My copy of this issue only has the variant cover, and what a cover it is: Tombstone grins evilly as Cage lay dead in the ground. The normal cover, upon looking online, isn't so bad, either, a close-up shot of Tombstone's face emphasizing his sinister scar and his sharp teeth. Interior artist Shawn Martinbrough actually has a framed version of this one on his wall!
Alright, picking up where we left off, Tombstone sics his dogs on Cage. Cage is still in the hole, and figures his best bet might be to hide in the casket until he can think of a better idea. As the dogs viciously claw at the "door", Tombstone fires his tommy gun in the air and shouts "Welcome home, Luke!"
Flashback time! Man, flashbacks are just all over the place in these Noir books. Anyway, here we learn what landed Cage in the pen for ten years. 616 Cage was framed for a crime he didn't commit; Noir Cage... not so much. The ugly guy Cage hit in last issue's flashback is at Stryker's club, hitting on a dancer, Josephine, aggressively. Cage stands up for her, and the guy calls him "something ugly." And that just flipped his switch, in his own words. Tossing the guy through the storefront window and onto the street, Cage just lets him have it. He says he forgot everything he knew, that he wasn't himself anymore. "It felt... unbelievable."
The guy tries to defend himself with a straight razor and then a revolver, but Cage's onslaught isn't stopping. After delivering the knockout punch, Cage sees a badge fall out of the guy's jacket... and in a split second the thrill iss gone. While he was distracted, Tombstone walked up, grabbed the downed cop's gun, and shot Cage twice.
Back to the present (insofar as 1933 or so is "the present"), the dogs have practically shredded the casket's lid. That's when Cage notices a card with the Lord's Prayer on it hidden inside the casket. Who put it in there? He has to find out. Meaning he has to get out of there. Bursting out of the casket, Cage challenges the dogs head on - knocking one out and landing an uppercut on the other that sends it flying right out of the ditch. Now that it's just him and Cage, Tombstone figures he should state the obvious: if he wanted Cage dead, he wouldn't be climbing out of that hole.
Cage narrates that Tombstone had a raw deal in life. The only albino in Harlem, the guy had another skin condition on top of that: scleroderma. "Sufferers find their bodies gradually becoming encased in hard and tightening skin. Other words, he hits like a Mack truck." That last tidbit is accompanied by a visual aid in the form of Tombstone delivering a massive right hand to Cage's kisser. With Cage on the ground, Tombstone tells him to get out of town or else.
For his part... Cage doesn't care. He's got a lot of things to take care of before he leaves this city. Cage spends the night at a cheap motel, and is called over by a familiar face as he leaves in the morning: Banticoff, who "just happens" to be getting a shoeshine on the street just outside. Cage wonders how he found him. Cage gives him an update on Daisy - she was strangled to death, and considering the minimal signs of struggle it looks like she was caught by surprise. Banticoff wishes he wouldn't describe the murder of the woman he loved to him, and Cage apologizes.
Banticoff tells Cage how he met Daisy. She was chasing a stray dog down Park Avenue, dressed in diamonds and high heels. When she caught the thing, he asked her why she bothered. "Everything deserves some love. Even a stray." Banticoff thinks that's why she found him. Sidenote: Banticoff's ugly dog from last issue is probably that same stray. Anyway, Banticoff tells Cage it's his job to uncover the truth and get justice for Daisy. Handing him a stack of spending money, he says it wouldn't hurt to look good doing it.
Banticoff gets in his car and is driven away, but Cage has a feeling. It's just a hunch; he describes it as "more of a 'sense' I got than any one fact." He follows Banticoff from stop to stop via cable car — and finds him enjoying the "exoticness" of Harlem. Paying street performers to dance for him, that sort of thing. Cage narrates that he thinks he knows Banticoff's type. "The sound of the drums... jump rope and tap shoes. People like Banticoff like everything black. They just don't want to be it."
When Banticoff heads for the Hotel Theresa, the ritziest place in Harlem, Cage thinks tailing him's about to get tough. A dark man like him only gets into that place carrying a bag or a horn. Never one to give up at the first sight of adversity, Cage helps a bellboy carry someone's luggage inside and he's in. Inside, he sees, uh... some people who I imagine are famous black entertainers from that era. That, and Banticoff romancing a pretty little thing. "Looks like the missus wasn't the only one who liked a little coco in her milk. I can't lie, I like Banticoff's taste." Banticoff hands his moll a wad of bills, and Cage decides he should follow that money.
Theories run in Cage's head as he shadows her. Banticoff have another family, maybe? Whatever the case, this girl looks like trouble. She walks into the train station, and Cage follows... but he doesn't have change for the turnstile and all he has on him is what he got from Banticoff. And there's a white cop at the station. White cop, black dude asking to break a hundred... he can't afford to waste time explaining himself. Grabbing a liquor bottle from a trash can, he clandestinely tosses it down some stairs. While the cop's investigating the sound, he jumps the turnstile.
Following her home, she flips out when she sees him behind her. He tries to tell her he just wants to ask a few questions, but he's interrupted by the girl's boyfriend cocking a shotgun. As he's explaining himself, Cage is knocked out by an unseen assailant wielding a baseball bat. When he wakes up, he's in his motel room - and it's covered in blood. As are his hands, his clothes, the bed... That's about when he realized it: he was being set up. The police knock on the door, and Cage hits the fire escape. But the cops outside fire at him from below, forcing him to seek higher ground up on the roof. The cops burst through the door, led by Officer Rachman (the guy Luke got sent up for beating), and Tombstone. This seems as good a time as any to mention that Rachman appears to have a freaky skin condition himself, looking almost like Freddy Krueger. I wasn't kidding when I said he was ugly.
Cage is amused that they gave Tombstone a badge for shooting him. Tombstone sets the record straight: he shot Cage for fun, the shield was just a bonus. Rachman tells Cage he's under arrest for the murder of Daisy Banticoff. Cage has an airtight alibi: he was still in prison when she was killed. Rachman produces a forged release form that says otherwise. Cage figures these two are part of the set up, but considering they couldn't lead ants to a picnic somebody must be pulling their strings.
Rachman and Tombstone didn't come to arrest Cage, they came to kill him. That means something he's doing is scaring them, or at least whoever they work for. What matters right now is that he needs a distraction. So he calls Tombstone by his real name, Lonnie, and asks if his mother knows where he is. Tombstone grits his teeth and says nobody calls him that. "Why not, Lonnie? It's the name your mama gave you." One of the uniform cops laughs at Tombstone's name, and gets a powerful backhand from the man himself. Rachman knows what Cage is trying to do and calls Tombstone an idiot for not seeing it, too.
Cage agrees - Tombstone is an idiot. By the by, there's this story about when he was born. Tombstone can hardly contain himself at this point. Anyway, the story goes that when "Lonnie" was born, his father took one look at the ghostly pale baby and spat right in his mother's face. Rachman just wants to shoot Cage and get it over with, but Tombstone figures that didn't work the first time - so he's gonna kill him with his bare hands, man to man.
Cage is game. Unfortunately, "this brick wall punches back." Cage dodges a deadly blow, and gets Tombstone in the gut. Tombstone laughs at his weak punch, but Cage wasn't trying to hurt him; he was trying to steal his gun. The body blow allowed him to get in close and lift Tombstone's piece. Cage shoots out one of the beams supporting the water tower on the roof, causing it to tip over and essentially flood the place out. He manages to climb down a busted clothesline in the confusion, leaving Tombstone and Rachman on the roof, humiliated.
On the street, Cage realizes he has to lay low. He looks at that Lord's Prayer card - St. Adrian's Church. There, he finds the place empty - save for a lone nun lighting candles for the departed. Cage grabs her arm when she tries to leave. He knows it's her. Josephine. He's here now and everything's going to be okay. She recoils from him, pulling back her hood to reveal many scars on her face. "You should never have come back here."
End of issue #2
