Canon in Crimson Read online

  “Sorry, you said? But what for?”

  Scarmardo gave Alger a pleading look but got nothing in return. Shaking like a leaf, he took a deep breath.

  “For keeping half of the money,” he said, almost inaudibly.

  “And?” Alger said, nodding in our general direction. The Driver and Screwdriver got up and walked over to the door. This little mummer’s show was clearly planned, but it was way beyond me by now. Scarmardo sighed heavily.

  “And for telling those men where you were,” he whispered.

  He looked back and forth from Alger to Big Six, and then at us, like an animal in a trap. The room had gone completely silent, except for the sound of Screwdriver tinkering with the doorknob. For a second, I was worried. What were they going to do to this poor fella? Alger smiled, looking for all the world like a tiger ready to pounce. But instead, he nodded again, and he and Big Six started leading Scarmardo to the table.

  “Well, there’ll be no need for any acrimony, then,” he said easily. “Let’s put this all behind us, shall we? What would you say to a friendly game?”

  Scarmardo looked at him warily as he sat down, unconvinced that he was being let off the hook that easily. I wasn’t convinced either; something was definitely wrong. I was sure of it when I realized the Ghost was standing next to me now. I hadn’t even heard a floorboard creak in the still room.

  “I thought you didn’t play?” I whispered to him.

  “Not games of chance,” he said with a grin.

  That’s when I heard it. The music fell to pieces abruptly outside the back room, and the sound of men yelling and people scattering replaced it. When I heard someone say the word gambling, it all came together.

  Shifty picked up the deck, but he only dealt for himself, Scarmardo, and the Ghost. The Doc and the twins were getting up, and Screwdriver was holding the door open. Alger skirted the table to reach me.

  “I’m terribly sorry, my friend, but actually, we have to be going,” he told Scarmardo. “You don’t mind playing just the three of you, do you?” That last seemed directed more to the other two. Scarmardo opened his mouth to protest, but the Ghost reached across the table and put a finger to his lips, and the proprietor-turned-fall-guy slumped down miserably.

  “It’s no problem.” Shifty told Alger. “You know we’d get pinched for you any time, Boss. Besides,” he said with a smirk, “nobody’s gonna cross us after this.” The Ghost silently indicated his agreement.

  Alger nodded with unspoken respect to both of them before he took my hand and hurried me out the open door. Screwdriver had apparently been doing something useful with the doorknob, because it locked behind us. I caught sight of the police cars parked around the corner, but the rest of the gang was already long gone.

  “Will they be okay?” I asked anxiously.

  “Of course,” he said, as if the thought hadn’t even occurred to him.

  “Even the ones who are going to jail?” I pressed. He raised an eyebrow at me again.

  “You really believe that bars can hold those two?”

  I guess I saw his point.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Well,” he said, “it’s rather late for young ladies to be out running around, isn’t it? I think we ought to get you home.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders, and we walked away clean. Still warm from the brandy and lightheaded from smoke and excitement, it seemed like my feet barely touched the ground. I was glad I was on their side, I decided. With friends like these, who needed to worry about enemies?

  Chapter 6—Friends Like These

  When R7 and G3 walked into Agency headquarters, a room full of people stopped what they were doing and looked up in synchrony like a flock of birds. Dozens of eyes fixed on R7, and she barely fought off the urge to turn and bolt back down the sixteen flights of stairs they’d climbed as she took the place in for the first time. Large and yet still somehow cramped, it was stuffed to the gills with suited men and their papers, pens, and reading lamps distributed around evenly spaced mahogany desks. To the right, glass and wood boxed off an office with a brass nameplate on the door, and to the left, a frazzled woman with glasses seemed to be simultaneously manning the office telephone and a huge switchboard covered in buttons and dials, which emitted buzzes of static and muffled voices. Those voices and the low hum of an industrial fan somewhere in a back hallway were the only sounds that remained in the hush.

  “So,” R7 whispered to G3, “I guess you didn’t tell them about me?”

  G3 shrugged.

  “Just the ones that needed to know.”

  “What about what I needed to know?”

  “You’ve learned a hell of a lot over the last year,” G3 told her, not bothering to keep his voice down. “A few more names won’t take you long.”

  “Fine,” she grumbled, following her partner to the mahogany desk that seemed to belong to him. The stares transformed into sidelong glances amid the resuming paper shuffle, and a man in tan fatigues like hers and G3’s slipped into the interior office. “Should I introduce myself or something?”

  “No need,” said G3. “Any second now, you’ll—”

  He was interrupted when the door to the interior office slammed open, and a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man with steel-colored hair burst into the room.

  “You blew it up?” he roared, parting the crowd as he stalked over to slam both hands down on G3’s desk, rattling pens and sending papers flying. “This is the third time a ten-foot-tall mechanical man has been seen rampaging around the city. The police are running around like chickens with their heads cut off with no idea what the hell is going on. You got eyes on the damned thing, and you blew it up?”

  “Twelve feet,” said R7.

  The steel-haired man paused, slowly turning an equally steely gaze on R7. She folded her arms, meeting his eyes with a defiant stare.

  “What?” said the man.

  “It was twelve feet tall,” R7 told him coolly. “Two feet taller than the streetcars, and those are ten. And yeah, we blew it up. So what?”

  Another pause ensued, and R7 listened to the fan again as silence washed back over the room.

  “Chief,” G3 finally said, “this is R7. R7, this is—”

  “Our boss,” she said, still matching glares with the man in question. “Got it.”

  The Chief looked her up and down like he was sizing up a car that might or might not run.

  “R7,” he said, as dangerously quiet as he’d been dangerously loud a moment ago, “I know your history and I don’t like it. I had a lot of reservations about bringing you on board, but I did it anyway because G3’s been my best agent for a long time, and he insisted you’d be an asset. So far, you haven’t given me any reason to think his judgment wasn’t...” He gave her a quick visual once-over again. “...compromised,” he finished. “I recommend that you fix that. Get me some information on the evidence you destroyed today, or I’ll put you right back where your partner found you so fast it’ll make your head spin. Got it?”

  R7’s fists clenched involuntarily and her teeth ground together, caging every furious retort that flooded into her mouth. Just barely, she managed a stiff nod.

  “Good,” said the Chief. He gave G3 an echo of the same stern look, then turned and strode back into his office, slamming the door behind him.

  R7 stood rigidly next to G3’s desk, fists trembling, face hot under the stage light stares of the people who were supposed to be her new colleagues.

  “R7,” she heard G3 say through the blood rushing in her ears. Breathing slowly and deliberately, she turned to face him and raised her eyebrows, not trusting her voice yet. “I know you’re angry,” he said. “That anger is part of why I wanted you on this team. But you have to use that anger for something constructive.”

  “Punching him in the face isn’t constructive?” R7 growled.

  “No. And neither is undermining his authority in front of everyone,” said G3. “Instead, you should go back to Uni
on Square. Now that the circus is over, you could probably find something we can use. I’ll stay here and talk to Spence”— he glanced at the woman at the switchboard—“about doing some analysis on the attacks so far.”

  R7’s jaw worked, but her pulse began to slow. He was right; doing something was always better. But—

  “You know this isn’t what I signed up to do,” she whispered. “I’m here for Draegan Levak.”

  “I know,” he said, “but I told you it would take some patience.”

  She sighed.

  “Fine,” she finally said, wheeling around to head back out. “But I can’t promise not to punch anyone.”

  §

  G3, she decided as she surveyed the grounds at Union Square, had been both right and wrong. Neither civilians nor police were swarming the area anymore, so as she combed the streets and the sidewalk for bits of information, she gathered far fewer strange looks than she would’ve otherwise in her distressed, ill-fitting, tan uniform. On the other hand, she gathered far fewer clues, too. The locals might’ve done a bad job dealing with the mechanical man when it had been up and running, but they’d swept the area pretty damn clean of useful evidence afterwards.

  R7 sighed and, leaning against a streetlamp, she closed her eyes, trying to conjure the scene in her mind. Speeding car, silver metal and glowing eyes, bullets, explosions, and...someone in red.

  Her eyes flew open, and she looked up to the ledge where she’d seen the figure. Had it really been the Red Death? She’d never gotten a close look at the vigilante before, but the all-red getup was pretty distinctive. And if the Red Death was involved, it was a pretty sure bet that so was the mob—the vigilante’s target of choice. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was all she had.

  So she slipped into the alley and skipped up three stories of fire escape to the ledge where she’d spotted the Red Death. In the thickening evening, it was hard to see anything very well, but after a few undignified minutes of crawling around on her hands and knees, she found a scrap of singed red cloth fluttering on the brick like an autumn leaf. It was better than absolutely nothing, she decided, stuffing the cloth in her pocket. But if she’d found that, it probably meant she’d looked hard enough. This was as good as it was going to get. With a sigh, she stood up and hopped off the ledge, dropping into a crouch in the alley below, just as four wiseguys rounded the corner.

  Sharp and cocky as hell in their striped suits and fedoras, they only paused for a moment, apparently oblivious to the fact that she’d just dropped in from three floors up. Mob—check. They looked her over very differently from the way the Chief had, and broke into matching leers.

  “Hey, doll,” said one of them. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing out here all alone?”

  “Yeah,” another one chimed in. “And why are you dressed like that? With those gams, you oughta be in a skirt.”

  “We can fix both of those for you,” said the first one.

  Use that anger for something constructive, G3 had said. R7 smiled.

  “Yeah?” she answered, taking a step closer to the first wiseguy. “Fix this.”

  She flicked out her foot and kicked him in the knee. He screamed and instinctively reached down to clutch his leg, and she elbowed his undefended nose, opening a faucet of blood.

  He was down for the count, but those were all the free shots she was going to get. And sure enough, his three friends surged in to join the fray. R7 grabbed one by the shoulders and slammed her forehead into his, dazing him. The other two tried to grab her arms, but she broke their grasp easily as she twisted around to face them. She went in for a quick uppercut to the one on the right’s jaw, snapping his head back.

  Meanwhile, the one on the left took the opening to move in and hit her in the kidneys with a solid punch—which she ignored completely as she pummeled the other one with a flurry of quick punches of her own until he collapsed into a trash heap. The man behind her tried hitting her a couple more times as she turned to face him, but she barely noticed. Confused about how ineffective his boxing technique turned out to be, he was taken completely off guard when she delivered a stomping kick to his chest and sent him flying back to slam into a brick wall. She wheeled back around to face the man she’d hit in the head—and he shot her with his .38.

  The round hit R7 in the shoulder, burning through her uniform and scalding her skin. But there it flattened and fell clinking onto the street.

  “I hate guns,” she snarled.

  While the wiseguy’s eyes widened, and before he could squeeze the trigger again, R7 slid forward and batted the revolver out of his hand, then swept his legs out from under him with one foot and pounced on him when he hit the ground.

  “Okay,” she growled, restraining both his hands, “spill. What are you mooks doing here?”

  “T-Tony sent us,” he said, trembling. “Wh-what the hell are you?”

  “Worry less about me and more about yourself,” she snapped. “Obviously Tony’s the one who sent you, but why? What does the mob have to do with mechanical men?”

  “I have no idea. I swear!” he said hastily, as R7 tightened her grip on his wrists. “We were just supposed to see if we could find anything!”

  “And did you?”

  The wiseguy nodded vigorously, gesturing with his head at a black canvas bag the man with the broken knee and nose had dropped.

  “There,” he said. “We found a piece a couple of blocks away. It’s in there. You can have it, just let me go!”

  R7 waited a few seconds longer, in case he decided to reveal anything else to save his skin, and then slowly she let go of his wrists and eased her weight off him.

  “Alright,” she said, “but if you’re lying? Trust me, you’ll regret it.”

  The wiseguy didn’t wait to promise that he wasn’t lying; the second he could squirm free, he dashed out of the alley and disappeared. R7 turned to pick up the bag, blithely passing unconscious and bleeding men as she went. Sure enough, when she turned the bag upside down, an oblong metal object the size of a large rolling pin fell out. Out of context, she didn’t recognize it at first, but after a moment, it hit her. It was the mechanical man’s antenna.

  It didn’t tell her what the mob connection was, but it was better than a scrap of cloth. She snatched the antenna off the ground and shoved it through her belt as she stood up. Or it would be better, she thought, if only she had any idea what to do with it.

  Chapter 7—Back and Forth

  Sunset hadn’t yet soothed the broiling air on the Fourth of July, but a slight

  breeze blew through the open windows to ruffle my hair as I folded myself into a chair at the kitchen table. The clarinet sang the opening bars of “The Rose of Washington Square” on the radio, which I’d kept turned on non-stop since our visit to the cabaret, and I sighed in contentment as I watched Alger rummage in a drawer in the hall closet. All the time I’d been spending with the Gang lately had been fun—fun enough to distract me from my curiosity about Alger’s pet project with the journals, for the moment—but I was just as happy that the two of us were alone for the moment, and that I had at least most of his attention.

  When he turned around, he was carrying a strange collection of objects, which he laid out on the kitchen table: a wooden board with a grid on it and two bowls of stones, one black and one white. I tilted my head to one side and gave him a skeptical look.

  “You’re not giving me another memory exercise for no reason, right?”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” he assured me, sitting down across from me. “It’s an ancient Chinese strategy game called ‘Go.’”

  “And you play it with rocks?”

  “Oh, come now,” he said with an amused smile. “It was all the rage among the Japanese courtesans.”

  “Courtesans?”

  “Never mind. Just give it a try.”

  “Okay,” I said graciously, “but only for you.”

  He nodded and pushed the white stones over to me, delivering a brief explanation of
the rules. I shrugged.

  “Seems simple enough.”

  He smirked at me, clearing the board.

  “Right. Ladies first, then.”

  So the game began. I saw right away, of course, why he’d thought my comment was so funny; it was anything but simple. In under an hour, I had nowhere left to play, and we had to start over. The second game lasted only a little bit longer. By the third game, I’d learned enough to figure out that he’d decided to take it easy on me, and it didn’t go nearly so quickly. After a while, a few groups of stones faced off in the corners, and two parallel lines of black and white were starting to grow across the board.

  “So,” he said, as I decided where to play next, “are the boys keeping you sufficiently entertained?”

  I tore my attention from the board to look up and nod enthusiastically.

  “They’re the bee’s knees!” I told him. “They tell me I’m the best lookout they ever had—er, ‘listen-out,’ is what they say. And they let me drive the decoy car, and I even cracked a safe for the first time yesterday.” I strategically left out the part where I’d stowed away on a boat with the Ghost, who’d been transporting stolen cargo. We’d somehow ended up talking about Greek literature until he’d made me promise to read the Iliad—in exchange for his promise not to tell Alger I’d sneaked out in the first place.

  “That all sounds satisfactory,” said Alger, flipping one of the stones across the knuckles of his left hand. “And the twins mentioned something about dancing, I believe?”

  “Yeah, they taught me after that bare-knuckle boxing match,” I said. “But…” Suddenly hesitant, I paused, looking back down at the wooden checkerboard.

  “But?”

  “Well,” I said, shifting in my chair, “I actually asked them to teach me how to fight, not how to dance. But they said you wouldn’t let them.” Actually, they’d told me that he’d threatened to kick them out of the Gang if they ever so much as tried, but I kept that detail to myself.