It worked. God damn. At least I had the instincts to know he was bullshitting me. He climbed back down, and the jar containing the Old Man popped up out of the trapdoor, resting in the big gorilla’s palm. The Old Man gave me the “come hither” fingers.
I followed the gorilla down through the cellar door. It was the first time I had been into the sub-basement of Hallowed Grounds. I wouldn’t have believed the place existed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.
It was one of those wine cellars like in the old Poe stories. Bottles and bottles of wine lined the walls, covered in cobwebs and worse. Candles sat atop human skulls, and piles of bones sat in some corners. We’re not talking about a serial killer here. Those bones had been there since the city was founded. Decades, centuries. Then again, maybe that was where deadheads crawled off to die when they felt the urge to eat brains.
We were crawling down twisting and turning tunnels. I might’ve believed there was a whole underworld beneath Ganesh.
“Hey, I don’t like this,” I said.
Next thing I knew, I had a piece in the small of my back. He must’ve kept it in his apron all the time. Big, round barrel. Seemed familiar somehow.
“Just keep walking,” the gorilla muttered. “You’ve stepped in it now. The boss wants to see you.”
Careful what you wish for, huh? By the time we reached a dead end, I was so turned around, I was nervous that I might never see the surface again.
If Eli Whitney had been a big fan of narcotics, he might have dreamt up the crazy machine I saw down there. The gorilla screwed the Old Man’s jar into a holster in the great machine that looked as though it had been specially crafted for that purpose. The jar apparently had two flaps in the bottom, and two levers from the machine fit through perfectly so that the Old Man had controls, like on a bulldozer.
“I’ll be off then, sir,” the gorilla said.
“What is this?” I asked, looking around in awe.
Something grabbed me around the neck. I reached up and tried to loosen myself, but it was like a vise grip the size of a surfboard. The Old Man was pleased as punch, sitting there pulling and twisting those levers.
I tried to say something, but my windpipe had been crushed. The Old Man lowered a microphone down into his jar. His voice sounded a little wet but otherwise normal. Well, for a twenty-year-old fetus. “You like playing games, Mr. Jones? How does this one strike you?”
The hydraulic arm—or whatever it was—jerked me forward, right in front of the jar. He looked in my eyes. “I can see you’re wondering what’s going on.”
I shrugged as best I could. Couldn’t say much. The claw released me from its viselike grip, and I dropped to the floor like a bag of wet laundry. I wanted to suck in air, but of course, I didn’t have to. It was a purely instinctual response. I tried to talk, but my windpipe was flattened. I struggled to jam a fist or a finger down my throat to open the airway up a bit so I could talk again.
“This is our future, unfortunately,” the Old Man said. “I’ve been working on this for a long time. It’s just a prototype, of course. No legs and no real tactile control. A brute. But the next model will be a little better.”
As I fiddled around with my neck, I felt a crunch. I didn’t know what the noise was, but I could talk again. I might have to get a doctor to look at it later. Or, well, whatever the equivalent of a doctor is in our community. A mortician, maybe. “I don’t want any trouble.” My voice was audibly hoarser.
“Don’t want any trouble?” the Old Man said, bringing his ridiculous mechanical arms together like an elderly woman tenting her fingers. “That’s why you threaten my tavern keeper? That’s why you insist on interrupting my work? You act awfully strange for a man who doesn’t want any trouble.” One of the mechanical arms grabbed me by the collar. It dragged me up in the air.
“Okay,” I said, “I get the point. You’re an important guy. Size doesn’t matter. I won’t make that mistake again.”
He stared at me for a moment. “No, you won’t, will you?” He dropped me to the ground. “What was so important, after all, to disturb me about?”
“It seems silly now,” I said, massaging my throat to try to get my voice back in order. “I’m trying to get a bead on Lazar.”
“Lazar?”
That’s when I saw the strangest thing I ever imagined. The little fetus sitting in a fishbowl full of booze and controlling a massive clockwork machine was odd enough. When the mechanical hand went up and scratched the top of the jar, just like a man scratching his head, it was too much for me. In any other circumstance, I would’ve burst out laughing. As it was, I was smart enough to keep that on the inside.
“I guess I know who you’re talking about. I wouldn’t worry too much about him. He’s making his way out of the community. He already lives in the Altstadt. Consider him untouchable, if you will.”
The Altstadt. That was… news.
He shooed me away with his huge claws like a man shooing away a cat. “Go on, now. Find your own way back. And Jones?”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Don’t you ever ask to see me again unless I invite you,” he said.
Don’t have to worry about that.
I wanted to kick in a few doors, ask a few questions, find out where in the Altstadt Lazar lived, but it turned out I had one major problem: I could barely talk.
The collapsed throat was a lot worse than I initially thought. After reopening it initially, I had a relapse. It must’ve really folded closed, because I could hardly communicate at all. I had to break out this notebook and scribble most of my requests.
That method was not conducive to getting the kind of information I wanted from the kind of people I had to ask. Half of them are illiterate, anyway. I decided instead to ask a few folks about how to get my throat fixed.
As it turns out, there are a number of “doctors” who specialize in our kind. Some are members of our kind and have real humanitarian (or corpsitarian?) motivations, but most are the med school dropout types who wander into the Welcome Mat with hangers looking for a few back-alley, knocked-up prom dates. They take on our kind, too. Why not? Can’t hurt someone who’s already dead, and no one can call the cops or sue. Most of our problems are cosmetic or functional, like my collapsed throat. They’re more like tradesmen than professionals. They treat a deadhead like a house with a leaky roof or a broken window. Not like waiting for a human being to heal.
The scratcher Lazar had recommended had a real vibe going. He wore a white lab coat that was yellowing at the edges and a big shiny reflector on his forehead, big thick birth control glasses, a toothy grin, and a light European accent. Foreigner, immigrant, something? Scratcher, anyway.
“What can I do for you?” he said, only it sounded like, “Vat ken I do for vu?”
I will forgo the accent in writing for your benefit and my sanity.
I pointed at my throat. He took a pocket lantern of some sort and none too gently pried open my throat. He could fit both of his gloved hands in my mouth. No kidding. Alive, I would’ve choked to death. He knew exactly what my limits were, of course, and our kind’s high, almost nonexistent pain tolerance.
“Trouble with the voice box?” he asked, shining the lantern down my throat. “Well, the whole esophagus is highly infected, but that’s normal. However, it is also pinched shut, and that is less so.” He leaned back on the cardboard box that served him as a chair. The guy acted like any other sawbones in a nice, clean office. It was a funny juxtaposition being in a back alley. He snapped off his gloves, sending a puff of talcum powder into the air. “So, let’s discuss my fee, shall we?”
It wasn’t exactly what I’d call a discussion—in polite company, anyway. More like he dictated to me that it would be twenty-five smackeroos. What a scam. I could’ve practically seen a real sawbones for that, if he wouldn’t have noticed my missing pulse and started whacking away at my chest and trying to give me the lips of life.
I fished into my pocket. F
unny. My wad of cash was still there, but it was wrapped in a rubber band. Someone had stolen my damned billfold. Naturally. But who would do that and leave the money? Oh well, the scratcher didn’t care where I kept my money, so I handed him the greenbacks.
“All right,” he said, “sounds good. Let’s get started.”
So out this guy pulls—I shit you not—a bicycle pump and one of those long balloons like a clown uses to make balloon animals. Why he had those objects, I don’t know. Seemed a bit nonstandard, even for a back-alley scratcher. He started feeding the balloon into my mouth, so naturally I pushed him away.
“Swallow it,” he said to me, like I’m a dog. “Swallow it.”
He started stroking my throat. Like, to loosen up my dead muscles? I was about to walk away right then and there. Let him keep my twenty-five clams.
“I know it’s going to be difficult, especially through the fold in your trachea, but you must swallow this so I can reinflate the airway.”
What the hell, I figured. At least I’ll find out what I’m paying for. It took a while, but I got it down. Then he started pumping away with the bicycle pump. I imagined the kind of pain I would have been in had I still been breathing, and I was fully aware of the humiliation I was feeling even though I wasn’t.
As he blew up the balloon with the bike pump, I did feel a change in my throat. I guess I understood his theory, but there must have been easier ways.
“Now we’re going to keep doing this until we hear a crunch,” he said. “Let me know if you hear it before me.”
Not exactly reassuring. But sure enough, a little while later, I felt it more than heard it. I motioned to him.
“All right,” he said. He let the balloon deflate then pulled it out of my throat like a strand of spaghetti. “How’s that?”
I took a tentative, totally unnecessary breath. “Feels better.” I was pleased to hear what I thought of as my own voice again. “Well, it doesn’t really feel like anything. But you know what I mean.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “Now is there anything else I can do for you? Patch up your hair a bit, perhaps, or anything peeling or falling off?”
I thought briefly about my bullet hole, but I decided I planned to avoid that sort of work as much as possible in the future. I waved my hand like I was folding a bad blackjack hand. “Thanks, I’m good.”
November 17, 1934
The Altstadt is the fancy part of town. Closest thing to a gated community we get in Ganesh. Even if I hadn’t forsworn the trolley, I couldn’t’ve gotten there. The trolley didn’t make stops there. If you couldn’t afford a taxi or—God forbid—your own jalopy, you certainly weren’t allowed in the Altstadt.
Despite his protestations, I didn’t bring the head. It wasn’t going to be like hanging out on the streets of the Mat where nobody gave a damn if you had a parrot on your shoulder, or hell, a talking decapitated head. That was where the Rockefellers and the Roosevelts rubbed elbows with the Carnegies and the Capones.
It was one long, endless walk from the Mat to the Altstadt. Unsurprisingly, it started to rain about halfway through so I could get nice and wet, then it stopped right around the end so I could slosh about in wet clothes for the last few blocks. Alive, I would’ve been furious. Dead, it was just a bit of a nuisance.
I clenched an address in my hand. It had taken a fair bit of talking to get. First the gorilla, then Homer, then a few other bar patrons. I had to move my circle a little bit wider and wider. It took almost the whole rest of the day yesterday. Between that and getting my throat reopened, it was a long day.
Every other building in the Altstadt was a steel-frame skyscraper. Some of them seemed more glass than stone. The nice ones would’ve had penthouses and maybe kidney-shaped swimming pools on the roofs, but I knew I’d never get high enough to see for myself. The other buildings were opera houses and fancy restaurants with one-dollar steaks.
44 Bow Street. Apartment 3C. It didn’t sound special. In the Altstadt though, it had to be a penthouse at worst.
As it turned out, it was all but a skyscraper. I half expected to see a giant monkey crawling up the side. The folks coming in and out were über-ritzy. All top hats and monocles for the men and fur coats and opera glasses for the dames. It half made me want to retch, but aside from the fact I had no bile left in my ducts, I didn’t want to make myself stand out any more by being covered with puke. I decided to go for it.
“Hahem,” the doorman said as he closed the door for me.
“Come on, buddy,” I said.
He looked me up and down like looking at me was making him dirty. Shitty little Napoleon in his tin soldier clothing with shoulder boards as big as donkey calves. Look down at me? Where does he live? If not the Mat, sure as shit not in that damn building. “I’m sorry, sir”—he sure made it sound like it pained him to call me “sir”—“but I can only let in residents and guests.”
“That’s me,” I said. “I’m a guest. So I guess we’re all done down here.”
He didn’t move. He steeled his jaw like he was Dick Tracy or something. Big fat, jowly, drippy jaw, and he tried to stick it out at me. I wanted to slug him, but sometimes I’ve got to suppress my wants. The real options, as I saw it, were to pull out my billfold—well, WH’s billfold—or to pull out my gun. Oh shit, I forgot my billfold was gone. Rubber band, then. I was leaning toward the gun.
I stuck out my own chin, except I pointed at the telephone. “Why don’t you pick up that squawk box, bub, and call 3C?”
He lowered his voice to a barely discernible growl. “I think you’re the one that’s a bub. Why don’t you beat it before I beat it for you?”
That was it. Screw the gun. Screw the cash. Time to throw down. I grabbed the doorman by his big, lacey lapels, but he already had his hands wrapped around my throat. Aside from collapsing it again, though, he didn’t know that it didn’t bother me. I guess our scuffle was about to get untoward.
“Manny!” somebody yelled.
I recognized the voice. Shit. So much for being clandestine.
The doorman let go of me and readjusted his uniform. He did all but pull out a lint brush and start brushing me off. “Yes, Mr. Bethany, so sorry about all the trouble. I was about to escort this gentleman off the premises.”
Lazar stood in the stairwell, his feet straddling two steps, his face hidden in the shadow. “It’s all right. Let him in.”
“Quite so, sir, quite so,” the doorman said.
I gave him one last look and pointed my finger at him like a gun. He mouthed something back to me, probably, “It’s not over.”
I followed Lazar up to his apartment. There was an elevator with an operator dressed like a little Horatio Nelson to complement the Napoleon at the door.
Where am I getting all this from? History must be bleeding back to me, but not more than a moment or two of my own history.
Nevertheless, Lazar seemed to prefer to walk. I wondered why. Maybe he was “passing” enough to walk down the street and not get noticed, but two minutes on an elevator and Uncle Moneybags and Auntie Aristocrat would suss him out. Maybe he had a wretched smell in confined spaces. Then again, maybe he just preferred to walk. Who knows?
He kept his door locked. Must be nice. The spread was immaculate. Paintings on the wall—real, not prints—from fancy European venues, no doubt. The sitting room was a pit in the floor with carpeting and plush couches, like a dried-up hot spring.
He tossed his keys into a little Polish pot near his door and stepped into the bathroom before I saw his face. “So, spying on me, I see.”
“That’s my job, ain’t it?” I said, adding, “The one you gave me.”
After a few nonexistent heartbeats, he reappeared in the bathroom doorjamb, illuminated by the fluorescent lights behind him. He looked much less passing than usual.
“Not strictly,” he said. “The key difference between a regular flatfoot and a private detective is that the one investigates everything and the other investigat
es only what he is paid to. Typically that doesn’t involve spying on your patron.”
Lazar, or Russ, or Bethany, or whoever sat down in the sitting pit. He tapped the chair next to him with his palm. Reluctantly, I joined him.
“What can I say?” I said. “I guess my curiosity got the better of me.”
“Or more likely that head has been feeding you ideas.” He examined his fingernails closely. “We’ll have to take care of that one day.”
I picked up a piece of lint from the couch. Must’ve been the maid’s day off. “I don’t need anyone else to give me crazy ideas.”
“Yes, I heard about your exploits with the Old Man,” Lazar said.
“Already?”
“I do have ears, and I listen. You’d be wise not to hassle the Old Man. Consider that free advice, and I give that rarely.”
I stood up. I never could sit for long, but listening to someone blow smoke up my ass made me even more antsy. I took a walk along the foyer wall, pretending to admire the paintings and pottery.
“What do you need to know about me so badly?” Lazar asked.
I didn’t bother to look at him. I just stood there, admiring some wooden chunk of pregnant African lady or something. “Thing is, according to the Welcome Mat’s public library—”
“Font of all wisdom,” he said.
“It’s got its faults,” I said, “but it’s got books and blats, too. And here’s a fun fact: Prohibition ended last year.”
He smiled. I could tell without even looking. I looked, though. Ruined my cool-guy stance, but seeing him all smug like a Cheshire cat was worth it. It was worth it to make me angry. Sometimes it’s nice to feel abused. It made me want to punch the teeth out of his head.
“True enough,” he said finally.
“So how is it that you’re a bootlegger? What’s going on here?”
He sighed the kind of sigh that made it sound like the story would make Gilgamesh seem like a short anecdote Mark Twain had jotted in a spare minute or two. He stood and poured himself a glass of something fancy and clear. “Drink?”
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