The Vaults

by Toby Ball

  He stood across the square from All Souls’, out of sight with his back against an apartment building. His conversation with Dr. Vesterhue did not give him much hope of seeing Lena Prosnicki, and he had no stomach for dealing with the ASU again. He was here to confirm Vesterhue’s claims about the security around All Souls’. Vesterhue had not exagerrated.

  While this was a dead end, he had given some thought to Casper Prosnicki during the walk here. Where would you find a boy whose father was murdered and whose mother was in an institution? An orphanage.

  Orphanages in the City, Poole knew, were neither uniform nor regulated. He was familiar with them from a case he had worked three years prior when a woman named Dagmar Rehmer had hired him to find her daughter, Ursula. He hadn’t considered this point before, but Dagmar Rehmer was another woman who had told Poole not to contact her. While an unusual arrangement, it was not unique to Poole’s experience. He was, by design, available to people who wished to avoid any undue attention. This was partly due to his relationship with Carla. Communists and anarchists, people who knew that the police would provide them with more problems than they would solve, were often Poole’s clients. Word had got around, too, in the City’s vast underground that Poole would provide honest services without asking sensitive questions of his clients. This was unusual, as other operatives available to these marginalized people would generally take advantage of their clients’ desperation or lack of alternatives. Poole, though, was scrupulous with the most marginal of his clients. His targets were often a different story.

  Ursula Rehmer, according to her mother, had been sent to an orphanage when Mr. Rehmer was killed in a car accident and Dagmar had suffered a breakdown. The case had been relatively simple—visit orphanages until he found the one that housed Ursula Rehmer. He was too late, though. She had died several months prior to his visit—a fact the beleaguered chaplain had read in her folder. Death by misadventure had been the cryptic notation as to cause. The chaplain had stared helplessly back at Poole in response to a query for more specifics.

  Ursula Rehmer’s orphanage had been St. Cecilia’s in the Hollows. Poole knew from that investigation that St. Cecilia’s was the sister orphanage of St. Mark’s, also in the Hollows. St. Mark’s seemed like a reasonable place to start.

  St. Mark’s had once been a tenement building, condemned to be torn down. The City, then under the previous mayor’s regime, bought the building and converted it to an orphanage. The condemnation order was rescinded. Seeing the building, Poole was convinced it should have come down years ago. It was amazing that people actually lived here. The building no longer even stood straight, instead listing slightly, but noticeably, to the south. A number of windows were broken. Poole counted seven on the front of the building alone. There were five floors.

  Poole opened the front door and stepped into a dim lobby. The odor inside—of sewage, rotting food, sweat, other things—caused him to pause. As his eyes adjusted, he found no one to speak to. He walked ahead. The parquet floor was filthy and uneven. Poole called out.

  He waited, heard footsteps—many of them—coming down stairs that he could not see. He backed toward the door, unnerved by the apparent number of people reacting to his arrival. A door in front and to his left opened, and six young boys careened into the room, coming to a stop at the sight of Poole. Poole guessed that they ranged in age from eight to about thirteen.

  They approached him cautiously, the youngest obviously in awe of Poole’s size. One of the boys, bare-chested and sinewy, took a step forward from the group. Ill-fitting pants were cinched with a rope and he was barefoot. The others also wore clothes seemingly chosen at random.

  “Who’re you?” the boy asked.

  “My name’s Poole.”

  While the boys stared at him, he took off his hat and lowered himself so that he was at the lead boy’s eye level.

  “Who’s in charge here?”

  The boy seemed confused by the question and looked back at Poole in silence.

  “I need to speak to an adult,” Poole said, speaking slowly and carefully. “Where is an adult?”

  Again the boys seemed to confer without speaking. The oldest said, “Come,” and turned back toward the stairs. Poole followed him, and the rest of the boys followed Poole. The stink of urine in the stairwell brought tears to Poole’s eyes. The boys seemed unaffected as they continued to ascend. In the semidarkness of the landings, Poole thought he could make out cracked doors and eyes examining him. At the landing of the fourth floor they hesitated.

  The oldest turned back to the other boys. “Stay.” Then he grabbed Poole’s hand. Poole was surprised by the heat in the boy’s hand and wondered if it was fever. They walked into the fourth-floor hall, and the smell of decay told Poole all he needed to know.

  The boy led him down the hall and stopped at a closed door. Poole opened it tentatively. The smell had been strong in the hallway, but it did not remotely prepare him for what was in the room. The stench had an almost physical presence. A decomposing corpse in a priest’s frock lay supine on a cot. Poole shut the door and breathed into his sleeve with his elbow bent, trying to filter the odor before he was sick. He was not an expert, but his guess was that the priest must have died in the past month. Did nobody know about this?

  Poole walked back to the stairwell with the boy following. The group was still on the landing and greeted Poole with searching eyes. He tried to smile kindly.

  “Does anyone know about this?” Poole asked the oldest.

  He shook his head.

  “Is there another adult?”

  Again the shake of the head.

  Poole was reeling from the smells, the condition of the boys, the body in the room. Focus on what you came here for. Upstairs he heard light footsteps and imagined more boys looking over the railing at the scene below.

  “Listen. I’m looking for a boy named Casper Prosnicki.”

  “Casper?” The oldest boy brightened at the name.

  “You know him? Where is he? Is he here?”

  “Gone,” the boy said, then made a gesture with his hand like a bird flying away.

  “Gone? Gone where?” Poole’s adrenaline spiked.

  “He’s on the streets.”

  “He’s gone to the streets? Where?” Poole grabbed the boy’s shoulders, harder than he intended. “Where is Casper?”

  The boy was frightened and his companions backed away from Poole, eyes wide.

  “Where?”

  The boy shook his head, tears beginning to flow down his cheeks.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Smith sat by the phone at a bar two blocks down from the Puskis’s flat. He was on his third scotch and his hands had finally stopped trembling. Now he was waiting for the phone to ring. It would be nice for it to happen this time. When he had finally managed to get out of the Vaults, he had called Riordon at Headquarters and asked him where the hell the phone call was telling him that Puskis was returning. Riordon said that he had called and the phone had rung but no one had answered. That was a lot of horseshit, Smith knew, because he could not have missed the phone down there. Riordon hadn’t called, and there wasn’t much to be done about it except remember and pay it back when the opportunity presented itself. In this case, however, if Dawlish, that fastidious elevator man, didn’t call, Smith would take the frustration out on his hide.

  Just thinking about it got him in a state again, so he threw back the scotch and ordered another.

  Two men in cheap suits sat just down the bar, talking. One was saying he thought that people could be divided into two groups: one that thought that their mood should affect everyone around them; and the other that thought that they should keep their moods to their own goddamn selves. The talker placed himself in the second group and his boss in the first. His companion nodded and started in about his wife.

  Smith thought about this. He didn’t feel as if he really had any moods. Or maybe it was that he had only one mood all the time—pissed off. Did he let it af
fect the people around him? Not if they kept their goddamn distance.

  The mayor definitely had his fucking moods. He didn’t have to say anything, though. People recognized his moods and acted accordingly. Even Smith steered clear when he sensed Red Henry’s rage. It wasn’t that he feared the mayor. Smith didn’t fear anyone. But hard men understand the pecking order, and Henry was right at the top. Smith was right there after him, but Henry was still number one. Smith could live with that, and with the fact that he could always put a bullet in the mayor’s head if he needed to. No one was safe from anyone. Not the mayor and not Smith. Exactly the way he liked it.

  He had worked his way through his scotch when the phone rang. It was Dawlish, saving himself a beating. Puskis was on his way home.

  Smith stood beneath the awning of the building across the street from Puskis’s. The flow of afternoon pedestrian traffic rendered Smith essentially invisible. Puskis was hard to miss, looking like a praying mantis with his long, skinny frame and his odd, stooped lope. Smith watched him as he made his slow progress along the sidewalk, approached his front door, and paused to fish keys out of his pocket. Puskis stopped suddenly and turned his head as though someone had called out to him. He stood looking to his left, and even from across the street the tension in his body was evident. Smith took an unconscious step forward for a better look.

  A man was now talking to Puskis. A hat obscured the man’s face, but something about him was familiar. They talked some more and the man gestured and Puskis nodded. Puskis turned back and unlocked the door. The man held the door as Puskis entered, then followed him in. At the threshold, however, the man stopped and took a brief look back at the street.

  Jesus Christ, Smith thought, it’s goddamn Frankie Frings.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Frings kept his eyes on his notebook. Avoiding eye contact calmed people who were nervous about talking to him. Puskis had been nervous from the start, down on the street. The way he froze when Frings called his name. The look on his face as Frings approached. He was scared of something, though not of Frings. Puskis was merely nervous about talking to him. Possibly, Frings thought, Puskis was nervous about talking to anyone. So he concentrated on his notebook and asked his questions gently.

  “I know you aren’t in the habit of talking to reporters.”

  “I’m . . . no, I actually am prohibited from giving information to reporters. A stipulation of my contract. I’m afraid I will not be of much, um, assistance to you.”

  “I understand. Let me just ask you what I want to ask, and you can decide whether you want to answer.”

  Puskis considered this. “Well, I suppose that is fine. Though, again, I’m afraid I will disappoint you.”

  “That’s fine. I’m looking for information on a man by the name of Otto Samuelson.” Frings stole a glance up at Puskis and saw the same look as when this odd man had first heard his name on the street; bewilderment and fear. “Do you know that name?”

  Puskis was slow to speak. “Why do you . . . why do you want to know about this man?”

  “Because someone I talked to told me Samuelson is the key to a big story I’m working on. Because it is important that I talk to him. Because when I did research into his story I learned that he was convicted of murder but couldn’t find any information on his sentence or where he is being held. I was told you were the person to talk to.”

  Frings let Puskis think about this and stared at the rugs hanging on the walls. A smell was in the air. Something that Puskis had cooked in the last few days—spices and meat and maybe rice.

  Finally Puskis spoke. “I don’t have an answer for you, though that is information in itself.”

  Frings looked up, confused.

  Puskis continued. “There are twenty men who were convicted of murder during the years 1927 and 1928 and were not incarcerated.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Puskis shook his head with a look of profound distress. “I don’t know. Like you, I did research. I have access to the City’s official records. There is no question that it is a complete accounting of the affairs of the City’s legal system. Yet there is no record that any of these men are serving time.”

  Frings’s breathing became shallow, his pulse fast. “Do you know the names of these men?”

  Puskis recited the twenty names while Frings wrote them down in his pad. The man’s recall was amazing.

  When he had finished the list, Puskis said, “At least one of the men is now deceased.”

  Frings nodded for him to continue.

  “Reif DeGraffenreid. I went to see him. He had been decapitated shortly before my arrival.”

  Jesus. “Where did you find this DeGraffenreid?”

  Puskis related the story of his journey to DeGraffenreid’s and his discovery of the corpse. His speech came in torrents, both hesitant and fast, like water under great pressure being forced through a small hole.

  When the story was done, Frings asked, “How did you know where to find DeGraffenreid?”

  “I received . . . it seems so obvious in hindsight . . . I received an anonymous phone call.”

  “Do you think it was from DeGraffenreid?”

  “No.”

  “It was a setup? Trying to scare you off?”

  “That would appear to be the case. Yes.”

  Now it was Frings who paused. He was slightly high and had to assess what he had just learned. He had a number of questions and hoped that Puskis had already thought to look into them.

  “When you did your research, was there anything about these men that seemed strange or that they had in common?”

  Puskis scratched his temple. “Beyond what we just discussed?” He thought. “They were all gang murders. They were all part of the, uh, the gang war that was active at the time between the White Gang and the Bristols.”

  Frings nodded and wrote, as much to keep Puskis talking as for his memory. “What else? Was there anything else?”

  “There was a small thing.”

  “Okay.”

  “When I first discovered the DeGraffenreid file, it had a sentence notation of ‘life,’ followed by the acronym PN. PN is not an approved acronym and I was puzzled, but assumed that it was a typographical error because PB is an approved acronym and the B and N are adjacent on the typewriter. But as I continued to research these cases, I found that all of these men had received the same sentence notation: ‘life,’ followed by PN. It is clearly more than a coincidence, but I do not know what it means.”

  When he was finished taking notes, Frings looked up at Puskis, who was visibly energized by this unloading of information.

  Frings asked, “What do you think happened to these men?”

  “My first assumption, as you might expect, was that they were executed. Perhaps in an, an extrajudicial manner.”

  “But then you found DeGraffenreid alive. Or he had been alive.”

  “Correct. He was indeed alive up until the time of my visit. He was living in the country.”

  “So, your thoughts?” Frings prompted.

  Puskis shrugged sadly. “I am not used to conjecture on the basis of such limited facts. Perhaps they were sent off to exile.”

  “But why these particular men, Mr. Puskis? Why them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They looked at each other for a minute, Frings sensing some kind of weird bond between them, wanting to give Puskis something in this exchange. Something that would cement this bond, make it possible for him to come back to Puskis later if he needed. Frings recognized a name from the list of twenty. He had information.

  “One of the men on the list, Vampire Reid.”

  Puskis lifted his thin eyebrows in query.

  “Well, you said one of the men on your list is deceased. It’s actually two, at least. They found Reid a few years back out in the sticks somewhere. I remember it because they cut him up pretty good, like someone really had a thing for him.”

  Puskis took this in with a grim e
xpression.

  “Just thought you’d like to know,” Frings said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Red Henry’s driver pulled up to the curb across the street from Puskis’s apartment building. Henry watched Smith as he stood at the corner, chin buried in his coat against the brutal wind now blowing. The driver gave a quick punch to his horn. Smith looked up and jogged over to the awaiting car. Henry took up most of the backseat, forcing Smith to lean hard against the door, and still there was an uncomfortable amount of physical contact. Henry was unperturbed. In fact, he liked other men to experience the power of his body. It was another way to intimidate.

  Henry said, “Why am I here?”

  It was only a seven-block drive from City Hall, but Smith had insisted that it needed to be a face-to-face and that it needed to be here, on the street. Henry was torn between annoyance at being dragged from his office and interest in what was so goddamn important that Smith would dare to insist that Henry take this trouble.

  Smith came straight out with it. If he had screwed up by bringing Henry out here, delaying would only exacerbate the situation. “That’s Arthur Puksis’s building. I’m eyeing him, just like you told Peja to tell me. He comes walking up to his door, you see, and out of nowhere comes Frankie Frings. They chin for a second and then they go inside together.”

  Henry sat absolutely still, thinking. This might be a good sign or it might be a terrible one, Smith knew.

  “Are they still in there?”

  “Yeah, pretty sure. I was gone for maybe—what?—a couple minutes calling you. I don’t think I’d have missed him in that time.”

  “You have any idea what they might be talking about?”