by P. N. Elrod
“Beats me, but it works.”
“Sure as hell does, kid, and that disappearing trick …”
“Comes in handy once in a while, I know. Are you all right?”
He found his feet and dusted his knees. “Yeah. They were all set, you came just in time. I owe you one.”
“We’ll call it even if you tell me where Bobbi is.”
“Locked in the basement.”
”Locked?”
“It was her idea. There’s a hidden room down there for emergencies.
“And a secret tunnel, too?” I joked.
“How’d you know?”
“I didn’t. You mean you’ve really got one of those?”
“Only to the building across the street. The basements connect up.”
“Maybe you and Escott should compare notes.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“It’s sort of a hobby with him. What d’you have one for?”
“When things were jumping hot in this town between Big Al and everyone else during Prohibition, it seemed like a good idea to have another way outta the place.”
“It still is. You should use it until this blows over.”
“First I make some phone calls.” He gestured at the two unconscious men. “Maybe they’re crooked, but this raid was real enough and I’m needing my lawyer to start putting things back together.”
“You got any plans for these guys?” I asked thoughtfully.
“I’m for dumping them out the nearest window, then getting away. You got something better in mind?”
“Yeah. I want them to take me to Kyler.”
He shook his massive head. “Dangerous, kid. You’ll end up showing your face to a lot of other cops who don’t need to see it.”
Nothing like an example to illustrate a point. I vanished, reappearing a few feet to his right. An ear-to-ear grin was my automatic response to Gordy’s open-mouth stare. “Think again. These mugs won’t even know I’m along.”
After some quick phoning to start things rolling in the legal department, we unlocked the door and cautiously checked the upper hall for invaders. Clear. Gordy locked it from the outside to keep out any importune visitors, then we hustled down to the ground-floor landing. The activity here was casual; just one cop passed us and he only nodded, not so much at me but the uniform. I’d borrowed Baker’s hat and overcoat, one too small and the other too short, but it had just proved its effectiveness as cover.
Oops. Wrong assumption. The cop paused, turned, and gave me a tough once-over. “When’s the last time you had a shave, kid? Just because you’re working this end of things doesn’t mean you can run around looking like that.”
“Uh …”
“And those ain’t regulation shoes, neither. What’s your name and badge number?”
I locked eyes with him and hoped for the best. It was draining to do it like this and tough on my conscience, but in for a penny, in for a pound, as Escott might have said. “Jack Sprat could eat no fat,” I babbled.
“What?”
The distraction of the rhyme took him off balance. The harder he focused to understand what the hell I was talking about, the easier he made it for me. “You didn’t even see us, Officer. Go on with what you were doing.”
“Okay,” he said reasonably, and walked off, just like that.
Gordy let out his breath. “Jeez.”
“That goes double for me. Let’s move.”
For a big man, Gordy knew how to be light on his feet; we fairly shot down the next flight of steps.
The deserted basement was as the raid had left it, with the door open, only a couple of dim lights on, and a mess littering the floor. We dodged around some overturned crates and smashed bottles, working toward the south wall. The farther we went, the happier I was to have company. Unlike the homey familiarity of my own underground room, this one was too large for comfort. The ceiling pressed close and the silence was like a vast monster watching us from the shadows.
Damn my imagination, anyway. I swallowed it back with private embarrassment. Bobbi was stuck down here with no way of knowing what was going on and I was the one trying not to be afraid of the dark. I’d once invented a mythical Vampire’s Union as a joke; this kind of nervousness would be enough to get me tossed out, fangs and all. Holding on to that crumb of lunacy got me through the next few minutes.
Gordy stopped over a dip in the floor with a large square drainage grate set into its lowest point. He braced himself and lifted it out.
“My God, you put her in there?” I whispered, staring at the black pit he’d uncovered.
“Not as bad as it looks.”
He sat, swung his legs over the edge, and carefully placed his feet on some thick iron rungs set into the smooth cement of the walls. The descent was short, the bottom not more than eight feet down. The hole wasn’t much bigger than a phone booth. Gordy fired up a match with one hand and used the other to grip something and push. A narrow door opened away from him. He stooped low and was gone.
I scrambled down the ladder, cracking an ankle against the last rung. Gordy, holding the door for me, waved me in. I ducked and followed and he let it close up behind. His match went out.
I worked spit into my mouth. “You got another light?”
“Jack? Is it you?”
Bobbi’s clear, sane, and extremely welcome voice seemed to dispel the crushing atmosphere in my overactive brain. A distant flashlight blazed smack into my face, blinding me as effectively as the total darkness. I didn’t mind.
The flash wavered from side to side as she trotted up. “Jack, Gordy, is everything okay?” She threw herself into my arms and I gathered her up in a tender bear hug.
“For the moment, honey.” I reluctantly eased her down. “What about you? This place is terrible.”
She almost echoed Gordy’s earlier comment. “It’s not so bad. I just pretend I’m a Becky Thatcher who’s given Tom Sawyer the slip. C’mon.” She took my hand to lead away with the bobbing light down a cement tunnel with smooth walls and a level floor. It turned once to the left and went up a step. The cement changed to ancient brick and pressed closer.
“Slick’s mob built all this?” I asked.
“Not Slick,” Gordy answered somewhere behind us. “Pearly Garson. He was scared of Big Al, but wanted to be like him. He heard that Al had an escape tunnel, so he had to have one, too.”
“Take long to dig?”
“Nah. He tied it into an old rail delivery system that the city forgot about, even got some of the labor for free. They’ve tightened up on some of the graft these days, but back then you could get away with murder.”
True, and he wasn’t just speaking figuratively. “What happened to Pearly?”
“Got shot by his girlfriend’s husband, then they took off for Canada.
Never did catch those two. Cops still have the case open, but Slick moved in and made sure nobody kicked about it too much. It was one hell of a funeral.”
The walls widened to a circular space that resembled a hub of some kind. More cement sealed up what had once been other branches leading off to goodness knows where beneath the city. I could have sieved through and gone exploring, but that would have to wait until sometime after hell froze over.
“All the comforts of home,” Bobbi said cheerfully, gesturing at a portable lantern burning on the grit-cluttered floor with a camp stool next to it. She turned the light up, revealing all the dreary details. It was fairly dry, which was the best that could be said about the place.
“Aren’t you freezing down here?” I asked. I was getting cold just looking at the endless rows of brickwork encircling us.
She gave herself a hug within her heavy coat, its high fur collar bunching up her bright blond hair. “Haven’t even thought about it. What I want to know is if it’s safe to leave now.”
Gordy shook his head. “The raid’s pretty much over, but we’re gonna get out of the way for a while. I called the lawyer and fixed it. We’ll go to his place. He’
ll have a spare room for you.”
“Jack, too?” she asked hopefully.
“Not yet, sweetheart,” I said.
She read my face, her own clouding up in response. “Then it’s not over, is it?”
“It will be soon.”
“For Kyler or you? You don’t look so good, Jack.”
I rallied for her sake. “I just need to clean up and shave.”
She nodded slowly, accepting the offered illusion, but not at all fooled by it. “What next?”
“We get you the hell out of here.”
Bobbi wasn’t all that in love with the place. Gordy took the flashlight, I picked up the lantern, and we started hiking. It seemed like a very long trip. I began to wonder if the tunnel ran down the length of the street instead of crossing it when a slab of iron loomed out of the dark to block our path. I hoped that it was a door; it had a handle but nothing like a lock or bolt on this side. Gordy gave it a hard twist, lifting and pulling at the same time. The thing gave and abruptly came away toward him, revealing the yawning darkness of what I could assume to be the other basement.
“Cozy,” I croaked. Both of them remained diplomatically oblivious to my nerves.
“Goes up through a furniture store,” Gordy laconically explained. “The lawyer’s car’ll be waiting for us.”
“Sure it’s safe?”
“Better’n any bank.”
“I’ll be fine,” Bobbi assured me. “Will you?”
That helped to straighten me up. Once again, she read my face right and we came together like a magnet and an iron, each giving the other what was needed to hold on a little longer.
Bobbi and I weren’t in any hurry to say good-bye, but Gordy pointed out that there was no telling how long the two cops would stay in dreamland. Sooner or later one of them would wake up or some enterprising member of the raid might decide to break into the office to see what was on the other side. I had things to do before that happened.
We reluctantly broke off. She gave me a last smile and squeeze on the arm and ducked through ahead of Gordy. He handed me a spare key to his office and followed her. A shift of metal and a heavy clang and we were solidly separated with very different directions to take. Armed with the lantern and trying to hold my mind on more important things than claustrophobia, I quickly returned to the Nightcrawler’s basement.
Neatly dropping the grate back into place, I all but galloped across (o the stairs. I left the lantern behind, making a point of turning it out, then vanished and floated upward.
It was safer in this form; any cops on the lookout for trouble would miss me, and I didn’t have to worry about making noise while whipping around the landings to the second floor. I reached Gordy’s office and went on through. The place was quiet. I materialized.
Thankfully, Galloway was still on the rug, sprawled on his back, and lust starting to snore. Baker was where I’d left him. I shrugged out of his coat. It wasn’t easy wrestling it back on him again, but things had to look right. If he noticed, he’d probably attribute his rumpled condition to our brief run-in. At least he didn’t wake up, which didn’t worry me too much; Galloway was my prime concern.
His snores were in full swing. It seemed a shame to disturb him, except he wasn’t all that aware when I started talking to him in a low, persuasive tone. He took the orders without question, same as the other cop had, and lay there like a zombie while I quietly unlocked the door from the inside. After dropping the key in the top drawer of Gordy’s desk, I stood a moment to take in a last bracing breath, then snapped my fingers.
That was Galloway’s cue to wake up. I disappeared just as his eyes flickered open.
He moaned, groaned, and cursed whatever aches his body had provided for the occasion, but eventually got to his feet. I kept clear of him, not wishing to advertise the least hint of my presence. He made a trip out to the hall and back, presumably to the nearby washroom for water. I heard a soft splash followed by Baker making outraged sputtering noises.
“What the hell … !
“On your feet, Baker. We gotta get moving.”
“What happened?”
“You let that jerk-off kid mop the floor with you, that’s what happened.” He’d somehow overlooked the fact that Gordy had also fallen on him like an avalanche.
“Shit, I didn’t even see it coming.”
“Well, too bad for you.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Out. C’mon.”
“Where?”
“Kyler’s. He’s gonna want to know about this.”
“Criminey, couldn’t you just phone him?”
I’d anticipated that alternative and smiled invisibly.
“He’ll want to see us personally,” he said, repeating my instructions to him, word for word. He made them sound normal.
More grouse, more mild objections, but in the end they straggled downstairs with me in their wake.
Calloway collared one of the regular cops and asked after Gordy.
“You kiddin, Lieutenant? We’ve been tearing the place apart for him. You’d think a guy that big would have turned up by now.”
I recognized the voice of the officer who had stopped us on the way to the basement.
“What about another man, tall, dark hair, needs a shave?”
Long pause, or so it seemed to me. “Nah, no one like that. Check with the boys out front. Maybe they bagged him with the others.”
“Got away,” Baker muttered when the cop left.
“Can’t help it now. Let’s get out before someone spots you instead.”
“You still going to … going to see him?”
Calloway answered by walking off. Baker reluctantly followed. I stuck with them as they went through a regular obstacle course to their car. Like a slightly colder blast of wind, I whipped inside one of the open doors and settled on the floor behind the driver’s seat. With my long legs crammed up over the drive shaft hump, I cautiously went solid again, the better to get an idea of our destination.
The ride was tense for me; I had to stay alert, ready to vanish any second should one of them happen to glance back. It was also silent with Baker nursing his bruised head and Calloway concentrating on the road. Plagued as I was by occasional motion sickness, I felt a strong pang of sympathy for Opal’s difficulty earlier tonight. At least I wasn’t riding with my back to the motor, though being stuffed in sideways couldn’t have been that much better.
And so I occupied myself with internal complaints over minor discomforts. The idea was to keep my mind off the near future and a job for which I had no enthusiasm.
A lot more driving, starts and stops, then a long steady stretch which helped to ease my stomach. Turn, then turn again onto a bumpy surface that threatened to undo everything. I had to brace myself to keep from rattling around too much and betraying my presence. We crunched to a final stop, tires sliding over gravel and gravel sliding over mud. Galloway cut the motor. I soaked in the comparative silence for only a second before disappearing. Galloway and Baker got out and I gave them plenty of time to get well away. Solid once more, I cautiously lifted for a peek out the window.
As a roadhouse, it could have qualified as anyone else’s mansion, but I wouldn’t have expected Kyler to invest in a shack, not after seeing his setup at the Travis. This one had a couple of sprawling stories’ worth of white-trimmed brown brick with an extra-wide porch running all around. In the summer it probably sported tables, with romantic couples wanting to watch the moon rise over the surrounding trees. Music leaked out from within. It was the kind of place I’d have taken Bobbi to for a nice dinner and some close dancing. Too bad about the new owner….
Never mind that for now.
I quit the car and circled the house. The front parking lot was full; the back was less crowded, but more informative. Kyler’s twin Gadillacs were parked together next to the rear entrance, noses out, prepared for a fast exit.
This was the right place and the time had come, but I hesitated to mov
e, held back by the blankness of the immediate future. No specific plan of what to do during that final confrontation had descended upon me. To be practical, not knowing the layout or circumstances ahead meant that improvisation would be a necessity … but the time had come, the time had come.
Before, I’d dreaded slipping into the efficient madness that had carried me through one murder; now I was afraid of not finding it again. It was far preferable to be borne comfortably along in a soothing haze of insanity than to have each action and detail burned clearly into memory as a conscious choice. If banging my head into a wall would have helped, I’d have done so; instead, I took a deep breath and walked right through it.
I usually floated in through cracks below doors or around windows, but picked the more difficult way for distraction. I felt the graininess of the mortar and the hard blocks it held together. Perhaps one night I would find a wall that I couldn’t seep through and stay trapped there like Fortunato, forever out of reach of his Amontillado. But this time the bricks gave way to plaster and strips of lath and I was in the free air of a large room. I could fumble around and try to guess my location, but now that I’d started, it was better to keep going and to go quickly. Since it seemed quiet enough to be deserted I found a corner and slowly materialized, eyes wide and ears straining.
The dance music, along with voices and the clink of dishes, grew louder now that I had real ears again. I was in a really nice billiards room. The lights were low and the cues and multicolored balls were stored in their cabinets, but one of the tables was still very much in use. A young man and woman with most of their clothes off were happily thrashing away on its sea of green felt like nobody’s business—nobody being myself.
My mouth popped open and an unexpected blush seared my face. I had enough presence of mind to disappear before either of them noticed me and got the hell out. I’d long ago lost my virginity and had seen enough of life not to be a prude, but encroaching on the privacy of courting couples was not a hobby I planned to take up just yet. The temptation to return and study another’s technique was very strong, though. One peril—or bonus—of my changed condition was the danger of becoming an incurable Peeping Tom. Maybe later, I told myself firmly, and left them to it.