CHAPTER EIGHT
The heavy summer showers had passed, willing the sun into hiding. The sky was raw, its shade the color of slate. A thick fog hung in the air like a shroud, so heavy that one could inhale and feel the vapors slide down the trachea and settle in the lungs. An overpowering dampness clung to the mist, rendering the atmosphere to retain the glassy, glittery appearance that occurred only at the end of a rain.
The slight zephyrs of the previous night had quickly progressed into quick- tempered winds at the wake of a thunderstorm that quelled the semi-drought the area had been experiencing courtesy of the breathless summer sun.
This absolute about-face in weather and the added factor that one was rendered nearly blind in the oppressing fog left many not to travail the streets of Brooklyn that late afternoon. The only sounds on the Brooklyn Bridge were the quick fall of footsteps of Angel Haddox and Nero Night.
The latter walked ahead of the former, her steps short, intense eyes watchful, and head jerking sporadically about.
Angel snorted. It was some stroke of irony; as though nature was playing a cruel ruse upon them. They had left the warehouse that morning completely cloaked and hooded, poised to skirt the darkened back alleys as to not arouse suspicion. Yet, here they were in full guise and Angel could not even see a few inches in front of her nose, nonetheless the Brooklyn newsies espy them.
She halted, her temper starting to make an appearance. The rage built in the pit of her stomach and ran through her blood; throughout the network of vessels to the tips of her fingers and toes and roots of hair that was bound by the black ribbon at the nape of her neck.
She turned sharply around, her head snapping with the motion, her storm- gray eyes burning and discerning nothing but the heavy swirls of fog. "Night, are you still there or has my wish come true and you've finally ended your pitiful life by jumping off the bridge?"
Her scathing remark fell short in the vapors. After a few moments of impatient waiting, Angel espied a dark figure approaching her through the veils of mist. An eyebrow cocked insolently and arms crossed over her chest, she waited as the figure's image grew sharper as the vividness of his ebony cloak incremented. The figure finally stood before her, resembling Death prepared to beckon her into the mist due to his garments of clothing.
A wry smile crossed her full lips at the morbid thought. Well, it isn't far from the truth, she thought with a hint of sick amusement.
From the visage shadowed by the hood came the oleaginous voice of Nero Night. "Jiminy, Angel, are you always this charming or did I just catch you on a bad day?"
With one expeditious motion he grasped the front of his hood and threw is back, revealing his summer-tanned skin. A coat of the fog's dew clung to his face and gave his already oily hair a disgusting gleam. A deep scowl lined his thin lips and caused his dark eyes to glow. He glared hatefully as his words lost their hint of amusement.
"Jesus, Angel, I don't see how Finesse can put up with all your bullshit. If I could of I would push you off the goddamn bridge and just go to Brooklyn and finish the job myself."
His hood still lowered; Night stalked past her, Angel's loathing gaze following him. "Finish the job? Finish the job? You make it seem as though we are going to assassinate someone!" Her voice was low, and she trembled as she fought to bridle the rage.
Night did not reply as he continued to briskly stride forward, a slight breeze circumventing through the thick fog, tossing his cloak behind him. His insolent silence was the match that ignited the impatient fury that fought to be uncaged within her. Her face becoming livid and her eyes burning with a fire, she tempestuously strode over to Night, standing before him and causing him to halt.
She gazed up at him, a zephyr throwing back her hood and caressing her bound hair as it tossed behind her. "Nero Night, I swear to all that is still holy and pure in this world that if you even draw one of your weapons I'll have no qualms whatsoever with keeping the oath I made that night."
Her eyes burned piercingly into his indifferent ones. Briefly, she swore she noted a flicker of fear flash across the orbs and temporarily shatter the cool façade. Yet, they soon regained their hardness once more as a sneer crossed his cracked lips. "What did I even say that night, Haddox? You're going soft. Finesse didn't believe me, but you're going soft. You don't have the guts to shoot me.
"Why don't you stay here and knit me a sweater like the little girl you are? Or better yet, why don't you get down on your knees and think sweet thoughts of me, sweetheart, because you're going to need all the practice you can get at being a whore. Not that you already aren't one, but the ones I've fucked are quite experienced, so you'll have quite a lot of catching up to do. I, on the other hand am on my way to becoming Oliver Haddox's new assassin once I get you and Finesse out of the way.
"Now, I have a prior engagement at the Brooklyn Lodging house to introduce Master Conlon to my switch that I just sharpened last night."
With a finalizing stare wrought with supreme authority, Night brushed past her, hitting her shoulder and causing her to recoil in a tinge of pain. A red haze of hatred clouded her vision and her body trembled with furor as she regarded Night's proud swaggering gait. Without even reviewing the notion twice, Angel reached into one of the many folds of her deep gray cloak, her glance never wavering from Night. Fumbling blindly, her hand felt the cool base of the revolver that was situated between the elastic waistband of her trousers and the flesh of her lower abdomen. Her grip on the base tightening, she pulled the revolver from her cloak with a flourish. In a fluid motion, she extended her arm skyward and pointed the weapon towards the cloudy heavens.
Night's dark figure was dimming in the overpowering swirls of mist that haunted the Brooklyn Bridge as her slippery fingers felt the trigger and cocked it. Involuntarily, in a ritual that she had performed so many times before, she pulled the trigger.
The deafening gunshot ripped through the thick air, rupturing the silence and shattering it into millions of shards. Angel immediately recoiled at the hateful, sonorous sound and winced, her teeth set on edge. Her pulse quickening, her eyes immediately fluttered open to find Night standing but a few feet from her. Utter incredulity and shock lined his features. His dark eyes were wide and glittering and his mouth was gaped in disbelief.
His lips moved wordlessly for a few syllables, before the jolt subsided and his hoarse voice filled her ears laced with blue curses. "Angel, what the hell are you thinking?" he bellowed, his tone growing. "Did you ever stop to think that Conlon and one of his newsies could be on this goddamn mother whoring bridge and we couldn't even see them? Or have you just lost your fucking marbles once and for all?"
Angel's countenance was quite cool and collected as she strode over to Night, her hips swaying some with her gait. The smoking revolver still clutched firmly in her grasp, she approached Night, her cold eyes upon him. Stepping closer, she lowered her mouth to his ear, as he cocked his head incredulously at her. She pushed the revolver into his abdomen so that he froze, arching away from the weapon.
Her hot breath filling his ear canal, she whispered in a low voice, "Maybe I have lost my marbles, Nero, maybe I have. But that still doesn't mean that you can push me around like one of your little sluts. I came to Brooklyn in this goddamn fog to spy on Spot Conlon and Jack Kelly and the other eight that are going to the war-council. Not to kill anyone. Those were my direct orders from my brother and I am not about to fall out of his favor. I am in charge here and if you so much as lay a finger on Spot Conlon I will blow your brains out. As much as I would love to kill him, Oliver did not give me the order to carry out his death on this day.
"If you so much as ever draw that pathetic excuse for a switchblade, I will blow your brains out. Remember that I have a revolver, which I can play like a virtuoso, and you are little boy with a switch. If you so much as attempt to wrest the revolver from me, I will blow your brains out."
Angel stepped back to regard Night's reaction. His face was twisted in cold rage and his dark eyes glimmered with the utmost hatred. "You're only a girl, Haddox. If I wanted-"
"If I wanted to could have lodged a bullet in you're brain many years ago. If you even try to so much as touch me I'll kill you. That, Nero Night is a promise. And I have never known a Haddox to break their promise."
With that, she gave herself the satisfaction of glancing into his eyes glazed over in malevolency and loathing. She then brushed past him, training her eyes forward as she grasped her hood with both hands and pulled it up once more, concealing her shining hair and face in shadows. The revolver was locked firmly in her clammy hand, prepared for use if needed.
The mist was waning. They had to hurry if they wanted to make haste to the lodging house with out having suspicion drawn upon them.
***
It hadn't been an assassination, though it had been just as odious a task.
Angel had awoken that morning, sprawled on her side on the splintered floorboards under the window of the third floor, the ungodly bright sun flooding the room and hurting her eyes. As soon as she had taken her first breath of consciousness, it felt as though an ice pick was being driven into her skull; felt as though her brains had been put through a processor and were ripping apart inside her cranium.
It had been fantastically worse than any hangover she had ever encountered. It had been even worse than the hangovers she acquired from the cheap gin Flynn acquired and both downed after an assassination.
But she hadn't drunk. She hadn't touched a single iota of alcohol since that day she and Flynn went to Brooklyn-the day she never wanted to recall for as long as she still breathed.
Her mind and soul had felt weak and her physical body ill by the way she disgorged her empty stomach with her head hanging out the window. She had felt hot and cold, had chills that could have perhaps been the cause of a fever.
Though, she knew it was not a physical affliction that plagued her. Yet, she found it quite astonishing to believe that three words numbering three syllables-
There's still time.
-could account for the overwhelming sickness she encountered. She spent the remainder of the morning, or perhaps it had been the rest of the afternoon for the time slipped her mind, sprawled on her stomach on the mattress. She stared unwaveringly at nothing in particular, falling in and out of blurry bouts of slumber, feeling to weak too muster enough energy to even find Flynn and head down to the Hideaway for food.
She needn't sell newspapers, for she had never sold one in her entire life. When she came to think of it, she did not think she knew an entire Midtown newsie who had sold a newspaper in their entire life, either. It was quite a sickeningly funny running gag with Oliver. Instead of being, she dare say, good and honest like Brooklyn and selling a pape for a living, Oliver had his sister and the best contracted assassin this side of New York hold a gun to a patron's head or have his thugs break their legs if they did not give him the money or supplies he craved. Being an assassin under Oliver was actually quite a compensating profession.
It had been a near impossible endeavor to keep the appellations of Brooklyn and Spot Conlon far from her mind. Though, the vehement questions that sprang to mind with the names were far more brutal to ignore.
She was still toying with the notion that Conlon visiting her chambers had only been a staple to the dream she had had of Dante's Inferno, when the knock had came to her door. Not being able to block the infernal noise from her throbbing brain, after twenty raps or so she lethargically dragged herself to the doorway and opened it only to find the stairs empty. Cursing the bastards under her breath, she had sluggishly dragged herself down to the second floor only to be beckoned into Oliver's room.
There she was given her orders.
She and Night were to go to the Brooklyn lodging house before the war- council and eavesdrop in on what the leaders of Brooklyn and Manhattan were chattering about. They were then to report back to the Hideaway, where the Lyners would be awaiting. They would rendezvous over a few bottles of booze and then head over to Gulliver's in the Bronx where Conlon and Kelly and eight others would be waiting.
At first, she fancied they had not heard the order correctly. Oliver had never issued an order for her to travail to Brooklyn without shooting anyone, nonetheless when the sun was still in the sky and sans her partner, Flynn. She had protested as passionately as her will would allow, yet Oliver had simply waved away all of her objections.
Due to her superior's command, Angel now found herself a few hundred feet away from the Brooklyn lodging house, gazing at the broken structure through the dying mist. A light breeze blew through the air, tugging her hood back somewhat, yet she frantically grabbed at it. She pulled it down lower as to cover her visage more, her hands clasping it together at the material below the chin.
Eliciting a listless sigh, she cast her eyes from the lodging house heavenward. The heavy thunderstorms of the previous night had left the thick, alien fog as a residue. Yet, through the mist she could discern the slightest outline of the setting summer-sun. The vapors would dissipate soon, leaving she and Night vulnerable to suspicion as they were garbed in their curious attire.
Her nose scrunching briefly at this ill misfortune, she exhaled deeply and turned over her shoulder. Night's darkened form was approaching her in his gliding gait. She watched as he reached into the folds of his cloak to retrieve a personally rolled cigarette, place it between his lips, and stop briefly to strike the match off the bottom of his shoe. Cupping his hands over his mouth and lighting it, he pitched the match carelessly away and inhaled deeply.
When he halted before her, she could only view the smoke fuming from his nostrils and the dim red glow that the embers cast. Her grip on the revolver tightened.
Angel regarded Night in silence for a few moments, as he said nothing, only inhaled on the cigarette. He finally spoke from beneath the hood. "That's the infamous Brooklyn Lodging House? It sure is a shithole."
She glanced over her shoulder quickly to view the lodging house before turning to Night. She brushed his statement off by caustically countering him. "And what would you know, Night? When's the last time you looked at where you lived?"
Angel swore she could feel his eyes burn into her from underneath the hood as the smoke billowed into the air. Her gaze faltering from his, an idea came to her and with her free hand she patted her pocket trousers for the cigarette Flynn had given her a few days prior. Placing it between her lips, she stared blatantly at Night. When he did not make a move to light the cigarette, she asked, "Well, do you have a light?"
He paused before he replied in a sniveling tone, "Why can't you just light your goddamn cigarette with your revolver? It's still smoking, you know."
A sneer crossing her lips, she tossed her head. "You know, you're so damn hilarious, Night. If the job of assassin doesn't work out maybe you can be Oliver's court jester. You have the jackass persona down pat already." She decisively added, "But, Nero, do you really want me to use my revolver again?"
Her words found their mark by the way Night begrudgingly reached inside his cloak and withdrew a match, which she quickly took from him. "Thank you very much, Nero. You're such a good foil," Angel said, lighting her cigarette.
The wind picked up, throwing back Night's hood so that she could catch a glimpse of his glowering visage. She smiled in spite of himself as he huffily pulled it over his head once more. Exhaling once again, he pitched the cigarette to the ground and snubbed it out with his slovenly shoe, smoke still wafting around him.
"So what the hell are we going to do all afternoon? Stand outside the lodging house having a smoke break? Oh, maybe we can ask Conlon and Kelly to join us! I sure as hell can't kill them but maybe we can have a drag with them. How 'bout it, Ang?" His voice's dominating tone was the usual sarcasm, yet she noted strong undercurrents of poorly bridled fury laced within.
Angel coolly exhaled, lowering the cigarette to her side and tapping the ashes to the cobblestones. She gazed at the lodging house. "We have to find out where they would be holding a conference. I was in the lodging house that night and I highly doubt that it would be in the parlor because sound travels quite easily outside. I suspect they wouldn't want anyone to hear their plans."
"I guess not," Night sneered.
She disregarded his negative comment, her gaze never wavering from the Brooklyn headquarters. "I don't think they would have it in the bunkroom because that's where all the newsies would congregate and I doubt Conlon and Kelly would want everyone and his brother to hear what they were discussing, even if it was about Oliver."
"Tell me when you stop thinking aloud and reach a point," he sighed loudly.
Her eyes quickly scanned the smeared windows until they halted upon one. Her breath caught in her throat. "That room. That's where they would be." She involuntarily raised an arm, extending a slim index finger towards the window in question.
Night's gaze followed to where she was motioning too. "And what makes that room so special?"
"Because," she whispered breathlessly, "that's his room."
"His room?" Night disparaged.
"Spot's room."
"Spot's room?" He asked, stretching the syllables of the appellation to their maximum allowance. "Am I noting informality with the leader of Brooklyn, Haddox?"
Angel blinked, her reverie immediately shattering. She felt her flesh heat until it was scorching. She furiously prayed under her breath for thanks that she was wearing the cloak for she knew not what vinaceous shade her skin had taken on. She snapped her head roughly towards Night, the motion pulling the hood back some and revealing her narrowed, storm-gray eyes.
"Conlon's room! I meant, Conlon's room." She paused before continuing, her eyes dropping from him, clearly ruffled. "Christ, you can't even call people by their names anymore? What's this world coming too?"
She felt his breath breeze against the back of her neck, causing the hairs to prickle, as he stood behind her, only a few inches separating them. "The world's coming to nothing, but you're coming to something, Haddox. I suspect that if you don't want others to have the wrong impression of you then you bite your tongue on certain subjects where your mind, and other regions of the body, turn to gelatin."
She whirled around to face him, her hood falling down and revealing her hair glinting in the first rays of sun that passed through the fog. Her eyes narrowed and face heated, she stared into his cloak. "And just what's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, nothing," Night sighed indifferently, plucking the cigarette from her fingers and placing it between his lips, inhaling deeply. "It's just that I was wondering how you knew where Spot's room was, that's all," he inquired mockingly, exhaling.
"I told you," Angel cried, her voice taking on a shrill pitch. "Whenever Midtown invaded Brooklyn two years back I had a scuffle with Conlon and it was in that room there."
He was only silent as the smoke billowed lazily from under his hood.
His silence was like a splinter she could not remove from under a thatch of sensitive skin. "What?" she roared, the word spilling from her like lava erupting from an active volcano.
Night shrugged, tapping ashes to the ground with a finger before pitching the cigarette not far from where the other rested. "Nothing, Haddox, it's just that I find it quite hard to believe that you can recall Spot Conlon's room of all rooms. And even if he was in the room at the time that you had- what was your word? Ah, scuffle. Even if he was in the room when you had a scuffle with him what makes you conclude that it was even his room? It could have been anyone's."
She grasped the full extent of the utter smugness in his voice. He only used this intonation whenever he knew he was correct or on the trail of a subject that one would give their soul not to disclose. Angel feared the latter.
She locked with his gaze, her eyes hard and cold. "What are you implying?"
He stepped closer to her, his visage covered by shadows. The putrid odor of his nicotine-infested breath invaded her nostrils as he spoke. "I'm implying that I can see right past you, Haddox. You may think you're the only one that can see it and are wondering why in the hell Oliver can't see it, but I can. I know you've gone soft. I know. I could sense it in your blood ever since we shot that Brooklyn newsie. You hesitated and you never hesitated before-"
Angel interrupted his words by pulling the revolver from her side and pressing it against Nero Night's skull with taunt outstretched arms. The flesh of her skin had since become a stark white and her eyes blazed. Tremors slid up and down her arms, causing the weapon to shake badly against his brow. Her words trembled as she spoke. "I will shoot you know, Night-"
He was close enough that she could discern the broad smile on his cracked, thin lips. "I know you would shoot me now, Haddox? Isn't that a bitch! You would shoot me, one of your own kind, but you won't let me lay a finger on Conlon, or, what did you call him, Spot?" His gales of hearty laughter filled the misty air.
Angel felt an overpowering sickness wash over her and her head suddenly become light as he knees began to buckle. She found the damned crystalline tears coming to her and rendering her vision blurry as she regarded Night's boisterous form, his shoulders shaking from succumbing to the laughter.
The hatred and the loathing welled in the pits of her stomach. She despised him for she knew he was correct in every single aspect he had touched on. She despised Oliver for having sent her here without Flynn and when her uncertain emotions of the leader of Brooklyn ran so high and untamed. Yet, mostly she hated herself. Hated herself for the utter wreck she had become. Hated herself because she was in a forced cocoon between the lifestyles of Angel Haddox and Helena Haddox. Hated herself because she could not, feared too much to take the step and plunge into one life. Hated herself because she hated who she had become; because she had gone blindly for the past six years under her brother's command and left behind every shard of Helena Haddox that she had known. Now, when she wanted to return to that time, it was impossible.
She hated herself because she was now and will always be Angel Haddox, assassin to Oliver Haddox and living in squalor and death in Midtown. Because Helena Haddox had died long ago, whenever Oliver had blown her parents' brains in and first handed her the revolver. Had died whenever she had claimed her first victim.
The tears streamed down her cheeks freely now as she stared into Night's darkened face. The fury boiled over in her nether-regions, shooting with the greatest magnitude up her body, up her throat and out of her mouth in the form of a grand scream. As this release came, she involuntarily twisted the revolver upside down in her hands and pulled her arms back.
Night's wild laughter still filling her ears, with a great force she smashed the base of the weapon into his face. The laughter subsided abruptly, immediately. Angel stepped back, lowering the gun in front of her as consciousness slipped from Night and he pitched forward to the cobblestones.
Stifling sobs, Angel gave his body a shove with the tip of her shoe. He rolled over, the hood leaving his face visible. She had connected the base with his left temple, and blood gushed freely from the wound. Straightening, she cast her gaze over her shoulder at the lodging house.
The fog was nearly all but extinguished and the sun would disappear beyond the west horizon in only a few hours. Angel turned, furiously brushing the tips of her fingers under her eyes to rid herself of the tears. She began striding towards the looming lodging house, when a thought crossed her mind.
Cursing repeatedly under her breath, she spun about once more and returned to Night's sprawled body. She could not leave him in the open for fear that the fog would be gone in a time span of half an hour at most and the newsies espy him, thus handing away her disguise.
With an exasperated sigh, she nudged the body with her feet into a nearby copse of bushes, successfully concealing him. She reckoned that she had given Night a pretty nasty blow to the head and he should remain unconscious for at least a few hours.
Discerning that the task was complete, she turned and faced the lodging house. Brushing away the last remnants of tears, Angel studiously made sure that her hood was pulled over her head and concealed her visage.
She strode forward, her hands clasping the hood together, and her eyes never leaving the leader's window, all the while asking herself how in the name of God she was going to pull this off.