Chapter One
I remember when the city was a shimmering jewel at the mouth of a gleaming river, a hub of international commerce and
culture that managed to retain its quaint small-town charm that drew so many people here in the first place. Now factories
belched plumes of grease and smoke into the air and bled murky death into the river. The city was an old toothless whore,
with endless rows of spires and smokestacks scraping the gra sky like something vomitted up from hell that just kept on going
up and up and up, forgetting where to stop.
From my office window in the Calamity Building, I could see it all, from 10th Street to Main, my world was dark, corrupt,
dying. I could hear the desperate cry of humanity, the rattle of gunshots from the riverfront warehouse district, the mournful
wail of sirens as they cut through the bleak night.
This is the City.
I am the night, in a city where Death is running for Mayor. I am Justice in a lawless world of damned things and hellish
creatures.
I'm the Claw!!!
I'm all three of these things at once, and sometimes I get them mixed up.
It was eight o'clock and the building had shut down for the night, leaving me alone with the bottle I kept in my bottom
drawer. It was a bottle of courage, but not the kind that makes men into heroes, or rescues kittens from trees, or tells your
weird Uncle Ernie that a grown man with a spoon up his nose just isn't funny.. No: this was courage of a different breed,
the courage a man took to face the day when he'd given up hope and then stopped believing that hope even existed. It was courage
sold in bottles and made in places like Tennessee and Kentucky. In the city and on the streets, this was the only courage
most folks even knew. And I was the bravest man in the world.
My thoughts were interrupted by two large men. I heard them before I saw them, pushing their way in past my secretary,
Honey. "I'm sorry, Mr. D.," she said.
I took them in at a glance. Government men, judging by their identical haircuts and cheap but sturdy shoes. I took another
pull from the bottle and dismissed Honey with a nod. The tall guy looked around disdainfully, brushing dust from his jacket.
His partner was all business, so wide in the shoulders that he seemed almost squat, his broad face seamed with old scars.
And his eyes, like blue fire, never left mine.
"Special Agent Weston," he said by way of introduction, then jerked his head toward his partner, "Special Agent Maxwell,
Bureau Seven. Division of Amish Affairs."
Bureau Seven, I thought, that shadowy government agency that served as an umbrella for Amish Affairs and several less
reputable disciplines, like my old enemies, the Invisible Ninjas. A million things passed through my mind. Mostly jokes about
Amish people.
"Save the jokes, Doolittle, we'll get right to the point. One of our best agents is missing. We'd like you to find him."
"What does it have to do with me?"
"We hear you're the best there is."
"You hear right."
"And...this agent, well, let's just say that you might have a personal involvement in this case."
"A personal...?"
I stopped. The silence fell between us like shards of crystal cast to the floor. Because I knew, and Weston's steely
gaze told me that he knew I knew, my only personal connection to Bureau Seven....
Weston nodded. "That's right, Doolittle. This missing agent is..."
"Roughhouse," I finished for him. Joe Roughhouse
was a shadowy figure in espionage circles, who moved in ways no one understood, who came and went like a vapor, impossible
to pin down. The only thing we knew for sure was that as a child he had put his eye out with a rubber band, and he made a
mean spinach quiche.
"I'll do it," I said, "On one condition."
****
Eventually everything intersects on a street corner. There are 32 million lives in the city and they scatter like insects,
their paths intersecting and entwining around each other like a tide of black fire erupting from an anthill. From socialites
and millionaires in three thosand dollar suits, to blind orphans and beggars who decent people are afraid to make eye contact
with; people from every social strata, every language, every culture represented as they buzzed past one another, each with
unknown purpose, never lingering, never inquiring; just a tired, sad people in a colorless city.
And on a million street corners in a thousand cities just like mine, kids hawk useless trinkets, or sit at newstands
or shine shoes for whoever will toss them a dime. Sometimes they beg or steal, hoping to scrape together enough to buy a crust
of bread, or maybe the old man's out of work and they hope to keep him drunk enough that he doesn't take it out on them. It's
a hard life in a hard world in a city that's hardest on the innocent.
Three years ago I'd come upon this particular street corner to witness a crime in progress, only to be beaten to the
punch, quite literally, by the two flying fists of fury of the local newsboy. For once I was impressed, and stood back while
he subdued two felons. So impressed that I took him under my wing and trained him as my sidekick. And now, when danger looms,
Billy Palmer becomes....DANGER BOY!!!
Today I found Billy, as usual, at his newstand. "I need you to come with me, Billy," I said, "Your country needs you."
"I'm not a boy, Claw," he grumbled.
"Of course you're not! You're a bright young man with a promising future!"
"I'm 51 years old," he said, "I served in Vietnam. I'm just shorter than you, that's all."
"Of course you are! Let's go, Danger Boy!"
To Be Continued....
