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M A R A N A T H A

© Osfer, June 2005

_All rights reserved.

May only be distributed for free.

May not be altered in any way.

Contains material of an erotic and homosexual nature which may be illegal to

read in your country, state, province or region.

The author takes no responsibility for transgressions on the part of the reader

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Available on paperback in 2005

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Chapter XVII - As Told By Nicky Marlowe

"I'm gonna go help my dad."

Easy words to say, on the surface, but there's a whole bunch of practical considerations that go with them. Most notably the lionboy shivering under my arm, wearing my denim jacket over his light mesh shirt and my boxers in lieu of the pants he lost. Or, well, I lost them for him. No, it's his fault for being so damn hot. Fuck, I'm hard as a rock, but I've got to focus and Alice, sweet kid that he is, knows that too, which is why he isn't reaching into my jeans or gnawing on my ears and trying to drag me into the nearest alley to leave something warm and wet inside him.

"I like your maarkings," he says with a voice like a christmas-tree bell, and he touches my face, looking at me like he's never seen me up close before. Maybe I look as different as I feel, that'd be cool. I smile down at him and I find myself hoping to all hell that puberty never catches up with my guy because if his leonine genes ever bust through his girlish good looks and turn him into a tall, hulking, bronze-maned Adonis I'm going to feel a mite less good about myself.

While he's looking at me, tracing the rosettes on my cheek, I look at him just as curiously, wondering what that would be like. My growth spurt's over ­­­­- I don't even know exactly how tall I am, I was always really skittish about measuring myself after I was the same height at fourteen that I was at thirteen, but I'm about chin-height to most guys around the six-foot-mark. And Alice is small enough he can rest his head on my shoulder while we proceed down the street and I imagine what it would be like if that were to change.

Shallow, I know. Me feeling uncomfortable about my prettyboy maybe ending up buffer and taller than me. It's its own kind of sexy notion, big, strapping studlion on all fours to suck me off while I watch TV, or rolling onto his back to let me hump him. And we've been playing with some mildly rough sex over the last few weeks, he likes it when I push him and grab him and if he were big and strong I could maybe be even rougher with him, if he'd like that. But I can't imagine feeling as good about fucking this little lion as I did just a few hours ago, if he could beat me in an arm-wrestling match and had a bigger dick than me. Call me old-fashioned, but I really dig being the man in our relationship.

Which is what I'm doing right now. "Is this the place?" I ask as we arrive at a pawn shop in a slightly more seedy, but also more interesting part of town than where I live. Back home everything's shit but doesn't have the decency to just break down and add some character to the place. The lights are dim and cracked, but none frizzle or die and all the cars are junk, but no burned-out wrecks. This block is much more exciting, and strangely familiar. "Is this where your sister lives?"

He nods to me. "It is where I live also," he tells me, guiding me around the back of the shop, moving one of the bricks by the back door and taking out a single, unmarked key with which he opens the door. When we walk into what looks to be a storeroom, we're immediately hit by the wall-muffled sounds of good hard sex, a yowling female voice and the deep lowing of an ox, along with the jingling of chains and the crack of a whip. "And my sister's boyfriend sometimes visits," my little lion says with a lick of his lips. "Shall I ask her if we can play in the basement sometime?"

He's such a tease and he jumps when I pinch him on the rump. I take a moment, staring into a grubby mirror, but I'm not looking at the handsome, if short, jaguar reflected there. I'm sniffing, and I smell something... familiar. Can't place it. When I break my concentration and see Alice in a corner, his shirt and my coat laid over a table, wiggling his boxers down as he rummages through a box marked 'Aleš' I hear my feet walking before I even feel them, I hear the sound of a zipper, see a shadow falling over my little boyfriend and hear him sighing softly in surprise, and I'm about to ask him what's wrong when I look down and see me knees are bent, the crotch of my jeans is pressed to his golden-furred buns and a stout, lightly barbed erection juts out of my fly and under his tail. Man, the things my body does when I'm not paying attention!

"Oh, Maarlowe..." Alice groans and straightens up, leaning back against my chest, shivering as the maneuver slides my dick deeper up his snug little passage. It's amazing ­­- he sometimes sees half a dozen Johns a day, but whenever I have him it's like he's just any fifteen-year-old. Not that I've fucked any other fifteen-year-old, and with a little hellcat like Alice, who needs to, but you know what I mean. He sways his hips and wiggles his back, growing warm to the touch like he always does when I just make myself at home in him unannounced and, softly, my hips begin to move, lightly entering him and retreating to the rhythm of his breaths.

It's possibly the lightest sex act we've ever performed, really small movements, occasional caresses, soft kisses, but the feeling... My dick's raw from overuse and it's lost some of its meaty thickness, like with morning wood, but what's left over is the pure, steel-hard core of the erection and the ache of it lends a special fire to the sensation of easing into that warm, narrow little tunnel, feeling those hot buns slide along either side of my dick. I love him so much, right this second and I know he loves me back, for whatever stupid reason and that if I asked him to he'd have a vasectomy so he'd never grow big and buff and while that's a really sick idea and I'd never ask it of him, and would really protest if he suggested it himself, knowing, intuitively, that he'd do it for me...

"I'm going to leave all of my stuff here... I want you to keep the books safe and not read them," I say, nuzzling his cheek to turn his head in the direction of the worktable where I left my backpack, lit by the dim bulb overhead that lights only our legs and gyrating hips and gives our face some privacy. "The rest is for your sister to sell, whatever she thinks is a fair price. I'm going to take some things I need, and if they're worth more than what I left, I promise I'll work to pay her back, if I don't return them."

It's hard to hold a conversation when you're having s- fuck, no, wait. We may be doing it standing-up in the corner of some dingy pawn-shop, me in jeans and a shirt and him beautifully naked, but, dammit, this is making love . It's slow, it's gentle, I actually care even more about making my boy gasp and sigh than getting off... So yeah, it's really hard to talk coherently during something like this, but I manage it and Alice manages to understand, and to nod. He clenches his buns and pushes back hard and does that bunny wiggle, rolling his hips in that weird pattern that feels so good and with two sharp sighs into his ear and a rough, stomach-tensing hunch up his rear - I'm so used to sex on the streets that I can't even make any noise even in private ­- my dick spits warm cum up his ass and he gets this adorable dreamy look in his eyes like feeling me squirt inside him is better for him than doing the squirting is for me. Jesus, if I ever get tired of spending time in this boy, just shoot me, because I'm not right in the head.

Both of us are quiet as I withdraw. A really beautiful moment passed and now a sense of dread's cooled the air. I turn my back to him as I zip up and he lowers his tufted tail to pull on a jumper and a pair of pants from the box while I scan the racks, crates and boxes for valuable equipment. A shiny balisong immediately catches my eye - the butterfly knife is old and rubbish, but I don't even check how sharp the blade is as I slip it into my back pocket. As long as it has a point, it'll make a good weapon and I'm not experienced enough a fighter for it to really matter if the blade is razor-sharp or just butter-knife-sharp. A bunch of gloves, all different sizes, but I manage to get one fingerless bicycle glove and one soccer goalkeeper glove, both of which have reasonably good grip. A little powder box with a flip-open mirror slips into my pocket - it may be pink, but I'm not picky. A length of rope - I get a very Boondock Saints vibe as I stuff the coils into a hipbag and fasten it tightly about my waist, feeding it through a beltloop. And of course the gear I always carry in my thigh pocket ­­- tools of the trade, as it were.

Alice lays his hand on my butt, making me jump, but when I turn around I see he's emptied my backpack and laid my diaries apart, and is holding a bunch of crap that he thinks maybe I'll find useful, and, dammit, he's real smart. There's a pack of firecrackers, still sealed, a laser pointed, a little plastic box of hairpins, a bunch of velvet handkerchiefs with stains I really don't want to think about, which I wrap around a number of items that would otherwise rattle in my pack, a pair of dark tinted swimming goggles whose only fault is a small hole near the socket that seals to the left eye, a GPS device that has a post-it with a date on it, no doubt the date when the guy who pawned it gets his last chance to buy it back and the thing goes on sale in the shop - two days from now, and the thing shows only one bar of battery status when I flick it on. A slim, slim digital camera that makes both of us grin when it shows that half its memory is filled with family photographs and the last two pictures are of mom fox and dad fox, smiling at the camera they hold themselves while they do it doggystyle in a small bed with model airplanes hanging over it and schoolbooks on the floor.

Some more crap, which I won't mention lest I spoil the surprise, goes in the backpack and a second hipbag and a tight bodywarmer, cool and black, goes around my chest before Alice helps me pull my backpack on. I turn and he grabs my paw, looking down at it. I feel so tall when I'm with him. He lifts my fingers to his lips, kisses them and slides a diamond ring on my finger, the diamond stud facing down. "It was the sharpest I could find," he whispers and I get what he means, though the tender helpfulness of the moment is rather spoiled by the sudden scream of ecstasy emanating from the basement. "You should go now. My sister always leaves to take her shower very quickly and if she finds you here she will want to meet you," Alice says, lightly pushing me back toward the door and as he does so, in his black pullover and loose slacks, I sort of get the feeling how our relationship might turn out if he indeed grew bigger than me, so to do my bit in preventing that just yet I take him in my arms and kiss him in a most manly fashion, hooking my fangs behind his, inhaling his delicious sweet scent and giving the buns I fucked not five minutes ago a squeeze that has him moaning when I break the kiss.

And then I'm outside, and I start jogging, and then I remember how far I have to run and I turn back and boost my first car ever, without a hitch.

I'll admit I wasn't thinking purely about practicality when I picked the wheels to steal, but the black 'vette, despite some terrible damage to the hood's paint-job and a dent in on door and a patched up window simply spoke to me when I saw it amid burned out wrecks and SUV's. A thing of beauty is a thief's beacon.

Being a city boy with a Scroogey mom and, really, no need of a car I hadn't had much driving experience since driver's ed, so it took me a while to get to know this black beastie, but by now she's purring along. Traffic's a bit thicker once I cross into the commerce district, just skirting the rim of what passes for Maranatha's night-life. Workaday clubs for teens that don't know any better and tawdry boozeries for yuppies or the unemployed. The night-life in Maranatha's great if you don't have any standards, but this city hides its real jewels and I guess I'm just not in-crowd enough to know have them revealed to me. I've heard of this place called the Dive, or maybe that's just the name of some rave that moves around, I really don't know and nobody'll tell me where it is. It sucks.

I stop at a traffic-light even though there's no other cars on this part of the road, but in the commercial quarter there's traffic cams all over the place, and getting my ass tagged in a stolen vehicle ain't gonna benefit me none. I look at the tall, mirror-smooth buildings around, completely abandoned at this time of night except for one or two offices and I wonder what people do there. Are there really nighthawks burning the midnight oil for their bosses? Maybe they're illicit, like me, doing some creative accounting, as I hear some people call 'fraud' now and again. No, then they wouldn't put on the lights.

Could I ever work there? White collar, suit? Aside from the fact that without so much as a high school diploma I ain't never gonna get hired, I wonder if I, me, could do it. It's not like I've got kids to feed, but I am feeling the urge, more and more, to provide for Alice and preferably not by stealing from folks, like I've been up to now. Although all the folks I roll tend to be smug fiftysomething assholes that think the world owes them three restaurant meals a week and a car that never breaks down. They piss me off, so I don't feel guilty about lifting some stuff.

Never anything that looks like personal effects, though. Hell, Finnigan came into the hide-out one day boasting of a jewel-box he'd stolen and laughed his ass off when there were a bunch of teeth in one compartment ­- some hausfrau had considered her kids' baby teeth worth keeping. I put the beat down on that sneaky fox's ass and he gave 'em to me fair and square, to his credit, and I waited outside the house he stole 'em from and when the daily groceries arrived, I had my buddy Tommy distract the driver while I snuck into the van, uncapped one of the bottles of milk and dropped the teeth in before writing "Lots of Love from the Tooth Fairy" on the side of the bottle.

Tommie blabbed about it and I got my ass laughed at, but who cares. Maybe they're right, maybe I am too soft for this trade. So what, then? Get a job in the mail room, work my way up to partner in some law firm? Used to happen. Yeah, right.

I leave the commercial quarter behind me and head up to the inner Maranatha ring road. This is completely deserted. Nobody knows about it, I think, except those people who read the leaflets the municipal information office drops in your mailbox. Like I do, when even my stereo can't blot out the shrill sound of mom and Suzie fighting or enthusing over this or that.

Maybe I could join the army for a few years? I could get a diploma, and learn some other stuff. Heavy vehicles driver's license, or maybe some engineering, who knows? Then again, the world ain't a safe place no more, and while I got no objection to the notion of doing some good for the world, if not my country... I'm a selfish guy, and I don't wanna leave Alice behind. Not ready for that, yet.

Bluecollar stuff, then. That's a problem, because I don't really know it. I see these huge guys working at the docks or in car shops and Santa's gonna have to bring me a couple more inches before I measure up to those standards. Fiddly technical stuff I got no fingers for. Let's see, what else?

I cruise over the inner ring road, a jag in a 'vette, is there anything slicker? I think not. All I need is my boy strapped into the seat next o me, leaning over for some nice road head. Mmm... I pass a construction site, and then another. It looks like the Maranatha municipality has decided to expand the commerce district, because there's one hulking, spindly metal skeleton piercing the sky after another. Construction? I could do that. And I've got no qualms working high steel, and that might pay pretty good, too. Honest nine-to-five work to provide for me and my lion.

Would he quit his work, though? I mean, I think it's really sexy how many guys he fucks, the thought of a fifteen-year-old whore who's still as sweet and cute as him, and as enthusiastic for sex with me, rowr. But ten years from now? Ah, hell, who am I kidding? We've been together a couple months and I'm already thinking ten years ahead. Idiot.

I'm already hearing the sirens, so instead of taking the exit I should, I cruise on a bit. My palms aren't sweating in their gloves, my heart isn't hammering in my chest and I'm not nervous at all. This, let me inform you, is not because I'm a cool criminal, a smooth operator who's been in worse scrapes. No, it's because I'm just a stupid kid who thinks he's hot shit while he has no idea what's waiting for him.

I park the car a few blocks away. Insofar as you can really talk about blocks in a district with warehouses and small houses and big silos. It's a little way up the light slope leading up to Maranatha Penitentiary. Crap! I just realized that if I get nabbed by the cops today I'm going there instead of juvie. And I don't even know anybody there. This sucks...

A drainpipe clings to the dark building I parked next to, right between two identical vans with fish logos on the side, that should be pretty safe. I even take the time to fiddle with the lock to try and get it to close, but it won't work. I really hope the corvette's still there when I get back, it's a real sweet ride and I back away from it, smiling at the sight of that beautiful machine before I hop up and scale the drainpipe. Once up top I kneel and swing my backpack around to my side, pulling out a monocular. It clearly used to be binoculars, but the hinge broke, but it doe the job, allowing me to scan my target.

Jesus H. Particular Christ.

At least the snippets of conversation I overheard when Mister Sharpish and some of his goons came to inspect our safehouse weren't wrong. The building's lit by spotlights that sweep it pointlessly like in action movies, little red-blue police lights adding to the epilepsy-inducing spectacle. There's the sound of a helicopter moving away, so maybe they've all been here so long it need to refuel or something, I don't know. All I know is there's more police surrounding the 21 st precinct building than ever worked there.

"Lombardi's been transferred, you say?" asked Mister Sharpish, the creepy ferret in that heavy-duty trenchcoat of his, two goons in black bomber jackets at his side, addressing a smartly dressed fox that I remember had an Irish name or something. He used to be one of the bigger bosses in town, but Mister Sharpish muscled his way up the ladder and now Mackey, as some of us call the older fox, works for Mister Sharpish.

"Indeed," says the fox, adjusting his tie subconsciously as if anyone in this entire building, condemned hulk, crack house and thieves den that it is, actually knows how a Windsor ought to be tied. "Our esteemed detective Lombardi has been assigned to desk duty in an out-of-the-way precinct because his singular obsession with Mister Ferrum caused him to neglect his other duties. Our problem would appear to have solved itself."

"Our problem?" asked Mister Sharpish. My god, if I ever see anyone with a more unsettling grin than that beady-eyed fucked-up ferret, I'm gonna shit myself. The ragged bunch of us stood lined up in the common room on the house's ground floor like soldiers at attention.

The fox just nodded graciously. "Your problem, of course, sir." No more than two months ago Mister Sharpish was a little upstart taking orders from the fox, Mackel or Mickilay or something - whatever, we all called him Mackey - and now he was the ferret's secretary or something, always walking with him, notebook in hand, phone in pocket. Never seen anybody take defeat that coolly, but this guy? A real pro. You can see why spent so long at the top without getting his ass whacked.

The ferret shook his head. "Solved my ass," he said and he looked right at me and I thought my heart was just gonna jump outta my chest and run down the street to get away from that look. "He's been a thorn in my thigh and now he's gonna be a sitting duck. Jolly! Feck!" he yelled and two muscular wolves, their torsos almost balloon-like in their puffy bomber-jackets, came and stood behind him. "I want you guys to put together a twelve-man team for a full-on assault. No timeframe, just make a list so's everybody knows what they're doing." I looked around at the other boys in the room - we always dreaded Mister Sharpish' inspections, even more so now he was the big cheese in this part of town, and the thought of him being so distracted that he might leave before giving us any shit about not thieving enough was no discomfort to us. "And Mackey?" I could see the fox wince, and with a customer that cool, you know that means he's hurtin' bad . He hates that name, and Mister Sharpish knows it. "You start comin' up with plans for the attack, there's a good lad."

He was moving away now, the thick, armored leather of his coat sweeping behind him and the goons behind that. A dozen young chests heaved with relief when Mackey, kind old man that he'd always been, turned his gentle eyes on me and said "Sir?" and when the ferret whipped around and fixed me with a glare it took me every ounce of balls to keep my ears upright and my bladder from voiding. "I believe young master Marlowe might have the key."

The other guys sniggered at the title he called me, obviously, but I was in such a state that I was sure there was a different reason. I'm not gonna tell you now, it'll spoil the surprise. But it scared the dripping shit outta me and my legs wanted to step back and my arms wanted to flail and my throat wanted to shout, but I did none of those things, even when Mister Sharpish came closer and threw his thin, malicious shadow over me.

"Zat right, son? You got something of value to contribute to our little enterprise?"

I didn't pale, didn't flinch. I looked him straight in those mad little eyes and Mackey stepped up behind him, flicking through the pages of his notebook.

"Indeed, sir. It appears master Marlowe - silence!" he snapped outta the blue at the other guys' sniggering, and they shut up PDQ. "Master Marlowe uncovered a rather novel route into the precinct which our detective is being transferred to. This may be a substantial tactical advantage. See for yourself," he said helpfully, handing the notebook to Mister Sharpish, who looked at the pages and then at me and smiled.

I didn't sigh with relief that this wasn't about what I thought it was about. I looked Mister Sharpish straight in those glittering little eyes. "Well now," he said with a grin and reached out to pat my cheek and I felt sick. "Aren't you just the enterprisin' young whipper-snapper?" I swear, I could see Mackey roll his eyes at the fact that Mister Sharpish used the word 'enterprise' twice in a row. "What's your name, Marlowe? Kid, I think you're gonna go far... Jolly, Feck, check this out," he snapped and turned again, his goons leaning over his shoulder to peer at the notebook. I don't know what it meant, but the old fox smiled at me as he adjusted his tie and followed his new boss out the door.

Tense? Tense wasn't the word for it. I was wound like a spring in a ballistic missile's gyroscope and when Billy Pockets, a short-eared rabbit I'd done some good work with on account of his jumping legs, patted me on the shoulder, I spun around and punched him in the gut hard enough to send him back against the wall. One of the paintings of the house's previous owner fell off the wall and hit him on the head and he fell unconscious in his own puke.

So yeah, I can admit it. That wasn't the nicest thing to do, and Billy Pockets totally didn't deserve it, but you know how these things go. The other guys looked at me like I was crazy and in this business, that's a good rep to have. That's why Mister Sharpish is in charge now - people think he's crazy and don't dare cross him. So I can't show I regret instinctively punching a rabbit who ain't been nothing but friendly to me, 'cuz, well, I might as well dress in a tutu and such everybody's dick. I walked right outta there, with a whole heap more cred than when I'd walked in, and a whole heap more troubles.

Trouble, that's the word. Trouble's what you call a flock of police around the place you wanna get into. They look real tetchy, too, from what I can see through the monocular. Swilling coffee with guns drawn. These guys must have been on duty all day with that nasty business up in the Sargasso building and it looks like all of them'd rather be home than here.

That's one thing you gotta say about Mister Sharpish. He ain't dumb, and he ain't the kind to wait so long to see if something's worth while that it passes him by. That's why I knew he'd do it today, when I saw the Sargasso thing on the news this morning. Or yesterday. It's past midnight, now. Whatever.

Think, Marlowe, think. I put the monocular down, prop my leg up on the edge of the building I'm on and fold my hands under my chin. Think, think, think. Some way in that the police haven't covered and that Sharpish' gang don't know about.

The tunnels would have been great for that. The old subway lines, gradually being taken over by the new subway lines, home to creepy junks and bums and zombies for all I know. But hey, I'm a cat, and what are we? Curious. So I've been scouting those tunnels out the last couple of weeks, see if any of them have convenient exits that would make them handy for a quick escape when the cops are after me, or even a very fortuitous extra entrance into a shop or something.

I hadn't expected to find a crumbled section of wall, when I walked through those dark tunnel with a little mini Mag-lite to aid my night vision, which led into the sub-basement of the garage adjacent to the 21 st precinct and, fool that I was, I'd immediately told Jolly, one of Mister Shaprish' closest goons, 'cuz you can trust Jolly to give credit where credit's due. Some of the guys started calling me Indiana Jones and I gave 'em a few scratches and they stopped that, and just call me Marlowe. They tried calling me McGyver a little after that for another reason ­- I gave it a week's thought, and then out with the claws again and they went right back to Marlowe.

So. I can gamble that Sharpish' guys think nobody but nobody knows about the tunnel entrance and that they've left nobody behind to guard it, but that'd be kind of stupid. Jolly ain't the smartest guy, and he's been a little off his game since that nasty shooting business at the Dive a few weeks back that took out Vernon - not that he'll be missed, asshole that the rabbit was - and a bunch of other guys. So he could be that stupid.

I hop over the edge of the roof and sliiiiiide down the drainpipe, landing on the ground as lightly as ever. One advantage of being compact, that. One great big honkin' disadvantage is that if even one guy's been left behind in the tunnels, I ain't got a spit in a hurricane's chance of getting past him. Sharpish asked Jolly and Feck to put a team together, and that means muscle.

I sit in the alley and look at the car. Beautiful, beautiful 'vette, all the more beautiful parked between two fuck-ugly vans with fish logos. I could really go for some fish right now. Anyway.

Leaning into the shadows like a good skulker I unzip my thigh pocket and pull out the little pink compact make-up box and flip it open. I look around, as much to check nobody's seeing my illicit activities as to check nobody sees me with a girl's compact, and pull a bundle of black cloth from my pocket, from which I pull a Ziploc bag, from which I pull my super-secret weapons: two little airbrushes, each with a canister the size of a test tube, one half-filled with black fluid, the other clear. I love this part. Makes me feel like James Bond or Ethan Hunt or The Dog. I'll tell you about The Dog later.

Tucking the clear-fluid airbrush into my pants pocket for easy access I get to work. I hold up the mirror, close one eye and start spraying my face, watching my ruddy yellow-with-black-rosettes fur turn deep, dark black. Not just black like some people got black fur, this is military-grade stuff, zero reflectivity and high yield. This ampule's lasted me twenty jobs already and I've still got another four stashed away. When I'm painted I'm a shadow, and when I wanna change back snap quick? That's what the other ampule's for. Even harder to come by and my only stash, this stuff neutralizes the paint instantly. A much wider nozzle ensures you can get yourself covered right fast, and in ten seconds your fur's back to normal. Every burglar dreams of getting their hand on this stuff - I spent page after page in my journal detailing how I got them.

Spot by spot my fur turns black; I close first one eye and then the other and when my face is good and black I do my ears and, holding my mirror sideways and really doing my best, the back of my head and neck. I flip the mirror shut, take off my jacket - it's a good jacket, but too bulky and too noisy - and give my arms a quick spray. I button my short-sleeved shirt up (fuck, it's cold these days) and tuck the airbrush back in the Ziploc, in the thick cloth wrapper, and pull out the final ingredients: two little black bottles, one with a screw cap. Unscrew, lift out eye-dropper, one drop in each eye. Blinkblink. Put on tinted goggles. Uncap the other bottle. Swig. Swish-swish. Spit. Yuck.

The goggles look kind of posery, but crime must come before fashion. With the belladonna I dropped in my eyes my pupils are big enough so they don't show any white in my black, black face. Downside is they make your eyes real sensitive to light and when you're a cat that means a lot. The stuff's technically poisonous but if you use it sparingly it's okay - not like those fashion-crazy bitches like Suzie who use the stuff every damn day because "slitted pupils are so nineties." And the mouthwash tints lips, tongue, teeth good and black and it's fucking disgusting .

Well disguised, I walk to my - well, not my - 'vette and toss my coat in the back seat and when I close the door, looking around I have an idea, and I gotta laugh because I didn't think of it sooner.

What the cops see is this: a van with a fish logo on the side comes roaring down the street while they're all focusing, weak-eyed, on the besieged police precinct. A chopper buzzes overhead - and then a second, competing for airspace. It's one of those lightweight jobs the press use, darting around like a mosquito looking for a good spot to penetrate, but the roar of the cop chopper's propellers and the distorted warning blaring from its speakers scares the press off - just as the van with the fish logo on the side crashes through the barricade of cop-cars.

The sound's the worst of it. Screaming metal as the speeding van breaks the front side of the first car clean off, powering on as if it didn't notice. Cops lunge out of harm's way, a megaphone falls, squealing, to the ground and the shrill, piercing sound is beaten only by the sound of the van screeching right between two personnel vehicles, spraying a fountain of sparks ten feet high on either side.

The sparks drift down like the glowing ember ash after a volcano eruption, cops cover themselves with their jackets and huddle together, too shocked to realize the sparks have harmlessly cooled by the time they sink and then the fish van's cleared the barricade ­- I'm actually kind of surprised that worked, now I think about it. It sways and wobbles from a flat tire as it speeds across the paved plaza in front of the precinct's entrance and finally it crashes into the front wall.

The wall's been braced with foot-high struts and beams at the base to prevent this kind of ram-raiding, or at least make it very unlikely for the driver to survive. The van's nose crunches up on impact and the seats slide forward, buckling over the dashboard, headrests hurling out of the windshield, through the precinct's windows and skidding along the ceiling, taking out all the lights in the room - glass everywhere. Its momentum was just enough to cause a portion of the wall next to the entrance doors to buckle and with a last lurch the van leans halfway into the building on its front wheels... and lands heavily back on all fours, finally giving the ghost with an engine's death-rattle.

Sounds bad for whatever poor sap was in there, don't it? Well, read on.

The cops are real professionals. Panic's over almost as soon as it began, officers are taking charge and ordering a reordering of the ranks, stationing some guys facing toward the street and fanning out, bringing new vehicles in to close the gap. It's really amazing how effective the MCPD can be when they're not extorting small businesses and accepting bribes from the likes of Mister Sharpish and trying to bully good honest cops out of the force as quick as they can. Gotta respect a force like that.

So, organized as they are, they notice pretty quick when, from the west tangent road, a similar van comes rolling along at a much gentler pace as if it's trying not to get noticed. That side was pretty lightly barricaded to begin with, since it's the parking lot and the snipers on the rooftops would make sure nobody would make it from the rear exit to a vehicle without a nice big hole in 'em. And now, with the reorganization of cars to make up for the hole the first van punched through, the barricade's so thin and the cops so unaware that it just rolls on through, right down a lane of the parking lot, hitting one or two cars until it hit the precinct's rear wall with a gentle tap and stayed there, engines hot.

The guys on the inside saw these things, too. When the first van crashed through the front wall they no doubt hustled forth and fired a few rounds into the windshield - pretty lucky the cops didn't take this as a sign to open fire themselves, but then, without luck this little plan o' mine wouldn't stand a chance.

"What the fuck? It's... It's just fish!" somebody shouted, looking through the windshield and into the van, its driver and passenger seat mangled and empty, the glass and metal divider splintered, the bags and bags of ice cold fish ripped and spilled into the driver's compartment. And a big-ass, fuck-off brick of a brick wedged on the floor, keeping what's left of the gas pedal pushed down.

Whoever spots that's quick on his feet, so it's probably not Jolly. Maybe Feck or Rudy or Three-Inch Charlie, they're the only ones with IQ's higher than their bicep circumference. And the police has figured it out, too.

"It's a decoy!" voices yell and there's a huge commotion toward the west side of the precinct, cops hut-hut-hutting and goons inside just running and shouting. The cop chopper moves his bright blue-tinted light beam from the first van to the second, and in the precious few moments that everybody's running from one end to the other, I make my move.

Like a shadow I hop from rooftop to rooftop, just like I saw, or thought I saw, from my bedroom window so many years ago. The Dog, leaping fearlessly across gaps between buildings with his long legs outstretched, throwing himself at walls and hoisting himself up as if gravity was something for amateurs. My tail flows behind me like a current in the air I cut through, my fists are clenched, held close to my body as I put all my energy into the run, the jump, the climb, four, five, six floors high, lit only by the blue moon and sodium light from below and, fuck it, I fly . If I had a longcoat I'd look like smoke, damn fast smoke.

The rooftops are lower now. Fewer decrepit, half-abandoned housing blocks, more low administrative buildings and warehouses and my target, the microfortress that is Precinct 21. Most of the lights are dimmed; it's hard to make out in the cold glare of the helicopter searchlights.

There's the crash of the first van plowing through the police barricade and the moment's chaos that ensue, then the van's free, wheels spinning like crazy, heavy brick on its gas pedal urging it on like a carrot on a stick. To my right I see the other van, slowly wheeling down another street, toward the precinct's west side. Same type of brick, same type of van, different gear. Nobody's noticed it yet.

The fist van slams into the front of the precinct - the spray of glass and concrete and crap I told you about already, but what's more important, I'm about to reach the end of the roof. Everything hinges on this now.

They notice the second van, and, like I predicted, attention shifts to it. Everyone overcompensates and thank God, the chopper swings toward it. And going from its position hovering over the first van's crash site to illuminating the other it passes by within a hump-jump-skip of the end of my roof.

I pump the air in my lungs and power forward, every muscle, every billion-year-old instinct working in perfect sync to push me forward. My arms held tight to my sides, my eyes focused on my target, the rungs of the chopper's landing supports, ahead and above...

I jump. My legs uncoil, my knees creak and I throw myself off a four-floor-high building. I throw my rope, clutched in loops in one hand, up and forward, several loops tied like lassos and I hurl it at the chopper that zooms past. The spools arc through the air, I feel my stomach raising up in my chest as gravity grabs me, starts to pull me down to the hard ground far below... But then there's a tug on the rope as well and I fly upward, swinging under the chopper like Tarzan or Spidey and as I stifle a holler of victory the chopper swoops too close to the building. I'm not even looking, don't even see it when my body smacks dead against the side of the 21 st precinct with a wet crunch.

In the moonlight and the blue glare of the chopper's searchlight, my blood looks like a black stain on the white concrete wall. I hit the wall so hard my body doesn't even fall yet. Nicky Marlowe dies.

No.

No, he doesn't.

That's not what I did - that'd be insane, it'd be depending on far too many coincidences. I thought about it, and rejected it.

Of course, I'm in the second van. I hear the crash of the first and resist the urge to gun the engine. I'd stand a chance of plowing through the barricade on the precinct's western side, but my chances will be better once the cars start moving, so I keep the van's speed low, hard to notice. The smell of fish from the back compartment is strong - who parks two vans filled with frozen fish overnight? I ask you. - and it tempts me. My stomach growls and my mouth waters.

I like my fish cold. Not raw, mind, but a cooked mackerel, left in the fridge and eaten with fingers and claws in the morning, mrowr . Maybe some chopped onion, if I get to do the chopping and not Mom or Suzie who make huge chunks. I like 'em fine. I went to Amsterdam last year - a school trip, there was, and I went with my own money because, you know, I'm not in school no more - and those guys, aside from the weed and cheese and fries with mayonnaise they eat raw herring.

Not, like, sushi that's been lightly cooked, pickled, deep-frozen herring. And herring season's short, so the fish I got was about six months old. They serve it on a little cardboard pad like it was a hot dog, you get them from vendor stalls just like that. They're skinned, boned and gutted and the heads are off but the tails aren't. If you ask, they'll chop it up for you but the way you're supposed to eat 'em is, you grab it by the tail and drop it down your gullet like you're a bird or something.

That spells heaven, for me. If this works out, I decide, I'm taking Alice to Amsterdam toot sweet . We're gonna have to find someplace to lie low, anyhow.

The smell is so intoxicating I completely forget myself until I'm driving through the gap between two cop-cars and, swinging on the steering-wheel, I aim the ponderous van between the lanes of black-and-whites and vehicles too ugly even for the impound and drive toward the precinct's rear entrance. Sounds kinky, 'rear entrance'. Why's Alice all I think about these days? Man, I'm smitten with that kitten.

Of course I don't stay in the van until it hits the door. I grab the brick off the passenger side seat and smack it down on the pedal, carefully lifting my foot. I claw through my safety-belt and open the door, and a black-as-pitch shadow that is Nicky Marlowe rolls out of the van and between two cruisers.

The rear door flies open. Feck's fuckin' slow nowadays, so it's probably Jude or Krieger that opens the door just as the van bumps against the wall next to him. If it's that triggerhappy rat Krieger his shotgun'll go off just from the fright of it and one of the twitchier snipers, ordered to be alert for any suspect activity, will drop him with a single round. Flash of light from a rooftop, Krieger's face becomes a bloody fountain and there's the bullet's crack-of-thunder sonic boom as Krieger's buddies kick what's left of him into the parking lot, slam the door shut and Feck, who ain't been the same since Vernon ate a few rounds and kicked the bucket... well, he overreacts.

Snipers covering the parking lot, their only means of escape, and the snipers fired first . So they mustn't be too worried about the cops Feck's holding hostage, must they? There's collegial concern for you.

I'm hidden in the shadow between two cars, one a black and white roller, the other a skanky green VW Beetle. Must be some kind of undercover vehicle. Whatever it is, it's between me and where I need to be, and with that chopper shining its spotlight right on the precinct's rear entrance there's no way I can dart in there without being spotted.

And then I hear it.

Gunfire.

Dull it is, muffled by the thick walls, but I hear it and it makes my teeth rattle. Feck's usually the wolf you go to when you want something done with a low body count, so he must feel he's got no choice but to show the cops outside he's serious by laying down one of the cops inside.

And another.

Another.

Oh, fuck.

I feel a tremble that starts in my calves and heads up my spine. I don't know if it's shock at the fact that policemen are being murdered just a few yards, as the crow flies, away, or that one of the poor saps might be my dad. Either way, the guys were right. I'm a pussy.

Literally, I can't move. It's like when you jump into water that's way, way too cold. Like mad crazy cold. Like, I don't know, Titanic cold. It hits you like it's hard, like it pounds your entire body at once and you just can't move, your body won't let you and there's nothing you can do. You start to sink, or you just freeze hip-deep and stand there and now I kneel here in the shadows while the cops outside rush inside the precinct and the windows light up with gunfire for ten long seconds, then go dark for ten long minutes and after I'm discovered and taken to the perimeter, they slowly start taking the bodies out.

I don't speak, huddled in the corner of a cop-car, a cop's watchful eye on me that would be sympathetic in any other city, but Maranatha's jaded the cop's gaze so all he can feel for me is mistrust, poor guy. Tears warp my vision but even so, when one of the brown-uniformed shapes moves out of the building, indistinguishable from the others that left already, my gut tightens and I know some part of my brain recognized what's left of my dad.

I'm taken to court hours or months later. Mom's there in the benches, tears on her cheek but she doesn't speak on my behalf. Crime after crime's heaped on my shoulders - most of 'em I didn't commit. Some cop wants to make it big by solving a lot of cases at once and who better to blame than the jaguar kid who just sits there and doesn't say anything, but who's too alert for the shrinks to believe he's nuts.

I go to jail, I get raped and addicted to bluepepper. When I'm thirty I get out. I immediately steal a car, get caught and within a month I'm back in jail, where, this time, I die.

Bummer, huh?

Course, I don't do that.

So what do I do?

Let's think.

I lure a single cop away from the barricade while everyone's distracted by the first van, knock him out, steal his uniform and his gun and when all the cops move toward the site of the second van's approach I slip through the barricade and into the building. Neither the cops nor Sharpish' guys inside realize I'm too short to be a cop, but while the former ignore me and let me make my way into the building, the latter spot me in two seconds flat and pop me in the skull.

I sneak through the tunnels anyway. Like a black shadow I dance through the darkness, barefoot, softly padding around the guards left behind by Feck to guard the tunnels, until there's one standing under a light. With no shadow for me to move through I make a dash for it, he tries to grab me and misses. He shouts and as I run up the stairs to the garage I'm stopped and I have a lot of explaining to do.

I drive my 'vette right through the hole in the barricade left by the first van when the cops reorganize themselves and head for the second van. I crash against the back of the first van. The seatbelt snaps, I fly forward, and a glass-shard-ridden, seriously unpleasant to look at and very dead Nicky Marlowe arcs through the van's interior and spills limply into the precinct me. Maybe Dad recognizes me.

I find a motorcycle, hotwire it and ride it through the hole in the barricade - same deal as with the 'vette.

I drive the motorcycle through the gap left by the second van - Feck's men gun me down.

I ride the motorcycle through the tunnels and roar past or through whoever Feck left behind to guard the storage sub-basements under the garage - I arrive at the stairs and the bike can't go up them. I'm caught.

This is getting pretty desperate. I'm running out of ideas, here.

I ride my motorcycle over the rooftops. I charge off the rooftop, ignoring the chopper that flies a hair's breadth away, its blue light shining through my wheels so that the spokes chop the solid beam of blue into a billion little shards. I make it onto the roof... and I'm stuck. Police snipers open fire in the chaos and lay me down.

I turn around and go home, now the police are distracted, hoping my dad can take care of himself.

That's... that's a good one. I can do that.

I'm driving away from the noise and the lights. I told my sweet boy a lie, but he'll forgive me. Maybe caution is the better part of valor, after all. I didn't go save my dad; instead I stay well out of trouble. I keep Alice safe. We don't piss off Mister Sharpish. I don't stay around to find out in the obituaries what happened to Dad or even to watch the news to see what happened. I fence my stuff at the nearest pawn shop that ain't Alice's sister's, drive up to the airport, ditch the car and buy two economy class tickets to Amsterdam and we have a good life. We move to Paris and we learn French - no need to learn Dutch in Amsterdam, most of the folks there speak better English than me. Alice's French is way better. One summer, Nezzy visits with her bull beau and a four-month old baby calf with lion-golden fur in her arms. Rings on their fingers. Together, the four of us hop in a van and drive through Germany to the Czech Republic, or whatever it's called by then, and Nezzy and Alice show us the town where they grew up. Their parents are long dead and only happy memories remain here. We stay in a small inn. The holiday ends, Nezzy and her family go back to Maranatha City, Alice and I go to Spain, but homophobia drives us back to Paris, and then into the countryside of the Provence. Better food there. Quieter living. I work as a mechanic, Alice in the local library and then the school. We contribute to the community and we are welcome there. Alice and I are both old men by the time we die.

Once again, no. A happy life based on a lie to one you love and abandoning your father?

Did I just say I love Alice?

What the hell?

Where am I?

My head hurts.

It stinks.

It stinks... really good.

My stomach growls.

My vision clears.

Oh, wait, I remember.

I shake my head carefully to get the groggies out. I listen carefully - Jeez, it smells good here. It's dark, cold and wet and I'm damn hungry. I hear the words "It's a decoy!" muted by deafness, distance and fish.

Yeah, I'm kinda in the first van. The one that plowed through the barricade and crashed into the front of the precinct, the one whose driver's seat was completely destroyed. After I punched the van through the police car barricade I grabbed the big-ass brick I'd brought with me off the passenger seat, dropped it on the gas pedal and threw myself into the back compartment of the van, burying myself in bags and bags of freshly-caught, chilled fish, which cushion me safely and squashily when the van hits the front of the precinct.

The impact knocks me but hard, but it don't hurt me too bad. I'm under too much slippery scaly matter for the glass to hurt me and when one of Feck's guys or Feck himself shines his light into the van, all he sees is the plastic bags and the shattered driver seat and the brick on the pedal so when I hear everybody call "It's a decoy!" and footsteps running away I wiggle my way out of the bags that encased me, idly snagging a single silvery-brown fish from one of the torn bags whose contents spilled into the passenger seat - mackerel! Score!

I hope out the shattered windshield and duck as if I can feel the blue beam of the chopper's spotlight just before it slices through the front reception I'm in. I'm glad I put on some shoes before going out as glass crunches under my soles. It's a good thing there's so much noise because it completely masks the sound of my footsteps as I, ducking, rush after Feck's men and out of the small reception hall, through the doors and where they take a right, I take a left.

All they have to do is look around and they'd see... Well, they'd see a shadow moving among shadows. I'm painted good and black, the lights here are out and nobody notices as, without even looking at my surroundings, I hop on a desk, leap up, tug at the grate of an air vent and let it simply clatter to the ground as I hoist myself up into the tiny, narrow crawlspace and start to move.

I'm in. The cops are outside. Tugs are inside. After poking their heads out the back door they'll rush quickly back in, nothing to provoke the snipers. No shooting, no killing. Confusions settles. Feck's guys spread through the building, securing everything again.

I hear my joints creak and feel painful, painful bruises appear all over my body as I squeeze myself through corner after claustrophobic corner in the pitch blackness of air vents so narrow they were never ever intended to possibly be used by anybody to crawl through and for once I'm glad I'm not bigger than I am, although I could really stand to be a midget now. Every movement risks getting stuck, but the grease the spilled fish left on my body and my clothes help me through more than one tight spot.

I find a large vertical shaft that gives me some breathing room. I hang over the edge, a dangerous fan below me that I can just about make out with my belladonna-enhanced night vision and, bracing my hands and feet against the metal walls of the air shaft - curse that fish grease - I slowly push myself up that shaft, heading to the second floor, my mackerel tucked safely in my belt.

I follow instinct and my nose and they lead me absolutely fucking nowhere, so in no time flat I come to a dead end. I look down through the grating - empty office - and decide that the risk is worth it. Moving forward through those cramped air vents was one thing, but moving back? Fuck that shit. With a rusty poker, if possible.

Down I jump, fish in one hand, grate in the other, perfectly silent. Nobody around to appreciate my silence, just a dark office.

You know what?

I think Nicky Marlowe, the clever jag, deserves a little reward, don't you? Yes indeedy.

I set the grate down on the ground and sit on top of it, legs tucked under me. My heart slowly modifies from a gallop to a trot and my hands stop shaking like I'm ninety, and more like I'm sixty and really drunk. I sweat fear, I drool nerves and the door of this office, with grayish light behind its thin, matte glass window, might as well have been a massive portal into the Scary Fortress of Blood and Pain.

I sink my teeth into my mackerel.

It's raw, it's half-frozen, it spent a few minutes in my pants but by all the saints and all the saviors, it's the best thing I've ever tasted. A single bite and my hunger is sated, my nerves are stilled and my gluttony is laid to rest. I put the fish aside, resist the urge to lick my fingers lest some of the dye come off, stand up and move toward the door without hesitation, fear, or a goddamn clue .

To be continued.

Available on paperback in 2005

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