The Red Storm (2 page)

At the outset it started off with him roughing up people when he didn't need to. That escalated to him throwing a local store owner out a window and onto a couple of dames strolling by. This of course did not please the syndicates. There was no point in telling Storm he was burning his bridges. He was beyond reason at that point.

He progressively became more violent. When a restaurant manager refused to pay for any more protection, Storm wrenched him into the back room and grilled the right side of the man's mug on a scalding oven top.

In a short time our rounds dwindled. Storm had developed into too much of a liability for the syndicates and they were cutting his services off. Instead of picking up the hint, he kept at it until there were no more rounds to make.

I went weeks without even hearing from him, until he called me at my flat late one night. I had been waiting for such a call. I knew it had been weeks since our final rounds were made, and that Storm had been blacklisted by everyone that mattered. He likely hadn't been paid as of that time, which meant he was getting desperate.

“Hey kid, you busy?”

“Depends,” I said. “What're you up to?”

“What makes you think I'm up to something?”

I didn't say anything.

“I need your help, just for tonight.”

“Help doing what?”

“I'm finished here. It's time to get out. But I'm flat, see. I need some traveling dough so I can blow this burg. I got it all set up, see. It's nothing big, I just need you to watch someone for me while I see about collecting the heavy sugar. Don't worry, I plan on cutting you in on it if you help me out.”

Being “cut in” was not what I was worried about. The “I need you to watch someone” was. I hung up the phone after getting directions to where he was at, and set out.

He gave me the location of a dive in Brooklyn. The commute took me more than an hour, and I arrived to the putrid stink of raw sewage from the Gowanus Canal. Shore birds flew from the weed-covered bank with large chunks of rotten meat, while horns of barges that crossed the commercial waterway sounded.

When Storm opened the door to his room on the top floor, I could tell he hadn't slept in days. Dark circles had fashioned around his eyes, but they still lit with hatred and menace.

“What's this all about?” I demanded upon him leading me into the place.

He didn't say anything right away. He casually drew out the silver hip flask he always had filled with assortments of illicit alcohol, took a pull, and held it out for me. I refused his offer.

He finally said, “I need you to watch the kid while I go collect the dough.”

“What kid?” I asked, but I had already ascertained the answer.

It was all over the papers. Some rich high-society couple's ten-year-old son had been kidnapped the previous day outside the hotel they were staying at. The couple was very prominent and had enough pull to get almost every copper in the city diverting their attention to finding junior.

“I got desperate,” he said. “I needed dough. Someone told me about this kid, and how his folks are loaded. So I scoped out the joint they were at, and it was a cinch. The stupid kid was outside with his handler. He was cake to take out. They were walking to the store and I just got up behind him, and I guess I got a little too rough with the sissy. I accidentally broke his neck. The kid started yapping, but he was easy to shut up!”

“Where's the kid now?”

Storm nudged his head toward the back room. “He's asleep. I called his folks last night from a drugstore pay phone. Told them I wanted three G's, and where to drop it off tonight.”

“You fool, you'll never get a piece of that kale! They'll have that place swarming with buttons. They're not going to risk that you ain't going to kill the kid after you have been paid off. They'll take their chance of beating the whereabouts out of you!”

“Got to risk it. I ain't kickin', I'm in desperate shape. Besides, I can smell them bulls a mile off. If I'm left holding the bag, I'll make damn sure to send them parents a piece of junior to show them I wasn't foolin'!”

If it was anyone else, their threats would have come off as nothing more than hot air. But coming from Storm, I believed him, and there was no point in trying to reason with him. I had to make sure that his threat didn't become a reality, so I agreed to watch the kid while he left to collect.

When Storm had gone, I went inside the room to check up on the kid, and to make sure he wasn't dead. Luckily, he wasn't. He had tucked himself away in the far corner of the room. When I hit the lamps, he covered his eyes with his arms like a bat using its wings to shield itself from the emanating light.

“It's okay, kid. I ain't going to hurt you. What's your name?”

He was nonresponsive. I stood there for a bit watching him, until at length he took his arms away from his eyes. He was a cute kid, with full blond hair, chubby trumpeter's cheeks, and a boyish face.

I left the room, but kept the door ajar. I sat on the couch, glancing at my railroad-grade pocket watch. As more time went by, the chance that things had gone south intensified. There could only be one possibility, Storm had gotten pinched and was being put through the wringer by the law. The city kitties would try to rough him up, but would end up hurting themselves more than Storm. The only shot they had to get Storm to sing was if it did Storm some good to do so. Like a lesser charge. That would mean the place would be raided by flatfoots at any moment. Either way, both outcomes were bad.

I got to my feet and went back into the room. “All right, time to beat it, kid,” I said.

The kid was still impassive. It was more than simple shock. I could not put my finger on it, but there was something odd with the kid. I had to shake him a few times to snap him out of it.

“Did you hear what I said?”

He didn't say anything. Impatient, I picked him up and flung him out the door as if he was a stray cat. When he had gotten to his feet, they moved without thought, and carried him straight out of the flat. I listened as his footsteps picked up speed down the hall until the noise tapered off.

It was less than half an hour later that Storm came crashing into the flat, his red-veined eyes pumping with animalistic furry.

“You were right. The place was swarming with buzzards. They must figure I'm some sort of sap. I got to get out tonight, but not before I send the kid home worse than when I got him.”

I didn't stand in the way as he went barging into the back room. It took but a few seconds for him to come back with even more hatred than before.

“Where the hell is the kid?”

“I let him go.”

“You what!”

“I let him go,” I said.

His attack was rapid enough that I had little time to counter a wild fist that was heaved at me. Even though Storm was much bigger, my advantage was that I happened to have more power and faster hand speed. Storm swung at me with everything he had, and I did my best to duck or avoid the full contact of the blows.

Between slips, I tried to get hits in, but I might as well have hit a concrete wall with a rubber mallet. I switched it up, and victimized his kidneys and body, using my back foot as leverage to put more power behind my lead hand.

The fight kept on at an unyielding pace. The furniture, walls, fixtures, and anything else that had the misfortune of being present in the room were destroyed. Ultimately the pain caught up to Storm. His stamina was slowing while his blows were getting weaker and loopy.

That's when Storm hit that last burst of desperate rage that large beasts have when they know their end is near. I didn't see it coming, so I went for the power punches to finish him off. It was a risky move and often left you vulnerable to counters. Storm knew this, for he had once dabbled in prizefighting. When Storm had nothing left to hold him up but his shoelaces, I went in for the kill and threw a hard left. Storm hit me with a counterpunch with his potent right that sent me just about through the back wall.

I didn't black out, but time seemed to slow. Trying to regain my separated senses, I could see Storm sitting on the other side of the room. He was wheezing, and blood was coming out his mouth.

“I thought you were better than that, kid,” he said.

“Don't be blaming me, you louse! You dug yourself into this. If you thought I'd sit by and let you kill some kid, that's just you being a fool.”

Storm laughed, which seemed to pain him. We sat like that for a while, until the distant sound of sirens came into earshot.

“That brat must've called us in,” he said, as he stumbled back onto his feet. Maybe the kid did give us up, but it was more likely Storm was followed. No matter, I didn't even attempt to get up. I merely watched as Storm lumbered toward the door. But before he left, he turned to me and said, “I'll be seeing you.”

I do not know how I was able to get back up and duck out before the law took the building down. I do remember lying low in my flat for weeks. I had more than enough money to sit on. I read the papers, and found that the boy was safely returned to his parents. As for Storm, the papers reported that he had stolen a switch engine and killed the driver and two flatfoots during his escape out of town. The police had put a dragnet out for him, but it was too late. Storm had slipped through and vanished.

That was the last time I heard or saw Bill Storm, until he walked into a New Orleans diner more than fifteen years later.

 

CHAPTER 2

It was 1938, the sort of clear, sunny day that made living in New Orleans pleasant. I was sitting alone at a diner I often frequented, staring out the window, watching nothing in particular, and chewing over my choice of work. There hadn't been any clients in some time. But that was to be anticipated. I was limited to taking on mainly other coloreds as clientele, since accepting white clients almost always led to problems down the line.

The waitress, a rotund woman, topped my cup off while I aimlessly worked on the daily crossword puzzle in front of me. I was in the middle of trying to find a name of a web-footed bird that was five letters when a gravelly voice asked, “Mind if I sit with you?” With indifference, I didn't look up from the crossword, but instead said, “Whatever you got to do, friend. I was about to go anyway.”

It was when the man had seated himself and his looming shadow fell across me that I looked up. I had to almost lean all the way back in the booth to get him in full view. He was still tall, and big, yet his face was unrecognizable. Only the gray, hate-filled eyes I recognized. Even after all these years, they were impossible to forget.

His face was sunken in and his skin was an embalmed gray color. His hair had fallen out long ago, leaving him bald and looking like a lopsided baseball.

“Hello, Champ. Been a long time,” he said in a voice that sounded like a crowbar going through a meat grinder.

“Yes, it sure has,” I said.

“It hurts just walking these days.”

I didn't know whether he wanted sympathy out of me or not. If he did, he wasn't going to get it.

“What can I do for you, Storm?”

He laughed, but like the last time I saw him laugh, it seemed to cause him discomfort.

“Why couldn't you ever just call me Bill?”

“If we were pals, I might've. But we never were pals.”

“No, I suppose we weren't. I figure I was a bit crazy back then.”

“I ain't in any sort of mood to swap stories from way back when. Either you tell me your business, or I'm going to pay my bill and blow on out of here.”

“Hey, don't be like that. I came here because I need your services, you playin' detective and all. If you don't want to do it, just consider it evening the score.”

“There's no score to even. If you still think I played you, that's your problem, not mine.”

“Okay, fine. But at least hear me out. I can't even take a leak anymore without pissing blood after what you did to me that night. Surely that's worthy of you hearing me out, ain't it?”

“You got about the time it'll take me to finish my coffee and pay the bill,” I said.

“It's like I was saying, I need your services. I heard you were playing detective these days, and I still can't wrap my head around that one. I tried lookin' you up, but you ain't listed and you don't got no office.”

“I reckon this is as good of an office as any.”

“And cheap rent, just a cup of joe, am I right?” he asked.

I said, “Why don't you just get on with what you want from me.”

“I need you to help me find my daughter.”

It took a lot to surprise me. Yet here I was, surprised. I suppose the thought of him having a daughter made him almost human.

“I had her years before we ever met. Hooked up with some crazy dame, found out she was pregnant. Funny part is, I wanted nothing to do with having no kid, that is until the first time I saw her. Hard as it may seem, I was gonna go legit for that kid. Try to be some sort of decent father. But that didn't happen, see. I came home to my flat to find out the witch took the kid and scrammed. Left this note saying she didn't want a monster like me having anything to do with her child. It's funny how she didn't think of me that way when I had them legs wrapped around my neck. Doing the kinda stuff that got her knocked up in the first place. But I guess that's dames for you.”

“How old would she be now?”

Storm inclined forward in his seat. “I figure she's gotta to be in her late twenties by now.”

“Let's get to the part of you coming to me.”

“I had been looking for her for years now. I almost lost hope of ever finding her, until a friend of mine who knew the witch told me he saw her here less than a year ago. Said he thinks she lives here. If she's here, it's a sure bet so is my daughter. When I found out you were working as a dick in this area as well, I figure things were working out just right.”