by Howe, A. E.
Matthew stared at Blasko, trying to decide if he was playing a prank on him. Matthew was used to that. As the town drunk, he’d been the butt of more than one joke.
“Really? Who done it?”
“Precisely the point.”
Matthew’s eyes got big. “Hey! I never hurt no one that wasn’t wearing a German uniform. I didn’t do nothin’. I haven’t even seen—”
Blasko held up his hand. “I know that you didn’t kill him. I need your help to find out who did.”
“You’re crazy. I’m a fu… A damn drunk,” Matthew said, looking down at the ground.
“You don’t have to be.”
Something in Blasko’s voice caused Matthew to look up. “Whatta you mean? I’ve tried quitting. Not so damn easy. I’ll quit! I’ve said it a million times and meant it each one, but here I am.” He spread his hands and presented his disheveled appearance.
“I can help you,” Blasko said. “But I want something in return.”
Matthew began to laugh and turned out all his pockets. “Take all my money,” he said, laughing more loudly. “You’re something else. You’d get more money from a skunk. And he’d smell better.”
Matthew was roaring with laughter now at his own expense. Blasko just stood and watched the man until the laughter turned into a coughing fit and finally died away.
“I need you to remain on the streets and to be my eyes and ears.”
“I think you are loony.”
“Do you want to be sober?”
“Yeah, sure. But not enough to give up drink. Hell, Prohibition hasn’t even slown me down,” Matthew said, sounding irritated at the question.
Blasko took a shiny object from his pocket and Matthew’s eyes were drawn to it. Blasko showed him a strange gold coin.
“I can make you forget your hunger for drink,” Blasko said, twirling the coin in his fingers. As the coin went round and round, it caught the light of the street lamp, flashing in Matthew’s eyes.
“I seen a guy when I was in France. Hypnogist or something like that. Made a soldier bark like a dog.” Matthew’s voice was quiet. He had begun to realize that there was something strange and profound about the dark figure standing over him.
“That is the idea. But instead of barking like a dog, I can make you not want to drink alcohol. Ever. But this must be something you want.”
Matthew stared at him. He needed to be sober, he knew that. But a voice inside his head reminded him that the only happiness he got these days was at the bottom of a mason jar of moonshine or a bottle of bathtub gin.
“I guess I could find other things to make me feel good,” he mumbled to himself. “I could maybe… meet someone. I haven’t been with a woman in… I don’t remember.” Matthew’s head hurt—the concept of being sober seemed overwhelming. He looked at Blasko. “Are you the devil or something?”
“No. But I can grant you this one wish if you want it.”
Something in the way Blasko made the offer reminded Matthew of a story he’d heard a long time ago. The people in the story found an object that would grant them their dearest wish, but when the wish became real, the people lived to regret it.
“How long have I got to make up my mind?”
“If you have to decide, then I already have my answer,” Blasko said and began to walk away.
Before he could get far, Matthew stood up and shouted. “No! Don’t go. I want it,” he said in a determined voice.
Blasko turned and looked back at the man, who swayed slightly on his feet.
“Okay. Sit down,” he said, moving quickly toward Matthew, who stumbled back onto the bench in the wake of the unexpected advance. The baron sat down next to him so that they were eye to eye. Blasko lifted the coin, holding it in front of Matthew’s face. The gold glittered seductively.
The coin was one of hundreds that had lined the bottom of the box he had traveled in from Romania. There was power in the gold that, when mixed with a bit of his native earth, allowed him to cross running water without too much suffering. Since the trip, he’d used many of the coins to pay for the renovations to Josephine’s basement, but there were still quite a few remaining.
Blasko began to twirl the coin rhythmically between his fingers while talking in a calm and soothing voice. A trained hypnotist could only hope to mesmerize a subject as deeply as Blasko could. It was another gift that came hand in hand with the curse.
“You are going to surrender control to me,” he said in a soft yet commanding tone. “You will open yourself up to the power of my words. You will no longer control your own mind. You will no longer control your own body. I am in control. Not you. I am the one who will tell you what you want. I will tell you what you crave. You will have no desire that is not mine…” Blasko’s voice continued in a comforting, yet demanding, drone. Matthew nodded his head dutifully.
“You will never desire alcohol again. If someone mentions beer, you will feel sick. Talking about gin will make your stomach turn until you retch. The smell of alcohol will repulse you. It will be impossible to force liquor past your lips.” The litany continued for several minutes before Blasko began the process of bringing Matthew out of the trance.
When Blasko finally put the coin away, Matthew blinked and shook his head. “What’d you do?”
“You’ll never be drunk again,” Blasko stated.
“That’s crazy. I’ve been drinking since I was twelve. If I want a bottle of gin…” Through the dim light, Blasko watched as Matthew’s face turned green and he dry-heaved off the side of the bench. Wiping his eyes, he looked at Blasko with an expression both of anger and wonder. “I really can’t drink?”
“No,” Blasko responded.
Keeping one eye on Blasko, Matthew took his bundle and unrolled it. Inside was a small flask. Still watching Blasko, he uncorked the bottle. He had planned to raise it to his lips, but as soon as the smell of the homemade gin reached his nostrils his arm jerked, flinging the bottle away. Matthew stared at his hand, shocked that it had seemingly reacted without his consent. “I’ll be damned,” he whispered.
“No. You are cured,” Blasko said with more than a hint of ego.
“Oh, crap. I got dried out once before and the DTs were something awful,” Matthew said, his eyes pleading.
“You won’t experience anything like that. I took care of it.”
“But how…?”
“When you were under my control, I told your mind to ignore any of the physical symptoms. You can relax now.” Blasko’s tone was brusque. He wanted to get past this and down to the matter at hand. “I need you to tell me everything you know about the Erickson household.”
“Oh, yeah,” Matthew said, surprised at how clear his mind already seemed without the desire for alcohol clouding his thoughts. “I been hanging out in the alley behind their house a bunch. The garbage from the rich folks’ houses is the best. Lots of leftovers. They don’t even send it out to the dogs. Erickson’s ain’t the best. The house on the other side of the alley throws away a lot better grub.”
“Never mind the epicurean tour. Have you seen anything unusual there? Think about people coming and going. What have you witnessed that seemed odd or out of place?” Blasko asked, using a soothing cadence. He could have questioned Matthew while he was mesmerized, but Blasko had learned long ago that people in that state were too open to suggestion. When he had tried it on prisoners of war, it had only resulted in things he already knew or suspected being fed back to him.
“Unusual?” Matthew seemed to ponder the question. “There’s certainly lots of coming and going, I know that.” He got quiet for a minute. “You know, there is one thing you probably don’t know… One of the places I got my hooch from.”
“Hooch?” Blasko asked.
“Corn, moonshine mostly, sometimes bathtub gin. Clarence sells it out of his garage. Rumor has it he’s got some friends who run it up from Florida. I only get the cheap stuff, but I hear tell he gets some first-class wares from Florida.”
&
nbsp; Blasko knew enough to understand this was a big deal. Half of the country’s law enforcement was focused on ending the production, importation and sale of alcohol. If Clarence was running rum, he was taking a huge risk.
“Did Erickson know what his son was doing?”
“You got me there. I never saw the old man around the garage. Of course, if he was involved then he wouldn’t be around when the deals were going down.”
Blasko sighed, realizing this could open up the suspect list to include the kinds of criminals straight out of the movies. Josephine had recently taken Blasko to see a Jimmy Cagney movie and, from what he’d read in the papers, the movie wasn’t far from the truth. Erickson might have stepped on the toes of some gang. His murder was certainly vicious enough.
“What about the women? Did you ever see them doing anything unusual? Maybe you saw one of them someplace you didn’t expect her to be.”
Blasko was hoping to take advantage of the village drunk’s position as part of the scenery. No one paid him any attention. At first, people would avoid eye contact so they didn’t feel compelled to talk to him or give him spare change. After a while, they’d walk past him at a faster pace to avoid the odor. Soon they wouldn’t be able to remember seeing him even when they tried.
“I run whenever I see that old spinster. I was sleeping out in the alley behind their house one day about a year ago. I guess she was walking by and I woke up and scared her. She tore me up with her umbrella. Called me words I haven’t heard since the Army. Wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.”
“What about the younger woman?”
“You mean the one married to Clarence? I seen her at the garage a few times.”
“Does she know about the liquor?”
“Couldn’t say. I don’t think she was ever there when I was buying. ’Course, I get pretty excited when I’m getting my squeeze.” As soon as he said this, Matthew rubbed his gut and looked uncomfortable. “What did you do to me?” he asked, not sounding like he really wanted to know.
Blasko ignored him. “And Mrs. Erickson?”
“Lady Lucy,” Matthew said with a strange inflection.
“What about her?” Blasko pressed.
“Nothing. I’ve just met her a couple times. She hangs around the house mostly. Hey, I remember! I seen her and the old man arguing one day. Their car had broken down. She said he should buy a new one, but he said Clarence could fix it. Said he’d make Clarence come home from the garage and get it running again.”
“That’s all?”
Matthew shrugged. “She shut up after that.”
“Fine, that’s enough for now.” Blasko looked at Matthew, wondering if he’d made the right decision. “You remember what you promised me in exchange for your sobriety?” he asked.
For a moment it looked like Matthew didn’t know what he was talking about. Slowly, though, his eyes narrowed and his expression darkened. “I guess I do. You said that I should be your eyes and ears. Or somethin’.” He looked around as if he wished he had a bottle.
“You are going to be completely sober tomorrow morning. How long has it been since you had a day without a drink?”
“You mean beer or nothin’? Probably when I was in the Army. What’s that, almost fifteen years?”
“You will do what you always do, but you’ll do it sober. Don’t tell anyone about this. I want you to watch everyone. I want you to hear everything.”
“Hell, what if I don’t want to?” Matthew asked petulantly.
“Anything I do, I can undo. Is that clear? Do this for me, and there will be more rewards to come,” Blasko told him. He wasn’t exactly sure what he would be able to do for the man, but he needed to provide some incentive—both the whip and the carrot.
“Yeah, okay. How long?”
“The more information you can get for me, the sooner you will be able to get on with your life. A life I am giving to you, I might add.”
“I get that.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow after dark. Keep an eye on Clarence and Amanda, as well as Lucy and Carrie.”
“Yes, sir,” Matthew said, giving Blasko an ironic salute as he walked away. “Hey, how’m I goin’ to spend my time if I can’t drink?” he yelled to the retreating figure.
Ignoring Matthew, Blasko headed back toward the Ericksons’ house. When he arrived, the body was being hauled out to the hearse parked at the curb. The crowd spread out just enough to make room for the doctor and the morticians to get the body through. A white sheet covered the corpse, blood seeping through to the vicarious thrill of the gawkers.
Blasko stood back and watched. Lucy and Amanda looked distraught as they stood on the porch, watching as their husband and father-in-law was carried down the walk. Clarence came out and talked with them for a moment before they all went back into the house.
Blasko’s attention was caught by a middle-aged man standing with the crowd in front of the house. Unlike everyone else whose attention was focused on the body, the man was watching the women on the porch, a fedora pulled down low over his face.
As soon as the women went back inside, the man turned and walked away. Blasko quietly followed him. The man looked around a couple of times as though he was afraid he might be noticed. After he’d walked at least a block, he pulled his hat up and walked more quickly.
Blasko followed him over three blocks to a large brick home. A ’28 Buick was parked in the drive and the lights were on in the house. The man stopped and leaned against the car. Blasko watched him as the man smoked a cigarette before going into the house.
Blasko moved closer and could hear voices coming from inside the house. The scent of a woman reached him, but he couldn’t detect signs of any children. Soon, the lights began to go off in the house until only one room was illuminated. Finally, that light also went out.
Blasko made a note of the address before walking home. Which of the women had he been looking at? Blasko wondered. Why didn’t he want to be seen? He could think of several reasons.
It was past one in the morning by the time he arrived back at Josephine’s house. He’d had a separate entryway built so that he could access his basement apartment directly from the outside without disturbing anyone else in the house.
Once inside, Blasko picked up a copy of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and tried to concentrate on the story he was reading. But he couldn’t keep his mind from thinking of Josephine. He recognized the pull of the blood they shared, but there was something else, something that scared him. She had a quality about her that he hadn’t seen in a woman in many years.
There was a rustle from the rafters and a small bat fluttered down to land on Blasko’s arm
“Vasile, my friend, what do you think? Do you have a female bat that you visit in the night? It’s been more than fifty years, locked up in my fortress in the mountains, since I’ve been with a woman. But they have not gotten any easier to understand, my friend.”
The bat simply looked at him and nuzzled Blasko’s finger. He’d found the creature lying on the ground, stunned, during one of his nightly walks. His castle in Romania had a been a home for many such creatures and he had always found them pleasant companions. So he’d brought this one home and fed it insects, nursing it back to health.
“What am I to do, little one? I thought I was through with this world. Now I’m chained to that… woman. There are times I think she wishes I was deader than I am,” he said, lightly stroking the bat’s head. Vasile shook his ears as though Blasko’s touch tickled him, then curled up on his shoulder. Blasko sighed and went back to his book.
Chapter Eleven
Josephine woke up at five. She tossed and turned, wanting to go back to sleep, but knowing that she should go down to the basement and speak with Blasko before he went to bed. No, before he goes to coffin, she corrected herself, still surprised at how the abnormal had slowly become normal.
Still dressed in her nightgown, she put on a robe and went quietly down the stairs. The mornings were noticea
bly cooler now that it was almost fall. She rapped three times on the basement door.
“Good morning,” he greeted her as he led her into his parlor. “I’m glad you came.”
Josephine had read him the riot act after the second time he’d knocked on her door in the middle of the night, wanting to talk. Since then, he’d made of point of letting her know she was always welcome to visit him in the predawn hours.
She spoke quickly before losing her nerve. “I don’t know if investigating the murder is the right thing to do. No one seems to be pointing the finger at you.” Josephine regretted letting Blasko get involved and had been replaying events over and over in her mind most of the night, trying to come up with a way to talk him into backing off.
“They will. If the sheriff doesn’t find a suspect soon, he will quickly look for another person to cast aspersions on. At some point, they will start going through the list of strangers in town. No, I’m going to solve this.”
She looked down at the volume of Sherlock Holmes on the end table and frowned. “Being the high sheriff or judge or whatever you were in Romania doesn’t give you any experience with our system of justice.”
“A good detective uses the same methods no matter what country he is in.”
“Reading books and torturing peasants doesn’t make you a detective,” Josephine snapped back. Why does he get my goat every time we have a discussion? she asked herself.
“Bah!” he muttered, too indignant to come up with a better response. He was now determined to catch the killer, if for no other reason than to prove to this insolent woman that he knew what he was doing.
Josephine saw the look in his eye and figured she might have pushed him a little far. With a sigh, she decided to offer an olive branch. “Okay, look into it. But don’t be too obvious.”
“It would be easier with your help. You can go places I can’t.”
“Like out in the sunshine?”
“Exactly. But more to the point, you are friends with these people.”
“I’m not exactly friends with—”
“Maybe not friends, but neighbors. Point being, they accept you as one of their own.”
