The lumbering southpaw hit a nasty one-two, which sent Kid Lightning crashing to the canvas. The wounded light heavyweight stood up at seven, showed his mitts to the referee, and somehow got back into the thick of it. To the surprise of everyone in attendance that night, the battered and bloodied Kid Dynamite made it back to his corner. He lived to see another round.
“A disgusting display.”
“Come now. You saw worse in your day.”
Of the two men talking, only one was visible. This caused at least one spectator to turn his head and scowl at the lunatic in his midst. Patrick Midnight was used to such looks. The special agent for the Society of Gentlemen Geographers got that look at least once every mission. He had ceased to care about it in 1920. Now, five years later, the special agent cared only about the mission. As for his unseen partner, the Reverend Blackstone continued to voice his disapproval of professional pugilism.
“But I can see how an unrepentant sinner like you enjoys such bloody frivolities,” Blackstone grumbled.
“Sure, I enjoy the fights like any red-blooded man, but you know that we are not here just to watch the show. We have to keep an eye on that creep.” Midnight nodded in the direction of the ringside seats. There, in between two flappers, one blonde and one brunette, sat Sam Giacalone in a white suit trimmed with gold lace. A fat cigar hung from his plump lips. His right hand, which was bedazzled with numerous gold and diamond rings, occasionally threw a sawbuck at a passing cigarette or popcorn girl. The Yorkville gangster seemed to be in rare form. His bright smile flashed frequently. He had reason to smile, after all. Several of the fights had been fixed beforehand, and each fixed fight meant a big payout for Giacalone and his associates.
For Midnight and the Society, the Giacalone case represented a “mild.” In Society parlance, that meant a mission designed to keep Midnight and the other agents from getting bored. The mild that night was simple: prove without a doubt that Sam Giacalone was not only fixing fights but using the same dirty money to manipulate the betting markets for that weekend’s Pilgrim Regatta. So far, after three days of shadowing Giacalone, Midnight had nothing but circumstantial evidence. He’d seen a lot of money being passed around, and a bunch of shady characters whispering in each other’s ears, but not much more than that. At best he could maybe collar the mobster on a Volstead Act violation, for Giacalone never went anywhere without a small glass of Canadian whisky.
Midnight thought better of that option. His many reconnaissance trips into the small fishing village of Newburyport made it clear that besides the annual Pilgrim Regatta, which drew in out-of-town money, both legal and illegal, the seaside port relied on the bootlegging trade to fill municipal coffers. The night before, Midnight had accidentally stumbled upon a scene wherein a uniformed constable helped a pair of weather-beaten sailors to unload big wooden crates stamped with the words “Nova Scotia.” The lifelong New Englander knew that the only thing that came into Massachusetts from Nova Scotia was whisky. He figured that the constable knew that too and given that Midnight watched the watchman aid in the delivery of said whisky, the special agent figured a Volstead raid would not be well received.
Kid Lightning bounced off the ropes and landed a vicious left hook to the liver. The roar of the crowd broke Midnight’s concentration. The special agent looked up and saw Kid Lightning follow up with a flush uppercut to his opponent’s jaw. The bigger man hit the canvas hard. He liked the dirty ring so much that he stayed there for more than ten seconds. The underdog won the day. Most of the crowd seated around Midnight stood and cheered for the unlikely victory. The men and women seated around Giacalone looked somewhere between crestfallen and too drunk to care. Giacalone, on the other hand, leaped from his seat in a rage. He uttered several blasphemous oaths in Italian before storming off towards the backstage area. At one point, he turned at the waist and made eye contact with Kid Lightning. Giacalone made the universal gesture for decapitation before turning around and disappearing.
“We finally got a lead,” Midnight whispered to Blackstone.
“Aye. That lad is going to need a few helping hands just to get out of the building alive.”
Midnight slithered his way through the crowd and made a beeline for the dressing rooms. A pair of sleepy-eyed constables stood watch. Midnight flashed a fake identification badge and told the younger of the two officers that he was with the Commonwealth’s athletic commission.
“I need to inspect Kid Lightning’s gloves for foreign objects,” he said. “It’s routine.”
“Ah ok, bub.” The younger officer pronounced his syllables slowly, indicating a breeding from somewhere north of the Merrimack. Midnight followed his hitched thumb into a concrete room filled only with a single bench and a lonely shower head.
“Wait here. The Kid’s making his way now,” the officer said over his shoulder. Less than ten seconds later, the triumphant fighter appeared.
“Hot damn! Did you see that? I whopped him. I took a lot of licks, but I got him in the end.” Kid Lightning’s baritone voice boomed in the small room. Beside him walked a lithe brunette with cornflower blue eyes and a delicate, creamy complexion. Despite her soft looks, she spoke the same brash Bostonian argot as Kid Lightning.
“Yeah, you got ‘em, but Sammy’s gonna get you,” she said.
“Clam it, doll-face. You worry too much. The guinea will calm down. Just give him time.”
“He did this,” the girl mimicked Giacalone’s decapitation motion from earlier. “That means no head for you, champ. He’s gonna saw your thinker off and feed it to the sharks. You know that Sammy don’t like it when stumblebums like you go independent. It’s bad for business.”
“Sammy this. Sammy that. Look,” Kid Lightning got in the woman’s face and raised a fist. “I’m sick and tired of hearing about that wop bastard. Just because I took a few dives for him doesn’t mean I’m his slave. I’m a man, and I’m a winner.” The boxer flexed his right bicep a few times in a vain effort to impress the girl. She still looked frightened.
“I dunno, Jimmy. I say we split tonight…right now. Go back to Boston and wait it out.”
“Nix! I came to see the races too. I’m a citizen. I got a right to watch races.”
Midnight cleared his throat.
“Sorry to interrupt. I’m with the athletic commission. I need to inspect your gloves.”
Kid Lightning eyed Midnight with deep suspicion. “Don’t you guys usually do that before a fight?”
“Can never be too careful. You’d be surprised at what pre-fight investigators have missed.” Kid Lightning remained unconvinced, but nevertheless handed his gloves over to Midnight. After a few squeezes, Midnight handed them right back.
“All set on the gloves. You’re a different story, though.”
“Me?”
“Well, both of you. Excuse me.” Midnight walked over and shut the door, thus putting the two barely awake constables out of earshot. Lowering his voice, Midnight spoke again.
“I’ll come clean. I’m not with the athletic commission, but I’m here for you all the same. I’m investigating Giacalone, and she’s right,” Midnight pointed towards the woman. “He’s going to come after you.”
“Lucky me. Surrounded by nervous Nellies,” Kid Lightning said.
“It’s a serious threat. Giacalone is not just a gambler and a loan shark; he’s a killer, too. You cost him money out there when you decided to be a real boxer for a change…”
“I am a real boxer, joe.” Kid Lightning got in Midnight’s face and flared his nostrils. The special agent calmed him down a little by flashing his .25 automatic. For his part, Blackstone put a restraining hand on the pugilist’s shoulder.”
“Who’s touching me?”
“A friend. And I’m your friend tonight too. This peashooter is for anyone who comes for your head. They won’t make it off this island.”
“A tall order,” Kid Lightning said.
“Thank you, mister,” the woman chimed in. “That means a lot. Name’s Mary Schneider.”
Midnight took her hand and introduced himself. The reluctant Kid Lightning mumbled that his name was Jimmy, just Jimmy.
“Ok. We all know each other now. Our next move is to get off this island and head into Newburyport.”
“And from there back to Boston,” Mary added. Midnight nodded and winked. The special agent started to lead both out of the dressing room when, from the bowels of the dingy convention hall, a series of lethal shots rang out. The special agent sprung into action. He turned to Kid Lightning and told him to keep Mary safe inside the dressing room.
“Nothing doing, joe. God made me a fighter, not a coward.”
“Ok, but those are gunshots, not fists.”
“Don’t care.” With that, the pugilist followed Midnight into the hallway and locked the dressing room door. The two men were joined by the now fully alert constables. Between the four of them, only Midnight was armed with matching firepower. The constables had their truncheons, and Kid Lightning had his fists. It was an underwhelming army, and the growing cacophony of bullets forced the special agent to ask for a favor.
“Of course, lad.” Blackstone materialized as a semi-transparent figure. Despite his ephemeral quality, the spirit was armed with a long rapier that could cut down both the living and the dead. Blackstone took the lead, followed by Midnight and Kid Lightning, the latter of whom had borrowed the older constable’s truncheon.
The small force crawled towards the boxing ring. There they found several spectators hunkered down for safety. Some had even crawled underneath the ring for shelter. Midnight looked up and saw a tapestry of blood and viscera inside the squared circle. An unlucky few, including the main event boxers, were dead, ripped through and cut in half by frenzied bullets.
“Where’s the ginzo? Where’s that slimy, no-good ginzo!” The disembodied voice not only sounded angry, but also crazed. A few rounds were fired into the air. “Well, do I have to kill every bum in this burgh to get an answer?” Midnight peeked above the ring and saw the speaker. He was a diminutive man in a pinstripe suit and crooked Trilby. The small nub of a cigarette burned in his lips. A .45 automatic hung loosely in his right hand.
“Who’s that?” Kid Lightning asked.
“Dat’s O’Leary,” said one of the terrified spectators. “Miles O’Leary.”
Midnight had to suppress a gulp. Miles O’Leary was the undisputed bootleg king of Providence. Every Irish hood on the Atlantic Seaboard saw him as their uncrowned king, and he was the only New England crime boss capable of sipping gin and swapping orders with Legs Diamond down in New York. His respect was largely the result of fear, for the tiny gangster had a reputation for overkill, such as the time he tied Dutch Greenberg up for days with a blindfold soaked in a mixture of vinegar and gonorrhea only to stab him over twenty times with a surgical scalpel. O’Leary’s biggest enemy was the Manzo gang of North Providence, and if recent news reports were to be believed, O’Leary was losing the war thanks to outside money and guns. As a result, O’Leary had declared war on all Italian organizations and families, even including innocent bystanders.
Midnight realized that the case was no longer “mild.” He was in the middle of a full-scale ethnic war.
Midnight used the ring’s apron to level his shooting hand. He took aim at O’Leary, closed one eye, and squeezed. The shot found its target, but the placement was off. Midnight’s heart sank when he saw the gangster reach for his shoulder rather than his heart. The special agent cursed himself.
O’Leary screamed and fired blindly. This caused several other men to emerge from the shadows, all of whom were armed with either shotguns or automatics of their own.
“Well, all subtlety is gone now,” Midnight said. “Never had the makings for a sniper anyway.” The special agent raced across the room. A swarm of bullets nipped at his heels, but he made it behind the bleacher seats without a scratch.
“Is that you, Sammy boy?” O’Leary cried. “You’re surrounded, and you’re going to die like the ginzo rat you are.”
Inspired by the night’s boxing, Midnight could not resist throwing out a jab of his own. “Sorry to disappoint you. I’m the other Sammy…Uncle Sammy.”
O’Leary and his men laughed in response. It was far from the reaction Midnight had hoped for. The gangster did not fear federal agents, and that meant Midnight was locked into a death duel. He kept moving and did his best to flank one of O’Leary gunmen. Midnight was forced to let off two rounds just to distract O’Leary’s men from getting too close to the ring. Unfortunately, Kid Lightning spoiled everything.
“I bet you can’t fight a lick without that gun in your hand,” he said. Midnight winced, but the braggadocious fighter at least succeeded in making all the gunmen forget about Midnight. The special agent used this to his advantage. When two of O’Leary’s goons made a beeline for Kid Lightning, Midnight came up from behind and fired two perfect rounds that killed the gunmen cleanly.
“Sonofabitch,” O’Leary bellowed. The gangster swiveled his hips and fired towards Midnight, forcing the special agent to dive for the dirty concrete. There he found the dropped shotgun. He rose up and fired buckshot at O’Leary. This time he missed completely, but when another gunman popped his head up, Midnight took him out with a single slug.
“You’re running out of men,” Kid Lightning taunted O’Leary from his concealed position.
“And you’re running out of life!” the gangster barked as he rounded a corner and found the other side of the ring. O’Leary fired once before collapsing inward with a sudden gasp. The wounded Providence bootlegger looked down at his stomach and could see the first shadow of crimson entrails. What he could not see was the killing blow nor its deliverer. Only Midnight could see the tall and haughty outline of Reverend Blackstone with his rapier almost knuckle-deep in O’Leary stomach. The ancestral shade offered the dying man a solemn prayer before gently pulling the blade out and thus ensuring a larger and more fatal entry wound. O’Leary sighed once and perished.
Midnight raced back down towards the ring. A preternatural part of him knew what he’d find, but he was still shocked when he discovered the bloodied corpse of Kid Lightning. O’Leary’s final shot had pierced the pugilist’s left eyeball. Now both men were dead, and Midnight felt like a monumental screw-up.
“This is not good,” Midnight said to no one in particular.
“Aye, lad. A lot of death for what? Continued avarice and sundry sins.”
“We’re getting these people out, sir,” said one of the constables. Midnight nodded his head and watched the survivors make an orderly exit. None would stay a moment longer on Plum Island; the Pilgrim Regatta be damned. Once alone, Midnight made for the dressing rooms and used the butt of the pilfered shotgun to break the door’s lock. He fully expected to find a cowering, but still alive Mary Schneider. Instead, Midnight found a solitary note written in a spidery hand.
We have your girlfriend. Meet us at Newbury Beach if you want her back.
“A message for the dead lad,” Blackstone said.
“He can’t answer it, but we can,” Midnight added.
“Aye. And so, we shall. To the beach.”
***
The deepest part of the night found Midnight and Blackstone standing on the cool sands of Newbury Beach. The gentle waves of the Atlantic Ocean would have lulled Midnight to sleep on any other occasion. Instead, on that night, the ocean provided the accompanying music to a scene of absolute horror.
Across from Midnight and Blackstone stood three figures. Mary Schneider formed the center. By the slump of her shoulders and the pained expression on her face, Midnight knew that her hands were bound tightly behind her back. She pleaded with Midnight to save her.
Standing to Mary’s side with a pistol pointed at her temple was Giacalone. The mobster’s smile was gone and replaced by a murderous scowl. Hate lived in his eyes, so too did confusion. He expected and wanted to see Kid Lightning, not Patrick Midnight.
The third man was the most mysterious. Dressed entirely in black and wearing a black cowl to hide his face, the man stood off to the side with his arms folded across his chest. The man refused to speak, even when Midnight addressed him directly.
“He doesn’t speak English, shamus,” Giacalone said. “Only French.”
“Je parle française,” Midnight said in his best trench patois. The former lieutenant for the Yankee Division smirked at his own erudition.
The masked man spat out “Merde” as his sole response.
“He ain’t as friendly as me,” Giacalone said. “Hell, between you and me, I don’t much like having him around. But you see, I kind of need him and his friends.”
“Why?” Midnight asked.
“We have a partnership. A business relationship. We trade money—they dump francs into a Montreal account for me, and I give them my cleaned laundry from every fixed fight, dirty pony race, and hooch sale. It’s a nice arrangement. And there’s a real kicker too, shamus. All these Frenchies want in return is my protection, and tonight’s the first time that I’ve had to pull my gat in their defense. Now, I get to interrogate you, shamus. What are you and O’Leary playing at? Are you just a mick down for the cause, or are you two crazy enough to think that you can push my people out to sea?”
“None of the above,” Midnight said. “O’Leary is dead. I helped to kill him.”
“Is that on the level?”
“It’s on the level.”
Giacalone looked at the back of Mary’s head. “So why care about this frill? You’re not her man, and I don’t think you’re a relation.”
“My interest in Mary is purely moral. As in I don’t think it’s moral to let an innocent woman be treated like this.”
“Like what? A cheap trinket? A louse? Go on, explain.”
“Look, Giacalone,” Midnight said with both hands in the air. His goal was to put the agitated mobster at ease, while simultaneously distracting him and the silent Frenchman from the movements of the creeping Reverend Blackstone. “Let her go and I’ll leave you and your friend alone. I’ll forget about the fixed fights and the money laundering and whatever it is the Frenchies are up to.”
Giacalone snickered. “Even I don’t know what they’re up to. All they do is spend night after night off the coast of Cape Cod near some Podunk burgh called Orleans.”
Midnight made a mental note of the comment and carried on. “See, it’s easy, really. Cut Mary loose and you two can get out of Massachusetts without fanfare. For all anyone knows, tonight was on O’Leary one-hundred-percent.”
“And he’s dead, and the dead don’t talk,” Giacalone said to himself. Midnight could tell that the mobster was being persuaded. The small wheels inside of his brain were spinning. That was good. That meant Blackstone had time—time that he always used wisely.”
“On second thought,” Giacalone said, “I have no reason to trust a shamus. In fact, I’ve never trusted a shamus.” The mobster thumbed the hammer back. Quick as a cat, Midnight pulled the .25 from his waistband and leveled it. It was now a race to see who could land first. One bullet fired, followed closely by a second.
Midnight stood still with the smoking automatic in his hand. Giacalone collapsed onto the nighttime sand. The Yorkville crime lord no longer breathed; no longer dreamed.
A second later, Mary Schneider hit the sand as well, but her cries let the special agent know that her wounds were painful, but not life-threatening. Midnight quickly untied her wrists and searched her body. He found a smoldering wound at the bottom of her earlobe. A millimeter higher and Mary Schneider would have never seen another Boston autumn. Midnight picked the woman up and cradled her gently.
A sudden gurgle from above forced the special agent to look upwards. There he saw Blackstone’s swift blade impale the masked man through the liver. The hooded figure choked on his own blood one more time and expired. Thus ended the bloodiest night of Patrick Midnight’s career.
***
The following morning was a flurry of activity. Midnight stayed on the beach until members of the Massachusetts State Police arrived to cart off the bodies. He provided a detective named Mulberry a rundown of the night’s events with a few things subtracted from the sum total. The rotund and florid Irishman bought everything and thanked the special agent with an offer to join the force.
“I like the post office well enough,” Midnight said, alluding to his oft-used cover as an inspector with the Post Office Department’s Mortuary Affairs division.
“A job’s a job,” Mulberry said. “As for me, I have to go talk to New York and see what they want to charge O’Leary’s corpse with.” He saluted Midnight and trundled off.
The special agent pulled a cigarette out of his jacket and did his best to appear exhausted. In truth, he was a bundle of nervous energy. He smoked until the last of the state troopers left the beach. When he was alone, Midnight removed several items from his coat and studied them. The items included an identification card, a well-used notebook, and scraps of a letter. Most of it was in French and had been taken from the corpse of the masked man.
The masked man’s name proved to be Jacques Roulet. Twenty-six. Resident of Paris. Veteran of the Great War. Medium height and average build. Dirty blonde. Occupation: none.
“Odd duck you killed,” Midnight said to Blackstone.
“More than odd, lad. Sinister.”
Midnight asked for clarification. Blackstone pointed at the notebook. “Strange calligraphy, and not all in the Frankish tongue.”
“Just doodles,” Midnight offered.
“Nay, lad. Something else. Devilry. Sigils.”
“A Frenchman with a pocket full of sigils and a connection to a Manhattan gangster. It doesn’t make sense. Oh, and there was that mention of Orleans. Giacalone said that the Frenchies were spending all their time in Orleans. Only thing to ever happen there was that U-boat raid in ’18. The Krauts shelled the town before fleeing the scene. Don’t understand why a bunch of Frenchmen interested in black magic would care about that.”
Midnight thumbed the notebook and re-studied the mutilated letter. He admitted that yes, the objects were bizarre. He put them back into his jacket pocket. Hours later, after Midnight returned to the mainland, he mailed the items to the Society’s headquarters in New York. He attached a simple note in lieu of a full report. He promised to do the latter the moment he returned to Exeter and his family’s manor. Midnight then boarded the first of a series of buses that would take him home along the coastal route. By the time the bus reached Ipswich, Midnight found himself relaxing. This dissipated soon enough, as the dilapidated bus blew out a tire twenty minutes into the trip.
“Some luck, eh?” Midnight asked Blackstone.
“No time to jest, lad. We’re too close.”
“Close to what?”
The bus driver interrupted to say that the bus was inoperable, and as such the passengers had two options. The first would be to head north towards Boxford. The second was to continue south on foot until Topsfield. The driver promised those going north that there would be another bus in Boxford.
“What about those going south?” Midnight asked.
“Don’t go south,” the driver warned. With that, the man turned and started escorting the passengers out. All decided to head north. All except for Midnight. He was left beside the road with one suitcase and a ghost.
“What’s the nearest town,” he asked Blackstone. The ancestral shade stayed silent, so Midnight repeated the question.
“I dare not say it.”
“What? Are you scared of…of…Nahant? Swampscott? Marblehead?”
“Nah, lad. ‘Tis Innsmouth that is next. Hated Innsmouth.”
All the air left Midnight’s lungs. When he caught it again, and put his beating heart back into his chest, Midnight bent down and retied his shoes.
He had a lot of walking ahead of him if he wanted to make it to the next county before nightfall.
— Arbogast is a neo-pulp writer, editor, and paranormal investigator out in the hinterlands. His most recent book is The Living Hypnotic Death. He tweets mostly metal online at @Arbogast1325.