by P. N. Elrod
“What happened an hour ago?”
“Ruthie’s boyfriend caught them.”
No need to say more. Ruthie Phillips tight as a tick with Soldier Burton, a tougher-than-average mug who got the moniker for his uncanny ability to march from courtrooms free and clear of all charges, if not of all suspicion. He started out as an enforcer during Prohibition and now ran a string of bookie joints. I could guess that he’d taken Ruthie to the fights one time too many, and the sight of Alby’s sweaty, well-muscled body had made an impression on her.
Gordy snorted. “The bouncers said everything looked okay. Nobody made a fuss. Ruthie took off, leaving Cornish and Burton at the table. They talked and had drinks, watched some of the show, then went to the lobby. I figure they stopped in the toilet for a leak, and Burton popped him during the drum finale.”
The club’s band had a hell of a drummer. Between his work and the blare of the horn section during that number Burton could have fired a cannon and no one would have noticed.
“I need help, Fleming,” Gordy said.
Now I was surprised. He was a man more used to ordering up help, not asking for it. “You got it, but you have ten other guys who can move a body just as easy as me.”
“Yeah, but they don’t need to know about this and be talking to the wrong people. Soldier Burton’s got big ideas. He’s been trying to bite pieces off my territory for over a year now. It’s no accident he left Cornish here. He wants to put me in Dutch with the New York bosses. Short odds are that he’s already called the cops.”
The drum finale had been about five minutes ago. “We better get the lead out, then.”
He nodded once, and I boosted from my regular table on the third tier overlooking the stage and followed him to the plush lobby.
“Where was the wash room attendant?” I asked, pitching my voice low and casual.
“On break, getting a sandwich. When a show’s playing, not many get up to use the john, so he takes a minute. Tonight he comes back, finds what he found, and tells me about it.”
“Will he spill to anyone else?”
“He’ll keep shut. Likes his job too much. He’s taking another break. A long one.”
The men’s room was fancy: pale-veined black marble floors, gold-plated faucets. You expected the water flowing out of them to be perfumed. There was only one patron now, just drying his hands. We waited for him to leave, then Gordy went to the last stall and pushed the door wide. Alby Cornish was slumped on the toilet seat, legs splayed and arms dangling, looking asleep, but definitely not breathing. He’d had a fighter’s beaten-up face, but was dressed sharp as a Broadway hoofer.
Gordy had been right about the tie hiding the bullet hole, but I caught the tang of fresh blood the instant we walked in. I don’t breathe regularly, but drew in air to speak and got the scent. It teased at me, as it always did, the way the smell of baking bread used to before I’d been killed last summer. Unlike Alby, I got over being dead, trading it for being undead. It has its advantages, if you’re not squeamish.
I’d fed earlier that night at the Union Stockyards, so my corner teeth stayed a normal length, but regardless of that the sight of Alby’s pathetic remains would have dispelled any hunger. Damn, he looked young. I tried not to wonder if he had family somewhere, a mother with a heart to break when she got the news. I tried, but was not successful. That’s why I would not do well as one of Gordy’s employees: unlike the others I had empathy and too much imagination.
I caught Gordy looking at me and knew he was reading things in my face.
“Sorry, kid.”
“I know.” I owed Gordy favors; he owed me favors. Neither of us kept track, but this wasn’t about paying what’s owed. When a friend calls for help, you be stand-up and help him, even if it costs a piece of your soul.
“If there was any other way—”
“We pretend he’s drunk?” I asked, because we shouldn’t waste time.
“Yeah.”
“Where do we take him? The lake?” Gordy had an efficient means of getting rid of inconvenient corpses, though I never asked for details. I could infer efficiency, since the mugs he disappeared never surfaced again.
“To Soldier Burton’s place.”
“Wha—?”
“He wanted to make trouble for me. It’s gonna bounce right back on him.”
No need to ask for an explanation, I’d find out soon enough, unless the cops interrupted us.
We lurched from the john with Alby between, his limp arms hauled chummily around our shoulders. God, he was still warm.
A few of the regulars in the lobby bar saw us dragging him past and hooted at his inability to hold his liquor. A couple of the bouncers looked our way, but Gordy waved them off, saying he’d handle things. We collected Alby’s hat from the check desk and jammed it on his head. It made him look more like a foolish drunk than a dead man.
We got him out into the muggy heat of an early summer night. Even the breeze off the nearby lake was no help at clearing the close air. Bloodsmell rose thick from Alby’s corpse, throwing me off stride as we took him down the steps.
“Cops,” I said, spotting a radio car as it turned onto the far end of the street. “C’mon, my buggy’s just over here.”
Even as we shoved Alby into the backseat of my Buick, the prowl car pulled up and both uniforms got out, hands on their guns, skepticism on their faces. Apparently they’d been told what to expect.
Gordy straightened to his full height, which was considerable, and waited. He made no outward show, but I could tell he was dangerously tense. His heartbeat was loud to my sensitive ears. There was a chance he could simply buy these two off, but it would give them a hold on him.
“Lemme handle it,” I said out the side of my mouth.
His gaze flicked sharply at me, and he made a very tiny grunting sound.
“Evening, officers.” I moved to the left so I was under the full glare of a street lamp. What I planned required light enough for them to see me. “Is there a problem?”
Two minutes later they drove off, calling in to report a false alarm. I’d learned their dispatcher sent them to the Nightcrawler to check an anonymous tip about a body on the premises. Then it was just a matter of persuading them that a drunk with a grudge had wanted to make trouble. Gordy and I got in my car and took a another route to get clear.
“How do you do that?” he asked, sparing a glance out the back window for the cops’ receding taillights.
“Native talent.” It hurt my head, especially behind my eyes. I’d hypnotized the cops faster than a stage magician. “It comes with the condition.”
“Along with the blood-drinking and vanishing act?” Gordy knew all about me being a vampire.
“Yeah.”
“Jeeze.” He’d seen me do my special evil-eye whammy on people before, but was still impressed. I asked for directions to Soldier Burton’s place. He gave them, and then settled back in silence for the rest of the ride.
I knew he had a high regard for my other, less exotic qualities, like being able to keep my mouth shut. Since making it clear I had no interest involving myself in his business and possessing my own reasons to avoid official notice, he trusted me to a degree that was considered unwise by his peers.
We’d met last August, soon after my murder at the hands of another gangster. At one point while under orders from his boss, Gordy had tried to beat information out of me, but I didn’t hold that against him. It’s a tough world. Besides, after what I’d been put through—dying and coming back—a couple fists in the gut were a cakewalk. Over the course of a few rough jams we’d developed an odd sort of friendship and mutual respect. That’s why I didn’t think twice about helping him move a corpse halfway across Chicago. If he’d dispatched the man himself I’d not have done it, but in that case Gordy would never have asked me in the first place.
I parked in a dark spot by the service door to ten stories of swank apartment building and cut the motor. Gordy’s plan was simple: G
et what was left of Alby Cornish up to the penthouse where Burton lived, then call the cops.
“I know a homicide dick who’s been itching to lock up Burton for years,” Gordy said.
Good enough for me. I could now see another reason why I was along: He needed me to get in. I vanished and slipped through the crack between the threshold and the locked doors, which would only open from the inside.
Once in, I pushed on the bar and Gordy strolled past, carrying Alby’s two hundred thirty pounds on one shoulder with apparent ease. We found the service elevator and took it to the top without encountering anyone.
“Wouldn’t it be better if Alby were actually in the apartment?” I asked.
“It would, so long as you don’t get caught.”
“Fat chance.”
I did my vanishing act again, this time slipping under the servant’s entry to reappear in a dim kitchen, which was cleaned up for the night and empty. The place was quiet; Soldier Burton was probably off making an alibi for himself. I edged the door open and told Gordy I’d take it from there.
“You don’t have to.”
“It’s being practical. If someone walks in I can get scarce, you can’t. Go down to the car, find a phone, then call your tame cop to come over. I’ll be gone by the time he arrives with the cavalry.”
A reasonable man, he handed the body over, along with the hat. If it weren’t so damned macabre, the whole thing would have struck me as being a fraternity house prank. Things were too serious, though. I could feel the dead man’s weight right down to my core. Not an hour ago he’d been leading a crooked, but fairly harmless life, having a good time with a pretty girl. Now he was a piece of meat heading for the coroner’s knife.
I kept in mind that the man who had so casually created that meat was somewhere close.
I’d hoped to find a bathroom and prop Alby on the toilet, but leaving him at the kitchen table would be good enough. Gingerly pulling a chair out, I seated him in it, and damned if he didn’t lapse into the same sprawling posture as in the club’s washroom stall. I placed the hat on his head at a jaunty angle, thinking he wouldn’t mind.
His killer would pay—and I had no reason to doubt Gordy’s line of reasoning or his word. Sure, he and Burton had a stew going between them over territory, but from what I knew of it, Burton was more annoyance than threat. This business had just upped the ante. Too bad for him that Gordy was a sharper player and had an ace like me in the hole.
Then the kitchen light flicked on. I jumped half a block, startled by a new player in the game.
Facing me was a blond angel: soft curves under a satin bathrobe, with a look on her kisser that declared her to be tougher than a keg of nails. Before I fully registered its presence, the revolver in her dainty pink hand spat viciously in my direction, and burning pain exploded above my left knee. My leg stopped working. I pitched over, clutching fire, bleeding, and cursing.
She didn’t say anything that I noticed; I was too busy trying to stay solid. The lead had gone right though my thigh. The holes were knitting up. The process was fast, but damned painful. My usual reaction to a bad hurt is to vanish, which would instantly heal me, but it didn’t seem a good idea to give in to it while angel-girl was watching. I was in no state to try hypnotizing her. When I was this mad I could snap minds like twigs.
“Ruthie? What the hell are you doing?” A man’s startled voice called from farther inside the flat, accompanied by approaching footsteps.
“What do you think? I told you I heard something.” Ruthie Phillips, for I recognized her now, rounded on someone behind her. “You jerk! You said you took care of Alby!”
“I did take care of him, honey. What’s—” The man came within view and stopped short to gape at me wounded on his tiled floor and Alby at the table gradually going into rigor. Returning the favor, I took in a handsome, no-nonsense mug with about forty years’ worth of strong-armed living behind it: Soldier Burton, in bathrobe and slippers, his hair combed and his razor thin mustache unblurred by stubble. If he and Ruthie had been in the sack, they’d been damned tidy about it. “Who the hell are you?”
I didn’t feel like talking except for more profanity, which I determinedly stifled. What an interesting bit of useless information about myself: I wasn’t in the habit of swearing in front of women, even when they shot me.
Ruthie broke the silence. “He’s one of Gordy’s. Hangs around the club like he owns it. Dates their headliner, Bobbi. She talks about him like he’s the Second Coming or something.”
Burton glared down. “Did Gordy put you up to this?”
I assumed he meant my dumping Alby on the premises. I didn’t feel like answering that one either and continued to hold my leg, plowing inch by inch through the fiery pain. It slowly—far too slowly—receded.
“What do we do with him?’ she asked.
“Lemme think.” Burton frowned mightily.
I looked at the woman. “Why’d you want to bump poor Alby?”
Her sweet-looking bee-stung lips curled into a sour sneer. “We both did. The dumb lug didn’t dive when he was supposed to and cost us plenty in the—”
“Can it,” said Burton sharply. “He don’t need to know anything.”
“Does it matter? You’re not letting him go, are you?’
“Of course not. What’s your story, ace? Bring Alby here, then ring the cops?”
“A favor for a favor,” I said as cheerfully as I could manage, given the state of my leg. “They should be here pretty soon, too.”
“Dammit.” But Burton didn’t seem that upset. He must have finished thinking. “Okay, doll, cover this punk while I carry Alby.”
“Carry him where?”
“The roof. You—” he snarled at me. “On your feet and walk.”
My blood was everywhere; Ruthie’s bullet had clipped me good; I’d lost plenty before putting pressure on with my fingers. Had I been a normal human I wouldn’t have been up to moving. Instead, I peeled myself off the floor, taking my time because I was dizzy. Another stop at the Stockyards later tonight would be necessary—if these two allowed me to leave. I didn’t think they would.
Now that I was calmer I speculated about hypnotizing them same as the cops, but there was a booze smell from them which would hamper any effort I made in that direction. Two at once with booze was always tricky. One or the other might pick up that something was off and object.
I limped out under Ruthie’s eagle eye. She kept far enough back so I couldn’t lunge for her. Not that I’d try; she looked more than ready to pop my other leg. My condition made me fast enough, but I was curious as to how they planned to get out of their mess. A body and a guy dripping red all over their floors would need a hell of an explanation.
Burton was powerfully built, but grunted under Alby’s weight. He took small fast steps to the service hall and hit the elevator button. It was a long wait for the cage since Gordy had taken it to the ground floor. The doors finally parted, and we crowded in.
They hadn’t noticed that my bleeding had stopped. I was healed up now, skin, bone, and muscle like new. Too bad I couldn’t say the same for my ruined pants.
The doors parted to hot, humid air blowing strongly from the lake. It was no cooler up here than on the street far below. Ruthie urged me out, and I went, continuing with the limping gag. Burton dropped Alby, then got behind me and snaked his arm around my neck, pulling hard. I was taller, but he had the balance and dragged me backward toward the low wall that marked the edge of the roof. I let him get away with it for the moment. If my curiosity hadn’t been up I’d have turned and folded him in two the wrong way.
“Don’t do anything stupid and I won’t snap your neck,” he told me.
“Grrhg,” I said agreeably.
We were the highest building for several surrounding blocks. Whatever he had planned would be untroubled by witnesses.
“Ruthie, get the bullets out of the gun.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
>
She grumbled but did it. “Now what?”
“Put the gun in his hand. I want his prints all over it.”
She grinned, liking the idea. I reluctantly cooperated but made a mess of it, smearing my bloodied fingers on the gun’s surface. Even the FBI wouldn’t pick up anything useful from it, but I planned not to let things go that far.
Ruthie, holding the gun by the satin sash of her bathrobe, was busy putting rounds back in their chambers. She clicked the barrel into place on the frame, and turned it so the two empty shells were in the right position for having just been fired. Smart, smart girl, but she’d forgotten about her own prints on the bullets. Interesting that Burton didn’t remind her about them.
“What’s this about?” I asked, when the pressure eased slightly on my windpipe.
“That’s for the cops to figure.”
“You want them to think I scragged Alby? Why would I do that?”
“As a favor to your boss, Gordy.”
“The DA won’t buy that as a motive,” I said, hoping to hear more. “I’ll walk free of this one.”
Amusement was in his voice as he spoke into my ear. “I don’t think so.”
I wouldn’t like whatever would come next. I’d sensed the tension in his body. He was braced for resistance. He had no idea just how much.
“Hey, big boy!” Ruthie called out, her voice a biting command to look her way.
I was just dumb enough to fall for it.
She’d opened the satin bathrobe wide, treating me to a full view of a luscious and beautifully naked body. Alive or undead, a man’s going to pause in surprise and be off guard for an instant.
Which was all Burton needed.
With terrible speed and strength he wrenched my head around with his big, competent hands. A nasty, loud snap seemingly inside my ears surprised me, then all feeling died below my neck. My head lolled as my weight shifted, and the world spun, sickening, insane.
If I’d been breathing I’d have gagged and begun suffocating.
I could not move. It was like those last moments before I conked out for the day on my home earth. A heavy involuntary paralysis takes over, and until I learned not to fight it, the feeling was horribly unpleasant.
