Dark of the Moon
© 2024 by Walter Reimer and E.O. Costello


One



The barbershop was a mess, with shattered glass from the obliterated front windows littering the floor and the sidewalk and glinting in the streetlights and the shop’s ceiling lamps. The mirrors that had lined one wall were a complete loss, and shards formed little islands within a sea of liquids: Barbicide, colognes, water.

Blood.

Quite a lot of it, too. The place reeked, too, from all the liquids.

The walls were pockmarked with bullet holes and the cops were standing around trying to figure out where to start marking each one, along with all the other evidence at the crime scene.

Of course, the victim was a logical place to start, I suppose. I looked down at him and took my hat off out of respect.

The victim was – well, he was half-wrapped in one of those sheets barbers will put around you to keep you from getting hair all over your clothes. Not that he would have had to worry about that. He wasn’t wearing any clothes.

What he was wearing was a thick coat of salt-and-pepper fur, because he was a werewolf.

Me? Name’s Pete Walshe; my friends call me Knocko. I work the werewolf beat here in New York City for my employer, the World-Telegram & Sun. Thanks to things like television, a lot of the guys who used to work with me aren’t working any longer. Just a few of us left throughout the city, but I’m the only guy on the World-Telly.

Werewolves? Ah, well, when you get most of the immigrants in Europe fetching up in New York City, you can sort of guess that the biggest population of lycanthropes (if you want to be fancy about it) would be in the Five Boroughs and spreading out as far as Philadelphia and Boston. Probably farther, since lots of immigrants just passed through Gotham on the way to Minnesota and other places out west.

Me? Nah; I’m as normal as they come. Grandparents came from Ireland during the Famine, and whoever saw a redhead werewolf, hah?

I went into a sort of half-crouch and looked over the body. Lots of bullet holes in him, front and back; whoever wanted to ice him wanted to be very sure. Maybe six feet tall, solid build but trending to fat, and the gray in his fur indicated to me that he was middle-aged. His teeth were bared, and one eye was closed while the other was half-open and sort of milky. Been dead a couple hours, at least. There was an overturned tray nearby, with a large brush peeking out from under it.

My calf muscles were starting to complain, so I straightened back up.

"Not going to say a ‘Hail, Mary,’ Knocko?"

I turned around. Richard Armbruster, my rival from the Daily News, had been admitted past the police cordon. It looked like New York’s Finest was letting only the reporters who knew about werewolves through. Armbruster knew a lot.

Whether he cared was another question.

"Shut up, Armbruster." That was Inspector Cunningham, NYPD Special Branch – also known as the Werewolf Squad. Having him in charge of the murder scene was a pretty ominous sign, on top of all the others. "Have a bit of respect."

"Why? A stiff's a stiff." Armbruster looked around. "Took quite a bit to make him assume room temperature, though. Anyone see anything? Like, maybe, the barber?"

“We’re looking for him,” Cunningham said. He looked at me. “Walshe.”

“Inspector.” He and I knew each other, and I wouldn’t be standing here if he hadn’t seen me trying to get past the beat cop outside. The cop wasn’t too impressed with my press pass, or the ‘special’ one with the purple stripe on it. Lucky for me, though, Cunningham spotted me and had me come on in. “Not surprised you’re on this.”

“More than you know.” He gave me the eye. “You hear the howling earlier?”

I think the whole city heard it. I was at a bar, in a back room, discussing the Dodgers over beers with a guy named Michael. He’s a werewolf, Irish ancestry like me, and sort of a go-between between me and the Pack. Long story short, I did them a good turn a few years earlier, and they thought Michael would be a good way to pass questions and answers back and forth.

Pretty good arrangement.

Anyway, we were wondering how in hell a journeyman like Larsen could throw a perfect game when Michael suddenly sat up in his chair.

There was a pause, and he Shifted, and he gave a start like he’d been goosed. Well, he was wearing pants; no place for his tail to go, right? His wolf ears swiveled, and went straight up again.

He gave me a fearful look. “Trouble,” he said.

It took me a good few beats to pick up on the noise, since we were inside the back room of the beer joint. I went over to the small window, and cranked it open.

There was howling going on, and it wasn't any sort of musical howling. I’m told Italian werewolves are almost operatic, but I guess I don’t have the ear for it. Anyway, these sounds were staccato and urgent, with howls overlapping each other.

In short, what Michael said. Trouble.

At this hour of the night, no one was using the payphone, so I called down to Barclay Street. On an evening newspaper, two in the morning is a pretty dead time, but there's always someone there in case something happens.

And something had happened.

"Knocko! Thank God you phoned in. You've heard it?"

"The howling? Yeah. It seems like it's all over. Anyone got a handle on what's going on?"

"That's for you to figure out, Knocko. All I can tell you is, head over to the Park Central Hotel. There's a werewolf that's been gunned down there."

I paused in the act of writing this down in my notebook.

"Hunh? Shot?"

"Shot."

"At the Park Central?!"

"That's what we've been told."

“Shit. Thanks.” I hung up, headed back to the back room, and swallowed the last of my beer, before I told my friend what I'd been told.

Michael looked up at me, and you could see some fear in his yellow eyes.

“Yeah, I heard,” I said to the Inspector. I jerked a thumb at the victim. “We have a name to fit the muzzle?”

“Not yet,” Cunningham said, “but he’s an older guy, I know that. Pity no one’s been able to sort how to trigger a Shift so we can see what he’s like in skin, ‘stead of in fur.” He eyed me. “Unless you know something.”

I shook my head. See, when I first really learned about werewolves in the Army, I found out that a lot of the things I thought I knew were wrong.

First, forget about the full Moon. The Shift, as they call it, is voluntary, and they have their first one when they’re teenagers. After that, they can do it anytime. Second, poking them with silver won’t work. Being a werewolf isn’t some kind of curse or something. I’m not really sure, but I think there’s at least one working for the Church, up in the Upper West Side.

Finally, you don’t ‘catch’ it from another werewolf. When I was in Germany right after the War, I – well, the term back then was ‘frat.’ Meant the same as another four-letter word starting with ‘f,’ catch my drift? Long story short, I had this Fräulein in bed, and she was a lively sort, and she bit me a couple times. Found out later that she had a furry side; she had Shifted in her sleep.

One of the weres in my unit set me straight about that. Made me feel better. I mean, you very well can’t go to a pro station for lycanthropy, can you?

When I made T3, a guy with a white lab coat over his uniform tried to explain to me how the Shift worked. My eyes started to cross about five minutes in.

Armbruster was rattling off questions left and right at the Inspector, and I was half-listening. Most of the questions were obvious ones, the kind that would be asked at the scene of any homicide. My rival, though, was in a bit of a hurry, since if he wanted to make the city final, he had to get on the phone right away with the essentials.

And, of course, being the Daily News, they had to have a grabbing picture on the front page. Remember, this was the paper that once showed a person getting the chair at Sing Sing. A guy with a Speed Graphic was shooting up close to the body, getting a full on shot of the face.

Barclay Street had sent up a photographer as well, and he quietly went up to me. He looked at the body, shuddered slightly, and crossed himself. I don't think he was all that keen on going near it. I turned to him, slightly.

"Listen. This is the shot I want." I pointed toward a shattered mirror, which had a sharp, web-like pattern of cracks. The shop’s union sign rested nearby, surrounded by shattered glass. "Get me something showing a cop's reflection in that."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "Not the body?" he whispered back.

"Trust me on this. Anyone give you grief, point them to me."

"Gonna put flowers down?" asked Armbruster. "Make it real artsy." I ignored him, took a few steps back, and looked over the scene.

They'd already started laying out the little flags indicating where bits of evidence lay, and I could see circular chalk-marks on the walls where it looked like they'd found slugs. Not much of a surprise. It was probable that the killer, or killers, had come in through the door leading not to the street, but to the hotel lobby. The dead werewolf had been sitting in one of the chairs. Probably the chair next to the toppled-over tray with the brush.

Given that the werewolf had exit wounds both front and back, it was likely that he'd seen something in the mirror, got up, was hit by some shots, turned around, and that's when he got finished off. Might have rolled over slightly as he died.

It wasn't a haphazard hit, though. All the smashed bottles, and the smashed mirrors, were in a tight arc. The front window must have been a few wild shots.

Damned lucky no one else was about. Damned lucky for the barber, too, whoever he was. Under ordinary circumstances, he'd have been right in the line of fire.

Armbruster swaggered off through the doors to the lobby, probably to commandeer one of the payphones to call 42nd Street. His photographer finished the job and beat feet, probably to find a taxi. My guy wasn't in that much of a hurry and was setting up a shot.

There was a shout from outside, and a bunch of confused voices. Inspector Cunningham and I both stepped over to the remains of the window and my mouth fell open.

Michael was there, still Shifted. I could see his tail and realized that he’d deliberately torn open the back of his pants. He was trying to get past two cops, his ears flat against his head and his eyes wide. “Knocko!” he gasped.

“Friend of yours?” Cunningham asked.

I nodded. “If he’s this wound up, he’s found something out.”

The Inspector gave the cops the high sign, and they let Michael past them. He took a few steps around all the broken glass, really careful because he’d taken his shoes off, and he stopped and stared at the victim.

His tail immediately tucked between his legs and he crossed himself. “God protect us . . . “ he whispered.

“What is it, Michael?” I asked him. I keep my voice down, because I don’t want any bystanders to hear.

“The Alpha,’ he whispered.

Cunningham looked back at the dead wolf and asked, “Which Pack?”

Michael cringed slightly and shook his head. “You don’t understand. The Alpha.”



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