The Double Vice: The 1st Hidden Gotham Novel by Chris Holcombe (free ebook reader txt) 📕

until Pru made her next move—whatever that would be.

“What about your brother?” Dash said. “We both know what your mother did.”

Walter fake pouted. “Tsk tsk tsk. Do you think I’m that stupid? Do you think I’m that sentimental?”

“You were blotto the night you had to move his body from your apartment to Central Park. Ever since, your mother’s been drinking herself to death. I think you both realize the horror of what she has done.”

Walter shook his head from side to side. “No, Mr. Parker. That will not work.”

“Oh?”

Pru slowly raised up, using her other hand to shield the Remington from the rain.

“You don’t feel any remorse over what you did to your brother? You don’t feel any shame over a mother murdering her own son?”

Pru was now inching towards the entrance. How could Walter not sense her? He must’ve been too focused on Dash.

Keep his attention.

“Carrying your brother’s lifeless corpse must’ve filled you with such rage. That’s how you and Mother did it, am I right? Carrying him as if he were a passed-out drunk.”

Walter just grinned his sick grin.

“But if you didn’t love your brother, why you were drunk the next night? Stumbling around West Fourth, shouting how I killed him.”

“I was drunk because my one source of income was now dead. And it was because of men like you, who filled his head with nonsensical things. Of how he could live as he wanted. In sin.”

Dash shook his head. “No. You actually cared for your brother.”

Walter adjusted his shoulders. The heavy gun must’ve been difficult to keep steady, to keep still. “Let me show you how sentimental we Müllers are. You know about my father, yes? How he dressed as a woman in the underground cabarets of Berlin?”

Dash nodded. “It was his nature, Walter.”

“Ha! Nature? Nature would never allow that! No, it is sin; it is the Devil, Mr. Parker. And it must be banished, snuffed out, destroyed. My mother knew that. It was why she called the Nazis, told them about the club, told them about him.”

Dash’s eyes widened.

Walter laughed. “So you see, we do not cry over dead perverts such as yourself.”

“It doesn’t explain why she’s drunk every day and every night, Walter. Perhaps the thought of losing two men in her family—a son and a husband—was more than she could bear.”

“I will show you how much we can bear,” Walter snarled. “First, I will aim this pistol at your foot and shoot it. I will do the same to your elbows and to your hands.”

Pru had just crossed the threshold and was a mere few feet away from Walter.

Dash said, “That’s a lot of bullets, Walter.”

The German patted his pockets. “Don’t worry. I have enough. I will keep you alive as I shatter every joint in your body, Mr. Parker, even if you are begging for death. For as long as possible, I will make you suffer.”

The dreadful mix of fear and anticipation was almost more than Dash could bear. He swallowed, his tongue thick, his throat dry.

Hurry, Pru, hurry!

He said, “Did they teach you that in Germany?”

Walter hummed a trill of a laugh. “We Germans are an incredible people filled with incredible strength. And it takes a lot of strength to pull the trigger.”

Pru by that point was directly behind Walter. She brought the blue steel Remington up in one smooth motion and placed the barrel against his temple.

“You got that right, mister,” she said.

Then she fired.

Epilogue

Round white headlights barreled towards Dash. A cab cutting through Jones Street. He stayed on the south side of Jones Street until the cabbie roared past.

It was Friday evening, August 27, and Dash was determined to return the bounce to his step. He breathed in deep, taking in the sounds of the city at night. He wanted these sights and sounds to replace the ones currently living behind his eyes.

In the last few days, he’d barely gotten any sleep. The events of the previous Tuesday night kept playing in a loop. He saw Mother’s dreamy expression as she described the killing of her son and the moving of his body as taking him to the Park.

Then the dead body of Marjorie Norton and the bullet passing through the temple of Walter Müller. He didn’t think the images would recede anytime soon.

Shortly after Pru had fired her lethal shot, she picked up the ledger from Walter’s lifeless hand and grabbed Dash’s live but trembling one and led him down the hallway.

“There’s a backdoor which leads to an alley,” she said.

“How did you know to come here?”

“He broke into my apartment. I figured he’d come here next, if he hadn’t been already.”

Dash tried to look back at Walter’s corpse, but Pru’s forward momentum prevented him from doing so. “What do we do about him? About Walter?”

They took a sharp turn at the end of the hallway.

“Listen to me,” she said, her voice firm. “We don’t have much time. Someone’s going to report the shots. The cops will be here soon.”

“We can’t just leave him there!”

Another sharp turn. A triple-locked door. Pru set about undoing the bolts. “You were never here. Neither was I.”

She wrenched open the door. “Go home!”

He didn’t understand but by that point in the evening, after all he had seen and heard, his mind had begun to shut down. He simply nodded, went out the backway, ran down the alleyway, and grabbed the first cab he could find. He returned to the Cherry Lane Playhouse, where he couldn’t speak for hours. Not even to Joe or Finn.

Dash awoke the next morning to newshawks reporting a sensational breaking-and-entering at the law firm of Meyers, Powers & Napier. An unidentified man was found shot dead on the premises, and the firm’s safe was found hanging open, its contents emptied. Police surmised the unidentified man had a partner who got greedy and decided to keep the safe’s treasures for himself.

The newshawks went on to describe the novelty of an all-female law firm, with a quote from Prudence Meyers