Hard-Boiled Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles)

by Gene Doucette

  “You were wrong about the place being full of feds,” she said. “But there was at least one.” She put her credentials on the table. “Ain’t that a kick in the head?”

  Vinnie and Echols looked at it, thought about it for a while, and then started laughing. “Yeah,” Vin said. “Yeah, that’s a problem, huh?”

  “Now we really have to kill both of you!” Echols said.

  Lucy laughed. “No, no, no, you’re thinking about it all wrong. I don’t care about you boys, all I want is who you sold the napkins to. The Outfit don’t have to be the wiser for it either way.”

  “But look what we did to this place!”

  “I tell you what,” Lucy said, a glimmer in her eye and a sidewise glance at me. “Word on the street is, Rocky here was into some stuff on the side.”

  Vinnie looked at me, wide-eyed. “Was he?”

  “I didn’t think so, no,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t have anything going on.”

  She threw me a wink. “Sure you did, Rock. You were in some stuff Jimmie didn’t know about, and it turns out that stuff involved selling secrets to the Germans, and it’s a shame how those secrets got you killed. And these fellas here, they’re heroes for finding out and turning over the whole operation.”

  “Heroes!” Echols agreed.

  “All they have to do is give me the name of everybody they know who touched those napkins. You know, since you don’t actually know those names and these guys do.”

  “I’m not sure I like that story,” I said.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think you would.” She had her gun out again. Apparently she really did have a place in her sleeve to hide that thing. She pointed it at my head. “Sorry, Rocky. It’s the only story everyone’s gonna buy. Tough thing is, you gotta die for it to work out.”

  I was thinking she had skipped a couple of non-lethal options, and possibly also forgotten the part where I said I wasn’t bulletproof. “These fellas will believe anything you say,” I pointed out.

  “Sure, you’re right, but the FBI won’t. You’re a guy with no last name and no family, manning a bar that stole and sold state secrets. People get locked up for that much. It’s better off for you this way.”

  “So you’re gonna shoot me?” I was pretty sure I was missing something.

  “Nah, not me. These boys are the ones that did it, right boys?”

  “Sorry, Rock,” Vinnie said. “You were a solid guy.”

  “Such a shame,” Echols agreed.

  I looked into Lucy’s green eyes and caught her giving me another wink. Then I noticed the barrel of the gun wasn’t actually pointed right at my head. It was aimed at the air to the right of me.

  “I always figured it’d be a dame that got me in the end,” I said. Because if you’re going to go, why not go out saying something memorably cliché?

  “Ain’t that the best way?” she asked.

  Then she fired.

  I fell over, and lay on the floor for about ten seconds, while she reiterated that I was now deceased and furthermore, the two very drugged guys at the bar had done the deed themselves. While they were busy mourning my passing, I got up again. She pulled me around the corner.

  “You got a back exit to this place, right?” she asked.

  “I do.”

  “Good.” She shoved something into my hand. “Take this and get outta here. Don’t talk to anybody, don’t let anybody see you, do nothing but head straight there, you got me?”

  The thing in my hand was a key.

  “I think I do.”

  “Good. I mean it, don’t let anybody see you. Take the alleys and keep your head down. Oh, and have this.” She kissed me, full-on, lips open, tender and fierce, and for about two seconds I forgot everything else including what I was supposed to be doing next.

  “Now go,” she said. Like I could run anywhere after that.

  * * *

  The key went to a door belonging to a room in a hotel six blocks away, in just about the seediest part of the seedy part of town. The place made Jimmy’s dive look like a four-star establishment. It could’ve taken me only a few minutes to get there but she said to stick to the alleys so I stuck to the alleys. More than once I had to park myself in a dark corner for a little while until I stopped hearing sirens. There ended up being a lot of sirens.

  It was a crummy room. Small bed, one wood chair, a toilet that only flushed when it felt like it, and a lingering smell that was some unholy combination of mildew and vomit. About the only thing nice about the place was there wasn’t anybody pointing a gun at me, which was a feature I could appreciate.

  With nothing much to do—I was too wound up to sleep and anyway that didn’t seem like a great plan—I sat on the chair and looked out at the alley through the one window. The drop was about three stories. I thought if I had to I could probably survive it. It wasn’t a great escape plan, but it was something.

  The delay was long enough for me to worry that I shouldn’t even be there. I was waiting on a succubus who could shoot me, turn me in to the government as a spy, or screw me in a more literal sense, and the third option was the only one worth sticking around for. Could have been she just staged my death in order to help me get out of town, but so long as she had the US government behind her there was no way to be sure. I’d heard enough stories about agitators disappearing and whatnot to be concerned that the country’s interests and mine didn’t coincide.

  It had to be four in the morning by the time Lucy let herself in.

  “You alone?” She asked. There was a light from the hallway, so I couldn’t see her face, but the figure and the voice and the gun in her hand was all I needed.

  “Just me,” I said. “Thanks for aiming a gun at me again, I was beginning to forget what that felt like.”

  “Just being careful.” She kicked the door closed behind her and tossed a sack onto the bed. It made a jingle when it hit, which the bed didn’t do when I’d sat on it earlier so I figured it was from the bag.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s the money from the cash drawer. Place like that, I figured it’d have a safe but I couldn’t find one.”

  “Nobody’s crazy enough to steal from Jimmy,” I said.

  “Looks like you were.”

  I picked up the sack while Lucy put her gun away and took off the coat. I was disappointed to see she’d taken the time to put on some more clothing sometime over the course of the night because now she had on a skirt and a blouse. She looked like someone straight out of the secretary pool, if they had one of those in heaven.

  To my unspoken observation she said, “Changed into ‘em before the place was stormed by the feds. I got methods I’d as soon keep to myself, you understand.”

  “I do.” It wasn’t a lot of cash in the bag. “What’s this for?”

  “That ought to be enough to get you outta town. You gotta be in the wind, Rocky. You get that, right?”

  “Explain it to me.”

  “Your story wasn’t gonna fly with my people. They look far enough into you they’re gonna have the same questions I had. You had to die.”

  She put one leg up on the bed and slid a hand up her thigh to unclip the garter holding her stocking in place. Then she began to slide the stocking down.

  “I knew the first time I saw you, you were gonna get me killed. How’d it happen?” I asked.

  “Your pal Vinnie and his buddy confessed to it. Sorry I had to fire the gun at your head like that, I’ve found this kind of persuasion works better if there’s a show that goes with it.”

  She slid out of the shoe to get the stocking all the way off, then started on her second leg. I was having a little trouble keeping track of what she was saying on account of what she was doing.

  “Once they were convinced I’d killed you, it wasn’t all that hard to talk them into thinking they’d done it themselves. Now, they’ll swear up and down they did it earlier, at the bar, brought your body to the lake and tossed it in, then went back to the bar looking
for me. Oh and it turns out you were into some nasty stuff. It looks like Rocky isn’t even your name.”

  “Those two guys with the big guns might have a thing or two to say about that story,” I said. I was staying in the chair for the moment, happy to watch her take her clothes off for me.

  “Yeah, funny thing tho. They were out front when the feds got to the scene, and I guess they both got a little trigger-happy. They were told to stand down, but whoops, they only spoke Polish. So they’re dead now, looks like.”

  “You sent them outside on purpose.”

  She had taken care of the other stocking and now was slipping off her skirt as casually as if she was standing in her own bedroom alone, except I had to think nobody ever looked this good undressing without an audience.

  “Could be. It’s really hard to convince someone of something if you don’t speak their language, no matter how much you drug ‘em. Good thing my cavalry knew to expect gunplay, huh?”

  “You might be too clever to trust.”

  “Look who’s talking, Mr. no-name immortal man. Now, you wanna help me get out of this blouse or do I have to do all the work here?”

  * * *

  I left Chicago a week later in a midnight cab ride that took me to a train stop a few miles out of town. First I had to say goodbye to Lucy, which was two days of work all by itself. Once the gun was safely on the other side of the room and her clothes safely on the floor, she turned out to be much easier to get to know, and at least trust enough to appreciate properly. That appreciation took up five days, with breaks for food and so she could call her office. Her explanation for being out was that she was looking for my body, which was easily the most entertaining excuse I’d ever heard.

  The money she gave me only took care of the cab ride and the train ticket, but that was okay because I had some money set aside—in the form of a duffel full of cash in a train station locker in Philly—and also some distant invested funds I didn’t really touch, but was there in a pinch.

  I didn’t know it at the time but those investments were actually about to explode in value. One of the things Al told me that didn’t make onto a napkin was about a company he was hoping to work for after his gig at the university ended. “It’s called International Business Machines, Rocky,” he had said. “I’m telling you, if you got any coin you should put some into it with them.”

  I followed his advice. I didn’t remember doing it, but I did.

  I don’t know how things worked out for Al, but I did make Lucy promise to tell him the truth about her. I mean, about being a government agent, not the succubus thing. I think he probably didn’t end up having anything to do with the Manhattan Project. That wasn’t his kind of gig. Maybe he wound up at IBM like he wanted.

  Lucy left me with about four different ways to contact her in the future, and made me promise to drop her a line once I’d settled on a new name. But as much as it was great to have a line on a succubus and a friend in the government, I didn’t expect to ever look her up again. She was still trouble, and that wasn’t going to change.

  Turns out I was wrong. But that’s a story for another time.

  Other works by Gene Doucette

  Immortal

  “I don’t know how old I am. My earliest memory is something along the lines of fire good, ice bad, so I think I predate written history, but I don’t know by how much. I like to brag that I’ve been there from the beginning, and while this may very well be true, I generally just say it to pick up girls.”

  --Adam the Immortal

  Surviving sixty thousand years takes cunning and more than a little luck. But in the twenty-first century, Adam confronts new dangers—someone has found out what he is, a demon is after him, and he has run out of places to hide. Worst of all, he has had entirely too much to drink.

  Immortal is a first person confessional penned by a man who is immortal, but not invincible. In an artful blending of sci-fi, adventure, fantasy, and humor, IMMORTAL introduces us to a world with vampires, demons and other “magical” creatures, yet a world without actual magic.

  At the center of the book is Adam.

  “I have been in quite a few tight situations in my long life. One of the first things I learned was if there is going to be a mob panic, don’t be standing between the mob and wherever it is they all want to go. The second thing I learned was, don’t try to run through fire.”

  --Adam the Immortal

  Adam is a sixty thousand year old man. (Approximately.) He doesn’t age or get sick, but is otherwise entirely capable of being killed. His survival has hinged on an innate ability to adapt, his wits, and a fairly large dollop of luck. He makes for an excellent guide through history . . . when he’s sober.

  Immortal is a contemporary fantasy for non-fantasy readers and fantasy enthusiasts alike.

  Buy Immortal

  * * *

  Hellenic Immortal

  “Very occasionally, I will pop up in the historical record. Most of the time I’m not at all easy to spot, because most of the time I’m just a guy who does a thing and then disappears again into the background behind someone-or-other who’s busy doing something much more important. But there are a couple of rare occasions when I get a starring role.”

  --Adam the Immortal

  An oracle has predicted the sojourner’s end, which is a problem for Adam insofar as he has never encountered an oracular prediction that didn’t come true . . . and he is the sojourner. To survive, he’s going to have to figure out what a beautiful ex-government analyst, an eco-terrorist, a rogue FBI agent, and the world’s oldest religious cult all want with him, and fast.

  And all he wanted when he came to Vegas was to forget about a girl. And maybe have a drink or two.

  “I am probably not the best source when it comes to who invented what. For a long time I thought I invented the wheel.”

  --Adam the Immortal

  The second book in the Immortal series, Hellenic Immortal follows the continuing adventures of Adam, a sixty-thousand-year-old man with a wry sense of humor, a flair for storytelling, and a knack for staying alive. Hellenic Immortal is a clever blend of history, mythology, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, mystery and romance. A little something, in other words, for every reader.

  Buy Hellenic Immortal

  * * *

  Immortal at the Edge of the World

  “What I was currently doing with my time and money . . . didn’t really deserve anyone else’s attention. If I was feeling romantic about it, I’d call it a quest, but all I was really doing was trying to answer a question I’d been ignoring for a thousand years.”

  In his very long life, Adam had encountered only one person who appeared to share his longevity: the mysterious red-haired woman. She appeared throughout history, usually from a distance, nearly always vanishing before he could speak to her.

  In his last encounter, she actually did vanish—into thin air, right in front of him. The question was how did she do it? To answer, Adam will have to complete a quest he gave up on a thousand years earlier, for an object that may no longer exist.

  If he can find it, he might be able to do what the red-haired woman did, and if he can do that, maybe he can find her again and ask her who she is . . . and why she seems to hate him.

  “You are being watched. Move your loved ones to safety . . . trust nobody.”

  But Adam isn’t the only one who wants the red-haired woman. There are other forces at work, and after a warning from one of the few men he trusts, Adam realizes how much danger everyone is in. To save his friends and finish his quest he may be forced to bankrupt himself, call in every favor he can, and ultimately trade the one thing he’d never been able to give up before: his life.

  From the author of Immortal and Hellenic Immortal comes Immortal at the Edge of the World, the breathtaking conclusion to the best-selling trilogy. Will Adam survive?

  Immortal at the Edge of the World will be available October 2, 2014

  * * *

  Fixer
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  What would you do if you could see into the future?

  As a child, he dreamed of being a superhero. Most people never get to realize their childhood dreams, but Corrigan Bain has come close. He is a fixer. His job is to prevent accidents—to see the future and “fix” things before people get hurt. But the ability to see into the future, however limited, isn’t always so simple. Sometimes not everyone can be saved.

  “Don’t let them know you can see them.”

  Graduate students from a local university are dying, and former lover and FBI agent Maggie Trent is the only person who believes their deaths aren’t as accidental as they appear. But the truth can only be found in something from Corrigan Bain’s past, and he’s not interested in sharing that past, not even with Maggie.

  To stop the deaths, Corrigan will have to face up to some old horrors, confront the possibility that he may be going mad, and find a way to stop a killer no one can see.

  Corrigan Bain is going insane . . . or is he?

  Because there’s something in the future that doesn’t want to be seen. It isn’t human. It’s got a taste for mayhem. And it is very, very angry.

  Buy Fixer

  * * *

  Surviving Hector (a short story)

  “You can call me Hector. Nobody else does, and I only thought of it three seconds ago, so you will not find anything about me by knowing this. It’s better than you with the gun, however.”

  Before leaving work for the weekend, Anita’s boss gave her a file for safekeeping. Now the killer sitting in her bedroom wants the file, and is willing to kill Anita and her wounded, unconscious husband if he doesn’t get it. But if she hands it over, he might kill them anyway.

  Alone, unarmed and dressed for bed, can Anita save her husband and herself? Can she survive Hector?

  Buy Surviving Hector

  * * *

  (as G Doucette)

  Sapphire Blue

  Has Mara lost control, or has it been taken from her?

  Mara Cantor’s life is boring and uncomplicated, and she likes it that way. She has her internship at the museum—a job she shares with her roommate, Davis—and while it is low-paying and occasionally mind-numbing, it gives her all the free time she needs to finish her thesis. And that is just fine.