The Haunted Heist
Page 14
The left side of my body went cold as Frankie sidled up to me. “I’m gonna borrow her for a second, fellas.” He led me away, weaving through tables like he was in a hurry.
“What’s going on?” His tone had changed and I didn’t like it.
Frankie turned and drew so close I feared he’d touch me. “Nobody’s looking at us anymore. We can sneak my gun.”
“Wait. Why do we need to sneak it?” I sidestepped to avoid a drunk flapper swinging her beads. “It is your gun, right?”
“Crazy Louie has it,” Frankie hissed, glancing over his shoulder. “He don’t like to be touched.”
“Darn it all, Frankie,” I started.
“Quiet down. He’s right over there.” Frankie pointed to a table near the bar. A girl in a shiny dress, with pixie-cut hair, sat on it while a guy in a plaid coat stood and lit her cigarette. “His body’s slumped over the table, with the gun in his left front coat pocket.”
I strained to see past the ghosts to the two partially rotted corpses lying on the table. One of them wore the plaid coat.
“Be casual,” Frankie said as I started forward.
Did he hear himself talking? “If I don’t touch his body”—his skeletal, dead body—“I can’t get the gun.”
“Not so loud,” Frankie said, grinning at the gangsters at the next table. They stared at us. “She knows not to lay a mortal hand on anything,” he assured them.
Wait a second. I wasn’t born last Tuesday. I drew closer to him. “You’re going to pretend you don’t know anything about this, and then you’re going to blame me when Crazy Louie’s gun goes missing.”
“Only if they see you,” he said, relaxing a bit as the other gangsters returned their attention to the party. “I want to be able to come back here.”
“Consider this.” I stared up at my hook-nosed, beady-eyed jerk of a friend. “You want me to steal from a dead gangster’s body, thereby angering the man while he stands about two feet away from me with a loaded weapon.” Louie died with the gun and that meant he’d have the ghostly version on him for eternity.
“Exactly,” Frankie said, completely missing my sarcasm. “Everyone will see I didn’t take it. And,” he seemed quite proud to point out, “nobody’s hunting me down later at your house.”
Except for one detail. “What if they hunt me down later at my house?”
He straightened his suit coat collar. “It’s not like you’re going to get caught,” he said, as if it were a logistical impossibility. “And worst-case scenario, if you do jack it up, you won’t be wanting to borrow my power ever again. You can spend your time drawing goofy signs for mortals and we’ll all be happy.”
He didn’t even believe I had a legitimate business.
I edged too close to a fat man and the chippie sitting on his lap and shuddered at the bone-searingly cold wetness that seeped through me as my knee passed through his elbow. He cursed and dropped her.
“Sorry,” I began.
“Move,” Frankie said, urging me forward while the guy was busy picking his date up off the floor.
Darn it all. Frankie had me pegged. Right about now, I was fine with never seeing the other side again. There was only one catch. “I still have to talk to Handsome Henry. Your friend Ice Pick says he’s probably at the cemetery.”
“Fine. I’ll plug you in at the cemetery. I won’t even complain. We’ll do it quick and none of these guys will even notice.”
“Frankie…”
“They don’t even hang out there,” he added. “Besides, you’re not gonna get caught.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the chance. “Unhook me.” We were only a table away. If I wasn’t on the ghostly plane, I’d be safe like Ellis.
Frankie practically snarled. “You throw off sparks when I do that. You don’t want that kind of attention.” Frankie leaned closer. “Do it fast. Do it now and nobody’s gonna shoot you.”
I stood directly in front of the dead mobster’s body. Frankie moved to block me from his view.
“All right.” I could handle this. “Now?” I murmured to my houseguest.
Frankie shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just an innocent bystander.”
Cute.
Stomach tight, I drew closer to the dead body. This wouldn’t be pleasant even without the prospect of getting shot. I braced one hand on the grimy table. Crazy Louie’s bare skull lolled on the table, a gaping hole in the back revealing a dusty mess that I didn’t even want to think about. Bloodstains marred his once-white shirt and the jacket hung in tatters from his bony shoulders.
Think of it like a mannequin.
One with bones and dried-up organs and…
I slipped my hand inside the jacket, hoping I didn’t grab anything gross as I felt gently and found a large lump in his pocket. I reached inside and felt the fragile fabric rip as I closed my hand around the handle of a very real, very deadly gun.
“Don’t touch any of this. It’s a crime scene,” Ellis said, standing over me. Cripes. It wasn’t like I could tell him about the gun, not at the moment, anyway.
Louie turned to look at us, as did his girlfriend, the man next to her, and a dozen more gangsters.
I felt the heat of their stares as I drew my hand slowly out of Louie’s pocket. Surely these guys wouldn’t fault a girl for stealing what wasn’t Louie’s anyway. “It’s not like we can call the police.” I tried to chuckle, and failed.
Without missing a beat, Ellis cocked his head. “I am the police.”
A chorus of metallic clicking echoed through the bar as every gangster in the place drew his gun and pointed it at Ellis’s head.
But they weren’t looking at me.
I grabbed Louie’s gun.
“Get ’em!” Louie hollered.
Dozens of gangsters opened fire on Ellis, their bullets passing straight through him. The wiseguys dropped like flies in their own crossfire.
A chair crashed to the floor and the ghost of Crazy Louie staggered for me.
I jerked to the side and the jacket tore. The body lurched and Louie’s head fell off.
“Gaaah!” Louie scrambled for his head, which he couldn’t hope to catch because he couldn’t touch it.
I ducked under the table. Of course I’d never start a mob fight or knock off Louie’s head on purpose, but that didn’t stop the insane gangster from pulling a revolver and pointing it straight at me.
Frankie tackled him with a head to the stomach, and he went down, his shot going wild just as I realized he’d shot at me. Shot at me!
My bag went flying, sending Frankie’s urn skittering across the floor, and someone yelled, “Bar fight!”
The Irish started firing in the back. The band struck up “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” And the fat gangster next to me smiled and plugged Frankie in the head just as he was standing up to yell at me about his urn.
The bullet hit Frankie square between the eyes and he went down.
Then a bullet whizzed straight past my left ear. I had to move. Now.
A girl with a feather in her hair kneed the fat gangster in the groin and he collapsed to the floor near me, still smoking his cigar as he fired his gun up at somebody.
I crawled to Frankie. “Turn your power off!” He lay on the floor, not moving with his eyes wide open. Two round bullet holes now marred his forehead. “Frankie!” I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Wake up!”
A bullet hit the floor next to me, throwing up biting shards of concrete, and I stared in horror down the yawning barrel of Crazy Louie’s ghost gun.
“Verity!” Ellis passed straight through the gangster, startling him.
“Wave your arms,” I pleaded. Bless the man—he did it without question and nailed Crazy Louie. The gangster cursed and dropped his ghostly revolver.
I scrambled for it and got it before he did, feeling the rush of power and the cold steel against my skin. Now I had a gun in each hand. A ghostly one in my right and a real one in my left. I made a break fo
r the urn, passing through two cowering flappers under the next table.
“Why you little—” Crazy Louie drew another gun, so I shot him in the leg with his ghostly gun. I felt the kickback reverberate up my arms as he cussed and went down.
I felt awful that I’d shot a man on purpose, even if he was already dead. I was also a bit surprised I’d actually hit him. I barely knew how to shoot, and here I stood double-fisted in a mob fight.
I found Frankie’s urn under the next table and shoved it into my bag, along with the real gun.
Ellis ran straight through Frankie’s motionless body and pulled me to my feet. “Let’s go!” he said, half-dragging me in a full-out haul for the front door.
He cut a path through the ghosts like Moses through the Red Sea while I ran next to him, out of breath and scared to death I could go down at any second.
We plowed through the velvet curtain and made a mad dash down the passageway.
“We clear?” Ellis barked.
“No!” I stumbled over debris in the tunnel. Gleeful shouts rang behind us.
I took the ladder first, climbing for my life with Ellis right behind me.
Classic cars parked five deep in the yard. I dodged past Packards and Model Ts, not willing to risk the consequences of running into them, while Ellis on the mortal plane plowed through them all.
We dashed alongside the old distillery building, and I hollered for him to run faster when I heard the engines starting up behind us.
I jumped into his Jeep, tossing my bag with Frankie’s urn onto the floor, along with the real revolver, which hit the floor and went off.
“Be careful!” Ellis snapped.
“I didn’t know it was loaded!” I bit back. Cripes. Of course it was loaded, it was in Crazy Louie’s pocket. Why would Crazy Louie carry around an unloaded gun? I aimed my ghostly gun out the side window as Ellis started the car.
These guys had been insane when they were alive, and now killing was some sort of a game to them. Except as long as I held Frankie’s power, their shoot-’em-up antics could actually kill me.
“Unload it!” Ellis ordered.
“I am! I am!” I shouted. “Just drive!”
We sped away.
I placed the ghostly gun on the dashboard and dug the real one out of my bag. I struggled to unload it with shaking fingers. At least three pairs of headlights bounced up the grassy area we’d just abandoned.
Ellis peeled out of the distillery, and my ghostly revolver slid down the dashboard.
The gangsters started firing.
A shot flew straight through his back window and whizzed past my ear, out the front of the car. “Sweet Jesus!” I dropped the mortal revolver and the bullets onto the floor of the car and grabbed the only weapon I could use off the dash.
A Packard rode our back bumper, two guys leaning out the side with handguns, whooping and grinning like they were riding the Rockin’ Roller Coaster at Disney World.
I fired at the front left tire and missed. I saw the flash of their guns as they returned fire, and felt the bullets whiz past.
I ducked, too late and uselessly anyway. The bullets could pass straight through the mortal car and end me.
“Hold on.” Ellis stomped on the gas, flying down the narrow two-lane country road.
The car behind us swung into the oncoming lane, and for a second, I thought the driver had lost control. But no, he quickly passed and pulled in front of us.
Then a second car pulled up the side. Dime Store Bobby leaned out the front passenger window, waving at me with a wild grin as somebody handed him a Tommy gun.
Oh my Lord. “Don’t shoot!” I called.
I fought down a wave of panic and fired at him, taking a straight shot, right through Ellis.
“What the—?” He stiffened and swerved like I’d dropped an ice cube down his back.
I fired again. Missed. I pulled the trigger again and my gun clicked. I was out of bullets.
Bobby laughed and aimed his Tommy gun directly at me.
Chapter 16
Dime Store Bobby actually smiled as he took aim at my head.
“Ellis!” I pointed and ducked.
Ellis slammed on the brakes and the car carrying Bobby shot out in front of us. The Jeep whipped to the left and I banged my head on the dash as we went careening off road, straight into a fallow cotton field still tangled with the remains of last year’s harvest.
I scrambled to see out the Jeep’s cloudy soft-top back window, where three pairs of headlights turned around and left the road to follow us.
They weren’t giving up until I was dead.
“Frankie!” I called.
No response.
I had his urn. He had to be…somewhere nearby.
“My Jeep was made for this,” Ellis gritted out.
That was well and good, but it couldn’t stop a ghost bullet.
“Tree!” I gasped. Ellis’s high beams caught a large trunk straight ahead.
“I see it.” He remained completely focused, whizzing past it and dropping us down straight into a creek. Water flew up on either side of us and I couldn’t see. I didn’t know where the gangsters were.
We bounced up the bank and I squinted through the glistening water clinging to the back window. The glare of headlights bore down on us. I could almost hear the guns cocking.
Shots erupted and I ducked again, but I didn’t feel bullets whiz past. And when I craned to see out the back, the headlights had faded. “I think they’re losing power.” Or maybe I was. It was the only explanation.
Ellis refused to take his eyes off the road. “Hang on.”
He steered us through a fallow wheat field and past a barn before we came out on the Old Mill Road near where he grew up.
Unbelievable. “I can’t believe I’m not dead. Do you realize how many times they shot at us?”
“I’m hard to kill,” Ellis said, making a sharp turn down another side road. I didn’t think the ghosts were following, but I suppose it paid to be extra careful.
“That was some amazing driving.”
“Told you I was a good date,” Ellis said, steering us toward the highway and home.
“Sinatra, candles, and now this.” I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“You didn’t even get to taste the dinner.”
At least I knew now that we’d be trying it again.
I propped my elbow on the windowsill and stared at the scenery flashing by. My brain was a mess. I kept seeing ghostly buffalo out the window—entire herds of them moving alongside the road. And just when I’d accepted the buffalo, they faded and we zipped past a group of men on horseback. They wore fancy chest armor and helmets that looked exactly like the kind Spanish explorers wore.
I hoped Crazy Louie wasn’t contagious.
We drove past the diner and I saw a Native American encampment in the parking lot, complete with a bonfire and old men smoking long-stemmed clay pipes. I didn’t understand any of this.
Frankie’s power usually left me when I removed myself from a property, but now it flowed freely, if erratically. I wondered what that meant, if Frankie lay dying for real, bleeding his power into me.
Ellis remained focused on the road and didn’t slow until we neared my home.
“I lost my gun,” I said, searching the seat next to me, unable to find the ghostly revolver. Ghostly objects never stuck around long after I touched them. It seemed this one had disappeared as well.
“The real gun is right next to the hole you made in my floorboard,” Ellis remarked.
Sure enough, Crazy Louie’s gun lay black and deadly beside a gaping bullet hole in the rubber floor runner. “Sorry about that.”
He hazarded a glance at me. “Are you all right? What happened back there?”
No doubt I looked a mess.
“They didn’t let us go easily,” I said, eyes trained on his dash. I was afraid to look out the window anymore. I didn’t want to think about my mishandling of a deadly firearm.
It seemed my gangster friend couldn’t dodge a bullet to save his afterlife.
“We need to get him home,” I told Ellis. The lid was gone. I rooted around in my bag. Then I took everything out. “No,” I gasped. I’d lost it. It was probably under a table at the speakeasy. This was really bad. I drew a hand to my mouth as the horror of it sank in. “We might have spilled Frankie out in the speakeasy.” Maybe that was why his power faded when we got too far away. “We could have left him behind with a bunch of murderous thugs.”
Of course, those were also his friends, but still…
“Breathe.” Ellis turned into the long driveway that led to my house. “We’ll take it one step at a time.”
That was easy for him to say. He hadn’t dumped his friend’s ashes out. Again.
Would Frankie be trapped in both places?
Was that even possible?
Ellis parked out front, and once he shut the car down, he gently took Frankie’s urn from me. “Let me see.” He hazarded a glance at me, the light casting shadows over his features. Then he clicked on his light and shone it inside. I held my breath as he examined it closely. “Looks like there’s a big chunk of dirt on the upper left curve of the urn.”
I felt the fist in my chest ease just a bit. “That’s good.”
“Plus some more dust at the bottom.” He clicked off the light and took my hand. “You did everything you could back there. You stood up to the mob for him.”
“I hope it’s enough.”
Now that we were home, I simply wanted to go to bed. Or cry. Maybe both. I’d shot a man tonight. My bullet wouldn’t kill Louie, but I’d still pulled the trigger and felt a thrill when I took him down. Frankie had been trying to drag me into a life of crime for as long as I’d known him, and it turned out he didn’t need to ride me about it. He just needed to put his afterlife on the line and I’d start shooting. What kind of person did that make me?