Tales of the Red Panda: The Crime Cabal (7 page)

It was a week later, at nearly half past ten in the morning, when Kit
Baxter appeared in the doorway of a well-appointed dining room in a fashionable
district of the city. She squinted as she stepped into the broad sunbeam
pouring in through the large picture window and made her way towards the table
on the far side of the room. There was a time when she could not have helped
but realize that most of the house she had grown up in would likely fit inside
this opulent room. Even in the homes of the city’s finest families, this would
be considered a grand space. In this house, it was unofficially known among the
servants as the “breakfast nook,” as it was considered too modest to entertain
anyone worth having to dinner.

Not that the current resident of the Mansion entertained much in the
family home, but those who had been in the Fenwick family’s service since his
parents’ time could only remember and hope. Such a one was Thompson, the
butler, who stood near his master’s left shoulder awaiting instructions. It
was, of course, already an hour at which any respectable person should have
long-ago finished breakfast and begun their day, but Thompson was not one to judge
his betters. If the master of the house wished to play at gad-about for a few
years, it was the privilege of his position and his birth, and Thompson never
thought to disapprove.

He did, however, disapprove of Kit Baxter. He disapproved of her a
great deal. The head butler was considered to be the senior position in a
household such as this, and servants should know their place. So it had been
since Thompson had first entered service, and so it should always be as far as
he was concerned. But not only had the master defied tradition by taking on a
female chauffeur, but this young woman was scandalously familiar, spoke without
being spoken to and seemed to regard Thompson as a nuisance, or worse. He
glowered at her from under his great, flowing eyebrows as she sauntered into
the dining room without invitation, her driver’s cap still perched upon her
head. Perhaps it was the sunbeam in her eyes, but the butler’s gaze seemed to
have no effect.

“Mornin’ Boss!” she sang.

Thompson coughed his disapproval.

“Ah, Kit, there you are,” the master of the house said, draining his
coffee. “Have you had breakfast?”

Thompson’s cough of disapproval sputtered with surprise. Kit Baxter
seemed to catch that at least.

“Ah… yeah, thanks, Boss. I’m fine. Didya sleep all right?”

Thompson’s cough was almost a roar.

“Eventually. I had a little… night table reading.”

“I gathered.”

“You were up early?” Fenwick said, peering at her just over the top of
his long-forgotten newspaper, which hid the smile that played around his lips.

“Had a few errands to run. Ready to go whenever you finally get
dressed.”

Thompson’s cough was furious.

“Thompson,” the master broke in suddenly, “you should really get that
cough looked at.”

Thompson was flustered. Persons of a certain class generally respected the
conventions of an aside among their servants, particularly when one needed
scolding as badly as Miss Baxter did. “Thank you, sir,” he said at last. “I
assure you I am quite well.”

“I mean it,” August Fenwick said sternly. “You should have a doctor
look at that cough. Right. Now.”

Thompson turned surprised to meet the man’s stern, hawk-like gaze. So
much like his father, and so completely different. It was not in Thompson’s
nature to disobey.

“Yes, sir. At once, sir,” he said, slinking out of the room.

Kit bounced at the knees, just a little, as the door closed, unable to
conceal her delight. The newspaper rose just a little higher to hide the smile
behind it.

“Coffee?” he said at last, giving up the unequal task. He stood quickly
and turned his back, crossing the room to the silver service.

“Are you getting it yourself?” she sassed. “I didn’t know you could do
that.”

“Don’t tell Thompson,” he said. “He’d be scandalized. You didn’t answer
my question.”

“I think you’d better go ahead and pour me a cup. A girl’s got to
gather her rosebuds while she may.” She bit her lip a little at the
possibilities of that allusion. He seemed not to notice.

He handed her a cup of coffee with just exactly the right amount of
milk in it. He did that sort of thing every so often, proving without meaning
to that he had been paying attention after all. Kit did her best to quash the
thought that she may be reading just a little too much into this, and watched
him over the rim of her cup. He discarded the smoking jacket that was draped
across his form with a single catlike motion and pulled on his day coat. The
languid posture of the spoiled millionaire was gone, replaced with the dynamic
energy of the Red Panda.

He stormed through the side door in the direction of the library, with his
eager partner swept up in his wake.

“You picked up the night’s reports from the contact men?” Fenwick
asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.

“In fact, I did,” she said, with a quick glance down the hall to make
sure they were unobserved. The rest of the staff didn’t seem to have as much
trouble as her Boss did in interpreting Kit’s feelings, which was the cause of
much mean-spirited speculation; she chose to ignore it in the name of even more
outrageous secrets.

He opened the door into the library, and locked it behind them.

“Anything interesting?” he said with an eyebrow arched.

“Agent thirty-three seems to think there’s a protection racket
operating on the north side.”

“Thirty-three? Gregor Sampson?” he said, pulling forward three volumes
in sequence to reveal a hidden panel beside the bookshelf which concealed an
electric switch.

“That’s the one. He’s got good instincts. He says nobody’s talking, but
he can tell that everybody’s scared,” she said with a determined set to her
face.

“Sampson’s a good man,” he said, pressing the switch in a precise
sequence. “Perhaps we should look into this.”

“Geez, Boss. I thought we had these rackets licked.” A panel slid open
on the far side of the room to reveal an object that would have deeply
confounded poor old Thompson the butler.

“Crime is like a hydra, Kit. Every time we cut off a head, another will
spring forth to take its place.”

“Sure, but I thought it might take a little longer for them to rebuild.
We’ve been leanin’ awful hard on the organized rackets. I thought we’d taken
all the big pieces off the board.”

“Maybe we left more pawns than we thought,” he said gravely as he
opened the pneumatic tube that led to their top-secret lair. He paused. “Ladies
first,” he said seriously.

“We could squeeze in together,” she said, trying to sound helpful.

“I keep telling you, I’m not sure the tube’s pneumatic actuators could
stand the strain.” As far as Kit could tell, he was completely earnest.

“I’m not sure mine could either,” she sighed as she stepped into the
tube.

“Wh- wait…,” he said, brows furrowed. “What does that mean?”

The door slid shut with a thunk. He could just hear her voice echoing
from inside the tube.

“It means I’ll see you in five minutes. Don’t be late.”

And with a great whoosh, she was gone.

Fenwick waited several minutes to be absolutely sure that she’d have
time to clear the landing pad before he arrived, stepped into the tube and
launched himself into the blackness.

As he rocketed through the nothingness to the hidden lair deep
underground, he frowned to no one in particular. The Flying Squirrel was right.
Their campaign against organized crime in the city had preoccupied them for
months. Certainly it was worth it to free the citizens of Toronto from the
parasitic grasp of the criminal low-lifes who preyed upon those who could least
afford it. But there were other fish in the sea. Other investigations, other
forces at work upon the city. He had also hoped that bringing down the major
gangs and caging the big fish would buy them a longer respite from the mobs.
Clearly he had miscalculated, but where?

If there was a gang left untouched by their efforts, it was one that
had never registered on their networks of agents and informants before. Perhaps
the police would have more information. In any case, if this last gang standing
were stepping up their efforts, it meant that he and the Squirrel had failed in
one other respect. They had sought to instill in those smaller fish who had
escaped their net a deep and abiding fear. The dead certainty that crime did
not pay, and that no one was beyond the reach of the hand of justice.

If there was a new protection racket flourishing on the north side, and
if other reports from their agents were true, then the little fish had grown
bold somehow. They were seizing the opportunity to hit the big-time. A status
they should have been terrified of, if all had gone according to plan.

The rising tide of compressed air rose to meet him and slow his
approach. The tube hissed as he opened it and stepped into the lair. There was
no sign of his partner.

“Kit?” he called as he stepped into the hall.

The door to her changing room opened a few inches, and her head stuck
out at an alarming angle.

“With ya in a sec’,” she grinned. “Put a mask on or somethin’ while you
wait. I hear they’re terribly comfortable.”

“Thanks, I might do that,” he said, picking up a mask and a set of
gauntlets off the rack.

“I forgot to ask about your night-table reading,” she called through
the door of the changing room. “Did you figure out what kind of explosive was
used?”

“There wasn’t much residue left to test,” he called back. “But it
wasn’t like anything I’ve encountered before. It burned hot and clean. Took out
the locks and hinges on the vaults at the largest brokerage in the city and did
almost no other damage. A finesse job.”

The door to the changing room opened and the Flying Squirrel stepped
out, pulling her cowl on as she did. “Finesse and high-explosive aren’t two
phrases we usually get in the same sentence.”

“Granted.” He smiled in spite of himself.

“And if they’re good enough to come up with a charge you can’t finger,
they’re pretty good. Could be a new player.”

“Could be,” he agreed. “And they got away with three hundred thousand
dollars in untraceable securities two nights ago, and neither we nor the police
seem able to do much about it.”

“So what do we do?” the Flying Squirrel asked with a grin. “Do we go
after the big bad and hope they’re half as tough as they are smart, or do we
shut down this protection racket before they get started?”

He was masked now, and pulled his hat on low with red-gauntleted hands.

“C,” he said. “All of the above.”

In an alley on the south side of St Clair Avenue, a tall, lithe form
stirred in the darkness. It peered out the mouth of the alleyway, the light
from the flickering gas lamps sending sporadic tendrils deep into the darkness.
The light revealed the watcher to be a young man, perhaps twenty-five, with a
stern focus to his eyes and a determined set to his jaw. He was wearing a
lightweight brown jacket and plain shirt, a tweed cap pulled down low over a
shock of blond hair. He looked like any one of a thousand men of his age might.
A casual observer would be hard pressed to remember anything about him. A
keener eye would have recognized him in an instant as a man trying to appear
nondescript – a moot point to the man in the alley, as he was certain
that he was completely unobserved.

The man in the alley was mistaken.

His eyes remained fixed straight ahead on a small grocery store, in
which a light still burned. There were few customers left at this hour, and the
owner of the shop was already busying himself bringing in his stock.

The man in the alley peered up the avenue. He saw a face he recognized
– a hard face with a cruel smile, sauntering along with a determined look
in his eyes. Satchel Braun, once a small-timer with Ace Ryder’s mob. The
watcher in the alley turned back to the grocery store. It seemed Braun’s most
likely destination. The man stepped forward, steeled himself with an intake of
breath and stepped out to cross the broad street.

He thought back to the conversation a week earlier that had set him
down this path, when he had unexpectedly found himself called into the office
of his division Captain, and to his astonishment found himself face to face
with the Chief of Police.

“Oh! I’m sorry, Chief O’Mally,”
he had said.
“I didn’t mean to–”

“Step in, Constable Parker,”
the Chief had replied.

“What’s that?”

“It is Constable Parker, isn’t
it?”
O’Mally had said,
opening a file on the Captain’s desk.
“Constable
Andy Parker?”

“Uh- Yes, sir,”
Parker had replied.

“Parker, I have an unusual
assignment for which I require the services of a capable and resourceful
officer, without going through the normal channels,”
O’Mally had begun.
“Captain Kreiger tells me that you may be the very man. What do you
think?”

“I think I can’t answer that
question without knowing more, sir. Though if Captain Kreiger says so, I’d be
surprised if it wasn’t true.”

O’Mally had snorted his approval. Loyal, but not a yes-man. Eager, but
not to the point of willful blindness. A good beginning.

“Parker, I don’t have to tell
you that this city has its share of problems. But since a certain man decided
to put on a mask and take the law into his own hands, the potential for
disaster has become unacceptably high.”

“You mean… the Red Panda, sir?”

“Do you know of any other
masked men patrolling the city’s rooftops, Constable Parker?”
O’Mally had said, his pipe clenched between
his teeth to the point of snapping.

“No, sir. I don’t mean to be
obtuse, sir, but it seems to me that the Red Panda has been doing some good.”

“Has he?”
O’Mally’s eyes had blazed with
disappointment.

“I’m not saying I approve of
his methods, Chief O’Mally,”
Parker had backtracked,
“but I see the
effect he has on the street every day. He does more than just shut down rackets
and take toughs off the street. He gives the people hope, sir. And in times
like these, that’s a kind of public service too.”

O’Mally had looked down his nose at the junior officer. He was bright,
earnest and believed what he was saying. The Chief respected him for speaking
his mind. He needed young men like Andy Parker on his force, but he needed them
to trust him to see the bigger picture.

“Parker, I don’t deny that
there’s some truth in what you say. Although there’s never been any proof that
the Red Panda isn’t simply eliminating rival gangs to consolidate crime under
his rule.”

“Nor has there been–,”
Parker had begun.

“Nor has there been any proof
that he is, I know. But we’re men of the world, Parker, and we’ve both seen too
much of man’s inhumanity to man to believe in the Tooth Fairy. Maybe the Red
Panda has no agenda other than the public good. But is that really the most
likely scenario?”

“Well… I guess not,”
Parker had admitted.

“And when the day comes that he
makes that clear, with his usual flair for the dramatic, what kind of effect do
you think that will have on those who believed in him? Who looked up to him?”
O’Mally’s gaze had been strong. It had been
hard to meet his eyes, but impossible to look away.

“I see what you mean, sir. But
I’m just one uniformed policeman. What can I do?”

“We must have leverage on this
Mystery Man. We cannot give him carte blanche to operate as he sees fit, and
have no way to track his activities. But I can’t set up a formal operation. If
word got out, the whole department could be made a laughingstock. You’re…
forgive me… but you’re unimportant enough to be able to run an independent
operation for me without attracting any attention. Kreiger has given the okay
for your temporary transfer to my direct command, if you feel equal to the
task.”

“Forgive me, Chief O’Mally,”
Parker had felt his head swim,
“but… what task exactly?”

“We must know who he is,
Parker. Who he really is and why he does what he does. I need you to discover
the true identity of the Red Panda!”

Unmask the Red Panda! It had been the battle cry of gangdom since his
crusade had begun, and now Andy Parker, sworn officer of the law, had been
handed the task all on his own.

He had spent days alone in the archives, reading and re-reading every
case file, every newspaper story he could lay his hands on. If there were any
insight to be found there, it had eluded the able Constable Parker. But
bookwork was not his strength. He needed to investigate, to see with his own
eyes. But how was he to manage that? It would be like tracking a ghost. Few had
seen the Red Panda when he had not intended to be seen. As he traded in his
pile of newspaper clippings for a fresh copy of the evening
Chronicle
, he realized there was one
place where the Red Panda was sure to be found. He read Jack Peters’ crime
column, hinting at possible new gang developments in the north end. Hero or
menace, if the Red Panda was to be found anywhere, it would be there, in the
thick of crime!

And so it was that two days later, Andy Parker found himself headed for
a small grocery store, just steps ahead of a man he knew to be a violent
mobster. He had nosed around enough to get a sense that there might be a
protection racket at play. He had heard enough whispered talk to know that the
owner of this greengrocer’s did not intend to pay the new gang’s ransom. Andy
Parker was betting there would be trouble here, and at the very least he would
be on hand to help the shopkeeper deal with Satchel Braun.

Parker entered the shop. A small bell rang above the door.

“I’m just about to close up,” the shopkeeper called.

“Sure thing,” Parker said, making his way to the back aisle. “I won’t
be but a minute.”

It was less than half a minute later when the bell rang once more.
Parker heard the shopkeeper’s voice again.

“Closing in a minute– Oh. It’s you,” he said.

“That’s right, Northcott. You don’t sound so surprised.” Parker could
hear Satchel Braun’s deep, nasal voice, cocky and sure of himself.

“Naw. I guess I knew that you’d be back.”

“Smart boy. Now, you gonna be just as smart and pay what you owe?”

Parker edged to where he could just make out the men standing almost
nose to nose. The shopkeeper bristled in anger at the much larger man.

“I don’t owe you a thing. You or any man. This is my place–”

“Because we say it is. No other reason, little man.”

“You get out of here, you understand? Get lost while you still can!”

The gangster chuckled, “While I still can, is that it? The grocer makes
with the threats? Well, here’s a little something for you!” The hood reached
inside his coat quickly.

“Hold it right there!” Parker heard his own voice calling as he burst
forth, his .38 drawn. “Get your hands where I can see them, Braun!”

Satchel Braun looked amused. “Do I know you?” he said holding up the
hand that had been thrust into his coat.

Parker blinked in amazement. The hand held nothing but a small whistle!

In a flash, he felt a shot of pain in his neck that coursed down his
back, almost paralyzing him. Someone behind him had some kind of hold on
pressure points in his neck!

“Drop the gat, tough guy,” said a voice. A decidedly un-masculine
voice. Parker was so surprised, he couldn’t have spoken even if it had been
possible. A grey-gloved hand reached out and pulled his service revolver away
from him. Parker was powerless to resist.

“Well, well… what have we here?” said another voice that seemed to come
from nowhere. Suddenly, from a darkened doorway that Andy Parker could have
sworn was empty, emerged the tall figure of a man, all in grey with a bright
red mask holding back terrible eyes. Eyes that seemed to glow, but were
completely blank! He was here. It didn’t seem possible…

“Who have you got?” the Red Panda boomed.

“Don’t know mine. He’s a fresh face,” said the voice behind him. The
voice’s owner moved to Parker’s right side and resolved itself into the most
breathtaking sight he had ever seen. The girl’s face was hidden by the cowl,
but it was impossible to hide that she was a beauty. But there was an edge to
the wry grin that played about her lips that screamed of danger. “Who’s yours?”
she called back to her partner.

“Satchel Braun,” said the Red Panda in mild disgust. “Imagine my
disappointment.”

“Braun? Gangland’s new mastermind? And his trusty assistant Skippy the
Paperboy here? Sheesh.”

Parker was gasping for air. “Co… co…,” he tried to say. The Flying
Squirrel was less than impressed.

“Make sense, wouldya, kitten? We’re on the clock here,” she growled.

“Co… co…”

“So, Satchel,” the masked man began, “we take hundreds of gangsters off
the street and you only move up from goon to assistant goon manager. That’s got
to sting. And I see you’ve taken up a musical instrument. I’m surprised you’ve
got the brain power to play the whistle.”

“Oh, I play it real good, hero,” Braun spat, “and you won’t like the
tune too much.”

“Co… co…,” Parker gasped.

“I think mine’s got a stutter,” called the Squirrel.

“Did you forget to release the pressure points again?” came the reply.

“Aw, shoot.”

Parker felt the sensation like knives of fire suddenly stop and he
crumpled to the floor. He gasped for air.

“Cop… I’m a cop…,” he gasped.

“What?”

“Check the pocket… Badge…”

“Unh… Boss?” she called.

Braun saw his opening and took it. He made the one move the masked man
couldn’t react to in time. He fell straight backwards and rolled, and came up
blowing the whistle as hard as he could. No sound could be heard.

The Red Panda sped forward and put an end to Satchel Braun’s silent
solo with a right cross that shattered the gunman’s jawbone and sent him
sprawling, unconscious, to the floor.

“Boss?” the girl called. In spite of himself, Parker’s heart raced as
she leaned in close to pull his shield out of the jacket pocket he indicated.
“What’s goin’ on?”

“Ultrasonics,” the masked marvel replied. “Could mean dogs.”

Without warning, the plate glass windows in the front of the shop burst
into a million pieces as two enormous men crashed through them. Each had to be
over seven feet tall, and were massive even in proportion. They didn’t shield
themselves from the flying glass; they didn’t even blink. They just raced right
through the window as if it weren’t there and stood, fists clenched.

“Nope,” the girl said. “It ain’t dogs.”

“Get Mister Northcott out of here!” the Red Panda called to his
partner. She raced from Parker’s side and pulled the stunned shopkeeper to the
doorway in the back of the shop.

Parker looked up in time to see the Red Panda step in to the
approaching giants. He broke from his fighting stance with astounding speed and
brought a right cross through the face of the towering man to his left, while
bringing his right foot straight up into the face of the other with a force
that made Parker shudder in spite of himself. Another red-gauntleted fist flew,
bringing a left uppercut to the first giant’s breadbasket. The man jumped back
half a step and froze in amazement. None of his blows had the slightest effect!