The Hierophant and Judgment

The fan boat roared through the bayou, as Cyrus slapped mosquitoes away from his neck. It was December, but that didn’t mean much to Louisiana mosquitoes. At least the humidity was down a little, so he wasn’t completely drowning in sweat.

After a few moments of reviewing the dossiers that Gable had dropped in his lap, Cyrus had decided to go with Henri Guiscane first. The man was a trauma medic who had distinguished himself in a M.A.S.H unit in ‘54. The entire unit had come under shelling, and he’d stayed behind to tend to the patients that couldn’t be moved.

By all rights, he should have gotten a medal for that. But Henri had a problem that the Army couldn’t overlook, not at the time. Henri was a little too black for them.

Henri hadn’t raised a fuss about it, but several of his colleagues had. The Army had decided to solve the problem and quiet the issue by forcing Henri into early retirement. But they’d at least also pulled a few strings to let him get through medical school, and become a full-fledged Doctor. That was no minor task, and the man had managed to knock out the parts he was missing in his education in two years, flat.

Which Cyrus also approved of. You never wanted to trust the gratitude of the services, not for long periods of time. Best bet was to grab what you could get from them, and move on.

The dossier had Henri down as running a small practice in the rougher parts of New Orleans, but Cyrus had found the place closed when he finally found a taxi driver willing to take him to that neighborhood. Some asking around, and a few lies about Henri saving his life during the war, had gotten him pointed to the swamps west of town, and a little flyspeck of a settlement that wasn’t on any official maps.

The place was called “Beulahville,” and the man driving the fanboat had been paid well to get Cyrus out there and back again.

Something was off, though. Cyrus’ gut was telling him that there was something wrong with this whole picture. Not for the first time, he regretted coming here unarmed. But he hadn’t dared bring a gun on the plane, and driving here would have been agony on his broken body. He might have been able to scrounge up one in New Orleans, but the fat stack of bills that Gable had included with the dossiers would only go so far, and plane tickets were expensive.

Fortunately, swamp boat rides weren’t. Cyrus forked over three bucks gladly, when the pilot dropped him off at an old dock at the edge of a crumbling old plantation house, and pointed west.

“‘Bout a t’ree minute walk,” the old fellow said, smiling up at him with a brilliant, if somewhat unevenly-toothed smile. “Gators don’t like the cold much, but don’t go near no logs. Follow the path. You see the old cabins soon ‘nuff.”

Cyrus dug out his cane, promised to be back within the hour, and headed out to the clearest spot he could see between the trees.

He heard the argument well before he saw the cabins. Most of it didn’t make sense, though. There was a man’s voice and a woman’s voice, and the language was either French or something like Creole. Cyrus did catch the name “Henri!” a few times, usually at the end of the woman’s sentences. Usually said in a tone he was well familiar with, when his mom was scolding his dad.

The cabins were in a clearing surrounding a hill, spaced out relatively easily. Some sort of vine-choked platform sat atop the hill, broken stumps of wood showing where poles had been mounted, long ago. The cabins were up on stilts, and were pretty well-worn, well lived in. They’d been decorated with gator hides, mounted fish heads, nets, and oars. A few had other random items, such as old dinner plates or license plates. One had a bicycle frame mounted on the wall at an angle, with the horn near the door and sticking out where a visitor could honk it.

And as Cyrus moved into the space between the nearest two cabins to the path, a long, low whistle sounded three times from the nearest cabin, and immediately the argument stopped.

In the silence, Cyrus heard a sound that made his heart miss a beat.

The metallic clicking of several guns being cocked.

“I’m awful sorry to intrude,” Cyrus said into the silence, knowing that he had maybe a few seconds, if he said the wrong thing. “I’m here to talk to Henri Guiscare. Just talk. That’s all. Then I’ll go back to Mister Perot, and he’ll take me back to New Orleans. Where my friends are waiting for me.”

That last part was a lie. There was no one waiting for Cyrus back in New Orleans. But if someone was thinking to murder him and ditch the corpse out here, then this might make them think twice.

He could hear movement in the cabins around him, low conversation on the air, sharp and tight. Someone whispered.

“Oh for lawd’s sakes!” The arguing man’s voice boomed out. “I’m Henri. Come on out around where I can see you. Come ‘round to the furthest cabin back, and no funny business.”

“None planned. I got a cane, need it to walk,” Cyrus said. “Sorry for all this fuss. Didn’t know I was… I’m not sure what’s goin’ on, here.”

He moved as he spoke, leaning heavier than he needed to on the cane. It had been a pretty good day for the pain, he hadn’t had to touch his medicine yet. But as he felt his heart beat, and the adrenaline rolling just under the surface, telling him just how many people must have sightlines on him from inside the darkened windows of those cabins, he knew that the pain would probably come later. Any stress at all, and it’d be back around like an old friend trying to mooch dinner.

The farthest cabin from the path was small, well-kept, with vases of flowers lining a cramped porch. The curtains on the windows were white and wispy, lit from behind with flickering lantern flames, and it had actual glass instead of tar paper. That said, the old wood creaked as he mounted the stairs, and the walls were just as patched and discolored from the replacement of rotting wood over the decades.

The door swung open as soon as he mounted the porch, and Cyrus found a shotgun barrel in his face. He froze. “That’s uh, not necessary,” he said, slowly.

“That remains to be seen,” Henri Guiscare said. “Annabelle, you reco’nize this fellow?”

“Ain’t nobody I seen ‘fore,” said the feminine voice who’d been arguing with Henri.

When Cyrus refocused his eye, he saw a curvy lady behind Henry. Padded in all the right places, wearing a floral print dress and a wrap around braided hair. Her face was smooth, quite attractive, but the scowl on it told Cyrus that even if he were in the market this was no time to be haggling. Cyrus looked back to Henri.

Henri wore a simple brown suit, jacket off, with a sweat-stained white shirt and bolo tie. The man was a few inches shorter than Cyrus, with coffee and cream colored skin, and his body had the kind of soft to it that Cyrus had seen in many soldiers who’d come back from the war and discovered that they could eat good food on the reg again, and there were no drill sergeants to punish them for taking a slice of cake or two. His hair was grayer than his age would suggest, and his face lined with the sort of worry you didn’t get from sitting around and eating good food on the reg. But it was his eyes that drew Cyrus. Sad, warm, and… fearful? But Cyrus got the notion that Henri wasn’t afraid of him.

And with that, Cyrus relaxed. “You don’t know me, Doctor Guiscare. Your wife doesn’t either.”

The woman snorted. Henri laughed, and lowered the shotgun. “She’s my sister,” he said, smiling with bright teeth, some of them winking silver. “And the fact you don’t know that means you’re all right, and I’m sorry for putin’ a scare into you. Come on in. Have some coffee. Maybe a few beignets? They’re yesterdays, but they still good.”

“Okay. What’s a beignet?” Cyrus asked, feeling the adrenaline drain away, feeling himself smile back, feeling the pain grumble that it wouldn’t get to visit long. “I assume you eat’em?”

Beignets turned out to be fried balls of dough that had been rolled in powdered sugar to the point that if you tried to chew one whole, then you nearly suffocated from the puffs of sweetness that stuck to your windpipes. At least, that’s what happened to Cyrus, and it banished the scowl on Susan Guiscare’s face as she shared a laugh with her brother.

“So, mister Colfax,” Henri said after introductions were done and the coffee was helping ensure the sugar went the right way down Cyrus’ throat. “If you ain’t here on worrisome business, then what may I ask brings you to my… to our doorstep?”

Cyrus had given a fair amount of thought on what to say next. “I’m here unofficially, representing a government agency. We’re recruiting people to go to a dangerous place, to save some children from kidnappers. We are going to need a Doctor for the team. And you’re the best.”

Henri’s eyes widened while Cyrus spoke, and he shared a look with Susan. She seemed just as surprised as he looked.

“And this has nothing at all to do with the trouble we got going on right now?” Henri asked.

“I don’t even know what kind of trouble it is has you hiding out in this swamp. But if you want this job, you might have to tell me about it,” Cyrus said. “Could be we could make it go away. But I’d need details, first.”

Another long look, between brother and sister. A few murmured words, in a language that Cyrus didn’t get, then Susan nodded.

Henri Guiscard cleared his throat. “Well. To be as simple and decent as I can, there’s a young fellow with a rich father, who thinks that Susan should be in his bed.”

“That will never happen!” Susan said, folding her arms. “He would not marry me if he could. And I wouldn’t have him, even if he wanted to do things proper like.”

“Rich enough to cause you trouble? You’re a respected Doctor. An army veteran.”

“And his daddy’s rich enough the Mayor of Nawlins calls him sir.” Henri said. “This young buck’s left a trail of bastard children and abandoned women behind him. So Susan’s back here for a while. ‘Til things quiet down, anyways.”

“They won’t. His bitch fiancee gon’ see to that,” Susan grumbled.

“There’s a woman in the mix? He’s not a bachelor?” Cyrus felt disgusted. Yeah, this sort of thing happened all the time… hell, his own father had gone astray… but to openly cheat on a woman who was going to be your wife? That took a special sort of scum.

“One of those arranged marriages that ain’t supposed to happen in the land of the free. Two rich families comin’ together. Thing is, HER daddy is high up in the local Klan. And Susan caused ‘nuff fuss that she’s sendin’ goons after her. Bunch of layabout white boys with nothin’ better to do.”

“One, two, I could take care of myself,” Susan grumbled. “But they pack a sedan full. Don’t need to guess how that gon’ end.”

Cyrus nodded. “Give me names. I’ll make some phone calls, see if we can make this go away.”

“Just like that?” Henri’s eyes narrowed.

“I don’t know if it’ll be easy,” Cyrus admitted. “But rich men usually have some skeletons in the closet. And the group I work for is pretty good at digging up skeletons.”

He wasn’t bluffing on that. The replacement sheriff who’d taken the last guy’s place back in Cooperston had made threatening noises about Cyrus’ role in the burning of Bunktown, and the murder of Buxley. Mr. Gable had made one phone call to the bureau, one phone call to the Mayor, and all that potential legal trouble had gone away.

Henri chewed the inside of his cheek, as he studied Cyrus. “They send you because you a veteran, too?”

“No,” Cyrus said. “But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a consideration. My boss has played square with me. He’ll deal square with you. And he’s NOT Army.”

“That kind of agency, then…” Henri leaned back. “This dangerous place, how dangerous we talking?”

“Henri…” Susan put her hand on her brother’s knee. He swiped it off, irritated.

“What else we got goin’ on, woman? Might as well hear him out. Beats having to wait ‘till Forrest gives up and fixes on some other poor woman.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“It’s gonna be dangerous as hell, won’t lie. No place you’ll find on any map. Getting there and back again is going to be risky. The upside is we’ll be better armed than the bad guys. The downside is that they’ll have some weird stuff to throw at us. I can’t explain it without getting into classified intel.” Cyrus sighed. “But your job is going to be fixing anyone who goes down, and saving lives.”

“Same as it ever was,” Henri nodded, eyes distant. “You say it’s to rescue kids?”

“Yeah. My brother and sister are there. But there’s a few more, at least.” Cyrus shut his eye. “We can’t move against the bad guys until they’re safe.”

“I’m in. But first you make this problem go away.”

“I’m in too,” Susan said, then raised a hand as Henri stood up. “Don’t you start! I’m goin’ have to get out of town for a while, even if this goes away. You know that!”

“I ain’t lettin’ you go to some jungle or South American death camp or wherever! You know what Mom would DO to me?”

There followed a tirade of angry language, and Cyrus waited for the right moment to clear his throat. Both of the Guiscare siblings glared at him, and he raised his hands to show peaceful intent. “If it helps, we’ve got a staging point in Texas. There’s housing there. She’d be surrounded by armed guards. It’d take a stupid man indeed to bring trouble there, out all the way from Louisiana.”

There was a little more argument, but it seemed mainly like a formality on Henri’s part. And when Cyrus left there, he left with a few names.

It was hard to miss the Sedan following him back to his hotel. It was packed full of goons. That said, they didn’t leave the car when he went inside, and once up in his room overlooking the street, he saw them waiting patiently across the street, sans one who had probably run back to report to his employer. Cyrus figured he had maybe an hour, but he wrestled the desk in front of the door to his room anyway.

Gable picked up the phone on the third ring, and Cyrus gave him the skinny. And Cyrus felt a lot of tension evaporate, when Gable heard the names and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Then he promised to make some phone calls, and between them, they hashed out a plan.

Half an hour later, Cyrus watched the low-slung frame of a police car roll up down the street, and park. The guys in the sedan instantly turned to stare.

Once Cyrus was sure they were fixated on the new arrivals, he unbarred the door and headed downstairs. The sedan goons didn’t notice him until he was a few feet from their car, and the nearest one flinched, as he raised his cane and rapped it against the window.

They stared at him, confused and irritated. Cyrus made little rolling motions with his free hand, until they got the notion and rolled the window down.

“Your boss is either Beaumont Carson or Whitford Chomely,” Cyrus said, watching the men look at each other. They were young, in their twenties or thirties, save for the driver, who was fifty and had a hell of a harder life than his passengers. That one had his hand under the dash, and Cyrus focused his eye on him.

In the reflection of the mirror, as they stared sullenly at him, he saw a policeman emerge from the patrol car and work his way up the street, twirling a nightstick.

Cyrus continued. “Both of those men were part of a conspiracy that plotted to overthrow FDR and replace him with a dictator. But Major General Smedley wasn’t so keen on that idea. It got hushed up.”

Blank looks from the young men, but he saw the driver’s eyes widen, then narrow. Cyrus grinned, and continued. “I’ve been sent to tell you that you’re done with the Guiscares. If your employer decides that he is NOT done with the Guiscares, then his part in the plot will be the talk of papers nationwide within a week. I wonder how the marriage will go THEN? Go and ask him that. We’re done here.”

The driver slowly drew his hand back from the dash, and nodded…

…but one of the young men had enough. He likely didn’t know the stakes, just knew they’d come here to work violence, and this uppity fool needed a taste of brass knuckles. He threw open the door, started to step out…

And the police officer bashed in the door’s window.

The man screamed and dove back in the car, and the driver took off, tires squealing.

The police officer nodded to Cyrus. “My eyes are givin’ me trouble today, sir. Can’t say I see you well. I expect you don’t see me too well either.”

“Must be something in the air. Think I’ll check out early and move on.”

“Might be best, sir. You have a blessed day.”

Another phone call to a certain fan boat owner got a message delivered. “Go. Go now to the address we discussed.”

From what Cyrus had seen of Henri, he wasn’t too worried about Henri and Susan getting to Texas. The man was resourceful, his sister was brave, and they were smart enough to grab a Green’s road atlas and get rolling. And while the cops of New Orleans couldn’t be trusted in the long run, they’d just gotten paid well enough to look the other way for a day or two.

Cyrus checked out and headed to the airport in a good mood, that lasted until he was sitting in the terminal, reading through his next chosen dossier.

This one would be a little trickier.

*****

Cyrus had only ever seen San Francisco in passing. This time was no different. He’d caught sleep on the plane ride over, and given the hilliness of the place, there was no real reason to go sight-seeing. A phone call back to Gable got him a visitor’s ticket on the boat he needed to be on, and within a few hours he was taking the ferry across the bay, to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.

The security was as tight as he expected, and he had to leave his cane at the first stop along the way. But the wary eyed screws were unexpectedly kind enough to provide a folding wheel chair, and a burly guard to push it. This time Cyrus needed the chair; sleeping during the long flight had cramped up his legs pretty fiercely, and walking on them afterwards had only irritated the muscles more.

The prison they called “The Rock,” became a blur. Doors that opened with buzzing, long corridors full of cells, with stony-faced men watching in rows. There were more hallways roped off than he expected. At his curious glance, craning his neck to get a better angle at the third one he cut around, his wheelchair wrangler was kind enough to supply an explanation. “Last earthquake did some damage. Uncle Sam’s still trying to figure out if it’s worth it to fix it all.”

The man he came to see was in solitary, and that involved riding a cargo elevator down into the base of the crag. The tunnels down here were lit with wire-caged lanterns set into the wall, cables running between them. The cell doors were reinforced, riveted metal here, with closed viewing slits. Another guard joined him, as they moved down the corridors.

“I’ll need to talk to him in person,” Cyrus said. “It’s going to be difficult doing that through a viewing slit.”

The newly arrived guard pursed his lips. “I can open the door so you can see each other, but there’s a chance he might try to come at you. That’s going to get messy. We can take him, but maybe not before he messes you up, pal.”

“You think he’ll do that?” Cyrus asked.

“Not likely, but there’s always a chance. The folks in here ain’t here because they’re bad at playing pinochle.”

Cyrus nodded. “I’ll take my chances. Ah… none of you are on his list, are you?”

The glance that the two shared spoke volumes. “No,” one said, tightly. “We’re not.”

“Figured he might put people on there accidentally, that’s all,” Cyrus said.

Still, the tension didn’t ease until they pulled up in front of one cell on the corner. The guard who had been pushing Cyrus rapped on the door with his nightstick, then slid the viewing panel open. “Bart. Got somebody to talk to you face to face. He’s good folks. Don’t go causing trouble or it’ll go bad for you.”

“Well, this is sure a surprise. Sure, I’m decent. Pop the door and let’s palaver.”

It was a mild voice, on the high end for a man. The Minnesota accent didn’t do it any favors, either. It certainly didn’t broadcast this man’s reputation.

One guard took up position next to the door with his nightstick at the ready. The other opened the door and stepped back, then pushed Cyrus’ chair in front of the cell. And Cyrus got his first look at Barty Mossjaeger.

Barty was a slender blonde man, wearing prison stripes. He had a pair of thick-rimmed glasses on his smiling, hawk-nosed face, and wispy hair that he’d tied back into a short pony tail. He was in his early thirties, but Cyrus only knew it by his dossier, and his face was unlined by any sort of worry.

It was, however, lined by a massive scar that ate up a good patch of his lower forehead, carved across his eyes, and highlighted the fact that one eye was green, and the other was black. The shrapnel that had torn through his head had left him viewing the world through mismatched orbs, ones that studied Cyrus with an empty, unworried gaze.

Barty Mossjaeger, Lieutenant Mossjaeger, had been a tough son of a bitch, by all accounts. Fast, deadly, well thought of by his fellow Rangers. Then some North Korean had put a grenade in exactly the wrong place to drop Barty… but not enough of a spot to finish him. Against the odds, a MASH unit like the one that Henri Guiscare had been in had managed to save Barty, at the cost of leaving the shrapnel in, permanently.

But when Barty had finally woken up from the coma, he was a different man.

People didn’t realize just HOW different, until the murders started. And they certainly didn’t connect the disappearances to good ol’ Barty Mossjaeger, who had come back from the war a little weird.

Barty Mossjaeger was a psychopath, now. He’d lost most of who he had been when that shrapnel had made a nest in his frontal lobe. What was left over was… something not quite human. Not entirely.

“I’ve read your files,” Cyrus said. “So that’ll save us some time. You like killing bad people.”

Barty tilted his head. “No.”

“No?”

“It’s necessary to kill bad people. So I do it. I don’t like or dislike it. It just needs doing, you know.”

“Yeah. I do know, kind of.” Cyrus shrugged. “I went to war to stop the bad folks. But you went to kill them, and there’s a difference there. And that’s all right. Lot of folks I knew enlisted to do that—”

“No,” Barty interrupted. “I went to war to prove to my Dad I wasn’t queer.”

Cyrus blinked, and coughed. He heard the guards chuckle behind him.

“Sure was a lot of fights, oh gosh yes, back in Basic,” Barty said, smiling wider. “When you’re small like me with a funny voice, people make some assumptions. But then we got in the field and it didn’t matter, and I went for my tabs, and that more or less settled it. And I realized that Dad was just an asshole. Like a lot of guys were. Doesn’t mean they’re bad, just dumb and mean. But anyway, the murdering part didn’t come along until later.”

“So you admit what you were doing was murder?”

“You betcha. But they all had it coming. I took my time and checked ‘em out, once someone got on my radar. Never put anyone in the ground who didn’t deserve it.”

“That man out in St. Paul who got his daughters pregnant,” Cyrus said, hating that he was having to even in a sideways manner have to defend this guy by proxy, even if it was more of a devil’s advocate… “That man in St. Paul had been caught and sentenced.”

“Yep. And it was too light. There was no reason he shouldn’t have gotten the chair. So he got me, instead. And I was working on looking over the judge for that case when they caught me. I’m still a little sad I never got to finish that, but I needed to see his bank accounts to make sure and I’m sure not a safe cracker.”

The guards chuckled.

Cyrus closed his eye.

This was why it was hard. Not because Barty Mossjaeger had issues to resolve, like Henri Guiscare had.

It was difficult because Barty was dangerous.

This man was completely sane, completely fearless of the law, and a cold-blooded murderer. And if Cyrus asked him to help, and he accepted, then he’d be turning him loose to kill more people. And probably some people that Cyrus didn’t want dead.

Cyrus had spent most of his life in Texas. Many of his neighbors were people that Barty Mossjaeger would have quietly grinned and gone to work on, whittling down the list.

And as far as the assholes that had Rusty and Beth, well…

“Answer me this,” Rusty said, into the silence, opening his eye to see Barty leaned forward, scrutinizing him carefully. “If it was a choice between saving kids and killing the worst people in the world, what would you do?”

“Gee willikers. This isn’t a trick question, like is one of those kids going to grow up to be Hitler? This is a serious question?”

“He better not grow up to be a Hitler, or I’ll tan his hide. No. It’s deadly serious.”

Barty rubbed his chin, and his eyes flicked back and forth as he considered. “Well, I figured out the best use for what was left of my life was getting rid of bad people. I could lie and say I was doing it for the kids but really it just felt right. But if I didn’t save kids when I had the chance that’d make me a pretty bad person, I figure. Well, worse, anyway.”

“You don’t think you’re a good person?” Cyrus asked.

“Me? Oh heck no! When I realized just how messed up I was, I thought about finishing the job!” Barty made finger guns, and mimed popping himself in the temples. “But it sure would have been rude to do that after the docs put me back together. “And I figured I could spend my time hunting down worse. I really doubt the world’s gonna run out of bad men before I die. Heck, might be soon. There’s talk I could get the death penalty from the last few murders.”

The only reason Barty hadn’t made headlines nationwide was because he HAD left plenty of details around from his research, Cyrus knew. The judge who first got his case hadn’t wanted to turn the man into any kind of role model, or give him any sort of sympathy.

After spending a few minutes in the presence of Barty, Cyrus was pretty sure the judge had made the right call. Barty just wasn’t right. The more Cyrus watched him smile, the more he looked into those empty eyes, the more he knew he was in the presence of something that wasn’t human anymore. Something that had died on the operating table, and something ELSE had come back, instead.

And damn it all, Cyrus had to work with what he had.

I’m going to hell for this, he thought, as he took a deep breath.

“The organization I represent needs you to kill some very bad people to save some children. The children are the priority. You’ll still be serving your sentence while you’re working with us, but any executions that come down the pike, well, they’ll get a stay. Maybe the governor’s pardon if it becomes necessary. You’ll be working with a team, and regardless of how bad you think any of them are, if you go after one of them you’ll die next. This operation will be off the books, you won’t be able to talk about it. No one will believe you if you do, anyway. There’s a good chance you die in the field, the opposition is fierce. Odds of success are slim. Do you understand me so far?”

“Well shoot, you’re threatening me with a good time, here! When do we leave?”

The rest was perfunctory, and wrapped up in a matter of minutes. The rest of the logistics would be handled by a phone call back to Site 719, set in motion by Gable’s administrative staff. They’d trade phone calls with the appropriate authorities, mail letters, the wheels of bureaucracy would grind and Barty Mossjaeger would be transported to an “alternate holding site,” due to “possible threats to his life.”

Sadly, his flight was on the morrow, so Cyrus found a cheap hotel back in ‘Frisco and settled in for a night’s rest and a chance to figure out the next steps.

He got neither, as he tossed and turned and worried, and spent the whole night reflecting on what he’d done.

Cyrus could not shake the feeling that he’d fucked up in some big, integral way by bringing Mossjaeger on board. And he just knew that he’d live to see it come back to bite him in the ass.