by P. N. Elrod
I tried again, but it didn’t work. There was too much booze in his brain for me to get past.
“What do you take me for?” he growled. “You must know I’ve got no reason to trust you, no matter what you say.”
“Angela has pretty much the same outlook,” I said sourly.
“Smart girl.”
“All I’m trying to do is keep her and Sullivan from blowing this town apart—”
“And a mighty fine sentiment it is, to be sure, but I’m not sayin’ anything until I have the go-ahead from her.” He put a stubborn set on his mouth and crossed his arms.
Nuts. I’d just have to wait until he was sober or more willing to talk on his own. To achieve the latter, I’d have to get us away from here, which shouldn’t be too hard, but I wasn’t all that happy over the prospect of hypnotizing ten guys into slumberland. I could do it, but it would be a whale of a chore and certainly bring back my headache. If some of them had been drinking like Doc, things could get even more complicated. My goal was to duck in and out of the roadhouse—Doc and Opal in tow—with no one the wiser, then clearing the mess with Angela and Sullivan long before the sun came up. Now I’d only get half of it accomplished. It was damned inconvenient for Sullivan to have gone running off, even if his intent was to help Opal.
“Okay, Doc, never mind. You got any idea whether Sullivan’s coming back tonight?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll have to leave you here and scout around for the best way out. It could take a while.”
“How long a while?”
“I don’t know, an hour or two, maybe more, till they fall asleep.”
“How ’bout I just come along and keep an eye on what you’re doin’?”
“Too risky. I need to keep low and move fast and know where you are when the time’s right so I can get to you.”
He shot me a sour look. “Yeah, I get it.”
“Not yet, you don’t; I’m coming back for you, because that’s part of my deal with Angela. You just take a nap until I get back, you need the rest.” I wanted to force one on him, but spared myself the effort and likely disappointment. He was three-quarters gone, if I was any judge of degrees of inebriation, and would probably conk out five minutes after I left, anyway. I gave the light cord another pull and the closet went black again. “Stay put and keep quiet,” I said in parting, then vanished and re-formed just outside.
“Fleming?” he whispered urgently. “Fleming?” He made grunting noises as he heaved to his feet. The light came on; I saw its glow through the crack at the base of the door. He tried the locked knob. “Hey—!”
“Shut up!” I snarled back.
“How’d you get out there? I didn’t see the door open.”
“Tell you later. Now keep quiet.”
He made noises to indicate his dissatisfaction with my reply, but offered no more arguments. I again listened hard for any reaction from the men down the hall, but none came.
Time to go to work.
My first choice was to find the guy who had been on the phone. Separated from the others, he’d be the easiest target. I swept through the room he’d been in and came up empty, which bothered me. I didn’t like not knowing where he’d gone off to, since he could turn up at any given inconvenient moment.
Another invisible sweep. He wasn’t anywhere on the floor. I went downstairs, thinking he might be after a drink at the bar, but that area was locked up.
Kitchen. Someone clattering around there.
Better and better. None of the other mugs would hear us this far away. I eased in and concluded by the sounds that he was fixing a meal. Drifting past his area, I took up a spot as far away from him as I could get and very slowly reappeared.
He worked using only the small light over a stove, but it was plenty for me. If I kept still and quiet, he wouldn’t notice me right away while I got a look around. He had an icebox door opened wide and was very absorbed in deciding what food to take out. A fat block of cheese was already on the table, along with some bread and mustard. Nobody else was around. This would be my best chance. I went invisible for a moment, long enough to close the space between us, then solid just as he straightened with three eggs in one hand and an onion in the other.
Maybe I should have waited until he’d put the stuff on the table. He gave a terrific yelp of surprise at my sudden appearance and the eggs and onions went flying.
SOME minutes later I had him thoroughly under my control, and the first thing I made him do was clean up the mess. If we got interrupted I didn’t want anything to look funny, so I kept nervous watch as he got the broken eggs off the floor and retrieved the onion from where it had rolled.
The second thing he did was to tell me where Sullivan had gone, except he couldn’t, since he didn’t know. I made a thorough job of questioning him and could trust what he said, but it was still nothing worth knowing. He was just another soldier and not one with any kind of rank. He could only confirm Doc’s story that Sullivan was gone with the girl to parts unknown and there was no telling when he’d be back.
But I already knew when: eight o’clock the next morning. Lousy for me since I wouldn’t be making the promised phone call at that time. At least Doc would be out of the line of fire, and maybe I’d have Angela in a sweet-talking frame of mind by then, so the night wasn’t going to be a complete water haul, but it could have been better. Nobody else was cooperating; I was starting to get into a bad mood from it.
Well . . . there were ways to fix things more to my liking.
Not wanting to interrupt his meal, I told him to continue with whatever he had in mind, but when he’d finished eating he would get very sleepy and take a nice long nap. He took the suggestion—along with the one to forget all about me—very well and got on with his preparations. It looked to be an egg-and-onion sandwich.
I vanished away from there before the onion stink got to be too much and floated back under the cellar door, materialized at the foot of the steps, then got out the flashlight. Next I fished out my notebook and flipped it open to the map Opal had drawn. Facing away from the steps, I walked about five yards along, stopped, and turned right toward the wall. It was fairly clear of clutter, compared to the rest of the place, just some old paint cans and a broken broom, exactly what she’d said would be there. I moved them out of the way.
My flash picked up the unpainted wood boards no different from those covering the rest of the wall. Halfway up, one of them sported a small knothole that had been knocked through. I hooked a finger inside it and first pulled, then pushed to work the latch mechanism.
Someone had done a great job of carpentry; a two-foot-wide, six-foot-tall section swung inward on a special concealed hinge. Escott would have loved it. I shone my light inside and was surprised to see a sizable chamber within. It seemed clear of booby traps and alarm wires, so I stepped in sideways.
With a low ceiling like the rest of the basement, the room was maybe five feet wide and twenty long and completely walled up except for the narrow hidden door. It looked to be part of the original layout of the foundation, but sectioned off from the rest by the phony wall. Comparing outside measurements to inside ones might reveal its existence, but there’s not many who would bother with such a detail.
The stuffy air smelled of machine grease, wood, and excelsior. Some long crates lined one side. I found an open one and checked it, discovering a fine collection of brand-new shotguns and ammunition. A second box turned up a carefully packed Thompson machine gun with all the trimmings, a third revealed a number of hand grenades nestled snug in their wood shavings. Vaughn Kyler had apparently been prepared for all kinds of fun up to and including an assault by the United States Marines Corps. Angela knew about the money; I wondered if she knew about the weapons. She’d have one hell of a field day with those grenades.
Toward the back was an old cot, a lantern on the bare floor next to a pack of cards, and a scatter of dusty magazines with lurid pictures of half-clad girls (usually screaming in rea
ction to some grotesque menace) gracing the covers. Damned if one of them wasn’t a copy of Spicy Terror Tales—I’d been trying to write a story to sell to them for weeks. Its latest page languished, abandoned on the desk in my own basement sanctuary at home. I felt like years had passed since I’d last worked on it.
With all the guns at hand I knew the place wasn’t meant to be a prison cell. My guess was when a member of the gang needed to lay low, this was where they took him. If the cops raided the joint all the person had to do was duck down here and fill the time in with reading or solitaire until the law got tired of searching and went away. If you didn’t know where to look to get in, then too bad.
Enough of a chill hung in the air to let me know this was probably not a popular spot to visit and linger unless you absolutely had to, adding to its security. There was no real lock for the entry, just the trick of the latch, so few people would think to look here for anything really valuable other than the guns. It was secret, but not too secret. Whatever Kyler chose to keep down here would be safe from his own gang members.
At the farthest end of the room were four innocuous, unmarked crates piled on top of one another, no different from the others. If Opal hadn’t told me what to look for, I’d have passed them by.
Instead, I went straight to them. They were covered with dust, unremarkable, each about a foot high and two wide, maybe a yard long, with thick rope handles, and had most likely once held weapons the same as the other boxes. I tried to lift the topmost one and found it heavy, even for me, then got a good grip on the nailed-down lid and hauled sharply upward. The nails squawked against the wood as they reluctantly parted company. The case lid came suddenly free in my hand. I peered inside, holding the light high.
I don’t have much need to breathe now, but caught my breath all the same. Couldn’t help it.
Holy shit.
Crammed within were fat bundles of fives, twenties, fifties, and hundreds, row after row of them, an obscene amount of cash smelling of old paper, ink, and the hands that it had passed through. No way to tell how much of that seven hundred grand was in this one box alone, but it was still a hellacious amount of money before me, and all I could do was stare.
A lot of fast thoughts were rushing around in my brain, though. Embodied before me on these bits of paper was the potential of a dozen different futures for yours truly, all of them featuring extreme comfort and luxury as the main theme. Sure, I was a vampire, but like everyone else on the planet I’m still only human. The idea of driving away from this place with all that cash packed into the trunk of the car seemed like the most sensible thing in the world I could do for myself.
My conscience chafed, though. It was, after all, dirty money, collected from countless brothels, gambling houses, the numbers trade, loan-sharking, protection payoffs, and the other varied rackets going on in this city. An unbelievable pile of cash came from those sources. The only thing more incredible was the fact that this cache was less than a fraction of a fraction of what was being moved through this city every month. Misery money. Every last dollar of it. Who was I to enjoy it?
On the other hand . . . who was I not to? Better me than some gangster, right? And it wasn’t like I’d never done this sort of thing before. Only a few months back I’d lifted a briefcase with ten grand of Frank Paco’s money inside and had split it with Escott, hardly thinking twice. We were still living well on it. At the time he’d said that a free agent was entitled to any reward his conscience would permit. After looking at so much cash ready for the taking, mine was getting more and more elastic by the minute.
But ten grand wasn’t anything compared to seven hundred thousand. Dealing with that much money was bound to make for trouble. Vague thoughts of coming to a bad end because of its dark origins clouded my enthusiasm. It was too good to be true. I knew for damn sure that my mom wouldn’t approve of this kind of thing at all.
I could just shove the lid back on and walk away from it . . . save myself a lot of trouble and maybe grief.
But only saps in the movies did that kind of thing. I wasn’t that saintly or that nuts.
I kept staring and hoping some flash of enlightenment would clear away my sudden doubts, but none came. It was just too much to take in, and I had other things to deal with tonight.
Finally I gave a shrug. What the hell, I’d take it now and work out the moral problems later when there was more time for them; my immediate problem was figuring a way of getting the whole shebang out of here.
Lifting the crates was easy, I was more than strong enough, but I couldn’t vanish and bring them along for the ride; they were just too big and bulky. I’d have to get creative. While I considered possibilities I broke open a big bundle of hundreds and began shoving the smaller bundles of bills—one thousand in each—into the various pockets of my overcoat, suit coat, and pants pockets. The stuff went away surprisingly fast and didn’t take up that much room. This admission to bare-faced greed did have a practical inspiration: If I got interrupted, then I’d at least have some “spare change” to carry away. Call it a tip for all the trouble I’d been through up to now. There was no point in counting it just yet, but I knew it to be several thousand. I collected enough in the next couple of minutes to live high on the hog for a considerably long time to come.
God bless America.
The dam broken for the moment, I gleefully went to work.
Slipping back outside the hidden room, I located the bags stuffed with table linens. No one would miss a few of these; I emptied one after another onto the cold concrete floor. A quick retrace of my steps and I was stooped over the crate, busily transferring cash into the laundry sacks. I divided it into thirds, roughly estimating that was how much I could disappear with in order to safely carry it out to the car. The estimate proved correct when I took a moment to test it by vanishing, hugging one of the heavily loaded bags close to my chest. It came along without a hitch.
There were nine of them in all at the end, and they took up a lot of space, and nine trips to the car and back took a hell of a lot of effort and energy from me. It did go pretty fast, since I can move very quickly once shed of the normal barriers of corporeal travel. No stumbling or noise and I can flit through brush and trees like smoke. Each jaunt left me feeling thinned out and more tired than the last, but soon the Caddie’s trunk was full, with bags left over. The rest I shoved onto the floor of the backseat, tired to the point of dizziness by the time I’d finished. Maybe I was better suited for sprints instead of marathons and sat on the running board for a time to catch up with myself and see if a little rest would help.
I was pushing things, but judged this onetime effort to be worth it. How many chances does a guy have to pick up this much money in one evening? Something less than none, so I’d take mine while I had it and deal with the physical consequences later at the Stockyards.
Before I completely quit the hidden room I put the empty crates back into place, their lids pressed down more or less as I’d found them. If by some chance Angela did manage to come here after the money, she’d know who had it, then it would be meat-hook time for me. Only I wasn’t going to let it get that far.
Checked my watch, it was nearly two—how time flies when you’re getting rich—and not a peep from upstairs. While I kept myself busy with something far more rewarding than just twiddling my thumbs, the house had settled for the night as I’d hoped.
Time to get started with the next stage.
To conserve strength, I went up to the second floor solid, ears wide open for any sound. Nothing but snoring from a couple of the rooms, even the poker players had given up for the night. I cat-footed to the storage closet and tried the knob, putting some elbow grease into it, twisting it right from the wood. It made a couple of sharp snapping noises, but not enough to disturb anyone enough to wake up for a look. Still, I counted to a hundred before taking out the remains of the latching mechanism and pulling the door open.
Doc was asleep and muttered unhappily as I shook him
. The flashlight batteries were nearly gone, but I flicked it on a moment so he could see, then helped him to his feet.
“What now?” he whispered.
“Down to the kitchen nice and easy and out the back door. I got a car up in the trees ready to go. I’m not figuring on trouble, but if we get interrupted, you duck and let me take care of them.”
“You’re welcome to it, son.”
He hung on to my arm to keep steady, and I guided him carefully along the hall, thankful for the thick carpet. I was still dry-mouthed the whole way, feeling very vulnerable, mostly for his sake. He couldn’t disappear if he had to.
The graveled lot was the same, no new cars. I got us moving forward across the highly exposed stretch of open ground as fast as Doc could take it. He picked up some speed toward the end, if only because I was half carrying him, but he was puffing loud.
We finally made the cover of the trees, and I paused to look back while he wheezed and gulped, trying to catch his breath. No new lights, no sign of movement at the windows. By God, we were going to get away clean on this one after all. Once inside the car I could gun it to hell and gone if I wanted and nuts to them.
Turning back to the car, the first sign I had of trouble was a glimpse of a shiny new green roadster parked in the trees just a bit farther up the rise. If my eyes had been human normal, I’d never have spotted it. The thing hadn’t been there on my last trip out, and I didn’t think it belonged to a courting couple looking for a quiet spot to neck. I stopped us cold, but by then it was too late to do anything.
Four of them emerged from where they’d been crouching behind the Caddie. They must have seen it while driving down the road from the other direction or I’d have heard them pass the roadhouse. Maxwell, wrapped in a brown suede raincoat, was in front, and so confident he didn’t bother to take his hands from his pockets. The dirty work was for the other three mugs closing around us. Their hands were out and full of guns.
“Oh. Shit.” Doc summed up my very thoughts.
