Gods of Manhattan (11 page)

Maya frowned, curious. "I've never seen you like this. You're... almost afraid of him. Even now. What is he to you?"

Doc Thunder scowled. "It doesn't matter. He's dead. It's his killer we should worry about - and whoever did that to Monk, if he's not the same person." He stood, suddenly, and stalked towards the exit, making her run to keep up. "I'm missing something. Smart as I am, I'm not smart enough..."

Maya blinked, trying to guess his meaning, then her eyes flew wide open. "No. Doc, no. It's too risky. Every time you use that thing, you run the risk of it killing you. You know that."

"Monk could still die because I was stupid, Maya." Doc Thunder scowled, cracking his knuckles as the rain began to spatter on the sidewalk. "My mind's made up. First, we get some sleep. Then, it's time for desperate measures."

He took a deep breath, then turned to her.

"It's time for the Omega Machine."

Chapter Five

The Case of The Man Who Never Smiled

After he'd finished cleaning the blood from the front of his mask, Parker Crane went to a cocktail party.

It was a low-key affair at the Astoria; a mere one hundred dollars for a ticket, and thus hardly worth bothering with for most members of the Jameson. A couple even looked askance at Crane's rousing himself for such a mediocre get-together. However, most understood that a large number of strumpets from the fashion 'scene' that Crane was involved in would be there, and young men would always be young men - it was only to be expected that Crane would want to sow a few wild oats. Besides, he was so awfully good at keeping his many and varied affairs from tarnishing the name of the club.

Crane decided not to call Marlene; she would either be there herself, or more likely embroiled in her own sordid affairs, in which case he knew where he could find her if she was needed. Instead, he made arrangements to go with two of the models he worked with regularly. A pair of twins, attractive enough to dabble in the modeling world, pneumatic enough to preserve his image and wealthy enough to be deemed worthy of his company, although they were, regrettably, new money. Blonde, naturally. Their father was something in dirigible construction. Crane had quite forgotten their names over the course of the carriage ride from their city apartment, where he'd picked them up - something that rhymed? Mandy and Sandy? Chloe and Zoe? He hadn't bothered to find out, or even talk to them beyond what was absolutely necessary. They spent the journey giggling and whispering to each other, while he looked out at the rain falling down on the city.

His city.

He was regretting not putting a bullet through the ape man's head. He'd assumed the throwback had died, but he'd seen the flare lighting up the Manhattan sky as Marlene had driven him back to his regular drop-off point, and he knew what it meant. The Gorilla Reporter had called in his lovers to bail him out.

The Blood-Spider disapproved of Doc Thunder - his permissive attitudes were the least of it - and he had no doubt that Thunder's simian sidekick had planned to kill him, perhaps in order to cover up an involvement in Donner's murder. Could he add Thunder to the list of suspects? And if so, how could he be dealt with? What bullet could bring down the bulletproof man?

Something to consider for the future. If Thunder turned out to have been the one to take Donner's life, neither he nor any member of his freakish entourage would live to regret it. Perhaps it would be best, he considered, if Olsen did not die from the bullet wounds, although it would be an unlikely outcome. If he survived, he could be interrogated.

The Blood-Spider would have his answers, once way or another.

On pulling up to the Astoria, Crane and his two dates were greeted by the expected barrage of flashbulbs. As usual, there was a gaggle of photographers armed with box cameras, and a secondary crowd of sketchers scribbling away with coloured pencils on small notepads. He set his face in a careful, studied mask of contempt, one girl on each arm, their matched backless dresses complimenting perfectly the cut of his tuxedo - a Gunn original, hand-stitched by the master himself. Crane felt the mask becoming real as his hands drifted down to the naked smalls of their backs, and the myriad documenters of his social life clustered about him to record the moment for posterity. To them, all he was was this persona, this disguise he'd created for himself. For them, his entire self boiled down to a string of listless, bored copulations, to parties and openings, launches and premieres, rumours and scandals and endless, beautiful women. And not one of them knew the truth - that was what filled him with that cold, coiling hatred, lying like a snake in his gut. Not a single one of these vultures knew the reality of the man they were so desperate to tell the world about in their filthy little publications.

The corner of his mouth twitched, almost involuntarily, in a smile. And if they did know... if the great unwashed who pored over these yellow rags, these scandal-sheets, if they knew his intimate secrets - what? Would they praise him? Understand the cause that burned in him like a fire? He liked to think they might.

Some would want him dead, of course. The criminals. The inhuman. But he and they were at war, a war that never ended. Nestled against warm, yielding flesh, his trigger fingers itched, unsatisfied, denied their kill.

Inside, the girls ran quickly to powder their noses, leaving him blessedly alone. As he plucked a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter, he felt his ears burning, and he turned his attention to the source - a rather loud argument near a potted plant, which the waiters were studiously avoiding as if attempting to starve it into silence, but which had drawn a small throng despite their efforts.

"What you don't understand, Mister Big-Shit Doctor
A-hole,
is the Blood-Spider's keepin' our streets safe, capeesh? Every one of these pieces of crap he puts down means lives saved! People
in the line
walkin' away from the jackpot and breathin' for another day! You ever told an officer's widow her husband's lying in the ground because some spic had more rights than he did? Huh? You ever did that, asshole, 'cause I have!"

The voice was loud, belligerent and rough, sandpapery from decades of nicotine abuse. Crane recognised it immediately. Detective Harry Stacey, forty-three years old, five feet and two inches tall. Hair a muddy grey with still the occasional streak of red. A handlebar moustache to match. A tan suit that had seen better days. He stank of whiskey, cheap cigars and light corruption. Crane had no doubt that he'd scrounged up the hundred dollars admission though gambling or stealing cash from the evidence locker, and presumably he was only here in the first place to grease a few palms or find a new mistress to put in the apartment he kept for that purpose across town.

In many respects, the man was a human sewer, but he had qualities that Crane couldn't help but admire. For example, he had an iron determination to protect the decent people in society from the undesirables, those who would prey on them - those inhuman devils who would revel in their sins, as it were - and he never allowed his weaknesses to compromise that. Not to mention that his deep connections with the more squalid elements of the police department allowed him to be useful to the Blood-Spider as a member of the Spider's Web.

Of course, if he hadn't proved himself so useful, he would have probably been killed by now. That made his blind loyalty a source of endless amusement to Crane, although naturally the Blood-Spider would never allow it to show. Idly, Crane looked over at his opponent in the one-sided debate.

'A tall, thin man, dressed in a grey suit and leaning on a gold-handled cane, with longish white hair and beard, hollow cheeks and grey, sunken eyes with large bags underneath them. The face was emotionless, almost supernaturally calm in the face of Stacey's tirade, and the only movement the man made was to occasionally take a long sip from the champagne glass in his left hand.

What had Stacey called the man? A doctor?

"It just seems somewhat unconstitutional, doesn't it? Shooting a young man in the street in cold blood. What about the basic freedoms?" The voice was cold, disinterested, and this attitude only enraged Stacey more. The scotch in his glass spilled over his clutching hand as he aimed a stubby finger at his debating partner.

"Freedoms? Screw your god-damn freedoms, Mister Med School! What about
my
freedoms? Where's my right to take a walk through the South Bronx at night without some freakin' jig sticking a knife up my ass? Where're the freedoms of all the decent folk, like - like schoolteachers, not the stinking commie ones, the ones who teach sports, where's their freedom not to have to look over their shoulders all the time in case there's a Jap with a giant freakin' pair of, I don't know, those sticks with the chains, what are they called, standing there waiting to knock their balls right off 'em and wear 'em like a friggin' hat? If it was up to you, Hamilton, you'd just give all the chinks and the spics who're terrorising the streets of this city a, a little slap on the wrist and a don't-do-it-again-"

"Can we do this without the racial invective?" murmured the doctor - Hamilton, that was his name. His expression had not changed, and he looked bored by the whole discussion. There was something about him that rubbed Crane the wrong way. His stoicism in the face of Stacey's drunken tirade seemed unnatural, somehow.

Not to mention his disapproval of the cause, which was suspicious in itself. This Hamilton would bear watching.

"Racial - up your
ass,
pal! I'm no racist!" Stacey flushed red, knuckles white on his glass as he tossed the rest of the scotch down his throat. "You god-damned
progressives,
you're pretty damned quick to call a guy a bigot just for speaking his mind, aincha? Maybe
you're
the racist, pal! Ever think of that? Maybe you're racist against people like me who friggin' work for a living -
in the line
- keepin' the streets safe like my buddy the Blood-Spider! Friggin'... friggin'
cop racist!
"

"I think we're done here." Hamilton turned on his heel, taking the bulk of the crowd with him. Stacey stared balefully after him for a moment, hurled his dead cigar angrily onto the polished floor and then charged off in the other direction, banging immediately into a waiter carrying a tray of canapés and sending miniature smoked salmon rolls scattering in all directions. Crane watched Stacey curse the man out and then head down a corridor in the direction of the gents' toilets.

Crane checked that no eyes were on him and then surreptitiously followed, making sure to keep several paces behind the detective, moving silently. Once they were out of sight of the main throng, Stacey stopped, digging in his inside pocket for a fresh cigar. Crane smiled, taking a handkerchief from his own pocket and using it to disguise his voice as he crept up behind the older man.

It was all in the timing. Crane, silent, waited until Stacey had raised the stogie to his lips and was attempting to light it with a book of matches he'd taken from one of the city's many strip clubs. Then he spoke.

"
Detective.
"

The Blood-Spider's voice. That unearthly hiss, low, sibilant and menacing. Harry Stacey nearly leapt out of his skin. "Christ-" The match went flying, thankfully going out before it burned a hole in the carpet. The cigar slipped from suddenly trembling fingers, bouncing off an unpolished shoe.

"
Turn around and you will be killed, Detective. Do we understand each other?
"

Stacey had been half turning, but now stood straight as a ramrod, beads of sweat appearing on goose bumped flesh, staring straight ahead. "Aw, crap. I mean yessir. Whatever you say. I won't turn around, you can count on your buddy Harry Stacey, Mr. Blood-Spider, sir, 'cause I'm right there with you
in the friggin' line,
pal -"

"
Be quiet.
"

Stacey was quiet.

"
Two days ago, a man was found dead, Detective. Murdered in his home. He was killed with a sword.
"

Stacey frowned. "Killed in his home... wait, was this that recluse guy everybody thought was dead? Danner, Donner, what was his name -"

Crane thrust the tip of a finger into the man's back, and he jerked as if he'd been stung by a wasp.

"
Be quiet, I said.
"

Stacey nodded, dumbly, trying to swallow.

"
I need information, Detective. Anyone who's been killed or injured with a sword in Manhattan. If you bring this information to my... mail drop...
"

"Aw, not that douchebag Crane! Jesus, every time I set foot in that friggin' rich-boy hellhole I get a case of the hives -" The finger jerked in his back again. "I love that guy."

"
Crane. If you bring him the intelligence I require, I will allow you to continue serving the cause. If not... your sins are deep and steep, Detective, and they lie black upon your heart. I know about the gambling, the bribes, the kickbacks, the whores. Some would say the Spider's Web has no place for you.
"

"So what, you'd kick me out?" Stacey scowled. "Just 'cause I cream a little off the top here and there? A guy's gotta make a living, buddy - uh, sir."

Crane jabbed the finger into his back once more, leaning closer. "Yes. I would kick you out."

His hiss dropped slightly. "
Of a window.
"