Star Harbor Nights

"Shoots?" Dani repeated.

"Yeah, try to stay out of the line of fire, though," Perfect said. "Since we don't have any way of knowing whether your aura will stop a bullet, short of shooting you."

"Getting shot equals bad," Dani said. "Got it. Um... I don't suppose we have a plan B?"

"It'll work," Perfect said. "One of their own just died under highly suspicious circumstances. They're going to be nervous, edgy, easily spooked... that's the only reason why they're all gathering at their old hang out. You can take advantage of that."

"Yeah, yeah... criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot," Dani said.

"Oh, have you studied criminology?" Perfect asked. "We should compare notes. Did you take formal classes, or..."

"Um... I guess you'd call it learning by example," Dani said. "Anyway, let's do this, before I chic... uh, lose my nerve."

"Alright," Perfect said. "Good luck!"

"Bye," Dani said. "Or over and out, or whatever."

"How about 'talk to you in a bit?'"

'Alright... talk to you in a bit."

"Orlena, I know this must be very trying for you," Ralph Mineo said, catching the server by her arm as she tried to scoot past the gathering of mobsters and former mobsters. "Joey was your friend. He shouldn't have died like that."

Lena stiffened at his touch, and positively froze at the mention of Joe DiMato... or "Joey Diamonds," as he'd been called.

"He died chasing a ghost," she said. "He should have just left it alone."

"You must grieve for him."

"He was an asshole," she said.

"You shouldn't speak ill of the dead, Lena," he said, glaring and making the sign of the cross.

"He was," Lena said. "But... he didn't deserve..."

"We'll get the bitch who did it," Mineo said. "They say our time in Star Harbor is past, but it'll be a cold day in hell when we can't even avenge one of our own."

"Uh, thanks," Lena said. She privately thought that whatever Mineo and his friends did, they would do out of fear that they might be next rather than respect for Joey's memory. They hadn't had a lot of use for him when he was alive. "I have to... uh, I'm working."

It was bad enough that Joey had died, bad enough that the last time she'd seen him, they'd fought... but his death had brought the "old crowd" back to Juniper Hill with a vengeance... almost literally. The old gangster night club had been remodeled as a modern dance club, and the cheap Italian men in expensive Italian suits looked badly out of place. The management knew that Lena knew some of them... she was sincerely hoping they'd leave before she was asked to say something to them.

"So, Ralphy," one of the others said, drawing Mineo back into the gathering as Lena sped away, "what exactly are we supposed to do about this 'ghost'?"

"I tell you, she's no ghost, she's just some God damned mutant," Mineo said to the gathered men once they'd finally got down to business. "But once we catch her, this bitch will be... Mother of God!"

At that moment, in a blinding flash of azure light, Dani had appeared, totally relaxed and reclining on her side on the table. She was dressed to kill, so to speak, in a blue vinyl body suit with a pair of short curved Japanese swords on her back and a pair of oversized boots on her feet, with stylized wings coming off the ankles.

All of the mobster types froze. Other peoples' heads craned around, almost synchronized. Conversations died. Dani half-expected the music to come to a halt, maybe with a cartoony scratching sound, but of course, the digital feed kept right on feeding, heedless of any human drama.

"Vittorio Palozzo," she said, languidly, letting each of the syllables roll around in her mouth, as she stood up, stretching like a cat after a good nap. "You know the name. I'm... here for him," she said, giving the three words a delicate inflection. Blue fire burned inside her eyes. "And one of you knows where to find him."

She turned her piercing gaze over the gangsters. There was a sound of a shoe scuffing on the tile, and she whipped her head around to see one of the men bolting away through the crowd. The rest of them unfroze a moment later. A few guns came out. The rest of them were scattering.

Dani was already off, though.

The voice of vicarious experience reminded her that running in a straight line was like standing still to a gunman who was in front of or behind you... but, she thought, people trying to shoot at you in real life probably don't aim as carefully as people playing a video game, where you get points for it. Mob shootings usually had a lot of bystanders who got caught in the crossfire. If she ducked and dodged from side to side, she'd be leading the shots that missed her into a lot of innocent bodies. She ran straight through the channel the fleeing mobster had made, sending a broad wave of force ahead of her to part the crowd some more.

She felt several bullets whizzing by her head, heard the shots... and felt something strike her back. It was like being snapped with a rubber band. Well, she thought, that answered one question, didn't it? She kept on. With the winged boots on her feet, nobody had time to squeeze off more than a couple shots before she made it to the door. She almost overtook her quarry inside the club, but slowed just enough to let him get out the door. Once outside, she stopped and watched him run around the corner. She took off after him, running past him to stop facing him, two yards ahead.

"Vittorio Palozzo," she repeated, glad she'd practiced pronouncing the unfamiliar name. She reached over her shoulder, putting her hand on the hilt of one of the swords. "You are going to tell me all about him."

It was called Seamus's Old Fashioned Dockside Bar and Grill, but the grill had been turned off years before to dodge a citywide ban on smoking in restaurants. Very few of Mick Seamus's patrons had gone there for the food, but nearly all of them smoked. The atmosphere inside was like the demonstration floor of a fog machine emporium, and more than a third of the dirty lamp-like lights suspended from the ceiling were out. Perfect had no problem at all making her entrance into the room proper by dropping lightly onto a table from the shadowy rafters above.

"Evening, gentlemen," Perfect said, loud enough to get the attention of everybody who'd missed her entrance.

"Oh, Christ," the barman said, ducking down beneath his bar.

"Who the fuck are you?" one of the thugs at the bar said.

"I'm the Black Rabbit. I've got a name for you... or a few of them, though they all belong to the same man: Vittorio Palozzo, A.K.A. Sal Vittorio, A.K.A. Vick Chicago... this ring any bells?"

"I'll ring a bell for you," a voice said from off to the side. She turned just in time to see a white ball winging through the air at her, which she caught. The impact of the heavy cellulose sphere against her palm was considerable, but she swallowed a grunt of pain.

"Pool, huh?" Perfect said, tossing the ball up and catching. "I'm game... but... do you mind if I break?" She dropped the cue ball in front of her, kicking it--being very glad as she did so that she'd dropped the slippers in favor of little black boots with reinforced toes--at the man who'd thrown it, and catching him in the groin.

All around the room, men went for their pieces. Perfect held out her arms, raising her hands to about the level of her head.

"Lookit that," somebody said behind her. "She's surrendering... never seen a mask surrender before."

"I'm not surrendering. Just pausing to point something out. Police have been called here twice this month in response to shots fired," Perfect said. "Any more incidents and you're going to lose Mick his license, and I'm sure nobody wants that. Now, I'm not here to arrest anybody. I don't know of any crimes that you've committed. I just want to talk to anybody who's seen Palozzo recently. Are you going to cooperate... or am I going to have to get really rough?"

"Hey, hey, the lady's right," someone said. "Let's be reasonable about this. There's no sense in drawing a lot of police attention down upon ourselves and our favorite hang out, is there?" He cracked his knuckles. "We'll do this without guns."

Perfect crouched into a fighting stance, dropping her arms. A hard rubber ball shot out of her right wrist guard and hit the knuckle-cracker in the solar plexus, knocking him down. Another one went over the two nearest goons and hit the head of a particularly large, scarred thug who happened to be holding a pool cue.

The men she'd shot the second ball past ducked, thinking they were under attack, and they caught her boots on their chins as she executed a backwards flip-roll off the edge of the table. She ducked underneath it, upending it to put a heavy wooden shield between herself and the mass of bad guys. Almost immediately, bullets cut through its feeble protection at about the height where her center mass would have been, if she hadn't ducked back down. Keeping low, she darted around the side of the table, dodging between the tangled legs of crooks who were rushing around for a clear shot. Two of them went down, clutching their groins. Her batons telescoped out, hitting kneecaps and dropping more of the criminals as she whirled around, rising up to strike at arms, heads, and guns that came too near her.

Unwilling to come too close, a few of the assemblage fired wild shots into the fray. Most of them missed everybody, but one of the gangsters dropped his gun, clutching the wound channel left on his arm by a graze.

"Enough!" a voice bellowed. The light fixtures all went dark, leaving only the dim glow of the emergency lights and a single fluorescent tube over the mirror behind the bar. Everyone--Perfect included--turned at once to see a man who seemed to be made of living darkness standing silhouetted by that harsh, unnatural light, standing on top of the counter.

It was the Dock Shadow, guardian vigilante of Star Harbor's waterfront. Perfect knew his costume was made of an experimental material, pigmented to absorb more than ninety nine point nine percent of the light that struck it, making it reflect far less light than that which is normally thought of as "black." His cowled mask left his lower face exposed, but with the only illumination coming from straight behind him, that was not apparent.

Perfect was absolutely arrested by the sight of him, standing in a deceptively feral pose. She knew he was a man of flesh and blood... and one with no overt superhuman powers, at that... but she fully understood, in that moment, how in a world of flying men and self-proclaimed gods, he was a legend.

In that moment, Perfect would have been extremely vulnerable, if not for the fact that everyone who could still walk was gone.

Shadow straightened up, stepping off the bar as if he descending a staircase, never mind the steep drop. He landed squarely on his feet without a shudder or grunt, and looked around, surveying the downed men, most of whom were cowering and starting to crawl away. One of them reached surreptitiously for a dropped gun, but Shadow kicked it almost casually away.

"You tried to talk them out of gunplay," he said to Perfect, still looking around the room instead of at her.

"Yeah, and it almost worked," she said.

"It was a good move," he said. "At least, considering that you walked right into the middle of a group of armed opponents and revealed yourself."

"I was only looking to talk, not fight," she said.

"To them, you are the enemy. You're never there just to talk. It's better if you can cultivate a separate identity, get in close to them before you try talking... or simply listening, during unguarded moments," He turned and faced her, looking her over. "You may be at a slight disadvantage there, but there are angles you could work."

"In other words, I get to be a hooker instead of a mook," Perfect said. "Any other tips?"

"Next time, leave off the 'Vick Chicago'," Dock Shadow said. "When dealing with mobsters, remember that nobody calls them the names reporters call them, except reporters."

"I've read that, about particular mobsters," Perfect said. "I didn't know how true it held across the board."

"Generally speaking... very true," the vigilante replied. "You're looking for Palozzo because you think he did the churches?"

"I'm looking for him because I'm nearly certain that he didn't," Perfect said.

Shadow nodded very slightly. Standing in the darkness, with only his chin and mouth really visible, it was as though the plane of his face contracted almost imperceptibly from top to bottom.

"I looked at the sites. It was his bombs... but not his style," he said. "There was too much overkill, too much redundancy. Palozzo’s a showboat, but he has his professional pride. He would never use any more than he had to in order to ensure the maximum conflagration. This was done by an amateur who was determined to see that the whole building went up and had no other way of being sure."

"Palozzo never actually did a job in Star Harbor, did he?" Perfect asked.

"No."

"But you know his style anyway."

"If I didn't, I wouldn't know if he did pull a job here," Dock Shadow said. "He didn't do this one."

"Do you have any idea who did?"

"I could give you a list as long as your arm of who didn't," he said. "Nobody with any connections. Nobody established."

"A determined amateur," Perfect repeated, thoughtfully.

"The worst kind," Shadow said. "The most dangerous." He paused. "Is there anything else?"

"Nothing I can think of," Perfect said. "If I think of something, though, can I get a hold of you?"

She thought she saw a small twitch at the corners of his mouth.

"That'll be the question, won't it?" he said. He took a step backwards towards a dark corner, raising a gloved hand to cover the exposed skin beneath his cowl. As soon as he was out of the direct light, he was gone. Perfect was about to turn to leave herself, but something caught her eye... something lying on the floor where the Dock Shadow had been standing.

Until she picked it up, it might have been a shadow itself... it was a small bundle of black cloth, cloth so dark it was hard to see the edges.