Immortal From Hell

by Gene Doucette

  He lowered his gun.

  “Take the deal,” he said.

  “What about him?” I asked, in reference to the large corpse lying nearby.

  “Killed by street ruffians in a random attack. No witnesses. Probably won’t find him until morning. Do we have a deal?”

  I took the deal.

  I hated myself for it, for a pretty decent stretch of time, but fortunately self-loathing is one of those things I’m comfortable with.

  As promised, I never saw Herman again.

  I did see Henry again, but not in person. He ended up being decently famous for all the wrong reasons, once someone figured out that people associated with Dr. H.H. Holmes of Chicago had a tendency to disappear. He was caught and convicted, and gained the kind of notoriety that put his picture in all the papers.

  They executed him, which was probably for the best.

  I have no idea how many people died between the time I could have put a stop to what he was doing, and the time he was arrested, but nobody else does either, because there’s no exact headcount on the number of people he killed. (He claimed something like 200, but I don’t think anyone believed that.)

  Anyway. There’s a list of the famous people I’ve known over the course of my stupidly long life, and depending on how one defines fame, it’s a pretty big list. On it, are two of the most famous serial killers in history. They’re the only ones that bug me, because I was close enough to stop them, and I didn’t.

  And people wonder why I drink.

  10

  One of the most important rules of the Path was that none of its members were supposed to derive undue financial benefit from its maintenance and use. Or rather, no direct benefit. One wasn’t supposed to establish tariffs at the way-stations, or use the Path to smuggle stuff. It functioned as a sort-of Hawala and a sort-of safe deposit box. (I actually prefer to think of them as train station lockers, but you get the point.) It was also a good thing to fall back on in an emergency. Smuggle drugs out of the country: no. Smuggle a legate whose life was in danger out of the country: yes.

  I was thinking about this as the plane landed in Chicago. I’d hoped the Path would be a decent way to get into the United States without having to worry that the people arranging the trip might sell us out for a cut of the bounty. I didn’t expect to travel quite like this, though, and to that end, I was growing concerned that perhaps someone figured out how to turn my little backdoor to the world into something profitable.

  My concern didn’t abate when we touched down in a private field, where a limousine was waiting.

  Mirella noted my interest in the limo.

  “I have never seen you so displeased to have a driver at your disposal,” she said. “Were you hoping for a hatchback?”

  “I was hoping for something a little less conspicuous, yeah.”

  “This way is faster.”

  “You’re not the one with a bounty on your head. I prefer the anonymity of crowds. How are you feeling?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said, with just the right amount of gruff in her voice to ensure that I would continue to worry very much. “Let’s solve our mystery.”

  The driver was an Asian fellow named Han. He met us at the trunk of the car, bowed deeply, then loaded our suitcases in the trunk. I was about to suggest a destination for us—my instinct was to head directly downtown—when he shoved a hotel room key into my hand.

  “The Path provides,” he said.

  “That’s great, but we were really looking to keep a low profile,” I said.

  I didn’t mean that a low profile meant not staying in a hotel; it meant not staying in a good one. Given my self-identification as founder had so far gotten us a private jet and a chauffeured limousine, I was a little concerned that the lodgings on the other end of this key was of the five-star variety. I like high-end hotels just fine, but not if staying in one will get me killed.

  “This concern was anticipated,” he said. “It is a very unpleasant hotel.”

  “Lovely,” Mirella muttered.

  “That sounds wonderful,” Thelonius said. “The ramshackle establishments always have better stories. Hello, Han, my name is Thelonius! Would it be all right if I rode up front?”

  The hotel was, as promised, unpleasant—a scary-looking eight story beast on the South Side of Chicago. It took up half a block, and was conveniently close to both a subway station and a walk-in clinic. I needed the former, not the latter, but I suspected most of the clientele leaned the other way. The lobby make me want to go get a tetanus shot, and I don’t even need those.

  The lobby also had a bar, which was great news.

  “I will leave you now,” Han said. He was standing in front of our luggage in the aforementioned lobby. His limo was double-parked outside, and probably about to get stripped for parts.

  “Okay, thanks,” I said.

  “The Chicago way-station is always available for your use, if you require.”

  He handed over a cell phone. It was a flip-phone, the kind of thing that looked state-of-the-art a decade or so ago. (Although all phones look state-of-the-art to me; I don’t even understand how land-lines work.)

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “If you need assistance, call the number in the preset. There is only one.”

  “What manner of assistance?” Mirella asked.

  “That was unspecified,” he said. “My understanding is that there are no limits to the nature or urgency of the assistance we will be providing.”

  “Who instructed you, exactly?” I asked.

  “That was also unspecified, sir.”

  “Another legate?”

  “As I said—”

  “Right, that’s okay,” I said, slipping the phone in my pocket. “Thanks again.”

  I could hear my old tech guru, Tcheckhy, lecturing me about how easy it was to track someone through their cell phone. It was definitely true that with the phone they could follow our movements during the day, and since they booked the hotel they also knew where we were staying, down to the room number. The smart play would have been to toss the phone in the trash and find a different hotel. I wasn’t going to do that, but it’s what I was supposed to do.

  “You aren’t keeping that?” Mirella asked as Han exited the lobby, unquestionably thinking along the same lines.

  “If anyone other than a representative of the Path had handed it to me, then no, I wouldn’t.”

  “Trust the Path, then.”

  “Trust the Path.”

  She shook her head, but didn’t try to talk me in another direction.

  The key went to one room with a double bed and something that approximated a couch for a third person. It was a little gratifying to see that whoever was making the plans on the other end of the Path didn’t know enough about us to register for two rooms. It certainly wasn’t due to a lack of availability at the hotel, which appeared to have hourly rates, and highly flexible vacancies.

  An hour later, Mirella and I were down in the lobby bar, to discuss how to proceed next, and to give Thelonius the room for a proper shower.

  “So,” Mirella said, over a neat bourbon that may have been distilled in a bathtub somewhere in the basement, based on the taste. “Now we are in Chicago. What’s the next part of your plan?”

  “We need to get downtown,” I said. “The train across the street can get us there. We’ll head to the Loop.”

  “Yes. And then what?”

  “Well I don’t know.”

  Eve arrived at the island with only the clothing on her back as evidence of her travels. For most people, that wouldn’t be worth anything, but most people don’t shoplift to dress themselves, as she clearly did.

  There was a plastic clip on her blouse. It was one of those things that would destroy the product (the blouse)—somehow—if anyone tried to remove it without the proper unlocking mechanism. Given what I knew about her, it was probably well within her abilities to get the clip off by other means, and it als
o probably never occurred to her. She probably thought it just came with the blouse.

  As we learned, it was possible to track this device back to the store in which it was employed, provided one gained access to the right database. This was what Jacques had to look up for us, apparently at great expense.

  So now, we knew the following: at some time in the past year, Eve was in Chicago for long enough to steal clothing from a department store on Wabash.

  The problem was, we didn’t know what good that was going to do us. Getting to Chicago was the first thing. After that…

  “We shouldn’t go to the store,” Mirella said. “You know that, yes? The price is still on your head, and even if we’ve decided to trust Jacques, he may not be the only one aware of our destination.”

  “I don’t know what else to do. The store is the only lead we have.”

  I was hoping just by walking into the place, I’d be struck by some sort of eureka moment, and then we would know what to do next. It wouldn’t be the first time it had worked out that way. I don’t think I ever had this little to work with before, though.

  Plus, Mirella was right: even if I had that highly unlikely moment of realization, it wouldn’t do me any good if a sniper took my head off as soon as I walked back outside.

  “Suppose we just wandered about?” Mirella said. “She was in Chicago, and now we are. It will make sense eventually.”

  “Wander about,” I said, laughing. “Have you ever been to Chicago?”

  “No. But you have.”

  “Not since the war,” I said.

  I think I probably lived in Chicago longer than in any other city in the U.S. I nearly died there twice: once in a speakeasy fire, and once in a… well, in another bar, in an aborted mob hit. I should have maybe learned the lesson to not spend so much time in the bars there. Instead, I decided not to spend so much time in Chicago as a whole.

  “Which war?” she asked.

  “Um. Which one had the Germans on the other side?”

  “Both world wars.”

  “Right. That doesn’t narrow it down much.”

  “It reduces the possibilities to two.”

  “Nazi Germans,” I clarified.

  “World War two, then. Perhaps a lot has changed since.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it has. But I don’t think there’s a chance it’s gotten less complicated. Wandering around here could take a really long time.”

  She shrugged.

  “We’ll start downtown, but stay away from the department store. Being large and busy should largely work to our advantage. You’ll be harder to shoot.”

  Over the course of the next week, we spent the daylight hours riding the L, hopping off at one location or another, and wandering around. It turned out to be the case that my prior experience with Chicago was largely unhelpful, which became obvious almost as soon as the skyline came into view.

  A hundred years earlier, Chicago and New York City were almost constantly trying to outdo one another in a competition to see who could build the tallest skyscraper. (I just assume this stopped happening, but maybe not.) That little competition apparently deposited a tremendous number of large buildings in downtown Chicago. Possibly more than in New York City, but Chicago always had a lot more room to work with.

  I’m not saying nothing was familiar, but what was familiar was usually surrounded by enough unfamiliar things that I couldn’t be entirely sure why it was familiar. Blessedly, the street map was still about the same, so I was usually able to orient myself pretty well.

  There were no eureka moments to be had, though, not in that first week. The highlight was that after spending the day looking for something helpful, we spent the evenings sampling mixed drinks in the local bars.

  Day eight was when Mirella suggested we modify our approach.

  “At the very least,” she said, “we should consider changing hotels and adjusting our schedule if we’re to continue with this. We’re creating a vulnerability, by doing essentially the same thing each time.”

  “We aren’t doing the same thing,” I said. “We’re getting off at different stops each day.”

  This conversation was taking place on the train, on a part of the elevated line called the Loop. It took us right past Wabash, and that department store, which was somewhat ironically one of the few stops we hadn’t gotten off at yet. We’d gotten to the Loop by way of an inbound train that we picked up outside of the hotel. We did this every morning.

  “You know what I mean, Adam. This is basic craft.”

  “I know, I know. So we’ll switch hotels.”

  What she wasn’t saying was that this was turning into a dead end. The problem was that we didn’t have any other ends to try, aside from going back to the island and waiting for Eve to recover her memory or Mirella to dissolve, whichever came first.

  “Maybe if we knew why she came to Chicago,” Mirella said.

  “Maybe. But I think I know the answer already. She came here because she’d seen me here. I know that sounds a little egotistical, but the last thing I said to her was to try and reconnect with the world. I might have even suggested she get a job somewhere. If she was going to do that, a city in which she’d seen me do that exact thing would make some sense.”

  “Well then, if you suggested this, and she came here, someone in this city might know her, and what she did while she was here.”

  Somehow, this hadn’t occurred to me. I couldn’t imagine Eve making friends with people, even though that was my exact recommendation.

  “That doesn’t get us any closer to where we want to be,” I said.

  “It might. It’s a...where is the imp?”

  I turned to check. He’d been occupying a seat at the other end of the car, engaging strangers in conversation and generally being the guy I would have imagined people found creepy, but they somehow never did. Except now he wasn’t doing that, because the seat was free.

  “There,” Mirella said, pointing out the window.

  Thelonius was on the train platform, heading for the nearest staircase with a single-mindedness that didn’t fit him at all.

  “Well,” I said. “Isn’t that odd.”

  This part of the L was, as I said, called the Loop, and it was called that because it looped. However, the train we were on didn’t just keep going around; it did one circuit and then went back up the track it came down, stopped at the end, and came back down again. Fortunately, there were four other trains using the Loop, and at least one of them went counter-clockwise around, all of which is to say that Mirella and I were able to get off at the next stop, hop a train heading back, and get to the exit Thelonius decided on his own initiative to take, in a lot less time than it could have.

  “Maybe he saw someone he could harass into telling him a new story,” Mirella groused, as we ran down the steps to the street.

  “Let’s find him and ask.”

  What we discovered on the street level was another reminder that there are too many people in the world: it was something like three in the afternoon, on a weekday, and the whole area was full of people. This appeared to be true at every stop, but it was still ridiculous.

  “Don’t they all have jobs?” I asked.

  “Perhaps their job involves walking from one building to the next.”

  We were across from an outdoor shopping plaza nestled between a number of decent-sized buildings. A hundred years ago, any one of them would have competed for tallest-in-the-world. Now, they were one of many.

  “Over there,” Mirella said, pointing to a particularly congested area. I couldn’t see him, but her eyes were better than mine so I took her word for it.

  We ran across and meandered though the crowd until Thelonius came into view. He was standing beside a bench and spinning around slowly, while looking skyward, acting just strangely enough to ensure people gave him a wide berth.

  “Thelonius,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh. Hello.”

  He continued his slow spin.


  “Are you looking for something?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “Why, I don’t know.” He stopped spinning to address us more directly. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be looking, would I?”

  Mirella laughed, shrugged, and took a seat on the bench.

  “Perhaps he’s looking for snipers,” she said. “He’s brought us to the ideal locale for it.”

  “The whole city is ideal for snipers,” I said. To Thelonius, I said, “why did you come here?”

  “I think I’m supposed to be here.”

  “Um, okay.”

  As far as I could tell, this part of downtown looked like every other part. I didn’t see the appeal.

  “How come?” I asked, hoping the answer wasn’t going to be a five-hour story. He had a lot of those.

  “Well,” he said, “there is this curious passage in the prophesies. I’ve never been able to tease out an understanding. Not until now. The foul hog tide steers fish to market, where the wind has answers.”

  “You’re right, that is curious. It sounds like nonsense.”

  “It all sounds like nonsense at first, Adam. That’s what makes them interesting! The possibilities are nearly without end. But this one, I’ve never been able to make anything out of. Today, I think I understand. And I think before now I wasn’t supposed to, which means I’m in the right place at the right time.”

  “But what does it mean, imp?” Mirella asked, impatiently.

  “Look up, my dear. At the sign you can see from the elevated track.”

  We looked.

  At the edge of the open courtyard was a billboard advertising a weekly farmer’s market. The artwork attached to the words included: a trussed pig, a cow, a chicken and a fish.

  “A tied hog, a steer, a fowl, and a fish,” I said.

  “My mistake was hearing ‘fish’ and ‘tide’ and imagining it related to tidal forces. We were on an island, after all. I suspect that same misapprehension allowed for my recall to attach an ‘s’ at the end of ‘steer’.”