Speakeasy Dead: a P.G. Wodehouse-Inspired Romantic Zombie Comedy (Hellfire Universe Historicals)

by Vicky Loebel

  Perhaps at this point I should describe my housekeeper. Five feet tall, shaped like a woman, inscribed with words of power inside her head, the golem has served royalty—if her own tales can be believed—passing over the course of generations from prince, to lord, to gentry as the bloodline degraded, snagging at last on the lowest and least impressive branch of the Benjamin family tree, namely, Bernard. She looks human if you ignore the rock-tight bun, alabaster skin, eyes that blaze red whenever she’s annoyed, and a penchant for Argosy adventure stories.

  We tell the neighbors she’s Swedish.

  I lit a Lucky. Ruth’s dancing was not the morning’s only trial. My battered neck, discreetly bundled in a fashionable scarf, was bruised and stiff from last night’s tussle with Hans. What’s more, as news of Beauregard’s appearance had spread through town, women, large and old, young and small, had flocked in numbers to the Fellowship’s bar where Clara’s zombie protégé had been installed mixing cocktails with a practiced, if somewhat mechanical, skill.

  This was fine news for my cousin, since entering the dance contest provided a more respectable reason for ladies to linger than either guzzling gin or drooling directly on Beau. Less fine was the effect on yours truly, whose services as taxi dancer had been much in demand from ladies who needed a partner to qualify.

  “I believe,” Gladys said, “Mr. Johnny Weissmuller is strongly favored to win a gold medal in the men’s 400-meter freestyle.”

  “Sports aren’t everything,” I answered with some asperity. To prove my point, I scanned page one. Insanity Plea Expected for Leopold and Loeb the headlines blurted. Right after Beauregard Silent in Miracle Cure.

  Gladys left for the kitchen. I opened the paper and watched the crowded bar. Clara had announced that Beau Beauregard’s vacant expression and sudden lack of verbal skills were a publicity stunt for his upcoming film, Ali Baba’s Bazaar, and so far customers seemed to be buying the goods. Perhaps because the zombie mixed drinks with the same air of wooden tragedy that had characterized his acting career.

  A large man dressed in pinstripes emerged from the bowling alley across the hall. He strode confidently into the bar, bypassed the stag line, and cut directly in on Ruth. The genie’s former partner hobbled away gratefully, rubbing his shins.

  I focused my attention on the sports page and a blow-by-blow description of Jesse Haines’ no-hitter against the Boston Braves.

  He threw the ball; they missed.

  He threw the ball; they missed again.

  “Thanks, Gladys.” My cousin’s trill cut short the Cardinal’s coup. “You’re a lamb.”

  I lifted my gaze in time to see half my eggs Benedict and two-thirds of the fried potatoes slither from Gladys’ tray onto a stoneware plate clutched in felonious female fingers.

  Clara dropped onto the opposite seat and set a dog-eared account book on the table. “Oh Bernie.” She’d changed out of last night’s buttermilk gown into a calf-length, rattlesnake-colored crepe with matching floppy hat, leaving her pale hair loose to spill about her shoulders. “He’s so gorgeous.”

  “Please, join me,” I offered graciously. “Choose any chair.”

  Gladys served me the remnants of my breakfast, placed strawberry jam and a pitcher of hollandaise between us, and glided away. Across the room, Pinstripe escorted Ruth to the bar and muscled a couple of gents out of their seats.

  “Isn’t this swell?” My cousin hijacked my coffee cup and took a swig. “I never thought we’d be so busy.”

  “Coffee?” I offered, snagging a cup and saucer off of a nearby table. “A touch of cream?”

  “Gosh, yes. I’m parched.” She ladled jam into her cup. “What an unholy night!”

  I pushed my own cup forward. She split the jam. I topped us both with black.

  “Just for the record,” I asked, taking a sip, “who’s gorgeous? Hell’s-henchman-Hans? Or Ali-Baba-Beau?”

  “Why, Beau, of course.” She beamed at the zombie. “Well, Beau and Hans are both gorgeous, I guess, but Beau’s the one I love. If only he weren’t a dead, brain-eating monster!”

  “If only.” I closed my eyes, enjoying strawberry-laced coffee, a nursery treat that went some distance toward soothing my lacerated throat. When I looked up, young C. had emptied the hollandaise pitcher onto her eggs.

  She took a bite and foolishly closed her own eyes, sighing.

  I swapped our plates.

  “Not that Beau’s really dead,” Clara continued. “So far, nobody’s even noticed—” Her eyes popped open. “Oh, Bernie.” She thrust the lower lip. “I’ve been awake all night!”

  She looked perky for someone who hadn’t slept. I wondered if Clara had been nipping Priscilla’s potions. Or worse, if she had leftover hellfire and was sampling the brew. Demonic blood is a great restorative, or so my dearly departed doctor Dad had warned. Fights wrinkles, cures the common cold. Until the day a demon comes to collect the bill and turns a warlock’s fountain of youth into a gusher of gore.

  Gladys returned with a second tray of eggs Benedict drenched in sauce, which she served Clara without so much as an apologetic grovel in my direction. I helped myself to the rest of the potatoes. I might have been inches taller, not to say meatier about the chest and shoulders, if not for my cousin’s lifelong habit of filching my food.

  “Gladys, darling?” Clara stretched up and whispered in my housekeeper’s shell-like ear.

  “I’ll see what I can arrange, miss.”

  Clara threw her arms around the golem and kissed a stony cheek. “You’re an angel!” If clay could blush, my housekeeper would have turned pink with pleasure.

  “I do my best, miss.”

  Pinstripe and Ruth finished their drinks. The band lurched into “The Sheik of Araby,” and Ruth set off in search of fresh young men to maim.

  The large man swaggered in our direction, carrying his drink.

  “Don’t look now,” I warned my cousin, “but Arnold Rothstein’s in town.”

  She looked of course; of course it wasn’t Arn. Pinstripe was twice as big and probably three times more likely to push the faces of young and inoffensive men through window panes.

  “Scuse me.” The man put out a paw. “Youse is the kids what runs this joint?”

  We said we were.

  “Harry Gibraltar.” He grabbed a chair. “Stoneface to all my friends, which I am confident youse two will shortly be.”

  Clara toyed with her account book.

  “Salute!” Stoneface lifted his whiskey. “You brew good hooch.”

  An awkward silence ensued. Falstaff has never bothered with Prohibition. As with many laws enacted in the greater 48—the length of swimsuits, miscegenation, gambling bans—we’ve simply shrugged and gone our way. But Stoneface wasn’t local. Granted, his chance of being a Fed seemed small. For one thing, Prohibition agents don’t stuff guns in their pockets.

  “Nice to meet you,” Clara said brightly. She took a Lucky Strike out of my cigarette case and leaned forward, sweeping the abundant golden curls to one side.

  Stoneface gave her a light. My cousin, who’d never smoked in her life, choked back a cough.

  “Me and Dr. George Umbridge” —Stoneface’s meaty thumb jerked toward the bowling lanes— “of Umbridge Funeral Emporium. Perhaps youse have heard of him?”

  We had. Dr. George Umbridge, Senior, was the city coroner, a wealthy, highly respected man, and a major investor in the Hollywood Grand Hotel. His daughter, Luella, was Clara’s closest friend. But there’s more to the story than that.

  The Umbridges were spiritualists who practiced a system of magic based on ghosts. Ghost magic is pretty tame stuff, ghosts being to demons much as house cats are to man-eating tigers: less powerful but also less likely to bite off your head. The fact these two systems of magic operated peacefully in the same town was due to strictly-maintained cordiality on both sides. Neither family viewed the bosom friendship between Luella and Clara with much enthusiasm. But in this, as in most things, the girls had done as the
y pleased.

  I’d grown up pretty fond of Luella, myself, even going so far as to date the young thing my senior year in high school. Unfortunately, just as the hope of future Benjamin generations had begun to glimmer in my golem’s eye, Luella had outgrown me and moved on to taller, smarter men.

  “Hey!” Stoneface Gibraltar snapped his fingers under my chin. “Are you listening?”

  I dragged my mind back to the table.

  “I was sayin,’” Stoneface began again, “I calls Dr. Umbridge Georgie on account of we’re pals. We been knocking over those crazy pins you got in the other room.”

  “You have?” I asked, surprised.

  The man pointed. Sure enough, Dr. Umbridge, short haired, dark skinned, wearing an elegant, caramel-colored suit that was pressed to a level of crispness Gladys would have admired, was at that moment entering the room. He strolled up to the counter and began teasing the ladies who fluttered around Beau Beauregard like moths around a desiccated shawl.

  Clara waved cheerfully. I squirmed straight, feeling shabby in my dance-rumpled white linen suit and safety-razor shave.

  Dr. Umbridge shook hands with Beauregard, waved to Clara, and then turned and left through the Fellowship’s front door.

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Gibraltar?” Clara puffed cautiously on her cigarette. “Would you like to enter the dance contest? Registration is about to close.”

  Stoneface ignored my cousin and turned toward me. “Me and Georgie,” he said, “got an arrangement. I do my bit, my speciality. And he brews up the…let us refer to it as ginger ale…for thirsty customers.”

  Clara blew smoke.

  “Jamaican ginger?” I asked. “Goes by the name of Jacques?”

  “Smart boy.” A giant fist swung up and tapped my shoulder. My chair rocked sideways. “That’s the stuff.”

  Stoneface must be the Hollywood Grand’s bootlegger. He’d be supplying the low-grade alcohol they mixed with the Umbridges’ jake spirits.

  My cousin wheezed faintly. Her cheeks were turning red.

  I reached across the table and took her cigarette.

  “If you’re worried about competition from our bar,” she gasped, waving away smoke, “you needn’t be. We’re very small.”

  Stoneface ignored her. “Only, it pains me to admit this,” he said. “This Jacques cocktail Georgie cooks up. It ain’t so good.”

  “I’ve tasted it,” I said. Customers had been carrying drinks over from the Hollywood Grand. “It’s…stimulating.”

  “Yeah, so’s a kick in the pants,” the bootlegger remarked darkly. “But that don’t cost no fifty cents.”

  “It’s not the Umbridges’ fault,” Clara said loyally. “The family’s been brewing perfectly good jake spirits for decades. It’s the cheap booze the hotel’s mixing it with that’s a problem.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Stoneface turned to her. “Who says?”

  “I know a thing or two about distillation, Mr. Gibraltar.”

  “Out of,” I commented, “the hundred things Priscilla’s tried to teach her.”

  Clara blundered on. “It isn’t safe or easy to get good alcohol from contaminated sources. Whoever’s selling that stuff has been supplying a bill of goods.”

  I kicked my cousin under the table. Her eyes got the message, but her mouth didn’t stop. “That bootlegger will be lucky,” she said, “if half the people drinking Jacques don’t end up blind.”

  “It ain’t poison,” Stoneface huffed. “It’s just a little bitter, is all.”

  “That’s what Socrates said.”

  “Oh yeah?” The man frowned. “Who’s he bootleg for?”

  I kicked again. Clara’s feet had moved out of range.

  “You cannot expect” —she sounded exactly like her half-sister, Priscilla— “to extract drinkable alcohol from army-surplus embalming fluid.”

  Stoneface Gibraltar’s brow lowered. “Exactly how do you know about that?”

  Clara’s expression turned coy. “I know a lot of things, Mr. Gibraltar.” She leaned her chin on one hand and batted her eyelids, producing the impression of either a fair-haired Theda Bara or a punch-drunk kitten with a mop on its head. “Why not give me a try?”

  The man examined my cousin. “A lot eh?” He reached out and placed his mitt on top of Clara’s hand. “Is that a fact?”

  “Yes,” Clara said seriously. “What’s more—”

  Stoneface wasn’t listening. He flipped her hand and tiptoed his fingers up the palm. “Maybe you and me, we ought to schedule a private tutorial.”

  Clara’s cheeks brightened. “Maybe.” She flapped the eyelashes again.

  “Well.” I scraped my chair back loudly from the table. “Well, it’s been nice getting to know you, Stoneface.” I stood. “Don’t hesitate—”

  Vise-like fingers closed on my jacket sleeve. “Siddown.”

  I sat.

  Stoneface did not let go. “I ain’t here about Jacques,” he told my cousin. “That stuff’s the goods. The Jacques is not what interests me.”

  “Well, then, if you’re looking to buy quality liquor.” Clara retrieved her hand and took a scrap of paper and a pencil out of her account book. “I can let you have one barrel per week of gin, whiskey, and apple brandy.” She wrote a number. “For this amount.”

  Stoneface whistled. “Ten barrels.” He crossed out her number. “Payment is fifty percent of gross.”

  “One and a half barrels.” She wrote again. “Fixed price. I don’t care what you sell it for.”

  The gangster’s fingers tightened painfully around my arm. “Five barrels.”

  “This isn’t Ford. We don’t have an assembly line.” The scrap changed sides again. “But I’ll give you an exclusive. Apart from you and us, nobody else gets the stuff.”

  Stoneface considered. “You got a deal.” He let me go and offered Clara his paw.

  I tugged my linen sleeve. The fabric was badly rumpled. However, things could be worse. Priscilla loved distilling; she’d be delighted to have the extra work. And the more hours that woman spent in her basement lab, the less time free to order me and Clara around.

  As if on cue, Priscilla chose that moment to enter the bar. She surged in, cinch-waisted, head erect, and aimed her flowing skirts at the bar counter.

  Beau Beauregard was not in sight. Uh oh.

  “In any case, two barrels is plenty.” Stoneface rumbled to his feet. “We’ll have eight barrels, maybe ten, after we’re done.”

  Clara’s expression fell. “You’re going to cut it?”

  “Sure,” Stoneface agreed. “We’ll save some for the swells, but this stuff’s too high quality for most people.”

  “Cut it with processed embalming fluid?”

  The mobster hardened. “We’ll process it real good,” he said. “No one will ever know.”

  “We’ll know,” Clara protested. “You can’t!”

  I saw her point. Cousin Priscilla would explode. And where Priscilla pops, hot burning lumps of ash rain down on me.

  “Are you saying?” Stoneface swiveled menacingly in my direction. “We don’t have no deal?”

  The man was twice my weight and half again my height.

  Clara jumped up. “Darn right, no deal!” She stamped her foot. “You’ve got to promise to sell it straight!”

  Stoneface gathered my linen jacket…and vest, and scarf, and shirt…in one big beefy hand. He squeezed his knuckles against my battered throat.

  “Say that again,” he snarled.

  “I didn’t.” I wheezed in pain.

  “And don’t think you can bully us!” Clara informed him. “We’re Woodsens! A Woodsen knows no fear!”

  “But my name’s—” The Benjamins are also traditionally fearless. This may explain why all the Benjamins, except for me, are dead.

  I couldn’t breathe. Gray dots rushed from my brain and flew about the room.

  “Don’t push your luck,” the gangster growled.

  The arguing voices blurred.


  Abruptly, his hand released me.

  I slumped down, gasping, in my chair.

  Gladys was standing behind Stoneface, who looked like somebody might be choking him.

  “Don’t make a fuss, Mr. Gibraltar,” she said. “I would not care to ventilate such an attractive suit.” A golem’s finger, I’m told, feels remarkably like the muzzle of a gun. But while both gun and finger can drill holes through your kidney, only the golem can grab the kidney and rip it out your back.

  Stoneface craned his neck, trying to see the very short woman behind him.

  “Your hat?” Gladys passed Stoneface a white fedora.

  Ruth sauntered over. “Is there trouble?” She stepped in close and fingered the man’s lapel. “I just love trouble.”

  Clara frowned at the bar, looking, I presumed, for the missing Beauregard.

  “Okay.” Stoneface growled. “Okay. No trouble. For now.” He pushed Ruthie away. “But youse kids better think twice about that deal.” He glared at me. “Or else!”

  Gladys showed him the door.

  My head throbbed. My neck ached.

  I closed my eyes.

  An instant later the genie was in my lap.

  “Poor sweetie.” Ruth straightened and retied my scarf, tucking the ends into my linen vest. “That bully hurt you.”

  “I’m fine.” I squirmed…which turns out not to be the wisest move when there’s a gorgeous, scantily-clad female sharing your seat.

  Ruth giggled and cuddled against my chest. She really was astonishingly lovely. Bright hair, smooth skin, soft curves….

  The genie nuzzled my cheek.

  …semi-retractable claws.

  I swallowed

  “I’m tired of dancing.” Ruth kissed me. “Let’s you and me go upstairs.”

  Those claws could be a problem. Also I knew better than to trust a genie.

  I kissed her back, deciding trust was overrated.

  “Enough, you cat!” Clara hauled the genie off of my lap. “Where’s Beau?” She held Ruth at arm’s length. “And don’t be cute. I ordered you to watch him.”

  “I watched, mistress.” Ruth’s eyes rolled back in alarm. “Don’t be mad! I watched where he went.”

  “And where was that?” Clara shoved Ruth away. “What the devil’s going on?”