The Clarity of Cold Steel

I NEED A DOZE and a dose and I ain’t got the scratch for a hotel room. I don’t fancy sleeping on the street tonight, so against my better judgement, I harken back to my coffin on Dhule Street, eyes red, back sore, dogs barking. I need a bath. A drink. A smoke. A week’s worth of whiskey-induced slumber. I need Sweet Sally to massage all my woes away. And I need the last of my pills. I take the back way in case any coppers are casing it. My door swings open slow and smooth and with a single push. It takes a second for me to realize the error. There’s no mail jammed underneath it, and there’s a smell I know, coming from within. The smell is Death.

I dive aside as a flurry of darts chatter by, burying themselves in staccato rhythm against the wall across the hall. Footsteps. Banging closer from the dark. And growling, too.

“Shit.” I’m showing heels, digging in my coat for my gun, hauling ass down the hall as he, as it, bursts from my coffin and slams against the wall, rights, and comes right on coming.

Fast fucker. Gaining. And he ain’t no daisy, that’s for sure. The boy’s Kalighat, a three-ringed Thuggee assassin, all turbaned-out in black with the coil looped over his face. Red eyes howling mad. But I ain’t painting a portrait.

I’m running.

I round a corner, stumbling, slip, catch myself on the floor with one hand, turn, aim and fire as the assassin bursts towards me. Foom! Foom! Foom! I unload my full magazine, broadheads all, eight gnarly bastards whooshing out in a spitfire storm faster than fast. I’m a quick draw but a shit aim. Some probably hit, some glide wide, but the results are the same. He doesn’t stop coming. Doesn’t seem to mind. Doesn’t seem to notice. “Motherfucker!”

“Eh? Wha—?” A coffin door cracks open, and Mister Bannerjee pokes his head out at the ruckus. His eyes burst wide, and he shoves the door shut. It slams shut in my face, and I’m scrambling again as the Kalighat tackles me to the floor.

“Oooof!”

Snarling, slavering, his hand’s growling in my face. His hand’s a low-grade canine graft, all rot and bother, mangy skin sloughing off in my hands as I fight to hold it back, to hold it off. It may be rotting, diseased, its tongue a wet strip of tainted bacon, breath of bone-rotten death, but those jaws’re still working just jolly good and those teeth? Shit, they’re gnarly sharp, an orthodontist’s nightmare, and ain’t I got the view of the century?

I wrestle, kick, force him up, back, but he keeps his feet, tripods above me, legs spread, still clamping me down, grimacing hard as he’s drawing something — a gun — from behind, his hell-graft snapping a centimeter’s breadth away, doing all the work as I kick and scream and holler and fight and piss and moan and cry and it’s about all over as he forces his gun barrel neatly against my gritted teeth.

I close my eyes, and I hear it go off — boom!

He drops dead on me.

Correction: everything but that damn arm of his drops dead on me. Limp as a noodle, he’s splayed out, but that canine graft’s still having its way, snarling, biting, vestigial nub forelegs flicking like some crippled infant. I kick the dead fucker off, slap away the hellhound and grab the Kalighat’s gun, press it in muzzle to muzzle. I unload like some carpenter nailing a joist to the sill. Foom! Foom! Foom!

The dog wheezes asthmatic as I collapse back against the corridor wall, kick the carcass away, wipe the sweat and hair and blood out of my eyes.

The stink of cordite, unmistakable, burns in the hall.

“Nice shot.” I glance up at Constable Ruben, standing down the hall at the intersection, a fine looking Luger-Spitfire clutched in his right hand, smoke oozing ghost slow from its barrel. “You see my hat?”

He glances down the other hallway toward my door. “Sure and I have, lad.” He smooths his receding hair back, nods. “Over there.”

“Aces.” I close my eyes, trying to slow my heart, my breath.

“No sweat. What in Jesus’s name is going on?”

I take a deep breath, finally catching it. “I do some work at the animal shelter.” I glance at the hell-graft, its eyes goggling with shock and hypoxia. “Found this poor fella in the alleyway. Looked hungry. Thought I’d fix him something.” I lean my head against the wall, pull out a cig. “Find him a good home. Nice owners.” Before I can light it, the hellhound whimpers and whines and drizzles blackish foam from its maw so I scoot forward and mash my booted heel into its jaw and feel the satisfaction of bone break. Its. Not mine. “He’s great with kids.”

“You okay, lad?” Constable Ruben watches dead-eyed as I work.

“No,” I lean back, stifle a shudder, “but thanks. Again.”

“You’re welcome.” Constable Ruben licks his lips, his Luger aimed now at me. The constable’s packing heat, real propellant, not the pneumatic shit. My great coat won’t even slow it. “You know this nightmare?”

“Sure.” He’s definitely Kalighat. One of the Dog Brothers, hired assassins. But which syndicate pulled his strings is the question? The underworld’s a fractured mess in Malabar. Not to mention the price on my head. “We go way back.”

“Boon friends?”

“The very boonest.”

“Kick that gun over this way, would you, lad?”

I nod, fumble at my lighter and cigarette, cede to his wishes.

Constable Ruben pulls a set of steel bracelets from his belt and tosses them my way. I drop my lighter, catch them on the fly, glance down at them, cold and angular with reality.

“I prefer fuzzy pink ones.” I clack one around my wrist.

“You’re under arrest for murder, by the way.” Constable Ruben nods with the barrel of his gun. “Tighter lad, if you please.”

I comply, push the cuffs tighter. “There going to be hell-grafted Kalighat assassins lounging in lockup?”

Constable Ruben shakes his head. “I’d be thinking not.”

“Well then,” I clack the other end of the manacles round my wrist, “my day’s finally looking up.”