Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Call Read online

  “I got lucky this time, but what about next time?” She shook her head again. “I told you I’m not the right person for this. I’m not a hero.”

  “Now that’s bollocks,” Marlin said. He drifted down close to her. Positive reinforcement was not his forte, especially after four thousand years of watching Scarlet Knights die, but in this case he knew the girl needed it. “You were superb down there. Even old Graves would have been hard-pressed to do better.”

  Marlin hated to admit it, but this was true. He had thought she was a clumsy albatross, but the way she had disarmed those buggers had been so quick, like a ninja. Her friend being in trouble had brought out the best in her, a confidence and strength previously untapped. If she could harness that consistently, she might be able to destroy the Dragoon and live to tell about it.

  Police lights approached from down the street. The girl wiped at her face with the gloves and then put the helmet back on. She started across the roof, away from the alley where her best friend had flagged down the cops.

  Marlin floated over to the girl’s side. “I think we’ve done enough for tonight. You ought to go home and rest.”

  She shook her head. “No. There has to be more I can do.”

  “Look—”

  She cut him off by flipping up the visor. “You said I’m the Scarlet Knight. The Scarlet Knight fights crime, right?”

  “Yes—”

  “Then let’s get to work.” She bounded across the roof, this time landing on her feet.

  ***

  Vagrants and petty criminals were the only ones to inhabit Robinson Park at this time of night. The vagrants mostly lay on benches, sleeping, while the petty criminals loitered in clusters; they wore distinctive colors to differentiate themselves. The Dragoon came upon a group of them lounging by a gazebo. He didn’t make any pretense of subtlety; he had nothing to fear from them.

  “What you supposed to be?” one asked. He raised a pistol.

  “I am your death,” the Dragoon said. He let the boy fire his pistol, but the bullet only glanced off his chest. Then he fired back with a claw through the boy’s forehead. The others were foolish enough to stand their ground. A few had larger caliber weapons, machine guns. It made no difference to him. Their bullets could not harm him.

  The spike on his left foot swelled until it was six feet long. He bent down to snap this off to use as a spear. He batted the weapon out of another boy’s hand and then stabbed him through the midsection, a gut wound that would leave him suffering for hours. He pulled the spear free and then whipped it around to cave in the skull of another boy.

  Only the one with the stomach wound remained alive. The Dragoon bent down, his eyes glowing. He could see the boy’s fear. His life played out not only in front of his eyes, but the Dragoon’s as well. Such a puny creature. A weak child who needed to associate with a pack and carry a large-caliber handgun to feel secure. “You are nothing,” the Dragoon hissed.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “You are already dead,” the Dragoon said. “But tell me what I want to know and I will end your suffering.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell me who runs this city.”

  The boy closed his eyes, but he did not die, not yet. Through chattering teeth he said, “The don…Don Vendetta, man. She run everything.”

  “Thank you.” The Dragoon snatched up the boy and then threw him up in the air. The boy slammed against a backboard; before he could fall back down, the Dragoon drilled a claw through each arm and two more in his chest. The result was a mockery of the feeble god the Christians believed in. “This city belongs to me now.”

  ***

  When the phone rang, Donovan knew it wouldn’t be good news. No phone ringing in the middle of the night ever brought good news. She confirmed this when she heard Kramer on the other end of the line. “Donovan, I need your ass down at the park ASAP.”

  “What for?”

  “You’ll see. Go to the northeast entrance. That’s where we’ve set up the command post.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  As she began to pull on her clothes, she wondered what this could be about. Every cop knew Robinson Park was where the gangs hung out at night. Everyone in the city knew that. Only the dumbest tourists ever got caught there after the sun went down. The department usually let it be, unless the gangs got out of hand.

  A command post signaled something big was going on. Had Kramer decided to clean up the place? Or maybe the mayor thought it would be a great way to curry favor before the election. Not that he needed any stunts like that with his lead in the polls over Lintner.

  As Kramer had indicated, there were already a dozen vehicles gathered near the northeast entrance. Officer Lois Early stood near the entrance, probably to make sure no press wandered inside.

  “Hey, Lois. What’s going on?” she asked.

  “You’re going to have to see it to believe it,” Early said.

  “Another turf war?”

  “Not a turf war. It’s Armageddon in there.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They’re all dead. A dozen gangs wiped out.”

  “Holy shit.”

  Early nodded to Donovan. “You think I could bum a smoke?”

  “I thought you quit.”

  “I think I’m going to start again.”

  Donovan lit a cigarette and handed it to her friend, who took it with trembling fingers. Early was a veteran cop; for her to get rattled meant the shit had really hit the fan in there. Donovan patted her friend’s shoulder. “Maybe you should go home.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Early said, but she sure as hell didn’t look fine. Her face was paler than usual and her hand still shook.

  Donovan didn’t want to leave her there, but she had no choice once Kramer shouted for her. “Where the hell have you been?” he said.

  “I was getting up to speed,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, I need you here,” he said. He pointed to the southwest corner. “Take a couple of uniforms with you and get a full report.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  She knew better than to ask Early to go with her. She found Cielo nearby. He looked shaken, though not as badly as Early. “You want to take a walk?” she asked.

  “Okay,” he said without any enthusiasm.

  She wondered what had gotten into everyone, at least until she saw the gazebo. As Early had indicated, they were all dead. A half-dozen of them, all in the Skinz gang. A third-rate gang, but they weren’t pushovers. Donovan knelt down beside one whose insides were on the outside now.

  The others all had similar wounds. Some had been decapitated, others disemboweled. One had his head caved in as if by a baseball bat. Another had a very large hole in his forehead. It could have been a gunshot, but given the others she doubted it.

  She waited for Cielo to stop throwing up before they continued. It was the same everywhere else. Gang members beheaded or gutted and homeless guys with holes in their heads. Donovan hadn’t gotten sick at a crime scene since her first week on the force, but her stomach roiled now.

  The worst of it was in the southwest corner. There were a dozen decapitated bodies piled up into a kind of pyramid. A second pyramid was composed entirely of their heads.

  “Good Christ,” she said.

  When she looked up, she saw another gang member had been nailed to a backboard. Donovan reached into her jacket, her hands shaking as much as Early’s had, so much that she struggled to get a cigarette out of the pack and light it. The nicotine did little to soothe her nerves.

  This wasn’t a turf war. It was a holocaust. Don Vendetta would seem to be the likeliest culprit, but this seemed a little high profile for her. Maybe some challenger wanting to get her attention. He would certainly get it, along with the rest of the city. There wouldn’t be any keeping this quiet.

  Chapter 18

  When Emma woke up the next morning, she was surprised to find Becky already up. H
er friend lounged on a beanbag chair and watched a rerun of Good Times. Her friend had gotten home even later than her, at four in the morning. Other than her eyes being bloodshot, Becky didn’t look any worse for wear. “Hey, kid,” Becky said as if it were a normal morning, as if she hadn’t nearly been murdered last night.

  “Hi,” Emma said. She tried to keep things normal as well; she knew she couldn’t mention anything about what had happened in the alley. She fixed herself a protein shake as usual and then took a shower.

  While in the shower, she noticed the bruises on her body, including a nasty one on her right shoulder. She winced as she reached for the soap with that arm. Apparently the armor’s protection had its limits, although it had reduced the scratches from the Black Dragoon to raw pink scars. She would have to ask Marlin about that later, although she suspected he would tell her the armor was supposed to keep her alive, not make her feel comfortable.

  She made sure to dash across the hallway to her bedroom so Becky couldn’t see the bruises. Her friend would never believe any phony excuses about falling down the stairs, having used that one a number of times herself. Emma looked back towards the living room and wondered if years of child abuse had allowed Becky to shrug off what had happened last night. Or at least to act around Emma as if it were nothing.

  They kept things normal as they walked down to the bus stop. Becky complained about another long, pointless day working for the Lintner campaign. Emma listened and nodded along. Inside she felt a profound sadness; she had never kept a secret like this from Becky before. She had kept the bullying she had endured in college secret, but that paled in comparison to the severity of the events in the last twenty-four hours.

  They said nothing to each other on the bus. Too distracted to read, Emma looked around the bus. A person directly across from her held a morning edition of the Times. She saw a gruesome picture of a man hanging from a basketball hoop. The headline proclaimed, “Armageddon in Robinson Park.” The more understated sub-headline read, “Gang Violence Escalates.”

  The picture was fuzzy, but when she squinted she saw the black marks in the body. Spikes, she would bet. The sort of spikes the Black Dragoon shot from his fingers, like the ones that had nearly killed her in the Dibbler Sausage plant. She wanted to snatch the paper away from whoever owned it so she could find out more, but she couldn’t. She would have to wait until she got off the bus to buy a newspaper.

  “Something wrong, kid?” Becky asked.

  “What? Oh, nothing. It’s nothing.”

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Emma said. To change the subject and distract Becky from any negative thoughts she might have, Emma brought up Dr. Dreyfus’s invitation to the opera.

  “And you’re going as colleagues?” she asked with a smirk.

  “No, this time it’s a date.”

  “A date! My little girl is so grown up now.”

  Emma couldn’t stop herself from blushing at this. “It’s not that big of a deal. It’s the opera.”

  “Yeah, right. Just the opera.” Becky shook her head. “What are you going to wear? They cut that black dress off you in the emergency room and I doubt we can sew it back together.”

  This was a good point, something Emma hadn’t considered. The mention of sewing did give her an idea. She reached into her purse and found the card Mrs. Chiostro had given to her at the funeral home. She showed this to Becky. “She said I should call if I needed a dress.”

  “Well that’s lucky,” Becky said. “That’s over in the historical district.”

  “I guess it is.”

  The bus squealed to a halt as it reached their stop. Becky passed the card back to Emma. “After you call her up, give me a call too. I can meet you there after work.”

  “Are you sure—?”

  “It’ll be fine.” Becky gave her a hug, which pained Emma from the bruises on her body. She barely held back a grunt that surely would have alerted her friend something was wrong. They said goodbye and then Emma went to find a newspaper.

  ***

  Emma could have spent years in the historical district studying the various houses that served as a reminder of a different era.. There were brownstones from the 1920s, Victorian mansions, and homes even older than that, when the city of Rampart had been in British hands. Mrs. Chiostro’s house fell into that latter category, a quaint brick colonial house with a maple tree out front.

  Mrs. Chiostro waited on the front steps for her, a smile on her face. “Hello, dear. I’m glad you made it. Your friend is in the parlor.”

  Mrs. Chiostro took Emma’s hand and then ushered her into a parlor stocked with furniture that would have looked more at home in one of the Victorian houses. Becky sat on an antique sofa, with a teacup in her hand. “Would you care for some tea?” Mrs. Chiostro asked.

  “That would be lovely. Thank you.”

  Emma sat down on the couch next to Becky while Mrs. Chiostro hustled away to get a cup of tea for her. Becky set hers aside; she made a disgusted face. “I don’t know how you can drink this stuff,” she whispered.

  “It’s an acquired taste I guess,” Emma said.

  “Well I’m not going to be acquiring it anytime soon.”

  Mrs. Chiostro reappeared carrying a tea set and plate of cookies on a silver tray. She set these down on the coffee table and then poured a cup of tea for Emma and one for herself. “The cookies are fresh,” she said. “I made them this afternoon.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” Emma said. She took one off the tray and delicately set it in her mouth. The cookies were oatmeal raisin, always her favorite because she was allergic to chocolate. These tasted better than Aunt Gladys’s—better even than Mom’s. “That’s delicious.”

  “Thank you, dear. It’s an old family recipe.”

  Emma took a sip of the tea and found it as wonderful as the cookies. If she wanted, Mrs. Chiostro could easily start a café.

  “Well now, I don’t suppose you two young ladies came here for tea and cookies, did you?”

  “No,” Emma said. “I need a dress.”

  “She’s going on a date. At the opera,” Becky said with a teasing smile.

  “The opera? Oh, that’s splendid. My husband and I used to go to the opera quite often. Such wonderful music, even if I never understood the words.”

  “Yes, it is,” Emma said. She looked down at her feet; her face turned red as she said, “I don’t have any money right now—”

  “That’s all right, dear. I’d be happy to sell something to you on credit.” The old woman took Emma’s hand and patted it gently. “You don’t look like a credit risk to me.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mrs. Chiostro sipped at her tea and then asked, “How are you adjusting to life in the big city?”

  “It’s all right,” Emma said.

  “How is Dr. MacGregor? I wanted to bring the poor dear some food but he wasn’t home.”

  “He’s doing better. He had to go back to work after what happened.”

  “The museum explosion. Yes, I remember hearing about that. Terrible business. How are you holding up?”

  “I’m fine,” Emma said.

  “I would imagine so with a big date at the opera,” Mrs. Chiostro said. The old woman got to her feet and then went over to a closet. She opened the door and disappeared inside. Emma looked over at Becky, who shrugged.

  Mrs. Chiostro returned a minute later with a beautiful dress. Emma nearly fell off the couch at the sight of it. The gown was mostly dark red, with gold trim, calling to mind the Scarlet Knight’s armor. “I think this should be about your size,” Mrs. Chiostro said.

  Emma stood up so Mrs. Chiostro could hold the dress up against her body. It did look to be almost exactly her size, though perhaps a bit short in the skirt. “It’s so beautiful,” she said. “How much is it?”

  “For you, two hundred dollars. For an extra fifty dollars I have a pair of shoes and some splendid gloves that would be perfect for the opera.”<
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  Emma sucked in a breath. Two hundred fifty dollars was a lot of money to her, but she sensed it was quite a deal for a dress like this. “That sounds fair, though I doubt you’ll have shoes to fit me.”

  Mrs. Chiostro laughed at this and patted Emma’s shoulder. “You let me worry about that, dear. In my day I’ve seen girls with much bigger feet than yours.”

  “You have?”

  “Oh my, yes. Lady Robinson wore a size twelve shoe.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes, but no one ever paid attention to her feet, did they?”

  “No,” Emma said. She hadn’t been born when Lady Robinson died, but her mother and aunt had told her stories about the woman. Wife to the richest man in the city, Clarissa Robinson had come to be known as “Lady” Robinson because of her elegance and grace. Every little girl in Rampart City had wanted to look like her. “Did you know her?”

  “A little bit.” Mrs. Chiostro squeezed Emma’s shoulder. “I made this dress for her to wear when the opera house opened.”

  Becky started to cough; Emma turned in time to see her friend spit pieces of cookie onto her plate. “This is her dress?” Emma said. “It must be worth a fortune!”

  “Don’t worry about that, dear. I bought it from the estate for a song.” She took Emma’s hand and led her over to a mirror. “I think she’d be honored if you wore it.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not elegant.”

  “Nonsense, dear. You’re very beautiful. All you need is some confidence and to let my sister do something with your hair.”

  “Your sister?”

  “She’s downstairs. I’ll take you to see her after we’re through here.”

  Emma was still leery about the dress. She couldn’t imagine wearing anything this special; she didn’t deserve it. A far more important, glamorous woman should be wearing it. Becky must have known what she was thinking, as she said, “Come on, kid, not every girl gets a chance to wear one of her dresses.”

  “That’s true,” Emma said.

  “You want to look good for Dr. Dreyfus, don’t you?”

  “Yes—”

  Mrs. Chiostro patted Emma’s arm. “Why don’t you try it on? See how it looks on you for real.”