared as the Lexus sped off with lightning acceleration.
The sudden silence after that thunder seemed eerie. Bobby Bassett was hyperventilating and trembling at the shock of the incident. Releasing him, the Dire Wolf sagged and almost fell as his knees went weak but he immediately caught himself and straightened up again. The ferocious grey eyes glared at the corner which the black car had rounded and raced away.
"Friends of yours?" he asked in a voice remarkable for its calm tones under the circumstances.
"You ain't dead? I ain't dead? What the hayll, man? How come we alive?"
Bane did not explain he was wearing the silk-thin Trom armor under his clothes which dispersed impact over its entire surface. It had felt like he was being pummeled by hammers but the barrage of 55 grain slugs had done nothing worse than bruise him. "Bulletproof vest," he said simply. He twisted to show the material of his jacket had been ripped open to reveal a grey sheen underneath.
"Man, I gotta get me one of them. You ain't even hurt?" Bassett demanded.
Grabbing the shorter man by one arm, the Dire Wolf yanked him along as he rushed toward where his car was parking. He flung open the passenger door and swung around toward the driver's side. When Bassett hesitated, Bane snapped, "Do you want to die when they come back? Get in!"
In another second, the Mustang was out on Ninth Avenue and swinging through side streets. Bane drove just above the speed limit, slowing for stop lights and signs, scanning in all directions for any sign of that Lexus. As they put some distance behind them heading south, he relaxed almost imperceptibly.
"You can let me out any time...." Bassett ventured uncertainly.
"Forget it, Bobby," the Dire Wolf said. "Your friends intended to kill you just now. If I had not heard the car turning the corner, you'd be dead. They knew you were going to meet me."
"Some fink ratted me out. Goddam. There goes my job," Bassett moaned.
"You've lost more than that," Bane said with no trace of sympathy as he headed past 110th Street and they saw the edge of Central Park, never quite deserted even on a bitter winter night. "You can't go back to your rooms. Intercrime might have someone watching them. You're going to stick with me until this is resolved."
"Wait, what? What was that word?"
"You heard me fine." Bane swung his head around to fix those pale eyes like a weapon. "Your bosses in the organization you worked for. Intercrime."
II.
Seeing an open spot on 51st, the Dire Wolf eased into it but left the engine running. "Let's get some facts established," he told his passenger. "I haven't clashed with Intercrime before. I'll be frank, they are not in my area of interest. Nothing supernatural about them. From what I understand, Intercrime is a sort of co-ordinating service for different rackets. They help launder money, arrange meetings, loan gunmen from one gang to another."
Bobby Bassett thought it over for a second. "Ah yeah, I guess that's about right. Different mobs may not want to work together or may hate each other, but Intercrime can act as a middleman. For a very reasonable fee. All I ever did was deliver messages and packages."
"Look, you are no choir boy," the Dire Wolf snapped. "You've had a hand in the dirtiest rackets. Human trafficking. Drug sales to underage students. Protection, extortion... Don't pretend you're not as bad as the animals you work for."
"Aw man, why you gotta dog me that way? I thought you were gonna help me, dude."
Bane kept his eyes in constant motion, checking traffic and watched the pedestrians. "Bobby, I usually am not concerned with regular crooks. My business is the Midnight War. I've heard rumors that some of your bosses were dealing with an old old man named Melchius. Have you met him?"
"Yeah, I seen him from a distance. He's more than weird, he gives me the creeps super-bad."
"You have good reason to be afraid of him! Melchius is one of the most dangerous people you will ever meet," Bane said. "Let this sink in. He is an Alchemist. He creates potions and serums that have effects modern science can't even explain, let alone duplicate. Every time you deal with him, you're in real danger. Melchius is working his own schemes and just using your bosses for his own purposes."
The old black man wrung his hands. He was clearly struggling between difficult choices. "When them guys shot at us.. you sure they were trying to hit me and not you?"
"Absolutely. Who could have overheard you call me this afternoon?"
Bassett's voice was low and miserable. "It hasta be where I was working today. I thought fer sure nobody was around to hear me but I guess I was wrong. Maybe they put in microphones, I wouldn't put anything past Blue-Eyes Martello."
"That's where the hunt begins," Bane said. "Give me the address and I'll start stirring things up."
"Uh-UH. No way. I need something in exhange. Everyone knows you've got deep pockets, Mr Dire Wolf. Gimme enough to set myself up far away, maybe California. I sure as hell can't stay in this town no longer," Bassett demanded.
The Dire Wolf considered this for only a second. "Fair enough. You're giving me the opening I need to locate Melchius. You have to realize, of course, that I don't trust you any more than I would any other member of Intercrime. If I decide you're leading me into a trap, I'll be annoyed with you."
Something about the way this man said that mild phrase... With a repressed shudder, Bassett answered, "Don't worry bout that. Lissen, I can tell you where I made that phone call from. It's a front for Intercrime exchanges. You know where Hudson Square is?"
"Sure." Bane checked his mirrors and pulled out. It was almost four o'clock now and traffic was still minimal. "We'll go down Fifth to Hudson Street."
As they drove along with skyscrapers looming up on either side, Bassett asked something that seemed to have been preying on his mind. "So, this Melchius cat. Who is he really? Where's he from?"
"No one knows," the Dire Wolf answered absently as he watched other cars for any sign of that Lexus. "I found a book published in London in 1898 that mentions him and he was described as 'venerable' back then. No doubt it was him, either, he was working on his trademark Alchemical solvents."
"Alchemy... what's that?"
"Hm. This might be hard to explain. In the Midnight War, Alchemists are men and women who know secrets of creating chemicals which have incredible effects. Mostly, they aim at prolonging life, turning lead into gold, creating homunculi, that sort of thing. Alchemists are dangerous to tackle. They know all about dozens of poisons and acids, and they often carry samples on them for defense." Pausing at a red light before rolling through it, he gave Bassett a stern glance. "If we do meet Melchius, keep as far away as you can. He'll be a really old man about your size, almost bald, with blue eyes and a beaky nose."
"Thanks for the heads-up," Bassett said. "We getting close now. Pull onto West Houston, if you don't mind. Wait, there-- you see that laundromat?"
Bane slid in front of a towaway zone sign for the moment and looked across the street. The SUPER-CONVENIENCE 24-HOUR LAUNDROMAT sat there. Lights spilled out from big picture windows, showing rows of washing machines and a wall full of dryers. As he watched, two young men who looked like college students and who seemed a little high emerged with bags of laundry over their shoulders. They were amused over something and, when one stumbled and almost fell, fresh bursts of laughter erupted from both.
"Good idea for a cover," the Dire Wolf said. "People come and go at all hours and no one really notices if they are carrying laundry or not. Some folks are always at these places in the middle of the night to use the bathrooms or the vending machines. This is your contact spot?"
"Yeah, I show up here most ever day. I get packages to deliver, messages to give folks in person, you know, I'm a go-fer. That's where I called you from today."
The Dire Wolf pulled out, went around the block and found a nearby spot to leave his Mustang. "Come on," he said as he got out. "You go in first."
"What? You crazy? That's walking into a death trap for me, man."
"You're going to be the distraction for a few seconds. That's all the time I'll need," Bane told him.
III.
As reluctantly as if walking to the bottom step of the gallows, Bobby Bassett stepped through the wide glass door which slid open with a swish. Just inside to the right was a counter with a work area behind it. Signs on the wall offered services of folding and sorting laundry, as well as notices about no liability assumed for lost items. As Bassett entered, a huge man weighing close to three hundred pounds lurched up from the chair in which he had been reading the NEW YORK POST. Blue-Eyes Martello was fat but not soft-looking. The round belly looked hard and the thick arms showed solid muscle under the short sleeved plain shirt. Under curly black hair, the distinctive bright blue eyes stood out in a square angry face. He started moving fast for the opening in the counter to grab at the old black man.
"You!" he yelled. "You got your nerve showing your face here af--"
That was as far aas Martello got before two hands clamped down like bear traps on his upper arms and he was lifted bodily up and over the counter to crash brutally on his back on the tile floor.
When he hit, he gasped with surprise and indignation but froze motionless when he saw who had flung him out from behind the counter like that.
At six feet even and one hundred and seventy-five pounds, Bane was built more like a runner than a body-builder. He had not relied on sheer brute strength on Martello, although some was needed, but a combination of leverage and redirecting the big man's momentum. When the gangster thudded down on the floor and recognized his attacker, it was already too late to react. Bane had dropped to one knee and cracked a simple straight punch to the jaw that flung the man's head back so hard it bounced when it hit the floor.
"I was lookin' straight at you and I STILL didn't see that punch!" Bassett declared in awe. "Damn, boy, you oughtta be in the ring."
"Stay out of the way," the Dire Wolf barked at him. From a plain wooden door at the back of the laundromat rushed two men as big as Martello, both wearing suits and hustling toward the intruder at full speed. Bane vaulted across the floor, bodyslamming the nearer thug so that they got tangled up with each other and fell clumsily to the floor. Bane dropped down to drive an elbow deep into a soft gut, then hopped up to whip out a front kick that snapped the other man's head halfway around as far as the neck would turn without breaking.
Again, Bobby Bassett had been watching and had only discerned a vague blur of motion. Now, as Bane straightened up and wheeled around to watch for any more mugs, Bassett realized all the wild tall tales he had heard about this man were true.
"Dude! I'm glad you're on my side!" he howled, gleeful at seeing the gangsters he feared get beaten down in less than three seconds.
The Dire Wolf did not answer him, being occupied with checking the condition of the two thugs. The one who he had elbowed in the stomach had vomited and was gasping as he continued to dry heave. The one who had been punched in the jaw moaned and stirred sluggishly but was not completely unconscious. Bane judged they would not be in any condition to cause trouble for a few minutes. He straightened up and headed for the also stunned Blue Eyes Martello. It was not being able to hit his oppponents hard enough that concerned Bane in a fight, it was judging how much force would not be fatal and yet still incapacitate. Sometimes he miscalculated on the side of too much impact and left a corpse instead of someone who could be questioned. It wasn't an exact science.
Getting down to kneel by Martello, Bane said, "Bobby! Go take a quick look up and down the street. Then lock the door. Do you know where the light switches are?"
"You bet."
"After the door is locked, turn off the outside lights and dim the lights in here," the Dire Wolf said. "We don't want any citizens wandering in with hampers of dirty socks and underwear." In the minute that the older man was occupied, Bane took a flat plastic case from inside his sport jacket. In the padded interior of the case were five hypodermics with color-coded bands on their sides. He selected the one with two yellow bands, grabbed Martello's right arm and injected the clear serum.
By the time Bassett had dimmed the lights so the laundromat seemed closed, the Dire Wolf had returned the case to his inner pocket and was watching as Blue-Eyes Martello struggled back to full consciousness.
"Uhhh... what? Bane! You bastard!" the gangster said. "What's your problem? I didn't do anything to you." He tried to sit up but failed, tried again and sagged helplessly down. He took a few deep breaths, made an effort to prop himself up on his elbows but couldn't do it.
Bane watched all this with an unreadable expression. He had no intention yet of informing Martello that he had been injected with the Trom enervation serum. For the next eighteen to twenty-four hours, the big thug would be too weak to stand or walk. The effect would pass after that. This serum had been a useful way for the old KDF members to incapacitate captured enemies without causing permanent harm. Unlike tying them up, the enervation drug could not be undone to free them.
But Bane did not explain any of this. In a cold quiet tone, he said, "You hit your head pretty hard, Blue-Eyes. Maybe you need X-Rays to see if there's any permanent damage."
Still making a futile effort to rise, Martello began to panic. "Why am I so weak? I can hardly move my arms and legs!"
"I suppose I could call for an ambulance," the Dire Wolf said, "But first I'd like a little information. I want Melchius, the old man who makes the weird potions. Where can I find him?"
"You know what you can do, you rat? You can jump in front of a subway train."
"Suit yourself. If you have a concussion, letting it go unattended might have serious consequences." There was absolutely no sympathy in Bane's voice. "Permanent paralysis, I'd guess. Get used to living in a wheelchair with nurses feeding you and telling you to be quiet when you say you need to go to the bathroom." He stood up and turned as if to leave.
The gangster cursed furiously, then his voice broke in a sob. "Don't leave me like this! I can't even reach the phone this way. Bane! Can you hear me?"
"Where's Melchius?" demanded that chilling voice.
"Goddam it. Okay, okay. Over in Jersey. The Palatino Funeral Home in Fultonville. He's there. Now call an ambulance, hurry!"
Bane came over to kneel over the thug. He was tempted to leave the man to fret and worry as punishment, but he might need to deal with this gangster some time in the future. "Calm down. I'm telling you that you're going to be all right. When your boys after there feel up to it, have them help you home. This weakness will pass by late tomorrow night. You're going to be all right, but honestly it's better than you deserve." He went toward the door and snapped his fingers at the amazed older man who had watched the exchange. "Let's roll, Bobby."
IV.
At this time of year, sunrise was still hours away when Bane emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel into New Jersey and sped along miles of strip malls, car lots and housing projects to find the town of Fultonville. Sitting beside him, Bobby Bassett had turned the Mustang's heat up but he still was curled up in his seat with his arms folded it.
"I'm liking this less and less," he grumbled. "When Blue-Eyes starts makin' phone calls, we is going to have some mean hombres searching for us."
"We already do. Those were Intercrime gunmen in that Lexus a few hours ago." The Dire Wolf turned onto a residential street that consisted of large private homes set almost touching each other with each yard no wider than a literal yard. "You stepped into this when you contacted me, Buddy. There was no turning back for you after that. Which brings up the question of why you did it?"
No answer came. The old black man huddled up within himself, miserable and withdrawn.
"Come on, start spilling it," Bane insisted. "Right now, I'm the only chance you have of staying alive. Give me something to work with."
"Awright, awright," Bassett gave in. "I don't know the big picture you unnerstand, I just put together bits and pieces I overhears. But it's like this. Bigshots disappear when they get in a tight spot... say the IRS is about to nab them on tax evasion or they is being called to testify in front of some Senate committee. The bigshots meet with this Melchius geezer a few times. Then they die of natural causes. Whatever hospital they go to calls the time and it's all official. Then the family requests the body be brought to this Palatino Funeral Home to get prettied up."
Bane pulled over at the corner at DuPont Street and peered ahead through the gloom. The streetlights were spaced out farther apart than usual in this neighborhood. "Yeah? Then what? There has to be more to it than that."
"Listen, Bane, I'm a Church-going man. Mebbe I don't make an honest dollar but I draw the line at blasphemy. Three times, three! Three times I have met these big bosses alive and better than ever after they was declared dead. In fact, they looked younger and healthier than before. I caught them giving orders to their flunkies when I wasn't s'posed to be around. Then they disappeared again and this time they wasn't ever heard from again."
The Dire Wolf turned to watch his passenger. His Kumundu training gave him acuity in judging everything from body language to to speech patterns changing to spotting subvocal tremors that meant deception. He was certain that this man was speaking the truth as he knew it. Unless Bassett was delusional enough to believe his own fantasies, he was speaking straight.
"Now I'm really interested," Bane said quietly. "This sounds like Midnight War, all right. Look. Next block over, you see the funeral home?"
"Yeah, that's it all right. I never went in there, I just waited in the parking lot around back to be given a package to deliver. But that's the place where a dozen racket bosses went in as stiffs and were walking around a few days later. Fugitives from the funeral home...!"
The Dire Wolf studied what he could see of the facility. Set back from the sidewalk with a snow-covered yard was a big, three story house that had the solid architecture of the late 19th Century. There was a wide front portico with a subdued yellow light burning over the oak door. A gravel driveway ran around the funeral home in a semi-circle and he could glimpse part of a parking area in the rear where a blue Dodge Ram sat under a tree. Windows on the ground floor glowed with the dim haze of nightlights.
"We're taking the direct approach," he told his passenger. "You go up and ring the bell."
"Man, you crazy. It's the middle of the night. You realize you're asking a black man to go into a funeral home in the middle of the night?! Dude!"
"I'm sure someone mundane is on watch. Another goon with thick knuckles and a gun somewhere on him. After we get in, you stay behind me and keep inconspicuous." With that, he jumped out of the car, took two steps away and was gone from sight.
Bassett blinked and swung around in his seat. How the hell did this guy DO that? It was an overcast night and Bane was wearing all black, but still... In between one step and the next, he was just gone out from sight and Bassett could not see a sign of him now. It was crazy.
Reluctant to leave the snug warm interior of the Mustang for the wind chill outside, Bobby Bassett nevertheless pulled up his coat collar and got out. He walked briskly up the block to the paved walk to the funeral home's porch. A discreet sign on a post read FUNERAL HOME - PALATINO FAMILY - EST 1976 in gold letters on a black background. Bassett went up the wide wooden steps to the front door, one hand on the railing, and glanced around for any sign of Bane. Nothing. Where was that fool? The old man was terrified about ringing the bell by himself and asking to be killed, with no evidence that the Dire Wolf was anywhere nearby but he remembered what had happened at the laundromat only an hour ago. Bassett sighed resignedly and pressed the round white doorbell.
So immediately that it implied he had been watching from the front room, a big beefy guy in a dark business suit with narrow tie flung open the door and glowered down at Bassett from his six feet four height. He had a neatly trimmed black beard and short black hair, and he scowled as if his face was a weapon. "You! Here?" he rumbled.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Listen I wanna talk to Dr Boyd," Bassett began.
The brute reached out a meaty hand but in the instant before he could grab the smaller man, his head rocked to one side as a fist exploded against it. Seemingly from nowhere, Jeremy Bane had flashed up onto the porch, swung the man around to face him and blasted a sharp hook that he immediately followed with a backfist from the same hand. As the big man sagged and started to fall, Bane sank another punch deep into the soft belly and threw the brute hard to one side. After a second, the Dire Wolf went over and tugged the unconscious man behind the railing where he would not be seen by any possible drivers going past.
"Whew! Glad to see you. My man! Can you teach me that?"
"Just train and work out for twenty years," Bane said. "I wanted to nail him while the door was still open." He knelt beside the dazed thug and took a pulse. Giving a satisfied grunt, Bane took a metal dart from a plastic container in his left jacket pocket and jabbed it into the back of the man's hairy hand. Immediately, the guard breathed more easily. Bane pocketed the dart and stood up again.
"Oooh, oooh, I know about them," said Bassett. "Those are them anestetic darts you use. You shoot 'em from an airgun, right? How come you didn't use that airgun?"
Bane did not know why he answered. Usually he didn't explain his methods. "He's wearing a heavy suit jacket and a topcoat. The darts sometimes don't penetrate multiple layers of clothing. Come on." He stepped through the massive wooden door into a waiting room with Bassett right behind him. This was a soothing room with solid, old-fashioned furniure, framed landscapes on every wall, a low table with assorted magazines and a white noise generator in a corner sounded like gentle breezes so there would be no uncomfortable silence for distressed family members. Facing them was an open doorway through which another giant bruiser came rushing.
This goon held a spurless snub-nosed .32 revolver and he swung it up without even asking who the intruders were. Lunging forward quicker than a fencer, Bane seized the gun and kept the cylinder from turning just by the strength of his grip. Before the thug could realize what was happening, Bane planted his feet in a forward stance and drove his free fist hard to the center of the man's chest. For a second, the thug's heart skipped a beat or two and he lost all concentration as the blood was driven away from his core.
Wresting the revolver away, the Dire Wolf swung it in a hooking move that clipped the already dazed man on the side of the jaw. He fell heavily, not quite catching himself on hands and knees, completely lost. The whole exchange had taken less than a second. Bane kept the gun himself and took out another of the anesthetic darts to inject this enemy as well. He searched the guard quickly, found an ankle holster and unfastened it to hold the gun more comfortably.
Bobby Bassett had been silent for this entire incident, which took place in less than a second. He caught Bane's eye and nodded approval. "I can see where the crazy stories about you get started," he whispered. "Lissen, lemme have that iron."
"Like I trust you," the Dire Wolf said in the same low tone. "Come on." He headed for the doorway through which the bruiser had come and they found themselves in an office with two desks sitting opposite each other. There were green metal filing cabinets, a bookcase filled with reference books, a coffee brewer with the usual paraphenalia and an empty cardboard box from Dunkin Donuts.
The room was dimly lit by a blue nightlight plugged in under the window.
"Stay by the door," Bane ordered as he began rapidly searching the office. He skipped the obvious ledgers and accounts, figuring they would only contain legitimate business records, and begandigging through the most commonly used hiding places. Squatting, he tilted up one filing cabinet to yank out a manila envelope taped under it. A few seconds of rifling through the papers made him raise an eyebrow before folding the envelope and stowing it inside his jacket.
The faint clatter of silverware was the next room made both him and Bassett stiffed. Bane pressed a finger to his lips for silence and glided lightly over to the half-closed office door. Beyond it was a short hallway with framed licenses and notices, and just a bit to one side was the open door of a kitchenette.
The Dire Wolf flattened against the way and peered cautiously around the edge of the doorway. He saw a slightly chubby young man in his mid-twenties, brown hair tousled and sticking up at random, wrapped in a bright red bathrobe much too large for him. He wore slippers and had a folded newspaper tucked under one arm as he placed a big ceramic bowl on the round table. Behind him, a waist-high refrigerator stood with its door open. He got a half-gallon milk container from inside, pulled down a box of Raisin Bran from the top of the refrigerator and went to settle down at the table for a middle of the night snack. The young man got everything arranged and had just put his hand on the back of chair when he froze in total fear.
A sharp metal blade was pressing up against his throat, and an iron hand gripped his jaw to keep it closed. From behind him, a low stern voice said, "No loud noises. Whisper your answers. If you understand me, raise your hands."
The young man obeyed, feeling his heart pound so furiously he expected cardiac arrest at any second.
"I'm going to let you answer," said the voice behind him. "Just whisper and you'll be fine." Bane relaxed his grasp on his prisoner's jaw just enough. "Who else is in this building tonight?"
In the most terrified voice imaginable, the young man whispered, "Just me and Mr Palatino..."
"And what's your name?" hissed the Dire Wolf, sliding the silver blade slightly so it left a red mark but did not break the skin.
"Doug.. Doug Carpino. Don't hurt me, please."
Bane loosened his grip on the man a little more. "Give me a reason not to. Where's Palatino?"
"He's asleep. In his room upstairs. Listen, there's not much money here but you can have it all, please let me go."
"I'm not after money," Bane said. "Where is Melchius?"
No answer came. Carpino began taking rapid shallow breaths as panic set in. He didn't struggle because of the dagger at his throat.
"Is he below us?"
"I don't know. I don't know anyone called... Melchius?" Carpino insisted.
"The prep room and morgue must be in the basement. Does Melchius have his lab there?"
"Oh, please, let me go, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just an assistant, I only had two years in Mortuary School, they don't tell me everything! I barely passeed the national board exam." He was having trouble staying coherent.
Again, Bane's long years of training and experience helped him judge the changes in his prisoner's voice, the degree of tension in the face muscles under his grip, the length of pauses between words. He concluded that Doug Carpino was too frightened to be lying successfully.
"You're going to be all right," the Dire Wolf said. A split-second later, he had let go of the young man's chin and whipped his hand into a jacket pocket to come up with one of the anesthetic darts he had placed loose there. The sharp point jabbed into the side of the young man's neck. As he felt his skin being punctured, Carpino made a strangled gasp and fell unconscious.
Bane carefully lowered the sleeping man to the floor behind the round table, where he would be out of the way. He could smell urine. Carpino had wet himself in terror. Bane straightened up without feeling the least amusement. He had caused that reaction in people before. He turned to see Basstt watching him with eyes popping out of the dark weathered face.
"You have something to say, Bobby?" he demanded quietly.
"Who, me? No, no, no, you know what you're doing far as I can see."
"Good. Stay behind me. We're going into the Alcemist's den, you and I."
V.
The prep room was kept chilly for obvious reasons but Bassett would be shivering anyway. Under the white fluorescent lights overhead, every detail stood out with heartless clarity. Along one wall were four drawers with occupants' names handwritten on cards held in slots. Against the opposite wall was a counter packed with surgical instruments, metal tanks of preservatives and saline solutions, a suction pump and the formaldehyde injector. Three white smocks hung on hooks next to boxes of blue latex gloves over a sink.
In the center of the chamber, two holding tables flanked the main prep table. There was a sheet-covered body on each of the simple holding tables, marked by a paper tag fixed to a frame at the head. Judging from the way the bodies looked under the sheets, one was a woman and one a man, both of rather small size and proportions. The unoccupied prep table was stainless steel set at a slight angle downward from the head. Hanging down from the ceiling were three nozzles on rubber tubes, and a shallow trough ran around the table down to a grate in the floor.. presumably to carry of fluids and body scraps.
Despite the air conditioning and the heavy use of cleansers, the sickly sweet tang of death could not be denied. It hung in the air like a morbid reminder.
Unmoved by all this, Jeremy Bane began searching the room. He glanced back to see his companion flattened against the door by which they had entered. "You okay, Bobby?"
"Yeah, yeah," answered the old black man finally. He pulled himself up straight, took a few deep breaths and marched over to the nearer holding table. "This ain't gonna be easy, Jeremy. I'd rather cut off my right arm than do this."
"I'll take over," Bane offered.
"No, no, thanks. I gotta be a man about this, I promised Wilma." He reached up and slowly, gently, pulled down the sheet to reveal the peaceful face of a young black woman. Her hair was pulled back tightly. She had a wide flat face with a strong jaw, more handsome than pretty. Just showing above the sheet on the side of her neck were wide stitches. "It IS her. It's Melissy."
Bane had come closer, worried by the stricken quality in the man's voice. "You knew her?"
"Not well, not well at all, but I sure knowed her mom. Me and Wilma have been friends all our lives. We played together as little nappy-headed kids in the Bronx. Oh, Wilma, how am I gonna tell you this?"
The Dire Wolf took the sheet and pulled it back up. "And that's why you came to me, Bobby?"
"Yeah it is. Wilma asked me to see if I could find what happened to Mellisy. I knowed the girl was running around with some of Blue-Eye's boys. They acted like they'd never heard of her. You was the only man I could think of who might be able to.. you know, get to the bottom of it all."
"I'm glad you asked for my help," the Dire Wolf said in a gentler voice than his usual tones. "I don't make dramatic speeches or threats but I promise you that whoever killed her will pay for it. Let's check out the other body." He circled around the prep table to yank down the sheet from the second cadaver's head.
Revealed was a wide, brutal face with a leonine mop of greying thick hair. He seemed to have been in his late fifties. "Well," said Bane. "Francis DiSalvo. One of the last of the oldtime Sicilian mob that controlled casinos in Atlantic City. He ordered a lot of contractors and construction bosses killed to save money on paying them. If anyone deserves to be on the cold slab, he does." The Dire Wolf pressed two fingers to the corpse's throat and managed to pry up an eyelid. "Room temperature. No pulse at all. Irises are clouded. You'd think this man is dead. And yet..."
"What? What are you getting at? My nerves are already shot, Jeremy, don't tease me like this!" pleaded Bassett.
"I don't see any signs of decomposition," Bane said. "No discoloration. No odor. The skin isn't slipping. DiSalvo hasn't been seen in over a week, according to gossip, but his body is as fresh as if he died an hour ago. My guess is he's in some sort of suspended half-life state through Alchemy. I think he allowed this so Melchius could revive him at some point."
Bassett headed back to the young woman's body but Bane stopped him in his tracks with a hand on one shoulder. "Sorry. You saw the stitches. She's already had an autopsy, Bobby. Let me take a look."
The Dire Wolf went over, standing with his back to the distraught old man and lifted the sheet. After a long moment, he lowered it again and shook his head. "I hate to be the one to tell you this. Her thoracic cavity is sunken. Organs were removed, I bet the heart and liver, maybe the kidneys and spleen as well. I'm sorry."
That hit the black man like a physical blow. He staggered back a few steps, found a stool on wheels and dropped down on it. "God have mercy on us all," he mumbled. "Why are there such things in the world? Why do the innocent suffer?"
"Wish I knew," Bane told him seriously. "Wiser minds than mine have looked for answers." He had been judging Bassett's vocal inflections and reaction times, and he came to a decision. Holding out the snub-nose revolver in its ankle holster, he said, "Here, Bobby. I'm taking a chance on you. I think you really did put yourself in jeopardy to find that woman's daughter. Now Intercrime has you on their kill list. When this is over, I'll arrange to relocate you with a new identity."
"Why.. thanks, Jeremy," said the older man. He put one foot up on a chair and strapped the holster under his baggy pants cuff. "I ain't been a good man, Good Lord knows, but sometimes I try to do what's right. You won't be sorry about me."
He started searching the prep room quickly but systematically, checking behind counters and rapping on walls or areas of the floor with his knuckles. When he found a latch at the base of the prep table, he clicked it and slid the whole apparatus forward to reveal a section of the floor marked by clean lines. Bassett had been watching him and got up to stand nearby.
"A trap door?" he asked.
"So it seems," the Dire Wolf answered from his position with one knee on the floor. "Be on your toes, Bobby." Bane pressed down and the panel slid up on a central pivot to reveal only darkness beneath. Instantly, a cloud of vile green vapor exploded up under pressure to engulf both Bane and his companion. The stench was awful. Caught before either could take a breath to hold it, both men collapsed limply to the cold floor. A withered bony hand reached up from the opening to dig its claws into the tile.
IV.
Over the years, the Dire Wolf had fought his way back up to consciousness after being drugged or bludgeoned so many times that he was no longer confused by the process. His enhanced healing from longtime Tagra tea use helped. It would take trauma that would outright kill a normal Human to keep Bane from recovering quickly. Now, he snapped back to full awareness as if he had merely been daydreaming for a few seconds. He knew not to give this away, of course, and remained motionless with his eyes closed while he evaluated the situation.
He was no longer in the chilly morgue at the funeral home, since the air had a temperature and humidity consistent with normal living quarters. He was propped up against a stone wall, his hands tied at the wrists with what felt like thick cord, his feet tied together with cord that had some slack. His legs were stretched out in front of him. Slowing his breathing with the earliest Tel Shai technique he had learned, Bane brought his hearing up to its sharpest focus. Something was dripping twenty feet ahead of him, not water from a tap, it sounded too viscous for that and there was bubbling. Next to him was Human breathing, a little nasal, a little labored. He decided it was old Bobby Bassett, almost certainly tied up the way he was. On the other side of a room, thirty feet away in his judgement, he listened to very odd breathing.
After a full minute, he could not decide if the stranger was very young or very old but in fine shape. The breathing came from less than five feet off the floor and was male. At one point, he caught the distinctive crackling of an elderly knee joint complaining about being made to flex.
"Evander! See to our guests, will you?" came an aged but energetic voice. Hearing heavy footsteps approaching, Bane decided there was no use in trying to play possum any more. An enemy would prod or kick him to see if he was awake. As the steps neared, the Dire Wolf opened his eyes and sat up more. He was watching a squat, severely deformed man drawing closer. Evander was a hunchback who might have stood six feet tall if he had been able to straighten up. The short bow legs were compensated by thick brawny arms and broad hands. Wrapped in a loose white shirt held by two buttons in front, wearing black tights and slippers on oversized feet, Evander turned his misshapen head back and forth.
None of his features matched. One eye was higher than the other and much larger, the nose was crooked almost to being sideways, the mouth was a wet gash like a recent wound. On a conical skull, sparse black hair stood out in various directions. "Master! This one is awake!"
Looking over at where Melchius stood by a table crowded with glass piping and retorts, Bane called out sarcastically, "Some Alchemist you are! You can't even fix up your flunky!"
Melchius smirked in reply. He was short and thin, with the slight belly and spindly limbs of the elderly but he stood bolt upright without supporting himself on anything. The ancient sorcerer wore plain white cotton slacks and a sleeveless tunic, but he also had on a solid leather vest covered with over two dozen pockets and pouches and loops holding glass cylinders. After watching Bane a moment, the Alchemist snickered, "You should have seen him before I did some work, hee hee hee..."
The Dire Wolf saw Bobby Bassett was only now starting to moan and twitch his fingers, so there would be quite a while before he returned to consciousness. Maybe it was for the best. The next few minutes would likely involve threats of torture and attempts to intimidate, just to soften them up. Maybe some beatings.
Bane got up on his knees with his hands behind him and rose to his feet unaided as if it was the easiest thing in the world, even with his feet hobbled. "I ran into Francis DiSalvo hanging out upstairs," he said. "Here's my theory, feel free to correct me. He's under pressure to disappear. Maybe the Feds have some witnesses ready to testify, maybe he has younger rivals about to overthrow him. Whatever. You sell him one of your serums that puts him in a trance indistinguishable from death. The hospital signs the certificate and his next of kin requests his carcass be brought here. Let me guess, he's supposed to be cremated."
Folding his arms and leaning back against his worktable, Melchius grinned with delight. "Oh, very good. You are not the simple-minded fistfighter that I hear you described as being. Do go on."
"The family does get an urn with some ashes, but they're not DiSalvo's. Instead, he has been revived by you with your Velkandu potions. In fact, you heal some of the damage that aging has done so he feels healthier than he has in years. I'm going to guess a little more... you use your serums to change his appearance a little?"
"So that he can enjoy a new start on life far away? Yes, my serum that temporarily softens bone makes it easy to give a man different features. I have to admit you are correct so far, Mr Bane. But please, are there any other thoughts you wish to share?"
Taking a few steps nearer to Melchius, pretending to be interested in a vat of green liquid bubbling above a small gas flame, the Dire Wolf said, "Well, the next bit is only speculation. I took a peek at that poor girl you have on a table above us. So I wonder if one of your Alchemical serums might eliminate the body's tendency to reject foreign tissue? If you can transplant organs without having to do any blood work or look for a close tissue match?"
Bane was slightly ashamed to realize he was merely expanding on what Bassett had told him, as if it were all his own deductions. But whatever kept Melchius distracted while Bane got a bit closer was worth trying. He had spotted his gear on a short table in one corner... his dart gun, the silver-bladed daggers, the various tiny gadgets concealed in hidden pockets, all nearly laid out but out of reach.
The Alchemist still seemed genuinely delighted at his prisoner's conversation. "Yes indeed," he said. "There you have it. That unlucky female in the morgue is donating several of her organs to another client of mine. The Widow Ballinger is sixty-three and years of neglected diabetes have left her ready for dialysis. With new kidneys as well as a new liver, she will feel youthful and energetic again... and her enormous fee will seem well worth it."
At this point, Bassett began mumbling loudly, tried to move but fell over on his side. His language was obscene in the extreme as he sprawled on the cement floor of the lab.
"Your companion does not seem to be recovering as well as you did," Melchius observed.
"I take better care of myself," Bane said. "He'll be fine in a few minutes."
The Alchemist raised a bony hand and tapped the side of his prominent nose. "Ah. You are wondering perhaps why I have not made myself a young man again."
"Fair enough," said the Dire Wolf, taking another step toward Melchius and leaning forward to peer at him. "I'd expect you to look like a college student."
"Hee hee hee. The truth is.. the truth is I indeed have replaced my heart, sundry other organs, even arteries. But since I am three hundred and twelve years old, this is the best result I can achieve! But now we must discuss your fate, Dire Wolf." The Alchemist nodded at Evander, who shambled around behind Bane to shove a chair under him so that he was forced down to sit on it.
"I think that is as close to me as you need to get," said Melcius. He pulled over a stool for himself. "You are well known in the Midnight War, Mr Bane. The Dire Wolf. You are a knight of Tel Shai and that implies you have been a regimen of the Tagra tea for over a decade. Your healing abilities are well beyond normal Human limits at this point."
Bane frowned over his shoulder at the misshapen Evander, then turned his attention back to the ancient sorcerer. "You're leading up to something I'm not going to like."
"So true. Your internal organs are functioning at peak efficiency. The Tagra has cleansed all impurities and toxins, and has repaired the normal wear and tear of daily life." Melchius rubbed his hands together as if drying them. "A older person receiving your heart, your liver, your kidneys... It would be like a high mileage car receiving factory new parts."
Despite all his experience being in perilous situations, Bane felt a cold jolt of alarm at this statement. "You intend to donate my insides to your clients?"
Melchius laughed out loud. "No. No, not all. Why waste them? I will have most of your organs placed within my own poor old body. Who knows, perhaps I will even experience some of your famous reflexes!"
V.
At this point, Bobby Bassett came to his senses, mumbling and trying to sit up again only to flop around without getting anywhere. The Alchemist gestured to his servant and Evander lurched over, swinging his powerful arms for balance, and propped the prisoner back up.
Bassett cursed and squeezed his eyes open. "What was that all about? Is there a gas leak in this building."
"Hah!" chuckled Melchius. "No, sir, that is a Velkandu potion of my own devising. You may find you have a headache."
"You ain't kidding. Jeremy, you okay?"
"I'm good," Bane said. He had noticed that the snub-nosed revolver was not on the table with his own gear and he only hoped that Melchius or his servant had not searched Bassett as thoroughly as they had gone over him. "Our host here is that Alchemist I mentioned."
"Give Mr Bane a seat," Melchius said as he rose again. The hunchbacked servant roughly shoved a wooden chair under the Dire Wolf from behind, swinging him around to face where Bassett was sitting.
From above them, an agonizing moan echoed. Bassett's already strained nerves gave out and he demanded, "What the hell was THAT?"
"Hee hee," said the ancient Alchemist. "That will be Mr DiSalvo coming back to life. This is a crucial time, I must administer restoratives to him. Evander! Watch these two closely. Kill the colored man if he causes trouble but try to keep the other one alive. I need to harvest him!"
As Melchius headed for the concrete steps leading up to the trap door, Bassett muttered, "We don't say 'colored people' any more, Grandpa."
"Forgive me," laughed Melchius. "I am from an earlier generation, you know." He raised the trap and went up to the prep room, closing it behind him.
Left in the lab with Evander standing between them and watching, Bane filled Bassett in on the gruesome details of the Alchemist's various schemes. As he talked, the Dire Wolf was working on the cords tying his wrists behind them. It would take a while to get loose. Those knots were well tied. If he could reach his boots, there was a single-edged razor blade hidding in a slit at the top of each one. Several times, he had cut himself free with one of those blades but Evander was not going to leave him unobserved for the necessary minute.
After hearing about the organ theft and reviving the seeming dead, Bassett shook his hand. "Man, what a ghoul. This Melchius... I don't think the bosses at Intercrime know what they're fooling with. He's gonna use them like puppets."
"He's old and cunning," Bane agreed. "And I've thought of something else. He mentioned the bone-softening serum. I've read about that. For a few hours, the treated bones become like clay and you can shape them, then they harden again. I think that explains our friend here."
They both stared at the misshapen hunchback. Though a twisted mouth, Evander said, "That's none of your business. Shut up."
"You didn't always look like this, did you?" Bane asked. "Melchius did this to you. And it's why you'll do whatever he orders, because he's the only one who can shape your body back to the way it used to look."
"I told you to shut up!" the monstrosity yelled, raised a gnarled fist with knuckles that were misaligned.
"But he's just going to string you along," the Dire Wolf went on. "He is NEVER going to restore your original looks. Not as long as he can keep you under his thumb-"
"Shut yer mouth!" Evander lurched over and backhanded Bane hard across the mouth with that bony hand. Bane was knocked off the chair which overturned, and landed heavily on his right side, rolling slightly to get in the position he had hoped for. He was within reach of the ceramic gas jet which heated the bubbling green retort.
Bassett grunted with effort, drawing his legs up beneath him despite his lack of flexibility. He managed to tug up his pants cuff and get the .32 revolver out of its holster. Even though he had no hope of accurate aim, he pointed the short barrel as best he could and let off a shot. In the enclosed lab, the noise was brutally loud. Evander dropped into a crouch and swung around, but the bullet had gotten nowhere near him. The hunchback rushed in at his prisoner from the side opposite where the gun could point. As soon as he got those massive hands on Bassett, Evander shook him violently, picked him up entirely off the floor and slammed him with murderous force against the stone wall behind them, driving his shoulder into the man's chest.
The old black man screamed at the pain, dropping the gun with a clatter, and sagged in Evander's grip. Bones had broken in his body from that impact. The hunchback raised Bassett again and threw him entirely across the lab to knock over a small table holding notebooks and loose papers. With a satisfied growl, Evander wheeled around to face the other captive.
Bane was standing there with his legs free. It had only taken a second to burn through the cords around his ankles since his boots were fireproof. The material of his pants cuff on one leg smoldered but he hardly noticed. Even as the grotesque Alchemist assistant turned around, Bane jumped straight up, drawing his knees tightly to his chest and brought his bound hands under his feet. As he landed again, his hands were now in front of him.
"What are you, some kind of acrobat?" roared Evander. He rushed headlong at his prisoner, only to run directly into a high side kick to the chest that stopped him dead and knocked him on his back. As the hunchback managed to sit up, he caught a front snap kick from a steel-capped boot that broke his neck.
There was no telling if Melchius had heard any of this or if he was too distracted by reviving the seemingly-dead Francis DiSalvo. Bane took three long strides over to the table where his gear had been put on display. With the sharp edge of a silver bladed dagger, he cut through the cords around his wrists as if they weren't there. Bane slid the matched daggers into their sheaths under his sleeves, shoved the anesthetic dart gun into its holster behind his hip and stowed the assorted gimmicks in his pockets without taking the seconds to put them where they belonged. Now he felt he had a better chance if Melchius came down those steps.
Doing this had delayed him for a few seconds from checking on Bassett, but it had been a tactical decision he had made. He crouched over the broken man and examined him gingerly. Long experience with violent trauma made him conclude that Bassett had a broken rib that had gone into his internal organs. Blood was running from the man's mouth and his breathing was labored. With each exhalation, a hissing noise indicated a ruptured lung.
Despite Bane taking care not to move the man, Bassett stirred and forced both eyes open, saying "You... okay, buddy?"
"I'm fine," Bane answered. "I'm calling an ambulance right now. Don't move."
"So cold... I know what that means..." the dying man mumbled.
"I'm glad I trusted you, Bobby," Bane told him loudly. "You did the right thing when it mattered."
He would never know if Bassett heard him, but he hoped so. The Dire Wolf straightened out the body with its arms down at the sides, then stood up with a cold anger. He picked up the .32 revolver from where it had fallen and checked that it still had four bullets in its chambers. Now for Melchius.
VI.
The trap door at the top of the stairs opened and a handful of glass globes were thrown down. As the trap slammed shut again, the globes shattered on impact and stinging clouds of white mist spread out over the lab. Reacting as quickly as he ever had in his life, Bane dug in both outside jacket pockets and came up with the oxygen membrane. It was a clear film that clung over his nose and mouth, held on by elastic tabs over his ears. Bane was now protected against any poison gas in common use, but he had no faith in being safe against what Alchemy could devise.
Immediately, his skin started burning as if being touched by naked fire. Even if the Trom armor under his clothes would keep his body from being eaten away, his head and hands were exposed. In the half a second it took him to leap up the stairs, the vapor spread throught the lab. Beakers and bottles exploded. Everything made of wood or paper burst into white-hot flame.
At the top of the steps, he found the trap door was locked from above. It was an awkward angle to use the Kumundu technique, but Bane set himself and drew torque up from his legs through his torso to explode out the palm of his rigid hand. Metal snapped and the trap flew up with Bane scrambling through the opening. The prep room was burning and filled with the same deadly mist. The Dire Wolf could feel his skin peeling off. Squinting as much as he could, he leaped out of the prep room into the waiting room. The whole building was burning and being corroded by the acidic fumes. He knew he only had a second of life left if he didn't get out. Racing across the smoke-filled room, he crossed both arms in front of his face and dove headlong through the nearest window with a crash of breaking glass.
Bane landed headfirst in a snowdrift. Part of his mind was grateful. Not only was it a soft break for his fall, but rubbing the snow all over him helped to clean off the lethal residue. The Dire Wolf rolled in the snow furiously, yanking off the oxygen membrane as a coughing jag shook him for five minutes. Eventually, with excrutiating slowness, he could draw a normal breath.
Getting up on legs that alarmed him by being shaky, Bane got up and stared back over his shoulder at a funeral home that was a giant torch spewing black smoke into the cold night air. His mind was clearing fast and he realized he had to get away. There was no chance of recovering Bassett's body or checking the house to see if anyone was alive. He could not have stayed in there another few seconds without being overcome himself. Whatever Melchius had thrown to destroy that building, it had certainly been effective.
The Dire Wolf grew stronger as he limped to where he had left his Mustang. Luckily, no one drove by in those few minutes. He was vaguely aware that his outer clothes were hanging in tatters and the gleam of the Trom armor underneath showed in a dozen places. Once he got behind the wheel, turning the key with swollen fingers that were red as if sunburned, Bane peeled out and drove without purpose for a few miles. His only thought was to put some distance between that fire and himself.
Ten minutes later, he saw a combination gas station and convenient mart. Cumberland Farms. He wheeled into a spot off to one side and turned the engine off. Packed in his travel knapsack sitting on the backseat was a large first aid kit. He began gingerly squirting Neosporin on his hands and face where the skin was peeling off in strips. Only now did he realize how much it really hurt. Bane wrapped his hands with a roll of sterile gauze, holding it on with white surgical tape to make crude mittens. He applied several large gauze pads with adhesive edges to his forehead and cheeks, which was all he could manage at the moment. With great relief, he decided that his eyes had not been damaged. They were watering but his vision seemed normal.
Starting up the Mustang again, Bane realized this was one of the rare times he had entered a gas station without his obsessive ritual of topping off the tank, checking the oil and tires and cleaning the windows. He was just too damaged to even think about it. He started back toward Manhattan, driving more slowly and carefully than usual.
Part of his mind was wondering why Melchius had reacted like that, torching the funeral home rather than confronting Bane. With his dozens of potions and elixirs, a veteran Alchemist was a dangerous opponent. Ah well, the Dire Wolf reflected that maybe Melchius was just a cautious sort of bad guy who preferred to avoid direct conflict. There would be another clash between them, he promised himself.
His skin was starting to sting less as the Tagra healing factor kicked in. Bane lowered his shoulders and leaned back more comfortably in the seat as he drove. He was thinking about Bobby Bassett, how he Bane had decided to give the man that gun against all prudence, and how it had worked out for the best. He had seriously expected Bobby to turn against him and try to work for the Alchemist. Bane allowed himself a bittersweet twinge. It was good that human nature did not always let him down.
4/28/2017
1/24-1/25/1992
I.
The optimistic sign on two posts, COMING SOON - A NEW MONDOMART FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE had been there for two years with no apparent progress having been made. The vacant lot on 146th Street had been littered by debris, loose stacks of half-burnt lumber and broken rubble for at least a year before the sign had gone up. The building had been demolished after a fire had ruined the sweatshop staffed by Chinese immigrant women, a blaze in which three of them had died because of a jammed exit door. At just before midnight, the Dire Wolf parked his dark green Mustang in a dead-end alley just off the street and sat for a few minutes remembering the tragedy.
The buildings on either side were dark and deserted, one had its windows boarded up or broken, and he could see some structural damage even from sitting in his car. Bane imagined that at some point the whole block would likely just be plowed over for a fresh start with this proposed giant concrete and mortar superstore. It was as good a place as any to meet an informer.
No cars had gone by for a few minutes on this viciously cold January night. Getting out, almost invisible in his black outfit of slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket, Jeremy Bane was a tall gaunt figure who moved with a restless energy as if he wanted to break into a full run every second. In the gloom, his pale grey eyes moved over the area with an intense scrutiny. Even when in a secure setting like his office he was on guard, so out in this area he acted as if in an active war zone. At thirty-four, he had survived so much.
In the shadow of a heap of scrap wood, plasterboard and broken stone, a beat-up metal barrel stood with burnt garbage sticking up from it. The inevitable marker of the homeless and the addicts. As Bane approached, he could tell someone was crouching behind the pile and he said quietly, "Here I am, ready to listen."
Standing up suspiciously, looking around in all directions, Bobby Bassett relaxed only slightly when he recognized Bane. Bassett was a small middle-aged black man not more than five feet six and wiry in a warm-up jacket and baggy pants. His hair was short-cropped with a noticeable bald circle on top, and he wore a thick bushy mustache to compensate. Although he wore knit wool gloves and a scarf, he did not have a hat on. "Thank God you got here," he said with a visible puff of condensation every time he exhaled. "I don't know how much time we have."
The Dire Wolf was still surveying their surroundings. "Then you should start talking fast, Bobby."
"Anybody but you, I would be doin' my award-winning impression of a clam--"
In the new half-second, Bane had seized the older man in a bear hug and swung him around away from the street. The Dire Wolf bent his head forward over Bassett's shoulder just as the black Lexus SC400 slowed going past and an AR-15 Armalite jutting out of the rear window blasted a clip right at them. Bullets punched across Bane's shoulders and upper back like a flurry of murderous hail. The big V8 engine roared as the Lexus sped off with lightning acceleration.
The sudden silence after that thunder seemed eerie. Bobby Bassett was hyperventilating and trembling at the shock of the incident. Releasing him, the Dire Wolf sagged and almost fell as his knees went weak but he immediately caught himself and straightened up again. The ferocious grey eyes glared at the corner which the black car had rounded and raced away.
"Friends of yours?" he asked in a voice remarkable for its calm tones under the circumstances.
"You ain't dead? I ain't dead? What the hayll, man? How come we alive?"
Bane did not explain he was wearing the silk-thin Trom armor under his clothes which dispersed impact over its entire surface. It had felt like he was being pummeled by hammers but the barrage of 55 grain slugs had done nothing worse than bruise him. "Bulletproof vest," he said simply. He twisted to show the material of his jacket had been ripped open to reveal a grey sheen underneath.
"Man, I gotta get me one of them. You ain't even hurt?" Bassett demanded.
Grabbing the shorter man by one arm, the Dire Wolf yanked him along as he rushed toward where his car was parking. He flung open the passenger door and swung around toward the driver's side. When Bassett hesitated, Bane snapped, "Do you want to die when they come back? Get in!"
In another second, the Mustang was out on Ninth Avenue and swinging through side streets. Bane drove just above the speed limit, slowing for stop lights and signs, scanning in all directions for any sign of that Lexus. As they put some distance behind them heading south, he relaxed almost imperceptibly.
"You can let me out any time...." Bassett ventured uncertainly.
"Forget it, Bobby," the Dire Wolf said. "Your friends intended to kill you just now. If I had not heard the car turning the corner, you'd be dead. They knew you were going to meet me."
"Some fink ratted me out. Goddam. There goes my job," Bassett moaned.
"You've lost more than that," Bane said with no trace of sympathy as he headed past 110th Street and they saw the edge of Central Park, never quite deserted even on a bitter winter night. "You can't go back to your rooms. Intercrime might have someone watching them. You're going to stick with me until this is resolved."
"Wait, what? What was that word?"
"You heard me fine." Bane swung his head around to fix those pale eyes like a weapon. "Your bosses in the organization you worked for. Intercrime."
II.
Seeing an open spot on 51st, the Dire Wolf eased into it but left the engine running. "Let's get some facts established," he told his passenger. "I haven't clashed with Intercrime before. I'll be frank, they are not in my area of interest. Nothing supernatural about them. From what I understand, Intercrime is a sort of co-ordinating service for different rackets. They help launder money, arrange meetings, loan gunmen from one gang to another."
Bobby Bassett thought it over for a second. "Ah yeah, I guess that's about right. Different mobs may not want to work together or may hate each other, but Intercrime can act as a middleman. For a very reasonable fee. All I ever did was deliver messages and packages."
"Look, you are no choir boy," the Dire Wolf snapped. "You've had a hand in the dirtiest rackets. Human trafficking. Drug sales to underage students. Protection, extortion... Don't pretend you're not as bad as the animals you work for."
"Aw man, why you gotta dog me that way? I thought you were gonna help me, dude."
Bane kept his eyes in constant motion, checking traffic and watched the pedestrians. "Bobby, I usually am not concerned with regular crooks. My business is the Midnight War. I've heard rumors that some of your bosses were dealing with an old old man named Melchius. Have you met him?"
"Yeah, I seen him from a distance. He's more than weird, he gives me the creeps super-bad."
"You have good reason to be afraid of him! Melchius is one of the most dangerous people you will ever meet," Bane said. "Let this sink in. He is an Alchemist. He creates potions and serums that have effects modern science can't even explain, let alone duplicate. Every time you deal with him, you're in real danger. Melchius is working his own schemes and just using your bosses for his own purposes."
The old black man wrung his hands. He was clearly struggling between difficult choices. "When them guys shot at us.. you sure they were trying to hit me and not you?"
"Absolutely. Who could have overheard you call me this afternoon?"
Bassett's voice was low and miserable. "It hasta be where I was working today. I thought fer sure nobody was around to hear me but I guess I was wrong. Maybe they put in microphones, I wouldn't put anything past Blue-Eyes Martello."
"That's where the hunt begins," Bane said. "Give me the address and I'll start stirring things up."
"Uh-UH. No way. I need something in exhange. Everyone knows you've got deep pockets, Mr Dire Wolf. Gimme enough to set myself up far away, maybe California. I sure as hell can't stay in this town no longer," Bassett demanded.
The Dire Wolf considered this for only a second. "Fair enough. You're giving me the opening I need to locate Melchius. You have to realize, of course, that I don't trust you any more than I would any other member of Intercrime. If I decide you're leading me into a trap, I'll be annoyed with you."
Something about the way this man said that mild phrase... With a repressed shudder, Bassett answered, "Don't worry bout that. Lissen, I can tell you where I made that phone call from. It's a front for Intercrime exchanges. You know where Hudson Square is?"
"Sure." Bane checked his mirrors and pulled out. It was almost four o'clock now and traffic was still minimal. "We'll go down Fifth to Hudson Street."
As they drove along with skyscrapers looming up on either side, Bassett asked something that seemed to have been preying on his mind. "So, this Melchius cat. Who is he really? Where's he from?"
"No one knows," the Dire Wolf answered absently as he watched other cars for any sign of that Lexus. "I found a book published in London in 1898 that mentions him and he was described as 'venerable' back then. No doubt it was him, either, he was working on his trademark Alchemical solvents."
"Alchemy... what's that?"
"Hm. This might be hard to explain. In the Midnight War, Alchemists are men and women who know secrets of creating chemicals which have incredible effects. Mostly, they aim at prolonging life, turning lead into gold, creating homunculi, that sort of thing. Alchemists are dangerous to tackle. They know all about dozens of poisons and acids, and they often carry samples on them for defense." Pausing at a red light before rolling through it, he gave Bassett a stern glance. "If we do meet Melchius, keep as far away as you can. He'll be a really old man about your size, almost bald, with blue eyes and a beaky nose."
"Thanks for the heads-up," Bassett said. "We getting close now. Pull onto West Houston, if you don't mind. Wait, there-- you see that laundromat?"
Bane slid in front of a towaway zone sign for the moment and looked across the street. The SUPER-CONVENIENCE 24-HOUR LAUNDROMAT sat there. Lights spilled out from big picture windows, showing rows of washing machines and a wall full of dryers. As he watched, two young men who looked like college students and who seemed a little high emerged with bags of laundry over their shoulders. They were amused over something and, when one stumbled and almost fell, fresh bursts of laughter erupted from both.
"Good idea for a cover," the Dire Wolf said. "People come and go at all hours and no one really notices if they are carrying laundry or not. Some folks are always at these places in the middle of the night to use the bathrooms or the vending machines. This is your contact spot?"
"Yeah, I show up here most ever day. I get packages to deliver, messages to give folks in person, you know, I'm a go-fer. That's where I called you from today."
The Dire Wolf pulled out, went around the block and found a nearby spot to leave his Mustang. "Come on," he said as he got out. "You go in first."
"What? You crazy? That's walking into a death trap for me, man."
"You're going to be the distraction for a few seconds. That's all the time I'll need," Bane told him.
III.
As reluctantly as if walking to the bottom step of the gallows, Bobby Bassett stepped through the wide glass door which slid open with a swish. Just inside to the right was a counter with a work area behind it. Signs on the wall offered services of folding and sorting laundry, as well as notices about no liability assumed for lost items. As Bassett entered, a huge man weighing close to three hundred pounds lurched up from the chair in which he had been reading the NEW YORK POST. Blue-Eyes Martello was fat but not soft-looking. The round belly looked hard and the thick arms showed solid muscle under the short sleeved plain shirt. Under curly black hair, the distinctive bright blue eyes stood out in a square angry face. He started moving fast for the opening in the counter to grab at the old black man.
"You!" he yelled. "You got your nerve showing your face here af--"
That was as far aas Martello got before two hands clamped down like bear traps on his upper arms and he was lifted bodily up and over the counter to crash brutally on his back on the tile floor.
When he hit, he gasped with surprise and indignation but froze motionless when he saw who had flung him out from behind the counter like that.
At six feet even and one hundred and seventy-five pounds, Bane was built more like a runner than a body-builder. He had not relied on sheer brute strength on Martello, although some was needed, but a combination of leverage and redirecting the big man's momentum. When the gangster thudded down on the floor and recognized his attacker, it was already too late to react. Bane had dropped to one knee and cracked a simple straight punch to the jaw that flung the man's head back so hard it bounced when it hit the floor.
"I was lookin' straight at you and I STILL didn't see that punch!" Bassett declared in awe. "Damn, boy, you oughtta be in the ring."
"Stay out of the way," the Dire Wolf barked at him. From a plain wooden door at the back of the laundromat rushed two men as big as Martello, both wearing suits and hustling toward the intruder at full speed. Bane vaulted across the floor, bodyslamming the nearer thug so that they got tangled up with each other and fell clumsily to the floor. Bane dropped down to drive an elbow deep into a soft gut, then hopped up to whip out a front kick that snapped the other man's head halfway around as far as the neck would turn without breaking.
Again, Bobby Bassett had been watching and had only discerned a vague blur of motion. Now, as Bane straightened up and wheeled around to watch for any more mugs, Bassett realized all the wild tall tales he had heard about this man were true.
"Dude! I'm glad you're on my side!" he howled, gleeful at seeing the gangsters he feared get beaten down in less than three seconds.
The Dire Wolf did not answer him, being occupied with checking the condition of the two thugs. The one who he had elbowed in the stomach had vomited and was gasping as he continued to dry heave. The one who had been punched in the jaw moaned and stirred sluggishly but was not completely unconscious. Bane judged they would not be in any condition to cause trouble for a few minutes. He straightened up and headed for the also stunned Blue Eyes Martello. It was not being able to hit his oppponents hard enough that concerned Bane in a fight, it was judging how much force would not be fatal and yet still incapacitate. Sometimes he miscalculated on the side of too much impact and left a corpse instead of someone who could be questioned. It wasn't an exact science.
Getting down to kneel by Martello, Bane said, "Bobby! Go take a quick look up and down the street. Then lock the door. Do you know where the light switches are?"
"You bet."
"After the door is locked, turn off the outside lights and dim the lights in here," the Dire Wolf said. "We don't want any citizens wandering in with hampers of dirty socks and underwear." In the minute that the older man was occupied, Bane took a flat plastic case from inside his sport jacket. In the padded interior of the case were five hypodermics with color-coded bands on their sides. He selected the one with two yellow bands, grabbed Martello's right arm and injected the clear serum.
By the time Bassett had dimmed the lights so the laundromat seemed closed, the Dire Wolf had returned the case to his inner pocket and was watching as Blue-Eyes Martello struggled back to full consciousness.
"Uhhh... what? Bane! You bastard!" the gangster said. "What's your problem? I didn't do anything to you." He tried to sit up but failed, tried again and sagged helplessly down. He took a few deep breaths, made an effort to prop himself up on his elbows but couldn't do it.
Bane watched all this with an unreadable expression. He had no intention yet of informing Martello that he had been injected with the Trom enervation serum. For the next eighteen to twenty-four hours, the big thug would be too weak to stand or walk. The effect would pass after that. This serum had been a useful way for the old KDF members to incapacitate captured enemies without causing permanent harm. Unlike tying them up, the enervation drug could not be undone to free them.
But Bane did not explain any of this. In a cold quiet tone, he said, "You hit your head pretty hard, Blue-Eyes. Maybe you need X-Rays to see if there's any permanent damage."
Still making a futile effort to rise, Martello began to panic. "Why am I so weak? I can hardly move my arms and legs!"
"I suppose I could call for an ambulance," the Dire Wolf said, "But first I'd like a little information. I want Melchius, the old man who makes the weird potions. Where can I find him?"
"You know what you can do, you rat? You can jump in front of a subway train."
"Suit yourself. If you have a concussion, letting it go unattended might have serious consequences." There was absolutely no sympathy in Bane's voice. "Permanent paralysis, I'd guess. Get used to living in a wheelchair with nurses feeding you and telling you to be quiet when you say you need to go to the bathroom." He stood up and turned as if to leave.
The gangster cursed furiously, then his voice broke in a sob. "Don't leave me like this! I can't even reach the phone this way. Bane! Can you hear me?"
"Where's Melchius?" demanded that chilling voice.
"Goddam it. Okay, okay. Over in Jersey. The Palatino Funeral Home in Fultonville. He's there. Now call an ambulance, hurry!"
Bane came over to kneel over the thug. He was tempted to leave the man to fret and worry as punishment, but he might need to deal with this gangster some time in the future. "Calm down. I'm telling you that you're going to be all right. When your boys after there feel up to it, have them help you home. This weakness will pass by late tomorrow night. You're going to be all right, but honestly it's better than you deserve." He went toward the door and snapped his fingers at the amazed older man who had watched the exchange. "Let's roll, Bobby."
IV.
At this time of year, sunrise was still hours away when Bane emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel into New Jersey and sped along miles of strip malls, car lots and housing projects to find the town of Fultonville. Sitting beside him, Bobby Bassett had turned the Mustang's heat up but he still was curled up in his seat with his arms folded it.
"I'm liking this less and less," he grumbled. "When Blue-Eyes starts makin' phone calls, we is going to have some mean hombres searching for us."
"We already do. Those were Intercrime gunmen in that Lexus a few hours ago." The Dire Wolf turned onto a residential street that consisted of large private homes set almost touching each other with each yard no wider than a literal yard. "You stepped into this when you contacted me, Buddy. There was no turning back for you after that. Which brings up the question of why you did it?"
No answer came. The old black man huddled up within himself, miserable and withdrawn.
"Come on, start spilling it," Bane insisted. "Right now, I'm the only chance you have of staying alive. Give me something to work with."
"Awright, awright," Bassett gave in. "I don't know the big picture you unnerstand, I just put together bits and pieces I overhears. But it's like this. Bigshots disappear when they get in a tight spot... say the IRS is about to nab them on tax evasion or they is being called to testify in front of some Senate committee. The bigshots meet with this Melchius geezer a few times. Then they die of natural causes. Whatever hospital they go to calls the time and it's all official. Then the family requests the body be brought to this Palatino Funeral Home to get prettied up."
Bane pulled over at the corner at DuPont Street and peered ahead through the gloom. The streetlights were spaced out farther apart than usual in this neighborhood. "Yeah? Then what? There has to be more to it than that."
"Listen, Bane, I'm a Church-going man. Mebbe I don't make an honest dollar but I draw the line at blasphemy. Three times, three! Three times I have met these big bosses alive and better than ever after they was declared dead. In fact, they looked younger and healthier than before. I caught them giving orders to their flunkies when I wasn't s'posed to be around. Then they disappeared again and this time they wasn't ever heard from again."
The Dire Wolf turned to watch his passenger. His Kumundu training gave him acuity in judging everything from body language to to speech patterns changing to spotting subvocal tremors that meant deception. He was certain that this man was speaking the truth as he knew it. Unless Bassett was delusional enough to believe his own fantasies, he was speaking straight.
"Now I'm really interested," Bane said quietly. "This sounds like Midnight War, all right. Look. Next block over, you see the funeral home?"
"Yeah, that's it all right. I never went in there, I just waited in the parking lot around back to be given a package to deliver. But that's the place where a dozen racket bosses went in as stiffs and were walking around a few days later. Fugitives from the funeral home...!"
The Dire Wolf studied what he could see of the facility. Set back from the sidewalk with a snow-covered yard was a big, three story house that had the solid architecture of the late 19th Century. There was a wide front portico with a subdued yellow light burning over the oak door. A gravel driveway ran around the funeral home in a semi-circle and he could glimpse part of a parking area in the rear where a blue Dodge Ram sat under a tree. Windows on the ground floor glowed with the dim haze of nightlights.
"We're taking the direct approach," he told his passenger. "You go up and ring the bell."
"Man, you crazy. It's the middle of the night. You realize you're asking a black man to go into a funeral home in the middle of the night?! Dude!"
"I'm sure someone mundane is on watch. Another goon with thick knuckles and a gun somewhere on him. After we get in, you stay behind me and keep inconspicuous." With that, he jumped out of the car, took two steps away and was gone from sight.
Bassett blinked and swung around in his seat. How the hell did this guy DO that? It was an overcast night and Bane was wearing all black, but still... In between one step and the next, he was just gone out from sight and Bassett could not see a sign of him now. It was crazy.
Reluctant to leave the snug warm interior of the Mustang for the wind chill outside, Bobby Bassett nevertheless pulled up his coat collar and got out. He walked briskly up the block to the paved walk to the funeral home's porch. A discreet sign on a post read FUNERAL HOME - PALATINO FAMILY - EST 1976 in gold letters on a black background. Bassett went up the wide wooden steps to the front door, one hand on the railing, and glanced around for any sign of Bane. Nothing. Where was that fool? The old man was terrified about ringing the bell by himself and asking to be killed, with no evidence that the Dire Wolf was anywhere nearby but he remembered what had happened at the laundromat only an hour ago. Bassett sighed resignedly and pressed the round white doorbell.
So immediately that it implied he had been watching from the front room, a big beefy guy in a dark business suit with narrow tie flung open the door and glowered down at Bassett from his six feet four height. He had a neatly trimmed black beard and short black hair, and he scowled as if his face was a weapon. "You! Here?" he rumbled.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Listen I wanna talk to Dr Boyd," Bassett began.
The brute reached out a meaty hand but in the instant before he could grab the smaller man, his head rocked to one side as a fist exploded against it. Seemingly from nowhere, Jeremy Bane had flashed up onto the porch, swung the man around to face him and blasted a sharp hook that he immediately followed with a backfist from the same hand. As the big man sagged and started to fall, Bane sank another punch deep into the soft belly and threw the brute hard to one side. After a second, the Dire Wolf went over and tugged the unconscious man behind the railing where he would not be seen by any possible drivers going past.
"Whew! Glad to see you. My man! Can you teach me that?"
"Just train and work out for twenty years," Bane said. "I wanted to nail him while the door was still open." He knelt beside the dazed thug and took a pulse. Giving a satisfied grunt, Bane took a metal dart from a plastic container in his left jacket pocket and jabbed it into the back of the man's hairy hand. Immediately, the guard breathed more easily. Bane pocketed the dart and stood up again.
"Oooh, oooh, I know about them," said Bassett. "Those are them anestetic darts you use. You shoot 'em from an airgun, right? How come you didn't use that airgun?"
Bane did not know why he answered. Usually he didn't explain his methods. "He's wearing a heavy suit jacket and a topcoat. The darts sometimes don't penetrate multiple layers of clothing. Come on." He stepped through the massive wooden door into a waiting room with Bassett right behind him. This was a soothing room with solid, old-fashioned furniure, framed landscapes on every wall, a low table with assorted magazines and a white noise generator in a corner sounded like gentle breezes so there would be no uncomfortable silence for distressed family members. Facing them was an open doorway through which another giant bruiser came rushing.
This goon held a spurless snub-nosed .32 revolver and he swung it up without even asking who the intruders were. Lunging forward quicker than a fencer, Bane seized the gun and kept the cylinder from turning just by the strength of his grip. Before the thug could realize what was happening, Bane planted his feet in a forward stance and drove his free fist hard to the center of the man's chest. For a second, the thug's heart skipped a beat or two and he lost all concentration as the blood was driven away from his core.
Wresting the revolver away, the Dire Wolf swung it in a hooking move that clipped the already dazed man on the side of the jaw. He fell heavily, not quite catching himself on hands and knees, completely lost. The whole exchange had taken less than a second. Bane kept the gun himself and took out another of the anesthetic darts to inject this enemy as well. He searched the guard quickly, found an ankle holster and unfastened it to hold the gun more comfortably.
Bobby Bassett had been silent for this entire incident, which took place in less than a second. He caught Bane's eye and nodded approval. "I can see where the crazy stories about you get started," he whispered. "Lissen, lemme have that iron."
"Like I trust you," the Dire Wolf said in the same low tone. "Come on." He headed for the doorway through which the bruiser had come and they found themselves in an office with two desks sitting opposite each other. There were green metal filing cabinets, a bookcase filled with reference books, a coffee brewer with the usual paraphenalia and an empty cardboard box from Dunkin Donuts.
The room was dimly lit by a blue nightlight plugged in under the window.
"Stay by the door," Bane ordered as he began rapidly searching the office. He skipped the obvious ledgers and accounts, figuring they would only contain legitimate business records, and begandigging through the most commonly used hiding places. Squatting, he tilted up one filing cabinet to yank out a manila envelope taped under it. A few seconds of rifling through the papers made him raise an eyebrow before folding the envelope and stowing it inside his jacket.
The faint clatter of silverware was the next room made both him and Bassett stiffed. Bane pressed a finger to his lips for silence and glided lightly over to the half-closed office door. Beyond it was a short hallway with framed licenses and notices, and just a bit to one side was the open door of a kitchenette.
The Dire Wolf flattened against the way and peered cautiously around the edge of the doorway. He saw a slightly chubby young man in his mid-twenties, brown hair tousled and sticking up at random, wrapped in a bright red bathrobe much too large for him. He wore slippers and had a folded newspaper tucked under one arm as he placed a big ceramic bowl on the round table. Behind him, a waist-high refrigerator stood with its door open. He got a half-gallon milk container from inside, pulled down a box of Raisin Bran from the top of the refrigerator and went to settle down at the table for a middle of the night snack. The young man got everything arranged and had just put his hand on the back of chair when he froze in total fear.
A sharp metal blade was pressing up against his throat, and an iron hand gripped his jaw to keep it closed. From behind him, a low stern voice said, "No loud noises. Whisper your answers. If you understand me, raise your hands."
The young man obeyed, feeling his heart pound so furiously he expected cardiac arrest at any second.
"I'm going to let you answer," said the voice behind him. "Just whisper and you'll be fine." Bane relaxed his grasp on his prisoner's jaw just enough. "Who else is in this building tonight?"
In the most terrified voice imaginable, the young man whispered, "Just me and Mr Palatino..."
"And what's your name?" hissed the Dire Wolf, sliding the silver blade slightly so it left a red mark but did not break the skin.
"Doug.. Doug Carpino. Don't hurt me, please."
Bane loosened his grip on the man a little more. "Give me a reason not to. Where's Palatino?"
"He's asleep. In his room upstairs. Listen, there's not much money here but you can have it all, please let me go."
"I'm not after money," Bane said. "Where is Melchius?"
No answer came. Carpino began taking rapid shallow breaths as panic set in. He didn't struggle because of the dagger at his throat.
"Is he below us?"
"I don't know. I don't know anyone called... Melchius?" Carpino insisted.
"The prep room and morgue must be in the basement. Does Melchius have his lab there?"
"Oh, please, let me go, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just an assistant, I only had two years in Mortuary School, they don't tell me everything! I barely passeed the national board exam." He was having trouble staying coherent.
Again, Bane's long years of training and experience helped him judge the changes in his prisoner's voice, the degree of tension in the face muscles under his grip, the length of pauses between words. He concluded that Doug Carpino was too frightened to be lying successfully.
"You're going to be all right," the Dire Wolf said. A split-second later, he had let go of the young man's chin and whipped his hand into a jacket pocket to come up with one of the anesthetic darts he had placed loose there. The sharp point jabbed into the side of the young man's neck. As he felt his skin being punctured, Carpino made a strangled gasp and fell unconscious.
Bane carefully lowered the sleeping man to the floor behind the round table, where he would be out of the way. He could smell urine. Carpino had wet himself in terror. Bane straightened up without feeling the least amusement. He had caused that reaction in people before. He turned to see Basstt watching him with eyes popping out of the dark weathered face.
"You have something to say, Bobby?" he demanded quietly.
"Who, me? No, no, no, you know what you're doing far as I can see."
"Good. Stay behind me. We're going into the Alcemist's den, you and I."
V.
The prep room was kept chilly for obvious reasons but Bassett would be shivering anyway. Under the white fluorescent lights overhead, every detail stood out with heartless clarity. Along one wall were four drawers with occupants' names handwritten on cards held in slots. Against the opposite wall was a counter packed with surgical instruments, metal tanks of preservatives and saline solutions, a suction pump and the formaldehyde injector. Three white smocks hung on hooks next to boxes of blue latex gloves over a sink.
In the center of the chamber, two holding tables flanked the main prep table. There was a sheet-covered body on each of the simple holding tables, marked by a paper tag fixed to a frame at the head. Judging from the way the bodies looked under the sheets, one was a woman and one a man, both of rather small size and proportions. The unoccupied prep table was stainless steel set at a slight angle downward from the head. Hanging down from the ceiling were three nozzles on rubber tubes, and a shallow trough ran around the table down to a grate in the floor.. presumably to carry of fluids and body scraps.
Despite the air conditioning and the heavy use of cleansers, the sickly sweet tang of death could not be denied. It hung in the air like a morbid reminder.
Unmoved by all this, Jeremy Bane began searching the room. He glanced back to see his companion flattened against the door by which they had entered. "You okay, Bobby?"
"Yeah, yeah," answered the old black man finally. He pulled himself up straight, took a few deep breaths and marched over to the nearer holding table. "This ain't gonna be easy, Jeremy. I'd rather cut off my right arm than do this."
"I'll take over," Bane offered.
"No, no, thanks. I gotta be a man about this, I promised Wilma." He reached up and slowly, gently, pulled down the sheet to reveal the peaceful face of a young black woman. Her hair was pulled back tightly. She had a wide flat face with a strong jaw, more handsome than pretty. Just showing above the sheet on the side of her neck were wide stitches. "It IS her. It's Melissy."
Bane had come closer, worried by the stricken quality in the man's voice. "You knew her?"
"Not well, not well at all, but I sure knowed her mom. Me and Wilma have been friends all our lives. We played together as little nappy-headed kids in the Bronx. Oh, Wilma, how am I gonna tell you this?"
The Dire Wolf took the sheet and pulled it back up. "And that's why you came to me, Bobby?"
"Yeah it is. Wilma asked me to see if I could find what happened to Mellisy. I knowed the girl was running around with some of Blue-Eye's boys. They acted like they'd never heard of her. You was the only man I could think of who might be able to.. you know, get to the bottom of it all."
"I'm glad you asked for my help," the Dire Wolf said in a gentler voice than his usual tones. "I don't make dramatic speeches or threats but I promise you that whoever killed her will pay for it. Let's check out the other body." He circled around the prep table to yank down the sheet from the second cadaver's head.
Revealed was a wide, brutal face with a leonine mop of greying thick hair. He seemed to have been in his late fifties. "Well," said Bane. "Francis DiSalvo. One of the last of the oldtime Sicilian mob that controlled casinos in Atlantic City. He ordered a lot of contractors and construction bosses killed to save money on paying them. If anyone deserves to be on the cold slab, he does." The Dire Wolf pressed two fingers to the corpse's throat and managed to pry up an eyelid. "Room temperature. No pulse at all. Irises are clouded. You'd think this man is dead. And yet..."
"What? What are you getting at? My nerves are already shot, Jeremy, don't tease me like this!" pleaded Bassett.
"I don't see any signs of decomposition," Bane said. "No discoloration. No odor. The skin isn't slipping. DiSalvo hasn't been seen in over a week, according to gossip, but his body is as fresh as if he died an hour ago. My guess is he's in some sort of suspended half-life state through Alchemy. I think he allowed this so Melchius could revive him at some point."
Bassett headed back to the young woman's body but Bane stopped him in his tracks with a hand on one shoulder. "Sorry. You saw the stitches. She's already had an autopsy, Bobby. Let me take a look."
The Dire Wolf went over, standing with his back to the distraught old man and lifted the sheet. After a long moment, he lowered it again and shook his head. "I hate to be the one to tell you this. Her thoracic cavity is sunken. Organs were removed, I bet the heart and liver, maybe the kidneys and spleen as well. I'm sorry."
That hit the black man like a physical blow. He staggered back a few steps, found a stool on wheels and dropped down on it. "God have mercy on us all," he mumbled. "Why are there such things in the world? Why do the innocent suffer?"
"Wish I knew," Bane told him seriously. "Wiser minds than mine have looked for answers." He had been judging Bassett's vocal inflections and reaction times, and he came to a decision. Holding out the snub-nose revolver in its ankle holster, he said, "Here, Bobby. I'm taking a chance on you. I think you really did put yourself in jeopardy to find that woman's daughter. Now Intercrime has you on their kill list. When this is over, I'll arrange to relocate you with a new identity."
"Why.. thanks, Jeremy," said the older man. He put one foot up on a chair and strapped the holster under his baggy pants cuff. "I ain't been a good man, Good Lord knows, but sometimes I try to do what's right. You won't be sorry about me."
He started searching the prep room quickly but systematically, checking behind counters and rapping on walls or areas of the floor with his knuckles. When he found a latch at the base of the prep table, he clicked it and slid the whole apparatus forward to reveal a section of the floor marked by clean lines. Bassett had been watching him and got up to stand nearby.
"A trap door?" he asked.
"So it seems," the Dire Wolf answered from his position with one knee on the floor. "Be on your toes, Bobby." Bane pressed down and the panel slid up on a central pivot to reveal only darkness beneath. Instantly, a cloud of vile green vapor exploded up under pressure to engulf both Bane and his companion. The stench was awful. Caught before either could take a breath to hold it, both men collapsed limply to the cold floor. A withered bony hand reached up from the opening to dig its claws into the tile.
IV.
Over the years, the Dire Wolf had fought his way back up to consciousness after being drugged or bludgeoned so many times that he was no longer confused by the process. His enhanced healing from longtime Tagra tea use helped. It would take trauma that would outright kill a normal Human to keep Bane from recovering quickly. Now, he snapped back to full awareness as if he had merely been daydreaming for a few seconds. He knew not to give this away, of course, and remained motionless with his eyes closed while he evaluated the situation.
He was no longer in the chilly morgue at the funeral home, since the air had a temperature and humidity consistent with normal living quarters. He was propped up against a stone wall, his hands tied at the wrists with what felt like thick cord, his feet tied together with cord that had some slack. His legs were stretched out in front of him. Slowing his breathing with the earliest Tel Shai technique he had learned, Bane brought his hearing up to its sharpest focus. Something was dripping twenty feet ahead of him, not water from a tap, it sounded too viscous for that and there was bubbling. Next to him was Human breathing, a little nasal, a little labored. He decided it was old Bobby Bassett, almost certainly tied up the way he was. On the other side of a room, thirty feet away in his judgement, he listened to very odd breathing.
After a full minute, he could not decide if the stranger was very young or very old but in fine shape. The breathing came from less than five feet off the floor and was male. At one point, he caught the distinctive crackling of an elderly knee joint complaining about being made to flex.
"Evander! See to our guests, will you?" came an aged but energetic voice. Hearing heavy footsteps approaching, Bane decided there was no use in trying to play possum any more. An enemy would prod or kick him to see if he was awake. As the steps neared, the Dire Wolf opened his eyes and sat up more. He was watching a squat, severely deformed man drawing closer. Evander was a hunchback who might have stood six feet tall if he had been able to straighten up. The short bow legs were compensated by thick brawny arms and broad hands. Wrapped in a loose white shirt held by two buttons in front, wearing black tights and slippers on oversized feet, Evander turned his misshapen head back and forth.
None of his features matched. One eye was higher than the other and much larger, the nose was crooked almost to being sideways, the mouth was a wet gash like a recent wound. On a conical skull, sparse black hair stood out in various directions. "Master! This one is awake!"
Looking over at where Melchius stood by a table crowded with glass piping and retorts, Bane called out sarcastically, "Some Alchemist you are! You can't even fix up your flunky!"
Melchius smirked in reply. He was short and thin, with the slight belly and spindly limbs of the elderly but he stood bolt upright without supporting himself on anything. The ancient sorcerer wore plain white cotton slacks and a sleeveless tunic, but he also had on a solid leather vest covered with over two dozen pockets and pouches and loops holding glass cylinders. After watching Bane a moment, the Alchemist snickered, "You should have seen him before I did some work, hee hee hee..."
The Dire Wolf saw Bobby Bassett was only now starting to moan and twitch his fingers, so there would be quite a while before he returned to consciousness. Maybe it was for the best. The next few minutes would likely involve threats of torture and attempts to intimidate, just to soften them up. Maybe some beatings.
Bane got up on his knees with his hands behind him and rose to his feet unaided as if it was the easiest thing in the world, even with his feet hobbled. "I ran into Francis DiSalvo hanging out upstairs," he said. "Here's my theory, feel free to correct me. He's under pressure to disappear. Maybe the Feds have some witnesses ready to testify, maybe he has younger rivals about to overthrow him. Whatever. You sell him one of your serums that puts him in a trance indistinguishable from death. The hospital signs the certificate and his next of kin requests his carcass be brought here. Let me guess, he's supposed to be cremated."
Folding his arms and leaning back against his worktable, Melchius grinned with delight. "Oh, very good. You are not the simple-minded fistfighter that I hear you described as being. Do go on."
"The family does get an urn with some ashes, but they're not DiSalvo's. Instead, he has been revived by you with your Velkandu potions. In fact, you heal some of the damage that aging has done so he feels healthier than he has in years. I'm going to guess a little more... you use your serums to change his appearance a little?"
"So that he can enjoy a new start on life far away? Yes, my serum that temporarily softens bone makes it easy to give a man different features. I have to admit you are correct so far, Mr Bane. But please, are there any other thoughts you wish to share?"
Taking a few steps nearer to Melchius, pretending to be interested in a vat of green liquid bubbling above a small gas flame, the Dire Wolf said, "Well, the next bit is only speculation. I took a peek at that poor girl you have on a table above us. So I wonder if one of your Alchemical serums might eliminate the body's tendency to reject foreign tissue? If you can transplant organs without having to do any blood work or look for a close tissue match?"
Bane was slightly ashamed to realize he was merely expanding on what Bassett had told him, as if it were all his own deductions. But whatever kept Melchius distracted while Bane got a bit closer was worth trying. He had spotted his gear on a short table in one corner... his dart gun, the silver-bladed daggers, the various tiny gadgets concealed in hidden pockets, all nearly laid out but out of reach.
The Alchemist still seemed genuinely delighted at his prisoner's conversation. "Yes indeed," he said. "There you have it. That unlucky female in the morgue is donating several of her organs to another client of mine. The Widow Ballinger is sixty-three and years of neglected diabetes have left her ready for dialysis. With new kidneys as well as a new liver, she will feel youthful and energetic again... and her enormous fee will seem well worth it."
At this point, Bassett began mumbling loudly, tried to move but fell over on his side. His language was obscene in the extreme as he sprawled on the cement floor of the lab.
"Your companion does not seem to be recovering as well as you did," Melchius observed.
"I take better care of myself," Bane said. "He'll be fine in a few minutes."
The Alchemist raised a bony hand and tapped the side of his prominent nose. "Ah. You are wondering perhaps why I have not made myself a young man again."
"Fair enough," said the Dire Wolf, taking another step toward Melchius and leaning forward to peer at him. "I'd expect you to look like a college student."
"Hee hee hee. The truth is.. the truth is I indeed have replaced my heart, sundry other organs, even arteries. But since I am three hundred and twelve years old, this is the best result I can achieve! But now we must discuss your fate, Dire Wolf." The Alchemist nodded at Evander, who shambled around behind Bane to shove a chair under him so that he was forced down to sit on it.
"I think that is as close to me as you need to get," said Melcius. He pulled over a stool for himself. "You are well known in the Midnight War, Mr Bane. The Dire Wolf. You are a knight of Tel Shai and that implies you have been a regimen of the Tagra tea for over a decade. Your healing abilities are well beyond normal Human limits at this point."
Bane frowned over his shoulder at the misshapen Evander, then turned his attention back to the ancient sorcerer. "You're leading up to something I'm not going to like."
"So true. Your internal organs are functioning at peak efficiency. The Tagra has cleansed all impurities and toxins, and has repaired the normal wear and tear of daily life." Melchius rubbed his hands together as if drying them. "A older person receiving your heart, your liver, your kidneys... It would be like a high mileage car receiving factory new parts."
Despite all his experience being in perilous situations, Bane felt a cold jolt of alarm at this statement. "You intend to donate my insides to your clients?"
Melchius laughed out loud. "No. No, not all. Why waste them? I will have most of your organs placed within my own poor old body. Who knows, perhaps I will even experience some of your famous reflexes!"
V.
At this point, Bobby Bassett came to his senses, mumbling and trying to sit up again only to flop around without getting anywhere. The Alchemist gestured to his servant and Evander lurched over, swinging his powerful arms for balance, and propped the prisoner back up.
Bassett cursed and squeezed his eyes open. "What was that all about? Is there a gas leak in this building."
"Hah!" chuckled Melchius. "No, sir, that is a Velkandu potion of my own devising. You may find you have a headache."
"You ain't kidding. Jeremy, you okay?"
"I'm good," Bane said. He had noticed that the snub-nosed revolver was not on the table with his own gear and he only hoped that Melchius or his servant had not searched Bassett as thoroughly as they had gone over him. "Our host here is that Alchemist I mentioned."
"Give Mr Bane a seat," Melchius said as he rose again. The hunchbacked servant roughly shoved a wooden chair under the Dire Wolf from behind, swinging him around to face where Bassett was sitting.
From above them, an agonizing moan echoed. Bassett's already strained nerves gave out and he demanded, "What the hell was THAT?"
"Hee hee," said the ancient Alchemist. "That will be Mr DiSalvo coming back to life. This is a crucial time, I must administer restoratives to him. Evander! Watch these two closely. Kill the colored man if he causes trouble but try to keep the other one alive. I need to harvest him!"
As Melchius headed for the concrete steps leading up to the trap door, Bassett muttered, "We don't say 'colored people' any more, Grandpa."
"Forgive me," laughed Melchius. "I am from an earlier generation, you know." He raised the trap and went up to the prep room, closing it behind him.
Left in the lab with Evander standing between them and watching, Bane filled Bassett in on the gruesome details of the Alchemist's various schemes. As he talked, the Dire Wolf was working on the cords tying his wrists behind them. It would take a while to get loose. Those knots were well tied. If he could reach his boots, there was a single-edged razor blade hidding in a slit at the top of each one. Several times, he had cut himself free with one of those blades but Evander was not going to leave him unobserved for the necessary minute.
After hearing about the organ theft and reviving the seeming dead, Bassett shook his hand. "Man, what a ghoul. This Melchius... I don't think the bosses at Intercrime know what they're fooling with. He's gonna use them like puppets."
"He's old and cunning," Bane agreed. "And I've thought of something else. He mentioned the bone-softening serum. I've read about that. For a few hours, the treated bones become like clay and you can shape them, then they harden again. I think that explains our friend here."
They both stared at the misshapen hunchback. Though a twisted mouth, Evander said, "That's none of your business. Shut up."
"You didn't always look like this, did you?" Bane asked. "Melchius did this to you. And it's why you'll do whatever he orders, because he's the only one who can shape your body back to the way it used to look."
"I told you to shut up!" the monstrosity yelled, raised a gnarled fist with knuckles that were misaligned.
"But he's just going to string you along," the Dire Wolf went on. "He is NEVER going to restore your original looks. Not as long as he can keep you under his thumb-"
"Shut yer mouth!" Evander lurched over and backhanded Bane hard across the mouth with that bony hand. Bane was knocked off the chair which overturned, and landed heavily on his right side, rolling slightly to get in the position he had hoped for. He was within reach of the ceramic gas jet which heated the bubbling green retort.
Bassett grunted with effort, drawing his legs up beneath him despite his lack of flexibility. He managed to tug up his pants cuff and get the .32 revolver out of its holster. Even though he had no hope of accurate aim, he pointed the short barrel as best he could and let off a shot. In the enclosed lab, the noise was brutally loud. Evander dropped into a crouch and swung around, but the bullet had gotten nowhere near him. The hunchback rushed in at his prisoner from the side opposite where the gun could point. As soon as he got those massive hands on Bassett, Evander shook him violently, picked him up entirely off the floor and slammed him with murderous force against the stone wall behind them, driving his shoulder into the man's chest.
The old black man screamed at the pain, dropping the gun with a clatter, and sagged in Evander's grip. Bones had broken in his body from that impact. The hunchback raised Bassett again and threw him entirely across the lab to knock over a small table holding notebooks and loose papers. With a satisfied growl, Evander wheeled around to face the other captive.
Bane was standing there with his legs free. It had only taken a second to burn through the cords around his ankles since his boots were fireproof. The material of his pants cuff on one leg smoldered but he hardly noticed. Even as the grotesque Alchemist assistant turned around, Bane jumped straight up, drawing his knees tightly to his chest and brought his bound hands under his feet. As he landed again, his hands were now in front of him.
"What are you, some kind of acrobat?" roared Evander. He rushed headlong at his prisoner, only to run directly into a high side kick to the chest that stopped him dead and knocked him on his back. As the hunchback managed to sit up, he caught a front snap kick from a steel-capped boot that broke his neck.
There was no telling if Melchius had heard any of this or if he was too distracted by reviving the seemingly-dead Francis DiSalvo. Bane took three long strides over to the table where his gear had been put on display. With the sharp edge of a silver bladed dagger, he cut through the cords around his wrists as if they weren't there. Bane slid the matched daggers into their sheaths under his sleeves, shoved the anesthetic dart gun into its holster behind his hip and stowed the assorted gimmicks in his pockets without taking the seconds to put them where they belonged. Now he felt he had a better chance if Melchius came down those steps.
Doing this had delayed him for a few seconds from checking on Bassett, but it had been a tactical decision he had made. He crouched over the broken man and examined him gingerly. Long experience with violent trauma made him conclude that Bassett had a broken rib that had gone into his internal organs. Blood was running from the man's mouth and his breathing was labored. With each exhalation, a hissing noise indicated a ruptured lung.
Despite Bane taking care not to move the man, Bassett stirred and forced both eyes open, saying "You... okay, buddy?"
"I'm fine," Bane answered. "I'm calling an ambulance right now. Don't move."
"So cold... I know what that means..." the dying man mumbled.
"I'm glad I trusted you, Bobby," Bane told him loudly. "You did the right thing when it mattered."
He would never know if Bassett heard him, but he hoped so. The Dire Wolf straightened out the body with its arms down at the sides, then stood up with a cold anger. He picked up the .32 revolver from where it had fallen and checked that it still had four bullets in its chambers. Now for Melchius.
VI.
The trap door at the top of the stairs opened and a handful of glass globes were thrown down. As the trap slammed shut again, the globes shattered on impact and stinging clouds of white mist spread out over the lab. Reacting as quickly as he ever had in his life, Bane dug in both outside jacket pockets and came up with the oxygen membrane. It was a clear film that clung over his nose and mouth, held on by elastic tabs over his ears. Bane was now protected against any poison gas in common use, but he had no faith in being safe against what Alchemy could devise.
Immediately, his skin started burning as if being touched by naked fire. Even if the Trom armor under his clothes would keep his body from being eaten away, his head and hands were exposed. In the half a second it took him to leap up the stairs, the vapor spread throught the lab. Beakers and bottles exploded. Everything made of wood or paper burst into white-hot flame.
At the top of the steps, he found the trap door was locked from above. It was an awkward angle to use the Kumundu technique, but Bane set himself and drew torque up from his legs through his torso to explode out the palm of his rigid hand. Metal snapped and the trap flew up with Bane scrambling through the opening. The prep room was burning and filled with the same deadly mist. The Dire Wolf could feel his skin peeling off. Squinting as much as he could, he leaped out of the prep room into the waiting room. The whole building was burning and being corroded by the acidic fumes. He knew he only had a second of life left if he didn't get out. Racing across the smoke-filled room, he crossed both arms in front of his face and dove headlong through the nearest window with a crash of breaking glass.
Bane landed headfirst in a snowdrift. Part of his mind was grateful. Not only was it a soft break for his fall, but rubbing the snow all over him helped to clean off the lethal residue. The Dire Wolf rolled in the snow furiously, yanking off the oxygen membrane as a coughing jag shook him for five minutes. Eventually, with excrutiating slowness, he could draw a normal breath.
Getting up on legs that alarmed him by being shaky, Bane got up and stared back over his shoulder at a funeral home that was a giant torch spewing black smoke into the cold night air. His mind was clearing fast and he realized he had to get away. There was no chance of recovering Bassett's body or checking the house to see if anyone was alive. He could not have stayed in there another few seconds without being overcome himself. Whatever Melchius had thrown to destroy that building, it had certainly been effective.
The Dire Wolf grew stronger as he limped to where he had left his Mustang. Luckily, no one drove by in those few minutes. He was vaguely aware that his outer clothes were hanging in tatters and the gleam of the Trom armor underneath showed in a dozen places. Once he got behind the wheel, turning the key with swollen fingers that were red as if sunburned, Bane peeled out and drove without purpose for a few miles. His only thought was to put some distance between that fire and himself.
Ten minutes later, he saw a combination gas station and convenient mart. Cumberland Farms. He wheeled into a spot off to one side and turned the engine off. Packed in his travel knapsack sitting on the backseat was a large first aid kit. He began gingerly squirting Neosporin on his hands and face where the skin was peeling off in strips. Only now did he realize how much it really hurt. Bane wrapped his hands with a roll of sterile gauze, holding it on with white surgical tape to make crude mittens. He applied several large gauze pads with adhesive edges to his forehead and cheeks, which was all he could manage at the moment. With great relief, he decided that his eyes had not been damaged. They were watering but his vision seemed normal.
Starting up the Mustang again, Bane realized this was one of the rare times he had entered a gas station without his obsessive ritual of topping off the tank, checking the oil and tires and cleaning the windows. He was just too damaged to even think about it. He started back toward Manhattan, driving more slowly and carefully than usual.
Part of his mind was wondering why Melchius had reacted like that, torching the funeral home rather than confronting Bane. With his dozens of potions and elixirs, a veteran Alchemist was a dangerous opponent. Ah well, the Dire Wolf reflected that maybe Melchius was just a cautious sort of bad guy who preferred to avoid direct conflict. There would be another clash between them, he promised himself.
His skin was starting to sting less as the Tagra healing factor kicked in. Bane lowered his shoulders and leaned back more comfortably in the seat as he drove. He was thinking about Bobby Bassett, how he Bane had decided to give the man that gun against all prudence, and how it had worked out for the best. He had seriously expected Bobby to turn against him and try to work for the Alchemist. Bane allowed himself a bittersweet twinge. It was good that human nature did not always let him down.
4/28/2017
