P N Elrod Omnibus

by P. N. Elrod

  Gabe’s muscles twitched as though from electric shock, and he had to fight to keep the revulsion from showing. Such sickening ideas were nightmare remnants of the dead and unmourned Whitey. As a human he’d been monster enough, God help the world if he’d survived as a vampire.

  That’s not me. I’m not like him.

  Gabe was better than that.

  He wanted to be, anyway.

  Gabe got the young woman’s name—Inga—how long she’d worked at the Royal Arms, and when she expected to go home tonight. She shared a flat with another, she added.

  “That’s lucky,” he said, noting that she left out whether her flat mate was friend or lover. “No chance to get lonely. You’ve got someone to talk to.”

  “I guess I do,” she agreed. “But maybe I’d like talking with someone else for a change.”

  She didn’t get huffy when he mentioned his hotel room might be a good place to have a conversation. He took it as being only fair when she mentioned she’d like more than a forty-cent tip. They settled on a sum and a time to meet so he could walk her over, then she asked if he wanted another cup of coffee. Inga had finished his.

  “A glass of water is fine.” He gave her dollar tip for that one, and she seemed to glow a little brighter. If things went well, they’d both have a fine evening ahead.

  He smiled fondly after, enjoying the view all over again as she went back to the bar. Inga had dark hair, which was a contrast to her name. He thought she must have some Swede in her, but weren’t they all blond? Were they different from dark-haired girls once the lights were out? He’d not had opportunity to look into it. That had to do with his future, one of the things he’d come here to think over, though he now had a chance to talk it out instead.

  He hoped—afterwards, of course—that Inga would be a good listener. He could always pay her extra. Didn’t crazy people give head-doctors lots of money to talk about their troubles? Gabe didn’t want a doctor who would take notes and give advice, he wanted a pretty girl who would lend a sympathetic ear for an hour or two. What she heard wouldn’t matter; he’d make sure she forgot everything before she left. Using hypnosis gave him a headache, but he needed only a few seconds, well worth the risk. She wouldn’t even wonder about the marks on her throat.

  His improved mood was spoiled when the man from the shadows came over. He looked down at Gabe for a moment, then sat as though invited. He seemed not to notice when Inga came up with the glass of water. She shot Gabe a nervous look, which told him just what kind of man was across from him. Gabe gave her a brief smile and another quick, subtle wink. He had everything—whatever it was—well in hand.

  “Yeah?” he said, just to get things rolling.

  “I know who you are. Whitey Kroun.”

  Gabe no longer thought of himself by that name. The bastard was dead and good riddance.

  “I’m Harry Ziemer,” the stranger announced. He seemed to expect some kind of reaction to that fact. He was solidly built, just starting to go bald. His mud-brown eyes had that soulless cast some guys get when they’ve killed one man too many or hadn’t killed nearly enough. Not a face one would forget, but still unfamiliar.

  Gabe had learned early on that the best way to compensate for a memory that didn’t exist was to not respond and let the other guy do the explaining. “Oh, yeah?” A useful phrase, he’d picked it up in Chicago.

  “Things are gonna stay friendly and quiet here, no need for you to trouble yourself.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “My friends and I are gonna do our deal.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We got an understanding?”

  “Whatever you say, Harry Ziemer.”

  “Thanks. Whitey.”

  Gabe felt a shifting inside him, like the throwing a switch.

  He’d just found out something new about his reborn self: he hated that name, but it was still his and he’d not given this bozo permission to use it. He didn’t like the accompanying smirk. He didn’t like the man throwing his weight around as though he owned the world. If he’d shown even an illusion of respect Gabe would have let it go, but he hadn’t.

  And, since to some people he was still Whitey Kroun, he could not ignore it.

  Ziemer left the table, returning to his friends. It was no surprise that they were the mugs Gabe had spotted earlier. Of course they’d be armed like their boss. Ziemer’s shoulder rig was blatantly visible through his suit.

  Gabriel was also armed, having a revolver in his overcoat pocket. Six shots. If it came to it he could miss twice or—more likely—have two bullets left over.

  He had to only look at a target to hit it square; you couldn’t learn that particular talent. You were born with it. Whitey Kroun had been born with it; when he died and Gabriel Kroun emerged, the talent had carried over.

  This is nuts. I was imagining it. He wasn’t. . .

  Ziemer looked right at him, smirk firmly in place. He murmured to the mugs. They chuckled and looked as well, smiling as though they’d put something over on Gabe so slick that he hadn’t yet caught on.

  His long fingers went around the base of his water glass to pick it up. He let it slip, and water slopped over the table. He grimaced and waved to Inga, pointing at the mess. She hurried up with a towel.

  “I’ll get you more,” she said.

  “Never mind that, cutey. Who’s Harry Ziemer and why is he here? No, don’t look at him, just do what you’re doing and smile at me.”

  “He wants to be a big shot. He’s been moving in on things, takes ’em over. Garages, taverns. He’s been loafing here for a week. There’s rumors we’re next.”

  “How’s he operate?”

  “He talks the owner into signing over the deed.”

  “At gun point?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. The owners always get out of town right after. Leastways no one sees ’em again. If Harry Ziemer’s got a beef against you, you should maybe leave, too.”

  “You’d think so. Relax, cutey, we’ve got a date.” He smiled, but her walk wasn’t as bouncy when she returned to the bar. Couldn’t blame her. Any time now she could have a new boss or be out of a job or worse. With guys like Ziemer there was always a worse.

  Ziemer and his cronies were gone from their table. The last of them was just walking into some kind of cave passage off the main room. Maybe it was the call of nature. One way to find out.

  The hall was wide and low, the ceiling and walls rounded. A wire with bare bulbs every ten feet hung from hooks in the ceiling. Their glow, all fifteen watts of it, wasn’t much help against the darkness, not that Gabe was worried. It was plenty bright to his eyes.

  Maybe this was where they raised the mushrooms once upon a time. The size of the place surprised him. Wasn’t it easier to build walls than carve out a hole? Had to be. People were nuts.

  I should know.

  He sniffed the air, for the first time picking up the kind of dank scent associated with caves. . .and tombs.

  Now why the hell did I think that?

  If only that smirking idiot had called him “Mr. Kroun” and not overstepped with the too-familiar “Whitey.”

  I should be out in the main room charming the socks off Inga, not doing this.

  The racket from the inept band faded with distance and a turn.

  A few yards along, he came to a branching. One way was absolutely black, even to him, and the source of the dank air. It must have led to the outside; he picked up the scent of snow, dead leaves, and moldy earth. Something dead and rotting was down there as well, but the stink of decay was so faint that a human would not have noticed.

  The other branch had light, a weak glow far down where the hall turned again. Gabe could see it, but only because of his supernatural edge. The bare bulbs on their wire had been shattered in this whole section, making a powerful discouragement to anyone without a flashlight.

  He went that way, drawn by voices echoing off the stone. Glass was underfoot. He kept to the one side, wincing whe
n he couldn’t avoid stepping on the shards. The crunching sounded very loud to him.

  No one can hear me, they’re too busy talking.

  The hall had shrunk in width and was more like a tunnel. His shoulders hunched up again. He forced them down.

  He reached the turn, took it, and came even with what seemed to be the boss’s lair. It wasn’t a room in the sense of having a door and a chamber beyond, but an especially deep alcove cut into the side of the tunnel. It had a big desk, chairs, file cabinets, and plenty of light, which was cheering.

  On the floor almost at his feet was a wide scatter of desk clutter, pencils and other junk, including a stone paperweight the same pale color as the walls. The name Lars Pargreave had been carved into one side. It was too small to be a cemetery marker, but the image crossed Gabe’s mind regardless. He could picture Ziemer swaggering in and knocking things from the desk as a way of getting the owner’s attention.

  A blond man—most likely Pargreave—sat behind the desk that faced toward the tunnel. His doughy face was sheeted with flop sweat. Even at ten feet Gabe picked up on air made thick and sour by the man’s fear.

  He had a right to it. Harry Ziemer, smiling, leaned over him with a gun muzzle pressed hard against his head. The smile had reached Ziemer’s dead eyes, animating them. He clearly liked his work.

  The other three were ranged loosely around the desk with their backs to Gabe. Like Ziemer, they were too focused on their prey, hyenas who’d not yet noticed the lion walking up.

  There was a long piece of paper on the desk that had the look of a legal document. The blond man was trying to hold a fountain pen in his shaking hand. It had to be hard to concentrate while four guys with their guns hanging out stared at you like that.

  Gabe came fully around the corner. “Harry!” he cheerfully called. “How you doing?”

  All five men jumped. Gratifying.

  Ziemer snapped around. He lost his smile. “We had a deal.”

  “Of course we did. I came to watch.” Gabe bent and picked up the paperweight, hefting it idly.

  “Watch?”

  “Yeah, it was this or bowling.” He swung the stone experimentally like a bowling ball to demonstrate, then put it on the desk. The men were looking at it and not noticing his other hand, which was in his coat pocket holding the revolver. “Doing a little taking-over?”

  “Whitey. . .” but Ziemer didn’t seem to know how to finish. Must have been a new kind of situation for him.

  Gabe drummed his fingers on the stone, gauging distances. He could bean the guy at the end, grab Ziemer and toss him over the desk at the other two, but one of them could still get a shot off. “The band out there stinks. I hope you’ll be hiring better talent.”

  “I’ll make money, don’t worry,” Ziemer said. “Whitey. . .”

  “Hm? Oh, don’t let me stop you. Go on with what you were doing. Act like I’m not here.”

  That had to be impossible, but Ziemer finally gathered himself and turned his attention back to the sweating man. “Sign it, Pargreave. Now.”

  The hapless Pargreave somehow managed to hold the pen long enough to scratch his signature on the paper. He shrank, visibly shrank, inside his ample skin. He was nothing to Gabe. For all he knew the man might be worse than Ziemer, but Gabe wasn’t here to defend any side but his own.

  I should just leave. These guys aren’t worth the trouble.

  Ziemer had the smile back. His eyes were bright and alive as he put a couple steps between himself and the moaning Pargreave, sighting down one extended arm.

  Gabe recognized that look, and thought he knew what it felt like. Some black ghost of a memory scuttled out from a corner of his mind, grinned, then darted from sight again.

  Whitey Kroun used to look like Ziemer—or so Gabe imagined. Whitey put himself forward to do jobs like this so he could feel the kind of thing Ziemer was now feeling.

  That’s wrong.

  Gabe had a conscience, just not much of one yet. It still managed to give him a twinge. It wanted him to do. . .something.

  “Harry?” Gabe spoke loud enough to disrupt the headlong rush to bring death in.

  Ziemer flinched, irritated. “What?”

  “There’s witnesses out front.”

  “They won’t know. This far in you can fire a cannon and they’d never hear it.”

  “Really?” That was interesting. “What about the cops? Won’t they wonder about this guy turning up dead?”

  “Cops here won’t do squat. We keep our business under the table, don’t bother them, and they leave us alone.”

  Gabe had heard about St. Paul’s infamous deal with the gangsters. The pact between law and disorder was an uneasy one, but mostly worked so long as the town got its share of the take. “Glad that’s covered, but come on, Harry—think about the mess. You’ll get blood and brains all over your nice bill of sale or whatever that is.”

  Ziemer was sufficiently distracted now. He looked fully at Gabe, not Pargreave. “What?”

  “Scrag him if you have to, but not here. Take it from one who knows. Blood soaks right into stone like this, you’ll never get it out.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing. I’m just saying you can do this better someplace else. You’ll have this guy’s leavings all over what’s going to be your desk. Instead, you ought to be sitting behind it from the first minute, laying down the rules like a big shot should.”

  One of the mugs who had the wit to move clear of Ziemer’s line of fire nodded. “He’s got a point, boss.”

  “You don’t want to get that stuff on your suit,” Gabe added. “Any of you guys in a mood for carrying a body around and cleaning up afterwards?”

  A silent exchange of looks between the three of them resulted in a unanimous shaking of heads and murmurs against such lowly labor.

  “I’m getting rid of him,” stated Ziemer, teeth on edge.

  “Well, of course you have to, just not here is all I’m saying.” Gabe stared indifferently down at the terrified Pargreave and thought of that branching into blackness and its stink of decay. “I bet you’ve got a place where you do that kind of business. Somewhere here in these caves? Yeah, I thought so.”

  Pargreave, shivering now, hadn’t given an answer. Ziemer and his pals saw what they wanted to see in the man’s gray face.

  “What do you think, Harry? Let’s make him take us to where he buries his bodies.”

  “Why do you wanna know? What do you care?”

  Gabe gave a shrug. “I help you out and maybe down the road you do me a small favor. It’s how the business runs, you know that. Think about it: what’ll it do for your reputation when it gets out that you got backing from Whitey Kroun himself?”

  “How small a favor?”

  “I was thinking free drinks from your new bar.”

  They gave a short laugh. Pargreave didn’t, but they talked over him.

  “You don’t want a cut of the take?” Ziemer was reasonably suspicious.

  “The take from a joint like this is peanuts to me. I’m just here ’cause I’m bored. Like I said: it was this or bowling.”

  They laughed again, and he could see his death in their eyes.

  I could be wrong. But killing an interloper is what I’d have done a few months back.

  He wasn’t that man anymore, but some piece of him lurked within. Gabe couldn’t recall Whitey, not exactly, but could judge him by the company he’d kept. Much of it had been scum like these.

  That’s why I understand them so well.

  Ziemer got an idea. “You’ve heard of me. That’s why you came to St. Paul. You heard what I’m doing.”

  Gabe sobered and slowly nodded, approving. “Good. . .you figured it out. Word gets around.”

  “So what’s your real angle?”

  “Harry, I’m here to size you up for the big boys, see if you’re someone we can work with. How you handle this—” he indicated Pargreave, “—with kid gloves or a wrecking ball, tells us what we
need to know. I’ll give you a hint: use the kid gloves, and we’ll cut you in on bigger and better things.”

  Ziemer looked as though he had the number on what they were talking about. Hell if Gabe knew. He was making it up as he went.

  Ziemer’s smirk was back, and he relaxed by a whole inch. “You’re all right, Whitey. I heard stories about you, but they—”

  With unnatural speed Gabe pulled his revolver free and shot four times. The noise was deafening in the confining space.

  He braced for return fire, but none came.

  He blinked against the smoke and ascertained there were four bodies on the floor, none of them getting up again. They had that look.

  Under the tang of gunpowder, the heavy perfume of their blood suddenly bloomed in the alcove. It seemed to fill his head. He made his normally dormant lungs take in a full measure of the scent, but not for a moment did he consider feeding. Those mugs were garbage, and you got rid of garbage.

  Gabe glanced at Pargreave, who looked like he’d swallowed his own tongue.

  “You gonna be a problem and remember any of this?” Gabe asked.

  Pargreave struggled past his shock, shaking his head. “No, sir,” he finally whispered.

  “Can you make them disappear?”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  Gabe didn’t trust him, though, and put him under anyway to make him forget. He washed himself from Pargreave’s memory, put the revolver in his hand, and told him it was self-defense, then walked quickly back down the tunnel before the man woke up.

  Gabriel returned to his table in the club’s main room, noticing that nothing had changed. The music from the amateurish band continued uninterrupted. His nerves settled, and the tightness inside his skull abruptly eased and vanished.

  Inga came over, face solemn. “You okay? Something wrong?”

  He found himself smiling warmly at her. “Nah. It’s copasetic.”

  “What’s going on with Ziemer?”

  “Just wanted a card game is all. I’d have joined in, but you and I have a date.”

  “I should get them drinks.”

  “Leave ’em. They’ll come out when they’re thirsty.”

  Inga was doubtful, looking at the hallway opening.