Mean Streets and Dead Alleys E-Book

Cora Buhlert

• Herausgeber: Cora Buhlert
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Wounded and weary after a long night of crimefighting, all Richard Blakemore a.k.a. the Silencer wants is to go home. But then he spots a young woman being stalked by three thugs, so the Silencer has to jump into the fray once more. However, when the Silencer follows the woman and her pursuers into a dark alley, he finds far more than he bargained for… This adventure of the Silencer is a short story of 6300 words or approx. 20 print pages.

Leseprobe

Mean Streets and Dead Alleys

by Cora Buhlert

Bremen, Germany

Copyright © 2014 by Cora Buhlert

All rights reserved.

Cover image © PhilCold, Dreamstime

Pegasus Pulp Publications

Mittelstraße 12

28816 Stuhr

Germany

www.pegasus-pulp.com

Mean Streets and Dead Alleys

They say that New York is the city that never sleeps, but that’s not quite true. For there are many neighbourhoods that do sleep at night, just like everywhere else in the world.

However the side streets of Broadway around Times Square, where the neon lights never go out, not even in the middle of the night, are not one of those neighbourhoods. There are always people about, whether it’s morning or evening, day or night.

And so few people gave the man in the long overcoat a second glance, as he hurried along Broadway in the very early hours of a cold January morning, the collar of his coat turned up against the icy wind, a fedora pulled deep into his face.

At first glance, he certainly looked respectable enough. His shoes were shiny, the fedora jaunty, his coat of a good cut and fine quality. He might have been a theatre manager who’d just closed up long after the last show was done, a reporter hunting down a story, a banker up early to catch news of faraway markets coming in via the stock ticker or an ad man who’d forgotten the time while cooped up in his office.

But the few who gave the man in the fedora and the long overcoat a second glance would have seen something quite different. They might have noticed the grim set of his mouth and the stubble on his chin, indicating that he hadn’t shaved for a day or two. They might have noticed that he didn’t just hunch his shoulders against the cold winds of Broadway, but that he was actually favouring his left side. They might have noticed that his left arm was hanging down limply and that he was clutching it with his right. A few very observant people might even have caught the gleam of a gun, when the winter wind blew open his long black coat. And at that point, everybody with even a lick of sense would have crossed the street, eager to avoid this grim stranger.

Lillian Hark certainly did have more than a lick of sense. You simply didn’t survive three years as a chorus girl on Broadway, if you didn’t have your head screwed on straight. And so she crossed the street as soon as she saw the grim stranger bearing down on her and stepped out onto Broadway in such a hurry that a late night cab had to swerve and honk to avoid her.

Indeed, Lillian was so eager to get away from the man with the fedora that she completely failed to notice that she had attracted the attention of three youths loitering in the doorway of an all-night diner on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street. Nor did she notice, as she walked along Broadway, heels clicking on the pavement, clutching her purse, camel hair coat pulled tight around her body, a Florentine hat bobbing on her platinum curls, that the youths had taken to following her.

Richard Blakemore noticed the young woman hurriedly crossing the street, as he approached, but did not worry too much about it. He certainly didn’t blame her. For a long night of crimefighting as the masked vigilante known as the Silencer had left him tired and hurt and looking not unlike the sort of fiend he normally hunted.

His encounter with the loan sharking and racketeering Tannenbaum gang had left him with bruises and aches all over. His left side was hurting and Richard suspected a cracked rib or two, courtesy of a newspaper wrapped lead pipe.

Even worse, Louis, youngest of the four criminal Tannenbaum brothers, had pulled a knife on him. Richard had managed to disarm him easily enough, but not without Louis drawing blood first. The cut wasn’t deep, just a flesh wound, but it had left his arm throbbing with pain and the wound bleeding through his shirt into his overcoat. Hell, he was probably dripping blood onto the sidewalk. No wonder that young women preferred to cross the street when they saw him approach.

He needed to find an all-night drugstore to purchase some surgical gauze and iodine solution to take care of the wound. He should stop at Whelan’s on Times Square just underneath the Wrigley’s sign, cause it was closest drugstore he knew of.

Maybe he should buy some soap, too, as well as shaving cream and a razor, so he wouldn’t look like a bum, when he came home to Constance. She was used to Richard’s nightly outings by now and more than experienced in removing bullets and dressing wounds. But nonetheless, Richard didn’t want to worry her more than necessary. It was a miracle that Constance was putting up with him at all.

Richard paid no more attention to the young woman who’d crossed the street when he approached. Why should he? The woman was obviously no threat, just someone with sufficient instincts of self-preservation to recognise a dangerous man when she saw one and sufficient brains to avoid him.

However, he did notice the three youths loitering in the doorway of Gino’s All-Night Diner on the corner of 42nd Street. His mind filed them away under “potential threat” as soon as he spotted them. And so Richard turned his head, when the three youths started moving all at once, having spotted something that caught their interest. His eyes followed their gaze and he cursed softly under his breath, when he saw them homing in on a young woman, the very same woman who had crossed the street to avoid him at that.

The woman seemed entirely oblivious to the danger she was in. She did not turn around nor did she cross the street again to avoid the youths. No, she just continued walking down Broadway, not even quickening her steps. So much for instincts of self-preservation.

The youths closed in on the woman, their movements smooth and near soundless on rubber-soled shoes. They moved with the grace of panthers, predators of the urban jungle stalking their prey.

Richard swore again, louder this time, and crossed the street, still hoping against hope that it wouldn’t come to a fight, that the woman would get wise and flag down a taxi, depriving the gang of their prey.

But the woman did not get wise. She just continued down Broadway, nodding a greeting to a street sweeper, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She didn’t falter or turn around, blissfully unaware she was being followed.

Then a sound caught the woman’s attention and she did turn around after all. Her pursuers immediately melted into doorways and alleys. Richard tried to move out of the way as well, but he was no longer as fast and young as the three thugs and injured besides. So he pretended to be unnaturally interested in a peeling poster advertising a show that had ended its run weeks before.

Nonetheless, the woman noticed him. Even worse, she recognised him. She frowned and continued walking, quicker this time, but not quite breaking into a run, not yet.

The three thugs quickened their steps as well, scurrying after the woman like great jungle cats. Whenever the woman cast an anguished glance over her shoulder, they vanished into doorways or pretended to be urgently interested in kicking an empty bottle to the curb.

Richard did his best to be inconspicuous as well, seemingly just another man about town. But once the woman had spotted him, it became increasingly difficult not to be noticed, even though Richard feigned interest in shop windows displaying lingerie and ladies’ shoes as well as photos of the latest hairstyles. In retrospect, that might not have been the best of ideas, because it made him look even more like a creep.

Every time, the woman looked over her shoulder, she quickened her steps. And every time both Richard and her pursuers moved quicker as well. At 38th Street, she finally broke into a run.