The East End
Gotham City, NJ
8:22 PM Local Time
The night was alive.
A cop had been shot the previous night. Some sort of undercover sting gone wrong, the GCPD spokesman had been tight-lipped. Naturally, tonight they were following the next step in their playbook: the show of force. An officer being injured made them look weak. It made them look impotent. So the police raged and lashed out, filling jail cells to capacity. Some of it was retaliatory, directed to the mob, plenty of low-ranking members paraded through the front door of Central then quietly released out the back when the cameras weren't looking- the Five Families had deep pockets after all. Some of it was pointless aggression towards whoever happened to be in the way, paranoia that they might be next turning to violence.
The man in the alleyway had been parked at the meter for too long, he would admit that. He had said as much when he came out from the laundromat to find the cop writing him a ticket. He had apologized, been respectful, kept his hands in sight, all the things pundits and gated community types say you should do. It hadn't stopped the officer from switching off his bodycam, from pushing him into this alleyway, from vigorously clubbing him with a baton. He did his best to avoid fighting back, to protect his head and neck from the blows, to avoid thinking of his family at home. He did his best not to wonder if he was going to die here.
There was a flash of red, grunts and shuffling feet, then the sound of a body falling heavily to the pavement. Somehow, miraculously, the blows had ceased. The man risked a peek up, blinking through the blood running into his eyes from the gashes on his head.
A figure in red coat and hat stood over the groaning, semi-conscious policeman, massaging his gloved knuckles.
“Sic semper tyrannis,” he muttered to himself. Turning, he knelt down and check on the man.
“Are you alright?” he asked in a surprisingly gentle voice.
“Can you walk?”“Yeah- yeah, I think so,” the man stammered as the Crimson Avenger helped him to his feet.
“You might want to head home before this guy gets up and calls his buddies,” he advised.
“You'll be okay. Anyone gives you trouble afterwards, call the East End Legal Clinic. They'll help you with the cops.”The man shook his head to clear some of the grogginess. “Okay,sure. Uh, thanks, man,” he said, confused by the Samaritan's strange clothing. “Appreciate you.”
“Sorry I can't stick around to see you home, things to do. Be safe out there,” the masked man said as he faded into the shadows.
The man stumbled to his car, rubbing at his more tender spots. This was going to be an odd story.
Ace Chemical Processing Plant
9:02 PM
So his tip had been correct after all. The Crimson Avenger hadn't harbored any doubts about the information, of course, Speed Saunders was worth every penny he paid him.
He squinted through the chain-link fence in the darkness, trying to make out details of the box trucks. They were plain white, no company logos or other identifying marks. You would never think twice about one if you passed it on the road.
What concerned the Crimson Avenger was what was being loaded in the back of the trucks. It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but the scurrying figures seemed to be rolling barrels up the ramps and disappearing into the back. Very similar to the incriminating leaking barrels he had seen a few nights earlier. Before the word had gone out in Travis Group publications, before online hashtags and petitions for Ace to allow an independent safety inspection had begun to circulate.
Of course, there was nothing sinister about barrels being loaded into a truck, even under cover of darkness. He'd have to get closer to be certain this was indeed an attempt at a coverup. For the second time that week he hoisted himself over the fence and set off towards the loading docks at a crouched run.
As he approached, staying clear of the few functional lights, he began to make out voices from the frenzied nocturnal operation. The occasional barked command from the people who seemed to be overseeing the loading- who all seemed the be armed, he noted with concerned. They weren't the uniformed rent-a-cops with .38s from the other night. These men and women were casually dressed but armed with rifles, submachine guns, shotguns. They looked disciplined and self-assured. The Crimson Avenger dropped even lower, crawling prone in the long grass- thankfully Ace's cost-cutting measures had extended to lawncare- and keeping well outside the circle of the parking lot illuminated by powerful floodlights. He stopped about twenty yards from the lot, hoping he was well hidden in the grass and the shadows, and listened intently, hoping to hear anything of value.
He could make out the shouts of instructions from the overseers more clearly now. Surprisingly, they sounded to him like accented Spanish and Mandarin, monosyllabic exhortations to work faster and stop being lazy. As he watched, the laborers were shoved, slapped, prodded with rifle butts.
It was adding up. The workers most likely weren't in the country legally, unable to get protection or make official complaints due to their status. In the eyes of a company like Ace Chemicals, who better to covertly handle dangerous toxic waste for pennies?
The righteous anger welled in him. He ached to rush forwards, engage the overseers, liberate these people from their indentured servitude. The Crimson Avenger was well aware that rushing twenty-five heavily armed people with only a pair of .45s would accomplish little, that an effort to be a “white savior” right now would end disastrously. He was only one man and he had to pick his battles. For now, he would have to be content with surveillance, learn a little more about the operation.
It took a full fifteen minutes for him to creep forward another ten feet or so, trying to make out more details. Conversation in lower tones was becoming more discernible to his ears, all of it between the overseers- the laborers were clearly not allowed to speak.
One man in particular seemed to be in charge of the operation. He did not seem to be armed and was dressed in a smart if rather old-fashioned suit. He was trim, dark-haired, with a pencil mustache. Something about him seemed familiar to the Crimson Avenger, annoyingly so.
The impression of familiarity was enhanced even more as he heard the man speak loudly to the guards with an exaggerated, almost stereotypical Southern drawl.
“C'mon, y'all, let's pick up the pace here. The advance team is flyin' in from Naples tomorrow night and I want to be ready to go by then, y'hear?”The overseers nodded assent, yelled some more to the already sweating laborers. Ears were boxed, rears kicked, insults hurled in an effort to squeeze more productivity out of them. The man in the suit nodded his approval, then idly scanned the darkness. Suddenly, he looked in the Crimson Avenger's direction and suddenly frowned.
The mystery man's heart began jackhammering as he tried to flatten himself even further. Surely the man couldn't see him. The shadows and the long grass must conceal him. He was just looking off into the distance. The Crimson Avenger held his breath as the man in the suit held that gaze in his direction. The longer he looked, the more familiar he seemed to the Crimson Avenger. Maybe if he were wearing a hat. . .
The man looked away, and the Crimson Avenger relaxed. No point in sticking around, every minute he did increased the likelihood of discovery. He had to take what he learned and get out of there.
As he crawled deeper into the shadows away from the loading operation, he kept thinking about the man in the suit's face. He had seen it somewhere before.
Perhaps on a cinema screen.
The Travis Residence
11:19 PM Local Time
“It's funny you should ask,” Cyril “Speed” Saunders said as he accepted the glass of beer Lee handed him. The private investigator thought nothing of being summoned to his client's at odd hours of the night and asked strange questions. It didn't even crack the top ten of strange client requests, and for a man who was valued for his knowledge he was able to make a profession of ignorance when needed.
“Normally asking about a European city in connection to toxic waste would require further research. I must have a soft spot for you because I'm not even going to bill for your time on this one. Naples and pollution says 'Camorra' to me.”“Camorra?” Lee asked quizzically.
“Who's that?”“An Italian organized crime syndicate based out of Naples. Western media often confuses them with the Mafia, but I trust you won't make that mistake in your papers,” Saunders said as he indicated the legal pad Lee was using for notes.
“They started out doing all the traditional stuff- protection, prostitution, narcotics, and so on. Still do to some extent, but they found a new untapped market: trash. Brings a new meaning to dirty money.”“Pecunia non olet. How does it make them money, though?”“Simple. They go to companies and undercut the prices of legitimate disposal services. They don't worry about unions, safety laws, transportation restrictions, environmental concerns, any kind of overhead. They just dump it in a lake or field somewhere and call it a day. There's whole regions of Campania where animals die and crops won't grow.” Saunders shook his head in disgust and took a gulp of beer.
“Do they run operations like that in America?”“Not to my knowledge. The EPA is usually pretty good about shutting down anything like that, but in this post-pandemic confusion, there might be a chance of getting away with that,” Saunders speculated.
Chance. The word rang in Lee's head. He sat bolt upright in his overstuffed chair as he made a sudden realization.
“You alright there, chief?” Saunders said in mild surprise at his change in posture.
“Tell me, Speed,” Lee asked, covering his start with affected boredom.
“You know anything about Slim Chance? The actor?”Saunders looked a little nonplussed, drained his beer in confusion.
“The guy from the Westerns? That's a hell of a segue. I can look into him I guess.”“Oh, sometimes I just say whatever silly thing comes to my head. You know us playboys. An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur? Anyways, I'll see you out, I'm sure you've got plenty of work to do tonight.” Ever the diligent host, he walked Saunders to the door, shook his hand goodnight.
After seeing out his guest, he was immediately curled up in his chair on his tablet once again, scrolling through whatever information he could find online. Louis “Slim” Chance. A genuine Texas cowboy who broke into acting a while back during the brief Western craze- his real-life skill in shooting, roping and riding coming in handy. He had had the sense to invest his money and retire once the public had stopped demanding films about the weird and wild west and now lived quietly.
It took an hour of reading and scrolling through repetitive entertainment magazine fluff pieces to find the things he was looking for, usually buried deep in amateur detective forums. Rumors about ties to organized crime, participation in human trafficking and providing undocumented workers for unsavory projects for pennies on the dollar. Nothing substantiated, of course, but enough to make Lee realize why Slim Chance had been supervising the loading operation at Ace Chemicals.
He lifted his phone and sent a polite text to Wing.
“Wing, any chance you might be able to teach me how to fight someone wielding a lasso? I have an odd feeling it might come in handy. Semper paratus!”
Nightbringer
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