The Night Mayor by Kim Newman Read Free Book Online

the posse. The cops were shooting at his broad chest, and he was taking all the bullets like popgun peas.
    I suppose I should have been grateful, but from the back I didn’t like the look of him. He was wearing only the tatters of a pair of grey pants, and had a Weissmuller physique. He raised his sinewy arms and howled into the lobby, flexing and unflexing his claws. I saw huge slabs of muscle shifting under a thick grey pelt. His head was in shadow, but I could swear he had pointed ears, a snout, too many teeth, and eyes that shone like fat fireflies. He jerked as the cops’ bullets went in, but kept standing.
    He stretched out a hand and scooped a wildly firing policeman off his feet. I cringed sideways, and just managed to avoid the cop as he tumbled through the air, a jagged lump of clothing and flesh ripped from his chest. Instinctively, I emptied my automatic into the thing’s back. Little tufts raised where the slugs went in, picking out a pentagram. My automatic was full again, so I tried to fill an imaginary circle in the back of the creature’s head. Spittle flew as he half-turned towards me, and I thought better of staying around.
    I ran down the street, leaving Sawyer and company to take care of this intruder from someone else’s plot. I wondered if any of the cops were loaded with silver bullets.
    My music stabbed into me with shrill violins as I splashed through the puddles of Poverty Row. I looked down at my feet and saw the sidewalks shift beneath me as I ran on. Reversed signs shattered under my shoes. I zigzagged, running more often than not down the middle of the road. Cars passed me by, ignoring my obvious distress even when I flapped my arms, trying to flag them down. I realised I was still clutching my gun like a comforter blanket. Still, I ran. There was water in my shoes now, soaking my socks, and the cold was climbing up past my ankles.
    I pushed through crowds and staggered down deserted alleyways. I knocked over newsstands and bounced off delivery trucks. Crouching against a wall, I saw my own face staring guiltily down at me from a WANTED poster. There was a reward out for me, posted by something called the Cicero Club. Police cars prowled past, searchlights stabbing the darkness for me. Knots of people saw me coming and whispered among themselves, turning up their collars to shut me out of the game. Every cop in the city was after me, and I knew Daine’s underworld connections would have spread the word to have me pencilled out of this draft by now. Nobody loves you when you’re down and out and wanted for murder.
    In the French quarter, I saw a Gestapo staff car draw up outside an
estaminet
and heard Raymond Massey describe me in gutturally accented English to a group of swarthy collaborators. I dodged seemingly random shots from the snipers on the roofs. There were Vs painted on all the posters of the Führer Anton Diffring, and bulletholes at chest height on most of the walls.
    Staggering down one well-lit main street, going from bar to bar, I tripped over Sterling Hayden. He was bleeding to death in the gutter, one hand trying to hold his stomach in, the other clutching a battered suitcase held together by travel stickers and string. He groaned as I stumbled, and my foot caught the catch of the case. It sprang open and a wind from nowhere whipped out the loose hundred-dollar bills stuffed inside. A cloud of mimeograph-grey money enveloped me for an instant, bills whipping my face, and scattered away. Pedestrians snatched bills from the air, scooped soggy currency from the sidewalk, watched as the valuable cloud took off like a hot-air balloon, twisting in a faintly manlike shape, ascending to the skies. It was the Genie of the Bank, willing to bestow three wishes on anyone who would set him free of the vaults, but skilled in the arts of irony and deception. All his promised were razor-edged with hidden dangers, loopholes and lessons. Those wise enough to save the last wish usually