Steam City Pirates (30 page)

I wore my usual attire of Army wool coat and gabardine trousers with my infantry hat. I also had my Colt inside my coat. We climbed quickly up the ladder stairs and out into the rush of the city’s traffic.

We reached the entrance to the park in about an hour, and we spread ourselves about twenty yards apart to be able to watch for Seth. We also looked up into the air in order to see if he were flying about freely or riding inside a balloon. The boy could be anywhere. I didn’t think he would be invisible or change his shape unless he were aware of who was tracking him down. While we were in the tent the day before, Seth was over our heads in Professor’s Lowe’s balloon. When Bessie saw my knife wound, she made me promise not to tell Seth anything about the assassins. This was a big mistake. He was now under immediate threat of losing his young life, and I felt responsible.

I heard the screams coming from the midway section of the park. It was the children’s area, and I looked over at Doctor Adler and nodded. We both began to run toward the sound of the screams.

The singassassin was standing in the center of the miniature version of the giant Octospinner near the roller coaster. Just as Biggs-Pemberton had described, Svebo Murr’n was tall and skinny, about six feet in height, and his glossy, pale green skin made him resemble a tall asparagus with appendages. The Octospinner for children was about fifty feet in circumference, with the same eight tentacles that moved up and down, while it spun around. And inside one of the little red cars at the end of a tentacle was Seth Mergenthaler.

“It’s him!” I yelled over at Doctor Adler, who was standing next to the ride’s ticket booth. “I’m going to have them stop the ride, and then you can try to throw the cloak over him,” I said.

Doctor Adler nodded his head vigorously, and then he ran over to the Octospinner’s perimeter in order to get a better throwing aim.

Visitors were watching the curious green man with horrified interest. The screams, we discovered, came from his earlier shrieks. Several of the empty cars on the ends of the Octopinner’s tentacles had been blown up by Svebo Murr’n’s deadly sound waves. It seemed like he was toying with the boy, and we needed to act immediately. If the shriek’s aim was so good that he could explode the cars while they were moving, then it was highly probable he could do the same to Seth’s car or even if Seth attempted to fly.

I ran over to the operator of the ride, and I whispered into his ear over the sound of the crowd and the whirring steam engine of the Octospinner. “You must stop it! We have to save the boy,” I told him.

The man, a portly gentlemen with suspendered trousers and a scraggly-gray beard, nodded his head gravely at me. He then walked over to the vertical metal lever that controlled the steam engine of the Octospinner. Just as he grabbed onto the lever, the shriek erupted. I could see the sound waves surge from his wide green mouth. They shot across the length of the ride and struck the pot belly of the attendant, who had not yet pulled down on the lever. It was like watching a lightning bolt strike, except that the sound waves struck so fast that there was silence at first. After the poor old man’s stomach exploded, the supersonic wail of a doomed fanatic was heard. It vibrated and shook all of us; the ticket booth rattled, and people answered this shriek with screams of their own.

I knew we still had to act if we wanted to save Seth. I shouted over at the rabbi at the top of my voice. “Doctor! You have to throw it now!”

When I said this, the green assassin started saying something that was unintelligible. It must have been some racist jargon because I could see him jump up on his spindly legs to point at Seth. I also noticed a medallion around Svebo’s neck for the first time. I moved closer to get a better look at it. On the face of the medallion was the image of the evil eye that Rabbi Adler had informed us about on the first day inside the temple’s sanctuary. This fanatic from another universe had adapted to the anti-Semitism of this world, and he was about to kill a very important Jew.

I was also concerned that in the face of this immediate danger Seth was not using his flying or invisibility powers. Could it be the curse of the medallion around the alien’s neck? What was it Rabbi Adler called it?
Ayin-horeh
? We only had seconds before the singassassin would be wailing Seth’s “swan song.”

I watched as Doctor Adler prepared to throw the rubber cloak. He was waiting patiently for the Octospinner to twirl around to his side. Once, twice, it spun past him. Then, it came again, and he was ready. The little car at the end of the tentacle containing Seth Mergenthaler came around and was on the level of Doctor Adler and his outstretched arms holding the cloak. The rabbi waited until the last second, and then he tossed it up at the passing boy. The rubber cloak was suspended in the air for hours, it seemed, until it finally grazed the boy’s arm and fell to the sawdust-covered floor of the midway!

I pulled out my pistol and aimed. When I fired off three rounds in rapid succession, the ricochets repeated the same way they had done when I had shot at the Ooor. The bullets bounced off the green head of the singassasin and pinged off into the air.

The green shriek then rose up on his twelve toes and was ready to send forth the deadly waves of sound. From behind him, however, a flying figure appeared. She had a large smile on her face, and her gold teeth were shimmering in the sun. When the murderer attempted to send out his shriek, the waves shot through the air, but they hovered in the middle of the path between Svebo Murr’n and Seth. After ten seconds, the force of the sound waves reversed, and they shot back into the head of the green monster. The force of the waves caused the wrinkled asparagus to explode into the air, and the willowy alien fell to the earth in a smoking heap.

I ran over to the controls on the Octospinner and pulled the lever. The ride came to a gradual stop. When Seth climbed out of the car, I saw the female
mazikeen
fly away, her butcher’s bib flowing in the Coney Island wind. I ran up to the boy shaking my head.

“What did you do? How did you know about this killer?” I asked my obvious questions.

“Remember, Detective. We
mazikeen
are like opposite poles of a magnet. When we are close, the space between us becomes immune to any force fields, including sound waves, radio waves and, in the future, digital or television waves. We knew this beforehand. When you made an alliance with Inquisitor Manette, the female
mazikeen
and I were no longer rivals.” Seth smiled up at me.

I tossed Seth’s black hair with my hand. “How did you know about the shriek? Your mother made me promise not to tell you.”

“I had a vision. This angel part of me seems to be quite receptive to difficulties pertaining to anti-Semitic forces within my universe. I suppose, when one considers it, all racist behavior is universal,” the boy pointed out.

“We still have three assassins waiting for us in the coming three days. Come back with Doctor Adler and me to the temple. We must make further plans,” I told the boy.

Doctor Adler approached us holding his rubber cloak. “It would have worked, you know,” he said. “I have a souvenir for you, Seth,” said the rabbi, and he handed the lad the medallion with the
Ayin-horeh
on it that the doctor had taken from the songassassin. “This was
beshert
, and I want to congratulate you on your ingenuity. This day was so much more valuable than a Bar Mitzvah!”

The Third Day

Again, we did not accomplish much in the way of planning when we were inside our temple sanctuary. We spent more time talking about how Seth had escaped his assassin and how close he came to being executed. Bessie was livid that the boy had not informed her about his vision and what his plans entailed. He informed her that if he had told her about the plan with his
doppelganger
, she would have forbade him from going at all. Sneaking out was so much more fun!

As for the anti-Semitic nature of the singassasin, Doctor Adler believed that the evil eye and anti-Semitism existed wherever evil existed, including in separate universes. “We must confront it whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head or deadly singing voice,” he told us. We all agreed.

We also commented upon the nature of the Society and how ever since we had formed an alliance with Manette and the Steam City Pirates they had come to our rescue in one form or another. First, the white submarine,
Mocha Dick
, had successfully fired its lethal torpedo at the Ooor Cefallusca in the waters off Coney Island. Next, the female
mazikeen
came to Seth’s rescue with her opposite magnetic force. These developments made me think about Seth’s dictum early on about the Hegelian Dialectic and synthesis. His thesis also seemed to be coming true.

But the day became new, and we had to face a new threat. The Zoftnist was developed by Biggs-Pemberton’s genetic engineering skills, so we knew this assassin would be an additional problem. Bessie suggested that we keep Becky inside our temple sanctuary, but we knew this would only be postponing the inevitable.

“As long as Franklin Biggs-Pemberton is alive, he will send out his prisoners whenever he knows we have left the confines of the temple. We cannot hide from this threat, as he has also threatened the entire New York population with a personal invention that he said he would unveil when he came after me.” I was adamant about going out to confront these monsters because I had read the most excellent book on conflict strategy by Sun Tzu called
The Art of War
. In it, he advised that the best defense is a potent offensive. As long as we searched out our enemy, we could gain the upper hand. It did not pay to sit and wait.

Becky came up with the idea of attracting her personal assassin. I should have known her enterprising mind would be the first to develop a plan of subterfuge. She was wearing one of the military outfits she used to wear to titillate my sleeping libido during the Edgar Allan Poe case. The French Foreign Legion uniform was quite appropriate attire for being hunted by a female assassin. Becky had a blue top with gold epaulettes and the
kepi
, or cap, with a rounded, flat top, black duck bill, and white cloth draped down the sides for life in the desert. However, she did not wear the usual pantaloons. Instead, she walked toward me in high heeled shoes and fishnet stockings--also of the French variety, but far more sensually attractive.

“I am going to walk the streets again, Patrick,” Becky told me, stroking her soft white fingers against the stubble on my cheek. “It has been many years since I have done so, but this will certainly make me an excellent moving target for the little beastie, don’t you agree? What better time to draw out the brains of a sinful woman than when she is loose on the streets?”

“You don’t plan to sexually lure this monster into a trap, do you?” I asked.

“No, O’Malley. You said this Zoftnist was genetically modified by Doctor Biggs-Pemberton. He used the genes of a giant anteater. I am aware that these mammals are related to sloths. What, pray tell, do we associate with the word ‘sloth’?” Becky asked. She was being her Vassar-educated self, and it often pained me to hear her lectures.

“Laziness!” said Seth, ever the quiz master of our group.

“Quite right, Master Mergenthaler. The giant anteater is very lazy and slow-moving. I would equate its behavior with that of a drunken gentleman on a night on the town. If this is the case, then the diamond cutting instrument that has been added to the tip of the elongated snout of this animal would be available for cutting, correct?” Becky extracted two tools from her French coat pocket and held them up for us to view. One tool was a small hammer, and the other device was a short chisel with a broad head for striking the hammer home.

“I, of course, would want two brutes to assist me at holding down this monster,” said Becky, her eyes glancing first at me and then over at Walter McKenzie. “Contrary to popular opinion, diamonds are not forever. One quick tap on this chisel against the diamond’s surface will split it in two! And, dare I say, another tap upon the alien’s head would also terminate its brain before it can reach mine.”

Bessie Mergenthaler gasped, and McKenzie laughed. I just stared at Becky.

“How can we be certain that this Zoftnist isn’t modified in other ways to make it move faster or perhaps it will have some weapon we know nothing about?” Again, I wanted to challenge Becky and her reasoning.

“You also told us that Biggs-Pemberton said this prisoner of his was a parasitic creature who lived off humanoids. That would mean it needs me more than I need it. When one is too needy, like men who need women, one is usually not thinking about an aggressive attack. No, I would guess that this parasite, even if it is female, wants to use stealth in order to sneak up on me and insert its cutting instrument. I shall place myself in a willing position to be punctured. This is something I have become quite good at over the years.” Becky grinned.

“All right, Becky. You can have it your way for now. If there happen to be any complications, we must react accordingly. I don’t want you harmed,” I said.

“Let’s go, O’Malley. We need to get out there to attract this alien assassin.” Becky walked toward the temple basement ladder.

“Where we goin’ to go, lass?” McKenzie asked, hitching up his trousers over his big stomach.

“What was the name of that bar where you first met our midget villain, Biggs-Pemberton?” Becky asked me.

“The Steam City Ale House. It’s on Fifth Avenue. It’s one of the new steam-powered bars,” I told her.

“Is it dark in there?” she asked. “Do they allow women?”

“Yes and yes. It’s in the wealthy neighborhood, so they have suffragists who frequent the place. I believe Victoria Woodhull, the free love advocate and Wall Street Stock Broker, visited the place not long ago, if I am not mistaken,” I said. “It caused quite a stir in the papers,” I added.

“Little biggie knows the place, and I am certainly a suffragette, so let’s go!” Becky cried, and we were off.

There was quite a crowd inside the tavern. The hissing of the steam engine behind the bar was powering the hose tentacles out to the different steins to fill them. It was like an Octospinner for drunks. We entered the place separately. First, I entered, walking directly to a back booth and sitting down. The odors I most detested, as I grew up working inside my father Robert’s taverns in Five Points, permeated the air. Booze, tobacco and the sweat of humans were those smells that reeked and clung to one’s clothes long afterward. The bar waitress, a pixie-looking Irish lass with a rose behind her ear, walked over to me. “What’ll it be, gent?” she asked.