A/N: I don't own any of the characters of Dark Angel, but it's debatable whether their creators would recognize them in these costumes. This AU assumes that the events of Dark Angel took place in 1938, during the Great Depression. I tried to make it as plausible and accurate as possible for a story about a supersoldier set way before genetic engineering, but I didn't have anyone beta, so please let me know if you see a mistake.
--
"Hard time here and everywhere you go / Times is harder than ever been before / And the people are driftin' from door to door / Can't find no heaven, I don't care where they go"
- Hard Time Killing Floor Blues, Skip James, 1931
--
"I'm going to need another ten dollars," said Karl Vogelsang, the no-good private detective Max had hired.
"That ain't hay, you know." She sighed, tired from her shift at the restaurant, and from this same song-and-dance again. "Didn't your mother ever tell you to be satisfied with what you've got?"
"How about you, baby?" Vogelsang said. The were sitting together in the back room of the laundry business he ran as a cover -- or maybe, because it paid better and more regularly. "Like I said, I traced the license plate you gave me, got the name of the man who owns it?"
"I'm not your baby, I'm your client. And I'm not looking for a man. It was a woman." Max could see the kind face in her mind's eye. "Hannah."
"Yeah, well he said he bought it off a dame up in Gillette County Wyoming in '29, right before the big crash."
"But nothing on Hannah? The other kids?" Her lost brothers and sisters. She needed to find them.
"Names would help."
"No can do," said Max regretfully. "Hannah was a nurse, though. Is there a registry of nurses or something?"
"Ten would help, too."
Max dug in her bag. The rent was due. She had to have more money, and fast.
--
Cal Theodore knocked on the door of the house, his heart pounding in his chest despite his best intentions. Almost every address in First Hill -- a neighborhood well within the boundaries of Seattle proper, yet somehow outside the bounds of the Depression that was crushing the country -- was on the list that Max had given him. The building was not as grand or imposing as some of its neighbors, but it was big enough. Cal could tell from a glance at the manicured lawn and the shiny paint on the front door that the people inside lived lives that were beyond his realm of experience.
All he had to do was pay careful attention. If his report wasn't good enough, he wouldn't earn anything from Max.
Cal had known Maxine Geneva for almost a decade, since the days when, as raggedy kids, they had both worked as messenger boys, doing foot runs together at Reliable's. Eventually, when her femaleness asserted itself strongly enough that even their nose-to-the-books boss couldn't avoid seeing it, "Max" was fired, but Cal still regularly stopped by with his bicycle to see if there were quick delivery jobs to be given out.
Maxie waitressed now at the Gem downtown, but she also had Cal and his mostly-younger collegues, as well as an assortment of sales boys, bus boys, rag boys, Western Union boys, encyclopedia sellers, knife-sharpeners and the like all over the city in her sometime employ. Cal's long-standing friendship with Max bought him a more thorough understanding of the kind of business she was running than the others enjoyed, but he knew that she wouldn't put up with faulty or incomplete information from anyone.
Cal shifted uncomfortably on the mat. He could hear movement inside. Finally, a colored maid opened the door, revealing a glimpse of a high-ceilinged foyer beyond. "Yes?" she said.
Over her shoulder in the foyer, Cal noted an antique dark wooden table -- teak maybe -- with heavy legs supported a vase of fresh-cut flowers. "Reliable Delivery Services," he announced. "Got a delivery for a --" he checked his clipboard automatically "-- Logan Cale." Cal tilted the package so that she could read the return address, if she could read, while he took in other details, making mental notes. The vase holding the flowers looked early Quing, not Ming, to him, but what the heck. He'd put it down as Ming. Cal wished he could see into the next room.
"Fine," said the maid, looking up from the parcel. "It can go on the table."
"I dunno," Cal said. "I'm supposed to get a signature. The big man not home?"
"No, he's out. Couldn't I sign?" she asked. "Mr. Cale been waiting for this one."
"Against policy," Cal lied briskly. "Tell you what though." He hopped from foot to foot, trying to look convincingly urgent. "You let me in to use the john, I'll take care of the signature myself."
--
In between the lunch and dinner rushes at the Gem, Max could almost always be found in the kitchen, listening in to the radio that Herbert, the head chef, kept turned low when he thought he could get away with it. He preferred jazz, but he listened to the serials and the soaps too, and some old-timey music, when the mood struck him. Max herself wasn't picky when it came to taking a load off.
"Maxie!" bellowed Cindy, her friend from the dish room. "Someone at the back to see you, and I know you ain't working!"
"Thanks," said Max, pushing through the saloon doors that communicated with the dish room. The three girls inside were shirking as much as she was, their sinks abandoned, hovering near enough to the kitchen so that they, too, could hear the music.
"You want to be quieter about telling me next time, help me keep Normal out of our hair?" Max asked. No one much cared for Normal, the tyrannical maitre'd and day manager, and the feeling was mutual. Still, the job paid her bills, some of them, and the Gem had weathered even leaner days, before Prohibition was repealed. It wasn't exactly cafe society here, but Max had a number of irons in the fire.
"Sorry, sugar," said Cindy unconcernedly, examining her buffed nails. "You know, this work is awful hard on the hands." She raised an eyebrow at Max. "I'd try for your job, but ain't all of us light enough to be able to pass for Eye-talian."
Max knew that her dark hair and olive skin, her full lips, made the negro women in the back speculate. Not knowing her own parents, it was easy for her not to rise to the bait. She wasn't lying to anyone. So she had picked her last name out of a telephone directory. So what?
"You think you'd rather be at a bunch of diners' beck and call all day?" Max asked. "Go and wash your mouth out with soap." The alley door was propped open, even though it was drizzling outside. She strode across the dish room. "What have you got for me, Stinky?"
"Aww, can't you cut that out? Everyone calls me Cal, now." Her oldest friend kicked at the spokes of his bicycle.
"Maybe you should try bathing more regular," Cindy pointed out from inside.
Max leaned against the doorway, ignoring the exchange. "Well?"
"I cased a house on Fogle Ave. today."
"And? They got anything good?"
"Oh, you bet they do." The skinny messenger waved a folded piece of paper in her face. "Wrote it all down."
Max took it from his hands. "Ming vase, silver tea service ... statue of a cat, huh?"
"Looked like porcelain."
"Security?"
"None of the help sleep in the house. Just one bodyguard. It's all in there -- a map of the first floor, too."
"Nice," Max allowed.
Cal shrugged. "I want the money for that tip-off."
"After."
"Hey, my ma has six mouths to feed, you know."
Max screwed up her face in mock sympathy. "When I think of all the responsibility resting on those thin shoulders, Stinky, I just want to cry."
"I'm not fooling, Max. I need ..." His voice trailed off. "Say, is that All Ears?"
The music in the kitchen had silenced, replaced by a man speaking, low and gravely. "... broadcast will last sixty seconds, and it is the only free voice in the city of Seattle."
"Listen up! He's on KPCB!" said Herbert.
The kitchen helpers had stopped their work. Everyone crowded closer to the set. All Ears was an anonymous reporter who had become something of a Robin Hood figure in Seattle. Apparently, he had contacts at several different radio stations, and his corruption-exposing broadcasts were unannounced, but greatly anticipated by Gem employees.
"Do you know Edgar Sonrisa? Of course you may feel that you do; his has become a household name. You've seen him, smiling for the flashbulbs at political dinners. He smiles because he is a man who believes that he will always continue to move through the world with impunity, his crimes going unpunished because of the power he wields."
"Maxine, where the fire truck are you?" Normal, stuck his head into the kitchen and bellowed. "Your orders are up! Bip bip bip! And what are you lazy lie-abouts doing?!"
"He owns canning factories and trucking operations up and down the West Coast. He also owns many of the police in this city. Nevertheless, Edgar Sonrisa is a criminal, and his crimes will no longer be tolerated. Some of those who have eaten the products he sells in this time of hardship are becoming ill, at risk of--"
Normal snapped the radio off. "I'm as busy as a one-armed paperhanger out there on the floor! Well? Get to work!" Cindy and the other dish girls returned to the back room, the others quickly, with Cindy following, as usual, at her own pace.
"That Sonrisa must be a real skunk!" said Cal.
"Don't be gullible," said Max. "You can't believe what you hear from the ether."
"But All Ears--"
"From anyone," Max insisted.
"Who the heck are you, buster?" Normal's attention settled momentarily on Cal, the interloper in the kitchen. "Get out of here! Shoo!"
It was as good a chance as any to escape. Max sprinted for the dining room and her waiting tables.
--
Logan Cale, heir to the Cale Aeronautics fortune, rogue journalist, and man-about-town, used a penknife to open the parcel that had arrived at his house that afternoon. It had been sent by a contact in San Diego. He gave the papers inside -- receipts and trucking manifests -- a cursory examination. Just more fuel for the fire. Logan tucked the packet under his arm, leaving the empty box in the hallway for the maid to take care of in the morning.
It was late, and his "house guests" were safely here, upstairs in the extra bedrooms. He had already drafted the script for the follow-up broadcast, which would air the next day. All that was left was the recording itself. Peter was around somewhere, no doubt, although Logan didn't see him. He hoped the bodyguard hadn't fallen asleep.
Logan walked through the dark-paneled library, his shoes whispering on the plush of carpet, and opened the door to his study-come-recording studio. He settled in his chair, fixing the aluminum disk in the machine and adjusting the mic. "This is All Ears," he said, for the second time that week. "This broadcast will last sixty seconds, and it is the only free voice in the city of Seattle. At the end of the Great War, Edgar Sonrisa purchased millions of cans of surplus creamed corn from Uncle Sam and he's been biding his time since then. Now, in a factory just outside of Seattle, he opens the cans, dilutes them with starch and water, and repackages, selling twice as many. The corn is marketed under his own Sunrise brand, as well as in the original Royale cans which his employees reseal. It is this resealing that is slowly poisoning the people who--"
"Hey!" Peter shouted from the library. Logan looked up.
And there was the girl.
She was beautiful, dressed all in black, black trousers and a black turtleneck, her dark hair curling about her face. At Peter's shout, her back stiffened and she turned away from Logan to face the bodyguard, graceful and tense.
"Laura!" Logan called. "Sophie!"
"They're OK, boss. The thief never got upstairs."
She turned to face Logan. Her eyes were round and black, too, and cradled in her arms was his statue of Bast. Thief, Peter said. She had not been sent here by Sonrisa, although god knew how much she had heard of his broadcast.
He found that he could breathe again. "You're a thief," he said. At the far side of the long library table, Peter nudged the safety on his weapon.
The girl shrugged elegantly. "Times are hard."
"Stay where you are, Peter," Logan ordered. He took a step into the room, empty palms spread. "You have good taste. French, about ten years old, a tribute to Chitarus."
"Whoever that is," she said.
"I see. You chose it because it was pretty."
"No, because it's the Egyptian goddess, Bast." She placed it carefully on the table. "Eye of Ra, protector, avenger, destroyer... giver of life who lives forever. She is the goddess who sees all goddesses."
"Ah."
Peter shifted, his bulk blocking the hallway, through which she must have entered. The girl glanced at him, then at Logan.
"I'm sorry," she said with a small smile. "I'd love to stay and discuss art, or even theology, but I need to be on my way. I love your show, though." She bounced once on the balls of her feet and then took off like an Olympic diver, jumping for the French windows as if they weren't there, and was out on the lawn with in a crash of glass.
Logan and Peter watched her sprinting for the gates. "That, I didn't expect, Mr. Cale. You want me to chase?"
"No, you won't catch her," Logan said. He looked at the aluminum disk, which he'd left turning. He'd have to start over with the broadcast. "Just find out who she is."
--
"Dark haired young lady, short, good figure," the big man said. "Very good figure. Maybe ate here some time in the last few days, maybe works here. Do you know who I'm talking about?"
"I'm sorry to say I do not," Normal said, fastidiously straightening the cloth covering a nearby table. It was Maxine Geneva the man was looking for, Normal was sure of it, but he wasn't going to admit to anything until he knew what kind of trouble she was in this time. "What makes you come here to look for her?"
The other man produced a booklet of matches. Normal recognized the Gem's logo, of course. The big man shrugged. "Found these." He handed the matches to Normal, along with a folded bill. "My boss is a ballet producer, very interested in her. He thinks she has quite a future as a dancer."
Normal was fairly certain he knew what that really meant, but the man certainly did not know what he was in for. He put the money in his pocket. "Tell your boss the producer to watch out for that girl. She's trouble."
"Name? Address?"
"Yeah, yeah." Normal reached for a pencil.
--
Brenda, Max's usually cheerful roommate, was sitting on the davenport in the common parlor, looking glum, her piecework abandoned on her knee. Max and Brenda rented a room upstairs in what used to be a single family house in Judkins Park, and were allowed use of the parlor and kitchen with the other tenants. This part of the city had become a place where Hoover carriages -- automobiles hitched to horses because of the prohibitive cost of gasoline and repairs -- were sometimes seen, and where hobos left runes on the mail boxes and telegraph poles, advising one other where to beg.
"Has Mr. Walter been up for the rent?" Max asked.
"You bet. And you still owe me your half."
"Don't worry," Max promised. "What's got you so down?"
"It's poor Little Bit," said Brenda. Little Bit was the son of the couple who lived across the hall. He was six or seven, Max guessed. "He's still sick. His mother heard All Ears on the radio today, and she says she thinks it might be because she bought some of that bad Royale brand corn."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," said Max." The kid will be fine."
"You think?"
Max remembered the man she had seen in the house on Fogle Avenue, handsome and condescending. "That radio hack is probably some bored rich swell in a mansion somewhere with nothing to do but stir up worries for working people. Looking for a laugh."
Brenda's eyes brightened. "Hey, speaking of rich -- someone came by with a present for you."
"A present?"
Brenda gestured toward their room. "Yes -- a statue of a cat."
--
It would not be accurate to say that Logan was waiting for her. For all he knew, she would sell the statue to the highest bidder without looking back. Still, when he heard the slight creak of a window opening in the dining window, the sound of someone landing lightly on the uncarpeted hardwood inside, he closed the oven door on the chicken he was preparing and turned, ready with a smile.
"Hello. It's funny how cats tend to turn up right around the dinner hour."
She didn't seem to be in the mood to play. "You broke into my room."
"Actually, your landlord let me in. And this, I believe, is what is commonly termed the pot calling the kettle black."
"I do it to make a living." She gestured toward the lushly appointed dining room around her. "That's clearly not one of your concerns."
"You should see my uncle's place."
"I'd love to. You want to give me the address?"
"I left you a present," Logan said.
"Am I supposed to be grateful?"
"That would not be inappropriate." Logan was still in the kitchen, talking to her through the wide doorway. He took a step forward, leaning on the door frame. His visitor took a step backward, then, looking as though she were going against her better judgment, pulled out a dining room chair for herself and sat.
"Mr. Cale?" Peter entered the dining room and looked from Logan to the girl at the table. "Should I ...?"
"Go upstairs, please, and check on Laura and Sophie," Logan said. The bodyguard left them. "Now, Maxine." This was the name her boss had given.
Her eyes narrowed. "Max. Look, what do you want from me?"
"You know who I am, where I live. I wanted to know the same, to make sure you weren't trying to hurt me. Can't be too careful in my line of work. But curiosity isn't just limited to the feline population. I think you're interesting. I want to understand what you do," Logan said truthfully. Ever since he'd first seen her, he hadn't been able to get her out of his head.
"What if I said the same to you, Mr. All Ears."
"What I do? That's easy," Logan said. "I'm proud of it. I research and write the broadcasts myself. I have some useful connections. I record here on electrical transcription disks. That's what all the canned radio programs are using. We change the labels on mine and swap them into the stacks. Once the technician realizes what they're broadcasting, he could shut it off, of course, but they never do." He grinned. "My fans are everywhere."
"Are my criminal escapades going to merit a broadcast?"
Logan was taken aback. "Uh, no. Not at all." He hadn't even thought of that. "I want to see this city the way it was, you know? The Depression has kicked the integrity out of people. Thugs -- people like this Sonrisa -- are taking advantage of hard times because they can. The police, and institutions that are supposed to protect citizens, they've been turned around. What you do is a symptom, I think, not the real problem."
"Gee, thank you doc," said Max. She stood up and walked to an ornate mirror near the sideboard. "Look what you've got. Why bother with all of that?"
"Because it should be done." Logan followed her to the sideboard. "I'm in the right position to do it." He looked over her shoulder at her reflection. "You're beautiful," he said, unable to stop himself. Max stood there stiffly, but did not move away. He brushed away the hair from the back of her neck, then, as if in a dream, examined the tattoo on the skin there. He had seen this before. In blue letters, someone's handwriting:
Group V
O Pos.
#452
"Project Manticore," Logan said.
--
Part 2 COMING SOON.