by Johnny Shaw
“As Merlin has little use for your Terran dollars,” Merlin said, “you must conform to the traditions of the Underneath. The universal currency of information. Floodgate’s greatest commodity has historically been the hidden knowledge that you possess about the people of the city. Merlin requires a secret. Give Merlin a wonderful secret, and my flock will take you back to the Overneath.”
“You’ve got to quit calling it that,” Andy said.
Rocco ignored Andy and nodded. “One secret.”
“As is the way of our kind,” Merlin said. “A very special secret.”
Rocco thought for a moment.
Merlin leaned toward Andy, not quite whispering, “For clarification, only half of Merlin’s children are cannibals. It’s a personal choice and an acquired taste.”
“I got it,” Rocco said. “I will tell you something that nobody but a select group knows.”
“That sounds like a very special secret,” Merlin said.
“Andy is my son.”
Merlin stared at him for a moment. “Who gives a shit?” he said, dropping character and then catching himself. “I mean, Merlin does not accept this inconsequential secret in exchange for safe passage. Merlin will have the hungry prepare the stewing cauldron.”
Rocco pointed at Andy. “He is also the man that killed Aloysius Gray.”
Andy looked to Rocco quickly. He hadn’t forgotten. He just wasn’t prepared to have one of his co-conspirators confess his crime to a complete stranger and his human ant farm. Especially his father.
“If true, that stands as very special.” Merlin turned to Andy and leaned in close. His breath stank, a combination of sardines and more sardines. “How does Merlin know the veracity of this statement? The gazettes above claimed some manner of sneak thief orchestrated Gray’s demise. You appear not as one prone to the burgle.”
“That’s the thing about secrets,” Rocco said. “They’re different than the story everyone else hears. It’s what makes them secrets.”
Merlin turned to him and nodded, and then back to Andy. “How did the late policeman die? Did you plunge a stake through the old man’s heart?”
“Shot him,” Andy coughed out. “I shot him.”
“The banality of powder weapons,” Merlin said. “Such an unremarkable way to vacate this plane.”
“It was an accident. There was a confrontation.”
“Do not do that,” Merlin said. “Do not minimize it. You killed a man. An irreparable act. Yet a solemn one. Respect the man—your victim—enough to make his end an apologue. One with a moral and a lesson and worth. Every death deserves to be a parable of sorts.”
“Does it?” Andy asked.
“Good enough secret?” Rocco asked, anxiousness in his voice. “Does that get us out of here?”
Merlin gave Andy a final stare. Very deliberately, he touched Andy, Rocco, and Kate on both shoulders, holding his hand on each for a full second. He stated with formal authority, “Merlin commands safe passage.”
The crowd hummed agreement. Merlin walked back in the direction he had come. “I bid you all a fond valediction.”
“How do we get back?” Rocco asked.
“My flock will take you. Merlin has spoken.”
One by one, the crowd broke the circle and jumped onto the train tracks, heading into the dark tunnel.
In the short time they had been in the Underneath, the streets above had grown thicker with pedestrian traffic. Fires and looting had broken out along Benchley Boulevard and the rest of downtown. Broken glass littered the sidewalk where store windows had been shattered. Looters ran in and out of stores carrying all manner of goods.
The only visible police presence were three cops who did their best to clear a gang of looters out of a stereo store. At gunpoint, they forced the men and women to leave empty-handed. With the looters rousted, the policemen got their shopping done, loading turntables and equalizers into the trunk of their squad car. When the store owner rushed out and tried to stop them, he was severely beaten.
The sun had set. The few working streetlights gave little illumination. Scattered fires provided additional light, giving the urban landscape a hellish patina. Even with the fires, most of the city lived in shadow.
The strange underground mob had led Rocco, Andy, and Kate along the tracks and up a series of ladders, and finally they loaded them into a sidewalk lift. The small elevator surfaced in a downtown alley. Two tall brick buildings on either side, walls tagged with graffiti that spoke a secret language.
Kate sat on a milk crate, catching her breath. She pulled out her cigarettes, squeezing the water out of them and throwing the pack to the ground. Andy and Rocco eyed the street from the alley.
“So,” Andy said. “Are we going to talk about Merlin and everything that happened down there?”
“He developed a shtick. It’s an effective defense,” Rocco said. “Crazy gets left alone. The more people think they’re cannibals or monsters or ghouls, the safer they are.”
Kate’s head dipped. She caught it and sat back.
“She looks rough,” Andy said. “Saint Vitus is the closest hospital, but it’s a dozen blocks.”
“Hospitals are going to be overloaded. We set Kate up with a bed in the candy factory. Pull a croaker. Get the biggest guns we got. Hit that safe house. End this.”
“That’s a hell of a to-do list. I don’t even know what ‘pull a croaker’ means,” Andy said. “None of that stops the rioting.”
“Nothing stops rioting, son. Consolidated will guard certain assets, friends, but the city’s going to burn a little.”
“That’s depressing,” Andy said.
Kate tried to stand but fell forward. Andy caught her before she hit the ground.
“How you doing, Katie?” Rocco said.
“I’m fine,” she mumbled with a grin. “Never better.”
“Time to get back to work.” Rocco marched to the street and smashed the window of the first parked vehicle he came across. Andy helped Kate to the Chevy Suburban and set her down in the backseat. He brushed the broken glass off the front seat and got in himself.
Rocco fiddled with the ignition. He glanced up at Andy. “Those subterranean weirdoes left us unarmed. Check the glove box for a gun.”
“Are you serious?”
“How long have you lived in Auction City?” Rocco said.
Andy opened the glove compartment. Sure enough, a small snub-nosed revolver sat among registration and insurance papers and about ten thousand ballpoint pens.
“It’ll do,” Rocco said.
He pulled the wide ride onto the street. The density of the traffic and crowd kept them to a crawl. The Suburban crept through the mass of people moving at a snail’s pace with the rest of the cars.
Angry drivers honked. Heads stuck out windows, swearing and yelling. A cabbie got out of his taxi to have a debate with the car behind him. The debate included a tire iron to the hood. Andy gave the cabbie an edge in that argument.
“This isn’t working,” Rocco said, turning the wheel and hopping onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians jumped out of the way as he barreled past the stalled cars. At the first intersection, he slowed and turned hard right, clipping a newspaper rack but staying on the sidewalk. Pedestrians turned wide-eyed as the Suburban accelerated toward them.
“What is it with you guys and driving on the sidewalk?” Andy asked, stiff-arming the dashboard and waiting for some kind of inevitable impact.
“It’s a nice night for a drive through the park,” Rocco said. He was having a little too much fun. Andy saw Redling Park four blocks ahead. How many people could they run over in that short distance?
He was about to find out. Two men carried a couch out of a shattered department store window. Rocco rode the horn to warn them. The men turned in time for one of them to get hit and the other pushed against the wall by the spinning couch. Rocco didn’t even slow down.
“You just hit that guy,” Andy said.
“He can sleep it
off on his new couch.”
The Suburban reached the park without driving through another person, but not for lack of trying.
“Slow down,” Andy said, seeing the concrete stairs that led down to the bike paths.
The grade was steep. They were going too fast. A second later they were airborne. The roughness of the road gave way to a feeling of weightlessness.
Rocco turned to Andy. “See. That wasn’t so bad.”
Then they landed. The Suburban hit the center of the staircase, bucking and tipping to the side. Andy and Rocco banged their heads on the ceiling. Kate bounced and slid around in the backseat, but luckily she was out.
On two wheels and an angle, the Suburban violently thumped down the slope. Rocco turned the steering wheel in a ridiculous effort to gain control, but that’s not how science worked. It did about as much good as a kid yanking one of those steering wheels on a shopping cart.
At the bottom, the truck landed on its tires, bounced twice, and came to a stop. Andy and Rocco stared straight ahead.
Rocco smiled. “You were right. I’m going to admit it. When you’re right, you’re right. I took that grade too fast. You live, you learn. Next time, it’ll be smoother.”
“Right,” Andy said. “Next time.”
Rocco stepped on the gas and drove down the bike path, heading for the riverfront and their secret candy factory criminal consortium headquarters.
CHAPTER 30
A man’s got to have morals. A code of ethics. Without ’em, we’re nothing but animals. I might be a hood, but I ain’t no traitor.
—«John “Jackie Bazooka” Benini, suspected capo of the Furgele criminal family on his role in assisting federal investigators in the apprehension of a group of fraudsters selling counterfeit war bonds (1943)
Rocco slowly drove past a woman wearing what looked like a prom dress. Her black hair stood at sharp angles, hair-sprayed into a fan at the front. Old knife wounds scarred her face in a crisscross. She held a shotgun in plain view. Between the hair, the dress, and the shotgun, there was no doubt she was ready to party.
The woman squinted into the windshield of the Suburban. Rocco gave her a nod. She nodded back. One block later, they passed another of Pilar’s army. The serene confidence of the women gave Andy chills.
The rollup gate into the factory opened as they approached. Agnes held the chain and waved them inside. Before they’d rolled to a stop, Agnes had the Suburban’s back door open.
“It’s a nice surprise to see that you’re not dead,” Agnes said. “Sheila said the building next to her brothel collapsed. That you were in a tunnel beneath it.”
“Is Sheila okay?” Rocco asked.
“She took a bullet from one of the Wells brothers, but will be fine.”
“You get a doctor?” Rocco asked.
Agnes gently picked up the unconscious Kate from the backseat and carried her through the factory toward the back rooms. Rocco and Andy followed close behind.
“Borrowed one,” Agnes said over her shoulder.
She carried Kate into the long hallway and past the room where Andy had been held when he’d first arrived. It was hard to believe that it had been only that morning.
“Come on,” Rocco said, giving Andy a light slap on the back and then steering him toward the open factory floor. “Agnes and the doc will make sure she’s okay. We got a raid to prep for.”
Pilar had organized an arsenal of weapons displayed on the long table in front of her, from knives to guns and back again. Next to her a stocky woman with a liar’s scar running from the side of her mouth to almost her ear pumped shells into a pump-action shotgun.
“You’re alive,” Pilar said. “I owe Agnes ten bucks.”
“You should know by now,” Rocco said. “It’ll take more than a collapsing building to kill me.”
“This is Mirna,” Pilar said. “Soon as the bombs went off, I got all the girls together. They’re ready for battle. Just point us in the right direction.”
Rocco gave her the rundown. Ben’s death and Kate’s injury. The brothel siege, the tunnels, and the Underneath. Finally the location of the safe house where the remaining escaped convicts were hopefully still holed up.
“What was the damage from the bombs and fires?” Rocco asked.
“Church got blown to hell, but Mac is safe. A bunch got killed, though. Some lieutenants in 893. CFO of the Trust. Everyone got hit hard. The leaders themselves got out. Should be at the Fortress by now.”
“Time we hit back,” Rocco said.
“If six men died in the prison fire,” Andy said, counting on his fingers, “you got one, Cemetery Joe, locked up here. Pretty sure that grenade took out the Wells brothers in the tunnel. Leaves us three: Hopewell, the Hawaiian bomber, and the Thief River Killer.”
“And the Thorntons. That clan is a whole ’nother ball of shit,” Rocco said, picking up a revolver and checking the cartridges.
“Can’t I live with the fantasy for five minutes that we’re just after three psychopaths instead of a whole army of them?” Andy said. “The safe house is still the primary target, right?”
“Listen to him,” Pilar said, smiling. “‘Primary target.’”
“It is, right?” Andy asked. “Those three convicts want me dead. The sooner we stop them, the sooner this day is over and I get a good night’s sleep. So someone, give me a goddamn gun and let me shoot some people.”
“While I like the enthusiasm,” Pilar said, “I ain’t going nowhere with you two until you take a shower and change your clothes. You both smell like shit.”
Andy smelled his shirt. “That’s probably from the shit.”
Of course they had a room devoted to costumes and disguises. What self-respecting criminal organization wouldn’t? Although Andy was hard-pressed to figure out what the pirate costume could be used for, beyond normal pirating applications.
Andy and Rocco flipped through the hangers, looking at the dark suits and holding them up against themselves. He felt like a kid getting fitted to be a ring bearer at a wedding.
“Some of these suits go all the way back to the Flood,” Rocco said. He held up a baggy pinstripe suit that looked like every movie gangster’s outfit. Andy was tempted to take it from him and try it on, but it looked as though it was for someone who was four feet tall and five feet wide.
“I’d be interested in hearing about the Flood,” Andy said. “I’ve read most of the personal accounts I could find. History books.”
“Thousands were there. Millions have stories. And all of them were heroes,” Rocco said.
“Not many telling stories of how they looted or killed.”
“If you survived it, you did horrible things,” Rocco said. “That’s how you know if someone’s telling the truth. If they admit that. Or if they say nothing. Sometimes the only way to tell the truth is to keep your mouth shut.”
Andy studied Rocco’s face.
“I ain’t what you expected, am I?” Rocco said.
“I wasn’t expecting anything,” Andy said, jamming a velvet suit back in the rack. “I’ve been fatherless for more than thirty-five years. I don’t barely know you. Apart from the insanity of this Floodgate stuff, you’re just some guy.”
“Okay,” Rocco said.
“That’s all you have to say? ‘Okay’?”
“A speech, some words, they ain’t going to change nothing. An apology would be insulting.”
Andy turned to him. “I spent so much time. Did so many things. It was all about finding you, figuring out who you were. Or rebelling against who I thought you were. What happens when you spend your life searching for something—someone—but when you find it, you don’t care anymore? I’m not disappointed in you. I’m numb to the idea.”
“I don’t know, son,” Rocco said, still thumbing through the suits.
“You won’t even tell me about my mother. Is she alive? In the city?” Andy said. “I guess I probably feel the same about her as you, but that’s for me and her to figure o
ut. You show back up, but you set the rules. And you won’t tell me the one last thing that I need to know. To close the damn book and put it on the shelf.”
“Elizabeth McIntyre,” Rocco said. “Beth.”
“The Beth that Kate mentioned,” Andy said. “Something about running around in the sewers during the Flood?”
“We had an adventure.”
“If you knew her then,” Andy asked, “how come I wasn’t born until twenty years later?”
“Life is strange.”
“And?” Andy asked. “That’s really all you’re going to say?”
“You know her name,” Rocco said. “Be happy about that.”
“I’m elated.”
Rocco took a breath, and then looked back up at Andy. “Christ on a crutch. We aren’t dressing for a fashion show. Grab whatever fits.”
Andy nodded and pulled a disco-era suit off the rack. It was unnecessarily orange with lapels the size of aircraft carriers.
“Okay,” Rocco said, “not whatever fits. Find a black suit.”
“You got it, Pops,” Andy said, putting as much snide as he could into it.
Rocco gave him a look. “You’re seriously going to go with Pops?”
“It was either that or Daddy-O.”
In their matching black suits, they looked like father-and-son federal agents. They poked their heads into the small room where a nervous doctor worked on Kate’s shoulder. She wore only a red bra from the waist up. Her eyes had lost some of the glaze from the medication. Agnes stood in the corner.
“Not much more I can do,” the doctor said to her. “As long as you get rest, you’ll heal fine. Too much activity could open that wound back up.”
“This ain’t my first demolition derby, Doc.” Kate gave him a hard slap on the ass with her good arm. He jumped.
“Good to see you back to your old self,” Rocco said.
“What kind of real woman would let something like a car bomb stop her?”
“Uh,” Andy said, “pretty much all of them.”
“Not the ones I know,” Kate said. She held up her hand and Agnes gave her a soft high five.
