The Shadow (4 page)

Johnny was grinning. “That’s a sure bet, boyo.”

When Tam’s back was to the rail, Duke stepped in close to study him, still chewing on the match stick.

“Wish I could trust you, I really do. But you picked the wrong alley to look down. Call it bad luck.”

Tam’s eyes were wide pools of black. “Please, I’m begging you. I have a family.”

“So figure we’re doin’ ya a favor,” Maxie said.

Johnny nodded in transparent concern. “Besides, they’ll get over it.”

Tam shook his head back and forth. “I won’t talk.”

“Save it,” Johnny said.

Duke took the match from his mouth and executed one of his favorite sleight-of-hand routines, running the head of the match through Tam’s thick black hair while igniting the thing with his thumbnail. He held the lighted match in front of Tam’s face. “I know you won’t talk.” Cutting his eyes to Johnny and Maxie, he added, “Dump him,” and blew out the match.

Tam screamed as the two mobbies began to bend him backward over the top of the railing. His hands clutched wildly at the wide lapels of their coats.

“I hate manual labor,” Johnny said, grunting.

“Then let’s just show ’im across and be done with it.”

They had Tam a foot off the pedestrian walkway when a resonant peal of laughter sounded through the fog. Duke’s henchmen froze and traded spooked looks. Even Tam ceased his struggling for a moment.

“Cripes, what gives with that?” Maxie asked.

The laugh returned, mocking now, seeming to issue from every direction.

Duke’s hand plunged into his coat and reappeared holding a snub-nosed revolver. “Who’s there? Show yourself, mug, or I’ll give it to you good.”

A deep, sinister voice broke the silence. “You murdered a policeman, Duke.”

Johnny and Maxie showed their weapons—a .38 and a .45—and threw mad glances toward the car, the bridge tower, the fog itself. “Who said that?” Maxie managed. “Duke, who’s saying that?”

Duke glared at him. “Shut your trap.”

The voice intoned: “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit, Duke. Crime does not pay.”

Once more, Maxie swung on Duke. “This ain’t good, this ain’t good, at all. Diamond Bert and Flash Gidley told me they heard of a couple of mugs got tagged by some bird at the South Street piers, and they couldn’t even see him!”

Duke worked his jaw. “I said, shut your clam. I heard that story, and I’ll tell you what I think. I think Bert and Flash are off their nuts, see? They’ve been smoking dope, get it? This guy’s no phantom, and I’ll prove it.” He strode past the nose of the sedan, out into the center of the bridge.

The phantom’s response was a contemptuous laugh. “Did you think you’d get away with it, Duke? Did you think
I
wouldn’t know?”

Duke spun around, digging a finger into his ear and searching for the source of the voice. “Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you. Well, take this—”

The snub-nose barked as Duke turned through a three-quarter circle, sending rounds high and low into the swirling fog. Behind him, Maxie, Johnny, and the immobile Tam crouched in apprehension.

The phantom’s trailing laugh now seemed to come from the Bronx side of the bridge. Duke stormed past the car and emptied his gun into the air.

“I could easily answer you in kind, Duke. But I want you alive.” The voice was a perfect imitation of Duke’s.

Rollins fumed, rushing to the passenger side of the Ford and pulling a tommy gun from the open rear. He returned to the center of the bridge and loosed an extended volley, spinning through a full circle, laughing wildly while the chatterbox riddled the night air. Johnny and Maxie ducked for cover as the Thompson’s rounds shattered lamppost globes, sconces mounted on the tower, even the side windows of the Ford. Duke stormed to the railing and fired another ricocheting burst into the pedestrian tunnel that ran through the pylon. The gun smoked and spit spent cartridges onto the pavement and the walkway.

When it was over, the cooling tommy pinging in the breathless silence, Maxie poked his head cautiously from behind the hood of the car. “You think you got him, Duke?”

Rollins returned an assured chuckle. “Does a dog have fleas? You’re goddamn right I—”

Duke’s head snapped back as though punched, and he pitched forward to the rain-slicked pavement, losing the submachine gun. He moaned and lifted his head, fingering a bloody nose.

Maxie stared at him in alarm. “Duke, Duke, you’re giving me the willies, throwing yourself to the ground like that.”

Panting, Duke scrambled to his feet, raising his fists like a prize fighter and turning in a circle, trying to draw a bead on his unseen assailant. “Show yourself, you yellow-bellied—”

Duke doubled over, clutching his stomach; then his head snapped back once more and something propelled him headfirst into the railing. Maxie, Johnny, and Tam watched mutely as Duke’s trenchcoat bunched up around his neck and he was hoisted off his feet by some invisible force. The polished toes of his shoes performed an anxious shuffle on the walkway, and Duke’s face began to turn purple in the eerie glow of the street lamps.

“You committed murder, Duke,” the baleful voice told him. “Now you’re going to confess to your crime.”

Out came a tooth with Duke’s mouthful of blood. “That’s a lie, screw. You’re all wet.”

He might have had something to add, but just then the force heaved him ten feet through the air to the center of the bridge, where he landed in a heap among the tommy’s shell casings. When he managed to get to his feet, he was snorting for breath through a broken nose, and the trilby was gone, exposing the bald pate that was the bane of his existence.

“I’m not confessing to nothing!”

“You will, Duke,” the phantom countered. “Because if you don’t, I’ll be there—around every corner, in every empty room—as inevitable as a guilty conscience.”

Duke took a series of punches to the face and body before being thrown against the left front fender of the car; then over it to the walkway, close to where Tam was cowering; then over the railing itself, only to hang suspended in the air.

“Don’t force me to act as your judge and jury, Duke,” the voice warned. “I don’t believe in the death penalty. I
am
the death penalty.”

Duke was hanging upside-down over the water, as if being dangled by his left foot, the trenchcoat cascading down over his jerking arms and head.

“I’ll finish you right here,” the voice promised. “I’ll plant you where you intended to plant him.”

Blood dripping from his mouth and nose, Duke could hear and smell the salt chop of the water. The fight had gone out of him, and fear had reared up in its place. “Okay, okay, you got me dead to rights. I’ll do what you say. I’ll confess. Just don’t let me fall, don’t let me fall.” He was whimpering like a baby.

The phantom’s retort was a snort of derisive laughter. “You will go to the Eighth Precinct House on Second Avenue, and there you will surrender yourself to Desk Sergeant Noonan. And you will do it tonight.”

The same unseen hands that had thrown Duke over the rail suddenly hoisted him back onto the walkway, only to toss him headfirst across the hood of the Ford, and directly through the split windscreen.

Maxie and Johnny still had their weapons out and their mouths open. They wanted no part of Duke’s problem and were backing away when a shadow appeared on the pavement, elongating in their direction until it finally encompassed and rose over them, high on the tower. Two pairs of terrified eyes followed the shadow to its source, where a parcel of the befogged darkness resolved into the profile of a human figure. The figure topped six feet and was cloaked in black from shoes to wide-brimmed hat, which was pulled low on its forehead. What little could be seen of its face behind a red scarf was fierce-eyed and hawklike, and around him the cloak fluttered and snapped like some animate creature of the night.

His laugh sibilant and bone-chilling, The Shadow swirled forward like a dark-stained portion of the fog itself.

“I hate this guy,” Johnny stammered, before he and Maxie turned tail and ran toward the lights of Manhattan.

The Shadow watched them go, then glided around the car to confront Tam, who was shaking like a leaf and rocking back and forth on his own concrete pier.

“Please,” he said, “I-I didn’t see anything—”

The Shadow whipped back his cloak, revealing the butts of shoulder-holstered automatics. He crossed black-gloved hands over his chest and drew the twin weapons, aiming them down at Tam. On the third finger of the left hand glowed a large red stone in a silver ring.

Tam knew a little about guns, and he saw now that what he had first taken for .45 Colts were heftier, nickel-plated handguns with mother-of-pearl handles. It took strong wrists and powerful forearms to control such weapons, but The Shadow’s were more than equal to the challenge.

Tam squeezed his eyes shut. Instantly, the air around him rang with eight explosive shots, and his feet seemed to leap from their shell of imprisoning concrete. In the subsequent silence, he glanced down at his legs fully expecting to find that his feet had been blown off, but realizing instead that the black-clad avenger’s bullets had chunked the block, freeing him.

Tam stared at the narrow-eyed man in the cloak, scarf, and hat. “Who are you?”

But before the question could be answered a taxicab tore out of the fog and screeched to a halt alongside the mobsters’ Ford, out of which protruded The Shadow’s still unconscious foeman, Duke Rollins. Like the guns, the taxi was like no other Tam had encountered around town, but rather a late-model, yellow and black, front-wheel-drive Cord touring sedan, somewhat longer than the standard model, with wide whitewalls, headlamps that rotated outward from compartments in the bulbous front fenders, and exhaust pipes jutting from both sides of the hood. On the roof was a trio of yellow Moderne running lights in the form of rising suns, with the words “Sunshine Radio” below the center light.

The rear door of the taxi opened of its own accord. The Shadow extended a hand to Tam and motioned him to enter. Tam did so, sliding all the way to the left, dismayed to learn that The Shadow planned to follow him in.

The door closed and the hack squealed into the night.

“Drive, Shrevvy,” The Shadow had instructed the hackie.

The name on the license was Moe Shrevnitz. From behind, in peacoat and tweed hat, he looked fifty or so. He drove daringly, with one arm thrown over the front seat, throwing glances to the backseat, taking every turn at the highest possible speed, scarcely looking at the road. The rates stenciled on the front doors of the cab were twenty cents for the first quarter mile, five cents additional, but, while the on-duty lights were lit, the cab’s black meter box was silent.

Tam risked a slight turn toward his backseat companion while Shrevnitz was barreling the cab south, along Manhattan’s East Side. He had no idea where he was being taken.

Only a portion of The Shadow’s aquiline profile was visible between the brim of the black hat and the scarlet scarf and upturned collar of the black, double-breasted frock coat he wore underneath the wool cloak. Aware of Tam’s gaze, The Shadow tugged his sleeve down over his right hand; the glove had been removed, and his hand was cut and bloodied from the beating he had meted out to Duke Rollins.

“Thank you,” Tam said at last. “For saving me.” When The Shadow didn’t respond, he looked to the chauffer. “Uh, you fellows are probably busy, so you can just drop me anywhere along the—”

“You’re Dr. Roy Tam,” The Shadow interrupted, his voice deep and susurrant. “A professor in the science department at New York University. A metallurgist, I believe.”

“Yes,” Tam said, amazed. “But how—”

“A theoretical physicist in your native country, a metallurgist here.” The Shadow snorted. “I’ve known of you for some time, Dr. Tam, and have long considered recruiting you.”

Tam showed him a puzzled look. “Recru—”

“I know, too, that you witnessed something two nights ago that almost got you killed tonight. Fortunately, I was made aware of Duke Rollins’s plans for you and was on hand to save you.” The Shadow looked at him out of the corner of his eye. His eyebrows were as bushy as caterpillars. “Your gratitude is appreciated, but it’s not enough. Since I have saved you life, your life belongs to me.”

Tam was confounded but too frightened to protest. “It does?”

The Shadow nodded. “You will become my agent—like dozens of others all over the world, in all walks of life. Some carry out missions for me every day, others may carry out only one in their lifetime. But theirs are lives with purpose, Dr. Tam. Purpose and honor.” He turned slightly toward Tam, as if waiting for a response.

Tam gulped and found his voice, opting for humor, his best defense. “Could I, uh . . . ask my wife about this?”

“No,” The Shadow told him sternly.

“Okay.” He swallowed audibly, telling himself: no jokes. A sudden right turn threw him against the door. Shrevnitz drove as if there were no tomorrow.

“Your life will proceed as always,” The Shadow said. “Mr. Shrevnitz will instruct you in the way in which you will be contacted should I ever require your help. When you hear one of my agents say, ‘The sun is shining,’ you will respond, ‘But the ice is slippery.’ This will identify you to each other. Do you understand?”

“ ‘The sun is shining’?”

“But the ice is slippery.”

Tam mulled it over for a moment, wondering suddenly if the joke wasn’t on him. “What then?”

“You will await my instructions.” The Shadow paused briefly. “I demand one thing of my agents, Tam: obedience. Absolute, unquestioning obedience.”

“You’ll have it,” Tam said, nodding. “No problem. But tell me one thing, please.” He leaned toward The Shadow. “How did you know my life was in danger? Who told you?” Tam caught a glance of piercing, almost reflective eyes.

A trailing, enigmatic laugh issued from the figure in black.

The Shadow knew!

S
hrevnitz threw the Cord into a screeching right-hand turn, but drove for only a block under the elevated train line before making another right and pulling over to the curb on the wrong side of the street. Manhattan was wet, but the temperature had actually nosed up a couple of degrees. Tam, still shaken from his brush with death and the white-knuckle ride from the Harlem River Bridge, understood that he was expected to take the subway home, and wasted no time scrambling out onto the sidewalk. Shrevnitz exited as well, from the Cord’s rear-hinged driver’s door. Tam’s black-clad rescuer remained in the cab.