Gods of Chicago: Omnibus Edition

by Sikes, AJ

  No, Chief wouldn’t knock him at all. Would he?

  What about the new boss? Brand tried to remember the man’s name, but his foggy head could barely remember how to knot a necktie. He did up the buttons on his shirt and shrugged into his suspenders. He reached into the closet for his coat. If he made double-time, Brand could get to his barber’s for a quick shave. He checked his wall clock and put the idea of a shave out of mind. He’d slept later than he’d thought. It was nearly eight o’clock. Snapping up a half-empty pouch of tobacco, Brand scooted out the door. He had a new boss to meet, and it wouldn’t do to show up unshaven and late to boot.

  The streets clapped and clattered with traffic by the time Brand’s feet touched pavement. The soreness was either retreating or his feet were numb from the cold. Either way, it was a little easier to walk and he took advantage of that, making time up from Dearborn to Harrison and then onto Printer’s Row. The Record’s building was across the street, and when Brand saw it he barreled into a couple of newsboys from one of the other outfits on the Row.

  Banners hung across the entrance to the Record, proclaiming the building home to the Ministry for Public Information, Chicago City. What caught Brand’s attention first were the two uniformed guards standing on either side of the entrance. They held some kind of fancy rifles and saluted as a group of men in suits strode into the building. The sedan that had let the men off slowly moved away. Its headlamps burned away the early morning chill in front of the car, and Brand didn’t miss the two little flags flying on short posts mounted into the sedan’s fenders. The Governor’s emblem showed clearly on the flags.

  The newsboys brushed themselves off. One of them spoke up as Brand stood there.

  “Hey, Mr. Brand, yeah? Huh. Hey, get this,” the kid said to his partner. “We’re giving the news to Mitchell Brand, eh, Robby?” The kid held out a paper. It fell open as Brand swiped it. Across the top, the now all too familiar sigil of the Governor’s office stood out in bold red, black, and gold ink. Beneath the symbol, Brand read a message that sent his gorge one way and his heart the other.

  Citizens of Chicago City are advised of the implementation of Eugenic Protocol 421, which allows for the registration, relocation, and sequestration as necessary of affected individuals. All persons meeting descriptions of ancestry related to African, Irish, Italian, Balkan, Central European, and Semitic birth are advised to report to the nearest processing facility without delay.

  Brand’s mind whipped to what Chief had told him the night before. A play for power, and all it needed was for the people to let it happen. He shoved the ragsheet into his pocket and sneered, “Thanks, boys, but that’s yesterday’s edition.” The newsboys let their mouths hang open for a second before they shuffled off, looking like a couple of hunted dogs. Brand turned and saw another sedan pulling up in front of the Record. This one had flags like the other, but curtains darkened its windows. Only the windscreen allowed a view into the car, and Brand could see a partition between the driver’s seat and where passengers would sit in the back. He dashed off the sidewalk and into the street ready to spit at whoever stepped out of the sedan. Thoughts of impressing his new boss forgotten, Brand chewed on the pile of words on his tongue. It was big enough to fill a front page, and somebody would hear a few of them before the morning was out. Brand’s feet hit the next sidewalk and two men exited the vehicle. The driver worked some lever from inside the car to close the door. Brand drew up even with the car’s bonnet and stared hard at the men who’d emerged. One of them stood no more than five feet high if that, and nearly as big around the middle. The other stood just over Brand’s sixty-six inches and probably weighed in a few pounds heavier. The taller bird spoke first, putting his hand on the squat fellow’s shoulder as he spoke.

  “Mitchell Brand. What exceptional timing. I do hope you can keep to a slightly tighter schedule in the future though. We need all employees in the building before I arrive. And. . .,” the guy took in Brand’s scruffy appearance with a sneer. “There’ll be time to discuss protocol later. First, I’d like to introduce you to your new colleague.” The tall man slapped his squat companion on the back. Brand couldn’t help but notice the pained look that passed across the little fat man’s mug. “This is Franklin Suttleby.”

  Brand just stood there half gaping at them. The fat one, Suttleby, beamed under his boss’s attention, the pain now gone from his face. Brand didn’t know where he fit into the mix yet, so he held off replying with his signature half-sneer and swallowed his smart remarks. The tall bird spoke up again. “Please accept my condolences for the loss of your former employer. I understand you knew each other a long time. This is probably quite a change for you.”

  The tall man paused, giving Brand a shot at some air time. Brand didn’t buy any. He’d guessed the bird doing the squawking must be Jameson Crane, the name coming up from the fog in Brand’s head as he stared at the odd couple from the fancy car. Whatever conversation Crane hoped for would have to wait. Brand wasn’t about to get chatty with the new leadership until he could call their play for certain.

  Crane piped up again. The G-man seemed too busy to care about Brand’s stonewall act. “Until new leadership is in place, Chicago City is under governance of the Great Lakes Territory. We have everything under control and are rapidly improving conditions around the city. You’ll be working with Suttleby here on the hourly bulletins, scheduled broadcasts, and special reports. Of course, anything not strictly approved beforehand will need my say-so before it can be broadcast.”

  “Sounds all right,” Brand said, hiding his true feelings with the calm of a boiler. “I guess you’d be Crane, then. Is that right?”

  “Jameson Crane. Yes. My full title, of course, is Minister of Public Information, and you’ll address me as Minister Crane from here on out.”

  Brand couldn’t help but smirk at that, and he saw Crane’s face darken in response. Before either Crane or his pet, Suttleby, could say anything else, Brand tipped his hat and stepped to the doors.

  One of the soldiers moved into his path.

  “Identification, sir.” The soldier and his partner wore a new style of military uniform, black cloth with gold piping along the collar, crisp starched lines down each arm and pant leg. They each carried some new kind of rifle. It had a wide-mouthed barrel set into a metal box with a glass vial on the back end. The trigger was bigger than anything Brand had seen before, even on the shoulder rockets the army used. The rifle wasn’t the only dingus these soldiers carried though. A visor extended from the lip of their helmets to conceal the top half of their faces, just like the G-men had. The soldiers also carried a metal baton on their belts. A coil of wire connected the baton to a small box on their opposite hip. Brand had seen some fancy dressed soldiers in the Great War. These guys were something else. And they weren’t patient either.

  “Identification is required to enter this facility, sir.”

  “How about you tell me who’s asking first,” he gave back, resting both hands on his hips. “And since when did the Daily Record become a facility?”

  “This facility houses the Ministry of Public Information, sir. All persons entering through these doors must show identification.”

  Brand spun around and looked at Crane. The G-man seemed content to let Brand sink or swim on his own, so the newsman turned to face the soldier again. Then Brand spat out a few of the words he’d been chewing on.

  “A man’s not even cold yet and you come walking in here with your boots, a fancy pea shooter, and that pig sticker on your belt. You ever see any action overseas? No? Oh, I get it then. They picked you and your pal here special because you were so good at standing around while everyone else climbed over the trench wall and into the meat grinder.”

  That last remark got the sentry’s blood up. Brand could see his neck flush with anger and his lips had curled back. Through a growl, the soldier repeated
his demand for identification, barely keeping the spittle in his mouth. Brand just smiled and then laughed. Turning around, he addressed Crane.

  “Well, Minister Crane. It seems these two battle-hardened veterans need me to prove I belong in the building. Can you vouch for me, or should I go to the trouble of sneaking upstairs to get my identification from my desk? It’s just that I’m not too good at climbing fire escapes these days.”

  “You’re free to enter now, Brand,” he said with a tone that fit the mask he’d let fall over his mug. “In the future, you’ll be expected to show identifying documents whenever you enter or leave the facility. And you’ll arrive in a timely manner, no later than zero seven-thirty hours on the dot.”

  Chapter 21

  Emma felt like she’d driven down every street in Eddie’s neighborhood twice and still hadn’t found a safe place to hide. The neighborhood felt like a maze now, and every corner promised a dead end in handcuffs or a hail of gunfire from above. The only comfort Emma could find was the lack of airships. Then, realizing that was unusual, she felt her guts twist up even worse. The coppers were just laying low, waiting her out. As soon as she left the neighborhood they’d be on her. And Eddie.

  “Where do we go, Eddie?”

  Eddie took a moment to reply. His face had gone slack and gray with anger or fear, maybe both. “Get us out to the village.”

  “What? Which village? Where is—”

  “Ukranian Village!”

  Emma recoiled from his outburst, shrinking against her side of the car. Eddie’s face said he was sorry. Then he opened his mouth and made good on the promise in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Lovebird. This ain’t how I want to go out, running from the coppers. It’s how I always worried it’d be for us, and I’m mad about that.”

  “I’m sorry, too, Eddie. Mostly I’m scared.” Emma let a pause fill the close space inside the car and they drove in silence for a while. “We’ll have to cross the river somewhere,” she finally said, cruising along a quiet street at the edge of Eddie’s neighborhood.

  “Try up by the rail yard on the wharf road,” Eddie said. “Always quiet there this time of morning.”

  At the riverside rail yards, Emma pulled into an empty stall beside a grain silo on the neighborhood side of the wharf road. All up and down the road, deserted wharves extended like dead fingers into the waterway. Low sheds and stalls waited on every wharf, open to the cold morning air and hungry for purpose. Some stalls were fitted with racks to take clothing. Others held coils of rope and netting. Emma stared at the wharves as if seeing them for the first time. This musty, cold, gray environment was the first stop for products from the fish and garment industries of the Eastern Seaboard. Products that used to end up on her plate and in her closets.

  Between the nearest wharf roads, a narrow bridge stretched across the river and into Little Italy. Greektown and then the Ukrainian Village were next, with plenty of routes through both. Emma put the car in gear and crept from the covered stall. At the opposite end of the bridge, a truck turned onto the narrow track and came across the river at them. They’d have to wait for it to clear the bridge before they could cross.

  The truck crossed and pulled up down the road, by another silo. Emma hesitated, wondering if the driver had seen her car and hoping he hadn’t. Two men got out of the cab and went into a yard shack beside the silo. The driver got out and eyed Emma’s car. The other men came out of the shack with a third and they all gathered around the truck. They held steaming mugs of coffee and blew smoke at each other. The one who’d stayed out motioned with a thumb and the group turned as one to look at Emma and Eddie sitting together in a car.

  “Shit!” Eddie said, dropping to the floorboards. Emma gunned the engine and raced the car across the bridge, leaving shouts and curses in the air behind them. Whatever head start they’d had was gone now. It wouldn’t take long for news to spread of a white woman and a negro driving out of the poorest neighborhood in town in the early morning hours. Following a switchback route, Emma took them through Little Italy, dodging around horses and bicycles with carts, slowing for crowds of pedestrians making their way to the wharves. As Emma guided them on to the village, following Eddie’s directions, a siren whined and faded somewhere far behind them. Emma stomped the accelerator and nearly crashed into the back end of a wagon loaded with coal.

  “Just keep even on, Lovebird,” Eddie said from the floorboards. He guided her by asking for landmarks. She said they were two blocks from where Ogden crossed Ashland. He told her to keep going and to turn at Lincoln Park, heading west into the village. She followed his directions and a few minutes later the sights and sounds of the village filled her windscreen. Emma was amazed they’d survived the morning. Overhead, an empty sky hung above empty washing lines stretched between apartment windows. Emma drove at a crawl, marveling at the neighborhood she’d often heard about but had never seen. They moved past doorways that spilled children and bundles of bread, followed by worn down mothers and stooped over crones. Men strode through the streets leading livestock. Some hefted beams of wood between them. The long posts rested on the mens’ shoulders. In their hands, the men carried wooden pails or boxes bristling with tools. Nobody looked at the foreign white woman in her foreign vehicle, but Emma knew they all had their eyes on her.

  “This is gypsy town, Eddie. Who’s going to help us here? I haven’t got any real money on me. What I do have, they’ll take and the car too. We’ll be stranded. Or—”

  Eddie shushed her and waved away her concerns. “Up a ways now, Emma. Go on until you see the railroad.” They kept on like that, with Eddie asking for landmarks and calling out turns. At last, Emma pulled up in an alley beside a cobbler’s shop.

  “It’s a speak, downstairs,” Eddie said. He sat up in the seat. “Boys and me played here Saturday night, and twice the month before. Gypsies got a taste for jazz, Lovebird. We get lucky, and I think we will, they’ll let us hide out here for a bit. We get real lucky, they’ll play some of their music for us. C’mon.”

  Emma reluctantly left the car, sliding over to leave through Eddie’s door so she’d be standing next to him when she got outside. She followed Eddie around the bonnet to the cobbler’s shop. Inside an old man crouched over a sheet of leather that he stretched and cut and stretched and cut again. Emma stayed so she could see out the window. She kept an eye on the car, worried that if she looked away, the next time she turned to look the car would be gone. Eddie put a hand on her shoulder and smiled, raising a finger to his lips for silence. Beside them, the cobbler punched holes in the leather for laces. He seated grommets in the holes. These he clamped down with a tool he gripped in both hands, closing the rough metal jaws over the eyeholes. When he finally put his work aside, Eddie greeted the man and introduced Emma.

  “This is my Lovebird, Mr. Naw-djee. We need a place to stay, just for a short time. Just until tonight. I was hoping you might help us in exchange for some of my horn playing.”

  The old man’s eyes twinkled and he laughed loud and booming in the close space of the low ceilinged shop. After he laughed, a look of concern draped over the man’s face. “Why does Eddie Collins bring trouble to Nagy? Eh? Eddie Collins is always paid so well for making his jazz in Nagy’s room. Making so the young people come and are buying Nagy’s Zwack and beer, even the Ouzo from the Greeks that Nagy sells the young people for twice what he pays. Eddie Collins makes Nagy’s life easy. But now he makes it hard.”

  “I’m real sorry, Mr. Nagy. I’m in love with this girl and she’s in love with me. You can see plain as anybody that’s not a good thing for us here in Chicago City. That’s why we’re going to New Orleans. First thing we can. But we just need a place to get our legs under us. We won’t make no trouble. I promise. If you want, I’d be happy to play my horn for them young people and make things easy for you.”

  The old man blinked a few times, w
iped at his eyes with a rag he pulled from his shirt pocket and tucked back in before speaking. “Eddie Collins is a crazy man. Is okay. Nagy was crazy man once, too. Nagy loved the wrong girl. That is how Nagy lost his tooth. See?” The old man lifted his cheek aside and showed a gaping space in his jaw. “Girl’s father did not like Nagy’s family, so he showed Nagy better way to live. Without girl. Also without tooth. But Nagy has other teeth. Can still chew meat,” he said, and nodded at a picture of a woman hanging on the wall by the door.

  “Eddie Collins has plan to go to New Orleans. That is good. Also foolish. But foolish and crazy make bed together, so Nagy is not surprised. Bring car to back.” The old man finished speaking and stood, waving with two crooked fingers in the air. He left through a rear door while Emma and Eddie went out to move her car around.

  Emma had watched the whole exchange in the shop with wonder in her eyes and a mix of fear and guilt in her heart. The old man’s clumsy English and his twinkling eyes reminded her of her own father when she’d been a little girl. When her mother was still in the house. Back then, Emma’s father knew how to laugh and he knew how to make other people laugh, too. He liked to play at being a gypsy, dancing like a buffoon and aping speech like the old shoemaker’s. Emma had laughed at her father’s antics. She’d laughed at how the silly gypsies talked. Coming face to face with the reality of these people, she wanted to apologize. For her father, but more for her memories of laughing at people she’d never known except through the pantomiming of a silly drunken old man.