The Vaults

by Toby Ball

  Smith shook his head.

  “Okay. Good work. Stay here and keep an eye on Puskis. What building is this?” Henry indicated the building where Smith had been standing.

  “The Bangkok Hotel.”

  “Get yourself a room where you can watch the street. No use in you catching goddamn pneumonia out here.”

  It was the most compassionate thing Smith had ever heard Henry say.

  Feral was in Red Henry’s office a half hour later, watching Henry smoke a cigar and pace. Feral could comfortably wait almost indefinitely—a skill that was valuable with Henry, who didn’t like to be rushed.

  “Sit down,” Henry said, billowing smoke as he talked.

  Feral sat. Out of habit, he placed most of his weight on his feet and on his forearms, which rested on the arms of the chair. He could do this without significant physical strain.

  “For once, Smith actually did something useful. He was watching Puskis—that troll who runs the Vaults—and saw Frankie Frings talking to him. They went up to Puskis’s apartment. Might still be there.”

  Feral nodded. This situation was fraught with possibility.

  Henry continued, “As you no doubt realize, this is a very bad development. Mr. Puskis has been expressly forbidden to talk to the press, but things have been a little dicey for him recently and he may be moving in his own direction. The catch is that we can’t deal with this situation in the usual ways. Puskis is too valuable in the Vaults. There’s no one who has any idea of what goes on down there. This new system that Ricks is putting together will be fine, but we have to have Puskis to shepherd the process. We need him, as strange as it seems. Frings, on the other hand, is a whole different problem. If anything happens to him, there will be an investigation, public pressure, all holy hell. So we come to our earlier plan.”

  “Nora Aspen.”

  “That’s right. As soon as possible.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  What passed for the intersection of Kopernik and Stanislaus streets was in a desolate part of town at the northernmost reaches of the Hollows. It was hard to believe that such a barren, empty place existed in the City. The tracks here had been abandoned nearly two decades ago when the railroad was rerouted south and east at the behest of some member of the City Council who stood to profit from the new route.

  As the letter instructed, Frings stood on the tracks. He was exposed out there, with at least a two-hundred-yard sprint to the nearest cover. Kopernik and Stanislaus streets were themselves largely abandoned, unpaved and scarred with ruts and potholes. It was a strange place to meet, the one advantage being that the bombers could easily see if Frings had brought anyone.

  Frings stood with his hands in his pockets and his back to the wind, which cut through his jacket as if it weren’t there. He had made a call to the newsroom on the way here, instructing Panos to run the version of his column for tomorrow that contained the phrase golden age, the signal to Bernal that Frings was ready to meet. He wondered if what he had learned from Puskis would be enough to satisfy Bernal. He had a huge piece of the puzzle: that Samuelson was one of a couple dozen murderers who didn’t go to prison after their convictions. He hoped that Bernal could tell him why they were never incarcerated.

  The cold was uncomfortable and the wait indeterminate, so Frings pulled a reefer from his coat pocket. The sweet, green smoke felt good in his lungs, and his sensation of the cold went from its being consuming to an odd, vaguely irritating feeling on his skin. The purple light above the City was interesting. And those searchlights beaming from the top of City Hall . . .

  Frings’s muscles were stiff from the cold by the time a lone figure approached down the tracks. He was fifty feet away when he called out, “Frings?” The voice was high and tense.

  Frings waved. The figure beckoned Frings with an arm motion and Frings followed, maintaining a constant fifty-foot distance, intuiting that this was his contact’s safety zone. They walked the tracks, past abandoned warehouses with the smoke of squatters’ fires filtering out through broken windows. Occasionally Frings saw a person lying at the bottom of the track-bed berm, either asleep or dead—it was impossible to tell in that light.

  They arrived at a warehouse emitting smoke and even some light from its windows. Frings’s escort came to a stop by the front door and waited for Frings to catch up. Up close, Frings was surprised by how small his companion was—maybe just five feet. His escort knocked an intricate beat, and with a scrape of metal on concrete the door opened from within.

  Inside, seven fires burned at various spots throughout the vast warehouse, illuminating oases in what was otherwise an indigo void. A fire near the door backlit a group of five standing figures. Like his escort, they were small as well, and it dawned on Frings that they were children.

  “You Frings?” one of the boys asked, stepping forward, apparently the leader.

  “I’m Frings.”

  “We did them bombs.”

  Frings wondered if he heard correctly. “You did those bombs?”

  The leader grunted in the affirmative.

  “Okay. If you are the bombers, what’s the point? What are you trying to prove?” Frings heard the doubt in his own voice.

  “You don’t believe me.” From his position it was hard to get a sense of what these kids looked like—they were merely silhouettes.

  “You weren’t what I was expecting.” Frings had never questioned children before and felt clumsy. In this situation, he thought, the reefer might actually help. Maybe.

  The leader looked down at his hand and Frings could see the silhouette of the boy’s pocket-watch chain hanging.

  The boy said, “Wait. Wait.”

  Frings stayed quiet, not understanding.

  “Wait. Listen.” The leader pointed at his watch as he spoke.

  “Wait for what? What’s going on?” Frings’s pulse accelerated. Something was not right.

  “The bomb. Then you’ll know.”

  Frings nodded, guessing that he at least had the basic idea. The group waited in silence. From other parts of the warehouse came hollow noises and echoes. The boys, Frings noticed, were alive with excitement and tension, shifting weight from foot to foot, sighing.

  “Out,” said the leader, motioning with his head. Frings followed him back out the door, the other boys in their wake, hunching their shoulders against the wind.

  “Watch,” the leader said, and pointed off down the tracks. Frings squinted and thought he could make out two figures and something else; maybe a barrel or drum. After a quick spark, the figures ran off into the darkness. Everyone was still. Frings strained to hear.

  A flash was accompanied by the deep bark of exploding dynamite. The kids were jumping up and down and clapping and laughing as debris rained around them. Two grabbed forearms and danced in circles.

  “Ummm,” said the leader. “Now you know us.”

  “Okay. I know.” Frings stared at the boys. What the hell was going on here?

  This statement seemed to excite the boys anew and there was more clapping.

  The leader’s voice was ecstatic, nearly yelling. “Got Block. Got Altabelli. Bernal next. We’ll get all of them.”

  The boys let out whoops to accentuate this statement. “All of them. All of them. All of them.”

  Some of the boys were uncontrollably shivering. Frings followed the group as it retreated back inside to their oil-drum fire. It was insane.

  “Why? Why are you bombing them?”

  “They owe us. You know? They owe us.”

  “They owe you? Block, Altabelli, and Bernal owe you?” What was he talking about?

  The leader nodded vigorously. “They owe us. They owe us.”

  “They owe you what?”

  “Scratch.”

  “Scratch?”

  The leader made a hand motion as if he were dealing cards. Or handing out money, Frings realized.

  “They owe you money?”

  “Money.” The leader nodded. “Money.”
r />   “For what?” This wasn’t making sense.

  “They stole it. They took our scratch, uhmm, money, took our money.”

  It didn’t seem possible that these kids could have any money to take, much less that Block or Altabelli or Bernal would bother to take it if they did.

  “Why would they take your money?”

  “We’re orphans. We’re owed,” he said, stretching out the o in owed. “They stole that scratch they owed.”

  Frings thought he understood what they were trying to tell him, but it didn’t follow. The way these kids spoke. They were orphans. They had probably never seen the inside of a school.

  “Why did you want to see me?”

  “You’re that writer. You’re the writer we need to tell about the bombs and the scratch they owe.”

  Frings stared back at the child.

  “You write what we said. You write it.”

  “You want me to write what you said?”

  The kids clapped and nodded.

  “You want me to write that you are orphans and they owe you money and that is why you bombed them?”

  “Yes,” the leader said, smiling. “Yes.”

  One of the boys snuck behind the group and put something on the fire and the flames suddenly leapt, reaching ten feet in the air. Frings felt the contrast of the heat on the front of his face and the cold on the back of his head. The higher flames illuminated the boys’ pale faces, coloring them orange. They were gaunt, skeletal creatures, some smiling under dull eyes.

  Frings broke away from the boys and the fire and looked back at the leader. They locked eyes. The boy’s were feverish.

  “What’s your name?” Frings asked.

  The boy pronounced his name with great care, as if he had practiced it often. “Casper Prosnicki.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Feral stood outside Nora’s door, listening to the tinny music coming from her Victrola. Verdi. He tried the door cautiously and found it locked. He took the keys that he’d nicked on his previous visit and carefully unlocked the dead bolt. With intense concentration he turned the knob until he felt the tongue slip out of the hole, then he eased the door forward at a painfully slow pace, careful not to let it squeak. Once in, he closed the door with equal care until the tongue had eased back in place, then laid the keys back on the table in the foyer and found the spot where he had previously watched Nora.

  She was reading on the couch again, her back to him, a martini glass within easy reach on an end table. Almost exactly the same as the first time, except this time he had work to do.

  He stood silently, and after perhaps an hour her head drifted slowly to the side and, with a start, straightened up again. Sleep was coming soon.

  A man on the street, an off-duty ASU officer, was to honk if Frings returned. Feral knew that this particular night was not vital. If it did not work out, there would be other opportunities. Red Henry, though, liked his orders to be carried out quickly, and there was no reason to needlessly disappoint him.

  Finally, her head lolled to the right and her shoulders rose and fell in a slow, regular rhythm. He reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a vial. He removed the cork from the top, and holding the vial at arm’s length so as not to get any of the fine powder around his face, he tapped some of it into his hand. Moving slowly, he crept to the couch, kneeling down next to Nora. He had known this moment would arrive, but the reality of being this close to her—this intimate—made him uncomfortable. He had thought of this moment often, the two of them meeting in the flesh. These were not romantic or sexual thoughts, though he knew that at some level he desired her. But that was not the focus of his thoughts of her. It was merely to touch this woman who had so enthralled him from a distance under the blue spotlight.

  He held the palm with the powder in front of his mouth and gently blew the contents into the air. She inhaled the powder, had a slight convulsion, as if she were about to cough, then settled back into a deeper sleep. Feral grabbed her under her arms and pulled her to a standing position so that she leaned against him, reached down, put his left arm underneath her knees, and picked her up, his right arm cradling her back. This was the only dangerous time—the only time that Frings could return and he, Feral, would not have control of the circumstances.

  He carried her to the door—opening it with his left hand—and then out, closing, but not locking the door behind them. He carried her down the emergency stairwell, beginning to perspire into his suit, his arms straining to hold her. As he descended, he began, dangerously and out of character, to think to the immediate future. Of her waking up and their actually talking. He felt that, in some sense, he knew what she would be like. Her personality seemed so apparent onstage, in the way she moved, the things she said between numbers, her posture as she interacted with others. She embodied certain traits, he thought: grace, humor, a kind of traditional decency that Americans liked to think they had, but which she truly did.

  They came to the back utility door, which Feral had unlocked with the key made from his wax impression. His car was waiting a hundred feet away, across the tiny green. This was the other dangerous moment, though the danger did not come from Frings. Feral had a story—he always did—if he was stopped by someone. But while the story would work for most women, it was unlikely to work when the unconscious woman he was carrying was Nora Aspen.

  He moved quickly across the green. His arms burned with her weight and he needed to get her to the car before anyone saw them. He held her upright briefly as he opened the rear door to the car. Then he was at the wheel, with Nora sleeping deeply in the backseat. His pulse raced, as it often did, once the danger had passed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  While Feral drove through the streets of Capitol Heights with Nora unconscious in his backseat, Frings was on the East Side at the Palace, sitting in Floyd Christian’s crimson office, drinking beer from a bottle while Floyd drank scotch. The air was thick with marijuana smoke. Frings could feel his body sag in exhaustion, the reefer giving him a comfortable feeling. He would happily have spent the night there on the leather couch.

  “You all right, Frank?” Floyd asked, concern on his face. That bothered Frings because Floyd was not one to let much worry him.

  “I’m tired.”

  Floyd laughed and pushed Frings a little. “All right. All right. I know it’s more than that, but if you don’t want to say . . .”

  Frings sighed. He was high and fatigued and was having a hard time thinking through consequences. It was dangerous to talk about his pact with Bernal, but he knew that telling someone would provide an almost physical release of tension. Floyd was trustworthy, and furthermore, Floyd lived in a different world. The East Side was segregated from the rest of the City, almost a completely separate, self-contained municipality. Floyd would never have any reason to come into contact with anyone who would be interested in the information, much less be able to use it. The bombing, on the other hand, was definitely off-limits.

  “I’m working on a story. It’s a little fuzzy right now. Ever hear about somebody getting convicted of murder and then not being put away?”

  Floyd gave him a funny look. “All the time, Frank. The hell do you think happens to your fellow ofay when he happens to murder my fellow Negro for looking at a white woman? Happens all the time. No white man has ever been sent to prison for murdering a black man.”

  Frings thought that was probably a debatable point, but not what he was talking about in any event. “I’m talking about something different, Floyd. Gang murders. The White Gang and the Bristol Gang.” Frings hesitated for a moment, realizing that as a club owner, Floyd had inevitably dealt with one or both of the gangs at some point. Floyd’s face, though, showed only interest. “I’m talking about gang hits, sometimes on the street with all kinds of witnesses, and then they go to trial and get convicted, and then, nothing. Don’t go to prison. Just kind of disappear.”

  Floyd was quiet, concentrating on his interlaced fingers restin
g on his knees.

  “What’re you thinking, Floyd?”

  “This scenario you’re telling me about. It reminds me of a story I heard here from one of the rummies. A fella who does some work for me sometimes and I give him free drinks. Anyway, John—that’s the rummy—comes back one day from doing some work out in the sticks. He does that, picks up with construction gangs, and they bring them to this place or that. So he says he’s out in the country—some town, I don’t think he even said what town it was—working on a crew that’s putting up this church in a lot right next to this garage. He says they take a break around noon for lunch, and they’re all sitting under this old oak tree for the shade ’cause it’s so damn hot. And this oak tree is actually on the garage’s property. So he’s eating his lunch when this truck pulls up to get gas, and he tells me that he wouldn’t believe it if he hadn’t seen it, but out steps ‘Blood Whiskers’ McAdam. Still has those big red whiskers, though he says they’re going a little gray, and those little peepers he’s got. Anyway, John knows Whiskers because I used to send him downtown to pay my subscription fee to ol’ Whiskers so that my bottles show up when they’re supposed to. So he says that Whiskers sees him and knows that John knows who he is, and John says he gets all red in that scary way that Whiskers has, and John gets ready to take a beating. Then, he says, Whiskers just gets back in his car and drives away. And that’s that.”

  Frings recognized Blood Whiskers from the list that Puskis had given him. “And Whiskers had been convicted for murder.”

  “Correct. I remember it, too, because there were a lot of happy people thinking he was going away for good or maybe even taking the juice. And then no one sees him for a few years, until John sees him out in the sticks, driving some old farmer’s truck.”

  “You’re sure that your buddy wasn’t mistaken? Maybe it was someone else?”

  “You ever meet Whiskers?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he’s not the kind of guy you get confused with anybody else. He is a uniquely scary individual. A bad gee if I’ve ever seen one.”