Boom Time

by Michelle E Lowe

  “He didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart, Chaplin,” Brody stated matter-of-factly. “He has use for you. That’s it. The same goes for the rest of us. We’re merely employees. Disposable employees.”

  Pierce really didn’t give a toss. In this strange age of machines and booze smuggling, he was simply coasting from one day to the next. In truth, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for the likes of him.

  “All right,” Pierce said apathetically. “That’s fine by me. It ain’t as though I’m lookin’ for a father figure.”

  “Just thought I’d warn ya. He’s lost sight on human life. He killed his own business partner, Jacob O’Sullivan, after he threatened to squeal on Quinn when he decided to go into the racket. Quinn loved the man, and he still had him whacked.”

  Pierce chewed his bottom lip.

  “When you cease to be useful, Chaplin, you disappear.”

  Raymond Reilly had stayed strong during their drive out of the city. He’d kept his trap shut. Hadn’t even begged for his life. Kelly Quinn knew he was going to break the moment he realized it was all real.

  “Please, Mr. Quinn,” Reilly pleaded, facing him while down on his knees, tears streaming down his face. A freshly dug grave hole beside him. “Don’t do this.”

  Many tall trees surrounded them. A dense forest of skeleton trees, inches of snow resting on their bare branches. This was where Quinn brought those who disappointed him.

  “You stole from me, Reilly,” Quinn reminded him, standing between Mr. Garcia and Mr. Lithgow. The only lights came from the flashlights the three held. “Twenty-two hundred, to be exact. And after I took you out of the slums, gave you a good job managing The Attic, and let you earn enough to feed your whole gutter trash family!”

  Reilly had been a loyal soldier to Quinn until he decided that what he had wasn’t enough and began picking small bits off the money pile. It took months before Quinn realized it.

  “I had to, sir. My ma is in the hospital. Her medical bills . . .”

  “‘Are more than what you can pay,’” Quinn cut in. “Yes, I know what you told me.”

  “But you wouldn’t give me a loan.”

  “Your family problems are none of my concern, Mr. Reilly,” Quinn retorted coolly. “You had no right taking what isn’t yours.”

  “Please, Mr. Quinn. She’s sick and if they move her to a poorer hospital, she could catch her death, or get an infection. I didn’t steal out of greed, sir. I did it for family.”

  The man was turning into a real mess. Tears, snot, and spittle drenched his pathetic face. He was trembling and no doubt about to lose control of his bladder soon. It was time to end this.

  “Whatever the cause, Mr. Reilly, the fact remains that you took what wasn’t yours.” He walked passed Reilly and kept going. “Do it.”

  Mr. Lithgow was the appointed executioner. He had more steel in his blood for the job than Garcia.

  “Noooooo—”

  The bang silenced Reilly. Quinn left his men to bury him.

  Snow and leaves encased in ice crunched heavily underfoot. His toes grew numb despite the boots he wore. In this area, he had put eight bodies into the ground. Thieves, snitches, even a couple of spies. All came here to meet their end. With every kill, it hardened Quinn a little more, and he needed the lift. It all boiled down to survival. To live, one needed to sacrifice.

  Kelly Quinn hadn’t entered the racket to make friends or to build a new family. He’d had a family once and they had died on him. He would never be the loving, doting grandfather he envisioned, or share a romantic night with his beloved wife, Erica, ever again. That was another life, and he could never go back to it. Now, he had a new life, and he had become the type of person who could survive in it.

  He reached the spot and stopped. The light of his flashlight passed over the very tree O’Sullivan’s brains had splattered on when Quinn shot him. Never could he forget this tree. He hated his friend and business partner for what he’d forced him to do to him.

  Quinn stared at it a moment before dropping the flashlight and undoing his trousers. He pissed over the grave, now a flattened piece of land. The heat of his stream melted the crisp snow.

  “Hello, Jacob,” he said. “Still burning in the pits of hell?” He finished and fastened up his breeches. “Don’t worry, old friend, I’m sure I’ll see you there soon enough.”

  To add to his disrespect, he spat on the ground and left in a hurry. After all, he did have an organization to run.

  At six-thirty on the dot, the shrill of the alarm clock went off. Such a loud, obnoxious thing. It really made Pierce miss his free-spirited days, sleeping for as long as he wanted, even if was out in some field somewhere.

  In the last century, he was Pierce Landcross, outlaw thief, living by his own bloody rules. In the twentieth century, he was Isaac Chaplin, domestic outlaw, taking orders.

  After a few long seconds of figuring out how to shut the bloody thing off, Pierce rubbed his face and got out of bed. He took his fifteen-minute shower while the water in the kettle boiled. Pierce enjoyed the convenience of showering. He cooked up eggs and drank his morning tea while he ate. Afterward, he brushed his teeth. The fact that paste was so accessible thrilled him to no end. In his time, all paste had been imported from Islamic, Spain. He had nothing really to complain about where his own teeth were concerned, for they were straight and fairly white, but to be able to clean them every morning was a real treat. Frank had gotten him some Brilliantine, an oily substance that kept men’s hair shiny and stiff. He hated it and, therefore, never used it.

  He got dressed seconds before a loud knock sounded at his door.

  “Mornin’, Frank,” Pierce sighed when he opened it.

  The grey expression on the man’s face reminded Pierce of the look of someone who had lost the will to live. The half-smoked cigarette hanging from his mouth even seemed sad.

  “Bloody hell, mate,” Pierce said, slipping his arms through his jacket sleeves. “You all right?”

  “We’z need to go.”

  “Erm, sure.”

  Pierce grabbed his keys and locked the apartment.

  The ride to The Attic was strangely quiet. It wasn’t like Frank to keep his lips together for so long.

  “So, er, cheers for giving me a lift. You must be getting mighty fed up being my coach driver.”

  “Youze what?” Frank quickly asked.

  Pierce really needed to stop showing his age.

  “Chauffeur, I mean.”

  Frank snorted and reached into his cigarette pack for his twelve-hundredth smoke. He’d been huffing down cigarettes like mad since their short trip started.

  “Ain’t nothin’,” he said, lighting it. “I gotta help with inventory dat youze guys brought in yesterday, anyhow. And de boss wants youze tawking like youze been born here before dis Friday.”

  Pierce gulped at that. “Friday? I was thinking he’d send me out Saturday—maybe even Sunday.”

  “Nope. Friday is the only time dat Leon has agreed to meet for a sit-down.”

  “What is a sit-down, by the way?”

  “Youze knows. A meetin’? It’s where mob bosses get together to twalkex business.”

  “I see.”

  Pierce didn’t fancy this at all. He’d planned to take Lucy out on Friday. Then, as if Frank had caught his worrisome thoughts, he suggested, “Youze ought to bring a date. Maybe we’z can arrange somethin’ with a waitress from The Attic. Fiona is a choice bit of calico.”

  “Choice bit of calico?”

  “Means she’s sexy.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ve already arranged a date with Lucy, but I don’t want her involved in this.”

  “That pretty little redheaded dame from the library?”

  Pierce was happy he’d inquired without saying anything derogatory. Then the tosser added, “Youze made it with her yet?”

  Pierce huffed. “She’s a nice girl.”

  “So, no, huh?”

  “We’ve only
been on two dates.” He sighed. “I’ll just explain that work needs me on Friday.”

  “Does she know what youze do?”

  Pierce was unsure if he should answer.

  “Youze told her, didn’t ya?” Frank surmised when Pierce gave no answer.

  “She isn’t going to say anything,” he fired back defensively. “She—”

  “Relax, Chaplin,” Frank cut in. “We’z all got broads dat knows what we’z do. As long as she don’t say nothin,’ then there ain’t nothin’ to worry ’bout.”

  Pierce sighed. “I still rather not have Kelly know about her.”

  “Why not?”

  He really wished he hadn’t started this conversation.

  “She just needs to be left out. No reason to drag her into any shite we’re in.”

  Frank took a long drag from his smoke, his eyes squinting as if considering what Pierce had said.

  “Yeah, I’z thinks dat would be best. Mr. Quinn has a way of bringing people in, chewing dem up, and spittin’ dem out when dere ain’t no more taste left in dem.” They stopped at a red light and Frank turned to him. “I’z won’t tell de boss. In my opinion, he don’t needs to know nothin’ ’bout her.”

  Pierce detected a grave seriousness in his tone that he’d never heard from him before. He remembered how sickly Frank had suddenly looked when Kelly brought up the mysterious business they needed to attend to. Whatever it had been, it didn’t seem to sit well with Frank.

  “Youze wills needs a date, though. Be less suspicious, y’know.”

  They reached Morton Street and parked in front of a red brick building. It was three stories and sat at the corner where a road cut in between the buildings. A fire escape ran down the side and stopped above the sidewalk where vehicles were parked at the curb.

  “The Village Antiques?” Pierce read the sign above the entrance.

  “Mr. Quinn’s front,” Frank explained. “Before he opened the speakeasy, he bought up a lot of antiques to sell at the store beneath it. It used to be a restaurant an’ bar. C’mon.”

  Pierce was about to open the door when Frank pinched the sleeve of his jacket. “Oh, one other thing. There’s somethin’ youze oughta knows ’bout George Baxter.”

  “The bloke who’s going to teach me how to sound American? What about him?”

  “He lost his arm in de war. Keep yourself from gawkin’ at it when youze sees.”

  Pierce tilted his head sideways and arched an eyebrow. “All right.”

  Pierce was glad for the heads up, but there seemed to be more to it than what Frank had told him.

  They went inside the antique store. A Christmas wreath was hung on the glass door below the WE’RE OPEN sign. The store was a moderately sized place and cramped due to all the stuff inside. There were two rooms. The main room had many types of chandeliers: crystal, dark bronze; and wooden, medieval-looking ones. Glass display cabinets held loads of various items such as old toys, jewelry, and parts of machinery such as ship lanterns and compasses. There were wooden wheel bicycles, paintings, cameras, and magic lanterns. Even furniture dating back to the last century. Pierce found all of it surreal. In the back of the store, a few blokes, carrying in barrels through the rear entrance, vanished through an open doorway nearby. Pierce recognized the casks as the ones he and Brody had brought back from Rum Row.

  “I’z gonna go help bring in the giggle water,” Frank told Pierce. “Go on up.”

  While Frank left out the open back door where the milk truck was parked outside, Pierce followed a worker over the threshold. Beyond it was a flight of stairs that lead up to an empty floor. It looked as though it had been part of the old restaurant, but no one was using it anymore. The worker he followed explained that the unoccupied space kept anyone in the antique store downstairs from hearing people in the speakeasy upstairs.

  Another staircase led them into The Attic. Pierce passed through the open door and instantly spied the fully stocked bar.

  The speakeasy was a swank hideaway. It was a long, rectangular room with booths lining the wall and windows with drapes between each booth. The thick drapes were crimson with paisley patterns in a lighter shade of red embellishing them. The bar across the way stretched from one end of the room to the other. A small hearth was located on the back wall with more windows on either side of it. Brass light fixtures hung from either end of the tavern, but the majority of light came through the large skylight above, set into the tin tile ceiling. Dozens of liquor bottles sat on shelves behind the bar. The walls were made of the same red brick as the exterior and adorned with Prohibition posters. Garland and colorful Christmas lights were also strung over the walls. A small, decorated tree sat upon its own table in the far corner. The floor was impressive and made entirely of copper pennies.

  The worker Pierce had followed went into an adjoining room on the left side. Standing behind the bar was a man leaning over the counter, reading a newspaper.

  Pierce went over. “Excuse me. I’m looking for George Baxter.”

  The man looked up. He had clear eyes with a touch of grey under them. He was slightly above average looking, with dirty-blond hair slicked back with that oily hair product. He wore a white button-up shirt and a brown, asymmetrical, four-pocket vest that hung off him unbuttoned. His one elbow was propped up on the bar counter, the other resting on the edge with his forearm hidden from view.

  In a voice that suggested fatigue, he said, “I’m George Baxter, friend.” He held out his hand. “You must be that young buck Mr. Quinn phoned me up about. Isaac Chaplin, right?”

  He sounded like a hick, almost the same as Pierce, but with a different accent.

  “Aye,” he answered, arching an eyebrow. “You’re George, eh?”

  “Last I checked. Why?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, mate. Frank told me something about you. S’pose he was only joshing.”

  George rose to his full height. “Oh? He told ya about my arm, did he?”

  What Pierce saw nearly floored him. The man brought up his hidden arm. The first thing Pierce noticed were the straight razor-shaped fingers. Mechanical things bolted together by small rivets at each finger joint and connected to a mechanical hand that consisted of stretch-spring ligaments with a chain threaded through the springs. Eyebolt screws lined the top and bottom of his hand and behind each finger joint. When George rolled up his shirtsleeve, he revealed ligaments attached to a rolling joint wrist that was itself bolted to a pair of iron forearm cylinders. A second rolling joint served as the elbow.

  “Watch this,” George instructed.

  The forearm cylinders let out a hiss and then stretched by pushing out a second pair of cylinders hidden inside them. The hand, which was actually attached to this hidden extension, reached for a little tin wind-up Christmas tree on the bar some ways down. The process was slow but no less remarkable to watch, especially when the fingers—thumb and all—grasped the tree as easily as any hand and lifted it. The extension began retracting slowly into the rod until the roller joint wrist reached its end. George handed the painted trinket to Pierce.

  “Blimey,” he gawked, accepting it.

  “Ingenious, ain’t it?” George remarked. “Manufactured by the best scientists in the world. When I lost my dadgum arm in an ambush at Ypres, the Army put my name on a special list to get this here contraption.” As he spoke, he flexed his robotic fingers, which made a clicking sound almost like a typewriter when they tapped against his metal palm.

  Pierce, still holding the tree, leaned in closer for a better look.

  “Bloody marvelous.” He then remembered what Frank told him and moved away, clearing his throat. “Er, sorry, mate. Didn’t mean to gawk.”

  George snorted while rolling down his shirtsleeve. “Don’t sweat it. I always get lookie loos, but it sure as hell beats having only one arm.”

  “Can image so.”

  “Your name is Chaplin, huh? Are you related to Charlie Chaplin?”

  “No,” Pierce said, winding up th
e tree and placing it on the counter. “Just a coincidence.”

  “Mighty shame. I enjoy his moving picture shows. So, Mr. Quinn sent you to me to teach you how to sound less British. What for?”

  Pierce watched the ornament slowly rotate before eyeing him. “Kelly never told you?”

  “Not over the phone. He’s mighty suspicious about conversing over the telephone, and rightfully so. Bosses such as Mr. Quinn are susceptible to wiretaps by the bull.”

  Pierce saw his point.

  “Ah. Well, he’s sending me off to sneak into Leon Clark’s nightclub to find out if he really has a submarine.”

  “I heard about the sub. Mr. Quinn thinks it’s true, huh? Wonder if he’ll actually steal it, though. I wouldn’t want to mess with Leon. Before he was nearly assassinated, he used to do things to folk that’d give nightmares to Satan himself.”

  Pierce sucked in a breath. He hated hearing about Leon and his inhumane ways of dealing with those who crossed him. Especially since he was one of them.

  “So, why do you need to change your accent?” George asked.

  “I, er, sort of robbed the man,” he explained, taking out his cigarette pack. “His people might be on the lookout for a young Brit such as myself.”

  “You robbed Leon Clark!” the bloke blurted out.

  “Don’t be announcing it to the bleedin’ world,” Pierce retorted.

  “Oh, I need a drink,” George exclaimed, lifting a section of the counter up so he could leave.

  He stepped into a room with a small sign that read OFFICE and soon returned, carrying a jar with a clear liquid inside.

  “What’s that?” Pierce inquired as George went back behind the bar, plucking two glasses from the counter.

  “White lightning,” he answered, setting the glasses down and twisting off the cap on the jar with his robotic hand. “Have a swig.”

  Pierce lifted the glass. He studied it before downing it. The burn in his throat caused him to cough.

  George poured him another. “Tasty, ain’t it? I brewed it myself.”

  “Y-you did?” Pierce asked, and that triggered more coughing.