Chapter 5

I ran a bath.

I ran my fingers over my chest.

I held my balls.

I could have squeezed my nipples, my genitals. But I didn't.

I held my heart and my balls not to arouse them, but to protect them. Everyone feels vulnerable sometimes.

Instead, I squeezed my eyelids shut tight and slid beneath the water.

Instantly, the walls of St. Agatha's grew around me, high, grim, and dark. To say that growing up in that icy cold orphanage, which had been built out of the east wing of St. Agatha's convent, was terrifying would be an understatement. Every night, we would cower. Every night, we would cry. Every night, we would hear the distant screams of young unmarried women giving birth to children that the Lord deemed unworthy, before the nuns would send those ungodly mothers, childless and shivering, into the night. We were told that what we heard were the cries of demons, the desperate pleas of the damned, those who would be forever judged by God above.

Deep down I knew my own mother was one of those demons.

And for a long, long time, I wondered if the curse of a demon could be passed down, from mother to son.

"Of course not," whispered Harry one night, my only friend in the orphanage. My only friend in the world.

We were both only seven years old at the time. Innocent, frightened and freezing. After lights out every night, which was always followed by prayers and a random beating, Harry would sneak across the dormitory, crawl into my bed and wrap his arm around me as tightly as he could to keep us both warm. When he did, he became my mother, my god, my everything—all at once.

In that instant, I remembered everything.

The cemetery.

The gravestones.

The tunnel.

The end of Harry.

With an eruption of water, my legs kicking and arms flailing, I sat bolt upright in the bath tub, coughing and spluttering, my eyes blinking madly as I watched the overflow splash across the floorboards of my cruddy office apartment.

I watched the water spill between the cracks.

I waited for Mr. Tudsbury in the apartment below to complain about the leak with a thud-thud-thud from the end of his broom handle. Ten seconds later, there it was. I didn't respond. Instead, I stepped out of the tub, and naked, I mopped up the water with my towel. When I was done, I tossed the sodden towel in the bath, then sat on the edge of the tub and wondered to myself—

Would I still be doing this as an old man?

Would my own memories still haunt me?

Wet and alone?

Goddamn, I needed a smoke right at that moment.

I crossed the room and picked up my pipe and dragon ashtray.

Shit, I was out of cannabis.

I licked the tip of a pencil and made a list of people I needed to see, thinking about both the Stuart Whitmore case at hand… and myself:

Skip, the news-kid

Stella Darling

Madame Chang

"Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Hart Industries flies high into the future!"

I picked up a rag and looked at the picture on the front page beneath the headline that nine-year-old Skip, the news-kid, had just belted out to the pedestrians on his busy street corner. It was a photograph of Holden Hart and his father standing with their arms around each other's shoulders, posing for the picture. To the world, Holden appeared to be the next in a billionaire's bloodline. To me, I couldn't help but see a distance in his eyes, as though the man standing beside him might as well have been a million miles away at the moment that picture was taken and the flash popped. Or perhaps Holden wished that of himself.

As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I cursed myself. There I was overthinking things again, letting Holden Hart into my head, a place where nobody belonged but me.

"Oy, Mr. Baxter, you gonna pay for that or what? I ain't no public library!"

I tossed Skip a coin. Then I doubled his money. "Hey Skip, you ever seen this guy around?"

I folded the newspaper, slid it under one arm, and pulled the photograph of Stu Whitmore from my inside jacket pocket. Skip took the picture in his ink-stained little fingers.

"You talkin' about Marky Marlow? Hells no. Even if I had, the answer'd still be hells no. I ain't gettin' my head shot off. Bein' a news-kid is dangerous enough. You seen how close the cabs cut the corners in this town?"

"No, I ain't talkin' about Marky Marlow. I mean the other guy."

Skip glanced at the picture again, shook his head, and handed it back. "Sorry, Mr. Baxter. I remember every face that passes this corner. I know all my customers—" As if to prove the point, he broke off the conversation momentarily to thank Mrs. Burston who paid him for a newspaper. "—but the fella standing next to Marky Marlow in that picture, I've never seen him before in my life. Now I'd love to sit and chat, but a kid's got a job to do, so if you wouldn't mind…"

"Thanks, Skip." I threw him another couple of pennies, and turned to walk away. "Don't work too hard."

"Someone's got to in this town," he said, before crying out, "Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Nun found dead in Wilde City Harbor!"

The words he shouted piqued my curiosity, and I turned back. "What did you just say?"

Skip told me, "It's on page two. You don't think there's more to a newspaper than the front page?"

I turned away again and pulled the paper out from under my arm while Skip kept singing his headlines out behind me. I flipped open to page two. Well, whaddaya know, one the nuns from Hell's Bells had gone to meet her maker earlier than expected. And not just any nun… it was Sister Rose. Or as me and the other orphans called her back in my time at Hell's Bells, Sister Rose-from-the-Dead. The most sinister, sadistic sister you'd ever have the misfortune to meet. Somehow, I didn't think she was going to rise from the dead now; according to the news report, she'd received multiple fractures to the skull before her body was dumped in the water.

That's Wilde City for ya.

Not even the nuns were safe.

As night began to pull its dark veil of sin and secrecy over the city, I made my way toward the red-light district down near the port, thinking to myself that if nobody else knew who Stu Whitmore was, at least Marky Marlow apparently did. All I had to do was find out the best way to organize a rendezvous with him, but I had a bad feeling that meant I would need an audience with Mamma Marlow first.

And the best person to talk to about setting up that kinda meeting was a woman who was big in the wrong crowd… but small in size.

As I turned into the Mews of Muses, the ladies of the night purred their way toward me, their blood-red lips curling into sinister smiles, their high heels clicking on the cobblestones, their long legs ready to wrap themselves around the first man they saw and devour him. But I wasn't looking for long legs.

"Look, ladies, it's Buck," one of the women said. "He's finally seen the light."

"Oh Buck," another moaned excitedly. "You ready for a real fuck?"

"Bucky Baxter," groaned yet another. "Come to me, you gorgeous piece of man. I'll show you what true love really is."

As their hands began to wrap around my arms, chest, shoulders, and face, I smiled politely and said, "Ladies, ladies, thanks for the charming offers. But I'm here to see—"

Before I could finish my sentence, someone started pushing and shoving the ladies aside… from somewhere down below.

The women stumbled away, rolling their eyes in annoyance as I heard the loudest, squeaky little voice I knew shouting, "Get away from him! Stand back! If Buck's made the switch, then he's my bitch!"

As the last of the ladies was yanked off me, I looked down to find Stella Darling—a corseted little person all of three feet tall, even with the heels—standing in front of me. Stella was a woman who had never let anyone bully her and had never seen her height as a disadvantage. In fact, she had often described it as her best work asset. Stella Darling refused to kneel to any man, so her height meant she could do her job standing up without compromising her principles. It was a win-win for everyone, really.

Stella flicked the ends of her blonde bob wig out of her face now and smiled up at me. "So is it true, Bucky boy? You finally swingin' the bat both ways?"

I squatted so that Stella and I were face to face, then smiled and straightened her wig for her after the tussle of getting the other girls off me. "Stella, you know if I ever swing the other way, you're my girl. But in the meantime, I'm here for work."

She beamed. "What a coincidence. So am I!"

I shook my head with a smile. "Stella, I'm not having sex with you."

Stella put her hands on her hips. "Then I ain't tellin' you what you need to know."

I pulled out a crisp ten-dollar bill.

Stella held off for all of three seconds, then snatched it from me. "Alright, toots, but I'm expecting some high-payin' customers to turn that corner any second now. You got five minutes, and that's it. Unless you wanna sweeten the deal a little." She grinned, licked her lips, and pushed up her tits with both hands, making the most of her cleavage.

"Five minutes should do it."

She sighed, disappointed, and put her hands on her hips again. "Well, you can't blame a dame for tryin'. Come over here and step into my office."

Stella's office was the alcove of the back door to a diner which had burned down two years ago, and had never been repaired. I sat on a wooden crate in the alcove while Stella stood opposite me and lit a cigarette. She offered me one.

I took it and cupped the end of it while she lit it for me.

I could feel my face aglow in the flickering yellow flame, and I caught a smile from her.

"One day, toots, you'll marry me," she said confidently. "You know that, don't you?"

I blew out a puff of smoke and said, "You know Buck Baxter ain't a marrying man."

"I know. I just hope someday one of us finds love. Wouldn't that be nice? Even if it wasn't with each other. Love would be nice. Someday. Don't you ever dream of that, Buck?"

I cocked an eyebrow. "What's the matter with you tonight? Why so mushy?"

She shooed the conversation away with a wave of her hand. "Nothin'. It's nothin'. And all this chit-chat is chewin' into your five minutes! So what the hell do you need, sweetie-pie?"

"A meeting with Mamma Marlow."

Stella stopped sucking on her cigarette mid-drag. Eyes wide, she pulled the cigarette from her lips and let the smoke drift from her gaping mouth before asking, "Toots, did you wake up with a death wish this morning? Why the fuck do you want a meeting with her?"

I pulled the picture out of my pocket and showed it to her. "My latest case. I need to find out more about the guy standin' next to Marky Marlow. To do that, I figure I need to speak to Marky. But to do that…"

"You need to speak to his Mamma," Stella finished for me. "Honey, you know how dangerous Mamma Marlow is, don't you? If you ask too many questions, dig too deep, she's gonna think you're one of Bugsy Brown's boys. And if that happens, you might as well go shopping for concrete boots yourself. At least you'll get the right fit."

"I know, I know. I'll lay as low as I can, I promise."

"Sweetie, it ain't about layin' low. You saw what happened in the shoot-out at Delfino's Deli last year, even the guys hidin' under the tables ended up eatin' lead. You get caught in the crossfire between Mamma and Bugsy and you're a dead man. And trust me, there's already too many ugly mugs in this city. We can't afford to lose a handsome face like yours." She put a lopsided, slicked strand of my hair back in place.

"Thanks, sweetheart. But I won't get hurt."

"You betta not," came a voice from behind. "We'd miss you."

Two arms like serpents wrapped themselves around my shoulders as a tall brunette tried to pull me away from Stella.

With a hiss, Stella warned the tall brunette away. "Get lost, you knuckle-headed elm tree. Cut my turf again, and I'll cut you down to size."

The brunette hissed back at Stella and retreated with a twisted expression of hate on her face.

"They love me, really," Stella told me with a peppery smile. "But back to you, sweetie. Are you sure you wanna meet with Mamma? I can arrange something for you. But I can't guarantee your safety."

"I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself."

With that comment, another set of arms laced their way around my neck. "How big?" asked the lofty, leggy redhead on the other end of those arms.

Before I could answer, Stella slapped at the redhead's arms and snapped, "Scram, Mount Everest! You got your head in the clouds if you think he's interested in you."

The redhead disappeared into the night with a growl.

Stella had already grabbed my left arm and was rolling up my sleeve. She pulled a lipstick out of her cleavage as though she were a magician, then scrawled an address on my bare forearm. "Be at this address at nine o'clock tomorrow night. Someone will be there to take you to Mamma."

"Thanks, Stella. I owe you one."

"You owe me lots."

"Me too," whispered a voice as the arms of a tall ginger-haired seductress draped themselves around me.

"Oh for Pete's sake," shouted Stella at the woman. "Beat it, you stupid skyscraper. The only thing attracted to you is lightning!"

The ginger-haired woman stormed away into the dark with a "Fuck you, freak!"

I eyed Stella with the curl of a grin at my lips. "Are you sure they love you?"

"Of course. They're all naming their damn kids after me. Which would be a lotta children if they didn't keep going to Dr. Krippen for a quick fix."

"You don't need them to name their children after you. I know you'll have kids of your own someday."

"Are you offering?"

I smiled. "No, I'm leaving. I believe my time is up."

I stood to leave and got maybe ten feet along the cobblestoned alley before Stella called back to me. "Hey, toots, ain't you forgettin' somethin'?"

I turned and looked at her, as though the gesture itself was enough to ask what?

Stella put a little sway into her hips as if she were ready to party. "You ain't wished me happy birthday yet?"

I stepped back toward her. "Today's your birthday?" I knelt in front of her, and her eyebrows did a little dance.

"Ooh, I like a man who kneels for me."

"I'd ask you how old you are, but I'm smart enough to know a gentleman never asks a lady that question."

"Honey, who are you kidding? You ain't no gentleman, and I sure as hell ain't no lady. And to answer your question, I'm older than I should be. Little people ain't supposed to live this long."

The penny dropped. "So that's why all the talk of love and marriage."

She shrugged, then laughed away the tear that was threatening to drop.

"Don't worry, my sweetheart," I said before leaning forward and giving her a kiss on the cheek. "I know you're gonna live forever."

"How do you know that?"

"Because the guy writing our story would never let you die."

"You promise?"

I looked up at the sky, trying to see beyond the stars that had filled the night, and nodded to her. "Yep, I promise. I get the feelin' he kinda likes you."

"Stop gettin' all schmaltzy on me, Buck Baxter. I know you're full of it. Now scoot before I charge you extra."

I smiled, stood, and tipped my trusty trilby hat to her. "Happy Birthday, sweetheart." With that, I turned and left.