"Suerte de Capote"

Philadelphia – 1984

A bleak wind rolled over the cemetery grounds, buffeting moss covered tombstones and weather-stained mausoleums. The gust hit Noirbarret at his back; he felt the stinging coolness of the air even beneath his overcoat. His very bones groaned at the drop in air pressure. A bank of black clouds marred the skyline behind him, rolling in like a polluted wave. A large anvil cloud trailed in their wake: ominous flotsam on the surf.

The weatherman did say something about rain, didn't he?

Noirbarret smirked, going so far as to chuckle. Irony of ironies, he'd left his umbrella in the car. Didn't think he'd need it around here.

Obviously.

His chuckle drew the attention of some of the mourners crowded around the white columbarium wall. They were holding a vigil while a faceplate was set over one of the nooks, sealing inside a white marble urn for all of eternity.

Or whatever length of time passed for 'eternity' in their minds.

Noirbarret scratched at his nose, nodding to the people in a show of respectful contrition. He turned away from the proceedings. They obviously didn't find anything amusing about his presence.

He wondered: if they had any idea who he was, and what he was doing attending the poor lady's funeral, would they be at least a little amused by the situation?

A rumble of thunder in the distance answered his thought. Noirbarret smirked at the approaching clouds.

"I guess not," he whispered.

X

X

X

He ambled back through the gravel path to the cemetery entrance, moseying by a cobbled wall separating the plots. A massive field of tombstones stretched to his right, and beyond that the melancholy ripples of the Delaware. He closed his eyes and filled his nose with the scent of the river, mingled with electric energy in the air.

He opened his eyes, slowly releasing his breath. When that little 'Zen' moment didn't seem to do the trick he produced a silver flask and guzzled the contents, hissing as the liquid stung his throat.

"Not vinegar..." he whispered.

The wind picked up behind him, obscuring the sound of tennis shoes tromping along the cobblestone wall. Only when the feet came to a stop, each foot clomping down hard on the stones, did Noirbarret take any notice.

He looked at the top of the wall first, merely staring at the small pair of ratty Reeboks perched at eye-level. He then dismissively turned back to the field of tombstones, letting off an annoyed grunt. Slowly, though, Noirbarret's head tilted to one side. He drew another long breath, then turned around again— this time far slower— and looked up at the wearer of those shoes.

Penance glared down at the man, arms crossed. The boy stood as still and as silent as a statue; only his dirty blond hair dancing in the rising wind betrayed any hint of life.

Noirbarret leapt back instinctively. He put one hand to his hip, reaching for his revolver before quickly coming to his senses. He cleared his throat, exposing a grudging smile, chuckling.

Penance didn't smile.

He didn't chuckle, either.

"Not enough weight to keep you down, huh?" Noirbarret clucked his tongue. "Funny: with you I usually know just the right amount of pressure..."

Instead of a gun Noirbarret produced his flask and took another nip of its contents. He capped it and wagged it from side to side, tossing it up to the boy.

Penance caught it. Without taking his rusty eyes off the man he uncapped it, deliberately poured the liquid out on the wall, then dropped the flask at his feet. The boy stomped on it once, his sneaker providing enough force to crush the thing flat. This only seemed to amuse Noirbarret.

"Not in the mood for a nip?" The man asked. "Or did you try giving it up, too? But alcohol was never your problem, was it?"

The man casually sauntered down the path, slow and deliberate. Penance matched him step-for-step on the wall.

"I was glad to see you got clean, you know. Honestly." Noirbarret looked up at the boy. "That poison, it did awful things to your face, and to the skin around your eyes. Made 'em look 'hollow', like a termite-infested woodcarving. Guess you never had to worry about your insides going rotten— or track marks burning themselves into your arms— but it brought me pain, Penance, seeing you like that: worn and washed-out and broken on the outside."

Noirbarret stopped walking and Penance stopped at the same time, still glaring down at him like a gargoyle statue. The man looked out along the field of tombstones with a cold smile.

"No. I like to see you fresh, and hearty, and whole. On the outside."

For a moment neither of them said anything. Noirbarret sighed, shaking his head.

"I'm still not going to hear that lovely, angelic little voice, am I?" He scoffed. "Pity you prefer talking with that little ghetto girlfriend of yours, and not with your very old friend. Well, I'm sure you've impressed upon her how 'heroic' and dashing you can be. Does she know you were up to your eyeballs in junk, not a few decades ago? Does she know it was so thick in you that you were practically oozing it out your pores?"

"No," the boy whispered.

The wind from the incoming weather picked up, its reedy howl rising. But the way Noirbarret turned around, slack-jawed at Penance's little whisper, it wouldn't have mattered if a fire or even an earthquake disturbed the peace between them.

To him that whisper was nothing short of a deafening roar.

Some stragglers from the memorial service moved along the path behind Noirbarret. Penance watched them with disinterest, flipping through the rolodex of his mind to find a more private way of conversing with the man. He found it in short order— something they could both make use of— and his next words came in the languid, sinuous phrasing of Algonquin.

"How far are we from it, now, do you think?"

Noirbarret's brow came up. His shocked eyes slowly returned to their default menacing slits and he exhaled, also examining the stream of mourners with disinterest.

"Where do you mean?" He matched the boy's smooth, effortless flow of the Native American language perfectly.

"The place where it all began."

"Jamestown?" Noirbarret paced a bit further back along the path; Penance matched him like a shadow. "Not far. Not far at all. Just about 300 kilometers, perhaps. Does that count as irony, do you think?"

"Mmm-mmm," Penance shook his head. "300 years," the boy grumbled.

"308, to be precise." Noirbarret held up eight fingers, wagging them with mock giddiness, taunting the boy. "I remember little things like that. Anniversaries, Penance. Especially the anniversary of such a... such a special relationship as ours."

Penance dropped down from the wall, his face as still as stone, and he walked past the last of the mourners still moving along the path. They only gave the boy the briefest of confused looks as he continued speaking in that strange, alien tongue.

"You missed anniversary number 300," the boy walked past Noirbarret, taking in the view of tombstone field for himself.

"Does that make you jealous? I did try, but sometimes you're a tough boy to find. An 8-year window is pretty impressive, I'd say, all things considered."

Penance said nothing to this. Noirbarret slowly came up behind him and rested one hand on each of the boy's shoulders. Penance could feel the electricity of that touch through his t-shirt; it scalded his skin with a strange energy: cold and dirty.

None of that had to do with their immortal 'electricity', either.

A light drizzle came over the cemetery, driven sideways by the hard, rising wind. The temperature fell another two degrees.

Noirbarret leaned down near the boy's ear, his mouth twisted in a vulgar grin.

"Maybe we should exchange gifts, to mark our missed occasion?" The man craned his head up, deep in mocking thought. "Now what would that be? 5 years is 'wood', and 10 years is 'tin'. Fifteen is 'crystal', and fifty is 'gold'. What would 300 be? 'Platinum', do you think?"

Penance shook his head, pulling away from the man's touch and moving a few feet off the path.

"Steel," the boy said.

Noirbarret's mocking smile widened.

"Perish, oh perish the very thought." He switched back to English, singing in a familiar melody. "Especially when I have one long beaten sword, and you but a pocket knife."

The boy grit his teeth, staring down at the ground.

"You've never had me in a fair fight," he said.

Noirbarret laughed, hefting himself up on the cobbled wall and sitting atop it, bundling his coat around him as a distant peal of thunder echoed in the sky.

"You're saying 'size doesn't matter', is that it? Well, maybe you're right. Look at you, after all. Tell me something, Penance: do you know how many kills you've made in your time? Do you have any idea at all?"

The boy shook his head, not bothering to look back at the man.

"There are people who keep track of these things, you know. People like us, and apparently certain others—"

"I only kill what comes after me—"

"And you can't help being 'desirable', can you?" Noirbarret laughed long and hard, shaking his head. "So you only kill the ones who had it coming, huh?"

Penance looked over his shoulder at the man. He nodded, keeping his dagger eyes open even in the strengthening rain.

"If that were true," Noirbarret wagged one finger at the boy, "then you'd have laid yourself out on a railroad track a long time ago, with your neck to the rail."

The boy looked away from the man; the 'daggers' in his eyes lost a bit of their lethal sheen.

"Oh! Now, now, now..." Noirbarret dropped off the wall and approached the boy, mockingly running a hand through Penance's bleached hair. "Here, now: I'm sorry. Sometimes you make me say the most horrible things. You make me do them, too, you know, but then I'm not here to judge you, Penance." Again the man's smile turned dark and cruel. "I may be the judgement, but don't think that means I necessarily agree with the sentence."

Penance pulled away from the man's touch, again moving towards the wall. He looked up at the sky, watching the black anvil cloud roll in atop the filthy streaks of dark clouds beneath it. The wind picked up and sent his hair fluttering wildly.

"Come on, now," Noirbarret teased. "Not the silent treatment again. That's very immature of you, Penance. Do you know that? Or are you just waiting for a better apology?"

Penance watched the thunder clouds rolling in, hot electricity snapping inside them, reflecting off his eyes. He felt the tenseness in his muscles ebb out of his body. The tightness in his chest evaporated; he managed a long and peaceful sigh.

The boy spoke his next words with a deathly, unsettling calm.

"You need to 'do penance', you mean?"

The man chuckled.

"Well, those are your words—"

"I've been thinking about the place where it all began, lately. Jamestown, I mean. Do you ever think about it, these days?"

Noirbarret's chuckle slowly fell away. He scratched his nose, shrugging.

"I suppose one can't not—"

Penance turned around and approached the man.

"I've been thinking about 'helplessness' a lot, too. I've run into more immortals lately than I usually see in 50 years. It used to be I was scared about how big the world was, back when I was a regular kid. Lately I get worried about how small it seems to be getting. Changes are happening faster than before, and something feels very 'wrong', somewhere. But that doesn't keep me up at night; it doesn't make me that worried. Do you wanna know why?"

"Enlighten me," Noirbarret grumbled.

Penance took another step towards the man; he had to nearly shout his words over the wind and rain.

"'Cause when I think of 'helplessness' the first thing I think about isn't me. In school they teach us synonyms, you know, and back in Baltimore I got points taken off a test 'cause I used the wrong synonym for 'helpless'. It made sense to me, but not my teacher. I think it would make a lot of sense to you, too."

Noirbarret reflexively took a step back as Penance took another step forward; the boy's commanding tone and mechanical, purposeful steps put him well off-guard.

"See, when I think 'helpless' I think 'impotent'..."

The man's black eyes widened and twitched.

"...and when I think 'impotent' I think about Jamestown," The boy looked up at Noirbarret, getting on his tiptoes to be as close to his face as possible. "I think about poor Black Hat, and his little 'problem'. I think about that spray of blood out your neck, bursting up into the air, hitting the ceiling beams..."

Noirbarret drew a breath. It was not calm, and it was not controlled.

"And I think," Penance mockingly smiled, "about how that's the only thing that you managed to 'get up' when you tried to—"

The man snarled like a wild animal, lunging at the boy. He wrapped his hands around Penance's throat, squeezing it savagely and pushing the boy back up against the cobbled stone wall.

A section of wall not fifty feet away from them swiftly blew apart, annihilated in a flash of blinding light and deafening noise. The lightning strike left a goodly chunk of the wall smoking and charred.

Noirbarret jumped at this, looking over at the ruined wall with panicked eyes. Penance, however, didn't react at all, merely staring up at the man choking him, eyes cold, collected and calm. Noirbarret returned his wild gaze to the boy and noticed Penance's tranquility. At first he was confused, but then understanding slowly crept into his face.

The man released his grip on Penance's throat, his face going from animalistic rage back to that mocking, comforting smile. He bent down and kissed Penance's forehead, again tousling the boy's hair, then he took a few steps back, looking up at the sky and making a contrite gesture with his open palms.

"I don't know what came over me," he chuckled nervously. He looked down at Penance, who still stared up at him with those cold eyes. Noirbarret wagged his finger. "Well, I do, at that. We push each other's buttons pretty well, don't we, Penance? I suppose anyone in our kind of 'relationship' would, wouldn't they? But that's awfully naughty of you, isn't it? Trying to get someone else to do your 'dirty work'?"

When the boy's cold glare didn't change Noirbarret decided to press his point. He got to his knees, lifting his chin and exposing his throat.

"You want that so bad, do you? Go ahead, Penance. Go ahead and get to cutting. You've got that little butter knife on you, don't you? Well, then use it. Go on: I won't stop you!"

Penance's teeth trembled atop each other, straining as he ground his jaw. He felt the weight of the little knife in his back pocket, and his hand screamed for the chance to reach back and draw it. His fingers trembled... his arm began to move...

Another flash of lightning scarred the sky, this one landing far out beyond the tombstones, in the waters of the Delaware. The thunderous boom shook the earth beneath them.

Penance drew a stuttering breath and relaxed the muscles in his arm. He broke off his gaze with Noirbarret, staring at the ground instead.

"Haha!" The man got to his feet, mockingly tapping the boy's nose. He howled with laughter, nearly dancing in the rain. "That's the best of your pathetic weaknesses, isn't it? The most hilarious one, at least. You still believe in 'it': that thing you've always looked for. Even when you pretend not to. Oh, some people at least try to hide their weaknesses, Penance, but you?"

Noirbarret again knelt before the boy, nearly getting nose-to-nose with him.

"Your weakness is in your name."

The boy rested his back against the wall, resisting the urge to slump down and sit in the muddy soil. Instead he merely hung his head for a moment, wallowing in defeat. After a time he began stalking off down the path.

Noirbarret matched the boy step-for-step, right at his side.

"I'll give you this, at least," the man said. "It was a gutsy little plan, wasn't it? Flap the cape in front of the bull's face enough, and watch him unleash all that rage. Heh. Leave it to a Spaniard to come up with such a thing."

Penance stopped at a small pump house near the middle of the tombstone field; it was the hub of the cemetery's irrigation system.

"Like I said: it was a good plan, but for one fatal mistake."

Penance merely stared at the rusty husk of the pump house.

"What was that?" Penance asked.

"You wanted to rely on my hatred to destroy us both, Penance. That could never happen, and do you know why?"

The boy didn't answer.

"It's because I don't hate you at all," the man explained. "Not... one...bit..."

Penance turned and faced the man.

"Although I suppose the feeling isn't mutual, is it?" Noirbarret chuckled.

"'Feelings' don't matter," Penance coldly declared. "What matters is that all this," Penance motioned between himself and Noirbarret, "has to end. What matters is that it will. Things are changing, somehow, all around us, and I don't care much about it, except for this..."

Penance took a step backwards, touching his back against the pump room's rusty façade.

"I'm going to hunt you, and I'm going to kill you," the boy said. He spoke with as cold and dry a cadence as if he were reciting a grocery list. "I'm going to see that neck of yours spray blood again, and when it does I'm going to compare it to the first time." Penance leered up at the man, his voice suddenly brash and mocking. "See if I can't get you to squirt any harder than the first time."

Again Noirbarret's eyes widened and twitched. Penance found dark amusement in the effect.

"You're right, you know," Penance smirked. "We do push each other's buttons, don't we?"

Noirbarret was too distracted with his bubbling rage to notice Penance turn one leg to the side and dig his foot down against the base of the pump room's wall. Before the man could react Penance had twisted himself down against a small depression in the soil, pushing enough of the metal wall in to wedge himself down under the structure, disappearing into the underside of the irrigation system. The central drainage line ran under that pump room, collecting excess rainwater and runoff from across the cemetery and moving it all out to the Delaware.

It was a massive pipe, really.

Big enough for a small boy, at least.

Barely.

X

X

X

It didn't take a detective to understand what had just happened, and what was about to happen.

Noirbarret wasted no time in racing through the cemetery, sprinting for the Delaware like a wolf running down its prey.

Less graceful, though.

He slipped and fell in the rain-soaked sod twice; by the time he'd jumped the cemetery fence and landed along the water's edge he was muddy, soaked to his underclothes, and disheveled to hell.

Angry, too.

Very angry.

He raced along the shoreline, quickly finding a drainage pipe sticking out the side of the uneven earth. Its narrow, weather-eaten bars were bent and broken, the breaks showing fresh, virgin metal.

Noirbarret spun about, looking up one end of the shoreline, then the other, then out to the water itself. He spun three times, mouth twisted with a hateful grimace, until finally he howled with rage and slammed one fist into the remains of the drainage grate, shattering his knuckles and his wrist bone.

He didn't feel a thing.

Twenty minutes later, as the rain ended and the clouds overhead cleared up, he shuffled out of the cemetery, moving like a zombie for his car. A state trooper's vehicle was waiting beside it, idling in the parking lot. The trooper rolled his window down and motioned to the man.

"Hey, are you Agent Noirbarret, FBI?" The trooper asked.

Noirbarret took one look at the man and gave the slightest of grunts, again moving for his car.

"Looks like you've been through the wringer, haven't you?"

Noirbarret fumbled for his keys.

"Looks like it," he growled.

"Well your office said you'd be here this afternoon. Glad I caught you, too. We might have a little break in this psycho killer case of yours. The 'headsman', I mean—"

He got his car door open and rolled his eyes.

"I don't care about—"

"The APB on that girl you were looking for— the young black one? We picked her up just over the river, in Burlington. Given she's a minor and a vagrant we've got her in custody, for the time being. Wanted to let you know that you can see her at your leisure."

He was getting into his car as the trooper spoke, but then he quickly paused 'mid-seat', hand on the roof of the car. He stood back up, clearing his throat.

"Freckle-faced..."

"Mmm," the trooper nodded. "And French-braided, too. God knows what the kid puts in her hair to get it that silky. Hell, my wife would probably wanna know."

Noirbarret's zombie-like gaze slowly gave way to a dark and vicious sneer.

"I'll get myself cleaned up, trooper," he said. "And then I'll drop by for a little visit and ask her..."