The Trenchcoat Brigade: Suicide Slum: Episode - The First
This was the place. It was an aging apartment building in which ancient prestige wrestled with current desolation so intimately that if one approached close enough, its walls would whisper the screenplay to a sorrowful Joan Crawford and Betty Davis blockbuster.
It matched Blackjack's description perfectly, "They forced her into la maison de la guerre du blanc et du noir, where le noir touts its winnings."
The trenchcoat silhouette of Litmus plodded directly toward the front door, as if matching the pace of the grim reaper of decay which inevitably stalked the structure. Only the slightest tilts of his slouch hat betrayed cautious glances into the shadowed alleys and alcoves. At the top of the steps, nearly touching the front door, he drew a ring of skeleton keys from his pocket and fingered them carefully with a gloved hand, searching for a match to the lock.
A flat tinny voice spoke softly in his right ear, "There are persons in the front room I'll warn you, but once you cross this threshold, you are on your own. I won't support a vendetta."
Litmus cupped a hand to his masked face, shielding the sound, "If I judged right, you won't have to. But regardless, this is something I have to do."
From another pocket he extracted an ordinary shot glass, which when placed against the door, emitted tense argument.
"You've gone too far this time," a woman's voice dared.
"You've no idea, honey," the man's voice threatened, "Once the boys have worked out the bugs in the brain-washing process, you'll find me taking your little information-brokering business to whole new heights you never dreamed of."
"'Taking my business'? That's a bit of a Freudian slip, isn't it? Don't test the loyalties of my employees; you might not like what you find."
"On the contrary, why don't we do exactly that and find out who really pulls the most weight around here? You can - Freeze, sister! Keep your hands away from that pretty little ladies' pistol in that handbag, 'cause I've already got ya covered."
"You wouldn't dare."
The door unlocked and flew open. "You haven't got everyone covered, Heavy Duke," Litmus announced.
"Back off, masked man," Duke warned, "or your reputation for being bulletproof will be put to the test." But his quick stutter-step backward was less brave than his words.
"Sort this out amongst yourselves, boys," the half-oriental woman purred, and with a smooth practiced move, she leaned into the nearby wall and slipped through a silent secret door, disappearing from the eye as surely as a pleasant morning's dream.
"No you don't," Duke tried, but turned his gun too late, upon only a blank wall.
Litmus made use of the moment. He threw open his trenchcoat and drew his twin rocket pistols from their side holsters. The men drew down on each other in unison, but Litmus pulled his triggers before aiming. Gale force winds filled the room, animating every loose object. Heavy Duke's unsteady shot rang out, but hit nothing.
"Damn your eyes, Litmus," Duke swore.
"Are you certain I need them?" A deliberate shake of his hands caused thick grey fog to bellow from the rocket pistols, filling the enclosed room in an instant. Litmus' unseen voice said, "The addition of ordinary theatrical smoke pellets to the inlets of my rocket pistols should alter the stakes considerably."
Gun shots rang out in the dark; three, four, five. Something electronic sparked in the fog as it hit the floor. Duke muttered in the cloud, "You should have kept your mouth shut; I knew right where to shoot."
"No," came the reply from right beside him. The muffled thump of a gloved fist soundly hitting a man's jaw preceded the collapse of Heavy Duke onto the clouded floor.
"You merely shot my voice recorder," Litmus told the unconscious man. He took the time to plant in the fellow's pocket a trademark piece of red litmus paper. Then his hands groped the wall and nearby furniture before the secret stairway opened.
The dim passageway gave no warning of its irregular stairs leading upward. On the way up, he suddenly stopped. "Unless my nose deceives me, I'm in familiar company."
"My hiding place is given away by Nostalgic Number Five? I didn't know you cared enough to notice, Mr. Litmus."
"Just an observation, ma'am. Or should I say Madam?"
"If you're expecting Madam Synful to fight to save my little empire, you may be disappointed. It all went out of control some time ago. I don't expect you to believe this, but I can't stand what my business and I have become. I suppose a lot of pretty things turn ugly on these streets. At this point I only want to be certain that poor woman is safe. She's been through a lot. But Madam Synful cannot show any sign of weakness to those three thugs upstairs, or any one of them will try to take over - after Duke convinced them that it pays to be greedy. That's why I'm glad you're here, glad that it's nearly all over."
"I'm always more suspicious of someone telling me what I want to hear. I'll give you a test, Synful. The truth will come out soon enough."
"What must I do?"
"You must be yourself."
Litmus carefully proceeded up the stairs and listened to the door at the top only a moment. The whirring of some kind of electronic mechanism drowned out any conversation going on in there. Litmus threw open the door and stepped into the laboratory. Two thugs in white lab coats hovered over the trussed-up hostage, Apple Mary, intently watching the progress of the experiment. Ominous chemistry apparatus covered every horizontal surface. And surely, that must have been the brain-washing machine strapped onto her face as she lay there helpless.
Litmus clenched both gloved fists until the knuckles popped loudly, "Alright boys, we can do this the hard way or the easy way."
In the shiny surface of the nearest stainless steel table, a reflection moved. An improvised blackjack slammed down upon Litmus' head from the hidden third henchman behind the door. Litmus' cowled head snapped down... then arose again.
"Uh oh," came from the man before Litmus mule-kicked backward into the soft of the man's stomach. He turned and zipped a plastic cable tie around the assailant's wrists, binding them fast before the fellow slumped to the ground, gasping for a lungful of air.
"The easy way."
Spinning around, Litmus found one of the captors wielding a pair of narrow-necked laboratory flasks. He shattered them against each other, manufacturing a pair of razor sharp glass knives. He swung at Litmus wildly.
Litmus reached back both hands to draw his trusty rocket pistols, leaving the front of his trenchcoat open and vulnerable. But before they were out of the holsters, the knifer stabbed firmly into his stomach, breaking both blades off against the police body armor under the shirt and tie.
The two pistols slammed into the knifer's ears with a loud thump of gunmetal on skin and bone. The henchman silently crumbled into a heap, arms wrapped about his head.
Litmus aimed at the last one.
The fellow warned, "You wouldn't dare use those over-clocked hair dryers in here with caustic chemicals about. We'd all die... or worse."
"I'm well covered, myself. And poor Apple Mary? I can hardly see her under that contraption. Looks like you're the one who has the most skin to lose, so don't be too quick to judge what I wouldn't do."
After a moment's thought, sweat beading on his forehead, "Perhaps we can be civilized about this, Mr. Litmus. I'll remove the apparatus, nice and easy. After all, the boss' plan to rule Suicide Slum by brainwashing the homeless is just a simple business proposal to me. It wouldn't be my army of hypnotized zombies, anyway. If I'm in jeopordy, I'd be willing to save my own skin by just... doing this!"
The technician heaved the brain-washing mask up, and dazzling lights in colorful patterns overcame Litmus' vision. Insane pipers blared in his ears. He staggered back, shielding his head in his arms, but it was no use; the bewildering lights and sounds piped directly into his brain. He could barely hear above the din a disturbing flat tinny voice announce, "That won't save your skin this time, Doctor Mindrobber."
Then everything became quiet and sane again. Litmus looked around and saw the technician lying unconscious with a badly bruised jaw. And upon the wall lay a shadow of a cloaked figure with a wide-brimmed hat. The flat tinny voice came out of nowhere, "It appears your hunch was right, and in no time you will again see Apple Mary making her living running her street corner apple cart safe and sound with one less predatory crime syndicate to bother the street vendors."
"The helping hand is appreciated. I was beginning to wonder if you would be content to wait outside. Now there's just one loose end to tie up. Give me a moment before you use the secret stairway, would you?"
A knowing laugh was the reply.
At the bottom of the dim stairway, Litmus paused before searching for the catch. "I suspect you two will be vanishing the instant the police take your statement. Just be sure to show up to testify, alright?"
"How did you figure that one, Mr. Litmus?" came her voice.
"Because I gave Apple Mary a special litmus test. For a woman who could talk my ear off on every other subject under the sun, she was uncharacteristically reticent about the subject of Furlong Hill and the Ashford Home. That was where you grew up with your foster family, wasn't it? Apple Mary is your mother. Isn't she? That's why you couldn't allow Duke to continue the racket and shake her down. ...or to get her out of his way. That's why the guiltless honest girl you used to be shattered out of that icy felonius mercantile facade you had laid upon yourself brick by brick."
"That was all very perceptive and... exhaustive. No one must know, Mr. Litmus. I'm not ready yet. But I have a plan. One that will take her and me away from this town and all its memories to a new life. Soon. Very soon."
"I will wish Madam Synful a pleasant and permanent retirement, never to be seen again, I trust. And for you two I wish best of luck in your new location. But it better be soon, very soon indeed, because these streets are catching up to you, and they are hungry."
Litmus was a founding member of two-fisted pulpy justice supergroup The Trenchcoat Brigade, and his primary beat was the Little Moscow neighborhood in Metropolis, just east of Hob's Bay. But cases do not respect neighborhood borders, so the Trenchcoat Brigade started out as alliances and information-trading among like-minded heroes. Litmus does not make it to most of the far-ranging adventures of the Trenchcoat Brigade these days, nor to the monthly meetings, but he stays in touch through other means!
Chip wrote this probably before 2006. We had a server crash and restoration during that year which reset the dates on almost everything. This story, including every character mentioned other than Blackjack, is Chip's creation entirely, and all rights are reserved to him. Reproduced with author's permission.
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