Hot Lead, Cold Iron

by Ari Marmell

  This time, my eyebrows went up.

  “When Congress has to deal with what I have to deal with,” he said, “then they can tell me to stop drinking.”

  You gotta love Chicago cops. I let him pour a tiny dollop into the milk, just to be polite. “To Congressman Volstead,” I said. Pete snorted, and raised his flask in response.

  “Seriously, Mick,” he said a minute later, after wiping his trap on his cuff. “What happened to you?”

  “Just a brief tussle. They got it worse’n me.”

  “With?” He started to scowl. “Not Ottati’s boys. I warned you about throwing in with them…”

  “No, not Ottati.” I sighed. “Uptowners.”

  “Damn it, Mick—”

  “Don’t start.” I threw back another few swallows. “I thought the Outfit had a truce with the Northside Gang. What’s the skinny?” It was one of the questions I’d asked him to look into over the blower.

  “Yeah, they do, but it’s pretty shaky. The beef between Ottati and the Uptown Boys is small potatoes. I think both sides are waiting to see if the two crews can handle it between themselves, without having to bring in the big guns on either side.”

  “Seems that the Uptown Boys are afraid the Shark’s doing just that. They were pretty hot to know who I was and what I was doing with him.”

  Pete leaned back in his—my—chair. He tensed as though to put his feet up on the desk, interpreted my look (correctly) as a warning not to. “Well, the good news is, if the history Shaugnessy gave me’s any guide, the Uptowners won’t be a problem for too much longer.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Fino Ottati’s enemies have a bad habit of getting into accidents.”

  That brought me up short. “Such as?”

  “All kindsa things. He went to war with Lou Smitty about four years ago…”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “That’s because his house burned down, with him and his crew inside. And back before the Outfit and the Northside made all nicey-nice, Fino was engaged in a turf war with a crew answering to Benny Fleischer.” At my expression, he clarified, “Brother of Saul Fleischer, one of Bugs Moran’s lieutenants. Well, Capo Fleischer and his best torpedoes were all piled in a car and on their way to a sit-down when they were hit by a freight train. One that wasn’t even supposed to be there; it’d been sent down the wrong track. How’s that for bad luck, huh?”

  Not surprising at all, if you know the fella’s mother. But what I said was, “Go on…”

  “There’s about half a dozen more of the same. Mostly other wiseguys and soldiers, but we lost a man—Detective Espenson—who was investigating some of Capone’s boys, Fino included. Just stumbled and fell over a bridge railing into the Calumet River. He coulda just been lit enough to be that clumsy—everyone knew he was a drinker—but it fits the pattern.”

  “Yeah…” Oh, it fit a pattern, all right. Guess I knew what kinda “evil” Donna Orsola was battling with her magics. Not that I could entirely blame her. I wondered if Fino even knew what dear old Mum was up to. “Anything about a fella named Scola in that history?” I asked him.

  Pete frowned, thinking. “Actually, yeah. ‘Bumpy’ Vince Scola. He—”

  “Bumpy?”

  “Bumpy,” he confirmed with a nod. “Way Shaugnessy tells it, back in his early days, Scola was running hooch down from Canada for John Torrio. So one day, on the backroads a few dozen miles outside town, the truck’s slowing up for a sharp bend when five or six hijackers with Tommies and shotguns pour onto the road and start squirting lead. Well, Scola just hits the gas like the bullets aren’t even there, and runs down three of them on his way. And as they’re making tracks, he turns to his partner, calm as you please, and says, ‘The roads around here are kinda bumpy, ain’t they?’”

  I couldn’t help but snicker. “Okay, ‘Bumpy’ it is.”

  “Right. So during the transition between Torrio and Capone, Bumpy got into it with Fino something fierce. Old grudges, I think.” He leaned forward over the desk, resting one hand on the typewriter. “Lotta bloodshed, but at that time, who’d notice? They…” He stopped, glanced down suddenly. “They make these in plastic now, y’know.”

  It took me a few quick blinks (so to speak) to follow the jump. “Oh, the typewriter? I like that one.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you having it here?”

  “Nah. Steel’s fine. Typewriter, filing cabinet, the joins on the bedframe, they’re all steel. It’s just pure iron that gives me problems.”

  “Huh. I never knew that.” He stared, kinda at me, kinda off into space.

  “Uh, Pete?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fino? Scola?”

  “Right! Sorry. So yeah, bunch of Scola’s thugs are gathered outside in front of one of his speakeasies when a carload of boys working for Sam Battaglia drove past and filled the whole lot of them with daylight. They swore it was a mistake, that they mistook ’em for Northsiders. Doesn’t sound too probable, but Al musta believed ’em, because he cracked down, shut down the war between Fino and Scola, and of course Battaglia never suffered any major repercussions. Sure Scola wasn’t too thrilled with that.”

  “But Scola survived?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. Thing is, he was supposed to be there, but he’d been hauled in not six hours earlier on an extortion charge. We couldn’t make it stick, but he was in the cooler for a day and change. Guess we saved his life.”

  We both leaned back, each mirroring the other, and sat for a few minutes—me pondering on bad luck and the magics of one particular Benandanti strega, Pete thinking about whatever he was thinking about.

  Probably nerving himself up for what was coming.

  Couldn’t blame him, either. I spent more’n a few minutes trying to convince myself he’d just handed me enough new leads, I didn’t need to go home after all. I really didn’t wanna go; you might’ve tumbled to that already.

  End of the day, though? If Frankie and everyone had come up snake eyes, it meant any Mob fingers in this pie were real well hidden. Since finding the kid was priority one, figuring who snatched her distant second… Well, I was just angling for an excuse, and I knew it.

  I left Pete to his ruminating and stood, puttering around the office a little, collecting what I’d need. From the cabinet’s bottom drawer, I pulled a leather jerkin, which I slid on over my shirt in place of a suit jacket. A belt followed, complete with a narrow holster for the L&G on the right hip, an empty scabbard on the left. Then I moved to the Murphy bed—which was still down and unmade—and reached into the left side of the niche, where the mattress didn’t quite reach. There, standing in the corner, was a wire-basket rapier, genuine fifteenth-century Toledo steel. Slid the blade home, threw my overcoat on over the jerkin, and I was as ready as I ever would be.

  Pete was staring at me over his flask, which he was in the process of emptying in fast gulps. “Getting decked out, Mick?”

  “Yeah, I’m coming along this time, not just opening the way for you. Gotta call on some of the folks back home.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “Not so you’d notice. Y’know, I been meaning to ask… how’d you talk your chief into letting you up and vanish for a three-day stretch every month?”

  “Heh. Told him I have a sick aunt, lives out of town. She needs me to help her clean and stock up the house every few weeks. He’s not thrilled about it, but I always make sure my shifts’re covered, so he goes along.” Pete smiled, a nervous, anemic little expression. “And I don’t think it’s occurred to anyone that it’s always on the full moon. Hmm. Maybe you could, uh, talk to him, Mick? Make him a little less surly about the whole thing?”

  I shook my head. “Not how it works, Pete. What I do ain’t exactly thought-control. I can usually nudge a guy into doing or feeling what I want—especially if it’s something quick and thoughtless, like dropping what he’s holding or sneezing or whatever—and I can sometimes make people see stuff that ain’t there. But it don’t
last more’n a couple of seconds after I walk away. Maybe a few minutes, if I laid into ’em heavy, then poof.

  “So yeah, I could talk to the chief. I could make him cooperative as you please, right up until I step out that door. And then you’re right back where you started, with a suspicious boss to boot.”

  “Yeah, that I don’t need.” Pete polished off the last dregs of whiskey and stood up. “All right. Let’s get on with this.”

  I headed for the alcove where the fridge used to be, the one with the splotches of mildew in the corners. Dragging my fingers along the wall, I stepped inside. “You got everything?” I asked Pete. “Remember, you can’t eat anything, drink anything, accept anything from anybody while you’re there. If you do—”

  “Yeah, Mick, I know the drill.” He hefted his backpack. “Three canteens of water, dried fruit, canned meats, and a few raw steaks for, uh, nighttime.”

  I nodded; it should do. The steaks wouldn’t be in great shape after a day or two, but fresh enough to suffice. And given how much stronger, how much heavier, magic was where we were going than it is here, he should be able to maintain enough control, even under the light of the moon, not to eat anything—or anyone—he shouldn’t.

  That was, after all, why he went every month.

  For a couple minutes I stood in that ugly, discolored little alcove, just feeling the growing things around me (even if they were just mold and mildew). I thought about them, reached out with mind and fingers both to touch them, carefully savoring and studying every sensation, every scent. I pushed my mind through them, linking them to me, until I could feel the whole world rotating around us, until we were its axis.

  It took right about no effort at all. I let myself take a few breaths to be grateful for our timing—in addition to the first night of the full moon, we were also coming up on the vernal equinox, which made this kinda thing scary simple—and then I pushed.

  The rear wall of the niche shrank away into the distance like it was falling down a deep (albeit horizontal) hole. From around and behind it belched an overwhelming puff of loamy air, the gasp of an awakening garden. The receding wall left behind a tunnel of moist, sifting soil that couldn’t possibly exist in the soggy earth beneath Chicago’s streets—which was fine, because it didn’t, not really. Twisted roots, wriggling worms, and things that coulda been either or both looped in and out of the passage walls, floor, and ceiling. Little critters skittered and clattered and giggled at the edges of earshot, way beyond the light. Molds in every color of the rainbow hung in spatters across the walls. Some gleamed with a phosphorescence that had nothing whatsoever to do with chemistry or biology; a few even twinkled as if they were distant stars, or maybe winking eyes.

  “Down the rabbit hole, Alice,” I said. Pete threw me a vorpal glare, and we were off.

  Our footsteps made a series of “fwumps” in the soft dirt, our breathing filled the air around us, and neither of ’em echoed in the least. Long minutes passed, and we strolled by dozens after dozens of roots and splotches, yet the sunlight filtering into my office from the tiny windows still seemed only a few paces behind us. The flickering fungi slowed and dimmed as we neared, picked back up once we’d moved on. Thick-stemmed mushrooms, with spotted caps in bruise-purple and drunk-nose fleshy red, started popping up from the ground, and occasionally the walls. And when I say “started popping up,” I don’t just mean that we happened across ’em on our way, though that was mostly the case; I mean that, a couple of times, they literally popped up in front of us, unfolding like beach umbrellas. Once or twice, I heard one yawn as it stretched.

  After a dozen steps or a few hundred yards, two minutes or twenty, the light behind us abruptly disappeared from sight—and the tunnel in front began to swim into focus, brightened by a steady, golden radiance from above.

  The floor sloped up, steep and sudden, and we were there.

  The Chicago Otherworld. Or more properly—since there’s so many more of you than of us, and your version of the city’s grown a lot faster’n ours—the Otherworld a few miles outside of Chicago. Which actually works for me, since I wouldn’t want someone stumbling on this particular Path and popping up unannounced in my office.

  We emerged from the earth in a veritable field of toadstools, from thick white maggoty-things that barely peeked from the soil to bright-capped stalks that reached above my knees. All around us, the grasses knelt and whispered in the springtime breeze; above, the sky was an impossible blue, without any sign of the sun. There was no sun, not in this part of Elphame; just a brightening of the sky in the day, then darkening to flaunt the glittering stars and gleaming silver of the moon.

  Yeah, there’s moonlight without a sun; look, I don’t sit around nitpicking the way your world works, do I? (Well, I guess maybe I do. Knock it off anyway.)

  In all directions except straight ahead, nature stretched unimpeded. A few dozen yards behind us, an impossibly thick forest loomed out of nowhere, casting its tiny portion of the world in perpetual midnight. Pinecones the size of babies rolled around in the dirt where they’d fallen, and you would not wanna be under one when that happened. Branches scraped as wind and other things moved through and around ’em, and we could hear the grunts, the thumps, the growls, and in some cases the songs and poems of the animals living inside. Off to the left, a fallen oak provided room and board for another population of mushrooms; the tree itself still lived without roots, growing new branches on its upper side, its leaves waving hello to its standing brothers of the wood. Other trees stood in all directions, alone or in small copses away from the forest, and these weren’t the oak, ash, and hawthorn of the woodlands behind us, but apple and pear and orange trees, their fruits ripe and enormous and ready to burst.

  Short tufts of that grass I mentioned stuck up like thinning hair between the bunches of mushrooms, growing thicker and taller as it spread, until it was a couple feet high just beyond the overlapping rings of toadstools. In a couple sporadic spots, tiny puddles of honey sat where the morning dew hadn’t yet seeped into the soil or the stems. The plains wore wildflowers in blinding reds and purples and blues, buzzing with bees and butterflies and wild pixies—all gangly and naked and not at all attractive (especially once you get to know ’em). They chattered and cooed at us, and snickered at Pete. Birds circled high, high above, cawing, crying, preying and praying; from here, it was impossible to be sure how large they might be—or to make out, exactly, the words that it seemed they were screeching.

  And on the far horizon, jutting over the rolling hills of grasses and trees, the tippy-tops of the towers and skyscrapers of our Chicago. The kinda-civilization, at the edge of this kinda-wilderness.

  I ain’t doing it justice, not by half. See, it ain’t just about the what, these expanses of Elphame, but the how. The aromas of sickly-sweet flowers and rich soil, wild grasses and hoary, moss-covered trees—they weren’t just on the wind, or winding up our noses the way “normal” smells are supposed to. They get inside your head as if they don’t even come from outside, but from your own mouth, tongue, skin. They’re everywhere, a part of you, not the world around you, until your breath turns floral and your words taste of leaves.

  The colors… They’re intense, impossible, almost painful; entities unto themselves, rather’n mere traits of other objects. They’re stark, standing out against each other, the richest greens, the sharpest reds, the deepest browns, the brightest yellows. You could try to capture ’em in a painting, but nobody’d buy it: too fake-looking. There’s no gradation, nothing muted; the dark and light emeralds of a leaf don’t blend into each other, but sit side-by-side with clear demarcation—as if no one color here would ever lower itself to blend with another.

  No wonder Pete was squinting.

  He was also fidgeting, feet shuffling, hands running up and down the straps of his pack. I gave him a few to get it out of his system; yeah, he’s been here before, about half a dozen times now, but it ain’t his world.

  Me, though? I could feel my back
relaxing, my shoulders straightening. Much as I hated the idea of coming back, of dealing with the sorts of bastards I’d walked away from, this was my home. It felt right, felt—not friendly, exactly, ’cause there’s plenty here that’s not, but less universally hostile, less alien.

  Partly it’s the whole technology thing. We’ve talked about that already. Partly it’s the iron. It’s all over your world: tools, nails, pieces of trains and buildings, railings, handles, furniture… You can’t get away from the damn stuff. Yeah, it ain’t actively painful unless I touch it, and casual contact—brushing against it, that kinda thing—usually doesn’t cause any lasting hurt. But it’s there, always itching at my skin and my mind. It’d be, for you, like living in a world where random objects were brushed with lye. Not here, not for me.

  And partly it’s just, this was my world. My own nature, my own magic, belonged here, in ways they never did and never would on the other side.

  Wasn’t enough to make me stay, though. What’s that tell you?

  I glanced Pete’s way, and couldn’t help but smile. Uncomfortable as he was, he was standing taller. A few of the lines on his face had smoothed, the shallow scar on his neck—inflicted by a drunk with a bottle some years ago—was gone. Hell, even his hair was thicker.

  Whoever you are, you’re always more you, in Elphame.

  Or in the better parts of Elphame, anyway. Trust me, you don’t want to visit the places where you’re less you, or more someone else; the things already living there are nasty.

  “Okay, Mick,” he said finally, turning back my way. “I’m ready to—Holy hell!”

  No fooling, he jumped up and back like a startled kitten. I just about bust a gut laughing, and it took me some minutes before I could breathe well enough to answer his unasked question. (Remember what I just said about “Whoever you are, in Elphame”?)

  “Some of us,” I told him, “don’t look entirely like our ‘true selves’ in your world. Far as we can tell, it’s random; some Fae don’t change a whit. Some just have a couple different features depending on which world they’re in: eye-color, shape of the chin, that kinda stuff. And me…”