fruitlessly for him. Like the man was searching for him now. Somehow his life had wrapped in upon itself neatly, like a loop, and he was there again. He was here again. It all made sense.
I have found a home in dark grass, Karl Bruning thought, and then died.
INTERLUDE 1 :
Everything is in motion, even what is still
November 10, 1942: New York, U.S.A.
For the fifth time that week, interrupting his favorite show as it played on the tinny Philco radio, the power cut out in Tony Lanois’ apartment. These days blackouts were not uncommon in New York City. “When you hear the sirens, don’t give the Krauts something to shoot at! Lights out!” the posters warned, but outside the window, the lights across Fourteenth Street glared a dim and constant yellow. Beyond them the Empire State Building stood glowing like some geometric Christmas Tree and not a single warning siren had sounded. New York continued apace, unmindful of such an insignificant and personal inconvenience.
Lanois sighed deeply and stood up from his rapidly-cooling soup in the dark. A million things could have caused the blackout in the Hale Building—his building—but Lanois knew better. He goddamn knew.
“Fuckin’ foreigners!” Lanois shouted. He hoped the bastards upstairs in Four-B could hear him, but the humming had started again. Soon the tenants would come down with their standard complaints in their standard order, about the lights, about their rats and bugs and all that other applesauce. Mostly war brides, they loved using the power outages as an excuse to complain about his shortcomings as the building super. During these bitch sessions he would feign polite interest, go to check on the power (stumbling down to the basement with a shitty old flickering flashlight), and then the lights would come back on of their accord seconds before he was ready to replace the cocksucking fuse.
Not again.
Like Sherlock Holmes or one of those hard nosed P.I.s on the silver screen, Tony had used his head. By paying attention to all the little details and carefully assembling the clues of the case, he had pretty much worked out the who and where, but not the what. As for the why, he was dying to find out, but that was phase two.
On the case of the mysterious power outages for some time now (in his official capacity as super, of course) Tony had long since noticed the oddities of the foreign goons in Four-B; the flickering of the hall light outside their door followed by the subtle whiffs of ozone from their apartment; the shouts and clangs and the low-pitched hum which seemed to thrum throughout the whole building, but only when they were at home; all the visitors and weird contraptions they were dragging up the stairs at all hours. Something screwy was going on up there, that much was sure.
In retrospect, he had known they would be trouble when he rented the unit to them three months before. But hey, the two men had paid in cash for the first year. In fuckin’ full. What was he going to do? Turn them down? There was a war on, after all.
He didn’t care if they were nancy boys or wetbacks, as long as they had money and were quiet. But what were they up to up there? You had to be careful these days. The man next door could be a spy for the Axis. Tony had seen a Republic serial not three days ago uptown, where Nazi agents had constructed a death beam using radio parts to disintegrate Manhattan. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Captain Midnight, they would have done it too. He knew it wasn’t anything like that, though. Probably only some type of wetback radio, but what for? To pick up transmissions from Cuba or wherever it was they came from?
Or to broadcast, maybe?
Suddenly, shattering his reverie, a strange noise drifted down from above. An intertwining conglomeration of muffled voices raised in a sing-song chanting which he had never heard before filtered through the other sounds of the New York night.
I have found a home in dark grass, Karl Bruning thought, and then died.
INTERLUDE 1 :
Everything is in motion, even what is still
November 10, 1942: New York, U.S.A.
For the fifth time that week, interrupting his favorite show as it played on the tinny Philco radio, the power cut out in Tony Lanois’ apartment. These days blackouts were not uncommon in New York City. “When you hear the sirens, don’t give the Krauts something to shoot at! Lights out!” the posters warned, but outside the window, the lights across Fourteenth Street glared a dim and constant yellow. Beyond them the Empire State Building stood glowing like some geometric Christmas Tree and not a single warning siren had sounded. New York continued apace, unmindful of such an insignificant and personal inconvenience.
Lanois sighed deeply and stood up from his rapidly-cooling soup in the dark. A million things could have caused the blackout in the Hale Building—his building—but Lanois knew better. He goddamn knew.
“Fuckin’ foreigners!” Lanois shouted. He hoped the bastards upstairs in Four-B could hear him, but the humming had started again. Soon the tenants would come down with their standard complaints in their standard order, about the lights, about their rats and bugs and all that other applesauce. Mostly war brides, they loved using the power outages as an excuse to complain about his shortcomings as the building super. During these bitch sessions he would feign polite interest, go to check on the power (stumbling down to the basement with a shitty old flickering flashlight), and then the lights would come back on of their accord seconds before he was ready to replace the cocksucking fuse.
Not again.
Like Sherlock Holmes or one of those hard nosed P.I.s on the silver screen, Tony had used his head. By paying attention to all the little details and carefully assembling the clues of the case, he had pretty much worked out the who and where, but not the what. As for the why, he was dying to find out, but that was phase two.
On the case of the mysterious power outages for some time now (in his official capacity as super, of course) Tony had long since noticed the oddities of the foreign goons in Four-B; the flickering of the hall light outside their door followed by the subtle whiffs of ozone from their apartment; the shouts and clangs and the low-pitched hum which seemed to thrum throughout the whole building, but only when they were at home; all the visitors and weird contraptions they were dragging up the stairs at all hours. Something screwy was going on up there, that much was sure.
In retrospect, he had known they would be trouble when he rented the unit to them three months before. But hey, the two men had paid in cash for the first year. In fuckin’ full. What was he going to do? Turn them down? There was a war on, after all.
He didn’t care if they were nancy boys or wetbacks, as long as they had money and were quiet. But what were they up to up there? You had to be careful these days. The man next door could be a spy for the Axis. Tony had seen a Republic serial not three days ago uptown, where Nazi agents had constructed a death beam using radio parts to disintegrate Manhattan. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Captain Midnight, they would have done it too. He knew it wasn’t anything like that, though. Probably only some type of wetback radio, but what for? To pick up transmissions from Cuba or wherever it was they came from?
Or to broadcast, maybe?
Suddenly, shattering his reverie, a strange noise drifted down from above. An intertwining conglomeration of muffled voices raised in a sing-song chanting which he had never heard before filtered through the other sounds of the New York night.
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