Unremarkable

by Geoff Habiger

  “No! And I was too busy getting my ass kicked to ask!”

  “That’s too bad. That could have been useful information.” Wright sounded disappointed that I’d not thought to ask Moira who her master was during our fight. It’s not like we had been on a date and making small talk. I hadn’t had time to think about anything while I was trying to keep her from killing me. I gave him a look that said “go shove it up your ass”. I was getting tired of being everybody’s pawn.

  “Look, Saul,” Agent Wright said. “It’s better that you don’t know what is going on. You’ll be in less danger that way.”

  I gave him an incredulous look. “I was almost killed by my girlfriend tonight because of what you two are doing. How can I be in less danger?”

  Truesdale chimed in. “All you need to do is what we tell you to do, got it?” He jabbed a meaty finger toward me. “Agent Wright and I have everything under control.”

  “Okay, so I guess I’ll just lay here while you two hitsigers go and arrest Al Capone’s brother and piss off the biggest gangster in all of Chicago.” They were acting like hotheads, flying by the seat of their pants and with no care for the consequences.

  Truesdale actually smiled and nodded. “All part of the plan, kid.” He turned, opened the door, and they left the room.

  Chapter 27

  I had a hard time falling asleep. To begin with, my body was now so used to my work schedule that it was rebelling at the fact that I was trying to sleep when it knew that I should be awake and sorting mail. More importantly though, my arm, back, and chest all hurt like hell. Since the doctor thought I had only been attacked by a ‘dog’, all they had given me for the pain was some aspirin. It had worked for about an hour, but then the pain had come roaring back.

  I lay on the bed in my dark room, staring up at the ceiling. There was a single window that looked out on one of the streets and the city light leaked in around the closed curtains. Some light from the hallway seeped in under the door and from the open window above it.

  Since I couldn’t sleep, I kept replaying the events of the past few days over and over in my mind. I kept trying to remember if there had been any clues that Moira was a vampire, and I kept striking out. When I thought about Moira, I only remembered everything good about her; how we met, our first date at the Green Mill, the events on St. Valentine’s Day and all the wild events since that fateful day. I relived our lovemaking—there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I should have known something was different with Moira that day—the way that she had acted by biting me and playing with the blood. But I challenge any guy to think straight or clear-headed when in the middle of having sex, even kinky sex. It can’t be done.

  What bothered me the most was what she had said during our fight. “You had such promise, Saul.” I could hear her voice in my head. During the fight she had sounded full of anger and rage, but now, in my mind, she sounded disappointed. “You were going to be my ace in the hole, my ticket to freedom, but now I’m forced to destroy my own creation or be killed myself. Such a fucking waste.”

  Destroy my own creation. Ice began to form in my stomach as I let those words sink in. Unconsciously, my right hand drifted down to the first bite wound Moira had given me. I racked my brain trying to remember everything that Agent Wright had said about vampires. He said that they had to feed on their victim at the neck. But what if he was wrong? What if they just needed to feed, period? Then I heard Mr. Brown’s voice in my head, “And the Gusenbergs were completing their ‘rights’ to become brothers as well. Had they completed the process then Frank might have survived.”

  Did that mean they had to feed multiple times to make a new vampire? Maybe. I was just making a guess since Mr. Brown never really said that they would have become vampires, but the pieces were starting to fit together. I sighed with relief. Moira had only bitten me that one time—not counting tonight—and I didn’t think that this shoulder wound counted.

  I started to relax. Then I heard Mrs. Rabinowitz’s voice in my head. “But why did she come back later?” I recalled the conversation we had on the second floor landing by her door on the morning after Agent Truesdale had given me my black eye. She said that she’d seen Moira come to my apartment while I’d been asleep. “…she didn’t stay long as she left a few minutes after arriving. Did the two of you get into a scuffle? It looked like her lips were bleeding.”

  Dread flowed through my veins, chilling me to my core. “Shit, shit, shit.” I muttered to myself. What the hell is going on? Am I going to become a raving monster– a creature of the night? Or is the process not finished? How many times does a vampire need to feed to make a new vampire? Two? Three? More? What happens if the process isn’t completed?

  My only knowledge of vampires came from reading Dracula and what Agent Wright had told me. I didn’t consider either source to be very reliable on the subject.

  I continued to fret and worry about this problem until my eyes finally grew heavy. I must have eventually dozed off since I dreamed, reliving Moira’s attack and our fight. I kept trying to tell Moira that I hadn’t done anything wrong, but she sneered and stuck a straw in me, which she used to drink my blood. As she drank, I could feel my body pulsing and changing, until I had transformed into a hideous, hunched beast with long claws and fangs. Moira laughed and called me to heel like a dog, her faithful pet, and I dutifully moved to her side, panting and nuzzling her thigh. She reached down and grabbed the back of my neck and I felt pain shoot through my body. I was paralyzed as she leaned down and bit into my neck. The feeling of her biting me was simultaneously excruciatingly painful and blissfully orgasmic. My body shook, and I woke up with a start.

  Cold, damp sweat soaked my clothes and sheets. I looked around and saw nothing in the dim light, but somehow I could sense that I was not alone in the room.

  “Who’s there?” I called out.

  “My my, Mr. Imbierowicz, that must have been quite the dream.”

  I recognized Bugs Moran’s voice and, as I turned toward the sound, there was the click of a lamp. Moran was sitting in a chair next to the window. The lights from the lamp and the city cast an eerie glow on his face. At first I was embarrassed that he had seen me dreaming, then my embarrassment was replaced with confusion and anger. “How did you know I was here?”

  “Now, now,” he chuckled. “The Beast isn’t the only one with connections in this town. When I heard that you had been so viciously attacked I knew that I had to come down here to show my concern.” He leaned down and there was the flare of a lighter as he lit a cigar.

  “I’m glad I mean so much to you,” I replied. I didn’t try to hide the sarcasm.

  “I thought we had a deal, Saul.” Moran paused to blow out a plume of smoke. “You made a deal with me to get me those books. But today, I hear that the Feds went and arrested Ralph Capone.” His voice was quiet, but held more menace because of it.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Ralph got arrested, so that must be good for you and your operation.”

  Moran laughed a harsh, dry laugh. “Saul, you schmuck. I don’t care whether Ralphie was arrested or not. That’s not the point. You went and involved the wrong people.” He jabbed his cigar toward me. Great, I thought. First Moira and now Moran. “You went and got the Feds involved and they fucked everything up. They don’t know shit, and they certainly don’t know how we do things here in Chicago.”

  I shook my head. I really didn’t understand, and getting blamed a second time for going to see Agents Truesdale and Wright was starting to irritate me. “I don’t understand. Isn’t it good that Ralph Capone was arrested? Isn’t that just as good as having the books?”

  “You’re a fuckin’ idiot, Saul. Putting Ralph in the hands of the Feds doesn’t give me the leverage that I need to twist Big Al’s tail in order to get him to do what I want him to do. The books are the only thing that will give me tha
t leverage, and will allow me to tell Capone where he can shove that small dick of his. But that chance is blown, now, because you had to run and cry to the fuckin’ Feds.”

  I sat there in my bed trying to understand what Moran was telling me. None of this was making any sense. “I didn’t know what they were going to do. It’s not like they told me their plans.”

  “Well, the cops who were holding onto Ralph let him out earlier today due to a lack of evidence.” Moran seemed reflective. He turned, pulled open the curtain, and looked out across Chicago. His thinking had me worried.

  “This was a deal between you and me, Saul. We had a simple understanding and now you’ve broken my trust. And if you can’t trust your friends,” Moran turned and looked at me, “who can you trust?”

  Wait, friends? When had we ever been friends? “Look,” I said, my voice cracking a bit. “I can still get the books for you.”

  “No, Saul,” Moran moved toward the door. “It’s too late for that. Now I have to take care of it myself.”

  Chapter 28

  The stink of Moran’s cigar lingered in the room, along with his parting words, which rang and bounced around in my head. My biggest fear was that he was going to take out his anger with me on my family. I felt so helpless. If he was going after my parents and sister, what could I do about it? I leaned my head back against the pillow and sighed. I was powerless to do anything; even if I hadn’t been hurt, what could I do to stop Moran if he decided to take out my family?

  As I lay there in the dark, I recalled Moran’s last words. “Now I have to take care of it myself.” I wondered if he might have meant something other than hurting my family, but I couldn’t think of anything else. Images of Moran’s goons—Cup and Glass—bursting into my parent’s house with Tommy Guns blazing away kept filling my mind.

  After a few minutes of this torture, I had had enough. I sat up, wincing at the pain in my chest and shoulder. I flung off my covers and started to get out of bed. My body ached all over and, as I stood up, new pain rippled up my back from all of my wounds. I looked around for some clothes—nothing. I seemed to recall that they had cut off my bloody clothes and thrown them away when I had been brought in for treatment. I cursed my luck and headed toward the door.

  Just then, the door opened and a nurse walked in. “What in God’s name do you think you are doing?” Her voice might have sounded nice, except for the fact that she sounded just like my mother when she caught me stealing cookies before dinner.

  “I need to go home,” I said.

  “Not a chance, young man.” I blushed a bit at being called ‘young man’. She couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than me, and wasn’t half bad to gaze at. She hurried across the room and guided me back into bed. I wanted to resist, but my mom taught me better than to be mean to a lady (vampires notwithstanding). “You can’t leave until the doctor has had a chance to look at you in the morning.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Oh, he usually gets in around 9 o’clock.” She finished tucking me back into the bed, making sure that the covers bound me tightly to the mattress. “Now you stay in bed, dear.”

  She gave my bandages a once-over, and stuck a thermometer in my mouth for good measure while she took my pulse. She pulled the thermometer out and read it carefully. Satisfied, she wrote some stuff on my chart and left the room.

  I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, feeling even worse than I had before.

  It felt like an eternity had passed before I saw the first rays of sunlight creep around the window shade. What little sleep I got was consistently shattered by dreams of Moran taking his revenge on my family. I anxiously waited while another eternity passed before the doctor finally came in. He poked at my wounds, pulling off the bandages and feeling around. I winced at the pain but managed to swallow the yelps and cries as he poked and prodded. He pried open my mouth with a tongue depressor, then squeezed my neck and shone a penlight into my eyes. He grunted a few times, and scribbled a few things on my chart. Apparently finished, he left without ever saying a word.

  I was about to get up again when the door opened and a new nurse walked in. She was older, and less appealing to look at, but she was carrying some clothes with her, which made her the loveliest person in the whole world.

  “Here you go, honey. Your friend left these here for you last night. The doctor says you can be released.” She laid the clothes on the bed and I immediately grabbed them to start getting dressed. The nurse quickly averted her eyes and left the room.

  It took me five times longer than normal to get dressed, and it hurt like hell, but I finally got all my clothes on. I headed out the door, finding my way to the elevator and then out of the hospital. I was initially a bit pissed that Truesdale and Wright weren’t there to meet me, but on second thought, they probably would have insisted on babysitting me.

  It took me a minute to get my bearings, then I headed for the nearest L station. Truesdale or Wright—probably Wright as he was certainly the nicer of the two Agents—had left me some money in my pocket. I took the train back to my old neighborhood, and walked (I was in too much pain to run) as fast as I could to my parent’s apartment building.

  I saw a strange car in front of their building, and I immediately thought the worst. Moran’s thugs had gotten here before I could do anything. A rock-hard lump of bile formed in my stomach as I continued to approach the apartment. As I got closer, I saw that the car had a name stenciled on the side: Schofield’s Flower Shop. This made me even more worried—Schofield’s was known to have been owned by Dean O’Banion, who was the leader of the North Side Gang until his death five years ago. Some people said that Moran still used the flower shop as a front.

  As I neared the steps to the apartment, a young delivery man came out of the building, tipping his hat to me as he walked down the steps. I was torn between racing upstairs to my parent’s place and decking this hired killer right here and now. My left hand flexed and tightened into a fist, but some doubt in my mind stayed my hand. Instead, I just glared at the delivery man as he got into the car and drove off.

  I headed inside and went up the stairs. As soon as I limped onto my parent’s floor, my worries and fears all melted away as I could hear Mom yelling at Sarah. I couldn’t make out the words, but I didn’t need to. Just hearing the raised voices, arguing over something mundane, told me that they were safe—at least from Moran. I knew Dad would be at the packing plant, and there was no way any of Moran’s goons would be able to get in there.

  I was about to open the door, when a shooting pain in my shoulder reminded me that I was not exactly in the best state to be seen by my mother. There was no lie I could tell Mom that could explain away my bruises, cuts, and other wounds. She would be merciless in her questions and I would eventually have to explain everything to her. I would rather have faced Moira again than face my Mom right now.

  With a twinge of reluctance, I turned and headed back down the stairs.

  I got back to my apartment around noon. I climbed the stairs to my floor slowly, the sounds of my fight with Moira yesterday echoing in my head. I was not looking forward to being back at my place and seeing the aftermath of what had happened. I know that she had turned into some kind of monster and had tried to kill me, but a small part of me still loved Moira. To come back and see all the blood and everything might be more than I could bear right now.

  I shook my head to clear it as I reached the third floor landing. My door was there, shut, and as I tried the handle, I found that it was also locked. Part of me marvelled at that little fact as I patted my pockets and found a single key in one of them. I put the key in the lock and opened the door.

  I was shocked by what I saw or, more appropriately, what I didn’t see. My kitchen was so clean that it practically glowed. There was no sign of the bloody fight. Had I not known differently, I would have sworn that Mom had been over here and had c
leaned the place up.

  The floor was freshly scrubbed and smelled of bleach. All of the walls had been scrubbed as well. There was not a trace of blood anywhere. The table had been cleaned and set upright, and a new chair sat at the table to replace the one that had ended Moira’s life.

  I looked into my room and saw that the blood had been cleaned from the floor and wall in there as well, and that the bed had been made. I went back into the kitchen and found a note sitting under my coffee cup on the counter.

  “I hope that everything looks like it did before the accident. Call us. ~ Wright”

  I looked around again and shook my head in disbelief. I idly wondered if I could somehow get them to come back to clean my bathroom, too?

  I was pondering this when there was a knock on my door. I jumped at the sound. I couldn’t remember the last time somebody had actually knocked in order to gain entry to my apartment. I walked over and opened the door.

  Al Capone stood on the landing, looking immaculate in a dark blue suit and white silk shirt and wearing a black fur coat that made his slightly large body seem even bigger. He had on a dark blue and gold-striped tie and was wearing a pearl-grey, snap-brimmed fedora with a blue silk band. He looked at me expectantly. “May I come in, Mr. Imbierowicz?”

  Chapter 29

  I hesitated slightly looking at the man standing in my doorway. His face was puffy and slightly red-faced and I could just make out his namesake scar. My first instinct was to slam the door in his face. Luckily, I thought better of it before I acted. “Uh...please come in, Mr. Capone.” I swung my arm to usher him into my kitchen.

  Capone took a confident step and walked into my apartment, taking off his hat and holding it in his gloved hands. He looked around with a flat expression. I felt a bit self-conscious as he looked over my simple apartment with the shabby and sparse furnishings.