NOIR-vember_ COMMAND PERFORMANCE_BLACK MAGIC_CHAPTER ONE

 

Ever wonder how a wolf feels in a trap, leg hopelessly caught in the iron teeth of it, watching the trapper slowly walking towards it?

Me either.

Until now.

The office I had been whisked away to was spacious, oak-paneled, and smelling faintly of good whiskey, cigar smoke, and leather. 

The odd stained-glass window behind me looked out at nothing … at least not anything of this world. 

But a chill wind blew out from it though it was not open. But then, Lake Pleasant was full of oddities like that.

It was said that people foolish enough to look hard into it saw things in it. 

What kind of things they were no longer able to say what with their minds wiped or reduced to drooling insanity.  

When swept into the office, I wisely kept my eyes to myself. I had more than enough nightmares to trouble my sleep without adding to them.

Anthony Vincent toyed with the cigar he never smoked … not since his lung cancer surgery. 

“Been watching you a long time, Black. You, a small-time hustler ….”

“Detective. Got the license and everything.”

“Whatever. Doesn’t change the fact you barely make a living, feeding off the bottom of the pond. You want to know why I bother?”

I shrugged. “Some people watch goldfish. You got me.”

“I got broads when I get bored.”

I fought to keep my face blank. Me being PC would only get me very painfully dead. 

You didn’t get to be the broker of all things criminal in this sprawling city by being a Rhodes Scholar. 

You achieved the blood throne by being more vicious and cunning than every other would-be King. 

Anthony Vincent had been sitting on that dark throne a very long time, 

and he was in no danger of losing it judging from what I had seen … feeding off the bottom.

“What I don’t got any more is Gloria.”

He didn’t bother telling me Gloria Vincent was his daughter, though he looked old enough for her to be his granddaughter. 

When you are one of the surfs of his vicious fiefdom, you were expected to know the faces you were supposed to bow and scrape before. 

Not that I did that. 

I just kept to the shadows when they went slumming where I lived and worked. 

Apparently, I hadn’t succeeded in hiding all that well. 

Or maybe you didn’t stay King long if you didn’t keep minute track of who could be useful to you … or deadly.

Merde.

Had I slipped up and let someone see what I could do?

I had always been so careful when going “sideways” as I called it. 

But often when I had been one inch from dying, I sometimes popped out in the oddest places. 

I always checked to see if there were any witnesses then. 

I could have missed a witness, for I was only … human.

The headmaster at Saint Rita of Cascia Orphanage didn’t think so. 

He thought me being dumped at night in front of the iron gates made my humanity suspect. 

He made me pray her prayer each night:

“O Glorious St. Rita, who didst miraculously participate in the sorrowful Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, obtain for me the grace to suffer with resignation the troubles of this life, and protect me in all my needs. Amen”

She was known both for practicing mortification of the flesh and for the efficacy of her prayers. 

Father Meyers loved to nightly mortify my back with that cane of his after I prayed her prayer … 

until my back stopped bleeding. 

Maybe there was something to the efficacy of her prayers after all.

He gave me the last name of Black then. I think the nickname of “Black Magic” came from him, too. 

I could never prove it, nor did I much care to. 

I just knew it unsettled the bullies at the orphanage enough to have them pick other prey. 

I was so satisfied with that result that I started using the name on the streets once I had “graduated” the orphanage.

I hurriedly ran the halls and rooms of this mansion through my mind that I had memorized when roughly shoved through them for this audience. 

If this went south, I did not have many good options.

 His estate was a regular fortress. I fought a smile. 

A talented bottom feeder like myself always found a rat hole to scurry into.

At least so far. There was always a first.

Like Anthony Vincent asking instead of ordering. 

“I need you to find Gloria for me, Black.”

“It’s an active police case. I could get my license revoked for poking around into it.”

“Do I look like I give a damn for your license being revoked? You find her, and I’ll make it worth your while.”

“How so?”

“You get to live.”