Somewhere in
The Haunt
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A
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s afternoon melded into
evening, the sun cast a deep red glow over the rusted shacks and garbage-lined
alleys of The Haunt. The mood of the city’s underbelly began to change, because
with the coming dark, there were footsteps and sudden movements in the shadows.
The denizens of this dark place prepared for another night of mayhem and
misdeeds.
The Haunt was a cruel
place, permeated by such foreboding that the old-timers often compared the slum
to an insatiable monster, feeding on the souls trapped within. Personally
however, Joe didn’t put much stock into scary stories.
Joseph Isaacs, or Blackjack
Joe as he was more commonly known, had just finished counting his cut of the
money made from the sale of a shipment of electronic equipment that Blackjack
and his friends had “liberated” from a cargo ship which had come into the
harbour two nights before. It helps to be
connected, Joe thought as he flipped open a small hatch in the floor of his
shack and stowed most of the cash. He pocketed the rest, closed the hatch and
covered it with a green threadbare rug.
Joe was only 27 years old,
but his tall, imposing and deceptively agile body, along with his charisma and
roguish charm kept him in good standing with most of The Haunt’s residents. He
had a flamboyant dress sense to match. His trademark and one of his most prized
possessions was a coal-black bowler hat. On the right side of its brim,
Blackjack always kept an Ace of Clubs, which he often left as a calling card to
enemies and law-enforcement authorities alike.
Joe buttoned his white shirt over an oak-coloured
torso, slung on his leather jacket, and strode out into the night. Blackjack
had no intention of walking all night though and luckily, the same connections
that had alerted him to the recent electronics score had, some months ago,
contracted him to deliver a former employee, who’d since betrayed them to the
cops, back into their hands. In return, he’d been given the man’s sports car as
payment. As the story went, the guy was a bookie who’d switched sides after he
was busted in a sting, but Blackjack hadn’t been too focussed on the details.
Though he preferred to
settle disagreements with words, Blackjack was well-aware of the volatility of
criminals. As such, he was never without weapons. In Joe’s pockets was an
assortment of knives as well as smoke bombs which made for a quick getaway,
when necessary. Holstered to his right hip was the most dangerous weapon of
all, a .357 Magnum pistol, which he called Delilah. Despite being an excellent
shot, Blackjack only used Delilah in the most extreme situations. This
unwillingness to kill made him weak in the eyes of The Haunt’s more brutal
gangsters.
Tonight, he was on his way
to deal with a low-level crook that went by the name of Devilish Danny.
Blackjack had recently been told that Danny had started extorting money from
the few decent families left in the slum. He was far from a law-abiding
citizen, but Joe would not stand idly by and allow the innocent to be preyed
upon.
Blackjack knew that at this
time of night, Devilish Danny would be seated at a table in his favourite
dive-bar, The Rusty Nail, buying
drinks for his verminous friends and surrounding himself with easy women. Before
heading to the bar, Joe swung his sleek, metallic beast around the corner and
down the street to pick up a member of his crew, Hugh Kilpatrick.
If Blackjack was a large
man, then Hugh was positively monstrous. He stood well over six feet tall, had
a wild mane of dark hair and was built like a tank. His cannon-like arms
ensured that he could knock out most men with a single punch, and he was
certainly battle-hardened. One of the things that stood out in Joe’s mind when
they first met several years earlier, other than the man’s sheer size, was that
while his left eye was a normal brown colour, in the right socket was a glass
replacement, and in place of a pupil was the image of a four-leaf clover. When
Blackjack asked him about it, he just smiled and said, “It brings the luck of
the Irish, little fella.”
Another symbol of Hugh’s
Celtic heritage was the only weapon he ever carried, a shillelagh. This
club-like weapon was a short, black staff made of hard blackthorn wood, with a
lead-filled knob at one end and a leather strap at the other. A punch from him
was bad enough, but when Hugh struck a blow with the shillelagh, broken bones
were a sure bet.
Joe found Hugh waiting
under a street-light, finishing off a cigarette. He pulled to the side of the
road, popped open the passenger door and said, “You shouldn’t smoke those Kilpatrick,
they’ll get you.”
“Yeah, yeah, shut your
mouth.” he said as he got in the car.
“You know, I think this car
would look better in candy-apple green, but I s’pose racing red ain’t too bad.”
“Whatever you say, you big
ol’ leprechaun.”
Hugh clapped a huge paw on
Blackjack’s shoulder, his facial expression somewhere between a grin and a
snarl. “Now boyo, what’d I tell you about callin’ me that?”
Joe smirked sideways, “I
thought you Irish cats were supposed to be easy-going.”
“Anyway, what’s that
scumbag Danny up to now?”
The smile faded from Joe’s
dark features, “I heard he and his punk friends have been putting the squeeze
on the families in the area, charging ‘em protection.”
The Irish giant let his
right hand fall to rest on the heavy knob of his shillelagh, “That ain’t very
neighbourly now, is it?”
Blackjack shook his head,
and lifted a hand to slightly adjust the position of his hat, “No, but I don’t
think that jackass gives a damn about being neighbourly.”
“What say we have a nice
chinwag with little Danny, eh?”
Just then, the decrepit,
peeling structure of The Rusty Nail came
into view. Joe slowed down and parked a short distance away from the bar’s
entrance, “Man, I’m feeling thirsty, how ‘bout you?”
As they got out of the car,
Hugh flashed a dangerous smile as he said, “Aye, let’s get a drink.”
At their approach, the
people loitering around outside the bar began to gawk and stare, whispering as
the sharply dressed black man and massive Celt confidently entered this den of
thieves and cutthroats. When they walked
through the doors, a squat, mousy-looking blonde waitress wearing a shabby and
stained white apron over an extremely short yellow dress hurried over to greet
them and in a high, squeaky voice, she asked, “Can I get you boys somethin’ to
drink?”
After looking around at the
bar’s occupants (most of them either arguing, or sitting in a drunken stupor)
Joe replied, “Two bottles of beer please, darlin’. We’ll be at the table in the
back, with our good friend, Devilish Danny.”
She eyed the two men
nervously, opened her mouth as if to speak, but thought better of it and
scurried away to fetch their drinks.
At the rear of the
establishment, seated at a rectangular wooden table and flanked by four
stockily built men, all drinking from large flagons of alcohol, was a thin,
skeletal man, with a gaunt, rat-like face and dirty blonde hair. On Devilish
Danny’s lap sat a busty, giggling young woman in platform boots, a black
mini-skirt and matching bikini top. She had long, stringy red hair and wore far
too much makeup. As he and Hugh walked over to the table, Blackjack sensed his
friend’s disgust.
When they were just a few steps away from the
table, two of the men rose and advanced to block their path. Both men wore the
same truckers’ hats, denim overalls and cowboy boots. Their most striking
similarity however, was that they shared the same massive overbite and gormless
facial expression.
“Ah, Maurice and Lenny
Thicket, how you doin’ tonight boys?” asked Joe.
“Evening lads,” added Hugh.
“Whut
da hell do you twos want?” demanded Maurice, the elder brother.
Lenny grunted loudly in
agreement.
“We just want a word with
your pal Danny-boy there,” answered Joe.
“Piss off,” was Maurice’s
crude reply.
A gurgling chuckle escaped
Lenny’s large, gap-toothed mouth.
Hugh took a step forward, “Well
lads, as convincin’ as that argument is, we really won’t be takin’ no for an
answer. If you’d just get outta our way, there’d be no reason to get all
excited, now would there?”
Maurice threw the first
punch, which Hugh caught before it even came close to reaching its target.
Crushing Maurice’s hand in his palm, he turned to Blackjack and smiled, “Shall
we split ‘em up evenly then?”
Joe took off his hat, flung
it like a Frisbee onto one of the empty tables behind him, and before Lenny’s
mind had registered that he was in an actual fight, Joe had punched him hard in
the gut and pulled his head down into such a vicious, concussion-inducing knee,
that he was unconscious, bleeding and missing three more teeth, without so much
as a whimper. At the same time, Hugh stretched out the squealing Maurice’s arm,
shifted his weight and pressed Maurice’s considerable weight clear above his
head. By this stage, the other two men had drawn pistols and gotten up from
their seats. This didn’t matter much though, because they didn’t even have time
to take aim before the Irishman had thrown Maurice right into them, causing all
three to careen into the table, their combined girth making it crack, splinter
and finally collapse. This left all four men incapacitated, three of them in a
squirming, groaning heap and the other lying flat on his back, strangely
peaceful in his own blood.
The Rusty Nail was
suddenly as silent as death. Blackjack turned on his heel, fetched his hat and
then both he and Hugh stepped over the wreckage of Danny’s friends and stood on
either side of him.
“Just a minute Joe,” Hugh
said as he lifted the scantily clad woman off of Danny’s severely shaking lap
and carried her outside. Once on the pavement, he set her back on her feet.
“What’s your name, me
lovely?”
“M-M-Mary Samuels,” she
stammered, clearly shocked at what had just transpired.
“Pleased to be makin’ your
acquaintance, young miss. Now I want you to go home and don’t ever come back to
this place, you hear me?”
“Y-Yes, okay and uh, thank
you,” and with that she ran down the street as quickly as she could in her high
boots.
Hugh watched until he could
no longer see Mary, then rejoined Joe and Danny.
“Having a good night so
far, Danny?” Joe asked, smiling cordially.
“Well I was. That is until
you interrupted my fun. Where is that sweet little lady? We was just gettin’
cosy-like,” Danny looked around with an odd mix of intense fear and mild
irritation on his face.
“You mean Mary?” Hugh
snarled in a low voice, “She’s long-gone. She’s no need of your sort of filth.”
“Easy, Kilpatrick,” said
Blackjack, turning back to their captive, “you see Devilish, Kilpatrick here hates
to see women mistreated, but that ain’t all we came to discuss.”
“Yeah, well what the hell
do you want?”
“Well, we hear you’ve been
paying unfriendly visits to some nice people ‘round here and truth be told, we
ain’t too pleased by that.”
Danny scowled nastily, “How
me and the boys make our scratch don’t got shit to do with you, Blackjack!”
Joe frowned, “I thought
you’d say that,” His kick to Danny’s chest sent the frightened crook back-first
to the floor.
“Understand this, you
little rat, I won’t have garbage like you feeding off innocent families. Now,
if we have to see you about this again, we won’t be so gentle.” Blackjack knelt
and patted Danny’s trembling cheek. “See ya, sunshine.”
As the men turned, Maurice,
who’d managed to extricate himself from the other two thugs, threw a hard punch
that caught Joe flush on the nose, making his eyes water as he staggered back a
little.
“That’s it.” Hugh smashed
the shillelagh into Maurice’s jaw, which made a horrible crunching sound as he
fell limply back to the floor.
“Well that stung,” Joe said
as he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, “nice shot.”
Hugh merely grinned. As the
two walked away, Blackjack dropped the Ace on Maurice’s head.
“Won’t be needin’ those
beers after all, love,” Hugh told the squat waitress, who held the two bottles
out to them on a tray.
As they drove away, Joe
asked, “Did you really have to pull that bowling alley stunt back there?”
Hugh smirked with
self-content, “You ain’t the only one with a bit o’ flash, Blackjack.”
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[Catch Part 5 next week.]
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