1992 – Why I Miss All The Best Parties

Standing over her body, he has no doubts that she was exsanguinated.  He’s seen it too many times.  He’s done it too many times.

There are no marks on her neck, but that’s common.  At least her assailant had that much decency.

A few interrogative touches later and the scene replays itself before him.  Images of a tall, unidentified man in a leather jacket.  Hunger while convincing her to open the door, traces of desire to flee the city on the doorknob from his escape.  A hint of regret, but not enough.  Impressions of fear on the item she used to defend herself.  A spent canister of pepper spray, useless for that purpose.  That would have to be destroyed.

When you want the job done right…

***

The pepper spray and a few similar incriminating items are all in a heavy duty trash bag now and ready for incineration.  All traces of blood wiped away, all signs of struggle removed.  Now came the closest thing to a hard part.

He pulls out his disposable Nokia, considers it briefly, and decides not to use it.  Whether he distrusts the new technology or simply prefers the old methods is unknown, possibly unknowable.  He puts it back in the pocket of his jumpsuit and extracts a small white handkerchief from a selection of colors.

He hefts her body in his arms, light from blood loss, and props it up in front of his by the picture window.  He waves the white handkerchief and ducks down.

The bullet rips through her head, splattering brains and what little blood is left.  By practice, by instinct, he lets go of the body a moment before the bullet hits.  The bullet passes through his right shoulder and embeds itself in the wall behind him.  The wound is an unfortunate necessity, but ballistics shouldn’t be able to tell.

He surveys the scene one last time.  Everything looks perfect except for the lack of blood splatter.  The head wound is ideal, but there should be blood everywhere.

I’m going to have to hit the hospital.

***

New Year Is Off To A Deadly Start

Chicago Tribune

January 02, 1993

The New Year was only minutes old when Joyce Foster made the sad discovery that a person is not safe from random gunfire even in her own living room.

The 28-year-old was killed as she stood near a window in a ninth floor apartment in a CHA high-rise building. The bullet, which ripped into her head, apparently was fired from the street, detectives said.

1962 - Do Me a Favor

Quickly, smartly, he moves through the city street.  The dead of night is never dead enough for some.  Even at this hour, Wacker is always alive.  He wears a dark, modern tux and a black overcoat.  A shadow in the shadow of the great Sears.

He reaches the ticket-taker.  He gives her his ticket.  She looks up from her book to chide him that he's too late for the performance, but somehow he senses her objection and folds a $100 bill in with the ticket.  She smiles and points him toward an usher but he is already moving.

He takes the marble steps two at a time.  He brushes past a plaque bearing many donors' names.  One of them was once his.

At the landing he approaches the door of a private box and enters.  Act III is just starting.  Perfect timing; Sparafucile's house.

If his target hears him coming, she doesn't show it.  He sits down just behind her and to her right.  "Your 20 scudi," he whispers, handing her an envelope.

She opens it just enough.  $10,000 and a photograph of Walter Kranz.  She smiles a morbid half-smile.

"It has to look like natural causes," he reminds her.

"No problem," she says.  "He's 80 years old and has leukemia.  I would think you could just leave well enough alone and time would do my job for you."

He makes no reply.

"Any last message for him?" she asks.

He pauses a moment, considering, and finally replies, "No psychics in my streets."

"I don't understand," she says and turns to question further but he is already opening the box curtain to leave.

1674 - History Repeats Itself

In a large yellow sitting room, two monsters are reading.  Both are uncomfortable.  One is put off by the scent of the hardwood floors, still new from installation, though he acknowledges that his reading companion wouldn't even notice it.  The other finds the openness of the room stifling, the bright colors off-putting.  Delicate white floral accents on the walls around them, matched with an elegantly scrolled fireplace and ornate couches, add to the formality and the beauty of the space, but do not put her at ease.

She looks up.  The one opposite her is rifling through a sheaf of papers, looking for a specific parchment he seems to have mislaid.  Curious and wary, she speaks her mind as ever.  "Pensez-vous que le Prince n'est pas intéressé par ce que vous avez à dire? Ou a son laquais fait cela sur son propre?"

Her companion looks up from his work.  "Quoi?"

She remains patient with him.  "Vous avez enfin un emploi du prince, et maintenant son serviteur vient le long. Je soupçonne que c'est une insulte contre vous."  Why he cannot see the potential danger is beyond her.

He puts the papers down on the table, and she relinquishes her copy of Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus.  He raises an eyebrow and lifts a hand casually.  "Honnêtement, je crois que le chambellan agit de son propre chef."

"En outre," he presses on, "Ce que le prince veut de moi, c'est différent. Il connaît ma valeur."

She shakes her head, wishing he could see it the way she does.  "Vous ne savez pas comme je le fais. Il ya des roues dans roues ici."

He stares back at her, patient but defiant.  "Et si il ya? De prendre du recul et de voir les roues est de conduire l'entraîneur. Et j'ai une meilleure vue que quiconque."

He has a point.  "Roues dans roues créer des frictions ... Je n'aimerais pas voir que vous brûlez..." she protests half-heartedly.

He sees that he has won her over and he smiles.  The bright warm smile that marks a neonate.  "Ceux qui causent trop de friction se retrouvent bientôt sur ​​le feu."

She laughs despite herself.  "En effet, ils le font.  En effet, ils le font."

She picks up her book again, and he his parchments.

2013 - Rituals in the Dark

In a bare, white room, he sits gathering his thoughts and discarding them like loose trash cluttering an otherwise clean space.  As ancient and pure as meditation can be, he empties his mind through patient, singular focus.

He is dressed in white, loose-fitting, disposable clothes.  Paper shirt, pants, nothing more.  When the exercise is done they will be burned.  His eyes are closed, lost in lack-of-thought, luxuriating in the nonbeing.

The walls are white with no adornment; no pictures hang and no color is visible.  The room is small, a cynic might call it a cell.  There is a light antiseptic smell but otherwise no scent.  He sits cross-legged on the floor before a low table.  There are three items on the table before him.  A sheaf of papers with writing on them.  A sheaf of papers which are blank.  A fountain pen.

It is dark in the room, no light can enter it.  One might wonder how a room can be both white and dark, if the absence of light means an absence of color.  One might further wonder just how far the absence goes.  To a creature such as this, does even time itself exist in this room?  If the time has no immediately measurable effect on him (as it does not) and cannot be measured at all in this space (as it cannot), who is to say it is even there?

One might wonder, but he does not wonder such things now.  Such thoughts do interest him from time to time, but now is not that time.  Only the blessed blankness for him now, the total now, the total nothing.  Darkness in the white.

In this time which is not time, in a place which might not be a place, Lord Quinn reaches out his hand.  He picks up the pen.  He begins to transcribe words from the papers on his left to the papers on his right.  He sits in total darkness, eyes dispassionately drifting from one paper to the other as he writes, accuracy his only goal.  He drafted his letter earlier, but this is the copy that will go out.  The copy he will allow out of his control, that may end up in the hands of...who knows who.  It pays to be cautious.

His thoughts briefly drift back to a time before, when he was not so cautious.  When a letter he had written fell into the hands of an enemy and was traced back to him.  He sighs over all that it had cost him back then; it was long, long ago so there was no sense being emotional, but at the time it had been disappointing.

As quickly as it happens, Lord Quinn realizes that he has allowed himself thoughts.  When he looks down at the page before him now it is rank; it smells like rotting garbage, disappointment and regret, and a burning villa outside Paris.

He crumples the paper up and tosses it aside.  Then he closes his eyes and starts again.

1578 - Cominciando giovane

As night settled on the town and the moon came out over the palazzo, the woman in black stepped out of her carriage.

She was tall and pale, her long black hair pouring down her back where it commingled with the black brocade of her gown.  A single strand of pearls formed the headband above her hair, and other small pearls accented her dress to form tasteful patterns on the rich fabric.  She smiled, feigning never having seen the place before.  The Duke need never know that her unseen wanderings had brought here many times indeed.

The servant came fumbling down the steps, wringing his hands as much as his brow on his approach.  "Mi dispiace, signora, se avessi saputo che venivi sarei stato qui a salutarvi."

She nodded kindly, accepting his words with charm.  "No, è stato scortese da parte mia di venire così tardi," she replied, and he smiled back.  She raised an eyebrow of inquiry and gestured torward the front door with her delicate hand, asking "È il vostro padrone di casa?"

The piddling little man, balding early in life, appeared concerned at fulfilling her request.  "Egli è, ma di solito non riceve chiamate così tardi ..."

She laughed, lightly and practiced.  "Sono sicuro che non mente, siamo vecchi amici," she said, reassuring him, and confidently brushed past him toward the door.  The little man looked at her footman, who glowered back, and he was left with no choice but to follow her into the house.

Once inside, she sat down on a receiving couch and prepared herself to wait.  "Digli che sono qui e che doveva vedermi subito," she said, reclining slightly while dismissing him with a smile and a wave.  Flustered, the little man scuttled off in search of his master.

After a few minutes a young boy of 13, dressed in servant's silks, entered with a tray bearing wine, fruit, and an empty cup.  He set the tray down on the table by the guest, and asked "Sarebbe la signora come qualche ristoro, mentre si attende?"

Her smile grew sly; here at last was the real opportunity she sought.  Conspiratorially, she gestured with one finger until the boy came over.  Reaching into the folds of her dress, the woman in black pulled out a florin.  The boy's eyes grew wide at the sight of more money than he made in a month.  She pressed it into his hand.

"Il tuo padrone, il duca, egli è un uomo buono?" she asked.

The boy nodded slowly, but the colors dancing around him said he was lying.  He was uncertain what she wanted, why she would question his loyalty, and he feared a trap.  Her smile grew warmer, and somehow so did her skin.

She nodded.  "Ho un lavoro per te," she said.  "Riesci a tenere gli occhi aperti? Riesci a vedere le cose e non dirlo? Se io vengo a voi di tanto in tanto, mi vuoi dire che cosa succede in questa casa?"

On realizing what she was asking of him, the boy's eyes betrayed his fear.  To his credit, he thought a minute before answering.  But eventually he nodded again, as she already knew he would.

The sound was too far away for the boy to hear, but with her well-trained ears she could hear the little man returning.  The woman in black sat up abruptly, causing the boy to stumble back from her.  "Bravo," she said.  "Ricordate sempre la prima regola: vedere tutto, non dire niente."  The boy nodded one more time, and hurried off back into the house.  The woman in black smoothed out her dress and her smile, but her inner grin could not be stifled.  Whatever the results of her meeting, her visit had been a success.  She had her spy.

2013 - Bread and Water

What's the connection.  There must be a connection.  Simply find the connection.

Quinn started over.  With bandaged fingers he gently pulled the pieces of newsprint down from the wall.  Placing them on the floor before him he shuffled them and spread them out.

"Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba closed by health department."

Letters lit up before him, jumping out of the headlines, but refusing to arrange themselves into words.

"Water contamination at Kingston Mines."

He turned to his left, from the articles to the large map of Chicago that occupied one wall of the small, dark room.  A dozen red pins stuck out of it, marking each location.  The sites were clustered into a small part of Chicago, but nothing tied them together.

"Customers outraged at Mia Francesca."

Photos were no help either.  Looking over the articles spread before him there was no pattern of connection.  Just the same shot over and over of whatever little eatery had suffered that night.

"Chilam Balam Closed by Police."

Turning to his right, he read the police reports and others from his own people.  Each one told the same story in frustratingly different words.  "Bad food" here and "contaminated water" there.

The spots on the map are all clustered in that one area.  If it was someone's intentional attack, it was also surgical.  The reports moved North as the evening progressed, against the river, which supports the theory that it was intentional.  But what motive?  Poisoning the Daeva's food supply would be the obvious answer, but what the hell is the point of poisoning the Daeva's food supply?  And where do the Nosferatu come in?  Why was DiParma discussing it so urgently with Augustus?

The whole thing made no sense, and where there's no sense we fall back on the basics of the trade.  He reached out, staring at the map but fumbling for the spool of twine, and began to wind a cord around the first red pin where the first report was made.  As he pulled the white thread through his fingers it caught, roughly, making paper-thin tears and cuts through the bandages on his fingertips.  The thread came off the spool white, but was a dark, rusty maroon by the time it reached the map.  He tied the end off around the pin, and moved to the next one.

There has to be a connection.