Author's Note: Agent Noirbarret finally gets a first name: 'Conall' means 'strong wolf' in Irish Gaelic. I figure that since my other two main characters already have animal motifs attached to them (Penance and foxes; Whip and birds) I might as well give the villain one, too. It's actually totally super-deep and profound, you know, and not just something I thought of of on the fly, for no reason in particular...

...totally. Definitely.

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"Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray"

Philadelphia – 1984

Penance lay on his back with his eyes closed, one arm over his face. Eventually he shrugged his shoulders:

"That's about it, I think."

Whip, standing over the boy and leaning against her fireplace, squinted at him:

"Wait: what'd that guy wanna tell you?"

"Nothing."

"Whaddya mean 'nothing'? You just said that Uallas guy told you he had 'one last thing' for you, and then—"

"It was nothing," Penance said. "It wasn't important..."

The boy sat up with a groan and cracked his neck. He looked down between his legs; Father Kenaz' ratty black wallet lay on its side. Normally Penance would only swipe the money and leave the wallet behind, but for some reason Kenaz had a few safety pins staked through his stack of bills, fixing them into the wallet. The boy had enough time to grab the wallet, but not quite enough to patiently sit down and undo all those pins. At least he had the good sense to do that much; it turned out that Kenaz was pretty loaded, for a priest. There was over $200 in the man's worn leather wallet.

Whip took another small swig from her bourbon bottle and wiped her chin. She hissed as the fluid scorched her throat.

"Don't believe me about any of it, huh?" Penance asked. "That's okay: I wouldn't either, I guess."

The girl stood before the boy and stared down at him:

"I..." she shook her head. "I dunno. I got nothin'..."

The boy smiled and picked up Whip's headphones. He put them over his ears.

"That's something, at least." Penance bowed his head, grinding his teeth together. "I'd freakin' kill for another cigarette."

Whip's brow arched hilariously; she looked at him with a priceless face. Penance waved a dismissive hand through the air, blinking with annoyance:

"Figure of speech," he grumbled.

The boy lay on his side and picked up the Walkman, fast forwarding through the songs. "I'm gonna wear out your batteries," he wiggled the Walkman in his hand and then motioned to Kenaz' wallet. "You can take it out of my half."

Whip picked the wallet up and unpinned a few bills from the stack.

"I'll take more'n that," she muttered.

The girl walked around the boy and moved for the apartment door. Penance didn't turn to face her:

"Where are you going?" He asked.

"I'm gonna go get you a shirt; I want you out of here as soon as those cops clear out downstairs, but I guess we can't have you walkin' around bare-chested, can we?"

Penance smiled faintly.

"You're sweet," he whispered.

Whip stood still for a moment, and then again she moved for the door.

"If you're gonna send the cops up," Penance said, "you better make sure a few of them wait on the street downstairs; I would try to escape by jumping off the roof, you know..."

Whip, hand on the doorknob, again paused briefly, but said nothing as she left the apartment.

Penance closed his eyes and found 'Synchrnocity II' on the cassette tape. He listened to it once, and then twice, and then three times. After that he spent several minutes rewinding and playing the same part of the song over and over and over again. As he did his mind drifted back in time to the Letterewe settlement and the dark waters of Loch Maree: he could feel a cold wind curling around that ancient well on the island, and the rope inside it swaying gently in the breeze.

He whispered along with the song:

"Many miles away something crawls from the slime at the bottom of a dark Scottish lake..."

X

X

X

The detectives stood beside a concrete pillar, absently watching one of the lab techs collect blood samples from it. One of them nudged the other and motioned beyond the pillar: Noirbarret crouched low, hovering over the decapitated body splayed out on the ground.

"How the hell'd the feds get their hooks in this thing so damn fast, anyway?" He asked.

The other detective scoffed, wedging a small patch of snuff between his lips and chomping down:

"He's out of Baltimore, they say. He's in town for some kinda investigation. I dunno. Guy's got a real hard-on for this kind of crime scene, apparently."

The other man scoffed:

"Some people have a pretty weird way of gettin' their rocks off, don't they?"

Noirbarret stood up slowly. He retrieved his black umbrella from the ground and faced the two detectives:

"Getting my 'rocks off'? Nope, not at all, gentlemen. For me this is nothing but foreplay."

"Yeah, yeah," the second detective drawled. "I'm sure you've got all kinds of ravin' psychotic sickos in your case files, Mister Norbert, but—"

"Agent," he said. "Noir-bar-ret."

"Do you have an ID on this body, yet? Or is that too trying for you?"

"We got his ID," the detective said. "Based on the head, at least. Vic's wallet was gone, which would make us think robbery, if not for all those explosives someone left downstairs, and the fact that most perps around here don't use swords—"

"You should get out more," Noirbarret said. "And what about that ID?"

"Guy's a preacher at the church next door, if you can believe that. Seriously: what kind of sick—"

"The name?" Noirbarret asked.

The other detective flipped through his notebook, licking his fingers before doing so. Noirbarret withheld an annoyed shudder as he watched the slob gum up his pages with his own greasy spit.

"Uh... ah, here we are: Father Daniel Kenaz, head priest of St. Hubertus Catholic Church." The detective looked at his colleague with a furrowed brow: "'Kenaz', huh? Kinda a funny name for a Catholic priest, isn't it?"

"Yeah," the other man agreed. "Sounds a little Jew-like..."

"Hebrew," Noirbarret spat.

The lab tech scraping blood off the pillar turned around and pointed at Noirbarret with his cotton swab:

"Fed's right about that," he said.

The man was short with scraggily but thick black hair. His eyes and brow were spaced in a distinctive manner; Noirbarret thought he had an Ashkenazi look to him.

"Yeah," the lab tech said, "'Kenaz' is actually Hebrew for—"

"'Hunter'," Noirbarret said.

The tech's eyes lit up:

"Hey, spot on, agent!"

Noirbarret looked back at the headless corpse and clasped his hands behind his back:

"Father 'Daniel Kenaz'," he mused. "'The hunter whose only judge is God'."

"Yeah," the tech chuckled. "Something like that."

The detectives grew tired of this. One of them pushed the tech as they walked past him:

"Cut it out with all the Jew word games, huh? The city's not paying you to play 'em."

"Mmm," the other agent agreed. "Save it for the Bar Mitzvah. An' get back to work on that blood! You lab boys'll have a hard enough time with this damn massacre as it is. Lord knows we still haven't found the poor dog that belongs to that broken collar, downstairs."

Noirbarret scoffed, muttering under his breath:

"Only an idiot would be looking for a dog. Idiot."

The tech meekly returned to his work. Noirbarret slowly circled the pillar and watched the man scrape at the pillar.

"What's your name, techie?"

"Wasserman," the man looked up at the agent and gave him a small, friendly smile. "Uh, listen, agent," he looked back at the detectives, now engaged in some small talk beside the body, "it's really not my job, or anything, and I don't want to step on any toes, but, uh..."

"Spit it out."

Wasserman motioned back to the corpse with his head:

"Well, a Catholic priest with a Hebrew name like that is a little unusual. I mean, I don't wanna say there's anything to it, and not that it explains any of this, here, but—"

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," Noirbarret waved a hand. He was about to walk off, but then gave the man another look. "Listen, Wasserman: my investigation is very important, and I wouldn't trust those two donut-munching wastes of space to keep me updated on this case..."

Noirbarret reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a silver case containing business cards; he slipped one of them into the tech's pocket, out of sight of the two detectives.

"You get anything good to share with me, I'd sure appreciate it."

Wasserman again looked at the detectives warily, but when he looked back at the agent he nodded.

"Thanks," Noirbarret said. He turned to leave, but then faced Wasserman again. "By the way: you look like you have a brain in your head, unlike anyone else around here. Ever think about Federal work?" Noirbarret motion to Wasserman's pocket. "You ever wanna apply, make sure you mention my name, alright?"

As Noirbarret began walking off Wasserman called after him:

"You know, I did hear the detectives talk about interviewing the guy who runs the food service at the church. He's a real beast of a Scandinavian guy, with a really shady look to him. I guess he'd have the strength to lop off a guy's head, at least."

Noirbarret smiled politely and shook his head:

"Thanks, but that doesn't really interest me."

Wasserman shrugged, returning to his work.

"Too bad. Well, that's about it, then, 'cause the only other person they're looking to have a chat with is his kitchen boy..."

Noirbarret spun on his heels, eyes bugged, and he gripped Wasserman's shoulder tightly, making the man flinch.

"What kitchen boy?"

X

X

X

Three hours later the man stood under the busted frame of an apartment awning across the street from St. Hubertus, seated on a graffiti-covered stoop. A light afternoon rain fell in the street like mist, the water droplets weaving in the wind like a curtain made of chiffon. Noirbarret smoked a cigarette, and his black eyes glowed against the cigarette's smoldering tip.

That ugly Finnish bastard at St. Hubertus was old hat around police, and he had absolutely no love for authority. That much was evident. The man kept calling his young assistant Lumi Korvat, and that was the name in the detectives' notebook when they finished with him. Noirbarret didn't speak Finnish, but he did know that it'd be one heck of a coincidence for both the kitchen master and his little guttersnipe assistant to be the same ethnicity without being related.

A chat with a few tramps on the street corner, however, was informative. They told him about the kid who ladled soup for them, and their description was most interesting. It was a very familiar description. Except for one small thing, that is. The man chuckled as he took another drag from his cigarette.

"Gotta say: I always wondered what you'd look like as a blond, Penance..."

Noirbarret pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and unfolded it; inside was a smear of blood he'd surreptitiously wiped off the crime scene floor. The man raised it to his face and took a breath, and then he gently ran his tongue along the edges of it. His face contorted with pleasure as the blood mingled with his own saliva. He couldn't even taste a trace of bitter metals.

No: to him that blood tasted like fresh honey, and the sweetest juice of ripened berries.

Noirbarret looked to one side; a rusty, lopsided payphone rested against the side of the building next door. He'd spent nearly an hour feeding quarters into the thing. He called local bus stations, taxi companies, homeless shelters, TV stations and newspapers. They all had Penance's description— ridiculous blond hair and all— and they were now all under the impression that the poor boy was in imminent peril. Noirbarret smirked.

Technically, of course, Penance was...

Suddenly the sound of tennis shoes tromped in puddles around the corner; a girl came bounding through the mist, seeking shelter under the awning, and she dropped a small plastic bag at her feet, moving to wring-out water from her long hair. The girl was black, maybe 16 years old, if that, lanky in the limbs and with freckles dotting her face. She didn't notice Noirbarret at first, and when she did she was initially surprised, but quickly put two-and-two together:

"You with the cops?" She asked him.

Noirbarret looked over at the mess of police and emergency vehicles surrounding the rec center. He returned the girl's gaze and slowly shook his head.

The girl tilted her head, and he could almost hear the gears turning in her brain; she was quick on her feet for someone so young, sussing him out with ease.

"You a fed, or something?"

"Something like that," the man smiled.

"CIA? ATF? 'Cause of that bomb, or whatever kinda racket they had back there?" She motioned to the rec center with her head.

Noirbarret slowly reached for his wallet and flipped it open, displaying his FBI badge. The girl approached him, curious, and he extended his hand to let her take it from him. He spoke to her as she turned the thing over in her hands.

"I'm not here because of the bombs," he explained, taking a long drag from his cigarette. "Someone died in there, and I want to find the person who did it." He got up, and the girl took a step back, making him smile. Noirbarret only walked to the edge of the awning and looked up the side of the building. "You live around here, kid?" He asked.

"Been known to," she answered, flipping closed his badge.

Noirbarret took the badge from her and pointed at the rec center:

"I don't suppose you saw anything unusual today. Before or after the commotion?"

Whip looked the man up and down, and again Noirbarret felt the gears in her head turning. She got a satisfied smirk on her face and lazily sauntered over to the stoop he'd been sitting on. She plunked down on it casually, legs spread at odd angles, and craned her head back:

"I saw some stuff over there that was way more than 'unusual'. The truth? I know who did the deed, in there, fed. Saw 'em plain as day, fed."

"You saw who they were?" He asked.

She nodded.

" And what direction they went, afterward?"

Again she nodded.

"But," the girl curled one finger through her damp hair, "you gotta tell me this: is there a reward for that kinda information?"

Noirbarret returned the girl's smile:

"Almost certainly," he cooed. "For starters, I won't take you in for vagrancy, kid—"

"That's not really a federal thing, is it?"

Noirbarret couldn't help it; his smile widened.

"You're smarter than you look, you know." Noribarret opened his wallet and rifled through its contents. "I've got precious little cash on me, kid, and I'm not going to an ATM for you. Figure if I have to go to that kind of trouble then I could just as easily have the local cops take your skinny little ass in on whatever charge I wanna give 'em. I am a federal agent, you know; I'm kinda credible like that..."

The girl looked down at the pack of cigarettes poking out his pocket.

"Tell you what, fed: I'll tell you what I saw if you gimme one of those," she pointed at the packet.

Noirbarret looked down at his cigarette pack, one eyebrow cocked incredulously:

"You guttersnipes around here really sell yourselves cheap," he said.

"Your broke-ass couldn't afford me, even if I were sellin'. And I'm a girl of simple tastes, so..."

Noirbarret gestured to her:

"So I agree to your terms, kid. Spill it."

"I do live around here," she said, "and I could see the rec center when that bomb went off. A little while after that happened I saw someone come out of the building, and they looked like they were covered in blood. At first I thought they were hurt, or something, but then I start thinking that's not their blood on 'em; it was someone else's."

The girl pointed down the street, past the rec center:

"Well, they ran just as fast as they could down the street, and they kept going for blocks before turning the corner. You ask me, fed, they were goin' for the bus terminal down south. Hope they cleaned up first, at least."

Noirbarret got to his haunches, getting at eye-level with her:

"Describe him," he whispered. "What did this person look like?"

She shrugged:

"I dunno: he was maybe six feet tall, brown hair, black eyes. Lots of muscles, kinda like a bodybuilder. An' he had a bunch of weird tattoos on his shoulder and on the side of his face. Looked like some kinda crazy biker dude, or something."

Noirbarret's expectant face slowly hardened into rough stone. His lips scrunched and he cemented his teeth together, flaring his nose.

"What?" The girl said. "That's exactly what I—"

The man lunged at her, grabbing her by the throat. She struggled to get him off her, but she was far too weak to do anything. He squeezed her throat and snarled at her:

"That is not what you saw!"

"Honest!" She squealed.

"Obstruction of justice is a 'federal thing', you little shit!" he growled. "That's about 10 years in the can, give or take, but for you, kid?"

He squeezed harder on the girl's throat, making her retch.

"You kinda annoy me, so at this point I'm thinking about the death penalty."

The girl could barely manage to speak:

"'Kay... maybe we could start over?"

"Tell me what you saw!"

The girl tried shaking her head as best she could:

"Nothing! Honest. I didn't see anything! I just told you I did so you'd—"

"So I'd give you a fat, juicy little reward?" Noirbarret snarled.

"Something like that," the girl winced as he tightened his grip on her throat.

"You tried to pull the wool over the eyes of a federal agent? Do you think I'm an idiot, brat?"

"I kinda did. But I guess you're smarter than you look..."

Noirbarret scoffed. He eased up on the girl's throat and got off the kid, letting her catch her breath.

"You got a real pair on you. You know that?"

The girl cradled her throat; she coughed.

"Yeah. You wouldn't believe the size of my jock."

The man shook his head and got to his feet. He straightened out his overcoat and retrieved his black umbrella from beside the stoop.

"I ought to kick your damn teeth in for your disrespect..."

He tossed his cigarette on the ground and then pulled the pack from his pants. He looked inside and shuffled the contents: three cigarettes remained inside. With a smirk he tossed the pack to the ground between the girl's legs.

"What's that for?" The girl asked.

"Your balls, of course," Noirbarret said. "They are bigger than most grown men I've known. Surprised you can walk straight. And, if you get out of my sight right now, you'll be able to keep walking straight, kid."

The man walked out into the misty rain, not bothering to unfurl his umbrella, and he stopped beside that wobbly payphone. The black girl wasted no time, plucking up his cigarette carton and vanishing down the alleyway like a raccoon startled away from a garbage raid.

"You're welcome," he smirked.

Noirbarret rested his fingers on the black frame of the telephone handle. He spent a moment delicately brushing his fingers along it, eyes closed in meditative reflection. After a moment he inhaled deeply, flaring his nostrils like a wolf catching the scent of distant prey.

"You couldn't leave the neighborhood just yet, could you, Penance?" The man shook his head, eyes still shut. "No. Too risky to be on the street right now. Shelter in place; that's the smart move, isn't it?"

Noirbarret grabbed the phone and quickly fed it quarters; he dialed.

"Operations," a voice on the other end said. "Agent Pierce, speaking."

"Noirbarret," he growled.

"Ah! Conall, huh? I see you're on a Philly number. On the road for a case?"

"The case," Noirbarret said.

"Ah. Your 'Headsman', right?"

"He struck down here, but this time he's made a mistake. Left a witness: a young kid. Brat's AWOL, now— I've got a description, but no positive ID— and he might be in serious trouble. I'm gonna need the purse on this one, Pierce."

"That might be a tough sell, Conall..."

"If we don't find this kid soon then we could be cleaning up a very little headless body in the near future."

"Look, I hear you, and if you wanna pull some manpower for this then that's fine. You've got standing orders to assemble your task force wherever you see fit. But I need to run any requests for an actual reward up the chain of command. And I gotta be honest: given all the time and treasure the bureau's already spent on this case I don't think the higher ups will be too keen on doling out any cash rewards without some really firm proof, here. You do remember that fiasco in Richmond, right? Not that anybody's pointing fingers, but—"

"I have a headless priest lying in a pool of blood, Pierce! What more 'proof' do you need?"

"About the kid, I mean. You want an offered reward for his whereabouts? Get sworn, certified statements from any witnesses who saw him, check missing child reports to track down the kid's parents to get their statements, and then—"

Noirbarret slammed the phone down on its receiver hard enough to shatter the entire payphone's frame, turning the plastic phone into misshapen mush. He bared his teeth and snarled like a wild animal. He stalked through the rain, rounding through one barren, blighted alleyway after another until he found a hobo pushing a filthy shopping cart. Noirbarret threw that cart away in one fell motion and grabbed the hobo by his grease-stained shirt collar.

"Listen up, pal." He flashed his FBI badge, and then he pulled out a copy of that picture of Penance at the Baltimore Zoo. "You ever seen this kid?"

The man's eyes bugged; he shook his head, trembling in fear.

Noirbarret forced the picture into the man's hand along with one of his business cards, and then he pushed him away. He pointed at the hobo:

"Kid's worth fifty-thousand dollars, buddy. No strings attached. You remember that face, you hear? And you damn-well better look for it!"

The man nodded emphatically.

"And," Noirbarret held up his finger, "I want every damned person alive within ten blocks of this hellhole to remember that face, too. And I want them looking for him, too, you hear? If I find out they're not..."

Again the man nodded, crouching down in fear beside his overturned cart. Noirbarret loomed over the man for a moment before he stormed off, overcoat ruffling in the misty air.

"...then you'll end up just like poor little Penance," he growled, "and you'll wish that you'd never been born!"