Chapter 7

This was an exciting week for me, not so much for the work we did as for the way I got to know Chris. When you spend that much time with someone under such stressful conditions, you come to know him very well. I was more and more impressed by Chris and found my regard for him growing daily.

We made one more pass at Humboldt Street, but drew a blank. It was my guess that we had simply scared the low-lifes to some other neighborhood, and it would take a while for them to come back. Therefore, it was time for us to move on, ourselves. I gave up my disguise for a while and went back to my plain black uniform. This gave me the advantage of being able to move more freely, so while business was slow, Phobos and I practiced climbing masonry walls.

It was on one of these exercises that we spotted a mugging in progress. Actually, it was more than that, but I don't have a word for it. Three young men were beating the hell out of an old man, whom I presume was just a homeless person living on the streets. We reacted immediately by hurrying to his assistance. We waded in with our sticks for weapons and laid out the three thugs in only seconds. With our training and equipment, the thugs really didn't stand a chance.

Their victim was still conscious, since the beating had been more to inflict pain than to do anything else. Phobos had a good knowledge of field first aid, so he checked the old man over and pronounced the injuries as painful, but not life-threatening. I asked the victim what was the reason for the attack, and he said that it really made no sense to him. He certainly had no money to be stolen, and he made a point of not bothering anybody.

I thought about it for a few moments and could not come up with an explanation for the cruelty. Phobos was equally puzzled. I could only come up with two possible explanations: either it was a random act of cruelty, or it was the beginning of some sort of devious protection plan. Well, the only thing to do was to question the attackers.

We immobilized them with plastic ties and went after the first one with the smelling salts. He had some broken ribs and a broken wrist, so we had to be careful how we handled him, since we did not want a fatality on our hands. I asked, "Why were you beating this harmless old man?"

"Fuck off, you bitch!"

"Yeah, I expected that from you. But you should know that I am Nyx, and I am sure that you have heard of the ways I punish those people I don't like." I waved my knife in front of his nose to emphasize my point.

"Please don't cut me! He's nothing but a worthless piece of trash. Why do you care what happens to him?"

"Well, as far as the first point goes, he's worth a whole lot more than you, you douche-bag. The second point is that I care about anyone who cannot defend himself. Now, answer my question, or I will start making the rest of your life very painful."

"OK, OK. We were hired to beat up the first person we ran into tonight if it was a man and to rape her if it happened to be a woman."

"Ah, the magic word. Who hired you?"

"I don't know his name. All I know is that he was a representative of the South End Gang. We were standing on a street corner looking for something to do when this guy came up to us and made the offer. He paid us $50 each to do the job."

"Well, you don't know how much pain you just saved yourself by being so open with me. If the other two jerks support your story, you'll get off real easy tonight."

I questioned the other two thugs and got essentially the same story. That being the case, they saved their cocks and balls, though they were all suffering from multiple broken bones. Phobos took the $50 from each of the thugs and gave it to the homeless man. It was the first time he had seen that much money at one time in years. We left several calling cards, and I called 911.

This was a quiet night, so we didn't see anything else to attract our attention. We went home for our usual late night snack and the conversation with Martha. Chris and I discussed the story of the South End Gang and the homeless. It didn't make a whole lot of sense. We decided to look into the matter on our next foray.

This particular adventure did not even make the news the next morning. We guessed that there was not much "news worthy" about a homeless man being saved from a serious beating. Maybe not, but we were both sure that something big was hidden just below the surface.

Our problem in solving this puzzle was in that we did not have any street contacts. We needed to develop a rapport with the small merchants and the homeless so that they could feed us information. Chris suggested that we make a point of doing some good for a few merchants that we could use as news gatherers for us. We could make them our drop boxes for information and could telephone them for whatever news they had collected. The phone calls from our end could be made with disposable cellphones, so that the calls could not be traced back to us.

We would have to commit to protecting the people who acted for us, but that should not be an insurmountable problem. We went a bit farther and purchased a police scanner from a friend of a friend from Chris' Army days. The cops had gotten smart and rigged their radios so that a simple scanner of the old type would no longer work, but our scanner had received the same kind of modifications, so we could hear anything that was put out on the cops' radios.

Martha had the scanner operating constantly, and we carried cell phones so that she could inform us of any radio calls that we would be interested in. It took a few days to get this all set up, but we finally were in business. Now we could know what the cops were doing and could stay out of their way, or we could butt in when the situation warranted.

We'd had the system in operation for two days when we had our first test. We were in the South End district looking for more of the attackers of the homeless when Martha called with a report of an officer being wounded in a knife attack only three blocks away. We dropped everything and rushed to the scene.

We found a cop on the ground with a big gash in his right arm and in his right leg. The first thing we did was stop long enough to apply a tourniquet to his arm and to his leg. That only took a couple of minutes, and we found out that his pistol and shotgun been stolen, along with his personal radio. He had been shot in the chest by the pistol, but his protective vest had saved his life.

Two men had attacked him when he had stopped to break up a fight. The fight had been a sham to get him to stop. He pointed out which way the attackers had run, so we dropped off a calling card and ran in the indicated direction. The attackers had run about half a block before cutting down an alley. We had to be cautious here because we would be silhouetted against the alley entrance. Phobos looked into the alley with his nightvision monocular, but didn't see anything, so we ran down the alley looking for signs of the attackers.

We found an open door leading to some stairs going up, so we guessed that was where the thugs had run. We started up the stairs and got about halfway up when I caught a shotgun blast mostly in my chest. The shock as much as anything else knocked me backwards and I slid down the stairs the rest of the way. None of the pellets penetrated on my arms, legs, or head, and my cuirass stopped the main part of the buckshot, but I did hurt all over, both from the shot and from the slide down the stairs.

This seemed to piss Phobos off, because he drew both pistols and started blasting away at the top of the stairs. This was a totally unexpected response from the point of view of the thugs, since they expected the kind of action the cops would have been forced to do: calls for their surrender and pleas for them to stop shooting. Well, Phobos was having none of that. He quickly reloaded and charged the rest of the way up the stairs, shooting all of the way. Of course, shooting while running only serves to keep the other guy's head down, but it was all that was necessary this time.