Spirits of the Charles

by Paul C. K. Spears

  He scowled, and his Caribbean accent crept in around the edge of his words. “I did what I had t’do. Nothing more.”

  “And you did it for me. I appreciate that.” She reached out, to caress his cheek. At the same time she caressed his jealousy, trying to soothe it with her power. “But that doesn’t mean I belong to you.”

  “Never said you did.” To her surprise, she couldn’t get a grip on him. He didn’t bend or break, under her will—he simply ignored her. His emotions couldn’t be Twisted at all. “And I don’t belong to you. You can stop trying to use the gift on me, girl.” He pronounced it ‘gel.’ “It’s not going to work.”

  “I…” She pulled away, as his anger blossomed into a dark and complex network of pressurized frustrations. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

  He crossed over to her, sitting on the desk. “Rose, it ain’t my place to tell you what to do. How to live your life.” His hand fell on hers. “But I can’t have you going back to this business. You got good work to do, in this world. You’re important.”

  She pulled her hand away. “You sound like the Soldiers. I’m nobody—just a swamp girl, who ran away.”

  “That ain’t true. You got the Twist for a reason. And that reason wasn’t to pull jobs for Gus god-damned Henderson.” She tried to gauge his face, normally so distant. He was angry, but there was concern there too. And fear. He was afraid for her—not without reason. Since the Atlantic, she’d tried to stay out of trouble, knowing hell that waited for her in the underbelly of this city.

  But Lucas couldn’t protect her from it. Not anymore.

  “Look… Gus threatened me, Lucas. He’s never talked to me like that before.” She shook her head. “Something’s up with him. If I do this job… if I find this ‘competitor’ he’s got, maybe I can talk to him. Find out what’s wrong.”

  “Why do you care what happens to that Scottish prick?”

  “Because he’s my friend! And don’t have many left. Besides… I owe him. He got the Wallace boys off my back. I just… never thought he’d cash me in like a fucking poker chip.”

  She turned to the window. The sun was climbing rapidly, heating the room past the frail defense of the electric fan; summer was coming early. Rose felt sweat beading on her forehead. She was afraid to ask what Lucas was thinking, afraid to touch the curling path of his thoughts. She’d never cared what other people thought of her before; she’d never allowed herself to. Now that she had, she remembered why she’d made herself distant in the first place. Intimacy was ugly, no matter what happy fantasy it projected onto the world. She didn’t like having her happiness pivot in sync with someone else’s. It felt too much like being a puppet.

  Finally, Lucas spoke. “If you go…”

  “I’m going.”

  “It’ll set in motion things you can’t control. Things you can’t Twist better.” He wiped sweat from his brow. “Something bad’s coming, to this city. I’ve prayed and prayed about it, but it’s still coming.” To her shock, he began to weep—quietly. “I can’t stop it, Rose.”

  “Lucas…” She pulled him close. They’d never understood each other, not really, but that didn’t stop her caring about him. “Come on. It’s not always up to you—you ain’t God.” She kissed him on the temple, the salty taste of his sweat coming away on her lips. “I’ve gotta get my things together. If Gus calls, tell him I’ll do the job.”

  Lucas sighed. “You watch yourself, around him. That man’s lost himself.”

  “Yeah… I suppose he has.” She heard a distant, thrumming growl in the distance, like an enormous angry hornet. They both paused, listening.

  “The hell is that?”

  Something red struck the window. Rose jumped; her mind leapt back to the Atlantic and its floor slick with blood. But this wasn’t blood: it was a swatch of red paper, stuck to the glass in the rising humidity. Another fell, and another, tumbling past in flickers of crimson.

  The two of them went out the back, into the street. The howl of the airplane passing was now strong enough to shake pollen from the church steeple and frighten pigeons from their roosts. People were emerging from their Sunday stupor, crowding the sidewalks and looking up with wonder and fascination.

  Rose didn’t see the plane, but she saw the papers: dozens of them, flipping down from the sky. Like a snowfall of crimson blades.

  “Maybe it’s Lindbergh,” said Lucas. He’d wiped the tears from his eyes, and was back to his usual soft-spoken self.

  “He’s not making that flight for weeks.” Rose had followed the news with fascination; the concept of flight attracted and scared her. “This is somebody else. Army, maybe?”

  Lucas pointed. “I don’t think so.”

  They caught sight of the craft. It was a rickety biplane, scraped together from Great War parts, with an unsteady flight-path and a trail of smoky exhaust. A masked man in the cockpit was hurling bundles of red paper out of the cockpit. He banked north towards Back Bay, passing out of sight behind the tall brownstones.

  Planes were not uncommon over Boston, but they were mostly smugglers or commercial flights. It took balls to pull a stunt like this, right over the rooftops—especially with the National Guard on alert.

  Red papers littered the sidewalk, clogging drains and obscuring windows. A horse at the curb whinnied and stamped as it was showered by fluttering debris. Rose knelt in the middle of the street to examine the papers.

  They were anarchist leaflets.

  INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

  SMASH THE OPPRESSIVE, CAPITALIST FILTH!!!

  JOIN US AT THE JOHN ADAMS COURTHOUSE, AND DEMAND FREEDOM!

  FREEDOM FOR CARLA PONZI, MARTYR OF THE CAUSE!!!

  THERE WILL BE FREEDOM, OR THERE WILL BE BLOOD!!!

  “Maybe we ought to go inside,” Lucas said.

  “It’s just one nut with a plane. If they wanted to drop bombs, they would have done it.” She tore up the leaflet. “I don’t understand. These creeps are obsessed with Ponzi. She’s just a scammer—why are they in her corner?”

  “Anger’s powerful.” Lucas watched the leaflets blow down the street. “There are thousands of Italians, in this city. You lock one up, call her a Bolshevik, threaten to electrocute her… It doesn’t matter how many people she’s fooled. Blood is blood.”

  She watched confused neighbors wander back into their homes, faces pale and frightful. Police arrived and began sweeping up the papers, which coated the pavement like a scarlet fungus. The distant drone of the plane dissipated, leaving behind a silence punctured only by car engines and the clang of church-bells.

  There was something unsettling about the timing: first Gus had called her, and now the Soldiers had mobilized again. Were the two connected? She had no way of knowing. Once she finished the job for Gus, though, she was washing her hands of all of it. She’d wanted so badly to believe her peace could last, that the underworld she’d lived in wouldn’t drag her back down into itself. She’d been naïve.

  She had too much blood on her hands, to ever know peace.

  CHAPTER 5

  CARLA WAS IN THE mess hall, eating by herself, when the big woman came to kill her.

  The slop they served at Suffolk was barely food: cold beans in brown water with some kind of pork-mush left over from the canneries. She was forcing it down, trying to get used to her new digs. They’d moved her back to her old stomping grounds, and things were much worse here. At least in Connecticut, few people had known who she was—except for Jacob. She’d considered reporting him, but even admitting she’d talked to an anarchist would looked bad. So she kept her mouth shut, and let them shuttle her around, passing the buck. And she waited.

  The waiting ended when a heavy hand came down on her mouth, another looping a twisted length of cloth around her neck. The cloth had been coiled into a rope, and when it crushed her windpipe Carla thought, Well, it’s about time.

  She’d known this was coming, but she’d let her guard down. Stupid. She braced her foot a
gainst the edge of the cafeteria table and pushed, trying to knock her attacker back—but the bitch wasn’t moving. So she twisted and kicked, first at the ample stomach, then at the groin.

  She’d never been a powerhouse; she was too small. But when her heel found the woman’s knee, there was a muffled pop and the red-haired, snarling bitch went down to one knee. The other convicts began to gather round: there was blood in the water.

  The rope was off Carla’s throat. She had a choice: cut and run, or take the advantage. She knew exactly how this would go if she backed down—there would be another attempt after this one, and another if that one failed. So she took her cafeteria tray, and smashed the woman across the face with it.

  It was a light, panicked blow and didn’t carry much momentum. But the message was clear. The woman sat stunned for a moment, and then punched Carla so hard in the nose she flew back on the table, bean-juice soaking her convict’s dress. Blood squirted from her nostrils, clogging her throat.

  “Anarchist… bitch.” The big woman was getting up. Carla wanted to do something, but she couldn’t seem to move; there were lights flashing in her eyes, her face was numb, and there was nowhere to go anyway—a ring of blank-faced women had surrounded them. So she rolled onto her side, curling up against further blows.

  Whistles sounded. Guards began pummeling their way through ranks of inmates. The woman came at her again, and Carla lashed out at her with a foot. It didn’t slow her down.

  She wrapped her hands round Carla’s throat. Smashed against the table, Carla felt the scar-tissue on her back begin to crawl with pain. It had always bothered her at the worst possible moments, ever since she’d given a skin transplant to a mining camp nurse decades ago. To this day, she didn’t know why. Bleeding heart, I guess. She brought up her hands, fingernails digging into the woman’s eyes.

  “Anarchist bitch—your bombs killed my husband!”

  “I… don’t… care!” She pushed her fingers into the woman’s sockets, horrified by her savagery but unable to stop. Her attacker’s eyeballs felt like warm, skinned grapes. She couldn’t breathe. Her lungs clenched and her heart pummeled her ribs. The universe blackened around her, like a burning piece of paper, slowly crumbling.

  A club bashed the woman in the head, and she went down. Air rushed mercifully into Carla’s lungs, and she thanked God her windpipe hadn’t been crushed. Crazy… this is crazy. I’m a woman of means… I’m high society. I shouldn’t even be here…

  They were hauled apart. Carla felt the sting of heavy bruises on her neck, and allowed herself to be taken away. They were going to put her in solitary again, and her only regret was not getting more bites before they hurled her into a freezing cement hole.

  It ain’t fair. I never wanted to hurt nobody. But now she did. Yes, she wanted to hurt these people very much. Anger had sparked in her, overriding her Catholic upbringing and whatever lasting streaks of charity she might’ve had. These rubes had screwed her over in Canada, in Virginia, and now in Boston. Whenever she tried to just get a leg up or make a little cash, they were always ready to slap her down—remind her who the big bosses were. The time for protest and silence was over.

  That night, when a new Soldier came to whisper promises in her ear, she took the deal. They shook on it in the dark, after spitting on their hands. They were bonded, and a new chapter in her life began.

  I’ll teach them to take my Ronnie from me.

  I’ll show them all.

  CHAPTER 6

  MICK HAD CLAWED his way back into consciousness sometime in November, the bulbs of Faulkner Hospital burning at his eyes. He was in Jamaica Plain--he could see the Pond out the window. Out there the sky was blue, the snow was falling… And he was alive. What a terrible thing to be.

  Because being alive meant being in withdrawal.

  It’d been weeks since Mick’s last hit of morphine, and he hit a fever-state of relapse immediately. His thoughts grew spotty. Grabbing at a nurse’s arm, he tried to beg for a hit, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Things went downhill from there.

  His goose-bumps, dilated pupils and bowel movements led them to separate him from the others. They administered water and tiny doses of morphine to keep him from choking on vomit as his body went mad. Being conscious was such a horror at first that he begged to die. His stab wounds festered; his bruises and broken bones screamed at him, day and night. The wheelchair had shielded him from the shrapnel, but he hadn’t avoided being pummeled by the shockwave, and his thin frame was nearly shattered. All this agony, without a drop of morphine, bred madness in him.

  Weeks crawled by, burning, steeping him in humiliation. He did not mark the months as they passed, only the differing sensations of pain as his wounds scabbed over and were reopened as he frantically picked at them. At last the itches and the desires began to fade away, the torture easing. He was breaking free.

  He thought about asking for Draughts, but some fragment of sanity kept him from stooping so low. He didn’t need to trade one set of horrors for another. No, he was determined to come back from death a smarter man, if not a healthier one. Besides, if he’d been smarter, he wouldn’t have fucked up in the first place.

  He tried to forgive himself. But it was hard. His attempt to kill Baxter had been borne of patriotism and desperation—there’d been no other way to bring the man down. He’d considered calling the cops, but the Angel had chopped his way out of ambushes before. Bombs were the only way.

  And he’d screwed it up.

  The foreman’s office had gone off the cliff and into the quarry, just as he’d planned. But the majority of the dynamite charges had failed, and the building didn’t disintegrate—just tumbled off the cliff like a child’s toy. Mick and Baxter had been thrown against walls, furniture, floors, and all the while Baxter’s knife had been bleeding Mick like a stuck pig. It didn’t seem possible that either of them should be alive. Baxter certainly wasn’t—a stray wooden beam had cleaved his head off. He was no more.

  As he sweated and trembled his way back to health, Mick demanded newspapers. He read about the bloodshed, the Carnage attack, Buda’s death, the Mayor’s resignation. The police jumped him as soon as he was lucid. At first he was a suspect, for obstructing justice: he should have come to them, first. Why hadn’t he come to them?

  He couldn’t make them understand. The Soldiers were everywhere, they had ears in every corner. He couldn’t mobilize the cops, not when they themselves might be compromised.

  He felt bad, keeping information from them. He hadn’t forgotten he was a cop, once. The strike back in ’18 had taken his job and his respect, but the tie of the uniform was still strong. He felt like shit deceiving men he should be helping. But he’d had no conclusive proof of the Soldiers’ existence… just rumors and hunches. And only one person had believed him

  Sylvester, you poor bastard.

  They wouldn’t tell him what had happened to the journalist’s head. The cops he asked about it had shared an ugly look, and changed the subject. He wasn’t sure if this was typical stone-walling, or if there was something else going on. Some other investigation. He suspected that Baxter hadn’t been the one to kill Sylvester—how had he committed a murder, left a huge mess and then gotten all the way to Quincy? No, the other Soldiers were responsible. Which meant that they still had the advantage of numbers. He had to tread carefully.

  Eventually, the cops concluded he wasn’t worth their time. As a form of “severance pay,” his charges for blowing up half of Quincy Quarry were ‘addressed’ by the Pinkerton Agency, out court. Now he was just a fixture of Faulkner Hospital, tucked away and tended by doctors he couldn’t afford. A nobody, forgotten.

  He felt useless, but at least the worst was over. At least he’d done something. With the Angel on their side, the Soldiers would have killed many more. Perhaps everyone in the building. He might be useless, but he’d made a difference… at the cost of turning into a vegetable.

  In May, the nurse told the vegetable he had a
visitor.

  “Tell them to come back. I’m working on… something.” His hands belonged to him again, and he was furiously scribbling in a notebook—trying to match radio reports of anarchist movements to the remaining Soldiers. The plane dropping leaflets, today… that was a bad sign. They were getting bolder again. This war wasn’t over; it was just changing shape. He had to be ready.

  Nancy scoffed. “He won’t take a ‘no,’ Mr. Vance.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Says he’s a friend.” She pulled a hundred-dollar bill from her apron, holding it like a dead rat. “He gave me this, when I told him to buzz off.”

  Vance sighed. “Did he show up in a nice car?”

  “Yep.”

  “Really big, nice suit? Covered in scales?”

  “That’s the guy.”

  Mick put down his notebook. “I’ll talk to him.”

  He heard the stairs creaking before Gus arrived. His friend had always been a big man; they’d called him “Greedy Gus” for his appetite in boot camp, before war had shaved off the extra weight and boxing grew him into a brick of a man. He’d been strong, very strong—Mick had seen him kill a Hun with a single punch, right to the temple. The stories they’d told about that fight… But this wasn’t the same man. This was a new Gus Henderson.

  Nearly seven feet of hideous lizard-person ducked under the doorjamb, followed by two burly men who looked like children next to him. Gus was dressed in a knit tie, Oxford-bag trousers, and a tight-waisted jacket—all tailored for his enormous size. Over the ensemble was draped a racoon coat, so huge it looked like half the raccoons in America had died for it.

  His friend’s face was a mess. Where once rosy cheeks and flinty eyes had sat, topped by bushy black eyebrows and undercut by a beard, now his skull was a stretched monster’s mug with heavy jaws and flaring nostrils. Sharp teeth glimmered behind his lips, and a lit cigar dangled from his maw.