"Sweet mother of mercy," Torchy said, touching his cross.

Rudy Canary stared at the gun that had failed him. He put it on a suddenly unoccupied table and sat before it.

"As but a winter chill," Thane said, his long fingers gaped apart as he spread his arms. "Holds you in its embrace then releases you to the wonder of the tapestry of oblivion." Speaking, he also stepped closer, a wan smile on his mortician's face.

His target put his face in his hands. Thane touched him on the shoulder and a spike of arctic ice lanced through Rudy Canary's body to his core. He shivered despite it being a humid evening and throwing his head back, he saw the placid features of his dispatcher.

"You were right," the doomed man said and his eyes fluttering, "it is peaceful." Thereafter his head dropped forward and onto the table top with a thud as his essence departed his now lifeless form.

Thane left the sh.e.l.l that had been Rudy Canary, hustler, thief and award-winning saucier. He stepped to the bar and hands on it said to Torchy, "Rum, neat."

"Sure, Thane, coming right up," the red-haired bartender said.

Thane gulped his drink and turning, gazed about the room. He spoke loudly. "Make sure you tell the police the truth. I came in to comfort my distraught friend and he was so upset, his ticker gave out."

There were eager murmurs of a.s.sent. The civilian sitting with Sally Sincyr raised a tentative hand.

"Ah, Mr. Thane?'

Thane's black eyes sparkled but he didn't say anything.

The square continued, "I'm Dr. Gil Fox, a professor of socio-anthropology over at Sinnot College doing some field work you might say here in Rust Valley."

Thane started to exit.

The academic came behind him. "I... I was wondering if I might interview you. There's been quite a handful of fascinating stories about you and I was hoping to "

He didn't finish as there was a harsh metallic whistling through the air and part of the corner of the Cobra Tap's doorway suddenly exploded in stucco and brick.

"Oh goodness," the professor exhaled, throwing himself backward onto the worn linoleum of the tavern.

Out on the street, Thane, who'd ducked the opening attack, was hunched forward, a.s.sessing his opponent. He was an older man, small in build and height and dressed in mechanic's overalls. He spun two meteor hammers with practiced ease about his head. A meteor hammer was essentially a weight at the end of a length of chain. But these were modified. At the end of the chains were metal b.a.l.l.s the size of croquet b.a.l.l.s. They had a spinning band around their circ.u.mference upon which were razor vanes.

Thane did a standing windmill whip of his legs as one of the spinning orbs slashed at him. Knowing its twin would follow he didn't land on his feet but shifted his body to come down on his shoulder in a roll. The trailing orb sheared his lower pant leg but he came to rest briefly behind a parked car.

Ghost Dancer, the old man in the overalls, as he was also a cla.s.sic car mechanic, momentarily ceased whipping about his meteor hammers. He knew better than to run over to that parked car looking for Thane he wouldn't be there. But he was a master of his senses and set out his hearing, instantly discerning nearby traffic and couples arguing or making love in close by apartment buildings. He continued seeking... there... he turned and whirling the meteor hammers in a blur, deflected five gunshots from Hano Thane's silenced gun. Simultaneously, he darted to the gloom of an alleyway between two buildings.

Thane followed, not expecting to find him there. He wasn't disappointed. Neither man wasted energy tossing about threats or braggadocio, but Thane knew there was only one person who would have sent the old man against him Yak.u.ma Hahn, head of the House of Hahn begun by his father, whom he a.s.sa.s.sinated by poisoning the old man's frosted flakes. The House of Hahn was the largest criminal enterprise, with tentacles stretching out from Rust Valley to numerous sectors of the city and beyond.

In the dark there was a hiss of metal from above. The slashing orb ripped into Thane's hand, slicing off his little finger, causing him to drop his weapon. He grunted. As the second orb came at his head, Thane got a grip on its chain, the links wrapping around his wrist and forearm. He pulled and the old man, who'd somehow gotten up the smooth wall to a second story recessed window and ledge, was dislodged and came hurtling down.

But Ghost Dancer adjusted his descent in mid-air and managed to land on one foot, delivering a spinning kick with the other catching Thane in his side, knocking him over. He went down hard on his back and an orb came fast at his head. He moved just in time, his hat flying off. His chapeau was crushed and cut by the ball. Thane was upright again and couldn't allow the sinister septuagenarian to keep him on the defensive. He hurtled at him, bombarded by body blows from the cutting b.a.l.l.s, feeling two ribs crack and suffering a deep gouge in his shoulder, but he entangled the chains around his torso and arms and was on the oldster.

A knife edge strike with his hand to the side of Ghost Dancer's temple dazed him but he countered with a knee aimed at Thane's groin. He blocked this and the chains loosened, he pirouetted like a ballerina, elbows out. His twirling top move worked and his blows to the older man sent him into a pile of garbage bags and milk crates. He struggled to keep his balance and as Thane sprang forward, the old man shoved a palm into his solar plexus. Thane gritted his teeth, stunned. Ghost Dancer came at him with a flurry of close combat rapid punches, seeking to overwhelm Thane.

The hawk-nosed killer was indeed momentarily subsumed and reeled backwards, feebly warding off the a.s.sault. But when Ghost Dancer attempted to bring one of his deadly meteors into play, having to unwind it from the hit man's body, it allowed a few milliseconds break in his actions. Thane rallied. An underhand, upward-delivered fist into the old man's heart area made him wheeze air and Thane sent him down with a follow up overhand right.

On one knee, Ghost Dancer yelled and delivered a stiff-fingered attack at Thane's mid-section designed to send his chi though the man's body and burst his kidney. A sweep of Thane's arm deflected the attempt. Getting a hold of one of the hammer meteor chains, he wrapped it around the old rascal's neck and moved behind him. Foot in the middle of the murder mechanic's back, Thane reared back on the chain like a man trying to stop a runaway race horse. Ghost Dancer thrashed and tried to do a back flip but Thane summoned up his reserve and will and screamed with triumph as he tightened the chain, the old killer gasping for breath, the bones in his neck cracking. Hano Thane allowed himself a cackle as he was about to send the treacherous Ghost Dancer to the great nothing.

In the midst of his glee, Thane's head was pretty much severed by the first swipe of the flying guillotine. Blood spurting from the now open top of his neck, Thane's head was completely removed by Ghost Dancer who let out a short length of chain with a quick flick of his wrist to have one of his meteors complete the decapitation. Ghost Dancer's protege, in her slit, silk skirt, gathered her weapon, a sharpened carbon alloy disk, its outer ring rotating counter to its inner ring, also controlled by a chain. She was known as Shadow Toed Fox. From where she stood behind the two, she stepped closer to her mentor.

"Very kind of you to spare my life," he said solemnly.

"I have more to learn from you," she answered without irony.

They departed, leaving the head and body of the once feared hit man Hano Thane, said to have made a bargain years ago with the Santeria deity of war, Chango, who in turn provided him with powers no mortal man should wield. Thane had stolen a sizeable amount of money from the Hahn clan and the hapless Rudy Canary had stumbled onto this fact. The paid killer had sought to silence him before he could sell his information. But through other means the crime chief Yak.u.ma Hahn had found out the truth and had brought in Ghost Dancer.

The demise of the infamous Hano Thane spread quickly in the neighborhood. He'd heard the slicers' serenade of steel and had succ.u.mbed. Friends and a.s.sociates of people he'd iced got bold. They absconded with his head in a black plastic bag like you get at a liquor store even as the patrol cars rounded the corner to the crime scene. Later in a ceremony that included hand rubbed Kansas City-style barbeque ribs and c.o.ked out strippers doing a ch.o.r.eographed dance of d.a.m.nation, those folks stomped on that head. Then they chopped it to pieces and dousing it in aged rum for the symbolic effect, set the reviled remains on fire. Thereafter what was left of skull bone was ground up and the ashes mixed in with premium dog food and fed to one-eyed pit bulls.

Two days after that, Chango, who'd been busy with pesky celestial matters, reached out for his emissary. He located him in an unmarked grave in potter's field. That would not do.

Hano Thane had a sensation of coming awake, but it was different than he could recall though remembering seemed like an abstract concept to him now. He felt around and by touch and tapping his shoes, determined he was in a box made of rough wood. A supernatural strength filling his limbs, he pushed and kicked and battered with his fists and forearms and feet and tore the box apart. Dirt, it felt like dirt, came in on him but that didn't seem to matter. Breathing didn't seem to be a concern but he wasn't going to be like this. He clawed and climbed, steady and sure until there was no further resistance and Thane determined he was out of the earth.

It was still dark to him but he could feel the coolness of the evening and somewhat absentmindedly, he brushed dirt off his clothes. He felt for his cheek, wondering if he needed a shave but could feel no cheek. He felt about some more and son of a gun, he didn't have a head.

Huh, wasn't that something? No G.o.dd.a.m.n head he reflected. Now how was it he could reflect without a brain? But one thing at a time. First he was going to pay a call on Ghost Dancer and his partner, a woman he determined as he had a sensation of perfume right before it went dark. After that, if he couldn't get his own head back, then somebody's head would do. How hard could it be to sew one on he wondered as he shambled out of the graveyard, occasionally b.u.mping into headstones and trees.

Thane was happy to be animated and be on a mission. Hey, that professor probably had a good head on his shoulders. Yeah. Thane would have whistled if he had a mouth.

Gary Phillips enjoys good cigars and reading the tweets of errant politicians. His latest efforts include short stories in Shaken, a collection done for j.a.pan quake relief, and in Crime Square, tales set in and around Times Square; crime graphic novels Cowboys and Angeltown: The Nate Hollis Investigations, and the retro cool adventures in comics and prose of that swinging freelance zen spy, That Man Flint.

The October 17 Economic Development Committee Meeting.

By Chris Rhatigan.

I need fire running through my veins for this. Instead I've got a combo of caffeine, nicotine and dexedrine.

I'm parked behind Parson Government Center. Probably ten minutes left and I'm rattling like the m.u.f.fler on a banger's Civic.

I pull The Post-Herald and The Chronicle from the back seat. The Rose Lensing murder is front page on both. My article is above the fold, jumps inside. Greg McDuffy's is confined to the right column, fourteen inches at most.

My bureau chief, Vickie Woodley, knows what sells newspapers and fought for that placement. She gets it.

Not only is my writing superior lean, clear, elegant but I have more details than McDuffy. I could just picture him at his desk, slurping his vat of Starbucks, furrowing his brow. She was strangled with a phone cord? Why didn't the cops give me that?

What my article failed to mention was how spontaneously it happened. Or how her face fat turned the color of her eye shadow. Or how it was my sloppiest work oily fingerprints everywhere and a half-smoked cigarette left at the scene.

I glance over the newspaper and spot a cop cruiser rolling through.

He's a young guy I've never seen before. He glares like he's surmised every detail of my life. But he circles a couple of times and leaves.

My heart beats steadily again. Steady and fast. The cops will arrest me. I just need an hour or two.

Billy Macklowe and Harrison Willis arrive in a Mercedes SL Cla.s.s with the top down. They're thirty-seven minutes late for the economic development meeting they're supposed to present at. Also known as on time to hot-shot developers.

Billy wears sungla.s.ses and has a pinstriped blazer draped over his shoulder. He says something and Harrison laughs, claps him on the back.

Here's how I a.s.sume that conversation went: Billy: "Raping an Indian burial ground with a condo complex sure is fun."

Harrison: "Ha! We will profit from this venture."

I wonder if they'll even recognize me. I've talked to them on at least a half-dozen occasions, but that doesn't mean anything.

A few minutes after they go inside I pull up to the fire lane and park on the gra.s.s. I pop the trunk, pull out the Mossberg 500, slip into the Parson Center through the side door.

I've never gone after the real a.s.sholes before. I always aimed for the easy targets the concerned citizens, all of those local folks who make a reporter's life insufferable.

Like Rose Lensing. For months she bugged me to write a feature about her cat, which had f.u.c.king miraculously survived a fall from the roof of her one-story house. Then she had the stones to complain when I misspelled the cat's name.

She wrote her last of many letters to the editor about how the Post-Herald hadn't hired anyone "worth their salt" since the Reagan administration. Vickie threw a coffee mug through a window when she read that line. That's the kind of editor I like stands behind her reporters.

I slide by the City Clerk's office, undetected, up the stairs, peek around the corner.

The hall is empty. A sterile tube of shiny floors, bland landscape paintings dotting the walls. The whole building reeks of "efficiencies" and "shovel-ready projects."

Room 237 is on the right. I'm revved up from the near-lethal combo of uppers. But I'm not as nervous as I usually am at this point. I no longer fear being caught. And I know my mission is sound.

It's been the same since I enrolled in journalism school twelve years ago I want to make a difference. I want to have a positive impact on people's lives.

I press my ear against the door. Billy's yukking it up.

"These are high-end, luxury condominiums that will attract the kind of young professionals your community is looking for."

That's developer speak for no black people.

"It's a win-win proposition for all stakeholders the neighborhood, downtown business, and the city's tax base."

How convenient, Billy when you make millions, everybody wins!

Someone asks whether the site is an Indian burial ground.

"Look," Billy purrs, "I know some of our friends in the press are against this. They're out to paint us as a big, corrupt company, but are we really going to let them stand in the way of progress?"

Murmurs of agreement all around.

I turn off the safety and open the door.

Shrieks. Oh my G.o.ds. Chairs roll backward.

Thirteen suits, as usual. Nauseating remnants of lunch greasy, half-eaten sandwiches and potato chip crumbs scattered across the board table.

Billy still has his laser-pointer aimed at a screen. He smiles like he's trying to sell me something. "Hey, what's this all about?"

"Sit."

"What?"

"In the f.u.c.king chair. Sit."

Billy does as he's told, places the laser-pointer on the table. "Whatever you say, boss."

Harrison is swifter than his business partner and quickly grasps the gravity of the situation. He backs toward the window, tries to figure out if he can make the jump.

"How this is going to work is real simple, Billy. You just need to tell me my name. Do that, you save everyone in this room."

"You're... " He turns his palms up. "Gosh, it's right at the tip of my tongue. Why don't you put the gun down? I think that would help me remember."

Harrison can probably make that jump. Broken ankle at worst.

"Not good enough," I say.

"Okay "

"But deep down, I'm a nice guy." I press the barrel into his Adam's apple. I feel his pulse. "So I'm going to cut you a break, give you an easy one to start with. What profession am I in?"

Billy blinks. "Newspapers?"

I dial up Samuel L. "Check out the big brain on Billy! That's right, newspapers."

Harrison's back is against the window and he's nudging it open. For the first time, I have a sliver of respect for him. He's sc.r.a.ppy, a survivor.

At least for now.

"You're used to high-pressure situations in your line of work, right Billy?"

He nods. Loosens his tie.

"You can handle this. This is a whole lot easier than closing one of your multi-million-dollar deals. You know the ones I mean. Where everyone wants a cut and there's a mob protesting every zoning meeting." His eyes dart around like there's an eject b.u.t.ton nearby. "So, tell me. What's my name?"

He presses fingers into gelled hair. I see the question running through his mind, a question he will never figure out how to answer, Why me? What did I do to deserve this?

"Take a guess, a.s.shole."

"I "

"Guess!"

Billy's bloodshot eyes want to cry, but it's too human an action for him.