7:20 pm, October 28, 1953
Abandoned municipal subway terminal
Factory District, Detroit, Michigan

The subway of the Line was a pale reflection of what could have been.

Effected ten years ago, it was intended to give the residents of the Line transport into the city proper. The people had given up on it after the crisis, so it ended up just another piece of scenery in the cheery landscape. Broken windows, flaking paint, rotted beams and molding tiles are all that remain of this once glorious component of the public transit system. Trains on underground rails carried passengers from the suburbs to destinations in the city and back again, and the subway maintained a healthy competition with the metropolitan shuttle bus that rendered the same service but took twice as long because of traffic.

Weekly had disappeared earlier that day without a trace. I suspected Arctic Nation was involved, but had no way to prove it. At first, I hadn't liked the guy—his kind are clingy, snoopy and maddeningly curious—but he'd started to grow on me. I guess it's not so true, what they say about us cats being loners. Don't ask me why, but for some reason I was even starting to miss his "delicate aroma."

With no better leads, I decided to follow the old magpie I'd seen first at Mrs. Grey's school raking leaves and then at Barry's Diner dumping his coins into the slot machine. Now the stuff about magpies having an eye for shiny things that don't belong to them is all true.

Blacksad was perched on the corner of the roof to the subway's upper tier, his silhouette making him look like a gargoyle. Snowflakes fell softly from the dark clouds overhead and the air was bitingly cold despite the lack of wind. The dazzling brilliance of Detriot's metropolitan area shone like a beacon in the distance, a stark contrast to the Line's dour foreground and an arrogant reminder of the economic and social status that the district's inhabitants would almost certainly never attain.

But he wasn't here to look back in jealous wonder at the glistening skyscrapers and colorful shop signs. He was here in this dark, uninviting place on a mission with only one thing in mind.

When Weekly had failed to meet him at their agreed-upon location that morning to discuss the clandestine meetings between Karup's wife and the Arctic Nation speaker, Blacksad had immediately suspected that his "scentimental" friend had been arrested or kidnapped by some of Arctic Nation's goons acting on the corrupt police chief's orders and was lying dead in an alley somewhere. Whatever the case, the weasel's vanishing act had those pompous white supremacists' bloody handprints all over it and Blacksad fervently hoped that the last possibility wasn't the one he'd discover.

Though he'd never openly admit it, he'd developed an attachment to the little fellow. His knack for getting into places that were otherwise inaccessible and picking out threads of conversation that a detective would never hear had made Blacksad realize just how invaluable the reporter's abilities were and that not all of his ilk made a habit of poking their noses into business that wasn't theirs. He kind of liked having someone to talk with and keep him company. It made life a lot easier and less lonely.

Determined to find his rusty-furred companion, he'd followed the old magpie he'd seen raking leaves at the school and again at the diner feeding coins to the slot machine. Magpies were notorious for taking things that caught their eye, especially things that glittered and sparkled, and selling them to fences who could find someone to buy them at ridiculous prices on the black market. This particular magpie had acquired Weekly's camera and brought it here to the dilapidated subway station where he met with a rat fence who would be able to turn a profit for it in the mall of ill-gotten goods and give him a portion of the sale.

The magpie reached into a burlap sack and pulled out the camera. "How much for this device?" he asked the rat.

Deciding this was his chance, Blacksad leapt down from the roof and landed in the ankle-deep snow with feline softness, stood and walked up to the duo. "This device," he said, startling the pair. "Who does it belong to?"

The rat took off running, and the magpie tried to discreetly stuff the camera back into the sack as he replied, "I'm quite sure I have no idea what you're talking about, good sir."

"I'm talking about my friend, the journalist," Blacksad clarified. He wanted to cut this poor old fellow some slack, but the fact that he'd come into possession of Weekly's camera had significantly diminished the detective's store of good will. "He appears to have run off, and I have a feeling you know where to."

The magpie's gullet bobbed as he gulped. "I don't know nothing," he said in a tone meant to provoke the other party's mercy. "They never say anything to me."

"They?" Blacksad gripped the collar of the magpie's coat and lifted, forcing the bird to stand on his tiptoes. "You've been everywhere I've been since I first set foot in this town. I don't know what you folks call it, but where I come from that's called shadowing. And that's more than plain bad luck has the intelligence for."

"Please, sir. I'm just a poor fellow trying to make enough to buy my way to Vegas."

"So you're a player?" Blacksad shoved the magpie out over the railing, holding him half-suspended in the air by his collar, and the bird cawed in fear. "Then what do you say to a game of Twenty Questions? Where is my friend!? Answer!"

The magpie's hands gripped the railing with all his might as he cried, "Okay! I'll take you to him! Just don't kill me, please!" Blacksad growled, but yanked the bird off the railing and released him. The magpie took several breaths to calm himself, but kept in mind that he'd be in trouble if he crossed this cat. "Quickly," he urged. "We haven't much time."

9:30 pm, Karup residence, Brahmun Street
Residential District, Detroit, Michigan

Hans Karup parked his car at the curb in front of his house, but he didn't get out immediately after killing the engine. Instead, he sat there a moment, contemplating everything that had been happening to him in the past several weeks. His mind had been in a whirling mess ever since that cat Blacksad had suddenly and conveniently appeared on the front walk to his church. It wasn't Blacksad himself that had caught his attention, but the accusations he'd started hurling almost the second their eyes met.

That comment about General Lee and how he'd feel if he were alive to know how his sword had been used was a rather indiscreet implication that the detective suspected the bear's hand in Kylie's kidnapping and Danah's death. Blacksad's warning that Karup get himself a concrete alibi because he was going to tear him down was nothing new—threats against him and his property by those who knew his secrets and needed to be controlled were common—but the detective's fearlessly blunt accusation that Huk was cavorting with his wife, shamelessly suggesting that adulterous things were happing behind the bear's back, had come as a profound shock. True, he and Jezebel didn't have the healthiest marriage—if a marriage with virtually no physical contact between spouses could be categorized as "healthy"—but Hans had never expected that another man might be getting what he'd been denied all along.

But he knew the subject couldn't just sit quietly on the sidelines and be ignored like a festering wound. It had to be faced, attacked and defeated by forces united in their desire to emerge victorious, then disposed of and left in the past. But there was already a wedge between him and his wife, a wedge that had been placed there by Jezebel when she'd told him that she'd never let herself be touched by any man, which made the situation that much harder for him because the best earthly place where a man could find solace and relaxation was in the arms of his wife.

He opened the car door and stepped out, deciding in the twelve steps from the curb to his front door that he was going to confront Jezebel about all of this, no matter how uncomfortable or embarrassing.

He stepped into the front room and closed the door. Jezebel was sitting on the couch watching I Love Lucy on their television. He slipped his coat off his back and folded it as he passed her silently on his way into the bedroom, where he opened the top drawer of the dresser and laid it inside. He didn't move from it, squeezing his eyes shut and gripping his coat in trembling hands as Jezebel stood from the couch and followed him in. "Tell me there's nothing between you and Huk," he said.

"I can't believe you're giving credit to that gossip," Jezebel admonished. "You know better than anyone that I'd never let myself be touched by a man. It disgusts me too much."

Hans whirled around, his face the picture of anguish and desperation. "For heaven's sake, Jez, it's unbearable!" he exclaimed. "How do you expect me to react when I hear that another man might be getting what I've been denied all this time?"

"Reprends toi, Hans. Tu savais ce qui t'attendait quand nous avons arrangé notre mariage. De toutes facons tu as trouvé de quoi te consoler, n'est-ce pas?" she said in French, knowing Hans wouldn't understand. "Besides, I think you're getting plenty enough love from the choir boys."

Hans' eyes flashed angrily, and with the speed of a striking snake he grabbed her wrist and threw her onto the bed, where he held her as he leaned over her with a furious snarl on his face. "If you value your health," he growled warningly, "then it would be in your best interest to never repeat that, dearest. You know good and well it's only a lie."

"And just what do you intend to do about it?" she challenged. "Kick me out of your house like you did with your first wife? A pity that I'm not a poor black girl like her!" Hans pushed off of her and cupped his face in one of his hands, trembling with rage and anguish. "You only need me in order to preserve your image!" she went on. "The perfect worker bee. Don't you forget—that is the only reason we're married."

"Out! Get out!" Hans roared.

"Gladly!" Jezebel stomped out and slammed the door behind her.

Hans stood there for a moment, trying and failing to get his fury under control, so he opened another drawer of the dresser and pulled out a red outfit bearing the stylized snowflake symbol of Arctic Nation on the chest.


At the abandoned factory, Huk and a posse stood in the center of a circle of cars. Most of them were armed with a weapon of some kind, mainly rifles and shotguns. Huk led a rust-colored weasel by a rope tied around the weasel's wrists. "Get the ropes, Bishop," he said to his bulldog lackey, handing over a set of keys. "The girls are in the car." Then he and the others turned and marched into the factory, dragging the weasel behind them.