Hellboy, Vol. 2: The All-Seeing Eye (20 page)

The proprietor of the Bagel Palace treated Hellboy and Cassie like royalty. It helped that Cassie had phoned ahead to say they were coming. Hellboy generally found that people reacted badly when he turned up in places he wasn’t expected. Sometimes they reacted badly when he turned up in places he
was
expected, but that was their problem.

Luigi Spineze, however, had had a half hour to get used to the idea, and as soon as they stepped through the door, Hellboy ducking his head beneath the lintel, he bustled towards them with open arms and a wide grin. He was a jolly little beach ball of a man, his dark bushy eyebrows and bristling moustache making up for the fact that he had very little hair on his shiny dome of a head.

“Cassie, my lovely girl!” he exclaimed, his accent an odd combination of Cockney and his native Italian. He enfolded her in a fatherly bear hug, then stepped back, his hands on her shoulders. “But let me look at you! Beautiful as always! You light up my life like a lantern!”

Cassie was laughing and shaking her head as he turned to Hellboy. “And Hellboy! What an honor! I saw your picture in the paper this morning, but I never dreamed I would see you in the flesh! And in my restaurant too!”

Hellboy grinned bashfully. “Yeah,” he said. “Ain’t life strange?”

The Bagel Palace — perhaps more of a coffee shop than a restaurant, despite what Luigi had said — was around half full. As usual, Hellboy was aware of people staring at him. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen food fall out of one guy’s gaping mouth as he had stepped through the door.

“I give you my best table!” Luigi said expansively. “Over here by the window! Come! Come!”

He began to move away. Hellboy pointed to a table on the opposite side of the room.

“Actually I’d rather sit back there in the corner,” he muttered.

“But this is my best table!” Luigi reiterated.

“Yeah, it’s very nice,” said Hellboy. “It’s just a bit ... well ... public.”

Luigi looked crestfallen — perhaps he had been hoping that Hellboy’s presence would draw the crowds — but he conceded graciously. Hellboy and Cassie sat down. The table Hellboy had chosen was sandwiched between the kitchen and the toilets, but at least it was relatively private. The two of them ordered bagels and coffee (despite the huge breakfast he had eaten that morning, Hellboy ordered six bagels to Cassie’s one), and then they sat looking at each other for a moment. Hellboy tugged at his goatee a little selfconsciously. “Nice place,” he muttered.

Cassie let loose a burst of soft laughter.

“What?” said Hellboy. “Did I say something funny?”

She raised a hand and wafted it between them. “No, it’s just ... this is so weird.”

“What is?”

“This situation. Sitting here with you. I mean ... what do I say to you? What do I say that you could possibly find interesting?”

Hellboy shrugged. He had encountered this attitude lots of times, but that didn’t mean he had ever gotten used to it. What people didn’t seem to realize about him was that on first encounter he often felt just as awkward as whoever he was with.

“Everything you’ve said has been pretty interesting so far,” he mumbled.

“But ... I can’t imagine what your life must be like. From what I’ve read, it sounds as though you’ve done some
amazing
things. I mean ... how dull must this be to you? Sitting in a cafe eating bagels?”

“Believe me,” said Hellboy, “when I’m doing some of the so-called amazing things you talk about, I crave stuff like this. Moments when I’m not at someone’s beck and call. Moments when I’m not getting my teeth knocked in, or freezing my buns off halfway up a mountain, or lost in some stinking catacombs somewhere. This is ... nice. More than nice.” He smiled uncertainly. “I mean ... nice place, great company, and hopefully good food. What’s not to like?”

Cassie smiled shyly. Now that she wasn’t having to put on a front for assholes like Reynolds she was showing her softer, more
truthful
side. Hellboy liked that. He liked people to be themselves around him, purely because it happened so rarely.

“I guess it’s just ... well, you must have met so many amazing people in your time. How can anyone ...
normal
compete with that?”

“Most of the people I meet are jerks,” Hellboy said. “Prissy government officials, know-it-all army types, psychos, megalomaniacs. I hardly ever get a chance to just meet real people and hang out.” He shrugged. “I’m really not that special. Those magazines and TV shows, they always say I’m
enigmatic
, but I’m really not. Truth is, I’m not sure I even know what that means.”

“It means you don’t say much,” said Cassie. “So people think you’re deep.”

Hellboy chuckled. “I don’t say much because I haven’t got much to say. Either that or it’s because people ask me stupid questions. You know what my friend, Abe, says about me?”

“What?”

“He says I’ve got hidden shallows.”

They both laughed.

“So ... what
is
going on here, Hellboy?” Cassie asked a few seconds later. “People are talking about monsters and ghosts and demons. It’s like the whole world’s going mad. And these killings ... is it the work of some nutter or ...” She broke off abruptly, held her hands up. “Look, just tell me to mind my own business, okay? I don’t want to put you in an awkward position. Like you say, you have enough people asking you damn stupid questions as it is.”

Hellboy shook his head. “Nah, you’re one of the team. You have a right to know.” He started to tell her, but just then Luigi bustled up with their food, placing each plate in front of them with a flourish.

“I get your coffee!” he told them. “And if I may, Hellboy ... a picture for my collection?”

He gestured around. Hellboy noticed that framed and signed portraits of celebrities hung on the walls. Many of the celebrities were holding up one of Luigi’s bagels and grinning into the camera — though Madonna was scowling behind a pair of shades, shoulders hunched.

“Okay,” he said, trying to conceal his sigh.

Luigi bustled happily away to fetch coffee and camera.

Cassie smiled sympathetically. “Sorry about that. Maybe this was a bad idea?”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Hellboy said. “I get this kinda thing all the time.”

“And yet you don’t seem comfortable with it.”

“Face like mine, you think I’d get used to it, wouldn’t you?” he joked. Grimacing, he continued, “Thing is, I feel like a fraud. I mean, I’m not some actor or singer. I don’t have any special skills.”

“From what I understand, you save the world on a regular basis,” said Cassie. “That’s pretty special.”

“That’s just biology. Genetics. I’m hard to kill, so the B.P.R.D. puts me on the front line. I’m not a master strategist. I’m not James Bond. I can just punch very, very hard is all.”

“Even so, it’s a damn sight more valuable than what most of this lot do.” She gestured round at the walls.

“Plus I’m better looking,” said Hellboy with a grin.

He submitted to the flashing eye of Luigi’s camera, trying not to let his smile turn into a clench-teethed expression of anguish. Even in his left hand the bagel looked no bigger than a Polo mint, but he brandished it gamely.

When Luigi finally left, Hellboy shuddered. “Glad that’s over. Give me a kraken to fight any day of the week.”

They munched their bagels and drank their coffee and he told her the rest of the reason why he was here.

“So what’s being done to stop it?” asked Cassie.

“Abe’s gathering information and Liz is following up some leads on the muti angle.”

“And you?”

“Just now I’m directing operations. That call I made in the car on the way over? That was to Agent Turner, who works for the B.P.R.D. here in London. Right now she should be negotiating with the police to organize a widespread campaign to question every vagrant in central London.” He tapped his satellite phone. “Soon as we establish a link between the victims — and we will, believe me — she’ll call me.”

He swigged the last of his coffee and asked Luigi for a refill. Then he said, “But enough about me for now. What about you? When did you first develop an interest in poking around inside dead people?”

She smiled. “Must be in the genes. My dad’s an eye surgeon, my mum’s a consultant haematologist. Even my baby brother’s doing medicine at Leeds University.”

She took a last bite of her cream-cheese bagel. Some of the filling squidged out the side and ended up on her cheek.

“You’ve got cream cheese on your face,” Hellboy said. She rubbed at the wrong cheek. “Where?”

“Here.” He reached out with his left hand, delicately extending a forefinger to scoop the blob of food off her face. As soon as his finger touched her skin, however, light flashed from somewhere in the vicinity of his left shoulder, harsh enough to make him blink. He turned his head, expecting to see Luigi standing there with his camera.

But it wasn’t Luigi. It was Colin Proctor.

“Hey!” Hellboy shouted, and was starting to rise when the light flashed again, blinding him. He squinted and rubbed a hand across his face. Unable to see, he felt his hoof knock against something, which fell over with a clatter.

“Hellboy!” he heard Cassie say, but he didn’t answer. His vision started to clear. He saw Proctor scurrying towards the door.

“Hey, you little bastard! Come back here!” he yelled.

Proctor turned briefly. “Don’t think so, mate.”Then he smirked and ducked out the door.

It was the smirk which did it. Hellboy felt rage rushing through him. He roared and ploughed across the restaurant. He’d tear that little creep limb from limb — or, if not, then he’d smash his camera, at least.

People screamed as Hellboy cut a swathe through them. He was not exactly oblivious to what lay in his path, but he was angry, and moving fast, and so was not as careful as he would ordinarily have been. He thumped against one table with his hip, knocking it over, scattering food and crockery. His duster, flying behind him, swept across another, tipping over a coffeepot, whose contents spilled across the lacquered surface and drooled onto the floor. In his haste to catch up with Proctor, he cracked his head on the lintel as he ducked out of the building.

“Crap!” he shouted, giving a little old lady passing by on the street outside the fright of her life.

Proctor was haring along the pavement as fast as his stubby legs would carry him. Hellboy sprinted in pursuit, hooves raising sparks from the paving slabs, duster billowing in his wake like the cape of a superhero. People screamed and leaped aside. On the opposite pavement they pointed and shouted. Hellboy was gaining on Proctor, but the journalist, sweat pouring down his face, had come to a halt beside a crappy little Astra and was ramming a key into the lock. Hellboy caught up with him just as the car began to pull away from the curb.

“No, you don’t!” Hellboy shouted, and lunged forward. With his stone hand he grabbed the rust-speckled rear bumper. The car screamed, raising smoke and the stink of scorched rubber from its spinning but stationary tires. And then with a grinding screech of metal, the bumper parted from the car and the vehicle sped away. It slued into the road, narrowly missing a black cab, whose horn was a long blat of anger and alarm. Hellboy staggered backwards, the bumper still clutched in his stone hand like some bizarre weapon.

“Please drop that, sir,” said a voice behind him.

Hellboy ground his teeth as Proctor’s car receded into the distance, and then turned.

Two uniformed constables were standing on the pavement beside a parked panda car ten yards behind him. Both policemen looked nervous. One had his hands half raised as if to placate a cornered animal; the right hand of the other kept straying subconsciously to the handle of his truncheon.

“Hey, guys,” Hellboy said, “do me a favor and follow that car, willya?”

“Which car, sir?” the officer with the raised hands asked, though Hellboy could tell by his tone of voice that the guy was merely humoring him.

“The little blue Astra. The one missing a rear bumper.” He held the bumper up and instantly the two constables went for their truncheons. Hellboy supposed that if they’d had guns they’d have pulled them on him.

He rolled his eyes. “Take it easy, guys. I’m the wronged party here. Look, I’ll put this down if it makes you happier.”

He bent and carefully placed the bumper on the pavement. Then he said, “So are you gonna help me or not?”

“Could you tell us
why
you caused damage to the car, sir?” asked the second policeman.

Hellboy sighed. “I was trying to stop the driver from getting away. No chance of that now.”

“And exactly
why
were you trying to stop him getting away, sir?”

Hellboy closed his eyes briefly. “Because he’s been hounding me ever since I arrived here.”

“Hounding you in what way, sir?” asked the second policeman.

“He’s a journalist,” said Hellboy. “He’s been following me around, taking pictures.”

The two policemen exchanged a glance.”There’s no law against taking pictures, sir,” said the first officer blandly.

“We have a policy in this country, sir — freedom of the press,” added the second.

“
Oh,fer Chrissakes
!” exploded Hellboy. “That little bastard is compromising the integrity of my mission here and you stand there spouting crap about freedom of the press. You guys are priceless, you know that?”

He turned away, but the first policeman said, “Where do you think you’re going, sir?”

“To finish my breakfast,” Hellboy said, “or is there a law against that as well?”

“I think you should accompany us to the station, sir,” the second policeman said.

Hellboy turned back. “What?” he said quietly.

The officer looked nervous, but doggedly continued, “Regardless of your status here, sir, I really think you should come with us. We wouldn’t be doing our job if we just let you go. There are certain charges you may have to answer at the station.”

“Charges?” Hellboy repeated. “Like what?”

“Causing an affray,” said the first policeman.

“Criminal damage,” said the second.

“So you’re arresting me?” said Hellboy.