Part 1

CALL HIM NEMESIS

By DONALD E. WESTLAKE

Criminals, beware; the Scorpion is on your trail! Hoodlums fear his fury--and, for that matter, so do the cops!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The man with the handkerchief mask said, "All right, everybody, keep tight. This is a holdup."

There were twelve people in the bank. There was Mr. Featherhall at his desk, refusing to okay a personal check from a perfect stranger. There was the perfect stranger, an itinerant garage mechanic named Rodney (Rod) Strom, like the check said. There were Miss English and Miss Philicoff, the girls in the gilded teller cages. There was Mister Anderson, the guard, dozing by the door in his brown uniform. There was Mrs. Elizabeth Clayhorn, depositing her husband's pay check in their joint checking account, and with her was her ten-year-old son Edward (Eddie) Clayhorn, Junior. There was Charlie Casale, getting ten dollars dimes, six dollars nickels and four dollars pennies for his father in the grocery store down the street. There was Mrs. Dolly Daniels, withdrawing money from her savings account again. And there were three bank robbers.

The three bank robbers looked like triplets. From the ground up, they all wore scuffy black shoes, baggy-kneed and unpressed khaki trousers, brown cracked-leather jackets over flannel shirts, white handkerchiefs over the lower half of their faces and gray-and-white check caps pulled low over their eyes. The eyes themselves looked dangerous.

The man who had spoken withdrew a small but mean-looking thirty-two calibre pistol from his jacket pocket. He waved it menacingly. One of the others took the pistol away from Mister Anderson, the guard, and said to him in a low voice, "Think about retirement, my friend." The third one, who carried a black satchel like a doctor's bag, walked quickly around behind the teller's counter and started filling it with money.

It was just like the movies.

The man who had first spoken herded the tellers, Mr. Featherhall and the customers all over against the back wall, while the second man stayed next to Mr. Anderson and the door. The third man stuffed money into the black satchel.

The man by the door said, "Hurry up."

The man with the satchel said, "One more drawer."

The man with the gun turned to say to the man at the door, "Keep your shirt on."

That was all Miss English needed. She kicked off her shoes and ran pelting in her stocking feet for the door.

* * * * *

The man by the door spread his arms out and shouted, "Hey!" The man with the gun swung violently back, cursing, and fired the gun. But he'd been moving too fast, and so had Miss English, and all he hit was the brass plate on Mr. Featherhall's desk.

The man by the door caught Miss English in a bear hug. She promptly did her best to scratch his eyes out. Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson went scooting out the front door and running down the street toward the police station in the next block, shouting, "Help! Help! Robbery!"

The man with the gun cursed some more. The man with the satchel came running around from behind the counter, and the man by the door tried to keep Miss English from scratching his eyes out. Then the man with the gun hit Miss English on the head. She fell unconscious to the floor, and all three of them ran out of the bank to the car out front, in which sat a very nervous-looking fourth man, gunning the engine.

Everyone except Miss English ran out after the bandits, to watch.

Things got very fast and very confused then. Two police cars came driving down the block and a half from the precinct house to the bank, and the car with the four robbers in it lurched away from the curb and drove straight down the street toward the police station. The police cars and the getaway car passed one another, with everybody shooting like the ships in pirate movies.

There was so much confusion that it looked as though the bank robbers were going to get away after all. The police cars were aiming the wrong way and, as they'd come down with sirens wailing, there was a clear path behind them.

Then, after the getaway car had gone more than two blocks, it suddenly started jouncing around. It smacked into a parked car and stopped. And all the police went running down there to clap handcuffs on the robbers when they crawled dazedly out of their car.

"Hey," said Eddie Clayhorn, ten years old. "Hey, that was something, huh, Mom?"

"Come along home," said his mother, grabbing his hand. "We don't want to be involved."

* * * * *

"It was the nuttiest thing," said Detective-Sergeant Stevenson. "An operation planned that well, you'd think they'd pay attention to their getaway car, you know what I mean?"

Detective-Sergeant Pauling shrugged. "They always slip up," he said. "Sooner or later, on some minor detail, they always slip up."

"Yes, but their _tires_."

"Well," said Pauling, "it was a stolen car. I suppose they just grabbed whatever was handiest."

"What I can't figure out," said Stevenson, "is exactly what made those tires do that. I mean, it was a hot day and all, but it wasn't _that_ hot. And they weren't going that fast. I don't think you could go fast enough to melt your tires down."

Pauling shrugged again. "We got them. That's the important thing."

"Still and all, it's nutty. They're free and clear, barrelling out Rockaway toward the Belt, and all at once their tires melt, the tubes blow out and there they are." Stevenson shook his head. "I can't figure it."

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," suggested Pauling. "They picked the wrong car to steal."

"And _that_ doesn't make sense, either," said Stevenson. "Why steal a car that could be identified as easily as that one?"

"Why? What was it, a foreign make?"

"No, it was a Chevvy, two-tone, three years old, looked just like half the cars on the streets. Except that in the trunk lid the owner had burned in 'The Scorpion' in big black letters you could see half a block away."

"Maybe they didn't notice it when they stole the car," said Pauling.

"For a well-planned operation like this one," said Stevenson, "they made a couple of really idiotic boners. It doesn't make any sense."

"What do they have to say about it?" Pauling demanded.

"Nothing, what do you expect? They'll make no statement at all."

The squad-room door opened, and a uniformed patrolman stuck his head in. "The owner of that Chevvy's here," he said.

"Right," said Stevenson. He followed the patrolman down the hall to the front desk.

The owner of the Chevvy was an angry-looking man of middle age, tall and paunchy. "John Hastings," he said. "They say you have my car here."

"I believe so, yes," said Stevenson. "I'm afraid it's in pretty bad shape."

"So I was told over the phone," said Hastings grimly. "I've contacted my insurance company."

"Good. The car's in the police garage, around the corner. If you'd come with me?"

* * * * *

On the way around, Stevenson said, "I believe you reported the car stolen almost immediately after it happened."

"That's right," said Hastings. "I stepped into a bar on my route. I'm a wine and liquor salesman. When I came out five minutes later, my car was gone."

"You left the keys in it?"

"Well, why not?" demanded Hastings belligerently. "If I'm making just a quick stop--I never spend more than five minutes with any one customer--I always leave the keys in the car. Why not?"

"The car was stolen," Stevenson reminded him.

Hastings grumbled and glared. "It's always been perfectly safe up till now."

"Yes, sir. In here."

Hastings took one look at his car and hit the ceiling. "It's ruined!" he cried. "What did you do to the tires?"

"Not a thing, sir. That happened to them in the holdup."

Hastings leaned down over one of the front tires. "Look at that! There's melted rubber all over the rims. Those rims are ruined! What did you use, incendiary bullets?"

Stevenson shook his head. "No, sir. When that happened they were two blocks away from the nearest policeman."

"Hmph." Hastings moved on around the car, stopping short to exclaim, "What in the name of God is that? You didn't tell me a bunch of _kids_ had stolen the car."

"It wasn't a bunch of kids," Stevenson told him. "It was four professional criminals, I thought you knew that. They were using it in a bank holdup."

"Then why did they do _that_?"

Stevenson followed Hastings' pointing finger, and saw again the crudely-lettered words, "The Scorpion" burned black into the paint of the trunk lid. "I really don't know," he said. "It wasn't there before the car was stolen?"

"Of course not!"

Stevenson frowned. "Now, why in the world did they do that?"

"I suggest," said Hastings with heavy sarcasm, "you ask them that."

Stevenson shook his head. "It wouldn't do any good. They aren't talking about anything. I don't suppose they'll ever tell us." He looked at the trunk lid again. "It's the nuttiest thing," he said thoughtfully....

That was on Wednesday.

The Friday afternoon mail delivery to the _Daily News_ brought a crank letter. It was in the crank letter's most obvious form; that is, the address had been clipped, a letter or a word at a time, from a newspaper and glued to the envelope. There was no return address.

The letter itself was in the same format. It was brief and to the point:

Dear Mr. Editor:

The Scorpion has struck. The bank robbers were captured. The Scorpion fights crime. Crooks and robbers are not safe from the avenging Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS!

Sincerely yours, THE SCORPION

The warning was duly noted, and the letter filed in the wastebasket. It didn't rate a line in the paper.

II

The bank robbery occurred in late June. Early in August, a Brooklyn man went berserk.

It happened in Canarsie, a section in southeast Brooklyn near Jamaica Bay. This particular area of Canarsie was a residential neighborhood, composed of one and two family houses. The man who went berserk was a Motor Vehicle Bureau clerk named Jerome Higgins.

Two days before, he had flunked a Civil Service examination for the third time. He reported himself sick and spent the two days at home, brooding, a bottle of blended whiskey at all times in his hand.

As the police reconstructed it later, Mrs. Higgins had attempted to awaken him on the third morning at seven-thirty, suggesting that he really ought to stop being so foolish, and go back to work. He then allegedly poked her in the eye, and locked her out of the bedroom.

Mrs. Higgins then apparently called her sister-in-law, a Mrs. Thelma Stodbetter, who was Mr. Higgins' sister. Mrs. Stodbetter arrived at the house at nine o'clock, and spent some time tapping at the still-locked bedroom door, apparently requesting Mr. Higgins to unlock the door and "stop acting like a child." Neighbors reported to the police that they heard Mr. Higgins shout a number of times, "Go away! Can't you let a man sleep?"

At about ten-fifteen, neighbors heard shots from the Higgins residence, a two-story one-family pink stucco affair in the middle of a block of similar homes. Mr. Higgins, it was learned later, had suddenly erupted from his bedroom, brandishing a .30-.30 hunting rifle and, being annoyed at the shrieks of his wife and sister, had fired seven shells at them, killing his wife on the spot and wounding his sister in the hand and shoulder.

Mrs. Stodbetter, wounded and scared out of her wits, raced screaming out the front door of the house, crying for the police and shouting, "Murder! Murder!" At this point, neighbors called the police. One neighbor additionally phoned three newspapers and two television stations, thereby earning forty dollars in "news-tips" rewards.

* * * * *

By chance, a mobile television unit was at that moment on the Belt Parkway, returning from having seen off a prime minister at Idlewild Airport. This unit was at once diverted to Canarsie, where it took up a position across the street from the scene of carnage and went to work with a Zoomar lens.

In the meantime, Mister Higgins had barricaded himself in his house, firing at anything that moved.

The two cameramen in the mobile unit worked their hearts out. One concentrated on the movements of the police and firemen and neighbors and ambulance attendants, while the other used the Zoomar lens to search for Mr. Higgins. He found him occasionally, offering the at-home audience brief glimpses of a stocky balding man in brown trousers and undershirt, stalking from window to window on the second floor of the house.

The show lasted for nearly an hour. There were policemen everywhere, and firemen everywhere, and neighbors milling around down at the corner, where the police had roped the block off, and occasionally Mr. Higgins would stick his rifle out a window and shoot at somebody. The police used loudspeakers to tell Higgins he might as well give up, they had the place surrounded and could eventually starve him out anyway. Higgins used his own good lungs to shout obscenities back and challenge anyone present to hand-to-hand combat.

The police fired tear gas shells at the house, but it was a windy day and all the windows in the Higgins house were either open or broken. Higgins was able to throw all the shells back out of the house again.

The show lasted for nearly an hour. Then it ended, suddenly and dramatically.

Higgins had showed himself to the Zoomar lens again, for the purpose of shooting either the camera or its operator. All at once he yelped and threw the rifle away. The rifle bounced onto the porch roof, slithered down to the edge, hung for a second against the drain, and finally fell barrel first onto the lawn.

Meanwhile, Higgins was running through the house, shouting like a wounded bull. He thundered down the stairs and out, hollering, to fall into the arms of the waiting police.

They had trouble holding him. At first they thought he was actually trying to get away, but then one of them heard what it was he was shouting: "My hands! My hands!"

They looked at his hands. The palms and the palm-side of the fingers were red and blistering, from what looked like severe burns. There was another burn on his right cheek and another one on his right shoulder.

Higgins, thoroughly chastened and bewildered, was led away for burn ointment and jail. The television crew went on back to Manhattan. The neighbors went home and telephoned their friends.

On-duty policemen had been called in from practically all of the precincts in Brooklyn. Among them was Detective-Sergeant William Stevenson. Stevenson frowned thoughtfully at Higgins as that unhappy individual was led away, and then strolled over to look at the rifle. He touched the stock, and it was somewhat warm but that was all.

He picked it up and turned it around. There, on the other side of the stock, burned into the wood, were the crudely-shaped letters, "The Scorpion."

* * * * *

You don't get to be Precinct Captain on nothing but political connections. Those help, of course, but you need more than that. As Captain Hanks was fond of pointing out, you needed as well to be both more imaginative than most--"You gotta be able to second-guess the smart boys"--and to be a complete realist--"You gotta have both feet on the ground." If these were somewhat contradictory qualities, it was best not to mention the fact to Captain Hanks.

The realist side of the captain's nature was currently at the fore. "Just what are you trying to say, Stevenson?" he demanded.

"I'm not sure," admitted Stevenson. "But we've got these two things. First, there's the getaway car from that bank job. The wheels melt for no reason at all, and somebody burns 'The Scorpion' onto the trunk. Then, yesterday, this guy Higgins out in Canarsie. He says the rifle all of a sudden got too hot to hold, and he's got the burn marks to prove it. And there on the rifle stock it is again. 'The Scorpion'."

"He says he put that on there himself," said the captain.

Stevenson shook his head. "His _lawyer_ says he put it on there. Higgins says he doesn't remember doing it. That's half the lawyer's case. He's trying to build up an insanity defense."

"He put it on there himself, Stevenson," said the captain with weary patience. "What are you trying to prove?"

"I don't know. All I know is it's the nuttiest thing I ever saw. And what about the getaway car? What about those tires melting?"

"They were defective," said Hanks promptly.

"All four of them at once? And what about the thing written on the trunk?"

"How do I know?" demanded the captain. "Kids put it on before the car was stolen, maybe. Or maybe the hoods did it themselves, who knows? What do _they_ say?"

"They say they didn't do it," said Stevenson. "And they say they never saw it before the robbery and they would have noticed it if it'd been there."

The captain shook his head. "I don't get it," he admitted. "What are you trying to prove?"

"I guess," said Stevenson slowly, thinking it out as he went along, "I guess I'm trying to prove that somebody melted those tires, and made that rifle too hot, and left his signature behind."

"What? You mean like in the comic books? Come on, Stevenson! What are you trying to hand me?"

"All I know," insisted Stevenson, "is what I see."

"And all _I_ know," the captain told him, "is Higgins put that name on his rifle himself. He says so."

"And what made it so hot?"

"Hell, man, he'd been firing that thing at people for an hour! What do you _think_ made it hot?"

"All of a sudden?"

"He noticed it all of a sudden, when it started to burn him."

"How come the same name showed up each time, then?" Stevenson asked desperately.

"How should I know? And why not, anyway? You know as well as I do these things happen. A bunch of teen-agers burgle a liquor store and they write 'The Golden Avengers' on the plate glass in lipstick. It happens all the time. Why not 'The Scorpion'? It couldn't occur to two people?"

"But there's no explanation--" started Stevenson.

"What do you mean, there's no explanation? I just _gave_ you the explanation. Look, Stevenson, I'm a busy man. You got a nutty idea--like Wilcox a few years ago, remember him? Got the idea there was a fiend around loose, stuffing all those kids into abandoned refrigerators to starve. He went around trying to prove it, and getting all upset, and pretty soon they had to put him away in the nut hatch. Remember?"

"I remember," said Stevenson.

"Forget this silly stuff, Stevenson," the captain advised him.

"Yes, sir," said Stevenson....

The day after Jerome Higgins went berserk, the afternoon mail brought a crank letter to the _Daily News_:

Dear Mr. Editor,

You did not warn your readers. The man who shot all those people could not escape the Scorpion. The Scorpion fights crime. No criminal is safe from the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS.

Sincerely yours, THE SCORPION

Unfortunately, this letter was not read by the same individual who had seen the first one, two months before. At any rate, it was filed in the same place, and forgotten.

III

Hallowe'en is a good time for a rumble. There's too many kids around for the cops to keep track of all of them, and if you're picked up carrying a knife or a length of tire chain or something, why, you're on your way to a Hallowe'en party and you're in costume. You're going as a JD.

The problem was this schoolyard. It was a block wide, with entrances on two streets. The street on the north was Challenger territory, and the street on the south was Scarlet Raider territory, and both sides claimed the schoolyard. There had been a few skirmishes, a few guys from both gangs had been jumped and knocked around a little, but that had been all. Finally, the War Lords from the two gangs had met, and determined that the matter could only be settled in a war.

The time was chosen: Hallowe'en. The place was chosen: the schoolyard. The weapons were chosen: pocket knives and tire chains okay, but no pistols or zip-guns. The time was fixed: eleven P.M. And the winner would have undisputed territorial rights to the schoolyard, both entrances.

The night of the rumble, the gangs assembled in their separate clubrooms for last-minute instructions. Debs were sent out to play chicken at the intersections nearest the schoolyard, both to warn of the approach of cops and to keep out any non-combatant kids who might come wandering through.

Judy Canzanetti was a Deb with the Scarlet Raiders. She was fifteen years old, short and black-haired and pretty in a movie-magazine, gum-chewing sort of way. She was proud of being in the Auxiliary of the Scarlet Raiders, and proud also of the job that had been assigned to her. She was to stand chicken on the southwest corner of the street.

Judy took up her position at five minutes to eleven. The streets were dark and quiet. Few people cared to walk this neighborhood after dark, particularly on Hallowe'en. Judy leaned her back against the telephone pole on the corner, stuck her hands in the pockets of her Scarlet Raider jacket and waited.

At eleven o'clock, she heard indistinct noises begin behind her. The rumble had started.

At five after eleven, a bunch of little kids came wandering down the street. They were all about ten or eleven years old, and most of them carried trick-or-treat shopping bags. Some of them had Hallowe'en masks on.

They started to make the turn toward the schoolyard. Judy said, "Hey, you kids. Take off."

One of them, wearing a red mask, turned to look at her. "Who, us?"

"Yes, you! Stay out of that street. Go on down that way."

"The subway's this way," objected the kid in the red mask.

"Who cares? You go around the other way."

* * * * *

"Listen, lady," said the kid in the red mask, aggrieved, "we got a long way to go to get home."

"Yeah," said another kid, in a black mask, "and we're late as it is."

"I couldn't care less," Judy told them callously. "You can't go down that street."

"Why not?" demanded yet another kid. This one was in the most complete and elaborate costume of them all, black leotards and a yellow shirt and a flowing: black cape. He wore a black and gold mask and had a black knit cap jammed down tight onto his head. "Why can't we go down there?" this apparition demanded.

"Because I said so," Judy told him. "Now, you kids get away from here. Take off."

"Hey!" cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume. "Hey, they're fighting down there!"

"It's a rumble," said Judy proudly. "You twerps don't want to be involved."

"Hey!" cried the kid in the black-and-yellow costume again. And he went running around Judy and dashing off down the street.

"Hey, Eddie!" shouted one of the other kids. "Eddie, come back!"

Judy wasn't sure what to do next. If she abandoned her post to chase the one kid who'd gotten through, then maybe all the rest of them would come running along after her. She didn't know what to do.

A sudden siren and a distant flashing red light solved her problems. "Cheez," said one of the kids. "The cops!"

"Fuzz!" screamed Judy. She turned and raced down the block toward the schoolyard, shouting, "Fuzz! Fuzz! Clear out, it's the fuzz!"

But then she stopped, wide-eyed, when she saw what was going on in the schoolyard.

The guys from both gangs were dancing. They were jumping around, waving their arms, throwing their weapons away. Then they all started pulling off their gang jackets and throwing them away, whooping and hollering. They were making such a racket themselves that they never heard Judy's warning. They didn't even hear the police sirens. And all at once both schoolyard entrances were full of cops, a cop had tight hold of Judy and the rumble was over.