Chapter 2

While we continued to play our card game, Drake pocketed his stolen silver coin with obvious satisfaction and loudly laughed about the daft dame he’d hoodwinked. Then after finishing his beer, he disappeared for a while with the rest of the other street bosses for a meeting upstairs with the big man, but it was a fairly short one apparently, and about a half hour later they all reappeared downstairs. Oddly, our local kingpin himself, Connor, was now seen walking towards our table, stopping just briefly along the way to casually greet by name some of the rest of his minor minions and henchlings by name. Like his father, Connor knew everyone who worked for him, even at the bottom rungs of his organization. Unlike his father, these sorts of sudden unanticipated encounters were generally not violent ones, or expected to become so.

Pilsner and I stood up from our card game, the pair of us in tandem and bowed our heads slightly and said ‘Sir’ in clear and hopefully respectful tones of voice, as he greeted us in turn.

“Otto! Another round here of whatever Chancer and Pilsner are having and also bring us three glasses of my usual.” He commanded of the bartender, while warmly greeting each of us and clasping each of our hands. Connor could act with the common touch and play the benevolent local community leader when he chose to do so, but it was quite unusual for him to want to speak with us at all, let alone for him to offer us drinks!

Glancing towards the bar, I noticed that even Drake looked a bit puzzled, but he lifted his beer cup up to me when I briefly gave him the raised eyebrow in a quizzical look, hoping I suppose for some sort of clue to the great man’s mood and inclinations towards us peons. He shrugged, but we didn’t have to wait for very long to find out.

“Drake’s got a very important appointment for later tonight and when I asked him who he could count on for a small escort to get him there safely and quietly, he suggested you both could do the job. A quiet trip ... no trigger boys, no one packing heat!” He said, pounding on the table hard with his fist, for emphasis. “Straight transport job, just him and a pair of other lugs. Are you game? Can we depend upon you two?”

Fuck ... well, there was only one acceptable answer to that question. Any other alternative would probably result in our lifeless bodies taking a late-night plunge into the river later tonight.

“Certainly Sir, we’re available ... and you can depend upon us.” Pilsner quickly squeaked out, with rather more enthusiasm and zeal than actual sincerity. But depend upon us for just what?

Otto came over himself, bearing two fresh beers and three whisky glasses, each with about two fingers of what was probably very good expensive stuff reserved for the Boss. That was another first ... seeing Otto actually bring service to a table. Here, you picked up your drink at the bar, or, if it was for someone significant in the organization, Knuckles would make the table delivery.

“Good ... good. Now, drink up fast!” Connor said, and then he made a brief Irish toast and downed the glass of whiskey.

May we get what we want,
May we get what we need,
But may we never get what we deserve!

Then, we downed our glasses too. Yeah ... that was indeed some really good expensive stuff!

“Alright then, the details. Pilsner, you still clanking about in that old beat-to-shit dark van? Good ... you’ll need that tonight! You see, my boss, Westside Jonny called me tonight asking if I could send three of my very best street fighters. Every outfit, racket and mob family on the island is sending their top thugs too. Maybe from the other Boroughs too. Orders, he said, from on top, The Five themselves! They requested the toughest and best of my lot ... for a very unusual promotion opportunity. It’s for a very special audition ... for one of the very top players ... Doctor Fate himself!”

Suddenly my blood ran as cold as the Hudson river itself and I began to wish that someone would just shoot me now and chuck me into its welcoming waters, and we’d be safely done with it all ... with our minds and souls intact and unspoiled.

The world is full of criminals. Most are penny ante, like Pilsner and me, then there are the tough boys, gunsels, minions and their street-lords like Drake, then bosses like Connor, and yet bigger and more powerful organizations and crime families that run the districts of the island, under the direction of the Five – the Kingpins of each of Megatropolis’s five boroughs. And then there are the so-called costumed ‘super-villains’, who are mostly not formally affiliated with the Syndicate. Most, if not all of them, are just plain crazy, from what I heard and read in the papers and I’ve never wanted anything to do with any of them. Most outfits, like ours, very wisely don’t either.

Doctor Fate lives in a very special world of genius-level craziness all his own and I’ve heard plenty of rumors suggesting that he’s undoubtedly one of the very top five criminal masterminds around, anywhere. He’s also said to be very, very, very insane ... well beyond just the usual evil maniacal cackling, hand-wringing and plotting to rule the world sort of criminal overlord. For starters, Empire Island, or Megatropolis, the state or even the entire nation are all just chicken-feed to him.

I don’t think that megalomaniac even wants to rule the world ... it’s too insignificant to him.

And I was going to take Drake and a pair of Connor’s other top thugs to meet him? We must have looked as pale as ghosts, because the boss just laughed at us, slapped us both hard on the backs and told us to sit and drink our beers and wait here for Drake and the others to give us our instructions. His business with us done, the big man paid us no further mind and left to return upstairs to his domain. It would have been kinder if he’d just plugged us, right then and there.

Drake came over in a few minutes to join us at our table and the other pair of happy candidates soon joined us too, all three of them in a rather too merry sort of mood. I decided that we were probably already dead, so there was little point in worrying about the details. So, I smiled and kept sipping my beer and let the others do all the talking, and Drake was in just the mood to wag my ears off.

“Fate only ever keeps a dozen underlings as lieutenants,” he whispered to me, excitedly, “exactly that number only, to handle all of his mundane affairs. They’re always the best of the very best ... the meanest nastiest killers that can be found, anywhere. Undoubtedly, there will be something of a trial, some sort of try-out, but you two won’t be involved in that. Your job is just to get us there in secret and then bear witness back here to the boss and to his boss, that we all followed orders. More importantly, to report if any of us gets the job and becomes part of Fate’s inner organization ... or not. I’ve heard that the Syndicate of the Five Boroughs has been eager for a chance just like this for several years! Every time before now, he has recruited from a different major city, taking only their best, the cream ... but now he’s here in Empire City and this might be my... our, only opportunity!”

Yeah, Drake’s ego was slipping out from behind its usual thin mask. The guy had been a cocky son-of-a-bitch even before he went into the Army and spent four years killing Japanese that just refused to ever surrender until they were all virtually exterminated on their home islands.

He didn’t speculate why he ... or The Five, wanted to have any part of Fate’s very special sort of irrationality, but I could guess. The top notch of costumed clown-villains didn’t indulge in the mundane street crime that Connor and his higher bosses controlled. Gambling, drugs, loan-sharking, prostitution, protection rackets, smuggling and petty burglary wasn’t their style. The so-called super-villains did flashier stuff like big bank and jewelry heists; bold public crimes guaranteed to make the front pages of all the newspapers. I supposed that the Syndicate could still be useful to the costumed villain groups for fencing loot, or assisting with other minor operations, like perhaps gun-running. Or maybe The Five, the kingpins of each of the Five Boroughs, just couldn’t stand for someone else to be raking in a fortune without them getting a slice of the action.

The Syndicate of the Five Boroughs was supposedly established during the war, allegedly by Meyer Lansky, to peacefully divide the interests and profits of the various ethnic criminal organizations of the five major regions of Megatropolis. Theoretically, the most two powerful Italian cosa nostra families hold two of these supreme seats, and I’ve heard that the Irish and Jewish criminal organizations each have one. As for the last position, I don’t think anyone knows, but I’d bet it’s probably someone otherwise entirely legit, like from Wall Street or Midtown, representing the monied classes and the greasing of the current political machine. They’re not called Tammany Hall anymore, but really nothing has changed at city hall (or at Albany, the state capital either) since the days of Boss Tweed.

Everyone, everywhere in every borough of Megatropolis has their hand out ... openly or otherwise ... especially the politicians and the cops on the street. It’s all just business as usual.

What was in this for Drake? Well, that was much simpler. A chance to work with Fate was a sure way to build up his criminal career resume to elite status. Not to mention, it was a way to access weapons and other technology that no one else on the streets could match. Even with just a few energy blasters and death rays in the hands of his followers, an ambitious young man like Drake could topple bosses and rule the streets, any streets he might take a fancy too. To you or me, the odds of winning this sort of trial tonight didn’t seem realistic, but to Drake (and his ego) the potential rewards were well worth the risks.

From what I’ve read in the newspapers, especially the popular tabloids like The Gazette that avidly follow the capers of the costumed clowns, heroines and villains alike, Doctor Fate normally only dealt with really scientific sorts of crimes, like cutting-edge experimental gizmos, thingamajigs and stuff, or arcane artifacts of reputedly very powerful or especially weird magic. Perhaps, his special flavor of megalomania was a touch more restrained in public than for most of his costumed kin, but he did on occasion send long egotistical speeches to the press, just like all the rest. The difference being, perhaps, that Doctor Fates esoteric ramblings made less than no sense to anyone not committed to Bellevue Asylum!

More than these scant facts, I didn’t know ... and really didn’t even want to know another thing more about that lunatic! As for meeting the villain in the flesh, I was certain that I was going to regret it!

Drake bought us another round of beers and even ordered Knuckles to procure the lot of us some nice thickly sliced roast beef sandwiches, and Pilsner and I tucked them down fast! Frankly, after that feast, the first real substantial food we’d had in at least a week, we were both full and happy enough with the world to not much care what sort of catastrophe we were about to blithely walk into.

Also in addition, Drake promised, we’d be paid a hundred dollars each for our time! For a ‘yard’ each ... a C, there wasn’t much that I wouldn’t do ... except use a gun, and everyone was on orders not to carry hot tonight. Pilsner and I don’t use guns anyway ... we also didn’t make $100 during most weeks of day labor and scrounging either. Just for the offer of a few beers and a brace of warm roast beef sandwiches, we’d have happily volunteered to have done the job for just a sawbuck each more, but wisely we both kept our mouths shut around our betters as much as we could for the next hour, until it was time to leave.

As I noted earlier, Drake was a decent neighborhood local boss, especially for the tough streets of the Abattoir itself. Drake could handle anyone in a straight-up fight and he was pretty smart and generally fair in his dealings with underlings. He had no shortage of attitude and he was generally always a bit over pleased with himself, but he could be reasoned with, usually ... even when his temper was up. Sometimes he had work for us, like pick-ups and deliveries, but never anything violent. He had leg-breakers for that sort of thing, and he liked to handle the rub-outs himself. He was also as tough as a rhino and a mean SOB in a street fight. He liked knife-work and other folks said he was a good as they come with a blade in his hand.

He was also a mean drunk, and after a few cold ones or shots of whisky his mood tended to get nastier, and tonight was no exception. I’ve heard some folks around here say that sometimes after just a few drinks that Drake would start to tell old war stories, from the brutal fighting that he saw in Japan and then Korea. Already he was a bit on edge, eager and good and ready for the fight to come and we still had about an hour’s drive to get there, up in the northern part of Empire Island.

The audition was to be held at an old portside warehouse along the Haarlem River near the borderline between Dutch Haarlem and the East Barrio, an area I wouldn’t have set a toe in at high noon, let alone gone to for a vicious trial-by-combat at midnight. Pilsner was already too nervous and wound-up to drive, and somehow he’d talked Otto into topping off his battered tin hipflask with a bit of the Old Ordinary, which he kept sipping on nervously while muttering to himself in the passenger seat for most of the drive uptown. Corn Whiskey’s alright, I suppose, but when I’m flush I prefer the spicier taste of rye myself.

Drake and the other two brunos picked by Connor, a pair of tough street soldiers named Miles and Dom, sat quietly in the back of the darkened van on the old mattress on the floor and nervously waited out the ride. We were supposed to deliver them to the warehouse just before midnight, and to garner as little external attention to ourselves as was possible. We were to be no more than fifteen minutes early and under no circumstances were we to arrive late! Pilsner’s old beat-up black painted van was perfect for this job. It had no windows on the sides or back, except for the driver’s and passenger ones, for anyone to see us or look inside. The sides of the van still had some faded vestiges of the old painted business signs for ‘Pilarski Scrap & Salvage’, but you would have had to have been right up close to it in very good daylight to have a prayer at reading it. Once we loaded our passengers inside, they could sit in the back on an old mattress, quite entirely out of sight.

While driving, I tried putting on the radio for a while, but like the rest of the van, it had seen better days. Some Haarlem station was playing some sweet bluesy jazz, but the dashboard speaker was putting out too much static and crackling to hear much of what the lady songbird was moaning about. The music started to put Drake’s nerves on edge and he bellowed at me to shut the damned thing off, so I did, and we rode from then on pretty much in total silence.

We passed by a couple of police patrol cars heading uptown, but they showed no interest in us. A bit later we had a brief concern about a pair of motorcycle cops that followed us discreetly for a block or two in the south Barrio, but they had other Saturday night problems to concern themselves with and they soon turned off onto another street.

The dock and warehouse region of the north Barrio near our destination seemed entirely deserted. Every other warehouse or building in the area was dark, without a single snooping nose or eye to be spotted. We’d made fast time going uptown and now needed to kill about ten minutes before we were supposed to arrive, so I just circled the wharf area, slowly. We hadn’t seen a living thing around for ten blocks, not even the odd street bum or wharf rat. Even the rats didn’t hang around here, except in pairs, for safety. I laughed at that thought ... back home in the Abattoir, even the rats were too scared to be seen at night, and risk becoming someone’s dinner.

In my neighborhood, the old slaughterhouses around West 39^th Street are mostly all gone now, moved down to below 14^th Street now since the war, most of the four legged vermin moving there with them. Some things don’t change though ... anything moving around the Abattoir on four legs is likely become someone’s dinner. Most folks there and in much of the lower Westside are too poor to much care how and where a meal comes from.

When Drake’s, Mile’s and Dom’s watches all agreed that it was a safe time to arrive, I drove the last two blocks to the address and pulled up to the doors of the old abandoned warehouse. Stopping the van, I turned to wish Drake and the other ‘good luck’ but the words caught and remained unspoken, stuck in my throat.

For a while when I was upstate at the pen a few years ago, I was sort of friendly with a lifer who had the next cell to my left. He was a veteran of the war too who had seen and done violently appalling things that perhaps might even have made Drake turn pale. Both in the Army and once he back home in Queens. He read a lot, like Pilsner, but mostly religious stuff and he talked a lot about fate and luck and some oriental belief called Karma ... that what you do comes right back to you, sooner or later. I had to admit that that made sense. Even the bible says, clearly, that you’ll reap what you sow.