Underground

by Kat Richardson

  “It must be a loop or a bridge of some kind that connects him to both that plane where his energy was strongest and to this one. I don’t think I care for that. . . .”

  I turned my eyes to Mara. “Then why isn’t he talking?” Something cold brushed across my knee.

  “Maybe he needs—”

  “A voice.” It was a reedy tenor and it came from Albert. I looked toward him and saw a thin line of the net touching my knee, connecting me to Albert. “It comes from you,” he confirmed. “If you want me to talk, you have to lend me this.”

  “I’d rather not, but I guess I don’t have much choice.”

  Mara stared at me. “I can hear you both! But Albert’s so quiet. . . .”

  I peered into the darkness of the grid, seeing Albert as a haze of light floating above the blazing energy lines. I thought I might be able to push a thin strand of that energy to him and boost his voice. . . .

  “Yes!” Albert’s thin voice urged in my head.

  I yanked back to a more normal level where the Grey was ever-present, the neon lines of power and force dim glimmers that clung to the shapes of the world.

  “No. I don’t think that would be a good idea—giving you power.”

  The light silvered his glasses and hid his eyes. He moved restlessly in his mesh of magic.

  “Mara, can you tighten that net up a little?”

  “I can, but why?”

  “Albert is playing games.”

  Mara gave a twitch of her hand and the reticulated spell cinched down, binding Albert into stillness. The illusion of light on his glasses faded.

  “Better,” I said, moving my foot so it touched the edge of the net to maintain my connection to Albert. I felt it like a static charge passing over my skin.

  “I won’t help you,” Albert warned.

  “You will if you want to get out of that net. Let’s start with something easy. What’s your full name?”

  He was stubbornly silent. I didn’t know if a geas—a magical compulsion—would work on a ghost, and I wasn’t thrilled about trying it, but Albert wasn’t cooperating. I plucked at a bit of the Grey and stared at Albert, catching his gaze as I pulled the buzzing, energetic material in front of me, forming the power connection that would allow me to make a binding demand on the ghost. Then I gave a mental push in Albert’s direction and said, “Talk freely and we’ll be done sooner. Then you can go.” I could see the fast-multiplying black lines of pressure build and press on the ghost, forcing my demand against him. He jerked his head back, then he shuddered. The tiny black lines clung to him and sank into his form like needles, knitting a compulsion between us. I felt instantly cold to the bone—the chill of lonely death. Compulsion runs two ways, and I’d have to take care to remove the connection completely when I was done with Albert. But I’d have to maintain the pressure as long as we were connected; I didn’t want him to push back and I didn’t want the feel of unquiet graves lingering in my mind.

  “Very well!” he snapped.

  “What is your full name?” I asked again. I wanted to see what he did when the answers were nonthreatening. It would make it easier to know when he was lying—which I was sure he’d try. Unlike most of the people I saw, Albert had no aura to act as a tell of his emotions.

  “Albert Wallace Frye,” he answered, sighing a little with resignation.

  “Any relation to Frye of the Frye Museum and Frye Meat Packing?”

  “None. Had I call upon the fortunes of Charlie or Frank Frye, I’d hardly have been serving bootleg whiskey to whitter-brained flappers in a speak south of the skid.” His tone stung with resentment, and I found I didn’t need to push him to speak now that he was started. He wanted to spit out the lost story of his life. I might have more trouble keeping him to the point.

  “Is that how you made your living—bootlegging?” I asked. I’d let him run a while, get comfortable, before I asked about zombies and monsters.

  “I made what you call a living in the pharmacy trade. I made money by distributing booze—which I’d started out making myself when the bluenosed fools of Washington state voted in their goddamned dry law. A better day for a dollar never was had until the Volstead Act made the booze business a crime. Don’t believe them when people tell you crime does not pay—it paid better than propriety. I only kept to the druggist’s counter to give myself a front from which to dole out the bottles.”

  Mara looked shocked at this venomous recitation. I guess even Irish witches have foolish romantic notions about American bootleggers as some kind of alcohol-running Robin Hood and his Merry Men. It was no revelation to me that they were in it for the money and not for the thrill of twitting a stupid law.

  “So you couldn’t keep up with demand,” I prompted. “Then you went into distribution on your own?”

  “Hell, no. I partnered up with Olmstead.”

  “Roy Olmstead?”

  “The same.”

  “I see. You did the distribution for Roy’s boys. That explains why you walked me into a speakeasy on the bluff that time. Did you work that one, too?”

  “No. I dropped goods. I only worked the One-oh-Seven.”

  “That’s the place under Occidental, right?”

  He peered at me. “Where?”

  I racked my brain a moment. “Second Avenue.”

  “Correct. I had to recoup my losses on the shop—I bought an interest in a drugstore upstairs, but it wasn’t going so well, what with Bartell and all, and my partner and I talked about opening a saloon instead.” I knew Bartell Drugs was a major chain, but I hadn’t realized it had started in Seattle.

  Albert talked over my ruminations. “When the dry law came in, we busted. We tried a refreshment parlor, but everyone tried that—you can only sell so many phosphates and flips. I was stuck with half a bad bargain. So we brewed up some goods and sold them downstairs, where it was harder for the dry squad to raid us. That’s how I met Roy—he was in on a raid and he told me I was a chump for going it alone. He said the way to make money was to run the liquor like a business—which is what he did.”

  “He also got caught.”

  Albert shrugged. “Small beer. He was back right after. Business as usual.”

  “I meant the Thanksgiving raid.”

  “What Thanksgiving raid?”

  An incredulous chuckle escaped me that he didn’t know and I did. “Roy Olmstead was arrested in 1924 and did four years at McNeil Island—it was the largest successful raid in the history of Prohibition. He appealed on a cause of unconstitutional process because the Federals tapped his phone. It’s a very famous case—Olmstead v. United States. I’d think even a ghost would have heard of it.” With my interest in mystery and crime novels, I had gobbled up the details of the case in a college law course.

  Albert stared at me. “They jugged Roy?”

  I gave him a bemused look to cover a sudden wash of tiredness and an urge to shiver. This interrogation was more draining than I’d hoped. “When did you die, Albert Wallace Frye? When did you die that you didn’t know the Feds nabbed Roy Olmstead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know when you died?” I demanded, giving a mental push against the black needles and feeling them prick me, too.

  Mara leaned close. “I’m not surprised—dyin’s traumatic. Who’d want to be remembering that?”

  I nodded and backed off. I’d try a different tack. “All right. What is the last date you remember?”

  “I can’t recall a date.” He seemed to think, his eyes behind the tiny wire-rimmed spectacles shifting as he considered. “It must have been May. The weather was nice, but not summer-hot in the attic—I lived in the attic then. Nineteen twenty-two. The bar had been raided again and the supply was short. I didn’t want to wait for the next run and my partner and I didn’t want to close the speakeasy, so I was ‘stretching’ the booze.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I was cutting it with carbinol—legal stuff from the pharmacy st
ock. It smells sweet and no one would notice—they certainly wouldn’t complain,” he added with a laugh, “and I wasn’t using a lot, just enough to eke a couple of extra bottles out of the lot we had to make it through till Sunday—that’s when I’d have the next shipment. I’d done it before when we ran the speak on our own, but you have to be careful with carbinol—it’s got nasty effects if you sauce it up too much.”

  Mara was choking on outrage. “Carbinol? That’s methanol— wood alcohol. It’s toxic!”

  “I know what it is, Mara. Sit tight.” I turned my attention back to Albert. “So you cut the whiskey with carbinol. What then? You sold it to someone who died?”

  Albert radiated confusion. “No . . . I don’t think I did. I can’t recall what happened. . . . A couple of Roy’s boys dropped in to see me. Things get a little fuzzy here. . . . I remember T.J. saying something about the whiskey in the sink, the carbinol . . . and then . . . and then . . . I can’t remember.”

  “They drowned him in it,” Mara said, her voice icy and her accent thickening under suppressed rage. “I cleared that memory from the place when we moved in. I didn’t want a murder lingerin’ in my house.”

  “But you let the victim stay.”

  “I thought that’s what he was,” she replied, her face and voice gone hard. “A victim.”

  “Apparently a worthy one.”

  “The lieutenant was a businessman and this was just business. He wouldn’t have had me killed,” Albert objected. “He didn’t. I’m sure of it.”

  “No, you’re not,” I corrected. “You don’t even remember.”

  “Roy didn’t let his men go armed! He said he’d rather lose the liquor than a life!”

  “That may have been Olmstead’s rule, but his underlings seemed to have decided it was too big a risk to let you poison people on his booze. It wasn’t good business to let that happen. They held you under and drowned you in your own sink.”

  Albert looked shaken and I could feel his distress in waves through the Grey. “No! Those skunks! Those rat bastards! I’ll kill them!”

  “They’ve all been dead for years, Albert.”

  “I’ll find their descendants. I’ll make them pay for killing me.

  I knew I’d been murdered. I knew it wasn’t an accident!” If he could have, he’d have stomped his foot and thrown a fit. “When I get a body of my own again, I’ll hunt them down and pay them back for what their fathers and grandfathers did.”

  “Ah. That’s the thing I want to talk to you about.”

  “What?”

  “The body. Is that why you’re still here? Looking for a body to take over?”

  “Of course! I was murdered, you dingy broad! I deserve to get my life back one way or another.”

  “So you caught a ride on a zombie.”

  “They don’t last long enough to keep. I thought I could set a few things in motion, but the damned redskin fought me and then that hairy thing meddled and brought you in and that was the end of that idea.”

  I felt tired and stiff with cold but went on. Now we were getting to what I needed. “You’ve tried to get into one of those before?”

  “Couple, few times, yes. They turn up in the tunnels after earthquakes or construction. There were a lot of ’em for a while after the bootleggers broke through some of the walls down below to make escape routes and to stash barrels from the dry squads.”

  “Do you know where they come from? What causes the dead to walk like that?”

  Albert rolled his eyes. “They come from the snake thing that lives down there.”

  “What snake thing? How does it make them?”

  “I don’t know! Why ask me? I only borrow them when I can. The snake comes up into the tunnels sometimes when there’s a hole in the right place—and don’t ask where because I don’t know. It came up when I worked the speak. It stays away from crowds, but it’s a hungry bastard and sometimes we’d find its leavings in the sidewalks or tunnels we’d cut between the basements and have to bury ’em quick or have the cops all over the place. You don’t want the customers to know there’s a monster downstairs, so we tried to chase it off. We couldn’t do it, but the old Indians could. When we came up with enough firewater and cash, they made it go away.

  “I thought I’d never see another one of those walking dead, but they came again after the big quake and that’s when I thought I’d try to get one. But either I didn’t have the strength or it didn’t and it fell apart, but I knew I’d find a way.”

  “Have you found one?”

  “I might have,” he said, going cagey and avoiding my gaze. I could feel him wriggling in the Grey. “Why d’you think I wanted that bottle you had?”

  Mara whispered, “I think he means the flask Ben made for you that Brian broke.”

  I nodded. “Why’d you make Brian break it?”

  “Because I didn’t want the witch to use it on me. I didn’t like seeing that other one in there and it didn’t like being in there. It wanted out and it said it would help me get the boy. But you killed it before it could help me.”

  “What do you mean, ‘get the boy’?” I asked, and leaned on the black needles of the compulsion until Albert winced, feeling them against my own skin as burning cold that spread into my flesh.

  “The witch’s son,” he babbled. “He listens to me. Since I’ve gotten stronger, I can talk to him—his mind’s more like yours— but he’s pliable. Even if I can’t have him, he can help me find a body I can have. He’ll be powerful when he’s older. Don’t look at me like that. It’s her own fault. She made the house stronger. She made me stronger. It’s only fair! I was robbed of my life!”

  Mara made an angry, snatching gesture, shouting, “Take yerself off, y’toad!” and a string of furious epithets I didn’t understand. Startled by Mara’s outburst, I jerked back from Albert, ripping the black threads that lay between us and feeling the cold flood away. Then the net that contained Albert flushed furious red and collapsed into a hard knot of magic that was flung up through the ceiling, dragging the ghost, screeching, into the ether. Mara muttered after him for a minute, glaring up at the ceiling where he’d disappeared. “Y ’scheming gobshite! Shaggin’ bastard!”

  I slumped into the couch, gulping warm air into my frosted lungs and shivering until the chill faded. Without thinking, I rubbed at my stiff knee. I felt drained and the injured joint ached, but I got better as I warmed up.

  A clatter sounded on the stairs and Mara swallowed her curses before a befuddled Ben trotted into the living room blinking and wondering what had happened.

  “Something came through the floor upstairs and went out the roof! I couldn’t see it but it felt like acid on the wind it made. What have you been doing down here? Are you OK, Mara? Harper?” He took a good look at his wife’s face and leaned back. “Uh-oh . . . What did I do?”

  “Nothing!” Then she bit her lip and stood up, sighing. “Oh, love, I’m sorry. Nothing you’ve done. ’Tis that wretched Albert. He’s—well, I’ve made a terrible mistake letting him stay. He’s not a good thing to have about. I’ve sent him off for a while until I can collect what to do with him.”

  “What to do with him?”

  “I think I may need Carlos, after all. . . .”

  Ben and I stared at her. “I don’t think that’s the best idea . . .” Ben started.

  “That foul thing has designs on our son! And it’s my fault! My fault for not probing deeper to find his true nature. That—that—” Mara nearly choked on her re-stoked fury.

  Ben closed the distance between them and rolled her into an encompassing embrace whose comfort I envied. “Shhh . . . Don’t feed the gobshites.”

  Mara hiccuped a laugh and punched him weakly on the side— which was all she could reach. “You!”

  “Yes, me. I get that you’re mad and that Albert has been up to no good with Brian. So, what’s he been up to and have you stopped him?”

  Aside from the riot of her hair, I couldn’t see Mara over the tops of
Ben’s shoulders even as I got a little unsteadily to my feet—I felt like I’d run ten miles in snow. Her voice seemed to come from his chest. “I’ve corked him up for a while,” she said, “but it shan’t last. I’ll have to find a way to send him away permanently. I’ve been so foolish. I let him stay and he used the magic I poured into the house to protect us to plot vile things and grow strong enough to attempt them. We can’t allow that to go on. And he won’t give up his plots if he remains, even if I can limit his ability to execute them.”

  “Then that’s why you thought of Carlos,” Ben concluded.

  “Yes,” she sighed. “I know, I know—it would be bad to call upon him. I may simply have to imprison Albert until I can find a solution. Though I can’t say I fancy being a prison warden.”

  “How long can you leave him where he is?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s spiked on the roof now. I suppose I can throw a dome of the Tender’s Lace over him and keep him in his little hole a week or so.”

  “Can you come up with a solution to him in a week?” Ben asked.

  “I can come up with something. . . .”

  “Good. We’ll put him in his box for a while and not worry about it this second. Tomorrow will be soon enough if he’s no threat to Brian tonight. You’re too upset, Mara, to do the best you can do right now.”

  “Hark at you. Voice of reason.”

  “I learn from exposure. What about you, Harper? Get what you came for?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry to say.”

  Ben shrugged.

  “I should go,” I added, making myself walk forward without any show of the wobbliness I felt. It wasn’t pain so much as shock and exertion.

  Mara started to object, pushing herself free from her husband’s embrace, but I knew pro forma when I heard it and I got out of the house as fast as decent manners would allow. I’d really tipped over the Danzigers’ apple cart. I felt bad about it, especially since I’d been right about Albert. There is, sometimes, more solace in being wrong, and I had to leave them to grapple with the problem of Albert alone for the time being.

  I didn’t want to inflict my bad feeling on anyone else, so I didn’t call Quinton or drop in at Phoebe’s place but went home to the ferret who ignored me in favor of her squeaky eggplant.