After finishing his food, the Baron set his payment by his plate and picked up the file folders. He didn’t bother to wait for the check; the bill he dropped was more than enough to cover costs and an oversized tip. “Bettino Lucci and Rufino Piazzi,” he said. “The last survivors of the SS John G. Paines.”
The Zombie closed his novel. “Tell me about them.”
The Baron flipped through Lucci’s file. There was a lot of junk related to expenses and lines of credit. “Receipts for food, firearms—here we go. His cultic record is brief, inducted by Anastasia himself in ‘48. Jesus, Anastasia.”
“The Mad Hatter was a cultist?” The Zombie was surprised. Albert “Mad Hatter” Anastasia was the Cosa Nostra boss who’d run Murder, Inc., one of the largest hitmen services in America during the interwar period. By raw chance, the Baron and the Zombie had met their victims at least a dozen times—just a small sample of the thousand or more that Murder, Inc. had killed and disposed of.
“A minor cultist, but yes.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“High Oracle Gagliano once told me that all the bosses in the Commission know about the gods, just most aren’t practicing. Now Anastasia?” He closed his eyes to think. “I remember the news about him. He joined the Navy to avoid prosecution in ‘47. Lucci’s induction must’ve been right after the war.” His eyes opened. He remembered Jacono’s Navy Reserve tattoos. “I bet he served with Jacono under Anastasia. Both of them must’ve become cultists around then.”
“That’s our connection to the Ozone Park Boys. The cultist yesterday said they were an Anastasia crew.” The Zombie tapped the hardcover of his book. “Was he a made man?”
“No. His primary record ends with induction. He hasn’t even picked up a task of his own.” The Baron flipped through the handful of pages and found a list of months and years. “He’s got calendar marks for constant participation. An active supporter for other cultists?”
“Most people are,” the Zombie agreed.
“So that’s Lucci, the man who brought in Jacono.” He closed the folder and opened up the other one, Rufino Piazzi’s file. “Oh my, look at that.” He picked up the first page. There was a sheet of yellow pad with a single word scribbled in heavy black marker. “DEMOLITIONS”
“Piazzi has a skillset?”
The Baron flipped through the remaining papers. “Induction by… I don’t know this man. Federico Barilla? Last year. No sign of being a made man. No receipts, no big operations.”
“So your survivors are a man who’d been trained by the leader of Murder, Inc. and a neophyte who knows how to make a bomb. Want to bet Piazzi was a frogman?”
“A combat diver would be essential if your aim was to covertly scuttle a ship.” The Baron tapped the page with a fingertip. “This explains why the job went to a vassal cult in the first place. Expertise and ruthlessness.” He closed the second file. “They didn’t have to cut a deal with Langley when they could contract with their own.”
“Were there any addresses?”
“I saw apartments in Brooklyn, right near Euclid Avenue. We can take the train and transfer to the C line at Times Square.”
The Zombie picked up his briefcase. “We should hurry. I’ll run my books to the hotel.”
“You think Jacono’s killer will know where to find them? He found Jacono.”
“Yeah, he’s one step ahead,” the Zombie said. “Meet you here in ten.”
While waiting, the Baron stopped by a hattery to purchase a pre-fit bowler for the Zombie. The black hat he chose was cheaply made, but it wouldn’t bother his friend, and the Zombie was bound to lose it again soon. They met up on the way to the shuttle train platform.
“Thank you.” The Zombie spun the bowler on its edge a couple of times, found its balance, and then tossed it onto his head, where it landed neatly. Then he pulled it down tight. “Good fit for showing off,” he said cheerily.
They purchased subway tickets, stood behind the only other two people riding this direction at this hour, and got on the train a few minutes ahead of schedule. After a brief transfer through a half-empty Times Square Station, they took the C line heading east. The subway was already deep underground when it left the island of Manhattan. It passed beneath the East River sediment at a depth of more than 30 feet, and despite the solid stone overhead and constant maintenance on the tunnel walls, discreet water pumps were required to draw away a constant dribble of water coming down from the tidal strait.
The Baron checked his watch. “That’s sunrise,” he said. “Churches won’t start until nine.”
In a subway, the only subjective measure of time was the movement of the train, and the major divisions were the terminal stops. They looked at the maps mounted on panels over the seats and counted off the permanently lit station signs.
“What are we going to ask them?” The Zombie was balancing in the aisle of the subway train, wobbling heavily whenever the car shuddered over a flaw in the tracks.
“Ask them about Nagy, the Cat, and whoever might be trying to kill them.” The Baron frowned at his friend. “Don’t fall over. You might damage the train.”
The Zombie grabbed an overhead bar. “We’ll tell them to get out of town?”
“New York would hold it against us if we didn’t.”
The subway rose towards a shallow terminal deeper into Brooklyn, heading northeast towards Queens. The last time they were here, Ozone Park was almost the countryside, ending in the Aqueduct Racetrack for thoroughbred horses. Since then, it’d expanded along the rails and Liberty Avenue, growing into a full community that spread down to the Brooklyn border. It also represented the easternmost territory of the gangster, Albert Anastasia. The addresses for Lucci and Piazzi were both in Brooklyn county; they’d be on the southwest side of the county line, a few blocks into the neighborhood of East New York. They were active members of the Ozone Park Boys, probably assigned to work chop shops in Howard Beach, Ozone Park itself, and across every rich neighborhood smashed up against Jamaica Bay.
Euclid Avenue station was a cramped, busy hole in the earth, patterned strangely with mismatched tiling and an air of desperate construction. It’d been half-finished during WWII, when material shortages were sharp. Afterwards, it hadn’t been so much completed as it had been patched up. They departed through narrow aisles and rose immediately to the street above, exiting into East New York. The sun was still low over the horizon and cast an orange light between the low residential buildings that lined the neighborhood’s broad streets. This luxurious use of space wasn’t a sign of wealth. Back when East New York was new, it’d been set on the lip of marshy lowlands, and the poverty-stricken residents hadn’t put much value on the land. The real measure of wealth could be seen in the old facades of whitewashed bricks, whose chalky surfaces costumed splotchy or mismatched materials and unified the otherwise aesthetically inconsistent homes, apartments, and businesses into a single community.
Lucci lived in public housing on Cypress Hill, a spot which hadn’t seen either a hill or a stand of cypress since glaciers ground down over the land during the last Ice Age. It was only about three blocks from the Euclid Avenue Station, so the Baron and the Zombie walked rather than call for a cab. It was about 6:30AM when the Cypress Hill Houses came into view.
“We’re too late for Lucci,” the Zombie said almost immediately.
The Baron paused beside him, grimacing at the sad sight. There were at least five police cars lining the walk in front of the houses, and despite the early hour on a Sunday, dozens of Italian immigrants were standing around, families banding together and watching the lack of visible activity with dreadful expectations. There were a group of pissed young men standing outside one house, forming an impatient locus for the neighborhood. They passed around cigarettes and shouted in Italian at the open door to a particular home.
“Think that’s Lucci’s place?” the Baron asked.
“Yes, and those are the Ozone Park Boys.”
“Some of them,” the Baron said. “Let’s see what we can learn, but fast.” They had to worry about Rufino Piazzi. If Lucci was dead, Piazzi’s fate might hang in the balance.
Before they were halfway down the street, they saw police officers streaming out en masse from the house, leading a sobbing young woman down to a squad car. They locked the door for her; the boys shouted in Italian at her, not in anger but encouragement. She was going to give a statement down at the station. Standard stuff, the Baron thought. Later, the crime scene would be searched and documented by trained investigators.
“I wish I could remember more Italian,” the Baron muttered.
They waited for the police to clear the street, then approached the pack of Ozone Street Boys. The Cosa Nostra thugs knew by instinct when someone thought they were important and purposeful. They all straightened up and quieted down, staring at the Baron and Zombie until they were within earshot. “Hey actor, you with the heat?” yelled one of the youngest, a scrawny kid who barely needed to shave and thus had the most to prove about manliness.
“We’re not police!” the Baron called out. He pulled out his wallet and a business card, then handed it to the first man who stepped forward, a large figure with a lantern jaw and a sports jacket. “I’m Paul-Henri Thiry, the Baron d’Holbach. Are you part of the Anastasia crew?”
“You talk like a cop,” said the scrawny kid.
“Shut it, Mike,” said the big man holding the Baron’s card. “Who’re you calling for?”
The Zombie stood quietly behind the Baron. This wasn’t a moment for his brand of intimidation. Simply by showing up, the Baron was putting the thugs on edge. “There was a man with a sedan, green glass windows, who killed Jacono on the East River yesterday. We were going to warn Lucci about it.”
“Jacono?” asked the big man.
“Lucci’s friend from the Navy Reserve.”
The big man nodded slowly. “Lucci got shot.” He handed the card back to the Baron. “Once in the chest, then once in the back of the head.”
“Did anyone see the killer?”
“No, but we’ll find him. We’ll put him in the dirt.”
“It may be three killers, or an organization.” The Baron looked over the crew. Ten men, probably everyone who lived on the block and also worked in the chop shops. It was hard to say how many of them would be cultists. “Lucci’s wife didn’t see anything?”
“She was asleep. Didn’t see nothing, didn’t hear nothing.”
“Was she in a different room from the shooting?”
“That’s right.”
The Baron glanced back at the Zombie. The Zombie shrugged. The Baron knew there was no secular way to suppress a gun so thoroughly that a person sleeping in another room wouldn’t wake up. Not unless they were drugged. Secular mafioso would probably be wondering if she were responsible for the killing, but they’d seemed supportive instead of accusatory when she left. Only the police would be suspicious of her—that must be why she’d been taken to the station. This lantern-jawed fellow was the natural leader, and he’d made no implications about her guilt or innocence. The only certain way to know was to ask.
“What’s your name? It doesn’t have to be real, just something to call you by.”
“Dug,” said the man, “like I dug a hole.”
“Dug, what is prestige?”
“Eh, one second.” Dug turned to the scrawny man, Mike, and shouted in Italian. Mike was confused, but he patted two of the others on their shoulders, and the three walked away from the group. Then Dug said to the Baron, “It’s the favor of the gods. What are our tasks?”
“The will of the gods,” the Baron said. That exchange was the London Password used to identify mutual awareness of the occult. Since the British Empire had touched every continent, the formula had been adopted in one form or another almost everywhere on Earth. Only very remote, isolated cults in Africa, South America, and Central Asia remained unaware of it.
“Are you the Baron, the one from the storybook that chick wrote?” Dug asked.
“Yes. I’m not your enemy, but you may have heard some things. If you haven’t, it’s better you hear them from me first. We assaulted a Luciano vassal cult under Boss Tomasso on the East River yesterday. Then the man behind me broke into Tammany Hall overnight and pulled the records so we’d know where to find Lucci. He’s the Zombie.”
“You assaulted us, but you came to help Lucci?”
“Blame it on poor communication.” The Baron said flatly. It was a dismissal, but he’d already given enough respect to Dug’s authority to deserve some in return.
Dug scratched the stubble on the edges of his jaw. The noise was like rubbing sandpaper on wood. “Okay,” he finally said, “but you’re too late to help.”
They were too late to save Lucci, but maybe they weren’t late for Piazzi. “Let’s share information,” the Baron said. “I’ll tell you what I think, full and honest, and if it’s useful, you can answer a question. We need to be fast though.”
Dug’s expression didn’t change. “Go ahead.”
The Baron lifted up one finger. “There’s only one way to fire a gun without alerting anyone. You wish for silence.” A second finger. “This means the killers are cultists.” He lifted a third finger. “Depending on the duration, the wish could’ve been fairly expensive, but there’s no guarantee on a high price. Nobody had any expectation of hearing anything, and there’s always a discount on subtlety.” A fourth. “Only a well-established cult would pay for a silent execution when the body would be discovered quickly. Hiding the murder for even a few minutes was a luxury.” His thumb, for the fifth point. “Jacono was shot because he was going to warn Lucci and Rufino Piazzi about the killers. Lucci must’ve been shot to keep him from warning Piazzi.”
Some of the men behind Dug began talking in Italian, muttering to each other quickly. The best the Baron could make out was the word boat. Dug scowled.
The Baron said, “Piazzi is the last survivor from the task to sink the liberty ship.”
“We know,” Dug replied flatly.
“We need to call him,” said one of the men.
“Quiet!” Dug shouted. Then calmly, “What’s your question, Baron?”
“Can you show us where Piazzi lives? He needs protection, and the Zombie is invincible.”
Dug’s scowl became a sneer. “We can protect him.”
“I believe it—and I wouldn’t take Piazzi away from your protection—but I need to talk with him. If he’s under siege, the Zombie is an advantage that you can’t turn down.” The Baron watched Dug’s tremendous jaw chewing over the problem. Clenched, unclenched cheeks. He needed a push. “Make up your mind now. We have his address, but you can get us there faster. Time matters. This might be happening right now.”
Dug’s face finally settled into a decision. “We’ll load up a car.” He shouted two more names, men who wore rough leather over wifebeaters at six-thirty in the morning. “Down the street,” he told the Baron, “we’ll take mine.”
His car was a mid-30s Packard Sedan with a lustrous cobalt blue paint job. Unlike modern cars with their artillery-shell styling elements, the Packard was a throwback to Ford’s Model-T design, long and slender with deep running boards and jutting wheel wells, split halfway up the body into two sections, the engine in front and the cab in back. It was the kind of toy a rich person would travel two states to buy at auction, not a car owned by a career criminal living in public housing. Certainly the local police would’ve checked into it, but it was probably assembled out of hundreds of parts coming out of chop shops all over New York, refurbished and hung on a steel frame with a VIN showing it’d been bought at a junkyard.
Dug took the driver’s seat. The Baron took the seat behind him, with Dug’s two friends taking the other two spots. “There’s a handle. Stand on the running board,” Dug said to the Zombie. The Zombie grinned and hopped up onto the car next to the Baron. The vehicle had modern ignition but manual transmission. Dug started it up, dropped the emergency brake, and shifted it into gear. The accelerator must’ve been sensitive. The Packard nearly peeled out, and the Zombie shouted gleefully as he was nearly thrown from the vehicle.
“Have you brought guns?” the Baron asked.
“We’re the Ozone Park Boys,” said the man next to the Baron, who was easily identified by his thick lips and mustache. Lips pulled his jacket back to show his Beretta firearm holstered at his flank. It was seated with the grip facing forwards. He would reach across, grab and pull. Not very fast, but secure and fairly well hidden.
“What about prestige?”
“Only Dug,” Lips said.
“Only a little,” Dug muttered.
“I have a significant pool,” the Baron said. “If we need wishes on the ground, I’m paying. Now this is important. If there’s someone at Piazzi’s home, try to take them alive. We need to question them. Who wanted to take out survivors of the liberty ship? Who killed Lucci? Whatever I learn, you’ll know too.”
“They try to kill me, I kill them,” Lips said.
“Keep a chill head,” rasped the man across from Dug, who had a receded chin that swept into his throat. No-Chin looked back at the Baron. “Are you armed?”
“Only with the Zombie.”
They pulled a corner, tires hissing on the pavement as they swerved around a pothole patch in the road. Dug pointed vaguely towards a three-story building further down the street. “There’s the Belmont-Sutter. Piazzi lives on the third floor. Recognize any cars?”
The Baron leaned over. There were a handful of autos, though most people here parked in a garage or didn’t own a vehicle. He checked the windows on everything he could see. They were all clear glass, nothing green. “Nothing obvious,” he said.
“Fuck it then.” Dug pulled the wheel into a tight swerve, rolled right up the curb, and parked on the far side of the street. “We’re here.”
The Belmont-Sutter apartments were three freestanding, three-story apartment complexes connected together by outside walkways, wrapping around the faces of the buildings and threading through the spaces between them. Each walkway had a solid concrete railing about two feet high with embedded metal fencing reaching up another two feet. These formed an open hallway around the perimeter of the complex, a circular path for people to reach the apartments facing out towards the street. Each floor on each building was further divided internally by a single open hallway, which gave quick passage to the far side of the building. It was impossible to tell from here, but there was a strong chance these also provided access to utility rooms, common areas, laundry rooms, and vending machines for soda and cigarettes. Metal stairwells rose up through the street-facing corners of the block and up through the spaces between the buildings.
A cursory glance revealed no activity, which was alarming enough. It was a Sunday morning. At least some of the residents should be early birds with doors open to enjoy the fine weather. Had something driven them indoors? Suspicious men or activities?
“Nothing moving,” the Baron said to Dug. “Be careful.”
“I noticed,” Dug said.
The Baron rapped on his window. “Zombie!” he called through the glass. “Take point!”
The Zombie gave the thumbs up and hopped off the running board. He stood in the street, scanning the building. He gave a subtle wave of his hand. Come.
“Out,” the Baron said.
Everyone bailed out of the vehicle in one swift motion. Dug hit the sidewalk with No-Chin beside him, and the Baron rose onto open pavement with Lips to his right, eyeing the Zombie’s back. The Baron eased his door shut, while the rest slammed theirs, announcing all across the quiet block that several men had arrived in a single car.
The Zombie glanced back, putting a finger over his lips. Silence, he mouthed.
The Baron belatedly realized that he could’ve planned a better approach. He could’ve taken clear command, encouraged stealth, and silenced the car’s engine with prestige. The urge to rush, to ease conflicts by recruiting the locals and deferring to their authority—it’d all pressured him into a riskier scenario, and now it was too late to be careful.
Dug frowned at the Zombie and stormed past him, arms back and chest forward while he crossed the street. If anyone were watching them from a hidden corner, they’d know Dug was here for violence. His body language said “enemy combatant,” not someone you could dissuade with words or threats. The other two Ozone Park Boys followed slowly.
The Baron stayed in place, watching the balconies. Each one had a concrete lip tall enough to hide a man, yet offered enough gaps to let someone peer down at the road.
The Zombie must’ve realized the same threats. He gave up on stealth and said aloud: “Dug, where is he?” If Dug died, at least they’d know where to go.
Dug paused, glancing back at the Zombie. “Up the stairs, center building. Room 232.”
Meanwhile, the Baron scanned the environment for the nearest cover. He could easily hide behind Dug’s car, but it was isolated. If he were pinned back there by enemy sightlines, he couldn’t move. The concrete stairwells on the apartments also worked, but they’d only cover shots coming from above—not from anyone hiding on the bottom floor or posting up along the street itself. Altogether, this was a poor place for a gunfight.
“Are you coming or what?” Dug asked the group.
“One moment,” the Zombie muttered, looking over the Belmont-Sutter apartments one last time. “Something is wrong.”
No-Chin and Lips both stopped beside the Zombie, waiting for his appraisal.
In the Baron’s heart, an intuitive clock was ticking down. Only seconds remained to understand the terrain, the possibilities of conflict. The Zombie seemed to understand this too. The silence, the open road—the Baron’s instincts were warning him of disaster.
“Boys, get to cover,” the Baron said softly, finally answering Dug’s question.
“What?” Dug asked him.
Everything was suddenly, absolutely quiet. There were many things d’Holbach didn’t notice until they were gone. Wind, birds, distant cars, train wheels, blood rushing behind his ears, the slight tinnitus all people suffered like an endlessly ringing chime—gone, gone, gone. Silence wasn’t really a state of the world; ears were always listening and the air always moved. Silence was truly a state of the mind, induced so subtly that only the observant even noticed.
On the third floor walkway, center building, near the door to 232—a handsome man in a business suit rolled up onto one knee from a prone position, strong hand forward, weak hand stabilizing his arm, 1911 pistol already at the natural point of aim.
The Baron was shouting from the moment his eye caught motion, but it was useless. No sound came out. He could feel his throat making the noises, but there was nothing to be heard. Silence had been wished upon the area.
When conscious thought caught up with reaction, he threw up an arm to indicate direction, then swept about, head down, and shouted into the emptiness, “I wish to be heard!”
A little prestige drained away, and his voice was cracked and terrible to hear, isolated from the soft cushion of environmental white noise. “Shooter!” he bellowed, scrambling for cover around Dug’s car.
There wasn’t any sound, only the twitch of the 1911 in the killer’s hands and two twirling brass cartridges. Everyone saw him. The Zombie broke into a full sprint towards the stairwell, No-Chin and Lips pulled their pistols, and Dug only looked down at himself—at two holes on his shirt, haloed with growing bloodstains. First he was shocked, then grief-stricken. His head twitched left, his legs relaxed, and he collapsed sideways onto the pavement, suffering the twin agonies of mortality and fatal injury. His lantern jaw hung open in a silent scream.
“Suppress that position!” The Baron was nearly behind the Packard now.
There was no need for suppression. No-Chin’s firing posture was pristine, aiming like the professional he was. He pulled off three quick shots in absolute silence, striking Dug’s shooter in the center of mass. The killer shuddered as bullets tore into him, and he fell away from the lip of the walkway, collapsing into cover behind the concrete barrier.
If the assassin had brought any prestige for dodging, he wouldn’t try it now. It’d be a death sentence—if he wasn’t already doomed to perish in the next minute or two.
No-Chin and Lips started yelling something, at each other or at Dug. No sound.
The Zombie reached the stairwell, sprinting rapidly upwards.
“Don’t kill!” the Baron shouted to him.
Dug’s body relaxed, and he flopped onto his back, chest up to the sky. Across his white shirt, two giant blossoms of blood-red meshed together into a growing field of crimson, warmly lit by the rising sun. One shot had punctured a lung. The other must’ve hit dead center and damaged his spine from the front. Both wounds gushed blood in time to Dug’s slowing heartbeat. A tidier wound in the right side of his head was draining blood over the pavement, like a spring spilling out of stones.
No-Chin stood in the street for an instant, mouthing incomprehensible hate. His friend was already dead.
The Baron’s brain finally recognized the facts. The assassin with the 1911 and the dum-dums had fired twice, but there was a headshot on Dug’s corpse.
“Second gunman! To my right!” the Baron roared. “Get to cover!”
No-Chin snapped out of his fury and ran for the closest street-level hallway between the apartment buildings. He hit the low fence on the property boundary with his stomach and let momentum roll him over the fence in a controlled half-flip, scuttling beneath the enemy position.
Lips ran backwards towards the Baron, aiming his pistol at the third story walkway, looking for that second shooter. The Baron pulled back, making room behind the cab, and Lips collapsed down next to him in cover, leaning into the car to steady himself.
“Shoot him if he moves!” the Baron shouted at Lips, both for Lips and the second shooter to hear. It was basically a bluff—the Baron had no clear idea where the second shooter was, but they only needed a few more seconds to close the distance, and these words might keep the shooter in place until the Zombie or No-Chin could ascend the building and find him.
The Zombie was practically leaping up the steps, taking them three or four at a time, pulling himself upwards with yanks on the railing, and No-Chin was already sprinting up towards the second story.
Fifteen seconds after all sound had disappeared, it returned suddenly. Wind blustered. Birds screeched at one another, fearing the force that had smothered their song. The thunder of blood and adrenaline filled the Baron’s ears. There was one bang of the Zombie’s shoe slamming a step, and then he caught himself, shifting to a stealthy prowl for the last few feet.
No-Chin followed suit about a floor below the Zombie, immediately slowing down, even as he continued his own climb to the third floor.
“Dug is dead!” Lips shouted to No-Chin. There was rage in his voice. The world was one Ozone Park Boy less, and these gangs were like family. Dug was their brother.
No-Chin acknowledged with a raised fist and continued climbing.
“We’ll get them both,” the Baron murmured, trying to keep Lips from making any unnecessary moves. “Soon, you’ll have them. Just stay with me. Stay in cover, and watch the balconies. I want that second shooter.”
“Fuckers shot Dug,” Lips said bitterly, peering over the Packard as instructed. “I’m going to kill them. Both of them.”
“I know,” the Baron said. “We need to interrogate first. Find all the bastards that did this. Then they’re yours. Understand me?”
“Yeah—”
“Good. We’ll get them.”
Lips brushed his mustache on his sleeve, then adjusted his firing stance. “Damn right we will. Fuckers got Dug…”
“Be patient,” the Baron urged him.
The Zombie finally reached the top of the stairs, opening out onto the walkway where the first shooter was hidden. “There you are!” he shouted, facing the injured man.
There was an answering shot from a pistol, striking the brick wall to the Zombie’s left with a puff of red dust. The recall echoed off the buildings, painful to hear, and the birds on the rooftops scattered, wings cutting audibly through the air.
The Zombie grinned, glancing over his clothes. “Are you trying to ruin my suit before seven in the morning? Good gods, man, this costs money!”
“Fuck off!” rasped the injured killer.
“That’s the Zombie!” the Baron yelled. “Throw your gun over the railing, stand up, and raise your arms! He’ll take you into custody! We’ll get you to a hospital!”
“Bullshit,” Lips whispered beside the Baron.
d’Holbach shushed him. “It’s a necessary lie.”
“He’s nodding!” the Zombie called down to the Baron. He took off his new bowler and dropped it at his feet. “Just stay calm,” he assured the killer.
No-Chin was nearly at the third story himself.
There was a sudden beep, a brief bite of static, and the killer shouted in a hoarse, half-drowned American accent, “Confirmed Zed, back out now!” Then a burst of coughing.
“Radio!” the Zombie shouted, leaping into a sprint.
The injured killer launched himself bodily against the walkway railing, throwing a large walkie-talkie and a pistol down onto the pavement below.
The walkie-talkie cracked open like a plastic gourd on the asphalt, stopping dead, and made a noise like a popped glass balloon. The pistol rattled near it.
The Zombie slowed to a stop in front of their quarry. “Fucking idiot!” he bellowed at the injured killer. He’d wanted that radio, but he knew better than to take his revenge.
Then the killer levered himself onto his feet in obvious agony and raised his hands over his head. “I surrender!” he yelled, quivering in pain. The glistening on his clothes suggested that No-Chin had gutshot him three times, a tight grouping.
The Zombie scowled. “Don’t move again, or I will break you.”
“I’m done!” the killer cried. “I give up!”
No-Chin stopped on the last step of the stairwell, leaning out to glance over the Zombie and Dug’s killer alike. He was staying in cover, likely watching for the same second shooter.
The Zombie very, very carefully started patting Dug’s killer on the shoulders and down his flanks. A brief pause. Then he pulled aside the man’s jacket and reached in to pull the quick release strap on a snub revolver.
The Baron caught sight of movement on the third story walkway of the building to their right. Someone in the intersecting hall moved out of the shadows cast by the morning sun, slipped down to one knee at the corner, and sighted down an M1 Garand in one smooth motion.
“Rifle!” the Baron barked. “Mid-hall, right building!”
Three things happened at once.
Lips stepped back from the Packard to get line of sight and emptied his revolver at the walkway. Unlike No-Chin, his firing stance was terrible, and four shots of questionable value peppered the concrete and ricocheted down the street. Somewhere distant, a window shattered.
No-Chin dropped onto one knee, aiming along the walkway, but he hesitated because the Zombie and the wounded killer were in his line of fire.
The second shooter fired in the opposite direction with his rifle—two shots in the back of the injured killer and the third in the back of his head, spritzing blood onto the Zombie. Dug’s killer collapsed instantly, thumping his head against the railing on the way down.
The Zombie jumped over the fallen body into a full sprint. “Ruined by seven in the morning!” he yelled. There was a visible smattering of blood on his suit, not a bloodbath, but enough to guarantee that the jacket would hit a dumpster before anyone could ask questions.
On the third floor, No-Chin took the opportunity to open fire, but the second shooter was already pulling back around the corner. The Baron could see him, clutching the rifle against his chest, looking around in a panic. There’d be no escape now, so the next move was obvious. In a moment, he would dodge, and they’d lose their last living lead on Jacono’s killers.
The Baron made a tactical decision. He ran out into the street, hoping there wasn’t a third shooter, and he grabbed the M1911 off the pavement where it’d fallen. He needed just one wound to stop the second shooter from dodging. He lifted the weapon and the slide drifted loosely back. He didn’t dare look at the muzzle head on, but he tapped beneath the barrel with a finger. The bushing was broken, and the spring cap must’ve jumped with the recoil spring.
“Fix it!” the Baron wished. A quarter of his remaining prestige vanished like instant regret, and the pistol snapped into shape as he took aim. An instant later, he pulled the trigger repeatedly, and the pistol barked, jumping in a tightly controlled firing stance.
Intuition said he was hitting the target, shooting the man’s legs—
But the second shooter roared without hesitation: “I wish my radio was broken!”
And the rifleman was cut from the world. Everyone heard the crack of the vacuum imploding where he’d been standing. A rifle, a pistol, and a walkie-talked rattled where they fell. One detail about the rules of debt was that a wish couldn’t be used to transport implements of war into a temple. Apparently, a walkie-talkie counted.
The Baron felt a pang of frustration. It was a goddamn waste of prestige if the second shooter didn’t stay in place. He flicked the safety on, pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket, and immediately wiped the 1911 down. They’d have to ditch this damn thing—it was Dug’s murder weapon—and he didn’t want to leave any prints.
Somewhere on the far side of the block, a car peeled out and accelerated away. “I’d bet that’s our third man!” the Baron shouted. It was probably the leader from the docks, the man who’d ordered Jacono’s shooting, watching the dirty work from down the street.
The Zombie leaned out over the railing. “What do we do now?” he shouted back.
The Baron waved. “Check the dying man!”
The Zombie shrugged and turned back towards Dug’s killer. No-Chin was standing up, approaching the same fallen body. Their eyes met. This was pointless, and they knew it.
The fallen man was still breathing in that strange automatic way, but it didn’t change a thing. Blood loss would stop his heart within the minute, and nobody here was remotely prestigious enough to heal the mortal wound before he technically died.
For that matter, the Baron wouldn’t even have the prestige to clean up the blood.
“He’s dead,” No-Chin judged.
“I think both are,” the Zombie replied.
No-Chin raised an eyebrow. “The rifleman?”
The Zombie knelt to pick up his bowler. “The Baron shot him in the thighs.”
“You sure?”
“I saw blood on the wall.” The Zombie set his hat on his head neatly, no juggling or flair.
No-Chin nodded. “Good.” He turned towards the walkway, looking out towards Lips. “Leone! We got ‘em both!”
“Fuck ‘em!” Lips shouted from behind the Packard.
The Zombie nodded. This was a failure for him and the Baron, but it would be best seen as a success for the Ozone Park Boys. He nodded solemnly to the fellow killer, and he agreed with satisfaction. “We got ‘em both.”
The Baron tossed the 1911 by Dug’s corpse and shoved the handkerchief back in his jacket pocket. It’d be easy to dwell on regrets, but it’d be more useful if they moved forward, checked on Piazzi, and generally kept moving before the police arrived.
First, what did this situation teach him? Each shooter had come with enough prestige to make one major wish and one minor one to dodge. Both had spent most of their power blanketing an area in silence. Even at a major discount, that was lavish behavior.
The cult sponsoring the killers was one of the major powers, that much was obvious. As for the killers themselves, they must’ve been contractors from separate cults. They had absolutely no loyalty to one another, and they’d ruthlessly cut their losses, assassinating their own once he was an information risk. It was disgusting behavior, and the leader who’d given the order was twice as responsible as the man who’d pulled the trigger.
Lips wandered over to Dug’s body. The big man would never move again, never talk again, because a cultic killer thought surprise was enough of an advantage to wipe out a group of four. It wasn’t. Now they were both probably dead, along with the man they killed.
“Fuckin’ Marcus,” Lips said. His face wrenched up, but there was a quiver of resistance, the strength of will being applied to keep his expression blank.
“We got revenge,” the Baron said. “His killers are dead.”
Lips was tearing up regardless, droplets rolling down the mafioso mask. “Why’d he have to die like that?”
“I’m sorry,” the Baron said. He didn’t elaborate. The worst thing he could do was force them to think about Dug’s death in a certain way. If they were going to believe Dug was an inevitable casualty, they had to come to that conclusion on their own. If they were going to believe Dug was murdered, that was their prerogative.
“We need to get these bodies out of here.” Lips paused to look around, seemed to listen for a moment. “We’ll only have a few minutes before the police come.”
“Where’s Piazzi?” the Baron asked.
“In his room?” Lips guessed, “232, if he isn’t dead.”
“I’ll check it out.” The Baron glanced towards the Belmont-Sutter buildings. No-Chin was jogging down the stairs to come check on his comrades. “You two move the bodies to the Packard. The Zombie and I will check on Piazzi.”
“Yeah,” Lips said. “I’ll get the keys.” He knelt down and started rummaging through Dug’s pockets, taking his wallet and keyring.
The Baron jogged up the stairwell to meet the Zombie on the walkway. The Zombie gestured at a door. 232 was written out with white waterproof tape. The original numbers must’ve been lost or never installed. At the Zombie’s feet were a couple of stamped steel picks, the kind used by locksmiths to open cars. They’d been trying to break in.
“If Dug didn’t drive us, we wouldn’t have made it,” the Baron noted.
The Zombie grunted. “Maybe. If I was Piazzi, I would’ve dodged a long time ago.”
“You think we brawled over an empty room?”
“I don’t know. As I said, maybe.”
The Baron took a deep breath. “Well, maybe he didn’t have any prestige. Think about it—why open a door if you don’t think there’s a man inside? They must’ve known something we don’t.” He stood by the door and reached out to knock. He didn’t want to be standing in front of it, in case the man had ideas about blasting someone through a doorway. He hesitated. For that matter, Piazzi was good with explosives. He shouldn’t knock when the Zombie could do it.
“What’s the wait?” the Zombie asked.
The Baron mimed an explosion, hands fluttering for the shockwaves. Then he walked down to the next door and gave the thumbs up. Go ahead. Knock on the door. If Piazzi were inside, they might learn where to find the Cat. If Piazzi wasn’t, they’d have nothing to show for it. If Piazzi were dead, they’d collect new questions without any answers. This was like the fable of the knight. A lion behind one door, the princess behind the other, and nothing they could do would influence what had occurred inside. If the Baron had been anyone else, the impulse might’ve come to pray for good luck. As it was, he simply wanted to know.
The Zombie knocked, and someone fired a shotgun slug through the door and into his stomach. The Baron flinched. A shotgun in a small room was louder than a jet engine. Even with a door and a wall to muffle the shot, it hurt.
Lips and No-Chin shouted from the street, “What the hell?”
The slug had stopped, and the Zombie reflexively caught it and grinned, holding it up like a prize. “Gods damn lucky!” he roared, letting the sun shine off that metal confirmation of killer intent. There was someone in the apartment. Piazzi was alive.
Author’s Note:
We found our boy! There’s hope yet for the free world.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
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There’s a moment of brief, period-accurate bigotry from an unnamed character, including a single period-accurate slur against the Vietnamese.
Before the invention of the light bulb, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach had kept an oil lamp on the nightstand by his bed. Winter mornings had stretched across the tilted Earth, casting a long, deep shadow of night over the French countryside. He’d risen a little after 4AM, being a natural morning person, and he’d always ignited the lamp to read by. There’d been little else to do hours before dawn, but he’d always been full of energy and intelligence, as if vitality had accumulated in him while he slept. Books had been stacked on the lower shelf of the nightstand, along with a restocked fountain pen. In the style of the times, he’d annotated whatever he read, taking notes for future essays and books. He’d been a writer, a true philosopher whose only task was to think and communicate the truths he’d apprehended.
Now when he awoke, he pulled the cord on a shaded lamp and filled the hotel bedroom with pale yellow light. There weren’t any philosophical tracts to read or notes to take. He wasn’t a writer anymore. Technically he was preparing a manuscript in his downtime, but The Nature of the System would never see publication. It wouldn’t even be read by anyone except the Zombie. d’Holbach was a philosopher in mind alone, retired in a sense because the world had demanded action for nearly one hundred and fifty years, and philosophy was best crafted with idle hands. Whenever he did read, he preferred fiction’s newest child, the well-adapted mutation born of fanciful faerie tales and adventure serials: science-fiction, though little of it was scientific. What mattered was the message. Science was ascendant, and everything could be understood by reason and observation. It was an attitude the cults should’ve adopted during the Enlightenment, but even today they remained stubbornly anachronistic, clinging to a theological metaphysics that would’ve embarrassed St. Thomas Aquinas with its simplicity.
It was 4AM on Sunday morning, and thank Edison for electrical power—the world would come awake quickly, and the Baron’s day could begin soon. He took his shaving kit into the bathroom, lathered up his scalp and face, and shaved with a straight edge. He preferred to visit a barber, but he was in a hurry and didn’t want his skin to look dirty. The trick for intimidation was to look the part. He appeared like landed nobility torn out of the 18th century, someone who expected orders to be followed and got his way. It often worked.
He washed the blade, stripped naked and showered quickly. Lathering up a cascade of soap, he felt a little pride about the quality of his physique. Exercise and time had improved his health to a peak never achieved in his first one hundred years of life, and he’d endured yesterday’s injuries well. The bruise on his arm was black, and there was a triangle of yellow on his stomach where Enzu’s boot had struck—with every breath, there was a soreness deep in his punished intestines—but still, he was already recovering, and nothing was too tender to move. Back when the Zombie had led him out of Europe, similar blows had put him down for a day.
He dried with the complimentary towel, dumped it into the hamper for room service, and dressed fully for the morning. Everything was finished neatly with a routine honed over decades. It was only a few minutes after 4:30 when he knocked on the bedroom door.
“Zombie?” he asked.
“It’s safe,” the Zombie called.
The Baron opened the door. The living room was dark, lights out, curtains and window open to the chill air. The Zombie was standing in front of a chair facing the open sky.
“See anything interesting?” the Baron asked.
“The clouds cleared around three,” the Zombie said, “so I’ve been watching the stars and imagining, at least as much as this body still imagines.”
The Baron hesitated to turn on a light, and he shut the bedroom door behind him. The darkness was almost complete. The moon was down, and the city was dim at this hour. The stars weren’t completely hidden, just dim. Their scant lights were scattered across the horizon like specks of quartz in black sand. “What’re you thinking about?”
“Spaceships,” the Zombie said. “I wish they were real.” He turned to look at the Baron, but his expression was hard to discern. Only the slight paleness of his eyes even indicated the direction of his face. “It’d be nice to know that the Earth isn’t the center of the universe.”
“Did you spend all night reading sci-fi?” the Baron asked.
The Zombie turned on the lamp in the corner of the room, flooding it with more warm soft yellow. “If space was somewhere they could go, the gods would have to be obsessed to stay here.”
That wasn’t an answer to the Baron’s question. He shielded his eyes, even though they weren’t that far adjusted yet. He guessed the Zombie was being slightly evasive for a reason. “You cook that thought out of Foundation?” he asked, again trying to verify if the Zombie spent all night reading.
“No. I haven’t been thinking about fiction.”
That was a half-answer, the kind that the Zombie used whenever he’d done something to make the Baron upset. “Did you go out last night then?”
The Zombie nodded towards the open window. “I took a walk.”
Ah, so that’s what his friend had been dancing around. A walk could be good or bad, depending on what the Zombie had done. “How was it?”
“Very enthusiastic.” The Zombie grinned, but only to himself. “I met some people.”
The Baron recognized that cheer. He forced his voice to remain neutral. “Did you kill anybody? Or hurt anyone?”
“I dragged a man by his collar and gave him a few bruises and lumps.”
The Baron waited for elaboration, but none was immediately delivered. If there was a murder, the Zombie would’ve been more serious. Despite appearances, he cared about the consequences, at least when it came to the Baron’s well-being. “Okay. We’ll talk about it over breakfast.” Some of the restaurants in the terminal would be open to feed Saturday’s drunks and Sunday’s workers. He’d debrief the Zombie over coffee.
The Zombie picked up his briefcase from the table. “I need another bowler.”
“We’ll buy one before we ride to Brooklyn.”
He chose a trio of double claro cigars from a humidor he’d brought with him from Boston, packed them into a fine cigar case with a guillotine cutter, and pocketed the lot. He’d smoke them sparingly, less for the tobacco and more for the habit.
On the elevator ride down to the lobby, he asked, “Did you make any enemies?”
“They already were our enemies. I made sure before I kicked in any doors.”
The Baron understood. The Zombie had taken a risk and collected secure information, which would’ve been difficult to retrieve by any other method. Still, only the Zombie could think that breaking-and-entering, trespassing, and assault were reasonable actions, and the Baron knew the Zombie’s history all too well. At least one if not all of those crimes had been committed in his name. No use crying over spilled milk, as the saying goes. The Baron felt confident that he had the diplomacy to deal with it, or at least to turn it to his advantage.
Once they were in the lobby, they went to the front desk and the Baron asked the night clerk for a room change. After a few minutes of checking schedules, the exhausted man at the front desk agreed that they could move after 6PM to the next room down the hall. The Baron said that he’d turn in his keys after dinner that evening, barring any important events or meetings keeping him in Brooklyn overnight.
“You expect we’ll be caught over there?” the Zombie asked.
“Just being prepared,” the Baron said.
They stepped out onto the sidewalk a little before 5AM. They were passing into nautical twilight, when a distant sun painted the horizon in faint glowing shades of deep-sea blue and royal purple, but they were still at least half an hour from sunrise. The streetlights were on, and the cars were shining their headlights; despite the sky’s rich colors, it was useless to see by.
“This time of day reminds me of the poles in winter,” the Zombie said.
The Baron laughed. “When was the last time you went to a pole?”
“Before I met you.”
“Come off it, you don’t remember that long ago.”
The Zombie had his hands behind his back. “That’s not true. I fell into an ice chasm and swam out through the ocean under the ice cap. You don’t forget an experience like that.”
“Oh? Why haven’t you told me about it before?”
“It didn’t occur to me until now.”
The Baron grinned. “Ha! Liar.” The started towards an entrance to Grand Central Terminal on the far corner of the intersection.
“I’ve been to both poles,” the Zombie said, “I’m serious.”
“I believe it, I just don’t believe you went there in the 17th century. You were busy torturing rich people in Central Europe.”
“It’s not a long way,” the Zombie said, “it only takes three years to circle the world.”
Now that was a number that the Baron believed. The Zombie was recognized clearly in Mesoamerican, Inuit, North American, and South American cultic lore. He’d crossed the oceans so many times that it was impossible to count. What surprised the Baron is that it’d never occurred to the Zombie that the New World was a strange place, since every place in the world but one was covered in people, and they’d all seemed equally ignorant of one another.
When the whole world was yours to explore, it was hard to remember the barriers that kept everyone else apart were nearly insurmountable, and that whole cosmologies were defined by these natural divisions. An ocean to an unprepared man might as well be an eternity of time and an infinity of space, and the people on the far side weren’t any more real than the gods in the sky or the dead under the earth. They were myths until you saw them—or in the case of the current gods of prestige, they were comfortable explanations for the unknown.
They spiraled down to the lower concourse where restaurants were opening their doors to travelers. Every Sunday, hundreds of businessmen prepared for 36-hour outbound rides to the old South, where their mining companies, plantations, and textile factories leeched off the hot, poverty-stricken countryside for cheap resources and cheaper labor. Virginian and Georgian accents were dominant, and the laughs of powerful men were rich and cruel. The jokes they told were either bawdy or awfully racist, and they seemed to make a point of telling them louder and laughing harder when the black and Italian waiters were trying to bus nearby tables. If a woman took their order, the facade of humor was pulled away to reveal naked harassment.
The Baron and the Zombie took a table outside the diner, away from the indoor crowd. A young couple—stoned, still awake, and downing raw coffee to reach the dawn—argued about how many people would die in a nuclear strike. She said millions and he said tens of millions, as if that were the difference between mere war and the end of civilization.
“It doesn’t matter how many people die,” the Baron interrupted them. “This civilization ends if the bombs fall. Even if you survive, your lives as they are now? They’re over, and the world that comes afterwards won’t be yours. You won’t be ready for it.”
“Yeah, man, of course,” said the girl, and then they started vehemently agreeing with one another, almost fighting to see whose cynicism came first, who was the leader and the follower in the prophesying of apocalypse.
“You shouldn’t be cynical,” the Baron interrupted again, “It’s dangerous. You’ll start to think that bad things are inevitable. You won’t stop them from happening.”
“Sure, sure, we get it,” said the man. He looked harassed, spent. The Baron could tell that they weren’t really listening. The waiter came by with the couple’s check.
The Baron flagged the waiter down and ordered coffee with cream, a soft boiled egg with soldiers, and hot grits. The Zombie only wanted coffee, his own portion, freshly brewed and almost boiling. The young couple left before the waiter delivered the Baron’s food. The Zombie had his book out on the table, but he wasn’t reading yet.
“Why’d you say that to those kids?” the Zombie asked.
“Their argument was ridiculous. You can prevent a man-made disaster.”
“I disagree. You often can’t.” The Zombie drained his tiny cup of scalding coffee like it was ice cold water. Then he put his mouth on the spigot of his coffee pot and took a long draught.
“That’s awful.”
“My opinion or the coffee?”
“Your choice.” The Baron took his bite. The grits were wonderful while hot, but he had to finish them quickly. Like all warm cereals, they became foul when chilled. His favorite word for the texture was clotted. Grits clotted after a few minutes, leaving a corn-and-butter scab.
“You can’t expect people to act like us. We have an unfair advantage.”
“This isn’t Kantian morality. I’m not universalizing our behavior.”
“I’m invincible. You’re infamous. We don’t rule the world, but we have influence.”
“I’m saying that we shouldn’t put on blinders. We have opportunities to do good.”
The Zombie downed more coffee, wiped his lips and gasped like he’d been refreshed. It was a deliberately annoying little sound, entirely artificial since he usually forgot to breathe unless he was talking. The Baron’s theory for this breathlessness was rather dark. At one time or another, the Zombie must’ve drowned long enough to unlearn the involuntary reflex of breathing. It was fortunate that the Zombie couldn’t remember any such events.
“I take opportunities whenever I can,” the Zombie said.
The Baron ate more grits, then sipped his own cooling coffee and sliced off the top of his pre-cracked egg. The runny yolk was steaming. He took a strip of dry toast—a “soldier”—and dipped it, British-style. “I’m not talking about you,” he said, before taking a bite.
The Zombie watched the yolk drip from the bread and grimaced. “And you call my behavior awful?” Of all the things in the world, he somehow hated raw eggs. It was doubly confusing since the Baron had once seen the Zombie eating elemental sulphur with a spoon.
“You’re really not messing with me?” the Baron asked for what must be the hundredth time. It was almost an impulse at this point—it always made no sense.
“Messing with you how?” the Zombie asked seriously.
“Eggs?”
“They’re foul.”
“I saw you drink bleach last week.”
“What does that have to do with eggs?”
The Baron dipped and ate another strip. They’d never resolve this strange little conflict, and there were more important matters than repeating a personal comedy about yolks. “Nevermind. You went on an enthusiastic walk?”
“Very enthusiastic.”
“Who did you visit?” The Baron hurried to eat as much of his breakfast as possible while the Zombie talked.
“I went down to Tammany Hall.”
The Baron nearly choked on a spoonful of grits. “Really?” he said around a mouthful.
“A door guard admitted that Schuler was cutting us off—without coercion.”
The Baron swallowed and frowned. “Did we make enemies?”
“No more than we had before. We also gained a little respect. Pailthorpe was there.”
“Who?” The name was only vaguely familiar.
“The archivist from our last visit. He’s very old now, but he shouted down six guards without any of them calling my bluff.” The Zombie wasn’t planning on killing anyone at Tammany, that went without question, though it was similarly unquestionable that he would have slaughtered the full complement if it’d been absolutely necessary.
“We can’t press them too far,” the Baron noted. “They’ll push back.”
The Zombie drained his coffee pot and set it on the table with a thud. “One moment.” He popped the briefcase on the table, opened it up and pulled out two file folders. “These are New York’s records on the survivors Jacono identified.” He threw them on the table. “For you.”
The Baron left them where they were. He was eating. “Does Schuler have a copy?”
“They were on a copy desk, but I didn’t see any papers.”
“We’ll need to be careful that we don’t meet Schuler in the street.”
“He wouldn’t try anything in the open. Not when we’re helping them.”
“Never say never. He’s the current Diviner. By definition, he’s insane.”
“You called him lucid.”
“It’s directed insanity.”
The Zombie closed the briefcase. “You aren’t angry with me?”
The Baron laughed under his breath. “Were you trying to piss me off?”
“You’ve yelled at me about this kind of thing before.”
The Baron scooped up more grits and shoveled them down. He felt that sense of weight, the density of the grain settling in his stomach. They’d feel a little leaden for the next hour, but they’d stick with him until lunch. He pointed the spoon at the Zombie. “That’s the key word—before. Could I have stopped you last night?”
“Honestly? No, I wasn’t going to wait for New York to screw us.”
“I don’t like it, I wouldn’t have done it myself, but there you go—two folders that we need.”
The Zombie grinned. “That sounds like approval to me.”
“It’s neutral. Let’s hope Boss Tweed and Oracle Gagliano are in a forgiving mood.”
“What about General Osman?”
“He’ll hate us regardless, though I’m hoping his son gives us a good word.” The Baron glanced through the concourse window into the diner. “We must be coming up on the hour. The racists are paying their checks. If they say anything, I’ll handle them.”
The Zombie opened Foundation and Empire again. “Fine.”
“You didn’t finish reading that last night?” the Baron asked.
“It was a long walk.”
The Baron polished off his breakfast while the Zombie kept his eyes on the page. A couple of businessmen lingered outside the door. One of them finally gestured towards the Baron. He was a lanky fellow in a white suit and a ridiculous cowboy hat. “Look at Ivy League.” His accent was thick. “How much did he pay for that slope?”
His friend laughed. “Too much.”
The Baron looked up, turned in his chair, and smiled at the man. Aggression was common in these places, at these hours, but he was used to it. “Excuse me, sir? Do you have a chaw of tobacco jammed in your mouth?”
Lanky Suit was a little lost, but he was a well-practiced bully. “Aww, look at that. Ivy League tried hurting my feelings.”
The Baron grimaced. “Either it’s a chaw, or that’s your accent.”
The Zombie looked up from his book before the man could retort. “That’s an accent?”
“I know!” the Baron said. “I guess he wanted to sound ridiculous.”
Lanky nudged his hat down towards his eyes. “Rich man’s got a mouth.”
The Baron smirked. “You think you’re a threat?”
Lanky’s hefty friend spoke up: “We could kick you around the block.”
“No, I get it now. You think I’m not a threat. You think, he’s sitting around, he’ll back off like the others, but I can see the police report now, can’t you?” He held out his hands, as if he were reading an invisible sheet of paper. “‘After starting a fight with other customers, Dixie and Clyde were boxed into submission by an athlete and a Korean-American soldier acting in self-defense. They declined to press charges, stating that the beating was punishment enough.’”
“Jeeeesus—” Lanky began.
The Baron slammed the side of his fist on the top of the table. All the silverware and plates rattled violently. He hadn’t even bothered to stand yet. “Are we fighting, or is this stupid?”
“You’re crazy,” Lanky said. “We were only joking.”
“You’re a goddamn menace,” his friend agreed.
The Baron watched them in silence. Saying anything would only prompt them to respond. Letting them have the last word would give them the confidence to leave with their dignity intact, which is all they wanted to salvage at this point. They were businessmen, ultimately, and with the macho games coming to a sudden end, they shook their heads as if they were the sane ones, as if they were the voice of reason in a violent world, and they walked away.
After they vanished into the concourse tunnels, the Baron laughed under his breath. “That was fun.”
“You haven’t cut loose in a while,” the Zombie noted.
“I can only justify it against people who deserve it.”
Verbal jousting was an old skillset for the Baron, one that’d been a necessary evil in the first few decades of his life. In 18th century Paris, two talents had been valued among the nobility above all others. The first and lesser was cunning, especially in financial matters, though it’d been widely believed that any articulate and educated gentleman was worthy of his title. The second and greater skill was wit, used almost exclusively to mock, belittle, and ultimately conquer others. Someone with a stutter might’ve been the most intelligent administrator in Europe, but there’d been little hope that the king would grant him an audience. If the throne had recognized a social pariah, he would’ve tainted his reputation through association.
The Baron was born German but naturalized in France. As a “foreigner” and a philosopher, he’d been allowed certain eccentricities by the Parisian nobility, and he’d never done anything to disguise his disapproval of such a ridiculous system. He’d relied primarily on his authority as a man of letters and a contributing author to the Encyclopédie to garner respect. Only when someone pressed him had he resorted to a harsh word, and while he hadn’t compared with the sharks that swam in the royal court, he’d bit hard enough to avoid being ostracized for its own sake—a fate that had sometimes befallen other natural philosophers.
Of course, money and reputation had kept their places at the table despite the lamentable focus on sharp-tongued dueling, and the Baron had been rich with both. The d’Holbach estate had paid for opening and maintaining the largest salon in Paris with one of the most extensive libraries on the continent. The philosophers Diderot and d’Alembert had conceived, prepared, and compiled the first encyclopedia of the Enlightenment there. Jean-Jacques Rousseau had traveled from Geneva often, and in his writings he’d coined the phrase d’Holbach’s Coterie, referring to the group of radical Enlightenment thinkers that’d regularly stayed in the Baron’s home.
It’d been a decadent place, practically a palace. They’d dined on luxurious and rare foods literally fit for kings and drank vintages of wine so expensive that one bottle could’ve been sold to pay a servant’s wages for a year. Women had been barred entry, even d’Holbach’s first and second wives—a fact that the Baron now regretted—and participation had been on an invite-only basis. Powerful radicals had frequented the salon and opined political, religious, and philosophical views that could’ve put them in a noose. They’d collected power, ambition, and intelligence, and all of them had drunk deep from the twin wells of revolution and change. The Enlightenment had been their time. They’d have made an incredibly powerful cult if any of them had known about the gods.
Such times were long past, though, and after two centuries a man changed. The Baron’s French was poor and vastly antiquated. He didn’t understand modern German. All he really had was English and a smattering of Italian—not enough to speak, just enough to listen. It was only through enduring practice that he’d kept his sharp wit and critical mind.
Thoughts of the past would occasionally crest over him, like gentle waves of nostalgia, but it was always brief. Those years were remote, consigned to the ocean of time, and despite contemporary theories that old minds were ossified, he found that to be absolutely false. Being this old merely meant well-practiced, but it didn’t stop the world from changing to the point where one adapted or died.
Author’s Note:
A wise man once said, fix your hearts or die.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and access 4 weeks of early chapters!
