Spirits of the Charles

by Paul C. K. Spears

  The Family men stood firm, even as windshields exploded and one of them went down, a bullethole in his long coat. Rose felt sick, but there was no time to react—she had to swerve to avoid return-fire, the noise of it washing away everything but terror.

  She wasn’t sure if God was on her side, but somebody was watching, because her swerve took them around the Family, riding two wheels and sending assassins diving for cover. The wheels slammed down again, engine whining—and then they were clear. But not out of range.

  She ducked and screamed as Browning rounds peppered the truck, shattering milk-bottles and tearing at their chassis. She heard Henderson roar with pain, his blood spattering the dashboard.

  Oh dear Jesus—But they were rounding the next bend. The road was uneven and their truck jolted and threatened to pitch over, but they were alive. She allowed herself to breathe at last, trying to follow the road, searching for twists and turns to throw off any pursuers. “Gus, you… you shot somebody!”

  “We’re mood-leggers, Rose. Shit happens.” He was clutching his shoulder; she couldn’t see how bad the injury was.

  She swallowed, and sent up a quick prayer for the dead man’s soul. Somehow, she didn’t think he’d make it to heaven. The other direction was more likely, for a gangster. “Think they’ll chase us?”

  “Don’t think so. They took a big risk, shooting irons off out here… Christ, that hurts.”

  She looked over, horrified, to see his entire left shoulder was a mass of red. Crimson had soaked his shirt, seeping through his fingers.

  “Gus! You’re—”

  “I’m fine. Just need some hair of the dog...” He reached into their glove compartment, and fumbled through permits and fake identities. She heard him wheeze with agony—Myth or not, he still felt pain like any other man. “Ah, there it is.” He plucked a brown bottle of Greed from the floor, its contents yellow and stuff.

  Despite her panic, she was disgusted. “Gus. You promised you wouldn’t drink that stuff on the job.”

  “Preach at me when I’m done bleeding.” He unscrewed the cap and chugged the last of it, tossing it out the window. “Ah … That’s good shit.”

  She watched as his greasy hair sprouted golden spines, fingers lengthening. His face grew longer, shrewder, more reptilian. It made her stomach turn, but at least it worked: his new mutations slowed the bleeding, bronze scales growing over his wound. He tore off a sleeve from his shirt, tying it over his shoulder. “See?” He belched. “All better.”

  Rose gripped the wheel in frustrated silence. She relied on him to get them through scrapes like this one, but it was hard to trust a guy who was always half-drunk. And his looks didn’t make easier to work with: those scales and claws had been caused by a batch of bad Greed years ago, and every drop of the stuff seemed to make it worse. Most days he was tolerable, but the Draughts blurred his judgment even as they kept him alive.

  Then he began to talk, his voice deeper and scratchier than before. She knew what it would be about, before he opened his mouth: he always returned to his favorite subject, after a drink.

  Money.

  “Rose… You ever think about hitting Providence?”

  She shrugged. “We just got shot at. I’m not thinking about anything.”

  He ignored her. “We should hit Providence sometime. I hear they got a king’s ransom in Draughts down there. We’d be made with some of that… just made.” His voice was silky, with the rush of Greed and his own delusions.

  “Yeah. I’ve thought about it. I’ve also thought about staying alive.” She sighed. “Get your blood off the dashboard. I don’t want to end up in the slammer, when some cop sees your guts all over the car.”

  “Sure. Say, you got a dollar? I could really use a dollar.”

  Her fear subsiding, Rose rolled her eyes and thanked God she was still alive to be annoyed. She tugged a crumpled bill from her pocket. “Here. Just promise me you’ll shut up.”

  Gus dabbed at his own fresh blood with it, then held it up to the light. The sun shone through it, stripes of light dancing over Washington’s blood-soaked face. “There he is. The big cheese.”

  “You owe me a dollar, Gus.”

  “Add it to my tab, honey.”

  “Call me ‘honey’ again, I’ll put another hole in you.”

  “Fair.” He pocketed the money. Her jibes seemed to sober him up; he might a bastard, but he still had priorities. “Get us back to town. We need to tell Wallace about our scrum back there.”

  “He’s not going to like what he hears.”

  Gus nodded. “I know.”

  “You know what he does, to people who bring him bad news.”

  “Yeah. I know.” They both fell silent, pondering the future. And their little bootleg truck rolled east, towards Boston.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE SPRINGFIELD SAFETY BANK was blown to hell. Mick Vance had never seen anything like it. The building’s owner, he reckoned, would probably get a fat insurance payout. Of course, that someone would have to clean up all the blood and organs.

  Mick stepped over the rubble towards the bank steps, pushing through crowds who shoved and jostled to glimpse the carnage—there were hundreds of people here, even though the robbery had only happened hours ago. State and Main were roped off; cars blatted their horns at pedestrians, who cursed and made creative gestures in reply. All in all, not a positive display of humanity.

  That was okay with Mick. To him, dealing with humanity was a regrettable job hazard. He aspired to better things… like a nice quiet director’s office in Company headquarters, far from obnoxious peons.

  The police cordon let him pass. Why wouldn’t they? He had a shiny Bureau of Investigation badge, after all. It looked very official, and winked in the sun when he flipped it open. The fact that it was fake, just like his long B.O.I. coat, wouldn’t reach the police until later. He was fine with that. The Boston Police Department couldn’t solve a crime if someone gave them a map, a compass and a year’s head start. Mick should know—he’d worked for them.

  No, Johnny Law wasn’t going to help here. The Pinkerton Group, with their tendency to skirt legality, was more suited to this job. And what a dirty job it was.

  The front door had been blown off its hinges, hurled inward by some terrible force. Past shards of window-glass, scattered by bullets, he found a series of bloody footprints—and stopped. Mick crouched, scrutinizing the stains. He knew he looked conspicuous, a six-foot-four skinny man with a hooked nose, sweeping curious eyes over the wreckage. He’d have to work quickly, to avoid attracting paparazzi.

  There was a metallic smell filling the dusty foyer of the bank: something unpleasant and animal. The stink of fear. Blood caked the expensive rug, and was splashed all over the tellers’ booths, their brass bars there stained with crusty smears.

  A dirty job, indeed. He cracked his knuckles. Time to get to work.

  Agents in employ of Pinkerton each had a talent for cracking the case: some were legbreakers, experts at the snapping of bone and tearing of ligaments. Others were expert gamblers, scoping out the “tells” in a suspect’s twitching jowl or mustache. Mick was neither. His talent was a little more… exotic.

  Mick straightened to his full height, borrowed hat tilting, and took a deep breath. All the emotions which had been on display hours before mixed around him, pheromones and the sharp crackle of Draughts wafting on the same frequency but with different intensity.

  The terror hit his nostrils first: strong, reeking. It was a horrific perfume, soaking the place, dripping from art-deco columns and baseboards. The killers had meant to sow panic, and they’d succeeded. They’d backed people into a corner—that much he’d gotten from witness statements. Shaking and blank-faced, the survivors spoke about men who soaked up bullets without flinching, gas-masks looming through clouds of smoke, and the screams… Those witnesses had been left like shell-shocked veterans.

  Mick tried not to let this cloud his judgment. Witness statements were unreliable, and
didn’t often correlate. Besides, Boston had seen strange things lately: the molasses flood at the turn of the decade, the Spanish influenza panic, and of course the police strike that had cost him his job. But as weird as the city was, it was still human. Everything human had a purpose, a motive. You just had to sniff it out.

  The fear was strongest, around the teller windows. Whatever they’d done, they’d started here. He ignored the red stains on the floor, preferring instead to focus on the drama in the central hall. It looked like a stage, with morning sunlight coming through the high windows, and he suspected it had been used as one.

  Picture the scene. Cowering customers, deranged men with guns looming over them. And then… what? Some kind of demand? A coffee table had served as the murderer’s pulpit, judging by the boot-prints. The terrorists, or whoever they were, had made a speech—a manifesto, and when it was finished, they’d started killing people.

  But… By that time, they’d already cracked the vault. Why so much theater? A distraction?

  “’Death to the capitalists,” said a reedy voice from behind him, “and all their works.’ That’s what they said. Isn’t it?”

  Mick turned to face the voice: it belonged to the shortest man he’d ever seen, a tiny fellow with a pencil mustache carrying a camera. Its bulky mass and black lens dwarfed the gremlin carrying it, who grinned at him. “Care to make a statement?”

  Mick grimaced. “No, thanks.”

  The camera went off, and he pulled his lapels up. The flash-bulb shattered, and the sudden smoke turned the heads of the real policemen in the doorway, who were waiting for someone—anyone—to take charge. He didn’t need additional eyes on him, not when he was doing Company work.

  “Get that thing out of my face. I thought the press wasn’t allowed in here.”

  “Yeah, well… It’s amazing what a flask of Glee will get you, these days. You sure about that statement?” The camera lowered; behind it were the beady, seeking eyes of a relentless journalist. “I’d make it worth your while...”

  Damn shutterbug. He only had so long before the real Bureau boys arrived; the Company had another agent stalling them right now, but that wouldn’t last. And then there was the army of rubber-neckers: bored housewives, maids and shoe-shiners, immigrants from the North End and socialites from Jamaica Plain, crowding for a glimpse. Every person who recalled his face later would make his job harder. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Sylvester Stein. Freelance journalist.” The hand Sylvester offered him was stained with ink, and Mick didn’t take it. “What brings you here, Mick the Nose?”

  Mick froze. “How do you know my—”

  “Please. How many beanpole private-eyes live in Boston?” Stein waggled his eyebrows in an infuriating manner, tapping one toe. “You ought to get a disguise, Micky boy. Some of us have bigger brains than the rubes out there.”

  Mick turned back to the teller windows, fuming. Barely ten minutes on the job, and his cover was blown. “You keep quiet, and I won’t tell the Bureau you’re not supposed to be here, okay?”

  “Fair enough.” Stein chewed the end of a ragged fountain pen. “So whatcha think happened?”

  “I’m working on it.” He couldn’t see through the blood on the windows; someone had left that there deliberately. One of the terrorists, maybe. There were three—that was something all the witnesses agreed on. One had been wearing a gas mask; another was a pale woman, with long braids. And one very large man, who’d taken three pistol rounds to the chest… and kept walking.

  He had a bad suspicion that part wasn’t witness exaggeration. No reason why—it just rang true to him. No sane person would rob a bank in broad daylight… unless they were prepared for resistance. Steel panels under a vest, maybe. Or something else.

  Something supernatural.

  “I’ll tell you what I think happened,” Sylvester said. “I think three people came in here, shot the place up, and stole bonds. They were probably Reds.”

  “Amazing. It’s almost like you know what everyone else knows.” He paused. “What makes you think they’re Communists?”

  Stein nodded at the blood. “Bit of a color scheme going on, eh? And all that shit about capitalism…”

  “Fair point.” Vance hated chatting on the job; absorbing the scent of human depravity took focus, and he was getting distracted, picking up cologne and pit-sweat from the cops standing outside. But it did help to have another pair of eyes. Reluctantly, he began to bounce ideas off the reporter—his words might show up on the front page, but at least he’d have leads to work with.

  “If they were Reds, though, why not toss in a few bombs and run? That’s always their way. Why stick around, and risk getting caught?”

  “If they’re not Reds,” said Stein, “maybe thieves, with delusions of grandeur?”

  Vance snorted. “Hell of a stunt for common thieves. Especially with the Bureau in town, after the flu riots. No, this took more balls than you’d need, for common burglary.”

  “Balls enough to take Pinkerton property?”

  Mick glared at him. “I hope that’s not going in your article.”

  “Relax,” said the short man, looking smug. “It’s practically public knowledge. They stole some of your glyphs, right? The kind you can make Draughts with. Gen-u-ine, Egyptian distilling stones! What a gutsy bunch.”

  “Sumerian,” Vance corrected him. “You need Sumerian glyphs to distill emotions. Right order, carved on the right type of stone. Otherwise, the Draughts won’t condense.”

  Stein snorted. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Professor. But I bet those glyphs were high-end—cut perfectly, works of art. Otherwise, why would you guys be stashing them here?”

  Mick didn’t bounce the ball back, this time. The stones were what his employers had sent him out to recover—they were incredibly old, some of the first used by Florence Nightingale, and the Company had been holding them as political leverage. Now they were gone, and he didn’t gain anything by making it obvious he was after them.

  “If they took the stones…” Vance moved towards the back of the bank. “They were after the vault, the whole time. Stealing the bonds was a cover.”

  “I wouldn’t go back there,” said the stubby man, following him. The click-clack of his shoes tapping against slate weaved back and forth behind Vance. “You’re not gonna like what you see.”

  “It’s my job.” The immense vault door was up ahead. The vault itself didn’t technically belong to Springfield Safety, but to a sister bank which shared the same building—and the office-rooms upstairs, where some had tried to flee after the carnage began. Only a few had made it there alive.

  “Trust me—Pinkerton don’t pay you enough to see this.”

  “That’s my business.” He rounded the edge of the steel door, and saw something that made his stomach lurch into his throat.

  Bodies, over a dozen of them, were stacked in the vault. Laid on top of each other, like cordwood. But these weren’t peaceful, funeral-home corpses—they’d been killed with incredible violence, men shredded in their two-piece suits and women with minks and pearls hacked to pieces. They’d been torn apart.

  No, he corrected himself. They’d torn each other apart.

  Teeth were broken off in forearms. Hands lay clutching broken limbs and collarbones which jumped like white exclamation points from dead skin. Every corpse’s face was contorted in fear and pain; those who hadn’t died strangling, stabbing or biting their fellows had been riddled with bullets. Blood filled the floor of the vault, pooling up at the edge. Only the metal lip of the vault door kept it from spilling into the hallway. There was so much blood that it hadn’t even dried yet; a few flakes had appeared on the edges, and around the money which drifted in flotillas past the dead.

  Once he finished puking behind a column, Mick straightened, trying to reign in disgust. There were similar piles of vomit near the door. It seemed the cops hadn’t been able to handle the scene either, and this comforted him. He’d been through the War; he
’d seen plenty of brutality, and even more as a Pinkerton employee. He could handle this.

  Wiping his mouth, he noticed something odd. On the wall beside the Greek pillar was a brown stain—tobacco juice.

  Strange… Stuffy bankers would never chew cud on the job. They’d use a spittoon, like proper gentlemen. He made a note, and turned to inspect the horror show behind him.

  “So,” he said, and his voice came out weaker than he’d hoped, “this is where they got the blood. Mystery solved.”

  Stein barked a laugh. “You got a real sense of humor. Yeah, they painted it up and down the bank, Dada-style.” He gestured at the cadavers. “No shortage of ‘paint’ in here.”

  “Someone crowded them in, and force-fed them Rage draughts.” Vance shivered. “So much that they tore each other apart—and the survivors were shot. Why? What the hell for? What message does that send?”

  Sylvester shrugged. “Beats me.”

  Vance shook his head. “This is bad. This is worse than the Wall Street bombing. This…” He swallowed. “This is an act of war.”

  “But with who?” Stein said, scribbling away with a steady hand. “Who are they picking a fight with? Feds already hate the Bolshies. They’ll only make things worse for their ‘comrades’ in the unions.”

  “I’m not sure. I…” Vance felt a drop of something strike his neck, cold and red. He looked up, and got his answer. Some enterprising madman had spelled it out across the domed arch overhead, leaving a broom and a bloodstained rag hanging in the light fixture.

  ITALY SENDS HER LOVE.

  “Damn,” said Stein, following the track of Mick’s eyes. “We’re at war with Fascists? Man, that’s… that’s big. We’re gonna need a special edition for this!”

  Mick frowned as the reporter scribbled away. “I’d hold the presses, if I were you.”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “This wasn’t the Italians. None of it smells right.” He curled a fist. “All this death, just to frame a country that doesn’t give a shit about us? Italians don’t even brew Draughts—their government thinks it’s ‘unpatriotic.’ This is some kind of… of terrible hoax.”